RTHK: Actor Smollett guilty of lying about 'hate attack'

Actor Jussie Smollett, the former star of the TV drama "Empire," was found guilty on Thursday of staging a hate crime against himself in what prosecutors said was a bid to gain sympathy and bolster his career.

Prosecutors said Smollett, who is black and openly gay, lied to police when he told them that he was accosted on a dark Chicago street by two masked strangers in January 2019.

The Cook County Circuit Court jury, which deliberated for nine hours, found Smollett guilty of five of the six felony disorderly conduct counts he faced, one for each time he was accused of lying to police.

Describing Smollett's account of what happened as "ridiculous," special prosecutor Dan Webb said, "Mr. Smollett would not have lost this case as he did today unless the jury found that he lied to them.

Smollett said the men threw a noose around his neck and poured chemicals on him while yelling racist and homophobic slurs and expressions of support for former US president Donald Trump.

Police arrested Smollett a month after the alleged assault, saying that he paid two brothers US$3,500 to stage the attack in an effort to raise his showbusiness profile. He eventually pleaded not guilty to six counts of felony disorderly conduct.

The two brothers, Abimbola and Olabinjo Osundairo, testified that Smollett paid them to participate in a fake attack and instructed them how to attack him. During the trial, the actor took the stand and disputed their accounts.

An emergency room doctor who treated Smollett on the night of the attack told the jury that the actor suffered real injuries.

Each felony count carries a maximum sentence of three years in prison.

"While it's certainly possible that he could receive a sentence involving prison time, the much more likely scenario is that he would receive probation with some amount of community service," former Cook County Prosecutor Eryk Wachnik said.

Cook County Judge James Linn did not set a date for sentencing, but scheduled a presentencing hearing for January 27. (Reuters)

This story has been published on: 2021-12-10. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article.
RTHK: Trump loses appeal over January 6 records

A US appeals court on Thursday rejected a request by former President Donald Trump to withhold records from the House of Representatives probe of the deadly January 6 attack on the Capitol, saying he had provided "no basis" for his request.

"Former President Trump has provided no basis for this court to override President Biden's judgment," a three-judge panel of the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit wrote.

President Joe Biden had previously determined that the records, which belong to the executive branch, should not be subject to executive privilege and that turning them over to Congress was in the best interest of the nation.

"Both branches agree that there is a unique legislative need for these documents and that they are directly relevant to the Committees inquiry into an attack on the legislative branch and its constitutional role in the peaceful transfer of power," the court said.

The ruling marks yet another blow to the Republican former president, who has waged an ongoing legal battle with the committee over access to documents and witnesses.

The House Select Committee investigating the riot has asked the National Archives, the US agency housing Trump's White House records, to produce visitor logs, phone records and written communications between his advisers.

The panel has said it needs the records to understand any role Trump may have played in fomenting the violence.

Trump has argued that the materials requested by the House committee were covered by the executive privilege legal doctrine that protects the confidentiality of some White House communications.

Trump's lawyers have called the Democratic-led investigation politically motivated, and argue that the documents are protected.

This is now the second time a federal court has ruled against Trump in the matter. (Reuters)

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South Africa: SARS moves to increase and expand the use of data

The South African Revenue Services (SARS) efforts to increase and expand the use of data to improve the integrity of outcomes and enhance its capability to detect instances of non-compliance is beginning to bear fruit.

This much was evident in the agencys recent notable successes in this regard, the revenue collector said on Thursday.

In a statement, it said: Using the data from various domestic and international sources, as input into machine learning models, risk profiling and case selection, a number of trends have already been observed with positive outcomes in a number of instances, some of which were previously reported.

SARS said examples of domestic third-party sources includes banks, retirement funds, medical insurance providers, the properties deeds office and the companies register. Other sources included the national register of motor vehicles, the National Treasurys Central Supplier Database (CSD), as well as the national population register. International data sources includes the automatic exchange of information on South Africans with off-shore financial assets from about 100 foreign jurisdictions, as well as several mutual administrative agreements with sister organisations.

Progress in respect of this strategic work included SARS in the current year having already collected R115 billion from compliance activities. This was an upward trend after the revenue collected over R172 billion revenue from compliance efforts in the previous financial year.

Of this amount, about 33% results from the automatic risk profiling of taxpayers using data and machine learning, said SARS.

Of the previously reported 26 000 individuals with economic activity and/or assets exceeding R1 million, almost 1000 have been identified as being involved in money laundering and other serious crimes.

Of the initial batch of 275 individuals with assets abroad detected using the Automatic Exchange of Information (AEOI) prorgamme, SARS said the the first 50 individuals had been selected for further scrutiny in relation to assets in tax havens, with more to follow.

We are working with the IRS in the US, utilising the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA), which has assisted in connecting a number of South Africans with links to the Pandora disclosures, and investments into a number of states, reads the statement.

On the government procurement of PPE, the revenue collector said its analysis of the CSD had highlighted large numbers of vendors who supply services to government who are not tax complaint.

Specifically, we identified approximately 1900 entities, each earning more than R1-million (between March 2020  May 2021), from contracts with government, totalling R6.3 billion, yet are not registered as VAT vendors; a further 2380 VAT registered vendors have filed nil returns, despite having earned collectively over R9 billion from government contracts.

The work of regularising the affairs of these taxpayers is well underway. An initial R220 million additional assessments have been raised; almost R75 million fraudulent refunds prevented; with debt collection efforts in progess. In each instance, SARS also considers whether criminal prosecutions are applicable.

Using whistle-blower reports as well as third-party data sources, SARS said it had recently deployed over 90 employees to execute one of the largest search and seizure operations following extensive investigative work.

This operation has identified 11 entities at 4 different sites, and 27 taxpayers for potential fraudulent disclosures in respect of a number of years. All assets have been preserved whilst the investigations proceed, it said, adding that results from its Criminal Investigations efforts had yielded over 70 convictions in 2021 alone.

SARS Commissioner Edward Kieswetter acknowledges that the revenue collector still had a long way to go.

But [we] are encouraged that our strategic approach is beginning to show early impact, he said.

He added that SARS proceeds from the premise that most taxpayers are honest and want to fulfil their legal obligations.

To these taxpayers, he said SARS would work hard to assist them by providing clarity and easing the burden of compliance.

Those, however who continue to defraud the tax system, must know that they do so at their own peril, as we make progress on the rebuilding and modernisation of the institution. As we observe Anti-Corruption Day, SARS remains committed to build on its capability to enforce the law and pursue those who wilfully or criminally seek to break it, he said.

Kieswetter advised non-compliant taxpayers to engage with SARS via the voluntary disclosure program (VDP) to determine if their disclosure would qualify for the relief provided in the VDP.

Where the disclosure does not qualify for the relief, it is strongly recommended that the taxpayer concerned regularise their tax affairs via the various mechanisms that are currently available. The VDP programme has processed in excess of 1000 applications that has resulted in R2.5 billion in revenue for the current year.

Our vision to build a smart modern SARS with unquestionable integrity is beginning to bear fruit, said he said.  SAnews.gov.za

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South Africa: PSC welcomes developments around lifestyle audits

The Public Service Commission (PSC) has welcomed the Department of Public Service and Administrations efforts in leading, coordinating and developing guidelines on lifestyle audits in the Public Service.

To this end, the PSC as part of its oversight role will work with the DPSA [Department of Public Service and Administration] as a lead department in this area of work with the view to monitor and evaluate the implementation across the entire public service, the PSC said in a statement on Thursday.

The PSC said it recognises the importance of conducting lifestyle audits towards the realisation of a capable, ethical and developmental state.

The auditing of lifestyles of public servants is certainly an important tool in the fight against corruption.

Earlier this week the PSC announced that the DPSA has approved a guide on implementing lifestyle audits in the Public Service which would commence in February 2022.

In Thursdays statement it added that in the execution of its functions, the PSC is guided by its Constitutional mandate which is to promote a high standard of professional ethics in the public service and to investigate, monitor and evaluate the organisation and administration, and personnel practices of the public service.

The PSC is also required to ensure effective and efficient public administration.

Having made inputs into the conceptualisation of this important milestone, the PSC eagerly awaits further communication from the department regarding this project, it said. SAnews.gov.za

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South Africa: Half of funding needed for Africas first mRNA vaccine hub raised: WHO

The Omicron variant has thrown the spotlight on the COVID-19 vaccine shortfall in Africa, with the continent remaining the worst hit by inequitable access to safe and effective vaccines.

Poorer countries continue to scramble to get their hands on the lifesaving jabs, with less than 10% of Africas 54 nations projected to reach the year-end target of fully vaccinating 40% of its population.

However, this could be a thing of the past, as Africa forges ahead to develop its first vaccine manufacturing capacity, to ensure viable vaccine security.

Mid-year, the World Health Organisation (WHO), together with the South African and French governments announced that the country would host Africas COVID-19 vaccine production facility, paving the way for African companies to begin manufacturing mRNA vaccines.

The WHO, a South African consortium and partners from COVAX have been working tirelessly to make this a reality.

The mRNA technology instructs cells to make a protein that generates an immune response in the body, producing antibodies that protect against disease, a key ingredient in Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines.

WHOs Dr Martin Friede, speaking during an open forum hosted by the Department of Science and Technology (DSI), said one of the biggest challenges with this pandemic is inequity.

Rich countries got vaccines and the poor countries did not, Friede said on Thursday.

He said one of the objectives of vaccine manufacturing hubs was to increase the number of companies to access the technology, especially in regions where there is insufficient vaccine capacity.

The South African consortium has since been set up to build a technology transfer hub with Biovac being the first spoke and a local company, Afrigen, which will develop the continent's first locally produced mRNA jab.

The other partners include the DSI, the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, the South African Medical Research Council and top local universities.

According to Friede, Afrigen will enter Phase 1 clinical trials by the end of next year, while Biovac is expected to produce material for clinical trials in 2023.

It is really important that South Africa takes the lead on this and tries not just making copies of vaccines, but tries to make new vaccines made in Africa for Africans, he said.

Now we can't do this without money, he added.

Crunching the numbers, he said the budget is 92 billion or R1.66 billion for about five years, with 52 million already been raised so far.

This is a lot of money by some people's perspectives. But it's not a lot of money when you look at how much has been spent on the pandemic.

The initiative has backing from many donors including France, Canada, Germany, ELMA Foundation and KFW Development Bank, with some having to formally confirm.

I'm going to quote a famous politician to say, yes, we can. It might take us a moment to get it done. But we'll do it, Friede added.

Afrigen Managing Director, Professor Petro Terblanche, said the support from all its partners was essential for success.

She announced that the company has since completed its vaccine facility suitable for the production of mRNA vaccines and clinical trials.

This was made possible by the companys 26-member team consisting of scientists, engineers, technologists, technicians, pharmacists and pharmacologists.

We did not get technology transfer from the two leading mRNA vaccine manufacturers. But we did it ourselves.

DSI Deputy Minister, Buti Manamela said government was honoured that the vaccine hub for Africa is in Cape Town.

This is a testament to the quality of South Africa scientific expertise and infrastructure and a vote of confidence in our country's capability for vaccine submissions.

Government, according to Manamela, has set aside 100 million in vaccine development over the next five years and hopes that the mRNA technology will also be used to fight TB, malaria, and HIV and AIDS.

We do not doubt that this facility will be of considerable benefit to our country, the continent and middle-income countries and make a significant contribution to the development of essential skills and knowledge.  SAnews.gov.za

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South Africa: Municipalities urged to address ageing water infrastructure

Water and Sanitation (DWS) Minister Senzo Mchunu, has called on municipalities to allocate budget for the replacement of old and ageing infrastructure, as they are the main causes of water losses and sewer spillages.

We need to stop the leaks leading to water losses. The project called War on Leaks is closed,it does not exist. You have to declare your own war on leaks in your municipalities. take this matter seriously and repair pipes, Mchunu said.

Mchunu made the call during a Ministerial working session held in Mpumalanga this week.

Mchunu and his deputies, David Mahlobo and Dikeledi Magadzi met with local and district municipalities represented by executive mayors and municipal managers, as well as the provincial Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs (COGTA) and Human Settlements departments.

During the three-day engagement with the municipalities, a number of common challenges were identified, and these included lack of maintenance of water and sanitation infrastructure, ageing and dilapidated infrastructure, leakages leading to high water losses, vandalism of infrastructure, mushrooming of informal settlements leading to increased water demand and pressure on infrastructure, as well as sewer spillages and the bucket system.

While acknowledging the challenges, Mchunu however, emphasised that there is no water crisis in the country.

The Minister called on executive mayors to prioritise communities and provide them with water.

He also called for a stop to sewer spillages and an end to the bucket system, as people can no longer be exposed to such an inhumane system.

We have to register the issue of stopping spillages as one priority. DWS, COGTA, district and local municipalities, go and craft a plan, do the sizing up, specify what needs to be done, how much it will cost and how long it will take.

All affected municipalities must pledge maximum funds and then the districts and the department should chip in, Mchunu said.

He further instructed the stakeholders to present a costed plan with committed funds to deal with the sewer spillage challenge.

Appointment of new Director-General welcomed

Meanwhile, Mchunu has lauded the appointment of new Director-General at the department, Dr Sean Douglas Phillips.

The Minister said the appointment came at an opportune time when the water sector is faced with a myriad of challenges that need knowledgeable administrators with innovative ideas to steer the ship in the right direction, working closely with the political leadership.

Dr Phillips comes with a wealth of knowledge in the public service, and we believe that he will assist this sixth administration in its resolve to ensure access to clean water and decent sanitation for all in line with our Constitution.

We have had our hands dirty since we joined the ship in August and Dr Phillips will complement the work that we do so that we achieve our objectives.

Mchunu added that he is hopeful that the stability of the department and its entities will be realised with a permanent Director-General of the calibre of Dr Phillips, and issued an impassioned plea to everyone in the sector to give him all the necessary support.

Dr Phillips, an engineer by profession, has more than 20 years in senior management positions in government with expertise in service delivery improvement, public service governance and administration, infrastructure procurement and delivery management, project and programme management, and operations management, amongst others.  SAnews.gov.za

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South Africa: 70% of people in hospital for COVID-19 unvaccinated

Seventy percent of those who have been admitted to hospital are those who are unvaccinated, revealed Health Minister, Dr Joe Phaahla, on Friday.

According to the Minister, while scientists are still conducting more studies if vaccines work against the Omicron variant, early signs indicate they are still effective.

So as things stand the vaccines are showing to be still very strong in protecting against severe disease as it did with previous variants, he said during a media briefing, adding that figures are showing those who are vaccinated are better protected.

In addition, current treatments used over the last 20 months are still very relevant and very effective. These include steroid, corticosteroid oxygen therapy, antivirals, and anticoagulants.

Children admissions

Phaahla told the media that between 14 November and 4 December 2021, there has been an increase in admission of children under five years, especially in Tshwane metro hospitals where early resurgence occurred. For the under-18s, hospital admissions comprised 21% of admissions.

However, according to the Minister, the patterns has since changed, with the proportion of admissions in children less than five years decreasing from 21% to 14% in the previous week to 8% this week.

But it has now changed to more adults getting infected, he added.

The provincial and national pictures is indicating a peak in both cases and admissions among children of all age groups. However, there is no change in the proportion of children getting seriously ill or dying.

Early data from hospital surveillance also reports from public and private hospitals indicate that admissions are largely in children admitted for other reasons, and then testing positive and for very short durations.

Despite making up 30% of the population, the younger people comprise only 12% of cases and 5% of hospital admissions.

However, the children who are at risk of severe disease are those under one year and other people with other comorbidities for children who are premature and who have diabetes, cancer and those with HIV and TB.

The Minister said he was unclear what is driving the apparent increase in children. But what we want to say is that there is no need for alarm.

In addition, he said while the other aspects of the transmissibility are showing, there are signs that the Omicron is less severe.

We know that the vaccines as emphasised, it remains the bulwark of protection against all these variants.

Gauteng

In Gauteng, the Minister said the weekly infections increased by more than 400% since last week and hospital admissions jumped by more than 200%.

According to the Minister, Omicron was the dominant variant among samples sequenced during November 2021.

That is, as far as of yesterday, 70% of the tests done are showing Omicron as a dominant variant, which is most likely the variant driving the increase in cases in Gauteng.

Omicron is quickly displacing the Delta variant in Gauteng and is also spreading in other provinces.

The Minister has urged people to get the vaccine, as the country races to reach the 27 million mark of administered jabs before the end of the day.

He has called on the younger aged between 18 and 35, which is sitting below 30% in terms of vaccine coverage, to get the shot.  SAnews.gov.za

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RTHK: US wins appeal over Julian Assange extradition

The United States won an appeal in London's High Court to have Wikileaks founder Julian Assange extradited to face criminal charges, including breaking a spying law and conspiring to hack government computers.

"The court allows the appeal," Judge Timothy Holroyde said.

The judge said he was satisfied with a package of assurances given by the United States about the conditions of Assange's detention including a pledge not to hold him in a so-called "ADX" maximum security prison in Colorado and that he would be transferred to Australia to serve his sentence if convicted.

The ruling brings Assange one step closer to being extradited but further hurdles remain.

Judge Holroyde said the case must now be remitted to Westminster Magistrates Court with the direction judges send it to the British government to decide whether or not Assange should be extradited to the United States.

US authorities accuse Australian-born Assange, 50, of 18 counts relating to Wikileaks release of vast troves of confidential US military records and diplomatic cables which they said had put lives in danger.

The United States was appealing against a January 4 ruling by a London District Judge that Assange should not be extradited because he would likely commit suicide in a US prison.

Wikileaks came to prominence when it published a US military video in 2010 showing a 2007 attack by Apache helicopters in Baghdad that killed a dozen people, including two Reuters news staff. It then released thousands of secret classified files and diplomatic cables.

US prosecutors and Western security officials regard Assange as a reckless and dangerous enemy of the state whose actions imperilled the lives of agents named in the leaked material.

But supporters cast Assange as an anti-establishment hero who has been victimised by the United States for exposing US wrongdoing in Afghanistan and Iraq. (Reuters)

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South Africa: Proposal to create corruption focused Chapter Nine institution

Former Justice of the Constitutional Court Judge, Albie Sachs, says the formation of an independent body or commission with powers akin to those of a Chapter Nine institution, should be considered in the fight against corruption.

Sachs was speaking during a celebration of the 25th anniversary of the signing of the Constitution.

Chapter Nine institutions like the Public Protector, Auditor General, the SA Human Rights Commission and others, are geared towards supporting the implementation of democratic processes in the country and are independent, subject only to the Constitution and the law but do account to the National Assembly.

Sachs  who himself helped to write the Constitution  said in hindsight, the drafters of South Africas highest laws should have considered a special commission to protect the country from corruption.

There were two things that turned out to be very important to South Africa that we didnt really envisage when we started drafting the Constitution and we didnt create special provisions in the Constitution to deal with them.

The one was HIV and the impact of the pandemic was enormous. But the Constitutional Court said [discrimination was ] to be unconstitutional. When it came to corruption, it wasnt mentioned in any of the themes of the Bill of Rights and there were no institutions to protect democracy solidified around people having a special role to deal with corruption, he said.

According to Sachs, the current Chapter Nine institutions  although working hard to protect democratic gains  do not have the specific focus required to deal with the scourge.

[It] is something that maybe should be considered for an amendment  a constitutional amendment. To create a body with the same independence that the other Chapter Nine institutions have, devoted to dealing with corruption, protecting whistle blowers, ensuring that there are prosecutions, creating information and understanding.

Sachs added that if not curbed, corruption will undercut all of the other rights guaranteed in the Bill of Rights and other gains of South Africa's Constitutional democracy.

Corruption threatens the achievement of all the other rights. It undermines it. It allows people in power  who should be upholding fundamental rights  to take kickbacks and have interests outside. It is not just a deviation of money, its the destruction of virtue, integrity and honesty, he said.  SAnews.gov.za

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South Africa: Continued pursuance of Constitutional goals a must

Minister of Justice and Correctional Services, Ronald Lamola, says government and society must remain unapologetic in the pursuance and protection of the ideals laid out in the Constitution.

The Minister was addressing a webinar observing the 25th anniversary of the signing of the Constitution into law by former President Nelson Mandela.

If these [ideals] are not followed by concerted actions by all of us, our best intentions remain hollow. In the same way, our constitution remains hollow to survivors of gender based violence. In the same way, our constitution remains hollow to those who idle in poverty and unemployment.

The Constitution has to be a catalyst for equality under these circumstances. Socio-economic rights must become a reality. In this vein, we need to be unapologetic in pursuing the goals which the Constitution has set us, he said.

Lamola highlighted that over the past 27 years, laws have been passed in an effort to realise the goals set out in the Constitution and to better the lives of those living in the country.

We have created new institutions and in some instances, we have given them even more powers informed by the learnings of our journey as we continue to reform the state.

[There are some]bills we are finalizing and producing to address systemic inequalities and unfair discrimination. We have put in place legislation directed at advancing human rights. In recent times, pieces of legislation have featured heavily in our courts with the intention to hold those with executive powers accountable for their decisions and also holding individuals accountable for various forms of discrimination, the Minister said.

Lamola added that the Constitution has allowed for positive progress in the lives of South Africans and cultivated a culture of observance of human rights.

[Our] Constitution can be a document that binds us together towards a better life for all. For our nation to prevail, we dare not lose our robust human rights culture which has grown from strength to strength in the past 25 years.

This human rights culture must be even more prominent now by all role players in society in a period where COVID-19 pandemic has had an impact on peoples livelihoods and more broadly the economy. The worlds richest nations continue to be on the wrong side of equality through unjust hoarding of vaccines, he said.

The Minister encouraged all those living in South Africa to actively protect the Constitution and the countrys democracy.

Our biggest threat to our democracy and its institutions is not only the politicians and big private companies amongst us who seek to override its foundations, but also citizens who chose to withdraw their participation. Our constitution is a living document and it lives with us. We have the responsibility to keep it alivelet us pledge to keep it alive in all facets of society.  SAnews.gov.za

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Hong Kong: Tso/Tong land review meeting held

The first meeting of the Working Group on Review of Tso/Tong Administration was held today to review the management of Tso/Tong under the New Territories Ordinance.

Chaired by Secretary for Home Affairs Caspar Tsui, the meeting also exchanged views on the direction of strengthening the management of Tso/Tong.

Mr Tsui said through the active participation of the Heung Yee Kuk New Territories, the working groups prime task is to review the current management of Tso/Tong as well as make recommendations to improve the management of Tso/Tong and facilitate the disposal of Tso/Tong lands.

He noted that optimising the use of Tso/Tong lands in the New Territories is on the premise that the Tso/Tong tradition should be respected and the legitimate interests of Tso/Tong members be protected.

Mr Tsui said the discussion today was a fruitful and stimulating one. He hoped that the Heung Yee Kuk would consult Tso/Tong and related people and make suggestions on the review direction as well as build a consensus among the rural community.

The working group was set up in accordance with the Chief Executive's 2021 Policy Address.

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Hong Kong: Polling station error found

The Registration & Electoral Office today said it discovered that electors of the eastern part of Sha Tin District of New Territories South East geographical constituency were mistakenly allocated to a wrong polling station.

The incident involves two nearby polling stations in the eastern part of Sha Tin District. Initial investigation revealed that when allocating electors to a polling station, office staff mistakenly swapped electors of two polling stations, namely CUHKFAA Chan Chun Ha Secondary School and PLK Riverain Primary School, resulting in the wrong allocation of polling station to about 14,200 electors.

Since poll cards have been mailed to all electors, the office is arranging to re-mail a revised poll card with the location map of the polling station to affected electors as soon as possible.

The office will deploy additional staff at the polling stations to assist electors on the polling day. Notices will be put up at the polling stations' prominent locations to make sure electors cast their votes at the correct venue.

The office offered apologies to the electors for the inconvenience caused, adding that electors can only cast their votes at the designated polling station.

Electors can log in to the Online Voter Information Enquiry System to check their designated polling station. Call 2891 1001 for enquiries.

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RTHK: Muratov and Ressa accept Nobel Peace Prize

People in positions of power in Russia are actively promoting the idea of war, and conflict with Ukraine is now distinctly possible, Nobel Peace Prize laureate Dmitry Muratov said on Friday.

Receiving his award at Oslo City Hall, Muratov said it was common in Russia to think that politicians who avoided bloodshed were weak, while threatening war was "the duty of true patriots".

Muratov, editor-in-chief of Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta, won the 2021 award jointly with Maria Ressa of the Philippines, co-founder of news site Rappler, in recognition of their fight for freedom of expression.

"The powerful actively promote the idea of war," he said. "Moreover, in (the) heads of some crazy geopoliticians, a war between Russia and Ukraine is not something impossible any longer."

US officials have said Russia could soon invade Ukraine following a build-up of troops near the Ukrainian border. Moscow has denied it is planning an invasion.

Muratov also said journalism in Russia was going "through a dark valley", with over a hundred journalists, media outlets, human rights defenders and non-governmental organisations having been branded as foreign agents.

"In Russia, this means 'enemies of the people'," Muratov said, dedicating his prize to all investigative journalists, and to colleagues at Novaya Gazeta killed because of their work.

Muratov's co-laureate Ressa reiterated her call for reform of social media platforms.

"Our greatest need today is to transform that hate and violence, the toxic sludge that's coursing through our information ecosystem, prioritised by American internet companies that make more money by spreading that hate and triggering the worst in us," she said.

"For the US, reform or revoke section 230, the law that treats social media platforms like utilities."

Ressa and Muratov are the first journalists to receive the Nobel prize since Germany's Carl von Ossietzky won the 1935 award for revealing the Nazis' secret rearmament programme.

Ressa noted in her speech that Von Ossietzky was never able to collect his award as he was held in a concentration camp and died in custody.

"By giving this to journalists today, the Nobel committee is signalling a similar historical moment, another existential point for democracy," she said. (Reuters)

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Two stages proposed for international commercial flight resumption

The Ministry of Transport has proposed two stages for the upcoming resumption of regular international commercial flights starting January 1.

At a meeting chaired by Deputy Minister Pham Binh Minh on December 9 regarding the plan, a representative of the ministry said the first stage, lasting for two weeks from January 1, will see the operation of flights between Vietnam and the destinations of Beijing, Tokyo, Seoul, Taipei  Taiwan (China), Bangkok, Singapore, Vientiane, Phnom Penh, and San Francisco or Los Angeles.



All international flights will land in the Noi Bai aiport in Hanoi and Tan Son Nhat airport in Ho Chi Minh City, with the frequency of four flights per week. The weekly number of foreign arrivals is expected at about 14,000.



The second stage starting from January next year will last for one month and covers more destinations  Kuala Lumpur, Hong Kong (China), Paris, Frankfurt, Sydney, and Moscow. More airports are suggested to join the scheme, including Da Nang in the central city of Da Nang, Cam Ranh in the central province of Khanh Hoa, Phu Quoc in the Mekong Delta province of Kien Giang, and Van Don in the northern province of Quang Ninh. Flight frequency will be increased to seven per week, with the weekly number of entries estimated at some 40,000.



Participants agreed with the policy of reopening international flight routes given that Vietnam now basically put the COVID-19 pandemic under control. They said there are a large number of Vietnamese people wishing to go home, including workers with expired labour contracts; students and people on working trips trapped overseas; and expatriates.



The resumption will create conditions for foreign investors and experts to travel to Vietnam to study the market and work for foreign-invested projects, they added.



Deputy PM Minh said the resumption is a practical need in the new normal situation. He required the building of a single medical declaration software applied to people on entry and good implementation of related information work./.
Seminar seeks opportunities for Vietnamese businesses abroad

A seminar was held on December 10 in virtual and in-person forms for heads of Vietnamese representatives abroad and businesses, aiming to seek measures to promote the economic diplomacy to serve the countrys development.













The seminar draws heads of 94 Vietnamese representative agencies abroad and many businesses(Photo: VNA)

The event focused on finding cooperation orientations and giving practical solutions to foster coordination between the diplomatic sector and business community during the production and business recovery and development in the new normal situation.



Opening the event, Deputy Foreign Minister Nguyen Minh Vu noted that the 13th National Party Congress Resolution clarifies the role of economic diplomacy for national development with people, localities and businesses put at the core of services. This is also a task of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and 94 representative agencies of Vietnam abroad, he said.



Vu said that the seminar, which is the first of a series of events held within the framework of the 31st Diplomatic Conference, is a chance for heads of the agencies to share information on the situation, trends of foreign markets and opportunities for Vietnamese enterprises.



The official held that Vietnam is experiencing a special period in which the business community is working to adapt to changes in the world and the country towards greener and more sustainable growth, and to impacts by COVID-19.



He expressed hope that through the seminar, businesses will receive market information and forecast as well as warnings that help them expand trade, investment and tourism activities abroad and seek support in removing difficulties in partnering with their foreign peers.



He asked the heads of Vietnamese representative agencies abroad to update businesses on the latest trends in trade, investment and production activities in other countries, as well as information on innovative technologies, education and training, and labour, while giving them advice on how to make the best use of the information.



Following the opening session, participants discussed opportunities and new business trends amid COVID-19 situation in various areas such as trade, investment, production, science, technology and renovation.



The seminar includes five sessions during which businesses will engage in direct discussions with heads of Vietnamese representative agencies in America, Europe, Northeast Asia, Southeast Asia-South Asia-South Pacific, and Middle East-Africa./.
HCM City residents receive third Covid-19 vaccine shots

Ho Chi Minh City on December 10 started providing additional booster shots of Covid-19 vaccine to local people.













Ho Chi Minh City started providing additional booster shots of Covid-19 vaccine to local people on December 10.

According to a plan issued on December 7 by the vice-chairman of the municipal people's committee, Duong Anh Duc, the third Covid-19 vaccine shots will be given to 6.3 million people from December 10 in an effort to boost their immunity against the virus.



The city will administer the booster shots to people aged above 18 who are fully vaccinated or who have received the additional shot at least six months previously. The priority will be given to people aged over 50, those suffering from underlying health issues, people who require long-term care at health facilities, and medical workers, especially those directly involved in collecting samples for Covid-19 testing and treating Covid-19 patients.



Meanwhile, additional Covid-19 shots will first go to the adults (from 18 years old) who have been fully inoculated with the last shot of the normal course at least 28 days before and are immunocompromised. Priority will be given to those aged over 60.



On December 10, people doing Covid-19 prevention and control work, the military forces, the police, and patients suffering immunocompromised diseases were given priority to receive their third vaccine shots.













Doctor Thach Thi Ca from Go Vap District Healthcare Centre said that a total of 250 HIV patients were given their third doses at the centre on Friday morning.



"We are using Pfizer and AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccines for those third shots," she said.



More than 1,000 people who are joining in the Covid-19 prevention work were also given their third vaccine shots on Friday morning.



As of December 5, over 7.92 million people in Ho Chi Minh City had been vaccinated, with nearly 6.82 million of them receiving the full two jabs.



Ho Chi Minh City is still the biggest Covid-19 epicentre in Vietnam, which is reporting a resurgence in the number of infections after a short time easing social distancing measures. On Thursday the city recorded 1,453 new cases, raising the total number of infections in the city to 483,376.
Vietnamese farmers face large fruit inventory as China tightens import rules

Vietnamese farmers are facing difficulties selling over one million tonnes of fruits after China, which is the country's biggest agricultural products importer, is tightening its import activities.















Jackfruit prices have been slashed in some southern provinces



On November 29, authorities in the northern province of Lang Son sent letters to farmers and export companies in some provinces with information that China has tightened its import regulations for Covid-19 prevention and thousands of trucks carrying agriculture products have been stuck at some local border gates. Lang Son authorities advised farmers and firms in these localities to carefully study the latest moves by China to regulate their production and exporting activities.







Thousands of trucks carrying agriculture products have been stuck at some local border gates in Lang Son Province



General Secretary of the Vietnam Fruit and Vegetable Association Dang Phuc Nguyen said that they had been informed that China would halt import activities for at least six weeks around the Lunar New Year Festival.



Jackfruit are one of the key farm products in the Mekong Delta region. The fruits are mainly exported to China and now face high inventory during the coming harvest season.



A local farmer, Tran Van Be said that jackfruit prices had been slashed to VND 1,000-5,000 per kilo while they can only recover investment at the price of VND 10,000 per kilo.



"Our products are being stuck at the Lang Son Border Gate for many days," the farmer said. "We'll incur big losses if China continues to tighten import regulations or suspend import during our harvest season around the Lunar New Year."



Tien Giang Province is a large fruit basket in the region with 80,000 hectares planting 11 kinds of fruits. Local farmers are also seeing prices falling by half due to the change in the Chinese market.



According to Le Thanh Tung, deputy head of the Department of Plant Cultivation, under the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, the southern provinces are harvesting over 700,000 tonnes of fruits this December including 200,000 tonnes of dragon fruits. And it is expected that the fruit output in the first quarter of 2022 will be some 1.7 million tonnes.



"Vietnam may still face lots of challenges in exporting agricultural products in the first quarter of 2022 if the Covid-19 epidemic continues," Tung said. Our key export market of China is tightening the checking the point of origin of imported products, which has caused serious congestion at the border gates. Localities should be well-prepared for the sales activities."



The official suggested that farmers and firms should try to sell their products in the domestic market during this time and look for opportunities to export their products to other countries including the US and Japan.
Vietnam nominated as co-chair of OECD's Southeast Asia programme for first time

Vietnam and Australia have been officially nominated as co-chairs of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD)-run Southeast Asia Regional Programme (SEARP) for 2022-2025, replacing Thailand and the Republic of Korea (RoK).













At the 8th meeting of the Steering Group of the OECD Southeast Asia Regional Programme. (Photo: VNA)

The nomination was decided at the 8th meeting of the Steering Group of the OECD Southeast Asia Regional Programme held in the form of videoconference on December 9. Assistant to the Foreign Minister and Director of the Department of Economic Affairs at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Nguyen Minh Hang attended the meeting.



In her remarks, Hang thanked OECD and the Southeast Asia Regional Programme for their acknowledgement of Vietnams active and responsible contributions over the past time, pledging that Vietnam will closely coordinate with Australia to carry forward the achievements and propose priority areas.



Anthony Stannard, a representative from the Australian delegation, also affirmed Australias resolve to join hands with Vietnam and regional countries in the next three years when it holds the co-chairmanship.



Vietnam is the third nation in Southeast Asia to work as co-chair of the programme, after Indonesia and Thailand, which demonstrates efforts in implementing the directive of the Party Central Committee's Secretariat on enhancing and advancing multilateral diplomacy by 2030.



The position would help Vietnam prove its international role and responsibility, while utilising OECDs consultancy and support for the countrys development goals.



The nomination also reflects OECDs trust in Vietnams capacity to connect the organisation with the Southeast Asian region in the areas of shared concern.



Inaugurated by OECD Secretary-General Angel Gurria and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe at the OECD Ministerial Council Meeting in May 2014, the OECD Southeast Asia Regional Programme aims to support the region in their domestic priorities, policy reforms and regional integration efforts. The programme held its first Ministerial Conference in March 2018, to discuss issues on Inclusive ASEAN, and the next phase of the Programme.
"Summit for democracy" only serves U.S. own interests: FM spokesperson

Xinhua) 08:06, December 10, 2021

BEIJING, Dec. 9 (Xinhua) -- A Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson has slammed the U.S.-proposed "summit for democracy," saying that it has nothing to do with international justice or democracy, but rather about serving the U.S. own selfish gains and maintaining its hegemony.

Spokesperson Wang Wenbin made the remarks at a daily news briefing on Thursday when asked about reports that the United States is seeking consensus among participating countries of the "summit" on the "Alliance for the Future of the Internet".

"This is another example of how the United States is politicizing, instrumentalizing and weaponizing democracy," said the spokesperson.

He said that the proposed "Alliance" shows once again that the United States is dividing the internet, seeking technological monopoly and cyber hegemony, and suppressing the scientific and technological development of other countries.

"The United States tries to impose its standards on others and restrict or take away the right to independently choose cooperative partners and develop the internet by countries, especially developing countries, thus stopping them from enjoying the dividend of digital economy and technological progress," Wang said.

He pointed out that the United States talks continually about building an "open" internet, but all it does in reality is to create confrontation and divide the internet.

The pushing for the so-called "Alliance" is in an attempt to plant ideological bias and zero-sum mentality in the supply, industrial and information chains of the internet, Wang said, adding that it will seriously distort the market.

"The United States is doing so in a hope to get an upper hand in the competition in an unfair and unjust manner. This runs counter to the internet spirit of peace, security, openness and cooperation," Wang said.

He stressed that the future of the internet should not and cannot be manipulated by a few countries.

"China opposes politicizing science and technology cooperation based on ideology and through exclusive arrangements as they hinder efforts to address shared challenge and seek common development. Such moves will only undermine scientific and technological innovation," said the spokesperson.

"The political manipulation of the United States in the name of democracy will only be met with wide opposition in the international community," he added.

(Web editor: Zhong Wenxing, Liang Jun)
Washington should clean up democratic mess rather than staging democracy show

Xinhua) 08:08, December 10, 2021

-- Washington's "show of democracy" takes place at a time when the illusion created by the American democratic system has been repeatedly shattered in recent years.

-- Rather than addressing its own challenges in establishing a healthy democracy, U.S. politicians are preoccupied with weaponizing democracy to smear other countries.

-- Despite the hoopla surrounding the so-called "Summit for Democracy," the international community has long concluded that American democracy exists only in form and not in substance.

BEIJING, Dec. 9 (Xinhua) -- Democracy is a right of all people and should never be patented by any country. As the international community watches in dismay the so-called "Summit for Democracy" led by the United States, more rational voices around the world have warned against Washington's attempt to pit one camp against another driven by a dangerous Cold War mentality.

Ironically, Washington's "show of democracy" also takes place at a time when the illusion created by the American democratic system has been repeatedly shattered in recent years.

Rather than addressing its own challenges in establishing a healthy democracy, U.S. politicians are preoccupied with weaponizing democracy to smear other countries.

RISKING FUELING POLARIZATION

Experts around the world have warned that by handpicking specific summit participants based on its own geopolitical considerations and assumptions about democratic standards without regard for other world democracies, Washington is actually further polarizing and dividing nations.

"Creating some kind of dividing lines is a very dangerous game," said Eyob Belachew, an Ethiopian international relations and political analyst.

The summit is anything but democratic as genuine democracy fundamentally favors inclusiveness, diversity, equal opportunities and prosperity of people rather than compelling other nations to adopt the Western model of democracy that primarily revolves around economic interests, Shakeel Ahmad Ramay, chief executive officer of Asian Institute of Eco-civilization Research and Development, told Xinhua.

"This is going to further divide the world in different blocs at a time when countries around the globe direly need unity and cooperation for global development," the expert said, stressing that the so-called "Summit for Democracy" is nothing but a tool to maintain U.S. hegemony under the guise of democracy.

In his column article for The Manila Times, Austin Ong, researcher of Manila-based think tank Integrated Development Studies Institute, said that by initiating the so-called "Summit for Democracy," the United States is making a mockery of democracy.

"It polarizes the world rather than harmonizes (it). Instead of creating more avenues for peaceful reintegration of relationships among nations, it intensifies divisions," Ong said.

UNQUALIFIED "DEMOCRACY BEACON"

Despite the hoopla surrounding the so-called "Summit for Democracy," the international community has long concluded that American democracy exists only in form and not in substance.

As is widely recognized that the ultimate litmus test for good democracy is whether it can truly represent and serve the fundamental interests of the people, the American way is far from being the "envy of the world."

Primarily, the American-style democracy is not democratic. Many of America's founding fathers were slave owners themselves. And almost a century after its founding, the United States still acquiesced in slavery, and forbade women or African Americans from voting.

Today, the American democracy is more of a plutocracy, with a government hardly of, by or for the people. As U.S. political scientist Francis Fukuyama wrote early this year, the government in Washington is "captured by powerful elite groups that distort policy to their own benefit and undermine the legitimacy of the regime as a whole."

"The people do not govern. Politicians respond almost exclusively to the desires of special interests and the wealthiest citizens," lamented Charles Wheelan, a senior lecturer at the Rockefeller Center at U.S. Dartmouth College.

A recent study by the Robert Bosch Foundation in Germany found that over half of Americans think the democratic system is not functioning at all under the current circumstances. Also alarmingly, a recent poll by U.S. broadcaster NPR shows that 81 percent of U.S. adults said the future of U.S. democracy is under threat.

FORCED DEMOCRACY CAN NOT FUNCTION

For a democracy to be viable and resilient, it also needs to draw its strength from a country's own culture and history, as well as its economic and social realities. This is a major reason why more than 20 years of nation-building in Afghanistan crashed to the ground in a matter of weeks. A copied American-style democracy did not have the local conditions to sustain it.

Lisandra Astiasaran Arias, counsellor of the permanent mission of Cuba to the UN Office at Geneva, argues that there is no simple model or definition of democracy, and every state has the right and the responsibility to develop its own models in accordance with its particular situation and the will of its own people.

"We should not allow the attempts of some countries to impose their views on democracy and human rights on the rest of the world," she said.

In their interviews with Xinhua, many experts said that China's impressive development, including its achievements in poverty reduction, has illustrated the characteristics of an advanced democracy.

"China has a different perspective or a different practice of democracy, which is not actually similar to what we already know or what we already have in mind," said Belachew, the Ethiopian international relations and political analyst.

"It is the whole process of people's democracy. This is really an advanced democracy in a Chinese way. It may not fit other countries, but it is helping China," he added.

Belachew stressed that China's people-centered approach has always put its people's interests at the forefront, which is key to China's development.

"Chinese democracy focuses on the wellbeing of the people," Belachew said.

(Web editor: Zhong Wenxing, Liang Jun)
Nation marks 20th anniversary of joining WTO

China Daily) 08:25, December 10, 2021

The thematic exhibition commemorating the 20th anniversary of China's accession to WTO during the fourth CIIE in Shanghai on Nov 7, 2021. [Photo by Zhu Xingxin/China Daily]

Global shoppers benefit, domestic market fuels imports growth and opportunities for foreign companies

A glance at imported products on the shelves of even an average-size supermarket in Beijing invariably shows that shoppers have plenty of options.

From food and beverages such as fruit, meat, baby formula and wine, to other daily necessities, including clothing, products from around the world have become commonplace for countless Chinese consumers using bricks-and-mortar shopping venues.

Online, they are even more readily availablejust the click of a mouse away.

The variety of global goods flooding into China is not only testimony to the nation's burgeoning domestic market, but also shows, in particular, how deeply the country has become interwoven with worldwide trade.

Gao Feng, spokesman for the Ministry of Commerce, said at an online media briefing on Thursday, "China will unwaveringly further high-level opening-up to share market opportunities with the rest of the world."

The nation would continue to reduce items on the negative list for foreign investment, and strengthen services and protection for foreign enterprises and related projects, Gao said.

With a constantly improving business environment governed by law that is up to international standards and market oriented, China hopes foreign investors will benefit from the country's growth dividends, he added.

Since joining the World Trade Organization, or WTO, in 2001, China has dramatically increased its exports to become the world's undisputed champion in this field.

Analysts said the nation provides global consumers with quality and cheap goods. At the same time, it continuously expands and opens up its domestic market to fuel growth in imports and provide more business opportunities for foreign companies with or without a presence in China.

They added that with its promise to further reforms and opening-up, China will continue to make a great contribution to global economic growth, especially at a time when industrial and supply chains worldwide are experiencing difficulties due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Tu Xinquan, dean of the China Institute for WTO Studies at the University of International Business and Economics in Beijing, said, "China has benefited from its accession to the WTO, but more important, by joining the multilateral trading system, it has enhanced the operational efficiency of the world economy and improved the use of global resources, making a huge contribution to international economic growth."

China's accession to the WTO enabled the nation to incorporate its own resources, including labor, land and natural assets, to the global economy at a much deeper level and on a much larger scale, accelerating the nation's economic growth, Tu said.

Thanks to China joining the international institution, developed economies could reallocate and match their capital resources with labor and China's other resources to reduce product costs and enhance productivity, he added.

Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, director-general of the WTO, said China has successfully positioned itself at the core of numerous global value chains. These production and trade networks have not only provided a lifeline for many countries during the pandemic, they have also increased the quantity, quality and variety of goods available worldwide, she added.

Okonjo-Iweala made the remarks via video link during a high-level session marking the 20th anniversary of China's accession to the WTO, held on the sidelines of the fourth China International Import Expo and Hongqiao International Economic Forum last month in Shanghai.

In November 2001, after 15 years of negotiations, the WTO formally approved China's entry as its 143rd member, which took effect a month later, making the WTO a truly international trade organization.

During the past two decades, China, which has different levels of development between regions, has made vigorous efforts to align itself with WTO rules, abide by them, and also to open its market.

It cut its overall tariff rate from 15.3 percent to 7.4 percent during this period, lower than the 9.8 percent accession commitment. The current tariff level is lower than those of all developing members of the WTO and close to those of developed members of the organization, according to the Ministry of Commerce.

The world's sixth-largest economy when it joined the WTO, China has risen to become the second-largest. It is also a major trade partner with more than 120 countries and regions, with total trade in goods soaring to $4.65 trillion last year, up from $509.8 billion in 2001, official customs data show.

The nation has opened some 120 subsectors in the services industry, compared with its accession promise to open 100, according to the Ministry of Commerce.

(Web editor: Zhong Wenxing, Liang Jun)
Central bank governor pledges support for HK's role as financial center

Xinhua) 08:27, December 10, 2021

BEIJING, Dec. 9 (Xinhua) -- China's central bank governor Yi Gang on Thursday said the bank will continue to support the development of Hong Kong as an international financial center.

The People's Bank of China will make efforts to optimize financial market connectivity mechanisms linking the Chinese mainland and the special administrative region, and develop more yuan-denominated products, Yi said at a symposium.

The central bank will also seek closer cooperation with Hong Kong in central bank digital currency and regulatory technology, and support the development of green finance in the region, Yi said.

Citing the progress in financial cooperation between the mainland and Hong Kong, Yi said that mainland firms now account for more than half of the listed companies in Hong Kong, with their stock value accounting for over 80 percent of the total.

Yi said he also expects Hong Kong to play a bigger role in channeling capital into Belt and Road construction, and attract more overseas investors to this undertaking.

(Web editor: Shi Xi, Liang Jun)
China holds workshop on Global Development Initiative with UN representatives

Xinhua) 08:37, December 10, 2021

BEIJING, Dec. 9 (Xinhua) -- China on Thursday held a workshop with UN representatives to discuss how to advance the Global Development Initiative (GDI) cooperation toward the accelerated implementation of the 2030 Agenda.

The workshop, jointly hosted by the China's foreign ministry and the office of resident coordinator of the UN development system in China, was attended by some 20 representatives from various U.N. development agencies in the country.

The GDI, proposed by Chinese President Xi Jinping, is an initiative to support the development of developing countries, promote global economic recovery in the post-pandemic era and strengthen international development cooperation, Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Ma Zhaoxu said during the workshop.

"The GDI gives top priority to development, and aims to address the special needs of developing countries," he said, adding that the GDI identifies eight priority areas of cooperation and charts feasible pathways to accelerate the implementation of the 2030 Agenda.

Noting that the GDI provides important new opportunities for cooperation between China and the United Nations, in particular the UN development system, Ma called on the two sides to focus on development, maximize synergy, deepen cooperation and reinforce coordination.

"The Chinese foreign ministry will continue to support the UN development agencies in carrying out their operations in China, and explore new areas and modalities of cooperation under the GDI framework for win-win results," he said.

Delegates attending the workshop spoke highly of China's achievements in implementing the 2030 Agenda, and welcomed Xi's GDI proposal.

Noting that the GDI would inject impetus into the advancement of the global development cause, they pledged to support the implementation of the GDI by making good use of their respective resources, strengths and partnership networks.

(Web editor: Shi Xi, Liang Jun)
Feature: Crystal clear, Cambodians thank China for wells, ponds of healthy water

Xinhua) 08:39, December 10, 2021

KAMPONG CHHNANG, Cambodia, Dec. 9 (Xinhua) -- As a farmer, Min Sorn, 49, has a life which relies almost entirely on her water supply. In Baribou district, roughly hours north of Cambodian capital Phnom Penh, severe water shortages are the norm.

China has helped dig 15 deep wells in Sorn's village, but her first concern was not for her crops which are sure to flourish, but for the health of her fellow villagers.

"We often face serious shortages of clean water, and have to collect it from lakes or ponds far from the village. Otherwise we have to buy it. At 3,000 riels (0.75 U.S. dollars) per container of 200 liters, and we have to be very careful with it," she told Xinhua. "Now, we have clean water on our doorsteps."

Another farmer, Nhem Thea, had nothing but praise for her new life. "The water from this pond is so clean we use it for drinking, cooking, bathing, washing clothes and watering some crops," she said.

The village chief Prum Chanthorn, 51, expressed his gratitude, "A Cambodian proverb says 'When you drink water, think of the source.' The water comes from the ground, but in a way, it comes from China. We will be forever grateful."

This is the second phase of long-term Chinese assistance with Cambodia's rural water supply problems.

As second-phase was completed, Cambodia's Minister of Rural Development Ouk Rabun said China had fulfilled the dreams of many people who had longed for clean water, sometimes for generations. Thanks to China's help, the Cambodian people in the region never worry about clean water again.

"These wells and ponds mean better living conditions, less poverty and economic growth," Rabun said.

Wu Guoquan, economic and commercial counselor at the Chinese embassy to Cambodia, said that from late 2017, China had built more than 1,800 wells in 16 provinces, just one of China's many projects to reduce poverty in Cambodia's rural areas. The second phase cost 90 million yuan (14 million dollars), which all came from the Chinese government.

"These wells and ponds improve access to clean water, reduce illness from water-borne diseases, and help people make more money," he said. "I hope that we can work together to ensure all of Cambodia's 12 million rural residents have clean water by 2025."

(Web editor: Shi Xi, Liang Jun)
Feature: Greek museum's teddy bear travels to China through children's book

Xinhua) 08:57, December 10, 2021

ATHENS, Dec. 9 (Xinhua) -- A yellow teddy bear, found in a dumpster half a century ago, has become a star exhibits of the Benaki Museum of Toys in Athens since the museum opened in 2017. The adventurous bear, an important collection item in Europe associated with childhood, has also reached China through a children's book written by Greek educator and author Eleni Geroulanou.

In a recent interview at the museum, Geroulanou told Xinhua that literature has a wonderful role to play in building bridges. Books remind us of how much we all have in common, as the emotions and meaning that underlie great stories are universal, crossing cultures and language barriers, she said.

In her fairytale "Once upon a time, a bear" which has been translated into Chinese and published by China's Hebei Children's Publishing House, the teddy bear wanders around the city in search of his home.

He eventually finds a new home and family in the embrace of Maria Argyriadis, a Greek researcher of toys who picked up the bear from the dumpster. Since then, some 20,000 such items have been collected from all over the world and donated to the Benaki Museum, a 19th-century mansion resembling a castle, by the seaside.

"Once upon a time, a bear" is based on the true story of Argyriadis and the teddy bear.

Argyriadis passed away in 2018, but was lucky to see the museum opening its doors in 2017, and the book printed in Greek.

"For Maria, this bear was unique. For the bear, Maria was his family. I was touched by this story and I wanted to make it public," the author said.

Geroulanou said her passion for toys and her family's friendship with Argyriadis inspired her to write this book.

Geroulanou said that she had wanted to work with kids since she was a teenage girl. She studied Early Childhood Education in Athens, continued her studies in Boston, the United States, specializing in Children's Museum Education and returned home to combine museum education with teaching.

As headmistress of a kindergarten in a renowned private school in Athens in recent years, she is constantly close to children.

In 2019 at the Bologna Children's Book Fair in Italy, her Greek publisher showed the book to a Chinese publisher, who loved the story and decided to publish it in China.

Due to the pandemic, Geroulanou has not been able to visit China yet, but she said she is looking forward to, when things get better, meeting with Chinese readers of her book.

Cultural exchanges are essential to the deeper understanding between people from different counties, Geroulanou said. "Through the exchange of ideas and stories, we create stronger bonds with each other, become more inspired and creative as we broaden our horizons," she said.

She said that both Greece and China have rich cultures and traditions dating back to ancient times, and that there is so much to learn from each other.

"I wish the Chinese readers, the young readers, enjoy my book, my story and travel with our bear all this journey, until he finds his home," Geroulanou said.

(Web editor: Shi Xi, Liang Jun)
It's a correct step for Western countries to recognize Chinese COVID-19 vaccines

09:03, December 10, 2021 By Jia Pingfan ( People's Daily

A number of Western countries have extended the list of COVID-19 jabs that inbound travelers must be given before entry since September this year, including France, the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada and Ireland.

The first batch of 300,000 doses of Sinopharm COVID-19 vaccines donated to Madagascar by the Chinese government arrives at Tananarive, capital of the African country, Sept. 24, 2021. (Photo courtesy of the Chinese Embassy in Madagascar)

These countries now recognize all vaccines authorized by the World Health Organization (WHO). China's Sinovac and Sinopharm vaccines are also on the list.

It means that travelers who have received any of the two Chinese vaccines 14 days prior to the day of arrival are allowed to enter these countries without need of quarantine.

Finally, these countries took a correct step.

Chinese COVID-19 vaccines, since being developed, had been slandered before they are gradually recognized today. Why are these Western countries changing their tone? The answer is obvious - Chinese jabs smashed doubts with performance and won respect with credibility, leaving no possibility for these Western countries to keep on wearing their "coke bottle" glasses that transmit only ideological bias.

International studies and clinical data have long proved the safety and efficacy of Chinese vaccines.

A total of 600,000 doses of COVID-19 vaccines donated by China to the Philippines arrive at an airport in Manila, Feb. 28, 2021. Chinese vaccines are the first COVID-19 vaccines received by the Philippines. (Photo courtesy of the Chinese Embassy in the Philippines)

The Journal of the American Medical Association posted a report that shows that in the U.S., the two inactivated vaccines developed by the China National Biotec Group (CNBG) affiliated with Sinopharm can produce high tier antibodies 14 days after two shots are administered, and the positive conversion rate of the neutralizing antibody reached over 99 percent.

Sri Lanka's University Of Sri Jayawardenapur also proved in a study that antibodies were detected in 95 percent of the receivers who got two jabs, and the Sinopharm vaccines are very effective against the Delta variant.

In Chile, the efficacy of Chinese vaccines reached 90.3 percent for the prevention of severe disease, and COVID-19 mortality rate among Uruguayans aged 18 to 69 who were vaccinated with Chinese vaccines fell by more than 95 percent.

Facts speak louder than words. International organizations and many countries have expressed their trust for Chinese vaccines with concrete actions. Political dignitaries took the lead to be inoculated with Chinese vaccines, and a number of countries placed orders for Chinese jabs. Besides, the WHO approved the emergency use of Chinese vaccines.

Taking COVID-19 vaccines as a global public product, China values and fulfills its promises. As a major manufacturer, the country is constantly improving its production capacity of COVID-19 vaccines, which has alleviated the short supply of jabs around the world and filled the vaccination gap. So far, China has provided over 1.8 billion doses of COVID-19 vaccines for more than 120 countries and international organizations. A total of 5.6 billion doses of COVID-19 vaccines have been administered outside China, and 1/3 of them were offered by China.

Western countries have been totally aware of the fact that Chinese vaccines are safe, efficient and affordable. Then why did they wait so long before giving the green light to Chinese jabs? Profits are the only reason. Only the green light to Chinese vaccines can save their traumatized economy.

A total of 200,000 doses of Sinopharm COVID-19 vaccines donated by the Red Cross Society of China to the Bangladesh Red Crescent Society are shipped on Oct. 25. (Photo courtesy of the Red Cross Society of China)

The world has been constantly advancing the vaccination drive since this year, which to a degree alleviated the pandemic. Some Western countries eased border restrictions to revitalize tourism and cross-border trade. However, the pandemic is still posing threats, with resurgence occurring one after another and the virus varying rapidly. Under such a background, how can these Western countries bring back businesses while lowering the risks of reopening their ports? Obviously the risks would not be very much lowered if Chinese vaccines are not taken into their consideration.

Apart from that, the Chinese market is too huge to be neglected. It is the world's largest and most potential consumption market that involves 1.4 billion people, including 400 million middle income earners. Who would really give it up?

Just as Kiyoyuki Seguchi, the research director with the Canon Institute for Global Studies has said, there is no other market in the world as attractive as China over the next 10 to 15 years.

At present, the pandemic is still ravaging the world while the economy is going through fragile recovery. Only by putting aside arrogance and prejudices and embracing cooperation and solidarity can the world walk out of the shadow and see a beam of light.

(Web editor: Hongyu, Liang Jun)
U.S. affronts democracy by inviting fugitive criminal suspect to Summit for Democracy

09:07, December 10, 2021 By Zhong Sheng ( People's Daily

Nathan Law Kwun-chung, one of the anti-China troublemakers in Hong Kong who have fled to escape punishment, recently claimed that the U.S. had invited him to the so-called Summit for Democracy, which is another irrefutable evidence that there is nothing democratic about the summit.

Offering a stage for the activist who blatantly preaches Hong Kong independence, the U.S. government has further exposed its true intention of turning democracy into a tool and weapon by holding this summit.

Being suspected of inciting secession and colluding with foreign forces or external elements to endanger national security, Law is a criminal suspect wanted by the Hong Kong police.

After learning that Law was going to the U.S. again to put on a political show, the Security Bureau of the Government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) condemned him for his shameful act of willingly serving as a puppet of foreign government and politicians for political dividends. It stated unequivocally that the HKSAR Government would hold him criminally responsible according to law, which is the attitude any government that respects the rule of law should have toward such cases.

In recent years, the U.S. has frequently posed as a guardian of Hong Kongs democracy, attempting to plunge the region into chaos under the guise of democracy.

Through a series of political maneuvers, including passing Hong Kong-related bills, brazenly imposing sanctions on Chinese officials, making unfounded charges against HKSAR affairs, harboring and endorsing anti-China troublemakers in Hong Kong, and colluding with some countries to exert pressure on China, the U.S. has wantonly interfered in Chinas internal affairs and undermined democracy in Hong Kong.

Considering Laws betrayal of Hong Kong and his motherland as unique value, U.S. politicians calling for containing China used him frequently as a marionette. They disguised him as a fighter for democracy, met with him during his visit to the U.S., offered platforms to him for peddling the idea of Hong Kong independence, spreading political lies, and defaming the national security law in Hong Kong and the Chinese central governments policy toward the HKSAR. These are ironclad proof of the U.S. interfering in Hong Kong affairs and backing the anti-China troublemakers in Hong Kong.

Hong Kong is an integral part of China. No interference of the U.S. can ever alter the prevailing historical trend toward the steady and continued success of Chinas one country, two systems policy.

With the formulation and implementation of the national security law in the HKSAR and improvements to Hong Kongs electoral system, the situation in Hong Kong made a major turn from chaos to order.

Hong Kong citizens generally believe that blind pursuit of American democracy never brings true democracy to Hong Kong, but only social division, ferocious battle, social disorder, economic imbalance, and governance failure.

The new electoral system is bringing elections in Hong Kong back on the track of benign competition, and the democracy system of the region begins to seek benefits for and serve the wellbeing of Hong Kong citizens once again.

Such positive changes in Hong Kong society have fully proven the attempt of U.S. politicians to meddle in the affairs of Hong Kong on the pretext of democracy a complete failure.

Likewise, the attempt of the U.S. side to support and pep up particular fugitive anti-China troublemakers in Hong Kong is doomed to failure and will end up in vain.

By inviting a criminal suspect on the run to the so-called Summit for Democracy, the U.S. has made itself a great laughingstock of the world and exposed its true intention of acting against democracy under the guise of democracy.

In accordance with its own standards, the U.S. classifies some countries as democracies and others not, which is in essence against the democratic spirit and a typical example of privatizing, politicizing, and putting labels on democracy.

When the world needs to strengthen solidarity and cooperation to tackle mounting global challenges, the U.S. is trying to advance its geostrategic agenda, suppress dissidents, and sow division and confrontation around the world. Its Cold War mentality and hegemonic acts going against the general trend of history will never succeed.

Democracy is a common value shared by all humanity, rather than a political tool willfully manipulated by the U.S.

The attempt of the U.S. to safeguard its hegemony under the guise of democracy has aroused strong opposition from the international community. The misdeeds and evil plots of U.S. politicians who have colluded with anti-China troublemakers in Hong Kong and shielded and connived at offenders will only be despised and end up in failure.

(Zhong Sheng is a pen name often used by Peoples Daily to express its views on foreign policy and international affairs.)

(Web editor: Hongyu, Liang Jun)
Chinese FM calls for promoting true democracy for better future of humankind

Xinhua) 09:20, December 10, 2021

HANGZHOU, Dec. 9 (Xinhua) -- While China further develops and refines democracy at home, it will advocate true democratic spirit and work together with countries around the world to create a better future for humanity, Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi said Thursday.

Wang made the remarks when delivering a video speech to the 14th Bali Democracy Forum held in Indonesia.

Just as plants are unique to the land they grow on, democracy, as a major fruit of human progress, is also rooted and nurtured in the history, culture, ethnic traditions and social environment of the countries concerned, Wang said.

Noting that the COVID-19 pandemic continues to ravage our societies and the international landscape is undergoing major changes unseen in a century, Wang said how to properly perceive, practice, improve and develop democracy so as to tackle challenges more effectively and promote world peace, stability and prosperity is indeed a "question of the century," a question that bears on the future of humankind.

"There are different approaches and attitudes toward this question. Some regard Western democracy as the only correct answer. They seek to forcibly transplant and impose it onto the whole world. Some attempt to take one country's model as the criterion, provoking tension between different political systems and ideologies and creating division and confrontation in the world," Wang said.

"Undoubtedly, none of these is true democracy, but fake democracy using democracy as a cover," he added.

Noting that democracy is not a special right reserved to a certain country, but a right for the people of all countries, Wang said the key criterion to gauge whether a country is democratic or not is whether its people are truly the masters of their own fate.

Wang said through a century of exploration and experimentation, the Communist Party of China (CPC) has led the Chinese people in finding a new form of democracy that suits China's national conditions, which is described as the whole-process people's democracy.

Countries have different ways to achieve democracy, he said, adding there is no single correct form of democracy for others to worship, and no democracy is superior to others.

"We have full confidence in our democracy, and we also fully respect other countries' democracy. We will not export our democracy. We are ready to have dialogue and exchanges with others on an equal footing, learn from other civilizations, and provide useful experience to other countries as well," Wang said.

Stressing that democracy is not only a way of domestic governance, but also a principle in global governance, Wang called on countries to vigorously advocate the spirit of democracy in state-to-state interactions, promote the correct approaches such as respect for sovereignty, equal-footed consultation, solidarity and cooperation, and make unremitting efforts for greater democracy in international relations.

The Bali Democracy Forum has been annually convened since 2008 as a platform for open inter-governmental dialogue among participating countries of Asia and the Pacific, focusing on a theme of democracy and governance. This year's theme was "Democracy for Humanity: Advancing Economic and Social Justice During the Pandemic."

(Web editor: Shi Xi, Liang Jun)
China steps on the gas with on-road trial of autonomous vehicles

Xinhua) 09:48, December 10, 2021

An autonomous vehicle (1st R) is in driverless test on a road in Yizhuang of Beijing, capital of China, Oct. 19, 2021.(Xinhua/Peng Ziyang)

BEIJING, Dec. 9 (Xinhua) -- Futuristic self-driving vehicles-- representing a new way of life behind the wheel -- went into on-road commercial trial in late November in Yizhuang of Beijing.

The feat is a major leap by China into developing its autonomous vehicle industry.

The trial operation area in Yizhuang, also known as E-Town, registered the first self-driving commercial trial pilot in China, the world's second largest economy. Chinese tech giant Baidu and Pony.ai were the first companies authorized to launch the pilot services.

So far, they have put no more than 100 autonomous vehicles into commercial service within an area of 60 square km in Yizhuang.

Relevant regulations were also issued by the city's high-level autonomous driving demonstration zone office to support the development of the emerging industry.

This marks a new stage in China's autonomous driving sector from testing and demonstration to commercialization pilot, said Chen Xiaobo, deputy director of the research center for transportation economy at the National Development and Reform Commission.

"The commercial trial of self-driving vehicles is a critical phase prior to its final application, which is conducive to cultivating an innovative and competitive self-driving industrial chain and supply chain in China," Chen said.

An autonomous vehicle is in driverless test on a road in Yizhuang of Beijing, capital of China, Oct. 19, 2021. (Xinhua/Peng Ziyang)

NEW LIFESTYLE

A passenger can hail a self-driving taxi at an assigned station through a Baidu car-hailing App, and about three minutes later, a self-driving taxi will arrive. Currently, the commercial trial -- a 2.8 km trip -- takes about 7 minutes and costs 1.46 yuan (about 23 U.S. cents).

Besides Baidu's taxi-hailing service, another company Pony.ai was authorized to launch the self-driving truck which has undertaken about 16,400 tonnes of commercial freight transportation with a cumulative mileage of over 50,000 km.

Pony.ai has launched the PonyPilot service in Guangzhou and Silicon Valley, providing more than 500,000 free trips.

"Robotaxi and Robotruck are two major emerging fields in self-driving industry. More and more people now believe that information technology will reform the means of transportation," said Wei Dong, vice president of Baidu Intelligent Driving Group.

At present, the self-driving pilot service has been extended to cities nationwide. Shanghai set up 253 self-driving test roads in four demonstration zones while Wuxi City, in east China's Jiangsu Province, is scheduled to launch three self-driving buses routes. In Baoding, north China's Hebei Province, 84 crossroads are equipped with AI-powered signal control systems, saving drivers 20 percent of the time on each trip.

An autonomous vehicle is in driverless test on a road in Yizhuang of Beijing, capital of China, Oct. 19, 2021. (Xinhua/Peng Ziyang)

BRIGHT PROSPECT

As the self-driving industry evolves rapidly, the Chinese government has issued regulations and policies to facilitate the development of the industry, including the strategy for the innovative development of intelligent vehicles and the new-energy vehicle development plan (2021-2035).

Peng Jun, co-founder and CEO of Pony.ai, said that policy, technology, and public acceptance are key to the rapid commercialization of self-driving vehicles, which requires large-scale trials.

A total of 27 provinces and cities in China have rolled out regulations on self-driving vehicles, established 16 autonomous driving demonstration zones, and opened more than 3,500 km of test roads.

Meanwhile, experts pointed out that attention should be paid to the data security of self-driving networks, which requires a coordinated policy and system design to guarantee a sound development of the self-driving industry.

Wei said the development of self-driving vehicles in China has entered a fast lane, which will become a safe and time-saving choice for the public. Kong Lei, director of the Beijing high-level autonomous driving demonstration zone office, said Beijing will expand the commercial trial areas in due time.

Zhou Ji, member of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, said that the next 15 years represent a critical period in the development of intelligent manufacturing, a core technology in the new round of industrial revolution, which is also an important opportunity for China.

(Web editor: Shi Xi, Liang Jun)
Washington's Xinjiang-related bill a dirty political trick

Xinhua) 10:42, December 10, 2021

BEIJING, Dec. 10 (Xinhua) -- The U.S. House of Representatives on Wednesday passed a baseless and heavily biased bill banning all imports from Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region out of the familiar "forced labor" slur, joining the Senate in playing a dirty political trick to grossly interfere in China's domestic affairs.

Yet the bill, another product of Washington's sinister intention to stir up chaos in Xinjiang and undermine China's peaceful development under the cloak of human rights, will fool no clear minds.

Washington invariably resorts to its old playbook of lies whenever it wants to step up its China-bashing campaign. However, it is increasingly known that their favorite and proud accusations like "religious oppression," "forced labor" and "genocide" are a far cry from truth.

For the record, Xinjiang-related issues are not about human rights, ethnicity or religion, but about fighting terrorism, separatism and extremism, maintaining stability and security, and safeguarding socio-economic development in the region.

Official data show that between the 1990s and 2016, thousands of violent terrorist activities took place in Xinjiang, claiming numerous lives and causing tremendous property damage. This dire situation was beyond tolerance, prompting the Chinese government to take counterterrorism and de-radicalization measures in accordance with law. As a result, there has been no terrorist incident in Xinjiang for many years.

Facts speak for themselves. Over the past four decades, Xinjiang has achieved remarkable progress and development. The Uygur population in Xinjiang has doubled from 5.55 million to more than 12 million. From 1978 to 2020, the per capita disposable income of both urban and rural residents in the region saw an increase of over 100 times.

Xinjiang eradicated absolute poverty for the first time in its history after lifting more than 3 million residents out of poverty by the end of 2020. Over 200 million visits are made by tourists to Xinjiang each year, showing the region's growing stability and attractiveness.

Labor and employment policies enacted by local governments have effectively safeguarded the people's basic right to employment. For example, about 70 percent of cotton in Xinjiang is harvested by machine, and jobs in the industry are well paying and competitive.

In fact, these truths are no longer secrets to the larger world. Xinjiang has kept its door wide open to all who remain skeptical, but those sanctimonious politicians in the White House refused to go and take a look. A growing number of think tanks, media and scholars have been telling what is really happening on the ground, but those politicians refused to listen. To them, Xinjiang is merely a political tool for creating a mess in China, so the true story does not matter at all.

Xinjiang affairs are purely China's internal affairs, and Washington is in no position and has no right to interfere. Besides, its defamation will in no way diminish Beijing's determination to maintain stability in Xinjiang, preserve national sovereignty, and safeguard China's legitimate rights to security and development. The earlier those self-styled human rights defenders in the White House realize this, the better, as their hypocritical political circus does neither side good.

They'd better devote their time and energy to addressing so many human right abuses happening in their own backyard. If they are successful, their words and actions would be more convincing to the people of the wider world.

(Web editor: Shi Xi, Liang Jun)
China, Nicaragua resume diplomatic relations

Xinhua) 11:02, December 10, 2021

TIANJIN, Dec. 10 (Xinhua) -- China and Nicaragua signed Friday in Tianjin the joint communique on the resumption of diplomatic relations between the People's Republic of China and the Republic of Nicaragua.

According to the communique, the People's Republic of China and the Republic of Nicaragua, in keeping with the interests and desire of the two peoples, have decided to recognize each other and resume diplomatic relations at the ambassadorial level, effective from the date of signature of this communique.

The two governments agree to develop friendly relations between the two countries on the basis of the principles of mutual respect for sovereignty and territorial integrity, mutual non-aggression, non-interference in each other's internal affairs, equality, mutual benefit and peaceful coexistence, the communique said.

The government of the Republic of Nicaragua recognizes that there is but one China in the world, the government of the People's Republic of China is the sole legal government representing the whole of China, and Taiwan is an inalienable part of China's territory, it said.

The government of the Republic of Nicaragua shall sever "diplomatic relations" with Taiwan as of this day and undertakes that it shall no longer develop any official relations or official exchanges with Taiwan. The government of the People's Republic of China appreciates this position of the government of the Republic of Nicaragua, the communique said.

The communique was signed by Ma Zhaoxu, Chinese vice foreign minister, and Laureano Ortega Murillo, representative from the government of Nicaragua.

Ma pointed out that the one-China principle is a universally recognized norm of international relations and a universal consensus of the international community. The government of Nicaragua has made a political decision to recognize and promise to abide by the one-China principle and resume diplomatic relations with China without any preconditions.

"It is in full compliance with the fundamental and long-term interests of Nicaragua and its people. It once again fully proves that adhering to the one-China principle is a correct choice that conforms to international justice and the trend of the times," Ma said, adding that the one-China principle is an overriding trend of the times with popular support.

Noting that a new chapter has opened in China-Nicaragua relations, Ma said China stands ready to develop cooperation in various fields with Nicaragua on the basis of mutual respect, equality and mutual benefit, so as to promote the continuous development of bilateral relations and benefit the two countries and the two peoples.

The vice foreign minister said China supports Nicaragua's fight against the pandemic, and is willing to actively promote extensive cooperation between the two countries on economy and people's livelihood, social development, infrastructure construction, trade and investment, and further strengthen communication and coordination in multiple areas.

(Web editor: Shi Xi, Liang Jun)
Hydropower station in SW China adopts lifts to help ships pass through

People's Daily Online) 11:05, December 10, 2021

The Wujiang River waterway in southwest Chinas Guizhou Province has recently resumed water traffic. Fourteen cargo ships loaded with 6,800 tons of phosphate ore were seen sailing along the river heading for a port in Wuhu, east Chinas Anhui Province.

Photo shows a ship sailing toward the second ship lift through a water channel along the Goupitan hydropower station navigation project. (Photo/gzspic.com)

When the ships arrived at the Goupitan hydropower station navigation project, which is located in Guizhou Province, they moved through the river while being transferred by three vertical ship lifts linked by two intermediate channels. The process seemed easy and smooth, but the construction of the project was as difficult as one imagines.

The Goupitan hydropower station was put into operation in 2009. It is the biggest power station in Guizhou and a key part of the national west-to-east power transmission project.

Photo shows a ship sailing toward the second ship lifts through a water channel along the Goupitan hydropower station navigation project. (Photo/gzspic.com)

The Goupitan hydropower station navigation project, which opened to water traffic this year, has been dubbed a ship lift museum by industry experts. It is the first of this kind in the world to adopt three ship lifts to help ships travel through the river. It also has the highest navigation buildings in the world, with water levels from upstream to downstream reaching 199 meters.

The lifting height completed by the second ship lift can reach 127 meters, the highest single lift in the world. The first and third ship lifts, which are able to lift a ship with a maximum weight of 500 tons from the water, are the largest lifts in the world with the strongest lifting power. In addition, the Goupitan hydropower station navigation project is also the first in the country that has tunnels for ships to pass through.

Photo shows a ship sailing toward the second ship lifts through a water channel along the Goupitan hydropower station navigation project. (Photo/gzspic.com)

Photo shows two ships sailing toward the second and third ship lifts, respectively, through two water channels along the Goupitan hydropower station navigation project. (Photo/gzspic.com)

Photo shows a ship sailing toward the third ship lift through a water channel along the Goupitan hydropower station navigation project. (Photo/gzspic.com)

Photo shows a ship leaving the third ship lift of the Goupitan hydropower station navigation project. (Photo/gzspic.com)

Photo shows ships moving underneath the Heshandu Wujiang River Grand Bridge located in southwest China's Guizhou Province. (Photo/gzspic.com)

Photo shows ships moving along the Wujiang River. (Photo/gzspic.com)

Photo shows ships moving along the Wujiang River. (Photo/gzspic.com)

Photo shows phosphate ore carried by a cargo ship being loaded into a bigger ship, which will then set sail along the Yangtze River in Fuling, southwest China's Chongqing municipality. (Photo/gzspic.com)

Photo shows phosphate ore carried by a cargo ship being loaded into a bigger ship, which will then set sail along the Yangtze River in Fuling, southwest China's Chongqing municipality. (Photo/gzspic.com)

A ship passes under a bridge on the Wujiang River to enter the Yangtze River. (Photo/gzspic.com)

(Web editor: Hongyu, Liang Jun)
US 'democracy summit' seen as divisive move

By CAO DESHENG (China Daily) 11:13, December 10, 2021

The American flag is flown at the US Capitolx in Washington. [Photo/Xinhua]

Washington's selection of participants looks like return to Cold War paradigms

As Beijing has offered a Global Development Initiative to rally international efforts to combat the COVID-19 pandemic and promote economic recovery, Washington is convening its so-called Summit for Democracy on Thursday and Friday, a move that observers said would serve to sow the seeds of division and confrontation worldwide.

But after the world watched the disregard for rule of law and mistrust of elections spread throughout the United States, the question is what moral authority does Washington have to lecture the rest of the world about democracy, they said.

Addressing the 14th Bali Democracy Forum on Thursday, State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi reiterated that democracy is not the privilege of an individual country but the right of people from all countries.

Some preach that Western-style democracy is a yardstick for democracy and they try to export it to, or impose it on other parts of the world, while others take a certain country's model of democracy as a dividing line to incite competition between different political systems and ideologies, Wang said in a video speech. "Such assertions are not true democracy, but hypocrisy in the name of democracy," he added.

The decision by US President Joe Biden's administration to handpick which countries and regions ought to participate in his "Summit for Democracy" constitutes a return to obsolete Cold War paradigms and goes against the trend of multilateralism, said Alfred de Zayas, a professor of international law at the Geneva School of Diplomacy and International Relations in Switzerland.

"It is obvious that such a conference cannot serve peace and justice, because it excludes billions of human beings," Zayas said in an article published on the website of China Global Television Network. He was the United Nations Independent Expert on the Promotion of a Democratic and Equitable International Order from 2012 to 2018.

"Far from being an exercise in democracy, the US summit artificially divides the world into two campsthose countries which the US unilaterally considers democratic and those that are labeled undemocratic."

According to the US Department of State, the summit will set forth an agenda for "democratic renewal".

However, observers said that the riot that took place at Capitol Hill in Washington in January to prevent the joint session of Congress from certifying the newly elected president has shown the world how badly US-style democracy works in practice. In addition, US efforts to promote its model of democracy globally have landed countries like Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan in disaster and itself in a disgraceful position.

Far from an example of "renewal", the summit reinforces the world view that the US believes it has a monopoly on democracy, said Danny Haiphong, a US-based independent journalist and researcher, and also a founding member of the No Cold War international campaign.

It begins from the vantage point that the US considers itself to be in a position to teach others about the perils of "authoritarianism", Haiphong added.

Noting that "democracy" is being used by the US as a cover for its hegemonic ambitions, he said the Biden administration's "Summit for Democracy" is just another opportunity for Washington to dress up its dangerous "America First" approach to politics in the garb of democracy.

Democracy is not a one-size-fits-all model, Haiphong said, and China and all nations have the right to pursue their own political and economic models of democracy free from external interference.

China and 30-plus nations currently suffering under US-imposed sanctions, including Russia, Cuba, Venezuela, Zimbabwe, Eritrea and Belarus, have been excluded from the summit. Pakistan, which was invited to the summit, announced on Wednesday it will not participate. However, Taiwan, which is an inalienable part of China's territory, is on the list of invitees.

Analysts said such a summit is to rally "democracies" against what the US considers to be "authoritarian" states, and the main purpose is to reassert Washington's hegemony as the so-called leader of the free world in order to reinforce its current efforts to deploy a new anti-China containment strategy.

Stephen Ndegwa, a Nairobi-based communication expert and lecturer-scholar at the United States International University-Africa, said that the world has been fed a unilateral view of democracy for many years.

The narrative has been based on notions that true democracy can only come from the West led by the US, which has adopted the carrot and stick approach in its perennial quest to "democratize" other countries, setting conditions for those who wish to have close relations with it, Ndegwa said.

However, he added, this coercion is gradually backfiring because of the gross interference of the US in other countries' internal affairs and the crumbling of democracy in the US as well.

Ndegwa commended China's whole-process people's democracy, saying that those who criticize China's political system fail to acknowledge that it is the only way to govern a country so vast and with a massive population of 1.4 billion people, the most populous globally.

"The Chinese truly follow the maxim that democracy is by the people and for the people."

(Web editor: Zhong Wenxing, Liang Jun)
Canada Goose changes return policy in Chinese mainland after backlash

(Global Times) 11:14, December 10, 2021

Jackets hang in the showroom of the Canada Goose factory in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, February 23, 2018. Photo:Xinhua

Canada Goose said on Thursday that it now offers return and exchange services for Chinese mainland customers within 14 days after their purchases in physical retail stores, in a major shift in its return policy after its no-refund policy drew widespread backlash.

The Canadian luxury down jacket maker was criticized by Chinese consumers for its controversial product refund policy in the Chinese mainland, which is different from policies in other markets, prompting many consumers to call the move discriminatory and double-standard.

According to a statement published on the official Weibo account of Canada Goose on Thursday, the retailer said it promises free return and exchange services to customers in the Chinese mainland for one time within 14 days after their purchases in physical retail stores, if the products are undamaged.

In addition, the Canadian brand said it could provide free tests of products if customers find the products are of defective quality. Customers could also go to third-party agencies to evaluate their products' quality.

If a third-party agency or the company confirms quality defects, Canadian Goose will offer refund or exchange services, it said in the statement.

The latest policy change followed a recent backlash among Chinese customers, who criticized the company's discriminatory double-standard policy in the Chinese mainland.

In a statement sent to the Global Times on December 2, Canada Goose's headquarters said that "in the Chinese mainland, customers are eligible to receive a refund within 14 days of purchase following applicable laws, if their product, purchased in a Canada Goose store, is found to have any issues with materials or craftsmanship; and seven-day unconditional return and refunds on official e-commerce platforms; or other circumstances subject to law."

However, its refund policies for items sold online still drew criticisms.

Such a refund policy for online sales differs from markets outside China, as the company shows a 30-day unconditional refund policy on the Canada Goose official website, but the clause does not apply to the Chinese mainland, where the seven-day unconditional return clause applies, the Xinhua News Agency reported, citing the Shanghai Consumers Council.

No brand should have any privilege over consumers, the China Consumers Association (CCA) stated in early December.

The CCA said that respecting and protecting consumers' rights and interests is the obligation of every business operator, and no enterprise or brand has special privileges. "If the brand sees itself as a big brand, engages in double standards, and discriminates against Chinese mainland consumers, it will fail in this market," the association noted.

Canada Goose said in the post on Thursday that it will abide by Chinese laws and regulations, and continue to provide high-quality products and customer experiences.

(Web editor: Zhong Wenxing, Liang Jun)
CCB London celebrates 30th anniversary in UK

15:13, December 10, 2021 By Yu Ying, Xu Chen ( People's Daily Online

LONDON, Dec. 9 (Peoples Daily Online) -- China Construction Bank London successfully held an online celebration marking its 30th anniversary and RMB clearing volume exceeding 60 trillion yuan on Dec. 8, 2021. More than 500 guests from British political and business circles reviewed the development history of CCB in the UK and looked forward to new prospects for deepening China-UK financial cooperation.

China Construction Bank London holds an online celebration marking its 30th anniversary and RMB clearing volume exceeding 60 trillion yuan on Dec. 8, 2021. (Photo/People's Daily Online)

In his speech, Chinese ambassador to the United Kingdom Zheng Zeguang fully affirmed the important contribution made by China Construction Bank in promoting China-UK financial cooperation, promoting China-UK relations and enhancing the friendship between the two countries. He pointed out that Chinas determination to expand high-level opening-up, to share development opportunities with the world and to promote economic globalization toward a more open, inclusive, balanced, and win-win direction will remain unchanged. Faced with various uncertainties under the current epidemic, China and Britain should cooperate closely, strengthen dialogue and cooperation, and further promote economic prosperity and development in the two countries.

Chairman of China Construction Bank Tian Guoli said that with CCB reaching its 30-year milestone in overseas business, it is ready to promote China-UK cooperation, especially in areas such as green development, digital economy and innovation which were mentioned in the recent phone call between the two countries leaders. CCB will join hands with all old and new friends to strengthen financial ties and innovation in the two countries, promote the green and sustainable development of the two economies, and t enhance the friendship and well-being of the two peoples.

Lord Gerry Grimstone, Minister for Investment of DIT and BEIS, Alderman Vincent Keaveny, Lord Mayor of the City of London, and Sir Douglas Flint, Chairman of ABRDN Group attended the event and delivered keynote speeches.

China Construction Bank established its London Representative Office in London in 1991. The bank was designated as an RMB clearing bank in the UK in 2014. Since then, its RMB clearing volume has surged, exceeding 60 trillion yuan in 2021.

(Web editor: Hongyu, Liang Jun)
Taiwan's very few remaining "allies" urged to follow Nicaragua's case

Xinhua) 16:48, December 10, 2021

BEIJING, Dec. 10 (Xinhua) -- A Chinese mainland spokesperson on Friday said Taiwan's very few remaining "allies" are welcomed to grasp the general historical trend and choose the right side of history as soon as possible.

Ma Xiaoguang, spokesperson for the Taiwan Affairs Office of the State Council, made the remarks at a press conference in Beijing following the resumption of diplomatic relations at the ambassadorial level between China and Nicaragua.

Expressing appreciation for the country's support for China's reunification, Ma said Taiwan is a part of China and the one-China principle is a basic norm governing international relations and a consensus of the international community.

Ma reiterated that the "Taiwan independence" path will only lead to a dead end.

"No individual or force can block the historical trend of China's complete reunification and the rejuvenation of the Chinese nation," the spokesperson said.

(Web editor: Shi Xi, Liang Jun)
Prosperity blooms among cotton workers

Xinhua) 16:49, December 10, 2021

URUMQI, Dec. 10 (Xinhua) -- Akbar Turek, a maintenance team manager, has been working in a major spinning company in Asku, southern Xinjiang for eight years.

Last year, he encountered something troubling -- the company he works for, which is the largest local provider of jobs, was blacklisted by the United States due to accusations of "forced labor."

As a result, some contracts could not be fulfilled. Akbar Turek, who loves his job, believes his own experience can debunk such groundless accusations as he does not want the company and his own livelihood to be impacted.

"In 2013, my cousin got me a job here because he said the working environment is good and the salary is high, and with free room and board. I have worked here for eight years already, and my cousin is in his 10th year," said Akbar Turek, a Uygur from Wensu County, Aksu Prefecture.

"There is no such thing as 'forced labor,' and I work here to secure a better life," he said. "Can those who fabricate these rumors feed my wife and children if I lose my job?"

The company, Huafu Color Spinning, has nearly 6,000 workers, of which more than 90 percent are from ethnic minority groups.

"Our company treats the employees very well. Many employees advise their relatives and friends to work here," said Li Qiang, board chairman of Huafu Color Spinning.

"Our factory has created jobs for the local people. They have come to work here out of their own will, not forced by anyone," he said. "The sanctions hurt not only us, but also our clients overseas as well. It's a loss for both sides."

The cotton textile industry is one of the pillar industries in the region. Nearly half of the local farmers are engaged in cotton production, and the income from cotton makes up 30 percent of their total earnings.

Qiu Haiquan, deputy general manager of an intelligent agricultural machinery company, is proud to see the company's products are helping cotton farmers make more money.

The company, based in the county of Xayar, is expected to raise its output value to more than 500 million yuan (about 78.6 million U.S. dollars) this year from 80 million yuan in 2018 when it was established.

"The demand for our cotton-picking machines has exceeded the supply this year," Qiu said, adding the company equips the machines with a positioning system to provide on-site maintenance services.

Now the company has developed a series of products, including plowing machines, seeders and pesticide sprayers, to meet the increasing demands of local farmers.

Omar Ezez, a 32-year-old cotton farmer in the county, has witnessed a huge change in cotton production. With the help of a cotton picker, his family's cotton field covering over 20 hectares is harvested in just two days. By contrast, when he was a child, it took about three months for a dozen workers to complete the picking work on a field covering roughly 7 hectares.

He bought a cotton picker last year and got a license to drive it this year. After picking the cotton on his own farm, he also drives the machine to work for other farmers, from which he expects to earn up to 500,000 yuan this year.

"Money is rolling in as long as the machine keeps running," he said.

Machines now perform over 80 percent of the cotton-picking work in the region, with the harvesting in northern Xinjiang nearly entirely mechanized, according to the regional agricultural authority.

"During the eight years I have worked here, I have got married and my child is three years old, and goes to the kindergarten near the factory," said Akbar Turek. "I just bought a house in the community next to the factory earlier this year and will move in next year."

(Web editor: Shi Xi, Liang Jun)
PAN Group and C.P. Vietnam signed a strategic cooperation agreement on Thursday in Ha Noi, agreeing to promote each other's strengths in the fields of operation and business, in accordance with the business strategy of each party.

The two sides commit to supporting each other in expanding and developing business activities, exploiting the best potentials of the market and promoting the sustainable development of the value chains.

They will cooperate in the sustainable shrimp value chain, raising the level of Viet Nam's shrimp industry.

PAN C.P. Vietnam will support the farming areas of the member companies ofGroup with breed, feed and shrimp farming preparation.

They will also jointly support Sao Ta Foods Joint Stock Company (Fimex VN) to improve the efficiency of shrimp farming, expand shrimp farms, diversify output products and expand export markets.

They are committed to cooperating in technology transfer, the application of advanced farming technology and aquaculture digital conversion applications in the shrimp industry.

The two sides will also cooperate in activities for the environment and community, towards the 17 United Nations sustainable development goals (SDGs) by 2030.

In addition to the fishery sector, they would cooperate, support and connect partners in other fields that they have strengths.

PAN Also under the agreement, theGroup and C.P. Vietnam signed a Memorandum of Understanding to co-operate in a sustainable development programme that contributes to the increase of mangrove forest cover area in the Mekong Delta, operated by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).

They will both participate in financing and implementing mangrove forest planting, development and rehabilitation activities in the region, enhancing the value and sustainability of the fishery value chain (shrimp and Shutchi catfish), coordinating with partners to take advantage of resources.

They agree to finance a project with a total budget of US$200,000 in the period of 2022 - 2023.

PAN PAN TheGroup is a leading agriculture and food group in Viet Nam providing highquality food to international and domestic markets. TheGroups mission is to guarantee food security by supplying safe and nutritious food products in a complete value chain. Additionally, it aims to create sustainable values for farmers, families and society.

C.P. Vietnam Corporation, a member of Thailands Charoen Pokphand Group, are an agro-industrial and food conglomerate that operates a vertically integrated business. Over the past three decades of development in Viet Nam, the company has developed a fully integrated and high-quality business of feed, farm, and food by applying the most advanced technology. In 2020, the company inaugurated Viet Nam's first-ever poultry complex for exports, which is also the largest scale in Southeast Asia, in Becamex Binh Phuoc Industrial Park.  VNS
HEFEI, Dec. 9 (Xinhua) -- The charcoal fire in the stove was red, the pot water had reached a rolling boil and curls of smoke were emanating from porcelain tea bowls, as a dozen villagers sat in a circle to discuss a reconstruction design of an ancient city gate in east China's Anhui Province. "Your suggestions on the gate's reconstruction have been adopted, with some new progress," said He Weijun, chairman of the people's congress of Linhuan Township in Suixi County, to the villagers. "I'll note down your views regarding the design sketch and pass them on to the government later." Over the course of past years, it has become a convention for He and other deputies of Linhuan Township People's Congress to meet the grassroots residents at the teahouse on the 10th day of every month, and listen to their ideas about public affairs of the town. "People are more willing to express their opinions at the teahouse in a relaxed atmosphere, so we decided to utilize this platform to connect with grassroots voices directly," said He. Linhuan Township, with hundreds of years of tea culture history, has more than 20 teahouses, attracting some 6,000 tea lovers every day. Zhang Yunxiao, 71, one of the frequent visitors of teahouses, is a regular attendee of the monthly meeting. "We can speak freely and the deputies would give us feedback at the next meeting," said Zhang, adding that it makes him feel that his voice has been heard and valued. The system of people's congresses, an organizational form of political power compatible with the governing system of the people's democratic dictatorship, is China's fundamental political system, and the ultimate approach and optimal solution to guaranteeing the people's status as masters of the country. It is also an important institutional support to whole-process people's democracy, stated a white paper released on Dec. 4. "Meeting people at the teahouse effectively complements our daily work mechanism, as it allows people to participate in public affairs before, during, and after the decision-making process. Many ideas and suggestions from the grassroots are reflected in the decisions of the government," said He. He noted that during the past five years, over 300 pieces of opinions and suggestions from the grassroots have been accepted, with the issues ranging from environmental protection, rural infrastructure construction to the preservation of cultural relics. "With people increasingly concerned about public affairs, democracy is embodied in not just elections but every aspect of China's grassroots governance," said Dong Yang, mayor of Linhuan Township, adding that the meeting at the teahouse is a practice of the whole-process people's democracy at the grassroots level. A member of the Suixi County Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, an advisory body to the government, Wang Shihong, 60 -- who spends half of the week at the teahouse -- echoed Dong's views. "I have been mediating conflicts among people at the teahouse for over 30 years. Gradually, they have shown willingness to offer suggestions and express their demands as they trust me, thus I can pool wisdom and inform about it to the local government," said Wang, adding that many opinions heard at the teahouse, such as installing traffic lights, have been put into practice. Over the years, members of the town's mediation team have increased to 55 from just a single person, as many more people have volunteered to join in, forming an important force in grassroots self-governance. "Many disputes can be solved through communication, sitting at the teahouses," said Zhang Xiuxia, owner of a teahouse and also a mediator who has settled over 100 disputes during the past six years. Besides the teahouse meetings, people across China have explored many different pragmatic practices of democracy based on the local characteristics. As Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Le Yucheng recently noted during a dialogue on democracy -- the practice of democracy is rooted in its own soil. The past and the present have proven that China's approach to democracy is based on national conditions and is supported by the people, Le said, adding that such an approach is real, effective and successful.


A villager casts her vote at a polling station in Meichong village of Fanchang district, east Chinas Anhui province, on December 8, 2021. Villagers went to polls on the day to elect a new village committee. Voters in other villages and residential neighborhoods of the district also elected their new leaderships. (Photo by Xiao Benxiang & Liu Yucai)



A villager casts his vote at a polling station in Meichong village of Fanchang district, east Chinas Anhui province, on December 8, 2021. Villagers went to polls on the day to elect a new village committee. Voters in other villages and residential neighborhoods of the district also elected their new leaderships. (Photo by Xiao Benxiang & Liu Yucai)



Villagers read the resumes of candidates at a polling station in Meichong village of Fanchang district, east Chinas Anhui province, on December 8, 2021. Villagers went to polls on the day to elect a new village committee. Voters in other villages and residential neighborhoods of the district also elected their new leaderships. (Photo by Xiao Benxiang & Liu Yucai)






A PLA naval landing ship flotilla carried out the year-end assessment in waters of the South China Sea recently. Landing ships, helicopters and air-cushioned landing crafts worked in synergy to fulfill operations. China's first Type 075 amphibious assault ship Hainan (Hull 31), which got commissioned to the PLA Navy this year, organized an exam on subjects of air-cushioned landing crafts' docking and undocking, amphibious armored vehicles' loading and unloading, etc., in a bid to reduce the time for equipment dispatch.
BEIJING, Dec. 10 -- "Rather devote life, than yield ground. This is the vow we will never forget." December 9, 2021, is the 20th birthday of Chen Xiangrong, a PLA martyr who was fallen during the China-India border clash in Galwan Valley. His comrades came to the place where he died to pay tribute. "We will never give up an inch of our country land," they solemnly swore. They paid respects with oath and conviction, swearing to defend the Chinese border with their lives.
By Chen Yang

December 7 marks the 80th anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in the US. According to Japanese media reports, 99 members of the Japanese House of Representatives including nine deputy ministerial-level government officials paid a collective visit to the Yasukuni Shrine on December 7. This move not only reflects that Japan still lacks serious reflection on the history of aggression, but also reflects that the US's long-term acquiescence and connivance have made the Japanese right-wing forces more eager to make trouble and unscrupulous.

The date of December 7th has a special meaning for both Japan and the US. For Japan, the Pearl Harbor incident accelerated the demise of Japanese militarism. For the US, the Pearl Harbor incident was one of the few domestic attacks since the founding of the country, which had left an unforgettable memory for the US.

Paying homage to the Yasukuni Shrine on the 80th anniversary of the Pearl Harbor incident by Japanese politicians highlights the extreme arrogance of right-wing forces. Such an arrogant act not only reflects the evocation of militarism by the Japanese right-wing forces, denial and beautification of previous wars of aggression, it also reflects Japan's outright provocation against the USthe worship of Japanese World War II war criminals including those who died in the Pearl Harbor attack on the US "national shame day".

Japan has failed to reflect on history since its defeat. In the past few decades, Japan never sincerely apologized to its Asian neighbors, including China, that have suffered its aggression. On the contrary, some Japanese politicians have made absurd words and deeds to deny the war of aggression and the objective history from time to time. Recently, Japanese politicians such as Shinzo Abe have repeatedly clamored about the "China threat theory" and "Taiwan emergency is Japanese emergency". This has undoubtedly created an "activity space" for Japanese right-wing forces.

Behind this is the long-term acquiescence of the US. After Japan was defeated and surrendered in 1945, the General Headquarters (GHQ) Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers led by the US began to reform Japan based on democracy and the rule of law. However, the reform was not complete. The emperor system was retained. In addition, many Japanese war criminals of World War II did not receive the punishment they deserved. Instead, they re-entered politics and even became prime ministers (such as Shinzo Abe's grandfather, Nobusuke Kishi). All these laid the groundwork for the ghost of militarism that still lingers on to this day.

At the same time, the US has wooed Japan to provoke conflicts and confrontations in the Asia-Pacific region in the name of the so-called alliance in recent years, which has also virtually contributed to the arrogance of the Japanese right-wing forces. From the Obama administration's Asia-Pacific rebalance strategy to the current Biden administration's "free and open Indo-Pacific", the US has often acquiesced in historical issues in exchange for Japan's active cooperation with its own strategy in order to realize its strategic vision based on the Cold War mentality and ideological bias. This has allowed the Japanese right-wing forces to feel encouraged. Coupled with the US acquiescence to Japanese politicians' past visiting of the Yasukuni Shrine, Japanese politicians finally made reckless provocations on the 80th anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.

The reason why Pearl Harbor was attacked by Japan on December 7, 80 years ago was the result of the US tolerance of Japanese militarist fascism to some extent. And 80 years later, Japanese political leaders chose to worship the war criminals on a sensitive day is undoubtedly related to the current connivance of the Japanese right-wing forces by the US. Perhaps the US will shoot itself in the foot. After all, the Pearl Harbor incident is a typical example.

Disclaimer: This article is originally published on the haiwainet.cn, and is translated from Chinese into English and edited by the China Military Online. The information, ideas or opinions appearing in this article do not necessarily reflect the views of eng.chinamil.com.cn.
By Teng Huaijin

Chinese, Vietnamese troops participating in the "Peace Rescue-2021" joint medical exercise conduct joint training at the exercise venue on December 8, 2021. (Photo by Wei Fei)

MONG CAI, Dec.10 -- The Chinese and Vietnamese troops participating in the bilateral medical exercise "Peace Rescue-2021" started joint training for the first time in Mong Cai city, Quang Ninh province of Vietnam on December 8, 2021.

At the exercise venue which was designed against the background of the COVID-19 pandemic, the two Level-II hospitals of the Chinese and Vietnamese militaries based on vehicles, tents and cabins have been fully put into action, with various functional modules in operation. At the simulated resettlement site of victims, the joint pandemic prevention team conducted on-site epidemiological survey, sampling and environmental disinfection.

In view of the characteristics of this exercise, both parties have adopted a variety of new means to present the combat application effects and improve the joint emergency medical rescue capability, such as mobile cabin system applied to detect infectious diseases, drones applied to detect disasters, visualization systems applied for live transmission of casualty situations, and satellites applied for remote domestic consultations, etc,.

According to Zhao Rongtao, a member of the level-II hospital acceptance team on the Chinese side and associate researcher with the PLAs Center for Disease Control and Prevention, the mobile nucleic acid testing laboratory is innovated based on medical cabin and easy-setup tents, featuring quick deployment with full equipment. It can serve as a safe and reliable laboratory in multiple scenarios such as on-site pathogen detection, large-scale screening, large-scale epidemic handling, etc,.

It is learned that the China-Vietnam joint military medical exercise "Peace Rescue-2021" is to officially kick off on December 10 as scheduled after two days of joint training.
The Heroes showed an interest in Puig last year as he became a free agent but Puig wanted to take another shot at the big leagues. The club instead signed Addison Russell, another former All-Star with the Chicago Cubs.

The club said Thursday it signed Puig to a one-year contract worth US$1 million, the maximum amount allowed for foreign players in the Korean baseball league.

In the end, Puig joined a team in the Mexican League, where he batted 0.312 with 10 home runs this season.

Heroes general manager Ko Hyung-wook flew to the Dominican Republic in person last month to meet Puig, who was playing in the country's Winter League. Puig still hopes to return to the majors, but turned his eye to Korea as the free agency market remains frozen due to a lockout.

Ko said he persuaded Puig that he could return to the big leagues after having a successful career in Korea.

Puig is the highest-profile major league player ever to sign with a Korean club.

While he is known for his fast and powerful play, he has a bad reputation for his petulant attitude. He showed up late for training habitually at his former teams and often caused bench-clearing brawls. Off the field, he was investigated by the police for drunk driving and domestic violence. He recently agreed to pay a settlement of about W300 million to a woman who filed a sexual assault suit against him (US$1=W1,177).

The problems prevented Puig from signing a free agent deal, despite his record of 3,015 at-bats, 834 hits, 132 home runs, 441 runs, 415 RBIs and a 0.277 batting average in 861 appearances over seven MLB seasons.

The Heroes said Puig's problems are behind him now as he has received treatment with medication for his mental problems, and the sexual assault allegation has been legally resolved.
Hundreds of people led by a teenager are suing the government in the Constitutional Court over mandatory vaccine passes for youngsters.

The government has made it mandatory for youngsters aged 12-18 to be fully vaccinated against coronavirus before they can attend crammers or commercial study spaces from February next year. The lead petitioner is a high school senior named Yang Dae-rim.

The group are to file their petition with the Constitutional Court on Friday.

"I started recruiting participants on YouTube in October," Yang said. "A total of 453 participants have signed up for the petition. The youngest is a 12-year-old who signed with his parents."

"The government's latest measure is, in fact, forcing COVID-19 vaccines on children and adolescents," the petition argues. "It infringes on the rights to the freedom of action, liberty and security of the person, and to education, which are protected by the Constitution, even though there are growing doubts about the efficacy and safety of vaccines."

"Infections are spiking even though the full vaccination rate has reached 80 percent," they add. "Individual citizens should be given the freedom to decide whether to get vaccinated or not if they have to worry about infection and side effects despite vaccination."

They also said they will file a complaint with prosecutors against President Moon Jae-in, Prime Minister Kim Boo-kyum, Health Minister Kwon Deok-chul and Jeong Eun-kyeong, the chief of the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency, for abuse of power next month.
Recognition of Foreign Degrees in Greece The following pertains to Greek and foreign nationals who have studied abroad and wish to pursue further studies in Greece or a professional carrier in a field where a degree of higher education is required in Greece. The Inter-University Center for the Recognition of Foreign Degrees (Diapanepistimiako Kentro Anagnorisis Titlon Spoudon Allodapis - DIKATSA) needs to verify the validity and equivalence of the acquired degree with those awarded by Greek institutions of higher education. Information is provided in Greek and in English. For up-to-date information, for clarifications and to inquire about the procedures, you may contact DIKATSA via e-mail at the address dikatsa@otenet.gr or by fax at +30-1-6756709. Please note that due to the current downsizing of the greek civil service, the DIKATSA is due to be phased-out in the immediate future - exactly what this will entail for people with foreign degrees is unclear at the present time.
Statement of Senator Risa Hontiveros on Maria Ressa's Nobel Peace Prize

On the occasion of journalist Maria Ressa being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, I call on Filipinos to renew our own commitment to safeguard freedom of expression, which is a precondition for democracy.

Maria's Nobel Peace Prize should be a reminder to us all that there can be no lasting peace without justice and no justice without truth.

Her win is a milestone, not just for the Philippines, but for all freedom-loving nations whose "fourth estate" are also under attack.

Over the years, Philippine democracy has been hit by terrible blows: the jailing of critics, killing of innocents, revision of history, ignoring human rights, and plundering of the nation's wealth. It will now take the commitment of a whole nation to flush out those who have harmed us and our future.

My fervent hope is that Maria's award will push many more Filipinos to finally take a stand on the right side of history.

So, let us not be afraid. Like Maria, we should keep our #CourageON.

For the sake of all the Filipinos who risk or have given their lives to keep Philippine democracy alive, we have to keep upholding the truth no matter what.
Press Release

December 10, 2021 'Homecoming' for Lacson, Sotto as They Visit Cebu More at: https://pinglacson.net/article/homecoming-for-lacson-sotto-as-they-visit-cebu A homecoming awaits the tandem of Sen. Panfilo "Ping" M. Lacson and Senate President Vicente "Tito" Sotto III as they head for Cebu on Friday for their Online Kumustahan this weekend. Lacson, who is running for President under Partido Reporma, recalled how he became an "Adopted Son of Cebu" for his no-nonsense leadership when he served as commander of the then Philippine Constabulary's Cebu Metropolitan District Command (MetroDisCom) from 1989 to 1992. Sotto, who is running for Vice President under the Nationalist People's Coalition, traces his roots to Cebu. "Importante ang Cebu sa akin. Adopted son ako ng Cebu dahil na-assign ako riyan as MetroDisCom Commander for 28 months, at nag-request sila kay then President Cory Aquino na i-retain ako (Cebu is very important to me because the people of Cebu made me an adopted son due to my performance as the Philippine Constabulary's Metropolitan District Commander there. When my tour of duty was about to end there, they requested the late former President Corazon Aquino to retain me)," Lacson said at the LACSON-SOTTO weekly media forum. Lacson's regular two-year term of office as a field commander in Cebu would have ended in August 1991, but with the request to the late Mrs. Aquino to extend his term, he stayed at Cebu MetroDisCom until February 1992, when he was transferred to Laguna. For his part, Sotto said they want to present their platform of government to residents of Cebu, which he pointed out is a vote-rich province and has a trickle-down effect on other provinces in Central Visayas. "It's not only important, it is critical. It has a trickle down effect on the entire Region 7. My family on my father's side comes from Cebu," he said. Lacson said the "adopted son" tag was in recognition not only of his performance but also of the integrity he showed when he headed the Cebu MetroDisCom. During his stint there, Lacson recalled he and his men rescued a young kidnap victim, the scion of the Gaisano clan. Lacson and his men rescued the boy safely and neutralized the kidnappers, but declined the victim's grateful relatives' offer of a reward. "Consistent ako riyan. We did our duty, you don't have to think of giving reward money to my men. Yan ang tumatak sa kanila (I have been consistent there. We did our duty. They did not have to think of giving reward money to my men. The people of Cebu remembered that)," Lacson recalled. "Kaya importante on a personal level na mabisita ang Cebu, to remind them adopted son nyo ako baka pwede tangkilikin nyo ako (So it is important to me on a personal level that I visit Cebu , so I can 'remind' the people that I am an adopted son of the province)," he added.
Saudi and Omani companies have signed 13 memoranda of understanding in Muscat worth $30 billion, the official Saudi press agency SPA reported on Tuesday.

These trade agreements which aim to diversify the economies of the two countries cover several cooperation projects, particularly in energy, tourism, and finance.

The MoUs were signed on the sidelines of the visit of Crown Prince Mohamed Ben Salman Ben Abdelaziz Al Saoud to Oman.

The Saudi Crown Prince arrived in the Omani capital on Monday evening, the first stop on his regional tour that also includes the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, and Qatar, ahead of the Gulf Cooperation Council summit scheduled for in mid-December.

This visit by the Saudi Crown Prince to Qatar will be the first since 2017, the date when the Gulf crisis broke out.
US President Joe Biden said democracy needed champions, including in the United States, as he opened a virtual summit of some 100 countries on Thursday, the choice of which has provoked much debate.

He said from the White House that democracy in the world needs champions to face important and troubling challenges, speaking from a podium surrounded by signs created for the occasion, bearing the inscription Summit for Democracy and a blue, orange and white logo.

The 46th US President acknowledged that the United States itself had to fight relentlessly to live up to its democratic ideals and agreed that none of the states invited to the summit were perfect.

But he called on them to join forces against autocrats who justify their repressive practices and policies as the most effective way to meet the challenges of the day, casting doubt on the ability of democratic regimes to care for their citizens.

The event, held virtually in Washington because of the Covid-19 pandemic, is in theory to be held in person next year.

The summit brings together representatives of around 100 governments, NGOs, businesses and charities, but the guest list has caused some tension.

The goal, according to Washington, is to set an assertive agenda for democratic renewal and address the greatest threats facing democracies today through collective action.
According to information published by the Royal Navy on December 9, 2021, the HMS Queen Elizabeth aircraft carrier returned home to Portsmouth after her maiden operational deployment which took the nations flagship to the Indo-Pacific and back.

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HMS Queen Elizabeth aircraft carrier (Picture source: Royal Navy)

On a seven-month mission, the aircraft carrier and her task group of eight supporting ships, a submarine, five air squadrons and more than 3,700 personnel visited more than 40 countries.

Her F-35B stealth jets flew more than 4,000 hours  more than 23 weeks in the skies, including combat sorties bombing remaining elements of Daesh  while the ship worked with allied and partner nations forging new ties, renewing old friendships and flying the flag for Britain.

Queen Elizabeth returned after some of her escort warships, which formed a protective ring around the aircraft carrier during her operations.

The aircraft carrier and her strike group sailed a combined 500,000 nautical miles and strengthened bonds with allies, including Australia, Canada, New Zealand, France, Greece, Israel, India, Italy, Japan, Oman and the Republic of Korea.

The task group was also a notable international effort, with Dutch frigate Evertsen and US Navy destroyer USS The Sullivans sailing side by side with seven British ships on the deployment.

US Marine Corps jets were also deployed alongside the RAFs 617 Squadron onboard HMS Queen Elizabeth, assembling the largest contingent of fifth-generation stealth jets ever seen at sea.

HMS Queen Elizabeth is the lead ship of the Queen Elizabeth class of aircraft carriers and the Fleet Flagship of the Royal Navy. Capable of carrying 60 aircraft including fixed-wing, rotary-wing, and autonomous vehicles, she was commissioned on 7 December 2017 and entered service in 2020.

Defensive weapons include the Phalanx Close-In Weapons System for anti-aircraft and anti-missile defense and 30mm Automated Small Calibre Guns and Miniguns for use against fast attack craft.

The hangars are designed for CH-47 Chinook operations without blade folding and for the V-22 Osprey tiltrotor, whilst the aircraft lifts can accommodate two Chinooks with unfolded blades.
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U.S. Rep. John Lewis served as Emorys Commencement speaker twice, first at the university-wide event in Atlanta in 2014, when he also addressed the School of Law ceremony, and then in 2019 at Oxford College. The civil rights luminary and longtime lawmaker passed away in 2020. Emory Photo/Video

Emory Universitys Goizueta Business School has announced the 20 semifinalist teams of the 2022 John R. Lewis Racial Justice Case Competition.

To broaden the nationwide impact of this vital initiative that launched in 2021, Goizueta Business School serves as the overall competition organizer and host school. With a focus on examining how companies can address racial injustice within their organizations, Goizueta has partnered with Cornell University SC Johnson College of Business, Howard School of Business, Rice University Jones Graduate School of Business, and Yale School of Management. Goizueta also welcomes its corporate sponsors Accenture, IBM/Call for Code, Moderna, Taco Bell, UPS and Momentive.ai.

As the focus of the competition this year, entrants were invited to complete industry-specific applications for the categories of consulting and professional services, food and beverage, health care, technology, and transportation and logistics. This years competition drew 76 applicant teams from more than 40 universities who will compete for monetary prizes ranging from $5,000 to $20,000. All prizes are a one-to-one split, with 50% given to the winning team and 50% donated to an organization advancing racial justice of the winners choosing.

Im thrilled with the quality of the applications this year. It is clear these student teams invested in research to understand their chosen industry and they provided thoughtful ideas about the issues they identified, says Lynne Segall, associate dean for management practice initiatives and senior lecturer of organization and management. I hope each team that submitted an application feels proud regardless of whether they are advancing, and I encourage them to keep these issues front of mind as they move on in their careers, as we need all leaders focused on addressing systemic racism.

In the preliminary round, applicant teams were judged on their ability to identify issues of racial justice in their specific industry and describe business role in solving said issues; their problem-solving approach; their rationale for selecting an organization to which their winning would be donated; and their demonstration of why their team represents diversity.

In the semifinal round, applicant teams will be judged by corporate partners, racial justice nongovernmental organization (NGO) partners, faculty and elected officials who used a numerical scoring system across the following criteria: potential for impact; feasibility of recommendations; creativity of solution; boldness; research quality and evidential support for recommendations; story structure and narrative; slide craft; and presentation delivery.

Semifinalist teams announced

Goizueta is proud to announce that the 20 semifinalist teams advancing to the next round of the competition are:

Accenture (consulting and professional services) Cornell University, Samuel Curtis Johnson Graduate School of Management Emory University, Goizueta Business School Johns Hopkins University, Carey Business School University of Pennsylvania, Wharton Business School

Taco Bell (food and beverage) Indiana University, Kelley School of Business University of Southern California, Marshall School of Business University of Virginia, Darden School of Business Yale University, School of Management

Moderna (health care) University of Florida, Hough Graduate School of Business Indiana University, Kelley School of Business Northwestern University, Kellogg School of Management Rice University, Jones School of Business

IBM Call for Code (technology) University of California  Berkeley, Haas School of Business University of Southern California, Marshall School of Business University of Washington, Foster School of Business Yale University, School of Management

UPS (transportation and logistics) Earlham College Georgia Institute of Technology, Scheller College of Business Georgetown University, McDonough School of Business The University of Texas at Dallas, Naveen Jindal School of Business



Origins of the John R. Lewis Racial Justice Case Competition to Address Systemic Racism and Racial Inequality

This first-of-its-kind competition was held Jan. 21, 2021, spearheaded by MBA graduate Willie Sullivan to examine how companies can address racial injustice within their organizations. A team from the USC Marshall School of Business took first place, the Goizueta Business School team took second place, and the Harvard Business School team took home the audience award.

The 105 team applicants were narrowed to 24 teams of students from across the country that investigated how their assigned corporation could best use its resources to address issues of racial injustice and disparities in wealth, health and education. Fortune 500 companies including Walmart, Salesforce, HP, Johnson & Johnson, Southern Company and Truist Bank joined as corporate partners to serve as models to help their organizations address structural racism.

2020 was a time of reckoning; it enabled those who could not or historically chose not to see the deep roots of inequity in America to not only open their eyes to these realities, but also to intentionally move in solidarity with Black communities in the name of racial justice. While we are no longer sitting in that moment, the need for transformative racial justice work in both business and society persists, as it has for centuries, says MBA student Jasmine Burton, co-managing director. As a coordinating leadership team, we are thrilled to see that diverse students across the country are continuing to use their skillsets and mindsets to showcase their commitment to racial equity, while also seeking to support companies in making lasting change to their DEI practices both within their companies and beyond.

Additional information about the John R. Lewis Racial Justice Competition including how individuals can register to attend the final presentations can be found at emory.biz/jlcc.

About Goizueta Business School at Emory University

Business education has been an integral part of Emory Universitys identity since 1919. That kind of longevity and significance does not come without a culture built on success and service. Emory Universitys Goizueta Business School offers a unique, community-oriented environment paired with the academic prestige and rigor of a major research institution. Goizueta develops business leaders of today and tomorrow with an undergraduate degree program, a Two-Year Full-Time MBA, a One-Year MBA, an Evening MBA, an Executive MBA, an MS in Business Analytics, a Master of Analytical Finance, a doctoral degree and a portfolio of non-degree Emory Executive Education courses.

Together, the Goizueta community strives to solve the worlds most pressing business problems. The school is named for the late Roberto C. Goizueta, former Chairman and CEO of The Coca-Cola Company. For more information, visit Goizueta online.

Emory University is recognized internationally as an inquiry-driven, ethically engaged and diverse community whose members work collaboratively for positive transformation in the world through courageous leadership in teaching, research, scholarship, health care and social action. The university consists of an outstanding liberal arts college, highly ranked professional schools and one of the larger and more comprehensive health care systems in the Southeast.
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Like a dragon of legend, the star EK Draconis has belched out a stream of flaming gas.

This is the first time such a supermassive filament eruption has been observed on a Sun-like star. Since, EK Draconis is similar to the Sun in size, but younger, this could indicate that the Sun also produced such supermassive ejections long ago. Large amounts of flaming gas from the Sun would have made the environment harsh for the planets, including the young Earth where life was first emerging.

A research group led by Kosuke Namekata and Hiroyuki Maehara at the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan (NAOJ) has been monitoring EK Draconis, a young solar-type star located 111 light-years away in the constellation Draco, the Dragon. Using several satellites and telescopes, including the 3.8 meter Seimei Telescope in western Japan, the group captured observational data indicating that a superflare had erupted from the star. This is the first optical spectroscopic observation of a superflare on a Sun-like star. Associated with the superflare, they also found evidence for an eruption of a supermassive filament of plasma, gas so hot that it breaks down into ions and electrons. This was another world's first discovery for a Sun-like star. The filament was large, 10 times more massive that any mass ejection ever recorded on the Sun, and fast, 500 km/s (about 1 million mph).

Assuming that EK Draconis is a typical example of a young Sun-like star, supermassive filaments could be common around young stars. Such hot, high-speed filaments streaming out of the young Sun would have had a severe impact on the environment of the Earth and other planets. These effects need to be considered when thinking about the origins of life on Earth and looking for life on other planets.

These results appeared as Kosuke Namekata et al. "Probable detection of an eruptive filament from a superflare on a solar-type star" in Nature Astronomy on December 9, 2021.

The National Astronomical Observatory of Japan, of the National Institutes of Natural Sciences, in cooperation with Kyoto University offers half of the Seimei Telescope observing time to Japanese Universities as open-use observing time. Open-use Seimei Telescope observations, together with the Optical and Infrared Synergetic Telescopes for Education and Research (OISTER) collaboration in Japan, made important contributions to these research results.

Astrobiology

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This is a composite view of X-rays, molecular gas, and warm ionized gas near the galactic center. The orange-colored features are of glowing hydrogen gas. One such feature, at the top tip of the jet (see the annotated image below) is interpreted as a hydrogen cloud that has been hit by the outflowing jet. The jet scatters off the cloud into tendrils that flow northward. Farther down near the black hole are X-ray observations of superheated gas colored blue and molecular gas in green. These data are evidence that the black hole occasionally accretes stars or gas clouds, and ejects some of the superheated material along its spin axis. Credits: NASA, ESA, and Gerald Cecil (UNC-Chapel Hill); Image Processing: Joseph DePasquale (STScI)

Our Milky Way's central black hole has a leak.

This supermassive black hole looks like it still has the vestiges of a blowtorch-like jet dating back several thousand years. NASA's Hubble Space Telescope hasn't photographed the phantom jet but has helped find circumstantial evidence that it is still pushing feebly into a huge hydrogen cloud and then splattering, like the narrow stream from a hose aimed into a pile of sand.

This is further evidence that the black hole, with a mass of 4.1 million Suns, is not a sleeping monster but periodically hiccups as stars and gas clouds fall into it. Black holes draw some material into a swirling, orbiting accretion disk where some of the infalling material is swept up into outflowing jets that are collimated by the black hole's powerful magnetic fields. The narrow "searchlight beams" are accompanied by a flood of deadly ionizing radiation.

"The central black hole is dynamically variable and is currently powered down," said Gerald Cecil of the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill. Cecil pieced together, like a jigsaw puzzle, multiwavelength observations from a variety of telescopes that suggest the black hole burps out mini-jets every time it swallows something hefty, like a gas cloud. His multinational team's research has just been published in the Astrophysical Journal.

In 2013 evidence for a stubby southern jet near the black hole came from X-rays detected by NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and radio waves detected by the Jansky Very Large Array telescope in Socorro, New Mexico. This jet too appears to be plowing into gas near the black hole.

Cecil was curious if there was a northern counter-jet as well. He first looked at archival spectra of such molecules as methyl alcohol and carbon monosulfide from the ALMA Observatory in Chile (Atacama Large Millimeter/Submillimeter Array), which uses millimeter wavelengths to peer through the veils of dust between us and the galactic core. ALMA reveals an expanding, narrow linear feature in molecular gas that can be traced back at least 15 light-years to the black hole.

By connecting the dots, Cecil next found in Hubble infrared-wavelength images a glowing, inflating bubble of hot gas that aligns to the jet at a distance of at least 35 light-years from the black hole. His team suggests that the black hole jet has plowed into it, inflating the bubble. These two residual effects of the fading jet are the only visual evidence of it impacting molecular gas.

As it blows through the gas the jet hits material and bends along multiple streams. "The streams percolate out of the Milky Way's dense gas disk," said co-author Alex Wagner of Tsukuba University in Japan. "The jet diverges from a pencil beam into tendrils, like that of an octopus." This outflow creates a series of expanding bubbles that extend out to at least 500 light-years. This larger "soap bubble" structure has been mapped at various wavelengths by other telescopes.

Wagner and Cecil next ran supercomputer models of jet outflows in a simulated Milky Way disk, which reproduced the observations. "Like in archeology, you dig and dig to find older and older artifacts until you come upon remnants of a grand civilization," said Cecil. Wagner's conclusion: "Our central black hole clearly surged in luminosity at least 1 millionfold in the last million years. That sufficed for a jet to punch into the Galactic halo."

Previous observations by Hubble and other telescopes found evidence that the Milky Way's black hole had an outburst about 2-4 million years ago. That was energetic enough to create an immense pair of bubbles towering above our galaxy that glow in gamma-rays. They were first discovered by NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope in 2010 and are surrounded by X-ray bubbles that were discovered in 2003 by the ROSAT satellite and mapped fully in 2020 by the eROSITA satellite.

Hubble ultraviolet-light spectra have been used to measure the expansion velocity and composition of the ballooning lobes. Hubble spectra later found that the burst was so powerful that it lit up a gaseous structure, called the Magellanic stream, at about 200,000 light-years from the galactic center. Gas is glowing from that event even today.

To get a better idea of what's going on, Cecil looked at Hubble and radio images of another galaxy with a black hole outflow. Located 47 million light-years away, the active spiral galaxy NGC 1068 has a string of bubble features aligned along an outflow from the very active black hole at its center. Cecil found that the scales of the radio and X-ray structures emerging from both NGC 1068 and our Milky Way are very similar. "A bow shock bubble at the top of the NGC 1068 outflow coincides with the scale of the Fermi bubble start in the Milky Way. NGC 1068 may be showing us what the Milky Way was doing during its major power surge several million years ago."

The residual jet feature is close enough to the Milky Way's black hole that it would become much more prominent only a few decades after the black hole powers up again. Cecil notes that "the black hole need only increase its luminosity by a hundredfold over that time to refill the jet channel with emitting particles. It would be cool to see how far the jet gets in that outburst. To reach into the Fermi gamma-ray bubbles would require that the jet sustain for hundreds of thousands of years because those bubbles are each 50,000 light years across!"

The anticipated images of the black hole's shadow made with the National Science Foundation's Event Horizon Telescope may reveal where and how the jet is launched.

The Hubble Space Telescope is a project of international cooperation between NASA and ESA (European Space Agency). NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, manages the telescope. The Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) in Baltimore, Maryland, conducts Hubble science operations. STScI is operated for NASA by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy in Washington, D.C.



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Citizen scientists have discovered a new object orbiting a Sun-like star that had been missed by previous searches.

The object is very distant from its host star--more than 1,600 times farther than the Earth is from the Sun--and is thought to be a large planet or a small brown dwarf, a type of object that is not massive enough to burn hydrogen like true stars. Details about the new world are published today in The Astrophysical Journal.

"This star had been looked at by more than one campaign searching for exoplanet companions. But previous teams looked really tight, really close to the star," said lead author Jackie Faherty, senior scientist in the American Museum of Natural History's Department of Astrophysics and co-founder of the citizen science project Backyard Worlds: Planet 9, which led to the object's discovery. "Because citizen scientists really liked the project, they found an object that many of these direct imaging surveys would have loved to have found, but they didn't look far enough away from its host."

The Backyard Worlds project lets volunteers search through nearly five years of digital images taken from NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) mission to try to identify new worlds inside and outside of our solar system. If an object close to Earth is moving, it will appear to "jump" in the same part of the sky over the years, similar to an object "moving" in a flipbook. Users can then flag these objects for further study by scientists.

In 2018, Backyard Worlds participant Jorg Schumann, who lives in Germany, alerted scientists to a new co-moving system: an object that appeared to be moving with a star. After confirming the system's motion, scientists used telescopes in California and Hawai'i to observe the star and object separately and were immediately excited by what they saw.

The new object is young and has a low mass, between 10 and 20 times the mass of Jupiter. This range overlaps with an important cutoff point--13 times the mass of Jupiter--which is sometimes used to distinguish planets from brown dwarfs. But scientists still aren't sure how heavy planets can be, which can make relying on this cutoff challenging. "We don't have a very good definition of the word 'planet,'" said Faherty.

Another defining feature is how they form: planets form from material gathering in disks around stars, while brown dwarfs are born from the collapse of giant clouds of gas, similar to how stars form. But the physical properties of this new object do not provide any clues to its formation. "There are hints that maybe it's more like an exoplanet, but there's nothing conclusive yet. However, it is an outlier," said Faherty.

What surprised the team the most is the new object's relationship to its host star. The object is farther away from the star than expected based on its comparatively low mass--over 1,600 times farther than the Earth is from the Sun. Few objects with such different masses from their host star have been found this far apart.

Ultimately, this discovery may help scientists get a better sense of how solar systems form, which is crucial to understanding the origins of life in the universe. "You had an exoplanet community just staring so close to it," said Faherty. "And we just pulled out a little, and we found an object. That makes me excited about what we might be missing in giant planets that might exist around these stars," said Faherty. "Sometimes, you need to broaden your scope."

Other authors on the study include Johanna M. Vos, Daniella C. Bardalez Gagliuffi, Austin Rothermich, and Andrew Ayala from the American Museum of Natural History; Jonathan Gagne from the University of Montreal; Mark Popinchalk from the American Museum of Natural History and the City University of New York; Adam J. Burgasser, Christian Aganze, Chih-Chun Hsu, Roman Gerasimov, and Christopher A. Theissen from the University of California, San Diego; Adam C. Schneider from the U.S. Naval Observatory and George Mason University; J. Davy Kirkpatrick and Federico Marocco from the California Institute of Technology; Aaron M. Meisner from NSF's National Optical-Infrared Astronomy Research Laboratory; Marc J. Kuchner from NASA Goddard Space Flight Center; Dan Caselden from Gigamon Applied Threat Research; Eileen C. Gonzales from Cornell University; Sarah L. Casewell from the University of Leicester; John H. Debes from the Space Telescope Science Institute; William J. Cooper from the University of Hertfordshire and the National Institute for Astrophysics in Italy, and R. L. Smart from the National Institute for Astrophysics in Italy.

This research was supported in part by NASA Astrophysics Data Analysis Program grant #s NNH17AE75I and 80NSSC20K0452 as well as NASA grant 2017-ADAP17-0067, the National Science Foundation grant #s 2007068, 2009136, and 2009177, and the Heising-Simons Foundation.



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By Azernews





By Ayya Lmahamad

Azerbaijan's Entrepreneurs Confederation (ASK) and the Asian Development Bank's (ADB) representative office in Azerbaijan have discussed the prospects of cooperation.

ASK's President Mammad Musayev briefed on the confederation's activities and the business and investment climate in the country. He spoke about the potential for the development of Azerbaijan's liberated lands.

The head of the ADB's representative office in Azerbaijan, Candice McDeigan, spoke about the work done by the permanent mission, public and private partnerships, technical assistance projects, investment and lending opportunities.

During the meeting, the parties discussed the proposals and promising projects for cooperation opportunities. It was decided to sign a memorandum on joint participation and cooperation in future forums.

Azerbaijan has been a member of the Asian Development Bank since 1999. Since then, the bank has committed $4.4 billion in loans, $32.28 million in technical assistance projects, including ADB-administered co-financing for Azerbaijan.
By Azernews





By Orkhan Amashov

A year has passed since the historic Victory Parade, an event of immense symbolic significance, which not only marked Azerbaijan's decisive victory in the Second Karabakh War, but also sent a duly chilling message to the nation's detractors and adversaries, demonstratively indicating that any attempt to reverse the legal consequences of last year's war, as enshrined in the November 10 ceasefire deal, will be foiled with vehemence and unmistakable efficiency.

An old Latin adage of timeless relevance suggests that one who wants peace should prepare for war. The self-same maxim does not enlighten us as to what should be done once the war is won. Perhaps we, in turn, could add that the correct course of action is to consolidate one's gains and strengthen the resources which gave a rise to victory, so as to make peace sustainable. That is what Azerbaijan has been doing since the cessation of hostilities.

The Victory Parade was not a cheap act of sabre-rattling or infantile chest-thumping, but a splendiferously potent, and indeed timely, demonstration of military prowess and political ambition. It was not meant to be a portent of new escalations, but the harbinger of a new order underpinning a durable peace.

It was clear from the outset that Azerbaijan is determined to apply itself fully to the revival of the liberated territories. After nearly 30 years of incomprehensibly devastating vandalism, sheer mayhem and wanton destruction of inconceivable proportions, the task before Baku was and is still massive. Substantial chunks of the liberated lands lie entirely derelict, scattered with ruins. The presence of landmines and unexploded ordnances have been the cause of massive problems. Although, on December 4, Armenia allegedly surrendered all the relevant minefield maps, it remains to be seen if all the schematics provided are accurate.

The unique reconstruction process currently underway is being undertaken primarily through the use of the nation's natural resources. Azerbaijan is open to foreign contributions and rightly determined to favour its allies and trusted partners when choosing potential investors.

Amongst the events that took place over the past year, the opening of Fuzuli International Airport is of particular importance, as it is perhaps the clearest possible manifestation of the efficiency and tenacity with which vast rebuilding measures are being implemented.

The revival of Shusha is another sign of Azerbaijan's zealous commitment towards placing Karabakh at the heart of a wider map of the region. The government in Baku is conscious that if the liberated territories, which have been restructured into two administrative units, are to be economically viable, they must be properly connected with the rest of the country and the wider region. This necessity is being duly acknowledged through the emphasis on the improvement of transportation infrastructure. Shusha should not just be the cultural capital of Azerbaijan or the beating heart of Karabakh, it should also be vibrant and flourishing. That is the reason why Baku is hellbent on transforming the city into a tourism resort.

A year after the Victory Parade, the trilateral ceasefire statement has yet not evolved into a comprehensive peace deal. Wide strides have been accomplished, but there is still much to do. The final peace will not come in a package form. The likely probability is that separate critical agreements, covering various aspects of Azerbaijani-Armenian relations will be signed, leading to a comprehensive treaty.

To date, Armenia has been compelled to agree to certain clauses that are essential to the full implementation of the November 10, 2020, ceasefire deal. The trilateral statement, signed subsequent to the Sochi meeting on November 26, reiterated the importance of intensifying work on the unblocking of transportation routes, in relation to which a trilateral working group has been in existence since January 2021, laying the foundation for a bilateral commission that is to be instituted by the end of the year, working on the delimitation and demarcation of the Azerbaijan-Armenia state border.

For a truly sustainable peace to be achieved, the aggressor, Armenia, should not just accept its defeat, which it partly did in the form of reluctant acquiescence, but also readjust its long-held existential pivots. There must be a clear realisation as to the reasons that led to the catastrophic defeat in last year's war and revanchist tendencies should be curbed.

Armenia is still engaged in some introspection, but it is not very certain if a painstakingly arduous self-contemplation, essential to detoxification of the Armenian soul, is underway. There are some worrying signs. Former Armenian President Robert Kocharyan, the leader of the largest opposition faction in parliament, has been blathering about the "start of the pan-Armenian resistance" for some time.

Armenia needs to do a deep-dive and recalibrate its whole being in a holistic manner. This will happen throughout the journey leading to a final peace with Azerbaijan, and continue for some time thereafter.
By Trend

The 11th Russia-Azerbaijan Interregional Forum will be held in Baku in 2022, spokesperson for the Russian Foreign Ministry Maria Zakharova said during a weekly briefing, Trend reports.

We attach great importance to the development of interregional ties with other countries, in particular, with Azerbaijan, Zakharova said.

The spokesperson added that the trade and economic cooperation with Azerbaijan is supported by 73 entities of the Russian Federation, 18 of them have agreements with Azerbaijan on trade, economic, scientific, technical and cultural cooperation.

The Russia-Azerbaijan interregional forum is in great demand, Zakharova said. It must be held in Azerbaijan in 2022 for the eleventh time.

Zakharova added that the visit of Governor of Russias Astrakhan Region Igor Babushkin to Azerbaijan was very successful.

The opening ceremony of the Astrakhan business center in Baku was held, the spokesperson said. A program of measures was signed following the visit to develop cooperation between the government of the Astrakhan region and the government of Azerbaijan for 2022.
By Trend

Azerbaijan marks a year since the Victory Parade held in Baku to commemorate the country's historic victory in the 44-day second Karabakh war, Trend reports on Dec. 10.

The Victory Parade in Baku is remembered as an important historical event in the life of the Azerbaijani people. It has become a holiday that the Azerbaijani people have been waiting for many years.

The Victory Parade took place in Baku on December 10, 2020, on Azadlig Square. It was attended by President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev, First Lady Mehriban Aliyeva, President of Turkey Recep Tayyip Erdogan and First Lady Emine Erdogan.

The Victory Parade, which was attended by more than 3,000 personnel, presented 150 units of military equipment, including recently adopted modern military equipment, missile and artillery installations, air defense systems, warships and boats, as well as part of the trophies captured from the enemy, defeated by the Azerbaijani army during the second Karabakh war. The parade demonstrated the power of the Azerbaijani state and army. It became the personification of joy in connection with the end of the 30-year longing of the Azerbaijani people, the realization of their cherished dream, ensuring the territorial integrity of the country.

After the parade, a firework was held in honor of the Victory took place on the territory of Baku Seaside Boulevard.




By Azernews





By Vugar Khalilov

Azerbaijani Defence Minister Zakir Hasanov has paid condolences to Turkey over three servicemen's killing in a PKK attack in northern Iraq, the Defence Ministry reported on its Twitter account on December 9.

I was saddened by the news that three Turkish servicemen were killed as a result of the treacherous terrorist attack during Pence-Yildirim Operation. Your pain is our pain, the ministry tweeted.

Earlier, Turkeys National Defence Ministry announced that three soldiers were killed and seven were injured in a terrorist attack in northern Iraq, where the Turkish army conducted the Pence-Yildirim (Claw-Lightning) anti-terrorism operations.

"Three of our heroic comrades were martyred as a result of the attack carried out by terrorists on December 09, 2021, in the Claw-Lightning operation region in the north of Iraq. We wish God's mercy on our martyrs who lost their lives in this incident, which left us with deep pain and sadness, and we express our condolences and patience to their grieving families, the Turkish Armed Forces and our noble nation," the Turkish National Defence Ministry said.

It added that six terrorists were neutralized as a result of the air operation carried out by the Turkish Army following the terrorist attack.

"Targets identified in the region were struck in an air operation and six terrorists were neutralised according to initial indications. Operations in the region are continuing," the statement said.

The Pence operations are a series of offensives Turkey has carried out since 2019 against terrorist organisations in northern Iraq, particularly the PKK.

The antiterrorism operations Claw-Tiger and Claw-Eagle were initiated in June 2020, while Claw-Lightning and Claw-Thunderbolt were launched in Iraqs Metina and Avasin-Basyan regions in April 2021.

In its more than 35-year terror campaign against Turkey, the PKK has been responsible for the deaths of over 40,000 people, including women, children, and infants.
By Azernews





By Vafa Ismayilova

Against the background of the global fight against separatism, the U.S-based pro-Nazi Armenian National Committee of America (ANCA) urges Washington to provide greater financial support to Armenian separatists.

ANCA wrote about this in a post on its official Facebook page a few days ago.

Despite the fact that Azerbaijan as a country suffering from Armenian separatism in its Karabakh region for about 30 years liberated the Armenian-occupied territories in late last year's war, Armenias foreign-based forces are still pursuing a policy of separatism.

Baku has repeatedly made all the necessary proposals to Yerevan with regard to the post-war situation. Namely - to sign a peace treaty, to recognize each other's territorial integrity, and to begin the delimitation and demarcation of borders.

It should be noted that official Bakus position has always been that it is inadmissible to create another state within the territory of one state established by the norms of international law and to resort to national and ethnic split to achieve this goal.

Before liberating its lands on its own, Azerbaijan repeatedly warned the world community about the dangers of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict in the region and called for decisive practical steps to deter Armenia from pursuing a policy of aggression.

Armenian diaspora also defeated in 44-day war

The U.S. branch of the ultranationalist left-wing party Armenian Revolutionary Federation (ARF, also known as Dashnaktsutyun or in short, Dashnak) usually incites hatred towards Azerbaijan and Turkey as a way to ensure political and financial support for themselves.

It is noteworthy that the 44-day war not only defeated the Armenian army, but also the Armenian diaspora.

The Armenian diaspora organizations, including ANCA which raised millions of dollars to continue the conflict in the region and prepare provocations against Azerbaijan, have exhausted materially and morally.

Back in 2018, former US ambassador to Azerbaijan Mathew Bryza said that ANCA does not want to see a settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, which would reduce the organizations ability to raise money from donors.

The Armenian armys inability to resist during the war after so much help has disappointed those who donated to the diaspora.

They now refuse to make donations as Armenia lost the war over Karabakh and seven regions around, which it occupied about 30 years ago. They believe that given the lack of the Karabakh factor to use against Azerbaijan and Turkey, there is no need for donations.

The misappropriation of the allocated funds is the other side of the problem. It is believed that the funds invested in the diaspora failed to be appropriately spent.

Under the guise of pursuing the interests of the Armenian people, the diaspora effectively turns the Armenian people into its victims. From this standpoint, the support given to Armenia by the Armenian diaspora can also be seen as a myth.

Begging money from Washington

In light of its frustrations, ANCA urges the U.S. government to increase aid to separatists. While begging money from Washington, ANCA radicals should not forget the fact that the peoples of Armenia and Azerbaijan have to co-exist in peace sooner or later.

The lack of peaceful co-existence threatens the whole region and its economic development. The peaceful co-existence is possible if Armenians give up their territorial claims and ethnic hatred mainly inflamed by the diaspora organizations, including ANCA. That is the Armenians have to look into their history, reconsider their place and role in the South Caucasus and their prospects in the region.

Over the past 200 years, Armenians territorial claims and the policy of hatred against other peoples have been at the heart of all ethnic conflicts in the South Caucasus.

Azerbaijan supports peace and is doing its best to sign a comprehensive peace treaty with Armenia.

Some experts believe that attitude to the Armenian diaspora in Armenian society is not unambiguous. According to them, unlike in the 1990s, it will not be easy for the Armenian diaspora to transfer nationalism, chauvinism and ethnic hatred into Armenian society now.

It should be noted that this radical lobby organization arranged the largest hate crime against the Azerbaijani community in Los Angeles in 2020 following hostilities on the Armenian-Azerbaijani border in Tovuz.

ANCA's former leader, Murad Topalyan, was one of the top ten terrorists in the history of the movement and was arrested on terror-related charges. Although the organization is trying to portray itself as a lobbyist one, separating itself from terrorism, in fact, it is still committed to the principles of aggression.

Anti-Azerbaijan efforts to fail

Despite ANCA's ongoing efforts and calls to stop U.S. aid to Azerbaijan, the U.S. State Department of Defence still retains the freedom to work together with the Azerbaijani Defence Ministry regardless of the Pallone amendment that blocked two sources of funding for U.S.- Azerbaijani military cooperation.

As confirmed by the Jamestown Foundation, the U.S. security relationship with Azerbaijan is premised on Washingtons broader desire to build up capacities and competencies in partner countries around the world to counter transnational threats, thwart terrorist networks, and respond to regional crises.

With the power vacuum being created in Afghanistan as a result of the rapid US pullout, Bakus ability to ensure a safe route to the region is of paramount strategic importance for Washington.

Armenian war crimes

The ultranationalist group, which spares no effort to ensure that the U.S. government stops any aid to Azerbaijan, based on its false allegations, does not utter a word about war crimes against Azerbaijan committed by Armenia in last year's war.

In the war unleashed by Armenia, Azerbaijan's Ganja, Barda, Yevlakh, Beylagan, Tartar, Gabala, Goranboy, Aghjabadi, Khizi and other cities and regions, fairly far from the war zone, came under Armenia's missile and artillery fire.

International human rights watchdogs Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch verified the use of banned cluster bombs and missiles by Armenia in its attacks against Azerbaijani cities.

As a result, 100 Azerbaijani civilians were killed, including 12 children and 27 women. As many as 454 people were injured, including 35 children. Some 181 children lost one parent, five children lost both parents, one family died. In total, 12,292 residential and non-residential buildings and 288 vehicles were damaged.

A criminal case has been initiated into the death of every civilian in Azerbaijan caused by the Armenian terror, and appeals have been sent to international courts and organizations.

In 2020 Azerbaijan liberated its territories from Armenias 30-year occupation. The scale of destruction and cultural genocide is now fully evident. In the early 1990s, Armenia invaded 20 percent of Azerbaijan, expelling about 1m Azerbaijanis from Karabakh in the early 1990s and 200,000 from Armenia in the late 1980s. During three decades of illegal occupation, Armenia razed 10,000 sq km of occupied Azerbaijani territories to the ground. Entire Azerbaijani cities were obliterated.

To erase all traces of Azerbaijani culture and history Armenia systematically destroyed cultural and historical monuments. Out of 67 mosques, 65 were desecrated and destroyed. Many mosques were turned into pigsties and cowsheds like the Juma Mosque of Agdam (1870), Zangilan Mosque (17th century) or Marmar Mosque (18th century) in Gubadli.

Some 900 cemeteries with over a million graves were decimated. Azerbaijani gravestones were even used to build stairs to Armenian homes. Car plates of killed and displaced Azerbaijanis were used to decorate public restrooms. Overall, during 30 years of occupation 927 libraries with 4.6 million books, 700 historical monuments and 22 museums with 100,000 exhibits were looted and destroyed by Armenia. Armenia looted and erased more heritage than ISIS terrorists did in Iraq and Syria. It is the worst cultural genocide of the 21st century.
By Azernews





By Vugar Khalilov

Deputy Foreign Minister Mahmud Mammad-Guliyev has said that Azerbaijan strongly condemns the vaccine nationalism that emerged during the pandemic, the Foreign Ministry reported on December 9.

Mammad-Guliyev made the remarks at the 14th session of the Bali Democracy Forum on "Democracy for Humanity: Advancing Economic and Social Justice during the Pandemic" held in Indonesia on December 9.

COVID-19

Addressing the event in an online format, Mammad-Guliyev stressed Azerbaijan's contribution to the global fight against the COVID-19 pandemic.

He noted that a special session of the UN General Assembly was held in December 2020 at the initiative of the Azerbaijani president as a chairman of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM).

The deputy minister said that the resolution on "Ensuring equal and universal access to vaccines for all countries" proposed by Azerbaijan on behalf of the NAM was unanimously adopted by the UN Human Rights Council, with a great majority in the 3rd Committee of the UN General Assembly.

Mammad-Guliyev also underlined the measures taken to ensure the social and economic rights of the population during the pandemic in the country.

Karabakh

Speaking about the trilateral statement signed on November 10, 2020, Mammad-Guliyev said that it put an end to the 30-year conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan, and ensured Azerbaijans territorial integrity after the 44-day war.

He stressed the importance of full implementation of the trilateral statements for lasting peace and development in the region.

He touched on the promotion of interreligious and intercultural dialogue and underlined that Azerbaijan is a country where different ethnic and religious groups had lived together peacefully for centuries.

Moreover, he added that Azerbaijan hosted a number of relevant international events.

It should be noted that the Bali Democracy Forum has been held at the initiative of the Indonesian government since 2008 and serves to promote democracy in the Asia-Pacific region and the wider region through the exchange of positive experiences.

Public and political figures from many countries around the world, including U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken and Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu addressed the forum too.
By Azernews





By Vafa Ismayilova

Azerbaijan has foiled Armenia's provocative attempts near Kalbajar region on the state border, the Azerbaijani Defence Ministry reported on December 10.

Armenia's armed forces committed another provocation in Basarkechar region of the state border, assembling additional manpower and military equipment. Starting from 1200 on December 10, the opposing side tried to keep the Azerbaijani army positions stationed in Kalbajar region under fire, the ministry said.

"As a result of the retaliatory actions undertaken by the Azerbaijan army units in a short period of time, the opposing side was suppressed and its provocative attempts were stopped. The Azerbaijan army units control the operational situation," the report added.

Earlier, the ministry reported Armenian troops shelled Azerbaijani army positions in Kalbajar at about 1500 on December 9.

On the night of December 8, Azerbaijani army serviceman Asif Aliyev was killed in a provocation committed by the Armenian armed forces near Kalbajar.

From 1435 to 1530 on December 8, the Armenian armed forces shelled Azerbaijani army positions in Kalbajar region's Zaylik settlement.

The worst escalation of tension was registered on the Azerbaijani-Armenian state border on November 16. As a result, seven Azerbaijani servicemen were killed and 10 were wounded during military operations in Kalbajar and Lachin on the state border with Armenia on November 16.

The trilateral ceasefire deal signed by the Azerbaijani, Russian and Armenian leaders on November 10, 2020, ended the three-decade conflict over Azerbaijans Karabakh region which along with the seven adjacent regions came under the occupation of Armenian armed forces in the war in the early 1990s.

On January 11, 2021, the Azerbaijani, Russian and Armenian leaders signed the second statement since the end of the 44-day war. The newly-signed statement was set to implement clause 9 of the November 2020 statement related to the unblocking of all economic and transport communications in the region.

On November 26, 2021, the Azerbaijani, Russian and Armenian leaders signed a statement and agreed on a number of issues, including the demarcation and delimitation of the Azerbaijani-Armenian border by late 2021, some points related to humanitarian issues and the issue of unblocking of transport corridors which applies to the railway and to automobile communications.
By Azernews





By Vugar Khalilov

Defence Minister Zakir Hasanov and his visiting Bahraini counterpart Khalifa bin Ahmed Al Khalifa have discussed the military and political situation in the region, the Defence Ministry reported on December 10.

At the meeting, Hasanov expressed hailed military cooperation between Bahrain and Azerbaijan and stressed the importance of developing the ties in this direction.

In turn, Khalifa congratulated Azerbaijan on the victory gained during the 44-day war with Armenia in 2020.

The sides also exchanged views on the future development of military cooperation and touched upon other issues in the defence sphere.

Diplomatic relations between Azerbaijan and Bahrain was established on November 6, 1996.
By Azernews





By Ayya Lmahamad

The U.S. hosts "the Summit for Democracy on December 9-10, to which 109 countries have been invited.

By what criteria the list of invitees was made is still a topical issue. The list does not include, Azerbaijan, Turkey, and other Turkic-speaking countries, the vast majority of Muslim countries, as well as China and Russia.

The fact that the U.S. did not invite such countries is a clear example of double standards and is proof that Washington is using the democracy factor for its own political purposes.

U.S. dividing world into "friends" and "aliens"

Russian military expert Igor Korotchenko has told local media that the U.S. has clearly divided the world into "friends" and "aliens".

Friends are mostly henchmen, those who are ready to carry out any instruction of Washington. Of course, in the light of everything that is going on, Armenias behavior is surprising, because it is a member-state of the CSTO [Collective Security Treaty Organization] and has allied relations with Russia. Against this background, Armenia is taking part in an anti-Russia event, he said.

The expert underlined that the fact that Russia, China, Azerbaijan, and several other countries were not invited to the summit, shows that those states are headed by strong, self-sufficient leaders who do not allow foreign interference in the affairs of the countries they lead.

Korotchenko noted that the Washington-hosted so-called democracy summit is an anti-Russian event that is held under the auspices of the U.S.

The expert stated that the post-Soviet countries invited there were states where the norms of democracy are not only not respected, but also suppressed.

The invitation of Armenia is a good example. As for democracy in Armenia a year ago we saw that a crowd of people in Yerevan dragged [former] Armenian Parliament Speaker Ararat Mirzoyan out of a car and beat him. Apparently, these standards of democracy today contribute to inviting Armenia and allowing it to participate in this summit, he said.

Korotchenko also recalled the constant clashes among Armenian MPs, in which it is common practice to throw mineral water glass bottles or kick each other. He stressed the question of how can a country, where the prime minister was hiding from the crowd of people in an underground bunker under the Defence Ministry building, be invited to such a summit.

But they are invited since Yerevan has the largest U.S. embassy, non-profit organizations sponsored by the State Department and numerous American foundations operate in Yerevan. [Prime Minister Nikol] Pashinyan and his team are Soros' representatives, he said.

Therefore, everything is obvious. This clearly demonstrates the cynicism of Washington, which diligently classifies a number of countries, while stubbornly ignoring the problems with democracy among its accomplices, he added.

"Summit of Washington vassals"

Political scientist Anton Bredikhin said that the democracy summit is in fact a summit of vassals - Washington's vassals, which are either within the U.S. sphere of influence or interested in it.

He noted that Armenia, invited to the summit, seeks to pursue a Western-oriented policy.

And of course, after the U.S. invited Yerevan to attend the summit, Pashinyan, seeing in this platform another opportunity to review the results of the Karabakh war, the decisions adopted in Moscow and Sochi, will seek to convey his position in the meeting, because he needs the U.S. and France to join the process, and for further decisions to be made solely in Armenia's interest, he said.

Bredikhin stressed that the summit is not so much deliberative in nature. He considered it to be rather in the nature of the fulfillment of the U.S.wishes.

"The Americans will present a number of their requirements, which will have to be fulfilled by all the participants of the forum. Both the deadlines within which these requirements must be met and the areas in which they must be implemented by each of the parties will be presented, he said.

The political scientist believes that Biden will make a number of statements that the new sanctions are needed against Russia and that each of the countries participating in this summit will be the party either proposing these sanctions or the party that will support these sanctions.

"So we are waiting for another batch of Western sanctions on Russia... Of course, at the end of the summit, Biden will announce that he can now rule the half-world. This half-world includes the invited countries, regardless of their regime or religious component, and now they will be obliged to fulfill all the wishes that will come from the White House," he said.

No credibility

Former US ambassador Matthew Bryza said that it is difficult for the U.S. to have credibility in claiming to be a global leader on democracy when they themselves have faced a serious challenge to their own democratic system. He added that it is not a good time for the U.S., in terms of its reputation, to hold a democracy summit.

Because to do so, the U.S. government needs to decide which democracies are good ones and which are bad ones that dont deserve to be invited, he said.

Bryza stressed that given the threats facing democracy in the U.S., most notably, the insurrections, riots against the U.S. Capitol on January 8, it is not a time when the U.S. has great credibility as a leader of democracy.

In fact, we still have one of the two major political parties in the U.S. falsely claiming that the last election was stolen from Donald Trump when it is absolutely clear that it is not the case, he said.

The selective choice of countries invited to the so-called democracy summit, clearly shows that it has been drawn up from the U.S. geopolitical interests and that America is fundamentally distorting the concept of democracy.
President Ilham Aliyev signed a decree on some measures to speed up economic development on the liberated territories of Azerbaijan, Azertag reported on December 10.

In accordance with the order, to create favorable conditions for accelerating the economic recovery in the liberated territories and increasing investment attractiveness, creating the modern and efficient production, trade, and service infrastructure, introducing innovative technologies, realizing industrial potential, preparing optimal benefits, incentive mechanisms and improving the entrepreneurial activity, the Azerbaijani Cabinet of Ministers was charged with the implementation of following issues:

1. prepare the proposals on the below-mentioned spheres within three months and submit them to the Azerbaijani President:

1.1. Effective management of economic resources and workforce in the liberated territories, the use of tax incentives, social insurance and other benefits to creating the processing industry and service infrastructure;

1.2. Stimulating private initiatives in the liberated territories, improving investment promotion mechanisms, introducing customs and tax incentives for the import of raw materials and other materials for entrepreneurs engaged in production in these territories;

1.3. Introducing benefits on utilities, namely, electricity, natural gas and water consumption, for entrepreneurs engaged in production in the liberated territories;

1.4. Attracting qualified specialists to the liberated territories, as well as introducing a quota for migrant workers and improving the procedure for issuing the work permits;

1.5. Expansion of opportunities for access to the funds for entrepreneurs operating in the liberated territories, and strengthening of the necessary state support in this sphere;

1.6. Support for investors introducing environmentally friendly technologies in the liberated territories, creating "green growth" and using renewable energy sources;

1.7. Development of partnership between the public and private sectors for the construction of residential areas in the liberated territories.

2. To resolve other issues arising from this order.
By Trend

A part of the Armenian military returned by Azerbaijan, who were arrested on November 16, 2021 while preventing the provocation of the Armenian armed forces in the direction of Kalbajar on the state border, were detained in Armenia.

Information was confirmed by the press secretary of the Investigative Committee of Armenia Vardan Tadevosyan, Trend reports citing Armenian media.

"Currently, five servicemen have been detained in the framework of a criminal case on the fact of violation of the rules of military service and combat duty, which led to grave consequences," he said.

According to him, petitions for the arrest of the military were submitted to the court.

On December 4, 2021 as a result of negotiations The Republic of Azerbaijan, guided by the principles of humanism, transferred 10 servicemen of Armenian origin to the Armenian side.

The handed persons were detained on November 16, 2021 while preventing the provocation of the Armenian armed forces in the direction of Kalbajar of the state border.
By Azernews





By Vugar Khalilov

Turkeys truck traffic grew by 17 percent in the past four months of 2021, Yen Shafak has reported.

Turkeys largest gateway to the Middle East - the Habur border checkpoint, which has a total 2,200 entry-exit capacity per day, with 4,327 trucks passage set a new record on December 3, the report added.

On the other hand, the number of departed trucks peaked on October 4, reaching 2,107 trucks per day. Serving twice its capacity, Habur is one of the main customs point in the $17-billion Turkey-Iraq trade.

The Kapikule border checkpoint, which is described as a trade bridge to Europe, raised its daily capacity to 1,238 trucks in September. In December the border gate exceeded its business volume (1,250 tucks per day) 11.4 percent and reached 1,376 trucks per day.

Mobility in Kap?kule was ensured with an average of 1,175 trucks per day in September, 1,197 trucks in October, 1,226 trucks in November and 1,321 trucks in December.

Furthermore, the Sarp border checkpoint, one of Turkey's most important border gates to the Caucasus in Artvin, also served three times its capacity with 721 trucks passing daily. This was the record number of trucks passing through the Sarp border checkpoint, which has a capacity of 250 trucks per day.

The highest number of trucks (704) crossed on December 3, 2020. The Sarp border checkpoint is an important transit point for trade in the Caucasus as well as Central Asia.

While Hamzabeyli with a capacity of 330 trucks served above its capacity with 791 truck exits per day on December 5, Ipsala with 296 truck exits on December 7 and Gurbulak with 620 truck exits on December 1 pushed the boundaries.

Turkey exports 120,000 trucks of items every month to various regions of the world. This figure exceeds 1.5 million trucks on an annual basis.

The increase in the freight prices due to the pandemic is considered one of the main reasons that led to the growth in highway transport. On the other hand, the growth in orders by European countries, which diversify their supply market and see Turkey as their production base, also increases truck mobility.
By Trend

Two servicemen injured in the crash of Mi-17 helicopter of the Azerbaijani State Border Service during a training flight at the Garaheybat airfield were discharged from the hospital, the State Border Service told Trend.

Lieutenant Colonel Emil Jafarov and Captain Ramin Adilov were discharged from the hospital of the State Border Guard Service, the message said. They feel good. Both servicemen are being treated at home under the supervision of doctors.

A military helicopter of the Azerbaijani State Border Service crashed during training flight at the Garaheybat airfield in Khizi district at 10:40 (GMT+4) on Nov. 30, as a result of which two people were injured and 14 people were killed.

The Prosecutor General's Office launched a criminal case under Article 352.2 of the Criminal Code (violation of flight or flight preparation rules as a result of which two or more people died) and other articles.
By Trend

More than 25,00 people in Azerbaijan carry a press card in their pocket. Perhaps from now on, there will be no more than 2,000 of them, the chairman of the Press Council Aflatun Amashev said during the discussion of the draft law "on Media" at a joint meeting of the parliamentary committees on human rights and legal policy and state-building, Trend reports.

According to Amashev, legislation on media in Azerbaijan was adopted 20 years ago, certain changes were made, but some points remained open, which are provided for by the new draft law "on Media".

He stressed that many people in their own interests opened websites, established newspapers, it was impossible to put pressure on them.

"Some government agencies had their own websites, so they did not want to place news in the form of advertising in newspapers, they themselves published a newspaper where their news was published," Amashev said.

Amashev noted that today, according to official statistics, Azerbaijan has about 6,000 media outlets.

"Individuals open websites or start publishing newspapers, carrying out activities once a month, then walking around with these newspapers under their arms. The creation of the Register will prevent such cases," he added.
By Azernews





By Ayya Lmahamad

Four more Azerbaijani servicemen wounded during last year's 44-day war with Armenia have received medical treatment in Turkey through Azerbaijan's Yashat Foundation support.

Servicemen Seymur Aliyev, Hashim Hashimov, Shamshir Haziyev and Ali Jafarli returned to Azerbaijan after successful completion of their treatment.

The treatment and rehabilitation of more veterans are underway in Turkey and the Yashat Foundation monitors the treatment process for servicemen until they are fully recovered. In addition, the foundation also provides medicines for the treatment of servicemen.

It should be noted that 154 seriously wounded servicemen were sent to Turkey for treatment, 117 of whom already returned to the country.

Set up by the presidential decree in December 2020, the foundations work covers the families of servicemen killed or got disabled during the war and also the families of employees of state bodies (institutions) who became disabled or lost their lives while serving in the liberated lands or while removing the consequences of military operations in the liberated lands.

It was earlier reported that the foundation had spent AZN 32.4 million ($19.1M) on the improvement of housing conditions, AZN 458,478 ($269,692) on education, vocational training and development of creative potential, AZN 5.4 million ($3.1M) on repayment of consumer and other loans and AZN 11.1 million ($6.5M) on treatment and psychological support.

From early 2021, meetings were held with 16,393 citizens, of which, 2,916 were members of martyrs families and 5,010 were wounded servicemen. Their needs were clarified and 15,834 applications of 10,875 people were considered and approved.

Yashat receives donations made through voluntary financial aid provided by Azerbaijani citizens, Azerbaijanis living abroad, other individuals and legal entities, as well as other sources not prohibited by law.

As of December 10, the foundation has collected over AZN 65 million ($38.2M).
As part of an expanded regional partnership with Boeing, Education For Employment (EFE), the leading youth employment organisation in the region, has launched yet another year of job placement and training programmes through four countries in MENA.

Across Jordan, Egypt, Morocco and the UAE, 1,188 youth have participated in Boeing training programmes to date. Job Training & Placement Programme graduates have been placed in various jobs in the automotive, education, healthcare, retail, ICT/BPO, hospitality and tourism industries, a statement from EFE said.

EFE-Global President & CEO Andrew Baird said: Since 2015, Boeing and EFEs partnership has resulted in tremendous impact for youth seeking employment. Across Jordan, Egypt, Morocco, and the UAE, 1,188 youth have participated in Boeing training programmes to date.

These programmes will be designed to equip participants to join and navigate the realities of the local labour market, offering them in-demand skills and competencies. Throughout these programmes, each EFE Affiliate will aim to simulate the work environment, requiring participants to attend classes, actively participate in a variety of programmes, and place them in jobs after their successful completion of such programmes.

EFEs partnership with Boeing began in Jordan in 2015. EFE-Jordan delivered two Job Training & Placement Programme cohorts in the retail sector beginning in May 2015. Forty students graduated from these classes and 32 youth were placed in jobs (80%).

Boeing Middle East, Turkey and Africa President Kuljit Ghata-Aura said: Boeing has been working with EFE in different community partners across the MENA region to help address the high unemployment rates in the region. Since 2015, we and our partners at EFE have delivered job training programmes resulting in the majority of graduates finding meaningful jobs across major industries.

Baird also added: MENA has the largest youth population globally and the highest youth unemployment rates; the need to address such a challenge has never been greater. Together with Boeing, we have and can create economic opportunities for unemployed youth in MENA so that they can create a brighter future for themselves, their families, and their communities.-TradeArabia News Service
Help India!

During a press conference, the community activists demanded that the Union Government establish a system for giving horizontal reservations for transgender people within the SC/ST/OBC categories.

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Suchitra | TwoCircles.net

NEW DELHI  This government doesnt understand Babasahebs idea of affirmative action, the voice Grace Banu echoed as she expressed her dissent. Banu, a Dalit trans rights advocate, the first transwoman to become an engineer, claims the government is ignorant to the struggles of the trans community as a whole, and also the caste struggle within the community.

In a press conference held on December 8, social activists from the trans community gathered to address the media, to demand horizontal reservations for transgender persons.

Tiruchi Siva, a Rajya Sabha MP from the DMK, piloted a private members bill in December 2014, proposing a scheme of horizontal reservation for transgender and intersex people; that is, reservation as a separate class within the already existing four vertical reservation slabs, similar to how reservation exists for women or people with disabilities.

The Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Act 2019, threw away numerous progressive suggestions from NALSA judgment and Tiruchi Sivas private member bill; and made no mention of reservation. The community expressed angst against this last year and continues to build pressure against the Act.

Will you club all cisgender women or cisgender persons within one category? Then why this treatment for us? Sweta, a transwoman and an activist from Chennai asked.

Welfare schemes are different, and rights are different. This is our right and we will take it from you. We are not asking, or appealing, or requesting. This is our right, and we demand it, Grace Banu fervently asserted.

If adopted, the new government policy will amount to giving transgender people vertical reservations inside the OBC group, which will be damaging to vast portions of the community.

We are struggling for our most basic rights even in 2021, for basic social documents. Many trans people are dropouts, especially those from marginalized communities. Only horizontal reservations would be true justice, said Negha, a transwoman who is an influencer and actress.

Many trans activists fear that this backward decision would harm transgender people from marginalized groups and deny them chances.

Dalit and Adivasi transgender people face gender-based violence from within their communities, and face caste-based violence outside. Is it fair to club privileged cisgender people and people from dominant castes within the same category as Dalit and Adivasi transgender people? said Ragini, another transwoman who is part of the Viduthalai Chiruthaigal Katchi (VCK).

Because it refuses to acknowledge that transgender people who are also Dalit or Adivasi face historical disadvantage because of their caste status, as well as discrimination, oppression, and marginalization because of their gender identity, the neglect of caste operating within the transgender and intersex communities can be detrimental for people from these communities.

We lost so many of our brethren this year, and we lose them every year. To healthcare inaccessibility, education inaccessibility, unemployment. So many of these things would be easier with horizontal reservations. We lose them because of your silence, Grace Banu said, taking a shot at media, who severely underreports atrocities against transgender persons.

The community activists demanded that the Union Government establish a system for giving horizontal reservations for transgender people within the SC/ST/OBC categories. Such an approach will take into consideration the intersectionality of the systemic oppression and bias that transgender and intersex people suffer, especially the ones who come from marginalized communities, who face triple persecution because of their caste identity, gender identity and in many cases, class.

It would also ensure that some places in school and work are earmarked for transgender and intersex individuals. Only such a structure of horizontal reservations can effectively protect the rights of transgender people as granted by Babasaheb and the Indian Constitution.
Help India!



The arrest of prominent human rights defender Khurram Parvez under UAPA has brought to halt the human rights work in Kashmir.

Auqib Javeed | TwoCircles.net

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SRINAGAR  The arrest of prominent Kashmiri human rights defender Khurram Parvez by the National Investigation Agency (NIA) in late November under Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA), has cast a shadow over human rights advocacy in the region.

The office of Jammu Kashmir Coalition of Civil Society (JKCCS) in Srinagars city centre Lal Chowk, where Parvez worked over two decades as its Program Coordinator, remains shut.

Researchers and activists who previously worked with JKCCS told TwoCircles.net that there is a sense of fear and concern following Khurrams arrest.

No one can be seen at the office now following the raids and the arrest of Khurram, a researcher at JKCCS said, on condition of anonymity.

On November 22, the National Investigative Agency (NIA) arrested Khurram Parvez from his residence in Sonwar area of Srinagar city.

Known for his human rights work in the region, Parvez is also the Chairperson of Asian Federation Against Involuntary Disappearances (AFAD). He has won several international awards including 2006 Reebok Human Rights Award.

The NIA first raided JKCCS and Association of Parents of Disappeared Persons (APDP) on October 28, 2020 along with 10 other NGOS, trusts, foundations and journalists after an alleged terror funding case was registered.

A year later, the federal agency raided JKCCS and Parvezs residence at Sonwar, Srinagar and formally arrested him under Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA), 1967.

The arrest memo says he was arrested in the case, FIR RC-30/2021/NIA/DLI filed on November 6, under IPC Sections 120B (criminal conspiracy), 121 (waging, attempting to wage, abetting waging of war against the government), and 121A (conspiracy to commit offences punishable by Section 121); and Sections 17 (raising funds for terrorist act), 18 (conspiracy), 18B (recruiting of any person or persons for terrorist act) and 40 (raising funds for a terrorist organisation) of the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act.

Parvez is currently on judicial remand in New Delhis infamous Tihar Jail.

The activists detention has caused a global outrage with the United Nations (UN) and global rights bodies calling for his immediate release.

Hes not a terrorist, Mary Lawlor, the UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights Defenders, calling Khurrams arrest disturbing, tweeted. Hes a human rights defender.

In 1948, the United Nations General Assembly adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). The UDHR is a milestone document that proclaims rights that everyone is entitled to, as a human being, regardless of their race, colour, religion, sex, language, political, national, origin and birth.

The theme of Human Rights Day 2021 is Reducing inequalities and advancing human rights. This years theme relates to Equality and Article 1 of UDHR which says All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. The principles of equality and non-discrimination are at the heart of human rights.

However, the NIA raids on the human rights groups in Kashmir are being interpreted as a death knell for human rights work in Kashmir.

It has affected our work. We havent been able research and document human rights violations in the region, another researcher said.

The researcher that work became tough right after the abrogation of Article 370 August 2019. We were able to bring out only a few reports and from last one year we couldnt do anything and I dont see any relief for us anytime soon, the researcher said.
Help India!



The groups reiterated the demand for the release of Umar Khalid, Khalid Saifi, Sharjeel Imam and hundreds of other incarcerated activists in India.

TCN News

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WASHINGTON, DC  Indian American Muslim Council (IAMC), an advocacy group committed to safeguarding Indias pluralist and tolerant ethos, and Hindus for Human Rights (HfHR), an advocate for pluralism, civil and human rights in South Asia and North America, rooted in the values of the Hindu faith, have welcomed the release of renowned Indian human rights defender and lawyer Sudha Bharadwaj on December 9 after being incarcerated for more than three years without trial.

Ms Bharadwajs release from prison rekindles the ever waning hope in the Indian judiciarys ability to withstand fascist pressures from the Indian government that has, in recent years, falsely accused and jailed tens of thousands of human rights defenders, students, farmers, lawyers, and journalists, many of whom come from religious minority and caste-oppressed communities such as Muslims, Christians and Dalits, the groups said in a statement.

The release of Sudha Bharadwaj proves that the charges against her and thousands of others are false and entirely political, Rasheed Ahmed, Executive Director, IAMC, said. Added Sunita Viswanath, Executive Director, HfHR: It is time that the Indian courts acknowledge the enormity of the crimes against Indias Constitution being committed by Prime Minister Narendra Modis Government by targeting these communities.

IAMC and HfHR demanded that the Indian courts should also rule immediately to also release several Muslim political prisoners who have been incarcerated under draconian laws, including Sharjeel Imam, Umar Khalid, Khalid Saifi, Ishrat Jahan, Siddique Kappan, and countless others. On November 17, IAMC, HfHR, and 16 other human rights organizations held a Congressional Briefing with family members of political prisoners.

It is abundantly clear that Indias Hindu extremist government, in collusion with state and local police departments, has falsely implicated Muslims in various cases of terrorism, sedition, and unlawful criminal activity, Mr Ahmed added. The slow pace of the cases against them keeps them in prison for years, denying them justice and destroying their lives.

The arrest of Ms. Bharadwaj was condemned widely internationally, including by United Nations Special Rapporteur on Human Rights Defenders Mary Lawlor. Ms Bharadwaj is accused in what has come to be known as the Bhima-Koregaon case, named after the township where nearly four years ago Hindu extremists had attacked a gathering of the Dalit community for an annual celebration.

In addition to Ms Bharadwaj, 15 other people, including leading public intellectuals, poets and authors, have been accused and incarcerated in this case. One of these activists, Jesuit priest Father Stan Swamy, 84, who was a decades-long champion of civil rights and liberties for Indias Adivasi (Indigenous) communities, was denied adequate medical provisions and died while under state custody. In a series of news reports published this year, the Washington Post has exposed that malware had been used to insert fake evidence in the laptop of one of the accused.
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Campus News

Ruhl named interim dean of dental school

UBNOW STAFF

Stefan Ruhl, an internationally renowned expert on saliva, oral bacteria and the oral microbiome, will serve as interim dean of the School of Dental Medicine, effective Jan. 6.

The announcement was made yesterday in a university-wide memo from A. Scott Weber, provost and executive vice president for academic affairs, and Allison Brashear, vice president for health sciences and dean of the Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences.

Ruhl succeeds Joseph Zambon, who is retiring after 39 years of service to UB.

We are grateful to Dr. Ruhl for his leadership and service during this transitional period, during which time we will launch an international search for the next dean of the School of Dental Medicine, Weber and Brashear said in the memo.

I am humbled by the amount of support I received from colleagues at our school, and am incredibly excited for the opportunity that lies ahead for all of us, Ruhl said. I see great potential for joining forces with the medical school and the other health professions at UB for the benefit of science, student education and serving the underserved in the Buffalo and Western New York area.

A fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Ruhl is a professor and associate chair of the Department of Oral Biology.

A highly prolific scholar, his research seeks to unravel the roles that saliva and microorganisms play in health, including in adhesion to the teeth and surfaces of the mouth, defense against pathogens and colonization of the oral cavity.

Ruhl investigates the molecular mechanisms of microbial binding to glycans, a common but little understood class of biomolecules that help bacteria attach to host surfaces, including those in the mouth. The goal of his lab is to harness tools that ultimately help scientists examine how the microorganisms bind to glycans in the mouth to form oral biofilms  more commonly known as dental plaque  increasing the risk for cavities and periodontal disease.

He was among the first researchers to catalogue the human salivary proteome, which is the entirety of proteins present in saliva and in salivary gland ductal secretions. Ruhl has led or participated in recent studies that have identified how saliva is made, tracing each salivary protein back to its source. He helped curate the Human Salivary Proteome Wiki, the first public platform that catalogs data on each of the thousands of proteins contained in saliva. His work also led to the identification of a starch-digesting enzyme called amylase in the saliva of dogs and various other mammals for the first time.

Ruhl has explored saliva to understand the factors that helped shape human evolution and, in particular, the evolution of the human mouth environment. Together with his co-workers, he found genetic evidence in saliva that humans may have mated with a ghost species of archaic humans, and discovered that 2 million years of eating meat and cooked food has led humans to develop a saliva that is now starkly different from that of chimpanzees and gorillas, our closest genetic relatives.

Ruhl joined the UB faculty in 2007 from the University of Regensburg, Germany, where he was a professor of operative dentistry and periodontology, and actively participated in clinical and academic student teaching and patient treatment.

My colleagues here at UB know me primarily as a scientist, but many dont know that I worked in private dental practice for two years and was active for more than 12 years in academic clinical dentistry. I know our profession from both sides of the spectrum, and that is why I believe I will be able to bridge these two domains at our school, Ruhl said.

In addition to his current associate chair role, Ruhl is director of the Advanced Training in Oral Biology program, and previously served as acting chair of the Department of Oral Biology from 2019-20.

He is the former president of the International Association for Dental Research (IADR) Salivary Research Group. The IADR recognized Ruhl with the Distinguished Scientist Award in Salivary Research in 2020 and the Salivary Researcher of the Year Award in 2014. He also serves as editor-in-chief of Clinical Oral Investigations, associate editor of JADA Foundational Science, and an editorial board member of the Journal of Dental Research.

He holds a doctor of dental surgery degree and a doctoral degree in immunology from the Georg-August University of Gottingen.
Houses razed to ashes in Bamenda Facebook

The smell of roasted human flesh fills the air in Mbengwi Road, a locale in Cameroons northwestern town of Bamenda after state forces went in search of gunmen who detonated an Improvised Explosive Device (IED) Wednesday, December 8, 2021.

Scores of people pointed their mobile phones at the burnt bodies of at least five persons as well as dozens of houses burning in hell-hot flames in the heart of the quarter after a military raid in the area.

As Amba-implanted explosive kills soldiers: Military goes on rampage, burns five alive, houses in Bamenda, The Guardian Post reports.

At least five persons were Wednesday evening burnt alive and scores of houses set ablaze along the Mbengwi Road, Azire, Hospital Roundabout and Rendezvous neighborhoods in Bamenda of the North West region by soldiers, The Guardian Post adds, citing accounts from locals.

According to reports, armed separatist fighters detonated an IED, destroying an armored vehicle aboard state forces. The casualty figures have not been made public by the authorities. But the reaction of the soldiers suggests the extent of the impact of the IED attack.

In retaliation, the soldiers are said to have gone nerves high, setting homes, cars, and businesses ablaze. Five persons are said to have been burnt alive in the process, leaving the population in shock. The incident has since been described by analysts as barbaric, heartless and genocidal, The Guardian Post reports.

Amateur videos on social media show at least five corpses burnt with many houses and shops charred to the ground.

For fear of the unknown, locals have been fleeing to safety.

"It was at about pass 3:15 pm that I was inside my house with my grandson. I heard a very loud explosion that sounded like a bomb. I fell to the ground and later heard sounds of gun all over. I later heard footsteps around my house and I saw military men who surrounded my house. Before I knew it, smoke was coming out of my building. I could not go out because of gunshots. I heard them speaking in French and I stayed mute with my grandson..., a survivor tells The Guardian Post.

"Even my identification card, my children's documents, certificates, and computers got burnt, even a single dress I didn't take from the house..."

With houses, shops, and cars burnt and about half a dozen people killed, Wednesdays action underscored the growing fears and suspicions swirling around the five-year-old Anglophone protest movement, which engulfed Cameroons North West and South West Regions in 2016 when thousands took to the streets to decry government corruption, poor services, and scarcity of jobs, benefiting from a strike action called by teachers and lawyers against perceived marginalization.

The street demonstrations later morphed into ongoing running gun battles between state forces and armed separatist fighters in the predominantly English-speaking regions, leading to untold destruction of human lives, their habitats, and livelihoods.

Cameroons state forces have been battling to dislodge the armed separatists who pitched their tents in the North West and South West Regions since Anglophone protests transformed into an armed conflict in 2017.

Tit-for-tat killings, kidnappings, arsons, maiming, and outright terror have become part of daily lives in some parts of the English-speaking regions.
Another answer, from Yasen Peyankov, who played Lopakhin in the 2004 Steppenwolf staging of The Cherry Orchard: I think Chekhov is the beginning of modern theater. The reason Seagull failed in 1896 is that it was performed in the old way, where actors were facing the audience and declaiming their lines. And here was this new voice in the theater that required a completely different style of acting. When the Moscow Art Theatre came to America in the 1920s with the productions of Konstantin Stanislavsky, many of the actors ended up staying here. They were largely responsible for the Group Theatre, the Actors Studio, everything that leads to (Marlon) Brando and (Robert) De Niro  It all starts from that tour.
So you chase the talent where it takes you. These are the 10 screen experiences I appreciated the most this year, mostly film, some television. Truly, 2021 (or 2020, or 2019, or  ) was the year the conventional distinctions between platforms all but vanished, like the mist-enshrouded witch in the upcoming Denzel Washington/Frances McDormand Tragedy of Macbeth. (Really good, by the way.) Some of these titles youll know. At least one  my No. 1  you very likely will not know, because its not a commodity from a conglomerate, and itll play a limited run early next year in a handful of cities including Chicago.
The continued delay means that applicants will continue to burn through money to retain real estate, employees and attorneys, while being prevented from opening and earning money. Most of the applicants are deemed social equity, who were supposed to be favored in licensing because they came from areas with high poverty and crime rates, or had been arrested for low-level marijuana offenses.
Mahon was also listed as one of those accused of making false records of Washington Federal to give to the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency in an attempt to appear as though the bank was following banking rules and internal policies, the indictment said. Mahon and others were also accused of making false entries into the banks records to block the comptrollers examinations into the banks loan portfolios.
Brown said the department believes that young people will gather at Millennium Park and police are prepared to get kids back on a train, call their parents or arrest the kids if needed. He said he could not comment on the specific number of officers that will be deployed over the weekend, but it is a significant increase of officers who will be deployed into neighborhoods and downtown.
Assistant Public Defender Scott Kozicki said Joyner lives with his sister and has one misdemeanor conviction for unlawful use of a weapon in October. Kozicki said Joyner was innocent until proven guilty and had attended each and every one of his court hearings for the conviction.
Immediately after the September carjacking, Davis worked with police and the car dealership in an attempt to use the vehicles internal tracking to locate it, but encountered bureaucratic hurdles. Meanwhile, her Porsche Cayenne was used in a second carjacking and at least one other crime, she later learned. More than a week later, after numerous phone calls, Davis was finally able to track her truck, and it was located within hours on Oct. 1.
Around 10:10 a.m. Thursday, police were called to perform a well-being check at a home in the 2100 block of North Nashville Avenue, where officers found the body of 29-year-old Andris B. Wofford, who died of a gunshot wound to the head, according to the Cook County medical examiners office and the Police Department. An autopsy Friday determined her death was a homicide.
Apart from last year, the shrine welcomes over 20 pilgrimages from all over the Chicago area, suburban Illinois and even nearby states on Dec. 12. It is the most visited shrine dedicated to Our Lady of Guadalupe in the United States and home to the largest celebration for the Day of Our Lady of Guadalupe outside of the festivities and homages paid in Mexicos Basilica de Guadalupe  the church that is believed to house the original cloak on which it is believed that the image of the Virgin Mary appeared before peasant Juan Diego in December 1531.
Treasurer Frerichs has been an outstanding Treasurer for our state. I am proud to support him in his upcoming election. Our State is lucky to have him in that role, the statement read. Seven years ago, I said nice things about Tom Cross. I understand how people could have viewed what I said as an endorsement. Ive apologized to the Treasurer and if I could go back in time, I wouldve handled it differently. I look forward to working with the Treasurer in the future to help all Illinoisans.
Even if the subject was unaware of the existence of the investigation, police officers who responded to a domestic disturbance at the home of the former police superintendent would have had reason to expect their actions to be closely scrutinized given the circumstances, especially in light of extensive news media coverage of the incident, according to the attorney generals office.
He cant say with certainty, Gleffes statement said, but it is likely the candidate (Quinn) did not file all of the signature pages that were collected, or those declarations simply were not needed to challenge the petitions given there were so many  signatures that were being challenged.
We are not Mississippi in 1965. We are not in Illinois in 1980. We are in Illinois (now) and the results speak for themselves, Berkowitz said, noting that of the 114 Democrats in the 177-member General Assembly, 34 are Black, 16 are Latino and five are Asian  in total making up 48% of the Democratic caucus.
The committee probe came after Newman settled a lawsuit in July filed by Iymen Chehade. Chehade alleged that he had entered into an employment contract with Newman in December 2018 that said if she won the 2020 3rd District race, he would be hired by her office and paid between $135,000 and $140,000 annually as a foreign policy adviser or legislative or district director.
The use of a veterinary device in a medical procedure like IUI poses a danger to the health and safety of patients, said John R. Lausch, U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois, in the release. We will continue to work with our law enforcement partners to hold accountable those who endanger the public health through the use of adulterated medical devices.
With guochao - or the rising tide of China's homegrown brands- becoming a buzzword in the fashion circle, it has also inspired some film and TV series creators. A new project exemplifying this trend is Rising With The Wind - a metropolis-set workplace series - which started shooting in Shanghai on Dec 7.

Adapted from writer Wei Zai's novel with the same title, the tale returns to the taking-off phase of China's e-commerce business, following a young entrepreneur sensitively capturing the new opportunities brought by internet expansion to revitalize a traditional homegrown shoe label.

Under the helm of director Zhao Yilong, the series has joined hands of actor Gong Jun, known for this year's martial arts drama Word of Honor, and actress Zhong Chuxi, who shot to fame from director Feng Xiaogang's 2017 blockbuster Youth. Zhong plays the only daughter of the late chairman of a traditional domestic label struggling with a financial crisis while Gong portrays an investor who plans to acquire the label.
China's new yuan-denominated loans totaled 1.27 trillion yuan (about 200 billion U.S. dollars) last month, down 160.5 billion yuan from the same period last year, central bank data showed Thursday.



The M2, a broad measure of money supply that covers cash in circulation and all deposits, increased 8.5 percent year on year to 235.6 trillion yuan at the end of November, according to the People's Bank of China.

The growth rate was 0.2 percentage points lower than the figure seen at the end of October, and was 2.2 percentage points lower than that during the same period last year.

The M1, which covers cash in circulation plus demand deposits, stood at 63.75 trillion yuan at the end of November. It was up by 3 percent year on year.

The M0, the amount of cash in circulation, went up by 7.2 percent from a year ago to 8.74 trillion yuan at the end of last month.

In November, the central bank injected a total of 134.8 billion yuan of net cash into the market.

Newly added social financing, a measurement of funds that individuals and non-financial firms receive from the financial system, came in at 2.61 trillion yuan during the period, representing a 478.6-billion-yuan increase from the same period last year and a 620.4-billion-yuan rise from the 2019 level.

Thursday's data also showed China's new yuan deposits in November reached 1.14 trillion yuan, down 961.2 billion yuan from a year earlier.

By the end of last month, total outstanding yuan deposits stood at 231.09 trillion yuan, up 8.6 percent year on year.

In November, RMB settlements for cross-border trade amounted to 741.7 billion yuan.

China's central bank has pledged to make its prudent monetary policy more targeted and flexible to better adapt to the needs of high-quality development and place more focus on the efficiency of financial services to support the real economy.
The China-Laos freight train service linking east China's Shandong Province with Laos started service on Thursday, local authorities said.



The first outbound train departed from the China-SCO Local Economic and Trade Cooperation Demonstration Area (SCODA) in the port city of Qingdao, Shandong on Thursday. It is the province's first international freight train heading for Laos after the China-Laos Railway started operations earlier this month.

Carrying 50 containers with goods worth about 1.18 million U.S. dollars, the train will leave China from the port of Mohan, southwest China's Yunnan Province and is expected to arrive in Vientiane, the Laotian capital, in about a week.

The new route is SCODA's second linking the province to Southeast Asia, following the route from Shandong to Vietnamese capital Hanoi.

To date, the demonstration area has 15 international freight train routes in operation. During the first 11 months of 2021, the SCODA had seen off 524 China-Europe freight trains, up 45.6 percent year on year.
Italy's antitrust regulator on Thursday fined online retail giant Amazon 1.13 billion euros (1.28 billion U.S. dollars) for competition-related abuses. It is among the biggest antitrust fines ever levied in Europe.

Italy's Competition and Market Guarantor (AGCM) alleged Amazon's Italian subsidiary had used its strong position to force retailers to use its logistics service.

AGCM said Amazon only allowed retailers that signed up for the "Fulfilment by Amazon" logistics service option to use the "Amazon Prime" label.

"Amazon Prime" is the retailer's loyalty program, which increases visibility and boosts sales to its 7 million members.

Amazon told reporters it "strongly disagreed" with the AGCM ruling and would appeal. It called the fine "unjustified and disproportionate."

An Amazon spokesperson told Xinhua that half of the company's annual sales come from small- and medium-sized retailers that do not use the "Fulfilment by Amazon" option.

"We support the growth of the 18,000 [small- and medium-sized retailers] that reach consumers via Amazon.it," the spokesperson said. "That is true for retailers who manage their own shipments or who use our services in that area."

Though Italy's fine against Amazon was unilateral, the AGCM said it had worked closely with the European Commission Directorate-General for Competition to make sure the decision in Italy did not conflict with ongoing investigations into Amazon and other major digital companies on a European Union level.

According to Ruhell Amin, head of global retail equity research for William O'Neil + Company, the fine of more than 1 billion euros was "significant" even for a company the size of Amazon, which has a total market capitalization of 1.7 trillion U.S. dollars according to Macrotrends.

In a television interview, Amin said the biggest concern for Amazon and other major online companies is that Italy's move could be part of a larger trend in more strictly regulating big technology companies.

"We're seeing a broad effort to regulate these companies in Europe," Amin said. "This seems like it could be just the tip of the iceberg."

The fine against Amazon is the second in Italy in less than three weeks. On Nov. 23, AGCM announced it would fine Amazon and Apple over 200 million euros for the way they market Beats-brand headphones. (1 euro = 1.13 U.S. dollars)
China's accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2001 laid down an institutional system for the country's opening up, boosting reform, growth and innovation over the past two decades, according to a high-level forum held Wednesday to mark the 20th anniversary of China's accession.

The forum was co-hosted by China Internet Information Center, the China Society for World Trade Organization Studies and the University of International Business and Economics in Beijing. WTO experts, professors and government officials reviewed China's landmark accession to the international organization and its contribution to the world economy at the forum.

The institutional opening up is a strategic decision by China in its foreign trade practice, and has proved to be a successful experience that China has drawn from during the past 20 years of being in the WTO, China's former Commerce Minister Chen Deming said.

Since China joined the WTO 20 years ago, Beijing has embarked on a road of globalization, ushering in the nation's rapid growth, said Yi Xiaozhun, former deputy director-general of the WTO.

Statistics show that China is now the world's largest exporter and second largest economy with its GDP per capita exceeding the $10,000 benchmark for two consecutive years.

Yi attributed China's rapid growth to its competent government, which stepped up firm top-down efforts to launch nationwide institutional reform and opening up for joining the WTO.

China amended and repealed more than 3,000 pieces of legislation, administrative regulations and departmental rules to establish a unified and transparent policy system consistent with WTO rules.

According to Chen, high-level institutional foreign trade will dampen U.S. and Western attempts at decoupling. Despite a group of 67 nations including China, the U.S. and EU members reaching an agreement on trade in services in the WTO last Thursday, the WTO functions have not fully recovered, and regional agreements remain a strategic option for China's institutional opening up.

Yi called for an open, non-discriminatory and rules-based multilateral trading system, saying it is indispensable to the economic growth of China and the entire world.

China needs to play an active role in WTO reform to ensure that the multilateral trade system continues to move forward in an open, inclusive and non-discriminatory way, while preventing the global trade system from moving toward protectionism, Yi said.
A promotional activity was held at the Russian Embassy in Beijing on Dec. 9 to introduce Russia's Abrau-Durso wine to the Chinese market.



The event was attended by Andrey Denisov, Russian ambassador to China; Alexey Dakhnovskiy, Russian trade representative to China; Cao Derong, president of China Chamber of Commerce of Import and Export of Foodstuffs, Native Produce and Animal By-Products (CFNA); as well as enterprise representatives from both China and Russia.

Ambassador Denisov highlighted the friendship between China and Russia, and shared his understanding of China's wine history in fluent Chinese.



Alexey Dakhnovskiy emphasized the strong economic complementarity between the two countries and the fruitful bilateral trade cooperation. He said that compared with chocolate, ice cream and vodka, Russian wine is a relatively new product for Chinese consumers, but that "Russian wine products have a promising market potential in China based on Russia's assessment."

Cao Derong explained the expanding trade engagement between China and Russia. "Last year, China imported $4.1 billion of agricultural products from Russia, up 14% year on year," he said. "This figure increased by 4% year on year to $3.5 billion from January to October this year."



Cao went on to talk about the rising popularity of Russian wine in China. "China imported $23 million of wine products from Russia last year and $29 million this year (Jan.-Oct.)," he noted. "As China upgrades its consumption and continues to open up to a higher standard, I believe that Russian wine enterprises, including Abrau-Durso, will shine in the Chinese market."



After the speeches, a video was played to introduce the manufacturing techniques and history of Abrau-Durso wine, which was first developed in 1870 under the order of Russian Tsar Alexander II.

According to the representatives of Abrau-Durso's branch in Shanghai, its production areas in Russia boast favorable soil and climate conditions, with around 320 sunny days each year. They also introduced their diverse range of products, including red wine, fruit wine, champagne, and non-alcoholic beverages suitable for children.

Currently, Abrau-Durso wine is known by 92% of Russian people and exported to 22 foreign countries. The Abrau-Durso Winery has become a wine production center integrating catering, accommodation and tourism.
You are here: Business

China's auto sales rose 4.5% year on year to nearly 23.49 million units in the first 11 months of 2021, data from the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers (CAAM) showed Friday.



Meanwhile, auto production rose 3.5% year on year to 23.17 million units, according to the data.

The better-than-expected performance of the auto industry came as the country's measures to ensure adequate power supply and stabilize raw material prices have taken effect, the association said.

In November alone, auto sales totaled about 2.52 million units, down 9.1% year on year.

Sales of passenger vehicles went down 4.7% year on year to over 2.19 million units in November, according to the data.

However, sales of new energy vehicles (NEVs) in November rocketed 121.1% year on year to about 450,000 units.

In the January-November period, NEV sales amounted to about 2.99 million units, surging by 166.8% year on year and accounting for 12.7% of the total sales of new vehicles., the CAAM data showed.

China aims to raise the proportion of NEVs in its sales of new vehicles to 20% by 2025, according to a development plan for China's NEV industry released in 2020.
Representatives from all walks of life in northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region have lambasted slanderous claims of "forced labor" in the region that have been fabricated by Western anti-China forces.

At a press briefing held in the regional capital Urumqi on Thursday, Xinjiang residents shared their experiences on equal and voluntary employment, as well as the positive impact of government policies on their well-being.

"People in Xinjiang have the right to define our own well-being, rather than the Western anti-China forces who fabricate rumors about us," said Alman Mahmut, a cardiology expert at a Xinjiang hospital.

As a frontline medical professional working in treatment, scientific research and education, Alman Mahmut said people in Xinjiang have enjoyed the tangible benefits of policies on education.

Yasin Muhammad, an official from Yutian County of Xinjiang's Hotan Prefecture, said at the press conference that residents of all ethnic groups in the region have the right to choose their own careers, and their rights are protected by law.

Ablikim Dawut said his training at a local vocational education and training center has secured him a job at an electric company with a monthly income of over 5,000 yuan (787.4 U.S. dollars). The claims of "forced labor" at the center are pure slander, he said.

The forced-labor slur fabricated by anti-China forces is a downright lie, which aims to disrupt the stability and prosperity of Xinjiang and destroy the people's right to subsistence, employment and development, said Hellat, who hosted the press briefing.
You are here: China

Nearly 2,000 Taiwan compatriots from all walks of life will attend the 13th Straits Forum in east China's Fujian Province starting Friday, according to the organizers.

The Straits Forum is the largest annual event across the Taiwan Strait, focusing on people-to-people exchanges.

Carrying on the theme of promoting people-to-people exchanges and deepening integrated development across the Taiwan Strait, this year's forum will feature 41 exchange activities on various topics, including the economy, culture and youth.

Zhong Zhigang, deputy head of the Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macao affairs office of Fujian, said that over 1,600 jobs and internship opportunities are available to young Taiwanese through the forum, in fields including rural development, entrepreneurship, talent training, and industrial cooperation.
China and the Arab states will expand win-win cooperation in utilizing the China-developed BeiDou Navigation Satellite System (BDS), according to the third China-Arab States BDS Cooperation Forum.

China and the Arab states will jointly implement pilot projects in key domains in the application of BDS and GNSS (global navigation satellite system) over the 2022-2023 period, according to a cooperation action plan signed at the forum that was held Wednesday in Beijing.

Both sides will facilitate the establishment of BDS/GNSS centers in the Arab states, hold training courses on satellite navigation technologies, and exchange visiting scholars. Each year, China will offer scholarships to three to five students majoring in navigation and communications from the Arab states, said the action plan.

China and the Arab states will also carry out joint BDS/GNSS tests and evaluations, and promote the application of BDS in international search and rescue, among other initiatives.

All the moves are expected to boost win-win cooperation and make BDS better serve the Arab states, said the action plan.

The forum was jointly hosted by the China Satellite Navigation Office and the Arab Information and Communication Technologies Organization, attracting more than 300 participants from China and 17 Arab states.

This year's forum was held after China officially commissioned BDS on July 31, 2020, opening the new BDS-3 system to global users.

Along with positioning, navigation and timing services, the BDS-3 system can provide a variety of value-added services like global search and rescue assistance, short message communication, ground- and satellite-based augmentation, and precise point positioning.

The forum highlighted the achievements and experience of China and Arab states in BDS/GNSS cooperation and proposed a platform for both sides to upgrade the win-win cooperation.

The BDS-based applications and solutions have benefited multiple industries in Arab states. BDS has been providing real-time, continuous, stable and precise GNSS positioning information data and timely information via Continuously Operating Reference Stations (CORS) in Tunisia, Algeria and other places.

High precision BDS/GNSS applications are also serving diverse fields such as land mapping, transportation, precision agriculture, and environmental monitoring.

In the railway construction in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), the integrated technologies of BDS/GNSS and the Internet of Things have helped the project management upgrade through efficient use of data and information.

The BDS application has entered a new phase of the integrated market, industrial and international development, according to China Satellite Navigation Office.
You are here: China

From Sunday to 3 p.m. Thursday, east China's Zhejiang Province logged 24 confirmed COVID-19 cases and 35 asymptomatic cases in three cities amid the latest resurgence.

All the local cases were reported in Ningbo, Shaoxing and Hangzhou, local authorities told a press conference on Thursday.

More than 2 million people have been sampled in the three cities for mass nucleic acid testing, among which about 1.52 million have received test results.

Some cities in the province have imposed restrictions on public activities as part of anti-epidemic measures.

Public places, such as libraries, museums, internet cafes, and chess and card rooms, have been asked to limit visitors at 75 percent of their total capacity and register visitor information according to the provincial COVID-19 prevention and control requirements.
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While China further develops and refines democracy at home, it will advocate true democratic spirit and work together with countries around the world to create a better future for humanity, Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi said Thursday.

Wang made the remarks when delivering a video speech to the 14th Bali Democracy Forum held in Indonesia.

Just as plants are unique to the land they grow on, democracy, as a major fruit of human progress, is also rooted and nurtured in the history, culture, ethnic traditions and social environment of the countries concerned, Wang said.

Noting that the COVID-19 pandemic continues to ravage our societies and the international landscape is undergoing major changes unseen in a century, Wang said how to properly perceive, practice, improve and develop democracy so as to tackle challenges more effectively and promote world peace, stability and prosperity is indeed a "question of the century," a question that bears on the future of humankind.

"There are different approaches and attitudes toward this question. Some regard Western democracy as the only correct answer. They seek to forcibly transplant and impose it onto the whole world. Some attempt to take one country's model as the criterion, provoking tension between different political systems and ideologies and creating division and confrontation in the world," Wang said.

"Undoubtedly, none of these is true democracy, but fake democracy using democracy as a cover," he added.

Noting that democracy is not a special right reserved to a certain country, but a right for the people of all countries, Wang said the key criterion to gauge whether a country is democratic or not is whether its people are truly the masters of their own fate.

Wang said through a century of exploration and experimentation, the Communist Party of China (CPC) has led the Chinese people in finding a new form of democracy that suits China's national conditions, which is described as the whole-process people's democracy.

Countries have different ways to achieve democracy, he said, adding there is no single correct form of democracy for others to worship, and no democracy is superior to others.

"We have full confidence in our democracy, and we also fully respect other countries' democracy. We will not export our democracy. We are ready to have dialogue and exchanges with others on an equal footing, learn from other civilizations, and provide useful experience to other countries as well," Wang said.

Stressing that democracy is not only a way of domestic governance, but also a principle in global governance, Wang called on countries to vigorously advocate the spirit of democracy in state-to-state interactions, promote the correct approaches such as respect for sovereignty, equal-footed consultation, solidarity and cooperation, and make unremitting efforts for greater democracy in international relations.

The Bali Democracy Forum has been annually convened since 2008 as a platform for open inter-governmental dialogue among participating countries of Asia and the Pacific, focusing on a theme of democracy and governance. This year's theme was "Democracy for Humanity: Advancing Economic and Social Justice During the Pandemic."
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The Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) on Thursday disclosed some 11 African countries have so far reported Omicron COVID-19 variant cases.

John Nkengasong, Director of the Africa CDC, told journalists in his periodic briefing that seven additional African countries have reported the Omicron variant during the past week, bringing the overall continental tally to 11.

The countries include South Africa, Botswana, Nigeria, Ghana, Uganda, Zambia, Senegal, Tunisia, Mozambique, Namibia, and Zimbabwe, according to the Africa CDC.

On Wednesday, the African Union (AU) had warned that travel and entry bans in connection with the emergence of the Omicron COVID-19 variant limit the free movement of people and goods, imposing immediate and significant impact on African countries.

The 55-member pan African bloc called for the urgent rescinding of travel bans placed on southern African countries following the detection of the Omicron variant.

"Current evidence, which underscores global spread and community transmission of the Omicron variant, does not support selective travel bans imposed on Southern African countries," the statement read.

It said that penalizing African countries for ensuring timely and transparent data dissemination in accordance with international health regulations acts as a disincentive for information sharing in the future, potentially posing a threat to health security on the continent and globally.

The AU stressed that recent travel and entry bans are imposing an adverse impact on the economy which will negatively affect the lives and livelihoods of populations concerned.

It further indicated that the travel ban created limited the capacity to access essential medical supplies needed to respond to the ongoing upsurge of cases.

As of Thursday, the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases in Africa reached 8,797,227 cases as the death toll stands at 224,231.
 Flash

A further 249 cases of the Omicron COVID variant have been reported in Britain, taking the total to 817, British health authorities said Thursday.

The latest daily figure comes after 131 new cases of the Omicron variant were confirmed on Wednesday.

At a Downing Street press conference on Wednesday evening, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said the variant's doubling rate could be between two to three days, highlighting just how infectious the new strain is.

The rise in cases of the variant showed it is spreading even faster than Johnson had predicted on Wednesday, while Health Secretary Sajid Javid said Britain could have around 1 million infections of the strain in the community by the end of the year.

Britain registered 50,867 new COVID-19 infections, bringing the total number of coronavirus cases in the country to 10,660,981, according to official figures released Thursday.

The country also reported a further 148 coronavirus-related deaths. The total number of coronavirus-related deaths in Britain now stands at 146,135, with 7,347 COVID-19 patients still in hospital.

The vast majority of these infections are likely to be the Delta variant, although the number of Omicron cases is rising.

Johnson has announced that Britain will move to "Plan B" restrictions to combat the rapid spread of the Omicron variant this winter.

The British prime minister has asked people to work from home when possible from Monday while announcing that face masks would be a legal requirement in "most public indoor" areas such as theaters and cinemas from Friday.

Proof of two vaccine doses or a negative COVID-19 test will be necessary for those wanting to enter nightclubs and large venues from next week, Johnson said, adding that people who are contacts of Omicron cases could face daily testing instead of undergoing a period of isolation.

However, Johnson said the new measures were "not a lockdown" and people "should not" cancel Christmas parties or nativity plays, and nightclubs will remain open.

More than 89 percent of people aged 12 and over in Britain have had their first dose of vaccine and more than 81 percent have received both doses, according to the latest figures. More than 37 percent have received booster jabs, or the third dose of a coronavirus vaccine.

To bring life back to normal, countries such as Britain, China, Germany, Russia and the United States have been racing against time to roll out coronavirus vaccines.
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Iran's Foreign Minister Hossein Amir Abdollahian said on Thursday that Iran has not received any "constructive and forward-looking" proposals from the West for the ongoing talks in the Austrian capital of Vienna to revive the 2015 nuclear deal, formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).

If the European parties to the deal study Iran's proposals carefully and without "false presuppositions," they will find out that the proposals are within the framework of JCPOA and focus on the unfinished topics of previous talks, said Amir Abdollahian in a telephone conversation with EU Foreign Affairs Chief Josep Borrell, according to Iran's Foreign Ministry website.

The Iranian foreign minister emphasized what he called "Iran's completely peaceful nuclear program," noting that "resolving the nuclear concerns is directly related to the complete lifting of sanctions."

For his part, Borrell also referred to the challenges that could damage the talks, expressing hope that with the efforts and interaction of all parties, the Vienna talks would move toward reaching an agreement.

He called for solving some concerns about Iran's current nuclear program and stressed the importance of cooperation between the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI) and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

The new round of negotiations between Iran and other remaining parties to the deal which started last week in Vienna called for a pause on Dec. 3, in a bid to review Iran's two proposals which urge the priority of removal of U.S. anti-Iran sanctions. The parties reconvened on Thursday.
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Iran will announce the names of American individuals and entities it will sanction for involvement in human rights violations, deputy minister for international affairs of Iran's Judiciary said on Thursday.

Kazem Gharibabadi said that the recent U.S. sanctions against some Iranian individuals and legal entities under the pretext of human rights violations was "a continuation of the same failed policy of maximum pressure against the Iranian nation and the use of sanctions as a tool to achieve political goals."

The United States "has imposed unilateral and illegal sanctions against the Iranian nation, endangering the fundamental rights of Iranian citizens and denying patients access to medicine and medical equipment," the official IRNA news agency quoted him as saying.

Washington's sanctions against Iranians are "unacceptable at all and more like a bitter joke" as the U.S. police violence against the black American community is a "systematic and institutionalized racism," said Gharibabadi, who also serves as the secretary of Human Rights Headquarters of the Islamic republic.

"How can it allow itself to claim to defend freedom and human rights in Iran?" he added.
 Flash

Democracy is a right of all people and should never be patented by any country. As the international community watches in dismay the so-called "Summit for Democracy" led by the United States, more rational voices around the world have warned against Washington's attempt to pit one camp against another driven by a dangerous Cold War mentality.



Ironically, Washington's "show of democracy" also takes place at a time when the illusion created by the American democratic system has been repeatedly shattered in recent years.

Rather than addressing its own challenges in establishing a healthy democracy, U.S. politicians are preoccupied with weaponizing democracy to smear other countries.

Risking fueling polarization

Experts around the world have warned that by handpicking specific summit participants based on its own geopolitical considerations and assumptions about democratic standards without regard for other world democracies, Washington is actually further polarizing and dividing nations.

"Creating some kind of dividing lines is a very dangerous game," said Eyob Belachew, an Ethiopian international relations and political analyst.

The summit is anything but democratic as genuine democracy fundamentally favors inclusiveness, diversity, equal opportunities and prosperity of people rather than compelling other nations to adopt the Western model of democracy that primarily revolves around economic interests, Shakeel Ahmad Ramay, chief executive officer of Asian Institute of Eco-civilization Research and Development, told Xinhua.

"This is going to further divide the world in different blocs at a time when countries around the globe direly need unity and cooperation for global development," the expert said, stressing that the so-called "Summit for Democracy" is nothing but a tool to maintain U.S. hegemony under the guise of democracy.

In his column article for The Manila Times, Austin Ong, researcher of Manila-based think tank Integrated Development Studies Institute, said that by initiating the so-called "Summit for Democracy," the United States is making a mockery of democracy.

"It polarizes the world rather than harmonizes (it). Instead of creating more avenues for peaceful reintegration of relationships among nations, it intensifies divisions," Ong said.

Unqualified 'Democracy Beacon'

Despite the hoopla surrounding the so-called "Summit for Democracy," the international community has long concluded that American democracy exists only in form and not in substance.

As is widely recognized that the ultimate litmus test for good democracy is whether it can truly represent and serve the fundamental interests of the people, the American way is far from being the "envy of the world."

Primarily, the American-style democracy is not democratic. Many of America's founding fathers were slave owners themselves. And almost a century after its founding, the United States still acquiesced in slavery, and forbade women or African Americans from voting.

Today, the American democracy is more of a plutocracy, with a government hardly of, by or for the people. As U.S. political scientist Francis Fukuyama wrote early this year, the government in Washington is "captured by powerful elite groups that distort policy to their own benefit and undermine the legitimacy of the regime as a whole."

"The people do not govern. Politicians respond almost exclusively to the desires of special interests and the wealthiest citizens," lamented Charles Wheelan, a senior lecturer at the Rockefeller Center at U.S. Dartmouth College.

A recent study by the Robert Bosch Foundation in Germany found that over half of Americans think the democratic system is not functioning at all under the current circumstances. Also alarmingly, a recent poll by U.S. broadcaster NPR shows that 81 percent of U.S. adults said the future of U.S. democracy is under threat.

Forced democracy can not function

For a democracy to be viable and resilient, it also needs to draw its strength from a country's own culture and history, as well as its economic and social realities. This is a major reason why more than 20 years of nation-building in Afghanistan crashed to the ground in a matter of weeks. A copied American-style democracy did not have the local conditions to sustain it.

Lisandra Astiasaran Arias, counsellor of the permanent mission of Cuba to the UN Office at Geneva, argues that there is no simple model or definition of democracy, and every state has the right and the responsibility to develop its own models in accordance with its particular situation and the will of its own people.

"We should not allow the attempts of some countries to impose their views on democracy and human rights on the rest of the world," she said.

In their interviews with Xinhua, many experts said that China's impressive development, including its achievements in poverty reduction, has illustrated the characteristics of an advanced democracy.

"China has a different perspective or a different practice of democracy, which is not actually similar to what we already know or what we already have in mind," said Belachew, the Ethiopian international relations and political analyst.

"It is the whole process of people's democracy. This is really an advanced democracy in a Chinese way. It may not fit other countries, but it is helping China," he added.

Belachew stressed that China's people-centered approach has always put its people's interests at the forefront, which is key to China's development.

"Chinese democracy focuses on the wellbeing of the people," Belachew said.
 Flash

China and Nicaragua signed Friday in Tianjin the joint communique on the resumption of diplomatic relations between the People's Republic of China and the Republic of Nicaragua.



According to the communique, the People's Republic of China and the Republic of Nicaragua, in keeping with the interests and desire of the two peoples, have decided to recognize each other and resume diplomatic relations at the ambassadorial level, effective from the date of signature of this communique.

The two governments agree to develop friendly relations between the two countries on the basis of the principles of mutual respect for sovereignty and territorial integrity, mutual non-aggression, non-interference in each other's internal affairs, equality, mutual benefit and peaceful coexistence, the communique said.

The government of the Republic of Nicaragua recognizes that there is but one China in the world, the government of the People's Republic of China is the sole legal government representing the whole of China, and Taiwan is an inalienable part of China's territory, it said.

The government of the Republic of Nicaragua shall sever "diplomatic relations" with Taiwan as of this day and undertakes that it shall no longer develop any official relations or official exchanges with Taiwan. The government of the People's Republic of China appreciates this position of the government of the Republic of Nicaragua, the communique said.


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Johnson Space Center rocket park named for former center director



December 10, 2021  George Abbey now has more than a herd of longhorns to his name at the entrance to NASA's Johnson Space Center.



Driving by the Houston home to NASA's human spaceflight program, past the 35-acre pasture established by Abbey for Texas Longhorn cattle to graze, visitors now come across a sign dedicating Johnson's Rocket Park to the Apollo-era engineer and former center director. The George W.S. Abbey Rocket Park displays one of only three remaining Saturn V rockets that was used to launch the first astronauts to the moon more than 50 years ago.



The park's dedication, which was made formal during a ceremony held on Friday (Dec. 10), highlights the many contributions Abbey made to the space program and to the local Johnson Space Center community  including the students who each year learn about ranch management from The Longhorn Project.



Accessible to the public via the nearby Space Center Houston and its daily tram tours of Johnson Space Center, the George W.S. Abbey Rocket Park showcases many of the historic missions and vehicles that its namesake helped succeed.



Described by NASA as one of its most influential leaders through the end of the 20th Century, Abbey's career with the space agency spanned five decades.



Reporting to NASA as an U.S. Air Force captain in 1964, Abbey was assigned to the Apollo program, which had the goal of landing the first humans on the moon. Three years later, Abbey left the service and became a civil servant to work as a technical assistant to Apollo spacecraft program manager George Low. In that role, he participated in the accident investigation following the fatal Apollo 1 fire and the development and implementation of spacecraft design changes that led to 13 successful Saturn V launches and six human moon landings.



In 1970, Abbey and the other members of the Apollo 13 mission operations team earned the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honor in the United States, for their dedication and work to safely return the Apollo 13 crew home. Three years later, in recognition of his contributions to the Apollo program, Abbey received the NASA Distinguished Service Medal.



Abbey then became director of flight operations at Johnson, leading the planning and management of flight control and astronaut activities. It was in that position that he led the selection committee for the first group of space shuttle astronauts, the first class to include women and minority candidates.



After seeing the space shuttle take flight, achieve numerous early successes and suffer its first tragedy  the loss of Challenger and its crew in 1986  Abbey was transferred to NASA Headquarters in Washington to serve as the deputy associate administrator for space flight, and was later named both as the National Space Council's senior director for civil space policy and special assistant to the NASA administrator. Here he helped negotiate a partnership with Rosaviakosmos (today Roscosmos), which led to Russia joining the International Space Station program.



Returning to Johnson as its deputy director in 1994, Abbey became the seventh person to lead the Houston campus in January 1996. As director, Abbey sought new ways to engage with the local community, including opening land to the Clear Creek Independent School District and Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo for a "hands-on" agricultural education facility known as the Longhorn Project.



Abbey led Johnson until February 2001, and ended his NASA career after nearly 40 years in January 2003. In 2018, he recounted his time with the agency in an authorized biography, "The Astronaut Maker: How One Mysterious Engineer Ran Human Spaceflight for a Generation," written by Michael Cassutt.



In addition to the 363-foot-long (110-m) Saturn V, which is the only one comprised of all flight-certified hardware, the George W.S. Abbey Rocket Park displays Mercury-Redstone and Little Joe rockets, as well as additional rocket engines and a bronze statue of the Apollo 13 crew.



"George W.S. Abbey Rocket Park allows dreamers and spaceflight enthusiasts to stand beside history and is a place of wonder for visitors from all over the world," NASA said.



The newly-named George W.S. Rocket Park honors the Apollo-era engineer who became director of NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston. (collectSPACE)





George Abbey, former director of Johnson Space Center, poses with Vanessa Wyche, the center's current director, beside a photo of the sign for the newly-named George W.S. Abbey Rocket Park on Friday, Dec. 10, 2021. (NASA/James Blair)





The "George W.S. Abbey Rocket Park" at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas as seen lit up at night. (NASA)





One of the last three Apollo Saturn V rockets is on display as a part of Johnson Space Center's George W.S. Abbey Rocket Park. (NASA/James Blair)



 2022 collectSPACE.com All rights reserved.
San Francisco, 10 Dec 2021: The Report Radiation Oncology Market Size, Share & Trends Analysis Report By Type (External Beam Radiation Therapy, Internal Beam Radiation Therapy), By Application, By Technology, By Region, And Segment Forecasts, 2021 - 2028

The global radiation oncology market size is expected to reach USD 11.7 billion by 2028, registering a CAGR of 7.0% over the forecast period, according to a new report by Grand View Research, Inc. The rising incidence of cancer and technological advancement in radiation therapy equipment are some of the major factors driving the growth of the market.

There have been various technological advancements in radiotherapy equipment over the last decade, which has been a major factor for growth. Advancement from 2D to 3D conformal radiotherapy, motion tracking, and real-time imaging has helped improve radiation targeting and thereby reduce exposure to the surrounding healthy tissues. For instance, Accuray Incorporated introduced its motion monitoring and correction tools, Synchrony, for the Radixact device in April 2019. In contrast to traditional radiotherapy devices, this technology increases dosage accuracy and treatment times and is comparatively more effective.

Strategies such as partnerships, innovative product launches, and acquisitions are the priority of major players in the industry. For instance, in February 2020, Varian received FDA 510K clearance for its Ethos Therapy. It is an AI-driven solution designed to deliver an entire adaptive treatment plan in 15 minutes, including patient set-up to treatment delivery. In December 2019, Elekta signed a non-binding MoU with ViewRay, Inc. for the advancement of the knowledge and application of MR-LINACs.

According to an article published in Seminars in Radiation Oncology in 2017, it is expected that in low- and middle-income countries alone, more than 12,000 additional treatment machines will be needed by 2035. Besides, by 2035, it is projected that China, India, and Brazil will need over 3,800, 1,200, and 400 additional equipment, respectively. Companies are taking several initiatives to meet this demand. For instance, in 2019, Tata Trust signed a 3-year agreement with Varian Medical Systems Inc. for the installation of new advanced radiotherapy equipment in India, to improve patient access to treatment.

However, the lack of skilled radiotherapy professionals is expected to be a major restraining factor for the growth of the market, particularly in developing countries. The recommended number of radiation oncologists in the developed world is around 4 per million population. There are around 0.8 radiation oncologists per million population in India. Similar is the situation in other countries in the Indian sub-continent.

Access Research Report of Radiation Oncology Market @ https://www.grandviewresearch.com/industry-analysis/radiation-oncology-market

Radiation Oncology Market Report Highlights

Due to the high availability of External Beam Radiation Therapy (EBRT) equipment and penetration of innovative diagnostic instruments and understanding of available treatment options, EBRT dominated the market in 2020

In IBRT application, the prostate cancer segment dominated the market in 2020, majorly due to the promising applications for brachytherapy in the treatment of prostate cancer

In 2020, North America dominated the market and accounted for a revenue share of more than 44.0%. Favorable reimbursement policies, quality of healthcare infrastructure, and the presence of key players in the region are some of the factors driving the market in the region

List of Key Players of Radiation Oncology Market

Varian Medical Systems, Inc.

Elekta AB

Accuray Incorporated

Ion Beam Applications (IBA)

R. BARD, INC. (BD)

Isoray Medical

Mevion Medical Systems, Inc.

Nordion Inc.

NTP Radioisotopes SOC Ltd.

Curium Pharma

Viewray Technologies, Inc.

Access Press Release of Radiation Oncology Market @ https://www.grandviewresearch.com/press-release/global-radiation-oncology-market
Centric Software continues expanding into Russia with popular retail clothing chain, helping reduce development time by 25% and production costs by 10%

CAMPBELL, Calif., December 9, 2021  Popular Russian clothing company Finn Flare recently went live with Centric PLM and have enjoyed significant gains in both time savings during product development, and reduced sourcing costs. Centric Software provides the most innovative enterprise solutions to plan, design, develop, source and sell products such as apparel, footwear, sporting goods, furniture, home decor, cosmetics, food & beverage and luxury to achieve strategic and operational digital transformation goals.

Finn Flare was started in 1960 in the small Finnish town of Salo, and over the next 10 years exported clothing to Scandinavia, Germany, the Netherlands, Austria, Switzerland and the USA. After entering the Russian market, the company opened concept stores specially adapted to the tastes and preferences of Russian buyers. Finn Flare specializes in middlewear, outerwear, casual and accessories collections, and today operates more than 110 stores in Russia, Kazakhstan, and Belarus, as well as appearing in popular European stores like Zalando, and selling direct to consumers via their online store.

Before undertaking their transformative digital journey with Centric PLM, the company recognized a need to shorten the development and production time of their collections. This meant finding effective production areas in different countries, as well as system-wide management of costing issues based on a comprehensive analysis of materials, work and delivery costs. When Covid-19 hit, they also faced business restrictions and logistics problems in different countries, especially an increase in delivery time of goods due to the pandemic.

Due to different processes and the specific work of our brand, data from different departments are often isolated, not presented completely or rendered stagnant, which can hinder the efficient management of the product lifecycle, says Valentina Khilmanovich, Head of Design and Development at Finn Flare. Centric PLM can easily integrate data from the entire lifetime of a product seamlessly. We can also conduct a comprehensive analysis of the product at all stages of the lifecycle, from the beginning of production to sales and financial results of the collection.

Centric PLM stood out against other PLM solutions during Finn Flares selection process thanks to added value for productivity, cost management, accelerated time to market, data sharing with ERP systems and product development. The ability to set and control key dates and milestones for production schedules was essential, as well as management and analysis of consumption of materials, prices, orders, sales and margins from each style, collection, and overall season.

Khilmanovich continues, Our main strategy was to shorten the production cycle as much as possible. Weve already seen a 25% reduction in development time for each collection and we were able to achieve a 10% reduction in production costs thanks to updating the costing process with suppliers, which provided new sourcing possibilities. Now were working on the timing of production cutbacks.

In terms of a business strategy, Centric PLM lets us enter updates, develop, support and retire products throughout their lifecycles, depending on decisions we make along the way. Centric is highly flexible for meeting the needs of our clients.

We started to develop our e-commerce strategy many years ago, explains Khilmanovich, building our own online store and cooperating with companies in Russian and European markets such as Wildberries, Otto and Zalando. Now, with more consumers shopping from home, our goal is to improve the connection between their interests and our brand loyalty. Centric PLM will help us develop assortments for these new sales channels more easily to improve overall performance.

Chris Groves, President and CEO of Centric Software, commented, As we expand into the Russian market, its deeply satisfying to see a company like Finn Flare achieving their growth strategy goals and accelerating by streamlining their supply chain using Centric PLM. We are delighted to be a part of the companys ongoing digital evolution and to be a part of all their future success.

Request a Demo





FiNN Flare (www.finn-flare.ru)

FiNN FLARE is a company with a long and successful history of formation. For more than 50 years, the brand has been pleasing its customers with consistently high-quality and practical clothing.

Like any successful company, FiNN FLARE has several qualities that help a brand to be recognized:

o Modern style

o European design

o High quality

o Comfortable fit

o Wide range of natural fabrics

The company's designers always offer interesting style solutions, combining completely different directions. In line with current fashion trends, collections are created taking into account the brand's philosophy. FiNN FLARE clothing is functional, yet fashionable, stylish and elegant, suitable for any occasion: going out, meeting with friends or a strict office dress code.

Centric Software (www.centricsoftware.com)

From its headquarters in Silicon Valley, Centric Software provides a Product Concept to Consumer Digital Transformation Platform for fashion, retail, footwear, luxury, outdoor and consumer goods including cosmetics, beauty and food and beverage. Centrics flagship Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) platform, Centric PLMTM, delivers enterprise-class merchandise planning, product development, sourcing, quality and product portfolio optimization innovations specifically for fast-moving consumer industries. Centric SMB focuses on core tools and industry best practices for emerging brands. Centric Visual Innovation Platform (CVIP) offers highly visual digital board experiences for collaboration and decision-making. Centric Software pioneered mobility, introducing the first mobile apps for PLM, and is widely known for connectivity to dozens of other enterprise systems including ERP, DAM, PIM, e-com, planning and more as well as creative tools such as Adobe Illustrator and a host of 3D CAD connectors. Centrics innovations are 100% market-driven with the highest user adoption rate and fastest time to value in the industry. All Centric innovations shorten time to market, boost product innovation and reduce costs.

Centric Software is majority-owned by Dassault Systemes (Euronext Paris: #13065, DSY.PA), the world leader in 3D design software, 3D digital mock-up and PLM solutions.

Centric Software has received multiple industry awards and recognition, including being named by Red Herring to its Top 100 Global list in 2013, 2015 and 2016. Centric also received various excellence awards from Frost & Sullivan in 2012, 2016, 2018 and 2021.

Centric Software is a registered trademark of Centric Software Inc. All other brands and product names may be trademarks of their respective owners.

Media Contacts:

Centric Software

Americas: Jennifer Forsythe, jforsythe@centricsoftware.com

EMEA: Kristen Salaun-Batby, ksalaun-batby@centricsoftware.com

APAC: Lily Dong, lily.dong@centricsoftware.com
The bank has been included in the Second Schedule to the Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934. As per the Act, banks satisfying the RBI that its affairs are not being conducted in a manner detrimental to the interests of its depositors, are included in the second schedule.  PTI

Mumbai: Paytm Payments Bank on Thursday said that it has received the scheduled bank status from the Reserve Bank of India. While a payments bank cannot access the call money market or the interbank line, a scheduled bank can.

Call money market refers to the market for extremely short period loans, say one day to fourteen days. Banks with surplus lend to other banks with deficit funds in the call money market. Thus, it provides an equilibrating mechanism for evening out short-term surpluses and deficits.

Commercial banks can quickly borrow from the call market to meet their statutory liquidity requirements, maximize their profits easily by investing their surplus funds in the call market during the period when call rates are high and volatile.

Being a Scheduled Payments Bank, Paytm Payments Bank can now explore new business opportunities. The bank can participate in government and other large corporations issued request for proposals (RFP), primary auctions, fixed-rate and variable rate repos, and reverse repos, along with participation in Marginal Standing Facility. The bank would now also be eligible to partner in government-run financial inclusion schemes, the company said in a press release.

However, a payments bank cannot lend and that restriction would remain.

The bank has been included in the Second Schedule to the Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934. As per the Act, banks satisfying the RBI that its affairs are not being conducted in a manner detrimental to the interests of its depositors, are included in the second schedule.

Satish Kumar Gupta, MD &CEO of Paytm Payments Bank said, The inclusion of Paytm Payments Bank in the Second Schedule to the Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934, will help us innovate further and bring more financial services and products to the underserved and unserved population in India.
Wreckage of the crashed IAF Mi-17V5 helicopter, in Coonoor, Tamil Nadu, Wednesday, Dec. 8, 2021. CDS Gen Bipin Rawat accompanied by his wife Madhulika Rawat, his staff and other officials were on board. (PTI Photo)

New Delhi/Coonoor (TN): Indias top military officer, Chief of Defence Staff Gen. Bipin Rawat, along with his wife Madhulika Rawat and 11 other military personnel was killed when an Indian Air Force Mi-17V5 helicopter crashed Wednesday afternoon near Coonoor in Tamil Nadu.

Gen Rawat, who was Indias first CDS, was going to the Defence Services Staff College, Wellington, to address the faculty and student officers of its staff course. Sources said he had reached Sulur airbase on Wednesday morning in a special IAF plane. He took a Mi-17V5 helicopter from Sulur to Wellington, which crashed at around 12.15 pm. There were 14 persons on board, including members of Gen. Rawats personal staff and four members of the crew.

With deep regret, it has now been ascertained that Gen. Bipin Rawat, Mrs Madhulika Rawat and 11 other persons on board have died in the unfortunate accident, the IAF said in a tweet. The IAF has ordered an inquiry to ascertain the reason behind the crash.

IAF Group Captain Varun Singh, who is the lone survivor of the crash, is now under treatment at the Military Hospital, Wellington. Incidentally Group Captain Singh was awarded the Shaurya Chakra on this years Independence Day for saving his LCA Tejas fighter aircraft during an aerial emergency in 2020.

Reports said the Mi-17V5 helicopter was flying at low altitude in foggy conditions when it crashed into a valley, before falling through the trees. A fire engulfed the helicopter by the time it landed on the ground. Two persons, who were ablaze, fell down from the helicopter, eyewitnesses said. The mangled and burnt remains of the IAF helicopter were strewn along the site, even as rescue services personnel were seen carrying bodies in stretchers to be transported through waiting ambulances. A major tragedy was averted as the helicopter fell at some distance away from human habitation, averting possible mass casualties.

Eyewitnesses at the crash site had also said that three persons, including Gen. Rawat, had been rescued alive with severe burn injuries and shifted to the Military Hospital in Wellington, where Gen. Rawat succumbed to his injuries soon afterwards.

The Cabinet Committee on Security met on Wednesday evening to take stock in the wake of Gen. Rawats tragic death. The government is likely to announce the new CDS soon as India is currently engaged in a tense military standoff with China. For now, Army Chief Gen. M.M. Naravane is the frontrunner for the CDS post if the Narendra Modi government follows the seniority criteria.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi said he was deeply anguished by the helicopter crash in which the nation lost Gen. Rawat, his wife and several other armed forces personnel. As Indias first CDS, Gen. Rawat worked on diverse aspects relating to our armed forces including defence reforms. He brought with him a rich experience of serving in the Army. India will never forget his exceptional service," said Mr Modi.

Gen. Rawat had survived a Cheetah helicopter crash in Dimapur, Nagaland, on February 3, 2015. He was then a lieutenant-general.

The victims mortal remains will be flown to New Delhi from Coimbatore Thursday, after a wreath-laying ceremony in the morning at Wellington, police and defence sources said. In New Delhi, officials said the mortal remains of Gen. Rawat and his wife are likely to arrive Thursday evening and their cremation will take place at Delhi Cantonment on Friday.

Earlier on Wednesday, defence minister Rajnath Singh briefed the Prime Minister on the accident. Mr Singh will make a statement in both Houses of Parliament on Thursday on the helicopter crash. Mr Singh had asked IAF chief Air Chief Marshal V.R. Chaudhari to visit the site of the crash. The defence minister had also visited the CDS residence and spoken to his daughter. He also had a meeting with the Army Chief.

Brig L.S. Lidder, defence adviser to the CDS, and his staff officer, Lt. Col. Harinder, were among those who were killed. Wing Commander Prithvi Singh, the pilot and the commanding officer of 109 Helicopter Unit, was also killed in the crash.

The horrific crash near Coonoor is the worst accident after the helicopter crash in Poonch in 1963 in which six officers -- Lt. Gen. Daulat Singh, Air Vice Marshal E.W. Pinto, Lt. Gen. Bikram Singh, Maj. Gen. K.N.D. Nanavati, Brig. S.R. Oberoi and Flt Lt S.S. Sodhi -- were killed. In order to prevent the loss of senior military commanders, there is a protocol that top armed forces officers cant fly together in a helicopter.

Earlier, Nilgiris collector S.P. Amrith told PTI that 13 persons were killed in the crash, while there was one survivor. While the helicopter took off at around 10.30 am on Wednesday, the Coonoor Fire Station received a call at 12 noon following the accident, official sources said.

Gen. Rawat had taken charge as Indias first CDS in January 2020. He was working towards new theatre commands and indigenisation. Gen. Rawat was an alumnus of St. Edward School, Shimla, and commissioned into the Armys 11 Gorkha Rifles in December 1978 at IMA, Dehradun. He had become Chief of the Army Staff on December 31, 2016.
The remains were later taken to Coimbatore by road, about 70 km away, from where they would be flown to New Delhi in a special IAF aircraft. (ANI Photo)

Coonoor/New Delhi: The flight data recorder of the military helicopter that crashed in a wooded, hilly area near Coonoor in Tamil Nadu killing India's first Chief of Defence Staff Bipin Rawat and 12 others was retrieved on Thursday.

As Defence Minister Rajnath Singh said in a statement in Parliament that an inquiry was already underway and the lone survivor was on life support, in Wellington, not far from the crash site, bugles sounded the last post to honour those who had been killed. The mortal remains of the victims in caskets wrapped in the Indian tricolour were taken to the Madras Regimental Centre at Wellington in decorated army trucks. Senior Army officials, Tamil Nadu ministers and Army veterans laid wreaths and paid floral tributes.

The remains were later taken to Coimbatore by road, about 70 km away, from where they would be flown to New Delhi in a special IAF aircraft.

Two boxes, including the flight data recorder, or the black box, were found after authorities expanded the search area from 300 metres to one kilometre. They are likely to be taken to Delhi or Bengaluru to ascertain the cause of the crash, officials said. The black box is expected to provide crucial data on the chain of events leading to the crash of the Mi-17VH helicopter that went up in flames in apparently foggy conditions on Wednesday afternoon, killing 63-year-old Rawat who was on his way to the Defence Services Staff College (DSSC) in Wellington to address faculty and student officers, his wife Madhulika and 11 others.

There was only one survivor, IAF's Group Captain Varun Singh, who is an instructor at the prestigious DSSC and received Gen Rawat at the Sulur airbase from where the entourage was heading towards Wellington in the chopper. All efforts are being made to save Group Captain Singh, who is on life support at the military hospital in Wellington, the Defence minister said in his statement. A tri-services inquiry headed by Air Marshal Manavendra Singh has been ordered by the Indian Air Force. A team of investigators had reached Wellington yesterday (Wednesday) itself and started their work, Singh said in his statement read out in both houses.

Both houses of Parliament observed a moment's silence to pay tribute and mourn the deaths. Laying down the timeline, the minister said, The Indian Air Force Mi17V5 helicopter took off from Sulur air base at 11.48 a.m. on Wednesday which had to land at Wellington at 12.15 pm.

The Air Traffic Control at Sulur airbase lost contact with the helicopter at approximately 12.08 pm. Later, a few locals reported a fire in the forest near Coonoor and rushed to the spot where they saw the remains of a helicopter engulfed in flames.

Rescue teams from local administration also reached the crash site and tried to recover survivors, he said.

All those recovered from the wreckage were immediately rushed to the military hospital at Wellington." He said the last rites of Gen Rawat will be performed with full military honours.

The last rites of the other military personnel who died in the crash will also be conducted with appropriate military honours, he added.

Besides CDS Rawat and his wife, his Defence Adviser Brig Lakhbinder Singh Lidder, Staff Officer Lt Col Harjinder Singh and nine other Armed Forces personnel, including the Air Force helicopter crew, the minister said.

Their names are Wing Commander Prithvi Singh Chauhan, Squadron Leader Kuldeep Singh, Junior Warrant Officer Rana Pratap Das, Junior Warrant Officer Arakkal Pradeep, Havildar Satpal Rai, Naik Gursewak Singh, Naik Jitendra Kumar, Lance Naik Vivek Kumar, Lance Naik B Sai Teja, he said.

Air Chief Marshal V R Chaudhari had been sent to the spot after receiving information about the accident on Wednesday itself, the minister said.

The Air chief has taken stock of the situation after visiting spot and the hospital. Speaker Om Birla expressed grief at Gen Rawat's untimely demise and said that the country had lost a skilled warrior, an outstanding strategist and an experienced leader.

In the Rajya Sabha, Deputy Chairman Harivansh informed the house about the tragic accident. Reading out Gen Rawat's obituary, he said the CDS had an illustrious military career spanning over four decades during which he held several important staff positions and went on to become the Chief of Army Staff on December 31, 2016.

Those who paid tributes in Wellington included Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M K Stalin and Telangana Governor Tamilisai Soundararajan.

Stalin, seen wearing a black muffler, later briefly spoke to the Army brass present there.
A key finding in the report states that India has the highest number of journalists  four  confirmed to have been murdered in retaliation for their work. (Representational Image: PTI)

New York: As per the latest Prison Census by New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), 293 journalists were jailed worldwide in 2021, a new record compared to a revised total of 280 in 2020. The census also notes that at least 24 were reported as "murdered," while 18 others died in circumstances too murky to determine whether they were specific targets.

Of this tally, India has jailed seven journalists in the past year, while five journalists were reported killed because of their work. A key finding in the report states that India has the highest number of journalists  four  confirmed to have been murdered in retaliation for their work. A fifth was killed while covering a protest.

The five killings included:

Avinash Jha of BNN News - killed between November 9-12

Chennakeshavalu of EV5 - killed on August 8

Manish Kumar Singh of Sudarshan TV - killed between August 8-10

Sulabh Srivastava of ABP News - killed on June 13

Raman Kashyap of Sadhna Plus TV - killed on October 3-4 while covering a protest

The seven journalists who have been imprisoned are Aasif Sultan of Kashmir Narrator, Tanveer Warsi of Prabhat Sanket, Anand Teltumbde, Gautam Navlakha, Manan Dar, Rajeev Sharma and Siddique Kappan.

According to the methodology of the report, the census accounts only for journalists in government custody and does not include those who have disappeared or are held captive by non-State actors. It also does not include the many journalists imprisoned and released throughout the year.

Global Picture

According to the report, the reasons for the relentless climb in the numbers of detained journalists - this is the sixth consecutive year that CPJ's census has recorded at least 250 incarcerated - differ between countries. "But all reflect a stark trend: a growing intolerance of independent reporting. Emboldened autocrats are increasingly ignoring due process and flouting international norms to keep themselves in power," the CPJ report said.

To draw out a ranking hierarchy in the report, China remains the world's worst jailer of journalists for the third year in a row (50 journalists), with Myanmar soaring to the second slot (26 media workers) after its recent military coup this year. Egypt (25), Vietnam (23), and Belarus (19), respectively, came at the next three slots.

Forty of the 293 detained journalists  less than 14%  are women, and at least 17 jailed journalists on the list have been charged with cybercrimes.

However, it must be assumed that numbers dont tell the full story, as the CPJ reports points out that: Authoritarian leaders are increasingly finding more sophisticated ways to block independent reporters and outlets  notably internet shutdowns and increased surveillance through high-tech spyware  than keeping them behind bars.
Autumn is the time

Of mists and mellow fruitfulness

And blankets of falling leaves

Which turn when wet to grime

Poets are blind to this slippery mess 

And the wretched road-sweeper grieves

From Dhoka Kola by Bachchoo

I know nothing about New Zealand but looking at an atlas I can see that its two islands, one which looks like a chewed bone and the other like a hat with a feather. Perhaps when He made them, God was thinking about a pub called the hat and bone. OK, Ill stop being frivolous and confess that this column is not really about New Zealand or its capital of Constantinople or whatever. Happenings in NZ have triggered a universal consideration.

Some weeks ago, the New Zealand governments working group on education proposed that all schools in the country should in their curriculum give the same weight to Maori mythology as they do to science in the classroom. This isnt, I admit, a quote from the working groups document itself, but from a neutral article that brought this fact and its aftermath to my attention.

The Maori understanding of the world is that all living things originated with Rangi and Papa, the sky mother and sky god. The Christian Old Testament says that the world was created by Jehovah in six days and the work was exhausting so he rested on the seventh.

Over the centuries since the Maoris formulated their belief and the Old Testament was written, human beings have produced, through diligent enquiry, observation, recording, experimentation, logic and theorising, what we today call the sciences.

It has been a slow and evolving process and some of the names associated with it are Pythagoras, Archimedes, Aryabhata, Galileo, Newton, Darwin, Curie, Einstein  the list is long. Throughout this period, technology followed, taking advantage of scientific understanding to give us, in very large part, the material world we live in today.

Of course, there are non-material sciences. Medicine is part science and part technology as we, with the development of the anti-Covid vaccines, thankfully know today. Freud was a thinker and certainly some of his thoughts can be classified as science. Even the rest of his contentions are philosophical and some intuitive, but there is no act of faith which he has thrust on humanity. Yes, some of the techniques of his followers and the therapies that are practiced in his name may have a lot to do with just that  faith!

But all this is obvious and I only repeat it so as to get on with the New Zealand story. Following the recommendation or diktat of their governmental education working group, seven prominent New Zealand scientists signed a letter headlined In Defence of Science published in the New Zealand Listener. The authors didnt denigrate the Maori mythological doctrines and agreed that they ought to be on the curriculum of schools, but ought not to be taught on a par with, or as an alternative belief structure to, the firm conclusions of physics, chemistry, biology and the rest. The signatories to the letter are all professors at Auckland University.

On publication of this point of view, as the cliche goes, all hell broke loose  in this case with Newfound Zeal. Two thousand academics signed a letter condemning in the main Prof. Garth Cooper, the professor of biochemistry at Auckland. The Royal Society of New Zealand has, as a result of the condemnatory objections to the Defence of Science letter, which even the vice-chancellor of Auckland, Dawn Freshwater, joined, instituted a disciplinary investigation into Prof. Cooper and his views.

In 1633, Galileo was tried for publishing his finding that the earth revolved around the sun. In 1925, John Scopes, a schoolteacher, was brought to trial for allegedly teaching Darwins theory of evolution instead of sticking to the Biblical myth of God creating the earth in six days. In our world too, many people have been persecuted and even killed for saying, in speech or writing that the assertions of religion are not factual.

Prof. Coopers continuing case in New Zealand is, at the least, a trial of freedom of expression in that country. At the worst, its a woke absurdity. Will he be dismissed from employment for saying that science is one thing and mythology another? Isnt he more sinned against than sinning? I retract the word more from my previous sentence. Isnt he totally right in asserting that the Maori view of creation is not a rival to sciences view of creation or reality?

For my part, gentle reader, I totally and unreservedly approve of, nay champion, the teaching of the Mahabharata and the Ramayana in Indian schools  and for that matter in all schools everywhere. Both our epics have roots in history, but they have evolved over thousands of years and have developed dynamic and interesting layers of narrative and, yes, myth.

Even if we concede that Hanuman was not a vanar, a forest-dwelling Adivasi, but a monkey god, and even if we are free and obliged to believe that he could carry a mountain in one hand while flying, does this epic story in any way rival the discovery that we live in a world of gravitational waves and forces?

Epics, myths, narratives enrich the imagination and a culture. Science merely and heroically endeavours to understand reality. They can and must coexist.
The world looked up into the night sky

In 1952, the International Council of Scientific Unions proposed the Internal Geophysical Year (IGY) to be recognized from July 1957 to December 1958. Scientists worldwide planned on observing geophysical phenomena and their effects on Earth. Two countries had much bolder IGY plans, which were literally out of this world. The US announced it would place a scientific satellite into Earths orbit during the IGY. The Soviet Union also announced its plans for launching an Earth-orbiting artificial satellite. A historical event occurred Friday, Oct. 4, 1957, which caused the world to take a collective breath and look upward at the night sky. At 10:29 p.m., Moscow Standard Time (2:29 p.m. Central Time), a Soviet R-7 two-stage rocket weighing 267 tons, lifted off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome launch complex in the remote Russian region of Tyuratam, inside the Kazakhstan Republic. The R-7 was a Russian/Soviet intercontinental ballistic missile without the military warhead attachment. Instead of a warhead, the rocket carried a 184-pound satellite payload called PS-1, better known as Sputnik 1. Sputnik 1 was a highly-polished 23-inch diameter metallic beach ball-sized sphere made of an aluminum-magnesium-titanium combination. According to the English Oxford dictionary, In Russian, the word sputnik means a traveling companion. The Sputnik 1 satellite was jettisoned from the R-7 at about 142 miles above the Earth in the weightlessness of space. Sputnik 1 then settled into an elliptical orbit, circling Earth once every 98 minutes at a speed of 18,000 mph. A 1-watt radio transmitter was powered from two of three onboard silver-zinc batteries. The Sputnik 1 satellite used a third battery to power its internal temperature and other instrument systems. The first artificially-made, Earth-orbiting satellite sent out a curious radio signal from its four cat-whisker antennas extending 7.9 and 9.5 feet, respectively. For the next three weeks, people worldwide became fixated, listening to the steady radio signal audio pattern of beep-beep-beep-beep-beep being transmitted down through the Earths atmosphere by Sputnik 1. Scientists and shortwave radio operators closely listened to Sputniks 20.005 and 40.002 MHz frequency radio band transmissions. American television and radio broadcast the satellites beeps for the general public to hear. Ground-based telescopes could see the small, shining metallic sphere as it speedily flew across the night sky. People peering up into the star-filled night sky saw a small, bright sunlit ball, Sputnik 1, majestically passing by. While Sputnik 1 orbited the planet and sent its radio beeps, American emotions ranged from shock and amazement to feelings of inspiration by witnessing the start of space exploration. However, many people also feared the Soviet Union would turn soviet satellites into space weapons. Instead of a harmless beeping satellite passing over the US, some folks felt the next Sputnik would be carrying a nuclear warhead that the Soviet Union could drop on them. There was real fear, confusion, and much anxiety experienced by many Americans. I once asked my mother about her memories of Oct. 4, 1957, and Sputnik 1. I was 27 years old, she recalled. I remember people were frightened; we didnt know whether the Russians were going to attack us by dropping bombs from their space satellites passing over our heads, she explained to me. In an attempt to ease a growing US public anxiety, Oct. 9, 1957, President Dwight Eisenhower announced, Now, so far as the satellite itself is concerned, that does not raise my apprehensions, not one iota. I see nothing at this moment, at this stage of development, that is significant in that development as far as security is concerned. President Eisenhower, or Ike, may have calmed the fears of some folks; however, many now felt that the Soviet Union had taken the technological lead in the new space race with the US. Starting Oct. 4, 1957, Sputnik 1 continued to broadcast beeps until Oct. 26, 1957, when the satellites battery power wholly drained. Sputnik 1 burned up Jan. 4, 1958, while re-entering the Earths atmosphere. Two months after Sputnik 1, the US attempted to launch a satellite into Earth orbit atop a three-stage Vanguard rocket. At the Atlantic Missile range in Cape Canaveral, FL, the Vanguard rocket ignited and began its ascent Dec. 5, 1957; however, after rising a little more than 3 feet, the rocket stalled, then settled back on the launch pad as its fuel tanks ruptured and exploded. The irony is that the Vanguard satellite was thrown clear of the explosion and landed on the ground. Although damaged, the satellite transmitted its beacon signal while lying on the ground. The first successful launch of a US satellite into Earth orbit occurred Jan. 31, 1958 at 9:48 p.m. Central Time, with Explorer 1. Explorer 1 used a modified US Redstone ballistic missile to obtain the altitude needed for orbit. Explorer 1 descended into the Earths atmosphere and disintegrated in the heat of re-entry March 31, 1970. One minute of recorded radio signal beeps from Sputnik 1 can be listened to at http://bit.ly/2fwmc6P. Listen to 10 seconds of telemetry transmission from Sputnik 1 at https://go.nasa.gov/2whXCtp. The world looked up into the night sky Oct. 4, 1957, in wonderment and apprehension.
The Australian government stated the new version of the Omicron variant called the mirror version that allegedly arose from South Africa. Its source is a South African man infected with the mutant strain, a derivative of the original Omicron strain.

An infected individual is in quarantine in Brisbane after he tested for the virus, which is said to surpass the delta is yet to be seen.

So-called sister strain causes alarm

According to Queensland Health minister Yvette D'Ath has told media that the strain in question is descended from two variants as defined by an international committee, the Express UK reports.

The World Health Organization (WHO) remarked the suspected strain does not have the genotypes common to Omicron as clarification. It simply means the shortcut to identifying the type is not applicable in this case.

Peter Aitken, the acting chief health officer, said the sister variant lacks the S-gene dropout, which differentiates the original mutant strain.

He said that some of the markers that make it a dead ringer for Omicron, but some factors notwithstanding, like how infectious and if it can genuinely evade the vaccines are yet to be discerned by specialists, cited Bloomberg.

The only thing everyone knows is that the Omicron could infect host cells better and infect at a much faster rate. Microbiologist Peter Collignon from the Australian National University remarked that more work is needed to research the virus strain that might be just masquerading as a new version of the Omicron variant.

Read Also: COVID-19 Antibodies Reduces the Immune Response Resulting to More Prolonged Symptoms in Long Haulers

He added that if the gene is gone from the strain, it might be another gene still there. It is like hiding and mistaking it for a new strain when the new mutant strain changes itself. This makes people think there is more than one out there, noted Metro UK.

The professor stated the so-called sister variant as another claim it is the same mutant strain but the genotype of the virus the adaptation of change to give an illusion of a new infective kind.

It should not be called a new type of virus but a sub-set. To be called a sister strain with new genes will need a significant change. This should be made clear, or there will be unnecessary alarm.

Omicron as variant of concern

Last November 26, the WHO called the new Omicron mutant first reported in South Africa of concern. The first wild type is the fifth SARS-CoV-2 to be called a variant of concern.

From the first detection, the mutant variant of the 5th strain is said to be moving all over the globe but not at the catastrophic that was predicted, even in the UK.

Health Secretary Sajid Javid remarked that Omicron cases had been detected a day past but added that no exposure due to travel abroad is the cause. It might be the case of the virus already in communities that have been exposed to the mutant variant.

On Tuesday, a total of 336 cases have been registered in the UK of the allegedly highly infections variant, up from 90 last Sunday.

The new version of the Omicron variant might be the same, but only the former changing, although the vaccine makes who say they are better is not proven yet.

Related Article: Could mRNA Vaccine be Tweaked To Deal With the Omicron Variant?

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President Joe Biden spoke with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky for more than an hour on Thursday, despite the White House's denial that the president was pressuring Kyiv to make concessions to Russia to avoid an invasion.

The president's 40-minute conversation to the leaders of nine NATO member countries in Eastern Europe followed the 76-minute call between Biden and Zelensky. The White House did not share readouts of the calls right away.

Biden assures Ukraine's Zelenskiy of US support

Thousands of Russian troops have gathered near Ukraine's borders in what US officials worry is a precursor to an invasion as early as next year. Biden spoke with Russian President Vladimir Putin for two hours on Tuesday, threatening economic sanctions, but assured reporters on Wednesday that he would not send US soldiers to Ukraine to stop Russian adventurism.

Biden stated on Wednesday that he intends to announce additional high-level meetings on the problem with America's European partners, NY Post reported. Officials from the White House have stated that the US may encourage Ukraine to grant some autonomy to eastern Ukraine regions now ruled by Russia-backed separatists who rebelled against the Kiev government in 2014. Those locations were given an unspecified "special status."

Per Daily Mail, the call comes after weeks of Russian military buildup and Biden's announcement that the US will play a more significant role in attempting to mediate a diplomatic solution to the region's tensions. This includes addressing Ukraine's desire to join NATO, which Putin regards as a red flag.

While Biden and allies have defied Putin's demands that Ukraine be denied NATO membership, senior State Department officials have stated that Ukrainian membership is unlikely to be granted in the next decade.

Biden had a video conversation with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday morning. Economic sanctions, including pressuring Germany's incoming government to abandon its Nord Stream 2 pipeline contract with Russia, as well as sending additional soldiers to NATO partners in the region and providing greater material support to Ukraine, were among the threats, according to the White House.

More US soldiers might be sent to Poland and Romania, according to National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan. Biden came to a halt when it came to deploying US soldiers into Ukraine.

Read Also: Joe Biden Introduces New Brand in Promoting Infrastructure Deal; Tries To Get Americans Excited in Missouri

Joe Biden warns Russia's Vladimir Putin

US President Joe Biden said on Wednesday that if Russian President Vladimir Putin invades Kyiv, there would be "serious repercussions," stressing that Washington is planning "strong economic and other measures," as per The Republic World.

Biden expressed concern about the concentration of Russian military troops on the Ukrainian border with reporters just a day after his virtual meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin, saying that his administration is drafting a set of initiatives and retaliatory steps that will make it "very, very difficult" for Russia to escalate the conflict.

When asked if he would send US soldiers to defend Ukraine in the face of a Russian military buildup, Biden told reporters that it is not on the table but that the US would provide defensive capabilities to the Ukrainian armed forces to discourage a military invasion.

Meanwhile, in a conference organized this week in response to fears of a Russian invasion of Kyiv, NATO foreign ministers and NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg warned Moscow that any attack on Ukrainian territory would be costly and result in retaliation. According to US intelligence, Russia is setting the basis for a large-scale military operation against Ukraine as early as 2022. Putin plans to assault Kyiv on many fronts and has sent an estimated 175,000 troops.

Related Article: Joe Biden-Vladimir Putin Meeting: US Warns Strong Nuclear, Economic Sanctions If Russia Invades Ukraine

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A United States Appeals Court has rejected former President Donald Trump's bid to block the House Select Committee from accessing White House records amid the Jan. 6 Capitol Hill riot investigation.

The decision has left the Republican businessman no choice but to ask the Supreme Court to overturn the ruling. Trump has repeatedly argued that the records the committee is asking for, held by the National Archives, are protected by executive privilege. This legal doctrine secures White House documents from being made public.

Trump's Bid Rejected

However, the select committee has rejected Trump's claims of executive privilege, with President Joe Biden waiving right over the disputed records. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit said in its Thursday ruling that Biden "and the Legislative Branch have shown a national interest in and pressing need for the prompt disclosure of these documents," CNBC reported.

Judge Patricia Millett, who wrote the D.C. Circuit opinion, said that the events on Jan. 6 showed the American nation how fragile certain democratic institutions and traditions were. She said that the decision was made regarding how the current U.S. president and Congress have shown how crucial the documents were to upholding the Constitution.

Read Also: Trump Continues to Tease Possible 2024 Re-Election Bid, Causing Confusion Within Republican Party

Additionally, the court said that former President Trump had not given sufficient legal reason to cast aside Democratic President Biden's assessment of the Executive Branch interests at stake. They said that the Republican businessman also did not provide adequate reasoning for creating a separation of powers conflict.

Millett, who former President Barack Obama appointed, was supported in her decision by fellow Obama-appointee, Judge Robert Wilkins, and Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, who Biden appointed. In response to Trump's claims of executive privilege, the Democratic president said that the events on Jan. 6 warranted the transparency over the disputed White House records, CNN reported.

Capitol Hill Riot

The court said that many lives were lost during the unprecedented Jan. 6 Capitol Hill riot, and blood was shed in the streets. They argued that portions of the Capitol building were severely damaged. The people responsible for the storming of the building endangered the lives of members of the House and Senate and aides, staffers, and others who were inside the Capitol.

The three judges added that there was a believable direct connection between former President Trump and the events of that horrific day. In response to the court's decision, Trump spokeswoman Liz Harrington said that the Republican businessman would not ask the Supreme Court to intervene in the House Select Committee's attempt to access the White House records.

Trump's lawyers have only 14 days to manage the process, delaying the release of the records to Congress. In a Twitter post, Harrington said that regardless of the Appeals Court's decision, Trump's case was always destined to reach the Supreme Court. She said that the former president's duty to defend the Constitution and the Office of the Presidency continues and that he will fight for every single citizen and every future administration, the Washington Post reported.

Related Article: Senate Democrats Face Pressure as Deadline in Joe Biden's Build Back Better Plan Looms; January Child Tax Credit Might Be Delayed

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On Thursday, talks to resurrect the 2015 Iran nuclear agreement started, with the US and Israel increasing their rhetorical pressure on Tehran over the potential economic and military implications if diplomacy fails.

Iran's top negotiator said Tehran was keeping to its stance last week when the negotiations fell due to European and American officials accusing Iran of making sweeping new demands and reneging on earlier this year's commitments.

US, Israel discuss alternatives if nuclear talks fail

Several US officials expressed their willingness to take a harder position if necessary, although stressing they favored a diplomatic approach. "Given the continuous progress in Iran's nuclear program, the president has urged his staff to be ready in the event that diplomacy fails and we are forced to pursue alternative options," White House secretary Jen Psaki said, as per Reuters.

The indirect US-Iran talks in Vienna, in which other diplomats from the remaining parties to the now-defunct 2015 deal - France, the United Kingdom, Germany, Russia, and China - shuttle between them because Tehran refuses direct contact with Washington, aim to get both sides to resume full compliance with the agreement.

Iran agreed to curtail its nuclear program - which the West worried might be used to create weapons, something Tehran denies - in exchange for relief from the United States, European Union, and United Nations sanctions.

With talks on resurrecting the nuclear agreement stalling in Vienna, Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett has echoed his predecessor, Benjamin Netanyahu, by accusing Iran of employing "nuclear blackmail" as a negotiating tool by ramping up its uranium enrichment, The Washington Post reported.

A series of strange explosions occurred at or near important Iranian nuclear sites in the summer of 2020. Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, the country's top nuclear scientist, was ambushed and slain in an assassination outside Tehran last November that was largely blamed on Israel.

Read Also: China Threatens Retaliation Against US, UK, and Australia for Boycotting at 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics

Israel participates in joint military drills to face Iran

In the event that discussions fail, Israeli leaders have been increasingly talking of launching a military assault against Iran, with or without US participation. According to a November poll by the Israel Democracy Institute, the majority of Jewish Israelis still perceive Iran as an existential danger and favor military action - even without American permission - above dialogue to settle the problem.

A Pentagon spokesperson, Jessica McNulty, said the US Department of Defense would not comment on the probable joint drill as Israel, and the US prepare to perform joint military drills to rehearse striking Iranian nuclear sites in a worst-case scenario.

Delegates from the United States and Europe present in the nuclear talks last week expressed disapproval and disappointment over Iran's demands. If the negotiations fail and the US and Israeli authorities advocate for a military attack on Iran, the hypothetical military practice would be used to prepare for the worst-case scenario. According to the United States, Iran is a menace to international peace and would harm or threaten Israel's existence.

Despite the Pentagon's refusal to discuss prospective anti-Iranian drills with Israel, sources say that the US would most likely push Iran to abandon its nuclear ambitions during the nuclear talks. However, no official confirmation of the probable preparations has been made. Earlier last week, US military chiefs stated that Iran's nuclear program is irrational, as per Republic World.

Related Article: UK, Israel Work Together To Stop Iran From Gaining Nuclear Weapons; Israeli Leader Worries That Rival Will Get Sanctions Relief

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The Ukrainian army said that the country's military did not have sufficient resources to repel a potential full-scale attack by Russia if the conflict begins without support from Western forces, including the United States.

Recently, on the 30th anniversary of the founding of Ukraine's armed forces, the country's president, Volodymyr Zelensky, visited and toured the trenches this week. The official announced the delivery of various military equipment, including tanks, armored vehicles, and ships. They will be used to support frontline units engaged in fighting off Russian forces and Kremlin-backed separatists.

Ukrainian Defense Against Russia

While the new weapons systems may be able to ward the opposition in the slow-moving war of attrition that has lasted for years, the head of Ukraine's military intelligence service, Gen. Kyrylo O. Budanov said that what the country's army has is not sufficient to fight against a full-on Russian assault that Moscow could be planning.

There are now an estimated 100,000 troops amassed across Ukraine's eastern, northern, and southern borders. Officials also revealed that there were more troops on the way but argued that without a significant influx of resources the country's military does not stand a chance against Russian troops, the New York Times reported.

Read Also: Trump Continues to Tease Possible 2024 Re-Election Bid, Causing Confusion Within Republican Party

Budanov argued that Ukrainian forces could become quickly overwhelmed if the Russian military deploys airstrikes and rockets targeting vulnerable, strategic positions. The attacks could stifle key elements of the country's army.

Full-Scale Attack

An expert said that it was highly unlikely for the Ukrainian forces to repel a full-scale attack by Russia despite the country's assembly of troops. More and more Russian troops and military equipment are gathering in locations near the Ukrainian border. This has caused the U.S., along with some of its allies and partners, have continued to raise concerns about the potential of Moscow's invasion of Ukraine.

Late last week, United States President Joe Biden's administration's officials revealed that U.S. intelligence indicated Russia could conduct an invasion of Ukraine early next year. The number of troops that Moscow could deploy is estimated to be as large as 175,000 based on multiple reports, Business Insider reported.

Despite the desperate need of Ukraine, President Biden on Wednesday told reporters that the United States was not considering sending troops to the country amid rising tensions with Moscow. The Democratic leader said that the idea was not on the table. While the U.S. had a moral obligation to NATO allies, the obligation did not extend to Ukraine, he added.

In a statement, CIA Director William Burns said that he believed Russian President Vladimir Putin was positioning his troops in a strategic way to allow them to act quickly and decisively once given the order. The situation comes after Biden had a call with Putin on Tuesday, attempting to deescalate the situation between Russia and Ukraine. The Democrat warned that if Moscow invaded Ukraine, the White House would enforce strict economic penalties against Russia. "I made it very clear, if in fact, he invades Ukraine, there will be severe consequences," said Biden, The Hill reported.



Related Article: US Appeals Court Rejects Trump's Bid To Prevent House Select Committee From Accessing White House Records, Citing Importance of Jan. 6 Investigation

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The Austrian federal government is imposing a $4,000 fine on residents who refuse to get vaccinated against the coronavirus infection that they will have to pay every three months in an attempt to boost the country's inoculation rates.

The new rule will affect residents who are 14 years and older and is set to take effect in February. On Nov. 19, the Austrian government announced its plans to impose a general vaccine mandate that will start on Feb. 1. Currently, the region only has a 68% vaccination rate, one of the lowest across Western Europe.

Vaccine Mandate Fine

The $4,000 fine on unvaccinated individuals who are not exempted will have to pay a varying amount based on their income and other financial obligations. The Cabinet minister who handles constitutional issues, Karoline Edtsadler, said that the Austrian government still had an obligation and a need to increase vaccination coverage. The official said the decision was made to prevent the implementation of more lockdowns in the country.

Eligible exemptions to the new rule will include pregnant women, even if they are advised to get vaccinated against the coronavirus infection. Additionally, those who are unable to get the shots due to various medical reasons will not be fined as well as individuals who have been infected and recovered from the virus in the past six months, said Health Minister Wolfgang Mueckstein, the New York Daily News reported.

The situation comes as many Austrians are doubtful of the efficacy and safety of the coronavirus vaccines, a view which is shared and encouraged by the far-right Freedom Party, the Parliament's third-biggest party. Three weeks ago, the country recorded peak numbers of coronavirus cases, forcing authorities to enforce a fourth national lockdown and make vaccinations mandatory for everyone.

Read Also: New York Gov. Kathy Hochul Announces Suspension of Elective Surgeries in Westchester County Due to Rising COVID-19 Cases, Declares State of Emergency

During a news conference on Thursday that was attended by Edtsadler and Mueckstein, the minister for constitutional affairs said that the government was not trying to punish unvaccinated residents. Instead, the official said they wanted to win people over and convince them to choose to get the vaccination to protect themselves and their fellow countrymen.

Low Vaccination Rates

The vaccine mandate will last until January 2024 and must be approved by parliament but already has two opposition parties supporting it, arguing that it would easily pass. Mueckstein said they would have quarterly vaccination deadlines and have authorities check a central vaccination register to check who is in it, Aljazeera reported.

In shortened proceedings, Austrian government officials could fine residents up to $680. The new vaccine mandate will have authorities reminding residents to get vaccinated every three months or have a medical doctor certify their right to be exempted before the next cutoff date.

Edtsadler said that there were still more than a million Austrians who have yet to get vaccinated against the coronavirus infection. A number that the official said was "too many" and added that the government wanted to show solidarity with everyone so the region can regain its freedom.

The enforcement of the latest lockdown caused Austria's seven-day infection rate to decline, recording only 432.6 cases per 100,000 residents, a decrease from the day before the lockdown which recorded more than 1,100 cases, Fox News reported.



Related Article: Newly Developed Plant-Based COVID-19 Vaccine Shows Positive Results; New Drug Discovered To Work Against All Mutations of Omicron Variant

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A child and three people were discovered shot to death in an apparent murder-suicide in Wisconsin. Officials in Milwaukee discovered the terrible crime during a welfare check at a house on South 49th Street and West Oklahoma Avenue on Wednesday.

At about 11:45 am local time, police were dispatched to the property for a welfare check. They located four deceased victims in the house. Three adults and one juvenile were killed, according to cops.

Boy is among 4 dead in Milwaukee incident

One of the dead victims is believed to have shot the other three before committing suicide, according to police. The identities and ages of the victims, as well as the alleged gunman, have not been revealed.

Per The Sun, the inquiry is still underway. According to police, there is no active threat to the public at this time. Autopsies are scheduled for Thursday, according to the Milwaukee County Medical Examiner's Office. Investigators request anybody with information to contact Milwaukee police at 414-935-7360 or Crime Stoppers at 414-224-TIPS, or utilize the P3 tips app to remain anonymous.

According to medical examiner data, Wilhelm was Kevin's father and the two lived in the duplex's upstairs apartment on the 3100 block of South 49th Street. Woodruff and the suspect, Holmes, shared a basement apartment, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel via Yahoo reported.

According to the medical examiner, Wilhelm was discovered dead in his kitchen while his son was discovered dead in a corridor. In the upper unit, Woodruff was also discovered dead in a corridor. In the downstairs unit, Holmes was discovered dead. Milwaukee police have not released any further information regarding the shootings, stating that the circumstances surrounding the event are still being investigated.

Read Also: Ex-Arizona Nurse Gets 10-Year Sentence After Sexually Assaulting Incapacitated Woman in Care Facility

Another crime in Milwaukee

In the meanwhile, authorities are looking into how a suspect died while in police custody. It happened following a traffic check on Wednesday night, according to Milwaukee police. Chief Jeffrey Norman of the Milwaukee Police Department attended a press conference on Thursday afternoon to try to explain what had transpired.

Officers pulled a car stopped in the 1600 block of South Caesar Chavez Drive at 8 pm, he said. Norman explained that the stop was not random and was part of an ongoing drug investigation. A 27-year-old Milwaukee man was detained and taken to District 2 headquarters, as per WISN.

Officers saw the suspect required medical assistance while they were there, Norman said. According to the chief, they suspect he consumed unknown drugs before being apprehended. He was taken to Ascension St. Francis Hospital for treatment by officers.

The individual was medically cleared at the hospital, according to Norman, and he was returned to District 2. He was transported to Froedtert Hospital for medical treatment when another medical emergency occurred while he was there.

The chief believes the guy man was in a holding cell and not in a squad car when he had the medical issue. According to Norman, the man was conscious when he was transferred to the hospital.

On Thursday morning, he was pronounced dead at the hospital. The man's identity has not been revealed. His remains was sent to the Milwaukee County Medical Examiner's Office on Friday, where an autopsy will be performed.

Toxicology findings are usually given after several weeks. The death is being examined as a possible drug overdose, according to the Medical Examiner's Office. Two policeman have been assigned to administrative duties.

One was 38 years old and had worked for the department for 6 years. The other was 30 years old and had worked for the department for three years. Their identities were likewise kept private. The timeframe is still being looked at, according to Norman.

It's unclear whether the police encounters were recorded on film by police body cameras. The West Allis Police Department will undertake the in-custody death investigation.

Related Article: At least 3 Students Dead, 8 Others Injured After 15-Year-Old Suspect Fires Semi-Automatic Handgun, Forcing Classrooms To Lock Down

@YouTube

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Every year, the royals would attend the Christmas Day service as a family, as has been a custom for decades. The event will take place in Sandringham, but it is likely that the monarch will also attend a ceremony at the Norfolk estate's St Mary Magdalene chapel.

Due to the COVID-19, all members were unable to attend last year, but it is anticipated that they will be able to attend this year. Prince Andrew wishes to "keep a low profile" for the holidays because the Duke "privately expressed a lot of anxiety around Christmas," according to royal sources.

Prince Andrew goes for another horse ride

Prince Andrew is "apprehensive" about attending the event with the rest of the family, according to them. The Ghislaine Maxwell trial in the Thurgood Marshall US courthouse in lower Manhattan has already addressed Prince Andrew three times, as per Express.co.

She is charged with eight counts, including luring kids and sex trafficking. If found guilty of all counts, Maxwell, a former associate of Jeffrey Epstein, could face an 80-year term. She refutes all of the allegations.

At the trial, Epstein's pilot, former housekeeper, and one of the accused victims, Jane, have all testified about Maxwell and Epstein's alleged crimes. The pilot, Larry Visoski, was questioned if Prince Andrew had ever flown on the plane with Jeffrey Epstein during their connection.

As Ghislaine Maxwell's sex trafficking trial proceeds, Prince Andrew grows anxious. Yesterday, the Duke of York, 61, went horseback riding near Windsor Castle. A photo of pedophile Jeffrey Epstein and Maxwell visiting the Queen's Balmoral estate was seen by a US court.

The photo depicts the couple relaxing on a bench on the deck of a log house on the royal estate's grounds. The never-before-seen photo was taken at Her Majesty's Scottish residence in 1999, when it was alleged that Prince Andrew hosted multi-millionaire pedophile Epstein.

According to accounts, Epstein's entourage, which included a woman in her twenties, was entertained by Prince Andrew. Pictures of Maxwell giving Epstein a disturbing foot massage were also revealed, The Sun reported.

Read Also: Prince Charles Deeply Hurt, Shocked Over Prince Harry's Saudi Billionaire Scandal Comment

Famous names embroiled in Ghislaine Maxwell trial

Per The Independent, Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell mingled with presidents, Hollywood stars, and royalty, entertaining them on private jets and at opulent estates across the world.

Those decades-long ties are playing a significant part in Maxwell's sex-trafficking trial in Manhattan's federal courthouse. According to her accusers, Maxwell would regularly brag about her personal relations with Bill Clinton, Prince Andrew, and Donald Trump.

Prosecutors said that having access to influential individuals was both enticing and scary and that victims of Epstein's abuse were hesitant to cease contact for fear of what he and his strong allies may do.

The prosecution heard that images of the late paedophile with Fidel Castro and Pope John Paul II adorned the walls of Epstein's Palm Beach house in Florida. The FBI discovered a cache of images of Maxwell and Epstein on private aircraft and in exotic locales across the world when they searched Epstein's Manhattan townhouse in 2019.

On the second day of Maxwell's trial, Epstein's 25-year pilot Larry Visoski told the court that Prince Andrew, Clinton, Trump, and Kevin Spacey were among the passengers on the so-called 'Lolita Express.' Visoski is also bringing famed violinist Itzhak Perlman to Michigan for the Interlochen Center for the Arts summer program, which he co-founded with Epstein.

On flights, he recalled former Maine Senator George Mitchell and Ohio Senator John Glenn. None of the well-known figures listed by Visoski are accused of wrongdoing in connection with Maxwell's prosecution.

Related Article: MPs Call for Probe Over Claims That Financier Pays Prince Andrew's $2 Million Loan; Banker Seated at Front Row Seat at Princess Eugenie's Wedding

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Mexican authorities reported that at least 53 people died after a trailer filled with migrants crashed into a truck and overturned in Southern Mexico on Thursday, with local authorities saying the majority of the victims were the ones riding the trailer.

The Attorney General's office issued a statement that revised the death toll, which was first reported at 49. There were at least 58 people who got injured from the accident, three of which were severe, said the Civil Protection service of Chiapas state, which borders Guatemala.

Dozens of Dead Migrants

In a statement, Mexican Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard said that some of the victims who died included foreign nationals. In a Twitter post, Ebrard expressed his condolences to the victims and their families, saying that they were communicating with the State Government and Civil Protection regarding the accident to potentially contact the foreign ministries of the affected nations.

In another Twitter post, Mexican President Andres Manual Lopez Obrador said he deeply regretted the tragedy in Chiapas that involved Central American migrants. The official said it was a very painful incident and extended his solidarity with the victims' families, CNN reported.

In an interview broadcast on Foro TV, the state director of civil protection, Luis Manuel Garcia Moreno said the majority of the victims were citizens of Guatemala, based on statements from survivors. The official added that preliminary investigations found the cause of the accident was a mechanical problem.

Read Also: Jussie Smollett Attorney Says Actor Plans To Appeal Guilty Verdict in Alleged Fake Hate Crime Scheme

Thousands of migrants pass through Mexico while hiding inside tractor-trailers similar to the one that crashed on Thursday. This was to avoid checkpoints set up by the country's national guard and immigration agency. The majority of migrants were traveling to the U.S. border.

Recently, United States President Joe Biden's administration has received scrutiny for the large number of migrants arriving at the southern U.S. border. This has caused the American federal government to rely on Mexico to stop the flow of people coming to the border, the Washington Post reported.

Immigration to the U.S.

The majority of the hundreds of thousands of migrants who are fleeing poverty and violence in Central America are paying smugglers to illegally transport them in crowded and dangerous trucks over a long journey. The situation comes as last month, a migrant caravan heading through Chiapas made the trek on foot after the local government's recent crackdown on people willing to lift migrants to the border.

This meant that many of the migrants had to carry their children in their arms under the blistering heat and downpours prominent in southern Mexico's rural states. The government's tactic attempts to break the will of migrants and see if they give up on traveling to the American border.

Many have wondered how the recent accident does not happen more frequently amid the scores of families standing inside cramped and unsafe trailers for hours. One of the biggest, and most frequent causes of concern among migrants traveling in these conditions is suffocation when smugglers fail to provide sufficient ventilation or hydration for the hours-long trip inside the vehicles, BBC reported.



Related Article: Microsoft Co-Founder Bill Gates Talks About His Life Over the Past Year, Details Foundation's Progress

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Attorney General Letitia James wants to question Donald Trump regarding the civil fraud allegations against his organization.

According to reports, the New York City attorney general wants to subpoena Trump so that the ex-POTUS could sit in a deposition early next year. If approved, James will ask Trump whether his organization manipulated valuations of its real estate properties.

If Trump is found guilty of any wrongdoing, James could file a civil lawsuit against him. However, she won't be able to file criminal charges against the ex-president. After all, Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. is the one in charge of conducting a criminal probe against Trump.

Trump Organization, executives face criminal probe

Throughout the past two years, investigators in the criminal probe have already charged Trump's company with fraud. They are now looking at the possibility that the Trump Organization misled banks and tax officials about the value of the company's assets, according to the Huffington Post.

Vance Jr's probe already resulted in the filing of charges against Chief Financial Officer Allen Weisselberg, as well as the Trump Payroll Corporation. An indictment against them revealed a years-long scheme to help Weisselberg and other executives avoid taxes on their salaries.

Read Also: Andrew Cuomo's Brother Chris Cuomo Suspended For Breaking CNN's Rules; Network Says They Understand It's Family First

Donald Trump's lawyer slams Letitia James

But Trump's lawyer, Ronald Fischetti, slammed James' plans to subpoena his client by saying it's purely political as a witch hunt.

"We will wait until we see what they show us in their subpoena and we will respond with our motions. This is purely political and he has done nothing wrong and we are not surprised at all," Fischetti said via CNBC.

A spokesperson for the Trump Organization also released a statement criticizing James. They said that so many issues affect the state, but the attorney general wants to investigate Trump. The spokesperson also accused James of targeting Trump because of her plans to run for governor. However, James announced her decision to back out of her gubernatorial race on Thursday, according to CNN.

Letitia James withdraws from gubernatorial race

Instead, James will run for re-election as the attorney general of New York. In her statement, James said that she realized that there are a lot of ongoing investigations, and she wants to finish the job.

If James did not withdraw her gubernatorial candidacy, she would've gone head to head with New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, the state's first female governor. She would've also become the first Black and first female attorney general of New York.

Hochul took over as governor in August after former Gov. Andrew Cuomo resigned from his job amid allegations of sexual misconduct. These were detailed in a report from James' office.

However, Cuomo denied the allegations even though several women already came forward, according to NBC.

Months after the allegations first made headlines, Cuomo's younger brother, Chris Cuomo, was fired from his hosting job. A spokesperson for CNN said that Chris broke the rules and did not tell them exactly what his involvement was in covering up his brother's indiscretions.

Related Article: Andrew Cuomo Drags Joe Biden In His Testimony Released By New York Attorney General Letitia James

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Taiwan said it was "deeply saddened" after Nicaragua has become the latest country to sever international, diplomatic relations with Taipei in favor of Beijing amid the rising tension between China and the island nation.

Authorities of the small democratic nation said that Nicaragua had "disregarded [their] many years of friendship." On the other hand, China praised the Central American nation's decision and demanded that any country who wished to have diplomatic relations with Beijing must cut ties with Taiwan.

Nicaragua Cuts Diplomatic Ties With Taiwan

The news comes as the US State Department on Friday called for democracies worldwide to "expand engagement with Taiwan" in opposition to China's aggressive claims. Beijing has long since seen Taiwan as a breakaway province that it plans to unify with the mainland in the future.

However, Taipei sees itself as a democratically-governed, independent country although it has never formally declared independence from mainland China. Since President Tsai Ing-wen took office in May 2016 and ruled over Taiwan, the country's list of international allies has decreased from 21 to 14, BBC reported.

Nicaragua's decision is similar to those made by other Central American nations, such as Honduras and Guatemala. In a televised announcement on Thursday, Nicaragua's Foreign Minister Denis Moncada said that the People's Republic of China was the only legitimate government representing all of China while speaking from the capital city Managua. The official said that Taiwan was an "undoubted part of the Chinese territory."

Read Also: Jussie Smollett Attorney Says Actor Plans To Appeal Guilty Verdict in Alleged Fake Hate Crime Scheme

During his speech, Moncada announced that his nation was cutting diplomatic ties with Taiwan and stopped all contact or official relationship with the island nation. Since the end of the Chinese civil war more than 70 years ago, mainland China and Taiwan have had separate governing bodies.

Now, Taipei has become a flourishing multi-party democracy; but the ruling Chinese Communist Party has recently begun to consider the island as an inseparable part of its territory. However, Beijing's claims come as it has never once controlled the island nation.

Rising International Tensions

El Salvador, Burkina Faso, and the Dominican Republic all announced in 2018 that they were no longer recognizing Taipei as a separate nation from China. In 2019, the same decision was made by the Solomon Islands and Kiribati, CNN reported.

Taiwan's foreign ministry said that as a member of the international community Taiwan had the right to exchange and develop diplomatic relations with other nations worldwide. Taipei officials said the country would continue to promote "pragmatic diplomacy" in an attempt to expand its international space.

China has repeatedly claimed that Taiwan had no right to the trappings of a state, recently stepping up pressure to win the favor of Taipei's remaining international allies. China's ambassador at the United Nations, Zhang Jun, said that Beijing was highly commending Nicaragua's decision, arguing that the One-China principle was a widely accepted consensus within the international community.

The cutting of ties between Nicaragua and Taiwan is also a severe blow to the United States after the American federal government imposed sanctions on Nestor Moncada Lau, a national security adviser to Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega. United States authorities allege that Lau operated an import and customs fraud scheme in an attempt to give profits to Ortega's government, CNBC reported.



Related Article: Senate Approves Legislation To Help Congress Prevent US Government From Going Into Default by Raising Debt Ceiling Without Filibuster

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Former Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi could reportedly spend the rest of her life in jail following the multiple charges filed against her.

According to reports, Kyi denied all the charges, but she was still sent to jail. Initially, Kyi was sentenced to four years behind bars for incitement and breaking COVID-19 rules during last year's election campaigns. This was later reduced to just two years behind bars.

However, the Nobel Peace Prize winner is still facing ten other charges that could send her to jail for the rest of her life.

Aung San Suu Kyi detained by military for ten months

According to CNN, the verdict didn't come as a surprise because Kyi was already detained by the military when it seized power earlier this year.

The former leader of Myanmar was kept in an undisclosed location even though her supporters believe she was given unfair treatment because of her political affiliations.

Read Also: Former Hong Kong Delivery Man Ma Chun-man Dubbed As 'Captain America 2.0' Says He Doesn't Regret Protesting Despite Almost Six-Year Jail Sentence

Following Kyi's imprisonment, the United Nations human rights chief Michelle Bachelet denounced her conviction. However, Myanmar's Ministry of Foreign Affairs fired back by criticizing the U.N. for their one-sided judgments against the court's decision.

"It is not appropriate to make one-sided judgment against the decision of the court which falls within the domestic jurisdiction of a sovereign country. Such acts constitute interference in the judiciary process and internal affairs of Myanmar," a spokesperson said via Reuters.

Aung San Suu Kyi's supporters want her freed

As of press writing, Kyi still has thousands of supporters in Myanmar. However, analysts believe she's no longer the driving force behind the country's pro-democracy movement and anti-junta resistance. After all, the country's future is now being decided by the people, who desire freedom and rights to democracy.

On the other hand, Kyi's critics believe that she ruled through a cult of personality and said that she was reluctant to accept other viewpoints. Her ways of ruling were eventually rejected because Myanmar is a highly diverse nation with over 135 ethnic nationalities.

Former Myanmar leader made mistakes

David Mathieson, an independent analyst from Myanmar, said that one of Kyi's mistakes was that she didn't empower democracy from the grassroots up. Instead, she imposed democracy downward.

Paing Ye Thu, an activist and support of Kyi, said they would continue to treat her as their leader even though she's imprisoned and can't defend herself.

Thu was imprisoned for two years after her poetry and dance routine, which poked satirical fun at the military junta, was deemed offensive.

Aung Kyaw, who was beaten nearly blind by soldiers, couldn't help but laugh at Kyi's sentencing. After all, he also suffered a similar fate when he was placed in solitary confinement for eight months for filming their looting, according to The Daily Beast.

However, Thet Swe Win, a well-known peace activist, said that Kyi made mistakes in the past, especially for supporting the military's actions against the Rohingya minorities, so she's being punished. But Win said that the goal is to bridge differences and for justice to prevail.

Related Article: Indian Nationals Call for Comedian Vir Das' Arrest Following Controversial Monologue That Defamed Country

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Illinois state Rep. Jonathan Carroll recently revealed that he received death threats after announcing new legislation called HB 4259.

According to reports, the new legislation states that unvaccinated residents of Illinois will be responsible for paying their hospitalizations and medical expenses if they test positive for COVID-19.

The bill was first announced on Monday, but three days later, Carroll said he would no longer pursue it after realizing how divisive it was.

"Due to the unintended divisive nature of HB 4259, I've decided not to pursue this legislation. Based on feedback and further reflection, we need to heal as a country and work together on common-sense solutions to put the pandemic behind us," Carroll said via NBC Chicago.

Rep. Jonathan Carroll reveals threats affected his entire family

Carroll added that violent threats made against him, his family, and his staff are reprehensible. He also encouraged everyone to engage in a more positive discourse regarding public health issues.

While speaking with the Chicago Sun-Times, Carroll confirmed that he received death threats from different people. He also received racial slurs, and someone also sent his Rabbi an email saying they would attack the synagogue he attends.

Someone published his home address on Twitter, but the platform immediately removed the information after he reported it.

Read Also: Illinois Democratic State Rep Kelly Cassidy Files Bill That Will Allow Women To Sue Men For Unwanted Pregnancies

He also reported the threats that he received to the Illinois State Police.

Carroll also said that people could no longer have conversations about controversial matters because they would be attacked when they speak up. He pointed out that he listened to those who disagreed with his legislation and understood where they were coming from. But when it was his turn to speak up, he was just criticized.

Senate President Don Harmon pleads for respectful engagements

Senate President Don Harmon said that death threats have no place in politics. He also encouraged everyone to be respectful when engaging in debates.

Reports also confirmed that no Democratic leader signed Carroll's bill. But they showed interest in it. However, Republicans immediately opposed the legislation.

Rep. Adam Niemerg, who introduced legislation protecting locals from being discriminated against if they refuse to get vaccinated, said that it's important for everyone to have the freedom to decide on their own.

Carroll argued that his legislation would provide an incentive to those already inoculated, especially when it comes to their insurance coverage.

Illinois could impose different types of vaccine mandates

According to Fox 32 Chicago, Illinois lawmakers are considering different vaccine mandates following a sudden spike in active cases in the city.

Rep. Ann Williams said that lawmakers should look at whether they should impose mandates at bars, restaurants, and other similar establishments. However, the representative stressed that she doesn't support the shutting down of restaurants and bars in the state.

Williams added that she doesn't support vaccine mandates per se because they have a negative connotation.

Williams previously proposed a bill to sue individuals who fake their vaccination status. Whoever will be found guilty could face criminal charges.

Related Article: Illinois COVID-19 Surge Much Worse Than Last Summer; New Active Cases Surpass 20,000

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The US government has won its High Court case to extradite Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks.

Following WikiLeaks' publishing of hundreds of thousands of leaked papers connected to the Afghanistan and Iraq conflicts, Assange, 50, is wanted in the United States for an alleged conspiracy to obtain and divulge national defense material.

Last year, a US grand jury charged him on 18 counts, 17 of which are related to the Espionage Act. According to Assange's lawyers, if convicted, he faces up to 175 years in prison and would be confined to a hell-hole US supermax prison.

Julian Assange can be extradited to the US

District Judge Vanessa Baraitser ruled in January that Assange should not be extradited to the United States, citing a serious and oppressive danger of suicide. On the other hand, the US government challenged the decision, claiming that it had offered diplomatic assurances that Assange would not be subjected to the harshest punishments either before or after his conviction.

According to the report, Assange's sentence is expected to be between four and six years. On Friday, the Lord Chief Justice Lord Burnett, sitting with Lord Justice Holroyde, decided to favor the United States after a two-day hearing in October.

The matter has now been forwarded to Priti Patel, who will ultimately judge Assange's extradition, but he is anticipated to fight today's decision, Daily Mail reported. His father, Richard, has previously stated that if necessary, he will take the legal fight all the way to the Supreme Court.

According to court records filed Friday, the senior justices considering the appeal were satisfied that these guarantees addressed the concerns that drove the judge to make her ruling in January.

Per CNN, the courts ruled that the matter be sent back to Westminster Magistrates' Court, with a district judge directing that the case be sent to the UK Home Secretary, who would decide whether Assange should be extradited to the United States.

According to a statement posted on the official WikiLeaks Twitter feed, Assange's fiancee Stella Moris called the High Court judgment a "grave miscarriage of justice." After WikiLeaks disclosed thousands of sensitive data and diplomatic cables in 2010, Assange is wanted in the United States on 18 felony counts.

He is being imprisoned at London's Belmarsh Prison. He may face up to 175 years in jail if convicted. In April 2019, British officials raided the Ecuadorian Embassy, where Assange had been holed up for seven years, and detained him for violating a US extradition demand.

Read Also: Authorities Start Manhunt For Michigan School Shooting Suspect's Parents After Prosecutors Charge Them

UK High Court overturns ruling against WikiLeaks' founder

The allegations against Assange stem from WikiLeaks' publication of 500,000 classified papers outlining military actions in Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as secret cables regarding Guantanamo Bay, in 2010, as per Gizmodo.

The infamous 'Collateral Murder' film, which depicted the July 2007 assassination of eleven people by an American Apache helicopter crew, includes Reuters journalists Namir Noor-Eldeen, 22, and Saeed Chmagh, 40.

According to footage captured by the helicopter gunsight after receiving approval from a superior officer, the helicopter crew fired on a group of Iraqi civilians in New Baghdad, killing 11 individuals and badly injuring two children.

US' James Lewis QC said the district judge based her judgment on Assange's intellectual ability to evade suicide prevention measures, which might become a "trump card" for anybody opposing their extradition regardless of the other state's resources.

The four binding diplomatic guarantees given were a "solemn issue and are not handed out like smarties, according to Lewis. If extradited, Assange would not face special administrative measures (SAMs) or be held at the ADX Florence Supermax facility. The US would agree to Assange being sent to Australia to complete any prison sentence he could get.

The US government also claimed that Assange is fit to be extradited. Lewis tells the court that Assange's mental illness doesn't even come close to being serious enough to preclude him from being transported abroad.

However, Assange's attorneys contended that the guarantees about the WikiLeaks founder's possible treatment were "meaningless" and "vague" as they fought the US' request to reverse the extradition ban. While under observation in the Ecuadorian embassy in London, the court also heard that Assange faced a "dangerous, scary, and frightening environment."

Related Article: Court Upholds Guilty Verdict Against Najib Razak; Former Malaysian PM Expresses Disappointment, Claims He Created Wealth for Malaysia

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New Samsung Galaxy S22 leaks teased a lot of exciting features. The smartphone might include the first-ever Dark Red color option.

Furthermore, it might be optimized for 512 GB integrated storage. Unfortunately, data miners also warned that the amazing smartphone could be low in supply.

Many fans anticipate Samsung's next biggest flagship device for 2022. The series line will be Samsung Galaxy S22, S22 Plus and S22 Ultra. Although nothing official has been announced for these smartphones at the time of writing, data miners managed to dig enough information to get a rough idea of the incoming devices.

Samsung Galaxy S22 Leaks: Specs and Color Options

The information comes from Twitter leaker Snoopytech, who notably has a long track record for Samsung related rumors. The leaker's latest post described the S22 lineup, storage, RAM configuration and color options. Snoopy said unnamed retailers confirmed the details.

Here are the confirmed #GalxyS22 Options (by retailers):



Galaxy S22 5G:

8 + 128 GB/256 GB

Pink Gold/Green/Black/White



Galaxy S22+ 5G

8 + 128/256 GB

Pink Gold/Green/Black/White



Galaxy S22 Ultra 5G

12 + 128/256 GB and 16 + 512 GB 

Dark Red/Black/White

(Render by @OnLeaks ) pic.twitter.com/srY6DnelDm  Snoopy (@_snoopytech_) December 9, 2021

The base model for Galaxy S22 notably shares the same specs as its predecessor, with its 8 GB memory and 128 GB to 256 GB storage.

The second model, Galaxy S22 Plus, also has the same configuration of 8 GB memory and 128 GB to 256 GB storage. The changes between these two smartphones might be on its camera setup, which is unfortunately not yet leaked,

The top-end variant, Galaxy S22 Ultra, features the biggest improvements that Samsung fans are excited for. Its RAM options are 12 GB to 16 GB, and its storage option adds an extra 512 GB variant.

The colors for all these models will include the traditional black and white. However, two new options are teased for S22 and S22 Plus, which are green and pink gold. Unfortunately, there are no picture samples.

The S22 Ultra also features an exclusive and gorgeous dark red color option. Fans can get an idea of this unique color through YouTuber Technizo Concept's video.



Read Also: Bitcoin, Ethereum, Top Cryptocurrencies Continue Free Fall in Crypto Crash: $500 Billion Wiped Out

Samsung Galaxy S22 Price: Is it Expensive?

According to GSMarena, the Galaxy S22 series is rumored to start at the same price as Galaxy S21 this year. It will presumably cost somewhere near $800.

Samsung is allegedly planning to ship out 14 million S22 units, 8 million S22+ units, and 11 million S22 Ultra units. This rumor further supports the claim that S22 might be affordable due to its predicted popularity.

Samsung Faces Chip Shortage: 2022 Supply Issues

Unfortunately for fans, the renowned smartphone marker reportedly admitted having issues with the ongoing semiconductor chip shortage.

According to Android Headlines, Samsung recently held a meeting to discuss business strategy for 2022. Senior executives said the global chip shortage may continue until the second half of 2022, which will undoubtedly affect stocks.

Samsung partnered with chip production firms like TSMC to make up for the missing components. However, this is not a reassurance on the availability of the stocks.

Be warned that the details mentioned in this article are mostly taken from data miners and leakers. Readers should take this information with a pinch of salt.

Related Article: Elizabeth Holmes Net Worth 2021: Theranos Founder Falls to 0 After Reaching More Than $4.5 Billion
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By Park Jae-hyuk







Unionized workers at Shinhan Bank and Industrial Bank of Korea (IBK) are asking their managements to institute a four-day workweek, backed by presidential candidates including Lee Jae-myung of the ruling Democratic Party of Korea and Sim Sang-jeung of the minor opposition Justice Party.







Shinhan Bank union leader Kim Jin-hong, who was reelected earlier this month, is in talks with the bank's management to test a four-and-a-half-day workweek next year, as a preparatory step to a four-day workweek which he promised to the union members.







According to the union, the four-and-a-half-day workweek will not reduce the bank's regular weekly working time from 40 hours. Under the system, employees are just allowed to work for only four hours on one of five weekdays, if they can finish doing the remaining four hours of work during the other four weekdays.







IBK union leader Kim Hyung-seon, who was reelected last month, also promised the union members that he will continue making efforts for the introduction of a four-day workweek to the nation's banking industry.







The state-run bank's unionized workers have been demanding a reduction of the workweek since earlier this year. They met the Justice Party presidential candidate on Nov. 1 to discuss this issue.







In Korea, several mobile platform providers, such as Woowa Brothers, Viva Republica and Good Choice Company, and conglomerates like SK Group are testing a four-and-a-half-day workweek for their employees to use their time more flexibly.







However, there remain concerns about the possibility of banks instituting a four-day workweek, because elderly financial consumers here, who are unfamiliar with online banking, have already felt inconvenienced with banks shortening their business hours and shutting down their branches.







In addition, the bank unions are asking the management not to cut their salaries even after the introduction of a four-day workweek, so some young jobseekers expressed worries about the probability of banks becoming more reluctant to hire new employees.


Samsung Fire & Marine Insurance CEO nominee Hong Won-hak, left, and Samsung Asset Management CEO nominee Seo Bong-kyun / Courtesy of each company



By Park Jae-hyuk



Samsung Fire & Marine Insurance Executive Vice President Hong Won-hak was named the insurer's new CEO, while Samsung Securities Sales & Trading Division Head Seo Bong-kyun was recommended to lead Samsung Asset Management, the companies said Friday.



Samsung Card CEO Kim Dae-hwan, who was promoted to "president" from "vice president" the same day, retained his position. Samsung Life Insurance and Samsung Securities also kept their CEOs unchanged.



All of the five major financial units of Samsung were initially expected to allow their chief executives to continue their duties, considering their earnings performances throughout this year.



Samsung Fire and Samsung Asset, however, eventually decided to bring a generational shift to their leadership, respectively, as Samsung Electronics did during its year-end reshuffle earlier this week, in line with Vice Chairman Lee Jae-yong's latest intention to create a "New Samsung." His vision features a corporate restructuring plan aimed at paving the way for young, talented workers to move up the promotional ladder faster regardless of their rank or age.



On a related note, current Samsung Fire CEO Choi Young-moo and Samsung Asset CEO Shim Jong-keug reportedly decided to step down in spite of their remaining terms, to give greater opportunities to younger executives.



According to Samsung Fire, its 57-year-old CEO nominee joined Samsung Life in 1990 and has developed expertise in the insurance business by working for both of Samsung's life and non-life insurance units. He also served as a Samsung Electronics executive in charge of business strategies.



"We expect Hong to enable the qualitative growth of Samsung Fire, marking its 70th anniversary next year, improving its competitiveness," a Samsung Fire official said.



Samsung Asset's CEO nominee, who was born in 1967, built most of his career at foreign investment banks, including Morgan Stanley, Citigroup and Goldman Sachs.



He joined Samsung Securities in late 2019, and has led the brokerage's asset management business.



"As an expert in asset management, who has worked in the industry for about 30 years, Seo will help Samsung Asset solidify its leading status in the domestic ETF market and expand its global presence," a Samsung Asset official said.



Their appointments will be finalized after the forthcoming meetings of each company's board of directors and shareholders. Samsung's financial units will also announce a reshuffle of its lower-level executives in the near future.


Mirae Asset Financial Group headquarters in central Seoul / Courtesy of Mirae Asset Group

By Anna J. Park



Mirae Asset Global Investments has won a years-long lawsuit against China's Anbang Insurance Group over a $5.8 billion acquisition deal involving luxury hotels in the United States, the Korean company said Friday.



It said the Delaware Supreme Court upheld the state's Chancery Court decision made in December 2020, which ruled in favor of Mirae Asset that the Chinese company was in breach of contract.



With the win, Mirae Asset is expected to receive about 700 billion won ($594 million) from Anbang Insurance, including a pre-paid contract deposit of $580 million as well as legal costs.



The legal battle goes back to September 2019, when Mirae Asset signed a contract with Anbang Insurance to buy 15 U.S. hotels owned by the Chinese insurer. Mirae Asset paid $580 million as a contract deposit for the deal.



The contract was supposed to be implemented by April 2020, yet Mirae Asset decided to withdraw from the contract in May 2020 on the grounds that Anbang had failed to carry out its prerequisite obligations under the contract.



Mirae Asset asserted that Anbang had not revealed that it was being sued in the U.S. over the matter of the hotels' ownership, as well as the fact that Anbang did not respond to Mirae Asset's requests for related information.



The two companies soon became embroiled in lawsuits, with each suing the other over the issue. Anbang sued Mirae Asset, saying that the firm had no justifiable cause for not implementing the contract, while Mirae Asset countersued Anbang in Delaware.



The trial court's ruling sided with Mirae Asset, recognizing that Anbang brought extensive changes to the hotels' management, such as shutting down hotels and firing employees, without Mirae Asset's agreement. This course of events was regarded as Anbang's failure to meet the precedent condition on the contract that business be "conducted in the ordinary course of business," giving Mirae Asset the right to terminate the contract.



Anbang appealed to a higher court after the ruling last December, yet Delaware's Supreme Court confirmed the ruling of the first trial, bringing victory to Mirae Asset.



Mirae Asset is expected to use the 700 billion won, which will be returned soon, for overseas real estate investments as well as potential M&As.


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Korean-Canadian author-filmmaker Sylvia Yu Friedman tells stories of women sold to Chinese farmers, coerced into prostitution in Asia



By Kang Hyun-kyung



Every year, an unspecified number of North Koreans risk their lives for the chance of a better life outside the impoverished nation. They secretly cross the border to arrive in China, hoping to go to a third country for a new life free of fear and starvation. If caught, they must pay the price: they may be executed or sent to labor camps notorious for their appalling human rights conditions.



For some, particularly women, their audacious decisions to escape to China are based on false promises. They are lured by human traffickers to cross the border for "jobs."



Once arriving in China, their lives are no longer under their control. They may be raped by traffickers, who are Chinese or ethnic Koreans who were born and raised in China, before they are sold to poor, older Chinese farmers. Some are forced into prostitution or to perform online pornography. Scared by death threats or potential harm to their family members left behind in the North, they find it impossible to end the sexual bondage by themselves.





Sylvia Yu Friedman / Courtesy of Sylvia Yu Friedman

Sylvia Yu Friedman, an award-winning filmmaker and investigative journalist who chronicled this modern-day sexual slavery in Asia in a documentary series, raised fresh worries about the ramifications of such enslavement: the traumas of victims' lives are passed down onto their children.



"There are thousands of children of North Korean mothers and Chinese fathers. Hundreds, if not thousands, of these children are abandoned by their mothers if they escape to a third country like South Korea, or if they are sold again to another husband," she said.



Friedman recently released a book titled, "A Long Road to Justice: Stories from the Frontlines in Asia," published by Penguin Random House. The memoir is her personal account of the stories of these women who were deceived into leaving their homes for other countries in Asia, including China and Hong Kong, for jobs, but ended up getting trapped in sex slavery.



Her documentary project led her to meet a wide range of people involved in contemporary sex trafficking, including smugglers, human traffickers and their victims, as well as frontline humanitarian workers who are trying to rescue victims.



The Korean-Canadian author and journalist came to live with the piercing pleas of those women, after interviewing several North Korean women who were sold to Chinese farmers, survivors of Japan's war-time system of sex slavery, and African and Asian women who were coerced into prostitution in Hong Kong's red-light district.





"A Long Road to Justice" by Sylvia Yu Friedman
This undated photo, provided by the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency, Dec. 8, shows U.S. Army Cpl. Benjamin Bazzell, 18, of Seymour, Conn., killed during the Korean War, who has been identified. AP-Yonhap



Beverly Guliuzza was overcome with a mix of shock, sadness and relief when military officials told her they had identified the remains of her brother, Benjamin Bazzell, an Army corporal who went missing in action during the Korean War in 1950 when she was just 12.



The notification to Guliuzza, now 84 and living with family in Everett, Washington, came last year, seven decades after she had last seen her older brother in their hometown of Seymour, Connecticut. The identification was publicly announced Tuesday by the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency, an arm of the U.S. Defense Department.



''When I found out all of this, it was just very sad but also very thankful that there was closure because it had always been missing in action and we never knew,'' Guliuzza said in a phone interview Wednesday. ''When someone is reported missing in action it's like you're in limbo. My mom never got to have closure.''



Bazzell was only 18 when he was killed on Nov. 30, 1950, when enemy forces attacked his unit in North Korea near the Chosin Reservoir, military officials say. He served with the 57th Field Artillery Battalion, 7th Infantry Division.



His body could not be recovered after the battle and remained missing until 2018, when North Korea gave the U.S. 55 boxes purportedly containing the remains of American service members killed during the Korean War. The exchange happened after then-President Donald Trump met with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.



Military officials say they used DNA and anthropological tests, as well as reviewed circumstantial evidence, to identify Bazzell and 76 other missing service members whose remains were in the boxes.



More than 7,500 Americans remain unaccounted for from the Korean War. The military has identified the remains of more than 600 Americans who went missing during the war and returned their bodies to their families since 1982, officials say.



Bazzell was among more than 1,000 U.S. soldiers and Marines killed in the fighting near the Chosin Reservoir from the end of November to mid-December in 1950, according to the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency. They were among a United Nations force of about 30,000 soldiers and Marines that was overwhelmed by an estimated 120,000 Chinese soldiers who flooded into North Korea during the war, the agency says.



Guliuzza has warm memories of her brother, who was nicknamed Benny. She said he was ''just a sweet, sweet boy'' who would wake her up late at night when he got home from his bowling alley job to tell her he had candy.



She said he voluntarily enlisted in the Army to the dismay of their mother, Helen Bazzell, who was never the same after he went missing.



''The effect on my mother was horrible,'' Guliuzza said. ''It changed the rest of her life. ... My mom used to be a happy person, and I remember she was always whistling. She stopped. She became kind of obsessed with trying to found out more information from the Army. Mom never gave up, never. She always felt that he would be coming home.''



Guliuzza said her brother will be buried at Tahoma National Cemetery in Kent, Washington. A date has not been set. (AP)


Prime Minister Kim Boo-kyum speaks at a COVID-19 response meeting in Incheon, Dec. 10. Yonhap



Booster shots for adults can be administered three months after their primary vaccination, Prime Minister Kim Boo-kyum said Friday, amid rising concerns over a surge in COVID-19 infections.



The decision to cut the dosage interval between primary vaccination and booster shots for people aged 18 or older was announced as the country's daily new coronavirus infections surpassed 7,000 for the third straight day amid worries about the omicron variant, while the number of serious COVID-19 cases showed no signs of letup.



"Our medical response capability is quickly burning out as daily cases remained in the 7,000s for a third day in row, with seniors aged 60 or older accounting for 35 percent of the cases," Kim said during a meeting of the Central Disaster and Safety Countermeasures Headquarters. "Our top priority task is a swift inoculation of vaccines."



A booster shot refers to an extra dose of a vaccine given after the protection provided by the original jab wanes over time.






A monitor at the disaster control center in Seongnam City Hall, Gyeonggi Province, shows 7,022 daily new COVID-19 cases for Thursday, raising the total caseload to 503,606. Yonhap



Gov't urged to reinstate tough distancing measures



By Lee Hyo-jin



The government may have failed to curb the current spread of the coronavirus by placing too much reliance on its vaccination plans, according to medical experts, as the country grapples with its worst surge in infections seen during the pandemic.



The experts called for reintroduction of strong social distancing measures to prevent the situation from spiraling out of control.



The Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KDCA) reported 7,022 new infections for Thursday, raising the total caseload to 503,606. The number of daily infections has stayed over 7,000 for three consecutive days after hitting an all-time high of 7,174 on Tuesday.



The number of patients in serious condition stood at 852, while 53 deaths were reported, bringing the total death toll to 4,130.



The country added three more cases of the Omicron variant, pushing the total to 63. The three new cases were traced to a church in Incheon, southwest of Seoul, linked to the first cases of the variant in the country.



Alarmed by the worsening virus situation, the government has announced Friday it would shorten the interval between primary vaccinations and booster shots for all individuals aged over 18 to three months, from the current five months, with an aim to speed up rollout of booster shots.



Eligible recipients will be able to make reservations on the KDCA website for their third dose starting Monday.








South Korea hopes to increase cooperation with Africa in natural resources and is ready to work together with the continent in terms of global supply chains, Seoul's vice foreign minister said Friday.







In an address to an academic forum on South Korea-Africa relations in Seoul, Vice Minister Choi Jong-kun pointed out Africa's growing role in coping with disruptions of global supply chains in resources.







"Africa possesses approximately a third of the world's natural resources, especially crucial raw materials for electric vehicles and rechargeable batteries, in which we are very much at the cutting edge," Choi said at the 4th Seoul Dialogue on Africa.







"Korea recognizes Africa's increasing presence in the global value chain, and we are very much ready to work more with Africa," he added.







The vice minister said South Korea hopes to create a "partnership for co-prosperity" with Africa through cooperation in health care and climate change response.







Seoul unveiled plans earlier this week to donate COVID-19 vaccines to Africa by working with the African Union, the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) and global vaccine distribution platform COVAX Facility.







The event, co-organized by the foreign ministry and the Seoul-based Korea-Africa Foundation, was also attended by former U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and Gabonese Ambassador to South Korea Carlos Boungou, who serves as dean of the African group of ambassadors here. (Yonhap)


President Moon Jae-in delivers a pre-recorded message at the virtual Summit for Democracy hosted by U.S. President Joe Biden, Dec. 9. Yonhap



President Moon Jae-in said Friday that South Korea is an "exemplary testament" to the value of democracy, citing the Korean people's struggle against authoritarianism and move for peaceful revolutions.



Moon made the remarks at a virtual democracy summit of leaders of more than 110 countries hosted by U.S. President Joe Biden.



The summit was a campaign promise of Biden, who has prioritized achieving the goal of rallying the nations of the world against the forces of authoritarianism. Key U.S. competitors, including China and Russia, that were not invited, have strongly denounced this week's summit as causing global division.



"Korea is an exemplary testament to the value of democracy," Moon told the summit. "Although having undergone colonial rule and a war, we have developed in compliance with international free trade norms and became the first country that ascended to the ranks of developed economies from a developing country."



"Every time authoritarianism suppressed the Korean people, they protected democracy and moved it forward through peaceful civil revolutions," Moon said.



"Korea will build on this experience and contribute to global democracy," Moon said. "Democracy never stopped, not even for a second. It is only renewed every time."



Moon said the world could overcome the COVID-19 crisis through democracy.



"Although a new variant 'omicron' is spreading, we will surely surmount the COVID-19 crisis together," Moon said. "As always, the strongest power we have in overcoming crises is our collective intelligence - democracy."



"Democracy did not stop at fighting authoritarianism," Moon said. "It enabled humanity to prosper with the power of freedom and creativity."



The summit came just days after the U.S. announced it will stage a diplomatic boycott of the upcoming Winter Olympics in Beijing due to China's human rights abuses.



In response to the U.S. announcement, the South Korean government repeated its principled support for the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics, again expressing hope that it will contribute to peace and inter-Korean relations.



The Moon Jae-in administration hopes for a breakthrough in efforts to revitalize the Korea peace process from the Beijing Olympics, similar to that from the 2018 PyeongChang games.



Some view the Beijing event as a potential chance for significant progress in the Moon government's push for the declaration of a formal end to the 1950-53 Korean War. (Yonhap)






Top military officials of South Korea and the United States have met to discuss the possibility of conducting an assessment required for the envisioned transfer of wartime operational control (OPCON) earlier than the current plan of next fall, sources said Friday.







Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Won In-choul and Gen. Paul LaCamera, the head of the South Korea-U.S. Combined Forces Command (CFC), held closed-door talks Thursday to discuss the timing of the full operational capability (FOC) assessment, the second part of a three-phase program to verify if South Korea is ready to lead the allies' combined forces, the sources said.







The meeting came a week after U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin reportedly agreed to consider advancing the timing for the FOC assessment during a courtesy call on President Moon Jae-in in Seoul.







During their annual security talks here last Thursday, Defense Minister Suh Wook and Austin agreed to conduct the assessment next fall, though Seoul has apparently sought more progress in the OPCON transition process before the term of the Moon administration ends in May.







During the meeting with LaCamera, Won was expected to reiterate Seoul's hope to conduct the FOC assessment in the first half of next year.







"I understand Commander LaCamera listened to Won's view, and there may be more meetings between them going forward," a source said on condition of anonymity.







The allies completed the initial operational capability assessment, the first part of the verification program, in 2019.







The FOC assessment has been delayed due in part to the COVID-19 pandemic. But last week's bilateral agreement to fix the year for the FOC assessment raised hopes that the overall OPCON transfer process will pick up pace. (Yonhap)


Police investigates an apartment complex in Goyang, Gyeonggi Province, where Yoo Han-gi, head of the Pocheon Urban Corp., was found dead, Dec. 10. Yonhap



The head of a regional city development company allegedly connected to a massive development corruption scandal was found dead Friday in an apparent suicide, police said.



Police said they discovered the body of Yoo Han-gi, head of the Pocheon Urban Corp., who was reported missing by his family early Friday, at around 7:40 a.m. near his home in Goyang, north of Seoul. Yoo reportedly left home after leaving behind a will.










Prosecutors sought a five-year prison sentence Friday for a former high school teacher charged with luring one of her students into having sex with her.







The former teacher at a high school in Incheon, west of Seoul, was indicted on charges of sexually abusing the student by having sex with him multiple times between 2019 and 2020 when she was the student's homeroom teacher.







In April this year, the Incheon District Court sentenced her to 1 1/2 years in prison, suspended for three years, saying she confessed to the crime and had no record of previous crimes, even though the gravity of her crime is heavy.







Prosecutors appealed the decision.







During a hearing Friday at an appellate division of the court, prosecutors demanded five-year imprisonment for her, saying the accused had sexual intercourse multiple times with the victim, who was not mature enough to develop his own perspective on sex.







"The victim has suffered irreparable mental distress and his parents are asking for a stern punishment," prosecutors said, demanding a heavier punishment.







During the hearing, the former teacher asked for leniency, saying she deeply regrets her actions. (Yonhap)






A car ferry set sail from South Korea's western port of Incheon to the country's southern resort island of Jeju on Friday in the resumption of the route in more than seven years following the deadly sinking of the Sewol ferry.







The 27,000-ton Beyond Trust was to arrive at Jeju port around 9 a.m. on Saturday.







The route had been closed since April 2014, when the 6,800-ton Sewol ferry sank off the country's southwestern coast, killing 304 people, mostly high school students on a school excursion to Jeju.







The Beyond Trust, built by Hyundai Mipo Dockyard, is 170 meters long, 26 meters wide and 28 meters high and can sail at a speed of up to 43 kilometers per hour, carrying 850 passengers, 487 cars and 65 containers, according to the shipyard.







Hyundai Mipo Dockyard is a subsidiary of Korea Shipbuilding & Offshore Engineering, the subholding company of global shipbuilding group Hyundai Heavy Industries Group. (Yonhap)


Main opposition People Power Party Chairman Lee Jun-seok / Yonhap



The main opposition People Power Party (PPP) renewed its calls for a special counsel investigation into the Seongnam development scandal on Friday after a suspect in the case was found dead in an apparent suicide.



Yoo Han-gi, head of Pocheon Urban Corp., a regional development company, was found dead near his home in Goyang, north of Seoul, earlier Friday, police said.



Yoo had been under investigation by prosecutors for allegedly taking bribes in connection with a 2015 apartment development project in Seongnam, south of Seoul, when he worked for that city's urban development corporation.






People Power Party presidential candidate Yoon Suk-yeol / Yonhap



A Seoul court on Friday dismissed a lawsuit filed by prosecutor general-turned-main opposition presidential candidate Yoon Suk-yeol against a disciplinary action imposed on him by the justice ministry while he was in office.



The Seoul Administrative Court dismissed Yoon's case seeking to reverse the ministry's suspension of his duties as chief prosecutor in December 2020, saying the requirements for litigation were not met in the case.



The decision means it is pointless to pursue the case as Yoon has left the office.



Accusing Yoon of violating political neutrality and other misconduct, the ministry then under Minister Choo Mi-ae suspended him for two months in the culmination of a feud between the two over prosecution reform and other politically sensitive investigations.






Roh Jae-seung, a young politician who had been appointed to a co-chair post of the election committee of the main opposition People Power Party's (PPP) presidential candidate Yoon Suk-yeol, announces his resignation from the post, Thursday at the National Assembly in Seoul, after facing strong criticism over his inappropriate remarks on politically sensitive issues. Joint Press Corps



By Jung Da-min



The presidential election committees of the major parties are facing criticism for their "thoughtless" addition of personnel to the organizations without fully verifying their past records on and offline.



The latest setback in personnel appointments came from the main opposition People Power Party (PPP) as Roh Jae-seung, who had been appointed as a co-chairman of the election committee, stepped down from the post on Thursday, only three days after being appointed, over his recent online remarks defaming the 1980 Gwangju Democratization Movement, humiliating the victims of the tragic event and those who lost loved ones as well as those supportive of the country's democratization movement.



Roh had been embroiled in controversy earlier due to his remarks disparaging those in the low income bracket, saying they take advantage of poverty to political ends in what was an indirect criticism of DPK presidential candidate Lee Jae-myung, who has garnered public support for his personal story of rising from his difficult beginnings as a poor factory worker.



Roh had gained popularity for his speech during the campaign period for the April 7 Seoul mayoral by-election, supporting Oh Se-hoon, the PPP candidate who was elected as Seoul mayor, in which he presented a perspective of young voters, introducing himself as an ordinary 37-year-old man who happened to deliver the speech by chance.



After the ruling Democratic Party of Korea's (DPK) crushing defeat by the PPP in the April 7 by-elections, which could be seen as barometer of public opinion ahead of the presidential election to be held next March, political watchers have noted that the percentage of those who voted for Oh was higher among men in their 20s and 30s. The political parties here have since been in fierce competition to appeal to these young voters, upon observations that they have now become swing voters unlike in the past when they were considered to be mainly supporters of the country's liberal bloc.



It was not the first time an appointment to the conservative party's election committee backfired.



The PPP had raised controversy earlier on Dec. 5 over its appointment of dermatologist and TV personality Ham Ik-byeong as a co-chairman of its election committee, which it withdrew the same day immediately after facing criticism over Ham's past remarks disparaging women. Ham had said in a media interview in 2014 that women only deserve three quarters of the rights given to men as they do not perform mandatory military service, and that only women who deliver more than two babies deserve the same rights given to men.





Cho Dong-youn, a professor of Seokyeong University's Department of Military Studies, answers reporters' questions regarding her appointment as the standing co-chairwoman of the Democratic Party of Korea's election committee, during a press conference at the party's headquarters on Yeouido, Seoul, Nov. 30. Cho resigned from the post, Dec. 3, after suffering political attacks over her private life. Joint Press Corps
Lee Jae-myung, front, the presidential nominee of the ruling Democratic Party, participates in a ritual at the Pyoam Shrine in Gyeongju, North Gyeongsang Provincel, to report to his ancestors his intention to run in the March 9 presidential election. Yonhap



Lee Jae-myung, the presidential nominee of the ruling Democratic Party (DP), called on the main opposition People Power Party (PPP) on Friday to agree to immediately execute its own proposal to spend 100 trillion won ($85 billion) on compensating small businesses hit by the pandemic.



Lee suggested the rival parties jointly pass a supplementary budget through a provisional session of the National Assembly this month to fund the payments.



"When it comes to people's livelihoods, there is no ruling and opposition party or progressive and conservative camp," he told reporters during a visit to Gyeongju, 371 kilometers southeast of Seoul.



"Since the opposition has raised the issue of providing 100 trillion won in support, rather than making empty promises that they will do something once they are elected, we should immediately do the things we can," he said.






Diving for family: A woman diver lugs a bag of shellfish she gathered from the seabed. She has shouldered the burden of being a breadwinner to support her family. Courtesy of Yang Jong-hoon



By Kang Hyun-kyung



"When you discover abalone while diving down into the sea, go for it. But if you see it while swimming up to the water's surface, don't even think about it."



This is a common safety tip among haenyeo, or the women divers of Jeju Island. Depending on each diver's capacity, these women hold their breath for a minute or so while gathering shellfish under the sea. Around the time they ascend to the water's surface, they have almost reached their physical limit. So if they are distracted by a small gain on their way to the surface, they could lose much more -- their life.





A woman diver swims up to the water's surface with an octopus in hand. Courtesy of Yang Jong-hoon



Each time they descend beneath the waves, they risk their lives.



This potentially fatal nature of their profession makes the haenyeo stay alert at all times while working. They rarely open their hearts to strangers. A haenyeo with a big smile on her face is a rare scene to see in real life or a photograph.



Documentary photographer Yang Jong-hoon's images of haenyeo are rare, partly because he captured these women with innocent smiles.





Courtesy of Yang Jong-hoon



His photography received attention as this year marks the fifth anniversary of the haenyeo being inscribed on UNESCO's intangible cultural heritage list.



The haenyeo, who juggle two to three other jobs in order to make a living, feel at home when they work with the Jeju-born photographer. They are not distracted by his camera, and simply go about their job as if nobody's watching.





Courtesy of Yang Jong-hoon



As a Jeju native, Yang came to develop his own skills to make the women feel at home during his photo shoots. Before taking photographs, he converses with the women using in the Jeju dialect. He wants to fathom what's deep in their hearts. The women gradually open up to the photographer, greeting him and asking if there's anything they can do for him.



The haenyeo are women who while keeping up their tough exterior still hold soft hearts on the inside.




Proper policies urgent to tackle low births, rapid aging

South Korea is expected to record its first decline in total population this year, according to Statistics Korea Thursday. The agency came up with a further grim assessment on the demographic situation facing the nation, saying the population will likely decrease by 14.18 million over the coming 50 years. This year, the population is estimated to reach 51.75 million, down from last year's 51.84 million.



The population will likely continue to fall to 37 million in 2070, the agency said based on its medium variant projection. It attributed the possible decline in population to the nation's low birthrate and rapid aging coupled with a drop in the inflow of foreigners amid the persevering COVID-19 pandemic.



The latest data is shocking as it stands in contrast to its forecast in 2018 that the nation's population will not decline until 2029. The agency's worst-case scenario sees the population dwindle to 31.53 million in 2070, the same level seen in 1969. South Korea's birthrate stands at 0.84, only half the average for OECD member countries.



Should this trend continue, the demographic disaster will accelerate and the population decline will have far-flung effects on the nation's sustainability. As a state is composed of territory, sovereignty and population, population is the key factor that determines the national prestige.



A possible drop in population will result in reduced consumption, weakening economic vitality. Most worrisome is that the nation's working population, aged between 15 and 64, will likely decrease by 20 million within 50 years. The warning from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) is noteworthy in that South Korea's potential GDP growth per capita will decline to 0.8 percent during the 2030- 2060 period, due mainly to the low birthrate and population decline.



The nation's portion of working population amounted to 72.1 percent last year, the highest among 38 OECD member countries. Yet, it is estimated to drop to the lowest 46.1 percent in 2070. Senior citizens aged more than 65 will account for 46.4 percent in 2070, which means 100 working people will have to care for 117, the highest in OECD.



South Korea spent 225 trillion won ($191 billion) from 2006 to 2020 to cope with the low birthrate and aging society. Yet, the government's heavy spending has failed to deter the demographic crisis, as it has mainly been focused on cash provision to support childbirths and nurturing.



The Moon Jae-in administration has also been suffering setbacks in its bids to tackle the issue, though it has been mobilizing diverse measures such as operating a taskforce team. The demographic problem is difficult to resolve as it relates to pending issues such as marriage, childbirth, childcare, employment and housing. In this context, it is highly disappointing that major presidential candidates of the ruling and opposition parties have failed to offer tangible policies to cope with these serious issues. They should be able to persuade the people with their own appropriate policies and visions.






By Baek Byung-yeul







The Korea Trade-Investment Promotion Agency (KOTRA) said Friday that it had hosted an investor event providing opportunities for domestic and overseas investors to meet local companies in virtual space.







The state-run agency said that it held what it calls a "PINVEST" event using its metaverse platform, Thursday. PINVEST is a portmanteau that combines "pinpoint" and "invest."







The event was KOTRA's first investment consultation event using the virtual reality platform. Through the metaverse platform, KOTRA aimed to offer investors an alternative to attending face-to-face meetings amid the ongoing pandemic.







"The meeting was designed to help investors directly choose companies they are interested in and have time for in-depth meetings in an independent virtual space," the agency said.







Not only did potential investors and foreign investment companies participate, but there were also about 70 domestic investment customers, including local governments, the Free Economic Zone Authority and the Chamber of Commerce and Industry, KOTRA added.







"Through the PINVEST event, which used the metaverse platform, we will strengthen counseling support so that overseas investors can achieve successful results when making investment decisions and operating their businesses," a KOTRA official said.


Apple's iPhone 13 / Courtesy of Apple



By Kim Bo-eun



Apple has come under fire for failing to promptly fix a defect in its latest iPhone launched here in October.



The U.S. tech giant took measures last month to address problems with the incoming call function found in the iPhone 13. But it is still receiving consumer complaints about problems with incoming calls.



The problem is mostly related to the signal for incoming calls and disruptions when receiving text messages.



Under the circumstances, Apple is blaming LG Uplus, considering that most iPhone 13 users tend to be subscribers of LG Uplus, one of the three mobile carriers here.



Posts on online communities showed subscribers of the two other mobile carriers, SK Telecom and KT, also experienced the same problem.



But the two have stated they have not received any official complaints from users.



Users of the iPhone 13 opened a groupchat on the KakaoTalk messenger app to share the problems they have experienced and discuss how to address the matter. The groupchat has over 600 participants as of Friday.



Apple made an updated iOS available on Nov. 12 to address the defect, but this has not solved the problem. LG Uplus, meanwhile, began operating a team dealing with complaints on Dec. 3, and is lending iPhone 12 phones to iPhone 13 users while the problem is being addressed.



Both Apple and LG Uplus have looked into the problem but have failed so far to find its cause. The Ministry of Science and ICT plans to call officials of Apple Korea and the three mobile carriers to come up with a solution.



Apple on Thursday issued a belated statement on the matter over a month after customers began experiencing failures in the iPhone 13's call function.



"We are making efforts to provide the best experience for customers," Apple stated. "We are looking into the issue that has affected some LG Uplus customers."



The iPhone 13 series was launched on Oct. 1 in Korea. The iPhone 13 Mini is priced at 950,000 won ($805), the iPhone 13 at 1.09 million won, the iPhone 13 Pro at 1.35 million won and the iPhone 13 Pro Max at 1.49 million won.



Users have complained online that the iPhone 13 is essentially an "expensive brick," stating a phone cannot be called a phone if its phone call function does not work.


A POSCO flag waves outside the company's building in Seoul. / Yonhap



By Baek Byung-yeul



POSCO has decided to split off its steel business and become a holding company, in a bid to find new growth engines and enhance shareholders' value, the steelmaking giant said Friday.



As a result of the decision, made at a board meeting, the newly established POSCO Holdings will be responsible for group-wide investment and new business development.



The holding company will own a 100 percent stake in its steel business unit. The company will hold a shareholders' meeting on Jan. 28 to obtain approval from shareholders for this transition to a holding company system.



The business overhaul has long been anticipated among market players, as the company thought that it had been undervalued despite its strong performance. Even when the company tried out new businesses, such as for secondary battery materials, it saw its growth potential being devalued, due to the perception that it is involved in steel only.



Regarding the background for the business overhaul, POSCO said that it has been seeking various ways to sustain growth and enhance corporate value in the rapidly changing business environment, such as by transitioning to low carbon emissions.



To this end, the company decided that it was essential to discover future business opportunities and switch to a holding company structure dedicated to the management of such investments, it said.



With this reorganization, POSCO said that it plans to establish a balanced growth system by choosing steel, secondary battery materials, lithium, nickel, hydrogen energy, infrastructure and food businesses as core items. By enhancing the competitiveness of each business, POSCO Group also aims to more than triple its corporate value by 2030.



"There have been several discussions on the transition to a holding company system in the past, but there is a consensus among the board members that now is the best time to reorganize the business structure while revolutionary changes that we have not experienced in the past are taking place," a company official said.



"We will strengthen our expertise by business and discover and foster new business opportunities in the future under the holding company system, as well as enhance corporate value and pave the way for the group's sustainable growth by creating synergy between group-wide projects," the official added.



POSCO started as a state-run company and was privatized in 2000. Its largest shareholder is the National Pension Service, owning a 9.74 percent stake. The industry view is that chances are low that the National Pension Service will oppose POSCO's restructuring plan in January's shareholders meeting, given that the government has encouraged conglomerates to improve their governance structures through transitioning to a holding company system.



On the announcement, investors showed a negative response as its stock price closed at 281,500 won ($238), down 4.58 percent from Thursday.


Rescuers and authorities work in the area of the accident of a truck where migrants were traveling, in the Chiapa de Corzo municipality, Chiapas state, Mexico, Dec. 9. EPA-Yonhap



At least 53 migrants crammed into a truck traveling at high speed were killed Thursday in Mexico after the vehicle overturned in the southern state of Chiapas, a major transit point for those trying to reach the United States.



Thousands of people attempt the long and hugely dangerous journey, often seeking a life free of violence and poverty in their home nations in South America.



It is unclear how many people were traveling in the truck but at least 58 were injured, three seriously, according to a preliminary report from the prosecutor's office in Chiapas, bordering Guatemala.



"It was horrible to hear the wailing. I just thought about helping," 18-year-old Sabina Lopez, who lives near the scene of the accident, told AFP.



Luis Manuel Garcia, from the Civil Protection director for Chiapas  which will take over the investigation into the accident  said most of the travelers were from Guatemala.



The driver, who fled the scene, appeared to have been speeding when he lost control of the vehicle on the highway connecting Chiapa de Corzo city with state capital Tuxtla Gutierrez, officials said.



Mexican leader Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador tweeted his condolences, calling the incident "very painful."



Local state governor Rutilio Escandon said that "law enforcement will determine who is responsible," adding that those hurt would be treated promptly.





Workers remove the container from the trailer of a truck that crashed with migrants aboard during a road accident in Tuxtla Gutierrez, Chiapas state, Mexico, Dec. 9. AFP-Yonhap



'Don't close your eyes'



At the roadside AFP saw rows of bodies covered with white sheets as rescue workers, ambulances and police officials swarmed over the scene.



Lopez, who lives in the popular El Refugio neighborhood nearby, told AFP she saw a man pleading with his wounded companion.



"Don't go to sleep, don't close your eyes," she recalled him saying.



"Remember what you promised your mother! Hold on."



Another resident Isaias Diaz  who arrived 15 minutes after the accident  described a "terrible" scene, with "a lot of people lying around, some of them were already dead."



Diaz said he saw "five, six children, injured obviously. People (who had) broken legs, ribs, heads, cuts on their necks, everything."



"The crying, the pain, the desperation. It was a very ugly atmosphere," he said.



Guatemalan President Alejandro Giammattei also pledged to provide any of his countrymen with consular assistance, including efforts to repatriate people.





A view of the bodies of those who died in the area of the accident of a truck where migrants were traveling, in the Chiapa de Corzo municipality, Chiapas state, Mexico, Dec. 9. EPA-Yonhap
Members of China's Communist Party (CCP) have a personal obligation to help tackle the country's plunging fertility rate by having three children, according to a commentary that has since been scrubbed from the internet.



"No party member should use any excuse, objective or personal, to not marry or have children, nor can they use any excuse to have only one or two children," said the article published by China Reports Network, which was published last month but started gaining traction on Wednesday.



"Every CCP member should shoulder the responsibility and obligation of the country's population growth and act on the three-child policy."



Although the original article can no longer be found on China Reports Network, screenshots have been widely circulated on social media and a related hashtag had garnered more than 5.7 million views on Weibo, China's Twitter-like social media platform, as of Thursday afternoon.



Thousands of Weibo users expressed shock and indignation at the commentary, with one citing the Law on the Protection of Rights and Interests of Women which stipulates individuals have the freedom not to give birth.



The opinion piece comes amid growing concern about the country's population crisis, which has pushed local governments to roll out a series of pronatalist policies to address the declining fertility rate and rapidly ageing population.



Births in China have been falling for four consecutive years since 2016 and hit a record low of 12 million in 2020. In some provinces, births are set to drop by close to 20 per cent this year.



Some demographers estimate China could go into population decline as early as this year.



In May, China allowed couples to have three children, ending the two-child policy introduced in 2016. China had a controversial one-child policy, which was strictly enforced with punishments including fines for violators and forced abortions, from 1980.



Beijing has also made it cheaper and easier for couples to have children by increasing parental leave and providing direct payments.



Part of the government's motivation to crack down on the private tutoring sector and property market in school districts is to address the rising costs of education, which remains a major deterrent for parents thinking of having children.



In addition to China's low fertility rate, demographers are worried about the country's ageing population.



According to the 2020 census, 264 million Chinese are aged 60 and above, accounting for 18.7 per cent of the 1.4 billion-strong population.



Last month, China issued new guidelines to better accommodate the needs of the elderly, including strengthening health care facilities, and cultivate a more comprehensive silver economy.



The commentary said party members unable to have children because of age and health conditions should "educate, guide and assist family members and friends to proactively have three children".



"[Party members] should never do nothing when family and friends are not getting married or giving birth, and should never be indifferent about them only having one or two children with any excuse."



The CCP has more than 95 million members.



China Reports Network is affiliated with the China Foreign Languages Publishing Administration, also known as the China International Publishing Group, a state-owned organization.


Advanced Registered Nurse Practitioner-Supervisory

University of Iowa

Hospitals and Clinics





80-100% position will serve Child Health Specialty Clinics in Creston by assessing the needs and conditions of children and youth with special health care needs, including children with behavioral and mental health concerns.



Women and minorities candidates are strongly encouraged to apply.

Selection process will include a Credential and Background Check.



The University of Iowa is an equal opportunity/affirmative action employer. All qualified applicants are encouraged to apply and will receive consideration for employment free from discrimination on the basis of race, creed, color, national origin, age, sex, pregnancy, sexual orientation, gender identity, genetic information, religion, associational preference, status as a qualified individual with a disability, or status as a protected veteran.



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Description

Description Relocation assistance and Visa sponsorship available! The Preschool Outreach Program at The Home for Little Wanderers provides individual play therapy, family therapy, and support for parents and caregivers of children ages birth to 7. The Early Childhood Clinician will provide age-appropriate, culturally sensitive therapy for clients and families in a variety of settings such as preschools, Head Start programs, day care centers, and at our clinical offices in Roslindale, Massachusetts. Valuing Diversity We are committed to excellence in diversity, equity, and inclusion, while simultaneously creating a culture that supports those values. We believe the differences we bring enhance our ability to provide exceptional service and care to diverse children, families, and communities. Moreover, diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging align with our values and our mission to help vulnerable children and their families build permanent, positive change. How You Will Be Making a Difference Provide case management services; act as a liaison with collateral agencies and programs; establish and maintain relationship services that support children's and family's growth. Act as an advocate for families, teach parents to advocate for themselves and their children. Help families develop the skills needed to navigate the social service system.

Utilize treatment modalities that are consistent with program goals and that best fit with clients' age and treatment needs, including play/expressive therapy, group therapy and family therapy.

Perform initial assessment and evaluation of new clients and families. Identify treatment needs and barriers to growth and development. Design treatment plans that address and specify outcomes. Collaborate with clients and family members to develop treatment objectives. Demonstrate cultural awareness and sensitivity.

Work as part of an interdisciplinary team to provide quality care. Attend staff meetings and case conferences; present client material. Consult with supervisor and team members on challenging or difficult client issues. Facilitate communication between various providers.

Submit reports, documentation and billing in a timely manner. Ensure that documentation meets utilization review and quality assurance standards.

Attend in-service training and outside seminars to enhance and develop clinical skills

May provide training, workshops and consultations to teachers, parents and collateral staff

Perform program specific duties and functions

May participate in agency committees

Provide on-call coverage and crisis intervention as needed

May be required to carry mobile device

Depending on the program, may be required to meet certain billing requirements on a weekly basis

Perform other duties as assigned Qualifications Master's degree in social work, mental health or related discipline

Massachusetts licensure (LICSW, LCSW, LMHC, or LMFT) required

Excellent cultural awareness and sensitivity

Computer literate, including Microsoft Office and Internet Explorer, with the ability to learn new software application

Bilingual in Spanish What The Home Can Offer You In addition to the chance to make a lasting impact on the lives of countless youth, The Home for Little Wanderers offers competitive salaries and a comprehensive benefits package including: Extensive training to new staff

Generous time off

Tuition reimbursement

Health and Dental Insurance available upon hire

403(b) Retirement Plan with employer match

Long-term Disability and Short-term Disability Insurance

Life Insurance

And more!









Category



Social and Human Service Assistants

Education



Master's Degree

Job type



Full time



Requirements

See job description.






Zoom is an award-winning workplace. We have been recognized by Comparably as #1 CEO, Company Happiness, Benefits, Compensation, Diversity, and more! Not to mention we've been awarded by Glassdoor as the 2nd Best US workplace & Best Large Company US CEO in 2018, Wealth-front, and Business Insider. Our culture focuses on delivering happiness, our commitment to transparency, and the tangible benefits we provide our employees and our customers. We are looking for a Latin America Account Executive - SMB (Spanish Speaker) with the right energy, competitive spirit, personal drive and track record of success in Sales. This position involves working with business clients with an employee count of 11 - 250 to provide them the right Zoom services that meet their video and online meeting needs. Working in a defined international territory, you will proactively engage with targeted companies, as well as follow up and close on various sources of inbound leads. Responsibilities: Meet or exceed sales and product objectives

Effectively qualify leads and identify prospect needs, engaging technical resources as required

Create client demos/ presentations, quotes/ proposals, and Quarterly Business Reviews (QBRs)

Conduct high-level conversations with C-Level and VP -Level Executives to address business needs

Utilize solution-selling techniques to effectively guide sales process to close

Develop and maintain business within existing accounts, manage complex sales situations and sales campaigns

Up-sell and leverage business from new and established customer relationships

Utilize Salesforce CRM to provide timely and accurate sales activity tracking and status updates

Work strategically with management to deliver forecasts, identify trending opportunities/challenges, and provide recommended solutions

Forecast sales activity and revenue achievement while creating satisfied customers

Resolve client issues in a timely and thorough manner; escalates issues to manager as appropriate

Keep informed of product line, competition and industry trends that may impact client business activities Requirements: 2+ years sales experience in a Technology company

1+ years experience working in a sales position with International customers

1+ years in a full cycle sales role

Direct SaaS/Cloud selling experience

SaaS video or web conferencing solutions selling experience preferred

This position requires the ability to hunt into new accounts, develop and maintain business within existing accounts and manage complex sales situations and large projects

Demonstrated excellence in presentations skill with ability to build relevant, strategic messaging

Presence and proficiency in social media such as LinkedIn preferred

Business forecasting, pipeline development and management skills are required

A proven track record of closed sales, client satisfaction, & team work

Must be detail oriented, organized, ethical, responsible, & self-motivated

Salesforce CRM experience preferred

Internet research skills with excellent PC literacy [Excel, Outlook, Word, PowerPoint]

BA/ BS or equivalent experience

Must be a fluent Spanish speaker in addition to fluent in English Ensuring a diverse and inclusive workplace where we learn from each other is core to Zoom's values. We welcome people of different backgrounds, experiences, abilities and perspectives including qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records as well as any qualified applicants requiring reasonable accommodations in accordance with the law. We believe that the unique contributions of all Zoomies is the driver of our success. To make sure that our products and culture continue to incorporate everyone's perspectives and experience we never discriminate on the basis of race, religion, national origin, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, age, or marital, veteran, or disability status. All your information will be kept confidential according to EEO guidelines. Given Zoom's status as a federal contractor, we are subject to President Biden's Executive Order requiring COVID-19 vaccinations for all US employees. As such, Zoom requires all US employees, including remote employees, to be fully vaccinated. Zoom will consider requests for reasonable accommodations for religious or medical reasons as required under applicable law. Explore Zoom:







Find us on social at the links below and on

Category



Sales Managers

Education



Bachelor's Degree

Experience



2 to 20+ years

Job type



Full time


Position Objective

The Phlebotomist aims to serve patients by executing the best method for obtaining biological specimens and ensuring quality specimen for testing. This position enhances the laboratory and hospital reputation by demonstrating a courteous and professional demeanor during all encounters.

Essential Functions:

Determines and executes the best method for obtaining biological specimens from patients of all ages as required to include venipuncture, capillary, and heel-stick puncture to ensure quality specimens for testing following the established productivity guidelines with minimal errors.

Maintains laboratory supplies inventory and orders appropriate tests in Laboratory Information System (LIS) as requested by authorized provider by accurately reading and interpreting orders and being familiar with test mnemonics.

Maintains safe and clean working environment by complying with procedures, rules, and regulations and that allows for easy staff interchange.

Conserves laboratory resources by using equipment and supplies as needed to accomplish job results; Performs preventative maintenance and troubleshoots problems to the full extent of ability.

Practices proper patient identification verification according to standard work; manages work queues to ensure appropriate and complete patient registration including demographic, insurance information. correct date of service, ordering caregiver and special flags.

Maintains inter- and intradepartmental work flow by fostering a spirit of cooperation (hand offs).

Actively participate in the laboratory quality plan/program (ex. investigative reports, notification of delays, etc.).

Participate in the training of new staff and students by serving as a mentor and technical resource;

Knowledge/Experience:

Minimum Education: High School Diploma or equivalent and specialized training in phlebotomy

Minimum Experience: N/A

Required License/Certifications:

Phlebotomy certification with the National Phlebotomy Association or American Society of Clinical Pathology or eligible; current American Heart Association Health Care Provider Basic Life Support (BLS) CPR certification; requires travel to various sites.

Preferred Qualifications:

Experience: One year of experience working in an acute care facility in an equivalent role.

License /Certifications: Phlebotomy certification with the National Phlebotomy Association or American Society of Clinical Pathology

Working Conditions/Physical Requirements

Medium work . Exerting up to 50 pounds of force occasionally, and/or up to 30 pounds of force frequently, and/or up to 10 pounds of force constantly to move objects.

There is reasonable expectation that employees in this position will be exposed to blood-borne pathogens.

The above is intended to describe the general content of and requirements for the performance of this job. It is not to be construed as an exhaustive statement of duties, responsibilities or requirements.
Sodexo Seniors is seeking an Internal Staffing Manager to support Frontline recruitment for our Senior Living Segment. This Internal Staffing Manager, you will source and recruit hourly individuals. The ideal candidate will reside virtually in either PA or MD to support the business portfolio.

You will use your strong communication, organizational skills and technical knowledge to drive all aspects of recruitment to provide exceptional customer service to our candidates and business partners. The Recruiter will source, screen for and fill a variety of positions in the areas environmental and food services.

Our ideal candidate will drive the recruitment process, source and pipeline candidate for just-in-time and future openings, immerse yourself in Sodexo's business and provide quality recruitment solutions to our business partners.

Key Responsibilities:

work closely with all hiring managers to execute the recruiting process;

source, screen and engage passive and active candidates;

utilize innovative sourcing techniques and strategies to find, connect and recruit top talent;

cultivate a robust network of potential candidates through pro-active market research, events, and on-going relationship management

Is this opportunity right for you? We are looking for candidates who have:

2+ years of high volume recruiting experience

an active and updated network to tap into and continue to build upon

Learn more about Sodexo's Benefits

Not the job for you?

At Sodexo, we offer Facilities Management positions in Corporate, Schools, Universities, Energy and Resources, Government and Agencies, Health Care and Senior Living locations across the United States. Continue your search for Facilities Management jobs.

Working for Sodexo:

How far will your ambition, talent and dedication take you? Sodexo fosters a culture committed to the growth of individuals through continuous learning, mentoring and career growth opportunities.

Make an Immediate Impact.

Sodexo is the North American leader for Quality of Life Services. More than 150,000 Sodexo employees work to improve the quality of daily life for our 13,000 client sites in North America. Sodexo partners with clients to help them attain their strategic vision by developing Facility Management service solutions that increase the effectiveness of their people, enhance their business processes and optimize their infrastructure, which deliver tangible outcomes.

Our client portfolio spans multiple markets across the nation including education, corporate services, health care and government services, which means we can offer a career full of variety, challenge and tremendous growth opportunities.
Sodexo Corporate Services is looking for a Retail Manager 3 to join our team at one of our prestigious accounts in Cambridge MA! The food operation consists of 1 Main Cafe, Starbucks, Micro-Market, and 3 small volume Branded Retail Concepts.

The Retail Manager 3 will assist the GM in overseeing and managing the complete operation, will cover for the GM in their absence. Duties include but not limited to:

managing the day to day of the operation

leading and developing a team of hourly employees

manging our mobile ordering system-location will be a cashless operation.

marketing initiatives

client relationship management

ensuring food quality

customer service

The ideal candidate will have an eye high end restaurant quality food, attention to detail, and excellent communication skills.

This position offers a traditional Business & Industry,Predominately M-F scheduled. Accrue 3 weeks of paid vacation per year (first year pro-rated based on date of hire). Medical Benefits beginning date of hire, and 401K with company match eligible.
ACCA (the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants) will be hosting its third Africa Members Convention (AMC) from 14th to 16th December 2021, for the first time online.

The theme this year is Repositioning the profession in Africa to drive and support economic recovery, sustainability, and social governance which has a forward-looking agenda aimed at helping the profession across Africa and globally build and sustain resilience in a still challenging environment due to Covid-19 and the climate crisis.

In shaping the future of the profession, over 6,000 ACCA members in Africa have been invited, alongside key decision and policy makers across economies who will be engaged during the AMC, in order to drive actionable changes.

Day 1 will focus on the role of African accountants at the heart of the continents route to recovery; day 2 will examine the role of digitalisation on the profession, and day 3 will focus on accountants and their role in policy development in Africa and on the global stage too. Speaking of the event, Jamil Ampomah, director of ACCA Africa says: Weve chosen a broad theme that brings together the issues which confront finance professionals and business leaders every day of their lives. Our theme also builds on the work at our first two Africa Member Conventions. In Ethiopia in 2017 we addressed the impact of socio-economic trends on the future of finance and business in Africa, and in Rwanda in 2019 we explored the evolution of finance as Africa thrives amid disruption.

We believe that this event will help the accountancy profession and its stakeholders deal with the challenges and opportunities ahead for 2022, supporting them to understand the new and emerging environment in which it works.

Key speakers at the AMC include:

1. Ms. Orla Collins FCCA, ACCA president

2. Dr. Ndidi Edozien, Chair at Circular Economy Innovation Partnership

3. Mr. Shailen Ramgoolam, Partner EY, Mauritius

4. Mr. Rodney Ndamba (FCCA), CEO Institute, Sustainability Africa

5. Dr. Bhavish Jugurnath, President of the Africa Emerging Tech Hub

6. Mr Amin Miramago, CEO, Institute of Certified Public Accountants Rwanda, (ICPAR)

7. Ms. Alta Prinsloo, Chief Executive Officer, Pan African Federation of Accountants -PAFA, South Africa

8. Dr. Obiageli Oby Ezekwesili, President of Human Capital Africa and Senior Economic Adviser at Africa Economic Development Policy Initiative (AEDPI).

9. Mr. Edwin Makori, CEO, Institute of Certified Public Accountants Kenya (ICPAK)

ACCA members can register for the AMC online here. ACCA has also opened up this event to non-ACCA members, who can also register at the same address.

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Source: Xinhua| 2021-12-09 12:13:02|Editor: huaxia

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People walk on the street in London, Britain, on Dec. 9, 2021. Britain will move to "Plan B" restrictions to combat the rapid spread of the Omicron variant this winter, said British Prime Minister Boris Johnson on Wednesday. (Photo by Stephen Chung/Xinhua)

LONDON, Dec. 8 (Xinhua) -- Britain will move to "Plan B" restrictions to combat the rapid spread of the Omicron variant this winter, said British Prime Minister Boris Johnson on Wednesday.

At a Downing Street press conference on Wednesday evening, the prime minister asked people to work from home when possible from Monday and that face masks would be a legal requirement in "most public indoor" areas such as theatres and cinemas from Friday.

Proof of two vaccine doses or a negative COVID-19 test will be necessary for those wanting to enter nightclubs and large venues from next week, Johnson said, adding that people who are contacts of Omicron cases could face daily testing instead of undergoing a period of isolation.

However, he said the new measures were "not a lockdown" and people "should not" cancel Christmas parties or Nativity plays, and nightclubs will remain open.

"Plan B" was set out in September and will help to tackle the new variant and reduce the chances of the National Health Service coming under unsustainable pressure, according to the British government.

The most recent data suggest that Omicron has a very high growth rate and is spreading rapidly. Another 131 cases of the Omicron variant have been reported in Britain, taking the total to 568, the UK Health Security Agency said Wednesday, noting that the doubling time could be as little as two-and-a-half days to three days. Enditem

A passenger wearing a face mask is seen on a bus in London, Britain, on Dec. 9, 2021. Britain will move to "Plan B" restrictions to combat the rapid spread of the Omicron variant this winter, said British Prime Minister Boris Johnson on Wednesday. (Photo by Stephen Chung/Xinhua)

People walk past signs for a COVID-19 testing clinic in London, Britain, on Dec. 9, 2021. Britain will move to "Plan B" restrictions to combat the rapid spread of the Omicron variant this winter, said British Prime Minister Boris Johnson on Wednesday. (Photo by Stephen Chung/Xinhua)

Photo taken on Dec. 9, 2021 shows a sign on COVID-19 secure safety measures outside the Criterion Theatre in London, Britain. Britain will move to "Plan B" restrictions to combat the rapid spread of the Omicron variant this winter, said British Prime Minister Boris Johnson on Wednesday. (Photo by Stephen Chung/Xinhua)

People walk past a sign requiring people to wear face coverings in London, Britain, on Dec. 9, 2021. Britain will move to "Plan B" restrictions to combat the rapid spread of the Omicron variant this winter, said British Prime Minister Boris Johnson on Wednesday. (Photo by Stephen Chung/Xinhua)

People walk past a sign requiring people to wear face coverings in London, Britain, on Dec. 9, 2021. Britain will move to "Plan B" restrictions to combat the rapid spread of the Omicron variant this winter, said British Prime Minister Boris Johnson on Wednesday. (Photo by Stephen Chung/Xinhua)

People walk past a sign requiring people to wear face coverings in Knightsbridge in London, Britain, on Dec. 9, 2021. Britain will move to "Plan B" restrictions to combat the rapid spread of the Omicron variant this winter, said British Prime Minister Boris Johnson on Wednesday. (Photo by Stephen Chung/Xinhua)

A woman walks past a sign requiring people to wear face coverings in London, Britain, on Dec. 9, 2021. Britain will move to "Plan B" restrictions to combat the rapid spread of the Omicron variant this winter, said British Prime Minister Boris Johnson on Wednesday. (Photo by Stephen Chung/Xinhua)

Photo taken on Dec. 9, 2021 shows a sign requiring customers to wear face coverings in London, Britain. Britain will move to "Plan B" restrictions to combat the rapid spread of the Omicron variant this winter, said British Prime Minister Boris Johnson on Wednesday. (Photo by Stephen Chung/Xinhua)
Source: Xinhua| 2021-12-09 23:39:46|Editor: huaxia

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Greek educator and author Eleni Geroulanou poses with the teddy bear that inspired her to write the fairytale "Once upon a time, a bear" at the Benaki Museum of Toys, in Athens, Greece, on Dec. 7, 2021. (Xinhua/Marios Lolos)

by Maria Spiliopoulou, Yu Shuaishuai

ATHENS, Dec. 9 (Xinhua) -- A yellow teddy bear, found in a dumpster half a century ago, has become a star exhibits of the Benaki Museum of Toys in Athens since the museum opened in 2017. The adventurous bear, an important collection item in Europe associated with childhood, has also reached China through a children's book written by Greek educator and author Eleni Geroulanou.

In a recent interview at the museum, Geroulanou told Xinhua that literature has a wonderful role to play in building bridges. Books remind us of how much we all have in common, as the emotions and meaning that underlie great stories are universal, crossing cultures and language barriers, she said.

In her fairytale "Once upon a time, a bear" which has been translated into Chinese and published by China's Hebei Children's Publishing House, the teddy bear wanders around the city in search of his home.

He eventually finds a new home and family in the embrace of Maria Argyriadis, a Greek researcher of toys who picked up the bear from the dumpster. Since then, some 20,000 such items have been collected from all over the world and donated to the Benaki Museum, a 19th-century mansion resembling a castle, by the seaside.

"Once upon a time, a bear" is based on the true story of Argyriadis and the teddy bear.

Argyriadis passed away in 2018, but was lucky to see the museum opening its doors in 2017, and the book printed in Greek.

"For Maria, this bear was unique. For the bear, Maria was his family. I was touched by this story and I wanted to make it public," the author said.

Geroulanou said her passion for toys and her family's friendship with Argyriadis inspired her to write this book.

Geroulanou said that she had wanted to work with kids since she was a teenage girl. She studied Early Childhood Education in Athens, continued her studies in Boston, the United States, specializing in Children's Museum Education and returned home to combine museum education with teaching.

As headmistress of a kindergarten in a renowned private school in Athens in recent years, she is constantly close to children.

In 2019 at the Bologna Children's Book Fair in Italy, her Greek publisher showed the book to a Chinese publisher, who loved the story and decided to publish it in China.

Due to the pandemic, Geroulanou has not been able to visit China yet, but she said she is looking forward to, when things get better, meeting with Chinese readers of her book.

Cultural exchanges are essential to the deeper understanding between people from different counties, Geroulanou said. "Through the exchange of ideas and stories, we create stronger bonds with each other, become more inspired and creative as we broaden our horizons," she said.

She said that both Greece and China have rich cultures and traditions dating back to ancient times, and that there is so much to learn from each other.

"I wish the Chinese readers, the young readers, enjoy my book, my story and travel with our bear all this journey, until he finds his home," Geroulanou said.

Greek educator and author Eleni Geroulanou poses with the Greek and the Chinese editions of her fairytale "Once upon a time, a bear" at the Benaki Museum of Toys, in Athens, Greece, on Dec. 7, 2021. (Xinhua/Marios Lolos)

Greek educator and author Eleni Geroulanou poses with the Greek and the Chinese editions of her fairytale "Once upon a time, a bear" at the Benaki Museum of Toys, in Athens, Greece, on Dec. 7, 2021. (Xinhua/Marios Lolos)

Greek educator and author Eleni Geroulanou poses with the teddy bear that inspired her to write the fairytale "Once upon a time, a bear" at the Benaki Museum of Toys, in Athens, Greece, on Dec. 7, 2021. (Xinhua/Marios Lolos)
Source: Xinhua| 2021-12-10 00:32:02|Editor: huaxia

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Soldiers carry out a joint military operation of Uganda and DRC against armed forces in Beni territory, northeastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), on Dec. 8, 2021. At the front-line against armed forces in northeastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Major General Kayanja Muhanga of the Ugandan army (UPDF), has stated his determination to destroy "once and for all" the rebels of the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), a nightmare for the African Great Lakes region. (Photo by Alain Uaykani/Xinhua)

by Alain Uaykani

MUKAKATI, DR Congo, Dec. 9 (Xinhua) -- At the front-line against armed forces in northeastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Major General Kayanja Muhanga of the Ugandan army (UPDF), has stated his determination to destroy "once and for all" the rebels of the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), a nightmare for the African Great Lakes region.

It is from Mukakati, a temporary base where the Ugandan army has settled in the middle of the forest in DRC's Beni territory, long troubled by armed attacks, that the Ugandan officer elaborated in an exclusive interview with Xinhua.

Since November 30, Ugandan forces have officially launched, in collaboration with their Congolese counterparts (FARDC), air and artillery operations against several positions of the notorious ADF rebels in DRC, a nightmare shared by Kinshasa and Kampala, which accuses the ADF rebels of being behind recent terrorist attacks in the Ugandan capital.

A few hours after the launch of the joint military operations, the Ugandan army immediately deployed troops and military equipment that crossed the border from Nobili, in DRC's North Kivu province.

At least 1,700 Ugandan soldiers have already arrived on the Congolese soil since the beginning of the operations, accompanied by about 100 vehicles of the troop transports, battle tanks, armored vehicles and others, according to the Congolese and Ugandan authorities.

RESTORING PEACE THE PRIORITY

For the major general, also the Ugandan commander leading these operations in DRC, it is time to hunt down the rebels until the total restoration of peace.

"After the official launch of operations by airstrikes, we are currently in the phase of deploying our ground troops to continue operations and pursue the enemy everywhere through its hiding places in areas that have been under threat for decades," Muhanga said.

Without specifying a deadline set for this operation, the Ugandan officer however clarified the mission's priority of "eradicating the ADF rebels to allow the return of a lasting peace and commercial activities" in the northeastern part of the DRC.

Referring to the memorandum signed by the two armies that guides the objective of these ongoing operations, he promised that the two armies will do their best within the framework of this memorandum to end the sufferings of their peoples from the violences inflicted by the ADF rebels.

NO HIDDEN AGENDA

Responding to the question raised by some organizations against the deployment of Ugandan armed forces in the DRC, Major General Muhanga reassured that his country has no hidden agenda behind these operations which simply consist of hunting down and eradicating the ADF rebels.

"I do not bring with me machines that consist in exploiting any wealth of the DRC. Our presence on the Congolese soil justifies operations against the rebels in order to bring peace between our countries. We are not interested in the exploitation of minerals or any trade. It is clear," he insisted.

Some poisoning campaigns undertaken by certain personalities and organizations simply aim at diverting the attention and support of the population of two countries, especially that of the DRC on the ongoing operations, he said.

"We have only brought our souls, and we are focused on the complete destruction of the ADF rebels. No one is going to distract us from that main objective. And in order to succeed, we need everyone during this operation," Muhanga added.

POSSIBLE COLLABORATION WITH U.N.

In a press conference held on December 1, the spokesman of the UN Mission in the DRC (MONUSCO) Mathias Gillmann expressed the "respect" of the UN mission for the joint military operations between Kinshasa and Kampala.

"Our mandate allows us to support the Congolese army in its operations. Our mandate does not allow us to support a regional coalition. But that doesn't mean we can't do anything. It simply means that our efforts must be coordinated," he noted.

Responding to the joint operations by the two countries, head of the MONUSCO Bintou Keita asked on December 6 in New York Kinshasa and Kampala to define a "common strategy as part of ongoing operations to ensure the security of the civilian population", still without stating a roadmap on possible participation in the Kinshasa-Kampala joint operation.

Regarding possible collaboration with MONUSCO elements deployed in northeastern DRC, the Uganda Commander stressed that he has no particular problems with MONUSCO, which has already been conducting operations in collaboration with the DRC for several years.

"We have a memorandum signed between us two countries (Uganda and the DRC) to conduct the joint military operations. But if there is ever any support from the UN, then it does not give us any particular problem," he said. Enditem

Soldiers carry out a joint military operation of Uganda and DRC against armed forces in Beni territory, northeastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), on Dec. 8, 2021. At the front-line against armed forces in northeastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Major General Kayanja Muhanga of the Ugandan army (UPDF), has stated his determination to destroy "once and for all" the rebels of the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), a nightmare for the African Great Lakes region. (Photo by Alain Uaykani/Xinhua)

Soldiers sit on a military vehicle during a joint military operation of Uganda and DRC against armed forces in Beni territory, northeastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), on Dec. 8, 2021. At the front-line against armed forces in northeastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Major General Kayanja Muhanga of the Ugandan army (UPDF), has stated his determination to destroy "once and for all" the rebels of the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), a nightmare for the African Great Lakes region. (Photo by Alain Uaykani/Xinhua)

Major General Kayanja Muhanga of the Ugandan army (UPDF) is seen in an exclusive interview with Xinhua in Beni territory, northeastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), on Dec. 8, 2021. At the front-line against armed forces in northeastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Major General Kayanja Muhanga of the Ugandan army (UPDF), has stated his determination to destroy "once and for all" the rebels of the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), a nightmare for the African Great Lakes region. (Photo by Alain Uaykani/Xinhua)

Soldiers from Uganda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) carry out a joint military operation against armed forces in Beni territory, northeastern DRC, on Dec. 8, 2021. At the front-line against armed forces in northeastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Major General Kayanja Muhanga of the Ugandan army (UPDF), has stated his determination to destroy "once and for all" the rebels of the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), a nightmare for the African Great Lakes region. (Photo by Alain Uaykani/Xinhua)

Soldiers are seen during a joint military operation of Uganda and DRC against armed forces in Beni territory, northeastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), on Dec. 8, 2021. At the front-line against armed forces in northeastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Major General Kayanja Muhanga of the Ugandan army (UPDF), has stated his determination to destroy "once and for all" the rebels of the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), a nightmare for the African Great Lakes region. (Photo by Alain Uaykani/Xinhua)

Soldiers from Uganda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) carry out a joint military operation against armed forces in Beni territory, northeastern DRC, on Dec. 8, 2021. At the front-line against armed forces in northeastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Major General Kayanja Muhanga of the Ugandan army (UPDF), has stated his determination to destroy "once and for all" the rebels of the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), a nightmare for the African Great Lakes region. (Photo by Alain Uaykani/Xinhua)

Soldiers carry out a joint military operation of Uganda and DRC against armed forces in Beni territory, northeastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), on Dec. 8, 2021. At the front-line against armed forces in northeastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Major General Kayanja Muhanga of the Ugandan army (UPDF), has stated his determination to destroy "once and for all" the rebels of the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), a nightmare for the African Great Lakes region. (Photo by Alain Uaykani/Xinhua)

Soldiers from Uganda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) are seen during a joint military operation against armed forces in Beni territory, northeastern DRC, on Dec. 8, 2021. At the front-line against armed forces in northeastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Major General Kayanja Muhanga of the Ugandan army (UPDF), has stated his determination to destroy "once and for all" the rebels of the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), a nightmare for the African Great Lakes region. (Photo by Alain Uaykani/Xinhua)

Major General Kayanja Muhanga (Front) of the Ugandan army (UPDF) is seen in an exclusive interview with Xinhua in Beni territory, northeastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), on Dec. 8, 2021. At the front-line against armed forces in northeastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Major General Kayanja Muhanga of the Ugandan army (UPDF), has stated his determination to destroy "once and for all" the rebels of the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), a nightmare for the African Great Lakes region. (Photo by Alain Uaykani/Xinhua)
Source: Xinhua| 2021-12-10 00:50:21|Editor: huaxia

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A worker works at a packaging material industrial park in Kashgar, northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, on Nov. 8, 2021. (Xinhua/Hou Zhaokang)

URUMQI, Dec. 9 (Xinhua) -- Representatives from all walks of life in northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region have lambasted slanderous claims of "forced labor" in the region that have been fabricated by Western anti-China forces.

At a press briefing held in the regional capital Urumqi on Thursday, Xinjiang residents shared their experiences on equal and voluntary employment, as well as the positive impact of government policies on their well-being.

"People in Xinjiang have the right to define our own well-being, rather than the Western anti-China forces who fabricate rumors about us," said Alman Mahmut, a cardiology expert at a Xinjiang hospital.

As a frontline medical professional working in treatment, scientific research and education, Alman Mahmut said people in Xinjiang have enjoyed the tangible benefits of policies on education.

Yasin Muhammad, an official from Yutian County of Xinjiang's Hotan Prefecture, said at the press conference that residents of all ethnic groups in the region have the right to choose their own careers, and their rights are protected by law.

Ablikim Dawut said his training at a local vocational education and training center has secured him a job at an electric company with a monthly income of over 5,000 yuan (787.4 U.S. dollars). The claims of "forced labor" at the center are pure slander, he said.

The forced-labor slur fabricated by anti-China forces is a downright lie, which aims to disrupt the stability and prosperity of Xinjiang and destroy the people's right to subsistence, employment and development, said Hellat, who hosted the press briefing. 
Source: Xinhua| 2021-12-10 04:05:16|Editor: huaxia

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A woman leaves a COVID-19 test and vaccination site near Times Square in New York, the United States, Dec. 7, 2021. (Xinhua/Wang Ying)

Doctors and experts are warning that those who refuse to take COVID-19 vaccines are creating a deadly domino effect for the country -- they are getting sick, spreading the virus to loved ones and the community, filling hospital beds and using up scarce medical resources.



NEW YORK, Dec. 9 (Xinhua) -- U.S. new cases, daily deaths and hospitalizations still rose, although more than 200 million people have been fully vaccinated against the coronavirus as of late Wednesday, about 60 percent of the population in the United States, with an average of 1.92 million doses administered per day in the past week, a 35 percent hike over the week before.

The vaccination "achievement comes as the nation's tallies of daily deaths and new cases rose in the past week and hospitalization rates jumped by 10 percent. The looming threat of the newly identified Omicron variant of the coronavirus also hangs over the country as it enters the holiday season. Omicron cases have been detected in 21 states so far," reported The Washington Post on Thursday.

Also on Thursday, The New York Times (NYT) reported that the United States is averaging about 121,300 coronavirus cases a day, an increase of about 27 percent from two weeks ago, and reported deaths are up 12 percent, to an average of about 1,275 per day; more than 55,000 coronavirus patients are hospitalized nationwide, far fewer than in September, but an increase of more than 15 percent over the past two weeks.

"U.S. health care workers said their situations had been worsened by staff shortages brought on by burnout, illnesses and resistance to vaccine mandates," said the report, adding that "even states that rank among the highest in vaccination rates are struggling," like Maine, where about 73 percent of the population is fully vaccinated, but the cases recently reached their pandemic peak.

Meanwhile, doctors and experts are warning that those who refuse to take COVID-19 vaccines are creating a deadly domino effect for the country. They are getting sick, spreading the virus to loved ones and the community, filling hospital beds, and using up scarce medical resources, Marschall Runge, CEO of Michigan Medicine and dean of the University of Michigan Medical School, was quoted by USA Today as saying.

A student prepares to receive the COVID-19 vaccine at the Woodrow Wilson Senior High School in Los Angeles, California, the United States, on Aug. 30, 2021. (Xinhua)

POLL, DATA

Released on Thursday, a polling of parents' views from the Kaiser Family Foundation said that about three in 10 U.S. parents reported they had gotten their 5- to 11-year-olds a shot of COVID-19 vaccine or said that they planned to right away, while 32 percent said they were going to wait and see, 7 percent said they would only if required and 29 percent said they definitely wouldn't.

Roughly five million, or 18 percent, of the estimated 28.4 million U.S. children in the 5-to-11 age bracket have gotten at least one shot in the five weeks since they were cleared to get vaccinated, federal data showed. The picture varied by region, with rates in several New England states above 30 percent and some states in the South far off the national pace.

"COVID-19 vaccinations for children 5 to 11 years old are off to a slow start in many parts of the U.S., federal data show, underscoring the challenges health officials face in persuading parents to inoculate their children," reported The Wall Street Journal on Thursday, adding that "the pace of vaccinations for 5- to 11-year-olds nationally had slowed significantly after initial high demand."

A woman waits for injection of COVID-19 booster vaccine in Burlingame, California, the United States, Dec. 4, 2021. (Xinhua/Wu Xiaoling)

NEW DRUG, VACCINE

On Wednesday, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) authorized the first drug for widespread use in preventing COVID-19 in Americans with weakened immune systems who have not been adequately protected by vaccines.

The antibody treatment, which was developed by AstraZeneca and will be sold under the brand name Evusheld, is engineered to be "long-acting," meaning the body metabolizes it more slowly so that it can stay active for months.

"That is expected to offer longer-lasting protection -- perhaps for half a year -- compared to the monoclonal antibody treatments that are given to high-risk people already sick with COVID-19," reported NYT.

Also on Wednesday, Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla said that people might need a fourth COVID-19 shot sooner than expected after preliminary research showed the new Omicron variant can undermine protective antibodies generated by the vaccine the company developed with BioNTech, said a CNBC report.

Bourla noted that a preliminary study by the company was based on a synthetic, lab-created copy of the variant and more data is needed from tests against the real virus. Those real-world results will be more accurate and are expected in the next two weeks, said the report. 
Source: Xinhua| 2021-12-10 04:48:26|Editor: huaxia

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A man walks past a COVID-19 test center in Manchester, Britain on Dec. 6, 2021. (Xinhua/Jon Super)

Britain reported another 249 cases of the Omicron coronavirus variant, compared with Wednesday's 131.

LONDON, Dec. 9 (Xinhua) -- A further 249 cases of the Omicron coronavirus variant have been reported in Britain, taking the total to 817, British health authorities said Thursday.

The latest daily figure came after 131 new cases of the Omicron variant were confirmed on Wednesday.

At a Downing Street press conference on Wednesday evening, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said the variant's doubling rate could be between two to three days, highlighting just how infectious the new strain is.

The rise in cases of the variant showed it is spreading even faster than Johnson had predicted.



A passenger walks past a public health notice in Heathrow Airport in London, Britain, Nov. 30, 2021. (Xinhua/Li Ying)

Britain registered 50,867 new coronavirus infections, bringing the total number of cases in the country to 10,660,981, according to official figures released Thursday.

The country also reported a further 148 coronavirus-related deaths, taking the national death toll to 146,135.

Johnson has announced that Britain will move to "Plan B" restrictions to combat the rapid spread of the Omicron variant this winter.

The prime minister has asked people to work from home when possible from Monday while announcing that face masks would be a legal requirement in "most public indoor" areas such as theaters and cinemas from Friday.

People wearing masks walk in London, Britain, Nov. 25, 2021. (Xinhua/Li Ying)

Proof of two vaccine doses or a negative coronavirus test will be necessary for those wanting to enter nightclubs and large venues from next week, Johnson said, adding that people who are contacts of Omicron cases could face daily testing instead of undergoing a period of isolation.

More than 89 percent of people aged 12 and over in Britain have had their first vaccine dose, and over 81 percent have received both, according to the latest figures. Some 37 percent have received the booster jab, or the third vaccine dose.

People queue up outside a vaccination center in Manchester, Britain, Nov. 10, 2021. (Xinhua/Jon Super) 
Source: Xinhua| 2021-12-10 07:32:31|Editor: huaxia

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Aerial photo taken on Jan. 1, 2019 shows Keku Bridge on Wenchuan-Ma'erkang expressway in southwest China's Sichuan Province. A series of "Super Projects" in Sichuan have been built to promote the development of western China, making contributions to local economic and social development. (Xinhua)

Aerial photo taken on Dec. 9, 2019 shows Keku Bridge on Wenchuan-Ma'erkang expressway in southwest China's Sichuan Province. A series of "Super Projects" in Sichuan have been built to promote the development of western China, making contributions to local economic and social development. (Xinhua)

Aerial photo taken on Oct. 21, 2021 shows an entrance of a tunnel on Ya'an-Kangding expressway in southwest China's Sichuan Province. A series of "Super Projects" in Sichuan have been built to promote the development of western China, making contributions to local economic and social development. (Xinhua/Shen Bohan)

Aerial photo taken on April 30, 2021 shows the Chengdu Tianfu International Airport in southwest China's Sichuan Province. A series of "Super Projects" in Sichuan have been built to promote the development of western China, making contributions to local economic and social development. (Photo by Wang Ruilin/Xinhua)

Aerial photo taken on Oct. 19, 2021 shows a meeting point of the sections of Sichuan-Shaanxi highway, Beijing-Kunming expressway, Baoji-Chengdu railway, Xi'an-Chengdu high-speed railway and Jialing River shipping lane in southwest China's Sichuan Province. A series of "Super Projects" in Sichuan have been built to promote the development of western China, making contributions to local economic and social development. (Xinhua/Shen Bohan)

Aerial photo taken on July 15, 2021 shows a view of Lianghekou hydropower plant on the Yalong River in southwest China's Sichuan Province. A series of "Super Projects" in Sichuan have been built to promote the development of western China, making contributions to local economic and social development. (Xinhua)

Aerial photo taken on June 10, 2021 shows Baihetan hydropower station in southwest China. A series of "Super Projects" in Sichuan have been built to promote the development of western China, making contributions to local economic and social development. (Xinhua/Xu Bingjie)

Aerial photo taken on July 15, 2021 shows a view of Lianghekou hydropower plant on the Yalong River in southwest China's Sichuan Province. A series of "Super Projects" in Sichuan have been built to promote the development of western China, making contributions to local economic and social development. (Xinhua)

Aerial photo taken on Oct. 23, 2021 shows a section of Ya'an-Xichang expressway in southwest China's Sichuan Province. A series of "Super Projects" in Sichuan have been built to promote the development of western China, making contributions to local economic and social development. (Xinhua)

Aerial photo taken on Oct. 23, 2021 shows a section of Ya'an-Xichang expressway in southwest China's Sichuan Province. A series of "Super Projects" in Sichuan have been built to promote the development of western China, making contributions to local economic and social development. (Xinhua)

Aerial panoramic photo taken on Oct. 21, 2021 shows the Luding grand bridge across Daduhe River on Ya'an-Kangding expressway (L) and a section of Ya'an-Kangding expressway in southwest China's Sichuan Province. A series of "Super Projects" in Sichuan have been built to promote the development of western China, making contributions to local economic and social development. (Xinhua/Shen Bohan)

Aerial photo taken on Oct. 21, 2021 shows the Luding grand bridge across Daduhe River of Ya'an-Kangding expressway in southwest China's Sichuan Province. A series of "Super Projects" in Sichuan have been built to promote the development of western China, making contributions to local economic and social development. (Xinhua/Shen Bohan)

Aerial photo taken on May 7, 2021 shows the Chengdu Tianfu International Airport in southwest China's Sichuan Province. A series of "Super Projects" in Sichuan have been built to promote the development of western China, making contributions to local economic and social development. (Photo by Wang Ruilin/Xinhua)
Source: Xinhua| 2021-12-10 08:00:18|Editor: huaxia

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U.S. President Donald Trump walks on the South Lawn before departing from the White House in Washington D.C., the United States, on Oct. 22, 2018.(Xinhua/Ting Shen)

The three-judge panel of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously rejected the arguments by the former president's lawyers that their client could assert executive privilege to prevent the current administration from sharing the Trump White House's documents with the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol.

WASHINGTON, Dec. 9 (Xinhua) -- A U.S. federal appeals court ruled Thursday to reject former President Donald Trump's bid to block the National Archives from turning over his administration's records to the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.

The three-judge panel of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously rejected the arguments by the former president's lawyers that their client could assert executive privilege to prevent the current administration from sharing the Trump White House's documents with the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol.

"The central question in this case is whether, despite the exceptional and imperative circumstances underlying the Committee's request and President (Joe) Biden's decision, a federal court can, at the former President's behest, override President Biden's decision not to invoke privilege and prevent his release to Congress of documents in his possession that he deems to be needed for a critical legislative inquiry," Judge Patricia Millett wrote in a 68-page opinion for the panel.

"On the record before us, former President Trump has provided no basis for this court to override President Biden's judgment and the agreement and accommodations worked out between the Political Branches over these documents," read the opinion.

"Both Branches agree that there is a unique legislative need for these documents and that they are directly relevant to the Committee's inquiry into an attack on the Legislative Branch and its constitutional role in the peaceful transfer of power," the opinion said.

The court said the transfer of the records could begin in 14 days, before which Trump is allowed to ask the Supreme Court to intervene in the case.

Immediately following the ruling, the Trump team vowed to appeal it. "Regardless of today's decision by the appeals court, this case was always destined for the Supreme Court. President Trump's duty to defend the Constitution and the Office of the Presidency continues, and he will keep fighting for every American and every future Administration," said Liz Harrington, Trump's spokesperson.

Trump in October sued the House Jan. 6 committee and the National Archives to stop the Biden administration from allowing the release of his White House's documents related to the insurrection on Capitol Hill.

File photo taken on Jan. 6, 2021 shows supporters of U.S. President Donald Trump gathering near the U.S. Capitol building in Washington, D.C., the United States. (Xinhua/Liu Jie)

Biden, in his capacity as the incumbent president, had denied Trump of his executive privilege covering the information requested, saying his predecessor's effort to stonewall the congressional investigation was neither in the best interest of the United States nor justified.

Trump's suit, however, was quickly tossed out by Judge Tanya Chutkan of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia (DDC). Trump then appealed the judge's decision in the D.C. Circuit, which fast tracked the case.

The National Archives, which is the custodian of the records at issue, said in an October filing in the DDC that the records Trump wanted to keep from lawmakers totaled over 770 pages, including files related to Mark Meadows, the former White House chief of staff; Stephen Miller, Trump's former senior adviser; and Patrick Philbin, his former deputy counsel.

Trump is also objecting to the release of the White House Daily Diary -- which detailed a president's movements, phone calls, trips, briefings, meetings and activities - as well as logs showing phone calls to Trump and to Vice President Mike Pence concerning events on Jan. 6, according to the filing.

Trump has also asserted executive privilege over records containing proposed talking points for Kayleigh McEnany, his former press secretary; a handwritten note concerning Jan. 6; a draft text of a presidential speech for the "Save America" rally that preceded the mob attack; and a draft executive order on the topic of election integrity, the filing said.

Resolute throughout the legal fight, Trump has instructed other key investigatees targeted by the select committee to cite the executive privilege and not cooperate with the probe.

The former president's onetime chief strategist, Steve Bannon, did accordingly and, as a result, is now being criminally prosecuted for contempt of Congress. Meadows also did what he was told by his former boss and is now facing the same criminal contempt referral from Congress to the Justice Department. 
Source: Xinhua| 2021-12-10 08:00:38|Editor: huaxia

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SAN JOSE, Dec. 9 (Xinhua) -- The Foreign Ministry of Nicaragua announced on Thursday that Nicaragua is breaking "diplomatic relations" with Taiwan.

"The Government of the Republic of Nicaragua declares that it recognizes that in the world there is only one single China," the Foreign Ministry said in an announcement released in Managua.

"The People's Republic of China is the only legitimate government that represents all of China and Taiwan is an inalienable part of the Chinese territory," according to the announcement.

"The Government of the Republic of Nicaragua today breaks diplomatic relations with Taiwan and ceases to have any contact or official relationship," the announcement said. Enditem
Source: Xinhua| 2021-12-10 10:14:11|Editor: huaxia

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People prepare to move a humpback whale carcass on the shore in Cape Town, South Africa, Dec. 9, 2021. Local government tried to move the humpback whale carcass with assistance of the police and the National Sea Rescue Institute after it was spotted on Thursday morning, local media reported. (Xinhua/Lyu Tianran)

People prepare to move a humpback whale carcass on the shore in Cape Town, South Africa, Dec. 9, 2021. Local government tried to move the humpback whale carcass with assistance of the police and the National Sea Rescue Institute after it was spotted on Thursday morning, local media reported. (Xinhua/Lyu Tianran)

People prepare to move a humpback whale carcass on the shore in Cape Town, South Africa, Dec. 9, 2021. Local government tried to move the humpback whale carcass with assistance of the police and the National Sea Rescue Institute after it was spotted on Thursday morning, local media reported. (Xinhua/Lyu Tianran)

Policemen stand by a humpback whale carcass on the shore in Cape Town, South Africa, Dec. 9, 2021. Local government tried to move the humpback whale carcass with assistance of the police and the National Sea Rescue Institute after it was spotted on Thursday morning, local media reported. (Xinhua/Lyu Tianran)
Source: Xinhua| 2021-12-10 10:58:02|Editor: huaxia

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China and Nicaragua sign the joint communique on the resumption of diplomatic relations between the People's Republic of China and the Republic of Nicaragua in north China's Tianjin, Dec. 10, 2021. (Xinhua/Yue Yuewei)

TIANJIN, Dec. 10 (Xinhua) -- China and Nicaragua signed Friday in Tianjin the joint communique on the resumption of diplomatic relations between the People's Republic of China and the Republic of Nicaragua.

According to the communique, the People's Republic of China and the Republic of Nicaragua, in keeping with the interests and desire of the two peoples, have decided to recognize each other and resume diplomatic relations at the ambassadorial level, effective from the date of signature of this communique.

The two governments agree to develop friendly relations between the two countries on the basis of the principles of mutual respect for sovereignty and territorial integrity, mutual non-aggression, non-interference in each other's internal affairs, equality, mutual benefit and peaceful coexistence, the communique said.

The government of the Republic of Nicaragua recognizes that there is but one China in the world, the government of the People's Republic of China is the sole legal government representing the whole of China, and Taiwan is an inalienable part of China's territory, it said.

The government of the Republic of Nicaragua shall sever "diplomatic relations" with Taiwan as of this day and undertakes that it shall no longer develop any official relations or official exchanges with Taiwan. The government of the People's Republic of China appreciates this position of the government of the Republic of Nicaragua, the communique said. Enditem

China and Nicaragua sign the joint communique on the resumption of diplomatic relations between the People's Republic of China and the Republic of Nicaragua in north China's Tianjin, Dec. 10, 2021. (Xinhua/Yue Yuewei)

China and Nicaragua sign the joint communique on the resumption of diplomatic relations between the People's Republic of China and the Republic of Nicaragua in north China's Tianjin, Dec. 10, 2021. (Xinhua/Yue Yuewei)

Related:
Source: Xinhua| 2021-12-10 12:06:15|Editor: huaxia

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Inside China: In this documentary, 3 US experts join Xinhua correspondent Miao Xiaojuan on a discovery tour across the nation to learn what the Chinese people have to say about democracy, freedom and human rights. Join us as we seek to better understand this frequently misrepresented country!

A Xinhua News Agency Production 
Source: Xinhua| 2021-12-10 14:37:48|Editor: huaxia

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A Long March-4B rocket carrying the Shijian-6 05 satellites blasts off from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwest China, Dec. 10, 2021. China successfully sent a new group of satellites into space on Friday. The satellites, Shijian-6 05, will be used for space exploration and new technology test. (Photo by Wang Jiangbo/Xinhua)

BEIJING, Dec. 10 (Xinhua) -- A Long March-4B rocket on Friday morning successfully sent a new group of satellites into space, marking the 400th launch mission of the China-developed Long March carrier rocket series.

Since the first launch in 1970, the Long March carrier rocket series has carried out 92.1 percent of China's space launch mission, according to the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC), developer of the rocket series and also the leading force of the country's space industry.

Over the past 51 years, the Long March series has sent more than 700 spacecraft into space, said the CASC.

In the 400 launch missions by Long March rockets, the first three 100 launches were completed in 37 years, 7 and a half years, and around 4 years, respectively.

While the lastest 100 launch missions were carried out within only 33 months since March 2019.

Wu Yansheng, board chairman of the CASC, said that the high launch frequency of the Long March highlights China's enhanced space launch capacity and the self-reliant spirit of the country's aerospace workers.

China's first space station Tiangong's core module, Chang'e-5 lunar probe, Tianwen-1 Mars probe, Shenzhou manned spacecraft, Tianzhou cargo craft, BeiDou-3 navigation satellites, and multiple others, were all sent into space by the Long March rockets amid the latest 100 launch missions.

Meanwhile, the growing Long March series has been continuously providing new rocket members, such as the Long March-5B, Long March-7A, Long March-8, to better serve China's persistent space exploration. Enditem
Source: Xinhua| 2021-12-10 14:41:12|Editor: huaxia

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BEIJING, Dec. 10 (Xinhua) -- Chinese President Xi Jinping has pointed out that democracy in international relations has become an unstoppable trend of the times.

In terms of promoting democracy in international relations, the Chinese president has on multiple occasions reiterated his viewpoint and proposals. The following are some highlights of his remarks.

Dec. 5, 2021

"Multilateralism is essentially about having international affairs managed by all parties through consultation and the future of the world decided by all countries working together," Xi said, while delivering a speech via video at the opening ceremony of the 2021 Imperial Springs International Forum.

It is important that we keep to the overall direction of advancing democracy in international relations, increase the representation and voice of developing countries in international affairs, and steer the global governance system toward greater justice and equity, he said.

Sept. 17, 2021

While addressing the 21st meeting of the Council of Heads of State of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) via video link, Xi said member countries should stay true to the Shanghai Spirit, keep to the right direction, follow the historical trends of promoting democracy in international relations, and pursue their own development as they pursue common development for humanity.

Nov. 12, 2020

"We need to adhere to peaceful coexistence. We need to respect other countries' right to development and their independent choice of development paths and models. We need to uphold multilateralism, oppose unilateralism, hegemony and power politics, and reject all forms of terrorism and acts of extreme violence. We need to work together to safeguard equity, justice, peace and security in the world," Xi said at the official ceremony of the third edition of the Paris Peace Forum.

June 10, 2018

While hegemony and power politics still persist in this world, the growing call for a more just and equitable international order must be heeded, Xi said at the 18th Meeting of the Council of Heads of Member States of the SCO.

Democracy in international relations has become an unstoppable trend of the times, he said.

Jan. 18, 2017

"We should advance democracy in international relations and reject dominance by just one or several countries. All countries should jointly shape the future of the world, write international rules, manage global affairs and ensure that development outcomes are shared by all," Xi said in a keynote speech at the United Nations Office at Geneva. Enditem
Source: Xinhua| 2021-12-10 17:33:23|Editor: huaxia

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Photo taken on Sept. 14, 2020 shows the United Nations (UN) flag flying outside the UN headquarters in New York, the United States. (Xinhua/Wang Ying)

BEIJING, Dec. 10 (Xinhua) -- Chinese President Xi Jinping has pointed out that democracy in international relations has become an unstoppable trend of the times.

In terms of promoting democracy in international relations, the Chinese president has on multiple occasions reiterated his viewpoint and proposals. The following are some highlights of his remarks.

Dec. 5, 2021

"Multilateralism is essentially about having international affairs managed by all parties through consultation and the future of the world decided by all countries working together," Xi said, while delivering a speech via video at the opening ceremony of the 2021 Imperial Springs International Forum.

It is important that we keep to the overall direction of advancing democracy in international relations, increase the representation and voice of developing countries in international affairs, and steer the global governance system toward greater justice and equity, he said.

Chinese President Xi Jinping addresses the 21st meeting of the Council of Heads of State of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) via video link in Beijing, capital of China, Sept. 17, 2021. (Xinhua/Liu Bin)

Sept. 17, 2021

While addressing the 21st meeting of the Council of Heads of State of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) via video link, Xi said member countries should stay true to the Shanghai Spirit, keep to the right direction, follow the historical trends of promoting democracy in international relations, and pursue their own development as they pursue common development for humanity.

Photo taken on Nov. 11, 2021 shows the exterior of La Grande Halle de la Villette that holds the Paris Peace Forum in Paris, France. (Xinhua/Gao Jing)

Nov. 12, 2020

"We need to adhere to peaceful coexistence. We need to respect other countries' right to development and their independent choice of development paths and models. We need to uphold multilateralism, oppose unilateralism, hegemony and power politics, and reject all forms of terrorism and acts of extreme violence. We need to work together to safeguard equity, justice, peace and security in the world," Xi said at the official ceremony of the third edition of the Paris Peace Forum.

Visitors take a tour near the Olympic sailing center, used as the conference hall during the 18th Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit, in Qingdao, east China's Shandong Province, July 1, 2018. (Xinhua/Li Ziheng)

June 10, 2018

While hegemony and power politics still persist in this world, the growing call for a more just and equitable international order must be heeded, Xi said at the 18th Meeting of the Council of Heads of Member States of the SCO.

Democracy in international relations has become an unstoppable trend of the times, he said.

Jan. 18, 2017

"We should advance democracy in international relations and reject dominance by just one or several countries. All countries should jointly shape the future of the world, write international rules, manage global affairs and ensure that development outcomes are shared by all," Xi said in a keynote speech at the United Nations Office at Geneva. 
Source: Xinhua| 2021-12-10 19:33:24|Editor: huaxia

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China and Nicaragua sign the joint communique on the resumption of diplomatic relations between the People's Republic of China and the Republic of Nicaragua in north China's Tianjin, Dec. 10, 2021. (Xinhua/Yue Yuewei)

For the Central American country, standing with China is a righteous choice, as well as a choice that benefits the country and its people.



BEIJING, Dec. 10 (Xinhua) -- Nicaragua signed with China on Friday a joint communique on the resumption of diplomatic relations, severing the so-called "diplomatic ties" with China's Taiwan.

By recognizing the one-China principle, Nicaragua has followed some other Central American countries by making the right decision and choosing to stand on the right side of history.

Back in 2007, Costa Rica became the first country in the region to forge diplomatic ties with China in the new century. Four years later, a free trade pact between the two countries took effect, and bilateral trade has flourished ever since.

From 2007 to 2020, Costa Rica's exports to China increased nearly fivefold. The goods exported to China's market have seen expanding diversity, and bilateral cooperation in various fields continues to strengthen.

An exhibitor from Costa Rica makes coffee at Food and Agricultural Products exhibition area during the second China International Import Expo (CIIE) in Shanghai, east China, Nov. 9, 2019. (Xinhua/Zhang Yuwei)

After Costa Rica, Panama, Dominica and El Salvador also established diplomatic ties with China subsequently. Besides, Honduran presidential candidate Xiomara Castro vowed during her election campaign to establish diplomatic relations with China. All these have once again showed that the one-China principle accords with the will of the people and the trend of times, and is therefore unstoppable.

However, for quite some time, a handful of people in some countries have been going against the general trend and playing with fire on the Taiwan question. They attempt to challenge China's bottom line, and to suppress China by playing the "Taiwan card."

For example, a week before Honduras held its general election, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs Brian A. Nichols rushed to the Central American country. He met with people from all walks of life in Honduras, and made clear to Honduran presidential candidates that the United States wants the country to maintain the so-called "diplomatic ties" with Taiwan.

People can tell right from wrong. It is a gross mistake if one believes that playing the "Taiwan card" could harm China's interests and disrupt its development. Washington's gimmickry has neither changed Honduras' presidential election result, nor prevented Nicaragua from making the righteous choice.

There is but one China in the world and Taiwan is an inalienable part of China's territory. It is a historical and legal fact that cannot be changed and also the real status quo that brooks no challenge.

Now, Nicaragua has become the 181st country that recognizes and supports the one-China principle. Its courage to make the decision deserves more respect and admiration at a time when the United States and Taiwan's Democratic Progressive Party authority are colluding to make waves across the strait.

For the Central American country, standing with China is a righteous choice, as well as a choice that benefits the country and its people. 
Source: Xinhua| 2021-12-10 21:40:17|Editor: huaxia

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Xi Jinping, general secretary of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, Chinese president and chairman of the Central Military Commission, speaks during the annual Central Economic Work Conference in Beijing, capital of China. The conference was held from Wednesday to Friday. (Xinhua/Wang Ye)

BEIJING, Dec. 10 (Xinhua) -- The annual Central Economic Work Conference was held in Beijing from Wednesday to Friday as Chinese leaders mapped out priorities for the economic work in 2022.

In a speech at the conference, Xi Jinping, general secretary of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee, Chinese president and chairman of the Central Military Commission, reviewed the country's economic work in 2021, analyzed the current economic situation and arranged next year's economic work.

The year 2021 has been a milestone for both the Party and the nation, according to the meeting, which noted that China has maintained a leading position in the world in economic development and epidemic control, with progress made in scientific strength, industrial chain resilience, reform and opening-up, people's livelihood and ecological civilization.

However, it cautioned that China's economic development is facing pressure from demand contraction, supply shocks and weakening expectations, and the external environment is becoming increasingly complicated, grim and uncertain.

"We must face the difficulties squarely while staying confident," said a statement released after the meeting, citing China's strong economic resilience and unchanged fundamentals underpinning long-term growth.

The meeting called for remaining committed to China's own cause, consolidating the economic foundations, enhancing the abilities of scientific and technological innovation and adhering to multilateralism.

It also urged making proactive efforts to align with the highest international economic and trade rules, deepening reform via high-level opening-up, and boosting high-quality development.

The meeting stressed the necessity to adhere to the centralized, unified leadership of the CPC Central Committee, promote high-quality development and pursue progress while ensuring stability.

It highlighted the timing, extent and efficiency of policy adjustments and reform to ensure their steady advancement, as well as coordination and systems thinking.

Actions should be taken to safeguard macroeconomic stability, keep major economic indicators within an appropriate range and maintain social stability to prepare for the Party's 20th National Congress, the meeting said.

Economic work next year should prioritize stability while pursuing progress, it noted, calling on all regions and departments to assume responsibility for stabilizing the macroeconomy, and all sides to take the initiative and launch policies conducive to economic stability. Enditem

Xi Jinping, general secretary of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, Chinese president and chairman of the Central Military Commission, speaks during the annual Central Economic Work Conference in Beijing, capital of China. The conference was held from Wednesday to Friday. (Xinhua/Ju Peng)

Xi Jinping, general secretary of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, Chinese president and chairman of the Central Military Commission, speaks during the annual Central Economic Work Conference in Beijing, capital of China. The conference was held from Wednesday to Friday. (Xinhua/Wang Ye)

Xi Jinping, general secretary of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, Chinese president and chairman of the Central Military Commission, speaks during the annual Central Economic Work Conference in Beijing, capital of China. Li Keqiang, Li Zhanshu, Wang Yang, Wang Huning, Zhao Leji and Han Zheng also attended the conference which was held from Wednesday to Friday. (Xinhua/Wang Ye)

Li Keqiang, a member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, speaks during the annual Central Economic Work Conference in Beijing, capital of China. The conference was held from Wednesday to Friday. (Xinhua/Wang Ye)
Source: Xinhua| 2021-12-10 18:59:28|Editor: huaxia

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ACCRA, Dec. 10 (Xinhua) -- Ghana will enforce tightened COVID-19 restrictions for international travelers to avert a fourth wave of the pandemic, authorities said.

Beginning from Sunday, Dec. 12, all persons above 18 years arriving in Ghana would be required to provide evidence of full vaccination against COVID-19, the Ghana Health Service (GHS) said in a statement issued late Thursday.

"All unvaccinated Ghanaians and residents of Ghana currently outside the country and intend to return within 14 days from the midnight of Dec. 12, 2021, are exempted. However, they will be vaccinated on arrival," the GHS said.

The decision was made as confirmed COVID-19 cases arriving at Kotoka International Airport (KIA) surged over 40 percent year-on-year in November, the statement said.

"We have since been recording an average of 20 positive cases a day at KIA, and there is a significant difference in the percentage of these infections based on vaccination status recorded at KIA," the GHS said.

"Available data from KIA show that a positive COVID-19 person is three times more likely to be unvaccinated," the statement said.

The GHS observed that globally, many countries are experiencing their fourth wave of COVID-19, "and many travelers from those countries come to Ghana."

"This is likely to increase during the festive season," it said.

Ghana has so far detected 34 cases of the Omicron variant among international arrivals, the GHS said.

The west African country commenced mandatory vaccination for designated groups of people earlier this month. Enditem
Source: Xinhua| 2021-12-10 20:08:46|Editor: huaxia

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ABUJA, Dec. 10 (Xinhua) -- Ten passengers died and five others were injured following an accident involving two buses in the central Nigerian city of Lokoja, local authorities said on Friday.

The two vehicles were travelling in the same direction on the Ajegwu bridge in Lokoja, capital of the central state of Kogi, early on Thursday, Solomon Agure, a local commander of the Federal Road Safety Corps, told a briefing in Lokoja city.

One of the buses possibly lost control due to speeding and hit the other, he said.

A total of 73 passengers were aboard the two buses at the time of the accident, Agure said.

Police have launched an investigation into the cause of the accident, he added.

Road accidents are frequently reported in Nigeria, often caused by overloading, bad roads, and reckless driving. Enditem
Source: Xinhua| 2021-12-10 09:09:43|Editor: huaxia

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ISLAMABAD, Dec. 10 (Xinhua) -- The China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) has brought prosperity to poor areas in Pakistan including those in southwestern Balochistan province, Khalid Mansoor, special assistant to Pakistani Prime Minister on CPEC affairs said here on Thursday.

Speaking at the session "CPEC in the Emerging Regional Scenario" organized by Islamabad-based think tank the Sustainable Development Policy Institute, the official stressed that CPEC has contributed to resolving the electricity shortage in Pakistan -- a big hurdle to industrial development.

Before the commercial operation of a number of energy projects under CPEC, Pakistan was suffering probably its most severe power crisis, with 12-18 hours of load shedding in a day, interrupting industrial production.

"Whatever power we were producing was most expensive, and not competitive in the international market, and that was the reason we were losing export orientation," Mansoor said.

He said his country wants to have cost-effective power, and wants to make use of coal mines in the southern Sindh province.

"Unfortunately, no funding was available for the power projects. So this is when we really resorted to China, and thanks to China for really helping us out," he said.

The official noted that the coal-fired power plants under CPEC have installed the state-of-the-art technology to make electricity production eco-friendly.

"There used to be propaganda that Pakistan is installing coal power plants which will emit dark soot in the air. I challenge you that if you visit CPEC coal power plants, you will witness that rather than throwing dark soot into the air they are emitting very clean and clear flue gas, and their walls and floor are cleaner than those in your drawing rooms," he said.

Mansoor said CPEC has enhanced Pakistan's connectivity to the Middle East, Central Asia and Africa, through making the country well-connected internally to a network of motorways, roads and the Gwadar port.

He said the phase 2 of CPEC which focuses on industrial, agricultural and socio-economic cooperation is more promising, with more job opportunities expected.

"Once we start developing and executing the projects in the special economic zones, we are going to have the industrial revolution, and Pakistan is going to be the main manufacturing hub. We need to have the import substitution, and we need to have the export orientation," he noted.

The official said his country should learn from China's successful development experiences and follow the footsteps of China which developed strong industrialization by becoming a large manufacturing hub of the world.

He said Pakistan has a very compatible environment for foreign industries to get relocated here as labor in Pakistan is very cheap, adding that the country will encourage companies from China and any other countries to invest in the special economic zones under CPEC in Pakistan. Enditem
Source: Xinhua| 2021-12-10 16:40:24|Editor: huaxia

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MANILA, Dec. 10 (Xinhua) -- The Philippines' Department of Health (DOH) reported 379 new COVID-19 infections on Friday, pushing the total number of confirmed cases in the Southeast Asian country to 2,836,200.

The DOH also reported that 25 more people died from COVID-19 complications, bringing the death toll to 49,961.

While with less than 1,000 cases reported since Nov. 24 in the country, the Philippine government decided to bar the entry of foreign travelers from Portugal from Wednesday to curb the Omicron variant.

Fully vaccinated travelers from Portugal will be required to undergo 14-day quarantine and strict testing before the set date, Cabinet Secretary Karlo Nograles said on Friday.

Nograles told a virtual news conference that the government will add Portugal to the "red list" of countries and regions considered as high-risk for COVID-19 since Sunday.

The country has banned international arrivals from 15 countries and territories, namely South Africa, Botswana, Namibia, Zimbabwe, Lesotho, Eswatini, Mozambique, Austria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Belgium, Italy, and France.

The Philippines, which has around 110 million population, has tested more than 23 million people since the pandemic. Enditem
Source: Xinhua| 2021-12-10 16:47:03|Editor: huaxia

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TOKYO, Dec. 10 (Xinhua) -- Japanese authorities have confirmed another eight cases of the Omicron variant of the COVID-19, bringing the total number of infections by the new strain in the country to 12, local media reported Friday.

The eight people entered Japan from abroad from late November to early this month, and all eight tested positive for the COVID-19 upon arrival at the airport with further analysis of their samples confirming that they were infected with the Omicron variant.

Japanese Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary Seiji Kihara said two of the eight infected people were in close contact with the first case confirmed in Japan.

The country detected its first Omicron case in a diplomat who arrived from Namibia on Nov. 30.

"We will thoroughly implement appropriate anti-virus measures by monitoring the situation through strengthened border control and genome analyses," Kihara told a regular press conference.

Three other infected people had been in Peru, Italy, and Nigeria before they arrived.

The World Health Organization has warned that the new Omicron variant, which has been confirmed in many other countries, could be more transmissible than previous strains of the virus and be able to evade immunity provided by current vaccines. Enditem
Source: Xinhua| 2021-12-10 19:19:30|Editor: huaxia

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KUNMING, Dec. 10 (Xinhua) -- Law-enforcement authorities from China, Laos, Myanmar and Thailand joined forces on Friday for the 112th Mekong River joint patrol.

The Chinese vessels departed on Friday from Jingha Port in Xishuangbanna Dai Autonomous Prefecture, southwest China's Yunnan Province, for the patrol, said the Yunnan provincial public security department.

The vessels are expected to navigate over 580 km in four days and three nights during the latest joint operation, according to the department.

The Mekong River, known as the Lancang River in China, is a vital waterway for cross-border shipping.

The 112th patrol also marks the 10-year anniversary of the joint operation, which was launched by the four countries on Dec. 10, 2011. Enditem
Source: Xinhua| 2021-12-10 20:06:11|Editor: huaxia

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HO CHI MINH CITY, Dec. 10 (Xinhua) -- Vietnam's largest COVID-19 hotspot Ho Chi Minh City on Friday started administering extra vaccine shots for prioritized groups, being the first locality in the Southeast Asian country to do so upon the health ministry's approval.

The booster COVID-19 shots were given to frontline forces including health workers, police, and military personnel. The priority was also given to those aged 50 and above, and immunocompromised people who have been fully inoculated with the last shot of the normal course at least 28 days, Vietnam News Agency reported on Friday.

From now on until 2022, the southern city will continue to administer the booster shots for immunocompromised people and adults who have received the full primary doses for at least six months in order of priority.

According to a plan announced Tuesday, it targets completing the booster vaccination for all residents aged 18 and over by the end of 2022.

Ho Chi Minh City is by far the largest COVID-19 hotspot in Vietnam with nearly 484,000 infections recorded as of Thursday. The city had inoculated around 14.8 million doses of COVID-19 vaccine to its people, including over 6.8 million second shots, according to the municipal center for disease control.

On Dec. 1, the Vietnamese Ministry of Health officially allowed localities to give vaccine booster shots for adults, prioritizing those with underlying conditions, people aged 50 and above, health workers who perform COVID-19 tests and take care of infected patients. Enditem
Source: Xinhua| 2021-12-10 23:31:59|Editor: huaxia

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JAKARTA, Dec. 10 (Xinhua) -- The death toll from the eruption of Indonesia's Semeru volcano has risen to 45 after rescuers recovered two more victims in Kampung Renteng hamlet of Lumajang district in East Java province, an official said Friday.

Meanwhile, nine people were still reportedly missing, 19 were seriously injured and 19 others had minor injuries, head of the post for emergency response to impacts of Semeru's volcanic hot clouds, Irwan Subekti, told a virtual press conference.

According to data from the task force for disaster emergency response to impacts of Semeru's hot clouds, there are 6,573 refugees, 2,970 affected houses, and 33 damaged public facilities, including a bridge that connects the districts of Lumajang and Malang.

The worst-hit areas included sub districts of Pronojiwo and Candipuro in Lumajang district, Subekti said, adding that there had been 126 evacuation posts.

He pointed out that three search and rescue teams had been deployed to the locations of the calamity, including the hardest-hit hamlets of Curah Kobokan and Kampung Renteng.

Semeru, which is one of the 127 active volcanoes in Indonesia, is currently at its second level status. The 3,676-meter-high volcano erupted on Saturday afternoon. Enditem
Source: Xinhua| 2021-12-10 01:13:15|Editor: huaxia

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Chinese Ambassador to Serbia Chen Bo (Front) addresses the opening ceremony of a center for genome sequencing in Belgrade, Serbia, on Dec. 9, 2021. The center for genome sequencing that will help Serbia fight against coronavirus was opened in Belgrade on Thursday. (Xinhua/Shi Zhongyu)

BELGRADE, Dec. 9 (Xinhua) -- A center for genome sequencing that will help Serbia fight against coronavirus was opened in Belgrade on Thursday.

The center, located in Serbia's Institute of Molecular Genetics and Genetic Engineering (IMGGE), is a cooperation project between Serbia and China. Serbia has invested 600 million RSD (5.6 million U.S. dollars) into the construction of the center. Meanwhile, China's BGI group has donated equipment.

At the opening ceremony, Serbian Prime Minister Ana Brnabic said that artificial intelligence, biotechnology, biomedicine, bioinformatics and bio-economics represent the next step in Serbia's development, allowing the country to tap into a fast-growing global market.

"What this means today for us, regarding the coronavirus epidemic, is that we will be able to monitor all mutations ourselves, that we wouldn't need to get this information from abroad...... This will mean a lot for treating coronavirus patients and a more successful battle against the virus," explained the Prime Minister.

Jelena Begovic, Director of the IMGGE, said biomedicine will "influence the quality of life of the whole country."

"I think this is a major day for technology and science in Serbia, and it represents the beginning of a different kind of future for all of us...... This is an investment into our future, not only into our present."

Serbia has already cooperated with China's BGI group to build two Fire Eye laboratories for PCR testing of samples for coronavirus, she said.

Chinese Ambassador to Serbia Chen Bo said that Serbia's improved capacity to sequence genomes and monitor virus mutations will boost the country's ability to control the epidemic.

"From the first donations of PCR tests and construction of two laboratories, to today's opening of this center, the cooperation between Serbia and BGI has reflected the successful cooperation of our two countries in fighting against the pandemic. Opening this center will also provide additional opportunities for cooperation in the fields of medicine, biomedicine and biology," she said. Enditem

Serbian Prime Minister Ana Brnabic (Front) addresses the opening ceremony of a center for genome sequencing in Belgrade, Serbia, on Dec. 9, 2021. The center for genome sequencing that will help Serbia fight against coronavirus was opened in Belgrade on Thursday. (Xinhua/Shi Zhongyu)

Serbian Prime Minister Ana Brnabic (2nd L) and Chinese Ambassador to Serbia Chen Bo (4th L) visit a center for genome sequencing in Belgrade, Serbia, on Dec. 9, 2021. The center for genome sequencing that will help Serbia fight against coronavirus was opened in Belgrade on Thursday. (Xinhua/Shi Zhongyu)
Source: Xinhua| 2021-12-11 05:56:38|Editor: huaxia

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VILNIUS, Dec. 10 (Xinhua) -- Lithuanian Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis submitted Friday his resignation amid the controversy of Belaruskali products being transported via Lithuania despite the U.S. sanctions against Belarus' fertilizer manufacturer.

The Belarusian state-owned company is one of the biggest potash producers in the world, and it exports most of its production via Lithuania.

The U.S. introduced sanctions on Belaruskali on Dec. 8 and Lithuanian authorities assumed that Belaruskali's transit across the country would cease on the same day, since commercial banks stopped processing the company's transactions.

However, state-owned Lithuanian Railways said the shipments to the port of Klaipeda would continue for another several months, as Belaruskali had paid in advance before the sanctions came into effect.

The railway company said the Foreign Ministry and the Transport Ministry had been informed about the situation, although Landsbergis initially denied any knowledge of it.

On Thursday, Landsbergis said he was ready to step down.

Transport Minister Marius Skuodis has also signaled he was ready to step down if the prime minister asked him to.

Lithuanian Prime Minister Ingrida Simonyte said on Thursday she would announce her decision early next week. Enditem
Source: Xinhua| 2021-12-11 06:08:02|Editor: huaxia

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LONDON, Dec. 10 (Xinhua) -- British Brexit Minister David Frost said on Friday that Britain and the European Union (EU) have made limited progress on the post-Brexit supply of medicines from Great Britain to Northern Ireland.

Frost had a video call with European Commission Vice President Maros Sefcovic on Friday to wrap up this week's talks about the Northern Ireland Protocol.

"We have made further limited progress on medicines but we have not reached agreement," Frost tweeted after the meeting.

"I underlined the need for movement on all the difficult issues created by the (Northern Ireland) Protocol, including customs, agrifood rules, subsidy policy, VAT/excise, & governance including the Court of Justice," Frost said.

He confirmed intensive talks will continue in the coming week.

Frost said he and Sefcovic will talk twice to steer the process, in the hope of making worthwhile progress towards agreed solutions before Christmas.

As part of the Brexit deal, the Northern Ireland Protocol stipulates that Northern Ireland remains in the EU single market and customs union to avoid a hard border between the region and the Republic of Ireland. However, this leads to a new "regulatory" border between Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

Britain and the EU view changing the protocol as a long-term solution to post-Brexit trade disruption in Northern Ireland. Britain outlined its proposals in a government paper in July, which observers interpreted as an intention to renegotiate the protocol.

In response, the EU published its own package to facilitate the movement of goods from Great Britain to Northern Ireland, including cutting customs formalities, simplified certification, and an 80 percent reduction of checks on retail goods for Northern Ireland's consumers.

It said it would guarantee an uninterrupted supply of medicine to the people of Northern Ireland, by changing EU rules. Enditem
Source: Xinhua| 2021-12-11 06:47:38|Editor: huaxia

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European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen (R) and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz attend a press conference in Brussels, Belgium, on Dec. 10, 2021. Olaf Scholz met with Ursula von der Leyen here on Friday. (Xinhua/Zheng Huansong)

BRUSSELS, Dec. 10 (Xinhua) -- The European Union (EU) should co-exist peacefully with other powers while seeking strategic sovereignty in today's multi-polar world, the new German chancellor Olaf Scholz said on Friday.

The modern world "will not be as bipolar as some are speculating," Scholz told a press conference after meeting with European Council President Charles Michel. Rather, he said it will be a multi-polar world with "many powers" including the U.S., Russia, China, Japan, India and other strong emerging nations.

To work in a multilateral way should "be on the map of the European Union when it comes to engaging with the rest of the world," said Scholz.

"We do need to ensure that we can all live together peacefully, and it won't be easy. But that is the challenge we face and we will have to take up."

Scholz stressed that Germany, a large country at the heart of the EU, has an important role to play in ensuring progress and a bright future for Europe.

Along with the German foreign minister, Scholz will be responsible for deciding on the biggest European economy's foreign policy line..

Scholz flew to Brussels from Paris, on the first leg of his maiden overseas trip as the German chancellor. He also met the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, on Friday.

A German politician herself, von der Leyen said Germany had always had "an important role in shaping the Union" and she was looking forward to "a very strong collaboration with the new Germany."

On Thursday, the new German foreign minister Annalena Baerbock visited Brussels. It was not a coincidence that she arrived in the 'capital of Europe' on her second day in office, she said. "I come here as a true European by heart, and as a foreign minister of a truly European government in Germany."

The EU's top diplomat Josep Borrell described Baerbock's visit as "highly symbolic," saying it demonstrated Germany's attachment to the EU. Enditem

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen (R) and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz pose for a photo in Brussels, Belgium, on Dec. 10, 2021. Olaf Scholz met with Ursula von der Leyen here on Friday. (Xinhua/Zheng Huansong)

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen (R) and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz arrive to attend a press conference in Brussels, Belgium, on Dec. 10, 2021. Olaf Scholz met with Ursula von der Leyen here on Friday. (Xinhua/Zheng Huansong)

European Council President Charles Michel (R) and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz attend a press conference after their meeting in Brussels, Belgium, on Dec. 10, 2021. The European Union (EU) should co-exist peacefully with other powers while seeking strategic sovereignty in today's multi-polar world, Olaf Scholz said on Friday. (Xinhua/Zheng Huansong)

European Council President Charles Michel (R) and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz attend a press conference after their meeting in Brussels, Belgium, on Dec. 10, 2021. The European Union (EU) should co-exist peacefully with other powers while seeking strategic sovereignty in today's multi-polar world, Olaf Scholz said on Friday. (Xinhua/Zheng Huansong)
Source: Xinhua| 2021-12-11 03:32:56|Editor: huaxia

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LOS ANGELES, Dec. 10 (Xinhua) -- The test result of a wastewater sample showed that the Omicron COVID-19 variant was present in U.S. state California even before the World Health Organization declared it the newest coronavirus variant of concern, media reported Friday, citing official sources.

The Omicron variant was detected in a sample of wastewater collected in Merced County on Nov. 25, the California Department of Public Health said in a statement to The Los Angeles Times, a major newspaper on the U.S. West Coast. That's one day after South Africa reported the variant to the World Health Organization, and a day before the agency labeled Omicron a "variant of concern."

The finding reinforces observations scientists have made in recent weeks that Omicron was rapidly spreading across the world even before global health officials were aware it existed, The Los Angeles Times reported, adding that the variant was also detected in wastewater samples collected in Sacramento County.

Sampling wastewater for coronavirus-related particles is being used to track pandemic trends. Groups of scientists in the state are monitoring wastewater for coronavirus samples, including experts affiliated with Stanford University, the University of California (UC) Berkeley, UC Davis, UC Merced, UC San Diego and the state Department of Public Health, according to the newspaper.

Health authorities announced last week that the first U.S. case of the Omicron variant of the coronavirus was detected in San Francisco, California. The individual was a traveler who returned from South Africa on Nov. 22.

The California Department of Public Health said in a release on Thursday that 13 confirmed cases associated with the Omicron variant have been reported to the state. The variant has been reportedly detected in more than 20 states in the country. Enditem
ONE of the biggest Chinese state-owned companies, China Harbour Engineering Company (CHEC) which was awarded a tender to upgrade Zimbabwes airspace navigation system has gone for the jugular as it now proposes to be given a bigger contract, documents at hand show.

In a document seen by the Zimbabwe Independent, dated November 9, 2021, written to Transport and Infrastructural Development minister Felix Mhona and copied to President Emmerson Mnangaga and his deputy Constantino Chiwenga, Defence minister Oppah Muchinguri and Finance minister Mthuli Ncube, CHEC dangles a carrot to implement an expanded project to modernise the airspace management system.

As a state-owned company of the Peoples Republic of China, we hereby invoke the spirit of the Comprehensive-Strategic Partnership of Cooperation that exists between our two countries and invite the Government of Zimbabwe to consider this project as a China-Zimbabwe strategic co-operation project, reads, in part, documents gleaned by the Independent.

Details obtained this week show that the government was in the process of drafting specifications for the large-scale national air traffic management system (radar). An inter-ministerial committee is yet to make the necessary recommendations to Cabinet.

However, through the Comprehensive Strategic Partnership of Co-operation, CHEC has already made solid proposals to the government for the upgrading of the radar system. The project will be financed through concessional funding packages from the Peoples Republic of China, documents show.

Harare and Beijing have for long enjoyed a cosy relationship and Mnangagwa and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping, in recent years agreed to elevate bilateral relations to a comprehensive strategic partnership.

This is what CHEC is riding on to clinch the lucrative expanded radar upgrade system project.

The Independent has previously exclusively reported that security organs under the Joint Operations Command (JOC) ensured that the radar system tender was awarded to friendly nations instead of companies from countries considered to be hostile to Harare.

A Spanish company was sidelined from the tender after security vetting.

CHEC won the aviation system contract as a sole bidder after other bidders lost the energy along the way following a restricted tender limited to China and Russia only, deliberately excluding Western bidders.

Approached for comment yesterday, Mhona declined to comment on the latest developments.

We are not in a position to comment on that matter. At the moment, we can only comment on the contract already awarded to the Chinese company (CHEC) on the modernisation of the navigation system, he said.

CHEC representative in Zimbabwe Tan Bosheng did not respond to questions sent via WhatsApp and SMS.

It is understood that for the initial radar system tender, CHEC has already started manufacturing Air Traffic Control Communication Systems (ATCCS) materials at its own cost despite payment delays from the government. CHEC cites the Comprehensive-Strategic Partnership in forging ahead with the project.

In aviation, the collapse of the ATC communication system would signal the last straw of Zimbabwes precarious aviation industry.

The delays in implementation of the radar upgrade has raised questions in parliament.

Last week, Transport and Infrastructure Parliamentary Portfolio Committee chairperson Oscar Gorerino queried the delays over the upgrade of the radar system.

It is very dangerous to have a non-functional radar system. Why is it taking so long to be upgraded? There is a need for a change of strategy. What is worrying is the continuous change of tender awarding without matching progress on the ground, he told a committee meeting.

However, top CHEC officials are said to have visited the country for high-level meetings.

According to diplomatic sources Beijing, which has revamped Zimbabwes major airports, has already lined up a comprehensive funding package for Zimbabwes critical airspace project which has faced perennial financing challenges and multiple tender award cancellations.

CHEC is one of Chinas state-owned infrastructure companies and notably the second largest marine engineering company in the world with specialty in submarine and airspace surveillance infrastructure and infrastructure construction of all modes as seen through its deep involvement in the artificial island construction in the South China Sea.

CHEC is a Chinese government strategic firm formed in 1980 which was later placed under the China Communications Construction Company (CCCC) in 2005 as a strategic asset when the Chinese government undertook its parastatal reforms.

It is the overseas arm of CCCC, which operates foreign markets on behalf of the Chinese government.

CCCC, CHECs parent group is the largest transport infrastructure company in the world and is highly rated in terms of financial clout even by Chinese state-owned company standards whilst its subsidiary CHEC is the second largest marine engineering company in the world and a key driver of Chinas global Belt and Road Initiative.

CHEC was last year blacklisted by the United States government for its involvement in the South China Sea conflict. CHEC, which explores foreign markets on behalf of CCCC, is one of 24 Chinese multinational companies that were blacklisted by the US.

According to the US Commerce Department, the companies have been targeted for their role in helping the Chinese military construct and militarise the internationally condemned artificial islands in the South China Sea.

Chinese companies are dominating in major sectors of the economy such as mining, agriculture and infrastructure development. Zimbabwe Independent
Police have located and interviewed a woman only identified as Colleta, in connection with the death of prominent banker Mr Douglas Munatsi on November 29.

Mr Munatsi died in a mysterious fire at his upmarket Harare apartment and Colleta is believed to have been the last person to see him alive.

Investigators are still awaiting the autopsy and toxicology examination results and have so far questioned several other people in connection with the case.

Mr Munatsi, who was the chief executive of the Zimbabwe Investment and Development Agency (ZIDA), was said to have been alone in his penthouse at the upmarket Northfields apartments in the capital when an inferno engulfed his main bedroom.

Authorities are still trying to ascertain the cause of the fire and death through the pending post-mortem results as well as reports from the Forensic Unit and Fire Brigade.

National police spokesperson Assistant Commissioner Paul Nyathi yesterday said Colleta had since been interviewed and released.

The Zimbabwe Republic Police has located Colleta and interviewed her. At the moment, police are still conducting investigations and will release full details once investigations are complete.

We will advise the public accordingly once the toxicology examination results are out, he said.

Among those that have been interviewed are the informant Mr Charles Gardner (32) of Northfields flats, a security guard at the flats Mr Shupai Zifunge (47) and Mr Martin Chitura (41) of Borrowdale who was employed by Mr Munatsi as a driver.

Others are Saurosi Marichambo (53) who was employed by Mr Munatsi as a chef and the deceaseds younger brother Cardmelon Munatsi (47).

Investigations have so far revealed that Mr Gardner, who resides in the neighbouring apartment, heard an explosion-like noise at around 0250hours and he woke up.

Mr Gardner went to the balcony to check where the noise was coming from and saw smoke coming out of Mr Munatsis apartment.

He also heard a voice that was shouting for help. Herald
TEACHERS unions have called on government to send non-examination classes home as part of measures to decongest schools and tame the spread of COVID-19 which has wreaked havoc in most learning institutions across the country.

Several privately-run boarding schools have suspended classes and sent learners home after recording a surge in infections in the past few days.

Schools are supposed to officially close for end of year on December 17, but teachers unions said one more week was too long given the speed at which the disease was spreading.

Amalgamated Rural Teachers Union president Obert Masaraure said the majority of schools have become a serious health threat,

We have been monitoring adherence to standard operating procedures (SOPs) in schools and adherence is as low as 25%, Masaraure said.

The union calls upon the government to temporarily close schools for non-examination classes while we enhance the capacity of our schools to adhere to SOPs. Our schools are a serious national health threat and if we dont act the nation will soon plunge into a health crisis.

Progressive Teachers Union president Takavafira Zhou said: Forget about SOPs, they are non-existent in most schools in Zimbabwe. There is a quandary in schools over invigilation of COVID-19-positive students with many teachers forced to invigilate without protective gear, Zhou said.

Many teachers have subsequently contracted the virus. Such command and control tactics have, therefore, endangered the health and safety of other pupils and teachers in schools.

If nothing is done as a matter of urgency, there is danger that schools may be virtually abandoned by teachers, or totally converted into quarantine centres rather than function as institutions of learning and teaching.

But Primary and Secondary Education ministry spokesperson Taungana Ndoro said they would stick to the December 17 closing date. Newsday
Tripoli, Libya (PANA) - A total of 176 vulnerable asylum seekers were evacuated from Libya on Friday on a humanitarian flight to Rwanda, chartered by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), which said it was the second such flight to Rwanda this year using the Emergency Transit Mechanism (ETM)
Bujumbura, Burundi (PANA) - The anti-coronavirus vaccine of the Chinese pharmaceutical firm 'SINOPHARM' has been joined since last Monday by that of 'Johnson & Johnson', an American pharmaceutical company, without however modifying the situation in Burundi where the immunization campaign remains timid
Port-Louis, Mauritius (PANA) - The Mauritian health authorities said on Friday that 83 new positive cases of COVID-19 have been reported in the last 24 hours
Addis Ababa, Ethiopia (PANA) - The UN humanitarian workers are continuing to provide support to communities affected by the war in Tigray and other regions, the UN Office for Humanitarian Affairs said on Thursday
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Wearing masks of some Afghan women victims of violence and terrorism, a number of RAWA activists organized a protest on the International Human Rights Day under the medieval rule of the Taliban. They chanted slogans against Taliban and vowed to continue their fight for justice and the rights of Afghan women.They were carrying placards with the following slogans in Persian, Pushto and English:

Afghan women are rising up, never accept slavery!

We will never pardon Taliban for the blood of Frozans, Arezos, Negars and other women victims!

Fundamentalism + Imperialism = Barbarism!

They Tried to Bury Us, They Didn't Know We Were Seeds

A society were women are in chains, will never experience prosperity!

In the absence of freedom and democracy, human rights have no meaning!

In a statement presented by a RAWA activist in the protest, it reads:

International Human Rights Day comes at a time when Afghanistan is no longer facing "human rights catastrophe" but the complete collapse of its human life. After the United States and NATO betrayed our people again and handed over Afghanistan to their Taliban minion, as expected, the so-called "achievements" of twenty years collapsed in twenty minutes, and made our people face an all-encompassing and unprecedented crisis.

Afghan women have gained awareness that today they are at the forefront of the fight against fundamentalism for freedom and justice, albeit at a rudimentary level. We strongly believe that these day-to-day struggles will become more widespread and roaring.
International Human Rights Day comes at a time when Afghanistan is no longer facing "human rights catastrophe" but the complete collapse of its human life. After the United States and NATO betrayed our people again and handed over Afghanistan to their Taliban minion, as expected, the so-called "achievements" of twenty years collapsed in twenty minutes, and made our people face an all-encompassing and unprecedented crisis.

Although the Taliban announced a "general amnesty" to fool out the opposition, they have practically killed and maimed hundreds across the country. In addition to the punishments of the Stone Age, stoning, ravaging, hanging in public, all kinds of torture and barbarism are taking place, which most of the world's media do not cover. They are committing crimes against our defenseless people while embracing the thieves and traitors such as Hamid Karzai, Abdullah Abdullah, Omar Zakhilwal, Zia-ul-Haq Amarkhail, Gulbuddin, Dawood Sultanzoi and others like them.

The Taliban are trying to pretend to be "changed" in order to gain global financial and diplomatic support, recognition and the lifting of sanctions. They even issue fatwas in "defending women's rights"! How can one expect "change" from a medieval and alien mercenary group whose whole life is associated with bloodshed, suicide, explosions and savagery? While the Haqqani Network, as the most dangerous terrorist group, is largely in power, the expectation of any "change" in the nature of the Taliban is self-deception and stupidity! Everyday, they demonstrate their true nature in suppressing women in Kabul and the provinces who bravely protest for their rights. In the early days of the takeover, the Taliban shot dead protesters in Herat, killing two Herat teachers who only wanted to open girls' schools and earn a living.

Afghanistan's experience over the past four decades has shown that Western powers and the regional countries involved in the Afghan affair are each willing to work with the biggest killers of the Afghan people for their own interests. For them, the fate of the Afghan people is of no value. Now, on the one hand, the United States and the West have imposed sanctions on the Taliban, on the other hand, they have romantic relations with the Taliban officials and their diplomatic relations continue. In their competitions in the region, they are once again sacrificing the people of Afghanistan and each of them is sharpening their teeth to swallow the last assets of our country. From the governments of the United States, Britain and France to Pakistan, China, Russia, Iran, India, Turkey, Qatar, etc., crocodile tears are shed in front of the media for the catastrophic situation of the Afghan people and poverty, misery and famine, but in secret to work with the Taliban and strengthening their influence in Afghanistan do not shy away from any sabotage and terrorism.

The people of Afghanistan must learn from the bloody history, especially the last twenty years, that justice, freedom, human rights and democracy are not gifts given to them by the foreign countries. These human values can only be institutionalized in the society through the struggle and efforts of the people of a nation, in which case no force will be able to threaten and take it back.

Afghan women have gained awareness that today they are at the forefront of the fight against fundamentalism for freedom and justice, albeit at a rudimentary level. We strongly believe that these day-to-day protest actions will become more widespread and roaring. The success of this wave of protests requires the rejection of compromisers, traders and self-serving elements. Women who sell themselves like Fawzia Koofi, Nahid Farid, Shahrzad Akbar, Roya Rahmani, Habibeh Sarabi, Fatemeh Gilani, Farkhondeh Zahra Naderi and the like should not be allowed to compromise and gain personal interests under the guise of "national resistance".

Understanding the difficulties and the extremely dangerous path we have taken, as always committed to the uncompromising struggle against fundamentalism and anti-imperialism, we will not neglect to expose the traitors and their pen-men and to inform and mobilize women. Despite the gloomy and suffocating atmosphere of the society, there is no way out of the current miserable situation except the struggle for justice.

Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA)

December 10, 2021
A Place for All Conservatives to Speak Their Mind.
Union Home Minister Amit Shah Home paid tributes to Chief of Defence Staff (CDS) General Bipin Rawat and his wife, who lost their lives along with 11 others in the military chopper crash in Tamil Nadu.

Around 10 a.m., the mortal remains of Rawat and his wife Madhulika Rawat arrived at his official residence at Kamraj Road from the Base Hospital here.

A large number of people also gathered at the residence to pay their last respects. Last rites of General Rawat and his wife will take place later in the day at Brar Square at Delhi Cantt.

Defence Minister Rajnath Singh paid tribute to Brig L.S. Lidder at Brar Square at Delhi Cantt, before cremation. Haryana Chief Minister M.L. Khattar also paid tribute to Brig Lidder at Brar Square.

On Thursday evening, the mortal remains of General Bipin Rawat, his wife Madhulika Rawat and 11 other armed forces personnel were brought to the Palam airport. Indian Air Force chief Air Chief Marshal V.R. Chaudhari brought the mortal remains of all the deceased. Earlier in the day, the mortal remains were moved in a convoy from Wellington to Sulur. From Sulur, the mortal remains were flown to Delhi in an Indian Air Force aircraft.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi paid his homage to General Rawat, his wife and 11 other armed forces personnel at the Palam airport. He also met the bereaved families.

Before the Prime Minister, Defence Minister Singh also reached the airport and met the family members of all the deceased and expressed his condolences to them.
Mumbai Mayor Kishori Pednekar on Friday received an anonymous letter with death threats in a foul language, a couple of days after she lodged a complaint against a BJP legislator for using offensive words against her.

Pednekar told media persons that the letter in Marathi, threatening to kill her and her family, was received in her mailbox, but it was not sealed and she would lodge a complaint with Byculla police in the matter.

The sender has warned that she would face repercussions if she messed with 'Dada', after which the Mumbai Police have strengthened security around her south Mumbai residence even as several women Shiv Sainiks condemned the targeting of the city's First Citizen.

The Mayor said that the letter was apparently posted in Panvel, Raigad district and asserted that she would not be cowed down by such intimidatory tactics.

Last year in December, she had received death threats on telephone which was received by her aide when she was subjected to abuses and warnings to kill her, and after her complaint, the accused was nabbed from Gujarat in January this year.

This week, Pednekar complained to Home Minister Dilip Walse-Patil and Police Commissioner Hemant Nagrale and filed the plea with Marine Drive Police Station against BJP legislator and ex-minister Ashish Shelar.

Following her complaint, Shelar - who claimed it was politically motivated and his comments were twisted out of context - was arrested under various charges but later granted bail by the police.


CDS Bipin Rawat cremated The final rites of Indias first chief of defence staff (CDS) General Bipin Rawat were performed at the Brar Square crematorium in Delhi Cantonment on Friday. General Rawat was killed along with his wife Madhulika and 11 other military personnel in a chopper crash near Coonoor in Tamil Nadus Niligiris district on Wednesday. The final rites of Indias first chief of defence staff (CDS) General Bipin Rawat were performed at the Brar Square crematorium in Delhi Cantonment on Friday. General Rawat was killed along with his wife Madhulika and 11 other military personnel in a chopper crash near Coonoor in Tamil Nadus Niligiris district on Wednesday.




Edison, NJ -- (SBWIRE) -- 12/10/2021 -- The Latest research study released by HTF MI "Self-Cashed or Fully Serviced ATM Market" with 100+ pages of analysis on business Strategy taken up by key and emerging industry players and delivers know how of the current market development, landscape, technologies, drivers, opportunities, market viewpoint and status. Understanding the segments helps in identifying the importance of different factors that aid the market growth. Some of the Major Companies covered in this Research are Fujitsu, GRG Banking, HESS Terminal Solutions, Hitachi Payment Services, Nautilus Hyosung, NCR, Wincor Nixdorf, DIEBOLD & Euronet etc.



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Browse market information, tables and figures extent in-depth TOC on "Self-Cashed or Fully Serviced ATM Market by Application (Bank Service Agent & Bank), by Product Type (, Deployment & Managed Services), Business scope, Manufacturing and Outlook  Estimate to 2025".



for more information or any query mail at sales@htfmarketreport.com



At last, all parts of the Self-Cashed or Fully Serviced ATM Market are quantitatively also subjectively valued to think about the Global just as regional market equally. This market study presents basic data and true figures about the market giving a deep analysis of this market based on market trends, market drivers, constraints and its future prospects. The report supplies the worldwide monetary challenge with the help of Porter's Five Forces Analysis and SWOT Analysis.



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Customization of the Report: The report can be customized as per your needs for added data up to 3 businesses or countries or 2 analyst hours.

On the basis of report- titled segments and sub-segment of the market are highlighted below:

Self-Cashed or Fully Serviced ATM Market By Application/End-User (Value and Volume from 2021 to 2026) : Bank Service Agent & Bank



Market By Type (Value and Volume from 2021 to 2026) : , Deployment & Managed Services



Self-Cashed or Fully Serviced ATM Market by Key Players: Fujitsu, GRG Banking, HESS Terminal Solutions, Hitachi Payment Services, Nautilus Hyosung, NCR, Wincor Nixdorf, DIEBOLD & Euronet



Geographically, this report is segmented into some key Regions, with manufacture, depletion, revenue (million USD), and market share and growth rate of Self-Cashed or Fully Serviced ATM in these regions, from 2015 to 2026 (forecast), covering China, USA, Europe, Japan, Korea, India, Southeast Asia & South America and its Share (%) and CAGR for the forecasted period 2021 to 2026.



Informational Takeaways from the Market Study: The report Self-Cashed or Fully Serviced ATM matches the completely examined and evaluated data of the noticeable companies and their situation in the market considering impact of Coronavirus. The measured tools including SWOT analysis, Porter's five powers analysis, and assumption return debt were utilized while separating the improvement of the key players performing in the market.



Key Development's in the Market: This segment of the Self-Cashed or Fully Serviced ATM report fuses the major developments of the market that contains confirmations, composed endeavors, R&D, new thing dispatch, joint endeavours, and relationship of driving members working in the market.



To get this report buy full copy @: https://www.htfmarketreport.com/buy-now?format=1&report=3729596



Some of the important question for stakeholders and business professional for expanding their position in the Self-Cashed or Fully Serviced ATM Market :

Q 1. Which Region offers the most rewarding open doors for the market Ahead of 2021?

Q 2. What are the business threats and Impact of latest scenario Over the market Growth and Estimation?

Q 3. What are probably the most encouraging, high-development scenarios for Self-Cashed or Fully Serviced ATM movement showcase by applications, types and regions?

Q 4.What segments grab most noteworthy attention in Self-Cashed or Fully Serviced ATM Market in 2020 and beyond?

Q 5. Who are the significant players confronting and developing in Self-Cashed or Fully Serviced ATM Market?



For More Information Read Table of Content @: https://www.htfmarketreport.com/reports/3729596-self-cashed-or-fully-serviced-atm-market-1



Key poles of the TOC:

Chapter 1 Self-Cashed or Fully Serviced ATM Market Business Overview

Chapter 2 Major Breakdown by Type [, Deployment & Managed Services]

Chapter 3 Major Application Wise Breakdown (Revenue & Volume)

Chapter 4 Manufacture Market Breakdown

Chapter 5 Sales & Estimates Market Study

Chapter 6 Key Manufacturers Production and Sales Market Comparison Breakdown

..

Chapter 8 Manufacturers, Deals and Closings Market Evaluation & Aggressiveness

Chapter 9 Key Companies Breakdown by Overall Market Size & Revenue by Type

..

Chapter 11 Business / Industry Chain (Value & Supply Chain Analysis)

Chapter 12 Conclusions & Appendix



Thanks for reading this article; you can also get individual chapter wise section or region wise report version like North America, LATAM, Europe or Southeast Asia.
Swiss radio hams develop ties with MakerSpaces The USKA President Willi Vollenweider HB9AMC attended the Fablab (MakerSpace) in Zug



A translation of the USKA post reads:



What are 'FabLabs'? Quote Wikipedia: A FabLab (sometimes called MakerSpace), is an open workshop with the aim of giving private individuals and individual traders access to modern manufacturing processes for individual pieces. Typical devices are 3D printers, laser cutters, CNC machines, presses for deep drawing or milling in order to be able to process different materials and workpieces ("make almost everything"). The first FabLab was initiated by Neil Gershenfeld at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 2002 and founded the rapidly growing maker movement worldwide. (End of quote).



There are currently around 25 FabLabs in Switzerland (see fablab.ch). In addition to the electronics and programming part, many projects of radio amateurs also require mechanical work, for which we often lack the expensive processing machines. The use of existing and accessible infrastructures is therefore obvious. In return, many FabLabs are interested in the electronics and ICT know-how of us radio amateurs - a win-win situation.



Member of the FabLab Zug team is Heinz HB9BPH. As part of a construction project carried out with the Lucerne section, parts of the "Magnetic Loop Antenna" were manufactured by the project members in the FabLab Zug (see downloads). The finished antenna is now part of the exhibition and was explained in detail to the guests at the opening of the exhibition by Heinz - effective public relations for our hobby!



We strive for nationwide partnerships with FabLabs to enable radio amateurs to access the FabLabs, especially in the context of USKA projects. We are looking for radio amateurs who already have relationships with FabLabs or would like to build up relationships for the radio amateurs. Please get in touch!



Willi HB9AMC



Magnetic Loop theory

https://www.uska.ch/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/Magnetic_Loop_Theorie_deutsch.pdf



Building a 3.5-24 MHz Magnetic Loop

https://www.uska.ch/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/Bauanleitung_Magnetic_Loop.pdf



Source USKA https://tinyurl.com/IARU-Switzerland
After more than a decade of violent repression and undemocratic rule that emerged after the 2009 ouster of Manuel Zelaya, a new leader takes the reins of the Central American nation.

by Sonali Kolhatkar

I am overwhelmed with joy; I just cannot believe it, says Dr. Oriel Maria Siu speaking to me from the city of San Pedro Sula the day after Hondurans like herself voted in presidential elections. Siu was ecstatic to learn that Xiomara Castro de Zelaya had an insurmountable lead over Nasry Asfura, the candidate representing the incumbent conservative party. Castro, the wife of ousted former president Manuel Zelaya, is a democratic socialist and will become the first woman president of Honduras. She triumphantly told her supporters, Today the people have made justice. We have reversed authoritarianism.

Castro was referring to the 12 years of repressive rule by the National Party, which took power after Zelaya was ousted in a 2009 military coup that, as per Siu, the United States orchestrated. Years after the coup, Hillary Clinton, who was the U.S. state secretary at the time of the coup, justified Zelayas removal, saying in a 2016 interview, I didnt like the way it looked or the way they did it but they had a very strong argument that they had followed the constitution and the legal precedence. The Intercept later exposed how U.S. military officers at the Center for Hemispheric Defense Studies assisted Honduran coup leaders in their efforts.

National Party leader Juan Orlando Hernandez claimed electoral victory in 2013 against Castro and then again in 2017 against Salvador Nasralla in the face of credible accusations of massive fraud. The man who has been deeply implicated in narco-trafficking in the U.S. (his brother was convicted in a New York court of smuggling in hundreds of tons of cocaine) used the Honduran security forces as his personal militia during his tenure.

Terror and violence reigned across Honduras, and among the many victims of the post-coup era was prominent environmental activist Berta Caceres, who led the resistance to a hydroelectric dam and was killed in 2016. Another victim was a 26-year-old nursing student named Keyla Martinez, who died in police custody in February 2021 after being arrested for violating a curfew. Her death prompted fresh protests.

Over the years, relentless state violence and corruption swept thousands of Honduran migrants northward who preferred the callousness of the U.S. immigration system to the barbarity of Hernandezs security forces. Conservatives in the U.S. refused to acknowledge the push factor of post-coup violence as a reason for Central American migration.

Still, resistance continued inside Honduras, and, according to Amnesty International, the wave of anti-government demonstrations has been a constant in the country in the face of massive repression.

Castros win may finally end this dark chapter, and its no wonder that Hondurans like Siu are celebrating. People were expecting the narco-dictatorship to again steal these elections, she says.

Castro, according to Siu, rose to prominence after her husbands ouster and was at the forefront letting people know, nationally and internationally, what was going on in Honduras. Castro campaigned on a socialist platform and brought together a coalition of what Siu described as local youth, Indigenous, Black, Garifuna movements that, after the 2009 coup, became a very strong social movement attempting to fight against the criminality of [the] corruption, militarism, police presence in the streets and extrajudicial killings that occurred under Hernandez.

Although Castro is the wife of ousted President Manuel Zelaya, Siu insists that President-elect Castro has a brain of her own and has a platform that is beautiful.

Suyapa Portillo Villeda, a Honduran American and associate professor of Chicano/a-Latino/a transnational studies at Pitzer College, says that Castro won on a proposal of promising participatory democracy and that she is trying to establish a new kind of pact with the people in calling for a national assembly to rewrite the constitution.

Its a bold position considering that former President Manuel Zelaya was on the verge of holding a referendum on the constitution when he was deposed in a military coup. This is the demand that has been there since 2009 that people have been organizing around, to have a new constitution that would get rid of the Cold War anti-communist constitution that was written during the Reagan era, says Portillo Villeda.

While the conservative backlash to a new constitution ushered in Hernandezs violent tenure, in many ways, Honduras democracy may have emerged stronger as a result. A system that Portillo Villeda describes as consisting of two oligarchic ruling parties is now a multiparty system, and Castro has managed to build a formidable coalition among several of them. This was a very Honduran type of win, says Portillo Villeda, referring to the grassroots organizing around Castros candidacy that included a lot of young Hondurans.

Castros win also represents a potential end to more than a decade of repression that includes violent misogyny. Women here die every day and rapes go without any form of justice, said Siu, who says she doesnt dare to walk on the streets after sundown. Honduras has been referred to as, one of the most dangerous places on Earth to be a woman.

Since 1985, Honduras has also maintained one of the most draconian abortion bans in the world, and under Hernandezs rule, Congress strengthened the ban. Pregnant people are not allowed abortions under any circumstances including rape or incest. Castro has promised to ease the ban.

The coalition that brought Castro to power includes a nascent feminist movement as well as a new queer and transgender movement working alongside traditional activist groups like unions, as well as Black and Indigenous communities. That is a big reason why Hondurans like Siu are hopeful, saying, she has the support of historically marginalized communities all throughout the nation.

Taking her broad mandate from a population eager for change and translating that to legitimate power in a nation whose governmental machinery has been decimated will be Castros most serious challenge. Of course, its going to be difficult, says Portillo Villeda, of the task ahead of Castro. Shes inheriting a broken country, legal system and Supreme Court and is coming into an empty house that has been robbed.

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.
UK court rules in favour of US in appeal to extradite Julian Assange

The US has won an appeal against a lower court's decision that barred Assange's extradition. The case to extradite WikiLeaks founder will be sent back to the lower court to be heard again.

The US government has won its appeal against a court decision which halted the extradition of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange.

The case will now go back to the lower court, where the matter will be heard again.

Friday's decision is unlikely to be the end of the case. Assange will be able to request permission for a final ruling from the UK's Supreme Court. Assange has been in custody since April 2019, when he was sentenced to 50 weeks behind bars.

Before that sentence, he was hauled out of the Ecuadorian Embassy by British authorities after his citizenship was revoked.

Why is the US seeking extradition?

The Australian is wanted on 18 charges in the United States and faces a maximum 175-year sentence if convicted.

The charges are related to the 2010 release by WikiLeaks of 500,000 secret files detailing aspects of military campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq.

The US government also alleges that he helped intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning steal the 2010 documents before exposing confidential sources around the world.

Manning was pardoned by former President Barack Obama at the end of his second four-year term. But she remained in jail from May 2019 until December 2020 for refusing to testify before a grand jury investigating WikiLeaks.

Assange and his lawyers have long argued that the protracted case against him is politically motivated.

His supporters also see him as a journalist who shone the light on possible war crimes.

Like other sectors maritime is not exceptional interm of transformation in term of technology. A life in custody

Before Assange was sentenced in the UK, he spent seven years at Ecuador's Embassy in London to avoid facing sexual assault allegations in Sweden that were later dropped.

While living in the embassy, Assange fathered two children with a member of his legal team, Stella Moris.

In November he was granted permission to marry Moris in Belmarsh prison.

July saw Assange spend his 50th birthday behind bars, and it was then that he found out that US authorities were continuing to pursue extradition.

Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison said as an Australian citizen Assange was "free to return home" once the legal cases against him have been concluded.

US authorities said if Britain agrees to extradite Assange, he could serve any potential prison sentence in Australia.

kb/sms (AFP, dpa, AP)
New Delhi, Dec 10 (UNI) President Ram Nath Kovind on Friday asserted that rights and duties are two sides of the same coin, and added that equality is the 'very soul' of human rights.

"The preamble of our constitution stresses upon justice, liberty, equality and fraternity. The four words beautifully sum up the whole range of human rights. In India, as Mahatma Gandhi ji often reiterated, rights and duties are two sides of the same coin.

Equality is the very soul of human rights, while non-discrimination is the first condition for absolute respect for human dignity," Kovind said, while addressing the 'Human Rights Day' celebrations, organised by the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC), at Vigyan Bhawan here.

Observing that the world is beset with countless "prejudices", the President said, " They, unfortunately, hinder the full realisation of individuals potential, and thus are not in the interest of society as a whole. Human Rights Day is the ideal occasion for us to ponder collectively and find ways to overcome such prejudices that only hinder the progress of humanity."

Mentioning the Covid pandemic, the President said, "Humanity is grappling with the worst pandemic in history. The pandemic is not yet over, and the virus seems to be one step ahead of humankind. It has disproportionately devastating impact on the vulnerable sections of society. In this context, India, despite the obvious challenges, has been able to save millions of lives by adopting a policy of free and universal availability of vaccine. "

He praised doctors, scientists and all other corona warriors for their heroic efforts to uphold peoples right to life and right to health.

The NHRC has worked with other stakeholders including civil society, media and individual activists to strengthen human rights, he added.

On the occasion, the President said the world should also debate and discuss the Right to a Healthy Environment and Climate Justice and added that degradation of nature is leading to irreversible changes in climate and we are witnessing its harmful impact.

"The world is waking up to the harsh reality, but it is yet to build the resolve to make decisive change. We owe it to our children that we save mother nature from the worst effects of industrialisation. The time is running out. India has taken initiatives at home as well as at the recently held 'Global Climate Conference', which would go a long way in restoring the health of the planet," he said.

NHRC chairperson Justice Arun Mishra and other dignitaries were present on the occasion.

Human Rights Day is celebrated on December 10 every year to commemorate the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). It was adopted and proclaimed by the General Assembly of the United Nations in 1948.

UNI DS SY 1645
Assam CM demands high level inquiry into PMs security lapse in Punjab 05 Jan 2022 | 8:17 PM Guwahati, Jan 5 (UNI) Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma on Wednesday demanded

a high level inquiry into the security lapse in Prime Minister Narendra Modis travel in Punjab

Compromising the security of the Prime Minister is a matter of serious concern and must be

enquired into at the highest levels, Sarma tweeted. see more..

Two brothers found murdered in Bokaro 05 Jan 2022 | 8:14 PM Bokaro, Jan 5 (UNI) Two brothers were found murdered inside a shop located at Bijulia village

under Chas Muffasil Police Station area in this district on Wednesday. see more..

Padma awardee charged under POSCO for sexually abusing a minor girl 05 Jan 2022 | 8:11 PM Guwahati, Jan 5 (UNI) A Padma awardee of Assam, charged under POSCO act for sexually abusing

a minor girl he was fostering, has obtained an interim anticipatory bail from Gauhati High Court to

evade arrest. see more..

Elderly couple dies due to asphyxiation in Jamtara 05 Jan 2022 | 8:03 PM Jamtara, Jan 5 (UNI) An elderly couple died on Wednesday due to asphyxiation in Udalbani

locality under Jamtara Police Station area in this district . see more..
For information only - not an official document

UNIS/OS/562

10 December 2021

PRESS RELEASE

UNOOSA and KIAM RAS pick agencies from Kenya and Nigeria to receive small wide field-of-view telescopes

VIENNA, 10 December 2021 (United Nations Information Service) - The United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs (UNOOSA) and the Keldysh Institute of Applied Mathematics of the Russian Academy of Sciences (KIAM RAS) have announced the winners of their joint opportunity ISONscope - a cooperation programme under the Access to Space for All Initiative. This year, the Kenya Space Agency and the Nigeria Centre for Basic Space Science of the National Space Research and Development Agency will receive two small wide field-of-view telescopes from KIAM RAS as a prize.

The ISONscope programme supports capacity-building and the promotion of space education and research in developing countries. Through the programme, KIAM RAS awards small telescopes to research institutions and agencies, aiming to increase national capabilities in astronomy and space data analysis. The recipients will also participate in the International Scientific Optical Network (ISON), a project coordinated by KIAM RAS, which mainly focuses on the collection of observational data on space debris and near-Earth objects.

The Kenyan Space Observation and Research Telescope (K-SORT Project), led by the Kenya Space Agency, aims to monitor space debris, space weather, and near-Earth objects. It also hopes to promote and support space science research and outreach programmes in Kenya. The Nigeria Centre for Basic Space Science will conduct a photometric study on a type of variable star known as Delta Scuti. By partnering with several Nigerian universities, access to the telescope is also expected to benefit students and their capacities.

UNOOSA Director Simonetta Di Pippo underscored the value of this effort saying: "ISONscope is the first opportunity that UNOOSA offers under the Access to Space for All Exploration Track, aimed at making inclusive the efforts on space exploration, so all countries develop capacity in this field. At UNOOSA we assign utmost importance to inclusion and leaving no one behind, working to ensure that the benefits of space, in particular for sustainable development, are truly accessible to all."

KIAM RAS Director Alexander Aptekarev said: "Fostering the exchange of scientific and technical information is the pivotal role of research organizations, particularly in the field of space research, which is closely interconnected with socio-economic factors and many other areas of knowledge."

Kenya Space Agency Director General Hillary Kipkosgey said: "This project is envisioned to enhance the study space science and astronomy at the Agency and in the partnering universities. The telescope is expected to set in motion a new era of Space science and Astronomy research in Kenya that will be instrumental in growing the local space sector."

"The opportunity provided to us by the Access to Space for All Initiative is unprecedented in our quest to contribute meaningfully to the global effort aimed at studying near-Earth objects. Since space is limitless, there is no limit to what can be achieved with this facility as we look forward to making a great impact globally", said Bonaventure Okere, Director of Centre for Basic Space Science.

For more detailed information, please see:

https://www.unoosa.org/oosa/en/ourwork/access2space4all/ISONscope/ISONscope_Rounds.html

* *** *

For more information, please contact:

Access to Space for All Initiative Team

United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs (UNOOSA)

Email: unoosa-access-to-space(at)un.org


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On 9 and 10 December 2021, the World Customs Organization (WCO) held the 16th PICARD Conference, which is an international platform to foster dialogue among Customs, the academic community and the private sector. The event attracted approximately around 800 registered participants from more than 110 countries.

In his opening remarks, Dr. Kunio Mikuriya, Secretary General of the WCO, reiterated the importance of continued dialogue and partnership between Customs administrations and academia. He stressed that Customs administrations needed to keep pace with recent trends, including data analytics and the circular economy, without losing sight of the fact that traditional Customs missions such as revenue collection, border security and trade facilitation are still extremely important. Dr. Mikuriya also took this opportunity to announce the WCO's theme for 2022: Scaling up Customs Digital Transformation by Embracing a Data Culture and Building a Data Ecosystem.

The Conference, which featured distinguished speakers and moderators from both Customs and academia, comprised 15 sessions covering the following three main themes: data analytics, COVID-19 and the circular economy.

During two sessions on data analytics, Customs shared hands-on experience of topics including risk analysis, fraud detection and geodata, while the academic community presented emerging technologies and recent developments.

Against the backdrop of the ongoing pandemic, two sessions were dedicated to COVID-19 related topics. In the two years since the pandemic was declared, Customs administrations and the private sector have learnt many lessons, including how to facilitate the trade in medical supplies, respond to large variations in the volume of trade and protect frontline Customs officers against the disease.

The circular economy is a very highly topical issue for the global community and Customs administrations need to be prepared for this new trend. Two sessions were dedicated to this topic, and renowned academics and researchers introduced the latest policy trends and findings in this area.

The Conference also addressed other important topics such as border security, innovations in facilitation, and education and training for Customs officials.

On the morning of Day 2 of the Conference, Dr. Mikuriya gave a speech describing the WCOs view of the environment in which Customs administrations are operating and the strategy adopted to support Members in addressing the issues faced.

The Secretary General then went on to sign two Memoranda of Understanding (MoUs) with the Clermont Auvergne University, France, represented by Dr. Gregoire Rota Graziosi, and the University of Victoria, Canada, represented by Dr. Emmanuel Brunet-Jailly. The signature of the MoUs will further enhance their cooperation and research capacities of the WCO.

In his closing remarks, Mr. Taeil Kang, WCO Director for Capacity Building, summarized the main outcomes of the Conference and thanked all those having contributed to the success of PICARD 2021.

The Conference was supported by the Korea Customs Service. A recording of the proceedings will be made available on the WCOs YouTube channel and details of the next Conference will be announced at a later date.
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Zanu PF Mashonaland Central Province provincial war veteran executive member, Cde Dennis Mushonga whose Chimurenga name was Cde Everisto Nhamo, has died.

Cde Nhamo died last Sunday at his home in Glendale after an illness. He joined the liberation struggle in 1972 after being recruited by the late General Solomon Mujuru at St Albert's Mission in Mt Darwin. Chairman of Mashonaland Central War Veterans Association, Cde Richard Chirongwe said the association has lost a brave freedom fighter. Cde Chirongwe said they had forwarded a request for Cde Nhamo to be accorded National Hero Status.

Cde Nhamo first received military training in the battle front and was later sent to Tanzania where he received further training at Mgagao military academy.

He became a member of the Zanla General Staff in 1974 and operated in Mt Darwin Muzarabani and Rushinga.

Cde Nhamo was part of a group that attacked Altena farm together with General Mujuru. He survived the epic five day battle at Mavhonde in Mozambique.

At this battle he was in charge communication system linking together the five bases at the camp. "When I saw the aeroplanes being gunned down at Mavhonde I told myself that I will never use an aeroplane as a means of transport. One by one we gunned them down," Cde Nhamo is quoted in the 60 minute epic Mavhonde documentary produced by the Zimbabwe Heritage Trust.

Cde Nhamo was part of a group of cadres who established Zhunda and Nyadzonia refugee camps together with the likes of Tracy Sarudzai Chakananga, Cde Tsanangurai popularly known as Cde Tsana Cde Dadirai, now Brigadier General Chitsungo, the late Timothy Gutura, Charles Saudi among others.

At Independence Cde Nhamo joined the National Army signals and communication but later retired on medical grounds.

Mourners are gathered at house no 1500 Highway Glendale. He is survived by a son Maxwell and daughter Memory.
The Port of Durban, the largest and busiest shipping terminal in sub-Saharan Africa.

But the world's largest free trade area needs measures to boost productivity and expand opportunities.

The African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) could reduce COVID-19-induced growth contraction, poverty and inequality trends and spur sustainable and inclusive growth on the continent if stronger support measures targeting women, young traders and small businesses are implemented, according to UNCTAD's Economic Development in Africa Report 2021 published on 8 December.

The report shows that trade policies alone are unlikely to support inclusive economic growth on the continent. Other measures needed to increase potential distributional gains from regional integration and help ensure inclusive development are cooperation in promoting investment and competition policies, accelerating financing of infrastructure that facilitates rural-urban linkages and providing equal access to socioeconomic opportunities and productive resources.

The AfCFTA, under which free trade officially commenced in January 2021, is one of the flagship projects of the African Union's Agenda 2063, which includes various targets on sustainable and inclusive growth. Economic growth can only be inclusive if it reduces both poverty and inequality, the report says.

"The AfCFTA has immense potential to spur economic growth and transform the continent's development prospects if additional measures are taken to realize and fairly distribute its many potential benefits, as these gains will not come automatically," said UNCTAD Secretary-General Rebeca Grynspan.

"Poverty and inequality are not inescapable. They are products of political choices and public policy. This report will support African governments and development partners to better leverage the AfCFTA to tackle both poverty and inequality to ensure the expected gains from free trade are more inclusive."

Inclusive growth elusive for most African countries

According to the report, growth has been inclusive in only 17 out of 49 African countries for which sufficient household data for between 2000 and 2020 is available. Africa's economic growth has been poverty-reducing, the report says, but inequality-increasing in 18 African countries and non-inclusive on either dimension in 14 nations.

This finding raises the key question of how economic growth through regional integration can contribute to poverty reduction and foster inclusive development, a main objective of Agenda 2063.

Africa's unprecedented growth in the 2000s has not translated into significantly improved livelihoods for most Africans, as the income gap between the rich and the poor has widened. About 34% of African households live below the international poverty line ($1.9 per day), and around 40% of the total wealth is owned by approximately 0.0001% of the continent's population, according to the report.

The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated inequalities and vulnerabilities of marginalized groups, resulting in an additional 37 million people in sub-Saharan Africa living in extreme poverty (at the poverty line of $1.9 per day).

Intra-African trade can create inclusive growth

The report says trade liberalization, whether bilateral, regional or multilateral, entails some losses of tariff revenues and has redistributional effects. However, more international trade can also generate interregional knowledge spillovers, which could increase efficiency, diffuse technology and redistribute wealth.

Intra-African trade is currently low at 14.4% of total African exports. It's comprised of 61% processed and semi-processed goods, suggesting higher potential benefits from greater regional trade for transformative and inclusive growth, the report finds.

The report emphasizes that when considering informal cross-border trade, Africa records higher intra-regional trade, particularly in agriculture.

Informal cross-border trade can account for up to 90% of official trade flows in some countries and contribute to up to 40% of total trade within regional economic communities such as the Southern African Development Community (SADC) and the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA).

It also functions as an employer of last resort for many vulnerable groups, making it an important source of income for the poorest segment of the population and marginalized groups like women and the youth.

An untapped $22 billion opportunity

The report finds that the continent's current untapped export potential amounts to $21.9 billion, equivalent to 43% of intra-African exports. It says an additional $9.2 billion of export potential can be realized through partial tariff liberalization under the AfCFTA over the next five years.

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To unlock the untapped potential, various intra-African non-tariff barriers, including costly non-tariff measures, infrastructure gaps and market information gaps, need to be successfully addressed. This requires joint efforts under the AfCFTA.

Long-term cooperation in investment and competition policies will be essential to overcoming market dominance by a few actors and to reducing structural and regulatory barriers to market entry.

Due to border closures induced by the COVID-19 pandemic, vulnerable groups such as women cross-border traders, small businesses and informal trades have experienced a complete depletion of their savings and have struggled to provide necessities for their families, the report says.

"Complementary measures to support women and young people in trade, small businesses and the least developed African countries are required to achieve a more inclusive AfCFTA," said Wamkele Mene, Secretary-General of the AfCFTA Secretariat.
President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo has said if Africa will develop and generate wealth and prosperity for its people, the success of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) will be critical towards that goal.

President Akufo-Addo said while 16 per cent of Africa's combined GDP was from intra-Africa trade, 72 per cent of Europe's combined GDP came from intra-European trade.

Those two statistics, President Akufo-Addo stated "tell us everything about the relative economic development of Africa and Europe."

Speaking at the Ghana-South Africa Business Forum in Accra on Sunday, with the visiting President of South Africa, Cyril Ramaphosa in attendance, President Akufo-Addo said Africa needed to focus and push up traumatically intra-African trade, which is the panacea to generating wealth and prosperity on the continent.

"And as God will have it at this critical moment of Africa's history, the AfCFTA's Secretariat is located here in Ghana, and the first Secretary-General of the AfCFTA is a South African, who had shown a great deal of attitude and enthusiasm for the work," he stated.

President Akufo-Addo said the private sector was pivotal in the development of AfCFTA and, therefore urged them to take on the responsibility of moving the process of regional integration and regional trade forward.

He reassured the South African business community that policy directives of the government would continue to be the position of Ghana.

President Akufo-Addo said Ghana and South Africa had agreed to set up a Business Advisory Council -- a joint committee for trade and investments -- to become part of the architecture of the Bi-National Commission which would maintain constantly, the dialogue and interaction between the two business communities.

The President said he was encouraged by the position of President Ramaphosa on many key issues affecting both South Africa and Ghana, as well as the larger continent of Africa.

Key amongst them, President Alufo-Addo said, was the 'fight' President Ramaphosa was leading for the domestic production of vaccines, and the call for some emergency treatment in the TIPPS Agreement that relates to intellectual property rights to the manufacturing of vaccines.

"It's one that you have Ghana's strongest support. We cannot enter the next round of the pandemic and are dependent again on people who hoard vaccines when the world needs them. We are determined this time around, to develop our capacity to produce vaccines," President Akufo-Addo stated.

Ghana Government has set up a National Vaccine Institute which would lead the process in the country to develop and manufacture vaccines.

"And to that extent, we are in full support of the position you have taken and we are hoping that we can work together in these areas for the future", President Akufo-Addo stated.

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On his part, President Ramaposa commended the resilience of the business community and their ability to sustain their businesses through these trying and difficult times of COVID-19.

The South African President said a critical condition for the recovery of the economies of African countries was the successful rollout of COVID-19 vaccines and the continued adherence to the measures and protocols put in place to keep citizens safe and alive.

He said while more than 220 million vaccine doses had been administered on the African continent, only 6.7 per cent of the African's population was fully vaccinated.

As of November 28, 2021, Africa had administered a total of around 235 million doses of vaccine against the coronavirus.

That, President Ramaphosa said, "is simply not acceptable and is also not enough if we are to revive and rebuild our economies that had been made fragile by COVID-19."

He said equitable access to vaccines was the best way to mitigate the economic, social and health consequences of the pandemic.

"That is why South Africa, together with India has co-sponsored a proposal at the World Trade Organisation (WTO) for a temporary TRIPS waiver to ensure access to COVID-19 vaccines and treatments."

President Ramaphosa urged all African countries to rally behind this proposal because the fastest and effective way to vaccinate "our population is if we are allowed to manufacture our vaccines and at the same time, build our own domestic pharmaceutical manufacturing capability.
Leaders from across the globe including President Muhammadu Buhari and 16 other African presidents are expected at a meeting with US President Joe Biden to discuss ways to make democracy more responsive.

The meeting tagged the "Summit for Democracy' organized by American administration is to be virtually held, with the knowledge that the United States is itself under scrutiny over its own commitment to the democratic process.

The 16 other African nations invited to the summit with Nigeria are Angola, Botswana, Cabo Verde, Democratic Republic of Congo, Ghana, Kenya, Liberia, Malawi, Mauritius, Namibia, Niger, Sao Tome and Principe, Senegal, Seychelles, South Africa and Zambia.

The two-day summit, with a participant list that includes 110 countries, will be hosted by President Joe Biden, who emphasised soon after taking office last January, that "democracy doesn't happen by accident. We have to defend it, fight for it, strengthen it, renew it."

According to a report by AllAfrica.com, the summit is the first in a year-long campaign during which participating nations will take initiatives, in the words of the Biden administration, "to make democracies more responsive and resilient, and to build a broader community of partners committed to global democratic renewal."

Though no reason was given for none extension of invitation to some notable African nations whose leaders will not be taking part in the virtual gathering as no explanation was offered for country-by-country invitation, but among those excluded are countries where presidential term limits have been overturned (Cote d'Ivoire), where elections have been marred by repression (Tanzania and Uganda) or whose governments have been installed by military coups (Egypt, Mali, Guinea Bissau and Sudan).

Also not invited are the governments of Mozambique, where allegations of corruption have strained ties with the U.S., and Ethiopia, where President Biden has since revoked the country's trade agreement and enabling the U.S. to impose sanctions on those most responsible for the conflict of the last year.
"JUST IN: Notorious kidnapper, Evans, Sentenced To Death By Hanging," begins a message posted on Facebook on 25 November 2021.

"Chukwudubem Onwuamadike, commonly known as Evans Kidnapper, is a notorious criminal who is known all across Nigeria for kidnapping important Nigerians and demanding ransom. He first became known to the common public when the police issued a warrant for his arrest back in 2013."

Onwuamadike is an alleged kidnapper who pleaded guilty to conspiracy and kidnapping in Ikeja High Court of Lagos state, southwestern Nigeria.

He and five others were arraigned on a two-count charge of conspiracy and kidnapping.

The post includes a photo of Onwuamadike in handcuffs, escorted by security officers.

But was he sentenced to death by hanging in late November?

Case adjourned, no verdict or sentence yet

The most recent news on Onwuamadike's trial is that the case was adjourned to 17 December for a hearing.

Justice Oluwatoyin Taiwo of an Ikeja Special Offences Court granted permission to two witnesses to testify online after the prosecutor from the Lagos State Ministry of Justice explained that his witnesses refused to physically testify in court, fearing for their safety.

There have been no credible media reports of a verdict - let alone a sentence of death - in Onwuamadike's case.

The message is false.
The suspects have been handed over to the police, the official said.

The Enugu Electricity Distribution Company (EEDC) said it has arrested nine people who allegedly specialise in vandalising electricity transformers within communities in the South-east.

The spokesperson for the EEDC, Emeka Ezeh, disclosed this in a statement made available to the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on Wednesday in Enugu.

Mr Ezeh said the vandal activities took place within two states in the South-east - Anambra and Enugu.

The suspected vandals have been handed over to the police for further investigation and prosecution, he said.

Mr Ezeh urged electricity customers to be more vigilant during this Yuletide as activities of vandals have been on the rise, to avoid "customers being subjected to darkness during the festive period".

"The company arrested two suspected vandals on Friday, December 3, through the vigilante team of Nri community in Aniocha Local Government Area of Anambra.

"The suspects, identified as Ugochukwu Nweri and Eugene Azali, were arrested for vandalising the Ugwuokporo D7 distribution substation located at Agukwu in Nri community.

"Having lifted the transformer from the plinth, the duo went ahead to drain the oil, cut some parts of the upriser and porcelain large cables.

"They were immediately handed over to the Neni Police Station, while effort is being made to transfer the suspects to the State Criminal Investigation Department, Awka, for further investigation and possible arraignment in court," Mr Ezeh said.

He said five suspected vandals were arrested by a vigilante group in Nara community in Nkanu East Local Government Area of Enugu State for alleged vandalism of EEDC transformers in the community.

The suspects have been identified as Chidera Ogbu, Ede Sunday, Onyedika Ani, Chinedu Ani, while the receiver of the stolen items has been identified as Onyebuchi Igwe.

Within the period, two suspects - Nwankwo, 22, and Chinedu Nwankwo, 21, both from Ezza Umuhuali community in Ebonyi, were arrested by Amayi Vigilante team for vandalising Amayi Akamili-Uruagu in Nnewi distribution substation, according to the spokesperson of the electricity company.

(NAN)
SUB: Three suspected kidnappers have been arrested at their hideout near Ossra-Irekpeni communities along Okene-Lokoja-Abuja highway....

Three suspected kidnappers have been arrested at their hideout near Ossra-Irekpeni communities along Okene-Lokoja-Abuja highway.

One of the local hunters who carried out the operation told Daily Trust that there was an exchange of gunfire.

He said the hunters alongside the chairman of Adavi Local Government Area of Kogi, Joseph Samuel Omuya, stormed the forest based on a tip-off, late Wednesday.

The source said while combing the forest, the kidnappers opened fire and the hunters returned fire for fire.

"We immediately engaged them in shootout and three of the kidnappers were arrested," he said.

According to him, some other gang members escaped with with bullets wounds while those arrested have been handed over to security operatives in Lokoja, the state capital.

The chairman of Adavi local government confirmed the arrest of three kidnappers, saying he led the operation.

He said the kidnappers were among the gangs that have been terrorising residents and travellers along Okene-Lokoja-Abuja highway.

"One of the kidnappers have confessed about their mode of operation, the nature of sophisticated weapons they use, and listed the names of other gang members," he said.

The chairman, while commending the the local hunters for their efforts and determination in discharging their duties, urged villagers residing in the area to be security-conscious and provide useful information to the appropriate security agents.

The spokesman of the Kogi state police command, DSP Williams Ovye Aya, did not pick calls or reply text message sent over the incident.
At least 15 worshippers were killed while dozens sustained injuries in an attack on a mosque in Ba'are village, Mashegu Local Government Area of Niger State.

The attackers reportedly struck when villagers were performing their early morning prayers.

A source said those who sustained injuries have been taken to the Kontagora General Hospital for treatment.

The Niger state Commissioner of Police, Monday Bala Kuryas, who confirmed the incident, said no fewer than 9 people were killed in the attack.

"Niger state police command has already drafted security personnel to the affected area to further safeguard lives and properties in that community," he said.

He stressed that security agencies would continue to discharge their responsibility of protecting lives and properties of Nigerlites and Nigerians while calling for credible intelligence from public.

The attack comes less than two months after bandits gunned down 18 worshippers from a mosque in the same local government.

The attack took place in Mazakuka village in Mashegu local government area on October 26, 2021.
The ailing actor who spoke with PREMIUM TIMES on Thursday said he has conducted a series of tests to ascertain the nature of his ailment to no avail.

Veteran Yoruba actor, Ojo Arowosafe, popularly known as Fadeyi Oloro has cried out to Nigerians, seeking financial assistance amidst health challenges.

The ailing actor who spoke with PREMIUM TIMES on Thursday said he has conducted a series of tests to ascertain the nature of his ailment to no avail. He also said he has sold all his properties while moving from one hospital to another in search of a solution.

The veteran actor who became a household name after he starred in the 1986 television drama, "Arelu", told this newspaper that he can not walk properly and is experiencing excruciating pains in his body. He pleaded for financial assistance from Nigerians.

He also complained about his colleagues, who he said had failed to reach out or help him.

In May 2021, the actor attended the Sanguonge Church of all Nations where he was healed by late TB Joshua. Before the encounter, he said he suffered from an illness that caused decay in his leg.

When he spoke with this newspaper, the veteran actor also confirmed that he was indeed healed by the late philanthropic prophet after battling ill health for two years.

Appeal

Fadeyi said he would appreciate any form of help he can receive from Nigerians. He showered prayers and blessings upon anyone who had helped him, while he appealed and solicited support, he said,

"I need help from everyone that has smiled by watching me on TV. "

While confirming that he is still interested in acting, he revealed that he has written a movie that he would love to produce titled "Fadeyi Oloro Ogbodoku", meaning 'Fadeyi must not die' but can't do that until after adequate treatment.

Abandoned by politicians

Meanwhile, during an interview on a Yoruba programme, 'Agbagba', the actor said despite working with people in authority he had been left alone to suffer, he said amidst tears:

"The suffering is too much, despite my closeness to the government- governors and ministers, I worked with them with all I had and almost lost my life in the process. They should all come to my aid now that I need them."

Explaining his closeness to politicians, the actor said: "I was not a politician, I only worked for them. When it is time for their campaign, I will volunteer to do whatever they want me to do not only for them but for all of the South-west."

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According to Fadeyi, he had worked with a former governor of Lagos State, Bola Tinubu, and other top politicians which included Raji Fashola, and Lai Mohammed, the minister of information. He said when he reached out to them they did not get any positive response.

He said: "I don't want to reveal some secrets involved in my association with them before they became who they are. Including Rauf Aregbesola and Lai Mohammed."

"I have been calling them, but no response from them. They should help me too. I also worked for Sanwo-Olu and I even called his secretary recently, Prince Adedeji, saying that I need their help, that they want me dead before they come to my aid. They want to say RIP but I forbid it.".

The veteran actor who hails from Igbra-Odo in Ekiti State, also mentioned that Kayode Fayose cannot deny knowing him.

Fadeyi has starred in many Yoruba movies like, 'Alagbara Ilu', 'Jagun Ina', 'Inu Bibi', 'IJA Abija', 'Osimi Ika', 'Adani Lori', 'Fitu Fona', 'Ruke Rudo' ,' Bola Ele', 'Ade Ogun' and many others.
The President noted that there had been improved security in the country's maritime domain and the Gulf of Guinea.

President Muhammadu Buhari, on Thursday, commended the Nigerian Navy for its efforts in the fight against piracy in the nation's maritime domain.

Mr Buhari spoke at the commissioning of some Nigerian Navy Ships (NNS), boats, and helicopter at the Naval Dockyard, Victoria Island in Lagos.

The President noted that there had been improved security in the country's maritime domain and the Gulf of Guinea.

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the President commissioned NNS LANA, NNS ABA, NNS KANO, NNS IKENNE, NNS SOKOTO, and NNS Oji, 111 boats, and an Agusta Westland 139 helicopter.

Mr Buhari said he was particularly delighted to commission the NNS Oji, a Seaward Defence Boat (SDB) 3 because it was locally built by the Nigerian Navy engineers.

"I am delighted to witness the commissioning ceremony of some recently acquired platforms as well as the commissioning of the indigenously constructed SDB 3 and the keel-laying ceremony for the construction of SDB 4 and SDB 5.

"It is gratifying to see that this area of platforms would shortly be indebted in the inventory of the Nigerian Navy fleet.

"This will no doubt boost the capability of the navy in securing the Nigerian maritime domain," he said.

Mr Buhari acknowledged the navy's efforts towards securing the nation's oil and gas industry in the maritime environment, as well as sea means of communications.

He described the Nigerian Navy as an undeniable major contributor to the economic well-being of the country, given "our present high dependence on oil and gas revenues.

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"The arrest of those involved in illegalities has yielded results of some pirates, illegal bunkering syndicates, pipeline vandals and other miscreants being convicted during this year (2021).

"Such successes were made possible through enforcement of our new anti-piracy law on Suppression of Piracy and Other Maritime Offensive Act 2019.

"Therefore, the significance of the commissioning of these platforms cannot be over-emphasized," he said.

Mr Buhari said the provision of the new policy directives of the navy had given the service credible guidelines and leverage for improved operational efficiency.

He noted that those directives were codified in such documents as the Nigerian Navy Strategic Plan 2021-2030; the Chief of the Naval Staff Strategic Directive 2021-2025 and the Total Spectrum Maritime Strategy.

The President charged the personnel to be professional and make good use of the platforms.

"We should note that we are in a critical period where our country is faced with a decline in our revenue and the security challenges we are facing.

"The present realities, therefore, calls for prudent resource management, innovativeness, accountability and careful maintenance," he said.

(NAN)
#NormasLegales ?? Modifican el Decreto Supremo que declara Estado de Emergencia Nacional por las graves circunstancias que afectan la vida de las personas a consecuencia de la COVID-19 y establece nuevas medidas de convivencia social.??https://t.co/ZxjqWCVZeL pic.twitter.com/w8It9ioAVJ
Canciller Oscar Maurtua participo de la ceremonia de inauguracion donde expreso su profunda emocion por la trascendencia para el Peru de ser el primer pais del continente americano en presentar un pesebre navideno en la Plaza San Pedro. pic.twitter.com/HDXip9yNxn
El Canciller Maurtua participo hoy en la III Reunion Ministerial del Foro China-CELAC, donde saludo la profundizacion de la cooperacion entre China y America Latina, con miras a la recuperacion economica, el avance tecnologico y el desarrollo sostenible.

??https://t.co/y7BJpcqmEb pic.twitter.com/I8bM2xrLdC
In remarks to the press, after participating in a special audience with the Supreme Pontiff , the diplomat affirmed that he had conveyed the greeting from the Head of State to the leader of the Catholic Church, which this month commemorates the arrival of Christ into the world.





"In this sacrosanct month of December, I have conveyed to the Holy Father the special greeting from the Head of State, Pedro Castillo, to whom Pope Francis has also extended the warmest invitation to visit him at the Vatican promptly," he revealed.





Remarks were made after attending a special audience with all authorities and people who participated in the creation of the Christmas motifs exhibited at the Holy See, among which the Chopcca Nativity Scene occupies a special place at the heart of world's Catholicism.









"Huancavelica has become a region of the country that has managed to transmit, like any Peruvian ambassador, a message from the bowels of the Andes (composed) of this creative, imaginative, suggestive art that our artisans craft and which is expressed through the beauty of the Chopcca Nativity Scene," the minister highlighted.




Llamo a todas las autoridades del Peru a trabajar con transparencia y sin ningun indicio de corrupcion. Debemos seguir dialogando por una verdadera descentralizacion, expreso @PedroCastilloTe en la reunion ejecutiva con los gobernadores regionales en Palacio de Gobierno. pic.twitter.com/D6SNkZxIl2
YEREVAN, DECEMBER 10, ARMENPRESS. President of the Republic of Artsakh Arayik Harutyunyan issued a statement on the 30th anniversary of the holding of referendum for independence in Artsakh.

Armenpress presents the full text of the statement:

Dear compatriots,

30 years ago, on this very day of 1991, amidst hostilities and artillery shelling of peaceful settlements, our people organized a high-level Referendum on Independence marking the way for us to achieve our goals. With the Constitution of the Republic of Artsakh adopted in 2006 we reaffirmed our commitment to those values and ideas that formed the basis of our newly-independent statehood. Nevertheless, no matter how difficult and bloody this thirty-year-long march was, we managed to build and strengthen our statehood through national efforts, continuing to be dedicated to the values of the Artsakh national-liberation movement.

Despite the mediation efforts of the OSCE Minsk Group aimed at peaceful settlement of the Azerbaijani-Karabagh conflict, Azerbaijan, bypassing one of the three principles presented to the conflicting parties  the non-use of force, as well as other well-known principles of the international law, launched several military aggressions against the Republic of Artsakh and its civilian population among which the 2020 war has become the hardest challenge for our statehood and people. Regardless of the great human, territorial, material and moral-psychological consequences of this aggression, the Republic of Artsakh has been standing, the will and endurance of our people on the chosen path towards independence are unshakable. Among the bright indicators of this very fact are that within this short period of time the population has reached about 120,000 people, a high-level security environment has been ensured, the fully functioning state institutions have been carrying out numerous development projects restoring economic infrastructure. It is noteworthy that not only the state bodies fulfill their vital functions on the basis of the Constitution and legislation of the Republic of Artsakh, but it is also symbolic that on this very day local self-governing bodies elections are held in two large communities, which itself is a small but important manifestation of our state-building determination.

Touching upon the post-war situation and our plans for the future, I would like to highlight several key points:

Security. Today we can state that despite the targeted provocations undertaken by Azerbaijan, due to the efforts of the Russian peacekeeping troops and the Defense Army, relative stability is maintained in Artsakh, which gives an opportunity to have a vision for the future and make active efforts in that direction. In this regard, I would like to express my deep gratitude to all the servicemen defending the Motherland, as well as the entire personnel of the Russian peacekeeping troops and personally to Russian President Vladimir Putin, due to whose immediate efforts the aspirations of the Turkish world have been thwarted and peace has been established in the region.

Given the extremely destructive and aggressive position of the Azerbaijani side, the uncertainty of the prospects and timing of the final and just settlement of the conflict, the Artsakh authorities and people believe that the presence of Russian peacekeepers in Artsakh should be guaranteed and indefinite as long as it is necessary. Within this context the needs and opinions of the people of Artsakh should be key factors, as we are the main beneficiaries of the peacekeeping mission.

Another pivotal direction to ensure the proper security is the consistent development of capabilities and fortifications of the Defense Army considering the existing challenges and peculiarities of the situation. In the past year, tangible work has been carried out and with time we will improve the efficiency of our security mechanisms.

Foreign policy. We will continue the struggle for the unconditional recognition of the realization of our people's right to self-determination and the return of the occupied territories. We are in favor of a peaceful settlement of the conflict, where the international recognition of the independence of the Republic of Artsakh on the basis of the right to self-determination is our main and uncompromising goal, which will pave the way for the realization of the ultimate goal of the Artsakh movement. In this regard, we expect the unconditional and long-lasting support of the whole Armenian nation, without doubt and hesitation towards the path we have chosen. Demographics. One of the main guarantees of keeping Artsakh Armenian and settling the conflict in favor of nation is the existence of the Armenian people in their native soil. In this regard, the post-war demographics are quite promising, but serious efforts and resources are needed to achieve the desired results.

Within this context, the satisfaction of housing needs is the main issue, which we started to solve immediately after the war. In particular, we have initiated large-scale constructions in different parts of Artsakh, within three years we plan to build about 5,000 apartments for the displaced and other vulnerable groups. Of course, this does not mean that we are retracting from our lost homeland, but on the other hand, we are well aware that the negotiation process in this regard can take a long time, thus, during this whole period leaving the displaced families to the whims of fate or the infamous experience of keeping them in tent settlements is unacceptable for us.

As a continuation of the topic, I would like to emphasize that the housing issue in Artsakh must be resolved comprehensively. Hence, in conformity with my pre-election promise, each family will have its own apartment, but some patience to eliminate the sharp consequences of the war is needed here. In parallel with this process, we will gradually launch new housing programs to support all families in need.

We have already launched or planning to launch a number of other programs to promote natural and mechanical demographic growth in Artsakh. This is one of the main directions where Pan-Armenian consolidation, large-scale and continuous participation is needed, taking into consideration the amount of resources required.

Socio-economic development.

The bulk of our economic potential has been lost in the aftermath of the war, which has made socioeconomic problems very acute. Of course, thanks to the Government of the Republic of Armenia, the Hayastan All-Armenian Fund and other charitable organizations, humanitarian assistance of the Russian Government and the ICRC we have been able to solve many problems. But, for achieving institutional solutions, the volume of state budget of the Republic of Artsakh for the coming years is very important.

I am glad to note that due to the support of the Republic of Armenia, in 2022 the expenditure part of the state budget of the Republic of Artsakh will make about 215 billion drams. For comparison, let me state that in 2020 the state budget was about 122 billion drams. This will definitely provide an opportunity to address the potential challenges, but much greater resources, including economic investments, are needed to continue improving socioeconomic and demographic situation. Therefore, I expect that all capable Pan-Armenian circles will have their direct participation in this important direction.

Naturally, in parallel, the full introduction of free and qualitative healthcare and education systems is of utmost importance for us. The process was launched before the war, is in progress now and will include new programs in the coming year.

Domestic policy.

As before the war, so more after it, I opened the doors for cooperation with all political forces, believing that only through joint efforts it is possible to face these difficult challenges. In this regard, we have many visible results, which are also largely the derivatives of this co-operational environment.

However, I am not satisfied with the degree of involvement and participation of all public and political forces in state-building process and in solving different problems in Artsakh and plan to launch a new stage of consultations with all circles to discuss the possibilities of forming more efficient formats and mechanisms. We will continue to implement reforms in the public administration system to increase the level of efficiency, transparency and public accountability.

This is the vision I and my government have. The disappointment, mourning, loss of the most of the Homeland, have caused a decline of mood, uncertainties to all of us, but my call and my urge is to quickly rediscover ourselves. I believe that as 120,000 Armenians now live and create in the native cradle, so will we overcome all the problems shoulder to shoulder, will successfully resist all the challenges and carve new victories together.

At the end, I once again turn to all the parliamentary and non-parliamentary political forces, all local and Pan-Armenian organizations and individuals, to leave aside all the disagreements. The door of cooperation is open to all of you. For the sake of Artsakh, bright future of our people and the sacred blood of our martyrs let us build the homeland of our dreams hand in hand. After all, the authorities come and go, only the values for which we live and struggle remain permanent
YEREVAN, DECEMBER 10, ARMENPRESS. Minister of Foreign Affairs of Armenia Ararat Mirzoyan met on December 9 with Secretary General of the International Organization of la Francophonie Louise Mushikiwabo on the sidelines of his working visit in Paris, the foreign ministry reports.

The sides discussed the implementation process of the initiatives within Armenias chairmanship at the Organization.

Ararat Mirzoyan and Louise Mushikiwabo discussed the prospects of strengthening the Armenia-OIF cooperation, particularly through the implementation of programs in economy and youth fields.

FM Mirzoyan said that Armenia supports Louise Mushikiwabos proposed reforms agenda of the Organization.

Louise Mushikiwabo presented to the Armenian FM the report of the OIF mission which observed the 2021 June parliamentary elections of Armenia.

The sides then exchanged ideas about the preparation works ahead of the 18th Francophonie summit to be held in Tunis in 2022.

FM Mirzoyan also presented a number of issues relating to regional stability and security to the OIF Secretary General.

Editing and Translating by Aneta Harutyunyan
Washington and Moscow agreed to hold further contacts in the context of the recent video conference between the presidents of Russia and the United States, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki has told reporters.

December 10, 2021, 10:27 US, Russia agree on further contacts after presidential talks  White House

STEPANAKERT, DECEMBER 10, ARTSAKHPRESS: When asked to comment on US President Joe Bidens earlier remarks about a forthcoming announcement on high-level meetings of Russia and NATO representatives to address Moscows security concerns, Psaki replied that Biden was scheduled to hold a phone conversation with leaders of the B9 group of nations. "And, of course, we are in touch every single day with a number of NATO Allies and partners," she added.

"When he [Biden] had the conversation with President Putin, they discussed and agreed to have their teams follow up in ongoing discussions and engagements," the press secretary said. "In terms of any other format or forum, there is no current mechanism for that. But right now, our focus is on engaging with the Europeans, many of our NATO Allies; doing that at a very high level, as the President referenced; and also following up, as was discussed in his call with President Putin."
A movie written by a Skaneateles native will compete at the Sundance Film Festival next month.

"Watcher," written by Zack Ford, is one of 82 films selected for the 2022 edition of the prestigious festival. It is one of 10 films that will compete in the U.S. Dramatic competition. Starring Maika Monroe and Karl Glusman, the film is about a woman and her fiance who move into a new apartment, only for her to suspect she's being watched by someone in a nearby building. It was directed by Chloe Okuno.

The movie was filmed in Romania in the spring. Ford sold the spec (unsolicited) script for the movie after years of effort, as he chronicled in an essay in Script Magazine last year.

Ford is currently living in Hollywood, where he has taken his screenwriting career to the next level, he told The Citizen in July.

"I grinded it out and got my chops in New York City for 16 years, and broke through there," he said. "And my decision to come to Los Angeles was predicated on that. It was the next step."

The son of filmmaker Lisa Ford, Zack decided to follow in her footsteps when he was 12. While attending New York University he wrote and sold his first screenplay, "Scar," in 2005.

For more information, visit festival.sundance.org.

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As Christmas approaches, the Auburn location of the Salvation Army has several needs it hopes the community can help with.

Volunteers are needed for the annual Red Kettle Campaign, which collects money for community efforts. Hours available for volunteer bell ringers are 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Mondays through Saturdays. To volunteer, call Capt. Dan Johnson at (207) 402-8632.

The Salvation Army also has several Angel Trees in the area, and is looking for people to fulfill the Christmas wishes of children in need. Tags with wishes can be taken from trees at BJ's, Dickman Farms, Half Acre Union Church, Planet Fitness, the United Church of Genoa, Walmart, M.C. Townsend Construction, the Auburn YMCA-WEIU and the Harriet Tubman Administration Building of the Auburn school district. For more information, call Capt. Holly Johnson at (207) 402-7127.

To donate canned goods, turkeys or hams for Christmas baskets for more than 100 families in need, bring items to the Salvation Army at 18 E. Genesee St., Auburn. Help assembling baskets is also needed.

Last, the Salvation Army's soup kitchen will be open for more people to get lunch from 1 to 2 p.m. Sundays. More volunteers helping prepare meals will mean more open days for the kitchen.

For more information, call the Salvation Army at (315) 253-0319.

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You may have heard of the infestation that is killing the hemlock trees in our area: hemlock woolly adelgid. This tiny invasive insect feeds on the hemlock trees young twigs by sucking the sap, causing the trees buds to die and needles to dry out and drop from the tree prematurely. The continuous feeding causes stress in the infected hemlock trees. The trees usually die within four to 10 years following the first HWAs invading them.

The loss of hemlock trees will be devastating to water quality. Hemlocks are the third most common tree in our area and make up much of the forest along shorelines, gorges and streams. Their shallow, branching root systems allow them to grow in steep terrain, which helps protect against erosion and also filter out nutrients in runoff. Their shade also helps cool the water temperatures, which is beneficial to fish and a deterrent to harmful algal blooms.

With the help of a small but dedicated group of volunteers from the Owasco Watershed Lake Association, named the Owasco Hemlock Hunters, we have been surveying the Owasco Lake watershed to identify properties that have HWA.

Our search begins by identifying those gullies, ravines and gorges that contain hemlock trees from Auburn to Groton. We use aerial views, mapping devices and visual exploration to assist in our hunt. Specifically, we are looking for areas that collect runoff and funnel it into Owasco Lake. If these tributaries lose the hemlocks, there is great potential for erosion to accelerate soil loss, causing nutrients to enter the lake. Nutrients in the water provide the food for invasive species (weeds in the lake) and harmful algal blooms.

We have been able to identify and treat over 4,000 infected hemlocks in the watershed this year. This has been possible through grants and donations to OWLA. Unfortunately, we have had to prioritize the treated properties to those that are most critical to save the infected hemlocks that prevent soil loss. But the search goes on.

There has been an unexpected benefit to our surveys, and that is to see the beautiful land around the lake and meet the landowners who have given us permission to explore their property. We have seen the many hidden streams, rapids and waterfalls that abound in the watershed. Some waterfalls are truly spectacular!

We have met a wide diversity of people, from retired ministers to wood carvers to hunting and fishing enthusiasts. These landowners share a common love, respect and concern for the beauty of Owasco Lake and its water quality. Some of the property owners we have met are new to this area, but others have been here for decades. Some have inherited the land from generations before them. All are concerned about the future generations. We sincerely thank them for their participation in this program to save Owasco Lake.

The Owasco Watershed Lake Association, partnering with the New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation, was recently awarded a grant of $138,750 for our continued identification and treatment of the HWA-infected hemlocks in Fillmore Glen and our watershed. This grant provides continued treatment funding for 2022 and 2023.

There are many resources to learn more about HWA, invasive species and harmful algal blooms, but we suggest that you start with the Owasco Watershed Lake Association website at owla.org.

If you have steep property with hemlocks and would like us to survey your trees, or would like to join in this effort, please contact us though our website.

Peter Rogers is a member of the board of directors of the Owasco Watershed Lake Association. For more information, or to join OWLA, visit owla.org.

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The Auburn Enlarged City School District put out a statement saying it and the Auburn Police Department have determined that reports of a violence threat at the high school on Friday were "rumors" and not credible.

Many families kept their students home from high school Friday because of concerns about reports that were circulating on social media.

Rumors about a planned attack on the school Friday said a note was found in a school bathroom. That was not true, the district said.

"The investigation determined that a note was never found and all of the social media posts were simply rumors," the district's statement said.

There was never a threat made regarding a violent act occurring on Friday, but we take any potential threat very seriously, said Jeffrey Pirozzolo, superintendent of schools, in the press release. Out of an abundance of caution, we have additional police officers at our schools today for added safety and security, but again, there is no active, credible threat against any of our school buildings."

The district urged anyone who knows of or suspects violent threats directed at people in any of its schools to notify the school principal and superintendent immediately so an investigation can start.

The rumor about violence Friday at the high school began earlier in the week and the district and police investigated, Pirozzolo said. A call was placed to parents of high school students on Wednesday informing them that an investigation had found no credible threat. The APD issued a similar statement in a press release on Thursday.

Police said other school districts throughout New York and the country have been experiencing similar threat reports, which have escalated since a deadly school shooting in Michigan on Nov. 30.

In an interview after the district's statement was released, Pirozzolo said more than half of the high school's students were absent Friday. While saying he understands the concerns of parents who kept children home, he said the situation is also frustrating.

"This is what social media does ... it spreads like wildfire," he said.

The superintendent said it's possible the unfounded rumor about violence on Friday could have also been influenced by recent situations in which the district dealt with issues involving specific students.

Any threat of violence against or within any of our schools are dealt with appropriately, which include school discipline and a referral to law enforcement, Pirozzolo he said in the press release.

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Dec. 10, 1996

HONOLULU  "Aloha!" was the first word from Ladislaus "Jim" Vinciguerra during an uptempo telephone interview from his hotel room at the Fort DeRussey Hole Koa Hotel.

Hole Koa, translated from Hawaiian, means "House of the Warrior."

Vinciguerra was in Hawaii to commemorate the 55th anniversary of the bombing of Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941.

Vinciguerra was stationed in Hawaii at Schofield Barracks as a member of the 25th Division of the 27th Infantry as a sergeant. His jog down the runway at Wheeler Air Force Base in the early morning of Dec. 7, 1941, would not go unforgotten.

He was out on his run when the Japanese attack began.

Vinciguerra, a past chairman of the Pearl Harbor Survivors Association of New York, departed Syracuse International Airport last Tuesday.

"It was a horrendous day," he said. "The weather conditions were quite adverse."

He met two survivors from the U.S.S. Arizona  sunk by the Japanese on that day  on the flight from Chicago. "We chatted quite a bit on the flight," he said.

Vinciguerra said "a colonel from the Marine Corps, once he found out what unit I was in, said, 'Oh my god! You were the guys who relieved us at Guadalcanal.' The Navy guy didn't want to talk much."

 Compiled by David Wilcox

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The National Weather Service has issued alerts, and utility companies are staging extra power restoration crews ahead of what's expected to be a heavy wind storm this weekend in much of upstate New York.

Sustained southwest winds of 35 to 45 mph with gusts of 60 to 65 mph are predicted for an area that also includes Wayne and Oswego counties.

"Damaging winds will blow down trees and power lines," NWS said. "Widespread power outages are expected. Travel will be difficult, especially for high profile vehicles. ... People should avoid being outside in forested areas and around trees and branches. If possible, remain in the lower levels of your home during the windstorm, and avoid windows. Use caution if you must drive."

A wind advisory is in effect for southern Cayuga County, along with an area that includes Cortland, Tompkins, Seneca and Onondaga counties. That advisory runs from 3 p.m. Saturday to 1 a.m. Sunday. Southwest winds of 20 to 30 mph with gusts up to 55 mph are in the forecast.

New York State Electric & Gas and Rochester Gas & Electric, both owned by the same corporation, along with National Grid put out statements Friday urging people to be prepared for power outages. The utilities said they are staging employees and equipment in areas expected to be affected the storm so they can respond quickly to any outages.

For more weather information, including long-range and hourly forecasts and radar, visit auburnpub.com.

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WASHINGTON  The U.S. military is about to start taking UFOs seriously thanks in large part to the bipartisan odd-couple team of Sen. Kirsten E. Gillibrand, a New York Democrat, and Sen. Marco Rubio, a Florida Republican.

Gillibrand and Rubio announced Thursday that the must-pass defense authorization bill for fiscal 2022 will include their amendment to establish a new federal office to study what they call "unidentified aerial phenomena" or "UAPs"  namely the mysterious flying objects that Air Force pilots and other military personnel have reported seeing for years.

My amendment will establish a formal office to report and respond to UAPs and give us the scientific capabilities needed to track and share data, investigate sightings and develop a response to this growing security threat," said Gillibrand, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee. "The United States needs a coordinated effort to take control and understand whether these aerial phenomena belong to a foreign government or something else altogether."

Long the obsession of starry-eyed teens and sci-fi fanatics, unidentified flying objects have drawn new interest in the military and in Congress in recent years simply because military pilots keep seeing inexplicable objects flying through the sky.

In fact, "60 Minutes" in May showed a video shot by a pilot that appears to show a UFO moving at high speed several miles away from a military jet.

Navy pilot Ryan Graves told the CBS broadcast that while on duty, he would see such objects "every day."

With that sort of thing happening, Gillibrand and Rubio  a progressive Democrat and a conservative Republican  agreed that the federal government had to put more effort into studying UFOs.

It is my hope that the creation of a new joint Defense Department and Intelligence Community office focused on UAPs will provided the resources, analytics and attention needed to determine what is loitering around our military training ranges, Rubio said. The DoD and (intelligence community) need to ensure a more uniform collection strategy is in place and that we continue to destigmatize reporting on UAPs, particularly from military aviators."

The Gillibrand-Rubio measure would create an office, run jointly by the Department of Defense and the Director of National Intelligence, to:

 Collect and analyze data about UAP sightings.

 Develop a "science plan" to test theories about what these strange flying objects are.

 Decide what kind of priority UAPs should have in the U.S. intelligence-gathering effort.

 Determine whether UAPs have any connection with foreign governments or other organizations.

 Deliver an annual report to Congress on the office's work.

That's a much heavier workload than that carried by a temporary Navy task force that merely collects data on UFO sightings. And much more work needs to be done than what the task force can accomplish, said Rep. Ruben Gallego, an Arizona Democrat who pushed for the amendment in the House.

Based on briefings Ive received as chairman of the House Intelligence and Special Operations Subcommittee, I firmly believe that the Department of Defense and the Intelligence Community need to come together and create a permanent, synchronized structure to collect and analyze UAP data," Gallego said.

Of course, some of those UFOs might not be anything extraterrestrial.

You're talking about drone technology, you're talking about balloon technology, you're talking about other aerial phenomena, and then you're talking about the unknown, Gillibrand told Politico last month. Regardless of where you fall on the question of the unknown, you have to answer the rest of the questions. Thats why this is urgent. Thats why having no oversight or accountability up until now to me is unacceptable.

Ignoring UFOs could weaken America's defenses, Gillibrand said.

Our national security efforts rely on aerial supremacy and these phenomena present a challenge to our dominance over the air," she said on Thursday. "Staying ahead of UAP sightings is critical to keeping our strategic edge and keeping our nation safe."

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MG Motor India, with an aim to expand footprint in South Asian countries, announced on Friday that it will use its facility in Halol, Gujarat to cater to markets here. The automaker stated that this expansion plan will begin with the export of the MG Hector SUV to Nepal.

Rajeev Chaba, President and Managing Director at MG Motor India, shared that the company is looking at having a wider audience base in South Asian countries.

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MG is geared up to expand its footprint across the other South Asian countries starting with Nepal. Hector has played a vital role in establishing our prowess in an auto industry as dynamic and aggressive as the Indian auto space, and we are looking forward to driving interest in Nepal with the launch of MG Hector," he added.

(Also read | Hyundai, MG Motor to expand affordable EV space, challenge Tata might)

MG had entered India in May of 2019 with the Hector as its debut product. The Hector has managed to cash in on the growing preference for SUVs here and was followed with the launch of ZS EV, Hector Plus, Gloster and the most-recent Astor.

(Also read | MG Motor India's Tata Nexon EV rival: What we know so far)

The company also recently announced that it is also set to introduce its second electric vehicle in the country. This EV is going to hit the Indian market by end of next year and will be a more affordable electric vehicle from the automaker. Currently, the brand offers ZS EV as its only fully electric vehicle. It is being expected that the price of the upcoming electric vehicle from MG may be in the range between 10 lakh and 15 lakh (ex-showroom).
Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers (SIAM) said on Friday that wholesales of passenger vehicles in the country declined by 19 per cent in November as the shortage of semiconductors continue to impact vehicle manufacturing and subsequent deliveries to dealer partners. Compared to the 2,64,898 units sold in November last year, this year's passenger vehicles units' sales stood at 2,15,626.

SIAM also informed the total sales of two-wheelers also fell sharply by 34 per cent, 10,50,616 units last month compared to the 16,00,379 units in the same period last year. The sales of three-wheelers also took a hit last month as the total dispatched units came down to 22,471 units compared to 24,071 units in November 2020. This fall accounts for about 7 per cent.

(Also read | Auto retail in November remained in negative despite Diwali, wedding season)

Director general Rajesh Menon, SIAM, stated that the auto industry continues to be adversely impacted due to the global semiconductor shortage. In the festive season, the industry was hoping to make up for the lost ground, but the sales in the month of November 2021, were the lowest in seven years for passenger vehicles, the lowest in 11 years for two-wheelers and the lowest in 19 years for three-wheelers," he added. He also added that with the rising threat of Omicron, the new variant of Covid, the industry is putting effort to ensure employees safety and is also focusing on regulating the supply chain.

(Also read | Planning to buy a car in 2022? Be prepared to shell out more. Here's why)

The semiconductor shortage has not only affected the domestic market but also has gripped the world's largest auto market, China. According to the latest industry data, the sales of November has come by 9.1 per cent. Chinese Association of Automobile Manufacturers (CAAM) informed that about 2.52 million vehicles were sold last month in the country which is noticeably lower compared to sales last year in November.

(With inputs from PTI)
Beijing (Gasgoo)- The commercial vehicle subsidiary of BAIC Group, Foton, announced that its subsidiary Beijing Borgward received a court-ordered seizure for its RMB2.2 billion worth of assets, petitioned by creditors.

BX5; photo credit: Borgward

According to Foton, the figure involved in the case is RMB124 million, the book value of the sealed-up property is RMB2.209 billion.

Foton disclosed that the seizure would hit Beijing Borgward hard and make it harder for Foton to claim its debts. Foton has filed for a seizure on Beijing Borgwards assets on November 11th, and the court has yet to act on the petition. Given that Beijing Borgwards assets are currently seized for other creditors, Foton can only wait its turn.

The announcement indicated 34 companies listed as creditors in this petition, seizing Beijing Borgwards assets, including machines, transportation equipment, office facilities, IT devices, tools, other equipment, constructions in progress, and inventory. The listed properties did not belong to Foton and were not part of the assets that Beijing Borgward used to pay its debt to Foton.

The announcement indicated 34 companies listed as creditors in this petition, seizing Beijing Borgwards assets, including machines, transportation equipment, office facilities, IT devices, tools, other equipment, constructions in progress, and inventory. The listed properties did not belong to Foton and were not part of the assets that Beijing Borgward used to pay its debt to Foton.

Earlier on October 27th, Foton released an announcement stating that it has successfully petitioned the court to freeze UCAR Inc.s 500 million shares in Beijing Borgward due to its un-paid equity transfer and interest. UCAR Inc.s 500 million shares of Beijing Borgward will remain frozen from September 8th, 2021, to September 7th, 2024.

Due to Beijing Borgwards inability to pay its borrowings from Foton, the court also seized RMB190 million worth of UCAR Inc.s assets as the guarantee of Beijing Borgward.

Later on, on November 18th, Foton furthered its claim, and the court seized another RMB1.645 billion of assets from UCAR Inc.
Beijing (Gasgoo)- Registrations of the SF5 from electric vehicle brand SERES continued to grow this year and amounted to nearly 2,000 vehicles in October.

Insurance registrations of the SF5 totaled 1,926 vehicles in China in October, representing a jump of 72.4% compared with the previous month while the year-to-date registrations of the model stood at 5,150 vehicles this year, according to data from the China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission (CBIRC).

Two cities in China registered over 100 SF5s in October, namely Shanghai and Shenzhen. Other cities out of the top 10 list all had respective registrations below 50 units.

By the combined registrations of the first ten months of this year, Chongqing, where the brands R&D center and production base are located, ranked first with nearly 1,000 SF5s registered. Shanghai followed Chongqing, but the gap was nearly 400 vehicles. Out of the top 10 list, Tianjin and Changsha also registered over 100 SF5s in October.

Photo credit: SERES

The SF5 features a range-extended electric system, which gives the vehicle a NEDC range of over 1,000 kilometers. Under battery electric mode, the model has a range of 180 kilometers.

To many customers, the bright spot of this model is the role of Huawei, which shows the SERES "Huawei Smart Selection" SF5 in its flagship stores. Thanks to HUAWEI HiCar solutions, the SF5s users can seamlessly switch between their mobile phone applications and the car-mounted central control panel.

Earlier this month, SERES launched its new premium intelligent vehicle brand AITO along with its range extension platform, the DE-i. The first HarmonyOS powered AITO model will make debut on December 23rd.
With Gasgoo Daily, we will offer daily important automotive news in China. For those we have reported, the title of the piece will include a hyperlink, which will provide detailed information.



HOZON Auto given credit line worth 2 billion yuan from Bank of Shanghai





Bank of Shanghai, HOZON Auto signing agreement; photo credit: HOZON Auto



On Dec.9, HOZON Auto and Bank of Shanghai signed an agreement for strategic cooperation on supply chain financing, green finance, retail finance, and other businesses. Meanwhile, the EV startup obtained from Bank of Shanghai a credit line worth 2 billion yuan ($314.036 million), which will be used for the development and application of intelligent cockpits and intelligent driving technologies, the manufacturing of high-quality smart vehicles, and the building of sales & service systems.

GAC Mitsubishi's first full-electric SUV rolls off production line

GAC Mitsubishi saw its first all-electric SUV, the AIRTREK, roll off the assembly line on Dec. 10. The model has been available for presale and is expected to hit the market in March 2022.

Volkswagen Group China to welcome new director

Volkswagen brand CEO Ralf Brandstaetter will take charge of the Volkswagen Group's China operations, taking reins from Stephan Woellenstein.

Soueast Auto unveils new brand identity, three new models

Chinese automaker Soueast Auto on Dec. 9 unveiled a new logo alongside three all-new models, namely, the DX9, the Soueast N7, and the Soueast A7.

CATL, BYD make up 68% of China's Jan.-Nov. installed power battery capacity

Regarding the year-to-date installed capacity, CATL and BYD together accounted for 68% of the country's total volume. Compared to the rankings based on Jan.-Oct. performance, SVOLT surpassed EVE Energy to the sixth place.

Pony.ai greenlighted open road autonomous driving test in Shenzhen

China's leading autonomous driving startup, Pony.ai, was granted the intelligent connected vehicle road test license by the city of Shenzhen, starting autonomous driving tests on the city's open roads right away.

China November auto sales down 9.1% YoY

China's vehicle sales in November achieved better results than expected, in spite of such challenges as automotive chip supply pressure and changes in regulations and policies, the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers (CAAM) said on Friday.

China has 2.385 million EV charging piles by Nov. 2021

By the end of Nov. 2021, there were 2.385 million charging piles deployed across China, up 55% from the same period of last year, according to the China Electric Vehicle Charging Infrastructure Promotion Alliance (EVCIPA).

Court seizes Beijing Borgward's RMB2.2 billion assets for creditors

The commercial vehicle subsidiary of BAIC Group, Foton, announced that its subsidiary Beijing Borgward received a court-ordered seizure for its RMB2.2 billion worth of assets, petitioned by creditors.

NIO fulfills annual target of battery swap station deployment ahead of schedule

NIO installed its 700th battery swap station in China on Dec. 10, hitting its annual target ahead of schedule, according to NIOs press release.

Tesla Models 3's new versions unveiled in MIIT's patent images with lower e-motor output

The Tesla Model 3, currently one of hotter-selling all-electric sedan models in China, will soon get two new versions with lower e-motor power outputs, according to the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT)'s documents.
LOS ANGELESAn Emmy-nominated director is seeking help from the adult community to solve a brutal murder of a 25-year-old gay porn star in 1990 whose head and feet were found in a dumpster.

Rachel Mason, who wrote and directed the widely popular Netflix documentary Circus of Books about a popular adult gay bookstore in West Hollywood, Calif. that was secretly owned by her parents, is seeking help from the LGBT community of the 1990s for her next documentary exploring the death of beautiful blond porn star Billy London.

Mason's partner, the first major trans female-to-male pornstar Buck Angel, is helping to get the word out through his extensive fan base and Instagram account.

"There is a possibility that a serial killer was preying on gay men during this time, and if you were a sex worker, particularly a gay sex worker at the time, it's possible your murder would be forgotten, or overlooked," Angel told AVN. "If anyone has photos from that era, or worked in the industry and knew Billy London, even the smallest detail could help."

The gruesome murder was depicted in the series "The Closer" with Kyra Sedgwick, and mentioned in a Guns and Roses song as well as the indie film "Hellbent."

Mason has already interviewed director Chi Chi LaRue, former AVN Gay & Bi Editor Mickey Skee, London's last boyfriend David Rey, who produced and directed many of his films, and others in the adult industry. She discovered by chance that her parents, Barry and Karen Mason, who ran the renown retail book and video outlet, not only hired David Rey to work at their store, but that Billy frequented the store, too.

The Masons, who were also backers of the prolific Video 10 porn distribution company that distributed some of London's films, decided to retire in 2019 and Rachel documented a very personal story with Ryan Murphy as one of the executive producers.

Circus of Books is now the location of LaRue's second boutique store location in West Hollywood for sex toys, adult paraphernalia and adult titles.

What Mason is looking for includes anyone who may have heard or known or seen anything at the time about Billy London, also credited as Bill E. London and Billy Porter, whose real name is William Newton, and anyone who has photos and video footage of West Hollywood, adult industry parties, Chi Chi LaRue's birthday bashes, street parties, festivals, gay pride events in the late 1980s through 1990.

She also seeks:

* Anyone who might have seen Jeffrey Dahmer, or someone who looked like him, in Los Angeles in 1990.

* Any associates of Billy who may have also worked on his last shoot featuring performer Mark Sage.

* Anyone who worked with Catalina Video, HIS Videos, London-Rey Productions, In-Hand Video, Stud or Stallion Video, Panther Productions, producer Hank Warner, or has knowledge of the catalogue of videos featuring Mark Sage.

Rachel, who won major accolades for her personal documentary of her parents secretly owning a gay adult bookstore, told AVN, "While working on my film 'Circus of Books,' I reached out to the writer Mickey Skee to see if he might have any personal photos of some of the performers who died of AIDS that we could use in the film, and an article from Adult Video News slipped out of a binder. He told me that was a story he had written about a young man who was killed in this evil way, and it was never solved."

The story became very personal to Rachel, adding, "Billy reminds me of all the young men I got to know that worked at my parents' store, they were spunky and amazing. I had never heard of anything so brutal happening in the community, which had already suffered so much death due to the AIDS crisis, so his murder just hit me very hard, and I wanted to commit to helping the effort to solve this case and I know that someone in the community may know something."

Gay novelists Christopher Rice and Eric Shaw Quinn also became haunted by London's murder and on their podcast, "The Dinner Party Show" they explored different theories about the murder on half a dozen of their shows. Rachel Mason was interviewed on their show about her planned documentary.

Because of the renewed interest in the forgotten murder, the Los Angeles Police Department re-opened the cold case. Hollywood Homicide Detective John Lamberti is working closely with Mason to finally solve the case, and is encouraging her documentary, as well as her outreach to the gay and adult communities.

Mason has already interviewed many of Billy's friends and all of his remaining living relatives and his past boyfriend. She has delved into the story interviewing dozens of people in the adult industry, and people who have met and known Billy and his friends.

A twink bottom, London is not to be confused with a recent gay porn performer also known as Billy London. His credits include Head of the Class, Bulge: Mass Appeal, Black Fantasies, Sex Waves, Imperfect Strangers, Sex Drive 2020 and another dozen or so titles.

"I never worked with Billy, but he was always around at industry events, and he seemed very nice," said Chi Chi LaRue. "His murder just shocked the whole industry at the time."

Buck Angel said he thinks the investigation at the time was not taken seriously by police and therefore not fully investigated.

"This is not only a story about one young guy's terrible demise, but it is about how the LGBT world was ignored and forgotten during this time by the media, by the police, and by the world," Angel said. "Rachel Mason is the best person to tell this story."

On a personal note, Billy's father Richard Harriman reached out to me and AVN in 2005 to help renew interest in his son's murder, and AVN published a few stories about the case. Billy's father, who is now deceased, said that Gay Video Guide publisher Sabin and I were probably the last people to see Billy when he visited us on the morning before he disappeared. Sabin shot photographs on Billy's last movie, The Grip of Passion.

At the time, Billy was ready to leave town to see family in Las Vegas. We were living a few blocks from where Billy's remains were found.

If there is any information you are able to provide, please write [email protected].
SAN DIEGOSeanCody.com is celebrating "Newbies Month" in January, when it will add many new faces to its site. The brand has also re-launched its apparel store.

The renowned gay porn studio, established in 2001, will feature a new model in each update during January and double the number of updates, which will include the bottoming debut of a well-known performer.

Sean Cody recently began releasing a limited series titled BelAmi X Sean Cody, in collaboration with the iconic European gay porn studio. The seven-part crossover event was shot in Barcelona by award-winning Spanish director Alter Sin. BelAmi X Sean Cody features some of each studios most popular stars including BelAmi exclusives Ethan O'Pry, Ashton Montana, Tom Houston, Bart Cuban, Jim Durden and Yannis Paluan. Joining the BelAmi talent are Sean Cody stars Asher, Deacon, Justin and Manny.

Additionally, Sean Cody has relaunched its apparel store after partnering with Daddy Couture to provide their loyal fans with a one-stop-shop for all Sean Cody merchandise and apparel. The shop will feature the brands iconic logo along with a variety of items ranging from classic staples like T-shirts, to seasonal apparel like hoodies, crewnecks and tanks.

To visit the store, click here.

For more information, visit SeanCody.com or follow the brand on Instagram, TikTok and Twitter.
During a briefing attended by Arab News, the officials said the MoU replaces and strengthens a 2016 agreement between the countries, which was the first of its kind in the region.

Artifacts taken from Egyptian antiquity sites are trafficked through Europe and the Gulf, and there was a surge in cases in the aftermath of protests during the Egyptian Revolution in 2011. The US is a major market for such stolen items, according to the State Department.

For the looting, theft and trafficking of Egyptian cultural property it continues to be an issue, a State Department official said in response to a question from Arab News. We certainly saw a large uptick in 2011, when there were many disruptions in the country. Thankfully we see a lower level (now) than in 2011 but the problem remains.

In terms of trafficking routes, they remain the same. We see a lot of movement through Europe and then on to the United States. The United States remains the largest art market, in general, in the world, so we continue to be a destination for this type of material. We also see trafficking through the Gulf States areas, which is also a concern.

The officials said damage caused to archaeological sites, places of worship and museums around the time of the 2011 protests was extensive, and cultural-heritage artifacts were then under constant threat of plunder.

A number of valuable objects were subsequently recovered from museums and art collectors in the US. In 2019, for example, the Justice Department ordered the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, known as the Met, to return a prized item from its collection of Egyptian antiquities after confirming it had been stolen.

The looted item, a gilded coffin that once held the remains of a high-ranking priest named Nedjemankh, is estimated to be about 2,100 years old. It was returned to Egypt following a repatriation ceremony in New York attended by Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Hassan Shoukry.

The coffin, crafted in Egypt between 150 and 50 B.C. and valued at about $4 million, was stolen from Egypts Minya region after the 2011 protests and smuggled out of the country, according to a State Department announcement on Oct. 23, 2019.

The Met bought it in 2017. According to the State Departments Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, New York prosecutors said the dealer provided unsuspecting museum officials with forged documents that made the sale appear legitimate.

Once presented with evidence proving it had been stolen, the Met cooperated with the district attorneys office and returned the coffin, which is now on public display in Egypt.

The new MoU expands the categories of protected objects and artifacts to including ethnological materials. The agreement will be policed by authorities that includes a crime task force staffed by agents from the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI, officials said. The US has similar agreements with 20 other countries including Libya, Algeria, Jordan and Morocco they added.

The new MoU also includes a legal process for Egyptian authorities to loan artifacts to US museums and special, temporary exhibitions.
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LINCOLN, Neb.  Researchers at the University of Nebraska smashed an 80,000-pound tractor-tanker into a concrete barrier in a test that could lead to safer, more cost-effective barriers throughout the United States.

The truck hit the barrier at about 50 mph, screeched along the side and tilted precariously, but it didn't roll over the top  just as researchers had hoped. Instead, the truck lurched away from the barrier, flopped onto its side and skidded into a roll before coming to a rest a few hundred feet away.

The high-speed safety experiment Wednesday was part of an effort by the university's Midwest Roadside Safety Facility to create thinner, shorter barriers that are still able to prevent tanker trucks from rolling over them. Researchers said they were still happy with the results, even though the truck flopped onto its side after bouncing away from the barrier.

"For the purposes of containment, the test was phenomenal," said Cody Stolle, a research assistant professor at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. "This would have prevented anybody from penetrating past that barrier into opposing traffic, off a bridge, or into anything that would have been behind it. The barrier performed exactly as it should have."

Bob Bielenberg, a university research engineer, said the university has also worked with NASCAR officials over the years to improve their vehicle safety. He said the special barriers tested on Wednesday could help shield highway overpasses with traffic beneath them or other areas where a spill would be disastrous.

"You may have situation where you have something critical behind there," Bielenberg said.

The experiment was designed to simulate extreme conditions, with the truck loaded to 80,000 pounds, the maximum weight allowed on interstate highways. It hit the barrier at a side-swiping, 15-degree angle to simulate the driver veering sharply out of control. The 24-year-old trailer was filled with 7,000 gallons of water in place of hazardous chemicals.

With its engine running in neutral and the driver's cabin empty, the tractor-trailer was pulled up to the correct impact speed with two trucks on a cable pulley system. It was heavy enough that the tow trucks' tires squealed as they started tugging. The experiment took place at an outdoor testing facility next to the Lincoln Airport.

Stolle said the crash yielded a trove of data and video footage that university engineers will study. He said several states have expressed interest in using the design once the experiment was completed, including Virginia and Utah, and some of the barriers could be put in place in the United States in as little as 12 months.

"This test was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity," Stolle said. "That's why there's such a broad interest."

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CHICAGO (AP)  Jussie Smolletts conviction Thursday for lying to police about a racist, homophobic attack came nearly three years after his report of a horrifying hate crime quickly became part of a polarized political landscape, with people  including the president of the United States  weighing in from all over.

A prosecutor said the verdict was a resounding message by the jury that Mr. Smollett did exactly what we said he did  recruit two brothers to fake an attack so it could be recorded by a surveillance camera and posted on social media for publicity.

The brothers testified that the former Empire actor paid them $3,500 for the hoax and gave them lines to yell, including about MAGA country, an apparent reference to then-President Donald Trumps Make America Great Again slogan.

The report made headlines around the world and prompted a massive manhunt in Chicago, with roughly two dozen police joining the investigation. It also drew criticism from Trump, who called the police departments handling of the case an absolute embarrassment to our country.

Not only did Mr. Smollett lie to the police and wreak havoc here in the city for weeks on end for no reason whatsoever, but then he compounded the problem by lying under oath to a jury, special prosecutor Dan Webb said after Thursday's verdict.

Smollett, who is Black and gay, maintained throughout the nearly three-year legal battle that he was attacked in downtown Chicago in January 2019 by people who yelled racist and anti-gay slurs and put a noose around his neck.

His attorney declared Smollett's innocence again Thursday after the jury found him guilty on five of six counts of disorderly conduct for lying to police. Nenye Uche said Smollett would appeal the conviction, and is 100% confident his name will be cleared by an appellate court.

Unfortunately we were facing an uphill battle where Jussie was already tried and convicted in the media and then we had to somehow get the jury to forget or unsee all the news stories that they had been hearing that were negative for the last three years, Uche told reporters after the verdict.

The jury convicted the 39-year-old on five counts of disorderly conduct  for each separate time he was charged with lying to police in the days after the alleged attack. He was acquitted on a sixth count, of lying to a detective in mid-February, weeks after Smollett said he was attacked.

Smollett stood and faced the jury, showing no visible reaction as the verdict was read. He and his family later left the courthouse without comment.

Judge James Linn set a post-trial hearing for Jan. 27, and said he would schedule Smollett's sentencing at a later date. Disorderly conduct is a class 4 felony that carries a prison sentence of up to three years, but experts have said if convicted, Smollett would likely be placed on probation and ordered to perform community service.

The damage to his personal and professional life may be more severe. Smollett lost his role on the TV program Empire," which was filmed in Chicago, after prosecutors said the alleged attack was a hoax, and he told jurors earlier this week, Ive lost my livelihood.

The jury deliberated for just over nine hours Wednesday and Thursday after a roughly one-week trial.

Smollett testified that he was the victim of a real hate crime, telling jurors there was no hoax. He called the brothers who testified against him liars and said the $3,500 check he wrote them was for meal and workout plans.

His attorneys argued that the brothers attacked the actor because they are homophobic and didnt like who he was. They also alleged the brothers made up the story about the attack being staged to get money from Smollett, and that they said they wouldnt testify against him if Smollett paid them each $1 million.

Asked Thursday if Smollett could be charged with perjury for lying on the witness stand, Webb said perjury charges generally dont happen after a defendant is convicted, but that it was unclear what would happen in Smollett's case.

He also said the Chicago Police Department was vindicated by the jury's verdict.

A lot of times people say, Well, police officers sweep things under the rug. This police department responded by absolutely testifying in this trial that they took it seriously," Webb said. "They believed he was a victim of a crime and they worked so hard for the next three weeks.

But Uche said Chicago police should have investigated the case much more," and that there were some witnesses who were never interviewed.

He called the jury's split verdict inconsistent, saying it made no sense for Smollett to be convicted of five counts but not the sixth charge, since everything stems from one incident.

An attorney for Abimbola and Olabingo Osundairo, the brothers who testified against Smollett, said her clients could not be more thrilled and pleased with the results."

Chicago police got this one right, Gloria Rodriguez said.

Associated Press reporter Sophia Tareen contributed to this report.

Check out the APs complete coverage of the Jussie Smollett case.

Copyright 2021 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.

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Teachers across Nebraska are burned out, working more hours and losing crucial planning time amid workforce shortages and a rise in mental health concerns in schools.

These are some of the findings of a Nebraska State Education Association survey of over 3,000 teachers released Thursday, and officials say solutions are needed now.

"This is a crisis," said NSEA President Jenni Benson.

The teachers union sent the survey earlier this school year to about 18,000 of its members, and around 17% responded, answering questions regarding personal stress, student mental health and staff shortages.

Nearly two-thirds of teachers said they were more stressed than last year, while 57% said they are working more compared to last year.

The survey painted a stark picture of staff shortages across the state, too, as schools struggle to fill vacant positions and find substitute teachers during the still-ongoing pandemic that has decimated the labor market.

Almost all respondents said their school districts are seeing a shortage of substitute teachers, while 88% said schools are short on paraprofessionals.

With a limited number of subs, teachers have been forced to drop planning time to cover classes. Three-fourths said they have had to cover for their colleagues, while 60% disagreed that their district is providing them with the planning time necessary to do their job.

Eighty-four percent of educators said they've witnessed a rise in behavioral and mental health issues among students this school year, while 64% also expressed concerns about their own mental well-being.

"You're covering classes for colleagues, you're losing your plan time, you're working more and you're more stressed. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that all of these things are combined," Benson said.

Among the over 4,300 comments gathered as part of the survey, one teacher put it bluntly: "This year feels worse than last year."

Wrote another: "We are floundering."

Solutions put forth both by respondents and the NSEA include increasing pay, placing less importance on assessments, eliminating certification hurdles -- like the Praxis CORE test -- and streamlining regulations that limit the number of days retired teachers can work as substitutes.

Benson also pointed to the influx of millions in coronavirus relief dollars doled out to the state and schools that should go toward more mental and behavioral health resources -- like telehealth services -- for schools.

The teachers union is also pushing for state lawmakers to use some of the federal funding to provide school staff with bonuses.

The federal government has disbursed over $546 million in relief to Nebraska schools, and the state has received over $1 billion as part of the American Rescue Plan.

Another startling data point: Nearly 1 in 3 respondents said they plan to leave the profession at the end of the school year.

"We are losing teachers because they do not feel supported or respected," wrote one teacher. "And young people are not choosing education as a profession because our state has not made it attractive enough. Frankly, the sky is falling."

Deb Rasmussen, president of the Lincoln Education Association, said the survey data is what she expected.

Teacher shortages have plagued schools nationally long before the pandemic, she said, but the arrival of COVID-19 brought the issue front and center in Lincoln.

Students are also dealing with the trauma from the pandemic, said Rasmussen, a former school counselor, and that's manifesting in more behavioral issues in the classroom.

And with a shortage of paras to respond to those situations, schools are struggling to find people to help.

"It's a perfect storm, and it's a bad perfect storm," Rasmussen said.

Respondents from Lincoln generally followed statewide trends, but only 36% said they did not have enough plan time, compared to 60% statewide. Ninety-two percent said they had increased concern for student mental health, compared to 84% across the state.

LEA has had conversations with LPS administrators about increasing pay for support staff, similar to raises proposed this week for bus drivers. And changes to pandemic protocols, like allowing administrators to video-conference into meetings instead of having to leave school, have been helpful.

"It's going to be an ongoing discussion," she said. "There are lots of ideas to get in there to help teachers and staff right now, but it's really hard."

Contact the writer at zhammack@journalstar.com or 402-473-7225. On Twitter @zach_hammack
The United States will take greater responsibility for the digital tools we export, U.S. Agency for International Development administrator Samantha Power said. All too often, technology originates in a hub of innovation like the United States and is exported to countries that use that technology to enable human rights abuses."

The White House also faced scrutiny for whom it invited to the summit. Only 5% of the population of the 111 countries represented live in countries where the right to free speech, right to protest and other core civic rights are fully respected, according to CIVICUS Monitor, a group that monitors civic freedoms.

Several countries  including India, Iraq, Pakistan, Poland and the Philippines  were given invitations despite concerns raised by civil society groups and the U.S. State Department about serious anti-democratic trends or human rights concerns in those nations.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki said the invitations were not mean to be intended as a stamp of approval and the administration was seeking a diverse range of voices and faces and representatives at the discussion.
Assange, 50, is currently being held at Londons high-security Belmarsh Prison. The High Court ordered that he remain in custody pending the outcome of the extradition case.

In January, a lower court judge refused the U.S. request to extradite Assange to face spying charges over WikiLeaks publication of secret military documents a decade ago. District Judge Vanessa Baraitser denied extradition on health grounds, saying the Australian citizen was likely to kill himself if held under harsh U.S. prison conditions.

The United States appealed, challenging the notion that Assanges mental health made him too vulnerable to withstand the U.S. judicial system. James Lewis, a lawyer for the U.S. government, said Assange has no history of serious and enduring mental illness and does not meet the threshold of being so ill that he cannot resist harming himself.

U.S. authorities have told British judges that if Assange is extradited for prosecution, he would be eligible to serve any U.S. prison sentence he receives in his native Australia. The authorities also said he wouldn't be held at the supermax penitentiary in Florence, Colorado, the highest-security prison in the United States.
So we're still trying to sort out exactly how the Taliban is going to proceed against them, and I think over the month or two it'll become a little more apparent to us, he said.

Similarly, McKenzie said it's not yet clear how strongly Taliban will go after the Islamic State group, also known as ISIS, which has violently attacked the Taliban across the country. The United States blamed ISIS for an Aug. 26 suicide bombing at Kabul airport that killed 13 American service members in the final days of the U.S. evacuation.

ISIS was reinvigorated," McKenzie said, by the release of numerous ISIS fighters from Afghan prisons in mid-August. He said both ISIS and al-Qaida are recruiting from inside and outside Afghanistan.

So certainly we should expect a resurgent ISIS. It would be very surprising if that weren't the case, he said, adding, It remains to be seen that the Taliban are going to be able to take effective action against them.

He called al-Qaida a more difficult problem for the Taliban because of their longstanding ties.
HELENA  Three men, one of whom told investigators that they were driving around "smoking marijuana and shooting fireworks at each other inside the vehicle" last week, face arson charges after two fires burned 13 homes south of Great Falls, Cascade County Sheriff Jesse Slaughter said.

Galvinn Coates Munson, Brandon Cordell Bennett Jr., and Jevin James McLean were charged Wednesday with arson by accountability or an alternative charge of negligent arson by accountability.

Munson, 19, also faces 14 counts of felony criminal endangerment because the fires, which started at about 2:40 a.m. on Dec. 1 and were pushed by high winds, created a risk of death or serious injury to area residents, who were sleeping, court records said. Bennett and McLean said Munson set both fires, court records said.

Home surveillance video of a car seen in the area where the fires started, tips from the public and videos of the fires briefly posted on social media helped lead to the arrests, Slaughter said Wednesday.
The suit was filed in U.S. District Court, which typically deals with matters of federal law or constitutionality, cases where the federal government is named or where the parties are from more than one state.

In moving to dismiss this suit, lawyers noted that the complaint takes issue with state statutes and the Wyoming constitution, rather than federal law, and all parties are in Wyoming.

Responses to the complaint also state that it failed to demonstrate Smiths or the other plaintiffs entitlement to relief based on their claims.

Several of the other plaintiffs, mostly parents, submitted statements with the suit saying their children had faced harassment and bullying at school for not wearing masks. In some cases, the plaintiffs said, their kids also suffered physical or mental injury including headaches, anxiety attacks and difficulty breathing from face masks.

The original suit also includes 100 unnamed Jane or John Does as defendants, and appears to sue all of its defendants with all 14 of its claims.
Billionaire news mogul Rupert Murdoch and his wife, Jerry Hall Murdoch, confirmed Thursday that they had purchased the sprawling Beaverhead Ranch in Beaverhead County from Matador Cattle Co., an indirect subsidiary of Koch Industries.

Both the Wall Street Journal and CNBC reported that the sale price was $200 million. A spokeswoman for Murdoch confirmed the sale but not the sale price in communication with CNBC.

The Beaverhead Ranch, a working cattle ranch, covers about 345,000 acres and stretches along a 90-mile road from Dillon to the Idaho border and east to Yellowstone National Park.

The ranch reports that it is home to 15 employee families, nearly 7,000 cow/calf pairs and a variety of wildlife. The ranchs headquarters are about 10 miles south of Dillon.

John Jackson, chairman of the Beaverhead County Commission and a rancher himself, said Thursday around midday that hed heard about the transaction but had no details yet.

The Koch brothers have been good neighbors, he said, employing residents and families in Beaverhead County at the Beaverhead Ranch.

He said he anticipates the Murdochs wont make major changes.
Less than two years ago, FWP began negotiating a new lease agreement with the Corps as the states 30-year lease was set to expire in April 2021. At that time, the FWP director said the state would manage the park for decades to come. Then the governor and FWP director changed and a new course was charted.

Id really like to give a big shout out to the director and the rest of his staff for shepherding the swap, said Gerald Gray, Little Shell tribal chairman.

Hell Creek State Park has been managed by the state since the 1960s, when the government stepped in after a local group floundered. Slowly the state built up its infrastructure on the 337 acres, located 26 miles north of Jordan. The park now boasts 71 campsites, a comfort station, water system, boat launch, playground, trails, RV dump station and fish cleaning station. FWP has also built staff housing and a maintenance building. Another 55 acres is sub-leased to Clint and Deb Thomas who operate the Hell Creek Marina.
She also imagines that these alerts being sent with no warning can be re-traumatizing for people who have experienced sexual violence and/or harassment in the past.

"Its a nerve-wracking feeling, especially for people who have already been through that.

Jen Euell, UM Student Advocacy Resource Center director, said she understands how the wording might be unsettling, and campus officials want to do everything possible to mitigate the impacts on their students.

Its scary and I totally get that. A part of me wishes we didnt have to send them, Euell said. I do feel like it can be triggering, especially for people who are survivors of trauma in the past.

Cook does appreciate the language used in the alerts when it comes to putting blame on suspects and letting students know what resources are available to them, she said. Each alert reads perpetrators are solely responsible for sexual assault and that consent is always necessary involving sexual acts. Contact information for the SARC is also provided.

The resource center will sometimes reach out to survivors when they know an alert is being sent out to let them know it isnt about their report, Euell added.
Following the Biden Administrations completely mismanaged withdrawal from Afghanistan, I have been extremely vocal in opposition to the mass evacuation and resettlement of Afghan nationals in America. I knew when I took this stance it would be controversial, but I believed then  as I do now  that the rushed evacuation and resettlement of tens of thousands of unvetted Afghan nationals in America poses a serious threat to the safety and security of our communities and our nation.

We were told that the Afghans being brought to the United States were allies who helped our country, and that it was our duty to bring them to America. That was a lie. Only three percent of the Afghan evacuees that were brought to America possess Special Immigrant Visas (SIVs) that were awarded to those that aided America. In fact, the vast majority of Afghans brought in were ineligible for SIVs  they just happened to board an American plane during the rushed evacuation.
Dramatic changes in elk management have Montanans concerned. But, unfortunately, on top of all of the other factors, political opportunism impacting our wildlife management has become the standard operating procedure for the Legislature. Since 2011, 489 bills have been introduced on wildlife issues, and 906 bills have been drafted. That doesnt count the budget bills that would defund wildlife management or habitat work, legislation that threatened public lands, bills that tried to eliminate the citizens' voice in management decisions while amplifying the power of politicians and the unelected bureaucrats that are beholden to them.

As we saw during the last legislative session, politicians continue to think they know better than Montanans who spend months outdoors hunting, fishing, and exploring our public lands. Think tanks spend countless hours and dollars spinning new ways to make Montana more like Texas, where wildlife is a commodity and not part of the public trust. This isn't the Montana way. Conflict and anger might be potent political currencies of our times, but it doesnt have to be, at least not for Montana's elk.
The failure of a part on Hebgen Lake Dam caused the Madison River below the dam to be all but dewatered.

Volunteers rushed to one of the most beloved fisheries in the state, helping however they could, carefully rescuing stranded brown trout and moving them to areas of the river with sufficient flow.

They were responsible, careful of the many eggs from the browns' just-completed spawning season. They came by the dozens to help to save the stretch of river between the dam and Ennis Lake, affectionately called the "50-mile riffle" by trout-fishers. It is one of the iconic places in all of fishing. It's like fly-fishing in a cathedral.

Of course the Denton fire is orders of magnitude more serious than a fishery cataclysm. But the thing the two disasters had in common was that they are the two most recent demonstrations of the incredible character of this state.

For centuries, as long as humans have walked this ground, they have depended upon each other for survival, and doing so  both natives and eventually the rest of us immigrants  was a matter of life and death. Harsh weather and big country guaranteed that.

Modern-day Montana has clung to that ethos of neighbor helping neighbor.
Sheri Haugen-Hoffart remembers thinking how sad it would be that some headstones at the North Dakota Veterans Cemetery wouldn't receive a wreath at Christmastime.

In her car years ago, listening to a radio broadcast about Wreaths Across America, she was determined to get involved.

"It's important to show respect to those veterans who proudly served for us and fought for the rights that we have," the Rugby native said.

Her grandfather was a disabled World War I veteran, and she has other relatives who also have served.

"It's been a passion of mine, honoring those veterans," she said.

At the time, in 2013, she headed the military affairs committee of the Bismarck Mandan Chamber EDC, and she brought the annual wreath memorial to the board as something to take on.

With permission granted, "I picked up the phone and started calling organizations and individuals that I knew and asked them to donate to this worthy cause," Haugen-Hoffart said.

Maine-based Wreaths Across America raises money to lay wreaths at the graves of veterans.

The cemetery south of Mandan has had wreaths laid at every grave since 2013 -- an annual feat accomplished in as little as 15 minutes. That's due to a big turnout of volunteers.

The Bismarck Composite Squadron of the Civil Air Patrol organizes the event, which this year is set to begin at 11 a.m. Dec. 18 at the Veterans Cemetery. Attendees are encouraged to carpool and to arrive early.

Every grave this year will again have a wreath -- more than 7,700, thanks to sponsors, many of them families.

The 15th annual event is a return to the traditional format and ceremony after changes to avoid a large gathering in 2020 due to the coronavirus pandemic. The only difference from tradition will be an addition to honor the U.S. Space Force, established in 2019, according to Squadron Lt. Col. Kevin Iverson.

"We're trying to figure out exactly how we're going to treat that," he said.

He's glad the traditional way is back.

"It's a good event. It's outdoors. We're not indoors, so the risk of COVID is pretty low. There's plenty of room out there for a lot of people," Iverson said.

Given the thousands of wreaths to lay, "it's really great to have the public involved in this," he said.

Cemetery Director Pamela Helbling-Schafer said the event's popularity and meaning are closely tied.

"It's just one more thing that the public can do to, No. 1, pay respects, and No. 2, take part in providing their assistance to our area in helping our veterans and our veterans' families," she said.

Volunteers can help remove the wreaths on Jan. 22.

Iverson hopes the Northern Plains weather cooperates, especially with no fallback date given that Christmas is the following weekend.

Haugen-Hoffart, who plans to help place wreaths, encourages people to also give to other veterans organizations, such as ones supporting veterans who have post-traumatic stress disorder or disabilities or who are homeless.

"All of them need attention and honor, respect," she said.

Reach Jack Dura at 701-250-8225 or jack.dura@bismarcktribune.com.

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A sentencing date has been set for a Canadian man who pleaded guilty to murder conspiracy and three other felonies in the death of a Bismarck man two years ago.

Earl Howard, 43, of Belwood, Ontario, will be sentenced Jan. 21, court documents show. He and Nikkisue Entzel were charged in early 2020 in the death of Chad Entzel, Nikkisue Entzels husband, in what authorities said was a love triangle with plans to cash in on a life insurance policy.

Howard in October entered into a plea agreement that carries a 25-year prison term with decades more possible if he violates probation after his release. South Central District Judge Douglas Bahr tentatively accepted the agreement pending the outcome of a presentence investigation.

Howard pleaded guilty to murder conspiracy, arson conspiracy, evidence tampering conspiracy and arson. He and Nikkisue Entzel were set to be tried together until Howard pleaded guilty. Her scheduled 10-day trial on charges of murder conspiracy, arson conspiracy, and evidence tampering conspiracy starts Feb. 28.

Their trial as co-defendants was to start Oct. 25. Howard is not on the state's witness list for Nikkisue Entzel's trial, according to Burleigh County State's Attorney Julie Lawyer.

The body of Chad Entzel, 42, was found Jan. 2, 2020, after emergency workers responded to a call of a house fire in northeast Bismarck. An autopsy showed he died of a gunshot wound to the head.

Reach Travis Svihovec at 701-250-8260 or Travis.Svihovec@bismarcktribune.com

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Coronavirus-related deaths are mounting again in North Dakota as COVID-19 cases spike due to the highly contagious delta variant.

The state Health Department's virus dashboard on Friday showed four more deaths -- the ninth confirmed this week. Death certificate filings can take up to 10 days under state law, so the deaths reported this week did not necessarily happen on the day they were put on the dashboard. But they're the most reported in one week since late January.

The new deaths brought North Dakota's pandemic toll to 1,560. The state no longer publicly reports the county, sex and age range of newly confirmed virus-related deaths, but Burleigh County's total on the dashboard increased by one for the third consecutive day, to 202. Morton County's total was unchanged, at 102.

Friday's dashboard showed 289 newly confirmed COVID-19 cases, from 4,988 tests completed Thursday. State officials calculated a positivity rate of 6.15%. The 14-day rolling average test positivity rate rose to 6.26%; the state's target is less than 5%. That rate has been rising for more than five weeks and is now on par with the level last year at this time, which preceded a spike to a pandemic high of 16% in mid-November.

There were 2,043 active COVID-19 cases in the state on Friday, the fifth straight day of an increase. One month ago there were fewer than 300 active cases statewide. The Burleigh-Morton total on Friday was 437.

The increase is being driven by delta, which health officials say is as contagious as chicken pox.

Confirmed delta cases in North Dakota have risen 41% from last week, to 526, according to Kirby Kruger, head of the Health Department's disease control division and forensic pathology section. Confirmed delta cases in the state at the start of the month numbered fewer than 50.

North Dakota's state lab has now identified 1,907 cases of five variants, an increase of 153 from last week, with the entire increase attributed to delta, which was first identified in India. There also have been 1,150 confirmed cases of the variant first identified in the United Kingdom, 185 of the two California variants, 42 of the the Japan/Brazil variant and four of the South Africa variant.

The actual number of variant cases in North Dakota is almost certainly higher than the data indicate, since only a fraction of virus test samples undergo the more complex process through which variants are determined. Kruger has said the sharp increase in delta cases is due entirely to the variant's increased prevalence, and not to increased testing.

Since the onset of the pandemic in March 2020, North Dakota has had 116,305 confirmed COVID-19 cases, with 112,702 recoveries and 4,600 hospitalizations. Sixty-two COVID-19 patients remained in a hospital Friday, unchanged from the previous day. Health officials say unvaccinated people make up the bulk of hospitalized virus patients.

State data showed 215 available staffed inpatient beds and 21 available intensive care unit beds statewide. In Bismarck, Sanford Health had one available staffed bed and one ICU bed, and CHI St. Alexius Health had none in either category for a third straight day.

Health officials are urging people who are not vaccinated against COVID-19 to get a shot, to help stem the rapid rise in cases. About 680,000 total doses of the three available COVID-19 vaccines have been administered in North Dakota, with about 100,700 doses in Burleigh-Morton counties, according to the state's vaccine dashboard. It shows 50.6% of eligible North Dakota adults are considered fully vaccinated; 23% of adolescents in the 12-18 age group are considered fully vaccinated.

More information

A list of free COVID-19 testing offered by local public health units is at health.nd.gov/covidtesting. People can go to health.nd.gov/covidvaccinelocator or call 866-207-2880 to see where COVID-19 vaccine is available near them. For more detailed information on coronavirus in North Dakota, go to www.health.nd.gov/coronavirus.

For more information on coronavirus variants, go to https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/transmission/variant.html. For information on county-level virus transmission risks, go to https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#county-view.

The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends that people wear masks in public indoor settings in areas with substantial or high COVID-19 transmission. That's calculated based on new cases per capita and testing results. All but nine of North Dakota's 53 counties are in those two categories, with most in the high category. Burleigh and Morton both are in the high category, according to the agency's COVID-19 data tracker website.

Reach Blake Nicholson at 701-250-8266 or blake.nicholson@bismarcktribune.com.

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SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (AP)  Seventeen stolen guns have been recovered at a residence in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, after a theft victim used GPS tracking which led to the house, according to police.

Authorities said an investigation began after some items were stolen from a car in in south Sioux Falls last October. Among the items was Apple Airpods. The owner of the headphones tracked them down using GPS.

Detectives eventually got a search warrant for the house and recovered the stolen items along with 17 firearms. Police say 12 guns were stolen from vehicles outside the city limits, including Minnehaha, McCook, Lincoln and Moody counties.

Authorities are searching for a 23-year-old man wanted for possessing the stolen guns.

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The semitractor-trailer that became stuck in the ice of Lake Sakakawea over the weekend has been removed, and it does not appear to have leaked anything of great concern to environmental officials.
Only a few of the tens of thousands of people who may be eligible have taken advantage of a policy that lets those with low-level marijuana convictions in North Dakota petition to have their records wiped clean if they avoid unlawful behavior for five years.

Records show only 51 of the 70 people who applied have been granted pardons in the two years the policy has been in place. Another three people, who were recommended for pardons last month by an advisory board, are awaiting approval by the governor.

Republican Gov. Doug Burgum and Attorney General Wayne Stenehjem both support the change, which brings North Dakota in line with some other states and cities that have been trying to fix problems that such past convictions have caused for people trying to find jobs and housing.

Stenehjem estimated as many as 175,000 marijuana convictions over several decades could be eligible for pardons under the policy.

Burgum has said the policy change could help address North Dakotas workforce shortage and grow its economy. He said removing the stigma for what in many cases are minor cases from years ago gives former offenders a second chance and allows them to contribute to their communities.

North Dakota already had allowed people to apply for pardons to remove marijuana-related offenses from their records, but the process was burdensome. While the new policy doesnt go as far as other states that automatically dismiss or pardon convictions, it does involve an application process.

People applying for pardons must complete a 1-page form that law enforcement reviews before placing a case on the pardon boards agenda. It costs nothing to apply.

Burgum's spokesman said the number of applicants seeking to have their pot convictions erased has slowed to a dwindle. Only eight applications were received last month in the fourth round of the summary pardons.

Five of the eight were returned because the applications were incomplete.

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The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers will conduct tests when conditions are favorable to study whether controlled water releases from Fort Peck Dam in Montana could help endangered pallid sturgeon successfully spawn, the agency has concluded.

At this point, hydrologic conditions will likely not support a flow test in 2022, said John Remus, chief of the Corps' Missouri River Water Management Division.

Thats because as of November, about 82% of the Upper Missouri River Basin was experiencing some form of drought or abnormally dry conditions. A strong water year will be needed to support the Corps' proposed testing for pallid sturgeon reproduction.

The testing will be guided by an environmental impact statement approved by Corps management in November.

The goal is to encourage pallid sturgeon to move up the Missouri River to its juncture with the Milk River or below Fort Peck Dam to spawn in the spring. Whether favorable conditions will ever be realized is the big question hanging over the proposal since the parameters are strictly defined to cause the least amount of harm to water users, wildlife and recreationists.

We are committed to conducting the test in a manner that ensures the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers can continue to serve all eight authorized purposes of the Missouri River Mainstem system, said Col. Geoff Van Epps, USACE commander, in a statement that accompanied the agency's decision notice affirming the environmental impact statement.

The system is operated for the congressionally authorized purposes of flood control, navigation, irrigation, hydropower, water supply, water quality, recreation, and fish and wildlife. Compliance with the Endangered Species Act is required to continue operating the system for its authorized purposes.

In its analysis of the EIS, an Independent Science Advisory Panel noted: The uncertain relationships between flow, temperature, and turbidity, and pallid sturgeon reproduction and recruitment to age 1, combined with the requirements to avoid, minimize, and mitigate the human impacts of management actions, create circumstances that challenge the fundamental practice of adaptive management of flows in the upper Missouri River.

Republican Montana Gov. Greg Gianforte wrote a letter in May to the Corps opposing the plan, contradicting years of work by fisheries biologists at the Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife & Parks when Democratic governors were in charge. In the letter Gianforte said the Corps lacked authority as it had no legal right to the Missouri Rivers water, criticized the lack of discussion about mitigating any damages caused by the releases and sought an extension of the comment period.

News that the EIS had been approved disappointed Gianforte, according to communications director Brooke Stroyke, who said the Corps decision to move forward didnt adequately address the concerns of the state.

The Corps has responsibility for the operation and maintenance of Fort Peck Dam in Montana and five dams and reservoirs on the Missouri River in North Dakota, South Dakota and Nebraska.

Also waiting in the wings to possibly provide pallid sturgeon an opportunity to successfully spawn is a new fish bypass channel built alongside Intake Dam on the lower Yellowstone River. The channel is proposed for operation in spring 2023.

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Im a sucker for stories of mercy, of unmerited favor granted to the undeserving, and recently became aware of such a story out of Sioux Falls, South Dakota.

In 2015, two boys ages 14 and 10 vandalized 20 cars at the Schulte Subaru dealership. Their handiwork was captured on security video, and once it was made public the boys were quickly caught.

A detective told owner Mike Schulte that the boys had not previously been in trouble and that the older boy was remorseful and admitted what he had done.

Schulte spoke to the parents of the boys and upon realizing their inability to pay for the $25,000 in damages, he declined to press charges.

The Sioux Falls Argus Leader reported that Schulte was heartbroken when he learned that the older boy walked about 3 miles to and from school each day.

So Schulte decided to help the boy and his mother by finding them a better place to live and bought the teenager a bicycle as well as a bus pass.

Schulte said the boy asked if he could come to the dealership and help out with trash collection and other small chores. Schulte added that he began to see a real change in the boy and called him a different person than the boy who committed the vandalism.

Schulte said he hoped the boy would one day look back on the kindness and say, This is when someone cared about me.

I have acted foolishly as a kid and as an adult, and Im thankful I have merciful friends and family.

I wish we heard more stories like this, and I dont mean just around Christmas. But mercy and compassion seem to be in short supply. If social media is an adequate reflection of society, then revenge is far more common than mercy.

We all want to be the recipients of mercy when we mess up, but when crossed, we want justice.

I am reminded of the unmerciful servant whose story is told in Matthew 18. The story tells us that the king forgave a great debt for a servant but then that servant was owed a small debt by another servant, and rather than forgive the debt he had the other servant put in prison.

He was called back before the king to answer for his lack of mercy to his fellow servant. The king reversed his decision and demanded the servant be jailed until the debt was repaid.

The lesson is simple: Show mercy to others as we have been the recipients of mercy. Forgive as we have been forgiven.

Mercy is a gift -- not a loan or debt to be paid back, but to be paid forward.

As we approach Christmas, I hope you will join me in determining to be more merciful, more gracious and more kind. Its what we all want, and need.

Gary Adkisson is publisher of The Bismarck Tribune.

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Very happy, very excited, but also a heavy heart when we think of the families and the victims who are still out there and who have not been found.

-- Rep. Ruth Buffalo, D-Fargo, a citizen of the Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara Nation, on the Legislature designating money to get a database of missing people in North Dakota off the ground.

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With the holidays upon us and an unpredictable new variant on its way, vaccines are the best way to reduce the transmission and severeness of COVID-19. We cannot overstate the importance of ensuring children receive this safe and effective vaccine. Immunizing your children will protect them and your families, allowing for a safer and healthier holiday season.

-- Dr. Kathy Anderson of Bismarck, president of the North Dakota Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics, after the omicron variant of the coronavirus emerged.

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"It appears as if 2021 will be, if not a record year, a significant year for visitation. Many of our visitors this year expressed an interest in enjoying the beautiful open spaces the North Dakota Badlands have to offer. Just as Theodore Roosevelt found the Badlands a healing space, so do many of our visitors."

-- Theodore Roosevelt National Park Deputy Superintendent Maureen McGee-Ballinger, on visitation this year at the state's No. 1 tourist attraction.

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"We have to all come together and work for consensus among those individuals so that we get a community that is good for all people and helps our economy."

-- Bismarck accountant Mike Schmitz, announcing a run for mayor and discussing building a consensus in a city that has people with different economic needs and diverse political views.

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Journalism is reporting that has been vetted, multi-sourced, contextualized and includes various perspectives. In the information age, much information is shared on social media and other digital platforms without regard for where it came from, whether its true, or whether it has been produced to advance a particular perspective or point of view. News literacy means understanding the difference.

-- Steve Andrist, chairman of the North Dakota News Cooperative, which hopes to begin producing original journalism early next year to bolster the content of the state's newspapers, including The Bismarck Tribune.

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"Now I'm learning so much more than I ever thought I would."

-- Century High School senior Olivia Tomanek, who took an automotive tech class in case she ever needed to work on her vehicle. Bismarck Public Schools is looking to expand its career and technical education facilities and programs with a $10 million grant.

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In the summer when Ive got the air conditioning and two or three hot tubs running, thats when Im really going to benefit.

-- Jerry Caufield, owner of Spas Etc. in Bismarck, after installing solar panels on the business's roof.

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Nobody wants a dead car because its cold.

-- Joseph McNeil, general manager of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe's SAGE Development Authority, on evaluating new electric vehicles to see how they fare in winter weather.

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The market reacts to the news that is seen at any given day.

-- AAA spokesman Gene LaDoucer, on big price swings for crude oil, which is refined into gasoline.

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"We're, I think, approaching it the way our administration always has, which is we're trying to find people that have the right combination of leadership skills and policy understanding of the area, the skills they would need to lead that position."

-- Gov. Doug Burgum, on the search for a new tax commissioner to replace Ryan Rauschenberger, who is resigning.

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How IT Can Assure Mobile Employee Productivity Mobility is not just about an anytime, anywhere lifestyle of mobile devices and wireless networks. It's ultimately about how to assure and optimize staff productivity in a mobile-centric world. Read this article to learn how you can optimize your mobile workforce operations.

System Upgrades Neednt Be Complex with the Right User Device Upgrading work devices is essential to ensure employee satisfaction and productivity but can prove a nightmare for IT departments to manage. This does not need to be the case if organizations roll out mobile systems designed specifically to help ease the transition. Access this blog to learn how.

Why Business Devices Must Adapt to the New Work Norm Business devices will need to keep up without any compromise in performance, as collaborative tools such as video-conferencing applications gain more features amidst their growing adoption in the era of hybrid work. Read this article to discover how you could optimize your hybrid work environment security and performance.

The Hybrid Workplace May be Settling on 3 Days in Office As post-pandemic restrictions are lifted, workers are returning to the office under new hybrid workplace schedules. Some companies say 'hybrid' means 3 days in the office. Access this blog to learn more about the future of the hybrid workplace.

The Total Economic Impact Of The Intel vPro Platform Forrester conducted an analysis on the ROI enterprises may realize by deploying the Intel vPro platform that aims to enable fast and reliable laptops/desktops that IT departments can more efficiently and effectively manage and secure. Download this report to unlock a complete look at the financial impact Intel vPro can have for your organization.

PC Performance Must Keep Up With User Demands In this era of remote and hybrid work, employee device performance is critical to overall productivity and security. Read this blog post to learn how organizations can effectively improve the performance of company-issued PCs, laptops, smartphones and tablets.

Get Digital: 6 Tips for Boosting Remote Employee Experience Remote work can't be successful without rethinking mobile capabilities and HR processes. Read this blog post to learn 6 lessons on improving employee experience in the new normal.

Invest In Employee Experience (EX), Drive Your Bottom Line Growth Technology can have an outsize impact on employee experience (EX)  driving satisfaction, retention and recruiting. Access this landing page to download a paper conducted by Forrester Consulting  based on customer interviews and survey responses  demonstrating how technology leaders clarify their EX needs and focus EX initiatives.

At Home or Office, Employees Need the Right Tools to Stay Productive With hybrid workplaces evolving into a long-term model, organizations need to roll out the right devices and tools to facilitate collaborative environments across different locations. Read this article to discover tools that are designed to enable employee productivity.

Enterprise Security Focus Needs to Encompass Hardware More than 80% of organizations already have experienced at least one firmware attack in the last two years, according to Microsoft's March 2021 Security Signals report. Read this article to learn about a hardware-based security solution that is designed to provide greater protection against these emerging threats.

The Total Economic Impact Of The Intel vPro Platform In this report, explore benefits of the Intel vPro platform implemented at a large composite company in this study conducted by Forrester Consultingbased on customer interviews and survey responses.

Get Digital: 6 Tips for Boosting Remote Employee Experience Remote work can't be successful without rethinking mobile capabilities and HR processes. Here are 6 lessons on improving employee experience in the new normal.

System Upgrades Neednt Be Complex with the Right User Device Upgrading work devices is essential to ensure employee satisfaction and productivity but can prove a nightmare for IT departments to manage. This does not need to be the case if organizations roll out mobile systems designed specifically to help ease the transition.

Enterprises Must Provide IT Support to Wherever Employees Work With more employees now working remotely, organizations need to be able to provide IT support regardless of the user's location and at the same level of security as their corporate network. Read this article to learn how to deliver a secure, quality remote work experience for employees that supports IT team efficiency.

How IT Can Assure Mobile Employee Productivity Remote work, or mobility, is no longer about an anytime, anywhere lifestyle or mobile devices and wireless networks in todays dispersed workforce. Its ultimately about how IT can assure and optimize mobile employee productivity. Read this article to learn about key personnel management strategies.

The Hybrid Workplace May be Settling on 3 Days in Office As post-pandemic restrictions are lifted, workers are returning to the office under new hybrid workplace schedules. Some companies say 'hybrid' means 3 days in the office. Access this blog to learn more about the future of the hybrid workplace.

Invest In Employee Experience (EX), Drive Your Bottom Line Growth Technology can have an outsize impact on employee experiencedriving satisfaction, retention, and recruiting. Download this Forrester paper to learn how technology-based EX initiatives can improve bottom line performance.

How PCs Will Drive the Future of Work As workers move into hybrid and remote roles in unprecedented numbers, devices matter more than ever. In this Forrester paper, learn how PC choice can impact security and remote management capabilities for enterprise IT teams.

Enterprise Security Focus Needs to Encompass Hardware If your hardware, which is the foundation of user devices, is not properly protected, anything that sits on top will not be secure either  including the OS and applications. Read this article to learn how the Intel vPro platform is designed to respond to threats and help businesses uncover potential attacks.

5 Endpoint Security Best Practices to Keep Company Data Safe Today, the term endpoint covers a wide array of devices used for business, from PCs and laptops to corporate all of which require much more security than antivirus and firewalls provide. Read on to learn about 5 endpoint security best practices that aim to provide a good baseline of end-user device posture and basic hygiene.

Why Business Devices Must Adapt to the New Work Norm Workspaces today need to incorporate online tools that allow remote workers to continue to collaborate effectively. Open up this blog post to learn all about the Intel vPro platform  aiming to deliver the performance and resilience organizations and their employees need to stay ahead of the game in this new era of remote and hybrid work.

At Home or Office, Employees Need the Right Tools to Stay Productive With hybrid workplaces now essential in a post-pandemic era, organizations will need to roll out the right devices and tools to facilitate collaborative environments across different locations. Read this article to learn how to do, so your employees can stay productive wherever they are.

PC Performance Must Keep Up With User Demands Employees now more than ever need high-performing work devices that are reliable and can deliver smart features that boost, not hinder, their productivity. Read this blog post to learn how you can meet PC performance demands and expectations.
Anyone who is 14 or younger today will never be able to purchase cigarettes legally in in New Zealand, according to new legislation expected to pass. The aim is to annually increase the legal smoking age by one year and make tobacco smoking illegal by 2025. From The Guardian:

The government announced the rising age alongside other measures to make smoking unaffordable and inaccessible, to try to reach its goal of making the country entirely smoke-free within the next four years. Other measures include reducing the legal amount of nicotine in tobacco products to very low levels, cutting down the shops where cigarettes could legally be sold, and increasing funding to addiction services. The new laws will not restrict vape sales.

"We want to make sure young people never start smoking so we will make it an offence to sell or supply smoked tobacco products to new cohorts of youth. People aged 14 when the law comes into effect will never be able to legally purchase tobacco," Verrall said.
Illustration: Seth

In October, McGill-Queen's University Press released The Adventurer's Glossary, a word-nerd exploration of the theory and practice of all sorts of adventure by my old friend and frequent Boing Boing contributor Josh Glenn. It's his third collaboration with the philosopher Mark Kingwell (who contributes a rousing yet erudite introduction) and the incredible cartoonist Seth. Altogether it's a treat for the eyes and mind.

Here are five sample entries from the glossary's "A" section:

ADVENTURE: An adventure is a risky endeavor whose outcome is unknown. That last bit is crucial; every true adventure involves not merely action but a venturesome, hopeful X factor  a risk to be dared, a discovery to be made, a puzzle to be solved, a mystery to be cracked. Derived from the Latin advenire ("arrive"), the term developed the sense of "that which happens or befalls unexpectedly." Viewed through this lens, absurd coincidences and lucky occurrences are features, not bugs, of adventure stories.

See: ACTION, CHANCE, LUCKY AGONISTIC

To be agonistic is to be fiercely competitive, forever striving to overcome one's peers; the term is derived from the Greek for "contestant." Nietzsche, who believed that the excellence of ancient Greek civilization could be chalked up to its agonistic culture, claimed that one's best friend should also be one's worst  most challenging  enemy. AHEAD OF THE CURVE

In aviation, the interaction between drag and airspeed can be plotted on a curve; to be ahead of the power curve is therefore to maintain good speed and altitude. In the 1920s, this technical jargon became a colloquialism meaning "better than predicted"; now, it's chiefly used in jargon-friendly business contexts, by those looking to anticipate developments.

See: PUSH THE ENVELOPE ALALA

While banging their weapons against their shields, ancient Greek hoplites (foot soldiers) would break into a full-throated battle cry of "Alala!" or "Eleleu!" as soon as they were within striking distance of their foes. The resulting din was demoralizing.

See: BARRITUS ALERT

The French military phrase a l'herte  which means, literally, "standing on a height," i.e., from which superior vantage point one can remain vigilantly on the lookout  gave us alert, which is to say, "engaged in close observation of a situation, event, or one's surroundings." As a noun, the term means "an alarm from a real or threatened attack."

See: VIGILANT

Looking for a gift for a word nerd and/or lover of adventure? Your quest ends here! Josh has kindly offered to let me run some excerpts from the book over the next several days so keep a sharp lookout, hear ye?
What do you get when you combine guest stars of The Love Boat with the contestants of Match Game? Why, an atrocious one-hour special called Beatles Forever: A Musical Tribute (1977)!

Cinema Crazed describes the watchable bomb as "one of the most brilliantly embarrassing television specials ever dropped on an unsuspecting world."

Dear friends, you have never experienced pure mad genius until you experience Anthony Newley caterwauling his way through the sitar spaciness of "Within You Without You." Dressed in a white tunic like a cheapjack swami, Newley bellows George Harrison's hippie-dippie lyrics like a mad elephant bathing in the Ganges while he wanders amid stoned-out extras. I've played this every day since rediscovering it and I plan to play it daily until the day I die  and I will update my will to have it played at my funeral.

There's one genuinely great part of the show: Ray Charles' covers of "Yesterday," and "Let it Be." No surprise there.

[via r/ObscureMedia].
MSNBC's Brian Williams didn't just say goodbye in his final episode of "The 11th Hour With Brian Williams" Thursday night  he also delivered an ominous warning about the state of the nation.

The 62-year-old journalist, who worked at MSNBC for 28 years, prefaced his grim message with, "My biggest worry is for my country."

Then, after describing himself in a way that used to be, long long ago, a commonplace ideal for journalists  "I'm not a liberal or a conservative. I'm an institutionalist. I believe in this place and in my love of country. I yield to no one"  he sounded the alarm.

"But the darkness on the edge of town has spread to main roads, on highways and neighborhoods. It's now at the local bar, the bowling alley, at the school board and the grocery store," he said. "Grown men and women who swore an oath to our constitution, elected by their constituents  have decided to join the mob and become something they are not."

"They've decided to burn it all down, with us inside," he continued. "That should scare you to no end," he said.

He then takes a break to thank his viewers and friends in a more typical farewell, before circling back.

"The reality is, though, I will wake up tomorrow in America of the year 2021, a nation unrecognizable to those who came before us and fought to protect it. Which is what you must do now."
A British court today permitted Wikileaks founder Julian Assange's extradition to the U.S. on "espionage" charges, reversing an earlier ruling that cited Assange's mental health and the brutal conditions in U.S. prisons. Lord Chief Justice Lord Burnett wrote in his ruling that the U.S. had given the U.K. new assurances that Assange would not be held in "highly restrictive prison conditions" and would be given "fair and humane treatment."

The US had offered four assurances, including that Mr Assange would not be subject to solitary confinement pre or post-trial or detained at the ADX Florence Supermax jail  a maximum security prison in Colorado  if extradited.

Lawyers for the US said he would be allowed to transfer to Australia to serve any prison sentence he may be given closer to home.

And they argued Mr Assange's mental illness "does not even come close" to being severe enough to prevent him from being extradited.

But lawyers representing Mr Assange argued the assurances over his future treatment were "meaningless" and "vague".
Reimagining a space

From the beginning of the pandemic, Town Ballroom owners Donny Kutzbach and Artie Kwitchoff said theyd open again only if and when it was safe to do so, and they could operate at full capacity. After staying dark for more than 18 months, the Town Ballroom finally reopened in September.

I don't think we had much choice, Kutzbach said when asked how he and Kwitchoff managed to stick to their guns throughout this period. We didn't expect to take 18 months off, but there we were. Public safety being paramount, we weren't going to take any chances before vaccination was fully in the picture.

Artists actually touring was the other key. Without the kind of acts that sell tickets, it didn't make sense to open. The business model couldn't work for anyone at lower capacities.

Being closed gave us a moment to rethink things. We started to ask ourselves questions. What did we want to do once we came back? What did we want to change? How could we be better? How could we reclaim space that either hadn't been properly utilized or had been completely wasted? The answers turned out to be way more than we had expected.
Here come the holidays. Advent has started. Christmas follows.

And no matter how big or small your church, in Western New York some people of faith might wonder: Another Christmas with Covid-19? Didn't we do that last year?

+4 Increased food prices just another challenge in feeding WNY's hungry In the Buffalo region, increases in food prices are taking a toll on some local organizations that provide food for hungry people.

Covid-19 is making news in a bad way, again. Positive cases in Western New York have grown to more than 10% for the last several weeks. The Western New York region is consistently among the state's highest positivity rates.

And a new Covid-19 variant known as Omicron is on the worry list of many people now, too.

So overall, things might be a bit Covid-19-focused when you attend a worship service this holiday season in Western New York.

Houses of worship are not exempt from Erie County's mask mandate. At one of Buffalo's largest Baptist churches, worshippers need to register to attend, and they could get a temperature check.

Last year for Christmas, services that were to be held in person were suspended in the Episcopal diocese, a spokesman said. There were videoconference services instead. This year, they are open again.
Greene asked if there was any effort by the county Health Department to include individuals who have tested positive as being immunized through natural immunity. Burstein said the county doesn't set the rules in that regard. She also said that vaccines provide greater protection against a broader number of Covid-19 variants.

Greene also asked about expanding rapid PCR testing in Erie County since rapid antigen tests tend to be less accurate.

Burstein said it has been difficult for Erie County to get access to a sufficient supply of highly accurate rapid tests, such as molecular and PCR tests. The county has run out of these tests for a couple of weeks before buying a new batch at great cost. The county had been using Abbott's ID NOW rapid molecular test.

"It's a big supply chain issue," she said. "They're expensive. And right now since this is a limited resource, we are offering the rapid PCR testing with ID NOW to students and faculty in schools because we want them to get back to the classroom as soon as possible."

She pointed out that many other local labs and businesses are offering these types of tests, though Erie County offers tests for free.
Jennifer Lawrence thought she was going to die.

The small plane in which she was a passenger was about to make an emergency landing at Buffalo Niagara International Airport four years ago. The incident made momentary news at the time, but mostly because an Oscar-winning actress was involved. Then it was quickly forgotten hereabouts. Now we know how close to disaster it actually was.

The article is pegged to her new movie, Dont Look Up, an end-of-the-world comedy with Leonardo DiCaprio that opens in theaters today and comes to Netflix on Christmas Eve.

The flight took off on June 10, 2017, from Louisville, where she had been visiting her parents. She was returning to her home in New York. The private plane was supposed to land at Teterboro Airport in New Jersey.

I know, flying private, I deserve to die, Lawrence says in the story. (This sort of sly awareness of her own celebrity is part of what makes her so appealing.)
Wydysh also said Niagara County would continue to focus its resources on vaccinations, contact tracing, testing and working to keep kids in school. She said the county is seeking more testing resources from the state "because we believe identifying and isolating those who test positive is the greatest need right now to reduce the spread."

Wendel, who also declined to follow Erie County's lead on a mask mandate, said Chautauqua County's Health Department and Sheriff's Office do not have the time or personnel to police mask wearing in public spaces and it would be far more helpful for the state to set up a vaccine clinic than to impose a mask mandate.

State Sen. George Borrello, a Sunset Bay Republican who is also a restaurant owner, said the edict will create more polarization around Covid-19, and he worried about front-line staffers who will end up having to enforce a mandate that he said is unrealistic and unfair.

Cathy Piciulo, president and CEO of the Ken-Ton Chamber of Commerce, said her members are concerned the state felt a need to intervene when they already were adjusting to the county's mask rule.

"We have no voice when it is the state making those decisions for everyone," she said in an email.
Two of Siwek's rulings cited the failure of the groups to file their lawsuit in time.

The groups asserted Erie Canal Harbor Development Corp. officials failed to take a "hard look" when they completed the environmental impact review of the project, including not complying with the State Environmental Quality Review Act. The groups challenged the negative declaration as "inadequate and conclusory." But any challenge to the negative declaration, by law, had to be made within four months of Nov. 9, 2020, the judge ruled.

The groups also challenged the City of Buffalo's Planning Board finding that the general project plan for the Outer Harbor was consistent with the city's Local Waterfront Revitalization Program.

But the group failed to make that challenge within 30 days, as required, so the judge also deemed that challenge "time-barred." Also, to successfully challenge the Planning Board's decision, the groups were required to name the Planning Board as a party in their legal action, but failed to do that, too, adding further grounds for dismissal, Siwek said.
The day after the body of a woman was plucked from a car that plunged into the Niagara River near the edge of the American Falls, police said their investigation indicates that it was not an accident.

"At this point in the investigation, entry into the water appears to be an intentional act," New York State Park Police Capt. Christopher Rola said in an emailed statement Thursday.

"However, cause and manner of death is still yet to be determined through autopsy," he added.

He also said that the victim has not been officially identified.

As the investigation into how the vehicle ended up in the water continued, authorities were also trying to determine what to do with the car. By Thursday, it had drifted even closer to the edge and was upside down. It teetered at times, but eventually seemed to be stuck in a shallow area about 40 feet from the brink of the American Falls.

When the U.S. Coast Guard made the rescue attempt Wednesday, the vehicle was right side up and appeared to be stuck on rocks, about 100 to 150 feet from the brink.
"These longtime partners have taken care of my family for over 15 years, and they contribute so much to Buffalo," he said. "Our community trusts them to know what steps are needed to make their voices heard and to make Starbucks and the Elmwood location an even better and fairer place to work.

Starbucks said following the vote results that it was "grateful for each partner who exercised their right to vote, and as we move forward we will continue to focus on working to exceed the expectations of all our partners and our customers."

"Today we saw a split vote in two stores in Buffalo, with a third vote outcome pending," the company said. "We believe that every partner matters. its how weve built the company and how we will continue to run the company."

The organizing campaign kicked off in August and drew widespread interest, given Starbucks' prominent corporate name and the fact that none of its 8,000-company owned U.S. stores was unionized. Starbucks Workers United leaders said they wanted employees  referred to as "partners" by Starbucks  to have more of a voice within the company.
Before the pandemic, Dr. Michael Gough typically saw patients with COPD, asthma and similar chronic lung conditions.

His Covid-19 patients have shown up much sicker, and in greater numbers, since spring of 2020.

Gough, a pulmonary and critical care medicine specialist, met most of them in the intensive care units at Sisters of Charity Hospital  St. Josephs Campus in Cheektowaga, as well as Kenmore Mercy Hospital in the Town of Tonawanda, where he also has worked in the outpatient clinic for more than a decade.

Almost 3,000 people in the region have died from Covid-19. The sickest who survived  among the more than 90,000 New Yorkers hospitalized so far  continue to struggle with lingering symptoms that include fatigue, brain fog, shortness of breath, anxiety and depression. Some remain on supplemental oxygen many months after they were stricken.

Those are all major quality of life issues for people, Gough said.

That is why he and others at Kenmore Mercy volunteered to start an online support group open to all long-term Covid-19 patients and their loved ones, as well as those who want to learn more about limiting exposure to the disease.
Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz ordered an indoor mask mandate here that began Nov. 23. The effort to keep the public safe from coronavirus isnt helped by local officials in Grand Island, Marilla, West Seneca and elsewhere who make headlines by announcing they wont enforce mask mandates.

That sentiment can also be found in Niagara County, where county Legislature Chairwoman Becky Wydysh said enforcing a mask mandate is not the best use of county resources.

Some of the officials admit that masks and vaccines will protect against the virus, but they object to the word mandate, which to them sounds like an infringement on their freedom. Those objections are keeping some lawyers busy and radio talk shows energized, but they ignore reality. The Delta and Omicron variants are prolonging the pandemic. Covid fatigue is not an excuse that allows New Yorkers to declare victory and go home, not with our hospitals bulging to capacity and too many citizens suffering with an illness that is largely preventable.

The state regulations are similar to Erie Countys. Masks are not required in a business or venue that has a full vaccination mandate. The state order is in effect until Jan. 15, at which time the governor promised to re-evaluate it.
With the closing of the regular big game season in the Southern Zone on Sunday, the next seasons to fall in line are the Southern Zone late bowhunting and muzzleloading seasons, as well as the Holiday Hunt Dec. 26 to Jan. 1. Starting one-half hour before sunrise on Monday (and running through Dec. 21), the late bowhunting/muzzleloading seasons begin for deer and bear, and you must have the appropriate tags available.

The Holiday Hunt (an extension to the late bowhunting and muzzleloading seasons) has a new twist that was announced by the Department of Environmental Conservations Bureau of Wildlife this week. After some pushback from snowmobile groups, DEC considered allowing counties to opt out of the Holiday Hunt by passing a local law. However, agency officials, after listening to conflicting views and the diversity of opinion, felt that further evaluation was needed. As a result, counties may not opt out of the Holiday Hunt proposal this year. The Holiday Hunt will occur in all Southern Zone counties this year as previously authorized.
Following all this, Sunday will be partly to mostly sunny with above average temperatures reaching the low 40s, and a 20-30 mph southwest wind.

If you've invested in a trip to Tampa to see what gives with our Bills, the weather there will be lovely. Sunday will be partly sunny with a high around 80, and a very light north wind. Temps will slowly fall through the 70s after sunset.

Speaking of above average temperatures, they will be with us most days well into December, with warm upper level high pressure ridging in the East. The American model upper air ensemble for Christmas Eve does not have the look of any cold in the East.
Congratulations Boris and Carrie Johnson on the birth of your baby. Though I must admit Prime Minister, I say this through somewhat gritted teeth. Across London is another mother and wife, whose career in Westminster is over, thrown by you to the wolves. And her crime? Your loyal advisor Allegra Stratton didnt attend that party, went home to her children, and a few days later wisely rehearsed a relevant line of questioning, anxiously laughing.

She joins a long line of those sacrificed to the chaos that has marked our PMs personal and political life. As we coo over cute baby pictures outside Number 10, what of the other women and children hes moved on from? In Hilary Mantels The Mirror and the Light, the Spanish ambassador asks Cromwell: What will you do, when the king turns on you, as sooner or later he turns on everyone close to him? Is there anyone in the Cabinet, apart from Nadine Dorries and Priti Patel, who remain loyal after another self-inflicted debacle? As for the polls, they are showing little approval.

It is the sheer incompetence in the handling of each crisis thats really cutting through. And this calamity came with a video, which was then then multiplied in the minds of millions of voters by more videos of heartbroken family members talking of dead loved ones. As with Matt Hancocks demise, visual proof can be a career killer.

On Wednesday Johnsons Plan B was vilified for putting parties over the workplace and seen as another cynical political ploy to distract from the lies and videotape. Perception matters and Johnsons credibility this week lies in tatters.

Who really buys he didnt know there had been a party? Allegra was in the inner circle (she had recently despatched Dominic Cummings with the help of one Carrie Johnson). Now it looks like his own communications director Jack Doyle attended it and gave out mock awards, which has serious ramifications. An apology early and Doyles resignation would have cauterised what is now a gaping wound... And what about the other parties, even one in his flat?

Story continues

Truth denial is his default mode (plenty of practise in his personal life I suppose). Deny a donor paid for the wallpaper. Deny Owen Paterson did any lobbying, then send out the Cabinet to defend this lie. Deny prioritising animals over people in evacuating from Afghanistan. On top, change the rules when it suits: prorogue Parliament when it blocks you; go after the judiciary when it rules in ways you dont like; try to cancel the Parliamentary Commission because it doesnt believe your mate.

And now the Conservative Party is being fined 17,800 by the Electoral Commission over the donation by Lord Brownlow to help cover the lavish renovations of Johnsons flat. Very murky water to challenge the reputation of this government. The Commission is at odds with the earlier findings of Lord Christopher Geidt, who was hired by Boris Johnson in April 2021 as the new Independent Advisor on MP Standards (the previous incumbent, Alex Allen, quit after Boris over-ruled his findings on Priti Patels bullying). Yet in May, Geidt accepted at face value the Prime Ministers claim - or lie - that he had not personally asked for more funds, despite a WhatsApp seen by the Commission by the PM to Brownlow on November 29 asking to him to authorise cash for further refurbishment works. I hazard Geidt will soon resign. You see the pattern here? Join Johnson and you soon get tainted.

When will it finally topple him? This could be close. Will Brownlow now talk? Can the PM really defend the claim he thought it a blind trust? But despite the Tory Partys history for ruthlessly despatching its own, its rarely a quick manoeuvre. Look how long it took for the Party to overthrow Theresa May, and that was with the ERG faction and Johnson endlessly troublemaking. Nothing like that kind of interior opposition today. Enemies and inheritors to the crown are hovering; Liz Truss has been on her own election trail for months.

If he makes it to next year, its not going to get any easier. Omicron means more economic damage. Put simply, less money coming in, more money going out. And theres a chance our vaccines cant ride to the rescue this time. Real incomes are set to fall, new taxes will hit wallets hard come April, and as PM he is heading into this perfect storm with far less political capital. Still, governments can often ride low in mid-term polls and go onto to win an election. Labour is gaining momentum but has yet to quite convince. So, when he goes remains an open question. But Johnson does not need many more outside enemies, hes more than enough of his own.

Truss needs to lose the empire state of mind

AS most small business owners woke yesterday with serious worries at home, the current Tory favourite Liz Truss, below, talked up the UKs global future (and her own) at the Chatham House foreign policy institute in central London, describing Britain as the greatest country in the world.

She went on to say that fashionable circles (fashionable circles?! What century is she from?) like to talk down both the UKs future and our proud imperial history. If Truss is serious about one day being prime minister, I for one want to hear less box-ticking for the weird inner cabal of the tiny Tory party membership and a bit more of her own vision that might one day unite a whole country. Despite her personal charm and photogenic appeal (now outdoing our Chancellor as social media political influencer), she needs to start demonstrating far more personal and political authenticity for a broad audience of voters to back her. Not a patchwork quilt of anti-woke chatter, patriotism, and reminders of Empire, matched with barely concealed ambition. Thats what weve got now. And he is hardly faring well.

Sex and the City is doomed without Kim

The new Sex and the City is apparently every reviewers delight  in that its a laughable disaster. But are any of us surprised? The last film outing for our once fabulous four was dreary and ridiculous. And this time around, four becomes three with loss of our favourite deliverer of the dirty one liner, the statuesque Samantha. Played by Kim Cattrall, she smartly adhered to Plan B and stayed closer to home.

Read More

Who is Allegra Stratton and how did she become the face of Tory sleaze?

Boris Johnson plunged into crisis as PM faces record Plan B revolt amid Christmas party fury

Its my party while the rest of you lockdown  the six gatherings rocking Boris Johnsons administration
Cans of Spam on a grocery shelf. The brand's owner Hormel capped off its seventh straight record-selling year.

Sales of the canned cooked meat Spam have hit a record high for the seventh year in a row, despite pandemic-related challenges.

That helped Hormel, the company that makes the iconic brand, deliver record sales of $3.5bn (2.65bn) in the three months to the end of October.

The firm's boss said it will start work on expanding its range of Spam products next year.

Hormel's shares rose by almost 6% in New York on Thursday.

"The Spam brand delivered its seventh consecutive year of record growth," Hormel's chief executive Jim Snee said on a conference call with investors.

"We are also beginning work on another expansion for the Spam family of products scheduled to be operational in 2023," he added.

Hormel, which completed its takeover of the Planters peanut brand in June, saw sales rise by 19% to $11.4bn for the year as a whole.

That came even as the company was faced with supply chain issues during the coronavirus pandemic.

To help limit the impact of supply issues in the future Hormel said it has signed a new five-year contract for supplies of pork, the main ingredient in Spam.

Asia popularity

Outside the US, Spam has a large international market, especially in the Asia-Pacific region.

It has been a household name in Hawaii since it was introduced in 1937.

It can be found on menus across the islands, as Spam musubi - a sushi-like dish - Spam fried rice, and the popular breakfast - Spam, eggs, and rice.

In South Korea, it was introduced by the US army during the Korean War, when food was scarce.

Today, Spam is so much a part of South Korean culture, that it is the staple ingredient in one of the country's favourite dishes: budae jjigae, or army stew.

Tins of Spam are even given as presents for the Lunar New Year, sometimes presented in gift-boxes as part of special promotion for the holiday.

Hormel is based in the US state of Minnesota and operates in more than 80 countries worldwide.

As well as Spam and Planters, its brands include Natural Choice and Applegate meat products and Skippy peanut butter.

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Northampton, MA --News Direct-- Whirlpool Corporation

As part of our 110 year anniversary celebration, our LAR North team donated 110 electrical appliances such as ovens, water dispensers, and refrigerators to multiple nonprofit organizations with varied causes such as children's homes, rehabilitation centers, migrant houses, and vulnerable communities located in #Mexico and #Colombia.

Through these donations, we contribute to the well-being of communities in the region while continuing our pursuit of improving life at home!

About Whirlpool CorporationWhirlpool Corporation (NYSE: WHR) is committed to being the best global kitchen and laundry company, in constant pursuit of improving life at home. In an increasingly digital world, the company is driving purposeful innovation to meet the evolving needs of consumers through its iconic brand portfolio, including Whirlpool, KitchenAid, Maytag, Consul, Brastemp, Amana, Bauknecht, JennAir, Indesit and Yummly. In 2020, the company reported approximately $19 billion in annual sales, 78,000 employees and 57 manufacturing and technology research centers. Additional information about the company can be found at WhirlpoolCorp.com, or find us on Twitter at @WhirlpoolCorp.

View additional multimedia and more ESG storytelling from Whirlpool Corporation on 3blmedia.com

View source version on newsdirect.com: https://newsdirect.com/news/whirlpool-corporations-lar-north-team-donated-110-electrical-appliances-as-part-of-whirlpools-110-year-anniversary-celebration-146677749
Wisconsin water utilities and local governments are joining industry groups seeking to stop the state from limiting toxic forever chemicals in the states drinking water.

The Municipal Environmental Groups water division  a trade association whose members include water utilities in Madison, Green Bay, Sun Prairie and 66 other communities  is urging the Department of Natural Resources to scrap rules developed over the past two years that would add certain fluorinated compounds to the list of regulated drinking water contaminants.

In comments submitted Tuesday, the group says the state should wait for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to adopt federal standards.

The Wisconsin Rural Water Association, which represents 586 municipal water and sewage utilities, and the League of Wisconsin Municipalities made similar requests, echoing comments made by industry groups including Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce, the Wisconsin Paper Council and the American Chemistry Council.

The EPA has announced plans to set limits for PFOA and PFOS, two of the thousands of synthetic chemicals collectively known as PFAS that have been found in public and private wells across the state.

However, those standards would likely not be in effect before 2026. By then it would be too late to spend an estimated $150 million in funding allocated through the new federal infrastructure law, said division administrator Darsi Foss.

The utility groups argue that the DNRs proposed standards, based on recommendations from the Department of Health Services, do not account for the costs and benefits in the way the EPAs would.

MEG-Water is concerned with the Departments proposal to establish drinking water standards without weighing the relative costs and benefits of those standards and the precedent that this may set for establishing future state drinking water standards for other emerging contaminants, the group wrote in comments submitted Tuesday.

Both trade groups say water utilities are under pressure to keep rates affordable in the face of expensive challenges, such as replacing lead service lines and aging water mains, and must already remove contaminants like radium, arsenic and nitrate. It argues newer contaminants like PFAS should get the same scrutiny and analysis as those other contaminants.

Found in wells

Tests have found PFAS in all of Madisons 23 municipal wells, though none are above the proposed limit. The city has taken one East Side well offline while exploring treatment options.

A spokesperson for the Madison Water Utility said that while utility leaders agree with many of the trade groups comments, including the need for a cost-benefit analysis, they support immediate state regulation.

Both federal and state standards will eventually be implemented, Marcus Pearson said. We know that, but we presume a federal standard could take years to implement.

Madison Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway said she supports state regulations, but urged the DNR to hold polluters accountable.

While water utilities are faced with addressing the contamination, they did not cause the pollution, Rhodes-Conway wrote. The best policy would be to require producers of PFAS containing products to take responsibility for remediation.

The state regulations, which received broad public support at a Dec. 1 hearing, are expected to come before the DNRs policy board in February before heading to the Republican-controlled Legislature, which has the power to alter or kill them.

Health problems

Manufactured for decades under brand names like Scotchguard and Teflon, the synthetic chemicals have been linked to health problems including low birth weight, cancer and liver disease, and have been shown to make vaccines less effective. Though discontinued in 2015, they do not break down naturally and remain ubiquitous in the environment.

In line with DHS recommendations, the DNRs draft rule establishes a combined limit of 20 ppt for PFOA and PFOS in drinking water. It would also require routine testing of municipal and some private water supplies, including mobile home parks and some workplaces.

Systems that exceed the limit would have to install filters or drill new wells.

Foss said the regulations would provide certainty for the 1.7 million residents who drink water from public water supplies.

The public wants to know if the water they are drinking is safe, Foss said.

The DNR estimates the total cost to businesses and local governments would be about $5.6 million in the first year and about $3.9 million per year going forward. Nine municipal water systems are expected to exceed the limits, requiring treatment systems that could together cost about $3.7 million per year over two decades.

But the agency says cleaner water could save Wisconsin residents at least $100 million a year in medical bills.

The proposed drinking water standards are similar to those adopted by Illinois but less restrictive than those in Minnesota and Michigan.

More analysis

While the EPA has said its safe to drink water with PFOS and PFOA concentrations up to 70 ppt, the agency now says there may be health risks at levels below just 1 ppt. An analysis of hundreds of new studies must now be reviewed by outside scientists before the agency sets standards based on what it determines is economically feasible.

All indications are it will be lower, said Jim Zellmer, deputy administrator of the DNRs environmental management division. And then we would move to develop and revise our rules based on that.

Pearson said the proposed state standard  which is 10 times higher than PFOA and PFOS levels in any active city well  should reassure the more than 260,000 Madison-area residents that our water is undeniably safe to drink.

As knowledge and understanding about PFAS changes, so will Madison Water Utilitys mitigation strategies, he said.

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(CNN)  Today, a lot of business students would probably pay serious money for Elon Musk's opinion of their work. In 1995, though  long before he took control of Tesla and, later, founded SpaceX  Musk was a teaching assistant helping grade exams and papers at the University of Pennsylvania's famous Wharton School of Business.

At the time, Musk was a University of Pennsylvania student himself, studying economics and physics. He also worked as a teaching assistant for the class Management 231, "Entrepreneurship: Implementation and Operations" taught by Professor Myles Bass. Some papers Musk graded for that class decades ago recently sold in an online auction for $7,753. The price includes a 25% fee paid to the auction company.

The auction company did not identify the buyer of the papers.

One of Bass's former students, Brian Thomas, recognizing the potential value of some of the long-ago coursework, consigned the papers to Boston's RR Auctions to be sold in an online sale. RR Auctions specializes in autographs and manuscripts and in the past, has sold writings from the likes of Albert Einstein and Steve Jobs for hundreds of thousands to over one million dollars.

Musk's check marks and point deductions didn't command that kind of money. None of the papers contained Musk's full signature, only the initials "EM." There was very little writing containing full words.

Musk signatures are rare, said RR Auctions Bobby Livingston. The firm previously sold an autographed photo of Musk for $1,383.

The only comment preserved on the class papers concerned Thomas's use of the phrase "s--t hits the fan" when explaining why a company might need an "exit strategy." Musk underlined the words, wrote "Graphic" over them, and deducted two points from Thomas's grade.

Thomas explained that the term had been a sort of inside joke intended for the enjoyment of his professor. He didn't realize that Musk, not the teacher, would be grading the test.

"Foolish on my part," Thomas said.

These days, Musk himself is known for using sometimes graphic language and obscene references in his own speech and social media postings.

Thomas and his son found the papers inside a tote bag in the family's garage while looking for some old high school yearbooks, Thomas said. His son noticed Musk's name and initials among the papers from the class.

Thomas has no specific recollections of Musk, he said.

"Even talking to you now, I cannot conjure an image of him being in the class," he said.

The only reason he had saved these papers was that he so fondly remembered Bass and that class. Today, Thomas is a financial adviser living in southern California, and many of his clients are tech entrepreneurs.

While he doesn't remember Musk at all, he said, he still quotes Professor Bass, who died in 2010.

This story was first published on CNN.com 'Someone just paid $7,753 for school papers graded by Elon Musk'
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, December 10)  The country's trade deficit swelled anew in October as imports grew significantly faster than exports, data released by the Philippine Statistics Authority on Friday showed.

The deficit stood at $4.01 billion during the month, nearly doubling the $2.04 billion tally in September last year. Cumulatively, the gap between exports and imports stood at $33.21 billion - up 66% annually.

The latest figure is also the widest since the $4.27 billion level recorded in January 2019.

Export sales totaled to $6.41 billion in September, representing a meager 2% growth. Coconut oil led major commodity groups in posting annual increases at 76.9%, followed by cathodes of refined copper along with chemicals.

Values of metal components, other manufactured goods, and wiring sets logged losses during the period.

China emerged as the country's top trading partner in exports - its value comprising $1.01 billion of the total. It was followed by the United States, Hong Kong, Japan, and Singapore.

Imports were valued at $10.42 billion during the month - expanding by 25.1%.

Save for telecommunication equipment and electrical machinery along with transport equipment, all major commodity groups recorded positive growth rates in September - with mineral fuels and lubricants taking the lead at 163.7%.

Beijing was also Manila's biggest supplier of imported goods, with total shipments worth $2.08 billion.

Japan, Korea, Indonesia, and the US complete the list of the country's top import trading partners.

UnionBank chief economist Ruben Carlo Asuncion told CNN Philippines the economy's reopening caused the trade deficit to widen even further in October.

Imports outpacing exports in terms of growth "reflects pre-pandemic Philippine trade performance structure where we see a consumer-driven economy over an export-oriented one," he said.

Pre-pandemic levels of trade growth may resume this 2022 with the economy beginning to normalize and base effects further fading, Asuncion added.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, December 10)  Presidential aspirant Senator Ping Lacson and his running mate Senate President Tito Sotto met with Cebu businessman Winston Garcia, who is also the brother of Cebu governor Gwen Garcia.

Lacson's camp, citing a media interview, on Friday said younger Garcia called the tandem his "sentimental favorite" and the "most decent so far" among those vying for the country's top posts in next year's elections.

"We'll seek the endorsement of everyone from the governor to the lowest member of the government, but more importantly, ang makapangyarihang mamamayan ng (the powerful citizens of) Cebu," Sotto told reporters at his campaign headquarters earlier.

Lacson stressed that though they seek the support of all sectors, the tandem's self-respect, dignity, and principles will remain intact.

Garcia was also the former manager and president of the Government Service Insurance System from January 2001 to September 2010.

His sister, Gov. Garcia, recently said she is not yet endorsing any presidential aspirant despite previously meeting with former senator Bongbong Marcos in October.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, December 10)  Two aircraft mishaps happened on Friday wherein two survived a private airplane crash in waters off Palawan while a commercial flight veered off the runway upon arriving in Cebu.

The Philippine Coast Guard reported that a plane carrying two pilots and live fish cargo left San Vicente Airport in Palawan at 1:06 p.m.

On its way to Cavite, the aircraft later on ditched on the shoreline of Barangay Tinegueban in El Nido due to engine trouble.

At 3:50 p.m., the coast guard said it spotted the aircraft near Duli Beach, around three hours away from the airport. The two pilots were rescued.

At Mactan Cebu International Airport, Philippine Airlines flight PR2369 swerved into the grass by the edge of the runway at 11:39 a.m. amid bad weather.

"All 29 passengers and 4 crew members (2 pilots and 2 cabin crew members) are safe and were able to disembark from the airplane using the aircraft's stairs," the airline said in a statement.

The Civil Aviation Authority of the Philippines said it had to temporarily close the airport, which affected 34 flights - including two that were rerouted to Iloilo International Airport. The runway reopened at 2:38 p.m.

The flight involved a De Havilland Dash 8 turboprop operated by PAL Express with registry number RP-C5911.
(CNN) -- Canada on Wednesday banned conversion therapy, which are treatments that claim to be able to change a person's sexual orientation or identity.

The law makes it a crime to subject a person of any age, consenting or not, to such treatment.

So-called conversion therapies rely on the assumption that sexual orientation can be changed or "cured" -- an idea discredited by major medical associations in the US, the UK and elsewhere.

It's often performed by religious leaders, but licensed clinicians are also engaged in the practice.

The Canadian bill makes "providing, promoting, or advertising conversion therapy" a criminal offense, the Senate of Canada said on Twitter. It will also be an offense to profit from the provision of conversion therapy.

In addition, the bill states a person cannot remove a "child from Canada with the intention that the child undergo conversion therapy outside Canada." The Criminal Code violations will go into effect 30 days after the bill received the Royal Assent on Wednesday.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau hailed the Royal Assent, which is granted by the Governor General of Canada.

"It's official: Our government's legislation banning the despicable and degrading practice of conversion therapy has received Royal Assent -- meaning it is now law," he wrote on Twitter. "LGBTQ2 Canadians, we'll always stand up for you and your rights."

"LGBTQ2" is the acronym used by the Canadian government, with the "2" referring to Two-Spirit, "a culturally-specific identity used by some Indigenous people to indicate a person whose gender identity, spiritual identity and/or sexual orientation comprises both male and female spirits," according to the government's glossary of terminology.

Last year, hundreds of religious leaders joined forces to push for a global ban on conversion therapy.

The declaration asked for forgiveness for the harm that some religious teachings have caused LGBTQ+ people and calls for everyone to "celebrate inclusivity and the extraordinary gift of our diversity."

Malta -- a tiny island nation in the Mediterranean with a population of just over 400,000 -- made history by implementing a nationwide ban on conversion therapy in 2016.

And in May 2020, Germany's parliament approved a ban on conversion therapies for minors, and for adults who have been forced, threatened or deceived to undergo the controversial treatment.

In the US, 20 states and more than 100 municipalities have banned the practice, according to the National Center for Lesbian Rights' Born Perfect campaign, which aims to end conversion therapy.

This story was first published on CNN.com "Canada bans conversion therapy, a practice Trudeau calls 'despicable and degrading'".
(CNN)  Nicaragua's government has broken off diplomatic relations with Taiwan and embraced Beijing, declaring "that there is only one China in the world."

The Nicaraguan announcement now leaves a little more than a dozen countries worldwide that maintain official diplomatic relations with self-ruled Taiwan, including fellow Central American countries Honduras and Guatemala.

"The People's Republic of China is the only legitimate government representing all of China and Taiwan is an undoubted part of the Chinese territory," Nicaragua's Foreign Minister Denis Moncada said in a televised announcement from capital city Managua on Thursday.

"The government of the Republic of Nicaragua breaks diplomatic relations with Taiwan as of today and stopped having any contact or official relationship," he said.

Mainland China and Taiwan have been governed separately since the end of the Chinese civil war more than 70 years ago. Taiwan is now a flourishing multi-party democracy, but the mainland's ruling Chinese Communist Party continues to view the island as an inseparable part of its territory -- despite having never controlled it

Beijing refuses to maintain diplomatic ties with any country that recognizes Taiwan and has spent much of the past 40 years attempting to isolate the island by chipping away at its diplomatic allies with offers of economic support.

The number of countries who have diplomatic relations with Taiwan rather than Beijing has shrunk rapidly in recent years as China looks to ramp up its global influence and outreach under President Xi Jinping.

In 2018, El Salvador, Burkina Faso and the Dominican Republic all announced they would no longer recognize Taipei, followed by the Solomon Islands and Kiribati in 2019.

And Nicaragua might not be the last nation to switch from Taiwan to China in 2021 either.

Honduran President-elect Xiomara Castro has publicly floated the idea of ditching her country's diplomatic ties with Taipei, leading to a concerted effort by President Tsai Ing-wen and her government to solidify ties with the South American nation.

China's ambassador to the United Nations Zhang Jun said on Twitter Friday that he "highly commended" Nicaragua's decision to end diplomatic relations with Taiwan, "which is in line with the prevailing trend of the time and people's aspiration."

"The One-China principle is a consensus widely accepted by the international community and allows no challenge," he said.

Under Xi, relations between Taipei and Beijing have deteriorated to levels not seen in decades. In October, China's military sent a record number of warplanes into the air around the island, amid threats of further military action. Meanwhile, the United States has sought to bolster Taiwan on the world stage with large arms sales and high profile visits by American officials.

Thursday's announcement leaves Taiwan with just 14 diplomatic allies, mostly small nations in the Caribbean and the Pacific, as well as the Vatican.

In a statement, Taiwan's foreign ministry expressed "pain and regret" at the news and said it would in turn sever diplomatic relations with Nicaragua, halt bilateral cooperation, and evacuate staffers from the country.

"The Ortega presidency disregarded the long-term friendship between Taiwanese and Nicaraguan that shared weal and woe. We are very sorry to see that," it said, referring to Nicaragua's recently reelected leader Daniel Ortega.

"Taiwan as a part of international society has the right to diplomatic relations with other countries. We will continue to promote "Steadfast Diplomacy" to expand our international surviving space, dedicating ourselves into maintaining regional peace and stability, fighting for the international status that we deserve, and protecting this nation's interests and the benefit of the people," Taiwan's statement also said.

According to Taiwan's official Central News Agency, this is not the first time that Nicaragua has broken ties with the self-governing island. It previously switched recognition to Beijing in 1985 -- also under President Ortega, who is currently serving his fifth non-consecutive term.

The two countries resumed ties in 1990, during the presidency of Violeta Barrios de Chamorro, CNA reported.
(CNN)  Evergrande has defaulted on its debt. Now Beijing is intervening to prevent a disorderly collapse of the indebted real estate group that could wreak havoc on the world's second biggest economy.

Fitch Ratings on Thursday declared that the embattled property developer has entered "restricted default," reflecting the company's inability to pay overdue interest earlier this week on two dollar bonds. The payments were due a month ago, and grace periods lapsed Monday.

Evergrande's apparent failure to pay that interest has revived fears about the future of the company, which is reeling under more than $300 billion of total liabilities. Evergrande is massive  it has about 200,000 employees, raked in more than $110 billion in sales last year, and owns more than 1,300 developments in more than 280 cities, according to the company.

Analysts have long been concerned that a collapse could trigger wider risks for China's property market, hurting homeowners and the broader financial system. Real estate and related industries account for as much as 30% of GDP.

Chinese authorities have so far downplayed the prospect of spillover risks.

"China's leadership is attempting to play it cool, but the circumstances surrounding Evergrande's downward spiral raises serious questions about [Chinese President] Xi Jinping's stewardship over China's rapidly cooling economy," said Craig Singleton, an adjunct fellow in the China Program at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a research institute based in Washington, D.C.

There's already plenty of evidence that Beijing is taking a leading role in guiding Evergrande through a restructuring of its debt and sprawling business operations.

The local government in Guangdong province, where Evergrande is based, said late last week that it would send officials into the firm to oversee risk management, strengthen internal controls and maintain normal operations.

And earlier this week, Evergrande announced it would set up a risk management committee, including government representatives, to focus on "mitigating and eliminating" future risks. Among its members are top officials from major state-owned enterprises in Guangdong, as well as an executive from a major bad debt manager owned by the central government.

Chinese authorities have taken other steps as well. The central bank on Monday announced that it would pump $188 billion into the economy, apparently to counter the real estate slump.

"These latest interventions, by both the central government and officials in Guangdong, suggest Chinese officials now begrudgingly accept that Evergrande is, in fact, 'too big to fail,'" Singleton said.

Global investors may 'take a hair cut'

The massive restructuring is going to come with some pain, at least for global bond holders.

Beijing has made it clear that its priority is protecting the thousands of Chinese people who have bought unfinished apartments, along with construction workers, suppliers and small investors. It also wants to limit the risk of other real estate firms going under. Investor fears over Evergrande's default have pushed up financing costs for other developers, as yields on offshore Chinese corporate debt surge.

At the same time, the government has been trying for more than a year to rein in excessive borrowing by developers  and so won't want to dilute that message.

That means the government may be "happy to see the firm itself go under and investors take a haircut," said Louis Kuijs, head of Asia economics at Oxford Economics, in a research note on Friday.

Chinese regulators have blamed Evergrande's crisis on the company's leaders. Its problems were the result of "poor management and blind expansion," the central bank and the country's securities regulator said Monday in public statements, reiterating previous criticisms.

Yi's comments on Thursday, made during a video speech to a forum in Hong Kong, underscore the government's priorities. He noted that Evergrande's problems would be handled in "a market-oriented way."

That "reinforces the ongoing stance from authorities of not turning to any bailout," said Yeap Jun Rong, market strategist for IG Group.

Spillover to growth

It's a "delicate balancing act" to allow Evergrande to fail while minimizing any economic or financial impact, Kujis said, especially given the broader downturn in real estate that has already seen several other developers default, including Kaisa Group this week.

New home prices in China fell in October for the second consecutive month, according to figures from the National Bureau of Statistics. The fall in September was the first in six years on a month-on-month basis.

A major slowdown in the property sector, along with other factors, could drag China's GDP growth next year down to 4.3%, according to Ting Lu, Nomura's chief China economist. That's much lower than the firm's estimated growth for 2021 of 7.8%.

During an online conference Friday, Lu also warned that the government shouldn't suddenly reverse its curbs on real estate finance. Such a turnaround would hurt Beijing's long-term goals, he added, pointing to its desire to reduce the economy's reliance on property and divert resources away from property into other sectors, such as tech.

Kuijs from Oxford Economics expects Beijing to take targeted policy measures for homeowners, troubled developers, or banks that are exposed to debt risks. He suggested such moves could include making it easier for developers to raise funds on the capital market, adjusting land policies, and increasing the construction of rental units.

"We also expect broader easing of fiscal and monetary policy," he said. "And it is likely the government will take steps to contain ripple effects in the financial system, including possibly ring-fencing banks particularly exposed to developers in trouble."

Singleton warned, though, that the real estate crisis remains a looming threat for China.

"The possibility of contagion in other parts of China's vast economy remains very real," he said. "And, it is on this issue where China's central bank faces its biggest constraint  while it may be able to contain the financial implications from a housing default, it cannot offset the housing market's impact on China's real economy."

This story was first published on CNN.com, "Evergrande can't pay its debts. China is scrambling to contain the fallout."
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, December 10)  Foreign direct investments (FDIs) in the Philippines soared annually in September, with the nine-month tally breaching the government's forecast for the entire year, data from the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas published Friday showed.

FDI inflows during the month netted at $660 million, a 30.4% annual growth. However, it is the weakest performance in four months since the $448 million registered in May.

The latest outturn brought total investments from foreigners during the nine-month period to $7.28 billion, 43.8% higher than last year and surpassing the $7-billion full-year forecast of the BSP.

Equity other than reinvested earnings suffered in September, plunging by 67.4% to $32 million as withdrawals posted a triple-digit annual growth.

Debt instruments, considered the safe option by investors, rose from $336 million last year to $538 million during the month.

Reinvestment of earnings, meanwhile, climbed by 25.2% to $89 million in September.

Most equity capital placements came from Japan, the United States, Hong Kong, Indonesia and Singapore according to the central bank.

The BSP said these investments were primarily made in the manufacturing; real estate, professional, scientific and technical; and construction industries.

RCBC chief economist Michael Ricafort said the month-on-month slowdown of FDIs in September could be attributed to COVID-19 infections posting a record high during the month. Said to be driven by the Delta variant, the surge triggered tighter restrictions especially in the capital region.

Better economic recovery prospects and increased infrastructure spending to pump-prime/stimulate the economy as well as part of preparations for the May 2022 elections also helped attract more FDIs, said Ricafort.
Water is a repository of life. For the Cordillera region, no body of water bears more importance than the Chico River. Spanning the provinces of Mountain Province, Kalinga and Cagayan, the Chico River bears a brutal history for the Cordillera peoples movement. Beyond a site of life, lore, and livelihood, the river was pillaged under the regime of dictator Ferdinand Marcos during the failed Chico River Dam Project. Now, the river is colored with the violent struggle for self-determination for the Cordillera people.

In the comic book Dawwang: Kababaihang Tagapagtanggol ng Kordilyera, these events are revisited by local independent feminist publisher Gantala Press and illustrated by Nina Martinez. Dawwang is the Naneng word for ilog, underscoring the rivers significance as a body of water that sits through ancestral domains for the Cordillera people. The book is also the Filipino version of the comic, which has previously been published in English as Let The River Flow Free and Lasst Den Fluss Fliessen in German as part of the Movements and Movements  Feminist Generations of the Goethe Institut-Indonesien project.

Carving a space for Indigenous women

Comics historically, are a medium for superheroes. By design, superheroes are large-scale representations of human possibility molded by the impossible. More often than not, their fates are dictated by origin stories shaped by scientific intervention or magical misfortune. Rarely do we enjoy a comic that crafts a tale grounded in reality, moreso one that concerns a hero for a group of people who have been systematically oppressed. In this way, the book also historicizes a story that has been preserved by the Cordillera people, with an emphasis on the role Indigenous women played in the Chico River Dam struggle.

The book cover of "Dawwang." Photo courtesy of GANTALA PRESS

Throughout Dawwang, we follow the protagonist Sierra who visits imprisoned activist and human rights defender Beatrice Betty Belen in October 2020, in Tafuk, Kalinga. Manang Betty is an Igorot leader who has tirelessly fought to protect her ancestral lands in Kalinga, leading the resistance against a geothermal project by Chevron Energy Company in her province and has been subjected to red-tagging and allegedly trumped-up charges. She was released in February 2021, after the Kalinga court dropped charges of illegal possession of firearms. Sierra learns about the proposed dismantling of Cordillera Heroes Monument which pays tribute to Lumbaya Gayudan, Pedro Dungoc, Macli-ing Dulag  the slain leader whose death at the hands of the state forces in 1980 served as a powderkeg to the Cordillera peoples unification against state forces who had been encroaching upon their lands for years.

She then asks Manang Tiling to tell her the story of the Chico River Dam struggle of which she was part of, with the narrative then oscillating between the present and an account of the past. Mahirap bang intindihin kung paano natin nakikita ang mundo? Manang Tining asks. The comic recalls the state-sponsored violence espoused during Chico River Dam project, a proposed hydroelectric power generation project that would have destroyed the culture, livelihoods and ancestral domains of the Kalinga people.

The comic builds on the world within the literature, featuring a map of the Cordillera Region and a glossary on the first page to ground the reader in its specific cultural context. Translations and definitions for words like bodong (peace talks), pangat (village elders) and surchachu (government soldier) greet the reader in its first pages. Bagong presidente refers to Corazon Aquino and Presidente refers to Marcos, molding the time that passes by while effectively drawing comparisons between the past and the glaring truth of how little has changed in the present. More than simply narrating events, the comic does not pander to any specific audience but rather, amplifies the voices directly involved in the story without isolating the reader. Its as if Manang Tining is telling us the story herself.

Honoring the role of Indigenous women

Indigenous women are particularly vulnerable, being subjected to multiple forms of oppression: as indigenous, as women, and as poor and deprived sectors of society, Executive Director of Philippine Task Force for Indigenous Peoples Rights (TFIP), Jill Carino outlines in the books introduction. These markers of identity for Indigenous women bind them to systemic oppression, often excluding them from basic rights like availing education, health services and their general recognition as vital actors to society.

While the Chico River Dam project is remembered as a landmark win for Indigenous people, their fight to self-determination and their ancestral domains, its legacy is one that continues to unfold. In photo: A spread from "Dawwang." Photo courtesy of GANTALA PRESS

In Dawwang, their history is rewritten with the recognition of being at the forefront of defense during the struggle. The lusay is chronicled, an act thought to bring bad luck wherein elderly women collectively disrobe, which is done in protest against the soldiers and government personnel attacking them. Barricades of defense, marching to Camp Duyan in the middle of the night, taking up arms against the soldiers  all with Indigenous women at the helm. The comic does not stray away from bringing to light the harassment, sexual violence and murder of the women either, crafting painful vignettes of the realities Indigenous women, especially those that local leaders and human rights defenders face today.

While the Chico River Dam project is remembered as a landmark win for Indigenous people, their fight to self-determination and their ancestral domains, its legacy is one that continues to unfold. The movement was instrumental in the passing of the Indigenous Peoples Rights Act (IPRA) in 1997, a law that required Free, Prior, and Informed Consent (FPIC) from Indigenous people affected by development projects on ancestral domains. Yet today, many groups still face threats of displacement and harassment. The Duterte administrations China-funded Chico River Pump Irrigation Project revisits the wound left in the wake of the Cordillera peoples ancestors, along with other ecologically destructive projects like the proposed Upper Tabuk Dam and larger Karayan Dam. Projects like these, coupled with new laws allowing for 100% foreign ownership in geothermal projects, disproportionately impact Indigenous people, ecological defenders and Indigenous women who take up roles of both and more. "Dawwang" leaves us to ponder on a truth that haunts us all: Ang lupa lamang ang magpkailanman.

***

Purchase a copy of Dawwang here. Proceeds will support the projects and campaigns of Innabuyog-Kalinga, a regional alliance of Indigenous womens organizations in Kalinga-Apayao.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, December 10)  The government has located more Filipinos who arrived in the country from South Africa, but two remain unreachable, the Department of Health said on Friday.

Five of the seven returning overseas Filipinos have been found, according to Health Undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire. Two are undergoing facility-based quarantine pending test results, another two are on home quarantine after testing negative for COVID-19, while one was discharged after completing the required isolation and negative test.

Vergeire said the two missing ROFs are from Mimaropa and Northern Mindanao. DOH is coordinating with their respective local governments so they can undergo testing and quarantine.

Eight Filipinos who returned to the country from South Africa last month either provided wrong or incomplete personal information so authorities struggled to reach out to them. One was earlier located, bringing the number of missing down to seven, and now to two.

South Africa is on the red list of the Inter-Agency Task Force as the potentially more transmissible Omicron variant of the coronavirus was first reported there.

The country has not yet detected a case of the heavily mutated variant so it is placing restrictions on travelers coming from countries with confirmed local Omicron cases.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, December 10) President Rodrigo Duterte has yet to decide on who to endorse for the 2022 polls, according to his former aide Senator Bong Go.

Go told reporters on Friday that he had a conversation with the chief executive the night before. He also denied rumors that Duterte has selected Manila Mayor Isko Moreno as his possible successor.

"That's not true. Wala pong ganoong balita," Go said in an event in Manila. "Ako po ay nag-aantay po kay Pangulong Duterte kung sino ang susuportahan."

[Translation: There's no such thing. I'm still waiting for President Duterte on who he will support.]

When asked if it's possible for Moreno to be Duterte's chosen candidate, the senator only said anything is possible at this point.

Go earlier announced he would be dropping out of the 2022 race, leaving the President's endorsement open for all candidates.

RELATED: Presidential aspirants weigh in on Bong Go's withdrawal

The senator said he's not changing his mind, but noted that he needs time before making it official at the Commission on Elections.

"Pinapaintindi ko po sa kanila (supporters) dahan-dahan intindihin niyo po ako," Go said. "Hanggang May 9 naman ang withdrawal so bakit ba tayo nagmamadali."

[Translation: I'm trying to make them (supporters) slowly understand my decision. The withdrawal is until May 9 so why rush?]

CNN Philippines correspondent Eimor Santos contributed to this report.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, December 10)  Rappler chief executive officer Maria Ressa formally accepted her Nobel Peace Prize award in Oslo, Norway on Friday.

Ressa made history as the first Filipino to receive the distinction. She's also the first woman to be awarded a Nobel Prize this year.

Ressa won the prize along with Russian journalist Dmitry Muratov.

"I stand before you, a representative of every journalist around the world who is forced to sacrifice so much to hold the line, to stay true to our values and mission: to bring you the truth and hold power to account," she said in her acceptance speech.

Ressa also slammed American tech giants "controlling our global information ecosystem," which she said are biased against facts and journalists.

"They are, by design, dividing us and radicalizing us," Ressa said. "What happens on social media doesn't stay on social media. Online violence is real world violence."

"Our greatest need today is to transform that hate and violence, the toxic sludge that's coursing through our information ecosystem, prioritized by American internet companies that make more money by spreading that hate and triggering the worst in us," she added.

The Rappler CEO also urged fellow journalists to hold the line against misinformation, to uphold press freedom, and to always side with truth.

"I've said this repeatedly over the last five years: without facts, you can't have truth. Without truth, you can't have trust. Without trust, we have no shared reality, no democracy, and it becomes impossible to deal with the existential problems of our times: climate, coronavirus, now, the battle for truth," Ressa said.

Ressa and Rappler are known to be critical of the Duterte administration. She is facing several tax evasion, libel, and cyber libel cases, and there's a closure order against the news website.

The Office of the Solicitor General had tried to block Ressa's bid to travel to Norway, but the Court of Appeals allowed her to personally receive the award.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, December 10)  The private sector is in talks with officials of AstraZeneca to secure another batch of COVID-19 vaccines for 2022, said presidential adviser for entrepreneurship Joey Concepcion.

In a statement, Concepcion said GoNegosyo, the non-profit organization he founded, organized the meeting between more than 350 firms and the vaccine maker to streamline initial plans to procure COVID-19 vaccines for 2022 as the emergence of coronavirus variants make booster shots necessary.

During the Dec. 9 meeting, Concepcion revealed that the Inter-Agency Task Force has given its go signal to the private sector to procure additional doses of AstraZeneca in 2022.

The parties involved first signed a tripartite agreement under the A Dose of Hope initiative for the delivery of vaccines this year, which will be complete on Dec. 27.

Concepcion said the new deal is now being arranged with the manufacturer, noting there will be a slight increase in the cost for the doses, but the price will already include shipping. AstraZeneca will no longer require payment up front or a security deposit.

AstraZeneca officials also said they are working on an updated version of their vaccine to address new variants of the coronavirus, according to Concepcion.

The vaccine AZD2816 still uses the same adenoviral vector platform, but now contains 10 changes across the spike protein, many of which are also seen in other variants of concern. This can also be used as a primary dose. The new version of the vaccine is projected to be available in the second half of 2022.

AstraZeneca Philippines country president Lotis Ramin said the private sector can choose to switch to the new vaccine variant, but orders have to be made as early as possible in order to assure supply. Deliveries will be on a quarterly basis.

Other countries are also starting to secure vaccines for next year, she added.

Concepcion said the foresight and pro-active stance of the country has led to the improving COVID-19 situation. This will also be useful in the procurement of more COVID-19 vaccines for 2022, he said.

We need to vax to the max or else our family bubbles and our business bubbles will weaken, he said, adding that the government also needs to secure boosters for the second half of 2022.
(CNN) -- A woman who was pulled from a car submerged in rushing water near the brink of Niagara Falls has died, New York State Park Police said Wednesday.

The unnamed local woman in her 60s was pulled from the car by a rescue swimmer dangling from a US Coast Guard helicopter about 50 yards from the American Falls, police said.

"We have never had a vehicle in the water this close to the brink," New York State Park Police Captain Chris Rola said in a press conference.

The woman was the only occupant of the car, which witnesses spotted floating down the river, Rola said.

Investigators believe the vehicle drove into the river in between a pedestrian and vehicle bridge but it's unclear what circumstances led to the incident.

The Coast Guard was deployed after police were unable to make a successful recovery, Rola said. Drones were also used to determine whether there were additional occupants in the vehicle and obtain license plate information, he said.

This story was first published on CNN.com "Woman pulled from submerged car near brink of Niagara Falls has died, police say".
Council OKs 33rd Avenue viaduct lighting project

The Columbus City Council moved forward in its effort to have better lighting on the 33rd Avenue viaduct.

On Monday, council members approved $161,401 to go to Commonwealth Electric Company of Columbus for the project. The company will construct lights at a better angle to lessen ice, hail and road salt damage. The current lighting has been in disrepair due to said damages.

The units will also be multi-colored, functional LEDs which will provide better aesthetics on the viaduct and lower operating costs, according to City Administrator Tara Vasicek.

In total, three bids were received with Commonwealth Electric Companys being the lowest. Per state statute, the City of Columbus is required to go with the lowest bid.

Additionally - per the Nebraska Department of Transportation and city agreement - the city is responsible for lighting operation, maintenance and electrical costs.

The city has been working with Union Pacific Railroad (UPRR) on the project. Although UPRR has approved the plans, it has to forward a maintenance consent letter  which will need to be approved by council  before the project can begin, according to Vasicek.

Augustine-Schulte reappointed as council president

For the second-straight year, First Ward Council Member Beth Augustine-Schulte was named council president.

Third Ward Council Member Rich Jablonski nominated Augustine-Schulte -- there were no other nominations. Augustine-Schulte  who is the third female city council president in Columbus history  said she appreciated the council members confidence in her abilities.

A lifelong Columbus resident, Augustine-Schulte was originally elected to the city council in 2009 with her term set to expire at the end of next year.

Columbus Sertoma Club fully covers project for upcoming community building/council chambers

A new addition to the Columbus Community Buildings community room and the Columbus City Council Chambers will be fully covered by a grant from the Columbus Sertoma Club.

The council OKd a quote of $17,428.96 from Electronic Contracting for a hearing loop system. A hearing loop takes a sound signal  which in most cases is from a microphone  and sends it directly into an individuals hearing aid.

The club received a $5,000 grant from the Cattlemens Ball held over the summer to help cover the cost.

Sertoma Club reached out to the city to see if it could cover the cost of the added amenity, according to Vasicek.

The citys architect and construction manager for the community building project  BVH and Boyd Jones, respectively  will work with Electronic Contracting to make sure installation of the loop hearing system is coordinated with the remaining construction, Vasicek said.

Third Ward Council Member Ron Schilling said he thinks the hearing loop system will be a nice addition to the community building, adding those who are hard of hearing will greatly appreciate it.

Jablonski said this will be the third city project that has a looping system with the Columbus Senior Center and Columbus Wellness Center being the others.

Its a project that fits well with our mission, he said.  I think its a good project and certainly with an aging population, its well-deserved. I think its a good opportunity for us to do that.

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The state Department of Health reported 178 new cases of COVID-19 and four deaths Friday in Cumberland County.

The number of patients hospitalized with COVID-19 in Cumberland County decreased to 116 in Friday's report, down six from Thursday. The 14-day average for hospitalizations in the county sits at 107.5, the highest rate since Oct. 28.

There are 26 adults in intensive care (up six from Thursday) and 23 on ventilators (up five from Thursday). Six adult ICU beds remain open of the 116 currently staffed across the county, and 45 of 94 ventilators in the county are in use.

The county finished November with 33 deaths after reporting 55 deaths in October. It has 25 deaths reported in the first 10 days of December.

Friday's report included 285 test results for Cumberland County, with 67 probable cases. Comparing just the number of negative tests (107) and confirmed positive tests (111), the county saw 51% of its tests come back positive.

Franklin County reported 111 patients hospitalized with COVID-19 Friday (up five from Thursday), with two of 32 currently staffed ICU beds available in the county and 15 of 36 available ventilators in use. There are 18 adults in intensive care and 14 on ventilators.

Dauphin County reported 156 patients hospitalized with COVID-19 Friday (down nine from Thursday), with 23 of 198 currently staffed ICU beds available in the county and 81 of 177 available ventilators in use. There are 47 adults in intensive care and 27 on ventilators.

School-age children

In its weekly update for the 15th week of the school year, the department reported 126 cases among children aged 5-18 in Cumberland County during the week of Dec. 1-7, the same number of cases that had been reported the previous week. The total number of cases in Cumberland County for this school year is 2,017.

Statewide, the number of cases among 5- to 18-year-olds saw its largest increase of the school year with 9,214 cases reported during the week of Dec. 1-7, compared to 6,574 during the previous week. The state said the total number of cases in that age group for the school year is 103,485.

Early Warning Dashboard

Cumberland County saw a decrease in its in percent positivity and its incidence rate per 100,000 people in the Health Department's weekly update to its Early Warning Monitoring System Dashboard Friday. Its percent positivity decreased to 14.9% for the week of Dec. 3-Dec. 9, down from 18.2% the previous week. The incidence rate per 100,000 people decreased to 239.2, down from 256.1 the previous week.

In the southeast region, Lebanon County featured significant increases in the Health Department update Friday, with its percent positivity jumping to 25.9% (up from 21.5% the previous week)  the second highest percent positivity in the state for the week behind Potter County (28.5%). Lebanon's incidence rate jumped to 458.4 (up from 345.6 the previous week). Sullivan County featured the highest incidence rate per 100,000 people for the week at 692.4.

Philadelphia County, which includes the city of Philadelphia, had the lowest percent positivity in the state for the week of Dec. 3-9 at 7.1%. Cameron County had the lowest incidence rate per 100,000 people in the state at 239.2.

Penn State Health update (Dec. 8)

Penn State Health lists a COVID-19 dashboard on its website tracking cases at each of its acute care hospitals  Penn State Health Milton S. Hershey Medical Center, Penn State Health Holy Spirit Medical Center, Hampden Medical Center and Penn State Health St. Joseph Medical Center. The dashboard will be updated every Monday, Wednesday and Friday.

Wednesday's update shows 158 total cases (154 adults, 4 pediatrics) in the health systems four hospitals, a decrease of 13 cases since Friday. Thirty are fully vaccinated (19%) with nine in an ICU and five on ventilators; 109 are nonvaccinated (69%) with 31 adults in an ICU and 17 adults on a ventilator, and 19 are unknown status patients. Three unvaccinated children are hospitalized and one is in an ICU and one on a ventilator.

Holy Spirit Medical Center in Camp Hill has 34 COVID patients. Six are fully vaccinated adults (one in ICU and one on a ventilator) and 28 are unvaccinated adults (four in an ICU and two on a ventilator).

Hampden Medical Center has six COVID patients, five of them unvaccinated (two in an ICU, one on a ventilator); one is fully vaccinated.

Vaccinations

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention labels Cumberland County as having "high" transmission of the virus  the highest level, which is the transmission level for every county in the state. Community transmission is determined by the number of new cases per 100,000 people in the last seven days and the positivity rate over the last seven days, so the classification could vary from day to day based on those numbers.

In data updated Thursday evening, the CDC says Cumberland County has seen 58.5% of its total population of 253,370 become fully vaccinated. For the county's population of people ages 12 and older, 66.9% have been fully vaccinated. For the county's population of people ages 5 and older, 61.9% have been fully vaccinated.

County numbers in the southcentral region (for Dec. 10):

Adams County (pop. 103,009): 83 new cases; 15,359 total cases (12,379 confirmed, 2,980 probable); 45,166 negatives; 253 deaths (+1); 48.9% of county population vaccinated

83 new cases; 15,359 total cases (12,379 confirmed, 2,980 probable); 45,166 negatives; 253 deaths (+1); 48.9% of county population vaccinated Bedford County (pop. 47,888): 41 new cases; 8,107 total cases (5,499 confirmed, 2,608 probable); 13,004 negatives; 202 deaths; 35.6% of county population vaccinated

41 new cases; 8,107 total cases (5,499 confirmed, 2,608 probable); 13,004 negatives; 202 deaths; 35.6% of county population vaccinated Blair County (pop. 121,829): 117 new cases; 21,661 total cases (17,091 confirmed, 4,570 probable); 48,515 negatives; 455 deaths (+3); 46.7% of county population vaccinated

117 new cases; 21,661 total cases (17,091 confirmed, 4,570 probable); 48,515 negatives; 455 deaths (+3); 46.7% of county population vaccinated Cumberland County (pop. 253,370): 178 new cases; 32,924 total cases (25,344 confirmed, 7,580 probable); 106,404 negatives; 676 deaths (+4); 58.5% of county population vaccinated

178 new cases; 32,924 total cases (25,344 confirmed, 7,580 probable); 106,404 negatives; 676 deaths (+4); 58.5% of county population vaccinated Dauphin County (pop. 278,299): 232 new cases; 39,635 total cases (33,600 confirmed, 6,035 probable); 132,793 negatives; 716 deaths (+4); 54.8% of county population vaccinated

232 new cases; 39,635 total cases (33,600 confirmed, 6,035 probable); 132,793 negatives; 716 deaths (+4); 54.8% of county population vaccinated Franklin County (pop. 155,027): 87 new cases; 25,226 total cases (20,017 confirmed, 5,209 probable); 65,479 negatives; 509 deaths (+3); 44.4% of county population vaccinated

87 new cases; 25,226 total cases (20,017 confirmed, 5,209 probable); 65,479 negatives; 509 deaths (+3); 44.4% of county population vaccinated Fulton County (pop. 14,530): 26 new cases; 2,823 total cases (1,351 confirmed, 1,472 probable); 5,115 negatives; 40 deaths; 33% of county population vaccinated

26 new cases; 2,823 total cases (1,351 confirmed, 1,472 probable); 5,115 negatives; 40 deaths; 33% of county population vaccinated Huntingdon County (pop. 45,144): 45 new cases; 7,932 total cases (6,476 confirmed, 1,456 probable); 21,803 negatives; 189 deaths (+1); 46.9% of county population vaccinated

45 new cases; 7,932 total cases (6,476 confirmed, 1,456 probable); 21,803 negatives; 189 deaths (+1); 46.9% of county population vaccinated Juniata County (pop. 24,763): 30 new cases; 3,533 total cases (3,225 confirmed, 308 probable); 6,860 negatives; 134 deaths; 37% of county population vaccinated

30 new cases; 3,533 total cases (3,225 confirmed, 308 probable); 6,860 negatives; 134 deaths; 37% of county population vaccinated Lebanon County (pop. 141,793): 122 new cases; 24,052 total cases (20,504 confirmed, 3,548 probable); 64,738 negatives; 366 deaths; 49% of county population vaccinated

122 new cases; 24,052 total cases (20,504 confirmed, 3,548 probable); 64,738 negatives; 366 deaths; 49% of county population vaccinated Mifflin County (pop. 46,138): 53 new cases; 8,575 total cases (8,110 confirmed, 465 probable); 18,091 negatives; 231 deaths; 45% of county population vaccinated

53 new cases; 8,575 total cases (8,110 confirmed, 465 probable); 18,091 negatives; 231 deaths; 45% of county population vaccinated Perry County (pop. 46,272): 41 new cases; 6,271 total cases (4,869 confirmed, 1,402 probable); 13,933 negatives; 135 deaths; 42.1% of county population vaccinated

41 new cases; 6,271 total cases (4,869 confirmed, 1,402 probable); 13,933 negatives; 135 deaths; 42.1% of county population vaccinated York County (pop. 449,058): 353 new cases; 74,081 total cases (59,894 confirmed; 14,187 probable); 199,669 negatives; 1,100 deaths (+3); 52.3% of county population vaccinated

ZIP code-level counts (updated Dec. 10):

17013: 3,873 positives, 16,420 negatives - +86 since Dec. 3

17015: 2,322 positives, 8,072 negatives - +57 since Dec. 3

17050: 3,709 positives, 17,128 negatives - +102 since Dec. 3

17055: 4,128 positives, 19,028 negatives - +113 since Dec. 3

17011: 3,767 positives, 15,735 negatives - +67 since Dec. 3

17007: 569 positives, 2,097 negatives - +18 since Dec. 3

17065: 422 positives, 1,412 negatives - +17 since Dec. 3

17324: 462 positives, 1,438 negatives - +17 since Dec. 3

17241: 1,052 positives, 3,537 negatives - +34 since Dec. 3

17257: 2,602 positives, 7,949 negatives - +70 since Dec. 3

17240: 265 positives, 713 negatives - +5 since Dec. 3

17025: 1,776 positives, 6,554 negatives - +65 since Dec. 3

17070: 1,662 positives, 6,150 negatives - +33 since Dec. 3

17043: 565 positives, 2,355 negatives - +16 since Dec. 3

17019: 2,028 positives, 6,220 negatives - +47 since Dec. 3

17266: 38 positives, 140 negatives - +1 since Dec. 3

School district and college case counts (updated Dec. 10)

The Sentinel's case counts for Cumberland County school districts and colleges or universities are updated Fridays. The policy for each school districts reporting is noted in the list below.

Big Spring School District (reports active cases in past 14 days with school exposure): 10 student cases and 2 staff cases being monitored as of Dec. 10.

(reports active cases in past 14 days with school exposure): 10 student cases and 2 staff cases being monitored as of Dec. 10. Camp Hill School District (posts chart that includes total case count): 2 new student cases and no new staff cases since Dec. 3; 107 student cases and 9 staff cases this school year (started Aug. 25.) Chart last updated on Dec. 10.

(posts chart that includes total case count): 2 new student cases and no new staff cases since Dec. 3; 107 student cases and 9 staff cases this school year (started Aug. 25.) Chart last updated on Dec. 10. Carlisle Area School District (reports cases as they occur and updates a chart): 17 new cases since Nov. 23; 239 cases this school year (started Aug. 25) according to the charts last update on Dec. 3.

(reports cases as they occur and updates a chart): 17 new cases since Nov. 23; 239 cases this school year (started Aug. 25) according to the charts last update on Dec. 3. Cumberland Valley School District (reports weekly and total number of cases with school exposure): 37 cases since Dec. 3; 392 cases this school year (started Aug. 31) as of the charts last update on Dec. 10.

(reports weekly and total number of cases with school exposure): 37 cases since Dec. 3; 392 cases this school year (started Aug. 31) as of the charts last update on Dec. 10. Mechanicsburg Area School District (chart lists total cases actively being monitored, updated Tuesday and Friday): 30 positive and presumed positive cases being monitored as of Dec. 10.

(chart lists total cases actively being monitored, updated Tuesday and Friday): 30 positive and presumed positive cases being monitored as of Dec. 10. Shippensburg Area School District (reports weekly and total confirmed case counts involving school exposure): 13 new cases since Dec. 3; 240 cases this school year (started Aug. 19) as of charts last update on Dec. 8.

(reports weekly and total confirmed case counts involving school exposure): 13 new cases since Dec. 3; 240 cases this school year (started Aug. 19) as of charts last update on Dec. 8. South Middleton School District (posts notices as cases occur, updates table of case counts weekly on Fridays): 103 cases this school year (started Aug. 25) as of the charts last update on Dec. 3.

(posts notices as cases occur, updates table of case counts weekly on Fridays): 103 cases this school year (started Aug. 25) as of the charts last update on Dec. 3. West Shore School District (reports active cases with school exposure within past 14 days): 48 student cases and 7 staff cases being monitored as of Dec. 10.

(reports active cases with school exposure within past 14 days): 48 student cases and 7 staff cases being monitored as of Dec. 10. Dickinson College : 2 new student cases and 1 employee case since Dec. 3; 57 student cases and 32 employee cases this semester (started Aug. 30.) Chart last updated on Dec. 10.

: 2 new student cases and 1 employee case since Dec. 3; 57 student cases and 32 employee cases this semester (started Aug. 30.) Chart last updated on Dec. 10. Messiah University : 22 new student cases and 5 new staff cases since Dec. 3; 127 student cases and 52 employee cases this semester (started Aug. 7.) Chart last updated Dec. 10.

: 22 new student cases and 5 new staff cases since Dec. 3; 127 student cases and 52 employee cases this semester (started Aug. 7.) Chart last updated Dec. 10. Shippensburg University: 23 new student cases and 1 new staff case since Nov. 19; 232 student cases and 29 employee cases this semester (started Aug. 1). Chart last updated on Dec. 6.

(Counties with a percent positivity above 5% in a week go on the Department of Health's watch list)

Pennsylvania: Percent Positivity - 14.4% last 7 days (15.2% previous 7 days) Incidence Rate per 100,000 people last 7 days - 321.4 (290.8 previous 7 days)

Adams County: Percent Positivity - 20.5% last 7 days (18.3% previous 7 days) Incidence Rate per 100,000 people last 7 days - 330.1 (255.3 previous 7 days)

Cumberland County: Percent Positivity - 14.9% last 7 days (18.2% previous 7 days) Incidence Rate per 100,000 people last 7 days - 239.2 (256.1 previous 7 days)

Dauphin County: Percent Positivity - 15.9% last 7 days (16.4% previous 7 days) Incidence Rate per 100,000 people last 7 days - 276.3 (230.7 previous 7 days)

Franklin County: Percent Positivity - 20.7% last 7 days (22.8% previous 7 days) Incidence Rate per 100,000 people last 7 days - 341.9 (294.8 previous 7 days)

Lebanon County: Percent Positivity - 25.9% last 7 days (21.5% previous 7 days) Incidence Rate per 100,000 people last 7 days - 458.4 (345.6 previous 7 days)

Perry County: Percent Positivity - 23.5% last 7 days (30.1% previous 7 days) Incidence Rate per 100,000 people last 7 days - 354.4 (412.8 previous 7 days)

York County:

Percent Positivity - 21.5% last 7 days (23.8% previous 7 days)

last 7 days (23.8% previous 7 days)

Incidence Rate per 100,000 people last 7 days - 405.3 (384.1 previous 7 days)

Email Jeff at jpratt@cumberlink.com. Follow him on Twitter @SentinelPratt.

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In last weeks article, I discussed the tax returns that can arise when administering a decedents estate and some of the pitfalls of which the person responsible for administering the estate should be aware. In this article, I will discuss some of the ways in which you can plan ahead to reduce tax burdens on your beneficiaries and prevent some of the administrative challenges.

When you are putting together your estate plans, you should be aware that what you leave behind to your loved ones will include tax consequences. Tax consequences might be harsher than you anticipate and can create headaches and hoops for your loved ones to jump through. Smart estate planning can help maximize the benefit your beneficiaries receive from your estate and manage the tax consequences.

Final income tax returns

After you pass away, the taxing authorities continue to expect further tax returns from you, and your estate will need to file your final income tax returns. For you, the process of gathering all of your tax forms and filing them is old hat. You know what forms to expect, and you may have a regular accountant who knows your finances. Your heirs will need this information.

You should maintain copies of your tax returns for the last five to seven years in an organized file where your heirs can easily locate them. This will give them a concise picture of your finances and the name of any accountant who can best help your personal representative with your financial records and taxes.

Another pitfall is that difficulties and delays can arise when someone needs to recover a tax refund owed to a decedent. Although it may seem like a good idea to leave a tax refund in addition to other assets, the refund can cause headaches and delays.

Taxing authorities will not release refunds to just anyone. They may flag it as identity theft, require additional forms and force your personal representative to jump through hoops if a refund is due on your final income tax return. If you are approaching end of life, you should adjust any tax withholding to reduce the likelihood that there will be a refund due after your death. It is best to plan for your tax return to result in either a $0 balance or a small balance owed. As an added benefit to your heirs, that final income tax payment is deductible on the Inheritance Tax Return.

Inheritance Tax Return

The Inheritance Tax Return is a state tax filing that applies to property inherited from any decedent who was a resident of Pennsylvania. The tax is based upon the relationship of the heirs to the decedent. The inheritance tax rate is 0% for a spouse or a qualifying charity, 4.5% for children or grandchildren, 12% for siblings, and 15% for any other person who receives an inheritance.

Property subject to inheritance tax includes some items that might not be expected. For example, if a child held a joint bank account with a parent, half of the balance in that bank account will be taxed as an inheritance to the surviving child, even if the account was entirely funded by the childs money.

You can prevent some inheritance tax consequences by talking to your estate planning attorney about how your accounts are titled and whether there is a better way to achieve your goals. In the example given here, the goal may have been convenience, allowing the parent to help manage the childs finances. That goal could have been achieved through a Power of Attorney, with the bank account only in the childs name, thus avoiding inheritance tax on the childs own money.

It may also make sense gift some property to your heirs during your lifetime rather than waiting until after you pass away. Make sure to consult with an attorney before doing so, though. Over-gifting could result in other consequences. Gifting too close in time to when you may need long term care could interfere with your eligibility for Medicaid.

Fiduciary tax returns for a trust

Some people benefit from setting up a trust during their lifetimes or as part of their estate plans. Some benefits, depending upon the type of trust, include minimizing inheritance tax, providing for a disabled relative, providing for a relative who has trouble managing money, protecting assets from creditors, assisting with Medicaid eligibility and providing for a Medicaid beneficiarys supplemental needs, setting aside money or property for a child, or to benefit a charitable cause that is near and dear to your heart.

The trust can be provided for in your will, which causes it to be created after your death if certain circumstances are met, or it can be created immediately during your lifetime. If the trust is created immediately, you should know how it will be treated for tax purposes, so the trustee appointed to manage that trust can meet their tax reporting obligations. If the trust is provided for upon your death, you should have a conversation with your designated trustee so they understand what their obligations will be when the time arises.

Most trusts file a Form 1041 and PA-41 fiduciary return to report the trusts income and distributions. This should be prepared by a tax professional who is familiar with the Internal Revenue Codes trust provisions and has reviewed the trust instrument.

Grantor trusts, which are a popular tool used for estate planning purposes, have an unusual tax treatment. During the grantors lifetime, the grantor trust is a disregarded entity for tax purposes. Any income to the grantor trust gets reported on the grantors 1040 personal income tax return as though the trust did not exist. That allows you to have the benefit of a trust without added complication to your tax filings.

After you pass away, your trustee will need to report the trusts income on a fiduciary return until it is wound up. You should make sure to provide your trustee with a copy of the Trust Instrument and discuss its tax treatment with them in advance, so they are not surprised by it.

Keystone Elder Law P.C. recently welcomed attorney Kelly Walsh Appleyard to their staff. Find additional articles & resources at www.KeystoneElderLaw.com or join their Facebook group Later in Life Planning and Resources. Call 717-697-3223 for a free telephone consultation with their Care Coordinator.

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Former MAC President Dr. Steve Kurtz received the Missouri Community College Associations Hall of Fame Award at the organizations annual convention, held Nov. 10-12 in Branson.

The Hall of Fame Award is one of the associations highest honors. It is not bestowed on an annual basis, but only when it is timely to recognize truly outstanding contributions to Missouris community colleges.

Dr. Jon Bauer, president of East Central College in Union, nominated Kurtz for this prestigious award in recognition of his many years leading the legislative charge for Missouris community colleges in Jefferson City.

As legislative chair, Steve was diligent in advocating for Missouris community colleges, looking out for legislation that would impact our institutions, and continually finding ways to raise the profile and effectiveness of our community colleges, said Bauer. Our state  especially our states community colleges  are better because of Steve Kurtz. Steve was the kind of colleague and college president one hopes to be."

MAC President Dr. Joe Gilgour said that the college was pleased to see Kurtz honored with the award. Numerous MAC colleagues and trustees were able to attend and reconnect with Kurtz at the ceremony.

Steve is very deserving of this award, said Gilgour. During his time as president at MAC, he served MCCA as an unwavering advocate for community colleges. He built strong relationships with senators and representatives throughout the state for the benefit of all students, staff, and colleges in the association.

Kurtz began his tenure at Mineral Area College in 2001 as the dean of Arts and Sciences. Following the retirement of Dr. Terry Barnes, he was promoted to interim president in 2006 and then served as president from February 2007 until December 2018. After retiring from MAC, he and his wife Renee relocated to Idaho where Kurtz is the accreditation liasion officer and interim director of planning and effectiveness at North Idaho College.

The Missouri Community College Association (MCCA) is a statewide organization through which Missouris community colleges share ideas and advance common goals. MCCA provides advocacy, information, professional development, and networking opportunities for community college faculty, staff, administrators, and trustees.

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She was born Arcangela Felice Assunta Wertmueller von Elgg Spanol von Braueichjob in Rome to an aristocratic Swiss family. Apparently rejecting her parents wishes to study law, Wertmueller instead went to drama school where she acted, wrote and directed plays. After graduating from Romes Theatre Academy, she toured Europe with Maria Signorellis puppet troupe.

In 1963, Italian actor Marcello Mastroianni, the husband of a schoolfriend, introduced Wertmueller to Federico Fellini, who asked her to be his assistant on 8. Wertmueller later said Fellini proved to be her greatest influence.

Its illuminating to be close to him, because you are close to a character whos so profoundly nonconformist, who runs with himself like a child with a kite, she said.

That same year, with Fellinis encouragement, Wertmueller went to Sicily to make The Lizards, her first feature film. It was favorably received but the director herself criticized it as being too rarefied, too difficult for people to understand. She wanted to make films for the masses.
RICHMOND, Va. (AP)  Republican Virginia Gov.-elect Glenn Youngkin announced Wednesday that he would seek to use his executive powers to withdraw the commonwealth from a multistate carbon cap-and-trade program he said has overburdened ratepayers and businesses.

Environmental attorneys and other advocates quickly shot back that Virginia's participation, approved through legislation last year, could not be undone by the governor alone.

Youngkin's remarks about the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, a program between 11 mid-Atlantic and northeast states designed to reduce carbon emissions from power plants, came during a speech he gave to the Hampton Roads Chamber.

Youngkin, who will take office in January, pledged to withdraw Virginia from the initiative through executive action."

RGGI describes itself as a regional market for carbon. But it is really a carbon tax that is fully passed on to ratepayers. It's a bad deal for Virginians. It's a bad deal for Virginia businesses," he said.
Some experts say the switch is not necessarily a significant loss for Taiwan and may only have been a matter of time. Taiwan has been increasing its exchanges with Western countries and has emphasized the sharing of democratic values and working with like-minded nations.

Everyone could see early on that this diplomatic relationship couldnt be kept, said Antonio C. Hsiang, a professor at La Academia Nacional de Estudios Y Estrategicos in Chile and an expert on Taiwan's relations in Latin America.

Taiwan's emphasis on democratic values stands in contrast to many of its diplomatic allies, such as Nicaragua or Honduras.

Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega was reelected in November in what the White House called a pantomime election.

The arbitrary imprisonment of nearly 40 opposition figures since May, including seven potential presidential candidates, and the blocking of political parties from participation rigged the outcome well before election day, U.S. President Joe Biden said in a statement in November in response to Ortegas election.
As with anything else, children are always observing their parents' behaviors, so model the behavior you want to see, Crifasi said. Don't joke about guns or let a kid take a turn shooting while you're hunting or doing target practice. Before setting your gun down, unload it, the AAP says.

"Talk to them about never pointing your gun at something they're not willing to destroy, for lack of a better term, because if it was loaded and discharged, you would likely destroy whatever that gun was aiming at," Crifasi said.

***

Dealing with other parents

If your children are going to visit the homes of people who might have a gun, add questions about gun safety to your playdate checklist, the AAP recommends.

"People can feel awkward about it, but really, when it comes down to the safety of our kids, we have to have those conversations," Crifasi said. "If your child has a peanut allergy, would you be uncomfortable asking the parents of your kid's friends to not give your kid peanuts? No, that would be something you'd absolutely do because it puts your kid at risk."
Virginia has confirmed its first case of the omicron variant, making it the 23rd state in the country with the new strain of the coronavirus.

The Virginia Department of Health identified the variant in a testing sample from an adult living in the northwest part of the state, according to a press release Thursday night.

While the person hadn't ventured outside the country, they had a history of domestic travel during the period of exposure.

We knew it was only a matter of time before we would record our first omicron infection in the Commonwealth, said Dr. Norman Oliver, VDH's state health commissioner. This drives home the challenge the COVID-19 virus presents to the world as the virus changes and mutates over time. Scientists are hard at work studying the newly identified variant to understand how easily it spreads and how sick it makes people."

Much remains unknown about the variant that has coursed through at least 50 countries within a month, prompting worldwide panic after South Africa - a country with a robust genomic surveillance system - identified the first person infected with the mutation.
Second, an impoverished geopolitics assumes that because Russia backs the Serbs, America should oppose them. But Bosnias fragility generates instability. The U.S. is conceding Russia a Balkan foothold  for what? Why not outflank Russia and draw new stable states closer to NATO, as weve done with Montenegro, Croatia and Slovenia? Regional security and integration would actually be easier with units that arent so internally brittle.

Third, theres an assumption that seems to answer every doubt about continuing to pursue a failed policy: Secession would validate genocide. I edited a book on Slobodan Milosevics trial and helped indict five Serbs for war crimes, so Im under no illusions. But atrocities have a context. An independent Republika Srpska would have little reason to pursue violence, but forcing unwilling communities into political union is destabilizing  as were seeing now.

Bosnia isnt a moral imperative. Its a country, and a failed one  not because its poor, corrupt and dysfunctional, but because many Bosnians dont believe in Bosnia. Americas policy is to insist they change their minds.
On the frosty morning of Dec. 9, 1921, in Dayton, Ohio, researchers at a General Motors lab poured a new fuel blend into one of their test engines. Immediately, the engine began running more quietly and putting out more power.

The new fuel was tetraethyl lead. With vast profits in sight  and very few public health regulations at the time  General Motors Co. rushed gasoline diluted with tetraethyl lead to market despite the known health risks of lead. They named it Ethyl gas.

It has been 100 years since that pivotal day in the development of leaded gasoline. As a historian of media and the environment, I see this anniversary as a time to reflect on the role of public health advocates and environmental journalists in preventing profit-driven tragedy.

Lead and death

By the early 1920s, the hazards of lead were well known  even Charles Dickens and Benjamin Franklin had written about the dangers of lead poisoning.

When GM began selling leaded gasoline, public health experts questioned its decision. One called lead a serious menace to public health, and another called concentrated tetraethyl lead a malicious and creeping poison.
The attack on Pearl Harbor was the opening chapter in an incredible story of a remarkable comeback, according to Albany City Manager Peter Troedsson, the guest speaker at a local event memorial this week.

American Legion Post 10 in Albany hosted its annual Pearl Harbor memorial ceremony this week to observe the 80th anniversary of the attack that pulled America into WWII.

Post Commander David Solomon oversaw the ceremony, accompanied by Chaplain Floyd Bacon. American Legion Riders from Posts 10, 51 and 58 attended, and Taps and a 21-gun salute were conducted by Post 10's Honor Guard.

Troedsson began by noting the passing of former Republican Sen. Bob Dole, who was wounded in battle while fighting in WWII Italy, and who went on to a lifetime of public service including running for president.

Following a moment of silence for Dole, Troedsson described the events of the infamous day in which Japan launched a surprise attack on the naval base at Honolulu. An estimated 2,386 Americans were killed, including 55 civilians, and 1,139 were wounded. Eighteen ships were sunk, including five battleships.

The U.S. was not expecting this attack, and our forces were unprepared, Troedsson said. But American servicemen and women responded heroically and effectively.

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Despite the advantage of the surprise attack, the Japanese did not strike a crippling blow against U.S. forces. Instead, they guaranteed an end to their imperialist ambitions by drawing America into the war, Troedsson said.

The story of Pearl Harbor is about bombs and battleships, international relations and geopolitics, he said. But it is perhaps more about the courage of men and women under fire.

Cody Mann covers the cities of Albany and Lebanon. He can be contacted at 541-812-6113 or Cody.Mann@lee.net.

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Question: What is stronger, Jack Wolcotts faith in Corvallis or the communitys faith in Wolcott and his iconic creation, Grass Roots Books & Music?

Tough call. Both belief systems have withstood the test of time, in this case 50 years. It was 50 years ago in September that Wolcott, Michael Nesson and their one employee, Gordy Hoke, started Grass Roots Books & Things on Southwest Second Street in Corvallis. Wolcott and his staff had hoped to organize an anniversary celebration by now, but the COVID-19 pandemic continues to make such a large gathering impractical.

Hopefully, next year, said Wolcott, whose optimism is catching.

We wanted to be sure to acknowledge peoples support and appropriately thank them, Wolcott said.

Wolcott, a Salem native who graduated from Oregon State University with a degree in psychology (he once thought of working to increase consumer awareness of advertising), got the bookshop bug after visiting a store in Santa Cruz, California, called Bookshop Santa Cruz, which still stands.

I became aware of the sheer amount of books there were on topics I didnt know existed, he said. There had to be a way to share that.

Nesson left after a year, Hoke stayed for a few years longer, and Wolcott married Sandy Smith, who became both a life partner and a business partner.

Smith developed her own bookshop bug at Village Books in Redondo Beach, California.

I didnt think I would ever walk into a bookstore like this and meet a man like this who somehow seemed to like me, Smith said. Its incredible to have had a bookstore life.

But this is 2021 and you cant really have a bookstore life anymore, can you? The chain stores took over (there was a Borders once in Corvallis), then Amazon took over, then Kindle took over. Bookstores were as dead as a doornail, right?

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Wolcott, as you might guess, says no.

I think the last five or 10 years have been a golden age for independent bookstores, he said.

Online advantage

Why? Because shops such as Grass Roots never stopped working to learn about their customers  and their community. And they have taken advantage of new online tools and distribution systems to battle the Amazons on their own terms.

Wolcott and other independents (maybe we should call them interdependents) are linked to a massive book warehouse in Roseburg that offers essentially one-day service and allows Wolcott's small shop to thrive despite a relatively small in-store inventory.

If we order by noon one day, we get it the next morning, Wolcott said. And even if a customer could get a book quicker somewhere else, in Corvallis they prefer to work with Wolcott and his staff.

People are confident that what we are doing has a certain level of integrity, and people are willing to give us that one day, Wolcott said.

The online portal/distribution system accounts for 25% of Grass Roots sales and has been a lifesaver during COVID. Customers can order online or by phone. Grass Roots still offers free delivery nearly two years into the pandemic, but people want to pick it up, Wolcott said.

People can navigate our website and we are learning from our customers. We are all helping each other and all working together.

COVID-19 forced Wolcott and his team to adapt, and longtime employee Tiffany Harlan morphed into the czarina of the web portal.

Shes the one doing the ordering, Smith said. We had huge amounts of online orders, and we owe a huge debt of gratitude to her. She has been our face for the past few years.

The gratitude Wolcott and Smith feel toward Harlan also extends to the entire staff.

Were hugely grateful for a long line of employees who have worked for us, Smith said.

The art of finding

The Grass Roots model is different. They dont SELL you a book. They FIND you YOUR book.

Over the years weve always tried to fill the needs of the community as we learned them, Wolcott said. We work really hard to provide a personal experience and service. What do you think and what do you want? Thats the biggest difference between independent bookstores and nationals.

Wolcott was asked if in his wildest imagination he ever foresaw being able to order a book by computer one day and have it be delivered from Roseburg the next day.

I love science fiction, but, he said, computers at the time were so large and expensive that no one but the government could afford one.

Wolcott then rummages behind a curtain in his upstairs office and pulls out a piece of laminated cardboard with rectangles drawn on it. Each rectangle represented a distributor and Wolcott would place index cards for the individual books onto the appropriate distributor box.

That was our first inventory system, he said. "It was an early analog computer if you will. I still have some of the cards. They were color-coded. It was a wonderfully complex system. There was no way I could see enough of it at one time to make sense of it.

As far as the books he enjoys reading Wolcott flipped the question on its head.

I want each person who comes into the store to find their book, and I want to help them find their book. I can help so many people find their books. That is my real pleasure. I have literally spent 50 years surrounded by books and believing in the people who are drawn to them. Thats the beauty and spirit of Grass Roots.

About 15 or 20 years ago (Wolcott and Smith cant quite agree on the exact date) the store took Things out of the title and replaced it with Music, although these days there is no music in the store. Grass Roots will order a CD, but there is no inventory.

In Wolcotts view there is a huge gulf separating book publishers and the music industry. When albums took a backseat to downloads of individual songs Wolcott checked out, comparing the approach to taking a book apart by its chapters and burping them out in pieces.

In-store events

Events and readings always have been a part of the Grass Roots experience. In non-COVID-19 times the shop would host two or three in-store events per week. Coronavirus, paradoxically, has meant more events are available to Grass Roots customers.

In the pre-2020 days, Wolcott said, many authors would make a West Coast swing and do Seattle, Portland and the Bay Area, skipping the mid-valley. Now, with everything on Zoom, a blizzard of events are available to Grass Roots customers. Smith, meanwhile, used the moment to reminisce about sitting on the floor of the store and having tea with author Barry Lopez.

Its incredible to see someone watch a poet or an author speak for the first time, Wolcott said. Its a transformative experience.

Grass Roots also got caught up in the Harry Potter craze, when stores would hold midnight debut events. For the release of the third book, the line snaked down Second Street and around the block, Wolcott said, with the biggest challenge being finding space inside the store for folks to come in and buy the book.

As soon as one of the kids had the book in his hands, he sat down in the store and started reading it, Wolcott said. Thats the magic of a book.

Wolcott also noted the importance of businesses such as Grass Roots to the local economy, citing data that shows local spending tends to have a multiplier effect that leads to more local spending.

Corvallis always has been supportive of local business, Wolcott said. You can make a significant difference shopping locally. Its a team effort. But we dont expect people to shop here because were local. We want to earn their business and not take it for granted.

Wolcott is 74 and said he wishes he had the time and energy to be more involved in community affairs.

I am literally worn out, and yet each day I wake up eager and refreshed. I love to work. I would be happy if I died right here. I cant think of something better. This, he said, gesturing at the store, is my term paper, but its not finished yet. Its so incredible what I have learned working in a bookstore on a daily basis.

Contact reporter James Day at jim.day@lee.net or 541-812-6116. Follow at Twitter.com/jameshday or gazettetimes.com/blogs/jim-day.

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A group that gave Gov. Kate Brown $800,000 in her 2018 re-election bid has endorsed House Speaker Tina Kotek, D-Portland, for governor in 2022.

EMILY's List, a Washington, D.C. based group that advocates for progressive women candidates to run for political office, said early Friday that Kotek was their candidate to succeed Brown as the next governor.

Tina Kotek is a proven fighter for opportunity and justice," Laphonza Butler, EMILY's List president wrote in statement announcing the endorsement.

EMILY's List is a acronym for "Early Money Is Like Yeast," comparing initial fundraising to yeast that makes dough rise.

The organization was formed in 1985 to prime the pump of campaign donations for female candidates running for local, state and federal office. The founders believe women were at a disadvantage in drawing crucial early donations that can motivate other donors to give.

EMILY's List has grown to five million members and raised $700 million for successful campaigns by 1,500 officeholders across the nation. Their list of victories include Vice President Kamala Harris, 16 governors, 26 U.S. Senators and 159 U.S. House members.

The endorsement cited what the group said was Kotek's support for affordable housing and health care, raising the minimum wage, ensuring pay and benefit equity, and championing a reduction in carbon emissions that cause global warming.

Maya Krishna-Rogers, the communications director for EMILY's List campaign efforts, said the group does not disclose what it plans to spend on any given race.

EMILY's List was one of the largest backers of Brown's 2018 race against the Republican nominee, former state Rep. Knute Buehler, R-Bend. A campaign wallet war raged, with Buehler receiving $2.5 million from Nike founder Phil Knight. Brown was able to match the pace in part through repeated refilling of her coffers by EMILY's List, which had given $800,000 by the November election.

Together they raised nearly $40 million for the race, which some political websites in late October rated as "too close to call" despite voters having last elected a Republican governor in 1982. Brown won 50.1% of the vote, while Buehler received 43.7%, and the remainder went to minor party candidates.

The endorsement of Kotek noted she would be the nation's first openly lesbian governor and a force for progressive policies in Salem.

"Oregon will reckon with the legacies of injustice, move past the politics of division, and become a better place for families to work and live," the EMILY's List endorsement said.

Kotek was cast as one of the "left-wing liberal" candidates running against "right-wing Trump apologist" Republicans by Sen. Betsy Johnson, D-Scappoose, when she announced last month that she was planning to run as an independent in 2022.

Johnson was endorsed by Buehler on Tuesday, who said she was the only alternative that could break the streak of Democratic victories made easier by the rightward tilt of the Republican Party that was out-of-step with the moderate majority of Oregon voters.

"It is vital that we break the iron grip monopoly of the radical left on power, politics, and policy in our state," Buehler said of Johnson.

Buehler's endorsement raised the question of whether Knight might support Johnson in a governor's race where spending might blow past the totals from 2018. Knight has not expressed a public preference for any candidate for governor.

Even without Knight's millions, Johnson had a built-in advantage in running as an independent.

Democrats and Republicans will slug it out in likely intense and expensive campaigning to win their party's May 17 primaries.

Johnson could sit on her cache of cash until summer, when she would turn in more than 24,000 valid signatures to Secretary of State Shemia Fagan. If certified, Johnson would go straight on the November ballot.

Kotek was the first prominent Democrat in the race for governor when she announced her candidacy just before Labor Day. Yamhill County Commissioner Casey Kulla and 2018 Independent Party governor nominee Patrick Starnes (who endorsed Brown late in the 2018 race) were the best-known names among earlier entrants.

State Treasurer Tobias Read announced in late September that he would run for governor. An infusion of celebrity givers and contributions from billionaires accompanied the entry in late October of former New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof, who now lives in Yamhill County.

While Kotek has reaped the largest share of endorsements from progressive activist groups, labor unions and state lawmakers, her campaign has lagged in early fundraising.

As of Tuesday, Kotek had raised $512,000, which included money rolled over from her House campaign account. Read has raised $661,000 and Kristof brought in $1.7 million. Johnson, who will not have to expend resources to be competitive in the primary, has topped $2.3 million in the bank.

Kotek trails some Republicans in campaign contributions. Bud Pierce, the 2016 GOP nominee for governor in a special election, has $767,000, with about half coming from his own pocket. Sandy Mayor Stan Pulliam has taken in $575,000 and longtime GOP consultant Bridget Barton of Portland is close to Kotek's total with $491,000 in contributions.

State campaign finance records show EMILY's List has made 88 contributions to candidates in Oregon since 2008.

Besides Brown's 2018 race for governor, the group backed her successful 2008 and 2012 election as secretary of state.

EMILY's List gave $180,000 to Val Hoyle's unsuccessful 2016 Democratic primary for secretary of state. Hoyle was elected Labor Commissioner in 2018 and recently announced she would forego a re-election bid to run for the new 6th Congressional District seat.

EMILY's List also gave over $100,000 to the successful 2020 campaign of Fagan for secretary of state. Most contributions have been under $5,000 to winning and losing candidates for the Oregon Legislature.

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State judge declares Texas abortion law unconstitutional  but does not stop it from being enforced

Eddie Gaspar/The Texas Tribune A Planned Parenthood examination room at Planned Parenthoods South Austin location.

A Texas judge on Thursday ruled that the states controversial law restricting abortions after about six weeks of pregnancy violates the Texas Constitution, saying it should not be enforced in court.

It was not immediately clear how the order would affect procedures in the state. The judge did not issue an injunction to block cases from being filed.

Todays ruling is a beacon of hope for Texans continuing to fight against this cruel and unconstitutional near-total abortion ban, Marsha Jones, executive director of The Afiya Center, an advocacy group for Black Texans reproductive rights and one of the lawsuit plaintiffs, said in a statement. Even if this ban is eventually permanently blocked, theres so much work still to be done to ensure that Black communities actually have the ability to grow the families we want ... We need our lawmakers to take action.

Although Thursdays ruling is a win for abortion rights advocates, the order only has direct consequences for the 14 lawsuits in the case that the judge oversaw. It does not directly prevent future suits from being brought under Texas law, though experts say it would likely be used as precedent in those cases.

The ruling comes as the U.S. Supreme Court is considering two separate challenges to Texas abortion law. And any decision from the high court will hold more weight on the issue and spell out a more definitive trajectory for the laws legal challenges.

John Seago, legislative director for Texas Right to Life, a prominent anti-abortion group named as a defendant in several suits filed by abortion rights advocates, said his organization is already working to appeal the order.

Seago said although hes disappointed in the ruling, he doesnt believe it is a massive blow to the law.

This doesnt really change the status of Senate Bill 8 at all, he said. It is just as risky for the abortion industry to perform a post-heartbeat abortion tomorrow as it has been for the last 100 days.

State District Judge David Peeples ruling Thursday emphasized that he wasnt ruling on abortion rights, but rather on the enforcement method that the law employs.

This case is not about abortion; it is about civil procedure, he wrote in his order.

Peeples echoed concerns on how a similar form of enforcement could be used to infringe on other constitutional rights, a view expressed by members of the U.S. Supreme Court during oral arguments last month in two other challenges to the law.

In sum, if SB 8s civil procedures are constitutional, a new and creative series of statutes could appear year after year, to be enforced by eager ideological claimants, who could bring suit in their home counties, where the judges would do their constitutional duty and enforce the law, Peeples said in his order. Pandoras Box has already been opened a bit, and time will tell.

As of Sept. 1, Texas law prohibits abortions after approximately six weeks, defying federal constitutional precedent. It has, until now, escaped most judicial oversight due to the unique way it is enforced. Instead of state officials enforcing the law, anyone who aids or abets a disallowed abortion is open to lawsuits, with penalties of at least $10,000 per case if lost.

The case before Peeples comes from 14 combined individual cases challenging Texas abortion law, commonly referred to as Senate Bill 8.

The judge ruled that Texas Right to Life cannot file lawsuits against the 14 plaintiffs for helping others get an abortion disallowed by the Texas law. The plaintiffs include doctors, nonprofit organizations and Planned Parenthood. However, other parties or individuals can still sue the plaintiffs under the abortion law.

This ruling is limited to the named parties. It does not apply to all other potential plaintiffs and defendants. John Doe could file suit tomorrow, without regard to this ruling, Josh Blackman, a law professor at South Texas College of Law Houston, said in an email.

Blackman added that Peeples can only rule on the 14 cases before him  not on any other cases or the law overall.

A judge cant declare a statute unconstitutional in all contexts. Courts can only issue rulings with regard to particular parties in a particular case. But other courts can choose to treat this ruling as precedential (and likely would), he said.

But even if Thursdays ruling had stopped the law from being enforced, SB 8 is written with an unusual restriction that allows someone to later be sued if that ruling is overturned on appeal.

Joanna Grossman, a professor at SMU Dedman School of Law, said that means providers may not be comfortable resuming procedures until all the court battles are waged.

It was just another thing to stack the deck against providers so that it just wasnt possible for them to manage their risk, she said. I assume theyre all having conversations with their lawyers right now about [whether] this actually gives them any ability to reopen.

The U.S. Supreme Court took up Texas law in two separate challenges more than a month ago over the way it is enforced. Key justices expressed concerns over the law, and it seemed likely that a majority of judges were open to blocking its enforcement.

The court is set to issue at least one opinion on cases sitting before it on Friday, although the court did not specify which cases.

The Texas Tribune is a nonpartisan, nonprofit media organization that informs Texans  and engages with them  about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues.

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A group of Cherry Creek high schoolers is partnering with Colorado Village Collaborative to build tiny homes for homeless residents in the Beloved Community Village.

The students are building five new tiny homes, to add to the 19 homes in the village. The students are part of the Cherry Creek Innovation Campus, a college and career preparedness facility for high schoolers in the Cherry Creek School District.

This project is not only teaching our students valuable life skills and preparing them for post-secondary careers, its also showing them how to use their skills for the benefit of the community, said Mike Degitis, project coordinator and math teacher at the campus. Students take pride in this project because it will actually become someones home.

About 40 second-year students will build the tiny homes throughout the 2021-22 school year, learning framing, electrical wiring, interior and exterior finishes, how to read construction drawings and how to stick to a tight schedule.

The Beloved Community Village, located at 4400 N. Pearl St., includes sleeping units, office space, a community center, bathrooms and a kitchen. The new tiny homes will be added to the village when it relocates to 4201 N. Monroe St. by April 30.

Denvers tiny home villages, which launched in 2017, serve as a transition from unsheltered homelessness to stable housing. In 2021, the two villages housed more than 45 people, 11 of whom moved into permanent housing, according to the Colorado Village Collaborative.

Being released from the hospital, I didnt have nowhere to go, said a tiny home village resident. This is an awesome blessing right here. If it wasnt for the village, I dont think I would have made it.

Cherry Creek Innovation Campus first became involved with the tiny home villages during the 2019-20 school year, when students built homes for the Womens Village at Clara Brown Commons.

The expansion of the Beloved Community Village is also being conducted in partnership with the City and County of Denver, contractor Whiting-Turner Contracting Co., Shopworks Architecture and architectural firm SAR+, which designed the new tiny homes.

This is a particularly gratifying project among trusted partners, and we appreciate the help in growing our tiny home village, said Cole Chandler, executive director of Colorado Village Collaborative, which runs the villages.
Which team are you the most optimistic about as we start 2022?

You voted:
The US Trade and Development Agency (USTDA) has awarded a grant to Smart Communications, the mobile unit of PLDT, to help the operator extend its 5G offering to 96% of the Philippines population.

TeleGeography reports that Smart plans to use the grant to invest further in equipment and services from Cisco Systems. The USTDA has previously provided financial support to Smart as it sought to modernise its fibre optic infrastructure to prepare for the advent of 5G in the Philippines.

This grant demonstrates USTDAs commitment to supporting cutting-edge information and communications technology infrastructure in the Philippines, while promoting innovative solutions from U.S. companies, said Ambassador Vinai Thummalapally, USTDAs Acting Director.

Meanwhile, rival operator DITO Telecommunity has confirmed that it is closing in on its end-2021 target of five million subscribers. A statement from founder Dennis Uy said: In just a short span of time, DITO Telecommunity has been able to quickly roll out its network in order to offer fast, reliable and wide reaching telecommunications services to the Filipino consumer.

The operators CTO Rodolfo Santiago has indicated that DITO is aiming for a market share of at least 30%, and will pursue a more aggressive strategy to achieve this following the introduction of mobile number portability (MNP) in the Philippines.
Hungarian IT service management company 4iG said it has signed a final contract to buy an 80.27% stake in Albanian telecommunications operator Albtelecom from Cetel Telecom, a majority-owned subsidiary of Turkeys diversified holding company Calik Holding.

ALBtelecom is Albanias leading fixed-line internet and TV operator, the largest owner of a fibre network in the country, and a mobile operator with a significant network of its own.

The transaction is expected to close in January 2022, subject to the approval of the Albanian authorities, 4iG said in a press release.

"The acquisition is another important step in the 4iG Groups expansion strategy in the Western Balkans: the group expands in another country in the region as a strategic investor, bringing its telecommunications and digital services," the Hungarian company added.

After the transaction, Calik Holding, one of the largest conglomerates of Turkey, will become an institutional investor in 4iG.

The Albanian state will continue to exercise its minority ownership rights in the company through the Albanian Ministry of Finance and Economy (13.78%) and the Albanian Post (2.47%).

ALBtelecoms shares will be acquired by 4iG in a multi-step transaction, which will result in Calik Holding, one of Turkeys largest conglomerates, acquiring a stake of around 3,2% in the Hungarian info-communications group as an institutional investor.

ALBtelecom is a telecommunications provider with strong growth potential. The acquisition is an important step in our expansion in the Western Balkans telco sector, which may open up further opportunities for us in the Albanian telecommunications and IT markets. - said Gellert Jaszai, Chairman & CEO of 4iG, after the signing of the agreement.

We have come to the country as a strategic investor, where we want to be present in the long term in providing high-quality services to retail and corporate customers. Our acquisition is an important step through our strategic goals, and we are committed to the development of the Albanian telecom sector and Albanias digitalisation efforts," Gellert added.
Indonesia and Huawei mull the expansion of the partnership between digital transformation and a number of initiatives to develop digitalization, 5G, AI, and new energy.

Indonesia's Coordinating Minister for Maritime and Investment Affairs, Luhut Binsar Pandjaitan, has met with Huawei's rotating chairman Guo Ping to discuss tightening ties between the country and the tech giant.

Indonesia is now gearing up to prepare strategic projects that involve new energy development and smart technology on the lead-up to hosting the G20 Summit in Bali next year. As we now move forward to promoting green development and a smart future, we would like to invite Huawei to participate in these sectors. We understand that Huawei is very advanced in these areas, said Minister Luhut.

Digitalization has also become Indonesias top priority development under President Joko Widodo. The country plans to drive digital economic growth and accelerate the rapid development of high-tech industries.

Indonesia is blessed with the potential to develop high-tech industries, said Guo Ping. As part of Indonesias digital ecosystem, Huawei will focus on technology innovations and make every effort to assist Indonesia in building robust ICT infrastructure and successful digitalization by using digital advanced technologies such as 5G, AI cloud, and IoT. 

Huawei launched a nationwide digital talent program in 2020 in collaboration with Indonesias Presidential Office (KSP) to cultivate more than 100,000 digital talents in 5 years. To date, Huawei has managed to achieve half of the 5 years target within the first two years, the company claimed.
Russias largest integrated digital company Rostelecom and VEB Ventures, a company of the VEB.RF group signed an agreement on the formation of the Atlas joint venture to create a fundamentally new backbone fiber-optic communication line (FOCL) Transit Europe  Asia of a new generation (TEA NEXT).

According to a joint press release, the new line will connect the Russian western and eastern borders with the largest cities and link to Russian borders with Mongolia and China. The network will also be extended from the country's borders with Europe to the main European traffic exchange centers in Frankfurt and Stockholm and will link Vladivostok to Busan, Tokyo, and Hong Kong via underwater communications channels.

"With the corporate set-up stage of the project now completed, the construction phase of the TEAs main segment is expected to start in 2022. The project will see Rostelecom and VEB Ventures each invest around RUB 6 billion in Atlas at the initial stage, while the strong interest expressed by financial partners signals the potential for external investor groups to join the project," the release said.

As announced earlier by Russias Deputy Prime Minister, Dmitry Chernyshenko, TEA NEXT will be instrumental in shaping the national digital economy and boosting innovation in every sector. The infrastructure developed by the joint partnership of Russias two digital leaders under a brand new business model is also a highly attractive investment project both in Russia and internationally.

TEA NEXT started in the summer of 2020 when Rostelecom founded the operating company Atlas and commenced the construction of the first segment running from Moscow via Saint-Petersburg through to the Latvian border.

The total investment is expected to reach around USD 650 million in the next few years with a view to finance the project up until 2025, partially by Atlas (through the JV fund) and a syndicated loan facility from VEB.RF, other Russian and international banks, many of which have already contractually committed to the development of the project.
Statement by Ambassador Flynn at Arria on Children without Parental Care in Conflict Settings

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Thank you Chair, for convening us on this important topic, and thank you to the briefers for their valuable insights.

Chair, it is the duty of this Council not only to address conflict, but to recognize that conflict does not affect us all equally. Graca Machels foundational report 25 years ago has been instrumental to our understanding of the disproportionate impact of conflict on children. It also paved the way for the UNs lifesaving work on the Children and Armed Conflict agenda.

As we have heard today, children in conflict zones suffer unbearable trauma, including violence, human rights and IHL violations, poverty, hunger and exploitation. They can also face the life-changing pain of losing loved ones to conflict, or separation from family due to displacement, recruitment and use, detention or violence.

No child should ever have to experience war, let alone without the support of parents or caregivers who can shield them from its harshest effects. We strongly support the vital work of UNICEF, ICRC and Save the Children in seeking to trace and reunite children with their families.

To address the plight of children without parental care, including unaccompanied children and separated children, this Council, Member States and UN entities must follow the guiding principle of the best interests of the child. Upholding and advancing their human rights should always be our primary consideration.

An important aspect of this when it comes to parental care is to recognize in our policy-making the diverse forms families can take.

And, crucially, a rights based approach helps ensure that we avoid securitizing the issue of children without parental care: it reminds us that children are always victims in conflict.

The international community is remarkably united on the question of child rights: we see this in the almost universal ratification of the Convention of the Rights of the Child, the unanimous support for the General Assembly resolution on the Rights of the Child, and the Councils consensus approach to Children and Armed Conflict.

We agree that the Council must do more to build on these and other efforts for children living in conflict zones without parental care.

Chair, ensuring the protection of all children living through war is critical to building sustainable and lasting peace for current and future generations. This is why the work of the Children and Armed Conflict agenda, including the Councils Working Group, is so vital.

It goes beyond childrens physical safety.

It includes ensuring all children can access comprehensive and non-discriminatory services that are gender-responsive and age-sensitive.

It means ensuring that children can enjoy their childhood without fear.

And it means giving all children the opportunity to pursue their goals.

The Councils recent adoption of Resolution 2601 on the protection of education in conflict is one such milestone in the pursuit of sustainable peace. This is why Ireland has long prioritized the safeguarding of education for children in emergency settings.

To leave no one behind, we must ensure that all children in conflict zones, particularly the most vulnerable who are without parental care, receive the protections and can access the services they need. That includes ensuring that UN peacekeeping operations have the mandates, the resources and the capacity to save childrens lives and secure their welfare. Now is the time to double down on such efforts.

Thank you.

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In Sullivan County in the mid-Hudson Valley, public health director Nancy McGraw said people have become complacent about the virus and she supports the mask mandate. She said vaccination rates are disappointingly low in remote areas including Woodbourne, where only 36% of roughly 3,000 residents are fully vaccinated.

We have very limited resources for enforcement and people need to do the right thing, McGraw said. Public responsibility is key here.

New York has the seventh highest rate of fully vaccinated residents: 70.1% as of federal data updated Friday. But fewer than 60% of residents are fully vaccinated in more than 500 zip codes throughout New York, according to data for about 1,300 zip codes provided by the state health agency.

Thirty-two upstate hospitals in Niagara and elsewhere had to limit performing nonessential elective surgeries starting Thursday because of capacity issues.

One of the states worst hit hospitals, Glen Falls Hospital in Warren County, said 50 out of 165 patients had COVID-19 as of Wednesday. Thats the most infected patients the hospital's ever reported, according to state data.
With affordable apartments almost non-existent and developers tending to focus on more profitable high-end projects, young people find house ownership in a major city an unrealistic aspiration.

Returning to Vietnam after studying abroad for five years, Hoang Minh has been able to land a good job with remuneration that allows him to live comfortably in the crowded city of Hanoi.

But his dream of owning an apartment is nowhere near being realized.

"I used to think that in a couple of years I would be a homeowner, but this goal is becoming more and more difficult to achieve," the 24-year-old said.

With a monthly salary of around VND20 million ($869), higher than most of his friends, Minh has calculated that it would take him around 20 years to pay off a VND2.1 billion two-bedroom apartment, only if his parents are willing to give him a considerable upfront payment.

However, "I dont want to be in debt for such a long time," he said.

In HCMC, 26-year-old Hien is also finding that rising property prices are pushing her dream of becoming a homeowner further and further away.

With a current salary of VND15 million a month, she said that the only way for her to buy an apartment would be to find a job with much higher income and borrow from her parents.

"I dont think Ill be able to buy property in the city. The best I can do is move to a neighboring province."

The shortage of affordable housing in Hanoi and HCMC is a disappointment for many young people like Minh and Hien.

Social housing demand among low-income earners in urban areas and workers in industrial parks in the 2021-2025 period is estimated at 294,600 apartments. It would take around VND220 trillion ($9.57 billion) to build them, according to a report released in October by the Ministry of Construction.

Most market research companies put the threshold for the affordable segment at VND25 million per square meter.

Despite such demand, just one percent of new apartment supply in HCMC was in the affordable segment, as opposed to 70 percent in the high-end segment, according to the Ho Chi Minh City Real Estate Association (HoREA).

HoREA Chairman Le Hoang Chau said recently that the imbalance between high-end and affordable segments despite high demand for the latter was alarming.

The situation has shown no improvement this year. Not a single apartment among the 371 new units launched in HCMC in October was in the affordable segment, according to a report by real estate consultancy DKRA Vietnam.

"The shortage of Grade C (affordable) apartments is continuing and would likely persist as most projects planned for year-end launch are in the mid-price and high-end segments," the report said.

It said 79 percent of the new supply in October was in the Grade A (high-end) segment and the rest were luxury apartments.

Although the Covid-19 pandemic has caused demand for properties to fall, HCMC and Hanoi still saw apartment prices rising 9 percent and 8 percent year-on-year respectively in August, according to real estate listing platform Batdongsan.com.

Batdongsan.com director Dinh Minh Tuan said that although social distancing due to Covid-19 has shifted a lot of investment from real estate to the stock market, it was a temporary trend, since investors were holding on to properties and waiting to buy again after the pandemic ends.

"This means prices are not likely to fall anytime soon," he added.

The average income of residents in Hanoi and HCMC is VND8.7 million and VND8.9 million a month respectively. This means that to own a VND1.5 billion apartment (one of the cheapest in the two cities) with half of their income paid as installment, an average person would have to pay up for 25 years.

Officials have acknowledged the issue but have not been able to come up with a workable solution.

The Ministry of Construction has proposed that VND65 trillion ($2.8 billion) in credit be provided to support developers of social housing and buyers of affordable property, but no final decision has been made on it.

HCMC has targeted building one million apartments by 2025 to replace aging and low-quality housing for low-income people, but some experts are concerned that existing blockages will make the goal unachievable.

Su Ngoc Khuong, senior director of real estate service firm Savills Vietnam, said that developers struggle with the process of acquiring cheap land to build affordable housing, and therefore, it would be more feasible if HCMC authorities provide the land for them.

As the land fund in core districts has depleted, the city could consider non-central districts like Binh Chanh and Hoc Mon to develop social housing, he said.

The city could sell the affordable apartments with a long repayment periods of 30-50 years as a way to keep workers committed to the city instead of returning to their hometowns, like it happened in the last several months, Khuong said.

"With quick approval, cheap land and a profit margin of 7-10 percent, I believe that many developers would be willing to begin work."

As officials and experts try to figure out what seems to be an elusive solution, Minh sees no choice but to look for an apartment for rent as he prepares to get married next year.

"My fiance and I have decided that renting is the wiser decision. For us, buying a house is unrealistic."
Covid-19 patients at the National Hospital for Tropical Diseases in Hanoi, December 2021. Photo by VnExpress/Giang Huy

With the pandemic situation basically under control, both community cases and deaths are rising in many localities, the Minister of Health warned Friday.

In the past seven days, Vietnam recorded over 14,400 cases a day on average compared to 14,300 the previous week, while the average daily fatality rate rose to 218 from 187, Minister Nguyen Thanh Long told a meeting of the National Steering Committee for Covid-19 Prevention and Control.

In Ho Chi Minh City, the average number of daily infections in the past 14 days has risen by 12 percent against the previous 14 days. The rate in Hanoi is as high as 149 percent.

So far in the fourth wave that hit Vietnam in late April, more than 1.36 million cases have been confirmed, over one million of which have recovered.

The national death toll since the pandemic started stands at 18,561, including 18,526 recorded in the fourth wave alone.

"As the pandemic spreads through the community, new outbreaks could occur anytime, especially in areas with high population density and where people have a high demand for traveling and trade," said Long.

The minister said it is necessary to continue to strengthen pandemic prevention and control measures, especially focusing on surveillance, early detection, treatment of severe cases to reduce mortality, and boosting vaccination.

He also warned localities of upcoming conditions and events that could facilitate the spread of the virus, including the transition from winter to spring, increase in the demand for traveling and trade on the occasions of New Year 2022 and Lunar New Year, to occur in early February, and the risk of the new strain Omicron, said to be more transmissible compared to Delta and previous strains as it carries many mutations.

"Besides, some units and people have grown negligent in preventing Covid-19 since almost all restrictions have been eased," he said.
File photo of a worker at an Amazon warehouse in Robbinsville, U.S., on November 29, 2021. Photo by Reuters

Italian regulators hit Amazon with a 1.1-billion-euro ($1.3-billion) antitrust fine Thursday for allegedly abusing its dominance in the market, the latest action against U.S. Big Tech in the E.U.

U.S. technology giants have been in the firing line in the European Union (E.U.) over their business practices.

In the latest salvo, Italy's competition watchdog said Amazon abused its dominant position by promoting its own logistics, or fulfilment, service that ships and delivers packages, on its Italian platform to the detriment of third-party sellers who did not use it.

"The abusive strategy adopted by Amazon is particularly serious, since it is likely to discourage, if not eliminate, competition in the relevant markets," read the 250-page decision by the Italian Competition Authority.

The move comes two weeks after the same authority imposed a 68.7-million-euro fine on Amazon for infringing E.U. laws through restrictions that penalised sellers of Apple and Beats products.

In the same action, Apple was ordered to pay 134.5 million euros.

As Europe forges ahead with antitrust litigation, US regulators are closely watching its approach to big tech firms, after Washington pledged to intensify scrutiny of the technology industry.

'Increasing Amazon's power'

The watchdog said Amazon's conduct under investigation dated from at least 2016, when it was possible to establish the online retailer's dominant market position in Italy based on revenue.

The fine was calculated as a percentage of worldwide revenue of Seattle-based parent company Amazon.com, but the agency said it acted on its authority to boost it by 50 percent, after taking into account the global size and dominance of the company.

"In view of the need to ensure the effective deterrence of the sanction, taking into account the fact that the Amazon Group had a global turnover in 2020 of more than 330 billion euros and Amazon's absolute importance at a global level, it is considered appropriate to apply a increase of 50 percent of the amount of the fine," it wrote.

Going forward, Amazon must grant sales privileges and visibility to all third-party sellers who meet fair and non-discriminatory standards for fulfilment, and must decide and publish such standards.

Those would be subject to review by a monitor, the agency said.

In its decision, the Italian watchdog said third-party sellers who do not use Amazon's fulfilment service are excluded from "a set of advantages essential for obtaining visibility and better sales prospects".

Those included better access to Amazon's "most loyal and high-end customers" who use Amazon Prime, the e-commerce giant's loyalty program.

Moreover, a tough performance measurement system is reserved for sellers who do not use Amazon's logistics system, which can lead, if failed, to suspension of the seller's account.

E.U. action

Last month, E.U. legislation to impose unprecedented restrictions on how U.S. tech giants do business passed a first, significant hurdle, with a European Parliament committee approving their version of the Digital Markets Act.

That would slap far-reaching rules on companies like Amazon, Facebook, Google, Apple and Microsoft.

Such tech companies have been variously accused of stifling competition, not paying enough taxes, stealing media content and threatening democracy by spreading fake news.
Holiday concerts at Elko High

ELKOThe Elko High School Choral Music department will be presenting their annual holiday concerts on Dec. 13 and 14.

The concerts will be the same each night and will feature the Elko High School choir and Choraliers singing many holiday favorites.

This is the first concert for the choir and Choraliers since December 2019.

The concerts start at 7 p.m. in the Elko High School Performing Art Building Theater.

Admission is free and masks are required to attend.

Handbell performance on Dec. 12

ELKO  The Elko Handbells 2021 Christmas Concert will begin at 4 p.m. Sunday, Dec. 12, at the First Presbyterian Church, 1559 Sewell Drive.

There is no admission fee but donations will be accepted.

Santa coming to NNRH on Dec. 18

ELKO  Northeastern Nevada is presenting a safe, socially distanced and sensory sensitive event with Santa at the hospital. Not everyone is comfortable visiting Santa in a big crowd. This will be a drive-through event, but families will have the option to get out of their vehicle and take their own photo with Santa (from 6 feet away.) Every participating child or adult will also receive a gift bag from Santa. The event will take place from noon to 2 p.m. Dec. 18 at the hospital. Pull under the awing of the main entrance where Santa and his friendly elves will be waiting to greet you. For more information, call 748-2007 or email NortheasternNevadaRegional@gamil.com.

RPEN Christmas luncheon

ELKO  The Elko County Chapter of Retired Public Employees of Nevada will hold their annual Christmas luncheon at 12:30 p.m. Dec. 17, at the Elko Senior Citizens Center, 1795 Ruby View Drive.

The Elko High School Choraliers will be performing. All active and retired public employees in the PERS retirement system are invited to attend as guests.

For more information contact President Margaret Marcucci at 934-7361 or email mkmarcucci56@gmail.com.

Healthy for the Holidays

ELKO  The Community Health Development Foundation and Elko Community Health Center present Healthy for the Holidays. They will host a free two-hour class from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. Dec. 17 at the Elko Senior Citizen Center.

Enjoy preparing and trying new recipes to make tasty, healthy holiday meals for you and your loved ones. The classes preview the six-week Healthy for Life Program starting in January. To register, contact Brittney Plaisted at 388-2852 or brittney.plaisted@elkochc.com.

Snowshoe hike in Lamoille Canyon

LAMOILLE  Nevada Outdoor School will host a snowshoe hike beginning at 10 a.m. Dec. 22 in Lamoille Canyon at the Powerhouse Picnic area.

The nonprofit organization will provide snowshoes if there is snow. If there is no snow, they will have a hiking session. Hot chocolate, cider, and tea will be provided.

This event is free to the public.

Living Stones to host community events

ELKO  Living Stones Churchs citywide Christmas celebration is scheduled at 4 and 6 p.m. Dec. 19 at the Elko Conference Center. All are welcome to join. For further information, contact Lead Pastor Nathan Hornback at 299-4633.

Survival and safety event

ELKO  Nevada Outdoor School will present a winter survival and safety event from 4- 5 p.m. Dec. 15 in the Elko Peace Park.

Staff will discuss how to prepare a winter safety bag, winter survival tips while exploring out in nature, and some other general survival tips. There will be hot chocolate for attendees.

This event is free to the public.

Sugar plum tree charity

ELKO  The Elko County Library is once again hosting their annual Sugar Plum Tree. Partner organizations have provided them with names of youth, elderly, and those with special needs, along with their gift requests.

Community members may come in to the library, select a tag from the tree and purchase gifts for those who may not otherwise get one at Christmas. The tree and tags are on display now. When you have selected a tag from the tree, please take it to the front desk to check it out.

Staff asks that all gifts purchased be wrapped and delivered to the library, with the tag attached, no later than 5 p.m. Dec. 15. For more information call 738-3066.

Western Sights exhibit

ELKO  The Western Sights of Jo Mora will be on display through May 14, 2022, in the Wiegand Gallery. The exhibit presents an engaging overview of the artists work in various media, from his signature cartes (illustrated maps) and illustrations to watercolors and bronze sculptures.

Artist Joseph Jacinto Jo Mora (b. 1876) came to the United States from Uruguay and became enamored with the culture and stories of the American West at an early age. Throughout his lifetime, Mora documented the changing landscape of the West through detailed etchings, illustrated maps, paintings, sculptures and stories.

In addition to this show, the Western Folklife Center is also showing a special selection of contemporary handcrafted gear from the permanent collection. The gallery is open 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Monday to Friday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday and during special events.

Admission is free the first Saturday of the month. Admission is $5 for adults, $3 for students and seniors and $1 for children six to 12-years-old. Free admission for members.

Horizon offers bereavement support group

ELKO  If you or a loved one is grieving the loss of a loved one, please join the Horizon Hospice support group. Participants meet at 6 p.m. on the first and third Tuesday of the month at 1250 Lamoille Highway, Suite 413.

There is no cost to community members. Call 778-0612 for more information.

Al-Anon meets Wednesdays in Spring Creek

SPRING CREEK The Al-Anon Spring Creek Step Study Group meets at 7 p.m. Wednesdays at the Spring Creek Baptist Church, 360 Spring Creek Parkway. The program is in person or virtual.

If you or someone you know is worried about a family member or friends drinking problem, Al-Anon is a mutual support group that shares their experiences, strengths and hope. Zoom meeting ID 890 588 5311 Password F8KmfZOn.

Celebrate recovery and find freedom

ELKO  Find freedom for your hurts, habits and hang-ups with The Nazarene Church Christ-centered recovery program every Friday evening.

A large group meets at 6 p.m. and a smaller group gathers at 7 p.m. The church is located at 740 Sage St.

Call 738-6714 for more information.

Medicare providers in Elko

ELKO  The Medicare in Elko Workgroup has updated their list of Elko medical providers. Listed are those clinics that will accept a new patient using Medicare or Medicaid.

It specifically lists clinics where patients can set up appointments with specific providers. The tri-fold brochure also lists providers found outside of Elko, along with two state agencies that help people with their Medicare needs. Senior Services and other medical services are listed.

The updated list is available on the groups website, medicarinelko.org. They also have a Facebook page medicare in elko, with a link to the brochure.

FRC hosts free teen programs

ELKO  Family Resource Center is hosting free online and in-person teen health programs each month for youth in Grades 5 to 7 and Grades 10 to 12.

These fun, evidence-based age-appropriate programs teach youth about making healthy life decisions. They incorporate medically accurate information along with crucial knowledge about identifying and handling social pressures, communicating effectively and dealing with peer pressure. Youth learn about reproductive health, puberty, hygiene, personal responsibility, avoiding risky behaviors and respect for self and others, while building knowledge, skills and confidence.

Youth receive their choice of a free backpack full of school supplies or a $25 store gift card after completing the program. There is a limit of one free incentive per participant per year. A parent or guardian must pre-register the participant by completing a permission slip before class.

The online programs are presented using Zoom in four day blocks for an hour and 45 minutes each day after school. The in-person classes vary, but are usually one day, scheduled on a Saturday or during holiday breaks. For more information call 753-7352, text 775-397-1874 or email teenhealth@elkofrc.org.

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Efforts to place a gross royalty on hardrock minerals reared up recently in a U.S. House committee, and while the royalty push was blocked from a Senate reconciliation bill, Nevada lawmakers are watching for new royalty moves.

Congressman Mark Amodei, R-Nev., said that when the Republicans were in control of the House, royalty bills didnt gain any momentum, but when the Democrats are in control, invariably they think the industry is getting away with things.

He said the House Democrats look to royalties on hardrock minerals to boost the money pot.

Still, it was a Democrat, Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada, who was instrumental in blocking the House-generated legislation on royalties from the Senate reconciliation bill, and she is continuing to watch out for new attempts.

The senator knows that Nevadas mining industry is critical to our economy, and she is working on solutions that support the many jobs and businesses it sustains while also investing in our communities, states an email from her office.

Amodei said Cortez Masto is stepping up and carrying the mantle of Democrat Harry Reid of Nevada who supported the mining industry when in the U.S. Senate, where he served as majority and minority leader, depending upon which party was in power.

The House Natural Resources Budget Reconciliation Act proposed an 8% gross royalty on new mines, a 4% gross royalty on existing operations and a 7-cent-per-ton tax on dirt and rock moved during the extraction process.

Cortez Masto requested a Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources hearing on the royalty proposal. Her staff said she called for Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W. Va., who is the committee chairman, to hold the hearing in October.

Amodei said he doesnt have a crystal ball any better than anyone else, but he said at some point, the bill on royalties may come to the House floor.

Hearing testimony

In the Senate committee hearing, Rich Haddock, general counsel for Barrick Gold Corp., testified that Barrick operates Nevada Gold Mines, a joint venture of Barrick and Newmont Corp. that is the largest gold-mining complex in the world with more than 7,000 employees and 4,000 contractors who employ thousands more.

These jobs pay average wages of $94,000  higher than any other industry in Nevada, said Haddock, who said most of the mining takes place on federal land managed by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, so dominant federal ownership makes the mining law more important to Nevada than any other state.

He said the 1872 mining law is a land tenure law governing the acquisition of mineral rights on federal lands and the relationships between the claimholders and the United States as paramount title holder. It also governs the relationships between competing claimants. The mining law still does these jobs very well.

Haddocks testimony included an explanation of the huge costs and many years it takes to bring mineral discoveries to mine production, stating that if miners dont find them, they will not be found.

On the opposite side, support for the royalty was voiced at the hearing by Autumn Hanna, vice president of Taxpayers for Common Sense.

She stated in written testimony that the organization believes public lands are taxpayer assets and should be managed in a way that preserves their value, ensures a fair return from private interests using them for profit and avoids future liability. The 1872 mining law fails by all these standards.

She said that under the mining law, valuable taxpayer lands and minerals are virtually given away to international mining conglomerates.

Hanna testified that the reason there has been support for the royalty is because the 1872 mining law is so egregious by todays standards. Though it governs some of the most precious hardrock minerals  such as gold, silver, copper, and platinum  and those these minerals belong to the American public, it entitles the industry to take them free of charge.

The oil, gas and coal industries pay a royalty, but Katie Sweeney, executive vice president and general counsel for the National Mining Association, testified that mineral mining is unlike other natural resource production. The amount of processable material produced can be less than a percent or ounces of a ton of displaced material.

She said that processable material must then go through many steps of being beneficiated, treated and smelted, and added that hardrock mining companies pay income and other federal, state, and local taxes where they operate.

Industrial minerals

While gold is the centerpiece of the latest royalty effort and those that came before over the years, the industrial hardrock mineral industry would also be impacted. David Brown, president and chief executive officer of Wyo-Ben Inc. that produces sodium bentonite, said that such a royalty would threaten his family business.

He testified that the one size fits all approach to mining law reform would significantly affect our companys ability to remain competitive and, perhaps, our viability to continue to operate and offer good paying, high quality employment.

Wyo-Ben operates in the Big Horn Basin of northern Wyoming and south-central Montana with headquarters in Billings, Mont., and Brown testified that roughly 90% of the bentonite the company uses for its products is mined on public land managed by the BLM.

An 8% gross royalty could possibly drive us out of business, he said in a later phone interview.

Brown said that with bentonites many uses, a gross royalty would have a negative impact on the nations supply chain, as well.

The House effort called for the gross royalty that the mining industry opposes, but the industry has shown a willingness at times to look at reforming the 1872 mining law.

Mining law reform

I dont think anyone is opposed to a discussion of updating the 1872 law, but I havent heard any talk on new reform, said Amodei, who was president of the Nevada Mining Association at an earlier point in his career.

Amodei said in a phone interview that there is a fear that if the industry says, lets talk, they will end up on the defensive. I dont blame the industry for saying hunker down. However, he said if the Republicans get back in control of the House, they may reach out to the industry.

Haddock testified that we recognize that the mining law is not perfect and that the law could be updated, but said any reform of the mining law should be consistent with the United States need for stable domestic supplies of critical minerals, including gold.

He testified Barrick has supported changes in the law that could include a reasonable prospective net royalty and an additional claim fee earmarked for reclamation and remediation of abandoned mine lands.

A net royalty would allow companies to recoup capital investments through the inevitable commodity price cycles, Haddock said in his written statement. A net royalty normalizes for ore grade because certain costs are covered, and in this way some more marginal mines can still survive and provide necessary materials and employment.

Mike Visher, administrator of the Nevada Division of Minerals, said in a phone call that a gross royalty would be detrimental to the industry, and he said people seem to forget that there is mining on private lands, too. They need to understand a royalty only affects production on federal land.

He said he hopes cooler heads prevail in Congress.

The minerals division receives revenue from all the mining claims filed on public land in Nevada and impacts to the industry could result in fewer mining claims being filed.

At the Elko County level, the chairman of the board of commissioners, Jon Karr, said at an October meeting he was glad Sen. Cortez Masto fought for mining. Commissioner Cliff Eklund said an 8% royalty would hurt the smaller, struggling mines. Look how many people you would put out of work, he said.

Meanwhile, Earthworks, an organization that has long supported a mining royalty, states on its website that the 1872 mining law subsidizes extraction by allowing mining interests to mine taxpayer-owned minerals without paying any royalties, unlike other extractive industries. Whoever stakes a claim and discovers valuable minerals on public lands claims those riches  more than $300 billion and counting since 1872  without giving taxpayers a dime for them.

Reclamation issue

On another issue related to mining law reform, Chris Wood of Trout Unlimited testified before the Senate committee on the clean up of historic mines and the need for more federal funding for reclamation of old mining lands.

While we have an opportunity to chart a path forward for responsible mining in our country, the impacts of the past are staggering. Spurred by the General Mining Law of 1872, for many years anyone with a claim was able to mine with little if any oversight  polluting waterways, stripping mountainsides, and changing the landscape of the West with little regard to health, safety or environmental impacts. The impacts of those historical mines are still felt today, he said.

Wood said, however, that smart updates to the 1872 mining law, along with Good Samaritan legislation, can help us not only clean up the mistakes of the past, but also chart a sustainable path forward by establishing a funding stream for remediation, removing liability barriers for Good Samaritans to clean up abandoned mines, and providing land managers with the discretion to balance new mining operations with all the other multiple uses provided by our public lands. 

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Kinross Gold Corp. announced on Dec. 8 that it has entered into an agreement Great Bear Resources to acquire Great Bears flagship Dixie project in the Red Lake mining district in Ontario, Canada. Kinross will acquire all the issued and outstanding shares of Great Bear. Kinross has agreed to an upfront payment of approximately $1.4 billion. From 60 to 75% of this will be cash, and the remainder will be Kinross shares.

The agreement also includes a contingent payment worth around $46 million payable when Kinross makes a public announcement of commercial production at Dixie, if at least 8.5 million gold ounces of measured and indicated mineral resources are disclosed.

Kinross, which has its corporate office in Toronto, Ontario, owns the Round Mountain and Bald Mountain mines in Nevada, as well as mines in Alaska, Brazil, West Africa and Russia.

The Dixie project is one of the most exciting recent gold discoveries globally, and extensive drilling results have shown the characteristics of a top tier deposit, a Kinross press release said.

Over the past several years, we have reviewed hundreds of opportunities, including every opportunity in Canada, Kinross President and CEO J. Paul Rollinson said during a presentation on the Great Bear transaction. We believe this is an excellent transaction for our shareholders.

Weve been looking at this asset since 2018, Rollinson said. And with recent confirmation of our views on Dixies potential, we believe now is the time to bring the asset into our portfolio.

We believe significant value remains to be unlocked through future exploration drilling, particularly in the underground extensions below the open pit, Rollinson said. The exploration results to date, from over 700 holes, and 340 kilometers of drilling, suggest a prolific gold system that remains unconstrained and open to extension, with over 80% of the property still unexplored.

This project plays to our strengths as we can leverage our project development, open pit and underground expertise, as well as our proven track record of operating top-tier assets. Dixie will be an excellent fit, and we are excited about its potential to become a cornerstone asset that is expected to support our longer-term production.

We look forward to building strong relationships with the Wabauskang and Lac Seul First Nations and will work with them to ensure that the project delivers sustainable benefits to their communities and respects their way of life, Rollinson said in the press release.

The Kinross team is very impressive, Great Bear President and CEO Chris Taylor said during the presentation. They have the technical open pit and underground expertise and development capability and financial strength to advance Dixie as a top-growth priority. Im excited at the potential for it to become a Canadian centerpiece tier 1 asset for the company.

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SSR Mining Inc. reported results of drilling at the Marigold Mine in Nevada support the extension of the mines current mine life of more than 10 years and enhance future opportunities at nearby Trenton Canyon.

The results came from 288 drill holes at Marigold, which has already had 32 years of gold production and expanded its land package in recent years, including in 2019 when it acquired Trenton Canyon and Buffalo Valley from Newmont Corp. The package is nearly 50,000 acres in Humboldt and Lander counties.

These exploration results highlight the potential to add incremental oxide mineralization to Marigolds already robust reserve life, said Rod Antal, president and chief executive officer of Denver-based SSR Mining, which combined with Alacer Gold Corp. in 2020.

By focusing on adding ounces proximal to existing infrastructure at New Millennium, we are demonstrating opportunities to build on Marigolds near and medium-term future, while also continuing to systematically explore the larger property for longer-term targets, he said in the Dec. 8 announcement.

We are working to expand and accelerate our exploration at Marigold as a precursor to completing an updated Marigold District Master Plan technical report later in 2022, Antal said.

Resource development drilling at New Millennium around the Basalt-Antler pit that historically produced roughly 1 million gold ounces at a grade of 0.026 ounces per ton showed new oxide intercepts that included 0.026 ounces per ton over nearly 55.12 feet.

That intercept, which was the highest, included 29.86 feet of 0.66 ounces per ton of gold, according to the company that provides many intercept details in its full announcement.

The New Millennium target area included six distinct zones  East Basalt, Battle Cry, Antler, Section 6, Lil Gun and North Antler. There was also some drilling at the Valmy and Cross Fire resource area.

SSR reported the company submitted a proposed amendment in June to the Marigold plan of operations to the U.S. Bureau of Land Management to include the Valmy and Cross Fire sites, and the company expects a decision yet this quarter.

At Trenton Canyon, drilling delivered high-grade intercepts of predominantly oxide mineralization, which SSR wants to potentially miner potential ore that can be processed by heap leaching. The company stated that the oxide inventory consists of isolated mineral centers, and definition drilling to delineate the extents of these mineral centers is ongoing.

Drilling at Buffalo Valley is aimed at converting the historically delineated mineral inventory in resource and reserve categories for a potential satellite operation, according to SSR.

SSR Mining also stated that the company continues to explore for structurally controlled sulfide mineralization potentially amendable to alternative mining and processing methods not currently available at Marigold. The facilities are south of Interstate 80 at Valmy.

Exploration efforts for sulfide ore focused on the Tempest Zone in the vicinity of the past-producing Trenton Canyon open pit, and the drilling at Buffalo Valley looked at mineralized structures identified in historical drilling outside the mine area and testing new targets.

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ELKO  A man originally charged with possession of child pornography has been given a suspended sentence after pleading no contest to attempted abuse, neglect or endangerment of a child.

Matthew R. Mierins, 23, was arrested in November 2020 after images and videos of children were found on his cellphone in October 2018. They had apparently been downloaded from the internet, according to an affidavit of probable cause prepared by an investigator from the Nevada Attorney Generals office.

A review of the evidence was not completed until February of 2020.

Mierins was listed as a resident of Bangor, Maine when he was sentenced by District Judge Kriston Hill on Nov. 12 to a suspended 12- to 60-month prison term. He was placed on probation for three years and was ordered to complete 250 hours of community service.

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ELKO  For six years, Thanksgiving Dinner for the Kids has provided holiday meals to local families.

This year the fundraiser brought in $14,164, more than the organizations $10,000 goal, feeding 152 families.

Thanksgiving Dinner for the Kids is a passion project inspired by a company celebrating its goal of feeding five families, Medina said.

I thought we could do better than that, and we did. We fed 35 families.

As a single mom, Medina said she also understood how difficult it was for some families to have a Thanksgiving dinner. I was embarrassed to ask for help at times. Thats how the passion project started.

Tabitha Stanley joined Medina to organize the food drive. Last year, Covid-19 prompted them to switch gears and accept cash donations or gift cards instead.

We dont know how our fundraising will go in the future, but no matter what, we will keep thriving, Medina said.

Communities In Schools, the Elko Area Chamber of Commerce, and, of course, our amazing community have supported the fundraiser over the years, she added.

The public can drop off donations at Communities In Schools or with the Chamber of Commerce at Sherman Station.

Medina can be reached for questions or more information at 775-340-8667 and Stanley at 775-299-8283. They can also be contacted at thanksgivingdinnerforthekids15@gmail.com.

Although Medina said she isnt sure exactly how much money has been raised over the years, she is confident that families in need have been served.

We have proudly helped 1,000 families with our passion project.

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Chen says vaccination remains key to protecting yourself and others from infection, reiterates the importance of mask wearing, physical distancing, and testing as holiday gatherings approach.

Booster shots are the best way to protect yourself and others from serious COVID-19 infection, particularly as new variants such as Omicron emerge, according to Wilbur Chen, MD, MS, professor of medicine at the University of Maryland School of Medicine (UMSOM) and an adult infectious disease expert in the schools Center for Vaccine Development and Global Health (CVD).

Chen, who serves as an advisor to Gov. Larry Hogan, an advisor to the University of Maryland, Baltimore (UMB) COVID-19 response team, and a member of the Centers for Disease Control and Preventions Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, said this is the best way to protect individuals, co-workers, and family members.

Completing your primary series with an authorized COVID-19 vaccine remains the best way to protect yourself against the virus and its variants, Chen said. If its been six months since your primary series, then your immunity may have declined significantly, so we recommend that you complete your booster dose.

Chens comments come amid concerns of rising COVID-19 cases and uncertainties over the Omicron variant. Vaccine manufacturers including Pfizer and BioNTech this week announced preliminary results showing that the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine neutralizes the Omicron variant after three doses. The booster dose is intended to continue to provide you with the best protection against this pandemic. Do it to also protect your friends, family, and neighbors, Chen said.

He further cautioned that there are other safeguards that should be taken to prevent the spread of COVID-19 and other illnesses, such as the flu.

Vaccines do not work alone. Everyone should continue to wear a well-fitting mask when in public spaces with other persons nearby, Chen said, adding that testing also is critical to reducing the spread of illness, as is staying home and away from work or school.

If you think you may have been exposed to a person with the infection, you should try to get tested, Chen said. Meanwhile, if you feel ill or think you had an exposure to the infection, you should remain at home and not spread the infection to others.

Planning for the Holiday Season

States across the country, including Maryland, have seen a rise in COVID-19 cases following the Thanksgiving holiday. Chen and other top infectious disease experts caution that safeguards need to be in place to fight the virus, primarily ensuring that those who are eligible get vaccinated.

Everyone is looking forward to spending precious time with friends and family during the coming holidays. Making sure that everyone who is eligible to be vaccinated and boosted has completed this before gatherings will be very important, Chen said. When planning indoor gatherings, make sure to create a safe environment by providing good ventilation of the air. People should remain masked as much as possible if they have not been fully vaccinated.

Chen also recommends having a plan for negative testing in place as another effective way to reduce the risk of infections during the holidays. There are two types of tests. Viral testing is commonly in the form of a rapid test and can confirm if there is active COVID-19 infection. The CDC asserts that these COVID-19 rapid self-tests are one of many key risk-reducing measures, along with vaccination, mask wearing, and physical distancing, that can help to reduce the spread of COVID-19.

The other form of testing, the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test for COVID-19, is a molecular test that analyzes an individuals upper-respiratory specimen, looking for genetic material (ribonucleic acid or RNA) of SARS-CoV-2. This laboratory-conducted PCR test has been considered the gold standard for diagnosing COVID-19 since it was authorized for use in February 2020.

Any individual 16 and older who is fully vaccinated is eligible to receive a booster shot. The CDC expanded booster eligibility to 16- and 17-year-olds on Dec. 9. More details about eligibility can be found on the CDCs website. To maintain a safe working environment at UMB, officials and infectious disease experts are encouraging individuals to get the COVID-19 booster shot. For information about vaccination sites and other COVID-19 resources, visit the UMB COVID-19 Recovery website.

Your Chance to Influence and Inspire Others

At UMB, your thoughts and experiences matter. We need your help to encourage others who are eligible to complete their COVID-19 vaccine series and get the booster shot. Share your story about why receiving the vaccine booster is important to you.

Tell Us Why You Got the COVID-19 Vaccine Booster and take this opportunity to showcase your story and inspire others on campus. Over the next few months, UMB will be highlighting members of the community and their vaccine booster experience.

Share your experience getting the COVID-19 vaccine/booster by tagging us @umbaltimore and using #UMBVaccinesWork on Twitter or Instagram. Include why you got the vaccine.

You also can submit your photos and comments about your vaccine experience by visiting www.umaryland.edu/cpa/digital-marketing-and-social-media/umbvaccineswork/.
Social security benefits are calculated the same nationally. In each state workers making under a certain amount pay part of their salary in social security tax which they then receive as a part of their total benefit upon retirement.

However, some states do charge taxes on the benefits; the rate and the exemptions available vary by the state. Survivor and railroad benefits are subject to the same rules as those paid to retirees.

Which states apply taxes to social security benefits? Colorado

Connecticut

Kansas

Minnesota

Missouri

Montana

Nebraska

New Mexico

Rhode Island

North Dakota

Vermont

Utah

West Virginia.

Supplemental Security Benefits

Unlike social security benefits, the calculation made for supplemental security income (SSI) is based on the state in which one lives. SSI is a need-based welfare program and is distributed to low-income individuals to help them cover the costs to cover basic needs like housing and food.

Some states offer higher SSI benefits to those in need. The total benefit is comprised of state and federal benefits. However, there are four states and one US territory that do not supplement the federal payment.

What states do not supplement federal SSI benefits? Arizona

Mississippi

North Dakora

Northern Mariana Islands

West Virginia

The Social Security Administration assists thirteen states in the distribution of SSI benefits. Those with questions should contact the SSA directly.

Which states rely on the Social Security Adminstration to distribute SSi benefits? California

Delaware

District of Columbia

Hawaii

Iowa

Michigan

Montana

Nevada

New Jersey

Pennsylvania

Rhode Island

Vermont

The remaining states distribute the federal and state payments themselves. Should beneficiaries have questions they should contact the state office directly.

Which states distribute SSI benefits themselves? Alabama

Alaska

Arkansas

Colorado

Connecticut

Florida

Georgia

Idaho

Illinois

Indiana

Kansas

Kentucky

Louisiana

Maine

Maryland

Massachusetts

Minnesota

Missouri

Mississipi

Nebraska

New Hampshire

New Mexico

New York

North Carolina

Ohio

Oklahoma

Oregon

South Carolina

South Dakota

Tennesee

Texas

Utah

Virginia

Washington

Wisconsin

Wyoming

How many SSI benefits were made in October 2021?

In October, over 7.7 million people received SSI benefits. The average federal benefit was $571.24 and $145 for states.

States with the highest benefits include California ($655), Washington DC ($620), Pennsylvania ($601), Maryland ($597), and Michigan ($594). Those with the lowest benefits include North Dakota ($534), Montana ($541), South Dakota ($546), New Hampshire ($547), and Alaska ($547).

California (1,151,201), Texas (611,276), New York (586,229), Florida (561,604), Pennsylvania (337,228) had the highest number of SSI beneficiaries.

Can your Medicare coverage be impacted by a zip code?

Yes. While the standard Part A and B premiums and deductable apply to members regardless of where they live, Part C and D prices vary. Part C or Medicare Advantage Plans provide dental, hearing, vision, and other services to seniors, while Part D plans are designed to keep the price of prescription drugs down for members. These plans are designed by health care provides operating in those areas and thus the prices are rather wide-ranging.

This year the price of the Part B premium which is applied to almost all seniors who receive Medicare has increased from $148 to $171. This is one of the largest increases seen in years.
Headlines

- Senate votes to raise the US debt ceiling by $2.5 trillion - What does this mean?

- The last of the Child Tax Credit payments will hit bank accounts today (Wednesday)

- Manchin still not convinced on Democrats' $2 trillion spending bill after call with Biden

- Could the Omicron variant lead to another stimulus check?

- Inflation outpaces social security 2022 COLA increase

- More US lawmakers pledge backing for Medicare for All

- Unemployment rate in the US down to 4.2% after 210,000 jobs added in November

Useful information & links

Child Tax Credit

- Biden faces a battle to secure Child Tax Credit extension

- IRS sends out final Child Tax Credit payment of 2021 on 15 December

Stimulus checks

- In Atlanta, some medical students are to get a $6,300 stimulus check.

- New parents could see another stimulus check reflected in their tax refund in 2022.

- What is the deadline to claim stimulus check plus-up payments in 2021?

- Congress urged to approve new stimulus check for Social Security recipients

- Some states could send out another stimulus check

Social Security

- How many Social Security payments are still to be sent out in 2021?

- Some states offer those receiving Supplemental Security Income benefits much larger payments

- Details of 2022 COLA increase being mailed to Social Security recipients

- What is the maximum Social Security benefit for 2022?

- 5.9% COLA increase -how much does this affect benefits?

Unemployment

- What is the natural unemployment rate formula?

Latest articles:
As the tragic case involving the 22 year old former wide receiver gets underway, it now seems prosecutors will have further access to information.

Henry Ruggs' medical records to be released

According to a Las Vegas judge on Thursday, prosecutors involved in the case of Henry Ruggs III are entitled to his blood test results, as they seek to bring four felony drunken driving charges against the former Raiders wide receiver. It is understood, however, that they are not permitted to request information regarding what Ruggs actually said to doctors in the moments following the deadly crash, nor can they access information about the injuries that he suffered in the accident.

In his statement, Justice of the Peace Robert Walsh said he would be issuing a written order to invoke Nevada privacy laws to limit information available to prosecutors. "The blood test results will be released, in addition to the authentication of the medical records," Walsh said. "Nothing to do with conversations or treatment as to any patient-doctor relationship."

The Prosecution vs Ruggs' lawyers

As it is understood, the doctors involved will not be permitted to testify, however, the prosecution can indeed field testimony from police, firefighters, neighbors and passing motorists who were present at the time. On the other side, Peter Christensen, who is attorney representing Ruggs' girlfriend, Kiara Je'nai Kilgo-Washington - a passenger in the car - has contested the move as it relates to his client, saying that she was in fact a victim and as such the state is not entitled to her medical records.

To date, attorneys for both Ruggs and Kilgo-Washington have declined to elaborate on the injuries that the couple suffered. Ruggs' lawyer David Chesnoff did, however, say in a previous statement made during a November 22nd hearing, that his client was in a leg cast for more than two weeks - both were hospitalized after the crash. Further to that Clark County District Attorney Steve Wolfson also said that he believed Ruggs' leg and Kilgo-Washington's arm were injured. It was later reported that Kilgo-Washington required surgery on her arm, while Ruggs was photographed in a wheelchair while wearing a foam neck brace during his initial court appearance the morning after the crash. Prosecutor Eric Bauman told the judge on Thursday that Kilgo-Washington's medical records were required in order to demonstrate that she received substantial injuries according to law. The preliminary hearing of evidence is now set for March 10th having initially been scheduled for March 10th.

Tragedy for Tina Tintor's family, Ruggs and the Raiders

As was previously reported, Henry Ruggs III, is accused of driving 156 mph in a residential neighborhood in his 2020 Chevrolet Corvette. Ruggs crashed into the rear of 23-year-old Tina Tintor's 2013 Toyota RAV4, rupturing the fuel tank and immediately setting a blaze. Tintor died in the blaze along with her dog, Max. At the time of the accident Ruggs' blood-alcohol content level was 0.16 which is twice the legal limit in Nevada.

In a sad move of solidarity, Las Vegas Raiders owner Mark Davis attended Tintor's funeral. Ruggs was released by the Raiders in the immediate hours after the accident. He was a first-round draft pick out of Alabama and was most definitely considered a promising talent. Ruggs would later post bail at $150,000 and was later placed under house arrest with strict conditions including an ankle monitor and daily alcohol tests.

Ruggs is now facing four felony counts - DUI resulting in death, DUI resulting in substantial bodily harm and two reckless driving charges. There is also a misdemeanor charge for possession of a gun while under the influence of alcohol as police found a loaded weapon in his car on the night of the accident. Should he be convicted, he will serve a mandatory prison sentence of two years but could face as much as 50 years.
NA Chairman Vuong Dinh Hue (Photo: HNMO)

Specifically, at the invitation of President of the National Assembly of the Republic of Korea Park Byeong Seug, and President of the Indian House of Representatives Sabha Om Birla, President of the Indian Senate Venkaiah Naidu, NA Chairman Vuong Dinh Hue will lead a high-ranking delegation of the Vietnamese NA to pay official visits to the Republic of Korea and India from December 12-19.

According to the Spokesperson of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the visits take place in the context of Vietnam - India relations, as well as Vietnam - RoK relations, especially the relationship between the Vietnamese NA and the Indian Parliament and the RoK NA, continue to be consolidated and make strong development steps. Vietnam, along with India and the RoK, are aiming to celebrate the 30th anniversary of diplomatic relations between Vietnam and the RoK and the 50th anniversary of diplomatic relations between Vietnam and India in 2022.

During the visit, NA Chairman Vuong Dinh Hue is expected to hold talks with the President of the RoK NA, the Speaker of the House of Representatives and the President of the Senate of India; and meet with senior leaders of the two countries, discussing many measures to strengthen the cooperation between the NAs, promoting the strategic cooperative partnership of Vietnam - the RoK and the Vietnam-India comprehensive strategic partnership in various fields, especially cooperation in post-COVID-19 economic recovery, and strengthening people-to-people exchanges and exchanges between localities.

In the RoK and India, NA Chairman Vuong Dinh Hue will also have meetings with leaders of a number of political parties, the Vietnamese community, the local business community, and conduct a number of other important bilateral activities./.
Vietnamese Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs To Anh Dung (Photo: VOV)

During the phone talks, the two sides expressed their delight at the comprehensive development of the Vietnam-UK strategic partnership. In 2021, despite impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, both sides have efficiently maintained high-level exchanges, with a highlight being Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinhs working trip to attend the 26th United Nations Climate Change Conference of the Parties (COP26) and visit the UK from October 31-November 3. They discussed specific measures to realise contents agreed by the two countries high-ranking leaders to deepen the bilateral strategic partnership.

As the two countries will celebrate the 50th anniversary of their bilateral diplomatic relationship in 2023, the two sides stressed the importance of arranging high-level delegation exchanges and intensifying the efficiency of key cooperative mechanisms, including the early organization of the Strategic Dialogue at the deputy foreign ministerial level.

Regarding climate change response, Mr. Amanda Milling appreciated Vietnams strong commitments at COP26, adding that the UK is willing to support Vietnam in reducing emissions and shifting to clean energies. Deputy Foreign Minister To Anh Dung affirmed that the Vietnamese Government is determined to implement declared commitments and speed up the implementation of measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by national resources and assistance of the international community.

In economic terms, the two sides agreed to work together to promote investment and trade cooperation on the basis of the UK-Vietnam Free Trade Agreement (UKVFTA), including enhancing the attraction of investment projects in the coming years in fields with great potential such as digital economy, green transformation, renewable energy development, green finance and infrastructure development.

On this occasion, Ms. Amanda Milling announced that the UK Government has decided to donate 320,000 more doses of AstraZeneca vaccine to Vietnam. Deputy Minister To Anh Dung expressed his sincere thanks to the UK Government for this decision and suggested that the UK continue to support Vietnam in accessing vaccines and drugs to treat COVID-19, especially transferring technology to produce COVID-19 vaccines, in order to soon overcome difficulties together and move towards pandemic control.

The two sides highly appreciated and agreed to continue working together closely at multilateral forums, especially at the United Nations. Minister of State Amanda Milling thanked Vietnam for enthusiastically supporting the UK to become a full dialogue partner of ASEAN, as well as in negotiating to join the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP).

The two sides also exchanged views on a number of international and regional issues of mutual concern, emphasizing the importance of respecting and maintaining peace, stability, security, as well as ensuring freedom of navigation and aviation in the East Sea is in line with international law, considering the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) as a legal framework for all activities at seas and oceans./.
AFV Board Chair Ta Viet Anh addresses the launch ceremony. (Photo: CPV)

On December 9, the Economic & Urban Newspaper in collaboration with ActionAid International in Vietnam and the Aid for social protection program foundation Vietnam (AFV) held the launch ceremony of the contest Contest Silent dedications in 2021.

Speaking at the launch ceremony, Deputy Editor-in-Chief of the Economic & Urban Newspaper Nguyen Xuan Khanh noted that the 4th wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, along with the new strain, has greatly affected the lives of people, agencies and enterprise.

In order to maintain production for economic development, industrial parks have still tried to operate under the "3 on-the-spot" model. The lives of workers in industrial parks, especially during the time of the COVID-19 pandemic, are always cared for.

According to Mr. Khanh, in Vietnam and many other countries, women and young people are facing the risk of sexual harassment. While there is a high demand for reproductive and sexual health care, a part of disadvantaged groups find it more difficult to access health care and sexual care services, especially in the context of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, he said.

The contest organizers representatives at the launch ceremony (Photo: CPV)

The contest aims gather articles, videos and photographic reportages from a large number of journalists and amateur writers, contributing a common voice to protect the lives of female workers, he added.

Talking about the purpose of the contest, AFV Board Chair Ta Viet Anh said that this is an effort in the fight against sexual harassment in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic to honor the important contribution of silent dedications to the goal of ensuring safety and security for the community.

In particular, the contest is organized for female migrant workers who face the risk of sexual harassment in the context of COVID-19, as well as to promote access to sexual reproductive health care services for women and young ethnic minority people and other disadvantaged groups.

The contest started from December 9, 2021 to the end of December 28, 2021. Authors can send their works published or composed from January 1 to December 20 via email: velvetconghienthamlang@gmail.com./.
Indonesias Tourism and Creative Economy Minister Sandiaga Uno. (Photo: The Jakartapost.com)



The countrys creative economy has been ranked third in the world in terms of its contribution to the national gross domestic product (GDP). The United States is currently ranked first with its Hollywood film industry, followed by the Republic of Korea with its K-Pop industry.



According to Minister Uno, high quality human resources (HR) in the tourism and creative economy sectors are needed to respond to the challenges ahead. To push up this potential, it is crucial to digitise the creative economy, he said.



Although between 70-75 percent of the creative economy is still supported by the culinary, handicraft and fashion industries, in the future, it is necessary to industrialise the creative economy in other areas to create applications for the gaming, television, radio, and animation industries, as well as a number of sub-sectors that their digitisation has been accelerated by the pandemic.



The minister also said these prospects are an opportunity that can be taken advantage of by all stakeholders. However, innovation, adaptation and cooperation among organisations are essential to ensure the success of the country's creative economy.



He went on saying that growth in tourism and the country's creative economy will be better next year because tourist destinations are more prepared with health and travel protocols, namely Clean, Health, Safety, Environmental Sustainability.



In the coming time, the ministry will also create support for businesses in the tourism industry and the creative economy from the National Economic Recovery (PEN) Programme./.
White cranes are seen at the Wuxing white crane conservation area by the Poyang Lake in Nanchang, east China's Jiangxi Province, Dec. 8, 2021. Numerous migratory birds including white cranes and swans have arrived in the wetland by the Poyang Lake, taking it as their winter habitat. (Xinhua/Zhou Mi)

White cranes are seen at the Wuxing white crane conservation area by the Poyang Lake in Nanchang, east China's Jiangxi Province, Dec. 8, 2021. Numerous migratory birds including white cranes and swans have arrived in the wetland by the Poyang Lake, taking it as their winter habitat. (Xinhua/Zhou Mi)

White cranes are seen at the Wuxing white crane conservation area by the Poyang Lake in Nanchang, east China's Jiangxi Province, Dec. 8, 2021. Numerous migratory birds including white cranes and swans have arrived in the wetland by the Poyang Lake, taking it as their winter habitat. (Xinhua/Zhou Mi)

White cranes are seen at the Wuxing white crane conservation area by the Poyang Lake in Nanchang, east China's Jiangxi Province, Dec. 8, 2021. Numerous migratory birds including white cranes and swans have arrived in the wetland by the Poyang Lake, taking it as their winter habitat. (Xinhua/Zhou Mi)

A white crane flies over the Wuxing white crane conservation area by the Poyang Lake in Nanchang, east China's Jiangxi Province, Dec. 8, 2021. Numerous migratory birds including white cranes and swans have arrived in the wetland by the Poyang Lake, taking it as their winter habitat. (Xinhua/Zhou Mi)

Swans are seen at the Wuxing white crane conservation area by the Poyang Lake in Nanchang, east China's Jiangxi Province, Dec. 8, 2021. Numerous migratory birds including white cranes and swans have arrived in the wetland by the Poyang Lake, taking it as their winter habitat. (Xinhua/Zhou Mi)

A white crane is seen at the Wuxing white crane conservation area by the Poyang Lake in Nanchang, east China's Jiangxi Province, Dec. 8, 2021. Numerous migratory birds including white cranes and swans have arrived in the wetland by the Poyang Lake, taking it as their winter habitat. (Xinhua/Zhou Mi)

Editor: GSY
By Zhang Andi

For years, the US has attempted to model other countries after its own image and export its brand of democracy. Such attempts are entirely undemocratic and at odds with the core values of democracy.

1. Color revolution

Since 2003, Eastern Europe and Central Asia have seen the Rose Revolution in Georgia, the Orange Revolution in Ukraine, and the Tulip Revolution in Kyrgyzstan.

The US State Department openly admitted playing a central role in these regime changes.

The US has developed a system of strategies and tactics for the so called peaceful evolution. It would start with cultural exchanges, economic assistance, and then public opinion shaping to foster an atmosphere for color revolution. It would exaggerate the mistakes and flaws of incumbent governments to foment public grievances and anti-government sentiments.

2. "Arab Spring"

As 2010 drew to a close, Tunisian citizen Bouazizi's grief and anger ignited a dramatic upheaval in the Arab world. The US orchestrated the show behind the scene, and played a key role.

The New York Times revealed in 2011 that a small core of American government-financed organizations were promoting democracy in Arab states before the Arab spring. A number of the groups and individuals directly involved in the Arab Spring revolts received training and financing from US organizations such as the International Republican Institute, the National Democratic Institute, and Freedom House.

As consequences, the vast majority of Arab countries, far from achieving the freedom, democracy and prosperity they had dreamed of, were plunged into chronic economic stagnation, social unrest, war, blight, and humanitarian crisis.

In Libya, Syria and Yemen, outside interventions turned revolutions into years of civil war. According to a study published on Lancet, between 2010 and 2013, Yemen, Tunisia, and Egypt lost about three months of life expectancy. Men in Syria had been expected to live to around 75 in 2010, that has fallen to about 69 years three years later. For Syrian women, average life expectancy dropped from about 80 to 75 years over the same period.

In a survey conducted in 2020, most people in Syria, Yemen, Lybia, and Sudan, believed their lives are worse than before the Arab spring.

The turmoil in Syria has even created a breeding ground for the terrorist organization ISIL, posing threat to peace and security in the Middle East and the world.

3. Afghanistan War

While in other occasions, the US export its brand of democracy by force, leading to humanitarian disasters.

The 20-year US war in Afghanistan has left the country devastated and impoverished. A total of 47,245 Afghan civilians and 66,000 to 69,000 Afghan soldiers and police were killed in US military operations, and more than 10 million people were displaced. The war destroyed the foundation for Afghanistans economic development and reduced Afghans to destitution.

4. Iraq War

In 2003, the US launched military strikes against Iraq for its alleged possession of weapons of mass destruction. The civilian death toll of the Iraq war is between 200,000 and 250,000, including over 16,000 directly killed by the US military. More than a million people lost their homes. Moreover, the US troops seriously violated international humanitarian principles, as evidenced by the frequent incidence of prisoner abuse. Until now, the US has never produced any credible proof of Iraqs possession of weapons of mass destruction.

As suggested by the French website Le Grand Soir, democracy has long become a weapon of massive destruction for the US to attack countries with different views.

Editor: ZAD
Anton Rovenskyy, Master of International Relations, International Political Scientist

Decisions and actions of these political players formed the political agenda of 2021. The winners and the outsiders of the last year are in the material below.

Winners

Olaf Scholz (Germany)

The new Federal Chancellor of Germany, Olaf Scholz, a Social Democrat, immediately makes it clear that he came to this post in earnest and for a long time. Indeed, Scholz has everything for it: from personal qualities to the huge reserve of strength created in the era of Angela Merkel. Scholz's foreign policy remains an intrigue, especially whether the new German chancellor will be able to become as authoritative globally as Merkel was.

Xi Jinping (China)

In 2021, the President of the People's Republic of China received the title of Helmsman of the Chinese Renaissance, which placed Xi Jinping on a par with Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping. Thus, the last obstacles allowing Xi Jinping to go to a record third term as chairman of the PRC, which will last until 2027, have been removed. Along with an increasing political weight and a broadening economic expansion, China has elaborated an effective algorithm to fight with Covid-19, which gives it a new impetus for growth in comparison to its geopolitical rivals for years ahead.

Recep Erdogan (Turkiye)

Under the leadership of Erdogan, in 2021 Turkiye continued to pursue a proactive offensive foreign policy, from the Middle East and Transcaucasia to North Africa, as well as to introduce new integration formats for the Turkic peoples. The downside of Turkiye's external expansion is the overstrain of its economy and the drop of the Turkish Lira. However, as long as such foreign policy brings Turkiye more benefits than costs, it will undoubtedly continue.

Naftali Bennett (Israel)

Israel's new prime minister, who took office in the middle of the year, became a compromise figure for the country's ruling class, which was weighed down by Benjamin Netanyahu's long tenure in power. Time will tell whether Bennett will be able to become for Israel as iconic as Netanyahu was, but there is no doubt that Bennett, who previously held various leading positions in the government, would not limit himself with only one term.

Eric Zemmour (France)

Eric Zemmour, a right-wing conservative journalist, has swept into the big league of French politics and announced his run in 2022 presidential elections. Outrunning Marine Le Pen, Zemmour is currently the leader of the French right wing, and is considered as a serious contender for the second round of elections. Zemmur's own political project, Reconquista, is to become a serious player during the next parliamentary elections.

Shavkat Mirziyoyev (Uzbekistan)

Uzbekistan still shows high economic performance and, along with liberalization of social and political life, becomes an example country in Central Asia. In the wake of success, Shavkat Mirziyoyev was successfully re-elected on the presidential election with a 80% confidence vote.

Min Aung Hlain (Myanmar)

The de facto leader of Myanmar, who came to power in a military coup on in February 2021, Min Aung Hlain has cemented his power, despite the lack of international legitimation and protests at home. Considering long-term prospects, militarian political projects are neither sustainable nor effective in management, but as for now the leader of the Myanmar junta is one of the winners of the year.

Outsiders

Benjamin Netanyahu (Israel)

Four rounds of early parliamentary elections in 2019-2021 allowed Benjamin Netanyahu to retain the seat of Israeli prime minister. However, such status quo did not suit a huge part of its political class, which managed to consolidate to remove Netanyahu from his position. Meanwhile, the Israeli criminal justice authorities have accumulated many questions for Netanyahu, who, after the loss of the prime minister's post, becomes much more vulnerable.

Ashraf Ghani (Afghanistan)

The withdrawal of the US troops from Afghanistan has led to an immediate collapse of the state and military structures built during the last 20 years. The infamously popular images of chaos at the Kabul airport are a clear proof of the current situation. Ghani, the President of Afghanistan, did not even try to build a system to counter the expansion of the Taliban, leaving the republic without a trace.

Andrej Babis (Czech Republic)

In 2021, after several years of litigation, EU auditors recognized a conflict of interests in the actions of Andrej Babis, the former Czech Prime Minister. During his tenure as a PM, Babis retained control over business structures, which were subsidized by the EU. However, Babis's troubles did not end: in autumn, he became a defendant in the Pandora Papers offshore scandal. These factors led to the defeat of the oligarchs party in the parliamentary elections and his resignation as a PM.

Armin Laschet (Germany)

Armin Laschet, considered the most likely successor to Angela Merkel in early 2021, lost his political capital in 8 months. As a result, the CDU/CSU was left outside the ruling coalition in the Bundestag, with Laschet possible resignation from the post of CDU chairman in the near future.

Joe Biden (USA)

The incumbent US president, Biden faces an unprecedented drop in confidence ratings just a year after his election. During his presidential inauguration, the Democratic Party seemed to become a monopolist in the next two electoral cycles. As of December 2021, the scenario of the Republican revenge looks more and more realistic. The US House of Representatives elections in November 2022 will become a checkpoint.

Emmanuel Macron (France)

In 2021, France lost a multibillion Australian submarine supply contract, with relations between Paris, official Washington and London deteriorating due to the formation of the AUKUS alliance. The contract for the supply of French combat aircraft for the needs of the Swiss armed forces was also in question. Parallel to this, Paris suffered a series of failures in Africa, namely in Mali and the CAR, the former French colonies.

By the end of the year, Emmanuel Macron has smoothed out these setbacks by signing big military-industrial contracts with the Middle Eastern states, as well as with an agreement on in-depth cooperation with Italy, relations with which France have been openly strained in the past few decades.

However, as a contender for the leadership in the united Europe, president Macron, especially considering his balance of victories and defeats, is clearly insufficient to be regarded as the winner of the year.

Igor Dodon (Moldova)

Following the defeat in the 2020 presidential elections, the Moldovan Socialists Party (PSRM) also lost the parliamentary elections in July 2021. In October 2021, Dodon resigned from his MP seat and will soon step down as head of the PSRM. Meanwhile, on the pro-Russian political field of Moldova, new political forces are gradually crystallizing, which puts a big question mark on the future prospects of the nations ex-president.
Biden in his talk with Zelensky says any decisions relating to Ukraine cannot be made without Ukraine  Yermak

Head of the President's Office of Ukraine Andriy Yermak has said that during the talks between the presidents of the United States and Ukraine on Thursday, American leader Joseph Biden said that any decisions regarding Ukraine could not be made without Ukraine.

"Any decisions concerning Ukraine cannot be made without it," Yermak quoted Biden as saying on the Right to Power program on Thursday.

"The United States will provide all necessary assistance so that Ukraine could deter [Russia] at all times," Yermak said.

He also added that Biden greeted Zelensky with great progress on reforms, in particular judicial reform.

"Today we saw all the signals that were sent in the form of sanctions and that were adopted against the person who blocked the implementation of these reforms at the very top of the Constitutional Court of Ukraine," Yermak said.
White House: Biden assures Zelensky in USA's commitment to 'no decisions or discussions about Ukraine without Ukraine'

U.S. President Joseph Biden in a telephone conversation assured Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky that the United States is committed to the principle of "no decisions or discussions about Ukraine without Ukraine," the White House said.

"He reaffirmed the United States' unwavering commitment to Ukraine's sovereignty and territorial integrity. President Biden made clear that the United States and its allies and partners are committed to the principle of 'no decisions or discussions about Ukraine without Ukraine,'" a press release posted on the White House website on Thursday says.

The leaders called on Russia to de-escalate tensions and agreed that diplomacy is the best way to make meaningful progress on conflict resolution.

"President Biden underscored the readiness of the United States to engage in support of confidence-building measures to advance the implementation of the Minsk Agreements, in support of the Normandy Format," it says.
Most Ukrainians consider Russia a hostile country for Ukraine. This is evidenced by the results of a survey conducted by the Rating sociological group.

"The majority of respondents (72%) consider Russia a hostile country, only 12% - an ally," a report on the study results, published on Friday, December 10, said.

At the same time, 52% of respondents support the idea of introducing visas from the Russian Federation, while 44% are against.

The share of those who consider Belarus a hostile country has also significantly increased - up to 48%, while a year ago 22% of respondents considered Belarus to be a hostile country.

The respondents consider the largest allies of Ukraine to be Canada, Lithuania, Poland and Great Britain, as well as the U.S. and Turkey. France, Germany and China are considered a little less allies, the latter is considered rather a neutral country.

It is noted that over the past year, the attitude towards Turkey and Great Britain has noticeably changed for the better.

The survey was conducted on December 6-8, 2021 among the population of Ukraine aged 18 and over in all regions, except for the temporarily occupied territories of Crimea and Donbas. The sample is representative in terms of age, sex and type of settlement. The survey was conducted using the CATI (Computer Assisted Telephone Interviews) method based on a random selection of mobile phone numbers. A total of 2,500 respondents were interviewed. The error of representativeness of the study with a confidence level of 0.95: not more than 2.0.
On Human Rights Day, the Presidium of the Mejis of the Crimean Tatar People appealed to all international organizations, governments and parliaments of states with an appeal to take tough measures of economic, political and diplomatic pressure on the Russian Federation in order to immediately liberate the occupied territories of Ukraine - Crimea and separate areas of Donetsk and Luhansk regions.

This is said in a statement of the Presidium of the Mejlis in connection with the 73rd anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the text of which was published by Chairman of the Mejlis Refat Chubarov on his Facebook page on Friday.

"The Presidium of the Mejis of the Crimean Tatar People calls on the President of Ukraine, the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine, leaders of political parties, public and religious organizations, all citizens of Ukraine to unite in order to liberate the territories of Ukraine seized by the Russian Federation, which is the only way to ensure human rights throughout Ukraine in accordance with principles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights," the document reads.

The statement notes that during the mass arrests and detentions of Crimean Tatars in September-December this year, more than 100 people were captured, including mothers of many children, minors, as well as lawyers.

The number of persons persecuted on politically motivated charges in the occupied Crimea is currently 234 people, of which 121 people are illegally deprived of their liberty.

In turn, the Facebook page of Kyiv-based Prosecutor's Office for the Autonomous Republic of Crimea and the city of Sevastopol says that over the past few months, the eighth case of groundless mass arrests of Crimean Tatars has been recorded, during which from 19 to 41 people were detained at the same time. In addition, constant pressure is exerted on lawyers representing the interests of illegally detained persons.

"The Russian Federation continues to disregard human rights, persecuting persons expressing a pro-Ukrainian position, professing a different religion, and not supporting the occupation. In 2021, the number of illegal detentions of citizens on far-fetched grounds more than doubled on the peninsula, from 68 in 2020 to 147 arrests. There are numerous illegal violations of the inviolability of housing during searches of Ukrainian citizens in Crimea. For example, this year the occupation law enforcement officers unreasonably broke into 46 houses," head of the Prosecutor's Office on Crimea Ihor Ponochovny said.

According to him, all this is a manifestation of the policy of the occupying state aimed at persecuting and intimidating Ukrainian citizens in Crimea. "Its ultimate goal is to change the demographic composition of the population of the peninsula, that is, to oust those who disagree with the occupation regime from the peninsula and settle Russian citizens in their place," Ponochovny stressed.

The prosecutor's office assured that every fact of violation of human rights in the occupied peninsula is recorded by them in the relevant criminal proceedings in order to implement the principle of inevitability of punishment of perpetrators using both national and international mechanisms.
More than half of Ukrainian citizens (56%) support the initiative of direct negotiations with Russia on the issue of resolving the conflict in Donbas in the absence of other alternatives. This is evidenced by the results of a survey conducted by the sociological group Rating.

"More than half of Ukrainian citizens (56%) support the initiative of direct negotiations with Russia on the issue of resolving the conflict in Donbas in the absence of other alternatives," the report on the study posted on Friday, December 10 reads.

At the same time, having a choice among the options for the format of negotiations to resolve the conflict in Donbas, 21% of respondents spoke in favor of direct negotiations with Russia.

A relative majority of respondents (45%) support the idea of expanding the Normandy format with the involvement of the United States and Great Britain. Some 12% of the respondents are in favor of negotiations with representatives of the so-called "DPR" and "LPR". Preservation of the Normandy format in the current composition, which includes Ukraine, Russia, France and Germany, is supported by 11% of respondents.

The involvement of Turkey in the negotiations on the settlement of the conflict in Donbas is supported by 46% of the respondents. At the same time, the same number of respondents opposed the idea of Turkish mediation in the negotiations.

The survey was conducted in all government-controlled regions among 2,500 respondents aged 18 and over using the CATI method (Computer Assisted Telephone Interviews) during December 6-8, 2021. The sample is representative in terms of age, gender and type of settlement. The error in the representativeness of the study with a confidence level of 0.95: no more than 2.0.
Normalization of the situation on the border between Russia and Ukraine requires diplomatic measures, in connection with which the talks between U.S. and Russian Presidents, Joe Biden and Vladimir Putin, as well as the dialogue at the Russia-NATO Council (RNC) platform, play an important role, Secretary General of the North Atlantic Alliance Jens Stoltenberg said on Friday.

"This crisis requires a political and diplomatic solution. So we welcome the dialogue between President Biden and President Putin. As well as the efforts to convene a new meeting in the Normandy format. Because dialogue is even more important when tensions are high," he said a joint press conference with Minister of Foreign Affairs of France, Jean-Yves Le Drian, and Minister of the Armed Forces of France, Florence Parly.

"Our offer of a meaningful dialogue in the NATO-Russia Council, with Russia, still stands," he said.

He also reiterated his call on Russia to make efforts to de-escalate the situation on the border with Ukraine.

For several months, the NATO Secretary General has been calling on the Russian Federation to establish cooperation within the RNC.
President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky has discussed with President of France Emmanuel Macron the issues of the Trilateral Contract Group for resolving the situation in eastern Ukraine (TCG), unblocking the Normandy format, energy security and diversification of energy supply.

"Talked to Emmanuel Macron about unlocking the Normandy format and the TCG work. Agreed on joint next steps. Discussed threats to Ukraine's energy security & diversification of energy sources. Grateful to the President of France for a positive assessment of the ongoing reforms," Zelensky wrote on Twitter Friday.

According to the presidential website, during the conversation Zelensky noted Ukraine's readiness to continue active work within the Normandy Four, and Macron outlined Ukraine's balanced position amid Russian military escalation and expressed support for important initiatives of Ukraine in the TCG to return to a full-fledged ceasefire, the release of illegally detained persons and the opening of an entry-exit checkpoint.

During the discussion of European energy security, Zelensky said the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline project poses a particular threat to the energy security of European states. Both presidents stressed the importance of diversifying energy supplies to Europe, in particular, through liquefied natural gas, the office said.

Macron commended Zelensky's efforts to perform reforms in Ukraine and confirmed the readiness of the French side to contribute in every possible way to these efforts.

The leaders of Ukraine and France agreed to continue discussing these issues during a meeting at the Eastern Partnership Summit in Brussels on December 15, 2021.
The State Road Agency of Ukraine (Ukravtodor) in 2021 renewed 5,000 km of Ukrainian roads and 300 artificial structures, Deputy Head of Ukravtodor Andriy Ivko said in an exclusive interview with Interfax-Ukraine.

"In 2020, we have restored more than 4,000 km of roads and 158 artificial structures. This year we planned to restore 4,500 km of roads and 160 artificial structures. Now, the construction season is coming to an end, and we have renewed 5,000 km in various directions. That is, we exceeded the plan. As for the artificial structures, it was planned to build 160 this year, but we did 300," he said.

Ivko also said that 20% of Ukrainian roads were restored in two years.

"In general, in Ukraine (taking into account the temporarily occupied territories) 46,600 km of national roads are international, national, territorial and regional roads. Last year, work was completed on 9% of roads, this year on 11%. In total, 20% of roads have been restored in two years. On the controlled territory there are almost 43,000 km of roads of national importance," the deputy head of the agency said.
The Swiss Federal Council decided to extend the freezing of assets of former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych and his entourage for one year at its meeting on Friday, December 10, the Swiss Embassy in Ukraine has said.

"The Federal Council of Switzerland has decided to extend for one year the asset freeze in the context of to support the judicial cooperation between Ukraine and Switzerland. This blocking was introduced in 2014 after the ouster of Ukrainian President Yanukovych," the Swiss Embassy said on Twitter on Friday.

It is indicated that since 2014, the Swiss authorities have been closely cooperating with Ukrainian counterparts to advance the asset recovery process.

"With regard to potential restitution, court rulings on the illicit origin of the assets have yet to be rendered in Ukraine. The maximum duration of the asset freeze is limit to ten years," the embassy said.

Seven years ago, the Swiss Federal Council decided to freeze all assets of Yanukovych and his entourage in the country.

The Swiss Embassy in Ukraine previously said that since then, the Swiss authorities have been working closely with Ukrainian partners to complete the process of returning these assets to the Ukrainian people based on court decisions on their illegal origin. The embassy also said that, according to Swiss law, the maximum duration of such a freeze is ten years.
Dragon Capital investment company is implementing office real estate projects planned before the coronavirus crisis and is temporarily not considering investments in new projects, the founder and CEO of Dragon Capital investment company, Tomas Fiala, has said.

"We are implementing the projects that were planned before COVID. But we are also looking forward: in 2-3 years, perhaps the demand for offices will again increase ... We have now completed the construction of an office center in Lviv and we are not considering other offices," he said in an exclusive interview with the Interfax-Ukraine agency.

Fiala noted that office real estate has significantly lost in profitability due to the pandemic, although it was previously considered the most promising. At the same time, the head of Dragon Capital believes that over time the demand for offices will recover.

"I still think that people will return to work from the office, since work from home is not competitive. Employers will see the difference in labor productivity and return employees to offices," the investment banker explained.

In his opinion, in the case of a long period, working from home is relaxing.

"In the beginning, of course, everyone tensed and worked at home, because there was nowhere to go: cinemas, restaurants and shopping centers - everything was closed, so you sit at home and work. Now the situation is different," Fiala stated.

The head of Dragon Capital clarified that the vacancy of office centers in the Dragon Capital portfolio has stabilized at 11%, and the total area of office space in it is 204,000 square meters.

"Now there is a drawdown and some vacancy: we have it at the level of 11%, and in the new centers that we have built and commissioned recently, it is higher. Therefore, rental rates in offices, of course, have fallen over the past year and a half," he said.

According to the investment company, in the structure of income from real estate assets in 2020, some 37% fell on offices, while the share of warehouses was 30%, retail - 33%.

According to Fiala, the amount of investments in upgrades of office centers purchased by the company since 2018 totaled $ 26 million (excluding construction from scratch).
On December 14, 2021, the Second UkraineInvest Annual Forum: Make in UA will be held in Kyiv. The event is aimed at highlighting the main economic developments of Ukraine and presenting a program for attracting investments in the manufacturing sector of Ukraine's economy. The forum will feature opening remarks by the Prime Minister of Ukraine Denys Shmyhal and Chairman of the Servant of the People parliamentary faction, Chairman of the Supervisory Board of UkraineInvest Davyd Arakhamia.

The Forums program consists of a series of dynamic and interactive discussions with over 30 speakers, including government officials, representatives of international organizations, global and Ukrainian business and investment communities. This year, the key topics of the event are presentation of the "MAKE in UA" Program for attracting investment in the manufacturing sector and business diplomacy development globally.

The Forum will be conducted in a combined offline and online format (with compulsory registration) in compliance with quarantine restrictions established to prevent the spread of COVID-19 in Ukraine. The Forum is scheduled to be held with the participation of more than 5,000 online attendants from more than 50 countries.

Key topics to be addressed:

"MAKE in UA" program

Implementation of reforms for manufacturing development

The role of IFO in investment projects support

Highlighting the success stories in manufacturing sector

Business diplomacy: Ukraine globally

The event is organized by the Government Investment Promotion Office UkraineInvest and supported by USAID Competitive Economy Program. Please follow the link for more details.

The Forum will be held in two languages: Ukrainian and English (with simultaneous interpretation).

Please follow the link to register for the event. The registration will be confirmed before December 13.

Mass media accreditation is required via the registration form and will be confirmed on December 13. Contact for media representatives: +38(063)7071646.

For media partnership and cooperation please contact: communications@ukraineinvest.com.
More than six million people in drought-hit areas of eastern and southern Ethiopia will need "life-saving" assistance this year, the UN's emergency response agency said in a new report.
France reported a record-smashing 271,686 daily virus cases Tuesday as Omicron infections race across the country, burdening hospital staff and threatening to disrupt transport, schools, and other services.
The United Nations' migration agency said 75 migrants drowned in the Mediterranean Sea north of Libya earlier this week as they attempted to reach Italy by boat.

The International Organization for Migration reported the latest tragedy in a tweet on Saturday, attributing the information to 15 survivors who were rescued by fishermen and brought to the port of Zuwara in northwestern Libya. It did not immediately provide further information.

Also on Saturday, the Italian Coast Guard rescued more than 420 migrants, including dozens of minors, from boats in difficulty in the Mediterranean Sea,

A coast guard statement said 70 people were brought safely by one of its motorboats to the tiny Italian island of Lampedusa, south of Sicily.

Meanwhile, a different coast guard vessel was headed to the port of Porto Empedocle on Saturday evening in Sicily with more than 350 migrants aboard after they were plucked to safety from a foundering fishing boat 70 miles (115 kilometers) from the Sicilian coast, the statement said. Among them were more than 40 minors.

That fishing boat ``was in danger, due to the bad weather conditions at sea and due to the elevated number of persons on board,`` the Coast Guard said. After being rescued by two motorboats, they were transferred to a larger Coast Guard vessel.

The statement described the rescue of the larger number of migrants as ``complex.`` Four cargo ships in the area were pressed into service to ``mitigate the impact of the wind'' on the rescue operation, it said, allowing the migrants to be safely rescued.

Each year, thousands of migrants and refugees from Africa, the Middle East and South Asia attempt the deadly Mediterranean sea crossing to Europe on overcrowded and often unseaworthy boats.

More than 1,300 men, women and children have died so far in 2021 trying to cross the Central Mediterranean from Libya and Tunisia to Italy and Malta according to IOM.

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Europe on Thursday reached the grim milestone of 1.5 million coronavirus deaths as nations scramble to tackle a worsening crisis with winter approaching.

In response, France accelerated its Covid booster rollout and Germany, with fatalities and infections surging, weighed new measures.

With the world braced for the full onslaught of yet another wave, the EU's medicines agency cleared a vaccine for children as young as five.

But South Africa reported a new worrying Covid-19 variant with devastating potential, the EU medicines agency cleared a vaccine for children as young as five.

In Paris, Health Minister Olivier Veran said Covid-19 booster shots, until now only available to people over 65 or with health problems, would be accessible to all adults starting this weekend.

From January 15, people over 18 would need to show proof of a top-up vaccine dose to maintain a valid Covid pass, which is required to enter restaurants, bars, gyms and other public venues.

The minister said the stringent measure could see France through the fifth wave without recourse to another lockdown, which the government is desperately trying to avoid.

Adding pressure, the EU Commission recommended that the bloc's vaccination certificate should become invalid once the holder's latest dose is more than nine months old.

'Grim milestone'

The number of daily new cases in France hit a seven-month high of 32,591 on Wednesday but the burden of critical cases in hospital remains manageable_a fact experts put down to France's energetic vaccination drive.

Neighbouring Germany meanwhile reported record coronavirus fatalities and infections Thursday as its total death toll passed 100,000_a "grim milestone", said Bild daily _just as a new government prepared to replace Angela Merkel's coalition.

Europe's largest economy recorded 351 Covid fatalities in the past 24 hours, bringing the official death toll since the start of the pandemic to 100,119.

The weekly incidence rate also hit an all-time high of 419.7 new infections per 100,000 people, according to the Robert Koch Institute health agency.

The spike in Germany came as Europe re-emerged as the pandemic's epicentre, with the continent battling sluggish vaccine uptake in some nations, the highly contagious Delta variant, colder weather sending people indoors and the easing of restrictions.

An AFP tally of official figures showed Thursday that more than 1.5 million people have died from Covid-19 in Europe.

Merkel's presumed successor Olaf Scholz outlined a roadmap Wednesday by announcing new measures to tame the fourth wave.

These included forming a corona response task force based at his office and bonuses for overstretched health workers.

However, steps announced last week to limit the unvaccinated from participating in public life have already come under fire.

"The latest decisions are like announcing in a flooding catastrophe a plan to hire more swimming teachers and distributing a few water wings and rubber ducks," Sueddeutsche newspaper fumed.

'Acute overload'

The German health sector has had to call on hospitals elsewhere in the EU for help. Some clinics are already facing an "acute overload", according to Gernot Marx, head of the German Interdisciplinary Association for Intensive Care and Emergency Medicine.

Germany last week began requiring people to prove they are vaccinated, have recovered from Covid-19 or recently tested negative before they can travel on public transport or enter workplaces.

Several of the worst-hit areas have gone further, cancelling Christmas markets and barring the unvaccinated from bars, gyms and leisure facilities.

Germany's Covid-19 crisis has in part been blamed on its relatively low vaccination rate of about 69 percent, compared to other Western European countries such as France, where it is 75 percent.

A campaign for booster shots has been marred by supply and logistics snags.

In an indication of what's to come, scientists in South Africa said Thursday they had detected a new Covid-19 variant with multiple mutations, blaming it for a surge in infection numbers.

The variant, which goes by the scientific lineage number B.1.1.529, "has a very high number of mutations," virologist Tulio de Oliveira said.

For Health Minister Joe Phaahla the variant was of "serious concern" and behind an "exponential" increase in cases.

Back in Europe, the Pfizer/BioNTech jab got the green light for five to 11 year-olds, clearing the way for the vaccination in an age group where the virus is rapidly spreading, and bringing the EU into line with the US, Israel and Canada.

The European Medicines Agency, using the jab's brand name, said "the benefits of Comirnaty in children aged five to 11 outweigh the risks".

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EU health ministers met on Tuesday as national governments step up measures to try to curb the Omicron Covid-19 variant spreading across Europe as winter closes in.

The gathering was expected to aim for greater coordination of bloc-wide measures in response, such as travel recommendations, and to hear pleas to accelerate vaccinations.

"I will be calling on all health ministers to close the immunisation gap to increase their vaccination rollout programmes and adhere to non-pharmaceutical measures (like) wearing masks and social distancing," EU health commissioner Stella Kyriakides said as she went into the meeting.

"We still don't know everything about Omicron," German Health Minister Jens Spahn said as he joined EU counterparts in Brussels.

"Consequently, travel restrictions (into the EU) are important so as to keep the incidence of the new variant in Europe and in Germany as low as possible," he said.

Member states retain final say on their individual health-related decisions, raising the prospect of a patchwork of restrictions across the 27-nation European Union as Christmas and ski trips loom.

The Omicron issue is the first order of business for an EU summit next week, on December 15 and 16, according to a draft agenda seen by AFP.

While questions about Omicron's severity and ability to escape immunity cannot be answered for a couple more weeks, initial data confirm its high transmissibility.

For instance, Denmark on the weekend reported a tripling of confirmed Omicron cases within 48 hours. And former EU member Britain identified 336 cases as of Monday doubling in 48 hours.

First detected in southern Africa two weeks ago, Omicron cases are now recorded in more than 40 countries.

Most of those cases initially were tracked to travellers from Africa, but now there are clusters of infections suggesting community spread.

Dominant strain in months

The European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) said on Monday there were a total 212 Omicron cases across the EU and in associated countries Iceland and Norway.

The biggest number of cases were in Portugal with 34, Denmark with 32, France on 25 and 19 in Norway.

Given its exponential rise, the ECDC has said it expects Omicron to become the dominant strain in Europe within months.

While the EU is putting greater emphasis on vaccinations, there is realisation that jabs alone are not enough.

As well as reinforcing the use of masks, social distancing and adequate ventilation, the EU is advancing with Covid-19 treatments.

On Tuesday, the European Commission approved another of those synthetic treatments for critical patients, sold as Actemra or RoActemra by Roche, according to the Swiss-based company.

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Talking about Egypts cooperation with Lebanon to solve the countries energy crisis and develop its economy, Ahram Daily Newspaper interviewed Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati.

On Thursday 11December, Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati paid his first visit to Cairo after assuming the position in September 2021, where he met with President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi and his Egyptian counterpart Mostafa Madbouly.

Ahram Daily Newspaper interviewed the prime minister, asking about cooperation between the two countries, including energy projects and gas exports to Lebanon.

Ahram Daily: First of all, how would you describe your visit to Egypt and meeting with President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi?

Najib Mikati: First, I am happy to visit Egypt and to meet His Excellency President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi. Our meeting was extremely fruitful where I found someone who is sad about the current situation of Lebanon. President El-Sisi spoke about Lebanon and the Lebanese people, adding that political and economic reforms in Lebanon are important and must focus on the Lebanese citizen and his life. This gives us a great incentive to continue our work.

AD: How do you view the current efforts to boost economic cooperation between Egypt and Lebanon, especially after the agreement between the Lebanese government and Arab Contractors in August 2021 to develop the port of Tripoli?

NM: When we signed the contract with the Arab Contractors Company to develop the port of Tripoli, it was a happy hour for us; first, for my hometown Tripoli to expand and establish the infrastructure making this vital port fully functional, and second, to have an Egyptian company with the history of Arab Contractors doing the project is a great opportunity.

I knew since yesterday that work will start soon, and everything is happening as desired, considering the funding and implementation of all the demands that is are in the agreement.

AD: This is concerning the port, but what about importing gas from Egypt? Especially since there are still challenges facing this project. Is there a timetable for its implementation?

NM: The only challenge  as you know  for the Egyptian gas to reach Lebanon is that it must pass through Syria and in Syria, there is [US legislation] Caesar Act that imposes sanctions on whoever gives financial and technical support to the Syrian government. For the gas pipeline to pass through Syria, the Egyptian and Jordanian governments received written approval from the US administration after applying the Caesar Act to the project. It was a relief for Egypt and Jordan, and of course for Lebanon.

Thats why we agreed with the Egyptian government to provide Lebanon with 650 million cubic metres per year.

In our meeting with President El-Sisi, we asked to increase this quantity and he promised to study the matter. The Egyptian government will deliver gas to Lebanon after carrying out the necessary repairs on the gas pipeline from Syrian borders to electricity plants in Lebanon.

AD: But Prime Minister, there are reports saying that the Arab gas pipeline has not worked for 10 years, and the Syrian electricity grid is dilapidated. How are you going to deal with this challenge?

NM: Yes, and for this reason, we are asking for its rehabilitation and we agreed with an Egyptian company to carry out this rehabilitation.

AD: Prime Minister, your visit to Cairo comes while Lebanon is witnessing several diplomatic, economic and political crises. What is your impression of these crises?

NM: Since when has Lebanon not seen crises in the past decades? Lebanon is always besieged with crises.

Unfortunately, the current implementation of Taif agreement and the constitution resulted in crises rather than solving the crises. There are many articles and provisions that have not been implemented like the Constitutional council, the Senate and the cancellation of political sectarianism.

We are moving against the roadmap made by the Taif agreement unfortunately.

AD: You stated that the Lebanese government is working, but at the same time the cabinets meetings are suspended due to the boycott of the Shia duo, Hezbollah and the Amal movement; can you explain to us this contradiction? How are the governmental decrees discussed and taken?

NM: Today, we have a faction from Lebanese society that boycotts the meetings of the cabinet and so I, as Najib Mikati, call for reconciliation and cohesion

Therefore, I work on the government as well as working with the ministers individually or with a group with of them in order to implement the plans we have without returning back to the cabinet, like for instance the gas pipeline agreement with Egypt and Jordan and the development of the Tripoli port.

This means the government is complete and does its role fully, but that does not mean we do not need the cabinet; we need the cabinet, but we have a bigger evil and a smaller evil. The smaller evil protects us from the bigger evil; the smaller evil is when the cabinet does not convene, while the bigger evil is further division between Lebanese people that cant be fixed easily.

AD: But Prime Minister, many say that the cabinet wont hold its meetings if Judge Tarek Bita, who leads the investigations of the 2020 Beirut Port explosion, is not dismissed from his position?

NM: The cabinet will hold its meeting in the right time, but concerning Judge Bitar, the government does not interfere in the work of judiciary and I am one of the people who signed the draft law to establish an independent judiciary authority and I cant contradict myself by interfering in the investigation.

I never interfere in the judiciary ever and I have never spoken with a judge during my political career.

AD: But you have not answered me concerning the linkage between the return of cabinet meetings and the dismissal of Judge Bitar?

NM: There is a constitutional order that stipulates that presidents, ministers and member of parliament stand trial in front of the Supreme Council of the Trial of Ministers and Presidents, which is a court of the highest eight judges, and seven deputies.

As Judge Bitar pursues a former prime minister and ministers, those defendants or witnesses should not be referred to trial or stand a trial in front of the Supreme Council before the parliament says its word on this matter.

I want a separation of powers in Lebanon; there is a military court for the military in Lebanon, and judicial inspection of judges, ministers and presidents has a special body too.

I say it frankly there is a constitutional order higher than law that must be respected.

AD: What are the urgent priorities for the Lebanese government?

NM: There are many different priorities like, first, safeguarding internal security, border security and security with United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFL), financial issues and talks and social issues.

There are three [more] extremely important priorities: first, the financial issue and the talks with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) as well as the plan to return deposits to depositors; second, to solve the electricity crisis; and third, to hold parliamentary elections on time.

AD: Lebanese people are concerned about their deposits and there is some despair that they wont receive them. How do you answer that?

NM: The deposits of the Lebanese people will not be lost.

AD: Lebanon started its talks with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) regarding economic reforms. How will the angry Lebanese street tolerate those reforms and what is the role of the government in this?

NM: The demands of the IMF were nearly implemented without making demands on the Lebanese people in terms of lifting subsidies on goods; today... nothing is subsidized in Lebanon whether medicine or energy or food. The important measures have been carried out and the Lebanese citizen is fully aware that this is one of the conditions to reach an agreement with the IMF.

AD: In April 2020, there was a complete reform plan to end Lebanons financial, economic and social crises but the Lebanese banks objected to the plan. Is there another reform plan you are working on?

NM: Yes, there is a new reform plan, which took into consideration both the rights of the depositors and the interest of the banks in addition to the restructuring of the banks, which is an essential thing to us.

AD: After the visit of French President Emmanuel Macron to Saudi Arabia and the resignation of the Information Minister George Kordahi last week, are there any steps to restore the relations between Lebanon and Gulf state? When will the Saudi ambassador return to Lebanon?

NM: For Lebanon and the Lebanese, we have never thought of cutting relations with any Arab country. We are Arabs and we need our Arab brothers and the relations between Arab countries must be brotherly and the diplomatic relations will return at the right time.

AD: Prime Minister, after the resignation of Information Minister George Kordahi, are you thinking about appointing a new minister or is there is a push to abolish the Ministry of Information? Especially considering that reforms declared by the government in October 2019, following the mass protests, called for abolishing the ministry and replacing it with a national council for visual and audio media?

NM: Frankly, I cant summarize the whole issue. I and his excellency President Michel Aoun accepted the resignation, but we have not resolved yet the matter of appointing a new minister. I have not not deeply discussed with President Aoun appointing a new minister for information, especially since the Ministry of Information does not have a big responsibility.

Currently, Minister of Education and Higher Education Abbas El-Halabi is appointed as acting information minister till we will see what we can do about this matter.

AD: The implementation of the 2006 UN Security Council Resolution No.1680 on the demarcation and control of the Lebanese-Syrian border is of great importance. What are the Lebanese government's steps in implementing the resolution?

NM: For our part, we are ready to demarcate the Lebanese-Syrian border, but can we define these borders on our own? We must start discussing this issue with our Syrian brothers in a fraternal and friendly way, not in a way imposed on us from the outside. When we and the Syrians sit at one table, we will inevitably reach a solution.

AD: From time to time, there are demands to reconsider the Taif Agreement and agree on a new national charter. How do you look to those demands?

NM: Frankly, the Taif Agreement and the constitution are still the best to govern Lebanon, but there is mismanagement and mis-implementation in addition to the failure to complete the agreement.

Before calling to amend Taif Agreement, we should agree to fully implement it and its points. Maybe this will lead us to a Lebanon that is founded on the basis of modern elections that leads to a non-sectarian House of Representatives and a Senate that protects the rights granted in the Taif agreement.

All those matters and issues are mentioned in the Lebanese constitution and Taif agreement. It should be implemented correctly.

AD: Some argue that there are parties that want to prevent or postpone the parliamentary elections by fabricating security threats or exploiting the economic crisis. [What do you think about this claim?]

NM: No one can disrupt the parliamentary elections next year. No one can ask for the postponement of the elections. Although I know that some people do not want to hold elections, I will not entertain debate on this subject. No one can say that I am disrupting the elections.

A version of this interview was originally published in Ahram Daily on 11 December.

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Egypt has codified a host of COVID-19 restrictions, including those regulating facemasks and public gatherings, assigning jail penalties and fines for violators in accordance with the newly issued epidemics and pandemics law.

The measures were published in the official gazette on Wednesday, almost 10 days after the country ratified the new law which regulates the rules of handling the coronavirus pandemic.

The epidemics and pandemics law allows the countrys prime minister to introduce such emergency measures for a limited period of time to safeguard public health.

Many of these restrictions have been in place since the first days of the pandemic.

These restrictions mandate that individuals wear facemasks on public or private transportation and in enclosed and open public venues where social distancing rules are difficult to be maintain.

The decision applies to government institutions, banks, houses of worship, stores, malls, cinemas, theatres, schools, universities and others.

The unvaccinated seeking to receive in-person public services are not allowed into government institutions, neither are unvaccinated state employees allowed into their workplaces.

Alternatively, a negative test certificate conducted no more than three days earlier may be presented.

Coffee shops, restaurants, hostels, and other tourist attractions are not allowed to serve shishas (water pipes), according to the decree, which was issued by the country's supreme committee tasked with managing the pandemic headed by Prime Minister Mostafa Madboly.

The new law also expanded the number of committee members, adding the culture and civil aviation ministers, as well as the presidential adviser for health affairs.

The committee also imposed a ban on wedding parties and funeral services in indoor public places, including inside houses of worship. It also banned religious and popular festivals in both open and enclosed public places.

However, the committee carved out exemption for funerals and prayer services inside large worship houses, provided that attendees adhere to all anti-coronavirus measures.

Visits to mosques' shrines, which can attract large crowds, are also prohibited, according to the Wednesday's decrees.

The committee said that the entry into Egypt by land, sea or air is limited to arrivals who are vaccinated with a vaccine approved by the WHO or the Egyptian Drug Authority (EDA); otherwise arrivals must present a negative PCR test certificate or undergo testing upon arrival.

The decision does not apply to arrivals under 12-years-old.

Punishments are to be imposed on those who contravene the announced measures, the committee said.

Inciting people to violate or disrupt the measures carries a punishment of one year in prison and a fine of no more than EGP 10,000. However, the law allows reconciliation, with violators paying a third of the maximum penalty.

Coronavirus infections and deaths have been on an upward trend as the country is going through the peak of the pandemic's fourth wave.

Thus far, Egypt has a total of 365,831 infections and 20,877 fatalities since the outbreak in February 2020.

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Egypt received on Thursday 1.27 million doses of the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine from Spain via the COVAX initiative, the Spanish embassy in Cairo announced.

According to the Spanish embassy in Cairo, Egypt received on Thursday a shipment of 1,273,600 doses of the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine.

The embassy added that this shipment comes as part of a COVID-19 vaccine grant, which was announced by Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez during his official visit to Egypt in early December.

Sanchez announced that Egypt would receive a total of 4.48 million doses from Spain.

Of this total, Spain delivered 204,000 doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine on 24 November and 3.24 million doses of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine on 28 November, the Spanish embassy stated.

Spain is among the top COVID-19 vaccine donor countries to Egypt, the Spanish embassy said.

Egypt has been supplied with around 98.4 million doses of different coronavirus vaccines, whether wholly made or in the form of raw materials, since the start of the pandemic according to Acting Health Minister Khaled Abdel Ghaffar earlier this week.

Around 51 million doses are ready for use, and about 48 million single doses have been administered, Abdel-Ghaffar said.

Since the beginning of its vaccination campaign early this year, Egypt has imported doses of the Sinopharm, Sinovac, AstraZeneca, Sputnik V, Moderna, Pfizer, and Johnson & Johnson vaccines.

Egypt has also locally produced millions of doses of the Chinese Sinovac vaccine.

The Egyptian government has set a goal to vaccinate 40 million people by the end of 2021.

Thus far, Egypt has had a total of 366,534 infections and 20,919 fatalities since the outbreak in February 2020.

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A Palestinian was killed by Israeli troops during a clash in the northern occupied West Bank on Friday, the Palestinian health ministry said.

The man sustained a gunshot wound to the head during clashes with Israeli forces in the village of Beita and succumbed to his injuries at a hospital in Nablus, the ministry said in a statement.

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A British appellate court has opened the door for Julian Assange to be extradited to the United States by overturning a lower court ruling that found the WikiLeaks founder's mental health was too fragile to withstand the American criminal justice system.

A lower court judge earlier this year refused an American request to extradite Assange to the U.S. to face spying charges over WikiLeaks' publication of secret military documents a decade ago. District Judge Vanessa Baraitser denied extradition on health grounds, saying Assange was likely to kill himself if held under harsh U.S. prison conditions.

The appellate court ruling handed down Friday is likely to be appealed.

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. AP's earlier story follows below.

LONDON (AP) _ Britain's High Court is set to rule Friday on whether to overturn an earlier decision and allow WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange to be sent to the United States to face espionage charges.

A lower court judge earlier this year refused an American request to extradite Assange to the U.S. to face spying charges over WikiLeaks' publication of secret military documents a decade ago. District Judge Vanessa Baraitser denied extradition on health grounds, saying Assange was likely to kill himself if held under harsh U.S. prison conditions.

Appealing against that decision at the High Court in London, an attorney for the U.S. government denied that Assange's mental health was too fragile to withstand the U.S. judicial system. Lawyer James Lewis said Assange ``has no history of serious and enduring mental illness'' and does not meet the threshold of being so ill that he cannot resist harming himself.

U.S. authorities have also told British judges that if they agree to extradite Assange, he could serve any U.S. prison sentence he receives in his native Australia.

U.S. prosecutors have indicted Assange on 17 espionage charges and one charge of computer misuse over WikiLeaks' publication of thousands of leaked military and diplomatic documents. The charges carry a maximum sentence of 175 years in prison, although Lewis said ``the longest sentence ever imposed for this offense is 63 months.''

Assange, 50, is currently being held at London's high-security Belmarsh Prison.

Whichever side loses Friday's decision is likely to appeal.

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A federal appeals court ruled Thursday against an effort by former President Donald Trump to shield documents from the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol.

In a 68-page ruling, the three-judge panel tossed aside Trump's various arguments for blocking through executive privilege records that the committee regards as vital to its investigation into the run-up to the deadly riot aimed at overturning the results of the 2020 presidential election.

Former U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during a rally protesting the Electoral College certification of Joe Biden as President in Washington on Jan. 6, 2021. [File Photo: AP/Evan Vucci]

Judge Patricia Millett, writing for the court, said Congress had uniquely vital interests in studying the events of Jan. 6 and said President Joe Biden had made a carefully reasoned determination that the documents were in the public interest and that executive privilege should therefore not be invoked. Trump also failed to show any harm that would occur from the release of the sought-after records, Millett wrote.

On the record before us, former President Trump has provided no basis for this court to override President Bidens judgment and the agreement and accommodations worked out between the Political Branches over these documents, the opinion states.

It adds, "Both Branches agree that there is a unique legislative need for these documents and that they are directly relevant to the Committees inquiry into an attack on the Legislative Branch and its constitutional role in the peaceful transfer of power.

The appeals court ruled that the injunction that has prevented the National Archives from turning over the documents will expire in two weeks, or when the Supreme Court rules on an expected appeal from Trump, whichever is later. Lawyers for Trump can also ask the entire appeals court to review the case. Seven of the 11 appellate judges on the court were appointed by Democratic presidents, four by Republican presidents.

The panel's leaders, Reps. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., and Liz Cheney, R.-Wyo., hailed the ruling, saying it respects the Select Committees interest in obtaining White House records and the Presidents judgment in allowing those records to be produced. Our work moves ahead swiftly. We will get to the truth.

But Trump's spokeswoman said the matter was far from settled. Regardless of todays decision by the appeals court, this case was always destined for the Supreme Court, Liz Harrington said, President Trumps duty to defend the Constitution and the Office of the Presidency continues, and he will keep fighting for every American and every future Administration.

The court wrote: The privilege being asserted is not a personal privilege belonging to former President Trump; he stewards it for the benefit of the Republic. The interests the privilege protects are those of the Presidency itself, not former President Trump individually. And the President has determined that immediate disclosure will promote, not injure, the national interest, and that delay here is itself injurious.

The court also praised Bidens calibrated judgment in working with Congress and the Archives to weigh privilege concerns, saying it bears no resemblance to the broad and limitless waiver of executive privilege former President Trump decries."

Biden had the committee defer its requests for some of the early documents that might have posed privilege claims, and officials expect more documents in subsequent tranches will be subject to the same outcome.

White House spokesman Mike Gwin said, As President Biden determined, the constitutional protections of executive privilege should not be used to shield information that reflects a clear and apparent effort to subvert the Constitution itself.
KYODO NEWS - Dec 10, 2021 - 16:03 | World, All

China has resumed diplomatic relations with Nicaragua, the Foreign Ministry said Friday, leaving just a record-low 14 countries that recognize self-ruled Taiwan.

Nicaragua is the eighth nation to cut diplomatic ties with the island since Tsai Ing-wen of the independence-leaning Democratic Progressive Party became Taiwan's president in May 2016.

The ministry said in a statement that Nicaragua "commits to abide by the one-China principle" and "undertakes that it shall no longer develop any official relations or official exchanges with Taiwan."

"This is the right choice that is in line with the global trend and has people's support. China highly appreciates this decision," the ministry added.

Nicaraguan Foreign Minister Denis Moncada said the People's Republic of China is the only legitimate government that represents all of China and Taiwan is an inalienable part of the Chinese territory.

Taiwan's Premier Su Tseng-chang lambasted the decision by Nicaragua and China, saying Beijing is taking every measure to isolate the self-ruled island.

Taiwan will strengthen ties with countries that share democracy and other values, Su added.

The United States, which has been deepening its ties with Taiwan as Beijing increases its military and diplomatic pressure on the island, expressed its objection to the latest development.

The State Department said that President Daniel Ortega's regime has no mandate to remove Nicaragua from the "family of American democracies."

The United States is committed to its "one China" policy, which recognizes Beijing as the "sole legal government of China" but allows unofficial ties with Taiwan and assistance to the island in maintaining a sufficient self-defense capability.

China and Taiwan have been governed separately since they split in 1949 amid a civil war. Beijing has since endeavored to diplomatically isolate Taiwan, which it regards as a renegade province to be reunified with the mainland by force if necessary.

Often dangling the prospect of economic assistance, the Communist-led government has sought to chisel away the shrinking group of countries that maintain diplomatic ties with democratic Taiwan, most of which are in Central America.
KYODO NEWS - Dec 10, 2021 - 17:30 | All, Japan

A Japanese anime studio known for producing popular anime series "Demon Slayer" and its president were found guilty Friday of evading a total of 138 million yen ($1.2 million) in corporate and consumption taxes.

The Tokyo District Court sentenced Hikaru Kondo, 52, to 20 months in prison, suspended for three years, and slapped a 30 million yen fine on his company Ufotable Inc. for violating national tax laws.

"Despite the company being in the black since 2012 thanks to the popularity of its high-quality anime works that gained acclaim, (Ufotable) repeatedly underreported sales. As corporate manager, you cannot escape strong criticism," Presiding Judge Akiyuki Tanaka said in handing down the ruling.

But the court gave a suspended sentence to Kondo because he had already paid the evaded tax. Prosecutors had demanded a 20-month jail term for the president and a 40 million yen fine for the company.

According to the ruling, Kondo evaded a total of some 109.2 million yen in corporate taxes by understating the company's income for the fiscal years ending in August 2015, 2017 and 2018.

He also dodged about 28.8 million yen in consumption taxes between September 2014 and August 2018 by not reporting a portion of taxable sales.

Ufotable said in a statement it "offers a heartfelt apology to fans of our works and those concerned."

Related coverage:

"Demon Slayer" grabs top spot in U.S. weekend box office revenues

Japan's comic market expands to record high on "Demon Slayer" love

"Demon Slayer" 1st Japanese film to top 40 bil. yen at box office
KYODO NEWS - Dec 10, 2021 - 22:30 | World, All

Taiwan's Defense Ministry said Friday that 13 Chinese warplanes entered its self-designated air defense identification zone earlier in the day.

The incursions came as the U.S. government hosted a two-day virtual summit from Thursday to counter challenges posed by authoritarianism seen in countries such as China.

Audrey Tang, Taiwan's digital minister, attended the "Summit for Democracy" meeting.

The aircraft included fighter jets, bombers and an anti-submarine patrol plane, the ministry said, adding some of them flew to an area east of Taiwan.

China regards Taiwan as a renegade province and has vowed to reclaim it, by force if necessary.
Delhi:

The HRD Ministry is set to award the Institution of Eminence (IoE) status to Airtel's Bharti University, after Reliance Group's yet-to-be established Jio Institute was given the tag. The University Grants Commission (UGC), in a meeting on Friday, recommended Satya Bharti Foundation's Bharti University's name for granting of the status under the greenfield institution (yet-to-be established) category. Bharti Foundation is the philanthropic arm of Bharti Enterprises, which runs telecom company Airtel, besides insurance company.

"In the greenfield category (institutions which are yet to be established) Bharti institute of Satya Bharti Foundation has been recommended. The greenfield institutions would get three-year period to establish and operationalise the institution, and thereafter, EEC (Empowered Expert Committee) will consider giving IoE status to such institution," a senior HRD Ministry official said. The ministry had last year granted the tag to Jio Institute sparking a row with stakeholders criticising the move as a favour to coroporates.

Following the controversy, the HRD Ministry had clarified that the institutions in the category will only get a "Letter of Intent" for now and their applications have been evaluated on basis of their proposals outlining availability of land, putting in place a core team with qualification and experience, making funding available for setting up the institution and a strategic action plan with annual milestones.
Delhi:

India once again told the US in clear terms that nay discussion on Kashmir will be with Pakistan only. External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar took to Twitter to make the statement hours after reports came that US President Donald Trump reiterated the Kashmir mediation offer. In a series of tweets, Jaishankar posted pictures of his meeting with US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. Tagging Pompeo, Jaishankar wrote, Wide ranging discussions with @SecPompeo on regional issues. Have conveyed to American counterpart @SecPompeo this morning in clear terms that any discussion on Kashmir, if at all warranted, will only be with Pakistan and only bilaterally.

Have conveyed to American counterpart @SecPompeo this morning in clear terms that any discussion on Kashmir, if at all warranted, will only be with Pakistan and only bilaterally.  Dr. S. Jaishankar (@DrSJaishankar) August 2, 2019

Trump reignited the mediation debate with his statement today. Addressing medias queries about Trumps offer and subsequent reactions form the two nuclear neighbours in south Asia. "It's really up to Prime Minister (Narendra) Modi (to accept the offer of mediation)," Trump said. When asked about India's rejection of his mediation offer, Trump sought a clarification. "Have they accepted the offer or not?" "I think they are fantastic people - Khan and Modi -- I mean. I would imagine they could get along very well, but if they wanted somebody to intervene, to help them and I spoke with Pakistan about that and I spoke frankly in (sic) India about it," Trump said.

India has been maintaining that the Kashmir issue was a bilateral one and no third party has any role. Khan welcomed Trump's remarks and said if the US agrees, prayers of more than a billion people will be with him. He was accompanied by Army chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa, Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) chief Lt Gen Faiz Hameed and Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi among others.

India has not been engaging with Pakistan since an attack on the Air Force base at Pathankot in January of 2016 by Pakistan-based terrorists, maintaining that talks and terror cannot go together.

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New Delhi:

The Supreme Court on Friday directed the Centre to take a decision by August 14 on top court collegium's recommendation to appoint Justice AA Kureshi as the Chief Justice of the Madhya Pradesh High Court.

A bench headed by Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi was told by Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, appearing for the Centre, that the Union government be given 10 days more for taking the decision as Parliament was still in session. "Whatever decision you want to take, take that and place it before the court," the bench said, adding that it can be put either on the judicial side or on the administrative side.

The bench, also comprising justices Deepak Gupta and Aniruddha Bose, was hearing a PIL filed by the Gujarat High Court Advocates Association (GHCAA) seeking a direction to the Centre to act upon the May 10 recommendation of the collegium to appoint Justice Kureshi, who is currently the Bombay High Court judge, as the Chief Justice of the Madhya Pradesh High Court. The Centre had earlier told the apex court that the issue of appointment of Justice Kureshi was "under consideration".

READ | Unnao rape survivor to be treated in Lucknow as Supreme Court defers decision on airlifting

During a previous hearing, counsel appearing for the Bar body said the Centre has "only the role of a 'distinguished communicator' as per the Memorandum of Procedure (MoP) and the Department of Justice is only to announce the appointment".

Referring to clauses of the MoP, which prescribe the procedure of appointment of judges in the Supreme Court and high courts, the Bar body submitted that the Centre has not much role in it after the collegium clears the name.

The lawyers' body had alleged that the Centre cleared the appointment of chief justices of other high courts, the recommendation of which was made by the three-member apex court collegium before the summer vacation.

The Centre, however, did not clear the file for appointment of Justice Kureshi as the Chief Justice and on June 7, came out with a notification appointing Justice Ravi Shanker Jha as Acting Chief Justice of the Madhya Pradesh High Court, it said.

READ | Ayodhya Case: Supreme Court to conduct hearing on day-to-day basis from August 6

Appointment of Justice Kureshi as the Chief Justice of the Madhya Pradesh High Court was recommended by the collegium on May 10.

The collegium's resolution had stated, "Justice A A Kureshi is the senior-most Judge from the Gujarat High Court and at present is functioning, on transfer, in the Bombay High Court. Having regard to all relevant factors, the Collegium is of the considered view that Justice A A Kureshi is suitable in all respects for being appointed as Chief Justice of the Madhya Pradesh High Court. The Collegium resolves to recommend accordingly."

The GHCAA petition highlighted that 18 other additional judges of different high courts were appointed after May 10. The association contended that the "reluctance" of the Centre to appoint Justice Kureshi as the Chief Justice of the Madhya Pradesh High Court is against the procedure laid down in the MoP and amounts to violation of articles 14 and 217 of the Constitution.

READ | Mayawati smells conspiracy in Unnao rape survivors accident, seeks Supreme Court intervention

The lawyers body said the inaction on the part of the Centre was an attack on the independence of the judiciary and diminishes the primacy of the judiciary in the matters of appointment and transfer of judges to the high courts and the Supreme Court.

GHCAA president Yatin Oza had reportedly said that Justice Kureshi was being singled out for an order passed by him in 2010, remanding current Union Home Minister Amit Shah to police custody.

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New Delhi:

The Rajya Sabha on Thursday passed the National Medical Commission Bill, 2019. The National Medical Commission Bill and the UAPA (Amendment) Bill were taken up in the Upper House today.

Earlier, the resident doctors in Delhi decided to withdraw all kind of services, including that of emergency department, on August 1 to protest the introduction of the National Medical Commission (NMC) Bill in the Rajya Sabha. Amid widespread protests, Health Minister Harsh Vardhan in a late night tweet said he would table the NMC bill for consideration and passage in the Rajya Sabha on August 1.

Hundreds of doctors at several government hospitals, including AIIMS, RML Hospital, Safdarjung Hospital and LNJP Hospital, boycotted work, held marches and raised slogans to protest against the National Medical Commission Bill which is currently under discussion at Rajya Sabha.

They have also threatened to continue their strike for an indefinite period if the bill is passed. The bill, which seeks to replace the graft-tainted Medical Council of India (MCI), got the nod of Lok Sabha on July 29.

Protests by resident doctors and undergraduate students of AIIMS and Safdarjung hospitals hit traffic on the stretch of road between Ring Road and Parliament as they tried to march towards Parliament. They were detained by police.

Another group of doctors, associated with Federation of Resident Doctors Association (FORDA), who had planned to march to Parliament from RML Hospital, were prevented from venturing out, FORDAs general secretary Dr Sunil Arora claimed.

Patients unaware of the stir reached hospitals only to return or wait interminably to be attended.

Resident doctors of Lok Nayak Jayaprakash Hospital, B R Ambedkar Medical College and Hospital, DDU Hospital and Sanjay Gandhi Memorial Hospital have also boycotted work and joined the stir.

At LNJP Hopsital, Delhi governments largest facility, the entire OPD was shut and emergency department saw very few patients.

We have a footfall of 9,000 per day in the OPD, and about 900 visit ER facility. Today, many patients, a large number of them from outstation cities, had to go back as the OPD is closed. In ER department, about 300 have visited so far, and we are managing with medical teaching staff from our college, LNJP Medical Superintendent Kishore Singh said.

Pankaj Pandey, a resident of Ghaziabad, had come for his check-up but had to wait for long hours, and eventually had to return home in vain.

The emergency departments and ICUs at many hospitals were managed with the help of faculty members, sponsored residents, pool officers, faculty members of other medical or surgical departments, while OPDs, radio-diagnosis and laboratory diagnosis services functioned on a restricted basis in some health facilities and shut at many other places.

Routine surgeries were cancelled and only emergency cases were taken in several facilities, authorities said.

We usually perform around 150-180 surgeries in a day. All the routine planned surgeries were cancelled and only emergency cases were attended to, Dr Sunil Gupta, Medical Superintendent at Safdarjung Hospital said.

Hospitals in the national capital put in place contingency plans as regular services were severely affected.

Patients, many from neighbouring cities, bore the maximum brunt of the strike as they faced a lot of hassle in accessing medical care or waited for long hours at OPDs of hospitals due to shortage of staff.

Sixty-year-old Shashi Devi, a native of Uttar Pradesh, said she along with her ill son and husband reached the national capital on Wednesday, and wanted to consult a doctor for her son on Thursday, but could not do so and was asked to come later.

We are hearing that the strike is for an indefinite period. I dont know how we will manage our stay in Delhi, as since yesterday we are on the pavement of the road facing the AIIMS, she rued.

The medical fraternity is opposing the bill saying it was anti-poor, anti-student and undemocratic.

The Indian Medical Association, which has also expressed reservations over several sections of the bill had given a call for a 24-hour withdrawal of non-essential services on Wednesday across the country. In a statement it has warned the government of intensifying the agitation if the grievances of the medical fraternity are not addressed.

The provisions of the said bill are nothing short of draconian and promote gross incompetence and mockery of professionals currently working day and night and sacrificing their youth for this broken system.

If it is tabled in its current form in Rajya Sabha without any amendments, the medical fraternity across the country will be forced to resort to extreme measures, which may hamper healthcare services nationwide. We will withdraw from essential and non-essential services from hospitals for an indefinite period, the AIIMS RDA, the FORDA and the Untied-RDA said in a joint statement.

The Bill provides for setting up of a National Medical Commission in place of the MCI for development and regulation of all aspects of medical education, profession and institutions.

Doctors are demanding certain amendments in the bill. According to them, if not amended, the bill will lead to deterioration of medical education and degradation of healthcare services.

The fraternity is opposing section 32(1), (2) and (3) of the bill saying it will encourage quackery by providing licence to practice modern medicine as community health providers for persons other than those possessing MBBS degrees.

They expressed uncertainty over the introduction of NEXT and scrapping the NEET-PG. They are also opposing decreasing the percentage of seats under controlled fees structure in private medical colleges and deemed universities from 85 to 50 per cent, reducing the representation of elected members from 75 per cent in MCI to 20 per cent in National Medical Commission and autonomous boards constituted there-under.

They are objecting to section 45 of the bill, which, they claim, empowers the Union government to override any suggestion of the National Medical Commission.

The bill proposes a common final-year MBBS examination, to be known as the National Exit Test (NEXT), for admission to post-graduate medical courses and for obtaining a licence to practise medicine.

It would also act as a screening test for foreign medical graduates, official sources said.

(With agency inputs)

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Unnao:

He is an accused of raping a teenage girl and killing her two family members. Yet, expelled BJP legislator from Uttar Pradesh Kuldeep Singh Sengar possesses his arms licence. The reason: The delay in the judicial process, say the police. "The cancellation of the arms licence is a judicial matter and not administrative. A decision on it can only be taken after (the court) hearing both the parties," District Magistrate Divendra Kumar Pandey said.

"The police has filed its report in connection with the cancellation of the licence and the MLA's lawyer has also filed a reply on behalf of Sengar. Since lawyers had been on strike, hearing could not take place. Now a decision will be taken," he said.

Sengar has licence to possess a single barrel gun, a rifle and a revolver.

The MLA from Bangermau in Unnao district was arrested by the CBI on April 13, 2018 and is lodged in Sitapur district jail. The process to cancel his gun licence is on since.

The woman, allegedly raped by BJP MLA Kuldeep Singh Sengar in 2017 when she was a minor, is battling for life after a truck rammed into the car she was travelling in with some family members and her lawyer. Two of her aunts died in the accident last Sunday.

Her family alleges that the collision was a deliberate attempt to kill her by those close to the MLA.

The apex court also directed shifting of the rape victim's uncle from Raebareli jail to Tihar and deferred the matter for further order on Monday.

His wife was in the ill-fated car and had died in the accident. He participated in her cremation on Wednesday after the Allahabad High Court granted him parole for a day.

He has been convicted in a 19-year-old case and sentenced to 10 years jail term on a case filed by Sengar's brother, Atul Singh.

The apex court also directed all media houses not to disclose the identity of the victim directly, indirectly, or in any manner.

During the brief hearing, the Uttar Pradesh government informed the bench that the interim compensation of Rs 25 lakh has already been released to the victim's family.

The Supreme Court has deferred hearing in the rape case for Monday.

(With PTI inputs)

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New Delhi :

The health condition of Unnao rape survivor and her lawyer, who were critically injured in a car accident alleged planned by the key accused in the case, now expelled BJP MLA Kuldeep Singh Sengar, is improving, Lucknow District Magistrate (DM) Raj Sharma said on Thursday.

"There is improvement in the health condition of Unnao rape survivor and her lawyer who are admitted in King George Medical University hospital, Lucknow. Family is satisfied with the treatment being provided here," the Lucknow DM said.

However, the statement of the hospital, where the girl is undergoing treatment, said that both - the girl and her lawyer - are critical and remain on life support.

"Their condition is critical. Both are on ventilator. But their condition is stable like yesterday. Their treatment is being done by a team of experts free of cost," the King George Medical University hospital said hours before DM's claim.

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The Unnao rape survivor and her lawyer were critically injured and two of hers aunts, who were also the key witnesses in the case, were killed after a speeding truck with its number plate painted black crushed their car. The family of the girl has alleged that accident was a planned conspiracy by the now expelled BJP MLA to eliminate the victim.

Earlier in the day, the Supreme Court transferred all the five cases linked to the Unnao rape survivor from the CBI court in Uttar Pradesh to Delhi and said the designated judge in the national capital will commence the trial on a day-to-day basis and complete the trial within 45 days.

"Taking into account the ground stated in transfer petition, and letter to the CJI, we order the transfer of all the cases from the CBI court in UP to Delhi,' the top court said.

The court has also directed the state to pay a compensation of Rs 25 lakh to the Unnao rape survivor. The victim and her family will now be provided protection by the central security forces, the top court ruled. Following the Supreme Court order, the District Magistrate also handed over a compensation cheque of Rs 25 lakh to the family members of the victim.

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New Delhi:

Reacting to Pakistans offer to provide consular access of Kulbhushan Jadhav to India, the MEA on Thursday said that the proposal sent by Pakistan is being evaluated by the government as per the guidelines given by ICJ. The response is to be sent will be given by the government through diplomatic channels.

"We have received a proposal from Pakistan. We are evaluating the proposal in the light of ICJ judgement. We will maintain communication with Pakistan in this matter through diplomatic channels," Raveesh Kumar said.

Indian national Kulbhushan Jadhav, who is on death row in Pakistan, will be granted consular access by Friday, Foreign Office spokesman Mohammad Faisal said on Thursday. Jadhav, 49, a retired Indian Navy officer, was sentenced to death by a Pakistani military court on charges of espionage and terrorism in April 2017 following which India had moved the International Court of Justice (ICJ), seeking a stay on his death sentence and further remedies.

Also read: After ICJ verdict, Pakistan finally offers consular access to Kulbhushan Jadhav: Reports

Pakistan is awaiting Indian response after it formally informed the Indian High Commission here, Faisal said at the weekly media briefing. The move comes two weeks after the ICJ ordered Pakistan on July 17 to undertake an effective review and reconsideration of the conviction and sentence of Jadhav and also to grant consular access to India without further delay.

In its 42-page ruling, the ICJ ruled that Pakistan had breached the Vienna Convention on diplomatic relations, which gives countries the right to consular access when their nationals are arrested abroad. Pakistan claims that its security forces arrested Jadhav from restive Balochistan province on March 3, 2016 after he reportedly entered from Iran.

However, India maintains that Jadhav was kidnapped from Iran where he had business interests after retiring from the Navy.

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New Delhi:

Coffee Day Enterprises stock plunged over 48 per cent in four days to hit its fresh lower circuit limit as wary investors took to selling amid slew of negative news aswirl about the company.

In four days of heavy selling, when shares of the company have tanked over 48 per cent, its market valuation has been eroded by Rs 1,956.6 crore to Rs 2,110.40 crore on the BSE.

On Friday, the scrip plummeted 9.96 per cent to a fresh 52-week low as well as lower circuit of Rs 99.90 on the BSE.

At the NSE, it cracked 10 per cent to its lower circuit limit and one-year low of Rs 99.45.

Coffee Day Enterprises on Wednesday named independent director S V Ranganath as the interim chairman of the company to replace its founder VG Siddhartha, who was confirmed dead, days after he went missing.

Siddharthas body was recovered from a river near Mangalore on Wednesday.

The coffee tycoon seemed to be under severe financial stress before his death with his Coffee Day Enterprises liabilities doubling to over Rs 5,200 crore and his unlisted ventures for realty and hospitality having similar levels of debt, as per regulatory filings with stock exchanges and the corporate affairs ministry.

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Srinagar:

The National Conference and the Peoples Democratic Party reacted strongly to the security advisory on Friday asking Amarnath pilgrims and tourists to leave Kashmir as soon as possible. National Conference leader Omar Abdullah said the directive would do nothing to dampen the sense of fear that is prevailing in the Valley.

"Although this unprecedented order would seem to suggest a genuine fear of a massive terror strike directed at Amarnath ji yatris or/and tourists this will do nothing to dampen the sense of fear & foreboding that prevails in the valley at the moment," Abdullah said in a series of tweets.

Although this unprecedented order would seem to suggest a genuine fear of a massive terror strike directed at Amarnath ji yatris or/and tourists this will do nothing to dampen the sense of fear & foreboding that prevails in the valley at the moment. https://t.co/qF99X0nAx6  Omar Abdullah (@OmarAbdullah) August 2, 2019

The comments come after the Jammu and Kashmir adminstration asked Amarnath pilgrims and tourists to immediately cut short their stay in the Valley and return as soon as possible in the wake of intelligence inputs of "specific terror threats" to the pilgrimage.

"Seriously? You think an official order telling tourists to leave immediately will not cause them to run from the valley as fast as they can? Which tourist will hang around after seeing this order. The airport & highway will be choked with people leaving," he tweeted.

First the avalanche of private orders about stocking up supplies that somehow made their way into public domain. And now news like this will create panic & distress. So far, GOIs resorted to military might & psychological warfare like techniques vis a vis J&K. Neither will work pic.twitter.com/wKqdTylWcH  Mehbooba Mufti (@MehboobaMufti) August 2, 2019

PDP president Mehbooba Mufti alleged that the Centre had resorted to "military might" and techniques like "psychological warfare" in the state.

"First the avalanche of private orders about stocking up supplies that somehow made their way into public domain. And now news like this will create panic & distress," Mufti tweeted.

"So far, GOI's resorted to military might & psychological warfare like techniques vis a vis J&K. Neither will work," she added.

Former IAS officer-turned-politician Shah Faesal asked if the administration was going to issue a separate advisory for the locals of Kashmir.

"JK Govt has asked Tourists and Amarnath Yatris to leave Kashmir immediately in view of a security threat. Is the Government considering any such advisory for locals also?" he asked. "Should Kashmiris also migrate to other places or is it that our lives do not matter?"

Why was Parliament not taken into confidence?: Left parties

Left parties hit out at the government, saying Parliament should have been taken into confidence before sending out such a missive.

In a tweet, CPI(M) general secretary Sitaram Yechury also alleged that rumours were being allowed to fester in Jammu and Kashmir. The Jammu and Kashmir government asked the Amarnath pilgrims and tourists on Friday to immediately make necessary arrangements to cut short their stay in the Valley and return as soon as possible in the wake of intelligence inputs of "specific terror threats" to the pilgrimage.

"Parliament is in session. Why isn't the PM taking the House into confidence? The panic and rumours allowed to fester in J&K are helping nobody," Yechury said in the tweet.

The Communist Party of India (Marxist) leader also tagged a news report about the security advisory issued by the Jammu and Kashmir government along with his tweet.

Communist Party of India (CPI) general secretary D Raja said terrorism was an issue that concerned the entire nation, all political parties spoke in one voice on it and the government was duty-bound to inform Parliament about the situation in Jammu and Kashmir.

"Terrorism is not a partisan issue. The government should tell Parliament as well as the nation what is really happening there. In the struggle against terrorism, the country stands as one. The government should take all political parties into confidence. It is a common fight, common concern," he said.

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Delhi:

A 31-year-old woman on Thursday allegedly attempted to end her life by jumping on a Delhi metro rail track as she cited sexual harassment by her landlord as the reason for her taking the extreme step, officials said. They said the incident took place at about 11 am at the Inderlok station when the woman, along with her two children, began approaching the railway track.

She probably wanted to end her and her two children's lives, a 10-year-old boy and a 12-year-old girl, they said. However, the boy wriggled out from his mother's grip and informed an on-duty CISF jawan about her intentions. A Central Industrial Security Force team quickly rushed and intercepted the woman and brought her to the station control room, the officials said.

She claimed during her grilling by the officials that her husband was working in Australia and her landlord had sexually assaulted her in his absence, they said. The woman said she gave a written complaint at the Moti Nagar police station about the alleged sexual assault but seeing no results she decided to take the extreme step of killing herself with her kids, the officials said.

The woman has been handed over to the Delhi Metro rail police for further probe on the allegations made by her, they said.
Srinagar:

The Indian and Chinese armies on Thursday held a ceremonial border personnel meeting at the Chushul-Moldo and DBO-TWD meeting points in eastern Ladakh of Jammu and Kashmiron on the occasion of China's People's Liberation Army Day.

"A ceremonial border personnel meeting (BPM) on the occasion of 'PLA Day' was conducted today at the Chushul-Moldo and DBO-TWD meeting points in Eastern Ladakh. The Indian delegations were led by Brig H S Gill and Col SS Lamba while the Chinese delegations were headed by Sr Col Cao Guo Sheng and Col Shong Chen Lee respectively," a defence spokesman said in Srinagar.

He said the meeting was marked by saluting of the national flag by delegation members of both countries. It was followed by the ceremonial addresses by delegation leaders of both sides.

The defence personnel from both countries also exchanged greetings and good wishes and passed a vote of thanks, reflecting the mutual desire to maintain and improve functional-level relations at the border.

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The spokesman said both the delegations interacted in a free, congenial and cordial environment. "This continuing interaction between border troops of both nations has created an environment of mutual trust and bonhomie along the border," he said.

The delegation parted amidst a feeling of friendship and commitment towards enhancing the existing cordial relations and maintaining peace along the Line of Actual Control, the spokesman added.

Both sides also sought to respect the mutual commitment to uphold the treaties and agreements signed between the two governments, seeking to maintain peace and tranquillity along the LAC, he said. Similar meetings were held earlier this year on two meeting points on the occasion of Indian Republic Day.

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New Delhi:

Gold prices edged marginally up by Rs 15 at Rs 35,795 per 10 gram but silver plunged by Rs 590 to Rs 41,530 per kg in the national capital as caution prevailed in view of weak global cues and lacklustre domestic buying, according to the All India Sarafa Association.

In the global market, gold was trading lower at USD 1,407 an ounce and silver price was down at USD 16.12 an ounce in New York.

The American currency rose 0.40 per cent to 98.91 against a basket of major currencies, further putting pressure on gold rates.

The yellow metal witnessed a selling pressure after the US Federal Reserve failed to give further clarity over future rate cuts, HDFC Securities Senior Analyst (Commodities) Tapan Patel said.

The US Fed cut the benchmark lending rate by 25 basis points to 2.0-2.25 per cent on Wednesday for the first time in more than a decade.

In the national capital, gold of 99.9 per cent and 99.5 per cent purity gained Rs 15 each to Rs 35,795 per 10 gram and Rs 35,625 per 10 gram, respectively.

Sovereign gold held steady at Rs 27,500 per eight gram.

Silver ready plummeted by Rs 590 to Rs 41,530 per kg, while weekly-based delivery plunged Rs 864 to Rs 40,570 per kg.

Price of silver coins traded lower by Rs 1000 to Rs 84,000 for buying and Rs 85,000 for selling of 100 pieces.

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Mumbai:

The lenders to the defunct Jet Airways on Thursday discussed the feasibility of extending the deadline for submitting expressions of interest for stake sale in the bankrupt airline having received four parties showing preliminary interest.

Late last month, the resolution professional Ashish Chhawchharia had floated EoIs for selling stake in the airline that stopped flying mid-April. The deadline for receipt of EoIs was kept as August 3.

"Bankers discussed about possibility of extending the deadline to receive EoIs," a banking source told PTI. At least four investors have shown interest in the assets of the airline, he said.

Meanwhile, the lead banker to the company State Bank of India has approved a Rs 10 crore interim funding to the airline and other banks are also in the process of approving the same, he said.

READ | Pay Rs 18,000 crore to travel abroad: Delhi High Court to Jet Airways founder Naresh Goyal

The lenders also discussed the criterion for evaluation of bids of the same amount, said another banker. The issue of releasing one-month salary to the employees, as suggested by NCLT was also discussed at the meeting.

On July 23, NCLT judges VP Singh and Ravikumar Duraisamy, had asked Chhawchharia to discuss the salary concerns with the lenders.

The tribunal said even if 100 per cent cannot be paid some amount of the salaries have to be given as it is important for the survival of the employees.

The lenders, who had been owning the airline since March 25 with 51 percent stake, had on June 17 decided to take the airline, which stopped flying on April 17, to the NCLT as they could not find a buyer.

Early July RP had said he had received claims worth over Rs 25,500 crore as of July 4, including over Rs 200 crore from founder Naresh Goyal, submitted by the holding company of the airline JetAir, but was rejected.

READ | Government orders probe against Jet Airways over alleged fund mismanagement

State Bank has made a claim of Rs 1,644 crore, including cash credit inclusive of interest, term loans and bank guarantees. Yes Bank has claimed Rs 1,084 crore, followed by PNBs Rs 963 crore and IDBI Banks Rs 594 crore.

Operational creditors excluding workmen and employees have made a claim of Rs 12,372 crore, with the entire amount being under verification, while the workmen and employees have made a claim of Rs 443 crore which is also under verification.

Apart from this, authorised representatives of workmen and employees have made 11,965 claims of Rs 735 crore, he said, adding other creditors, including other financial creditors and operational creditors, have made 121 claims amounting to Rs 1,105 crore.

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New Delhi:

The BJP is an "organic" entity and not an "assembled" entity, Prime Minister Narendra Modi told the ruling party lawmakers in New Delhi as he asked them to remain active as ground workers even after becoming ministers or legislators. "The BJP is an organic entity and not an assembled entity. It has reached here because of its ideology and thoughts not because of one family's legacy," Modi told the BJP MPs during a two-day training programmes for them.

"The party worker in you should remain alive always even if you become a minister or an MP. Irrespective of your age, always remain a student so that learning process goes on," Modi was quoted as saying by Parliamentary Affairs Minister Pralhad Joshi.

The PM was addressing the BJP lawmakers at a two-day training programme for them that began on Saturday. During the training programme, the party MPs will also be addressed by Home Minister Amit Shah, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh and party working president JP Nadda.

The training programme, "Abhyas Varga", is being organised at Parliament and issues like the party's ideology and Parliamentary procedures will be discussed at length.

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New Delhi:

Amid the intelligence inputs of terrorist attack threats in Jammu and Kashmir, authorities on Friday issued an advisory asking tourists and Amarnath Yatris to "immediately" curtail their stay in the Valley and return to their homes "as soon as possible". The advisory issued by Principal Secretary to Government Shaleen Kabra said that given the prevailing situation in Kashmir, it will be in the interest of safety and security of the tourists and Amarnath Yatris to leave the Valley.

"Keeping in view the latest intelligence inputs of terror threats, with specific targeting of the Amarnath Yatra, and given the prevailing security situation in the Kashmir Valley, in the interest of safety and security of the tourists and Amarnath Yatris, it is advised that they may curtail their stay in the Valley immediately and take necessary measures to return as soon as possible," the advisory said.

The government's advisory has come hours after the Indian Army revealed that they have confirmed intelligence reports that terrorists backed by the Pakistan Army are trying to disrupt the Amarnath Yatra. Addressing a joint presser with CRPF and Jammu and Kashmir Police, the Army said that they have recovered a landmine and a sniper rifle with Pakistan ordnance factory markings from the route of the pilgrimage.

Also Read | Air force, Army on high alert after mega troop deployment in Kashmir: Report

The revelation comes in the backdrop of massive troops buildup in Kashmir. After rushing 10,000 troops of paramilitary forces to Kashmir last, the central on Thursday moved over 280 companies of security forces, which makes more 28,000 troops, to the Valley. It has also pressed the Indian Air Force aircraft including the C-17 heavy lift plane into service.

The troops buildup in the Kashmir triggered speculations among locals that the central government may be planning to abrogate of Article 35A of the Constitution, which gaurantees special rights to the people of Kashmir. However, Jammu and Kashmir Governor Satya Pal Malik had on Tuesday cleared the air and said that there was no plan to scrap Article 35A.

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New Delhi:

Kiara Advani is currently basking in the success of her latest release, Kabir Singh. The actress starred opposite Shahid Kapoor and their chemistry has garnered a lot of praise from the audience. The film has collected Rs 275 crore at the box-office and become the highest-grossing film of 2019.

Kiara recently celebrated her 27th birthday on July 31. From Karan Johar to Shahid Kapoor, several bigwigs of Bollywood attended the birthday bash of the gorgeous actress. The stunner took the internet by a storm with her all-white look. Advani wore a white satin skirt with a matching bralette. She teamed her outfit with a white quilted Chanel cross-body bag. Can you guess the price of this beautiful bag?

The official website describes the waist bag as, "Lambskin, Gold-Tone & Silver-Tone Metal" and it costs $5,000 that roughly comes up to Rs 3,47,974.

Meanwhile, in Kabir Singh, Kiara played the role of a medical student Preeti. Directed by Sandeep Vanga Reddy, it is a remake of Telugu blockbuster Arjun Reddy, which starred Vijay Devarakonda and Shalini Pandey.

According to Kiara, Sandeep approached her through a casting agent after watching her performance in Telugu film Bharat Ane Nenu, in which she starred opposite Mahesh Babu. "I did a screen test for 'Kabir Singh' and Sandeep sir liked it. Things were almost locked but then for reasons best known it did not work out then. The film went through casting changes and one day it came back to me. I did ask the director why cast me again? He said because 'I only see you'. He was convinced that only I could do this film. I truly believe films are in your destiny."

She will be next seen in Raj Mehta's Good News. She is sharing screen space with Akshay Kumar, Kareena Kapoor Khan and Diljit Dosanjh in the movie. Good News is due to release on December 27, 2019. She will also be teaming up with rumoured beau Siddharth Malhotra for Shamshera.
Delhi:

Days after crucial verdict by the International Court of Justice, Pakistan will finally grant consular access to Kulbhushan Jadhav tomorrow. Various Pakistani media reports suggest that official communication has already been sent from Islamabad to New Delhi. The decision comes after the ICJ verdict on July 19 that ordered the Pakistani administration to reconsider the death sentence awarded to Jadhav and grant consular access to the former Indian Navy official.

After the verdict, Pakistan had issued a statement in which it said, Pursuant to the decision of the ICJ, Commander Kulbushan Jadhav has been informed of his rights under Article 36, Paragraph 1(b) of the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations." The statement further added the operative part that India has been demanding since the time Jadhav was arrested. "As a responsible state, Pakistan will grant consular access to Commander Kulbushan Jadhav according to Pakistani laws, for which modalities are being worked out," it said. The retired Indian Navy officer was sentenced to death by a Pakistani military court on charges of "espionage and terrorism" in April 2017.

Despite massive embarrassment at the International Court of Justice in connection with the Kulbhushan Jadhav case, Pakistan remains adamant in its approach. It was evident form the tweet of Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan, who said that Kulbhushan Jadhav was guilty of crimes against people of Pakistan. He also highlighted the fact that the ICJ had not acquitted Jadhav. Appreciate ICJs decision not to acquit, release & return Commander Kulbhushan Jadhav to India. He is guilty of crimes against the people of Pakistan. Pakistan shall proceed further as per law, Khan said on micro-blogging site. Khans tweet mirrors the statement made by Pakistans foreign ministry shortly after the verdict, which directed Pakistan to grant consular access to KJadhav. The verdict had also asked Islamabad to reconsider the death penalty.

The Foreign Office in a statement said Pakistan as a responsible member of the international community upheld its commitment from the very beginning of the case by appearing before the court for the provisional measures hearing despite a very short notice. Having heard the judgment, Pakistan will now proceed as per law, the statement said. The statement claimed that the Hague-based ICJ in its judgment did not accept Indias plea to acquit/release Jadhav. The Foreign Office reiterated that Jadhav entered Pakistan without a visa on authentic Indian Passport with a fake alias Hussain Mubarak Patel.

Jadhav, 49, a retired Indian Navy officer, was sentenced to death by the Pakistani military court on charges of "espionage and terrorism" after a closed trial in April 2017. His sentencing evoked a sharp reaction in India. Reading out the verdict, President of the Court Judge Abdulqawi Ahmed Yusuf ordered an "effective review and reconsideration of the conviction and sentence of Mr Kulbhushan Sudhir Jadhav". The verdict went India's way by a resounding 15 votes to one.

However, despite massive embarrassment at the International Court of Justice in connection with the Kulbhushan Jadhav case, Pakistan remains adamant in its approach. It was evident form the tweet of Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan, who said that Kulbhushan Jadhav was guilty of crimes against people of Pakistan. He also highlighted the fact that the ICJ had not acquitted Jadhav. Appreciate ICJs decision not to acquit, release & return Commander Kulbhushan Jadhav to India. He is guilty of crimes against the people of Pakistan. Pakistan shall proceed further as per law, Khan said on micro-blogging site. Khans tweet mirrors the statement made by Pakistans foreign ministry shortly after the verdict, which directed Pakistan to grant consular access to Jadhav. The verdict had also asked Islamabad to reconsider the death penalty.

Making a statement in both houses of Parliament on the ICJ judgement, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar had said, "Pakistan was found to have deprived India of the right to communicate with Jadhav, have access to him, visit him in detention and arrange his legal representation"."Kulbhushan Jadhav is innocent of the charges made against him. His forced confession without legal representation and due process will not change this reality," he said. "We once again call upon Pakistan to release and repatriate him forthwith," the minister said.

Despite massive embarrassment at the International Court of Justice in connection with the Kulbhushan Jadhav case, Pakistan remains adamant in its approach. It was evident form the tweet of Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan, who said that Kulbhushan Jadhav was guilty of crimes against people of Pakistan. He also highlighted the fact that the ICJ had not acquitted Jadhav. Appreciate ICJs decision not to acquit, release & return Commander Kulbhushan Jadhav to India. He is guilty of crimes against the people of Pakistan. Pakistan shall proceed further as per law, Khan said on micro-blogging site. Khans tweet mirrors the statement made by Pakistans foreign ministry shortly after the verdict, which directed Pakistan to grant consular access to KJadhav. The verdict had also asked Islamabad to reconsider the death penalty.

The Foreign Office in a statement said Pakistan as a responsible member of the international community upheld its commitment from the very beginning of the case by appearing before the court for the provisional measures hearing despite a very short notice. Having heard the judgment, Pakistan will now proceed as per law, the statement said. The statement claimed that the Hague-based ICJ in its judgment did not accept Indias plea to acquit/release Jadhav. The Foreign Office reiterated that Jadhav entered Pakistan without a visa on authentic Indian Passport with a fake alias Hussain Mubarak Patel.

Jadhav, 49, a retired Indian Navy officer, was sentenced to death by the Pakistani military court on charges of "espionage and terrorism" after a closed trial in April 2017. His sentencing evoked a sharp reaction in India. Reading out the verdict, President of the Court Judge Abdulqawi Ahmed Yusuf ordered an "effective review and reconsideration of the conviction and sentence of Mr Kulbhushan Sudhir Jadhav". The verdict went India's way by a resounding 15 votes to one.

However, despite massive embarrassment at the International Court of Justice in connection with the Kulbhushan Jadhav case, Pakistan remains adamant in its approach. It was evident form the tweet of Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan, who said that Kulbhushan Jadhav was guilty of crimes against people of Pakistan. He also highlighted the fact that the ICJ had not acquitted Jadhav. Appreciate ICJs decision not to acquit, release & return Commander Kulbhushan Jadhav to India. He is guilty of crimes against the people of Pakistan. Pakistan shall proceed further as per law, Khan said on micro-blogging site. Khans tweet mirrors the statement made by Pakistans foreign ministry shortly after the verdict, which directed Pakistan to grant consular access to KJadhav. The verdict had also asked Islamabad to reconsider the death penalty.

Making a statement in both houses of Parliament on the ICJ judgement, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar said, "Pakistan was found to have deprived India of the right to communicate with Jadhav, have access to him, visit him in detention and arrange his legal representation"."Kulbhushan Jadhav is innocent of the charges made against him. His forced confession without legal representation and due process will not change this reality," he said. "We once again call upon Pakistan to release and repatriate him forthwith," the minister said.

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New Delhi:

Kolkata police will interrogate Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Mukul Roy in connection with Burrabazar case in which Roy had allegedly received a sum of Rs. 80 lakhs from a person. The Kolkata police will interrogate Roy at his residence in Delhi.

A Kolkata court on Monday issued an arrest warrant against BJP leader Mukul Roy in connection with a cash recovery of Rs 19 lakh from a person in Burrabazar area last year. The Additional Chief Metropolitan Magistrate, Kolkata, issued the warrant against Roy on a prayer by the Burrabazar police station, alleging non-cooperation on his part in investigation into the case.

Investigating officers had served Roy with a notice earlier this year to appear at the police station for interrogation in connection with the recovery, his lawyer Subhasish Dasgupta said. Dasgupta said a petition by the BJP leader challenging the notice is already pending before the Delhi High Court.

"As such, the warrant was issued despite pendancy of the petition mentioned before a bench of the Delhi High Court, and it is likely to be taken up by an appropriate bench on Tuesday," he said.

Roy alleged that Monday's development was politically motivated, and that Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee wants him arrested in order to thwart BJP's organisational activities in the state.

"This is a politically motivated move. Banerjee has targeted me and (Barrackpore BJP MP) Arjun (Singh), as she knows that if we are removed (arrested), the organisational activities of the BJP in Bengal can be affected," Roy told PTI.

Dasgupta also claimed that Roy has turned 65 and he can be questioned at his place of residence or at the police station under which his residence is located. He added that the saffron party leader is willing to assist the investigation as and when required.

The case pertains to the recovery of Rs 19 lakh from a person in Burrabazar area on July 31, 2018, leading to his arrest along with a few others. Roy's phone number allegedly featured in one of the arrested person's call list.

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New Delhi:

Two terrorists were killed in an encounter that broke out on Saturday morning in Jammu and Kashmir's Shopian. An Army jawan was also injured in the firing. According to reports, the encounter broke out after security forces launched a cordon and search operation in the area following specific inputs about the presence of terrorists. As the forces zeroed the suspected spot the hiding terrorists fired upon them triggering an encounter.



This is the second encounter in less than 24 hours, an encounter broke out between security forces and terrorists in Jammu and Kashmir's Shopian district late Thursday night. The exchange of fire took place in in Pandushan village area following a cordon-and-search operation by a joint team of Indian Army, CRPF and Jammu and Kashmir police.



Meanwhile, in a separate incident, a vehicle of 55 Rashtriya Rifle (RR) was targeted by an Improvised Explosive Device (IED) in Zahid Bagh village of South Kashmirs Pulwama district earlier today. While the vehicle has suffered a minor damage, no loss of life has been reported in the attack so far.

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New Delhi:

Amidst the prevailing uncertainty and tensions in the Kashmir Valley, the United Kingdom (UK) and Germany have issued a fresh travel advisory for its citizens, asking them not to travel to the militancy-hit state. The development comes in the view of "unpredictable violence, including bombings, grenade attacks, shootings and kidnapping" in the Valley.

In a statement, the UK's foreign office said, "The Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) advise against all travel to Jammu and Kashmir with the exception of (i) travel within the city Jammu, (ii) travel by air to the city of Jammu, (iii) travel within the region of Ladakh".

It further advised against all but essential travel to the city of Srinagar and travel between the cities of Jammu and Srinagar on the Jammu-Srinagar national highway. The tourist destination of Palgham, Gulmarg and Sonamarg fall within the areas to which the FCO advise againat all travel, it added.

READ | On Kashmir buzz, Omar says 'want to hear from Govt of India publicly that there is no need to worry'

"Travelers staying in Kashmir (especially the Kashmir Valley and the Armanath Yatra Pilgrimage Route) are advised to leave Jammu and Kashmir," the advisory issued by the German ministry of foreign affairs read.

Panic and rumours were triggered across the Valley with the Centre taking a flurry of initiatives over the last few weeks. In less than a week, Centre decided to additional 38,000 troops to the Kashmir Valley in two batches - 10,000 and 28,000.

The unrest in the region has further intensified in the wake of Jammu and Kashmir authorities last night issuing an advisory, asking tourists and Amarnath pilgrims to cut short their stay citing security threats. The advisory follows an Army warning that said Pakistan-based terrorists were planning to target the Amarnath Yatra.

READ | Two Jaish terrorists killed in Sopore encounter, arms and ammunition recovered

Though Governor Satya Pal Malik has tried to quell the assumptions, many fears that the developments were part of an 'effort' to repeal Articles 370 and 35A.

The purpose of the travel advisory is to provide information and advice to citizens of the respetive country before they plan foreign travel to different destinations around the world. The country-wise guide, available online, is kept under constant review to be updated in light to developing incidents or threats in a particular region around the world.

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Kathmandu, December 10

The Embassy of Israel in Kathmandu, in partnership with the Avsar Foundation, awarded a Nepali farmer with a cash prize of Rs 500,000.

During an event held in Kathmandu on Thursday, Agriculture Minister Mahindra Raya Yadav handed over a cheque worth the amount to Uddha Prasad Neupane, a farmer from Dhunibeshi of Dhading, as he was declared the Krishi Tara.

Israel has been hosting several Nepali farmers in the country to train them in agricultural technologies, innovations and skills. Among participants of the programme, it has begun to award selected farmers since 2019.

Neupane was also in Israel from 2012 to 2013.

Ten best agriculture farms were shortlisted from among the total applications received for the award. The winner was selected by the jury of three judges after a tough decision, the embassy says in a statement.

Addressing the event, the Israeli Ambassador to Nepal Hanan Goder, said, Nepal can become a net exporter of food, and Israel is willing to share our experiences in this field.
Globally, December 10 is observed as the Human Rights Day every year after the United Nations General Assembly adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights on this day in 1948. This day is celebrated to promote equality, peace, justice, freedom, and the work for the protection of human dignity irrespective of their race, colour, religion, sex, language, or social status.

But, every now and then, human rights have been violated, and to restore them, people have staged arduous protests and several human rights movements. In the context of Nepal as well, many such protests and human rights movements have been conducted.

Here are some key human rights movements in the history of Nepal that have established and redefined human rights status in the country.

1. The 1979 Nepali Student Revolution

Photo by Towfiqu barbhuiya on Unsplash

The Nepali Student Revolution of 1979, or 2036 Saalko Aandolan as it is known in the vernacular, was a series of protests made by the students in April and May of that year. Official records state that 11 people were killed and 164 were left wounded during the series of protests, one of the earliest human rights movements seen in Nepal.

On April 6, 1979, a group of students had protested against the execution of the former Pakistani Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. A huge violent clash started, and later the representatives of the student community composed a list of 22 demands to the authorities as a precondition to ending the student movement. Further protests were held alongside, and on April 9, a nine-member Students Action Committee was formed to write the 25-point charter of demands. Also, the Chief Action Committee comprising three members was formed. Then, on April 23, a protest was held against the violence committed by the Rashtravadi Swatantra Vidyarthi Mandal and the violent assault led to the death of a few students whereas over 60 others were injured.

After the event, the authorities decided to close the campuses and hostel students were given 24 hours to clear the hostels. Later, clashes occurred in 37 of the then 75 districts of Nepal. Then education minister Pashupati Shamsher Rana also resigned.

Then, on May 2, King Birendra formed a five-member commission headed by the Supreme Court Chief Justice Dhanendra Bahadur Singh to respond to the protest. Then, the 160 arrested students were also released. Later, the remaining 64 with the opposition political leaders were also released on May 9. Similarly, all the student committees of the student movement reached an agreement with the royal commission. The agreement included the abolition of the 1972 Education Policy, scrapping entrance exams of universities, giving the right to form independent unions, some of the key human rights for the students then.

2. Peoples Movement I

Min Ratna Bajracharya for Wikimedia Common

The People Movement I is also known as the 1990 peoples movement or the Jana Andolan of 2046. It was a multiparty movement that started and ended in 1990, and put a full stop to absolute monarchy, and commenced the governance system of multiparty democracy with constitutional monarchy. Besides politics, the movement also contributed to the countrys human rights sector.

On December 15, 1960, King Mahendra had suspended the constitution, dissolved the elected parliament, dismissed the cabinet, imposed direct rule, and imprisoned the then prime minister BP Koirala and his colleagues. It was the beginning of the partyless Panchayat system which deprived the public of some basic human rights. All the political parties were banned and the local people were also not satisfied with the monotonous regime. People were, directly and indirectly, speaking against it and the communists also started an underground revolution.

A series of events occurred against the Panchayat system like planting bombs in the kings car, raising local awareness, protests, fire in Singha Durbar, etc. After all this, the Panchayat government declared a referendum to be held in 1980, but 55 per cent of voters came in favour of the Panchayat system. Nonetheless, the election was believed to be unfair as all the powers were in the hand of the king.

After a series of protests and events against Panchayat, two political groupsthe United Left Front and Nepali Congresunited together to launch a campaign to achieve a multiparty democracy in Nepal. The movement officially started on February 18, 1990. The joint civil resistance launched by the united political parties was successful in overthrowing the Panchayat system, and the country became a multiparty democracy along with a constitutional monarchy. It is still one of the largest and more successful human rights movements in Nepal.

3. Peoples Movement II

The Peoples Movement II is also known as the Loktantra Andolan held in 2006, arguably the largest democratic and human rights movement in Nepal. The cause of the movement was the coup by King Gyanendra and the goals were to restore the parliament and abolish the monarchy. Thus, the revolution resulted in the restoration of parliament, and later, in 2008, Nepal was declared the federal democratic republic.

Using the Nepal Constitution 1990, King Gyanendra had controlled the government as an absolute monarch in 2005. He had dissolved the parliament and sent them all home, powerless, triggering the biggest human rights movements in Nepal. Both communist and non-communist political forces broke out against the kings power grab. The Seven Party Alliance stood for the restoration of democracy in Nepal, and on April 24, 2006, the king relented and they achieved their goal. The 2006 democratic movement in Nepal became successful in abolishing the monarchy and establishing a popularly elected government. The injuries and death tolls were stated to be even more than the first peoples movement.

4. Guthi Bill Movement

Locals protest the controversial Guthi Bill in Kathmandu, on Wednesday, June 19, 2019.

The Guthi Bill protest was arguably the biggest human rights movement since the Peoples Movement of 2006. The protest was held at Maitighar Mandala in the capital on June 19, 2019, by gathering thousands of members of Kathmandu valley, especially people belonging to the Newa community.

In simple words, guthis are socio-economic trusts or institutions that fund their obligation from incomes of cultivated or leased land as assets. After the entry of the Guthi Bill in the National Assembly, protestors consistently hit the streets against it. The protestors believed it to be an attempt of the government to wipe out centuries-old customs and traditions and nationalise the guthi-owned land. So, through the protest, they were pressing the government to withdraw or revise the bill.

At that time, the Hashtag #StopGuthiBill was trending on Twitter and various Facebook groups were also formed against the Guthi Bill. However, the government was defending the bill stating that it has been brought not to control the guthis and their functioning, but to regulate them. The protestors were attacked by the police with batons and water cannons at Maitighar Mandala. And at least six people were injured when police tried to disperse the crowd. Finally, the government withdrew the bill.

5. The Kalapani Discord

On November 2, 2019, India published a new map of the political boundaries of the country. But, it sparked a series of protests in Nepal as the map also included the disputed area of Kalapani, which Nepal claims to be its part.

Then, when the news was caught by the local media, there started the Kalapani protest throughout the nation with the trending hashtag #backoffindia on Twitter. Also, Nepali protestors gathered in front of the Indian Embassy in Kathmandu. Likewise, the local people of both countries showed their aggression regarding this case through online posts, tweets, comments on social platforms, triggering one of the widespread online and offline human rights movements in Nepals context.

Then, on May 20, 2020, Nepal released a new map of its territory that expanded its claim to 335 square km area up to the Kuthi Yankti river, including Kalapani, Lipulekh, and Limpiyadhura.

This is also considered a human rights movement as most Nepalis associate it with the rights to nationality.

6. Dalit movements

File: A participant of a demonstration that demands justice for Dalits

According to the 2011 Nepal census, Dalits make up about 13.6 per cent of the total population of the country. From the beginning, the Dalits have been oppressed and marginalised in the worst forms for millenniums in the name of caste. Also termed as untouchables by the rigid caste system, the most critical issue for the community is to remove caste-based discrimination from the whole society and have a dignified life. Following this, the Dalit communities have faced many human rights violations and the member of the communities had to pour out to the streets in several instances.

So, numerous Dalit movements are observed in Nepal with the appeal to establish a just and equitable society where all persons can live without any fear respectfully. The first Dalit movement was considered as the successful movement of the Pashupati Temple Entrance Campaign in 1954. Similarly, the Dalit movements are held every year with the protestors holding placards raising public awareness for social equality and against caste-based discrimination.
House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, shown here at a May 2018 ceremony at Marine Barracks in Washington, D.C., wants answers on the federal government's telework posture. (Photo credit: U.S. Marine Corps photo by Sgt. Robert Knapp)

Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), top House Republican, has serious questions about wide-scale government telework, one of the workplace flexibilities the Biden-Harris administration has explicitly established as a tool to be leveraged into the future, even after the pandemic subsides.

McCarthy says that he has doubts, particularly about the effects of telework on service levels for Americans seeking government benefits.

The Biden Administration's maximum telework edict is not working for the American people, many of whom are struggling to secure in-person services from their federal government, McCarthy wrote in a Dec. 8 letter to leadership at the Office of Management and Budget, the Office of Personnel Management and the General Services Administration.

Instead of focusing on how the federal workforce can better function in the future, it is critical that your agencies focus on the issues at hand now, he continued.

McCarthy wants answers about why the government remains on a maximum telework status; the number of feds currently teleworking; and the re-entry plans submitted by agencies to the White House-led Safer Federal Workforce Taskforce.

Another question is how agencies have been monitoring the efficacy and productivity of teleworking employees.

McCarthy pointed to backlog of claims for veteran benefits at the Veterans Administration, which has 256,369 disability compensation and pension claims thatve been pending for over 125 days, as of Dec. 4.

That backlog has long been an issue for the agency, although it did shoot up during the pandemic, at least in part because of a temporary pause of the in-person exams needed to determine eligibility for the benefits. Other backlogs at the National Archives and Records Administration, which houses records needed for the claims process, have also contributed to the VA backlog.

McCarthy also pointed to service levels at the Social Security Administration. That agency is beginning a re-entry process for field office and teleservice feds on Jan. 3, 2022.

The House Minority Leader isnt the only Republican lawmaker voicing concerns.

This week, Senator Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) also sent letters looking for information on telework levels and how agencies are tracking employee productivity from seventeen agencies.

In a recent subcommittee hearing on the House Oversight and Reform Committee, top subcommittee Republican Rep. Jody Hice (R-Ga.) also stressed the need for metrics to measure productivity from feds, saying that telework posed a risk of fraud.

In that hearing, Michelle Amante, vice president for federal workforce programs at the nonpartisan Partnership for Public Service, said I dont think we should start with the premise that there will absolutely be fraud, continuing on to agree that establishing performance metrics is the key.

How productivity measurement might change in a remote setting was also a topic of discussion this week at the Senior Executives Associations Federal Executive Virtual Leadership Summit.

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office started its telework program in 1997. Fred Steckler, the agencys chief administrative officer, said that setting clear expectations and measurable performance plans is key to success.

It also takes buy-in, he said during a Dec. 9 session.

It really gets down to a change of mindset that needs to happen if you werent already operating in a remote or hybrid environment, and its a change in mindset from both the managers perspective and the employees perspective, he said.

Federal employees themselves reported in the 2021 Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey a significant drop in being able to always or most of the time meet the needs of customers during the pandemic - 86% - as opposed to before the pandemic - 94%.

A survey by the National Treasury Employees Union, which has said it will continue to advocate for increased telework post-pandemic, found that 50% of the 13,800 respondents reported that their productivity "increased a lot while teleworking. Twenty-four point one percent reported no change in productivity and almost 5% said that their productivity "decreased a little."

The American Federation of Government Employees has also released survey results of its own members finding that 62% of respondents said that their productivity increased a lot while teleworking during the pandemic.
(Adds sale details)

By Mike Stone

WASHINGTON, Dec 10 (Reuters) - The U.S. State Department has approved the potential sale of four Multi-Mission Surface Combatant ships for $6.9 billion to Greece alongside $2.5 billion worth of upgrades to Greece's existing Meko Class ships, the Pentagon said on Friday.

The deal follows a September agreement where Greece said it would buy French frigates worth about 3 billion euros ($3.51 billion).

The proposed sale would include four Multi-Mission Surface Combatant Ships, similar to the 370-plus-foot-long Littoral Combat Ships used by the U.S. Navy, and associated missiles, sonars, weapons, spares and technical support, the Pentagon said.

The Pentagon said Lockheed Martin was the prime contractor for the ships.

The State Department also approved a potential sale of $2.5 billion worth of upgrades and modernization to four vessels in Greece's existing fleet of Meko Class frigates, the Pentagon said. The potential package includes Phalanx missile upgrade kits to protect against cruise missiles, MK 49 Guided Missile Launcher Systems, new sonars and support.

Raytheon Technologies, Lockheed and BAE Systems are the prime contractors for that sale, the Pentagon said.

The Pentagon's Defense Security Cooperation Agency notified Congress of the possible sale on Friday.

Despite approval by the State Department, the notification does not indicate that a contract has been signed or that negotiations have concluded.

Greece contributes to NATO operations in Kosovo, supports NATO's southern flank, as well as counterterrorism and counter-piracy maritime efforts in the Mediterranean. (Reporting by Mike Stone in Washington Editing by Sonya Hepinstall and Matthew Lewis)
Cultivate the perfect night in with craft vodka, delicious cheeses, and a new coffee blend.

 Recommendations are independently chosen by Revieweds editors. Purchases you make through our links may earn us a commission.

Whether your loved one is just learning to cook for themselves or has been eating adventurously for as long as you can remember, food and beverage gifts are an easy and delicious way to show that you care. Small food businesses are the ideal places to look for the best gifts: Theyre usually not so well-known that to receive them is expected, and, because theyre not mass-produced, the quality is often high and the products themselves are unique.

Tackle your holiday shopping with deals and expert advice delivered straight to your phone. Sign up for text message alerts from the deal-hunting team at Reviewed.

An added bonus? Theyre a chance to support businesses from members of marginalized communitiesand as a member of the LGBTQ+ community, I am always looking for LGBTQ+ businesses putting out exciting, mouth-watering products to try and, ideally, answering the eternal holiday question: What should I get everyone? Ahead, find nine great food and beverage businesses owned by LGBTQ+ individuals that should help you answer it, too.

1. Diaspora Co.

Give the gift of a more equitable (and more delicious) spice rack.

Weve already waxed poetic about the quality of Diaspora Co. spices here at Reviewed, but heres a recap: This direct-to-consumer spice company works with 150 farms across India and Sri Lanka to bring top-quality, single-origin turmeric, peppercorns, cardamom, and more to your door.

If thats not enough, they pay roughly six times more than the average commodity price for the spicesmeaning the farmers make a living wage producing some of the most vibrant spices youll ever taste. Snag a gift set of three, six, or nine spices for your family member still building out their spice cabinet.

Build your own pack of spices at Diaspora Co. starting at $36

2. Rancho Gordo

Beans, beans, theyre gifts from the heart.

Dried beans might have become a pantry essential in the past two years, but Rancho Gordo has been selling California-grown heirloom beans since it was established by Steve Sando in 2001. From pantry staples like black beans to unheard-of varieties like alubia blanca and Santa Maria Pinquitos, the beans Rancho Gordo puts out are more labor-intensive, sure, but also more delicious than anything youve ever found in a can. Any vegan or meat-conscious family member will thank you endlessly for putting a bag of these in their stocking.

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Get a Rancho Gordo Gift Set at myPanier for $49.90

3. Cowgirl Creamery

The cheese aficionado in your life will thank you.

Sue Conley and Peggy Smith built careers at some of the best restaurants in California before setting out on their own in the early 90s with a wholesale business selling local dairy and produce to Bay Area chefs. That work with high-quality dairy in their area has since evolved into a full-blown creamery dishing out delectable (and always organic) artisan cheeses, from the fan-favorite triple-cream cheese Mt. Tam to the dried pepper-encrusted Devils Gulch, always sourcing from organic, pasture-raised milk. Gift one of their sets and the cheese freak in your life will never be the same.

Get the Cowgirl Creamery Classic Cowgirl Cheese Collection at Goldbelly for $70

4. Omsom

Two sisters made it their mission to bring punchy Asian flavors to the pantry.

Sisters Vanessa and Kim Pham launched Omsom just months before the pandemic began, but their products feel like they were built for a time when people were looking for something exciting and flavorful without having to put it together. Their products, which they call starters, are basically sauces with all the flavors needed to make a specific dish from cuisines across Asiathink basil-flecked Thai krapow, or smoky and spicy Korean bulgogipackaged with detailed step-by-step guides for whipping up the recipe at home. Theyre a weeknight savior for an extra-flavorful meal, yes, but they also provide easy access to the flavors that form the foundation for some of Asias most iconic dishes, and thats something most anyone could benefit from.

Get a gift set from Omsom starting at $29

5. Equator Coffees

Coffee you can sip with pride.

Partners in business and in life, Brooke McDonnell and Helen Russell started their California coffee company in 1995 with a simple goal: roasting and brewing better coffee, and sourcing it in a way that makes the lives of the people who produce it better. Nine cafes and nearly two decades later, Equator is doing just that, with blends that raise money for charities like the World Bicycle Relief and the Keller Restaurant Relief Fund, not to mention its coffee getting served in iconic restaurants such as French Laundry. Mornings just got a lot better.

Get Equator Coffee from Amazon starting at $14.29

6. Madhu Chocolate

Saffron milk, rose pistachio, dark masala chaithese are just a few of the inventive flavors of Madhu chocolate.

This Austin-based business combines the traditional Indian flavors founder Harshit Gupta grew up enjoying with the perennial treat: a chocolate bar. Gupta and his husband, Elliott Curelop, have used that simple idea to create mouth-watering treats with unique flavors like saffron milk, rose pistachio, and orange clove, wrapped up in stylish packaging to boot. I smell a stocking stuffer.

Get Madhu Chocolate starting at $9

7. Supergay Spirits

A craft spirit essential to a fashionable bar cart.

Supergay Spirits sensibility is apparent right from the mismatched, painterly face on the bottle. Founded by Aaron Thorp, a sommelier and beverage director, and Tom Jackson of the queer culture magazine Gayletter, the farm to disco vodka is made entirely from organic corn and filtered through activated coconut charcoal, making it particularly smooth and slightly sweet. It gets better: A portion of its profits go to organizations supporting hospitality workers. That never goes out of style.

Get Supergay Craft Vodka on Drizly for $29.99

8. Proteau Botanical

A non-alcoholic aperitif ready to enjoy straight from the bottle.

Non-alcoholic spirits have had a major moment this past year, so if youve got a boozeless imbiber in your life, Proteau is for them. These two botanical aperitifs were developed by John deBary, who cut his teeth at the neo-speakeasy PDT (Please Dont Tell) and as the bar director for the Momofuku restaurant. Though his background is in alcoholic libations, that knowledge made him well-suited to build a nonalcoholic beverage that pulls from drinks like vermouth and amaro to hit the same way. Ludlow Red offers a pepper blackberry flavor, while Rivington Spritz tastes like lightly carbonated strawberriesdont ask, just drink.

Get Proteau Botanical Drinks, Set of 2, at Food52 for $40

9. 18.21 Bitters

Give the gift of better bitters.

Bitters are an essential part of any home bar, and if your loved one is ready to upgrade from the classics look no further than 18.21 Bitters. These are far from the standardstheyve got flavors like Earl Grey, grapefruit lavender, and chili and lime, meaning everything from a gin and tonic to an original cocktail can get a little punch of personality. The company also sells shrubs, tinctures, tonic, and more, meaning a speakeasy-quality cocktail is possible at home, and with minimal effort. No matter which offering youre inspired to gift, the aspiring mixologist in your life says thanks in advance.

Get 18.21 Bitters on Drizly starting at $2.19

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Prices were accurate at the time this article was published but may change over time.

This article originally appeared on Reviewed: Gifts from LGBTQ+ food and beverage businesses
Harvest Hands accepts $15,000 donation from AGRIS Co-operative

John Nooyen (left), AGRIS Co-operative board President and Jim Anderson (middle), AGRIS ownership committee chair, presents a donation to Harvest Hands. Jim and Jacintha Collins, founders, (right), accepts the donation on behalf of Harvest Hands. The $15,000 donation will be used to serve families and agencies in the communities surrounding AGRIS Co-operative.

John Nooyen (left), AGRIS Co-operative board President and Jim Anderson (middle), AGRIS ownership committee chair, presents a donation to Harvest Hands. Jim and Jacintha Collins, founders, (right), accepts the donation on behalf of Harvest Hands. The $15,000 donation will be used to serve families and agencies in the communities surrounding AGRIS Co-operative.

CHATHAM, Ontario, Dec. 10, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- AGRIS Co-operative (AGRIS) board President John Nooyen announced today that the co-operative is giving back to their communities with a $15,000 donation to Harvest Hands, a centralized food distribution bank rescuing surplus food from retailers, bakers and growers to help agencies and thousands of families throughout Southwestern Ontario.



Jim Anderson, AGRIS ownership committee chair, stated, We unanimously wanted to continue giving back to the communities where we farm, work and raise our families. This year again, because of the COVID-19 pandemic, we knew people are still having a tough time feeding their families, and we wanted to continue to help.

Despite being in the second year of the pandemic, AGRIS is thankful for another good year. Jim Campbell, general manager, is proud of what it took to serve farmers again this year. Our team continues to serve our customers with the utmost care and safety during another pandemic year. The efforts of our staff and customers to remain safe on the farm and at home is certainly another reason to be thankful and to give back.

Harvest Hands founder, Jim Collins, is thankful for being a partner in this humanitarian effort. Raised on a farm in Essex County, I have a great appreciation of the value of co-operation and farming. What farmers do every day to help contribute to the act of feeding people around the globe will come back to you ten-fold knowing hungry people will be able to fill their bellies and lessen their burden during these difficult times. We believe that this generous gift of $15,000 will help to supply and distribute food to those who are not able to purchase food themselves. Thank you all for being a partner in this humanitarian effort."

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AGRIS Co-operative Ltd. is a 100 per cent farmer-owned grain marketing and farm-input supply company that serves more than 1,000 farmer-owners in 14 locations in Essex, Kent, Elgin, Middlesex and Lambton Counties. It is a leader in precision farming technology, seed, agronomy and petroleum services. The co-operative is a partner in Great Lakes Grain, a grain merchandising company. AGRIS Co-operative is a member-owner of GROWMARK, Inc. and markets products and services under the FS banner.

Visit https://agris.coop and https://fssystem.com for more information.

Media contact:

Jim Campbell

General Manager

AGRIS Co-operative Ltd.

Phone: 519-380-2371

Email: jimc@agris.coop

A photo accompanying this announcement is available at https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/1260c7de-3b31-4fb4-97b0-12456d872b1e.




Fortescue Metals Group CEO Elizabeth Gaines poses for a picture after sharing her outlook on China's steel production prospects, in Shanghai

By Shashwat Awasthi

(Reuters) -Fortescue Metals Group Ltd said on Friday Elizabeth Gaines will step down as chief executive as the miner extends its transition from a pure play iron ore producer to a green energy and resources firm.

Gaines, who oversaw a tripling in the share price of the world's fourth-biggest iron ore miner in the past four years, will remain on Fortescue's board as a non-executive director and assist in the search for the new CEO.

The move comes as Fortescue's chairman and Australia's richest man, Andrew Forrest, pushes to turn the company into the world's biggest green energy group, with a focus on hydrogen at its green power arm, Fortescue Future Industries (FFI).

Forrest hailed Gaines, a former travel industry and private equity executive who joined the company in 2013 and also served as its chief financial officer, as one of Australia's "truly inspiring leaders".

Gaines said she wanted to make way for a new boss to lead Fortescue's evolution into a renewable energy and resources company.

"I don't see this as departure of any shape or form, and I think this is just the opportune time. Fortescue is genuinely transitioning," Gaines told reporters in Sydney.

The company did not set a timeline for the change over.

Fortescue has begun a worldwide search to identify its next chief executive and other leaders with "global experience across heavy industry, manufacturing, and renewable energy," it said in a statement.

Analysts said the move was not unexpected, although the timing was a bit sooner than some had anticipated.

"Management churn at Fortescue has been an ongoing concern in the market, including risk to CEO tenure in the wake of Elizabeth Gaines selling the majority of her Fortescue shares in September," Credit Suisse analyst Saul Kavonic said.

Its shares slipped as much as 1.8% and closed down 0.8%, underperforming its bigger iron ore rivals and the broader market, as investors mulled how the transition would fit into the company's strategy.

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"Fortescue needs to tread warily to make sure its iron ore business operates to its optimal potential as the cash flow generated will be initially the sole funding for FFI," said Shaw & Partners analyst Peter O'Connor.

Fortescue lost its chief operating officer Greg Lilleyman, a highly respected executive in the iron ore industry, and two other senior leaders following a review this year of cost blowouts at its Iron Bridge magnetite project.

Kavonic had flagged the risk of Gaines potentially quitting in a September note after she sold around 65% of her shares, excluding performance rights.

Analysts also pointed to some disenchantment at Fortescue after long-term incentives were cut.

(Reporting by Shashwat Awasthi; additional reporting by Sonali Paul; editing by Rashmi Aich, Sam Holmes and Richard Pullin)
INDEPENDENCE, OH / ACCESSWIRE / December 10, 2021 / The CPR Cell Phone Repair Network is pleased to continue expanding across the country! Its latest addition, CPR Ponca City in Oklahoma, recently opened for business and is ready to take in its first customers.

"It's my pleasure to announce our latest store opening and congratulate Mickey Pratt on his new CPR location," said Chris Jourdan, Director of Franchise Operations at CPR Cell Phone Repair. "Mickey has been with the CPR network for a few years now with stores in Shawnee and Del City. It's his continued success, hard work, and dedication that makes us confident he and the Ponca City store will do well."

Residents of Ponca City, Blackwell, Tonkawa, and other nearby communities in Kay County and beyond are invited to visit Mickey's store when in need of a dependable and affordable device repair service. CPR Ponca City is conveniently located in a busy retail center near many residential neighborhoods.

"As a Veteran, both I and my team understand the importance of quality service," said Mickey. "We also embody other qualities of military service, including dependability, integrity, and respect. Because of this, we believe our customers will grow to rely on us as their primary mobile repair provider."

Mickey was born and raised in Oklahoma and has owned and operated local businesses for over 15 years. When he's not working, he enjoys spending time with his wife and three kids.

To learn more about CPR Ponca City or either of Mickey's other locations, please contact the store at the details provided below.

CPR Cell Phone Repair Ponca City is located at:

505 N 14th Ste B

Ponca City, OK 74604

Please contact the store at 580-749-5371 or via email: repairs@cpr-poncacity.com

Please visit the website: https://www.cellphonerepair.com/ponca-city-ok/

Mickey's other CPR stores are located at:

CPR Del City

5101 SE 29th St

#103

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Del City, OK 73115

CPR Shawnee

2003 N Harrison St

Shawnee, OK 74804

About CPR Cell Phone Repair

Founded in Orlando, Fla. in 1996, CPR Cell Phone Repair is a fast-growing mobile repair franchise in North America, operating over 850 locations internationally. As a pioneer and leader in the electronics repair industry, CPR offers same-day repair and refurbishing services for cell phones, laptops, gaming systems, digital music players, tablets, and other personal electronic devices. In 2021, CPR was named in Entrepreneur Magazine's Franchise 500 for the sixth consecutive year and ranked second in the Electronics Repairs and Sales Category.

For more information about CPR Cell Phone Repair and franchise opportunities, visit https://www.cellphonerepair.com/ or call 877-856-5101.

Media Contact

Chris Jourdan

chris.jourdan@cpr-corporate.com

877-392-6278 ext. 7711

SOURCE: CPR Cell Phone Repair





View source version on accesswire.com:

https://www.accesswire.com/677108/CPR-Cell-Phone-Repair-Welcomes-New-Store-in-Ponca-City-OK




The brand name EVUSHELD and the nonproprietary names tixagevimab and cilgavimab were developed with the help of Brand Institute, a Miami-based naming agency and the global leader in pharmaceutical and healthcare-related name development

MIAMI, FL, Dec. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Brand Institute is proud to announce its successful partnership with AstraZeneca in developing the brand name EVUSHELD and assisting with the development of the nonproprietary names tixagevimab and cilgavimab, together denoting the first long-acting antibody combination authorized for emergency use by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for pre-exposure prevention of COVID-19. EVUSHELD works specifically to protect adults and adolescents (aged 12 and older) with immune systems that have been compromised by a medical condition or immunosuppressive medications.

"The entire Brand Institute and Drug Safety Institute Team congratulates AstraZeneca on the emergency use authorization of EVUSHELD by the FDA," said Brand Institute's Chairman and CEO, James L. Dettore. "EVUSHELD will surely be an important treatment option in the global fight against COVID-19, especially for at-risk individuals whose immune systems are unable to generate a sufficient response to the disease on their own, even once vaccinatedas well as individuals for whom vaccination isn't recommended in the first place. The FDA's tentative authorization now allows the protection that EVUSHELD has been shown to provide to be put to work."

Full FDA approval of EVUSHELD may be granted once it undergoes complete review according to the FDA's guidelines, policies, and procedures.

About Brand Institute and our wholly owned subsidiary, Drug Safety Institute

Brand Institute is the global leader in pharmaceutical and healthcare-related name development, with a portfolio of over 3,500 marketed healthcare names for nearly 1,000 clients. The company partners on over 75% of pharmaceutical brand and nonproprietary name approvals globally every year. Drug Safety Institute is comprised of former naming regulatory officials from global government health agencies, including FDA, EMA, Health Canada, American Medical Association (AMA), and the World Health Organization (WHO). These regulatory experts co-authored the name review guidelines while with their respective agencies, with many responsible for ultimately approving (or rejecting) brand name applications. Now working for a private company, these professionals provide Brand Institute's clients with industry-leading guidance pertaining to drug name safety (i.e., preventing medication errors), packaging, and labeling.

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Contact: Scott Piergrossi

President, Creative

spiergrossi@brandinstitute.com

Cision

View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/fda-issues-emergency-use-authorization-for-astrazenecas-evusheld-tixagevimab-co-packaged-with-cilgavimab-the-first-antibody-therapy-authorized-in-the-us-for-pre-exposure-prophylaxis-of-covid-19-301442025.html

SOURCE Brand Institute, Inc.
SAN FRANCISCO, Dec. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Hagens Berman urges Berkeley Lights, Inc. (NASDAQ: BLI) investors with significant losses to submit your losses now.

Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro LLP

Class Period: July 17, 2020  Sept. 14, 2021

Lead Plaintiff Deadline: Feb. 7, 2022

Visit: www.hbsslaw.com/investor-fraud/BLI

Contact An Attorney Now: BLI@hbsslaw.com

844-916-0895

Berkeley Lights, Inc. (BLI) Securities Class Action:



The litigation focuses on the accuracy of cell biology specialist Berkeley Lights' statements concerning its only product, the Beacon: a $2 million lab instrument that the Company touts is "a better, more advanced way to process and analyze cells."

The complaint alleges Defendants made false and misleading statements or failed to disclose: (1) the Beacon suffered from numerous design and manufacturing defects including breakdowns, high error rates, and data integrity issues; (2) Berkeley Lights had received numerous customer complaints regarding the durability and effectiveness of the company's automation systems; and, (3) the actual market for Berkeley Lights' products was just a fraction of the $23 billion represented to investors because of the relatively high cost of its instruments and consumables and inability to provide sustained performance necessary to justify the high costs.

The complaint alleges that the truth emerged on Sep. 15, 2021, when analyst Scorpion Capital published a scathing report entitled, "Fleecing Customers And IPO Bagholders With A $2 Million Black Box That's A Clunker." Scorpion said that its discussions with Berkeley Lights' key customers and employees revealed that the Beacon is a flop, citing astronomical error rates, machine break downs, and that key product claims and capabilities are false. In short, Scorpion reported it found a trail of customers who allege they were "tricked" into buying a $2 million lemon and "[t]he reality is so far from BLI's grandiose hype that we believe its product claims and practices may constitute outright fraud."

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"We're focused on investors' losses and proving Berkeley Lights lied the commercial viability of the Beacon," said Reed Kathrein, the Hagens Berman partner leading the investigation.

If you invested in Berkeley Lights, or have knowledge that may assist the firm's investigation, click here to discuss your legal rights with Hagens Berman.

Whistleblowers: Persons with non-public information regarding Berkeley Lights should consider their options to help in the investigation or take advantage of the SEC Whistleblower program. Under the new program, whistleblowers who provide original information may receive rewards totaling up to 30 percent of any successful recovery made by the SEC. For more information, call Reed Kathrein at 844-916-0895 or email mailto:BLI@hbsslaw.com.

About Hagens Berman

Hagens Berman is a national law firm with eight offices in eight cities around the country and over eighty attorneys. The firm represents investors, whistleblowers, workers and consumers in complex litigation. More about the firm and its successes is located at hbsslaw.com. For the latest news visit our newsroom or follow us on Twitter at @classactionlaw .

Contact:

Reed Kathrein, 844-916-0895

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SOURCE Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro LLP
(Bloomberg) -- Intel Corp. is railing against a proposed import ban on a key chipmaking ingredient, saying the move would worsen an already-perilous shortage of semiconductors.

Most Read from Bloomberg

The company is trying to dissuade the U.S. International Trade Commission from halting imports of so-called chemical mechanical planarization slurries that are sold under the name Optiplane. DuPonts Rohm & Haas unit makes the products in Taiwan and Japan, and theyve drawn allegations that they infringe technology owned by Illinois-based CMC Materials Inc. The ITC was scheduled to announce its final decision later Thursday but postponed it until Dec. 16. It gave no reason for the one-week delay.

Intel, the worlds biggest chipmaker, has told the commission that banning Optiplane slurries from U.S.-based semiconductor chip fabrication lines without a 24-month transition period could conflict with national security and economic interests.

If the ban is approved, it could thrust an obscure legal battle into the spotlight. CMCs Cabot Microelectronics sought the move, saying Optiplane was using Cabots cutting-edge technology for silica particles in a slurry for polishing the semiconductor layers. Cabot uses the composition for its iDiel family of slurries.

A trade judge in July said a component made overseas infringes Cabots patent and rejected DuPonts argument that the patent is invalid.

Semiconductors, which provide the brains and storage of most devices that have on/off switches, are made in a complex process that involves putting layers of conductive and insulating materials on disks of silicon. Circuit patterns are then burned onto them.

That process, which takes months to complete, involves some layers that are only an atom thick and results in the cramming of billions of transistors onto postage-stamp-sized pieces of silicon.

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The slurries are used at different steps in the manufacturing process and subtle variations between them have outsized impacts in a fabrication environment, Intel said.

The company looks to tap into concerns about the global shortage of semiconductors, which has hit a wide swath of the economy. The automotive industry alone is on course to lose more than $200 billion in sales because they cant build enough vehicles to meet demand.

The ITC ban could hurt Intel more than some rivals because the Santa Clara, California-based company relies more heavily on U.S. facilities. Manufacturers with Asian factories wouldnt be affected by the change.

But the ITC staff lawyers, which act as a third party in these cases on behalf of the public interest, have supported Intels call for a 24-month delay in any import ban.

That lag would provide a sufficient period for Intel to transition to acceptable noninfringing alternatives, particularly if the commission finds there is a semiconductor chip shortage, Thomas Chen, an investigative attorney with the agency, told the commission last month.

Cabot said Intel and DuPont are just using the chip shortage as an excuse to avoid an import ban.

The reported semiconductor shortage is a result of a complex set of economic factors and has nothing at all to do with the supply of CMP slurries, let alone the supply of the specific infringing products at issue in this investigation, Cabot said in its own filing with the agency.

The case is In the Matter of Certain Mechanical Planarization Slurries, 337-1204, U.S. International Trade Commission (Washington)

(Updates with one-week delay in decision in second paragraph.)

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2021 Bloomberg L.P.
Annual Program Recognizes the Dynamic Companies Making Extraordinary Impacts in Their Fields and Society

ATLANTA, Dec. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Jackson Healthcare, a family of highly specialized healthcare staffing, search and technology companies, today announced that it has earned a top honor in the 2021 Inc. "Best in Business" awards program. The company earned a gold distinction in the "Pandemic Response" category, which recognizes companies that had an outsized impact on the local, national or global response to COVID-19 this year.

The list, which can be found in the Winter issue of Inc. magazine, recognizes privately held American businesses of all sizes that are making a difference and have had an outstanding influence on their communities, their industries, the environment or society as a whole.

This is the second consecutive year that Jackson Healthcare has earned "Best in Business" recognition.

"Jackson Healthcare was built upon the philosophy that businesses should be a force for good in the world," says Shane Jackson, president, Jackson Healthcare. "While the pandemic has posed great challenges, it also has enabled us to further fulfill our mission of improving the delivery of patient care and the lives of everyone we touch. This includes our commitment to serve others  from the hospitals and healthcare facilities we partner with and the dedicated medical professionals we work with across the country, to our associates, and the families and communities we touch locally and abroad. We're honored to be recognized by Inc. for these collective efforts."

Adds Jackson, "As our organization's response to the pandemic is ongoing, we remain laser focused on helping ensure that highly-skilled medical professionals are mobilized to support COVID and all other care requirements, when and where they're needed."

Scott Omelianuk, editor-in-chief of Inc., says, "What began for us during the pandemic as an effort to showcase companies that were helping the community has grown into a recognition of social, environmental and economic impact. The companies on this year's list are changemakers with heart  and they're pouring the best of their business into the people and communities around them."

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Rather than relying on quantitative criteria tied to sales or funding, Inc.'s editors reviewed the companies' achievements over the past year and noted how they made a positive difference in the world. They then selected honorees across 49 different categories. This year's applicant pool was extremely competitive, with approximately 2,700 entries and an acceptance rate in the low single digits. Honorees for gold, silver, bronze and general excellence across industries and categories are featured online at www.inc.com/best-in-business.

About INC. Media

The world's most trusted business-media brand, Inc. offers entrepreneurs the knowledge, tools, connections, and community to build great companies. Its award-winning multiplatform content reaches more than 50 million people each month across various channels, including websites, newsletters, social media, podcasts, and print. Its prestigious Inc. 5000 list, produced every year since 1982, analyzes company data to recognize the fastest-growing privately held businesses in the United States. The global recognition that comes with inclusion in the Inc. 5000 allows these founders a chance to engage with their peers in an exclusive community with the credibility to help drive sales and recruit talent. The associated Inc. 5000 Conference is part of a highly acclaimed portfolio of bespoke events produced by Inc. For more information, visit www.inc.com.

About Jackson Healthcare

Jackson Healthcare is a family of highly specialized healthcare staffing, search and technology companies. With a mission to improve the delivery of patient care and the lives of everyone it touches, it helps healthcare facilities across the country serve more than 10 million patients each year. Backed by more than 1,500 associates and with over $1.4 billion in annual revenue, Jackson Healthcare is one of the largest U.S. healthcare staffing companies. In addition to being Great Place to Work certified, it is consistently named an employer of choice, having been nationally recognized as a best workplace in healthcare, a best workplace for women and a best workplace for millennials, as well as being named among the healthiest employers. Learn more at www.jacksonhealthcare.com.

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SOURCE Jackson Healthcare
Rating Action: Moody's revises KP's outlook to Negative; CFR affirmed at B3Global Credit Research - 09 Dec 2021London, 09 December 2021 -- Moody's Investors Service ("Moody's") today affirmed the corporate family rating (CFR) of Kleopatra Holdings 2 S.C.A ("Klockner Pentaplast" or "KP") at B3 along with a B2 instrument rating of the senior secured 1st lien revolving credit facility and senior secured 1st lien term loan B, as well as guaranteed senior secured notes due 2026 issued by Kleopatra Finco S.a r.l. The agency also affirmed the Caa2 instrument rating of the guaranteed senior notes due 2026 issued by Kleopatra Holdings 2 S.C.A. The rating outlook on all ratings was changed to negative from stable.A full list of affected ratings is provided at the end of the press release.RATINGS RATIONALEToday's rating action reflects material deterioration in profitability over the course of the first three quarters of 2021 as measured by the EBITDA margin declining to 13.7% for the twelve months ending September 2021 from 15.5% in 2020 (as adjusted by Moody's). This reduction in EBITDA resulted from lags in passing through escalating costs of raw materials and other variable expenses such as energy, transportation, labour and packaging. Despite the majority (approximately 60%) of KP's contracts not being based on an index for pass-through purposes, the company experienced significant margin compression in the first nine months of 2021. As a result, KP's leverage measured as debt/EBITDA rose sharply to 9.2x for the twelve months ending September 2021 from 7.9x pro forma for the refinancing in January 2021 (as adjusted by Moody's). The agency expects KP's leverage to exceed 10.0x in 2021 before reducing gradually in 2022.The rating action also considered an expectation of gradual turnaround in margin erosion and deleveraging over several quarters as price increases are implemented and raw material prices stabilise. However, at present there is no sufficient evidence that costs will stabilize and supply chain issues will abate.Demand for some of KP's pharma products has waned in 2021 following fewer non-coronavirus related infections in 2020 and resulting high inventory levels remaining throughout the distribution channel to the final consumer. At the same time, demand for its protein packaging products has also been negatively affected in 2021 by supply chain disruptions in the meat packing industry particularly as a result of labour shortages in Europe.KP's CFR continues to reflect (i) ongoing challenge of achieving timely pass-throughs of input cost increases to customers as raw material prices vary; (ii) high leverage after refinancing in January 2021 exacerbated by recent expense pass-through challenges; (iii) shift towards greater sustainability in a competitive environment. More positively, the rating also takes into account KP's (i) large and globally diversified business albeit with some concentration in Europe; (ii) focus on less cyclical food and pharma end-markets; (iii) good liquidity bolstered by expectation of positive free cash flow after 2021; (iv) experienced management team that demonstrated execution of stronger performance in 2020.ENVIRONMENTAL, SOCIAL AND GOVERNANCE CONSIDERATIONSEnvironmental considerations for KP include consumer- and regulation-driven trends towards reducing the negative environmental effects of plastic waste and plastic packaging, particularly in the EU and UK. KP is very focused on the sustainability trends, has developed new and more sustainable products and has a clear innovation focus on sustainability. The company also engages in industry initiatives and set clear targets around using recycled materials.Social considerations include health and safety given that KP is a manufacturer with 31 sites and almost 6,000 employees.Governance considerations include the aggressive financial policy reflected in the company's high leverage and track record of shareholder dividends.LIQUIDITYThe company's liquidity position is good and supported by the fully undrawn and committed E150 million revolving facility due 2025, ca. E70 million on cash as of September 2021 and limited seasonality in cash flows. KP will not have any larger debt maturities until 2025/26. There is a one financial maintenance covenant related to the RCF, which is only tested if the RCF is drawn by more than 40% (net of cash), however Moody's does not expect the company to utilize its RCF in the near term.STRUCTURAL CONSIDERATIONSKP's capital structure includes senior secured term loans and revolving credit facility (RCF), senior secured notes and senior notes. The RCF, term loans and secured notes rank pari passu, while the senior notes are subordinated to them in terms of ranking which is reflected in the B2 instrument ratings for the around E1.2 billion of senior secured term loans and E400 million of senior secured notes, one notch above the CFR of B3. The senior notes rating at Caa2 reflects the notes' subordination to a substantial amount of secured debt.RATING OUTLOOKThe negative rating outlook reflects the company's weakening profitability and rising leverage in the wake of the increase in input costs.FACTORS THAT COULD LEAD TO AN UPGRADE OR DOWNGRADE OF THE RATINGSWhile unlikely in the near term, the rating could be upgraded if the company manages to reduce its Moody's-adjusted debt/EBITDA sustainably below 6.5x (including factoring), combined with Moody's-adjusted free cash flow/debt at least in the mid-single digits in percentage terms.The rating outlook is likely to be stabilised if KP's profitability strengthens and it leverage is reduced to below 8.0x while maintaining a positive free cash flow.The rating is likely to be downgraded if KP fails to stem its margin erosion and reduce its leverage over the next few quarters. Negative free cash flow and any liquidity challenges could also lead to a downgrade.LIST OF AFFECTED RATINGSAffirmations:..Issuer: Kleopatra Holdings 2 S.C.A....LT Corporate Family Rating, Affirmed B3....Probability of Default Rating, Affirmed B3-PD....Senior Unsecured Regular Bond/Debenture, Affirmed Caa2..Issuer: Kleopatra Finco S.a r.l.....Senior Secured Bank Credit Facility, Affirmed B2....Senior Secured Regular Bond/Debenture, Affirmed B2..Issuer: Klockner Pentaplast of America, Inc.....BACKED Senior Secured Bank Credit Facility, Affirmed B2Outlook Actions:..Issuer: Kleopatra Finco S.a r.l.....Outlook, Changed To Negative From Stable..Issuer: Kleopatra Holdings 2 S.C.A....Outlook, Changed To Negative From Stable..Issuer: Klockner Pentaplast of America, Inc.....Outlook, Changed To Negative From StablePRINCIPAL METHODOLOGYThe principal methodology used in these ratings was Packaging Manufacturers: Metal, Glass and Plastic Containers Methodology published in September 2020 and available at https://www.moodys.com/researchdocumentcontentpage.aspx?docid=PBC_1236221. Alternatively, please see the Rating Methodologies page on www.moodys.com for a copy of this methodology.COMPANY PROFILEKleopatra Holdings 2 S.C.A is a plastic packaging manufacturing firm that specialises in the manufacturing of flexible plastic films and rigid plastic trays for use across a wide range of end markets. Total revenue on a YTD September 2021 basis was E1.4 billion. The majority of revenue (circa 60%) was generated in Europe, but also around a quarter in North America and the rest across the world including South America and the Asia Pacific region. Strategic Value Partners (SVP) has been the majority shareholder of the group following a financial restructuring and subsequent recapitalisation in June 2012.REGULATORY DISCLOSURESFor further specification of Moody's key rating assumptions and sensitivity analysis, see the sections Methodology Assumptions and Sensitivity to Assumptions in the disclosure form. Moody's Rating Symbols and Definitions can be found at: https://www.moodys.com/researchdocumentcontentpage.aspx?docid=PBC_79004.For ratings issued on a program, series, category/class of debt or security this announcement provides certain regulatory disclosures in relation to each rating of a subsequently issued bond or note of the same series, category/class of debt, security or pursuant to a program for which the ratings are derived exclusively from existing ratings in accordance with Moody's rating practices. For ratings issued on a support provider, this announcement provides certain regulatory disclosures in relation to the credit rating action on the support provider and in relation to each particular credit rating action for securities that derive their credit ratings from the support provider's credit rating. For provisional ratings, this announcement provides certain regulatory disclosures in relation to the provisional rating assigned, and in relation to a definitive rating that may be assigned subsequent to the final issuance of the debt, in each case where the transaction structure and terms have not changed prior to the assignment of the definitive rating in a manner that would have affected the rating. For further information please see the ratings tab on the issuer/entity page for the respective issuer on www.moodys.com.For any affected securities or rated entities receiving direct credit support from the primary entity(ies) of this credit rating action, and whose ratings may change as a result of this credit rating action, the associated regulatory disclosures will be those of the guarantor entity. Exceptions to this approach exist for the following disclosures, if applicable to jurisdiction: Ancillary Services, Disclosure to rated entity, Disclosure from rated entity.The ratings have been disclosed to the rated entity or its designated agent(s) and issued with no amendment resulting from that disclosure.These ratings are solicited. Please refer to Moody's Policy for Designating and Assigning Unsolicited Credit Ratings available on its website www.moodys.com.Regulatory disclosures contained in this press release apply to the credit rating and, if applicable, the related rating outlook or rating review.Moody's general principles for assessing environmental, social and governance (ESG) risks in our credit analysis can be found at http://www.moodys.com/researchdocumentcontentpage.aspx?docid=PBC_1288235.The Global Scale Credit Rating on this Credit Rating Announcement was issued by one of Moody's affiliates outside the EU and is endorsed by Moody's Deutschland GmbH, An der Welle 5, Frankfurt am Main 60322, Germany, in accordance with Art.4 paragraph 3 of the Regulation (EC) No 1060/2009 on Credit Rating Agencies. Further information on the EU endorsement status and on the Moody's office that issued the credit rating is available on www.moodys.com.Please see www.moodys.com for any updates on changes to the lead rating analyst and to the Moody's legal entity that has issued the rating.Please see the ratings tab on the issuer/entity page on www.moodys.com for additional regulatory disclosures for each credit rating. Maria Maslovsky Vice President - Senior Analyst Corporate Finance Group Moody's Investors Service Ltd. One Canada Square Canary Wharf London E14 5FA United Kingdom JOURNALISTS: 44 20 7772 5456 Client Service: 44 20 7772 5454 Mario Santangelo Associate Managing Director Corporate Finance Group JOURNALISTS: 44 20 7772 5456 Client Service: 44 20 7772 5454 Releasing Office: Moody's Investors Service Ltd. One Canada Square Canary Wharf London E14 5FA United Kingdom JOURNALISTS: 44 20 7772 5456 Client Service: 44 20 7772 5454  2021 Moodys Corporation, Moodys Investors Service, Inc., Moodys Analytics, Inc. and/or their licensors and affiliates (collectively, MOODYS). All rights reserved.CREDIT RATINGS ISSUED BY MOODY'S CREDIT RATINGS AFFILIATES ARE THEIR CURRENT OPINIONS OF THE RELATIVE FUTURE CREDIT RISK OF ENTITIES, CREDIT COMMITMENTS, OR DEBT OR DEBT-LIKE SECURITIES, AND MATERIALS, PRODUCTS, SERVICES AND INFORMATION PUBLISHED BY MOODYS (COLLECTIVELY, PUBLICATIONS) MAY INCLUDE SUCH CURRENT OPINIONS. MOODYS DEFINES CREDIT RISK AS THE RISK THAT AN ENTITY MAY NOT MEET ITS CONTRACTUAL FINANCIAL OBLIGATIONS AS THEY COME DUE AND ANY ESTIMATED FINANCIAL LOSS IN THE EVENT OF DEFAULT OR IMPAIRMENT. SEE APPLICABLE MOODYS RATING SYMBOLS AND DEFINITIONS PUBLICATION FOR INFORMATION ON THE TYPES OF CONTRACTUAL FINANCIAL OBLIGATIONS ADDRESSED BY MOODYS CREDIT RATINGS. 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Luxury Tech Leader Collaborates with Partners Molteni&C and Misty Copeland for Festive Gathering to Raise Awareness

NEW YORK, Dec. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- LG SIGNATURE, the ultra-premium brand from LG Electronics known for world-class design and cutting-edge innovations, is supporting DIFFA's (Design Industries Foundation Fighting AIDS) Specify with Care program this holiday season.

Courtesy of LG SIGNATURE

DIFFA serves a wide network of communities and grants funds to organizations providing treatment, education, and assistance for people impacted by HIV, AIDS, homelessness, hunger and mental health issues. LG SIGNATURE's support helps assure that DIFFA has the resources to assist HIV and AIDS organizations year-round.

The contribution was announced at a holiday soiree for the interior design community with DIFFA on Dec. 9 at Molteni&C|Dada|UniFor's New York Flagship Store, which currently showcases LG SIGNATURE innovations led by the world's first rollable TV, OLED R, as part of a three-year collaboration with the Italian premium lifestyle and furniture brand.

The event sparked a larger dialogue around DIFFA's pressing needs among the 150-plus guests including designers, architects and clients. The American Ballet Theatre's Principal Dancer Misty Copeland made a special appearance as an LG SIGNATURE brand ambassador who is equally passionate about humanitarian efforts.

"We value the opportunity to promote DIFFA's mission in partnership with Molteni&C to help bring awareness to this noble cause as champions of change," said Peggy Ang, marketing senior vice president at LG Electronics USA, which markets the LG SIGNATURE brand in the United States. "It's been a trying year, and at LG we believe life's good when we care for the well-being of others. There's no better time than the holiday season to pay it forward and hopefully inspire others to join us."

DIFFA Executive Director Dawn Roberson, said, "We're honored to have the support of innovative industry leaders like LG SIGNATURE who recognize the importance of advocacy within our local community. This holiday event proved to be a wonderful reminder that together, and with our shared network, we have the power to make a difference in the lives of the organizations and individuals we serve."

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LG SIGNATURE's newest offerings were on display for holiday event attendees, highlighting its expansive collection just in time for the gift-giving season. Featured products included:

LG SIGNATURE OLED R Rollable TV (model 65RX) , an engineering and user-centric triumph that reimagines the television experience by disappearing at the touch of a button to liberate users from the limitations of a wall for a more thoughtfully curated living space. Built using an ultra-thin, flexible 4K OLED screen made from one sheet of glass, LG SIGNATURE OLED R features luminous display technology composed of over 8 million self-lit pixels that deliver superior, detailed, and vivid picture quality, powered by LG's fourth-generation  (Alpha) 9 intelligent processor for best-in-class visuals. Most notably, the TV transforms into three different viewing windows to expand the user experience from watching content to exploring mood lighting, listening to music, smart home control and much more.

LG SIGNATURE Wine Cellar , a sleek and seamlessly designed appliance with Wi-Fi connectivity that mimics the environment of traditional wine caves. Using LG's Optimal Preservation Technology, the wine cellar minimizes temperature fluctuations, reduces vibration, limits light exposure and locks in humidity to create the ideal storage environment for any variety or vintage. The unit can hold up to 65 bottles and features noteworthy conveniences like InstaView, a glass touch display that illuminates for easy exterior viewing to reduce cold air loss, and Voice Activation powered by LG's ThinQ technology, which allows you to open the door with the sound of your voice. An Auto Open Door feature opens the door automatically with the wave of a foot for an added touch. Convertible drawers offer customizable temperatures from fridge to freezer mode, exemplifying the wine cellar as an all-in-one preservation system for food and wine.

LG SIGNATURE OLED 8K TVs (models 77Z9 and 88Z9) , an award-winning OLED 8K TV that redefines the premium viewing experience thanks to more than 33 million self-lit pixels, 1 billion colors, perfect blacks and limitless contrast. With a picture that's four times sharper than 4K UHD and with 16 times the detail of HDTV, the 88- and 77-inch class LG SIGNATURE OLED 8K TVs exceed the industry's official 8K Ultra HD definition set by the Consumer Technology Association.

LG SIGNATURE Air Purifier, an all-in-one, Allergy Foundation of America (AAFA)-certified air purifier and humidifier that helps eliminate particles within a 318 sq. ft. radius. The Watering Engine disperses atomized water to create a comfortable humidity level, using UV light and smart drying technology to prevent mold and bacteria accumulation. The Smart LED Indicator allows users to see the air being cleaned through a transparent cover, with the display changing from red to blue as the indoor air quality improves.

Today, visitors to the Molteni&C|Dada|UniFor New York Flagship Store can enjoy a more integrated luxury lifestyle shopping experience, browsing both brands in-store. The LG SIGNATURE OLED 8K TV (model 77Z9) will remain on display in-store, along with the LG OLED 4K TV (model 65GX), which is featured in the 2021 Molteni&C collection catalog.

For more information about DIFFA's mission and how to get involved, please visit www.DIFFA.org. To learn more about LG SIGNATURE, its growing product lineup and ongoing partnerships, please visit www.LGSIGNATURE.com.

About LG SIGNATURE

LG SIGNATURE is the first ultra-premium brand across multiple product categories from global innovator LG Electronics. Catering to the most discerning consumers, LG SIGNATURE is designed to provide a state-of-the-art living experience that feels pure, sophisticated and luxurious. Combining the very best of everything LG has to offer, the distinctive LG SIGNATURE products were designed with their true essence in mind  streamlined to focus on each product's essential function while maintaining LG SIGNATURE's modern, signature design. For more information, visit www.LGSIGNATURE.com.

About DIFFA

Design Industries Foundation Fighting AIDS (DIFFA) raises awareness and grants funds to organizations that provide treatment, direct care services, preventive education programs, and advocacy for individuals impacted by HIV/AIDS, as well as related challenges, including drug abuse and homelessness, which directly impact new HIV/AIDS infections. DIFFA is one of the largest funders of HIV/AIDS service and education programs in the United States, mobilizing the immense resources and creativity of the design community. Since its founding in 1984, DIFFA has emerged from a grassroots organization into a national foundation based in New York City with chapters and community partners across the country that, working together, have provided more than $45 million to hundreds of HIV/AIDS organizations nationwide. Recent recipients of DIFFA grants include: Alpha Workshops, Gay Men's Heath Crisis, Housing Works, God's Love We Deliver, Bailey House, Correctional Association of NY, SAGE, BOOM! Health, Hetrick-Martin Institute, Callen-Lorde Community Health Center, among many others. www.diffa.org.

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Minister Champagne announces new measures to help companies meet their diversity and inclusion targets

Minister Champagne announces new measures to help companies meet their diversity and inclusion targets

Canada NewsWire

OTTAWA, ON, Dec. 10, 2021

OTTAWA, ON, Dec. 10, 2021 /CNW/ - Equity, diversity and inclusion are fundamental to Canada's economy, both now and in the future. When their senior executives are reflective of Canada's diversity, businesses and organizations of all sizes benefit. The Government of Canada believes that corporate Canada should look like Canada and that bringing broader perspectives and talents to decision-making bodies is essential to building back a stronger and more resilient country.

Today, the Honourable Francois-Philippe Champagne, Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry, announced an investment of $28.5 million to support the implementation of a toolkit to help organizations participating in the 50  30 Challenge meet their diversity and inclusion objectives.

Since the 50  30 Challenge launched in December 2020, close to 1,400 organizations have signed on. Over the past year, Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada (ISED) has been working with partners to develop tools and resources to support these organizations in adopting practices to improve equity and diversity.

To that end, Minister Champagne announced today that, along with 50  30 Challenge Ecosystem partners, KPMG in Canada will be developing the What Works Toolkit, an online suite of tools, policies and resources for organizations across Canada to use. The toolkit will include resources to support the recruitment and mentorship of board members and senior managers from under-represented groups, as well as tools to support the development of anti-racism, anti-harassment and inclusive workplace strategies.

The Minister also announced the five 50  30 Challenge Ecosystem partners that will be supporting the adoption of the What Works Toolkit and further supporting participating organizations. The Ecosystem partnersColleges and Institutes Canada, Global Compact Network Canada, the Ted Rogers School of Management's Diversity Institute, the Women's Economic Council, and Egalewill be responsible for helping participants meet their diversity and inclusion goals by linking them to best practices and tools, providing guidance, and advising them on other diversity supports specific to each organization's unique needs.

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Additionally, ISED has been working with the Standards Council of Canada and the Ted Rogers School of Management's Diversity Institute to create a framework for measuring 50  30 Challenge achievements. As a part of this process, the Council has published a publicly available specification guidance document to aid organizations in the first steps of implementing equity, diversity and inclusion practices.

Quotes

"For the Canadian economy to achieve its full potential, everyone must have the chance to make their full contribution. It's been clearly established that organizations with more diverse decision-making bodies are also more successful. I'm excited to see the Challenge participants take concrete actions to bring more diverse voices to the table and reap the rewards for turning their ambitions into reality."

 The Honourable Francois-Philippe Champagne, Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry

"In Canada, diversity is a fact but inclusion is a choice. When all Canadians see themselves represented at the highest levels of our institutions, we all benefit. It's inspiring to see close to 1,400 Canadian organizations stepping up for the 50  30 Challenge in its first year, and we are looking forward to supporting them in their diversity and inclusion efforts in the year to come. And that's because we know representation matters."

 The Honourable Ahmed Hussen, Minister of Housing and Diversity and Inclusion

Quick facts

Launched in December 2020, the 50  30 Challenge is a voluntary pledge by Canadian organizations to increase the representation and inclusion of diverse groups within their workplace. Organizations participating in the Challenge aspire to two goals: gender parity (50% women and/or non-binary people) and significant representation (30%) of other under-represented groupssuch as racialized, Black, and/or people of colour; people with disabilities (including invisible and episodic disabilities); and LGBTQ2+ and/or gender and sexually diverse individualson Canadian boards or in senior management.

Close to 1,400 organizations across Canada have now joined the 50  30 Challenge.

The 50  30 Challenge builds on the efforts undertaken since 2015 to advance equality, including the Women Entrepreneurship Strategy; diversity disclosure requirements for publicly traded companies; a charter on equity, diversity and inclusion for post-secondary institutions; and the Black Entrepreneurship Program.

The 50  30 Challenge builds on the 2018 amendments to the Canada Business Corporations Act that require distributing corporations to report on their board and senior management diversity.

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New data underscore efficacy of Piqray, even in those patients with a short treatment duration on prior CDK4/6i or with ESR1 mutations, biomarkers of endocrine resistance1-5

Recent guideline updates support use of Piqray with fulvestrant for postmenopausal HR+/HER2- PIK3CA-mutated mBC patients immediately after failure on prior CDK4/6i treatment6

Piqray works synergistically with fulvestrant across the PI3K and estrogen receptor pathways, respectivelyremaining the only treatment specifically approved for mBC with a PIK3CA mutation, a known oncogenic driver of the disease7-9

Five BYLieve presentations include data on longer-term follow-up and ESR1 mutations, which occur in up to 56% of patients with HR+/HER2- mBC1-5,10-11

Basel, December 10, 2021  Novartis today announced new Piqray (alpelisib) data indicating benefit across a broad range of patient and disease characteristics as seen in analyses from all three cohorts of BYLieve. BYLieve is an ongoing Phase II, open-label, 3-cohort non-comparative study evaluating Piqray with endocrine therapy including men and pre- and postmenopausal women with hormone-receptor positive, human epidermal growth factor receptor-2 negative (HR+/HER2-) advanced or metastatic breast cancer (mBC) who have progressed on or after prior therapies, including CDK4/6 inhibitor plus endocrine therapy1-5. These data will be presented at the 2021 San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium (SABCS) from December 7-10.

The data from all three cohorts of the BYLieve study have value for the medical community and for the patients we care for with mBC, because these cohorts show a benefit from alpelisib in the post-CDK4/6i setting for patients with HR+/HER2- PIK3CA-mutated cancer, said Dr. Hope S. Rugo, Director, Breast Oncology and Clinical Trials Education, University of California San Francisco (UCSF) Helen Diller Family Comprehensive Cancer Center. Beyond illustrating the efficacy and safety of alpelisib, regardless of the duration of prior CDK4/6i treatment, the data provide meaningful insights into how alpelisib may benefit different subgroups of patients.

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Highlights from the BYLieve data presented at SABCS

BYLieve Cohort A (P1-18-03) : Updated safety and efficacy data after 18 months of follow-up showed median overall survival improvement of 26.4 months (95% CI: 21.0-30.5) for patients treated with Piqray plus fulvestrant immediately following CDK4/6i plus an AI 1 . The most common all-grade adverse events (AEs) (n=127) were diarrhea (63.8%), hyperglycemia (59.8%), nausea (46.5%) and rash (31.5%) 1 .





BYLieve Cohort C (PD13-05) : The third and final BYLieve cohort included patients who received chemotherapy or endocrine therapy as immediate prior treatment, who could have received prior CDK4/6i as well 2 .

The primary endpoint was met with 48.7% (95% CI: 39.3%-58.2%) of patients alive and without disease progression at six months 2 . Data confirm clinically relevant activity of Piqray as a targeted therapy for PIK3CA as a driver oncogene 2 . No new safety signals were observed, with the most common all-grade AEs (n=126) being hyperglycemia (65.1%), diarrhea (52.4%), nausea (40.5%) and rash (38.9%) 2 .



BYLieve Cohorts A & B (P1-18-08; P5-13-03; PD15-01): Exploratory biomarker and post-hoc analyses demonstrated efficacy with Piqray plus fulvestrant/letrozole in CDK4/6i-resistant mBC, as seen in patients with early discontinuation of the prior CDK4/6i (Cohort A: 6 months median PFS of 12.0 months and >6 months median PFS of 6.2 months; HR=0.51; 95% CI: 0.29-0.89; Cohort B: 6 months median PFS of 5.9 months and >6 months median PFS of 5.6 months; HR=0.72; 95% CI: 0.45-1.18), supporting the use of Piqray plus endocrine therapy as an immediate next-line option in these patients3. Grade 3 AEs were experienced by 84.6% (n=22) and 66.0% (n=66) of patients in the 6 months and >6 months subgroups, respectively, in Cohort A and by 62.5% (n=20) and 72.5% (n=66) of patients in the 6 months and >6 months subgroups, respectively, in Cohort B3.

Additionally, the exploratory ctDNA analysis from Cohorts A and B (median PFS of 7.3 months and 5.7 months in Cohorts A and Cohort B, respectively) found that Piqray was effective in the post-CDK4/6i setting regardless of endocrine therapy partner and tumor genomic profile and other mutations associated with CDK4/6i resistance4. Across the three cohorts no new safety signals were observed, even with longer exposure, as seen in Cohort A, confirming no cumulative toxicities with Piqray1-3.

An estimated 361,826 people are diagnosed with mBC worldwide each year, and approximately 40% of those with HR+/HER2- subtype have a PIK3CA mutation, which is associated with a poor prognosis8-9.

Visit https://www.hcp.novartis.com/virtual-congress/sabcs-2021/ for the latest information from Novartis, including our commitment to the Oncology community, and access to our SABCS Virtual Scientific Program data presentations (for registered participants).

About Piqray (alpelisib)

Piqray is a kinase inhibitor developed for use in combination with fulvestrant for the treatment of postmenopausal women, and men, with HR+/HER2-, PIK3CA-mutated, advanced or metastatic breast cancer following progression on or after endocrine-based regimen7. Piqray is approved in 64 countries, including the US and European member states12.

Novartis is continuing to reimagine cancer with additional trials of Piqray. EPIK-B5 will be a large Phase III clinical trial of Piqray in combination with fulvestrant to complement the SOLAR-1 study13. Novartis is also studying the potential of Piqray in triple negative breast cancer (TNBC) in the EPIK-B3 Phase III clinical trial, in advanced HER2+ breast cancer in the EPIK-B2 Phase III clinical trial and in ovarian cancer in the EPIK-O Phase III clinical trial14-16.

About Novartis in Advanced Breast Cancer

Novartis tackles breast cancer with superior science, collaboration and a passion for transforming patient care. We've taken a bold approach to our research by including patient populations often neglected in clinical trials, identifying new pathways or mutations that may play a role in disease progression and developing therapies that not only maintain, but also improve, quality of life for patients. Our priority over the past 30 years and today is to deliver treatments proven to improve and extend lives for those diagnosed with advanced breast cancer.

Important Safety Information from the PIQRAY EU SmPC

The most common ADRs and the most common grade 3 / 4 ADRs (reported at a frequency >20% and 2%, respectively) were plasma glucose increased, creatinine increased, gamma-glutamyltransferase increased, rash, lymphocyte count decreased, nausea, alanine aminotransferase increased, anaemia, fatigue, lipase increased, decreased appetite*, stomatitis, vomiting*, weight decreased, hypocalcaemia, plasma glucose decreased*, activated partial thromboplastin time prolonged*, alopecia**, diarrhoea, hypokalaemia, hypertension, nausea, creatinine increased, and mucosal inflammation (*<2% grade 3/4 ADRs reported, ** no grade 3/4 ADRs reported).

Piqray can cause serious side effects such as severe hypersensitivity, severe cutaneous reactions, hyperglycaemia, pneumonitis, diarrhoea and osteonecrosis of the jaw.

The following should be taken into consideration prior to or during treatment with Piqray:

Piqray should be permanently discontinued in patients with serious hypersensitivity reactions.

Piqray should not be initiated in patients with a history of severe cutaneous reactions, should be interrupted if signs or symptoms of severe cutaneous reactions are present, and permanently discontinued if a severe cutaneous reaction is confirmed.

Fasting glucose and HbA1c levels should be monitored frequently in the first 4 weeks of treatment, and patients should be advised of the signs and symptoms of hyperglycaemia.

In case of new or worsening respiratory symptoms, the patient should be evaluated for pneumonitis.

Patients should be advised to notify their physician if diarrhoea occurs.

Caution should be exercised when Piqray and bisphosphonates or denosumab are used together or sequentially. Piqray should not be initiated in patients with ongoing osteonecrosis of the jaw.

The efficacy and safety of Piqray has not been studied in patients with symptomatic visceral disease.

Animal studies suggest that Piqray may cause fetal harm in pregnant women. Therefore, as a precaution, women of childbearing potential should use effective contraception while receiving Piqray during treatment and at least 1 week after stopping treatment. Women should not breast feed for at least 1 week after the last dose of Piqray. Piqray may affect fertility in males and females.

Please see full Prescribing Information for Piqray, available at www.Piqray.com.

Disclaimer

This press release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of the United States Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements can generally be identified by words such as potential, can, will, plan, may, could, would, expect, anticipate, seek, look forward, believe, committed, investigational, pipeline, launch, or similar terms, or by express or implied discussions regarding potential marketing approvals, new indications or labeling for the investigational or approved products described in this press release, or regarding potential future revenues from such products. You should not place undue reliance on these statements. Such forward-looking statements are based on our current beliefs and expectations regarding future events, and are subject to significant known and unknown risks and uncertainties. Should one or more of these risks or uncertainties materialize, or should underlying assumptions prove incorrect, actual results may vary materially from those set forth in the forward-looking statements. There can be no guarantee that the investigational or approved products described in this press release will be submitted or approved for sale or for any additional indications or labeling in any market, or at any particular time. Nor can there be any guarantee that such products will be commercially successful in the future. In particular, our expectations regarding such products could be affected by, among other things, the uncertainties inherent in research and development, including clinical trial results and additional analysis of existing clinical data; regulatory actions or delays or government regulation generally; global trends toward health care cost containment, including government, payor and general public pricing and reimbursement pressures and requirements for increased pricing transparency; our ability to obtain or maintain proprietary intellectual property protection; the particular prescribing preferences of physicians and patients; general political, economic and business conditions, including the effects of and efforts to mitigate pandemic diseases such as COVID-19; safety, quality, data integrity or manufacturing issues; potential or actual data security and data privacy breaches, or disruptions of our information technology systems, and other risks and factors referred to in Novartis AGs current Form 20-F on file with the US Securities and Exchange Commission. Novartis is providing the information in this press release as of this date and does not undertake any obligation to update any forward-looking statements contained in this press release as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.

About Novartis

Novartis is reimagining medicine to improve and extend peoples lives. As a leading global medicines company, we use innovative science and digital technologies to create transformative treatments in areas of great medical need. In our quest to find new medicines, we consistently rank among the worlds top companies investing in research and development. Novartis products reach nearly 800 million people globally and we are finding innovative ways to expand access to our latest treatments. About 108,000 people of more than 140 nationalities work at Novartis around the world. Find out more at https://www.novartis.com.

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References

Ciruelos EM et al. Alpelisib + fulvestrant in patients with hormone receptor-positive (HR+), human epidermal growth factor receptor 2-negative (HER2-), PIK3CA-mutated advanced breast cancer (ABC) previously treated with cyclin-dependent kinase 4/6 inhibitor (CDK4/6i) + aromatase inhibitor (AI): 18-month follow-up of BYLieve Cohort A. Presented at the San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium, December 8, 2021. Abstract #P1-18-03. Rugo HS et al. Alpelisib + fulvestrant in patients with PIK3CA-mutated, HR+, HER2- advanced breast cancer (ABC) who received chemotherapy or endocrine therapy (ET) as immediate prior treatment: BYLieve Cohort C primary results and exploratory biomarker analyses. Presented at the San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium, December 10, 2021. Abstract #PD13-05. Chia S et al. Effect of duration of prior cyclin-dependent kinase 4/6 inhibitor (CDK4/6i) therapy (6 mo or >6 mo) on alpelisib benefit in patients with hormone receptor-positive (HR+), human epidermal growth factor receptor 2-negative (HER2-), PIK3CA-mutated advanced breast cancer (ABC) from BYLieve. Presented at the San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium, December 8, 2021. Abstract # P1-18-08. Juric D et al. Alpelisib + endocrine therapy (ET) in patients with hormone receptor-positive (HR+), human epidermal growth factor receptor 2-negative (HER2-), PIK3CA-mutated advanced breast cancer (ABC) previously treated with cyclin-dependent kinase 4/6 inhibitor (CDK4/6i): Biomarker analyses from the Phase II BYLieve study. Presented at the San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium, December 8, 2021. Abstract #P5-13-03. Turner N et al. Impact of ESR1 mutations on endocrine therapy (ET) plus alpelisib benefit in patients with hormone receptor-positive (HR+), human epidermal growth factor receptor 2-negative (HER2-), PIK3CA-mutated, advanced breast cancer (ABC) who progressed on or after prior cyclin-dependent kinase inhibitor (CDK4/6i) therapy in the BYLieve trial. Presented at the San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium, December 10, 2021. Abstract #PD15-01. Burstein HJ, Somerfield MR, Barton DL, et al: Endocrine treatment and targeted therapy for HR-positive, HER2-negative metastatic breast Cancer: ASCO Guideline update. J Clin Oncol. July 29, 2021. Piqray (alpelisib) Prescribing Information. East Hanover, New Jersey, USA: Novartis Pharmaceuticals Corporation; July 2021. The Cancer Genome Atlas Network. Comprehensive molecular portraits of human breast tumours. Nature. 2012;490(7418):61-70. Mosele F, Stefanovska B, Lusque A, et al. Outcome and molecular landscape of patients with PIK3CA-mutated metastatic breast cancer. Ann Oncol. 2020;31(3):377-386. Fribbens, C., et al. Tracking Evolution of Aromatase Inhibitor Resistance with Circulating Tumour DNA Analysis in Metastatic Breast Cancer. Ann Oncol. 2018;29(1):145-153. https://doi.org/10.1093/annonc/mdx483. Dustin D, et al. ESR1 Mutations in Breast Cancer. Cancer. 2019;125(21):3714-3728, https://doi.org/10.1002/cncr.32345. Novartis Data on File. Novartis Pharmaceuticals Corp: 2021. Novartis Pharmaceuticals. Study to Assess the Efficacy and Safety of Alpelisib Plus Fulvestrant in Participants With HR-postitive (HR+), HER2-negative, Advanced Breast Cancer After Treatment With a CDK4/6 Inhibitor and an Aromatase Inhibitor: EPIK-B5 (October 27, 2021- November 27, 2026). Identifier: NCT05038735. https://www.clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT05038735. Novartis Pharmaceuticals. Study Assessing the Efficacy and Safety of Alpelisib + Nab-paclitaxel in Subjects With Advanced TNBC Who Carry Either a PIK3CA Mutation or Have PTEN Loss: EPIK-B3 (June 8, 2020-January 9, 2026). Identifier: NCT04251533. https://www.clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT04251533. Novartis Pharmaceuticals. EPIK-B2: A Two Part, Phase III, Multicenter, Randomized (1:1), Double-blind, Placebo-controlled Study to Assess the Efficacy and Safety of Alpelisib (BYL719) in Combination With Trastuzumab and Pertuzumab as Maintenance Therapy in Patients With HER2-positive Advanced Breast Cancer With a PIK3CA Mutation. Identifier: NCT04208178. https://www.clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/ NCT04208178. Novartis Pharmaceuticals. Alpelisib Plus Olaparib in Platinum-resistant/Refractory, High-grade Serous Ovarian Cancer, With no Germline BRCA Mutation Detected: EPIK-O (July 2, 2021-January 31, 2025). Identifier: NCT04729387. https://www.clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT04729387.

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NEW YORK, Dec. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Technavio's latest research report on the Ready To Cook Market In India offers a comprehensive analysis on new product launches, the latest trends, drivers, and challenges . The ready-to-cook market share growth in India by the offline segment for revenue generation. The wide prevalence of organized retail is increasing the sales of ready-to-cook food products. Supermarkets and hypermarkets are preferred by consumers due to the availability of products of all categories under a single roof, which is not possible in small shops. The increasing disposable incomes and rapid urbanization are shifting consumers' buying preferences from neighborhood convenience stores to supermarkets and hypermarkets.

Attractive Opportunities in Ready to Cook Market in India by Distribution Channel and Type - Forecast and Analysis 2022-2026

The ready-to-cook market in India is estimated to grow by USD 451.57 from 2021 to 2026. However, the growth momentum is likely to decelerate at a CAGR of 7.61%.

For more insights on the ready-to-cook market in India - Download a free sample now!

Market Dynamics

Factors such as growing preference for convenience food products in working population, new product launches, and the evolving retail landscape will drive the growth of the ready-to-cook market in India. However, growing health concerns might hamper the market growth. The holistic analysis of the drivers & challenges will help in deducing end goals and refining marketing strategies to gain a competitive edge. The ready-to-cook market analysis report of India also provides detailed information on other upcoming trends that will have a far-reaching effect on the market growth.

Company Profiles

The ready-to-cook market in India is fragmented and the vendors are deploying various organic and inorganic growth strategies to compete in the market. Some of the companies covered in this report are Bambino Agro Industries Ltd., Gits Food Products Pvt. Ltd., Hindustan Unilever Ltd., iD Fresh Food (India) Pvt. Ltd., IndianFarm Foods Pvt. Ltd., ITC Ltd., Kohinoor Foods Ltd., MTR Foods Pvt. Ltd., Nestle SA, and REGAL KITCHEN FOODS LTD., etc.

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Few Companies with Key Offerings

Bambino Agro Industries Ltd. - The company offers a wide of ready-to-cook products such as vermicelli, roasted vermicelli, instant pasta, noodles, and many more.

Gits Food Products Pvt. Ltd. - The company offers a wide of ready-to-cook products such as biryani, pau bhaji, veg pulao, masala rice, and many more.

Hindustan Unilever Ltd. - The company offers a wide range of ready-to-cook products such as Hyderabadi chicken dum biryani, dal makhani, and many more.

iD Fresh Food (India) Pvt. Ltd. - The company offers a wide range of ready-to-cook products such as fried idli or masala idli fry and many more.

IndianFarm Foods Pvt. Ltd - The company offers a wide range of ready-to-cook products such as Rava idli, ragi idli, idli mix, and many more.

Competitive Analysis

The competitive scenario provided in the ready-to-cook market in India report analyzes, evaluates, and positions companies based on various performance indicators. Some of the factors considered for this analysis include the financial performance of companies over the past few years, growth strategies, product innovations, new product launches, investments, growth in market share, etc.

Market Segmentation

By Distribution Channel, the market is classified into offline and online

By Type, the market is classified into instant noodles and pasta, instant soup, ready-to-mix, snacks, and others

Related Reports -

Frozen Food Market -The frozen food market has the potential to grow by USD 94.99 billion during 2021-2025, and the market's growth momentum will decelerate at a CAGR of 6.77%. Download a free sample now!

Sugar-Free Food and Beverage Market -The sugar-free food and beverage market share is expected to increase by USD 23.56 billion from 2020 to 2025, and the market's growth momentum will accelerate at a CAGR of 6.63%. Download a free sample now!

Ready To Cook Market In India Scope Report Coverage Details Page number 120 Base year 2021 Forecast period 2022-2026 Growth momentum & CAGR Decelerate at a CAGR of 7.61% Market growth 2022-2026 USD 451.57 million Market structure Fragmented YoY growth (%) 8.97 Regional analysis India Competitive landscape Leading companies, competitive strategies, consumer engagement scope Companies profiled Bambino Agro Industries Ltd., Gits Food Products Pvt. Ltd., Hindustan Unilever Ltd., iD Fresh Food (India) Pvt. Ltd., IndianFarm Foods Pvt. Ltd., ITC Ltd., Kohinoor Foods Ltd., MTR Foods Pvt. Ltd., Nestle SA, and REGAL KITCHEN FOODS LTD. Market Dynamics Parent market analysis, Market growth inducers and obstacles, Fast-growing and slow-growing segment analysis, COVID-19 impact and future consumer dynamics, market condition analysis for the forecast period Customization purview If our report has not included the data that you are looking for, you can reach out to our analysts and get segments customized.

About Us

Technavio is a leading global technology research and advisory company. Their research and analysis focus on emerging market trends and provides actionable insights to help businesses identify market opportunities and develop effective strategies to optimize their market positions. With over 500 specialized analysts, Technavio's report library consists of more than 17,000 reports and counting, covering 800 technologies, spanning across 50 countries. Their client base consists of enterprises of all sizes, including more than 100 Fortune 500 companies. This growing client base relies on Technavio's comprehensive coverage, extensive research, and actionable market insights to identify opportunities in existing and potential markets and assess their competitive positions within changing market scenarios.

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Hit play on the player above to hear the podcast and follow along with the transcript below. This transcript was automatically generated, and then edited for clarity in its current form. There may be some differences between the audio and the text.

More: Daily news, true crime, and more USA TODAY podcasts

Hey there listeners, it's Brett Molina. Welcome back to Talking Tech. Zoom of course has been a huge benefit to all of us, not to mention all the other tools that we use to video conference online, whether it's with friends or family or with colleagues that we're using during work.

There have also been a lot of instances of Zoom gone wrong. Here is the most recent one. The CEO of online mortgage company Better.com, Vishal Garg, recently apologized in a letter to employees after he says he, "Blundered the process of informing workers of layoffs."

This was after footage of his Zoom call was made available on social media and shared with different news reports that show him basically letting go of a swath of employees on a Zoom call. The video that's available on YouTube, and it's available within my story... You can read it on tech.usatoday.com.

He's sitting in a conference room, sitting at a conference table, and he's giving this talk about not great news that he wants to share, and he talks about layoffs and he drops this quote. Here we go. "If you are on this call you are part of the unlucky group being laid off. Your employment here is terminated effectively immediately."

Of course there was swift backlash. There have been reports that executives from Better.com have left the company since this has happened. Then we have this letter from the Better.com CEO apologizing, "I failed to show the appropriate amount of respect and appreciation for the individuals who were affected and for their contributions to Better."

An employee talked with CNN as well about this experience and it's a fascinating story. He basically was on this all and heard this announcement. Then when he was trying to get into a company Slack channel just to find out what happened he lost communication with everything. He lost his email and his phone and everything else soon after. So as he explains, it's a surreal moment.

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Earlier this month there was a report that Better.com had confirmed layoffs of about 9% of its staff, or about 900 people. We've reached out to representatives at Better.com to confirm details of the layoffs and also some other information. I'll update my story the second it's available. Be sure to go to tech.usatoday.com for the latest on this.

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Concerned about the combination of flu season, winter holidays and COVID-19 cases, the Rappahannock Area Health District is offering free flu shots, coronavirus vaccines and COVID-19 tests at community clinics this month.

During our last flu season, there were strict COVID mitigations in place that also helped to stop the spread of other transmissible infections, flu included, said Mary Chamberlin, public information officer with the Rappahannock Area Health District. Experts are not certain what this flu season will look like.

Theres even concern that because there was little flu virus activity last year, natural immunity may be lower than in an average flu season, said Lisa Sollot, respiratory disease coordinator with the Virginia Department of Health.

Because of that uncertainty, the health district encourages everyone 6 months and older to get an annual flu shot.

FREE FLU SHOTS

Starting on Monday, Dec. 13, free shots will be available as long as supplies last at three local health departments, from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m., on the days designated below:

Mondays:
In a memo to the court, special masters Bernard Grofman and Sean Trende said six of the 11 districts have a Democratic lean, and four of the 11 lean Republican.

Taken together, the three districts in the Fredericksburg region come out to more or less a wash in terms of partisan dynamics, said Stephen Farnsworth, University of Mary Washington professor of political science and director of the universitys Center for Leadership and Media Studies. The 10th is less Democratic than it was. The 7th is more Democratic than it was. And the 1st remains comfortably Republican.

While the draft maps could benefit Democrats overall, the proposed changes also would mean one incumbent Democrat, 7th District Rep. Abigail Spanberger, would no longer live in that district, but instead be in the 1st. Spanbergers office did not respond to a message seeking comment.

If youre a fan of Rep. Spanberger, youre not liking this map, Farnsworth said.

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Candidates are already eyeing the proposed new 7th District, with the seat up for election in November.
Tawana Lee, Melendezs mother and the second of four children of Tommy and Jacqueline Lee, wants others to join with them in celebrating her fathers life.

We want to reach out to the world to let them know so we can find a way to celebrate together and do a big memorial and remembrance of him, she said. He was such an impactful and positive person, everyone who met him was impacted by him.

As the family tries to deal with the personal losses, theyve also struggled to find a place to stay. No one in their extended family had room to take in the whole group. The grandmother is staying with one relative while the young couple and their babies are temporarily living with her father. Both Melendez and Lawson are full-time college students. Shes focusing on psychology and hes studying business administration but may switch to become an electrician.

Tawana Lee, a certified nursing assistant, has lived with her parents over the years just as Melendez, known as GG, has spent all her life with them. Tawana Lee wants to find a place where she can help with her mothers care, but finding something affordable has been a struggle.
The Supreme Court of Virginia took control of the states redistricting process after the new Virginia Redistricting Commission bogged down on partisan lines and failed to draw maps for either of the legislative chambers or the states congressional seats. The commission, made up by party-nominated citizens and legislators, ultimately could not come close to compromise.

By contrast, the experts tasked by the courts to draw the maps described a friendlier process.

We agreed on almost all issues initially, and the few issues on which we initially disagreed were resolved by amicable discussion, Republican Sean Trende and Democrat Bernard Grofman wrote in a memo to the court, which they asked be shared with the public along with the maps.

The court will hear public comment on the maps on Dec. 15 and Dec. 17 from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m.

Below is an initial glimpse at the proposed maps.

Congressional seats

More often than not, Democrats would have a slight edge in Virginias U.S. House delegation, but the proposed map doesnt cement their current 7-4 advantage, according to an analysis by the special masters.
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As the winners of Fremont Creative Collectives last Pitch It in Fremont! competition, Blair Horner said Run Nebraska has made a name for itself organizing and timing races in the years since.

Yes, those events happen all around Nebraska, but they also happen right here in Fremont, and that enriches the community in Fremont by having those events happen, he said.

After more than three years, Fremont Creative Collective will return the competition, allowing entrepreneurs to share their ideas with a panel of judges to win $5,000. The event is set for April 21 at Milady Coffeehouse.

Founded by Fremont City Councilmember Glen Ellis, Fremont Creative Collective allows innovators and entrepreneurs to collaborate, said Horner, secretary for the nonprofits board.

Our goal is to assist and equip them with local resources, connect them with local resources that are going to help them start and then sustain a local business, he said.

Entrants to the competition must fill out an application by March 31. The application can be found by visiting Fremont Creative Collectives website.

Theres quite a bit of questions, Horner said. Theyre going to need to spend a little bit of time on it.

The applications will go to Chris McBratney, a member of the board and co-founder of Run Nebraska, who will submit them to the board.

Were kind of going to be looking at each one of them as they come in, Horner said. And if theyre a little incomplete, we will probably reach out to them and ask them for more information, more data.

Although the last event had about 10 entrees in the competition, Horner said the limit will be lower this time around.

Were going to try to hold that to five or six, he said. By holding it to five or six, I think thats going to allow us more time with each one of them.

The applications will be vetted by the board, who will have certain criteria for choosing which will be selected, including location.

This is the Fremont Creative Collective, and so its not that we would turn someone away, but someone from Lincoln probably has some more resources at their disposal than someone from Fremont, Horner said.

On the day of the competition, the entrants will make a pitch to a panel of judges, who will grade them according to a secret rubric.

Hopefully were going to be able to arrange this so that its interactive so that theres some ability for judges to question and to tease out additional information if they feel like they need it, Horner said.

The judges will then decide the winner, who will receive additional prizes, including a free bronze membership to the Fremont Area Chamber of Commerce for one year and a free advertisement in the Fremont Tribune.

Additionally, Horner said Midland University professor Jenny Murnane has offered to give a two-hour consulting session to the winner that will be tailored to their needs.

It can be anything from a business plan to a marketing program to a combination of those two or even just helping them strategically, thinking through, What are the steps we need to take at this point so that we can start getting ourselves to the next level? he said.

With the Fremont Creative Collective, Horner said its goal isnt to start the next Lincoln Premium Poultry with a competition like this, but maybe two friends who just want to make a business together.

And 10 years down the road, maybe one of those guys are on our board and maybe they are employing 10 people, he said. Its those little moves that help make the community better.

In working with organizations like the Fremont Chamber and Greater Fremont Development Council, Horner said Fremont Creative Collective just wants to help the little guys.

Im just excited about the future of Fremont Creative Collective, and I think Fremonts in a position right now where it needs it, he said. Its ready for something like this.

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Fremont Mayor Joey Spellerberg was recently honored by the U.S. Global Leadership Coalition for his work at its annual Tribute Celebration on Tuesday.

It was a neat day, and its neat to be able to represent Fremont, he said. I do see this as a Fremont award, and it was great to have our community represented as a part of this.

USGLC honored almost 100 mayors from across the country for their leadership with former U.S. Senator Norm Coleman and former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

USGLC is proud to honor Mayor Spellerberg because he has been an influential advocate for strengthening American global leadership to support our communities here at home, USGLC President and CEO Liz Schrayer said in a press release.

Formed in 1995, USGLC is a nonprofit dedicated to supporting national security and foreign policy to improve the countrys economy and safety.

On Sept. 28, Spellerberg issued a proclamation declaring the day as U.S. Heartland Global Leadership Day and highlighting Fremonts job opportunities and Midland University.

Your proclamation was inspiring, not only showcasing the success of your city, but to demonstrate to your constituents that engaging globally matters to their everyday lives, Schrayer said in a thank-you letter.

A few weeks after the proclamation, Spellerberg said he was asked to join USGLCs Nebraska Advisory Committee.

Our goal as a committee in Nebraska is to advocate for Nebraska in the world and our local communities, Spellerberg said. And so its kind of our connection to Washington, D.C., and what goes on in the world and how that affects local communities right here in Fremont.

The committees more than 100 members include Warren Buffett, former Gov. Ben Nelson and Sens. Adam Morfeld and Rita Sanders.

As a benefit to the people here in Fremont, it just lets our voice be heard, he said. And so thats important, not only in Fremont and state of Nebraska, but also in the world as well.

USGLCs celebration also included a tribute to former Secretary of State Colin Powell and a recognition of U.S. Sens. Jeanne Shaheen and Todd Young for their work.

With the mayors recognition, Schrayer said in the release that they were on the frontlines handling issues with the economy and COVID-19 pandemic.

Mayors across America are stepping up, knowing that diplomacy and development are essential to the health, safety, and economic interests of every American family, she said. Its exciting to recognize them.

Spellerberg said he and the city of Fremont were honored for supporting the countrys leadership in global affairs.

Its a Fremont award, he said. What happens here locally does make an impact in the world, and sometimes its hard to see, but when you look at Fremont and our strong, ag-based economy, its really important that we have access to the global marketplace.

Additionally, Spellerberg said he believes its important as mayor to have a global perspective in order to serve Fremont well.

This is an award as well for Fremont as a whole in just the recognition thats going on here, he said. So it definitely was an honor.

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An Afghan female pilot who was pregnant when she flew from Tajikistan to the United Arab Emirates last month with other U.S.-trained Afghan pilots and crew members has given birth to a baby boy.

The pilot, 27, was one of 143 who arrived on November 10 in Abu Dhabi after months of uncertainty about their final destination. They had fled Afghanistan to Tajikistan on August 15 and spent more than three months in the country.

One of the pilots colleagues told RFE/RL on December 9 that the baby was born a week ago and that both mother and baby were in good health.

The U.S. Embassy in Tajikistan said last month that the pilots were among 191 Afghan evacuees who were to fly to the U.A.E. and be processed before being granted immigration rights to the United States.

The pilots and crew members have all received COVID-19 vaccines and were looking forward to traveling to the United States, the pilot's colleague told RFE/RL, adding the exact date of their departure is still unknown.

The woman who gave birth is one of two female pilots in the group. She had been hospitalized twice while in Tajikistan.

The pilots played an important role in the war against the Taliban, flying alongside U.S. pilots and conducting air strikes against Taliban positions.

The U.S. war ended in August, with a chaotic withdrawal of all American forces. The Taliban-led government has said that the pilots would not be in danger if they return, but the pilots are skeptical and no longer see Afghanistan as safe.

Based on reporting by RFE/RLs Tajik Service
Pakistanis who say their relatives have been forcibly disappeared at the hands of Pakistani security forces are demanding the government provide information about their fate.

Dozens of people joined a rally on December 10 in Islamabad carrying placards bearing the names, pictures, and date on which their love ones went missing.

Rights activists say more than 8,000 people have been abducted by Pakistan's security agencies over the past two decades during operations against alleged militants, leaving hundreds of families with no knowledge of their whereabouts or whether they are still alive.

Activists also complain that those responsible for committing enforced disappearances are not being held accountable.

Pakistani authorities reject the allegations, saying many of the disappeared were either killed in operations against Islamist militants or crossed into Afghanistan to hide there.

On November 8, the lower house of Pakistans parliament passed a bill criminalizing enforced disappearance. But the amendment also foresees penalties of up to five years' imprisonment and 100,000 rupees ($563) in fines for anyone found guilty of filing a complaint with information that proves to be false.

The bill, which has been criticized by human rights defenders, needs to be approved by the Senate and signed by the president to become law.

Relatives of victims of enforced disappearance are already often reluctant to report cases or exchange information with Government officials, either for fear of reprisals or lack of trust," a group of UN experts said in a statement on December 10.

"If passed, this law would undoubtedly lead to an increased underreporting of the crime, and foster impunity for the perpetrators," they added.

Last month, Amnesty International said cases of enforced disappearance had been documented in Pakistan since the mid-1980s, but the abhorrent practice has been routinely used by Pakistans intelligence services over the past 20 years to target human rights defenders, political activists, students, and journalists, with the fate of hundreds of victims still unknown.
Jimmy Sengenberger is host of The Jimmy Sengenberger Show Saturdays from 6-9am on News/Talk 710 KNUS. He also hosts Jimmy at the Crossroads, a webshow and podcast in partnership with The Washington Examiner.
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State prosecutors have ended an investigation into the sexual assault allegations against former East Helena Police Chief William Harrington, who recently pleaded guilty to a separate charge of distributing child pornography.

The Montana Attorney General's Office Division of Criminal Investigation said the allegations of sexual assault were unsubstantiated.

"At the request of city officials, DCI investigated a report of sexual assault by the former police chief. At no point in the investigation did they find that the sexual encounters were non-consensual," attorney general spokeswoman Emilee Cantrell said in an email this week.

Harrington resigned from his post as East Helena's highest ranking police officer March 5, after being put on administrative leave pending the investigation into the sexual assault allegations.

The Lewis and Clark County Sheriff's Office was initially brought in by city leadership, but Sheriff Leo Dutton said he turned over the case to the division of criminal investigation.

Shortly after his resignation, Harrington was arrested and charged with three counts of distributing child pornography and one count of possessing child pornography.

Harrington pleaded guilty to one count of distributing child pornography Tuesday in U.S. District Court. The government will seek the dismissal of the three other counts if the court accepts the terms of a plea agreement in the case.

"At the same time, the investigation initiated by the Lewis and Clark County Sheriffs Office into allegations of distribution of child pornography were substantiated," Cantrell said of the division of criminal investigation's work on the case. "The Department of Justice is glad he pleaded guilty in that case and will be held accountable."

The Montana Public Safety Officer Standards and Training Bureau has put on hold its investigation into Harrington's conduct, according to POST Paralegal and Investigator Katrina Bolger. The POST Bureau will likely revoke Harrington's police certification following his sentencing, which is scheduled for April 13, 2022.

Bolger said that generally when criminal charges are pending, such investigations are put on hold to allow law enforcement officers and agents of the court to do their jobs.

A report resulting from a third-party investigation into workplace culture within the East Helena Police Department, which stemmed from the sexual assault claim and was filed May 11, outlined Harrington's meticulous efforts to isolate his officers and employees from other agencies and each other. The report also claimed Harrington installed video surveillance cameras in the department and GPS tracking devices within the squad cars, allowing only him to monitor employees remotely.

The report, filed by a Great Falls attorney, states "Harrington's tenure with the EHPD did nothing to address these problems (inadequate management and oversight; the failure to define roles and responsibilities; lack of training; outdated policies and procedures; burnout and stress) and in fact seemed to only worsen many of the issues."

Portions of that report, obtained by the Independent Record through a records request, were redacted "to protect the right to privacy of the alleged victim," according to East Helena City Attorney Peter Elverum.

East Helena Mayor James Schell and Mayor-elect Kelly Harris did not respond to requests for comment.

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A former Carroll College student pleaded guilty Thursday to multiple felony crimes including rape and secretly recording women using the bathroom in his campus apartment.

As part of a plea agreement negotiated with the Lewis and Clark County Attorney's Office, Connor Andrew Jones, 22, admitted to raping an intoxicated and unconscious woman and collecting years worth of video of various women using the bathroom.

Jones pleaded guilty in District Judge Kathy Seeley's court to one felony count and two misdemeanor counts of surreptitious visual observation or recording; one felony count of aggravated sexual intercourse without consent by common scheme; one felony count of sexual abuse of children; and one felony count of burglary by common scheme.

The plea agreement included the dismissal of 19 other charges, the majority of which were related to secret video recordings.

The county attorney recommended a sentence of 40 years in prison with 20 years suspended for the crime of aggravated sexual intercourse without consent, five years in prison for the count of sexual abuse of children, and 10 years in prison for the single count of burglary. The misdemeanor counts of surreptitious visual recording come with a recommended sentence of 18 months in county jail, while the felony count of the same crime comes with a recommendation of five years in prison.

The recommendation is for the sentences to run concurrently, which means Jones would face a total of 20 years in prison if Seeley follows the county attorney's recommendations.

The plea agreement also includes conditions that Jones be placed under the supervision of the Montana Department of Corrections, obtain approval from his supervising officer before taking up residence anywhere, make such a residence open to officer searches and maintain employment approved by the board of parolees.

Jones is prohibited from owning, using or possessing any firearm, alcohol or drugs.

Other standard conditions are also included.

Seeley ordered a presentence investigation and a psychosexual evaluation to be conducted.

Jones' case first came to light when a faculty member at Carroll College noticed some unusual files on a storage device in January 2020. Upon further examination, the faculty member realized it appeared to show images of women using the bathroom with no knowledge of being filmed. Another person recognized Jones' on-campus apartment in the images.

Police later uncovered years worth of video files depicting various females using the restroom in the apartment, and 18 of them were identified. Another recovered video file depicts Jones sexually assaulting an unconscious woman. While interviewing victims in the case, one woman reportedly told police that Jones had touched her inappropriately after being told "no."

Investigators were also able to recover more than 700 files depicting child pornography from devices seized from Jones.

A sentencing hearing for Jones was scheduled for Feb. 16 at 9 a.m.

Jones, who was apprehended in the Denver suburb of Aurora, Colorado, appeared in the court via video teleconference because of inclement weather.

Seeley stated it is mandatory for Jones to appear in person for his sentencing hearing.

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A 56-year-old Helena man was arrested in Idaho on Tuesday after officers found more than 4 pounds of marijuana and nearly 3 pounds of methamphetamine in his vehicle.

Wesley V. Long was charged with felony drug trafficking in methamphetamine, felony drug trafficking in marijuana, felony enhancement as a persistent violator, and misdemeanor possession of drug paraphernalia, Idaho authorities said.

Long was northbound on Interstate 15 in Bingham County around 1 p.m. Tuesday when an Idaho State Trooper pulled him over for changing lanes without signaling, according to a press release from the Idaho State Police.

The trooper found evidence of drug use while speaking with the driver. During a search of the vehicle, troopers located several large bags of raw marijuana and three large bags containing a white substance that tested presumptive positive for methamphetamine.

Long was arrested and booked into the Bingham County Jail.

"We all use our highways to drive to work or travel with our families, yet drug traffickers use the highways too," Capt. Chris Weadick of ISP District 6 in Idaho Falls said in the news release.

"The training and experience of ISP troopers helps them locate a significant amount of illegal drugs, but it's only a fraction of what's out there. While our troopers keep doing all they can, and we hope sharing this information helps us all understand the relentless consistency of the illegal drug trade," Weadick said. "It's this education, combined with support services for those addicted and more discussions on how to keep families healthy and strong that will keep our communities safe."

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Former Montana Gov. Marc Racicot warned recently that fidelity is in jeopardy in America, not only in regard to the state and national constitutions, but to the countrys spirit as well. He also said there are serious warning signs that the U.S. Constitution and republic are at risk.

The most probable way for our republic to vanish is through a lack of honor and fidelity. Not surprisingly that is precisely what is required by our constitutional oath of office, he said in a speech brought a standing ovation from nearly 100 people attending the 100th annual meeting of the Montana Taxpayers Association on Wednesday at the Best Western Premier Helena Great Northern Hotel.

I dont want to preach, so I am hopeful that I wont appear pretentious, but with all that has dramatically changed with the political and social fabric of our lives in this last decade and a half  much for the worse  in my judgment, I would confess that I sometimes feel like I am diagonally parked in a parallel universe," Racicot, a Republican, said.

Maybe the old adage is true, that inside every older person is a younger person who wondered what happened, he said.

He said the Montana Constitution requires an oath for any any public office and asked what the framers had in mind when they chose fidelity as the guiding principle for appropriate behavior from anyone who holds public office.

Racicot, 73, said fidelity is faithfulness to a person, cause, belief and country. He said it is demonstrated by loyalty and support without self-aggrandizement, deceit, trickery or obfuscation. He said it also includes humility, respect of others and the rights of others, decency, integrity, honor, self-discipline, selflessness, self-examination and just common courtesy.

Fidelity is the exact opposite of seeking power for its own sake, which as history reveals, at the end of the day, is really a fools errand, Racicot said.

Without accepting, embracing and discharging ones duties as guided by fidelity, it is inevitable that the life of our republic will over time, like grains of sand passing through an hourglass, be at risk.

Racicot served as Montana's attorney general from 1989 to 1993 and as governor from 1993 to 2001. He was chair of the Republican National Committee from 2002 until 2003. He was then chief executive officer of the American Insurance Association from 2005 to 2009. He sparked headlines in September 2020 when he said during an interview on Yellowstone Public Radio he would vote for Democrat Joe Biden for president, citing character flaws in then-President Donald Trump.

Racicot said the life of this nation is dependent upon everyone taking care of and nurturing democracy daily.

A people who cannot talk or listen to each other, who do not respect each other, who will not sincerely consider the thoughts of each other, who do not trust each other and who cannot reason with each other, cannot long live in freedom, Racicot said.

He said many grew up in an America where being a neighbor meant more than living next door. He said there was a shared positive attitude about life, neighbors, families and values.

We expected the best of each other until proven wrong, he said.

Racicot said that should be contrasted with the awkward, thoughtless, mean and frequently inaccurate public communications of today where 360,000 Tweets per minute hit social media.

Thats how much of the country and much of the world talks to each other these days, he said. Its dizzying, its vacuous and its perilous.

Racicot said the chances of people with diverse views sitting across the table and talking with others about how to solve difficult problems have been substantially diminished and replaced with mindless electronic rituals that produce more confusion than understanding.

It seems almost impossible to me to manage the noise, to control the flood of unverified and frequently inaccurate communications, conceived in anger and competition and then regretted because of all the blathering that is now a matter of public record, he said.

How is it that we stop this runaway train as it picks up speed and leaves scattered all over the landscape so much destruction and damage along the way?

Racicot said the internet is a marvelous creation, but it has also strained people's social existence, especially in political affairs with irresponsible suggestions that have no basis in fact.

We have to bring more discipline and integrity to our communications and comments, he said.

This needs to be done to fulfill the requirements of fidelity to one another, the cause of freedom and future of the country.

The alternative is to witness our way of life being torn apart at the seams, he said. Its not really a big ask. I am not asking for a return to simpler times. I am calling hopefully for return to simple timeless and enduring values: presuming the best of each the other, listening in good faith before acting or responding, exuding magnanimity and self-correcting our own mistakes.

Much more can be accomplished by shunning rhetorical games of yesteryear, now magnified and given eternal life by the internet, he said.

Im suggesting that we focus on caring and listening to each other, gathering the facts before we make up our minds and then actually fixing our societys problems rather than being distracted by flashing lights and engaging in the to and fro of never ending, instantaneous, bitter and all too often mean and careless electronic communications that can be sent with the speed of light with a silent click to every corner of the planet Earth and beyond

He said democracy is a voluntary association of individuals.

We choose it, Racicot said, adding the country faces a crucial struggle to preserve our society from within.

He said he believes the majority of Americans are tired of the intramural wars and the divisions.

Let us abandon the fruitless and solitary search for power and control and get about fixing the problems, with fidelity -- so help me God.

Assistant editor Phil Drake can be reached at 406-231-9021.

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The city of Helena's urban deer culling program is now underway after a two-year hiatus due to budget cuts.

Administered by the Helena Police Department, the program removes deer from the urban landscape to bring the population down to a more manageable level.

According to HPD Lt. Jayson Zander, the results of a five-night October survey of deer within the city, conducted for the first time since 2018, showed a population density of 39.5 deer per square mile, far higher than the acceptable number of 12 deer per square mile.

"We're about back to where we started when we we first started the program," Zander said.

The program has been in place since 2008.

To reach that objective, Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks authorized HPD to trap and kill up to 200 deer.

Zander said the city has had the same 200-deer quota in past years, but that number has never been achieved.

Chief of Police Steve Hagen said in an email Thursday that trapping began Monday, and so far only one deer has been removed.

"Due to the warm weather, it has been slow going," Hagen said.

Zander said the department has 12 deer traps at its disposal, eight of which have been set.

Should the police cull a high number of bucks, FWP will permit the culling of an additional 50 deer.

Budget cuts to the police department in fiscal year 2018 resulted in the suspension of the program.

Hagen previously told the Independent Record that the decision to cut the program was made by former Chief Troy McGee when the department was ordered to make more than $470,000 in cuts.

The program typically costs the city about $30,000 annually.

"Because of the complaints that came back to the city commission, it was re-approved for the 2021 fiscal year," Zander said.

As part of the increased budget, the department hired a second animal control officer who will work part time on urban wildlife matters, including the deer cull, and part time on standard animal control matters, including expanded patrols of Helena Open Lands trails.

FWP Warden Sgt. Justin Hawkaluk said each carcass will be tested for chronic wasting disease.

"This is a readily available sample, and we will take advantage of it," Hawkaluk said. "It will give us a good idea of how significant the rate of CWD is in that area."

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Helena Public Schools Superintendent Rex Weltz has offered more details as to why he was among the eight Montana school district leaders who signed a letter expressing no confidence in state Superintendent of Public Instruction Elsie Arntzen, claiming frustration with her office.

We write to express our disappointment in your leadership as our states chief public education officer, the superintendents of the AA schools wrote Dec. 6, noting they represent 64,000 students, which they said is 45% of Montanas public schools enrollment.

Indeed, for the reasons described in this letter, we express no confidence in your performance as Montanas chief public education officer, they wrote.

The bottom line is that for us to best do our jobs, we need you to be doing yours, the superintendents wrote. They said many of the problems revolve around the state Office of Public Instructions 90% staff turnover rate under Arntzen.

Weltz, speaking Wednesday on the Coffee Break program on KCAP 95.9 FM radio, said there was no one particular issue that sparked the letter to the Office of Public Instruction (OPI). But he did say there has been a slowdown in the time it takes to get new employees certified.

Its normally the case at the beginning of the school year, but its never been like this before and that really affects my staff -- when they are not able to get their certification from OPI, Weltz, who became superintendent in July, said. It has an effect on them and their morale.

He said staffing is down at OPI, making it difficult to get the support and the resources that you need in the day-to-day grind.

In all my years I have always relied heavily on OPI and the services they provide and it has been a phenomenal asset, Weltz said. Right now we are not receiving that sort of service.

In addition to Weltz, superintendents from Belgrade, Billings, Bozeman, Butte, Great Falls, Kalispell and Missoula signed the five-page letter that listed nine examples of deficiencies with OPI.

On Wednesday, superintendents from Butte-Silver Bow, Sweet Grass, Wheatland and Missoula counties also sent a letter, saying it was time they voiced their dissent.

Arntzen, now in her second term as superintendent, said Tuesday she is taking the concerns "humbly and seriously."

"At the heart of everything we do, our collective mission is to always put Montana students first," Arntzen said in her reply. "To do that, it's imperative that we have unity and ongoing support readily available for our students, teachers, administrative staff and school districts."

The first letter from the eight superintendents listed concerns about not having enough OPI staff to process applications of educators in a timely manner; EGrants, noting that problems at OPI have resulted in districts being unable to timely apply for or access funds necessary to do their work; and updated content standards. They also said OPI updates on special education standards have been lacking and that Arntzen has used her office to speak against the efforts of educators chosen to revise the Code of Ethics.

We expect better of you, the Superintendent of Public Instruction, whose job it is to guide the OPI and manage its resources for the betterment of all of Montanas public schools, the superintendents wrote. We hope our concerns do not fall on deaf ears

Weltz was asked if he thought the letter would prompt some issues to be resolved.

He said it was his wish that something will come out of it, such as OPI replacing staff it has lost and provide more service for districts.

But more importantly, to provide more service for students, he said.

Ultimately what we are working for is what is best for kids, he said. We need the support of OPI in specific situations so that we can best serve our kids. So that is really where I am at.

Weltz said that he believes OPI and the state superintendent want that as well.

The high turnover rate in the state superintendent's office has resulted in serious deficiencies, such as lack of support from Arntzens office when it comes to applying for programs and grants, while some important departments at OPI are either understaffed or without a director, according to the letter.

This story contains information from Lee Newspapers Reporter Skylar Rispens.

Assistant editor Phil Drake can be reached at 406-231-9021.

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HELENA  Three men, one of whom told investigators that they were driving around "smoking marijuana and shooting fireworks at each other inside the vehicle" last week, face arson charges after two fires burned 13 homes south of Great Falls, Cascade County Sheriff Jesse Slaughter said.

Galvinn Coates Munson, Brandon Cordell Bennett Jr., and Jevin James McLean were charged Wednesday with arson by accountability or an alternative charge of negligent arson by accountability.

Munson, 19, also faces 14 counts of felony criminal endangerment because the fires, which started at about 2:40 a.m. on Dec. 1 and were pushed by high winds, created a risk of death or serious injury to area residents, who were sleeping, court records said. Bennett and McLean said Munson set both fires, court records said.

Home surveillance video of a car seen in the area where the fires started, tips from the public and videos of the fires briefly posted on social media helped lead to the arrests, Slaughter said Wednesday.

Justice of the Peace Dave Grubich set bail at $100,000 for Munson, who was out on bail at the time of the fires after being charged earlier this year in a rape that reportedly happened in July 2019. Munson has pleaded not guilty to the rape charge.

Bail was set at $50,000 each for Bennett, 18, and McLean, 19. All are subject to GPS monitoring if they are released, County Attorney Josh Racki said Thursday.

None of the men entered a plea and all requested public defenders, but attorneys have not been appointed, Racki said. The men remained jailed Thursday,

Munson, who declined to be questioned by officers, shot a Roman candle  a kind of firework  into the grass, starting the first fire, Bennett and McLean told investigators. The men tried to stomp out the fire, but were unsuccessful and drove off, court records said.

A short time later, Munson asked McLean to pull the car over again and Munson used a lighter to set another fire, his co-defendants said, according to charging documents.

Bennett and McLean acknowledged taking cellphone video of Munson starting the fires using the Snapchat app, investigators said.

The men went home without reporting the fires, prosecutors said. The fire also burned 16 outbuildings, numerous vehicles and other property, court records said.

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An interim legislative committee on Thursday unanimously voted to reject industry rules proposed by the Department of Revenue's new cannabis division, with plans to rework the proposal early next week.

The deadline to wrap up the department's rules is quickly approaching, with legalization taking full effect Jan. 1 and marijuana providers gearing up for the state's first recreational market.

But lawmakers on Thursday took issue with several of the rules proposed by the Cannabis Control Division, including labeling terminology and growing capacities for the tribes, each of which were afforded a single, license as part of the Legislature's legalization framework bill passed earlier this year. The department develops rules to essentially fill in the gaps left in legislation, although lawmakers said Thursday the rules were running afoul of their intent when they wrote the bill.

"The one thing we are charged with, being the Legislature, is we do the policy," Sen. Jason Ellsworth, R-Hamilton, said. "The Department of Revenue doesn't do policy."

The committee has called back several rules already this year, although the department has said it's only following the law as lawmakers wrote it. In House Bill 701, the legalization framework bill, lawmakers prohibited cannabis providers from selling hemp. The revenue department then, told providers they would not be able to sell CBD, a derivative of hemp. The Economic Affairs Interim Committee in November asked the Cannabis Control Division to fix the issue, again arguing it went against their intent.

Sen. Shane Morigeau, D-Missoula, took issue Thursday with the department's interpretation of the law  which stated tribes would be allowed one tier 1 license, the smallest capacity license to grow cannabis. The department's proposed rule would not allow tribes to scale up their operation and apply for a higher tiered license.

"Our intent throughout the process has always been that it be fair and equitable, that these entities, these tribes can tier up through that system," Morigeau said.

Jameson Walker, the committee's staff attorney, said his reading of the provision did not specifically allow tribes a license higher than tier 1, but it did not necessarily prevent it, either.

"It's in the gray area," he said.

A spokesperson for the Department of Revenue said Thursday no tribe has applied for a license.

Ellsworth made the motion that threw the brakes on the department's rules until Monday, when the department will meet with the committee again at 2 p.m. to retool the proposals. Kristan Barbour, the Cannabis Control Division administrator, said during the meeting they remain willing to work with the committee.

"We look forward to having these discussions in the coming days," Barbour said.

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In a tense courtroom Thursday, a Helena judge accepted a plea agreement in which a man previously accused of felony assault with a weapon admitted to a misdemeanor charge of disturbing the peace.

Rodney Robert Smith will pay a $100 fine in addition to $75 in court fees. Last year Smith was initially accused in court documents of exposing his handgun and saying "Im going to get you" to restaurant manager John Schneider after the two fought when Smith was asked to wear a face mask in Hokkaido Ramen and Izakaya in downtown Helena. Montana was under a statewide mask requirement at the time because of COVID-19.

Smith disputed the claim and last year the court entered on his behalf a not guilty plea to the felony charge, as well as to misdemeanors for carrying a concealed weapon without a permit and doing so in a prohibited place.

Earlier this year state Attorney General Austin Knudsens office asked Lewis and Clark County Attorney Leo Gallagher for his documents in the case and after reviewing them directed Gallagher to drop two misdemeanor conceal-carry charges.

After Gallagher told the Attorney General's Office in an email he had probable cause and could not dismiss those charges and still "comply with my oath of office," Gallagher then requested the case be reassigned and the Attorney Generals office took over.

Smith and Derek Oestreicher, general counsel for the Attorney Generals Office, signed the plea agreement last month.

Im really reluctant here. This concerns me, Lewis and Clark County District Court Judge Kathy Seeley said before accepting the deal Thursday. She doubled the fines from the $50 proposed by the state Attorney Generals Office in the plea agreement to what she said was the maximum allowed.

Oestreicher said the Attorney Generals Office dropped the initial charges and offered a plea deal for an amended charge of disturbing the peace because he didnt believe he'd be able to prove the original charges based on the evidence in the case files. Oestreicher also said the two misdemeanor conceal-carry charges were based on laws repealed about three months after the dispute at the restaurant.

Upon our review of the entire investigative file, and all the evidence available to us, we've come to the determination that we simply cannot prove counts one and two (felony assault with a weapon and misdemeanor assault), as originally charged, beyond a reasonable doubt, which is the standard here, Oestreicher said. He also said understood the Schneiders disagreed with the state's position.

After accepting the plea agreement, Seeley let John Schneider and his wife, Jessie, who also works at the restaurant and was there the night of the dispute, address the court.

After swearing an oath saying he was providing a truthful description of what happened, Schneider said he believed Smith was going to kill him during the fight and that he still fears for his and his employees safety. Schneider also said he was not consulted by the Attorney Generals Office until weeks before the plea agreement hearing.

Jessie Schneider, who was also sworn in, said Smith pushed her that night. She told Seeley she was extremely shaken by the altercation and that the Attorney Generals Office was "unsympathetic."

Oestreicher told Seeley the county attorneys office came to essentially the same conclusion that the Attorney General's Office has with respect to the original four counts. He gave Seeley an email from Deputy County Attorney John Nesbitt dated Feb. 22 and sent to Smith's attorney in which Nesbitt said he'd be agreeable to a plea deal dismissing the two misdemeanor conceal-carry charges. Nesbitt cited the passage of House Bill 102 earlier this year that eliminated the conceal-carry laws Smith was accused of breaking.

Seeley said the deputy county attorney, however, did not offer to dismiss the felony assault with a weapon allegation, and instead suggested a change to a criminal endangerment charge with three years deferred and a recommendation Smith not be allowed to possess weapons during that period. The initial charge carried carried a possible prison sentence of up to 20 years and a $50,000 fine if Smith was convicted.

Seeley asked Nesbitt, who was in court Thursday, if he disagreed with Oestreicher's characterizations, to which Nesbitt answered: Wholeheartedly, your honor, with basically everything thats been represented in the last five minutes.

During the hearing, Seeley asked Oestreicher several times about his statement that he could not prove the case as originally charged.

You do realize that any fact at issue in the case could be proven by the testimony of one witness whom the jury believes? Seeley asked.

Before signing off on the plea agreement, Seeley told the courtroom she was "relying on the representations of a licensed attorney telling me he cant prove the case beyond a reasonable doubt."

Seeley said her role as a judge was limited and that the case left her "between a rock and a hard place."

"I'm not saying I'm a fan necessarily, but I'm telling you I'm not planning to die on this hill ... it is not my bailiwick to prosecute cases, Seeley said.

Palmer Hoovestal, Smiths attorney, told Seeley he filed an affidavit from a friend of Smiths that disputed Schneider's account. Hoovestal also said Smiths wife, Stacy, could testify in support of Smith's account of the dispute.

Hoovestal in an email to the Montana State News Bureau previously said that there was an existing relationship between the Smiths and Schneiders. Stacy Smith previously taught the Schneiders child in preschool. John Schneider told the Montana State News Bureau said they pulled their child from class over frustrations about the level of education in remote classes during the pandemic. In police body camera footage from the night, Schneider told a police officer he knew Stacy Smith but did not know Rodney Smith.

Smith spoke sparingly through the hearing Thursday, admitting to Seeley that he quarreled with a staff member and knocked over water glasses after being asked to leave for refusing to wear a face mask. He also told Seeley he had no intention to go anywhere near the restaurant or the Schneiders ever again.

Seeley told John and Jessie Schneider they could make statements but it would not change the outcome of the case because of the amended charges Smith admitted to.

"Since Nov. 6, 2020 and ever since then, I still fear for my safety and the safety of my family, team and restaurant," John Schneider said. He told Seeley he was not consulted about the plea deal, but was contacted by Oestreicher to notify him one was reached.

"I believe this plea deal would unfairly take away my rights as an innocent victim," Schneider said.

Schneider repeated what was included in the original affidavit in the case, which claimed Smith hit him in the genitals and exposed a handgun.

"I saw him touch the gun and heard him verbally threaten me," Schneider said, adding that he believed Smith intended to shoot and kill him.

"I feared for my life and safety and I still do to this day," Schneider said.

Jessie Schneider, whose testimony was broken up by crying, told the court Smith grabbed her. She said she hadn't been given an opportunity to explain how the altercation affected her.

"I have nightmares that my husband and myself will be shot by him, Schneider said.

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Theres $555 billion for clean energy in the White Houses Build Back Better plan, and Montana energy stakeholders see opportunities for renewable development big and small.

Electric cooperatives should find it easier to transition away from coal power. Nonprofits for the first time should qualify for renewable energy tax incentives. The homeowner share of the rooftop solar costs should be cut about 30%.

The Senate will take up Build Back Better in the coming weeks through budget reconciliation. The bill passed the House on partisan lines in November with $2 trillion in spending on a broad range of social programs, like funding for prekindergarten and childcare, affordable housing, health insurance subsidies and lower prescription drug prices for seniors.

There's a couple provisions in this reconciliation bill that could help co-ops keep up with government regulation and consumer demand, said Ryan Hall, spokesman for the Montana Rural Electric Cooperatives Association.

The reconciliation bill gives co-ops the same access to renewable energy tax incentives that investor-owned, for-profit generators have enjoyed for a while," he added. "We'll also be able to access direct payment of these tax credits that are currently available only to the for-profit and investor-owned utilities."

Another provision is a voluntary Energy Transition Program, which will make $10 billion available for cooperatives to retire coal plants and build new renewable generation projects, he said.

In Montana, any benefit to cooperatives is no small matter. More than 400,000 Montanans rely on cooperatives for electricity. Co-ops are customer-owned, nonprofit organizations that were crucial for electrifying portions of the sparsely populated rural West that for-profit utilities regarded as unprofitable and avoided. Consequently, one in 10 rural homes had no electric service in the 1930s, according to the National Rural Electric Cooperatives Association. Things didnt start improving until President Franklin Roosevelt created the Rural Electrification Administration and pushed the creation of cooperatives.

Co-ops in the West are significant consumers of coal power. Basin Electric, which generates power for the benefit of cooperatives in nine states, relies on four coal plants that have a combined nameplate capacity of 3,651 megawatts. Any transition away from fossil fuels to reduce carbon dioxide emissions will cost cooperatives.

But co-ops are also investing in renewables. Montanas largest solar development, the 1,100-acre Cabin Creek Project, is a Basin Electric Power Cooperative project located near Baker. It is being built under contract by Clenera Renewable Energy, of Boise, Idaho. The nameplate capacity is 150 megawatts. The cost of the electricity is in the $30 per megawatt hour range, considerably less than the rate-based fossil fuel power in the portfolios of Montanas for-profit utilities.

Cooperatives arent the only nonprofits seeing first-time access to federal incentives for energy. Not being able to participate in tax incentives for renewable developments have left nonprofits watching with their noses pressed to the glass as for-profit businesses dined out on renewable energy tax credits. Some Build Back Better incentives work more like rebates, which should spark investment.

My understanding is that the provisions are really thinking about rebates and giving people incentives instead of just being a tax credit, or a tax break, said Amy Cilimburg, director of Climate Smart Missoula. It just makes them available to all kinds of nonprofits and governments, including, you know, schools, churches, nonprofits, larger or small, its just a whole lot easier.

An investment tax credit of 30% has been the primary tool for a decade when it comes to encouraging renewable energy investment. But the investment tax credits did nothing for organizations that dont pay taxes, or individuals who dont pay enough tax to make the 30% credit work.

Churches are a good example of a nonprofit organization that could install enough rooftop solar to generate most of their electricity, Cilimburg said.

Build Back Better would provide the 30% incentive as a rebate, or direct payment upfront, and would not be a later payment on taxes paid. There are also tax credits for renewable generation and energy storage  such as batteries  which havent been offered before. Tax credits of $12,500 for electric vehicles, which like the rebates for renewable energy generation would be available up front, are another example.

One of the issues receiving little attention is the plan to keep these tax incentives around for 10 years. That certainty hasnt always been there for renewable energy. There were years in the past decade when Renewable Energy Production Tax Credits were only approved 12 months at a time, in some cases retroactively by Congress in the final weeks of December.

Having incentives on tap for a decade should create stability for solar construction, said Andrew Valainis, Montana Renewable Energy Association executive director. Whats also promising is the separate credit for battery storage, which could be big for Montana businesses.

What's great about the credits in the Build Back Better program, from my perspective, is that not only will it give another boost to solar and wind by extending it for 10 years so there's predictability, it will also add a standalone credit for storage, which is huge, Valainis said. Right now, if you install like a home storage system, to get the tax credit you have to install it and solar at the same time, then the storage would qualify, and toward the total cost. What this bill would do is, it would allow a separate credit, similar to the ITC, for solar and wind, but for storage.

Energy storage is still new, with that price expected to decrease as the batteries become more established. The separate credit for storage gives consumers the option of waiting a few years for more favorable prices, Valainis said.

Montanas delegation has been sharply divided on supporting the bill. U.S. Sen. Jon Tester, a Democrat, has indicated he wont support spending that isnt paid for, but his vote has to be in support of the plan for Democrats to succeed.

Montana Republican Sen. Steve Daines doesnt support Build Back Better. Daines was also a no vote on the $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill passed by the Senate a few weeks ago. Daines has backed away from large spending bills since President Joe Biden took office. Daines voted for two major COVID-19 stimulus bills in 2020, the $900 billion coronavirus relief bill last December and the $2.2 trillion Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act in March 2020.

Montanas at-large Republican Rep. Matt Rosendale voted against Build Back Better in the House, as well as the infrastructure bill.

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Billionaire news mogul Rupert Murdoch and his wife, Jerry Hall Murdoch, confirmed Thursday that they had purchased the sprawling Beaverhead Ranch in Beaverhead County from Matador Cattle Co., an indirect subsidiary of Koch Industries.

Both the Wall Street Journal and CNBC reported that the sale price was $200 million. A spokeswoman for Murdoch confirmed the sale but not the sale price in communication with CNBC.

The Beaverhead Ranch, a working cattle ranch, covers about 345,000 acres and stretches along a 90-mile road from Dillon to the Idaho border and east to Yellowstone National Park.

The ranch reports that it is home to 15 employee families, nearly 7,000 cow/calf pairs and a variety of wildlife. The ranchs headquarters are about 10 miles south of Dillon.

John Jackson, chairman of the Beaverhead County Commission and a rancher himself, said Thursday around midday that hed heard about the transaction but had no details yet.

The Koch brothers have been good neighbors, he said, employing residents and families in Beaverhead County at the Beaverhead Ranch.

He said he anticipates the Murdochs wont make major changes.

A quote attributed to Rupert Murdoch by the Wall Street Journal declared, We feel privileged to assume ownership of this beautiful land and look forward to continually enhancing both the commercial cattle business and the conservation assets across the ranch.

The Montana Standard reported on Dec. 28, 1950, that Fred Koch had purchased a 42,000 acre ranch near Dillon for $1.1 million. The article said the ranch was formerly known as the Poindexter & Orr ranch, named for Philip Poindexter and William Orr.

Poindexter, from Pennsylvania, and Orr, a native of Ireland, came to the region around the time Beaverhead County was formed in 1865. They raised cattle and horses on their ranch. The men were inducted into the Cowboy Hall of Fame in 2013.

Rupert Murdoch is 90 years old. His News Corp. owns the Wall Street Journal, Fox Corp. and a host of other news outlets and media companies.

Koch Industries is based in Wichita, Kansas. Fred Koch founded the oil refinery firm that later became Koch Industries. He also purchased a ranch in Texas known as the Matador Ranch.

Charles and David Koch, often referred to as the Koch brothers, became powerful forces in libertarian and conservative causes. David Koch died in 2019.

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DECATUR  Police said they chased down and caught three Decatur burglars after the men committed back-to-back break-ins at two used car dealerships in the city.

Sworn affidavits said the Decatur Police Department responded to Affordable Autos, 805 N. Main St., at 2:17 a.m. Tuesday and found a window had been forced and multiple dealer plates stolen.

Barely an hour later, at 3:18 a.m., officers arrived at M&M Motors, 901 W. Eldorado St., in response to a burglar alarm and got there in time to catch the suspects while they were still on the premises.

DPD officers entered the parking lot and observed a broken window on the west side of the building with the lights on in the room, said Officer Javion Crisman, who signed one of the affidavits.

DPD officers observed what appeared to be an individual wearing black clothing brush past the window and out of my sight. DPD officers approached the southern wall of the building and heard what sounded like glass breaking on the west side of the building and observed two individuals jump from the open window of the building and start to sprint away.

Crisman said he immediately presented his service weapon at one of the fleeing men, who ignored commands to stop running and surrender. This 20-year-old man reached a fence on the southwest side of the lot and jumped and tried to climb it, but wasnt able to and was then arrested and handcuffed.

Officer Austin Bowman said police searching for the other fleeing man spotted this 19-year-old suspect running northbound across Eldorado Street and gave chase after he refused all commands to stop. Bowman said the man was chased down and arrested in the 900 block of West Cerro Gordo Street.

Bowman said the third suspect, aged 20, was found crouched down between two vehicles, and he fled as soon as he knew hed been found.

The subject immediately began running northeast towards Eldorado Street, said Bowman, who described the man ignoring repeated commands to stop as the officer gave chase onto a parking lot near Tastys Chicago Grill, 824 W. Eldorado St.

I located the subject laying on his stomach behind a shed located north of the business, added Bowman, who arrested the man. He said the man told him his job had been to act as a lookout while his accomplices handled both burglaries.

Police described the inside of M&M Motors as being littered with broken glass and open drawers in the wake of the crime. The 19-year-old is quoted as telling police the men targeted the auto businesses in the hopes of finding money inside.

The men were booked on preliminary charges of burglary and resisting/obstructing police. A check of Macon County Jail records Thursday showed the two 20-year-olds are free after each posting $1,000 bond on bail set at $10,000 each. The 19-year-old remained in custody with his bail set at $40,000, meaning he must post a bond of $4,000 to be released.

All preliminary charges are subject to review by the state's attorneys office.

Contact Tony Reid at (217) 421-7977. Follow him on Twitter: @TonyJReid

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SPRINGFIELD  The Illinois National Guard's 183rd Air Wing is one step closer to receiving $10.2 million in funding for a base civil engineer complex in Springfield after the National Defense Authorization Act successfully passed out of the House.

Illinois District 18 Rep. Darin LaHood and Illinois District 13 Rep. Rodney Davis voted in favor of the measure. Maj. Gen. Richard Neely, Illinois' adjutant general, head of the state Department of Military Affairs and commander for the Illinois Army and Air National Guards, made the funding request.

"I am proud to support the FY22 National Defense Authorization Act, which includes critical funding to help build and upgrade the Base Civil Engineer Complex for the Illinois Air National Guard 183rd Wing in Springfield," LaHood said. "The men and women in the 183rd deserve up-to-date resources to continue providing exceptional emergency response and support services."

Springfield Mayor Jim Langfelder and Abraham Lincoln Capital Airport executive director Mark Hanna also support the funding.

The act now heads to the Senate for a final vote.

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Dr. Stephanie Davis lay in a fetal position at a Harvey gas station, trying to protect herself while her assailant kicked her, then seized her vehicle and sped away.

Immediately after the September carjacking, Davis worked with police and the car dealership to attempt to use the vehicles internal tracking to locate it, but encountered bureaucratic hurdles. Meanwhile, her Porsche Cayenne was used in a second carjacking and at least one other crime, she later learned. More than a week later, after numerous phone calls, Davis was finally able to track her truck, and it was located within hours on Oct. 1.

If police and the car dealer had been able to track her car more quickly, she believes it could have saved someone from another traumatic carjacking.

If the tracing and recovery had occurred sooner, there would be one less victim associated with my vehicle, Davis said.

Davis, a retired Air Force physician, told her story at a news conference on Thursday along with Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart to call on automakers to come up with solutions to quickly and easily track carjacked vehicles.

Dart on Dec. 3 sent a letter to major automakers asking them to collaborate.

Everywhere carjackings are up, Dart said at the news conference. People are rightfully outraged. Theyre scared.

Carjackings have long been a scourge in Chicago, affecting nearly every neighborhood across the city. Most recently, Chicago police arrested an 11-year-old suspected in multiple carjackings.

Most vehicles made after 2015  which make up the majority of hijacked vehicles in the area  have the ability to be tracked, Dart said. But police face challenges in working with car manufacturers to trace the vehicles in a timely manner. Sometimes the victims, who would have to facilitate, are injured, he said. Sometimes, the car companies have an overly complicated process.

Among other possible solutions, Dart suggested the automakers create a free 24/7 hotline that customers and police could use in the event of a carjacking. The Cook County sheriffs office also created a consent form that car owners can fill out in advance, so that if their vehicle is stolen, police will have permission to track. The form can be found on the sheriff offices website.

Dart said carjackings across the county have increased by 43% so far this year, as compared to 2020.

In Daviss case, she was attacked in broad daylight, while stopping at a gas station about 7:30 a.m. after a trip to the gym. The carjacker grabbed her door handle as she tried to close it, and pointed a gun at her head, she said.

Using reflexes born of military training, she grabbed the barrel of the gun and pointed it away from her, she said. The carjacker threw her to the ground and began kicking her, she said.

He drove away in her Cayenne. When she called her dealer, she was told the vehicle couldnt be tracked, she said, even though the vehicle had that capability. Later that day, she learned it was used in a carjacking in Elmhurst.

Improving quick access to tracking information would be beneficial to countless victims who are trying to get their lives back after a horrific trauma like a carjacking, she said.

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Registered Nurse Rachelle Curtis cares for an intubated patient in the coronavirus intensive care unit at CHRISTUS Santa Rosa Hospital on Friday, Jan. 22, 2021. MIKALA COMPTON | Herald-Zeitung
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Marcus Lemonis was born in war-torn Beirut, Lebanon in 1973; and, at nine months old, was adopted by a couple living in Miami, Florida. Marcus has long served as the Chairperson at Camping World and Gander RV & Outdoors. With his efforts, it is now Americas #1 source for RVs, camping accessories, RV maintenance and repair. When hes not running his multibillion-dollar company, Marcus is focusing on his other passion by helping struggling businesses get back on their feet. He shows this process on his hit TV show, CNBCs The Profit, a past nominee for the 2018 Critics Choice Award for Best Structured Reality Series. Although he was not born in America, he is proud to be living the American Dream through hard work, determination and believing. With multiple ventures on his resume, Marcus can be seen sharing his knowledge through numerous business and entertainment television programs and speaking engagements. During the Covid-19 pandemic, Marcus launched The Business Learning Center, a free of charge, educational tool on his website aimed to help entrepreneurs succeed during challenging times. He simultaneously dedicated $50M towards the launch of The Lemon-Aid Foundation, his charitable mission of supporting and investing in underserved communities and small businesses.
Both of these mandates constitute overreach by the federal government, and they skipped the full rulemaking process, which requires notice and comment periods.

These mandates intrude into the affairs of ordinary Americans and their employers. Further, they are counterproductive.

We heard testimony to this effect during an October hearing of the Energy and Commerce Committees Subcommittee on Health, on which I serve. One of the witnesses was Ballad Health CEO Alan Levine. He noted the challenges faced by rural hospitals in recruiting and retaining staff under normal circumstances, let alone during an ongoing pandemic.

During the time allotted to me for questions, I pointed out that a one-size-fits-all mandate would exacerbate those challenges. At a time when health care workers feel the strain of their continuous efforts against the coronavirus, the last thing the federal government should do is put in place more burdens.

In an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal, Seema Verma, CMS administrator during the Trump administration, further spelled out some of the consequences of the mandate for hospitals.
A Gastonia woman has been charged in the death of a 72-year-old man in Hickory. His body was found at Preston Ridge apartments last weekend.

Bryana Salymar Martines, 22, is charged with first-degree murder and possession of a stolen automobile, the Catawba County jail website says. The website lists her residence as Shelby, but Hickory police described her as a Gastonia resident Thursday afternoon.

Capt. Jeff Young of the Hickory Police Department confirmed that Martines is charged in the death of Robert Godfrey, who was found by officers in his apartment on Startown Road on Saturday. He had died a few days before being found.

Police also determined Godfreys car had been stolen.

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Charlotte officers found the car and attempted to arrest Abraham Adon Jr., 28, of Fort Mill, South Carolina, on Tuesday, the Hickory Police Department said.

Adon fled into South Carolina, where he was taken into custody. Extradition is pending for him on charges of possession of a stolen motor vehicle and eluding arrest, according to information released by Hickory police Thursday afternoon.
The filing period for the 2022 election period is closed, and the upcoming primaries have been moved from March 8 to May 17 by order of the N.C. Supreme Court.

The order, which was issued late Wednesday, affects all races up for election next year. The order comes in response to lawsuits challenging the electoral district maps the General Assembly adopted last month.

Candidates who filed earlier this week would be accepted for the new election date unless a future decision changes the eligibility of anyone who has already filed.

Filing was disrupted Monday  the day the filing period began  by court decisions that halted filing for legislative races and then allowed filing for those races to resume.

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In the three days that filing was open, several candidates filed for election in Catawba County.

Sheriff Don Brown, state Sen. Dean Proctor, state Reps. Jay Adams and Mitchell Setzer  all Republicans  filed to run again.

Hickory City Council members Jill Patton, David Zagaroli and David Williams filed for reelection. In Long View, Mayor Marla Thompson and Alderman Gary Lingerfelt filed for reelection. The municipal races are nonpartisan.
MAJOR HURDLES

There are still serious challenges.

Scalability is one. Getting lab-bred corals out into the ocean and having them survive will be hard, especially since reintroduction has to happen on a local level to avoid bringing detrimental biological material from one region to another.

James Guest, a coral ecologist in the United Kingdom, leads a project to show selectively bred corals not only survive longer in warmer water, but can also be successfully reintroduced on a large scale.

Its great if we can do all this stuff in the lab, but we have to show that we can get very large numbers of them out onto the reef in a cost-effective way, Guest said.

Scientists are testing delivery methods, such as using ships to pump young corals into the ocean and deploying small underwater robots to plant coral.

No one is proposing assisted evolution alone will save the worlds reefs. The idea is part of a suite of measures  with proposals ranging from creating shades for coral to pumping cooler deep-ocean water onto reefs that get too warm.
Sadly, the numbers of veterans like the senator and my father are dwindling. Very few are left. Just as the heroes of the First World War passed into the annals of history, so are the veterans of World War II. And Korea. And Vietnam.

We dont like to think of such things, but death is a fact of life. The heroes who are left should be celebrated. Sure, we will honor them at their funerals, but think of how much better it would be if the ones who are still with us know beyond all doubt we are grateful for their sacrifice  while they can hear and see our respect face to face.

Give them a hug or shake their hands now. Dont wait until the only thing you can do is raise a toast in remembrance.

I offer the same sentiments to the men and women who saw America through the dark days of war on the home front. Rosie the Riveter was not some gimmick character on a poster to stir patriotism. She was your ancestor who ferried fighter planes and heavy bombers bound for Europe and the Pacific.

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She worked in mills and factories and produced the necessities of war and peace. She helped build those airplanes, battleships and aircraft carriers, tanks and heavy vehicles that carried our warriors to victory.
" " Allen Street in Tombstone, Arizona, circa 1880s. The infamous gunfight now known as the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral happened near here. Public Domain

The Wild, Wild West would not be the, well, Wild West that we know today without the O.K. Corral and the famous gunfight that erupted there on a late October afternoon in 1881.

The romanticized version of the American cowboy, tin stars, quick draw gunfights, saloons on dusty streets, and unending desert landscapes wouldn't hold such a firm place in our consciousness if not for this infamous showdown. The one between tough-nosed lawmen and some hard-headed outlaws in the town of Tombstone, near the Mexican border in the Arizona Territory.

But just to clarify: The shootout wasn't even in a corral at all. It turns out, the shootout took place in a vacant lot, next to a photo studio and a boarding house.

Second point of clarification: Nobody ever called the standoff "the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral" until Hollywood sunk its claws into the story in the late 1950s. The deadly scrap was well-known by historians, but to them it was just a fight. It wasn't "the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral" until 1957's Burt Lancaster-Kirk Douglas blockbuster, "Gunfight at the O.K. Corral."

Which, you have to admit, does sound way cooler than "Gunfight in a Vacant Lot."

"That doesn't play well. But 'Gunfight at the O.K. Corral' is magic. It's all in a name. Everything's in the name," says Marshall Trimble, Arizona's official state historian. "I've written about 25 books and the hardest part of the whole thing is coming up with a catchy name."

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The Backstory of Tombstone

In true Western fashion, the cast of the real-life fight is easily broken into two groups.

The "Good Guys" were the lawmen in an otherwise lawless part of the Arizona Territory. They were Tombstone Marshal Virgil Earp, his brothers Morgan and Wyatt (both officially special policemen), and temporary policeman (and Wyatt Earp friend) John Henry "Doc" Holliday.

The "Bad Guys" were known as the "Cowboys," a cow-rustling, horse-thieving group of no-good cusses who didn't like the iron-handed Earps or anything to do with the law. They were Billy Claiborne, brothers Ike and Billy Clanton, and brothers Frank and Tom McLaury.

These two groups hated each other.

Long story short. Between 1879 and 1880, Tombstone's population exploded with prospectors searching for silver ore and the town needed law enforcement. Town leaders wanted men like Virgil and Wyatt Earp because they had solid reputations as gunfighters and lawmen.

But the Clanton and McLaury families, who were prominent ranchers, formed their own coalition, known as the Cowboys, and they were against the Earp brothers and the law, even though the Earps had support from Tombstone's leading businessmen, including Mayor John Clum and mining tycoon E.B. Gage.

Needless to say, the two groups had a history of run-ins. The Cowboys didn't recognize Virgil Earp as marshal or his legal authority, and the Cowboys despised the fact that Earp and his "lawmen" often used possibly extra-legal methods to enforce the law.

" " (L-r) John Henry "Doc" Holliday, Wyatt Earp and Virgil Earp were the "good" guys at the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral. WIKIMEDIA/HowStuffWorks

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The Gunfight of All Gunfights

In late 1881, it was against the law to carry weapons within the Tombstone town limits. Virgil Earp let that be known to the Cowboys. And that's how things started that day.

After some threats and two pistol-whippings  the Earps didn't take any guff from scofflaws, and both Ike Clanton and Tom McLaury tasted a little frontier justice from the handles of the Earps' pistols earlier that day  the two groups squared off at about 3 p.m. Oct. 26. Most estimates put the two groups not much farther than 6 feet (1.8 meters) apart. There were plenty of guns present. Holliday carried a shotgun.

"When [the Cowboys] came into town and Billy [Clanton] saw his brother Ike had been hit, and Frank saw his brother Tom had been cocked, they were spoiling for a fight then," Trimble says. "They made open threats that they were going to kill the Earps. They were overheard, and that's what saved the Earps and Doc from maybe going to a murder trial."

Here, we jump ahead to the firsthand witness account of John H. Behan. He was the sheriff of Cochise County, a political rival to the Earps and a friend to many of the Cowboys, and one of many interviewed afterward during a hearing into the gunfight. This courtesy of the Arizona Memory Project (typos part of the official transcript):

When they go;to the party of cowboys they drew their guns and sa said you sons of bitches you have been looking for a fight and you can have it. Someone of the party I think Marshall Earp said throw up your hands we are going to disarm you ... Instantaniously with that the fight commenced the fought around there and their was and there was some 25 to 30 shots fired ...

Over the years, dozens and dozens of accounts have been written on the fight, many relying on firsthand accounts like Behan's (and others, here). Some say that at least one of the Cowboys was unarmed. Others refute that claim. Questions arose as to who fired the first shot, and who shot whom. But the toll of the gunfight is not in question.

Once everything had quieted down, three Cowboys  Billy Clanton, just 18 or 19 years old at the time, and both McLaury brothers  were dead.

The fight lasted no more than 30 seconds.

"That was kind of how it played out. In the end, Morgan Earp almost had a fatal wound. The bullet just missed his spine. But it went right clear through his back," Trimble says. "Virgil took a hit in his leg. And Doc just got a scrape.

"Wyatt come through without a scratch. Just like he does in the movies."

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The Fallout From the Gunfight

Four days after the fight, Ike Clanton  who had fled once bullets started flying  accused the Earps and Holliday of murder, and Tombstone Justice of the Peace Wells Spicer held a hearing into the throwdown. Behan backed the Cowboys, but others supported the Earps and Holliday.

The verdict, Trimble says, may have hinged on the testimony of Addie Bourland, a local dressmaker, who contradicted the Cowboys who claimed that they had their hands up and should not have been fired upon. An excerpt from her testimony, via Famous Trials, by the University of Missouri-Kansas City's Douglas O. Linder:

I didn't see anyone holding up their hands; they all seemed to be firing in general, on both sides. They were firing on both sides, at each other; I mean by this at the time the firing commenced.

Despite the damning  and quite probably false  testimony from Ike Clanton and others, Spicer eventually found that the Earps and Holliday were well within their rights and declared that no trial was necessary.

Ike Clanton, bent on revenging the death of his brother and the other Cowboys, is generally thought to be behind the assassination attempt on Virgil Earp in December of that year and the murder of Morgan Earp, who was gunned down in a Tombstone billiard club in early 1882. After Morgan's killing, Wyatt Earp tracked down some of Clanton's cohorts, killing a couple. Clanton was killed by a detective in Springerville, Arizona Territory, in 1887 while resisting arrest.

Wyatt was the last of the O.K. Corral survivors. He died in Los Angeles in 1929, at age 80.

" " After just 30 seconds of shooting, Billy Clanton and both McLaury brothers were dead. The graves are located in the historic Boot Hill cemetery in Tombstone, Arizona. Wikimedia Commons

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The Gunfight as Legend Today

The gunfight gained near mythic status in 1931, after Stuart Lake  a former press agent for president Theodore Roosevelt and a Hollywood writer  interviewed Wyatt and published a loose biography titled "Wyatt Earp: Frontier Marshal." Then came the movie. A TV series on Wyatt Earp's life and times (starring Hugh O'Brian) ran from 1955 to 1961.

Among the actors who have portrayed Earp (including Lancaster in the 1957 movie, opposite Douglas playing the part of Doc Holliday): Henry Fonda ("My Darling Clementine," 1946), James Garner ("Hour of the Gun," 1967), Kurt Russell ("Tombstone," 1993), Kevin Costner ("Wyatt Earp," 1994) and Val Kilmer ("Wyatt Earp's Revenge," 2012).

Clanton's testimony in the Spicer hearings was the basis of several latter-day recountings of the fight that threw Wyatt Earp's reputation into question.

"I think it's the psychology that people like to believe that a good guy can't be that good. And Wyatt wasn't," Trimble says. "Wyatt had a little shady past  all of them did.

"I tell people, these were sporting men. Wyatt Earp, Doc Holliday, Bat Masterson ... these guys were sporting men. They ran around with prostitutes, gambled, hung out with an unsavory lot. But Wyatt came from good stock. He came from a good family. Wyatt was a whole lot better than the others. He was just a product of his time."

Tourists now stream into Tombstone to see reenactments  four times a day, except on Thanksgiving and Christmas  of the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral. Beyond Tombstone that face-to-face showdown between a lawless bunch of cowboys and a hardened bunch of lawmen has given Arizona and the entire West a huge part of its identity. Larger even than that, for many visitors, the gunfight is a snapshot of America.

"A lot of Arizonans just roll their eyes when they see these reenactments. But I never complain. And I've seen hundreds of them," Trimble says. "The tourists just love it. They come over here and they want to come to Tombstone, because you can't come to America without coming to Tombstone.

"Gunfighters are America's rendition of King Arthur's Knights of the Roundtable. They are the warriors. People are fascinated by them, because they had a code of their own. And it's an independence  a free-spirited independence. It's what everybody wishes they could be but aren't."

NOW THAT'S INTERESTING In just about every movie featuring Wyatt Earp, Doc Holliday is there. He's been played by, among many others, brothers Dennis and Randy Quaid (Dennis in "Wyatt Earp," 1994, and Randy in "Purgatory," 1999) and by Val Kilmer ("Tombstone," 1993). Kilmer also portrayed Earp in a direct-to-video movie, "Wyatt Earp's Revenge," 2012.
" " Guilhem Vellut /Flickr (CC BY 2.0) A colorful street mural at the Canal de Saint-Denis in Paris, France, depicts some of the gods of ancient Egypt (with a bit of a modern twist).

Gods and goddesses were an essential part of Ancient Egyptian life. So much so, in fact, that there are said to be over 2,000 deities in the Egyptian pantheon. And while a select few of these mythical characters are sometimes considered top-tier (Atum, Shu, Tefnut, Geb, Nut, Osiris, Isis, Seth and Nephthys), there are plenty of others with fascinating tales and and morals to teach that may be overlooked or misunderstood in modern society.

"The Egyptian religion has obviously changed a lot throughout the millennia," Victoria Almansa-Villatoro, Ph.D. candidate in Egyptology at Brown University, writes via email. "Even considering that pharaonic ideology is extremely conservative, we should not expect the Egyptian pantheon to remain the same for three thousand years of history. Moreover, traditions change also locally from north to south, and some gods have different names, or are favored over others in certain provinces."

Here are five Egyptian gods and goddesses worth getting to know:

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1. Ra: The Sun God

"If there is a god that has always occupied a prominent position in the Egyptian pantheon, all over Egypt and Sudan, that god is Ra," Almansa-Villatoro says. "Up to some extent, most gods in Egypt have a solar aspect or can even claim to be minor manifestations of Ra. For example, the well-known lioness goddesses Sekhmet and Tefnut, or even Hathor, are nothing but the Eye of Ra."

" " Ra, the sun god, was the most important god in Ancient Egypt. Said to be born each morning in the east, and die each night in the west, he traveled through the underworld during the night. Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 2.0 FR)

Ra is considered the first pharaoh of the world, and as legend has it, his golden sun ship sailed across the sky each day and then traveled through Duat, the underworld, at night. In Duat, he navigated the River of Darkness to fight off monsters. Each morning, Egyptians are said to have celebrated his victorious return, which allowed the new day to begin.

"In ancient Egyptian, 'Ra' simply means 'sun,' Almansa-Villatoro says. "Ra is the god-beetle Khepri in the morning that drags the sun throughout the sky (just like beetles transport and hide balls that contain their eggs, Egyptians imagined the beginning of life as a regenerating sun that a beetle helped to give 'birth' every morning), he is just Ra in the middle of the day, and Atum (depicted as an old man) in the evening. After sailing the day sky, Ra would disappear under the earth and travel the night sky. During the day, Ra uses the dayboat, and during the night he ferries a nightboat, because the sky is nothing but an ocean that can be traversed."

According to Almansa-Villatoro, Ra dies every night in the western horizon (which is why most Egyptian necropolises were built on the western bank of the Nile), and then is born again in the east every morning. "Therefore, every solar symbol in ancient Egypt, such as the Eye of Ra, has a strong regenerative power," she says. "Just like Osiris [god of the underworld], Ra is a god related with death, but also with rebirth. The rising and setting of the sun represents one of the two main concepts of time of ancient Egypt: cyclical time. Osiris represents eternity (just like a mummy or a pyramid: something that is extra-temporal and that endures), whilst Ra represents continuity and repetition."

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2. Neith: The Goddess of War and Weaving

Neith was the patroness of the city of Sais and according to some accounts, was considered the creator of the world and the mother of Ra (which made her the mother of all the gods). On the flip side, she's also said to have been the creator of Ra's arch nemesis, the great serpent, Apep.

" " Goddess Neith was an ancient goddess of war and weaving. Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 2.0 FR)

"The importance of Neith is usually underrated in modern Egyptology because her roles as a creator and maternal (yet virgin!) goddess were supplanted by Isis in later times," Almansa-Villatoro says. "She is one of the oldest goddesses of Egypt, appearing in the earliest records with the symbol of two bounded bows."

Neith's signature emblem is a pair of crossed arrows shown against the background of a leather shield, and she's also sometimes represented by an image of a bow case, which she is occasionally depicted as wearing on her head in place of a crown (when she's not rocking the red crown associated with Lower Egypt and holding crossed arrows and a bow). "For a long time, her symbols had been confused with the crossed arrows of the archaic Hemusets (very obscure female entities that were very popular in the Early Dynastic times but almost absent later on!), because in later times, Neith adopts the arrows icon," Almansa-Villatoro says. "Thus, weapons and the Red Crown of Egypt are her main attributes."

Almansa-Villatoro says Neith is unique in her defiance of gender norms and stereotypes. "The interesting thing is that violence and power are traditionally associated with men and not women in ancient times," she says. "Neith exhibits a series of attributes that make her appear neutral to gender: She looks like a woman, but she is a warrior/huntress, king, she was the 'father and mother' of Ra, and her name could be written with a phallus sign! Many creator goddesses cross-culturally have warrior, royal and androgynous attributes (e.g., the Phrygian Cybele, Mesopotamian Inanna). The ancient Mediterranean archetype of Mother-Goddess is problematic, especially for Egypt, but Neith certainly fits the model of a powerful, and sometimes androgynous, creator female seen in other cultures, and not always related with motherhood."

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3. Anubis: God of Mummification

Often represented as a jackal-headed man (jackals were once associated with death), Anubis was considered the protector of the dead. In addition to guarding graves, however, Anubis was also in charge of weighing the hearts of the deceased and is also considered "the guardian of the scales."

According to legend, he weighed the hearts of the dead against the weight of a feather which represented truth. If the scales tipped in favor of the heart, Anubis unleashed a demon called Ammit to destroy the deceased person, but if scaled tipped toward the feather, Anubis delivered the person to Osiris, the king of the underworld. Osiris would then take that person to heaven.

" " Mask depicting the jackal-headed god, Anubis, likely worn by a male priest playing the part of Anubis in a temple during mummification or burial ritual and probably buried with the priest who had worn it in life. Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

" " Thoth was the god of science, wisdom, hieroglyphs, writing, magic, art, judgment and the dead. Pikist

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4. Thoth: The God of Writing, Science, the Moon and More

Often depicted as an ibis, a man with an ibis head, or a baboon, Thoth is the god of writing and wisdom and is said to have invented language and hieroglyphics. He's also credited with possessing knowledge around magic and possessing secrets the other gods weren't privy to.

"As guardian of knowledge, he became associated with secrecy and magic," Almansa-Villatoro says. "Several ancient authors, among which the late period Egyptian historian Manetho, claim that Thoth himself wrote thousands of books that contained the wisdom and knowledge of ancient Egyptians."

Almansa-Villatoro says one Egyptian fictional story in particular, the Demotic tale of Setne-Khamwas (also written as 'Setne-Khamuas') tells how the prince Setne-Khamuas, a son of Ramses II, travels around Egypt searching for the legendary Book of Thoth that grants magic powers for its reader.

"Setne-Khamuas learns of a series of misfortunes that the previous book owner, Neferkaptah, had endured after stealing the book from the place where Thoth had hidden it," she says. "Thus, Khamuas decides to return the book to Neferkaptah's tomb only after he himself begins to experience its curse. The moral of the story is that divine knowledge and power should not be sought by humans!"

" " Horus appreared as a falcon. His right eye was the sun or morning star, representing power; his left eye was the moon or evening star, representing healing. PxFuel

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5. Horus: The Sky God (and More)

In some versions of the story, Horus was raised to avenge his father's murder and lost his left eye in a fight with Seth. The eye, however, was magically healed by Thoth. Sometimes referred to as "the Avenger," Horus is said to have defeated Seth and claimed the title of pharaoh. All mortal pharaohs after him supposedly considered themselves his descendants.

Horus is a complicated character in the world of Egyptology. Often represented as a man with the head of a falcon, he's taken on different forms and meanings over time.

While he was originally said to be the god of war and the sky, he was later predominantly known for being the son of Osiris, god of the underworld, and Isis, goddess of healing and magic.

His most famous role is perhaps his part in the myth surrounding Osiris and his brother Seth.

As legend has it, Seth murdered Osiris out of jealousy, and scattered pieces of his body throughout Egypt. Isis managed to bring her husband back to life and then gave birth to their son, Horus.

Now That's Interesting What's in a name? It's hard to tell, if you consider how Egyptian names were interpreted by the Greeks and transformed over time. Take "Thoth" for example. "His name in Egyptian was written DHwty (conventionally pronounced as Djehuty)," Almansa-Villatoro says. "'Thoth' was the Greek way of pronouncing it toward the end of the first millennium B.C.E."
On December 7, workers are at the construction site of the Nanchang-Changsha 1,000 kV UHV AC transmission project in Zhangfang Village, Zhangfang Town, Liuyang City. The project is a supplementary of the800 kV Yazhong-Jiangxi UHV DC project and part of the UHV AC ring network in Central China. It will help increase Hunan Electric Power Co., Ltd.s power supply capacity to 4 million kilowatts from 2 million. It will be put into operation by the end of the year.

Properly equipped Yang Pan, a 32 years old electrician, walked on wires that is 60 meters above the ground and and installed spacers with his colleagues. As the day came to end, installations of the Nanchang-Changsha 1,000 kV UHV AC transmission project were completed.



Major Snow, the 21st solar term on the traditional Chinese calendar, falls on December 7 this year. It had added a sense of festivity to this completion.



The opening ceremony was held here, and when this project is now completed, we want to take a photo together at the place we started, Huang Taobao told us. Hailing that We had accomplished it, electricians and managers took a photo together below this transmission tower



In the installing period that is less than nine months, we had accomplished this construction with quality. All electricians choose to give up weekends and holidays, and completely devote themselves to this project. Huang told us. Most of workers come from Anhui province and Sichuan province, and they have been away from home almost a year.

This project is one of the most difficult projects that I had participated. Zhou Yunhe, the project manager, told us. He has been in this industry for 35 years, and this project is a memorable one to him.



Huang Taotao told us, there were many weather situations that worsened the condition of installing. Also, because many construction sites are at forests and mountains, transportation of heavy equipment became more difficult.

As this part of project came to end, many workers from other provinces will leave Liuyang. Liuyang where they had worked for nine months remains unknown to them as a city, but this project is an honor to their labor.
ST. CHARLES  Authorities rescued a 62-year-old woman from the Fox River in suburban Chicago on Wednesday after her car left a roadway and landed in the water.

First responders found a four-door sedan partially submerged in the river approximately 25 feet from the river wall around 12:30 p.m., authorities said.

St. Charles firefighters entered the water and transported the woman to shore with a small boat, authorities said. Once on land she was treated by paramedics and transported to a hospital for evaluation because of exposure to the cold water.

The vehicle was then hoisted out of the water and towed from the scene, authorities said.

The car apparently left the roadway in a parking area for an undetermined reason, they said.

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BUTTE, Mont.  An Illinois company that turned mining waste into roofing materials at a Montana plant was fined and ordered to conduct medical monitoring of workers on Friday, after pleading guilty to a criminal charge that it exposed employees to arsenic.

Tinley Park, Illinois-based U.S. Minerals was sentenced by U.S. District Judge Dana Christensen to pay a $393,200 fine and will be on probation for five years, according to court records. The company pleaded guilty in August to negligent endangerment, a misdemeanor violation of the federal Clean Air Act.

Prosecutors said U.S. Minerals continued to poison its workers by exposing them to arsenic despite repeated warnings from regulators. Long-term exposure to inorganic arsenic can lead to skin cancer and cancer in the bladder and lungs, according to the World Health Organization.

In its guilty plea, the company acknowledged it "negligently placed another person in the imminent danger of death or serious bodily injury."

From 2013 to when it closed in June 2021 the company's Anaconda plant converted mining waste known as black slag  a byproduct of a century of copper smelting in the town  into roofing materials called Black Diamond Abrasive Products.

Under a plea agreement, U.S. Minerals plants in Illinois, Wisconsin, Kansas, Texas and Louisiana will be under increased oversight by the Environmental Protection Agency and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration during a five-year probationary period.

The company would also have to monitor the health of former employees of the Anaconda plant during that time.

Employees who take advantage of the medical monitoring program would not give up the right to pursue civil litigation against U.S. Minerals, under the agreement.

Five of six employees tested at the Anaconda plant in July 2015 had elevated levels of arsenic, according to a 2016 report by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health. At the time, respiratory protection was provided but not required, and there was no running water or handwashing stations at the plant

The company was earlier fined nearly $107,000 by OSHA for violations in 2016.

Montana's health department ordered the plant to temporarily close in February 2019 after at least two workers had elevated arsenic levels in their urine in 2018.

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Winston-Salem police provided details Thursday about an overturned tractor-trailer that forced officers to close U.S. 52 North between Germanton Road and University Parkway Wednesday for 7 hours.

Police received a report at 2:38 p.m. that a 2014 Volvo semi-tractor trailer had overturned on the highway just past Germanton Road, police said.

When officers arrived, they found the tractor-trailer blocking the highways northbound lanes, police said.

Officers also found the driver, Krasmir Peykov Tenev, 51, of Sussex, Wis., who suffered a minor injury, police said.

Officers learned that Tenev was driving north on the highway when, for unknown reasons, his vehicle traveled off the road, police said. Tenev then overcorrected to return to the road, causing his vehicles load to shift.

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The shifting of the load caused the tractor-trailer to overturn, police said.

Tenev, who refused medical treatment, was cited for failure to maintain his lane of travel, police said.
This is the world we as Americans choose to live in. Gun deaths on school grounds, it seems, are a fact of life here, accepted as inevitable and unavoidable, like bad weather or power outages.

Republicans, meanwhile, are more urgently ranting about books in school libraries and critical race theory  neither of which, to our knowledge, has been used yet to kill anyone. (Or even worse, if theyre certain members of Congress, they playfully tweet family photos in front of a Christmas tree, holding assault-style guns, under the caption Santa, please bring more ammo.)

Meanwhile, in Oxford, Mich., the more we know, the worse the story gets.

Only hours before the fatal shootings, school officials called in Ethan Crumbley and his parents for a conference. That morning a teacher had found a drawing by the sophomore that depicted a person being shot and featuring the words Blood everywhere.

Its fair to ask, even in hindsight, why school counselors didnt send the student home as a potential danger to himself and others. Or why neither his parents nor school officials checked the contents of his backpack the day of the conference  and the shooting.
COVID denial

Rep. Jim Jordan, a Republican from Ohio, recently tweeted: Real America is done with COVID-19.

While everyone wishes this were true, the COVID-19 pandemic is far from over. The U.S. is currently experiencing a winter surge with new cases averaging more than 100,000 a day. COVID-19 deaths exceed 1,000 a day. And the new omicron variant now identified in about half the states has the potential to make things even worse.

One suspects that the people of the Real America that Jordan applauds are members of the Republican base. That conservative slice of America may think they are done with COVID, but its definitely not done with them. A recent study of 3,000 counties across the U.S. by NPR found that in counties that voted heavily pro-Trump, the death rate has been almost 2.8 times higher than those counties favoring Biden. Being unvaccinated increases the risk of death from the virus dramatically, according to the CDC, and Republicans make up almost 60% of unvaccinated people in the U.S.
Education

editor's pick topical alert top story

Many Nebraska teachers are stressed, overworked and want to quit, survey finds

Teachers across Nebraska are burned out, working more hours and losing crucial planning time amid workforce shortages and a rise in mental health concerns in schools.

Those are some of the findings of a Nebraska State Education Association survey of more than 3,000 teachers released Thursday, and officials say solutions are needed now.

"This is a crisis," said NSEA President Jenni Benson.

The teachers union sent the survey earlier this school year to about 18,000 of its members, and about 17% responded, answering questions regarding personal stress, student mental health and staff shortages.

LPS proposes pay raise for bus drivers as shortages, delays persist Most bus drivers would see a roughly 18% pay increase and paras would receive a 50-cent raise under the proposal set to go before the Lincoln Board of Education next week.

Nearly two-thirds of respondents said they were more stressed than last year, while 57% said they are working more compared with last year.

The survey painted a stark picture of staff shortages across the state, too, as schools struggle to fill vacant positions and find substitute teachers during the still-ongoing pandemic that has decimated the labor market.

Almost all respondents said their school districts are seeing a shortage of substitute teachers, while 88% said schools are short on paraprofessionals.

With a limited number of subs, teachers have been forced to drop planning time to cover classes. Three-fourths said they have had to cover for colleagues, while 60% disagreed that their district is providing them with the planning time necessary to do their job.

Eighty-four percent of respondents said they've witnessed a rise in behavioral and mental health issues among students this school year, while 64% also expressed concerns about their own mental well-being.

"You're covering classes for colleagues, you're losing your plan time, you're working more and you're more stressed. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that all of these things are combined," Benson said.

PDF: Read the results of the teachers' survey

Among the more than 4,300 comments gathered as part of the survey, one teacher put it bluntly: "This year feels worse than last year."

Another wrote: "We are floundering."

Solutions put forth both by respondents and the NSEA include increasing pay, placing less importance on assessments, eliminating certification hurdles  like the Praxis CORE test  and streamlining regulations that limit the number of days retired teachers can work as substitutes.

'An urgent to-do': Nebraska officials roll out campaign to bolster child vaccination efforts The Max the Vax campaign developed by the Children's Hospital and Medical Center in Omaha and the Nebraska Department of Education will provide families with online vaccination resources and info straight from doctors.

Benson also pointed to the influx of millions in coronavirus relief dollars doled out to the state and schools that should go toward more mental and behavioral health resources  like telehealth services  for schools.

The teachers union is also pushing for state lawmakers to use some of the federal funding to provide school staff with bonuses.

The federal government has disbursed more than $546 million in relief to Nebraska schools, and the state has received more than $1 billion as part of the American Rescue Plan.

Another startling data point: Nearly 1 in 3 respondents said they plan to leave the profession at the end of the school year.

"We are losing teachers because they do not feel supported or respected," wrote one teacher. "And young people are not choosing education as a profession because our state has not made it attractive enough. Frankly, the sky is falling."

Deb Rasmussen, president of the Lincoln Education Association, said the survey data is what she expected.

Teacher shortages have plagued schools nationally long before the pandemic, she said, but the arrival of COVID-19 brought the issue front-and-center in Lincoln.

State test results underscore gaps between remote, in-person learners at LPS As a whole, LPS students' proficiencies in English and math were above the state average, according to scores released Monday. But remote learners fared worse than their in-person peers.

Students are also dealing with the trauma from the pandemic, said Rasmussen, a former school counselor, and that's manifesting in more behavioral issues in the classroom.

And with a shortage of paras to respond to those situations, schools are struggling to find people to help.

"It's a perfect storm, and it's a bad perfect storm," Rasmussen said.

Respondents from Lincoln generally followed statewide trends, but only 36% said they did not have enough planning time, compared with 60% statewide. Ninety-two percent said they had increased concern for student mental health, compared with 84% across the state.

LPS teachers would have two additional days off next semester under proposal LPS is proposing giving teachers Jan. 4 and May 26 -- currently non-student days -- as days off, subject to an agreement with the Lincoln Education Association, Superintendent, Steve Joel announced.

LEA has had conversations with Lincoln Public Schools administrators about increasing pay for support staff, similar to raises proposed this week for bus drivers. And changes to pandemic protocols, like allowing administrators to video conference into meetings instead of having to leave school, have been helpful.

"It's going to be an ongoing discussion," she said. "There are lots of ideas to get in there to help teachers and staff right now, but it's really hard."

Lincoln school resource officers issued fewer citations in year marked by pandemic, but disparities remain Officers responded to 275 calls at LPS middle schools and 474 at high schools. Of those calls, 20% resulted in a citation, which is down from an average of 31% in previous years.

With quarantines up at LPS, Lincoln school board member urges parents to get children vaccinated Over 1,500 children ages 5-11 were vaccinated at Lincoln High School on Saturday with three more clinics planned for this week.
The Lincoln-Lancaster County Health Department reported three COVID-19 deaths Thursday: a woman in her 30s and a woman in her 60s, who both were hospitalized and unvaccinated, and a woman in her 60s who was hospitalized and vaccinated.

The rise in cases and hospitalizations in Nebraska so far has been driven by the COVID-19 delta variant, which has been the dominant strain of the disease for several months now.

However, a new variant, omicron, has appeared in the past few weeks, including in Southeast Nebraska, where six cases were found last week.

No more local cases of the variant have been identified, but it's likely a matter of time.

Dr. Jim Nora, Bryan's medical director for infection prevention, said that while the omicron variant is more transmissible, there's some evidence it causes more mild disease.

However, Nora said, "it would have to be much less virulent to make up for the increased transmission."

He encouraged people to get vaccinated if they have not yet done so and to get a booster shot if they are eligible.
Lincoln squeezed a few snowflakes out of a winter storm Friday that dropped close to a foot of the white stuff in other parts of the state.

Residents of northern Nebraska had to deal with significant snowfall, with 11.1 inches reported by shortly after noon in Valentine, according to the National Weather Service.

Nine inches of snow fell north of Chadron in the Panhandle, with 8-inch reports from near Hemingford. Roads across areas of north-central Nebraska were snow-covered throughout the day, and in some cases, travel was difficult.

The weather service had winter storm warnings posted along Nebraska's northern tier of counties, with the heaviest snow expected into southern South Dakota and along the Iowa-Minnesota border.

To the west, Battle Lake, Wyoming, at an elevation of 10,000 feet, reported 37.5 inches of snow.

While snow totals were just under one inch in the Lincoln area, winter weather advisories extended south to include the Interstate 80 corridor from Omaha to Lexington, where occasional bands of moderate snow and freezing precipitation led to some slick roads.
MARTINEZ, Calif. (AP)  A DNA match has helped cold case investigators solve the killing of a San Francisco Bay Area waitress whose body was found in a restaurant's basement bathroom 25 years ago, authorities said Thursday.

A murder charge was filed by prosecutors against prison inmate Danny Lamont Hamilton, alleging he drowned Priscilla Lewis during an attempted rape and burglary at a restaurant in the city of Crockett on September 24, 1996, said a statement from the Contra Costa County Sheriff's Office.

The case went unsolved for decades after investigators interviewed dozens of people, submitted numerous pieces of evidence for analysis and executed several search warrants, the statement said.

Detectives last year submitted additional evidence to a DNA crime lab and a match came back that linked Hamilton to the crime, the statement said.

He is serving a life sentence at a state prison near San Diego after being convicted of sexual assault charges unrelated to Lewis death, authorities said. It was not known whether he has a lawyer who could speak on his behalf.

Troy Kinslow, a cousin of Lewis who grew up with her in the nearby town of Port Costa, said her slaying haunted him for years.
U.S. District Judge J.P. Boulee, however, issued orders Thursday allowing all eight lawsuits to proceed, and said that since they mostly involve the same defendants, facts and legal issues, he may consolidate them, at least for discovery purposes.

Boulee, a Trump appointee, rejected arguments that the plaintiffs didnt have the right to sue, hadnt stated any particular harm suffered or hadnt justified the relief theyre seeking.

This is a huge step in our fight to protect voting rights for Georgians and voters across the country, Marc Elias said in an email. The prominent Democratic attorney filed the first suit in Georgia and is challenging GOP-backed election laws in other states.
Authorities allege that transfers from the Cheema Investments account were being made to bank accounts for each retail liquor store and bar and purchases for many of the retail locations were greater than the sales Singh reported to the state.

Ford alleges the Singhs intended to evade tax liability from December 2018 to December 2020 by underreporting sales tax of $109,350 for about $1,540,556 in underreported sales.

The affidavit further alleges that Kuldip Singh did not file an individual income tax return for 2018 and underreported income in 2019. He is alleged to have failed to report income of approximately $635,775, with a tax liability of about $28,004, in 2018 and income of $727,879, with a tax liability of about $42,167.

Carol Singh is alleged to have failed to report income of about $583,553 with the intent to evade tax liability of $24,212. For the tax year of 2019, she is alleged to have failed to report income of $466,915 to evade tax liability of $29,463.

Kuldip Singh and Carol Singh were arrested Tuesday. However, they posted bond and were released.

The Nebraska Attorney Generals Office is prosecuting the case. An attorney for the Singhs had not yet been entered in court.
Former Nebraska State Sen. Ernie Chambers pushed aside his signature short-sleeve sweatshirt Thursday and flexed his arm before getting a booster dose of the COVID-19 vaccine.

To show that he felt just fine after the jab, he dropped and gave the staff at Charles Drew Health Center 30 pushups.

Chambers, 84, said he wants to be an example to others, especially those in the Black community.

Im hoping that the people who may have some regard for me, and what I recommend, will see that I myself took two shots, took my booster, he said. They may be inclined to say, If he did it, then I think Ill give it a try also."

Over the course of the pandemic, Chambers said, he has been a fairly regular guest on his daughters podcast. He talks about misinformation surrounding COVID-19, which he has dubbed Cyrus the Virus. Chambers said he tries to relate things back to common Bible passages.

When Chambers was at Charles Drew for his booster, he said, several people thanked him for what he was doing. But he was moved by an 11-year-old girl who he said was enthusiastic about receiving her vaccine.
WATERLOO  Authorities are recommending motorists stay off the roads this morning (Thursday) following an overnight ice storm responsible for several semi crashes and two collisions that demolished squad cars.

Two semis rolled in an accident on Highway 218 near the intersection with Cedar Wapsi Road, said Capt. Mark Herbst with the Black Hawk County Sheriffs Office.

He said there were also tractor-trailer crashes on Interstate 380 near the Gilbertville exit.

Herbst said there were also numerous accidents between those two locations.

Two Sheriffs Office squad patrol vehicles were struck while deputies were working the collisions, Herbst said. He said no serious injuries were reported in the squad car crashes.

Rural roads in Black Hawk County are 100 percent ice covered, Herbst said.

In town, Waterloo street department trucks are spreading salt.

Accumulating snowfall is possible Friday into Friday Night for parts of central and northern Iowa, including much of the Highway

20 corridor. A light wintry mix is also possible over central Iowa.
That may look, at first glance, like a return to the strategy that failed under Trump  but it would be done in coordination with U.S. allies, more like the sanctions policy Obama pursued a decade ago. The new sanctions would be designed to nudge Iran toward practical concessions, not the wholesale surrender Trump imagined.

Iran has a valid point on one count: It says it can't be sure the next U.S. president will honor any commitments Biden makes. (Trump taught that lesson.) So it will be difficult to conclude a full agreement before the 2024 election.

But a delay in timing may suit Biden too. Republicans are likely to call any deal a sellout; the president probably doesn't want a debate over concessions to Iran right now. And by hanging tough, the Iranians are giving Biden an opportunity to look tough in return.

A deal will be maddeningly hard to get  just as hard as it was for Obama in 2015.

What makes it worth pursuing, despite the obstacles, is the alternative.
Susanne Blue's Local View ("Lincoln can do better," Nov. 26) accurately describes the suffering of those with severe mental illness on the streets of our city. It didn't have to be this way.

In 2004, Lincoln had one of the best systems in the country for meeting the needs of individuals with severe mental illness.

After a "reform" begun by Gov. Mike Johanns' administration and continued by the administrations of Govs. Dave Heineman and Pete Ricketts, it's been a 17-year slide in our current situation. In 2009, the state ended modern treatment and rehabilitation in the Lincoln Regional Center and created a more prison-like environment (the simultaneous crisis in the correctional system is not a coincidence).

In 2013, Lancaster County closed the Community Mental Health Center, which had specialized programs and services to meet the needs of severely mentally ill individuals. Existing services were privatized, which meant in this case giving the money to private providers with little interest in treating the severely mentally ill population and no accountability.
RACINE  A vehicle with two children inside, a 3-year-old and a 1-year-old, was stolen Wednesday from the 2200 block of 16th Street, the Racine Police Department reported after the alleged operator of the stolen vehicle, a 15-year-old boy from Racine, was taken into custody Thursday.

According to a release from the Racine Police Department, the children were later found Wednesday in the 2900 block of Washington Avenue uninjured. They were evaluated by Racine rescue officials and returned to family.

There is no evidence to show there is any connection between the suspect and the vehicle owner. This appears to be a random vehicle theft, Sgt. Chad Melby, the RPDs public information officer, said in a follow-up email.

Reports of the stolen vehicle came in at about 4:30 p.m. Wednesday. Officers quickly located the stolen vehicle in the area; the operator allegedly fled in a very reckless manner at a high rate of speed.

Officers stopped directly pursuing the vehicle due to extreme danger to the children and public safety, the release said.

At 9 a.m. Thursday, an officer located the stolen vehicle occupied on the south side of Racine. When a vehicle stop was attempted, the operator allegedly again fled at a high rate of speed. The operator was taken into custody near 21st and Ohio streets.

The 15-year-old male, who was not identified by police, was arrested in reference of both incidents, the release said. He was arrested under the following recommended charges: two counts of recklessly endangering safety, two counts of fleeing and eluding and two counts of operation a vehicle without owners consent.

RPD is urging any witnesses with information to call the Investigations Unit at 262-635-7756. Those who wish to remain anonymous can contact Crime Stoppers by phone at 262-636-9330 or through the Crime Stoppers app by using the p3 app.
Two Wisconsin men were each sentenced Friday to two years of probation and ordered to pay fines for taking part in the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, as Congress met to certify the results of the 2020 presidential election won by Joe Biden.

Brandon Nelson, 29, of Madison, and Abram Markofski, 24, of La Crosse, had pleaded guilty in September to a misdemeanor charge of parading, demonstrating or picketing in a Capitol building. Appearing by video in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., both said they were sorry for their actions.

I just want to express how sorry I am for being a part of the breach, Nelson said. I want to say Im sorry to the families of anyone affected by the violence, obviously particularly law enforcement and I know there is an officer who took his life in the aftermath of that. That doesnt make me feel very good.

Nelson said he exercised bad judgment that day and said that since then Ive made better decisions.

Markofski said his thoughts were summarized in a letter to U.S. District Judge John Bates that was not part of the public docket.

I want to emphasize only one point, to you, to the government, and to all the police officers present at the Capitol on Jan. 6. Im sorry, he said.

Bates told the men the events they took part in, even though they resulted in misdemeanor convictions, were nonetheless serious.

They involved a threat to our democratic process, an attack on our democratic values, Bates said. The events of Jan. 6 were the most significant assault on the Capitol since the war of 1812. Indeed, this is the single most deadly attack on the Capitol by domestic forces in the history of the United States. And it took lives. We cannot ignore that.

Nelson and Markofski traveled from Madison to Washington to attend a rally by then-President Donald Trump, then marched to the Capitol where surveillance video showed the two enter the building through the Senate wing doors about 2:16 p.m. They left around 3:41 p.m.

Lawyers for Nelson and Markofski sought probation for the two, while Assistant U.S. Attorney Seth Meinero asked for 14-day jail sentences. While there was no evidence that the two themselves committed any acts of violence or destruction, Meinero said they were among those who lingered the longest inside the Capitol following the breach, when rioters broke windows and smashed doors to gain entry to the building.

That does not make these offenses something less serious, Bates said. These offenses remain as very serious, an affront to our democratic values. But they do fall on the lower end of the spectrum of offenses.

Markofskis attorney, Jonas Bednarek, said Markofski has already suffered secondary harm as a result of his arrest. Markofski lost his job with Kwik Trip in La Crosse, Bednarek said, and the Army National Guard has begun proceedings to strip his security clearances. He was also placed on probation at Viterbo University for two years for non-academic misconduct.

Nelson, a psychiatric technician at Mendota Mental Health Institute, served in the Air National Guard for six years. Since his arrest, said his attorney, federal defender Jessica Ettinger, he has been shaken and embarrassed by the attention he has received and has cut out any inkling of toxic politics from his life to focus on his future.

In addition to probation, each was ordered to pay $500 restitution to help pay for the estimated $1.5 million damage done to the Capitol during the riot. Nelson was fined $2,500, while Markofski was ordered to pay a $1,000 fine. Each was also ordered to perform 50 hours of community service within a year.

Closing the 90-minute hearing, Bates told both men that it was their acceptance of responsibility, cooperation with investigators and contrition that kept them from receiving a harsher sentence.

I hope that is faith well placed in each of you. I think it is, Bates said. I certainly would be surprised to hear otherwise in the future. I hope that you will put this conduct behind you but that you will continue to reflect on it and on the importance of upholding the democratic values of this great country and abide by the rule of law and the principles that are so valuable in our democratic process.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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RACINE  Racine is honoring its role in the Underground Railroad with more visual aids than before.

The City of Racine and members of the community held a dedication ceremony in Monument Square on Thursday afternoon for nine new historical markers being installed throughout Downtown. The markers indicate significant sites of the Underground Railroad, along which enslaved people moved on their way to freedom.

The nine are joining an existing marker that was installed in 2007 on the south side of the Root River, east of the Main Street bridge. The 10 markers are to be known as the Racine Underground Railroad Freedom Heritage Trail.

The Racine Underground Railroad Freedom Heritage Trail actually includes 27 sites across the county, but only the 10 in the Downtown are being memorialized at this time.

A pamphlet that accompanies the walking/driving tour has been available at the Racine Heritage Museum since 2008.

Building a just community

Racine Mayor Cory Mason, City Council member Mollie Jones, Racine Heritage Museum Director Chris Paulson and representatives of the Professional Womens Network for Service spoke on the importance of recognizing Racines history and participation in the Underground Railroad.

Mason said its important to tell the history of something because if we dont learn our history, we can forget it. He added that he is grateful to the nonprofits, churches and businesses that have allowed these plaques to be placed on or near their properties.

Follow the trail The historical markers as part of the Racine Underground Railroad Freedom Heritage Trail are found in these spots: South side of Root River, east of Main Street Bridge

Racine Heritage Museum

Monument Square

First Presbyterian Church

On Sixth Street at Sixth and Villa streets

Southeast corner of Fourth and Main streets

North side of Fourth Street, east of Main Street

826 State St.

1120 Grand Ave., adjacent to St. Paul Missionary Baptist Church

Wisconsin Avenue between Fifth and Sixth streets (not installed yet)

Were still trying to find our freedom and equality and build a just community, even today, Mason said, noting hes honored to be the mayor of a city that played a role in the Underground Railroad.

There is still work to be done when it comes to finding freedom, he continued. I hope that by honoring the story, remembering the story and honoring the work by PWNS and other community partners at the museum, that we can continue to tell that story.

Pauline Mitchell, PWNS Underground Railroad project director, said it is rewarding to witness tangible evidence of the deliberate, thoughtful, resolute and scholarly efforts of the collaborators for this segment of the project.

The Underground Railroad was successful in increasing the northern opposition to slavery, help hasten the Civil War, freed many men, women and children and gave rise to the end of slavery. This is why PWNS is so bullish about getting this project out in the forefront, Mitchell said.

Recognizing Glover

Jones said during the process of bringing these markers to the city, she learned the story of Joshua Glover, a slave who in 1854 escaped to Canada with the help of Racinians.

The time had come for us to pull the story of Joshua Glover, and the story of the abolitionists in Wisconsin, take it from the shelves, dust it off, and bring it to the floor, said PWNS organizer Pearline Terry. We took it. And initially, we nurtured it. And the dream became a reality.

A 2-ton boulder in Monument Square was erected in 2002 to recognize the citys role in the Glover case. Glover was an enslaved person who had escaped to Racine and sold handmade items in Monument Square, then known as Haymarket Square, until he was arrested in 1854 and taken to a jail in Milwaukee.

About 100 men gathered in Haymarket Square, then took a steamer to Milwaukee to protest Glovers arrest, which eventually led to them breaking him out of jail. Glover was smuggled via the Underground Railroad to Canada, where he lived out the rest of his life.

Racine Underground Railroad Heritage Trail moves closer to reality RACINE  The city is a bit closer to memorializing the important role it played for people escaping slavery on the Underground Railroad.

I did not have an idea that there were so many people that had been involved as abolitionists to help our enslaved ancestors get out of harms way, Jones said.

Chris Paulson, executive director of the Racine Heritage Museum, said he appreciates the fact that the partnership with PWNS goes back decades and together they are able to share a new recognition story that is so compelling to these communities.

You just cant overstate the importance of this community in the most pivotal part of our nations history, Paulson said. I am just deeply grateful for  on a personal level, the friendships that we have made over the decades, and the work that we continue to do together to make sure that this story is preserved and shared for generations.

In photos: Stops along the Racine Underground Railroad Heritage Trail Site Map A pamphlet outlining the sites on the self-guided walking/driving tour of the Roots of Freedom Underground Railroad Heritage Trail has been av The Racine Heritage Museum. Racine has a rich abolitionist history and accounts of smuggling escaped slaves to safety. The Racine Heritage Museum was one of several organ Racine Heritage Museum marker This marker will be placed outside of the Racine Heritage Museum to note the contribution the museum has made to maintaining the history that  Location of Reverend Kinney's home Reverend Martin Kinney was the pastor of the Congregational Church and an ardent abolitionist who gave an anti-slavery speech the night Joshua Reverend Kinney's house marker Markers such as this one, designating the location of Rev. Martin Kinney's home on State Street, are to be part of the Racine Underground Rail The Racine Advocate The former location of the Racine Advocate whose editor, Charles Clement, spread the word about Glover's capture. Racine Advocate marker This marker will denote the location of the Racine Advocate. Cartwright's Blacksmith Shop This was the approximate location of Cartwright's Blacksmith Shop. Justinian Cartwright was born free in Kentucky and later moved to Racine wh Cartwright's Blacksmith Shop marker UR First Presbyterian Church

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KENOSHA COUNTY  The Kenosha County Sheriffs Department is looking for a man after a Town of Paris woman reportedly chased an intruder from her home late Tuesday morning at gunpoint.

Deputies were dispatched to the home in the 15000 block of 12th Street (Highway E) at 11:09 a.m. Tuesday for a reported trespassing complaint. The intruder is described as a white male, between 40 and 50 years old and weighing approximately 200 pounds. He was reportedly wearing a brown canvas jacket and a maroon-colored beanie hat.

The homeowner stated that the suspect never threatened her or spoke to her while he was inside her residence, a press release from Sgt. David Wright, the Sheriff Departments public information officer, said The suspect left the residence and drove away from the property westbound on 12th Street in an older model red SUV that had rust on the front bumper.

According to the homeowner, nothing was taken from the residence, and it is unknown what the intentions of the suspect were, Wright said. Deputies canvassed the area but did not locate the vehicle or the intruder. Neighbors were notified as investigators sought surveillance video.

The homeowner reported to investigators and wrote on social media that she was working from home when she heard footsteps. Her dog, a pit bull named Bella who was sleeping nearby, awoke to the sound.

(Bella) immediately ran out the office barking like she could smell something, the woman recalled.

The woman reportedly followed the dog and came upon the unknown person in her home.

I yelled for him to leave, and he began walking towards me, she wrote. I ran to get the gun, and by the time I ran back to the hallway, he had followed me down the hall. I had him at gunpoint.

The man reportedly stood and stared at her for a period of time before turning to leave.

He had this creepy, cold face, the woman wrote on social media.

The woman said it is possible that her dog bit the man. As a result, Wright said area hospitals were asked to keep an eye out for a patient with a dog bite to the arm. However, there had been no reports of such an injury as of Wednesday afternoon.

The investigation is active and ongoing, Wright said. Anyone with information about a person or vehicle matching the descriptions should contact the Kenosha County Sheriffs Department at 262-605-5100 or the Kenosha County Crime Stoppers anonymously at 262-656-7333.

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The U.S. Supreme Court this week allowed a Democratic-backed lawsuit over Wisconsins next 10-year political maps to proceed, denying a Republican request to dismiss the case.

The denial keeps alive hopes among Democrats and those in favor of nonpartisan legislative and congressional districts that the federal court could provide further review of the states redistricting process. The Wisconsin Supreme Court last week ruled that Wisconsins political maps for the next decade be drawn with minimal changes to the existing boundaries, dealing a victory to GOP lawmakers who want to maintain the core of maps they drew in secret in 2011 that have helped the party hold strong majorities in both chambers.

As part of the state Supreme Court case, parties have until Dec. 15 to submit map proposals and the court plans to conduct a hearing and take arguments starting Jan. 18. The court indicated the hearing process could take several days.

On Friday, a spokesperson for Gov. Tony Evers confirmed that, in light of the state Supreme Courts ruling, the Democratic governor will not be submitting maps drawn by the Peoples Maps Commission, which he created last year to create maps with citizen input. Those maps deviate heavily from current maps.

Details on what the governors new maps will entail were not made available Friday, but the spokesperson said the new boundaries will likely be submitted in the coming days.

Evers vetoed GOP-drawn maps in mid-November and has championed boundaries drawn by the nonpartisan commission, but those maps have failed to get universal support among legislative Democrats, with some criticizing the boundaries for potentially diminishing Black and Hispanic representation in the Legislature.

Republicans have said maintaining the core of existing boundaries disenfranchises the fewest number of voters, but Democrats and proponents of nonpartisan legislative boundaries have criticized the proposal as an attempt to bake in GOP-friendly districts into the states next 10-year maps.

Ultimately, the state Supreme Court issued a 4-3 ruling last week, with all four conservative justices in favor of basing the states next maps on existing boundaries.

Writing for the majority, Justice Rebecca Bradley said a least-change approach safeguards the long-term institutional legitimacy of this court by removing us from the political fray and ensuring we act as judges rather than political actors.

Democratic Attorney General Josh Kaul said the ruling almost certainly ends all hope for anything remotely resembling fair maps in Wisconsin for at least the next decade  and quite possibly much longer.

The U.S. District Court earlier this month issued a stay in the Democratic-backed case pending further action by the state Supreme Court. Its unclear if the federal court would take up the matter after the state Supreme Court comes to a final ruling.

Whether the federal court takes up the case hinges on if the maps drawn by the state Supreme Court comply with requirements in federal law, such as the Voting Rights Act.

The Legislature must redraw political lines every decade based on the latest population figures from the U.S. Census Bureau. The mapmaking process can allow a party in power, even without statewide majority support, to create or increase a legislative majority based on how district lines are drawn.

In 2011, Republicans controlled the Legislature and governors office during a decennial redistricting process for the first time in decades and drew the maps in secret conditions that excluded Democrats. By packing Democratic voters in cities into lopsided districts and spreading out rural and suburban Republicans into districts with solid, but narrower, majorities, the maps allowed the GOP to hold more than 60% of legislative seats, even when Democrats won all statewide elections in 2018.

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Once again, gun violence has been visited upon a high school. Once again, feelings and opinions are running high as parents, schoolmates, the school administration and prosecutors are mulling the questions: How could this have happened and who is to blame?

Four students were killed and seven others were injured at Oxford High School, 30 miles north of Detroit, on Nov. 30. Investigators allege 16-year-old Ethan Crumbley emerged from a school bathroom and began firing at classmates. He surrendered when police arrived 5 minutes later.

Oakland County Prosecutor Karen McDonald has charged Crumbley as an adult with murder and attempted murder. She then charged Crumbleys parents, Jennifer and James Crumbley, with involuntary manslaughter, after it was revealed they bought their son a 9mm Sig Sauer semiautomatic handgun as a Christmas present on Black Friday  five days before the shooting  and didnt reveal that to school officials when they were called in to the school for an emergency conference with counselors after Ethan was found by a teacher with disturbing drawings of a gun, a bullet, someone bleeding and the written message: The thoughts wont stop, please help me, blood everywhere, my life is worthless, the world is dead.

Further, the Crumbleys reportedly resisted having their son sent home from school, and school officials then sent him back to class after directing the parents to get Ethan counseling within 48 hours. The hallway shootings started a couple of hours later.

Its that meeting with Oxford school counselors and the Crumbleys that is now fueling outrage over the shooting and the determination to let the sophomore go back to class.

Blessed as we are with 20-20 hindsight we have a definitive answer to that: No. Not a chance.

Four young bodies in the hallways of Oxford underscore that judgment.

Prosecutor McDonald shares that view. Not only has she charged Crumbleys parents, but she said she is looking at the actions of Oxford school counselors and administrators for their actions: There was absolutely evidence to suggest that there was an indication he (Ethan) might harm somebody and even kill somebody. We havent ruled out charging anyone.

While it is unusual, we have no problem with the Crumbleys being charged in this case. The courts can sort that out.

The issue of whether to charge school officials is a thornier issue. Involuntary manslaughter carries a maximum penalty of 15 years in prison; a lesser charge of misconduct in office can have a penalty of up to 5 years in prison. We have no doubt that successful prosecution of Oxford counselors or administrators would quickly change the landscape of school discipline everywhere and counselors would bounce students from school for any scrawled graffiti with bloody knives, guns, bodies or a hint of violence.

Certainly, the circumstances of the Nov. 30 conference and what transpired deserve a full and independent investigation, and Oxford Community School officials say they are open to that. Still, the Michigan Attorney General said the district had rejected her offer to have her office conduct that investigation; she said her office may do it anyway.

Oxford Superintendent Tim Throne, in a letter to families last weekend, wrote: While we understand this decision (to allow Ethan to remain in school) has caused anger, confusion and prompted understandable questioning, the counselors made a judgment based on their professional training and clinical experience, and did not have all the facts we now know.

Perhaps that is so. According to what we know, school officials were not aware that Ethan had a gun  or that he had it at school that day. We also dont know whether the counselors asked directly whether he did have access to a gun, which they should have. Nor were his locker or backpack searched.

School officials have said Ethan Crumbley had no history of disciplinary issues at school and appeared calm when he met with school counselors. Throne said counselors spent 90 minutes with the teen while they waited for his parents to arrive. According to news reports, during that time the teen did homework and claimed that the drawing, which included a laughing emoji and the phrase the thoughts wont stop, help me, was part of a video game he was designing.

Still, the tragic results of Nov. 30 tell us that Oxford counselors got this wrong. A full investigation is needed, along with a re-examination of school policies on when a student should be removed from the classroom.

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1. Crime. Too much violence, too many shootings. Police have to get a handle on it.

2. Coronavirus. The omicron variant and others to follow threaten the community.

3. Roads. Killeen-area roads are still a mess after last years storm  a serious problem.

4.Government. Elections are on the horizon, and voters will have hard choices to make.

5. Unsure. Its hard to say which single issue will stand out at this point.

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Just before Thanksgiving, The White House announced that 2.6 million children ages 5-11, or 10% of that age range, had received a vaccination against COVID-19. Dr. Joann Fouts, a family medicine physician and medical director of Vernon Memorial Healthcares Bland Clinic in Westby, describes why parents should consider vaccinating their children against COVID-19.

Since the return to school in September, Wisconsin has seen a steady increase in the number of pediatric COVID-19 cases and is now considered very high.

The latest numbers from the Wisconsin Department of Health Services show the under 18 age group to have the highest infection rate in the state, above all other age groups, said Dr. Fouts. This includes the 18-24 age group, which previously had the highest infection rate.

The Wisconsin Department of Health Services further reports that with the introduction of the COVID-19 Delta variant, the number of children hospitalized due to COVID-19 has tripled since the summer months, Dr. Fouts also explained. It is impossible to know which children will have mild symptoms with COVID-19, and which ones will suffer severe symptoms requiring hospitalization. It is best to immunize and protect your childs health.

Dr. Fouts said that simply due to the larger number of infections in our state, we are bound to see higher numbers of children with complications or needing hospitalization due to COVID-19. Vaccinating children against COVID-19 will give them the best chance of getting through a COVID-19 diagnosis without hospitalization.

In addition, some children with COVID-19 develop Long COVID, meaning symptoms last months after diagnosis. Some long-lasting issues associated with Long COVID include fatigue, shortness of breath, coughing, joint or chest pain and others.

Vaccination also lowers the risk of developing Long COVID, said Dr. Fouts.

Dr. Fouts recognizes a possible reluctance amongst parents to vaccinate their children, but notes several reasons why parents should not fear the vaccine:

The CDC has stated that COVID-19 vaccines have undergone  and will continue to undergo  the most intensive safety monitoring in U.S. history.

The structure of the COVID-19 vaccine, called messenger RNA, or mRNA, is nothing new, and, in fact, has been around for decades.

mRNA, after doing its job, breaks down and does not affect DNA.

The vaccine for 5-11 year olds contains a lower dose specifically for that age group.

There is no evidence that COVID-19 vaccines affect future fertility in boys or girls.

I want to remind everyone again, that vaccines undergo years of testing and development. Please take advantage of these huge advancements in medicine to protect your children from the possible severity of COVID-19, concluded Dr. Fouts.

Parents who would like to have their children vaccinated against COVID-19 may make an appointment with the childs primary care provider or check the local health departments website for vaccination clinics in the area.
Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Kansas has changed a policy that denied sex reassignment surgery to people who did not legally change their names, the company confirmed Thursday.

The change came after the American Civil Liberties Union of Kansas and the Transgender Legal Defense and Education Fund raised the issue on behalf of Charley Osman, a transgender man, who was rejected after he sought pre-authorization in June for two surgeries.

Im pretty sure Im not the first person to go through this, but I want to be sure Im the last, Osman said in a news release issued by ACLU Kansas. This is an incredibly expensive surgery, and for a long time I was afraid I wouldnt be able to have it. Im very glad Blue Cross Blue Shield changed their policies so that no one else has to go through what I did.

Several medical providers agreed Osmans surgery was medically necessary, ACLU of Kansas said. The organizations sent a letter to Blue Cross Blue Shield on Osmans behalf in August saying the name change requirement was outdated, inconsistent with medical standards, discriminatory and illegal.

With the policy change, Osman will undergo the surgeries by the end of the year, according to the statement.

Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Kansas said it makes decisions based on feedback and insights from its members.

Policies are important to ensure we keep costs down and insurance affordable," the company said in a statement. "However, we are constantly reviewing and updating these policies to meet the evolving needs of our members, and this is a good example of that process working.

Ezra Cukor, senior staff attorney with the Transgender Legal Defense and Education Fund, said many transgender people may not want to change their names. Legal name changes can also be expensive and time consuming and have no relation to medical necessity, he said.

Were glad that BCBS of Kansas stepped up to change this antiquated policy requirement," said Sharon Brett, legal director for the ACLU of Kansas. "This is an important first step toward ensuring that Blue Cross/Blue Shield of Kansas provides care that is inclusive, non-discriminatory, and rooted in clinical standards.

Thomas Witt, executive director for Equality Kansas, the state's leading LGBTQ advocacy group, praised the change.

Transgender Kansans have struggled for years overcoming disparities in access to health care and insurance, Witt said in a statement. "Todays news signals another step forward for LGBTQ Kansans on our long road to full equality.

The insurance company's new policy lists 18 procedures often associated with gender reassignment that it said are considered cosmetic and will not be covered. Those include such things as breast or calf implants, hair removal, voice modification or chin reshaping.

Brett said the two advocacy groups will continue to work with Blue Cross and Blue Shield Kansas for policy changes to ensure other subscribers are not denied "medically necessary care.

This story has been corrected to show Ezra Cukor used the he pronoun.

Copyright 2021 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.

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Longtime community figure and dedicated volunteer Louie Ferris has died at age 91, officials confirmed on Thursday, after a battle with cancer.

Ferris, a veteran of the Korean War, was an instrumental volunteer in the community and dedicated his life to giving back. He once said he was always working somewhere behind the scenes in the community.

He spearheaded the citys Veterans Freedom Park, which just welcomed a new World War II memorial in September. Around 200 people gathered for the ceremony, with Ferris preceding over the unveiling.

La Crosse Mayor Mitch Reynolds called Ferris a tremendous member of our community, at the La Crosse Common Council meeting Thursday night. Reynolds said that Ferris had passed away earlier that morning.

Ive known Louie for at least 20 years, and he was here last month to lead us in the pledge of allegiance on Veterans Day, Reynolds said. I called him that day, that morning and asked him to be a part of that and to lead us in that pledge. And he said yes, because thats what he always did. He always just said yes to whatever organization asked him for help, whatever cause needed his help.

He created an example for the rest for us to follow in terms of service to our community and frankly our nation as a whole. There are few people that Ive met in my life that had the arrival to commitment to service than (Louie), Reynolds said, saying he left a tremendous legacy in the community.

Born on La Crosses North Side, Ferris joined the National Guard while still in High School, and later enlisted in the U.S. Air Force where he served in the Korean War for eight years.

He told the Tribune in a story earlier this year that his dedication to service was instilled by his family and the generations that came before him, and highlighted the importance of passing that dedication on to the next generation.

After his service in the military, Ferris was passionate about bettering his home community of La Crosse. He supported veterans affairs  including as a loyal advocate for Hmong-Lao veterans  volunteered for womens shelters, bolstered a variety of community fundraisers, mentored young adults and much more.

Louie, not bad for a North Sider, as he would say, Reynolds said.

La Crosse lost a true friend. Louie Ferris was an all-around great man, a tireless advocate for his fellow veterans and loved La Crosse with his whole heart, Sen. Brad Pfaff, D-Onalaska, said in a social media post on Thursday.

Representative Ron Kind in a statement to the Tribune noted Ferris will be greatly missed.

I was deeply saddened to learn of Louie Ferriss passing. From serving our country in the military to serving our community here at home, Louie dedicated his life to helping others, Kind said. There was nothing he couldnt accomplish when he set his mind to something.

He was a tireless advocate for many causes, but above all he always worked to honor our veterans. Louies great legacy is Veterans Freedom Park and the war memorials he built with the help of others, so visitors can pause to remember those who served and sacrificed for our nation. Louie was a wonderful person, a giant in our community, and a dear friend of mine.

This is a developing story and may be updated.

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Jussie Smollett took the witness stand Monday at his trial where he is facing charges accusing him of staging a racist, anti-gay attack on himself and lying to Chicago police about it.
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP)  Attorney General Herbert Slatery announced Friday he wouldn't appeal the resentencing of a Tennessee death row inmate to life in prison after initially resisting the move just two years prior.

Last month, Judge Monte Watkins vacated the conviction of Abu-Ali AbdurRahman (ah-BOO-ah-LEE) (AHB-dur-RAK-mahn) after finding his Constitutional right to a fair trial had been violated because his trial was marred by racism during jury selection. According to the court order, AbdurRahman pleaded guilty to charges of murder, attempted murder and armed robbery for which he received three consecutive life sentences.

My office has reviewed the courts order, and we have significant concerns about its legality," Slatery wrote in a letter to Nashville's District Attorney Glenn Funk. "Despite these concerns, we have decided not to appeal, in part, because we think it would be unfair to expose Mr. AbdurRahman to continued uncertainty about his sentence.

Now that Slatery has decided he won't appeal, AbdurRahman will spend the rest of his life in prison but without the threat of execution.

AbdurRahman was originally sentenced to die in 1987 for the murder of Patrick Daniels, who was stabbed to death. Norma Jean Norman was also stabbed but survived. The stabbing took place in Normans house while her two young daughters, Katrina and Shawanna, huddled in a back bedroom.

In 2019, Slatery appealed Watkin's first attempt to throw out AbdurRahmans death sentence. AbdurRahman, who is Black, had petitioned to reopen his case, presenting evidence that prosecutors at his trial treated Black potential jurors differently from white potential jurors.

His attorneys eventually signed an agreement with Funk to reduce his sentence in return for AbdurRahman agreeing to drop any future appeals.

However, Slatery had argued that Watkins did not have the authority to modify AbdurRahmans sentence based merely on an agreement with the district attorney. The Tennessee Court of Criminal Appeals agreed. It said Watkins could review the petition again but ordered him to follow procedures outlined in the appeals courts decision. That order set the stage for November's do-over.

Although we have chosen not to appeal this order, we will continue to monitor all efforts to unlawfully modify or vacate final judgments, and we will take whatever action is necessary and appropriate to ensure that the law is followed, Slatery said.

Copyright 2021 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.

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COCONUT ISLAND, Hawaii (AP)  On a moonless summer night in Hawaii, krill, fish and crabs swirl through a beam of light as two researchers peer into the water above a vibrant reef.

Minutes later, like clockwork, they see eggs and sperm from spawning coral drifting past their boat. They scoop up the fishy-smelling blobs and put them in test tubes.

In this Darwinian experiment, the scientists are trying to speed up corals evolutionary clock to breed super corals that can better withstand the impacts of global warming.

For the past five years, the researchers have been conducting experiments to prove their theories would work. Now, they're getting ready to plant laboratory-raised corals in the ocean to see how they survive in nature.

Assisted evolution started out as this kind of crazy idea that you could actually help something change and allow that to survive better because it is changing, said Kira Hughes, a University of Hawaii researcher and the project's manager.

SPEEDING UP NATURE

Researchers tested three methods of making corals more resilient:

 Selective breeding that carries on desirable traits from parents.

 Acclimation that conditions corals to tolerate heat by exposing them to increasing temperatures.

 And modifying the algae that give corals essential nutrients.

Hughes said the methods all have proven successful in the lab.

And while some other scientists worried this is meddling with nature, Hughes said the rapidly warming planet leaves no other options. We have to intervene in order to make a change for coral reefs to survive into the future, she said.

When ocean temperatures rise, coral releases its symbiotic algae that supply nutrients and impart its vibrant colors. The coral turns white  a process called bleaching  and can quickly become sick and die.

For more than a decade, scientists have been observing corals that have survived bleaching, even when others have died on the same reef.

So, researchers are focusing on those hardy survivors, hoping to enhance their heat tolerance. And they found selective breeding held the most promise for Hawaii's reefs.

Corals are threatened worldwide by a lot of stressors, but increasing temperatures are probably the most severe, said Crawford Drury, chief scientist at Hawaiis Coral Resilience Lab. And so thats what our focus is on, working with parents that are really thermally tolerant.

A NOVEL IDEA

In 2015, Ruth Gates, who launched the resilience lab, and Madeleine van Oppen of the Australian Institute of Marine Science published a paper on assisted evolution during one of the world's worst bleaching events.

The scientists proposed bringing corals into a lab to help them evolve into more heat-tolerant animals. And the idea attracted Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, who funded the first phase of research and whose foundation still supports the program.

Weve given (coral) experiences that we think are going to raise their ability to survive, Gates told The Associated Press in a 2015 interview.

Gates, who died of brain cancer in 2018, also said she wanted people to know how intimately reef health is intertwined with human health.

Coral reefs, often called the rainforests of the sea, provide food for humans and marine animals, shoreline protection for coastal communities, jobs for tourist economies and even medicine to treat illnesses such as cancer, arthritis and Alzheimers disease.

A recent report from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and other research organizations concluded bleaching events are the biggest threat to the world's coral reefs. Scientists found that between 2009 and 2018, the world lost about 14% of its coral.

Assisted evolution was not widely accepted when first proposed.

Van Oppen said there were concerns about losing genetic diversity and critics who said the scientists were playing gods by tampering with the reef.

Well, you know, (humans) have already intervened with the reef for very long periods of time, van Oppen said. All were trying to do is to repair the damage.

Rather than editing genes or creating anything unnatural, researchers are just nudging what could already happen in the ocean, she said. We are really focusing first on as local a scale as possible to try and maintain and enhance what is already there."

MILLIONS OF YEARS IN THE MAKING

Still, there are lingering questions.

We have discovered lots of reasons why corals dont bleach," said Steve Palumbi, a marine biologist and professor at Stanford University. Just because you find a coral that isnt bleaching in the field or in the lab doesnt mean its permanently heat tolerant.

Corals have been on Earth for about 250 million years and their genetic code is not fully understood.

This is not the first time any coral on the entire planet has ever been exposed to heat, Palumbi said. So the fact that all corals are not heat resistant tells you ... that theres some disadvantage to it. And if there werent a disadvantage, theyd all be heat resistant.

But Palumbi thinks the assisted evolution work has a valuable place in coral management plans because reefs all over the world are in desperate, desperate, desperate trouble.

The project has gained broad support and spurred research around the world. Scientists in the United Kingdom, Saudi Arabia, Germany and elsewhere are doing their own coral resilience work. The U.S. government also backs the effort.

Assisted evolution "is really impressive and very consistent with a study that we conducted with the National Academies of Sciences, said Jennifer Koss, the director of NOAA's Coral Reef Conservation Program.

We asked them to gather all the most recent cutting-edge science that was really centered on innovative interventions in coral reef management, Koss said. And certainly, this assisted gene flow fits right in.

MAJOR HURDLES

There are still serious challenges.

Scalability is one. Getting lab-bred corals out into the ocean and having them survive will be hard, especially since reintroduction has to happen on a local level to avoid bringing detrimental biological material from one region to another.

James Guest, a coral ecologist in the United Kingdom, leads a project to show selectively bred corals not only survive longer in warmer water, but can also be successfully reintroduced on a large scale.

Its great if we can do all this stuff in the lab, but we have to show that we can get very large numbers of them out onto the reef in a cost-effective way, Guest said.

Scientists are testing delivery methods, such as using ships to pump young corals into the ocean and deploying small underwater robots to plant coral.

No one is proposing assisted evolution alone will save the worlds reefs. The idea is part of a suite of measures  with proposals ranging from creating shades for coral to pumping cooler deep-ocean water onto reefs that get too warm.

The advantage of planting stronger corals is that after a generation or two, they should spread their traits naturally, without much human intervention.

Over the next several years, the Hawaii scientists will place selectively bred coral back into Kaneohe Bay and observe their behavior. Van Oppen and her colleagues have already put some selectively bred hybrid corals  where the eggs of one species are fertilized by the sperm of another  back on the Great Barrier Reef.

With the world's oceans continuing to warm, scientists say they are up against the clock to save reefs.

All the work we are going to do here, said Hawaii's Drury, is not going to make a difference if we dont wind up addressing climate change on a global, systematic scale.

So really, what were trying to do is buy time.

This story has been corrected to show that van Oppen's team has planted hybrid corals  not corals with modified symbiotic algae  on the Great Barrier Reef.

Follow Caleb Jones on Twitter: @CalebAP

Copyright 2021 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.

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MILWAUKEE  A 7-year-old boy is among four people found fatally shot at a southside Milwaukee home in an apparent case of murder-suicide, according to police.

Officers went to the house to check on the welfare of a person shortly before noon Wednesday, entered the home and found the four people dead, WTMJ-TV reported.

The Milwaukee County Medical Examiner's Office identified the dead as 7-year-old Kevin James Becker-Wilhelm; 54-year-old female Jeazell Woodruff; 42-year-old Jason Wilhelm; and 49-year-old Fredrick Holmes.

Police issued a statement Thursday afternoon saying Holmes lived with Woodruff in the building's lower unit. The boy and Wilhelm lived in the upstairs unit. Investigators believe Holmes was the shooter but the circumstances remain under investigation.

"Four people are dead. How are you going to cope from that? I heard yelling, cussing, I heard three gunshots," said one neighbor, Rita Radomski.

Carlos Cruz, who lives two doors down from where the shooting took place, said those who lived inside the home typically kept to themselves.

"They were very private like everybody else around here, so yeah it's very shocking. I've been up since like six this morning and I swear I didn't hear anything at all," said Cruz.

Members of Milwaukee's Violence Prevention team were also on scene providing support to those affected by the shooting.

"We provide resources where needed, we want to see what we can do from a therapeutic standpoint," said Derrick Rogers, director of 414 Life.

Autopsies are scheduled for Thursday. There is no active threat to the public, police said.

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The U.S. Supreme Court this week allowed a Democratic-backed lawsuit over Wisconsins next 10-year political maps to proceed, denying a Republican request to dismiss the case.

The denial keeps alive hopes among Democrats and those in favor of nonpartisan legislative and congressional districts that the federal court could provide further review of the states redistricting process. The Wisconsin Supreme Court last week ruled that Wisconsins political maps for the next decade be drawn with minimal changes to the existing boundaries, dealing a victory to GOP lawmakers who want to maintain the core of maps they drew in secret in 2011 that have helped the party hold strong majorities in both chambers.

As part of the state Supreme Court case, parties have until Dec. 15 to submit map proposals and the court plans to conduct a hearing and take arguments starting Jan. 18. The court indicated the hearing process could take several days.

On Friday, a spokesperson for Gov. Tony Evers confirmed that, in light of the state Supreme Courts ruling, the Democratic governor will not be submitting maps drawn by the Peoples Maps Commission, which he created last year to create maps with citizen input. Those maps deviate heavily from current maps.

Details on what the governors new maps will entail were not made available Friday, but the spokesperson said the new boundaries will likely be submitted in the coming days.

Evers vetoed GOP-drawn maps in mid-November and has championed boundaries drawn by the nonpartisan commission, but those maps have failed to get universal support among legislative Democrats, with some criticizing the boundaries for potentially diminishing Black and Hispanic representation in the Legislature.

Republicans have said maintaining the core of existing boundaries disenfranchises the fewest number of voters, but Democrats and proponents of nonpartisan legislative boundaries have criticized the proposal as an attempt to bake in GOP-friendly districts into the states next 10-year maps.

Ultimately, the state Supreme Court issued a 4-3 ruling last week, with all four conservative justices in favor of basing the states next maps on existing boundaries.

Writing for the majority, Justice Rebecca Bradley said a least-change approach safeguards the long-term institutional legitimacy of this court by removing us from the political fray and ensuring we act as judges rather than political actors.

Democratic Attorney General Josh Kaul said the ruling almost certainly ends all hope for anything remotely resembling fair maps in Wisconsin for at least the next decade  and quite possibly much longer.

The U.S. District Court earlier this month issued a stay in the Democratic-backed case pending further action by the state Supreme Court. Its unclear if the federal court would take up the matter after the state Supreme Court comes to a final ruling.

Whether the federal court takes up the case hinges on if the maps drawn by the state Supreme Court comply with requirements in federal law, such as the Voting Rights Act.

The Legislature must redraw political lines every decade based on the latest population figures from the U.S. Census Bureau. The mapmaking process can allow a party in power, even without statewide majority support, to create or increase a legislative majority based on how district lines are drawn.

In 2011, Republicans controlled the Legislature and governors office during a decennial redistricting process for the first time in decades and drew the maps in secret conditions that excluded Democrats. By packing Democratic voters in cities into lopsided districts and spreading out rural and suburban Republicans into districts with solid, but narrower, majorities, the maps allowed the GOP to hold more than 60% of legislative seats, even when Democrats won all statewide elections in 2018.

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CITY COUNCIL APPROVES LAS FIRST PARTICIPATORY BUDGETING PLAN $8.5 million to go to nine LA neighborhoods

The Los Angeles City Council unanimously approved a plan from the Civil + Human Rights and Equity Department (LA Civil Rights) to roll out the citys first participatory budgeting pilot program. The Los Angeles Reforms for Equity and Public Acknowledgement of Institutional Racism, or LA REPAIR, will give nine communities impacted by high rates of poverty, COVID-19, pollution and other factors the decision-making power to allocate more than $8.5 million in city funds.

When it comes to the issues that burden neighborhoods across our city  whether its the climate crisis, the pandemic, or economic inequality  nobody has better solutions than our own residents, said Mayor Eric Garcetti. LA REPAIR is about empowering our communities with the resources and autonomy they need to address the challenges of today and make their neighborhoods stronger and more resilient for generations to come, and Im thankful to the City Council for taking this important step to make this program a reality.

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From inequities in service delivery to infrastructure investment, as we move forward we must work to transform our City into one that achieves its core work while addressing the stark inequities that have long existed in Los Angeles, said Council President Nury Martinez. For too long, communities of color have had to fight extra hard for equitable allocation in budget funding and as we move forward, this work will be institutionalized as a part of our future budgeting process. Last year, the Council led an historic city-wide series of listening sessions to directly hear from our residents on how city funds should be spent, because its crucial to have input from our communities on where they want to see money allocated in their neighborhoods.

Los Angeles has some of the lowest income and highest need neighborhoods in the country, living in the shadow of immense wealth and investment, said Capri Maddox, Executive Director of LA Civil Rights. These neighborhoods know whats best for their communities, and deserve the power to shape their own futures. LA REPAIR will put these communities in the drivers seat and help us tackle structural inequality head on. We are so grateful to the Mayor for proposing this participatory budgeting program, and to the City Council for moving it forward today.

First proposed by Mayor Eric Garcetti in his proposed 2021-22 city budget, LA REPAIR will begin soliciting ideas early next year, with community votes on final proposals as soon as May. The neighborhoods in the participatory budgeting pilot, known as REPAIR Zones, are Skid Row, Arleta-Pacoima, Boyle Heights, Mission Hills-Panorama City-North Hills, Westlake, West Adams, South Los Angeles, Southeast Los Angeles and Wilmington-Harbor Gateway.

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In its report on LA REPAIR, LA Civil Rights used poverty data, COVID-19 case rate data, as well as data reflecting the digital divide and a statewide mapping tool of pollution called CalEnviroScreen to determine the nine REPAIR zones.

All nine communities have at least 87% residents of color, and at least 16% live in poverty. Furthermore, these communities have an unemployment rate of at least 15%, and at least 30% of all renter households paid half or more of their income on rent.

Los Angeles has no shortage of challenges, but also no shortage of community-based organizations and neighborhood leaders working tirelessly toward a better future, said Councilmember Kevin de Leon. I see this in my district from Skid Row to Boyle Heights. Its time to give these communities the power to shape their own future. LA REPAIR from LA Civil Rights is a bold step toward equity for Los Angeles, giving underserved communities real power over real dollars, and Im proud to move it forward.

Westlake in my district is the densest neighborhood in Los Angeles with several generations of families living in one-bedroom apartments, the highest percentage of immigrants, and the greatest numbers of people who have died or who have COVID-19 in CD 1, stated Councilmember Gil Cedillo. Its inclusion in LA REPAIRs participatory budgeting pilot project will give my Westlake constituents the opportunity to give input on City expenditures in their neighborhood to make it more safe, clean, and secure and to improve the quality of life for their children, youth and families.

For far too long Black and Brown communities have been sidelined by a governmental system that has made them feel unseen, said Councilmember Curren Price. It is time to empower their collective voices and give them their seat at the table so that they can take the reins in determining what is needed in their communities today, tomorrow and in the future.

LA REPAIR is a historic step forward in our collective efforts to build a Los Angeles thats more equitable and livable, said City Councilmember Mitch OFarrell, who represents parts of the Westlake neighborhood. By inviting leaders from historically neglected neighborhoods to a seat at the table and prioritizing investments that are driven by community input, LA REPAIR will help us create stronger, more resilient neighborhoods as we emerge from the pandemic.

To truly establish a more equitable, antiracist LA, we must ensure that low-income communities of color have the tools and resources to not just reimagine their communities, but actually participate in the decision-making process. LA REPAIR is poised to redefine civic engagement in the City of Los Angeles by educating, engaging and most importantly, empowering, historically underserved groups to decide on investment priorities to uplift their communities, said Karly Katona, Caretaker of the 10th Council District.

Every neighborhood has unique needs and the LA REPAIR program will give a voice and power to our community members to choose how to best invest in solutions to historic inequities, said Councilmember Joe Buscaino. It is my hope that in the coming years we can expand this innovative program to more neighborhoods throughout the city.

This pilot project serves as an important tool to empower disenfranchised communities to have greater input on spending decisions for their neighborhoods. This process will be instrumental to uplifting voices that too often are overshadowed by the voices of more affluent areas, said Councilmember Monica Rodriguez.

Participatory budgeting, which is in place in thousands of cities worldwide, including New York City, Oakland and Seattle, emphasizes public ownership of government resources, deepens democracy, improves trust in government and builds stronger communities impacted by systemic inequality, according to the report.

In the coming months, LA Civil Rights will onboard a Participatory Budgeting consultant to finalize program design and solicit program ideas from LA REPAIR Zones. Any resident of a REPAIR Zone can provide ideas for programs and vote on final proposals, including those residing in an L.A. City shelter or housing. Community members from each REPAIR Zone will form an advisory committee to oversee program implementation, and the $8.5 million will be geared toward community-driven ideas and community-based partners over City-led programs.
Investigation Continuing Into Killing of Rapper in Inglewood

The investigation was continuing today into the killing of Compton rapper Slim 400, who was gunned down in Inglewood. The shooting was reported about 8 p.m. Wednesday at Manchester Boulevard and Seventh Avenue. The Los Angeles County coroners office on Friday identified the slain man as 34-year-old Vincent Cochran Jr.

Paramedics sent to the location at the request of Inglewood police took the mortally wounded man to a hospital, according to the Los Angeles County Fire Department. Police have not released details of their investigation into the killing.

According to CBS2, officers on patrol heard the gunshots and responded to find a man on the ground with gunshot wounds. TMZ.com reported that the rapper apparently was shot as he sat in a vehicle in a driveway.

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According to TMZ, Slim was born to military parents in Germany, moved to Los Angeles as a young child and was raised in Compton. The rapper was later discovered and signed by the now-nonexistent Pu$haz Ink music label  the same one made popular by YG and DJ Mustard. Slim narrowly escaped death back in the summer of 2019 when he was shot nine times in L.A., TMZ reported. Slim claimed he was ambushed in the attack while visiting family in Compton.
LA City Council Approves New Council District Borders to Be In Effect Jan. 1

The Los Angeles City Council today approved the new borders for the citys 15 council districts, which will go into effect on Jan. 1.



The measure passed by a 13-0 margin, with Councilman Joe Buscaino

absent and Councilman Mark Ridley-Thomas suspended following his indictment on

federal corruption charges.



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The council took over the redistricting process from the civilian City

Council Redistricting Commission, which submitted recommendations to

council members on Oct. 21. The 21 commissioners used data from the U.S. Census

to update the citys districts, with each council member getting about 260,000

people to represent.



The draft map made drastic changes to the current 15 council districts, including creating an entirely new district that would have been represented by either Councilman Paul Krekorian or Councilwoman Nithya Raman without any of their previous constituents.



When it reached the council for its portion of the redistricting process, Council President Nury Martinez blasted the map, saying Los Angeles cannot reasonably move forward with a draft map that raises concerns for so many marginalized communities.



Council members introduced dozens of changes to the borders, creating a hybrid map that was advanced out of the councils Ad Hoc Redistricting Committee. The map then underwent two state-required public hearings in November.



The map received praise from some constituents for uniting Koreatown under Council District 10 and Hollywood under Council District 13. Other Angelenos called in to oppose the map for dividing their neighborhoods, specifically Studio City and Reseda. Under the map, Studio City is split between Council Districts 2 and 4, and Reseda is divided among Council Districts 3 and 4.



I dont know why youre splitting valley communities if they have similar interests and similar demographics, they go to similar stores and business? Why split Studio City, why split Reseda? Keep them all together, a caller who identified himself as Kenneth said.



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Studio City Neighborhood Council Vice President Scott Mandell urged Krekorian to introduce an amendment to the map that would give Council District 2 the entirety of Studio City.



We want to remain whole, we want to remain in the same council district with the same council member we voted for, Mandell said. Several people called in to oppose the map for not returning assets previously held by Council District 8.



Exposition Park  which includes Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, the Natural History Museum and Banc of California Stadium  was located in Council District 8 for decades until the redistricting process a decade ago, when it was moved, along with USC, to Council District 9.



Councilman Marqueece Harris-Dawson, who represents Council District 8, made multiple attempts to move the assets back into his district.



USC and Expo Park, which has been in the Eighth District for longer than most of the council has been alive, got taken out of the Eighth District and put in the Ninth District, Harris-Dawson told council members on Nov. 23.



You cant not fight for this. I cannot walk out of here not having put this before each and every one of you, he told council members. At least the African American Museum ought to be in the one Black district, he added.



His final motion to move the assets into Council District 8 failed, only receiving the support of three council members  Harris-Dawson, Councilman Mike Bonin and Raman.



Councilman Curren Price, who represents the Council District 9, said he vehemently opposed moving Exposition Park out of his district. The fact is, CD9 is still the most impoverished district in the city  of both Black and brown folks, but still the most impoverished and it certainly doesnt make sense to take assets from a district thats showing some progress, some development, Price said.



The City Council also approved amendments from Raman to restore part of her district, but her office says she is still losing about 40% of her constituents under the current proposal.



The councils significant changes to the civilian commissions recommended map came amid calls from many  including the commission itself  to change the citys policy in the future to allow an entirely independent body handle the redistricting process.



In the commissions recommendations submitted to the council, it called for an independent body to redraw the borders in 2031.



This commission over the last year confirmed that the quasi- independent nature of the advisory commission simply does not work, commission Chairman Fred Ali told council members. Its time for an independent, rather than advisory, commission to assume responsibility for redistricting for the good of our city.



Ali told council members on Nov. 2 that 15,000 people offered comment during the process, but he noted challenges during the process, including the COVID-19 pandemic, census data being delayed by five months and a historic undercount of certain communities within that data.



Martinez said the commissions map reflected an undercount she attributed to the Trump administrations failed attempt to add a citizenship question to the census and to what she called the former presidents confusing messaging on the census deadline.



Los Angeles numbers are simply not accurate. Look around you, we did not get whiter and we did not get wealthier. This is not the Los Angeles that I see around me, Martinez said.
We present the last of three parts of the short story "Benito Cereno." It was written by Herman Melville.

As we told you in earlier parts of our story, rebel slaves seized the ship San Dominick off the coast of Chile. They killed many of its officers and crew. The captain, Benito Cereno, was ordered to sail to Senegal. But first, he was forced to take the ship to the lonely island of Santa Maria, near the southern end of Chile. There, it could safely get water and supplies for the long, dangerous voyage to Africa.

At the island, the rebels were surprised and frightened when they found an American ship anchored in the harbor. It also had stopped for water. Many of the rebels wanted to sail away. But their leader, Babo, opposed it. They had little water and food, and could not go far. Babo created a story to keep anyone from suspecting that the Spanish vessel was in the hands of rebels, and that its captain was a prisoner.

At first, Babo seemed successful. The captain of the American ship, Amasa Delano, visited the San Dominick. He suspected nothing, although surprised by the general disorder on board. He also could not understand the strange behavior of its captain, Benito Cereno. Later incidents, however, began to worry him. Captain Delano grew more and more suspicious. At one time, he even feared that his life might be in danger.

Twice, he caught the Spanish captain and his servant, Babo, with their heads together, whispering like two conspirators. It made Captain Delano wonder. Were they plotting to kill him and seize his ship? Who were these men, cut throats? Pirates?

Captian Delano grew nervous. Then, he was happy to see his whale boat off in the distance. It was returning with supplies for the Spanish ship. The sight of his boat calmed him. It made his suspicions and fear quickly disappear. He felt foolish for having had such dark thoughts.

Now, here is Shep O'Neal with the rest of our story, "Benito Cereno."

Captain Delano went down to Captain Cerenos cabin to cheer him up and say goodbye.

Better and better, Don Benito, he said as he entered the cabin, your troubles will soon be over. The American invited the Spanish captain to come aboard his boat for a cup of coffee.

Cerenos eyes brightened. But then the light in them died. He shook his head and said he could not accept the invitation. Captain Delano was offended. He was about to withdraw when Don Benito rose from his chair and took Delanos hand. The Spaniards hand shook. And he was too excited to speak. Delano pulled his hand away and turned, climbing back to the deck. His face was troubled.

Captain Delano could not understand Don Benito's actions. One minute the Spaniard was warm and polite. Then -- just as quickly -- cold and hostile. Captain Delano asked himself: Why did he refuse to join me? Why is he so unfriendly?

Captain Delano got to the deck and was about to step down into his boat when he heard his name. To his surprise, Don Benito was calling, coming quickly toward him.

Captain Delano was pleased and turned back to meet him. Don Benito warmly took his hand, with more energy and emotion than he had ever shown. But his excitement seemed too much for him, and he could not speak. Babo then came between the two men and put his arm around Don Benito to support him. Clearly, he wanted to end the meeting between the two captains.

Walking between the two men, Babo went with them to the walkway. Don Benito would not let go of Captain Delanos hand. He held it tightly across the servants body.

Soon, they were standing by the ships side, looking down onto the American boat. Its crew turned up their wondering eyes. Captain Delano did not know what to do as he waited for Don Benito to let go of his hand. He wanted to step down into his boat. But Don Benito still firmly held his hand.

Then, in an excited voice the Spaniard said: I can go no further. Here I must say goodbye. Farewell, my dear, dear Don Amasa. Go! Go! And he tore his hand loose. Go, and God protect you better than he did me. Go, Don Amasa, my best friend.

Captain Delano was deeply moved. He would have stayed for another minute or so, but he caught the eye of Babo. It seemed to say, This is bad for Don Benitos health. And so he quickly took the short step down into his boat with the continuing farewells of Don Benito, who stood rooted at the ships side.

Captain Delano sat down in the back of his boat, gave Don Benito a last salute, and ordered his men to push off. The boat began to move. Suddenly, Don Benito sprang over the side and came down at Delanos feet. And he kept shouting toward the Spanish ship. His cries were so wild that no one could understand him.

An American officer asked what does this mean. Captain Delano turned a cold smile upon Captain Cereno and said he neither knew nor cared. It seems, he added, that the Spaniard has taken it into his head to give his people the idea that we want to kidnap him. Or elseand suddenly Captain Delano shouted: Watch out for your lives! He saw Babo, the servant, on the rail above, with a dagger in his hand. He was ready to jump.

What followed happened so quickly that Captain Delano could not tell one incident from another. They all came together in one great blur of violent action and excitement.

As Babo came down, Captain Delano flung Don Benito aside and caught the rebel leader, pulling the dagger from his hand. He pushed Babo firmly down in the bottom of the boat, which now began to pick up speed. Then, Babo, with his one free hand, pulled a second dagger from his clothes and struck at Captain Cereno. Captain Delano knocked it from his hand.

Now, he saw everything clearly: Babo had leaped into the whale boat  not to kill him  but to kill Captain Cereno.

For the first time, he understood the mysterious behavior of Don Benito  a prisoner under sentence of death. He looked back at the Spanish ship and got a clear picture of what its captain had escaped.

On board the San Dominick, the shouting rebels were raising their axes and knives in a wild revolt. They stopped some of the Spanish sailors from jumping into the sea. A few, however, jumped, while two or three, who were not quick enough, went hurrying up the top-most wood arms.

Captain Delano signaled to his ship, ordering it to get its guns ready. When the whale boat reached his ship Captain Delano asked for ropes. He tied Babo, and had him pulled up on deck. A small boat was quickly sent out to pick up three Spanish sailors who had jumped from Captain Cerenos ship.

Captain Delano asked Don Benito what guns the rebels had. He answered that they had none that could be used. In the first days of the rebellion, a cabin passenger now dead had destroyed the few guns there were.

The Americans fired six shots at the San Dominick. But the rebel ship moved out of reach. Small boats were armed and lowered. Captain Delano ordered his men into them. And they moved out to capture the rebel ship.

The boats caught up with the San Dominick when it was nearly night. But the moon was rising, and the gunners were able to see where they were shooting. The rebels had no bullets. And they could do nothing but yell. Many of the rebels were killed and the San Dominick was captured.

After an investigation, Babo was found guilty of stealing a ship and of murder, and was hanged. Captain Benito Cereno never was well again and he soon died. So, ended the terrible story of the slave revolt aboard the slave ship, the San Dominick.

What do you think of this story? Write to us in the Comments section or on our Facebook page.

Quiz

Quiz - Benito Cereno by Herman Melville, Part Three Start the Quiz to find out Start Quiz

For teachers

This lesson plan, based on the CALLA Approach, teaches the strategy of using a graphic organizer to help understand the story.





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Words in This Story

incident  n. an event or something that happens

whale boat - n. a long rowboat with a bow at either end for easy maneuverability, formerly used in whaling

dagger - n. a sharp pointed knife that is used as a weapon

gunners - n. a soldier who operates a large gun




American President Joe Biden opened the first Summit for Democracy on Thursday. The gathering aims to bring together world leaders who, in his words, strengthen our own democracies and push back on authoritarianism.

This is an urgent matter, Biden said as he opened the two-day video meeting. The data were seeing is largely pointing in the wrong direction.

The president made note of a recent report from the International Institute of Democracy and Electoral Assistance. The report found that more than half of all democracies have experienced a decline in at least one aspect of their democracy over the last 10 years, including the United States.

Michael Abramowitz is head of Freedom House, which produced yearly reports on the state of democracy around the world. He said American democracy has been hurting in recent years. He added, Right now, were going through a phase in America where its very difficult to get things done and to really prove that democracy can deliver.

Biden announced plans to spend up to $424 million to support independent media, fight corruption, defend fair elections and advance democracy. The money must be approved by the United States Congress.

The gathering drew criticism from American adversaries and nations that were not invited to join.

Ahead of the gathering, the ambassadors to the U.S. from China and Russia jointly described the Biden administration as showing a Cold-War mentality. They wrote that the gathering could lead to division in the world. China and Russia were among the nations that did not receive invitations to take part in the meeting.

Chinese officials have also criticized the U.S. for inviting Taiwan to take part. China claims the self-governing island as part of its territory.



Other leaders speaking

World leaders took turns to speak about the state of democracy. Many of the video messages had been recorded at an earlier time.

The democratic conversation is changing, said Denmarks Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen. New technologies, she said, have centered more on reaching people than on freedom of speech.

Ukraines President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who took part in Thursdays meeting, said on Twitter, Democracy is not a given, it must be fought for. Zelensky was to meet with Biden later in the day. Biden had warned Russia not to invade Ukraine a day earlier.

Polands Andrzej Duda also spoke out against Russia and its support of Belarus in his comments to the gathering. Polands support for democracy has made us the target of the Kremlin propaganda, he said.

The U.S. State Department listed more than 100 countries that were invited to the gathering. The countries include liberal democracies, weaker democracies and those with authoritarian qualities.

Pakistans Prime Minister Imran Khan declined to attend the meeting. In a statement issued ahead of the gathering, the foreign ministry said, We value our partnership with the U.S. which we wish to expand both bilaterally as well as in terms of regional and international cooperation.

Hungary attempted unsuccessfully to block European Union Commission President Ursula von der Leyen from speaking at the gathering. Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto called the meeting a political event. Hungary was among the countries not invited to the event. Other such nations included Turkey and Egypt.

Im Jill Robbins.

Hai Do adapted this story for Learning English based on VOA and Associated Press news reports. Ashley Thompson was the editor.

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Words in This Story

authoritarianism - n. a belief requiring people to obey authority at the cost of personal freedom

aspect - n. a part of something

deliver - v. to produce the promised or expected results

advance - v. to move forward

adversary - n. an enemy or opponent

decline - v. to say that you will not do something

bilaterally - adv. involving two countries

regional - n. a part of the world

What do you think of the Summit for Democracy? Write to us in the Comments section.


Across the United States, people looking to buy real Christmas trees are either finding reduced choices, higher prices, or both.

The worldwide supply problem has also affected the number of artificial trees, like those made from plastic.

A combination of severe weather and difficulties getting trees from factories overseas caused what one industry expert called a double whammy. This means that the situation is bad in two different ways.

Jami Warner is executive director of the American Christmas Tree Association. She said, Growers have been hard hit by floods, fires, smoke, drought, extreme weather conditions.

Heat and fires in the northwest U.S. in June hurt Christmas tree farms in Oregon and Washington. Those are the states where most of the trees come from.

It takes 10 years for most trees to grow. So, losing trees to fires and bad weather creates problems that may last for many years.

Even for the trees that do get cut down for sale, there are not enough truck drivers to bring them into city markets.

Dale Pine and Stacy Valenzuela run Crystal River Christmas Trees near Oakland, California. They normally get trees from Oregon, but a stretch of extremely hot temperatures damaged the crop.

Valenzuela called the situation grim. She said she talked to suppliers every day to ask for trees. She said it has been a lot of work to get these trees on the ground this year.

A Christmas tree market in Washington, D.C. brought out many customers who live in the area called Capitol Hill. The market, held in early December, was two streets away from the U.S. Capitol building.

Del Voss organized the sale as a way to raise money for a local community group. He charged about $75 for trees that were one meter tall. Most trees cost over $100.

He said he bought the trees at an auction in Pennsylvania about 10 days earlier. In the past, the group purchased trees from a small business that gets trees for community organizations to sell. But this year, that business had no trees available.

He was unable to get his trees because of the shortage, Voss said.

Voss called the auction process where about 40,000 trees were for sale chaotic.

He said he paid about $15,000 for 200 trees. That is two times more than what he usually pays. Other places in the area have less costly trees, he said, but the ones he sells provide money for the organization.

Most people, he said, were happy to pay a little more because the money went to a good cause. If they thought the price was too high, he told them where they could go to pay less.





We dont want people to have bad feelings about buying a Christmas tree.

Voss said there are not as many trees this year because of the countrys poor economic situation 12 years ago. When farmers took out loans to buy and plant young trees, banks did not offer them as much money. In turn, the farmers could not plant as many trees. There was also disease and bad weather that killed the young trees.

Voss said the supply is lower than normal this year -- but demand is higher. Many people are choosing to stay home for Christmas because of ongoing concerns about traveling during the COVID-19 pandemic. And they want their own tree to celebrate the holiday.

Caroline Tuan works for Balsam Hill, a company that makes artificial trees. She said her companys trees are made in China. She explained that slowdowns at the ports and a lack of truck drivers have made artificial trees 20 percent more expensive this year. In addition, there are not as many choices.

David Cruise went to the Balsam Hill store to buy an artificial tree this year. He decided it would be better for the environment to buy a tree that would last for a long time.

This is really the way to go, he said.

Dan McPheeters lives in Washington, D.C. He came to the sale near the U.S. Capitol because places where he bought trees in the past were sold out.

I grew up with an artificial tree. I think it makes all the sense in the world. But the kids seem to enjoy picking out a tree, and my wife really enjoys it. So, its a nice family activity.

Im Dan Friedell.

Dan Friedell wrote this story for Learning English with additional information from the Associated Press. Ashley Thompson was the editor.

Do you like to have a Christmas tree where you live? Tell us in the Comments section and visit our Facebook page.

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Words in This Story

drought  n. a long period of time during which there is very little or no rain

grim  adj. causing feelings of sadness or worry : gloomy or depressing

auction  n. a public sale at which things are sold to the people who offer to pay the most

chaotic  adj. in a state of complete confusion or disorder

artificial  adj. not natural or real : made, produced, or done to seem like something natural

pick out  v. to choose or select (the best or most appropriate person or thing) from a group

customer n. someone who buys goods or services from a business




A new film version of the beloved American musical West Side Story opened in theaters around the world Friday. Director Steven Spielberg employed Latin actors to perform the parts of the Puerto Rican characters on which the story is based.

That was not the case in casting for the 1957 Broadway musical or 1961 movie of the same name. Only one actor in the film was Latin: Rita Moreno, who played Anita. She won an Academy Award for her performance. The movie received nine other Oscars.

Like those productions, however, this new movie is also based on William Shakespeares tragic love story, Romeo and Juliet. West Side Story presents two opposing groups of teenagers in New York City: The Sharks are Puerto Rican, the Jets are white. Jet Tony and Shark Maria fall in love, increasing hostility and distrust between and within their groups.

Spielberg spent more than a year looking for his cast. His search went outside the United States to Latin America and Australia. Twenty of the films actors are Puerto Ricans or of Puerto Rican ancestry.

"I wanted to cast it authentically, to ensure that the actors playing the Shark boys and girls were 100 percent Latinx, and young," Spielberg said.

Rita Moreno is among the cast also. And she helped produce the movie.

This time Moreno plays Valentina, a new part that replaces the original character of store owner Doc.

'A huge step forward'

Latinos are the largest minority in the United States, accounting for 19 percent of the population. Numerous studies show that the group is greatly under-represented in film and television.

Actor-dancer Ariana DeBose who plays Anita in the new movie, praised Spielbergs work for its integrity.

"He is using his privilege to say, well, if I can do it, everybody can, and pay respect to the culture, Debose said.

Rich backstories are created for each character in the new West Side Story. Both English and Spanish language is used in the film. The writer of the new movie, Tony Kushner, said Spanish, had to exist in equal proportions alongside English."

Spielberg spoke of people seeing the movie together in public theaters. He said he hoped English-speaking audiences will suddenly hear laughter coming from pockets of the theater from the Spanish-speaking audience."

David Alvarez plays Bernardo, the leader of the Sharks. He calls the casting effort "a huge step forward."

Alvarez said 2021s West Side Story and In the Heights, another recent musical with a large Latino cast, are signs that the United States, in Alvarez's words, "is beginning to realize that the Latino community here is much larger and they are recognizing us."

"It is a beautiful thing to see that we are finally taking a step forward ... We are here, we want to be part of America, we want to integrate ourselves with this society," Alvarez said.

Im Caty Weaver.

Lucila Sigal reported this story for the Associated Press. Jr. Caty Weaver adapted it for VOA Learning English. Susan Shand was the editor.

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Words in This Story

character - n. a person who appears in a story, book, play, movie, or television show

casting - n. the act or event of choosing actors for theatrical productions

authentically - adv. done in a true and accurate way

integrity - n. the quality of being honest and fair

privilege - n. a right or benefit that is given to some people and not to others

proportion - n. the relationship that exists between the size, number, or amount of two things

audience - n. a group of people who gather together to listen to something (such as a concert) or watch something (such as a movie or play) : the people who attend a performance

pocket - n. a small area or group that is different from the larger area or group it is in or near  usually + of

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New Zealands government believes it has come up with a new plan to end tobacco smoking: a lifetime ban for those aged 14 or younger.

Under a new law the government plans to pass next year, the lowest age to buy cigarettes would keep rising year after year.

The yearly increase could mean that 65 years after the law takes effect, shoppers could still buy cigarettes  but only if they could prove they were at least 80 years old.

Officials hope smoking will disappear many years before then. The new plan sets a goal of having fewer than 5 percent of New Zealanders smoking by 2025.

Other parts of the plan include allowing only the sale of tobacco products with very low nicotine levels and reducing the number of stores that can sell such products. The changes would be brought in over a set period of time to help sellers deal with the market changes.

The minimum age to buy cigarettes in New Zealand is now 18 years old. So, the lifetime smoking ban for youth would not have an effect for a few years.

In a discussion with The Associated Press, New Zealands Associate Health Minister Dr. Ayesha Verrall said her work at a public hospital in Wellington involved telling several smokers they had developed cancer.

You meet, every day, someone facing the misery caused by tobacco, said Verrall, who is organizing the new plan. The most horrible ways people die. Being short of breath, caused by tobacco.

For years, smoking rates have fallen in New Zealand. About 11 percent of adults smoke, with 9 percent smoking every day. Daily smoking remains high among Indigenous Maori at 22 percent. Under the governments plan, a new group would be created to help reduce smoking among Maori.

Big tax increases have already been put on cigarettes in recent years. Some question why the tax levels were not increased even further.

We dont think tax increases will have any further impact, Verrall said.

Verrall added the tax measures have a greater effect on lower-income people, who are more likely to smoke.

The new law would not deal with vaping. Verrall said that tobacco smoking is far more harmful and remains a leading cause of preventable deaths in New Zealand, killing up to 5,000 people each year.

New Zealands plan to ban the next generation from tobacco smoking has not been tried elsewhere, she said.

But she said studies have shown youth tobacco sales decrease when minimum ages are raised. In the U.S., the federal minimum age to buy tobacco products was raised from 18 to 21 two years ago.

While public health experts have generally welcomed the New Zealand plan, not everybody is happy.

Sunny Kaushal said some stores could be put out of business. Kaushal leads the Dairy and Business Owners Group, which represents nearly 5,000 corner stores and gas stations in New Zealand.

We all want a smoke-free New Zealand, he said. But this is going to hugely impact small businesses. It should not be done so it is destroying dairies, lives and families in the process. Its not the way.

In New Zealand, the term dairy means a small, local store.

Kaushal said the tax increases on tobacco had already created an illegal market that gangs were operating in, and the problem would only get worse. He said smoking was already nearing its end in New Zealand and would disappear on its own.

Kaushal described the new plan as being driven by academics.

But Verrall said she did not believe the government was going too far, because data show that most smokers want to quit anyway.

Im John Russell.

Nick Perry reported on this story for the Associated Press. John Russell adapted it for Learning English. Susan Shand was the editor.

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Words in This Story

nicotine  n. a substance in tobacco that makes it difficult for people to stop smoking cigarettes

misery n. extreme suffering or unhappiness

impact  n. a powerful or major influence or effect

minimum  n. the lowest number or amount that is possible or allowed  usually singular


More than 50 people died Thursday in southern Mexico when a truck filled with over 160 migrants crashed into a bridge.

Mexican authorities said the truck was smuggling migrants trying to make it to the United States. It was the highest number of migrant deaths in Mexico since 2010, when 72 migrants were killed by a drug gang.

By Friday, the Mexican government said 54 people died. At least 50 others were hurt, but some injured people ran away because they were worried about being arrested.

Most of the people were from Guatemala, but some were from Honduras, Mexico and Ecuador.

Rescuers worked to help those still alive out of the truck. The dead were moved to the side of the road in Tuxtla Gutierrez, a city in the Mexican state of Chiapas.



The cargo area of the truck was destroyed. People said the truck fell on its side and hit the bridge. Officials said the driver may have been going too fast and lost control at a curve in the road.

Luis Manuel Moreno of the Chiapas civil defense office said more than 20 survivors had serious injuries.

Guatemalan Celso Pacheco was in the truck. He said the driver was going too fast and lost control. The head of Mexicos National Guard said the driver ran away.

Another man said the trailer couldnt handle the weight of the people."

International leaders expressed their concern about the deaths and injuries.

Ken Salazar, the U.S. ambassador to Mexico, said in a Twitter post: human smugglers disregard human life for their own profit and told people not to migrate outside of the normal rules.

Thousands of people travel through Mexico each month with the hope of reaching the U.S.

In recent months, Mexico has tried to stop large groups from walking toward the border. Many, now, are trying to make it in less visible ways.

In October, Mexican authorities stopped six trucks in the state of Tamaulipas and found over 600 people inside.

Irineo Mujica is an activist. He is walking with a group of about 400 migrants through Mexico. He blamed immigration policies for the tragedy.

The injured migrants will be able to stay in Mexico during their treatment because they are witnesses to a crime. Mexicos National Immigration Institute said it would give visas to the survivors.

The Mexican government said it would work to identify the dead and cover their burial costs or the cost of sending their bodies home.

Mexican president Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador called the crash very painful on Twitter.

Im Dan Friedell.

Dan Friedell adapted this story for Learning English based on reporting by Reuters and the Associated Press. Susan Shand was the editor.

What do you think of the accident in Mexico? Tell us in the Comments Section and visit our Facebook page.

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Words in This Story

curve  n. a smooth, rounded line, shape, path, etc.

cargo  n. something that is carried from one place to another by boat, airplane, etc.

trailer  n. long platform or box with wheels that is pulled behind a truck or car and used to transport things

smuggle  v. to move (someone or something) from one country into another illegally and secretly
TED Talk videos are popular in the United States and other countries. These videos explore issues in science, technology, education and other subjects. They can also be a useful tool for learning English.

Today on Everyday Grammar, we will tell how TED Talks can teach you about some common phrasal verbs, including three with the word hang. They are hang up, hang on and hang out.

We will also explain how you can predict the general meaning of a phrasal verb, even if you do not know its exact definition.

But first, let's look a little more closely at phrasal verbs and how they are used.

What are phrasal verbs?

Phrasal verbs are groups of words that have a verb and one or more short words. When combined, the words have an idiomatic meaning. In other words, phrasal verbs have a meaning that is different from what you might expect.

Consider the phrasal verb take out. It has the verb take and the word out. Together, they mean to remove someone or something from something else. For example, you can take out some money from your pocket.

A phrasal verb can have several meanings. For example, take out can also mean that you get financial help, as in the statement I want to start a business, but I dont have enough money. So, Im taking out a loan.

There are thousands of phrasal verbs. The good news is that you do not need to learn all of them.

Your time is better spent learning the most common phrasal verbs.

Melodie Garnier and Norbert Schmitt are language experts. They made a list of the most common phrasal verbs and their most common meanings.

Of the 150 most common phrasal verbs, three involve the verb hang. Hang means to connect or place something so that it is held up without support from below. But as you know now, phrasal verbs have different meanings than what the verb by itself suggests.

The three most common phrasal verbs with hang are hang up, hang on and hang out.

Even if you do not know what each of these phrasal verbs means, you will learn how to predict what they could mean.

Let us explore each phrasal verb by listening to TED Talks. You will hear part of a TED Talk and have time to think about what the phrasal verb means. Then you will hear the answer.

#1 Hang up

In our first example, futurist and businessman Juan Enriquez talks about gene editing tools such as CRISPR. While talking about the past, when a long-distance telephone call cost a lot of money, Enriquez uses our first phrasal verb: hang up.

Because, of course, you used to get interrupted by operators whod tell you, Long distance calling. Do you want to hang up? And now we think nothing of calling all over the world.

Can you tell what Enriquez meant when he said hang up?

Enriquez gives you an example of the most common meaning of hang up: to end or finish a phone call. You can tell that long distance calls must have cost a lot years ago because he said, And now we think nothing of calling all over the world.

#2 Hang on

In our second TED Talk, researcher Max Tegmark talks about the threats and opportunities of artificial intelligence, or AI. Listen to how he uses our second phrasal verb, hang on.

We could end up in a fantastic future where everybodys better off: the poor are richer, the rich are richer, everybody is healthy and free to live out their dreams. Now, hang on. Do you folks want the future thats politically right or left?

Could you tell what Tegmark meant when he used the phrasal verb hang on?

In this case, hang on means wait for a short time. Tegmark is asking the crowd to think about what he just said. He makes several statements, then says hang on, then asks a question. You can tell from the sound of his voice that he wants everyone to wait and think.

#3 Hang out

In our third and final TED Talk, we hear from Luis H. Zayas, head of the Steve Hicks School of Social Work at the University of Texas at Austin. Here he explores how difficult experiences can affect a childs brain. Listen to how he uses hang out.

Afterwards, after school, they [children] go home and they ride bikes, hang out with friends, do homework and explore the world  all the essentials for child development.

Can you tell what Zayas meant when he said hang out?

In this case, hang out means having fun. Terms like ride bikes and with friends and explore the world suggest that hanging out means having fun.

Closing thoughts

The point of this report was to teach you two things. We talked about the meaning of three common phrasal verbs. But we also talked about how to start thinking about new phrasal verbs.

You can use these ideas when you listen to radio broadcasts, watch films or talk to English speakers. Although phrasal verbs can be difficult, the learning process will be much easier if you spend your time wisely.

I'm John Russell.

And I'm Ashley Thompson.

John Russell wrote this story for VOA Learning English. George Grow was the editor.

_____________________________________________________________

Words in This Story

pocket  n. an area in clothing used for carrying small objects

interrupt  v. to ask questions or say things while another person is speaking; to do or say something that causes someone to stop speaking

opportunity  n. a chance to do something

artificial intelligence  n. a computer systems able to perform work that normally requires human intelligence

fantastic  adj. extremely good

bike  n. short for bicycle a vehicle powered by two wheels

essential  n. something that is important or necessary




The Albany Regional Museum is going high tech to highlight pioneering women who helped shape the future of Albany and Oregon.

The Albany Explorer app was created by the Albany Visitors Association and Hospitality Vision. It has self-guided tours of Albanys historic districts and Linn Countys covered bridges as well as shopping, dining and other details. The Holiday Lights Tour is currently featured as well. Its free and available for Android and Apple phones.

A tour to be unveiled at the end of January will highlight diversity and achievement, featuring six women and their important, unique accomplishments. The Pioneering Women History Stop will be an interactive tour featuring signs with QR codes at various locations, the first of its kind showcasing Albany-area women in history.

Our town loves history, and we wanted to be able to highlight pioneering women and pioneering in the sense of women whove done impressive or interesting things for the city of Albany, Keith Lohse, executive director of the Albany Regional Museum, said. Its a story thats not told nearly often enough.

Scanning a QR code on the signs through the app will prompt video and audio with biographical facts and contributions of the featured pioneering woman. Additionally, the link will include an interactive map and a downloadable, printable piece on the subject. Lohse said more historical stops will be added in the future.

Theres already some tours that will tell you the history of the individual houses, he said. Were excited to expand that and offer more for people.

The museum received an Oregon Cultural Trust grant for $8,562 to develop a new tour in partnership with the Albany Visitors Association.

The app, which launched in 2018, has been popular particularly with the use of the Google map tours, according to Rebecca Bond, Albany Visitors Association executive director. She said the idea for adding the tours emerged from the collaborative process of developing the app, which is regularly updated with new features.

Quality journalism doesn't happen without your help Support local news coverage and the people who report it by subscribing to the Albany Democrat-Herald.

The whole thing is available on our website, but also now on the app, so people can get all this information with them wherever they go, Bond said. She noted that an audio component added this past year starring the voice of Albany City Councilor Matilda Novak allows users to hear the history of locations in the Hackleman and Monteith historic districts.

Bond said its important to tell the full story of the local history, which includes significant contributions from women. From the visitor industry perspective, she sees the tours as a draw for history buffs, who she says are already fond of the city because of its historic aspects.

It just adds to the experience, she said. The app is paid for through sponsorships, according to Bond, who said it typically has more than 1,000 users at any given time, and sees much more activity around the holidays.

For more information contact Keith Lohse at the Albany Regional Museum at 541-967-7122, or Rebecca Bond at the Albany Visitors Association at 541-928-0911.

Cody Mann covers the cities of Albany and Lebanon. He can be contacted at 541-812-6113 or Cody.Mann@lee.net.

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There was one Linn County death included in Thursdays COVID-19 report from the Oregon Health Authority, bringing that countys COVID-19-related death total up to 188.

There were 69 new confirmed and presumptive cases of the virus in Linn County, raising the case total to 15,113.

In addition, information about Wednesdays three Linn County deaths were released on Thursday. An 81-year-old man died on Oct. 10 at his residence, a 90-year-old man who died Oct. 11 at his residence and a 66-year-old man who died Nov. 29 at Samaritan Albany General Hospital.

Benton County had 16 new cases on Thursday, raising that countys case total to 6,283. No new deaths were reported in the county.

OHA reported 901 new confirmed and presumptive COVID-19 cases on Thursday, raising the states case total to 399,361. There were 38 new deaths, bringing Oregons death total to 5,356.

OHA also released the coronavirus vaccine breakthrough report on Thursday, showing that 69.4% of all cases between Nov. 28 and Dec. 4 occurred in unvaccinated individuals. Of the 6,496 cases reported, only 30.6% occurred in vaccinated individuals.

Vaccines remain the most effective tool to reduce the spread of the virus, according to OHA.

Hospitalizations: There are currently 404 Oregonians hospitalized with COVID-19, 94 of who are in intensive care unit beds.

There are 56 available adult ICU beds out of 682, a 8% availability. There are 247 available adult non-ICU beds out of 4,171, a 6% availability.

Quality journalism doesn't happen without your help Support local news coverage and the people who report it by subscribing to the Albany Democrat-Herald.

In the mid-Willamette Valley, adult ICU beds have 8% availability, and adult non-ICU beds have only 3% availability.

Vaccinations: OHA reported that 32,291 new doses of coronavirus vaccinations were added to the state immunization registry on Wednesday, Dec. 8. As of Thursday, nearly 3 million Oregonians have had at least one dose of the vaccine, and 2.7 million have completed a vaccine series.

Nationally: The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported 125,960 new confirmed and presumptive cases of the virus on Thursday, raising the U.S. case total to nearly 49.5 million. There were 1,335 new deaths reported Thursday, bringing the nationwide death total to 790,766.

Joanna Mann covers education for Mid-Valley Media. She can be contacted at 541-812-6076 or Joanna.Mann@lee.net. Follow her on Twitter via @joanna_mann_.

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The re-interment ceremony will return a casket containing bones too small for identification to an empty grave at the National Cemetery of the Pacific in Honolulu, also known as the Punchbowl.

The Oklahoma Project, led by anthropologists at the agencys Offutt Air Force Base laboratory and aided by DNA analysts in Dover, Delaware, resulted in the identification of 361 crew men.

The lab identified all but four of the 23 missing USS Oklahoma sailors from Nebraska and western Iowa.

Three other caskets containing larger bones were buried last week. The Navy has separated them in the hope that they could be linked in the future to some of the 33 Oklahoma sailors who remain unidentified  perhaps through future advances in DNA technology, or if new DNA samples are obtained from families of USS Oklahoma casualties, according to the Omaha World-Herald.

A date and location of Penticos burial havent been set by the Navy yet.

Pentico was born on March 31, 1924 to parents Sherman and Ethel Pentico in Overton. He had two older brothers, George, born in 1907, and Charles, born 1922. Walter moved with his family to Lexington when he was just two years old.

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As part of the investigation, authorities obtained subpoenas for the bank accounts of Kuldip and Carol Sing, as well as accounts under the business names at area banks. Fords focus was on Singhs retail liquor stores and bars for all purchases and sales of liquor, beer and cigarettes, all items subject to sales tax in Nebraska. Ford requested documents from Jacksons investigation regarding purchases of liquor, beer and wine for all stores and bars owned by Singh during the period of January 2017 to December 2020.

A sales and income analysis of accounts and records from the Nebraska State Patrol, Wyoming Liquor distributor and Wyoming Department of Revenue, were conclusive that purchases were being continually made for all of Singhs liquor stores and bars, the affidavit states. That monthly inventory was being sold and reordered.

Authorities allege that transfers from the Cheema Investments LLC account were being made to bank accounts for each retail liquor store and bars and purchases for many of his retail locations were greater than the sales he reported to the state over a period of three to four years.
Introduction to quaternions and rotations in 3D.

Upadate 11 December 2021: This post was featured on HackerNews and briefly hold the top spot. Please see this link for the full discussion. Minor modifications have been done based on the comments.

This is part of a series. The other articles are:

This is a mathematical series and the following prerequisites are recommended: trigonometry, algebra, complex numbers, Euclidean geometry and linear algebra (matrices).

Table of Contents

Quaternions

Animating in 3D

A common problem in computer animations is rotating an object in fully 3D space. Think objects, spaceships and heroes tumbling and turning in complex sequences. This is usually accomplished with an arcane mathematical object called a quaternion. For example, here is a spaceship rotating in Unity, a popular game engine that is often used to make mobile games:

Space Cruiser 1 by Gamer Squid

The code to implement this uses Unitys inbuilt Quaternion , making it very succinct:

var t = Time . time * speed ; transform . rotation = Quaternion . Slerp ( init . rotation , final . rotation , t );

In Unitys UI the init and final rotations are specified by three angles, which are then transformed into quaternions in the backend. This means that printing a rotation will result in four numbers, not three.

What are these four numbers? Unitys own documentation is very elusive on what quaternions are. It is worth quoting it:

Quaternions are used to represent rotations. They are compact, don't suffer from gimbal lock and can easily be interpolated. Unity internally uses Quaternions to represent all rotations. They are based on complex numbers and are not easy to understand intuitively. You almost never access or modify individual Quaternion components ...

This is a common caveat next to the descriptions of properties:

Don't modify this directly unless you know quaternions inside out.

I did not encounter quaternions in all my years of engineering, although a lecturer once alluded to them during a class in my masters. They are frowned upon in favour of more intuitive and versatile vectors and matrices. Those can also be used to calculate 3D rotations and that is an approach that I did use in engineering, especially in my masters.

So why then are computer game developers and animators left to battle with this obscure mathematics that engineers wont touch? Unity gives good reasons: compactness (4 numbers), numerical stability (dont suffer from Gimbal lock) and interpolation (easy to find rotations between other rotations). These are significant differentiating factors in computer games and animations, which may need to compute many thousands of rotations every frame.

This series of posts seeks to illuminate quaternions so that you are one of those people who knows them inside out. Later posts will build the logical foundations for quaternions and describe the mathematics in detail. For the meantime, the rest of this post will be an interactive review of rotation methods in 3D.

Mathematical representations of rotations in 3D

There are two main methods to describe 3D rotations:

Three angles and an order. An axis with three co-ordinates and an angle.

In both cases four quantities are used to describe the rotation, but usually one degree of freedom is fixed. For three angles, the order is fixed. For the axis-angle representation, the axis is set to have a unit length, so it can only exist on the unit sphere and hence two numbers are sufficient to describe it (latitude and longitude). In either case, there are three remaining degrees of freedom.

1. Three angles and an order

 0.00  0.00  0.00 reset hide gimbal For the best user experience, use a large monitor. Instructions: slide each angle in the following order: , , .

An intuitive way to describe a rotation is with three separate angles. These are known as the Euler angles after the great mathematician Leonhard Euler. There are many different conventions for Euler angles depending on the axes and orders chosen. For the interactive graph I have used the Tait-Bryan angle representation, which is often used in engineering. Here is an illustration:

Modified from Wikipedia

The three angles are:

$\psi$: yaw, about the $z$ axis.

$\theta$: pitch, about the $y$ axis

$\phi$: roll, about the $x$ axis.

The order used is yaw-pitch-roll, also called $\psi$-$\theta$-$\phi$ or $z$-$y$-$x$ or ZYX. As an example of how the order affects the final rotation, here are two rotations done with a yaw of 30 and a roll of 90. The left uses the yaw-roll order and the right a roll-yaw order.

Yaw-roll (left) and roll-yaw (right).

On the left, the cruiser first rotates 30 to the left and then rolls on its side. On the right, the cruiser rolls on it side first, so that a pilot sitting inside would perceive his left as up, and hence the yaw rotation results in a 30 movement upwards. This is why the order needs to be specified.

Given the order, each angle can be used to construct a 33 rotation matrix $R_{\alpha}$ which represents a 2D rotation about an axis. See part 2 for more detail. Then the rotated vector $v_r$ is obtained from $v$ by multiplying each matrix in order:

Matrix defintions \[ R_{\psi} = \begin{bmatrix} \cos(\psi) & -\sin(\psi) & 0 \\ \sin(\psi) & \phantom{+}\cos(\psi) & 0 \\ 0 & 0 & 1 \end{bmatrix} \] \[ R_{\theta} = \begin{bmatrix} \phantom{+}\cos(\theta) & 0 & \sin(\theta) \\ 0 & 1 & 0 \\ -\sin(\theta) & 0 & \cos(\theta) \end{bmatrix} \] \[ R_{\phi} = \begin{bmatrix} 1 & 0 & 0 \\ 0 & \cos(\phi) & -\sin(\phi) \\ 0 & \sin(\phi) & \phantom{+}\cos(\phi) \end{bmatrix} \]

\[v_r = R_{\phi}R_{\theta}R_{\psi}v\]

I would like to emphasise that the above graph is dynamically generated by using this equation to update the 3D co-ordinates for the Plotly charting library. The result is a natural looking rotation. The JavaScript code can be found here or with your browsers inspection tools.

If you do follow the order, the base will rotate about one circle of the gimbal at the time. But what if you dont follow it? For example, you move $\theta$ and $\phi$ before $\psi$? Go back and try this if you havent already. The answer is, the whole gimbal rotates to the orientation where it would have been if the rotation order of $z$-$y$-$x$ was respected. This path cannot be represented with the angles $\psi$, $\theta$ or $\phi$. (It can be with other Euler angles but that only shifts the problem.) This already illustrates one of the biggest problems with Euler angles: it enforces unnatural constraints.

To see how this can create complexity, consider the interpolation problem in the initial GIF of this post. Given the angles for the first and final rotation, how would you find the rotation at the middle point?

First make a circle that connects the nose of the cruiser from its starting position to its final position. Then for each point on the arc of the circle, find some $\psi$, $\theta$ and $\phi$ applied in that order that will result in a rotation to that point. This requires adjusting three angles simultaneously. One can imagine an algorithm where you adjust $\psi$, then $\theta$ then $\phi$ and if the point doesnt fall on the circle where it is supposed to go, start from the beginning at $\psi$ again. A better algorithm is provided below, but it is still constrained by the same underlying process. Well see shortly that the quaternion algorithm is much, much simpler.

More detail: interpolation with Euler angles 

Using the inner product: $\cos(\alpha) = \vec{p}_0 \cdot \vec{p}_1 = x_1 x_2 + y_1 y_2 + z_1 z_2 $ The equation of the circle is $\vec{p}_t = r\cos(\alpha t)\hat{x} + r\sin(\alpha t)\hat{y}$ Define $r = \lvert \vec{p}_0 \rvert = \lvert \vec{p}_1 \rvert $

Define $\hat{x} = \frac{1}{r}\vec{p}_0 $

Calculate $\hat{y}$ from $\vec{p}_1 = r\cos(\alpha)\hat{x} + r\sin(\alpha)\hat{y}$ We can use $t=0.5$ to find the middle vector. With (2) there is enough information to create the animation, but what if we want the angles? This requires solving 3 highly non-linear trigonometric equations from $p_t=R_{\phi}R_{\theta}R_{\psi}p_0$. An alternative is to calculate an axis-angle rotation matrix with $\hat{n} = \hat{x} \times \hat{y}$ and $\theta = \alpha t$. Then compare terms with the Euler rotation matrix.

Another problem comes from gimbal lock. This is not an issue when the rotations are enforced, which is the situation in animations. But going the other way, where rotations need to be calculated from accelerations and velocities - as is often the case in physics problems - this is a major problem. In particular, when the pitch is 90, yaw and roll switch, and this provides enough ambiguity in the equations to inject significant numeric instability. (The same happens at a 90 angle for yaw and roll but only the middle angle causes a problem.) For this reason, Euler angles should never be used in physics simulations - I speak from experience.

More detail: proving gimbal lock 

The symbol $\omega$ is used to denote an angular velocity e.g. $\omega_\alpha = \frac{d\alpha}{dt}$, measured in radians/second. In physics problems we often have the angular velocity in the world frame, $\omega^0$ but we need the angular velocities of the Euler angles to integrate to get the Euler angles. These angular velocities are related as follows: \[ \begin{align} \vec{\omega}^0 &= \omega_{\psi}\hat{z} + \omega_{\theta}\hat{y}' + \omega_{\phi}\hat{x}'' \\ \begin{bmatrix} \omega_{x}^0 \\ \omega_{y}^0 \\ \omega_{z}^0 \end{bmatrix} &= \omega_{\psi} \begin{bmatrix} 0 \\ 0 \\ 1 \end{bmatrix} + \omega_{\theta} R_{\psi} \begin{bmatrix} 0 \\ 1 \\ 0 \end{bmatrix} + \omega_{\phi} R_{\psi}R_{\theta} \begin{bmatrix} 1 \\ 0 \\ 0 \end{bmatrix} \\ &= \omega_{\psi} \begin{bmatrix} 0 \\ 0 \\ 1 \end{bmatrix} + \omega_{\theta} \begin{bmatrix} -\sin(\phi) \\ \phantom{+}\cos(\phi) \\ 0 \end{bmatrix} + \omega_{\phi} \begin{bmatrix} \cos(\phi)\cos(\theta) \\ \sin(\phi)\cos(\theta) \\ -\sin(\theta) \end{bmatrix} \\ &= \begin{bmatrix} \cos(\phi)\cos(\theta) & -\sin(\phi) & 0 \\ \sin(\phi)\cos(\theta) & \phantom{+}\cos(\phi) & 0\\ -\sin(\theta) & 0 & 1 \end{bmatrix} \begin{bmatrix} \omega_{\phi} \\ \omega_{\theta} \\ \omega_{\psi} \end{bmatrix} \end{align} \] Invert the matrix to get the unknown Euler velocities in terms of the known world velocities: \[ \begin{align} \Rightarrow \begin{bmatrix} \omega_{\phi} \\ \omega_{\theta} \\ \omega_{\psi} \end{bmatrix} &= \frac{1}{\cos(\theta)} \begin{bmatrix} \cos(\psi) & \sin(\psi) & 0 \\ -\sin(\psi)\cos(\theta) & \cos(\psi)\cos(\theta) & 0\\ \phantom{+}\cos(\psi)\sin(\theta) & \sin(\psi)\sin(\theta) & 1 \end{bmatrix} \begin{bmatrix} \omega_{x}^0 \\ \omega_{y}^0 \\ \omega_{z}^0 \end{bmatrix} \end{align} \] This expression is undefined for $\cos\theta = 0$, which happens at $\theta = n\frac{\pi}{2} \;, n \in \mathbb{Z}$. This is where gimbal lock happens.

Concluding this section, we have discovered that Euler angles are intuitive and work well for static systems. However they are not suited for dynamic systems, whether that be through interpolation or numerical integration. Thankfully the next method does work well in the latter case.

2. An axis and an angle

 0.00  0.00  0.00 reset hide guides Instructions: slide the  and  sliders to change the normal vector. Slide  to rotate in a circle around the normal vector. q = +1.000 + 0.000i + 0.000j + 0.000k For the best user experience, use a large monitor.

Note that every point on the circle can be reached twice: through the clockwise rotation or through the anti-clockwise rotation. This is known as the double cover property.

There are multiple ways to calculate the axis-angle representation. This graph uses a quaternion. See the source code here or with your browsers inspection tools.

What is a quaternion? Here is a mathematical definition:

Definition: Quaternion /kwtnn/ A quaternion is a number of the form $$s + xi+yj + zk \; ; \; s, x, y, z \in \mathbb{R}$$ where the basis elements $i$, $j$ and $k$ obey the following rules of multiplication: $$i^2 = j^2 = k^2 = ijk = -1 \;,\; ij=k \;,\; ji=-k$$

It may be unusual that $ij=k$ but $ji=-k$, but this should not be surprising after the Euler angles section. 3D rotations depend on order and hence any mathematics that represents them must depend on order. Part 3 will provide further physical justifications for this abstract definition.

The quaternion is calculated from the normal vector and $\theta$ as follows:

\[\begin{aligned} \hat{n} &= \cos(\beta)\cos(\alpha)i + \cos(\beta)\sin(\alpha)j + \sin(\beta)k \\ q &= \cos(\tfrac{\theta}{2}) + \sin(\tfrac{\theta}{2})\hat{n} \end{aligned}\]

The rotation is then done with this formula (proved in part 3):

\[\begin{aligned} v_r &= qvq^{*}\\ &= (\cos (\tfrac{\theta}{2}) + \sin (\tfrac{\theta}{2})\hat{n})v(\cos (\tfrac{\theta}{2})- \sin (\tfrac{\theta}{2}) \hat{n}) \end{aligned}\]

Euler angles are 3D which we can visualise, while quaternions are 4D which means we cannot. Why then should we prefer quaternions? Their main advantage comes with interpolations. Here again is the problem of finding the middle rotation between the starting and final rotations in the GIF:

Again we draw the arc of a circle which the nose of the cruiser will travel along. The axis-angle representation is a natural fit to this problem, because this arc can itself be represented with a normal vector and an angle. Even so, the quaternion solution to the problem is unexpectedly simple. For this special case of $t=0.5$, calculate the quaternion:

\[q_{0.5} = \frac{q_{0.0} + q_{1.0}}{2}\]

and apply the rotation formula. Done.

In general the expression for $q_t$ is more complex. But I hope this example gives a sense of the power of quaternions.

Outline

Using quaternions for 3D rotations is a very sensible choice for animation software. They are essentially an array of four numbers with the normal rules for addition and subtraction and some special rules for multiplication. Encode that, and you get rotation functions and stateless, fast, interpolations almost for free.

I hope this post has illuminated some of their properties and advantages. If you wish to learn more, the rest of the series will expand more on the mathematics of quaternions.

Part 2 describes rotations in 2D. It describes complex numbers, which can be thought of as a simpler type of quaternion.

Part 3 describes the fundamentals of quaternions and their mathematics. A few proofs of their properties are given.

Part 4 focuses on interpolation. An interactive graph with a stick aeroplane in place of the Unity space cruiser is presented.

To get the most out of this series, you should be comfortable with trigonometry, algebra, complex numbers, Euclidean geometry and linear algebra (matrices). This maths was covered in my first year of engineering.

This series is the kind I would have liked to see. When I first learnt about quaternions I found that I had to consult many sources to understand them properly. Nearly every source began with a story of an Irish mathematician, a bridge, and an epiphany that caused him to carve the fundamental formula of quaternions into the stone. Its a nice story but it is a confusing one to begin with. Why did he have this epiphany? What magic did he grasp that day and can we also? In part 3 I do tell this story, but at a point where sufficient mathematics has been discussed so we can somewhat approximate the mathematicians thoughts that day. Instead I chose to lead with a different story; one about why quaternions are still relevant 178 years later. I hope this was appreciated.

This series is written from the perspective of an engineer. I try to introduce ideas and justify them in as intuitive a way as possible. Mathematical proofs are only done for identities where that is difficult. I also do not explore how quaternions fit into the general context of mathematical fields and algebras, or more general versions of quaternion algebra.

Extra: Other forms of axis-angle rotations

Identical rotations could also be accomplished with other formulas, namely the Rodrigues formulas and with Pauli matrices. I will give the formulas without going into detail; this is only to compare forms.

The Rodrigues formulas are as follows:

\[\begin{aligned} \vec{v}_r &= \cos \theta \vec{v}+ \sin \theta (\hat{n} \times \vec{v}) + (1-\cos \theta)(\vec{v} \cdot \hat{n}) \hat{n} \\ \vec{v}_r &= [I_3 + \sin\theta N + (1-\cos \theta) N^2]\vec{v} \;, \; N\vec{v} = \hat{n} \times \vec{v} \end{aligned}\]

Note that $\vec{v} = (x, y, z)^T \equiv 0 + xi + yj + zk = v$.

The Pauli matrices formula is a sort of intermediate form between quaternions and the Rodrigues formulas. It uses 22 matrices and complex numbers:

\[\begin{aligned} \vec{v} \cdot \vec{\sigma} &= \begin{bmatrix} z & x + iy \\ x - iy & -z \end{bmatrix} \\ U &= \cos (\tfrac{\theta}{2}) I_2 - \sin (\tfrac{\theta}{2})(i\hat{n} \cdot \vec{\sigma}) \\ \vec{v}_r \cdot \vec{\sigma} &= U(\vec{v} \cdot \vec{\sigma} ) U^\dagger \end{aligned}\]

Here again is the quaternion formula:

\[\begin{aligned} v_r &= qvq^{*}\\ &= (\cos (\tfrac{\theta}{2}) + \sin (\tfrac{\theta}{2})\hat{n})v(\cos (\tfrac{\theta}{2})- \sin (\tfrac{\theta}{2}) \hat{n}) \end{aligned}\]

These are four different formulas which are based on four different branches of mathematics (Euclidean geometry, linear algebra and complex numbers, quaternions) with multiple different types of multiplications (scalar multiplication, quaternion multiplication, dot products, vector cross products and matrix multiplication), yet these formulas all represent the same physical rotation and will result in identical vectors $\vec{v}_r$.

For a comparison of all formulas in Julia, please see this repository: Rotations.jl.

Quaternions are best for interpolations and hence animations. But any of these methods will work for physics simulations. Personally, I have successfully used the Rodrigues matrix formula on simulations of complex 3D robots.

More detail: axis-angle formulas from angular velocities 

It is straightforward to calculate the normal vector and angle from angular velocities. An object with an angular velocity $\vec{\omega}$ rotates about an axis parallel to $\vec{\omega}$. So the normal vector is $\hat{n} = \frac{\vec{\omega}}{\lvert \vec{\omega} \rvert}$. $\theta$ is a measure of the magnitude of this rotation: $ \theta = \lvert \vec{\omega} \rvert \Delta t = \sqrt{ \omega_x^2 + \omega_y^2 + \omega_z^2 }\Delta t $. Then apply any of the axis-angle formulas.

References

There are many sources I used to learn about quaternions. Each provides more detail in some area, whether it be animations, mathematical formulas, or visualisations.
ERs Alex Kingston returns as Sloane Thompson, former Commander of the City of London Police, enlisted by her good friend Frank (Tom Selleck)who she once invited to her hotel room for a nightcap (!)to get to the bottom of a cyberattack hacking the NYPD that forced Danny (Donnie Wahlberg) to release a suspect. An hour earlier on Magnum P.I. (9/8c), theres another cyberattack, this time a ransomware scheme targeting the Honolulu P.D. on Christmas Eve, leading to Det. Lia Kaleo (Chantal Thuy) revealing a secret to Magnum (Jay Hernandez) and fellow detective Katsumoto (Tim Kang). Both series return in early January, while S.W.A.T. (8/7c) prepares for a move to Sundays in the new year.
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Astin, for example, decided to move forward with her store in mid-2020 as COVID-19 raged and began looking for space in early 2021 before opening in late September.

The biggest lessons that came to me is that if you want to do something and you can, dont put it off because you just dont know whats going to happen, said Astin, who looked at other spaces in the city before signing a lease on a 750-square-foot space just a few blocks from her home. I really wanted to be on Monroe Street. Theres a lot of great other businesses that really fit with me. And to be perfectly blunt, Im tired of online shopping. I dont like the experience of it and I think a lot of people are.

Astin, 45, grew up in Evansville and graduated from Hamline University in St. Paul, Minnesota. She worked for a public relations firm that specialized in news copy but moved to Los Angeles for 11 years where she worked behind the scenes in television and appeared in commercials. She moved back to Wisconsin in 2012 with her husband and her then-3-year-old twins and worked as a stay-at-home mother but also did work in the photo studios at ShopBob on East Washington Avenue.
Wilke was initially jailed Monday on $10,000 bail, but that was reduced Wednesday to $2,500 bail. Wilke remained in the Dane County Jail late Thursday.

According to a criminal complaint filed Wednesday:

Wilke said what happened to his grandmother was an accident. He said his car door was open and she was standing outside his car, and at one point also told police his grandmother had opened his car door.

Wilke said he tried to put his car into drive to move it forward, but instead accidentally put it into reverse. The door struck Susan Wilke, pushing her over and causing her to strike her head. Wilke told police she had weak ankles and knees and poor balance.

He said he had come to speak with her about setting up appointments for him. He had been staying with her for the previous few days. He was about to leave in his car when she came out of the building with the time and date for a doctors appointment. Later, he told police he had gotten into an argument with her because he had made suicidal statements to her.
Markofskis attorney, Jonas Bednarek, said Markofski has already suffered secondary harm as a result of his arrest. Markofski lost his job with Kwik Trip in La Crosse, Bednarek said, and the Army National Guard has begun proceedings to strip his security clearances. He was also placed on probation at Viterbo University for two years for non-academic misconduct.

Nelson, a psychiatric technician at Mendota Mental Health Institute, served in the Air National Guard for six years. Since his arrest, said his attorney, federal defender Jessica Ettinger, he has been shaken and embarrassed by the attention he has received and has cut out any inkling of toxic politics from his life to focus on his future.

In addition to probation, each was ordered to pay $500 restitution to help pay for the estimated $1.5 million damage done to the Capitol during the riot. Nelson was fined $2,500, while Markofski was ordered to pay a $1,000 fine. Each was also ordered to perform 50 hours of community service within a year.

Closing the 90-minute hearing, Bates told both men that it was their acceptance of responsibility, cooperation with investigators and contrition that kept them from receiving a harsher sentence.
JEROME  The Idaho Department of Transportation presented final plans Thursday for the Interstate 84 South Jerome Interchange at an open house.

Members of the public gathered at Jerome Council Chambers to learn about the project and ask questions of project staff about the modified divided diamond-style interchange, which bears a resemblance to a roundabout.

Plans for the interchange were initially presented in 2018, but Federal Highway Administration requests for additional reviews and analysis delayed the project by several years.

The planned designs for the Exit 168 interchange can be viewed at an Idaho Department of Transportation Virtual Open House through Dec 30.

According to project manager Nathan Jerke of the Idaho Transportation Department, the circular shape of the design was inspired by state standards that have changed since the original bridge was built in 1966.

Really, the crux of the issue is the angle that the interstate crosses under Lincoln Avenue, Jerke said.

The interstate passes under Lincoln Avenue at a 63-degree angle. Current ITD standards only allow for up to a 45-degree angle at such bridge crossings, which allows for more robust reinforcement of bridge joints. In the case of Lincoln Avenue, 50 years of traffic rumbling over the sharp angle on the bridge joints has led to recurrent maintenance issues for the last decade.

In addition to residential and community transit, the South Jerome Interchange is a primary interchange for a lot of truck traffic, including farm-to-market traffic, dairy tanker trucks going to the two cheese plants, hay haulers, and manufacturing and distribution traffic for numerous other businesses. Growth in Jerome, as in much of the Magic Valley, has drawn more commercial use of nearby areas, much of which is impacted by the interchange.

We are seeing a lot more traffic through this interchange and this is a 50-year design, Jerke said. We do believe this will work for the community of Jerome for a long, long time.

The design for the bridge replacement was guided by an analysis of the increase in traffic and anticipation of continued growth in the area. The design will allow for the addition of a third lane in each direction of I-84. It also minimizes the amount of new property to be acquired for the right of way.

Thursday nights open house was the sixth open house held for this project since the initial needs assessment open house in 2017, and the transportation department has been working on the design for this interchange since 2016. Taking feedback from open houses and comments from the public, the circular design had the most favorable response from the public.

While people have always said it looks just like a big roundabout, its not going to function like a big roundabout, Jerke said. Its not going to be free-flowing circular. It will be free-flowing north and south.

Lincoln Avenue is the priority movement through the interchange, as people go north and south there.

That design was brought to public again in 2018 with more analysis, and, according to Jerke, at that meeting, the public was in support of it.

Construction had been scheduled for early 2021, but before the project could advance, the Federal Highway Administration stepped in with some concerns and requested additional reviews.

The project itself got delayed a couple years because of the slow minutiae of trying to refine it and get it as close to just right as we possibly can, Jerke said.

In the end, the federal reviews did not result in a whole lot of big changes, Jerke said. The major result was the addition of signals at the end of the off-ramps coming from I-84 to help coordinate traffic flow with north- and south-bound Lincoln avenue.

Right-of-way negotiations and relocation of utilities for the project are expected to take most of 2022. Construction on the interchange is scheduled to begin in late 2023, with a projected budget of around $30 million.

Costa Paulos was at the meeting on Thursday night. Paulos said he uses the I-84 South Jerome Interchange daily while working at his family-owned car dealership, Con Paulos Chevrolet. He said hed attended previous open house in 2018 and had followed the project design throughout the process.

I think in the long term itll be good, Paulos said. A lot of stuff gets backed up coming from the Boise area, and trying to get trucks to come in and out of the milk plants.

Paulos spoke with project staff about how the new design and the lengthy construction process would impact his business flow-wise, for our customers being able to access us.

Some people didnt want it to happen, but its OK. I think itll be good. Long term, for us to grow, we have to have some things done. The infrastructure of our state is not going to be able to hold what we have coming to the state.

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HELSINKI (AP)  Finland has agreed to buy 64 Lockheed Martin fighter jets to replace its aging fleet of combat planes in a 10 billion-euro ($11.3 billion) deal that represents the Finnish military's largest ever purchase, the government said Friday.

The Nordic country picked the U.S. company's F-35A fighters from among five contenders, which also included the Boeing F-18 Super Hornet, France's Dassault Rafale, Britain's Eurofighter Typhoon and Sweden's Saab Gripen.

The Finnish air force has a fleet of more than 60 F-18 Hornets, acquired in the early 1990s. It started looking for a successor aircraft in 2014.

Finnish Prime Minister Sanna Marin said her governments decision, based on a recommendation by the Finnish Defense Forces, to purchase F-35A was unanimous.

New fighters are a key part of Finlands defense, Marin told a press conference. Fighters protect the integrity of Finnish airspace, protect society from airstrikes and support (Finnish) army and navy operations.

The Defense Ministry said Friday that the price tag for the deal with Lockheed Martin includes training and other equipment.

The U.S. aerospace, arms and defense company said in a statement it was honored" the Finnish government picked the F-35 through its thorough, open competition.

Lockheed Martin said the deal would include a robust weapons package, a sustainment solution tailored to Finlands unique security of supply requirements, as well as a comprehensive training program.

Direct procurement from Lockheed, including weapons, is worth about 8.4 billion euros with the additional 1.6 billion earmarked for the weapons package optimization, equipment, construction of hangars and future amendments, the Finnish government said.

Maj. Gen. Pasi Jokinen, commander of the Finnish air force, said the F-35 was chosen for its performance in combat, reconnaissance and survival capability.

European Union member Finland is a militarily non-aligned nation but closely cooperates with NATO in a way similar to neighboring Sweden.

Switzerland, another militarily non-aligned European country, and NATO members Denmark and Norway previously decided to buy the F-35.

Finland, which shares a 1,340-kilometer (832-mile) border with Russia, has increased its bilateral defense and military cooperation with Sweden, Norway and the United States in the past few years.

Bethesda, Maryland-based Lockheed Martin said Friday that there are currently more than 730 F-35s in service worldwide.



Jan M. Olsen in Copenhagen, Denmark contributed to this report.

Copyright 2021 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.

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Wayne Hoffman, the chief bottle washer of the so-called Idaho Freedom Foundation, announced on December 3 that he was contemplating the horrible fate that would befall Idahos colleges and universities for an alleged failure to follow IFFs curriculum instructions. On December 7 (the Day of Infamy) last year, Hoffman decreed there would be hell to pay if the schools did not stop toying with social justice. Now he says hes trying to figure out whats worse than hell to pay because thats the punishment he wants his captive legislators to hit the schools with in the 2022 legislative session.

Some folks might think that Hoffman is a bit arrogant, full of himself, for thinking he and IFF are in control of Idahos colleges and universities. Well, IFFs many legislators jump to its every command, so even though neither Hoffman nor IFF were elected by the voters, they do control much of what happens in the Legislature. One question that does arise is why Boise State has a tenured, IFF-linked professor on its faculty who spews out misogynism, if the school is really a social justice incubator?

But, while it is doubtful that the colleges are dabbling in any untoward social justice practices, it is not clear that doing so would constitute a mortal sin. After all, most major religions are committed to the concept of social justice, probably because both the Old and New Testaments are chock full of commands to perform social justice. For example, Psalms 82:3-4 commands: Defend the poor and fatherless; Do justice to the afflicted and needy. Maybe Hoffman should be doing battle with organized religion.

Hoffman has been busy because in a speech the same day in Coeur dAlene, he suggested that the Idaho Legislature could eliminate Idahos Medicaid, food stamp and other welfare programs. He said Idahoans could cross the state line to get medical, food and other assistance in Spokane. The YouTube video showed that Hoffman and his IFF-inspired crowd greatly enjoyed his remarks. Not sure how they would comply with the written word of the Maker. Hoffmans video can be found at youtu.be/ki9omHp-dl8.

Freedom Foundation board member Doyle Beck would certainly agree with Hoffman, though. In a December 1 opinion piece, Beck proclaimed that IFF is leading the fight against social programs, presumably meaning the kinds of programs Hoffman was talking about. It should be remembered that Idaho voters supported the expansion of Medicaid by a vote of 60.6% in 2018. IFF strongly opposed Medicaid expansion and unsuccessfully sued to kill it. Hoffman was suggesting the death of the entire program.

Beck says IFF wants to do away with socialist programs. Would that include Social Security, Medicare, federal farm assistance, veterans assistance, disaster recovery, SBA programs and hundreds of other programs? Practically every person and business in America receives help of some sort from the federal government.

It is interesting that the IFF and a majority of its board members scarfed up more than $2,000,000 in Paycheck Protection Program forgivable loan funds just over a year ago. IFF got almost $130,000, while Becks companies got just over $168,000. Lawyer, Congressional candidate and medical debt collector Bryan Smith got a little over $205,000 for his law firm and debt collection business. Apparently, socialism is only when the other guy is getting government assistance.

After giving some thought to Hoffmans puzzling question about whats worse than hell to pay, the answer is clearcontinuing to be ruled by laws written by IFFs captive legislators. Its time to clean Idahos House of disruptive lawmakers who worship at the IFF altar and ignore their duty to act responsibly in the interests of their voters.

Jim Jones is a Vietnam combat veteran who served eight years as Idaho attorney general (1983-1991) and 12 years as justice of the Idaho Supreme Court (2005-2017). He is currently a regular contributor to The Hill online news. He blogs at JJCommonTater.

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A Spencer man is in jail after leading police through two states before being apprehended in Rockingham County, North Carolina.

Eric Lee Baliles, 43, was a fugitive from Patrick, Henry and Franklin counties, and police from those jurisdictions as well as the Virginia State Police and the U.S. Marshall Service had been searching for Baliles for weeks leading up to his arrest on Nov. 17, Patrick County Sheriff Dan Smith said.

Baliles was wanted from our jurisdiction for felony breaking and entering and grand larceny and for a probation violation, said Smith. He is named as the accused in felony warrants for recently breaking into a property on Virginia-North Carolina Road in the Moorefield Store area of the county.

Baliles was extradited back to Virginia and was arraigned in Patrick County General District Court on Dec. 2.

Smith said Henry County deputies began a vehicle pursuit in Henry County, and the pursuit ended in Rockingham County.

Patrick County Commonwealths Attorney Stephanie Brinegar-Vipperman told the Martinsville Bulletin that Baliles has been in and out of jail for over 20 years, mostly due to substance abuse issues and violations of addiction programs that judges had sentenced Baliles to over that same period.

In February 2020 Baliles was jailed in Henry County on 15 counts of probation violation in what had become a long criminal record.

That record started in July 1997, four days before his 19th birthday, in Patrick County. Over a five month period he was convicted of committing grand larceny 11 times, break and enter five times, tamper with or damage a vehicle three times, petit larceny three times, theft of a firearm and trespass.

Baliles either pleaded guilty or was found guilty in every instance and was sentenced to a total of 92 years in prison with all but six months suspended.

Over the 2-month period from December 1998 to January 1999, Baliles accumulated 12 break and enter charges, six grand larcenies, 2 petit larcenies, and one charge of destroying property.

As before, Baliles pleaded guilty or was found guilty of all the charges and the court added another 107 years and seven months in prison. All but 3 years and seven months of the time was suspended.

In February 1999 Baliles escaped custody, records show. After he was caught, another six months was added to his jail term.

In August 1999 Baliles had 72 years in prison reinstated on 24 counts of parole violation. Each count represented a 3-year reinstatement and all but two were made to run concurrently, effectively adding six more years of jail time.

After serving a decade in prison, Baliles was back out in 2010 and lived in the Richmond area for a while. There, he was caught for speeding, driving on a suspended license, assault and battery of a family member, unlawful entry and distributing an imitation controlled substance.

The court sentenced Baliles to five years in prison, and suspended four, so Baliles was back in jail for another year.

In 2012 Baliles spent six days in the Henry County jail after he was charged on two different occasions with speeding and driving on a suspended license.

For the next five years, Baliles name did not appear on any arrest reports, but in 2017 he was convicted of assault and spent 30 days in jail.

In April 2018, Baliles failed to appear in court and was charged with contempt. He spent four days in jail after police arrested him the following day.

Missing a court date triggered 11 violations of his probation, and this time Balliles was placed in the Community Corrections Alternative Program (CCAP).

CCAP is a sentencing option for those convicted of non-violent crimes that emphasizes re-entry and transitional services, according to the Virginia Department of Corrections website.

If accepted, participants must be on supervision for the duration of the program, and after successful completion, there is a recommended period of intensive supervision followed by at least one year of regular supervision.

One month later Baliles was charged in Franklin County for grand larceny, grand larceny auto theft, larceny of a firearm, enter a structure to commit assault and battery, and receive or buy stolen goods.

Another 21 parole violations were added to Baliles list, and each one was referred to the CCAP program.

Another 19 probation violations from Patrick County surfaced as a result of the ammunition charge.

Baliles is due in Henry County Circuit Court on Jan. 5 on multiple probation violation charges and is due back in Patrick County General District Court on Feb. 11 on charges of enter property to damage, grand larceny and elude or disregard police as well as more than 20 probation violations.

Bill Wyatt is a reporter for the Martinsville Bulletin. He can be reached at 276-638-8801, Ext. 2360. Follow him @billdwyatt.

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The McDowell County Board of Commissioners will select a chairman and vice chairman as well as hear an update about the county parks and recreation programs.

The commissioners will meet at 5 p.m. Monday at the Universal Advanced Manufacturing Center at 634 College Drive.

The first item of business will be the selection of a chairman and a vice chairman. The commissioners will also recognize county employees. Adrienne Jones with McDowell EMS will give an update about the COVID-19 situation in McDowell. Parks and Recreation Director Chad Marsh will provide a report about his department. Jason McDougald will talk about the G5 Trail Collective effort.

Under old business, the commissioners will talk about the American Rescue Plan funding and hear updates about county building projects. They will get new information about the Stacy Hill Road water project and the Fonta Flora State Trail.

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Under new business, the commissioners will consider administrative items, tax matters and the 2022 meeting schedule. They will make appointments to board and committees and consider a grant for the Marion Fire Department.
Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed announced that he had left the frontline and returned to Addis Ababa, after government forces claimed to have retaken several strategic towns from Tigrayan rebels over the past fortnight.

Gone are the images of Abiy Ahmed in uniform alongside the military at the front. These images have been regularly broadcast by the state media for the past two weeks. This week, the Ethiopian Prime Minister announced that he had returned to his office and thus resumed the management of current affairs that he had entrusted to his deputy prime minister.

A way to punctuate the counter-offensive that has allowed government forces to regain ground against the Tigrayan forces. They recently claimed to have retaken the strategic towns of Dessie and Kombolcha, as well as the highly symbolic site of Lalibela.

This is only the first phase. The battle is not yet decided, the Prime Minister said in a statement, while the TPLF, through its political leader, denied that the government was regaining the military advantage, claiming that the army had only retaken areas abandoned by the rebels during a strategic withdrawal.

In any case, to mark his return to the Ethiopian capital, to show that the threat to him has receded, and to recall the role of Ethiopia at the regional level, Abiy Ahmed multiplied these last 24 hours the telephone exchanges with his neighbours: Kenyan, Djiboutian Somali or Ugandan. He also spoke with the head of the United Nations. He also spoke with the head of the United Nations and did not fail to echo this on his twitter account.
Three staff members of the UN refugee agency (UNHCR) were injured on Wednesday when their convoy was attacked by gunmen in the Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, the UN agency said on Thursday.

Unidentified assailants opened fire on a UN convoy travelling in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo on Wednesday, UNHCR said in a statement.

A vehicle of the UNHCR, the UN refugee agency, was hit by gunfire and three UNHCR staff members were injured, it said.

The three people received emergency medical assistance at the scene. They were then taken to safety by the escort and transported to a hospital where they are currently receiving treatment, the statement said.

According to the source, the convoy was escorted by the United Nations Stabilisation Mission in the DRC (Monusco).

The attack took place in the locality of Mambassa, in Lubero territory, in the province of North Kivu.

UNHCR said it was shocked and outraged by the attack and called for the protection of civilians and humanitarian workers from violence.

The eastern part of the DRC has been plagued by violence for nearly three decades due to the presence of dozens of local and foreign armed groups.

Attacks and massacres targeting civilians are an almost daily occurrence. Since May 2021, at least 1,546 civilians have been killed by armed groups in three provinces of eastern DRC, according to the Kivu Security Barometer (KST).
A summit between the African Union and the European Union will be held on 17 and 18 February in Brussels as part of the French presidency of the European Union, Emmanuel Macron announced on Thursday, in order to rebuild in depth the somewhat tired relationship between the two continents.

Among several axes, the French head of state called for a new economic and financial deal with Africa, in particular to complete this solidarity with Africans, recalling that between 2020 and 2025, there are 300 billion euros of financing needs for African economies, because they have economic and financial consequences to manage.

Europe must have a common strategy with Africa in international bodies, to allow this solidarity, continued Emmanuel Macron, urging that this mechanism of investment in solidarity with the African continent should be updated.

During this presidential address from the Elysee Palace, which is to be followed by a press conference, the Head of State also called for the deployment of an agenda in terms of education, health and climate that is commensurate with Africas challenges.

The African continent has challenges that are even greater than ours in education, he added, calling for the continuation and Europeanisation of existing partnerships, with a real project to further develop the education of young girls throughout Africa, but also the training of teachers, as well as the development of health education structures.

Emmanuel Macron also indicated that he wanted to develop a real health agenda which consists of deploying much faster and much stronger vaccine production and production structures.
Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain

While considerable advances have been achieved in our battle against the coronavirus, new mutations of COVID19 continue to emerge and could threaten public health.

To prevent further severe pandemics, researchers from the University of Copenhagen and the immunotherapy company Evaxion have teamed up to develop a new AI tool that can more quickly and effectively predict how different protein elements can be assembled to increase the likelihood of coronavirus protection.

Their tool, BIFROST, is a computer model that uses algorithms to put together virus proteins that are most likely to be included in a vaccine, explains Christian Thygesen, an industrial Ph.D.

Thygesen has developed the model together with Evaxion and Associate Professor Thomas Hamelryck in the Deep Probabilistic Programming group at the University of Copenhagen's Department of Computer Science.

"For a vaccine to be effective, the body must be able to produce antibodies against viruses. It does so if it recognizes dangerous proteinssuch as coronavirus spike proteins. With BIFROST, we use algorithms to prioritize the parts of viral proteins that we already know can stimulate an immune response, so that we can assemble them in a way that is most likely to work in a vaccine," says Christian Thygesen.

BIFROST uses data on amino acid chainsthe building blocks of proteinsto predict how various proteins look and behave. In the future, this knowledge will allow researchers to design "super proteins" that elicit the desired response to viruses in the immune system, with few side effects.

BIFROSTfaster, cheaper, better

BIFROST has numerous advantages over other models, according to a new study conducted by the three researchers.

Until now, researchers have used a computer model called Rosetta to learn about the shape and behavior of proteins. But as Christian Thygesen explains, the Rosetta method has significant shortcomings:

"Our new method has the major advantage of running on special hardware that allows us to get answers in seconds rather than waiting hours for results. It saves time and thus money."

BIFROST has another unique attribute that makes it more efficient than Rosetta.

"Where, based on a single amino acid chain, Rosetta can only provide one estimate of the protein in question, our tool uses algorithms to calculate the probability of several possible proteins. One piece of an amino acid chain doesn't have to result in exactly the same proteins every time," explains Thygesen

Thus, BIFROST is equipped to provide us with more suggestions about potential protein shapes and behaviors. This is important when trying to develop a vaccine that needs to be able to recognize many new variants of, for example, coronavirus spike proteins.

However, Evaxion's Anders B. Srensen explains that there is still quite a way to go before the design behind BIFROST can be deoployed in a real vaccine.

"We have proven that BIFROST acts as a concept in the design phase, whereas real-world testing with animal models will be completed in 2022. So there remains a ways to go for us to test how our designed proteins function in humans. Nevertheless, with BIFROST, we have taken an important step towards creating a vaccine that can protect us from future pandemics," Srensen concludes.

Explore further Using computer modeling to predict the evolution of new COVID variants

More information: Christian B. Thygesen et al, Efficient Generative Modelling of Protein Structure Fragments using a Deep Markov Model, bioRXiv (2021). Christian B. Thygesen et al, Efficient Generative Modelling of Protein Structure Fragments using a Deep Markov Model,(2021). DOI: 10.1101/2021.06.22.449406
(HealthDay)The Omicron variant could prompt a reshuffling of the way doctors treat COVID infections in the United States, and antiviral pills will likely lead the way in that redoubled effort, Harvard experts say.

New antiviral pills developed by Merck and Pfizer are expected to remain effective against the Omicron variant, mostly because they interfere with the ability of the coronavirus to replicate itself rather than its ability to infect human cells, the researchers noted during a media briefing this week.

"They target parts of the virus that are more sort of stowed away from the immune system," explained Dr. Jonathan Abraham, an assistant professor of microbiology at Harvard Medical School in Boston.

Unfortunately, Omicron's mutations also mean that the current best treatments for the Delta variantmonoclonal antibodieswill likely lose their effectiveness against the new strain.

"It does seem like the variant is able to essentially mess up those antibodies' ability to neutralize the virus, so we're going to reformulate some of those antibodies to make them more effective against the Omicron variant," said Stephen Kissler, a postdoctoral infectious disease research fellow with the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

After surfacing in South Africa in late November, the Omicron variant of COVID has already been found in 21 U.S. states, according to data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

At this point, the highly infectious Delta variant still accounts for 99% of COVID cases in the United States, but the Harvard experts anticipate that Omicron's even greater infectiousness means it will eventually become the dominant strain here.

Antiviral pills should work against Omicron

"I do actually expect Omicron to displace Delta in the coming weeks," Kissler said. "The time frame for that is going to vary quite a bit. In places that have already started to see an increase in transmission, I think within the next six to eight weeks is probably reasonable."

Vaccinesand, for that matter, natural immunitycreate antibodies that go after COVID's spike protein, the part of the virus that allows it to enter human cells.

Infectious disease experts are worried about Omicron because it has developed more than 30 mutations in its spike protein, which could help the coronavirus evade vaccine-induced or natural immunity.

"The data suggests this is a more transmissible virus with significant degrees of immune escape that are going to render the vaccines less effective and many or most of the monoclonal antibodies ineffective," said Dr. Jacob Lemieux, an instructor in medicine at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital.

But the Merck antiviral pill molnupiravir and the Pfizer's antiviral pill entry Paxlovid both work by messing with the coronavirus as it attempts to replicate itself.

Molnupiravir causes the COVID virus to create flawed copies of itself that contain genetic errors, Abraham said.

"The copy machine for the virus becomes more sloppy," Abraham explained. "That eventually allows the virus to make so many mistakes that the virus is no longer functional."

Merck has said its pill can reduce the risk of hospitalization and death from COVID by 30%. An advisory panel of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration voted 13-10 last week to approve the drug. Word on an emergency use authorization is expected any day now from the agency.

Pfizer set to seek approval of its antiviral pill soon

Paxlovid is a protease inhibitor, a type of antiviral drug also used to treat HIV. It inhibits the action of an enzyme that the coronavirus needs to replicate itself, slowing and eventually stopping its spread.

Early data provided by Pfizer showed that Paxlovid reduced the risk of COVID-related hospitalization and death by 89%. Pfizer is expected to submit full clinical trial results to the FDA soon, Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla told CNBC.

Both drugs could be prescribed and taken at home, and so have been compared to Tamiflu.

Omicron's mutations don't mean that monoclonal antibodies are completely out of the picture, but they will need to be re-engineered to take into account the new ways that the variant can evade immunity, Abraham said.

It'll likely take three to six months to create monoclonal antibodies that have been adapted to deal with Omicron, Abraham noted.

There is one concern with molnupiravirthat by causing the coronavirus to create flawed copies, the drug might actually prompt the evolution of even worse mutations in COVID.

If the drug is approved, people will need to take it precisely as directed to ward off that possibility, Abraham said.

"We'll have to be in a situation where we're really careful about how these drugs are prescribed and how they're administered, ensuring near-perfect compliance so that they work most effectively and don't induce resistance," Abraham said.

Explore further Pfizer already working on Covid vaccine targeting Omicron: CEO

More information: The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has more about The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has more about COVID-19 variants

Copyright  2021 HealthDay. All rights reserved.
Commuters wear protective face masks as they walk through a subway station, in Sao Paulo, Brazil, Wednesday, Dec. 1, 2021, amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Brazil joined the widening circle of countries to report cases of the omicron variant. Credit: AP Photo/Andre Penner

Brazil will require international travelers who aren't vaccinated against the coronavirus to quarantine for five days in their city of destination after arriving by plane.

The decision issued by the ministries of health, justice, infrastructure and the government's chief of staff was published in the nation's official gazette Thursday.

The administration of President Jair Bolsonaro, who is unvaccinated himself, will start enforcing the measure Saturday. It is unclear how effectively Brazil can or will track those required to quarantine.

The head of the country's health regulator, Antonio Barra Torres, told The Associated Press that the policy will "mean discouragement of anti-vaccine tourism to Brazil."

The quarantine requirement "is a deterrent and educational measure," Torres said by phone.

Travelers coming to Brazil still need to submit a negative PCR test result before boarding in their country of origin and submit a declaration to the country's health regulator.

Unvaccinated travelers will have to take a new virus test after the five-day quarantine period and must check in with a health agency center that will have their addresses.

Brazil's government announced the quarantine requirement as worldwide concerns grow about omicron, a new and rapidly spreading variant of the coronavirus, though it is not yet clear if it is more dangerous than other variants.

More than 616,000 people have died of COVID-19 in Brazil, the country with second-most deaths from the disease. The pandemic has waned in recent months and the nation's seven-day average is approaching 200 deaths a day.

Many of Brazil's major cities, including Rio de Janeiro, have either cancelled or scaled back their New Year's Eve festivities due to fears of a new spread of the virus.

Rio's fireworks show on Copacabana beach is a major tourism draw, and Mayor Eduardo Paes said Thursday that it will take place as expected. The fireworks will be placed in 10 boats for a 16-minute-display.

"Of course there will be a gathering (for the fireworks)," Paes said at a news conference. "Gatherings are not prohibited in Rio de Janeiro."

Explore further Brazil confirms 3rd omicron case, considers new measures

 2021 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
Credit: CC0 Public Domain

Use of certain personal care products during pregnancy may impact maternal hormone levels, according to a new Rutgers study.

Personal care and beauty products contain several ingredients that often include a wide range of endocrine-disrupting chemicals like phthalates, parabens, phenols, parabens and toxic metals. These chemicals interact with hormone systems, influencing synthesis, regulation, transport, metabolism and hormone reception, which are all especially vulnerable during pregnancy.

The National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences and National Institutes of Health-funded study, published in Environmental Research, examined the association between personal care product use and the levels of sex steroid hormones, including estrogens and progesterone and thyroid hormones among pregnant women. The researchers also explored how demographic factors impact the use of certain personal care products.

Researchers collected blood samples from 1,070 pregnant women between 18 and 40 years of age enrolled in the Puerto Rico PROTECT Cohort, an ongoing prospective birth study designed to examine environmental exposures in pregnant women and their children who live in the northern karst zone of Puerto Rico.

As part of the study, participants underwent physical exams and completed a series of questionnaires providing their demographics, occupation, lifestyle and use of personal care products like fragrances, lotions, cosmetics, nail polish, shaving cream, mouthwash, shampoo and other hair products, such as bleach, relaxers and mousse. Participants also provided blood samples twice throughout their pregnancies, which were analyzed for nine sex steroid and thyroid hormones.

The researchers found that the use of hair products, particularly hair dyes, bleach, relaxers and mousse are associated with lower levels of sex steroid hormones, which have a critical role maintaining pregnancy and fetal development. Disruptions of these hormones may contribute to adverse maternal and pregnancy outcomes like growth restriction, preterm birth and low birth weight.

"Alterations in hormone levels, especially during pregnancy, can have vast consequences beyond health at birth including changes in infant and child growth, pubertal trajectories and may influence development of hormone-sensitive cancers such as breast, uterine and ovarian cancer," says the study's lead author, Zorimar Rivera-Nunez, an assistant professor at the Rutgers School of Public Health. "Additional research should address the public health impact of exposure to chemicals in hair products in pregnant populations."

The researchers also found that socioeconomic variables, such as income, education and employment status, influence the use of personal care products among pregnant women in Puerto Rico. For example, participants who reported a household income greater than $100,000 use personal care products more often than participants with lower household incomes. Additionally, employed participants reported using more cosmetics than those who were unemployed.

"Prior research has shown that non-pregnant populations have also reported associations between frequency of use and socioeconomic markers, such as household income and education," Rivera-Nunez said. "A strong culture of beauty influences Latina women, which may impact consistent use of cosmetics through pregnancy. This data is important because it will allow us to identify populations who are at an increased risk of chemical exposures associated with personal care product use."

The researchers, who include individuals from the Rutgers Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences Institute, University of Michigan, University of Puerto Rico, University of Georgia and Northeastern University, recommend that primary physicians and obstetricians should speak to reproductive-age women about the potential health impact of endocrine disrupting chemicals, like those found in hair products.

Explore further Metals and metalloids may alter prenatal hormone concentrations during pregnancy: study

More information: Zorimar Rivera-Nunez et al, Personal care products: Demographic characteristics and maternal hormones in pregnant women from Puerto Rico, Environmental Research (2021). Journal information: Environmental Research Zorimar Rivera-Nunez et al, Personal care products: Demographic characteristics and maternal hormones in pregnant women from Puerto Rico,(2021). DOI: 10.1016/j.envres.2021.112376
Credit: University of Aberdeen

A new test developed by scientists at the University of Aberdeen using AI-assisted technology has proven to be almost one hundred percent accurate in detecting COVID antibodies.

The Universal EpitoGen SARS-Cov-2-test passed the penultimate round of quality assurance assessments by the National Institute for Biological Standards and Control (NIBSC) with a reported accuracy that would outperform existing COVID tests.

In the NIBSC assessment, the Universal EpitoGen test detected antibody responses to infection by SARS-CoV-2 virus from patient samples with more than 99.5% accuracy and 98.5% specificity.

Unlike the 'traditional," currently used tests, that can become less accurate as new variants emerge, the innovative EpitoGen technology is just as effective in detecting an antibody response to new variants without losing accuracy. Therefore, the new tests can be used to estimate the prevalence of circulating variant strains in the community, including the OMICRON variant.

Funded by the Scottish Government Chief Scientist Office Rapid Response in COVID-19 (RARC-19) research program, the team of scientists led by Professor Mirela Delibegovic from the University of Aberdeen, with industry partners Vertebrate Antibodies Ltd and colleagues in NHS Grampian, joined forces to develop these new tests using innovative AI antibody technology known as EpitoGen.

The Universal EpitoGen test is one of a suite of tests currently in development. These include tests that can also assess the effectiveness of vaccines against new mutations and allows the incorporation of new mutations into existing tests in a matter of dayssomething that is not possible using the current technology.

Professor Mirela Delibegovic from the University of Aberdeen and academic lead on the project explains: "The news that our tests are so remarkably accurate is extremely exciting, particularly given the increasing worry around the emergence of new variants.

"These tests can be adapted quickly and efficiently to incorporate new mutationsan important development, as we are right now realizing the importance of detecting and monitoring new COVID variants.

"So, to have the validation that this test has such a phenomenal level of accuracy is hugely encouraging and important."

Dr. Tiehui Wang, Director of Biologics at Vertebrate Antibodies Ltd, added: "Our EpitoGen platform is paradigm shifting in the serodiagnostic sector.

"As well as COVID-19, the EpitoGen platform can be used for the development of highly sensitive and specific diagnostic tests for infectious and auto-immune diseases such as Lyme Disease and Type 1 Diabetes. The team are now working on development of in parallel to work on COVID-19."

Dr. Abdo Alnabulsi, Chief Operating Officer at AIBIOLOGICS, who helped develop the technology said: "Several international stakeholders are evaluating the COVID-19 tests and the potential of the new EpitoGen platform with a view to roll out in several different countries."

Explore further Scientists develop 'game-changing' antibody test
The Czech Republic has made Covid-19 vaccines mandatory for people aged 60 and above from March 1, the government said on Friday, as it battles one of the highest infection rates in the world.

The obligation will also apply to health workers, police officers, firefighters and the military.

"We see that people of a certain age are those most likely to be hospitalised in intensive care," Health Minister Adam Vojtech said.

The new regulation has been approved just a week before a new Czech government is set to take over.

The new health minister nominee has already said he is opposed to mandatory vaccinations for seniors and wants to modify the legislation.

The Czech Republic has reported 981 Covid cases per 100,000 people over the past seven daysthe second-highest infection rate after its neighbour Slovakia.

Centre-right leader Petr Fiala, who won a general election in October, is set to take over as prime minister.

He is due to meet with President Milos Zeman next week to agree on a date for the formal approval of his new coalition government.

Explore further All Czech students to be tested to curb surge in virus cases

 2021 AFP
(HealthDay)From 2000 to 2011, the age-adjusted heart disease death rate in the United States decreased 3.7 percent per year; however, the decline slowed to 0.7 percent per year during 2011 to 2019, according to a December data brief published by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention National Center for Health Statistics.

Anthony Sawyer, M.P.H., and Lee Anne Flagg, Ph.D., from the National Center for Health Statistics in Hyattsville, Maryland, examined changes in heart disease death rates from 2000 through 2019 using data from the National Vital Statistics System.

The researchers found that the U.S. age-adjusted heart disease death rate decreased by an average of 3.7 percent per year during 2000 to 2011 and slowed to a decrease of 0.7 percent per year during 2011 to 2019. There was variation noted in the age-adjusted heart disease death rates, from a low of 116.7 deaths/100,000 in Minnesota to a high of 231.4 in Oklahoma in 2019. In all states, age-adjusted death rates for heart disease declined from 2000 to 2011. In one-half of states and the District of Columbia, age-adjusted death rates for heart disease declined from 2011 to 2019, while there was no change in 24 states and an increase in one state.

"Although heart disease remains the leading cause of death, this report's findings are consistent with the long-term trend in heart disease death rates," the authors write. "Heart disease death rates declined rapidly beginning in the mid-1960s, but that decline slowed in the 2010s."

Explore further From 1999 to 2019, death rates higher in rural versus urban areas

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Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain

Harvard experts warn of a "surge upon a surge" in COVID-19 infections in the coming weeks, as cases involving the Omicron variant pile onto the nationwide illness and death the Delta strain has left in its wake in recent months.

"It comes at such a bad time in terms of the outbreak in front of us, which is truly a resurgent Delta outbreak that is reaching new heights in terms of cases and with hospitalizations and deaths also rising," said Jacob Lemieux, an infectious diseases doctor at Massachusetts General Hospital and instructor in medicine at Harvard Medical School. "What we're looking at is a surge upon a surge during a holiday period where there's going to be a lot of gathering, and now with what is likely a more transmissible virus and a virus thatwe now are beginning to see the datahas significant degrees of immune escape."

Lemieux spoke at a media briefing by the Massachusetts Consortium on Pathogen Readiness on Tuesday. His assessment was echoed by other specialists.

"We're ready to be done with this, but we're not done yet," said Karen Jacobson, an infectious disease physician at Boston Medical Center and a member of the consortium.

The experts spoke as area hospitals filled up with patients who deferred care for a variety of illnesses during last winter's COVID surge.

"We are facing another difficult winter," Jacobson said. "We know that a number of the people getting infected today will get ill and be getting into the hospital."

Cases of COVID-19 have been rising since mid-October, when the late-summer surge across the South subsided and the U.S. Center for Disease Control's seven-day average of daily cases hit a low of 64,000. By Tuesday, that figure had almost doubled, reaching 117,000 patients. Also on Tuesday, daily deaths jumped to 1,027 from 726 in late November, a 41 percent increase in just over a week.

In the Boston area, levels of coronavirus found in wastewater, which provide an indicator of what may lie ahead, have hit a new high. Meanwhile, governors in New Hampshire, Maine, and New York have called out the National Guard to help hospitals handle the strain of COVID cases. The worrying signs come as public health officials brace for the impact of Omicron, which exploded across South Africa last month before spreading internationally. The variant, first detected in the U.S. on Dec. 2, has reached 19 states and 50 countries.

In a Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health call, Stephen Kissler, a fellow in the Department of Immunology and Infectious Diseases, said that he expects Omicron to overtake Delta as the dominant strain in the U.S. in six to eight weeks. Answers to two important questions about the variant are coming into focus, he added. First, Omicron appears to be more transmissiblepotentially much more transmissiblethan Delta. Second, it seems to evade at least some immunity, whether natural or vaccine-derived, meaning a likely rise in breakthrough infections. One crucial remaining questionwhether it causes more severe illnessmay take another week or more to answer because severe illness and death from coronavirus tend to lag reports of infection.

CDC officials say that the initial 43 U.S. Omicron cases appear mild, following on reports from South Africa that patients were younger and not alarmingly sick. Kissler and the other experts cautioned against reading too much into those reports. Many of South Africa's young patients, Kissler said, were tested only because they were at the hospital for non-COVID conditions and so aren't an accurate gauge of cases. Also, more broadly, South Africa's population is younger than that of the U.S., and young people have experienced milder symptoms since the beginning of the pandemic.

Patients in an older population face the prospect of more severe illness. But the U.S., with more than 200 million full vaccinations, has higher rates of protection than South Africa, which should provide at least some defense against the new variant. (Pfizer and BioNTech recently offered good news on this front, saying that a third dose of their mRNA vaccine appears to protect against Omicron.)

The rise of the new variant shouldn't overshadow progress against the pandemic in recent weeks, the experts said. COVID pills now being evaluated by regulators attack mechanisms in the virus' life cycle that don't appear to have mutated in Omicron. Vaccines have been a game changer, and are widely available, at least in the U.S., for those seeking vaccination, or a booster, ahead of holiday parties. The availability of rapid at-home tests is another boon, they said, urging people to test before gathering with friends and family.

"We need to really be thinking about mitigation as we had before," Jacobson said. "Not locking down, but when we gatherand I think we still can gather in ways that we didn't last yearto test before we see others, so we know we're not carrying one of these minimally symptomatic or asymptomatic cases. And when we don't have an opportunity to test, we try to stay in well-ventilated and masked settings."

This story is published courtesy of the Harvard Gazette, Harvard University's official newspaper. For additional university news, visit Harvard.edu.
Fig. 1: Population structure within British Pakistanis from Bradford. a, b Principal components analysis of 2200 unrelated Pakistani mothers, with the self-reported subgroups with >20 samples indicated in different colours. Plots show PC1 versus PC2 (a) and PC2 versus PC3 (b). Proportion of overall variation explained by each PC is noted in brackets on the axis label. c ADMIXTURE plot (K = 4) illustrating different ancestral components making up the various subgroups, with the largest self-reported subgroups indicated. We have indicated the two distinct subgroups amongst the Rajput. Credit: DOI: 10.1038/s41467-021-27394-2

The first fine-scale analysis of genetic diversity within the British Pakistani population has been conducted by researchers at the Wellcome Sanger Institute, the University of Leeds, the Bradford Institute for Health Research (BIHR) and their collaborators. The research reveals that the genetic structure of this population has been shaped over a period of around 2,000 years by the biraderi social system, a practice of marrying within clans.

The study, published today (10 December 2021) in Nature Communications, details genetic differences between biraderi groups that will have important implications for the design of medical studies seeking to discover the genetic roots of common illnesses, such as diabetes and heart disease. These data will help to ensure that those of Pakistani ancestry are represented in such research, and will be able to benefit from new knowledge and therapies that emerge.

Human genomes are approximately 99.9 percent identical, regardless of ancestry. The remaining 0.1 percent holds differences between individuals, called genetic variants, which make us unique. Most genetic research to date has been conducted on European-ancestry individuals, which has led to a fuller understanding of human genetic variation, population structure and the role of genetic variation in disease.

However, findings about the genetic contribution to disease in Europeans may not translate well to individuals of other ethnicities. In recent years, studies of non-Europeans have started to provide a more complete picture of human genetic diversity and associated medical implications.

History and culture have influenced the genetic make-up of populations from different parts of the world. One such cultural factor is the biraderi social system, which has been practiced in Pakistani populations for centuries. Historically, people tended to marry within their own biraderi (community) to reinforce hereditary social status, occupation and land ownership. This system is still practiced to some extent today, both in Pakistan and within Pakistani-ancestry populations in countries like the UK.

In this study, researchers analyzed genomes from over 4,000 Pakistani-ancestry individuals, together with self-reported information about their family history, to investigate the genetic characteristics of the British Pakistani population. These data were collected by the Bradford Institute for Health Research (BIHR) as part of the Born in Bradford project.

Scientists at the Wellcome Sanger Institute and the University of Leeds analyzed the genomic data to map the fine-scale population structure and explore the demographic history of British Pakistanis.

Though Bradford Pakistani groups were found to be genetically similar to other Pakistani and Indian populations, the study found evidence that the biraderi social system has played an important role in shaping genetic variation. Participants shared the same genetic history until around 2,000 years ago, when they started separating into biraderi groups, including the Pathan, Jatt, Rajput, Awan, Gujjar, Mughal, Syed, Arain, Qasabi, and Bains.

Sanger's Dr. Elena Arciero conducted analysis that revealed that some groups experienced reductions in effective population size at various points in history. This could have been due to an increase in marriage-within-groups or an actual reduction in the population size as recorded in census data.

"Prior to this study our knowledge of the genetic history of these biraderis was quite sparse, so it adds considerably to our understanding of the social history of Pakistan. There is historical evidence to suggest that marriage within biraderi groups began to increase around 2000 years ago and became stricter during colonial times under the British Raj, when new property taxes were introduced to generate revenue. This may explain the reduction in effective population size that we observe in the genomic data," says Dr. Sufyan Dogra, senior research fellow from the Bradford Institute for Health Research (BIHR).

Previous research from Born in Bradford has shown that there is an increase in risk of recessive disorders amongst the children of first cousins, which is similar to that for children born to white British mothers aged 34 and over. This study finds that recessive disorders are likely to be more common amongst the children of couples who are not closely related but come from the same biraderi group, because their parents are distantly related. However the risk is at least 10 times higher for children of first cousins than for children of unrelated parents from the same biraderi.

"The study represents a step forward in the potential benefits of genetic research for marginalized populations, consistent with a wish to broaden the knowledge base and clinical benefits of genetic studies," Dr. Mark Iles,

a senior author of the study from the University of Leeds.

The findings have important medical implications for British Pakistanis. Incidence of common diseases like type-2 diabetes and heart disease are two-to-four times higher than in the white British population. The detailed genetic structure mapped in the study will help researchers to design future studies and search for common variants associated with these and other health problems, with the aim of improving diagnosis and treatment of these diseases as well as tailoring preventative advice.

"It is important to understand the fine-scale structure of a population when planning medical research such as genome-wide association studies. I hope our findings will provide a foundation for future research into the causes of genetic disease in Pakistani populations," Dr. Hilary Martin, a senior author of the study from the Wellcome Sanger Institute.

Explore further 137 human genomes from the Middle East fill gaps in human history

More information: Elena Arciero et al, Fine-scale population structure and demographic history of British Pakistanis, Nature Communications (2021). Journal information: Nature Communications Elena Arciero et al, Fine-scale population structure and demographic history of British Pakistanis,(2021). DOI: 10.1038/s41467-021-27394-2
Germany on Friday passed legislation requiring healthcare workers to get inoculated against COVID-19, a first step toward possible mandatory jabs for all adults.

A large majority of Bundestag lower house MPs voted for the measure requiring staff at hospitals, doctors' offices and care homes to be fully vaccinated by mid-March 2022, which was then approved by the Bundesrat upper house.

The decision follows similar moves by France, Italy, Britain and Greece.

Health Minister Karl Lauterbach, who took office this week with the new government under Olaf Scholz, asked deputies from across the political spectrum to support the measure to protect vulnerable groups.

"The pandemic is a mission for us allthis isn't a moment for party politics," he told the chamber before the vote.

He said he hoped Germany could break a vicious fourth wave of the outbreak by the end of the month so that people could visit their families over the holidays.

"That's what we're fighting for," he said, stressing the need to slow the spread of the Delta virus variant and stop the Omicron strain from gaining ground.

Scholz, who took power on Wednesday, has come out strongly in favour of mandatory vaccinations after the voluntary campaign fell short with just under 70 percent of the population fully inoculated. Around 21 percent have received a booster shot.

Expanding the mandate to the general public would see the country follow the example of neighbouring Austria, which is requiring vaccinations from February.

Majority supports mandate

Angela Merkel's previous government had always ruled out mandatory vaccination, but calls for action have grown louder in Germany as infection rates hit record highs and hospitals buckle under the strain.

Around 89 percent of German care home staff and 90 percent of medical workers are fully vaccinated, according to an official estimate from October, but with wide variation among regions.

"Mandatory vaccination is a really difficult issue," Markus Heim, a senior doctor in the intensive care unit at Munich's Rechts der Isar hospital, told AFP.

"Everyone who works in the medical sector wants more people to be inoculated and if that can be achieved by requiring it then a lot of people working here would support it."

Mandatory jabs are now backed by politicians from across the spectrum and Scholz aims to have a policy in force by February or March to head off a possible fifth wave of infections.

A clear majority of Germans also supports the move, with 68 percent telling public broadcaster ZDF in a poll published Friday that they support a general requirement.

The country recorded 61,288 new infections in the past 24 hours on Friday and 484 deaths, according to the Robert Koch Institute health agency. Nearly 105,000 people have died with coronavirus.

Earlier this month, Germany moved to shut off large parts of public life to people who have not been vaccinated or have not recovered from COVID-19.

It includes a blanket ban on entering bars, restaurants and cinemas for anyone who is unvaccinated or not recovered from coronavirus.

Several hard-hit German regions have already cancelled Christmas markets and barred the unvaccinated from public spaces like gyms and leisure facilities to slow the pandemic's spread.

Explore further German leaders plan crackdown on unjabbed to tackle COVID surge

 2021 AFP
Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain

"We stopped doing heads."

It was the second time I'd heard a medical examiner say this while I was studying how the roles of medical examiners and coroners have changed during the COVID-19 pandemic.

A medical examiner from Ohio explained to me that opening a skull is one of the most dangerous parts of an autopsy in the COVID-19 era. This is because the kind of saw often used during autopsies has a beating motion that produces aerosolsamong the primary modes of transmission of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. The medical examiner explained that his office would not open a skull unless absolutely necessary for the exam and then would use a high-powered vacuum to reduce particle spread from the process.

This was one of several policies and practices medical examiners and coroners in the U.S. had to change when adapting to the ongoing pandemic.

In the early months of the pandemic, doctors and nursesor "front-line" health care workersreceived much-deserved praise and recognition for their heroic actions. This included New Yorkers banging on pots and pans every night at 7 p.m. and Denver residents howling like wolves at 8 p.m. in support of front-line workers for months in 2020a tradition that returned in 2021 a year after the pandemic began.

But "death care" workers such as coroners and medical examiners, who also are providing critical services during the ongoing pandemic, have been far less celebrated and recognized. Yet they have been struggling under the unceasing pressure of excess deaths, backed-up funeral systems and increased data-gathering responsibilities. They have also had to take on additional tasks of reporting COVID-19 data for public health purposes. And these workers have suffered a lot of burnout.

I am a public administration professor who is studying public servants in death care services. My work has highlighted the need to better understand the complex roles that these medical professionals play, especially when much of their work is unseen and not well understood by the general public.

The roles of medical examiners and coroners

Since the beginning of the pandemic, medical examiners and coroners have dealt with repeated COVID-19 surges that as of November 2021 have left more than 768,000 Americans dead. Public health and reporting requirements following COVID-19 deaths added to these professionals' already heavy workloads.

Medical examiners and coroners are public servants charged with carrying out medical, scientific and legal death investigations. Medical examiners have board-certified medical training in pathology, forensic pathology or another associated medical field and are appointed by county commissioners or other leaders. Coroners, who receive training in medical and legal investigation, are elected to their roles by voters.

From Bexar County, Texas, Feb. 24, 2021: One example of the increased workload faced by death care workers during the pandemic.

Outside of the context of COVID-19, these death care workers are called in to investigate suspicious, unnatural deaths. The process of death investigation in the U.S. is complicated and bureaucratic, and each state sets its own criteria. Some states have medical examiner systems, others have a coroner system, while still others might have a hybrid approach.

The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the need for additional safety precautions to reduce exposure and spread for the protection of medical examiners, coroners and death investigation teams.

COVID-19 and excess deaths

Throughout the pandemic, public-facing offices of medical examiners' and coroners' offices might have closed, following COVID-19 guidelines, but the behind-the-scenes operations accelerated. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that COVID-19 contributed to more than 902,000 excess deathsmeaning deaths in addition to those statistically projected for an area based on past trendsin the U.S. as of late November 2021.

One challenge that became critical in the early months of the pandemic was distinguishing cause of death from manner of death. Cause of death refers to a specific and immediate injury, disease or condition that led to a death. Manner of death is a medical and legal description grouping deaths into five categories for public health purposes: natural, accident, homicide, suicide or undetermined.

These distinctions are critical for accurately tracking and reporting whether someone died from COVID-19-related complications or whether someone died while carrying the virus but from another cause such as a car accident or heart attack, for example. Initially, there was no agreed-upon standard for deciding what constituted a COVID-19-related death. As COVID-19 deaths surged early in the pandemic, some people began to question those numbers, given the medical complexities and unknowns associated with the virus. The CDC eventually provided guidance in April 2020 on how COVID-19 deaths should be officially reported.

Supporting death care workers as the pandemic drags on

Research has shown thatlong before the pandemicmedical examiners and coroners, who deal daily with psychological stressors such as handling human remains and talking with grieving families, were at high risk of depression and post-traumatic stress. COVID-19 has taken an already stressful job and added additional pressure.

A 2020 study collected stories from forensic workers at the University of Michigan who had to drastically change policies for their personal safety while also finding ways to support and assist grieving families. For example, when social distancing rules prohibited in-person memorial services, the team devised thoughtful ways to use photographs to preserve a loved one's memory. For example, one biomedical photographer provided families with high-quality photos of their loved one's hands or tattoos.

The ongoing pandemic means death care workers are still providing these much-needed services to families. One quality and research manager I spoke with from a medical examiner's office in Minnesota noted that people who work at funeral homes are often left out of the support network that health care professionals have received during the pandemic. "People believe that health care ends at death, and it does not," he said.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
COVID-19 vaccines are handed over to staff of community health centres in India. There are fears that the Omicron variant would heavily affect the country, which was devastated by the Delta variant in mid-2021. Credit: Sarabjit Singh (Tribune India) (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:COVID-19_vaccination_in_Jalandhar.jpg), CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.en)

The emergence of Omicron, a rapidly spreading new strain of COVID-19, a year after the world embarked on mass-vaccinations against the pandemic, has put paid to Nishant Balan's plans to return to the United Arab Emirates to resume his contract business.

The reason? His work recently carried him to South Africa, where Omicron emerged.

"I may now have to fold up my contract business altogether since I have already overshot many deadlines and am running up losses by the hour," said Balan. "And then there is no telling when the restrictions around Omicron are going to be lifted."

Omicron, which carries 50 mutations, most of them in the spike protein which helps the virus infect human cells, popped up in early November. Since then, the strain has spread to 23 countries, forcing many to reimpose travel restrictions, tighten surveillance and study the variant's vulnerability to existing vaccines.

Said Manu Raj, a top epidemiologist based in Kochi, India: "Africa was begging for vaccines and none of the rich countries listenedthey just piled up more than they needed. Any country that lags in vaccination will likely produce more mutations.

"Now Mother Nature is giving it back to those deaf ears. The world will need to be more equitable than this, or we will keep seeing bad things," said Raj, a professor at the School of Medicine, Amrita University, Kochi.

Lessons from India

India, where the highly contagious Delta variant emerged at the beginning of the year, learned the hard way the consequences of being tardy on vaccinations. A major vaccine manufacturer and exporter, India responded to Delta with free vaccinations only by 21 June. By then an estimated four million people had died as hospitals were overwhelmed and supplies of essential medicines and oxygen ran out.

Still, India's mass vaccinations, among the biggest such drives in the world, had a salutary effect. Where the country recorded an average of 40,000 new cases per day during the peak months of the second wave, between April and September, the number is now down to an average of 10,000 new cases per day and declining steadily.

Manohar Agnani, additional secretary in the Union Health Ministry, said at an interactive webinar on 12 November that "nearly 80 percent of the eligible [adult] population in India has been vaccinated against COVID-19 with a first dose while 38 percent has been full vaccinated."

According to an official release, India's central government had by 27 November distributed 1.3 million doses to various states and had a stock of 221.7 million doses. India's extensive sero-surveys suggest that 70 percent of the 1.4 billion population had acquired COVID-19 antibodies by April.

Better availability of vaccines in India in recent months has allowed a ramping up of the vaccination drive and a streamlining of the vaccine supply chain across the vast country, according to the release.

"COVID vaccines are holding outwe are not seeing breakthrough infections, we have a high seropositivity rate and antibody presence," said Randhir Guleria, director of the All India Institute of Medical Science, speaking at a public function in the capital on 24 November.

India's first cases of Omicron infection, that of a medical doctor and a South African national, were announced at a media briefing on 1 December by the union health ministry. An official said there was no cause for panic as "all Omicron related cases were found to have mild symptoms so far."

"For a country where every other person is infected and the majority of those remaining are vaccinated, this is no news to be afraid of," said Raj.

"While it is inevitable that new strains will emerge, as they do with influenza, it is not clear if they will all pose the same risk that we saw with the Delta variant," said Ramanan Laxminarayan, epidemiologist and founder and director of the Center for Disease Dynamics, Economics and Policy in Washington DC.

"Viruses generally evolve in the direction of reduced virulence and if that happens with SARS-COV-2, then we could see the proliferation of a strain that is easily transmissible but that causes only mild infections," Laxminarayan told SciDev.Net. "Regardless, our best bet is to increase vaccination coverage since they are protective, at least partially, against novel strains as well."

India, compelled to suspend vaccine exports in March, has now resumed supplies to other countries. India's leading manufacturer, the Serum Institute of India, said in a press release on 26 November that the first batches of its COVISHIELD vaccine, manufactured under license from AstraZeneca, were on their way to low- and middle-income countries via the COVAX Facilitya global mechanism created to ensure equitable distribution of COVID-19 vaccines.

Africa short-changed

Yet Catherine Kyobutungi, executive director of Nairobi-headquartered African Population and Health Research Center, said the COVAX Facility failed to meet Africa's expectations, forcing countries to fall back on donations from rich countries with excess stock.

"These donations are unpredictable and erratic and many countries have had to deal with periods of too many doses and those with stock outs," she said.

According to Kyobutungi, the WHO's target of vaccinating 10 percent of the population of every country by September was too low to achieve herd immunity against SARS-COV2.

"One needs about 90 percent of the population fully vaccinated," she said.

"Most African countries will not even meet the low targets they had set for themselves," added Kyobutungi, citing failure to access enough doses as the key factor behind low vaccination rates.

Countries such as Burkina Faso, Gambia, Democratic Republic of Congo, Central African Republic, Madagascar, Niger, South Sudan, Sierra Leone and Uganda have less than one percent of their populations fully vaccinated, she observed.

"Africa has been short-changed by the rest of the world. Without its own vaccine development and manufacturing capacity, it has been at the back of the queue," Kyobutungi told SciDev.Net.

According to the WHO, nine African countries, including Morocco, South Africa and Tunisia had reached the 10 percent goal at the beginning of September and by the end of the month six more countries had achieved or surpassed that target. Mauritius and Seychelles recorded over 60 percent of their population vaccinated.

Nigel Garett, head of pathogenesis and vaccine research at the Centre for the AIDS Program of Research in South Africa said that the fault lies in African countries "not being seen as a commercial market by prominent vaccine companies especially companies producing mRNA vaccines."

Garett tells SciDev.Net that uncertainties about vaccine effectiveness on variants of concern had also delayed many vaccine rollouts in Africa.

"Poor access to testing facilities means that the confirmed cases are a fraction of actual cases," said Kyobutungi, adding that while deaths may be underestimated, they are a more accurate indicator of what's going on in the population.

WHO's new target of getting 40 percent of the population of each country vaccinated by December end has a far better chance of success in the Eastern Mediterranean and Latin American regions than in Africa.

The December goal is considered a key step to the WHO Strategy to Achieve Global COVID-19 Vaccination which aims to have 70 percent of the world's population covered by mid-2022.

Diplomacy in the Middle East

Of the 22 countries in WHO's Eastern Mediterranean region, seven countries achieved the December-end target ahead of time while seven more countries are on the way to achieving it, said Amjad Al Khouli, WHO epidemiology advisor in the Middle East Region. But the other eight countries in the region are struggling to catch up, he said.

The success in the Eastern Mediterranean region with its 679 million people owes a lot to authorities who have been actively countering an 'infodemic' of fake news, which initially caused vaccine hesitancy among many residents.

That situation has now changed, according to a recent regional study conducted in all the 22 countries which showed a high level of acceptance of COVID-19 vaccinations.

Conflicts in the region were another matter. "The main reason for the situation in countries that are far from achieving the goal is the fragility of the health systems, the atmosphere of conflict, and the repercussions of various emergencies," Al Khouli said.

Al Khouli also blamed insufficient supplies of vaccines thanks to "unfair" distribution, poor logistics and difficulties in reaching the doses to unsafe geographic areas. Delays have also caused the fragile, time-bound vaccines stocks to expire.

WHO is now making efforts, with the cooperation of governments in the region, to overcome different obstacles, said Al Khouli. For example, in conflict areas, a "Health Diplomacy" program is taking advantage of ceasefire periods to deliver vaccines and health services.

These efforts resulted in a significant increase in vaccine supplies to low- and lower-middle-income countries in the region during the last quarter, said Al Khouli. "One-third of the total doses provided by the COVAX facility to the Eastern Mediterranean Region have been over the past four weeks."

Egypt, which had a difficult start in January because of vaccine hesitancy, is now on track to achieve the December target. Mohamed Ali Ezz Al Arab, medical advisor, Egyptian Centre for Right to Medicine, tells SciDev.Net that vaccination rates have reached 12 percent and that the government was "striving hard during to reach the target of vaccinating 40 percent of the population by the end of 2021."

Latin America delays

In Latin America, 48 percent of the population in major countries now stands immunized. Chile had by mid-November had vaccinated 82 percent of its people, followed by Uruguay with 76 percent. Also showing high vaccination rates were Cuba with 72 percent, El Salvador, 61 percent, Argentina, 60 percent and Brazil, 59 percent.

However, many countries in the region are also showing low vaccination rates. "We had access difficulties from the beginning," Jarbas Barbosa da Silva, assistant director of the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) told SciDev.Net.

According to PAHO, vaccination is at a standstill in about nine countries, while Guatemala, Jamaica, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Nicaragua and Haiti are showing below 20 percent coverage, said da Silva, adding that during the early stages, rich countries had cornered the entire production of Pfizer and Moderna, ignoring the COVAX Facility.

In addition, AstraZeneca had significant shortages, as India the main manufacturing contractor, suspended exports in March. "Latin America should have received 80 million doses from that producer this year but did not get even 10 percent," Barbosa explained.

"COVAX was not able to leverage its negotiation capacity, which should have been the sum of the purchasing power of several countries," said Felipe de Carvalho, Access Campaign Coordinator at Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) Brazil.

With delays continuing, Latin American countries have turned to manufacturers in Russia (Sputnik V) and China (Sinovac, Sinopharm) and some are also working with public and private institutions in Argentina and Brazil to develop mRNA vaccines as part of a strategy to reduce vulnerability and dependence.

In late November, Brazil recorded two cases of Omicron infection, the first in Latin America, adding to concerns of rapid spread of the new strain, especially in countries of the region with low vaccination rates.

WHO director general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said at a special session of the World Health Assembly on 29 November that while every country had a responsibility to protect its own people, uneven vaccine distribution would allow the COVID-19 virus to "spread and evolve in ways we cannot predict or prevent."

The WHO chief pointed out that low-income countries had received just 0.6 percent of the world's COVID-19 vaccines, while the G20 countries had received 80 percent. He stressed that "no country can vaccinate its way out of the pandemic alone" and that "no region, no country, no community and no individual is safe until we are all safe."

Tedros's words have particular meaning for Nishant Balan who now faces financial ruin as a result of the brief trip he made to South Africa early November.

"The best I can say is that I did not test positive for COVID as I had taken care to get myself fully vaccinated early, though I can't say the same for people I meet during my business trips."

Explore further World's fastest vaccination campaign in numbers

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Members of a World Health Organization team are seen through a window wearing protective gear during a field visit to the Hubei Animal Disease Control and Prevention Center for another day of field visit in Wuhan in central China's Hubei province, on Feb. 2, 2021. Nearly two years into the COVID-19 pandemic, the origin of the virus tormenting the world remains shrouded in mystery. Credit: AP Photo/Ng Han Guan, File

Nearly two years into the COVID-19 pandemic, the origin of the virus tormenting the world remains shrouded in mystery.

Most scientists believe it emerged in the wild and jumped from bats to humans, either directly or through another animal. Others theorize it escaped from a Chinese lab.

Now, with the global COVID-19 death toll surpassing 5.2 million on the second anniversary of the earliest human cases, a growing chorus of scientists is trying to keep the focus on what they regard as the more plausible "zoonotic," or animal-to-human, theory, in the hope that what's learned will help humankind fend off new viruses and variants.

"The lab-leak scenario gets a lot of attention, you know, on places like Twitter," but "there's no evidence that this virus was in a lab," said University of Utah scientist Stephen Goldstein, who with 20 others wrote an article in the journal Cell in August laying out evidence for animal origin.

Michael Worobey, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Arizona who contributed to the article, said he always thought zoonotic transmission was more likely than a lab leak but had signed a letter with other scientists last spring saying both theories were viable. Since then, he said, his own and others' research has made him even more confident about the animal hypothesis, which is "just way more supported by the data."

A security person moves journalists away from the Wuhan Institute of Virology after a World Health Organization team arrived for a field visit in Wuhan in China's Hubei province on Feb. 3, 2021. Nearly two years into the COVID-19 pandemic, the origin of the virus tormenting the world remains shrouded in mystery. Credit: AP Photo/Ng Han Guan, File

Last month, Worobey published a COVID-19 timeline linking the first known human case to the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market in Wuhan, China, where live animals were sold.

"The lab leak idea is almost certainly a huge distraction that's taking focus away from what actually happened," he said.

Others aren't so sure. Over the summer, a review ordered by President Joe Biden showed that four U.S. intelligence agencies believed with low confidence that the virus was initially transmitted from an animal to a human, and one agency believed with moderate confidence that the first infection was linked to a lab.

Some supporters of the lab-leak hypothesis have theorized that researchers were accidentally exposed because of inadequate safety practices while working with samples from the wild, or perhaps after creating the virus in the laboratory. U.S. intelligence officials have rejected suspicions China developed the virus as a bioweapon.

The continuing search for answers has inflamed tensions between the U.S. and China, which has accused the U.S. of making it the scapegoat for the disaster. Some experts fear the pandemic's origins may never be known.

This 2020 electron microscope image made available by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows SARS-CoV-2 virus particles which cause COVID-19. Nearly two years into the COVID-19 pandemic, the origin of the virus tormenting the world remains shrouded in mystery. Credit: Hannah A. Bullock, Azaibi Tamin/CDC via AP, File

FROM BATS TO PEOPLE

Scientists said in the Cell paper that SARS-CoV-2, which causes COVID-19, is the ninth documented coronavirus to infect humans. All previous ones originated in animals.

That includes the virus that caused the 2003 SARS epidemic, which also has been associated with markets selling live animals in China.

Many researchers believe wild animals were intermediate hosts for SARS-CoV-2, meaning they were infected with a bat coronavirus that then evolved. Scientists have been looking for the exact bat coronavirus involved, and in September identified three viruses in bats in Laos more similar to SARS-CoV-2 than any known viruses.

Worobey suspects raccoon dogs were the intermediate host. The fox-like mammals are susceptible to coronaviruses and were being sold live at the Huanan market, he said.

A man looks on near a display advocating the effectiveness of wearing masks to curb the spread of the coronavirus ahead of the anniversary of the 76-day lockdown of the city where the coronavirus was first detected in Wuhan in central China's Hubei province on Jan. 22, 2021. Nearly two years into the COVID-19 pandemic, the origin of the virus tormenting the world remains shrouded in mystery. Credit: AP Photo/Ng Han Guan, File

"The gold-standard piece of evidence for an animal origin" would be an infected animal from there, Goldstein said. "But as far as we know, the market was cleared out."

Earlier this year, a joint report by the World Health Organization and China called the transmission of the virus from bats to humans through another animal the most likely scenario and a lab leak "extremely unlikely."

But that report also sowed doubt by pegging the first known COVID-19 case as an accountant who had no connection to the Huanan market and first showed symptoms on Dec. 8, 2019. Worobey said proponents of the lab-leak theory point to that case in claiming the virus escaped from a Wuhan Institute of Virology facility near where the man lived.

According to Worobey's research, however, the man said in an interview that his Dec. 8 illness was actually a dental problem, and his COVID-19 symptoms began on Dec. 16, a date confirmed in hospital records.

Worobey's analysis identifies an earlier case: a vendor in the Huanan market who came down with COVID-19 on Dec. 11.

The Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market, sits closed in Wuhan in central China's Hubei province on Jan. 21, 2020. Nearly two years into the COVID-19 pandemic, the origin of the virus tormenting the world remains shrouded in mystery. Some scientists believe it started at the market. Credit: AP Photo/Dake Kang, File

ANIMAL THREATS

Experts worry the same sort of animal-to-human transmission of viruses could spark new pandemicsand worsen this one.

Since COVID-19 emerged, many types of animals have gotten infected, including pet cats, dogs and ferrets; zoo animals such as big cats, otters and non-human primates; farm-raised mink; and white-tailed deer.

Most got the virus from people, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which says that humans can spread it to animals during close contact but that the risk of animals transmitting it to people is low.

Another fear, however, is that animals could unleash new viral variants. Some wonder if the omicron variant began this way.

"Around the world, we might have animals potentially incubating these variants even if we get (COVID-19) under control in humans," said David O'Connor, a virology expert at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. "We're probably not going to do a big giraffe immunization program any time soon."

The World Health Organization team is briefed outside of the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market on the third day of their field visit in Wuhan, China on Jan. 31, 2021. Nearly two years into the COVID-19 pandemic, the origin of the virus tormenting the world remains shrouded in mystery. Some scientists believe it started at the market. Credit: AP Photo/Ng Han Guan, File

Worobey said he has been looking for genetic fingerprints that might indicate whether omicron was created when the virus jumped from humans to an animal, mutated, and then leaped back to people.

Experts say preventing zoonotic disease will require not only cracking down on illegal wildlife sales but making progress on big global problems that increase risky human-animal contact, such as habitat destruction and climate change.

Failing to fully investigate the animal origin of the virus, scientists said in the Cell paper, "would leave the world vulnerable to future pandemics arising from the same human activities that have repeatedly put us on a collision course with novel viruses."

'TOXIC' POLITICS

But further investigation is stymied by superpower politics. Lawrence Gostin of Georgetown University said there has been a "bare-knuckles fight" between China and the United States.

A resident wearing a mask against the coronavirus walks through reed fields and the cityscape along the Yangtze River in Wuhan in central China's Hubei province on April 16, 2020. Nearly two years into the COVID-19 pandemic, the origin of the virus tormenting the world remains shrouded in mystery. Credit: AP Photo/Ng Han Guan, File

"The politics around the origins investigation has literally poisoned the well of global cooperation," said Gostin, director of the WHO Collaborating Center on National and Global Health Law. "The politics have literally been toxic."

An AP investigation last year found that the Chinese government was strictly controlling all research into COVID-19's origins and promoting fringe theories that the virus could have come from outside the country.

"This is a country that's by instinct very closed, and it was never going to allow unfettered access by foreigners into its territory," Gostin said.

Still, Gostin said there's one positive development that has come out of the investigation.

WHO has formed an advisory group to look into the pandemic's origins. And Gostin said that while he doubts the panel will solve the mystery, "they will have a group of highly qualified scientists ready to be deployed in an instant in the next pandemic."

Explore further First Wuhan COVID case days later than initially reported: scientist

 2021 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
(HealthDay)Nearly half of 12- to 17-year-olds in the United States have had at least one COVID-19 vaccine shot, but the initial rush to get teens immunized has stalled, a new survey of parents shows.

Only 1% of parents now plan to get their teen vaccinated as soon as possible; 13% said they'll wait and see how vaccination works for others; and 30% said they won't get their teen vaccinated.

The nationwide telephone and online survey of nearly 1,200 parents with a child under 18 was conducted Nov. 8 to 23, and the results appear in a new Kaiser Family Foundation report.

Children between 5 and 11 years of age became eligible for COVID-19 shots in the past month. Sixteen percent of their parents said their child had been vaccinated, and 13% said they planned to get the shot for the child right away. About one-third (32%) said they would see how the shots work for other children first and almost as many (29%) said their child would not be vaccinated.

The survey was conducted before the emergence of the highly contagious Omicron variant, which could change parents' vaccine views, according to the report authors.

The survey revealed that most parents don't feel they have enough information about the effectiveness (58%), side effects (63%) or safety (61%) of COVID-19 vaccines in children. In all, 52% of parents with teens and about 40% of those with 5- to 11-year-olds were confident that vaccines are safe for their children.

About 57% of parents of teens and 55% of those with younger kids said they believe a COVID-19 infection poses a greater risk than vaccination, while 39% and 41%, respectively, considered vaccination a bigger risk.

Unvaccinated parents were much more likely to believe that vaccines pose a greater risk to their teen (80%) or younger child (71%), the findings showed.

Hispanic parents were more likely (62%) to say their teen had been vaccinated than Black parents (48%) or white respondents (42%), but there were no significant racial or ethnic differences in their intentions to get younger kids vaccinated.

Hispanic parents and Black parents were more likely than white parents to express concerns about vaccine access. For example, among those with unvaccinated children, more Hispanic parents (47%) than Black parents (43%) or white parents (23%) expressed concern about missing work to take their kids to get the shot or care for them if they have side effects.

Fewer than half of respondents said they had talked to their child's pediatrician about the COVID-19 vaccines. Sixteen percent of parents with teens and 15% of those with younger children said they had talked to their pediatrician, and he or she had not recommended vaccination.

Forty-nine percent of parents said their child's school had provided information about how to get a vaccine, and 44% said their school had encouraged them to do so.

In all, two-thirds of parents oppose schools requiring all eligible students to get vaccinated; 32% said they support such a mandate.

The margin of error is plus or minus 4 percentage points for the full sample of parents, but differs for subgroups, according to a Kaiser Family Foundation news release.

More information: The American Academy of Pediatrics has more about The American Academy of Pediatrics has more about the science behind COVID-19 vaccines

Copyright  2021 HealthDay. All rights reserved.
Firefighting foam can contain PFAS. Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain

A research team led by The Australian National University (ANU) has released findings from a major epidemiological study funded by the Department of Health, which examined the potential health impacts of PFAS in three Australian communities.

PFAS-per- and poly-fluoroalkyl substances are man-made chemicals found in a range of products, including firefighting foam and non-stick cookware. There are many different types of PFAS chemicals, all of which last for a long time in the environment and in the bodies of people who are exposed. Despite many international studies looking into PFAS, there is uncertainty about their health effects in people.

The study examined three communities with environmental PFAS exposureKatherine in the Northern Territory, Oakey in Queensland and Williamtown in New South Wales. All three communities were affected by historic use of firefighting foams containing PFAS on nearby Defence Force bases.

Overall, there was clear evidence of elevated blood serum concentrations of PFAS in residents and workers in the PFAS-affected communities, and of increased psychological distress in the three exposed communities.

"The main factors associated with people having higher levels of PFAS in their blood were the length of time they had lived in the town, whether they regularly drank bore water or ate locally-grown foods and if they had worked with firefighting foams in the past," study lead Professor Kirk, from ANU, said.

"In exposed communities, one third of people reported being 'very' or 'extremely' concerned about their health, including one in five people who had serious concerns about their mental health.

"We did identify an association between higher PFAS levels in blood and higher cholesterol, which has been reported in other studies internationally."

The evidence for other adverse health outcomes was generally limited. For the majority of health outcomes studied, findings were consistent with previous studies that have not conclusively identified causative links between PFAS and health.

"Based on health records collected over many years, we noted higher rates of some health conditions in individual PFAS-affected communities, compared to communities without known PFAS contamination. However, we can't rule out that these findings were due to chance or important factors that we couldn't measure," Associate Professor Rosemary Korda, a leading data linkage expert from ANU, said.

Researchers from The Australian National University led the PFAS Health Study team, which included international experts on epidemiology, environmental chemistry, cancer, and statistics. The Australian Government Department of Health funded the study.

Chief medical officer, Professor Paul Kelly said: "The Department of Health considers this study to be an important step in better understanding PFAS exposure and potential health effects in Australia.

"The consistency of the findings of the ANU study with previous studies that have not identified direct links between PFAS and adverse health outcomes is encouraging. This study is the first significant piece of Australian research of this kind and we thank all those individuals who participated."
Credit: Shutterstock

Australian children aged five to 11 will start to receive the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine from January 10, after it cleared the final regulatory step and was recommended for use in this age group by the Australian Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation (ATAGI).

ATAGI recommends children aged five to 11 receive two 10 microgram doses (which is one-third of the over-12s dose), eight weeks apart.

What does the trial data say about safety and efficacy?

The Pfizer vaccine trial included 2,268 children aged five to 11. Of these children, 1,517 were given two doses of 10 microgram vaccine three weeks apart, and 751 who were given a placebo. The results found the vaccine was safe and had good efficacy.

Children given the vaccine had similar antibody levels after the second dose to older adolescents and young adults (aged 16-25). This indicates their immune system was able to recognize the lower amount of vaccine mRNAthe vital ingredient in the Pfizer vaccineand still produce a good amount of antibody to protect against the virus.

There were no serious reactions in this trial, however the sample size wasn't large enough to detect rare adverse events.

The most common side effects occurred in the first two to three days and included:

painful arm (around 70% at any time in the first week after vaccination but usually in the first few days)

headache (around 25%)

tiredness (around 35%).

The vaccine was around 90% effective at preventing confirmed COVID-19 infection, with three COVID cases in the vaccine group and 16 in the placebo group.

Based on this data, the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) provisionally approved the vaccine for use in 511 year-old Australians on Sunday, following United States' Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval at the end of October.

How safe and effective has it been overseas?

Australia has around 2.3 million children aged five to 11. So we can look to the real-world experience of the Pfizer vaccine in the US to see what we can expect.

More than 5 million US children aged five to 11 have had one dose and more than 2 million have had a second dose.

One potential concern authorities are watching out for is the risk of heart inflammation, called myocarditis. This is a rare side effect after the second dose in young males aged 1217, with an estimated risk of around ten cases per 100,000.

No cases of myocarditis, or the related condition pericarditis, were reported in the clinical trial of five- to 11-year-olds.

No data is yet available on the real world effectiveness of the vaccine to protect against hospitalization or infection in children aged 511, however this will emerge.

Why an eight week interval?

The US, European Union, Canada and Israel have approved Pfizer for younger children. The US has gone with a three week interval between doses, while Canada recommends eight weeks.

There are two reasons for a wider interval. The first is a potentially better immune response. Studies in adults have shown a larger gap between doses has resulted in a higher antibody immune response and better vaccine effectiveness, although this has not been shown yet for children under 12.

The second is a possible lower risk of developing myocarditis. In a Canadian study, young adults aged 1824 had lower rates of myocarditis when the interval between dose one and two was greater than eight weeks compared to those with an interval of less than 30 days between doses.

While similar data for children under 12 is not yet available, a recommendation for a wider interval allows us to continue to monitor real-world international experience of the risk of myocarditis.

Who should be first in line to get the vaccine?

Some children with underlying medical conditions are more likely to get sicker with COVID. This includes those with obesity, diabetes, neurological diseases, heart and lung conditions. These children should be among the first to get the vaccine next January.

If my child is about to turn 12, should I wait?

There is no major difference in the immune systems of an 11- and 12-year-old.

The age cut-off was chosen based on the ages of the children in the vaccine trials. These age groupings were most likely designed to match the ages children are when they attend primary and high school.

If your 11 year old is about to turn 12, they should get the dose at 11 and not wait.

If they had the 10 microgram dose and turn 12 before their second dose is due, ATAGI says they may get a 30 microgram second dose when they are 12.

How will the vaccine be administered?

The lower (10 microgram) child's dose has been packaged in orange-top vials so it doesn't get confused with the purple- or gray-top (30 microgram) dose vial used for adults.

The vaccine will be given in the child's upper arm, and you and child will need to wait for at least 15 minutes after vaccination in case of a reaction.

The vaccine will be available through general practices, Aboriginal Health Services, community pharmacies and state and territory clinics.

Your child can get other vaccines at the same time, if they're due, but there is very limited data on the side effects when both a COVID and non-COVID vaccine are given at the same time.

If your child has had COVID-19 disease in the past they should still get vaccinated but it is important to make sure they have completely recovered before getting a vaccine. You can wait up to six months after natural infection before getting the vaccine. If in doubt talk with your GP.

Can my child with allergies still get the vaccine?

Children who have had an allergic reaction to a substance called PEG (polyethylene glycol)  which is a commonly used ingredient of other medications, hand sanitisers, cosmetics and bathroom productsshould talk to their GP before getting the vaccine.

If your child has an allergic reaction after the first dose, talk to your GP before getting dose two.

Children who are allergic to foods such as nuts, milk or eggs, or those who have asthma or hay fever, can safely receive the Pfizer vaccine.

When will kids under five be vaccinated?

Results from clinical trials in children under five years old are expected soon.

A lower dose of 3 micrograms of the Pfizer vaccine is being trialed in children aged six months to two years.

Moderna is also trialing lower doses of its vaccine in children under five.

Vaccinating five- to 11-year-old Australian children is is an important next step in our ability to protect both ourselves and the community against COVID-19. The safety of the vaccines will be closely monitored as we roll them out in January and aim to give first doses before children go back to school.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
South Africa will next month start giving Pfizer booster shots against coronavirus, a health official said Friday, a day after the country reported a near-record high in daily cases of the disease.

"The first people who will qualify for the booster dose in South Africa will be people over the age of 60 years," Dr. Nicolas Crisp, director general at the health ministry, told a weekly news conference.

Experts are working to determine whether current COVID vaccines will work against the new highly-mutated variant, which was discovered by South African scientists last month.

The daily number of new COVID infections surged to a high of 22,391 on Thursday, when nearly 30 percent of tests were positive.

The highest daily tally so far was in early July, when the country hit more 26,000 new infections.

Health practitioners last month had already started being offered Johnson & Johnson shots as boosters.

South Africa is the worst-hit country in the continent for coronavirus, recording a cumulative 3.09 million cases, of which over 90,000 have been fatal.

A small study this week by the country's African Health Research Institute, not yet peer reviewed, suggested that Omicron may be able to evade some of the antibody immunity from the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine.

But, its authors said, there was no reason to believe that vaccination would not protect against from severe disease caused by the variant.

Slightly more than a quarter of South Africa's population are fully vaccinated, with the figure among adults being 43 percent.

Omicron accounts for around 70 percent of new infections being detected in South Africa, Health Minister Joe Phaahla has said.

However, hospitalised patients are so far showing mild symptoms, he said.

Explore further S.Africa okays COVID vaccine boosters for adults

 2021 AFP
An anti-vaccination protest in Leipzig, Germany. Credit: Eric Lenz/Shutterstock

The COVID-19 pandemic has been accompanied by an "infodemic" of false information and conspiracy theories since the virus first emerged nearly two years ago. Exposure to misinformation can reduce plans to get vaccinated, and may potentially put more people at risk.

This tension between those who are vaccinated and those who reject vaccines or dispute the science can divide families and rip apart friendships especially when loved ones are immersed in conspiracy theories about, for example, the origin of COVID-19 or mask wearing.

With Germany hit by a significant fourth wave of COVID infections, several German states are now trying new ways to tackle COVID denial and false information about vaccination. Building on research about disinformation, which refers to incorrect information that is deliberately spread, some states have created centers with free, confidential counseling for people who are either looking for help in dealing with family members who believe false information or just want to check facts.

German disinformation centers

For example, a center in the state of Baden-Wurttemberg provides telephone counseling. According to its annual report many people ask questions such as: "How can we deal with those who believe in conspiracy theories?" or "Are there conversation strategies to convince the other person that he is wrong?"

Baden-Wurttemberg center staff handled more than 300 requests for advice and information in 2020. The largest category was inquiries about conspiracy theories. Similar centers to counter the negative impact of conspiracy theories are in Berlin and North Rhine-Westphalia.

Studies repeatedly reveal an association between the belief in conspiracy theories and the rejection of sometimes life-saving preventive measures such as vaccinations. In Germany research has linked a higher acceptance of misinformation to support for the far-right AFD party as well as a reliance on social media for news. And even before the pandemic, studies found that exposure to conspiracy theories can lead to people making decisions that are hazardous to their health.

According to some early work on disinformation, yet to be fully reviewed, it could reduce compliance with social distancing, which in turn could lead to more cases.

The German centers' advice also builds on a technique known as motivational interviewing. This relies on asking open-ended questions. For example, instead of trying to overwhelm a friend or family member with facts about the safety of vaccines, one should give the person space to express his or her fears by asking, "What do you think about vaccines?" Instead of saying, "No, you're wrong," or instead of mocking the other person one should present the other person's decision-making process as perfectly understandable. "Oh yes, I also read that on social media. Sounded really scary."

Rebutting false information

After demonstrating respect and empathy in this manner, one can then offer to provide facts by asking: "Would you mind if I tell you what I know about these posts on social media?" There is no guarantee of success, but failure is more likely if one takes a direct, confrontational approachhowever tempting that may be.

The centers also provide leaflets to help people spot conspiracy theories. Our research has culminated in a handbook, available in ten languages, on how to rebut COVID disinformation and how best to communicate the scientific knowledge about vaccines.

One promising avenue of research that we report on uses inoculation theory. This gets its name because the idea of it is like a medical vaccination, it provides people with a defense against a later attack by misinformation. Inoculation involves giving people information about how they might be misled, without necessarily anticipating what exactly they will encounter later. Knowing how disinformers operate (such as by making incoherent arguments or appealing to emotion), can "inoculate" people against being swayed by misinformation.

Anyone can find themselves confronted by loved ones who suddenly embrace various conspiracy theories. Initiatives such as the ones in Germany, and digital or printed guides are one way to try to treat and prevent further psychological damage of COVID-19 in families and friends.

Science-based crisis communication skills rely on empathy and critical thinking. These must play a more central role in professional training for doctors in discussing these issues with patients, but they are also available to better prepare the public for the infodemic and its potential effects.

Explore further Twitter is the social network most resistant to conspiracy theory beliefs

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Credit: Unsplash/CC0 Public Domain

The new research, led by the University of Sydney, is a two-year follow up of the Australian Placental Transfusion Study, the award-winning and largest-ever clinical trial of delayed cord clamping of babies born before 30 weeks. It was conducted in 25 hospitals across seven countries.

The new study compared outcomes for over 1500 babies from the initial study, 767 with caregivers aiming for 60 second delay in clamping and 764 with caregivers aiming for cord clamping before 10 seconds after delivery.

Researchers found that delaying clamping reduces a child's relative risk of death or major disability in early childhood by 17 percent. This included a 30 percent reduction in mortality before the age of two.

In addition, 15 percent fewer infants in the delayed-clamping group needed blood transfusions after birth.

The study is published in The Lancet Child and Adolescent Health today.

It is coordinated by the University of Sydney's NHMRC Clinical Trials Centre in collaboration with the IMPACT Clinical Trials Network of the Perinatal Society of Australia and New Zealand and the Australian and New Zealand Neonatal Network.

Study lead, Professor William Tarnow-Mordi, Head of Neonatal and Perinatal Trials at the Clinical Trials Centre and Professor of Neonatal Medicine in the Faculty of Medicine and Health said the simple process of aiming to wait a minute before clamping will have significant impact worldwide.

"It's very rare to find an intervention with this sort of impact that is free and requires nothing more sophisticated than a clock. This could significantly contribute to the UN's Sustainable Development goal to end preventable deaths in newborns and children under fivea goal which has really suffered during the pandemic," he said.

"Applied consistently worldwide, aiming to wait a minute before cord clamping in very preterm babies who do not require immediate resuscitation could ensure that an extra 50,000 survive without major disability in the next decade," said biostatistician Dr. Kristy Robledo from the University of Sydney who led the two-year follow-up analysis.

"In other words, for every 20 very preterm babies who get delayed instead of immediate clamping, one more will survive without major disability."

Why wait?

Delayed umbilical cord clamping is routine in full term babies to allow the newborn time to adapt to life outside the womb, however, until recently, clinicians generally cut the cord of preterm babies immediately so urgent medical care could be given.

"Ten years ago, umbilical cords were routinely clamped quickly after a very preterm birth and the baby was passed to a paediatrician in case the child needed urgent help with breathing," said Professor Tarnow-Mordi.

"But we now know that almost all very preterm babies will start breathing by themselves in the first minute, if they are given that time."

"We think that, after delaying cord clamping, babies get extra red and white blood cells and stem cells from the placenta, helping to achieve healthy oxygen levels, control infection and repair injured tissue."

What does this mean for babies born today?

The childhood follow-up to the Australian Placental Transfusion Study is the largest world-wide two-year follow up of preterm cord clamping providing the best evidence to date on positive outcomes at two years of age.

Co-author and founder of Miracle Babies Foundation Melinda Cruz, herself a parent of three preterm babies, said she hoped the results would give parents confidence to discuss their options with their birthing professionals.

"I hope that prospective parents around the world will read about this trial for themselves and discuss it with their midwives and obstetricians," she said.

From research to practice

The first evidence, published in the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology, indicating that delayed umbilical cord clamping might have benefits for preterm infants and their mothers came in 2017 from a systematic review of randomised trials in nearly 3,000 preterm babies.

The Australian Placental Transfusion Study led by Professor Tarnow-Mordi was the largest of these trials and went to be named winner of the 'Trial of the Year' by Federal Health Minister, Greg Hunt MP and the Australian Clinical Trials Alliance in 2018.

While the World Health Organization recommends that newborns, including preterm babies who do not require positive pressure ventilation should not have their cord clamped earlier than one minute after birth this has not always been consistently applied.

Next steps

"Midwives welcome this researchdelaying cord clamping ensures that the physiological changes happening at the time of birth can happen and there are clearly very good outcomes especially for premature babies. We can all do this and now we know we should," said Professor Caroline Homer, President of the Perinatal Society of Australia and New Zealand and past President of the Australian College of Midwives.

"Moving forward it's vital that perinatal professionals record the time of first breath and cord clamping to the second during births to allow for robust, large-scale data to further our work in this area," said co-author Professor Jonathan Morris, Professor of Obstetrics and Gynaecology at the University of Sydney and Director of Women and Babies Research at The Kolling Institute.

"Intensive staff training in the new protocols will also be vital as it can be daunting to delay treatment in very early and sick babies, but the evidence suggests this results in the best outcomes for these children."

The ALPHA Collaboration (Advancing Large collectively Prioritised trials for Health outcomes Assessment) will be vital to taking this research forward. They are an international collaboration of perinatal researchers, professionals, parents and policymakers that work with organisations and individuals worldwide to ensure that trials like this can, in the future, run at least ten times larger and faster, in a new era of increased international collaboration.

More information: Kristy P Robledo et al, Effects of delayed versus immediate umbilical cord clamping in reducing death or major disability at 2 years corrected age among very preterm infants (APTS): a multicentre, randomised clinical trial, The Lancet Child & Adolescent Health (2021). Journal information: American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology Kristy P Robledo et al, Effects of delayed versus immediate umbilical cord clamping in reducing death or major disability at 2 years corrected age among very preterm infants (APTS): a multicentre, randomised clinical trial,(2021). DOI: 10.1016/S2352-4642(21)00373-4
7-day rolling average. Due to limited testing, the number of confirmed cases is lower than the true number of infections. Credit: Johns Hopkins CSSE COVID data/Our World in Data

A high vaccination rate is the foundation of any pandemic policy, but further protection is still needed. From an economic perspective, that protection comes from more investment in healthcare and air quality, which now seem essential complements to vaccines and face masks.

Looking at continental Europe over the last weeks, it seems the relative calm of the vaccine summer is over. The vaccines work wonderfully but are not a miracle cure. Austria is a painful example, where vaccination rates are low in mountainous areas (63% of total population), but much higher around Vienna (70%). And just as doctors in rural Salzburg were deciding between life and death three weeks ago, the situation got out of hand in Vienna as well. This culminated into a national lockdown, 2020 style.

Daily new confirmed COVID cases per million people

The reason is simple. The vaccines protect us against hospitalization and severe disease (see graph below), but less against transmission with each month that goes by. Hence the term vaccine waning. As a result, the virus can still circulate in places with high vaccination rates, and crucially, pressure on hospitals can rise rapidly since vaccinated people still have a small risk of ending up there. A small percentage of a very large group is all it takes.

COVID-19 doses and confirmed deaths

This pressure cooker would have been a lot more explosive without the vaccines, and we can be grateful for that, but it shows the limitations of a strategy solely based on vaccination. This goes for Western Europe, but also for the UK where COVID numbers have stabilized at an uncomfortably high level and are creeping up again.

More importantly, even if boosters can provide more sustainable protection against transmission, which seems increasingly likely, there is no guarantee this will also cover the latest Omicron variant. And adapting the vaccines to new variants takes 100 days at best.

Given this uncertainty, and to minimize the risk of further lockdowns which come with huge societal and economic costs, having a broader long-term strategy as we move from pandemic to endemic phase (the normal circulation of a virus, like flu) cannot hurt.

Increasing efforts

So what can be done? Besides getting that third shot into as many arms as possible, we can first of all boost healthcare itself. Since the crisis could last for years and we do not know what other crises lie ahead, this can be seen as a valuable insurance.

In the Netherlands for example, vaccination coverage is as high as in Belgium (75% of total population) but ICU capacity is lower (and only slightly lower than in the UK), which partially explains why Belgium was able to avoid a stricter lockdown last month.

Such a safety net then consists primarily of sufficient ICU, acute care, vaccination and testing capacity, but certainly also of more support for GPs and long-term care, since everything is connected.

As much of the current pressure on healthcare systems is due to absenteeism, protecting the mental health of healthcare workers and giving them a pay raise would be a quick win. Making lateral-flow tests freely and widely available across Europe to boost testing capacity, as the UK has done, is another. All in all, boosting healthcare can be seen as a productive investment, as it gives us more of a buffer before having to shut down schools or parts of the economy.

Subsidies to improve air quality could be a second strategy. Why not make this compulsory for all large office buildings and schools, and organize checks on CO meters in the hospitality industry, for example? We have known for more than a year that the virus is also spread through the airespecially in enclosed spaces where the aerosol cloud can build up, just like cigarette smoke. So places need to be well ventilated. A recent study shows that indoor CO monitoring reveals to be a practical proxy to SARS-CoV-2 transmission risk.

Better ventilation and air filters are a logical solution. Working with air filters is surprisingly cheap and flexible, and is a quick fix, while refitting existing buildings with better ventilation is more cumbersome and costly.

Due to limited testing and challenges in the attribution of the cause of death, confirmed deaths can be lower than the true number of deaths. Credit: John Hopkins CSSE COVID data/Our World in Data

But even this would be a clear win in the long run, since studies show that well-ventilated spaces make for a better learning environment or workplace. Better air means fewer respiratory illnesses in general, so this investment would also increase our productivity in normal times.

Given that these are all productive investments, we can use our remaining fiscal flexibility to finance them. The benefits will outweigh the costs, which are still peanuts compared to the huge sums of state aid given to companies in the form of grants and loans during the pandemic, partially propping up "zombie companies." The latter was a necessary evil, a side effect from saving entire economies from the brink in 2020-2021. But now the time has come to gradually phase out this support, and invest in strategies for the future.

Working from home

But even if we go for all those investments, we are not out of the woods yet. To fully eliminate the lockdown risk, we need to be able to switch up remote working relatively quickly. If the figures rise above a certain level, remote working could become the norm.

Experts will have to decide on the thresholds, and which jobs will qualify, but the principle is clear. When we are on the brink, we work from home as much as possible. Even when this causes efficiency losses, which is far from certain if we pick the right jobs, it must be clear to employers that the alternative of a lockdown is much worse. Unfortunately, we cannot continue paying for furlough schemes and state aid should something similar happen in future.

When the benefits of a policy outweigh the cost in any conceivable scenario, there is little reason not to do it. If politicians want to regain the trust they have lost along the way, showing us they can do the maths will restore our confidence in their competence.

Explore further Making vaccination compulsory for NHS frontline workers likely to make patients suffer

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
GROUPS OF parents and other anti-communist organizations condemned the acquittal of about 15 leaders of the Communist Party of the Philipp...
TUNIS, Tunisia (AP)  A fire at Tunisias largest Islamist party's headquarters in the capital Tunis Thursday killed one person and injured eighteen, authorities and the party said. The injured included a former prime minister who was hurt after jumping out of a window.

In a statement, the Ennahdha movement said party activist Sami Sifi, 51, died and several staff members and politicians were injured.

The cause of the blaze was not immediately clear.

Tunisia's Interior Ministry said a charred body had been taken away by rescue teams and 18 people had been injured, most of whom were treated for respiratory problems.

Videos on social media showed a thick column of white smoke rising from the building, as occupants tried to jump out of the windows to escape the flames.

Ennahdha Vice-President Ali Laarayedh, who served as Tunisias prime minister in 2013-2014, suffered leg fractures after jumping from a second floor window. His son wrote on social media that he was taken to hospital for treatment.

Ennahdha said the causes of the fire are not yet known.

The Party prays for mercy for the deceased and expresses condolences to his family, it thanks the firefighters who intervened quickly to put out the fire and rescue those present at the headquarters it said in a statement.

The Interior Ministry said a judicial inquiry had been opened.

Formerly Tunisias ruling party with a majority of seats in parliament, Ennahdha has been in the grip of an internal crisis for months, sparked by Tunisian President Kais Saieds power grab this summer.

On 25 July, following nationwide anti-government protests which partly targeted Ennahdha offices across the country, Saied abruptly dismissed his government and froze parliament, taking on sweeping powers.

Ennahdha leader Rached Ghannouchi compared the measures to a coup detat.

Although observers have warned of democratic backsliding, Saieds measures have proven widely popular with a Tunisian public weary of the countrys political elites amid an economic and political crisis exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. Many Tunisians blame Ennahdha for mishandling the countrys successive crises.

In the decade after Tunisias 2011 revolution that ousted autocrat Zine Al Abidine Ben Ali, Ennahdha experienced a resurgence and dominated Tunisias politics.

But since July, hundreds of Ennahdha MPs have resigned or openly criticized the party and its leader Ghannouchi.

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BREVARD, N.C.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Dec 10, 2021--

Gaia Herbs, a leading natural herbal products brand in the United States, today announced the launch of its new line of USDA Certified Organic, Non-GMO Project Verified, plant-powered herbal gummies with three concentrated, great-tasting varieties: Ashwagandha Gummies, Sleep Gummies, and Relax Gummies. All three gummy formulas are now available on gaiaherbs.com and will roll out across natural and health food stores nationally beginning in January 2022.

This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20211210005040/en/

Gaia Herbs Herbal Gummies Line. (Photo: Business Wire)

For more than 30 years, Gaia Herbs has been a pioneer in the natural products industry, producing the highest-quality herbal supplements assured for purity, potency, and integrity by combining scientific expertise and traditional herbal wisdom. The company brings the same approach to its new line of herbal gummies, which are expertly formulated with only the best organic and sustainably sourced herbs to help reduce stress and promote relaxation.* Gaia Herbs new Ashwagandha Gummies deliver a potent six grams of Ashwagandha to promote stress reduction and an increased resistance to stress.* The brands new Sleep Gummies blend Ashwagandha and Passionflower to maintain a sense of calm and promote a good nights rest.* Lastly, Gaia Herbs new Relax Gummies contain a harmonious blend of Passionflower, Holy Basil, and Lemon Balm to maintain emotional well-being and support a sense of calm and relaxation.*

At Gaia Herbs, we believe that plants have the power to heal. This belief is and always has been at the forefront of our product growth and innovation as a company, said Tracy Eames, Vice President of Marketing for Gaia Herbs. Over the last two years, we have introduced gummy products that have set a new market standard combining taste, convenience, potency, and quality. The launch of our new herbal gummies is a testament to the commitment we have made to provide consumers with a delicious, convenient way to incorporate herbal supplements into their daily routines. We know ingredients are important, so each new gummy formula is sweetened only with real fruit, flavored only with herbs and pure essential oils, and made with sustainably sourced ingredients that are clean and traceable.

Gaia Herbs new herbal gummies reflect the companys mission of producing products with transparent and sustainable sourcing. The brand believes that herbs should be sourced from where they grow best, which has allowed Gaia Herbs to create lasting relationships with other producers and farmers around the world who share their same commitment to quality, sustainability, and transparency. The line is Certified Organic, Non-GMO Project Verified, and plant-powered, made without any artificial colors, preservatives, flavors, or sweeteners.

As with all Gaia Herbs supplements, the new herbal gummies are purity-tested. They are also vegan, dairy-free, gluten-free, and soy-free. Additional product details include:

Ashwagandha Herbal Gummies: Formulated to promote stress reduction and an increased resistance to stress: Each gummy delivers a potent six grams of this ancient adaptogenic herb to help the body cope with lifes challenges.* Sweetened only with real fruitblueberry, apple, and dateand flavored with ginger and cinnamon, these gummies are a tasty way to support a healthy response to stress.* SRP $14.99 (45 CT); SRP $26.99 (81 CT)

Sleep Herbal Gummies: The herbal powers of Ashwagandha, Passionflower, Reishi, and Jujube date combine to help combat occasional sleeplessness.* Sweetened with apple and tart cherry, and flavored with sweet orange oil, these gummies are a delicious way to support a sense of calm and promote a restful nights sleep, with benefits that continue to build over time.* SRP $17.99 (40 CT)

Relax Herbal Gummies: This expertly formulated blend of Passionflower, Lemon Balm, and Holy Basil promotes relaxation and helps maintain emotional well-being.* Flavored with lemon oil and sweetened with apple and blueberry, these refreshing and tasty gummies are designed to support a sense of calm in times of stress.* SRP $17.99 (45 CT)

Gaia Herbs believes in providing the highest level of transparency. Through its industry-leading Meet Your Herbs  traceability program, consumers can enter the ID number located on the back of any of its newest herbal gummy formulas, and all other Gaia Herbs products, to learn where the ingredients came from, including how the herbs were grown, harvested, and extracted, and the tests the product underwent to validate its purity, potency, and integrity. Gaia Herbs allows consumers to do this for a simple reason: It has nothing to hide and everything to share, and the company believes that everyone has the right to know what they are putting in their body.

All Gaia Herbs products are sold through natural and independently owned health food stores across the nation as well as through gaiaherbs.com and other trusted online retail sites. To find a store near you, visit gaiaherbs.com/stores.

About Gaia Herbs

For over 30 years, Gaia Herbs has been connecting people, plants, and planet to create healing. Gaia Herbs is a leading herbal brand in North America committed to creating the highest-quality health and wellness products assured for purity, potency, and integrity. The company offers more than 200 herbal products, including liquid extracts, functional powders, gummies, teas, and Liquid Phyto-Caps . From its Certified Organic farm nestled in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Western North Carolina, the company uses regenerative agriculture methods to grow more than three million plants each year and harvests and extracts the herbs at just the right time, when the phytochemicals are at their peak. Gaia Herbs introduced the worlds first herb traceability program, meetyourherbs.com, which allows it to share complete transparency around its herbs and ingredients. The company is proud to be a Certified B Corporation  using business as a force for good. Through the Gaia Herbs Roots Initiative, the company champions environmental and social sustainability on its farm and around the world. Learn more at gaiaherbs.com and join in the conversation on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and Instagram.

*These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.

View source version on businesswire.com:https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20211210005040/en/

CONTACT: Sarah Appelblatt

Rachel Kay Public Relations

(858) 229-2478

KEYWORD: NORTH CAROLINA UNITED STATES NORTH AMERICA

INDUSTRY KEYWORD: RETAIL ALTERNATIVE MEDICINE HEALTH FOOD/BEVERAGE

SOURCE: Gaia Herbs

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JACKSON, Miss. (AP)  A federal judge has approved funding for an independent monitor to collect and analyze data on how Mississippi's mental health system is working to prevent unnecessary hospitalizations.

U.S. District Judge Carlton Reeves ordered on Dec. 3 that the state make an initial payment of $25,000 to Michael Hogan, a mental health care veteran with 40 years experience. He previously served as special master amid the ongoing litigation between the Mississippi Department of Health and the federal government.

The order comes as the state is appealing a September ruling from Reeves that requires it to design a plan for the future of the states mental health care system.

Hogan submitted a proposed budget on Oct. 18 totaling $317,330 in estimated costs for the year to fulfill his role as a monitor. That includes fees for Hogan's duties and for experts that may need to be required to assist with data analysis and validation.

Under Reeves order, the state is responsible for tracking a wide array of data, including state hospital admissions and the number of patients who remain in state hospitals more than 180 days; calls to mobile crisis teams, and the number of people being placed in jail while waiting for a state hospital bed.

While acting as monitor, Hogan will be required to provide reports every six months on the states compliance with Reeves order. Reeves will hold a status conference with the state, the federal government and Hogan after each report is submitted. Hogan will be appointed for three years and could be reappointed.

Reeves also ruled in September that the state must start a clinical review process. The state must sample 100 to 200 patients a year to assure that services are working as intended to address the needs of people with serious mental illness.

However, the state requested that the implementation of the review process be delayed while its appeal is underway.

The requirements are the result of a yearslong legal battle over how Mississippi cares for people with mental illness.

The federal government issued a letter in 2011 saying the state had done too little to provide mental health services outside mental hospitals. The Justice Department sued Mississippi in 2016, and Reeves ruled the state was in violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act.

State attorneys contend Mississippi has enacted programs that enable people to obtain treatment in their communities and avoid hospitalizations, such as mobile crisis teams, supportive housing and peer support services. Justice Department attorneys said during a hearing last summer that those services need to be expanded and that there need to be metrics to ensure they are working.

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Members of the governing body of an Alaska borough roughly the size of West Virginia wont hold meetings in 2022 outside the governing city, a practice that became a casualty of the coronavirus pandemic.

The Kenai Peninsula Borough this week nixed annual one-time, in-person meetings in the communities of Seward and Homer, instead opting to continue holding all meetings over Zoom from the borough seat in Kenai, the Peninsula Clarion reported.

The practice of traveling to the other communities was suspended in both 2020 and 2021 because of the pandemic.

Assembly member Brent Hibbert said meetings outside Kenai involve travel time for staff to set up, but indicated the Zoom meetings allow others to participate. He noted that at Tuesdays meeting, two mayors  including one from Seldovia, a community that is a boat ride across Kachemak Bay from Homer  joined by Zoom.

I dont know why we cant do this by Zoom, said Hibbert, who voted against in-person meetings. We have the capabilities. It keeps us off the road, it keeps us safe. Were not driving back in the dark.

Assembly member Cindy Ecklund supported holding the meetings outside of Kenai.

Theres so many people serving the borough in these other areas, Ecklund said. I just thought that would be something that people would want to do.  (Its) one time a year, guys.

Supporters said traveling to other communities offers the chance for assembly members to make personal connections with people in those communities.

You have borough assembly members from the small communities that travel to Kenai and Soldotna all the time, and nobody talks about the safety and the travel for those assembly members, Homer resident Ingrid Harrald told assembly members.

As somebody who is very involved in local politics, me talking over Zoom or over the phone does not have the impact of sitting in front of you, Harrald said.

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ANNAPOLIS, Md. (AP)  The Maryland General Assembly voted to override more than 20 of Gov. Larry Hogans vetoes in a special session this week during its special session on redistricting. While lawmakers overrode Hogan's veto of a redrawn congressional map, here are some of the measures approved by the Democrat-controlled legislature in the last session that were enacted this week over the Republican governors opposition:

IMMIGRATION

Lawmakers enacted legislation that bans local jails from being paid by the federal government to detain people on immigration matters in Maryland. They also voted to override the governors veto of a bill that requires state employees to deny inspection of records or use of facial recognition technology by any federal agency seeking to enforce immigration law without a warrant.

PAROLE-GOVERNOR

Lawmakers voted to repeal a requirement that parole for an inmate serving a life sentence must be approved by the governor and puts the decision in the control of a parole commission.

LOCAL TAXES

Maryland counties and the city of Baltimore will have more flexibility in setting local income taxes.

EMERGENCY PROCUREMENTS

The governor will be required to provide a legislative panel notice within 72 hours after the execution of a contract or spending of money when authorizing certain emergency procurement during a state of emergency.

PANDEMIC PLANNING

The law will require the state health department to work with local health departments and the Maryland State Department of Education to implement a two-year plan to respond to COVID-19.

TRANSIT FUNDING

The state will be required to make investments to maintain the states public transit system to start addressing a $2 billion maintenance backlog.

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The Los Angeles Board of Education has chosen the longtime superintendent of Miami-Dade County Public Schools to be the next superintendent of Los Angeles Unified School District, the second largest in the nation, officials said Thursday.

The board announced the appointment of Alberto Carvalho after a unanimous vote Thursday, as Carvalho held a live news conference in Florida, describing his career path as a story that could only be told in America.

An admired and experienced educator, Carvalho, 57, is credited with improving graduation rates and academic performance at Miami-Dade, the countrys fourth-largest K-12 public school district, during a long, stable tenure that started in 2008. Like many students in Los Angeles and Miami-Dade, both large, urban districts, Carvalho grew up in poverty. He came to the United States as an undocumented immigrant, he said. He moved first to New York City and then to Miami.

I am the poor kid from Portugal whose first job in this country was as a dishwasher, second job was as a day laborer, Carvalho said. On his way to Thursdays news conference, Carvalho said he drove through a Miami neighborhood where he had been homeless 30 years ago.

My world changed when I became a teacher, Carvalho said. I still feel this journey is a fairytale."

Carvalho attended Broward Community College and graduated in 1990 from Barry University, a small Catholic school near Miami, with a biology degree. He became a high school science and math teacher before quickly moving up the administrative ranks, becoming a principal before moving to the district office where he was the districts spokesman and an assistant superintendent before becoming superintendent.

His 2008 hiring in Miami revealed that Carvalho had been exchanging explicit emails with a former Miami Herald reporter. He denied an affair, but conceded that the exchanges were inappropriate.

He earned numerous accolades during his tenure, including being named Superintendent of the Year in 2014 by the national superintendents association. In 2018, New York Mayor Bill de Blasio named him as education chancellor of the nation's largest school district, but Carvalho backed out of the deal the next day. He said Thursday that New Yorks lure was that it was where he arrived in the United States, but it became apparent quickly that it did not have all the elements necessary for him to succeed. He did not elaborate.

Carvalho said Thursday he is proud of his time in Miami. He said when he took over as superintendent, the graduation rate was 58% and dozens of schools received D and F grades from the state. Nine inner-city schools were threatened by the state with closure. The district says its current graduation rate is 93% and has no D or F schools.

Alberto Carvalho brings the deep experience we need as an educator and leader of a large urban district to manage L.A. Unifieds ongoing response to and recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic, Board President Kelly Gonez said in a statement. As the longtime Miami-Dade Superintendent, he established a clear record of positive student outcomes and has relentlessly worked towards greater equity for historically underserved communities. I know he will continue that focus in Los Angeles, and he is ready for the challenges and opportunities ahead of us.

The school board said it had unanimously voted to select Carvalho as the next superintendent but still needed to finalize his contract, which would be voted on Dec. 14.

In Los Angeles, Carvalho succeeds Austin Beutner, who stepped down as superintendent in June at the end of his three-year contract, after steering the school system through the early stages of the pandemic and a full year of distance learning, while all schools were closed to in-person classes.

Since Beutners departure the district has been managed by Interim Superintendent Megan Reilly.

Carvalho arrives in Los Angeles at a critical moment, as the district that serves about 600,000 students finds itself flush with funding from state and federal COVID-19 relief money but still struggling with the impacts of the pandemic, including learning losses and declining enrollment.

Carvalho and several other Florida superintendents sparred this year with Gov. Ron DeSantis over their imposition of mask mandates to combat the states then-rapid spread of COVID-19. DeSantis, through his education commissioner, banned mandates, saying that should be left to parents. He cut funding to some districts that defied him.

But Carvalho and others refused to yield, saying masks protected students, teachers and staff. Carvalho dropped Miami-Dades mandate last month as the states infection rate dropped and a judge upheld DeSantis power to allow parents to decide for their students.

Mask mandates remain in effect in all California public schools, and Carvalho will be arriving in Los Angeles as the school district becomes one of the first in California to put a student vaccine mandate into effect in mid-January for all children 12 and older.

Carvalho said that when he arrives in Los Angeles, he plans to spend some time learning the district and its culture.

Certainly, I will bring my personal philosophy but at the same time I will listen carefully to the culture, to the tradition, to the practices of Los Angeles," he said.

Gecker reported from San Francisco and Spencer contributed from Fort Lauderdale, Florida.

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COPENHAGEN, Denmark (AP)  The two journalists who shared this year's Nobel Peace Prize received their awards Friday during a pomp-filled ceremony in Norway, with both warning that the world needs independent reporting to counter the power of authoritarian governments.

Maria Ressa of the Philippines and fellow laureate Dmitry Muratov of Russia gave their Nobel lectures at Oslo City Hall. The Norwegian Nobel Committee awarded them the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize for their separate fights for freedom of expression in countries where reporters have faced persistent attacks, harassment and killings.

Yes, we growl and bite. Yes, we have sharp teeth and strong grip, Muratov said of journalists. But we are the prerequisite for progress. We are the antidote against tyranny.

Muratov also used his speech to give a dire warning about the potential for a war between Russia and Ukraine. A massive Russian troop buildup near Ukraine's border has led to Western diplomatic efforts to prevent an invasion, which the Kremlin has denied it is planning.

"In (the) heads of some crazy geopoliticians, a war between Russia and Ukraine is not something impossible any longer. But I know that wars end with identifying soldiers and exchanging prisoners, Muratov said.

Ressa, 58, co-founded Rappler, a news website critical of the Philippine government, in 2012. Muratov, 59, was one of the founders in 1993 of the independent Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta.

Ressa, the first person from the Philippines to win the Nobel Peace Prize, offered a bleak assessment of the journalism industry, saying the era of competition for news is dead.

We need to help independent journalism survive, first by giving greater protection to journalists and standing up against states which target journalists, she told the audience of 200 people, including Norwegian royals and officials who sat with a meter (3 feet) separating them for the pandemic-curtailed ceremony. Normally the Oslo event is attended by 1,000 people.

Ressa, who was visibly moved, couldnt resist taking a selfie with Muratov inside the Oslo City Hall before the arrival of the Norwegian royals.

Together with the medals featuring the effigy of the prizes founder Alfred Nobel and diploma, came 10 million kronor ($1.1 million) to be shared between them.

Norwegian Nobel Committee chairwoman Berit Reiss-Andersen said free speech and information are a basic prerequisite for democracy itself. The laureates are participants in a war where the written word is their weapon, where truth is their goal and every exposure of misuse of power is a victory."

Muratov said that in Russia, journalism is going through a dark valley with many reporters and human rights activists being branded as foreign agents.

"Many of our colleagues have lost their jobs. Some have to leave the country. Some are deprived of the opportunity to live a normal life for an unknown period of time. Maybe forever

Muratov ended his lecture by asking the assembly to honor reporters "who have given their lives for this profession, with a minute of silence. I want journalists to die old.

On Thursday, the Brussels-based International Federation of Journalists said that imprisonments of media workers are on the rise, with 365 journalists behind bars compared with 235 last year. Nine journalists have been killed in the line of duty in Afghanistan alone and 102 imprisoned in China.

Russia still has 12 journalists behind bars, and three reporters were killed in the Philippines, it said.

David Beasley, head of the World Food Program that won the 2020 Nobel Peace Prize, also gave a lecture in Oslo and called on world leaders to assert your power and stop all of these horrible wars. Beasley was given the award last year at a ceremony in Rome, due to the pandemic.

He said that the combination of conflict, climate and COVID has created an unprecedented perfect storm, adding 45 million in 43 countries are knocking on famines door and it is within our power to save them.

He also urged billionaires to give us the $6.6 billion we need to prevent famine now and save 45 million lives now, and said they know how to revolutionize phones, cars, rockets, and retail. Help us revolutionize how the planet eats.

Ceremonies honoring all of the newest Nobel laureates are usually held in Oslo and Sweden's capital, Stockholm, on Dec. 10, the anniversary of prize founder Alfred Nobel's death. However, due to the pandemic, the awards in physics, chemistry, medicine, literature and economics were presented during ceremonies in the laureates hometowns.

The ongoing coronavirus pandemic still affects our lives in a profound manner. Like last year, the Nobel award diploma and medals have been handed over to you, Carl-Henrik Heldin, chairman of the Nobel Foundation, said later Friday at a ceremony to pay tribute to the laureates at Stockholm City Hall.

The 250-strong audience included Swedens King Carl XVI Gustav, senior members of Swedens royal family, scholars and officials. Normally, approximately 1,250 people attend.

Wrapping up the nearly 90-minute event, actress Lena Olin who hosted the ceremony said the 2021 laureates are dedicated to truth in various forms  scientific knowledge, the human experience and the fundamental right of journalists to report facts.

In Oslo, the day is to end with a torchlit procession from the city's Central Station to the Grand Hotel, where the Peace Prize laureates are to greet the parade from a balcony.

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COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP)  For five hours Thursday, the South Carolina House debated a proposal to prevent private companies in South Carolina from firing employees who refuse to get a COVID-19 vaccine.

Then, just before members were set to vote, Republican leadership stripped that ban from the bill, leaving it only banning COVID-19 vaccine mandates for state and local government employees, contractors and public school students.

The bill passed 67-31 on Thursday and only needs a routine third reading Friday before being sent to the Senate. Senators have already gone home and appear unlikely to take the matter up before the regular 2022 session begins on Jan. 11.

The proposal requires employers to honor religious or medical exemptions and said a medical exemption can include a prior positive COVID-19 test, pregnancy or presence of coronavirus antibodies. It also makes businesses pay unemployment benefits to a worker fired for not being vaccinated.

The suddenly watered-down bill was a dizzying, but maybe not surprising end to a whirlwind 48 hours where the proposal went from a subcommittee to the House floor.

Republicans typically allow businesses in the state to have free rein and numerous groups, including the South Carolina Chamber of Commerce, asked lawmakers to oppose the bill. Democrats spent hours championing businesses and the right of employers to determine requirements for their workers only to watch the debate change in an instant.

Democrats suggested Republicans were trying to provide cover for their most conservative members in party primaries by putting on a debate.

The amendment that altered the bill came when there was only six minutes of debate available on the proposal.

Nobody knows what it is  that's not a good way to govern, said Rep. Russell Ott, a Democrat from St. Matthews.

Only two states  Montana and Tennessee  have passed similar bans for private businesses. Fewer than a dozen states have in place similar laws to what the South Carolina House ended up passing Thursday.

Before agreeing to strip out the ban on private businesses allowing vaccines, the bill's primary supporter Rep. Stewart Jones argued that the proposal protected personal freedom.

Its a question of if anybody should be able to make you inject something into your body without your own will, the Republican from Laurens said.

Democrats put up more than a dozen amendments during the day that were all rejected. They included proposals to force state employees who aren't vaccinated to pay more in health insurance premiums, require hospitals to prioritize care for the vaccinated, make it a misdemeanor to possess a fake vaccine ID card and require unvaccinated people to pay all their medical costs out of pocket.

If you choose to be stupid, pay the stupid price, said Rep. Cezar McKnight, a Democrat from Kingstree.

Before the switch, the South Carolina Chamber of Commerce and 27 other business associations from local chambers to trade associations of retailers, truckers, manufacturers and others said they were against the bill, calling it an unprecedented step against free enterprise.

South Carolina has a long-held tradition of being a pro-business state that allows businesses to operate with minimal government intervention, the groups said in their statement. Employment decisions have been left to individual businesses in our state, subject to what each business believes is right for their operations.

Upon being sent to the Senate, the bill likely can't go anywhere until the General Assembly returns for its regular 2022 session on Jan. 11. Senators at the end of their redistricting special session Tuesday were wishing colleagues and staff Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year and saying they would see them in January.

Follow Jeffrey Collins on Twitter at https://twitter.com/JSCollinsAP.

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TORONTO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Dec 10, 2021--

Cross-Border Impact Ventures (CBIV) today announced the launch of the firm and its Womens and Childrens Health Technology Fund, which will invest in health technology companies that address the health needs of women, children, and adolescents or make health systems more resilient. CBIV has US$30 million in commitments towards an ultimate fund size of more than US$100 million and anticipates making its first investments in Q1 2022.

This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20211210005089/en/

Cross-Border Impact Ventures will invest in health technology companies with global growth, high return, and impact potential. Its primary focus is on medical device, diagnostic, and digital health companies based in North America, Europe, and Israel. Its secondary focus is on commercial stage companies in emerging markets with global technology transfer potential. (Photo: Business Wire)

The following investors are among the Limited Partners (LPs) in the CBIV Womens and Childrens Health Technology Fund:

Childrens Investment Fund Foundation (CIFF), a philanthropic organization focused on transforming the lives of children and adolescents.

Global Health Investment Corporation (GHIC), a non-profit organization catalyzing the development of technologies to improve health worldwide. GHIC is investing in the Womens and Childrens Health Technology Fund with the financial support of the German government through its KfW Development Bank.

Grand Challenges Canada (GCC), a Canadian not-for-profit organization that invests in local innovations that address critical global health, humanitarian, and Indigenous community challenges in Canada and low-resource countries.

Hamilton Community Foundation, a public foundation whose activities include investing in organizations that create positive impact beyond financial returns.

Rally Total Impact Fund, a multi-asset class impact investment fund that uses capital to generate financial returns and create positive social and environmental impact.

RockCreek, a leading global investment firm that applies data-driven technology and innovation to create long-term value.

CBIV also has the support of a strategic healthcare investor, as well as Sida  the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency, which provides a guarantee to investors in the fund to encourage private sector participation in the firms impact investing strategy.

CBIV will invest in health technology companies with global growth, high return, and impact potential. Its primary focus is on medical device, diagnostic, and digital health companies based in North America, Europe, and Israel. Its secondary focus is on commercial stage companies in emerging markets with global technology transfer potential. Target investments include healthcare software companies with $1MM - $10MM in revenue, as well as companies developing technology that requires regulatory approval and have at least one product that is CE Mark or FDA approved. The fund will use a gender lens to invest and will work with portfolio companies to improve their diversity and ensure products meet the needs of more users of diverse backgrounds.

In addition to sourcing deals, undertaking due diligence, making investments, and working at the board level to support company growth and exit opportunities, CBIV will also target, measure, monitor, and report on impact in terms of health outcomes. CBIV has set an ambitious impact target across its portfolio companies of 500,000 lives saved and improvements in the lives of 10 million underserved women and children in emerging markets.

As an Impact Fund, CBIV is working towards SFDR Article 9 compliance in Europe, and will be signing on to the UN-developed framework for the Principles for Responsible Investment and the International Finance Corporations (IFC) Operating Principles for Impact Management.

We launched Cross-Border Impact Ventures based on the idea that borders should not dictate who gets access to the best health technologies, said Annie Theriault, Managing Partner at CBIV. Our firm will play an important role in the health technology market by investing in companies that are creating innovations that have the potential to save lives or transform healthcare in North America, Europe, emerging markets, and underserved populations. This includes healthcare tools that are easier to use, provide greater precision, and can rapidly deliver diagnostics.

Over the next decade, we expect trillions of dollars to be allocated to impact investing given its potential to drive tangible change, said Donna Parr, Managing Partner at CBIV. The timing could not be better for us to launch our impact fund, which has already attracted interest from investors in global markets that are looking to make a difference in the world while seeking venture returns.

Women Leaders Bring a Wealth of Investment Experience to CBIV

Annie Theriault, Managing Partner at CBIV, has been immersed in impact investing, venture capital, royalty financing, and capital markets throughout her career. As a venture capital investor and venture advisor, she worked with high impact companies to mobilize more than $100 million in non-dilutive capital. Annie was previously a director on the boards of several North American venture-backed companies, is an advisor to crowdfunding fintech company FrontFundr, and, prior to the launch of CBIV, was Chief Investment Officer at Grand Challenges Canada. Annie obtained her PhD in Management from the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto, is a CFA Charterholder, and holds the ICD.D designation. She also has a masters degree in Business Economics from Wilfrid Laurier University and a Bachelor of Science with First Class Honours in Chemistry from Mount Allison University.

Donna Parr, Managing Partner at CBIV, has more than 30 years of experience managing venture capital, growth equity, and private debt investment portfolios of up to $1 billion. She has managed two biotech related funds (GrowthWorks Canadian Fund and Canadian Medical Discoveries Fund) and has held roles at several notable pension funds and firms, including OMERS, CPP, and TD Capital. She is currently on the boards of Constellation Software and Topicus.com. Donna holds a masters degree in International Relations from the University of Toronto and earned her MBA from Schulich School of Business. She holds the ICD.D designation.

Scientific and Strategic Advisory Boards Support the Investing team

CBIV has a Scientific Advisory Board composed of world-class medical experts in womens, childrens, and adolescents health and innovation. This Board will provide the investment management team with objective and expert scientific views related to clinical trial protocols, product design needs, adoption issues, and trends in health technology. Advisors include: Dr. Majorie Jenkins, Dean of UofSC School of Medicine Greenville and Chief Academic Officer for Prisma Health-Upstate with prior experience with the Office of Womens Health at the FDA; Dr. Alyson McGregor, Director of the Division for Sex and Gender in Emergency Medicine at Brown Universitys Department of Emergency Medicine and expert on gender differences in chronic disease; Dr. Zulfiqar Bhutta, Co-Director at The Hospital for Sick Children (SickKids) Centre for Global Child Health; and Dr. Mario Merialdi, former Senior Director at Becton Dickinsons Global Health division and prior World Health Organization (WHO) research coordinator for maternal and perinatal health.

CBIVs Strategic Advisory Board includes experts in mergers and acquisitions, technology, international sales and marketing, strategic partnerships, and global health. Strategic advisors include Sanjay Cherian, Chief Strategy Officer at ClearDATA, with past roles at TELUS Health, Shoppers Drug Mart, and Accentures Healthcare practice; Colleen Hancock, member of the mothers2mothers board of directors, and past COO at Baby Center and VP within the Johnson & Johnson Family of Companies; Renuke Gadde, global health leader and former business lead for the Becton Dickinson Global Health division; Alice Fabiano, Global Director, Social Innovation & Investment at Johnson & Johnson; and Karlee Silver, Co-CEO at Grand Challenges Canada.

Incubated in Partnership with Grand Challenges Canada

CBIV was incubated in partnership with Grand Challenges Canada (GCC), one of the countrys largest impact-first investors. Funded by the Government of Canada and other partners, GCC funds and supports innovators in low- and middle-income countries and Canada to seed and transition to scale their Bold Ideas with Big Impact . Over the past 11 years, GCC has funded over 1,300 projects in more than 105 countries. These innovations are expected to save up to 1.78 million lives and improve up to 64 million lives by 2030.

In addition to providing initial funding to develop the strategy and facilitate the first close of the Womens and Childrens Health Technology Fund, GCC also supports CBIV with access to world class expertise in health and health impact modeling. CBIV also benefits from GCCs connections with other global health organizations and on-the-ground implementation partners. While CBIV is an independent firm, GCC will remain an advisor to CBIV. This includes supporting the evaluation of portfolio company impact, and serving on several fund advisory committees, including the Impact Committee.

Meeting the UNs Sustainable Development Goals requires filling a substantial financing gap; a broader mobilization of resources, both public and private, is necessary. New models like this fund, which leverages global market economics to create a business case for technologies useful in emerging economies, are critical to bring in new resources to save and improve lives, said Jocelyn Mackie, Co-CEO of Grand Challenges Canada. Weve learned from our anchor investment in the Global Health Investment Fund and now incubated a fund more aligned with Canadas strategic priorities: womens and childrens health and gender equality. Grand Challenges Canada is an innovation platform designed to support new models of funding innovation for impact, exactly like Cross-Border Impact Ventures.

Supplemental Quotes

As a Foundation focused on the wellbeing of women, children and adolescents, we are pleased to see the launch of this debut Fund by CBIV. The Funds strategy aligns with our belief in promoting health equity for the most economically disadvantaged, and backing new, innovative and affordable solutions to problems faced by women, children and adolescents. CBIV can help us address inequities in access by more effectively deploying technological and business model innovations.  Imraan Mohammed, Head of Impact Investing, Childrens Investment Fund Foundation (CIFF)

The Global Health Investment Corporation, with the generous support of the Government of Germany through KfW Development Bank, is pleased to support the Womens and Childrens Health Technology Fund, which will invest in technologies that address the health needs of women, children, and adolescents or make health systems more resilient.  Labeeb M. Abboud, Chairman & CEO, Global Health Investment Corporation

By providing funds to invest in the Womens and Childrens Health Technology Fund, the German government underlines its strong political focus on improving women and child health especially in Low and Middle Income countries. This first close is proof that leveraging public with private funds allows us to invest in health R&D in this essential but far too often neglected segment by the private sector.  Michael Krake, Director General, Global Health, Trade, Private Sector Development, German Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development ( BMZ )

The opportunity to support the first fund focused on women and childrens health technology and support female fund managers is aligned with our commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion across everything we do, including investing.  Annette Aquin, Executive Vice-President, Finance & Operations, Hamilton Community Foundation

Good health is a right  one that requires high quality investments to achieve. Working with Cross-Border Impact Ventures, RockCreek is building on our two-decades of investing to improve health across gender, race, age, and borders.  Alifia Doriwala, Managing Director, RockCreek

Too little attention is being paid to womens and childrens health in low- and middle-income countries and there are too few women venture capitalists. We at Sida, Sweden's government agency for development cooperation, are delighted to support Cross-Border Impact Ventures and are looking forward to following the progress of the fund over the next decade.  Maria Tegborg, Head of Global Social Development Unit, the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida)

About Cross-Border Impact Ventures

Cross-Border Impact Ventures (CBIV) is an impact investor in transformative health technology companies that address the needs of women, children, and adolescents or make health systems more resilient. Through its Womens and Childrens Health Technology Fund, CBIV primarily invests in commercial stage health technology companies that have global growth, high return, and impact potential. CBIV has set an ambitious impact target of 500,000 lives saved and 10 million lives improved in emerging markets across its portfolio companies. For additional information, visit crossborder.ventures.

View source version on businesswire.com:https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20211210005089/en/

CONTACT: Media:

Jodi Echakowitz

Boulevard Public Relations (for CBIV)

416-271-7250

KEYWORD: NORTH AMERICA CANADA

INDUSTRY KEYWORD: CHILDREN BIOTECHNOLOGY CONSUMER ELECTRONICS TECHNOLOGY PROFESSIONAL SERVICES HEALTH GENERAL HEALTH WOMEN TELECOMMUNICATIONS OTHER PROFESSIONAL SERVICES CONSUMER

SOURCE: Cross-Border Impact Ventures

Copyright Business Wire 2021.

PUB: 12/10/2021 06:00 AM/DISC: 12/10/2021 06:02 AM

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The University of Montana Faculty Senate passed a non-binding resolution on Thursday demanding that the school's retirement fund divest its fossil fuel investments.

The Teachers Insurance and Annuity Association of America-College Retirement Equities Fund (TIAA), where many UM staff have investments, has approximately $13 billion invested in fossil fuel industries and about $844 million in deforestation, according to the resolution.

UM wildlife biology professor Jedediah Brodie authored the resolution after deciding to bring the topic of divestment to his place of employment as he saw other universities and governments making similar moves in recent years.

We all need to be thinking about ways to reduce climate change, and there are personal things we can do like flying less, eating less meat, just being conscious of where our power comes from, Brodie said. But it turns out that one of the most effective things we can do as individuals is make sure that our retirement funds are not invested in climate destruction.

The resolution passed in a Zoom poll with 61% responding in favor, 22% against, and 17% abstaining.

Brodie acknowledged that TIAA offers a socially responsible choice for an investment plan, which he considers to be complete greenwashing as it includes multiple fossil fuel, chemical and deforestation companies.

Its pretty silly. But my sense too is even if it was a decent choice, like a truly socially responsible choice, is that really what were looking for? Brodie asked.

What if we could just get great market returns by investing in the genocide sector or the mass murder sector, would we really want to do that? Would we really want TIAA to say, Well, how about heres a genocide-free option, or a mass murder-free option? No, I would argue no, we'd want them to divest completely from those sectors, he continued.

Brodie fielded questions from some faculty senate members before the vote. One asked if the resolution would take away UM employees' choice to invest in fossil fuel companies through their TIAA investments.

I assume the way this would work is they would just line item out certain companies, which actually, incidentally, is quite a small fraction of their portfolio. Its only around 5% of their total portfolio, Brodie said. So you would still have the options to choose different investment strategies, just without any of the fossil fuel companies being in any of them.

Another member pointed out that much of what TIAA manages is actually related to Vanguard, an investment adviser company, and that most of the default plans available are life-cycle plans. Brodie said that he may address that discrepancy with a future resolution for the faculty senates consideration.

Are they (TIAA) going to listen to just this one resolution from this one small university? Probably not, Brodie said. But there are a growing number of universities that are doing these exact same kinds of resolutions.

Several other higher education institutions around the country have passed similar resolutions, including Cornell University and several campuses with the State University of New York, according to the organization TIAA-Divest.

Also this week, Montana State Universitys Faculty Senate unanimously passed a climate-related resolution recognizing climate change as one of the most significant challenges facing Montana and the world.

Their resolution aims to support their universitys Campus Sustainability Advisory Council to reduce MSUs carbon footprint and encourage faculty to support curricula focusing on challenges of climate change.

I think its fantastic and I think its so awesome that the two big public universities in Montana are leading, or helping contribute, to this societal charge towards getting away from climate destruction, Brodie said.

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JUNEAU, Alaska (AP)  The U.S. House has passed legislation to extend a year-end deadline for Alaska Native corporations and tribes to use federal coronavirus relief funds. But it isn't the same bill that earlier passed the Senate.

The House bill was introduced by Arizona Rep. Tom OHalleran, a Democrat, and Alaska Rep. Don Young, a Republican.

Kaitlin Hooker, a O'Halleran spokesperson, said the bill now goes to the Senate. Hooker noted the House has not considered the bill the Senate passed in October.

Young, in a statement, called for urgent Senate action.

Indigenous people were some of the hardest hit by the COVID-19 pandemic, and pulling the rug out from under them by letting an arbitrary deadline take away these needed resources is a flagrant violation of our federal trust responsibility, he said.

Karina Borger, a spokesperson for Alaska U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski, said Alaska's congressional delegation was working every angle possible to get an extension in place.

Zack Brown, a Young spokesperson, said in an email that whether it's the House legislation or the Senate legislation, the clock is ticking and Leadership needs to act and schedule one of these fixes for a final vote.

The U.S. Supreme Court in June ruled Alaska Native corporations were entitled to funds, but the executive director of the Alaska Native Village Corporation Association has said that some corporations have yet to receive funds and others face challenges distributing money they have received.

Tribes began receiving funds in the spring of 2020. A report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office cited issues with the rollout, including guidance from the Department of the Treasury for use of funds that changed over time.

The extensions proposed are for a year. The House bill would push the deadline to Dec. 30, 2022, according to O'Halleran's office. The Senate bill called for pushing it to Dec. 31, 2022, according to Alaska's U.S. senators.

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COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP)  South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster wants to invest most of a $525 million settlement from the federal government over plutonium storage at a former nuclear weapons plant into the counties surrounding the plant.

The governor on Friday released his recommendations for the money from the 2020 settlement. Federal authorities had promised a plant at the Savannah River Site near Aiken that would turn plutonium from unneeded nuclear weapons into nuclear reactor fuel but instead left about 21,000 pounds (9,500 kilograms) of the highly radioactive material in storage in South Carolina.

McMaster's plan would direct $317.5 million to projects in Aiken County and $121 million and $13 million to nearby Barnwell and Allendale counties, respectively. Those communities surrounding the nuclear plant should be the beneficiaries of the funds, McMaster wrote in a letter to state lawmakers.

These settlement funds present us with a once in a lifetime opportunity, McMaster wrote. By making big, bold, and transformative investments in the areas of education, infrastructure, workforce, and economic development, we can quite literally change the future of the region and the State.

The money is currently in the hands of the state legislature, which will ultimately decide how to spend the cash.

The governor's proposal would create several industrial parks, upgrade water and sewer systems and help develop and expand workforce training programs in the three counties, among other suggestions. McMaster has recommended several other infrastructure projects in Aiken, including a project to ease congestion on a busy road and a broadband expansion effort.

McMaster also wants $73.5 million to go into a reserve fund for future use.

South Carolina has long fought with the federal government over the plutonium, which was sent to the state for a facility intended to create nuclear fuel until federal officials shut the program down.

The feds promised in 2002 to get rid of all the plutonium by 2017 and the settlement was brokered after the promise was broken. The 2020 settlement also requires the U.S. to get all the plutonium out by the end of 2036 or face more penalties that could total more than $1 billion.

The Savannah River Site once had nearly 26,000 workers in the early 1990s as it shifted from making nuclear weapons to finding ways to clean and store the radioactive byproducts of weapons and nuclear plants. Now, about 11,000 people work at the site.

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LONDON (AP)  A British appellate court opened the door Friday for Julian Assange to be extradited to the United States by overturning a lower court's decision that the WikiLeaks founder's mental health was too fragile to withstand the American criminal justice system.

The High Court in London ruled that U.S. assurances were enough to guarantee Assange would be treated humanely and directed a lower court judge to send the extradition request to Britain's interior minister for review. Home Secretary Priti Patel, who oversees law enforcement in the U.K., will make the final decision on whether to extradite Assange.

There is no reason why this court should not accept the assurances as meaning what they say,'' the High Court ruling stated. There is no basis for assuming that the USA has not given the assurances in good faith.

Assanges fiance, Stella Moris, called the decision a grave miscarriage of justice and said Assange's lawyers would seek to appeal to the U.K. Supreme Court.

We will fight," Moris said outside court, where supporters gathered with banners demanding Assange's release.

Every generation has an epic fight to fight and this is ours, because Julian represents the fundamentals of what it means to live in a free society, she said.

Assange, 50, is currently being held at Londons high-security Belmarsh Prison. The High Court ordered that he remain in custody pending the outcome of the extradition case.

In January, a lower court judge refused the U.S. request to extradite Assange to face spying charges over WikiLeaks publication of secret military documents a decade ago. District Judge Vanessa Baraitser denied extradition on health grounds, saying the Australian citizen was likely to kill himself if held under harsh U.S. prison conditions.

The United States appealed, challenging the notion that Assanges mental health made him too vulnerable to withstand the U.S. judicial system. James Lewis, a lawyer for the U.S. government, said Assange has no history of serious and enduring mental illness and does not meet the threshold of being so ill that he cannot resist harming himself.

U.S. authorities have told British judges that if Assange is extradited for prosecution, he would be eligible to serve any U.S. prison sentence he receives in his native Australia. The authorities also said he wouldn't be held at the supermax penitentiary in Florence, Colorado, the highest-security prison in the United States.

The U.S. has indicted Assange on 17 espionage charges and one charge of computer misuse over WikiLeaks publication of thousands of leaked military and diplomatic documents. The charges carry a maximum sentence of 175 years in prison, although Lewis said the longest sentence ever imposed for this offense is 63 months.

Since WikiLeaks began publishing classified documents more than a decade ago, Assange has become a flashpoint figure.

Some see him as a dangerous secret-spiller who endangered the lives of informers and others who helped the U.S. in war zones. Others say WikiLeaks shone a light on official malfeasance that governments want to keep secret.

American prosecutors say Assange unlawfully helped U.S. Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning steal classified diplomatic cables and military files that WikiLeaks later published, putting lives at risk. Lawyers for Assange argue that he was acting as a journalist and is entitled to First Amendment freedom of speech protections for publishing documents that exposed U.S. military wrongdoing in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Assange has been in prison since he was arrested in April 2019 for skipping bail during a separate legal battle. Before that, he spent seven years holed up inside Ecuadors Embassy in London. Assange sought protection in the embassy in 2012 to avoid extradition to Sweden to face allegations of rape and sexual assault.

Sweden dropped the sex crimes investigations in November 2019 because so much time had elapsed.

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I thought that I might get a slightly easier time from the audience at a comedy club in Oldham if I didnt sound like one of the Conservative Party, says Whitehall of his previous use of mockney on stage (Getty)

Jack Whitehall didnt set out to make posh, public schoolboys his cachet. He certainly didnt intend for his IMDb page to read like a Tory Christmas party guestlist; names like Barnaby, Pennyfeather, Hugo and Alfie. Thats just how it played out. But now, 13 years into a career where hes ping-ponged from potty-mouthed millennial stand-up to TV comedy and now Hollywood, hes thinking it might be time to hang up the polo mallet. I mined that posh bit for the best part of a decade, he says. Maybe Ive exhausted it. Its just the same joke over and over again. The way hes talking  sounding wearier than any 33-year-old ought to be  seems like theres no maybe about it.

Over Zoom, Whitehall is sat next to a gigantic poster of a grinning puppy with a New York City manhole cover in its mouth like a ginormous frisbee. The comedian looks tiny in comparison. His legs are uncomfortably crossed on the type of stool that necessitates perching as opposed to sitting. The adorable puppy poster  in promotion of his latest release Clifford the Big Red Dog  feels incongruous with Whitehalls comic persona. He tends to be crude, lunging headlong for a joke about anal bleaching or bad sex, still reminiscent of the television character who whisked him off on this trajectory: JP.

In 2011, Whitehall was an art history dropout and budding comic appearing on various panel shows. Then he was cast in Fresh Meat, a Channel 4 series about a group of freshers at university, as Jonathan Pemberley, trust fund baby and bona fide douchebag. JP, as he was known, was a plum role for any comedian wishing to enter acting; he was awfully awful and completely hilarious. JP said things like: Ill probably end up being prime minister or something one day. I dont want to be. Its just that kind of shit just happens to guys like me. The show celebrated its 10th anniversary earlier this year. It was very hard to do anything after that because the scripts were never quite as good as a Sam Bain and Jesse Armstong script, Whitehall says. (After all, that pair also wrote Peep Show and Armstrong has gone on to create the most buzzy show of the decade with Succession.)

Story continues

One way of getting around that problem was by writing his own show. And so Whitehall created Bad Education, the hit BBC comedy series in which he played Alfie Wickers (a JP-styled character, only slightly older and a teacher in a state school). Just like Fresh Meat, viewers ate it up. By his early twenties, Whitehall had become the go-to posh divvy of choice. It made sense; the actor himself went to Marlborough College. Onscreen, his look  when greased up by copious dollops of hair gel and paired with the correct shade of reddy-pink trousers  can come off both obnoxious and endearing. In a similar vein to the stripper with the heart of gold, Whitehalls w*****s are almost always likeable. He lends them humanity and grounds his performance in unlikely pathos. Its a quality thats more obviously on display in his latest release, the fun-for-the-whole-family film Clifford the Big Red Dog, in which he plays Uncle Casey, lovable buffoon and cousin to a little girl whose ginger-haired pup grows unbelievably large.

Although now it feels like it was inevitable, the whole posho angle wasnt always the plan. When Whitehall was starting out on the comedy circuit as a teenager, he hid his privilege with a mockney accent and affected slang. I thought that I might get a slightly easier time from the audience at a comedy club in Oldham if I didnt sound like one of the Conservative Party, he recalls. I thought maybe I could avoid getting a pint thrown at my head.

Whitehall acted opposite a 10-foot animatronic canine operated by two puppeteers (Paramount Pictures)

In 2008, the comedian landed a gig presenting on Big Brothers Big Mouth where he attempted to impersonate the shows previous presenter, Russell Brand. I didnt know who I was so I borrowed my personality from different people I saw on TV, says Whitehall. Over the next decade he navigated through different incarnations, as Whitehall calls them, including one where he says he tried to imitate Jack Dee, to wind up somewhere closer to who he actually is. Admittedly, that person is posh. But Whitehall is about more than that, or would like to be. I will remain really, really posh for the rest of my life, he muses, but there might be other aspects of myself that I could harness. I might be able to say something a bit more interesting than punchlines about Waitrose. I remind him that those punchlines were often very funny. Yeah. He sighs. I just want to mix it up eventually.

Mixing it up is more difficult than youd think. Whitehalls Netflix series Travels with My Father was hugely successful  a travelogue in which he jaunts around the world with his theatrical-agent father who is exceedingly more plummy than himself  and was his biggest introduction yet to American audiences who just love an English toff. Time and time again, Whitehall will tell himself to choose something different, something challenging. Like playing a serial killer in some dark brooding drama, he suggests.

But then a script will come along for a buddy comedy about a manchild and hes immediately smitten. He cant help himself. Uncle Casey, he says, is the same part with an American accent, he deadpans. Its Alfie Wickers but hes American. And Jungle Cruise was different because I didnt have a beard. These are the times that Whitehall comes across most like his public persona, when he is cracking one-liners to a willing audience. His voice sparks up, as if suddenly plugged into a power outlet. He stretches vowels and changes pitch for dramatic effect.

Whitehall demonstrates this sense of self-awareness regularly. The kind that easily bats away flattery and excuses he makes for himself. Its most obvious when hes talking about how he sees himself received by others, and its what led him to stop hosting the Brits Awards after four years. After that first time, I was conscious of not outstaying my welcome, he says. I wanted to make sure people still enjoyed seeing me do it. Whitehall adds that Olly Murs and Niall Horan  his common targets of choice  can rest easy this time around.

Hes decided to step back from the mic for similar reasons. The problem with stand-up is that you get through a lot of your life experience very quickly, he says. Mining memories for material is nothing new for comedians, and over his career Whitehall has made a screeching, smoking spectacle by burning through the rubber of his life. But the tyres have worn out. At the end of my last tour, I thought it was definitely time to take a little break, he says, and to not have that moment the minute after youve said something and someones laughed to think, Oh I need to make sure I remember that because I could say it again in a professional capacity.

Whitehall starred as the insufferable public school lad JP in Fresh Meat, opposite Charlotte Ritchie, Kimberley Nixon, Zawe Ashton, Greg McHugh, and Joe Thomas (Channel 4)

Hes onto bigger things now anyway  the big screen. Clifford the Big Red Dog and Disneys Jungle Cruise (in which he starred opposite Dwayne Johnson and Emily Blunt) are his biggest US releases to date. Crossing the Atlantic is a well-worn journey for UK comedians, but it can also be a treacherous one. Look at James Corden. Whitehalls friend and former collaborator on A League of Their Own found immense success across the pond with a self-titled late night show and his many blockbuster billings. Too many blockbuster billings, some would argue. Now, the once-beloved Corden routinely finds himself at the centre of online petitions to keep him out of films. Speaking about his pals fate, Whitehall gestures to the tall-poppy syndrome he sees as a problem in Britain; the wish to brutally lay into successful people. Im always hyperaware of that and hyperaware of how Twitter can be a volatile place and that you have to tread carefully. Everyday theres a new villain, which is why I wake up every day hoping that its not going to be me.

There might be other aspects of myself that I could harness. I might be able to say something a bit more interesting than punchlines about Waitrose.

There is something daunting about the time in which Whitehall came up as a teenage comic. In a Venn diagram of social acceptability, he sits in the middle of when it was supposedly OK to joke about anything and the time that people started recording everything on mobile phones. Is he scared that those less PG jokes will resurface to bite him? I definitely feel that fear a bit, he says. There was a period of time where people could get away with anything they wanted and then there was a bit of a movement to censor that and redefine what you could and couldnt joke about. And now weve had this over-calibration where weve found ourselves in a place in time where possibly what were allowed to say is being over-policed.

Travels With My Father sees Whitehall and his exceedingly plummy dad Michael jaunt across the world (Simon Ridgway)

He predicts that a balance will eventually be found. In the next decade or so, well probably end up with a better situation where people are more thoughtful about what they say but at the same time, it doesnt feel like free speech is too overly restricted. Admittedly, Whitehall says, Im an optimist.

Hes less optimistic about his chances of breaking out from under the heap of his past smutty material. In some moments I look at the actors that I admire and the trajectory of their careers and I think to myself wow, look at Tom Hanks, that is the perfect career. Hanks also started out making family movies like Turner and Hooch and Splash before he progressed into Oscar winners, and Whitehall is happy to be venturing down a similar path. But before I get ahead of myself I remember that Tom Hanks never did Late n Live at the Edinburgh Festival so theres no landmines out in the ether, he laughs. That always helps me check myself and reminds me that the wheels will probably come off at some point because I did so much late night comedy. And I probably went for the jugular on more than one occasion. Nowadays, hes aiming for the heart.

Clifford the Big Red Dog is available to watch in cinemas from 10 December

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Cindy Byake talks about her journey to Akron from Uganda on Saturday during a Green Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Committee gathering at the city's Central Administration Building.

For eight years, Akron resident Cindy Byake and her family lived in Uganda after fleeing military conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

She and her family were fortunate: they knew someone in Uganda they could stay with while they planned for the future.

But Byake had friends who were in an even more difficult position.

More difficult by far.

She told her story and her friends' during a meeting of Greens Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Committee on Saturday.

Her friends' families were given tents to live in. Food would be delivered in bulk for the refugees, Byake said

They give you food once a month for the whole family, Byake said last week in a phone interview. You build your own house of clay [with] no electricity.

Nearly 1 million citizens of the Democratic Republic of Congo have fled to neighboring countries as refugees and asylum-seekers.

Life in a camp can be brutal for refugees, Byake said.

There are some days you eat once a day, she said. You dont know if you are going to wake up tomorrow because of the insecurity [and] no one cares.

Eye-opening arrival: No palm trees in Akron, but area has its strengths

In 2019, Byake and her family learned they would be coming to the U.S. Much of what they knew about America had come from movies or other unreliable sources.

We get to see California and Vegas and New York City, she said. When we came here, everything was different.  I thought it would be all sunny [with] nice palm trees.

Akron doesnt have the palatial homes of California or the glitz of Las Vegas, but it does have its strengths, Byake said.

Akron is kind of quiet, she said. Here, there is space and not a lot of people. We have a lot of libraries.

Byake and her family, like many others who come to Akron, settled in North Hill. They were assigned a case worker from the International Institute of Akron, which works with immigrants and refugees, helping them adjust to their new home.

The IIA encourages newcomers to work, Byake said, assisting them with job searches and learning how to navigate public transportation.

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But Metro can be confusing for someone who is still learning the language and adjusting to culture shock.

We got lost a lot on the transit center, she said.

Finding employment and medical assistance

In Byakes case, her adjustment was made easier because she knew English. Her parents had a more difficult time with the language, but were able to land jobs at Little Tikes and Amazon.

Medical issues can also present difficulties for immigrants and refugees, Byake said.

When her sister developed ulcers, the family didnt know what to do. A caseworker told them to call 911.

Experiences like that helped Byake develop a working knowledge of how health care operates in the U.S. Now, she works as a translator at a local hospital and is going to Stark State for a cybersecurity and computer forensics degree.

Byake said IIA caseworkers are assigned for a limited time, with immigrants then left on their own. Many are still adjusting to their new homes without understanding the language or society they live in.

International Welcome Center helps family adjust

She said a New Franklin organization, the International Welcome Center, stepped in to help her and her family.

A volunteer at IWC taught me how to drive, she said. The IWC has helped a lot of refugees like us. You get friends who understand.

The IWC is the brainchild of Cary Duckett, pastor at Grace Bible Church, who said he hopes construction will begin next year on a building dedicated to the IWCs mission. At present, the organization is helping about 150 refugees adjust to the Akron area and its dearth of palm trees.

Cindy and her family did not know they were coming to the United States, he said. They were invited to come to the United States.

Families dont get to choose which city they will live in, Duckett said.

They are told where they are going to start, he said.

The International Institute of Akron is federally funded for 90 days to resettle families in Akron. After that time, Duckett said, the process of becoming a citizen is just beginning.

Thats where the IWC comes into play, Duckett said. Volunteers at the organization give one-on-one assistance, providing transportation, legal help, and other practical training.

Day 91, we come along beside them and begin to help them with things like learning English, learning how to drive, helping them find friends, he said.

Byake said many refugees are wary of people who offer help, fearing they may have ulterior motives.

When someone wants to be your friend, you think someone wants to use you, she said. You think everyone that smiles at you wants something.

Duckett said IWC volunteers work to gain the confidence of refugees, with the realization that that connection builds trust and speeds the adjustment to an often confusing world.

They have been through some very traumatic situations, he said. Once you become their friend, real progress can be made.

'We all put on a strong face'

Byake said shes still learning about some of the finer details of life in Akron and the U.S.

We love spicy [food], but American spicy is not spicy at all, she said.

Education, in some respects, is more advanced in her native land, she said.

In Africa we do college algebra in eighth grade, she said. Here you use calculators.

Byake said some refugees may seem distant because they have trained themselves not to show emotion despite the difficult life they've endured.

We all put on a strong face, she said. You dont show it on your face.

Leave a message for Alan Ashworth at 330-996-3859 or email him at aashworth@gannett.com. Follow him on Twitter at @newsalanbeaconj.

This article originally appeared on Akron Beacon Journal: DEI event in Green spotlights long journey to Northeast Ohio
Premier furniture manufacturer EJ Victor has received a $240,000 Building Reuse grant from the state.

The grant supports expansion and restoration of the building it currently occupies at 110 Wamsutta Mill Road in Morganton. The city of Morganton was the applicant for the grant, which was called Project Umbrella, and the city, along with Burke County, will supply a 5% local match for the project.

We are very appreciative of the grant opportunity and how it will assist us in our expansion plans, said David Bennett, president and CEO of EJ Victor. As a locally owned and operated business, being able to manufacture our wood and upholstery products domestically is a real source of pride and given the current global supply chain, a real competitive advantage. The grant will specifically allow us to convert a section of our factory that was once used to house imported products into a manufacturing floor that will domestically produce case goods and upholstery.
HICKORY  The Catawba Valley Interfaith Council will host its annual celebration of Human Rights Day at 5:30 p.m. today at Temple Beth Shalom in Hickory.

Human Rights Day, Dec. 10, was formally established by the United Nations General Assembly in 1950 to celebrate the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948, but the declaration has been recognized as the first global enunciation of human rights since it was proclaimed by most of the member nations in the aftermath of World War II.

The principles of equality and non-discrimination at the heart of the UDHR, and human rights in general, are the theme for Human Rights Day observance this year.

The Rev. Joe Hoffman, a retired United Church of Christ pastor from Asheville and an advocate for social justice issues, will speak at the event. Hoffman will address Article 1 of the UDHR, which states that, All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights, and are endowed with reason and conscience and should act toward one another in a spirit of brotherhood.
A veteran firefighter and his wife are hoping to bring unique, locally sourced goods to Burke County when their general store opens this weekend.

Buzzes Creamery & General Store, located on U.S. 64 at the highways intersection with Propst Road, will hold a grand opening celebration Saturday from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m.

Weve always just kind of wanted to do something on our own and kind of grow our own thing, and have something thats unique to us  and also something thats unique to the area, said Dustin Buzze, co-owner of the store. We want to be different, and we wanted to work for ourselves eventually, way on down the road, and just say hey, this is something that you can have fun with.

Buzze, an army veteran who was deployed twice to Iraq and once to Afghanistan, also works as a fulltime firefighter for the Morganton Department of Public Safety. His wife, Jessica, works as an emergency room nurse at UNC Health Blue Ridge.
Butte police reports

Lug nuts removed

It was reported just after 2 a.m. Tuesday morning that two people parked their cars off Continental Drive and Highway 2. The two then left in one car and left the other car behind. When they came back, the man got into his vehicle and drove away. He didnt get too far as all the lug nuts had been taken off and the wheels then fell off.

PFMA, twice

Late Tuesday night, Desarae Dawn Cummings, 41, of Butte was arrested on two misdemeanor counts of partner or family member assault (physical contact) and resisting arrest.

When police arrived at a residence in the 2300 block of Massachusetts, Cummings was reportedly yelling at an elderly man. She appeared to have been drinking and allegedly struck another man and a woman while in the house.

Locked out

At about 8 p.m. Tuesday, Mark Thomas Ybarra, 69, of Butte had accidentally locked himself out of his apartment in the 100 block of West Broadway Street.

Ybarra reportedly contacted his neighbor to see if he had a key, which he didnt. This angered Ybarra, who yelled at the neighbor and pushed a window out of its frame.

He was jailed for misdemeanor disorderly conduct.

Alleged shoplifter

At 9:30 p.m. Monday, an officer responded to the Town Pump, 531 S. Montana St., to investigate a theft of two salads and a sandwich valued at $16.

After going over video footage, the officer recognized the alleged shoplifter as Mary Celeste Gardipee, 36, of Butte.

She was located later and arrested for the misdemeanor shoplifting crime. She also had felony warrants out for her arrest for probation violation and revocation of sentence.

Erratic driver

Just after 11 p.m. Monday, an officer witnessed an erratic driver on Platinum and Washington.

The cop was able to stop the vehicle at Montana and Iron.

The driver, Chase Michael Myers, 25, of Butte, reportedly appeared nervous and a field sobriety test was done. There was no detection of alcohol, but the officer learned Myers had a warrant out for his arrest out of Lake County.

Just as he was to be handcuffed, he pulled away and continued to resist and reportedly made an attempt to grab the officers weapon. Another officer arrived to assist and Myers continued to resist. He eventually ended up on the ground on his stomach.

The officers were then able to handcuff Myers and get him in the car.

Lake County law officials were not interested in having Myers extradited, but he was jailed for the felony offenses of assaulting a peace officer (two counts) and probation violation, and misdemeanors  resisting arrest, driving with a suspended or revoked drivers license, and failure to have one or two tail lamps

Theft in parking lot

A staff member at Butte High School contacted the school resource officer at about noon Wednesday. Some students had witnessed a man going through cars in the parking lot at Silver and Colorado.

An officer arrived and stopped William Robert Hampton, 21, of Billings, who was still in the parking lot and carrying some things in his hands.

While being detained, one of the students brought a video to the attention of the officer. The video reportedly showed Hampton inside one of the cars.

He admitted to being inside the vehicle and was arrested. While being booked, a glass pipe and other drug paraphernalia were found in his possession, along with a baggie of suspected methamphetamine.

Hampton was jailed for felony possession of dangerous drugs and the misdemeanor offenses of theft from a motor vehicle, criminal trespass to a vehicle, criminal trespass to property and possession of drug paraphernalia.

Garage break-in

It was discovered early Monday morning that a garage located in the 1000 block of Placer had been broken into. Tools and other items were taken.

Packages stolen

On Monday morning, a package was taken off a porch in the 2100 block of George St.

The following morning, packages were taken from a residence in the 100 block of Trinity Loop.

Jeep stolen

Early Monday afternoon, a red 1989 Jeep Cherokee was taken from the 700 block of Nevada Street

Credit union vandalism

It was reported Wednesday morning that someone had glued the cash dispenser door shut on an ATM machine at Southwest Montana Community Federal Credit Union, 1925 Elizabeth Warren Ave.

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By Alex Pologruto | Dec 10, 2021

Dr. Marquese Carter, assistant professor of music at Murray State University, recently participated as a featured artist in the Musical Bodies Symposium at Indiana University Bloomington

MURRAY, Ky.  Dr. Marquese Carter, assistant professor of music at Murray State University, recently participated as a featured artist in the Musical Bodies Symposium at Indiana University Bloomington.

Carter sang a lecture recital entitled "Born this Way: Black Voice and Black Bodies. The recital included art songs by Florence Price, Charles Brown, Margaret Bonds and Errolyn Wallen, along with musical theatre pieces and an arrangement of a disco track by up-and-coming composer Amre Ford.

Dr. Ayana Smith, associate professor of music in musicology at the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music and a specialist in Italian baroque opera, served as a collaborator with Carter on the recital. Together, they created a multi-media scholarly work that centered on black queer embodiment through visual media and song.

My concert with Dr. Smith was the final event of the program, said Carter. This lecture recital was a highly personal musical journey through my own self-discovery as a black queer trans* person. Dr. Smith presented her scholarly framework that explores the embodiment of the black experience through fashion as I sang my own story.

The Musical Bodies Symposium is sponsored by the Global Popular Music team from Platform, a new, integrative research initiative housed at Indiana University Bloomington created to allow arts and humanities scholars at every level of education  from undergraduates to professors  to connect their research, via interdisciplinary collaboration, to units on the Bloomington campus that do not normally work with humanists. Funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Platform is investigating two areas of scholarship: Indiana Studies and Global Popular Music.

In October, Carter also joined the Bloomington Symphony Orchestra for a performance of works by Florence B. Price, the first black female composer to be nationally recognized. The orchestra presented Wade in the Water, a concert featuring a selection of Prices art songs as well as the Indiana premiere of her Symphony No. 4 in D minor.

In addition to performing with the orchestra, Carter participated in an informal discussion with the orchestras Artistic Director Alejandro Gomez Guillen on Zoom. They shared insights on Prices art songs, expanded on their historical context and the renaissance of her music in the last few years, and addressed why her music and that of other composers of color have been historically overlooked.

Carter joined the Murray State Department of Music in 2020. They teach voice and music history, and their scholarship on Price has been featured in numerous forums including the Society for American Music conference and the New York Times.

To learn more about Carters work, visit marquesecarter.com. To learn more about Murray States Department of Music please visit murraystate.edu/music.
Carvalho attended Broward Community College and graduated in 1990 from Barry University, a small Catholic school near Miami, with a biology degree. He became a high school science and math teacher before quickly moving up the administrative ranks, becoming a principal before moving to the district office where he was the districts spokesman and an assistant superintendent before becoming superintendent.

His 2008 hiring in Miami revealed that Carvalho had been exchanging explicit emails with a former Miami Herald reporter. He denied an affair, but conceded that the exchanges were inappropriate.

He earned numerous accolades during his tenure, including being named Superintendent of the Year in 2014 by the national superintendents association. In 2018, New York Mayor Bill de Blasio named him as education chancellor of the nation's largest school district, but Carvalho backed out of the deal the next day. He said Thursday that New Yorks lure was that it was where he arrived in the United States, but it became apparent quickly that it did not have all the elements necessary for him to succeed. He did not elaborate.
Authorities said the investigation began when the Indian Arts and Crafts Board, an Interior Department agency that promotes Native art, received complaints that the two were fraudulently holding themselves out as enrolled tribal members.

Rath is charged with four counts of misrepresentation of Indian-produced goods, which is punishable by up to five years in prison. Van Dyke faces two counts of the same crime.

Rath also faces one misdemeanor count of unlawfully possessing golden eagle parts, and one of unlawfully possessing migratory bird parts.

According to charging documents, an employee of Ye Olde Curiosity Shop, which has been in business for more than a century, told investigators that she wrote an artist biography of Rath based on information he provided about his tribal affiliation.

Matthew Steinbrueck, the owner of Raven's Nest Treasure, told investigators that the artists told him they were tribal members and that he believed them, according to the documents. He said he did not knowingly sell counterfeit Indian products.
DES MOINES, Iowa (AP)  The U.S. Department of Justice on Wednesday issued a strong condemnation of the way Iowa treats people with intellectual and developmental disabilities, telling the state it must find ways to care for people in community settings and not in institutions.

In a letter and a 33-page report sent to state officials, Kristen Clarke, an assistant attorney general in the Justice Department's civil rights division, said that after a yearlong investigation they have concluded there is reasonable cause to believe Iowa violates the federal Americans with Disabilities Act by failing to provide services that integrate people with intellectual disabilities into their communities.

Iowa has failed to address known deficiencies in the availability of community-based services and supports that contribute to needless institutionalization of people with IDD, the report said.

It said state officials have known for years that community-based support for people with complex medical and behavioral needs is insufficient and have acknowledged that they have failed to meaningfully assess the capacity of the community service system.

State officials largely agreed and promised to explore new services.
Alcohol and drugs policy expert Professor Charles Parry has called for more stringent regulations for online alcohol sales and home deliveries.

Parry is the director of the alcohol, tobacco & other drug research unit at the South African Medical Research (SAMRC).

Speaking to Cape Talk, he said tougher rules are needed to combat alcohol abuse and underage drinking.

Research in New Zealand found that online alcohol deliveries were closely linked to heavy drinking. I think we can expect that in South Africa too, he said.

One of the problems is that many companies that deliver alcohol do not have liquor licenses.

He said anyone with a motorbike could deliver alcohol. These delivery agents are not adequately trained and are rushed to do deliveries, which means they will not stop deliveries to minors.

Parry suggested many interventions to prevent underage drinking and alcohol abuse.
The City of St. Helena would provide water to the site of the old Hall mobile home park and pay $950,000 to resolve a lawsuit by the property owners, according to the terms of a settlement agreement that could be approved by the City Council on Tuesday.

The proposed settlement with Hall Vineland, LLC would allow the property, which is just south of the St. Helena city limits, to use up to 2,135,250 gallons of city water per year, or approximately 6.5 acre-feet.

The $950,000 in payments to Hall Vineland would be spread over six years. That amount doesnt include legal fees incurred by the city during almost three years of litigation.

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The St. Helena Public Works Department issued a will-serve letter in 2016 agreeing to provide water for a project on the site of the old Vineland Vista Mobile Home Park, based on historical water annual water demand of 2,135,250 gallons per year.

The city rescinded that letter in 2018, claiming it had been based on the property owners incorrect assumptions about existing water use at the park, which had been vacant since 2014.

The move came amid concerns by the City Council that the proposed project amounted to a hotel, not a continuation of the sites use as a mobile home park.

Hall Vinelands lawsuit sought a new will-serve letter and claimed damages exceeding $7 million. It claimed the property owners were only looking to renovate the park and had never abandoned their water rights.

The case was scheduled to go to trial in March 2022. According to a staff report by Kevin Siegel, special counsel to the city, the City would have a reasonably good chance of prevailing in the trial court or on appeal, but it would be risky and costly.

The $950,000 payment "eliminates risk that a court or jury would find the City liable for a larger amount," according to Siegel's report.

The settlement grew out of negotiations, settlement conferences, and mediation sessions. The original agenda for Tuesday's council meeting listed the settlement on the consent calendar, where routine items may be approved with no discussion. An updated agenda released Monday shows the settlement under "Old Business." The council is also scheduled to discuss the settlement in closed session at 4:30 p.m. Tuesday, before the 6 p.m. regular meeting.

You can reach Jesse Duarte at 967-6803 or jduarte@sthelenastar.com.

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Napa Countys proposed plan to ensure groundwater beneath world-famous wine country never gets pumped dry is drawing both praise and criticism.

The state-required plan aims to avoid such things as plummeting well levels, sinking land, and the drying up of waterways fed by groundwater. It lists conditions that could trigger such preventive actions as well as pumping restrictions.

At about 1,000 pages with 4,000 pages of appendices, the draft Napa Valley Subbasin Groundwater Sustainability Plan went before county supervisors on Tuesday. They sat as the Groundwater Sustainability Agency.

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Supervisors will decide on Jan. 11 whether the draft plan is good enough to submit as is to the state Department of Water Resources, with a Jan. 31 deadline. On Tuesday, they listened to public comments.

Michelle Benvenuto, executive director of Winegrowers of Napa County, recommended the county adopt the draft plan.

Napa County relies on the viability of the wine industry, and the wine industry relies on our groundwater being managed sustainably, Benvenuto said.

The plan is a living document. It will continue to evolve as more data and innovative concepts become available, she said.

Napa Valley Grapegrowers supported the plan. Protecting groundwater to ensure the success of agriculture is essential to the group's mission, said Molly Moran Williams of the group.

But the environmental community sees room for improvement.

Napa County should expand the groundwater plans scope to look at the entire watershed, said Elizabeth Reid-Wainscoat of the Center for Biological Diversity. It should have quicker triggers for action steps.

The plan doesnt reflect the stark reality of the current drought. The county must take bold action, she said.

Local environmentalist Chris Malan had a list of things she said need to be changed in the draft plan, such streams she thought wont be properly monitored. Groundwater can feed streams during the dry months.

The plan utterly fails to imagine climate change and prolonged drought and more drought, Malan said.

The Napa Valley subbasin is one part of a system that supports the water needs of many communities. That includes the flora and fauna of the valley, Nick Cheranich of the Napa Sierra Club Group wrote to the county.

We see the framing of the (plan) as being subbasin only, rather than as a system under pressure from development, growth and climate change, he wrote.

Napa County will continue to accept written comments on the draft plan through Dec. 14. Go to https://bit.ly/3Gv6Kyx to read it.

I dont believe there are any fatal flaws with the plan, Planning, Building and Environmental Services Director David Morrison told supervisors.

County supervisors didnt mention any that they saw.

Its not saying this is the final answer to everything, Supervisor Brad Wagenknecht said. Its saying, Heres what we need to know now and what we will need to know in the near future. I think thats a good thing.

The county plans to form a technical workgroup with experts to advise the Groundwater Sustainability Agency. Morrison said that could happen by February or March.

Wagenknecht said he hoped the technical workgroup has the ability to upset the whole political spectrum because its not a political group; its a science group.

The city of Napa doesn't use groundwater. But Morrison noted that non-groundwater users rely on the county for recreation and the agricultural economy that generates jobs and brings visitors.

Even those people who dont currently use groundwater have a strong stake in the future health of the groundwater. This is a community responsibility, he said.

You can reach Barry Eberling at 256-2253 or beberling@napanews.com.

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Andranik Grigoryan is the CEO of Converse Bank, Chairman of Executive Management

France intends to help Azerbaijan in search of missing persons during 1st Karabakh war

Aeroflot cancels flight to Almaty: Aktau airport not working

Arnak Avetisyan appointed Armenian State Property Management Committees chair

Armenia appoints new ambassador to Russia

Christmas Eve liturgy takes place in Armenia's Etchmiadzin

Attempts to demolish a monument of Nazarbayev in Kazakhstan

Armenia deputy PM Mher Grigoryan to co-chair intergovernmental joint commission with Iran

Media: Internet cut off in Nursultan and Almaty

Armenia Prosecutor General to head for Moscow

Armenia premier to send 10-member delegation to Russia

Dollar gains value in Armenia

Kazakh president delivers new speech to nation

Kazakhstan protesters disarm police: Mir TV channel's office vandalized

Kazakhstan presidential residence set on fire

Almaty commandant: More than 500 civilians are beaten

OSCE calls for de-escalation of Kazakhstan situation

Protesters try to break into residence of Kazakhstan's president

Kazakh security forces take the side of protesters

Kazakh protesters seize Kazakh president's residence and destroy TV channels premises

Baghdad military base hit by missile attack

Armenian traces destroyed in occupied Shushi

Prosecutor's office building is on fire: State of emergency in Almaty

Azerbaijan declares 2022 year of occupied Armenian city of Shushi

Justice minister not commenting on arresting Armenian captives returned from Azerbaijan

Yerevan homeless shelter residents picketing in front of Armenia labor, social affairs ministry

Hong Kong imposes ban on flights from 8 countries due to COVID-19

Protesters in Almaty riot hospitals and clinics

PM: I have hard time imagining how Omicron variant cannot enter Armenia

New council of Armenias Parakar does not convene first session, new village mayor not elected

7 new cases of coronavirus reported in Artsakh

Armenia cargo transportation via railway drops but passengers increase in 2021

Government hands over Zangezur Copper and Molybdenum Combine certified rights with 15% Armenia-owned shares

Borrell says EU cannot be a neutral spectator in talks with Russia

Armenian PM urges to throw plastic bags out of life

Oil prices stabilize after jump

Premier recalls that anti-tobacco law has entered into force in Armenia as of January 1

129 new cases of COVID-19 confirmed in Armenia

Kazakhstan President accepts governments resignation

Armenia State Property Management Committee dismissed

Armenia PM: We are entering 2022 with quite serious start to reforms

New council of Armenias Parakar convenes first session, village mayor election on agenda

New York prosecutor drops sex crime case against ex-governor Cuomo

England, Wales to make taking pictures of breastfeeding mothers in public illegal

Paraguay presidential guard dies after being impaled by deer while on duty

Flights delayed at Kazakhstan's Aktau airport as rallies continue

NATO foreign ministers to hold videoconference ahead of meeting with Russia

Ford to double production capacity for electric version of F-150 pickup

Oil prices rise by 1%

Borrell not to discuss Nord Stream 2 during Ukraine visit

Mercedes-Benz presents new electric car Vision EQXX

Kazakh authorities to satisfy protesters' demands for lower gas prices

Flooding in Iran: at least 8 people killed

Turkish lira drops for another 4%

Taliban army to be reinforced with suicide bombers

Doctors reveal details of Brazil presidents health condition

NATO head plans special meeting with Russia amid Ukraine crisis

Russian peacekeepers ensure safe entry to Karabakh for about 2,000 vehicles

Wave of protests against COVID-19 measures across Germany

Karabakh President holds new years first working consultation with law enforcement agencies heads

Coronavirus vaccines in Armenia are complemented with another one

Armenia soldier remanded in custody for inflicting fatal gunshot wound to fellow serviceman

Gas futures price in Europe exceed $ 1,000

US holds virtual inauguration ceremony for COVID-19-infected mayor

US court forbids Pentagon to punish military personnel refusing vaccinations

Armenia PM: We need to open new strategic page for transformation of customs service

Armenia ambassador delivers lecture for U.S. Naval War College students

5-month-old baby dies in Yerevan hospital

Armenias Vardenis town hall chief of staff signs mayor-elect inauguration session minutes

Georgia to not attend 2nd 3+3-format meeting in Turkey either, its ambassador says

Turkey airline applies for conducting flights between Istanbul and Yerevan

China urges Russia and US to continue reducing nuclear arsenals

Person, 58, dies in fire in Armenias Hrazdan

Blinken and Cavusoglu discuss relations with Armenia

Armenia law enforcement not permitting reporters to enter Vardenis town hall building

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90 new cases of COVID-19 confirmed in Armenia

Israel photographer captures remarkable momentary image of flock of birds

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Mexico president says he sought Assange pardon from Trump

Military helicopter crashes in Israel: two pilots die

New mayors inauguration to be held in Armenias Vardenis, there are large number of police officers

Armenia soldier dies from gunshot wound

Biden returns from holiday break to D.C. amid snowstorm

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Brazil President hospitalized after stomach pains

Russia, China, UK, US, France state need to prevent nuclear war

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Embassy in Armenia: France will continue to work for establishment of peace, stability in region

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Iran Airtour flights between Tehran and Yerevan kick off

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4 more persons die of coronavirus in Artsakh
YEREVAN.  Hraparak daily of Armenia writes: According to our information, two RF [(Russian Federation)] deputy defense ministers were among the RF representatives of the [Armenia-Azerbaijan borer] demarcation and delimitation commission who arrived in Yerevan yesterday.

They were met at the Erebuni military airport by the former commander of the Russian peacekeepers in Artsakh [(Nagorno-Karabakh)], Lieutenant General Rustam Muradov, who will head the work of the Russian part of this commission.

Upon arrival in Yerevan, they traveled to [Artsakh capital] Stepanakert, met with the [Russian] peacekeeping troops and their command.

By the way, according to our sources, the Russian side is concerned about the fact of the Azerbaijani violence against the civilian population in Artsakh, as it understands that this will lead to a big anti-Russian wave. This is the reason for Muradov's last long visit to Armenia. Only his presence restrains the Azerbaijani side to some extent. According to our information, there was no meeting with any representative of the military-political leadership of Artsakh.

Yesterday, the delegation that arrived from Russia left for Gyumri, the Russian 102nd military base, and today, most likely, they will leave Armenia.
YEREVAN.  As we have already informed, the Armenian side has two servicemen who sustained light gunshot wounds after the provocation carried out by the Azerbaijani armed forces units in the eastern direction of the Republic of Armenia on December 9, the Ministry of Defense (MOD) of Armenia informed Armenian News-NEWS.am.

In the evening of the same day, a group of citizens protesting in Gegharkunik Province and blocking the road leading from Vardenis town to the capital Yerevan on domestic political issues, having learned in advance that the vehicle transporting one of the wounded to the Yerevan Central Clinical Military Hospital would pass that road soon, told the deputy commander of the military unit that they would obstruct the course of the mentioned car.

Due to that, the car had to reach Yerevan by a detour, as a result of which the rendering of timely and necessary medical assistance to the serviceman was considerably delayed.

The Ministry of Defense of Armenia considers what happened inadmissible, and also reminds that the armed forces are not involved in politics and carry out the function of ensuring Armenia's security on a 24-hour basis. Obstructing the function of providing medical assistance to servicemen wounded during the defense of the homeland is beyond all moral limits, regardless of any argumentation, the MOD added.
Taking into account the tense border situation, the residents of Vardenis, Armenia, reopened the Martuni-Vardenis motorway Thursday at midnight. Davit Shahnazaryan, a member of the United Vardenis bloc, told this to Armenian News-NEWS.am Friday.

In support of Aram Harutyunyan who heads the electoral list of this bloc, the residents of Vardenis had closed off the aforesaid motorway Thursday, and presented their respective demands.

After the local elections in Vardenis on December 5, when the Aharon Khachatryan and the United Vardenis blocs announced the formation of a coalition, the investigative committee of Sevan city had summoned Aram Harutyunyanwho heads the electoral list of the United Vardenis blocfor questioning, and detained him.

"We announced that we are [re]opening the road on the condition that they release our candidate. Taking into account that the border situation had become tense, we had wounded [soldiers], we decided to [re]open the road so as not to hinder any process. But they will restart again if they do not released Aram Harutyunyan," Shahnazaryan said.

He noted that there has been no response in this regard from any official.

"Only police representatives were in the area," he added.
The protest of the residents in Vardenis was stopped precisely because the border situation was tense, there was an incident, and we had wounded. Davit Shahnazaryan, a member of the United Vardenis bloc, told this to Armenian News-NEWS.am Friday.

Earlier, the Ministry of Defense of Armenia issued a statement saying that the deputy commander in Vardenis had been told by the demonstrators that they would obstruct the car that was transporting a wounded soldier to Yerevan.

"Such an incident did not happen. We have never had such an attitude towards our soldiers, our army. Despite the fact that an indefinite [protest] action had been announced, a decision was made to [re]open the [Martuni-Vardenis] road so that we would not hinder the process, the fulfillment of any task in any way. Many people taking part in the [protest] action have taken part in the 44-day [Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh)] war [last year] and felt on their skin all the hardships of the war. How can these people hinder the one transferring a wounded soldier? An ambulance even came, they said there was a car accident, and the residents quickly [re]opened the road for it to pass. How can they hinder the one who oversees their safety?" asked the member of the aforesaid bloc.

According to Shahnazaryan, no action of the people of Vardenis can be considered as an obstacle to the functions of the Armenian army.

"Our region is the region where there are many soldiers," he added.

The Azerbaijani army units once again resorted to provocation, starting from 4:25pm on Thursday, opening intense firefrom various-caliber firearmsin the direction of the Armenian military positions located in the Gegharkunik Province sector of the Armenia-Azerbaijan border. And as a result of this provocation, two Armenian servicemen sustained minor gunshot wounds.

In support of Aram Harutyunyan who heads the electoral list of the United Vardenis bloc, the residents of Vardenis had closed off the Martuni-Vardenis motorway Thursday, and presented their respective demands. After the local elections in Vardenis on December 5, when the Aharon Khachatryan and the United Vardenis blocs announced the formation of a coalition, the investigative committee of Sevan city had summoned Aram Harutyunyan for questioning, and detained him. And the court decision on whether to arrest Harutyunyan is expected to be announced Friday.
President of Armenia Armen Sarkissian participated online in the Ada Lovelace Festival in Germany, held under the title "Quantum World" this year.

The Festival, named after mathematician Ada Lovelace, is a unique platform for tech talents and tech enthusiasts alike to discuss the impact of technological changes on different areas of life. Representatives of the German government and world leading technology companies are taking part in the Festival.

Within the framework of the Festival, the President of the Republic Armen Sarkissian answered the questions on the challenges of the changing world, and quantum policy.

"I call what we are witnessing now R-evolution, that is, rapid evolution," said the President. In other words, we will live in a period of constant rapid evolution, where quantum computing will completely change our lives. I am sure that the people who are present at the conference are well aware of that."

President Sarkissian noted we must realize that we live in a world, which is completely different even from the world thirty years ago. "The way we communicate, the fact that everyone has a device in their hands that contains a wealth of information, the fact that people can express their ideas in social media, and the way we manage our healthcare system have totally changed our planet," he said, - The planet has now become smaller, more crowded, and very fast. Each of us leads two lives. We have our material life, also the electronic or alternative life that is constantly with us. That life is absolutely quantum in the sense that it travels at the speed of light, allowing us to receive large-scale information. That life also affects our material life. 

Answering the question about the impact of technological changes on the politics, President Sarkissian noted that the politics is changing. "Thirty, fifty or a hundred years ago, classical politics was implemented through a parliamentary, presidential or monarchical structure, through international structures. "Everything is different today," he said. - You vote not every five years but at least five times a day through Facebook. Democracy has changed. The political events in the world over the last 10-15 years have become very unpredictable and unstable. We need to understand that we are entering a completely different era for humanity, which has one formulation - quantum."

According to President Sarkissian, in the future, people will make decisions with the help of artificial intelligence. "To compare what can happen, I will give an example from different areas of our lives. Take chess, for example. It's a great game. I am proud to say that every child in Armenia learns chess from the first grade at school because it is a fantastic tool to develop logic, concentration, and thinking discipline," said the President. Today, chess combines a person of fantastic talent and a computer. No one can become a world champion today if he is not computer-trained. In other words, it has become an excellent helper that can analyze all possible moves. Tomorrow, a super-powerful computer, using artificial intelligence, can help chess players make the right moves. But in any case, the chess players will be individuals because chess is not just about making the right move. It is entirely different when you see the person sitting in front of you: you have a struggle of personalities, characters, knowledge, and cultures; perhaps, even a battle of morality. In other words, the decision-maker will be the person, but artificial intelligence will support him. The same will be in politics. People will make decisions, but artificial intelligence will help them."
Armenian News - NEWS.am presents the daily digest of Armenia-related top news as of 10.12.21:

 At noon Friday, units of the Azerbaijani armed forces attacked the Armenian military positions at the eastern direction of the Armenia-Azerbaijan border, the Armenian defense ministry reported.

But as a result of the retaliatory actions by the Armenian side, the adversary suffered human losses and was thrown back to its initial positions.

The exchange of fire continues at this moment.

 As a result of the provocation made by the units of the Azerbaijani Armed Forces in the eastern direction of the Armenian-Azerbaijani border today, two Armenian servicemen received slight firearm injuries, the Ministry of Defense of Armenia reported.

As of 6 p.m. exchange of fire has stopped.

 Germanys new Minister of Agriculture Cem Ozdemir is the first minister of the Federal Republic of Germany with a history of migration, DW reports.

His parents were labor migrants who moved from Turkey in the early 1960s when Germany had a huge lack of workers and they met in Germany. Ozdemir was born in 1965 in Bad Urach.

Ozdemir was the initiator and one of the most active supporters for adoption of the Armenian Genocide Resolution approved on June 2, 2016, by the Bundestag.

After the adoption of the resolution, he received threats, and the number of death threats reached a point where the federal agency for criminal cases was compelled to take measures to ensure the politicians safety.

 Charges have been brought against 5 of the 10 prisoners of war who were returned to Armenia on December 4, and the motion to arrest them has been filed with the court. This is what Spokesperson of the Investigative Committee of Armenia Vardan Tadevosyan said during a conversation with Armenian News-NEWS.am.

According to the Investigative Committee, the servicemen are charged with violating the rules for on-duty combat service or combat service that caused heavy consequences.

The spokesperson also informed that the Investigative Committee is currently considering the motions for arrest, and the court hearings are in progress.

 As of Friday morning, 347 new cases of the coronavirus were confirmed in Armenia, and the total number of these cases has reached 342,115 in the country.

Also, 20 more deaths from COVID-19 were registered, making the respective total 7,767 cases.
A Yerevan court of general jurisdiction, under the chairmanship of Judge Vahe Misakan, returned from the consultation room and announced its decision on the motion under the case against Dr. Armen Charchyan [the imprisoned MP from the opposition Armenia Faction in the National Assembly of Armenia and former director of Izmirlian Medical Center of Yerevan] by which it lifted the arrest pre-trial measure against him. Afterwards, Armen Charchyan was released from the courtroom.

The judge declared that signature to not leave the country has been chosen as a pre-trial measure.

After the court announced its decision, there was applause in the courtroom, and Armen Charchyan was greeted by the members of his team outside.

The Constitutional Court on Thursday made a decision on the constitutionality of Article 31, Section 1, Clause 3, and Article 295, Section 1, Clause 2 second paragraph of the Criminal Procedure Code, and it ruled that a person in custody cannot be kept in custody from the moment of acquiring the status of an MP.

On August 23, the Criminal Court of Appeal had granted the prosecutions appeal against the lower courts decision to release Armen Charchyan on bail. After this appellate court decision, Armen Charchyan had gone to a Yerevan penitentiary on his own initiative, and was arrested there. But On August 30, it became known that Charchyan's health condition had deteriorated and he was taken to Yerevan civic hospital.

Charchyan had suffered an acute heart attack on August 24, has severe diabetes, and is taking 92 units of insulin which is incompatible with his being in custodyand this incompatibility is confirmed by a government decision, too.

Armen Charchyan is charged with committing electoral fraud.
Prime Minister of Armenia Nikol Pashinyan today visited the State Supervision Service and introduced the staff to the Services newly appointed head Romanos Petrosyan. The Prime Minister expressed gratitude to Tigran Ulikhanyan for the work that he did as Head of the State Supervision Service.

As reported the Office of the Prime Minister, Pashinyan congratulated Romanos Petrosyan, wished him success and mentioned that the State Supervision Service is one of the major circles and tools in the system of administration in order to ensure fruitful operation of the public administration system. There have been certain problems in the State Supervision Service, but we need to move forward by taking all this into consideration, he added.

Ulikhanyan expressed gratitude to the Armenian premier for the trust, thanked the staff for the cooperation and wished the new head of the Service success.

In his turn, Petrosyan expressed gratitude for the great trust and assured that he will do his best to increase the institutional role of the State Supervision Service.
Governor of Shirak Province of Armenia Nazeli Baghdasaryan today received the delegation led by Secretary General of the International Federation of Red Cross and the Red Crescent Movement Jagan Chapagain, as reported the regional governors office of Shirak Province.

Its an honor for us to host you in Shirak Province. There are already preconditions for cooperation, and I fully hope that the major mission that you are carrying out in Armenia will be ongoing, Baghdasaryan told Chapagain.

Attaching importance to the active cooperation with the IFRC, the parties discussed the return of Armenian captives originally from Shirak Province and humanitarian aid. Chapagain expressed gratitude to the regional governor of Shirak Province for the reception and stated that he reaffirms the willingness to stand with Armenia, adding that the IFRCs programs in Shirak Province will be ongoing. The regional governor highly appreciated the activities of the IFRC in Shirak Province and particularly touched upon the programs for increasing resistance of communities and mitigation of the consequences of war and disasters.
I dont know about that, I was summoned to the Prosecutor Generals Office, but during the four-day sessions in the National Assembly, I called and said I will show up later. This is what leader of the opposition Armenia Faction of the National Assembly of Armenia Seyran Ohanyan told reporters in parliament, touching upon the fact that attachment has been imposed on his assets.

Asked if he doesnt have assets that are illegal, Ohanyan said the following: I have what I have declared, or what my family has declared. They [the authorities] want to charge me within the scope of all the actions that the shareholding company has taken through the state procedures, but I dont accept the charge.

Asked if the attachment is imposed on the declared assets, Ohanyan said he will find out when he shows up to the Prosecutor Generals Office since nothing is stated in the notice.

As reported earlier, the court for cases of civil forfeiture of illegal assets granted the motion of the Prosecutor Generals Office and imposed attachment on the assets of several former high-ranking officials and their persons in kinship. Arrest has been applied as a measure of securing the claim for civil forfeiture of illegal assets.

The Prosecutor Generals Office has particularly explored the lawfulness of the assets of former Minister of Defense, deputy of the opposition Armenia Faction Seyran Ohanyan and his wife Ruzanna Khachatryan, a person associated with him, former head of Serzh Sargsyans bodyguards Vachagan Ghazaryan, his wife, daughter and son and petitioned to impose attachment on their assets, and the petition was granted.
The inter-agency commission for prevention of the COVID-19 pandemic in Armenia today held a session chaired by Deputy Prime Minister Hambardzum Matevosyan, as reported the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister.

In his opening remarks, the Deputy Prime Minister stated that the measures for prevention of the spread of the pandemic remain on the agenda for the commissions first session.

According to him, the coronavirus vaccines are already available, which serves as a real opportunity to prevent the spread of the pandemic and its negative impact. Matevosyan added that it seems as though the new variant of the coronavirus (Omicron) hasnt been sufficiently explored and there is a risk that it may become the start of a more severe wave. He urged citizens to get vaccinated and break the chain of the pandemic.

During the session attended by government officials and lawmakers, the coronavirus situation in Armenia was discussed. Minister of Health Anahit Avanesyan presented the picture of the current trends of the spread of the virus and the current vaccination indicators. The effectiveness of the current measures for prevention and the future steps to increase effectiveness were discussed.
Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan delivered remarks at the virtual "Summit for Democracy" initiated by US President Joe Biden.

The Prime Minister, in particular, noted.

Honorable President Biden,

Excellencies,

Ladies and Gentlemen,

It is my honor to represent the Republic of Armenia at todays Summit for Democracy. Citizens of Armenia do not take for granted the value of government of the people, by the people, for the people. We have fought for it throughout our modern history. By voting for independence in 1991, we also restored a multi-party system and a framework of political rights that is meant to empower the individual citizen. Over the last three years, Armenians have chosen democracy over authoritarianism twice. The first time was in 2018, following the non-violent Velvet Revolution, and the subsequent free and fair snap election. The second time was in 2021, following a devastating war. Armenians went to the polls, again, to ensure that we would not return to the ways of the past. Indeed, democracy is a perpetual work in progress.

We are committed to the consolidation of democracy in Armenia through strengthening democratic institutions. By embracing transparency and accountability, we are planning governance reforms and the implementation of policies that will build faith both in Armenia and among our partners abroad. By 2026, we aim to achieve continuous improvements in comparative indicators, specifically rising from a score of 50 to 60 in the World Banks Worldwide Governance Indicator, and 49 to 60 in Transparency Internationals Corruption Perception Index.

We also consider tackling climate change as fundamental to democratic governance, and are committed to building a low-emission energy sector and a vibrant green economy.

In our bid to consolidate our democracy, we are facing multiple challenges. The biggest challenge for us comes in the form of military threats to our security. Fighting for democracy at home is yet another challenge. That challenge is compounded when threats arise from beyond our borders. If we are to restore the appeal of democracy throughout the world, we need to join forces to face these challenges together. Armenia is committed to contributing to the global mission of strengthening democracy, and we hope that we are not alone.

The two-day event is attended by leaders and representatives of more than a hundred countries.

Joe Biden delivered a speech at the opening of the Summit, after which the panel discussions started.

Representatives of non-governmental organizations and the private sector are also taking part in the conference.

Issues related to countering threats to democracy, fighting corruption and protecting human rights are on the agenda of the two-day debates.
Today, at the invitation of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation, the first meeting for the formation of a regional advisory platform was held in Moscow and was attended by the representatives of Armenia, Russia, Iran, Azerbaijan and Turkey, at the level of the Deputy Foreign Ministers, as reported the Armenian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

The scopes of possible regional cooperation, including economy, transport, culture and humanitarian issues, were discussed during the meeting.

Deputy Foreign Minister of Armenia Vahe Gevorgyan reaffirmed the Armenian sides position that the agenda of the regional advisory platform needs to be targeted at the formation of a mutually beneficial and mutually understandable agenda for regional cooperation, refraining from duplicating other international platforms, including formats with the mandate to settle conflicts.

An agreement was reached to continue the consultations, based on the need for respect for and inclusion of the rights of all countries of the region, the press release reads.
The military provocations of the Azerbaijani armed forces along the entire Armenian-Azerbaijani border happen every day. On December 10, Vahe Manaseryan, a serviceman of the armed forces of Armenia, was fatally wounded and eight other servicemen were injured in a course of such provocation.

Expressing deep condolences to the family of the fallen serviceman, wishing a speedy recovery to the wounded servicemen, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Armenia condemns the provocative actions of Azerbaijan, emphasizing that they are pre-planned and aimed to further escalate the situation in the region.

The above-mentioned observation is based on the fact that Azerbaijan is constantly evolving its absurd rhetoric on so-called "Zangezur Corridor", which contradicts the Trilateral Statements of November 9, 2020, January 11, 2021, and the agreements reached in Sochi on November 26, 2021, and are a blatant demonstration of the aspirations towards the sovereign territory of the Republic of Armenia.

Armed units of Azerbaijan have illegally infiltrated into the sovereign territory of the Republic of Armenia and occupied an area of more than 40 square kilometers since May of this year, and todays incident took place in one of those areas.

To date, Azerbaijan has not responded to the proposal of the Republic of Armenia on the mirror withdrawal of the troops, which was handed over to the Azerbaijani side in written form on November 26.

The Republic of Armenia draws the attention of its partner in the security sphere - the Russian Federation, also the Collective Security Treaty Organization, UN Security Council, OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chair countries and the international community to the above-mentioned evidence, as well as to the fact that with its warmongering statements the official Baku continues the threats of use of force against the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Armenia, violating the fundamental principles of international law, including the UN Charter, as well as undermining the regional and global security.

The Republic of Armenia calls on the Republic of Azerbaijan to refrain from provocative rhetoric and actions, and not to hinder the efforts of establishing peace and stability in the region.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Armenia is convinced that the mirror withdrawal of the troops from the Armenian-Azerbaijani border and the launch of an international monitoring mechanism could be one of the measures to avoid further escalation of the situation.
HK imposes stringent quarantine on US arrivals

Arrivals from the US will be facing 'the most stringent' quarantine and testing requirements. File photo: RTHK

The government said it will implement "the most stringent" quarantine and testing requirements for arrivals from the United States starting Monday, after a man travelling from the US to Hong Kong this week was found to be carrying the Omicron variant.



Inbound travellers from the US will stay at the Penny's Bay quarantine centre for the first seven days of their three-week isolation and get tested every day, before they'll spend the next 14 days under hotel quarantine.



Meanwhile, the authorities are adding Cuba, Kuwait and Liechtenstein to the Group A high-risk regions starting Monday, as Omicron cases were identified in those countries.



Only Hong Kong residents with recognised vaccination records from these places will be allowed entry. Upon arrival, they will have to undergo 21 days of quarantine at a hotel and tested six times.



A government spokesman said in a statement "the most stringent inbound prevention and control measures in the world" that Hong Kong has in place has warded off the Omicron variant.



"All five imported Omicron cases recorded so far were detected while the inbound travellers were undergoing stringent quarantine and testing measures. The relevant cases and their close contacts had been isolated immediately so that they would not have any contact with the community," the statement read.
"Religious violence spawned by allegations of blasphemy has taken on a life of its own, destroying the fabric of society slowly but surely," Pakistans Dawn newspaper said in an editorial. A commentary in the same newspaper tersely declares that this is "just a trailer" of things to come in future with the state both military and civilian (politicians and bureaucracy) caving in to pressures from religious zealots, some of which they have themselves nurtured and/or condoned as "state assets". While successive governments have been responsible, the efforts of the Imran Khan government to buy peace with two Tehreeks -- the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) and Tehreek-e-Labaik Pakistan (TLP) -- both of whom justify violence in the name of faith, coupled with the rise of the Taliban in neighbouring Pakistan with Islamabad's tacit support, has heightened the concerns as never before. TLP slogans were raised by its activists among the scores of factory who last week lynched a Sri Lankan manager, Priyantha Kumar, at a Sialkot factory. His body was burnt as thousands watched and some even filmed, causing nationwide anger reactions abroad and diplomatic issues with Colombo. This comes as part of a trend of mobs punishing those who they suspect have insulted the Prophet or Islamic scriptures and symbols, violating the blasphemy law that prescribes death penalty. The British-era blasphemy laws, tightened during military dictator Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq's era in 1980s, have set an alarming trend that has accelerated in the last decade, analysts say. Among those killed was Punjab Governor Salman Taseer. His bodyguard, the killer, when hanged, has a memorial dedicated to him that is visited by many. Student Mashaal Khan was among he many lynched. Numerous others, especially those from religious minorities, have been targeted by mobs. Kuamara, who ordered labels with Arabic writings removed from consignments meant for export, possibly without knowing what the writings said, was accused of blasphemy by the workers. "While he (Imran Khan) tweeted his condemnation of the incident the prime minister has not said much about the threat of religious extremism," Columnist Zahid Hussein says, lamenting "weaponisation of faith", (Dawn, December 9). To Khan who considers himself a global Muslim leader campaigning against Islamophobia in the West, Hussein has advised to look within Pakistan and "not look for reasons outside". Even among other Prime Ministers, he ought to take the liberal cue from his Sri Lankan and New Zealand counterparts. Pakistani media reports note that Khan has failed to restrain his Defence Minister Pervez Khattak, politically close to him, who said of Kumara's killing: "murders happen. There were people who were impacted by the Islamic faith, both youngsters and adults. They become upset and act in a passionate manner. This isn't to say that it was a reaction to something. Everyone has their own way of thinking". Commentators have said that Khattak may have been crude', but this is precisely the thinking of many in and outside the government who justify faith-based violence. Faith-based violence blamed on teachings at mosques and madrassas in Pakistan. But the Dawn editorial (A watershed moment?) noted that the clerics were among those who condemned it in strong words. However, "several of the clerics vociferous in their condemnation of the murder as 'inhumane and un-Islamic' have been the driving force behind the blasphemy campaign across the country that has been the cause of untold misery to thousands". "Whether this 'watershed moment' proves a catalyst for real change is as yet unknown. Sadly, history tells us that this nation has a very limited capacity for self-reflection, let alone taking the difficult steps that would be needed to root out what is no less than a cancer of the soul." In a hard-hitting commentary on the blame-game that takes place after each incident, from the Prime Minister to the priests to the policemen, Ahad Hussein says that all the anger and outrage will soon be forgotten as has been the case in the past. "Then, just like that, it's over. And done. And dusted. Because, you see, no one is really responsible. Or everyone is. And when everyone is, no one really is." Hussein writes: "A weak state, unable to stop the spread of a retrogressive mindset has turned the country into a breeding ground for violent extremism. What happened in Sialkot was just a trailer of the horror that awaits us." --IANS ksk/ ( 736 Words) 2021-12-10-15:52:37 (IANS)
Lt General Salahuddin Satti (retd), then commander of the Triple One Brigade, which oversaw the overthrow of former Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif government on October 12, 1999, has termed the coup an unfortunate incident, The News reported. In an interview with Saudi Urdu News website, the former Pakistan Chief of General Staff, Lt Gen Satti said the incident of October 12, 1999 should have never occurred. He said he met former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif twice before the toppling of his government and found him a polite and mature person as the premier, the report said. The former head of the Triple One Brigade, who supervised the military coup against Nawaz Sharif, spoke for the first time about the incident and its aftermath. In his interview with the Urdu News, he said there is an impression that the military operation against Nawaz Sharif was pre-planned, which is totally wrong. "As the Commander of the Triple One Brigade, I did not go to the Prime Minister's House or even Islamabad. I controlled the entire operation and gave instructions through mobile. Apart from sending a unit from the Presidency to PTV, some troops were dispatched to the Prime Minister's House. But our troops did not cross the PM House's gate till the evening when General Mahmood reached there," Lt Gen Satti told Urdu News. Referring to the atmosphere inside the Prime Minister's House, he said that tension had arisen when the troops faced the newly-appointed COAS, General Ziauddin Butt who was accompanied by highly-trained retired SSG commandos. They were armed and very active. General Satti further stated that the commanding officer called and told him about the situation and said if Gen Butt's commandos opened fire, then it will be difficult to handle the situation. However, the commanding officer told the armed personnel accompanied by Gen Butt to stop as they could not guarantee anyone's life. After this warning, they stopped their movement and General Butt was kept under house arrest there and later shifted to the CMH because he was not feeling well, the report said. "General Ziauddin Butt was the head of the ISI. An impression was created through the media that the military wanted to topple Nawaz Sharif's government. However, there were no such preparations as perceived in the media," commented Gen Satti. About his personal training, he told the Urdu News that he was the Chief of Staff at the X Corps when two years prior to this incident, President Farooq Ahmed Leghari had toppled Benazir Bhutto's government. The military was moved at that time too. Therefore, being Chief of Staff of X Corps, he knew how to make such arrangements under these circumstances, the report added. He further said that Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif's father Mian Sharif arranged a meeting between his son and the Chief of the Army Staff General Pervez Musharraf to settle their issues amicably. After this meeting, he took General Pervez Musharraf to Umrah and everyone thought the issues had been settled between them. Once the issues were resolved apparently, General Musharraf left for Sri Lanka on an official tour. What happened behind him is history now, he said, the report said. --IANS san/ ( 548 Words) 2021-12-10-17:55:23 (IANS)
Organised by the Gujarat government, the Vibrant Gujarat Global Summit will be inaugurated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and will be held from January 10-12 at Gandhinagar.

The Bowling Alley is a day-long pitching event for startups interested in showcasing their business plans and business models to the investor community. GVFL has invited major investors from across the country to attend the event physically as well as virtually.

Some of the major investors who have already confirmed participation include Bessemer Venture Partners, Trifecta Capital, Unicorn India Ventures, Equanimity Investments, GVFL Ltd, Venture Catalyst, 9 Unicorns, 100X VC and Sixth Sense Ventures, among others.

GVFL is inviting the participation of all startup entrepreneurs from Gujarat to pitch their business plans to the investors. Startups with unique and scalable business models, and technology as a differentiator, can apply for this event. The sessions will have sub-categories including bio-technology, agri-technology, education technology, Internet of Things (IoT), Artificial Intelligence (AI), and defence technology, among others.

The central theme of VGGS is to epitomise the commitments from 'Aatmanirbhar Gujarat to Aatmanirbhar Bharat'.

It is the Prime Minister's vision that India should have 75 unicorn startups to mark the 75th year of the country's Independence in 2022. Union Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal has set up the National Startup Advisory Council (NSAC) to facilitate this vision.

--IANS amc/arm

( 277 Words)

2021-12-10-00:11:37 (IANS)
Ahmedabad (Gujarat) [India], December 10 (ANI/PRNewswire): 833 students celebrated a major milestone in their educational journeys as they graduated from Ahmedabad University receiving degrees at its 11th Annual Convocation on December 4, 2021. 616 students from the Amrut Mody School of Management, 39 students from the School of Arts & Sciences, 161 students from the School of Engineering & Applied Science and 17 students from School of Computer Studies were recognised at this virtual ceremony. The total count of graduating students also includes four doctoral students - one from Life Sciences and three from Engineering. Recalling the goal of setting up Ahmedabad Education Society (AES) in the 1930s, Chancellor Sanjay Lalbhai said, "The big idea was to create and nurture a comprehensive university system in Ahmedabad - one that will build the theories which will change the society for good, helping our youth become agents of change. Ahmedabad University is carefully crafting this proposition for its students and faculty and strengthening the foundation of a research university in India." Addressing the students, the University's Vice Chancellor & Chairman, Board of Management, Professor Pankaj Chandra, said, "Last year, at this time, we were unsure as to how would the pandemic affect India, when would the vaccine arrive, how would our graduates navigate the new challenges of the world, and who will want to travel the world to be part of a new Institution. Yet, the indomitable spirit of Gujarat prevailed, and we built hope when there was darkness. We completed the academic year with enormous grace, care and rigour through the efforts of our amazingly innovative faculty." "As you stand on the threshold of new opportunities, you will experience that the world has changed dramatically. Big issues that existed but were ignored are now in our face and we cannot ignore them anymore - whether it is untimely rains across the country, flooding in cities, the incidence of dengue and other diseases year after year, rising road casualties, persistence of extreme poverty in our country or even lack of peace within the country and in our neighbourhood. These and other similar areas offer big opportunities for you to engage with and contribute to the wellbeing of our nation and its people. Remember, you have within you the best of traditions of deep learning, contemporary skills, and a can-do orientation. Just believe in your goodness and you will do wise things." One of the most influential economists of our times and Ford Foundation International Professor of Economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Professor Abhijit Vinayak Banerjee was the chief guest at this year's convocation. Congratulating the students, he encouraged them to see themselves as supremely privileged to graduate in these strange times, overcoming psychological pressures to reach success. He said, "The present often dominates our perception and we forget the perspective we started with. In your case, before your admission to your programme, it could have been: I want this opportunity for my life; I will be lucky to get into Ahmedabad University. So the first thing to do is: open your heart and celebrate. Look at your achievement both as a privilege and a responsibility. I know a lot of students from leading universities who have been disappointed because they were too quick to buy into the narrative of what success constitutes. You don't need the usual props to be successful. In an age where what you hear the most is often influenced by structured discourses, it is very important to open your heart and think about what you really want to do. The most important training is not the one in your chosen subject; it's actually in the training of the mind, openness to ideas and the ability to interpret what others mean." Shifting his focus on India, the Nobel laureate added, "In India, this is the moment when society demands your talent and commitment... Remember, change happens slowly. So do not be shy in trying new things. Lastly, do not forget the ways in which you are connected for life to your peers, mentors and faculty at Ahmedabad University." This story is provided by PRNewswire. ANI will not be responsible in any way for the content of this article. (ANI/PRNewswire)
Mumbai (Maharashtra) [India], December 10 (ANI/NewsVoir): Aditi Rao Hydari was the guest of honour at the launch of an exquisite selection of wedding watches by Nebula from Titan. The curated range of 18KT gold timepieces for men and women was modelled with grace and elan by the gracious star. She was joined by Kalpana Rangamani, Chief Marketing Officer, Titan Watches, who introduced the collection saying, "Nebula is the most premium offering from Titan that brings together expert watchmaking and the grace and grandeur of 18KT gold. With unique designs inspired by the art forms and architecture of India, Nebula offers a range of unique and elegant designs for men and women. I'm very happy to introduce a curated collection of watches handpicked by our style experts to complement the ensemble in our grand Indian weddings." The brand showcased a range of artistic watches designed to add an extra special touch to wedding celebrations. Nebula's new "Pair Watches" celebrate natural stones with unique patterns in their finely cut dials. Brilliant blue lapis lazulis and rich green malachites are precisely cut and delicately placed into the dials of these rare timepieces, embellished with diamonds and gold. Another dreamy, feminine timepiece, features an intricately carved red stone that is cut in a signature floral pattern and sparkles with uncut diamonds, flowing into a graceful stone studded gold bracelet. The blend of inspiration from across the world is translated into refined dial design that seeks cues from the rich murals of Ajanta and Ellora, its perfect radiance accentuated by precision set diamonds to create a masterpiece. In conversation with Aditi Rao Hydari: Tell us about your love for watches I love watches and they are my go-to accessory for every outfit. I have grown up seeing my grandmother wear very beautiful vintage watches with the classic Kanjeevaram sarees and beautiful old textiles. I may not wear earrings, but I will always wear a watch! Please tell us about the collection you are launching today I am very happy to launch Nebula's collection of curated 18KT gold watches for this wedding season, because the pieces are truly, very beautiful. Nebula is a brand that is synonymous with luxury. With intricate detailing and embellished with diamonds and precious stones, these watches are opulent and elegant and perfectly accessorise all my outfits for a wedding. Which are your favourite pieces from the collection and why? All the pieces in this collection are timeless and exquisite. There are 3 pieces that I find absolutely stunning. The one I am wearing has emeralds and diamonds, there is another with rubies and diamonds and a third with jade and rubies. I love that they are inspired by India's heritage and culture, whether it is filigree, calligraphy, or the Deccan. The translation of inspiration from an iconic structure like the Falaknuma Palace - its architecture, especially the fountains - into design, is inspired. It's a very beautiful collection and I truly like it a lot. Why would you suggest people buy this collection from Nebula? I love watches, and quite often at weddings I wish that I had a timepiece but sometimes a watch doesn't quite complement traditional wear. Nebula's wedding collection is so beautiful, the watches look like beautiful jewellery, and I would happily wear this to any wedding or function where I'm wearing traditional clothes. I love this collection and as an accessory that is stunning. This story is provided by NewsVoir. ANI will not be responsible in any way for the content of this article. (ANI/NewsVoir)
New Delhi (India), December 10 (ANI/PNN): Renowned businesswoman & philanthropist Jyotsna Reddy, who is known for her contribution to the beauty sector in India, has been awarded the prestigious national award champions of change. She was the youngest among the luminaries who received the award for their contributions in various fields for exemplary achievements. With Empowerment as the core mission, twenty foundations have emerged as the change maker. From building a community that spreads fosters positivity and growth to digitizing learning spaces of children, It has become quite the inspiration for women and children who dream to aspire. According to the official website of Twenty foundations, the acronym of TWENTY stands for a transformative phase of a female through the cycle of life, namely Teens to twenties, Womanhood, Empowerment, Nurture, Traning and Yield power. Being the head of India's first-ever beauty incubator, Reddy aims to pioneer in the beauty landscape by introducing turnkey solutions for brands to effectively strategize towards market growth. By implementation of latest technologies and understanding the dynamics of beauty science, Cosmetico has pioneered all branches of beauty from formulation to merchandising. As someone who seeks the impact of inspiration, She has invested all her passion in initiatives that inspire, transform, and accelerate people's lives. Her mission to create a destination for every segment of India to have access to beauty and hygiene products truly define her as a champion of change. Popularly known as the " youngest beauty tycoon of India", Jyotsna Reddy holds an inspirational journey behind creating one of the most promising beauty brands that advocate inclusivity. Her endless quest for perfection in innovations has made her curate the finest brands that speak quality through diversity. It is needless to say Reddy has been a woman of substance with ceaseless creativity and passion. This story is provided by PNN. ANI will not be responsible in any way for the content of this article. (ANI/PNN)
New Delhi [India], December 10 (ANI/BusinessWire India): One of the fastest-growing media agencies The Setroc Group under the leadership of Francisco Cortes, who was named 'a media force to be reckoned with' by the notable and regarded MY LifeStyle magazine, has been awarded a contract by the NJSBDC (NJ Small Business Development Centers) to produce videos that highlight the organization's leadership and also small businesses that utilize their services. Francisco Cortes who is the co-founder and president of the worldwide interchanges firm - The Setroc Group, is liable for developing and extending key associations; including new business advancement and ability enrollment. The New Jersey Small Business Development Centers (NJSBDC) provide comprehensive assistance to small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to maximize growth opportunities and generate economic impact statewide. The NJSBDC will be the leading statewide organization providing advisory and training services to businesses and new high-impact, growth-oriented SMEs and businesses. The Setroc Group is a correspondence partnership supporting individual and public zone offices to intensify their media impression in the Hispanic commercial center. It is filling in as a trusted and key advocate in different fields like informing, media relations, video producing, and experiential promoting. The accomplishment of The Setroc Group is because of its experience of more prominent than 30 years in the spaces like advertising, media, promoting, photography, remove film producing, post-assembling, and high-stop liveliness enterprises. Its diverse method of Marketing, Advertising, Public Relations, and Video Production takes a total of 360 procedures for your message all under one organization. The secret formula is indistinguishable components advancement, commitment to the transporter, and imaginative reasoning. It is an honor winning governmentally ensured Service-Disabled Veteran-Owned Small Business (SDVOSB) and broadly guaranteed Minority Business Enterprise (MBE). Francisco is a media veteran with 20 or more long stretches of significant transmission network insight in advertising, showcasing, publicizing, photography, film creation, visual communication, and multi-social and local area outreach. This story is provided by BusinessWire India. ANI will not be responsible in any way for the content of this article. (ANI/BusinessWire India)
Dubai [UAE], December 10 (ANI/NewsVoir): The India Pavilion at EXPO2020 Dubai has achieved another milestone by recording half a million visitors' mark since its inauguration on October 1, 2021 by Piyush Goyal, Minister of Commerce and Industry, Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution and Textiles. In his tweet message on this landmark achievement, Goyal said, "#IndiaAtDubaiExpo stands tall, showcasing our capabilities in achieving ambitious goals for global good, which reflects India's Partnerships, Pride & its People." (twitter.com/PiyushGoyal/status/1469215867867000834?s=20). Talking about the success of the India Pavilion, Sunjay Sudhir, Ambassador of India to the UAE said, "India is honoured to participate in Dubai EXPO - a global platform where different nations have congregated to showcase their business potential and cultural heritage. As India is an important and growing investment destination, EXPO2020 Dubai has given us a unique opportunity to network with global stakeholders and secure investments for our country." He added, "We are delighted to see the response from the visitors who wish to immerse themselves in Modern India's confluence of opportunities and potential. The visitors have participated enthusiastically and have rejoiced in the festivities at the India Pavilion. We will ensure that the momentum is sustained, and our visitors get to experience the real essence of India as we move ahead in our journey at the Expo." The India Pavilion has hosted various meetings and events pertaining to investments across focus sectors and states along with cultural events for the visitors since inauguration. Besides showcasing India as an attractive investment destination on an international platform, the Expo has been pivotal in strengthening the bilateral trade relations with the UAE and cultural ties between India and the rest of the world. The India Pavilion has been recognized as one of the most iconic pavilions at the Expo by American Institute of Architects and is one of the most visited pavilions at the EXPO2020 Dubai. The Pavilion has played a key role in showcasing the Indian start-up ecosystem amongst global audience through the Innovation Hub bus. Among the states, Gujarat, Telangana, Karnataka, Rajasthan, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh and UT of Ladakh have already showcased their business potential and have secured investment opportunities in key sectors. The Pavilion has also promoted India's key sectors such as New and Renewable Energy, Space, Urban and Rural Development, Oil & Gas and Textile during their respective weeks. Leading voices from the government and industry including Hardeep Singh Puri, Union Minister for Petroleum and Natural Gas & Minister for Housing and Urban Affairs, Government of India, Dr S Jaishankar, Minister of External Affairs, Government of India, Darshana V Jardosh, Minister of State for Textile & Railways, Government of India, Shanti Kumar Dhariwal, Minister for Urban Development & Housing, Government of Rajasthan, Subhash Desai, Minister of Industries, Government of Maharashtra, Aditi Tatkare, Minister of State for Industries and Tourism, Government of Maharashtra and Dr K. Sivan, Chairman, Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) & Secretary Department of Space have been a part of the sessions at the India Pavilion. The India Pavilion has hosted several cultural activities during Dusshera and Navratri celebrations. These included folk dances, storytelling and music for countless visitors and dignitaries. It hosted Diwali Week from November 2-5 which was celebrated with great enthusiasm. The festival of Diwali was celebrated with colourful installations and lighting in the form of Swarangoli or LED Rangoli, virtual display of firecrackers and events including performances by leading Indian artists like Salim-Sulaiman, Vipul Mehta and bands like Rooh and Dhruv. The upcoming weeks at the India Pavilion will witness participation from other states such as Uttar Pradesh, Kerala, Jharkhand, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, UT of Jammu & Kashmir among others and sectors such as Healthcare, Electronics and Information Technology, Energy Conservation, Environment & Sustainability, Tribal Affairs, Spices & Tourism to name a few. To know more about India Pavilion at EXPO2020 Dubai, please visit: Website - www.indiaexpo2020.com Facebook - www.facebook.com/indiaatexpo2020 Instagram - www.instagram.com/indiaatexpo2020 Twitter - twitter.com/IndiaExpo2020?s=09 LinkedIn - www.linkedin.com/company/india-expo-2020/?viewAsMember=true YouTube - www.youtube.com/channel/UC6uOcYsc4g_JWMfS_Dz4Fhg/featured Koo - www.kooapp.com/profile/IndiaExpo2020 To know more about EXPO2020 Dubai, please visit - www.expo2020dubai.com/en. This story is provided by NewsVoir. ANI will not be responsible in any way for the content of this article. (ANI/NewsVoir)
Mumbai (Maharashtra), [India] December 10 (ANI/PNN): Touted to be one of the biggest musical releases of the year, Jassi Chhokar and Gurlej Akhtar's Magnum dropped today. The upbeat Punjabi track is sung by the dynamic duo with music composed by Chhokar, Jassi Khamachon has penned the lyrics. Magnum is presented by Krysstal 24 Music. The music video, which is high on drama, style and action, features Chhokar, Swati Chauhan, Shehzaan Khan and Sahil Masih. Shot at Turkey, Istambul on a huge scale, the video perfectly conveys the essence of the song and is themed on revenge, power game and ambitions. It has been produced by Pooja Arora and Mahender Singh. Despite an upbeat tempo and international sounds, what captures attention is the rustic and earthy Punjabi flavour to it. Needless to say, Magnum is sure to emerge as the next party anthem! Talking about Magnum, Jassi Chhokar says, "I had a wonderful time creating Magnum. We released the song just today, and we're lucky to be receiving so much love already. I loved the collaboration with Gurlej. She has a power-packed voice, and it's always amazing to work with people who help bring out the best from within you. And kudos to Dhanashree for making the song look so beautiful onscreen as a director!" Our DOP Dhruwal Patel has done brilliant work! We're very happy that we could achieve our vision." he added Magnum is a powerful song. Hence, you can see the video talking about everything that is considered powerful, like money and ambitions. Dhanashree Mehta Goel adds, "We wanted to make a slick video that perfectly conveys the core flavour of the song. Sharing her excitement, Gurlej Akhtar says, "Magnum is a very special song for me. We had a gala time recording it. Having said that, it is a tough song to croon because it requires you to sing at various scales. But Jassi has done a fabulous job in composing this track, which is sure to leave a mark in people's hearts." This story is provided by PNN. ANI will not be responsible in any way for the content of this article. (ANI/PNN)
The company will begin with exporting MG Hector to Nepal as the first step towards its expansion plan for other South Asian countries.

"MG Motor India is constantly progressing its operations, expanding the market reach, stakeholder base, and adding new customers and partners to the MG family. Taking this spirit forward, MG is geared up to expand its footprint across the other South Asian countries starting with Nepal," MG Motor India President and Managing Director Rajeev Chaba said.

"Hector has played a vital role in establishing our prowess in the auto industry as dynamic and aggressive as the Indian auto space, and we are looking forward to driving interest in Nepal with the launch of MG Hector."

MG Motor India began commercial production in India on May 6, 2019, and launched its first car, MG Hector, in June 2019. Its manufacturing facility in Halol has an annual production capacity of 80,000 vehicles and employs nearly 2,500 workers.

Currently, the company offers Hector, ZS EV, and Gloster.

--IANS rv/vd

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2021-12-10-22:28:58 (IANS)
Actor Ayushmann Khurrana, whose rom-com 'Chandigarh Kare Aashiqui' hit the theaters on Friday, took a moment to thank his parents, P. Khurrana and Poonam Khurrana, for the values they have instilled in him. He feels that it's their parenting which enabled him to make some brave choices in his career. The actor took to Instagram and shared a throwback picture of himself with his parents, with the caption: "Thank you Maa and Papa for all the values and all the life lessons that you have patiently taught me. They have been and will always be with me as my guiding light. I'm blessed to have you as my parents. Love you." Directed by Abhishek Kapoor, 'Chandigarh Kare Aashiqui' aims to start a conversation on love as Ayushmann's character of a body-builder from Chandigarh falls in love with a trans-woman, played by Vaani Kapoor. With this film, the actor continues his streak of doing content-driven cinema that brings different subjects into national consciousness, besides presenting new perspectives. --IANS aa/arm ( 179 Words) 2021-12-10-19:36:43 (IANS)
A new study has found that in order to prevent thyroid cancer, one should avoid excess weight or obesity. The research has been published in the 'International Journal of Cancer'. The world-first study led by Dr Maarit Laaksonen from UNSW's School of Mathematics and Statistics found that one in five future thyroid cancers in Australia is attributable to current levels of overweight and obesity. Dr Laaksonen, a senior lecturer in Data Science, said that this is concerning as the prevalence of obesity in Australia has doubled during the last two decades, with 75 per cent of Australian men and 60 per cent of Australian women being overweight or obese. "This finding translates to close to 10,000 thyroid cancers in the next 10 years," Dr Laaksonen said. "Obesity explains 75 per cent of this burden in Australia," Dr Laaksonen added. The main authority for cancer research, the International Agency for Research on Cancer, has concluded that body fatness is a causal risk factor of thyroid cancer. But Dr Laaksonen said this is the first time a study has evaluated the thyroid cancer burden attributable to current levels of overweight and obesity and compared this burden by sex. Thyroid cancer is one of the few cancers that are 2-3 times as common in women as in men, but Dr Laaksonen said the study found that the future thyroid cancer burden attributable to overweight/obese is higher for men compared with women. Being overweight or obese explained two in five thyroid cancers in men and one in 10 thyroid cancers in women. "It is still not well understood what causes the sex difference in overweight/obesity-related thyroid cancer risk," Dr Laaksonen said. "But our findings add evidence to the urgent need to halt and reverse the current global trend in weight gain, especially obesity and especially in men," Dr Laaksonen added. Dr Laaksonen said that while this study defined what is linked to one in five thyroid cancers in Australia, it's not well understood what explained the remainder. "Other lifestyle factors do not appear to be implicated but ionizing radiation exposure, iodine deficiency and some genetic factors and family history are known to increase the thyroid cancer risk. Thyroid cancer is a bit like prostate cancer that its risk factors are not yet very well understood," Dr Laaksonen said. The study findings were based on seven Australian cohort studies involving 370,000 participants, which enabled the evaluation of less common cancers such as thyroid cancer. "We linked the data from these seven studies, which all ascertained the participants' Body Mass Index [BMI] at study baseline, with national cancer and death databases, which allowed us to estimate the strength of BMI-cancer and BMI-death associations during the follow-up," Dr Laaksonen explained. "We estimated up-to-date prevalence of overweight and obesity in the Australian population from the latest National Health Survey from 2017-2018, and then combined the strength of association and exposure prevalence estimates to estimate population attributable fractions [PAF]. The PAFs described what fraction of future cancers at the population level is explained by current exposure. We did this by applying advanced PAF methods which I developed," Dr Laaksonen continued. The advanced PAF methods allowed for unbiased disease burden estimates, as well as for the comparison of preventable disease burden by population subgroups in the study. "These methods require access to large cohort data," Dr Laaksonen said. As the prevalence of overweight/obesity is higher in men than women it adds to the sex difference in thyroid cancer burden. "Finally, we multiplied the PAF estimates by the projected numbers of thyroid cancers in the next ten years (2021-2030) to get the absolute numbers of thyroid cancers that are expected to occur due to body fatness," Dr Laaksonen said. The aim of the project, which was jointly funded by the National Health and Medical Research Council and the Cancer Institute NSW, was to evaluate for the first time the preventable future burden of cancer in Australia and its determinants. The team involved in this study included collaborators and representatives of the seven cohort studies on which the study was based. They were from various Australian universities, institutes and Cancer Councils. Dr Laaksonen had previously published findings on preventable lung, colorectal, breast, endometrial, ovarian, pancreatic, kidney, bladder and head and neck cancers. The data scientist is a member of an international team that had recently received a $550,000 grant from the World Cancer Research Fund to expand the cancer burden analyses internationally. "This grant is a fantastic opportunity to use my methods to inform global cancer control. Our collaboration includes experts at Cancer Council Victoria, University of Melbourne, University of New South Wales and Harvard University," she said. Her next steps include a study on the preventable burden of stomach and oesophageal cancers and a summary paper on the preventable cancer burden in Australia across all cancers. (ANI)
An ex-gratia amount of Rs 50,000 will be given to the next of kin of persons who died of COVID-19 disease, said Yashpal Garg, Secretary Health of Chandigarh on Thursday. Speaking to ANI, Garg said, "Last month, Supreme Court has given directions to give an ex gratia amount of Rs 50,000 to the next kin of persons who died of COVID-19 infection. So, we have given all the details to the Disaster Management Authority." "Last week, a total of 12 applications have been received, out of which five people have received the ex-gratia amount. We have asked for more applications and trying to transfer this amount to all within 30 days," he said. Further, the Health Secretary said that a total of 1,076 people have died due to the COVID-19 virus in Chandigarh so far. "Earlier, we had data of 820 deaths in Chandigarh, but after collecting data from cremation grounds, we found out that there are a total of 1,076 deaths reported in Chandigarh," he said. Appealing to people to come forward and apply for the ex-gratia amount, Garg said, "I would say that people should come forward and submit the applications. Even, if there are people whose name is not there in the 1,076 death list, they can also apply for the ex gratia amount by submitting the application to Grievance committee." "If the committee considers the application, then they will also get this amount," he added. (ANI)
A group of people attempted to forcefully enter a church in Rohtak on Thursday alleging that religious conversion is taking place there. The church is located in the Indira Colony of Rohtak. The Assistant Pastor of the Church said, "People come here out of devotion, just like any other place of worship. We never forced anyone to come here. Last evening SHO came and told us of a complaint. We gave all our information to the chowki incharge. SHO then came and inspected the situation here." Meanwhile, the administration deployed police personnel outside the church following the incident. "We received a complaint that something like this might be happening. We probed and found nothing like that. We deployed personnel as precautionary measures. There was a congregation for which no permission had been obtained. So, it was dispersed," said Manoj Kumar, Deputy Commissioner, Rohtak. (ANI)
The arrested persons have been identified as K. Senthil Kumar (48), A. Sathikbatcha (35), and Nanthakumar (21). The trio was planning to take the sea cucumbers to Vedalai in Ramanathapuram district and smuggle them to Sri Lanka by boat from there.

A special squad was on night patrol when a pungent smell drew their attention at around 1.30 am, a senior official told mediapersons.

The team then raided VFS enterprises, which deals with seafood, and found sea cucumbers being boiled in large vessels. The police said that Senthil Kumar is a second-time offender who was earlier detained for trying to smuggle sea cucumbers.

They were engaged by habitual offenders, Meera Shah and Mansoor Ali, who have five-six cases registered against them for sea cucumber smuggling, and the owner of the food processing company, Vijayakumar.

All of them have been booked under relevant sections of Wildlife Protection Act, 1972. Search is on to nab Mansoor Ali, Vijayakumar and Meera Shah, who are on the run.

Sea cucumbers are marine animals with a leathery skin and an elongated body containing a single, branched gonad. They are listed under Schedule I of the Wildlife Protection Act, 1972, giving them the same level of protection as tigers and making poaching them illegal.

--IANS aal/arm

( 262 Words)

2021-12-10-00:00:14 (IANS)
Gyanu, on last week, challenged the party's state President Sanjay Jaiswal and Deputy Chief Minister Tar Kishore Prasad who is also a leader of BJP Legislature Party, saying that the BJP has turned into a "leadership-less party" in Bihar.

Following his statement, party Disciplinary Committee President Vinay Singh issued show cause notice to Gyanu, the MLA of Barh constituency in Patna district.

Vinay Singh, in a written statement, said that Gyanu has given 14 days time to reply to the notice.

BJP sources say that Gyanu was wanting a berth in the Nitish Kumar government but the party state leadership did not recommended his name during its second expansion.

--IANS ajk/vd

( 141 Words)

2021-12-10-00:00:15 (IANS)
A YouTuber named Maridhas has been arrested by the Tamil Nadu police from his residence in Madurai for his controversial tweet on the IAF chopper crash near Coonoor on Wednesday, in which India's first Chief of Defence Staff General Bipin Rawat, his wife and 11 other armed forces personnel were killed. In the tweet, which he later deleted, Maridhas asked whether Tamil Nadu was turning into Kashmir under DMK rule. He also said in a separate tweet that cadres and sympathisers of DMK made fun of the passing away of General Rawat, adding that DMK was the first choice for separatist forces. BJP cadres had blocked the entry of police to his residence at Surya Nagar in Maduria and the police had to use force to take him into custody. Maridhas has been charged under the relevant sections of the Indian Penal Code by the Cyber Police . --IANS aal/arm ( 162 Words) 2021-12-10-00:19:29 (IANS)
A low-intensity blast took place on Thursday in the room of a court in the national capital while a hearing was underway, injuring one person, officials said. No death, however, was reported. This is the second major incident at Rohini court complex in the past three months. Earlier on September 24, in an incident that seemed ripped from a Bollywood potboiler, top Delhi gangster Jitender Singh Mann, alias Gogi, was shot dead in a courtroom by two assailants dressed in lawyers' garb. A senior Delhi Police officer said the source of explosion was traced to a laptop bag kept in courtroom number 102 of Rohini court complex. The blast happened at around 10.30 a.m. on Thursday morning. "The spot was completely cordoned off then and the litigants were asked to vacate the premises," he said adding that the explosion occurred when a hearing was underway. According to a Delhi Fire Services Department official, a call was received at 10.40 a.m. regarding a 'mysterious' explosion at the Rohini Court after which the Fire Department rushed at least 7 fire tenders to the spot. "The blast was of low intensity and the injured person was rushed to a nearby hospital even before the fire tenders reached the spot," the official said. The injured has been identified as Head Constable Rajeev, Naib Court. Lawyers present at the spot told IANS that Rajeev was seated on a chair at the time of the incident and the bag, which exploded, was right under his chair. "He sustained minor injuries and is receiving treatment at a hospital. His condition is stable," an official said. Another lawyer told IANS that all proceedings were stopped after the blast. Amid chaotic scenes, the Delhi Police personnel secured the area. Deputy Commissioner of Police (Rohini) Pranav Tayal also reached the spot to assess the situation. Apart from the heavy police presence inside the Court premises, the National Security Guard personnel were also deployed to examine and inspect the area. "The investigation is still going on and the forensic teams have collected the debris from the spot and taken them for examination," a police officer said. He further informed that the anti-terror unit of Delhi Police -- Special Cell -- will now investigate Thursday's incident. --IANS uj/pgh ( 387 Words) 2021-12-10-00:19:30 (IANS)
Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) Rajya Sabha MP and former National President of Rashtriya Kisan Morcha Vijaypal Singh Tomar on Thursday hit out at Bharatiya Kisan Union (BKU) leader Rakesh Tikait for taking a 'U-turn' on farm laws. Speaking to ANI, Tomar said, "Earlier, Rakesh Tikait praised the bill (Farmers' Produce Trade and Commerce (Promotion and Facilitation) Bill, 2020) and said that it is very beneficial for farmers. He also expressed his gratitude to Prime Minister Narendra Modi for fulfilling the 27-years old dream of his father. But then, he changed his stand and joined the protest against these laws." "However, he called off the protest for which I welcome him," Tomar added. Earlier on December 9, farmers, who have been protesting against the three farm laws on different borders of Delhi since November 26 last year, announced that they are suspending their year-long agitation and would vacate the protest sites on December 11. The announcement came after the protesting farmers received a letter from the Central government, with promises of forming a committee on Minimum Support Price (MSP) and withdrawing cases against them immediately. While addressing a press conference, farmer leader Gurnam Singh Charuni said, "We have decided to suspend our agitation. We will hold a review meeting on Jan 15. If the government does not fulfil its promises, we could resume our agitation." "Protesting farmers will vacate the protest sites on December 11," another farmers' leader Darshan Pal Singh said. Both the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha passed the Farm Laws Repeal Bill on the first day of the winter session on November 29. President Ram Nath Kovind has also given his assent to the Bill that completes the process of repealing the three farm laws. (ANI)
More than 100 students from different colleges and communities on Thursday held a sit-in protest and mass candlelight march in Itanagar against the Nagaland civilians killings. The demonstration was led by All Arunachal Pradesh Student Union in collaboration with the North East Student Organization (NESO) at Indira Gandhi National Park, Itanagar. The demonstrators also included 15 Naga Students from NERIST (North East Regional Institute of Science and Technology), Nirjuli, Arunachal Pradesh. They demanded the repeal of the Armed Forces Special Powers Act, 1958 (AFSPA). Speaking to ANI, social activist and scholar of Rajiv Gandhi University Prem Taba said, "We are here to pay homage to the 14 innocent civilians who were killed by the Indian Army in Nagaland. The anti-democracy and colonial Laws like AFSPA should be abolished from the Northeast." "My message to the Naga brothers and sisters out there is that, be strong and be brave because they have been living with AFSPA for almost four decades, we are with them," Taba added. All Arunachal Pradesh Student Union vice president Meje Taku expressed solidarity with the people of Nagaland. Addressing the public, Taku said, "AFSPA is a Draconian Law which has been misused throughout the history. I request all the Naga Brothers stay strong as it is indeed a tough time for all of us." The firing incident in Nagaland's Mon district on December 4 left 14 civilians dead. Meanwhile, the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) on Monday directed all agencies to ensure that "no such unfortunate incident recurs in future while undertaking operations against insurgents". Earlier on Monday, Home Minister Amit Shah had termed the killing of civilians by security forces in Nagaland a "case of mistaken identity" and informed that a special investigation team (SIT) has been formed with direction to submit its report on the unfortunate incident within one month. On June 30, the Ministry of Home Affairs extended the AFSPA in Nagaland for another six months. According to a notification by the MHA, the Act will remain in effect in Nagaland until December 31. (ANI)
Schools in Hyderabad have appealed to parents not to feel scared about sending their children to schools, following the emergence of the Omicron variant of the coronavirus. Parents of children, too, have supported them. Schools in Telangana resumed offline classes on September 1 this year amid stringent adherence to COVID-19 protocols. Varalakshmi, a principal of a private school said, "I am happy that all our teaching staff and students are healthy. Here, every teacher is fully vaccinated to prevent COVID-19. Our students are following COVID-19 protocols like practising social distancing, wearing a mask and sanitising after every hour.""We are working and teaching students via both online and offline modes. I appeal to all the parents to not worry about the COVID-19 situation," she added. Speaking with ANI, Shailaja, a parent said, "I would request parents not to worry regarding Omicron. Parents can send their kids to schools without any hesitation. Most of the schools and colleges are following COVID precautions." Another parent Kalyan Kumar told ANI, "I request parents not to panic regarding Omicron. I request them to send their children to school. Almost every school and institution is taking proper safety measures. I am sending my kids to school by following COVID-19 norms." Telangana has not reported a single case of the Omicron till now. As India reported nearly two dozen Omicron cases, Union Health Secretary Rajesh Bhushan on Wednesday asked all the States to submit all the samples of positive cases of international travellers and their contacts as well as from emerging hotspots. (ANI)
Haryana Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar on Thursday welcomed the decision of the Samyukta Kissan Morcha (SKM) to suspend its year-long protests against the three farm laws. "I welcome the decision of the Samyukta Kissan Morcha to suspend the agitation after the assurance given by the Central Government. Jai jawan Jai Kisan," read Khattar's tweet roughly translated from Hindi. Earlier on Thursday, SKM finally decided to end their year-long protest against the three farm laws, which were enacted last year and repealed on the first day of the ongoing Winter session of the Parliament, after it received a formal letter from the government agreeing to their pending demands, including a legal guarantee on Minimum Support Price (MSP). In a press statement, the SKM said, "Government of India, through the Secretary, Ministry of Agriculture & Farmers' Welfare, sends a formal letter to Samyukt Kisan Morcha agreeing to several pending demands of the protesting farmers. Samyukta Kisan Morcha formally announces the lifting of the morchas at Delhi Borders on national highways and various other locations in response. Current agitation stands suspended. Battle has been won and the war to ensure farmers' rights, especially to secure MSP as a legal entitlement for all farmers, will continue." SKM dedicated this victory of the struggle to around 715 martyrs of the movement, including those who died in Lakhimpur Kheri, said the press release. "SKM congratulates all the protesting farmers and citizens, and their supporters wholeheartedly for waging an unprecedented struggle and for the glorious gains of the movement," said the release. SKM decided to postpone the celebration due to the untimely death of CDS General Bipin Rawat.In order to ensure that the Centre is keeping to its commitments, SKM will hold its meeting on January 15 in Delhi. (ANI)
The members of Kerala Government Medical Officers' Association (KGMOA), who work in government hospitals under the Directorate of Health Services are continuing their protest for the third day over anomalies in their pay revision. Government doctors began an indefinite standing strike before the Secretariat on Wednesday. "Government doctors of Kerala are on warpath now. We have been given a pay revision two years back but none of the recommendations was put into practice even now. Our pay package still remains low," said Dr Syam Sunder, former president of KGMOA. Even after several rounds of discussions between KGMOA and the state government, the decision remained inconclusive. "The recommendations given by the pay commission has not been put into practice. We have discussed with the government so many times. Because of the COVID-19 pandemic and financial constraints, it has been put off so many times," Dr Sunder said. Recalling the days when the pandemic was at its peak, Dr Sunder said that the doctors worked round the clock in service of the people without complaints. "This is total negligence towards us, we are feeling insulted and humiliated by the government by this type of behaviour. We are requesting the government to consider our pleas as soon as possible and put our pay scale into practice," he noted. (ANI)
The deceased has been identified as Manav Lalwani.

Trombay Police station senior officer Siddheshwar Gove told the media that the victim and his woman friend attended a late-night party with friends.

"Upon reaching home after the party was over, he tried contacting her on phone. However, she did not pick up the call. Upon repeated failure to contact her, he died by suicide by hanging himself," the police officer informed.

His parents found him hanging on the terrace on Tuesday morning and informed the police.

The victim's body has been sent for postmortem.

CCTV footage is being checked for further investigation. A case has been registered and the statement of the girl has been recorded. (ANI)
More than 140 crore COVID-19 vaccine doses have been provided to States and Union Territories, the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare informed on Friday. The Union Health Ministry further informed that more than 18.80 crore balance and unutilized vaccine doses are still available with States and Union Territories. "More than 140 crores (1,40,04,00,230) vaccine doses have been provided to States/UTs so far through Government of India (free of cost channel) and through direct state procurement category. More than 18.80 crores (18,80,33,706) balance and unutilized COVID vaccine doses are still available with the States, Union Territories to be administered," the ministry's release said. The Central Government is committed to accelerating the pace and expanding the scope of COVID-19 vaccination throughout the country. The nationwide COVID-19 vaccination started on January 16, 2021. The new phase of universalization of COVID-19 vaccination commenced from June 21, 2021. The vaccination drive has been ramped up through the availability of more vaccines, advance visibility of vaccine availability to States and UTs for enabling better planning by them and streamlining the vaccine supply chain. As part of the nationwide vaccination drive, the Government of India has been supporting the States and UTs by providing them COVID vaccines free of cost. In the new phase of the universalization 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 UTs. (ANI)
The Union Home Minister visited the residence of the CDS and laid a wreath on their mortal remains here.

Uttarakhand Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami also paid floral tributes to the CDS and his wife.

5/11 Gorkha Rifles are looking after all the arrangements of the last rites of General Rawat who was commissioned in the unit and also went ahead to command it.

The last rites of General Rawat will be performed later in the day with full military honours. The funeral procession will start from Kamraj Marg and reach Brar Square crematorium in Delhi Cantonment.

An IAF chopper crash near Tamil Nadu's Coonoor on Wednesday claimed the lives of 13 people including CDS Rawat and his wife Madhulika Rawat.

Apart from General Rawat and his wife, his defence adviser Brig LS Lidder and Staff Officer Lieutenant Colonel Harjinder Singh also died in the crash.

Meanwhile, Brig LS Lidder was laid to rest earlier today.

Other nine defence forces personnel who died in the chopper crash are Wing Commander Prithvi Singh Chauhan, Squadron Leader Kuldeep Singh, Junior Warrant Officer Rana Pratap Das, Junior Warrant Officer Arakkal Pradeep, Havildar Satpal Rai, Naik Gursewak Singh, Naik Jitendra Kumar, Lance Naik Vivek Kumar and Lance Naik B Sai Teja.

The bodies of the victims were flown from Sulur near Coimbatore to the Palam air base Thursday evening in caskets wrapped in the Tricolour.

Group Captain Varun Singh, the lone survivor in the crash, has been shifted to Air Force Command hospital at Bengaluru for further treatment.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh, National Security Advisor Ajit Doval and Union Minister Smriti Irani visited Palam airbase and paid their last respects to the deceased.

The Centre has ordered a 'tri service' inquiry into the accident. The inquiry will be headed by Air Marshal Manvendra Singh, Air Officer Commanding-in-Chief Training Command.

According to the sources, the black box of the chopper has been recovered from the crash site.

A team of Tamil Nadu's Forensic Science Department also visited the crash site. (ANI)
The last rites of Defence Adviser to the Chief of Defence Staff (CDS) General Bipin Rawat, Brigadier Lakhbinder Singh Lidder, who was among the 13 people who died in the military helicopter crash in Tamil Nadu's Coonoor, were performed with full military honours at Brar Square crematorium in Delhi Cantonment on Friday. An IAF chopper crash near Tamil Nadu's Coonoor on Wednesday claimed the lives of 13 people including CDS Rawat and his wife Madhulika Rawat. Defence Minister Rajnath Singh and Haryana Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar were present at the last rites of the Brigadier Lidder. Wife and daughter of the defence advisor of the CDS broke down while paying their last respects to him. Mournful visuals showed Brigadier's wife in tears kneeling by the head of her husband's coffin, which was draped with the national flag and decked with flowers. Brigadier's daughter was by her mother's side, fighting back tears of her own while paying her last respects to her father. The three service chiefs - Army Chief General MM Naravane, Navy Chief Admiral R Hari Kumar and IAF chief Air Chief Marshal VR Chaudhari too paid their tribute to Brig LS Lidder. Meanwhile, CDS General Rawat will be cremated later in the day today with full military honours. The Army said the mortal remains of only three persons -- General Rawat, his wife Madhulika Rawat and Brigadier Lidder -- had been positively identified so far. Other 10 defence forces personnel who died in the chopper crash are Staff Officer Lieutenant Colonel Harjinder Singh, Wing Commander Prithvi Singh Chauhan, Squadron Leader Kuldeep Singh, Junior Warrant Officer Rana Pratap Das, Junior Warrant Officer Arakkal Pradeep, Havildar Satpal Rai, Naik Gursewak Singh, Naik Jitendra Kumar, Lance Naik Vivek Kumar and Lance Naik B Sai Teja. The bodies of the victims were flown from Sulur near Coimbatore to the Palam airbase Thursday evening in caskets wrapped in the Tricolour. Group Captain Varun Singh, the lone survivor in the crash, has been shifted to Air Force Command hospital at Bengaluru for further treatment. The Centre has ordered a 'tri service' inquiry into the accident. The inquiry will be headed by Air Marshal Manvendra Singh, Air Officer Commanding-in-Chief Training Command. According to the sources, the black box of the chopper has been recovered from the crash site. A team of Tamil Nadu's Forensic Science Department also visited the crash site. (ANI)
Maharashtra Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar and state Home Minister Dilip Walse Patil on Friday held a meeting to review the COVID-19 situation in Pune, said sources. "The meeting is currently underway at Pune Council Hall. Deputy CM Ajit Pawar and Home Minister Dilip Walse Patil are joined by other senior officials of the district," informed sources. This is the first meeting after cases of new COVID-19 variant Omicron were detected in the city. A total of seven people in Pune had tested positive for Omicron. Six people, including three Nigerian nationals, tested positive for the 'Omicron' strain in Pimpri Chinchwad of Pune district, informed Municipal Commissioner Rajesh Patil on Monday. Later, one more was tested positive for the variant in Pune city. Meanwhile, one of these seven people has recovered from the infection. "The first Omicron patient of the Pune city has tested negative in his RT-PCR test and is all set to go home today," said Deputy Health Chief of the Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC), Dr Sanjeev Wavare on Friday. The first two cases of the Omicron variant were reported in the country in Karnataka, followed by one in Gujarat's Jamnagar and then another in Maharashtra's Dombivili. The new variant of COVID-19 was first reported to the World Health Organization (WHO) from South Africa on November 25. As per the WHO, the first known confirmed B.1.1.529 infection was from a specimen collected on November 9 this year. On November 26, the WHO named the new COVID-19 variant B.1.1.529, which has been detected in South Africa, as 'Omicron'. The WHO has classified Omicron as a 'variant of concern'. (ANI)
Three international travellers who arrived in Goa from the United Kingdom on Friday have tested positive for COVID-19, informed state health minister Vishwajit Rane. The flight was carrying a total of 237 passengers, all of whom were tested for COVID-19 infection. "This is with reference to flight AI 146 that arrived from UK today morning. 237 travellers tested on arrival. 3 patients have been tested positive," the health minister tweeted. The other 234 passengers have to undergo a home quarantine. "All other negative travellers will be kept in strict home quarantine and will be retested on day 8 or earlier if symptomatic. According to the Government of India guidelines/protocols, necessary directions have been issued to DHS in this regard," Rane said. Another man tested positive for COVID-19 at the airport on Friday and was isolated at Primary health care in Cansaulim. "A 41-year-old British national of Goan origin tested positive today morning at the airport. The patient has been isolated at PHC-Cansaulim," Rane informed. Earlier, Goa Chief Minister Pramod Sawant said that Russian returnees who reached Goa via Delhi were suspected to be infected with COVID-19 variant 'Omicron'. Rane also had earlier informed that five sailors who arrived in the state in a merchant's vessel were suspected to be Omicron positive. Several cases of the Omicron variant of COVID-19 have been detected in the country with Karnataka, Maharashtra, Rajasthan, and Delhi reporting new cases. A new variant of COVID-19 was first reported to the World Health Organization (WHO) from South Africa on November 25. As per the WHO, the first known confirmed B.1.1.529 infection was from a specimen collected on November 9 this year. On November 26, the WHO named the new COVID-19 variant B.1.1.529, which has been detected in South Africa, as 'Omicron'. The WHO has classified Omicron as a 'variant of concern'. Meanwhile, the office of the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) on Thursday announced that the restrictions on scheduled international commercial passenger services from and to India shall not apply to international all-cargo operations and flights specifically approved by DGCA. Circular issued by the DGCA stated that the suspension of scheduled international commercial passenger services has been extended till January 31 next year. India has added several countries to the list from where travellers would need to follow additional measures on arrival in the country, including post-arrival testing for infection. The current list of "at-risk" countries for the COVID-19 Omicron variant includes the United Kingdom, other countries in Europe, South Africa, Brazil, Botswana, China, Ghana, Mauritius, New Zealand, Zimbabwe, Tanzania, Hong Kong and Israel. (ANI)
Sources on Friday told ANI, "Special Cell of Delhi Police, which is probing the blast case in Rohini's Court has not got any special hand from CCTV so far. The police have started scrutinizing the details of all the vehicles, be it two-wheeler or a four-wheeler, entering the court premises since the day of the blast."

"So far, the Special Cell of Delhi Police, which is probing the blast case in Rohini's Court No. 102, has not got any special clue from CCTV," it said.

A low-intensity explosion in a laptop bag took place at the Rohini court complex on Thursday.

Following the incident, the spot was cordoned off and the Forensic team and National Security Guard (NSG) team was called. The forensic team collected the debris from the spot and took it for examination.

Delhi Police registered a case and investigation is carried out by Special Cell.

Prima facie, the explosion seemed to have taken place in a black coloured bag which was found lying on spot, said Delhi Police.

No causality was reported in the incident. However, a court staff sustained minor injuries and was admitted to a hospital. (ANI)
The Government of Tripura will soon approach the Ministry of Civil Aviation seeking direct international flight linkages between Agartala-Chittagong and Agartala-Singapore route, highly placed sources in the Civil Secretariat said. Already, Chief Minister Biplab Kumar Deb has sought direct flight service between Agartala-Dhaka route during a virtual meeting with Union Civil Aviation Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia. These moves can be seen as a prelude to Maharaja Bir Bikram Airport in Agartala getting the status of International Airport. It is expected that the first international flight shall land in Agartala soon after the new Airport terminal building is inaugurated. "Tripura government is eager to ensure connectivity with all the South East Asian countries, especially the commercial capitals. If Agartala gets direct flights to all the commercial capitals of the South East Asian countries, Agartala will become a strategic point in the global map," sources said. "Even the government has decided to grant subsidies to make sure that the international flights show interest in Tripura. Only recently, the government has reduced the state's share of taxes on Aviation Turbine Fuel. Similarly, some other steps shall surely be taken to attract the airlines operating international flights", the source added. The Chief Minister, while inaugurating the Destination Tripura investment summit, had said that the Tripura government is wholeheartedly trying to bring international flights to MBB Airport in Agartala. (ANI)
Out of the seven Omicron cases detected in Pune, five people have tested negative and two are in stable condition, Maharashtra Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar said on Friday. "Out of seven Omicron cases in the district, five patients tested negative and others are stable," said the Deputy Chief Minister while briefing reporters here about the new variant of COVID-19 detected in Pune. Pawar held a meeting with state Home Minister Dilip Walse Patil and other officials on Friday to review the COVID-19 situation in Pune. Owing to the rising concerns about Omicron, Pawar said that foreign returnees to the state were being tracked and officials keeping a watch on their health. "In Maharashtra, we have tracked and traced a total of 4,604 foreign travellers. The administration is contacting them and asking about their health regularly," he noted. The minister said that Pune district has reached the target of vaccinating 100 per cent of its eligible population with the first dose of a COVID-19 vaccine, becoming the second district in Maharashtra to do so after Mumbai. "Eligible beneficiaries in Pune are 100 per cent vaccinated with first dose against COVID-19. It is the second district in the state to do so. In last 10 days, on average the vaccination pace has increased in the state. However, in some places, people are a bit reluctant about vaccination. A decision will be taken soon to increase the pace and cater to vaccine hesitancy," he added. According to the deputy chief minister, in cities like Baramati, Daund and Indapur, the second dose vaccination is low. "We have appointed two specials officers and have tasked them with using all the agencies of the district administration to increase the vaccination number of the second dose beneficiaries for these areas," Pawar said. He also informed that officials have been directed to hold blood donation camps similar to that organized for vaccination. (ANI)
Chief Minister Bhupesh Baghel is on a two-day visit to Sonakhan to attend a programme on the martyrdom day of the freedom fighter Veer Narayan Singh on Friday. Speaking to ANI, Baghel said, "Veer Narayan Singh was hanged on December 10 at Jaistambh Chowk in Raipur. We have got the opportunity to bow to that soil. I am on a two-day visit to Sonakhan to attend the event organised on this occasion." Talking about the decision of the farmers' unions to suspend the agitation, the Chief Minister said, "The farmers have not rolled back the protest, they have only suspended it. The farmers' unions have also accepted the conditions of the government. They will keep taking note of the government's actions from time to time. Their protest is yet not over." Asked about the state's preparedness in case of the rise in COVID-19 new variant, Omicron cases in the state, he said that the state is fully prepared. "May Omicron never enter Chhattisgarh, but if it does, then we are fully prepared for it," he said. Earlier this month, Chief Minister Baghel had said that air travel should be banned between India and the countries where the Omicron variant is spreading. (ANI)
In a bid to enhance security measures in all court premises, Delhi High Court on Friday directed the Delhi Commissioner of Police to constitute a team of experts to undertake the exercise of security audit of High Court Complex as well as all the District Court Complexes in the national capital. A division bench headed by Chief Justice of Delhi DN Patel has issued several directions on Friday in regards to upgradation and enhancement measures of security in court premises in the light of the Rohini Court shootout incident. The court further stated that the police authorities shall be primarily responsible for regular and continuous security-audit of all the Court Complexes, deployment of adequate personnel, monitoring through CCTV cameras etc., the Government of NCT of Delhi shall be responsible for making budgetary allocation for purchasing security-related devices, as suggested and recommended by the Delhi Police in its Status Report. The police personnel so deployed shall scrupulously check all the vehicles entering the Court Complexes. Only authorized vehicles with stickers shall be permitted inside the Court Complexes, which would include vehicles of staff, advocates and Judges, Delhi HC directed. As regards to high-risk Under Trial Prisoners (UTPs), as far as possible, their appearance may be secured through virtual mode. Wherever or whenever there is a necessity to produce such UTPs physically abundant care and precautions shall be taken in terms of providing adequate police escort and checking/frisking etc., added the court. The bench on November 24 had heard the several stakeholders in the matter and told that the bench will soon pass directions to strengthen the security measures for the High Court and all District courts of Delhi. The court has kept April 18, 2022, as the date for the next hearing. The court also said that the aforesaid directions shall be scrupulously followed by all concerned. There should be round-the-clock monitoring of the court buildings through CCTV cameras and it shall be ensured that the cameras are in working condition, without fail. Steps shall be taken to install, as far as possible, CCTV cameras with high resolution and adequate storage capacity, covering as much area as possible, more particularly, the areas surrounding the lock-ups in the District Courts, the court ordered. Earlier, Additional Solicitor General Chetan Sharma appearing for the Delhi Police apprised the Court that Delhi Police Physical checking points in every court's entry point have been covered, door metals installed at various courts, 2300 CCTV installed, tender floated for procuring adequate scanner x-ray machines etc. Earlier, the Bar Council of Delhi (BCD) said that all advocates shall abide by the security checks and in case any advocate violates the security check, the concerned Bar Association/Bar Council of Delhi will take action and in case the Bar Association deems fit, the matter shall be referred to Bar Council of Delhi by the respective Bar Association, for taking action treating the same as misconduct. The Court earlier had sought suggestions of all stakeholders including different Bar Associations and Bar Council of Delhi regarding the up-gradation of security in the premises of Delhi District Courts after the shootout of Rohini Court. The High Court was hearing a suo motu petition along with a petition moved by a female lawyer Deepa Joseph through Advocate Robin Raju seeking several directions in regards to safety and security in court premises. On September 24, the two attackers, Rahul Tyagi and Jagdeep Jagga had allegedly posed as lawyers to enter the courtroom and fired multiple bullets at gangster Jitender Maan alias Gogi. Police personnel retaliated, allegedly killing the two on the spot. Further probe in this matter is underway. (ANI)
The incident occurred on Thursday night near Sangam when the three-wheeler fell into Beeraperu stream after it was hit by a truck coming from the opposite direction on the bridge across the stream.

The autorickshaw was carrying 12 persons, all belonging to a family and were on their way to a temple for a night halt. While four swam to safety, three others were rescued by the local people. Nagavali (14), one of those rescued, later succumbed at a hospital.

District Superintendent of Police Vijaya Rao said rescue workers resumed search for five missing persons on Friday morning. Personnel from the Coast Guard and expert divers were taking part in the rescue operation.

The autorickshaw was pulled out of the stream with the help of a crane.

The mishap took place around 9.30 p.m. when the three-wheeler which was crossing the bridge over the stream, was hit by a truck travelling in the opposite direction.

Streams and rivers in the district have been in spate since the cyclone in November, when the district experienced heavy rain.

--IANS ms/dpb

( 215 Words)

2021-12-10-11:24:47 (IANS)
Laxmi Kumari, residing in the police quarters, shot herself on the head using her service pistol at about 2 a.m., said the official.

She was found lying on the bed with the weapon in her right hand.

She was deployed at the Lalit Narayan Mithila University police station.

Darbhanga SP Ashok Kumar Prasad and SDPO Sadar Krishna Nandan Kumar visited the spot.

"Prima facie, it appears to be a case of suicide. The victim was holding the gun in her right hand. We have taken the photographs of the incident. The FSL team also taken the samples from the spot especially from her to found gun powder," Prasad said.

"Apart from suicide, we are also investigating other angles. The actual reason of her death would be ascertained after getting the post-mortem and forensic reports," Prasad added.

Laxmi Kumari was a native of Supaul district and she was recruited in 2018.

--IANS ajk/svn/ksk/

( 176 Words)

2021-12-10-13:18:23 (IANS)
The National Commission for Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR) on Friday issued a notice to the Superintendent Police (SP) of Sagar district in Madhya Pradesh, seeking its report on a complaint of feeding cow meat to children at sewadham ashram. The move came after the Commission received a complaint against St. Francis Sevadham located in the Shyampura area under Sagar district in Madhya Pradesh. The complaint alleged that minor children were being forced to eat beef and read the Bible. Recently, two siblings residing in St. Francis Sevadham with the help of their parents lodged a complaint in the Cantt police station in the district. As per the report, children have alleged that "they were forced to eat cow meat and read the Bible. On refusing to do so, the children alleged that they would be harassed by the ashram authorities." Acting on the complaint, the NCPCR has directed Sagar District SP to investigate the matter and submit its report within next 48 hours. Father of the children, Deshraj Raikvar had written a letter to the Child Welfare Committee, Sagar, mentioning that a woman, who introduced herself as a social worker, took his children to the sevadham ashram. "I went to meet my children many times, but they did not allow me to meet them. Somehow, once I got a chance to meet children. My children said they did not want to stay at the ashram because they are being forced to eat cow meat. They were beaten up for refusing to eat the meat and reading the Bible," Deshraj wrote in his letter to the Child Welfare Committee, Sagar. --IANS pd/dpb ( 287 Words) 2021-12-10-14:16:45 (IANS)
A conductor of Tamil Nadu State Transport Corporation (TNSTC) bus was arrested on Friday for sexually assaulting a woman passenger. The 21-year-old victim, along with her husband, had lodged a complaint at the Kaanai police station of Villupuram district that she was sexually assaulted by the conductor on Thursday night. In her complaint, the woman said that she had boarded the bus at Villupuram and was heading towards Kothamangalam. After other passengers alighted from the vehicle, the conductor sat next to her and assaulted her after Perumbakkam. Villupuram district collector D. Mohan immediately suspended the arrested conductor, Silambarasan, and driver of the bus Anbu Selvan. Kaanai police SHO told IANS said that further investigation is being carried out and the involvement of the driver is also being probed. He also said that the conductor will be further questioned on whether he had assaulted other women who had travelled in the bus during its previous trips at night. M. Raghuvaran, a human rights activist working for the destitute women at Madurai, told IANS: "The conductor must be given maximum punishment. Both the conductor and the driver must be dismissed from service. The Chief Minister must order a detailed probe as to whether such things are happening in late-night buses of the TNSTC. This must not be the first case and needs proper investigation. CCTV cameras should be installed in all the buses so that the women can travel safely." --IANS aal/shb/ ( 250 Words) 2021-12-10-14:18:31 (IANS)
India's Chabahar port project in Iran does not come within the ambit of the US sanctions on the country, the Parliament was told on Friday. Responding to question by BSP Lok Sabha member Ritesh Pandey on the impact of US sanctions on Iran on the project, External Affairs Minister Dr S. Jaishnkar said this agreement was signed in 2016, and possession was taken in 2018. "Terminal is fully functional and US sanctions are not relevant to this project at all," he said. As Pandey said that he was told that Iranian government was saying that Chabahar port project has been miserably delayed because of the sanction, and it was learnt that the China is trying to take the rail project after the US sanctions, Jaishankar said that all this was totally untrue. "The terminal is fully functional and recently we have shipped six cranes for the port," he said. Jaishankar also informed the House that all agreements on Chabahar port operations are limited to Iran. Replying to a question on the job loss due to Covid-19 and on the NRIs who have come back to India due to the pandemic, Jaishankar said: "Our focus is on getting them back, in restoring their jobs, and payments due to them are given." --IANS ams/vd ( 226 Words) 2021-12-10-16:17:50 (IANS)
A local court here on Friday refused bail to the five CPI-M workers who were arrested on December 1 by the CBI in connection with the murder of two youth Congress workers on February 17, 2019 at Periya in Kasargode district. The five, who were refused bail, were -- local CPI-M leaders at Periya Raju, Vishnu Sura, S. Madhu, Reji Varghese and Hari Prasad. Strongly opposing the bail was the CBI who told the Ernakulam Additional chief judicial magistrate court that giving bail to these accused will impact further investigation. Incidentally, the ongoing CBI probe into the brutal twin murder case has sent shockwaves to the ruling CPI-M. In the remand report, filed before the CBI court here on December 2, it states that former CPI-M Udma legislator -- K.V. Kunhiraman is the 21st accused in the case. It was on December 1, 2020, the Pinarayi Vijayan government suffered a huge setback when the apex court upheld the verdict of the Kerala High Court's division bench to handover the murder case probe to the CBI and exactly after a year, the CBI arrested the five CPI-M leaders in connection with it. The gruesome murder took place on February 17, 2019 at Periya in Kasargode district. Youth Congress workers, Krupesh, 19, and Sharath Lal Joshy, 24, were attacked by three motorcycle-borne men while returning from an event. While Krupesh died at the Kasargode district hospital, Joshy succumbed to his injuries on his way to a medical facility in Mangaluru, Karnataka. The families of the victims and the Congress have been demanding a CBI probe from the outset, saying that the police had failed to arrest the real accused, who, according to them, are senior CPI-M leaders in Kasargode who had conspired to eliminate the two young Congress workers. The family then approached the High Court and the Single Bench approved of it, but the Pinarayi Vijayan government appealed in the division bench, which upheld the single bench verdict. The Vijayan government then approached the Supreme Court and on December 1, 2020, the apex court upheld the division bench's verdict. --IANS sg/shb/ ( 363 Words) 2021-12-10-17:05:15 (IANS)
Congress General Secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra on Friday lashed out at the Aam Aadmi Party for not being able to tackle the air pollution issue in the national capital, while accusing the BJP government in Goa of working only for the interests of a few rich businessmen and ignoring the people of the coastal state. "There are a lot of parties which have come here from elsewhere. There are new parties today. What have they done in their respective states. Have they ushered in progress? I am from Delhi. AAP is from Delhi. There is so much pollution in Delhi that you cannot breathe," she said during an interaction with members of the tribal community in Morpirla village in South Goa. Priyanka Gandhi is on a one-day visit to the state, which goes to polls in February next year. "You have to opt for development by preserving your environment, because you have to preserve the environment, the forests here, the farms, the water, the sea. You have to think which party will do this for you and who will listen to you. It is only the Congress party which will strike this balance. I hope you will think and cast your vote and ensure that the Congress wins. Elect a government which works for you," she said in her poll pitch. The Congress leader also lambasted the BJP-led coalition government in Goa, which she said, ignored the basic issues concerning the local population. "The government in Goa today is not the kind which works for the people. The government is working for itself. It wants to hold on to power in any condition, therefore they bestow favours on their industrialist friends. They started coal mining here too," she said. "We are working hard to give a kind of government in Goa which works for the people of Goa and delivers the state to its people," she said, accusing the BJP government of having "exploited local resources, and harmed environment to give benefit to a few of its friends while depriving the local people". --IANS maya/vd ( 358 Words) 2021-12-10-17:28:56 (IANS)
Maharashtra Minister Nawab Malik on Friday tendered an unconditional apology in the Bombay High Court for "wilfully breaching" his undertaking to the court to refrain from making any statements against Narcotics Control Bureau Zonal Director Sameer Wankhede and his family. In his affidavit in response to an explanation sought by the court why action should not be taken against him as prima facie, Malik had "wilfully breached" its order, he tendered an "unconditional apology" to Justice S. J. Kathawalla and Justice Milind Jadhav. "At the outset, I tender my unconditional apology to this Honourable Court in respect of the breaches of my undertaking given to this Honourable Court as recorded in the orders dated November 25 and 29, 2021. I had no intention to disrespect, dishonour, overreach or breach the said order," said Malik. He also said that his utterances were not any press releases or statements but were part of interviews with the media outlets when he was merely replying to questions asked by journalists. "These responses were made by me in the belief that such responses made in the course of interviews were not within the ambit of his undertaking before the court," said Malik, in reference to the defamation case filed by the NCB officer's father, Dnyandev Wankhede. The NCP leader assured that he would not make any more personal comments on the Wankhedes until the pendency of the defamation suit, and the apology was accepted by the court. "I however believe my statement will not prevent me from commenting on the political misuse of central agencies, and the conduct of their officers in the course of performance of their official duties hereafter," Malik said in the affidavit. Following the undertaking by Malik's lawyer Aspi Chinoy, Wankhede's counsel Birendra Saraf urged that the Minister must not misuse the (above) statement to continue making defamatory utterances against the NCB officer. --IANS qn/vd ( 327 Words) 2021-12-10-17:32:22 (IANS)
RJD leader Tejashwi Yadav's maternal uncle Sadhu Yadav on Friday went all out at his nephew over his inter-community marriage to former schoolmate Rachel Godinho. Sadhu Yadav, the former Gopalganj MP, did not pull his punches in his attack on Tejashwi. "He has demeaned the image of Lalu Prasad's family after did the marriage with a girl belonging to another community. He doesn't deserve to be called Leader of Opposition in Bihar Assembly. "He is doing arbitrariness in the family and party. He wants to rule us. We cannot allow him to do so. We will boycott him. We will teach him a lesson," said Sadhu Yadav, whose rage also owed to the fact that he was not invited to the ceremony. He said that Lalu Prasad's old aide Prem Gupta, who attended the marriage, was a "corrupt person". "In fact all the invited persons who were participated in the marriage are corrupt," he said. Tejashwi Yadav got married to Rachel Godinho in a south Delhi's Sainik farm locality on Thursday in presence of all family members. He has invited limited people for the marriage. Even RJD's Bihar President Jagadanand Singh and other top leaders were not invited for the event. Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar was not invited as well. --IANS ajk/vd ( 223 Words) 2021-12-10-19:20:55 (IANS)
Goa BJP president Sadanand Shet Tanavade on Friday called for a curb on the mass influx of Trinamool Congress party workers in the state, accusing the West Bengal-based party's cadre of having a 'khooni' (bloody) mentality. "They have a 'khooni' mentality. People are joining them against their own wishes for fear of their lives. Their politics is vulgar. There should be a control over the volume (of TMC workers) coming into Goa," Tanavade told reporters in Panaji. The state Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) president also said that while visits to the poll-bound states by party leaders were fair, the influx of hordes of party workers to a poll-bound state posed concerns. "Leaders of every party are welcome in Goa, like P. Chidambaram, CT Ravi, (Devendra) Fadnavis. We have no objection to that. If Mamata Banerjee comes to Goa we have no issue. But (the concern) is about the low level workers. They have a different mentality. They should not get them here to carry out their agenda. They should not do it. A lot of things could happen on account of this," he added. The issue of alleged mass influx of TMC workers to Goa was first put in the public domain by the official handle of the Goa BJP, which uploaded a video of Bengali-speaking persons alighting at a Goa railway station. TMC has claimed that the video is fake. Tanavade also said that there was a vast gulf between the political cultures in Goa and West Bengal, adding that in West Bengal post-poll violence was common, unlike Goa. "In Goa, we have a different mentality. Political workers from across parties are not enemies after elections, even though in the run up to polls political allegations are made. But outside the political realm, we are friends. Finally, we are human beings. But in West Bengal, the nature of politics is different," Tanavade said. --IANS maya/pgh ( 330 Words) 2021-12-10-19:43:32 (IANS)
Bhartiya Janata Yuva Morcha (BJYM) on Friday organised shraddhanjali programmes in more than 500 shaheed samaraks across the country to honour the demise of CDS General Bipin Rawat, his wife Madhulika Rawat and 11 other personnel, who lost their lives in a helicopter accident. According to BYJM, prior to the helicopter accident, General Rawat was to finalise the three unified theatre commands in the country which would result in better coordination between the Army, Navy and Airforce. "Lakhs of BJYM workers across the country lit lamps and paid floral tributes to the deceased soldiers," the release said. Tejasvi Surya, BJYM President while walking along the funeral procession paid his heartfelt condolences towards the great patriots along with BJP workers and hoped that their efforts will not go in vain and the military of India will strengthen. Surya said, "We all have lost a great soldier whose service will always be remembered and respected. We will continue to draw inspiration from his glorious life and rededicate ourselves to the service of this nation and hope that his good work will be continued by his successors and he will be blessing us from heaven." Bodies of Chief of Defence Staff (CDS) General Bipin Rawat and his wife Madhulika Rawat, who died in a chopper crash in Tamil Nadu on Wednesday, were cremated with full military honours at the Brar Square crematorium in Delhi Cantonment on Friday. (ANI)
A mosque in Jalpaiguri's Gomirapara does not use loudspeakers during azan to avoid disturbance in the studies of children taking classes on its ground. Due to the COVID pandemic, the West Bengal government has allowed the reopening of schools only for students between classes IX to XII. Classes for students below class IX continue to be on online mode. But most of the students in Jalpaiguri's Berubari area do not have access to smartphones to attend regular online classes. In this situation, the teachers of Berubari Gomirapara High School went the extra mile to ensure the studies of students and prevent dropouts. They started taking offline classes on the ground of the local mosque. Meanwhile, the Gomirapara mosque authority also decided not to use loudspeakers during Azan thanking that the sound may divert the attention of the students who study on the ground. Speaking to ANI, Indranil Saha, a teacher in Berubari Gomirapara High School, Jalpaiguri said, "The village is adjacent to the international border. The mobile network is poor here. Further, students do not have smartphones. The state government has reopened classes between IX and XII. So we decided to provide offline classes for students of lower grades outside of the school." "Our objective is to continue the study of every school going student to avoid dropouts. We have received very good cooperation from the mosque authorities," added Saha. Danaraj Roy, a student said that they do not have smartphones to attend regular online classes. "The mosque authorities are not using loudspeakers during the time of azan to avoid any disturbance," he said. Najimul Haque, Imam of Gomirapara mosque said that COVID has been affecting the education of children. He emphasised that the education of children should be the first priority. He lauded the efforts of the teachers of Gomirapara High School. "The initiative taken by the teachers of Gomirapara High School really helps the students to continue their studies. We are praying azan without loudspeakers so that noise-free classes can be run on our ground. We have no issue with that and requested teachers to continue the classes in future. Without education, we cannot develop our country. We believe education is first, religion secondary," said Imam Najimul Haque. Bapi Haque, a villager said, "It is great that students get a chance to continue their study when they are still not allowed in the school. We switch off our mosque loudspeakers during the azan to avoid any disturbance." (ANI)
After the farmers received a formal letter from the Centre agreeing to their pending demands on Thursday, farmers at the Singhu border expressed their happiness and prepare to return to their homes after calling off their protest against the farm laws. Speaking to ANI, Manpreet Singh, Executive Member of Bharatiya Kisan Union (BKU) Punjab said, "We have won this battle after the struggles of a year-long protest. We are happy that the Central government has agreed to fulfil our pending demands. We are doing packing here and will return to our homes at 9 am on December 11." "However, we will not celebrate the victory because our CDS Bipin Rawat has lost his life in Tamil Nadu helicopter crash," he said. Meanwhile, Harvinder Singh, General Secretary of BKU expressed grief over the death of all those 700 farmers who lost their lives in this year-long protest. "We are disappointed that our 700 farmers died during this protest. The Centre has not said anything for them. When any higher rank official loses his life, the government gives special treatment to them. But it did not happen in the case of farmers. I want this kind of treatment should also be given to all 700 deceased farmers," Harvinder said. Further, Harvinder said that the farmers did not become hurdles to the travellers passing by. "We never created any problem or stopped travellers passing by. Traffic was moving as usual. The traffic was disturbed only when Andolan took place. I hope that the Centre will take care of farmers in future as well," he added. Gurvinder Kaur, mother of a protester at Singhu border said, "My son has been protesting here since the beginning of this agitation. We are happy that we won this battle after a lot of struggle. The Central government has taken a good decision." Farmers, who have been protesting against the three farm laws on different borders of Delhi since November 26 last year, announced on Wednesday that they are suspending their year-long agitation and would vacate the protest sites on December 11. "As far as the matter of compensation is concerned, UP and Haryana have given in-principle consent," it read. While addressing a press conference, farmer leader Gurnam Singh Charuni said, "We have decided to suspend our agitation. We will hold a review meeting on Jan 15. If the government does not fulfil its promises, we could resume our agitation." "Protesting farmers will vacate the protest sites on December 11," another farmers' leader Darshan Pal Singh said. Earlier on November 29, Both the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha passed the Farm Laws Repeal Bill on the first day of the winter session of Parliament. (ANI)
Kashi Vishwanath Temple has been decked up before the inauguration by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on December 13. Speaking to ANI, Shrikant Mishra, Priest at Kashi Vishwanath temple said, "The city is filled with enthusiasm as the temple is ready to become 'Vishwanath Dham' after years. PM Modi is going to inaugurate the corridor on December 13." "Significantly, 'Jyotirling' of Kashi Vishwanath temple is considered to be the most important among other twelve Jyotirlingas, that's why lakhs of devotees come here to offer prayers. Earlier, this temple was only situated 2,000 metres, but now it has been spread over 50,000 square metres," the priest said. The priest further spoke about the difficulties faced during the construction of this corridor. "The path of completing PM Modi's dream project was difficult as around 14,000 people were displaced from their homes. Now, the Ganga ghat will be easily visible from the temple," he added. Meanwhile, the temple's lighting has been done keeping in mind its blue theme and heritage look. "The temple has now flourished in its true form. All the arrangements have been made here for devotees. Now, the devotees will get mesmerised by the lighting of the temple as the number of lighting experts were working on it. The lighting has been done keeping in mind its blue theme and heritage look. The walls are adorned with blue lights," said Suresh, lighting expert at Kashi Vishwanath temple. Nagendra Pandey, another priest and an astrologer said, "The temple will be inaugurated on December 13 at an auspicious time." Meanwhile, Uttar Pradesh Tourism Minister Neelkanth Tiwari said that the project has been built with Rs 399 crores. "It has been built with Rs 399 crores and is not only taking forward the dignity of Kashi but also creating a possibility of the boom in the religious tourism of Varanasi. The tourism sector is expected to grow insignificantly," Tiwari said. At Kashi Vishwanath Dham Corridor, devotees will also see a statue of Maratha Queen Maharani Ahilyabai Holkar, who once reconstructed the temple. The entire event will be aired live across the country. Known to be Prime Minister's dream project, this corridor will shorten the time span and will set a direct link between the temple and the Ganga river. (ANI)
A new research led by the University of Cambridge's Centre for the Study of Existential Risk (CSER) has recommended a new call to action in order to earn the trust of the governments and the public. The study has been published in the 'Science Journal'. They said that companies building intelligent technologies should harness techniques such as "red team" hacking, audit trails and "bias bounties" - paying out rewards for revealing ethical flaws - to prove their integrity before releasing AI for use on the wider public. Otherwise, the industry faced a "crisis of trust" in the systems that increasingly underpin our society, as the public concerned continued to mount over everything from driverless cars and autonomous drones to secret social media algorithms that spread misinformation and provoked political turmoil. The novelty and "black box" nature of AI systems, and ferocious competition in the race to the marketplace, had hindered the development and adoption of auditing or third-party analysis, according to lead author Dr Shahar Avin of CSER. The experts argued that incentives to increase trustworthiness should not be limited to regulation, but must also come from within an industry yet to fully comprehend that public trust is vital for its own future - and trust is fraying. The new publication put forward a series of "concrete" measures that they said should be adopted by AI developers. "There are critical gaps in the processes required to create AI that has earned public trust. Some of these gaps have enabled questionable behaviour that is now tarnishing the entire field," said Avin. "We are starting to see a public backlash against technology. This 'tech-lash' can be all-encompassing: either all AI is good or all AI is bad. Governments and the public need to be able to easily tell apart between the trustworthy, the snake-oil salesmen, and the clueless," Avin said. "Once you can do that, there is a real incentive to be trustworthy. But while you can't tell them apart, there is a lot of pressure to cut corners," Avin added. Co-author and CSER researcher Haydn Belfield said, "Most AI developers want to act responsibly and safely, but it's been unclear what concrete steps they can take until now. Our report fills in some of these gaps." The idea of AI "red teaming" - sometimes known as white-hat hacking - took its cue from cyber-security. "Red teams are ethical hackers playing the role of malign external agents," said Avin. "They would be called in to attack any new AI, or strategise on how to use it for malicious purposes, in order to reveal any weaknesses or potential for harm," Avin added. While a few big companies had the internal capacity to "red team" - which came with its own ethical conflicts - the report called for a third-party community, one that can independently interrogate new AI and share any findings for the benefit of all developers. A global resource could also offer high-quality red teaming to the small start-up companies and research labs developing AI that could become ubiquitous. The new report, a concise update of more detailed recommendations published by a group of 59 experts last year, also highlighted the potential for bias and safety "bounties" to increase openness and public trust in AI. This meant financially rewarding any researcher who uncovered flaws in AI that had the potential to compromise public trust or safety - such as racial or socioeconomic biases in algorithms used for medical or recruitment purposes. Earlier this year, Twitter began offering bounties to those who could identify biases in their image-cropping algorithm. Companies would benefit from these discoveries, said researchers, and be given time to address them before they are publicly revealed. Avin pointed out that, currently, much of this "pushing and prodding" is done on a limited, ad-hoc basis by academics and investigative journalists. The report also called for auditing by trusted external agencies - and for open standards on how to document AI to make such auditing possible - along with platforms dedicated to sharing "incidents": cases of undesired AI behaviour that could cause harm to humans. These, along with meaningful consequences for failing an external audit, would significantly contribute to an "ecosystem of trust", said the researchers. "Some may question whether our recommendations conflict with commercial interests, but other safety-critical industries, such as the automotive or pharmaceutical industry, manage it perfectly well," said Belfield. "Lives and livelihoods are ever more reliant on AI that is closed to scrutiny, and that is a recipe for a crisis of trust. It's time for the industry to move beyond well-meaning ethical principles and implement real-world mechanisms to address this," he added. "We are grateful to our collaborators who have highlighted a range of initiatives aimed at tackling these challenges, but we need policy and public support to create an ecosystem of trust for AI," Avin concluded. (ANI)
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos' space firm Blue Origin's Crew-3 flight that will carry daughter of the first American in space has been delayed till Saturday due to bad weather. The flight -- a first to carry six astronauts to space -- was initially set for December 9. The last two missions carried only four. "Due to forecasted winds on December 9 and 10, the New Shepard launch team has made the call to delay the launch of NS-19 to December 11," the company said in a statement on Thursday. The new liftoff is targeted for 8.45 a.m. CST (8.15 p.m. IST) from Launch Site One in West Texas. The company said that the team has completed Flight Readiness Review and the vehicle has "met all mission requirements for launch". But, "weather remains as the only gating factor for launch", it added. The crew will include two honorary guests -- 'Good Morning America' co-anchor Michael Strahan and Laura Shepard Churchley, the eldest daughter of Alan Shepard, who was the first American to fly to space. The other are four paying customers -- space industry executive and philanthropist Dylan Taylor, investor Evan Dick, Bess Ventures founder Lane Bess, and Cameron Bess. Lane and Cameron Bess will become the first parent-child pair to fly in space, the company said. The Crew-3 mission furthers the company's vision of millions of people living and working in space for the benefit of Earth. It will be New Shepard's third human flight this year, the sixth for the programme in 2021, and the 19th in its history. Blue Origin's blasted off its second human flight to space on October 13, with the original Star Trek's Captain James T. Kirk (actor William Shatner) who became the oldest man ever to travel to space, along with NASA engineer Chris Boshuizen, Glen de Vries, a co-founder of software company Medidata, and Audrey Powers, Vice President of missions and flight operations. On July 20, Blue Origin carried its first human flight which included Jeff Bezos, his brother Mark Bezos, aviation pioneer Wally Funk, and Blue Origin's first customer, Oliver Daemen. In October, Bezos' space firm has also announced plans to build a commercial space station called Orbital Reef by second half of this decade. For the project Blue Origin has partnered with spaceflight company Sierra Space, a subsidiary of the Sierra Nevada Corporation, Boeing, Redwire Space, Genesis Engineering Solutions, and Arizona State University. "The station will open the next chapter of human space exploration and development by facilitating the growth of a vibrant ecosystem and business model for the future," the company had announced. --IANS rvt/ksk/ ( 445 Words) 2021-12-10-14:21:54 (IANS)
Director-General of the Department of Communicable Disease Control under the Lao Ministry of Health Rattanaxay Phetsouvanh, told a press conference here on Thursday that 1,504 COVID-19 cases and one new death have been recorded over the past 24 hours, bringing the national tally to 67,322 cases and 143 deaths.

Rattanaxay said that the new infections included 1,502 local transmissions and two imported cases.

Of the new community cases, Vientiane recorded the highest number with 677.

The new death involved a 90-year-old man in Vientiane, who suffered from hypertension and had not been vaccinated against COVID-19.

Laos reported its first two confirmed COVID-19 cases on March 24 last year. (ANI/Xinhua)
Uzbekistan has urged the international community to lift sanctions and unfreeze the assets of Afghanistan as the country is going through the worst humanitarian situation, local media reported on Thursday. On Wednesday, Foreign Minister of Uzbekistan Abdulaziz Kamilov in his contribution at the Italy-Central Asia Second Ministerial Meeting in Tashkent urged the world community to lift sanctions and unfreeze the assets of Afghanistan, Khaama Press reported. According to the Afghanistan news agency, Uzbekistan has now become another country in the region that asks for the release of over USD 9.5 billion preserves of Afghanistan now frozen in American banks. Earlier, Pakistan, China, and Russia had urged the world to unfreeze Afghanistan's assets. The Uzbek Foreign Minister asks the world to undertake actions to lift sanctions of Afghanistan, unfreeze its assets, and work for the restoration of its banking system as the country is going through the worst humanitarian situation, Khaama Press reported. "The people of Afghanistan are in a very difficult situation and the humanitarian situation of the country is nearing disaster. It is important to provide effective assistance to the people of Afghanistan." Said Kamilov. He further called on the Taliban to take action and do not allow terrorism to spread from their soil. The Taliban entered Kabul on August 15, causing the US-backed government to step down. Later in September, the outfit announced the composition of the new interim government of Afghanistan. The country is currently battered by the deepening economic, humanitarian, and security crisis following the Taliban takeover. The international community, from governments to non-governmental organizations, has been providing various assistance to the Afghan people. (ANI)
Last week, a mob in Pakistan's Sialkot had tortured the Lankan national Priyantha Diyawadana to death before burning his body in Sialkot over alleged blasphemy. The incident took place in the Wazirabad Road area.

Citing the reports, The Express Tribune reported that around 34 main suspects have been arrested so far, whereas the recent arrests came after the law enforcement officials traced the culprits via CCTV footage and cellular data.

Human Rights Focus Pakistan (HRFP) has condemned the killing in Sialkot.

"The incident is an addition in defaming Pakistan's image more, where several such incidents have already been happening with Christians, Hindus, and others in past and some foreigners have also been assassinated," the HRPF chairman had said.

"Rule of law and state has failed to safe the foreigners and non-Muslims which will affect on the individuals and business community also who are interested to come and start work or establish their businesses," HRPF added.

Jamaat-e-Islami has announced to observe Balochistan Solidarity Day on December 12 to highlight the rising numbers of forced disappearances and extrajudicial killings by Pakistan's security forces.

Baloch leaders and activists have repeatedly blamed the Pakistani government and military for mass killings and forced disappearances of Balochistan natives.

"Balochistan is rich in natural resources but its people are deprived of even basic needs. The present and former governments have failed to meet their demands," said JI Ameer Sirajul Haq while addressing a meeting of the party's central leadership at Mansoora here on Wednesday.

He had urged the government to meet the demands of the protesters. (ANI)
Ignoring Election Commission of Pakistan's (ECP) advisory, Prime Minister Imran Khan on Wednesday inaugurated the Naya Pakistan Card programme, thus violating the code of conduct for the upcoming local body elections in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province. Sources in the Regional Election Commission's office told Dawn that an advisory was issued to the Prime Minister's House at 9:40 am on Wednesday, while the prime minister launched the Naya Pakistan Card about health, educational and agricultural incentives at the Governor's House in the afternoon ignoring the advisory. The advisory read, "It has come to notice of the undersigned through Daily Dawn, December 8, 2021, that you are expected to visit Peshawar today to launch Pakistan Card Initiative." An official in the regional Election Commission of Pakistan told Dawn that a notice could be issued to the prime minister as he had violated the code of conduct. "The issuance of notice to the prime minister is not the domain of the ECP regional office and instead, the matter will be handled by the central ECP office in Islamabad," he said. The official said the advisory issued to the prime minister had been shared with the Election Commission of Pakistan. In the first phase, the Election Commission of Pakistan is to conduct local body elections in 17 districts of the province on December 19, while the polls will be held in the remaining districts on January 16, reported Dawn. "After the issuance of the election schedule, the president, prime minister, governor, speaker, deputy speaker of any assembly, chairman and deputy chairman of Senate, federal and provincial ministers, advisers to the prime minister or chief minister or any other holder of public office shall not visit the area of any local council to announce any development scheme or to canvass or campaign for any candidate or any political party," read the advisory. It added that in case someone was a resident of the district, where the election was to be held, he or she might visit the district but he or she should not take part in any kind of political activity. (ANI)
Washington [US], December 10 (ANI/Sputnik): The US District Court for the District of Columbia Circuit denied former President Donald Trump's bid to prevent the release of White House records from his administration to the US House Select Committee leading a probe into the events at the Capitol on January 6, a court ruling said. "On the record before us, former President Trump has provided no basis for this court to override President Biden's judgment and the agreement and accommodations worked out between the Political Branches over these documents... For those reasons, we affirm the district court's judgment denying a preliminary injunction as to those documents in the Archivist's first three tranches over which President Biden has determined that a claim of executive privilege is not justified," the ruling said on Thursday. The central question in the case was whether a US federal court can, at Trump's behest, override Biden's decision to release to the congressional committee documents that he deems to be needed for a critical legislative inquiry, the ruling said. The Select Committee will decide next week whether to file contempt charges against former Trump Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, who filed charges against US Speaker Pelosi and all nine members of the panel. Meadows asked the court to invalidate the subpoena that the Select Committee had issued to him and Verizon, the cellular operator for his prior personal phone records. Former Trump adviser Steve Bannon is similarly fighting what he called the Select Committee's overreach, prompting them to bring contempt charges against him for refusing to comply with the panel's subpoenas. (ANI/Sputnik)
During the talks, which lasted one and a half hours, the two leaders exchanged their views on the results of the recent talks between Biden and Russian President Vladimir Putin.

In the conversation, Zelensky reiterated his country's commitment to peaceful settlement in Donbas, stressing that Kiev has clear proposals to unlock the peace process and stands ready to discuss them in various formats.

Zelensky and Biden also discussed the ways to provide security, financial and political support for Kiev and the steps to strengthen Ukraine's energy sustainability.

On Tuesday, Biden and Putin met online to discuss the Ukrainian crisis, among other issues. (ANI/Xinhua)
A report by Tibet Action Institute on Tuesday uncovered China's vast system of colonial boarding schools inside Tibet which separates children as young as four from their parents. The report titled "Separated from their families, hidden from the world - China's vast system of colonial boarding schools inside Tibet" showed Chinese government policies are forcing three out of every four Tibetan students into a vast network of colonial boarding schools, subjected to indoctrination. The schools are a cornerstone of Xi Jinping's campaign to supplant Tibetan identity with a homogenous Chinese identity in order to neutralize potential resistance to Chinese Communist Party (CCP) rule, reported Tibet Action Institute. The report finds that an estimated 800,000 to 900,000 Tibetan students aged six to 18, as well as an unknown number of four and five-year-olds, are in these state-run schools. The schools function as sites for remoulding children into Chinese nationals loyal to the CCP. Removed from their families and communities, students must study primarily in Chinese, are barred from practising their religion, and are subjected to political indoctrination, added Tibet Action Institute. "By intentionally uprooting Tibetan children from their families and culture and making them live in state-run boarding schools, the Chinese authorities are using one of the most heinous tools of colonization to attack Tibetan identity," said Lhadon Tethong, Director of Tibet Action Institute. "China's unprecedented campaign of forced sinicization in Tibet targets even the youngest children and demands the urgent intervention of the United Nations and concerned governments," said Tethong. Over the last decade, Chinese authorities have systematically eliminated local schools in Tibet and replaced them with centralized boarding schools, including for elementary-aged children. Monastery schools and other privately-run Tibetan schools have also been forced to close, leaving parents with no choice but to send their children away. In cases where parents try to resist, authorities use threats and intimidation to ensure compliance, reported Tibet Action Institute. Researchers in Tibet and China have documented serious emotional and psychological harm to Tibetan students living in colonial boarding schools. Restrictions on access to Tibet make first-hand verification of current conditions impossible, but interviews with Tibetans abroad who attended earlier iterations of boarding school in Tibet paint a harrowing picture of children living in poor conditions, subjected to physical and sexual abuse, racism and discrimination, as well as political indoctrination. The report draws on a range of primary and secondary sources, including first-hand accounts from inside Tibet that describe how China's education policies affect the lived experience of Tibetans on the ground, statements from Tibetans in exile who are survivors of China's colonial boarding school system, data collected from official sources, and scholars in Tibet, China and abroad. "China claims to be educating Tibetan children, but the world knows what it looks like when children are pushed into residential schools run by a state that wants to wipe out their culture," said Tethong. "Beijing must be pressed to respect the right of all Tibetan children to receive a high-quality mother-tongue education without being separated from their families, before any more irreparable harm is done," added Tethong. (ANI)
Nicaragua's government on Thursday ended its diplomatic relations with Taiwan. "The government of Nicaragua declares that it recognizes that there is only one China in the world," Foreign Minister Denis Moncada said in a televised announcement, reported CNN. "The People's Republic of China is the only legitimate government representing all of China and Taiwan is an undoubted part of the Chinese territory. The government of the Republic of Nicaragua breaks diplomatic relations with Taiwan as of today and stopped having any contact or official relationship," he said. Nicaragua's announcement leaves a little more than a dozen countries worldwide that maintain official diplomatic relations with Taiwan, including fellow Central American countries Honduras and Guatemala. Although Taiwan and China have been separately governed for more than 70 years, Beijing views the democratic island of 24 million people as part of its territory and has regularly stated its aim of "reunification," despite the fact Taiwan has never been ruled by the Chinese Communist Party. In a statement, Taiwan's foreign ministry expressed "pain and regret" at the news and said it would, in turn, sever diplomatic relations with Nicaragua, halt bilateral cooperation, and evacuate staffers from the country, reported CNN. "The Ortega presidency disregarded the long-term friendship between Taiwanese and Nicaraguan that shared weal and woe. We are very sorry to see that," it said, referring to Nicaragua's recently re-elected leader Daniel Ortega. "Taiwan as a part of international society has the right to diplomatic relations with other countries. We will continue to promote "Steadfast Diplomacy" to expand our international surviving space, dedicating ourselves into maintaining regional peace and stability, fighting for the international status that we deserve, and protecting this nation's interests and the benefit of the people," the statement also said. Under President Xi Jinping, China has steadily ramped up its global influence and outreach. Meanwhile, recent US presidents Donald Trump and Joe Biden have sought to bolster Taiwan on the world stage with large arms sales and high profile visits by US officials. (ANI)
As per Washington Examiner, Blinken is promoting those who perpetrated genocide against religious freedom.

The Islamic State perpetrated genocide against Yezidis, some of whom remain enslaved in Turkey or among its Arab proxies. Blinken promoted them.

Consider the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh War during the waning days of the Trump presidency: Turkey and Azerbaijan timed their assault on Nagorno-Karabakh's Christians to coincide with the 100th anniversary of the Ottoman invasion of Armenia. The symbolism was clear: This was not just a dispute over land but also Armenian Genocide 2.0, reported Washington Examiner.

Armenians were hopeful, though, when Joe Biden became president. Biden said he would recognize the Armenian genocide. He kept his word.

The problem was that, two days later, Blinken turned around and authorized new aid to Azerbaijan, money that legally required certification that Azerbaijan had abandoned the military option. For Blinken, it was balanced, reported Washington Examiner.

Last month, Azerbaijan sent troops into Armenia proper, killing more than a dozen. Blinken's response was bothsiderism on steroids, never mind that only one country did the invading.

Blinken also travelled to Nigeria last month. After mildly criticizing Nigeria's press freedom and human rights record, Blinken removed Nigeria from the list of countries violating religious freedom.

Moreover, Christians and other religious minorities face capriciously applied blasphemy laws that carry the death penalty in Pakistan.

Earlier this month, a mob stripped Sri Lankan factory manager Priyantha Kumara, beat him to death, set his body ablaze, and then posed for selfies. His crime? Taking down an extremist poster that reportedly included a Quranic quote.

Pakistan has descended into mob violence and now exports its model to the Taliban's Afghanistan. Blinken's reaction? Continuing aid to Islamabad and treating it more as a partner than an adversary, reported Washington Examiner. (ANI)
Koshkin will serve 48 months in prison after being convicted in June of running a so-called "crypting" service used to conceal malware from antivirus software. He was arrested by authorities in California in September 2019.

Koshkin, 41, formerly of Estonia, operated the websites "Crypt4U.com," "fud.bz" and others, the Justice Department said in a statement. The websites promised to render malicious software fully undetectable by nearly every major provider of antivirus software, the release said.

The Justice Department also said he worked with Peter Levashov, the operator of the Kelihos botnet, to develop a system that would allow Levashov to crypt the Kelihos malware multiple times each day.

In September 2018, Levashov pleaded guilty to various computer crime-related offenses.

His co-defendant, Pavel Tsurkan, pleaded guilty on June 16 to one count of causing damage to a protected computer, the Justice Department said. (ANI/Sputnik)
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday (local time) attended the closed-door session of the first Summit for Democracy. As a special gesture, PM Modi was invited to participate in the main Leaders' Plenary Session hosted by US President Joe Biden. This closed-door session saw interventions from 12 select countries, including India. At President Biden's invitation. The second Leaders' Plenary Session was hosted by the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen. PM Modi will deliver India's national statement today. This will be open to the public. According to sources, at the closed-door session, PM Modi said that the democratic spirit, including respect for rule of law and pluralistic ethos, is ingrained in Indians. The Indian Diaspora carries it too, thereby contributing to the economic well-being and social harmony of their adopted homes. PM Modi emphasized the need for democratic countries to deliver on values enshrined in their Constitutions. He also outlined sensitivity, accountability, participation and reform orientation as four pillars of Indian democratic governance. He stressed that principles of democracy should also guide global governance; and that given technology's ability to impact democracy positively or negatively, technology companies should contribute to preserving open and democratic societies. As the world's largest democracy, India has commended this innovative initiative. India has always stood ready to share its experiences with fellow democracies. Earlier today, PM Modi said through a tweet, "Happy to have participated in the Summit for Democracy at the invitation of President Biden. As the world's largest democracy, India stands ready to work with our partners to strengthen democratic values globally, including in multilateral fora." Biden on Thursday kicked off the first-ever Summit for Democracy. Besides PM Modi, around 80 world leaders attended the opening remarks virtually. The summit focuses on challenges and opportunities facing democracies and will provide a platform for leaders to announce both individual and collective commitments, reforms, and initiatives to defend democracy and human rights at home and abroad. China was not invited to the summit while Pakistan had declined the invite. (ANI)
United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees has expressed concern on rapid migration under the Taliban's rule from Afghanistan to neighboring countries such as Iran. A senior UN official urged the Islamic Emirate and the international community to find a 'modus operandi' to tackle the current crisis in Afghanistan, according to Tolo News. Further, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), Filippo Grandi, warned that the economic collapse of the country would trigger a massive wave of migration to the neighboring and world countries. "Ultimately, the Taliban, who are in control of the country today, and the international community and its entities need to find a modus operandi, need to co-exist with each other, need to make the necessary steps for that to happen," he told the UN Security Council. "The Taliban of course by delivering on the all-important issues of the rights of women, women at work, rights of minorities--and the international community by supporting it as it needs to happen, the functioning of the state and all of this for the sake of the Afghan people," he added. The UN and other humanitarian organizations are expressing grave concern over the deterioration of living conditions in Afghanistan as thousands of people still lack access to proper shelter in wintertime, according to the Tolo News. Meanwhile, Afghanistan's Ministry of Refugees and Repatriation said that over 1,000 Afghans had been illegally crossing the borders to Iran. However, it's believed that the formation of a strong economic system could overcome the current situation in Afghanistan besides help from overseas donors. According to the UNHCR, 3.4 million Afghan refugees are living in Iran, of whom two million lack legal documents (ANI)
Sri Lanka Foreign Minister G L Peiris had a meeting with the Acting High Commissioner of Pakistan in Colombo Tanvir Ahmad on Thursday to discuss the matters relating to financial security and compensation of the family of late Priyantha Kumara who was killed by a mob in Sialkot area, Pakistan last week. Last week, a mob in the Wazirabad Road area in Sialkot had tortured Sri Lankan national Priyantha Kumara Diyawadana to death before burning his body in Sialkot over alleged blasphemy. Sri Lanka Foreign Ministry said in a press note that Peiris expressed confidence that the Pakistan Government would take the required steps that the family of late Priyantha Kumara gets justice. Recalling the telephone call had with the Pakistan Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi on Saturday, the Minister said: "he offered his condolences and promised to make available to Sri Lanka all the information from the probe at the earliest". Sri Lankan Foreign Minister also appreciated the intervention of Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan who has taken personal charge of this investigation and taken steps to immediately investigate the incident. He also welcomed the announcement of the donation of USD 100,000 by the business community in Sialkot and the payment of the monthly salary of Priyantha Kumara to his widow. Peiris highlighted the fact that the Sri Lankan government is concerned about the future of the two children of the late Priyantha Kumara and the importance of receiving the payments on time. He requested the Pakistan envoy to arrange a mechanism to ensure that the salary will be received by the family every month without any disruption. Conveying his heartfelt apologies for the incident, the Acting High Commissioner assured that the Government of Pakistan has taken the necessary steps for a full investigation and ensuring compensation for the family. (ANI)
The rally was held by Voice For Baloch Missing Persons on Thursday. The protesters held placards and banners demanding the release of all forcefully disappeared Baloch people.

Enforced disappearance has been used as a tool by the Pakistani state to silence the oppressed people of Balochistan since the very first day of its occupation.

While countless abductees have been killed, many of them are still facing inhuman torture in army secret cells.

While successive governments have promised to criminalise enforced disappearance, none has taken concrete steps and the practice continues with impunity.

Several human rights organisations including the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, Amnesty International have confirmed that security forces are behind these disappearances,

Recently, fighting between Pakistan security forces and Baloch insurgents have intensified in the region. In its 2020 Country Reports on Human Rights, the US State Department has highlighted significant human rights issues in Pakistan, including unlawful or arbitrary killings by the government and forced disappearance of Pashtun, Sindhi and Baloch human rights activists.

In a recent report titled "Living Ghosts," the human rights group Amnesty International documented the practice of enforced disappearances in Pakistan and urged Pakistani authorities to end its use as a tool of state policy. (ANI)
The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) has condemned the arrest of senior Pakistani politician and Baloch Muttahida Mahaz (BMM) president Yousuf Masti Khan in Gwadar. Yousuf Khan was arrested on Thursday on the charge of making a "provocative and anti-state" speech at a protest sit-in staged by the people of Gwadar, Dawn newspaper reported. "HRCP condemns the arrest of AWP president and veteran leader Yousuf Masti Khan in Gwadar. Mr Khan has done nothing more than demand that the state give Gwadar's residents the civil, political and economic rights to which they are entitled," HRCP said in a statement. "To charge him under archaic and repressive colonial laws is undemocratic. He must be released immediately and unconditionally, especially given his poor health," the rights group added. This arrest comes amid ongoing protest by the residents of Gwadar city for rights that has been going on for over 20 days. Masti Khan was arrested from a hotel where he was staying. He was later produced before a court and then remanded for one day in police custody. "We are not afraid of arrests and attitude of Gwadar police. Our peaceful sit-in is being pushed towards violence," said Maulana Hidayat-ur-Rehman, while condemning the arrest of the leader. He said the people of Gwadar had decided to lay siege to the police station against the arrest of Yousuf Khan. However, the decision had been postponed on the appeal of the Gwadar deputy commissioner, Dawn reported. Amid the ongoing protest in the port city of Gwadar, Pakistani authorities have issued orders to send thousands of police officers from various other districts for maintenance of law and order and on anti-riot duties. (ANI)
The decision of the Nicaraguan government to sever the relations with Taiwan does not reflect the will of the Nicaraguan people, US State Department said on Thursday (local time). This statement was issued after Nicaragua announced cutting off ties with Taiwan and recognized the island as a part of the People's Republic of China. "The Ortega-Murillo regime has announced it has severed diplomatic relations and ended official contact with Taiwan, but the sham election on November 7 did not provide it with any mandate to remove Nicaragua from the family of American democracies," US Department of State spokesperson Ned Price said in a statement on Thursday. "Without the mandate that comes with a free and fair election, Ortega's actions cannot reflect the will of the Nicaraguan people, who continue to struggle for democracy and the ability to exercise their human rights and fundamental freedoms," he added. On Thursday, Foreign Minister Denis Moncada said in a televised announcement, said the government of Nicaragua declares that it recognizes that there is only one China in the world. "The People's Republic of China is the only legitimate government representing all of China and Taiwan is an undoubted part of the Chinese territory. The government of the Republic of Nicaragua breaks diplomatic relations with Taiwan as of today and stopped having any contact or official relationship," he said. Nicaragua's announcement leaves a little more than a dozen countries worldwide that maintain official diplomatic relations with Taiwan, including fellow Central American countries Honduras and Guatemala. Although Taiwan and China have been separately governed for more than 70 years, Beijing views the democratic island of 24 million people as part of its territory and has regularly stated its aim of "reunification," despite the fact Taiwan has never been ruled by the Chinese Communist Party. In a statement, Taiwan's foreign ministry expressed "pain and regret" at the news and said it would, in turn, sever diplomatic relations with Nicaragua, halt bilateral cooperation, and evacuate staffers from the country, reported CNN. "The Ortega presidency disregarded the long-term friendship between Taiwanese and Nicaraguan that shared weal and woe. We are very sorry to see that," it said, referring to Nicaragua's recently re-elected leader Daniel Ortega. Under President Xi Jinping, China has steadily ramped up its global influence and outreach. Meanwhile, recent US presidents Donald Trump and Joe Biden have sought to bolster Taiwan on the world stage with large arms sales and high profile visits by US officials. (ANI)
This is a panoramic view of a night in Yokohama. The Minato Mirai area is illuminated with lights.

The Lighting of the Yokohama harbor is celebrated through an event named 'Yorunoyo' which is organised in the months of November and December.

At least 30 spots in the city are lit up and are popped up with music. The Big Bridge terminal for international passenger boats changes its colour of lights. This light and music show is the main attraction of Yokohama city.

"One of the important points of Yokohama City is the night view at the port, which is very popular. The real pleasure is to add searchlights and facility light to this night view and to dynamically create the night view as a winter event with sound and light," said Kazumichi Kawamoto Yorunoyo Project leader, City of Yokohama

The big dome at Newport Center square was also decked up with lights. This scene was a treat to the visitor's eyes.

The Dome's diameter is 20 meters. Visitors can enjoy walking around the dome along with watching the dome changing its colour. This scene is possible due to cutting edge technology.

"It was my first time seeing it. It was very beautiful," said a visitor

The night view of Yokohama and the lightning event at the port provides visitors' with beautiful scenery and an experience of a lifetime. (ANI)
The two countries signed a communique on the establishment of ties in the early hours of Friday in the Chinese city of Tianjin, Sputnik reported citing Chinese Central Television.

On Thursday, Nicaragua Foreign Minister Denis Moncada said in a televised announcement the government of Nicaragua declares that it recognizes that there is only one China in the world.

Nicaragua's announcement leaves a little more than a dozen countries worldwide that maintain official diplomatic relations with Taiwan, including fellow Central American countries Honduras and Guatemala.

Although Taiwan and China have been separately governed for more than 70 years, Beijing views the democratic island of 24 million people as part of its territory and has regularly stated its aim of "reunification," despite the fact Taiwan has never been ruled by the Chinese Communist Party.

In a statement, Taiwan's foreign ministry expressed "pain and regret" at the news and said it would, in turn, sever diplomatic relations with Nicaragua, halt bilateral cooperation, and evacuate staffers from the country, reported CNN.

"The Ortega presidency disregarded the long-term friendship between Taiwanese and Nicaraguan that shared weal and woe. We are very sorry to see that," it said, referring to Nicaragua's recently re-elected leader Daniel Ortega.

Under President Xi Jinping, China has steadily ramped up its global influence and outreach. Meanwhile, recent US presidents Donald Trump and Joe Biden have sought to bolster Taiwan on the world stage with large arms sales and high profile visits by US officials. (ANI)
Local media outlet Creta Live reported that the Mixed Jury Court of Appeal of Eastern Crete found him guilty for the murder, according to Greek City Times.

Earlier, the crime took place near a greenhouse in the Tympaki area where the unfortunate 24-year-old worked.

Tympaki town and a former municipality in the Heraklion regional unit, Crete, Greece

Further, the 36-year-old Pakistani was the one who had introduced the victim to the owner of the greenhouse to work and he confessed to the crime claiming that he killed his compatriot because of personal disputes.

Meanwhile, when they quarrelled, the 36-year-old threw his compatriot to the ground and then smashed his head with a hammer.

The body of the 24-year-old was found half-naked in a ravine with his head wrapped in nylon. (ANI)
As many as 293 media workers were put behind bars globally in 2021, said the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). "CPJ's 2021 prison census found that the number of reporters jailed for their work hit a new global record of 293, up from a revised total of 280 in 2020," CPJ said in its report. At least 24 journalists were killed because of their coverage so far this year; 18 others died in circumstances too murky to determine whether they were specific targets. China remains the world's worst jailer of journalists for the third year in a row, with 50 behind bars. Myanmar soared to the second slot with 26 jailed media workers after the crackdown that followed its February 1 military coup. Egypt (25), Vietnam (23), and Belarus (19), respectively, rounded out the top five. According to the report, the reasons for the relentless climb in the numbers of detained journalists - this is the sixth consecutive year that CPJ's census has recorded at least 250 incarcerated - differ between countries. "But all reflect a stark trend: a growing intolerance of independent reporting. Emboldened autocrats are increasingly ignoring due process and flouting international norms to keep themselves in power," the CPJ report said. China's relentless incarceration of journalists is not new. However, this is the first time journalists held in Hong Kong are found on CPJ's annual census - a result of the implementation of the draconian 2020 National Security Law imposed in response to the city's historic pro-democracy protests. Eight Hong Kong media figures, including Jimmy Lai, founder of Apple Daily and Next Digital and CPJ's 2021 Gwen Ifill Press Freedom Awardee, were jailed in a stark blow to the city's already embattled independent press. On mainland China, freelance video journalist Zhang Zhan, arrested in May 2020 for her critical coverage of China's response to the COVID-19 pandemic, is serving four years for "picking quarrels and stirring up trouble" - a charge often used to target peaceful critics of the ruling Chinese Communist Party. (ANI)
JSDF is heavily oriented around maritime defense and naval power to defend against invasions from the sea. However, improved sensors, propulsion systems, and communications allow land-based anti-ship missiles to threaten targets hundreds of miles away from a shoreline, according to the National Interest.

Further, these weapons go beyond the mandated coastal defense of JSDF and can threaten ships across the littoral waters in North Pacific and therefore can change the outlook of future naval conflicts either with China or North Korea.

Also, the Japan Ground Self-Defense Force (JGSDF) operates the Type 12 anti-ship cruise missile mounted on eight-wheel trucks

Each Type 12 launcher carries six missiles weighing 1,500 pounds that cruise towards the general position of a targeted vessel.

However, despite the capabilities Type 12 has a limitation compared to China's latest anti-ship missiles and as its range is only one hundred and twenty-four miles (200 km) writes Sebastien Roblin for the National Interest.

Despite that, Type 12 Kai's capability leap would have major implications in a conflict with North Korea or China. Batteries on the major Japanese islands of Kyushu or Honshu, for example, could threaten ships departing from Shanghai or transiting via the Yellow Sea to the Pacific. They could also attack targets on land anywhere in North Korea., according to the National Interest.

Also, three Type 12 batteries could be used for Japan's plans to fortify the Ryukyu Island chain thereby constraining the mobility of the Chinese Navy in event of a conflict.

Ultimately, Japan's investment in Type 12 is a bid to maintain a dynamic of mutual vulnerability during a time when long-distance missiles could modify established relationships between air, sea, and land power (ANI)
Nur-Sultan [Kazakhstan], December 10 (ANI/Sputnik): The Kazakh Foreign Ministry has yet to confirm that Russian, Turkish and Iranian foreign ministers will meet in Nur-Sultan as part of the next round of talks on Syria, scheduled from December 21-22. Kazakh Foreign Minister Mukhtar Tleuberdi previously said that the meeting of the top diplomats of the Astana format was under consideration. "The meeting of the guarantor states' foreign ministers has not yet been confirmed. But the next round of Syrian talks will be held, as had been announced, from December 21 - 22 at the deputy foreign minister level," Kazakh Foreign Ministry spokesman Aibek Smadiyarov told Sputnik. Negotiations to resolve the Syrian war, which broke out in 2011, have been ongoing in Nur-Sultan since 2017 with the mediation of guarantor-states of the Astana format (after the former name of the Kazakh capital). In January 2018, the Russian city of Sochi hosted a congress of the Syrian national dialogue, the first such attempt since the beginning of the conflict to bring together Syrian main political forces. The main result of the Congress was the decision to create a Constitutional Committee, which operates in Geneva and whose main task is to prepare constitutional reform in Syria. (ANI/Sputnik)
China on Friday rejected the ruling of London-based Uyghur Tribunal as "completely void" of any legal basis and added that final ruling by the panel is nothing but a political farce staged by a handful of "contemptible individuals." This reaction comes after a London-based independent tribunal on Thursday ruled that China committed 'genocide' against Uyghurs and other ethnic minorities in Xinjiang province. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson said the anti-China, separatist organization has rallied a handful of anti-China elements to set up the so-called Uyghur Tribunal, Xinhua news agency reported. "They hired liars to make false statements and falsify evidence, in an attempt to craft a political tool to disrupt Xinjiang and smear China," said the Chinese spokesperson, adding that the tribunal is "completely void of any legal basis and has no credibility at all." "The malicious intentions of its previous anti-China activities have been laid bare by facts and deplored by perceptive people in the international community. The so-called final ruling by such a machine churning out lies is nothing but a political farce staged by a handful of contemptible individuals," said the spokesperson. The Uyghur Tribunal declared the verdict on Thursday after a panel of Britain-based lawyers and rights experts examined human rights violations in the Xinjiang region. Hearings were held in June, September, and November this year, during which the Tribunal's expert panel reviewed hundreds of witness statements and heard live evidence from more than 30 witnesses about their experiences of China's oppressive policies, as well as from expert witnesses. "The tribunal is satisfied that the PRC (People's Republic of China) has affected a deliberate, systematic and concerted policy with the object of so-called 'optimizing' the population in Xinjiang by the means of a long-term reduction of Uyghur and other ethnic minority populations to be achieved through limiting and reducing Uyghur births," Geoffrey Nice, who chaired the tribunal, said on Thursday. He added that the tribunal was "satisfied" that very senior officials in the PRC and CCP (Chinese Communist Party) bear primary responsibility for acts in Xinjiang." (ANI)
CDS Rawat and his wife were among the 13 people who died in the military helicopter crash in Tamil Nadu's Coonoor on Wednesday.

French and Israel envoys Emmanuel Lenian and Naor Gilon paid tribute to Rawat and his wife. Besides them, British High Commissioner Alex Ellis and Bangladesh High Commissioner to India Mohammad Imran also paid their last respects.

Military attaches of different countries also paid their last respects to India's first CDS.

Speaking to ANI, Konstantin L. Zadorin, Captain first rank at Embassy of the Russian Federation for military, said that General Rawat and his family contributed to make India and Russia's military cooperation like a brotherhood.

"We did a lot to make our partnership really special and privileged. Gen Rawat and his family made a contribution to make our military cooperation like a brotherhood that's why a very sad day for us and it's a great loss for us," he said.

CDS General Rawat will be cremated later in the day today with full military honours.

Apart from General Rawat and his wife, his defence adviser Brig L.S. Lidder and Staff Officer Lieutenant Colonel Harjinder Singh also died in the crash.

Meanwhile, Brig L.S. Lidder was laid to rest earlier today.

Other nine defence forces personnel who died in the chopper crash are Wing Commander Prithvi Singh Chauhan, Squadron Leader Kuldeep Singh, Junior Warrant Officer Rana Pratap Das, Junior Warrant Officer Arakkal Pradeep, Havildar Satpal Rai, Naik Gursewak Singh, Naik Jitendra Kumar, Lance Naik Vivek Kumar and Lance Naik B. Sai Teja.

The bodies of the victims were flown from Sulur near Coimbatore to the Palam airbase on Thursday evening in caskets wrapped in the Tricolour.

Group Captain Varun Singh, the lone survivor in the crash, has been shifted to Air Force Command hospital at Bengaluru for further treatment. (ANI)
China lauded Nicaragua for cutting ties with Taiwan and making "the right choice," by restoring diplomatic relations with Beijing. The Chinese Foreign Ministry, in a statement, said Beijing highly appreciates this decision, Sputnik reported. "The Government of Nicaragua recognizes and commits to abide by the one-China principle, severs the so-called 'diplomatic relations' with Taiwan, resumes diplomatic relations with the People's Republic of China, and undertakes that it shall no longer develop any official relations or official exchanges with Taiwan. This is the right choice that is in line with the global trend and has people's support. China highly appreciates this decision," the Chinese ministry said in a statement. On Thursday, Nicaragua Foreign Minister Denis Moncada said in a televised announcement the government of Nicaragua declares that it recognizes that there is only one China in the world. Nicaragua's announcement leaves a little more than a dozen countries worldwide that maintain official diplomatic relations with Taiwan, including fellow Central American countries Honduras and Guatemala. Although Taiwan and China have been separately governed for more than 70 years, Beijing views the democratic island of 24 million people as part of its territory and has regularly stated its aim of "reunification," despite the fact Taiwan has never been ruled by the Chinese Communist Party. In a statement, Taiwan's foreign ministry expressed "pain and regret" at the news and said it would, in turn, sever diplomatic relations with Nicaragua, halt bilateral cooperation, and evacuate staffers from the country, reported CNN. "The Ortega presidency disregarded the long-term friendship between Taiwanese and Nicaraguan that shared weal and woe. We are very sorry to see that," it said, referring to Nicaragua's recently re-elected leader Daniel Ortega. Under President Xi Jinping, China has steadily ramped up its global influence and outreach. Meanwhile, recent US presidents Donald Trump and Joe Biden have sought to bolster Taiwan on the world stage with large arms sales and high profile visits by US officials. (ANI)
South African President Cyril Ramaphosa has invited scientists from the BRICS member states to visit his country and study the coronavirus and its mutations with local specialists. "President Cyril Ramaphosa has invited scientists from fellow BRICS countries - Brazil, Russia, India and China - to work alongside South African scientists in further researching the various characteristics of the COVID-19 virus and its mutations," the office of South African President said in a statement, as quoted by Russian news agency Sputnik. "This cooperation takes place within the context of the establishment of the BRICS Vaccine Research and Development Centre in a virtual format," the statement read. The development comes as WHO said that it was sending a technical surge team to South Africa province to monitor Omicron and help with contract tracing, amid a spike in coronavirus reinfections. Last week, WHO said that South Africa is reportedly seeing more patients contracting COVID-19 after having already been infected, in a way it did not with previous variants. The UN agency said that it is working with the African government to accelerate studies and bolster the response to the new variant. Amid the ongoing spread of the Omicron variant around the world, a UN health agency panel on Thursday said that early laboratory data on the effectiveness of existing vaccines against the new COVID-19 variant is useful, but it is still unclear how effective these will be in treating severely sick patients. The comes following reassurance from the World Health Organization (WHO) that available vaccines "hold up very well" in protecting people from the worst forms of coronavirus sickness for six months or more. "The neutralization data has an underpinning, but it's really the clinical data that are going to be most influential about how to manage an Omicron situation," said Dr Kate O'Brien, Director, Department of Immunization, Vaccines and Biologicals at WHO. (ANI)
Iran's Foreign Minister Hossein Amir Abdollahian said that the country has not received any "constructive and forward-looking" proposals from the West in the ongoing talks to revive the 2015 nuclear deal, formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). If the European parties to the deal study Iran's proposals carefully and without "false presuppositions", they will find out that the proposals are within the framework of the JCPOA and focus on the unfinished topics of previous talks, Xinhua news agency quoted Amir Abdollahian as saying during a telephone call with EU Foreign Affairs Chief Josep Borrell on Thursday. The Foreign Minister emphasised what he called "Iran's completely peaceful nuclear program," noting that "resolving the nuclear concerns is directly related to the complete lifting of sanctions". For his part, Borrell also referred to the challenges that could damage the talks, expressing hope that with the efforts and interaction of all parties, the Vienna talks would move toward reaching an agreement. He called for solving some concerns about Iran's current nuclear program and stressed the importance of cooperation between the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI) and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). The new round of negotiations between Iran and other remaining parties to the deal which started last week in Vienna called for a pause on December 3, in a bid to review Iran's two proposals which urge the priority of removal of US sanctions. The parties reconvened on Thursday. --IANS ksk/ ( 256 Words) 2021-12-10-09:34:14 (IANS)
This is likely to negatively impact the nascent peace efforts.

Earlier, a lot of informal discussions had taken place between the TTP and Pakistan government, according to the Dawn.

The Afghan Taliban are playing the role of principal mediator between Pakistan and TTP and both sides had agreed to that.

Earlier, a six-point agreement was reached between the Pakistan government and TTP on Oct 25, 2021.

Also, "direct, face-to-face" talks between the two sides were held in Afghanistan's south-western Khost province for nearly two weeks to negotiate peace between TTP and Pakistan government.

However, TTP has set its own conditions which among other things include enforcement of Shariah and restoration of tribal areas to their pre-merger status for continuing the cease-fire with Pakistan, according to the Dawn.

Earlier, TTP leader Mufti Noor Wali Mahsud announced an end to the ceasefire and asked his fighters to resume attacks.

The TTP's decision to end the ceasefire may increase further violence and extremism in Pakistan with the aid of the Taliban in Afghanistan. (ANI)
Washington [US], December 10 (ANI/Sputnik): The US needs additional consultations with the EU and Russia before approving the format of any meetings between leading NATO states and Moscow, The Wall Street Journal reported, citing a senior official from the Biden administration. "Within the next couple of days, we are obviously going to continue talking to our European partners. We are going to continue talking with our Russian partners and finding a way forward," the official told the newspaper, adding that the US is "prepared to talk to the Russians about this full set of issues." (ANI/Sputnik)
"The Houthis randomly fired missiles that landed on Al-Hamah IDP camp, which is located in the southern part of the government-controlled city of Marib," the official told Xinhua news agency.

The source confirmed the Houthi shelling resulted in seriously injuring 12 displaced people, mostly women and children.

He added that a number of families left the IDP camp in a state of panic after the strikes.

Meanwhile, the Executive Unit for the Management of IDP camps in Marib said in a press statement that two ballistic missiles fired by the Houthi militia against the camp.

The Houthis have recently resumed their intense military operations against Marib.

The Houthi military escalation against the southern areas of Marib left nearly 96,328 displaced people since the beginning of last September, according to official government reports.

--IANS ksk/

( 175 Words)

2021-12-10-12:12:22 (IANS)
The conservation agency said in a statement that WWF Tanzania's National Forest Program has through its Trillion Trees Project signed the contract with 4H Tanzania and Friends of Usambara in a new step to tackle rampant deforestation and degradation of the mountains, reports Xinhua news agency.

WWF Tanzania's Forest Program will be implemented north of the Usambara Mountains where the landscape's ecosystem is being impacted by deforestation and degradation, said the statement.

It said deforestation adversely affects communities as the Usambara Mountains covering 3,500 square km is a fundamental source of food and water, underlining its significance for human wellbeing and the national economy.

The Usambara's are a part of the ancient Eastern Arc chain which mountains stretch in a broken crescent from the Taita hills in southern Kenya down to Morogoro and the southern highlands.

They are estimated to be at least 100 million years old and the rocks forming them may be as much as 600 million years old.

The mountains are home to an exceptional assortment of plants and animals and represent one of the highest degrees of biodiversity on the continent.

--IANS ksk/

( 236 Words)

2021-12-10-13:06:44 (IANS)
The Unicef has expressed worries over the reimplementation of the Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP) at the US southern border with Mexico, as required by a court order, could put the safety and wellbeing of asylum-seeking children and their families at risk. The MPP is a US government program, initiated in January 2019, under which the country returns to Mexico certain citizens and nationals of countries other than Mexico while their American removal proceedings are pending. MPP applies to those who arrive from Mexico by land. "Following the initial implementation of MPP in January 2019, more than 70,000 asylum seekers were forced to return to Mexico until US immigration courts could resolve their cases. Those subject to MPP, including many children and adolescents, waited for months in shelters and makeshift camps in Mexico without access to appropriate housing, hygiene, nutrition and essential services," the UN agency said in a statement. Although the Unicef welcomes "commitments from the US government to assist Central American countries in tackling the root causes of migration and provide humanitarian assistance to those in need", it contended that the MPP could have "profound consequences for children, many of whom have been left with no safe options to escape dire conditions and threats in their home countries". "All migrant children have the right to protection, essential services, to live in adequate conditions with dignity and to be with their families. "Children - no matter where they come from or what their migration status - are children first and foremost. It is imperative that all governments prioritize the protection and wellbeing of children in line with their best interests and guarantee their access to asylum procedures in a timely manner," the Unicef statement added. On June 1, the Secretary of Homeland Security determined that the MPP should be terminated and issued a memorandum to that effect. On August 13 however, the US District Court for the Northern District of Texas determined that the June 1 memo was not issued in compliance with the Administrative Procedure Act and ordered the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to "enforce and implement MPP in good faith". On October 29, after an extensive and comprehensive review, the Secretary of Homeland Security issued a new memorandum terminating MPP, which DHS will implement as soon as practicable after issuance of a final judicial decision to vacate the Texas injunction. --IANS ksk/ ( 406 Words) 2021-12-10-13:38:58 (IANS)
The family of Riley Franz, a student who was shot in the neck at Oxford High School in the US state of Michigan on November 30, has filed a $100 million lawsuit, local media reported. The federal lawsuit, filed on Thursday, accuses school officials of dismissing violent threats, not only in the hours and days before Ethan Crumbley's shooting, but also two weeks earlier when students and parents raised concerns, local media quoted attorney Geoffrey Fieger as saying. In addition to the federal lawsuit, a similar suit will be filed in state court, which will also seek $100 million, Xinhua news agency quoted Fieger as further saying. Riley Franz, 17, and her sister Bella, 14, were together when Riley and other students were shot. The girls had been in a bathroom and were shot at as they emerged. In the days since, both girls have suffered from anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder, along with physical and emotional injuries, according to the lawsuit. Days before the attack, Crumbley "acted in such a way that would lead a reasonable observer to know and/or believe that he was planning to cause great bodily harm", the lawsuit states. It accuses school officials of increasing the danger to students by allowing Crumbley to stay at the school and repeatedly failing to inform the school safety liaison officer about his behaviour and excluding him from a meeting with his parents. In the days leading up to the shooting, Crumbley "posted countdowns and threats of bodily harm, including death, on his social media accounts, warning of violent tendencies and murderous ideology prior to actually coming to school with the handgun and ammunition to perpetuate the slaughter", the suit says. The night before the shooting, Crumbley said on Twitter: "Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds. See you tomorrow Oxford." The goal of claiming a high price in the suit is "to compel people to do something" to prevent school shootings, said Fieger. Defendants in the federal suit include school district superintendent Timothy Throne, Oxford High School Principal Steven Wolf, two teachers, two counsellors and a staff member. --IANS ksk/ ( 366 Words) 2021-12-10-14:40:38 (IANS)
The move came after the Australian Technical Advisory Group on Immunizations (ATAGI) signed off on the Therapeutic Goods Administration's decision to approve Pfizer's vaccine for children, reports Xinhua news agency.

However, ATAGI advised that children wait eight weeks between their first and second doses compared to three weeks for adults.

More than 2 million children will become available for the vaccine, with doses to be one third the size administered to adults.

Morrison said parents could have confidence the vaccine is safe.

"This will bring great relief to so many mums and dads, who now have a choice on what's best for their kids. They can have peace of mind knowing this has the tick from the best medical regulators in the world," he told reporters.

ATAGI noted that inoculation was particularly important for children with severe illness and those living in areas with high case numbers.

Bookings for vaccine appointments will open in late December and Health Minister Greg Hunt said the government would strongly recommend all children were inoculated.

"Australians can be reassured that by vaccinating their children against Covid-19 they have done everything possible to keep their child safe from this virus," he said.

"Vaccinating children can also help reduce community transmission and help prevent children passing the virus on to younger siblings, grandparents and the wider community."

Australia on Friday reported more than 1,700 new locally-acquired coronavirus infections.

Till date, 88.9 per cent of Australians aged 16 and over have been fully vaccinated against the virus.

--IANS ksk/

( 294 Words)

2021-12-10-15:10:12 (IANS)
MAPLE GROVE, MN  Three Maple Grove schools were added Thursday to the Minnesota Department of Healths list of facilities with recent outbreaks.

Two elementary schools  Oak View and Weaver Lake  and the Arbor View Early Childhood Center were named on the most recent list, joining 10 other schools in Maple Grove.

Ave Maria Academy, the Minnesota Excellence in Learning Academy and Parnassus Preparatory School have been on the list for several weeks, alongside five Osseo Area elementary schools  Basswood, Cedar Island, Fernbrook, Rice Lake and Rush Creek  and Maple Grove Middle School and Maple Grove Senior High.

What To Know About Parking In Maple Grove With Snowstorm Inbound

Ten of the 13 Maple Grove schools on the list are in the Osseo Area Schools district.

The COVID-19 data dashboard for Osseo Area Schools shows there have been 1,134 total coronavirus cases among students in the district since Sept. 7. The district serves about 20,500 students.

The district has also reported 209 cases among its 4,100 staff members since Sept. 7.

2 Treated At Hospital After Maple Grove House Fire: Chief

The Minnesota Department of Health's most recent list of facilities with coronavirus outbreaks included 150 Hennepin County schools, 30 more than last week. More than 1,000 schools statewide were named on Thursdays list.

A school is considered to have an outbreak when it reports five or more confirmed cases of the virus in students or staff who were in the building while infectious during the most recent two-week reporting period.

Schools on the list may not have ongoing transmission, according to MDH officials. Schools are removed from the list after 28 days without any new cases.

This article originally appeared on the Maple Grove Patch
Elsa and Olaf make the trek to the snow caves of Sci-Port, queens of drag sashay for a cause, you can bury yourself in text at the book sale of the year and channel your inner Rat Pack for a night for a night in Las Vegas (and not leave Shreveport). But wait, theres even more! Well transport you to a place where snowflakes waltz and sugar plums dance the night away. Find your special brand of magic in our #CoolDowntown.

Snow Sisters and Enchanted Snowman at Sno-port

1. The Snow Sisters and The Enchanted Snowman (Elsa, Anna and Olaf) will travel to the village of North Wind inside SnoPort at Sci-Port Discovery Center this Saturday to the delight of all the little ones you know. Enjoy ice fishing, the make-it-glow tree of snow and more as you explore the snow caves of SnoPort. When: Sat., Dec. 11, 11 am- 2 pm. Where: Sci-Port, 820 Clyde Fant Parkway. Cost: Free with a SnoPort ticket, $8/$25. Info: www.snoport.com

Shreve Memorial Book Sale

2. Grab your sturdy bags and boxes and get thee hither to the Main Branch of the Shreve Memorial Library for the Shreve Memorial Library Friends Book Sale. This is your chance to load up on books of all subjects, both paper and hardback, for an almost ridiculously tiny amount of money. Spend $5 to become a friend of the library and get in early to shop! When: Sat., Dec. 11. Noon- 5 pm (get in from 9 am- noon if youre a friend!) Where: 424 Texas Street. Cost: $5 before noon, free admission after. Info: FB/friends book sale

Las Vegas Night

3. Dress to the nines, hope for a straight, try not to crap out. Its the return of the glitzy, glamour-filled Las Vegas Night, the fundraiser for the Betty and Leonard Phillips Deaf Action Center. $500 in chips will get you started; Lady Luck will see you through. Enjoy a lavish buffet, open bar, and amazing silent and live auctions. When: Sat., Dec. 11, 7pm- just shy of midnight. Where: Petroleum Club,416 Travis St. Cost: $250. Info: deafactioncenter.org/events

Not So Silent Benefit Show

4. Make your way to the Korner Lounge for their in-person Not-So-Silent Benefit Show featuring Shalula Davenport, Renee Zaunee, Gemini Breeks and Olivia Martini Breeks. They will vogue and sashay the night away to raise money for The Philadelphia Center. The night of giving back starts at 10:30 and runs until all the fun and glamour is so tired it has to go home for a nap. When: Sat., Dec. 11, 10:30 pm- until. Where: Korner Lounge, 800 Louisiana Ave. Cost: $8 admission. All door proceeds donated to the Philadelphia Center. Info: FB/korner lounge

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The Nutcracker

5. A Christmas tradition returns to the riverfront Saturday and Sunday. Clara, the Sugar Plum Fairy and The Nutcracker bring the joy and wonder of the holiday season to Riverview Hall. The Shreveport Metropolitan Ballet welcomes guest artists Simon Wexler and Sarah Lane and a cast of more than 100 talented local dancers. When: Sat., Dec. 11 @ 6:30 pm, Sun., Dec. 12 @ 3 pm. Where: Riverview Theater, 600 Clyde Fant Parkway. Cost: $35/$55. Info: shreveportmetroballet.org

This article originally appeared on Shreveport Times: 5 things to do in downtown Shreveport December 10
GOLEM, Albania (AP)  Women who were evacuated to Albania after the Taliban returned to power in Afghanistan are urging the international community to pay attention to the plight of Afghan women and girls still living in an environment of severe gender-based discrimination.

Some 550 evacuated Afghans are in the Albanian coastal town of Golem, 50 kilometers west of the capital Tirana. For more than two weeks, women in the group wrote articles, posted social media messages and contacted foreign authorities and organizations to remind people about the worsening conditions in Afghanistan.

Unless the world pays attention to the dire situation of the Afghan women now  without a job, isolated at home, no prospects ahead  tomorrow it will be too late, Masoud Faizy, 48, a gynecologist who was research director at the Malali Maternity Hospital in Kabul, said Friday.

Faizy said friends she has communicated with told her life had become unbearable since Western troops left Afghanistan and the Taliban took over running the country in August.

Shamail Zarei, a board member of the Afghan Womens Network said the public awareness campaign in Albania arose out of such conversations. Reports from Afghanistan say the Taliban has closed schools for girls and barred women from working or attending universities.

How could we fight, our friends back home tell us, who do not take easy our call for them to fight at a time that we already left the country, Zarei told The Associated Press.

Zarei's younger sister Sabera, 21, who had been studying law in Afghanistan, said her classmates were "depressed and disappointed after the rushing move out by the U.S. Army.

Fear for family members still in Afghanistan haunts the Afghan evacuees, who are waiting in Albania for authorization to move to the United States and other countries.

Setara Golzari, 15, said the school she had attended in Herat, Afghanistan, was closed by the Taliban.

Why do they hate women? she asked.

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Golzari called on the U.S. government to speed up the visa process for her family, saying her mother suffers from a serious illness that has gone untreated for the last month in Albania.

She doesnt have the proper diet and we are not finding the medicine she uses and she is suffering a lot, the teenager said.

Albania has sheltered a total of 2,250 Afghan evacuees in hotels and resorts around the Balkan nation. They have been told they will have to stay there for about a year until U.S. authorities finish processing their special immigration visas.

Albania has offered medical assistance to all Afghan evacuees. Albanian doctors. however, often ask for private payments because the Afghans are not listed as having medical insurance.

The Afghan Womens Network issued a plea for the international community to take action to end the existing violence against the Afghan people, especially women, and to establish a mechanism to monitor human rights violations in Afghanistan and not to leave our people alone.
ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) An Air Force civilian police officer at Joint Base Charleston was arrested in Florida after threatening to run his vehicle into a hospital or military base so that authorities would be forced to kill him, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement said.

The FDLE arrested Thomas James Stephan on Wednesday after receiving a warning from authorities in South Carolina, where the man has worked as an Air Force civilian police officer at Joint Base Charleston.

He was charged with written or electronic threats to kill, do bodily injury or conduct a mass shooting or an act of terrorism, according to the affidavit.

An arrest affidavit said Stephan, 30, sent multiple text messages on Tuesday to a sworn law enforcement officer at JBC, threatening to run his vehicle into a hospital or access a military installation and provoke a deadly shootout so that authorities would be forced to kill him.

Stephan " sent several text messages that he would cause a mass casualty event, according to the affidavit. The defendant identified a hospital and military base as targets of causing an act of terrorism by driving his vehicle into a location to cause injury or death to multiple people.

During the initial investigation, Stephan indicated during text that he was near PSFB, the affidavit read, a reference to Patrick Space Force Base. There is probable cause to believe the defendant has indicated that he would cause an act of terrorism by creating a mass casualty event.

After a long series of texts, Stephan told the JBC security officer to stop texting him or he would strike.

Another text or message and we make this from one death to a Mass case, Stephan texted the JCB security officer, according to the affidavit. Do we understand each other? Its a lot what a car full of fuel can do to hospital...By your silence you understand.

The JBC officer responded by asking about potential new employment.

What about the job in Washington, that security officer texted Stephan.

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Didnt happen, Stephan responded. Dont work me, been through the course.

Officials in South Carolina interviewed his associates at the base to determine what phone number he was using, and learned that Stephan was near Patrick Space Force Base on Floridas Atlantic Coast, the report said. A civilian member of the 628th Air Base Wings security forces squadron, according to the Post and Courier newspaper, Stephan was later spotted on an overpass near Universal Studios, the newspaper reported, threatening to jump. He was detained by Orlando Police for evaluation and investigation until the FDLE warrant was issued.

We were aware of the threat, J. Porter, chief of public affairs for Patrick Space Force Base and Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, told Air Force Times. Porter declined to elaborate on what, if any, security measures were taken.

Officials from Joint Base Charleston did not immediately response to a request for comment.

Stephan is being held without bond at the Orange County Jail. The case will be prosecuted by the state attorneys office. A lawyer who could speak on behalf of Stephan was not listed on jail records.
Disgraced South Carolina attorney Alex Murdaugh used $2 million from the estate of his former family housekeeper to pay off an alleged hitman accused of shooting him in a botched assisted-suicide scheme, the lawyers for the housekeeper's sons allege.

Curtis Edward Smith, also known as "Cousin Eddie," was paid with funds from proceeds that were supposed to be used to settle the 2018 trip-and-fall death of Gloria Satterfield, the longtime housekeeper of the Murdaugh family, according to Eric Bland and Ronnie Richter. The lawyers for Satterfield's estate made the claim in an amended lawsuit that also accuses Bank of America of aiding and abetting Murdaugh in laundering millions in stolen funds.

He also engaged in other suspicious activity that should have been flagged by the banking giant, according to the suit.

SC JUDGE FREEZES ALEX MURDAUGH'S ASSETS AS CIVIL SUITS AGAINST DISGRACED LEGAL SCION MOUNT

"BOA is the bank of a money launderer. BOA is a bank of fraud," the lawsuit states. "They are nothing more than a high-tech laundromat."

The lawsuit seeks to explore Smith's possible role in Murdaugh's alleged fraud and demands he hand over any money or property belonging to Satterfield's estate.

A lawsuit was initially filed Sept. 15 on behalf of Satterfields sons, Michael Anthony Satterfield and Brian Harriott, detailing the theft of money from the housekeepers heirs. Wrongful death settlements were secured from insurance carriers for amounts totaling $4.3 million.

The amended suit says Murdaugh issued checks to Smith between Oct. 8, 2019 to May 28, 2021 through fake "Forge" accounts for nearly $165,000. Another 254 checks totaling $1.8 million were issued to Smith from Murdaugh's personal account and through transfers from the fake accounts, the lawsuit states.

"Upon information and belief, at least a portion of the funds transferred to Cousin Eddie came from the monies that were wrongfully taken from the plaintiffs," the lawsuit states.

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Fox News has reached out to Murdaugh's attorney.

Documents provided by attorneys for Satterfields estate purportedly show a Bank of America account under the name "Forge," which was used to keep $3.4 million that was allegedly stolen from various victims.

"Through this action, the Satterfield family hopes to find the answer to the ultimate question: Wheres the money? " Bland and Richter said in a news release.

Bank of America denies any wrongdoing and said it was not aware of any theft.

"There is no basis for this lawsuit, and we are asking the court to dismiss it," the company said in a statement to Fox News. "Make no mistake, the wrongdoer here was Mr. Murdaugh, and the diversion of these funds occurred away from Bank of America. We had no knowledge of any theft and followed standard procedures in account openings for a sole proprietor business. "

South Carolina Law Enforcement Division (SLED) has opened an investigation into Statterfied's death, which was ruled as natural, but inconsistent with injuries sustained in a trip-and-fall accident, officials said.

Murdaugh is already charged with insurance fraud, conspiracy to commit insurance fraud and filing a false police report in connection to an alleged Sept. 4 shooting. He allegedly told authorities he hired Smith to shoot him so his surviving son, Buster Murdaugh, could collect a $10 million life insurance policy.

The shooting occurred after Murdaugh resigned from the Hampton, South Carolina, law firm founded by his great-grandfather amid allegations he embezzled millions from clients.

In June, his wife, Maggie, and their 22-year-old son, Paul, were murdered at their home. No suspects have been named in the case and the killings remain unsolved. Alex Murdaugh has denied involvement.

Fox News' Danielle Wallace contributed to this report.
Amanda Holden is celebrating her wedding anniversary. (PA)

Amanda Holden has shared a rare picture of her husband as the pair celebrate their wedding anniversary.

The sweet snap posted on the TV stars Instagram Story seems to have been taken on a holiday and shows Holden planting a kiss on her hubby Chris Hughes cheek.

Happy Anniversary darling, she wrote. 20 together 13 married.

Read more: Amanda Holden admits she and husband have tried and failed to join 'Mile High Club'

The Britains Got Talent judge added a single red heart emoji to her post.

Amanda Holden and Chris Hughes tied the knot in 2008. (Amanda Holden Instagram)

The couple tied the knot on December 10, 2008 at the luxurious Babington House in Somerset.

Holden often mentions him but record producer Hughes remains largely out of the public eye.

The Heart radio presenter recently revealed that the flame is still burning strong in their relationship.

She told the Mirror last month: Oh God, I really fancy Chris. Well be eating dinner in a restaurant, hell go to the loo, then Ill look up, catch a glimpse of a man and think, 'Hes fit' and then realise, 'F***, thats my husband! I still fancy him!'"

The pair have two daughters. (PA)

Holden went on: "He challenges me and I challenge him, and I think that is the secret to a good marriage."

Read more: Amanda Holden strips for 50th birthday

The star also said that Hughes wasnt a yes man but said that he was still her biggest supporter.

Holden shares daughters, Lexie, 15, and Hollie, nine, with Hughes, who she refers to as Crispy.

The pair had a stillborn son, who they named Theo, in 2011. Holden was seven months into the pregnancy when Theo died in the womb and she had to deliver him by C-section.

Watch: Amanda Holden pronounces 'wasabi' in bizarre way in TV show clip
Donald Trump. Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images

A federal appeals court in Washington, D.C., on Thursday denied former President Donald Trump's bid to keep documents from the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.

In a unanimous decision, the three-judge panel upheld a lower court's opinion, with Judge Patricia Millett writing that Trump's lawyers "provided no basis for this court to override President Biden's judgement" that the records in question not be protected by executive privilege.

Millett also wrote that on Jan. 6, "lives were lost; blood was shed: portions of the Capitol building were badly damaged; and the lives of members of the House and Senate, as well as aides, staffers, and others who were working in the building, were endangered. There is a direct linkage between the former president and the events of the day."

The documents Trump wants to block from the House committee are held by the National Archives and Records Administration, and include White House call logs and draft speeches. A spokeswoman for Trump said he intends to appeal the decision with the Supreme Court; he has 14 days to do so, before the records are turned over to Congress.

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Former President Donald Trump has lost his latest legal battle over documents relating to the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, in a case that tests the power of a former president to withhold his records from Congressional scrutiny.

On Dec. 9, 2021, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals court said that the Congressional committee investigating the Capitol attack should have access to a trove of evidence that Trump is attempting to shield from the panel.

It is the latest ruling in a series of court cases in which Trump has fought legal demands from Congress for documents from his administration. This legal battle pitted the untested powers of a former president to keep his papers from public view against the proven power of the current president to determine which administration documents  from former or current presidents  can be released to the public. The battle is likely headed to the Supreme Court.

How did we get here?

After Jan. 6, the House of Representatives established a select committee to investigate the facts and circumstances surrounding the attack. Of the nine members, two are Republicans; all were appointed by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

As part of the committees investigation, Congress sought to obtain records  including visitor logs, handwritten notes and speech drafts  from Trumps period in office that relate to the Capitol attack.

In addition to issuing subpoenas to Trump aides for documents and testimony  with varying degree of success in getting former administration officials to comply  the select committee requested presidential records that were held by the National Archives.

Presidential records are materials created or received by the president or his immediate staff to help the president carry out his constitutional duties.

Federal law regulates access to those records.

Under the Presidential Records Act, once a president leaves office, it becomes the job of the archivist of the United States to preserve the former presidents documents. The archivist also controls their release.

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This means the select committee had to ask the archivist for access to Trumps records.

The law requires that, after the archivist receives such a request, he notify both the former president, in this case Trump, and the current president, Joe Biden. If either man felt that the records contained constitutionally protected information that should not be disclosed, either had 30 calendar days to assert that claim.

Trump did just that. He told the archivist that he believed the records were protected by executive privilege and that they could not be disclosed.

Judge Millett at her confirmation hearing, wearing pearls, a beige shirt and dark jacket. She has short, brown hair.

What is executive privilege?

Executive privilege enables presidents and executive branch officials to withhold documents that would reveal the opinions, recommendations and deliberations on which governmental decisions and policies are based. This privilege exists to encourage candor among presidential advisers by preserving the confidentiality of their communications.

Trump has argued that some of the documents the select committee requested from the archivist reflect deliberations that he asserted should remain confidential. According to Trumps legal team, releasing the documents would hurt the office of the president by compromising the ability of future presidents to rely on full and frank advice.

For example, Presidents Harry Truman, Richard Nixon and George W. Bush all argued that the modern realities of the presidency require that presidents be able keep some information secret even after leaving office.

However, this is the first case in which a former president has asserted executive privilege and the current president disagreed.

Biden v. Trump

Under the Presidential Records Act, the archivist must consult with the incumbent president when a former president asserts a claim of privilege.

When Archivist David Ferriero did so, the Biden White House said asserting executive privilege would not be in the best interests of the country and instructed the archivist to grant the select committee access to the records.

Trump then went to court. Among other things, he asked the judiciary to prevent the archivist from giving the disputed records to the select committee.

On Nov. 9, 2021, the District Court denied Trumps request.

Trump appealed the decision.

Then, on Dec. 9, the Circuit Court ruled that Trump had provided insufficient legal basis for overriding Bidens decision. In the opinion, the court noted that the profound interests in disclosure of the documents far outweighed Trumps concerns about executive privilege.

Supreme Court next?

The D.C. District Court ended its opinion by saying that the events of January 6th exposed the fragility of those democratic institutions and traditions that we had perhaps come to take for granted. In response, the President of the United States and Congress have each made the judgment that access to this subset of presidential communication records is necessary to address a matter of great constitutional moment for the Republic.

"Former President Trump has given this court no legal reason to cast aside President Bidens assessment of the Executive Branch interests at stake, or to create a separation of powers conflict that the Political Branches have avoided.

This case is just the latest in a series of battles over congressional access to information from the Trump administration.

The D.C. Circuit Court acknowledged the implications of these battles in its opinion and noted that arguments over the documents are best worked out between the political branches of government.

Yet, these disputes raise real separation of powers concerns, particularly  as here  when the executive and legislative branches look to the courts to serve as an umpire. Also at stake is how much power Congress has to hold the president accountable. As a result, the case is very likely headed to the Supreme Court.

[Get The Conversations most important politics headlines, in our Politics Weekly newsletter.]

This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit news site dedicated to sharing ideas from academic experts. It was written by: Jennifer Selin, University of Missouri-Columbia.

Read more:



Jennifer L. Selin has received funding and/or support for her research on Congress and the executive branch from the Center for Effective Lawmaking, Dirksen Congressional Center, Kinder Institute on Constitutional Democracy, and Levin Center at Wayne Law.
Torn up pages of the Quran and Islamic literature found in the Interfaith Reflection Room at ASU's Hayden Library on Dec. 8. Police have made an arrest in connection to the incident.

Arizona State University police said they arrested an individual related to a destroyed Quran and other damage in the Hayden Library on the Tempe campus.

Wesley Waggoner, 37, was arrested and charged with criminal damage for causing significant damage to library property, including a Quran from the interfaith reflection area, according to a Friday morning police statement.

Laborious police work, thorough investigating and cognizance from the library staff is what brought this incident to a quick resolution, ASU Police Chief Michael Thompson said in a statement.

INCIDENT UPDATE - An arrest has been made in connection to the criminal damage reported at Hayden Library.



ASUPD arrested and charged Wesley Waggoner with Criminal Damage for causing significant damage to library property, including a Quran from the interfaith reflection area. pic.twitter.com/yKU5ldfkAj  Arizona State University Police Department (@ASUPolice) December 10, 2021

The Muslim Students Association of ASU had publicized the incident on social media Wednesday evening, calling it a hate crime and urging ASU to investigate and hold whoever is responsible to account.

Photos posted to the groups Instagram page show what appear to be burned and torn up Quran and Islamic literature pages, as well as a damaged wall. The room is one where many Muslim students go to pray, according to the student group.

There should be zero tolerance for any actions of hatred on campus, the Muslim Students Associations statement said. The safety concerns of the Muslim students on campus cannot go unheard or unattended.

Sasha Uddin, education director for the Muslim Students Association, said her group is grateful to ASU police for making the investigation a priority, with an arrest made the day after the incident was reported.

Story continues

We want to move forward with peace and also making sure we do ensure security for anyone who decides theyd like to go into the Interfaith Reflection Room, she said.

The ASU Police Department confirmed Thursday that it was investigating reported criminal damage in the librarys Interfaith Reflection Room after being notified of property and facilities damage.

Waggoner was arrested at around 8 p.m. Thursday after Hayden Library staff reported further damage to library property, according to police. Police officers linked Waggoner to Wednesday's incident using surveillance footage.

Thompson, the police chief, said in a statement that police were still investigating the "circumstances and reasoning" around the destructive actions.

There is no room or tolerance at ASU for this type of damaging behavior, he said.

In addition to criminal damage, Waggoner was charged with possession of drug paraphernalia, and police said he had methamphetamine on him. He also had two confirmed warrants, according to ASU police.

Uddin, the student leader in the Muslim Students Association, said they are focusing on forgiveness.

We dont want to make any hasty generalizations towards the person who committed the crime and towards ASU in general.

Have a story about higher education? Reach the reporter at Alison.Steinbach@arizonarepublic.com or at 602-444-4282. Follow her on Twitter @alisteinbach.

Support local journalism. Subscribe to azcentral.com today.

This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: ASU police arrest man after Quran found damaged in campus library
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Rating Action:

Moodys affirms Berkshire Hathaways Aa2 senior debt

rating, stable outlook

10 December 2021

New York, December 10, 2021  Moodys Investors Service has affirmed the Aa2 senior unsecured

debt rating and Prime-1 short-term issuer rating of Berkshire Hathaway Inc. (Berkshire, NYSE: BRK)

as well as the ratings on subsidiary debts that are unconditionally and irrevocably guaranteed by

Berkshire (see list below). The rating outlook for Berkshire is stable.

RATINGS RATIONALE

According to Moodys, the rating affirmation reflects Berkshire's extraordinarily well capitalized

(re)insurance operations, its highly diversified earnings and cash flow from regulated and non-

regulated businesses, and its conservative financial policy, by which it maintains of a large liquidity

pool and moderate financial leverage. Partly offsetting these strengths are potential earnings

and capital volatility related to the company's large, concentrated stock investments and its large

individual (re)insurance transactions. Other challenges include enterprise risk management given

the vast business portfolio, and leadership succession given the critical role CEO Warren Buffett has

played in developing Berkshire's culture and financial performance.

Berkshire reported net operating earnings of $20.2 billion for the first nine months of 2021, up

19% versus the prior year period, reflecting strong double-digit increases in the railroad, utilities

and energy, and manufacturing, service and retailing segments, partly offset by a double-digit

decline in the (re)insurance segment. The year-to-date decline in (re)insurance results reflects

lower underwriting income, partly because of higher catastrophe losses, along with slightly lower

investment income. Moody's expects that Berkshire will benefit from the recovering economy in 2022

and will continue to grow its operating earnings, cash flow and capital base over time.

As of September 30, 2021, Berkshire had consolidated cash and equivalents totaling $149 billion, a

Story continues

majority held within the (re)insurance segment. The company had total borrowings of $115 billion, a

majority issued by the railroad and utilities and energy segments. Consolidated total leverage, which

incorporates all reported debt plus Moody's adjustments for pensions and leases, was about 20% at

September 30, 2021, within Moodys rating expectations. Berkshire generates healthy pretax interest

coverage, averaging more than 10 times over the past five years. The company holds at least $30

billion of cash and equivalents at or readily available to the parent to address potential needs or

opportunities.

FACTORS THAT COULD LEAD TO AN UPGRADE OR DOWNGRADE OF THE RATINGS

Factors that could lead to an upgrade of Berkshire's ratings include (i) meaningful improvement in

standalone credit profiles of major operating units, and (ii) continued holdings of substantial cash and

equivalents at or readily available to the parent company relative to outstanding indebtedness.

Factors that could lead to a rating downgrade include: (i) meaningful deterioration in standalone

credit profiles(s) of one or more major operating units, (ii) a shift towards a less conservative

financial profile (for example, total consolidated leverage exceeding 30%, or total leverage excluding

railroad, utilities and energy exceeding 15%), (iii) losses from (re)insurance underwriting and/or

investments causing a 15% decline in shareholders equity in a given year, or (iv) a significant

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decline in cash and equivalents at or readily available to the parent (for example, declining toward

$30 billion, which management cites as a minimum balance).

Moody's has affirmed the following ratings:

Berkshire Hathaway Inc. -- long-term issuer rating and senior unsecured debt at Aa2, senior

unsecured shelf at (P)Aa2, short-term issuer rating at Prime-1;

Berkshire Hathaway Finance Corporation -- backed senior unsecured debt at Aa2, backed senior

unsecured shelf at (P)Aa2;

The Lubrizol Corporation -- backed senior unsecured debt at Aa2;

Precision Castparts Corp. -- backed senior unsecured debt at Aa2.

The rating outlook for these companies is stable.

The methodologies used in these ratings were Property and Casualty Insurers

Methodology published in September 2021 and available at

https://www.moodys.com/

researchdocumentcontentpage.aspx?docid=PBC_1254163

, and Reinsurers Methodology published

in November 2019 and available at

https://www.moodys.com/researchdocumentcontentpage.aspx?

docid=PBC_1187551

. Alternatively, please see the Rating Methodologies page on www.moodys.com

for a copy of these methodologies.

Based in Omaha, Nebraska, Berkshire is a holding company engaged through subsidiaries in

diversified businesses that fall into four broad segments: (re)insurance; railroad; utilities and

energy; and manufacturing, service and retailing. Berkshire also holds sizable minority interests in

several publicly traded firms through its portfolio of common stocks, held mainly by its (re)insurance

subsidiaries. Berkshire generated total revenue of $204 billion, net operating earnings of $20.2

billion, and net income attributable to Berkshire of $50.1 billion for the first nine months of 2021.

The main differences between net income and operating earnings are that net income includes

unrealized gains on stock investments plus a smaller amount of realized investment gains. Berkshire

had total assets of $921 billion and Berkshire shareholders equity of $472 billion as of September

30, 2021.

REGULATORY DISCLOSURES

For further specification of Moodys key rating assumptions and sensitivity analysis, see

the sections Methodology Assumptions and Sensitivity to Assumptions in the disclosure

form. Moodys Rating Symbols and Definitions can be found at:

https://www.moodys.com/

researchdocumentcontentpage.aspx?docid=PBC_79004

.

For ratings issued on a program, series, category/class of debt or security this announcement

provides certain regulatory disclosures in relation to each rating of a subsequently issued bond or

note of the same series, category/class of debt, security or pursuant to a program for which the

ratings are derived exclusively from existing ratings in accordance with Moody's rating practices.

For ratings issued on a support provider, this announcement provides certain regulatory disclosures

in relation to the credit rating action on the support provider and in relation to each particular credit

rating action for securities that derive their credit ratings from the support provider's credit rating.

For provisional ratings, this announcement provides certain regulatory disclosures in relation to the

provisional rating assigned, and in relation to a definitive rating that may be assigned subsequent

to the final issuance of the debt, in each case where the transaction structure and terms have not

changed prior to the assignment of the definitive rating in a manner that would have affected the

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rating. For further information please see the ratings tab on the issuer/entity page for the respective

issuer on www.moodys.com.

For any affected securities or rated entities receiving direct credit support from the primary entity(ies)

of this credit rating action, and whose ratings may change as a result of this credit rating action, the

associated regulatory disclosures will be those of the guarantor entity. Exceptions to this approach

exist for the following disclosures, if applicable to jurisdiction: Ancillary Services, Disclosure to rated

entity, Disclosure from rated entity.

The ratings have been disclosed to the rated entity or its designated agent(s) and issued with no

amendment resulting from that disclosure.

These ratings are solicited. Please refer to Moodys Policy for Designating and Assigning Unsolicited

Credit Ratings available on its website www.moodys.com.

Regulatory disclosures contained in this press release apply to the credit rating and, if applicable, the

related rating outlook or rating review.

Moodys general principles for assessing environmental, social and governance (ESG) risks in

our credit analysis can be found at

http://www.moodys.com/researchdocumentcontentpage.aspx?

docid=PBC_1288235

.

The Global Scale Credit Rating on this Credit Rating Announcement was issued by one of Moodys

affiliates outside the EU and is endorsed by Moodys Deutschland GmbH, An der Welle 5, Frankfurt

am Main 60322, Germany, in accordance with Art.4 paragraph 3 of the Regulation (EC) No

1060/2009 on Credit Rating Agencies. Further information on the EU endorsement status and on the

Moodys office that issued the credit rating is available on www.moodys.com.

The Global Scale Credit Rating on this Credit Rating Announcement was issued by one of Moodys

affiliates outside the UK and is endorsed by Moodys Investors Service Limited, One Canada

Square, Canary Wharf, London E14 5FA under the law applicable to credit rating agencies in the UK.

Further information on the UK endorsement status and on the Moodys office that issued the credit

rating is available on www.moodys.com.

Please see www.moodys.com for any updates on changes to the lead rating analyst and to the

Moody's legal entity that has issued the rating.

Please see the ratings tab on the issuer/entity page on www.moodys.com for additional regulatory

disclosures for each credit rating.

Bruce Ballentine

VP-Sr Credit Officer

Financial Institutions Group

Moody's Investors Service, Inc.

250 Greenwich Street

New York, NY 10007

U.S.A.

JOURNALISTS: 1 212 553 0376

Client Service: 1 212 553 1653

Sarah Hibler

Associate Managing Director

Financial Institutions Group

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JOURNALISTS: 1 212 553 0376

Client Service: 1 212 553 1653

Releasing Office:

Moody's Investors Service, Inc.

250 Greenwich Street

New York, NY 10007

U.S.A.

JOURNALISTS: 1 212 553 0376

Client Service: 1 212 553 1653

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licensors and affiliates (collectively, MOODYS). All rights reserved.

CREDIT RATINGS ISSUED BY MOODY'S CREDIT RATINGS AFFILIATES ARE THEIR CURRENT

OPINIONS OF THE RELATIVE FUTURE CREDIT RISK OF ENTITIES, CREDIT COMMITMENTS,

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President Biden said Friday that he's "deeply troubled" by Kellogg Company's decision to replace workers who rejected a tentative settlement this week.

The latest: Kellogg announced this week that it would permanently replace the employees on strike after workers rejected a five-year tentative agreement that included 3% pay raises.

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"The prolonged work stoppage has left us no choice but to continue executing the next phase of our contingency plan including hiring replacement employees in positions vacated by striking workers," Chris Hood, the President of Kellogg North America, said in a statement.

Catch up quick: Nearly 1,400 Kellogg workers at all of the company's U.S. cereal plants went on strike starting Oct. 5 to seek a "fair contract" for workers.

Kellogg plants haven't operated at full capacity due to the strikes.

In November, the company warned that its annual profits could take a hit.

What he's saying: "Collective bargaining is an essential tool to protect the rights of workers that should be free from threats and intimidation from employers," Biden said in a statement.

"Thats why I am deeply troubled by reports of Kelloggs plans to permanently replace striking workers from the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers International during their ongoing collective bargaining negotiations," he added.

"Permanently replacing striking workers is an existential attack on the union and its members jobs and livelihoods," Biden said. "I have long opposed permanent striker replacements and I strongly support legislation that would ban that practice."

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The Hill

President Biden's disapproval rating reached a new high in December, according to a new CNBC-Change Research poll. Overall, the survey showed 56 percent of voters disapproved of Biden's performance in office, an uptick from 54 percent in September and 49 percent in April. His approval rating now stands at 44 percent.Biden was particularly hard hit when it came to the public's opinion of his handling of the economy and the COVID-19 pandemic....
President Biden has told his national security team to "be prepared" if diplomatic talks fail to stymie Iran from developing its nuclear capabilities.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Thursday that Biden continues to believe the best way to stop Irans nuclear program is through pursuing diplomatic channels.

But after months of indirectly negotiating with Iran the administrations patience appears to be wearing thin.

FORMER TRUMP ADVISER SAYS POSSIBLE BIDEN 'PLAN B' ON IRAN NUCLEAR DEAL 'INSANE'

"Given the ongoing advances in Irans nuclear program the president has asked his team to be prepared in the event that diplomacy fails," Psaki told reporters. "We must turn to other options and that requires preparations.

"We have made clear to Iran that the only path out of sanctions is through nuclear compliance," she said, adding that the Biden administration has kept all sanctions it inherited from the previous administration in place.

"If diplomacy cannot get on track soon and if Irans nuclear program continues to accelerate then we will have no choice but to take additional measures to further restrict Irans revenue-producing sectors" the chief White House spokesperson said.

The administration is taking steps to show Iranian officials it is serious in its intent to economically burden Tehran.

Led by the director for the Office of Foreign Assets Control, Andrea Gacki, a delegation of treasury officials will head to the United Arab Emirates next week to ensure that existing sanctions against Iran are being complied with.

IRAN SAYS IT HAS FURTHER ENRICHED ITS URANIUM, DRAWING WIDESPREAD CONDEMNATION

President Joe Biden speaks on the economy during an event at the South Court Auditorium at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building on Nov. 23, 2021, Alex Wong/Getty Images

Psaki's comments come as the European Union and a Russian envoy meet with Iranian negotiators in Vienna in an attempt to repair the shattered 2015 Iran nuclear deal.

Biden made it a top priority for his administration to bring Iran back to the negotiating table and re-enter the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), which fell apart after the U.S. withdrew from the agreement in 2018.

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Iran has refused to engage in direct talks with the United States and negotiations have only been further stonewalled since the election of anti-Western President Ebrahim Raisi in June.

Iran has called for all sanctions imposed under the Trump administration to be lifted. But Western officials have reported that Tehran has backtracked on agreements made in previous negotiations, Reuters reported Thursday.

State Department spokesperson Ned Price said the "runway" for diplomatic negotiations is "very short."

"There is not much time left," he told reporters Thursday. Adding the U.S. will stop seeking a path toward mutual JCPOA compliance if Iran does not take negotiations seriously "in the very near future."

"If the Iranian regime suspects the United States of weakness they will be sorely surprised," Price warned.
President Joe Biden reached out to Ukraines leader Thursday as the United States moved to take a more direct role in diplomacy between that country and Russia, part of a broader effort to dissuade Russia from a destabilizing invasion of its western neighbor.

But any negotiations to peacefully resolve Europes tangled East-West rivalries will present minefields for the U.S. president.

Biden made his offer of American diplomacy during a two-hour online session with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday, while repeating warnings of tough new sanctions and increased defensive aid to the region if Russia does invade. Biden proposed joining the Europeans in negotiations not just to settle the conflict in eastern Ukraine but to address Putins larger strategic objections to NATO expanding its membership and building military capacity ever closer to Russias borders.

Russians have 120,000 troops on its border, increased intel gathering, Ukraine ministry says

Biden spoke with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy by phone for more than an hour Thursday. In a tweet, the Ukrainian leader said the two discussed possible formats for resolving the conflict in Donbas and touched upon the course of internal reforms in Ukraine.

Administration officials have suggested that the U.S. will press Ukraine to formally cede a measure of autonomy within its eastern Donbas region, which is now under de facto control by Russia-backed separatists who rose up against Kyiv in 2014. Decentralization of Ukraine and a special status for Donbas were laid out in an ambiguous, European-brokered peace deal in 2015, but it has never taken hold.

More autonomy could formally give residents of that region more authority over some local issues. The administration officials made no mention of ceding any territory, and Biden has said that Ukraines sovereignty and territorial integrity are not on the table for the U.S.

Biden also will have to finesse Ukraines desire to join NATO. The U.S. and NATO reject Putins demands that they guarantee Ukraine wont be admitted to the Western military alliance.

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But senior State Department officials have told Ukraine that NATO membership is unlikely to be approved in the next decade, according to a person familiar with those private talks who spoke on condition of anonymity.

For Biden, the challenge will be encouraging Kyiv to accept some of the facts on the ground in eastern Ukraine, without appearing to cave to Putin  a perception that could embolden the Russian leader and unleash a fresh line of condemnations by Republicans as Bidens popularity is already in decline.

Ukraine may be asked can you make some step forward on these areas, said Steven Pifer, a former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine. That could include measures such as allowing the Russia-allied Donbas region to control its own health care, police and schools, he said.

But I dont see Washington pushing the Ukrainians to take steps that would compromise their sovereignty or the ability of the national government when it came to making decisions, Pifer said.

In a statement after his call with Biden, Ukraine said Zelenskyy was offering clear proposals to unblock the peace process and is ready to discuss them in various formats.

Ukraine, a former Soviet republic with deep cultural and historic ties to Russia, has in recent years sought closer integration with the West and membership in NATO. The alliance has held out the promise of membership but it has declined to set a timeline. Even before the current crisis, Ukraine was a long way from joining.

Since 2014, however, when Russia invaded and annexed Crimea and then threw its weight behind the armed separatists in the industrial Donbas region, the United States and other NATO members have been helping Ukraine build up its defenses.

National security adviser Jake Sullivan stressed at a White House briefing after Bidens call with Putin that there was the delivery of defensive assistance to Ukraine just very recently, and that will continue.

Pentagon press secretary John Kirby said Wednesday the last items in the administrations latest $60 million package of security assistance to Ukraine are arriving there this week and consist mainly of small arms and ammunition.

The call between Biden and Putin took place as tensions grew over the threat of Russian forces again rolling into Ukraine. Putin denies any such intention and charges that it is NATO strengthening its hold in former Soviet satellites and republics that is threatening Russia.

U.S. intelligence reports last week said Russia had moved 70,000 troops to Ukraines borders as it builds toward a possible invasion early next year.

If Russia were to invade, the Biden administration has made clear the country would face the toughest U.S. sanctions yet.

No plans to send more troops to Ukraine, Biden says

After speaking with Zelenskyy, Biden planned to brief leaders of nine NATO members in Eastern Europe, including three former Soviet republics. Its part of weeks of coordination with NATO allies on the response to the Russian military buildup on Ukraines border.

Before and after his call with Putin, Biden spoke with the leaders of Britain, France, Germany and Italy. France and Germany took the lead in brokering the 2015 peace deal between Ukraine and the Russia-backed rebels, in whats known as the Normandy format.

We hope by Friday were gonna be able to say, announce to you, were having meetings at a higher level, Biden said Wednesday. Not just with us, but with at least four of our major NATO allies, and Russia.

The meetings would address the future of Russias concern relative to NATO writ large, and whether or not we could work out any accommodations as it relates to bringing down the temperature in Ukraines east, Biden said.

Speaking at a news conference in Paris on Thursday, French President Emmanuel Macron defended French-German diplomatic efforts over the past several years to mediate between Russia and Ukraine, but said he welcomed Bidens outreach to his European allies on the matter.

Our aim  all of us Europeans and our American partners  is first to be at Ukraines side to ensure its security ... and to start a demanding dialogue with Russia, Macron said.

Asked about any need for Ukrainian compromises, Sullivan told reporters Tuesday that Ukrainians have come forward with constructive ideas for how to move the diplomacy forward. Were encouraging that.

Under the 2015 deal, Ukraine agreed to change its constitution to accommodate the peculiarities of the two Donbas separatist republics and to legalize their special status. Some analysts said the deals vagueness, and some conflicting requirements, make its provisions effectively unworkable.

Ukraine is willing to engage in talks on defining special status, including possible changes that account for the cultural and linguistic differences of its eastern Donbas region, which has a higher proportion of native Russian speakers, the person familiar with the private talks between Ukraine and the United States said.

But Ukraine would reject any change that gives the region virtual veto power over national policy, the person said.

Alexander Vershbow, a former U.S. ambassador to Moscow, said a reinvigoration of previous negotiating efforts among diplomats from France, Germany, Russia and Ukraine could be a step forward, particularly if the U.S. became directly involved.

In an interview before the Biden-Putin video meeting, Vershbow said another option would be to recreate the U.S.-Russia channel of talks used during the Obama administration in parallel with those talks.

It has to be very much in lockstep with the Ukrainians  not behind their backs, or forcing them to accept a distasteful compromise, Vershbow said.
Black Americans are more than twice as likely to be uninsured as their white counterparts. Stock photo/ Getty Images

Americans in the South hold an average of $532 in medical debt, according to a recent study.

Nearly 28% of households with a Black member had medical debt compared to 17.2% of White households.

Advocates say that's because 12 states haven't expanded Medicaid.

A new report highlights that Black Americans in the South carry the heftiest medical debt burden in the US.

The Bloomberg analysis shows a myriad of ways medical and healthcare institutions pursue collecting more than $140 billion in US medical debt, which is the leading cause of bankruptcy in the country.

The Journal of the American Medical Association survey showed Americans in the South hold an average of $532 in medical debt - with a Census survey also finding households with at least one Black American holding 28% of medical debt.

Black Americans are also more than twice as likely to be uninsured than their white counterparts, which healthcare professionals say can lead to higher mortality rates. Experts say this is largely due to Republican governors and state legislatures in Southern states who continue to block the passing of Medicaid expansion.

Insider spoke with advocates who say Medicaid expansion alone could mitigate the impact of medical debt on Black Americans.

"The data is so clear on this," Astra Taylor, a spokesperson for Debt Collective, told Insider. The Debt Collective is a debtors' union working to cancel all forms of debt within US households.

"The states that haven't expanded Medicaid have more medical debt for poor and vulnerable populations," Taylor added. "So there is an absolute cause and effect here."

Advocates argue Medicaid expansion would improve health outcomes for Black Americans

The US healthcare system is complex with many entities eligible to report medical debt to collectors. Nonprofit hospitals, insurers, even independent service providers have the ability to report medical debt to bill collectors.

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Under the Affordable Care Act, Medicaid expansion  which began in 2014  provided health coverage for an additional 12 million people across the country. However, there are an estimated 30 million people still uninsured, which advocates say can have long-term consequences.

Uninsured Americans are more likely to postpone urgent treatment and less likely to seek preventive care for major health conditions and chronic diseases because they'd have to pay out of pocket.

Often, when they do see a doctor it is typically too late because the illnesses have progressed.

Astra Taylor, Debt Collective

According to a study by University of Southern California, which looked at data from 2014 to 2018, of the 32 Medicaid expansion states and 17 non-expansion states, found Medicaid expansion was associated with nearly 12 fewer deaths per 100,000 US adults annually.

"The reduction in all-cause mortality was most associated with the number of women and non-Hispanic Black residents in each state," researcher Dr. Brian Lee wrote in the study

Lee added that "states that have chosen not to expand [Medicaid] have higher proportions of poor and Black residents, so they may have the most to gain" from the program's expansion.

Southern states have continued to reject Medicaid expansion

Recent analysis found that expanding Medicaid would provide coverage to more than 2.2 million uninsured - about 60% people of color. Marko Geber/Getty

Republican-led, Southern states have continued over the years to delay movement on passing Medicaid expansion, which allows individuals to qualify for medical coverage on their income alone.

Some Republican legislators have argued that medical coverage should be offered to those who are employed. While others say that the expansion could be a financial risk to their state budgets despite Federal pledged dollars toward the program.

Under the expansion, the threshold to qualify for Medicaid is a household income below 133% of the federal poverty level.

This year, Texas, Florida, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Tennessee have rejected moves to expand Medicaid. Louisiana, Arkansas, and Oklahoma have all expanded Medicaid. Wisconsin, Wyoming, Kansas and South Dakota also haven't expanded Medicaid.

While Republican governor's have led this blockade, in North Carolina, a GOP supermajority in the state legislature has stood in the way of Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper's fight.

The Center of Budget and Policy Priorities estimates, Florida's population makes up the highest share of uninsured Black people in the country at more than 17%. This can be tied directly back to Floridia being one of 12 states that hasn't expanded Medicaid.

Still, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has repeatedly proclaimed he's not on board with expanding the program and says that's because of fiscal responsibility despite estimates indicating it would deliver healthcare to 800,000 Floridans who are uninsured.

In a Center of Budget and Policy Priorities survey earlier this year, Medicaid expansion states had smaller medical debt gap between Black and white communities than non-expansion states.

Meanwhile, more than 15% of Black Georgians are uninsured.

Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp has continued to push for a mandatory work requirement in order to qualify for Medicaid, which was rejected by the federal government.

"This is not a free handout. Hardworking Georgians who qualify will have skin in the game," the governor said in 2019. "It is a path forward toward higher earnings, better opportunities and a healthier future."

Xakota Espinoza, Fair Fight Action

Fair Fight Action paid off more than $210 million in medical debt for more than 108,000 individuals across the South, including 68,000 Georgians last month.

The advocacy group was founded by Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams, who championed the need to expand Medicaid coverage in Georgia since the movement was first launched to combat voter suppression in Southern states.

That work continues now as an economy wrecked by the COVID-19 pandemic has worsened debt and inequity in healthcare.

"Medicaid expansion is critical to relieving families who continue to struggle amid an ongoing pandemic," a Fair Fight representative, Xakota Espinoza, told Insider.

Espinoza added that the expansion is "fundamental to addressing disparities Black Georgians face in accessing quality affordable healthcare, which have been only further exacerbated throughout COVID-19."

Southern-based advocacy groups combating inequity in healthcare, including the Equal Justice Initiative and Dollar For, have worked to obtain medical debt relief for vulnerable communities.

Dollar For, a nonprofit advocacy group, has paid off more than $10 million in medical debt since the organization started in 2012.

"Our core belief is that a medical crisis should not be followed by a financial crisis," Dollar For's mission statement reads. "Unfortunately, with the current healthcare system in the US being what it is, that's the case more often than not.

Advocates stress that Black Americans have to be at the center of fighting for change, Taylor says

In the Build Back Better Act making its way through the US Senate, there is a provision to expand insurance coverage directly to states that have not thus far.

A Kaiser Family Foundation analysis found that Medicaid expansion nationally would bring coverage to more than 2.2 million people, about 60% of those of color.

Taylor, a Representative for Debt Collective, says that's a significant step.

However, she tells Insider an action that would have a larger impact would be if President Joe Biden's administration began to penalize nonprofit hospitals  the most common in the country  for not offering specific charity-free services to people who qualify.

She calls on the federal government to take away the nonprofit status of hospitals refusing to provide that resource. Debt Collective says the solution is to organize for a more robust universal healthcare system within the US.

Black Americans in particular, Taylor says, need to be at the center of this fight because, as the study notes, they are the most impacted by the construction of the current system.

"The solution to this has to involve Black Americans and we have to organize," Taylor said. "We need a healthcare system that is publicly funded, and be free at the point of need."

A previous version of this story erroneously stated that Black Americans hold an average of $532 in medical debt. That figure is for all Americans located in the Southern US.

Read the original article on Insider
When Juniper Russo saw Tchalla on the afternoon of Jan. 17, she said the rescued bobcat was in near perfect health. Less than 24 hours later, Russo reportedly found him in severe pain and agony in his backyard pen.

Tchallas tail, she said, had been cut off.

Now Russo, director of For Fox Sake Wildlife Rescue in Chattanooga, Tennessee, is suing the contracting company that was reportedly doing construction work on the property when the cat was maimed. In a complaint filed Tuesday, Dec. 7, Russo said her neighbors saw construction workers that morning playing loud music and laughing and hooting like they were having a party.

Tchalla has brain damage from an injury when he was a kitten and could not return to the wild, according to the rescue groups Facebook page. He was affectionately nicknamed potato for his lack of intelligence and is known for having an unexplained affinity for bulbs of fennel.

According to the lawsuit, Tchallas severed tail was never found. Russos lawyer, Robin R. Flores, said they think someone took it as a trophy, and he had to have surgery to repair the damaged nerve endings.

Itd be like cutting your arm off and leaving it, Flores said of the bobcats wound.

Russo declined to comment in a statement to McClatchy News on Thursday, Dec. 9, saying the incident was painful to talk about and deferring to her lawyer.

Tornadoes and a baby bobcat

According to the complaint, For Fox Sake is a nonprofit wildlife rescue and rehabilitation center regulated by the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency and U.S. Department of Agriculture. As director, Russo has a permit to possess wild animals for educational purposes.

She runs the rescue out of her backyard in Chattanooga, Tennessee.

On April 13, 2020, severe thunderstorms in southeast Tennessee unleashed at least seven tornadoes, News Channel 9 reported. At least nine people died and 150 buildings were damaged as a result, according to the Chattanooga Times Free Press.

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Russos house and the wildlife rescue were among the structures catastrophically damaged, her attorney said in the complaint.

Flores told McClatchy News that Russo repaired the animal pens herself because insurance wouldnt cover it. But the home also needed to be rebuilt, and Apex Restoration DKI was called in to help. Apex Restoration is a contracting company that specializes in emergency disaster cleanup and property restoration, according to its website.

A representative from the company did not immediately respond to McClatchy News request for comment on Thursday, Dec. 9.

According to the complaint, Russo and her family did not live in the house while it was being repaired, and the contractor was in complete control of the property from April 2020 to February 2021.

About a month after the tornadoes hit, For Fox Sake received a newborn bobcat named Tchalla for rehabilitation, Russos lawyer said in court documents.

According to the rescue groups Facebook page, Tchalla was dropped by a hawk as a newborn and turned out special as a result. At 4 months old, the veterinarian reportedly determined he could not be released into the wild.

He cant hunt, has no fear of humans, and makes some, well, questionable decisions, the rescue group said in an October Facebook post about the bobcat. As a result, he became an education ambassador rather than being released to the wild.

In the lawsuit, Flores said Tchalla became tame and effectively Russos pet. The pair have since emotionally bonded to one another, he said.

Someone cut the cats tail off

According to the complaint, Tchallas pen passed a USDA inspection on Dec. 15, 2020  just a few weeks before he was injured.

Russo went to check on the animals at 4 p.m. on Jan. 17, the lawsuit states. She returned around noon the following day and reportedly found the back gate open, and construction equipment, tools and a stereo in the backyard with no one around.

Tchalla, meanwhile, was in his pen severely injured, Russos laywer said.

This animal was treated barbarically, he told McClatchy News.

The next door neighbors reportedly told Russo that the loud music and noise was coming from the backyard around 10:30 a.m. that morning. Russo subsequently called the police and the general manager at Apex Restoration.

The general manager arrived first and called a member of the construction crew, according to the complaint.

Someone cut the cats tail off and it better not be one of you guys, he reportedly said.

An officer with the Chattanooga Police Department arrived shortly thereafter and looked at Tchallas pen, Russos attorney said. The officer reportedly did not find anything that would have caused the cats injury.

Tchallas vet also determined the injury seemed to be a deliberate act caused by a clean and fast cut, the lawsuit states.

The general manager asked Russo after the incident if she wanted the crew to not return to the property  but warned that it would take an additional four months to complete the restoration, according to the complaint. Her lawyer said Russo felt that she had no choice but to allow (them) to remain working on the property.

Russos Post Traumatic Stress Disorder was exacerbated by the alleged injury to Tchalla, according to the complaint, and its become difficult to use the bobcat as an education tool because the cat is not in its natural condition.

The lawsuit accuses Apex Restoration of negligence and intentional infliction of emotional distress. Russo is seeking at least $100,000 in damages for mental anguish as a result.

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The Daily Beast

GettyEven as daily new COVID cases set all-time records and hospitals fill up, epidemiologists have arrived at a perhaps surprising consensus. Yes, the latest Omicron variant of the novel coronavirus is bad. But it could have been a lot worse.Even as cases have surged, deaths haventat least not to the same degree. Omicron is highly transmissible but generally not as severe as some older variantslineages is the scientific term.We got lucky. But that luck might not hold. Many of the same epid
Dec. 9Boulder police have arrested one man on weapons charges after reportedly firing an AK-47 into the air on University Hill.

Matthew Daniel Marton, 21, was arrested Wednesday on suspicion of unlawful purchase of firearms, felony menacing with a deadly weapon, defacing a firearm, possession of a defaced firearm, two counts of prohibited use of weapons  aiming at another person, two counts of prohibited use of weapons  discharge and three counts of reckless endangerment.

His bond that case is set at $10,000, according to court records.

The unlawful purchase and menacing counts are felonies, while the remaining counts are misdemeanors.

Police were called to the area of 12th Street and College Avenue just before 6 a.m. Monday for a report of shots being fired. Police responded and did not find any evidence of any property being struck or any shell casings, and there were no reported injuries.

According to an arrest affidavit, police identified Marton, who lived in an apartment in the area, as a person of interest at the time after officers were able to track the sound of the shots to his unit.

Marton appeared to be intoxicated and also told police he had been drinking, and he was arrested on suspicion of failing to comply with bond conditions that stated he was not supposed to consume alcohol.

Police found an AK-47 rifle with a scratched out serial number in Marton's room, and both of Marton's roommates said Marton had illegally purchased the rifle and occasionally fired it in the air.

According to the affidavit, Marton denied owning the gun and said it belonged to one of his roommates when questioned by police.

According to court records, Marton is already facing a felony menacing case in Boulder County following an arrest in September, and is not supposed to be in possession of firearms.

Anyone with any additional information related to this incident is asked to call Detective K. Euler at 303-441-3393 reference case No. 21-11636.
Heisey Wind Ensemble Christmas concert this weekend

NEWARK  The Heisey Wind Ensemble returns to the stage following a near two-year absence due to COVID-19 for the traditional Christmas at the Reese Center, 7:30 p.m. Saturday Dec. 11 and 3 p.m. Sunday.

The concert will be at the John W. Alford Performing Arts Hall in the John Gilbert Reese Center on the Newark campus of Ohio State University and Central Ohio Technical College. All those attending the concert will be required to wear face masks while inside the Reese Center.

Russel Mikkelson, music director and conductor, begins his 20th year with the Heisey Wind Ensemble. He has selected a wide variety of holiday favorites, including, "A Most Wonderful Christmas," "Mary Did You Know?" and "O Holy Night" with vocalist Thomas Petrushka, "Christmas Toons" by Julie Giroux, and a band with narration of the classic "The Night Before Christmas."

Daniel Farr, a graduate conducting major at Ohio State University, will serve as narrator.

The second half will open with Josh Reynolds, also a graduate conducting major at Ohio State University, conducting Victor Herberts March of the Toys. The concert continues with Alfred Reeds Russian Christmas Music. As is tradition, there will be an audience sing-along and Leroy Anderson's "Sleigh Ride."

Additional concerts for the Heisey Wind Ensemble's 37th season will be Feb. 22 and April 30, the Heisey Wind Ensemble Big Band on May 21 and the Newark Independence Day Celebration on July 3. Non-patron tickets for HWE concerts are available only at the door.

Tickets are $15 for adults, $10 for seniors age 60-plus, and $5 for students. Additional information can be found at the bands website at www.heiseywindensemble.org.

NOCA announces Dar Williams performs here Saturday

NEWARK  The Newark Organization for the Creative Arts announced Dar Williams with Emily Scott Robinson will perform 8 p.m. Saturday at Thirty One West in downtown Newark.

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All patrons and staff have been asked to be vaccinated to attend the show and must provide proof of vaccination or a negative test taken within 72 hours and a photo ID to enter. The artist also strongly requests that all audience members wear masks for the duration of the show.

NOCA also announced Grammy-nominated blues legend Bettye LaVette will perform here Feb. 18 and Bonnie "Prince" Billy and Matt Sweeney present "Superwolves" with Emmett Kelly on Feb. 22.

Lakewood seeks board candidates

The Lakewood Local Board of Education seeks candidates to fill a vacated board term commencing January 2022 through December 2025. Candidates must be a resident of the Lakewood Local School District and 18 years or older.

Candidates should submit an OSBA application for board member and a resume to the Lakewood superintendent's office. The application is available on the district website and at the district central office. This must be received no later than 3 p.m. Wednesday Dec. 15.

All candidates will be interviewed at a special board meeting at 6:30 p.m. Jan. 5 at the Lakewood High School library.

This article originally appeared on Newark Advocate: Briefs: Heisey Wind Ensemble returns Saturday
Recipients of grants from the Greater Sarasota Chamber of Commerces Opportunities For All initiative.

 The Greater Sarasota Chamber of Commerces Opportunities For All initiative has awarded grants to 38 local businesses through the Business Assistance Funds Program. This program was designed to assist minority, small business owners and nonprofit organizations with resources that will help our local businesses grow and thrive.

Of the 150 applications submitted, 38 awardees were chosen by a selection committee made up of local business owners and community leaders.

The grant recipients are: 301 Tires, Luxury Barber Lounge, Abundant Blessing Consulting Services, Margwine Organization, Inc., American Field Inspections, Mary Butler, LLC, Around The Way Non-Emergency Medical Transportation, Minet's Table, Best Employment SoluTions, Mission Made Possible, LLC, Biom Probiotics, Mountain View Media, Black and Tan Cigar Bar and Lounge, Music Compound, Compound Catering, My Reality Speaks, LLC, Dapper Bowtique, NewSara Logistics, Drummerboy Entertainment and Newtown Nation.

Also: Emerge Sarasota, Oueens of Domestic Violence Awareness Inc., Family Fixins, RDA FL Solutions, Flashfoot Academy, Settles Stump Grinding & Tree Service LLC, Freestyle Healing SRQ, Single Mom & A Mop, Happy Soul, Styles By Maria, King HR Services, The Freeland Eddie Law Group, P.A., La Brisa Tacos y Mariscos, Tunstall Tires, Learn My History Foundation, Wee Kare Concierge, Love At Home Care, LLC and WillMoores Twangy Wing Sauce.

The Opportunities For All grant was provided by the Charles & Margery Barancik Foundation.

 CenterPlace Health has partnered with the Health Planning Council of Southwest Florida, Inc. to certify three of its staff members as navigators for the Affordable Care Act.

Ximena Granada, Tracy Green and Fran Polar are Certified Navigators and currently scheduling appointments that are free and open to the public. Granada and Green are both community health workers at CenterPlace Health and Polar is the marketing and communications coordinator.

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The team of three will assist the public in registering for affordable health insurance. Both Granada and Polar are bilingual, fluent in both English and Spanish.

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The navigator position was created by the Affordable Care Act to provide help for people enrolling in coverage through the health insurance exchange and to refer or assist with Medicaid enrollment.

Navigators are paid by state and federal grant programs, and cannot be compensated by the insurance companies.

Navigators must complete comprehensive federal training, criminal background checks, and state training and registration (when applicable), prior to assisting consumers.

The mission of CenterPlace Health is to provide efficient and effective delivery of quality, affordable health services to a diverse population in a compassionate and caring manner.

 State College of Florida, Manatee-Sarasota, will offer an entry-level real estate sales associate pre-license course Jan. 31 to April 4.

The 63-hour course, facilitated by real estate broker Kelly Repassy, of Keller Williams Realty, is required by the state of Florida to earn a real estate license and is a requirement for taking the state exam, which is not included.

The course will take place 6 to 9 p.m. on Mondays and Wednesdays at SCF Lakewood Ranch, 7131 Professional Parkway, Sarasota. Registration is $349 per person and includes the textbook and the practice exam April 11.

Visit http://www.scf.edu/training to register. For more information, contact Lee Kotwicki at KotwicL@SCF.edu or 941-363-7218.

This article originally appeared on Sarasota Herald-Tribune: Chamber awards small business grants, real estate course at State College of Florida
Calvin Williams stands for a portrait at Memphis City Hall on Dec. 7, 2021.

Update: Calvin Williams appointment as deputy city court clerk failed. The Memphis City Council voted against it on Jan. 4, 2022.

Calvin Williams was somber Tuesday as he sat in Memphis City Hall.

Two members of the Memphis City Council, Worth Morgan and Chase Carlisle, had, at the very least, delayed his appointment as deputy city court clerk for two weeks and potentially killed it altogether.

Williams already works in the City Court Clerk's office. The appointment is a promotion to a $105,000 a year job  not permission to start working in government again.

He's worked in the clerk's office in some capacity since December 2016, returning to government employment after working as a delivery driver for seven years. That job delivering produce was what kept him going after he left prison.

Williams went to prison in 2007 after being swept up in Tennessee Waltz, the anti-corruption sting that sent numerous Shelby County officials to jail on corruption charges. Williams was convicted of accepting a $1,500 bribe when he was chief administrator for the Shelby County Commission.

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After Morgan and Carlisle delayed his appointment, Williams walked up to Morgan in the city council committee room. Their words were muffled but Williams told Morgan he hoped the councilman would support his nomination and that he had paid his debt to society.

"I have done everything that society has asked me to do and even more," Williams said in an interview Tuesday. "I've looked everybody in the face  people who mattered and people who haven't mattered or don't matter  and I've apologized for even being in that situation."

The conversation with Williams left Morgan largely unmoved, the councilman said.

"One thing that I haven't heard from Calvin Williams was an admission of guilt that anything he did was wrong or illegal," Morgan said. "I absolutely believe in rehabilitation but part of rehabilitation is accountability for those actions but that would give me pause if he's not willing to admit what he did was improper."

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If Morgan does vote no, he's just one vote on a 13-member body and it remains to be seen if six other members of the council are ready to vote against Williams.

Williams' political support for the deputy court clerk's job comes from Myron Lowery, the city court clerk and former longtime city councilman. Lowery expressed frustration with media reports about Williams' appointment and showed confidence in the man he wants to promote.

"I haven't let his past conviction [affect] me because I've watched him work for the past two years," City Court Clerk Myron Lowery said in an interview Tuesday.

"Of course it's fair, but those people that raised the objections haven't worked with him for the past two years like I have," Lowery said. He cited Williams' long record of public service.

Williams said he was grateful for Lowery's continued loyalty.

"He's been around the political game for a long time. A lot of politicians would've ran from this. He did not," Williams said. "I've asked people for second chances and the one thing that I've guaranteed them is that I would never need a third."

Samuel Hardiman covers Memphis city government, politics, energy and environmental topics for The Commercial Appeal. He can be reached by email at samuel.hardiman@commercialappeal.com or followed on Twitter at @samhardiman.

This article originally appeared on Memphis Commercial Appeal: Memphis City Council's decision on Calvin Williams as deputy clerk
Companies in Canadas oil sands put the lowest portion of operating cash into capital spending in Q3, according to a new report. They were also the only group to commit over 15 per cent of total cash outlay towards shareholder returns.

North American oil and gas producers are swimming in record levels of free cash flow as the price of oil climbs, and companies keep a tight lid on spending due to COVID-19. That "meteoric rise" translated to more rewards for shareholders in the third quarter, according to Evaluate Energy, especially in Canada's oil patch.

A group of 84 Canadian and U.S. producers tracked by the London-based industry data provider raked in a combined US$32.5 billion in operating revenue in the third quarter of this year, the highest level recorded since 2018. At the same time, Evaluate Energy found flat capital spending of around 55 per cent of operating cash flow was a "major factor" keeping producers flush.

Free cash flow - the difference between funds from operations and capital expenditures - reached a record $19.1 billion for the companies tracked in the report. That's more than $8 billion higher than the previous record total from last quarter. It also dwarfs the pre-pandemic average of $1.7 billion between 2018 and Q1 2020, Evaluate Energy said in research released on Thursday.

"Producers have made clear their desire over the past few months to return as much free cash flow as possible to shareholders," senior oil and gas analyst Mark Young wrote in the report. "Should cash flow outpace board or regulatorily-approved plans, the vast majority of producers plan to direct excess cash towards strengthening balance sheets."

The report looked at 35 Canadian oil-weighted producers, including Suncor Energy (SU.TO)(SU), Cenovus Energy (CVE.TO)(CVE), Imperial Oil (IMO.TO)(IMO), Canadian Natural Resources (CNQ.TO)(CNQ), and MEG Energy (MEG), as well as 18 Canadian gas-weighted producers.

Young found producers in Canada's oil sands put the lowest portion of operating cash into capital spending, dropping below 25 per cent in Q3. They were also the only group to commit over 15 per cent of total cash outlay towards shareholder returns.

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Crescent Point Energy (CPG.TO)(CPG) is among the Canadian energy names staying true to this trend. The Calgary-based firm said on Monday that it will raise its quarterly dividend and spend up to $100 million on share repurchases over the next six months.

"Given the significant improvement in balance sheet strength, we expect a disproportionate amount of this free cash flow will accrue to shareholders through some combination of dividend increases, special dividends, normal course issuer bids or substantial issuer bids," CIBC analyst Robert Catellier wrote in the bank's 2022 equity outlook released on Tuesday.

Eric Nuttall, senior portfolio manager at Toronto-based Ninepoint Partners, and a staunch advocate of investment in Canada's energy sector, also expects the payouts to continue as oil marches higher and balance sheets grow stronger. He manages the firm's roughly $860 million Canada-focused energy fund.

"It's only going to get better, not only as the oil price goes up, but as balance sheets get paid down more and more and more," he said at a recent virtual event. "I want 50 per cent of your free cash flow for my unit holders. We've been through a tough time. [For] seven years, they've been the worst bear market in history. They need to get paid."

Jeff Lagerquist is a senior reporter at Yahoo Finance Canada. Follow him on Twitter @jefflagerquist.

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Associated Press

A rabbi who was badly wounded in a deadly antisemitic attack at the Chabad of Poway synagogue in Southern California was sentenced Tuesday to 14 months in federal prison for running a multimillion-dollar donation fraud, authorities said. Yisrael Goldstein, 60, also was ordered to pay about $2.8 million in restitution. I beg for mercy to accept my repentance and allow me to right the wrongs, Goldstein told the judge at his sentencing, the San Diego Union-Tribne reported. He asked for the chance to do whatever I can to help others to the best of my ability.
Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts on Thursday dismissed an emergency request to block the federal mask mandate for air travel amid litigation in the lower courts.

Driving the news: Michael Seklecki, a Florida resident, filed a lawsuit against the Transportation Security Administration on behalf of himself and his 4-year-old son, and Lucas Wall, from Washington, joined the suit, all citing medical reasons.

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The government argued in an appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit that Congress had authorized the policy for safety reasons and noted "the challengers had not pursued an available procedure for obtaining medical exemptions," per the New York Times.

The appeals court has yet to rule on the suit.

Between the lines: Roberts didn't comment on his ruling, nor did he request a response to the emergency relief application or refer it to the full Supreme Court, indicating he "viewed the legal question in the case as insubstantial," the NYT notes.

The big picture: The TSA has on several occasions extended the mask mandate in response to surging COVID-19 cases and the threat of the Delta variant.

The current order for planes, trains, buses and at airports is due to expire March 18.

More from Axios: Sign up to get the latest market trends with Axios Markets. Subscribe for free
By Yew Lun Tian and Ben Blanchard

BEIJING/TAIPEI (Reuters) -China and Nicaragua re-established diplomatic ties on Friday after the Central American country broke relations with Chinese-claimed Taiwan, boosting Beijing in a part of the world long considered the United States' backyard and angering Washington.

China has increased military and political pressure on Taiwan to accept its sovereignty claims, drawing anger from the democratically ruled island, which has repeatedly said it would not be bullied and has the right to international participation.

China's Foreign Ministry, announcing the decision after meetings with Nicaragua's finance minister and two of President Daniel Ortega's sons in the northern Chinese city of Tianjin, said the country had made the "correct choice".

The break with Taiwan shrinks the island's dwindling pool of international allies and is a blow to the United States.

It follows months of worsening ties between Ortega and Washington, and came on the day the U.S. State Department said it had applied sanctions on Nestor Moncada Lau, a national security adviser to Ortega, alleging he operates an import and customs fraud scheme to enrich members of Ortega's government.

The U.S. State Department said Nicaragua's decision did not reflect the will of the Nicaraguan people because its government was not freely elected.

"We do know, however, that this deprives Nicaragua's people of a steadfast partner in its democratic and economic growth," spokesperson Ned Price said in a statement. "We encourage all countries that value democratic institutions, transparency, the rule of law, and promoting economic prosperity for their citizens to expand engagement with Taiwan."

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said Taiwan's allies - now only 14 countries - have stayed with Taipei only because of pressure from the United States and Taiwan's "dollar diplomacy", accusations Taipei denies.

Story continues

Nicaragua's congress in 2019 accepted a $100 million loan from Taiwan, but Taiwan's Foreign Ministry said on Friday that money, designed for economic reconstruction, has never been paid because of "procedural issues with allocation requirements" by the bank, which it did not name.

China's Foreign Ministry, asked if China would give financial aid to Nicaragua, said the resumption in ties was a "political decision, definitely not a bargaining chip".

'MARCH TOWARDS THE WORLD'

Taiwan's government said it was unbowed by Nicaragua's decision.

Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen said the island would not bend to pressure or change the determination to uphold democracy and freedom and "march towards the world".

"The more successful Taiwan's democracy is, the stronger the international support, and the greater the pressure from the authoritarian camp," she said in Taipei.

A senior Taiwan official familiar with the matter told Reuters the timing was "provocative", coming during the Biden administration's Summit for Democracy, which Taiwan is attending, and a week before four referendums on the island, though they are on domestic issues like energy and pork imports.

At the now-defunct Nicaraguan embassy in Taipei, in a building in the leafy suburb of Tianmu, staff said the former ambassador was not in. Nicaragua's flag outside had been removed by the time a Reuters reporter arrived mid-morning.

Ortega first cut ties with Taiwan in 1985, but they were re-established with the island in 1990 under then-Nicaraguan President Violeta Barrios de Chamorro.

One Taiwan-based diplomatic source, familiar with the region, said the move was not a surprise given Washington's lack of leverage with Ortega due to the sanctions, and that looking to China for aid and support was a natural course of action.

"It appears that Ortega had had enough," the source told Reuters, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Attention will now turn to another Taiwan friend, Honduras.

Aides for the incoming president Xiomara Castro have said she would not establish ties with China, backtracking from Castro's earlier comments that she was open to starting formal relations with Beijing.

A second Taiwan-based diplomatic source told Reuters it was still a case of "watch this space" whether Honduras would ultimately go with Beijing.

(Reporting by Yew Lun Tian, and Ben Blanchard, Yimou Lee and Sarah Wu; Additional reporting by Josh Horwitz in Shanghai; additional reporting by the Mexico City newsroom; Editing by Christopher Cushing, Gerry Doyle and Raju Gopalakrishnan)
New cast members of "A Christmas Carol," from left, Sriram Emani (Bob Cratchit), Jon Peterson (Jacob Marley), and David Sitler (Ebenezer Scrooge) are photographed together in the balcony of The Hanover Theatre Dec. 8.

WORCESTER  The annual production of "A Christmas Carol" by The Hanover Theatre and Conservatory for the Performing Arts returns to the stage for live in-person performances Dec. 16-23 with some new faces in leading roles.

Each new actor helps to turn a new page on the production now in its 13th year on The Hanover Theatre stage. It premiered in 2008 with an adaptation by The Hanover Theatre president and CEO Troy Siebels (who has also directed each show) telling Charles Dickens' 1843 story of the mean and miserly Ebenezer Scrooge and his spiritual redemption at Christmas as he becomes transformed with goodwill.

Among the cast members making their Hanover Theatre debuts this year are David Sitler as Ebenezer Scrooge, Sriram Emani as Bob Cratchit, and Jon J. Peterson as the ghostly Jacob Marley.

This is the first production of "A Christmas Carol" of any kind that Emani has appeared in and he said he had not considered ever being cast as a character such as Cratchit, Scrooge's put upon but conscientious clerk with a family at home that includes his sickly son, Tiny Tim.

"I never imagined. I feel it's definitely an important moment in time," Emani said of being cast as Cratchit.

In some innovative nontraditional casting, Bob Cratchit, Mrs. Cratchit (played by Alka Nayyar), and the Cratchit children (Simi Gandhi, Sanjay Manoharan, Alexis Anu Thakkallapalli, and Sri Chaitra Prasadula ) are being depicted as a South Asian family of Indian origin.

"It's a very important comment about representation and I'm extremely honored to be part of it," Emani said.

"We had an opportunity to approach the casting this year to better celebrate the diversity of people in London in the mid-19th century," said Siebels. "In particular, England began to colonize India at that time and immigration greatly increased in both directions. Weve envisioned the Cratchit family as recent immigrants from India, and are exploring how that impacts Bob Cratchits relationship with Ebenezer Scrooge and others."

Story continues

Emani grew up in India and came to the United States 10 years ago. He now lives in Boston.

"I did a lot of theater in India," he said. Here he's had roles in TV and film, but "A Christmas Carol" will be his first professional stage production in this country.

"You see a lot of theater where the traditional classics are presented. I'll audition for what might be more open for me. I'd never considered this show ('A Christmas Carol') for an audition tape," he said.

Emani made a short film recently that also included Annie Kerins in the cast, although they weren't in the same scene together.

Sri Chaitra Prasadula as Tiny Tim and Sriram Emani as Bob Cratchit.

Kerins and her husband, Steve Gagliastro, have had a long involvement with The Hanover Theatre's "A Christmas Carol." This year she and Gagliastro play Mrs. and Mr. Fezziwig, while also both serving as the show's associate directors. Kerins is also associate chorographer and Gagliastro is associate music director.

Emani said Kerins contacted him and asked if he would like to audition for "A Christmas Carol."

"I said 'Are they open to that?' She said, 'Yes, of course.' I remember being so inspired. (Thinking) 'This is so great,'" Emani said.

"Rehearsals have been one of the best experiences I've had so far. There are some actors who pretty much know everything (about the show) and a bunch of us who are new. They are all so supportive. They let us make our own choices," he said. In doing so, "I can actually live the life and times of Bob Cratchit as opposed to just saying the dialogue."

Asked how he feels about Bob Cratchit, Emani said, "I think he's a true representation of someone who is very positive, very grateful for the opportunity that he has. I think it's true of immigrants. Christmas is a time to be grateful and I think that's really endearing about him. For me, it's really awesome. This is a great way to think of people who came from the outside at the time and how they did blend in with the community at the time."

David Sitler will be playing Scrooge for the eighth time in his career, but "A Christmas Carol" is his first performance with the The Hanover Theatre.

Also, "This is the first time I think I've ever seen it done where the Cratchit family are all South Asian," Sitler said.

"It all makes sense. There were immigrants there. The whole cast across the board is multi-racial. It's really a mix of society, which is what it should be. It would have been in London in the 1840s, and certainly is what we are today," he said.

"I wouldn't have predicted this but the story feels more real to me now, and more honest," said Siebels. "So much of the play is the same, but even with these few changes it really resonates even more deeply than it has in previous years."

The Hanover Theatre production enjoyed yearly success from 2008 on with large casts, authentic-looking costumes and sets, and some dazzling special effects.

Last year, with the pandemic, Siebels conceived of "A Christmas Carol Reimagined" where eight cast members of a production of "A Christmas Carol" that was canceled went back to the space that had been been abandoned and told the story in a different way. "A Christmas Carol" was presented by the new THT Rep and filmed at the BrickBox Theater at the Jean McDonough Arts Center, 20 Franklin St. The production was available for online On Demand and people could also go to the BrickBox Theater to attend screenings.

Now The Hanover Theatre's production is back on stage for 2021 with a cast of about 30 actors, adults and children, drawn from New York and Boston, as well as locally. Music will once again include The Hanover Theatre's famed Mighty Wurlitzer Organ as well as the acting ensemble singing carols.

There will be student matinees in addition to the regular performances. Also, a relaxed performance of "A Christmas Carol" will be held at 11 a.m. Dec. 19. A relaxed performance is a specially adapted show, modified for adults and children who might benefit from a more relaxed environment. ASL and Audio Description services will be available at the 4 p.m. Dec. 19 performance.

David Sitler gets into his role as Ebenezer Scrooge.

Jeremy Lawrence had the role of Scrooge for several years up to and including the 2019 production. Last year, Gagliastro stepped into the part.

For Sitler, "A Christmas Carol" will be the first time he has been on stage since "everything was shut down in March 2020," he said.

From Millville, Pennsylvania, and now living in Jersey City, New Jersey, he has been on Broadway ("An Inspector Calls" with Rosemary Harris) and on national tour (with Stacy Keach in "Frost/Nixon"), as well as Off-Broadway and regionally in over 160 plays. TV credits include Little America, Girl Boxer, Hunters, Law and Order SVU and Plant, and he has just finished shooting a film for Disney.

Sitler isn't a stranger to Worcester. "I used to come up and audition for Foothills (the former Foothills Theatre Company). I was never cast there."

Sitler didn't sound bitter. "It was such a shame it couldn't survive," he said of the theater company.

Returning to Worcester after Foothills closed over 12 years ago, "the downtown area is really beautiful. The Hanover Theatre is a gorgeous theater. I went to see 'The Nutcracker.' It was thrilling to be in there," he said.

The Hanover Theatre's production of "A Christmas Carol" is the largest that Sitler has appeared in as Scrooge.

"It's the eighth time. Every one's a little different  The first time you do it you're a deer in the headlights," he said of the role of Scrooge.

Sitler said Siebel's adaptation of Dickens is "so true to the language." Meanwhile, "Troy is very collaborative, so it's really great. I bring something else to the plate having played the character before. The rehearsals have just been going great. The lighting, the stage, the sets. It's really thrilling."

Playing Scrooge requires some stamina, since the character is on stage most of the time, Sitler said.

"I've run seven marathons," he said only half-joking. "I'm pretty well versed in the rigors of the role. The last 20 minutes are a sprint. Once you've been redeemed you can do anything. I'm a very physical actor, so I'm looking forward to having a lot of physicality in the role of Scrooge."

Being in "A Christmas Carol" does get Sitler in the holiday spirit, especially since he's back on stage after 20 months.

"That's another aspect for me. I just hope the world stays safe and sane. I'm happy to get to tell this story again this Christmas."

Jon J. Peterson plays Jacob Marley.

Jon J. Peterson also came to Foothills Theatre to audition, but he got cast in its productions of "The Rocky Horror Show," "George M. Cohan Tonight!" and "The World Goes Round." He recently was in a film version of George M. Cohan Tonight, yet to be released, but so far receiving 14 awards from film festivals globally. Peterson also has numerous Broadway/Off-Broadway credits, including "Barefoot in the Park," "Midnight at the Never Get," and "Cabaret."

"Worcester  it feels very familiar. It's changed a lot. The downtown area seems very swish compared to what it was before, and the The Hanover Theatre is wonderful. It's nice to see theater in downtown," Peterson said.

He is originally from London, England, and "sort of have the gypsy in me," dividing his time among New York City, Los Angeles and London.

Peterson has never done "A Christmas Carol" before. "I'm very happy to be doing it. It's a lovely show to do at Christmas. It gets you in the spirit, for sure."

He said while he was at Foothills he got to know Kerins and Gagliastro, and "they asked me if I'd come and audition (of 'A Christmas Carol')."

The Hanover Theatre production has the ghost of Jacob Marley, Scrooge's late business partner, make a spectacular flying entrance and then descend to warn Scrooge about the visitations to come by the Spirits of Christmases Past, Present and Yet To Come.

Peterson was about to get his "first flying lessons" as Marley in rehearsals. "Apparently, you have to have a strong stomach or core otherwise you'll tip," he said.

"It will make me more haunted and terrified."

Peterson also plays Old Joe, a character seen toward the end of the story, and he will be singing carols with the ensemble. "There's a lot to do. We don't stand still for a minute," he said.

Like Sitler, Peterson saw the theaters shutdown in March 2020. "When it all happened I went down with COVID myself. I was sick as a dog for three weeks. I've had COVID, I've had three shots, so I should be COVID's worst enemy."

During the pandemic he was in two short films "to keep the artistic juices flowing," but he's also happy to be back on stage and with a glow that comes from "A Christmas Carol."

"There are kids in the show. Singing the carol is lovely. And I'm from London. So, you know, it's set in London."

(This story has been amended to correct the dates of the production and correct the actress portraying Mrs. Cratchit.)

'A Christmas Carol'

When: 7 p.m. Dec. 16; 2 and 7 p.m. Dec. 18; 11 a.m. Dec. 19 (relaxed performance), 4 p.m. Dec. 19 (ASL and Audio Description services offered); 7 p.m. Dec. 22 and 23

Where: The Hanover Theatre and Conservatory for the Performing Arts, 2 Southbridge St., Worcester

How much: Tickets are $28, $46 and $56 depending on seat location. Call the box office at (877) 571-7469 or visit www. TheHanoverTheatre.org. Complete details about The Hanover Theatre's safety protocols can be found at https://thehanovertheatre.org/safetyprotocols

This article originally appeared on Telegram & Gazette: "A Christmas Carol' back on Hanover Theatre stage with new casting
Cincinnati police are investigating the death of a 50-year-old man found shot dead in Walnut Hills on Thursday evening.

Officers dispatched to the 3000 block of Mentor Avenue at about 5:15 p.m. found the body of Lamond Ellis, police said in a news release.

Anyone with information about his death is asked to call police at 513-352-3542.

This article originally appeared on Cincinnati Enquirer: Cincinnati police: Man found shot dead in Walnut Hills Thursday
Workers say that the current imbalance in the labor market means that they're able to hold out for better jobs. Getty Images

An understaffed cleaning company in Oregon says it's had to turn down some customers.

Owner of Sakred Space told KTVZ that he'd been struggling to hire the right staff.

"Not a lot of people want to go back to work at this point, still," he said.

The owner of a cleaning company in Oregon says he's had to put some customers on waiting lists for house cleans and turn down others because he can't get enough staff.

Zachary Avis, who owns cleaning business Sakred Space in Central Oregon, told local media outlet KTVZ that business is booming as the holiday season approaches but that the company is looking for at least two more members of staff.

Alongside himself and his wife, he currently has just two employees, he said. KTVZ reported that some Avis employees left during the pandemic, without elaborating.

Avis said that it was "just really difficult getting people to come in, good reliable people to come in."

"In order for us to grow, we need more employees," he said.

Avis said that the business is booked up until the New Year but that he can't take on new customers unless he gets more staff.

"Unfortunately, due to current staffing shortages, our company has had to downsize in clientele," Sakred Space posted on Facebook in November. The company said that it had held interviews but had high standards on who it hired and was waiting until it could find "the right fit."

Other cleaning companies previously told Insider that they're having to slash the number of houses they can clean because of a lack of labor, despite soaring demand for their services.

"Not a lot of people want to go back to work at this point, still," Avis told KTVZ.

It's a rhetoric that many business owners have repeated during the pandemic. But Americans overwhelmingly say that they do want to work, just for better wages, benefits, and working conditions. Some workers say that there is a wage shortage, not a labor shortage.

Story continues

Workers say that the current imbalance in the labor market means that they're able to hold out for better jobs. Some workers have also been quitting to return to education, switch industries, or retire early.

In a job listing for cleaning techs posted on Facebook in October, Sakred Space said it paid staff between $16 and $18 an hour and said hires would have flexible schedules and wouldn't work weekend and evening shifts. Staff also get monthly professional massages, 30 days of training, and holiday bonuses, it said.

Some cleaners are going independent

Avis told KTVZ that he'd seen a rise in independent cleaners who offer lower prices to customers.

Ashley Lindell started working as a cleaner in Orange County, New York during the pandemic after quitting her full-time union job to become a caregiver. She told Insider that she'd struggled to find roles with both good wages and flexible schedules to fit around looking after her father and kids.

Lindell said that she started off making $28 an hour for gigs she got through a cleaning-services site she's listed on, and working some independent shifts on the side, before going fully independent in July. She now makes between $30 and $45 an hour, she said.

Lindell said she was able to schedule her work around school and appointments, and worked between 20 and 35 hours a week.

"I work to live, I don't live to work," she said.

Read the original article on Business Insider
As Ohio deals with a surge in COVID-19 cases since Thanksgiving, area hospitals are taxed with more patients. Wooster Community Hospital reported 33 patients diagnosed with COVID-19 as of Wednesday. Of that number, five are vaccinated. All 28 unvaccinated individuals are in intensive care with serious symptoms while the vaccinated patients experience mild symptoms, according to a hospital official.

WOOSTER  COVID-19 cases are on the rise in Northeast Ohio two weeks after families and friends gathered for Thanksgiving.

Now, area hospitals are becoming full or worse as more people are hospitalized with the virus.

Wooster Community Hospital reported 33 COVID-positive patients as of Wednesday.

Ashland couple's bout with COVID: Near-death COVID-19 experience has newlyweds rethinking vaccinations

"We are definitely seeing a spike in COVID cases and we are full, but I would not say as of yet that we are overwhelmed," said Shelly Huff, vice president of patient services and the chief nursing officer at the hospital. "We're kind of at that tipping point where if we get much more we might be, but we aren't hit as bad as other places."

Of the 33 patients diagnosed with COVID-19 at the Wooster facility, five are vaccinated. All 28 unvaccinated individuals are in intensive care with serious symptoms while the vaccinated patients experience mild symptoms, she said.

The situation is the same at Ashland County's University Hospital Samaritan, Communication Director Kathy Witmer said.

"It's similar to what (we're) seeing across Northeast Ohio," Witmer said. "It's the same surge in COVID that all health care systems are feeling."

COVID-19 cases up in Wayne, Ashland and Holmes

An ambulance sits at the UH Samaritan Emergency Room drop-off point Thursday. Ashland County has seen a 40% increase in the number of COVID-19 cases as of Dec. 8, with 209 cases reported, according to CDC data.

With the holiday season now in full swing, this new wave of COVID-19 highlights the lack of vaccinations in the region, where the most severe cases are most often found in unvaccinated individuals.

Wayne County's case count increased by 32% as of Wednesday, Dec. 8, to 482 new cases in the previous seven-day period, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That is up from 386 cases on Nov. 27.

Christmas to do: Bethlehem Alive takes guests on a guided performance of Christ's birth

Ashland County followed suit with a 40% increase to 209 novel coronavirus cases, while Holmes County is up to 105 cases, a 64% change from Dec. 8, according to the CDC.

Story continues

As cases rise, vaccination rates remain low in all three counties despite repeated warnings from health officials that unvaccinated individuals are more likely to die or experience worse COVID-19 symptoms.

Nearly 42% of the eligible population in Wayne County is vaccinated while Ashland is at 40%. Holmes County has the lowest vaccination rate in the region at 17%, according to the CDC website.

Another COVID wave with fewer staff

As COVID cases surge across Ohio and more people are admitted to hospitals, vaccination rates in the tri-county area remain low. Nearly 42% of the eligible population in Wayne County is vaccinated while Ashland is at 40%. Holmes County has the lowest vaccination rate in the region at 17%, according to the CDC website.

As more COVID-19 cases are admitted, hospitals warn that emergency room times will become longer as facilities operate short-staffed.

This is true in the Northeast Ohio Aultman Hospital system, which became overwhelmed in recent days, and Aultman Orrville is no different.

"We are still caring for patients as they come in, but wait times will likely be longer than usual due to high capacity," said Missi Steepleton, executive director, marketing, communications and retail. "During these times of influx, we continue to coordinate bed capacity with other local and regional health systems."

As of Wednesday, Dec. 9, there were 114 COVID-positive patients throughout the Aultman medical system, 85% of whom are unvaccinated, Steepleton said.

"The vaccine mandate does not affect the current situation, as it is not being enforced while we await further guidance based on court decisions," she said. "However, workforce challenges continue to affect this situation across the region and the nation."

Jail renovation: Wayne Community Corrections Board approves a three-year plan with jail renovation goals

The Mansfield News Journal reported there were 66 COVID-19 positive hospitalizations in OhioHealth hospitals and emergency departments in Ashland and Richland counties.

"We are caring for more COVID-19 patients now than we have in the last three months, which includes the COVID-19 surge in September," said Christina Thompson, media relations and communications manager for OhioHealth Mansfield and Shelby hospitals. "Our highest surge level, due to COVID-19, was in December 2020."

"We're seeing increases in hospitalizations of COVID and non-COVID related patients, and we are operating sometimes at 115% to 120% capacity," said Jason Justus, CEO of Holmes County's Pomerene Hospital.

Chief Executive Officer Jason Justus of Holmes County's Pomerene Hospital said Ohio experienced its greatest number of hospitalizations in one day on Tuesday, as did the county.

Pomerene facilities are experiencing 30% to 40% higher COVID-19 infection rates in patients being tested, Justus said.

"We're seeing increases in hospitalizations of COVID and non-COVID related patients, and we are operating sometimes at 115% to 120% capacity," Justus said. "But I cannot reiterate enough the significant luxury Pomerene has from being staffed with some of the best people that I have ever experienced."

Justus noted that Holmes County has a history of low unemployment, which leaves a smaller field of potential employees to fill the void.

"We're down about 11% of staff, or about 90% of what we should be and what we work toward," Justus said. "We are pursuing all measures to recruit individuals of expertise and talent to Holmes County to care for our community. It is a daily challenge to meet the staffing needs."

New therapy clinic in Holmes County

Pomerene was to unveil an antibody therapy clinic on Friday, joining the likes of Wooster Community Hospital where the COVID-19 treatment is also used.

"This is a medical treatment that is delivered via an IV," Justus explained. "We have been doing this in our ED (emergency department) for several weeks, but based on the fact that these new therapies have a very high success rate in helping minimize the symptoms of somebody who might be ill from COVID, it minimizes and reduces hospitalizations and COVID-related deaths.

The clinic will be open Tuesday to Friday from noon to 6 p.m. He said these times will change to match the demand.

"We see this as an extremely important opportunity to serve the community and it is a very, very valuable resource that will help many individuals, especially those who might be older," Justus said.

Uptick in COVID-19 cases at area schools

As COVID cases surge throughout the tri-county area, some schools have seen an increase too.

Wooster City and Ashland City school districts each reported 20 COVID cases across their districts, according to data from the districts' COVID dashboards.

Triway Local Schools arent far behind with 15 cases as of Dec. 8, according to the district's COVID dashboard.

The two Holmes County school districts have seen an increase in COVID cases, but no major spike.

At West Holmes, there were 12 total cases between staff and students, according to the districts COVID update page.

Eric Jurkovic

"We have not seen an uptick since Thanksgiving," West Holmes Superintendent Eric Jurkovic said. "As far as quarantining students, we have not seen a rise."

He attributes this to the governor's decision that gave students the option to wear a mask for 14 days if they were in close contact with a COVID-positive student.

"Our attendance rate data with the number of students absent is consistent with the past five years," Jurkovic added. "The state of the health of the district is okay."

East Holmes Superintendent Erik Beun said his district experienced an increase in cases the week after Thanksgiving, but schools have returned to normal this past week.

East Holmes Superintendent Erik Beun

"We have been able to work effectively in areas where we might be shorter on staff than normal," Beun said. "This is due in large part to current staff helping to make things work."

Districts such as Orrville, Dalton, Norwayne, Hillsdale and Mapleton have reported fewer than 10 cases throughout their schools in recent weeks.

How to stay healthy

To stay healthy during this newest wave of the pandemic, experts like Wooster Community's Huff urge everyone to get the COVID-19 vaccine and booster.

Anyone ages 5 and older can receive the vaccine at local pharmacies or via the county health department. Appointments can be scheduled online at the Ohio Department of Health website.

To prevent the spread of COVID-19, the CDC encourages everyone to wear masks and socially distance when possible.

If someone suspects they might be sick or were exposed to someone who tested positive for the virus, they should get a COVID-19 test and quarantine, according to the CDC website.

Staff writers Rachel Karas (The Daily Record) and Grant Ritchey (Ashland Times-Gazette) contributed to this report.

Reach Bryce by email at bbuyakie@gannett.com

On Twitter: @Bryce_Buyakie

Reach Kevin at klynch@the-daily-record.com

This article originally appeared on The Daily Record: COVID-19 cases spike in holiday wave, unvaccinated most at risk
Corpus Christi City Council is moving forward with a vote Tuesday to make an appointment to one of the regions most powerful boards, despite a report of "impropriety" that an applicant said was meant to "smear" his name.

The allegation has been dropped for now as per the decision of a Nueces County grand jury.

Council is slated to vote to either reappoint incumbent Richard Valls to the Port of Corpus Christi Authority commission or nominate other candidates that have also applied for the spot.

Valls' term is up on Dec. 31.

City Manager Peter Zanoni and City Attorney Miles Risley along with Police Chief Mike Markle decided to pass along the reported allegation to the Texas Rangers, Zanoni said.

"It quickly became apparent that it's really not a city matter to be investigated," the city manager told the Caller-Times on Friday. "Rather, it would be a state agency that would look at it based on what Councilman Lerma talked to Miles about."

On Dec. 8, "information concerning a Port Commission appointment was presented to the duly organized Grand Jury of Nueces County, Texas. The Grand Jury voted to have no further action taken on this matter at this time," according to a county court document.

The state investigation agency then put the issue in the hands of Nueces County District Attorney Mark A. Gonzalez.

On Dec. 8, "information concerning a Port Commission appointment was presented to the duly organized Grand Jury of Nueces County, Texas. The Grand Jury voted to have no further action taken on this matter at this time," according to a county court document.

More: 'Impropriety' alleged as vote approaches for Port of Corpus Christi appointment

What to know on the allegation

Roughly two weeks ago, Dist. 1 Councilman Billy Lerma reported an "impropriety" relating to the port commission appointment to the city manager and attorney, Zanoni said.

Lerma told the Caller-Times on Friday he had "no comment" regarding the decision. However, he provided the Caller-Times a statement he had also given to other media outlets earlier this week.

Roughly two weeks ago, Dist. 1 Councilman Billy Lerma reported an "impropriety" relating to the port commission appointment to the city manager and attorney, Corpus Christi City Manager Peter Zanoni said. The Nueces County Grand Jury has since voted to have no further action on the taken on this matter at this time. Lerma said he had "no comment" regarding the decision. However, he provided the Caller-Times a statement he had also given to other media outlets earlier this week.

Mayor Paulette Guajardo stated she was "not aware of those details" when asked about the grand jury decision by the Caller-Times.

Story continues

Valls, the current port commissioner, denied any wrongdoing when contacted by the Caller-Times Friday. He said he has "not been able to learn whether" Lerma made a complaint of a "bribe or other inappropriate conduct" but questioned the timing and Lerma's motivation.

Valls said before Lerma's statement to the media, a port attorney had requested information from Risley including what council member made the complaint, who was accused and for details of the allegation but was refused information.

"I have not been contacted by the Texas Rangers or any others requesting information of me about the 'incidents' referenced by Councilman Lerma," Valls added.

He said as a port commissioner, "I am duty bound to update members of the City Council."

Valls said to do this, he had lunch with Lerma on Oct. 27, as he routinely does with other members of his appointing body. After lunch, Lerma texted Valls, "Its always a pleasure to talk with you too Rick. Thank you again for lunch and good conversation, the commissioner recalled.

Rick Valls, left, speaks with Glenn Pushis of Steel Dynamics Inc.

"At no other time did we have any real opportunity to discuss my appointment, (which we did at lunch.)"

Valls said the next week, Lerma, his wife, and others attended Driscoll Childrens Hospital Singer-Songwriter Event with him and his family. Valls had invited them to the event.

"This was purely a social event for all of us. Obviously, the fact that Councilman Lerma enjoyed our conversation at lunch, then attended an evening event with our spouses, and never once suggested any inappropriate conduct for six weeks after our meeting is incredibly troublesome," Valls said.

"The timing of Councilman Lermas complaint makes me question whether there are political motivations on his part to help his self-described 'lifelong friend,' Mr. Kenneth Berry, who is competing against me for re-appointment to the Port Commission."

Valls said he hopes that a TV news station that first reported Lerma's allegation will follow up with the "same vigor" to report the grand jury's findings.

He plans to ask for an investigation into the identities of those unnamed sources who "participated with KRIS 6 News and social media to smear my name."

City Councilman Billy Lerma Jr. at the State of the Port luncheon on Wednesday, Nov. 10, 2021, in Corpus Christi, Texas.

When will the vote happen?

Last week, Zanoni and the mayor pulled the item from the council agenda for this past Tuesday, Dec. 7 meeting.

However, the city is moving forward with the vote next week because Valls' term expires at the end of the month, and if no appointment has been made by then, that would put the port commissioner in a "holdover status," which is not a "desired business practice," Zanoni said.

Valls' term began on Dec. 10, 2013.

"I am certain that I did not make any inappropriate comment or offer to Councilman Lerma, not at any time. Some unidentified person, or persons, obviously leaked a false story to KRIS 6 News, for their political gain," Valls said.

"I will be asking for a full investigation to ascertain the identities of all persons who participated with KRIS 6 News and social media to smear my name. I will be evaluating all legal remedies available to me. I sincerely hope that KRIS 6 News and others report the results of any investigation with the same vigor."

A commission of seven members, who are not paid, preside over the port. Three are appointed by City Council, three by Nueces County commissioners, and one by San Patricio County commissioners. Port commissioners can serve up to four three-year terms.

The seats are considered prominent positions in the community.

"The port of Corpus Christi is a major economic and employment institution for our community. And so (the city) wants representation on the commission to be in line with what the current mayor and City Council's ideologies are, with respect to what the port is expected to do as a community partner," Zanoni said Friday.

He added, "The city has three appointees on the board, so that the board can be comprised in part by those persons who are representing the city on another entity, and that they can carry the views of the City Council, the mayor in the business dealings at the Port of Corpus Christi."

Among its duties, the board oversees the ports budget and policies. That includes voting on land purchases and infrastructure investments.

About 20 people applied for the position. The port commission applications, including Valls', can be found on the city's website under Tuesday's City Council meeting agenda attachments.

About 20 people applied for a position on the Port of Corpus Christi Authority commission, including incumbent Richard Valls. The port commission applications can be found on the city's website under the council agenda attachments.

Related coverage

More: Proposed deepwater port project up for public comment

More: Chairman: Community should take pride in Port of Corpus Christi during record-setting 2021

Kathryn Cargo follows business openings and developments while reporting on impacts of the city governments decisions. See our subscription options and special offers at Caller.com/subscribe

This article originally appeared on Corpus Christi Caller Times: 'Impropriety' allegation: Here's why vote for port seat will happen
PROVIDENCE, RI  COVID-19 booster shots are now available to 16 and 17-year-olds in Rhode Island, the Department of Health announced Friday.

The announcement comes following updated guidance from the Centers For Disease Control and Prevention, issued Thursday.

"Im proud that Rhode Island led the nation in getting our population vaccinated  as of today, over 96 percent of adults have at least one shot," Gov. Dan McKee said. "To fully protects ourselves and our loved ones against Delta, Omicron and other variants, its time to double down and get a boost."

Before the changed guidance, booster shots were only available to adults. Now, 16 and 17-year-olds can get a Pfizer shot if they finished their first series of vaccinations at least six months earlier, or two months after the Johnson and Johnson single-dose vaccine. At this time, Pfizer is the only booster shot available to this age group.

"We are seeing very high levels of COVID-19 transmission right now in Rhode Island," said Dr. Nicola Alexander-Scott, the director of the Department of Health. "Booster doses for everyone who is eligible is critical to strengthen protection against Omicron and other variants, and to keeping individuals and communities as safe as possible. COVID-19 vaccines are safe, effective, and accessible all throughout Rhode Island. Im urging parents and families to get their 16- and 17-year-olds boosted as soon as possible."

This article originally appeared on the Narragansett-South Kingstown Patch
Texas Republicans are increasing their involvement in local races, hoping to do more to influence municipal and school board elections that have turned into political battlegrounds during the coronavirus pandemic.

The state Republican Party announced Monday it had formed a new Local Government Committee to work with county parties on backing candidates in nonpartisan local elections, where issues like mask mandates and the teaching of what some conservatives call critical race theory have become flashpoints.

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Thats really been the match that totally ignited this, said Rolando Garcia, a member of the State Republican Executive Committee who chairs the new group. School board races have always been important, but its been hard to get the attention and resources to them, and so theyve been sleepy affairs.

The state GOP is emboldened by recent wins in places like Carroll Independent School District, where opponents of a district proposal to address racism in schools captured a majority on the school board last month. Republicans are also looking to build on victories like that of Javier Villalobos, a Republican who won his election earlier this year as the mayor of McAllen, which traditionally votes for Democrats.

Democrats across the country see the importance of local elections in the fight for America, and so does the Texas GOP, Matt Rinaldi, chair of the Texas GOP, said in a statement.

The state Democratic Party has been supporting local nonpartisan candidates through a program, Project LIFT, that started in 2015. The program, which stands for Local Investment in the Future of Texas, recruits, trains and provides resources to people running for municipal offices and school board.

Weve got to take an aggressive approach in these races, said Odus Evbagharu, chair of the Harris County Democratic Party. Our democracys on the line, and it starts at our most local level.

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In recent months, school boards have gained new attention in Texas and nationwide amid raging debates over pandemic rules. Even though Gov. Greg Abbott has banned public schools from requiring masks, some school boards have defied him and sought to mandate masks anyway, prompting legal action from the state.

This year, parents have turned their attention to the perception that critical race theory is being taught to their children and have pushed to remove books from school libraries that contain offensive content. Critical race theory is a concept teaches that racism is embedded in society, and while there is no evidence it is widely taught in K-12 schools in Texas, the Legislature passed a law aiming to crack down on it that went into effect Thursday. That law is behind a GOP state lawmakers recent investigation into the types of books that school districts have.

Additionally, Abbott has been on a hunt to root out any pornographic material in public schools, telling the Texas Education Agency to investigate it last month.

Garcia is from Houston, where the Harris County GOP has already charged into local contests. The county party backed three challengers who ousted members of the Cypress-Fairbanks Independent School District school board in November. The county party has also endorsed three candidates in the Houston Independent School District school board runoffs that are happening Saturday.

For example, one of those candidates, Bridget Wade, opposes mask requirements for students and has said she is against schools teaching our children that one race is better than the other.

Evbagharu said the party is in it to win it when it comes to the Houston ISD runoffs. He denounced the GOP crusade against critical race theory as classroom censorship, saying Republicans are trying to disrupt democracy and disrupt the way history is taught.

Garcia said the Local Government Committee is focused on educating county parties that they can indeed endorse in local nonpartisan races and then giving them guidelines on how to support a candidate if they do choose to endorse. Typically, a majority of precinct chairs must approve before a county party can formally support a candidate in a local election.

After a county party gets behind a candidate, the state party may come in with its aid  like a mailer  but Garcia emphasized that these are conversations that each county party needs to have first.

In the meantime, school boards are continuing to garner statewide GOP attention. Some Republican state lawmakers have called on the Texas Association of School Boards to sever ties with the National Associations of School Boards after it asked the Biden administration to look at recent parental hostility toward school board members as domestic terrorism.

On Monday, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick called for the resignation of the co-chair of Fort Worth Independent School Districts Racial Equity Committee after she shared personal information about parents who sued the district to stop its mask mandate. (Patrick referred to the committee member, Norma Garcia-Lopez, as a school board member, but the committee is separate from the school board and advises it.)

Patrick Svitek is the primary political correspondent for The Texas Tribune, the only member-supported, digital-first, nonpartisan media organization that informs Texans about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues. This article originally appeared Dec. 7 at TexasTribune.org.

Disclosure: Texas Association of School Boards has been a financial supporter of The Texas Tribune. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribunes journalism.

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PRAGUE (Reuters) - Czech President Milos Zeman said on Friday he had rejected the nomination of a foreign minister in the incoming cabinet over the candidate's reservations toward Israel and toward cooperation with other members in a central European alliance.

Zeman said in a statement he was ready to appoint the rest of the cabinet but the rejection sets the stage for a legal battle with the new prime minister, Petr Fiala, leader of the centre-right Civic Democrats.

Fiala has backed the foreign minister nominee, Jan Lipavsky, from the liberal Pirate Party, which is part of Fiala's coalition that won an election in October.

Zeman, who is not the head of the executive under the constitution but has frequently exerted pressure on cabinets, said Lipavsky lacked qualifications.

Zeman said he was rejecting Lipavsky's "distanced" stance on Israel and on the central European Visegrad group, whose fellow members Poland and Hungary have been at loggerheads with European partners over the rule of law.

The Czech Republic has had strong ties with Israel and Fiala's coalition pledged to hold that line.

Lipavsky signed a letter alongside more than 400 other lawmakers from Europe in February in protesting Israel's expansion of settlements in the West Bank.

He has been against on moving the Czech embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, which is one of Zeman's goals that would put the Czechs alongside the United States in a decision that drew widespread criticism from the international community. The Czechs have so far opened a diplomatic office in Jerusalem.

The Pirates have criticised Visegrad partner Hungary for what the party's chief called "authoritarian tendencies".

They have also criticised Zeman's affinity with China and Russia, although Zeman did not mention those positions in his statement.

Under the constitution, the president appoints ministers nominated by the prime minister.

Fiala said he would take the matter to court.

Story continues

"It is necessary that the Constitutional Court once and for all settles the question of authorities in appointing new members of government," he said on Twitter, adding he would announce his next move on Monday.

Fiala's cabinet is expected to be appointed before Christmas but it was not clear if the row over Lipavsky could affect the timing.

(Reporting by Jan Lopatka and Robert Muller; Editing by Raissa Kasolowsky)
More than 4 million Ohioans like Heather Isaly, an otherwise healthy 47-year-old mother from Suffield Township, are now eligible for a COVID vaccine booster.

Isaly wanted the extra shot but didn't think she was eligible yet when she visited an urgent care in Kent last month for an earache. She went for an antibiotic and left with a positive COVID-19 test.

Ive gone this whole time without getting it, she said, admitting that shed let her guard down, not wearing a mask, thinking the vaccine had her fully covered. It seems crazy to me. I knew I was vaccinated, but I also didnt get my booster.

Technically, she was following the shifting rules from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which made people in her age group eligible for the booster 10 days after her urgent care visit.

After the visit, she developed a raspy, wheezy shortness of breath on her fourth day of symptoms. As she sat in a jam-packed waiting room at Cleveland Clinic Akron General, she saw no visible injuries in the people around her.

Heather Isaly, a 47-year-old mother from Suffield Township, contracted COVID-19 seven months after being fully vaccinated. Prior to getting COVID last month, Isaly wanted the booster, but was unsure if she was eligible.

In the exam room, a nurse popped in every few minutes  but not to check on her.

They were so busy that they were looking for open rooms, she recalled this week, still trying to shake a cough.

Omicron: First cases of COVID-19 omicron variant detected in Ohio, officials say

COVID-19: More COVID-19 patients hospitalized in Northeast Ohio this week than any time in pandemic

COVID-19 vaccines: Near-death COVID-19 experience has newlyweds rethinking vaccinations

Mixed messaging, uncertainty and the initial overselling of what's still proving to be highly effective vaccines have many people confused about whether they can and should get a COVID booster. Now, public health officials and hospitals executives are seeing an unprecedented wave of patients.

They're like Isaly in many ways  between 30 and 50 years old with no underlying health conditions. But unlike Isaly, most people admitted to the hospital arrive unvaccinated.

Story continues

'Unprecedented demand'

It was bad when Isaly sat in the waiting room last month at Akron General. Its only gotten worse.

Since Thanksgiving, three of the four major hospital systems serving Summit County set new pandemic records for COVID-19 admissions. Akron Generals record of 106 a year ago fell twice this week as nonessential surgeries have been canceled or postponed, forcing many families whove reached their annual insurance deductibles to wait until after they reset next year.

At AGMC, we have doubled up beds wherever we can, brought in agency and staffing, and paid bonuses and overtime. Many of you have picked up extra shifts to help, Dr. Brian Harte, president of Akron General Hospital, told staff Wednesday.

We have  again  brought in a morgue trailer which is currently in use on our campus, he continued. "But judging by this morning, none of these efforts are enough for managing this unprecedented demand. You and your colleagues are exhausting yourselves trying to keep up. The same scenario is playing out at Mercy, Medina, and many hospitals in Northeast Ohio.

And the root cause of this problem is a general community failure to get vaccinated.

There were more patients hospitalized with COVID-19 in Northeast Ohio hospitals earlier this week than at any point in the pandemic.

On Thursday, there were 1,071 hospitalized COVID-19 patients across Northeast Central Ohio Region 5, which includes Akron, Canton, Youngstown and surrounding areas, according to Dr. John Crow, an Akron Children's Hospital physician who is coordinating the 13-county region's COVID-19 surge response.

The previous high was 1,059 last December, before vaccines were widely available.

In the Akron region, the daily hospitalization count is also nearing its all-time high of 318 last Dec. 15. On Friday, there were 305 people hospitalized with COVID in the four Akron-area hospitals, up from 295 on Thursday. That includes 151 at Summa Health, 113 at Cleveland Clinic Akron General, 28 at Western Reserve Hospital and 13 at Akron Children's Hospital.

Made with Flourish

The vaccine worked

Isaly left the hospital with clear chest X-rays and good oxygen levels.

Doctors and nurses dont often see vaccinated patients. When they do, their symptoms are milder and they rarely end up in intensive care units, which are filled primarily, and often only, with unvaccinated patients.

Since she was vaccinated seven months earlier, Isaly was told her symptoms would subside on Day 6. They got worse on Day 5 and, as the doctor predicted, began improving the next day.

The vaccine primes the body to attack the virus, instead of wasting precious time recognizing a foreign invader and jumpstarting natural antibody production, Summit County Health Commissioner Donna Skoda explained. The quicker the body responds, the less likely the patient develops symptoms or needs hospitalized.

Isaly quarantined in her bedroom until just before Thanksgiving. Meanwhile, the rest of the family tested negative and her two children in college got their boosters. Shes scheduling hers now.

Mixed messaging

When the COVID-19 boosters were first approved by the Food and Drug Administration, "they had categories, Skoda said.

First up for the booster: the 65-and-older population and people in tight living quarters like prisons and nursing homes. Then came the 50-64 group with underlying health conditions.

Fast-forward three weeks and broad guidance comes out that everyone over 18 years of age seek it regardless of health status," said Skoda.

Today, Skoda recommends the booster for all adults if two months have passed since their single dose of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine or six months since their second Pfizer or Moderna shot.

But confusion continues with each new headline, including the coverage of the more contagious, and possibly milder, omicron variant.

Because of the mixed messaging, Ive got people who call me and say, Im going to wait because they may need to put something else in this to fight a new variant,  said Skoda, who advises not to wait if you're eligible to get a booster.

How effective are vaccines months later?

The other concern is that people hear about breakthrough cases and question the vaccines, which have held up despite losing some of their potency in the first few months.

Early on, media and health officials touted the vaccines as 90% or better at preventing illness, and even better at preventing hospitalization or death.

A study released in October of 3,436,957 people who got the Pfizer vaccine showed the effectiveness against infection dropped from 88% to 47% within five months of full vaccination. For the delta variant, infection rates dropped from 93% to 53%, which is still above the 50% threshold for FDA approval.

These aren't one-and-done smallpox or mumps vaccines. Chance of breakthrough infection increases with time, but the Pfizer study showed that six months after full vaccination, only 7% of fully vaccinated people sought hospitalization.

Deaths 2.4 times higher in low vaccine counties

The CDC reported in September that unvaccinated people are testing positive for COVID 5.4 times more often and dying 14 more often than vaccinated patients.

Public health officials follow the science. Definitive mortality and case data wasn't available when the vaccines were rolled out. But Skoda thinks there was enough clinical research when the boosters were approved to head off speculation by painting a more nuanced picture.

Folks think the vaccine is perfect and we should never get sick with it, said Skoda. But if Im 100% honest, we oversold the vaccine. We kept saying, 'Its 90% effective, youre going to be safe.' And then people started getting sick and they said, 'Oh hell, it doesnt work. Why do this?'

While immunity expectedly wanes, the last five months make a strong case that vaccines are saving lives.

A Beacon Journal analysis of Ohio Department of Health data finds that since July 1, one in 1,008 residents have died of COVID in the 21 Ohio counties where fewer than 40% of people are vaccinated. In the 23 counties with 50% or higher vaccination rates, one in 2,433 people have died of COVID.

The upshot is that counties with lower vaccination rates are losing 2.4 times more patients in this delta surge.

But vaccination rates havent changed much since May, when children ages 12 to 15 became eligible for the shot. Theres been a modest uptick in first shots since children ages 5 to 11 became eligible last month.

Made with Flourish

Of the 6,261,891 Ohioans fully vaccinated through November, 80% have been so for more than six months. Their immunity is declining.

While 53% of Ohio is fully vaccinated, only 16% have received a booster. The difference suggests that as many as 4.3 million Ohioans are living in that gray area, vaccinated now for six months or more and either unsure, unable or unwilling to get a booster.

The FDA approved the Pfizer booster Sept. 22 for adults compromised by health or work. The extra dose of Moderna was approved next. Restrictions for underlying health conditions and occupational hazard were lifted Nov. 19, a week after Islay went to urgent care with an earache.

On Thursday, the FDA approved the Pfizer booster for 16 and 17 year olds.

Reach Doug Livingston at dlivingston@thebeaconjournal.com or 330-996-3792.

This article originally appeared on Akron Beacon Journal: 4.3 million vaccinated Ohioans eligible for COVID booster
Felicia Cox disappeared from the northern Mississippi town of Pontotoc in July 2007. Her brother-in-law, David Neal Cox, admitted to killing her before his November execution for a different crime, the murder of his estranged wife Kim in 2010.

Before his November execution, Amber Miskelly hoped David Neal Cox would tell investigators what happened to her mother, Felicia Cox, who went missing in 2007.

Miskelly may get the answers she is looking for. David Cox, executed in Nov. 17 by lethal injection for the murder of his estranged wife, admitted before his death to killing his sister-in-law Felicia, Miskelly's mother, in 2007 and disclosed the possible location of her body, said John Weddle, district attorney for several northern Mississippi counties.

"Giving my mother a proper burial means everything to me," Miskelly said Wednesday. "I want her home and to be able to have somewhere to go visit her."

On Monday, Weddle said investigators are preparing to begin recovery efforts and Mississippi State University archeology and anthropology experts will be on-hand if remains are located. The district attorney's office did not disclose the exact location.

Felicia Cox, a mother of two, was 40 when she disappeared from the northern Mississippi city of Pontotoc in July 2007 after going to visit her sister-in-law, Kim Cox. Kim was married to Felicia's brother-in-law, David Cox.

Three years later, David Cox killed his wife and that murder led to his recent execution.

Weddle, the district attorney, said David Cox was a longtime suspect in Felicia's disappearance.

Miskelly was 18 when her mother went missing. She had hoped David Cox would provide answers about her mother's disappearance before his execution.

"I felt a relief, but it broke my heart all over again," Miskelly said about learning of his confession.

Felicia Cox, the sister-in-law of David Neal Cox, went missing in July 2007 in Pontotoc County. David Cox admitted to killing her before his November execution for a different crime, the murder of his estranged wife Kim in 2010.

Weddle said David Cox disclosed information about his sister-in-law to his attorneys from the Mississippi Office of Capital Post-Conviction Counsel in late October and waived his attorney-client privilege after his death.

Two days after the execution, David Cox's lawyers hand-delivered his letter to Weddle's office.

Story continues

Miskelly said the district attorney's office has not shared David Cox's letter with her.

What happened to Felicia Cox?: Execution of David Neal Cox may leave woman with more questions about her missing mother

On the day of Felicia's disappearance, she went to see Kim Cox at Kim's home in Pontotoc, but only David Cox was there. When Felicia Cox didn't return to her house, Kim Cox filed a missing persons report with the Pontotoc County Sheriff's Department.

Felicia's car, a 1999 Chevrolet Blazer, was found on Waldo Road in Randolph, an unincorporated community in Pontotoc. Her purse and medication were inside the locked car, according to her missing persons report.

Miskelly said her mother wouldn't go anywhere without the medicine she took for pain.

The Associated Press contributed reporting.

Reporter Mina Corpuz can be reached by email at mcorpuz@gannett.com. You can follow her on Twitter @mlcorpuz.

This article originally appeared on Mississippi Clarion Ledger: David Neal Cox admitted to killing sister-in-law missing since 2007
A Los Angeles-bound flight from Washington, D.C. was diverted to Oklahoma City after a"combative passenger" assaulted a flight attendant and an air marshal aboard the plane Thursday evening, local police said.

Why it matters: Airlines are dealing with a surge in unruly passengers, with the Federal Aviation Administration confirming over 5,500 cases this year. Most involved mask-related incidents.

Stay on top of the latest market trends and economic insights with Axios Markets. Subscribe for free

Video from the scene shows the Delta Airlines passenger suspected in the latest case of in-flight violence was maskless when he was led away by authorities.

Driving the news: Bayne Bunce, 59, who answered a call to assist federal air marshals aboard Delta flight 342 said he saw a man trying to "get at" a flight attendant.

Oklahoma City Police Capt. Arthur Gregory told Axios in a phone call that an air marshal attempted to take the suspect into custody after he "assaulted a flight attendant," but he "proceeded to assault the air marshal."

The suspect was eventually placed in handcuffs and the pilot diverted the plane to Will Rogers World Airport, where the suspect was escorted off the flight, authorities said.

The FAA confirmed the diversion to Axios in an email and said it "investigates every unruly passenger report it receives from the airlines." Gregory said the FBI could also investigate.

The big picture: The FAA and the Justice Department established an information-sharing protocol in August to refer unruly passenger cases to the FBI for review.

The FAA launched a "zero tolerance" policy on unruly passengers in January and has since increased fines  with a recent case facing a $40,000 penalty.

The agency has referred the "most egregious" cases to the FBI for potential criminal prosecution.

Delta Airlines did not immediately respond to Axios' request for comment.

Go deeper: Delta asks other carriers to share "no-fly" lists of unruly passengers

More from Axios: Sign up to get the latest market trends with Axios Markets. Subscribe for free
Julian Assange is in custody in Belmarsh prison (PA)

The US government has won a High Court bid to extradite WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange to America.

Mr Assange is wanted in the United States over the publication of thousands of classified documents in 2010 and 2011.

The US was appealing a court ruling from January that said Mr Assange would not be extradited due to concerns over this mental health. The American authorities assured the court that Mr Assange would not face highly restrictive prison conditions if he were allowed to travel to the United States. They said that strict measures would only be used if Mr Assange committed any further acts that would merit them.

Mr Assanges fiancee Stella Morris condemned the new ruling as dangerous and misguided and said that the US assurances were inherently unreliable.

Who is Julia Assange and what did he do?

Julian Assange is the founder of WikiLeaks, an organisation that made headlines around the world in 2010 after it published a series of leaks provided by US army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning.

The leaks included 75,000 documents related to the war in Afghanistan and around 390,000 army field reports relating to the war in Iraq.

WikiLeaks also published more than 250,000 diplomatic cables dated between 1996 and 2010, which provided insights into more than 270 US embassies around the world.

Julian Assange entered the Ecuadorian embassy in London in July 2019 after a court ruled that he should be extradited to Sweden. Swedish authorities had issued an arrest warrant for Mr Assange following sexual assault allegations.

Mr Assange requested political asylum in the embassy and said he would not leave even if the sex allegations were dropped because of fears that the US also wanted to extradite him.

On 11 April 2019, Mr Assange was arrested after the Ecuadorian government withdrew his asylum and he was taken into custody by UK police.

What has his court battle been about?

Mr Assange has been battling to stop his extradition to the United States.

Story continues

In January 2021 district judge Vanessa Baraitser ruled that Mr Assange should not be sent to the US, citing an oppressive risk of suicide.

The US authorities then brought a High Court challenge to that judgment and have now had it successfully overturned in the High court.

Lord Chief Justice Lord Burnett and Lord Justice Holroyde found that judge Baraitser had based her decision on the risk of Mr Assange being held in highly restrictive prison conditions if extradited.

Lord Burnett said that, following assurances made by the US, they were now satisfied that Mr Assange could be extradited.

What happens now that the US has won its appeal?

Julian Assanges lawyers will try to take his case to the Supreme court. In a statement on Friday, Mr Assanges legal team said: On behalf of Mr Assange, his lawyers will be seeking permission to appeal this decision to the Supreme Court; the application to do so has to be made in writing within 14 days.

Any such appeal to the Supreme Court would relate to the question of the assurances. Appeals on other important questions, including questions of free speech and on the political motivation of the US extradition request, have yet to be considered by an appeal court.

Speaking outside the Royal Courts of Justice in London, Julian Assanges fiancee, Stella Morris, said: We will fight. Every generation has an epic fight to fight and this is ours, because Julian represents the fundamentals of what it means to live in a free society, of what it means to have press freedom, of what it means for journalists to do their jobs without being afraid of spending the rest of their lives in prison.

Read More

UK court rules on request to send Assange to US for trial

US government wins High Court appeal for Julian Assanges extradition

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Who could replace Boris Johnson as Tory leader?

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Happy Saturday! Here's the news for Dec. 11 in Oak Park and River Forest.

First, today's weather: A little rain in the morning. High: 47 Low: 32.

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Are you a local business owner or marketer in Oak Park-River Forest? We'd love to start connecting local businesses with our amazing readers. Learn more here.

Here are the top stories today in Oak Park-River Forest:

1. One person died and four were injured as the result of a two-car accident at the intersection of Harlem Avenue and Jackson Boulevard on Dec. 4. A man driving south on Harlem was killed after veering into another vehicle in the northbound lanes. (Wednesday Journal)

2. A 22 year old was charged with unlawful use of a weapon after a struggle with a gun at a Citgo in Elmwood Park. The gun discharged and struck the building during the struggle, according to police. (Paid source: Elm Leaves)

3. Since the beginning of the month, 114 people have tested positive for COVID-19 in Oak Park. As of Wednesday, 41,941 people were fully vaccinated in the village. (VOP)

4. Oak Park Festival Theatre lost 50 years worth of memories in the Lake Street fire last month. Despite the loss of records, props and speakers, managing director Bryan Wakefield said the show will go on next summer. (Wednesday Journal)

5. The Anderson Family Holiday Jamboree is set for Dec. 22 at FitzGeralds Nightclub. Oak Park siblings Lauren, Mark, and Erik Anderson will perform at the fourth annual concert. (Paid source: Oak Leaves)

Today in Oak Park-River Forest:

St. Giles leads a grotto walk at Dominican University in honor of the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe. (8:30 a.m.)

Trinity High School hosts Breakfast with Santa. (9 a.m.)

See Polar Express for free at Lake Theatre . (10 a.m.)

Enjoy hot chocolate, caroling and live music as part of downtown Oak Parks Holiday Walk . (10 a.m.)

Make your own Gingerbread House at Pleasant Home . (2 p.m.)

Coleen Dieker performs revitalized Jewish music at Oak Park Temple . (7 p.m.)

The Sing We Joyous! Holiday Spectacular returns to First United Church of Oak Park. (7:30 p.m.)

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Send a friend or neighbor this link so they can subscribe

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Send me a news tip or suggestion at georgi.presecky@patch.com

That's all for this Saturday, OPRF! See you tomorrow for more local news.

 Georgi Presecky

This article originally appeared on the Oak Park-River Forest Patch
Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) arrives for a press conference after the weekly policy luncheon on Tuesday, December 7, 2021.





More than 50 economists have signed on to a new letter calling on Congress to "swiftly" pass President Biden's sweeping climate and social policy bill, arguing that it would alleviate some of the pressures of inflation by lowering health care and other costs for families.

The signatories of the letter include Alan Blinder, who served as vice chairman of the Federal Reserve in the 1990s, and Elgie Holstein, senior director for strategic planning at the Environmental Defense Fund and a former economic adviser in the Clinton White House.

It comes amid uncertainty surrounding the path forward for the massive bill, which Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) is hoping to bring to the floor before the chamber leaves for the holidays.

"Congress can alleviate some of the strain caused by inflation by passing the Build Back Better Act, which will lower everyday costs for families, including child care, health care, utility bills, prescription drugs, and education," states the letter, a copy of which was obtained by The Hill ahead of its release. "These investments, combined with the Build Back Better Act's tax credits for the middle class, will help allow families to keep more money in their pockets."

"Overall, the Build Back Better Act will foster a more equitable, sustainable economy by creating millions of jobs, lowering costs, and cutting taxes for American families. We urge Congress to swiftly pass this critical legislation into law," the letter continues.

The letter was organized by Invest in America Action, a liberal group that has advocated for the passage of Biden's full domestic agenda.

Republicans have hammered Democrats over inflation, blaming rising prices on Biden's agenda. Economists say inflation has been driven by the pandemic, though some say the $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief law passed this year is partially to blame.

A Monmouth University poll released this week found that roughly 3 in 10 Americans surveyed name everyday bills or inflation as the biggest concern they face.

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The letter was sent just ahead of the Labor Department's release of the consumer price index, a key metric of inflation.

The letter echoes the White House's argument that Democrats' roughly $2 trillion climate and social spending legislation, which passed the House ahead of Thanksgiving break, would lower costs for middle-class families because of the extension of the expanded child tax credit, funding to expand access to child care and other provisions.

Passing the legislation will be tricky in the Senate, where seats are evenly split between the parties with Vice President Harris casting the tie-breaking vote for the Democrats. No Republicans are expected to vote for the package, and Sens. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) have expressed reservations about it.

Manchin has raised ongoing concerns about inflation and warned Democrats against rushing to pass the package as recently as Tuesday.

"The unknown we're facing today is much greater than the need that people believe in this aspirational bill that we're looking at, and we've got to make sure we get this right," Manchin said during a Wall Street Journal CEO Council Summit on Tuesday evening.

The legislation is paid for through tax increases and enhanced IRS enforcement, though the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) found that the package would add about $367 billion to the deficit over the next decade. That number, however, does not take into account $207 billion in revenue that the CBO estimates would be raised by providing the IRS with more money for enforcement.

The White House has sought to counter Manchin's concerns.

"We are quite confident that if the question is, what can we do to address the costs that are most pressing to American families, that if that is the debate and that is the discussion, then the case for the Build Back Better Act only gets stronger and that we are building momentum around that set of arguments," White House National Economic Council Director Brian Deese told reporters during a briefing Thursday.
I have to admit, I am engaged enough in the culture war that I enjoyed seeing Jussie Smollett convicted of five felonies for staging a heinous anti-gay and anti-Black hate crime to bring attention to himself.

As a conservative, it is delicious to have the self-described truth-tellers of the media and the "reality-based community" of the left made to look foolish.

Smollett's story was obviously too good to be true from the start. MAGA hat-wearing, noose- and chemical-wielding assailants lurking after midnight in a winter storm waiting for victims to pass by on the way back from Subway was always more Hollywood fantasy than nightly news reality.

Nevertheless, the story was swallowed polar-vortex and all by many who should have known waiting for a few more facts was the wiser course.

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Joe Biden leapt into the fray after the New York Times reported the story with a straight face. "What happened today to @JussieSmollett must never be tolerated in this country. We must stand up and demand that we no longer give this hate safe harbor; that homophobia and racism have no place on our streets or in our hearts. We are with you, Jussie," Biden tweeted.

Actor Jussie Smollett was convicted of five felonies for staging a hate crime.

Kamala Harris also had her say on Twitter. "@JussieSmollett is one of the kindest, most gentle human beings I know. Im praying for his quick recovery. This was an attempted modern day lynching. No one should have to fear for their life because of their sexuality or color of their skin. We must confront this hate."

Verdict is a teaching moment

But once I got past the sugar-high of schadenfreude, I started to think there might be more here than my initial reaction let on. Here maybe is a teaching moment for both sides of an increasingly divided nation.

For Democrats and the left, beyond the obvious lesson to pause before tweeting about the latest outrage, it might be a moment to have more empathy for those on the right who are led to believe things that aren't true. That's a sin that even the Democratic president and vice-president can commit in the right circumstances.

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And it is not like it is the first time that most right-thinking liberals knew something that simply wasn't true. Remember the Duke Lacrosse case? Many people knew the three white guys were rapists  until the story fell apart.

And we all knew about the University of Virginia frat boy rape case because Rolling Stone told us, and their searing journalism made national headlines. Until the reporting was shown to be false.

And it is not like fake hate crimes are unheard of, either. Remember in 2017 when a wave of 2,000 bomb threats were called into Jewish organizations? The perp was a Jewish teenager.

Maybe if journalists and Democrats weren't so self-righteous about Republican believing fantasies like the idea that the 2020 election was stolen, we could have more productive conversations that might change minds.

Be cautious about the stories you believe

Which brings me to the lesson for my conservative brothers and sisters. Be careful who you listen to.

It is obvious to us that Democrats should know better than to believe a Hollywood B-lister and his Washington boosters, but are Republican politicians and reality-TV stars all that different from Jussie Smollett and Joe Biden?

They're all politicians, and you should trust them about as far as you can throw them. For Donald Trump and his claim that he won the 2020 election, that's not very far. Even when his hand-picked advocates do the counting, the facts show that he lost fair and square. That's just what happened in Arizona and Wisconsin.

Democrats are now admitting that Smollett was full of it. Republicans should get the hint and admit it when the people we trust lead us astray, too.

David Mastio is an opinion writer for USA TODAY. Follow him on Twitter @DavidMastio.

You can read diverse opinions from our Board of Contributors and other writers on the Opinion front page, on Twitter @usatodayopinion and in our daily Opinion newsletter. To respond to a column, submit a comment to letters@usatoday.com.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Jussie Smollett's lies hold culture war lessons for all of us
Epic Charter Schools co-founders Ben Harris, left, and David Chaney.

The co-founders of Epic Charter Schools have sued the school system they founded for $6.84 million.

A company owned by Epic co-founders Ben Harris and David Chaney filed a breach of contract lawsuit on Wednesday in Oklahoma County District Court against the school system, which they established and earned millions from over the past decade.

"EPIC welcomes Oklahoma (County) District Court review of (the company's) demand for $6.84 million in public school funds," the school system said in a statement.

Epic cut ties with Harris and Chaney's company, Epic Youth Services, in May. The co-founders' divorce from Epic followed years of criminal investigations, allegations of financial crimes and a scathing state audit released last year.

For subscribers: Epic Charter School leaders welcome investigation as new allegations surface

Epic Charter Schools co-founders David Chaney, center, and Ben Harris, right, sued the virtual charter school system they established a decade ago. Their company, Epic Youth Services, says the school owes $6.84 million.

The company contends it helped Epic migrate data to a new technology vendor from July 1 to Sept. 30 after the split.

By assisting with the transition, the co-founders claim Epic owes them 10% of the school system's funding from that 90-day period, under the termination agreement that codified their company's separation from the school.

The lawsuit contends Epic One-on-One, the system's biggest branch, owes $4.14 million and Epic Blended Charter, based in Tulsa County and Oklahoma County, owes $2.7 million.

The co-founders' company said it invoiced Epic for $6.84 million on Oct. 8.

"Despite multiple attempts to contact (Epic's) various attorneys, (the company) has not received any official response to or payment of the foregoing invoices," the lawsuit states.

More: Grand jury calls for changes at Epic Charter Schools

Epic Charter Schools owed millions from its co-founders, officials say

Since both sides parted ways, Epic has claimed Harris and Chaney refused to turn over potentially millions of dollars that belong to the public virtual charter school.

The co-founders' business hasn't transferred the remaining balance of the Learning Fund, a bank account that supported extracurricular activities, technology and supplemental lesson plans for students. Epic officials said the company hasn't informed them of how much money is even left in the account.

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The company owned and operated the Learning Fund for years, denying public view and audits of the account. The Oklahoma State Auditor and Inspector's Office is now reviewing the account's records.

Epic established a public version of the Learning Fund on July 1 that is run by the school and subject to open records requests.

But, the amount left over in the former Learning Fund is still in Harris and Chaney's hands, Epic said.

In the four months since the termination, (Epic Youth Services) has provided us very little information, a spokesperson for the school system said in October. However, we suspect the sum they owe to us to be in the millions.

The termination agreement between the school and the company states Learning Fund dollars from before July 1 will remain private, but the company must donate the remaining balance to the school system once all liabilities charged before July 1 are paid.

We have been in constant communication with the schools counsel," the company's attorney, Libby Scott, said in October. We have provided them with everything that is required under the Mutual Termination Agreement, and any additional deadlines or demands have not been communicated to us.

Reporter Nuria Martinez-Keel covers K-12 and higher education throughout the state of Oklahoma. Have a story idea for Nuria? She can be reached at nmartinez-keel@oklahoman.com or on Twitter at @NuriaMKeel. Support Nurias work and that of other Oklahoman journalists by purchasing a digital subscription today at subscribe.oklahoman.com.

This article originally appeared on Oklahoman: Epic Charter Schools co-founders sue school for $6.8 million
BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Russian aggression against Ukraine would come at a price, the head of the European Commission said on Friday, but declined to say outright if such a move by Moscow would trigger EU sanctions against the Russian gas pipeline Nord Stream 2.

Ursula von der Leyen was speaking at a joint news conference with Germany's new Chancellor Olaf Scholz in response to a question if cutting off Nord Stream 2 would be part of any stepping up of sanctions on Russia in case it attacked Ukraine.

"As the EU Commission, in June the European Council tasked us with developing options on Russia and we have done that now," von der Leyen said.

"Any aggression has to come at a price, that is why we will communicate these points to Russia, but we will not be making them public," she said.

"In general terms, it is important to say that energy cannot be a means to exert pressure and European energy security has to be secured," she said.

Scholz refused to spell out the exact consequences of a Russian invasion of Ukraine.

(Reporting by Jan Strupczewski)
IDAHO SPRINGS, Colo. (AP)  A former Colorado police officer who used a Taser on a 75-year-old man without warning, requiring the man to be taken to the hospital, pleaded guilty Thursday to a misdemeanor assault charge in a deal in which he permanently relinquished his right to serve as a law enforcement officer in the state.

An attorney for the man's family objected to the deal, claiming that prosecutors showed former Idaho Springs Officer Nicholas Hanning special treatment and asking the judge to consider appointing a special prosecutor to take on the case, KUSA-TV reports.

Judge Cynthia Jones conditionally accepted the plea but scheduled a January hearing to hear objections from Michael Clark's family attorney. The charge carries a penalty of six to 24 months in jail and sentencing was also set for January.

If the judge finds a special prosecutor is needed, the plea deal would be voided.

Prosecutors denied doing Hanning any favors and cited his acceptance of responsibility as a factor in the deal.

Hanning was charged with third-degree assault on an at-risk person and fired from the department after the May 30 event.

According to police body camera footage and court documents, Hanning and another officer knocked on the door to Clarks apartment without announcing they were officers. A 30-year-old woman who had just moved in next door had accused Clark of punching her in the face, which Clark later denied.

Clark opened the door  yelling, What do you want?  and Hanning forced him into a wall, according to an arrest warrant affidavit.

Clark was holding what his attorney said was a collectible sword made from a sawfish snout and put it away but refused repeated police commands to both lie down and leave the apartment. Hanning then used his Taser on Clark, who fell and hit a chair, an affidavit said.

Hanning told a paramedic that he also kicked Clark in the knee and punched him in the back of the head, the affidavit said.

Within days, Clark was hospitalized for a stroke and other health problems, according to Clark's family lawyer, Sarah Schiekle.

Police originally said Clark and the officer got into an altercation before the Taser was used but later said Hanning initiated the altercation and that Clark put down a sword-like weapon when asked to do so.
VERO BEACH  The family of a Gifford woman who sued Cleveland Clinic Indian River Hospital after she never woke up from routine elective outpatient surgery in 2017 has settled the lawsuit, their attorney said Friday.

Toshuua Hughes, 46, who is being cared for at a Sarasota traumatic brain injury facility, remains in a state of non-responsive wakefulness four years after she underwent a hysterectomy, her Vero Beach lawyer David Carter has said.

Toshuua Hughes

Carter on Friday confirmed that a medical malpractice suit filed in 2018 against the hospital, anesthesiologist Dr. Donnie J. Konovsky, and his former employer Anesthesia of Indian River, Inc., has fully settled pending approval by a guardianship judge overseeing Hughes care and wellbeing.

The terms are to remain confidential, Carter said without elaborating, who in February noted the constant care Hughes requires could top $20 million.

What happened to Toshuua Hughes? Gifford woman in permanent comatose state suing Indian River Hospital following 2017 surgery

A trial, which has been repeatedly postponed, had been expected as soon as February 2022, records show.

Hughes current condition wasnt caused by the surgery performed June 16, 2017, the lawsuit stated, but from what happened to the married mother of five children during and after her transport from the hospitals operating room.

Toshuua Hughes

She was permanently injured from a lack of proper medical care following surgery, when she didnt fully wake up and her breathing was essentially non-existent for several critical minutes, court papers claimed.

Two hospital nurses present during Hughes breathing emergency but not listed as lawsuit defendants, also were negligent in rendering medical care and treatment to her, the suit claimed.

Cleveland Clinic, which in 2019 took over the hospital formerly known as Indian River Medical Center, has had at least six lawyers from four law firms participate in Hughes medical malpractice lawsuit.

Reached Friday, hospital spokesman Scott Samples declined to comment.

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Latest on COVID-19 cases: Treasure Coast vaccination rate rises for first time in months

In Hughes' lawsuit, Konovsky is accused in part of failing to wake her after surgery, failing to monitor her breathing, and then failing to react in time to prevent brain damage when she showed signs of respiratory distress.

Indian River Medical Center in Vero Beach, Fla., is now called Cleveland Clinic Indian River Hospital.

Her harm was compounded, court filings claimed, when evidence surfaced that showed hospital policies were not followed during Hughes respiratory emergency, and medical records were later altered to minimize or shield the negligent care she received.

In an April 19 court filing, the hospital admitted Hughes suffered injury and damages which are permanent and continuing, and that she will suffer losses in the future.

Hospital officials too, pointed to Konovsky as a responsible party.

This defendant, hospital attorneys wrote, admits that Dr. Konovsky was negligent in his care and treatment of Toshuua Hughes.

In court proceedings and filings, Konovskys Tallahassee attorney Roger Fontela, has flatly rejected the claims in Hughes' lawsuit that Konovsky failed to closely monitor her and provided inadequate care following her surgery.

Records show Konovsky currently lives in Spokane, Washington, where hes had an active license to practice medicine since 2018.

His Florida medical license was retired in January 2020, according to state records.

Gifford resident Toshuua Hughes, her husband Rodrick Phinizee, on right, and three of their five children, before she suffered an anoxic brain injury following hysterectomy surgery June 16, 2017 at Indian River Medical Center, in Vero Beach.

The lawsuit includes consortium claims filed on behalf of Hughes husband of 23 years, Rodrick Phinizee and their five children, including two minors.

Meaning, each family member is seeking damages based on their loss of her "comfort, society and companionship" that will continue into in the future.

On Monday, Indian River Circuit Judge Janet Carney Croom ordered that a Guardian Ad Litem be assigned to represent the settlement interests of Hughes two minor children during the approval process.

Croom further ordered a written report be submitted by the guardian to the court providing an opinion of the fairness of the proposed personal injury settlement.

Melissa E. Holsman is the legal affairs reporter for TCPalm and Treasure Coast Newspapers, and is writer and co-host of Uncertain Terms, a true crime podcast. Reach her at melissa.holsman@tcpalm.com.

This article originally appeared on Treasure Coast Newspapers: Gifford woman's family settles Cleveland Clinic malpractice lawsuit
Ida grower Sarah Mathe empties harvested corn into a grain truck for transporting to the elevator.

Farm incomes in Monroe County are projected to be the highest since 2013 and traditional family size farms continue to decline in number, county commissioners learned this week.

Ned Birkey, an MSU extension educator emeritus and agricultural consultant, told commissioners about the status of agriculture in the region Tuesday night.

Although incomes have risen, input prices, such as for fertilizer, have also increased, in some cases by 130 percent from just one year ago, Birkey said.

Tariffs and import duties have also hampered supplies, such as for potash fertilizer, he said during his annual end-of-year report. Land prices, cash rents and costs for machinery such as tractors and combines have also increased.

The most recent Purdue/ CME monthly Ag Economy Barometer, a nationwide measure of the health of the U.S. agricultural economy, is at its weakest level since July, 2020, he said.

Farmer sentiment has weakened amid rising concerns of a cost-price squeeze, he told the nine-member county board. This is somewhat similar to the University of Michigan monthly Consumer Sentiment Index.

Traditional family size farms continue to decline in number, while large and small farms continue to increase.

Farmland is overwhelmingly owned by local farm families and interests and not by foreign or outside corporate entities or interests, he said.

Many large family owned farms in Monroe County are either incorporated or in a partnership form of ownership, he said, citing figures from the 2017 Ag Census for the county.

He noted availability of labor and supply chain disruptions continue to hamper agriculture, particularly in the fruit, vegetable and dairy sectors.

He thanked the board for contracting with his company -- Spartan Agricultural Consulting, LLC -- to provide education and information to various parties about agriculture and natural resource matters.

This article originally appeared on The Monroe News: Farm incomes rising, but number of family farms continue to decline
Poll worker Ariel Dashner checks a voter's ID at the Hart Park Muellner Building in Wauwatosa. A judge on Thursday upheld Wisconsin's voter ID requirements for college students.

MADISON  A federal judge on Thursday upheld the way Wisconsin's decade-old voter ID law treats college students.

It's the latest case to keep in place the voter ID law, which has faced a slew of litigation over the years.

In 2019, the liberal group Common Cause Wisconsin filed a lawsuit arguing the law treats students unfairly because college IDs must have elements that other types of IDs don't have to have.

Specifically, the college IDs can be used for voting only if the IDs expire within two years of being issued and include a signature. IDs from five of the state's institutions of higher learning don't meet those criteria, according to the lawsuit.

On Thursday, U.S. District Judge James Peterson threw out the lawsuit, ruling that it was reasonable for the state to spell out what must be included on college IDs.

"It would be rational for the legislature to conclude that making student IDs more uniform enhances their reliability, makes them more difficult to falsify, and makes it easier for poll workers to recognize a valid student ID," Peterson wrote.

Peterson, who was nominated to the bench by President Barack Obama, has ruled against the voter ID law in the past. In a separate case in 2016, he struck down limits on early voting and parts of the state's voter ID law.

Much of that decision was reversed in 2020 by an appeals court and returned to him for further consideration. He continues to weigh aspects of that case, such as how the state ensures voters can get IDs if they don't have birth certificates or other credentials.

Subscribe to our On Wisconsin Politics newsletter for the week's political news explained.

Contact Patrick Marley at patrick.marley@jrn.com. Follow him on Twitter at @patrickdmarley.

Our subscribers make this reporting possible. Please consider supporting local journalism by subscribing to the Journal Sentinel at jsonline.com/deal.

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This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Judge upholds Wisconsin's voter ID requirements for college students
Defendant Eric Conley, in background, with his attorney shortly before his sentence was imposed Thursday.

PANAMA CITY  A former police officer found guilty of battery for striking a handcuffed suspect in the chest while he was on the ground was sentenced Thursday to 15 days in the Bay County Jail, State Attorney Larry Basford announced.

Eric Conley, 43, who was fired from the Panama City Police Department following the Nov. 12, 2020, incident, was found guilty on Dec. 1. He was taken into custody Thursday to begin serving his sentence, which will be followed by 12 months of probation.

According to a Thursday press release, County Court Judge Shane Vann granted Prosecutor Bob Pells request that Conley be adjudicated guilty and denied a defense request that the defendant be allowed to serve his sentence on weekends. Pell and fellow Prosecutor Dustin Miller presented the case at trial.

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Judge Vann also ordered the defendant to pay $800 in fines and complete an anger management class before his probation ends.

Pell and Miller presented evidence at trial that showed Conley was on duty Nov. 12, 2020, when he responded to a call and encountered a man who was ultimately taken into custody.

A video taken by a witness and played for the jury showed the 41-year-old victim handcuffed behind his back and on the ground beside the rear door of a patrol car. One officer was standing over the handcuffed man, another was in the background, and Conley was shown kneeling down over the suspect. Witnesses testified that Conley then punched the man while he was handcuffed and lying on his back.

Lead Prosecutor Bob Pell, standing beside co-counsel Dustin Miller, addresses County Judge Shane Vann during sentencing Thursday for former police officer Eric Conley, seated at left.

The officer who had been in the background, Timothy Manson, is seen on video hurrying toward Conley, grabbing him and forcefully pulling him off the handcuffed man. At trial, Manson testified the use of force was excessive.

This article originally appeared on The News Herald: Former Panama City cop Eric Conley gets jail time for hitting suspect
Former Trump trade adviser Peter Navarro has said that Ukraine is not really a country as Russia is increasing its troop presence on the border with the neighbouring country.

Mr Navarro said that the Russian military presence on the Ukrainian border was an attempt to test the resolve and willingness to intervene of US leaders.

We never would be having this conversation if Trump was in the White House because, basically, peace through strength was a doctrine that was working with Russia, with North Korea, with China, with Iran and everything else, Mr Navarro claimed while speaking on Newsmax on Thursday. Right now, every dictator around the world is going to test Joe Biden, whether its Putin or whether its Xi Jinping.

With respect to the issue of Ukraine, I think a little history at least is useful, Mr Navarro added.

The Soviet Union back before Russia when it broke up contained all of Ukraine including Crimea. The country itself is not really a country because if you look at it, the western part of it, like its literally split in half, those are all Russian speakers, he said, but quickly corrected himself.

Excuse me, the eastern part is all Russian speakers, he said. The western part are all Ukrainian speakers. And its a country ... thats been kind of at war with itself with their election system.

Russia now has around 100,000 troops close to its border with Ukraine, leading to worries that an attack may come early next year. US intelligence has warned that Russia could invade its neighbour as soon as January, CBS has reported.

The Moscow bureau chief for The New York Times, Anton Troianovski, said earlier this week that US intelligence believes that Russia is preparing for a military offensive involving an estimated 175,000 troops.

He said that the Ukrainian military would be utterly outgunned and outmatched, but added while speaking on the podcast The Daily that theres a grim and determined mood within the Ukrainian ranks.

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The soldiers on the border have made it clear that if it comes to it, they will be prepared to do what they can to make this as costly as possible for the other side, he said.

Troianovski said Russian President Vladimir Putin has been extraordinarily fixated on the issue of Ukraine since the fall of the Soviet Union 30 years ago.

Ukraine became independent when the Soviet Union fell, and for people of Putins generation, this was an incredibly shocking and even traumatic moment, as out of all the republics the Soviet Union lost when it was disbanded, Ukraine was probably the one most valuable to Moscow, the bureau chief said.

When Mr Putin came to power a decade after the fall of the Soviet Union, he tried to pull Ukraine closer to Russia. But by 2014, it became clear that he had failed when the country went through the Maidan Revolution when citizens protested after the countrys president withdrew from a deal that would have moved the country closer to the European Union and the West.

The protests forced out Viktor Yanukovych, a president friendly to Russia, and led to a government more aimed at strengthening ties to the West. But Mr Putin didnt view it as a revolution by the people, but as a coup engineered by the CIA and other Western intelligence agencies meant to drive Ukraine away from Russia, Troianovski said.

He sent troops to Crimea, a Ukrainian peninsula in the Black Sea, and fomented a separatist war in Eastern Ukraine that has so far led to the deaths of more than 10,000 people, according to Troianovski.

Volodymyr Zelensky became president of Ukraine in May 2019. Earlier this year, he started taking a much harder stance against Russia.

He cracked down on a pro-Russian oligarch and pro-Russian media. He continued with military exercises with American soldiers and with other Western forces. He kept talking up the idea of Ukraine joining NATO, Troianovski said of Mr Zelensky on The Daily.

This is what Putin seems to fear the most, the idea of Nato becoming more entrenched in this region. So Putin made it clear that this was starting to cross what he describes as Russias red lines and that Russia was willing to take action to stop this, he added.

The White House has said that President Joe Biden reassured Mr Zelensky during a conversation lasting more than an hour on Thursday.

President Biden voiced the deep concerns of the United States and our European Allies about Russias aggressive actions towards Ukraine and made clear that the US and our Allies would respond with strong economic and other measures in the event of a further military intervention, the White House said.

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FORT WALTON BEACH  Several police officers were dispatched to United Fidelity Bank on Friday to help foster kids in the local community fulfill their Christmas wish lists.

Officers with the Fort Walton Beach Police Department were stationed at the bank most of the day as they collected donations of dolls, toy cars, play sets and more to fill the back of their new military appreciation truck for Operation Santa.

Now in its third year, the toy drive benefits foster children in the FamiliesFirst Network. The nonprofit organization provides child welfare services to more than 1,000 children in foster care in Escambia, Santa Rosa, Okaloosa and Walton counties.

Its a big part of our tradition, said Lt. Brandon Chapin, the events lead organizer. We like to help more than just being out enforcing laws. We like to do more. Thats kind of the nature of it.

Officer Gerard Bhagwatsingh places donated toys in the back of the gift truck during the Fort Walton Beach Police Departments toy drive held at United Fidelity Bank downtown.

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Donations of toys, bikes, and cash began flowing in as the event kicked off Friday morning. By mid-day the bed of the truck was not visible. Numerous toys had been dropped off and cash donations had already surpassed last year's total of $580.

A single donor contributed a check for $500 and another person donated $250 worth of toys.

For just as many toy donations were getting, were getting cash donations as well, Chapin said. Its nice to see the community come together and support these children. Thats really what its all about.

Officers will deliver the toys to Santas workshop in Pensacola next week, where the FamiliesFirst Network is gathering donations. The toys will then be distributed around Christmas.

In other news: Comfort at Christmas: Freeport eighth-grader collects over 150 new pjs for kids in foster care

Monetary donations will be used to purchase any toys children asked for that were not donated and items such as gift cards that can easily be shipped to children who have been placed with family members who live out of state.

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Kathryn Burns, who oversees the case management units at the FamiliesFirst Network, said the toys are a welcomed gift for children who can sometimes have a hard time adjusting in a new home, especially during the holidays.

Officer Kalan Wasson wheels a donated bike to the back of the gift truck during the Fort Walton Beach Police Departments toy drive held at United Fidelity Bank downtown.

I can only imagine what its like for them, and each one takes it a little bit differently based off where they are in their trauma, said Burns, who added that children are removed from homes because of safety concerns regarding abuse, abandonment or neglect.

Often it is police who have some of the first encounters with those children. Chapin said many officers at the Police Department are familiar with children in the foster care system, and two members of the department have even opened their own homes for foster kids.

"Unfortunate events happen," he said. We have some officers who have dealt with the same children who are now in the foster system out on calls previously. So there is that connection there. We kind of get to see the worst side of it."

Children in the foster care system range from newborns to 18-year-olds. The FamiliesFirst Network also offers young adult services for children who have aged out of the foster care system.

Burns said children of all ages will receive gifts donated through the toy drive.

Lieutenant Brandon Chapin talks about the importance of being able to help out with gifts for needy families during the Fort Walton Beach Police Departments toy drive held at United Fidelity Bank downtown.

This does serve some kids that are also in our extended foster care program just to try to help them feel like people do care about them and there is a community around them that supports them, she said.

Burns said the FamiliesFirst Network is happy to have the support of the Police Department, which has been a big help in checking off the childrens wish lists over the past few years. Last year the event brought in just over 1,000 toys.

These are wishes every kid would have, Burns said. If you can fill that one wish of something that they want, that gives them a sense of hope. Thats what Christmas is about. That sense of hope.

Chapin said its important for the Police Department to work with organizations like the FamiliesFirst Network to help build stronger ties with the community and give back to children in need.

A motorcycling Santa stopped by to thank officers during the Fort Walton Beach Police Departments toy drive held at United Fidelity Bank downtown.

Anyone who missed Fridays event can still help out by dropping off unwrapped toys at the police station lobby at 7 Hollywood Blvd. until Dec. 10.

The Police Department also will collect new, unwrapped toys for the Toys for Tots program at the station on Dec. 17. The event is from 6 to 9 p.m. and will feature a winter wonderland of decorated plot houses, lights and displays created by officers.

Its a big thing for us to help our local community because inherently with the nature of law enforcement we want community partnerships, Chapin said. This is all part of our community outreach and building that community.

This article originally appeared on Northwest Florida Daily News: Fort Walton Beach police collect Christmas gifts for area foster kids
Twenty-nine years ago, as she was preparing the ground to rebuild her family home in El Mozote, El Salvador, Miriam Nunez found the bones of her in-laws scattered all over the property.

They were among the nearly 1,000 people -- half of them children -- massacred ten years earlier by government soldiers who accused the village of aiding leftist guerillas in El Salvador's bloody 1980-1992 civil war.

"I had to collect all the teeth of the little girls, small bones... fingers... and put them in a bag," Nunez told AFP, forty years after the massacre for which no one has yet been held accountable.

The El Mozote massacre, which took place over five days in December 1981, was one of the deadliest in Latin American history.

Nunez, now 63, recalled coming across the bloodied dress of a little girl called Yesenia, then 18 months old, who would have become her sister-in-law, as well as the dentures of her mother-in-law.

In all, Nunez's husband Orlando Marquez lost 15 family members in the mass killing -- the worst episode of El Salvador's internal conflict, which in total left more than 75,000 dead and more than 7,000 people missing.

Three of Marquez's murdered relatives were children.

- Children slashed -

In 1981, the residents of El Mozote were living a peaceful life in the midst of war, raising beans, corn, sugar cane and cows among green hills some 200 kilometers (124 miles) east of the capital San Salvador.

Unbeknownst to many, a leftist rebel guerilla group was operating in the area.

Then on December 9, the country's military arrived in the region. Five days of bloodshed followed.

The deadliest day was the 11th, in El Mozote.

Soldiers of the Atlacatl Battalion -- a counter-insurgency command trained by the United States -- burnt homes, raped women and killed all the villagers they could find.

Some children were thrown in the air and slashed with machetes, according to survivor accounts.

At the time, Miriam Nunez lived in Lourdes, near San Salvador, and her husband survived as he was away, studying in the capital.

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Another survivor, Maria de la Paz Chicas, who was 11 at the time, was visiting a nearby village with her father.

When they tried to return home, "they (soldiers) would not let us enter. This is what saved us."

Chicas, now 51, lost six brothers and 17 cousins.

- No verdict yet -

In 2012, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights blamed the Salvadoran government for the El Mozote massacre and ordered reparations.

Four years later, the country's Supreme Court ruled that a blanket amnesty for people accused of war crimes during the conflict was unconstitutional.

Charges were brought against soldiers accused of involvement, but no verdicts have yet been passed.

The long-dragging trial suffered another setback this year, when presiding judge Jorge Guzman resigned in solidarity with colleagues who were fired in a controversial judicial reform.

Ovidio Gonzalez, a lawyer for the victims, accuses the government and army of seeking "to delay the process and prevent the conviction of the soldiers responsible."

"Forty years later, we want to tell the Salvadoran state: 'look, enough of continuing to want to cover up this case'," added Leonel Tobar Claros, president of the Association of Victims of El Mozote.

Now 43, he lost two dozen family members as a toddler.

- 'Collecting skulls' -

Nunez and her husband returned to El Mozote a decade after the massacre, at the end of the civil war in 1992, to rebuild the family home.

Chicas returned at about the same time, and recalls that the once-happy village had become an overgrown refuge for coyotes.

"When we got there we started collecting skulls, bones.... we kept them," and later gave the body parts to forensic investigators, she said.

Bones were found all over the town.

"My sister, we found in the convent. She was six months pregnant" when she was killed aged 27, next to her four-year-old son, said Chicas.

"She never let go of the boy." He was also killed.

The residents of El Mozote are now trying to build a new life on a foundation of pain.

As part of reparations, the government has paved roads and built a memorial near a cemetery for the victims.

The site includes a mural decorated in mosaic tiles, which Chicas said reminds her of "hearts shattered to pieces."

cmm/mav/rsr/mlr/caw
PARIS (Reuters) -France will ask the European Union to start legal action against Britain if it fails to issue more fishing licences by a Friday deadline set by the European Commission, a French minister said.

Clement Beaune, the junior European Affairs Minister, also accused British Prime Minister Boris Johnson of trying unsuccessfully to isolate France in the dispute over post-Brexit fishing licences for French fishermen.

France is still waiting for Britain to approve nearly 100 licences for its fishermen to operate in UK teritorial waters, Beaune told France Info radio.

"If Britain today gives a few dozen extra licences as a token of goodwill... we will take that into account," he said, adding that if the deadlock persists, France will ask the Commission at the weekend to announce the start of legal action.

Britain and the EU agreed to set up a licensing system to grant fishing vessels access to each other's waters when Britain left the bloc. But France says it has not been given the full number it is due, while Britain says only those lacking the correct documentation have not been granted.

Fishing represents a tiny share of both the French and British economies, but it is politically sensitive.

"Boris Johnson told himself he could isolate the French. We have re-mobilised (the Europeans) so that the deal is respected," Beaune said.

Johnson's spokesman told reporters on Thursday that Britain never set a deadline for resolving the issue, a comment Beaune said was "not a sign of trust".

French Seas Minister Annick Girardin said on Thursday that France would urge the EU Commission to take the matter for arbitration by a committee of British and EU representatives that oversees the implementation of the Brexit trade agreement.

If that failed, France would push for the Commission to launch litigation proceedings, a move the minister said would take time.

(Reporting by Dominique Vidalon, editing by Gareth Jones)
A 21-year-old jail inmate with terminal cancer will be allowed to spend his remaining days at home, despite concerns from the judge and prosecutor about his violent past.

On Thursday, Judge Jon Kapetan approved the compassionate release for Anthony Sandoval.

Kapetan was initially reluctant to release Sandoval, calling him a dangerous individual. But he changed his mind after listening to the arguments from Sandovals defense attorney, Charles Barrett.

Barrett did not deny Sandovals criminal past or his current charges of assault with a firearm and robbery. He and two accomplices are accused of being involved in the non-fatal shooting of a street vendor in central Fresno on Oct. 18, 2020.

Sandoval was facing three years and eight months, plus 25 to life if he was convicted.

In his motion to the court, Barrett provided a letter from one of Sandovals doctors, who said the 21-year-old has terminal lung cancer.

It is my belief that the patient has days to weeks to live, wrote Dr. Patrick MacMillam of UCSFs Palliative Medicine Division.

MacMillam wrote that given Sandovals debilitating condition, he does not deem him a threat to anyone and feels the patient would be better served if he could be on hospice at home with his family.

Barrett said Sandoval is currently in a skilled nursing facility, where the family has limited access to him because of COVID-19 restrictions.

Kapetan agreed to allow Sandoval to be cared for at his home, under certain conditions. Kapetan ordered Sandoval be on an electronic monitoring program and he must sign a pre-trial release contract.

Deputy District Attorney Emily Fernandez was opposed to letting Sandoval stay at home.

Fernandez said that along with his current charges, he previously was charged with car jacking and burglary.

The prosecutor also worried about the victim in Sandovals most recent crime.

This was a life-altering event for this victim, Fernandez said. This individual broke his femur and he had an entry and exit wound. He also had multiple injuries to his shoulder and he will likely never live his life the same way. People may fear this might happen to some other innocent person, if he is let out.
The top U.S. commander for the Middle East said Thursday that the United States will keep the current 2,500 troops in Iraq for the foreseeable future, and he warned that he expects increasing attacks on U.S. and Iraqi personnel by Iranian-backed militias determined to get American forces out.

Marine Gen. Frank McKenzie said in an interview with The Associated Press at the Pentagon that despite the shift by U.S. forces to a non-combat role in Iraq, they will still provide air support and other military aid for Iraqs fight against the Islamic State.

Noting that Iranian-backed militias want all Western forces out of Iraq, he said an ongoing uptick in violence may continue through December.

They actually want all U.S. forces to leave, and all U.S. forces are not going to leave, he said, adding that as a result, that may provoke a response as we get later into the end of the month.

The Iraqi government earlier Thursday announced the conclusion of talks on ending the U.S. combat mission against IS. U.S. forces have been largely in an advisory role for some time, so the announced transition changes little. The announcement reflects a July decision by the Biden administration to end the U.S. combat mission in Iraq by Dec. 31.

Iraqi military still dependent on US, coalition military in ISIS fight: watchdog

Weve drawn down from bases we didnt need, weve made it harder to get at us. But the Iraqis still want us to be there. They still want the presence, they still want the engagement, said McKenzie. So as long as they want it, and we can mutually agree thats the case  were going to be there.

He said he believes Islamic State militants will continue to be a threat in Iraq and that the group will keep recreating itself, perhaps under a different name. The key, he said, will be to ensure that IS is not able to coalesce with other elements around the globe and become increasingly strong and dangerous.

America invaded Iraq in 2003, and at the peak point had more than 170,000 troops battling insurgents in the country and later working to train and advise Iraqi forces. All U.S. forces were withdrawn at the end of 2011, but just three years later, American troops were back to help Iraq beat back the Islamic State group, which had swept across the border from Syria to gain control of a large swath of the country.

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The U.S. presence in Iraq has long been a flash point for Tehran, but tensions spiked after a January 2020 U.S. drone strike near the Baghdad airport killed a top Iranian general. In retaliation, Iran launched a barrage of missiles at al-Asad airbase, where U.S. troops were stationed. More than 100 service members suffered traumatic brain injuries in the blasts.

IG to study how doctors, CENTCOM handled TBIs after 2020 al-Asad attack

More recently, Iranian proxies are believed responsible for an assassination attempt last month on Iraqs Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi. And officials have said they believe Iran was behind the October drone attack at the military outpost in southern Syria where American troops are based. No U.S. personnel were killed or injured in the attack.

I think an attack to kill the prime minister is a pretty significant event, McKenzie said. I think thats a signpost of the desperation that theyre under right now.

McKenzie, who has headed U.S. Central Command for nearly three years and traveled extensively throughout the region, painted a picture that reflected the recent upheaval in Afghanistan, where U.S. troops departed at the end of August.

On Afghanistan, McKenzie said the al-Qaida extremist group has grown slightly since U.S. forces left and that the ruling Taliban leaders are divided about their 2020 pledge to break ties with the group. He said the departure of the U.S military and intelligence assets from the country has made it very hard, not impossible to ensure that neither al-Qaida nor the Islamic State groups Afghanistan affiliate can pose a threat to the United States.

Like the Talibans long campaign to get Americans out of Afghanistan, Iran and its proxies have battled to get the U.S. out of Iraq and the broader Middle East.

Iran still pursues a vision of ejecting us, he said. And they see the principal battleground for that as being in Iraq. And I believe they are under the view that they can increase friction in Iraq to where we will leave.

Iran, he said, believes that campaign wont affect the nuclear negotiations that were long stalled but are now restarting. But, he said, I think its a dangerous position for the Iranians to maintain, because I think theyre not going to be able to decouple those two things.

McKenzie said that as NATO begins to expand its presence in Iraq as planned, the U.S. will refine its force there. And the total U.S. force presence will depend on future agreements with Iraqs government.

The U.S. troops in Syria, currently numbering about 900, will continue to advise and assist Syrian rebel forces in the fight against IS, McKenzie said. He said its not clear how much longer that will be necessary but said, I think we are measurably closer than we were a couple of years ago. I still think we have a ways to go.

More broadly, McKenzie noted that the U.S. troop presence across the Middle East has significantly dropped since last year, when it peaked amid tensions with Iran, at as much as 80,000. The U.S. has identified China and Russia as the top national security threats, labeling China as Americas pacing challenge, and has looked to focus more effort and assets in the Pacific.

In its recent review of the positioning of U.S. forces around the world, the Pentagon said little about removing or repositioning troops in the Middle East. McKenzie and other top military leaders have long worried that the U.S. military is concentrated in too few locations in the Middle East and must disperse more to increase security.

We think it is important to work with our partners in the region to present a more complex targeting problem to Iran, he said, adding that U.S. will look at other bases and opportunities to move troops around to achieve that goal.

McKenzie said he is particularly concerned by Irans development of ballistic and cruise missiles as well as armed drones.

And so those things are very concerning to me because they continue to develop them, he said. And they show no signs of abating in their research in this field, and their fielding of new and increasingly lethal and capable weapons.
PARIS (AP)  German Chancellor Olaf Scholz held a meeting with French President Emmanuel Macron in Paris on Friday as their governments work to deescalate tensions between Russia and Ukraine.

The leaders held a joint news conference during Scholz's first trip abroad following his coalition government's swearing-in on Wednesday. They said they would meet with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy next week on the sidelines of a European Union summit in Brussels.

We all view the situation on the Ukrainian border with concern, Scholz said. Were clear that the inviolability of borders in Europe is one of the principles that all in Europe must accept for our common security.This rule goes for everyone.

Scholz plans to go from France to Brussels to meet with European Union and NATO officials. Macron said he and Russian President Vladimir Putin are scheduled to talk next week.

Our first goal is to avoid any useless tension, Macron said. Our will ... Europeans and Americans, is to show that we are very vigilant about the situation, but that there must be no escalation, in any way.

U.S. President Joe Biden this week moved to take a more direct role in diplomacy between Ukraine and Russia. In recent years, France and Germany have played mediator roles in the conflict.

Biden has pressed Putin to pull back a massive Russian troop buildup near Ukraine's border that has created growing concern in Washington and European capitals, as well as in Ukraine itself.

Macron and Scholz discussed other bilateral and European issues Friday, including the economic recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic. Macron has made boosting growth and jobs a priority of France's upcoming six-month presidency of the European Union, which starts in January.

Scholz, who was previously Germanys finance minister, noted that he and Macron both have tried to show what is possible in Europe when we work together. " Europes 750 billion-euro ($846 billion) pandemic recovery fund is an emphatic symbol of the possibilities connected with this, he said.

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And so I am very confident that we can solve the tasks that lie ahead of us  this is about continuing to make possible and maintain the growth that we set on track with the recovery fund, and at the same time providing for solid finances, Scholz said.

Scholz, a 63-year-old center-left politician, became Germanys ninth post-World War II chancellor this week, opening a new era for the European Unions most populous nation and largest economy after Angela Merkels 16-year tenure.

His government is composed of a coalition of his center-left Social Democrats, the environmentalist Greens and the pro-business Free Democrats.

_____

Moulson contributed from Berlin, Germany
Steven Gerrard will be determined to give Liverpool a bloody nose on an emotional return to Anfield with Aston Villa on Saturday as the coronavirus once more casts a shadow over the Premier League.

Former Liverpool midfielder Gerrard has won three of his four league matches since taking over from Dean Smith at Villa Park but faces a tough task against Jurgen Klopp's free-scoring team.

Dethroned leaders Chelsea will be desperate to get back on track against Leeds this weekend, while Newcastle start a tough run of games that could make or break their season.

AFP Sport takes a look at some of the talking points ahead of the action.

Gerrard factor

Steven Gerrard is widely expected to return to Liverpool as manager one day after a stellar playing career at Anfield, but he has been at pains to say he does not regard the Villa job as a mere stepping stone.

The 41-year-old left Scottish champions Rangers last month to pit his wits as a manager in the Premier League and has had an immediate impact.

Wins over Brighton, Crystal Palace and Leicester have lifted Villa to 10th place, with the only blot on his copybook being a narrow 2-1 defeat to leaders Manchester City.

He knows that although he is likely to receive a warm welcome at Liverpool, the goodwill will end when the home side kick off in search of their fifth straight league win.

Gerrard, who won the Champions League, two FA Cups, three League Cups and the UEFA Cup at Anfield, promised he would not get caught up in the occasion.

"I certainly won't make it about me," he said. "If other people do I can't control that. It's about us going there full of confidence and belief that we can go and take something from the game."

Leaky Chelsea

Chelsea went into last weekend's game against West Ham, which ended in a 3-2 defeat, with the proud record of just six goals conceded in 14 Premier League matches but they have now sprung a leak.

The 3-3 Champions League draw against Zenit Saint Petersburg on Wednesday meant a Thomas Tuchel side had conceded three or more goals in consecutive games for the first time since April 2019, when he was manager of Paris Saint-Germain.

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The German knows Chelsea must recover their defensive solidity as the bedrock of a title challenge because they do not boast the attacking resources of Manchester City or Liverpool.

Forwards Romelu Lukaku and Timo Werner are now level with defender Reece James and attacking midfielder Mason Mount at the top of Chelsea's goalscoring charts, but tellingly they have just five goals apiece in all competitions.

Captain Cesar Azpilicueta has demanded a reaction from the Blues, who are two points behind leaders City.

"We have to have a reaction on Saturday in front of our fans, and all together try to get the win and have a good performance from the first minute, and then from there start building our confidence," he said.

Spurs fixture crunch

An outbreak of the coronavirus at Tottenham has thrown the club's plans into chaos, with Antonio Conte's side now facing a potential fixture pile-up.

Spurs' crucial midweek Europa Conference League match against Rennes was called off on Wednesday after the alarming Covid outbreak and 24 hours later their Premier League match at Brighton on Sunday was also postponed.

Tottenham already have a match to make up after last month's game at Burnley was postponed due to heavy snow.

It is not a new conundrum for the club, who last season had matches postponed due to Covid outbreaks within opposition camps, but it is a major headache during a busy time of the year.

Fixtures (1500 GMT unless stated)

Friday

Brentford v Watford (2000)

Saturday

Manchester City v Wolves (1230), Arsenal v Southampton, Chelsea v Leeds, Liverpool v Aston Villa, Norwich v Manchester United (1730)

Sunday

Burnley v West Ham (1400), Leicester v Newcastle (1400), Crystal Palace v Everton (1630)

Brighton v Tottenham - postponed due to Covid outbreak

jw/smg/mw
A fourth victim took the stand Friday at Ghislaine Maxwell 's Manhattan federal sex-trafficking trial and testified that the British socialite gave her an unsolicited massage and touched her breasts.

GHISLAINE MAXWELL RUBS JEFFREY EPSTEIN'S FEET ON PRIVATE JET IN RAUNCHY PHOTOS SEIZED AFTER HIS ARREST

Annie Farmer, who has been outspoken about the alleged abuse, used her true identity on the stand. The three prior victims who testified used pseudonyms or first names to protect their privacy.

Farmer said she was 16 when she visited the late financier and Maxwell, now 59, at his sprawling New Mexico ranch in 1996. Her older sister, Maria, worked for Epstein at the time in New York.

Maxwell offered to give Farmer a massage, and she agreed and got undressed, she told jurors. During the rubdown, Maxwell allegedly fondled her breasts.

GHISLAINE MAXWELL ALLEGEDLY TOLD TEEN SHE HAD A GREAT BODY FOR MR. EPSTEIN AND HIS FRIENDS

"Once she pulled down the sheet, I felt kind of frozen," Farmer testified. Later on during the trip, Epstein crawled into her bed in the guestroom where she was sleeping.

"Suddenly Epstein kind of opened my door, bounding into the room in a playful way, saying that he wanted to cuddle," Farmer recalled. Then he "pressed his body into me," she said.

She excused herself to use the bathroom to get away from the convicted pedophile who was more than twice her age at the time.

A month later, Epstein and Maxwell allegedly sexually assaulted her older sister, Maria, at the Ohio compound of Les Wexner, former Victoria's Secret CEO, according to civil filings.

Epstein hanged himself in a Manhattan jail cell in 2019 while awaiting trial on federal sex crimes charges. He was 66 at the time.

Farmer's testimony was originally expected on Thursday but an attorney in the case fell ill and court was postponed. Prosecutors are expected to rest their case as early as Friday.

Maxwell, who has been jailed since her arrest, is accused of recruiting and grooming girls to be abused by Epstein from 1994 to 2004.

She's charged with six counts stemming from the alleged abuse of four victims, including sex trafficking of a minor and enticement of a minor. If convicted, she faces up to 70 years in prison.

She has denied the allegations.
Things got heated on the House floor Thursday when U.S. Rep. James Comer, R-Ky., confronted California Democrat Adam Schiff over the Russia probe and the overseas business dealings of Hunter Biden, according to a report.

Comer accused Schiff of trying to "peddle" information to discredit former President Donald Trump during recent years, while Schiff insinuated that Comer was ignoring alleged actions by Trump associates in support of the former president.

Later, after Comer suggested Schiff was ignoring the business history of Hunter Biden, the presidents son, the Democrat tried to shift the attention to past accusations against Donald Trump Jr.

The showdown came as House members were debating the Protecting Our Democracy Act, a Democrat-backed bill intended to limit presidential authority, in response to actions taken by Trump while he was in office, the Examiner reported.

NEW YORK TIMES MOCKED FOR CLAIMING DEBUNKED STEELE DOSSIER A DISTRACTION FROM THE REAL RUSSIA INVESTIGATION

Schiff, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, led the panels investigation into possible ties between Russia and the Trump campaign during the 2016 presidential election. Comer serves as ranking member of the House Oversight and Reform Committee.

Thursdays confrontation between Comer and Schiff was reported by the Washington Examiner.

"Every time Chairman Schiff rises to speak on a bill about intelligence and security and holding the president accountable, I get excited hoping were going to hear about that evidence of collusion and all the other investigations that were conducted in the House," Comer said, making reference to claims against the Trump campaign that were later discredited.

Schiff responded by defending the investigations he led, according to the Examiner.

"Are you aware that the presidents campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, met with an agent of Russian intelligence and provided Russian intelligence with internal campaign polling data, as well as strategic insights about their intelligence in key battleground states? Are you aware of that?" Schiff replied.

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Comer fired back: "I think everyone is aware of every bit of information that you have tried to peddle over the last four years," the Republican said.

"Are you aware that while the Trump campaign chairman was providing internal polling data, that Kremlin intelligence was leading a clandestine social media campaign to elect Donald Trump?" Schiff answered.

"I think we see every day  Facebook just announced that Russia was trying to do a Facebook campaign in Ukraine, if I remember reading that correctly," Comer shot back.

The Republican then shifted the focus to Hunter Biden, son of the president, and his overseas business dealings, details of which the Trump 2020 campaign used to make its case against Democrat Joe Biden winning the White House.

"Are you aware of President Bidens son Hunters art dealings? Are you aware of the presidents sons dealings  in Congo with the cobalt mine? Are you aware of the dealings in Ukraine?" Comer asked Schiff.

"I am aware of President Trumps son meeting secretly in Trump Tower New York with a Russian delegation with the purpose of receiving dirt on Hillary Clinton, which the Russian delegation represented was part of the Russian governments effort to help elect Donald Trump in 2016," Schiff said, "and I am aware that ... Donald Trump Jr. said in response to that Russian offer of dirt on Donald Trumps opponent that he would love it, suggested the best time would be in late summer, and had a secret meeting in Trump Tower. And when asked about that secret meeting, both the president and his son lied about it. Are you aware about those facts?"

"I think that everyones seen all the information, again, that you all have peddled," Comer responded. "Im curious if you would like to make a wager on which presidents child, which presidents son, at the end of the day, once we have the gavel, will ... be the most security risk to our nation."

"Im happy to continue to outline the contacts between the Trump campaign and Russia, their solicitation of Russian help in the election, the former presidents effort to coerce Ukraine into helping him cheat in the election," Schiff said.

"They have spent a lot of time, a lot of effort, a lot of tax dollars on trying to peddle a lot of wrongdoing in the previous administration," Comer replied.

In November, Comer wrote an Opinion essay for Fox News, arguing that the American public deserved to know why art works by Hunter Biden were selling for seemingly inflated prices.

"Paintings that some art experts have characterized as being of coffee-shop caliber," Comer wrote.

He suggested the art sales could be providing a way for foreign agents and others "to access Hunter Biden, and through him the Oval Office."

Also in November, Schiff said during an appearance on NBCs "Meet the Press" that he had no regrets about hyping the infamous Steele dossier during the Russia probe even though its contents were later largely called into question.

"I don't regret saying that we should investigate claims of someone who, frankly, was a well-respected British intelligence officer," Schiff responded. "And we couldnt have known, of course, years ago that we would learn years later that someone who is a primary source lied to him."

Fox News Jessica Chasmar contributed to this story.
TEGUGICALPA (Reuters) - Incoming Honduran President Xiomara Castro received a potential boost on Thursday when an opposition party offered to support her party in presiding over the next Congress, where initial election results suggest she may lack control.

Preliminary results of last month's election suggested that Castro's leftist Liberty and Refoundation Party (Libre) would win about 50 seats and its main allies would muster about 10 more in the new 128-member Congress, leaving them short of a majority.

Still, Yani Rosenthal, leader of the center-right Liberal Party, which is tipped to win around 22 seats, said his party was willing to vote for a Libre lawmaker to head Congress, possibly setting the scene for broader cooperation.

Rosenthal, who ran unsuccessfully for president this year, said the offer was not tied to any conditions.

It poses complications, however, because Salvador Nasralla, Castro's political partner who controls Libre's main allies, noted that one of his 10 prospective lawmakers was due to head Congress under a deal previously forged with her.

Projected to be the second-biggest force in Congress with 44 seats, ahead of the Liberal Party, is the conservative National Party of outgoing President Juan Orlando Hernandez.

Castro is set to take office in January.

(Reporting by Gustavo Palencia; Editing by Peter Cooney)




Drug companies are deliberately targeting the U.S. to raise prices and game the patent system to delay generic competition in a way that is "unsustainable, unjustified, and unfair to patients and taxpayers," according to the findings from a new investigation released Friday by House Democrats.

The investigation focused on 10 companies that sell 12 of the most expensive drugs to Medicare, including insulin, and found those companies collectively raised prices more than 250 times. The drugs in the committee's investigation are now priced at a median of almost 500 percent higher than when they were brought to market, the report found.

All 10 companies have compensation structures that tie incentive payments to revenue and other financial targets, and several companies directly tied incentive compensation to drug-specific revenue targets, the report found.

The 269-page report from the staff of the House Oversight and Reform Committee is the culmination of a three year investigation started by the late Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.), who was the committee's chairman until his death in 2019.

Staff said they reviewed more than 1.5 million pages of documents - including internal strategy documents, communications among top executives, board materials and nonpublic pricing data.

It also builds off a series of hearings with executives from many of the companies examined in the report.

The report seeks to push back on the claims by the drug industry that price increases are necessary in order to fund research and development into new cures and serves as a call for the Senate to pass the Build Back Better legislation that would allow Medicare to negotiate the prices of some drugs.

The House passed its version of the bill last month, and Senate Democratic leaders are aiming to pass the legislation before Christmas. But Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) is still not on board with the timeline, and Democrats need his support.

The documents showed some of the companies deliberately targeted the U.S. market for increases - while maintaining or lowering prices in the rest of the world - in part because Medicare cannot negotiate directly for lower prices.

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"The investigation has provided a rare glimpse into the decision-making of many of the world's most profitable drug companies," Oversight and Reform Committee Chairwoman Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.) said in a preamble letter to committee members. "Reforms are also needed to make pharmaceutical R&D spending more transparent and prevent anti-competitive practices that suppress generic competition and keep prices high."

The drug industry often argues that critics focus too much on the list price for drugs, which is misleading because many patients get discounts.

But the report says the 12 drugs' net prices that consumers pay out of pocket are "significantly higher" than when the medicines were introduced.

Debra DeShong, executive vice president for public affairs at the industry trade group PhRMA, called the report "misleading" and said it "fails to address abusive practices by insurance companies and middlemen who profit off a broken system while patients can't afford their medicines."

"This so-called investigation has ignored the real affordability problems people face, like rising deductibles and other out-of-pocket costs. This is nothing more than a partisan exercise to justify an extreme proposal that will restrict patient access to lifesaving cures and treatments. We think there's a better way that would lower costs at the pharmacy, while preserving choice, access and innovation," DeShong said.

The final report builds on some of the committee's earlier work and also presents new findings from an investigation of insulin products manufactured by Eli Lilly, Novo Nordisk and Sanofi. These three companies collectively control approximately 90 percent of the global insulin market.

"Over the past 20 years, they have repeatedly and dramatically raised the list prices of their rapid-acting and long-acting insulins and reaped billions of dollars in revenues," the report found, adding that Medicare lost out on more than $16 billion in savings because of those increases.

The House bill would put a cap on how much seniors on Medicare pay for insulin, limiting it to $35 a month.

At the same time, House Republicans on the committee released their own report, claiming pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs) are responsible for price increases, not drug companies. PBMs administer prescription drug plans for large employers and are tasked with negotiating discounts on drugs with pharmaceutical firms and insurers.

PBMs have engaged in finger-pointing with drug companies and lawmakers over rising prices for years.

"Pharmacy Benefit Managers must be held accountable for their role in rising prescription drug prices, and Congress must take on PBMs to implement transparency and restore competition," committee ranking member James Comer (R-Ky.) said in a statement.
Torrance police stand guard outside the Gable House Bowl after three people were killed and four were injured in a shooting on Jan. 5, 2019. (Gina Ferazzi/Los Angeles Times)

When Torrance police officers saw Black people in their city in the 1990s, they had two special phrases to describe them, according to a federal lawsuit.

A pair of acronyms  "NIT" and "NITAD"  both used a racial slur to note that a Black person was either "in Torrance" or "in Torrance after dark," according to the testimony of former Torrance police officers contained in U.S. Department of Justice filings.

In the wake of a Times investigation revealing the details of years of racist, homophobic and otherwise vile texts sent by more than a dozen Torrance police officers, some L.A. County residents have noted that Torrance has a long history of struggling with inclusion, often centered on the practices of its police department.

In 1995, the Justice Department launched an investigation into racist policing in Torrance and sued the department over alleged discriminatory hiring practices.

In court documents filed as part of that case, former officers said they were taught by supervisors during their probationary periods that some African Americans were upstanding Black citizens" while others were best described by a racial slur. Former officers also said they were instructed to stop and question Black motorists without cause, according to the complaint.

The allegations arose from a broader federal investigation into discriminatory hiring practices in Torrance's police and fire departments, which was launched in 1991. When the Justice Department brought its suit in 1993, the 233-member department employed only three Black officers, six Asian officers and 15 Latino officers. There were only eight people of color employed in a 175-member fire department at that time.

Torrance was one of several Southern California cities sued over discriminatory practices by the Justice Department at the time. Pomona, El Monte and Alhambra all entered into settlements with the government, but Torrance spent millions fighting the reform effort. In 1996, a judge sided with the city and decided the federal government had failed to prove Torrance's police and fire department tests or application processes were racially biased.

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Philip Eure  the attorney who brought the case for the federal government and now serves as the New York City Police Department's inspector general  could not immediately be reached for comment.

At the time, Torrance Police Chief Joe De Ladurantey defended the department's tactics as good, aggressive policing.

If I were a citizen, youre damned right Id want people stopped," he told The Times in 1995, dismissing complaints of racial profiling by noting he received just as many allegations of misconduct against officers from white residents.

Police leaders in L.A. County have taken a much different approach in response to the recent racist text scandal.

After news of the hateful messages first became public in August, Torrance Police Chief Jeremiah Hart asked California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta for assistance. Bonta launched an investigation Wednesday. Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. George Gascon has also spoken highly of Hart for being forthcoming with information about the scandal as his office reviews how many criminal cases might be impacted by the officers' alleged misconduct.

County prosecutors have already dismissed 40 cases where officers implicated in the scandal would have been material witnesses, according to Greg Risling, a district attorney's office spokesman. The Torrance city attorney's office has also dismissed 50 criminal cases involving officers under investigation as they were unavailable to testify, according to Sgt. Mark Ponegalek, a Torrance police spokesman.

Fifteen officers remain on administrative leave due to the scandal, Ponegalek said. Long Beach police officer Maxwell Schroeder, a former Torrance recruit who was among the officers The Times identified earlier this week, was suspended Friday as a result of the scandal.

"This department does not tolerate biased or prejudicial behavior by any employee  this officers actions do not reflect the morals held by our officers who engage with our diverse community, Long Beach Police Chief Robert Luna, who recently announced he will run for sheriff next year, said in a statement. Every Long Beach resident deserves to be treated with equity and respect when they interact with our personnel.

Cody Weldin and Christopher Tomsic, the two officers whose alleged criminal behavior sparked the investigation into the texts earlier this year, are no longer employed by Torrance police.

There are five officers implicated in the scandal whose identities remain unknown. Torrance police have declined to confirm or deny the names of the officers caught up in the scandal, citing ongoing administrative and criminal investigations.

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
US special climate envoy John Kerry. Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images

US climate envoy John Kerry told Politico that trillions need to be spent to fight the climate crisis.

He singled out seven countries, including Saudi Arabia and China, that need to do more to cut emissions.

AOC has separately endorsed spending trillions on the climate through her Green New Deal proposal.

US climate envoy John Kerry just said something a lot closer to the views of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez than any other American politician: trillions need to be spent on fighting climate change.

Unlike AOC, though, he wants to ensure every country is playing its part in confronting the challenge.

Kerry spoke to Politico while in Europe this week, where he's strategizing with other leaders on getting countries to reduce their carbon emissions. He said that if the world is to "avoid the worst consequences of the climate crisis," seven countries specifically need to do more to meet the challenge: China, Russia, India, Brazil, Mexico, Indonesia, South Africa and Saudi Arabia.

"Trillions can clearly  and will need to  be invested," Kerry said.

"We are working out the details of these different options right now," he added. "We want to be very specific. None of this should be pie in the sky. It needs to be real and economically viable."

This type of funding would come from a range of sources, Kerry told Politico, including philanthropies, partnerships among rich countries, and the private sector to help less wealthy nations that depend on fossil fuels or deforestation.

Since AOC became a member of Congress, she's become a lonely voice calling for spending on a scale previously unthinkable to save the planet from the climate crisis. She spearheaded the Green New Deal in 2019, which laid out goals for a 10-year national mobilization to upgrade US infrastructure, convert to zero-emission energy sources, and remove greenhouse gases and reduce pollution, among other things.

She reintroduced the bill this February with Massachusetts Sen. Ed Markey, saying during a press conference at the time that "our movement towards a sustainable future has been divided with really just this false notion that we have to choose between our planet and our economy."

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As Insider reported, AOC and Markey's 10-year climate initiative did not have a specific price tag, but a cost analysis from the right-leaning American Action Forum estimated the Green New Deal would cost between $51 trillion and $93 trillion over the next decade. In 2019, Ocasio-Cortez did put a number on it, saying the resolution would cost at least $10 trillion.

"I think we really need to get to $10 trillion to have a shot," Ocasio-Cortez told The Hill, adding, "I know it's a ton. I don't think anyone wants to spend that amount of money, it's not a fun number to say, I'm not excited to say we need to spend $10 trillion on climate, but ... it's just the fact of the scenario."

Republicans largely oppose the Green New Deal, particularly due to the amount of money carrying it out would cost. Ranking member of the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources John Barrasso said in a statement in April that "the green new disaster is back."

"The Green New Deal isn't about protecting the environment. It's about massively increasing the size of government and dictating how Americans live their lives," Barrasso said.

Both parties have historically been in favor of significant annual spending on defense, though, most recently passing a $770 billion national defense bill. The Congressional Budget Office previously estimated Congress will spend $7.3 trillion on defense over the next decade.

Kerry acknowledged the challenges of choosing to spend trillions now on the climate crisis if a Republican takes over the White House in 2024  especially after President Donald Trump took the US out of the Paris agreement. He told Politico, though, that regardless of who assumes office in three years, he is confident any leader will stick to renewed climate commitments.

"I don't believe any president or any prime minister or any finance minister can stand in the way of what the marketplace is now doing ... I think anybody who's serious knows that these things are happening, these investments are being made, this transition is undertaken," Kerry said. "And I don't believe a politician can turn it around."

Read the original article on Business Insider
By Tim Reid

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - A judge in Texas ruled on Thursday that a law prohibiting abortions after about six weeks violated the state's constitution because it allows private citizens to sue abortion providers.

State District Court Judge David Peeples was ruling on a contentious Texas law that bans abortions after a fetal heartbeat has been detected, usually after about six weeks and when many women do not yet realize they are pregnant.

Abortion providers signaled that despite the ruling, they are unlikely to resume the procedure until an expected ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court. The law, which went into effect in September, effectively bans nearly all abortions in Texas, America's second most-populous state.

Texas Right to Life, an anti-abortion group that backed the law, immediately filed an appeal against Thursday's ruling.

The law was designed to avoid normal means of legal challenge, because rather than making state officials responsible for enforcement, it instead gave private individuals anywhere the right to sue doctors and others who provide abortions after six weeks in Texas.

Peeples ruled that the law unconstitutionally gave legal standing to people not injured, and was an "unlawful delegation of enforcement power to a private person."

The U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments about the Texas law last month and is expected to issue a ruling in coming weeks.

The nation's highest court this month also heard arguments about a restrictive Republican-backed Mississippi law that is seen as a direct challenge to the court's landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling that legalized the procedure nationwide.

In oral arguments on Dec. 1, conservative justices, who have a 6-3 majority on the court, signaled a willingness to dramatically curtail abortion rights in the United States. A ruling on the Mississippi law is expected by the summer.

(Reporting by Tim Reid; Editing by Peter Cooney)
Jussie Smollett, leaves the Leighton Criminal Court Building between his mother Janet Smollett and sister Jurnee Smollett

US actor Jussie Smollett lied to police when he claimed to have been the victim of a racist, homophobic assault, a Chicago jury has found.

At trial this week, Smollett, 39, stood by denials that he staged the hoax attack against himself.

Prosecutors countered that he "lied for hours" on the stand as he repeated what he told to Chicago police.

He was found guilty on Thursday of five counts of disorderly conduct.

Each count carries a penalty of up to three years in prison. Given Smollett's lack of previous convictions, experts have said a lighter sentence or probation is likely. A sentencing date has yet to be scheduled.

The jury of six men and six women reached its decision one day after deliberations began.

The trial stemmed from an incident nearly three years ago, in January 2019, when the former Empire television show star told police he was the victim of an attack.

Smollett, who is black and gay, told police he was set upon by two assailants who shouted slurs, yelled a Trump slogan, dumped a "chemical substance" on him, and tied a noose around his neck while he was walking late at night in Chicago.

Authorities opened an investigation into the attack, but in February of that year, police charged Smollett with filing a false police report, alleging he had staged the assault.

He faced a total of six charges, each referring to different instances in which he was accused of lying to police. He was found guilty of five of the six charges, meaning that the last one had not been proven in court.

At trial, jurors heard from brothers Abimbola and Olabinjo Osundairo, who said Smollett had orchestrated the attack himself and paid them $3,500 (2,600) to carry it out.

Smollett said the cheque was for a meal and workout plan from Abimbola, a friend and an extra on Empire, a TV drama about a hip hop dynasty. Asked by his defence lawyer if he gave the man payment for the alleged scheme, Smollett replied: "Never."

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He also testified that he and Abimbola were involved in a sexual relationship before the alleged attack.

Special prosecutor Dan Webb asked the actor repeatedly about a "hoax" attack. Each time, Smollett denied that was the case.

"There was no hoax on my part," he said. "Any question you're going to ask about that is going to be denied."

In his closing arguments, Mr Webb said Smollett caused Chicago police to spend enormous resources investigating the alleged crime.

"Besides being against the law, it is just plain wrong to outright denigrate something as serious as a real hate crime and then make sure it involved words and symbols that have such historical significance in our country," Mr Webb said.

Outside the court after the verdict was read, Mr Webb added that "for Mr Smollett to get up in front of [the jury] and lie for hours and hours, that really compounded his misconduct".

He called it "unexpected" that Smollett would lie repeatedly during trial, and said that it will be something that he raises with the judge during sentencing.

Nenye Uche, a lawyer for Smollett, said that the team "obviously respectfully disagree with the jury's verdict", and that they are "100% confident" that the case will be overturned on appeal.

Authorities have said Smollett wanted to boost his profile because he was "dissatisfied with his salary" on Empire. By the fifth season of the show, he said he was being paid $100,000 per episode.

He was eventually written out amid the controversy around the alleged attack.
The former Empire star faces up to three years in prison for an allegedly staged attack in 2019.

After about a week-long trial, actor/musician Jussie Smollett was found guilty by a Cook County jury in Chicago Thursday after being accused of staging a hate crime in 2019.

As theGrio has extensively reported, Smollett told police in January 2019 that he was a victim of racist and homophobic attack. Following an investigation, Chicago police alleged Smollett orchestrated and lied about the hate crime, causing a legal and media frenzy that made international headlines.

This week, Smollett went to trial after being charged with six felony counts of disorderly conduct for making false reports to the police; he was found guilty on five of the six charges.

Former Empire actor Jussie Smollett leaves the Leighton Criminal Courts Building on Dec. 8, 2021 in Chicago, Illinois. (Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images)

The jury reportedly deliberated for nine hours over the course of two days before finding Smollett guilty. Per Chicago Tribune, Smollett could face up to three years in prison, though with no prior criminal record its far more likely he would receive a lighter sentence including possible probation.

Smollett is said to have remained stoic as the verdict was announced.

The verdict seemingly ends a nearly three-year saga following the alleged attack, which saw an initial wave of support for Smollett from public figures, politicians, and celebrities alike. Per the Tribune, despite the cases high profile, jurors were tasked with determining only one thing: Whether Smollett, in fact, staged the attack on himself, then lied to police about it.

As Associated Press reported, defense attorneys suggested during the trial that the Osundairo brothers, Abimbola and Olabingo Osundairo, targeted the Empire actor and staged the hoax themselves for money.

Smolletts legal team argued that, following interrogation from the Chicago police, the brothers then demanded $1 million each from Smollett to not testify against him at trial. Both men said in court last week that Smollett paid and directed them to perform the fake attack in order to gain media attention.

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Jussie Smollett with his mother Janet at the Leighton Criminal Courthouse for day five of his trial in Chicago. (AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast)

Smollett was previously indicted in March 2019 on 16 counts of felony disorderly conduct. A week later, however, Cook County States Attorney Kim Foxx dropped all charges, saying that the actor did community service, lost his $10,000 bond and was no danger to the community, on top of having no previous felony convictions.

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The post Jussie Smollett found guilty in hate crime hoax appeared first on TheGrio.
Actor Jussie Smollett was found guilty on Thursday of making a false report to Chicago police that he was the victim of a hate crime in January 2019, per the Washington Post.

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The big picture: The 39-year-old former "Empire" star, who is Black and gay, reported to police that he was the victim of a hate crime when two men violently attacked him. Prosecutors accused him of orchestrating a hoax attack on himself. An attorney for Smollett said after the verdict he's "100% innocent" and would file an appeal, per AP.

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House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Greg Meeks (D-N.Y.) said he wants to lead a bipartisan group of U.S. lawmakers to Taiwan next month to reassert America's commitment to the self-ruling island that China sees as under its control.

"I want to go and I may go to Taiwan in January," Meeks said Thursday evening in an interview with The Hill just off the House floor.

The official trip by the Foreign Affairs Committee, known as a congressional member delegation, or CODEL, would mark the third such visit to Taiwan by a group of lawmakers in recent months.

Meek's remarks come amid heightened tensions between China and Taiwan and are sure to infuriate officials in Beijing, who earlier had issued stern warnings to U.S. lawmakers not to travel to the island.

"The administration and others have made it clear what our position is on Taiwan: We stand with Taiwan. We're already making sure that they have the wherewithal to defend themselves, and we think it would be a big mistake for the PRC [People's Republic of China] to try to go and invade it," Meeks told The Hill.

"We believe that the way they have existed for all this period of time, based upon the agreements, should remain."

On Nov. 9, six GOP lawmakers - including Sens. John Cornyn (Texas), Tommy Tuberville (Ala.) and Mike Lee (Utah) - made a surprise visit, traveling to Taipei in a U.S. Navy C-40A plane.

Just weeks later, over the Thanksgiving break, a bipartisan group of five lawmakers on the House Veterans Affairs Committee, led by Chairman Mark Takano (D-Calif.), made a second surprise visit to the island. Reps. Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.), Nancy Mace (R-S.C.), Colin Allred (D-Texas) and Sara Jacobs (D-Calif.) also attended.

Both delegations met with Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen and other top officials during their trips. And Meeks said he plans to do the same.

"Any time we travel in an official CODEL, we try to meet with the head of state," he said.

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The possible Taiwan visit would be one leg of a broader trip to Asia in January, Meeks said. An invitation would likely be extended to the more than 50 members of the Foreign Affairs Committee.

"I believe there would be broad bipartisan interest in and participation on a CODEL to Taiwan, as it has never been more important for America to show support for our allies under threat," said one Democrat on the Foreign Affairs panel who said he would attend such a trip.

But Foreign Affairs lawmakers are sure to face pressure from Beijing, as did some of their colleagues who made earlier visits to Taiwan.

Slotkin, a former CIA analyst who joined the Takano delegation, told CNN that she and others received "strongly worded," "angry" and "blunt" messages from the Chinese Embassy in Washington, warning them to call off the trip. They all ignored the threats.

Meeks said he won't be deterred either.

"I stand up and I speak out for what I believe, and no one can intimidate me to stop it," he said.
Miami-Dade County Public Schools Supt. Alberto Carvalho has been selected as the next leader of the L.A. Unified School District. (Lynne Sladky / Associated Press)

Alberto Carvalho, who has led Miami-Dade County Public Schools since 2008 and is among the nations most experienced and admired school district leaders, was named Thursday the next superintendent of the Los Angeles Unified School District, bringing a reputation for stability and improved student achievement in Florida to the nation's second-largest school district.

The Los Angeles Board of Education unanimously approved his selection Thursday morning, a high-stakes decision at a pivotal moment for the school district, which is undertaking a monumental pandemic recovery effort for its 450,000 students.

In coming to L.A. Unified, Carvalho, 57, moves from heading the fourth-largest K-12 public school system to take on one of the highest-profile and most challenging posts in public education.

He'll jump into a school system in which many students have long struggled to achieve and were further set back  academically and emotionally  by the COVID-19 pandemic. The district also is facing sharply declining enrollment and a long-term structural deficit. The financial risk has receded, for now, because of billions of dollars in coronavirus relief aid and state tax surpluses that Carvalho must spend quickly and wisely.

In remarks broadcast in Miami, Carvalho said long-standing challenges confront urban and rural school districts throughout the country.

"There are still historic, difficult achievement gaps between poor students and non-poor students," he said. He also spoke of "unprecedented learning loss and unfinished learning as a result of this pandemic that has disproportionately impacted the most fragile amongst us  students of color, students who are poor English-language learners, and students with disabilities."

"Based on the conversations that I've had with the leadership of the board in L.A., recognizing the challenges, the needs, but also the opportunities, I feel that this is a very good fit," he said.

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School board President Kelly Gonez agrees.

Alberto Carvalho brings the deep experience we need as an educator and leader of a large urban district to manage L.A. Unifieds ongoing response to and recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic, Gonez said. He established a clear record of positive student outcomes and has relentlessly worked toward greater equity for historically underserved communities. I know he will continue that focus in Los Angeles."

The board hopes to approve his contract next week. No start date was announced.

The record in Miami

In Miami, Carvalhos accomplishments have included enhancing science and technology opportunities at schools and increasing the number of Advanced Placement and honors classes for minority students from low-income families, UCLA education professor Tyrone Howard said.

More broadly speaking, Carvalho seized on the importance of offering choices in schooling that embodied variety, quality and academic rigor, his supporters said.

The challenges in L.A. have relevant overlap, Howard added.

Miami-Dade school board member Lucia Baez-Geller praised Carvalho as data-driven, skilled at integrating technology and someone "willing to take steps that might not be popular but are necessary.

On Florida's accountability system, the Miami-Dade district's rating has risen to an A.

One of Carvalho's accomplishments has been surviving in the job for more than an entire generation of K-12 students. The tenure of urban superintendents typically lasts three years or less.

Since Roy Romer's departure in 2006, L.A. Unified has had eight school chiefs, including interim office holders. Former Supt. Austin Beutner stepped down in June at the end of his three-year contract, in part citing exhaustion after managing through a teachers' strike and a pandemic. Beutner's top deputy, Megan Reilly, has served as interim leader since that time and was a finalist for the job.

A cross-country move

The new position will represent a full reboot for Carvalho, who has spent his entire education career affiliated with the Miami district  rising from teacher to the top job.

He wont have the benefit of the relationships in L.A. that he had in Miami," said former Miami and New York City schools chief Rudy Crew, for whom Carvalho worked as a top aide in Miami. "Hell have to work hard to do that. And I expect he will work hard to do that.

Pedro Noguera, dean of USC's Rossier School of Education, said Carvalho will be well served by his experience in the highly politicized environment of Miami and Florida.

In addition, "he is an innovator with an ability to 'see' a large system in all of its complexity," Noguera said. All the same, "he will need to surround himself with people who know L.A. and know the current school system so that he can approach changing it strategically."

In enticing Carvalho to change coasts, the Los Angeles Board of Education accomplished something that New York City  the nation's largest school system  could not. In 2018, Carvalho agreed to take the New York job, then backed out one day later on live TV, announcing his decision to stay in Miami.

This time, he again appeared on live TV in Miami, but announced his departure.

"I want to demonstrate the possibilities of reinventing education, as we've done here in Miami-Dade in collaboration with good working people, the true believers, who right now labor and endeavor in teaching kids every single day in Los Angeles," said Carvalho, who bear-hugged each dignitary who stood behind him.

A few local leaders and advocates had hoped a Latino would be appointed to serve a district that is nearly 75% Latino and about 10% white. Carvalho is a native of Portugal and speaks fluent Spanish, which he incorporated into his farewell remarks.

"Here we have another white man brought in to lead as superintendent, a white man immigrant from Europe," said one L.A. advocate, who requested anonymity because she'll have to collaborate with the new leader. "What is the cultural fit in L.A.?"

L.A. board member Nick Melvoin seemed to anticipate that concern in his praise for Carvalho: "We have no doubt that he will continue to lead with empathy, bringing his personal history as an immigrant and English learner to bear, and work alongside parents, students, teachers and the broader community to realize a vision of success for all students.

Miami-Dade school board member Luisa Santos called Carvalho's hire a win for all immigrants, for all formerly undocumented people, for all English-language learners, to see people of that background in positions of power where they get to drive change for others, she said.

Immigrant roots

Carvalho arrived alone and almost penniless to the U.S. at age 17. He learned English as a young adult and quickly worked his way up from construction and restaurant jobs as he attended Broward Community College. He later won a scholarship to Barry University and enrolled on a pre-med track. He excelled academically, but took a hard turn in his career path when, in his mid-20s, he interviewed for a teaching position at Miami Jackson Senior High. He was offered a job the same day, a Miami Herald profile reported in 2019.

After four years in the classroom  teaching physics, chemistry and calculus  he became an assistant principal. The superintendent at the time was so impressed that he brought Carvalho to work downtown without his having been a principal. Carvalho oversaw federal programs and later became the district's chief communications officer. He gained further experience by overseeing grant administration and lobbying state officials.

Under Supt. Crew, Carvalho launched several initiatives, including a Parent Academy and a School Improvement Zone, focusing on campuses with low academic achievement.

After becoming superintendent, Carvalho eventually filled a gap in his resume, serving as a principal. He put himself at the helm of a new campus called iPrep Academy, a pre-kindergarten-to-12th-grade magnet school "designed to promote respect and responsibility among the students and staff," according to its website. All students are required to take honors classes.

A few stumbles

His career also included episodes that led to criticism.

In Miami, Carvahlo's tenure as superintendent was marred at the beginning when embarrassing emails surfaced between him and an education beat reporter. A few emails were romantically suggestive; others indicated what some perceived as professionally inappropriate collaboration on coverage. The reporter, who had moved on to another newspaper, resigned from her job, but Carvalho  who denied any romantic involvement  forged ahead.

Carvalho came under scrutiny late last year from the school system's inspector general. Carvalho had helped solicit a $1.57-million donation from an online instruction company for a foundation that Carvalho oversees. The company had a contract pending with the district. Once hired, the company provided an online platform that was mired in problems and quickly scrapped, the Miami-Herald reported.

In June, the inspector general concluded that the donation, which was meant to benefit teachers, did not violate state or district ethics policies, but created the appearance of impropriety and that the foundation, which Carvalho had started, should return the funds. The foundation instead distributed the money in $100 gift certificates to teachers, according to the Miami Herald.

In the big picture, such episodes were "the most minor of speed bumps on a very smooth and very successful 14-year run, said Fernand Amandi, a local communications strategist based in Miami.

Los Angeles educators and advocates generally expressed enthusiasm over the selection.

Importantly, he views English learners not primarily as students who lack English fluency but as the children of immigrants with the rich hopes, dreams and aspirations that immigrant families have always brought to this country, said Patricia Gandara, a professor of education at UCLA and an expert on English learners, who make up nearly 20% of L.A. district students.

Eighth-grade English teacher Joni Badar also was hopeful.

As an educator, I am thrilled to have a leader who has served in the classroom and as a principal appointed to head our district, said Badar, who teaches at White Middle School in Carson. It is essential that our new superintendent listens to and works alongside teachers."

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
HAMPTON  The Lady of the Sea Marine Memorial could honor the memory of at least one more New Hampshire service member lost at sea in defense of his country.

Wouldnt it be wonderful if that can happen? said Hampton state Rep. Mike Edgar, prime sponsor of House Bill 1456, which would amend the current law allowing the names of military veterans lost at sea since Sept. 11, 2001, to be added to the monument.

Currently, Edgar said, the memorial holds the names of New Hampshire veterans lost or buried at sea during World War II and the Korean and Vietnam conflicts.

A local state representative is sponsoring legislation to add additional names to Hamptons Lady of the Sea Marine Memorial, including the name of Hampton man who was lost at sea in 2018.

The name Edgar hopes to see added if his bill becomes law is a native son of Hampton, the late Jonathan Currier.

Currier, a Marine corporal, was lost sea in 2018. According to reports, he is believed to have fallen overboard Aug. 9 that year from his ship the USS Essex, while the amphibious assault vessel was deployed in the Mindanao Sea off the Philippines Islands. Currier, a member of the 13th Marine Expeditionary Unit, was declared dead Aug. 17, following a five-day search over 13,000 square miles.

Previous story: Devastated parents mourn young Marine lost at sea

The son of Kathy and Chris Currier and the brother of Collin Currier, Jonathan was a Winnacunnet High School graduate in the Class of 2015. Age 21 at the time of his death, due to his talents and leadership skills, he had already advanced in just three years to be a crew chief for a CH-53E Super Stallion helicopter.

Jonathan was my neighbor, Edgar said. He was a member of the Junior ROTC program at Winnacunnet and he was an Eagle Scout. He was just a great kid, a wonderful young man.

Edgar is a retired Navy captain, a 28-year veteran of the Navy Construction Battalion  better known as the Seabees  with the motto Can Do. When Berk Bennett, the commander of Hamptons American Legion Post 35, approached him about getting Curriers name on the seaside memorial, Edgar got to work.

Plenty of support

Edgar learned because the Lady of the Sea is a state veterans memorial under the jurisdiction of the state Department of Parks and Recreation, legislation was needed to update its guidelines. The law was last amended in 1990. He reached out to other legislators to garner their support as co-sponsors. He got a bunch, with both sides of the aisle included.

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Along with Edgar, other Seacoast representatives who signed on to the bill are Renny Cushing, of Hampton, Jim Maggiore, of North Hampton, Laura Pantelakos, of Portsmouth, and Jaci Grote, of Rye, Steve Shurtleff, of Pennacook, John Graham, of Bedford, and Skip Cleaver, of Nashua.

If the bill passes the House, Seacoast District 24's Sen. Tom Sherman of Rye and Dover-area District 4's Sen. David Watters have agreed to usher it through the Senate chamber.

'His name should be on the monument'

According to Bennett, Curriers name is found on Hampton American Legion Post 35's Global War on Terrorism Memorial, as is any and every veteran who lost his or her life during the last 20 years. But he reached out to Edgar to ensure that Curriers name finds a place of honor on the Lady of the Sea Marine Memorial located publicly on Hampton Beach for all to read.

Jonathan Currier, a Marine corporal, was lost sea in 2018.

My thought was you have a Hampton kid here who was lost at sea while serving his country during the Global War on Terrorism, Bennet said. And his name should be on that memorial.

And if other Granite Staters were or are lost at sea while defending this country, Bennett said, their names should be added as well, although to the best of his knowledge, he isnt aware of anyone other than Currier.

The history behind the Lady of the Sea Marine Memorial

Dedicated on 1957, the Lady of the Sea Marine Memorial was established due to the pursuit of the father of a New Hampshire man who died at sea during World War II.

According to excerpts from a story by John M. Holman, Manchester resident William E. Downs sought a grave marker from the federal government for his late son Capt. William D. Downs, after he was buried at sea on May 25, 1945. Downs was surprised to learn the federal government could not  or would not furnish a grave marker to honor his son's life and death.

In 1950, Downs turned to his home state for help, seeking a monument to memorialize all New Hampshires sons and daughters lost or buried at sea in defense of their country. Then-Gov. Sherman Adams created a "New Hampshire Marine Memorial Commission."

After four years of studying all the possibilities, and under the governorship of Hugh Gregg, the site of Hampton Beach was selected for the memorial, across from the Ashworth Hotel.

After considering many plans, it was the current design of a woman gazing out at the ocean holding a wreath, offered by the late Concord Alice E. Cosgrove that was chosen. It was carved from a 24-ton block of New Hampshire granite by Italian artisan Vincenzo Andreani, according to Holman.

The statue is 12 feet with a stone seat surrounding it bearing the names of New Hampshires late maritime heroes, along with words from John Gays 1714 poem, An Epistle to a Lady: "Breathe soft, ye winds ... ye waves in silence rest."

The monument was completed and dedicated on Memorial Day, May 30, 1957, under the governorship of Lane Dwinell. On Veterans Day, 1970, Hamptons American Legion Post 35 dedicated two flag poles at the memorial, which fly the American and New Hampshire flags.

Bennetts hoping that on Memorial Day 2022, Post 35 will be able to hold another ceremony to honor Marine Corporal Jonathan Currier, of Hampton, when his name is added to the states Lady of the Sea Marine Memorial.

This article originally appeared on Portsmouth Herald: NH bill seeks to add Hampton native to Lady of the Sea Marine Memorial
FORT WALTON BEACH  Students at Liza Jackson Preparatory School are breaking down walls  literally.

The gym was bursting with cheer Wednesday and Thursday as three selected teams of different age divisions competed against 40 other schools in an international virtual exercise challenge using the Fort Walton Beach schools new Lu interactive playground, which operates similarly to a Wii gaming system.

Students on a bleacher stomped their feet and those plopped cross-legged on the gym floor clapped their hands and yelled as they watched their peers knock down as many projected brick walls as they could with real sports balls in a 5-minute period through an app called Wall.

Students at Liza Jackson Preparatory School throw balls to knock down a wall as quickly as possible in the newest game on the state-of-the-art Lu interactive playground. Thes activity was part of the Global Lu Challenge, in which schools around the world compete to record the fastest time.

Related: Liza Jackson gets a $20M upgrade: Students get first look at new school building

Emily Curtis, the P.E. teacher, said it marked the students' first time competing in a Lu Challenge. She decided to participate because she loves good, healthy competition, and wants to promote physical activity before the holiday break.

They're just so excited to know that they're doing something here that other students around the world are also doing, Curtis said. I just thought that was a really cool concept.

After huffing and puffing from throwing balls at the wall for 5 consecutive minutes, the students retired to class. The 12-plus category won first place in the global competition.

Undeniably the students favorite part was of the challenge was when their teachers participated after, erupting with joy when their principal, Kaye McKinley, joined in.

Ben Williams, 11, said the Wall was his favorite Lu activity so far.

Its really tiring but its really fun, Ben said. "Its just an amazing experience and its interactive, amazing everything.

Mason Douglas, 8, felt the same.

Its tiring and it gets out your wiggles, he said. It makes you not want to do anything anymore. You get to break down walls.

The Lu is a piece of technology that uses a computer, projector and a 3-D camera to project images onto the wall for students to interact with, Curtis said. It transforms the gym into an immersive environment, she said.

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Liza Jackson Preparatory School Principal Kaye McKinley (far right) gets in on the fun with staff and students as they play the newest game on the state-of-the-art Lu interactive playground.

It's a lot more engaging for them, Curtis said. They're really excited, which makes them more active. Their faces light up when they come into the gym. It's just been a game changer for our program, as the kids have really enjoyed how it's complemented our existing program.

Related: Liza Jackson Preparatory School teachers tour new 76,000 square foot school

This not only marks the first year Liza Jackson has used the Lu, but also the first year it has held P.E. classes in a gym, Curtis said. The school received both after moving into its new location at the site of the old YMCA complex at 1123 Hospital Road this school year.

Curtis pitched it to the Liza Jackson Preparatory School Board of Directors after doing some research. She first stumbled across Lu several years ago through a viral video in which kids threw balls at the wall to smash bugs.

Someone had shared that with me on Facebook and said, You should look into this. This is this would be really cool for your kids, and it's just stayed in the back of my mind, she said. As I knew we were going to be moving into this new facility and going to have a gym, I knew I wanted some kind of projector system to allow us to visually display things for the students.

Liza Jackson Preparatory School P.E. teacher Emily Curtis rallies her players before warmups for their first playing of the newest game on the state-of-the-art Lu interactive playground. This activity was part of the Global Lu Challenge, in which schools around the world compete to record the fastest time.

Curtis is grateful the board saw her vision, she said.

The students use the Lu regularly, alternating between days in the field and other gymnasium activities. Emerson King, 8, appreciates the interactive nature.

I like that whenever you through a ball at the Lu, it notices that you threw a ball at it, and when you throw it at the target, the target goes away, Emerson said. I think thats really cool.

Brooklyn Naylor, 10, said she likes it because it challenges different abilities.

The Lu not only helps with physical health, but also academics. It implements cross-curricular concepts because Curtis can create custom applications and games.

I can ask the third grade teachers what they're learning in science, and then I can create a game on the Lu that will reinforce those concepts with physical activity, she said. So it might be a trivia game where they're throwing a ball at the correct answer, or it might be math facts, where they're solving math equations that relate specifically to what they've learned in class that week.

A state-of-the-art Lu interactive playground was installed at Liza Jackson Preparatory School for the first playing of the newest game in the Global Lu Challenge.

More: Liza Jackson Preparatory School donates STEAM machine to Emerald Coast Science Center

The kids are so excited, they dont always notice the teacher collaboration happening behind the scenes, Curtis noted.

They step in the gym and they think they're just coming to P.E., and they see these questions that they remember from class yesterday or from class in the morning, she said. They get so excited when they know the answer to this question, like, Oh, I just learned this. I feel like we're meeting some of the needs of those students that are really kinesthetic learners, and they're able to apply a physical aspect to some of the things they're learning academically in class.

Like Curtis, McKinley thinks the technology is a good fit for the school.

The kids dont necessarily go outside and play and run; a lot of them dont have time to do that because were a very rigorous school, she said. To combine the physical with the academics is amazing.

This article originally appeared on Northwest Florida Daily News: Liza Jackson Preparatory School uses Lu interactive virtual playground
Dec. 10The New Mexican

ALBUQUERQUE  It took the Lobos an entire season to win six games during former coach Paul Weir's final go-round with the University of New Mexico men's basketball program in 2020-21.

His replacement, Richard Pitino, needed just 10 to reach a half-dozen hashmarks in the win column this time around.

The Lobos (6-4) rolled past Denver, 87-67, on Thursday night in The Pit as KJ Jenkins led the way with five 3-pointers in the second half. It was the second of six straight home games during the month of December for UNM, which hosts UTEP on Sunday before taking a week off for players taking final exams.

Jenkins finished with 21 points while center Gethro Muscadin had a double-double with a 12 points and 11 rebounds. Jay-Allen Tovar added 10 boards and nine points while Jamal Mashburn Jr. became the first Lobo in seven years to reach double figures in all of the season's first 10 games with 10 points.

For Jenkins, it was the breakout game he sorely needed. The junior college transfer had been slowed by an injured ankle that forced him to miss two games.

After Monday's overtime loss to New Mexico State, he said his ankle was still an issue but not so bad that it would keep him from taking the court. Pitino took notice, giving his 6-foot-2 guard a chance to get out and create some offense.

"He looks better," Pitino said in a postgame interview on KKOB-AM. "He was pretty hobbled by that. He's not like a lightning-quick player to begin with, and when you take away his speed a little bit, it's going to slow him down."

Denver dropped to 3-8 with the loss, the Pioneers' fifth straight setback. Their lack of size showed as the Lobos dominated the rebounding category with a 48-32 advantage.

UNM led by as many as 27 points, giving Pitino a chance to get a number of players some much-needed time on the court. That included freshman center Sebastian Forsling. The 7-foot Swede logged a career-high 18 minutes, doubling his season totals for points and rebounds.

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Pitino said he was concerned about how his team would respond after the heartbreaking loss to NMSU.

"I thought there would just be an emotional letdown for everybody, which is natural," he said.

The Lobos went the entire first half without a made 3-pointer, yet led 41-27 at intermission. Once the outside shots started falling the game got out of hand as the lead ballooned to more than two dozen points.

Pitino said he was happiest with the rebounding. Much-maligned in that category in some of the first few games, the Lobos have turned the corner in that regard since a trip to Las Vegas, Nev., for a Thanksgiving-week tournament that produced a pair of losses.

"We have improved drastically since that Towson game with the rebounding," Pitino said.

The Lobos will not play another game on the road until January. Until then they'll have home dates against UTEP, SMU (Dec. 19), Norfolk State (Dec. 21) and the Mountain West Conference opener on Dec. 28 against preseason favorite Colorado State.

GAME NOTES

The Lobos were once again without Emmanuel Kuac, a 6-7 guard who had shown flashes of outstanding play before a lower-body injury sidelined him last weekend in practice. Pitino already ruled him out for Sunday's game and said his return is still up in the air. ... Guard Saquan Singleton continues to struggle at the free throw line. He was 2-for-4 against Denver and is now 9-for-20 for the season. ... Guards Jaelen House and Mashburn didn't play much in the second half. No Lobo had more than 25 minutes. ... UNM had 15 assists although no one single player had more than two. ... Thursday's attendance was 8,046, roughly 5,000 fewer than Monday's game against NMSU.
Calvin Shaw, director of the Criminal Justice Academy at Gaston College, left, and Belmont Police Chief Chad Hawkins, center, were among those helping load toys Wednesday, Dec. 8, 2021, as part of the Christmas Magic program.

Toy prices are up.

The supply chain is tenuous.

Products are limited.

Welcome to the Christmas season 2021.

But despite the vagaries of the economy, dozens of law enforcement officers turned out at Libby Lou's in Cramerton Wednesday afternoon to lend a hand in moving toys for Gaston County's Christmas Magic effort.

Christmas Magic is designed to provide books, toys, clothing and food for hundreds of children across Gaston County this Christmas.

The effort is being managed again this year by the Gaston County Communities in Schools program and partially funded by an anonymous donor who has once again contributed $50,000 to make Christmas purchases.

"This is wonderful," said Communities in Schools Executive Director Arin Farmer as she watched law enforcement officers move toys from Libby Lou's warehouse into vehicles for transport to Gaston College.

"Gaston College has been gracious enough to provide us space," said Farmer. "Everything will be stored there for volunteers to sort out and prepare individual packages for the referrals which we have."

Among those helping load the vehicles were a dozen or so recent graduates of the Gaston College Basic Law Enforcement Training program.

"Graduation was on Dec. 6," said Justice Academy Director Calvin Shaw. "Part of what we do is help the cadets learn about the community, learn about its non-profits, and learn about working together."

Farmer said referrals of children for the program come primarily from county schools and from social workers.

Farmer emphasized that the large anonymous donation is not the end of this year's effort but rather the beginning.

"We're hoping people will not read about this contribution and say, 'Well, they've got all they need," she said. "Instead, we want people to say, 'That's wonderful. Now, what can I do to help?'"

This marks the fourth consecutive year that Libby Lou's has provided toys for the effort, at a considerable discount, and also contributed a sizeable share of toys as well.

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Co-owners Lou Ann Gibson and Libby Stines explained that the same supply chain issues that have afflicted many sectors of the American economy have impacted the toy business as well.

The pair said they began working in January to assure that enough toys of all descriptions would be available when Christmas arrived.

"We're just so glad that Christmas Magic uses a small, local supplier," Stines said, "and we're happy to do our part as well. We try to make sure they get the best bang for the buck."

Farmer emphasized that Christmas Magic will be accepting support right up through Christmas.

"If anyone wants to know how they can get involved, they can give us a call at 704-867-3512," she said. "Checks should be made out to Communities in Schools, with the tagline 'Christmas Magic.'"

Bill Poteat may be reached at 704-869-1855 or bpoteat@gastongazette.com.

This article originally appeared on The Gaston Gazette: Local law enforcement help out Gaston County's Christmas Magic effort
By Essi Lehto and Mike Stone

HELSINKI/WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Finland has chosen U.S. defence giant Lockheed Martin's F-35 fighters to replace ageing F/A-18 combat jets and plans to order 64 planes with weapons systems in a $9.4 billion deal, the government said on Friday.

Lockheed Martin competed in a tender for the deal with Sweden's Saab, U.S. rival Boeing, France's Dassault and Britain's BAE Systems.

The procurement from Lockheed, including weapons as well as service and maintenance until 2030, is estimated to cost 8.378 billion euros ($9.44 billion), the government said.

The construction of hangars and other equipment will add a further 777 million euros, and 824 million euros will be reserved for the final optimised weapons package and to control future contract amendments, it added.

"When comparing military performance, the F-35 best met our needs," Defence Minister Antti Kaikkonen told a news conference.

Military planemakers have been vying for the deal since late 2015, when the Finnish defence ministry began the search for a new jet to replace Finland's old Hornet fighter bought in 1992 from McDonnell Douglas, now part of Boeing.

Finland is the 14th nation to opt for the F-35. It will begin phasing in the F-35 from 2027 onwards, said Airforce Commander Pasi Jokinen.

The choice strengthens the small Nordic nation's defence cooperation with its allies, most significantly the United States and Norway, said researcher Charly Salonius-Pasternak at the Finnish Institute of International Affairs.

"Finland and Norway already train together in the north so it will be a political decision to determine what intelligence is shared and when," he told Reuters, referring to the potential for the jets to share data in real time.

Unlike Norway, Finland is not a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) but it has forged stronger ties with the organisation in recent years and chosen military equipment compatible with NATO members.

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In 2014 Finland and Sweden, which is also not a NATO member, signed an agreement to train together and allow NATO assistance in crisis situations.

"The F-35 will provide Finnish industries unique digital capabilities that leverage 5th generation engineering and manufacturing," said Bridget Lauderdale, Lockheed Martin's vice president and general manager of the F-35 programme.

"The production work will continue for more than 20 years, and the F-35 sustainment work will continue into the 2070s," Lauderdale said in a statement.

Rival jetmakers expressed their disappointment with Finland's decision with Saab Chief Executive Micael Johansson saying he was somewhat surprised the F-35 had fallen within budget.

France's Dassault said said the choice of a U.S. aircraft was regrettable.

"Once again, we notice and regret an American preference prevailing in Europe," Dassault said in a statement.

Boeing said it still sees significant international interest in its F/A-18 Block III Super Hornet and EA-18G Growler.

Sweden, a neighbour to Finland and home to Gripen maker Saab, said it regretted the outcome while also respecting the decision.

"Our excellent defence cooperation will of course continue. Finland will continue to be our closest security and defence policy partner," Sweden's Ministry of Defence said in a statement.

Reuters reported earlier on Friday that Lockheed Martin was set to win the contract.

($1 = 0.8871 euros)

(This story corrects the spelling of Micael Johansson's name)

(Reporting by Essi Lehto in Helsinki, Mike Stone in Washington, additional reporting by Johan Ahlander and Helena Soderpalm in Stockholm; Editing by Tim Hepher, Terje Solsvik, David Goodman, Susan Fenton and Raissa Kasolowsky)
ALTADENA, CA  Loma Alta Park is for some snowfall this Saturday  about 40 tons.

The snow is part of the Los Angeles County Department of Parks and Recreation's Parks After Dark Program, which aims to bring a "winter wonderland" to local parks this holiday season.

Local children will have the chance to go sledding at the park as well as pay a visit to Santa Claus, park officials said. The free event will be from 4 to 8 p.m.

Norma Edith Garcia-Gonzalez, executive director of the parks department, said in a statement the Parks After Dark Program is needed more than ever to help families "heal from the trauma brought on by COVID-19."



"This free event eliminates barriers to recreational opportunities and introduces families to enriching experiences that promote mental and physical health by gathering as communities and families in parks," she said.



The parks department has also partnered with the toy company Mattel to hand out free holiday stockings to children filled with different toys and games, according to officials.

For more information, visit the Los Angeles County Department of Parks And Recreation website.



This article originally appeared on the Altadena Patch
Starbucks has around 235,000 employees across 9,000 stores in the U.S. None of them had been unionized until Thursday, December 9, when one store in Buffalo voted to become part of Workers United, an independent affiliate of the Service Employees International Union. The vote passed 19-8, CNN reports. Two other Buffalo locations held a vote as well. One location voted 12-8 in opposition of the union, and the third location is still in the voting process.

One store might not seem like a big deal, but Starbucks employees have been rallying around unionizing for months now, and the corporation has been trying to dissuade the efforts in Buffalo. In fact, Starbucks sent top executives to Buffalo, including former CEO, Howard Schultz, to keep this from happening.

Read more

But now, other shops are filing to start the process of holding votes, including three other Buffalo stores, along with one in Mesa, Arizona. I have a feeling well be seeing more and more Starbucks location joining employee unions in the coming year.

This is a historic moment in time, said Michelle Eisen, to CNN, who is a barista with 11 years of experience at the newly unionized Starbucks in Buffalo. This win is the first step in changing what it means to be a partner at Starbucks, and what it means to work in the service industry more broadly. With a union, we now have the ability to negotiate a contract that holds Starbucks accountable to be the company we know it can be, and gives us a real voice in our workplace.

It appears as if Starbucks is worried about what might happen in the future in regards to employee unions. A recent filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) shows Starbucks noting, in a section about risk concerns, if a significant portion of our employees were to become unionized, our labor costs could increase and our business could be negatively affected by other requirements and expectations that could increase our costs, change our employee culture, decrease our flexibility and disrupt our business.

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In the same filing, the company notes additional concern with how its reputation could be damaged if they do manage to defeat unionizing attempts. Our responses to any union organizing efforts could negatively impact how our brand is perceived and have adverse effects on our business, including on our financial results.

Though the Buffalo store may now be unionized, theres no guarantee efforts will be fruitful right off the bat. No portion of the law exists that can force a company to reach a labor deal with a newly minted union, so itll take some effort from customers and public officials to get Starbucks to the negotiating table.

Lexi Rizzo is another employee of the unionized Starbucks location. She said to CNN, Its probably not a fair assumption that they want to come and bargain with us, but I hope they will.
Loharano and her husband Mandilimana have transformed the way they farm

Loharano's effortless grace belies the hard work that she is doing to stave off the tragedy that is unfolding in parts of her region of Madagascar.

A prolonged drought in the deep south of the island has left 1.3 million people struggling to find food and 28,000 facing starvation. Some have called it the world's first famine caused by climate change, though this has been disputed.

But Loharano's village, Tsimanananda, where she is a community leader, has been spared the worst.

It is a tough 45-minute drive from Ambovombe, the regional capital of Androy, one of the regions hardest hit by the sharp drop in rainfall in recent years.

The 4x4 vehicle can barely find a grip on the sandy roads. The view through the dusty windscreen reveals a desert-like dune landscape, stripped of trees and exposed to harsh winds.

It is hard to imagine anything growing here. But Tsimanananda stands out in the landscape.

Loharano's smile lights up the space around her. She is short and gentle - not the first person you would pick out as the leader in her neighbourhood.

But she quickly invites me into her compound, making me feel at home.

"We suffered a lot from hunger. We planted but it failed every time," the 43-year-old says, reflecting on a previous drought that started in 2013. But with the help of a local charity, the Agro-ecological Centre of the South (CTAS), this time things are very different.

Shortly after I arrive, Loharano leads a short class under the shade of a tree.

Armed with a poster illustrating farming techniques, she talks to her neighbours, and her husband Mandilimana, about drought-resistant crops and techniques to revitalise the soil.

'We have breakfast, lunch and dinner'

Over the past seven years, CTAS has helped introduce grains like millet and sorghum and local legume varieties, which grow well in the sandy conditions and improve the soil's fertility.

The villagers were also taught how to plant natural windbreaks to help protect the crops from the ravages of the elements.

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"Now, we have breakfast, lunch and dinner," Loharano says proudly as she shows off her plot of land where she and Mandilimana have grown an impressive range of crops.

On one end there are rows of millet, then beans, peas and sweet potatoes.

"We eat the husk from the ground millet with sugar and this is the favourite food of the children, their bellies are always full of millet."

CTAS has replicated this work in 14 other villages in the south of Madagascar helping some 10,000 households, the charity says.

But the small organisation cannot reach everyone and there is clearly enormous need.

Back in the regional capital, Ambovombe, is a sight reminiscent of a war zone.

In a small dusty field, dozens of families have erected makeshift tents - a patchwork of torn mosquito nets, rice sacks and plastic sheets.

But these people, around 400, have fled hunger not conflict.

Unlike Loharano, they were not able to grow any food and had to sell their farms and cattle just to survive.

Climate change controversy

However it is more than just possessions that people have lost.

Mahosoa, who lives here with one of his wives and 12 children, tells me four of his youngest children died at the start of the drought three years ago.

"They died of hunger in the village. They died one by one, day by day. We didn't eat for one week. Nothing to eat, nothing to drink."

The residents of the makeshift camp in Ambovombe fled their homes fearing starvation

Mahosoa tells me some of his children go out to beg in the town so they can buy food or water.

Promises of aid from the government have not materialised for them, he says.

The government has distributed food aid in the affected area and has announced dozens of long-term infrastructure projects that could transform the area's prospects.

Nevertheless, President Andry Rajoelina has been criticised for failing to respond quickly enough to the crisis as the impact of the successive years of drought became more obvious.

Some locals put this down to the historical marginalisation of the region.

"During the war against the French colonialist army, the Antandroy [people from the Androy region] were able to fight against the French colonisers, they were able to use guerrilla tactics," university lecturer Dr Tsimihole Tovondrafale says.

Because of this, he says the French were not interested in developing the region.

"They didn't think about how to make roads, dig wells for example, and that's still the politics of Madagascar since independence up to now."

Many political commentators blame what they see as the government's slowness to react for exacerbating the hunger crisis in the south, but Madagascar's environment minister sees things very differently.

Dr Baomiavotse Vahinala Raharinirina says that the famine is "climactic in its origin". This chimes with the view of the World Food Programme, which says that the crisis is being driven by climate change.

The recent influential World Weather Attribution report on the drought in Madagascar, which included work from Dr Rondro Barimalala, a Malagasy climate scientist, disputed this.

Researchers found that though the recent rains have been poor and the probability of future droughts may be on the rise, the change in rainfall cannot be attributed to human impact on the climate.

Regardless of the exact cause of the lack of rain, there is no doubt that hundreds of thousands of people will be living with its impact for years to come.

Through her work to improve her village, Loharano is happy her community has avoided the disaster many are facing right now.

But it hurts her to see many more cannot be helped.

"I feel sad for them because they could die of hunger. One day, somebody had nothing and I asked her why.

"She said that they hadn't eaten since the day before. So I told her to take some of my peas and feed her kids."
Major snow is expected in the Cascade Range this weekend, the beginning of a longer term trend of winter weather.

UPDATE at 2:30 p.m. on Sunday, Dec. 12

With all the new snow, Mt Hood Meadows announced it was opening Sunday while Mt. Bachelor will open for the season on Monday.

The two largest ski areas in Oregon will be somewhat limited to begin, before expanding operations.

See the announcements for Meadows here and for Bachelor here.



ORIGINAL STORY

It took a while for the winter weather to arrive, but it hit with force this weekend and is expected to stay for the next week and even a few months, according to meteorologists and long-term forecasts.

It's good news both for the still-drought-plagued state along with ski areas that haven't received enough snow to open yet.

By Sunday morning, the weather stations in the Salem area reported a 24-hour rain total of 1.22 inches

And some ski areas reported enough snow  38 inches at Timberline Lodge in 72 hours  to open Sunday.

Rain, cold and possible snow will continue in Salem for the next week.

Short-term forecast: heavy snow in mountains

Oregon's mountains expected to see one to three feet of snow at pass levels this weekend, likely bringing hazardous driving conditions, as a weak atmospheric river collides with cool air from Canada in Oregon's Cascade Range.

Highway 20 over Santiam Pass and Highway 58 over Willamette Pass wereforecast to see a whopping two to three feet of snow over the weekend.

Travel over mountain passes on Highway 22 (Santiam Pass), Highway 58 (Willamette Pass) and roads near Government Camp (Mount Hood) will likely be snow-covered and challenging, meteorologists said.

A winter storm warning was in place for Oregon's mountain passes from 8 a.m. Saturday to 8 a.m. Sunday for the heavy snow and winds up to 45 mph.

"Travel could be very difficult to impossible," the National Weather Service wrote. "Patchy blowing snow could significantly reduce visibility. Gusty winds could bring down tree branches."

For local stories that matter, subscribe today.

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"We're expecting the heaviest snow to set up above 3,000 to 3,500 feet this weekend," said Daniel Hartsock, meteorologist for the National Weather Service in Portland.

The heavy mountain snow was expected to subside by Sunday afternoon, but cooling temperatures are expected to keep a few inches of snow falling each day into early next week.

"We could see another system mid-next week, but right now our forecast models are all over the place on what that means," Hartsock said. "It could be another big dump of snow depending on where the jet stream sets up."

More: 'A place of reverence and awe': New trail into Grove of Titans showcases mythic redwoods

Snow totals at higher elevations, such Timberline Lodge on Mount Hood and Mount Bachelor, are even more eye-popping, with 35 to 45 inches possible above 5,000 and 6,000 feet.

(Story continues below)

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Long-term forecast favors cool, wet and snowy conditions

In a La Nina winter, forecasters always expected winter of 2021-22 to be cool, wet and snowy in the mountains.

"It has been fairly wet; it just took a while for the cool part to kick in," Hartsock said.

Almost every long-term forecast from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration favors wetter and cooler than normal conditions, all the way through March.

"We're expecting snowpack to grow steadily throughout the winter," Hartsock added.

That's good news, as Oregon still is technically in deep drought based on multiple years of below-average precipitation and above-average temperatures, although it can seem odd when rivers are running high and the state is heavily saturated.

The state was also, heading into this weekend, well below average for snowpack. That should change in a hurry.

More: These 22 Oregon winter adventures offer snow, waterfalls and hot springs

Ski areas begin to open

The dump of snow should kick off the winter recreation season in Oregon's mountains, including the state's ski areas.

Timberline Lodge and Mount Hood Meadows announced they were opening for the season Sunday. Mt. Hood Skibowl opened Saturday and Sunday for tubing, and its website announced night skiing would open Wednesday.

Mt. Bachelor announced it would open Monday.

Zach Urness has been an outdoors reporter in Oregon for 13 years and is host of the Explore Oregon Podcast. To support his work, subscribe to the Statesman Journal. Urness can be reached at zurness@StatesmanJournal.com or (503) 399-6801. Find him on Twitter at @ZachsORoutdoors.

This article originally appeared on Salem Statesman Journal: Mt. Bachelor and Mt. Hood Meadows announce season openings
A 36-year-old man is charged with a felony for allegedly stealing audio equipment owned by the federal government that was meant to amplify President Joe Bidens speech in Kansas City on Wednesday.

Jason P. Keith, of Grandview, is accused of stealing valuables estimated to be worth $14,000, according to court records. The items were reported stolen Tuesday morning by an employee with the Defense Information Systems Agency, which handles information sharing and communications for the Department of Defense.

According to court records, the theft took place in the underground parking garage of the Plazas Intercontinental Hotel at 401 Ward Parkway. Locks on the back of two U-Haul trucks parked there had been cut off and several things were missing from the containers, including a dolly, cable reels, extension cords, other sound equipment and a fall protection kit.

The theft was investigated by Kansas City police. Surveillance cameras owned by the city and other privately owned ones captured video of a suspect wearing black pants, black shoes and a long black coat. He was seen pushing a dolly filled with stolen equipment in the wee hours by those cameras as well as a security guard and two University of Missouri Kansas City police officers as he followed a route along Brush Creek, court records state.

Police officers later tracked the stolen equipment to the Shell gas station at 2601 Dr. Martin Luther King Boulevard. Keith was arrested there Tuesday afternoon, roughly 12 hours after the theft occurred.

Police allegedly found some of the missing equipment in Keiths possession. More was discovered in a wooded area behind the gas station.

The president visited Kansas City to promote a coming wave of new federal spending on highways, bridges and other priorities projects as part of an aim to rebuild the nations aging infrastructure. In his speech Wednesday, made at the Kansas City Area Transportation Authority, Biden touted the new infrastructure law inked last month as the most significant investment in roads and bridges in 70 years.

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The measure is ultimately expected to deliver $3.2 billion to Kansas and $7.9 billion to Missouri to address an array of needs, from transportation to water treatment to broadband internet.

Keith was charged in Jackson County Circuit Court on Tuesday. He is being held on $40,000 bond in the Jackson County Detention Center.

The Stars Jonathan Shorman contributed to this report.
A man who died after shooting at a Fresno County Sheriffs deputy on Wednesday has been identified by the Fresno County Sheriffs Office.

The suspect was 27-year-old Roberto Jose Gamez of Fresno. Gamez, the sheriffs office said Thursday, had been released on zero dollar bail earlier Wednesday after he suspected of possession of drugs for sale.

The incident happened around 3:30 p.m. Wednesday near Cedar and North avenues, where Fresno police said a Sheriffs Ag Task Force member was conducting an investigation and attempted to pull over Gamez.

Gamez fled from the deputy before losing control of his vehicle and caused the car to land on its roof along the Cedar off-ramp at northbound Highway 99.

Police said he then opened fire at the deputy.

Police on Wednessday declined to detail what happened next: What we can say at this time is the suspect who fired at the deputy is deceased, Fresno Police Lt. Bill Dooley said.

Gamezs cause of death was not made clear. When asked if the deputy shot back at the suspect, Dooley withheld comment.

The officer involved in the shooting was not injured, Dooley said. Law enforcement with Fresno Police and the California Highway Patrol responded to the shooting when the deputy asked for nearby assistance.

Because the shooting happened within city limits, Fresno Police is heading the investigation.
BOSTON (AP)  Immigrant advocates in Massachusetts are cheering the inclusion of $20 million in aid to Afghan refugees and Haitian migrants in a broader, $4 billion spending plan from state lawmakers.

The bill, which was approved last week and is currently awaiting Republican Gov. Charlie Bakers signature, sets aside $12 million for Afghan refugees and another $8 million for Haitian migrants.

Jeffrey Thielman, president and CEO of the International Institute of New England, one of the states major refugee resettlement nonprofits, said Friday that the bill, if approved, would make Massachusetts one of the few if only states to commit state money to support the latest wave of immigrants from both troubled countries.

Massachusetts really stands out, he said, noting that Oregon lawmakers have proposed allocating $18 million to help resettle some 1,200 Afghan refugees.

New York has also committed $5 million to help nearly 1,800 Afghans resettle in the state, and Californias governor and legislative leaders have proposed using nearly $17 million in state money to help resettle Afghan refugees.

A Baker spokesperson said the administration is reviewing the bill and didnt comment on the proposed spending for Afghan and Haitian immigrants. The Republican has until Monday to sign the bill into law but can also veto specific line items or offer amendments.

For Afghans, the legislatures plan calls for up to 75% of the $12 million to go directly to arriving families, and the remaining 25% to bolster refugee resettlement organizations.

The funding could provide, on average, about $3,000 per refugee, or $12,000 for a family of four, according to Thielman, whose organization has resettled more than 200 of the roughly 700 Afghan refugees that have so far arrived.

This should give folks a really good running start in their first six months, he said. Federal dollars only go so far.

For Haitian migrants, the legislatures spending plan designates $8 million to the Immigrant Family Services Institute, a Boston-based group active in the local Haitian community.

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The bill calls for the money to specifically go towards supporting Haitians who arrived in the country this summer after the assassination of the Caribbean nations president and an earthquake prompted a wave of migration.

Immigrant rights groups and local Haitian organizations have said theyre struggling to meet the needs of migrants arriving in the state, especially as winter sets in.

Haitian frontline organizations have been doing heroic work resettling the hundreds of Haitian families that have arrived in Massachusetts in recent weeks, Amy Grunder, of the Massachusetts Immigrant and Refugee Advocacy Coalition, said Friday. We urge Governor Baker to sign it into law.

The legislatures $4 billion plan allocates money from the American Rescue Plan Act, which is the second round of federal coronavirus aid approved by Congress, as well as state budget surplus funds.

The spending is meant to help with the states ongoing economic recovery from the pandemic while also making investments in housing, climate preparedness, education and other areas.
When the towers fell on Sept. 11, 2001, the country was plunged into a war  a war that until its abrupt end this August was considered the forever war.

And for the 20th anniversary of the attacks, the U.S. Military Academy at West Point football team decided to honor the Army members of Task Force Dagger for their role in the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan.

While there were multiple joint special operations task forces established during Operation Enduring Freedom, Task Force Dagger was the first, with members deploying as early as Oct. 19, 2001.

West Point grad pranks Navy alumni ahead of annual Army Navy game

Elements of the task force came from the Armys 5th Special Forces Group, the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment, Air Force Special Tactics Teams and the Central Intelligence Agencys Special Activities Division.

Their goal was to partner with Afghan warlords and fighters from the Northern Alliance to wipe out Al Qaeda and the Taliban.

The Army Green Beret teams involved in the mission, known as Operational Detachment Alphas, included ODAs 534, 555, 574 and 595.

The ODA numbers can be found on the shoulders of this years jerseys. Army Special Forces Latin motto, De Oppresso Liber, or To free the oppressed, is also printed on the front of the jerseys.

Special Operations Forces teams, Operational Detachment Alphas, are featured on the shoulders of the 2021 Army uniforms. (Army)

ODAs 555 and 595 were the first two elements to enter the country after the attacks, with ODA 595 supporting anti-Taliban efforts in the Panjshir Valley, while ODA 555 worked to defeat Taliban forces near Bagram.

The members of ODA 595 have also famously been nicknamed the Horse Soldiers, after they commandeered horses in order to navigate the mountainous terrain on their way to helping Afghan citizens reclaim the city of Mazar-e-Sharif.

ODA 534 partnered with elements of the Northern Alliance and Afghan Gen. Atta Muhammad Nur, providing them with air support and direct lines of fire.

ODA 574 was tasked with escorting Hamid Karzai, who was intended to lead the governing body of the country after the fall of the Taliban. The team ultimately won the Battle of Tarin Kowt with Karzai loyalists and were key in the U.S. and Afghan forces later retaking Kandahar.

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If there was any fear that we had, it was that we would be worthy of the American people the people of New York, people of Washington, the people of Pennsylvania, the people of our great country and all those who lost people on that day, commander of Task Force Dagger, Lt. Gen. John Mulholland, said of their mission on a West Point website. So that was with us constantly, the fear that we would not be worthy of the American people.

Although the ODAs as a whole are the main focus of this years uniforms, also highlighted is the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment.

Nicknamed the Nightstalkers, the 160th SOAR is the premier rotary wing for Army Special Forces. In 2001, the regiment was responsible for transporting the ODAs from Karshi-Khanabad Airbase in Uzbekistan to their various insertion points in Northern Afghanistan, flying MH-47E Chinook helicopters and modified CH-47s.

Their unit patch is featured on the teams helmets, along with the date of the 2001 attacks.

More than 300 members of the Armys Special Operations Command  to include enablers like members of female Civil Support Teams and PsyOps  died in their countrys service since 2001.

Note: Travel accommodations for Army Navy Game coverage by Military Times were provided by USAA, a military-focused insurance company.
Well, another year has about passed us by, and we are in that magical season where we will be wishing each other a merry Christmas and a happy new year. No doubt we send out these greetings with all sincerity, although in many cases we are sure it may not be a great holiday season nor a joyous new year for everyone. And as we end 2021 with increased inflation, everyone's pocketbook will be suffering.

Dashing over the river and through the woods to grandma's house this holiday season will cost us a lot more. Gas prices are soaring, and the Biden administration is still investigating whether or not they will shut down more pipelines. Your car to make that holiday trip may be getting up in age, but you need to keep it running, if the parts are available from China. Of course you could retire the old Pontiac and buy a new car, but most new car lots are empty, because computer chips from China are keeping auto makers from building new models.

Gerry Feld

So maybe staying home to eat and sending Grandma a gift card from J.C. Penney might just be the best idea. But when you went grocery shopping, you discovered how many of your favorite foods were not available, because they are sitting on ships surrounded by sharks off the West Coast. So after altering your menu, you come up with a meal plan the family would enjoy. But the higher cost of those foods means you will not to be able to pay your daughter's college tuition next month.

So mom decides you will all go out to eat at your favorite restaurant. Not surprising, every restaurant you call for a reservation is closed, because they can not get enough employees to work. Luckily after dozens of calls, you do find a restaurant that will take your reservation. Regrettably after you arrive, you are told you will not be allowed in because you have no proof you have received the COVID-19 vaccine.

Feeling dejected, you leave the restaurant to discover the Pontiac has been stolen. You immediately call the police department, to be told by the dispatcher that their office has too few officers to investigate the theft today, and they will get at it first thing tomorrow.

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So now we are back to the car issue again. Due to the increased demand for good used vehicles, values have increased astronomically, but your insurance company is not taking that into consideration when they reimburse you for the loss of the Pontiac.

If all that was not bad enough, you are still feeling guilty about the lack of presents under the Christmas tree. The problem was, no matter what stores you went to, all the popular toys you wanted are still sitting on unloaded ships, aside of the ships containing your Christmas dinner.

Feeling a bit cold that your entire Christmas holiday has been a bust, you walk over to the thermostat to increase the temperature in your house. Suddenly you remember, with the price increase of natural gas last month, you could not make the copay for little Tommie's orthodontics check-up.

Walking over to the 52-inch plasma TV and leather recliner, remembrances of past plentiful Christmases, you turn on the news. There on the south lawn of the White House is President Biden, wishing you and all Americans a very splendid Christmas, as he reminds you his Build Back Better program he wants Congress to pass will cost you absolutely nothing.

Nothing?" you yell as you watch the president and first lady climb aboard Marine One for a short trip to Andrews Air Force Base, where they will take Air Force One for a flight to Hawaii to relax.

Before you throw your shoe at the TV you change channels. There is big Ed, of Big Ed's Used Car Emporium talking about the recent clean used cars that just arrived on his lot, and are ready to go. As the camera scans the lot, there sits the Pontiac.

May YOUR holidays work out better!

 This is the opinion of Gerry Feld, whose column is published the second Sunday of the month. He writes about issues from a conservative perspective and is a published novelist.

This article originally appeared on St. Cloud Times: Merry grim Christmas and happy dystopian new year




Mississippi public universities that were required to implement a coronavirus vaccine mandate under the Biden administration's order have rescinded the policy.

The University of Mississippi, Jackson State University and the University of Southern Mississippi told The Hill they lifted their coronavirus vaccine mandate after the Biden administration's order to require federal contractors be vaccinated was halted in court.

Mississippi State University told The Associated Press it has also gone forward with revoking the vaccine mandate due to the court's decision.

Biden's mandate made it so federal contractors had to be vaccinated by Jan. 4, but the order was halted in court nationwide on Wednesday.

The other public colleges in the state, Mississippi Valley State University, Delta State University, Alcorn State University and Mississippi University for Women, are not covered federal contractors and were not required to abide by Biden's order, a spokesperson for Mississippi Valley State University told The Hill.

"The Board of Trustees of the Institutions of Higher Learning (IHL) gave university leaders the authority to follow the federal government's executive order and related guidance as long as the order was not stayed, delayed or revoked. Since the executive order was stayed, the university is suspending its efforts to require vaccination of our employees," Chancellor Glenn Boyce said Wednesday after the court decision.

Boyce said the school will monitor further legal updates and reinstate the mandate if the court changes the decision. He did encourage staff to get the vaccine regardless of the law.

The University of Southern Mississippi is keeping its vaccine submission portal open for any employees who want to upload proof of vaccination.

Jackson State University said it is following the directive approved by the Mississippi Board of Trustees of State Institutions of Higher Learning, which ruled schools did not have to require the coronavirus vaccine if Biden's order was stayed in court.

The Hill has reached out to Mississippi State University, Delta State University, Alcorn State University and Mississippi University for Women for comment.
It's Christmastime in Chicago.

In response to a wild Saturday night downtown that left a 12-year-old shot in the back, a CTA bus driver beaten, and 20 young people arrested last week, Chicago's top cop David Brown decided to beef-up weekend patrols for the holidays.



"Chicago belongs to all of us, but if you come downtown or anywhere else to engage in disorderly conduct or other crimes, you will get arrested."



Chicago Top Cop Says More Cops Will Guard Downtown This Weekend

Chicago Police Supt. David Brown ( Scott Olson/Getty Images)

Sunday: Gusty. High: 48 Low: 37

Former "Empire" actor Jussie Smollett's conviction on charges that he faked a hate crime against himself and lied about it to the cops isn't the end of his legal woes. City Hall is still suing Smollett for the cost of investigating the hoax, $130,106.15. (Patch)

Why aren't there any federal tribal lands in Illinois? Reporter Robert Loerzel takes a look back at the regions history from the late 1700s through the 1830s  a period marked by armed conflicts, numerous treaty negotiations often made under pressure and through coercive tactics and more to push out Native peoples. (WBEZ)

In the wake of a graduate student's murder, Hyde Park residents feel the University of Chicago has created a divide between its campus and the community with protests that seem to be "rallying against Black residents," writes Chima Ikoro. (South Side Weekly)

An off-duty police officer was arrested after a 29-year-old woman was found dead from a gunshot wound to her chin in the Galewood neighborhood. Criminal charges were pending last Friday. (Patch)

Coronavirus cases are spiking in Chicago to more than 900 a day, but hospitalizations haven't' followed that trend, Chicago's top doctor says. (Patch)

For A Good Time, Click:

Saturday:



Handmade Market at the Empty Bottle (12 noon)

Kill the Noise at Sound-Bar (10 p.m.)

Higher Ground: Diplo, Solardo, Vnssa, Anden at Byline Bank Aragon Ballroom (9 p.m.)

Nicky Romero at TAO Chicago (10 p.m.)

Whitney Cummings at The Vic Theatre (7:30 p.m.)

Whitney Cummings. (Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty Images)

Allman Family Revival at The Chicago Theatre (8 p.m.)

Salsa Sundays at Cubby Bear (7 p.m.)

Songs of Good Cheer at Old Town School of Folk Music (4 p.m.)

Watch Party! Bears vs. Packers at Epiphany Center for the Arts (5 p.m.)

The Chris White Trio Tribute to A Charlie Brown Christmas at Lincoln Park Zoo (5 p.m.)

Just The Links:

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This article originally appeared on the Chicago Patch
(Reuters) - Protesters in Myanmar closed businesses and stayed off the streets on Friday in a "silent strike" against rule by the military and its ousting of the Southeast Asian country's democratically elected government in a February coup.

Photos published by Myanmar media showed deserted streets and markets in towns across the country, while protesters in the northern city of Shwebo wore black clothes and marched in silence.

"We need to send a message to the world about Myanmar's terrible human rights violations," protest leader Khin Sandar told media.

"Silence is the loudest shout. We want our rights back. We want revolution. We express sadness for our fallen heroes," she said.

Myanmar was plunged into crisis when the military overthrew leader Aung San Suu Kyi and her government on Feb. 1, triggering daily protests in towns and cities and fighting in borderlands between the military and ethnic minority insurgents.

Nobel laureate Suu Kyi, 76, is facing various charges and was sentenced to four years in prison on Monday on the first of them - incitement and breaching coronavirus regulations - drawing international condemnation of what critics described https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/un-rights-boss-bachelet-deplores-suu-kyi-conviction-sham-trial-statement-2021-12-06 as a "sham trial".

The junta chief later reduced her sentence https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/no-one-above-law-myanmar-junta-minister-says-suu-kyi-verdict-2021-12-07 by two years on "grounds of humanity" but the charges she still faces could see her jailed for many years.

Junta forces seeking to crush opposition have killed more than 1,300 people, according to the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (AAPP) monitoring group.

Last Sunday, five people were killed and at least 15 arrested after soldiers used a car to crash through https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/myanmar-security-forces-ram-car-into-protest-yangon-deaths-feared-2021-12-05 an anti-coup protest in the city of Yangon. Myanmar's state media has dismissed reports of the incident as disinformation.

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Minn Khant Kyaw Linn, a student activist from the General Strikes Collaboration Body protest group said participation in the "silent strike" had been widespread.

"You can see how much people hate the junta," he said.

(Reporting by Reuters Staff; Editing by James Pearson, Robert Birsel)
PARIS (Reuters) -The crisis in Ukraine can only be solved through diplomacy and Russia must do its utmost to reduce tensions, NATO and French officials said on Friday, warning of serious consequences if Moscow were to launch a military intervention in Ukraine.

Russia has amassed troops on its border with Ukraine, where Kremlin-backed rebels have been fighting the Kyiv government, raising fears that it might be preparing to invade.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has denied he intends to attack Ukraine, but he has bridled against what he sees as NATO's eastward expansion and the deployment of military hardware close to its border.

"Russia must de-escalate, respect Ukraine's sovereignty and territorial integrity (and) return to diplomacy. The crisis requires a political and diplomatic solution," NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg told a news conference in Paris.

Speaking alongside French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian and Defence Minister Florence Parly, he said the alliance stood by its position supporting Ukraine's bid to join NATO.

U.S. President Joe Biden on Thursday promised Central European NATO members more military support as concern grows over a Russian troop build-up on the border with Ukraine, Lithuania's presidential advisor Asta Skaisgiryte said.

Biden also reassured the allies that Washington would not reach any agreement with Russia about the region behind their backs, Skaisgiryte told reporters.

"Any attack on the integrity of Ukraine would have massive strategic consequences," Le Drian told the news conference.

(Reporting by John Irish in Doha; Editing by Catherine Evans)
Campaigners say many of the establishments that employ children are fronts for sex trade

Children are being exploited in Nepalese bars and folk music venues, some of which are fronts for the sex trade. By some estimates, thousands of minors are affected. The BBC's Geeta Pandey reports from Delhi.

When Rita migrated from her village in Nepal to the capital, Kathmandu, she thought she was escaping poverty.

Back in her village, Rita - whose name we have changed for her protection - lived with her alcoholic mother and siblings. Her father had moved to Malaysia for work and abandoned the family.

"At first he used to send us money, but then he stopped," Rita said. "We did not have enough land, so I came to Kathmandu when I was 12 or 13."

Her first jobs in Kathmandu included working in a brick factory, cleaning and washing utensils in a home, working in a hotel kitchen and being a shop assistant.

The pay was meagre, work backbreaking and quite often her abusive and predatory male co-workers tried to touch and grope her, she said.

At 14, Rita got a job in a restaurant where she had to sit, eat and drink with customers.

"The customers smoked hookah and drank alcohol," she recalled. "They would touch my hands, say vulgar words, but I couldn't object. Some of them even wanted to kiss me. I used to escape saying that I wanted to use the toilet."

Sharing her story with campaigners from the Child Labour Action Research programme (Clarissa), funded by the British government, Rita detailed incidents where she was forced to drink alcohol and where men took her to nearby guest houses or rented rooms and offered her money in return for sex.

Campaigners say Rita is one of hundreds, possibly thousands, of Nepalese children, some as young as 11, who are trapped in the country's adult entertainment sector, engaged in a terrible form of child labour.

Professor Danny Burns, Clarissa director and professor at the Institute of Development Studies at the University of Sussex, says when we talk about child labour, a lot of the discussion focuses on big firms and global supply chains.

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"But the worst forms of child labour are in small businesses and family-owned businesses - the kind of places that employ children like Rita," Prof Burns told the BBC.

Most of the girls and young women who work in these joints say they have found themselves in exploitative situations

Nepal has 1.1 million children aged between five and 17 years engaged in child labour and 0.22 million children work in hazardous industries, even though employing children is illegal in the country.

Kathmandu has pledged to eliminate child labour by 2025 in tandem with the UN goal to end child labour in all forms and also set an ambitious target to end the worst forms of child labour by 2022.

Minister for Women, Children and Senior Citizens Uma Regmi told Binita Dahal of the BBC Nepali service that the "government is determined to meet the target".

"We have little time left, but we will make all efforts to end the worst forms of child labour by 2022," she said.

But campaigners say that to do that, Nepal must focus on small businesses in the informal sector, especially the adult entertainment sector.

Pragya Lamsal, a researcher at Clarissa in Kathmandu, told the BBC that the charity had collected and analysed testimonies of nearly 400 children employed in the sector.

"We found that in a majority of the cases, the children had moved from rural areas to Kathmandu, they were recruited by informal intermediaries such as friends, relatives and neighbours, and most of them ended up working in massage parlours, dance bars, guest houses or seedy restaurants," she said.

Sudhir Malla, the head of Clarissa in Nepal, said most of the children came from poor families or broken homes and in the city, they are hired mostly by "dohori restaurants" - establishments that claim to promote folk music.

"There are some genuine establishments, but many smaller places in the dark underbelly of the city are seedy joints and fronts for sex trade. They hire young women and girls to serve alcohol, wait at tables, work in hookah bars, dance bars and massage parlours," he said.

Many of these places operate under the radar, he added - functioning out of basements, street corners and private apartments.

"These establishments are required by law to register and renew their documents regularly and provide details of their workers to the authorities. Many register initially but don't renew their registration and there is little incentive or repercussion if they do not. Then there are those who do not register at all."

During Covid, the children had to make very dire choices because it was a matter of their livelihoods

So, the children work without formal contracts and are not given any job descriptions or fixed salaries.

Ms Lamsal said most of the girls and young women who work in these places say they have found themselves in exploitative situations.

"The girls were told that if guests ran up a big bill, their own tips would be higher," she said. "Most of them are young and without formal education and, in most cases, they have no option because their families are dependent on the money they earn. They are very vulnerable and many of them slip into situations which are exploitative."

The girls also have to deal with the stigma that surrounds this kind of work," Ms Lamsal said. Most don't even tell their parents, so in cases of abuse they can't go to their families or the police for help. Many also don't report abuse because of fear of losing their jobs.

And Covid-19 made their situation a lot worse, Mr Malla said.

"During the pandemic, the government forced the sector to shut down, but many just went deeper underground," he said. "And the children had to make very dire choices. It was a matter of their livelihoods, they had to pay rent, they had to get food, and in cases where they are the breadwinners, they had families to support."

According to Prof Burns, Covid has reversed progress, and no country with a major child labour problem is on course to end it by 2025.

"For long, there were trends towards a decrease, but in the past year and a half, there has been a significant increase in the number of child labour in all the countries where the problem exists," he said.

"In the long run, it is critical to focus on taking children out of the worst forms of child labour. But there would always be children who'll do this job because they're hungry. So, in the short term, we have to improve their work conditions. That's the best we can do."

Minister Uma Regmi said it was her government's "priority to reach out to these children", adding that those who need help "can contact us through our helpline numbers".

"We are collaborating with various agencies to find out about children working in dangerous situations," she said. "Once we get the facts, we will coordinate with the home ministry to make those illegal operators accountable and punish them."

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A 22-year-old man was arrested for alleged sexual assault of a child by the Abilene Police Department on Tuesday, following an arrest warrant issued by the Weatherford Police Department.

The parents of a 15-year-old girl reported the sexual assault to Weatherford police on Dec. 2 after they found out the man, Diego Alejandro Cortez, had been in their house and in their daughters bedroom, Weatherford police said in a news release Thursday.

Authorities said the girl told officers she met Cortez on a social media platform, and they exchanged personal information through both the platform and by text. The girl told police she gave Cortez her address and they had sex on three occasions.

The girl said Cortez presented himself as an armed services member and said he was stationed in the Abilene area. As of Thursday afternoon, police have not confirmed whether he was actually in the military.

Detectives said there may be more female juvenile victims, and offenses could have occurred as far back as 2020.

Anyone who believes they are a victim of sexual assault or any other offense committed by Cortez is asked to report the offense to their local law enforcement authority. Weatherford police said they can also contact case detective Corp. Jason Goff at (817) 598-4414 or by email at jgoff@weatherfordtx.gov.
Flowflex antigen rapid test (ART) kits available at NTUC FairPrice outlets. (PHOTO: NTUC FairPrice/Screenshot)

SINGAPORE  NTUC FairPrice will be stocking a new brand of antigen rapid test (ART) kits priced at $4.90 each, which is generally cheaper than the currently available brands.

The Flowflex ART kits will be available online and at all 70 Unity stores, as well as more than 90 FairPrice and FairPrice-affiliated outlets from Friday (10 December).

The ART kits will be available in pack sizes of one kit ($4.90), five kits ($24) and 25 kits ($117.50). Stocks may vary at different stores.

ART kits on sale in Singapore generally cost above $5.50, with some priced between $7 and $10.

The supermarket chain added in a media release that the kits will also be stocked at selected Cheers and FairPrice Xpress convenience stores, including the outlets at Khoo Teck Puat Hospital, Sengkang Community Hospital and Outram Community Hospital.

Health Minister Ong Ye Kung had said in mid-November that people can soon expect to buy antigen rapid test kits at lower prices.

The Flowflex ART kits, developed by United States-based diagnostic and medical devices firm Acon Laboratories, were authorised for use in Singapore by the Health Sciences Authority (HSA) on 8 November, under the Pandemic Special Access Route for critical new medical products during a pandemic.

Stay in the know on-the-go: Join Yahoo Singapore's Telegram channel at http://t.me/YahooSingapore
Stock photo

The Ohio & Erie Canalway National Heritage Area recently celebrated its 25th anniversary.

The area was designated by Congress in 1996 to preserve and celebrate the rails, trails, landscapes, towns and sites that grew up along the first 110 miles of the canal. More than 2.5 million Americans annually visit the 87-mile Towpath Trail.

The designation was given due to the work of a Ralph Pegula, a solicitor in the village of Navarre. Regula was familiar with the history of the Ohio & Erie Canal and its impact on communities in northeast Ohio. He worked with Canton Repository reporter Allan Simpson to advocate for the conservation, interpretation and development of the canal with local elected officials and service organizations.

Regula and Simpson convinced the Ohio to deed over the canal lands in Stark County to the Stark County Government.

The Canalway Partners was founded in Cleveland to focus on the project in Cleveland and Cuyahoga County and Ohio & Erie Canalway Coalition was founded in Canal Fulton to focus on Summit, Stark, and Tuscarawas counties.

For information: ohioanderiecanalway.com.

This article originally appeared on The Times-Reporter: Ohio & Erie Canalway celebrates anniversary
A Delta Airlines flight from Washington, D.C., to Los Angeles diverted to Oklahoma City Thursday night, where Oklahoma City police arrested a passenger who reportedly assaulted a flight attendant.

Ariel Pennington, a resident of Washington, D.C., was booked into the Oklahoma County jail on complaints of public drunkenness and disorderly conduct, according to police. Pennington was detained by federal air marshals, according to an FBI statement, when OKC police arrived on the plane.

Combative passenger on @Delta flight assaults flight attendant and Air Marshal, according to OKC police. Flight #342 from Washington D.C. to Los Angeles was diverted to Oklahoma City where police arrested the passenger. Story: https://t.co/3u0zKJrOQs pic.twitter.com/RHnZX60z3M  Eric Resendiz (@abc7eric) December 10, 2021

Pennington was yelling, cursing, and generally disruptive on the airplane and in the terminal, according to the police report by Officer Robert Kemmet.

"He was physically resistant and verbally abusive to me, the passengers and the flight crew, and was engaged in unquestionably disorderly conduct, which he continued after I removed him from the plane and as I escorted him to the police office," Kemmet wrote in the report.

Pennington was booked just after 11 p.m. Thursday and released at 4:54 a.m. Friday on two bonds of $167.

Shayne Heffington of DHS and Jim Anderson of the FBI attempted to interview Pennington for their own investigations, Kemmet wrote.

The Federal Aviation Administration has received 5,553 unruly passenger reports in 2021 as of Dec. 7. Of those, 3,998 were mask-related. The FAA has initiated 1,017 incident investigations, compared to 183 in 2020.

This article originally appeared on Oklahoman: Delta passenger allegedly assaults flight attendant, arrested in OKC
RAMALLAH, West Bank (AP)  Israeli forces shot and killed a Palestinian during clashes Friday in the occupied West Bank, health authorities in the territory said.

According to a statement, 31-year-old Jamil Abu Ayyash suffered a gunshot wound to the head during clashes in the northern West Bank town of Beita. After being shot, he was taken to a nearby hospital where he later died from his injuries.

The Palestinian Red Crescent medical service says the Israeli army fired live bullets, as well as rubber-coated bullets and tear gas at dozens of protesters during he clashes. The medical service also said the army closed off nearby roads, which made it difficult for an ambulance to get to the scene. There were no reports of any other serious injuries.

The army said no live rounds were used and that the troops opened fire with rubber bullets in response to Palestinians hurling rocks and burning tires.

Israeli forces and Palestinians have clashed weekly in Beita over the past several months. The Palestinians have been demonstrating against the establishment of an unauthorized Israeli settlement outpost they say was built on their land.

Under a deal signed in June between the Israeli government and the settlers of Eviatar outpost, the site was abandoned, although the settlement buildings have not been demolished and remain under army protection. The Palestinians have denounced the deal, saying it is a move by Israel to take their land. At least six protesters have been killed in the violence.

Over 500,000 Jewish settlers live across more than 130 settlements located across the occupied West Bank. Israeli. Palestinians say settlements in the territory are the major obstacle to the establishment of their future state, which would also include the Gaza Strip and east Jerusalem.

Israel's Prime Minister Naftali Bennett is a staunch supporter of settlements and an opponent of a Palestinian state. He has shown little interest in reviving past peace talks but has called for measures to reduce conflict and improve economic conditions for Palestinians. Most of the international community views settlements as illegal.
Salena Le poses with The Meow Cat Cafe merchandise at the Farmer's Market downtown.

PANAMA CITY  A local woman is searching for the perfect building to open the first cat cafe in Bay County.

Animal lover Salena Le hopes to soon open The Meow Cat Cafe in the Panama City area. After her visit to The Witty Whisker, a cat cafe in St. Augustine, she decided she wanted to open a similar business of her own.

I think this will increase adoption rates and itll be good for people to go there to take the time to have animal therapy, Le said.

Le is currently looking for the right location to open her business as a foster home for cats and people to come to relax. Shes hoping to open in Downtown Panama City or Panama City Beach within the next two years. Le created a GoFundMe account to ask for support opening her business. To donate, visit https://gofund.me/e101bb06.

More Panama City news:

Three cats play at The Witty Whisker Cat Cafe in St. Augustine.

There are more than 125 cat cafes across the United States. Typically, a cat cafe has two separate rooms, a cat lounge room where all the cats are being fostered and a cafe area that serves food and drinks. This gives exposure for cats to socialize with other cats and people.

The Meow Cat Cafe will be a temporary foster home for up to 20 cats available for adoption. Le said she realized she wanted to start the business after she found out animal shelters waived adoption fees because of the overcrowding of cats.

Ive always been an animal lover, so it just breaks my heart to know that so many cats dont have anywhere to go, Le said. I wasnt planning to adopt from there but I connected with a cat from there and took her home with me and what I felt after that made me want to create this experience for other people.

Salena Le poses at The Witty Whisker, a cat cafe in St. Augustine.

Her core mission is to create a cozy foster home for cats and allow them to interact with people in hopes of getting adopted. Le said she wants to create a healing experience for both cats and humans.

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Le has volunteered at the Salty Cat Rescue and raises money for her new business most Saturdays at the farmers market downtown. She sells merchandise for the Meow Cat Cafe such as coffee mugs, stickers and sweatshirts, and accepts donations in exchange for a free tote bag.

I feel like Im fulfilling my service to what Im passionate about and thats helping animals and saving animals. Ive had that passion since I was a kid, so doing this feels like my purpose in life, Le said.

This article originally appeared on The News Herald: Panama City woman working to open cat cafe in the area
By Daniela Desantis

ASUNCION (Reuters) - Paraguay remains resolute about maintaining diplomatic relations with Taiwan despite Nicaragua's decision to shift its allegiance to China, the top adviser to the South American country's President Mario Abdo told Reuters on Friday.

China and Nicaragua re-established diplomatic ties on Friday after the Central American country broke relations with Chinese-claimed Taiwan, boosting Beijing in a part of the world where the United States has strong influence.

"It is a decision of the Nicaraguan government. We respect it, but Paraguay remains firm in its position to continue diplomatic relations with Taiwan," Federico Gonzalez, advisor to President Abdo, said in a statement to Reuters.

"For Paraguay this doesn't change anything. Our position remains the same."

China has increased military and political pressure on Taiwan to accept its sovereignty claims, drawing anger from the democratically ruled island, which has repeatedly said it would not be bullied and has the right to international participation.

Nicaragua's break with Taiwan has reduced the island's small group of international allies, and has put renewed focus on whether other countries who maintain diplomatic ties with Taiwan could do the same.

Paraguay is the only South American nation that maintains ties with Taiwan, a relationship that has been going on for more than six decades. Taiwan finances various infrastructure projects and agricultural support in the country, and donated medical supplies at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.

In announcing the donation last June of a million doses of vaccines to Paraguay, U.S. Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs Victoria Nuland, said that Paraguay's relationship with Taiwan set a strong example for the world.

China, which considers Taiwan a rogue province, says the island's allies, now down to 14, remain with Taipei only because of pressure from Washington and so-called "dollar diplomacy".

(Reporting by Daniela Desantis, writing by Hugh Bronstein; Editing by Alistair Bell)
Associated Press

A former hermit in New Hampshire whose cabin in the woods burned down after nearly three decades on the property that he was ordered to leave has been charged with trespassing there once again, turning a shed that survived the fire into a makeshift home outfitted with a wood stove. There had been an outpouring of support for David Lidstone, 81  better known as River Dave" since he was arrested in July and accused of squatting on property owned by a Vermont man. Lidstone was a local celebrity to boaters and kayakers on the Merrimack River before his property dispute caught the attention of the masses, bringing in over $200,000 in donations to help him start a new, law-abiding life.
Pippa Middleton and Princess Beatrice just wore The Fold. (Getty Images)

Yahoo Life's editors are committed to independently selecting wonderful products at great prices for you. We may receive a share from purchases made via links on this page. Pricing and availability are subject to change.

The royal family do many things well, but one that the female members in particular do impeccably is know how to pick out a good coat.

As demonstrated on Wednesday when Princess Beatrice and sister of the Duchess of Cambridge, Pippa Middleton, when they attended an event at Westminster Abbey both dressed in the same 645 coat by British brand The Fold.

The Christmas carol service saw the two women don the classic, streamlined coat, Pippa in forest green and Princess Beatrice in a biscuit brown.

Pippa Middleton attends the "Together At Christmas" community carol service at Westminster Abbey. (Getty Images)

Princess Beatrice attends the "Together At Christmas" community carol service at Westminster Abbey. (Getty Images)

Though the brand seems to be doing the rounds among the royal ranks, if you haven't heard of it before, we've made it our business to find out everything you need to know about it.

Firstly, you can still get your hands on the The Fold Finchley Wool Blend Tailored Coat at John Lewis worn by Pippa - although it's down to a few sizes and likely to sell out soon.

Buy it: The Fold Finchley Wool Blend Tailored Coat in Dark Green | 645 from John Lewis

The brand has rocketed in popularity since starting up in a discreet Chelsea boutique in 2012, designed to feel like a 'members club', where it offers personal services to its clients - which include the likes of Kate Middleton and Holly Willoughby.

And it's easy to see how the brand's clever designing, which boast 'contouring' wrapped waistline to give the illusion of a slimmer figure and a flattering, fit-and-flare silhouette, has pulled in the shopping elite.

The brand, whose prices start at 75 for the Hutton leather belt, has also received the royal seal of approval from the Duchess of Cambridge, who first wore one of its smart grey dresses in 2015.

The Duchess Of Cambridge Visits Hope House in 2015 wearing a dress from The Fold. (Getty Images)

And TV royalty too, when Holly Willoughby wore the brand's blush pink, fit-and-flare dress, which has consistently sold out season after season.

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Sold? We certainly are, so we've rounded up our favourite eight pieces from the brand, all currently available on John Lewis.

8 pieces from The Fold that we're coveting right now from John Lewis

(John Lewis)

(John Lewis)

(John Lewis)

(John Lewis)

(John Lewis)

(John Lewis)

(John Lewis)

(John Lewis)

Watch: What are the best bargain beauty products
Protesters outside Supreme Court as justices hear arguments in high-profile abortion case





Three in ten voters surveyed in a new Hill-HarrisX poll want Roe v. Wade overturned.

Thirty percent of the registered voters who responded to the Dec. 6-7 survey said the Supreme Court's landmark 1973 decision guaranteeing abortion rights should be overturned.

Another thirty-three percent of respondents said Roe v. Wade should be changed but kept in place and another 37 percent said it should be affirmed as is without any changes.

Forty-one percent of Republicans said Roe v. Wade should be overturned, while 42 percent of Democrats said it should be affirmed as is. Independent voters were split, with 37 percent saying it should be changed but kept in place and another 37 percent saying it should be affirmed as is.

On the issue of abortion itself, the survey found that 45 percent of voters polled said the procedure should be legal in limited circumstances such as rape, incest and to save the life of the mother.

Twenty-one percent of voters said it should be legal under most circumstances until the point of viability.

Seventeen percent of voters said abortion should be illegal under all circumstances, while another 17 percent said it should be legal under all circumstances.

On Friday, the Supreme Court ruled to allow abortion providers to pursue a federal lawsuit challenging a restrictive Texas law that bans abortion after six weeks of pregnancy.

The Hill-HarrisX poll was conducted online among 926 registered voters between Dec. 6 and 7. It has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.2 percentage points.

-Gabriela Schulte
Kevin Smith, Lobsta Bakes of Maine Fresh Seafood Market and Catering owner, stands outside his store on Friday, Dec. 10, 2021, in Newtown, Ohio. Smith is retiring after 25 years at the store.

After more than 25 years of fulfilling his mission to bring coastal seafood to landlocked Cincinnati by opening several fish markets and seafood catering businesses, Kevin Smith will be calling it quits at the end of the year.

Smith told The Enquirer he's finally ready to retire to spend more time with his wife Ann and his new pup Snugs.

"I know it's time," he said Friday. "I've got things I've got to catch up on from the last 25 years. My wife has been a lobster widow for 25 years, I worked all weekends for 25 years, I've worked in the shops. So, she's excited for me to get through so we can do things together."

Smith's expertise in securing exquisite seafood dates back to his upbringing in Swan's Island, Maine. A commercial fisherman by trade, Smith, his three brothers, and his father operated a fishing business in Swan's Island called Bounty Seafood that Smith was a part of for around 20 years.

Kevin Smith, Lobsta Bakes of Maine Fresh Seafood Market and Catering owner, is greeted by Gretchen Hensel, a patron of about a decade, after she found out he is retiring on Friday, Dec. 10, 2021, at Smith's store in Newtown, Ohio. Smith is retiring after 25 years at the store.

He eventually brought those talents to the Queen City.

In 1981, Smith met his wife Ann, a Cincinnati native, in Camden, Maine after she had moved away from Ohio upon completing nursing school. The couple eventually moved to Cincinnati, the same place where they got married, in 1992. Smith spent his first three years in Ohio as an electrician.

But his passion for seafood and his fisherman's upbringing led him to chase his dreams of starting his own business. In 1996, he opened his own catering business and fish market, providing Maine-quality seafood to the folks of Anderson Township. The name of the market was Bounty Seafood II, an ode to his family's business. It opened on Salem Road.

He sold the market in 2005 to focus solely on catering before opening his latest market, Lobsta Bakes of Maine, back in 2009.

Smith's clientele for Lobsta Bakes of Maine, which is located on Church Street in Newtown, continued to grow over the years. And long ago, he realized he had found the perfect area to open a business in.

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"I've had great success here in Cincinnati, and I'm proud of that," he said. "The one thing that has made success in Cincinnati is the seafood I've provided, but also the customers. If I had to do it all over again, I would set up here again, because (the people of Cincinnati) love small businesses. They support a lot of small businesses around here besides myself."

Though catering slowed down significantly over the past two years during the COVID-19 pandemic, Smith's market sales went up by 70% at one point. He has since maintained 40% growth of pre-pandemic sales, he said.

Kevin Smith, Lobsta Bakes of Maine Fresh Seafood Market and Catering owner, helps a customer on Friday, Dec. 10, 2021, at his store in Newtown, Ohio. Smith is retiring after 25 years at the store.

But the future of Lobsta Bakes is still to be determined. Though Smith is retiring, he has heard from some interested candidates about potentially taking over the business.

"I'm proud of what I've built," he said. "I'm hoping maybe I can keep the legacy going. I don't have kids, but I'm hoping somebody will come along that can just keep it going. I hate to just shut it down, but if I have to, that's what we'll do."

"Nothing's for sure until you see the check in your hand," he added.

Kevin Smith, Lobsta Bakes of Maine Fresh Seafood Market and Catering owner, holds two of his lobsters next to a lobster tank he custom built on Friday, Dec. 10, 2021, at his store in Newtown, Ohio. Smith is retiring after 25 years at the store.

Smith said he will be engaged in a few upcoming meetings and an announcement on the market's future will come soon.

"My crew wants to stay and work," he said. "They want to find somebody that will take it over. So, I'm in the process of talking but I haven't got a real customer yet."

Until any future announcements are made, Smith says he's focused on his customers until the end of the year. That, and reflecting on his 25 years of service to Cincinnati.

"We're so busy here, I have to concentrate all on my customers right now for the holiday season and to make sure all the fish is good," he said. "My mission when I first came here was to have the best seafood I could bring in and provide great customer service. Those are my two things, and I think it's worked out.

"My customers say it has."

This article originally appeared on Cincinnati Enquirer: Popular Cincinnati seafood specialist to retire in January
Washington County prekindergarten students are ahead of the state average in their readiness for kindergarten, according to a Washington County Public Schools report.

The findings of the Kindergarten Readiness Assessment report states that 42% of kindergarten students that completed Washington County Public Schools pre-K program demonstrated readiness for kindergarten in the 2021-22 school year. That means they were fully prepared for kindergarten this year, despite learning virtually through the COVID-19 pandemic.

The state average was 40%.

"When I initially looked at it, I was expecting significant drop or some type of dramatic negative change out of our kindergarten readiness," Superintendent Boyd Michael said at a business meeting of the Washington County Board of Education this week. "I'm very pleased to report  you know (it was) better than I expected."

The data comes from the Maryland State Department of Education.

Gary Willow, associate superintendent for curriculum and instruction, gave credit to Michael and the school board.

"I think some people think what we're doing in Washington County is the norm across the state. It is not," he said.

"... Full-day prekindergarten that is free and available to all students is not the norm. And, what we're proud of here  (it was in a) year of a pandemic where our students were learning portions of the year through Zoom.

"Pre-K on Zoom," Willow said. "Our teachers, our parents, our community members responded, and for the first time we are above the state average."

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The assessment measures a students ability in the areas of social foundations, language and literacy, math, physical well-being and motor development.

"They're looking at the whole child," Kelly Longerbeam, coordinator for early learning with WCPS, said. "Their social and emotional aspect. How are they doing in their physical and motor development."

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Willow also presented yearly percentages on how Washington County stacks up to other school systems in Maryland.

In 2019, Washington County was 17th in the state in kindergarten readiness out of 24 school systems.

Worcester County was first, at 64%. Prince George's County was last at 35%.

"This year. we're ninth in the state," Willow said. "... We're really excited."

Worcester County remained first, but dropped to 62%. Baltimore City was last at 25%.

Meanwhile, Willow thanked the teachers, paraprofessionals, parents, guardians, aunts and uncles who were there collaborating during virtual learning.

"I also want to thank our daycare providers  the YMCA, all of those big programs made sure (students) were logged on each day," he said. "And, they helped make these scores a possibility or reality."

Michael reminded the board that pre-K students were one of the first to come back to in-person learning, which also made a difference.

"So we made a priority to see those children in-person," he said. "We know Zoom is not the very best effort. A lot of our pre-K teachers worked individually with students on Zoom, not just in a full class, and I think that could have made some difference as well."

Sherry Greenfield is the Education Reporter, covering Washington County Public Schools and the Washington County Board of Education. Follow Sherry on Twitter at Sheina2018 or Instagram at beckmangreenfield.

This article originally appeared on The Herald-Mail: Pre-K in Washington County Public Schools more ready for kindergarten
PROVIENCE  More than a dozen state prison guards conducted a contraband search of patients in the psychiatric wing of the state-run Eleanor Slater Hospital, after the latest in a series of self-inflicted injuries.

In the latest case, a patient with a history of self-harm managed to stockpile and swallow an unknown quantity of pills. Earlier cases included a serious eye-gouging incident with a spoon that was not retrieved, as required, after a meal.

According to reports from inside the hospital on Friday morning, the hospital's chief medical officer Elinore McCance-Katz led what was officially described as a "routine" search of the patients and their surroundings in the Benton building.

Most recently: Latest incident of 'patient self-harm' at state hospital prompts a review of 'leadership'

The Benton building on the Cranston campus of the Eleanor Slater Hospital.

Asked about the morning's events, hospital spokesman Randal Edgar said: "As you know, the health and safety of our patients and staff is our top priority. In partnership with the states Department of Corrections, we are running a routine contraband search at the Benton facility."

Late Friday, he said: "Contraband was found and confiscated. As a result, the Benton facility is now safer for patients and staff."

Previously: Another patient injury raises questions about Eleanor Slater Hospital investigation

"There is nothing routine about having 15 correctional guards storm a hospital,'' said one observer, who asked not to be identified.

Many, if not most, of the patients in this wing of the hospital were sent there by state court judges for a number of possible reasons.

They include: people awaiting a psychiatric evaluation as part of a trial; those who have been found incompetent to stand trial who may be receiving treatment in an attempt to help them regain competency and those who were tried and found not guilty by reason of insanity. The population also potentially includes: inmates serving a sentence in prison who develop the need for inpatient psychiatric care.

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Previous incidents at Eleanor Slater Hospital

The search comes in the wake of an incident last weekend involving a patient who stockpiled and swallowed enough pills to be sent off campus to Rhode Island Hospital for evaluation and treatment.

Changes ahead: Here's what we know about the plan to fix Eleanor Slater Hospital

The same patient was found face-down in a bathroom with a string around her neck on Columbus Day weekend. She was sent to Rhode Island Hospital on that occasion as well after reporting she had swallowed the top of a razor left in her possession.

The state's Department of Behavioral Healthcare, Developmental Disabilities and Hospitals has not confirmed that it was the same patient who was involved with the pill-swallowing incident last weekend. But multiple sources have done so.

Edgar said Friday that the patient "was sent to an outside hospital for evaluation, observation and any treatment, if needed, and has since returned to ESH."

What Eleanor Slater officials have said about the issue

In response to the latest in this series of incidents, Edgar earlier this week issued a statement on Wednesday that said, in part:

"The incident is under investigation and it appears that proper procedures were not followed.

"Accountability is being assessed at all levels. Changes will be made based on the findings of the investigation to ensure that procedures are followed."

He said the incident had also led to a review of "the performance" of the hospital's current leadership. There have not been any updates on the findings.

It is not yet clear how many prison employees  also known as "correctional officers"  were dispatched to the hospital, and when, if ever, this last happened. Sources on the scene said there appeared to be 14 or 15 there Friday.

But Edgar said the "Department of Corrections has assisted in the past with security audits and searches of the hospitals forensic unit. Contraband searches are handled on a routine basis by hospital staff. However, in light of recent incidents, this was an added step to ensure the safety of patients and staff."

"The search was handled in a professional manner and the description of the corrections officers as storming the facility is a mischaracterization,'' he added.

"It was an organized entry that followed ESH policies for COVID screening and took place in a manner that allowed ESH staff to observe."

It remains unclear if the hospital verified that the guards had been vaccinated against Covid.

This article originally appeared on The Providence Journal: Prison guards search for contraband at Eleanor Slater Hospital
University of Florida officials in November blocked three professors from offering expert testimony in a lawsuit that challenged recently enacted state voting restrictions. But the university soon reversed course amid a public outcry.

The criticism leveled at the university included charges that the scholars academic freedom had been violated, along with their First Amendment rights to free speech. The professors themselves filed a lawsuit against the university after the reversal, saying that the university had violated foundational principles of academic freedom and free speech.

From my perspective as a constitutional law scholar and lawyer, untangling how these two claims are both related and distinct can help us understand how these kinds of disputes ultimately pit robust protections for free inquiry and debate against public institutions desire to manage their operations as they choose. It turns out that courts reach very mixed results when deciding these disputes.

People voting at stand-up voting carrels.

Protecting speech

Public universities  like the University of Florida  are government employers. They sometimes restrict the speech of faculty members, who are their employees. For example, the University of Florida asserted that professors testimony in a lawsuit against the state was adverse to the universitys interests as a state of Florida institution when it first sought to block that testimony. Such restrictions can trigger both First Amendment and academic freedom concerns.

First Amendment law is the body of constitutional law that protects speech from the governments unjustified interference. For example, it prohibits the government from punishing critics for speaking out.

Academic freedom describes an academic communitys customs and practices that allow free intellectual inquiry and debate. These customs and practices help advance universities mission of creating and disseminating knowledge.

Under these customs and practices, for instance, scholars have the freedom to choose which topics to explore and which conclusions to draw.

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Academic freedom protections are enforced by academic communities, like universities. First Amendment protections are enforced by courts.

Government often limits its employees speech

First Amendment law generally prohibits the government from restricting individuals right to speak freely. But the First Amendment rules that apply to the government when it limits the speech of its own employees are much more government-friendly, allowing greater restrictions of those workers speech.

Under these rules, the First Amendment protects a public employees speech as an individual citizen on a matter of public concern, so long as that speech does not unduly interfere with her government employers operations.

So, for example, the First Amendment would protect a public school teachers letter to the editor or social media posting that criticizes the mayor. The lawsuit filed by the University of Florida professors who were originally told they couldnt give testimony similarly argues that, through that testimony, the professors sought to offer their views as individual citizens on the important matter of voting rights.

In contrast, according to the Supreme Court, public employees speech pursuant to to their official duties is entirely unprotected by the First Amendment.

According to one landmark ruling, thats because government employers must, as a practical matter, have power over their employees job-related speech, to control what the Supreme Court called what the employer itself has commissioned or created. In other words, what a person says as part of her official duties as a government employee is not protected by the First Amendment. This is so, according to the court, even when the employees job-related speech is on a matter of great concern to the public.

What about whistleblowers?

The Supreme Court first announced this rule in a 2006 decision called Garcetti v. Ceballos. In that case, the justices rejected a prosecutors claim that he was exercising his First Amendment rights to free speech and should not have been punished by his governmental employer for his internal memo that questioned a warrants legitimacy.

Lower courts now frequently apply the Garcetti ruling to dismiss the First Amendment claims of government workers punished for truthfully reporting government misconduct when it was their job to report it.

For example, courts found that the First Amendment did not protect public health care workers who were disciplined after conveying their concerns about patient care. Likewise, it didnt protect police officers who were fired after reporting public corruption.

The Garcetti ruling sometimes makes it hard to figure out when public employees speech occurs pursuant to their official duties and thus loses any First Amendment protection.

One court even applied Garcetti to conclude that the First Amendment permits the government to punish a public employee for truthfully testifying that a state legislator on a state agency payroll had not been reporting to work  when the employees testimony involved information that he acquired on the job.

Fortunately, the Supreme Court reversed that decision in Lane v. Franks, holding that the First Amendment protects a public employee who provided truthful sworn testimony when his job duties did not ordinarily involve such testimony.

A whistle and a judge's gavel.

Crowded intersection

Another important question that remains unanswered is whether the Garcetti ruling strips public university faculty members of First Amendment protection for their research, teaching and other job-related speech. Its a First Amendment question complicated by its intersection with academic freedom protections.

The Supreme Court has emphasized that academic freedom is key to universities mission of creating and disseminating knowledge. This mission, the justices said, advances First Amendment values by contributing to the marketplace of ideas and a vibrant democracy.

The court relied on this observation in two mid-20th-century decisions to say that the First Amendment protected universities from legislatures that sought to squelch unorthodox beliefs or unpopular expression. Lawmakers had tried to do that by requiring loyalty oaths of faculty members or by investigating faculty members allegedly subversive activities.

If the First Amendment protects universities from that sort of legislative interference with their academic mission, does it also protect public university faculty members from employer interference with their job-related speech?

Decades later in the Garcetti case, the Supreme Court punted on this question. Its still not clear whether the First Amendment protects public university faculty members research, teaching or other on-the-job speech from their employers restrictions.

Regardless of how the Supreme Court ultimately rules on this First Amendment question, academic freedom principles  which rely on academic communities themselves for their enforcement rather than on courts  can still provide an independent source of protection for faculty members job-related speech.

In other words, universities themselves can choose to respect those principles in their treatment of their faculty members.

For these reasons, those who objected to the University of Floridas efforts to silence its professors testimony argued not only that the university was violating the First Amendment, but also that it was violating its own institutional commitment to academic freedom.

Editors note: The University of Florida is a supporting member of The Conversation.

This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit news site dedicated to sharing ideas from academic experts. It was written by: Helen Norton, University of Colorado Boulder.

Read more:



Helen Norton does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Representatives from the Leon Classroom Teacher Association attend the Leon County School Board meeting Tuesday, August 10, 2021.

Its not often that there are so many things wrong with an issue before the Legislature, you dont know where to start listing them.

But a constitutional amendment aimed at returning Florida to partisan School Board elections is really that bad.

In fact, its hard to find anything good to say about the proposal, Senate Joint Resolution 244, sponsored by state Sen. Joe Gruters. The Sarasota Republican is chairman of the Republican Party of Florida, which enhances chances of this bad idea getting through the 2022 legislative session but, thankfully, it should have a hard time getting public approval.

Sponsorship by the GOP chairman might be the first red flag, warning that this is a highly partisan idea. Its approval by a 5-4 party-line vote in the Senate Ethics and Elections Committee, with all Republicans voting aye and all Democrats nay, might be a second clue to its partisan pedigree.

Not too long ago  1998, to be precise  Floridians voted to make School Board elections non-partisan. It seems to have worked out all right.

But Gruters contends that, if candidates run with an R or D after their names on the ballot, voters would have a quick and easy indicator of their political leanings. Never mind finding out anything about what candidates believe, or what they want to do on the School Board, we could just go by their party labels.

Generally, Democrat means liberal, by contemporary Florida standards. Republican means conservative, which currently translates to unquestioning fealty to Donald J. Trump. Not always, but close enough.

And no party affiliation, or NPA, means no voting in the Republican or Democratic primaries.

Thats the first thing wrong with this amendment. It disenfranchises a huge segment of Floridas registered voters, those who dont choose between either of the major parties.

In essence, returning to partisan School Board races would mean NPAs get to pay property taxes and send their kids to schools governed by those elected officials, but they would have no voice in selection of candidates for those important jobs.

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They could vote only in November, when most races are already decided in very red or blue counties. Frankly, a lot of non-partisan races are decided by parties now.

Everyone who cares already knows which candidates are Republicans or Democrats, and can vote accordingly. But at least non-partisan races let everyone vote, if theyre interested.

Theres no Republican education or Democratic education; at least, there shouldnt be. The schools are for the children, for the good of each community, and theres no need to inject partisanship into their governance.

Thats what this is really about.

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Rep. Ramon Alexander: 10 pieces of factual Florida history that should be taught in public schools

Gov. Ron DeSantis has lately been fighting with some counties over COVID policy and face masks. His Department for Education has sought to block salaries of defiant School Board members. Hes also been fighting with some boards over critical race theory.

Even if its adopted in 2022, the amendment wouldnt apply to School Board races until two years later, at the earliest. But its presence on next years ballot would be a strong signal of whos really in charge, and one more wedge issue for the GOP to campaign on next year.

Having non-party voters, and those who register with splinter parties, participating in non-partisan elections has a moderating influence on those races. If its assumed that all the Republicans will vote for the craziest conservatives and all the Democrats will go for the looniest liberals, then candidates will have to moderate their messages and appeal to the middle-roaders who are turned off by pandering to either extreme.

One masked audience member sits among mostly unmasked audience members as they listen to public comments about the Leon County School District's masking policy during a Leon County School Board meeting Tuesday, July 27, 2021.

Across Florida, and in several states across the nation, School Board meetings have turned into chaotic clashes over curriculum, face masks and several culture-war flashpoints. Making their members run with party labels can only aggravate that pointless partisanship.

More from Bill Cotterell

Fortunately, Gruters amendment is a long way from fruition. As a constitutional amendment, it requires a 60% majority in both the House and Senate to get on next years ballot. And then, it would need 60% public approval at the polls.

Thats do-able, but a tall order. The GOP recently took the lead in voter registration, but not by much. If Democrats united against it  not to mention all those NPAs and minor-party voters whod be disenfranchised  the amendment wouldnt reach the required three-fifths in a statewide referendum.

Probably the best argument against the measure is an old rule not heard much around the Capitol anymore: It aint broke. Dont fix it.

Bill Cotterell is a retired Tallahassee Democrat Capitol reporter.

This article originally appeared on Tallahassee Democrat: Bill Cotterell: Florida GOP head seeks to make School Board races partisan
Prosecutors on Friday recommended more than five years in jail for a Jan. 6 rioter who assaulted police and participated in some of the most violent episodes of the entire attack, the steepest sentence sought to date and a harbinger of even longer sentence requests that could come.

Robert Palmer hurled wooden boards and a fire extinguisher at police officers guarding the Lower West Terrace tunnel of the Capitol, the site being prepared for Joe Bidens inauguration weeks later  and just yards from where some lawmakers were sheltering amid the violence.

Defendants repeated violent assaults on law enforcement for the purpose of overturning a democratic election warrant a significant term of imprisonment, Assistant U.S. Attorney Robert Juman wrote in the 39-page sentencing memo.

Palmer, who pleaded guilty on Oct. 4, would be the first assailant sentenced for participating in the Lower West Tunnel violence, where police battled rioters for more than two hours and some of the most harrowing scenes of violence occurred. The clash there included the beating and tasing of Washington Metropolitan Police Officer Michael Fanone and the crushing of Metropolitan Police Officer Daniel Hodges in a Capitol doorway. Both episodes have become part of iconic and disturbing images of that day.

The Justice Department called for a 63-month sentence for Palmer, which prosecutors noted was on the lower end of the recommended range based on the details of his crime. The primary reason for that decision was that Palmer was one of the few felony defendants to plead guilty early and cooperate with law enforcement.

Unlike other Capitol defendants, Palmer pled guilty relatively early, turned himself into law enforcement, and voluntarily met with the FBI to provide truthful information, prosecutors wrote. A 63-month sentence reflects the gravity of Palmers conduct, his lack of remorse, and the need to deter Palmer and others from similar conduct in the future, while at the same time recognizing Palmers early decision to plead guilty and avoid the need for a trial.

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The longest sentence handed down so far went to Jacob Chansley, also known as the QAnon Shaman. Chansley infamously wore a horned headdress and carried a bullhorn as he urged rioters on and was among the first to breach the Capitol. He made his way to the Senate chamber and onto the dais where then-Vice President Mike Pence had stood moments earlier. Judge Royce Lamberth sentenced him to 41 months in prison. That sentence matched the one Lamberth also gave to Scott Fairlamb, who pleaded guilty to assaulting a police officer outside the Capitol.

Unlike Fairlamb, Palmer engaged in repeated assaults on law enforcement, acquired and used dangerous weapons, and never sought to assist law enforcement, Juman noted.

The sentencing memo is unique for another reason as well: It quotes at length from public comments made by Rep. Stephanie Murphy (D-Fla.), who said during a July hearing that she was hiding in an office near the West Terrace tunnel during the most extreme moments of the violence.

While you were holding back the mob at the Lower West Terrace entrance, I was holed up with Congresswoman Kathleen Rice in a small office about 40 paces from the tunnel that you all were in, Murphy said at the time, in a passage now quoted by prosecutors.

Murphy is one of nine House lawmakers on the Jan. 6 select committee probing multiple aspects of the attack.

Prosecutors spent most of their memo detailing the relentless violence they say Palmer perpetrated. After witnessing numerous police assaults, Juman writes, Palmer chose to join in.

First, Juman says, Palmer pushed his way to the front of the line of rioters and threw a wooden plank at officers. Then he sprayed a fire extinguisher at them before throwing it at them. He briefly retreated after absorbing pepper spray but returned a few minutes later to hurl a four-to five-foot pole at police.

Police then hit Palmer in the abdomen with a non-lethal munition, Juman says. After laying on the ground briefly, Palmer got up and showed off his injury to the crowd, claiming he was only defending himself when he was attacked.

Prosecutors also considered statements Palmer made after entering his guilty plea in the case. Juman notes that Palmer posted a public statement on the Internet falsely claiming that his actions on January 6 were purely defensive, and falsely claiming that his assaults on law enforcement were a reaction to  rather than the cause of  him being tear gassed and shot with a non-lethal projectile.

Palmers post-plea falsehoods demonstrate a lack of remorse and are inconsistent with an acceptance of responsibility, Juman writes.

Nicholas Wu contributed to this report.


A Pueblo jury found Gina Vinson-DeHerrera guilty of first-degree murder on Dec. 10 in connection to the death of Steven Sandoval, 35, of Pueblo West, last year.

She was sentenced to life in the Department of Corrections without the possibility of parole based on Colorado's mandatory minimum sentencing guidelines.

Throughout the more-than weeklong trial, members of Vinson-DeHerrera's family were present in the crowd watching the proceedings. As the jury deliberated their decision, the family gathered in a circle in the hallway and prayed the jury would find Vinson-DeHerrera's actions were in self-defense.

But the jury found her guilty, triggering an automatic sentence of life without parole.

On Sept. 20, 2020, at approximately 10 a.m, Pueblo police were called to the 600 block of East B Street on a report that a motor vehicle theft was in progress.

About a minute later, police received another call that a shooting had occurred at the same location.

After arriving at the scene, police located Sandoval, who had been shot. He was transported to a local hospital where he later died of his injuries.

According to police, Vinson-DeHerrera had left the residence in a blue 2008 Ford Mustang convertible prior to officers arrival. The vehicle was later located and recovered by officers at another location

Police quickly identified Vinson-DeHerrera as the primary suspect in the shooting and she was arrested the following day on Sept. 21, 2020.

Contact Chieftain reporter Lacey Latch at llatch@gannett.com or on social media @laceylatch.

This article originally appeared on The Pueblo Chieftain: Gina Vinson-DeHerrera sentenced to life in prison for Pueblo murder
Clifford Davis-Odell Horton Federal Building in Memphis Wednesday, March 25, 2020.

Currently, the federal building in Downtown Memphis bears the names of two men, Clifford Davis and Odell Horton. Next year, the building will bear one name  Horton's.

A Senate vote on Thursday cleared the way for dropping Davis' name. In November, the House voted to strip the building of Davis' name due to his ties to the Ku Klux Klan and his pro-segregation legacy. President Joe Biden is expected to sign the bill into law.

The passage of the bill bookends an effort by U.S. Rep. Steve Cohen, who successfully pushed to have Horton's name added to the federal building in 2007 after his election to congress. The measure was Cohen's first successful bill.

"This is a proud day for Memphis and a satisfying legislative accomplishment," Cohen said in a statement. " I look forward to seeing President Biden sign this bill into law and to the ceremonial renaming in Memphis next year.

Horton, who died in 2006 from respiratory failure, had a decades-long legal career before presiding over federal court in West Tennessee. He was the first Black assistant U.S. attorney and federal judge in West Tennessee post-Reconstruction.

Horton's long and varied professional life started after he served in the U.S. Marines in the late '40s and early 50s. While most of his career was based in legal services, he also presided over the division of health and hospitals for the City of Memphis during former Memphis Mayor Henry Loeb's administration.

Additionally, Horton also served as the president of LeMoyne-Owen College from 1970 to 1974.

Micaela Watts is a reporter for The Commercial Appeal and can be reached at micaela.watts@commercialappeal.com.

This article originally appeared on Memphis Commercial Appeal: Odell Horton, Clifford Davis names on federal building in Memphis
Neither the Shelby County Democratic Party nor the Republican Party will endorse school board candidates next year, during the first election to be affected by a new state law permitting partisan school board races.

Shelby County Democratic Party Chair Gabby Salinas said in a Thursday statement that the party continues to prioritize equity in public schools. After consulting with teachers, parents, advocates, and community leaders, party leaders believe the best way to accomplish that goal is for school board races to remain nonpartisan.

Salinas called the new law an attempt by the GOP-controlled legislature to further politicize and divide public education.

More: Partisan school board elections are headed to Nashville after local Democrats, GOP request primaries

All of us, regardless of political affiliation, have a vested interest in the education of our children  they are our future, Salinas said. We must work together to leverage the power of our government to ensure that every child, regardless of their socio-economic status, race, ethnicity, religion, sex, or gender has access to a sound public education.

Shelby County Republican Party Chair Cary Vaughn said via email Thursday the party will not pursue partisan school board races because they see no advantage or benefit in changing our protocol.

The deadline for local political parties to file intent to hold primary elections for school board members is Friday, Dec. 10. Primaries will be held in May for the November ballot.

The law is one of a bundle of bills passed during an October special session convened by Republican lawmakers to curb COVID restrictions, and was signed into law by Gov. Bill Lee last month.

The measure allows  but does not require  local political parties to put forth school board candidates with Republican or Democratic labels starting next year, when half of school board races will be on Tennesseans ballots. Candidates also may run as independents.

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Tennessee is among several other states  like Florida and Arizona  to consider making school board contests partisan, fueled by debates about critical race theory and school mask mandates that have often fallen along party lines.

More: Federal judge blocks Tennessee's law preventing schools from issuing mask mandates

Advocates of the law contend that party labels would give voters more clarity when selecting candidates who best reflect their ideals in one of the most critical policy jobs in their communities.

Some try to argue that school boards are somehow apolitical because they dont have an R or a D besides their names. Thats nonsense, said Rep. Mark Cochran, a Republican from Englewood, in October. The politics are already there. This is just shedding light on what politics there are.

Some Democrats and Republicans, meanwhile, have argued the last thing Tennessee needs is more partisanship in education. They expressed concern that party labels would distract from whats most important  students  and deter school board candidates from running because of elevated political tensions and increased expenses of campaigning.

Earlier this week, the Metro Nashville school board sent a letter to the chairpersons of both the Davidson County Republican and Democratic parties, urging them to refrain from calling for partisan school board elections. The GOP voted Tuesday night on the matter, but as of Wednesday had declined to release the outcome, The Tennessean reported. Democrats were set to vote Wednesday.

This story was originally published on Chalkbeat, a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools.

This article originally appeared on Memphis Commercial Appeal: Shelby County school board candidates won't receive political endorsement
A subsidiary of Royal Dutch Shell (RDS.A) recently made a major oil discovery at the Blacktip North prospect in the Alaminos Canyon block 336 in the deep-water U.S. Gulf of Mexico (GoM). At multiple stages, the Blacktip North Well encountered more than 300 feet (91 metres) of net oil pay and an assessment is underway to further determine development options.

Blacktip North is run by Shell (89.49%) and co-owned by Repsol (10.51%). It is located about 30 miles northeast of the Whale discovery, 4.5 miles northeast of the recently reviewed Blacktip discovery and 42 miles from the Perdido host. The discovery well was drilled at a water-depth of 8,443 meters by Transoceans ultra-deepwater drillship Deepwater Poseidon.

Shell's Deepwater executive vice president Paul Goodfellow believes that the Blacktip North potential is the most recent example of fresh resources being discovered in Shell's lucrative corridors. The Perdido Corridor, for example, is at the centre of value creation in the Gulf of Mexico and it represents an opportunity to utilize RDS.A's existing infrastructure to unlock the full value potential of its finds.

Earlier in May, Shell affiliate made a major oil exploration at the Leopard prospect in the Alaminos Canyon block 691 in the deep-water U.S. Gulf of Mexico (GoM). At multiple stages, the Leopard Well encountered more than 600 feet (183 metres) of net oil pay.

RDS.A belongs to a global group of energy and petrochemical companies. It is involved in all phases of the petroleum industry right from exploration to final processing and delivery. Shell recently released first-quarter 2021 earnings results wherein the bottom line came ahead of the Zacks Consensus Estimate by 3.8%.

Zacks Rank & Key Picks

Shell currently has a Zack Rank #3 (Hold). Investors interested in the energy sector might look at the following stocks worth considering with a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy) at present. You can see the complete list of todays Zacks #1 Rank stocks here.

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Occidental Petroleum Corporation OXY is an integrated oil and gas company with significant exploration and production exposure. OXY is also a producer of various basic chemicals, petrochemicals, polymers and specialty chemicals. As of 2020 end, OXY's preliminary worldwide proved reserves totaled 2.91 billion BOE compared with 3.9 billion BOE at the end of 2019.

In the past year, shares of Occidental Petroleum have surged 99% compared with the industry's growth of 96.6%. OXY's 2021 earnings are expected to soar 151.4% from the year-ago reported figure. OXY has also witnessed eight northward estimate revisions in the past 60 days. In the third quarter, OXY achieved its divestiture target of $10 billion by inking a deal to sell off its interest in two offshore Ghana assets for $750 million.

PDC Energy PDCE is an independent upstream operator dealing in exploration, development and production of natural gas, crude oil and natural gas liquids. PDCE, which reached its present form following the January 2020 combination with SRC Energy, is currently the second-largest producer in the Denver-Julesburg Basin. As of 2020 end, PDCE's total estimated proved reserves were 731,073 thousand barrels of oil equivalent.

In the past year, shares of PDC Energy have gained 169% compared with the industry's growth of 108.6%. PDCE's earnings for 2021 are expected to surge 273.4% from the prior-year reported figure. In the past 60 days, the Zacks Consensus Estimate for PDCE's 2021 earnings has been raised 26.8%. Earnings of PDCE beat the Zacks Consensus Estimate in all the last four quarters, the average being 51.06%.

Callon Petroleum Company CPE solely focuses on the exploration, and production of oil and gas resources in the Permian Basin. CPE boasts an impressive footprint throughout the core of the Permian Basin, which is the highest-producing shale play in the United States. Callon Petroleum, currently valued at $2.9 billion, entered the basin in 2009 and has been strengthening its foothold in the region since then.

In the past year, shares of Callon Petroleum have soared 234.6% compared with Zacks Exploration and Production Industry's growth of 90.7%. CPE's 2021 earnings are expected to skyrocket 222.7% from the prior-year reported figure. CPE currently has a Zacks Style Score of A for both Growth and Momentum. CPE has witnessed six upward revisions in the past 60 days.



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Deputies seized hundreds of thousands of lethal doses of fentanyl during a traffic stop, the Butler County Sheriff's Office said on Friday.

The traffic stop happened at State Route 4 and Boymel Drive in Fairfield, officials said in a news release.

The vehicle was searched during the stop, with deputies discovering and confiscating a kilogram of fentanyl, officials said.

A single kilogram of fentanyl has the potential to kill 500,000 people, according to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration. Drug traffickers usually distribute the substance by the kilogram.

Officials said 25-year-old Adrian Eliud Casilles, of Hilliard, Ohio, was arrested and charged with felony counts of drug possession and trafficking drugs.

This is what happens when you bring drugs into Butler County. We take your drugs and we take you to jail, Sheriff Richard Jones said in a release.

This article originally appeared on Cincinnati Enquirer: Sheriff: Thousands of lethal fentanyl doses seized in Butler County
SINGAPORE (Reuters) - Singapore has detected its first locally transmitted case of the COVID-19 variant Omicron in a member of staff at the city state's airport, authorities said late on Thursday, warning that more Omicron cases are likely to be detected.

The 24-year-old Singaporean woman, who works in a service role in the airport, "may have interacted with transit passengers from Omicron-affected countries," the health ministry said in a statement.

She tested preliminarily positive for Omicron as a part of the routine testing for frontline workers, it said, noting she was fully vaccinated and asymptomatic.

A second Omicron case reported on Tuesday was a traveller from Germany.

Both of individuals had received vaccine boosters shots, the health ministry said.

The cases are currently pending further genome sequencing to confirm the variant.

Singapore had previously detected three Omicron cases, all found in overseas travellers.

"Given its high transmissibility and spread to many parts of the world, we should expect to find more Omicron cases at our borders and also within our community," the health ministry said.

Singapore has vaccinated 96% of its eligible population, and authorities are urging the public to get booster shots amid concerns over the Omicron variant.

(Reporting by Chen Lin in Singapore; Editing by Ed Davies)
Landon Arrowood, 22, said he felt bittersweet sitting at the graduation for the Leaders of Tomorrow for the Justice Impacted (LOTJI) program.

"This is one of the best groups I've ever put myself in," he said.

Arrowood, who's been in an out of jail for drug addiction, had done all sorts of therapy, like cognitive behavioral therapy and intensive outpatient programs before hearing about the LOTJI program.

"I would do it three times again if I could," he said. "Just seeing the progress I made in the first two, three weeks in myself, how I interact with people, how I think and make decisions... it's just crazy."

Landon Arrowood and his girlfriend, Hailee Johnson, at the Leaders of Tomorrow graduation ceremony at the downtown Sioux Falls Holiday Inn on Thursday, Dec. 9, 2021.

Think 3D Solution's Leaders of Tomorrow (LOT) 12-week program empowers participants of all ages with tools to creating a positive mindset and implementing successful habits, with the larger goal of developing the next generation of leaders in Sioux Falls. LOTJI recruits formerly incarcerated individuals on parole or probation, with funding from Minnehaha County, and celebrated Arrowood and 13 others Thursday at the downtown Holiday Inn, graduating as the program's second cohort. Participants are not court-mandated to attend LOTJI and come on their free will.

The graduation had over 50 attendees, including the families of graduates and previous graduates of the program. The group heard a speech from Mayor Paul Tenhaken and testimony LOT graduates about the program.

"It's so important for us to be filling that pipeline as a community," Tenhaken said of a growing gap left by a retiring workforce. "Who's next, who's ready to put their hand up and say, 'I'm going to help lead in my organization, in my community, on this board?'"

More: Minnehaha County criminal justice program aims to reinvigorate hope for formerly incarcerated

Tenhaken thanked LOT sponsors and Think 3D founders Tamien Dysart and Vaney Hariri, on behalf of the city, for their work to make the city better.

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LOTJI graduate Reva Fallis said the program changed her life by helping her become more self-aware and have more accountability in her relationships with her kids, and having a support system within the program.

Reva Fallis speaks about her experience in the Leaders of Tomorrow Justice Impacted (LOTJI) program during the LOT graduation ceremony at the downtown Sioux Falls Holiday Inn on Thursday, Dec. 9, 2021.

"I am honored that the judicial system had picked me to be in this class, because I don't think I would've been able to stand in front of a lot of people, with all the confidence I have in myself today," said Fallis.

Fallis has struggled with drug and alcohol addiction, but said her two daughters and six grandchildren continue to motivate her in leading a better life.

"I want to break the cycle of ACEs (Adverse Child Experiences) for my children," she said tearfully, looking over at her two daughters who came to the graduation. "I want to show them there's a better life out there and never think you can't succeed."

Previously: Minnehaha County uses $700K grant to focus on racial, ethnic inequities in justice system

The last time the Argus Leader visited LOTJI in October, the group was in the fourth week of the program curriculum, learning about Think 3D's "winning formula": Habits x Belief = Results.

Now, at the end of the 12 weeks, LOTJI co-facilitator Terry Liggins could not be more proud of the 14 grads.

Leaders of Tomorrow for the Justice Impacted's (LOTJI) second cohort graduates pose for a photo with program facilitators Terry Liggins and Serene Thin Elk on Thursday, December 9th, 2021.

"This is what community looks like, bringing in families to see what happens when people are wrapped around with real support, said Liggins, who was also formerly incarcerated and is a LOT grad.

Liggins said he was proud of Think 3D's commitment to go out in the margins of the community to reach all people, especially the justice impacted. LOTJI has improved retention through word-of-mouth referrals from previous graduates, probational officers and peers.

LOTJI only has funding from the county for one more cohort in 2022, and will have to go back to the drawing board for more funding to continue the program specific to the formerly incarcerated, Liggins said.

"Hopefully, what we're able to do is demonstrate what happens when you invest in this population and that they're worth continuing to support all right," he said.

Email human rights reporter Nicole Ki at nki@argusleader.com or follow on Twitter at @_nicoleki.

This article originally appeared on Sioux Falls Argus Leader: Sioux Falls celebrates criminal justice leadership program graduates
US Special Forces soldiers and Afghan National Interdiction Unit agents board CH-47 Chinook helicopters for an operation in Helmand province, September 12, 2016. US Army/Sgt. Connor Mendez

The end of the war in Afghanistan closes a chapter for US special-operations forces.

Like the rest of the US military, those operators are shifting to an era of great-power competition.

But US special operators will also continue to fight and help others fight terrorist threats.

The hectic last days of the US presence in Afghanistan spelled an end of an era for the US special-operations community.

For the past two decades, US special operators have been at the forefront of the fight against global terrorism. In addition to Afghanistan, American commandos deployed  and in some cases are still deploying  to Iraq and Syria and parts of Africa and Southeast Asia to combat terrorist groups.

US Special Operations Command is following the Pentagon's shift to great-power competition against near-peer competitors, such as China and Russia, but elusive and persistent jihadists still threaten security and stability around the world.

That means US special operators face two completely different opponents. Although those challenges have common elements, SOCOM will have to use two different playbooks to counter them.

The fight against terrorism continues

Gen. Richard D. Clarke at a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing, March 25, 2021 Anna Moneymaker-Pool/Getty Images

Even before the fall of the Afghan government and the chaos of the Taliban takeover  which could lead to a resurgence of Al Qaeda or other terrorist organizations  SOCOM's leader emphasized that counterterrorism remains the US special-operations community's priority.

In testimony to Congress in April, Gen. Richard Clarke, the commander of SOCOM, highlighted that his force has the capabilities and tools to address both violent extremist organizations and Russia and China.

Clarke also said that there has been a drawdown in the deployment of special-operations forces abroad, with 2020 being the year with the fewest commandos abroad since 2001.

The SOCOM commander told lawmakers that about 40% of US special operators focus on near-peer adversaries, with the rest fighting terrorists. Clarke said the command is looking to balance that division of labor equally, showing that while the Pentagon pivots to near-peer warfare, the US special-operations community still has to deal with terrorism.

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Nepalese soldiers practice medically evacuating casualties with 1st Special Forces Group (Airborne) during a joint exercise in Nepal, February 18, 2020. US Army

Despite being battered by the US military and intelligence community for more than 20 years, Al Qaeda and its many offshoots are still present and seeking to strike American and Western targets.

Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula is particularly dangerous. Other VEOs, such as ISIS and Al Shabaab, also pose a considerable threat.

In comments at the Military Reporters and Editors Association conference in November, Clarke acknowledged that the threat of terrorism remains active.

Clarke said SOCOM has started a review from its operations in Afghanistan to inform the special-operations community's future approach to violent extremist organizations. He suggested the review's focus will be on how US commandos supported larger conventional forces.

"We got to take those lessons learned, and where applicable to conditions somewhere else, we have to be able to apply those," Clarke said at the conference.

One mission, two lessons

Lithuanian troops and US Army Special Forces soldiers conduct mission planning during an exercise, September 8, 2018. US Army/Sgt. Karen Sampson

Perhaps one of the most important nuggets of information from Clarke in November was about how SOCOM conducts foreign internal defense  the training and advising of local forces  and how it may approach that mission in the future.

Foreign internal defense is arguably one of the most important missions done by US special-operations units, as it allows them to "outsource" all or part of the burden of warfare by building the capability and capacity of foreign conventional and special-operations units.

After nearly two decades conducting that mission on behalf of Iraqi and Afghan counterparts  at the cost of billions of dollars and thousands of American lives  forces in both countries have faltered or failed against determined adversaries.

The approach US forces took to that mission in those countries shouldn't be the default going forward, Clark said last month.

A US Special Forces soldier briefs Guatemalan Special Forces before an exercise in Guatemala, March 3, 2020. US Army/Spc. Aaron Schaeper

"We don't necessarily need to train with partner forces for what we want them to do. We need to train for partner forces of what they need to do for their country and their environment. I think that's the biggest lesson that we have to take from this, writ large," Clarke told military reporters at the conference.

What that means in practical terms is that US special operators may have different curricula for foreign internal defense, depending on the "customer."

For example, Army Green Berets in Taiwan may teach their Taiwanese counterparts guerrilla tactics to use against a larger Chinese force after an invasion of the island nation, while Marine Raiders deployed to Kenya train their local counterparts to conduct counterterrorism and direct-action operations against a non-state group like Al Shabaab.

The inherent flexibility of US special-operations units would allow them to teach different aspects of the same mission set to two audiences in ways suited for each audience.

The future will be packed with challenges for the US special-operations community, but it has shown over the past 40 years that it has versatile toolkit to address current and emerging threats.

Stavros Atlamazoglou is a defense journalist specializing in special operations, a Hellenic Army veteran (national service with the 575th Marine Battalion and Army HQ), and a Johns Hopkins University graduate.

Read the original article on Business Insider
Atlantic City Electric, Exelon, the Drumthwacket Foundation and Sustainable Jersey are honoring six student teams across southern New Jersey for their New Jersey Student Climate Challenge action projects, which offer local solutions to the issue of climate change.

As part of the inaugural year of program, local student teams were tasked with developing and executing a school or community-based climate action project and creating a digital story/video to accompany the project. Student team winners and their teacher mentors were recognized at a virtual awards ceremony hosted by the Drumthwacket Foundation with New Jersey First Lady Tammy Murphy.

This generation of students will feel the impact of climate change more than any other and they understand the critical need for innovative climate action, said First Lady Tammy Murphy. The creativity, passion and advocacy displayed by our students through their projects fills me with hope for the future and certainty that New Jerseys youth will be the future leaders of the climate movement for our nation and the world.

More: Readers donate $35,000 to Give A Christmas, help 300 families  but some still in need.

The New Jersey Student Climate Challenge is a pilot program, funded by Atlantic City Electric and its parent company, Exelon, that was created to foster the growing role young people are playing in addressing climate change. The initiative builds on New Jerseys efforts to increase climate literacy among young people across the state, including its first-in-the-nation effort to incorporate climate change education across all Kindergarten through 12th grade state academic standards.

Ava Blando, a junior at Robbinsville High School, and the artistic activism coordinator for New Jersey Student Sustainability Coalition, served as the master of ceremonies for the virtual awards ceremony honoring six teams from South Jersey who were the winners of the New Jersey Student Climate Challenge.

The students participating and receiving grants represent the best of the best across South Jersey and demonstrate a bright future for the next generation that will shape our continued efforts to combat the climate crisis, said Melissa Lavinson, senior vice president of Federal Governmental and Regulatory Affairs and Public Policy for Exelon Utility, which includes Atlantic City Electric. Climate Change continues to impact our communities. From the recent EF3 tornado in Gloucester County to more severe thunderstorms and hurricanes, programs like the New Jersey Student Climate Challenge have never been more important in helping to raise awareness of the need to act and respond.

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Winners in the high school category are:

First: Team MM from Winslow Township High School, Winslow Township School District, Camden County.

Second: Penns Grove Locavores Team from Penns Grove High School, Penns Grove-Carneys Point Regional School District, Salem County.

Third: Clearview Environmental Club from Clearview Regional High School, Clearview Regional High School District, Gloucester County.

Winners in the middle school category are:

First: Plastic Free AC Team from Sovereign Avenue School, Atlantic City School District, Atlantic County.

Second: The Green Team from Winslow Township Middle School, Winslow Township School District, Camden County.

Third: Radical Rugrats Team from Winslow Township School 5, Winslow Township School District, Camden County.

The Drumthwacket Foundation worked with Sustainable Jersey, the program facilitator, to use a $500,000 grant, provided by Atlantic City Electric and Exelon, to develop the contest. During the inaugural year, the pilot program provided support and recognition to teams of students from public middle and high schools in Atlantic City Electrics service area.

Winners were selected by a panel of judges that included educators and representatives from local non-profits, state agencies and the partner organizations. Winning schools receive a grant to support their climate education initiatives.

Details regarding this year's New Jersey Student Climate Challenge

This years New Jersey Student Climate Challenge is now open to New Jersey public schools and students in grades six to 12 across the state. Middle and high school students are encouraged to identify and complete a school or community project to address a cause or impact of climate change. The students then create a short digital story video to highlight what they accomplished.

To support and inspire student action, educational sessions are offered. The sessions spotlight local impacts of climate change and strategies to address them, as well as success stories about what students are already accomplishing. Students participate through their respective schools.

There is no cost to schools or students to participate.

Entry deadline is April 1.

For information, visit bit.ly/NJStudentClimateChallenge.

Send community news and event items to lvoit@gannett.com. Help support local journalism with a subscription to the Burlington County Times/The Daily Journal/Courier Post.

This article originally appeared on Burlington County Times: New Jersey Student Climate Challenge winners announced
WEYMOUTH  Nearly all of South Shore Health's employees have complied with its COVID-19 vaccine requirement for anyone working within the system.

Susan Griffin, South Shore Health's director of public relations and communications, said 99.6% of the health system's employees  all but nine of 5,649 people  have received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine.

Griffin said the nine employees who did not comply are on unpaid administrative leave as of Dec. 5. The health system will move to fire them if they do not get vaccinated, she said.

"While we regret that nine members of our team chose not to comply with the mandate and have been placed on unpaid suspension, their absence will not impact operations," a written statement from the health system said. "We hope these individuals will choose to be vaccinated, so they can rejoin our exceptional team in doing what we do best  meeting the health and wellness needs of patients across the South Shore."

Lining up: Omicron, holidays heighten demand for boosters on the South Shore

Tis the season: Do you have symptoms of the flu or COVID-19? Here is how you can tell the difference.

Griffin said the health system accepts medical and religious exemptions following the guidance for exemptions outlined by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services in its mandate for health care workers. She did not specify how many exemptions, if any, the health system granted.

Hospitals that are part of the Massachusetts Health & Hospital Association  all acute-care hospitals except those owned by Steward Health Care  agreed in July to adopt mandatory vaccination policies for workers.

Dr. Simone Wildes is vaccinated against COVID-19 by registered nurse Susan Adams at South Shore Hospital on Thursday, Dec. 17, 2020.

The Biden administration implemented a requirement for all health care workers in the nation to be vaccinated against COVID-19 by Jan. 4, but multiple courts have blocked the rules. Many health care systems have moved to implement their own vaccination requirements.

In October, a federal judge denied a request by several employees of Mass General Brigham seeking to block the hospital system from putting them on leave due to their refusal to be vaccinated.

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It's our 24th year: Let's join hearts and hands - can you contribute to The Patriot Ledger

Looking ahead: Is the new COVID-19 normal a new, worrisome variant every few months?

This article originally appeared on The Patriot Ledger: South Shore Health reached 99.6% vaccination rate among staff
Talawanda School District

In the latest school threat, Talawanda High School students in Butler County were sent home Friday early after a lockdown.

At 11:20 a.m., school officials said students were being kept in their fouth period class while law enforcement investigated a "potential threat" written in a bathroom stall.

The school also barred visitors as part of the lockdown procedure.

More than an hour later at just after 1 p.m., officials said the students at the high school and middle school would be sent home early "out of an abundance of caution."

After-school activities and athletics were also canceled.

This threat came after a rash of threats in the Greater Cincinnati area. Reading City Community School District canceled all classes on Thursday due to a threat. Fairfield and Milford have also dealt with threats this month.

Threats have been happening across the country in the wake of the school shooting in Oxford, Michigan that left four dead and seven injured. Dozens of students have been arrested in Michigan alone as copycat cases spike.

This article originally appeared on Cincinnati Enquirer: Talawanda High School students released early after bathroom stall threat
Good morning, Mount Pleasant and Sturtevant! Let's get you all caught up to start this weekend off on an informed note.

First, your weekend weather:

Friday: Cloudy with afternoon rain. High: 44 Low: 37.

Saturday: Some morning snow; colder. High: 38 Low: 28.

Sunday: Milder; breezy in the p.m.. High: 45 Low: 35.

Here are the top stories in Mount Pleasant-Sturtevant today:

Here are dogs, cats, and other pets available for adoption at Mount Pleasant and Sturtevant area shelters. (Mount Pleasant-Sturtevant Patch) A teacher that works for the Wheatland J1 School District in Burlington was charged with sexual assault and child pornography in connection with allegations he had a sexual relationship with a 16-year-old. (Mount Pleasant-Sturtevant Patch) What is the youngest county in Wisconsin? Here's how Racine stacks up against other parts of the state. (24/7 Wall St.) Check out these five new Mount Pleasant and Sturtevant area homes on the market (Mount Pleasant-Sturtevant Patch)

Today's Mount Pleasant-Sturtevant Daily is brought to you in part by our friends at Verizon. They're building the fastest 5G network in the country. To learn how 5G is going to change life for you and your community  and to get access to this amazing technology  click here. And thank you Verizon for sponsoring this community resource in Mount Pleasant-Sturtevant!

This weekend in Mount Pleasant-Sturtevant:

Friday, December 10

Make Stuff: Winter Wood Signs - Racine Public Library (10:00 AM)

Renaissance Feast 5:30 PM - DeKoven Center (5:30 PM)

Saturday, December 11

Kenosha Public Market - Holiday Event (10:00 AM)

Pokemon Club - Racine Public Library (12:00 PM)

Christmas Open House (6:00 PM)

Sunday, December 12

Kenosha, save with Sam's Club Membership & Donate 25% to end Hunger! (9:00 AM)

14th Annual Working Artist Holiday Sale (10:00 AM)

From my notebook:

Wisconsin Department of Transportation: "Theres potential for a strong winter storm to move through Wisconsin tomorrow afternoon into Saturday with travel impacts expected. Get familiar with the Winter Road Conditions layer on 511wi.gov. Use this great tool and know before you..." (Facebook)

City of Racine, On the lake: "Free COVID Testing! City of Racine COVID-19 Testing Festival Hall 5 Fifth Street, Racine Mondays & Thursdays, 12 PM  6 PM WE STRONGLY RECOMMEND PRE-REGISTERING BEFORE YOU GO! https://register.covidconnect.... Testing provided ..." (Facebook)

Racine County Eye: "Cops 'N Kids 19th Annual Book Giveaway | Local News I Racine County Eye - Racine, Wisconsin https://bit.ly/3y9VeFM" (Facebook)

Racine County Eye: "Free Christmas Concerts Dec 15, 22 with Belle City Brassworks | Local News I Racine County Eye - Racine, Wisconsin https://bit.ly/3GkB0fk" (Facebook)

Racine County Eye: "Donation Drive for Waukesha Parade Victims | Local News I Racine County Eye - Racine, Wisconsin https://bit.ly/3lIezsL" (Facebook)

From our sponsors  thanks for supporting local news!

Story continues

Events:

"Voyage to the Deep" at the Milwaukee Public Museum (December 10)

Add your event

Loving the Mount Pleasant-Sturtevant Daily? Here are all the ways you can get more involved:

Send a friend or neighbor this link so they can subscribe

Get your local business listed in front of readers

Send me a news tip or suggestion at john.quinnies@patch.com

That's it for today. I'll catch up with you next week with another update!

 John Quinnies

About me: Hey, my name is John. I live in Milwaukee. I cover parts of metro Milwaukee. Email me at john.quinnies@patch.com.Get in touch if you have anything to say about Shorewood, Greenfield, Greendale, Oak Creek, Franklin, New Berlin, Whitefish Bay, Mount Pleasant or Sturtevant.

This article originally appeared on the Mount Pleasant-Sturtevant Patch
By Sayed Hassib and Ahmad Massih

KABUL (Reuters) - In the biting cold of a Kabul autumn, Hadia Ahmadi, a 43-year-old teacher who lost her job after the Taliban seized the Afghan capital in August, sits by the roadside trying to earn the equivalent of a few cents polishing shoes.

The abrupt withdrawal of foreign aid following the Taliban victory has sent Afghanistan's fragile economy into freefall, leaving millions facing hunger and making once well-off middle class families destitute.

"I turned to polishing shoes when I saw that my kids were hungry," said Ahmadi, a mother of five who did not want to give her family name.

The economy has long stood on shaky foundations, dependent on aid that has now disappeared and with enormous gaps between the Kabul elite and millions living just above the breadline.

Ahmadi's family typified the progress made by a section of society during 20 years of Western-backed rule.

After a decade of teaching, with a husband employed as a cook in a private company and a daughter with a job as a clerk at a government agency, they enjoyed a modest prosperity that was swept away in a matter of weeks.

With girls' schools closed indefinitely, her job was first to go, and her husband and then her daughter lost theirs soon after. A son studying computer science was forced to give up his course when the family could no longer afford the tuition fees.

Roadside displays of household goods for sale have sprung up across Kabul, as families try to raise money to eat. They bear witness to how common Ahmadi's experiences have become, with people taking once unimaginable steps to survive.

"We are spending days in hunger right now, and for the time being, there is no one in our family who could financially support us all," she said.

The United Nations has warned of a humanitarian disaster in Afghanistan and is trying to raise $4.5 billion to help avoid the worst, but with foreign aid blocked and the bank system near collapse the economy has been strangled by a lack of cash.

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The Taliban famously did not allow women to work outside the home when they were last in power between 1996-2001 and have severely limited employment opportunities for women. But for many like Ahmadi, there is no alternative.

"Some widows are the only food providers for their families, while some women want to financially help their husbands," she said. "The Taliban must allow women to go to work. They must provide jobs for them, there is no employment right now."

(Writing by James Mackenzie; Editing by Mike Collett-White)
A 13-year-old runaway says she was raped by a man and told that shed be sent into prostitution, according to police in Kansas.

Liberal police officers found the teen girl on Tuesday, Dec. 7, with a 63-year-old man, according to a news release posted on Facebook. She had been reported missing in Denison, Texas.

Liberal is in southwest Kansas, about 420 miles northwest of Denison.

The girl reported that, while in a Denison restaurant, two 63-year-old men from Liberal approached her. Authorities say one of those men convinced her to go with them to Kansas.

Once in Liberal, the girl said, one of the men forcefully raped her, according to the news release.

This man also told her he was going to prostitute the girl out to other people who would pay them good money, police said. The girl said the man had several visitors while she was in his home.

As part of an investigation, the department says officers conducted a search warrant in the 800 block of South Lincoln.

The 63-year-old man she was with has been arrested, police told McClatchy News in a phone interview, and the department is seeking charges of rape, aggravated human trafficking, aggravated kidnapping, aggravated interference with parental custody, aggravated intimidation of a victim and aggravated indecent liberties with a child.

The other 63-year-old man has not been booked into jail, police told McClatchy, as an investigation into the case continues.

Anyone with additional information regarding this case is asked to call 620-626-0141.

Man tried to rape woman during burglary at North Carolina university campus, cops say

Nanny molested boys in his care for over a year, TX officials say. Hes going to prison

Kidnapping suspect bounces off hotel window while trying to escape, Ohio police say
A North Carolina man was crushed to death by a car while trying to cut off and steal its catalytic converter, Union County sheriffs investigators said Friday.

Officers found the man dead beneath a Toyota Prius sedan, one of many vehicles in the driveway of a home in the 3900 block of West Unionville Indian Trail Road, according to a Facebook post by the Sheriffs Office.

Evidence showed the man was cutting off and trying to steal the converter when the car crushed and killed him at about 5:45 p.m. Wednesday, investigators said.

The findings on scene indicated that at some point during the cutting of the exhaust pipe, the vehicle fell off of the automotive jack and on top of the male subject, according to the post.

Officers found a catalytic converter theft suspect dead beneath a Toyota Prius sedan in the 3900 block of West Unionville Indian Trail Road on Wednesday, Dec. 8, 2021, according to a Facebook post by Union County Sheriffs Office.

The man didnt live at the home, sheriffs officials said, but he was a local resident.

His name and age havent been released because of the ongoing investigation, according to the Sheriffs Office.

The case highlights the dangers of trying to steal parts from vehicles, the Sheriffs Office said.

A catalytic converter and the small amount of scrap value it holds is not worth the risk of losing your life, according to the post.

Catalytic converters contain valuable metals, including platinum, rhodium and palladium, and can be sold for $150 to $200 per piece at junk yards, The Washington Post reported, citing police. Replacing one can cost vehicle owners thousands of dollars, according to the Post.

Thieves need only a few minutes to cut a catalytic converter from a vehicle. Car owners often realize the converter was stolen only when they hear an irregular sound as theyre driving.

An auto shop employee uses an engraving tool to etch a license plate number on a catalytic converter to prevent theft.

CMPD stats

In Charlotte-Mecklenburg, 1,463 converters were stolen this year through Sept. 26, according to the latest available figures, police Officer Thomas Hildebrand told The Charlotte Observer on Friday.

That compares to the 862 catalytic converters stolen in all of 2020 and the 218 converters stolen in 2019, he said.

CMPD expects to have updated 2021 figures in January, he said.

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Thefts of the exhaust system devices had been pretty uncommon until the past two years, Major Cecil Brisbon said during a weekly CMPD news conference in April.

CMPD in April said its Steele Creek and University City divisions were seeing the most thefts.

New state law

On Dec. 1, a new state law took effect that makes the theft of a catalytic convert a class I felony with a mandatory $1,000 fine.

Nearly every community in North Carolina is dealing with a rash of catalytic converter thefts, State Sen. Thomas McInnis, R-Anson, said in September when Gov. Roy Cooper signed into law the catalytic converter bill McInnis sponsored, WBTV reported at the time. I want to send a clear message to criminals that these thefts will not be tolerated.
LAFAYETTE, Ind.  At the height of the pandemic, before Tippecanoe County residents could get the first shot of the COVID-19 vaccine, the daily averages of new cases were near 250, approaching 300.

After vaccines started being administered, the daily number of new COVID-19 cases dropped as low as eight per day, according to data presented at a called press conference of the Tippecanoe County Health Department Wednesday.

"They say a picture is worth a thousand words," said Dr. Jeremy Adler, county health official, as he showed a graphic with a dramatic increase in the number of positive cases in the past week.

Adler noted on the presentation slide a peak in November and December 2020, when the instances of new cases per day numbered around 250 and approaching 300, with a peak averaging of 213.

"Shortly after that," Adler added, "the vaccines were introduced and our numbers began to drop. Then in March, the alpha variant, or the UK variant, came along, and we saw a little bit of a bump up in our cases, at that time peaking at 50 new cases per day."

The latest variant, omicron, has not been reported in Indiana as of Thursday.

Dr. Jeremy Adler, Tippecanoe Countys health officer, speaks during a press conference at the Tippecanoe County Office Building, Wednesday, Dec. 8, 2021 in Lafayette.

In September, the daily average of new cases dropped to as low as 8 cases a day.

"In November, cases began to rise again," Adler said. "There has been quite a significant steep climb in the number of new cases that we're seeing. We've had days where new cases have been in the 150s, 170s. Today, for example, in the 160s."

The current seven-day average is 140 new cases of COVID-19, Adler added, the highest numbers seen in the county since June.

Dr. Jeremy Adler, Tippecanoe Countys health officer, left, speaks during a press conference at the Tippecanoe County Office Building, Wednesday, Dec. 8, 2021 in Lafayette.

"We are of course monitoring this ongoing trend. It's very concerning that number has increased so significantly. Because of this increase, our seven-day positivity rate is 12.1%."

That positivity rate impacts the hospitals within the county, Adler added.

"As a result our hospitals are quite busy with COVID-19 patients and are quite strained."

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Top medical advisors within Tippecanoe County also attended the meeting: Dr. Christopher Mansfield, infectious disease physician and associate chief medical officer for adult hospital medicine at IU Health Arnett; Daniel Wickert, vice president of medical affairs for Franciscan Health Lafayette; and chief medical officer, Protect Purdue Health Center.

West Lafayette Mayor John Dennis also participated in the panel, stressing the need to continue wearing masks while indoors.

Both hospitals reported a significant increase in COVID-19 hospitalizations immediately after Thanksgiving, each seeing as many as 41 patients hospitalized for the virus on the Monday after the holiday. The daily census of COVID-19 patients has remained as high in the days since Thanksgiving, the doctors noted.

The CDC considers Tippecanoe County to be a county of high community transmission, Adler said, noting a "very significant level of community transmission of COVID-19" in the county.

"Because we are considered a community of high transmission," Adler said, "the CDC does recommend that everyone, including those of us who are fully vaccinated, wear masks in indoor public settings. This is very important as the level of the virus in the community is quite high."

Adler said he gave leaders within the Tippecanoe School Corporation that advice as the school board approached a vote on maintaining a mask mandate. Keep the mandate in effect, Adler advised.

The TSC board Wednesday evening decided masks would be optional at their schools once the burden of responsibility cited in Indiana Gov. Eric Holcomb's emergency order no longer rests with public schools.

Adler noted that 56.4% of Tippecanoe County residents are fully vaccinated, with just over 30,000 having received the booster doses.

The county has experienced over 31,400 COVID-19 cases since the pandemic started; 279 people have died, as of Thursday.

COVID-19 deaths in Tippecanoe County show a stark disparity between the vaccinated and unvaccinated, Adler detailed. Of the individuals who have died, 74% were unvaccinated.

"This is real world, local data that supports the effectiveness of vaccines," Alder said.

Deanna Watson is the executive editor at the Journal & Courier. Contact her at dwatson@gannett.com. Follow her on Twitter at @deannawatson66.

This article originally appeared on Lafayette Journal & Courier: Health officer: Tippecanoe County sees 'significant' increase in COVID-19




Former President Trump blasted Benjamin Netanyahu, accusing the former Israeli prime minister of disloyalty while using profanity to criticize the former ally for his congratulatory message to President Biden following the 2020 election, according to an Axios report.

Trump touted that he helped Netanyahu, now the opposition leader in Israel, in his own election efforts, reversed decades of U.S. policy in Israel's favor and supported Israel's claim to land that was seized in war, while continuing to incorrectly claim that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from him, reports The Associated Press.

"The first person that congratulated [Biden] was Bibi Netanyahu, the man that I did more for than any other person I dealt with. ... Bibi could have stayed quiet. He has made a terrible mistake," Trump said, according to Axios.

Netanyahu was not the first leader across the world to congratulate Biden, as Netanyahu waited more than 12 hours to do so, and he followed up with a tweet that praised Trump, according to the AP.

Trump told Axios he was shocked when his wife, Melania Trump, showed him the video of Netanyahu congratulating Biden.

"[Netanyahu] was very early - like, earlier than most. I haven't spoken to him since. F--- him," Trump said according to Axios.

"For Bibi Netanyahu, before the ink was even dry, to do a message, and not only a message, to do a tape to Joe Biden talking about their great, great friendship - they didn't have a friendship, because if they did, [the Obama administration] wouldn't have done the Iran deal," Trump said, according to Axios, adding, "And guess what, now they're going to do it again."

Trump lauded his administration's actions in Israel during his presidency, noting the administration's recognition of Jerusalem as the country's capital and its move to drop objections to settlements in the occupied area in the West Bank, reports NPR.

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"I'll tell you what - had I not come along I think Israel was going to be destroyed," Trump said of the relationship, according to NPR. "I think Israel would have been destroyed maybe by now."

On Thursday, Netanyahu responded to Trump's reported criticism, saying, "I highly appreciate President Trump's big contribution to Israel and its security. I also appreciate the importance of the strong alliance between Israel and the U.S. and therefore it was important for me to congratulate the incoming President."

The Hill has contacted Trump's office for comment.

- Updated at 11:34 a.m.
JERUSALEM (AP)  Former President Donald Trump earlier this year lashed out with profanity at Benjamin Netanyahu for congratulating President Joe Biden on his victory in the U.S. election, an Israeli newspaper reported Friday.

Trump accused the former Israeli leader of disloyalty, saying he had helped Netanyahu in his own elections by reversing decades of U.S. policy and supporting Israel's claims to territory seized in war. Trump is still falsely claiming the U.S. election was stolen from him.

In interviews earlier this year with the Israeli journalist Barak Ravid, Trump expressed fury at a video Netanyahu circulated online in which he congratulated Biden.

Nobody did more for Bibi. And I liked Bibi. I still like Bibi, Trump said, referring to Netanyahu by his nickname, in the remarks published by English language website of the Yediot Aharonot newspaper. But I also like loyalty... Bibi could have stayed quiet. He has made a terrible mistake.

Netanyahu had congratulated Biden more than 12 hours after the election was called and after most other world leaders. Netanyahu did not refer to him as president-elect in the tweet, and followed it up with a post praising Trump.

Trump appeared to be particularly incensed by a video released by Netanyahu on Jan. 20, the day Biden was inaugurated, in which Netanyahu said he and Biden had a warm personal friendship going back many decades.

I havent spoken to him since. F- him, Trump was quoted as saying.

Video: Hundreds of Israelis celebrate Netanyahu's unseating

In a statement released after the remarks were publicized, Netanyahu said that he greatly appreciates President Trump's great contribution to the state of Israel and its security.

Netanyahu said he also greatly appreciates the importance of the strong alliance between Israel and the United States, so it was important to congratulate the incoming U.S. President.

Netanyahu was replaced as prime minister last summer after he was unable to form a governing majority in the wake of four hard-fought elections in less than two years.

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The Trump administration took unprecedented steps to support Israel, including dropping objections to its settlements in the occupied West Bank and recognizing Jerusalem as its capital. After proposing a Mideast plan that was adamantly rejected by the Palestinians, the administration brokered normalization agreements between Israel and four Arab states.

Trump said his decision to recognize Israel's annexation of the Golan Heights, which it captured from Syria in the 1967 war, helped Netanyahu ahead of Israeli elections in April 2019.

I did it right before the election, which helped him (Netanyahu) a lot," Trump said.

The Trump administration also withdrew from the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, to which Israel had been strongly opposed. After he re-imposed U.S. sanctions that had been lifted under the deal, Iran began publicly exceeding the limits it had set on its nuclear program. Biden is now working with world powers to try to restore the agreement.

Ill tell you what  had I not come along I think Israel was going to be destroyed," Trump said. "I think Israel would have been destroyed maybe by now.

___

Associated Press reporter Isaac Scharf contributed to this report.
Two men were arrested Wednesday on suspicion of sparking a massive California wildfire that destroyed hundreds of homes and threatened Lake Tahoe.

But an attorney for the father and son told BuzzFeed News the two men are not only innocent, but they were among the first to report the flames to authorities. David Scott Smith, 66, and Travis Shane Smith, 32, were currently in custody in El Dorado County Jail, their attorney Mark J. Reichel said.

The two are accused of reckless arson, but Reichel said they actually tried to warn people in the area about the flames as the fire began to spread rapidly. The El Dorado County District Attorney's office charged the pair on Thursday with three counts of recklessly causing a fire and two weapons charges, all felonies, according to court documents provided to BuzzFeed News.

Savannah Broddrick, an assistant for the district attorney, declined to comment on Reichels statements, telling BuzzFeed News Wednesday night that the office was not responding to questions on how the fire started. The cause of the fire is still under investigation, a spokesperson for the US Forest Service's El Dorado National Forest unit told BuzzFeed News.

The Caldor fire burned a total of 221,835 acres and destroyed more than 1,000 structures, including hundreds of homes as it burned for 67 days. The small community of Grizzly Flats was decimated, and the fire tore through the forest above the idyllic Tahoe Basin. For days, it threatened to decimate South Lake Tahoe, causing thousands of people to evacuate. It was the second blaze on record to cross the Sierra Nevada mountains.

Reichel said that the two men are not accused of starting the fire intentionally but of somehow sparking the first flames accidentally, a claim they denied.

"We dispute that [my clients] even were the persons that started the fire," Reichel said.

David and Travis Smith were riding a dune buggy when they first spotted the fire, the attorney said. The pair then called 911 to report the flames.

Story continues

"Even when the calls dropped, [they] kept calling back and giving the location fo the fire," Reichel said.

The two also tried to warn other campers in the area to get out.

The two men are currently being held in lieu of $1 million each.

More on this
School resource officers at Amos P. Godby High School arrested two 17-year-olds Thursday after both were caught trespassing in stolen vehicles and one was found with an unloaded gun, according to the Leon County Sheriff's Office.

Both students were taken to the Juvenile Assessment Center on charges of trespassing on school grounds, disrupting a school function and grand theft auto.

The student whose car had the unloaded handgun in it was charged with possession of a firearm on school grounds  at least the sixth gun-related arrest at a Leon County school since Aug. 1.

Read more: Godby student arrested with gun on campus, second firearm arrest in a week

Also: Godby student arrested after gun found in car on campus; 4th incident this month at Leon schools

Elsewhere in Florida: Embry-Riddle student planned mass shooting on campus, police say

The two teens, who are students at other Leon County schools, were seen in the visitor's parking lot by a Godby administrator around 10 a.m. The pair walked by the school's office and through a security gate, according to an incident summary by LCSO.

Administrators approached the teens, who tried to flee before they were arrested by school resource deputies.

Soon deputies learned both of the cars the students drove to Godby were stolen in Leon County, the summary said. A search of both cars yielded the unloaded pistol, which had an altered serial number.

Once again, the alertness of school staff and deputies resulted in proactive measures to prevent potential threats to the safety of our most vulnerable," Sheriff Walt McNeil said in a statement. "We continue to encourage citizens to be proactive too: If you see something, say something.

Guns on campus coverage:

Since the beginning of the 2021-22 school year in August, at least nine Leon County K-12 students have been arrested for bringing weapons on campus, including guns, brass knuckles and a stun gun, according to a count by the Tallahassee Democrat.

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This is at least the third time a gun has been found on Godby's campus this semester, too.

The frequency of similar weapons arrests since the beginning of the 2021-22 school year has prompted the sheriff's office to increase patrols at schools, and hold rallies about gun violence and the consequences of bringing a firearm to school.

Contact Christopher Cann at ccann@tallahassee.com and follow @ChrisCannFL on Twitter.

Never miss a story: Subscribe to the Tallahassee Democrat using the link at the top of the page.

This article originally appeared on Tallahassee Democrat: Godby High School: Teens arrested, charged with grand theft auto
By David Shepardson

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration said on Friday it had found no safety issues after investigating allegations made against Blue Origins human spaceflight program.

The FAA said in September it would review safety concerns raised by former Blue Origin employees. The FAA said on Friday it was closing its investigation after finding "no specific safety issues" and was taking no action against billionaire Jeff Bezos' space company.

Alexandra Abrams, former head of Blue Origin Employee Communications, and 20 other unnamed Blue Origin employees and former employees, said in an essay they had "seen a pattern of decision-making that often prioritizes execution speed and cost reduction over the appropriate resourcing to ensure quality."

A Blue Origin spokesperson did not immediately comment Friday but said in September Abrams "was dismissed for cause two years ago after repeated warnings for issues involving federal export control regulations."

Abrams told CBS News, which first reported the allegations, she never received any warnings related to export control issues.

In July, Bezos soared some 66.5 miles (107 km) above the Texas desert aboard a New Shepard launch vehicle in a suborbital flight.

Blue Origin said in September it stood "by our safety record and believe that New Shepard is the safest space vehicle ever designed or built."

The essay said a 2018 team at Blue Origin "documented more than 1,000 problem reports related to the engines that power Blue Origins rockets, which had never been addressed."

(Reporting by David Shepardson; Editing by Sonya Hepinstall and Chizu Nomiyama)
Hey, people of Five Towns! I'm here with your brand-new Five Towns Daily.

A crash that set a car on fire in Woodmere was caused by drunk driving, police say. And neighbors of the new UBS Arena say event-goers are trashing their homes.

First, today's weather:

Windy and warm with showers. High: 60 Low: 44.

Here are the top five stories in Five Towns today:

Patch reports that a veteran Nassau County Police Officer has died from COVID-19 complications. Hector Nunez spent 16 years as an officer, and was based at the 5th precinct in Elmont. An online fundraising effort for his family has been launched. (Patch) Jerry Barmash has the story on a Far Rockaway man who was arrested for driving while intoxicated after he crashed into a utility pole in Woodmere Thursday. Willie Bryant, 54, was driving a Mercedes SUV that burst into flames after the impact. (Patch) Juan Lasso tells us that Valley Stream native Tommy Shevlin will be the new acting president of the Nassau County Police Benevolent Association beginning in January. Shevlin is a state-certified counselor and wants to combat the stigma of mental health issues in the police force. (LI Herald) The LI Herald visited Project Thank A Cop's second annual Michael Geraldi-Ray Abear Holiday Shop with a Cop at Mattys Toy Stop in the Peninsula Shopping Center in Hewlett last weekend. Around 100 children from Long Island and New York City, who have undergone recent hardship got to shop for free, with Santa Claus and Mrs. Claus and police officers. (LI Herald) News 12 Long Island talks to residents near the new UBS arena. At a Floral Park Civic Association meeting on Thursday, people said event-goers are urinating on peoples' lawns and throwing garbage around. (News 12)

Today in Five Towns:

King of the Mat Wrestling Tournament, Hewlett High School, 8:30 a.m.

From my notebook:

Hewlett High School students performed at New York State School Music Association ( NYSSMA ) in Rochester, NY: Sean Fruman in Vocal Jazz, Anastasia Inglima in Mixed Choir and Ilana Mizrahi in Wind Ensemble . (Facebook)

A new interactive exhibit at the Cradle of Aviation shows how the Hubble Telescope works. (Patch)

The late Rabbi Alvin and Rosalind Poplack were remembered and the chapel of the International Synagogue at John F. Kennedy International Airport was dedicated to them at the synagogues annual Hanukkah celebration on Dec. 2. (LI Herald)

From our sponsors  thanks for supporting local news!

Story continues

Events:

Holiday Tales at the Castle at Sands Point Preserve (December 12)

Big Apple Circus is NOW OPEN in New York City! (December 12)

Add your event

Announcements:

Behind The Scoreboard  Ed Sullivans Huge Lesson For The World (Details)

Add your announcement

Job listings:

Lumber yard worker/ facility attendant/ Customer Service (Details)

Add your job listing

Loving the Five Towns Daily? Here are all the ways you can get more involved:

Send a friend or neighbor this link so they can subscribe

Get your local business listed in front of readers

Send me a news tip or suggestion at FiveTowns@Patch.com

Now you're in the loop and ready to start this Saturday off right. I'll be back in your inbox tomorrow with another update!

 Jackie

This article originally appeared on the Five Towns Patch
Ugandan and Congolese troops worked to repair a key road in eastern DR Congo on Friday, officers said, ahead of an expected push against the region's notorious ADF rebels.

The two neighbours have launched joint operations against the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), accused of massacres in eastern DR Congo and bomb blasts in Uganda.

Ugandan forces launched air and artillery strikes on November 30 and moved across the border to set up an advance base, but then had to pause because of poor roads.

Earth-moving machines were at work on Friday on a badly-damaged section of the 80-kilometre (50-mile) highway linking the frontier post at Nobili with Mbau.

Part of the road crosses the world-famous Virunga National Park, a haven to rare species, including the mountain gorilla.

"Work between the two armies' military engineers is progressing very well," Captain Antony Mualushayi, the military spokesman for the eastern DR Congo region of Beni, told reporters.

"Troops are already positioned in several (ADF) strongholds that were bombarded on November 30," he said.

"But as there is a road problem, it's better to fix it once and for all."

Work to make the damaged section passable will take "more or less 48 hours," he said.

An AFP journalist at the Nobili border post saw five tanks cross on Friday.

The ADF was historically a Ugandan rebel coalition whose biggest group comprised Muslims opposed to Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni.

The group established itself in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo in 1995, later becoming the deadliest of scores of outlawed forces in the troubled region.

DR Congo's Catholic Church says the ADF has killed around 6,000 civilians since 2013 while a respected monitor, the Kivu Security Tracker, blames it for more than 1,200 deaths in the area alone since 2017.

Uganda moved against the ADF with DR Congo's consent after accusing it of a string of recent attacks on its soil that have been claimed by the Islamic State.

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The notion of Ugandan troops operating on DRC soil is controversial in a country where many recall the role of Uganda and Rwanda in stoking past instability in the east of the country.

Critics include Denis Mukwege, the gynaecologist who won the 2018 Nobel Peace Prize for his work helping victims of sexual violence in South Kivu province.

Mualushayi told journalists, "You saw as I did that everywhere we go, there's always a Ugandan soldier and a Congolese soldier" together.

This, he said, showed "there really is friendship, collaboration, the will to confront and do away with the ADF."

Since April 2019, some ADF attacks in eastern DR Congo have been claimed by IS, which describes the group as its Islamic State Central Africa Province offshoot.

In March, the United States placed the ADF on its list of "terrorist" organisations linked to IS.

smu-at/ri/pvh
Julian Assange speaks to the media from the balcony of the Embassy Of Ecuador on May 19, 2017 in London, England. Jack Taylor/Getty Images

Wikileaks founder Julian Assange can be extradited to the US, a UK court said on Friday.

Assange is currently a UK prison, and a court previously ruled he could not be sent to the US.

The court ruled that the decision should go to the UK's Home Secretary for a final decision.

Wikileaks founder Julian Assange can be extradited to the US where he faces charges including hacking charges, a London court ruled on Friday.

It overturns an earlier ruling in a lower court that Assange could not be extradited on humanitarian grounds, which was based on concern that he would be at a risk of suicide and self-harm if sent to the US.

That decision was reversed on Friday in London's High Court after the US made assurances to the UK that it would not subject him to its harshest prison conditions.

The High Court hearing does not itself mean that Assange will be extradited. The decision now passes to the UK Home Secretary, Priti Patel, who can choose to extradite or not.

The Home Office told Insider after the verdict that it was too soon to comment on the case.

The US has accused Assange of conspiring to hack government computers and breaching the Espionage Act after WikiLeaks published a trove of confidential military and diplomatic documents in 2010.

He faces 18 charges in the US.

Assange lived for years in Ecuador's embassy in London, hoping to avoid the US justice process by seeking asylum there. Ecuador withdrew its protection over him in in April 2019, at which point police entered the embassy dragged him out.

The US then requested to extradite him, a process which has lasted more than two years. Assange has been in prison in the UK since he was arrested.

A summary of the decision published by UK officials said that the US assured the UK that Assange "will receive appropriate clinical and psychological treatment" in prison while in the US.

The US also said it would let Assange serve his sentence to Australia, his home country, if he sought a transfer there.

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Assange's fiancee Stella Morris, a former member of his legal team, said in response to Friday's ruling: "How can it be fair, how can it be right, how can it be possible, to extradite Julian to the very country which plotted to kill him?"

That appeared to be a reference to a Yahoo News investigation which said that the CIA during the Trump administration considered plans to kidnap or assassinate Assange while he was still in the embassy.

Read the original article on Business Insider
A Norwegian flag (REUTERS)

Oil and gas imports have soared by almost a quarter in recent months as the government scrambles to cope with the energy crisis.

Figures from the Office for National Statistics show fuel imports from non-EU countries spiked by 23.8% to 1 billion in October, reflecting higher prices and increased quantities of fuel being shipped. The ONS said the spike was largely driven by an increase in shipments of gas from Norway.

The ONS said: Notable increases in imports of fuels from both EU and non-EU countries in recent months can be attributed both to increases in the quantity of fuel imports and rising prices.

The rise in fuel prices reflects increased global demand driven by the economic recovery from the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic and global recession, alongside international supply issues. Increased volumes of fuel imports reflects increasing demand combined with a fall in domestic production of oil and gas.

Soaring gas prices have put pressure on domestic suppliers, with over half going bust this year alone. The government has been criticised for not building up enough spare capacity of gas, leaving the UK highly exposed to international markets.

Prices have soared as reopening leads to a surge in demand around the world. At the same time, supply has dropped due to outages and maintenance work. The situation has been aggravated by a low wind year, which has hit renewable power, and an unusually long and cold winter at the beginning of the year.

Last month it was reported that the government had approached Qatar about becoming the UKs supplier of last resort of gas. Such a deal would mean Qatar would agree to supply Britain if other sources became squeezed.

While prices are high, industry insiders say there is enough supply available to see the UK through winter.

Overall, current conditions indicate that normalisation is unlikely to occur before spring 2022, analysts at UBS wrote in a note. The severity of the crisis will largely depend on weather conditions this winter.

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An appellate court in London on Friday overturned a lower court's ruling from earlier this year and opened the door for Julian Assange to be extradited to the U.S. to face espionage charges.

An appeal is almost certain in a case that has attracted international attention. Assange's detractors see him as a traitor over his WikiLeaks publication of thousands of leaked military and diplomatic documents a decade ago. His supporters see his imprisonment as an affront against the free press.

A lower court judge refused an American request to extradite Assange to the U.S. to face spying charges. A judge said Assange, 50, who is currently being held at Londons high-security Belmarsh Prison, could kill himself if held under harsh U.S. prison conditions.

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An attorney for the U.S. government who appealed the decision denied that Assanges mental health was too fragile to withstand the U.S. judicial system and even assured the court that any sentence handed down could be carried out in an Australian prison.

The appeals will likely end up in the Supreme Court.

Stella Moris, Assange's fiancee, told reporters that his legal team would appeal the court's decision, Reuters reported.

"How can it be fair, how can it be right, how can it be possible, to extradite Julian to the very country which plotted to kill him?" she said. "We will appeal this decision at the earliest possible moment."

The Associated Press contributed to this report
KYIV, Ukraine (AP)  Ukraine's president said Friday that more opportunities for talks with Russia may arise thanks to the U.S. diplomatic effort to help de-escalate tensions after Moscow massed troops near Ukraine's border, stoking fears of a possible invasion.

U.S. President Joe Biden spoke with both Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Russian President Vladimir Putin this week, as the United States moved to take a more direct role in diplomacy between Kyiv and Moscow.

The U.S. president proposed joining the Europeans in negotiations not just to settle the conflict in eastern Ukraine but to address Putins larger strategic objections to NATO expanding its membership eastwards.

In an interview aired Friday by the Ukrainian TV channel 1+1, Zelenskyy said that, thanks to the U.S., one more platform for talks with Russia may appear, in addition to the so-called Normandy format that involves France and Germany.

The two European countries in 2015 brokered a peace agreement that helped end large-scale hostilities in Ukraine's east, where Ukrainian forces have been fighting with Russia-backed separatists since 2014. But efforts to reach a political settlement of the conflict that has since killed more than 14,000 people have failed, and sporadic skirmishes have continued along the tense line of contact.

Zelenskyy said Friday that, with the support of the U.S. and Ukraine's European allies, he doesn't rule out direct talks between him and Putin  something he has proposed to the Russian leader several times to no avail.

I see the support for this path from both our European partners and the U.S., Zelenskyy said.

Tensions between Moscow, Kyiv and its Western allies have worsened in recent weeks over the invasion fears.

Russian officials have repeatedly denied plans to attack Ukraine, and in turn blamed Kyiv for its own allegedly aggressive designs. Putin has urged the West to provide guarantees that would preclude NATO from expanding to Ukraine or deploying troops and weapons there.

Zelenskyy said Friday that the message he got from Biden during Thursday's call was the Russia assured the U.S. and the whole world that it doesn't intend to continue the escalation against the territory of our independent state.
Receiving monoclonal antibodies to treat COVID-19 used to be a time-consuming process at the UPMC Hamot Infusion Center.

The intravenous treatment took about 30 minutes, which came after a nearly hour-long wait for the medication. That's because the Hamot pharmacy wouldn't prepare the medicine and transport it to the infusion center until the patient arrived.

"It could take two hours for a treatment, counting the 30 minutes a patient needed to wait afterward so we could monitor them," said Daniel Gessel, Hamot's director of operations.

Courtney Dylewski, R.N., nurse manager of the UPMC Hamot Infusion Center, 215 Holland St., holds the two medicines used when she gives monoclonal antibody injections to COVID-19 patients. Hamot started providing injections instead of intravenous treatments in September.

As a result, the infusion center could only treat five or six COVID-19 patients a day. But a recent advancement is allowing Hamot and other UPMC hospitals to give monoclonal antibodies more quickly and allowing them to treat three times as many patients.

Instead of an IV treatment, patients are receiving monoclonal antibodies through four subcutaneous, or under-the-skin, injections. Meadville Medical Center also offers injections.

"UPMC did the research and found this approach was just as effective as IV treatments," Gessel said. "We began giving subcutaneous injections in September and now that's how we deliver monoclonal antibodies."

Not only does the series of injections take just a couple of minutes, the medicine can be prepared well in advance and stored in a refrigerator. Patients are often in the office less than an hour, including the 30-minute observation time.

4 injections are required

Monoclonal antibodies are laboratory-produced molecules that can restore, enhance or mimic the immune system's attack on cells. The ones given to COVID-19 patients have been selected because of their ability to resist the virus.

The treatment is usually offered to people with mild-to-moderate COVID-19 who are within the first 10 days of developing symptoms.

Karli Marafine received the injections Nov. 7, one day after the 36-year-old Waterford woman was diagnosed with COVID-19.

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"I wasn't that surprised because my husband had tested positive two days prior," said Marafine, who was not vaccinated against COVID-19. "I knew that if I did develop COVID ... I would ask about getting the antibodies."

Marafine received a referral from the urgent-care center where she was diagnosed and was able to receive monoclonal antibodies at Hamot. A physician referral is required to receive the treatment.

Four injections are required because there is too much fluid to be given in one dose, said Courtney Dylewski, R.N., the infusion center's nurse manager.

"We would see a bubble if we tried to give it all at once," Dylewski said. "We give the injections in the back or the arm, the abdomen or the top of the thigh."

Courtney Dylewski, R.N., nurse manager of the UPMC Hamot Infusion Center, 215 Holland St., holds the two medicines used for monoclonal antibody injections to COVID-19 patients.

About 5 hours after the injections, Marafine began experiencing strong chills and a fever as her immune system responded to the antibodies.

Her COVID-19 symptoms  which had included body aches, a low-grade fever, a cough and a headache  started improving within 24 hours.

"I would say that I am completely recovered," said Marafine, a Hamot nurse who was nine weeks pregnant when she was diagnosed with COVID-19.

Marafine's husband received monoclonal antibodies through an IV treatment. The most significant difference was that his immune response started within 90 minutes, Marafine said. He also has since recovered from COVID-19.

Though some injections are still given inside the hospital, Hamot's infusion center, 215 Holland St., is now open seven days a week. It has provided about 1,200 treatments since monoclonal antibodies became available a year ago.

The antibodies have been proven to reduce COVID-19 symptoms and lower the risk of hospitalization and death, according to a study from the New England Journal of Medicine

UPMC has seen an increase in demand for the treatment during the recent surge in cases.

"Thanks to the injections, we are able to meet the demand," Gessel said. "But UPMC is looking to open or expand clinics at other locations."

Contact David Bruce at dbruce@timesnews.com. Follow him on Twitter @ETNBruce.

This article originally appeared on Erie Times-News: UPMC Hamot monoclonal antibodies now given by injection
The envoys of seven Western states plus the European Union urged Tunisia on Friday to respect "fundamental freedoms" and set a timeline for a return to democratic institutions.

Tunisia's President Kais Saied on July 25 sacked the government, suspended parliament and seized wide-ranging powers, following months of economic and political turmoil worsened by the coronavirus pandemic.

Four and a half months later, he has yet to declare a clear timeline for his next steps, deepening the uncertainty hanging over the country's battered economy and sparking fears for political freedoms in the birthplace of the 2011 Arab uprisings.

In a joint statement on Friday, diplomatic mission heads of the G7 nations plus the EU said they "strongly support the people of Tunisia in their pursuit of effective, democratic, and transparent governance".

"We restate the importance of respect for all Tunisians' fundamental freedoms, and inclusive and transparent engagement with all stakeholders, including diverse political and civil society voices," they said.

They called for "a clear timeline allowing for a swift return to functioning democratic institutions, with an elected parliament playing a significant role".

"This will help to ensure widespread and lasting support for Tunisia's future progress. We stand ready to support Tunisia and its people in addressing the challenges ahead," they added.

Saied's July 25 power grab won support from many Tunisians tired of political parties seen as deeply corrupt and incapable of solving the country's deep social and economic woes.

But he has since faced mass demonstrations and growing accusations that he is becoming a new autocrat.

Human rights groups have repeatedly warned against the trial of civilians in military courts.

Meanwhile, talks with international lenders over a fourth bailout package in a decade have stalled and worries are growing that the country could default on its sovereign debt.

par/kir




Democratic strategists say it's vital the White House use a projected fall in gas prices to counter Republican attacks by tying the decrease to Biden administration policies.

President Biden has taken a political hit from inflation, and gas prices in particular have done him damage. The average price at the pump when Biden took office was around $2.40 per gallon, but had risen to around $3.40 per gallon in November.

Republicans have blamed Biden for the high prices, linking his energy and economic policies to across-the-board inflation and lower fuel production domestically. In a July floor speech, Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) decried the president's "hypocritical and backward energy policy that is putting a target on American workers."

The price of gas is projected to fall in the weeks ahead, with Patrick De Haan, head of petroleum analysis at price comparison website GasBuddy, projecting a decline of up to 25 cents a gallon. Tuesday projections by the U.S. Energy Information Administration suggested prices will fall below $3 a gallon in 2022.

Presidents are always blamed for high gas prices, though prices rise and fall for a number of reasons that often stand outside the White House's control, from international events to financial crises or - in the case of 2020 - a global pandemic.

But after taking blows for the high prices, the White House is signaling it wants to get some credit if there is some good news at the pump.

The White House so far has struck a balance between attributing a price drop to Biden administration policies and pointing to factors outside the government's control.

On Thursday, White House chief of staff Ron Klain tweeted a Politico article noting the decline but added "we've got to make more progress" despite "moving in the right direction."

Gas prices are already starting to come down (esp. since Thanksgiving) -- we've got to make more progress, but it's moving in the right direction. https://t.co/LchXIX4PeW- Ronald Klain (@WHCOS) December 9, 2021

On Wednesday, Biden himself cited recent price declines and said he would ensure consumers are not "gouged for gas."

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"The price of gas at the pump has already begun to fall nationally, and real pump prices in 20 states are now lower than the 20-year average," he said Thursday, leaning into the positive economic news.

The White House has also worked to show it understands the frustrations people feel about high prices.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki noted after Thanksgiving that a drop in oil prices, largely spurred by the new omicron COVID-19 variant, had not yet directly translated to lower consumer prices.

"This has a real impact on the American people. It is incredibly frustrating," Psaki said Nov. 30. "That's why the president is so focused on it."

And the administration is seeking to draw attention to energy companies.

A day after nothing the frustrations of Americans, Psaki noted that Biden has asked the Federal Trade Commission to probe whether energy companies have engaged in illegal activity.

The White House and Democrats are worried about next year's midterms, when Republicans need to just gain a handful of seats to win back majorities in the House and Senate.

Inflation and gas prices are a part of those worries, and Democratic political strategists say the White House faces a challenge in convincing voters to give it credit for good gas price news.

Democratic strategist Jon Reinish suggested that as prices rose, the party erred by "downplaying" the hardship.

"That just left a huge opening for Republicans to pounce [and for Democrats] to be seen as not recognizing a problem or ignoring a problem," he said.

To blunt future attacks, he said Democrats must emphasize "that they're aware that the problem exists."

"Number one you got to show empathy. And Joe Biden can do that very well," said Ian Russell, a partner at Beacon Media who spent six years with the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. "You've got to demonstrate that you understand that this is a problem. You can't brush it aside or lecture people."

Officials with the administration and the Federal Reserve at times over the last year have brushed off concerns about inflation as a temporary issue. Russell and others interviewed for this story suggested that is a mistake, politically.

"No one cares what the chairman of the Federal Reserve thinks, they care when their wife or their husband tells them what they saw at the grocery store, or when they went to fill up their gas tank," he added.

Democratic strategist Eddie Vale said it's essential that Democrats ensure a price drop at the pump is perceived as the result of White House action.

"We need to talk, in specifics, about what Biden and Democrats are doing to help people lower costs," Vale told The Hill. This includes not just targeted action like the Strategic Petroleum Reserve release announced just before Thanksgiving, but also earlier policies such as funding for the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program in the American Rescue Act or tax credits for electric vehicles, he said.

"And a family's costs can't just be looked at in isolation, so [Democrats should] also remind folks what we're doing for non-energy related costs," Vale said in an email, citing policies like the child tax credit and Democratic efforts to lower the cost of prescription drugs.

"But politics is also about drawing contrasts so it's also important to remind people that Republicans are opposing all of these things," he added. "Republicans are talking a lot about inflation but they voted against helping you with home heating costs for the winter."

Just as important is that the administration lay out the steps it's taking to address energy issues such as gas prices, Reinish said.

"Whether that's tapping into the strategic oil reserves, whether that is working with the major gas, oil and energy companies, or whether that is putting pressure on OPEC, or foreign companies, countries or organizations, Democrats have to consistently show that they recognize the problem, they feel it and that they're taking action," he said,

Some strategists are skeptical a drop in prices will boost Democrats in the way the increase in prices has hurt them, regardless of the political messaging.

"It's much easier to blame a politician for an increase in the gas and gas prices than to credit a politician for decreasing gas prices," said a Democratic strategist who asked to speak on background. "If they go down far enough, they'll fade as an issue and something else will come along that people are discontented about, and that's a danger of being in power."
On his way to Texas for vacation, Plover's Mike Scotch stopped at a microbrewery in a small town in Louisiana to take a break.

There was a man, Hugh Smith, sitting near them that Scotch struck up a conversation with. About an hour later, Smith said he had to go home to do his dialysis because he was in stage four renal failure and was waiting for a kidney.

"I can give you one of mine," Scotch said immediately.

What happened as a chance meeting, changed both men forever. Smith ended up getting Scotch's kidney, and during the process, Scotch learned about how many people need living kidney donors.

"My wife and I both just feel that this is a solvable problem, I mean, as crazy as that might sound," Scotch said. "The numbers prove that if enough people know about it and cared enough there wouldn't be any people on the waitlist, let alone dying."

That inspired him to raise awareness through long bike rides. The first one was from Madison to Smith in Louisiana.

Mark Scotch, left, greets Hugh Smith during his 1,600-mile bike ride he's calling the "The Organ Trail." Scotch met Smith in Natchitoches, Louisiana and learned he needed a kidney for a transplant.

For his generosity and efforts at awareness, Scotch was given the Triumph of the Year award during USA TODAY's Best of Humankind Awards Thursday. The show was hosted by Jenna Bush Hager of TODAY with Hoda and Jenna.

"It's just unbelievable what you can do to change somebody's life," Scotch said during the show.

The Best of Humankind Awards honor everyday people who have showcased the highest level of kindness, compassion and perseverance in 2021. Each Humankind award recognizes and celebrates an everyday person who is making a difference in their community.

Watch the full show here:

Through a public nomination process, Humankind received hundreds of inspirational stories from the public. The finalists in 11 categories received more than 70,000 votes.

Winners in each category will be awarded $1,000 to help further their cause, with the person nominating them receiving $250.

Sweepstakes: Enter by Dec. 31 to win $1,000 for you and $1,000 for the charity of your choice

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Other winners of the night included:

Best of Animalkind: Michele and Jeff Allen of South Hampton, New Jersey

The Allens are the founders of a year-round hospice dedicated to senior dogs. Removing terminally ill dogs from bad conditions, they work 24/7 to ensure that the animals last days are spent in comfort, surrounded by love and the appropriate medical care. This award was sponsored by PetsMart Charities.

Best of Militarykind: Christopher Douglas of Midlothian, Texas

Douglas is a Midlothian Police Officer and Air Force veteran. However, his most remarkable title is "Captain America of Texas." In his superhero role, Christopher has worked with the Make a Wish Foundation to make countless dreams come true. Despite working 12-hour shifts, Christopher is always ready to show love and kindness to his community in his off-duty hours.

Best of Womankind: Dorothy Oliver of Panola, Alabama

Oliver is not in the medical profession, but she's primarily responsible for getting 97% of the residents of Panola, Alabama, vaccinated. As the pandemic took hold, the general store owner was so concerned about her community that she went door-to-door encouraging her friends and neighbors to get vaccinated. To make the vaccination process as easy as possible, Dorothy volunteered to schedule appointments and drive fellow residents to and from the vaccination centers.

Best of Sportskind: Hannah Jordan of Tulsa, Oklahoma

Jordan's creative spirit is inspired by cycling. She was only 6 when she was diagnosed with a life-threatening disease that would require her to use a feeding tube for the rest of her life. At 13, Hannah began cycling. She quickly fell in love with the sport, and within 10 days of learning to ride, she'd completed 210 miles. In the following years, Hannah competed in more than 150 races. She even claimed a world title, all while being attached by feeding tube to the bag of fluids in her backpack. Now, age 20, she's working to bring hope to others with inventions that will help them live their very best life.

Best of Earthkind: Sara Stewart of South Bend, Indiana

Stewart is the inspiration behind The Unity Gardens in South Bend, Indiana. This nonprofit free pick garden aims to improve community health by increasing the accessibility to fruits and vegetables and promoting education on nutrition, food preparation and sustainability. However, it's become so much more than a garden. Sara has created a culture of caring in her community, as the gardens provide food for anyone in need and bring diverse people and businesses together to grow, harvest, share and eat healthy food.

Humankind Healthcare Worker of the Year: Dr. Tamatha Fenster, New York

Fenster is a gynecological surgeon who worked in the ICU during the first wave of the Covid pandemic. Seeing patients die from the virus, unable to have family or friends at their bedside, prompted Fenster to create an innovative communication device so that dying patients could hear the voices of their loved ones and religious figures while they took their last breaths. The device, called "Voice Love," allows people to communicate from anywhere in the world, bringing solace to critically ill patients under quarantine. It is free to all, as Fenster and her partners believe patient connection to clergy, loved ones and friends is a fundamental right.

Humankind Educator of the Year: Kimberly Mileszko of Burlington County, New Jersey

Mileszko is a job developer for a large high school in New Jersey, working with special needs students ages 17-21. Kim places dozens of special needs students from four local high schools into job training programs. During the last year, she's reinvented the process to ensure that graduating students continue to grow and be successful. By contacting local businesses, organizations, and community groups and asking, "How can my students help you?" Kim has been instrumental in helping students, often overlooked by the business community, gain the social and physical skills to become productive members of society.

Humankind Act of Kindness Caught on Video: Skyler Carter of Lund, Nevada

Carter is a high schooler who came to the aid of his classmate and friend, Tanner Hendrix. Tanner is a high functioning special needs student and was devastated to find that a bully had put his tennis shoes in the toilet before PE class. But the following week, Tanner got a big surprise when Skyler was caught on camera at his home delivering him a new pair of tennis shoes and telling Tanner how upset he was to hear that Tanner was treated poorly.

Humankind Viewer's Choice Award: Mark James of St. Augustine, Florida

James is a Corrections Deputy in Florida. He's also a youth football coach and a mentor. His mentoring program is called the Nu Nation of Men, in which he teaches young men the skills that will empower and sustain them throughout life. These include social skills, anger management, conflict resolution, hygiene, health and nutrition, accountability and recreation.

Humankind Person of the Year: Heather Boone of Monroe, Michigan

Heather Boone's mission as the Pastor of Oaks of Righteousness Church is to help anyone in need. After establishing the church, she founded a homeless shelter, living there herself for two years to better aid those without houses. The food pantry and food program she later created provide more than 10,000 meals a year. She's also created a clothing closet, a furniture donation center, a community center, a free daycare center and a tutoring program for children.

Read more about the awards at HumankindAwards.com.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Mark Scotch wins Triumph of the Year award during Best of Humankind Awards
Ada Ojeh-Teme (third from right in blue) sits with other women featured in the documentary. Linn Washington

Ada Ojeh-Teme passed out from period pain at age 11, but a doctor told her to just take Tylenol.

She lived with undiagnosed endometriosis, which has affected her fertility, for 25 years.

Black women's pain is more likely to be dismissed, MSNBC's "The Fertility Secret" illustrates.

Ada Ojeh-Teme's first period at age 11 didn't just announce itself with spotting in her underwear.

The Miami resident remembers being at school when suddenly she felt a "rush of pain" radiating from her uterus and consuming her entire body. "I don't understand. I'm so hot. What's happening?" Ojeh-Teme said she thought before passing out in the hallway.

"The doctor definitely belittled the pain," she said, just telling Ojeh-Teme to take Tylenol a few days before her period.

For 25 years, Ojeh-Teme tried to follow the advice  going from regular-strength Tylenol to eventually 800 milligram doses a few times a day. Still, the pain forced her to miss classes and even reschedule her wedding.

"It takes a toll," she said. "For someone to just dismiss you and say, 'Yeah I hear you're in pain, but just do this,' you start to think, 'Well, I guess this is a 'me problem.'"

It wasn't until Ojeh-Teme underwent surgery to remove a fibroid in her 30s that she learned the pain, all along, had been endometriosis, a chronic condition that causes uterine-like tissue grows in the pelvic cavity outside the uterus.

The surgeon had found so many endometriosis lesions the surgery took more than six hours instead of the expected 30 minutes, Ojeh-Teme said. "When came out, his first comment to us was, 'How did you bear this for so long?'"

"Finally," Ojeh-Teme said she thought, "somebody sees me and somebody can understand that I'm not crazy after all."

Ojeh-Teme is one of five women of color featured in the upcoming MSNBC documentary "Stories We Tell: The Fertility Secret," produced by Today Show anchor Sheinelle Jones. Ojeh-Teme's story highlights how Black women's pain can be overlooked in the healthcare system.

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Ojeh-Teme and her husband have been trying to have a baby for 10 years

Ada Ojeh-Teme and her husband Screenshot/NBC

Ojeh-Teme didn't realize at first that her endometriosis and fibroid history could affect her fertility. "I've paid my dues," she thought. In reality, both conditions can reduce the chances of becoming pregnant, especially if they're widespread and in advanced stages.

That lack of awareness is part of what inspired Jones to make the film, her first. "All of these women were saying they just wish they would have known sooner that they were going to run into trouble," she told Insider.

Ojeh-Teme and her husband are now in year 10 of trying to become pregnant. They've gone through at least eight IVF cycles, and have one embryo left.

"There's this misconception with infertility that you should always be heading in some direction, and it should end with a child," Ojeh-Teme said in the film. "I'm OK with where I am now, that this is what is for me."

Black women's pain is more likely to be dismissed

Being Black and being a woman can influence how your pain is treated in the healthcare system.

Ada Ojeh-Teme in the hospital for what turned out to be a 6- or 7-hour surgery. Screenshot/NBC/Ada Ojeh-Teme

One 2016 study found that about half of white medical students and residents endorsed false beliefs about biological differences between Black and white people, like that Black people's nerve endings are less sensitive and their skin is thicker. In turn, they rated Black patients' pain as lower and made less accurate treatment recommendations.

Research has also shown that women report more severe levels of pain, more frequent pain, and longer periods of pain than men, but are treated for it less aggressively.

Rather than blame all doctors, Jones emphasizes the importance of advocating for yourself and finding a physician who listens. She remembers her grandfather, a physician, being "so gentle, so kind," she said. "We should seek those physicians out."

"Stories We Tell: The Fertility Secret" will air on MSNBC on Sunday, December 19 at 10 p.m. EST

Read the original article on Insider
The woman seen at a San Diego board of supervisors meeting on December 7, 2021. San Diego County

A woman sang an anti-vaxx cover of "All I want for Christmas is You" at a county meeting Tuesday.

The San Diego county board of supervisors were debating an extension to an emergency order.

She changed the lyrics to promote ivermectin and oppose mask mandates.

A woman performed an anti-vaxx rendition of "All I Want For Christmas is You" during a county meeting on Tuesday in San Diego, California.

The woman, who identified herself as Bridgette, stepped up to the lectern at the San Diego County Board of Supervisors meeting and put on a Santa hat.

She then sang an altered version of Mariah Carey's song with lyrics attacking masks and vaccines, and suggested natural immunity as the solution to the Omicron coronavirus variant.

The meeting was recorded by San Diego county, and her rendition can be seen at the 2:03:00 mark.

The board had been debating whether to support an extension to the local health-emergency order, and the woman came forward when local residents were invited to speak.

In the song, the woman promoted the drugs ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine  both falsely promoted by anti-vaxxers as cures for COVID-19. She also said schools should stay open, and that she wanted "body autonomy" over vaccines. The US Food and Drug Administration has cautioned against the use of ivermectin or hydroxychloroquine to treat COVID-19.

Here are her full, alternative lyrics:

"I don't want a lot for Christmas, just body autonomy. I don't care about the variants, because of natural immunity. I just want my freedom now, the constitution will show us how, make my dreams come true. End the state of emergency and acknowledge early treatment too. Ivermectin, not just [inaudible] hydroxychloroquine, vitamin C and vitamin D, and zinc and [inaudible] I won't wear a useless mask, I don't need to stay at home, and my kids should go to school. We don't need to be alone. I just want my freedom now, the constitution will show us how, make my dreams come true, baby I ... end the emergency."

Read the original article on Insider
Lynchburg city officials Friday announced a bump in the starting salary for police officers in hopes of addressing staffing shortages in the citys police force and also spoke about a recent rise in violent crime.

Mayor MaryJane Dolan, City Manager Wynter Benda and Police Chief Ryan Zuidema all spoke at the news conference.

Benda announced that effective Jan. 5, the starting salary for Lynchburg police officers will be raised to $50,000, giving the Lynchburg Police Department what he said will be the highest starting pay for law enforcement in Central Virginia.

There will still be other issues to address, Benda said, but I am thankful that I have the support of the city council, as well [as] the cooperation and input of Chief Zuidema, as we continue to work to make our police department the best it can be and fully equipped to address crime in our community.

Zuidema said the pay raise is a game changer, bumping the starting annual salary of Lynchburg police officers up from $40,019.20.

Weve been struggling like a lot of other law enforcement agencies across this nation to recruit and retain qualified people, Zuidema said, so this is a major, major step forward in the right direction.

Zuidema said the department has 28 hard vacancies in its sworn officer ranks, and is expecting to put four officers in the next academy, which is well, well short of the vacancies we have.

City officials are hoping that raising the starting salary will allow the department to return to normal staffing levels, which will, in turn, ease the burden of having officers running from call to call, according to Zuidema.

We want our officers to be able to be out there engaging in proactive policing, Zuidema said. We know the importance of building trust and relationships in our community, and how that will help us overall as a community stay safe.

When LPD gave its latest pay boost to new recruits in March 2020, it was down 38 sworn officers out of a total of 174 positions, a roster thats now up to at least 176. Zuidema also has pressed to increase the force up to around 200 officers in recent years.

While city officials are hoping to fill the vacancies, they are asking for the help of the community to come forward if they have seen or know anything regarding acts of violence in the city.

One example among other recent incidents is on Monday, witnesses reported two groups shooting at each other in the Family Dollar parking lot at Fifth and Federal streets, the Lynchburg Police Department has said. No one was injured, but two businesses were struck by gunfire and casings were found in the area.

We need the communitys help, Zuidema said. We need the communitys help when it comes to dealing with any crime, but especially violent crime.

Dolan said the recent acts of violence in the city cannot and will not be tolerated.

It is vitally important for all of us to ensure that our police department has the resources necessary to combat violence, Dolan said.

Our city is better than this, Zuidema said. We have all got to do a better job collectively to address these issues before they come up.

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A father and son have been jailed in connection to an alleged murder conspiracy in the Blue Springs area.

Gage County Sheriff Millard Gus Gustafson said during the course of the investigation they found evidence that indicated 40-year-old Derrie Seeman and his 71-year-old father, William Seeman Jr., had been plotting to kill or have a family member killed, as well as a juvenile male and another adult male.

Derrie Seeman and Bill Seeman were arrested at their home in Liberty, Nebraska, about 6 miles north of the Kansas border, on Thursday morning and booked into the Gage County Detention Center on conspiracy to commit murder.

Gustafson said the would-be victim was notified of the arrests by the Gage County Victim Advocates Office.

The investigation is ongoing.

Reach the writer at 402-473-7237 or lpilger@journalstar.com. On Twitter @LJSpilger
"All of the people involved with this lawsuit should regret being here," the judge wrote in his order. "To begin with, nearly every public official draws the attention of critics and cranks who have opinions they insist on sharing."
A Scottsbluff liquor store owner and his wife are accused of failing to pay more than $100,000 in sales taxes and thousands of dollars in state taxes, all with the intent of evading paying taxes.

According to Scotts Bluff County Court records, charges of two counts of evading income tax, a Class IV felony; two counts of failure to pay sales tax, a Class IV felony; filing a fraudulent state income tax return, a Class IV felony; and theft by taking, a class II felony, were filed against Kuldip Singh, 60, of Scottsbluff, and his wife Carol Singh.

Offenses are alleged to have taken place in 2019 and 2020, according to court records.

An arrest affidavit reports that Marcus Ford, a deputy state sheriff and revenue investigator of the Nebraska Department of Revenue, opened a case involving Kuldip Cheema, doing business as Cheema Invests LLC, Cheema Capital LLC, Aman Hospitality LLC, 5BC LLC, KCAS LLC, Cheema & Cheema LLC and RS Auto Sales LTD, in June 2020.

Ford had been working with Nebraska State Patrol investigator Rob Jackson, who heads liquor enforcement in Troop E, which covers the Panhandle. Jackson received an anonymous complaint from a former employee of Cheema alleging he was bootlegging liquor from his Wyoming store to the Scottsbluff store.

As part of the investigation, authorities obtained subpoenas for the bank accounts of Kuldip and Carol Sing, as well as accounts under the business names at area banks. Fords focus was on Singhs retail liquor stores and bars for all purchases and sales of liquor, beer and cigarettes, all items subject to sales tax in Nebraska. Ford requested documents from Jacksons investigation regarding purchases of liquor, beer and wine for all stores and bars owned by Singh during the period of January 2017 to December 2020.

A sales and income analysis of accounts and records from the Nebraska State Patrol, Wyoming Liquor distributor and Wyoming Department of Revenue, were conclusive that purchases were being continually made for all of Singhs liquor stores and bars, the affidavit states. That monthly inventory was being sold and reordered.

Authorities allege that transfers from the Cheema Investments LLC account were being made to bank accounts for each retail liquor store and bars and purchases for many of his retail locations were greater than the sales he reported to the state over a period of three to four years.

Investigators with the Department of Revenue determined that the Singhs were underreporting their sales and taxes to the state of Nebraska. The affidavit alleged that Kuldip Singh did not report sales taxes due to the state of Nebraska in the amount under Cheema Capital LLC and under Cheema & Cheema LLC. Ford alleges the Singhs intended to evade tax liability from the periods of December 2018 to December 2020 by underreporting sales tax of $109,350 for about $1,540,556 in underreported sales.

The affidavit further alleges that Kuldip Singh did not file an individual income tax for 2018 and underreported income in 2019. He is alleged to have failed to report income of approximately $635,775, with a tax liability of about $28,004, in 2018 and income of $727,879, with a tax liability of about $42,167.

Carol Singh is alleged to have failed to report income of about $583,553 with the intent to evade tax liability of $24,212. For the tax year of 2019, she is alleged to have failed to report income of $466,915 to evade tax liability of $29,463.

Carol Singh allegedly underreported her income for the tax years of 2018 and 2019 of $857,632 and that taxes of $70,171 were due.

On the theft charge, authorities allege that Kuldip and Carol Singh, with the intent to evade paying over trust fund sales taxes to the state, committed theft by controlling and failing to remit sales taxes in the amount of $109,350 from December 2018 to December 2020.

Kuldip Singh and Carol Singh were arrested on Tuesday, however, they had posted bond and were released. Their next scheduled court appearances were not yet available in online court records.

The Nebraska Attorney Generals office is prosecuting the case, with Deputy Attorney General Doug Warner noted as the prosecuting attorney. An attorney for the Singhs had not yet been entered in court.

The Singhs continue to operate stores in Scottsbluff, Chadron, Bridgeport and Torrington, Wyoming, despite Kuldip Singh having been convicted of liquor law violations in August. An appeal by Singh of that conviction to Scotts Bluff County District Court remains pending.
A roundup of legislative and Capitol news items of interest:

HALF-STAFF: Gov. Kim Reynolds has extended her order to fly all flags in Iowa at half-staff until midnight Saturday in honor and remembrance of Sen. Bob Dole, who represented Kansas in Congress for 35 years in the U.S. House and Senate. Dole died Sunday at age 98.

Reynolds order was issued in conjunction with President Joe Bidens proclamation to amend the initial order earlier this week to lower the U.S. flag to half-staff for the updated length of time.

ROAD USE TAX FUND REVENUES: Although Iowa revenues from motor fuel taxes and vehicle registrations decreased in the past month, the Legislative Services Agency reported Thursday that year-to-date distribution from the Road Use Tax Fund is up by $42 million, or 4.5 percent, compared to fiscal 2021.

Compared to December 2020, fuel taxes decreased by $21.9 million, revenue from vehicle registrations decreased by $1.7 million and fees for new vehicle registrations decreased by about $859,000. However, truck registrations increased by $26,600.

Fuel taxes, annual vehicle registration fees and new vehicle registration fees provided 89.6 percent of all revenue in the Road Use Tax Fund through Nov. 30.

PUBLIC HEALTH PROCLAMATION: Gov. Kim Reynolds said Wednesday the state of Iowa will remain under a public health emergency disaster proclamation through the end of 2021.

The governor first proclaimed a state of disaster emergency on March 9, 2020, in response to the outbreak of COVID-19.

As of Wednesday, 542,422 cases have been reported in Iowa since that date, with 7,550 deaths, according to the latest Iowa Department of Public Health data.

Reynolds told talk show host Jeff Angelos iHeart radio audience Wednesday that she plans to renew the proclamation extension she signed Nov. 12 through the end of the year. It was set to expire later this week.

Our anticipation on that (proclamation extension) is by the end of the year well be able to let it go or end it. Hopefully, Jan. 1 will end the emergency health declaration, the governor told the WHO-AM radio talk show host.

Reynolds said regulatory relief for hospitals is needed as COVID-19 hospitalizations are at the highest level in nearly a year, with about three-fourths of the COVID-19 patients not being vaccinated.

Currently, about 58 percent of Iowans aged 5 and older are fully vaccinated.

HUNTING/FISHING LICENSES ON SALE: Officials with the Iowa Department of Natural Resources say resident hunting, fishing and other state-issued licenses for 2022 are available beginning Dec. 15.

DNR officials say Iowas menu of license options includes the popular Outdoor Combo for hunting/fishing/habitat for $55; the Anglers Special three-year fishing license for $62; and the Hunters Special three-year hunting license with habitat included for $101.

Also available is the Bonus Line option for $14, allowing resident and non-resident anglers to fish with one more line in addition to the two lines allowed with the regular fishing license.

DNR officials also noted that beginning Dec. 15, hunters who purchase a 2022 license and plan to pursue migratory game birds will be required to register for the Harvest Information Program.

Hunters can do thatthrough the Go Outdoors Iowa app on their smartphone  iowadnr.gov/waterfowl or at gooutdoorsiowa.com  and answering the questions there.

Once registered, hunters will need to physically write a confirmation number on the line provided at the top of the license as proof of registration.

The state agency says the change was necessary because registering through license vendors at the time of purchase has been inconsistent.

Licenses are available at 700 locations across the state, and on the DNR website at iowadnr.gov/GoOutdoorsIowa. Licenses purchased for 2021 expire Jan. 10.

MILLER LEADS ASSOCIATION: Iowa Attorney General Tom Miller has been elected to serve as the president of the National Association of Attorneys General, hoping to focus on consumer protection issues during his term.

Specifically, Miller said he has selected Consumer Protection 2.0: Tech Threats and Tools as his presidential initiative due to the unprecedented sophistication and the seriousness of the threats currently facing consumers.

Miller said the rapid changes in digital technology and social media pose both promise and peril for all Americans.

In 2022, I want to muster our collective efforts to fight back, he said. This will require a bipartisan approach as well as strong partnerships with federal, state, and local officials; consumer groups; and partners in the private sector.

Miller said he will host his presidential summit in Des Moines in August.
A Davenport Republican state lawmaker says he will run for statewide office in 2022 rather than seek re-election to the Iowa Senate.

Roby Smith, R-Davenport, announced Thursday he is running for Iowa State treasurer, challenging 39-year incumbent Michael Fitzgerald.

Iowa needs a treasurer who understands the challenges of the 21st Century and is willing to protect Iowans from a Biden administration that is determined to invade our financial privacy, Smith said of an administration proposal to widen the authority to root out tax evasion by allowing the IRS to get annual, aggregated reports of flows from bank accounts with a minimum of $600.

Smith worked for nearly a decade as a local banker before running for the Iowa Legislature and has a business administration degree. He is a member of the ownership group of the Quad Cities River Bandits and serves as an unpaid member of the local U.S. Bank Board.

Fitzgerald is one of only three Democrats to hold statewide office in Iowa and is the nations longest-serving state treasurer. He was first elected in 1982 and re-elected in 2018 to his 10th term.

He serves as the states banker, managing taxes that are paid to the state of Iowa and investing the states money. His office coordinates the College Savings Iowa program and manages the purchase and repayment of state bonds.

Fitzgerald, in a statement, touted his accomplishments launching programs including the 529 college savings plan, the Great Iowa Treasure Hunt of unclaimed property program and Iowas ABLE plan, which helps Iowans with disabilities and their families save for the future and not risk losing benefits.

In times like today, there is no question that experience counts, Fitzgerald said. Through my leadership, I will continue to promote fair government and safe financial strategies.

Smith was first elected to the Iowa Senate in 2010 and re-elected to a third term in 2018. His current term ends on Jan. 8, 2023.

Redistricting placed Smith into a newly-drawn senate district alongside incumbent Davenport Democrat Jim Lykam. Lykam could not immediately be reached for comment Thursday. He has not publicly declared his 2022 plans but has previously indicated he plans to seek re-election.

Smith, who represents part of Davenport and Bettendorf, Riverdale and Panorama Park, was drawn into a more rural and less urban district that stretches from northwest Davenport to West Branch and the Linn County border and includes rural Cedar County.

Smith, too, could have chosen to move a few blocks east across Jersey Ridge Road to run for an open Senate seat thats pretty Republican, Lykam noted in October when asked if he planned to run against Smith. The new senate district includes much of Smiths current district, as well as Eldridge and part of LeClaire.

Republicans know that (Republican Iowa Gov.) Kim Reynolds workforce crisis will be an anchor around their necks in competitive Senate districts next year, so theyre jumping ship as fast as possible, Andy Suchorski, executive director of the Iowa Senate Democrats Majority Fund, said in a statement.

Senate Majority Leader Jack Whitver announced last month he will move from Ankeny and seek reelection in a more rural, conservative district.

Smith said redistricting did not factor into his decision to run for state treasurer.

I will have served 12 years in the Senate, Smith said. Youve served that long, and Ive done a lot of good work for the people of Scott County and now its time to do good work for the people of the state of Iowa.

Lykam in October said Smith would be a top target for Senate Democrats in 2022. Smith, who chairs the State Government Committee and serves on the Commerce, Rules and Administration, and Ways and Means committees, spearheaded sweeping changes to Iowa election laws Democrats and voting rights advocates argue amount to voter suppression. Smith and Republicans contend Iowas new election laws safeguard voting and promote voter confidence.

Smith noted his support in the Iowa Senate to make it easier for families to invest in Iowas college savings program by extending the time period families could contribute to their childrens account, while still receiving the tax benefit.

Smith also noted his support of tax reforms, helping pass the largest income tax cut for working Iowans in our states history, and efforts to promote and improve financial literacy among high school students.

My passion has always been about helping Iowa families achieve their dreams, overcome challenges, and secure their future, Smith said in a statement. Thats exactly where my focus will be as Iowas next treasurer.
NEW YORK (AP)  Beneath a pale winter light and the glare of television cameras, it seemed hard not to see the Jan. 6 U.S. Capitol riot for what it was. The violent storming of the Capitol by Donald Trump supporters bent on upending the election of Joe Biden was as clear as day: democracy un
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One militant of Ennahdha, the largest party in Tunisias suspended Parliament died Thursday at headquarters of the political organization after a fire broke out of at the reception.

Identified as Sami by the party leader Rached Ghannouchi, the militant set fire to himself in distress causing the fire outbreak.

Ghannouchi, branded Sami martyr adding that he was victim of marginalization and poverty.

Sami spent more than ten years in prison for opposing the dictatorship and tyranny. And even after the revolution that had swept away the dictator, Sami has not managed to have a minimum of decent life, and this despite the decisions of the Instance of Truth and Dignity, whose recommendations have remained without action. Sami is the victim of the media war that has targeted Ennahdha activists, even ten years after the revolution, Ghannouchi added.

The interior ministry in a count of the incident that indicated that 18 other people including senior members such as Ali Laarayedh and Abdelkarim Harouni sustained injures.

Both senior members jumped through the windows, two floors from the ground to escape the fire that engulfed the reception at 2pm local time.

Around 150 people were in the building located the business district of capital Tunis according Maryam Bennour, also member of the Islamist party. Sami reportedly set himself on fire after he was denied access to Ghannouchi.

Posted by North Africa Post North Africa Post's news desk is composed of journalists and editors, who are constantly working to provide new and accurate stories to NAP readers.
Up to now, $1.8 billion has been spent on the state's expressway system expansion, according to a report shared Wednesday. Of the original system identified in 1988, six projects are under construction, three are in the design phase and two are in the planning phase.

Sen. Mark Kolterman of Seward pressed Selmer about expanding U.S. 81 between York and Columbus. That's in the design phase and expected to be complete in 2035.

I would hope that, with the money thats coming in, we could make an attempt to move that up on the schedule, Kolterman said.

Selmer said the time estimates for expressway projects were created before the federal legislation passed. He expects the federal money will allow the state to hold to the current schedule, he said, and the department is looking at ways to accelerate it.

Four of the lawmakers in attendance Wednesday  Sens. Curt Friesen of Henderson, Joni Albrecht of Thurston, Dan Hughes of Venango and Mike Moser of Columbus  issued a statement Tuesday coming to the defense of Republican gubernatorial candidate Jim Pillen, who dismissed the need for the federal infrastructure bill at a debate over the weekend.
Photo: Spencer Platt/Getty Images

The New York City Council voted on Thursday to allow noncitizens to vote in municipal elections, making New York the largest city to do so. Under the new legislation, more than 800,000 New Yorkers would be allowed to cast ballots for the next mayor, comptroller, council member, and borough president.

The bill officially creates a new voter category: municipal voters, people who are not U.S. citizens but are recognized as lawful permanent residents or have official authorization to work in the country. Municipal voters must have resided in the city for at least 30 consecutive days by Election Day. A separate registration form for municipal voters would be created, and for elections that include races they cant participate in, such as state or federal ones, separate municipal ballots would be produced.

In a statement to Intelligencer, Council Member Carlina Rivera, a co-sponsor of the bill, said, Si se puede - yes we can, and yes we did. With voting rights under attack nationwide, we in New York City have a responsibility to stand up in defense of voting as a right - not just a privilege reserved for those in positions of power. Here, power belongs to New Yorkers. To all of us. I am so grateful to my colleague and friend Council Member Ydanis Rodriguez for spearheading this fight along with the New York Immigration Coalition, and proud that we have voted to restore municipal voting rights to non-citizen immigrant New Yorkers

The bill was reintroduced by Rodriguez, the prime sponsor, in 2020 after past measures had failed. Supporters say this move by the City Council will validate the rights of immigrant New Yorkers who had previously been disenfranchised in local politics in the city where they live. Earlier this year, Felipe De La Hoz wrote for Intelligencer about the potential for the new legislation to empower sections of the citys electorate that havent always been prioritized by local politicians:

What this shift in voter base might really achieve is an increase in the political firepower of immigrant-heavy neighborhoods like Washington Heights, Corona, Sunset Park, and others that are home to large standing populations of permanent residents, regardless of their political leanings. Its not necessarily that the voter demographics or political viewpoints would fundamentally shift, but balloon in areas of the city that traditionally have had a harder time achieving political representation.

In a New York Post op-ed published just before Thanksgiving, Joe Borelli, the City Councils Republican minority leader, railed against the proposed legislation, as expected, saying it showed how much contempt progressives have for city voters.

If the champions of this bill really care about our democracy, they would encourage immigrants to strive toward American citizenship  not cheapen it by giving away the store, Borelli wrote. And they would take the fundamental question about who can and cannot vote in New York City to the people themselves, by putting this on a ballot referendum in November.

While a majority of Democrats on the council voted in favor of the bill, Mayor Bill de Blasio has been ambivalent about it, expressing concern over its legality while showing no indication that he intends to block the bill during his final days in office. He spoke in a similar tone during a press conference on Wednesday.

Right now, I still have very mixed feelings about it. Ive been honest about that. That hasnt changed a bit. I think there are still some outstanding legal questions about the citys authority versus the states in this matter. But I respect the City Council, he said. So, you know, well see what their final action is there. My assumption is Im just going to respect whatever they do. But I do think there are still open questions on this for the future.
 Announcing the #Sundance 2022 Feature Film, Indie Episodic, and New Frontier lineups. Explore the program now: https://t.co/he3dMjbaSu



 Ticket Packages On Sale December 17

 Individual Tickets On Sale January 6 pic.twitter.com/MZcXiIAYDi  SundanceFilmFestival (@sundancefest) December 9, 2021

I can't believe I'm typing this but DUAL will be in competition at the 2022 Sundance Film Festival. I cried on the mats of my jiu jitsu academy when I found out. pic.twitter.com/kxXyDX3UCQ  Riley Stearns (@RileyStearns) December 9, 2021

Regina Hall has two films premiering at the 2022 Sundance Film Festival.



 Master, dir: Mariama Diallo

 Honk for Jesus, Save Your Soul, dir: Adamma Ebo pic.twitter.com/e6831feQ8W  Film Updates (@FilmUpdates) December 9, 2021

Watcher

Im humbled and honored that my feature film WATCHER is playing at Sundance 2022! So many people have put their heart and soul into making this movie. I cant wait for you all to see it. #Sundance https://t.co/cfRRkPeJNQ  Chloe Okuno (@cokuno_san) December 9, 2021

Resurrection

Sundance 2022 First Looks: Rebecca Hall In 'Resurrection,' Elizabeth Banks In 'Call Jane' & More https://t.co/uoLM04khf7  The Playlist (@ThePlaylistNews) December 9, 2021

After Yang

Coming to Sundance 2022: Jesse Eisenbergs WHEN YOU FINISH SAVING THE WORLD, Kogonadas AFTER YANG, & Mark Becker and Aaron Schocks INSTANT LIFE  @sundancefest pic.twitter.com/dvhdoQyw6F  A24 (@A24) December 9, 2021

over the moon to share I will be returning to #Sundance with our feature directorial debut Am I Ok? starring Dakota Johnson & Sonoya Mizuno and written by Lauren Pomerantz. its a beautiful story with beautiful performances and I got to make it with the sexy af Tig Notaro ! pic.twitter.com/6R8jpU14RY  Stephanie Allynne (@StephAllynne) December 9, 2021

Fresh

FRESH, directed by Mimi Cave, starring Daisy Edgar-Jones and Sebastian Stan, is premiering at #Sundance Film Festival 2022!

@sundancefest will be both in person and online, so you can join from anywhere in the US. January 20-30. Tickets on sale 12/17 at https://t.co/6u8s1kxEt4 pic.twitter.com/KH0flUL2uN  Legendary (@Legendary) December 9, 2021

Aftershock

Thrilled to announce that were premiering Aftershock at the @Sundance Film Festival! #Sundance 2022 will be both in person and online, so you can join in from anywhere in the US. January 20-30. Ticket packages on sale 12/17 at https://t.co/VeLsfIxJCQ #Sundance @aftershockdoc pic.twitter.com/H4fgBHmnWu  Rebecca Kent (@popularthug) December 9, 2021

Nanny

After a breakneck speed of production thru post I can finally share were premiering NANNY, my feature film writing/directing debut, at @sundanceorg's Sundance Film Festival.#Sundance 2022 is in person AND online Jan 20-30th. Tix avail 12/17 @ https://t.co/WOK8UhVmY4  pic.twitter.com/7GNSS7V19H  Octavia Butler knew... (@NotNikyatu) December 9, 2021

Sundance has unveiled the lineup for the 2022 edition of its annual film festival, which runs from January 20th to the 30th. It will once again be a dual-format festival, with in person screenings in Park City, Utah and online screenings in the comfort of your own home. The festival showcases all kinds of films and short form work, and while there are some established names in the mix, many of the picks are from first time filmmakers. The full lineup is listed here , but if you're not feeling up to that much reading, OP has picked out 10 titles that sound promising.: Karen Gillan, Aaron Paul, Beulah Koale: Riley Stearns: Recently diagnosed with a rare and incurable disease, Sarah is unsure how to process the news. To help ease her friends and familys impending loss, she is encouraged to participate in a simple futuristic cloning procedure called Replacement, after which Sarahs last days will be spent teaching the clone how to live on as Sarah once shes gone. But while it takes only an hour for a clone to be made, things become significantly more challenging when that double is no longer wanted.: Riley Stearns last directed 2019's: Regina Hall, Amber Gray, Zoe Renee, Talia Balsam, Talia Ryder: Mariama Diallo: At an elite New England university built on the site of a Salem-era gallows hill, three women strive to find their place. Gail Bishop, just instated as Master, a dean of students, discovers what lies behind the schools immaculate facade; first-year student Jasmine Moore confronts a new home that is cold and unwelcoming; and literature professor Liv Beckman collides with colleagues who question her right to belong. Navigating politics and privilege, they encounter increasingly terrifying manifestations of the schools haunted past and present.: This is Mariama Diallo's feature film debut.: Maika Monroe, Karl Glusman, Ciubuciu Bogdan Alexandru: Zack Ford: Chloe Okuno: Julia joins her husband when he relocates to his familys native Romania for a new job. Having recently abandoned her acting career, she finds herself frequently alone and unoccupied. One night, people-watching from her picture window, she spots a vague figure in an adjacent building, who seems to be looking back at her. Soon after, while alone at a local movie theater, Julias sense of being watched intensifies, and she becomes certain shes being followed  could it be the same unknown neighbor? Meanwhile, a serial killer known as The Spider stalks the city.: Rebecca Hall, Tim Roth, Grace Kaufman, Michael Esper, Angela Wong Carbone: Andrew Semans: Margaret leads a successful and orderly life, perfectly balancing the demands of her busy career and single parenthood to her fiercely independent daughter Abbie. But that careful balance is upended when she glimpses a man she instantly recognizes, an unwelcome shadow from her past. A short time later, she encounters him again. Before long, Margaret starts seeing David everywhere  and their meetings appear to be far from an unlucky coincidence. Battling her rising fear, Margaret must confront the monster shes evaded for two decades who has come to conclude their unfinished business.: Colin Farrell, Jodie Turner-Smith, Justin H. Min, Malea Emma Tjandrawidjaja, Haley Lu Richardson: Kogonada: When Yang  a lifelike, artificially intelligent android that Jake and Kyra buy as a companion for their adopted daughter  abruptly stops functioning, Jake just wants him repaired quickly and cheaply. But having purchased Yang certified refurbished from a now-defunct store, hes led first to a conspiracy theorist technician and then a technology museum curator, who discovers that Yang was actually recording memories. Jakes quest eventually becomes one of existential introspection and contemplating his own life, as it passes him by.: This premiered at Cannes 2021.: Dylan Southern & Will LovelaceAn immersive journey through the New York music scene of the early 2000s. Set against the backdrop of 9/11, the film tells the story of how a new generation kickstarted a musical rebirth for New York City that reverberated around the world.: Inspired by the book of the same name by Lizzy Goodman.: Dakota Johnson, Sonoya Mizuno, Jermaine Fowler, Kiersey Clemons, Molly Gordon, Sean Hayes: Lauren Pomerantz: Stephanie Allynne, Tig Notaro: Lucy and Jane are the best of friends. They finish each others sentences, predict every detail of each others food order, and pretty much know everything about each other. But when Jane is promoted at work and agrees to move to London for her new position, Lucy confesses her deepest, long-held secret: She likes women, she has for a long time, and shes terrified by this later-in-life realization. Suddenly, their friendship is thrown into chaos as the two choose different routes by which to navigate the sudden changes in their lives.: Daisy Edgar-Jones, Sebastian Stan, Jojo T. Gibbs, Charlotte Le Bon, Andrea Bang, Dayo Okeniyi: Lauryn Kahn: Mimi Cave: Frustrated by scrolling dating apps only to end up on lame, tedious dates, Noa takes a chance by giving her number to the awkwardly charming Steve after a produce-section meet-cute at the grocery store. During a subsequent date at a local bar, sassy banter gives way to a chemistry-laden hookup, and a smitten Noa dares to hope that she might have actually found a real connection with the dashing cosmetic surgeon. She accepts Steves invitation to an impromptu weekend getaway, only to find that her new paramour has been hiding some unusual appetites.: Paula Eiselt, Tonya Lewis Lee: An alarmingly disproportionate number of Black women are failed every year by the U.S. maternal health system. Shamony Gibson and Amber Rose Isaac were vibrant, excited mothers-to-be whose deaths due to childbirth complications were preventable. Now, their partners and families are determined to sound a rallying cry around this chilling yet largely ignored crisis.: Anna Diop, Michelle Monaghan, Sinqua Walls, Morgan Spector, Rose Decker, Leslie Uggams: Nikyatu Jusu: Undocumented immigrant Aisha lands a job nannying for the daughter of a wealthy Manhattan couple. While she easily wins the affection of young Rose, she also finds herself caught up in the rocky marriage between the girls controlling mom and woke photojournalist dad. Haunted by the absence of the young son she left behind in Senegal, Aisha hopes her precarious job will allow her to bring him into the U.S. and the life she has carefully pieced together. Just as his arrival finally feels imminent, a supernatural presence begins to invade both her dreams and her reality.Source 1
"Since 1999, Jesse Metcalfe has been capturing Americas hearts on the small & silver screens, delighting our ears with incredible original music, using his platform for philanthropic causes, and leading as an example of health & wellness.



A renowned model & actor, Jesse has been shot for publications all over the world and has collaborated with incredible photographers. Check out the gallery of photos - test shoots, editorial, fashion & fitness"

They dont like your posture, the cut of your jib, your attitude, you dont take orders #LiveFree  Jesse Metcalfe (@jessemetcalfe) November 9, 2021

What is your favourite Jesse Metcalfe film? View Answers

"John Tucker Must Die" 40 ( 59.7 % ) One of the Hallmark ones, idk they're all the same 7 ( 10.4 % ) PureFlix's "God's Not Dead 2" 1 ( 1.5 % ) "Hard Kill" with Bruce Willis 1 ( 1.5 % ) Wait...this isn't the guy from Swimfan? 18 ( 26.9 % )

is 43 years old today and I know what you're all thinking - "who?" and "why did you make this post?" and "what's he been up to since Desperate Housewives?"Well I'm here to answer all your questions as we celebrate the career of a famousJesse without an ONTD tag!"Interesting...I like the cut of his jib. Tell me, shittysoup, does he have a website where I can learn more about him?""Well I knew he was a renowned model and actor...but musician?""Huh...what else should I know about him?""Well...what else?"..............Anyway that's it. That's the post. Why? I don't know.Sources: 1
The criticism from the government and environmentalists may have a positive effect on the natural gas industry, forcing producers to be as clean as possible

The natural gas industry has responded to these claims by claiming it has the potential to reduce far more emissions far more quickly than renewable energy does

The U.S. natural gas industry has come under fire for its rising investment and production, with government officials and others wanting to see renewable investment instead

Natural gas, the energy source that was once hailed as the bridge fuel of the future, is now starting to face resistance from certain groups. One Sierra Club official was very clear in labeling new investments in natural gas as a mistake and arguing that what was really needed was an investment in renewables and related technologies. As this negative pressure mounts, the natural gas industry is now fighting back.

Earlier this month, Senator Elizabeth Warren sent a letter to almost a dozen oil and gas companies, accusing them of corporate greed and profiteering for exporting record amounts of natural gas instead of keeping it at home to keep prices low.

The cause of rapidly rising energy prices for consumers and manufacturers is clear: some of the nations largest and most profitable oil and gas companies are putting their massive profits, share prices and dividends for investors, and millions of dollars in CEO pay and bonuses ahead of the needs of American consumers and the nations recovery from the pandemic, Sen. Warren wrote, citing reports in the Wall Street Journal about record export rates.

And yet, at the same time, there is often strong opposition to more natural gas use in the United States. New Yorks now-former governor Andrew Cuomo, for instance, was a vocal opponent of new gas infrastructure and put a lot of effort into killing a new gas pipeline project, the final blow delivered just last year. At the same time, two years ago, amid a gas crunch, Cuomo threatened New Yorks grid operator with the revocation of its license if it didnt supply enough power for everyone even though the company cited the shortage of pipeline capacity that is required to supply the gas used to make the electricity.

Like with oil, the feeling of some consumers towards natural gas seems to be We hate you, but we need you. And like oil, gas producers are making an effort to clean up their image. BP, for instance, recently won A-grade certification for its gas from MiQ, an independent certifier of methane emissions, which, according to its senior advisor Georges Tijbosch, can help both gas producers and regulators by providing the former with a competitive edge if their gas is low-emission and the latter with the necessary information to tighten control over emissions.

It appears that with the growing awareness of emissions, buyers of energy commodities are also becoming more sensitive to their carbon footprint. So, certification and efforts to lower the emission footprint of natural gas production will pay off by making the companys product more attractive, albeit more expensive, for buyers.

But some in the industry argue that, even without certification, gas has done a huge amount to help the reduction of emissions by simply replacing coal. In response to Sen. Warrens letter this month, the chief executive of EQT Energy, Toby Rice, wrote that The emissions reduction from coal to gas switching seen in the United States between 2005 and 2019 is the equivalent of actually electrifying approximately 190 million cars, or roughly 70% of the total number of cars in the United States. We are currently projected to have global sales of 31.1 million electric vehicles in 2030.

He also wrote that the higher domestic prices for natural gas were not the result of record exports, saying the ramp-up of these exports had the potential to be the biggest green initiative on the planet, and its not even close.

Ramping LNG in a manner that specifically targets the replacement of foreign coal, particularly in China, represents the largest, fastest and most proven opportunity for the United States to address global climate change, Rice wrote. Thats the prizereducing emission levels at a pace weve never seen, while simultaneously providing the world with cheap, reliable and clean energy.

Thats an impressive return of the ball to Warrens  and other politicians court. Put simply, the choice for politicians like Warren is this: you can either have dirt cheap gas at home and be selfish about it or share the low-emission commodity with the world to help lower global emissions, because whatever the arguments against gas, nobody is arguing that it is dirtier than coal.

At the end of the day, unless the federal government passes legislation to limit exports of natural gas, there is nothing it can do to limit the corporate greed that is part of capitalism. Just the suggestion of more emissions-focused legislation appears to be prompting companies to make greater commitments in this respect, both in oil and gas. Perhaps the tensions between the U.S. administration and the energy industry could have a positive outcome.

By Irina Slav for Oilprice.com

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Following one of the biggest daily collapses in the past two decades at the end of November, oil prices have rebounded in recent days in a mini relief rally and were headed early on Friday to their largest weekly gain since August.

As of 9:24 a.m. EST on Friday, WTI Crude was up 1.23% at $71.83 and Brent Crude was trading up 1.01% at $75.20, after fears of a severe impact of the Omicron COVID variant on oil demand started to ease this week.

On November 26, oil prices crashed by more than 10%, with the front-month futures price for Brent Crude collapsing by $9.50 per barrel, or nearly 12%, after the World Health Organization (WHO) designated Omicron as a variant of concern.

Daily Brent crude oil prices have fallen by at least 10% on only 8 days since 2000, the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) said in an analysis on Friday.

In the 5,629 trading days since the start of 2000, Brent Crude prices remained within 2% of the previous days value 72% of the time. This year, before the November 26 price drop, the most the Brent crude oil price decreased in a single day was 6.9%, on March 18, according to data compiled by the EIA.

Panic over whether the still little-researched new variant will escape vaccine protection led to a crash on all markets on November 26, the day after Thanksgiving, and crude oil led the plunge as countries started to announce bans on flights from African countries. The low liquidity on the oil market in the festive period in the U.S. also contributed to the collapse in prices, which was the largest one-day crash since April 2020.

In the following two weeks, fears have subsided, and Pfizer and BioNTech said this week their booster shot promises to be effective against the Omicron variant. Although its early days to draw conclusions of how effective vaccines would be to protect against Omicron, scientists are also encouraged by early reports that symptoms of the new variant are mild.

By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com

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U.S. shale producers have been disappointed with the Biden Administrations policies regarding the oil and gas industry for nearly a year now, and they voiced their disappointment, once again, at this weeks World Petroleum Congress in Houston.

While the U.S. Administration was calling repeatedly on OPEC+ to pump more oil to stop the rally in U.S. gasoline prices, which hit a seven-year high a few months ago, it failed to reach out to domestic producers first for more supply, shale executives and industry associations say.

Instead of asking OPEC+ and counties like Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and Russia to pump more oil, the Administration should have laid the foundations for a faster recovery of U.S. oil production, which producers curtailed last year in response to the crash in demand and oil prices, executives say.

Not that everyone would have listened. The oil companies have now switched to a shareholder returns mode from record production mode to finally reward investors after years of splurging on record production and seeing little (or in many cases, negative) cash flows.

Shale executives started to express their criticism of the Biden Administration weeks ago, when officials openly pleaded with OPEC+ to increase supply to relieve prices at the pump in the United States.

Now many of those executives gathered in Houston to reiterate their view that you should have called us first.

Enormous Profits

[T]he energy industry is making enormous profits. Theyre back up to above where they were before the pandemic started. So, they have taken advantage of that moment  the profits  to be able to engage in shareholder buybacks, for example, U.S. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm said last month when President Joe Biden announced plans for a release of 50 million barrels from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) in a bid to lower gasoline prices.

But we want to encourage them to increase supply. We want supply to be increased both inside the United States and around the world so that we can reduce the pressures at the pump, Granholm added.

The U.S. shale patch, however, is not racing to boost supply too much. One reason is the still widely prevalent capital discipline. But another is wariness and uncertainty about the Biden Administrations policies toward oil and gas, and said Administrations calls on OPEC+ to pump more while imposing restrictive measures on drilling on U.S. federal land.

Pioneer Natural Resources CEO: They have not called me

Their first response was to call Opec and ask them to pump more oil. They have not called me, Pioneer Natural Resources CEO Scott Sheffield told the Financial Times on the sidelines of the Houston energy conference. And were the largest Permian producer, Sheffield added.

Pioneer Natural Resources and many other public oil and gas producers cannot change capital budgets and drilling plans overnight, especially now that they are scrutinized by investors demanding higher returns.

The U.S. shale has not been happy with the Administrations continued engagement with OPEC+ on oil supply, while there is suchand it is abundantin America.

I think first you, you stay home, you ask your friends, and you ask your neighbors to do it. And then if we cant do it, you call some other countries, Occidentals CEO Vicki Hollub told CNBC last month.

U.S. Producers Grapple With Uncertainties Beyond Oil Prices

The shale patch is keeping disciplined spending because of their changed priority to return cash to investors first and because of the high uncertainties on the global oil market with oversupply looming early next year and uncertain impact of Omicron (or other) COVID variants on demand. But U.S. oil producers also face heightened uncertainty with this Administration, which pushes for renewable energy and looks to impose more restrictive policies on the fossil fuels industry.

When the Biden Administration intensified calls on OPEC+ to boost production to alleviate surging gasoline prices in the U.S., the American Exploration and Production Council said at the end of October, The worst thing an Administration can do to energy prices is restrict supply by implementing policies that make it harder to produce energy.

The Administration also called for an investigation into whether oil companies are allegedly colluding to make gasoline prices the highest in seven years.

In a comment following President Bidens renewed request for the Federal Trade Commission to investigate rising gas prices, Frank Macchiarola, Senior Vice President for Policy, Economics and Regulatory Affairs at the American Petroleum Institute (API), said in mid-November:

This is a distraction from the fundamental market shift that is taking place and the ill-advised government decisions that are exacerbating this challenging situation. Demand has returned as the economy comes back and is outpacing supply. Further impacting the imbalance is the continued decision from the administration to restrict access to Americas energy supply and cancel important infrastructure projects.

Rather than launching investigations on markets that are regulated and closely monitored on a daily basis or pleading with OPEC to increase supply, we should be encouraging the safe and responsible development of American-made oil and natural gas, Macchiarola added.

By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com

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Mexicos Pemex plans to reduce the amount of oil it exports next year and use it domestically instead, Bloomberg has reported, as the country seeks to reduce its dependence on expensive fuels by processing more oil locally.

Mexico is the third-largest oil exporter in the Americas after the United States and Canada, according to the Energy Information Administration. The main destinations for its crude are its northern neighbors in North America and China, India, and South Korea, as well as European countries. A cut in exports could make some of these importers look for alternative suppliers.

Asia could feel a particularly severe blow, according to Bloomberg. It accounts for more than a quarter of Mexican oil exports, and refiners in South Korea and India are particularly vulnerable to the cuts, which Pemex has signaled will be smaller for European and U.S. buyers, going back on plans to move away from its biggest market in the United States.

Increasing domestic refining capacity was one of President Andres Manuel Lopez Obradors campaign promises and part of government plans to restore the dominant market position of Pemex, which is the worlds most indebted oil company. The plan envisaged the construction of a new refinery in the Tabasco state, initially expected to cost $8 billion. Later calculations, however, showed it could end up gobbling up $12.4 billion.

Apart from cost overruns and delays in the timeline, the Dos Bocas refinery was earlier this year found to be located in a protected area of mangroves which Pemex vowed to protect and not be allowed to develop projects and activities in areas where the mangroves grow.

Besides the Dos Bocas project, Pemex is also planning a downstream expansion abroad. The company has struck a deal to buy the Houston Deer Park refinery from Shell, prepared to spend $1.6 billion on the deal.

By Irina Slav for Oilprice.com

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The OPEC+ interventions on the market in recent years have helped the oil industry to see the beginning of the return of confidence and investments, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak told Russian TV channel Rossiya 24 in an interview on Friday.

We positively assess the joint actions since 2016. They allowed us to return investments and restore confidence in the industry. This is a strategically longer period for planning our activities, Novak told Rossiya 24 in an interview to mark the fifth anniversary of the first OPEC+ agreement reached in December 2016.

Back then, OPEC and a group of a dozen non-OPEC oil producers led by Russia started to manage the supply in order to limit production and balance the market.

The most difficult meeting for OPEC+ was the one in March 2020, when countries couldnt reach consensus on how to proceed with the collective oil supply at the start of the pandemic, Novak told Rossiya 24.

A month after the deal collapsed and Russia and Saudi Arabia were in a price war in March and early April 2020, the OPEC+ members realized that they need to cut a massive amount of oil production in order to bring the market back to balance while demand and prices were crashing with the pandemic.

OPEC+ is still unwinding those 10 million barrels per day (bpd) total cuts, by easing them by 400,000 bpd every month.

Earlier in December, the group surprised many market observers by sticking to its plan to ease the production cuts in January by 400,000 bpd, despite mounting evidence of a larger-than-expected oil surplus early next year.

OPEC+ may have brought more stability to the market, but investments post-COVID are still lagging behind pre-pandemic levels, industry officials and analysts warn.

Upstream oil and gas investment must rise to the pre-pandemic levels of around $525 billion per year through the end of the decade so that the industry can ensure a demand-supply balance, Saudi Arabia-based International Energy Forum (IEF) and IHS Markit said in a report this week. This year, upstream investment is still depressed, for a second year in a row, and is estimated at around $341 billion, they added.

OPEC Secretary General Mohammad Barkindo warned the audience at the World Petroleum Congress this week that cutting investments in oil and gas production is misguided. Insufficient investment in new oil and gas supply would lead to energy shortages, as well as market imbalances and higher prices, Barkindo added.

By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com

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Saudi Arabia will supply full contracted oil volumes to most of its buyers in Asia, Reuters has reported, citing unnamed sources familiar with the Kingdoms moves.

This will be the fourth month in a row during which Saudi Arabia has supplied full volumes, which suggests that crude oil supply is sufficient for the time being.

Previously, Saudi Arabia has on occasion notified buyers it would not be able to supply full contractual volumes, which has affected international oil prices because of the implication supply might be too tight for full exports.

Yet in October, the Kingdom said it was ready to supply additional volumes to certain buyers in Asia, all while fulfilling its full contractual obligation with the rest of them.

The Kingdom raised its official selling prices for oil just days after the news broke there was a new coronavirus variant out there, which immediately weighed on international benchmarks. This signal of confidence may have served to help stabilize prices. The hike for the flagship Arab Light was $0.60 for Asian buyers, which brought its premium to the Dubai/Oman spread to $3.30 per barrel. The price raise for U.S. buyers was between $0.40 and $0.60 per barrel across grades.

The price hikes interestingly came despite a decision at the latest OPEC+ meeting to keep adding 400,000 bpd to members combined production despite the Omicron scare. This suggests that Saudi Arabia is either very confident about demand for crude oil in the near future, or it is trying to stabilize prices by displaying this confidence.

Bloomberg meanwhile reported earlier this week that Asian buyers appetite for Saudi oil was moderate, with no one asking for additional volumes for January. December orders were also for regular volumes without additional cargo requests. According to traders, the spot market will also liven up soon after some of Saudi Arabias fellow OPEC members announce their own official selling prices for January.

By Charles Kennedy for Oilprice.com

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Govt-and-politics

Records show state employees knew Nebraska wouldn't be reimbursed for border deployment

When Nebraska sent state troopers to the Texas-Mexico border over the summer, spokespeople said the state may be reimbursed for the cost.

But behind the scenes, there was an understanding among state employees that Nebraska would pay for the deployment, according to emails and text messages obtained by The World-Herald.

Nebraska Gov. Pete Ricketts was one of multiple Republican governors who responded to a call for help at the border from Texas and Arizona via the Emergency Management Assistance Compact, commonly referred to as EMAC, a mutual aid agreement among states.

Ricketts said at the time that the state was happy to step up and that the federal government had fallen short in its response at the border.

The World-Herald reported in July that Nebraska had agreed not to seek reimbursement from Texas for costs, most recently estimated at $500,000.

Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds, who also sent troopers to the border, said Iowa would foot its bill after agreements were made public. In South Dakota, the Washington Post reported, Gov. Kristi Noem deployed National Guard troops using a private donation from Willis and Reba Johnsons Foundation.

Gov. Pete Ricketts joins other GOP governors at southern border in Texas The only expenses incurred by Nebraska would be travel expenses related to the security detail. The governor is paying personally for his travel.

But in Nebraska, officials continued to say reimbursement was on the table.

The World-Herald has since reviewed dozens of pages of emails and text messages, obtained under the states public records law, between state officials and employees in the days leading up to the original deployment and the deployments extension.

Some show that employees understood, even before the deployment was announced, that the state would not be reimbursed.

(A spokesman for Ricketts did not entirely rule out reimbursement last week but said it was unlikely.)

The records shed light on details of the initial deployment  including spending more than $20,000 for new uniforms  and its extension over the summer.

On June 15, Ricketts office received a letter from Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey requesting that states send all available law enforcement resources to the border in defense of our sovereignty and territorial integrity.

The same day, Bryan Tuma, who at the time led the Nebraska Emergency Management Agency, received a message with a subject line indicating that it contained details of the EMAC request from Arizona and Texas. (The State Patrol, which released the documents, redacted the entire body of the email as tactical and strategic information.)

Tuma forwarded the message to Col. John Bolduc, superintendent of the Nebraska State Patrol, who forwarded it to Patrol Capt. Jason Scott, who would ultimately lead the deployment.

Sometime before June 17, a person (whose name was redacted) sent a message to Capt. Kevin Ryan of the patrols Administrative Services Division:

Texas/Arizona put out a nationwide EMAC requesting 500 troopers. Petes office directed us to put a proposal together to send 25. Ill be on the phone all day with Carol and (redacted) putting it together. We wont be reimbursed for this one.

On June 17, a controller in the patrols accounting division sought clarification on the timing of the deployment and added: Also, Russ mentioned that we might not get reimbursed, in an apparent reference to Maj. Russell Lewis of the Administrative Services Division.

Is that the case? Who are we going to be able to submit this like every other EMAC through NEMA for reimbursement?

In response, the person (whose name was redacted) said they were on the road and requested that she call.

Ricketts, Nebraska State Patrol defend deployment to border as troopers head home The superintendent of the Nebraska State Patrol said troopers assisted in the arrests of more than 15 people for human smuggling and located at least six known gang or cartel members.

One email did suggest that reimbursement for some of the costs was rumored to be possible. In a message to Bolduc on June 17, Tuma said the state sent an offer to Texas that morning, asked whether there was authorization to proceed, and added:

Also hearing the Texas Legislature may authorize funds for covering the cost of incidentals, such as lodging, meals, travel, he wrote. Cannot confirm for sure.

Bolduc forwarded the message to Scott and said FYI. I informed Mr. Tuma that we are a green light from the Governor.

Ricketts has since echoed the notion of Texas providing reimbursement in a special session, but the Texas Governors Office told The World-Herald that there are no plans for a special session.

Even if that rumored reimbursement occurred, documents show that Nebraskas estimated travel costs and commodities had been expected to make up 30% of an initial $334,012 estimate. Personnel costs, which wouldnt have been reimbursed under that proposal, accounted for 70% of estimated costs.

Asked for more details about Tumas knowledge of potential reimbursement, a spokesperson for the Nebraska Emergency Management Agency said they didnt have answers and Tuma has since retired. The World-Herald could not reach Tuma for comment.

By June 18, deployment details were coming together.

Someone sent a message to Ryan saying Jay Scott had stopped at a uniform shop and decided that the uniforms the person had picked out wouldnt work.

I guess it wasnt going to be durable enough, the person wrote. Was thinking they were going for 16 days and not 16 weeks, adding a laughing emoji and Whatever.

An invoice from an Omaha uniform store, dated June 23, shows that the State Patrol was billed for $22,203 worth of uniform pieces such as tactical boots, T-shirts, polos, hats, and pants. Shipping accounted for $1,177 of that cost.

State Patrol spokesman Cody Thomas said the new, light green uniforms were issued to minimize the possibility of heat-related health problems  the traditional uniforms are dark blue, he said, and training uniforms are black. Troopers can now use the new ones as training uniforms, Thomas said.

A final roster of people headed to Texas was shared June 18, along with dates for the deployment: June 27 to July 10.

Nebraska agreed to pay for state troopers' Texas deployment, documents show The agreement under which Nebraska sent state troopers to the U.S.-Mexico border includes no provision for Texas to pay estimated $334,000 cost, according to documents obtained by The World-Herald.

A request from the Texas Department of Public Safety says that Texas and Arizona asked states to absorb the associated costs with this mission in support of the entire country and provide services at no charge to Texas.

An agreement signed by Maj. Gen. Daryl L. Bohac, the adjutant general of the Nebraska National Guard, on June 18, said NEBRASKA WILL NOT SEEK COST REIMBURSEMENT FROM THE STATE OF TEXAS  COST ESTIMATES ARE ONLY INCLUDED FOR FUTURE AUDITING PURPOSES.

Ricketts office announced the deployment June 19.

A spokesperson for the governor that day did not address questions about who would pay for it. A few days later, Thomas wrote in an email that funding hadnt been finalized as critics called for more transparency.

Thomas said the agency had been reimbursed for previous responses requested through the same partnership, such as during pipeline protests in North Dakota.

Thomas gave a similar answer July 9, when Ricketts announced that 15 Nebraska State Patrol troopers would continue their voluntary deployment to Texas for an additional 14 days.

That characterization of the extension also gave an impression that differed from conversations behind the scenes, which referred to a second wave of troopers.

The patrol originally said that the extended deployment comprised 15 troopers and that the remainder would return to Nebraska; but eight remained from the original group, and the state sent seven new troopers.

In total, Thomas clarified recently, 32 troopers participated in the deployment.

That second wave, an email shows, included a SWAT roster. Thomas said SWAT team members were included in both waves and mostly assisted U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents.

Much of that work was done on foot where vehicles were unable to travel, he wrote.

150 Nebraska National Guard members to deploy to southwest border in October A total of about 150 guardsmen from Nebraska will deploy next month at the direction of the federal government.

Records also show that deployed troopers received shift differential pay, which Thomas said is an extra 85 cents per hour and is usually given to troopers who begin their shifts after 3 p.m.

That would amount to roughly $10 extra per day for each trooper.

All deployed troopers at the rank of sergeant or trooper received shift differential pay as part of this mission, Thomas wrote in an email. That decision was made to satisfy questions raised by the state troopers union regarding detached duty pay.

When The World-Herald reported on Nebraskas agreement not to seek reimbursement, Ricketts office and the State Patrol said that a funding source hadnt been finalized and that the language in the agreement was included to expedite the deployment.

At a July press conference where officials defended the deployment, Ricketts said Gov. Abbott's office had indicated reimbursement was possible and that Texas may hold a special session to reimburse states like Nebraska.

But Abbott's press secretary Renae Eze said Texas, which has had three special legislative sessions this year, does not plan on having another.

Texans tasked the Legislature with delivering on key priorities for the state in this most recent special session, including property tax relief, redistricting and the nearly $16 billion American Rescue Plan Act funding, and we went above and beyond to deliver on these priorities as well as solve other critical issues for Texas. Because of the Texas House and Senates efforts to get these priorities across the finish line, there is no need for another special session at this time.

She did not address whether Abbott planned to otherwise propose or encourage the Legislature to reimburse.

When The World-Herald emailed that statement to then-Ricketts spokesman Taylor Gage, along with quotes from internal messages that show an understanding that Nebraska would not be reimbursed, Gage said in an email: Reimbursement is unlikely at this point, but we continue to push Texas for it.

The State Patrol hasnt calculated the total amount spent on the Texas deployment, according to Thomas, because costs have been absorbed by the NSP budget.

The $500,000 cost estimate provided at a press conference in July is still the best estimate, he said.

Clarification: Renae Eze, press secretary for the Texas governor, told The World-Herald in a statement that there is no need for another special session in Texas. A previous version of this story failed to attribute the statement to Eze due to a layout error that removed the two paragraphs before the statement.
NEW YORK (AP)  The nation's largest food and retail union is urging more than 60 retail and grocery chains to implement stronger measures to help protect hourly workers amid a surge of virus infections and the new variant omicron.

The United Food and Commercial Workers Union said in a letter to the CEOS of Walmart, Kroger and others that they should reinstate social distancing protocols and urge customers to wear masks at all locations. It also is pushing chains to provide paid sick leave benefits to encourage workers to get the initial vaccination or the vaccination booster should they have a reaction. The union, which has 1.3 million members, also said that companies should further increase worker hourly pay to alleviate the impact of surging prices in food and other basics.
The state Public Education Department is working on a deal to connect rural students to the internet through StarLink, a SpaceX satellite network that will offer service to the public in New Mexico starting next year. Agency spokeswoman Judy Robinson said the cost would be $1.6 million for the first year of service and for the installation of receivers.

The legislation passed by the House also includes $142 million for roads and $2 million for a teacher training fund.

Boosting the training fund is aimed at pulling the state out of a growing teacher shortage that has swelled to about 1,000 unfilled vacancies. Supporters have said the bill could support as many as 1,500 educators and aspiring educators, mostly by subsidizing university tuition for college students who want to become teachers.

Our teacher shortage is acute, Democratic Rep. Nathan Small of Las Cruces said, adding that he wanted aspiring teachers to know the Legislature is taking action.

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.

Copyright 2021 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
In 1958, she married her husband, George, and they both became educators for Omaha Public Schools. Johnson was a math teacher and guidance counselor at Central High School and her husband was an art teacher at Benson High School.

The couple often encountered discrimination, Shaw said. While they searched for a house in the 1960s, real estate agents at open houses would pass them up to serve other customers.

She said it was almost like they were invisible, he said.

In 1969, they built a home in Omahas first intentionally mixed race subdivision, named New Horizons, Shaw said.

They became Shaws guardians when he was 3 years old because his mother was still a teenager, he said. Shaw attended Omaha North, where Johnson ended her education career as a director of counseling. She retired a year after he graduated in 1997.

It was fun looking back at it. I almost wish I wasnt embarrassed, wondering what people were going to think if they found out my grandma was my counselor here at Omaha North, Shaw said. But there was nothing to be ashamed of because she was a great woman and well known in the high school. Everyone liked her, and she knew everybody.
Our board of education has a goal to lower suspensions, the teacher said. My concern is in trying to meet that goal we are not addressing, or helping, students to change their behavior. Instead, we are allowing the continued disruptions and harmful behaviors.

Another said: Districts need to be doing things to help with student mental health. Admin needs to support teachers in knowing they dont have to tolerate abuse by students in our classrooms.

A third teacher said: Our district has a physical aggression crisis.

About a third of educators who responded said they plan to leave teaching at the end of the school year.

Benson said some students who were learning remotely or who may have just disappeared from the rolls for the last two years are now back in school. Not only are they trying to make up ground, but theyre navigating a wide range of mental-health concerns, she said.

Seventy-five percent of teachers said theyve had to cover other teachers classes this year.

Nearly all respondents  97 percent  said their district is experiencing a shortage of substitute teachers.
Cirians Farmers Drive-In Market sold its last straggler, a 4-foot Douglas fir, on Thursday, marking an early end to the Christmas tree season for the midtown Omaha business.

With fewer firs, pines and spruces to go around and many customers looking to snag their trees early, some Omaha-area suppliers are already out of trees  with Christmas still two weeks away.

Extreme weather such as wildfires and droughts and supply chain disruptions have reduced supplies of Christmas trees nationwide, according to the Associated Press. Shoppers across the country are expected to have fewer choices and pay up to 30% more for trees this Christmas, industry officials said.

Austin Cirian of Cirians Farmers Drive-In Market has been lucky, he said. Cirians has been sourcing its trees from the same person for 30 years, so its orders get priority.

Cirian said that of the 1,200 trees it started with this season, only one was left on Tuesday. He said about 400 trees were sold before Thanksgiving, nearly double what the business usually sells.

Cirian said he hopes suppliers are able to continue building up their stocks of trees so shortages dont occur in the future, but he expects that to take a few years.
The six were convicted of embezzlement last year in a trial marred by delays and irregularities. They were sentenced to between 8 and 13 years in prison for a never-executed proposal to refinance billions of dollars in the oil companys bonds. Maduro at the time accused them of treason. They all pleaded not guilty and the U.S. considers them to be wrongfully detained.

After having been granted house arrest, they were swiftly thrown back in jail Oct. 16, 2021, the same day that a close ally of Maduro was extradited by the African nation of Cape Verde to the U.S. to face money laundering charges.

While at El Helicoide prison, Carstens also met with Luke Denman and Airan Berry  two former Green Berets arrested in connection with a failed raid aimed at toppling Maduro that was staged from Colombia. He also conducted a wellness check with former U.S. Marine Matthew Heath, who is being held at a separate facility on unrelated allegations.
WASHINGTON (AP)  The U.S. issued financial sanctions and visa bans on former and current government officials and entities in nine countries Friday  including China, Myanmar and Russia  as part of coordinated actions with Canada and the U.K. to coincide with International Human Rights Day.

Canada and the U.K. joined with the U.S. in imposing the latest in a series of measures aimed at freezing military authorities in Myanmar out of the global finance system in response to the Feb. 1 overthrow of the democratically elected government and the violent crackdown on the opposition that has followed.

U.S. authorities simultaneously issued financial sanctions and visa bans on a broad array of officials and entities from the throughout the world, including Chinese authorities involved in the repression of Uyghurs and other ethnic minorities and a Russian university that helps North Korea raise money with an abusive overseas labor program.

We are determined to put human rights at the center of our foreign policy and we reaffirm this commitment by using appropriate tools and authorities to draw attention to and promote accountability for human rights violations and abuses, no matter where they occur, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in announcing the measures.
As Cooper noted, the growing number of women judges is partly driven by the increase in women lawyers.

These days, law schools tend to be split almost equally between the sexes, and those women have been filling more spots in law firms, government offices and courtrooms.

But the latest milestone also represents Gov. Pete Ricketts commendable record of appointing women to the bench.

Three of the five Douglas County district judges chosen by Ricketts in the past two years were women. Going back a decade, five of 11 appointees during that period by Ricketts and his predecessor, former Gov. Dave Heineman, were women.

A Ricketts spokesman said the governor does not consider gender or other demographics when making selections, but instead focuses on qualities such as experience, qualifications, temperament and judicial philosophy.

Even so, its a positive development to see qualified women rise to leadership positions that have historically been dominated by men.

Coopers article quotes Douglas County Public Defender Tom Riley, who noted that the increase in female judges is mirrored by the growing role of women throughout the Douglas County Courthouse.
Thank you, Scouts

We have three adult children who were all involved in scouting when they were young. We recently moved to a new neighborhood and they have a group of Scouts who put up flags for the patriotic days on the calendar. Martin Luther King Day, Presidents Day, Memorial Day, July 4, Veterans Day ... the list is a long one. For a small donation, you will walk out on these special days to a flag proudly flying in front of your house. When I walked out the morning of Dec. 7 to see the flags lining our street in honor of Pearl Harbor Day, like the Grinch, my heart grew three sizes. I support the cookie sellers and the popcorn sellers, but I am in awe of the flag bearers and their parents. Thank you so much to the Scouts of Falcon Ridge!
A President's Visit to Sutro Heights

Excerpt from the San Francisco Morning Call

Tuesday, April 28, 1891, Pg 1

(Thanks to Christine Miller for her transcription work!)

THE SUTRO LUNCHEON



At the pleasant home of Adolph Sutro, overlooking the ocean, the President and his party were conducted to the esplanades, where they saw for the first time the Golden Gate, and for several minutes Mr. Harrison stood silently gazing upon the lovely scene spread out before him. He was interrupted, however, in his reverie by a photographer whose services had been secured by Mr. Sutro, and who turned his camera square upon the President. The latter was a little surprised, evidently, but he rose equal to the occasion and presented a bold front to the enemy. The hands, instinctively sought the inevitable overcoat pocket, and with the former thrust deep into latter and his hat well down upon his ears, the representative of 65,000,000 people stood for his photograph. One shot was enough to satisfy the cravings of his ambition and in spite of the remonstrances of the artist he turned resolutely upon his heels and walked away.

This completed all were escorted to the house, Miss Sutro was in readiness to welcome them to the interior.

The ladies were shown to apartments where they could remove their wraps, and the gentlemen were led to the north room to rid themselves of a portion, at least, of the dust that had been gathered on the long drive.

But a short time was allowed to elapse before luncheon was announced and Mr. Sutro led the way to the dining room with Mrs. Harrison. Then came the President, who escorted Miss Sutro, and was followed by Colonel Sanger and Mrs. McKee. General Ruger remained to the last and slipped quietly to his place alone.

The guests were seated in the order shown below:

(click here for seating chart)



PREPARATORY

California Oysters - Beef Tea

Riesling California 1883, Rudesheimer, Haute Sauterne (A. de Luze & Fils. 1875)



APPETIZERS, COLD

Turkey, Goose, Tongue, Ham, Goose Liver, Sardines, Sardelles, Caviar, Asparagus, Artichokes

Zinfandel, Califronia, 1882



INTERMEDIATE

Sweet-Bread with Mushrooms

Chateu La Rose (From the cellar of Baron Sarget, 1865)



ROAST

Chickens, Ducks

Chateau Lafitte (From the cellar of Baron Rothschild, 1872)



DESSERT

Sponge-Cake, Wine Jelly, Ice Cream, Strawberries, Macaroons

Haute Sauterne (Sweet) (Raymond & Lafon, 1875), Champagne (Mumm's Extra Dry)



COFFEE

Cognac, 1825. Chartreuse, Curacao, Kirsch.

The President, as did all who were with him, did ample justice to the various dishes which had been prepared by Mrs. Morse, under the supervision of August Couper, and which reflected credit upon their skill. The wines were also sampled generously by all, with the exception of the Postmaster-General, who turned his glass down the moment he was seated at the table.

Nearly two hours were spent in discussing the menu and when the luncheon was completed Mr. Sutro, who sat nearly facing the President arose and said:

"Mr. President, ladies and gentlemen: You have tasted our California sparkling wine and found it to overflow: you have also found the average California heart to do the same. For that reason, Mr. President, you become the victim of speeches inflicted upon you, but permit me to call your attention to the fact that this is a process of nature which cannot be changed. In the one instance, it is the carbonic acid gas, in the other the overwhelming quantity of ozone from the Pacific Ocean bottled up in the Californian's heart which finds its way out.

"But Mr. President, I do not rise to inflict a speech upon you: I simply rise to present to you a photolithographic letter written by Sebastian Viscano, the great Spanish navigator. This is probably the first letter in existence written by any human being from California. It is dated at the port of Monterey, December 28, 1602, named in honor of the Conde de Monterey, then Viceroy of Mexico. It is addressed to the court of Spain and states that he (Viscano) had taken possession of this country for his Majesty.

"We now know that the opinion he expressed about California at this early date was quite correct, for he says: 'The land is thickly peopled by Indians, is very fertile, and its climate and the quality of its soil resembles Castile, and any seed sown there will give fruit'.

"The original of this letter I found in hunting through the Archivos de los Indias at Seville, Spain. At the date of this letter Queen Elizabeth was still on the throne of England, Louis Quatorze of France was not born yet, and the Pilgrim Fathers had not yet landed on Plymouth Rock.

"Little did Sebastian Viscano dream that within three centuries this far distant land would be counted as one of the best, if not the best portion of the domain of a nation, the most enlightened, progressive and powerful on the face of the earth.

"In connection with the history of California, it is a curious fact that the early navigators, Sir Francis Drake, Cabrillo and others, for two centuries sailed by the bay of San Francisco without discovering it. It was left to an overland expedition, undertaken in the year 1769 by the Franciscan Fathers from San Diego, to discover the bay of San Francisco, which they first supposed to be an inland lake, but the entrance to the bay from the ocean or the Golden Gate, was not discovered until four years later on December 4, 1774, by another expedition sent out from Monterey by Junipero Serra, the father of all the missions of California.

"Mr.Theodore Hittell, the historian, speaks of this event as follows: 'They arrived on December 4th at Point Lobos where they supposed themselves the first Christian visitors. They erected a cross upon the summit of the hill, looking down upon the jagged point of the Seal Rocks on the one side, and on the deep precipices of the entrance into the bay on the other'.

"Mr. President, we are glad they found the Golden Gate, for otherwise none of us would be here to-day. We are also glad that you will to-day behold it in all its natural grandeur, perfectly preserved as Junipero's soldiers saw it, for no modern cannon or extensive earthworks have been permitted to mar its pristine beauty. Mr. President, we all thank you for having come to see our beautiful land, and permit me especially to thank you for the honor of your visit to Sutro Heights."

The letter referred to in his brief address was handsomely bound in red plush, and on receiving it the President, without arising from his seat, replied:

"I beg to thank you, Mr. Sutro, and to promise you personally and on behalf of those who journey with me, that this will be a red-letter day in our lives".

When the party left the table they immediately donned their hats and wraps and were driven quickly to the train, and carried to a point opposite Fort Point, where the carriages were in waiting for them to convey them to the Presidio.

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Streetwise - Some Cast Changes

by Frank Dunnigan

May 2009

My parents were married in August of 1947 and bought their one and only house on 18th Avenue near Vicente just a year later, on their one-year anniversary. The newlyweds, still childless at that point, were especially impressed with the fact that St. Cecilia's School was just half a block away, a proximity that proved fortuitous in the years to come.

The house had been built in January of 1936 (according to the electrical permit posted in the garage) for a Mr. & Mrs. Galleazi, whose family manufactured accordions. According one of the neighbors, all of these original homes sold for about the same price, $6,500 in 1936. By the time my parents became the second owners in 1948, the price had exactly doubled to $13,000.

Mom never admitted that they had received help when buying the place, but among Grandma Dunnigan's papers when she died in 1960 was tiny check stub from the old Hibernia Bank at #1 Jones Street, in the amount of $1,500 with the notation "Frank & Kathy's new home on 18th Avenue." It was somehow reassuring to learn that we baby boomers were not the first generation to accept parental help when purchasing a home!

The standard house back then was almost always two bedrooms. Even today, there are only two homes on that block (both built later, in the early 1940s) that have the coveted third bedroom on the main floor. What was the original builder thinking? Nobody was going to have children of opposite sexes? Or that no one with children would ever be buying a home? Likewise, that same builder never planned for the car situation, and most people eventually had to replace those original double garage doors with an overhead door, thus widening the opening to allow for the newer cars. This was a big issue circa 1960 when cars began sprouting tail fins. Electric openers began appearing in the 1970s and 1980s, as the neighborhood population began aging a bit.

Our home's builder, a Mr. Johnson, constructed similar houses along the entire east side of 18th, from Vicente to Wawona, and along the west side of 18th, from Vicente only half-way up the block (the remaining homes were built circa 1939-40 by a different company). In trying to keep the prices consistent, the original homes were designed with three slight differences. The first group, from the corner of Vicente halfway up the east side of the block, had large kitchens, medium-size dining rooms, plus a breakfast room, but no view. Those on the west side, from the corner of Vicente halfway up the block, had medium-size kitchens, bigger dining rooms, a breakfast room, plus a view from the bedrooms. The final group had the large, eat-in kitchens, with medium-size dining rooms, and no breakfast room, but a spectacular westward view from the living rooms.

In my early days, every house had the requisite wooden kitchen table and chairs, which morphed into formica-topped tables and chrome-legged chairs in the mid-1950s, and then into maple hardwood table-and-chair sets by the 1970s. Everyone seemed to have the same yellow-green-red-blue set of Pyrex bowls, a Sunbeam Mixmaster, and Revere copper-clad pots and pans. Appliances were always white, though most households embraced the classic 1970s Harvest Gold in later years when the San Francisco firm of Mayta-Jensen swept through the neighborhood in a series of kitchen updates (end of those built-in, pull-down ironing boards). These kitchen renovations always managed to add a lot more counter space and electrical outletsour original kitchen had only one outlet behind the stove and one other adjacent to the ironing board. All the kitchens on our block had a skylight, but during those remodels, most people had a light fixture installed within the skylight to brighten things up a bit at night. Our original refrigerator was huge for its timea white 1948 Hotpoint with 12 cubic feet total, and a freezer compartment that could hold four trays of ice and a few boxes of frozen vegetables, maximum. I still have the original instruction booklet, showing smiling whole fruits and vegetables dancing a conga line of sorts in and out of the two crisper drawers. A half gallon of ice cream would have taken up virtually the entire freezer unit, and therefore such treats were only purchased in small quantities and brought home for immediate consumption. Our kitchen dishes in the 1950s were white, with a pine branch and pine cones on them, to be replaced in the late 1960s with unbreakable Corelle with tiny little flowers around the border, and then in the 1970s with the classic Franciscan pattern, Desert Rose.

Every home had a corner fireplace in the living room, but no gas starters. Numerous families never used their fireplaces, wanting to keep their homes "clean." Some rationalized that with a central gas furnace, there was no need to rely on a fireplace for heat, so why go to all the bother of lugging wood upstairs? In retrospect, this appears to have been a female argument. More than one young husband of the 1950s is reported to have said to his beloved, "Ya know, the day we get home from the cemetery after your funeral, the first thing I'm gonna do is light a fire in that fireplace!"

Many of the living rooms had cathedral ceilings, some embellished with Philippine mahogany beams to match the wood molding and doors in the living, dining, and entry areas. Again, to equalize the costs of all the homes, the builder sometimes eliminated the beams, or dropped the living room ceiling a bit, though still leaving it vaulted, with or without plaster embellishments. Electric wall sconces were a standard source of light in the living rooms, and most dining rooms started with wrought iron chandeliers that gradually morphed themselves into crystal chandeliers as time went by.

Almost without exception, these homes had a downstairs room, complete with a sink and bar set-up. These eventually became rainy day play locations for all of the kids who came along in the 1950s, and were the locales of most of our childhood birthday parties. Dad's friend Bill had an amazing set-up of glassware with recessed lighting and glass shelving behind the bar of his knotty-pine paneled room (complete with gold-color "comedy" and "tragedy" masks hanging above that I still remember to this day.) Most of us first-born sons eventually commandeered these spaces as our own bedrooms sometime during our high school years.

The center patio was a standard feature of those homes, though as time went on, most people noticed the heat loss, or discovered that the patio floor was beginning to leak, and covered the whole thing over with a vented skylight. Many people filled these areas with a variety of flora and fauna. About 1961 or so, there was a big neighborhood push for fuchsias, which can thrive in cool, foggy weather. Mrs. Cauley had an enormous variety in her patio, and often rooted them for the neighbors. When given some attention, the plants produced steady streams of color, though there was a certain amount of maintenance involved, including daily watering (multiple times during warm weather), plus fertilizing, picking up fallen blooms, and chasing the ever-present bee population out of the house.

Many of the adjacent dining rooms had built-in cabinets to store the china and crystal that the Moms had all collected upon marriage, and tables were lovingly set for all the christenings and birthdays, Thanksgivings and Christmases, and the buffet gatherings that always followed family funerals. The Moms always took their places at the table in a chair that was closest to the swinging kitchen door, with the Dads holding down the opposite end. Kids and grandparents, aunts and uncles all had their usual spots, assigned seating, so to speak, and no one ever had to wonder where they were supposed to sitthe Moms always had it planned out well in advance, and one look would tell a stranger immediately where to sit. Unlike Ward and June Cleaver, my parents never served regular weeknight dinners in the dining roomit was for special occasions only. In the 1950s, it was a real treat for kids to be allowed to have dinner on the coffee table in front of the TV in the living room, while the parents could then relax in the kitchen. While this was probably not the best for developing conversational skills in some, it did give the parents a brief respite before the turmoil involving bathtime and bedtime.

The bathrooms on our block were all classic art deco, in various combinations of black tiles with pink, yellow, pale green, or powder blue. Some of the houses had "split" baths, with the toilet in a separate room that had access from the hallway and from the main bathroom. The sinks were the classic pedestal, and there were separate stall showers, originally with shower curtains, and later, many people updated to glass shower doors, with the requisite frosted swan, after an advertising blitz by the old Sears, Roebuck Co. at Geary and Masonic. Most of these bathrooms never had an electrical outlet, unless the owners had one installed in the years after construction. Presumably everyone towel-dried their hair and men shaved their faces and women their legs with a blade in those early days. Every house had exactly one bathroom, though some lucky folks had the "half-bath," often just a toilet, tucked away in the garage near the downstairs room and its barpresumably the builder knew the physiological effects of beer on the human body over time. It continues to amaze me how families with two adults and three or more kids could cope with just a single bathroom. Three kids seemed to be the demarcation lineat that point many families added an extra bathroom downstairs, much to relief of everyone's kidneys.

The original single phone was in a recessed shelf in the hallway, complete with a telephone book holder beneath the shelf. These were obviously designed for the old "candlestick" style phones of the early 1930s, with the ringer located in a recessed, lattice-covered box above the shelf. By the time I arrived on the scene in 1951, the phone, with its 12-foot cord, looked like a late 1930s prop that might have appeared in The Maltese Falcon. This remained until the late 1960s, when it became modern, beige, and sported a 50-foot cord that could be dragged all over the house. I wonder just how many Outside Lands residents were tripped up in the 1950s by that black cord being stretched invisibly across the hall and into the bathroom when someone desired privacy for their conversation?

When it came to phones, we always had a party line in the 1950s and early 1960s. Mr. & Mrs. Vincent, who lived next door to us, and Mr. Nielsen across the street, were on our party line all those years. Sometimes you would pick up the phone and hear that a party line neighbor was using it, and you would then hang up quietly, and wait for them to be donehowever, the phone rang only in the house that was being called. I don't know for sure, but I think that the telephone company must have matched subscribers up carefully. Our two-parent, two-kid household was linked with two childless households, which was a better situation than if we had been paired up with another household that had a bunch of kids. Calling a party line neighbor was also a tricky propositionyou had to go through the operator for that.

We had many original neighbors for years, including those on both sides. Our uphill neighbor died in 1982, but one of his adult children continues to live there; our downhill neighbor lived until 1991, and our family was there until Mom died in 2002. This was par for the course for that blockeven today, there are still multiple houses there that are occupied by the children, grandchildren, and even the great-grandchildren of the original owners, due in some part to family ties, but also due to the intricacies of Proposition 13 and the laws involving real estate transfers among family members.

By the 1980s, iron gates became a standard feature on most homes in the neighborhood, a factor that has been universally recognized as the beginning of a decline in the overall quality of life for the neighborhood. The fact is that the 1980s era corresponded with the passing of many of the men in the neighborhood. Many of the Moms, with kids grown and moved away, plus a recently deceased spouse, felt a far greater sense of security in their long-time homes with those iron gates in place.

In spite of all the physical elements that surrounded us, what remains first and foremost in my memory are the people who came and went in the nearly 55 years that our family occupied that 25-by-120-foot spot of San Francisco. I can still see images, either in photos, or in my mind's eye of:

Excited 30-somethings bringing me home from the hospital in 1951, Mom in her navy blue polka dot dress, along with a hat and gloves, and Dad in a light gray suit standing next to her in front of the dark green 1950 Plymouth. My christening party, a few weeks later, was the biggest gathering that they had hosted in the house up until then.





Long-gone grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, schoolmates and prom dates who joined us for birthdays, first communions, confirmations, graduations, and all sorts of other events, and all the hugs and kisses that were exchanged at the front door as they arrived and left. Pictures were always taken of everyone around the dining room table, and again, posing in front of the fireplace. Looking back it's amazing that there were practically no changes to that fireplace/mantel backdrop in over 50 years, except for the occasional potted plant (sometimes real, sometimes fake) in one corner.





There was the St. Patrick's Day in 1956 when Mom & Dad hosted an engagement party for Dad's brother, and Mom wowed everyone by placing a tiny drop of green food coloring in the bottom of each champagne glassa project in which I was allowed to help out.





Thanksgiving had its own set of rituals. Although we always went to Mom's mother or her sister's house for ThanksgivingMom never hosted her own until 1992there was always a turkey in the oven "so we can have enough leftovers". Were we the only family that cooked a whole turkey just to have leftover turkey sandwiches with dressing after the holiday? I think not.





Christmas, particularly on 18th Avenue took on a life of its own. The "night of the lighting" was usually the Saturday night two full weeks before Christmas, when Santa arrived on the fire engine and all the Christmas trees and outside lights were turned on. Everyone hosted an open house that night, with large quantities of Chex mix, Lipton's Onion Dip, and Christmas cookies consumed and washed down with a variety of beverages. Mom always recalled the Christmas of 1950 at the Kelly's house when one neighbor had to leave the party early, in order to get to the hospital just in time to deliver twin girlsthat was likely the inspiration that brought me onto the scene a year later. My parents always seemed to favor white trees, both flocked real ones and artificial, though in 1959, we had one of those ubiquitous aluminum trees with the color wheel. For the last 25 years of her life, Mom was committed to green trees, both real and artificial, with small clear lights and gold ball ornaments.





Our long-time family friend Theresa, invariably dropping by in the middle of Dad's pre-July4th birthday dinner, with her ever-present box of See's candy for him. Originally one of Grandma's friends, she continued her ritual long after Dad died in 1980, a silent little reminder of a family friendship that went back to 1906 when my great-grandparents left their burned-out home South of Market and became next door neighbors and close friends to Theresa's parents on 21st Street in the Mission.





My high school and college graduations from St. Ignatius and USF, and what had to be the two largest and longest parties that we ever held in that house both starting in the late afternoon, topping 60 people each, and spilling out, upstairs, downstairs, and into the big back yard, with the final guests departing in the wee small hours of the next morning. A good time, as they say, was had by all.





Easter brunches were one of Mom's favorite get-togethers in later years, as we mixed and matched family and friends, older-middle-younger generations, co-workers and neighbors. The early morning buffet morphed itself into an all day snacking session, and the leftover ham became dinner for anyone who was still there.

As happy as most events were, there were others that remain just as clear, though incredibly sad. I still remember where I was in the house when I was told of the unexpected deaths of some beloved neighbors, exactly where everyone was sitting around the dining room table that hot Indian summer afternoon after Grandma died, and the typically foggy Sunset District summer day in 1980 when we returned home after my father's funeral.

In Mom's final months in 2002, approaching age 90, she remained housebound, save for that standing hairdresser appointment that she faithfully kept on Thursdays, almost up to the very end. Seated in her "den"almost all the women who lived alone converted the second bedroom into a den with a telephone, easy chair and console television, televisions having been banished from most of the living rooms on that block sometime in the 1970sshe continued to have visitors in person and by telephone daily. Assisted by a wonderful Irish woman, who had been helping her out a few hours each day for ten years, Mom got her fondest wishto remain in her own house right up to the end. No doubt, the ghosts of the past were especially friendly to her, and I'm sure that she was content to live out her days among so many fond memories.

As I drive up and down that block today, I still see the manicured patches of lawn, the present generation of children, still running in and out of each other's houses, plus Dads in shirtsleeves and one or two Moms in aprons, chatting casually with one another. The Venetian blinds of living room windows still twitch, almost imperceptibly, as neighbors peer out to see just who is driving along so slowly and staring at things. It's as though a popular, long-running play is still in progress, being acted out upon the same stage and under the same lighting, with just a couple of minor changes in the cast of characters..

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An agency that oversees police accountability in Chicago wrongly withheld records about a police misconduct allegation following a domestic disturbance report last year at the home of former police Superintendent Eddie Johnson, the Illinois attorney generals office has ruled.

The case represents the latest example of Mayor Lori Lightfoots administration resisting public scrutiny of city government despite her campaign pledge to bring in the light and promote transparency.

The attorney generals office ruling, issued Nov. 30, found the Civilian Office of Police Accountability improperly denied the Chicago Tribunes open-records request for documents related to a police complaint investigation into on-duty officers response to a call at Johnsons South Side home in October 2020.

On Thursday, COPA spokesman Ephraim Eaddy said in a statement that the agency accepts the determinations of the attorney generals office. He also said COPA last year began reviewing its practices of releasing materials for open investigations to improve transparency.

When considering the release of documents in pending investigations, or those which are not investigated by COPA and assigned to the ( Chicago polices) Bureau of Internal Affairs, COPA aims to strike the difficult balance between protecting the integrity of open investigations and keeping our commitment to transparency, Eaddy said.

The Tribunes request to COPA was for so-called face sheets, which typically document the names of officers who are involved in a complaint. That includes those who filed the complaint, are accused of misconduct or witnessed alleged wrongdoing. The face sheet also has a brief statement describing the nature of the disciplinary probe.

The complaint related to the incident at Johnsons home was filed to COPA before it was turned over to Internal Affairs.

After the Tribune asked COPA about the AGs ruling, COPA released the 3-page face sheet for the Internal Affairs investigation. The report shows a field training officer  generally tasked with overseeing younger and inexperienced cops  who was on scene at Johnsons home on Oct. 23, 2020, was accused of neglect of duty. The report offers no further details. The Tribune isnt identifying the officer because no disciplinary charges have been filed against him.

The report says the complaint was filed by one of the officers bosses, a captain in the Deering patrol district. Two other cops were listed in the report as witnesses, a sergeant and another officer. Chicago police spokesman Don Terry said Thursday the complaint remains under investigation by Internal Affairs.

Over the years, the Tribune has requested and successfully obtained these face sheets from COPA, even if the complaint was still under investigation by an outside agency such as Internal Affairs or the citys inspector generals office.

In this instance, COPA argued the states Freedom of Information Act allows it to withhold the face sheets if the agency thought disclosing them would interfere with the case.

This includes the concern that public disclosure of the disciplinary investigation could tip off officers that their actions are being looked at by Internal Affairs.

But in its Nov. 30 decision, the attorney generals office ruled COPA failed to adequately meet its burden under the state FOIA law to show that disclosing the face sheets would hamper the disciplinary case.

Even if the subject was unaware of the existence of the investigation, police officers who responded to a domestic disturbance at the home of the former police superintendent would have had reason to expect their actions to be closely scrutinized given the circumstances, especially in light of extensive news media coverage of the incident, according to the attorney generals office.

The office also determined that COPA provided no support for its assertion that disclosing the existence of such an investigation would interfere with the case itself.

The AG opinion comes about a month after the attorney generals office determined the Lightfoot administration improperly redacted the name of a supervisor with the citys Office of Emergency Management and Communications who was accused of sexually harassing a woman at work.

The COPA report was filed after officers were called to Johnsons home on Oct. 23, 2020. According to police reports, Johnsons wife told them that a few hours earlier, she was involved in a heated altercation with Johnson over their relationship, and he took a Lysol can and a lighter with the intention to light some of his wifes clothing on fire.

That action resulted in small flames on the clothes lying on the bed and comforter, the police reports stated.

It was the latest controversial incident involving Johnson since he was fired by Lightfoot two years ago after being found asleep behind the wheel of his city vehicle after a night out drinking with a subordinate.

That subordinate, Cynthia Donald, an officer who worked on Johnsons security detail, filed an explosive lawsuit last year accusing the former superintendent of raping and harassing her over the course of a few years. Johnson has denied those allegations, and the lawsuit is still pending.

Despite the mayors campaign vows to improve transparency at City Hall, Lightfoot also has repeatedly refused to release the inspector generals full report  instead of just the summary of its findings, which was disclosed last year  on the night Johnson was found asleep in his car.

Lightfoot has also come under fire for her administrations handling of the Anjanette Young case. Her administration fought to withhold video of a botched police raid at Youngs home, and the mayor has also declined to commit to releasing former Inspector General Joe Fergusons full report on the case.

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CHICAGO  A pair of true crime TV series, one about women murdered in Chicago and another about a triple murder in LaSalle County, make for worthwhile if difficult viewing, sorting through the failures of law enforcement and the criminal justice system.

On Discovery+, the three-part Hunt for the Chicago Strangler may have an artless news magazine format, but its a more sensitive project than its lurid title suggests. Narrated by the actress Tonya Pinkins (a Chicago native), the series centers on the murders of more than 50 women, most of them Black, who were found strangled on the South and West Sides over the past two decades. Their murders remain unsolved.

States attorney Kim Foxx is among those interviewed: Youre talking about women who were thrown in the trash, who were found in abandoned buildings. Horrors that were just blips in the news, if at all. Is this the work of a serial killer? Why do these cases remain open, the series asks, and how has apathy from police and the news media played into that?

The show has made some smart decisions about who it seeks out for context, including Hood Feminism author Mikki Kendall who recalls: When I first heard about it, it almost sounded like an urban legend. Theres no way multiple Black girls have been found in alleys, killed in similar ways, and no ones looking for them. Her blunt assessment confronts the ways racism is at work. One of the things that I think is important to understand about the stories of these women is that, largely, they are in neighborhoods that the city has neglected, she says. And then you say, Well, we dont know why these things are happening here. Yes, you do. Because you essentially created the perfect place to get away with murder. Later, she concludes: Chicago is my home. It is also a home that doesnt love me back.

Or as the activist and writer Beverly Reed-Scott describes the citys intentional disinvestment in Black communities: You look up one day and the neighborhood that you loved is hollow. She pauses. Theres so much pain in this moment.

The Hunt for the Chicago Stranger is strongest when it centers the families of the murdered women. Their grief is raw, as is their exhausted anger. Angela Ford died in 2001, after setting out one day to pick up her childrens report cards from school. According to her father, Riley Ford, after her death the family encountered a revolving door of detectives. Every time we talked to one, they know less about the case. Or cared less about the case, I dont know.

Gwendolyn Williams, who died in 2002, was the oldest of six. Her brother Michael Pritchett describes the fallout of her murder: When you have a family thats so close and so used to doing every single thing together  everything together? You dont imagine anybody in that puzzle missing. Not one piece missing. And they took her from us, you know? You done messed up our puzzle.

The Murders at Starved Rock, which premieres Tuesday on HBO, centers a different crime and is considerably less focused on the families. The series is aiming for something a bit more layered in its approach, though its not wholly successful. Director Jody McVeigh-Schultz looks at the 1960 murders of three middle-aged women who were found beaten to death in Starved Rock State Park in LaSalle County, about 100 miles southwest of Chicago.

David Raccuglia is the son of Anthony Raccuglia, the latter of whom was the prosecutor who successfully convicted Chester Weger of the murders. Fifteen years ago, David Raccuglia began filming a documentary attempting to unravel whether or not Weger was wrongfully convicted. (Weger was paroled in February of 2020 at the age of 80.) Theres the confession that Weger says was coerced; investigators whose methods were anything but by the book; and the strange fact that the states attorney and two sheriffs deputies pocketed the reward money for solving the case. Wegers family has never doubted his innocence (and their pain is given consideration here) but the more Raccuglia learns  and the longer he talks with Weger  the muddier things get. Time has warped Wegers perception of the truth, Raccuglia suspects, whatever the truth actually is.

Raccuglia never finished the film, but hes the centerpiece of this three-part series. He is thoughtful and his insistence on asking tough questions of his father (who he interviewed prior to Anthony Racculgias death in 2019) creates a compelling tension. But centering him feels misjudged. It takes the emphasis away from both the families of the women who were killed (no matter who is responsible for the crime, their pain is deep and real) and Wegers family (who have been bereft all these years for obviously very different reasons).

Even so, Raccuglia is as good a guide as any. When the series begins, he repeats a theory as to how Starved Rock got its name. A voice off camera says: I think thats a myth.

I think everything in the Illinois Valley is possibly a myth, Racculgia replies.

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SPRINGFIELD  The state saw its unfunded pension liability decrease in fiscal year 2021 for the first time in four years, due in large part to investment returns exceeding 20%, according to a new report from the Commission on Government Forecasting and Accountability.

Measuring by the current-day values of the pension fund assets, unfunded liabilities  or the amount of debt the state pension funds owe that they cant afford to pay  dropped by nearly 10%, to $130 billion in FY 2021 from $144 billion in the previous fiscal year. That put the states five pension funds at 46.5% funded, up from 39% the previous year.

Its the best funding ratio since 2008 and only the third decrease to unfunded liabilities in the last 15 years, the last occurring in FY 2017 at 0.5%, the other in FY 2011 at 2.9%. Otherwise, unfunded liabilities have risen annually from $42.2 billion in 2007.

But the report also noted that not much has changed to alleviate the underlying financial pressures that have caused unfunded liabilities to triple since the financial crisis of 2007-08, meaning the good financial news was more anomaly than trend.

The returns of 22.9-25.2% for FY 2021, which ended June 30, far exceeded the anticipated 6.% to 7% returns, according to the report.

Aside from the good investment news, the report was substantially similar to countless other pension reports in recent years, particularly because it once again called on the state to revamp the much-maligned 1994 Edgar Ramp plan for paying down pension debt.

Thats the name commonly used to refer to Public Act 88-0593, or the states 50-year plan to bring the its five pension funds to 90% funded by 2045.

The actual target for that ramp should be a 100%-funded pension system within the next 25 years or preferably sooner, according to a letter attached to the COGFA report from its actuary, Segal Consulting.

The letter also faulted the Edgar Ramp for backloading pension payments, providing for smaller contributions in the early years leading to the current reality which sees 20% of the states discretionary spending going to pension payments each year. It also highlighted other times the pension system was shortchanged, including during the tenure of former Gov. Rod Blagojevich.

Only after the target is increased to 100%, the report noted, would the state begin to see sustained reductions to its unfunded pension liabilities.

(T)he funding plan under (Public Act) 88-0593 produces employer (State) contributions that are actuarially insufficient, meaning if all other actuarial assumptions are met, unfunded liabilities will still increase due to the State contributing an amount that is not sufficient to stop the growth in the unfunded liability, according to the report.

But increasing pension payments is easier said than done, Alexis Sturm, director of the Governors Office of Management and Budget, said in a letter accompanying the report.

She was unavailable for a phone call Thursday, but her letter to COGFAs co-chairs said consideration of changes to the current 90% target needs to be reviewed carefully within the context of the impact on the states budget.

The $8.6 billion pension payment in FY 2021 was 20% of the states $42.9 billion General Revenue Fund budget, and pensions are routinely the states largest GRF expense outside of K-12 education. In fiscal year 2022, COGFA estimated the GRF payment at $9.4 billion, or over 21% of the operating budget.

FY 2023s Edgar Ramp-mandated GRF payment is estimated at more than $9.6 billion, or nearly $10.8 billion including other state funds.

But, according to the report, if the state wants to contribute at a rate approved by actuaries, it will need to contribute nearly $14.9 billion in FY 2023, which begins July 1, or 38% higher than what is provided for via the Edgar Ramp.

An increase to the goal would result in higher payments, but eventually lead to a reduction in the unfunded liabilities in the systems, Sturm wrote. Given the current fiscal pressures facing the state, this too is inadvisable to consider until Illinois can eliminate the unpaid bill backlog, borrowings undertaken to pay off the debts remaining from the budget impasse and the COVID-driven recession and address the underlying structural deficit.

The backlog currently sits at about $4.8 billion, according to the website maintained by Illinois Comptroller Susana Mendoza, who said in a public appearance this week that the oldest unpaid voucher was 21 days old.

Still, the 90% goal, Sturm said, is reasonable and achievable, given the circumstances. Gov. J.B. Pritzkers administration has fully funded the pension system at Edgar Ramp levels in each of his first three years, although he briefly considered lowering the payment in his first year before quickly dropping the plan.

In their letter to COGFAs director, leaders at the states big three pension funds  the State Universities Retirement System, State Employees Retirement System and Teachers Retirement System  all also endorsed the 100% funding target and shorter ramps to full funding.

Earlier funding, in addition to a targeted funding ratio of 100%, would make the retirement systems more secure and would substantially reduce financing costs due to interest accruing on the unfunded liability, the primary driver of the state contribution requirements, the leaders of the pension systems wrote.

The report also noted that a pension buyout program initiated in 2018 and extended for three years by the General Assembly under Pritzker created a $213 million reduction in unfunded liability for FY 2021.

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A beloved 71-year-old grandfather out for a walk in Chinatown was gunned down by a man who shot at him 22 times, including as he lay helpless on the ground, according to prosecutors, leaving his family demanding justice.

This was an execution, said Cook County Judge Maryam Ahmad before denying bail for Alphonso W. Joyner during a hearing that was audio-streamed live on YouTube.

Joyner was charged with first-degree murder, aggravated unlawful use of a weapon and possession of a revoked firearm owners identification card in connection with the death of Woom Sing Tse, who is being remembered as a great family man who lived the American Dream after emigrating from China 50 years ago.

After Joyners hearing, Woom Sing Tses son William Tse became emotional as he spoke about his father at the courthouse at 26th and California.

Im speechless, he said. We just want justice.

Assistant States Attorney James Murphy said the shooting of Tse, who was walking from his home to purchase a newspaper, was captured on multiple video surveillance cameras.

Judge, I cant give you a motive or why this happened. Sometimes individuals just do evil things and thats the situation we have here, Murphy said.

We dont have answers why, William Tse said.

Tse died after being shot multiple times in the 200 block of West 23rd Place around 12:30 p.m. Tuesday.

As Tse walked across Princeton Avenue, Joyner, who had been circling the area in a light blue car, began driving east on 23rd Place and stopped at a stop sign, Murphy said in court.

After Joyner cleared the intersection, he pointed a gun out of the drivers side window and fired seven times at Tse, Murphy said.

Joyner then paused, drove the car a little closer and fired six more times at Tse, who appeared to cover his head and ears as his body jerked and fell to the ground, Murphy said.

Joyner pulled into oncoming traffic, parked the car and calmly walked over to Tse, who was on the ground yelling.

Joyner reportedly said: Hey, hey, then fired eight more times in quick succession and aninth time before walking back to his car and speeding away on the expressway, Murphy said.

Joyner was arrested 11 miles away on the Kennedy Expressway 66 minutes later, with a loaded ghost gun with an extended magazine tucked next to him, the same caliber as the nearly 20 casings found at the scene, , Murphy said.

Joyner appeared to be wearing the same clothes seen in the video and both his hands tested positive for gunshot residue. The light blue car was registered to him, Murphy said.

Assistant Public Defender Scott Kozicki said Joyner lives with his sister and has one misdemeanor conviction for unlawful use of a weapon in October. Kozicki said Joyner was innocent until proven guilty and had attended each and every one of his court hearings for the conviction.

Before denying bail, Judge Ahmad said Tse was doing something people do every day. Walk(ing) home.

Woom Sing Tse moved to America from China around 50 years ago, said his son. The elder Tse retired nine years ago after working in a restaurant and had three children and nine grandchildren.

My dad didnt say much, said William Tse, but he had been welcoming to anyone and everyone and could often be found preparing food for his grandchildren.

I know my mom is missing him, William Tse said.

Chicago police Superintendent David Brown spoke of Tse during a press briefing announcing the charges against Joyner Wednesday night.

He was a man who came to this country with a few dollars in his pocket, and with hard work and a determined spirit, he achieved the American Dream, Brown said.

Brown also referred to Tse as a provider for his family, a father, grandfather, husband and member of the Chicago community.

Yesterday his life was tragically ended in broad daylight in the Chinatown neighborhood by Joyner, Brown said at the news conference.

Joyner, who lives the 1100 block of West 110th Place in the citys Morgan Park neighborhood, is due back in court on Dec. 29.

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Amazon.com Inc.s ubiquitous cloud-computing network, the spine for a lot of digital communications and transactions across the U.S., went dark for several hours on Tuesday.

Here are some things that might have freaked you out:

 You were jogging and couldnt order your Roomba to vacuum the third floor of your house.

 You were at the airport and your Ring camera couldnt show you who was at your front door.

You were grocery shopping and couldnt tell your smart fridge to scan its egg supply.

 You were in bed and Alexa couldnt read headlines and weather to you.

 You had trouble buying stuff at a theme park.

 You couldnt play League of Legends.

Who cares? This isnt really essential, right?

The cloud has provided bounteous advantages but also excess  a cornucopia of nice-to-haves, much of it silly. Being locked out of your home because your Ring is haywire is more serious than not being able to film visitors on the stoop, of course. Seniors unable to turn on house lights at night or receive prescription drug deliveries because of cloud troubles is more problematic than being unable to stream Free Guy.

Even those comparisons dont truly surface the most substantive threats to consider when digital meltdowns or significant hacks occur on vital private networks such as Amazon Web Services. AWS is the biggest cloud provider in the U.S., but outages happen with some regularity at other leading cloud services, too. Alphabet Inc.s Google Cloud Platform has had its share of woes, as has Microsoft Corp.s Azure service.

These cloud networks not only power the consumer indulgences that people whine about when theres an outage, they also fuel core government and corporate work such as national security and blockbuster financial transactions. Alphabet, Amazon, Microsoft and Oracle Corp. are all jockeying to secure an important cloud contact with the Defense Department, for example.

Yet some of these same cloud services have been central to startling and sprawling nation-state hacks over the last year involving, for example, the SolarWinds Corp. Based on the limited information Amazon disclosed on its service health dashboard about its Tuesday outage, hackers or a denial-of-service attack were not responsible. Amazon cited a network device issue and said the outage was largely confined to the East Coast. Thats about as much as we know because thats all that Amazon decided to share. That lack of transparency and disclosure is a big problem, one that Amazon has shown little interest in resolving.

Widespread use of cloud computing is here to stay, and its benefits far outweigh its disadvantages. But Amazons secrecy  and its unwillingness to provide greater insight into its operations  is emblematic of how much unnecessary autonomy it enjoys. Amazon doesnt have to operate this way.

Consider Microsoft. It has been willing to share information publicly about intrusions or breakdowns so it can help form public-private alliances to insulate computer networks. It has also taken the bold step of identifying countries such as Iran, North Korea, Russia and China for their roles in orchestrating digital assaults. Amazon, on the other hand, declined to testify at congressional hearings earlier this year about the SolarWinds breach, even though hackers used Amazons cloud servers to stage digital assaults. Regulators shouldnt continue allowing it to stay mum, but Washington may lack the backbone needed to be more aggressive. A defense bill moving through Congress recently shed provisions that would have required companies to report cyberattacks and ransomware payments to the federal government.

Think about all of that the next time your Roomba doesnt respond.

Timothy L. O'Brien is a senior columnist for Bloomberg Opinion.

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Normally, the St. Louis-based website The Gateway Pundit can and should be laughed off as right-wing, fake-news nonsense. But as Reuters recently reported, the sites false allegations of election fraud in jurisdictions around the country have stoked harassment and death threats against two dozen election officials. The reason toxic platforms like this exist is because there is a market for them. Only when the news-consuming public learns to be more discerning in where it looks for information will those platforms loosen their damaging grip on political discourse.

The Gateway Pundit is a popular blog among Americas far-right political fringes, trafficking in the kind of half-truths and whole-cloth lies that fuel so much of that end of the political spectrum these days. After a right-wing fanatic killed a counterprotester with a car during the white nationalist demonstration in 2017 in Charlottesville, Virginia, The Gateway Pundit falsely attributed the attack to an Anti-Trump protester. After the Las Vegas mass shooting that year, it wrongly accused a Democrat who liked Rachel Maddow.

The site was a prominent purveyor of the racist lie that former President Barack Obama wasnt born in the United States. And, more recently, it advanced the Trumpian big lie that the 2020 presidential election was rife with fraud.

A mother and daughter who together counted ballots in Fulton County, Georgia, sued the website and its founder, St. Louisan Jim Hoft, after the site promoted false allegations by Trump surrogates that the pair counted suitcases full of fake Biden ballots after hours. That August post drew a comment on Hofts site alleging the two women are traitors to the country and should be hung by the neck until dead.

The site also promoted the falsehood about fake ballots in Madison, Wisconsin, which led one commenter to specify the kind of bullet recommended for killing the city clerk there. Other public officials in Wisconsin, Georgia and Arizona were inundated with racist or misogynistic hate email, allegations of treason and calls for their imprisonment after The Gateway Pundit lobbed baseless allegations of fraud at them.

Mainstream media outlets today are routinely accused by both the right and left of ideologically tilting their reporting, and its not difficult to find anecdotal evidence to back up such criticism. But those mainstream sources, including this newspaper, at least attempt to present factual coverage, because their business models rely on long-term credibility. The Gateway Pundits of the world and fellow travelers, like One America News Network and Breitbart News, rely instead on shock, outrage and an appeal to consumers worst instincts. Facts seldom come into it.

Its easy to research assertions made on these platforms. Often, theyve already been debunked by reputable sources such as FactCheck.org and PolitiFact. Such double-checking by consumers shouldnt be necessary, but in a media universe polluted by such fake-news waste dumps as The Gateway Pundit, it is.

St. Louis Post-Dispatch

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100 years ago

Dec. 10, 1921: A Bunsonville storekeeper was found shot dead in his car near Scottland. Both villages are in Edgar County, south of Danville. A jug of white mule was found in the auto, touching off numerous theories. He may have been to nearby Indiana, where bootleggers abound.

75 years ago

Dec. 10, 1946: The U. S. Supreme Court upheld the 1928 murder conviction of Roy Carter of Fairbury. Carter is serving 99 years, but claimed the court did not appoint a lawyer to defend him. He had entered a guilty plea and stuck to it. The state contended he was offered a lawyer.

50 years ago

Dec. 10, 1971: About 800 signatures have been gathered for Normals proposed wet-dry referendum. The Normal Chamber of Commerce is coordinating the effort. Normal was wet for a time in 1935 and for now only signatures from residents inside the 1935 borders are being taken.

25 years ago

Dec. 10, 1996: Normal Mayor Kent Karraker has filed petitions to run for a second term. Six candidates for the city council also filed, and two more are expected to follow. Karraker is expected to have competition from Normal businessman Steve Harsh.

Compiled by Jack Keefe; jkeefe@coldwellhomes.com.
Chief Director at the Ministry of Energy, Mr Lawrence Apaalse has urged leaders of Africas energy sector to foster collaboration to ensure that the continent would harness its energy resources.



Mr Apaalse made this call when he represented Energy Minister, Hon. Dr Matthew Opoku Prempeh at a Ministerial Round Table Discussion at the 23rd World Petroleum Congress in Houston, Texas in the USA.



He said the African continent is blessed with abundant natural resources including oil and gas as nearly half of the countries in West Africa are producing oil and gas, making the sub-region an important hub of the sector.



He further said Africa is cognizant of the advocacy for energy transition and cleaner energy, however, the conversation must be had within a careful context, which is the reality of the current stage of Africas current circumstances and growth trajectory.22222



Many in Africa, including the African Energy Chamber, recommend a multi-pronged approach to addressing energy poverty - one that harnesses both renewable energy sources and fossil fuel. I think this is a call in the right direction he said

He continued In the West African subregion alone, in countries like Senegal, Nigeria, Cameroon and Ghana, gas will be a game-changer in providing cheaper access to power and ultimately driving industrialization. This in turn creates employment and business opportunities both in the upstream and downstream petroleum sector.



The Chief Director said gas, especially Africas Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) is the cleanest of fossil fuel, and harnessing it to power generators can make a huge impact on the drive to accelerate universal coverage.



Touching on the promotion of LPG for cooking, Mr Apaalse said the Ghana Cylinder manufacturing company has been empowered to manufacture good quality LPG cylinders and stoves designed to meet the specific needs of its target market.



He said the company has the capacity to significantly increase the number of LPG cookstoves and cylinders on the Ghanaian market and beyond as the world advocates for clean cooking.



He also spoke on the governments Accelerated Oil and Gas Capacity Programme (AOGC) to ensure that Ghanaians are equipped with the relevant skills and certifications to be able to work in the oil and gas industry and also made a strong case for investors to invest in Ghanas unexplored basins.



Mr Apaalse called for energy infrastructure interconnectivity within Africa and further called for experience sharing and the study of best practices so that Africas energy resources could be exploited for the benefit of our citizens.

Source: King Edward Ambrose Washman Addo/peacefmonline.com/ghana









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

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Dr Freda Prempeh, the Member of Parliament of Tano North constituency in the Ahafo Region has cautioned contractors executing various government projects in the area against shoddy works.



During inspection visits to some project sites in the constituency, Dr Prempeh also the Minister of State in charge of Works and Housing asked the contractors to speed up and complete the projects within schedule to benefit the constituents.



Contractors have abandoned work on several projects including educational facilities such as classroom blocks, dormitories, hostels, and some major roads in the area.



The Ghana News Agency (GNA) gathered that most of the contractors executing the projects had not been on site for months because of lack of funds to continue the projects.



But, Dr Prempeh asked the contractors to resume work, and assured to follow-up and facilitated payment processes.



Some of the abandoned projects, the MP inspected included separate boys and girls dormitories, administration, and masonry blocks at the Yamfo Vocational Institute.



Dr Prempeh also inspected the progress of work on the construction of the Community Health-based Planning Services (CHPS) compound at Rubi and a Kindergarten block at Tano-Ano.



She, however, lauded the progress of work on the extension of electricity to Rubi, Beposo, Koope, Asuade, Agona, Tano-Ano, and Atudrobesa, which would open up the farming communities, and better the living conditions of the rural folks.



Dr Prempeh said every community in the constituency had in one way or other benefited from development projects including health and educational facilities as well as potable drinking water and durbars grounds.



She assured the people the government would do everything possible to ensure that works on abandoned development projects in the area were resumed and completed.



The MP later told the GNA she had lobbied for the construction of more than 150 boreholes, many durbar grounds, markets, Astro-turf pitch, as well as CHPS compounds and classroom blocks spread across the local communities in the constituency.

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.

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The Minister for Energy and MP for Manhyia South, Dr Matthew Opoku Prempeh, also known as NAPO, has strongly refuted claims of ethnic bias in relation to his recent comments on radio regarding the Keta Sea Defence Wall Project.



It will be recalled that in the afternoon of 2nd December 2021, the Minister granted an interview to Asempa FMs Ekosii Sen? radio programme.



In particular, in discussing the Keta Sea Defence Wall project, the Minister berated the NDC for abandoning the people of Keta for eight years during their administration, noting that the project never found expression in any of the then governments eight budgets. He was emphatic in stating that  I support the Finance Minister finding space within the coffers to fund the Keta Sea Defence Project. I support that 100%.



However, what the Minister said he found objectionable was the opposition NDC insisting that unless the government found a budget line for the project because it is in their stronghold, they would not approve of the budget, describing this as holding a gun to governments head, in which case he would, as a Kumasi MP, also lead Kumasi residents in a demonstration to press for their needs arising out of flooding situations if the hostage-taking were to yield fruit.



According to sources close to the Minister, this simple, logical argument by the Minister on political hostage-taking that has deliberately been given an unfortunate ethnic twist through a selective airing of the tape by elements in the NDC to imply that he was against the Keta Sea Defence project and would lead a demonstration against it should it be included in the budget.



It must be placed on record that over the years, the Minister has worked with individuals and teams both in Parliament and Cabinet from diverse ethnic backgrounds, and never has this been an issue in those relationships.



According to the source, is sad and unfortunate that Dr Prempehs political opponents, in a desperate attempt to deflect their partys failure to decisively deal with the Keta Sea Defence project, find it expedient to project him in a negative ethnic light to generate ill-feeling towards him, the NPP and the government.



The source concluded that Dr Prempeh remains focused on his mandate as a Minister and Member of Parliament and continues to believe in social justice as a core value in projecting the interests of all Ghanaians.

Source: King Edward Ambrose Washman Addo/peacefmonline.com/ghana









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

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Former Head of Monitoring Unit of the Forestry Commission, Charles Owusu, has raised concerns about the office of the Special Prosecutor, Kissi Agyebeng, in his fight against corruption.



He noted on Peace FM's ''Kokrokoo'' Friday morning that the Special Prosecutor's office hasn't been fully equipped with the necessary resources to enable him work dutifully to serve the nation.



Alluding to similar concerns shared by the former Special Prosecutor (SP) Martin Amidu who complained about the government not helping him to execute his mandate, Charles Owusu wondered why the office remains under-resourced till now.



He called on the government to do the needful or else will fail to clamp down on corruption.



"If indeed we want to eradicate corruption, then we should resource his office for him to execute his duties effectively because we support him . . . The government must listen attentively to Kissi Agyebeng and the resources he needs to work should be given him," he said.





Source: Ameyaw Adu Gyamfi/Peacefmonline.com/Ghana









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

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The Creative Arts Agency, in collaboration with Global Entrepreneurship Network-Ghana (GEN-Ghana), will host the Creative Art Access to Finance Town Hall on Wednesday, December 15, 2021.



The town hall meeting, scheduled to take place at the Conference Room of the Creative Arts Agency begins at 9:45am prompt. With regards to COVID-19 protocols, only a select invitees would be attending in person with majority of attendees participating virtually while Joy FM would broadcast the event live and stream on other social media platforms.



The impressive panel line-up includes Lawrence Agyinsam, CEO, Ghana Exim Bank; David Tetteh, Consultant to Ghana Stock Management Exchange on Listings and New Products; Hannah B. Acquah, Founder/CEO TKC Africa Ltd (Business and Investment Consulting Firm); and Sewu-Steve Tawia, Investor at Asime Ventures and Accra Angels Network. The panel shall be moderated by Odelia Ntiamoah, Head of Joy Business.



In addition to the panel, there shall be keynote addresses and a questions and answers segment.



The overarching objective of this town is to drive investments from both local and international investors into the Ghanaian creative art industry. The town hall event will bring together heads of investment funds and financial institutions to connect with established and aspiring creative arts professionals in an interactive format to have a conversation, share information and knowledge on the various access to financial capital options for the creative sector in Ghana.



We will also use the Town Hall event to create the platform for some of the successful creative art professionals to share their experiences on how they raised capital, the mistakes they made, challenges they faced and how they dealt with those challenges. The town hall will be climaxed with a Q and A session to give the participants the opportunity to interact with the panellists and special guests, a statement signed Stephen Gyasi-Kwaw Country Founder/MD, Global Entrepreneurship Network-Ghana (GEN-Ghana) said.



Participants will be informed about the funding/financing options for the creative industries, which will also help them to make informed choices in sourcing for financial capital to start and grow their businesses in the creative arts sector. Register at www.genghana.com/townhall in advance to join virtually via zoom

Source: Peacefmonline.com/ghana









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

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" " Nuns from Taiwan pray in Taipei on May 8, 2011, in celebration of the Buddha's birth anniversary. Patrick Lin/AFP/Getty Images

In recent years, many Buddhist nuns have taken on leadership roles that require either ordination status or academic degrees, all of which was quite unheard of in Buddhist monastic traditions in the past.

However, this change has also met with much resistance, as traditionally Buddhism has allowed only men to serve in these roles. The early Pali Vinaya texts in the Buddhist canon recount how Buddha thrice rejected the request of his foster mother, Mahaprajapati, to be ordained, before his disciple, Ananda, persuaded him to accept women into the monastic body.

Ananda had to make two arguments for his case: an emotional one  that Mahaprajapati had been kind to the Buddha and raised him  and a logical one  that women, too, had the potential to become enlightened.

Even so, the Buddha stipulated an extra set of rules  the Eight Heavy Rules, or gurudharma in Sanskrit  that effectively placed the nuns under the supervision of monks. These rules have formed a crucial part of the Buddhist discourse on women's status.

As a scholar of Buddhism with a focus on gender, I have been closely following the debates over women's leadership. Nuns in virtually all Buddhist traditions, from Sri Lanka, Tibet and Nepal to Thailand, are becoming equal members in the sangha, or the Buddhist community.

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Ordination and Opportunities

The Buddhist monastic community is divided into a fourfold system of novice monks, novice nuns, fully ordained monks and fully ordained nuns, each with a set of precepts, or vinaya, that they need to follow.

Of the three major Buddhist monastic traditions  Theravada Buddhism in Sri Lanka and Southeast Asia, Mahayana Buddhism in East Asia and Tantric Buddhism in Tibet and the Himalayas  a continuous lineage of fully ordained nuns is found only in the East Asian Mahayana tradition.

This is because to conduct the full ordination ceremony there need to be five fully ordained monks and five fully ordained nuns present. While there are individual cases of fully ordained nuns in both the Theravada and the Tibetan traditions, the rarity of these cases made a continuous lineage practically impossible.

Those who are fully ordained have to adhere to many rules governing their speech, behavior, clothing, daily schedule and interaction with others. While novice nuns have only about 100 precepts to follow; those who are fully ordained have to adhere to over 300. However, full ordination also offers prestigious standing in the community, higher ritual status, and freedom from serving monks and senior members, cooking, cleaning and performing daily maintenance.

Additionally, because of the lack of equal ordination status for nuns, lay patrons have generally preferred to have monks undertake ritual tasks instead. As a result, nuns not only receive less financial support from their families, than monks do, they are also paid less by patrons of their monastic community.

The overall lack of opportunity, income and prestige further perpetuates a cycle that disadvantages female monastics.

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Seeking Change

Buddhist women began to seek change and request full ordination from the East Asian tradition as early as the 1970s.

At the First International Conference for Buddhist Women in 1987, the issue of full ordination for Buddhist women emerged as one of the central themes. This conversation was initiated by a group of nuns from Europe and the United States in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition.

"Sakyadhita: International Association of Buddhist Women" was founded shortly after the conference. With its name inspired by the Pali and Sanskrit word meaning "daughters of the Buddha," Sakyadhita serves as an international forum on women's status and gender equality in Buddhism.

As with the admission of women into the Buddhist community, the establishment of a continuous lineage of full ordination was accompanied by controversy since its inception. The different opinions among Buddhist women and feminist scholars came to the fore at the International Congress on Women's Role in the Sangha in Hamburg, Germany, in 2007.

While some hailed the return of full ordination for women as a victory against patriarchy, a group of Tibetan and Himalayan nuns affiliated with the Tibetan Nuns Project openly stated their discomfort with the feminist label placed on efforts to reinstate fully ordained nuns.

Despite the difference in their opinions, many more nuns have taken concrete steps to elevate their ordination status, either in groups or individually. For example, in Tibetan Buddhism, while the dalai lama has yet to weigh in on this issue, the 17th Karmapa, Ogyen Trinley Dorje, decided to initiate this change. The Karmapa is the leader of the Karma Kagyu school, another major Tibetan Buddhist school.

In March 2017, with much fanfare and the Karmapa presiding, 19 women received novice monastic vows from a group of five fully ordained nuns from Nan Lin Vinaya Nunnery in Taiwan. It marked the first step to revive the long-lost tradition of full ordination for Tibetan and Himalayan Buddhist monastic women.

In addition, there are examples of women from Buddhist communities in Nepal, Bhutan, Sri Lanka and Myanmar receiving full ordination abroad. To do so, these nuns usually seek ordination from their East Asian Buddhist sisters, outside their own lineage.

" " Dhammananda, the first bhikkhuni in Thailand from the Theravada branch of Buddhism. AP Photo/Penny Yi Wang

While the issue of ordination remains controversial in the Thai Buddhist community, the presence of fully ordained female Buddhist leaders such as Dhammananda Bhikkhuni, a Thai Buddhist nun, scholar and activist, has encouraged many in Thailand to take similar steps and receive ordination from abroad.

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Seeking Higher Religious Education

In addition to providing equal standing for nuns through restoring ordination, another approach toward building future female Buddhist leadership has to do with education.

Historically, limited educational opportunities were available to Buddhist women. However, in recent years two emerging education initiatives have come to fruition across the Himalayas: Nuns in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition are, for the first time in Buddhist history, receiving the highest degrees and becoming Buddhist scholars and educators themselves.

The first of such gender-equal monastic education programs started in Eastern Tibet. It grants the title of khenmo  the highest degree in Buddhist learning in the Nyingma tradition  to nuns who have completed a rigorous decadelong curriculum. Since the 1990s, over 200 women have graduated from the program. Some remained in teaching roles, while others assumed editorial or publishing roles, or became administrators at the Buddhist academy.

Another group of Tibetan nuns at Dolmaling Nunnery in Himachal Pradesh, India, have received the geshema degree  the highest degree in Tibetan Gelugpa monastic learning  since 2016, following a precedent set by the German Tibetan nun Kelsang Wangmo. As of 2019, 44 nuns hold the geshema degree. Like their counterparts in Eastern Tibet, many geshema graduates became teachers at their institutions and are cultivating future generations of female scholars.

In a tradition that associates much status and prestige with lineage transmission and scholarly achievement, establishing a legitimate ordination lineage and providing equal education opportunities clear the way for women to become leaders in unprecedented ways. It also ensures a continuous impact on future generations.

Jue Liang is a visiting assistant professor at Denison University in Granville, Ohio. She is a scholar of Tibetan Buddhist literature, history and culture.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. You can find the original article here.
" " For centuries, the inhabitants of Aas, in the Pyrenees-Atlantiques region of France, have whistled to communicate from one valley to another. Francois DUCASSE/Getty Images

When you, a human, want to audibly communicate with another person, you generally use your voice. Speech happens when air passes through your larynx, or voice box, and amplifies the noise made there in your throat, nasal passages, sinuses and mouth. This is a great way to communicate, but there are some drawbacks.

For instance, if you live on a mountainside and your friend lives one slope over, shouting to each other isn't always that effective. For one thing, shouting creates a lot of echoes among the nooks and crannies of mountain slopes, and the average outdoor range of an intelligible human voice is only about 591 feet (180 meters). Short of walking over to where your friend lives to carry on a conversation at a reasonable speaking distance, or communicating with some sort of visual technique like smoke signals, there's not much to be done except to whistle.

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Why Whistle?

Whistling is the product of air being forced through a small hole made by your lips. A whistle is different from your voice because it is clear, and the frequency is narrow and high-pitched. The sound of a whistle can carry for more than 5 miles (8 kilometers) and it holds its form, while a shout can splinter into an echoey mess. Birds have discovered this and use it to communicate between treetops and mountainsides the world over.

So, although humanity has relied on spoken language for millennia to accomplish everyday, face-to-face communication, there are more than 70 groups around the world that engage in special whistled languages  millions of people speak them, although the advent of text messaging has certainly seen a dive in whistled language worldwide. They're most commonly found in mountainous regions where shepherds or farmers need to pass messages around without huffing and puffing up and down hills to do it, but whistles are also used to communicate through the impenetrable undergrowth of the Amazon rainforest and are useful to Inuit at sea as well.

Hunters can use whistling to speak to each other in a way that doesn't alarm their prey like voice-produced language might. Whistled languages have even been useful in battle among soldiers fighting on the same side.

"The most fascinating thing about whistled languages is their birdlike aspect which encodes the complexity of human languages while highlighting a tight relation between human language and the environment," says Julien Meyer, a researcher at the University of Grenoble in France and author of "Whistled Languages: A Worldwide Inquiry on Human Whistled Speech."

According to Meyer, when whistled speech is still present, it signals that traditional activities are still commonly practiced and therefore a relationship with the land is maintained.

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How Whistling Languages Work

According to Meyer, whistled languages are commonly based on the spoken language native to an area. For instance, in Southern China, where the diversity of whistled languages is high, spoken language is tonal  that is to say, the consonants and vowels decide the meaning of a word, as well as the pitch. The whistled languages in this part of China seem to match the musicality of the local speech, and the pitch of the whistle can change the meaning of a whistled "sentence."

In places where the language is not tonal  like in the mountainous Canary Island off the coast of Spain where the whistled language Silbo Gomero is "spoken"  Spanish acts as a template for the sounds of their whistled language. The vowel sounds are mirrored in the shape of the whistles while consonants are decided by the clip, cadence and slides of the whistled tones. To hear it, it seems crazy that anyone would be able to understand Silbo Gomero at all, but according to Meyer, whistled language speakers around the world are found to be able to understand about 90 percent of what's communicated.

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Whistled Language in the Brain

Meyer conjectures that people are able to understand whistled language for the same reason you can read a sentence full of words whose letters have been jumbled: Our brains are desperate to make sense of what's going on.

Whistled languages have some neuroscientists rethinking how language works in the brain. It's been commonly thought that language is the exclusive purview of the left hemisphere of the brain, but studies of whistled language speakers have found that these languages are handled by both sides of the brain, much like music.

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Now That's Interesting The first record of the existence of whistled language is from the Greek philosopher Herodotus, who wrote in the 5th century B.C.E. of a group of cave-dwelling Ethiopians: "Their speech is like no other in the world: it is like the squeaking of bats."
South Yorkshire. Credit: The University of Sheffield

Dr. Jesse Matheson, from the University of Sheffield's Department of Economics, worked with researchers from the universities of Nottingham and Birmingham to compare how often people will be working from home in the next year compared to before the pandemic, and what effect that will have on the revenue generated by city centres.

He discovered that on average, people will be working roughly one day a week more at home than they were before the pandemic, which could have huge long term consequences for the hospitality and retail industries, which have already faced a tumultuous 18 months.

It is expected that the extra day of working from home will be a permanent shift as a result of the pandemic, which has seen everyone's lives change dramatically since the first lockdown in March 2021.

As people spend more time in suburban areas as a result of working from home, they will not be providing the economic benefits to city centres that office workers previously would, such as going to coffee shops, buying lunch, or going shopping after work. These shifts could see roughly 77,000 people who work in the hospitality and retail industries be forced to either relocate to jobs in suburbs or lose their jobs completely.

Not only could these changes lead to tens of thousands of low income workers losing their jobs, but it could make inequalities between rich and poor areas even worsethe study found that, as people who are more affluent are more likely to be able to work from home, the money being lost by city centre shops is more likely to be recuperated in higher income suburbs.

London. Credit: The University of Sheffield

Dr. Jesse Matheson, lead author of the paper from the University of Sheffield's Department of Economics, said: "We estimate that about 3 billion in annual spending will leave city centers as a result of working from home. This decrease will be concentrated in a few very dense centres; for example, the City of London will experience a spending decrease of 31.6 per cent, and central Birmingham will experience a decrease of 8 per cent. Some of this spending will be realised in the residential areas where these workers live, but some may be lost altogether. As suburban neighbourhoods lack the density of city centres, many retail and hospitality businesses will find it is not profitable to relocate.

"Workers in retail and hospitality may also find that demand has shifted to locations to which commuting is too difficult, which means that supply may not be able to keep up with demand."

As a result of this shift to working from homeor the effect of 'zoomshock' as Dr. Matheson coined the phenomenathe report argues that city centres may have to transform themselves in order to stay relevant, by becoming more residential instead of retail focused. The research follows a previous study by Dr. Matheson which found that how quickly households or businesses recover from the economic impact of Covid-19 depends on where you live and what you do, as wealthier areas will be quicker to recover.

Dr. Matheson says there is work to do in finding out if all of the lost 3 billion will be spent elsewhere or lost altogether. He said: "This money may be recuperated in the higher income suburbs, but in a lot of places working from home means people are more spread out, which isn't good business for retail business like coffee shops, who require high density areas for business. So there is a risk this revenue could be lost from the hospitality and retail sectors forever."

Explore further The pandemic widened the gap between the rich and the poor, and it continues
Cornell-led researchers on San Juan Island, Washington, tagged specific seagrass plants, shown here at low tide, to follow them through time. Climate change is prompting more wasting disease, but it also hurting the root system of these grasses. Credit: Cornell University

In an oceanic omen for climate change's intensifying effects, Cornell-led research shows that seagrassthrough large swaths of intertidal meadows in the Pacific Northwestsuffers from a lesion-filled wasting disease. The grasses' once-vibrant plant root systems are deteriorating, too.

The research was published Nov. 10 in the journal Frontiers in Marine Science.

"Not only are we seeing more seagrass wasting disease outbreaks, we're seeing a severe impact within the vital nutrient stores of these plants in the rootsso they become compromised late in the growing season, setting them up for a harder winter," said co-lead author Olivia Graham, a doctoral student in the field of ecology and evolutionary biology.

The other lead author is Lillian R. Aoki, a former postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences.

Eelgrass (Zostera marina) normally thrives in the San Juan Islands, Washington, on the Salish Sea along the Canadian border. In typical scenarios, Graham describes the seagrass meadow environment as bountiful underwater rainforests, which clean the waters and support herring, salmon, perch, clams, mussels and oysters. Nearby, orca whales feast on Chinook salmonthe largest of the Pacific salmonwhich live in these tidal grasslands.

Seagrass wasting disease has been present for years, thanks to the warming waters of climate change, which strengthens the plant's disease nemesis Labyrinthula zosterae. This paper confirms that below the muddy beds, the plant's roots are compromised.

In their research, Graham and Aoki marked hundreds of plants at low tide and followed the meadow's fate over several weeks. This "mark and recapture" method showed that seagrass with disease lesions grew more slowly and produced less storage sugars than their healthy counterparts.

"This answers a long-standing question about whether this disease does actual damage," said senior author Drew Harvell, professor emeritus in ecology and evolutionary biology, in CALS. "Unfortunately, it is a resounding 'yes.'"

Eelgrass plants spread vegetatively, Harvell said, noting that seagrass roots have huge systems where carbohydrates and sugars get manufactured and stored, to expand their own lush networks.

"This paper really nails it," Harvell said. "Plants were tagged in the natural meadow and each one followed through time. We learned that the lesioned plants had reduced starch reserves and grew more slowly, so now we can say that the wasting disease is even bigger than most thoughtand the harm goes well beyond the lesions."

In addition to Graham, Aoki and Harvell, researchers on this paper, "Effects of Seagrass Wasting Disease on Eelgrass Growth and Belowground Sugar in Natural Meadows," were Carla P. Gomes, professor in the Cornell Ann S. Bowers College of Computing and Information Science and the director of the Institute for Computational Sustainability; Brendan Rappazzo, doctoral student in computer science; Sukanya Dayal '19; Tiffany Stephens, Seagrove Kelp Co., Ketchikan, Alaska; and Joshua Stokes, undergraduate student at Southeast Missouri State University, Cape Girardeau, Missouri. The National Science Foundation provided funding.

A related paper by the Cornell team, "Warming Sea Surface Temperatures Fuel Summer Epidemics of Eelgrass Wasting Disease," published Nov. 25 in the Marine Ecology Progress Series, showed increasing levels of eelgrass wasting disease at the San Juan Islands, from 5% to 70% in 2013, and then increasing to 60% to 90% by 2017. Eelgrass shoot density declined by 60% between 2013 and 2015 and did not recover. Further, the work shows the disease prevalence was correlated with warmer water temperatures for the month prior to sampling. The study shows increasing levels of disease in multiples sites in 2017.

Explore further Eelgrass wasting disease has new enemies: Drones and artificial intelligence

More information: Olivia J. Graham et al, Effects of Seagrass Wasting Disease on Eelgrass Growth and Belowground Sugar in Natural Meadows, Frontiers in Marine Science (2021). Journal information: Frontiers in Marine Science Olivia J. Graham et al, Effects of Seagrass Wasting Disease on Eelgrass Growth and Belowground Sugar in Natural Meadows,(2021). DOI: 10.3389/fmars.2021.768668
Credit: Shutterstock

Last week, the U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, which is considered by many to be the most significant battle over abortion rights in decades. If the court upholds the Mississippi law or overturns Roe v. Wade altogether, as the justices appeared poised to do, 21 states likely will ban or curtail access to abortions in short order.

However, the current debate over reproductive rightswhich focuses exclusively on legal access to abortion and birth controlis too narrow and does not address the complexity of issues people face, both structurally and personally, according to Zakiya Luna, associate professor of sociology in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis.

"When we focus exclusively on abortion, we miss that it is part of a reproductive spectrum," said Luna, who is author of "Reproductive Rights as Human Rights: Women of Color and the Fight for Reproductive Justice."

"Most people spend decades of their life in combinations of trying to prevent pregnancy (their own or someone else's); have children (themselves or through other means like adoption); form families (with or without kids); and keep that family healthy and happy. But it is not like these are all separate categories."

Luna argues that the country should shift its focus to reproductive justice, which expands the conversation to include the broader range of reproductive experiences.

"The reproductive justice movement focuses on the resources people need to actually utilize their rights," Luna said. "Reproductive justice came from women of color and takes the whole discussion a step further by noting that beyond the right to not have children (e.g., birth control, abortion), it's also necessary to consider the right to have children and the right to parent with dignity."

How women of color are leading fight for reproductive justice

Women of color have historically played an importantalthough often unseenrole in the fight for reproductive freedom, according to Luna.

"Women of color have a unique experience regarding reproduction in this country. We and our families have been fighting for reproductive control of our lives from the beginning. Going back to the founding of this nation, Indigenous people had their families torn apart by colonizers who took their children and tried to 'civilize' them by forcing them into boarding schools.

"Enslaved Black women birthed children who the law did not even consider theirschildren born to a slave were legally the master's property. These are just a couple examples of how communities of color were not allowed to have children or to parent their children historically," she said.

"Moving to the 20th century, state and county governments forcibly sterilized groups of people, including immigrants, people with disabilities, people convicted of crimes and basically anyone seen as a threat to building a pure nation. People of color were part of these groups, too, although not exclusively."

According to Luna, the reproductive justice movement has grown significantly over the last 15 years in part because it benefits all women and families. "As one of the movement founders, Loretta Ross, says, reproductive justice was started by women of color, but it is not only for them," she said.

What will happen if Roe v. Wade is overturned?

If the court rules in favor of Mississippi or overturns Roe v. Wade, Luna said women of color will be disproportionately impacted. Today, 75% of abortion patients are low income. Women of colorspecifically, Black, Latina and Indigenousare disproportionately low income.

"Abortion has been part of the U.S. for centuries. When Roe v. Wade was decided, there were already different views on abortion in the states," she said. "The patchwork of laws meant some states had legal access and some states had explicit restrictions. So, people who had the money to travel went to states like California and New York to get abortions or even other countries. Just like people do now."

However, if Roe v. Wade is overturned, there's reason to believe it will have far-reaching effects beyond low-income women most affected by current restrictions, Luna said.

"Economic inequality has only increased since Roe was decided as the economic structure has changed drastically in the U.S.," she said. "Fewer jobs come with health care, and medical care in general has become a more complicated system. Additionally, child care costs have risen significantly."

"If Roe is overturned, anyone who gets pregnant and the people who love them will be facing a different set of realities in a post-Roe world."

Hope is more productive than despair

With people on both sides of the debate claiming that Roe v. Wade is as good as dead, abortion rights supporters may be feeling hopeless right now. To those people, Luna offers the following advice:

"Creating change is a long-term process. When people are sitting isolated, just watching the news or listening to the Supreme Court, it is pretty easy to be in despair," she said. "But despair does not lead to making change.

"Each action we take on an issue we care about has an effect; we just can't always see it in front of us. That's why I think it is important to be connected to some type of setting where people are engaged with the issues at a practical level. There are organizations in every state connecting people who care about reproductive justice to concrete ways to make change."

From housing people who are traveling in or out of state for services, to donating water for an upcoming protest, to simply donating money, there are a range of ways to support reproductive justice-minded organizations, Luna said.

"I hope anyone reading this would think about how they can help rather than focus on what they cannot do. Movements are made up of everyday people who are doing their little bit to help," she said.

Explore further US experiencing increasingly restricted access to abortion care
The varied uses of muon imaging include searching the interiors of ancient structures and detecting the abundances of nuclear particles. Credit: Bonechi L., DAlessandro R., Giammanco A, (2020)

Muon imaging, or "muography," may be a niche field, but with uses in probing both man-made and natural structures, its appeal is expanding rapidly. A new open-access review published in Reviews in Physics by Lorenzo Bonechi and Raffaello D'Alessandro from the Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare, Italy, and Andrea Giammanco, Universite Catholique de Louvain Centre for Cosmology, Particle Physics, and Phenomenology, Belgium, looks at the history, current status, and future prospects of muography.

Muon imaging methods hinge on the absorption or scattering by structures of atmospheric muons that are created in a chain reaction triggered when cosmic rays strike particles in the upper atmospheres. This scattering and absorption can be used to probe the interiors of these structures.

"Muon imaging creates links between otherwise disconnected areas of science, such as particle physics, geology, and archaeology," Giammanco says. "Moreover, muons come for free, they are a perfectly safe form of radiation, and they are naturally produced and ubiquitous. There is no need for expensive accelerators, or for dangerous natural radiation sources."

Giammanco explains that the uses of muons include probing the interior of volcanoes and ancient archaeological structures, which could have important societal implications.

"More than a half-million people live in the 'red zone' around Vesuvius, the volcano that famously wiped out the ancient Roman cities of Pompeii and Hercolaneum. Silent since 1944, Vesuvius may reawaken at any moment," Giammanco says. "Muography gives access to the interior of such volcanoes in a more direct way than any standard method."

The researcher adds that muography could also assist in the nuclear sector, as a monitoring tool in the disposal of nuclear waste and even in nuclear arms control.

More everyday uses are possible too, such as helping engineers to spot structural weaknesses in tunnels, bridges, and buildings, a use that links the field to its origins.

"It all started in 1955 with a very simple setup: Geiger counters on a rail, in an Australian mine, with the purpose of measuring tunnel overburden. The observed rate of counts was simply translated into an estimated thickness of the overburden," Giammanco says. "As time progressed, detectors became more sophisticated; usually such developments were not motivated by muography, but by other purposes, including more fundamental physics research such as particle physics."

Giammanco adds that researchers working with muography today build upon the developments in particle detectors pioneered at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) and future research will be founded upon its successors, with muography becoming a field in its own right.

He explains that now is the ideal time for a review paper on muograghy, particularly given the increasing interest in developing more efficient and compact portable muon detectors.

"This may be a turning point in time for this subject. Until very recently, most of the muography literature has consisted of proof-of-principle measurements whose purpose is to demonstrate that a certain study is feasible. The private sector is becoming more and more interested and a portable multi-purpose detector is obviously an appealing idea for them. If costs are sufficiently cut, and if we manage to make such detectors almost 'plug and play," this may have a very deep impact on archaeology, exploratory geophysics, and civil engineering," Giammanco concludes.

Explore further Combining muography with existing technology to improve volcanic eruption predictions

More information: Lorenzo Bonechi et al, Atmospheric muons as an imaging tool, Reviews in Physics (2020). Lorenzo Bonechi et al, Atmospheric muons as an imaging tool,(2020). DOI: 10.1016/j.revip.2020.100038

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Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain

It's not that professors in the Department of Agricultural and Applied Economics at the University of Wyoming are involved in money laundering, but they aresort of.

Economists Chian Jones Ritten and Chris Bastian, and their partner, Professor Emeritus Owen Phillips in UW's College of Business, shouldn't have to worry about FBI agents bearing handcuffs on the UW campus this holiday season.

But policymakers directing money laundering enforcement might be interested in the trio's research into the best ways to reduce illegal trade.

Their findings, published in the research journal PLOS ONE in November, suggest concentrating law enforcement efforts at the point of sale is more effective to reduce illegal market activity than seizing laundered profits.

Their economic laboratory experiments showed illicit trade is reduced nearly 32 percent when law enforcement is focused at the point of sale. That may be oversimplified, but think of the Wyoming Highway Patrol seizing illegal products en route to a deal or market.

"Given all of the emphasis currently on policy addressed at money laundering and stopping money laundering, I was somewhat surprised we found that law enforcement aimed at money laundering is really not that effective," says Jones Ritten, an associate professor in the department. "But, when we thought about it from an economic perspective, that wasn't surprising at all."

Phillips had received training on investigating money laundering and approached Bastian about the topic.

"It really started out more focused on money laundering but, between Chian, Owen and me, it grew into a broader topic on policy looking at illegal products," says Bastian, a professor in the department.

Those markets could include illegal drugs, organs, wildlife and even fraudulent food products.

Their previous work had already studied factors that affect privately negotiated or less developed markets. The new work was an extension of how people negotiate and the outcomes they expect, Jones Ritten says.

"If there are risks of law enforcement, how does that affect behavior?" Jones Ritten asks. "So it might sound really out there, but it really is similar to the lab work we've already done. What we're really thinking about is on a much larger scalelarge producers who may have entities in many countries and many regions. And, so, we're talking about large-scale buyers and sellers of these illegal markets."

Thirty-six lab experimental sessions had 288 participants bargaining along the production-trade-laundering cycle, with a risk of seizure at various points.

"We had to assign what the risk was," Bastian says. "There is no empirical evidence to tell us what the rate of seizure actually is."

They assigned a 20 percent chance of being caught.

"I think the question in the real world is, "Is that 20 percent above or below what we actually see in these product markets?" And that's data we just don't have," Bastian says. "But I think the reality is, if you were somebody involved in that market, our research points to if we can give you the perception the risk is relatively high, that may alter your behavior."

He jokes that he's not going to conduct field research to find out.

Results showed behaviors in the market were not what models suggested. The 32 percent reduction was surprising.

"The magnitude of the reduction in trade is what was really different," Jones Ritten says. "We found that law enforcement in these areas was much more effective than theory alone would have predicted."

People respond to these risks in a much more drastic fashion than models suggest, she says.

"It's especially the sellers who respond so much more drastically than we ever expected them to, and the amount of reduction that they have and the amount of product they produce and trade," Jones Ritten says.

That's good for law enforcement, she says.

"Their objective is to reduce the trade and production, and we found that these risks associated with these types of markets and law enforcement create a larger reduction than we had originally thought," she says.

Turns out criminals react the same to the risk of their products being seized as having to pay taxes.

"After we started looking at results, in my mind, it started to fall in line with research in other areas related to taxes and how people respond to those types of costs when they're doing business," Bastian says. "They start looking at the tax as a cost of business."

Explore further Research suggests budget reminders cause unexpected consumer behavior

More information: Chian Jones Ritten et al, The relative effectiveness of law enforcement policies aimed at reducing illegal trade: Evidence from laboratory markets, PLOS ONE (2021). Journal information: PLoS ONE Chian Jones Ritten et al, The relative effectiveness of law enforcement policies aimed at reducing illegal trade: Evidence from laboratory markets,(2021). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0259254
Europes largest astronomy network brings together around 20 telescopes and telescope arrays. Credit:  vchal, Shutterstock

Groundbreaking discoveries about gravitational waves, black holes, cosmic rays, neutrinos and other areas of cutting-edge astronomy may soon become more frequent due to the convergence of two major communities of astronomers in a fresh project.

Previously, Europe had two major collaborative networks for ground-based astronomy running over the past couple of decades, known as OPTICON and RadioNet. These focused on observing astronomical phenomena in separate wavelength ranges of the electromagnetic spectrumthe former at optical wavelengths, in a portion of the spectrum that includes visible light; and the latter at longer, radio wavelengths.

Now, these two domains of astronomy are uniting in a project called the OPTICON RadioNet Pilot (ORP), a consortium of astronomers from 37 institutions and 15 European countries, plus Australia and South Africa.

Referring to itself as 'Europe's largest astronomy network', the initiative was set up in light of the increasing need for astronomers to have a range of skills in different domains and use complementary techniques to understand phenomena. It also brings together around 20 telescopes and telescope arrays owned by members of the consortium, with the aim of harmonising methods and tools between the two domains, and opening up physical and virtual access to facilities.

'There are some people who are experts in both domains, but these are different communities,' said Dr. Jean-Gabriel Cuby at the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) and Aix-Marseille University, and coordinator for the ORP project. 'I was trained as an optical astronomer, and other people were trained as radio astronomers. Now, we need also to train wavelength-neutral astronomers.'

He explained that the more you can observe about phenomena at different wavelengths, the more of a picture you can build. 'Multi-wavelength astronomy is about observing across the whole spectral domain to have as much information as possible,' he said. 'The light we receive in optical and radio wavelengths comes from different physical processes; so the more we observe in terms of wavelength coverage, the more we learn about the physical processes.'

Dr. Cuby said the aim is to facilitate and speed up the process of getting telescope time for projects that require different facilitieswhich can be a long-winded processmaking it easier for people to do more ambitious projects that previously required vast management efforts.

The telescope facilities include the likes of LOFAR, a trans-European low-frequency radio telescope network based in the Netherlands, and EVN, a network of radio telescopes located mainly in Europe and Asia, with additional antennas in South Africa and Puerto Rico.

Multi-messenger age

Dr. Cuby elaborated on how the need is growing to foster harmonisation between domains in the current age of so-called multi-messenger astronomy. This involves the observation of various 'messenger' particlessuch as gravitational waves, neutrinos and cosmic raysthat can reveal different information about the same sources, potentially giving unprecedented insight into the universe and its origins.

Harmonisation is also key for time-domain astronomy, which explores how astronomical events vary over time. Events now being explored are frequently transient, with many, like fast radio bursts, lasting mere milliseconds. Capturing multiple aspects of them thus requires rapid deployment of telescopes and facilities, which can again be aided by collaboration. 'This time-domain astronomy is going to explode in the coming years,' said Dr. Cuby. 'This is really the golden age of astronomy.'

Professor Gerry Gilmore, a cosmologist at the University of Cambridge who is involved in ORP as scientific coordinator for OPTICON, elaborated further. 'That's the sort of science we now do, where you discover something that's usually highly variable and very often it's transient,' he said. 'It's all over very quickly and you don't get another chance. You want then to be able to bring the whole array of potential capabilities into looking at that particular place in the sky now.'

Previously, said Prof. Gilmore, capturing a transient event relied on a huge amount of luck in looking in the right place at the right time, but ORP provides a chance to 'plan to be lucky' through more targeted efforts between different researchers and opens up the 'discovery space' in astronomy.

'As soon as the technology became available to start looking for shorter and shorter timescale events, hey presto, we discovered they're all therethe universe is full of stuff. And it's the most extreme things that happen fastest.'

Gravitational waves

Much of this multi-messenger and time-domain astronomy is in its infancy, but is being opened up by advances in technologies and new deployments of cutting-edge observatories around the world.

One emerging area that ORP hopes will be spurred by collaboration is that of gravitational waves. First detected in 2015, these are ripples in space-time formed by some of the universe's most cataclysmic events, such as pairs of black holes colliding.

This November, an international team of astronomers announced the detection of a record number of gravitational waves, adding 35 new observations over the course of roughly six months to bring the total to 90 so far. The findings, they believe, will help further our understanding of the evolution of the universe, and topics such as the life and death of stars.

With the related study listing more than 1,600 authors from all corners of the world, and harnessing around 100 ground- and space-based instrumentsincluding visible, infrared and radio telescopes, neutrino and gamma-ray observatories, and X-ray instrumentsthis reflects the hugely extensive collaboration taking place in modern astronomy.

One of the authors, Dr. Sarp Akcay, a theoretical physicist at University College Dublin in Ireland who is not involved in ORP, said the ORP initiative looks promising for inspiring more rapid discoveries.

'This type of large-scale collaboration will be extremely helpful for gravitational-wave astronomy, and even more so for so-called multi-messenger astronomy,' he said. 'With more telescopes joining a global network, follow-up observations can be made quicker in the future, adding to our knowledge of these events.'

Prof. Gilmore said, meanwhile, that although the main focus of ORP is on inspiring collaboration rather than carrying out specific investigations itself, a test case for the project is combining the search for black holes in the optical and radio wavelengths to find out more about their nature, exactly how common these objects are, and whether theories about them are correct.

And with the Milky Way alone thought to harbour millions of black holes, which are often formed by the death of massive stars, there's a vast amount to find out. 'There's a handful of them that have been observed in very special circumstances,' said Prof. Gilmore. 'So we've seen the tip of the iceberg, but we predict that there are huge numbers of them.'

Long-term view

Though it's early days for ORP, which launched this March, and the exact way it develops is yet to be seen, Dr. Cuby and his team hope that the pilot can later transition into a sustainable long-term project beyond its current scheduled duration until early 2025. The aim is also to enable open access to those around the world, broadening the scope for involvement of previously under-represented researchers and countries.

Prof. Gilmore said, meanwhile, that the separate communities have been increasingly converging in recent years, while the OPTICON and RadioNet projects have already established strong collaborative networks in their individual domains over many years. 'The community has been changing steadily over the last few decades,' he said. 'People have been forming teams and using a range of facilities for a given scientific topic. Multi-wavelength astronomy is the reality of the way we actually do it these days.'

With the ORP project, he said: 'Now, it should be possible for a group of young, enthusiastic scientists just to choose their leader, she writes the proposal, and pingoff the team goes'.

Professor Anton Zensus, scientific coordinator for RadioNet in the ORP project, believes the initiative is a 'crucial step' in furthering the field of astronomy that will allow a much richer picture of the universe.

'Multifrequency use allows us to better understand the secrets of the universe,' he said. 'ORP will allow a fast reaction to unexpected and transient astronomical phenomena in the sky, such as gamma ray bursts. We aim on getting a full image illuminating all aspects of phenomena.'

Dr. Zensus added that bringing the radio and optical communities together to harmonise astronomy is a 'crucial step to make it attractive for users from all astronomical communities' and help open up this area of science to non-specialist users too. 'A multi-messenger approach will deepen our understanding of astronomy phenomena, and at the same time create new questions and approaches,' he said.

The research in this article was funded by the EU. If you liked this article, please consider sharing it on social media.

Explore further Uncovering the secrets of ultra-low frequency gravitational waves
The CORK (Circulation Obviation Retrofit Kit) borehole monitoring observatory, pictured here, is connected to the Ocean Networks Neptune Canada cable system. It can monitor fluid pressure within the oceanic crust that contains faults and fractures as pathways for water, heat, and chemical exchange between rock and ocean. Credit: Ocean Networks Canada

The natural structure of the rigid oceanic crust that forms a shell around Earth contains cracks and faults. These fissures are hydrothermal pathways for heat, water, and chemical solutions to move between the ocean and the lithosphere.

Scientists traditionally use seismic waves to uncover the nature of oceanic crust, including lithology and structure. When seismic compressional waves, or P waves, travel along fault trends, the wave speed remains largely unaffected. In comparison, previous research has discovered that seismic velocities can be up to 20% slower when waves pass across local faults and fractures compared to when they cross less fractured crust. Additionally, prior work has used remote seismic detection to map out the large-scale seismic speeds of oceanic crust.

In a new study by Sun et al., the researchers characterized formation-scale mechanical properties using direct, in situ measurements of fluid pressure and colocated seismic records. They used an array of boreholes and seafloor instruments connected to Ocean Networks Canada's cabled NEPTUNE observatory that spreads across the Juan de Fuca and North American plates. To understand how compressible the crust is, the team compared seismic surface wave strain with formation fluid pressure variations caused by distant large earthquakes. Although the use of formation fluid pressure as a proxy for strain has been applied to other settings, this study is the first to use the approach at seismic frequencies in an offshore setting.

The researchers found that in the faulted oceanic crust, their compressibility determinations indicated that seismic waves traveling in the cross-fabric direction would be slowed by more than 50%. This slowing is much more dramatic than all previous standard seismic measurements and suggests that there may be ubiquitousand previously unrecognizedfracturing in the upper hundreds of meters of oceanic crust.

Their results indicate that the degree of fracturing of shallow oceanic crust is substantial and has direct influence on hydrothermal circulation and slab hydration. The age of the crust where this study was carried out is 3.6 million years old, and the authors hope new offshore borehole monitoring in other locations will better define the nature of faulting and the crust's hydrologic properties.

Explore further Direct evidence of segregated oceanic crust trapped within the mantle transition zone

More information: Tianhaozhe Sun et al, Seismic Formation Fluid Pressure Observations Reveal High Anisotropy of Oceanic Crust, Geophysical Research Letters (2021). Journal information: Geophysical Research Letters Tianhaozhe Sun et al, Seismic Formation Fluid Pressure Observations Reveal High Anisotropy of Oceanic Crust,(2021). DOI: 10.1029/2021GL095347

Provided by Eos
Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain

A hedge fund designed to pool money together for the public good could tackle a niche of problems that governments, non-profit organizations and for-profit companies all struggle with solving, according to Penn State researchers.

In a study, a pair of Smeal College of Business researchers outlined a hedge fund model that features an ever-growing prize and patent repository. They said the money raised through the hedge fundan actively managed investment poolcould then be aimed at solving problems that have broad societal value, such as curing diseases and tackling environmental challenges.

The public good-oriented hedge fund idea goes to the heart of a vexing problem, said John Liechty, professor of marketing and an affiliate of the Institute for Computational and Data Sciences. Non-profits are usually restricted to smaller budgets to solve problems and governments can be hampered by political inefficiencies, said Liechty. In contrast, for-profit companies are adept at managing large sums of money for problems that can earn money over long periods of time, he added.

"There are certain classes of problems that occur that the businesses won't tackle, traditionally, because they can't formulate the expected return," said Liechty. "The question for me was: How do you organize capital to actually try to solve those really hard problems? In some sense, it's easy to organize capital to go help your neighbor, for example because the problem is small, but we have some problems that are really hard, like how do we get a group of really smart, talented, committed people to dedicate a decade of their lives or more to potentially solving these really big problems. That's not easy to do."

In their proposal to address this resource gap, the researchers suggest a crowdfundingor crowdsourcingapproach that would create an ever-growing monetary prize to attract that necessary talent for solving a problem. Crowdfunding is a well-established method for people to pool money or resources together.

Prioritizing projects

Crowdfunding would do more than just raise moneythe approach can also help raise awareness and better prioritize projects, according to Stefan Wuyts, professor of marketing, Smeal College of Business and director of the Institute for the Study of Business Markets.

"There are certain problems that will not be addressed if things are left on their own and those are problems that are not just sufficiently attractive economically, but also problems with enormous uncertainty, like finding a cure for a disease," said Wuyts. "When you crowdfund and crowdsource the solution to problems and you get funding from the larger crowd, then society is essentially deciding on what are the important problems to tackle. What's more, since the hedge fund can grow organically over time, it is not necessary to determine beforehand how much it should cost, which is another question that we do not have the answer to advise because of that uncertainty."

The model allows people to donate money to the hedge fund, whose fund managers can then invest that money in a range of assets, similar to an established trust fund. People sympathetic to the cause, but who do not want to invest directly, could have their money managed by the hedge fund. The management fees from that fund, then, could be donated back to the main fund.

A patent repository would serve as the legal structure to share intellectual property that is being used to target a problem, such as a chemical compound to treat or cure a disease. The repository would also ensure that a person or team whose ideas helped solve the problemwithin the parameters set by the organizerswould be awarded the prize money.

The proposal would work best by focusing resources on a single problem, said the researchers.

"It wouldn't try to solve every problem," said Liechty. "This is an entity that has been set up for a special purpose, a particular problem, even if it is a global problem."

Treating cystic fibrosis

The search for a cure for cystic fibrosis, a progressive, genetic disease that causes persistent lung infections and limits the ability to breathe, is one example of how a grassroots' crowd-sourced effort could galvanize support and create new pathways to funding innovative treatments and solutions, according to the researchers, who report their findings in SN Business & Economics. It also shows the challenges these efforts face to be ultimately successful.

The researchers said that the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation invested more than $150 million to develop an FDA-approved treatment, which was then patented and sold to a pharmaceutical company. The treatment now costs patients about $300,000 each year, according to the researchers. However, a grassroots-initiated study of another promising, but non-patentable oral approach for the condition, targets glutathioneGSHlevels in the patients' lungs. While the treatment has shown initial limited success, it has yet to receive funding for the necessary, but expensive, FDA approval process. The GSH treatment, if successful, would cost approximately $1,200 a year, the researchers added.

The researchers report that "The fact that the oral GSH approacha potentially viable treatmenthas no path to secure monopoly pricing nor offer academic prestige, has left it bereft of capital; this represents not only a market failure, but in our view, a philanthropic failure."

A hedge fund for climate remediation?

Beyond medical treatments, hedge funds could be created for other significant social and scientific challenges, said Wuyts.

"I think climate-related solutions might be interesting," said Wuyts. "A solution for climate change is too vague because it's too big of a problem, but it can be narrowed down. For example, to target alternative sources of energy that are as yet too uncertain to attract corporate or government funding, but that could possibly work."

Liechty suggested that finding legal solutions to the negative effects of the internet and social media are another category for hedge funds that potentially could serve the public good.

"You just have to think about hard problems that aren't being addressed," said Liechty.

The researchers said the next step for the project would be connecting with people and organizations who might be interested in partnering on the idea and identifying initial problems that could benefit from this approach.

"We've talked a lot about how to get this started, how to get the ball rolling," said Wuyts. "I agree that one way is to start small to make sure all the details are working and use that as a success story that could lead to addressing bigger and bigger problems."

Explore further Timing the market in specific industries delivers for hedge fund managers

More information: Liechty, J. et al, 'If I had a hedge fund, I would cure diabetes': endogenous mechanisms for creating public goods. SN Business & Economics (2021). Liechty, J. et al, 'If I had a hedge fund, I would cure diabetes': endogenous mechanisms for creating public goods.(2021). doi.org/10.1007/s43546-021-00115-z

Provided by Penn State Institute for Computational and Data Sciences
Katherine Michelmore. Credit: University of Michigan

Children of Earned Income Tax Credit beneficiaries delayed marriage and first births, according to a new study co-authored by a University of Michigan professor, suggesting the cost-effectiveness of the federal program.

Little has been known about the long-term marriage and fertility effects of the children of social welfare beneficiaries, which led Katherine Michelmore, associate professor of public policy, and Leonard Lopoo of Syracuse University to investigate the intergenerational effects of the EITC on marriage and fertility decision-making.

Analyzing data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, the researchers found children of EITC beneficiaries delayed marriage and first births in early adulthood (ages 1625). Specifically, a $1,000 increase in EITC exposure in childhood caused a 2 percent to 3 percent decline in a woman's likelihood of having her first child and getting married in her early 20s.

The study found similar reductions in fertility decisions among Black and white women, but marriage declines were concentrated among white women. The researchers found no evidence that exposure to the EITC affected men in the same ways.

"These results are consistent with a human capital theory perspective, which suggests that increases in educational attainment increase the opportunity costs of childbearing, leading to lower fertility rates among young women exposed to the EITC," the authors wrote in the study published in Demography.

The authors conclude the results of the study have implications for the well-being of young women who delay having children. They note early childbearing can result in negative outcomes for mother and child, including decreased educational attainment, poor labor market outcomes, increased use of social welfare programs and poor health.

The results also have implications for federal and state spending on the EITC.

Each birth avoided before age 25 reduces EITC claims, since childless individuals are not eligible for the credit until turning 25, according to the study. The results further suggest the program is cost-effective, "improving the human capital and reducing the incidence of early childbearing among those exposed to the credit in childhood."

The study builds on research into the familial benefits of the EITC by Michelmore and others at U-M and Syracuse.

More information: Katherine Michelmore et al, The Effect of EITC Exposure in Childhood on Marriage and Early Childbearing, Demography (2021). Journal information: Demography Katherine Michelmore et al, The Effect of EITC Exposure in Childhood on Marriage and Early Childbearing,(2021). DOI: 10.1215/00703370-9506903
This is a long-exposure image from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope of massive galaxy cluster Abell 2744. It shows some of the faintest and youngest galaxies detected in space. Credit: NASA/ESA/STScI

What was previously identified as a gas and dust cloud at the center of our galaxy actually consists of three very young stars. That is the result of a new study led by scientists from the University of Cologne's Institute of Astrophysics. The European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope (VLT)a telescope with mirror diameters of 8.20 meters on the summit of Cerro Paranal in Chileprovided the data for the study, which has appeared in The Astrophysical Journal. The stars began to form less than 1 million years ago, which is very young in astrophysical terms. By comparison, our sun is just under 5 billion years old.

In 2011, an object was found by means of the infrared data measured by the Very Large Telescope, promising to reveal an unprecedented process at the center of our galaxy. Based on a multi-wavelength analysis, scientists determined that it must be a cloud of gas and dust, which was named G2. The interaction with the black hole at the center of our galaxy, SgrA*, should have torn G2 apart and caused proverbial fireworks. The researchers assumed that when G2 collided with SgrA*, various processes would cause the gas and dust to make the black hole flare up. But that did not happen.

In addition, there were other factors that gave astronomers around the world a headache and fuelled controversial discussions. Studies showed that the temperature of G2 is almost twice as high as that of surrounding dust sources. One possible explanation for G2's temperature is the extreme number of stars at the center of our galaxy. So these stars could have heated up G2. The only question is why all other known dust sources at the center of the galaxy show a much lower temperature. The black hole, SgrA*, was also ruled out as a heat source. The temperature of G2 should have increased the closer the supposed dust cloud came to the black holelike we would feel if we approached a radiator. However, the temperature remained constant over a long period of time, although the distance to the black hole varied. The more closely G2 was observed around the world, the more it became apparent that the cosmic object had to be more than just a cloud of gas and dust.

The new results show that G2 actually consists of three individual stars. "We had the opportunity to observe the center of our galaxy ourselves several times with the Very Large Telescope. Together with the data from the Southern Observatory archive, we were able to cover a period from 2005 to 2019," said lead author Dr. Florian Peiker from the Institute of Astrophysics. The unusual structure of the data was also helpful in locating G2. Each pixel of the captured image has an associated spectrum that covers a very specific and detailed waveband. For the scientists, this offers an enormous level of detail. "That G2 actually consists of three evolving young stars is sensational. Never before have stars younger than the ones found been observed around SgrA*," Peiker said.

The results open the door to many more fascinating research questionsfor example where these young stars come from. The radiation-intensive environment of a supermassive black hole is not necessarily the best place to produce young stars. Peiker concludes, "The new results provide unique insights into how black holes work. We can use the environment of SgrA* as a blueprint to learn more about the evolution and processes of other galaxies in completely different corners of our Universe."

Explore further Very Large Telescope uncovers closest pair of supermassive black holes yet

More information: Florian Peiker et al, The Apparent Tail of the Galactic Center Object G2/DSO, The Astrophysical Journal (2021). Journal information: Astrophysical Journal Florian Peiker et al, The Apparent Tail of the Galactic Center Object G2/DSO,(2021). DOI: 10.3847/1538-4357/ac23df
One of the James Webb telescope's missions is to look for conditions that could sustain life outside our solar system.

There is only one Earth... that we know of.

But outside our own solar system, other stars give warmth and light to planets and, possibly, life.

Soon to offer a better look at these so-called exoplanets is NASA's new James Webb telescope, which is set to launch this month and become the largest and most powerful observatory in orbit.

One of its major missions is to look for conditions that could sustain life outside our solar system, where scientists have only recently been able to look for it.

The first exoplanet observed51 Pegasi bwas discovered in 1995 and since then nearly 5,000 others have been noted, from gas giants similar to our solar system's Jupiter or Neptune to rocky planets like Earth.

Some are a habitable distance from their suns, in a range fancifully named the Goldilocks Zone.

But beyond being neither too close to, nor too far from the stars they orbit, little is known about these planets or what they are made of.

They are too far away to be observed directly and rocky planets, which are more susceptible to be capable of sustaining life as we know it, tend to be even smaller and harder to observe.

So far, astronomers have detected them as they pass in front of the stars they orbit, capturing tiny variations in luminosity.

This has allowed them to determine their size and density but the resttheir atmospheric composition, what's going on on their surfacesis left to discover.

The Mid-Infrared Instrument will use a camera and a spectrograph to see mid-infrared light invisible to the human eye.

'Look at their innards'

Astrophysicists hope the Webb telescope will help fill in some of these gaps.

Equipped with a new piece of technology called the Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI), it will use a camera and a spectrograph to see light in the mid-infrared region of the electromagnetic spectrum, invisible to the human eye.

"It will revolutionise how we see planets' atmospheres. We're going to get a look at their innards!" said Pierre-Oliver Lagage of the French space agency who worked on MIRI with a US and European team.

Pierre Ferruit, a Webb project scientist at the European Space Agency, explained that MIRI will be able to read the infrared signature of light filtered through various substances in planets atmospheres as they pass in front of their stars.

In this way, Ferruit told AFP, scientists should be able to tell whether they contain molecules like water vapour, carbon monoxide and methane.

Those three substances are present in Earth's atmosphere and could potentially signal biological activity on a planet's surface.

"To think that twenty years ago we knew of almost no exoplanets and now we are about to find out what their atmospheres are made ofit's huge," Ferruit said.

Trappist-1

Rene Doyon is head of the Institute for Research on Exoplanets in Montreal and main scientist on another of the Webb's instruments, the Near Infrared Imager and Slitless Spectrograph.

Scientists should be able to tell whether exoplanets' atmospheres contain molecules like water vapor, carbon monoxide and methane.

"My dream would be to find an atmosphere around a rocky planet in a habitable zone with water molecules," Doyon told AFP, describing three conditions that would make life as we know it on Earth possible.

But there are pitfalls: on Venus for example scientists recently thought they found phosphine, associated with biological activity on Earth.

Subsequent research, however, showed there were no traces of the gas.

Doyon said finding the origins of biological molecules will probably be "beyond the capabilities" of the Webb telescope.

"That will be for later," confirmed Ferruit. "For now we are looking for conditions that are favourable to life, like the presence of liquid water."

Such clues will narrow the focus of future missions that aim to discover "whether the Earth is one of a kind, or not".

Webb is already set to probe a system around the planetary system Trappist-1, around 40 light years from Earth, which was discovered by Belgian scientists who named it after famous beer-brewing monks.

It has seven planets, of which three are in a Goldilocks zone and orbit a dwarf star, whose not-too-bright light will make it easier to detect the composition of the atmosphere.

Other instruments for direct observation will allow Webb to examine the atmospheres of "hot Jupiters" or "mini Neptunes", said Doyon.

He said he expects new categories of exoplanets could be discovered along with plenty of surprises.

"Surprise is what exoplanet discovery is made of," he said.

Explore further James Webb Space Telescope primed to lift the haze surrounding sub-Neptunes

 2021 AFP
The discovery of leptoquarks could explain quirks in the standard model of particle physics (inset) discovered at the Large Hadron Collider (main). Credit: Inset: Cush Public Domain (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Standard_Model_of_Elementary_Particles.svg)

The hunt is on for leptoquarks, particles beyond the limits of the standard model of particle physics the best description we have so far of the physics that governs the forces of the Universe and its particles. These hypothetical particles could prove useful in explaining experimental and theoretical anomalies observed at particle accelerators such as the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) and could help to unify theories of physics beyond the standard model, if researchers could just spot them.

A new paper published in Nuclear Physics B by Anirban Karan, Priyotosh Bandyopadhyay, and Saunak Dutta, of the Indian Institute of Technology Hyderabad, Kandi, together with Mahesh Jakkapu, Graduate University for Advanced Studies (SOKENDAI), Kanagawa, Japan, examines the potential signatures of leptoquarks at the LHC to see how they could arise from proton-proton collisions for the possible mass ranges of these particles.

The main objective of this research is how to distinguish the signatures of different leptoquarks at proton-proton colliders like LHC or its proposed successor," Karan says.

The researcher explains that leptoquarks could be important in describing why families of particlesfermions and bosonsinteract in the way that they do. Fermions and bosons differ in the quality known as"spin"; while fermions are spin 1/2 particles, bosons are of integer spin.

"There are two types of fundamental fermions, namely quarks and leptons," he explains. "This distinction is made on the basis of how they act in the strong interaction mediated by gluons [the strong force-carrying that stick together quarks in protons and neutrons and bind together short-lived particles created in particle accelerators]."

Karan further explains that two different types of elementary bosons have been discovered, gauge bosons and Higgs bosons, and each of these interacts with two quarks or two leptons.

Leptoquarks are a proposed form of boson which can couple to one quark and one lepton, instead. "There are various phenomenological issues in Particle Physics which could be resolved if these hypothetical particles do exist," Karan adds. "However, no experimental evidence for their existence has been discovered yet."

Karan adds that ten different types of leptoquarks interacting with observed standard model fermions have been proposed but there is little research concerning how their signatures might be distinguished. This paper explores that possibility.

"We find using simulations that total cross-section and angular distribution for pair production of leptoquarks at LHC can be used to determine the spin of leptoquarks," Karan says. He adds that the notion of leptoquarks isn't new, these particles were first proposed in the 1970s and the search for them heated up during the 1990s when the HERA particle accelerator began operating.

"No conclusive evidence for the existence of leptoquarks was found. Nevertheless, leptoquarks have had much attention in recent years," Karan adds. "It has been noticed that leptoquarks are a very good candidate for explaining discrepancies between experimental measurements and standard model predictions. Therefore, they have been searched for at more energetic machines, including the LHC. Upcoming colliders are more energetic still and physicists hope to confirm their existence at those machines."

Explore further Researchers set new bounds on the mass of leptoquarks

More information: Priyotosh Bandyopadhyay et al, Distinguishing Leptoquarks at the LHC/FCC, Nuclear Physics B (2021). Priyotosh Bandyopadhyay et al, Distinguishing Leptoquarks at the LHC/FCC,(2021). DOI: 10.1016/j.nuclphysb.2021.115524

Provided by SciencePOD
Credit: Unsplash/CC0 Public Domain

Known to be fine regulators of gene expression, microRNAs are small molecules that remain particularly stable in biofluidsblood, urine, etc. In humans, these molecules have revealed great potential as prognostic or diagnostic tools for many diseases such as various cancers, strokes, and, particularly, heart attacks. However, few studies have been carried out on their potential as non-invasive biomarkers in animals, either for disease control or as a tool to assess their physiological status. This lack of information is particularly noticeable in cold-blooded aquatic species, whose physiological status is directly affected by environmental fluctuations, both in the wild and on farms. For this reason, specialists in fish reproduction and nutrition at INRAE, in collaboration with an American team from the University of Oregon, decided to conduct a study to evaluate the potential of circulating microRNAs as biomarkers of the metabolic or reproductive state of fish.

The team conducted their work on rainbow troutthe predominant fish species in French aquacultureby first establishing a comprehensive sequence annotation of expressed microRNAs in the species. Then, they used a simple blood sample to carry out PCR analysesa genetic analysis method used here to identify and measure microRNAswhich enabled them to identify microRNAs showing major changes in abundance, depending on the physiological status of the animal. Most notably, they characterized a microRNA that could detect, and even predict, ovulation and egg quality in fish. The researchers were also able to identify a growth signature, since their results showed an over-abundance of some specific microRNAs, called myomiRs, under conditions of high fish growth. MyomiRs are actually known to be involved in high episodes of muscle growth in many other animals as well.

This innovative study opens up great possibilities, since non-invasive biomarkersaccessible from a simple blood test and quantifiable by PCRcould not only avoid costly and time-consuming experimental procedures, but also facilitate access to valuable information on the physiological or pathological state of living animals. Their results might also lead to the development of a wide range of applications to monitor the physiological state of animals, both for researchers and veterinary specialists. In the future, thanks to the identification of generic biomarkers like myomiRswhich are present in many animal speciessimilar studies might be carried out for other species.

Explore further Researchers discover promising biomarkers to diagnose mild traumatic brain injury

More information: Emilie Cardona et al, Circulating miRNA repertoire as a biomarker of metabolic and reproductive states in rainbow trout, BMC Biology (2021). Journal information: BMC Biology Emilie Cardona et al, Circulating miRNA repertoire as a biomarker of metabolic and reproductive states in rainbow trout,(2021). DOI: 10.1186/s12915-021-01163-5

Provided by INRAE
An immature Sumatran orangutan is soliciting food from its mother as a way of learning foraging skills. Credit: Natalie Uomini

When it comes to motherhood, orangutans are animals of distinction. An orangutan mother will stay in close contact with her baby for up to nine yearslonger than almost all mammals other than humans. Much like humans, orangutans rely on their mothers to learn life skillssuch as what to eat and where to find itbefore they finally reach independence almost a decade after birth. But unlike humans, orangutan mothers were not known to participate in their offspring's learning; behaving as passive role models rather than active teachers. That is, until a team of researchers at the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior in Konstanz, Germany, uncovered the first evidence yet of active involvement by orangutan mothers in their offspring's skill learning. When orangutan mothers are foraging, they tailor their behavior to match the age and abilities of their offspring, thereby helping their young to socially learn new skills. The study raises the possibility that orangutans perform teachinga behavior that's rare among animalsand sheds light on the factors that led to the evolution of teaching in humans.

The team studied how immature orangutans learn foraging skills. During the eight to nine year weaning periodone of the longest periods of nutritional dependency in any mammalimmatures must learn how to recognize and process more than 200 food items, many of which require several steps before they can be eaten. Easy-to-eat flowers and leaves require no processing, for example, whereas bark must be loosened from the tree and scraped with the teeth to remove the nutritional parts. The most difficult foods require tools, such as sticks that are converted into brushes for excavating honey from bee hives.

How they learn such complex foraging skills, according to previous studies, is by watching their mothers. Immatures will watch or "peer" at their mother when she is eating, especially when the food is hard to process. They will also beg or "solicit" food that the mother is eating, usually by attempting to grab the item out of her hands. But a mystery remained: why was the learning process one sided?

"It was puzzling that mothers always seemed so passive during these feeding interactions," says Caroline Schuppli, from the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior, who led the study. "Mothers have so much time with their offspring, and maintain such a close connection, but they never appeared to be actively involved in the skill acquisition of their young." The mystery was compounded by a lack of data. "Past studies had always examined skill learning from the point of view of the offspring," says Schuppli, "so we didn't know the role of the role model."

Data on the mother's role

For this study, Schuppli teamed up with researchers from the University of Zurich in Switzerland, the Universitas Nasional in Indonesia, and the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany to gather data on the mother's role in offspring skill development. They analyzed data on 1300 instances of begging, or "food solicitation," by 27 immature Sumatran orangutans that were collected over twelve years at the Suaq Balimbing research area in Sumatra, Indonesia. For each event they scored if the mother would let the immature take the food or not, and then analyzed this with information on the age of the begging individual and the properties of the food item.

Results showed that orangutan mothers do respond to their offspring during feeding, and therefore facilitate learning opportunities: when their offspring solicit food, orangutan mothers adjust their tolerance according to their offspring's age (i.e., competence levels) and according to how difficult the food item is to process. Mothers show the highest tolerance levels during the age at which their offspring acquire their food recognition and food processing skills. Furthermore, they show the highest levels of tolerance for items that are difficult to process, and they stay tolerant longest for these items. For items that require tool use, for example, the mothers show the highest tolerance levels and stay tolerant throughout the dependency period of their offspring. For leaves which can just be picked and ingested whole, they show overall lower levels of tolerance and stop sharing them when the offspring has reached a certain age.

Active involvement

Says Schuppli: "Our findings suggest that orangutan mothers are actively involved in their offspring's skill learning. However, they do this in a reactive, rather than proactive way. Interestingly, there were very few incidents of active food sharing only. This means that orangutan immatures need to take the initiative during learning. This is very different from humans, where active teaching plays an important role and role models are much more proactive. It is also different from chimpanzees, where mothers seem to be more proactive."

However, whether or not these behavioral adjustments by orangutan mothers classify as functional teaching is still unknown. While the study's results match some criteria of the teaching definition, other criteria cannot be tested with the data set. "These findings give us a special insight into the factors that lead to the evolution of teaching," says Schuppli. "While teaching is quite rare in the animal kingdom, it occurs in widely separated species. Our study shows that these orangutans have at least some, and perhaps all, of the cognitive, ecological, and social conditions to support teaching ability."

Explore further Sex-specific social learning prepares young orangutans for adulthood

More information: Mulati Mikeliban et al, Orangutan mothers adjust their behaviour during food solicitations in a way that likely facilitates feeding skill acquisition in their offspring, Scientific Reports (2021). Journal information: Scientific Reports Mulati Mikeliban et al, Orangutan mothers adjust their behaviour during food solicitations in a way that likely facilitates feeding skill acquisition in their offspring,(2021). DOI: 10.1038/s41598-021-02901-z
Lithograph of two male paradise parrots by HC Richter, from John Goulds 1848 book The Birds of Australia. Credit: Mitchell Library

Exactly 100 years ago tomorrow, a bird that had been relegated to extinction made a comeback. The exquisitely beautiful paradise parrot was rediscovered by Cyril Jerrard, a grazier from Gayndah in Queensland's Burnett district, on December 11, 1921.

But its return was fleeting. Scattered pairs were seen around Gayndah until 1929. Some were seen around nearby Gin Gin in the 1930s. After that came only rumor and hope.

Today, the paradise parrot has the tragic status of extinct. It's the only mainland Australian bird species known to have suffered that fate since colonization.

On the 100th anniversary of the parrot's rediscovery, we might revisit the event and consider why the bird's resurrection was so brief. From that, we may gain insights into how to help the many species threatened with extinction today.

Our 'avarice and thoughtlessness'

In 1924, a few years after rediscovering the paradise parrot, Jerrard identified the reasons for its decline. "Directly by our avarice and thoughtlessness," he wrote, "and indirectly by our disturbance of the balance so nicely preserved by nature, we are undoubtedly accountable for the tragedy of this bird."

Although a grazier, he acknowledged "the most fatal change of all" was wrought by the pastoral industry.

Jerrard's collaborator in trying to save the bird, the journalist and birder Alec Chisholm, also nominated pastoralismespecially the burning of grasslandsas a main factor in the decline, along with trapping for the aviary trade and feral cats.

The first ever photograph of a paradise parrot, taken by Cyril Jerrard, March 1922. Credit: National Library of Australia

But while Jerrard and Chisholm could point out why the paradise parrot was sliding towards extinction, they were unable to do much about it. In books, newspapers and magazines, Chisholm publicized the parrot's plight and pleaded for its preservation. His pleas didn't exactly fall on deaf ears, but they were inadequate to counter a social ethos that privileged economic gain over avian loss.

Besides, ornithologists in the 1920s and 1930s had a lamentably limited repertoire of strategies to save endangered species.

On the latter issue, things have changed dramatically. We now have comprehensive scientific studies of the risks facing endangered species, and a vast array of remedial measures.

There are gaps in the science and imperfections in the conservation strategies, but there is a potential to rescue endangered species today that was lacking when the paradise parrot was rediscovered.

Lessons for the golden-shouldered parrot

Take, for example, the paradise parrot's close relative, the golden-shouldered parrot of Cape York Peninsula. Currently listed by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature as endangered, it faces threats similar to those that annihilated its southern cousin last century.

In the heartland of golden-shouldered parrot territory, pastoralists Sue and Tom Shephard are devoted to preserving the parrots on their station, as was Jerrard 100 years ago. But unlike the Gayndah grazier, the Shephards have scientific backup.

Were better equipped today to rescue species like the golden-shouldered parrot than we were a century ago. Credit: Russell McGregor

From the pioneering studies of environmental scientists in the 1990s to more recent investigations, scientists working on Cape York Peninsula have scrutinized the species' needs and advised on how to safeguard them. They place particular stress on fire management.

The birds eat seeds from several preferred grasses, which require specific fire regimes to thrive. The availability of seed affects the parrot's breeding success. Fire also helps maintain the birds' grassy woodland habitat and leaves fewer places for predators to hide.

But since European colonization, fire regimes in Australia have changed dramatically across northern Australia. It has meant the golden-shouldered parrot has less food and is more vulnerable to predators.

Chisholm in the 1920s knew fire had something to do with the paradise parrot's demise, but his writings on the topic were sketchy and vague. There was then no clear understanding of the fire ecology of this land, still less of the role of Indigenous fire regimes or willingness to learn from them.

Now, we have detailed calibrations of the type and intensity of fires needed to ensure breeding success for the golden-shouldered parrot and to minimize its loss to predators. Traditional owners of its territory, the Thaypan and Olkola peoples, collaborate with pastoralists and ecologists, linking traditional knowledge with Western science to reestablish fire regimes beneficial to the parrot.

While we're better equipped today to rescue endangered species than was the case for the paradise parrot last century, that's no cause for complacency.

Despite the superior conservation strategies and technologies now available, the drivers of extinction identified by Cyril Jerrard in the 1920sour "avarice and thoughtlessness"remain stubbornly persistent.

Male (lower) and female (upper) paradise parrots on their termite mound nest, photographed by Cyril Jerrard, March 1922. Credit: National Library of Australia

Prioritizing bird welfare

If we're to ensure the golden-shouldered parrot and other endangered species do not go the way of the paradise parrot, we need scientific strategies and technologies.

But we need more than those. Sometimes, at least, we need to subordinate avarice to avian welfare.

For that, we need to connect, emotionally and ethically, with the birds around us. Birds must matter to usnot merely in an abstract or objectified fashion but as beings of intrinsic worth.

That's what Chisholm was getting at in his 1922 book, Mateship with Birds, the concluding chapter of which was titled "The Paradise Parrot Tragedy." In the lavish language then fashionable among nature writers, he urged readers to "dispute the dangerous idea that a thing of beauty is a joy for ever in a cage or cabinet; and disdain, too, the lopsided belief that the moving finger of civilisation must move on over the bodies of 'the loveliest and the best' of Nature's children."

He and Jerrard lacked the tools and technologies to avert the paradise parrot's tragedy, but not an appreciation of our moral responsibility to try to do so. We now have the tools and technologies, but our moral compass seems as fickle as ever.

Explore further Parrot poachers striking while the market's hot

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
A Batman River loach, the species lost to science since 1974 was recently rediscovered in southeast Turkey. It is the first fish to be rediscovered on Shoal and Re:wilds top 10 most wanted lost fishes list. Credit: Re:wild

Turkish ichthyologists have rediscovered populations of the critically endangered Batman River loach in two streams in southeast Turkey, the first time the tiny fish has been seen since 1974, and the first species rediscovered on Shoal and Re:wild's top 10 most wanted lost fishes list, which launched in June 2021.

"When I first heard about the Search for the Lost Fishes project, I was very happy," said Cuynet Kaya, associate professor with Recep Tayyip Erdogan University. "Moreover, two of the 10 most wanted fish species were distributed in my country. It is a very different feeling when you see naturalists from foreign countries caring about an endemic species in your country and making efforts to save it. As a freshwater fish taxonomist, I thought that I should do my best for this project, and fortunately our efforts resulted in finding the first lost endemic and critically endangered Batman River loach."

After learning about the Search for Lost Fishes, Kaya and Munevver Oral, a research fellow with Recep Tayyip Erdogan University, set out to search for the small yellow-and-brown striped fish which is the smallest loach species in the Middle East, and smaller than any loach species found in Europe. The tiny critter, growing up to 1.4 inches (or 36 millimeters) long, was once distributed around streams and tributaries of the Batman River, which is thought to take its name not from the caped-crusader, but from the nearby Bati Raman mountain.

Expedition teams have searched the river underneath the historic Malabadi bridge and the lower parts of the Batman River, where the fish was first discovered, many times in the decades since the Batman River loach's last sighting, without success. After analyzing possible locations where the Batman River loach could survive, Kaya and Oral instead focused their search on the Sarim Stream, which is upstream of the Batman Dam. In October and November 2021, the team visited the stream and other headwaters of the Batman River, which are shallow, rocky and fast-flowing, the preferred habitat of the fish.

Kaya and Oral searched the streams using tight-weave nets that prevented the Batman River loach from slipping through. They found 14 fish in the Sarim Stream and another nine in the Han Stream.

Kaya and Oral said the population of the loach seems steady, but they are concerned about the effects of pollution, drought, and invasive species, and stressed that further study is needed to get a clearer understanding of the species' total distribution.

"When we launched the Search for the Lost Fishes, we hoped that we would have the opportunity to celebrate days like this," said Mike Baltzer, executive director of Shoal. "There are so many lost and threatened fish and we are so happy that this little loach has been found, and hopefully we can now secure its future. This is the first species of Lost Fishes that has been rediscoveredhopefully the first of many."

Populations of the Batman River loach nosedived after the construction of the Batman Dam in Turkey between 1986 and 1999, leading some scientists to fear it may have become extinct. Construction of the Batman Dam may have caused populations of the species to fall and, when Kaya and Oral sampled areas downstream of the dam, where the species was recorded in 1974, they were unable to find any individuals. The species' habitat is now fragmented due to the dam, and the fish can no longer move downstream.

"We have searched for this fish for many years. It is obviously very rare, as it has not been found in the original locations that it was previously recorded," said Jorg Freyhof, Europe's leading ichthyologist and expert on these fishes, and who is co-authoring a research paper with Kaya about the rediscovery. "We even doubted that it existed. Cuneyt made massive efforts to finally confirm its existence. Its finding is a sign of hope, that this species has survived despite everything that has been done to kill the river."

Shoal and Re:wild launched the Search for Lost Fishes with in June 2021, in a bid to encourage people to look for species that have fallen off the radar, so that conservation programs can be put in place to bring them back from the brink of extinction.

Shoal

Shoal is a global collaborative initiative to halt the extinction and recover populations of the most threatened freshwater species in the wild. Freshwater species are going extinct faster than their marine or terrestrial cousins, and almost one in three of those alive today could soon disappear, never to return. There is an urgent need for determined action, and Shoal is building a strong community of partners that will work together to give critical attention, escalate support, and accelerate and intensify the action that is required to stem the tide of extinction and recover endangered species populations throughout the Earth's freshwaters.

Shoal's Search for the Lost Fishes project highlights more than 300 freshwater fish species that haven't been recorded in over a decade, but which are yet to be declared Extinct by the IUCN Red List. By promoting the species, Shoal hopes that they will be rediscovered, allowing for robust conservation projects to be implemented to bring them back from the brink of extinction.

Explore further US formally removes Colorado River fish's endangered status

Provided by Shoal
Credit: Unsplash/CC0 Public Domain

Like the dark side of the moon, what you cannot see you cannot know. The same holds for floodplains.

Floodplains have long been recognized as an important habitat for a variety of plant and animal life, but what has been known about them is literally above the waterline. Little was previously known about the physical properties that allowed for such biotic diversity.

In a recent collaborative effort by Kyoto University, Hokkaido University, and the Colorado State University led by Hiromi Uno, interesting dynamics were observed during and after seasonal flooding on the Butokamabetsu River floodplain in northern Japan. The combination of the natural flow patterns of rivers and the complex geomorphology of the floodplain supported diverse aquatic biota there.

Of course, going underwater in diving gear just after snow and ice melt in Hokkaido, Japan, is not especially practical as a method of research.

"Getting to the field site was logistically very difficult," notes Uno, "and the dynamic day-by-day changes in the flood environment also made the study both challenging and interesting."

Rather, Uno and her team investigated the role of the flow dynamics during and after the snowmelt flood which had shaped the post-flood aquatic communities. Intensive fieldwork and a 2019 flood-recession survey yielded data in flow dynamics, water chemistry, and animal responses in the floodplain, located in the Hokkaido University Uryu Experimental Forest.

As highly dynamic ecosystems, floodplains are water bodies formed by fluvial processes such as channel migration. Some of these channels are permanently, periodically, or never connected to the river or mainstream.

The team's findings reveal that seasonal changes cause extensive floods as well as the expansion and contraction of river channels. These allow for spatial and temporal changes to aquatic habitats for a diverse range of animals, such as amphibians, fish, benthos, and plankton.

These results support the team's hypothesis that the observed changes give rise to the distinct responses and adaptations of each biological group to the hydrological dynamics during flood recessions, which in turn give rise to the diversity seen in aquatic communities.

Borrowing from an ancient proverb, a flood may be a crisis for the danger it poses, but it could also present valuable opportunities.

"People generally do not like floods, but some animals are different," says Hiromi Uno, who suggests floods may be an essential part of many biotic communities.

The research was published in Freshwater Biology.

Explore further Flood hazards: Vermont and Colorado as case studies

More information: Hiromi Uno et al, Spatially variable hydrological and biological processes shape diverse postflood aquatic communities, Freshwater Biology (2021). Hiromi Uno et al, Spatially variable hydrological and biological processes shape diverse postflood aquatic communities,(2021). DOI: 10.1111/fwb.13862
Credit: ICFO/ G. Munoz

Almost 80 years after Scottish botanist Robert Brown described the continuous random motion of microscopic particles in a fluid, Albert Einstein provided a theoretical foundation for this observation. Since then, scientists have discovered systems that deviate substantially from the laws of Brownian motion. Such deviations are referred to as anomalous diffusion and occur in a wide range of systems, ranging from the transport of molecules in the nucleus to animal foraging strategies and stock market fluctuations.

Over time, scientists developed various methods for understanding anomalous diffusion using classical statistics. However, advances in machine learning recently gave birth to more sophisticated tools, with data-based methods that characterize anomalous diffusion from single trajectories.

Now, researchers supported by the EU-funded NOQIA, OPTOlogic and ComplexSwimmers projects have carried out the first objective comparison of traditional and novel methods used to decode anomalous diffusion in various realistic conditions. The results were published in the journal Nature Communications.

The challenge

To compare the different methods, the research team gathered the scientific community and organized an open competition called the Anomalous Diffusion (AnDi) challenge. Participating teams applied their algorithms to a common data set, including diverse conditions.

The AnDi challenge consisted of three tasks. The first task entailed inferring the anomalous diffusion exponent, the second required participants to classify the underlying diffusion model and the final one involved trajectory segmentation. Each task was then divided into three subtasks corresponding to the trajectory dimensions: 1D, 2D and 3D.

According to the study, although no particular method performed the best across all scenarios, machine learning-based approaches surpassed conventional methods for all tasks. "For each dimension, we could identify a group of methods with comparable performance that greatly improve the precision of the anomalous diffusion exponent with respect to the baseline provided by the classical estimation of the MSD," the study authors write. MSD stands for mean squared displacement. "These approaches were all based on machine learning, so we can infer that machine-learning-based methods can go beyond classical statistics, probably because they can extract from the trajectories of complex models some information that is not easily assessed by classical statistics."

The study's achievements highlight the importance of community-based efforts in the quest to advance science. In the hope that their effort will be extended to reach a larger consensus, the research team has built an interactive tool for storing data sets and the results of the challenge. Scientists can benchmark new methods according to the challenge's rules and compare scores with those of other challenge participants. The AnDi challenge will remain open permanently, with continuous updates of performance improvements on demand.

Senior author Dr. Carlo Manzo commented on the study's findings in a news release: "The results of this study further highlight the central role that anomalous diffusion has in defining biological functions at multiple scales while revealing insight into the current state of the field and providing a benchmark for future developers." Dr. Manzo is a visiting scientist at NOQIA (NOvel Quantum simulatorsconnectIng Areas) and OPTOlogic (Optical Topologic Logic) projects coordinator Institute of Photonic Sciences, Barcelona. The ComplexSwimmers (Biocompatible and Interactive Artificial Micro- and Nanoswimmers and Their Applications) project is coordinated by the University of Gothenburg in Sweden.

Explore further Challenging Einstein's picture of Brownian motion

More information: Gorka Munoz-Gil et al, Objective comparison of methods to decode anomalous diffusion, Nature Communications (2021). Journal information: Nature Communications Gorka Munoz-Gil et al, Objective comparison of methods to decode anomalous diffusion,(2021). DOI: 10.1038/s41467-021-26320-w
Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain

Research in Bangladesh reported in the International Journal of Social Entrepreneurship and Innovation suggests that social entrepreneurship increased there during the COVID-19 pandemic. Areas that benefited from this activity were primarily in food, healthcare, employment, and education, the team writes. They suggest that managers should focus on these four sectors when we are faced with the next major crisis.

Entrepreneurs by definition create and endeavor to profit from novel business ventures, there is a well-known element of innovation associated with entrepreneurship. Commonly, those who are successful evaluate an emerging set of circumstances that might require a novel response, service or product and plan, act on those plans, and re-evaluate their impact and the whole process and ultimately offer something that the consumers want or need.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, lockdowns, social distancing, the closure of business, and, of course, the very sickness and deaths wrought by the disease, there has been, for many, little opportunity for entrepreneurship. For others, however, they have risen to the enormous challenges the pandemic has presented. Moreover, given the problems so many people have faced during the pandemic, the notion of more altruistic endeavors have come to the fore. The social entrepreneur who hopes to solve a societal problem by offering a novel product or service is the champion needed in many areas of society where the focus is solving the problem rather than worrying about profit margins and the fiscal bottom line.

Work by others in 2020 had already shown how active and swift social entrepreneurs could be in a time of crisis. The new work from S.M. Sadrul Huda of the North South University, and Syeda Raisa Maliha of Re-think, Re-search, in Dhaka, Bangladesh, demonstrates how in the midst of a crisis our inner humanity emerges. The team delves into the details of some extraordinary entrepreneurial activities in Bangladesh carried out by social entrepreneurs as we live through the pandemic. Among the entrepreneurial endeavors are efforts to provide protective gear and food to the poor, employment opportunities for rickshaw pullers, free online education, free laptops for students, shopping and home delivery of groceries, supplying oxygen cylinders, as well as the use of various digital tools and services such as PeaceMaker Studio, iFarmer, and Shuttle.

More information: S.M. Sadrul Huda et al, Rise of social entrepreneurship during COVID-19 pandemic, International Journal of Social Entrepreneurship and Innovation (2021). S.M. Sadrul Huda et al, Rise of social entrepreneurship during COVID-19 pandemic,(2021). DOI: 10.1504/IJSEI.2021.119294
Valeria Boldosova. Credit: Riikka Kalmi

With the increasing digitalization in manufacturing industries, companies start to integrate big data analytics into business processes and sell smart services. However, people tend to resist change, remain skeptical about unknown products and technologies and avoid new ways of doing work. According to Valeria Boldosova's doctoral dissertation at the University of Vaasa, Finland, using deliberate storytelling in the workplace might help to deal with these problems.

"My doctoral research is inspired by the real-world challenges that managers face with and in the dissertation, I provide practical guidance to companies on how to sell more and how to adopt new technologies," says Valeria Boldosova.

Use storytelling to deal with employees who resist technological change

According to Boldosova's research, introducing new technology to employees can be difficult, especially if it is business analytics driven by big data. Employees lack the awareness of why the technological change is happening, fail to understand how it will affect their jobs and what are the benefits, feel threatened by a novel technology and do not trust it. This prevents companies from maximizing the business potential of big data.

Boldosova suggests that to improve the attitudes of employees toward analytics and increase its use among employees, managers should create and spread positive stories.

"I strongly encourage managers to use storytelling when steering an organization through internal technological change. As a result of successful storytelling activities, companies can observe up to 80% increase in analytics use among employees," Boldosova writes in her dissertation.

Do your employees struggle with interpreting big data? Turn numbers into stories

Nowadays, everyone speaks about the business potential of big data, however, extracting value from complex technical data can be challenging to nontechnical experts. Employees hesitate to use the analytics technology because they find it difficult to translate data into actionable insights and instead of relying on hard data they prefer to use intuition. According to Boldosova's dissertation, storytelling helps to make sense of technical data, reduces the perceived complexity and gives employees the confidence to use analytics in daily work.

"Managers should build their stories around the analytical dashboards and put numbers into a business context so that employees understand which customer problems analytics solves. At the end of the day, people can forget numbers, but stories they remember. Stories can be more effective during training than a technical document and it is a great way to educate existing employees instead of hiring expensive data scientists," suggests Boldosova.

Storytelling is a secret weapon that helps to close more deals

Boldosova's dissertation also reveals that storytelling can help manufacturing companies to sell digitally-enabled smart services, like remote condition monitoring and predictive maintenance, to customers. She points out that manufacturers often struggle with selling smart services because customers tend to have a product-oriented mindset and are reluctant to pay for what they cannot touch. Customers do not recognize the practical value of new services and have security and privacy concerns due to high levels of digitalization.

"Storytelling can help sales managers to change conservative customer minds toward data-driven services and increase service sales," says Boldosova.

"Stories supported by the reference customer data demonstrate how analytics solves real-life problems of existing customers and help prospective customers see the practical value of a service. Stories paint a positive picture of a trustworthy service provider, reduce uncertainty and help to persuade a customer to buy from you," she concludes.

In her interdisciplinary dissertation, M.Sc. (Econ.) Valeria Boldosova combines insights from information systems, marketing, linguistics, psychology and neuroscience and explains how companies can influence the behavior of employees and customers through stories.

Boldosova conducted her research in the Finnish offices of international large organizations in the energy sector, industrial automation field and sheet metal processing industry. Boldosova's dissertation builds on four articles published in high-quality international scholarly venues and her research material consists of ethnographic observations from 55 events, 78 interviews, over 300 documents and 130 pages of fieldwork notes.

Explore further Co-worker interventions can moderate customer sexual harassment in service industry

More information: Boldosova, Valeria (2021). Facts tell, but stories sell : The power of storytelling in influencing human behavior toward big data analytics and smart services: Boldosova, Valeria (2021). Facts tell, but stories sell : The power of storytelling in influencing human behavior toward big data analytics and smart services: osuva.uwasa.fi/handle/10024/13159
This graph shows the results of two experiments on the lead-208 isotope in gray along with four models used to interpret the results in red and green. The take-home message here is that no single model can reproduce both experiments. Credit: Michigan State University

Uncertainty is part of life. There's just no escaping it, even in a science as precise as nuclear physics.

While scientists work to develop ideas and experiments to minimize that uncertainty, they mustn't forget about it, said Michigan State University's Witold Nazarewicz. To that end, he and collaborators in Germany and Italy published a reminder of sorts in the journal Physical Review Letters.

"It's important to remember that experimental measurements and theoretical models must be accompanied by error estimates," said Nazarewicz, John A. Hannah Distinguished Professor of Physics and chief scientist at the Facility for Rare Isotope Beams, or FRIB. "And things can be understood better when you consider those uncertainties."

Here, Nazarewicz is referring to many discussions following the successful outcome of the highly anticipated Lead Radius Experiment at the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility in Virginia. The experiment was working to deduce the neutron size of a lead atom's core, or nucleus, through a measurement of a tiny left-right asymmetry in electron scattering.

This experimentknown as PREX, which rhymes with "T. rex"looked at a lead nucleus with 82 protons and 126 neutrons. The P in PREX comes from lead's abbreviation on the periodic table, Pb.

Scientists knew that this isotope or version of lead would have a "neutron skin" because it has more neutrons than protons. That is, the neutrons would stick out ever so slightly farther than the protons.

What the early theoretical analysis of PREX result has suggested, though, is that this skin is a few quadrillionths of an inch thicker than many scientists had expected. And, again through the work of theorists, this teeny tiny skin can have astronomical implications: It can be related to the size of celestial objects such as neutron stars.

Neutron stars are fascinating for many reasons, including their mind-boggling density. They are incredibly massivethe "typical" neutron star has 40% more mass than our sunand incredibly small, by star standards. You could fit about five neutron stars with the mass of seven suns between East Lansing and Ann Arbor.

And lead's unexpectedly thick neutron skin could imply that these stars are larger than expected. Not dramatically larger, but enough to send "a psychological jolt to the community," said Jorge Piekarewicz, a professor of theoretical nuclear physics at Florida State University, in an interview with Science magazine this April.

In the new paper, Nazarewicz has joined forces with collaborators Paul-Gerhard Reinhard, a professor of physics at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg in Germany, and Xavier Roca-Maza, an associate professor of physics at the University of Milan in Italy. The trio has taken a step back and analyzed the PREX results through numerous lenses provided by different theoretical models.

The researchers found that when the PREX data are explained by a theoretical model, another basic nuclear property of lead, called the dipole polarizability, cannot be reproduced. Put another way, there's not a single current model that can consistently account for what is known about properties of the lead nucleus and the PREX measurement.

One way of looking at this disconnect between theories and the PREX experiment is that the models are flawed or broken. But Nazarewicz cautioned against that interpretation.

"What we're saying is 'hold your horses,'" Nazarewicz said. "We need to understand the PREX result better before drawing far-reaching conclusions."

That is, there's some uncertainty.

In their new analysis, Nazarewicz and his colleagues paid close attention to the uncertainties or "error bars" that are part of the experiment and the models used to interpret it. When those error bars are considered, the picture that emerges is that the PREX result and models are more consistent than they initially may have appeared.

"We don't have any compelling evidence at present that neutron skins and neutron stars must be bigger than predicted by standard models of atomic nuclei. Although this may not be the most exciting outcome, it takes nothing away from the importance of the PREX result. It simply shows that it's too early to be making definitive assertions about the size of neutron skins and stars, which will require more experiments and lots of model developments," Nazarewicz said.

With FRIB coming online in spring 2022, it will also offer new avenues to explore these problems. Indeed, studies of neutron skins and neutron stars are key components of FRIB's science portfolio.

"The next generation of experiments will help." Nazarewicz said. "But, considering the current data, there is no immediate need to revisit our textbooks."

Explore further Physicists predict neutron stars may be bigger than previously imagined

More information: Paul-Gerhard Reinhard et al, Information Content of the Parity-Violating Asymmetry in Pb208, Physical Review Letters (2021). Journal information: Science , Physical Review Letters Paul-Gerhard Reinhard et al, Information Content of the Parity-Violating Asymmetry in Pb208,(2021). DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.127.232501
CAMBRIDGE  The Cambridge Central School Board of Education will take at least a month to decide whether it will appeal state Education Commissioner Betty Rosas order to retire its Indian nickname and emblem, board President Jessica Ziehm said Thursday.

In a ruling issued Nov. 29, Rosa annulled the boards July 8 vote that reversed its previous months vote to retire the Indian name, mascot, and logo. She gave the board until July 1 to comply.

Speaking to an audience of about 50 people during the boards regular monthly meeting, Ziehm said the board has four months to file an Article 78 challenge to the commissioners ruling. One member of the five-member board, Shay Price, arrived Wednesday in Antarctica for a military deployment of several months, Ziehm said. He was unable to set up connections to attend the meeting remotely.

A one-month delay will allow the board to collect information, review it, and send it to Price, Ziehm said.

All five board members must be involved, Ziehm said.

Although the board took no action Thursday, Ziehm said the decision has not been made to take no action at all. The board will work with school Superintendent Douglas Silvernell and the schools attorneys to estimate the cost of a challenge, inventory where in the school the nickname and emblem appear and the potential costs of removing them.

The board will also set up a steering committee to help the superintendent begin the process of choosing a new emblem, if necessary.

The board will share its next step and possible decision at its next regular meeting on Jan. 13, Ziehm said.

This is not our sole issue, Ziehm said. Give us time to process whether it is in the best interests of the district to challenge the ruling.

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GLENS FALLS  North Country Earth Action took a day off from sharing climate-focused messages to ask the community to do their part in controlling the spread of COVID-19.

Catherine Atherden, a member of North Country Earth Action, was joined by other group members and Queensbury Town Board member Harrison Freer as they held signs across from Glens Falls Hospital on Thursday.

They lighted signs said we heart nurses and propped up smaller lighted letters spelling out get vaccinated until dark.

Atherden said the group is usually focused on climate action and some political topics, but saw a need during the pandemic to say something else to the community.

We have a light brigade that has been mainly climate crisis focused and some political, supporting specific people, so this is a one-off. Its not something we would normally do, but we were so disheartened by the reaction in this area, Atherden said.

The climate activism group decided it was important to encourage the community to get a COVID vaccination shot as the number of cases and deaths in the area continues to rise.

Atherden also said the nurses needed a little more recognition in this time of strain on hospital staff.

My brother is a nurse and its not easy, she said. It is hard work and they must feel disheartened when every COVID case in the ICU is from an unvaccinated person.

Group member Pete Roland reflected on his gratitude for freedom of speech as Pemma Reed shared her distaste for the recent comments she has heard regarding the vaccination.

Isnt it great that we live in America? They can say what they want, but so can we, Roland remarked, pointing to the signs. Freer, Atherden, Reed and Roland, along with Diane Collins, Bernice Mennis, Lisa Adamson and Gus Myhrberg, stood in the below-freezing temperatures smiling under their masks as cars honked in support of their message.

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GLENS FALLS  The Glens Falls Police Department will welcome a new K-9 on Wednesday.

The new pup will be named in honor of the late Glens Falls Police Officer Brian J. Lashway.

The 6-month-old German shepherd, bred and raised by Norbert Safko, was selected for his service based on his high work drive as well as his personality, according to a news release.

The German shepherd will attend local K-9 schools, along with training classes and sessions, beginning in the spring.

Lashway served the department from January 2005 through July 2012. He was diagnosed with cancer while with the force, which resulted in a career-ending illness.

He died on June 27, 2017.

Officer Lashway served the city of Glens Falls with pride and we are sure the newest K-9 to our department will do the same and carry the same honor, the news release states.

The swearing-in ceremony will take place at 11 a.m. Wednesday at Heritage Hall in the Cool Insuring Arena. The event will include a remembrance for Lashway.

The ceremony is open to the public.

Patrol Officer Kirsten Lunder, the K-9 patrol handler, will be available following the ceremony for photo opportunities.

In June 2016, the Police Department re-established a K-9 unit after a 20-year absence.

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The Washington County Public Health Department reported Wednesday night that another member of the community died from COVID-19.

The individual was 85 and resided at a nursing home prior to being hospitalized with the virus, according to the county. The person had been vaccinated.

Washington County officials and the health department said they offer their thoughts and prayers to the friends, family and caretakers of the deceased resident.

The health department on Wednesday night reported 124 additional new COVID cases and 89 recoveries.

The county said 17 residents were in the hospital on Wednesday, which is seven fewer than the last news release.

Currently the health department has recorded 986 breakthrough cases, and of those eight county residents have died after being fully vaccinated.

According to New York state vaccine data, Washington County has 36,323 residents who have been fully vaccinated.

The seven-day rolling positivity rate is at 10.2%.

The county has added 73 individuals to the persons under monitoring list, bringing the total to 1,574, with 361 active cases.

Warren County

Warren County Health Services reported 56 new COVID-19 cases on Thursday and 55 recoveries. Of the new cases reported, 25 individuals have been fully vaccinated.

The county has 20 residents hospitalized, with four of them critically ill, according to the news release.

Fourteen of the individuals in the hospital are unvaccinated.

Ray Agnew, vice president of Glens Falls Hospital, reported a total of 42 COVID-19 patients currently with five individuals in the ICU.

Health Services is reportedly monitoring 537 active cases, with 513 experiencing mild illness.

The report states that 1,584 fully vaccinated residents have contracted the virus out of the 45,361 fully vaccinated individuals in the county.

As of Thursday, 76.3% of Warren County residents have received one dose of the vaccine, while 70.6% of residents have been fully vaccinated.

The seven-day rolling positivity rate is at 8.3%, higher than the 7% rate reported in the Capital Region.

Health Services reported 834 residents currently in quarantine.

Warren County continues to see a high number of cases stemming from family/household, work, and public gatherings, the news release said.

The county is strongly recommending mask-wearing and social distancing whenever possible.

Statewide

Gov. Kathy Hochul addressed the state on Thursday with an update on COVID-19 numbers.

The surge in cases should be an alarm going off, Hochul said. We know the tools to help stop the spread of this deadly virus and prevent people from getting seriously ill from COVID-19: Get vaccinated, get the booster shot, wear a mask.

On Thursday, 12,491 new positive results were recorded in the state.

Hochul reported 511 new admitted hospitalizations across the state, bringing the number to 3,498.

New York has administered 30,904,286 vaccination doses.

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Christmas parade: Registration to participate in the citys Christmas parade is underway. The parade will be held 6 p.m. Dec. 18. Individuals, clubs, groups, floats and decorated vehicles will line up by 5 p.m. at 500 London Ave. The parade will wind through city streets to proceed down Philadelphia Avenue, with a grandstand in the 100 block of Philadelphia Avenue. For more information and to register, call Brenda Ruth 609-335-1767 or email ehcparade@gmail.com.

Galloway Township

New pastor installed at Macedonia Baptist: The community is invited to the installation of the Rev. Cheryl Hicks as the first female pastor at Macedonia Baptist Church in the South Egg Harbor section of the township. The service will be held 3 p.m. Sunday. Hicks will be the sixth recorded pastor in the churchs 104-year history. Bishop John R. Gandy, of Abundant Life Center Church, will officiate. Recently retired pastor emeritus the Rev. Ernest Barnes will oversee the program. The service also will be streamed live on the churchs Facebook link.

Lower Township
The plans include new sustainability and flood resiliency designs, as well as job opportunities for Buzby and surrounding residents. Current Buzby management staff will be rehired when the $15.4 million project is completed, which is projected to be in March 2023.

Today is a great day for Buzby Homes residents, said Mayor Marty Small Sr. Over the past few decades, Buzby Homes has fallen into great disrepair with serious issues that can no longer be addressed with a Band-Aid. This project is a major step forward in strengthening our city, and we applaud the Atlantic City Housing Authority and The Michaels Organization for not only renovating Buzby Homes with the comfort of residents in mind, but for ensuring that the renovations are built to withstand the unique coastal weather challenges we experience.

While each unit is being rehabbed, at an estimated time of about three weeks, residents will be provided with either temporary relocation off-site or will be moved into a vacant unit on-site. All costs for relocation will be covered by the Housing Authority and the Michaels Organization, developers on the project.
He tried to teach the lesson of how to be good person, and he would always say, Remember what happened, Roth said.

Kohn performed her marriage ceremony to Henry Roth, she said. Of the 273 guests, most of the adults were Holocaust survivors, as Henry Roths parents were also survivors.

Vineland was one of several areas in New Jersey where many surviving Jews came after World War II to become farmers and start a new life, she said.

In 2014, Austrian artist Manfred Bockelmann gave Kohn a portrait he had done of Kohns sister Ida Rebecca, who died in the camp at age 7. It was based on the only photo Kohn had of his sister, rescued by another prisoner from Kohns mothers purse after she and Ida Rebecca were sent to the gas chambers.

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Judith Vogel, professor of mathematics at Stockton, called Kohn a remarkable teacher.
The greatest value of American elections is their influence on public affairs as the essential method of self-governance. Next best may be that they reveal and highlight characteristics and trends in the body politic.

The November election will be remembered for the broad partisan shift in New Jersey and elsewhere. But beyond the contests of parties there were two results that affirm the health of democracy and should be appreciated by nearly everyone.

One is that this election, once again most competitively fought in South Jersey, proved convincingly that while campaign spending is often a factor in outcomes, it is easily overwhelmed by other factors.

Heavy spending on Assembly and state Senate races in the 2nd District and 8th District made them the fifth and third costliest races in state history. In the 2nd  mainly Atlantic County  $7.7 million was spent. In the 8th  parts of Camden and Burlington counties along with Hammonton  $8.5 million was spent, according to the New Jersey Election Law Enforcement Commission.

That was about a third of total legislative campaign spending in the state, and the first time two legislative races have each topped $6 million in one election, said Jeff Brindle, ELEC executive director.
A.C. should ban

smoking in casinos

Mayor Marty Small should enact a citywide health emergency for Atlantic City to ban all indoor smoking on the casino floor due to the pandemic. All casino floor personnel would greatly appreciate it. Its a nightmare to work there, people drinking and smoking with no masks on. We dont know who is vaccinated or not.

William Hackett

Atlantic City

Biden is incurable

presidential disaster

Joe Bidens contentious presidency has damaged the country on several levels. His bungling and incompetent performance will undoubtedly lead to potentially serious, future consequences. His executive orders revising immigration enforcement policies, incorporating undocumented immigrants into the census, and his proclamation of pulling funds from the border wall along with disfranchising himself from the U.S. Border patrol by falsely accusing agents of whipping immigrants, have partly led to a chaotic border crisis.
Ahead Of Verdict, Parents Of Jailed Belarusian Blogger Losik Say He's 'Not Guilty Of Anything'

The parents of jailed Belarusian blogger and RFE/RL consultant Ihar Losik say they are trying to remain optimistic ahead of a court verdict expected on December 14. Losik's parents, Alyaksandr and Natallya, told RFE/RL their life is now about "believing that things will change for the better" and that their son was innocent of any charges. Losik has been in pretrial detention since June 2020, prior to the disputed presidential election widely believed to have been rigged by Belarusian autocrat Alyaksandr Lukashenka. The charges against Losik are broadly seen as politically motivated. Also, in a report issued on December 9, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) said the number of jailed journalists increased in 2021, with Belarus among top five worst countries.

INCIDENTS AND THREATS

Amnesty Launches Petition Demanding Release Of RFE/RL Journalist

Amnesty International has launched an online petition demanding the immediate release of RFE/RL freelance correspondent Vladyslav Yesypenko, who has testified that he was tortured after his arrest in March in Russian-occupied Crimea. Yesypenko, a dual Russian-Ukrainian citizen who contributes to Crimea.Realities, had worked in Crimea for five years reporting on the social and environmental situation there before being detained. Russia has sought to crush dissent in Crimea, including prosecuting journalists and human rights activists, since seizing the Ukrainian peninsula in March 2014.

Instead Of Being Released, RFE/RLs Belarusian Service Contributor Gets Another 10-Day Jail Term

Instead of being released from a detention center in Minsk after finishing a 10-day jail term, a freelance journalist for RFE/RLs Belarus Service, Andrey Kuznechyk, was handed another 10-day jail term on a controversial hooliganism charge. Relatives of Kuznechyk told RFE/RL that the journalist was supposed to be released on December 6 but remained in custody. Several hours later, they were told that he had been found guilty of hooliganism again.

Russian Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Highlights Vital Role Of Journalism In Democracy

Authoritarian leaders are undermining the media and democratic institutions at the peril of peace, Dmitry Muratov, a joint winner of the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize, said on December 9 ahead of the award ceremony in Norway's capital, Oslo. At a news conference, Muratov, editor in chief of independent Russian newspaper Novaya gazeta, said, "Lack of belief in democracy means that, with time, people turn their backs on democracy, you will get a dictator, and dictatorship leads to war."

'No Bomb Threat:' Polish Probe Into Ryanair Diversion Dismisses Belarusian Account

A Polish investigation has established that there was no bomb threat on a Ryanair plane that made an emergency landing in Minsk earlier this year, allowing Belarusian authorities to arrest opposition blogger Raman Pratasevich and his girlfriend. The National Public Prosecutor's Office, which oversaw the probe, said in a statement on December 9 that the whole situation was only an excuse to force the pilot to land in the Belarusian capital. Pratasevich and Russian citizen Sofia Sapega were arrested on May 23 when authoritarian Belarusian ruler Alyaksandr Lukashenka scrambled a military jet to escort the Ryanair passenger flight over its airspace to land in Minsk.

Russia Blocks Privacy Service Tor In Latest Move To Control Internet

Russia's media regulator has blocked the online anonymity service Tor in what is seen as the latest move by Moscow to bring the Internet in Russia under its control. Roskomnadzor announced it had blocked access to the popular service on December 8, cutting off users' ability to thwart government surveillance by cloaking IP addresses. In a blog post, the Tor Project confirmed the move, and also offered users a way to circumvent the block. Also, a Moscow court orders Google to pay more fines for failing to delete content.

'The West Turned These People's Life Into Hell': How Belarus And Russia Covered The Migration Crisis

In a sign of the two states increasingly close political ties, Belarus and Russias state-run TV crafted a single narrative to cover the illegal migration crisis on the European Unions borders: The West is to blame, and Belarus is blameless. Current Times Footage Vs. Footage examined in November 2021 just how far -- and deep -- that unified message ran.

Journalists From Bulgaria, Kazakhstan Among Winners Of State Department's Anti-Corruption Champions Award

Journalists from Kazakhstan and Bulgaria are among the winners of the U.S. State Department's 2021 Anti-Corruption Champions Award. U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken announced the annual award laureates on December 8, calling those selected  including Kazakh journalist Zhamilya Maricheva, who works for the Protenge investigative journalism project, and Bulgarian journalist Nikolay Staykov, who is a co-founder of the Anti-Corruption Fund investigative group  "individuals who have demonstrated leadership, courage, and impact in preventing, exposing, and combating corruption.

Editor Of Belarusian Media Outlet Detained After Apartment Search

The editor of a Belarusian media outlet that has covered protests against the Belarusian regime and reported on journalists who have been labeled extremist was arrested on December 8, following a search of his apartment. Syarhey Satsuk, the chief editor of the Ej.by online news outlet, was detained and will be sent to a pretrial detention center, the Belarusian Association of Journalists (BAJ) said. The ej.by website also was blocked.

Satsuk was detained after the search during which his phones and laptop computers were confiscated and after interrogation by the Investigative Committee in an old case related to an alleged bribe.

Russia Blasted Over 'Unprecedented' Pressure On Jailed Journalist's Lawyers

Human rights and media-freedom watchdogs are calling on Russia to stop prosecuting media lawyers and allow reporters to receive proper legal assistance, as the authorities are "stepping up their harassment" of journalists via the controversial "foreign agents" law. Amnesty International and Reporters Without Borders (RSF) issued the pleas this week after one of the lawyers defending Ivan Safronov, a jailed investigative reporter charged with treason, fled Russia to Georgia late last month.

'Unlawful Intrusion:' Kazakh Activists' Mobile Devices Infected With Pegasus Spyware

Amnesty International says four Kazakh activists have had their mobile devices infected with Pegasus spyware in what it said further shows that the malicious software is being used by governments to try to "silence social movements and crush dissent." Israels NSO Group became the center of controversy after an international media consortium in July reported that its Pegasus spyware was used in attempts to hack smartphones belonging to more than a dozen current or former world leaders, journalists, human rights activists, business, and executives, in some 50 countries.

AWARDS: RFE/RL Journalists Recognized for Investigative Work in Ukraine, Bulgaria, and Moldova
WASHINGTONReporters from across RFE/RLs services were awarded top honors this week for their work uncovering corruption in their home countries.

On December 7th, Natalie Sedletska, a journalist for RFE/RLs Ukrainian Service, was recognized for her reporting for the program Schemes: Corruption in Details, receiving DC-based think tank Transatlantic Leadership Networks inaugural Freedom of the Media award. Schemes, an RFE/RL program dedicated to investigating and exposing high-level corruption that was created in the wake of the 2014 Maidan Revolution, was previously awarded the top prize in Ukraines National Investigative Journalism Competition this past September. Sedletska dedicated her award to her team of investigators at Schemes, additionally bringing attention to the case of RFE/RL journalist Vladyslav Yesypenko, jailed since March 2021 in Russia-occupied Crimea:

This award is an accomplishment that would not be possible without my colleagues from the Schemes investigative team, supported by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. Also I want to use this opportunity to remember my colleague Vladyslav Yesypenko, RFERL contributor, and another dozen reporters who are currently in jail in Crimea, occupied by Russia. Journalism is not a crime.

Bulgarias Anti-Corruption Fund honored the work of three investigative journalists from RFE/RLs Bulgarian Service at its annual Red Line ceremony dedicated to recognizing journalism exposing corruption in Bulgaria on December 9  International Anti-Corruption Day. Boris Mitovs in-depth and consistent efforts to uncover the dependencies of judiciary, executive and legislative power, were recognized with the Supreme Court Award. Earlier this year, Mitov investigated the rapid rise in wealth of former Bulgarian politician Delyan Peevski, amid allegations of corruption and money laundering. The Fund also awarded Genka Shikerova a Special Award for Investigative Journalism, for her reporting in February on the systematic deforestation of Bulgarian forests, while Damyana Veleva was honored in the young journalist category for her work in revealing that more than 400 villages in Bulgaria have not had regulated water supplies since the 1950s,. The ceremony can be re-watched on Facebook Live.

Also on December 9, Moldovas National Agency for Integrity (ANI) awarded RFE/RLs Moldovan Service a Diploma of Gratitude for supporting the fight against corruption through clear and thorough reporting. Part of Moldovas renewed efforts to tackle corruption, the ANI was recently revamped to act as a check on the wealth of top public servants and politicians. The agency applauded the service for the clarity of its reports on the changes made to the laws regarding the National Agency of Integrity, conflict of interest, and integrity [of public officials].

-- Erica Stefano
Should Facebook and Twitter ban postings recommending certain drugs for the treatment of Covid, but not endorsed by Dr. Tony Fauci? The CDC? The government?

Recently Dr. Fauci, the face of the Biden administration's war on Covid, told the world, if they criticize Tony Fauci, "they are really criticizing science, because I represent science."

Fauci's claim is not new. It is a claim of "eminent doctors" over the centuries to silence any doctor  or lesser person  who dared to propose alternate treatments to those endorsed by prevailing "medical science."

In 1537 in France, the masters of the medical profession were the physicians of the teaching faculty of the University of Paris. They were certain they were the medical "science" of their day. Gun shots were to be treated by pouring boiling oil on the wound. If the arm or leg received a serious wound, it was to be amputated as quickly as possible. To stop bleeding, you sealed the blood vessel with a white hot iron.

In those days, amputations and cautery were considered beneath the physician's dignity. They were left to surgeons, or to their barber assistants. One such barber was Ambrose Pare. He served France as a military surgeon in its 1537 campaign in Italy.
In her testimony, Farmer recalled the unwanted physical contact making her feel like she "just wanted the weekend to be over.  I wanted to be done with it.

She added: All these experiences made me feel like they had a very different interest in me."

Asked by a prosecutor at the start of her testimony if she saw anyone in the courtroom who had ever given her a massage, Farmer identified Maxwell, who was sitting at the defense table looking at Farmer.

Farmer, now 42, took the stand using her true identity  a departure from the decision by three other accusers with similar stories who testified under pseudonyms or first names only to protect their privacy.

Two of the others who testified said they were just 14 when the abuse started and that Maxwell sometimes participated in the encounters.

Farmer testified that she met Epstein at age 16 on a 1996 trip to New York City to visit her older sister, who was working for him at his Manhattan mansion. When they visited him at the home, he seemed very friendly and down to earth, and even offered to mentor her, she said.
A pair of South Dakota Mines students have won the eighth annual Butterfield Cup. The competition is part of the universitys CSC 340 software engineering course and has a history of turning student ideas into start-up companies. This years contest challenged students to build better software for connecting employers with college students.

The 2021 Butterfield Cup winners, computer science majors Haakon Anderson and Chami Senarath, built the program Pipeline for Recruiters, which allows employers to create profiles and track potential hires to compare and contrast strengths of various applicants with their internal team.

Its a college-to-corporate website that helps recruiters build the pipeline for potential new hires, said Senarath. We got to learn a lot about the back-end development and databases and had fun putting our own ideas and spin on the front-end, Anderson adds.

The Butterfield Cup is an annual competition created by local entrepreneurs to recognize the best mobile app or software produced by a team of Mines students in one semester. Previous winners have gone on to become finalists in the Governors Giant Vision Competition.

Senarath and Anderson say they may turn the experience and knowledge gained in this class into a separate business idea they have for the next Mines CEO Business Plan Competition, the Governors Giant Vision Awards and other contests. Using the skills and knowledge we have gained here we think we have a strong plan for a potential business, said Senarath.

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Hotel Alex Johnson could have a medical cannabis dispensary in what's now the Alex Johnson Mercantile on St. Joseph Street.

The Rapid City Planning Commission unanimously approved a conditional use permit for the location and for 610 St. Joseph Street next door, and 12 others during its Thursday morning meeting.

Community Development Director Vicki Fisher said her staff would not support side-by-side dispensaries downtown when the state awarded its permits.

"We recommend the stipulation that only one dispensary be allowed," Fisher said. "Depending upon which location they choose, if they should be fortunate enough to pull a license, we would support either location, but only one."

Each location needs a conditional use permit as it's within 500 feet of a park, which is Main Street Square, and a church.

The commission denied only one of 16 conditional use permits for a dispensary by a 6-3 vote. Commissioners Erik Braun, John Herr and Eirik Heikes voted no on the denial.

The permit was for a proposed location on the east side of Tower Road and south of the intersection with Skyline Drive. Access would have been gained through Highway 16. Long range planner Kip Harrington said the Department of Transportation would monitor the access and advise if a turn lane was necessary.

"It is topographically impossible to get access (to the location) from Tower Road," he said.

Fisher said if the commission voted to continue the item for soil testing, it would, in essence, be denying the request since those pursuing a state medical cannabis license need to have applications in by Dec. 31 for the state lottery.

Staff recommended approval of the item, but commissioners had concerns over the topography.

The commission unanimously voted to continue a planned development overlay to allow a medical cannabis dispensary at 2130 North LaCrosse Street.

Fisher said staff saw the legally required conditional use permit notice was not posted continuously at the location, so the city has no choice but to continue the item to its Jan. 6 meeting. However, since it would be past the state's Dec. 31 deadline to submit applications for the license lottery, she anticipates the applicant pulling its application.

She recommended that the commission not deny the application since staff would be in support of the location, but it needs to meet the notice requirement.

The commission also spent considerable time on a rezoning request from general commercial to office commercial south of Omaha Street and west of Cambell Street. The 7.92 acres would be used for three 60-unit affordable housing apartment buildings.

Kyle Hibbs with Indigo Design on behalf of Blue Line Development said the target tenants include young and elderly residents.

He said rent would target between 30% and 60% of the area median income. Rent would be adjusted to the income of the family and how many units are in the family. One-bed, one-bath units would be between $364 and $794 a month; two-bed, two-bath units would range from $427 to $942 a month; and three-bed, two-bath units would range from $501 to about $1,100 a month.

Staff changed its recommendation from its original denial to approve with a required planned development designation.

The commission approved the rezoning request 7-2.

 Contact Siandhara Bonnet at siandhara.bonnet@rapidcityjournal.com 

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Noem has garnered national attention for her relatively hands-off approach to the COVID-19 pandemic, in which she pushed to keep businesses open, encouraged visitors to come to the state, and railed against vaccine mandates.

Republicans were the most supportive of Noem, a first-term GOP governor, with 74.5% of Republicans strongly or somewhat in approval of her performance on five topics. Independents were less supportive, with 66.4% strongly or somewhat supportive. Among Democrats, who showed strong disapproval of Noems performance, 24.7% were strongly or somewhat in approval of her performance, with just over 65% of Democrats somewhat or strongly disapproving.

Noems performance ratings in the October 2021 poll rose in comparison with a similar News Watch/Chiesman Center poll conducted in October 2020, near the height of the COVID-19 pandemic in South Dakota. At that time, 53.8% of respondents overall were strongly or somewhat approving of Noems performance, while 40.9% were strongly or somewhat disapproving.

On her handling of the economy, 69.4% of respondents in the 2021 poll strongly or somewhat approved of her performance; 65.6% strongly or somewhat approved of her performance on managing the pandemic; 72.0% strongly or somewhat approved of her focus on problems specific to South Dakota; and 61.6% strongly or somewhat approved of her upholding of the integrity of the office.

Noem did not fare as well on her handling of marijuana legalization, with only 39.2% of respondents strongly or somewhat in approval, and 17.8% somewhat disapproving and 33.4% strongly disapproving of her performance.

Emily Wanless, a political science professor at Augustana University in Sioux Falls, said Noem may appear increasingly strong among her supporters due to her higher national profile, which has brought attention to South Dakota. Noem has also had more time in office to show supporters she is willing to lead, Wanless said.

I think shes established herself as an executive in the state, Wanless said. If youre more comfortable with someone as the decision maker, and shes made it clear she is going to be the decision maker, theres a rallying-around-the-flag effect.

Wanless said Noem also benefits from being a Republican in a state with supermajority GOP control in the Legislature and all statewide offices being held by Republicans.

That level of support, Wanless said, has likely made Noem feel comfortable attacking or mocking people or groups that disagree with her, such as in a recent Tweet where she encouraged vegans to eat meat on World Vegan Day and posted a photo of herself with a gun and a dead pheasant.

You can do that in a state like South Dakota, where you have a supermajority of party support, said Wanless, who reviewed the poll results. She doesnt have to rely on appeasing the vegans, not even a handful; she doesnt need any of them.

Yet Wanless said divisive or mocking statements by the governor only add to the binary polarization sweeping politics in America.

Its not just that people are disagreeing on issues, she said. Polarization is taking shots at somebodys morals, values and integrity, and for some reason, that resonates with her crowd to make these politicized statements and stances.
Snow blanketed western South Dakota on Thursday night and Friday, bringing much needed precipitation to the region.

Fridays snow was a rarity in that it wasnt accompanied by wind, according to meteorologist Scott Rudge with the National Weather Service in Rapid City.

Its coming down fairly straight and accumulating fairly evenly. Its well needed, well wanted moisture, he said. Weve been collecting reports of some pretty good snow off to the south of Rapid City.

Rapid City received about 6 inches of snow, Rudge said.

Weve been talking about the drought all summer, so its much needed precipitation, he said. We are still running behind average for the year.

City crews pre-treated roads before the storm started, according to city officials. On Friday morning, Rapid City street maintenance supervisor Jeremy Cahill reported crews were giving priority attention to re-treating main lines, hills and busier intersections for icing conditions.

The Pennington County Sheriff's Office reported roads were snow-covered and slippery. A semi slipped and blocked traffic on Highway 16 temporarily, but it was reopened before 10 a.m.

The snow caused some delays on Friday morning. Rapid City Area Schools started classes two hours late, and Youth & Family Services started at 10:30 a.m. and cancelled busing for the day.

Rapid City Regional Airport and the main commercial runway remained open Friday, though travelers were advised to check road conditions and contact airlines for updates about the status of flights.

By late Friday morning, weather at the airport was clearing up and visibility was improving, according to Toni Broom, deputy airport director for Finance and Administration.

Flights are coming and going. Some are delayed. There are some cancellations, Broom said.

Precipitation varied widely throughout the Black Hills. In the Northern Hills, Spearfish reported about 1-1/2 inches and Lead-Deadwood had about 3 to 4 inches on Friday morning.

Terry Peak Ski Area received about 4 inches of snow.

We got some good snow last night and its cold so were making snow too, said Linda Derosier, Terry Peaks marketing director. Were going to probably be opening sometime next week. Were getting real close.  Were looking forward to a good Christmas.

Terry Peak also is trying to fill several positions for its upcoming ski season, Derosier said.

Counties along the southern border of South Dakota got the brunt of the snowfall, Rudge said. Fall River and Oglala Lakota counties were reporting as much as 12 to 18 inches of snow in some spots. Rudge said the Southern Hills had the best chance of keeping some snow through Christmas.

The outlook in the Black Hills indicates temperatures will be close to average for the next week or two, and no major storms are forecast.

Aside from a few snowflakes here and there, Rudge said Fridays snow is the first in Rapid City since mid-October, when the city received a little more than 3 inches of snow on Oct. 12 and about two inches on Oct. 20.

The wintery precipitation means temperatures will remain cooler in the week ahead and more precipitation is a definite maybe, Rudge said.

With all the snow we are getting right now  that warm-up we were expecting Sunday and Monday and Tuesday is going to be tempered because of the snow cover. It will not be quite as warm but still temperatures will be in the 30s to mid 40s, he said. Theres a small chance of precipitation by Wednesday.

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While the Rapid City Regional Airport and commercial runway are open, flights may still be delayed or canceled.

Airport administration said travelers should contact their airlines for current scheduled flight status Thursday morning. According to the National Weather Service, 4.1 inches of snow fell overnight in Rapid City as of 5 a.m.. The snow is expected to dissipate this afternoon.

Toni Broom, Deputy Airport Director for Finance and Administration with the airport, said in a news release that travelers should also check local road conditions and be cautious when traveling to the airport.

As of 8 a.m., Jeremy Cahill with the city's Street Department reported that crews are giving priority attention to retreating main lines, hills and collector intersections for icing conditions.

Crews pre-treated roads before the storm started Wednesday night, according to the city.

Rapid City Area Schools, meanwhile, are starting classes two hours late today.

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The Sentence Review Division of the Montana Supreme Court affirmed former Florence physician Chris Christensens 10-year prison sentence on Wednesday.

The case dates back to 2015 when Christensens Florence Clinic was raided after area pharmacists reported concerns about large opioid prescriptions issued by the doctor.

He was originally charged with 400 felonies in 2015. Those were later consolidated to 22 counts, including two charges of negligent homicide for the overdose deaths of two of his patients.

Christensen was first sentenced in February 2018 after a Ravalli County jury found him guilty of two counts of negligent homicide, nine counts of criminal endangerment and 11 counts of criminal distribution of dangerous drugs.

Ravalli County District Judge Jeffrey Langton also ordered Christensen to pay almost $26,000 to cover the cost of the jury trial.

Langton allowed Christensen to remain out of jail while his appeal to the Montana Supreme Court was heard.

The Montana Supreme Court dismissed the negligent homicide charges after finding there wasnt sufficient evidence to convict. The drug charges were affirmed.

District Judge Jason Marks sentenced Christensen to 10 years in prison on the drug charges in November 2020.

Christensen was required to turn himself in on March 26 this year to begin serving his prison term.

Christensens application for review of the sentence was heard by the Supreme Court's review panel on Nov. 4.

His attorney argued the 69-year-old Christensen should be released from incarceration for medical reasons.

The judges on the Sentence Review Division concluded that Christensens reasons for modification of his sentence were insufficient.

Both Judge Langton and Judge Marks clearly and fully stated their reasons why (Christensen) should be sentenced to prison, the decision read. Upon review of the entire record, the Sentence Review Division agrees with such reasoning.

The Ravalli Republic was unable to contact Christensens attorney.

Christensen can seek post-conviction relief or ask for parole due to medical reasons, but this was his last opportunity to reduce the sentence.

We are grateful for the Supreme Courts review panel agreeing that a prison sentence is appropriate, and hope that this will provide some closure for the victims, their families and our community, said Ravalli County Attorney Bill Fulbright.

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" " China banned export of monk fruit in 2004, so you'll rarely see the fresh fruit. But the sweetener extract is extremely popular. Eskymaks/Shutterstock

From the outside, monk fruit looks like a small brown melon no bigger than an apple. But inside, one of the world's best natural sweeteners awaits. This fruit, indigenous to southern China and northern Thailand, produces a natural sweetener with zero calories, zero sodium and zero fat that's up to 500 times sweeter than sugar.

Monk fruit has also long been used to treat illness across China. Then in 1995, it made its way to the big leagues when Procter and Gamble patented a technique to produce sweetener from the crop.

But the road from local sweetener and medicine to international phenomenon hasn't been easy for monk fruit, known as luo han guo in Mandarin Chinese. China, the main monk-fruit exporter, banned the removal of the fruit's seeds and genetic material in 2004, according to market-intelligence firm Beroe. This restriction gives the country a competitive edge, and also means those outside China may never try fresh monk fruit  but monk fruit extract is a different story.

And extract is also its most popular form. Monk fruit extract is commercially available everywhere from big box stores like Walmart to major online retailers like Amazon, and it's included in hundreds of products, including Chobani yogurt and Starbucks Double Shot Coffee.

So how did monk fruit, a member of the gourd family, become a star among sweeteners? Its story starts in the mountains of southern China.

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A Brief History of Monk Fruit

Buddhist monks in southern China's Guilin area were the first to discover luo han guo in the 13th century. This landscape, with its dense, steep mountains, ideal sunlight, and 60 to 80 percent humidity, is optimal growing grounds for monk fruit. The monks believed these gourds would guarantee long life, and the Chinese still rely on the monk fruit's health benefits to this day.

"Monk fruit is used at home for medicinal purposes," Ruixi Hu, founder of Lost Plate Food Tours, says via email. Hu grew up in Chengdu, China, and runs food tours across the country and beyond. "It is good for coughs, dry mouths, ulcers and constipation. In China, all of those symptoms are 'hot' in Chinese medicine, so monk-fruit tea 'cools' you down."

While it may be used as a sweetener, monk fruit isn't simply a sugar swap. "It has a very unique taste," Hu says. "It's a little bit sweet. It has a very earthy taste."

This subtly sweet taste pairs with health promises like zero calories, zero carbohydrates, zero sugar, low-glycemic properties, and the ability to reduce oxidative stress (an imbalance in the body of free radicals and antioxidants, according to Medical News Today.) The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) also has monk fruit on the "generally regarded as safe" list, which means there appear to be no harmful side effects  although more research is needed to understand the full health impacts, according to Healthline.

Health perks are among the many factors that make monk fruit so appealing, and that's why companies now incorporate monk fruit left and right, be it natural product sweeteners or commercially available extracts such as granules, powders and liquids.

" " Starbucks began offering Whole Earth Sweetener Companys sweetener packets with Stevia and monk fruit at 9,000 of its locations in late 2016. Starbucks

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How to Use Monk Fruit

Given China's 2004 regulations, most people outside of the country won't see monk fruit in anything but extract form. But Hu says people in China don't eat the fresh fruit either. "We never eat it, we only drink it," Hu says. "I've heard that some places in the south stew with it, but that's not very common."

Even in China, monk fruit is typically sold dried; it shares shelf space with raisins. But Hu says tea is one of few ways to use the fresh fruit; this is the same remedy they use for ailments like coughs. "You crack it open with your hands and put it into hot water and drink it," she says. "You can put the entire broken-up fruit into the hot water."

Monk fruit can also work as a sugar substitute for everything from salad dressings to sweet chocolate brownies. It's heat stable, although its unusual taste means you should plan to experiment before perfecting a monk-fruit-sweetened recipe.

NOW THAT'S INTERESTING To create monk-fruit extract, manufacturers crush the fruit to separate the juice from pulp, then process the juice into substances called mogrosides. One study in animals indicated these mogrosides may help control blood sugar levels, and another indicated they may prevent complications with diabetes, according to Medical News Today.
Construction of a 1.1 million-square-foot distribution center is underway in northern Hanover County, but the developers of the $100 million project dont yet have any tenants lined up.

The projects owners  New York-based Raith Capital Partners and Needham, Mass.-based Equity Industrial Partners  acknowledge that building a speculative warehouse of that size in this market is very unusual.

But we are optimistic because it is the way of the world right now, said Mark Reardon, a partner at Equity Industrial. Just about every day you read in the paper about [supply chain issues] and how companies are trying to get product to people faster. Theres a need.

The owners believe the distribution center, which is slated to be completed next summer, will be leased by the time it opens or shortly thereafter. Talks are underway with a couple of companies that have expressed interest in taking about half of the space, but nothing definitive yet.
Many of the Richmond areas budding, creative entrepreneurs  makers of fashion, art and food  are still looking to rebuild from the COVID-19 pandemic.

Some are putting forth their work at a series of pop-up markets called Holiday Villages organized by the Richmond Night Market in partnership with Richmonds economic development office and Brok Productions.

The open-air markets are held in different locations across the city. One market was held Dec. 4 at Brookland Park Boulevard and North Avenue in North Richmond. Another happened Dec. 11 at Forest Hill Park in South Richmond. The last markets of the year are scheduled from 1 to 6 p.m. Saturday and Sunday at the 17th Street Market in Shockoe Bottom.

One of the goals of the holiday pop-up markets is to give Richmond-area residents a chance to shop for local and unique products, said Adrienne Cole Johnson, a co-founder of the Richmond Night Market, a nontraditional business and creativity incubator that organizes pop-up markets.

We pride ourselves on having a unique mix of vendors  anything from jewelry to ceramics, stationery, candles  things for yourself, your house, your loved ones, Johnson said.
The board of directors at Lee Enterprises, which owns the Richmond Times-Dispatch and nine other daily newspapers in Virginia, on Thursday rejected a New York hedge funds unsolicited offer to buy the company.

Lee Chairman Mary Junck said Alden Global Capitals $24-per-share offer grossly undervalued Lee and failed to recognize the strength of its business, especially its fast-growing digital news platform.

We remain confident in our ability to create significant value as an independent company, Junck said in a news release.

Lee also reported Thursday a $5.3 million fiscal fourth-quarter profit, rebounding from a $1.3 million loss a year ago, as the number of digital-only subscribers at the company grew 65% to 402,000.

A representative for Alden did not immediately respond to a request for comment Thursday.

The rejection marks a significant setback for Alden, which is looking to make Lee the latest in a series of acquisitions intended to consolidate the newspaper industry.
Harrison, of Bethesda, Md.-based C.A. Harrison Companies LLC, has to correct the buildings exterior violations no later than June 8. Harrison did not return a request for comment.

Wednesdays court decision is a favorable step toward bringing this property into compliance and removing the dangers associated with the old Ramada eyesore that has plagued the City for some time, City Attorney Anthony Williams said in a statement.

Despite Wednesdays decision, the legal battle isnt over. According to the city, Harrison is expected to appeal.

Petersburg will continue to use all available legal means to ensure that this dilapidated building is no longer a burden upon and danger to the citizens of Petersburg, Petersburg Mayor Sam Parham said in a statement.

In June, Williams filed a 267-page complaint in Petersburg Circuit Court seeking to have the former hotel be declared a public nuisance and an unsafe structure. The complaint sought for Harrison to address the citys concerns or clear the path for the city to demolish the building.

The lawsuit is slated for trial in July.
Makola Abdullah, president of Virginia State, said hes still waiting to find out how the funds will be directed  they could go toward building costs, academic programs or financial aid. The universitys biggest need, he said, is its students.

We will always make sure we find a way to increase financial aid to students, Abdullah said. But were really excited about the announcement.

Northams budget also would allocate an additional $40 million over two years to increase affordability at VSU and Norfolk State.

Giving an extra $20 million to VUU and Hampton represents the first time Virginia has provided funding for private HBCUs.

Students who attend private schools can get state assistance in the form of a Tuition Assistance Grant. On Thursday, Northam proposed raising the maximum grant from $4,000 to $5,000. When Northam took office, it was $3,400.

VUU students got $1.5 million in TAG in 2019, and Hamptons got $2 million. The average college student who received TAG in 2018 got $3,000.

Everyone wants to go to college these days, said Hakim Lucas, president of VUU. But not everyone can afford to do so.
After renovations, Celebrate RVA was heading toward a March 2020 opening when COVID-19 shuttered its plans. Mattingly said the group wasnt able to host parties, but it pivoted and instead used the space as a virtual learning facilitation center for about 20 RPS students who needed a safe place to do online learning while their parents went to work.

During the bleakness of the pandemic, that happy space became known as birthday school.

Meanwhile, Mattingly continued delivering birthday bags to homes. Empowering parents who need some help is a correlating benefit, she said.

When youre deciding between the next meal or a kids birthday, you have to pick the meal, she said.

Within the bags are all of the things you need [and] you get to be the hero in your kids eyes because thats not what were here for, she added. We just want celebration to be in and alive in the community.
Like the Talibans long campaign to get Americans out of Afghanistan, Iran and its proxies have battled to get the U.S. out of Iraq and the broader Middle East.

Iran still pursues a vision of ejecting us, he said. And they see the principal battleground for that as being in Iraq. And I believe they are under the view that they can increase friction in Iraq to where we will leave.

Iran, he said, believes that campaign wont affect the nuclear negotiations that were long stalled but are now restarting. But, he said, I think its a dangerous position for the Iranians to maintain, because I think theyre not going to be able to decouple those two things.

McKenzie said that as NATO begins to expand its presence in Iraq as planned, the U.S. will refine its force there. And the total U.S. force presence will depend on future agreements with Iraqs government.

The U.S. troops in Syria, currently numbering about 900, will continue to advise and assist Syrian rebel forces in the fight against IS, McKenzie said. He said its not clear how much longer that will be necessary but said, I think we are measurably closer than we were a couple of years ago. I still think we have a ways to go.
Speaking of Virginias gun deaths, Northam said: Whether those deaths are homicides, suicides or accidents, every last one of them is a tragedy. Every one of them is a family that will never be the same.

Brian Moran, Virginias secretary of Public Safety and Homeland Security, said at the event that about two-thirds of Virginias gun deaths are suicides.

Gun-safety advocate Lori Haas, whose daughter was wounded during the 2007 Virginia Tech shooting in which 32 students and professors were slain, endorsed the proposal, saying a public health approach is necessary.

Getting comprehensive data to guide decisions on policy and programs is a must, said Haas, Virginia director of the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence. We know that laws alone arent going to reduce gun violence.

Moran said the suicide rate among veterans is significantly higher than that of the rest of the population. Last year 188 veterans in Virginia lost their lives to suicide and 135 used firearms, Moran said, adding that law enforcement officers also have a higher rate of suicide than the general population.
Under the Supreme Courts maps, no one was sacred, no region was spared.

Indeed, the maps speak loud and clear: The seven justices read election returns.

Nearly seven in 10 voters in 2020 favored a constitutional amendment largely stripping the General Assembly of its redistricting power. If a bipartisan commission couldnt deliver on depoliticized redistricting  it was hard-wired by foes to fail  then the court would, with plans that guarantee the legislature and congressional delegation will look very different by the time theyre fully implemented in 2023.

Not that Lemons should care. Hes a short-timer, likely quitting the court in 2023, having reached the mandatory retirement age of 73. Lemons is pretty much liberated. He can send a message that the court is capable of independence on an issue that defines the legislatures power. That includes its authority to hire and fire judges.

The public knows  and the justices, in effect, acknowledged  that hyper-partisan gerrymandering has become the rule; that both parties are guilty of it; and that a court dominated by Republican picks  and required to draw districts because the commission deadlocked along party lines  can stick it to Rs and Ds.
During a recent medical test, I noticed that my face mask had slipped down.

Sorry! I said to the technician, who also was masked. Im vaccinated and boosted, and you are too, right? Slight pause.

Im healthy, he said, using a favorite dodge of the unvaccinated.

Why would anyone whose job requires close contact with people who could be sick or immune-compromised take such a risk for himself, his patients and his co-workers?

He said he had decades of experience, including at a hospital where tuberculosis patients coughed in his face, and was healthy. He doesnt buy the need for vaccinations against COVID-19, thinks they could be harmful and believes the number of reported COVID deaths is inflated.

Scientists, however, agree that vaccinations help reduce the spread of COVID and its severity  and are less risky than the disease.

Most health care workers voluntarily take the common-sense precaution of vaccinations. Still, about 30% of workers in hospitals were unvaccinated as of September, according to a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention study.
There are a number of ways to involve students in education policy, both formal and informal. Sadly, many of the formal avenues for student representation still arent common practice across the country.

As of January, only 67 of the nations largest 495 school districts have a student representative on the school board, which is the gold standard of student involvement. And as of 2018, only 20 states (including Washington, D.C.) have a student representative on their state board of education, and only five of those have voting power. Only seven states even have established a statewide student advisory panel.

These three programs  student representatives on the school board and state board of education, and a statewide student advisory panel  should be considered the bare minimum for any state or district that wishes to involve students in setting policy.

But real student involvement means more than just simply giving students a seat at the table; it means actually listening when students speak. Students demand that our concerns be both heard and heeded, and too often, we feel those in government do neither.
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A busy calendar of live theater continues this month with Attic Productions presentation of Welcome to Mitford, which on Thursday began its second of two weekend runs.

The show is based on novelist Jan Karons widely beloved Mitford series, particularly her 1994 debut, At Home in Mitford.

Described as one of the most popular shows ever to hit the Attic stage, Welcome to Mitford was intended to open in March 2020  one of several revivals slated for the troupes 25th anniversary season. But then came COVID.

As director Wyatt Ewell explained in his welcoming remarks to the audience at the Dec. 5 matinee, the theater fell silent  and the set pieces gathered dust  for 16 months until life slowly returned to something more closely resembling normal.

Its a backstory befitting the spirit of Mitford, where the days unfold both bitter and sweet, and the townspeople make their way along through grace and faith.

In Welcome to Mitford, Father Tim Kavanaugh leads an Episcopal congregation in a small North Carolina mountain town. Approaching 60, he grapples with how to support his church, with keeping his parishioners looked after, and with being less-than-happily single.

More than two dozen supporting characters take part in the events that unfold during the course of the show, which is told in a series of brief vignettes that weave themselves together to reach a satisfying conclusion.

Although the story deals with some serious matters, there is plenty of humor along the way. The early scenes establish the rhythm of town life, as the church staff tries to keep body and soul together, and the menfolk gather at the local diner to discuss topics such as whether gizzards would be a good addition to the menu.

Various locals begin to figure prominently in Father Tims orbit, including the wealthy town matriarch Sadie Baxter, a wayward boy named Dooley Barlowe, and the childrens book author Cynthia Coppersmith, who has just moved into the house next to the parsonage.

As Father Tim, Bill Joppich is in almost every minute of the play, and he carries the ensemble with an able and steady presence and an engaging personality. Two lovely scenes where he is presiding over church services might just have you feeling youre really there.

In fact, many scenes likely will have the audience nodding in recognition, whether its getting a lecture from your family doctor, navigating a new relationship, or just hearing a friend like Uncle Billy tell a good joke.

There is no room to give due credit to every cast member. Suffice it to say that all the key roles are well-played, and the actors who appear briefly bring a nice energy to the production. Kudos as well to the production crew, which has done a good job creating a lot of town within the stage confines.

One name bears mention for a different reason: James Honaker. He directed Welcome to Mitford when it was first produced at Attic Productions in March 2012, and was planning to direct it again for the 2020 anniversary. But even before COVID, life forced a change and director Ewell stepped in. Now as the show finally goes on, Honaker is again part of the team, this time as the diner owner Percy Mosley, and his comic presence is a wonderful addition.

In his program notes, Ewell writes: Welcome to Mitford is a play about giving thanks.

Its also about community  Mitfords, and ours.
RICMOND  A proposed map of Virginias congressional districts has prompted a flurry of campaign announcements, and criticisms that the newly drawn districts would primarily disadvantage female incumbents.

The most jarring change in the map is the vanishing of the 7th Congressional District from the Richmond area, which would leave Democrat Rep. Abigail Spanberger with no obvious seat in which to run for re-election.

Rep. Morgan Griffith, R-Salem, also appears to have been drawn out of his Southwest Virginia district, but because members of Congress are not required to live in their district, and he remains in close proximity, he likely faces better odds than Spanberger of being reelected.

The map appears to have made two other seats more Republican: those belonging to Reps. Elaine Luria, D-2nd, and Jennifer Wexton, D-10th. Luria, like Spanberger, already faced a tough re-election fight. Wextons district, which she carried in 2020 by 13 percentage points, would become among the states most competitive.

Lurias district, based in Virginia Beach, already one of the states most competitive, would lose its portion of Norfolk and gain part of Chesapeake, among other changes. Wextons 10th District would now stretch from Albemarle County north through Fauquier to Loudoun County.

The three women in Virginias congressional delegation now have either been written out of their seat or now have their seats in jeopardy, said Virginia political analyst Bob Holsworth.

The maps dont appear to be overly partisan, according to political analysts and at least one academic analysis. The Princeton Gerrymandering Project gave the map a top grade, with an A for partisan fairness.

In a normal year, Democrats would have a 6-5 majority in the congressional delegation, according to the experts who drew the map for the Virginia Supreme Court.

Democrats current 7-4 advantage would mark a good year, and would likely have been cemented if Democrats had not ceded control of the redistricting process to the new Virginia Redistricting Commission and now the state Supreme Court.

The creation of the new proposed 7th District anchored in Prince William County immediately prompted jockeying among a slew of the countys Democrats. Former Del. Jennifer Carroll Foy, Del. Elizabeth Guzman and state Sen. Jeremy McPike all had showed interest in the seat.

The new 7th District likely would be a safe Democrat seat, and would have the third-largest percentage of voters of color among the states U.S. House districts.

Richmond area

Spanberger has remained silent on the draft proposal, which would need the courts approval in order to take effect.

The proposed map would transform two of Spanbergers strongholds. Western Chesterfield County would move into the 5th District, now represented by Republican Rep. Bob Good. Western Henrico County, where Spanberger lives, would move into the 1st District, represented by Republican Rep. Rob Wittman.

Eastern Chesterfield and eastern Henrico would remain in the 4th District, represented by Democrat Don McEachin.

The vanishing of the Richmond-area 7th District quickly scrambled the developing Republican primary field for that seat.

State Sen. Bryce Reeves, R-Spotsylvania, announced enthusiastically late Wednesday that he would run in the new 10th District, seeking the Republican nomination to run against Wexton.

Taylor Keeney, a former aide to Gov. Bob McDonnell and who lives in Goochland County, said that if the map holds, she would not run against Wittman in a GOP primary.

I have told Congressman Wittman I will help him with anything he needs for his re-election, she said.

Other Richmond-area GOP hopefuls were more cautious. Del. John McGuire, R-Goochland, and the campaign of Tina Ramirez said they would wait until the lines are final to announce a decision. Sen. Amanda Chase, R-Chesterfield, said she, too, would wait to make a decision, but noted that she would not challenge Good in the 5th District.

Princeton gave the map average C marks for competitiveness and for compactness, meaning the maps dont needlessly split communities. But, a significant feature of the proposed map is that it splits the Richmond area into three different congressional districts, and if all incumbents  Good, Wittman and McEachin  win re-election, then only McEachin would live within the Richmond metro area, one of the states most populous city centers.

Holsworth said the proposed map fails Richmonds suburbs. If you talk about keeping communities of interest together, Chesterfield, Henrico were simply eviscerated in this map, he said.

Under the proposed map, Wittman, who lives in the Northern Neck, would represent western Henrico as well as Hanover, in a district that would stretch from Zions Crossroads to Williamsburg.

Chase would be in a new 5th District with Good, who would claim a swath of western Chesterfield including Bon Air and Midlothian. Chase said in a Facebook post: Bob Good is doing a good job and shouldnt be challenged.

In an interview, Chase said the map needlessly dices up the Richmond area, and she urged the court to scrap it.

My biggest concern with this map is the complete lack of community interest, she said. I live in western Chesterfield; what do we have in common with Lynchburg?

mleonor@timesdispatch.com (804) 649-6254 Twitter: @MelLeonor_ mmartz@timesdispatch.com (804) 649-6964 Staff writer Andrew Cain contributed to this report.
No one seems to remember when, precisely, they last heard the call of Old Gabriel.

At best guess the deep-voiced, mournful low of the distinctive East End Shops steam whistle sounded for what was perhaps the final time  perhaps  on some unremarked day in 2020.

For those not steeped in Roanoke railroad lore, the East End Shops along Campbell Avenue were the place where the Norfolk and Western Railway built its steam engines in the heyday of that technology. The shops began in 1881 as Roanoke Machine Works and shut down in May 2020 as the railroad, which became Norfolk Southern in a 1982 merger, restructured and moved those locomotive shop jobs to Pennsylvania.

For 137 years, the employees in that machine shop were called to work, cued to take a lunch break and released to go home by the sounds made as steam gushed through Old Gabriel. The steam whistles song was as sui generis to Roanoke as the neon star on Mill Mountain. The anecdotes passed down through the years asserted that Roanokers so trusted the whistles timekeeping that they used it for reference when winding their watches.

The nickname for the whistle, presumably, refers to common Christian (though not biblical) lore about the horn that the archangel Gabriel will play to herald the coming of Judgement Day.

Dopesick author Beth Macy wrote a fabulous feature for The Roanoke Times in 1996 about Old Gabriel in which musician Wes Chappel broke down the notes in the whistles call: an inverted D-major seventh chord, composed of a D, then a high C sharp and finally a low F sharp that descended to an A-major chord.

Most recently Old Gabriel sparked attention from the Roanoke Times long running Whats On Your Mind? column. Back in 2014, Tom Landon explained Old Gabriel to a reader curious about what the sound of the whistle signified. Here in 2021, Ray Cox explained Old Gabriels uncertain fate to a reader curious why they didnt hear the whistle anymore.

Former Roanoke Mayor David Bowers has expressed interest in preserving Old Gabriel, or at least learning what it would take. Hes far from the only valley resident who favors the idea.

Salem rail historian Ken Miller, an officer in the Roanoke chapter of the National Railway Historical Society, who curates the railroads archives for the Norfolk Southern Historical Society, says that options are being investigated, though there is little information that can be disclosed at the moment as to where the effort stands, much less what the costs would be and where the funding or the steam would come from.davdvd

It is being actively worked, Miller says.

Certainly, theres great reason to wish that effort all success.

As a metaphor, this is a bit convoluted, but as health care drives the economy of 21st century Roanoke, perhaps its on the nose. You could describe Old Gabriel as the pacemaker that for decades governed the citys economic heartbeat.

Roanokes days as a railroad capital are over. The city must, and has, and continues to diversify its economy. Yet theres a romance to the railroad, an imagination-capturing quality to its inventions, its history, its chutzpah, its linking of communities across the continent that has few equivalents within the spectrum of American industry.

This quality, a challenge to define but unquestionable in its majestic presence, had an apotheosis in the sight of the last-of-its-kind Norfolk and Western J Class 611 steam engine rumbling into Roanoke under its own power in 2015, an occasion that caused thousands to line the tracks for miles and miles, cheering as living antiquity rolled past.

Built in the East End Shops in 1950 as Old Gabriel marked the hours, the 611 represented the peak of Roanokes ingenuity.

In a bit of bitter irony, one of the most welcome developments of the past decade put the fate of the 611 on uncertain tracks. Amtrak began picking up passengers in Roanoke in 2017  and had 611 excursions from Roanoke continued in 2018, Amtrak would have been in charge of operating them. Instead, Amtrak announced a ban on trips by special trains like the 611. Though the steam locomotive is still owned by the Virginia Museum of Transportation, for the past couple years if you wanted to ride behind this Roanoke treasure you had to travel to Pennsylvania.

It would be a shame if the 611 were to ever go inert again. Yet with the engines ultimate fate a foggy prognostication, the need to preserve other important mementos of Roanokes rail-town origins grows even more urgent.

Its worth noting that as a relic Old Gabriel cant claim bragging rights at the same level as the 611. For one thing, the whistle that exists now is not the original, its more like the fourth edition, as previous versions eventually broke down beyond repair and were replaced. Whereas the earlier incarnations of Old Gabriel were forged by hand, the latest one reportedly was purchased from a manufacturer.

Still, this artifact serves as an embodiment of a bygone era thats vitally important to the tale of how the Star City came to be.

Hopefully someday Roanoke Valley residents will once again turn their heads at the momentary, mysterious distraction of a steam whistle, the noise inspiring those who dont know what it means to indulge their curiosity and discover Roanokes history.
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Email Thomas Elias at tdelias@aol.com. His book, "The Burzynski Breakthrough, The Most Promising Cancer Treatment and the Governments Campaign to Squelch It" is now available in a soft cover fourth edition. For more Elias columns, visit www.californiafocus.net
" " SpaceX's Dragon arrived at the International Space Station on May 6, 2019, pictured here over the North Atlantic Ocean. SpaceX

If you think that the idea of colonizing other planets is something out of a particularly far-fetched science fiction movie or book, Elon Musk, founder of private space travel company SpaceX, has a surprise for you.

Musk has said that there's a 70 percent chance that he'll travel on a rocket to Mars in his lifetime, and that he's thinking about eventually moving there to live in a human outpost on the surface of the red planet [source: Allen and VandeHei].

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Unlike the protagonist of the science-fiction novel and movie "The Martian," Musk most likely wouldn't be lonely on the red planet. Back in 2012, at a conference of the Royal Aeronautical Society in London, he sketched out a vision for a Mars colony that eventually would grow to the size of a small- to medium-sized city on Earth, with 80,000 inhabitants [source: Coppinger].

While Musk envisions a private-sector Mars colony, NASA has plans to eventually establish a base on Mars as well. The Trump Administration currently is focused upon revisiting the moon by 2024 and building a permanent base there that would provide the opportunity for "developing the technologies to take American astronauts to Mars and beyond," in the words of Vice President Mike Pence [source: Wall]. In anticipation of that day, NASA already is testing technologies such as space habitat modules  basically, spacefaring mobile homes that would provide life support for humans living on the surface of other worlds [source: NASA].

The European Space Agency also has envisioned setting up its own "Moon Village" on the lunar surface [source: Woerner].

Meanwhile, visionaries also are looking toward the eventual colonization of Earth-like exoplanets orbiting around other stars [source: Ceriotti].

What has humans looking to make new homes in the cosmos? The National Space Society, a private-sector organization that promotes a spacefaring future, cites a variety of reasons for building colonies in space. One reason is that other worlds contain vast amounts of metals and other natural resources and potential sources of energy, and provide opportunities for "potentially profit-making industries" [source: National Space Society].

Establishing outposts on other worlds also might be a way to hedge the bet on humanity's survival, in case our existence on our home planet is threatened by a nuclear war, climate change, pandemics and population growth. The late physicist Stephen Hawking believed that humanity needs to colonize another planet within the next century, if it is to avoid the threat of extinction [source: Kharpal].

But before humans venture to distant worlds, they'll most likely be starting with a colony on the moon. In the next section, we'll look at what might be needed to live there.
FLORENCE, S.C.  Six Florence One Schools students will be heading to Winthrop in March to participate in the South Carolina Music Educators Association All-State Choral Clinic.

South Florences Morgan Matney (alto), Tyler Russell (bass), Jennings Thompson (bass), West Florences Bailey Barefoot and Mariah Docherty (both sopranos) and Wilsons Joshua Burks (tenor) were honored by the Florence One Schools Board of Trustees Thursday evening.

Selection for All-State represents the highest honor a music student can achieve at the state level, and auditions are extremely competitive, Dr. Erick Figueras, director of arts and innovative programs for the district, said in a news release. We are proud of these hard-working students and their extraordinary teachers who will be representing Florence 1 Schools at Winthrop University in March.

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Auditions for the all-state program were virtual this year, and the students were selected from participants who competed state-wide.

The students were taught by Andy Dibble (South Florence), Nikki Raines (West Florence) and L. Megerlyn Davis (Wilson).
He said he didnt know at the time which race would be involved but that the ballot measure ultimately made sense, given how close the results were and that some questioned how the measure had passed when early, partial votes on election night showed it failing.

Certified results showed the ballot measure won with about 50.6% of the vote  174,032 yes votes and 170,251 no votes.

My whole intent here is to try to get as much confidence and trust in elections as possible, he said. And if that means doing a ... statewide hand count, then we did it. And again, I think some people feel better now but theres definitely a small group out there that still dont.

Meyers chief of staff, Josh Applebee, said the emails given to AP provide an accurate representation of those received and said at some point, it was hard to separate the ways in which Meyers office was being contacted. Asked if they misspoke in November 2020 when they referenced emails specifically and if they had lumped together emails and other forms of contact, he said: I think thats probably a better way to look at it.
As has been the case with so many other school shootings over several years, last weeks murder spree at Oxford High School in suburban Detroit might have been avoided if actions had been taken in the face of several obvious warning signs.

Ethan Crumbley, 15, is charged with murdering four of his fellow students and wounding with intent to kill seven others. He has also been charged with terrorism.

There were a series of signs leading up to this tragedy  as there usually are  that should have alerted people that Crumbley was a serious threat.

He had displayed disciplinary problems for some time. On the day of the shooting, he was summoned to the school office after misbehaving. His parents were also called in, an indication that officials were taking this latest incident more seriously than previous ones.

Oakland prosecutor Karen McDonald told CNN there is a strong possibility Crumbley had the gun used in the killings in his backpack when he met with school officials and his parents. Did no one think it unusual, if not suspicious, that Crumbley would bring the backpack with him, instead of leaving it in his locker or the classroom? Why didnt someone ask him to open the backpack and check its contents?
Political campaign season may be over but battles against what increasingly is being called critical race theory are not.

I still put CRT in quotes. I know that those who want to kick CRT out of public schools hate to hear me bring up the fact that CRT isnt taught in public schools.

But that technicality doesnt matter to the activists, including some genuinely concerned parents. True, CRT is an academic framework, created by progressive legal scholars in the 1970s and 80s, that posits racism to be not only a matter of individual bias but also embedded in legal systems and policies that historically have shaped American law and public policy.

Yet, Ive heard that label politically repurposed by conservatives and ballyhooed effectively through conservative media to apply to just about any publication or classroom instruction that, in their terms, divides the races into victims and oppressors, or otherwise might cause white children to feel badly about themselves.

Thats not accurate, either, but it is the description I widely hear from advocates for laws like those already enacted in 12 states and proposed in 29 others, according to an Education Week analysis at the end of last month.
 Is Jussie Smollett likely to get probation after convictions on five low-level state felony counts of disorderly conduct? | Main | FIX Clemency Act introduced in US House seeking to fix broken federal clemency process 

December 10, 2021

"Bureau of Justice Statistics releases "Capital Punishment, 2020  Statistical Tables"

Today the Justice Department's Bureau of Justice Statistics has released this new report with data on the administration of capital punishment in the United States through the end of 2020. (As I have noted before, though BJS provides great data on criminal justice administration, in the capital punishment arena the Death Penalty Information Center tends to have more up-to-date and more detailed data on capital punishment.)

This new BJS report provides notable and clear statistical snapshots about the death penalty in the US, and the document starts with this introduction and these "highlights" on the first two pages of a 26-page document:

At yearend 2020, a total of 28 states and the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) held 2,469 prisoners under sentence of death, which was 94 (4%) fewer than at yearend 2019. During 2020, the number of prisoners under sentence of death declined for the twentieth consecutive year. California (28%), Florida (14%), and Texas (8%) held half of the prisoners under sentence of death in the United States on December 31, 2020. The BOP held 51 prisoners under sentence of death at yearend. Five states and the BOP executed a total of 17 prisoners in 2020. The BOP executed 10 prisoners, which accounted for 59% of the executions carried out in 2020. This report presents statistics on persons who were under sentence of death in 2020, state and federal death penalty laws in 2020, and historical trends in executions. At yearend 2020, a total of 31 states and the federal government authorized the death penalty. Colorado repealed the death penalty provision of its first-degree murder statute in July 2020, and the governor commuted the death sentences of the three prisoners under previously imposed sentences of death to life without the possibility of parole. 

Seven states received a total of 14 prisoners under sentence of death in 2020, the smallest annual number reported since the U.S. Supreme Court invalidated capital punishment statutes in several states in 1972 (see Furman v. Georgia, 408 U.S. 238 (1972)).

Nineteen states removed a total of 91 prisoners from under sentence of death by means other than execution in 2020.

During 2020, 17 states and the BOP reported a decrease in the number of prisoners held under sentence of death, 16 states reported no change, and no states reported an increase in the number of prisoners held under sentence of death.

The largest declines in the number of prisoners under sentence of death in 2020 occurred in California (down 24 prisoners) and Pennsylvania (down 14).

The majority (98%) of prisoners under sentence of death were male.

At yearend 2020, about 56% of prisoners under sentence of death were white and 41% were black.

Among prisoners under sentence of death at yearend 2020 with a known ethnicity, 15% were Hispanic. 

Prisoners under sentence of death on December 31, 2020 had been on death row for an average of 19.4 years.

Prisoners executed during 2020 had been on death row for an average of 18.9 years.

December 10, 2021 at 11:06 AM | Permalink

Comments

Talking capital punishment, I was not alone in thinking that the decision day at the Supreme Court yesterday was going to involve Ramirez. They accelerated the hearing of the case, but it seems to be taking a bit of time for them to hand down a decision.

Somewhat interesting, since the case offers a chance for some unity, a cross-ideological decision possible. OTOH, there is likely some division, and there might be fleshing it out and writing concurring/dissenting opinions.

It also doesn't seem to be too time sensitive. Executions occurred while Texas held some others up. Still, if you aren't going to decide the case that quickly, not really necessarily to have the oral argument so fast either.

Posted by: Joe | Dec 11, 2021 12:19:42 PM

I am not sure the low number of new death sentences in 2020 is particularly meaningful. To impose a death sentence, there first needs to be a trial and, from what I heard last year from other prosecutors in major death penalty states, trials were on hold for most of the year due to COVID.

Posted by: tmm | Dec 13, 2021 10:42:48 AM

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 "Bureau of Justice Statistics releases "Capital Punishment, 2020  Statistical Tables" | Main | "Protective State Policies and the Employment of Fathers with Criminal Records" 

December 10, 2021

FIX Clemency Act introduced in US House seeking to fix broken federal clemency process

As reported in this new Insider article, headlined "Congressional progressives back new bill to radically change the 'broken' clemency system," today a notable new federal bill was introduced seeking to fix the federal sentencing process. Here are the basics:

The "FIX Clemency Act," introduced Friday by Rep. Ayanna Pressley, a Democrat from Massachusetts, calls for a nine-person board that would be responsible for reviewing petitions for clemency and issuing recommendations directly to the president. The recommendations would also be made public in an annual report to Congress. At least one member of the panel would be someone who was previously incarcerated. "Clemency works, but the current system is broken and denies thousands of people the chance of redemption and justice," Pressley told Insider. "It is long overdue that the president uses his clemency authority to address the generations of systemic injustices that have created the mass incarceration crisis," she said, arguing that her bill was a "critical" part of that effort. The proposal, endorsed by the ACLU and the NAACP, comes as advocates of clemency reform are increasingly frustrated with the administration. Since taking office, President Joe Biden has not used his clemency power  a fact that is not unusual at this point in a new presidency, but a disappointment to those who see it as an area where the White House can immediately and unilaterally reform the criminal justice system.... The bill introduced Friday would eliminate the Office of the Pardon Attorney, transferring its functions to the new board, and guarantee that all requests for pardon or commutation be reviewed within 18 months. Members of the new panel would include a representative from the Department of Justice, but also someone who has worked for a federal public defenders office. During the 2020 campaign, a "unity" task force composed of Biden supporters and backers of Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders recommended the creation of an independent clemency review board. The proposal is also in the Democratic Party's platform. So far, however, the administration has given no indication that it endorses the reform. And its liberal critics say the federal criminal justice system is headed in the wrong direction. "2021 marks the first increase in 8 years of our federal prison population  that's nearly a decade of progress that has been wiped out," Rep. Cori Bush, a Democrat from Missouri and cosponsor of the new legislation, said in a statement.... "Fueled by the failed war on drugs, the mass incarceration epidemic that our nation faces has ruined lives, families and communities," Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, a New York Democrat who leads the House Democratic Caucus, said in a statement. "Our broken clemency system only deepens this pain, and we must transform it in a just, equitable and transparent manner."

Via Rep. Presssly's official website, here are links for the Bill Text and Bill Summary for this quite interesting and important bill. This press release from that office, titled "Bill Establishes Independent U.S. Clemency Board to Review Applications, Transmit Recommendations Directly to President," starts this way:

Today, Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley (MA-07), along with Congresswoman Cori Bush (MO-01), Congressman Hakeem Jeffries (NY-08) and grassroots advocates, unveiled the Fair and Independent Experts in Clemency (FIX Clemency) Act, historic legislation to transform our nations broken clemency system and address the growing mass incarceration crisis.

December 10, 2021 at 01:54 PM | Permalink

Comments

Pardons should be routinely granted where offense is relatively minor and the person has lived an exemplary life since the crime.

Posted by: Federalist | Dec 10, 2021 2:10:35 PM

Somewhere along the history of this "free" Country some great men thought it was a great idea to give drug addicts, who dealt small amounts of drugs to maintain their habit, a longer sentence than violent criminals. Placing the American people at a greater risk of a violent crime because these are the people getting out on parole, (for some reason the Federal Gov doesn't go after them, only drug involved crime, which honestly they have no business doing, 99% of the cases should be on the State level, but then again, the States want actual evidence) or at the end of their shorter sentence. Imagine what it must be like to sit in a Federal Prison and see someone walk in and 12 years later, walk out even though they murdered someone...This is supposed to be the land if the free, but, is the far from the truth.

We have Prosecutors who push for overly long sentences for people who have charges for "Drug Trafficking" though the only evidence they have is the word of someone else pulled in for the reason. The entire judicial power is in the prosecutors, not judges, it's a farce and it's not like they have a conscience. How do they sleep at night? I have no clue.

People with drug problems (which if you read these peoples proffers, it's in black and white on the first page, hence why they are recommended for RDAP , a drug treatment program. An educated person would think to themselves, these people would benefit so much more in rehab or sentenced to community service. Win/Win for both parties. (before they are sent to prison for 10 years or in a lot of cases 20 or more years)

Biden promised to fix this, he has not. What a disappointment, especially since he is one of the main reasons we are spending so much money to house these people, and their children who we end up supporting one way or another.

Another problem in the Federal Justice System is why are these people doing time in prison again for past petty crimes they already did time for? They already paid society for whatever they were in trouble for, you make them do it again? I might be able to accept that if it was a drug crime, but it's any trouble they have been in. If they didn't pay a past fine while on probation or parole? (Because let's be real, these people are all poor) then they call it "absconding" making it almost impossible for them to get any relief while in prison. Most, caught in a web of words of a friend who WAS caught with drugs. Also there is no parole so if they were sentenced to 35 years (truly, a common sentence) they will die in there.

State investigators have to do their jobs and set up buys, get drug amount evidence, video, text, gps, but the Federal Government can just pull you in because someone said they saw them with drugs and tell them they better plead guilty or pay for it if they take it to trial? Which they will pay for if they go to trial because the Justice system is setup that way. You don't get a downward departure so if found guilty, and you will be. Words are evidence in Federal, you will spend the rest of your life in prison, for words, with no relief...ever.

This is so wrong in so many ways, and this President promised to fix it, he has not done anything. As much as I couldn't stand the past President, he did do something and passed the first step act, which was weak at best. But, it was something.

The American people should be outraged and demand change, strike down mandatory minimums and the abuse of peoples rights, put the power back into the judges hands. NOW, before the next person walk in a courtroom to get a sentence longer than El Chapo. There are a ton just in the Fort Worth area who are in prison with no drugs ever found on them serving longer than an actual Kingpin who murdered people and caught with drugs...

You're probably wondering why I am writing so much about this...it's because, just like any other bill that makes sense, like this one. Won't pass. Anything that makes sense, just doesn't.

I sit back and wonder, why does this Country want to keep people locked up for most of their lives for drugs? (I am not talking about Kingpins and/or violent drug cartels)- because it gives the middle class jobs, and corporations billions. These corporations are in these corrupt politicians ears telling them they will loose their support if a reform bill is passed. This isn't the American way. I always wonder why these great bills come up and nothing ever happens. It's because they want to look like they are trying when they know damn well it won't pass.

Solution? Vote out the old corrupt politicians who have been in these corporations pockets for years and vote in people who will make change, demand term limits in congress so we can get rid of these soulless ticks who are bleeding this country dry.

Sorry for the rant, I type fast.

Posted by: ESiretta | Dec 11, 2021 4:54:17 AM

Pardons should be granted for non Violent drug charges

Especially if they have been sentenced to over 10 years

If the person is taking classes and showed they have tried to better themselves after 3 years they should be able to get a pardon

These men are pleading guilty to football numbers because they know better than to go to trial. They have no choice but to plead guilty to something they didnt do

This is breaking up families especially in the black communities.

Posted by: Prison lives matter | Dec 11, 2021 7:25:14 PM

Those convicted of possession of child pornography material ONLY (as a first time offense) and with NO evidence of any contact with minors, and who have completed their term of supervised release and their treatment regimen, and have not re-offended for at least three years, should be granted clemency and/or pardoned. And taken off the sex offender registry.

The moral panic associated with this addiction (and it IS an addiction) and the steady increase in penalties over the past 20 years needs to be checked. There is NO reason to routinely and without need destroy their lives. The recidivism rate for those with a history of this offense is the lowest of ALL cohorts, other than murderers.

Isn't it about time to re-examine our response to this offense? I'm more than ready to let these offenders live their lives in peace. Many, if not most, can return to being productive and positive members of our community.

Posted by: Get Off Necks | Dec 12, 2021 4:37:45 AM

@ Getoffournecks, maybe so, but those dudes drive production.

Posted by: Federalist | Dec 12, 2021 11:23:41 AM

Federalist,

The same could be said of every drug offender and offense. And white collar crimes as well. And political corruption, especially on the part of politicians (on both sides of the aisle). And yet, pardons and clemency predominates white collar crimes, and political corruption offenses. Your argument is not at all persuasive.

Posted by: Get Off Necks | Dec 12, 2021 11:02:22 PM

If people are driving the production of vile porn, why shouldnt they be punished? And cant society treat the viewing of kiddie porn as re-victimization?

Posted by: Federalist | Dec 13, 2021 10:45:16 AM

Federalist,

Of course punishment should be appropriate for the crime. My point is that the punishment is out of proportion as are the all of the collateral consequences following the punishment (i.e., prison).

Following incarceration, an offender is further sentenced to a lifetime of punishment (i.e., sex offender registry, prohibitions as to travel, limitations as to housing, employment, holding of professional licenses, overall stigmatization and banishment from society [think 'Scarlett Letter'], just to name a few) These punishments are not visited upon ANY OTHER category of crime. It is way way past the money. And all because of the moral 'reaction' of those enflamed by sensationalistic press coverage, unrelenting political grandstanding, holier-than-thou vindictiveness and vigilantism.

Even murderers are given second chances.

Posted by: Get Off Necks | Dec 13, 2021 6:51:53 PM

They call what happens to felons after they have completed serving their sentences "collateral consequences", but they really do destroy lives, as much or more than the formal punishments and incarceration do.

Posted by: Jim Gormley | Dec 19, 2021 6:49:45 PM

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Indias senior-most military official Bipin Rawat and his wife Madhulika Rawat were laid to rest with full state honours on Friday.

General Rawat, his wife and 11 others were killed in a helicopter crash in the southern state of Tamil Nadu on Wednesday.

The Indian Air Force (IAF) Mi-17 V 5 helicopter crashed in a forest minutes before its scheduled landing at the Wellington military base. The lone survivor, Group Captain Varun Singh, is being treated at a military hospital in the state.

The 63-year-old general was named Indias first chief of defence staff (CDS) in 2019, a role designed to provide oversight of the countrys army, navy and air force combined. He had earlier served as the countrys chief of military.

The mortal remains of Gen Rawat and his wife Madhulika were brought to the national capitals Brar Square crematorium in a gun carriage amid chants of patriotic slogans.

Federal defence minister Rajnath Singh, Delhis chief minister Arvind Kejriwal and other leaders across the political spectrum paid their respects before the cremation.

Army officers carry the coffins containing the mortal remains of Indias defence chief General Bipin Rawat (Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)

Gen Rawat was accorded a 17-gun salute in the presence of 800 service personnel. The couples last rites were performed by their daughters Kritika and Tarini.

Military commanders of Sri Lanka, Bhutan, Nepal and Bangladesh joined the final rites, while Pakistans defence adviser and naval adviser posted at its high commission paid their last respects at the generals residence.

The bodies of Gen Rawat, his wife and 11 others were flown to Delhi on Thursday night.

Indian prime minister Narendra Modi led tributes in a brief ceremony on Thursday.

Indias prime minister Narendra Modi pays tributes in front of the coffins of the countrys top military official and 12 others (Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)

Addressing the Indian parliament, the defence minister Mr Singh said there was no indication of bad weather in Tamil Nadu, where the chopper crashed, or a distress signal from the crew.

He added that the Russian-origin chopper took off from Sulur Air Base at 11.48am and was expected to land at Wellington in the next 27 minutes. However, just 20 minutes after taking off, the air base lost contact with the helicopter.

Story continues

The choppers black box was recovered after the search in the area was expanded from 300m to 1km, authorities confirmed.

Firemen and rescue workers stand next to the debris of an IAF Mi-17V5 helicopter crash site (AFP via Getty Images)

Meanwhile, a video of a helicopter flying near the Nilgris and vanishing into mist has emerged and is being said to be the last time the chopper was seen before it crashed. The IAF has not confirmed the authenticity of the video.

The IAF has constituted a tri-service court of inquiry to investigate the cause of the chopper crash.

The inquiry would be completed expeditiously and facts brought out. Till then, to respect the dignity of the deceased, uninformed speculation may be avoided, it tweeted.

IAF has constituted a tri-service Court of Inquiry to investigate the cause of the tragic helicopter accident on 08 Dec 21. The inquiry would be completed expeditiously & facts brought out. Till then, to respect the dignity of the deceased, uninformed speculation may be avoided.  Indian Air Force (@IAF_MCC) December 10, 2021

The international community offered condolences for Gen Rawat.

Well remember Gen Rawat as an exceptional leader who served his country and contributed to the US-India defence relationship, said US secretary of state Antony Blinken.

Russian ambassador Nikolay Kudashev condoled the military chiefs death as well: India has lost its great patriot and dedicated hero.

Russia has lost a very close friend, who played a big role in promotion of our bilateral special and privileged strategic partnership. Grieving together with India. Goodbye, friend! Farewell, commander! Mr Kudashev tweeted.

Russia has lost a very close friend, who played a big role in promotion of our bilateral special and privileged strategic partnership. Grieving together with India. Goodbye, friend! Farewell, commander! https://t.co/ywpXHHYYJC  Nikolay Kudashev  (@NKudashev) December 8, 2021

Emmanuel Lenain, the French envoy to India, was seen paying his respects at the generals funeral.

I wanted to pay tribute and to come in person for that ceremony as we remember him as a great military leader, emphatic, warm, determined and great friend to move forward cooperation with my country. Hell be really fondly remembered, he told news agency ANI.

Other senior military figures killed in the crash were Gen Rawats defence assistant Brigadier LS Lidder and his staff officer Lt Colonel Harjinder Singh.

The Indian armys Mi-17V5 helicopters, like the model involved in the crash, are used in high-altitude operations and for transporting officials, including the prime minister.
Arguably the star in any mixed nut bag, pecans are big business in the United States. According to the American Pecan Council, the U.S. produces more than 300 million pounds of pecans annually, mostly in Southern and Southwestern states. With their mild, deliciously nutty and buttery flavor, pecans tend to gain the most attention from American nut-lovers around the holidays.

The Selman family of Oklahoma has been growing pecans commercially for more than 40 years. Chad Selmans father started his business, S&S Pecan Co., with a single orchard outside Tulsa, Oklahoma, in 1980. Selman spent his childhood alongside his dad, working the farm as it flourished. After four years at college earning a business degree, the pecans pulled Selman back home, and he re-joined his father in the shady groves. After his dad retired, Selman  a former president of the Oklahoma Pecan Growers Board and member of the American Pecan Council  founded his own company in 2013, Selman Farms LLC, which now includes more than 50 groves (including his dads first orchard). In January of 2021, the entrepreneur expanded and formed the Selman Nut Company to take a crack at wholesale and online retail.

Mighty tall and mighty prosperous

Pecans are the seeds of a species of hickory trees indigenous to the Southern and Southwestern United States and Mexico. A new pecan tree can begin bearing pecans at around 10 years old, but, according to Selman, most really crank things up when theyre teenagers, at around 15 years old. And they dont stop, he says. I think there are trees from the 1800s still alive and producing. Many of these hickories are almost as tall as they are old, reaching about 130 feet into the sky, and can produce 1,000 pounds of nuts a year, each. For comparison, most trees yield about 100 pounds annually.

The native, more sustainable way

The majority of trees in Selmans groves are a wild, native variety. They are the original nut that was growing naturally in Oklahoma, he says. While the state of Oklahoma is around fifth in the nation for total pecan production, its in the top three for native production.

According to Selman, pecans are an easy crop to grow (at least in pecan country), but he praises attributes of the original pecan. Because natives are, as the name says, native to here, theyve adapted to do well without a lot of input from us, he says. That makes them more sustainable.

Selman Farms doesnt need to irrigate its native groves; rainfall does the trick. The areas naturally occurring grasses and clover add the right amount of nitrogen to the soil around the trees, so theres no call for chemical fertilizers either. On the flip side, some other, non-native varieties require fungicides to stop ailments, like pecan scab.

There is a drawback. The natives are cheaper to grow, but they sell for less, which is the opposite of the way things go with some other foods; today, many people will pay a premium for a natural product.

That mindset hasnt made its way to the pecan industry yet, but were pushing for that, Selman says.

From tree, to seed, to store

When its time for harvest, a giant C-clamp-like machine grabs the tree trunks and shakes the nuts loose. The vibrations bring more than pecans to the ground, so workers follow behind and remove the sticks and other debris that fell. Next, another machine collects them. It has rubber fingers that roll over the nuts, sweeping them up into the machine, Selman says. It also uses blasts of air to blow off grass and leaves before emptying the pecans into buckets on a trailer for transport.

At the end of a prosperous season, Selman harvests more than 1 million pounds of pecans from about 30,000 trees, and they all end up at the farms base of operations where theyre evaluated and sorted by sophisticated machines judging weight and color  good pecans are heavier and have a lighter brown hue. Human eyes do the final inspection, examining the nuts as they move past on a conveyor belt.

Theyre then sold on the wholesale market and at that point, theyll head to a sheller, where the meat is removed, resulting in the finished pecans available at grocery stores or from a specialty retailer like Selman Nut Company, which also sells roasted pecans, other nuts and treats like praline candies and pecans enrobed in bourbon-maple coating.

Selman says his work reaps rewards that go beyond the tangible take. Ive just been in it so long, and I love it. And like those mammoth, 200-year-old trees, his satisfaction keeps growing. At the end of a long day, when you get a good crop in, its just a really great feeling, he says. I enjoy knowing Im producing something people want.

Interested in trying Selman Nut Companys pecans for yourself? Get a pack, here.

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WASHINGTON (AP)  Amtrak will need to reduce service in January unless more employees get vaccinated against COVID-19, the passenger rail systems president says.

Stephen Gardner says about 95% of Amtrak workers are at least partially vaccinated. The rest face a Jan. 4 deadline that the Biden administration set for employees of federal contractors.

If enough employees resist getting the shots, We anticipate proactively needing to temporarily reduce some train frequencies across our network in January to avoid staffing-related cancellations," Gardner told a congressional panel Thursday.

Gardner said any service reductions would last until March "or as soon as we have qualified employees available.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki downplayed the impact of the vaccine mandate on Amtrak. She touted the high percentage of its employees who are vaccinated and noted that others still have four weeks before the deadline, which will be followed by a period of counseling, accommodations and enforcement.

We dont expect these requirements will cause disruptions to services that people depend on, Psaki said during a briefing Thursday. There is some time to implement it.

Amtrak cut service and reduced its workforce after travel plummeted because of the pandemic  at its low point last year, ridership fell to 4% of its pre-pandemic level.

Gardner said Amtrak has restored most service and about 70% of passenger traffic has returned, but it's going to take several years for ridership to return to 2019 numbers. The exact timing, he said, will depend on how long the pandemic lasts and how quickly business travelers get back on the train.

Amtrak has said it expects to hire 2,500 to 3,500 employees by September 2022, but its own inspector general said this week that the company doesnt have enough staff or leadership in human resources to recruit, screen and hire those workers. Nearly half of the 64 jobs in talent-acquisition are vacant, leading to hiring delays, the auditor said.

Amtrak said in August that all employees would need to get vaccinated or be tested weekly for COVID-19. In September, President Joe Biden ordered that federal workers and employees of federal contractors be fully vaccinated by Dec. 8, a deadline that was later delayed until Jan. 4.

This week, a federal judge in Georgia blocked the administration from enforcing the mandate, saying that Biden exceeded his authority in issuing the executive order for vaccinations. The ruling expanded one issued by a federal judge in Kentucky that was limited to contractors in three states.

Separately, other judges have held up Bidens vaccine mandates for health care workers and companies with at least 100 employees.

Copyright 2021 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
NEW YORK (AP)  Companies of all sizes are rethinking their plans to send workers back to the office as the new omicron variant adds another layer of uncertainty.

Alphabet's Google and the nation's second largest automaker Ford Co. are among those once again delaying their return-to-office plans, while other businesses whose employees have already returned are considering adding extra precautions like requiring masks. Officials in the United Kingdom, Denmark, Norway and Sweden also have asked people in recent days to work from home if they can because of concerns about the variant.

Meta, formerly known as Facebook, and ridesharing company Lyft separately announced Tuesday that they're letting workers delay their return when offices fully reopen early next year. Meta still plans to open its headquarters at the end of January but will allow workers to delay their return as late as June. Lyft says it won't require workers to come back to its offices for all of next year, though they will fully reopen as planned in February.

Janelle Gale, vice president of human resources for Meta, said the latest decision recognizes some arent quite ready to come back.

The moves are the latest indication of how difficult it is for companies to set firm plans for their employees' mandatory return as worries about a spike in new cases or new variants keep shifting deadlines. This fall, the delta variant spurred many big companies to postpone a mandatory return to early next year.

A year and a half ago, we thought this would be for a very short time, said Jeff Levin-Scherz, population health leader at Willis Towers Watson, a global advisory firm. But the pandemic has thrown us many curves, and employers need to continue to be nimble.

The firm's survey of 543 employers with 5.2 million workers showed on average 34% of remote-capable employees remain remote, but that would decline to 27% by the first quarter of 2022. However, the survey was conducted before news of omicron surfaced.

The delayed plans are yet another blow to already struggling restaurants, bars, dry cleaners and other businesses that rely on office workers as patrons. Particularly hard-hit are those in downtown or midtown areas of cities like New York dominated by office buildings that remain largely empty.

The delays come even as U.S. health officials say early indications suggest omicron may be less dangerous than delta, which continues to fuel hospitalizations.

Lawrence Gostin, a public health expert at Georgetown University, doesn't believe there's enough scientific information on omicron to warrant companies delaying their return-to-office plans.

There will be a constant stream of new variants as well as surges and waning of cases, Gostin said. We shouldnt disrupt normal business activity at every possible trigger.

He noted that layered protection like masks, vaccinations and ventilation are highly effective at preventing virus spread in a workplace.

Still, the stream of new variants is having a psychological impact on business owners.

Omicron has made me realize work life will never return to the way it was pre-COVID, said Gisela Girard, president of advertising agency Creative Civilization, whose 12 employees have been working remotely since March 2020. It made me realize how working from home is likely to keep employees, their families and also our clients safe.

This summer, Girard's company aimed for a mandatory hybrid work plan to start in fall, but delta pushed back those plans to early next year. Now, omicron has her reconsidering not only those plans but whether employees should return at all. She renewed the office lease last year but said she's rethinking the physical office space.

For companies that have already brought workers back to the office, it's harder to retreat and allow them to be remote again. Still, some are considering new safety measures.

Kent Swig, president of Swig Equities LLC, a privately owned real estate investment and development company in Manhattan, said its 65 employees returned to the office in fall 2020 on a hybrid basis and went to five days a week in the office in May, after all were vaccinated.

However, Swig says he's now closely monitoring the new variant and will consider mandating masks and even requiring COVID-19 testing a few times a week if the threat increases. He said he will reverse course and start hybrid or remote work if the situation gets worse.

My first and foremost job is to protect all my staff, Swig said. I am going to err on the side of caution.

Levin-Scherz noted many employers have set multiple dates for return to the workplace over the past year, and at this point are looking to resolve more uncertainty before they set new dates.

Target CEO Brian Cornell recently told The Associated Press that it's avoiding putting dates on the calendar for a mandated return to its Minneapolis headquarters. Target started gradually opening collaboration areas and workspaces in the fall for employees who wanted an option to work on-site.

Were going to learn along the way and make sure we make the right steps for our team, Cornell said.

Lyft said the decision to let workers choose to work remotely for all of 2022 wasn't tied exclusively to omicron but said new variants are a factor contributing to uncertainty.

We've heard from our team members that they value continued flexibility in determining where they work and would benefit from additional time to plan, said Ashley Adams, a Lyft spokeswoman.

Meanwhile, Google is indefinitely delaying the mandatory return to its offices. A company spokesperson said in an email that the update was in line with its earlier guidance that a return would start no sooner than Jan. 10 and depend on local conditions. The company said it safely opened more than 90% of its U.S. offices and nearly 40% of U.S. workers came into the office in recent weeks.

Ford said Monday that it will delay plans for hybrid work at its Dearborn, Michigan, headquarters until March and plans to start a pilot phase for select employees in February. It had previously said it wouldn't start the hybrid work model before January.

Ford said that the hybrid work model affects approximately 18,000 employees in North America. Hourly manufacturing employees returned to work in May 2020.

Follow Anne DInnocenzio: http://twitter.com/ADInnocenzio

Copyright 2021 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
SANTA FE, N.M. (AP)  A New Mexico state senator said Thursday that he has tested positive for COVID-19 and will quarantine at home, with a special legislative session underway on political redistricting.

Democratic Sen. Bobby Gonzales of Taos told The Associated Press that he tested positive for the coronavirus Wednesday through a rapid test. He informed Senate leadership out of concern for anyone who might also have been exposed through close contact.

Gonzales said he was scheduled on Thursday to undergo another coronavirus test at a hospital in Taos. He is fully vaccinated, including a recent booster shot, and was experiencing some mild nasal discomfort.

Gonzales said he also was tested on Saturday with a negative result before meeting that day with Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham. He underwent another test Wednesday as required by the governor's office in anticipation of another meeting with Lujan Grisham that did not occur.

In response to Gonzales situation, contact tracing was underway at the state Capitol. A Senate floor session was canceled for unspecified reasons.

A member of the governor's staff is quarantining out of an abundance of caution after interacting with Gonzales on Wednesday, Lujan Grisham spokeswoman Nora Sackett Meyers said in an email. She said a coronavirus PCR test of the governor came back negative on Thursday.

The governor is tested regularly and has never returned a positive test, Meyers said. After the senators positive rapid test, the governors scheduled meeting with legislative leadership this morning was conducted remotely ... out of an abundance of caution.

Meyers said the legislative session presents a heightened COVID-19 risk and that those meeting in-person with the governor are being asked to take a rapid test before. She did not address whether there are health concerns related to Saturdays meeting between Gonzales and the governor.

Gonzales said a prolonged quarantine would likely exclude him from participation in Senate decisions, under rules that restrict online participation.

Gonzales said he was open to sharing his medical information to help others make informed decisions.

I have nothing to hide, Gonzales said. The more people are aware of it, fine. That's the world we are in today.

Legislative leaders are requiring proof of vaccination for the public to gain entrance to the Capitol during the current legislative session. Masks are required indoors with few exceptions.

News about the positive test prompted a Navajo Nation delegation to cut short its stay in Santa Fe.

We're very concerned, said Leonard Gorman, executive director of the Navajo Nation Civil Rights Commission. We prefer to protect our families and not be in this situation. ... I think, for the Navajo Nation, we will be returning home this evening.

New Mexico legislators are not required to be vaccinated for COVID-19, while immunizations are required under a state public health order for employees of the governors office  located on the top floor of the state Capitol.

Lujan Grisham has been vaccinated for COVID-19, including a booster shot.

Copyright 2021 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
BOSTON (AP)  A group of Christian, Hindu, Buddhist and Jewish leaders is urging luxury fashion house Louis Vuitton to stop using animal fur in its clothing and other products.

In a joint statement, Orthodox Christian priest Stephen Karcher, Hindu activist Rajan Zed, Jewish rabbi ElizaBeth Webb Beyer and Buddhist priest Matthew Fisher said selling items trimmed with fur is inconsistent with the ethics and values of parent company Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton.

Louis Vuitton should explore new boundaries of fur-free creative design and discontinue selling all products made from animal fur, the clerics said Thursday, calling the trend cruel, outdated and unnecessary.

Animals should not be made to suffer and killed to make fashion and glamorize bodies when there are other valid fashion alternatives at our disposition. Cruelty should never become fashionable, they said.

Paris-based Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment.

Zed, who is president of the Nevada-based Universal Society of Hinduism, urged LVMH CEO Bernard Arnault and other executives  as well as the fashion industry as a whole  to review the practice.

It's not the first time Zed's group has targeted Louis Vuitton. Last year, it called on the luxury goods maker to pull a yoga mat made partly of cowhide leather, calling it insensitive to practicing Hindus, who regard cows as sacred symbols of life.

San Francisco and Los Angeles are among U.S. cities with vibrant fashion sectors that have banned the sale of fur products.

Sao Paulo, Brazil, has banned the import and sale of fur since 2015, and fur farming has been outlawed in the United Kingdom for more than two decades.

Copyright 2021 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.

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SANTA FE, N.M. (AP)  The New Mexico House on Friday passed a bill for funneling federal pandemic relief funding to improve broadband internet improvement projects and the state's road infrastructure after a committee added more spending items to the bill.

An amendment put in the bill by the House Appropriations and Finance Committee calls for using $50 million to build a rural hospital. While a location for the hospital has not been determined, some legislators were leaning toward building it in Valencia County, south of Albuquerque.

Another amendment consolidated $123 million in internet funding to allow state officials flexibility in deciding which technology to improve broadband access in underserved areas, especially rural regions. New Mexico has considered methods ranging from traditional fiber optic cable to internet beamed to the ground by satellites and blimps.

Republican committee members complained that $25 million in existing internet projects have stalled because they have not been funded.

Theyve been vetted. Theyve been approved, and theyre sitting on a shelf lacking funding, said Rep. Randal Crowder of Clovis.

Broadband also was also discussed earlier Friday in the Senate, with one lawmaker announcing that state officials are considering buying a new form of satellite internet for rural students  most of whom have lacked internet access through the pandemic.

The state Public Education Department is working on a deal to connect rural students to the internet through StarLink, a SpaceX satellite network that will offer service to the public in New Mexico starting next year. Agency spokeswoman Judy Robinson said the cost would be $1.6 million for the first year of service and for the installation of receivers.

The legislation passed by the House also includes $142 million for roads and $2 million for a teacher training fund.

Boosting the training fund is aimed at pulling the state out of a growing teacher shortage that has swelled to about 1,000 unfilled vacancies. Supporters have said the bill could support as many as 1,500 educators and aspiring educators, mostly by subsidizing university tuition for college students who want to become teachers.

Our teacher shortage is acute, Democratic Rep. Nathan Small of Las Cruces said, adding that he wanted aspiring teachers to know the Legislature is taking action.

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.

Copyright 2021 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.

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It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas  and Britain's royal family are getting ready by releasing their Christmas cards.

Prince William and Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge shared a family photo used for this year's official Christmas card, while Prince Charles and Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall went for a sign of the times, with an image of themselves wearing face masks..

Kensington Palace released the picture of William and Kate on vacation in Jordan earlier this year with their young children Prince George, Princess Charlotte and Prince Louis.

The palace released the image on Twitter, adding: "Delighted to share a new image of the family, which features on this year's Christmas card."

Delighted to share a new image of the family, which features on this years Christmas card  pic.twitter.com/aHFIhSfVXx  The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge (@KensingtonRoyal) December 10, 2021

It is unclear when the family went to Jordan.

The release of the card came just two days after Kate hosted a glamorous festive extravaganza within the hallowed Westminster Abbey in central London.

The congregation was made up of guests nominated by their local communities, as well as representatives from many of the charities and patronages of the Queen and other royal family members.

The hour-long service, set to air on the UK's ITV network on Christmas Eve, also featured a sprinkling of celebrity appearances.

Meanwhile, the image of Charles and Camilla, taken by Sam Hussein, shows the couple in the summer at Royal Ascot, an annual horse-racing event.

The royal family usually spend the holiday period at Sandringham, Queen Elizabeth II's country estate in rural Norfolk, around 100 miles northeast of London, where the monarch is usually joined by her children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

***

CNN's Lauren Said-Moorhouse contributed reporting.

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ONAWA, Iowa -- Jay Lee Neubaum's trial wrapped up Thursday without his defense attorney calling any witnesses, as a judge will now decide whether the Mapleton teen is guilty of sexually abusing seven teenage girls.

During the three-day trial, each of the girls, who ranged in age from 13 to 16, described how Neubaum forced himself on them at various locations in Mapleton, pop. 1,165, between August 2019 and March 2020.

Neubaum, 18, has denied the allegations.

In her closing arguments, defense attorney Theresa Rachel contended prosecutors had failed to prove their case. She pointed to what she described as conflicting or inconsistent testimony from the girls and other witnesses.

"The evidence that was presented either shows consent or that it didn't even rise to the level of a sex act," Rachel told the court.

Rachel also focused on one of the girls, a then-15-year-old who testified Neubaum sexually abused her in the bedroom of his home in March 2020, ejaculating on her underwear and jeans. A state criminalist testified Thursday that seminal fluid found on the crotch of her jeans matched Neubaum's DNA.

The defense attorney suggested the girl may have persuaded the other six girls to concoct stories of their own.

"There is also a lot of evidence that shows that there might have been some collusion between these girls of how to say this and what to say to law enforcement," Rachel told the court.

In his rebuttal, Monona County Attorney Ian A. McConaughey said the girl would have had to have been an "amazing, amazing manipulator" to fabricate a false claim of sexual abuse not only for herself, but also six other girls, for over 1 1/2 years, and then testify, under oath, and "make that false claim of sexual abuse all over again."

"But that's not what the evidence has shown -- that (the girl) is some sort of grand master behind this," McConaughey told the court.

In their testimony, the girls told consistent stories, McConaughey said in his closing arguments. In each instance, Neubaum got the victims alone, started kissing them against their will, pushed them down, forcibly removed their pants and underwear, and sexually assaulted them, the prosecutor said.

"This defendant used the same playbook over and over because he knew that's what worked," he said.

Neubaum forced himself on the girls, despite their repeated pleas asking him to stop, he said.

"He simply would not accept no for an answer," McConaughey said.

Responding to the defense bringing up the extended period between when the cases allegedly occurred and when the victims came forward to authorities, McConaughey said many of the victims were long fearful of saying anything.

"A lot of the victims worried what other people would think of them," he said. "They were worried nobody would believe them."

Neubaum "made these girls feel it was not safe to tell and that worked for a long time," he said.

Some victims were in denial, a state of shock or ashamed of what happened, said the prosecutor, who mentioned one of the girls twice tried unsuccessfully to kill herself.

Before the prosecution rested its case Thursday, Maple Valley-Anthon Oto High School Principal Dan Dougherty testified that Neubaum attended special units addressing sexual consent as an MVAO student in 2018 and 2019.

"It was mandatory for all of our students to watch a video, listening to a speaker, as well as take part in a discussion with school mentors, related to the rules of sexual consent," Dougherty said.

Neubaum is charged with 10 counts of third-degree sexual abuse for the alleged assault of six girls, and forced sexual contact with a seventh. Each sex abuse count carries a 10-year prison sentence.

Because Neubaum waived his right to a jury trial, District Judge Zachary Hindman will decide the case in a written ruling. Hindman said he intends to reach a decision as soon as possible. Once that happens, he will schedule a hearing to announce the verdict.

In May, a Monona County jury found Neubaum guilty of second-degree murder in the Jan. 31, 2020, shooting death of 16-year-old Joseph Hopkins in Mapleton. Neubaum is currently serving a 50-year prison term on that offense.

Hindman on Thursday granted Neubaum's request not to return to Monona County for the verdict in the sex abuse trial. Court officials will make arrangements for him to watch the proceedings through a Zoom call.

Journal staff writer Earl Horlyk contributed to this story.

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SIOUX CITY -- The Bishop Heelan School System is calling it early today.

After 11 a.m. this morning, the Catholic school group announced that there would be a two-hour early dismissal for all elementary schools and a 1:30 p.m. end for the high school. With that, after school activities are canceled too.

Also during the 11 o'clock hour, the Sioux City Community School District announced that it would have a two-hour early dismissal today, for all schools, in anticipation of the day's winter storms. That district canceled evening events as well.

Early Friday morning, South Sioux City Community Schools Superintendent Todd Strom gave word in a press release that: South Sioux City Schools would be dismissed at noon today because of the forecasted weather conditions.

In some parts of Siouxland, as many as six inches of snow have been called for. For Sioux City, as of noon on Friday, the forecast calls for about two inches of snow during the day.

Jared McNett is an online editor and reporter for the Sioux City Journal. You can reach him at 712-293-4234 and follow him on Twitter at TwoHeadedBoy98.

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SIOUX CITY -- It's an early dismissal for Sioux City school kids.

Late Friday morning, the Sioux City Community School District announced that it will have a two-hour early dismissal today, for all schools, in anticipation of the day's winter storms.

Along with classes wrapping up early, Sioux City Community School District Director of Communications Leslie Heying noted in a press release that all evening activities will be canceled for the district.

Early Friday morning, South Sioux City Community Schools Superintendent Todd Strom gave word in a press release that: South Sioux City Schools would be dismissed at noon today because of the forecasted weather conditions.

In some parts of Siouxland, as many as six inches of snow have been called for. For Sioux City, as of noon on Friday, the forecast calls for about two inches of snow during the day.

Jared McNett is an online editor and reporter for the Sioux City Journal. You can reach him at 712-293-4234 and follow him on Twitter at TwoHeadedBoy98.

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SIOUX CITY  Dr. Albert Mosley is the next president of Morningside University, according to an announcement Thursday from the school's board of directors.

Mosley, senior vice president and chief mission integration officer for Methodist Le Bonheur Healthcare, will become the 13th president of Morningside effective June 2022. He will succeed John Reynders, who has served at Morningside since 1999 and is the university's longest-sitting president.

"I am so thrilled to become part of the Morningside community," Mosley said in a statement. "The reputation and celebration of Morningside in Siouxland are remarkable, and I am especially looking forward to joining a community that shares my values and priorities. Morningside has an emphasis on developing students as whole persons, which is something I have sought to do throughout my career in higher education."

Mosley was selected following an eight-month nationwide search led by a 16-member committee comprised of students, faculty, staff, alumni and board members.

"We all agree we found an exceptional leader in Dr. Mosley, and we look forward to welcoming him to Morningside," said Craig Struve, who chaired the committee.

The Morningside University Board of Directors convened on Dec. 1, at which time the search committee shared its recommendation. The board unanimously voted to move forward with offering the position.

"Our board saw in Dr. Mosley a charismatic leader who had embodied throughout his career the passion for ethical leadership and civic responsibility that are central to Morningsides mission and culture," said Esther Mackintosh, chair of the board of directors.

As part of the senior leadership team at Methodist Le Bonheur Healthcare, a nonprofit, comprehensive, six-hospital health care system with 13,000 employees based in Memphis, Tennessee, Mosley provides strategic visioning and leadership to a division with more than 350 employees and a budget in excess of $50 million.

That division includes the Methodist Healthcare Foundation, Methodist Le Bonheur Community Outreach, behavioral health, the Center for Bioethics and Health Equity, the Center of Excellence in Faith & Health Equity, strategic philanthropy, international ministries, spiritual care, volunteer services and clinical pastoral education.

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SIOUX CITY -- Artist Brenda Schoenherr-Thelen admits that in the days following her cancer diagnosis in June 2021 she thought her work could continue unabated. Primary peritoneal cancer wouldn't stop her from filling up canvasses, carving pumpkins or practicing calligraphy.

That notion lasted right up until chemotherapy became part of the picture.

Going through something as draining as chemo, which she receives at the University of Nebraska's cancer center, requires steroids to help recover. But that presents problems when Schoenherr-Thelen has to paint something like the annual Little Yellow Dog portrait.

"Ive done this for 16 years and whats interesting about this one is Im on chemotherapy. Being on chemo I had to wait until the steroids wore off because my hands shake from the steroids," Schoenherr-Thelen said.

In total, it took Schoenherr-Thelen about 18 hours to bring Yukon, the Goldendoodle named the 2021 Little Yellow Dog, to life on her 11-by-14 canvas. Eighteen hours at her kitchen table, she painted a 10-week-old pup in a forested setting with about 30 different colors of acrylic. Typically she would meet the Little Yellow Dog but, this time out, she could only paint Yukon from what she saw of him in a picture.

"With cancer Ive been staying in my house because my defenses are down so I had people mail me photos," Schoenherr-Thelen said.

That hasn't been the only change for the woman who turned 60 in October. She said that she also has had to give up the daycare business she ran for 30 years and had to stop teaching calligraphy and painting classes at the Sioux City Art Center.

"That makes me sick but I cant just be around people. I miss the Art Center so much. It breaks my heart so much. Its like a second home to me," she said.

Debra Marqusee, the education coordinator at the Sioux City Art Center, said Schoenherr-Thelen's absence has been felt.

"We certainly miss her good energy and I havent found a teacher who could replace her. Im just waiting for the day she calls me and says: Debra Im ready to come back," Marqusee said.

According to Marqusee, the kind of energy that Schoenherr-Thelen put into her teaching was so powerful that classes would often be full and the same folks would keep coming back. "She has a following," Marqusee said.

Though the two haven't been together at the Art Center in quite some time, Marqusee said they still keep in touch via Facebook.

Bruce Brock, an auctioneer who Schoenherr-Thelen met through the Little Yellow Dog event, said that he keeps in contact through texts.

"Shes a very caring person, obviously, to do all that for the people who win the Little Yellow Dog prize. And I dont think she does it for the recognition," Brock said.

Given the circumstances, Brock said, this year's painting for the auction is even more meaningful than ones Schoenherr-Thelen did of Samantha the Maltese or Finnegan the Scottish Terrier.

"It speaks volumes to her caring nature that she was able to draw within herself that courage. She was up to the task," Brock said. Because of that kind of courage and strength, he said he expects her return soon enough.

And whenever Schoenherr-Thelen does make it back to the Sioux City Art Center, Marqusee said that, based on experience, she knows the longtime artist can handle whatever task she's given.

"Every time I would give her a challenge she would be nervous but she would accomplish it," Marqusee said.

For Schoenherr-Thelen, when her work schedule is dictated by what her body is telling her, art is therapy as much as anything else.

"I start painting and get lost in the painting and I can paint for hours and not realize its three in the morning," she said.

Jared McNett is an online editor and reporter for the Sioux City Journal. You can reach him at 712-293-4234 and follow him on Twitter at TwoHeadedBoy98.

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SIOUX CITY -- The state of Iowa has allocated six traveling health care professionals to Sioux City's two hospitals as hospitalizations of Iowans with COVID-19 ramp up around the state.

The state is contracting for 100 health care professionals, nurses and respiratory therapists, to support 17 facilities that provide 1, 2 and 3 Trauma Level care, Sarah Ekstrand, a spokeswoman for the Iowa Department of Public Health, told The Journal in an email.

"Providing supplemental staff to these facilities will enhance capacity, reduce ED wait room times, facilitate additional transfers of critically ill patients and reduce strain at lower level trauma care facilities allowing their teams to focus on care for those who are less critically ill. Federal funds from the most appropriate allowable funding course will be used," she said.

MercyOne Siouxland Medical Center and UnityPoint Health -- St. Luke's will each receive three health care professionals through the contract.

"MercyOne is receiving staffing assistance from the state of Iowa in each of our regions. A total of three individuals are allocated to MercyOne Siouxland Medical Center," Michaela Feldmann, MercyOne regional communications lead, said. "In addition to this assistance, we continue to actively seek to fill positions across our health system. While we continue to recruit for additional care team members, we remain committed to providing safe and compassionate care."

Leah McInerney, a senior marketing communications specialist for UnityPoint Health  St. Luke's, said the hospital has received aid from the state in the form of three traveling nurses.

"While our current staffing is being supported by our own team members and agency nurses, these additional nurses from the state will allow our own teams some flexibility while we continue providing amazing patient care to those that choose us," she said. "Our frontline workers have fought through an unprecedented time these past couple of years, and this aid from the governor is greatly appreciated."

The Associated Press reported Wednesday that the number of hospitalized patients in the state is the highest since Dec. 14, 2020, and the ICU census is the highest in a year. Hospitalizations increased 7.5% from the Monday update to 777 patients with 185 people requiring ICU care.

While cases of the virus went up in Woodbury County last week, hospitalizations remained stable according to the most recent report from Siouxland District Health Department.

The number of people in Sioux City's two hospitals with COVID-19 remained unchanged at 31 from the week of Nov. 22 to last week. Twenty of those hospitalizations are due to the virus, according to the report.

Woodbury County reported 343 positive cases for the week beginning Nov. 29, up from 252 the week before, according to the report. No additional COVID-19-related deaths were tallied in the county. The death toll currently stands at 263. Hospitalizations and deaths lag reported cases.

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SOUTH SIOUX CITY -- It's a half day.

Early Friday morning, South Sioux City Community Schools Superintendent Todd Strom gave word in a press release that: South Sioux City Schools will be dismissed at noon today because of the forecasted weather conditions.

"Activities and practices are also canceled," Strom said in his release.

Thursday morning, South Sioux City's Public Works Department made a declaration that all throughout Friday, until 6 a.m. on Saturday morning, there will be a snow emergency in town which means that parking is prohibited in areas designated as "snow emergency routes."

Jared McNett is an online editor and reporter for the Sioux City Journal. You can reach him at 712-293-4234 and follow him on Twitter at TwoHeadedBoy98.

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Former "Empire" actor Jussie Smollett was convicted Thursday on five of six charges he staged an anti-gay, racist attack on himself nearly three years ago and then lied to Chicago police about it.

He was acquitted on one count.

The verdict came after a roughly one-week trial in which two brothers testified that Smollett recruited them to fake an attack on him near his home in downtown Chicago in January 2019. Smollett repeatedly denied the claims. The brothers said Smollett orchestrated the hoax, telling them to put a noose around his neck and rough him up in view of a surveillance camera, and that he said he wanted video of the hoax made public via social media.

Smollett called the brothers "liars" and said their account was "100% false." He testified over two days about being the victim of what he said was a hate crime, telling the jury "there was no hoax."

Abimbola Osundairo, who worked with Smollett on the Chicago set of "Empire," and his brother, Olabingo Osundairo, also testified that Smollett paid them $3,500 for faking the attack. Smollett said the money was for meal and workout plans that Abimbola Osundairo was providing so the actor could be more toned for upcoming performances.

The Jan. 29 assault was reported to police, prompting a massive investigation that a lead detective said included some two dozen officers and 3,000 staff hours. The investigation  which included video from surveillance cameras, GPS and taxi and rideshare records  led police to the Osundairo brothers, who told detectives Smollett had staged the alleged hate crime.

Smollett's defense attorneys argued that the brothers attacked the actor  who is gay and Black  because they were homophobic and didn't like "who he was." They also alleged the brothers made up the story about the attack being staged to get money from Smollett, and that they told him they wouldn't testify against him if he paid them each $1 million.

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Check out the AP's complete coverage of the Jussie Smollett case.

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Check out the AP's complete coverage of the Jussie Smollett case.

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ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP)  Anchorage has won its lawsuit with a federal agency over failed construction at the states largest port.

U.S. Court of Federal Claims Judge Edward J. Damich on Thursday found the U.S. Maritime Administration breached its 2003 and 2011 agreements with the Municipality of Anchorage over construction at the Port of Anchorage, KTUU-TV reported. The facility has since been renamed the Port of Alaska.

Its an enormous vindication of what weve been saying all along, and thats basically that the federal government had control of this project and they didnt perform  they messed it up, assistant municipal attorney Robert Owens said.

In 2014, Anchorage filed a lawsuit against the maritime administration for more than $300 million over failed construction in the effort to replace deteriorating facilities and upgrade port infrastructure to meet increasing demands.

A nine-day trial was held last spring, at which the municipality argued the governments 2003 and 2011 agreements required the agency to provide technical expertise to oversee, design and construct the expansion project free of defect, the court documents show.

The government countered that Anchorage was the party responsible for managing and executing the project, and the maritime administration didn't breach any duties.

The judge sided with Anchorage, saying the federal agency failed to enforce its contractual duties or administer funds properly.

The amount of damages have not been awarded yet. Both sides have 10 days to submit arguments for what they believe the monetary award should be.

Anchorage Mayor Dave Bronson called the verdict a victory for Alaska.

The Port of Alaska is a vital piece of infrastructure for all Alaskans, with roughly 90% of our population touched by goods that come through the Port, Bronson said in a statement.

The municipality is working with the state and federal government to secure nearly $1.6 billion to repair the port, Bronson said.

An email sent Friday to the U.S. Maritime Administration seeking comment was not immediately returned.

For copyright information, check with the distributor of this item, KTUU-TV.

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WASHINGTON (AP)  Bob Dole was honored Friday at Washington National Cathedral and the World War II monument he helped create as top leaders from both parties saluted the longtime Kansas senators ability to practice bare-knuckle politics without compromising his civility.

Displaying a bipartisanship rare in modern government, politicians in office and out came together to pay homage to Doles hard-scrabble rise from wounded war veteran to Senate stalwart to three-time, unsuccessful presidential candidate.

He could be partisan, and that was fine, said President Joe Biden. Americans have been partisan since Jefferson and Hamilton squared off in George Washingtons Cabinet. But like them, Bob Dole was a patriot.

Joining Biden at the funeral service were members of Congress, Cabinet officials, three Republican former vice presidents and Bill Clinton, who beat Dole to win reelection as president in 1996.

Theres something that connects that past and present, war time and peace, then and now, said Biden, who touched Doles casket before addressing the service and mentioned their 50 years of friendship. The courage, the grit, the goodness and the grace of 2nd Lt. Bob Dole, who became Congressman Dole, Senator Dole, statesman, husband, father, friend, colleague and  a word thats often overused, but not here  a genuine hero.

Dole, who died Sunday at age 98, was severely wounded during World War II, served nearly 36 years in Congress and was GOP Senate leader for more than a decade. Besides his sharp, often sarcastic tongue, among Doles best-known attributes were his pragmatism and self-deprecating wit  representing the sense of compromise of a bygone era.

While calling him a giant of our time and of all time, Biden said Dole was worried at the end of his life about American democracy being threatened by bitter political battles and had noted that infighting from both parties grows more unacceptable day by day.

Still, Democrats and Republicans coming together to praise Doles ability to put country and public service over ideology was the overriding theme.

Biden offered vivid, visceral details during his eulogy, speaking about Dole being born a child of the Dust Bowl, volunteering as a young man for military service and how he came back to painful years recovering from his wounds.

God, what courage Bob Dole had, the president said.

Former Republican Kansas Sen. Pat Roberts said Dole used humor as a political tool, delivering deadpan punchlines which helped let the air out of the partisan balloons. Doles daughter, Robin, read a letter her father wrote to his staff in which he said I believe in the future of the United States of America.

After the funeral service, Doles casket traveled to the World War II Memorial on the National Mall, which opened in 2004 and which Roberts said would not have existed with Dole spending years spearheading the legislation that erected it.

Bob Dole understood that it was just not enough recognition that this Greatest Generation deserved," Roberts said. It was reflection and renewal, and it was for the Greatest Generation to inspire the next generation.

He also recalled Dole often spending Saturday mornings at the memorial, greeting veterans visiting as part of trips he helped organize. Dole was a longtime advocate for the Honor Flight Network, which arranges for veterans to travel to Washington to see memorials dedicated to their service.

Former Democratic Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle said Dole once told him he thought about being buried at the World War II memorial. Daschle also said Doles sense of duty extended beyond veterans, including when he left the presidential campaign trail to attend the 1996 graduation party of a girl paralyzed in a car crash.

Addressing the crowd at the memorial, actor Tom Hanks asked, How many structures in this city exist but for the efforts of one man?

It was Bob Dole who willed this memorial into place, said Hanks, who starred in the World War II drama Saving Private Ryan.

Dole suffered paralyzing, near-fatal wounds during World War II. Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, recalled how, after Dole was hit amid fighting in the Italian mountains in 1945, he was dragged behind a wall by a fellow soldier and lay there, facing up in the dirt. Not knowing if he would live or die. Unable to move as the battle raged around him. And he lay there for 10 consecutive hours before medics were able to reach him."

He served the army. He served the state of Kansas. He served his political party. But, above all, he served his country and he served his fellow Americans, Milley said. Bob Dole always, always put his country first.

The service ended with Milley escorting Dole's wife, former North Carolina Sen. Elizabeth Dole, as she and Robin touched a wreath in his honor, then bowed their heads in prayer as taps was played.

Doles body is also traveling to Kansas, where weekend events include a public viewing in his hometown of Russell. He will eventually be interred at Arlington National Cemetery.

Fridays services followed Dole lying in state on Thursday under the dome of the U.S. Capitol he so loved. Dole served as a Kansas state legislator before running for Congress in 1960, joining the House for eight years then going on to win the Senate seat.

Dole was early in his career seen as a GOP hatchet man. He was a mentee of Richard Nixon and chairman of the Republican National Committee during the Watergate era. During his Senate career, though, Dole grew to see the value of reaching across the aisle and secured his more lasting achievements.

Those included the Americans with Disabilities Act that to this day ensures a level of accessibility as a civil right. Dole also fought to protect Social Security benefits for elderly Americans and supported civil rights  even if such actions weren't always politically popular with everyone.

Over the opposition of many in his party and some in mine, he managed a bill to create a federal holiday in the name of Martin Luther King, Jr., Biden said. Bob Dole did that.

Copyright 2021 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.

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HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP)  George Bochetto, a prominent Philadelphia lawyer and Republican whose cases have often landed in the public spotlight, said Thursday that he is seriously considering running for Pennsylvania's open U.S. Senate seat.

In a brief interview, Bochetto, 69, said he is looking at it very, very seriously and its very likely that he will decide to run. Bochetto has considered running for mayor many times in the heavily Democratic city of Philadelphia, and ran briefly in 1999 before ending his candidacy.

In August, Bochetto won a judge's ruling preventing the city of Philadelphia from removing a 144-year-old statue of Christopher Columbus in a dispute that highlighted tensions over views of exploration, Italian American history and colonialism that changed the lives and cultures of native people.

Bochetto also helped write the defense brief in former President Donald Trump's second impeachment trial earlier this year, he said.

The Republican primary field for U.S. Senate is in flux, with Mehmet Oz  best known as the host of TVs Dr. Oz Show  saying that he's moved from New Jersey to run and David McCormick, CEO of one of the worlds largest hedge funds, moving from Connecticut in anticipation of running, advisers say.

The wide-open race for the seat being vacated by retiring Republican Sen. Pat Toomey is expected to be among the nations most competitive and could determine control of the Senate in next years election.

Copyright 2021 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.

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CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP)  West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice has lost another costly court ruling over his coal companies' environmental violations.

A federal judge in Virginia ruled Southern Coal Corp. and two dozen other Justice-owned companies must pay $2.5 million in penalties and clean up mining sites in Tennessee.

Justice has long battled taxes, fines and court penalties in several states.

A joint filing by the U.S. Department of Justice, Alabama and Tennessee said the company violated a 2016 agreement for environment clean up, the Charleston Gazette-Mail reported.

The agreement, known as a consent decree, required Southern Coal Corp. and two-dozen other companies to pay a $900,000 civil penalty to resolve more than 23,000 water pollution violations.

Chief U.S. District Judge Michael Urbanski ruled Tuesday that the companies failed to maintain water pollution control permits in Alabama and Tennessee and failed to complete mine stabilization work at three Tennessee sites.

Were disappointed in the ruling and are considering our options going forward, certainly including an appeal, Steven Ruby, an attorney for the Justice companies, told the newspaper.

Justice lost another case last month in Kentucky when a judge ordered him and his son, Jay Justice, to pay $2.9 million in fines for cleanup violations in eastern Kentucky.

For copyright information, check with the distributor of this item, The Charleston Gazette-Mail.

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Newspaper publisher Lee Enterprises has rejected a takeover offer from the Alden Global Capital hedge fund that is one of the largest newspaper owners in the country with a reputation for intense cost cuts and layoffs, but the fight over the company's future is likely far from over.

Lee said Thursday that its board unanimously rejected Alden's offer to buy the company for $24 per share or about $141 million because it isn't in the best interests of shareholders. Also Thursday, Lee reported a $5.3 million fiscal fourth-quarter profit this year, rebounding from a $1.3 million loss a year ago, as the number of digital-only subscribers at the company grew 65% to 402,000.

The Alden proposal grossly undervalues Lee and fails to recognize the strength of our business today, as the fastest-growing digital subscription platform in local media, and our compelling future prospects, Lee Chairman Mary Junck said.

But Ken Doctor, a longtime media analyst who now runs a local online journalism startup called Lookout Santa Cruz in California, said Alden isn't likely to abandon its bid to acquire Lee because it believes it can extract profits from the company with the model it has used elsewhere that calls for selling off the real estate the chain owns and drastically cutting costs.

What Alden has done -- and its now pretty proven community to community -- its harvesting the last profits out of the newspaper business and it is doing that unapologetically, Doctor said.

Alden said last month when it made its offer that it already owned more than 6% of Lee's stock. The New York-based hedge fund didn't immediately respond to Lee Thursday.

Steve Waldman, president of Report for America, an organization that places journalists in local newsrooms, including The Associated Press, said Aldens approach to running newspapers takes a heavy toll on the communities they cover because of the newsroom cuts. Alden and other hedge funds already own half the daily newspaper circulation in the country, he said.

When newspapers have their reporting staffs eviscerated, it means that governments arent held accountable, corruption goes up, waste goes up, voter turnout goes down, residents dont have the basic information they need to solve the problems of their communities, Waldman said.

Even if Lee succeeds at turning away Alden, it will likely face pressure to sell itself to someone else in the next couple of years or find a suitor willing to take the company private.

In that regard, Lee might be able to get assistance from its biggest financier, Warren Buffetts Berkshire Hathaway, which has held Lees $483 million in debt since Berkshire decided to sell its newspaper chain to Lee in 2020. At the time, Buffett praised Lee as the best steward for its papers. Buffett did not immediately respond to a request for comment Thursday.

The newspaper industry has been struggling with shrinking revenue as it transitions to digital publication, and the pandemic only intensified those stresses. Pew Research has estimated that nearly half of all newsroom jobs were eliminated between 2004 and 2018 as newspapers consolidated or closed. About one-fourth of the countrys newspapers have closed in the past 15 years, according to research from the University of North Carolina.

But earlier this week, Lee received support from its second-largest shareholder, Praetorian Capital which holds 7.3% of Lees stock. Investment manager Harris Kupperman said in a letter to Lees board Wednesday that he believes the companys stock is worth at least $100 apiece  well above Aldens opportunistic offer.

The only reason that the shares trade where they do, is that investors have yet to realize that while the traditional print newspaper business slowly declines, the digital business has been growing rapidly, becoming an increasingly substantial percentage of the total business, Kupperman wrote.

After Alden made its unsolicited bid, Lee adopted a poison-pill plan that would make it more expensive for Alden to buy up Lees shares once it owns more than 10% of the company. Lee also rebuffed Alden's attempt to nominate three new directors to the company's board.

If Alden does acquire 10% of the shares, the shareholder rights plan that the Davenport, Iowa-based company adopted would allow its other shareholders to buy shares at a 50% discount at that point or possibly get free shares for every share they already own.

Lee owns the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, the Buffalo News and dozens of other newspapers including nearly every daily newspaper in Nebraska. Unions at those papers have urged Lee to fight off Alden's advances because of concerns about what the hedge fund would do.

We must remain vigilant  this offer wont be the assassins last. Alden not only grossly undervalues journalism, it grossly undermines it, the union that represents Lee's journalists at the Omaha World-Herald tweeted Thursday.

Alden has scooped up newspapers across the country through a series of acquisitions in recent years, including the purchase of Tribune's papers earlier this year. Alden also owns the Denver Post, Orange County Register and Boston Herald.

Lee's stock gained 11% Thursday to close at $27.70  nearly $4 above what Alden offered.

Copyright 2021 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.

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MONTEZUMA, Iowa (AP)  Deer hunters found a dead mountain lion with a broken snare around its neck in east-central Iowa, state wildlife officials reported.

The Iowa Department of Natural Resources said the nearly 120-pound (54.4 kilogram) cat was found Tuesday in Poweshiek County by a group of hunters.

Mountain lions  also known as pumas and cougars  have no legal wildlife status in Iowa, meaning the hunters could have kept the carcass. Instead, they turned it over to DNR officials.

It is not required that (mountain) lions be reported to the Iowa DNR; however, we really appreciate it when they are, department wildlife biologist Vince Evelsizer told the Des Moines Register. It helps us all in monitoring their whereabouts and learning more about them.

The agency will conduct tests on the carcass to try to get more information on the mountain lions background, Evelsizer said.

Confirmed mountain lion sightings in Iowa are rare.

For copyright information, check with the distributor of this item, The Des Moines Register.

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SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (AP)  South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem's Secretary of Health, who helped steer the state's response to the coronavirus pandemic, announced her resignation Friday.

Kim Malsam-Rysdon played a right-hand role as Noem went without most restrictions during the pandemic. Malsam-Rysdon oversaw the state's testing and vaccination efforts, as well as its public health communications.

Kim has been a steady hand as our Secretary of Health, Noem said in a statement. I have appreciated her help and partnership during unprecedented times. We will miss having her on the team, and we wish her all the best.

Malsam-Rysdon is the latest person to exit from the governor's core team in recent weeks. She has also lost her chief of finance and replaced her chief of staff.

Malsam-Rysdon started as a cabinet secretary in 2015 under Noem's predecessor Dennis Daugaard.

I am thankful for the opportunity to lead the Department of Health the last seven years, and for Governor Noems leadership, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic, Malsam-Rysdon said in a statement.

The governor named Joan Adam as her Interim Secretary of Health. She previously worked as a division director in the Department of Health, overseeing the state's public health lab, correctional health care services, vital records and health information technology.

Copyright 2021 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
With the drowning deaths of 27 migrants crossing the Channel from France to England, illegal migration from the Third World is front and center anew in European politics.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson has proposed that France take back to its shores all migrants who cross the Channel illegally and come ashore in Britain.

In the run-up to French elections this April, a startling development suggests that resistance to illegal migration is spreading and the idea of dealing with it resolutely and unapologetically is taking root.

Marine Le Pen, president of the rightist National Rally, formerly the National Front, who is expected to reach the finals for president of France against Emmanuel Macron, is suddenly being challenged.

The rising star on the right is Eric Zemmour, who, writes The New York Times, "became one of France's best-selling authors in the past decade by writing books on the nation's decline -- fueled, he said, by the loss of traditional French and Christian values, the immigration of Muslim Africans bent on a reverse colonization of France, the rise of feminism and the loss of virility, and a 'great replacement' of white people."

Zemmour is being called "the Donald Trump of France." And he and Le Pen are now running third and second behind Macron in the polling to become the next president of France, which suggests the power of the issue on which they agree: uninvited and unwelcome Third-World migration.

"You feel like a foreigner in your own country," said Zemmour in his announcement speech Tuesday, declaiming, "We will not be replaced."

Neighboring Spain is gripped by the same concern. Refugees and migrants from the global south use Morocco as a base from which to breach the Spanish enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla on the African coast.

Spain has taken to pushing the intruders back into Morocco.

Madrid has accused Rabat of using the migrants as a diplomatic weapon to extort changes in Spanish policy.

Italy, whose native-born ethnic population has been in a steady decline, patrols the Mediterranean Sea to prevent migrants from Libya from reaching its shores. Drowning deaths are not uncommon. The Channel and the Mediterranean Sea are more formidable and unforgiving waters to cross than the Rio Grande.

Greece is attempting to keep Turkey from moving refugees and migrants from Middle East wars onto the Greek islands off Turkey's coast.

Half a decade ago, Turkey was bought off with billions of euros to prevent the millions of Arab and Muslim refugees within its borders from crossing over into the EU.

In the recent clash between Poland and Belarus, the weapon of choice for Alexander Lukashenko was -- migrants.

Brought into Belarus from the Mideast, they were moved to the Polish border, forcing Warsaw to deploy troops to keep thousands out of Poland. Lukashenko was exploiting the migrants to punish Poland and the EU for supporting sanctions on his regime.

After Europe united against him, Lukashenko moved the migrants away from the border and sent many back to Syria and countries whence they came.

In the hierarchy of European fears, the perceived threat to national identities that comes with mass migrations from the failed and failing states of the Third World appears to rank as a greater concern than the prospect of a Russian army driving toward the Rhine.

Most European nations have a birth rate below what is needed to replace their native-born ethnic populations. And as the founding peoples of these nations pass on, they are being replaced by peoples from what were once colonies that the old European empires controlled.

Most of these European nations have not had the experience with mass immigration the Americans have -- from the Irish migration of 1845-1849 to the millions from Central and Eastern Europe between 1890 and 1924.

Yet even the Americans had never known a migration of the magnitude of the one that began in 1965 and continues today, legal and illegal, a migration that has altered irreversibly the ethnic composition of the country of Ike and JFK.

In President Joe Biden's first year, over a million illegals breached the U.S. southern border along with hundreds of thousands of "got-aways" who made it into our country without any contact with border authority.

The rising resistance to illegal immigration in Europe is being denounced by Euro-elites as xenophobia and racism, and the proscribed term used to define it is the one the Times associates with Zemmour.

What is "The Great Replacement"? A hostile critic defines it thus:

"The Great Replacement Theory is an ethno-nationalist theory warning that an indigenous European -- e.g., white -- population is being replaced by non-European immigrants.

"The Great Replacement concept was popularized by French writer Renaud Camus in his 2012 book, 'Le Grand Remplacement' ('The Great Replacement')."

The English translation of Camus' book is entitled, "You Will Not Replace Us!" Growing numbers of Western peoples appear to fear exactly what it is that Zemmour and Camus say they fear.

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A major trend from the Census is the growing number of individuals who are voting with their feet against bad economic policies. States with high tax and regulatory burdens such as California, New York, Illinois, among others are all experiencing population loss. States with either low- or zero-income taxes such as Texas, Florida, and North Carolina are gaining residents.

Tax rates matter and high taxes deter both productivity and economic growth. The COVID-19 pandemic is also changing the nature of work and as a result both businesses and people are becoming more mobile with working from home. The Census results and the embrace of workplace mobility are just two examples of individuals pursuing economic freedom.

Iowas economy is in recovery from the pandemic, but challenges remain. Perhaps the most significant economic challenge is the need to find workers. Iowa businesses need qualified workers to fill numerous jobs. Even prior to the pandemic, workforce issues were a concern for both policymakers and businesses.

Growing Iowas population and expanding the workforce will not be easy. However, the solution will not be found in expanding tax credits, incentive programs, or other government mandated solutions, but rather through expanding economic freedom. Hundreds of independent studies have produced overwhelming evidence that higher levels of economic freedom are associated with more opportunity, more prosperity, greater economic growth, more investment, and more jobs.

The Fraser Institutes 2021 Economic Freedom of North America report measures economic freedom among the states. Iowa is ranked only 30th out of 50. Specifically, Iowa receives lower ratings in terms of government spending and tax climate.

Among Iowas neighbors only Illinois (33) and Minnesota (38) are ranked lower. South Dakota, a no income tax state, is ranked seventh in the index. Nebraska and Missouri are 16th and 17th; Wisconsin is 25th. The top five most economically free states are New Hampshire (1), Tennessee (2), Florida (3), Texas (4), and Virginia (5). All these states, except for Virginia, have no income tax.

Iowas personal income tax has long put the state at a competitive disadvantage. Its top rate of 8.53% is one of the highest in the nation. Among Iowas six neighboring states, only Minnesotas 9.85% is higher. Since income taxes essentially act as a penalty on productive activity, keeping their rates low is particularly important for economic prosperity.

Competition among the states is getting fiercer as policymakers compete for both jobs and people. Many states, including Iowa, are enacting pro-growth tax reforms, and eliminating regulations to make their states more economically competitive.

Governor Kim Reynolds and the Republican-led legislature are making tax reform a priority. In 2018, the legislature passed a historic tax reform measure that began to lower both the individual and corporate income tax rates. This past session the legislature passed another tax reform measure that will ensure that Iowas top individual income tax rate will be lowered to 6.5 percent in 2023 and the inheritance tax will be phased out.

On the regulatory front, Governor Reynolds and the legislature have reformed Iowas burdensome occupational licensing laws and established universal recognition for out-of-state licenses. This reform is removing barriers to work, especially for those new residents of Iowa, making it a more attractive choice for those looking to relocate.

Governor Reynolds and the legislature are also working to control spending. As a result of conservative budgeting, Iowas fiscal house is in strong condition. Iowas budget has a $1.24 billion surplus, and the reserve accounts are full. Prudent budgeting has resulted not only in funding the priorities of government, but also enabling the legislature to enact needed tax reform.

However, more progress is needed. The Tax Foundations most recent State Business Tax Climate Index ranks Iowa only 40th, largely due to high corporate and personal income taxes. The recent income tax cuts are very important steps to improving Iowas tax climate, but even once fully implemented, the top rate will still be above most other states including three of its neighbors (Missouri, Illinois, and South Dakota). These interstate differences are important because they can have an impact on the location decisions of businesses and residents.

Going into the 2022 legislative session policymakers can build on their recent progress by continuing to lower tax rates, keep spending levels low, and eliminate excessive regulations that create roadblocks to success. By increasing economic freedom, that will help keep Iowas economy growing and create new opportunities for all.

John Hendrickson serves as policy director for Iowans for Tax Relief Foundation and Dean Stansel is an economist at the Bridwell Institute in the Cox School of Business at Southern Methodist University and the primary author of the Economic Freedom of North America report.

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Care and Feeding is Slates parenting advice column. Have a question for Care and Feeding? Submit it here.

Dear Care and Feeding,

My almost 12-year-old son has become really interested in World War II over the last year or so. Im very happy that hes so into something educational, as opposed to TikTok dances or video games, but Im nervous. While we often have discussions about each countrys stance during the war, and he reads a lot of books, he also does a lot of online research on his own. We monitor his internet activity, but I know theres no way to police every single thing your kid sees online. Im worried hes going to be exposed to Nazism or right-wing extremism at some point. Hes young, white, and male, and quite impressionable at this age. We live in an extremely white, agnostic communityIm not even sure hed know what Judaism was if we hadnt talked about different religions at home. I keep wanting to broach the topic of this, but I havent been able to so far. How do I ensure he stays on the right side of history?

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 How to Handle

Dear How to Handle,

Im generally of the opinion that war is probably one of the worst obsessions that a young man can have, for the reasons you can imagine. Its undoubtable that a kid who has fixated on WWII will come across some information on Nazis, and considering just how many young people have been seduced by their modern incarnation via the internet, I think you are right to keep a close eye on this obsession. But you also have to get in front of the internet and introduce the conversation about Nazism and right-wing extremist views before hes heard the other side of the story. Make sure that his fixation on weaponry or whatever else might have interested him about the period never overshadows his understanding, as much as possible, of the atrocities that occurred. Honestly, all parents of White boys need to be having some very serious dialogues about those belief systems and the people who traffic in them before someone comes along offering a different perspective on society and culture. Kids your sons age are struggling to make sense of the world around them, and they can be susceptible to dangerous influences with absolute ease, even when you think youve been keeping watch. Talk to him tonight. Also, try to identity just what it is he finds so compelling about this war and figure out ways to nurture that interest in less fraught ways if you can.

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From this weeks letter, My Daughters Friend Group Drama Has Gotten Out of Control : Samanthas mother has continually discussed the bullying situation with me and the other parents.

Dear Care and Feeding,

Im an older preteen, and I just came out as bisexual. It didnt go badly, not exactly. My parent knew that I had a crush on a girl prior to this, so I think they knew. My parent works in mental health and has many clients who have kids who have come out as something like bi to get attention. Im not like one of these kids, and I have evidence to support it! I have known for over a year. My parent doesnt want me to pick a label for myself, but I really want one. This is a fight I feel the need to fight and win. My grandfather who I am extremely close with is in poor health, and I really want to come out to him. My mom gives EXTREMELY HARSH punishments so Im worried what would happen if I defied her. At the same time, I want to be a loud and proud bisexual. And I feel that is my right. I communicate the best in writing, but I dont mind saying it verbally if I dont have to bring it up, if that makes a difference. What am I supposed to do to be a proud member of the LGBTQ community, but also avoid punishment? Im hoping you can help me, please.

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 Bisexual Who Knows It

Dear Bisexual Who Knows It,

I am so sorry you arent getting the support you deserve from your parent at this point. Im curious about those kids who came out for attention and how your parent determined that to be true. Im also curious about these punishments that you speak of, and if theyd actually punish you for simply stating your identity. I sure hope not, but I do know that there are parents who would, and as a result, there are young people who spend their time working to survive their parents home from the moment they realize that their identity is one that would not be fully accepted there.

You can perhaps write your parent a lettersince you say writing is easier for youthat explains that while you understand that they dont want you to rush into choosing a label for yourself, that you are very clear about who you are and only want for your family to accept and acknowledge that. Hopefully, they will receive that well and stop asking you not to be honest. However, Im wondering what you think will happen if they dont. If you feel that asserting your identity to your parent is going to make it harder for you to live under their roof, you are allowed to make a decision with your safety and comfort in mind, not just your understandable desire to be true to your identity.

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Can you speak privately to your grandfather? If you can talk to him in confidence, about both what you want to share and your parents reaction to it thus far, he may be a valued confidantesomeone who isnt inclined to tell you what to do, but instead, who will embrace you as you are. If thats not him, is there someone in your life (a teacher, a friends parent) whom you can speak to about what youre dealing with openly without them running back to your parent? Its important that you begin to identify the people who will have your back and support you unconditionally, no matter what your parent choses to do.

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You dont have to have your parents support to be an out and proud bisexual. Ideally, you will in time, but even if they never seem to understand or accept you fully, their view of you simply doesnt matter as much as your own. Wishing you all the best on your journey.

Catch Up on Care and Feeding

 If you missed Thursdays column, read it here.

 Discuss this column in the Slate Parenting Facebook group!

Dear Care and Feeding,

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A close friend of mine has three children, ages 12, 14 and 15, that constantly ridicule and mock her physical disabilities, lack of money, the fact she divorced their father, her inability to work outside the home, and her housekeeping skills, to the point she is extremely depressed about their level of disrespect toward her. They make fun of her almost constantly, whether solely in her presence or around others. It has become unbearable to watch, to bite my tongue and not correct their horrific behavior. Children this age are typically more compassionate, and when she asks me for advice, I find myself as a loss for words, as I know she wont punish them for their behavior. Is there anything I can do to help the situation? FYI, I have in the past cleaned her home, helped her complete numerous household tasks and errands, and given her money. But none of this leads to permanent change.

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 Feeling Inept

Dear Feeling Inept,

Youre a good friend, and Im so sorry your girl is going through all of this. It sounds like she could use some help gaining control over a few aspects of her lifeperhaps you can hold her hand along the way. Sit her down for a talk: Explain your concerns, that youve been watching her manage these really difficult situations with grace, but that it may be time for her to take some steps to improve things around the housein particular, how it looks and how her children treat her. Does she have any emotional support? It sounds like shed really benefit from having a professional to talk to; perhaps you can take on the task of finding a few within her means. Shes got to learn to erect some stable boundaries for her children (something else a therapist can help with), and she may need to hear that from someone who really cares about her. Be frank: The way her children treat her is unacceptable, she does not deserve it, and it must end. Help her plot and plan on a new way of living. What kind of chores can these kids start taking on so that the house isnt such a wreck? Is there money in budget for an occasional cleaning service? Ride with your girl on this journey: She needs someone who is not only going to tell her what she needs to hear, but also who will also be there with her along the way as she works to implement some necessary changes. Wishing you and her all the best.

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Want Advice From Care and Feeding?

Submit your questions about parenting and family life here. Its anonymous! (Questions may be edited for publication.)

Dear Care and Feeding,

What should the rules be for sleep-overs for LGBTQ+ middle/high schoolers? When my husband and I were that age (a thousand years ago), the easy, bright line rule was no opposite-sex sleep overs. But if the goal is preventing/reducing sexual shenanigans, that rule doesnt work with a lesbian middle schooler. You cant flip it and say no same sex sleepovers, because you miss out on so much normal middle school bonding. We want to say no sleepovers with romantic interests, but thats too easy to circumvent with tweens who dont want to share their crushes in the first place. It feels like we should have a conversation with the other kids parents to make sure were all on the same page about whats happening, but what if that means outing someone who isnt ready to be outed? And while were super proud of our daughter for choosing friends who think liking girls is equivalent to liking chocolate vs. vanilla vs. whatever ice cream, we know that these same kids parents arent all as open minded.

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Weve asked our gay relatives and friends, but were mid-40s, and no one we know in our generation was out back when they were in middle school. Yay for our awesome kids who know who they are and are proudly out, but how do we navigate this? COVID has bought us some time in all this, but with younger kids being vaccinated, we need to have a response. We talked with our 12-year-old about this, I said I want you to be able to have sleepovers but I dont know the rules around LGBTQ, were trying to sort it out and do right by you, what do you think the rules should be? But she hasnt shared any ideas either, other than Google it. Which, honestly, is the best Ive got as well. What are the guidelines for navigating this?

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 Need New Rules

Dear Need New Rules,

As Ive written in this space before, same-gender-loving young people are not the only ones that engage in sexual experimentation during sleepovers and on other occasions when theyre left to their own devices. With this in mind, the rules for slumber parties with queer kids should be the same as the ones for those with kids who are assumed to be otherwise. The expectation should be set that no inappropriate activity will take place, and the kids should feel watched enough that theyd worry that any attempt at doing something banned would be foiled by the parent who just seemed to be up all night long, constantly popping in to offer snacks when she should totally be sleep. While there must be adequate privacy (so that young folks can comfortably wear pajamas and sleep), there should not be access to places where kids can go sneak off unattended for long periods of time, nor should they feel they have free reign to do whatever, whenever.

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However  even with watchful eyes, its possible that some fooling around may go down at a sleepover, regardless of the orientations of the children present. Again, it didnt take the increased visibility of LGBTQ people in society to make this sort of thing a thing. Straight girls have been practicing kissing (and other stuff) on one another at slumber parties for generations; furthermore, consensual experimentation between peers isnt the worst thing in the world, as much as we may want to avoid facilitating it for our own children. All you can do is reduce the risk that things get truly out of hand by making sure your kids and their guests have eyes on them more often than not.

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 Jamilah

For More Parenting Coverage, Listen to Mom and Dad Are Fighting

More Advice From Slate

I have a good friend who has been depressed lately about getting older, being single, and feeling like he will never get married and have children. I am also single but very happy with that fact. He has not behaved inappropriately, but I am very aware that he is attracted to me, and I do not return those feelings. He knows I dont return his feelings. I am concerned that since I do not reciprocate his feelings I risk making things worse either by offering support or by distancing myself. How do I support him through this while keeping appropriate boundaries?
On a recent episode of Amicus, Dahlia Lithwick spoke with Katherine Franke, director of the Center for Gender and Sexuality Law at Columbia University and faculty director of the Law, Rights, and Religion Project at Columbia Law School, about whats at stake in the Supreme Courts new abortion case, Dobbs v. Jackson Womens Health. The two discussed how a secular framework is being applied to religious argument, the Roberts courts highest priority, and what will ensue if this case leads to the toppling of Roe v. Wade. This conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.

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Dahlia Lithwick: I want to start with the obvious but somehow unspoken observation that the Dobbs argument we heard recently is about gender and abortionand also religion. But we only talk about gender and abortionand never religion. We have Justice Samuel Alito leaping in to ask, Are there secular philosophers and bioethicists who take the position that the rights of personhood begin at conception, or at some point other than viability? So the argument becomes: There are secular philosophers and bioethicists who take this position. This isnt about faith at all.

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For an awful lot of Americans, the debate about Roe and Planned Parenthood v. Casey is a religious conversation most of the time. It would be constitutionally intolerable if this were a religious conversation, so the arguers have to swath it in secular language. Im wondering if you agree that we are talking about one thing, and were not talking about the other thing that is really the thing we should be talking about.

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Katherine Franke: Well, the thing we should have been talking about was womens lives, which was painfully absent in so many ways, other than occasional remarks from Justice Sonia Sotomayor. But by and large, the arguments from every other member of the courtand certainly from the Mississippi attorney generalignored that this is a vital issue for women. Why do women get pregnant? Why do people need abortions? Thats the first thing that was absent and that we need to talk more. The other thing is religion: We can now be at a point in 2021, with a decision coming out in the summer of 2022, where it is the official policy of the United States Supreme Courtand more than a majority of state legislaturesthat life begins at a certain time. That is absolutely a religious decision, but one that is now passing as secular in nature.

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I find that so troubling when its held up against the ways in which explicitly religious values are being used as a cudgel to undermine probably the most fundamental public value, which is public health. The Dobbs case comes on the heels of the COVID cases last summer, where governors across the country were scrambling to deal with this horrendous pandemic, imposing reasonable limitations on the ways in which we all operated normally. Religious organizations on the right objected to being held to account for the same kinds of burdens all the rest of us were facing. Those cases went to the Supreme Court, and the courts used them to recognize that religious liberty is a more important value than public health. So between those COVID cases and what we see in Dobbs, I am prepared to say the Supreme Court is the greatest threat to public health that we have present in the United States during a deadly pandemic.

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Theres a two-tier way that this court analyzes rightsthat religious liberty and property rights are at the top, and a lot of other things, including public health and gender issues and immigrants rights, are down at the bottom. This is beginning to be a referendum on what the majority of the court deems an emergency.

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When you have the thick morality of religion up against a thin administrative state that doesnt have any commitment to a good society, the public sector will always lose.  Katherine Franke

What this court is doing is explicitly tiering constitutional rights. Part of how theyre doing that is by saying, When we look at the text to the Constitution, we dont see the word abortion, we dont see the word privacy, we dont see the word gay, but we do see the word religion, and we do see the words gun and militia. There are top-tier rights that get priority treatment, religious liberty being the most important it seems. I think gun rights are probably going to be right up there with it, once the court issues the gun case decision in the spring or the summer. And then other rights are second-tier rights, which can be respected when they dont come in conflict with other top-tier rights. I mean, I hope thats where we end up, although after the arguments, it may be that they dont exist at all.

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I think thats absolutely right. Justices Gorsuch, Alito, Thomas, and Kavanaugh to some degree have been ringing this bell that we are in the midst of a constitutional emergency in terms of threats to the rights basically of certain Christians. The way they have pulled this off is worthy of note. When the Framers wrote the Bill of Rights and additional amendments to the Constitutionin which they crafted limits on state power over rights to free speech, religious liberty, equal protection, rights to bear guns, rights to counsel in criminal trialsthey understood those rights as bearing a complex relationship to one another, and that they had to be balanced and managed in a kind of synergistic ecology. No one of them was any more important than any other. In a particular court case, one could be seen as more important or, at least, might win that day, but the others would be able to come back and fight another day after that.

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If you think about same-sex marriagethe Obergefell decision, Lawrence v. Texasthose were cases in which there wasnt a conflict with another right. But when those rights come into conflict with these top-tier rights, religious liberty being most important, then they have to yield. This is a radical new way to think about what it means to be a people governed by limits on government: that some people enjoy greater freedom and equality than others do.

Mississippi Solicitor General Scott Stewart told the justices that Roe and Casey haunt our country and poison the law. Then he said that Roe and Caseys core holdings, according to the courts, are that people can protect an unborn girls life when she just barely can survive outside the womb, but not any earlier, when she needs a little more help. Im just wondering, rhetorically, what that move isto start talking about Roe and Casey as being about an unborn girl. Thats not actually what those cases are. It again seems like its putting this deeply faith-based spin and then leaving it there for the court to object tobut nobody objects to the unborn little girl.

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Its a faith-based spin, but its also a kind of patriarchal paternalism. The other part of Casey is the court making up this myth that there are many women who have abortions who come later to regret them, and so for that reason, its good that various states actually impose a kind of supervision on that decision, and then decide what kind of information you might need about a waiting period or fetal pain.

I think this is just the next step in that process of, Heres the state helping those little innocent future girls just as the state was there to help those already-born girls who were going to make a decision that they would later regret. There are so many things offensive about that, but one of them is that Roe v. Wade was decided on the idea of the integrity of a persons ability to make a decision about something as important as a pregnancy with their doctor. We often frame it as a privacy case, but its also a liberty case. The woman or pregnant person is an agent in Roe whose rights are protected up to a certain point. By the time we get to Casey, the pregnant person is a potentially irrational vessel for a future person, and really needs the paternalistic guidance of the state in order to make a decision she might later regret. So I think that language about protecting future girlsthe seeds were already in Casey.

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I know it didnt escape your attention that Mississippi Solicitor General Scott Stewart was the guy who famously defended the Trump administration policy that wouldnt have allowed a pregnant migrant teen out of a shelter even when the government was not going to pay for her abortion. She was not going to be transported by the government. At that time his argument was that the government could not facilitate an abortion, that to merely open the door to the shelter in which this migrant teen was being held would be facilitationwhich, again, strikes me as a purely theological claim. Tell me if Im overreading it.

This goes back to where we started: that religion is always already on the scene, even in spaces we wouldnt understand as religious. I think part of the underlying problem here is that starting in the Reagan era, with a shrinking public sphere and government, what we also saw was almost an evaporation of the idea of a public morality. Prior to Reagan, we had these deep ideas about justice. Even during the LBJ period, we created a social welfare system that was about taking care of one another as a public responsibility, and then a civil rights infrastructure. These were public projects that people felt collectively committed to. That has all withered, and we have delegated to the private sectorlargely religious or faith-based organizationsthe job of thinking morally, and now all the government is there for, all the public sector is there for, is a coordination function.

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When you have the thick morality of religion up against a thin administrative state that doesnt have any commitment to a good society, the public sector will always lose. I think thats why we lost the COVID court cases: Religion is so much more important than whatever kind of collective morality we might be able to muster around protecting public health. Religion has captured so much of what we even might think of as secular public health values.

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Can you talk briefly about the other side of the coin? Because I suspect you get this question as often as I do, which is, Hey, Katherine, my religion says Im actually allowed to have an abortion up to and including the viability line if its a threat to my health. Or, My religion says that in cases of rape and incest, abortion is absolutely allowed. Why is the conversation so profoundly asymmetrical that we dont even hear religious liberty claims from people who dont want to be constrained by six-week or 15-week bans?

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Youre absolutely right. There are many people of faith, many faith traditions, and many health care providers of faith for whom providing the full spectrum of reproductive health care is consonant with their faith, if not determined by it. Generally, media coverage of religious liberty is framed around the religious right. But whats really interesting about the pre-Roe period is that there was a robust clergy consultation service that helped facilitate abortions. There were Jews, Christians, Muslims, multidenominational groups of faith leaders committed to helping get access to abortion for whoever needed it as an article of their faith. That withered somewhat once abortion became legal because that wasnt needed as much.

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There is a long tradition in this country of faith-based activists, health care providers, and others advocating for the full range of reproductive health care. I will share with you confidentially, and your listeners, that we are working on reinvigorating lawsuits challenging bills like SB8 with religious liberty claims and reinvigorating the clergy consultation service. The right doesnt get to own religion, and it certainly shouldnt when it comes to the law.

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There are other church-and-state cases barreling toward the court. I wonder if you could talk for a minute about what folks should be looking out for in the world of religious liberty in collision with civil rights.

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I think its important for journalists and other people who are reading the court carefully to pay attention to the degree to which the court is engaged in storytelling. When it decides these religious liberty cases, it does so by telling a very rich story about the history of the United States: the fundamental importance of religious persecution at the founding, how religious liberty was a fundamental value from the founding onward, and how virtuous faith-based people are. By contrast, when, say, gay people come to the court seeking equality, as was the case in the last term, you get sterile, logical, boring, technical reasoning. Theres no rich story of a history of equality, or the history of persecution of lesbians or gay men or queer people or trans people.

I would expect this dynamic in the abortion cases. We wont hear a story about why it is that some people are faced with a decision to terminate a pregnancy. Instead, we will hear a different kind of story about the care of state legislatures for womens health and their care for these future girls. These are signals of what the court cares about, in terms of what storytelling it does and what kind of reasoning it deploys.

I also think what comes next depends a little bit on whether the court goes big or goes small in this decision. When they hand down the decision in Dobbs, and if its a sweeping Clarence Thomas sort of opinion where SCOTUS basically wipes abortion rights from the Constitution, the Alliance Defending Freedom will have a complaint filed the next day challenging Obergefell. That side is ready, and its well-resourced with smart lawyers. Our side is never that ready. The other side is teeing up, the next round of cases that will expand and build on whatever it is the court decides in Dobbs.

The day that decision comes down, more than half the states have statutes that will spring into action rendering abortion a crime. The pro-choice movement will have to move into our own form of action, of helping move people around the country from states that are conscripting women into forced parenthood to states that are not doing so. The activism will be in the streets for sure, but it wont be enough, unfortunately.

Listen to the entire episode here:
On Thursday, Donald Trump lost his latest legal battle seeking to block information from the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack. In a unanimous opinion written by Judge Patricia Millett, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit ruled that it would not grant the former president an injunction blocking the National Archives from turning over White House documents surrounding the events of Jan. 6, as required by law.

Trump had contested President Joe Bidens waiver of executive privilege over the materials. But Millett, joined by Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson and Judge Robert L. Wilkins, ruled that Trump had not shown that the presidency would be injured by the release of key documents, even though the previous president objected.

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In a thorough 68-page opinion, the court determined that Trump had failed even to allege, let alone demonstrate, any particularized harm that would arise from disclosure, any distinct and superseding interest in confidentiality attached to these particular documents, lack of relevance, or any other reasoned justification for withholding the documents.

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Former President Trump likewise has failed to establish irreparable harm, and the balance of interests and equities weigh decisively in favor of disclosure, Millett wrote. For those reasons, we affirm the district courts judgment denying a preliminary injunction as to those documents in the Archivists first three tranches over which President Biden has determined that a claim of executive privilege is not justified.

The ruling, which drew on precedent that granted greater weight to claims of executive privilege by the current president than the former, is a vindication of U.S. District Judge Tanya S. Chutkan, who also rejected Trumps request for a preliminary injunction. The panel did allow a temporary administrative injunction against the disclosure of the documents to remain in effect for Trump to appeal to the Supreme Court.

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The D.C. Circuits ruling was direct, forceful, and comprehensive in deferring to the judgments of both Congress and the current president that the requested information about the worst attack on the seat of government since the War of 1812 is necessary for the House of Representatives to do its workand for the nations democracy to function.

A court would be hard-pressed under these circumstances to tell the President that he has miscalculated the interests of the United States, and to start an interbranch conflict that the President and Congress have averted, Millett wrote.

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For good measure, the panel also noted that even if it accepted that the courts should second-guess the sitting president and the House of Representatives on behalf of a former president who is now a private citizen, Trumps request still would fail on its own terms.

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Under any of the tests advocated by former President Trump, the profound interests in disclosure advanced by President Biden and the January 6th Committee far exceed his generalized concerns for Executive Branch confidentiality, Millett explained.

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During last months oral arguments, one of the panels principal concerns was that Trump was asking the court to block production of the documents without actually articulating why. He raised only a very general claim that it would be in the best interests of the executive brancha claim that the current president rejected. As Millett wrote:

[Trump] has not identified any specific countervailing need for confidentiality tied to the documents at issue, beyond their being presidential communications. Neither has he presented arguments that grapple with the substance of President Bidens and Congresss weighty judgments. Nor has he made even a preliminary showing that the content of any particular document lacks relevance to the Committees investigation. He offers instead only a grab-bag of objections that simply assert without elaboration his superior assessment of Executive Branch interests, insists that Congress and the Committee have no legitimate legislative interest in an attack on the Capitol, and impugns the motives of President Biden and the House. That falls far short of meeting his burden and makes it impossible for this court to find any likelihood of success.

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Further, the panel scoffed at the notion that the court mustat Trumps behest and without any actual specific guidance as to what its looking forgo through each individual document to make its own determination about whether Trumps or Bidens view of executive privilege should win out.

If what former President Trump means instead is that the court should hunt through the documents in an effort to espy important reasons why President Bidens decision might be ill-advised, he gets the law backwards, Millett wrote. Having asserted the importance of confidentiality in these documents based on his expert viewpoint as the President during whose term they were created, former President Trump had the burden of articulating some compelling explanation for nondisclosure to the court. He cannot stand silent and leave it to the court to come up with arguments for him.

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The panel also recognized the significance of the Jan. 6 committees work as an important, historic endeavor. Finally, it acknowledged the possibility that Trump or other executive branch officials may have contributed to the disaster that day.

The Committee is investigating a singular event in this nations history, in which there is a sufficient factual predicate for inferring that former President Trump and his advisors played a materially relevant role, Millett wrote.

Millett closed with lofty language recalling Benjamin Franklins admonition that the Constitutional Convention had provided Americans a Republic, if you can keep it to emphasize that the events of January 6th exposed the fragility of those democratic institutions and traditions that we had perhaps come to take for granted.

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Thursdays decision, should it be affirmed by the Supreme Court, is also a devastating blow for witnesses who have sought to hide from subpoenaed testimony before the Jan. 6 committee. These witnesses include Steve Bannon, who has been charged by the Department of Justice with criminal contempt of Congress, and former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, who is facing similar contempt charges after ending a cooperation deal with the committee and instead suing it. If the courts defer to Bidens waiver of executive privilege over these documents, it stands to reason that they should also defer to his judgment that these witnesses should provide sworn testimony.

The documents in question include drafts of speeches concerning the events of Jan. 6, a draft executive order on election integrity, and handwritten notes concerning the events of Jan. 6 from Meadows himself.
Chief Justice John Roberts sounds distraught. After Fridays ruling by his five fellow conservatives on the Supreme Court allowing Texas S.B. 8 bounty system to stand for now, Roberts wrote that his colleagues had pushed the entire system of judicial review to the precipice of disaster.

The clear purpose and actual effect of S.B. 8 has been to nullify this Courts rulings, Roberts wrote in perhaps the most hair-on-fire moment of his career. Prohibiting federal lawsuits against judges and clerks who might in practice enforce S.B. 8s now apparently constitutional nullification schemewhich allows private individuals to sue anyone who abets an abortion into oblivion without federal judicial oversightthreatened to make the constitution itself into a solemn mockery.

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The nature of the federal right infringed does not matter; it is the role of the Supreme Court in our constitutional system that is at stake, wrote Roberts in an opinion joined by the courts three progressives. The Texas law effectively bans abortions in the state.

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Nullify  Court rulings. Solemn mockery. Constitutional system  at stake. That all sounds  pretty bad!

The chief justice is not exaggerating. By blessing even an altered version of Texas bounty-based scheme to upend Roe v. Wade, the courts five ultraconservatives are clearly opening the door for state nullification of other rights. That issue itself came up during oral arguments, as well as in part of an amicus brief by a guns right group that feared liberal states might put constitutional rights cherished by conservatives, such as virtually unlimited Second Amendment rights, in the crosshairs.

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Hardcore Trumpists might scoff at the warnings of the chief justice, who they have long viewed as a turncoat for his decision to cast a fifth vote to uphold Obamacare and for other relatively moderate moves. If Democratic officials in blue states have the nerve to try to attack GOP-favored Constitutional rights via a similar scheme, Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett can simply reassess their positions. After all, the constitutional right to an abortion is likely about to go out the window based on their five votes when Dobbs vs. Jackson Womens Health Organization is decided in about six months, so what actually have these five justices blessed in the meantime? Certainly not the right for California to offer $10,000 bounties on anyone who abets the sale of a handgun, which would threaten a real right unlike the fictional abortion protection that is about to go the way of the dodo bird? Inconsistency ultimately only really hurts you when you dont have the votes, and the Federalist Society now owns this court with one, two, three, four, five of them.

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I get it! The right stacked the court with hardcore partisans elevated under practically criminal circumstances, and now they have certain expectations. Theres no reason to let some nagging by that black-robed weenie change anything they might do to recraft the entire constitutional system according to Samuel Alitos Fox Newsimprinted worldview.

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Roberts, though, is an independent actor. Judged by his previous lurcheshowever mildlyto the middle, the chief justice appears very much to care about the courts collapsing public legitimacy. And, again, if you read the words that he wrote in his concurring opinion in the S.B. 8 case, he also has genuine fears not just about how all this slash and burn will play with the public, but also about what it means for our entire constitutional system.

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If Roberts does actually mean all those dire warnings in his desperate opinion on Friday, then he does have one option that would go a significant way towards curing many of the concerns he professes to have about the courts legitimacy, and the potential nullification of its rulings, and the status of our very republican structure: Roberts could retire.

You might ask: Why would anyone retire from one of the most powerful jobs in the world at the age of 66 and with lifetime tenure?

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Thats a fair point, and I dont very well imagine the chief justice will take me up on my humble proposition.

It would clearly, however, resolve a good deal of the problems he professes to have with the entirety of our constitutional system now being at stake.

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First, its not historically given that just because the justices have life tenure that they stay in the job forever. Supreme Court justices often retire. In fact, in the not too recent past it wasnt unusual for them to retire during the tenure of a president of the opposite party to the one that appointed them, which would be the case if the Republican-appointed Roberts retired right now with Democrat Joe Biden in the White House. (As Scott Lemieux wrote in the Washington Post in 2019, for the most part, strategic resignations were not an issue for much of the 20th century.) Heck, even popes sometimes retire. Historically speaking, it would not be crazy, or even bizarre, for Roberts to retire early from this job.

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Second, retirement would clearly alleviate many of the questions the court faces about its legitimacy that Roberts now says hes very concerned about. If Roberts retires now, for instance, he gives weight to the argument his Democratic-appointed colleague Stephen Breyer has used to resist calls for his own retirementthat the court is actually not a hopelessly broken and partisan institution and that justices strategically resigning when a preferred president is in the White House is what really damages the courts legitimacy. If Roberts retires when a Democrat can replace him, it proves Breyers point that the system still works! Further, Roberts going now would basically amount to an offer of restitution for the Supreme Court seat that was stolen by Mitch McConnell when the Senate refused to hold a hearing on Barack Obama nominee Merrick Garland for nearly a year at the end of his presidency and then seated Amy Coney Barrett with weeks remaining in Donald Trumps tenure.

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To be clear: At this point, the biggest point of contention around the courts legitimacy is that stolen seat. In one fell swoop, Roberts could negate that argument almost entirely. As such, his retirement would tamp down any lingering calls for court reform, which are weak now but could gain strength as the court further lurches to the right.

Third, this is likely the best method Roberts has of pushing the court in the face-saving direction he actually wants it to go, where it gradually but significantly moves the constitutional law to the right, only without overturning the entire apple cart all at once. If Roberts is replaced by a fourth progressive jurist, Justices Kavanaugh and Coney Barrett might feel some pressure to pivot to finding any sort of middle ground on major issues with tactically moderate progressives, such as Elena Kagan. After all, they will be on the court a long time and they have to know that 73-year-old Clarence Thomas and 71-year-old Samuel Alito cant live forever. If Kavanaugh and Barrett find that theres a potential for the balance of the court to shift in the next ten years, they might be persuaded to play a little nicer with Kagan, lest the court possibly swing drastically leftward when Thomas and Alito are no longer on the job.

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This is all a long shot, I will say, but its more likely to work than whatever it is Roberts is doing now to convince his junior colleagues not to join Thomas and Alito in a mission to watch the world burn. Tactically speaking, the ballast of a fourth progressive justice will do a lot more to pull the court back from the brink of total illegitimacy than any admonishing minority opinions Roberts might join his three progressive colleagues in offering.

Finally, the one thing that Roberts appears truly concerned with other than the courts legitimacy (and demolishing voting rights, which hes already achieved), is his own legacy. How will history judge him if he retires early to restore the courts balance and legitimacy? One thing is sure, he will go down in certain conservative circles as a Benedict Arnoldlevel villain. But hes already achieved that status to a great extent and I dont think Donald Trump could be any meaner to him than he already has been. Meanwhile, should he retire, Roberts will almost certainly go down in history as a noble hero who sacrificed his own position to save the legitimacy of the court and maybe even the constitutional system. Further, the gesture will likely be largely symbolic, as the five remaining conservative justices will continue to pull the court and the country further and further in the rightward direction that Roberts actually prefers, perhaps radically so.

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What about Roberts legacy if he stays on the court? It doesnt appear like that will go well. The courts five conservatives are clearly intent on quickly pulling the country into a deep, dark well of minority rule and devastation of fundamental constitutional protections with or without him. If he sides with them, he has the potential to play a role in the destruction of our democratic experiment, up to and including any possible 2024 restoration of his loathed President Donald Trump via judicial rulings that might help overturn free and fair elections. If he bucks his conservative colleagues, hes one of four losers warning about the imminent and ongoing collapse of a system that they are powerless to prevent. Either he will be the sixth vote on a radical, destructive Court that will forever tarnish the Supreme Courts legitimacy and possibly devolve the nation into a series of constitutional crises from which we may never recover, or hell be a fourth loser howling into the ever-darkening void.

Retirement might not sound so bad if those are your options!
In 1983, the Soviet Union shot down a Korean Air Lines passenger jet, killing everyone on board. Afterward, a band of American communists showed up at my college to hand out their newspaper. It displayed a photo of a top Soviet military commander showing off the countrys air defenses. The caption boasted: Dont mess with the Russians!

That celebration of Soviet power and brutality exposed a moral rot on the far reaches of the American left. But today, youre more likely to find this kind of rot on the American right. Its in Donald Trumps persistent glorification of Vladimir Putin, Kim Jong-un, and other autocrats. And its a regular feature on Fox News, thanks to Americas proudest nihilist, Tucker Carlson.

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Carlson has spouted Kremlin propaganda for years. But in the past two months, as Russia has massed troops near its border with Ukraine, he has redoubled his efforts, rationalizing Putins aggression and denouncing Western attempts to deter a Russian invasion. Carlson isnt a Russian agent, nor is he a useful idiot. Hes a useful cynic: someone whose moral emptiness happens to serve the interests of a foreign power. If you read Russian government websites, youll find that hes using the same talking points as Putins Ministry of Foreign Affairs. And sometimes, he generates anti-American material for Russian state TV.

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Putins government, unlike the old Soviet Union, portrays Russia as a Christian nation. Last week, in a statement denouncing the American-backed global Summit for Democracywhich opened on Thursdaythe Russian foreign ministry accused European leaders of aggressive inculcation of ultra-liberal values and practices that are destroying the Christian foundations of European civilization. That argumentrepeated three times in the statement, in varying formswas an appeal to Christians in the West, encouraging them to turn against their own governments and identify instead with Russia.

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On Tuesday, Carlson delivered the same message to his audience in the United States. In a segment dedicated to opposing American involvement in Ukraine, he interviewed a guest, retired U.S. Army Col. Douglas Macgregor, who made the case that Putins government rests on the foundation of Orthodox Christianity and that we should celebrate that, not try to destroy it. To this, Carlson added: Maybe thats one of the reasons we are trying to destroy it. Carlsons meaning was unmistakable: The United States is opposing Russia because the Russian government is Christian, and the American government isnt.

Putins regime has a record of exterminating dissidents, but Carlson says thats not important. Carlsons predecessor in the Fox prime-time lineup, Bill OReilly, famously called Putin a killer during a 2017 interview with Trump. In that interview, Trump defended Putin: We got a lot of killers. What, you think our countrys so innocent? Three months after that exchange, Carlson took over OReillys time slot, and criticism of Putin in the 8 p.m. hour all but disappeared. On Tuesday, Carlson showed a video clip of President Joe Biden affirming that Putin is a killer.These people are children, Carlson sneered, referring to Biden and other Putin critics. Every other head of state has been a killer, too, he suggested. Vladimir Putins soul? Who cares?

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As the Summit for Democracy gets underway, one of Russias principal aims is to discredit the idea that America is a democracy. In presenting this argument, the Russian foreign ministry uses the lies and talking points that Trump and Carlson have spread. Millions of Americans question the fairness and transparency of the 2020 [U.S.] presidential election, the ministry noted in its statement last week, citing dubious practices such as multi-week mail voting and the continuing reprisals of US authorities against protesters outside the Capitol on January 6.

Carlson peddles the same paranoia about the election and Jan. 6. In fact, he has approvingly quoted Putin on these subjects. But on Tuesday, he went further, deploying the same anti-American argumentthat were insincere about democracyspecifically to undercut Ukraine. The U.S. governments attempt to deter Russian aggression against Ukraine is not about democracy, he scoffed. He dismissed this American meddling as an extension of the Russia hoax, a mindless conviction that everything about Vladimir Putin is bad. Behind it all, he told viewers, was a corrupt lobbying campaign: Ukrainian interests have pumped millions of lobbying dollars into Washington, D.C. to tell us that Russia is bad.

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In her weekly briefings, Maria Zakharova, the Russian foreign ministrys spokeswoman, insists that NATO and the United States are the real aggressors in Ukraine. She accuses them of moving closer to the borders of our country and seeking to destabilize the situation on Russias borders. Carlson agrees. Putin just wants to keep his western border secure, he declared on Tuesday, brushing off Russias previous invasion of Ukraineits 2014 seizure and annexation of Crimeaand its current assembly of forces near the border. He denounced NATO as obsolete and cruel, claiming that it exists primarily to torment Vladimir Putin. And he rebuked Republican Sen. Joni Ernst, who had urged Biden to deter a Russian invasion of Ukraine, as a bloodthirsty warmonger.

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Carlson seems particularly interested in Sevastopol, a port city on the Black Sea, which Russia seized from Ukraine in the Crimean invasion. Russia used to lease a naval base there, but in 2014, Putin eliminated that expense by stealing the whole peninsula. A month ago, Carlson said we shouldnt care about that invasion, because when it took place, I didnt notice a detectable decline in American living standards. But on Tuesday, he suddenly expressed interest in protecting the city. NATO should stay out of Ukraine, he cautioned, because its involvement there would compromise Russias access to its Sevastopol Naval Base, and Putin cannot let [that] happen. Actually, Sevastopol is far from the area where NATO aid would be applied. But to Carlson, that doesnt matter. In his view, Ukraines loss of Sevastopol was fine, but anything that triggers Putins anxiety about Russia possibly losing Sevastopol would be unacceptable.

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Carlson doesnt just parrot Russias moral arguments and fuss over its territorial concerns. He also reinforces Russias strategic message: that instead of trying to deter Putin, America should be deterred by Putin. In a briefing two weeks ago, Zakharova noted ominously that Russias gas pipeline to Germany, Nord Stream 2, is vital for stable energy supplies to Europe and for the competitiveness of Germany and the EU. Carlson agrees that Russias energy supplies give it geopolitical powerand from this he concludes that the United States should capitulate. Why would we take Ukraines side and not Russias side? he asks. I mean, whos got the energy reserves?

Russias foreign ministry also dangles the prospect that it could turn to China as an alternative partner if the United States makes trouble in Ukraine or elsewhere. Last month, Zakharova boasted that Russia has close and trustful contacts, close neighborly relations, and all-round partnership and strategic interaction with China, unlike Russias cool relations with the United States. Carlson makes the same point. By challenging Putin in Ukraine, he warns, wed be driving Russiaand we are, in factdeeper into the arms of the government of China.

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NATO and the United States are trying to avert a war in Ukraine by persuading Putin that he cant win, because through sanctions on Russia and military assistance to Ukraine, the West would make a Russian invasion too painful for the Kremlin. Carlson is doing the opposite: Hes trying to persuade Americans that we cant win, because Putin would make Western resistance too painful for us. There is nothing we could possibly gain from a military confrontation with Vladimir Putin, and there is very much we could loseincluding, of course, many thousands of American lives, Carlson warned his viewers on Tuesday. His guest, Macgregor, reasoned that the United States should cut a deal with Russiaacceding to Putins threatsbecause if we were to challenge Russia in Ukraine, we will be defeated.

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Carlson also echoes the Russian foreign ministry in other ways. The ministry says the Anglo-Saxon military lobby is fabricating the Russian threat to extract more defense spending; Carlson, in his rant against helping Ukraine, blames the guys from Raytheon. The ministry mocks the United States for complaining about other countries borders while failing to manage its own border crisis; Carlson raises the same point. Why does Ukraine have a God-given right to territorial integrity, he asks, when we have Hondurans invading Texas? On Russian state TV, video clips of Carlson and his diatribes are a constant presence.

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Why does Carlson use his platform to serve Russia? I doubt he sees it that way. He doesnt think hes being owned by Putin. He thinks hes owning the libs. But when you dedicate your show to owning the libs, and when the liberals you hate are people who believe in human rights around the world, you can end up as the American spokesman for thugs like Putin and Hungarys Viktor Orban, who despise liberal democracy, immigration, andas Carlson recently put it, in praise of Russiawoke American culture. And thats why Carlson mocks the idea of looking for Putins soul. Hes not looking for men who have souls. Hes looking for men who dont.
Drake and Kanye West are hosting a benefit concert on Thursday night to free former Gangster Disciples leader Larry Hoover from a federal supermax prison. The concert will stream on Amazon and in select IMAX theaters and will raise money for nonprofits focused on prison reform.

While the event will likely raise lots of money, some of which will go to great organizations like the Uptown Peoples Law Center, it is unlikely to get Hoover out of prison. Hoover has both state and federal convictions, the former for a 1973 murder and the latter 1997 conviction for running a criminal enterprise in Chicago. While his federal conviction can technically be revisited under new federal criminal justice reforms, his state conviction has no such flexibility. Even if his federal conviction was commuted, he would be shifted to state prison to serve the remainder of his 200-year murder sentence.

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That means he can only gain freedom through a rare gubernatorial and presidential pardon.

Hoovers case is unique because of the scale of his influence and his complicated history, but his plight highlights the all too common challenge of releasing people who have exhausted their appeals in court. Many federal prisoners are out of luck if they cannot be released under the narrow parameters of the First Step Act.

Recent momentum in the movement to free Hoover stems from the First Step Act, for which West advocated to former President Donald Trump. The 2018 law allows judges to resentence people with certain federal convictions, including people convicted of selling crack, as penalties for the crime have since been reduced to address racial disparities.

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Chicago has reduced sentences for federal prisoners under the First Step Act more frequently than other cities: 75 of 200 cases examined in a 2020 Chicago Sun-Times analysis ended with sentence reduction. Judge Harry Leinenweber, who handled Hoovers original federal conviction and who oversaw his hearing earlier this year, has approved 10 petitions for sentence reductions under the First Step Act and rejected three.

But Leinenweber rejected Hoovers bid for a resentencing earlier this year in a 19-page decision. Leinenweber was clear that Hoover should be made an example of, suggesting that commuting his sentence could somehow encourage others to follow in his footsteps. To the extent that any one person can deter another to commit crimes, Hoovers life imprisonment symbolically demonstrates that the rule of law reaches even those in power who seem untouchable, Leinenweber wrote.

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The prosecutor who handled Hoovers conviction agrees with Leinenwebers sentiments, suggesting that releasing Hoover would be a miscarriage of justice. Prosecutors claimed that Hoover was single-handedly responsible for Chicagos high murder rate in the 1970s and 1980s because of his leadership of the Gangster Disciples, one of several competing gangs of the era.

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This is absurd, but its also a sign that Hoovers outsize influence is working against his efforts to get free. Hoover took the reins of the Gangster Disciples in the 1970s, after he had already been sentenced to 150 to 200 years for ordering a 1973 murder.

In 1987, Hoover and top lieutenants in the Gangster Disciples rebranded the organization as GD, for Growth and Development, and declared the organization was centered on community empowerment. In the 90s, Hoover founded a community organization called 21st Century VOTE, whose membership consisted of former gang members. Among the groups actions was a failed bid calling for Hoovers parole in August 1993. The organizations get-out-the-vote efforts earned Hoover political influence with Chicago aldermen and a former mayor, making him a celebrity behind bars and granting him the following he still enjoys today.

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Concurrently, Hoover was still apparently running the gang as a drug operation from prison, leading to a 1997 federal conviction after hours of recorded conversations from his prison cell were used by the prosecution.

Hoovers followers believe his federal conviction was an attempt to suppress his political organizing. (Hoovers defense chose not to address the substance of the evidence against him, and his attempts at appeal have focused on whether the government recorded his conversations legally.) His detractors believe Hoovers Growth and Development turn was a ruse. But to Hoover, developing political power was the natural progression of any gang. Every ethnic group, they start out with these street gangs, but as they mature they turn into something far more legitimate and something that could be a credit to the community, he told the Chicago Reader in 1995.

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Because Hoovers perceived influence has raised alarm among prosecutors, Hoover himself was uncomfortable with the Drake/Kanye concert, worrying it could hurt his chances of release, according to his son.

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Part of his discomfort may stem from the fact that getting a sentence commuted or vacated is exceedingly difficult and politically fraught. President Joe Biden, nearing a year in office, has yet to issue a single pardon, with nearly 17,000 outstanding petitions from federal prisoners collecting dust at the Department of Justice. And Biden seems uninterested in auditing the review process for clemency, which relies on the recommendations of judges and prosecutors to advance petitions. More importantly, a federal pardon from the president would not erase Hoovers state murder conviction.

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Clemency or a pardon at the state level is unlikely too. Current Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker has granted at least one commutation for a murder conviction, in a case where Gerald Reed stated he was beaten into confessing to a double homicide. This commutation led to some blowback, and commuting the sentence of Hoover, who led one of the largest gangs in Chicago history, would certainly engender much more.

Aside from gubernatorial action, revisiting the states sentence for Hoovers murder conviction would be impossible without exculpatory evidence. Hoover has confessed to the murder and asked for forgiveness during his parole requests in the early 90s. Unlike with the federal conviction, theres no way to change long state sentences on the basis that they are severe. The First Step Act pertains only to the countrys 156,862 federal prisoners, not the 2 million people in state prisons and county jails.

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All this raises the question of what Hoovers supporters, his son, Kanye, and Drake are hoping to achieve with tonights concert. Larry Hoover Jr. has said he hopes to build momentum for a pardon. Kanye, perhaps emboldened by his wifes successful efforts to pardon prisoners under the previous president, is trying to repeat this success with Hoover, whom he idolizes for his community service.

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But one thing is clear: The event will be lucrative. Tickets were sold for between $200 and $1,000, according to the Source. The artists chose nonprofits focused on helping people return from prison, including Ex-Cons for Community and Social Change and Hustle 2.0. While its unfortunate that so much social responsibility for helping people who were incarcerated is outsourced by the state to nonprofits, the organizations can likely use the money. And regardless of whether Hoovers case is improved or harmed by the ostentatious benefit concert, maybe there is hope that the millions of people currently incarcerated who have a lower profile than Hoover will get the resources they need to get free.
ARCHIVED - Hospitality industry up in arms over potential smoking ban in Spain



The Ministry of Health in Spain wants to prohibit smoking on terraces

Seven autonomous communities in Spain, including Valencia, have adopted the Terrazas Sin Humo measure as a tool against Covid, which prohibits patrons from smoking on the outdoor terraces of bars and restaurants. Now, however, the government is preparing its ambitious law against tobacco that proposes, among other measures, to permanently introduce this rule across the country.

Understandably enough, the Hospitality Industry of Spain, which already feels targeted and mistreated by the administration, has strongly criticised the plan.

President of the association, Jose Luis Yzuel, has questioned the point of the measure.

Is it that a man will not be able to smoke on a terrace but if he sits on a bench half a meter away, he will be able to? It's stupid", he concluded.

Mr Yzuel has argued that business owners are already perfectly entitled to not allow smoking on their terraces if they so wish, but said it is quite another thing to force the outright ban on publicans and restaurateurs.

It is an approach of total hypocrisy and cynicism, the president insisted. On the one hand, the State collects hundreds of millions of euros in taxes and instead of raising awareness and respecting the freedom of companies, it prohibits.

The measure to prohibit smoking on terraces is part of a battery of initiatives prepared by the Ministry of Health, which also supports banning smoking in private cars, the generic packaging of tobacco brands, raising taxes on tobacco products and restricting the use of e-cigarettes.

According to last years European Health Survey, 16.4% of women and 23.3% of men smoke daily in Spain while 20% of those aged 15 and over are confirmed smokers, well above the European average.

Image: Archive
ARCHIVED - Meteorologists predict that Spain could have a White Christmas



A cold snap across Spain means that temperature over the festive period will be lower than normal

December has begun with very variable weather patterns, ranging from stable and mild days to periods of frigid cold, snowstorms and gales, all culminating in storm Barra earlier this week. While the Cantabrian slope experienced the most extreme weather, the experts from Meteored have revealed that, for Christmas, the earliest forecasts point to a very different situation across all of Spain.

Initial predictions suggest that the anticyclone will move towards the North Sea over the holidays, leading to a much colder Christmas than normal. Meteored foresees temperatures of between 1 and 3 degrees below average in Galicia, Cantabria and Castilla y Leon, while the festive season will be around 1 degree cooler in the rest of Spain, including the Balearic and Canary Islands.

The exceptions will be the south of Extremadura and the western half of Andalucia, where the temperatures will remain around average. After the Christmas period, the mercury is expected to return to normal at the beginning of 2022.

A possible White Christmas

If the predictions come to fruition, meteorologists believe that it could snow over the main days of the Christmas holidays. In Spain, heavy snowfall is usually confined to the northern half of the country and in mountainous areas, but several snowstorms have made the history books, including the Christmas squall that buried the city of Burgos in snow in 2004.

The not-so-pleasant news is that the Yuletide period could see higher than average rainfall in the Valencian Community, the Region of Murcia, eastern Almeria and the Canary Islands, which may continue into the first week of the new year.

Image: Archive
The government has adopted a national strategy and is designing its action plan to cover many walks of life.

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In the search for environmentally acceptable solutions and zero-emission energy sources, Slovakias one answer is hydrogen.

Investment Advisory Guide Well-arranged information about the economy, labour market, investor support, legislation, and real estate as well as investment opportunities in Slovakia. For more details visit ouronline shop.

Economy Minister Richard Sulik (SaS) sees it as the fuel of the future and is determined to tap into its potential. His ministry has come up with the National Hydrogen Strategy, which the government adopted in June 2021, to be followed by an action plan with concrete measures and investment opportunities. Slovak scientists and designers have meanwhile developed a car and a bus that run on hydrogen. Both have been presented at the Expo 2020 in Dubai.

Hydrogen is the future and we want to be prepared for it, Sulik told The Slovak Spectator. He sees hydrogen technologies as a major prospect for Slovakia in the long term. If we want to have a carbon-neutral economy by 2050, this will be impossible without hydrogen.

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Related article Automotive industry faces the biggest transformation in its history Read more

A hydrogen plan

Hydrogen technologies are a way for Slovakia to reduce its dependence on two strategic fossil fuels: crude oil and natural gas. The country is one of the three most industrialised economies of the European Union with a significant usage of natural gas.

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https://sputniknews.com/20211210/armenian-defence-ministry-says-repelled-azerbaijans-attack-at-border-1091416081.html

Armenian Defence Ministry Says Repelled Azerbaijan's Attack at Border

Armenian Defence Ministry Says Repelled Azerbaijan's Attack at Border

The Armenian army has repelled an assault by Azerbaijani troops on its military bases at their common border

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armenia

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"On 10 December, at around noon [08:00 GMT], units of the Azerbaijani armed forces attacked Armenian combat positions stationed in the eastern area of the Armenian-Azerbaijani border. As a result of the retaliatory actions of the Armenian side, the enemy suffered losses and was thrown back to its original positions," the ministry said in a statement.Shooting on the border is ongoing, it added.One Armenian soldier died as a result of a shooting at the border with Azerbaijan, the Armenian Defense Ministry said.Further information about the incident will be released later, the ministry noted.There have been several recent episodes of border tension flaring up despite the recent agreement between the parties to work towards border demarcation and demilitarization. Armenian President Ilham Aliyev, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, and Russian President Vladimir Putin met in Russia's Sochi on 26 November, where they discussed steps for the normalization of Yerevan-Baku ties, including stability and security of the border.The meeting followed border clashes that erupted in mid-November, which claimed dozens of lives from both sides.The escalation of a long-lasting conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan in the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh erupted in September 2020 and ended with a trilateral ceasefire agreement, signed in November of the same year.

FeEisi Azerbaijan wants to steal more land, little by little without triggering a huge war. Armenia can study which parts of the border are susceptible to this tactic and strengthen them. 3

tim The problem for Armenia is the new purchase by Azerbaijan of the Turkish armed drones, which caused complete devastation when they were used against their artillery positions during the recent conflict. 2

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https://sputniknews.com/20211210/assanges-friend-on-uk-high-court-decision-taking-away-hope-of-justice-is-the-beginning-of-fascism--1091423483.html

Assange's Friend on UK High Court Decision: Taking Away Hope of Justice is Beginning of Fascism

Assange's Friend on UK High Court Decision: Taking Away Hope of Justice is Beginning of Fascism

John Pilger, a veteran investigative journalist believes that the ruling on Assange extradition to the US has done no less but blew apart one of the cornerstones of a civilised society - which is justice.

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us wins appeal to extradite assange

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John Pilger, a veteran investigative journalist, filmmaker and Julian Assange's friend, believes that the ruling on Assange extradition to the US has done no less but blew apart one of the cornerstones of a civilised society - which is justice. Sputnik: Now, as the verdict is announced, how will it impact the international media community, especially journalists and organisations who face similar charges?John Pilger: I think the main threat is to justice. It is a threat to journalism. But the main threat here is a travesty of a miscarriage of justice, that's what I think is the real. I don't see many journalists who might be in danger because most of the press, most of the Western press have actually been opposed to Julian Assange, and it's only in recent months or perhaps years that they realized there might be a threat to them. The real threat here is the grotesque, the grotesque dismissal of justice. It really sends a shadow right over the body politic of the United Kingdom, because when you take away any hope of justice in the courts, then that truly is the beginning of fascism. This dismissal of justice, I call it grotesque, I don't exaggerate, because what they said in their brief statement today, the judges or rather the Lord Chief Justice said, was that they had accepted assurances from the United States that Julian would not be imprisoned in what they call over their special administrative measures. That is a hell hole dropped into a place where he would never be seen again, like some living death. Those assurances, the United States itself said that we reserve the right to withdraw all those assurances if Assange does something we don't like. This is about justice. Justice is, in my view, the most important cornerstone of any civilized society, and it's just been blown apart in London.Sputnik: What about the whole concept of whistleblowing? Should everyone think about exposing misconduct fear of being treated like Assange?John Pilger: Yes, it's a threat to whistleblowers. This is the gravest threat to real journalism. I don't mean a journalism that is simply an echo chamber of governments and their vested interests. I mean those honourable exceptions, real journalists, whistleblowers, the journalists who today have difficulty having their work published in the mainstream.Sputnik: Why is the Assange case so different from Francis Haugen's, who exposed Facebook misconduct and has been touring all over Europe with her testimony?John Pilger: The Assange case is very clear because Assange went to the heart of an imperial state, and he and WikiLeaks exposed the criminal activities of that state. And in so doing, performed a unique public service. He exposed the CIA for what it is. He exposed the body politic of the United States for what it is with the expose of the diplomatic cables. He exposed the conduct of war by the United States for what it is, and that is a kind of homicidal activity. On that scale that hasn't been done before.Sputnik: How true is it that the whole case is just a matter of national security and classified information?John Pilger: National security is what we call in English a weasel term. National security means those unaccountable below parliaments, below governments who actually wield extraordinary power the intelligence agencies, the defence establishments. Every country now, that likes to still call itself a democracy, really, its power resides in its national security state, and that is a state in shadow, a state that conducts wars.Sputnik: Is there an alternative course of action for Assange's defence team now? What are his friends and family going to do?John Pilger: They're appealing. Now they'll appeal to the UK Supreme Court. That's what Stella Morris, Julian's fiancee, said today. And my guess is that that appeal may at least delay the extradition of Julian to the United States. You have to really understand when you look at the statement by the judges, how, from the point of view of logic alone, let alone the point of view of justice, how outrageous it is. They are accepting assurances from the state, which itself has said it will break those assurances. It's a kind of Kafkaesque statement.Sputnik: During the first day of his Summit for Democracy, President Biden declared his support for independent journalism and free speech. What's your take on this, given the news from London?John Pilger: My laughter is enough. I also heard the secretary of State, a rather miserable creature, who wanders around the world threatening countries, called Anthony Blinken, talking about how journalists should be free. And the next day, the United States government seems to win its case of blocking the freedom of certainly the world's most famous journalist. I've been a journalist for a long time and I'm still in awe at the United States capacity to live in its own world of illusion. Perhaps they actually believe that. Perhaps they believed they are a democracy. Perhaps they believe they're a force for good. If they do believe it, they have a great sense of humour.

https://sputniknews.com/20211210/moscow-london-courts-verdict-on-assanges-extradition-shameful-1091414410.html

Hess Very true, Secretary of State, Anthony Blinken is an ardent Israeli Zionist Jews who is wondering around the world threatening Iran, China, Russia, Ethiopia, etc. A Jew. 3

mandrake Todays society is a fascist dominated regime, not the benito kind of fascism but an updated version where the less salubrious parts are adjusted not to be seen or noted. Fascism is a master of disguise but nevertheless present everywhere. the concept democracy is the first victim and what we are given is a sad joke without meaning, sure as a clucking bell were allowed to vote on what were toldo vote on. The system is broken and allows todays politicians to enrich themselves on the back of the 98 pct! 3

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julian assange, us, interviews, wikileaks
https://sputniknews.com/20211210/australia-to-replace-european-military-helicopters-with-us-black-hawks-1091413263.html

Australia to Replace European Military Helicopters With US Black Hawks

Australia to Replace European Military Helicopters With US Black Hawks

Australia will replace European MRH-90 Taipan military helicopters with multi-role American Black Hawks, Australian Defence Minister Peter Dutton said.

2021-12-10T10:36+0000

2021-12-10T10:36+0000

2021-12-10T10:38+0000

military & intelligence

australia

helicopters

us

/html/head/meta[@name='og:title']/@content /html/head/meta[@name='og:description']/@content

https://cdnn1.img.sputniknews.com/img/07e5/0c/0a/1091413426_0:0:2048:1153_1920x0_80_0_0_c5fecb3c7933311d8bf602544319b455.jpg

"For the interoperability with the US and Australia which is increasingly important for us given the instability in our region, the Black Hawk made perfect sense. They are much cheaper to fly than what the Taipans were," the minister told Australia's Nine News.According to the minister, the 41 Taipan helicopters were unreliable and did not live up to the expectations. In their stead, Australia will purchase up to 40 Black Hawk helicopters from the United States.Earlier on Friday, Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison also said that the Taipans "weren't doing their job". The purchase of American helicopters, he said, complies with obligations under the AUKUS partnership with the United States and the United Kingdom.According to Nine News, replacement of the helicopters will cost taxpayers 7 billion Australian dollars ($5 billion).The Australian government's decision drew criticism from the opposition. Deputy Labor Leader Richard Marles said the country's military programs raised questions amid the recent refusal of the Australian authorities to honor the $90 billion submarine contract with France in favor of the US nuclear submarines."We are seeing a whole lot of defence programs being scrapped. When we see defence programs being turned over like this, it is billions of dollars wasted," Marles said, as quoted by Nine News.Labour frontbencher Bill Shorten Bill Shorten, on the contrary, urged the Australian government to take hard decision to replace the helicopter fleet.In January, Australia banned the use of 30 out of the 33 Black Hawk helicopters already purchased due to technical problems. Three helicopters continued to be used only because they were operating outside Australia, in East Timor.The Black Hawk helicopters are designed and built by the US Sikorsky Aircraft manufacturer. Taipan aircraft are produced by the European NHIndustries consortium.According to the Australian Defence Magazine, Taipan helicopters are used in Australia by aviation regiments in the suburbs of Townsville and Holsworthy. They were put into service in 2007 to replace the outdated S-70A-9 Black Hawks helicopters.

https://sputniknews.com/20211130/us-to-upgrade-military-infrastructure-develop-new-bases-in-australia-guam-to-counter-china-1091132952.html

vot tak "Would you like some lube?" "No, I'm australian. I want my humiliation accompanied with pain." 11

Hess Black Hawks are very good whe used against unarmed civilians. They will be used against Australians in Australia.Australian does not have enemoes. It makes them on the run after the US. 7

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military & intelligence, australia, helicopters, us
https://sputniknews.com/20211210/china-officially-establishes-diplomatic-ties-with-nicaragua-reports-say-1091405101.html

China Officially Establishes Diplomatic Ties With Nicaragua, Reports Say

China Officially Establishes Diplomatic Ties With Nicaragua, Reports Say

China has officially established diplomatic relations with Nicaragua

2021-12-10T05:19+0000

2021-12-10T05:19+0000

2021-12-10T05:19+0000

nicaragua

world

china

/html/head/meta[@name='og:title']/@content /html/head/meta[@name='og:description']/@content

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The two countries signed a communique on the establishment of ties in the early hours of Friday in the Chinese city of Tianjin.The Nicaraguan government announced its decision to cut off relations with Taiwan in favour of developing ties with China on Thursday. The United States has condemned the move, saying that the government led by President Daniel Ortega was not reflecting the will of the Nicaraguan people and the Latin American nation would lose a steadfast partner.Taiwan has been governed independently from mainland China since the end of the Chinese Civil War in 1949. Beijing views the island as its province, while Taiwan (formally, the Republic of China) maintains that it is an autonomous country and has political and economic relations with several other nations.

vot tak Very good news. 10

BUY HUAWEI what idiots are usa politicians, how do the idiots know what the people of Nicaragua want and want ??? The people of Nicaragua do not want contact with the United States, that is the fact so accept it or disappear 8

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nicaragua, world, china
https://sputniknews.com/20211210/danish-pms-car-vandalised-by-protesters-during-minkgate-hearing-1091406420.html

Danish PMs Car Vandalised by Protesters During 'Minkgate' Hearing

Danish PMs Car Vandalised by Protesters During 'Minkgate' Hearing

The decision to kill 15 million mink to stop a mutated COVID strain from interfering with the vaccination campaign was found to be unconstitutional, as Danish law doesn't allow the killing of healthy animals.

2021-12-10T06:05+0000

2021-12-10T06:05+0000

2021-12-10T06:05+0000

denmark

news

mette frederiksen

scandinavia

mink

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The Danish police had to escort Prime Minister Mette Frederiksens car away from the Frederiksberg court, after protesters had encircled the vehicle and inflicted some minor damage, including a broken rear light.Frederiksen, who had been summoned to a court to meet a commission surveying the so-called Minkgate, her governments decision in 2020 to cull the entire stock of farmed mink due to a fear of COVID-19 mutations, was not in the car at the time of the incident, TV2 reported.As the car became encircled by protesters, the Copenhagen police decided to shield it.In connection with this, a rear light was smashed on the car. It has now been driven away from the location. We are looking further into what happened, the police said in a statement.Subsequently, two people were arrested as a result of disturbances related to the demonstrations, the Copenhagen Police said. One of the individuals arrested was seized for violent or threatening behaviour towards service personnel, and the other for making offensive remarks.As she arrived at the court, Frederiksen was booed by a sizable gathering of protesters, some of whom held signs calling to put her in prison. Others mentioned the lost text messages related to the cull, which, as Frederiksen and her team claim, were automatically deleted and are a topic of inquiry as well. Yet another sign read Ignorance doesn't absolve one of responsibility, referring to the government's claims it didn't know the order to cull mink lacked legal basis at the time it was issued, which is why it had to be green-lit retroactively.Frederiksen, however, was adamant about the cull, calling it the decision unfortunate, but the right thing to do.The decision to kill 15 million mink to stop a mutated COVID strain from interfering with the vaccination campaign was found to be unconstitutional, as Danish law doesn't allow the killing of healthy animals. Subsequently, Frederiksen's Food Minister and fellow Social Democrat Mogens Jensen took the blame and left his post over the affair that, as analysts argued, undermined the ruling party's stance in the recent municipal election. The cull effectively eradicated a thriving sector, as Denmark was one of the world's leading producers and exporters of fur.

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denmark, news, mette frederiksen, scandinavia, mink
https://sputniknews.com/20211210/f-him-bitter-trump-bashes-netanyahu-over-bibis-efforts-to-cozy-up-to-biden-1091415003.html

F*** Him: Bitter Trump Bashes Netanyahu Over Bibis Efforts to Cozy Up to Biden

F*** Him: Bitter Trump Bashes Netanyahu Over Bibis Efforts to Cozy Up to Biden

The former president expressed hurt feelings over his Israeli counterpart's alleged betrayal.

2021-12-10T11:37+0000

2021-12-10T11:37+0000

2021-12-10T12:06+0000

donald trump

united states

benjamin netanyahu

israel

betrayal

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Former President Donald Trump has expressed bitterness and disappointment with Benjamin Netanyahu  one of his closest foreign allies during his four years in office, over the former Israeli prime ministers decision to congratulate Biden with his election victory in November 2020, and after his inauguration in January 2021.The first person that congratulated [Biden] was Bibi Netanyahu, the man that I did more for than any other person I dealt with, Trump said, speaking to Israeli Journalist Barak Ravid in a pair of interviews for Ravids new book Trumps Peace: The Abraham Accords and the Reshaping of the Middle East.I was personally disappointed in him. The elections here were in dispute. They still areBibi could have stayed quiet. He has made a terrible mistake, the former president added, referring to his long-running claims that the 2020 election was rigged against him in key battleground states using a combination of faulty voting machines and fake mail-in ballots.I liked Bibi. I still like Bibi. But I also like loyalty, Trump complained. Trumps feathers were also ruffled by the Israeli prime minsters video recording on 20 January 2021 congratulating Biden, this time after he stepped into office.The billionaire went on to list off some of the things he did for Netanyahu, including having the US recognize Israeli sovereignty over the occupied Syrian Golan Heights, which Tel Aviv took control over in 1967 and annexed in 1981. That was a big deal. People say that was a $10 billion gift. I did it right before the election, which helped [Netanyahu] a lothe would have lost the election if it wasnt for me. So he tied. He went up a lot after I did it. He went up 10 points or 15 points after I did Golan Heights, Trump insisted.The former president also stressed that his decision to unilaterally scrap the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action Iran nuclear deal in 2018 was because of my relations with Israel, and claimed that if he had not pulled out of the deal, Israel would have been destroyed maybe by now.Trumps candid comments on Netanyahu are the second time hes made frank remarks about the United States relationship with Israel in recent weeks. In late October, the former president accidentally said the quiet part out loud and raised eyebrows after complaining that Israel no longer has sufficient control of US Congress. The biggest change Ive seen in Congress is Israel literally owned Congress  you understand that  10 years ago, 15 years ago. And it was so powerful. And today its almost the oppositeThey had such power, Israel had such incredible power  and rightly  over Congress, and now it doesnt. Its incredible, actually, Trump said in a radio interview.Last month, in a prerecorded address to the Republican Jewish Coalitions annual meeting in Las Vegas, Trump listed off his administrations pro-Israeli policies, and boasted that no president has ever been a better friend to the state of Israel and Im very proud of that.

https://sputniknews.com/20190605/mossad-worked-hard-on-iran-lied-speech-1075654353.html

Holger H. Bibbi the scumbag realized very early that the Orange Man is history and therefore of now further value... 13

netman Of course two evils cannot coexist! 10

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Ilya Tsukanov

donald trump, united states, benjamin netanyahu, israel, betrayal
https://sputniknews.com/20211210/germany-chancellor-reportedly-mulls-pulling-support-for-nord-stream-2-in-case-of-russia-ukraine-war-1091421671.html

German Chancellor Reportedly Mulls Pulling Support for Nord Stream 2 in Case of Russia-Ukraine War

German Chancellor Reportedly Mulls Pulling Support for Nord Stream 2 in Case of Russia-Ukraine War

Olaf Scholz took the reigns of the chancellorship from Angela Merkel on Wednesday, following the September elections and negotiations which allowed his Social... 10.12.2021, Sputnik International

2021-12-10T15:09+0000

2021-12-10T15:09+0000

2021-12-10T15:14+0000

russia

germany

nord stream 2

olaf scholz

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The cabinet of the new Scholz government supports Nord Stream 2, but may halt the project in the event of hypothetical Russian invasion of Ukraine, the Financial Times reports, citing sources said to be familiar with the new governments position.Stopping Nord Stream 2 is said to be one of the options Germany and Western powers generally have if tensions in Ukraine escalate into a war.Scholzs Social Democrats have been broadly supportive of the $10.5 billion energy infrastructure megaproject, seeing it as a boon for German businesses and energy security as the Central European industrial powerhouse switches away from nuclear and coal power. However, current and former officials in Moscow cited by FT fear that Scholzs Green Party coalition partners, who have long opposed the pipeline in the past, could throw a wrench in the works.Nord Stream 2 is technically complete and ready to start pumping gas to Germany  from where it can be carried by pipelines further west and south. However, the pipeline first requires regulatory approval from German and European Union regulators.The projects completion was previously delayed by over a year after Washington threatened to slap sanctions on European companies involved in its construction, prompting a major Swiss pipelaying firm, insurers, suppliers and others to pull out. Russian energy giant Gazprom scrambled to complete the project, with the last weld finished in September, and one of its two lines filled with gas in October.Nord Stream 2s completion comes just in time to supply Western Europe with gas amid shortages and skyrocketing prices caused by lower-than-normal reserves in the regions underground gas storage facilities. However, the necessity for regulatory approval has led to concerns that opponents of the project in Berlin or Brussels could stretch out the approval process to the spring of 2022 and the end of the heating season, meaning shortages and high prices will prevail.German media have reported that is facing pressure on Nord Stream 2 from Berlins US allies. In a bid to improve German-US ties post-Trump, the Biden administration agreed in May not to impose new sanctions on Nord Stream 2 and its Switzerland-based operator, Nord Stream 2 AG. The agreement requires Berlin to slap restrictions on Russia and limits its energy exports should Russia attempt to use energy as a weapon or commit further aggressive acts against Ukraine.Western officials and media have stepped up claims in recent weeks that Russia may be preparing for a military invasion of Ukraine by concentrating troops on the border. Moscow has dismissed the allegations, and accused the Wests client government in Kiev of attempting to resolve the frozen civil conflict in eastern Ukraine by force.The latest Western media reports about possible Russian 'invasion plans' began to circulate in November, when Politico published satellite photos purporting to show a concentration of Russian armoured forces "on the border with Ukraine," but actually showing vehicles and support equipment in Yelnya, in Smolensk region, about 250 km to the north of Ukraine, and over 800 km from the eastern Ukraine conflict zone. The reporting has since expanded to claims of the movement of tens or even hundreds of thousands of Russian troops near the border, and suggestions that Moscow might begin an assault in January.Earlier this week, Ukrainian opposition politician Ilya Kiva warned that Kiev and its Western patrons may be preparing some kind of provocation against Russia at the end of next month, with a provocation "killing two birds with one stone" and allowing the West to impose new sanctions, while helping Kiev to "write off their failures, hunger and cold on the war."Russia-Western relations deteriorated severely in early 2014, after ultranationalist and pro-western political forces in Ukraine overthrew the countrys democratically elected president in a coup. Authorities in the majority ethnic Russian region of Crimea organized a referendum which saw the peninsula break off from Ukraine and rejoin Russia. In the spring of 2014, Kiev moved military forces to the Donbass to attempt to crush local pro-independence forces organized in the aftermath of the coup. The US and the EU accused Russia of illegally annexing Crimea, and claimed that Russia either has troops in the eastern Ukrainian breakaways, or is supporting the region militarily. Moscow has dismissed the allegations.

https://sputniknews.com/20211128/germany-warns-us-congress-nord-stream-2-sanctions-will-damage-transatlantic-unity-docs-show-1091089295.html

https://sputniknews.com/20211122/ukraine-accuses-russia-of-using-nord-stream-2-certification-as-weapon-in-hybrid-war-1090926341.html

https://sputniknews.com/20211117/merkel-says-vulnerable-consumers-need-energy-bill-help-amid-rising-prices-1090805988.html

FeEisi Russia can end gas transit fees to Ukraine forcing the US, EU and IMF to spend billions to keep Ukraine's economy and military afloat. 13

md101 Maybe Olaf hasn't considered that in such case, he might have to search for natural gas elsewhere. 9

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https://sputniknews.com/20211210/india-airlifts-over-100-people-including-afghan-nationals-holy-books-from-kabul-1091409714.html

India Airlifts Over 100 People, Including Afghan Nationals, Holy Books From Kabul

India Airlifts Over 100 People, Including Afghan Nationals, Holy Books From Kabul

The Indian Armed Forces started "Operation Devi Shakti" on 15 August this year. They evacuated Indian citizens and foreign nationals from Afghanistan after the Taliban captured Kabul. Several Indian Air Force and Air India flights were carried out under the operation, evacuating stranded Indian and Afghan nationals.

2021-12-10T10:35+0000

2021-12-10T10:35+0000

2021-12-10T10:35+0000

kabul

indian air force

politics

politics

south asia

afghanistan

taliban

india

politics

air india

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A special repatriation flight from Kabul with around 110 people, including Afghanis belonging to the Hindu and Sikh communities arrived in India on Friday. All the evacuees were brought in an Indian government chartered flight being operated from Kabul.Earlier in the day, in a statement, the Indian World Forum (IWF) said that the flight is repatriating Indians who were stranded in Afghanistan and distressed Afghan citizens from the Hindu and Sikh communities. The IWF is coordinating with India's Ministry of External Affairs in the evacuation of stranded Indian citizens in Afghanistan. Meanwhile, three copies of the Sikhs' holy book Sri Guru Granth Sahib from Afghanistan's historical Gurdwaras and the Hindu scriptures Ramanaya, Mahabharat and Shrimad Bhagavad Gita from the 5th Century Asamai Mandir temple in Kabul have also been brought to India.The Afghan nationals are scheduled to be rehabilitated by Delhi-based NGO Sobti Foundation.The copies of Sri Guru Granth Sahib will be taken to Gurdwara Guru Arjan Dev Ji, Mahavir Nagar, in New Delhi and the Hindu religious scriptures will be taken to Asamai Mandir in Faridabad city in Haryana state.In a reply to a question in the Parliament on 3 December, Federal Minister of State for External Affairs V. Muraleedharan had said that so far, 565 people, including 438 Indians, have been evacuated from Afghanistan under Operation Devi Shakti.He also informed the Parliament that 74 members of the minority community, primarily Sikhs, have been evacuated from Afghanistan.

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kabul, indian air force, politics, politics, south asia, afghanistan, taliban, india, politics, air india, kabul international airport, sikh, politics, indian air force (iaf), taliban presence, india
https://sputniknews.com/20211210/india-bjp-ally-condemns-home-ministers-statement-on-nagaland-violence-1091413764.html

India: BJP Ally Condemns Home Minister's Statement on Nagaland Violence

India: BJP Ally Condemns Home Minister's Statement on Nagaland Violence

A botched anti-insurgency operation and retaliatory violence resulted in the death of 14 civilians and one soldier last week in the Indian state of Nagaland on... 10.12.2021, Sputnik International

2021-12-10T13:23+0000

2021-12-10T13:23+0000

2021-12-10T13:23+0000

india

nagaland

india

bharatiya janata party (bjp)

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https://cdnn1.img.sputniknews.com/img/07e5/0c/0a/1091418212_0:194:600:532_1920x0_80_0_0_79027871853c690dc09772fbd8b7c0e8.jpg

The Bharatiya Janata Party's (BJP) ally, the National People's Party, has accused federal Home Minister Amit Shah of twisting facts about the death of civilians killed by armed forces in the northeastern Indian state's Mon District recently.Dr. Ahoto's statement followed the deadly incident, which occurred over the weekend, as well as Shah's subsequent remarks on Monday.Last Saturday, India's security forces left six people dead when they opened fire at a van in which villagers were returning home from their mine. Later, angry villagers attacked the army camps, which led to the death of eight more people - seven civilians and one soldier - in the clashes. One more villager died during a violent confrontation between the two sides on Sunday.Commenting on the incident on Monday, the Home Minister said that "security forces had signalled the vehicle to stop, but it had sped away".According to the National People's Party president, however, that was not the case. "Shah's claim that vehicle was asked to stop was incorrect," Ahoto said. "There were no security checkpoints near the village (where the attack took place) nor were the victims trying to flee."Many media reports also report that BJP's Mon District President Nyawang Konyak, has expressed his own dissatisfaction over Home Minister Shah's statement; he categorically said, "The statement by Amit Shah that they didn't stop at the check gates and were trying to flee, is a lie."

india

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india, nagaland, india, bharatiya janata party (bjp)
https://sputniknews.com/20211210/iraqi-militia-threatens-to-fight-american-occupiers-as-pentagon-marks-end-to-combat-mission-1091424961.html

Iraqi Militia Threatens to Fight American Occupiers as Pentagon Marks End to Combat Mission

Iraqi Militia Threatens to Fight American Occupiers as Pentagon Marks End to Combat Mission

Iraqi and US officials announced Thursday that Americas counterterrorism combat mission in Iraq had come to an end. From now on, the US military role in Iraq... 10.12.2021, Sputnik International

2021-12-10T18:53+0000

2021-12-10T18:53+0000

2021-12-10T18:53+0000

united states

iraq

iraqi popular mobilization forces

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US forces will be classified as occupiers after the end of December and treated accordingly, Nasr al-Shammari, a spokesman for al-Nujaba, a 10,000 militiamen-strong Iraqi Shia militia movement, has warned.American forces cannot be identified as anything other than occupiers if they do not withdraw by the end of the current year, al-Shammari said, speaking to Lebanons al-Mayadeen television news network on Thursday.The deadline for the withdrawal of occupying forces is nearing, and must be fully implemented. The resistance front will never again face the challenges it confronted between 2003 and 2011. The bloc is now stronger than ever, the spokesman warned, referring to the period of the US occupation of Iraq following the 2003 invasion.In a statement earlier in the day, al-Nujaba secretary-general Akram al-Kaabi warned that the US occupiers would be made to pay for their crimes against Iraqis, and that Washington would remain an enemy to us even if they pulled out entirely.The US occupation created many proxies that serve its interest in Iraq, and fighting them is a legitimate and national duty, according to al-Kaabi. The official accused the US of failing to respect Iraqs sovereignty, and rejected attempts to disarm the Popular Mobilization Militias formed in 2014 to fight Daesh (ISIS)* so long as the country is still occupied.The United States designates the al-Nujaba movement as a terrorist group, despite its operations in fighting jihadist forces operating across Syria and Iraq. In April 2021, media affiliated with al-Nujaba reported that unknown resistance forces had attacked a Mossad safe house in northern Iraq, killing multiple Israeli spies.Thursdays statements were the second time al-Nujaba has publicly warned the US to leave Iraq. In July, shortly after US President Joe Biden and Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi announced an agreement on the end to the US combat mission, the militant group said that it had no confidence whatsoever in the Americans, and would not agree to their presence [in Iraq] under any circumstances.Al-Nujaba demanded a complete pullout of American forces, including the criminal US Air Force, which the group said was responsible for a range of crimes, including the January 2020 assassination of Iranian Revolutionary Guard Quds Force commander Qasem Soleimani and Popular Mobilization Forces deputy chief Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis.Iraqi national security advisor Qasim al-Araji announced a formal end to the US-led coalition combat mission in Iraq on Thursday. Combined Joint Task Force-Inherent Resolve, the official name for the US-led mission, later confirmed that the combat mission had come to an end, and transitioned to an advise, assist, and enable role.The US is estimated to have about 2,500 troops in Iraq  the same number that were in the country when Donald Trump left office in January. According to Air Force Magazine, the troops were simply transitioned to an 'advise and assist' role Thursday ahead of the 31 deadline to end the combat mission. The Trump administration began slashing troop numbers in Iraq in the spring of 2020 following the Soleimani assassination, which led Iraqs parliament to demand the USs withdrawal, and saw Iran raining over a dozen ballistic missiles on two US bases, leaving over 100 US troops with traumatic brain injuries. The assassination has also prompted some Iraqi militias to launch rocket attacks on US facilities, and to sabotage US supply convoys.* A terrorist group outlawed in Russia and many other countries.

https://sputniknews.com/20210727/all-us-troops-including-criminal-air-force-must-quit-iraq-militia-warns-as-occupation-rebranded-1083472029.html

Alba1970 the only good American soldier is 6 foot underground and i'm sure Iraq has plenty of land to put these occupiers to rest 9

TruePatriot The only invite that Inherent Resolve got was the invitation to LEAVE. Now, do so. Or will the US continue to not abide by any treaty or agreement and simply bully their way along. This time the Iraqis will have more to say about it than just telling them to leave. 2

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https://sputniknews.com/20211210/israeli-defence-minister-accuses-tehran-of-building-up-military-in-western-iran-to-attack-israel-1091422565.html

Israeli Defence Minister Accuses Tehran of Building Up Military in Western Iran to Attack Israel

Israeli Defence Minister Accuses Tehran of Building Up Military in Western Iran to Attack Israel

The Jewish State and the Islamic Republic severed diplomatic relations in 1979. Israel, the Middle Easts only suspected nuclear weapons state, has long... 10.12.2021, Sputnik International

2021-12-10T16:34+0000

2021-12-10T16:34+0000

2021-12-10T16:35+0000

united states

iran

aggression

israel

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Israeli Defence Minister Benny Gantz has accused Iran of engaging in a military buildup which will allow it to attack its neighbours, including Israel.In addition to Irans missile power, the Israeli defence minister accused the Islamic Republic of training allies in the operation of armed drones, saying hed told his US hosts about these efforts on Thursday.Following his meeting with US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin, Gantz said that the Islamic Republic posed a threat not justto our physical security, but to our way of life and our shared values.Gantzs trip to Washington came in an atmosphere of continued regional tensions between Israel and its sworn adversary, Iran, and reports that America and the Jewish State were planning possible joint drills to practice the destruction of Iranian nuclear power infrastructure if the recently resumed Vienna talks on the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action nuclear deal fall through.Earlier this year, Israel set aside $1.5 billion in its defence budget to prepare for possible strikes on Iran, either independently or in coordination with its US allies.Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov warned Thursday that any US-Israeli joint drills against Iran threaten to destabilize the situation in an explosive region and were not needed. The diplomat stressed that right now it is important to show restraint and focus on facilitating the negotiations process.Tehran has blamed US stubbornness for last weeks breakdown of the Vienna nuclear talks, with another round of negotiations held Thursday and ending after about an hour. Washington unilaterally pulled out of the JCPOA in 2018 and reactivated crushing sanctions against Irans energy and banking sectors. Tehran wants these sanctions removed before it returns to its commitments under the agreement. The White House wants Iran to first reduce its uranium enrichment and stockpiling activities. The dispute about which side should be the first to make good will concessions has led to a stalemate in negotiations, souring hopes that President Joe Biden would quickly reject his predecessors Iran policy and return to the JCPOA immediately after stepping into office in January.Israel has repeatedly threatened to attack Irans nuclear infrastructure, claiming the Islamic Republic has a secret military nuclear research arm trying to develop nuclear weapons. Iran has repeatedly denied these claims, pointing to its principled rejection of nukes and weapons of mass destruction of any kind, and to the countrys obligations under the Non-Proliferation Treaty, as well as a stringent inspections regime by the International Atomic Energy Agency. Israel, by contrast, is not a member of the NPT, and does not allow the IAEA to inspect its nuclear facilities, despite Tel Avivs suspected status as a nuclear weapons state.Iran maintains a powerful conventional ballistic and cruise missile capability consisting of tens of thousands of short-, medium- and long-range missiles. The United States and its European allies have repeatedly sought to reign in Tehrans missile power, but the Islamic Republic has vocally rejected such efforts, citing its missiles as the main guarantor of strategic security.Earlier this year, following revelations that the Israeli military set aside $1.5 billion to prepare for a possible attack on Irans nuclear facilities, Iranian Supreme National Security Council chief Ali Shamkhani warned that Israel should instead set aside tens of thousands of billions of dollars funding to repair the damage that is going to be caused by Irans shocking response to any aggression.

https://sputniknews.com/20210912/israel-claims-iran-exporting-aerial-terrorism-by-training-militias-to-use-advanced-drones-1089006910.html

https://sputniknews.com/20211205/iran-blames-us-stubbornness-on-sanctions-for-breakdown-of-vienna-nuke-talks--1091266267.html

https://sputniknews.com/20211209/us-threatens-additional-measures-against-iran-if-diplomacy-fails-1091398017.html

mandrake The world would be pleased if someone did the world a favour and did a vlad the impaler trick on the jew defense minister. And no one will miss him or the rest of the thieving, murderin and lying jews illegally occupying palestine! 10

vot tak Hypocritical israeli sods. The planet's main problem is israel. Kill israel, resurrect Palestine, and half the problems in this world will disappear quite soon after. 10

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https://sputniknews.com/20211210/japanese-foreign-minister-hayashi-to-visit-uk-for-g7-summit-reports-say-1091407922.html

Japanese Foreign Minister Hayashi to Visit UK for G7 Summit, Reports Say

Japanese Foreign Minister Hayashi to Visit UK for G7 Summit, Reports Say

Japanese Foreign Minister Yoshimasa Hayashi will pay a visit to the United Kingdom to attend the G7 ministerial meeting

2021-12-10T06:44+0000

2021-12-10T06:44+0000

2021-12-10T06:45+0000

world

japan

g7 summit

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Hayashi will visit Liverpool from December 10-13 where the G7 foreign ministers summit will be held. The trip will be the first visit abroad after Hayashi assumed office as his country's top diplomat. The official previously served as the minister of education, culture, sports, science and technology.In the course of the G7 meeting, the ministers will discuss the issues concerning the fight against COVID-19, the emergence of the new Omicron variant, human rights issues, as well as the positions of different countries regarding the "diplomatic boycott" of the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing, which has already been announced by the United States and the United Kingdom. Japan has not yet arrived at a decision.As part of the trip, the Japanese minister will also hold a number of bilateral meetings with his counterparts.

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world, japan, g7 summit
https://sputniknews.com/20211210/john-kiriakou-describes-what-awaits-assange-in-the-us-1091427268.html

Ex-CIA Counterterrorism Officer Describes What Awaits Assange in the US

Ex-CIA Counterterrorism Officer Describes What Awaits Assange in the US

On Friday, a London court has ruled in favour of a US government appeal to extradite WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. The ruling has been met with criticism... 10.12.2021, Sputnik International

2021-12-10T22:37+0000

2021-12-10T22:37+0000

2021-12-11T15:00+0000

us wins appeal to extradite assange

julian assange

whistleblower

opinion

extradition

wikileaks

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John Kiriakou, a former CIA Counterterrorism Officer and former Senior Investigator on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee spoke about the British court's decision and what awaits Assange in the US.What are your thoughts on the latest developments of the Assange trial?John Kiriakou: I was surprised by the verdict. Probably shouldnt have been. Im in close touch with the Assange family and all of them expected this and I was foolish enough to say that I thought they were wrong. I thought there was an understanding in the British courts, there was certainly precedent in the British courts, that the US practice of solitary confinement is inhumane. There have been three previous cases in the UK courts where the UK has refused to extradite prisoners to the United States just because of the risk of them being sent to solitary confinement.The British seemed to have bought that.I spoke to Gabriel Shipton, Julian's brother, a couple of days ago, and he said that they expected to lose at this level, but that they were going to appeal to the Supreme Court and if they lose at the Supreme Court theyll appeal to the European Court of Human Rights. And it's the European Court of Human Rights that has upheld the United Nations position, that solitary confinement in the US is a form of torture.So the fight is not over yet.If the fight were to end in the way a lot of people are worried it might with Assange being extradited to the US, where might he be expected to go and what conditions could he expect?John Kiriakou: There really is no good news there. Because Julian is a public figure and because he has been charged with national security crimes, the Bureau of Prisons is going to make an argument to keep him in a medium or high-security prison. And even then in a medium or high, theyll further argue that he should be in a communications management unit. This will undoubtedly come at the request of the CIA.Because in a communications management unit you just are not free to speak to the public. You can't engage with journalists, your phone calls are monitored in real-time, your incoming and outgoing mail is monitored unlike with most other prisoners in the system. They will make it that he can't communicate with anybody.With that said, his [Julians] family said that public opinion is truly turning in his favor in Australia. The leadership of the Labour Party has come out and said that Julian should be freed and allowed to return to Australia.Theres talk in the media that part of the deal that the United Stated will eventually negotiate with the UK for deportation is that theyll try him here, convict him and send him to Australia. So there is always a possibility that he can be released once he gets to Australia. But the question that the family has is will he survive long enough to make it to Australia?John Kiriakou: Hes mentally fragile because hes essentially been in solitary confinement since 2012. We know he suffers from autism, we know he suffers from profound depression. And what? Are we going to rely on the Bureau of Prisons to keep him safe? Come on, thats not how it works.What does this court decision mean for journalism?John Kiriakou: That's the big question, that's the big issue. It's so disappointing that the likes of the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times are not coming out in support of Julian. This would be the first time that the publisher of classified information has been targeted in an espionage act case. WaPo, NYT, and WSJ publish classified information every single day. Thats what their job is! That's how they break stories.Now sometimes those classified leaks are authorized, but wrong is wrong! If youre going to prosecute one you have to prosecute the other.So if Julian is successfully prosecuted, the logical next step is to prosecute national security journalists from mainstream outlets. And then thats a slippery slope down the Constitution.

https://sputniknews.com/20211210/us-justice-department-pleased-by-ruling-on-assange-extradition-1091423168.html

https://sputniknews.com/20211210/australia-must-show-us-it-wont-tolerate-assange-being-treated-this-way-lawyer-says-1091423348.html

GKW Any US citizen should be profoundly ashamed of not only the crimes committed by its military but also of wanting to destroy the one person who revealed the disgusting murder and torture the US engages in on a regular basis. This must come to an end with international, unrelenting, worldwide condemnation. 7

Nevi'im Jesus Christ taught a subject called "truth' and was crucified by the Romans and Jewish elite. Julian Assange has also told the 'truth' and condemned by the same Satanist Freemason Zionist elite. 5

8

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julian assange, whistleblower, opinion, extradition, wikileaks
Assange Extradition Ruling Black Mark on History of Press Freedom, NGO Says

A London High Court's decision to overturn an earlier ruling that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange cannot be extradited to the United States is a black day for press freedom in America and around the world, San Francisco-based nonprofit Freedom of the Press Foundation said on Friday.



"These proceedings, and today's ruling, are a black mark on the history of press freedom. That United States prosecutors continued to push for this outcome is a betrayal of the journalistic principles the Biden administration has taken credit for celebrating," Trevor Timm, executive director of the Freedom of the Press Foundation, said in a statement.



He called prosecutorial actions against the whistleblower an abuse of the Espionage Act and "an embarrassment to basic ideals of justice and to core First Amendment values."



Freedom of the Press Foundation further urged the US Department of Justice to terminate its pursuit of prosecution of Assange and commit to not using the Espionage Act against journalists and their sources.



The whistleblower is wanted by the United States on espionage charges after WikiLeaks published thousands of classified documents that shed light on war crimes committed by American troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. If put on trial and convicted in the US, the Australian journalist faces up to 175 years in prison.



Assange has been on remand at Belmarsh high-security prison in southeast London since October 2020, after serving an 11-month sentence for breaking bail after staying in the Ecuadorean embassy in London for seven years.
https://sputniknews.com/20211210/lockheed-martin-signs-contract-for-64-f-35-fighters-with-finland-1091418659.html

Lockheed Martin Signs Contract for 64 F-35 Fighters With Finland

Lockheed Martin Signs Contract for 64 F-35 Fighters With Finland

Finland has concluded the largest defense contract in its history with Lockheed Martin for the delivery of 64 F-35 fighters

2021-12-10T13:33+0000

2021-12-10T13:33+0000

2021-12-10T13:33+0000

military & intelligence

finland

f-35

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"The Government of Finland has 10 December 2021 authorised the Finnish Defence Forces Logistics Command to sign a procurement contract with the Government of the United States on Finland's next multi-role fighter. The fighter replacing the Hornet fleet's capability is the Lockheed Martin F-35A Lightning II," the cabinet said in a statement.The deal entails the procurement of 64 F-35 fighters, various tailored weaponry, training and servicing solutions, and other related systems and maintenance services until the end of 2030.Finland will allocate over $10 billion toward the contract. The fighters are expected to be delivered in 2025-2030.In October 2020, the US Congress was notified about a possible deal with Finland on F-35s and related weapons and equipment. Apart from the F-35s, the Finnish Defense Ministry also considered four other options, including the Boeing F/A-18 Super Hornet, Dassault Rafale, Eurofighter Typhoon, and Saab Gripen.

USSuxRuskyNuts Finland is nothing but a US colony filled with spineless clowns! The POSF-35's only success is that countries were all pressured into purchasing them. Other than that it's a 20+ year old piece of shit! 18

vot tak More informative article at RT: "Russias neighbor to splash 10bn on F-35 fighter jets in record deal" ... The military budget of finland for 2019 was $3.97 billion. That shows how badly this small israeloamerican colony just got reamed buying these hanger queens. 7

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military & intelligence, finland, f-35
https://sputniknews.com/20211210/myanmar-citizen-pleads-guilty-on-plot-to-attack-nations-un-envoy-1091428916.html

Myanmar Citizen Pleads Guilty on Plot to Attack Nations UN Envoy

Myanmar Citizen Pleads Guilty on Plot to Attack Nations UN Envoy

Myanmar citizen Ye Hein Zaw has pleaded guilty to participating in a conspiracy to attack or assassinate his countrys ambassador to the United Nations, the US Justice Department said.

2021-12-10T22:51+0000

2021-12-10T22:51+0000

2021-12-10T22:51+0000

myanmar

un headquarters in new york

us justice department

us

attack

payment

prison

conspiracy

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Damian Williams, the US Attorney for the Southern District of New York, announced today the guilty plea of Ye Hein Zaw, a citizen of Myanmar, for his role in a conspiracy to assault and make a violent attack upon Myanmars Permanent Representative to the United Nations, the Justice Department said in a press release on Friday.Zaw pleaded guilty today in White Plains federal court before US District Judge Philip Halpern, the release said.Zaw pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to assault and make a violent attack upon a foreign official, which carries a maximum sentence of five years in prison. He is scheduled to be sentenced by Judge Halpern on May 10, 2022, according to the release.

myanmar

un headquarters in new york

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https://sputniknews.com/20211210/paris-may-ask-european-commission-to-launch-legal-proceedings-against-uk-over-fishing-row-1091410101.html

Paris May Ask European Commission to Launch Legal Proceedings Against UK Over Fishing Row

Paris May Ask European Commission to Launch Legal Proceedings Against UK Over Fishing Row

France will ask the European Commission to initiate legal proceedings against the United Kingdom

2021-12-10T08:43+0000

2021-12-10T08:43+0000

2021-12-10T08:43+0000

france

europe

fishing

uk

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"If they [the British] maintain their position, we will ask the European Commission this weekend to announce a legal procedure against the British. This is a legal procedure that the European Commission did not want to resort to till the last. But we will ask to start this procedure, which means, that all Europeans recognize that the British do not respect the agreement and will demand that it be respected," Beaune told the Franceinfo broadcaster.Late last month, France set 10 December as the final deadline for the settlement of the fisheries dispute after which Beaune said it would quit the talks.Paris-London negotiations on fishery rights have so far seen no breakthrough, with France accusing the UK of refusal to issue enough licenses allowing French fishermen to enter the British waters. London has denied the allegation.In early November, France announced a new set of sanctions against the UK following the detention of a British boat in the French waters in late October but then postponed their implementation in the wake of the renewed negotiations on the matter.

William Wiliam Since over 2 years I was diagnosed with an enlarged prostate and asked to undergo chemotherapy which may have affected my urinary system. I came across Dr. Ahmed's previous client testimonials on this page on various diseases and decided to try his herbal product. I bought his product, which I received via DHL service at my address within 4 days and used the product for 21 days as prescribed by my doctor. After consuming the herbal products, my prostate was completely healed. I recommend Dr. Ahmed to anyone with cardiovascular disease, lung cancer, coronary heart disease, bone cancer, hepatitis B, fibroids, high blood sugar and pressure, prostate, diabetes, low sperm, liver cleansing, fat burning, herpes virus, kidney STONES, COPD, ERERATION DISORDERS, LOW FLOW, your information. E-mail; drahmedusman5104@gmail.com or WhatsApp +14436204203 0

William Wiliam Since over 2 years I was diagnosed with an enlarged prostate and asked to undergo chemotherapy which may have affected my urinary system. I came across Dr. Ahmed's previous client testimonials on this page on various diseases and decided to try his herbal product. I bought his product, which I received via DHL service at my address within 4 days and used the product for 21 days as prescribed by my doctor. After consuming the herbal products, my prostate was completely healed. I recommend Dr. Ahmed to anyone with cardiovascular disease, lung cancer, coronary heart disease, bone cancer, hepatitis B, fibroids, high blood sugar and pressure, prostate, diabetes, low sperm, liver cleansing, fat burning, herpes virus, kidney STONES, COPD, ERERATION DISORDERS, LOW FLOW, your information. E-mail; drahmedusman5104@gmail.com or WhatsApp +14436204203 0

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france, europe, fishing, uk
https://sputniknews.com/20211210/pentagon-orders-thinktank-study-to-identify-critical-questions-on-future-of-us-nuclear-programme-1091416541.html

Pentagon Orders Thinktank Study to Identify Critical Questions on Future of US Nuclear Programme

Pentagon Orders Thinktank Study to Identify Critical Questions on Future of US Nuclear Programme

The American Ground Based Strategic Deterrent (GBSD) intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) is being developed as a replacement for the ageing LGM-30G... 10.12.2021, Sputnik International

2021-12-10T13:15+0000

2021-12-10T13:15+0000

2021-12-10T13:15+0000

pentagon

us

minuteman iii

icbms

nuclear posture review (npr)

open skies treaty

intermediate-range nuclear forces treaty (inf)

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The Pentagon has commissioned a Washington thinktank - the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (CEIP) - to draw up a report on the future of the US intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) programme, reported The Guardian.Three rounds of virtual consultations involving Pentagon officials, nuclear weapons experts and arms control advocates, launched on 7 December, are to result in options set forth by the end of January.These will revolve around whether to extend the life of the current ICBM, the Minuteman III, or develop the new $100bn missile, known as the Ground Based Strategic Deterrent (GBSD).The US currently stores around 400 Minuteman III missiles in its launch silos, and is presumably planning to replace them with GBSDs, should the tests slated for the end of 2023 go smoothly. GBSD developer Northrop Grumman is working on the "critical design review" of the ICBM's subsystems, according to a report by Air Force magazine published earlier in the year.GBSD is being developed as a replacement for the LGM-30G Minuteman series of ICBMs, which have been in service since 1962.Critics of the GBSD programme noted concerns over the programme's too-high price tag amid a plethora of other budgetary pressures.Box-ticking Exercise ConcernsThe department has  tasked the Carnegie Endowment to conduct an external study of diverse views on the intercontinental ballistic missile leg of the nuclear triad to inform the NPR, Democratic senator Ed Markey was told in a letter from Colin Kahl, the undersecretary of defence for policy, regarding the role of the CEIP, according to the outlet.However, according to cited critics, the Carnegie Endowment final report is not the independent assessment on the issue that congressional Democrats had sought.By the time the Carnegie Endowment delivers its report, the 2022 Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) is due to be delivered to the White House. Critics have reportedly questioned whether the findings will have any influence on decision-making regarding the future nuclear arsenal.When participants of the first Carnegie session doubted the feasibility of the commissioned report if its conclusions would arrive too late to influence the posture review, Pentagon officials are reported as saying:Proponents of arms control are said to be fearing that President Joe Biden will see his options narrowed down to those drawn up by Pentagon hawks in the NPR.Senator Markey was cited as commenting:Im pleased that the Biden administration says it is committed to listening to voices outside of the nuclear weapons confederacy that advocate an unnecessary and wasteful $1.2tn in upgrades. But the proof will be in the pudding whether the Pentagon gives the president options to boldly reduce the role of nuclear weapons in our defence strategy  or if it defies the presidents guidance.James Acton, the co-director of the CEIPs nuclear policy programme, appeared to allay concerns saying that the review was not intended as a substitute for a thorough study of the cost and feasibility of a Minuteman III life extension. Controversy had been sparked earlier in the year after the abrupt removal in September of Leonor Tomero, who had served as the deputy assistant secretary of defense for nuclear and missile defense policy  ostensibly due to a reorganisation.However, Tomero, an advocate for nuclear restraint, had been also overseeing a review of Americas atomic weapons posture, set to be completed early next year.This prompted non-proliferation advocates to question whether this move could bias the review. Tomero had raised questions about the cost of the GBSD programme.President Joe Biden ran in 2020 on a platform of opposing new nuclear weapons, saying the current US arsenal was sufficient. However, his first defence budget backs doubling down on upgrading all three legs of the nuclear arsenal. America's push to upgrade its ground-based arm of the nuclear triad comes as Washington intensified tensions with Russia and China and amid deteriorating global security agreements.The US also withdrew from two accords with Russia. In August 2019, Washington scrapped the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (IRNFT) Treaty, signed by the Soviet Union and the United States in 1987. It applied to deployed and non-deployed ground-based missiles of intermediate-range (1,000-5,000 kilometres) and shorter-range (500-1,000 kilometres).The United States withdrew from the Open Skies treaty, regulating aerial surveys of regular armaments and small- and medium-range missile deployments, in November 2020.The Pentagon has repeatedly argued its case for upgrading the American nuclear arsenal in light of the latest defence industry achievements by Russia and China.

https://sputniknews.com/20210628/us-plans-to-test-its-60-billion-replacement-for-ageing-minuteman-icbms-in-2023-1083258404.html

ASmith_ A gradually growing ever faster charge by the wicked Zionists to ignite World War 3 pitting the West vs the East while slithering into the Tel Aviv Bunkers and laughing at how gullible Western populations were to allow them to be used for mass eliminations. 2

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pentagon, us, minuteman iii, icbms, nuclear posture review (npr), open skies treaty, intermediate-range nuclear forces treaty (inf)
https://sputniknews.com/20211210/russian-foreign-ministry-slams-ukrainian-vessels-action-in-strait-of-kerch-as-provocation-1091413081.html

Russian Foreign Ministry Slams Ukrainian Vessel's Action in Strait of Kerch as Provocation

Russian Foreign Ministry Slams Ukrainian Vessel's Action in Strait of Kerch as Provocation

The actions of the Ukrainian Navy's command ship "Donbass" that moved toward the Kerch Strait are nothing but provocation, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said.

2021-12-10T10:29+0000

2021-12-10T10:29+0000

2021-12-10T10:29+0000

news

russia

ukraine

russian foreign ministry

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"In my opinion, everyone has already understood everything a long time ago, based on the statements made by the Russian law enforcement structures. In my opinion, this is obvious, this is another provocation," Zakharova told the Channel One broadcaster, adding that this case "is not unique ... it is a complex of provocative actions that are carried out around our borders."According to Konstantin Gavrilov, who heads the Russian delegation at the arms control negotiations in Vienna, Ukraine's provocations, such as the incident in the Sea of Azov, complicate the situation in the region."Unfortunately, in addition to yesterday's provocation and earlier, Ukraine made attempts to undermine the existing regime, which, first of all, reduces the channel's throughput capacity and causes economic damage to ship carriers. As time has shown, this does not bring any political dividends but only complicates the already difficult situation in the region," Gavrilov said.Kiev needs to abandon the tactics of making minor violations, he said, noting that behind these provocations, there is a task to postpone the solution of really difficult issues.Russia's Federal Security Service said late on Thursday that the Ukrainian Navy's command ship "Donbass" moved toward the Kerch Strait, ignoring demands to change the course. Later, the ship turned back, still ignoring any requests.The current procedure for the passage of the Kerch-Yenikalsky Canal by ships is effective and allows for high throughput capacity. A request is sent for the passage, after which the vessel is inspected, which takes about 40-45 minutes, while this procedure is valid for all vessels, including Russian and Ukrainian, the diplomat.

https://sputniknews.com/20211209/ukrainian-navy-ship-heading-toward-kerch-ignores-demands-to-change-course---fsb-1091397072.html

koursk koursk russia can very well sequester the rafts at fault of the banderastan *** if the banderastan wants to recover them, it will have to pay a heavy fine to russia *** and if kiev does not pay, the tubs will be dismantled *** nothing relevant easier for russia 3

TruePatriot Perhaps the Ukronazis can rename the ship to the Dumbass in honor of their provocation. 1

2

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news, russia, ukraine, russian foreign ministry
https://sputniknews.com/20211210/south-african-president-invites-scientists-from-brics-countries-to-study-covid-19-1091410543.html

South African President Invites Scientists From BRICS Countries to Study COVID-19

South African President Invites Scientists From BRICS Countries to Study COVID-19

South African President Cyril Ramaphosa has invited scientists from the BRICS member states to visit his nation and study the coronavirus

2021-12-10T08:52+0000

2021-12-10T08:52+0000

2021-12-10T08:52+0000

omicron covid strain

africa

south africa

covid-19

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"President Cyril Ramaphosa has invited scientists from fellow BRICS countries  Brazil, Russia, India and China  to work alongside South African scientists in further researching the various characteristics of the COVID-19 virus and its mutations," the office said in a statement."This cooperation takes place within the context of the establishment of the BRICS Vaccine Research and Development Centre in a virtual format," the statement read.The World Health Organization during an emergency meeting on 26 November designated the new COVID-19 strain as a "variant of concern" and called it Omicron. The variant first originated in South Africa and is spreading around the world with more and more countries reporting on Omicron cases. The spread of Omicron prompted many countries to close borders for foreigners arriving from Africa regardless of whether they hold a vaccination or recovery certificate or a negative coronavirus test.

Rita Lamar GREAT NEWS!!! Congratulations to the South African President Cyril Ramaphosa for the initiative! 6

William Wiliam Since over 2 years I was diagnosed with an enlarged prostate and asked to undergo chemotherapy which may have affected my urinary system. I came across Dr. Ahmed's previous client testimonials on this page on various diseases and decided to try his herbal product. I bought his product, which I received via DHL service at my address within 4 days and used the product for 21 days as prescribed by my doctor. After consuming the herbal products, my prostate was completely healed. I recommend Dr. Ahmed to anyone with cardiovascular disease, lung cancer, coronary heart disease, bone cancer, hepatitis B, fibroids, high blood sugar and pressure, prostate, diabetes, low sperm, liver cleansing, fat burning, herpes virus, kidney STONES, COPD, ERERATION DISORDERS, LOW FLOW, your information. E-mail; drahmedusman5104@gmail.com or WhatsApp +14436204203 0

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africa, south africa, covid-19
https://sputniknews.com/20211210/sputnik-rt-chief-simonyan-slams-uk-courts-assange-extradition-ruling-calls-him-modern-day-galileo-1091416297.html

Sputnik, RT Chief Simonyan Slams UK Courts Assange Extradition Ruling, Calls Him Modern-Day Galileo

Sputnik, RT Chief Simonyan Slams UK Courts Assange Extradition Ruling, Calls Him Modern-Day Galileo

London High Court Lord Justice Timothy Holroyde ruled on Friday that Julian Assange can be extradited to the US to face trial, overturning a decision by a... 10.12.2021, Sputnik International

2021-12-10T12:22+0000

2021-12-10T12:22+0000

2021-12-10T13:52+0000

julian assange

margarita simonyan

us wins appeal to extradite assange

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Sputnik and RT Editor-in-Chief Margarita Simonyan forcefully condemned the ruling by a London court to allow the extradition of Julian Assange, characterising the journalist as a modern-day Galileo who has done more for free speech than anyone in a century.London High Court Lord Justice Timothy Holroyde ruled Friday in favour of a US government appeal requesting Assanges extradition to the United States. Assanges fiance, Stella Moris, called the ruling a grave miscarriage of justice and vowed that Holroydes decision would be appealed as soon as possible.The US government charges Assange with crimes under the rarely used Espionage Act over 1917 over WikiLeaks publication of thousands of military and diplomatic documents, including videos exposing alleged US war crimes in the Middle East. If convicted, the journalist could die in prison.Journalists, human rights defenders, and civil rights activists around the world have slammed Assanges persecution at the hands of UK and US authorities, arguing that efforts to prosecute him constitute an attack on press freedom and could serve as a precedent-setting case allowing the US government to go after anyone Washington happens to disagree with politically or feels threatened by.Assange has been jailed at Britains Belmarsh Prison since 2019 after getting dragged out of the Ecuadorian Embassy in London by Metropolitan Police on breach of bail charges. He took shelter in the Embassy in 2012 amid fears of politically motivated persecution and extradition to the US via Sweden, where two women accused him of sex crimes. The latter charges were eventually dropped, with Assange maintaining his innocence throughout.

https://sputniknews.com/20211210/live-updates-amnesty-international-calls-assanges-extradition-ruling-travesty-of-justice-1091415800.html

mandrake Shes just voicing what the world feels, but the pillowbiters are thoroughly in the hands of the superdumb morons from washington dc? 2

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julian assange, margarita simonyan
https://sputniknews.com/20211210/taiwan-regrets-nicaraguas-decision-to-cut-off-ties-with-island-foreign-ministry-says-1091409941.html

Taiwan Regrets Nicaragua's Decision to Cut Off Ties With Island, Foreign Ministry Says

Taiwan Regrets Nicaragua's Decision to Cut Off Ties With Island, Foreign Ministry Says

Taiwan deeply regrets Nicaragua's decision to cut off ties with the island

2021-12-10T08:40+0000

2021-12-10T08:40+0000

2021-12-10T08:40+0000

nicaragua

world

taiwan

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"The Taiwan government deeply regrets this decision. To safeguard national sovereignty and dignity, Taiwan has decided to terminate diplomatic relations with Nicaragua with immediate effect, end all bilateral cooperation projects and aid programs, and recall staff of its Embassy and Technical Mission in Nicaragua," the ministry said in a statement.The ministry also noted that Taiwan has always been a good friend of Nicaragua and has worked with the country's authorities to improve the living conditions of the Nicaraguan people and contribute to the country's development.On Thursday, the Nicaraguan government announced its decision to cut off relations with Taiwan. On Friday, China and Nicaragua signed a Joint Communique on the Resumption of Diplomatic Relations.Nicaragua established relations with Taiwan in 1930, when the island was part of the Japanese Empire. The Consulate of Taiwan in Managua received the status of embassy in 1967. The first time bilateral relations were broken was after Daniel Ortega came to power in Nicaragua in 1985. In the same year, he established diplomatic relations with Beijing. However, Ortega's successor Violeta Barrios de Chamorro revised the country's foreign policy, re-recognized Taiwan and cut relations with Beijing.Taiwan has been governed independently from mainland China since 1949. Beijing views the island as its province, while Taiwan  a territory with its own democratically-elected government  maintains that it is an autonomous country but stops short of declaring independence.

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nicaragua, world, taiwan
https://sputniknews.com/20211210/teacher-turned-nuclear-submarine-spy-says-wanted-to-flee-because-of-trump-not-arrest--report-1091404264.html

Teacher-Turned Nuclear Submarine Spy Says Wanted to Flee Because of Trump, Not Arrest  Report

Teacher-Turned Nuclear Submarine Spy Says Wanted to Flee Because of Trump, Not Arrest  Report

Prosecuted Maryland Teacher-Turned-Spy Says Wanted To Flee Because Of Trump, Not Arrest  Report

2021-12-10T03:43+0000

2021-12-10T03:43+0000

2021-12-10T03:43+0000

us

spy

nuclear submarines

viral

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The wife of the engineer, former school teacher Diana Toebbe, wanted to leave the country because of President Donald Trump, her lawyers said in court on Wednesday. They denied the fact that she attempted to escape justice, according to NBC News.The couple was arrested after plotting to flee the country as Diana had written to her husband Jonathan: I cannot believe that the two of us wouldnt be welcomed and rewarded by a foreign govt.Now lawyers claim the couple wanted to escape due to their frustration with the countrys political situation, which could be seen in their exchange of messages that reportedly took place in 2019.According to the texts, Diana Toebbe wanted to live in France as she was done with Trump, who rigged the entire system.Their chat concluded with Jonathan saying: Weve got passports, and some savings. In a real pinch we can flee quickly.Her lawyers also claim that Diana was unaware of her husbands scheme to sell classified data.Jonathan Toebbe worked in the US Navy as a nuclear engineer in a nuclear power plant program. He had access to classified data, related to the design elements, performance parameters and characteristics of reactors used on nuclear submarines. He was actively screened by national security through the US Department of Defense, which gave him access to classified data.In April 2020, Toebbe mailed a package containing classified information to representatives of an unnamed country with an offer to sell secret information. He managed to sell some of the data he possessed, but his foreign counterpart appeared to be an FBI covert operative and, after another attempt to pass on information, Jonathan and Diana were arrested.

https://sputniknews.com/20211010/dead-drops-in-half-eaten-sandwiches-gum-packages-fbi-unveils-plot-to-sell-us-nuclear-sub-secrets-1089818596.html

vot tak Who are the foreign country? If it were Russia, China, Iran or DPRK, you can bet this would be hyped by the zionistas. My guess is the fbi pretended to be israelis (not really such a pretense, really). 1

sdfxghdg sxhdh I get paid over $87 per hour working from home with 2 kids at home. I never thought Id be able to do it but my best friend earns over 10k a month doing this and she convinced me to try. The potential with this is endless. Heres what Ive been doing .. 0

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us, spy, nuclear submarines, viral
https://sputniknews.com/20211210/tweeps-decry-elder-abuse-as-first-lady-dismisses-ridiculous-worries-about-bidens-mental-fitness-1091414751.html

Tweeps Decry 'Elder Abuse' as First Lady Dismisses 'Ridiculous' Worries About Bidens Mental Fitness

Tweeps Decry 'Elder Abuse' as First Lady Dismisses 'Ridiculous' Worries About Bidens Mental Fitness

First Lady Jill Biden dismissed concerns about President Joe Biden's mental fitness as "ridiculous" in an interview with "CBS Sunday Morning."

2021-12-10T12:13+0000

2021-12-10T12:13+0000

2021-12-10T12:13+0000

joe biden

jill biden

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First Lady Jill Biden dismissed concerns about President Joe Biden's mental fitness as "ridiculous" in an interview at Camp David Presidential retreat, Maryland, with "CBS Sunday Morning." The FLOTUS defended Biden when asked about recent polls that revealed some Americans question his mental aptitude, saying, "I think that's ridiculous", according to an excerpt of the interview, set to be aired on 12 December on CBS and streamed on Paramount+.A Politico/Morning Consult poll released last month discovered that while 46% of Americans agree that Biden is mentally fit, at least 48% disagree that the now-79-year old - the oldest person to become president  displays mental fitness.A day before Joe Biden turned 79 on 20 November the president underwent a routine physical examination, with his doctor announcing he's in good health and fit for office.Netizens, who recalled how recently Joe Biden was mocked online after a video from his visit to Kansas City, begged to differ with this official verdict, though.The vid showed Biden being ushered along with a blind man while touring the Kansas City Area Transportation Authority. At some point it seemed things were the other way around, and the phrase blind leading the blind trended online. Furthermore, Biden was heard inquiring Where am I?, some people argued that the POTUS was just clarifying where exactly he should stand.Jill Bidens outright dismissal of concerns about her husbands faculties sparked a succession of comments on social media. Many deplored how she was contributing to his demise and guilty of elder abuse.

Gone Biden was used to win an election. Isn't that elder abuse? Old people should rest. Working all hours, which is what a president of a state like USA does, is exhausting. I'm not sarcastic. Old people deserve a peaceful, restful elderhood, a time in their life they can finally take for themselves and their families, i.e. grandchildren spoilage. Yes, even Biden. 1

Dang! She's nothing but a self aggrandizing self promoting greedy b@tch that'll do anything to be wife of a president. DEFINITELY ELDER ABUSE!! as long as she gets what she wants!! With a wife like THAT ... 1

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joe biden, jill biden
https://sputniknews.com/20211210/uk-govt-reportedly-drafting-post-xmas-plan-c-covid-response-to-tackle-spread-of-omicron-variant-1091412302.html

UK Govt Reportedly Drafting Post-Xmas Plan C COVID Response to Tackle Spread of Omicron Variant

UK Govt Reportedly Drafting Post-Xmas Plan C COVID Response to Tackle Spread of Omicron Variant

Stricter coronavirus restrictions prompted by concerns over the Omicron variant may be deployed in the UK after Christmas, according to media reports.

2021-12-10T10:35+0000

2021-12-10T10:35+0000

2021-12-10T10:35+0000

omicron covid strain

uk

covid-19

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While the dust has not yet settled amid the ruckus triggered by the UK governments coronavirus response Plan B announcement on Wednesday, reports suggest a Plan C is already in the pipeline.Stricter coronavirus restrictions prompted by concerns over the Omicron variant may be deployed in the UK after Christmas, reported the Daily Mail.The countrys COVID-19 response officials and experts are said to be working on a draft set of measures, to be deployed, if necessary, in January.The package includes mandatory face masks in all indoor spaces and school classrooms. Furthermore, these measures would reportedly include a mandatory check in with the NHS Covid app or by providing phone and email contacts in writing before venturing out to a pub or restaurant. A vaccine passport ( NHS Covid Pass) proving vaccination status or a negative lateral flow test would need to be provided at even more venues.Also allegedly mulled is introduction of 10-day self-isolation for contacts of all confirmed cases of COVID-19, not just the Omicron variant.It is believed that some of these measures had been on the table when Plan B was being conceived. However, they were reportedly overruled by ministers ahead of the announcement made by Boris Johnson on 8 December.Boris Johnson indicated on Wednesday that he could not rule out introducing tougher restrictions if the new virus strain proved to be more dangerous than preceding Delta and Plan B failed to bring down cases.He also attempted to reassure the public that while nothing was ruled out, the measures could be scaled back on more optimistic data.Regarding forcing people to get vaccinated, the PM said if the jabs are shown to be successful at holding the Omicron variant then there is going to come a point when we are going to have to have a conversation about ways in which we deal with this pandemic.The UK government revealed on Wednesday that a winter Plan B was to be enforced in England, with face masks required in public settings, including theatres and cinemas as of Friday. People are to be encouraged to work from home as of 13 December, and from 15 December the National Health Service (NHS) COVID Pass, proving vaccination status or a negative lateral flow test, will be required for entry to certain venues, such as nightclubs, indoor unseated venues with more than 500 people, unseated outdoor venues with more than 4,000 people and any event with more than 10,000 people.Announcing the new rules at a Downing Street briefing on Wednesday, the UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson described them as "proportionate and responsible."Some 568 confirmed cases have so far been identified in the UK.A rebellion is anticipated when the new plans are voted on in the House of Commons next week, with dozens of Tory backbenchers threatening to rebel or abstain. With the proposed new rules coming amid fallout from Boris Johnsons handling of the lockdown-breaching Christmas party scandal, many have questioned the timing of Plan B as a diversion tactic.According to the BBC at least 22 Tory MPs plan to vote against the rules next Tuesday.Another senior MP was quoted as saying:The Labour Party is likely to support the restrictions. Deputy leader Angela Rayner told BBC Breakfast she welcomed the measures so "people can have a safer Christmas".

https://sputniknews.com/20211210/tory-mps-reportedly-in-conversations-on-replacing-scandal-plagued-bojo-if-things-fall-down--1091405615.html

Thomas Turk Ill informed/paid off/threatened Medicos, terrorizing the public via naiive politicos.. for what? Big Pharma Profit or population reduction? No Omicron, no COVID, only)-Mi-Gawd The Identity of the Virus: Health/ Science Institutions Worldwide Have No Record of SARS-COV-2 Isolation/Purification. By Christine Massey, December 05, 2021 As a spike protein cannot be idented as a virus, the 1M US$ reward by Dr. Russell Blaylock for its ident is NOT taken up. Dr. Kary Mullins, inventor of the PCR test stated that his test only idents strands of DNA from Hep. and Flu. US Dr. Elisabeth Eads studies noted that the PCR test gives 97% false positives. WHO on Jan. 20, 2021 in their Directive #202005 stated that the PCR test is of NO VALUE.. this superseding their Jan.20.2020 advice to do PCR tests. 1

Thomas Turk A fake Pandemic, a fake killer injection.. insane times.. lets hope it ends. Killer injections? The Hal Turner Radio Show. Just in USA.. The deaths of airline pilots skyrocketed seventeen-hundred percent (1700%) during the first nine months of 2021. Pilots were coerced into taking the COVID-19 shots under threat of losing their jobs. Pilot Deaths: 2019: 1.. 2020: 6 .. 2021: 109 (through September 21) 1

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uk, covid-19
https://sputniknews.com/20211210/uk-high-court-announces-verdict-on-julian-assanges-extradition-case-1091404736.html

Situation Outside London Court as US Wins Extradition Appeal For Assange

Situation Outside London Court as US Wins Extradition Appeal For Assange

Royal Courts of Justice in London as the verdict in the extradition case of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange

2021-12-10T09:03+0000

2021-12-10T09:03+0000

2021-12-10T10:47+0000

julian assange

extradition

uk

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Live from the Royal Courts of Justice in London as a London judge, Lord Justice Timothy Holroyde, overturned a lower court's decision to block the extradition of Julian Assange.The WikiLeaks founder was arrested in London on 11 April 2019, and sentenced to 50 weeks in prison for jumping bail in 2012. He took refuge inside the Ecuadorean embassy in the UK capital to avoid extradition to Sweden, where he was facing sexual assault charges that were later dropped by a Swedish court. Assange is wanted by the United States on espionage charges after WikiLeaks published thousands of classified documents that shed light on war crimes committed by American troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. If put on trial and convicted in the US, the Australian journalist faces up to 175 years in prison.Follow Sputnik's Live Feed to Find Out More!

Rita Lamar FREE JULIAN ASSANGE, NOW!!! 4

Nevi'im This is an example of the total injustice and the power of the Global Deep State and their media propaganda outlets. 4

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UK High Court Announces Verdict on Julian Assanges Extradition Case UK High Court Announces Verdict on Julian Assanges Extradition Case 2021-12-10T09:03+0000 true PT1S

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julian assange, extradition, uk, 
https://sputniknews.com/20211210/uk-police-investigate-unexplained-death-of-submarine-worker-at-faslane-naval-base--1091417348.html

UK Police Investigate 'Unexplained' Death of Submarine Worker at Faslane Naval Base

UK Police Investigate 'Unexplained' Death of Submarine Worker at Faslane Naval Base

Police have launched an investigation into an unexplained death of a man who worked on the Trident nuclear submarines at HM Naval Base Clyde in Faslane outside Glasgow.

2021-12-10T13:36+0000

2021-12-10T13:36+0000

2021-12-10T13:36+0000

death

submarine

uk

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Police have launched an investigation into the unexplained death of a man who worked on the Trident nuclear submarines at HM Naval Base Clyde in Faslane outside Glasgow. The late submariner was a junior crew member who worked on a Vanguard-class boat, one of those that carry the UKs Trident missiles. His body was found in the barracks at the base, the Guardian reported, citing its sources. According to a Scotland police spokesman, the cause of the man's death "is currently being treated as unexplained" and it will be established through a postmortem examination.Some 5,000 submariners reportedly crew the vessels, and the identity of the deceased man will be known only to a relatively closed community stationed at the base. The Faslane base is home to all of the UK's nuclear submarines, including the four Vanguard-class vessels and the Astute-class fleet of so-called hunter-killer submarines.

STABOU Youssef C le syndrome AUKUS POTUS observe par les Politiques Francaises ! 0

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death, submarine, uk
https://sputniknews.com/20211210/us-justice-department-pleased-by-ruling-on-assange-extradition-1091423168.html

US Justice Department 'Pleased' by Ruling on Assange Extradition

US Justice Department 'Pleased' by Ruling on Assange Extradition

A London court ruled Friday in favour of a US government appeal to extradite WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, overruling an earlier decision by a lower court... 10.12.2021, Sputnik International

2021-12-10T17:06+0000

2021-12-10T17:06+0000

2021-12-10T17:38+0000

us wins appeal to extradite assange

julian assange

us

wikileaks

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The Justice Department is delighted by London High Court Lord Justice Timothy Holroyde's ruling in favour of the US government's appeal to undo a lower court's push to stop Julian Assange from being extradited.Holroyde announced at a hearing Friday that the 50-year-old WikiLeaks founder could be extradited to the United States, reversing a January decision by UK district court judge Vanessa Baraitser that it would be "oppressive" to extradite him, saying that he might try to take his own life if imprisoned in America amid concerns over his mental health.Assange's fiancee Stella Moris called Friday's ruling a "grave miscarriage of justice" and promised to appeal the decision at the earliest possible opportunity.The decision has been broadly condemned by independent journalists, civil liberties and human rights groups around the world, including Reporters Without Borders, Amnesty International, the Freedom fo the Press Foundation, the Don't Extradite Campaign, the International Federation of Journalists, and others. Sputnik and RT editor-in-chief Margarita Simonyan hailed Assange as a modern-day Galileo and suggested the "Pharisees" seeking to harm him should "burn in hell."Assange has been effectively imprisoned for over nine years, ever since he took refuge in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London in 2012 amid fears of politically-motivated persecution and extradition to the United States via Sweden, where a pair of women accused him of sex crimes, over WikiLeaks' work to expose embarassing state and corporate secrets, including alleged US war crimes in Iraq. He was dragged out of the embassy in April 2019 and arrested by British authorities for 50 weeks for skipping bail in the sex crimes case, despite the fact that Swedish authorities had dropped those charges. Since then, he has been incarcerated at Belmarsh Prison. Extradition hearings began in September 2020. If extradited and convicted on the Espionage Act charges against him, Assange could spend the rest of his life in jail.

https://sputniknews.com/20211210/live-updates-amnesty-international-calls-assanges-extradition-ruling-travesty-of-justice-1091415800.html

BillOwens US Injustice Department is a more fitting name. 17

Jack Sprat Once again the British lap dog has licked clean the anus of the vicious cur who prowls the halls of power in Washington. It is only a matter of time when the fetid breath of this predator permeates the last redoubt of truth in the EU. All that will be left for Europe is the distant memory of having once embraced the moral high ground as the sewage of their cowardice inundates them. 14

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https://sputniknews.com/20211210/xiomara-castro-wont-immediately-switch-honduras-recognition-from-taiwan-to-china---report-1091429219.html

Xiomara Castro Wont Immediately Switch Honduras Recognition From Taiwan to China - Report

Xiomara Castro Wont Immediately Switch Honduras Recognition From Taiwan to China - Report

After Nicaragua switched recognition of the Chinese government from Taipei to Beijing, Honduras was expected to follow suit. However, recent comments by the incoming administration suggest that wont immediately be on the agenda.

2021-12-10T23:07+0000

2021-12-10T23:07+0000

2021-12-11T00:32+0000

latin america

honduras

diplomatic relations

china

taiwan

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"The new government will maintain relations with Taiwan," Gerardo Torres, secretary of international relations for Honduras Libre Party and a member of President-elect Xiomara Castros transition team, told Reuters on Friday."President-elect Xiomara Castro has been clear, these ties will be maintained. Nobody in the party wants to enter government distancing ourselves from the United States, he added.However, Rodolfo Pastor, another member of Castros transition team, also told the news agency that Honduras could still recognize China in the future, because the country of 1.4 billion is a new superpower. He said the new government would study the matter.The Central American nation is just one of 14 that still recognize Taiwan, formally the Republic of China (ROC), as the legitimate government of China. The ROC nominally ruled all of China from the 1912 liberal revolution that forced the last Chinese emperor from power until the 1949 foundation of the socialist Peoples Republic of China (PRC), which displaced its power on the mainland. However, much of the republican period was marred by warlordism, civil war, and a devastating invasion by Imperial Japan, meaning the ROC rarely got to exercise real power over the land.The Red Army that defeated the ROC in the civil war in 1949 was unable to invade the island of Taiwan, leaving the US-backed government intact. Both governments claim to be the legitimate government of China and require other nations to accept their position before establishing relations. The US made the switch in 1979, as have the vast majority of the worlds nations. However, the US also continued to maintain informal ties with Taipei, funneling their weapons and giving them diplomatic cover and a pressure point against Washingtons rivals in Beijing.The few states that remain have become areas of tight competition, as each side seeks to woo them with promises of economic investment and trade. In the Pacific, the US and its ally Australia have tried to use fears of imminent Chinese military bases to keep nations on Taiwans side - even though Washington is building its own in the region anyway.Pastor told Reuters that Castro would like to maintain good relations with Washington, provided they are based on mutual respect and sovereignty, and is eager to work with the Biden administration on addressing the countrys migration crisis. According to the Los Angeles Times, in 2019, an estimated 1% of Honduras population attempted to enter the United States.The aide added that Castros administration would focus on issues like reducing its debt burden, which would require negotiating with the International Monetary Fund.Castro will be sworn into office in late January 2022.

USSuxRuskyNuts No one cares what Honduras recognizes or thinks because it's just another lacky filled US colony! 6

papimalo Give them some time to realize that USA has nothing to offer, instead China has the resources, finances, and technology. The trend is unstoppable. 5

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latin america, honduras, diplomatic relations, china, taiwan
Kevin Johnson collected career training win 1,000 on Thursday (Dec. 9) at The Meadows when Officerincommand won the sixth race. Dave Palone piloted the winner for Betcha Win Stable.

A native of Adrian, Michigan, Johnson said he never dreamed he would collect 1,000 wins and nearly $8 million in purses, even though he could see the Lenawee County Fairgrounds, which offered harness racing, from his home.

I was 11 or 12, and I had a newspaper route, recalled Johnson. My cousin went to the fairgrounds and got a job paying $20 a week. I was making $10 a week delivering papers, so I thought Id try it.

Johnson caught on with legendary trainer Frank OMara and learned the basics from him. He drove in his first matinee at 13 and thought his future might be in driving. But as he grew to 180 pounds, he realized that might not be the way to go.

I remember once losing a three-way photo at the wire, he said. The winning driver told me, If you weighed 30 pounds less, youd have won that race.

So Johnson retired from driving with a total of five career wins and set his sights on training. But that would have to wait, as he joined the U.S. Navy and was stationed primarily in Jacksonville, serving as a recruiter among other duties. Along the way, he earned a degree in management from the University of Michigan.

Mustering out after 12 years, Johnson opened a public stable in 1991 and worked in Chicago and at the Meadowlands before settling at The Meadows, where he has a farm near the track. Hes trained a number of good ones, including the mare Elusive Prey, a $30,000 yearling acquisition who banked more than $800,000 and finished second in the 2007 James Lynch Memorial and third in that years Breeders Crown final  at 50-1  for Johnson and partner Winbak Farm.

Johnson attributes his success to the help and support of his team, particularly his wife, Rebecca Williams.

Shes my partner, and she runs the farm, said Johnson. Her parents were horsemen, and she has more horse sense than I ever had. If I say load em up, were moving to Chicago, shes already slinging harnesses.

Johnson also cites caretaker Jeff Lazek  Hes one of the last of the greats. Hes the first one here in the morning and the last one to leave  and his principal owner, Richard Briskey, who operates Briskey Concrete Inc. near Delaware, Ohio.

Ricks approach as an owner is great. He tells me, Your job is to make money. My job is to make sure you have money to make money.

Johnson indicates he plans no major changes for the future.

Ive accomplished about everything I want to accomplish in racing, he said. If I go 10 more years, Im good with it. If I go 10 more days, Im good with it.

Joey And Just Like Magic Win Feature Trots

Even-money favourite Joey converted a pocket trip to a Lightning Lane victory in Thursdays co-feature at The Meadows, a $12,100 conditioned trot.

Joey and Brian Zendt waited patiently while Mystical Peter did the heavy lifting on the front end, throwing down three-quarters in 1:26. Mystical Peter went down grudgingly, but Joey was a head better in 1:54.2. Tequila Talkin completed the ticket.

Leslie Zendt trains Joey, a six-year-old Yankee Glide-Jodis Jayme gelding who extended his lifetime bankroll to $192,708, and owns with Bill Zendt Stables.

In Thursdays co-feature, also a $12,100 conditioned trot, Just Like Magic was carried wide by a breaker through the first turn but still prevailed in 1:56.1 for Hunter Myers. The four-year-old Dontyouforgetit-Trainedfordancin gelding vaulted over $100,000 in career earnings for trainer Joelene Christman, who owns with Mark Christman.

Elsewhere on Thursdays card, trainer Kaylee Martin notched her first career pari-mutuel win with Heytherwillie. Prior to that victory, Martin, 19, had won seven races at as many venues on the Pennsylvania Fairs Circuit, which doesnt offer betting. Martin owns the two-year-old Possess The Will-Heythergeorgiegirl gelding trotter with Jodi Martin and Fred Uber Jr.

Palone piloted four winners on the 12-race card.

Live racing at The Meadows continues Friday when the 12-race program features a $10,775.04 carryover in the final-race Super Hi-5. First post is 12:45 p.m.

(With files from MSOA)
Officials with the Prince County Horsemen's Club wish to advise members of the organization's upcoming annual general meeting.

The annual general meeting for the Prince County Horsemen's Club will be held at Red Shores Summerside at 7 p.m. on December 13, 2021.

All members are encouraged to attend.
GERING  USGLC annual event will also honor the legacy of General Colin Powell and recognize Secretary-General of the United Nations Antonio Guterres.

WASHINGTON, D.C.  The U.S. Global Leadership Coalition (USGLC) is honoring Gering Mayor Tony Kaufman for his work to advocate for U.S. global leadership as an imperative and effective approach to strengthening our countrys local communities. USGLC paid tribute to mayors across America at its virtual 2021 Tribute Celebration on Dec. 7.

USGLC is proud to honor Mayor Kaufman because he has been an influential advocate for strengthening American global leadership to support our communities here at home, Liz Schrayer, president and CEO of the U.S. Global Leadership Coalition, said. Lets face it, mayors across the country are on the frontlines every day, addressing global issues that are now kitchen table issues  from the pandemic to our economy  that matter to their constituents. They uniquely understand that America simply cant ignore what happens outside our borders.

Mayors across America are stepping up, knowing that diplomacy and development are essential to the health, safety and economic interests of every American family. Its exciting to recognize them.
Schank does have a specific recommendation for motel gift cards.

We do use the Quality Inn. They have worked wonders for us. They come highly recommended, she said.

She said Monument Inn and Suites has also been very helpful to Firefighter Ministry, as well.

Schank, though, said the community has been supportive and generous with helping her in her mission with Firefighter Ministry.

Schank said this year has been one of the worst for fires.

Weve had years where weve had like 10 fires that weve helped with. This year, weve had 36 already, she said.

In addition to victims of fire, Firefighter Ministry also serves firefighters by providing food and drinks among other things during wildfires.

They just need someone to look out for them, too, Schank said.

Area firefighters have been busier than usual with four wildfires this year.

Schank can often be found making lunch for her fellow firefighters when they need a meal break. They also have food delivered to the staging areas while they battle wildfires.
Crespo reminded attendees that district officials were still receiving emails and calls from the other side of the argument, regardless of whether they came to the meetings.

But before parents took part in public comment, several board members made their positions clear about mature reading content in Cheyenne.

Trustees Christy Klaassen, Tim Bolin and Alicia Smith questioned who should have access and whether books with higher maturity requirements should be available without a parents permission. Currently, parents may opt out of their student receiving certain materials, but all three suggested the possibility of switching the process. The base curriculum and access would not include books seen as too mature, and parents would instead have to opt in to this kind of content.

It sounds like a great thing to do, said Bolin.

After discussions were held between board members, time was allotted to hear from the community and it included largely negative testimony. Accusations of censorship, disputes of COVID-19 data in the county driving the mask mandate, threats to call the Wyoming Department of Family Services and fights against immoral teaching materials were heard.
If youre a Homesteader, you need a strong, laconic John Wayne type to protect you and your home office. Alas, all you have is me -- a chatty Gabby Hayes type with three strategies you can use when the Outlaws ride up.

NO. 1: BEWARE THE RTO

Companies uncomfortable with a staff of free-range employees can issue an RTO, or Return To Office order. If youre a Homesteader, this means you must give up the ranch or give up your job. While many are hesitant about accepting the risks of looking for a new position, there is also danger in returning to your workplace.

Your managers let you escape your cubicle once. They wont want to do it again.

There could be virtual locks, like higher salaries or better snacks, but if there is too much resistance, management may decide to hire a posse of Pinkertons to keep the peace.

The solution is to pack a shovel in your briefcase on your first day back. If you see time locks on the conference room doors and the parking lot has been turned into a moat, you may have no choice but to dig your way out.

NO. 2: YOUR DEPARTMENT HEAD MAY HOLD THE KEY
Theres a lot not to like about running as a Republican in New England. Where do we start?

Lets start with Charlie Baker, the Republican governor of Massachusetts. Though Massachusetts is one of the most Democratic states in the country, Baker remains very popular among the voters. His approval ratings rarely strayed below 60%, even in the depths of the COVID-19 crisis. If Baker ran for another term in the 2022 general election, hed probably win handily, but he has decided not to run. Why?

Because between now and next November, he faces a primary in a Republican Party that has gone haywire. Former President Donald Trump has vowed to take down Baker. (Hes already endorsed former state Rep. Geoff Diehl, the only well-known Republican running in the partys primary.) Baker evidently doesnt want to play in the nasty clown show sure to follow.

Baker didnt vote for Trump in 2016 and 2020, leaving that presidential line on the ballot blank. He also called for Trumps removal from office following the violent Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. These are reasons why Trump cannot abide Baker. Theyre also reasons why Baker could easily win another term as a Republican governor of Massachusetts.
Dole suffered paralyzing, near-fatal wounds during World War II. Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, recalled how, after Dole was hit amid fighting in the Italian mountains in 1945, he was dragged behind a wall by a fellow soldier and lay there, facing up in the dirt. Not knowing if he would live or die. Unable to move as the battle raged around him. And he lay there for 10 consecutive hours before medics were able to reach him."

He served the army. He served the state of Kansas. He served his political party. But, above all, he served his country and he served his fellow Americans, Milley said. Bob Dole always, always put his country first.

The service ended with Milley escorting Dole's wife, former North Carolina Sen. Elizabeth Dole, as she and Robin touched a wreath in his honor, then bowed their heads in prayer as taps was played.

Doles body is also traveling to Kansas, where weekend events include a public viewing in his hometown of Russell. He will eventually be interred at Arlington National Cemetery.
Mali is currently run by a military government, the third one in the last decade. Like the others it is considered temporary and the current one is supposed to be replaced by elections in early 2022. This now appears unlikely. The five colonels running the current military government want to remain in power, despite threats by the UN and major foreign donors to withdraw assistance. Mali has long been one of the most corrupt nations in Africa and again shows itself the most resistant to changing that. The new temporary government has not yet agreed to a date for elections and is insisting they cannot reach a decision until sometime in December, if then.

The Malian military has staged three government takeovers since 2012. The last one, in May 2021, was an internal dispute within the military. Since the May coup foreign donors have warned that most of the foreign aid will stop coming if Mali does not carry out a significant reduction in corruption, government ineffectiveness and overall instability. None of these three military takeovers were about corruption, but rather anger at the corrupt politicians stealing money meant to finance operations against Islamic terrorist and separatist minorities in the north. The unrest up there had been getting worse for several years before the 2012 coup. An increase in unrest in the north was not unexpected but the intensity of the violence up there was. By 2011, the fighting in the north was more than the army could handle. Mali never needed much of a military and that was reflected in how decades of corrupt rulers treated it as another source of jobs for supporters. Many of the officers were professionals who thought otherwise and argued for more realistic treatment of the military and the threats it was facing up north. That was ignored because the corrupt politicians feared being replaced by corruptible military officers.

Foreign aid donors agreed with the minority of Mali officers who called for more professionalism. The most popular, in the army, officers were both professional and corrupt and thats how we got a military government that staged a coup in 2020 and another in 2021. That has been described as a coup too far.

France concluded that the Mali leaders were incorrigibly corrupt and that the expensive French counterterror operation in the north was no longer worth the effort. Neighboring nations were willing to continue cooperate in suppressing Islamic terrorism but France is reducing and redeploying its 5,100 counterterrorism troops to assist less-corrupt neighbors serious about reducing the terrorism. This involves reducing the French force by 2,000 personnel and those reductions are most visible in northern Mali, where some French bases are being shut as the troops depart.

The May 2021 coup was not well received by foreign aid donors. This includes France, which pays for its 5,100 counterterrorism troops who operate throughout the region. The military was not happy with foreign donor demands that they cooperate with political factions that made possible the 2020 coup. These groups and the coup leaders formed the interim (and foreign donor approved) CNT (National Transitional Council) government. The foreign donors insisted that a civilian lead the CNT with one of the military coup leaders as his deputy. The army and civilian members of the CNT did not get along. The main disagreement that triggered the May coup was about efforts to negotiate with Islamic terror groups and ineffective measures to prosecute corrupt politicians.

The May coup was led by the army colonel who had earlier been appointed deputy head of the CNT. The colonel replaced the civilian who originally held the job as CNT leader. After that the military-dominated CNT rapidly replaced many existing CNT officials with army officers or civilians known to be pro-military. When foreign donors, including France, criticized this, the army threatened to seek financial aid elsewhere. There was no elsewhere for the Mali coup leaders, at least not one they could afford. The Mali officers threats said a lot about their motives, which was mainly about maintaining their power and helping themselves to a portion of foreign aid. The coup leaders did have one source of wealth, the Mali gold mines. Recently protestors tried to block access to one of the largest mines but that effort only lasted a few days before the security forces cleared the roads.

December 9, 2021: The military government is supposed to have obtained agreement on the composition of the CNT transitional by December 12 when ECOWAS (Economic Community of 15 West African States) meets to discuss lifting its sanctions against Mali. The military government needs those sanctions lifted but cannot decide when to hold the long-delayed elections.

December 8, 2021: In central Mali (Mopti region) Islamic terrorists attacked a peacekeeper supply convoy with a roadside bomb. Seven peacekeepers were killed and three wounded.

December 7, 2021: The government halted food exports because of poor crops throughout the region. Mali normally exports up to 15 percent of its annual grain production. The government fears that higher food prices in neighboring countries will cause shortages in areas of Mali that cannot afford those prices. Foreign aid donors are reluctant to cover such losses in a corrupt country like Mali. The military government has other reasons to be prudent. The growing corruption Islamic terrorist violence have hurt the economy, with GDP declining nearly two percent this year while population has grown to 20 million.

December 5, 2021: In the northeast (south of Gao) there were explosions in two peacekeeper bases, apparently from mortar or rocket fire. There were no casualties and no shortage of suspects. Thats because Gao is near where the borders of Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso meet. The three borders area has been a terrorist hotspot for over three years because Islamic terror groups can just cross the border to escape heavy counterterrorism efforts. For that reason, this area has been called the Menaka Region. Previously this area was just part of the larger Gao Region, centered on one of the few cities in the north. Menaka has become ungovernable because so many Islamic terrorists and bandits now operate here. The counterterrorism forces search for and attack specific targets but the government is unable to maintain sufficient security forces here to provide a measure of law and order found in the rest of the country.

December 3, 2021: In Central Mali (Mopti region) Islamic terrorists attacked a bus carrying civilians. The bus caught fire and the combination of bullets and burns left 32 civilians dead and 18 badly wounded. The attackers demobilized the bus before they fled the scene.

In the north (east of Kidal) a peacekeeper supply convoy travelling from Kidal to Gao when it was attacked by Islamic terrorists or bandits. One civilian driver was killed and another wounded. The armed guards with the convoy fired on the attackers, who fled.

The army revealed that it had recently received six Chinese 19-ton VN2C MRAP (Mine-Resistant Ambush-Protected) vehicles. Since the May 2021 coup there have been no vehicles from the usual Western suppliers. Instead, the current military government has obtained over fifty vehicles, several batches. These are all wheeled armored vehicles, most of the MRAP class, from a variety of suppliers.

The last Western donor shipment was in early 2020 when the EU delivered thirteen more Bastion MRAP vehicles. Bastion is a French made 4x4 wheeled APCs (armored personnel carrier). In effect the 12-ton Bastion is MRAP lite as it has many of the same design features of an MRAP but is not as well protected against mines and roadside bombs. It can carry up to twelve (usually 8-10) and has a turret mounted heavy machine-gun or automatic grenade launcher. Bastion does have excellent cross-country mobility and was designed mainly as a reconnaissance vehicle that can also serve as convoy escort or in peacekeeping operations. Bastion is also used by the French military.

In mid-2019 a regiment of the Mali army was converted to a mechanized unit with the addition of several dozen 11 ton Casspir armored vehicles. These are from South Africa which is where this late 1980s vintage vehicle proved to be the first effective modern MRAP design to enter wide use. Casspir will always be remembered as one of the earliest and most successful MRAP type vehicles. Originally designed for the South African police in the early 1980s, this 4x4 wheeled vehicle has remained in production ever since. The basic design has been upgraded over the years. Germany is paying for the vehicles and providing trainers for drivers and mechanics. Casspirs carry up to twelve troops and have plenty of bulletproof windows (with gun firing ports) and are excellent for patrols. Like all MRAP vehicles, Casspirs (and their passengers) can survive most vehicle mines and roadside bombs as well as rifle and machine-gun fire.

November 27, 2021: A French military supply convoy traveling through Niger to Gao in northeast Mali was attacked by political protesters just short of the Mali border. Some of the demonstrators wanted to steal some of the hundred trucks in the convoy. The armed convoy guards fired warning shots that allowed the convoy to move. Rocks and other thrown objects injured two of the civilian truck drivers. Some protestors believed rumors that the convoy was carrying weapons for Islamic terrorists in Mali.

November 14, 2021: In the southwest (Koulikoro region) Islamic terrorists attacked a military outpost, killing four soldiers and wounding 14 others. The attack was repulsed with six bodies left behind by the fleeing gunmen, who apparently took their wounded with them.
Minkema was placed on probation for a year, but if she stays out of trouble during the 12 months, the charges can be dismissed, and she avoids a jail term of up to 10 years.

In other matter involving assault on a law enforcement officer and failure to even start performing 100 hours of community service ordered by the court, Judge Fleenor revoked bond for Eleanor Rachel Thompson of Riner and ordered her to submit to a mental examination.

Thompsons assault charge came out of an encounter with a deputy on Nov. 23, 2020, and she was told to appear for a mental exam in a hearing on Oct. 5 of this year after two case continuances. She was originally indicted for assault on law enforcement officers by a county grand jury on July 6.

Appearing before the judge Tuesday, she said she doesnt know why she did not appear for the exam two months ago. The judge revoked her bail and sent her to New River Regional Jail to await the court-ordered exam next year.

In another case, on a recommendation from the Commonwealth, Judge Fleenor dismissed a misdemeanor sexual battery charge against Shawn Gailey of Copper Hill.
The woman testified that it was like a mood switch, that Combs went from being angry to nice. She said he kept suggesting they have sex, saying things like you know you want it. She brushed it off at first, she said, and then told him she didnt feel well and didnt want to when he insisted that she did.

She said after Combs pushed her back on the bed and began to remove her clothes, I just gave in at that point.

The woman said she didnt tell anyone because she felt intimidated by Combs. Then, on April 19,2020, she filed a report with the Smyth County Sheriff's Office. Although the woman was unable to give Lt. Kevin Terry a specific date, she told him it occurred sometime within the last month, according to a criminal complaint, so Terry listed the offense date as March 15- April 15, 2020. Several months later, that time frame was moved up by a week.

The day she filed the report, Combs had been arrested on a public intoxication charge in the Town of Marion after an interaction with some residents on Severt Street as he drove through. Upon his arrest a SCSO deputy arrived to serve him with an emergency protective order his wife had been granted.
IN AN EFFORT to combat human trafficking, drugs and firearms smuggling, poaching and other illicit activities, the Turks and Caicos Islands and the Bahamas officially inked an agreement to boost maritime security in both nations.





On Thursday December 2nd, 2021, TCI Governor Nigel Dakin, Bahamas Minister of Labor and Immigration Keith Richard Bell and TCI Minister of Immigration Hon. Arlington Musgrove signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to help enhance maritime security("the Shiprider Agreement) by proactively addressing the challenges of illegal immigrants and other illicit activities that threaten border security.





The MOU was signed on the Bahamas Defense Force (RBDF) ship HMB Nassau, prior to the Ocean Security Strategic Leadership Conference.





The long-awaited (MOU) between the two countries solidifies cooperation and will make provisions for the Royal Bahamas Defence Force, and the TCI Joint Task Force to join forces, share intelligence, and conduct training to combat human trafficking, illegal migration etc.





On his Instagram, Governor Nigel Dakin said the MOU signing as an "important national security moment.





He stressed that it will allow both countries to tackle shared challenges in a more strategic fashion.





"The challenges we collectively face are getting worse, not better, but we are collectively in better shape now than before and theres a recognition that TCI is increasingly in a position to not only deliver tactical but strategic impact.





As part of TCIs long standing OPBAT agreement ,(Operation Bahamas and Turks and Caicos Islands), the TCI hosted senior delegations from the US (led by an Admiral and the responsible US Ambassador) and the Bahamas (led by a Minster, Chief of Defence Staff and National Security Permanent Secretary)and representatives from UK Military, FCDO and Home Office to witness the historic signing.





Dakin said: "Thats what OPBAT now needs to do, we dont want to be just stopping sloops (forever), we need a network to take down a network.





" We also need to be smart in learning off each others capabilities and adding unique value to each other.





He further explained that three lines of work were conceived at the conference and agreed by the relevant parties.





"The US will build capacity through training and, through that, build expertise, mutual trust and interoperability.





"The Bahamas have taken on the role of developing a genuinely joint concept of operations that will integrate our deployments far more than we have in the past particularly between TCI and Haiti.





"TCI - supported by the UK - will develop systems to allow trilateral intelligence sharing.





"This is vital if we are to go after those who organise and facilitate rather than those who just operate or travel in the vessels.





"The visit saw US and Bahamian "Cutters moored alongside each other in Grand Turk (a first I think).





"Agreements to allow TCI to work on board Bahamian vessels patrolling our waters were signed as was a similar agreement with the US on collaboration on Search and Rescue: all the more apposite given the loss of seven migrants in our waters last week, he added.





The Territorys fully operational military regiment will also assist the maritime officers at sea, and also through land-based operations in this regard.





Although the Bahamas has assisted the territory with interception and intelligence sharing for years, the MoU will provide a legal framework for the cooperation.





The strengthening of these bilateral relations will allow the Bahamas marine forces to patrol the TCIs waters, in an effort to reinforce the work of the territorys Immigration Task Force and Police Maritime Unit.





The TCI, Bahamas, and the United States are currently cooperating on maritime security issues through OPBAT.





This is an agreement for trilateral cooperation on drug control activities. Negotiations began in 2018 on the TCI-Bahamas Sailor Agreement, which allows TCI and Bahamas "sailors to board each others law enforcement agencies or aircraft.





Through this agreement sailors may be empowered to assist in the enforcement of TCI laws relating to trafficking, illegal immigration, trafficking of drugs or firearms or unregulated fishing.
Garena Free Fire redeem codes for December 10: Garena Free Fire releases redeem codes daily in order to allow players to access special items. Also, the codes can be obtained for free, that is players do not have to spend any money to get the same. Apart from the redeem codes, Garena Free Fire also offers gamers a vast range of cosmetics like outfits, skins, and more to choose from. Free Fire players also have an option to access these additional Free Fire items and obtain them by completing and winning Free Fire missions.

It can be noted that players can buy these additional items from the in-game store as well but it can be an expensive exercise. Taking to its official Twitter account Garena Free Fire has also informed that the Money Heist Mode is going to be available for the players on December 11. While, on Wednesday it informed that a special winter collection of items is here and players can top up till December 12 to get new items. Top up of atleast 200 diamonds will get you the Ice Feather Katana while the top up of atleast 500 will give you Roaring Bandana.

Also today is the last day to win two exclusive grand prizes that is Red Robster Woodpecker and Endless Bullet Emote, from the latest faded wheel. And now coming to the players who want to redeem codes can do so by visiting the official redemption website. Here is how:

Garena Free Fire Redeem codes for December 10:

FBHJ I876 TRGH

F3AD Q2RF IJNB

FNMR F987 YGBN

FYF5 BNSX D98U

FH65 RGRF VS3F

FU7T 6G5T VRCX

FQ2R TG7V 6TID

FRBG B687 RYEI

FHFB GYBU INHG

F876 EIUD BVHG

FE67 RVBU YOT9

F8BU VJ3E K0PO

FK3L XPZ4 FGTR

Garena Free Fire redeem codes for December 10: Steps to redeem

To get the redeem codes, you will first have to visit the official Garena Free Fire code redemption website by clicking on the link- https://reward.ff.garena.com/en.

You will then have to login on the page with either your Facebook, Google, Twitter, Apple Id, HUAWEI or VK ID to continue the redemption process. However, you need to note that your login ID must be the same as your in-game login ID.

After logging in, copy any one of the 12 character long redeem codes from todays code list and then paste it into the text box.

This will bring up a dialogue box for double-checking. Click on 'OK'. And your redemption code process is completed.

In case, your redemption bid fails for some reason, you will get an Email, otherwise you have to wait for a minimum 24 hours to get your rewards to become active on your gadget.

Keep playing and winning!
Tougher rules on extreme content are around the corner. Credit: Ascannio

Facebook's approach to users' data has just been dealt a major blow from the European court of justice (ECJ). In an answer to a question from Germany's highest court, the ECJ's advocate generalwhose opinion is not binding but is generally followed by the courthas made an essential clarification to Europe's data protection law to confirm that consumer associations can bring actions on behalf of individuals.

If followed by the ECJ, this will make it much easier for people to defend their rights against tech giants in future. Coming on the back of a decision by the European general court against Google several weeks ago for using its platform power to restrict competitors, it is the latest example of European regulators making the business climate increasingly chilly for the companies that control our datain sharp contrast to the US.

Facebook and consent

The current case is about the way that Facebook, now known as Meta, in its early years encouraged users to play quizzes and games such as FarmVille, before sharing the results with all their friends. In an action brought by the Federation of Germany Consumer Organizations (VZBV), that was originally heard in 2014, it claimed that Facebook's data protection notice did not clearly explain to users how their data could be shared. It wants the company to be forbidden from using similar consent forms in future.

VZBV won the original case and on appeal, before it was heard by Germany's highest court in May 2020. The judges agreed that Facebook had misled users with the notice, but sought an opinion from the ECJ on Facebook's argument that only individuals and not consumer organizations can bring complaints under the EU's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which governs this area.

The advocate general's recommendation, ahead of a final ECJ decision in 2022, reflects the fact that individuals do not typically start legal proceedings against large companies for a small breach of a rather technical regulation. Suing big firms on behalf of society is what consumers' organizations do, so it would limit people's protection if this was disallowed.

Facebook's approach to games is not the only time there have been questions about how it obtained users' consent over data. It famously sent unsolicited emails to users' contacts when they joined the social network. It also placed "like" buttons on third party websites and harvested the data without seeking users' consent.

One by one, national European regulators have ruled these practices illegal, but always long after the fact. When Facebook was ordered to pay 100,000 (85,138) by German regulators in 2016 for sending unsolicited emails, for instance, it was clearly too late to affect the company's behavior on that individual issue.

VZBV has been at the forefront of fighting to make tech giants accountable for customer data since the early 2010s, though not always successfully. It failed in an attempt to stop Facebook claiming its platform is "free and will always be," while making users pay with their private data. It was also unable to require the company to allow users to adopt a pseudonym. Facebook had resisted citing safety concerns, but perhaps also because data on identifiable consumers is more valuable than anonymous ones.

The GDPR and future regulations

As Facebook and other social media companies have continued to develop new techniques to harvest consumer data, the GDPR was adopted by the EU in 2018 as a general framework to clarify the rules. It gives users more control and rights over their own data, requiring clear consent before it can be used.

Pending a decision on consumer organizations, the ECJ has already recently decided that national privacy watchdogs can directly fine tech firms under the GDPR for breaches affecting their citizens. Facebook had claimed only the Irish authority was competent, since its EU headquarters are there. A forthcoming ECJ case will look at giving similar powers to antitrust authorities.

The EU rules around big tech are also set to be strengthened in 2022 with the Digital Services Act and Digital Markets Act. This package of extra restrictions is set to include curbing the uncontrolled spread of unverified and often hateful content, with the potential for penalties of 10% of a company's annual revenue.

And for all the talk of a bonfire of EU data protection rules after Brexit, the forthcoming UK Online Safety Bill goes arguably even further in the same direction, with not only similar fines but potential prison sentences for executives over breaches. The bill may even make Facebook responsible for scams by other companies advertising on the platform.

Major EU countries such as Germany, France and the Netherlands also want the Digital Services Act to block what has become big tech's major strategy to attract new users: identifying non-profitable but successful internet companies, and buying their technology and user base. The UK is now decisively on the same path, as the Competition and Market Authority just ordered Facebook/Meta to sell Giphy, the largest repository of GIFs on the internet, which it bought in 2020 for US$400 million (301 million).

European regulators are therefore unraveling tech giants' business models one decision after the other. European data regulation is also becoming the de facto global standard because to be allowed to operate in Europe (which generates a quarter of Facebook's annual profits), global tech often has to obey the stricter European rules across the board.

The European logic is that harvesting private data is often a rip-off. People care about privacy but give away their data in exchange for almost nothing, and the government should protect them. American regulators consider this patronizing, with the Supreme Court ruling almost 20 years ago that a dominant firm is free to exploit its consumers. Recent whistleblower Frances Haugen has provoked some soul searching in the US, but will probably ultimately struggle to secure meaningful changes to the rules around data and content.

With the likes of the UK now strongly following the path of the EU, the US is becoming increasingly isolated in this area. Meta is still free to make money out of their existing Facebook users in Europe. But as younger generations leave Facebook for the likes of TikTok and Snapchat, it faces increasing difficulties in reaching them and gathering the necessary information to sell their profiles to advertisers. It may therefore be time for companies like Facebook to find new sources of revenue.

Explore further WhatsApp pushes privacy update to comply with Irish ruling

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
General Motors and a joint-venture partner plan to build an electric vehicle battery factory in Lansing, Michigan, their third such factory in the U.S.

The companies' plans were revealed Friday in documents posted on the city's website. They say the plant would cost up to $2.5 billion and employ as many as 1,700 workers.

The factory would be built on the site of GM's Lansing Delta Township Assembly factory, which has been annexed by the city under a revenue-sharing agreement. A joint venture between GM and LG Energy Solution called Ultium Cells LLC would build the plant.

The selection is a big win for Michigan, which missed out on three Ford Motor Co. battery factories and an electric vehicle assembly plant that were placed in Kentucky and Tennessee.

The documents seeking Renaissance Zone and industrial tax breaks say the joint venture is obligating itself to investment and job creation. It says the building and related site improvements would be about 2.5 million square feet (230,000 square meters) with two-thirds of the building being a "clean room" environment for battery cell manufacturing.

"The machinery and equipment consists of electrode mixing, coating, assembly and formation areas," the documents say.

The plant's first year of operation would be in 2025. It would start with 750 workers, with 1,700 by the end of 2026.

GM would not comment specifically on the factory's location but said it is developing business cases "for potential future investments in Michigan." The company said it is discussing incentives with local officials.

"These projects are not approved and securing all available incentives will be critical for any business case to continue moving forward," spokesman Dan Flores said. "I'm not going to speculate on the timing of when GM leadership will make a decision on potential future investments in Michigan."

The step came as Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and the state Legislature work to quickly enact economic development incentive bills focused on "critical" industries and preparing shovel-ready sites for business expansions. It is not clear what new incentives Michigan could offer GM, though it has billions of dollars in federal discretionary pandemic rescue aid and surplus state tax revenues.

A spokesman for the Michigan Economic Development Corp. said it is premature to comment on any potential state support for GM.

Ford's decision in September to build electric vehicle and battery plants in southern states was a blow to the nation's auto hub, particularly because Ford said Michigan did not have the types of sites it needed.

The Lansing City Council will meet Monday and the following week to approve the tax breaks, president Peter Spadafore said.

"It's my understanding there's a competition for a battery plant and Lansing will do everything we can to make sure we are competitive to bring those jobs and billions of dollars of investment to our community," he said.

GM also has applied for tax breaks in Orion Township, Michigan, where a factory that builds the Chevrolet Bolt electric car and SUV is located. The company wants to build an addition to the plant to assemble battery cells into packs that would go into electric vehicles.

This likely means GM plans to designate the Orion plant as its third electric vehicle assembly plant, along with factories in Detroit-Hamtramck, Michigan, and Spring Hill, Tennessee. Flores would not comment beyond the company statement.

The company has said it would spend about $2 billion upgrading factories to build EVs, so that would bring the total new investment in Michigan to about $4.5 billion. Shares of GM closed Friday up 6%, at $63.21.

GM has said the joint venture will build four North American factories to make EV battery cells.

Two other locations have been announced, in Spring Hill and Lordstown, Ohio. The fourth location has not been disclosed.

GM has set a goal of selling only electric passenger vehicles by 2035. The company plans to roll out 30 electric vehicles globally by 2025. It also has pledged to invest $35 billion in electric and autonomous vehicles from 2020 through 2025.

Details of GM's plans come amid a race to build North American battery factories to supply what is expected to be exponentially increasing demand for electric vehicles as the world transitions away from internal combustion engines.

Earlier this week, Toyota announced it would build a $1.3 billion battery plant in North Carolina. Stellantis, formerly Fiat Chrysler, has said it will build two battery plants in North America. Ford announced three plants in Kentucky and Tennessee.

The LMC Automotive consulting firm expects U.S. sales of new fully electric vehicles to hit nearly 400,000 this year, almost double last year's figures. They still make up only about 2.6% of sales, but the firm expects sales to grow to more than 730,000 next year and more than 2 million by 2025. Even at 2 million, EV sales still would be only about 12% of U.S. new vehicle sales.

Explore further GM venture to build North American battery chemical plant

 2021 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
ICANN says the internet could be made much more accessible for people whose languages do not use the Latin alphabet.

When website addresses using writing systems like Chinese and Arabic were introduced back in 2009, it was hailed as a step that would transform the internet.

But 12 years later, the vast majority of the web remains wedded to the Roman alphabetand ICANN, the organisation in charge of protecting the internet's infrastructure, is on a mission to change it.

"The truth of the matter is that even if half the world's population uses the internet today, it's the elite of the worldmainly those living in cities, mainly those with a good income," Goran Marby, head of the US-based non-profit, told AFP in an interview.

"Shouldn't we give people the opportunity to use their own scripts, their own keyboards, their own narratives?"

It's thanks to ICANNthe Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbersthat when you type an address at the top of the screen, your computer can find the web page you're looking for.

These days it's theoretically possible to type an address in more than 150 scripts, including obscure ones like ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs, and watch the page load.

But large parts of the internet remain incompatible with writing systems other than the Latin alphabet. Many US websites, for example, would not allow you to make a purchase or subscribe to their newsletter if you entered an email address in Tamil or Hebrew.

When a group of bodies including ICANN tested the world's top 1,000 websites last year, only 11 percent accepted a Chinese or Arabic email address when trying, for example, to contact them via an online form.

Goran Marby is on a mission to defend 'the original idea of the internetto connect people'

Western-centric since conception

One of ICANN's priorities for the coming years is to ensure that 28 commonly used writing scripts are usable across the internet.

The problem isn't restricted to the West: in China even WeChat, the country's most popular messaging app, does not recognise email addresses written in Chinese characters.

Chinese web addresses often use strings of numbers, like the dating site 5201314.com.

This is partly because it can be hard to remember how to spell a web address in pinyin, the romanised version of Chinese, and partly because number-based puns work well in Mandarin ("520" sounds like "I love you").

In many parts of the world, people have simply tried to adapt to an internet that doesn't speak their language.

"It never even crossed my mind," said Cairo finance worker Hadeer al-Shater, when asked whether she had considered setting up an Arabic-script email account.

"The whole point is to be able to communicate with the rest of the world. And unfortunately, Arabic is not very practical on the internet," she said.

Marby points out that the internet of today grew largely out of the work of US and European computer scientists. As a result, it has disproportionately benefited those who can read and write in Latin-based scripts.

One of ICANN's priorities for the coming years is to ensure that 28 commonly used writing scripts are usable across the internet.

An estimated 37 percent of the world's population2.9 billion peoplehave still never used the internet, according to the UN's International Telecommunication Union, 96 percent of them in developing countries.

And Marby argues that this number will remain high if people who don't use the Latin alphabet are locked out.

"We think it's very important to make sure that the original idea of the internetto connect peopledoesn't get forgotten," he said.

Good for business?

Progress has been made on some fronts. Users of Google's popular Gmail service, for example, have been able to exchange messages with people whose email addresses use non-Latin characters since 2014.

In Russia, about 40 percent of companies have a version of their website that uses a Cyrillic "top-level domain" (TLD)  meaning the suffix of a website, such as ".com" or ".org".

But while most Russian hosting services allow email addresses with a Cyrillic domain, the part before the "at" symbol remains in the Latin alphabet, the Russian Coordination Center for TLDs explains on its website.

Marby stresses that "universal acceptance"the idea of all scripts being usable across the internetwill never happen unless companies help fix the issue on their end.

"We have to continue to work with software developers and manufacturers to make sure they actually do this," he said.

In the long-run, he argues, universal acceptance will be good for business by allowing companies to reach new markets.

"But this is not something that we're doing over the next six months," he said. "This is going to take years."

Explore further Internet overseers seek crackdown on coronavirus website scams

 2021 AFP
[U]nfortunately it has become a daily trend across the country, she wrote.

LeBlanc encouraged parents to talk to their students about the seriousness of making similar threats.

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Its not a joke, he said. Police will investigate. You could be arrested. Its illegal to do that, and you could face serious legal consequences that could impact both that child and their family for a very long time.

LeBlanc said both the school district and police department take all threats against schools seriously.

We take safety seriously. It isnt just a buzzword; it really is the top priority, he said. We all work in these schools, too. Our staff is there, so safety is the number one thing. No matter how major or small it may seem, were going to take it seriously, and were going to work with police and let them investigate it and make sure that were doing everything we can to keep everyone safe.

After determining Wednesdays threats were not credible, LeBlanc said the district plans to have more officers at the schools, in addition to the School Resource Officers assigned to the campuses, to help give students, parents and employees peace of mind.
MESQUITE, Texas (AP)  A suburban Dallas police officer who was fatally shot while responding to a domestic dispute in a supermarket parking lot was remembered Thursday for his devotion to his family, faith and job.

Mesquite police Officer Richard Houston, 46, was fatally shot on Dec. 3. Hundreds of mourners attended the funeral for the married father of three children Thursday at Lake Pointe Church in nearby Rockwall.

You were faithful, steadfast, kind, loving, selfless and hard-working," Houston's daughter, Shelby Houston, 18, said at the service.

Mesquite Assistant Police Chief Doug Yates said Houston spent an entire shift praying after a colleague died of cancer. And Yates said that while clearing out Houstons squad car after his death, he found Houstons Bible.

Richard didnt just go to church  Richard walked with God each day, Yates said.
Patrick Stover announced in a press release Thursday he would not seek reappointment as vice chancellor and as dean of agriculture and life sciences at Texas A&M University and as director of Texas A&M AgriLife Research, finishing out his terms for those positions at the end of December.

Instead, Stover announced he would focus on the development of the Institute for Advancing Health Through Agriculture.

Stover has served as vice chancellor and dean of agriculture and life sciences since March 2018. The organization, according to Stover, made great progress on the aspirations he had to nurture a culture of transparency, equity and effective academic faculty governance; to create an environment where world-class scholars and students blossom; and to enhance diversity and inclusion within AgriLife.

Stover will serve as IHA director and provide oversight of the Agriculture, Food and Nutrition Evidence Center after being asked by Texas A&M University President Katherine Banks and Chancellor John Sharp to reposition his focus.
American Partners Federal Credit Union is celebrating its first Christmas in Rocky Mount by raising awareness and money for several area nonprofit organizations. It is calling the event a Chari-Tree Auction.

Nonprofit organizations are created and designed to support, build up and strengthen communities. We are proud that credit unions are nonprofits and we want to do all we can to support other organizations that have similar goals of making communities stronger, Brian Bone, CEO of the credit union, said.

Organizations including Healing Strides, STEP Inc. and the Franklin County YMCA have decorated Christmas trees in the credit unions lobby. The trees are being auctioned off at the end of the holiday season. The winners of the auction will get to take their trees home with them. Donations are also being accepted for organizations that are not among those that have decorated trees. The credit union said that 100% of the winning bids and donations will go directly to the nonprofit organizations. Bids are being accepted at the credit unions lobby and on its website.

Healing Strides is excited to participate in the first of many Chari-Tree Auctions. We were so excited we decided to do two trees. One to auction, horse themed, of course, and one for our participants to make ornaments to help decorate. We do hope our community will come by and support this wonderful opportunity for a fun and festive time, Carol Young, CEO of Healing Strides of VA, said.

To celebrate the initiative, a reception will be held at the credit unions 77 Powder Creek Lane location in Rocky Mount on Dec. 10 at 5 p.m. Snacks and beverages, including brownies, cookies, tarts cocoa and coffee, will be provided by The Koffee Barn.

Whether you want to place a bid on a tree, donate to one of these organizations, or just come to show your support, all are invited, Brent Clarke, business development officer for the credit union, said. Please join us to celebrate the season and support the Franklin County community.
Ned Hudsons 95th birthday on Nov. 26 was not just a one-day celebration. His whole birthday week and beyond has been a celebration.

Hudsons birthday kept his postal carrier extra busy. Hudson didnt just receive a few birthday cards, rather he received more than 95 cards in the mail and an additional 68 handmade cards from local children.

How did he feel about receiving all of those cards? Its unbelievable. It was really nice. I really loved it, he said. His favorite card? All of them! I couldnt believe no two were alike, he remarked.

The abundance of cards received started with Hudsons daughter-in-law Judy Hudson and granddaughter Tiffany Hodges who made posts on Facebook requesting cards. The idea for cards from kids came from Jamie Stump, YMCA childcare director and friend of the Hudson family.

In addition to the cards made by YMCA childcare children, 3rd graders from Christian Heritage Academy (CHA) made cards. Two of Hudsons great-grandsons are in a class together at CHA.

As evidenced by five children, 12 grandchildren and 16 great-grandchildren, family is important to Hudson. For Hudsons 94th birthday which was on Thanksgiving Day, his family wanted to do something special to honor him. Their labor of love was to create a Christmas tree out of hay bales and decorate it with lights.

This year the family expressed their love by crafting a Christmas bear with lights on Thanksgiving Day. Judy Hudson described the familys bear-decorating experience by saying, They love it. Theyre excited to be able to create together.

Grandpa Ned, as everyone calls him Judy said, has really made an impact on the lives of his family members. Hodges emotionally spoke of her grandpas specialness by describing him as very tender hearted, wise with money, a successful farmer, humble, kind, genuine and well thought of. Hes the best all-around and a one of a kind.

Five generations have farmed the Century Farm on which Ned was born. Judy said he still goes to the farm twice a day to feed the goats, ducks and guineas and that the boys continue to work the farm under his sharp eye. He was named Farmer of the Year in 2011.

The farm had been a dairy farm which now has beef cattle and hay and grain for cash crops.

In reflecting on his life and the farm, Ned said, I cant believe I made it this long. I cant believe all the changes that have been made. Me and my wife started out with just a horse and now its tractors. Ned shared how much he misses his other half. His wife of 72 years, Essyebelle, passed away in 2019.

Regarding the Christmas bear which can be seen on Muse Field Road at the Hudson family farm in Rocky Mount, Ned said, I cant believe all them grandkids put that thing up.

Next years Christmas agricultural art has yet to be determined, but Judy said, Well keep doing it as long as Grandpa gives us the hay.
Following a long December tradition, 11 veterans were presented Thursday with quilts to honor them and, perhaps, to keep them warm and cozy.

For the 13th time, members of the Loose Threads Sewing Circle gave quilts to former military members as part of the Quilts of Valor project. The ceremony was held in the Liberty Room of the United Veterans Club.

The project, which has been going since 2008, is done in conjunction with the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Grand Island. The medical center provides the veterans, and the Loose Threads group furnishes the quilts. Heidi Degodt was on hand from the VA.

During the years, the group has produced close to 200 quilts, four afghans and three coats for service dogs.

Making quilts is their hobby, said Sandy Larkey of Guide Rock.

If we kept all the quilts we make, wed have to have a warehouse, said Larkey, who opened Thursdays program.

One of the recipients was Ron Green of Silver Creek.

I appreciate these women doing this, said Green, 71. We didnt get a lot when we came back, except grief.
Opening statements in the trial of a suburban Minneapolis police officer who fatally shot Daunte Wright during a routine traffic stop are expected Wednesday in the same courtroom where another ex-cop was convicted of murder in the death of George Floyd.

Officer Kim Potter, 49, faces first- and second-degree manslaughter charges in a homicide her lawyers have suggested resulted from her mistaking her gun for a Taser in April. Potter has pleaded not guilty and faces at least a decade in prison if convicted.

The shooting of the 20-year-old Black man happened in Brooklyn Center, a few miles from the Hennepin County Government Center where former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin was on trial for killing Floyd.

MORE COVERAGE OF THE POTTER TRIAL

Wright's killing set off several days of protests in the Minneapolis suburb. It rocked a metropolitan area scarred by other police-involved deaths and reignited national conversations about policing and the use of force against people of color.

Just as video footage played a crucial role in the case against Chauvin, body camera video is expected to be critical in the trial against Potter, who is White.
Perez worked as a compost laborer for nearly 21 years and retired in October 1997, Banks said.

Deputy City Attorney Bernard in den Bosch said that when a retired employee dies, a portion of his or her monthly pension can go to a spouse, a minor child or an adult child with a disability, until that person dies. No spouse or children are listed in Perezs obituary.

Yet the checks wrongly continued after Perez died. They were sent out monthly until the final payment, dated Sept. 30. The total amount was nearly $118,037, Banks said.

About a decade ago, the city, which administers the civilian and first responder pensions, hired a database service called LexisNexis that searches for former employees names and Social Security numbers and checks whether someone has died. But in den Bosch said the database didnt show that Perez had died.

The error was uncovered when a city employee recently conducted a review and searched Perezs name online, which resulted in the discovery of his obituary from years ago, in den Bosch said.

Omaha Police Lt. Neal Bonacci said the investigation into the matter is still active. He said detectives were working with the Finance Department.
I talk a lot about my family, weight loss, getting divorced, having kids who are now in college and dating again, she said. Whether youre 21 or 61, its going to be fun and no one will walk away from my show and say, I didnt really get what she was talking about.

Kimmel finds herself drawn to absurdist humor. She enjoys the videos her younger brother, Jonathan Kimmel, makes. His credits include six years of writing for South Park.

My little brother is super funny, she said. He makes these videos  I mean, I can never explain them. They are things that would sound ridiculous to explain, but if you see it, its like, OK, I get it.

Most people know Kimmels older brother, Jimmy Kimmel. Yep, that Jimmy Kimmel.

Both of my brothers are great, she said. Jimmy is very funny but I think hes more traditionally funny. Johnathan is just absurd. I get a real kick out of him.

For her material, Kimmel likes to observe life around her and incorporate it into her routine.
KEARNEY  After two years and $25 million of construction and renovation, a landmark of downtown Kearney will re-emerge as a dazzling attraction where people of all ages and interests can get excited about Nebraska art.

Organizers expected to greet a host of dignitaries and supporters for a pair of events to kick off the major renovation and expansion of the Museum of Nebraska Art. The museum, which is the receptacle and guardian of all art thats about Nebraska or created by Nebraskans, will remain closed for the next two years as the transformation takes place.

Some of the people who were instrumental in the impending project were scheduled to speak today at a pair of events at the museum. The massive structure, which in its early years served as Kearneys Post Office, has nearly been emptied of its contents in anticipation of the constriction and renovation.

The MONA staff has taken up new temporary quarters in the Eagles Nest Plaza office complex in north Kearney.

Today (Friday), at 10:30 a.m., dignitaries were scheduled to gather inside MONA to break ground and kick the project into gear.
LEXINGTON  A resident physician from Omaha accused of killing her husband in June 2020 has had her trial date pushed back to February 2022.

Kathleen Jourdan, 32, of Omaha, is charged with second-degree murder and use of a deadly weapon to commit a felony. She has claimed she acted in self-defense.

A pre-trial date was set for Jan. 21, 2022 at 10:30 a.m. and a jury trial has been set for Feb. 8, 9, 10 and 11, 2022 starting at 9 a.m. each day.

She pleaded not guilty to the charges in June 2020. Jourdans bail was continued and she remains free.

On June 17, 2020 Jourdan, her husband, Joshua, and their two children were moving to Scottsbluff to continue her medical residency.

While driving on Interstate 80 near Cozad, Jourdan and her husband began arguing. Joshua pulled the vehicle over to the side of the road, gave her a look and raised his arm like he was going to strike her, Kathleen Jourdan told law enforcement, according to an affidavit.

She then allegedly grabbed a handgun from the center console of the vehicle and shot Joshua twice in the chest, according to an affidavit.
Once we kind of figured out their lineup and what they were trying to do I thought our floor defense really took over, Cook said. In game three they couldnt get a ball down on the floor. Then you start seeing a few errors here and there. Thats how we play. Thats how we roll. We try to get our defense to make teams feel uncomfortable.

Illinois coach Chris Tamas said it was a tough deal that Cooney had to miss the match.

She was just so sick she couldnt get on the plane, Tamas said.

Illinois ranks in the top 10 in the nation in serving, but wasnt able to make that a deciding factor against Nebraska. Nebraska led in ace serves 8-4, and Lauren Stivrins and Kenzie Knuckles had three aces apiece.

I think it was really exciting, especially in the second set when we were down there for a little bit, we just went back and kept thumping our serves and sticking with it, Kubik said. I think that just shows our grit and determination.
Nationally, facilities rarely attain exceeds the standard rating, so to have two for YRTC-K speaks to our teams incredible dedication and professionalism, said Mark LaBouchardiere, administrator of the Office of Juvenile Services in the Division of Children & Family Services. They are caring for our youth in a way that will help them to overcome challenges and optimally function upon their release from the facility, and providing a great service to both the youth we serve and the State of Nebraska. My hat is off to YRTC-K Facility Administrator Paul Gordon and Compliance Manager Shaylee Fortner on this outstanding report. I thank them and their staffs for all their hard work.
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CARTERVILLE  During the year, the Poshard Foundation works to heal abused children physically and emotionally and to stop the abuse of children. That means they often buy needed items like car seats, beds or special medical equipment used to examine children who are sexually abused.

Once a year, the Poshard Foundation volunteers step up to help Santa by providing Christmas gifts to organizations that serve needy and abused children.

The foundations website says it provides funding for children in crisis when other funds are not available. For children, Christmas is important, according to Jo Poshard, founder of the organization.

This is such a great thing to do for the community and kids. The work you have done is fantastic, Dr. Kirk Overstreet, president of John A. Logan College, said to Poshard.

We will have more than 2,000 gifts to give to 500 kids, Poshard said.

The gifts are made possible by the groups sponsors, which include Ameren Illinois.

Tina Gibbs, community relations executive for Ameren, gave Poshard a check for $5,000 on Wednesday while organizations shopped for gifts.

We felt its part of our responsibility to support the community. We see the need and continue to give. We want to step up and support the Poshard Foundation as much as we can, Gibbs said.

Maria Barton and Gloria Cravens of Damas Latinas were choosing gifts for 25 children.

This is amazing. One of our biggest events is our Christmas celebration with children in need, Barton said.

Cravens said this saves money for the group to use on other charitable things they do, such as scholarships for graduating high school students.

The organization brings together Hispanic women. Damas Latinas started in 1986 and has about 40 active members, who Cravens said are part of sisterhood and really good friends.

Mary Jo Agin was selecting gifts for 10 children served by CASA of Saline County. CASA or Court Appointed Special Advocates serves children who are in the court system. Agin said they advocate for the best needs of their children and write reports to a judge.

She said they also go to the homes involved for a visit and focus on the educational needs of children. A new program also addresses the health needs of their children.

Shopping is fun. Some of our kids made requests that were very specific, she said.

They will get their gifts and coats at a holiday party Dec. 18.

In addition to Damas Latinas and Casa of Saline County, the Poshard Foundation provided gifts to these organizations:

Arrowleaf

Cairo Womens Center

Caritas

Centerstone

CASA of Marion County

CASA of Williamson County

DCFS, Cairo

DCFS, Harrisburg

DCFS, Marion

DCFS, Metropolis

LSSI Prisoner and Family Ministry

Spero

The Promise

The Nights Shield

The Womens Center/Harrisburg

Young Hearts with Goals and Purpose

While their Christmas event is fun, the Poshard Foundation helps children all year long.

For more information or to make a donation, visit poshardfoundation.org or call 618-985-2828, ext. 8564. The foundations office is at John A. Logan College.

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All of Southern Illinois should brace for significant severe weather Friday night through the early Saturday hours as the National Weather Service is predicting unusual winter weather resulting in a few strong tornadoes, damaging gusts and large hail.

The NWS Storm Prediction Center has upgraded Southern Illinois and parts of Arkansas, Missouri, Tennessee and Kentucky to a level 4 out of 5 moderate risk for severe weather.

Moderate severe weather risks such as this is highly unusually for the area, Michael York, a NWS meteorologist, said.

Theyre not very common. A couple or three times a year in a typical year we have a moderate risk, York said. This year I dont know if weve had any. A moderate risk implies a fairly widespread severe weather event. Usually it includes the possibility of a few strong tornados and of course large hail and damaging straight-line winds.

Severe thunderstorms and tornadoes are likely caused by a cold front moving across the region along with lots of moisture and wind shear in the atmosphere.

The timing of the system covering Southern Illinois will be from around 7 p.m. through 3 a.m.

The thunderstorms are expected to develop by late today into the early evening across Southern Illinois, Southeast Missouri and possibly West Kentucky.

They will continue through the overnight hours crossing into Indiana and western Kentucky, NWS said.

Outside of the thunderstorms, strong wind gusts of 30 to 40 miles per hour are possible this evening into early Saturday morning.

A couple long-track tornadoes are highly possible as well.

Nighttime tornadoes are one of the biggest problems because they happen when people are normally asleep, York said. We recommend having a means of being woken up at night by a weather radio. Then you can take some protective actions.

The greatest tornado threat is close to the confluence of the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers, near Cairo, according to NWS.

It is advised that you have multiple means of receiving weather updates throughout the storm and that you have a safety plan in place.

The main message emergency officials have for those residing in the Southern Illinois region, which is expecting severe weather and hazardous conditions, is to be aware.

Ryan Buckingham, a fire chief and the Director of Emergency Management for Franklin County, said it is important people remain cognizant of their surroundings.

Some of these storms are going to be moving at a very high rate of speed. So one thing you're going to want to do is monitor the conditions around you, have a way, multiple ways actually to receive watch and warning information, and then seek shelter immediately if a warning is issued, or your conditions change around you, Buckingham said.

Buckingham said in these winter month storms, the storm is moving faster than it usually would and sometimes the warnings cant keep up with them, which is why it is important to remain aware.

If someone is living in a home without a basement, Buckingham said the best way to seek shelter is to move to a sturdy structure away from doors and windows and to put as much material as possible between yourself and the outside.

Rebecca Clark, a communications manager with the Illinois Emergency Management Agency, said it is important to have a plan in place.

So know what you would do the personal protective measures that you would take under a watch under warning. Specifically, know where he will go when a warning is issued. A warning means it's time to take cover, Clark said. So if you live in a more mobile home, know where you would go, where's the closest storm shelter for your area, whether it be a church, or community building, know those places where you would go now before the storm hits. And most importantly, always make sure that you have more than one way to receive emergency alerts and notifications.

Clark said resources for storm preparedness and disaster relief can be found at ready.illinois.gov

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Dr. David Staten has been appointed South Carolina State Universitys acting associate provost for Academic Affairs effective Dec. 16, 2021.

Staten succeeds Dr. Jesulon Gibbs-Brown, who recently left the position citing personal reasons. Gibbs-Brown will continue to be an asset to the Division of Academic Affairs while serving as an associate professor in the SC State Department of Education.

Staten is a professor in the Rehabilitation Counseling Program at SC State. His primary areas of research include:

 Racial identity development of minorities with disabilities

 Health orientations of African American college students

 Health disparities of minorities with disabilities.

Staten has been employed by SC State as a rehabilitation counselor educator for the past 20 years. He has more than 15 years of administrative experience as the program director of the Rehabilitation Counseling Program and several years of experience serving as department chair.

Staten has mentored many students who have gone on to have successful careers in rehabilitation counseling and higher education. He has extensive knowledge and experience in the area program and regional accreditations.

Staten received his B.S. in criminal justice and his M.A. in rehabilitation from SC State University in 1992 and 1994 respectively, and he received his Ph.D. in rehabilitation counselor education from the University of Iowa.

Staten has successfully managed more than $10 million of external grant funds from such agencies as Rehabilitation Services Administration; National Institute on Disability, Independent Living and Rehabilitation Research; and the U..S Department of Education.

He was the first African American man to serve as the president of the American Rehabilitation Counseling Association. He has also served as the president of the Orangeburg Morning Rotary Club.

He most recently served as the president of the SC State University Faculty Senate for consecutive terms.

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Western conservation advocates on Tuesday called for the federal government to defer much of the oil and gas leasing scheduled for early next year.

A year after the Biden administration paused new lease sales and ordered the Department of the Interior to review the leasing program, and six months after a federal judge ordered the federal government to resume leasing, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) is now planning to hold its first onshore lease sale since December 2020 in early 2022.

On Aug. 31, the BLM proposed 459 Wyoming parcels, spanning more than 568,000 acres, for sale early next year. It announced last month that it would defer 264 of those parcels due to environmental concerns, including the presence of priority sage grouse habitat.

Some conservation and outdoor recreation groups want to see many more leases deferred pending additional environmental review.

Its not just the sheer volume of leasing thats a problem, said John Rader, a conservation advocate for the Wyoming Outdoor Council. Its also where the leases are located. Weve consistently seen parcels sold in inappropriate places.

In Wyoming, where roughly half of the 9 million acres of federal lands leased for oil and gas development havent been developed, Rader questioned the need to sell additional leases in areas that are significant for other reasons, including sensitive wildlife habitat, historic trails, sacred cultural sites and lands used for hunting and recreation.

Some of these parcels are on lands with very low development potential and very high conservation value, where industrial development just doesnt make sense, Rader said.

The Outdoor Council is generally optimistic about the Department of the Interiors recently published report on the oil and gas leasing program, he said. The report deemed the leasing program to be unfair to taxpayers and inadequate on climate change, and proposed raising royalty and bonding rates.

Its findings frustrated industry, which felt the report was unfair to oil and gas producers and would have an outsized impact on Wyoming, where a particularly high share of drilling occurs on federal lands.

But the conservation groups believe that the federal governments existing leasing protocols are inadequate.

The public and tribes have been routinely flagging these concerns, and the Department of the Interior has identified many of them in their report, so we sincerely hope to see some changes, Rader said.

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A total of 192 cases of coronavirus have been found among Casper city workers since March 2020.

More than half of those have come since July of this year.

Since the beginning of the pandemic, 43 city employees have filed workers compensation claims related to COVID-19, amounting to around $138,000 paid or reserved. Those payments come from a state fund, not the citys budget, but the claims will affect the workers comp premiums Casper must pay to the state for the next three years.

As of last week, just over 700 people work for the city both full- and part-time.

Along with the rest of the state, cases of COVID among city workers surged last winter before subsiding in the spring, when there were no new cases reported for nearly two months.

Between mid-February and the end of July, just five total cases were found among city employees.

Cases then began to rise again, mirroring a spike around Wyoming as the delta variant took hold among communities with relatively low vaccination rates.

Since the last week of July, there have been 101 new cases found among city workers, resulting in 56 other employees having to quarantine due to close contact.

Two members of Casper City Council, Kyle Gamroth and Lisa Engebretsen, also reported coming down with coronavirus in July. Both confirmed they were unvaccinated when they contracted the disease.

The most cases found in one week came during the first week of September, which saw 16 new cases reported. The previous high for any week before that was in October 2020, when 14 employees tested positive for the virus.

No new cases have been reported among Casper employees since the last week of November.

The city implemented a voluntary vaccine incentive program at the beginning of October, offering $250 to employees who prove full vaccination by the end of the year. As of Dec. 2, 310 employees had cashed in on the program and more than $83,000 had been paid in incentives.

From the 43 workers compensation claims made by city employees affected by COVID, $32,825 has been paid out so far. Another $105,550 has been reserved for future payments.

Of the money paid so far, most has gone to employees who made claims based on temporary total disability, meaning they likely contracted COVID at work and it made it impossible for them to do their job for a period of time.

City Manager Carter Napier previously told the Star-Tribune that most of those claims arise from employees who have been hospitalized with serious cases of coronavirus.

When introducing a voluntary vaccine incentive program in late September, the city reported there had been 28 medical or temporary disability claims made by Casper employees, amounting to $281,720 either paid or reserved.

Casper Parks Director Zulima Lopez, the citys former risk manager, said that number has since gone down because a handful of the largest and most serious claims overestimated the money needed for treatment. Some of the anticipated costs placed on reserve may have also been covered by personal insurance, Lopez said, further reducing that component.

Follow city and crime reporter Ellen Gerst on Twitter at @ellengerst.

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The Wyoming State Penitentiary will have its first female warden, with the promotion of Deputy Warden Neicole Molden announced on Thursday.

Molden is set to take the post on Dec. 17, according to a release from the Wyoming Department of Corrections. She has already made history as the facilitys first female deputy warden, and will also be the prisons second African American warden.

I like to be out there with the inmates, walk and talk and interact and see whats going on, Molden said. To be able to run a facility or institution you have to be out there. You cant just be sitting behind the desk.

Shell be taking over from Warden Michael Harlow, who was appointed to the position in June 2020. The department confirmed Thursday that Harlow has resigned as warden.

Molden has been with the department since 2009, when she was hired as a unit manager at the Wyoming Medium Correctional Institution in Torrington. After eight years there, she worked as an associate warden at the womens prison in Lusk before becoming the deputy warden in Rawlins in January 2020.

The facility is experiencing an outbreak of COVID-19, with 77 cases found last week and 47 more this week. As of last week, there were 535 people incarcerated there, meaning roughly one in five of them has tested positive for the virus in the last two weeks.

Working in prisons during a pandemic has been a challenge, Molden said. In her words, it has forced staff to get creative and find different ways to do things... to keep inmates safe from COVID.

Once she takes the lead at the state penitentiary, Molden said she plans on bringing in programs to build job skills for incarcerated people. A greenhouse where residents can learn to grow their own food will soon be coming to the facility, she said, and theyll be able to start farming in the spring.

Molden said that working as a woman in prisons mostly populated and staffed by men has had its challenges, but has gotten easier as time goes on.

I make it well-known how direct I am, she said. I dont tolerate any nonsense, I dont accept it from the population nor the staff.

The penitentiary has been having trouble keeping staff, Molden said, but thats been common among correctional facilities across Wyoming even before the pandemic. Its hard to recruit people, especially from out-of-state, to come live in Rawlins.

As a Level IV/V facility, the state penitentiary is Wyomings highest-security prison.

Follow city and crime reporter Ellen Gerst on Twitter at @ellengerst.

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It will soon cost you at least a dollar or two more to enjoy a Carib or Stag beer as bar owners say a price increase by Carib Brewery has left them with no other alternative but to charge customers more.

Carib Brewery, in a statement on Monday, announced a $1 retail price increase per bottle or can would apply to its Carib, Carib Pilsner, Stag, Carib Blue, Royal Extra Stout, Coors, Heineken, Guinness, Smirnoff Ice and Blue Moon products.
new chief: Tobago House of Assembly Chief Secretary Farley Augustine takes the oath of office yesterday at Magdalena Grand Beach and Golf Resort, Tobago.

Photos courtesy The Office of the Prime Minister
MISSING Valsayn fisherman Stefan Gangoo may be lost at sea or land, and his mother is asking
The stage is being set for a showdown between the Government and unvaccinated workers employed by the State, come January 17.

With a week and a half to go, there has been no real effort aimed at defusing the looming confrontation. Meanwhile, as positions harden on each side, the public has been reduced to the role of spectator, unsure of how the banning of unvaccinated public sector employees from the workplace without pay will affect them, since, apart from the Prime Ministers statement, there has been no information regarding the public sectors Quasi Safe Zones Policy.
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The Pima County Attorneys Office has launched the review of a police shooting that left a man in a motorized wheelchair dead last month.

Pima County Attorney Laura Conover said her office had received the bulk of necessary evidence from the Tucson Police Department to begin to evaluate the facts of the case and conduct the investigation.

The video is jarring. And, the video represents but a fraction of the evidence we must evaluate to determine if criminal charges are warranted in this incident, Conover said in a statement. Charging decisions, especially involving incidents in which a loss of life has occurred, are not made in this office based on emotion. They are based on a deliberative review of all the facts and all the evidence at hand. It is our obligation, my obligation, to get these decisions right, not rushed, while strictly ensuring the rights of the accused as embodied in our Constitution and laws.

Conover said she has scheduled a convening of a critical incident review group, made up of senior homicide prosecutors and experienced attorneys, to determine whether to present the case to a grand jury for a possible indictment of the officer.
Hobbs declined to comment.

Separately Thursday, state Sen. Sally Ann Gonzales, D-Tucson, lashed out at other leaders in the Democratic Party for not being more critical of Hobbs.

Gonzales said the latest apology video posted by Hobbs on Wednesday fell short of acknowledging her role in the firing and instead was designed more to try to undo damage to her political future.

The senator also said she will propose legislation in the upcoming session, which starts in January, designed to preclude the kind of discrimination that resulted in Adams being fired and having to sue to get her job back. But she said she does not yet have details to release.

Adams notice of claim is a formal precursor to filing suit against the government and any of its employees or agents.

She is not fit to serve, not as the governor of the state of Arizona and not as the secretary of state, Adams said.

Adams had been a policy adviser for Senate Democrats when she was fired in February 2015 shortly after Hobbs became Senate minority leader.
"We were always very welcomed with this story," said Moreno, adding that the premise of immigration and home struck a universal chord.

But Moreno, 40, didn't realize how strongly the story resonated beyond the U.S./Mexico border until they took the opera to Paris.

"Because the story is directly related to Mexico and the United States immigration, we thought it was really appealing (mostly) in the States, but when we went to Paris it was eye opening," he said, recounting how he and other cast members were approached by audience members at a Paris street-side cafe the day after a performance.

Three black men stopped them and said, "Hey, you were at the opera last night," recalled Moreno, the father of two young daughters.

"And then they were on the verge of crying. You told the story of my family when my parents moved form Africa to Paris,'" they told him. "We already knew it was a national subject, but when these African people came and told us about their story ... being told on stage, it was such a great feeling for us as artists to feel that we were touching people not only in the United States but all over the world.
The UA team is also partnering with Raytheon, which is developing hypersonics for the military to counter moves by China and Russia to develop their own hypersonic missiles.

The UA is among 87 university members of the University Consortium for Applied Hypersonics, which was launched by the Defense Department last year to develop the workforce and research for modern hypersonic flight systems in support of national defense. The consortium also has 90 industry partners, including Raytheon, and eight national laboratories.

Wes Kremer, president of Raytheon Missiles & Defense, said the companys involvement in the university consortium will help develop the next generation of hypersonic engineers.

Our investment in digital engineering tools like the surrogate aerodynamic database will accelerate the development and delivery of hypersonic technologies to the warfighter, Kremer said as part of the UAs grant announcement.

Next-gen interceptor advances

Tucson-based Raytheon Missiles & Defense marked major milestones in its venture with Northrop Grumman to develop the nations next ballistic-missile interceptor.
Pandemic mystery: Scientists focus on COVID's animal origins

Nearly two years into the COVID-19 pandemic, the origin of the virus tormenting the world remains shrouded in mystery.

Most scientists believe it emerged in the wild and jumped from bats to humans, either directly or through another animal. Others theorize it escaped from a Chinese lab.

Now, with the global COVID-19 death toll surpassing 5.2 million on the second anniversary of the earliest human cases, a growing chorus of scientists is trying to keep the focus on what they regard as the more plausible zoonotic, or animal-to-human, theory, in the hope that what's learned will help humankind fend off new viruses and variants.

The lab-leak scenario gets a lot of attention, you know, on places like Twitter, but theres no evidence that this virus was in a lab, said University of Utah scientist Stephen Goldstein, who with 20 others wrote an article in the journal Cell in August laying out evidence for animal origin.
The murder trial in state court was not the end of the legal troubles for the McMichaels and Bryan. They now face hate crime charges at the federal level that allege they violated Arbery's civil rights, unjustly pursuing and threatening him on a public street, because he was Black.

A judge has scheduled jury selection in the federal trial to begin Feb. 7. The McMichaels and Bryan pleaded not guilty to the hate crime charges in May.

Like the state trial, the federal case will be tried in Glynn County, where the killing occurred just outside the port city of Brunswick. Typically, a federal jury would be drawn from residents of Glynn County as well as six neighboring counties that make up the Brunswick Division of the federal court system's Southern District of Georgia.

The parties believe that it is likely that many potential jurors from the Brunswick Division will have experienced sustained exposure to the case and may have formed immutable opinions, in one direction or the other, that will ultimately preclude them from sitting on a jury in this case," the attorneys said in their legal motion.
Assisted evolution was not widely accepted when first proposed.

Van Oppen said there were concerns about losing genetic diversity and critics who said the scientists were "playing gods" by tampering with the reef.

"Well, you know, (humans) have already intervened with the reef for very long periods of time," van Oppen said. "All we're trying to do is to repair the damage."

Rather than editing genes or creating anything unnatural, researchers are just nudging what could already happen in the ocean, she said. "We are really focusing first on as local a scale as possible to try and maintain and enhance what is already there."

MILLIONS OF YEARS IN THE MAKING

Still, there are lingering questions.

"We have discovered lots of reasons why corals don't bleach," said Steve Palumbi, a marine biologist and professor at Stanford University. "Just because you find a coral that isn't bleaching in the field or in the lab doesn't mean it's permanently heat tolerant."

Corals have been on Earth for about 250 million years and their genetic code is not fully understood.
Video taken by a witness and posted to social media showed the white police officer grabbing and pushing Johnson onto a concrete bench. Johnson was taken into custody on accusations of resisting arrest but was not charged with a crime and was not cited for smoking.

The incident fueled racial tensions in the normally sedate suburb as protesters claimed Johnson was singled out for being Black. It happened two days after the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis unleashed nationwide protests over police brutality.

The witness's video shows Johnson telling the officer to shut the (expletive) up. At one point, the man says he is being arrested because hes Black. Thats what the issue is, he said.

Body camera footage shows the back-and-forth continued on the drive to the police station.

The officer says, Did I feel threatened when you put your hands on me? No, because Im not scared of you, but Im not going to let you put your hands on me. Johnson denied the allegation and says he was trying to get the officers hands off him.
The suit could further Perdue's effort to sew up the votes of Trump backers who believe the election was stolen as he tries to come back from his Senate election loss, saying that's how he'll unify the Republican Party and beat Kemp in the primary and then Democrat Stacey Abrams.

His position that Georgia's 2020 election was wrongly decided isn't new. He called on Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to resign while votes were still being counted in 2020, saying he failed to deliver honest and transparent elections, said if he had been in the U.S. Senate on Jan. 6, he would have voted against accepting Georgias electoral votes. But until now he hadn't sued.

David Perdue is so concerned about election fraud that he waited a year to file a lawsuit that conveniently coincided with his disastrous campaign launch, said Kemp spokesperson Cody Hall. Keep in mind that lawsuit after lawsuit regarding the 2020 election was dismissed in part because Perdue declined to be listed as a plaintiff.
To support their sentencing recommendation, prosecutors included a handwritten letter Swinney tried to send to Derek Chauvin, the former Minneapolis police officer who was convicting of killing Floyd, sparking months of nationwide protests.

In the letter, Swinney expressed sympathy for Chauvin after his conviction, telling him to keep his head up because he could win on appeal or be freed through other means.

Another thing that may end up working in your favor is that this country is headed toward civil war, Swinney wrote. I see it ramping up. Civil war will get you out of jail. Itll get me out too.

Swinney is a member of the far-right group the Proud Boys.

He earlier admitted, as part of a civil settlement, to assaulting a woman during an August 2020 protest in Portland.

Copyright 2021 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
RAMALLAH, West Bank (AP)  Israeli forces shot and killed a Palestinian during clashes Friday in the occupied West Bank, health authorities in the territory said.

According to a statement, 31-year-old Jamil Abu Ayyash suffered a gunshot wound to the head during clashes in the northern West Bank town of Beita. After being shot, he was taken to a nearby hospital where he later died from his injuries.

The Palestinian Red Crescent medical service says the Israeli army fired live bullets, as well as rubber-coated bullets and tear gas at dozens of protesters during he clashes. The medical service also said the army closed off nearby roads, which made it difficult for an ambulance to get to the scene. There were no reports of any other serious injuries.

The army said no live rounds were used and that the troops opened fire with rubber bullets in response to Palestinians hurling rocks and burning tires.

Israeli forces and Palestinians have clashed weekly in Beita over the past several months. The Palestinians have been demonstrating against the establishment of an unauthorized Israeli settlement outpost they say was built on their land.
One out of four Americans volunteers, performing billions of hours of service annually, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The most common among them is collecting, preparing, distributing or serving food.

In Colorado, Teresa Dilka, a 68-year-old retired nurse, started volunteering at the Food Bank of the Rockies a couple of months ago, only after getting her COVID shot. She says she used to give money to the Denver-based food bank, but her income dwindled when her mother died. So she stopped donating money, and started donating her time instead.

Sometimes it seems like its helping me more than Im helping them, she said. It just feels good to be able to help.

At the Arizona-based St. Marys Food Bank, one of the largest in the country, volunteering hasnt declined since news about omicron came out, said Jerry Brown, a spokesperson for the organization. Many of their volunteers had just returned during this years holiday season following last years big drop-off, when their volunteer staffing dwindled from about 200 to only 30 per shift.
PHOENIX (AP)  The Phoenix Zoo is the latest among several dozen in the United States to vaccinate animals considered susceptible to getting COVID-19 from close contact with people.

Big cats such as Sumatran tigers, jaguars and African lions; many of the zoo's primates like Bornean orangutans and tiny emperor tamarins; and Egyptian fruit bats, armadillos and two-toed sloths are among the 75 animals that have already received their first shots.

Veterinarian Dr. Gary West, the zoo's senior vice president of animal health and living collections, said Thursday that staff members are now giving the second jabs that will serve as boosters and should keep them protected for a year.

The big cats were vaccinated from a distance with the use of darts.

They take it way better than people do, West said of the animals. They don't like it, but they bounce right back and go back to their lives.

There have been no cases of coronavirus infection detected among Phoenix Zoo animals
OPINION: Have an opinion or expertise on a particular subject? Write a Letter to the Editor or an Opinion piece at Tucson.com/opinion.
Question: I have lived in my neighborhood for three years and I havent met my neighbors. Is it too awkward now to make an introduction now?
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Terwilliger then told the committee in a letter this week that a deposition had become untenable because the committee has no intention of respecting boundaries around questions that Trump claims are off-limits.

Trump has attempted to hinder much of the committees work, including in an ongoing court case, by arguing that Congress cannot obtain information about his private White House conversations.

Terwilliger also told the committee that he learned over the weekend that they had issued a subpoena to a third-party communications provider that he said would include intensely personal information about Meadows.

As a result of careful and deliberate consideration of these factors, we now must decline the opportunity to appear voluntarily for a deposition, Terwilliger wrote in the Tuesday letter.

In his response, Thompson confirmed the subpoenas to a third party but said it does not impact Mr. Meadowss production of documents and text messages, which are the areas we seek to develop during his deposition.
Koumjian said his organization had received over 200,000 communications since the army takeover and has collected over 1.5 million items of evidence that were being analyzed so that one day those most responsible for the serious international crimes in Myanmar will be brought to account.

Earlier this week, witnesses and other sources said that Myanmar government troops rounded up villagers, some believed to be children, tied them up and slaughtered them. A video of the aftermath of Tuesdays assault  apparently carried out in retaliation for an attack on a military convoy  showed the charred bodies of 11 people lying in a circle amid what appeared to be the remains of a hut.

Myanmars military-installed government described the reports as fake news.

Myanmar is not one of the International Criminal Court's 123 member states, meaning the Netherlands-based court does not automatically have jurisdiction over crimes committed there. However, Myanmar's self-styled National Unity Government sent a declaration to the court in July saying it accepted the ICC's jurisdiction dating back to 2002, when the global court started work.
Oklahomas COVID-19 daily case average has more than doubled in the month after its post-delta variant wave low point  rising when the omicron variant reportedly remains less than 1% of cases across the country.

The states seven-day average of new cases rose to 1,561 on Friday. Thats a 149% jump from the recent low-water mark of 553 reported Nov. 7. The delta waves peak hit 2,806 cases per day in late August.

Interim Health Commissioner Keith Reed told a media briefing Thursday that the increase is a reminder that COVID is still a concern in Oklahoma and that a new variant and colder weather driving people inside are both factors that can contribute to upswings in disease spread.

Obviously, our hope was that the downward trend would continue in the cases  or at least the plateau  but were not surprised that we have seen an increase, Reed said. Thats what a pandemic typically involves. Its a series of surges.

We anticipate that this surge  or this increase, I dont know that Id call it a surge yet  but this increase will be much less severe than the previous one. We hope to see a plateau very soon on it.
It was finally time to throw away the broken plastic Santa with the $1.58 TG&Y price tag on it.

That particular jolly ol Saint Nick likely came from Grandmas overwhelming amount of Christmas decorations. It wasnt an expensive item and wasnt part of any display in memory. Its a mystery when it was purchased or damaged.

But Grandma wasnt one to get rid of anything and handed it off to Mom at some point. It stayed around in boxes, hauled to at least four other homes.

Until one day it showed up in my foyer with a heap of other stuff. Moms spin on it was that she was handing things down to her daughters, like an early inheritance. My sister ended up with items most definitely bought with Green Stamps.

Mom said we could throw it all away if we wanted; she was downsizing and didnt want so much stuff anymore.

We took it to be that she couldnt bring herself to toss it. She knew it was cheap, broken-down holiday pieces destined for a dumpster, but those were still part of her mothers collection. She needed us to do this favor for her.
A six-hectare ecotourism area has been put into operation near the headquarters of the Peoples Committee of a district in northern Vietnam even though the developer of the venue has yet to obtain permits for its construction and business.

Located on the Da Do River bank in Kien Thuy District, Hai Phong City, this tourism facility, Big Sun, was previously an agricultural land area covering some 60,000 square meters, around one kilometer away from the office of the district's Peoples Committee, as revealed in an expose by Tuoi Tre (Youth) newspaper.

Big Sun now provides travelers with resorts, accommodations, infinity swimming pools, bars, coffee shops, ecological experience areas, sites for outdoor events, and many areas for recreation and adventurous sports.

Following the travel instructions posted on social media, Tuoi Tre reporters came to this tourism site, where a checkpoint had been set up at its entrance to charge VND150,000 (US$6.5) per visitor but to offer free admission to children under one meter tall.

This image shows one of the accommodations for rent in Big Sun, an illicitly developed eco-tourism site in Hai Phong City, northern Vietnam. Photo: Tien Thang / Tuoi Tre

The facility provides customers with accommodations at rentals from VND800,000 ($35) to VND1.5 million ($65), depending on their stay period (daytime or overnight).

According to locals, the owner of Big Sun is a leading entrepreneur, who has built and developed it at a huge cost since 2019.

Notably, the facility has yet to obtain safety certificates for its swimming pool and adventurous sports services.

As a spontaneously-built tourism area, Big Sun has yet to be recognized by local tourism authorities.

I don't understand the management role and responsibility of local government in this case, as they have let such a large unlicensed tourism facility exist close to the headquarters of the districts and communes administrations, Vu Duy Phong, 43, a resident in Kien Thuy, told Tuoi Tre reporters.

Phong pointed out that the local administrations had ordered the demolition of some other much smaller unlicensed construction works, which covered only several tens of square meters each.

The reporters contacted Nguyen Van Tuan, chairman of the Kien Thuy Peoples Committee, to clarify Big Suns violations but he asked them to work with the local bureau of natural resources and environment.

Do Thai Quyen, deputy head of the bureau, confirmed to Tuoi Tre that Big Sun was built on an agricultural land area over which the land use purpose had been changed without approval from competent agencies.

On April 16, the districts administration issued a decision to fine Vu Thi Lan Anh, the investor of the construction site, VND22.5 million ($978) for her unauthorized use of farmland for non-agricultural purposes, Quyen said.

This photo shows Big Suns swimming pool and other recreation and sport facilities that have yet to be granted safety certificates by relevant agencies. Photo: Tien Thang / Tuoi Tre.

The decision also requested that Anh, within ten days of the issuance of the decision, restore the status quo of the land lot, but after she paid the fine, her tourism facility has continued operating.

Currently, nearly 195 hectares of agricultural land in Hai Phong has been illegally encroached or used for construction works, while only a fractional ratio of such land, at 0.03 percent, has been handled after the violations were brought to light, according to statistics.

In another expose carried out last month, Tuoi Tre uncovered a similar case in the Central Highlands province of Lam Dong, where many real estate projects have mushroomed illegally, turning many tea-growing hills in Bao Loc City and Bao Lam District into great construction sites despite ongoing police investigation.

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Remittances to Vietnam are expected to hit a record US$18.1 billion in 2021, according to the World Bank and Global Knowledge Partnership on Migration and Development (KNOMAD).

As such, the country will be the eighth-largest remittance recipient in the world and the third-largest in the Asia-Pacific region this year.

In 2020, Vietnamese abroad sent home $17.2 billion.

Ho Chi Minh City, the countrys largest remittance recipient, is forecast to attract $6.5-6.6 billion this year, compared with $6.1 billion in 2020.

Nguyen Minh Tam, deputy general director of Saigon Thuong Tin Commercial Joint Stock Bank (Sacombank), said the main sources of Vietnams remittances, the U.S., Australia and Canada, increased their sums by 10 to 20 percent compared to previous years.

Vu Thanh Trung, deputy general director of DongA Money Transfer Co. Ltd., attributed the rise to overseas Vietnamese transferring more money to support their relatives in Vietnam during the implementation of strict COVID-19 social distancing measures.

The remittances were mostly spent on investment, production, and business, according to Tam.

According to estimates from the World Banks Migration and Development Brief released recently, remittances to low- and middle-income countries are expected to grow a strong 7.3 percent to reach $589 billion in 2021.

This return to growth is more robust than earlier estimation and follows the resilience of flows in 2020, when remittances declined only 1.7 percent despite a severe global recession due to COVID-19.

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Australia will begin administering COVID-19 vaccines for children aged 5 to 11 from Jan. 10, Prime Minister Scott Morrison said on Friday, after the rollout cleared final regulatory hurdles.

"This will be welcome news for millions of families across the country who want the opportunity for their children to be vaccinated," Morrison said in a statement.

After reviewing clinical data from Canada, the country's vaccination advisory group recommended an eight-week interval between the two doses, which can be shortened to three weeks if there is an outbreak.

Pfizer doses will be administered in the initial phase, while regulators assess the suitability of Moderna shots. A decision is expected in the coming weeks.

The decision comes as Australia seeks to accelerate the rollout of booster shots after becoming one of the world's most-vaccinated countries against COVID-19, inoculating nearly 90% of its population above 16 with two doses. Some 70% of children aged 12 to 15 have been fully vaccinated.

Authorities have been urging people to take the booster shot concerned about the new, more transmissible Omicron variant amid a steady rise in infections in Sydney, Australia's largest city.

New South Wales state, which includes Sydney, reported 516 new cases on Friday, its biggest rise in two months.

Most were caused by the Delta variant but the number of Omicron infections has been creeping up since Australia reported its first case about two weeks ago. Some 50 cases have been detected so far, the majority in Sydney.

Australia has reported about 225,000 COVID-19 cases and 2,084 deaths, far fewer than many comparable countries.
Vietnam has appealed to the UK for assistance in applying new agricultural technologies and methods, according to Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development Le Minh Hoan.

Minister Hoan met with British Ambassador to Vietnam Gareth Ward on Wednesday to discuss the bilateral trade of seafood, forest and livestock products, and veterinary medicine, Nhan Dan (People) online newspaper reported.

Vietnam and the UK do not overlap in their agricultural production and that lack of competition has given way to a culture of bilateral support that enables both to enjoy the others specialties, Minister Hoan said.

He also touched on livestock production, noting that Vietnam facilitates animal quarantine activities in line with agreements that benefit farmers from both countries.

During the meeting, Hoan appealed to Ward for continued UK support in securing equipment and improving Vietnams animal quarantine capabilities in order to boost the qualities of local animal quarantine activities.

The two officials also discussed issues related to illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing.

Minister Hoan said the European Commission (EC)s imposition of a 'yellow card' warning on IUU fishing against Vietnams seafood exports to the EU since 2017 has caused great damage to Vietnamese fishermen and the economy as a whole.

He noted that Vietnam has an over-3,000-kilometer coastline.

The Vietnamese government has been improving relevant legislation to turn traditional and spontaneous fishing practices into well-organized fishing operations that work in alignment with international regulations and commitments related to environmental and ocean protection.

The installation of cruise surveillance devices on fishing vessels to ensure they do not violate foreign waters, as well as to trace the origin of seafood, is currently being carried out in Vietnam in accordance with the country's road map, the minister said.

Such actions not only aim to have the EC remove the yellow card warning for Vietnam, but also reflect the nations responsibilities to the international community for preserving marine biodiversity and protecting aquatic resources for future generations, the Vietnamese official said.

The minister also expressed his wish that the UK, a leading country in the application of science and technology to fishing, forestry, and animal husbandry, will promote cooperation and exchanges between the two sides in order to help Vietnam access and apply new technologies in these fields.

British Ambassador Ward expressed his excitement in seeing the two countries maintain close cooperation despite the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Such cooperation has paved the way for the development of the general economy, as well as both countries agriculture industries.

I still remember the good impressions I had during my previous visits to national forests in Vietnam," Ward said.

"The forests of Vietnam have great potential for ecotourism development that will bring great benefits to people.

The ambassador also affirmed that the UK will continue to provide training for Vietnamese stakeholders in tracing timber origins and creating opportunities for local farmers.

In the field of animal husbandry and veterinary medicine, the ambassador hopes that Vietnam and the UK will keep cooperating and exchanging information so as to prevent the spread of domestic animal diseases.

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What you need to know today in Vietnam:

Politics

-- Party General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong has requested extra efforts to build a more transparent and stronger Party and political system, according to the Vietnam News Agency.

Society

-- The COVID-19 pandemic has caused VND273 trillion (US$11.8 billion) economic loss to Ho Chi Minh City, Nguyen Thi Le, chairperson of the municipal People's Council, said at a meeting on Thursday.

-- Over 1.5 million AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine doses arrived in Ho Chi Minh City on Thursday, concluding a 30-million-shot deal between the Anglo-Swedish company and Vietnam Vaccine Joint Stock Company, which was backed by the Vietnamese health ministry.

-- Vietnam will focus on resuming regular international flights in 2022, subject to COVID-19 developments, the Vietnam New Agency quoted Minister of Transport Nguyen Van The as saying on Thursday.

-- A grade-12 student died on Thursday in Quang Tri Province, Vietnam after getting COVID-19 vaccination on December 2. She exhibited adverse reactions right after the inoculation.

Business

-- Remittances to Vietnam will reach a record $18.1 billion in 2021, according to estimates by the World Bank and Global Knowledge Partnership on Migration and Development.

-- Vietnam will have 2.4 million micro- and small-sized enterprises by 2030, according to figures announced at a meeting to debut One Business Connection, a corporate linkage community, in Ho Chi Minh City on Thursday.

World News

-- "At least 53 mostly Central American migrants died when the truck transporting them turned over in southern Mexico on Thursday, in one of the worst accidents to befall people risking their lives to reach the United States border," Reuters reported.

-- Australia will begin vaccinating children aged 5 to 11 against COVID-19 from January 10, Reuters cited Prime Minister Scott Morrison as saying on Friday.

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The COVID-19 pandemic has so far resulted in economic losses surpassing VND273 trillion (US$11.8 billion) in Ho Chi Minh City, according to chairwoman of the municipal Peoples Council Nguyen Thi Le.

The Ho Chi Minh City Peoples Council convened its fourth session from December 7 to 9 to assess the economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and discuss socio-economic development plans for the coming years.

Deputies at the conference passed 13 resolutions on various fields to revive the city's economy while adapting safely and effectively controlling the pandemic.

In her closing speech, chairwoman Le said the pandemic had severely impacted many aspects of the southern city and Vietnam in general this year.

The pandemic has caused an economic downturn, disrupted supply chains, and labor shortage, as well as affecting peoples lives and health.

Ho Chi Minh Citys economic losses due to COVID-19 in 2020 and 2021 are estimated to top VND273 trillion, Le elaborated.

The citys Gross Regional Domestic Product (GRDP) is expected to drop this year, compared with a six percent growth target approved previously, she added.

In order to improve the situation in 2022, the city needs to implement the approved resolutions in an effective and transparent manner, the chairwoman continued.

Focus will be directed on strengthening the health system, carrying out administrative reforms, improving the investment environment, and supporting businesses.

The city will strive to achieve a six to 6.5 percent GRDP growth rate next year.

Competent authorities will continue working to provide assistance for residents affected by the pandemic and ensure social security.

The city is planning to allow ninth and twelfth graders to resume offline learning in the coming time, chairwoman Le stated.

More students will be allowed to return to school in the future as long as the plan matches the citys vaccination progress, she added.

Ho Chi Minh City has been the hardest-hit locality since the fourth outbreak hit Vietnam on April 27, with more than 483,300 local infections.

Health workers have administered nearly 14.8 million vaccine doses, with more than 7.9 million out of nine million people in the city fully vaccinated.

The city began inoculating children aged 12 to 17 against COVID-19 in late October.

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The Korea Chamber of Commerce in Vietnam (KOCHAM) collected nearly VND5 billion (US$217,500) in donations at the KOCHAM Charity Night on Thursday to assist orphans affected by the COVID-19 pandemic in the Southeast Asian country.

Over 82 South Korean enterprises donated a combined VND4 billion ($174,000) in cash and VND1 billion ($43,500) in gifts to support orphans in Vietnam during the KOCHAM Charity Night in Ho Chi Minh City.

The funds will be handed over to the Vietnam Fatherland Front Committees in Ho Chi Minh City, Binh Duong, Dong Nai, Ba Ria-Vung Tau, and Long An, to provide medical expenses and academic scholarships for orphans.

In-kind donations will be given directly to orphanages in Ho Chi Minh City.

During the challenging period of fighting the COVID-19 epidemic like fighting the enemy, Ho Chi Minh City has received plenty of support from both overseas Vietnamese and domestic organizations and individuals, To Thi Bich Chau, chairwoman of the Vietnam Fatherland Front Committee in Ho Chi Minh City, said at the event.

Chau also thanked the Consulate General of the Republic of Korea and KOCHAM for donating an additional VND9 billion ($389,000) worth of cash and medical equipment.

In the coming time, I hope that we will have more activities which further strengthen the relationship between our two countries, Chau said.

KOCHAM was established in 2004 in order to create a business platform for South Korean companies to contribute to the growth of Vietnamese society, according to the organizations website.

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More than 1.5 million doses of AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine, the last batch of a 30-million-dose contract between Vietnam and the manufacturer, have been delivered to the Southeast Asian country.

The vaccine doses touched down in Ho Chi Minh City on Thursday evening.

This is the final shipment of a purchase contract between AstraZeneca and Vietnam Vaccine JSC (VNVC), with the assistance of the Ministry of Health.

The deal was inked in 2020, sending the first batch to Vietnam in late February.

On November 2, VNVC signed another contract with AstraZeneca to purchase an additional 25 million vaccine jabs for Vietnam.

AstraZeneca is expected to start delivering these doses in late December.

VNVC has also ordered 20,000 doses of AstraZenecas antibody cocktail, Evusheld, which is designed to prevent COVID-19 infection in individuals with a weak immune system or a history of severe side effects from coronavirus vaccines.

The use of the therapy has yet to be approved in Vietnam, however.

Vietnam has received more than 156 million COVID-19 vaccine doses out of the 200 million shots that have been purchased, according to the Ministry of Health.

Health workers have administered nearly 130 million vaccine doses since vaccination was rolled out nationwide on March 8.

Over 74 million of the countrys 98 million people have received at least one dose while almost 56 million are now fully immunized.

The government has provided inoculation for children aged 12 to 17 since early November.

The country has documented 1,367,433 patients since the pandemic first hit it early last year, with 1,050,979 recoveries and 27,186 fatalities.

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A twelfth-grade student has passed away at a local hospital seven days after receiving a dose of Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine in Vietnam.

The deceased student was 17-year-old N.T.N.N., a twelfth grader at Nguyen Huu Than High School in Trieu Phong District, Quang Tri Province, the Vietnam News Agency quoted the provincial steering committee for COVID-19 prevention and control as saying on Thursday evening.

N. received a shot of Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine at the medical center in Trieu Dai Commune, Trieu Phong District on December 2.

The expiration date of the vaccine is February 2022.

The girl began to show signs of disorientation, anaphylaxis, and a drop in pulse and blood pressure about 25 minutes after the vaccination.

Health workers at the medical center provided treatment for her anaphylaxis but it was ineffective.

N. was transferred to Quang Tri General Hospital.

She exhibited signs of cardiac and respiratory arrest on her way to the hospital.

The patient was given cardiopulmonary resuscitation in the emergency room.

During her treatment, N. suffered from a blood clotting disorder and needed blood transfusion.

Despite doctors efforts, she died at the hospital at 1:00 pm on Thursday.

Vo Thanh Tam, director of Trieu Phong District Medical Center, affirmed that the vaccination site in Trieu Dai had strictly followed the procedures promulgated by the Ministry of Health.

Prior to the vaccination, N.s family informed that she had a history of allergy to some antibiotics.

Doctors at the inoculation site advised the family to make careful consideration regarding her vaccination and recommended that the girl receive the vaccine at a higher-level medical center, Tam stated.

However, the family insisted that N. be injected at the site in Trieu Dai.

She showed signs of anaphylaxis shortly after the immunization, Tam added.

This is Vietnams fifth death following COVID-19 vaccination in children aged 12 to 17 reported since last month.

By Monday, health workers had administered vaccine shots to nearly 5.3 million children in this age group, including over 4.3 million first-dose recipients and more than 936,000 who are fully vaccinated, VnExpress reported.

Around 0.3 percent of the vaccinated children have experienced such reactions as fever, pain at the injection site, muscle soreness, headache, and fatigue, the health ministry said.

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The Ministry of Health registered 14,839 additional coronavirus cases in Vietnam on Friday, alongside 1,362 recoveries and 216 deaths.

The latest infections, including 20 imported and 14,819 domestic transmissions, were logged in 57 provinces and cities, the ministry said, adding that 8,843 patients caught the coronavirus in the community.

Ho Chi Minh City documented 1,226 of the newest cases, Soc Trang Province 894, Tay Ninh Province 893, Ca Mau Province 822, Dong Thap Province 744, Ben Tre Province 712, Can Tho City 675, Hanoi 637, Khanh Hoa Province 587, Dong Nai Province 434, Binh Duong Province 381, Ba Ria-Vung Tau 381, Binh Thuan Province 219, Da Nang 198, Lam Dong Province 186, Thua Thien-Hue Province 182, Hai Phong City 180, Quang Nam Province 122, and Quang Ninh Province 28.

Vietnam had logged 15,300 locally-acquired infections on Thursday.

The country has confirmed 1,376,930 community transmissions in all its 63 provinces and cities since the fourth virus wave erupted on April 27. A combined 1,049,524 of them have recovered from COVID-19.

Ho Chi Minh City sits atop the caseload with 484,602 patients, followed by Binh Duong Province with 286,459, Dong Nai Province with 91,490, Long An Province with 39,021, Tay Ninh Province with 36,873, Dong Thap Province with 28,753, Tien Giang Province with 27,665, Can Tho City with 26,920, An Giang Province with 26,233, Binh Thuan Province with 21,141, Ba Ria-Vung Tau Province with 20,916, Khanh Hoa Province with 18,038, Hanoi with 16,271, and Da Nang with 7,317.

Vietnam detected only 1,570 locally-transmitted infections in total in the previous three waves.

The health ministry recorded 1,362 recovered patients on Friday, raising the total to 1,052,341.

The toll has jumped to 27,402 fatalities after the ministry confirmed 216 mortalities on the same day, including 71 in Ho Chi Minh City, 33 in Dong Nai Province, 15 in Binh Duong Province, 14 in Tay Ninh Province, and the remaining in 14 other provinces and cities.

Vietnam has logged 1,382,272 patients since the COVID-19 pandemic first hit it early last year.

Health workers have administered nearly 131 million vaccine doses, including 1,029,505 shots on Thursday, since vaccination was rolled out nationwide on March 8.

Over 74.5 million of the countrys 98 million people have received at least one dose while more than 56.3 million are now fully immunized.

Vietnam aims to fully inoculate 100 percent of its adult population this year. Many provinces and cities are immunizing children aged 12-17 against COVID-19, using Pfizer-BioNTech shots.

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Vietnams Ministry of Foreign Affairs is coordinating with related ministries, agencies, and authorities in host countries to organize more flights to bring Vietnamese people back home, taking into account the huge demand prior to the approaching Lunar New Year holiday.

The foreign ministrys spokeswoman Le Thi Thu Hang made the remarks during a regular press conference on Thursday afternoon.

Vietnamese authorities and representative agencies abroad have worked closely with domestic and foreign airlines to conduct over 800 flights, carrying home nearly 200,000 Vietnamese citizens from over 60 countries and territories, amid the complicated developments of the COVID-19 pandemic, according to Hang.

She said Vietnamese citizens demand for returning home is high as the Lunar New Year festival is drawing near and many Vietnamese workers and students' visas have expired.

The foreign ministry is working closely with different ministries, agencies, and localities to arrange flights carrying Vietnamese citizens home, taking into consideration the overseas Vietnameses wish, the pandemic situation, and Vietnam's quarantine capacity, she said.

Hangs announcement came after Deputy Prime Minister Vu Duc Dam on Wednesday asked the working group of the five Ministries of Foreign Affairs, Health, National Defense, Public Security, and Transport to urgently report and satisfy the legitimate needs to return home of overseas Vietnamese people.

Dam requested the Ministry of Health to issue new guidelines on quarantine and health monitoring for people entering Vietnam from abroad no later than December 15, with those who have been fully vaccinated against COVID-19 and have negative test results before departure allowed to self-isolate and monitor their health at home.

The Ministry of Transport has suggested that the central government allows international flights to resume in two pilot phases.

The first phase starting December 15 will see the reopening of flights between Vietnam and San Francisco or Los Angeles in the U.S., Singapore, Bangkok in Thailand, Phnom Penh in Cambodia, Vientiane in Laos, Beijing in mainland China, Tokyo in Japan, Seoul in South Korea, and Taipei in Taiwan.

The second phase will start next January, adding flights on routes connecting Vietnam and Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia, Hong Kong, Paris in France, Frankfurt in Germany, Sydney in Australia, and Moscow in Russia.

Vietnam closed its doors to foreign tourists and grounded international flights in March last year, allowing entry only to Vietnamese repatriates, foreign experts, investors, and highly-skilled workers, among others.

The Southeast Asian country has documented 1,367,433 patients since the COVID-19 pandemic first struck early last year, with 1,050,979 recoveries and 27,186 deaths.

More than 74 million of the countrys 98 million people have received at least one dose while almost 56 million are now fully immunized.

Like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter to get the latest news about Vietnam!
Hoi An City, a top destination in central Quang Nam Province, has become the first locale in Vietnam to disapprove of the consumption of dog and cat meat, following the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with a global animal welfare organization on Friday morning.

Authorities in Hoi An had worked with FOUR PAWS, the global organization acting for animals under direct human influence, throughout this year before the two sides reached the MoU, in which the former is committed to taking drastic actions to end its dog and cat meat trade and consumption.

The MoU, effective for two years starting the end of 2021, also emphasizes the goal of improving animal welfare through vaccination and rabies eradication programs, helping to avert a pandemic outbreak, and developing Hoi An as a tourist-friendly city.

City authorities have realized that it is impossible to eradicate rabies without thoroughly eliminating dog and cat meat trade.

Their initial actions will thus include a campaign to raise local public awareness and rescue dogs and cats from slaughtering and selling, while providing animal healthcare services and enforcing regulations to end dog and cat meat trade can be the follow-ups.

A leader signs a Memorandum of Understanding against the consumption of dog and cat meat in Hoi An City, Quang Nam Province, Vietnam, December 10, 2021. Photo: Q.T. / Tuoi Tre

Each year, Vietnam has more than five million dogs and one million cats trafficked and slaughtered for meat, endangering animal rights and public health and negatively affecting the image of the country in the eyes of international friends, according to FOUR PAWS.

The signing of the MoU on Friday is thus viewed as a progressive step toward refining Vietnams image, with Julie Sanders, director of FOUR PAWSs companion animal department, hailing it as an important and groundbreaking activity in Vietnam and in the region.

Sanders expects that as Hoi An has pioneered, other locales across Vietnam will follow suit.

Only about 6.3 percent of Vietnamese eat dog meat, while 88 percent support a ban on the trade in dog and cat meat, according to a survey conducted by FOUR PAWS.

FOUR PAWS has been working closely with government agencies to achieve a prohibition against dog and cat meat eating, citing the reasons of animal cruelty, health risks from rabies, and the spread of zoonotic diseases to the community.

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Update:

Weather has prevented Studio 10s Daniel Doody from travelling to Antarctica for a second time, and unfortunately he will no longer be going.

Next week he will explore Hobart and surrounds for 10.

Its a shame but safety is paramount, he said. The weather in Antarctica is unpredictable and this season Mother Nature wasnt going to play nice. Australian Antarctica Division has ensured Studio 10 will be back next year. So until then Im going to practice my Happy Feet routine!

Earlier:

Studio 10 reporter Daniel Doody will broadcast from Antarctica on Monday in a rare television Live cross.

Doody was granted access from the Australian Antarctica division media program but the young father had to undergo 14 days of quarantine in Hobart first -just 6 weeks after the birth of his second child, Arlo.

When he broke the news to his wife some months ago, he wasnt sure how it would be received.

When I told her that most likely Id be going to Antarctica at the end of the year there was a bit of a pause, he told TV Tonight.

There was a little bit of a tear down her cheek and then a hug. She was like, No, thats okay. Youve got to do it. Youre never going to get this opportunity.

But there was also a last minute hitch.

Doody was due to fly on Wednesday from Hobart to Wilkins aerodrome, about a four and a half hour flight, before another three and a half hours by terra bus to Casey Station. But bad weather has pushed that trip back to today.

Still he appreciates the importance of taking every precaution and quarantine.

Each station has one doctor and a couple of medical assistants who usually look up up to around 200 people. So the thought of COVID coming into Antarctica would be quite disastrous, he said,

I guess thats why theyre making sure that they take every precaution necessary.

It is tough, I miss my family. But Ive been Facetiming them every single day and keeping occupied because Im preparing for this fantastic trip.

Its not the first time an Australian crew has broadcast from Antarctica, but it is rare, with Sunrise and Totally Wild having visited before, while Australia Live in 1998 included a satellite cross.

Joining Doody is camera operator Owen Wynne. Both will spend around a week in Antarctica, filing for Studio 10.

Weve got a whole team on the ground (in Sydney) supporting us at Studio 10, helping us with graphics and scripts.

Ill be reporting on the amazing work that goes on there by the expeditioners that are working as part of the Australian Antarctic Division, he explained.

Whatever I see through my eyes, the viewers will see.

Its pretty special moment to take in and hopefully it will be spectacular. Im sure its going to be very cold!

Doody has been with Studio 10 for just over a year, having moved from ABC, but Antarctica is well up on his list of career highlights.

Im absolutely loving it. Its such an amazing show. The people behind the scenes, the team, the producers, the crew in the control room, camera operators everyone is just so amazing. And under the helm of Tamara, whos my boss, Im really enjoying my time now. Ive been learning loads. Ive been making mistakes, but Ive been learning from them! he said.

Im looking forward to seeing what 2022 will bring.

Studio 10 airs 8am weekdays on 10.
A trailer has finally been released for vampire fantasy series Firebite, which premieres next week at AMC+.

The eight-episode series takes a new spin on the vampire genre, following two Indigenous Australian hunters, Tyson (Rob Collins) and Shanika (Shantae Barnes-Cowan), on their quest to battle the last colony of vampires in the middle of the South Australian desert.

The series also stars Yael Stone (Orange is the New Black) and Callan Mulvey (Avengers: End Game), amongst others.

Created, directed and written by Warwick Thornton (Samson and Delilah, Sweet Country) alongside Brendan Fletcher (Mad Bastards), with Tony Krawitz (The Tall Man, Dead Europe) joining as director, Firebite is an AMC Studios original production with See-Saw Films.

Premieres Thursday 16 December on AMC+ with new episodes to follow every Thursday.

AMC+ is accessible through Amazon Prime Video.

Violence, horror themes.
Former Empire star Jussie Smollett has been found guilty on five of six charges of disorderly conduct for making a false report to Chicago police that he was the victim of a hate crime in January 2019.

The jury of six men and six women deliberated for more than nine hours.

The trial, which began last week, stemmed from an incident nearly three years ago when Smollett told police two men attacked him late one night by his Chicago apartment. The mystery suspects called him anti-gay and racist slurs, put a noose around his neck, poured bleach on him and exclaimed, This is MAGA country, he told police.

Celebrities, politicians and others rallied to his defence, and police spent considerable resources tracking down the two suspects. But authorities soon determined that the suspects were actually two of Smolletts acquaintances from the Empire set.

In court last week brothers Bola and Ola Osundairo, testified that Smollett directed and paid them to carry out the fake attack in an attempt to get media attention.

Smollett took the stand and maintained his innocence in the ordeal, denying he planned the attack and insisting he was a real victim of a crime. He pleaded not guilty to all charges.

The five guilty verdicts pertained to statements Smollett made to the police the day of the alleged assault, while the sixth count pertained to a police interview two weeks later.

Smollett faced six counts of disorderly conduct, a Class 4 felony in Illinois  a relatively minor offence. The charges carry a potential maximum sentence of three years in prison, but are more likely to result in a sentence of probation.

Update: Lead Smollett defense attorney Nenye Uche told media, We feel 100% confident that this case will be won on appeal.

Source: CNN, Variety
Screen Queensland has partnered with Screenworks for a range of workshops, events, and initiatives as part of its North Queensland Regional Program.

With a total investment of $675,000 over three years, Screenworks will deliver a range of industry development and up-skilling opportunities in Far North and North Queensland.

Screen Queensland Chief Creative Officer Jo Dillon said, Screenworks presented a highly compelling proposal, based on their depth of expertise and a strong track record in delivering programs for regional practitioners around the country.

We are delighted to partner with Screenworks again to help foster local talent and content creation in the region, and grow career opportunities in the north of the state.

This new program of skills development and initiatives will work hand in hand with the expected opening, in mid-2022, of the Screen Queensland Studios, Cairns, an exciting new creative hub for content creators and screen practitioners from this area.

Screenworks CEO Ken Crouch said, Screenworks has been supporting and developing the screen industry and its talent across regional Australia for more than 20 years, and specifically in North Queensland since 2017.

Were very excited to partner with Screen Queensland and the local industry to implement this new program and to further grow the screen skills and production capacity of the region.

It will also be a great opportunity to create a long-term presence in North Queensland by employing local Screenworks staff and further developing partnerships in the region.

The North Queensland Regional Program was announced by Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk in June, as part of the $71 million funding boost for the states screen industry.

Member for Mulgrave Curtis Pitt said, This new, extended plan builds upon the work already achieved via the Far North Queensland Screen Production Strategic Plan throughout the past three years.

The region is home to a thriving community of passionate and skilled filmmakers and content creators with diverse and unique stories to tell, and this program will further support talent development and careers for the many screen practitioners based in North and Far North Queensland.

Screenworks will also employ a local Project Coordinator to focus on the delivery of the events, programs and activities over the next three years.
New Caledonia is pushing ahead with a referendum on independence from France this weekend, despite concerns that a boycott by pro-independence parties who oppose holding the poll amid the coronavirus pandemic risks an outbreak of violence.

Frances decision to hold the last of a series of three votes on Sunday, against the wishes of indigenous Kanaks, has drawn condemnation in neighbouring Pacific islands where sensitivities over colonization are high.

The Melanesian Spearhead Group (MSG), comprised of Vanuatu, Fiji, Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands and the major New Caledonian independence party, has called on Pacific island countries not to recognise the result.

The Noumea Accord of 1998, which set out a path for potential independence, agreed three referendums to determine the future of the country.

With the two previous polls, in 2018 and 2020, resulting in a narrowing of the "No" vote from 57% to 53%, Sundays vote presents the last opportunity for the "Yes" campaign to achieve a simple majority.

Concerns over campaigning in villages

Pro-independence groups have accused France of refusing to delay the vote until later in 2022, as allowed under the Accord, to reduce the chance of a "Yes" vote and to placate nationalists ahead of a French presidential election early next year.

Kanak leaders say the pandemic has prevented door-to-door campaigning in villages. They also want to allow for traditional mourning periods - about 300 people, mostly Kanak, have died of COVID-19 since September in a population of around 270,000.

New Caledonias congress president, Roch Wamytan, a pro-independence leader who signed the peace accord, raised concerns on Thursday at a United Nations committee on decolonization.

Former secretary general of the Pacific Islands Forum, Meg Taylor, wrote with the former leaders of Tuvalu, Kiribati, Palau and the Marshall Islands to French president Emmanuel Macron on Nov. 23, warning of potential violence if the poll went ahead.

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Election observers from the United Nations and Pacific Islands Forum have arrived in the capital Noumea, as have 2,000 police from France to maintain order.

The Noumea Accord itself was agreed to help end a decade of conflict that resulted in 80 deaths.

George Hoaau, the acting director-general of the Melanesian group, said the French were "not good at anti-colonization."

"They are not good at establishing egalitarian relations with former colonies," Hoaau told Reuters in a telephone interview. "We must not allow this type of engagement with indigenous people in the 21st century."

Taylor told Reuters that decolonization was a priority for Pacific island nations: "Will it be a legitimate process when people dont attend?"

A spokesman for Frances Overseas Minister, Sebastien Lecornu, who is en-route to New Caledonia, said the incidence rate of COVID-19 had been "trending positively for one month."

"We are aware that the date of 12 December is not consensual ... but it is the duty of the State to set it," he said.

Indopacific focus

Lecornus spokesman said France would "draw conclusions from this non-participation, which is a very strong message sent by the pro-independence supporters, but this non-participation will not override or cancel the result of the three referendums".

Lecornu has said his office would seek dialogue with all parties the day after the referendum.

However, the leader of New Caledonias Rassemblement party and former president, Thierry Santa, has said such dialogue is unlikely until after the French presidential election. Santa linked Frances decision with renewed attention in Paris on the IndoPacific, and anger that Australia dumped a major French submarine contract.

"Its absolutely certain that the ripping up of the submarine contract by Australia and the United States has influenced Frances attitude towards New Caledonia," Santa, whose party is anti-independence, told Islandsbusiness.com.

(REUTERS)
French President Emmanuel Macron hailed a "convergence of views" with Chancellor Olaf Scholz on Friday as the German leader met his key EU and NATO allies.

On only the second day since taking over from his long-standing predecessor Angela Merkel, Scholz plunged into talks with Macron in Paris then European Commission chiefs Ursula von der Leyen and Charles Michel in Brussels.

France and Germany are traditionally the joint motor of European integration, and Macron was keen to get the powerful German leader on side as he embarks on a six-month presidency role in the EU and his own re-election campaign.

Later, Scholz -- a Social Democrat who runs a coalition government with a Green foreign minister -- he was due to see NATO secretary general Jens Stoltenberg, amid tensions with Russia over the conflict in Ukraine top of the agenda.

Macron and Scholz, both pro-EU figures, are the new tandem in charge of Europe's biggest economies and both champion strengthening Europe's "strategic sovereignty", a key theme of Macron's coming six months in the EU chair.

Addressing Scholz as "dear Olaf" and using the informal "tu" pronoun in French, Macron said he had seen "a convergence of views, a desire to have our countries work together, and a firm and determined belief in Europe... which we will need in the months and years ahead".

The visit was "a very important moment to build solid foundations for cooperation between our countries", he added at a news conference.

Scholz made Paris his first overseas stop after taking over on Wednesday Merkel at the end of her 16 years in power.

He said the talks focused on "making Europe strong and European sovereignty".

- New agenda -

Macron laid out an ambitious agenda Thursday for a "Europe that is powerful in the world" during France's time as the rotating president of the 27-member Council of the European Union in the first half of next year.

Story continues

The 43-year-old wants to make further progress towards building up European defence capabilities and border forces, as well as devising ways of financing huge public investments in strategic industries considered vital for EU sovereignty.

Analysts say Macron's desire for more flexible budget rules in the EU, enabling governments to run larger deficits, could run into opposition from a Germany that has historically insisted on financial rigour.

Scholz said there was "not a contradiction" between wanting to finance ambitious investments to ensure growth, and solid public finances.

"For me, they are two sides of the same coin," said Scholz, who was previously German finance minister and helped push through a historic EU fund for a Covid recovery last year that saw the bloc raise money collectively for the first time.

The 63-year-old has long backed Germany's trademark budget austerity goals, but he threw his weight behind the EU recovery fund to help Europe cope with the pandemic -- going further than Merkel.

- Russian tensions -

As well as discussing the European Union, the two leaders also talked about the Russian troop buildup on Ukraine's border, as well as relations with China and the African continent.

"All must accept that borders in Europe cannot be changed. This rule is for everyone," Scholz said in reference to Russian leader Vladimir Putin, who has been accused by the US of planning an invasion of its neighbour.

Scholz had warned Moscow on Thursday of "consequences" for the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, a Russian project to deliver natural gas to Germany and a major source of friction with many partners, including France.

As Western powers threaten punishing new sanctions against Moscow, the project could soon play a central role.

"With Nord Stream 2, Germany has the big geopolitical weapon in its hand without ever having sought it," said Ulrich Speck, an analyst at the German Marshall Fund.

In Brussels, Scholz was greeted warmly by European Commission president von der Leyen, despite her hailing from Merkel's defeated centre-right CDU party.

"We know that Germany, a large country at the heart of the European Union, has a responsibility," Scholz said, after separate talks with von der Leyen and Michel.

"We can't just stand at the sidelines and comment on what's going on. No, we have to get in to the midst of it all and make a contribution to ensuring progress and a bright future in Europe and that's how we see our role."

Political scientist Andrea Roemmele of the Hertie School of Governance said she expects closer cooperation with Paris on security policy under Scholz.

But with the French presidential elections looming next year, Berlin will likely "take a wait-and-see stance" on projects, particularly given the threat of a strong showing by the far right.

burs-dc/har
Picture Royal Vopak - Michiel Gilsing

Picture Royal Vopak - Michiel Gilsing

Picture Royal Vopak - Michiel Gilsing

Royal Vopak provides an update on the composition of its Executive Board

Michiel Gilsing to succeed Gerard Paulides as CFO of Royal Vopak

COO Frits Eulderink nominated for a next term



Rotterdam, the Netherlands, 10 December 2021

The Supervisory Board of Royal Vopak will nominate Michiel Gilsing to succeed Gerard Paulides as CFO and member of the Executive Board, subject to shareholders approval and as per the date of the AGM scheduled for 20 April 2022. Frits Eulderink will be nominated for a next term as COO and member of the Executive Board.

Gerard joined the Executive Board in February 2018 and his four-year term ends in April 2022. He remains available to the incoming CFO and to the Royal Vopak Board to assist with the transition and will leave Royal Vopak on 30 June 2022. Frits has been COO of Royal Vopak since 2010 and his reappointment will take effect on 20 April 2022 subject to shareholders approval.

Gerard on his departure: I am pleased with the strategic progress Royal Vopak has made over the last 4 years and I am proud of this great company and certainly enjoyed working with the Royal Vopak colleagues. However, after more than four inspiring years, I want to focus on new challenges again. I will of course remain fully committed to Royal Vopak over the coming period.

Michiel Gilsing will join the Executive Board of Royal Vopak and take over the CFO function. Michiel has over 25 years experience in general management, finance, commercial management and international business development. He started his career with Royal Vopak in 2004 and has since performed leadership and management roles at both national and international levels.

The Supervisory Board is pleased to welcome Michiel to the Executive Board. Michiel has a proven track record of results-driven leadership, strategic thinking and financial acumen. The Supervisory Board looks forward to benefiting from Michiels leadership and expertise ensuring the successful continuation of Royal Vopak businesses. The Supervisory Board is also pleased to propose the reappointment of Frits who has demonstrated a strong affinity with the agenda Royal Vopak pursues and who is fully committed to driving that agenda forward.

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Michiel on his nomination: "It is an honor to be nominated CFO and member of the Executive Board of Royal Vopak. I thank the Supervisory Board for their trust and am excited to step into the CFO role to accelerate growth and deliver value to our customers, employees and shareholders. I look forward to building on the companys momentum and strong business fundamentals to position Royal Vopak for the future.

Ben Noteboom, Chairman of the Supervisory Board: "The Supervisory Board appreciates the important contribution Gerard has made and we wish him the very best for his future. The Supervisory Board has found a worthy successor in Michiel. During his career Michiel has been especially valuable for Royal Vopak. He brings a depth of experience to the role, having in-depth knowledge of our business and sharing our values. We are confident Michiel will provide strong leadership and are excited to have him take this next step as we move the company forward. Frits is a proven leader with a great track record for managing our company. We are pleased to have him proceed with his responsibilities as COO and continue to create value for our shareholders and other stakeholders. Overall the Supervisory Board has full confidence in the new composition of the Executive Board with Dick, Frits and Michiel to lead the company into the next phase.

On 20 October 2021 the Supervisory Board announced the nomination of Dick Richelle to become Chairman of the Executive Board as per 1 January 2022.

This press release contains inside information as meant in clause 7 of the Market Abuse Regulation.



About Royal Vopak

Royal Vopak is the worlds leading independent tank storage company. We store vital products with care. With over 400 years of history and a focus on sustainability, we ensure safe, clean and efficient storage and handling of bulk liquid products and gases for our customers. By doing so, we enable the delivery of products that are vital to our economy and daily lives, ranging from chemicals, oils, gases and LNG to biofuels and vegoils. We are determined to develop key infrastructure solutions for the worlds changing energy and feedstock systems, while simultaneously investing in digitalization and innovation. Vopak is listed on the Euronext Amsterdam and is headquartered in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. For more information, please visit vopak.com.



For more information please contact:

Vopak Press: Liesbeth Lans - Manager External Communication,

global.communication@vopak.com



Vopak Analysts and Investors: Fatjona Topciu - Head of Investor Relations,

investor.relations@vopak.com





Attachments




As the world grapples with the challenge posed by the Omicron variant, scientists and residents in South Africa are coming to grips with the real-world impact of this worrying strain.

This country has already seen two weeks of mass infection and the experience is generating the sort of anecdotal information and scientific observation that will help provide the answers that people are desperately looking for.

When it comes questions about transmissibility - or the infectious nature of this emergent strain - you do not really need to speak to the scientists.

Instead, you could spend 15 minutes with local councillor Adolf Marema, who represents Alexandra township in Johannesburg.

Live COVID updates from the UK and around the world

"Is the variant spreading quickly?" I asked.

"Very fast, very fast, like a bomb I can tell you," he replied.

When I asked how many people have been infected, he said: "A lot of people, I mean, on a daily basis I interact with around 100 to 200 people and I talk to a lot of them. and a whole lot of those people admitted, the majority of them, that they have flu. the majority of those people were saying they had flu."

Watch: COVID-19: Scotland may face 'tsunami of infections' from Omicron variant, Nicola Sturgeon warns

Severity of Omicron variant remains unclear

Nobody in Alexandra seems to use the word "Omicron" to describe their ailments - "flu" is overwhelmingly preferred - but there can be little doubt that Omicron is sweeping through the neighbourhood.

We met a primary school administrator called Muzi Linda, who tested positive for COVID-19 last week and I asked him to describe his symptoms.

"Well, I've had a headache, blocked nose, wasn't too runny, I've been coughing, that was the major one."

When I asked him how he would rate the severity on a scale 1 to 10, he said: "A '4' honestly, because it wasn't that bad, only after the first day, I decided to take a pill for my headache but that was it."

Story continues

Unlike the issue of transmissibility, questions about the severity of Omicron are less certain but there are a lot of people - like Mr Linda - who do not think it is particularly serious.

Others, like Dr Fareed Abdullah, are also beginning to take a view on this critical question.

A leading clinician at Pretoria's Steve Biko Academic Hospital, he has spent the past 18 months treating the most serious COVID-related cases.

Majority of patients do not have severe COVID symptoms

Yet with Omicron, he has witnessed a significant reduction in the number of patients suffering from the most serious symptoms.

Gesturing towards a forest of assessment tents set up for new patients on the hospital's forecourt, he gave us an up-to-the-minute rundown.

"Right now, we have 40 patients, either COVID-positive or waiting for results but the difference this time around is that the majority of these patients are not here because of severe COVID-pneumonia."

Last week, the hospital treated 42 patients suffering from the new strain but Dr Abdullah said he was, "pleasantly surprised" to discover that two thirds were using "room air" - not oxygen or ventilators - to help them breath.

"The picture could change but what is certain is that there is a difference this time around compared to the previous three waves (of COVID-19)."

"I talk to every one of my colleagues who has been working in this hospital and they have all made the same observation (as well as) colleagues at other hospitals and it is the same picture."

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Scientists unclear how much South Africa spread can help with predictions for UK

In the UK, documents released by a sub-group of the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE), say if initial estimates of transmission advantage and immune escape from South Africa are applicable to the UK population, there is the potential for a peak of infections much larger than that experienced in January 2021 - with hospital admissions from Omicron alone reaching 1,000 a day in the UK in January next year.

However, scientists do note that "South Africa is not the UK, both in epidemiological terms but also socially".

South Africa has a younger population and less people there have been fully vaccinated.

However, South Africans are far more likely to have been infected by previous strains, which like vaccines produce antibodies, so there may be more similarities between the two countries than it first appears.
There should be a greater awareness in Europe as to just how difficult it is to build a nation (Rex)

So, Jeremy Clarkson thinks Barbados is going to regret becoming a republic? Clarkson is of course entitled to that view  which he expressed in a recent column for The Times  but while some may have expected the debate to be around the relationship between the Caribbean island and the Queen, what followed seemed to me to be the worst case of attempted national assassination (by way of scaremongering) imaginable. Or was it just a simple dose of insecure sour grapes?

Barbados is going to be the Taiwan that China never had, he says. Soon, China will exercise dominion over the land and our beaches will no longer be public. Sandy Lane (a luxury tourist resort) will be torn down. And all because Clarkson says so.

Rather than a debate about the islands colonial history and its links to Britains slave trade, or the rising influence of China  hardly a novel issue  Clarkson instead cried that the Chinese wolf is going to swallow an entire island whole. Mention was made, in passing, of the experience of Hong Kong; but there werent any suggestions as to how micro-states could be expected to resist China.

The really hard questions still remain, regardless of whether readers are distracted from the issues. How, for example, may poor, post-colonial countries be assisted, given that much of the wealth and infrastructure which is presently enjoyed in Europe was extracted from former colonies? Have they started on a level playing field  and if not, what is the reason for that?

Is it in Europes interest to allow them to fail and/or fall into the hands of China, whether by reason of default or neglect? Indeed, the concept of the leveraged debt trap  a term referring to the practice of poorer countries taking out loan after loan to build expensive infrastructure that they cant afford  was not invented, nor perfected, by China. Look north and west for that.

The great question of our age regarding China cannot be divorced from the yawning gap left by former colonial powers for China to enter. European powers cannot so easily escape their historical moral and economic duties and obligations to former colonies, even if Clarkson were brave enough to come out and say so. Moreover, these duties are owed to republics and constitutional monarchies alike, thus rendering any perceived distinction moot. Perhaps this will relax himand render him more sanguine.

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There should be a greater awareness in Europe as to just how difficult it is to build a nation whilst starting behind the proverbial eight ball of 350 years of extractive colonisation. I wish people would realise that.

Even if one gets off ones feet, complex rules render it difficult for countries like Barbados, who have done relatively well on the development indices, to access aid if one is deemed too successful. Thus, they are caught in a developmental lacuna.

A further plague is the deliberate attempt on the part of the EU to exclude certain hard currency dependent, small states from the international financial community by imposing anti-money laundering (AML) and compliance standards far more stringent than is applied to EU members (or the UK), while leaving China completely to its own devices. It is simply too big a trading partner. Control over correspondent banking relationships is the financial chokehold of choice in the 21st century.

Were Clarkson to ask whether it was a good idea for Barbados to secede further whilst still expecting support from the UK, some ears may have pricked. Instead, he let that ball pass through to the keeper. Maybe he did so just because, as he says, he hates cricket?

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Bajans would have hoped beyond hope that Clarkson may have been more gracious in what amounts to no more than a ceremonial parting. For in exercising our free choice, we wish no one any harm. We are too small, really. And after all, our avowed policy is that we are friends of all, but satellites of none.

Barbados remains a strong parliamentary democracy with a proven, fundamental commitment to freedom and respect for human rights. In addition, it remains steadfast to our reputation for hospitality to visitors and to foreign investors alike. These are not principles which will be abandoned, at any cost.

We remain sincerely grateful for any opportunity to show that this is, and ever will be the case. And you are welcome back any time, Clarkson.

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Turkey's policy in the South Caucasus is based on the principle of good-neighborly relations, but Ankara does not hide its regional interests, which include building up its regional influence. Turkey is closely following all processes that could lead to the unification of Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan and welcomes the positive agenda of the South Caucasus. Ankara does not seek to assume the role of the chief arbiter, but it will not cease to provide assistance to the peacekeeping policy. The prospect of overcoming the contradictions existing in the region, with the subsequent formation of supranational structures, may interest Turkey.

If Armenia and Azerbaijan agree to rebuild the border infrastructure, Turkey will be one of the first countries to offer assistance. The construction market of the republic has thousands of companies that are relatively successful in overcoming the pandemic. The coronavirus epidemic has darkened the international air travel market, but stimulated renovations. Turkey strives to achieve global success, including through the construction industry, therefore Ankara's readiness to invest in the restoration processes in the South Caucasus is linked to the opportunities for the development of various segments of the national economy.

In many ways, the integration of the region will allow Ankara to focus on the transport and logistics sector of the economy. New transport routes may be added to the existing transport system that links Turkey and Azerbaijan, while simultaneously supporting the transit potential of Georgia, which will link Turkey with the entire South Caucasus.In this case, Ankara will be able to initiate the unification of transport networks, which will provide an opportunity for the citizens of Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan to get to the Bosphorus by the shortest land route, and then to Europe. In turn, Ankara is realizing a long-standing political desire to get close to the Caspian region, thereby expanding its export opportunities in Central Asia.

Like Iran, Turkey does not have impressive experience in implementing integration projects. Therefore, Ankara is hardly ready to act as a curator of the association, especially in the presence of anti-Turkish sentiments in the ranks of Armenian nationalists.However, Turkish politics is able to create the necessary atmosphere, provide a platform for maintaining the desire for integration, which will allow it to overcome contradictions with Armenia when the existing agenda in relations changes.With the change of the internal political paradigm, Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia will overcome the consequences of the conflicts, thereby removing the need for Ankara to maintain the balance of power in the region. The existing anti-Turkish sentiments will lose their relevance, and the nationalist parties of Armenia will find themselves in the minority, since the new opportunities and prospects of the future union will negate the expediency of the existence of a revanchist ideology.

The benefits are obvious, but the Turkish policy is pragmatic and its participation will be possible provided that the subjects of the region approach the integration process on their own initiative, as openly as possible without any extra-regional coercion. Otherwise, Ankara may encounter opposition from the marginal circles of Armenian politics, who intend to accuse the Turkish leadership of seeking to expand its influence "in the spirit of neo-Ottomanism" and a desire to abolish the sovereignty of the South Caucasus republics.

Unification promotion will enable Turkey to develop a completely different strategy towards the European Union. European policy will become more active in discussing the modernization of customs cooperation with Turkey, which could become the main transit between the EU and the South Caucasus integration area. The expansion of the customs union will provide full access to the domestic market of the world's largest trading bloc, allowing Ankara to use the full potential of the national economy in two directions at once, west and east.
The snap parliamentary elections of June 2021 have not resolved Armenias political crisis, one in which it has found itself since the 2020 war with Azerbaijan in Nagorno Karabakh. A Russian-orchestrated ceasefire not only confirmed Armenias military defeat but induced the countrys immense crisis, the destabilisation of the Armenian governments validity, intensification of political divisions, and reinforcement of political polarity in the country, Emerging Europe writes.

For political parties opposing the current administration, the terms of the ceasefire agreement questioned Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyans standing; portrayed him as the countrys traitor, and continually demanded his resignation during protests and demonstrations conducted after the ceasefires implementation.

Notwithstanding Armenias devastating military defeat, the June parliamentary elections resulted in Pashinyan achieving a majority. But a fitting explanation for the electoral results is less about the public favouring Pashinyan and more about the publics painful recollections of the former administrations of presidents Robert Kocharyan and Serzh Sargsyan.

The fact that Armenia Alliance, led by Kocharyan, came in second in these parliamentary elections led to further polarisation within Armenian domestic politics. Instead of searching for a way out of this chaotic landscape, both the ruling Civil Contract party and Armenia Alliance have resorted to recriminations.

While Pashinyans supporters assign blame to former President Kocharyan for putting Armenia in a position where it would lose the war against Azerbaijan, Kocharyans proxies attribute the defeat to Pashinyans utter recklessness. In other words, Pashinyan and Kocharyan accuse one other for actual and potential shortcomings and wrongdoing that plunged the country into an abyss.

Meanwhile, war-torn Armenia continues to face unresolved problems, including, but not limited to, the Covid-19 pandemic and economic devastation. The Armenian domestic political landscape can be best described by a zero sum game, where even threats of national security do not diminish frictions between leading political actors.

Furthermore, the countrys subsequent political instability has been complicated to a greater extent by the tremendous mismanagement of the pandemic and economic underdevelopment. According to the World Bank, the Covid-19 pandemic and the Nagorno-Karabakh war derailed Armenias economic expansion, resulting in a sharp 7.4 per cent economic contraction. These dual shocks were fraught with an increase in poverty, especially amongst the urban populations.

Moreover, with adequate recognition of public discontent, the Armenian government has been unrelenting in its efforts at controlling the medias narrative and public discourse regarding politically sensitive issues. On October 9, the Armenian Constitutional Court upheld recent legislation which substantially increased the penalties for insulting individuals for their public activities.In effect, the law is consistent with measures that non-democratic governments resort to in order to suppress anti-government dissent. Meanwhile, amongst the driving forces behind the 2018 Velvet Revolution was the Armenian peoples fervent desire to flourish in a more democratic country.

Pashinyan previously disguised himself as a pro-European figure, yet shortly after coming to power, he cemented Armenias pledge of allegiance to Russia. The Russia-brokered ceasefire has fortified Russias image as a saviour across Armenia. One hundred years ago, after the establishment of Soviet rule in Armenia, the First Armenian Premier, Dashnak, Hovhannes Kajaznuni, noted: From the first day of our statehood we well acknowledged that such a small, poor, deprived, and isolated country as Armenia, cannot become truly independent and autonomous  We should be grateful to Bolsheviks. By deposing us, they  if not saved  have put us on a reliable path ..

A century later, Armenian political thought largely remains marked with perceptions of itself as helpless and Russia as its protector. The most conspicuous exception is the National Democratic Pole (now the nationalist group "Sasna Tsrer" has this name), which blamed the devastating state of Armenia on Russia. The party achieved less than two per cent of the vote in the snap parliamentary elections of June 2021.
The US-initiated virtual Summit for Democracy will continue today. Speaking at the summit yesterday, President Joe Biden launched a $424.4 million "Democratic Renewal" initiative.

As Asia Times notes, leaders from 110 countries (the guest list includes Pakistan, Ukraine and Brazil) who work in government, civil society and the private sector, with the officially declared purpose of developing an agenda to renew democratic government and keep democracys ideals strong.

But how to square this high-sounding project when just a few months ago America is back was Bidens mantra as he met with the Group of Seven in Cornwall? Bidens emphasis in the European meetings was bolstering NATO allies for a new global face-off with Russia and China. Despite existential threats posed by catastrophic climate change (which Biden and other world leaders inadequately addressed at COP26) and an ongoing global pandemic, Bidens new normal seems ominously leaning to a revival of Cold War politics.

We are committed to the rules-based international order, concludes the final communique from the June NATO meetings, but Russias aggressive actions constitute a threat to Euro-Atlantic security. Chinas growing influence and international policies can present challenges that we need to address together as an alliance.

Much of the plan addressed bolstering the North Atlantic Treaty Organizations growing military capabilities on the Russian borders, and the alliance for the first time also designated China as a systemic challenge.

As the Democracy Summit convenes, old Cold War tropes are indeed being recycled. In a rare joint op-ed, Chinas and Russias ambassadors to the US depict the summit as an evident product of its Cold War mentality, [which]  will stoke up ideological confrontation and a rift in the world, creating new dividing lines. In the United States narrative that is described in the Chinese and Russian ambassadors warning, the world is divided between democratic and authoritarian nations. The US has never ceased to paint the latter as repressive and rapacious, threatening their neighbors and working to disrupt a presumably benign rules-based order.

China is the new No 1 pacing challenge, as Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin put it in March, with Russia relegated to second place.

The United States insists, that it and its NATO allies invest to maintain superiority in every domain of warfare  land, air, sea, space and cyber  and in every region from the borders of Russia to the South China Sea.

In a Washington addled by bitter partisan divides, the call to meet the threat posed by China and Russia forges bipartisan consensus.

Republican Senator Tom Cotton wrote in a February report titled Beat China that he sees the Asian country as the new Soviet Union: Once again, America confronts a powerful totalitarian adversary that seeks to dominate Eurasia and remake the world order.

As during the Cold War with the USSR, with China, the threat abroad is being used to justify action at home.

When it comes to investing in the American people, Republicans such as Cotton see big government as evil and industrial policy as creeping socialism; when it comes to foreign policy, they eagerly join the call for updating Americas long-term economic, industrial and technological efforts to reflect the growing threat posed by Communist China.

The same Republican senators who couldnt bring themselves to back an investigation into the sacking of the Capitol on January 6 rush to support research and development when framed as addressing threats posed by Chinese investments.

While dangerous, a Cold War face-off between democracies and authoritarian states, anchored by China and Russia, is the establishments sweet spot. The powerful military-industrial security interests gain renewed importance.

The tremendously bloated Pentagon budget continues without question as it presumably gears up for new deployments, and a new array of weapons to counter growing Chinese assertiveness. NATO gets a revived mission. A bipartisan center can be re-established, with bickering about tactics and spending anchored by an agreement on mission.

The costs of going back to the Cold War are immense, however.

While Senator Bernie Sanders praised Biden in June for recognizing authoritarianism as a major threat to democracy, he wisely cautioned that the primary conflict  is taking place not between countries but within them. And if democracy is going to win out, it will do so not on a traditional battlefield but by demonstrating that democracy can actually deliver a better quality of life for people than authoritarianism can.

It also deeply distorts the real security threats the US faces. This summer, as the impacts of extreme weather exacted an ever-greater toll on American lives and resources, it became increasingly difficult to pretend that climate change is only a distant threat. No progress can be made without China, which now leads the world in fossil-fuel emissions and at COP26 pledged to cut them to net zero by 2060.

Climate can no longer be relegated to a rhetorical statement of concern at the end of documents focused on military buildups and great power conflicts in peripheral countries.

A renewed Cold War would reinforce the nationalist and militarist factions in all countries. More than a year after Trump left the presidential office and social-media platform from which he could amplify his lies about China and Covid-19, the fearmongering he fueled continues to contribute to a rise of hate crimes against Asian-Americans. This is but one of many aspects of how the deep fractures within the US will make revitalizing its democracy even more difficult.

Before the US chooses to lead any kind of Summit for Democracy, and before America is back to a new Cold War, the country urgently needs a more serious discussion about its real security priorities  and the real challenges it faces.
An exhibition of author dolls of the Namdakov family "Ulger: Tales and Dreams" has opened at the State Museum of Oriental Art, where more than a hundred unique pieces of art are presented. In Buryat "Ulger" means "legend".

"This is a unique collection. These are not even dolls, they are independent works of art. Each doll is a complete image. It can be a character, it can be some kind of mood. There are many Buddhist and Buryat characters of ancient myths, fairy tales, legends. They are all painted with some national peculiarities, but there is no such clear parallel. This is probably closer to global symbols", Nonna Alfonso, the exhibition's curator, says.



According to her, the exhibition is divided into two parts: "The first part is fairy tales, all things related to fairy tale characters. The second part, the dream, you could say, refers already to such representatives of the universal human dream: dolls, princesses, deities."



Tatyana Metaksa, Advisor to the Director General of the State Museum of Oriental Art, spoke about the author of the sketches, the famous Russian sculptor, Honored Artist of Russia Dashi Namdakov: "The exhibition of dolls is complemented by decorative and applied objects. A very beautiful trunk is behind me. It is supplemented by tanka, Buddhist icons from our funds, but the main thing on it is dolls. This is a long painstaking work of Dashi, who is the author of sketches for these dolls. Each doll is created after Dashi makes a preliminary image of it. Im very excited to be with you at this exhibition. We invite you to come to our Museum to look at these absolutely wonderful dolls".

The exhibition will run until January 23, 2022.
A command ship of the Ukrainian Navy, the Donbass, changed its course and turned away from the Kerch Strait, the public relations department of Russias Federal Security Service (FSB) said on Thursday.

"The Donbass command ship changed its course to the opposite from the Kerch Strait, and is not responding to requests. Actions of the Ukrainian ships crew are viewed as provocative, posing a threat to safety of navigation," TASS cited FSB as saying.

According to the Russian security service, the Donbass command ship of the Ukrainian Navy left the port city of Mariupol at 09:12 Moscow time on Thursday, heading towards the Kerch Strait. The Ukrainian side filed no requests for sailing through the Kerch-Yenikale Canal, a maritime route in the Kerch Strait connecting the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov. At 13:45, a Russian coast guard ship warned the Donbass that it must comply with the Russian law and apply for a permission to navigate the Kerch-Yenikale Canal. The ships crew replied that it did not plan to sail via the Kerch Strait. However, the vessel kept sailing towards the Kerch Strait and ignored commands to change course.
French President Emmanuel Macron said he planned to hold talks next week with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky to discuss the situation in Ukraine.

"Our desire is contact with President Zelensky, whom I will see on Wednesday, and in contact with President Putin, with whom I will negotiate next week, to restart this format [Normandy format] and the political process," Macron said at a press conference on Thursday.

He added that U.S. participation in the settlement in Ukraine will not replace the existing Normandy format. "I think this coordination will not replace the format that exists. President Biden himself noted in the communique the importance of the Normandy format," Macron said at a press conference on Thursday.



He also thanked U.S. President Joe Biden for coordinating with European partners before and after talking with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
The arrivals in Russia from South Africa who tested positive for the Omicron coronavirus variant have a mild form of the infection, Russian Health Minister Mikhail Murashko told reporters.

"They have a mild form," he said, when asked about the condition of the Omicron patients. The minister also confirmed that only two Omicron cases had been identified in Russia so far. The data of other passengers from the same flight are being analyzed, Murashko added.

Russia recorded its first two Omicron cases on December 6. According to the federal sanitary watchdog, two people who arrived from South Africa tested positive for the variant.

On November 26, the World Health Organization (WHO) named the B.1.1.529 coronavirus strain discovered in southern Africa after the Greek letter omicron. According to the WHO, "this variant has a large number of mutations, some of which are concerning." Omicron cases have already been detected in more than 50 countries, with most patients identified in South Africa. However, no Omicron-related deaths have been recorded yet.
Former U.S. President Donald Trump lashed out with profanity at Benjamin Netanyahu for congratulating President Joe Biden on his victory in last year's election, an Israeli newspaper reported Friday.

Trump accused the former Israeli leader of disloyalty, saying he had helped Netanyahu in his own elections by reversing decades of U.S. policy and supporting Israel's claims to territory seized in war. Trump is still falsely claiming the U.S. election was stolen from him.

In interviews earlier this year with the Israeli journalist Barak Ravid, Trump expressed fury at a video Netanyahu circulated online in which he congratulated Biden.

Nobody did more for Bibi. And I liked Bibi. I still like Bibi, Trump said, referring to Netanyahu by his nickname, in the remarks published by the Yediot Aharonot newspaper. But I also like loyalty... Bibi could have stayed quiet. He has made a terrible mistake.

Netanyahu congratulated Biden more than 12 hours after the election had been called and after most other world leaders. Netanyahu did not refer to him as president-elect in the tweet, and followed it up with a post praising Trump.

Trump appeared to be particularly incensed by a video released by Netanyahu on Jan. 20, the day Biden was inaugurated, in which Netanyahu said he and Biden had a warm personal friendship going back many decades.
The United States plans to build new "defense facilities" in Georgia and Armenia, according to preliminary documentation provided by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, writes RT.

The document says that the U.S. wants to sign two separate contracts with companies that could undertake the design and construction of new, as well as the restoration of old facilities in Georgia and Armenia "in support of the defense activities of the United States."

It is noted that the new contracts will relate primarily to "construction, design, reconstruction of buildings, repair of roads, sidewalks." The total value of the contracts may reach $45 million.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres will attend the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics, his spokesman said on Thursday, after the United States announced a diplomatic boycott and several other Western nations followed suit.

The secretary-general received an invitation from the International Olympic Committee to attend the opening of the Beijing Winter Games and he has accepted it, spokesman Stephane Dujarric told reporters.

The US said its athletes would still compete, but that it would not send a diplomatic delegation in a protest against rights abuses by China. Australia, the United Kingdom and Canada also announced diplomatic boycotts.

France for its part said it has no plans to join the boycott, President Emmanuel Macron announced on Thursday, calling such a move insignificant.
Most of the 100,000 businesses that have left the market in 2021 have been small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs), which has caused difficulties to millions of workers and their families.

According to the Ministry of Planning and Investment (MPI), SMEs account for 98 percent of Vietnams total enterprises and create 5 million jobs. The enterprises use medium level technologies, create low added value, and use a lot of resources and labor. A high number of enterprises have been hit hard by Covid-19 over the last two years and they need prompt help.

MPI and USAID are developing a project  LinkSME  that connects SMEs, improves their capability, and helps them gradually get deeply involved in the global value chain.

The project has three pillars  connecting SMEs with leading enterprises in value chains, support for financial access, and digital transformation.

Le Manh Hung from MPI said thanks to LinkSME, a lot of orders have been connected, and dozens of training courses for hundreds of businesses have been organized to satisfy technical requirements set by the leading enterprises in the value chains. Businesses have been helped to access financial resources worth hundreds of billions of dong.

Nearly 100,000 businesses have accessed documents to improve awareness about digital transformation. More than 500 businesses have been assessed for readiness and 100 businesses have received in-depth consultancy to digitize.

Le Duy Anh, Director of Xuan Hoa JSC, said LinkSME sent specialists to reassess his companys capacity, gave technical assistance, and helped to find clients and low-cost capital.

Anh said in the past he could not imagine what he needed to go digital. But now, he knows what the business needs to do and how many work items it needs to do so.

Dang Dinh Thinh from JAT Autoparts and Industry Equipment Production JSC said the enterprise, with support from LinkSME, is carrying out a model of a smart factory, creating opportunities to cooperate with foreign businesses and expand export markets.

His business has improved the quality of products, the management and finding of foreign customers. That is why the company has obtained more orders, while other businesses have fewer clients because of Covid-19.

In 2019, exports were 16.9 percent of the companys turnover, while the figure rose to 19.7 percent in 2020 and 30.4 percent in the first nine months of 2021 to $13.6 million. Most products target the US and Canadian market.

Nguyen Thi Thanh Hoa, CEO of Eubiz, which has subsidiaries in Dac Nong, Binh Phuoc and Son La, and has distribution partners in the US, Europe and Australia, said that digital transformation has helped increase transparency, reduced costs, and increased competitiveness against Thai and Chinese enterprises.

Tran Thuy

SMEs need State assistance Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are in dire need of financial resources to maintain and restore operations.
Since the Covid-19 pandemic began, technology businesses have shown their potential by maintaining an impressive growth momentum.

Vietnam's economy has been strongly hit by the pandemic. In 2021, the countrys GDP is estimated to grow only 2%. Commercial and service activities have been heavily affected in provinces and cities under lockdown.

Up to 17.8% of enterprises face labor shortages while the number of businesses suspending operations has increased by nearly 20% compared to 2020.

In the new situation, Covid-19 is still a threat to economic recovery, with the rise of the Omicron variant. Ensuring a timely response to pandemic risks while maintaining safe production is an ever-greater challenge for businesses.

The pandemic has forced businesses to change their traditional way of operating. Technology enterprises have become one of the bright spots in the overall picture of the economy.

According to the National Digital Transformation Program to 2030, the digital economy will account for 30% of Vietnams GDP; and the proportion of digital economy in each industry and field will reach at least 20%. The pandemic, along with prolonged lockdowns, has spurred the rise of digital transformation in Vietnam.

Deputy Minister of Information and Communications Pham Duc Long said at a recent press conference the number of newly established digital firms in Vietnam is over 5,600, based on the need to "work online, sell goods online, and solve problems online".

Nguyen Thanh Tuyen, Deputy Director of the Information Technology Department at the Ministry of Information and Communications, said that Vietnam's digital technology industry has achieved impressive developments, with a growth rate of over 9% in 2020, three times higher than GDP growth.

The pandemic global health crisis has changed consumption trends and directly affected businesses, but has also been a "golden opportunity" to go digital in business. It is predicted that many areas will powerfully change after the pandemic, including online jobs, online education, distance healthcare, online shopping, online events, and online fairs.

Shift in labor structure

Digital transformation is here to stay. Workers will be required to adapt and seize opportunities to fit the digital society and digital economy.

Deputy Minister of Information and Communications Pham Duc Long said that in 2021 Vietnam recorded an increase of 5% in people working in the digital technology field, or 60,000 employees.

The National Forum for Development of Digital Technology Businesses 2021, with the theme "Digital transformation - The driving force for economic recovery and development", will be held on December 11 at the National Convention Center in Hanoi in both face-to-face and online formats. At the forum, the organizing board will announce Vietnam's digital transformation goals.

Vinh Ngo
It is forecast that the number of new cases in Hanoi will rise, possibly 1,000 cases a day, said Director of the Department of Health Tran Thi Nhi Ha.

Director of the Hanoi Department of Health Tran Thi Nhi Ha.

Ha told a meeting of the Hanoi Peoples Council on December 9 that up to 774 cases were recorded on December 6. It is forecast that the number of new cases will rise, possibly 1,000 cases a day.

Ha said that the virus has spread in the community and the Omicron variant may appear for various reasons: pathogens may already exist in the community, the reopening of economic and production activities, people from other countries entering Vietnam, the winter-spring climate which is favorable for the virus, and peoples unreasonable mindset after being vaccinated.

However, she confirmed that with determination and coordinated solutions and the consensus of the people, the pandemic has remained basically under control.

Hanoi has developed solutions to treat 100,000 cases. Patients without symptoms or mild symptoms are treated at home or at grassroots medical facilities. Hospitals only treat critical cases, with a total of 8,000 beds. Ha said this policy is an important decision for the city.

Plan on vaccinations for children aged 5-11 to be reported to Politburo

The Prime Minister has assigned the Ministry of Health to finalize a plan on vaccinations for children from 5 to 11 years old by December 10 and report to the Politburo. The plan must clearly show the theoretical and practical basis, scientific-based solutions, epidemic developments at home and the practice of other countries. It is necessary to sign a contract to purchase vaccines for children in December 2021.

Hanoi: Most 12th graders are still studying online.

Some high schools have opened for 12th graders at the instruction of the Hanoi Department of Education and Training but the number of students in school is modest. For example, Tran Nhan Tong High School has divided 12th grade students into two groups for face-to-face study at school. However, only 33 students went to school on the first day and only 9 students on the second day. It was not a surprise because a survey of parents revealed that only 9 families had agreed to send their children back to school.

Medical equipment and Covid-19 test kits purchases to be inspected

The Government Inspectorate has decided to inspect the procurement of medical equipment, biological products, and test kits for the prevention and control of the Covid-19 epidemic at the Ministry of Health, in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City.

Red River urban area development plan to be approved in January 2022

No later than the first half of January 2022, Hanoi authorities will have enough legal basis to approve the Red River and Duong River urban area planning, to complete 100% of the urban zoning planning in the capital city.

HCM City: Two women die after using services at spas

Two women were reported to have died after using services at private spas in HCM City on December 6-7.

The first incident occurred at a spa in Tan Phu District on December 7. The victim was a 24-year-old girl who was shocked after a spa employee applied desensitizer on her back before performing a beautifying service. The girl was brought to the hospital but the doctor could not save her.

On December 6, People's Hospital 115 received a 31-year-old female patient who died after abdominal liposuction was conducted at a private spa in District 1.

HCM City buys 300,000 packages of Covid-19 medicines

The city has decided to purchase an additional 300,000 packs of medicine to treat Covid-19 patients without symptoms or mild symptoms who are under home quarantine. This move is to promptly distribute medicine to people and be ready to cope with the complicated developments of the epidemic in the city.

Of the 300,000 packages, there are 200,000 packs of drug A (vitamins, pain relievers and fever reducers), 50,000 packs of drug B (anti-inflammatory, anticoagulant) and 50,000 packs of children's medicines. The purchase is divided into 2 phases, in the form of appointment of contractors, which is used in purchasing drugs and medical equipment for epidemic prevention and control in urgent cases.

The city has received 25,000 doses of Molnupiravir from the Ministry of Health. In the very near future, antiviral drugs for the treatment of Covid-19 may be available at drugstores, said Director of the citys Department of Health Tang Chi Thuong.

National Assembly Chairman Vuong Dinh Hue to pay official visits to Korea and India on Dec 12-19

A spokesman for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs has said that National Assembly Chairwoman Vuong Dinh Hue will make an official visit to South Korea and India from December 12 to 19.

During the visit, it is expected that the Vietnamese National Assembly Chairman will hold talks with the President of the National Assembly of Korea, the Speaker of the House of Representatives and the President of the Senate of India. He will also meet with senior leaders of Korea and India to discuss measures to strengthen relations between the two National Assemblies.

The National Assembly Chairman of Vietnam will have meetings with representatives of several political parties, the Vietnamese community, the business community in the host countries, and have a number of other important bilateral activities.

Six army generals retire

General Phan Van Giang, Minister of National Defense, on December 7 chaired a conference to announce and hand over retirement decisions to six generals, who are members of the 12th Party Central Committee, including: General Do Ba Ty, Senior Lieutenant General Nguyen Chi Vinh, Senior Lieutenant General Tran Don, Senior Lieutenant General Be Xuan Truong, Senior Lieutenant General Le Chiem and Senior Lieutenant General Nguyen Phuong Nam (former Deputy Chief of the General Staff of the Vietnam People's Army).

PV
Thousands of people inquire about this room each year. When Japanese tourists come to HCM City, the room's unique history draws their attention.

The hotel sees around 65,000 guests a year, with a third of them being Japanese. Two out of every 10 Japanese visitors staying at the hotel will make use of this room. Thousands of visitors are projected to arrive each year.

Famed Japanese journalist and writer Takeshi Kaiko (1930-1989) once resided in room number 103 at the Majestic Hotel (HCMC) during 1964-1965.

Ms. Huynh Thi Thu Nga, Deputy Director of Majestic Hotel, said that during his stay in the room, Takeshi Kaiko had many anti-war articles from a third-party perspective on the conflict and the anti-American resistance war of Vietnamese people. He is a celebrated novelist in Japan.

Guests of all ages are eager to learn about history and culture, and this particular space is no exception. It is assumed that European travelers flock to the Majestic hotel because it was designed in French style; however, the reality is that Japanese visitors account for 35-40 percent of all visitors.

Prior to the pandemic, room 103 was frequently packed with Japanese visitors. Guest who arrived later would seek permission to visit the room if it had been reserved in advance by someone else. The hotel said that room 103 is still arranged in the same manner as it was when the writer resided there.

The Majestic is HCMC's second-oldest hotel, having been built in 1925. Other notable guests at the hotel include Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong; Thai Princess Maha Chakri; and current Emperor Naruhito who has visited since he was the Crown Prince of Japan.

A few images from hotel room 103 at The Majestic:

Takeshi Kaiko's brief biography in both Japanese and English can be found outside room 103. (Photo: Tran Chung)

The room grips Japanese visitors interest, even though it is not spacious.

The room's furniture, including an ancient desk phone, has remained unchanged over the years. (Photo: Tran Chung).

From 1964 until 1965, the prominent Japanese author stayed in this accommodation. (Photo: Tran Chung)

Room 103 is visited by an estimated tens of thousands of Japanese tourists each year. (Photo: Tran Chung)

The view from the hotel's exterior. (Photo: Tran Chung)

Tran Chung

Quarantine services: gold mine for golf tourism In early 2021, 59 foreign tourists arrived in Phuket province in southern Thailand and were quarantined at a luxury hotel for 14 days. This is one of the first groups of international tourists to Thailand under the "resort quarantine" program.
A pharmacy in HCM Citys Binh Thanh District. The citys Department of Health has asked private pharmacies to take an active part in the fight against COVID-19.  VNS Photo Viet Dung

HCM CITY  HCM City is calling for help from private pharmacies in the fight against COVID-19, and requesting more military medical staff amid a rising number of COVID patients.

The citys Department of Health has called for private pharmacies to be more involved in the citys fight against COVID-19. The city has more than 6,500 private pharmacies.

Pharmacies can supply equipment and medicine at reasonable prices to help COVID patients treat themselves at home, such as rapid test kits, pulse oximeters, and disinfectant.

Pharmacies have also been asked to offer health consultations to help patients at home, and to spread awareness about pandemic preventive measures, guiding customers with symptoms to test themselves and to contact local health authorities if they test positive.

Pharmacies have also been asked to keep up-to-date lists of local medical stations and community-based COVID treatment teams so that locals can contact them.

Certain pharmacies may be appointed by local steering committees for pandemic prevention and control to work with medical stations to manage drug distribution for patients at home.

HCM City is also asking the Ministry of National Defence for 537 military medical personnel to support 179 of the citys mobile medical stations.

In August, military assigned personnel, including thousands of doctors and military medical students, helped the city deal with the fourth COVID wave. The military began gradually withdrawing its personnel from the city when the situation became more stable, but recently the city has seen a rising number of COVID patients.

In early December the city asked the Ministry of National Defence to maintain its 85 mobile medical stations until the end of the year before withdrawing its personnel to help it deal with the rising caseload.

The participation of military medical forces, public and private healthcare, and charity programmes helped the city overcome its most challenging period during the fourth outbreak, according to the department.

The number of new daily COVID cases and deaths in HCM City, the countrys COVID-19 epicentre, has been on the rise since the citys reopening on October 1.

The citys COVID-19 Resuscitation Hospital plans to increase the number of beds, and has asked the department for more staff.

To reduce the death rate from COVID-19, the city is focusing on testing, vaccinations and treatment for people aged 65 and over and people with underlying health conditions.

It began giving booster shots for 6.3 million people starting on December 10. VNS
The Salzburg Festival is projecting for a return to normal next summer, announcing a schedule of 228 performances over 45 days that include a new production of Bela Bartoks Bluebeards Castle paired with Carl Orffs A Play on the End of Time.

Salzburg, Europes premier festival, cut to 110 performances in 2020 because of the coronavirus pandemic and was back up to 163 last summer. Revenue dropped from 31.2 million Euros ($34.9 million) in 2019 to 8.7 million Euros ($10.4 million) before rebounding to 27.7 million Euros ($31.5 million) in 2021, when 227,000 attended.

We are doing a full program. We cannot predict how it will be in the summer, festival artistic director Markus Hinterhauser said during a telephone interview. We had two summers when we had the pandemic situation and we had to react.

Hinterhauser hopes the festivals regular audience, usually drawn to Austria from more than 80 nations, will return for the first time since 2019 after skipping last summer due to travel restrictions.
The dentist was apprehensive, worried that such a young patient alone might cause problems, but he sailed through the procedure like a trooper, Jurek said. The dentist was so impressed with his behavior that he returned 10 cents to Jurek.

It really impressed me there were there were people like that, he said of the dentist.

At 17, he did a short stint with the U.S. Navy Medical Corps, preparing for an invasion of Tokyo that never happened because World War II ended.

It was in the service that he further developed his sense of empathy. Before he left, he was working with Marines who had spinal cord injuries. He said the hardest part was when a loved one rejected the patient because they did not think they could cope with all the associated problems. That was when he developed an affinity for helping people with psychosocial problems.

Jurek went on to develop a family dental practice in Waco. He was crowded with clients and had to eventually bring in three more dentists to help him with the work.

During his time there, he started with his philanthropic mission by often giving care to people who could not afford it. He would also offer discount services to groups such as teachers or ministers.
Toy drive Saturday

Heart of Texas Fishing will host a toy drive from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Saturday at the horseshoe pits at Brazos Park East, 3516 N. Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd., to help the Robinson Police Department collect toys for Blue Santa kids and families in need.

The event will include a car show, with participants encouraged to bring hot rods or classic cars, and will also feature a cornhole tournament, food and live music.

Wacos best tamales contest

The Hispanic Leaders Network is sponsoring a contest to determine who makes Wacos best tamales.

Deadline to sign up is Monday. Register by emailing info@wacohispanicchamber.com or calling 919-548-2704. First prize is $500.

Waco Aglow meeting

Waco Aglow will meet at 10 a.m. Saturday at Liberty Virtual Office, 7215 Bosque Blvd. A Christmas brunch and prophetic ornament exchange are planned. For more information, call 254-495-7872 or email aglowwaco@yahoo.com.

YMCA kids art classes
MOSCOW (AP)  President Vladimir Putin on Thursday brushed aside complaints about prosecutors' move to close one of Russias most prominent human rights groups, claiming it listed Nazi collaborators among the victims of Soviet-era repression. The Memorial group denied the allegations.

During a video call with members of the Kremlin human rights council, Putin responded to their complaints by asserting that Memorial had listed people allegedly involved in the killings of Jews during World War II alongside victims of Soviet repression.

Memorial should have conformed to the humane goals it has declared as the core of its activities and it shouldn't have done things that I mentioned," Putin said, according to Russian news reports.

Speaking on independent Dozhd television, Nikita Petrov, a leading member of Memorial, rejected Putin's claim as false. He argued that the group squarely relied on the authorities' decisions rehabilitating the victims of Soviet-era repressions while compiling their lists.
Such defenses strike me as evidence they dont know how to do any other kind of politics  only the kind where every setback looks racist and sexist.

That mindset is the driver of Harris problems. Her supporters seem to believe that the first Black female vice president is such a big deal that everyone  staffers, journalists, the president himself  should work as if she is just too big to fail. Hence all the anger at Biden for not creating more opportunities for her to shine. Its a conundrum unique to her, two CNN reporters explain. People are expecting their historic vice president to make history every day when in fact shes trying to carry the duties of a secondary role.

Theres obviously some truth to that. Putting her in charge of the root causes of the border crisis was a recipe for failure.

But that begs the question: Since when is it the job of the president to prioritize the political success of the vice president?

For instance, according to the Post, her supporters say Bidens refusal to push for wholesale changes to the Senate filibuster limits her ability to solve problems such as immigration and voting rights, presumably because the V.P. casts the deciding vote in a tied Senate.
Side effects exist

This letter is in response to the letter in the Wednesday Trib. While I have no standing to dispute the law with a legal scholar, I take exception to the definitive yet erroneous medical opinions stated in that letter. As a physician, I will address the lawyers statements, ... there are no side effects to the COVID-19 vaccines ... These are all undisputed facts ...

Allow me to dispute your facts. While I would take them down one by one, there is room only to debunk the first of your erroneous statements.

As preface, I have been a physician for 25 years, serving in the U.S. Air Force and at the highest level of the U.S. Space Force. I am well-acquainted with mandatory vaccination programs, having administered them for the better part of my career. I had COVID-19 twice before vaccine availability and was subsequently vaccinated and boosted. You will find no greater advocate of the COVID-19 vaccines. That said, truth and transparency are essential in medicine.
ASHLAND  The numbers look good for Ashland.

Thats what the Ashland City Council heard at its meeting on Dec. 2 during a presentation by Ashland Area Economic Development Corporation Executive Director Caleb Fjone.

U.S. Census data shows Ashland is one of the fastest growing cities in Nebraska.

We are the 49th largest city but we are the ninth fastest growing city in the state right now, Fjone told the council.

Ashland is experiencing 2.22% annual growth rate. The population grew 12.7% between 2010 and 2020, going from 2,453 residents to 2,764 in the past decade.

Fjone said these numbers show a healthy growth rate that should drive Ashland to surpass the 3,000 mark in population by next year.

Ashland is a wonderful place that people want to live, he said.

Ashlands location halfway between Omaha and Lincoln is attractive to new residents. But the city should also look out for its neighbors, other area municipalities that are also looking to grow.

Were competing with other smaller cities, he said.
Most of us know about the Presidents Executive Order 14042 mandating that most federal government contractor employees provide proof of full COVID vaccines. At last count 19 states have filed lawsuits challenging the mandate and, at press time, two federal courts (Kentucky and Georgia) have just recently issued preliminary injunctions prohibiting the mandate. In Kentucky, the court applied the injunctions only for Kentucky, Ohio and Tennessee. The Georgia federal judge went further and applied the injunction nationwide. Meanwhile, the U.S. Senate has passed a resolution to overturn virtually all federal vaccine mandates, which means little other than it received scant attention on the evening news.

Does this mean that contractor-mandated vaccines are off the table? No.

May vaccines still be mandatory for federal contractor employees? Yes.

Should contractors implement mandatory vaccination requirements or wait until the courts (including the Supremes -- the Court not the Motown band) ultimate decides? That depends.

So lets unpack it from here.

First, the Kentucky and Georgia courts imposed preliminary injunctions, not final court decisions. And the other complaints filed in three other courts have yet to be decided. These preliminary injunctions are actions by a court ordering a person to do or cease a specific action during the pendency of the case. In other words, a preliminary injunction does not mean the case is over; in fact, its virtually only the beginning. These actions, seldom used by the courts, are typical when a plaintiff can show that its case has merit and will likely succeed and to stop the course of action to prevent a possible injustice or harm to the plaintiff pending a final resolution. A permanent injunction, or a final court judgment to that effect, comes after further court proceedings and typically over a longer time period. Compare injunctions with a lawsuit seeking money damages. The latter case is only about damages so typically there is nothing to initially enjoin or stop.

As such, we dont know for sure how this will be resolved at the end of the day and its highly doubtful it will be resolved before the revised Jan. 18 vaccination deadline. The complaints themselves contain multiple theories, primarily that the grandaddy of federal procurement statues (loosely known as the Procurement Act), which provides the president broad (though not unlimited) authority to manage federal procurements, doesnt extend that authority to such mandatory vaccinations.

But to be sure, the president has that broad authority to direct government procurement policy, set the rules for issuing government contracts, and establish procurement standards and regulations such as the FAR both on an interim and final basis.

The question in these lawsuits is whether or not the President overstepped this authority. So far, two courts have said yes. Three other courts (in several of these cases multiple states filed in a single state) are still considering the issue.

And the murky legal issues in these cases dont stop with the Procurement Act. Other grounds asserted include that the mandate is unconstitutional as being an action only states or Congress can impose, that the government didnt use the proper administrative procedures in implementing the mandate, plus other arguments, for example, that only the FAR Council and not the President (who technically controls the FAR Council) can change the rules mandating the vaccination, the mandate violates federal competition requirements and is arbitrary and capricious  English for just plain unlawful.

While the states are throwing spaghetti-laden legal theories against the proverbial kitchen wall hoping one or more of them will permanently stick, contractors still need to decide whether to impose their own employee (and subcontractor) vaccine mandates or hold out until a final, final, final court judgment is rendered, or at least know where the wind is steadily blowing. (Incidentally, throwing spaghetti against the wall to demonstrate doneness is a comical myth, especially for whoever has to clean the wall).

And of course its no accident that all of these cases were filed in districts chock full of conservative judges, so the ultimate outcome is that much more unclear.

Bottom line: it aint over til its over.

Second, neither of the injunction orders prohibits a contractor from implementing vaccination policies and mandating vaccinations on its own. The ruling, again not a final one, only prohibits the federal government from mandating the vaccination through the executive order pending the outcome of the litigation. And currently most states dont have laws limiting such mandates including DC, Maryland and Virginia (noting currently that 10 other states have imposed statutory limits on mandated vaccines). Right now, the main bone of contention is how employees and teaming partners will react given the current situation.

Third, there may be reasons for a contractor to opt for mandating vaccinations:

There are a number of major federal contractors and some mid-tier companies that have nonetheless mandated vaccinations for their employees and are also requiring their subcontractors to implement similar vax programs (e.g., Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, L3Harris, BAE, Booz Allen). This flow-down requirement will likely be accompanied by a threat of a convenience termination if the subcontractor fails to comply. In that case, you may or may not need to comply as a subcontractor depending on the terms of the subcontract and whether your refusal to comply may (or may not) jeopardize a long term relationship with the prime.

Federal employees who are co-located with their contractor counterparts may resent the fact that the government employee is vaccinated through a separate executive order (and according to the White House over 95 percent are fully vaccinated although some federal employees are suing to avoid the mandate) while the contractor employee is perceived as dodging the vaccine bullet, at least for now. Companies wishing to avoid the wrath of an angry pro-vaccine customer should consider its options in implementing a vax policy.

Consider that, according to the GSA, 91 percent of GSA Schedule contractors have agreed to execute contract modifications to add a clause implementing the mandate. Im not certain what percentage of the total contractors that represents but if this is starting a vaccination bandwagon then the government contracting industry as a whole should pay close attention to how this continues to evolve.

Listen to your employees. Some may oppose or even challenge the mandate but think of the impact on the employees who do favor or indeed demand it -- and that may well be the overwhelming majority of your employee population. Although these employee challenges are also uncertain, one Alabama federal judge recently denied a similar injunction request by five United Launch Alliance employees fired because they refused to be vaccinated.

Vaccinations will promote a healthier work environment and may even save lives.

These are just some reasons a contractor may need or desire to mandate vaccinations even if the government doesnt force the issue. There may be others as we go along.

For those contractors that are imposing the mandate, consider drafting and implementing strong policies and procedures. This is primarily to ensure an orderly management of a mandatory process.

In addition, the mandate contains two exceptions: (1) where the employee is legally entitled to a medical-related accommodation that may include not being vaccinated, or (2) the employee holds a sincerely held religious belief, practice or observance that conflicts with the vaccination requirement. A policy may weed out those who cannot support either exception.

To further elaborate, the medical exception is limited mostly to where the employee has a vax allergy. The religious exemption is more troublesome for the employer because the term sincere belief has a rather low bar, the belief is individualized to the person asserting it and just about any halfway legitimate religion applies, as long as it is an actual religious conviction. In short, the religious belief can be suspect, so long as it has a religious basis and is sincere and not pulled out of thin air. The EEOC has recently published guidance on this issue which, typical of EEOC, is rather incomplete. So this exemption remains stuck in a legal quagmire.

A mandatory vaccination policy would contain procedures for an employee applying for and potentially obtaining or being denied an accommodation and the failure to follow those procedures will provide the employer at least some legal cover to defend against a possible employee termination suit. For example, an employer can ask for health care provider documentation to support the requested medical accommodation. An employee who claims that a religion doesnt support the vaccination may be asked to explain that belief. In both cases a mere disagreement with or philosophical objection to the vaccination provides the employee no legal protection, and in most instances it will be up to the employee to provide documentation to support the exception.

But I cant leave without imparting my thoughts about these lawsuits. First, its hard to imagine that the states have legal standing to sue the federal government on this issue. Standing basically means the plaintiff has a real grievance and will suffer real (not conjectural or hypothetical) injury if not corrected. Without standing you cannot sue. Here, the states are suing the feds over federal government management of federal government contracts. And Im doubtful that a states argument that without relief the state and its citizens will lose contracts is either relevant or evidence of such loss beyond a mere hypothetical. In the Florida case, for example, lawyers for the state attached to the complaint examples of affected federal contracts, many of which the mandate doesnt even apply.

Second, putting aside the constitutional and procedural claims (since my space here is limited), the states argument that the Procurement Act doesnt authorize the Presidents mandate is not impressive. Strip it down and the real argument is that the mandate is not sufficiently related to the economical and efficient management of federal procurements, which is what the Procurement Act broadly requires. Or simply put, the President overstepped his bounds under the Procurement Act because the mandates purpose is not ensuring economy and efficiency in government contracting administration.

But isnt it conceivable that not requiring the vax may make government contracting less efficient? And isnt that in any event up to the federal government, not the states, to decide? Either way, doesnt the government have an interest in ensuring that its contracts not suffer major disruptions from this pandemic? And arent such disruptions likely to impose an economic burden on the government?

Im not quite sure but perhaps the Kentucky and Georgia judges should have considered President Johnsons Executive Order 11246 prohibiting discrimination against federal contractor employees. That measure arguably had no relation to actual federal procurement activities or their efficiency and economy, and (thankfully) that EO hasnt been successfully challenged since 1965. (Notably both Presidents Kennedy and Eisenhower also issued executive orders related to combating discrimination in government contracting, also never successfully challenged). Not directly on point but to me it is sufficiently analogous to conclude that the Procurement Act logically extends to the vaccine mandate.

But then again all of this may be a moot point if the delays end up outlasting the pandemic. That is until the next one.

But consider this: legal stuff aside, for the contractor it should be all about the customer and its mission, and it must be all about the sustainment of revenue, strong contract backlog and continuous contract incumbency. And its definitely about the health and safety of customers, employees and team members.

The other moral and legal issues may take a back seat, or a front seat. Regardless, it seems other than healthcare industry we are the only one facing an industry-specific vax mandate, so eventually we will all need to deal with it, no matter what these courts tell us.

Happy Holidays!
The Sundance Film Festival is returning to the Utah mountains in January armed with documentaries about Bill Cosby, Princess Diana, Kanye West and Lucille Ball and the directorial debuts of Eva Longoria, Tig Notaro and Jesse Eisenberg.

Festival organizers unveiled the lineup for the 2022 edition on Thursday, which includes 82 feature-length films culled from over 3,700 submissions.

This years program reflects the unsettling and uncertain times weve been living in for the past year and a half, said Kim Yutani, Sundances director of programming.

As in years past, the festival boasts a robust documentary lineup, including We Need to Talk About Cosby, in which director W. Kamau Bell attempts to examine the art and artist question as it applies to the actor/comedian, who spent time in prison before his sexual assault conviction was overturned.

Festival director Tabitha Jackson says the Cosby doc is, A real cultural analysis of what happened.

Lucy and Desi, which marks Amy Poehlers documentary debut, and The Princess from director Ed Perkins are also in the lineup.

Directors Clarence Coodie Simmons and Chike Ozah also have jeen-yuhs: A Kanye Trilogy, chronicling 21 years of Kanye West with never-before-seen footage, and Kathryn Ferguson charts the career of Sinead OConnor in Nothing Compares.

The documentaries also go beyond the big names and biopics. Director Ramin Bahrani will debut his film 2nd Chance, about the bankrupt pizzeria owner who invented the modern bulletproof vest, and Rory Kennedy has Downfall: The Case Against Boeing, which looks at the two Boeing 737 MAX crashes and the aftermath. Others look at the last ship carrying enslaved Africans to the U.S. (Descendant), the U.S. maternal health crisis (Aftershock), TikTok (TikTok, Boom) and midwives in Myanmar (Midwives).

Lena Dunham goes behind the camera once more with Sharp Stick, about a 26-year-old who begins an affair with her older boss, Michel Hazanavicius will premiere his zombie comedy, Final Cut, and Riley Stearns will debut Dual, starring Karen Gillan as a woman who attempts to clone herself after a terminal diagnosis.

There are some notable debuts, like AM I OK? a film about female friends directed by Tig Notaro and Stephanie Allynne and starring Dakota Johnson and Sonoya Mizuno. Eva Longoria directs a documentary about the rivalry between boxers Oscar De La Hoya and Julio Cesar Chavez, and Jesse Eisenberg has When You Finish Saving the World, starring Julianne Moore and Finn Wolfhard as mother and son. Carol screenwriter Phyllis Nagy has also written and directed Call Jane, about abortions in the late 1960s. It stars Elizabeth Banks and Sigourney Weaver.

The U.S. dramatic competition slate, which has launched films like CODA, Passing and Minari, includes one of Michael Kenneth Williams final projects, 892, starring John Boyega as a desperate veteran who is on the brink of homelessness.

We saw a lot of films that have psychological thriller or horror elements throughout the program. We do have a dedicated midnight section, but we were able to find places for so many of these films that were just doing really interesting things, Yutani said. And in our U.S. Dramatic section, there are several films written by women exploring racial injustice and the status of women of color in Academia through this horror film lens.

After going largely virtual in 2021, organizers are planning to return to an in-person festival in Park City, Utah, with some satellite screenings at regional theaters across the U.S. during the second weekend and virtual options as well. Earlier this year, the festival announced that all attendees, from filmmakers to ticket buyers and volunteers, would be required to have received the COVID-19 vaccine.

Were excited to return to our home in Utah, but also to come together in new ways, Jackson said. Building on our experience last year, weve discovered new possibilities of convergence, and we embrace the fact that we are now an expanded community in which active participation matters, and audience presence  however it manifests  is essential to our mission.

In that spirit, the festival will kick off on Jan. 20 with the immersive live-cinema documentary 32 Sounds, which will debut online and in Park Citys Egyptian Theater. Other day one premieres include Longorias La Guerra Civil and The Princess.

This year, we look forward to celebrating this generations most innovative storytellers as they share their work across a wide range of genres and forms, said Robert Redford, the founder and president of the Sundance Institute. These artists have provided a light through the darkest of times, and we look forward to welcoming their unique visions out into the world and experiencing them together.

-

Follow AP Film Writer Lindsey Bahr on Twitter: www.twitter.com/ldbahr

This story corrects the title of the documentary jeen-yuhs: A Kanye Trilogy.

The festival will run from Jan 20 through Jan 30. Ticket packages go on sale starting Dec. 17 and individual tickets will be available on Jan. 6.

Copyright 2021 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
WATERLOO  The first confirmed case of the omicron variant of COVID-19 has been found in an unvaccinated person under the age of 18 who lives in Black Hawk County.

The person  whose name, age, gender and city of residence was not given  is currently asymptomatic and was tested for coronavirus after being exposed to it during travel, according to the Iowa Department of Public Health, which released the news Thursday afternoon.

Black Hawk County Public Health acted quickly to initiate contact with the family and remain in contact to monitor the health of the individual, the department said in a news release.

The State Hygienic Lab confirmed the variant, the first reported case in Iowa.

As always, COVID-19 infected individuals are advised to isolate, the department said.

County Health Director Nafissa Cisse Egbuonye has sounded the alarm recently about the countys high COVID positivity rates. As of Thursday, Black Hawk County had an 18.8% positivity rate in the last two weeks, with 41 people currently hospitalized.

Egbuonye advised people to get vaccinated against COVID-19, which IDPH interim director Kelly Garcia reiterated Thursday, along with urging booster shots.

There is emerging evidence that a booster dose of vaccine offers protection against omicron, which is great news, Garcia said. Vaccinated Iowans who have not yet received a booster should do so as soon as possible.

Omicron has been identified in at least 19 states. Scientists are working to determine whether omicron spreads more easily or causes more severe disease than the delta variant that now dominates in the U.S. They are also studying how well the current vaccines work against it.

More than a third of Iowans remain unvaccinated and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says 57.5% of the population is fully vaccinated, placing the state 24th in the nation.

Iowa is experiencing a high rate of spread of COVID-19 in all 99 counties.

The Associated Press contributed to this story.

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DAVENPORT -- A Davenport Republican state lawmaker says he will run for statewide office in 2022 rather than seek re-election to the Iowa Senate.

Roby Smith, R-Davenport, announced Thursday he is running for Iowa State Treasurer, challenging 39-year incumbent Michael Fitzgerald.

Smith could not immediately be reached for comment Thursday.

"Our economy, especially banking, is undergoing changes, Smith said in a statement. "Iowa needs a Treasurer who understands the challenges of the 21st Century and is willing to protect Iowans from a Biden administration that is determined to invade our financial privacy."

Smith worked for nearly a decade as a local banker before becoming a small business owner and running for the Iowa legislature. He serves as an unpaid member of the local U.S. Bank Board and teaches financial literacy to students as a volunteer through Junior Achievement. He is also a member of the ownership group of the Quad Cities River Bandits.

Fitzgerald is one of only three Democrats to hold statewide office in Iowa and is the nation's longest-serving state treasurer. He was first elected in 1982 and re-elected in 2018 to his 10th term.

He serves as the states banker, managing taxes that are paid to the state of Iowa and investing the state's money. His office coordinates the College Savings Iowa program and manages the purchase and repayment of state bonds.

Fitzgerald, in a statement, touted his accomplishments launching programs including the 529 college savings plan, the Great Iowa Treasure Hunt of unclaimed property program and Iowas ABLE plan, which helps Iowans with disabilities and their families save for the future and not risk losing benefits.

"In times like today, there is no question that experience counts," Fitzgerald said. "Through my leadership, I will continue to promote fair government and safe financial strategies."

Smith was first elected to the Iowa Senate in 2010 and re-elected to a third term in 2018. His current term ends on Jan. 8, 2023.

Redistricting placed Smith into a newly-drawn senate district alongside incumbent Davenport Democrat Jim Lykam. Lykam could not immediately be reached for comment Thursday. He has not publicly declared his 2022 plans but has previously indicated he plans to seek re-election.

Smith, who represents part of Davenport and Bettendorf, Riverdale and Panorama Park, was drawn into a more rural and less urban district that stretches from northwest Davenport to West Branch and the Linn County border and includes rural Cedar County.

Smith, too, could have chosen to move a few blocks east across Jersey Ridge Road to run in an open Senate seat "that's pretty Republican," Lykam noted in October when asked if he planned to run against Smith. The new senate district includes much of Smith's current district, as well as Eldridge and part of LeClaire.

"Republicans know that (Republican Iowa Gov.) Kim Reynolds' workforce crisis will be an anchor around their necks in competitive Senate districts next year, so they're jumping ship as fast as possible," Andy Suchorski, executive director of the Iowa Senate Democrats' Majority Fund, said in a statement.

Senate Majority Leader Jack Whitver announced last month he will move from Ankeny and seek reelection in a more rural, conservative district.

Lykam in October said Smith would be a top target for Senate Democrats in 2022. Smith, who chairs the State Government Committee and serves on the Commerce, Rules and Administration, and Ways and Means committees, spearheaded sweeping changes to Iowa election laws Democrats and voting rights advocates argue amount to voter suppression. Smith and Republicans contend Iowa's new election laws safeguard voting and promote voter confidence.

Smith, in announcing his campaign for treasurer, noted his support in the Iowa Senate to make it easier for families to invest in Iowas college savings program by extending the time period families could contribute to their children's account, while still receiving the tax benefit.

Smith also noted his support of tax reforms, "helping pass the largest income tax cut for working Iowans in our states history."

"My passion has always been about helping Iowa families achieve their dreams, overcome challenges, and secure their future," Smith said. "Thats exactly where my focus will be as Iowas next Treasurer."

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WATERLOO  The only city in Iowa with a censure process enshrined in law used it for the first time Thursday night to censure a fellow council member for allegations dating back to 2018.

Margaret Klein, the Ward 1 councilor who lost her bid for mayor of Waterloo in November, said she regretted nothing and would do it again. She was accused of nine violations of city code, and an attorney hired by the city found she had committed five.

With Dave Boesen absent and Klein leaving before the vote, the remaining council voted 5-0 to censure Klein. The vote is a formal disapproval of her conduct and will not affect her ability to vote or remain seated for the remainder of her term, which ends next month.

We are here tonight over freedom of speech, Klein said, speaking directly to a crowd of around two dozen people, many of them supporters.

She detailed each of the alleged violations she was accused of by Ward 3 Councilor Pat Morrissey, who began the censure process Nov. 1 during a council meeting the night before the city election. After each allegation, Klein noted she (stood) by those statements or that she would do that again, giving her rationale behind each one.

I dont take this seriously  I really do not, Klein said of the censure process, which she opposed when it was approved last December. This rule that we inserted is silly. It chills conversation.

Kristine Stone, an attorney with Ahlers and Cooney of Des Moines, reviewed the allegations formally brought by Morrissey against Klein and whether they violated city code or city policies as laid out in the censure process.

Five violations were confirmed. Four were found only to have violated the citys 2017 strategic plan  specifically by damaging the image and reputation of Waterloo. In her report, Stone noted she considered the citys strategic plan, because it was adopted by resolution, to be a statement of City Council policy.

Those four policy violations involved Kleins comments about the city dumping raw sewage in the river, the griffin rebranding committee being rigged, misprinted wording on a Mayors Fun Run T-shirt, and accusing Mayor Quentin Hart of appointing sexual predators to police advisory boards.

Its some punishment that I had the audacity to run for office; thats what I think, Klein said.

One allegation  that she made false statements about All-In Grocers developers fooling the council and that a payment was hidden between council items  was found by Stone to violate city code prohibiting council members from making personal attacks in the City Council meeting setting.

Klein criticized the fact the city had spent so much money sending it off to a law firm in Des Moines to investigate her, and left council chambers immediately after laying out her defense, along with half of the crowd. She said she would vote for the pie at Village Inn rather than listen to all the pontificating before the vote.

They keep saying we can only say positive things, Klein said. Never say anything that will cast a shadow on the reputation of Waterloo. ... But you cannot neglect the parts that need to be fixed. You just cannot.

Councilor Ray Feuss disagreed with that characterization, noting one allegation about dumping raw sewage resulted an insurance carrier reprimanding the city, saying Klein should brought up those issues differently.

We are going to bring up the tough things. We are going to acknowledge the fact that we have problems, and were going to work toward solutions, Feuss said. But not out here.

Others agreed.

She may firmly believe those things, and I dont condemn her, Councilor Jerome Amos said. But when we are sitting in these positions, we have to be very cognizant about what we say and how we say it.

It is clear that my colleague does not understand and refuses to take accountability as an adult for her actions, Councilor Jonathan Grieder said. She has clearly violated the rules of this council, and those are the facts.

The usually verbose Morrissey was brief.

No regrets that I heard, no remorse that I heard, no repudiation did I hear, no retraction, he said.

Councilor Sharon Juon said she tried befriending Klein early in their tenures because I believed she had a good heart and a good soul, but found their conversations were absolutely reversed and falsified and denied by Klein.

When its malicious, when its harmful, when its directed at doing damage, thats where I draw the line, Juon said.

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CHERRY POINT, NC  Sometimes all we can do is watch as tragedy unfolds because we lack the skills to respond or are nowhere near it.

Even if one has the expertise and happens to be near an emergency at the right time, it takes a special type of awareness to recognize what is happening and immediately jump into action.

U.S Marine Corps Sgt. Kyle Ubbelohde, a Waterloo native, demonstrated his all-around abilities, his drive to help others, and innate awareness the early morning of June 28.

He was driving to work at the Marine Corps Air Station in Cherry Point, North Carolina, when he rescued a young child stuck in a drainage canal.

Because of his courageous response and heroics, Ubbelohde, 25, was awarded the Navy and Marine Corps Commendation Medal on Nov. 24.

I saw out of the corner of my eye a red blob, essentially, he said. I didnt realize what it was at first, and I saw it go from the top of the wall down into the water. I started piecing it together, and I realized that something was just not right with that situation.

That red blob was child in a red shirt in a canal approximately four feet deep with water.

He was not face down in the water, but with the height of the walls, he was not able to get himself out, and I could see him going toward the drainage system, he said.

While he does not know how the child got there, he said the child was moving around when he leapt into action and calmed him down. Ubbelohde took him to the canal wall, hoisted him up over it, pulled himself out, and made the call for emergency services.

Im thankful that I was able to acknowledge that situation. It definitely made a difference in his life, and that familys life, he said. When I see a situation where I can help out, I always want to do what I can.

Once he got to his office and had time to process what had happened, he said he was thankful that he was there at the right time.

I dont really have that short of a drive to work. If I were to have hit a stoplight, or tried to go through a yellow light a little bit sooner, I wouldnt have been there at the time that I was, he said. Im just thankful it worked out the way it did.

It was the second time he received a top military award for his quick thinking near the Marine Corps Air Station. In 2019, he was awarded the Navy and Marine Corps Achievement Medal after he witnessed a head-on collision and extracted a person from a smoking vehicle.

Ubbelohde rolled the person into a position where they could breathe a little bit better, and waited there until an ambulance arrived.

Five years prior to the first incident, Ubbelohde was living in Waterloo.

He fondly recalls his time in the Cedar Valley as an avid outdoorsman, whether trap shooting at the Izaak Walton League, camping trips to Isle Royale near Lake Superior, or being outdoors with Boy Scout Troop 1.

Trial begins in Elk Run Heights home invasion robbery An Elk Run Heights woman said she thought she was going to be shot and feared for the safety of her children when three masked men kicked open the door to her home dragged her out of bed.

Ubbelohde graduated from Waterloo West High School in 2014 and was destined for a career in public service.

At the age of 17, he joined the Marine Corps and in September 2014 left Waterloo for boot camp at the Marine Corps Recruit Depot in San Diego.

From there, Ubbelohdes Marine Corps career was nothing short of eventful, but eventually he found himself learning at the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency in Washington, D.C.

He ended up in Cherry Point, North Carolina, in 2019 and is now a geospatial intelligence specialist with 2nd Marine Aircraft Wing.

Ubbelohde credits the Marine Corps combat lifesaver certification for his abilities to react appropriately to different situations. He also says his infantry training played a huge role in being able to remove injured people from dangerous situations.

As a Marine, Ubbelohde has learned how to handle stressful situations while keeping his composure.

The Marine Corps does a good job. They stress you out and expect you to react properly, he said.

Ubbelohdes parents, Kevin and Cathie, still reside and work in the Cedar Valley.

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SANTA FE, N.M. (AP)  Efforts to shore up Native American political influence in New Mexico through the redistricting process got a boost on Thursday as legislators advanced a state Senate map that incorporates consensus recommendations from an array of Indigenous communities.

A Senate redistricting bill from Democratic state Sen. Linda Lopez of Albuquerque cleared its first hurdle with a 6-3 committee endorsement. A second committee review for the bill is scheduled before a possible Senate floor vote.

The map includes recommendations for the heavily Indigenous northwestern region of the state that are endorsed by the Navajo Nation, the Jicarilla Apache Tribe and New Mexico's 19 Indigenous pueblos. The region ceded population to the rest of the state over the past decade, threatening to dilute Native American influence in key state legislative districts.

Keegan King, an Acoma Pueblo member and co-chairman of a major Indigenous redistricting alliance, urged lawmakers to back the proposal.

It upholds the principles of the Voting Rights Act, King told the panel of state lawmakers. These maps have been crafted with true tribal consultation and in collaboration with communities across our state. They have the support and blessing of the sovereign tribal nations.

In three of the districts, Native Americans would account for at least 62% of the voting-age population.

Two additional districts would be roughly 35% Native American each, ensuring significant influence in elections.

One of those proposed influence districts has undergone substantial changes to unite Indigenous residents of Zuni, Laguna, Acoma and Isleta pueblos across a sprawling swath of the state. In the process it would pair two Republican incumbents in the same district.

I hope that wasn't intentional or partisan in nature, said Republican Senate minority leader Greg Baca of Belen, who could be paired against GOP Sen. Joseph Sanchez in future elections in the the proposal.

Baca and Republican colleagues lamented that none of the maps recommended by a citizens advisory board have been translated directly into proposed legislation.

New Mexico adopted an advisory board to vet maps proposals at public meetings. State lawmakers have the final say in a hybrid approach designed to temper political inclinations.

We empowered a body to produce maps, and we have yet to see any one of those maps, Baca said.

The proposed Senate political map also pairs two incumbent Democrats in a single Albuquerque-based district.

Separately Thursday, two Native American communities voiced opposition to a congressional redistricting plan that would extend the state's traditionally Democratic northern 3rd District into a conservative oil-producing region of the state.

Lobbyist Conroy Chino, representing the Indigenous communities of Taos Pueblo and Acoma Pueblo, said that the Democratic-backed redistricting proposal would have a negative influence on political representation for the two tribes.

Despite the criticism, the congressional redistricting bill from Democratic Sen. Joseph Cervantes and Rep. Georgene Louis advanced Thursday toward a Senate floor vote, with a 6-3 endorsement by the judiciary committee.

The proposal would alter the political panorama in the 3rd Congressional District for incumbent Democratic Rep. Teresa Leger Fernandez, wrapping more politically conservative voters into the traditionally Democratic district and diluting Native American representation.

Chino also noted a close relationship between Taos and Acoma pueblos and Leger Fernandez, a first term congresswoman an attorney with lengthy experience on Indigenous issues and projects.

Under this current iteration the number of Native Americans in congressional District 3 gets reduced down from 20% to 16%, Chino said. And the tribes that I represent feel that will have an impact when it comes to their interests at the congressional level, they will have competing interests from where they sit in the state with, perhaps, the southeastern part of the state.

The redistricting plan would break up a conservative stronghold in the states southeastern oil production zone into multiple congressional districts, a proposal that has generated protests from Republicans holding the legislative minority and from oil industry representatives.

The plan would also bolster a Hispanic majority in New Mexicos southern 2nd Congressional District by extending its boundaries into Albuquerque.

Copyright 2021 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.

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Bob Dole is being honored at Washington National Cathedral as leaders of both parties pay tribute to the longtime Kansas senator known for his overriding sense of civility.
HOUSTON (AP)  Rapper Travis Scott said in an interview that he didn't know that fans had died at his Astroworld festival in Houston until after his performance.

It wasn't really until minutes before the press conference until I figured out exactly what happened. Even after the show, you're just kind of hearing things, but I didn't know the exact details until minutes before the press conference," Scott said.

He said he paused the performance a couple of times, but he couldn't hear fans screaming for help.

I stopped like a couple of times just to make sure everybody was OK, said Scott. I just really go off the fans energy as a collective, you know? Call and response. I just didn't, I just didn't hear that.

Scott was the headliner and creator of the Astroworld festival, where 50,000 people were in the audience. Scotts set turned deadly as fans surged toward the stage. The youngest victim was 9-year-old Ezra Blount. The others who died ranged in age from 14 to 27. Some 300 people were injured and treated at the festival site and 25 were taken to hospitals.

More than 300 lawsuits have been filed so far in Houston and will be consolidated and handled by one judge. Scott, concert promoter Live Nation and other companies associated with the event are among those being sued. Additionally, Scott and the event organizers are the focus of a criminal investigation by Houston police. No one has been charged, and no timetable has been set for when the investigation would be completed.

Travis Scott, his entourage, handlers, promoters, managers, hangers on and everyone else who enable him are the problem, said Tony Buzbee, an attorney representing the family of 21-year-old Axel Acosta Avila who died, in a statement provided to the AP on Thursday. Everything that Travis Scott has done or said since ten people died and hundreds of others were injured at his concert has been lawyer driven and calculated to shift blame from him to someone else.

In the interview, Scott denied that his history of encouraging fans to rush the stage or push past security contributed to the chaos at Astroworld.

People didn't just show up there to be harmful, said Scott. People showed up to have a good time and something unfortunate happened.

Scott said he had private discussions with some of the families of the victims. He also said that he understood why some families declined his offer to pay for funeral expenses.

I'm always going to be here to want to help them," Scott said of the victims' families. I gotta continue to show up for that. I just wanted to make sure they knew that I was there for them and continue to be there for them."

Scott said that he wants to know more about what caused the deaths and be a leader in finding ways to prevent similar tragedies from happening at other live events.

I have a responsibility to figure out what happened here. I have a responsibility to figure out the solution, said Scott.

Copyright 2021 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.

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Results from our recent study of South Dakota voters age 50 and older found that they overwhelmingly consider Medicaid an important safety net for low-income residents in the state and express consistent support for expanding access to those who earn less than $18,000 per year. Large majorities of South Dakota voters across party lines also consider it important for South Dakota state lawmakers to bring an estimated $1.3 billion in South Dakota tax dollars back from Washington, DC over the next five years to expand Medicaid health care in their state. Two-thirds of South Dakota voters say they are extremely or very likely to vote to expand Medicaid health care to their fellow residents who earn under $18,000 a year.

Methodology

The South Dakota Medicaid Expansion survey was conducted by phone September 1328, 2021 with a total sample of 1,000 South Dakota registered voters ages 50-plus. All data are weighted by age and gender to accurately reflect the population of registered voters in South Dakota ages 50-plus from the sample source.

For more information, please contact Teresa A. Keenan at tkeenan@aarp.org. For media inquiries, please contact External Relations at media@aarp.org.

Suggested citation:

Keenan, Teresa A. South Dakota Voters' Views on Medicaid Expansion. Washington, DC: AARP Research, December 2021. https://doi.org/10.26419/res.00499.001


NSX Welcomes Haodex Limited

Sydney, Dec 10, 2021 AEST (ABN Newswire) - Haodex Limited ( NSX:HAO ) listed yesterday on the National Stock Exchange of Australia with an initial market capitalisation of $30.3 million.Haodex Limited has developed platforms that aim to bridge the gap in the supply chain between foreign customer demands and local companies supply. Haodex owns 78% of and operates 2 omnichannel marketplaces, being MonkeyKing Australia and BulkBuy, and owns 100% of a short term Chinese accommodation hosting business, Franks Haus.About Haodex Limited

Haodex Limited (NSX:HAO) is an Australian company focused on forward thinking online platforms and global projects.

Haodex owns 78% of and operates 2 omnichannel marketplaces, being MonkeyKing Australia (www.monkeykingaustralia.com) and BulkBuy (www.bulkbuyworld.com), and owns 100% of a short term Chinese accommodation hosting business, Franks Haus (www.frankshaus.com).

MonkeyKing is an online e-commerce platform which sources Australian products from Australian suppliers to distribute to consumers in Asia, mainly China.

BulkBuy is a wholesale e-commerce marketplace which allows users to participate in group buying deals. BulkBuy enables merchants to set up an online store and sell products directly to customers at wholesale prices by allowing several customers to participate in group buying deals (crowd-ordering).

Franks Haus is an online platform for leasing private properties, mainly for short term accommodation, in China. The platform will attract tourists

About NSX Limited

NSX Limited (ASX:NSX) via its wholly owned subsidiary National Stock Exchange of Australia Limited (NSXA) operates the Tier 1 Licensed stock exchange facility for the listing of equity securities, corporate debt and investment scheme units. The company is also involved in trading and settlement activities.
Maybe its meaningful that straight people dont have a lock on pleasantly dull holiday movies. Im kind of serious when I say that! The freedom to be mediocre is underrated. And the warmed-over tropes in Netflixs Single All the Way have the right kind of coziness to them, in this story about two guys who realize theyre in love. A subpar script shouldnt really matter when were talking about a genre designed for curling up under a blanket with a foamy hot mug of something close at hand.

And yet 

Quality-wise, Single All the Way lands somewhere between the flatness of a Hallmark Christmas movie and bigger budget, better written holiday movies like The Family Stone, the kind that once boasted Hollywood stars and that used to show up in theaters, only to become yearly staples thanks to repeated cable airings ever after. I dont foresee a similar kind of annual tradition for this Netflix outing.

Michale Urie (Ugly Betty) stars as Peter, who lives in Los Angeles and creates social media campaigns. He hates every minute of it and cant wait to go home and spend Christmas with his family in small town New Hampshire. This year, he brings along his roommate and longtime best friend Nick (Philemon Chambers in his screen debut) and only semi-jokingly suggests they tell Peters family theyre dating, hoping to short circuit the why are you still single? conversation. They never actually go through with it, which I suppose is one way of subverting expectations, but the script (from Chad Hodge and directed by Michael Mayer) doesnt finesse this back-and-forth as a funny rebuke of the trope. It just feels like an idea from an early draft left in by mistake.

But never fear, the movie includes plenty of other old chestnuts, so off they go to picturesque New Hampshire  big city transplant returns home to the quaint locale of their childhood, check  where Mom (Kathy Najimy) and Dad (Barry Bostwick) welcome them with open arms. Jennifer Coolidge plays the kooky aunt (check) and Schitts Creek alum Jennifer Robertson plays Peters kooky sister (uh, check I guess?) and since not being in a romantic relationship is considered an aberration (check, check, check) mom has set Peter up on a blind date with her trainer (Luke Macfarlane) while dad and the cousins are convinced that Nick is actually the one for Peter.

Theres a lot of this conspiring and opining behind Nick and Peters backs, about whether theyre destined to be together, and its meant to be warmly overbearing but it actually just feels icky and maybe Im a buzzkill for saying that, so on to the next obstacle which is  Peter and Nick do in fact have hearts in their eyes for each other but are hesitant to really go for it.

Thats about as much conflict as the film can muster, which is resolved when they decide to move to New Hampshire, where there is nary another Black person in sight, let alone gay people besides moms trainer and they never even mention this in a soooo, how do we feel about building a life here? type of way. I probably wouldnt care if the whole thing didnt feel like it was sanded down to its blandest form, because both Urie and Chambers make for delightful screen company. You like being around them. Its easy and light and theyre on the same wavelength. I just wish the film had better writing or at least a wild instinct to throw good sense out the window and get really and truly schmaltzy. Its comforting but unfulfilling, settling for the equivalent of TV as background noise.

Theres scant physical comedy but one moment stands out: Peter is rolling his cart through the liquor store, contemplating the holiday with his cacophonous family, and he grabs a bottle of wine. Pause. Then another. Pause. Then four more. It works because Urie has great timing.

Single All the Way cannot sustain itself on Uries considerable charms alone, but hes been so underused since the days of Ugly Betty that its thrilling to see him in a starring role. If only it was a better one.
Copyright  2021 Albuquerque Journal

SANTA FE  Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham authorized legislators Thursday to take emergency action to update New Mexicos new medical malpractice law to address insurance concerns raised by independent medical practices and physicians.

She amended her proclamation for the special legislative session that began this week to allow lawmakers to take up a bill clarifying that independent physicians arent considered employees or agents of a hospital  and thus exposed to more legal liability  if they visit a hospital to perform surgery or handle other work.

The proposal, House Bill 11, makes other technical changes to the law, too, to clarify the legal liability for outpatient clinics.

Independent physicians and their medical practices warned legislators this week that they expected to close their offices or curtail operations Dec. 31 because of an inability to get insurance.

The concern surfaced after insurance carriers raised questions about how to interpret language in the new Medical Malpractice Act defining who in the health care system should be subject to a $4 million cap on certain legal damages and who faces a $750,000 cap.

Bipartisan legislation updating the act was passed earlier this year. It made hospitals subject to the higher cap and put independent physicians under the lower cap, but insurance carriers later questioned how to treat independent doctors who sometimes work at a hospital or who own and operate small clinics.

A coalition of trial lawyers, patients, physicians and hospitals reached agreement this week on what they described as technical fixes that would clarify the law to ensure it worked as intended.

Lujan Grisham, a Democrat, controls the agenda of the special session, and she agreed Thursday to add the issue to the list of topics legislators may take up.

Her office met with all concerned parties after being made aware of the concerns and agreed to make a technical fix to the act germane in the ongoing special session in order to avert any unintended consequences of the act as it is currently written, Lujan Grisham spokeswoman Nora Meyers Sackett said.

The proposal is expected to go before the House Judiciary Committee on Friday morning and could reach the full House for consideration late in the day. It would also need Senate approval to reach the governor.

Besides the medical malpractice, the special session is otherwise dedicated to redistricting and the allocation of federal stimulus funds.
Copyright  2021 Albuquerque Journal

COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations both ticked up on Thursday, with the state reporting 1,626 new cases, which was nearly 200 more from the day before.

The state also reported 14 additional deaths, bringing the statewide toll to 5,459. Those whose deaths were reported on Thursday ranged in age from a McKinley County man in his 20s to a Bernalillo County woman in her 90s. Three of the dead were residents of senior-living facilities.

There were 716 COVID hospitalizations around the state compared with 687 the day before. Those are the highest number of cases in New Mexico hospitals since early January, when vaccines werent widely available. Of the new cases reported, Bernalillo County had the most with 493.

Vaccinated people made up about 14.3% of the deaths during a four-week period that ended this week, according to Department of Health officials.

The fuel for this fire  is unvaccinated individuals, Acting Health Secretary David Scrase said during a media briefing this week.

Nearly 75% of New Mexico adults are fully vaccinated and 26% have had a booster shot, according to the Health Departments website. New Mexicos seven-day test positivity rate was 12.6%.

The cases and test rate reported by the state dont include data from people who test themselves in their own home with over-the-counter COVID tests, which can be purchased at certain drug stores, said Christine Ross, the state epidemiologist.

We want people to use these tests, we want people to have really easy access to testing, and we want to provide as much information as we can about how they need to act on that result, Ross said.
Round and round we go, chasing an elusive formula to improve K-12 educational outcomes in our state.

Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham has planted a flag on the issue of teacher pay, asking the Legislature to boost New Mexico educational salaries by 7%.

Lawmakers should seriously consider this move  especially given the states strong financial outlook. Revenue growth based on consumer spending and revenue from oil and gas production has state economists projecting $1.6 billion in new money over this years spending levels.

That would easily cover the cost of proposed raises and a revised salary schedule, estimated to cost $280 million a year. In addition to 7% raises, the governors proposal calls for increasing the minimum salary for teachers in the states three-tier licensing system to $50,000, $60,000 and $70,000. Its intended to bring N.M. salaries in line with the national average, making the state more competitive with Colorado and Texas. It also serves a long-term goal of making the profession more attractive to college students, putting more in the teaching pipeline.

But lets not confuse the goals here. Lawmakers shouldnt expect a hike in teacher pay to be the sole answer to filling teacher vacancies (N.M. Public Education Secretary-designate Kurt Steinhaus recently cited an estimated 1,000 teacher vacancies statewide) and solving the states feeble school performance (just one out of three students can read at grade level and one out of five can do grade-level math).

If higher salaries get more teachers through the schoolhouse doors and keep them there, fine. We need that. But its wishful thinking to expect better pay alone will get more folks into the profession, keep them there or deliver better student performance.

N.M. teachers leave the profession at a much higher rate than the national average. The Legislature needs to consider all factors that contribute to these early exits. Educators and their advocates have testified in the Roundhouse about the need for better support from school leaders, more professional development and extra time to plan. It would be unfair to expect teachers to do better just because theyre making more money.

Speaking of support for teachers, Lujan Grishams compensation request correctly applies to all front-line education staff, from teachers aides to janitors to counselors. But it makes zero fiscal/bottom-line sense to include all central office administrators in the plan.

Meanwhile, if higher pay is on the menu, some accountability measures should be, too. That means continuing education requirements and measurable performance standards to ensure students are doing better. Its a sore spot among some, but taxpayers should be able see tangible results. That didnt happen when we adopted the three-tiered licensing system with raises in 2003  a 2012 Legislative Finance Committee Report found nearly 6,000 teachers advanced to new license levels, receiving $59 million in mandatory salary increases yet student performance  has not improved.

As if all that isnt complicated enough, lawmakers must also consider extended learning times to overcome pandemic-related learning deficits and find ways to boost per-pupil funding to provide more resources to schools, especially in light of the court-ordered Yazzie-Martinez Action Plan that guarantees all public school students the opportunity to be college and career-ready.

Even if these proposed raises materialize, it will take time for them to have an impact on attracting young New Mexicans to the profession. So, other creative approaches will be needed to shore up the teacher workforce. One is waiving the one-year sit-out requirement for teachers to double dip (collect a pension while still working) for a few years. In the past, weve also suggested attracting alternative license or J-1 and H-1B visa program teachers from other countries to the classroom. And heavily publicizing alternative licensure programs that get educated, qualified folks into a second career and into a classroom should already be happening.

New Mexicos K-12 public education has been in trouble for a long time, with an insufficient workforce and abysmal student proficiency results. A debate about teacher pay is a good starting point for a larger discussion about systemic changes that need to occur to get the states public education system on the right track.

This editorial first appeared in the Albuquerque Journal. It was written by members of the editorial board and is unsigned as it represents the opinion of the newspaper rather than the writers.
Copyright  2021 Albuquerque Journal

The Bernalillo County Sheriffs Office has identified the man shot and killed by at least one deputy on Tuesday as 41-year-old Mario Armando Diaz.

Jayme Fuller, a BCSO spokeswoman, said around 8:15 p.m. deputies were called by Albuquerque Police Department dispatch because a domestic violence incident had been reported at an Allsups gas station on Coors and Blake SW.

The victim in the incident had called the nonemergency line from an apartment complex at 6200 Montano Plaza NW, near Coors.

Deputies were sent to talk to the victim around 9 p.m., Fuller said, and they learned that a battery had occurred.

While speaking with the victim, the offender of the suspected battery arrived on the scene, Fuller said. The offender quickly fled on foot, and deputies engaged in a foot pursuit with the suspect.

She said when the deputies caught up with the suspect a physical altercation occurred and at least one deputy fired one round, striking the suspect during the encounter.

The Multi Agency Task Force  made up of BCSO, APD and New Mexico State Police  is investigating the shooting.

Fuller said a news conference will be held about the incident after the deputies are interviewed and videos reviewed.

Diazs friends and family could not be reached Thursday.
Copyright  2021 Albuquerque Journal

SANTA FE  Ten years ago, Democratic legislators in the majority couldnt agree on a plan to redraw the boundaries of the states congressional districts, failing even to send a proposal to the Republican governor.

But a much different picture is coming into focus this year.

Redistricting proposals for Congress and legislative seats are marching quickly through committees as Democrats stick together and use their hefty majorities to propel the maps toward passage  with Republicans powerless so far to stop it.

The fast pace in the first few days of the special session has triggered bitter opposition from Republicans.

Sen. Mark Moores, R-Albuquerque, on Thursday accused Senate Democrats of meeting privately to work out the maps ahead of time.

This process is broken, Moores said in a committee hearing Thursday.

Democrats, in turn, say they have immediately made the proposed maps public and based them, in large part, on the work of the Citizen Redistricting Committee, an independent group created this year that accepted public testimony in hearings throughout New Mexico.

Many of the changes made to the committees recommendations for state senators, for example, ensured two sets of Republican incumbents in southeastern New Mexico werent paired in districts, forcing them to run against each other to keep a seat, Democratic senators said.

We can never take politics out of redistricting  you just cant, Sen. Bill ONeill, D-Albuquerque, said. But were heading in that direction.

Political contrast

The political environment at the Capitol is much different now than a decade ago.

In 2011, Democrats clung to a 36-33 majority over Republicans in the House, giving them almost no margin for disagreement to pass a plan over GOP objections. This year, Democrats have a 45-24 majority.

Democrat Michelle Lujan Grisham also occupies the Governors Office, in contrast to 2011, when Republican Susana Martinez served as chief executive.

In the end, Martinez vetoed redistricting plans for the state House and Senate, and the Legislature didnt send her a plan for Congress.

Court action ultimately determined the boundaries.

Senate Majority Whip Linda Lopez  an Albuquerque Democrat who led a redistricting committee 10 years ago  said this years session is much different.

The work of the Citizen Redistricting Committee, she said, gave the Legislature a jump start this year.

The committee-recommended maps arent advancing at the Legislature this year. But they were often the starting point, Democrats said, for the plans now moving forward.

Lopez said 68% of the Senate map moving through the Legislature matches a proposal from the Citizen Redistricting Committee.

Using the CRC map as the basis, you can make this a much more efficient process, she said.

Not a monster

In the House, Republicans plan to propose their own redrawing of the chambers 70 district boundary lines, but it likely faces long odds given Democrats decisive majority.

Democrats insistence that they based their proposals on the committee recommendations hasnt quelled GOP concerns. Some House Republicans contend the Democratic-backed maps would specifically target some of their incumbents.

Rep. Martin Zamora, R-Clovis, accused Democrats on the House floor of trying to purge Hispanic Republicans from the chamber by making changes to their districts.

I am not a monster, Zamora said this week. I am not a bad person because Im a Republican Chicano.

In a Senate hearing, Republican Sen. Cliff Pirtle of Roswell, said he opted against even introducing his own congressional proposal.

I know exactly where its going to be filed if I brought that forward, he said Thursday.

Fast pace

Partisan disagreement aside, a host of plans are making fast progress inside the Roundhouse.

The plans moving forward include:

 Senate Bill 1, redrawing congressional districts, has cleared two committees and is awaiting action by the full Senate.

It would give Democrats an edge in all three of New Mexicos seats in the U.S. House, according to analysis of voting trends over the last decade. Democrats now hold two of the seats.

Albuquerque would be split into two districts  with much of the West Side, South Valley and neighborhoods southwest of Downtown going to the 2nd Congressional District, which also cover southern New Mexico.

The remainder of Albuquerque would share a district with Rio Rancho in the 1st Congressional District while also stretching down through Lincoln County to Ruidoso.

 Senate Bill 2, revising boundaries for the 42 state Senate districts, passed one committee Thursday and must clear one more before heading to the full Senate.

It would establish 27 Democratic-leaning districts, similar to the total now. Democrats have held 26 or 27 seats in recent years.

The plan also would pair two sets of incumbents into the same districts  Democrats Bill ONeill and Gerald Ortiz y Pino in Albuquerque, and Republicans Joshua Sanchez of Bosque and Greg Baca of Belen. Baca is the Senate minority leader.

 House Bill 8, redrawing the 70 districts of the state House, has passed two committees and is awaiting action by the full chamber.

It would pair Democrat Dayan Hochman-Vigil and Republican Bill Rehm, both of Albuquerque, and Republican Greg Nibert and independent Phelps Anderson, both of Roswell.

Forty-five of the 70 seats would be Democratic leaning, according to political performance data, the same number of seats Democrats now hold.

 A measure to revise boundaries of the state Public Education Commission.
The Board of Education for Albuquerque Public Schools unanimously approved a new procurement policy Wednesday just months after former state Rep. Sheryl Williams Stapleton was accused of abusing the previous procedure by alledgedly embezzling millions of dollars from APS.

Stapleton worked as the districts coordinator and director of Career and Technical Education, and allegedly used her position to funnel money from APS to businesses and entities with ties to herself, according to the indictment.

The district has followed state and federal guidelines, but its new, official policy specifically:

 Creates a new code of conduct for procurements.

 Establishes rules pertaining to competition, impartiality, transparency.

 Creates internal controls to curb fraud, waste and abuse of APS resources.

It also explicitly prohibits APS employees from participating in the procurement process if the employee or the employees immediate family members have a financial interest in obtaining a contract.

Sole-source contract at issue

Through her former position at APS, Stapleton oversaw a sole-source contract for vocational training that awarded more than $5 million over 15 years to a Washington, D.C.-based company, according to her indictment. About $950,000 from that contract was alledgedly diverted by Stapleton to companies and charities connected to her.

Stapleton was indicted by a grand jury in September on one count of racketeering, five counts of money laundering and separate counts of soliciting or receiving kickbacks, and having an unlawful interest in a public contract and other crimes.

Stapleton, speaking through her attorney, has denied any wrongdoing.

Though Stapleton was not mentioned by name during the meeting, board member Barbara Petersen alluded to the investigation during board member comments.

There are mistakes that we should have caught, she said. But the most important thing is developing the policy and the training and the practice that makes sure (it is) if not impossible, is way harder (to violate), she said.

The purpose of the new policy, APS Chief Financial Officer Tami Coleman said during the meeting, is to ensure that all APS employees and anyone involved with purchases know that there are procedures to be followed and to codify internal controls.

It really falls mostly on the procurement office to really lock in those internal controls that are necessary for us to assure that we follow good processes and that we are treating taxpayer funds with the utmost respect as they deserve, she said.

A first for APS

Prior to the adoption of the new policy, APS had no official procurement policy, board members were told.

Rennette Apodaca, APS procurement executive director, said that while APS had no official policy, it has been following state and federal procurement rules.

A lot of this was already in place, she said. Weve already been doing it.

Under the new policy, APS employees involved in the procurement process will have to ensure that it is carried out on a competitive basis determined by the APS purchasing directive, and adhere to rules regarding efficient and effective procurement.

Central to the allegations against Stapleton is a sole-source contract awarded to Washington, D.C.-based Robotic Learning Management Systems LLC.

Stapleton alledgedly helped the company secure and maintain its contract, according to court records.

The new policy advises against sole-source contracts, stating that exceptions to competition thresholds and processes shall be allowed in exceptional situations only as allowed by law and regulations.

Competition exceptions must be approved by the procurement executive director and include fact-based justifiable documentation, according to the new policy.
Copyright  2021 Albuquerque Journal

SANTA FE  A plan to split Albuquerque between two congressional districts and reorient New Mexicos political landscape won approval 25-15 in the state Senate late Friday and now heads to the House.

The proposal underwent significant changes in a committee hearing early Friday before securing the Senates endorsement in the evening.

It would split Albuquerque and establish a Democratic lean in all three congressional districts, just as a previous version did.

Democrats now hold two of the three seats.

Sen. Joseph Cervantes, a Las Cruces Democrat and sponsor of the measure, said New Mexicos long-standing congressional map is out of date.

The existing map has an Albuquerque-based district, then a northern New Mexico seat and a southern seat.

But Cervantes said water scarcity, climate change and other challenges arent well-served by the north-south orientation and would be better addressed by the proposed districts.

This map does something unique  reimagine New Mexico, reimagine a state where Albuquerque is not an island to itself, he said.

Republican opponents of the Cervantes plan, however, said it would dilute rural voices by mixing them in with bigger-city residents.

They said it didnt make sense for, say, someone living in liberal Santa Fe to serve as the representative of conservative-leaning communities along eastern New Mexico and part of the oil patch.

The urban/rural divide in New Mexico is real, said Sen. Ron Griggs, R-Alamogordo.

The bill passed along party lines, with Republicans and one independent opposed.

Under the revised version of Senate Bill 1:

 The 1st Congressional District would cover eastern Albuquerque, part of the citys West Side and part of Rio Rancho. It would also stretch from Placitas through the East Mountains and down to the edge of Roswell.

Based on an analysis of voting trends over the last 10 years, Democrats would have a 7 percentage point advantage in the 1st Congressional District over Republicans.

The district is now held by Democrat Melanie Stansbury of Northeast Albuquerque.

 The 2nd Congressional District  now based in southern New Mexico  would instead cover part of the West Side of Albuquerque, neighborhoods southwest of Downtown Albuquerque and the South Valley.

The district would also stretch south to cover Las Cruces, Carlsbad and part of Hobbs in the oil patch.

It would have a 6 percentage point lean toward Democrats.

Republican Yvette Herrell of Alamogordo now represents the district.

 The 3rd Congressional District would still be based in northern New Mexico. It would also cover part of Rio Rancho and stretch all the way to part of Hobbs.

It would have a 12 point Democratic lean. The incumbent is Democrat Teresa Leger Fernandez of Santa Fe.

During Fridays debate, Sen. Jacob Candelaria, an Albuquerque independent who opposed the bill, questioned why some heavily Hispanic parts of Albuquerque would be moved into the southern-based 2nd Congressional District.

Why is it always conveniently Hispanics and people of color who have to bear the brunt of these bad choices? Candelaria asked.

But Sen. Michael Padilla, D-Albuquerque, said the proposed changes could open the door for more Hispanic candidates to win election in the 2nd Congressional District.

One Hispanic candidate, Democrat Xochitl Torres Small of Las Cruces, has held the seat since it was created in the 1960s.
Copyright  2021 Albuquerque Journal

SANTA FE  A retooled plan to spend a chunk of New Mexicos remaining federal COVID-19 relief funds could pave the way for construction of a new hospital in Valencia County.

The House voted 65-1 on Friday to endorse a $504.5 million spending plan that, after being amended earlier in the day, includes $50 million for construction of a new acute care hospital in New Mexico.

While the bill, House Bill 2, does not specify where the hospital would be located other than stipulating it would be in a county with fewer than 100,000 residents, several legislators acknowledged a long-running effort in Valencia County to build a new health care facility.

Senate Minority Leader Greg Baca, R-Belen, said he and other legislators have pushed for funding to build a new hospital that could also serve nearby areas like Mountainair.

This has been a long time in the making, Baca told the Journal. Its really going to improve health care in the area.

Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham in April vetoed a bill that would have authorized funds from a 2006 mill levy to be redirected for construction of a new 24-hour hospital in Valencia County. She said in her veto message the funding shift would be undemocratic.

But the Democratic governor met in July with Valencia County health care administrators and elected officials about health care needs in the area and said Friday she was glad to see progress on the issue.

Delivering funds to support the construction of a Valencia County hospital has been a priority for my administration, Lujan Grisham said in a social media post.

Previous attempts to build a new hospital in the county with about 76,000 residents have also been unsuccessful, even though a 2015 study found there was more than 41,000 visits by county residents to University of New Mexico Hospital in Albuquerque and its affiliated clinics.

But the proposal to spend $504.5 million that New Mexico received under the federal American Rescue Plan Act could give new life to the project, while also appropriating funding for nine road construction projects around the state and broadband expansion efforts.

The state currently has roughly $1.1 billion in unspent federal relief funds, which were the subject of a legal dispute between a bipartisan group of legislators and Lujan Grishams office.

The Supreme Court ultimately sided with the lawmakers in the case, ruling Lujan Grisham could not spend the money without legislative approval. That prompted the Democratic governor to add spending of the funds to the agenda of the ongoing special session on redistricting.

The plan approved Friday by the House Appropriations and Finance Committee would leave spending decisions for about $698 million of the federal relief dollars until a 30-day regular session that starts in January.

Thats because about $133 million of the money included in the legislative plan comes from a separate federal fund that is intended specifically for capital projects.

Meanwhile, other changes made Friday to the bill include the addition of $2 million for a teacher preparation scholarship fund, which could help nearly 170 aspiring teachers at least partially pay for tuition and fee expenses.

More money is expected to be appropriated to the scholarship fund during the upcoming 30-day legislative session as New Mexico grapples with a statewide teacher shortage caused in part by a surge in recent retirements, a top legislative official said.

This is a first strong step as we go into the holiday season, said Rep. Nathan Small, D-Las Cruces, who described the states teacher shortage as acute.

The spending package now advances to the Senate, which could make changes to the legislation before a final vote. If that were to happen, the bill would have to return to the House for final approval before being sent to Lujan Grisham.

The governor could then sign the bill in its entirety, veto it or use her line-item veto authority to ax specific earmarks.
Copyright  2021 Albuquerque Journal

A year after Albuquerque Mayor Tim Keller stood on vacant land near the citys airport to ballyhoo a potential development deal so big officials were afraid that discussing it might jinx it, the deal has collapsed.

The aerospace company behind the planned Orion Center has imploded amid financial and legal trouble, killing its planned agreement to lease and develop 114.5 acres of Albuquerque Aviation Department land  a project company representatives had said could eventually employ 2,500 people.

From day one, we were cautiously optimistic. The proposal seemed a little too good to be true but we wanted to at least give it a shot at no risk to the City, Keller said in a statement Friday. After waiting 8 months for them to seal the deal, its time we move on.

Company officials have not yet responded to a request for comment.

Local officials began speaking publicly about the project last year, including at a November 2020 news conference after the citys Environmental Planning Commission approved its site plan. Keller announced then that Group Orion, a Washington, D.C.-based aerospace company with plans to map and model the Earths surface using a network of satellites, planned to build a massive campus near Kirtland Air Force Base. He called the proposed campus, which was slated to eventually host thousands of employees tasked with constructing and testing the satellites, a frankly unbelievable bright spot in the midst of a pandemic.

Though Keller cautioned that the deal was a work in progress, he frequently heralded it as a reason for optimism. By April, the Albuquerque City Council had approved a ground lease and development agreement that called on Orions parent company  Theia Group Inc., or TGI  to develop at least 48 acres by 2025 and the whole site within a decade.

But the company never signed the agreement  which would have triggered an initial $1 million payment  the city said in a news release Friday.

The massive center has come under scrutiny as TGI has faced lawsuits and been forced to relinquish company assets and, city officials say, failed to follow through on commitments.

In August, New York-based investment firm FCS Advisors LLC filed suit against Theia Group, alleging that the aerospace company owed approximately $289 million after failing to pay back a pair of promissory notes, according to court filings.

Court records indicate that at an October court hearing, legal counsel for Theia stated: There is no company today. Theres no money being spent in any meaningful way.

In November, U.S. District Judge Kevin Castel ruled that Theia Group must relinquish its assets, including a license granted by the Federal Communications Commission allowing the company to build its network of satellites, to a court-appointed third party.

In his decision, Castel wrote that Theia Groups finances had deteriorated quickly, necessitating what he termed an extraordinary remedy.

The company was not forthcoming with information amid the lawsuits, the city said in its news release.

On Nov. 24, the city notified the receiver that it could not proceed with the deal given the circumstances, Sunport spokeswoman Stephanie Kitts said.

The City understands that the appointed receiver is in the process of liquidating all of TGIs assets and will sell the FCC license allowing the creation of a satellite network to a different entity. If the receiver or another entity expresses interest in renewing negotiations with the City to establish a facility at the  property, those options will be evaluated, the city said in its release.

The city had not offered any economic development incentives to the company during negotiations, the release said.

Sunport spokeswoman Kitts said that the city is actively marketing the property and has received preliminary interest from a company she said she could not yet identify.

City Councilor Pat Davis, whose district includes the site, said the loss is disappointing but the city at least had received a $125,000 security deposit from the company early in its dealings so taxpayers arent out money. He said there is significant interest in that part of Albuquerque, and the city should be able to identify another tenant.

Its not that this company (TGI) changed their mind on Albuquerque, Davis said. Its that in this tech sort of field, best laid plans dont always work.
Copyright  2021 Albuquerque Journal

When wildfire smoke creates hazy skies across the West, many cities and states warn residents that the pollution could cause respiratory issues.

Now a University of New Mexico research team has found that exposure to the smoke, even from a distance, could also cause neurological problems and premature aging.

The researchers worked out of a mobile lab in Laguna Pueblo for nearly three weeks in October 2020 to study effects of drifting wildfire smoke on mice.

Matthew Campen, a professor in UNMs College of Pharmacy, said a key finding was increased brain inflammation in the mice.

Inflammation is sort of the beginning of every disease that we know about, like lung and heart diseases, Campen said. Inflammation in the brain leads to all sorts of things, from mood disorders to developmental problems to long-term neurodegeneration like Alzheimers and dementia.

The team published its findings this week in the Toxicological Sciences journal.

All procedures were approved by a UNM committee that oversees the use of lab animals.

Smoke that drifted from California, Arizona and Washington to the test site contained small particles from wood and other manmade materials burned in the wildfires.

The smoke exposure impaired the blood-brain barrier in the mice.

That barrier typically allows blood nutrients to get to the brain, but also acts as a principal line of defense against toxins.

Brain cells respond to that (impairment), and you get immune cells from the rest of the body coming into the brain, Campen said. These different cell types invade the brain essentially to protect it, but the concern is how long it lasts and if it fixes itself in short periods of time, or has implications for long-term dementia or Alzheimers or depression.

The mice in New Mexico were hundreds of miles away from the wildfire sources.

But millions of people who live closer to the fires were exposed to much greater pollution concentrations.

Campen said he hopes the study will prompt clinical research into the short- and long-term neurological effects of direct smoke exposure on firefighters and other residents.

This was just a tiny little study, but the effects are alarming, he said. Wildfire smoke is not going away.

Theresa Davis is a Report for America corps member covering water and the environment for the Albuquerque Journal.
BUTTE COUNTY, Calif. - A new California law may change the way you throw out your food.

The effort is to get organic waste like food and yard scraps out of landfills and instead turn them into compost.

The change is supposed to come on Jan. 1., but Butte County and the City of Chico Public Works are planning on applying for an extension.

Jim Reynolds lives in Chico and is not too happy to hear about the coming waste change, even though it may be some time before it takes effect.

To put it in a separate can and have a smelly can out on your back porch, it's not something I am looking forward to, said Reynolds. Thats just one more can thats going to line our streets.

Cities, counties and trash providers do have a few options. They can help customers combine yard and food waste in the same trash container to go to a compost facility, or they can add a separate can for food waste specifically.

Currently, people living in Chico have an extra container for their yard scraps, but combining this with food scraps would mean having a compost facility that could handle the two together.

Sometimes the green waste doesn't necessarily act well with your food waste, said Josh Pack, Director of Public Works for Butte County. There may be a bin. It may be incorporated in yard waste."

According to Cal Recycle, 20% of Californias methane pollution comes from food, yard and other organic waste rotting in landfills.

Cal Recycle adds that the implementation of this composting effort is one of the fastest and easiest ways Californians can fight climate change, feed Californians in need, conserve precious water used to grow food, and move the state towards a future with less pollution and more green jobs.

The big challenge for places like Butte County and Chico is finding a compost facility that can work with food and yard waste.

"I think the lack of facilities is going to be a problem for many organizations, so finding those facilities is what we are trying to determine and find the best approach that will be the easiest on residents and commercial businesses, said Parks and Natural Resource Manager for the City of Chico, Linda Herman.

Right now, Butte County does have the only facility north of Marysville that turns food waste into energy and gas through anaerobic digestion but currently does not process any yard waste.

Butte County is considering going through a third-party service to get the job done, but there are still many hoops to jump through before this becomes a reality.

Reynolds is concerned if adding an extra bin will just mean an extra garbage truck.

Pollution in general from a big garbage truck has to outweigh the amount of methane gas they could capture and put to good use, Reynolds told Action News Now.

Both Butte County and Chico are trying to avoid an extra can for residents if possible, but whatever happens, you have time to prepare.

On Jan. 1, youre not going to see new bins. Youre not going to see all sorts of new standards till over the next couple of years, said Pack.

Pack said Public Works will be going before the Butte County Board of Supervisors in January to discuss what the best implementation plan will be.

Chico Public Works is planning on also doing the same with City Council in February.

Now is not the time to start combining your food waste with green waste. The city and county will notify you when the change will take effect.
REDDING, Calif. - The Bay Area woman charged with starting the Fawn Fire was back in court on Thursday.

A Shasta County judge ordered that Alexandra Souverneva be placed with the Department of State Hospitals so that she can undergo competency training.

She already has been declared as incompetent to stand trial, said Gregg Cohen, Souvernevas attorney. She'll go down there and hopefully be restored to competency sometime soon.

Souverneva must be admitted to the state hospital within 90 days. It's still unknown how long she'll be required to stay.

Souverneva is charged with felony arson for starting the Fawn Fire in September.

Cohen also told Action News Now, the arson charges against her still stand. Once she finishes her treatment and evaluation, she will return to Shasta County to face trial.

It's based on how well they can get her to come around, said Cohen. When she's restored to competency, then she'll come back to ready for her charges.

RELATED: Fawn Fire suspect to be placed into state hospital

But months after the fire, families impacted by it are still hurt and angry.

[Im] pissed off. However, I knew this was going to be the result. It's just the way California is going now, said Bonnie Jorgensen, who lost her home to the Fawn Fire. Having said that, I'm just waiting. I'm angry. The law isn't necessarily fair. What victims would like to see is good old justice.

It's because of this one person who decided to light this fire during fire season and all these people lose their homes, said Percy Gonzales, who also her home to the fire. It's horrible. We've worked our entire lives to have what we have. We have nothing now.

Jorgensen and Gonzales raised their family on their property for many years. Some of whats left standing include their Gazebo, some tables, the pool, and a swing set. Nearly all their memories were lost to the fire.

We have no past. Our entire past is gone, said Gonzales.

Jorgensen hopes to see the suspect prosecuted.

I expect to see her stand trial, said Jorgensen. I expect her to be held accountable for not just for our family. But all the rest of the families and all of the fire victims around.

Gonzales said she hopes this brings their family closure.

Gonzales and Jorgensen told Action News Now they are planning on rebuilding but it will take them some time.

The Fawn Fire burned 8,578 acres and destroyed 185 structures.
CORNING, Calif. - Corning Police Department is looking for a person who was last in contact with family on Nov. 8.

Police said Rochell Smith, 38, was supposed to be in the Oroville area.

Anyone with information is asked to contact the Corning Police Department.
BUTTE COUNTY, Calif. - New information from the Butte County Sheriff on the double murder in the Gridley area.

Sheriff Kory Honea tells Action News Now they're looking for a man named Alfredo Banuelos-Villarreal. He is one of two suspects wanted for murder.

Ladexter Pelt (left) and John Dubose Jr. (right) were reported missing on Saturday. Ladexter Pelt (left) and John Dubose Jr. (right) were reported missing on Saturday.

The sheriff's office believes the two killed two Alabama men visiting the area and last seen near Gridley.

"They ended up at a residence in the unincorporated area outside Gridley," Honea said. "We believe while they were there, they were victims of murder. The Gridley Police department was contacted when family members lost contact with Pelt and Dubose (victims)."

RELATED: BCSO: Suspect arrested for murder of 2 Alabama men, searching for another suspect

Police have not found bodies, but Honea says there's evidence pointing to murder.

"Through the course of the investigation, we've verified the family member have lost with Pelt and Dubose, both of their cell phones have been recovered and there's been no sign of life since then. Through exhaustive investigation with interviews with people in their circle, and crime scene analysis, we came to believe they were victims of homicide and their bodies were disposed of," Honea said.
BUTTE COUNTY, Calif. - A man arrested for starting seven fires in the area of Forbestown Rd. in June pleaded no contest to two charges Wednesday, according to District Attorney Mike Ramsey.

Ramsey said Guy Dalrymple admitted to starting the two fires during a state of emergency.

RELATED: Suspect arrested for starting seven fires in Butte County

Dalrymple faces 11 years in state prison and will be back in court on Jan. 12 for sentencing.

He previosuly pleaded not guilty to all seven charges.
CHICO, Calif. - Traffic heading southbound at the intersection of Forest Ave. and Springfield Dr. is shut down due to an Amazon vehicle on its side in Chico, according to the Chico Police Department.

Chico PD received a call around 4:27 p.m. that an Amazon van traveling southbound on Forest Ave. is on its side.

A small Toyota SUV ran a red light going westbound on Springfield Dr. and crashed with the Amazon van.

Police said it is at the intersection near the WinCo in the area.

The driver of the van is a 35-year-old woman who complained of pain and was transported to Enloe.

The 81-year-old Toyota driver didn't receive injuries but was shocked, according to police on the scene.

Roads are expected to be closed for the next hour.

This is a developing story. Action News Now will keep you updated with new information on-air and online.
BREEZER, Indias go-to RTD (ready-to-drink) brand, has joined hands with one of the worlds biggest & longest running music media brand, Mixmag to bring their flagship property The Lab to India. Kick-starting on the 9th of December 21, the most colourful parties in Goa will take place every Thursday from 4pm  8pm in Goa, all the way till 10th February 22. With ten parties lined up, BREEZER brings an unforgettable experience to their audience is Goa, and pushes them to Live Life In Colour.

Known for its close-knit and immersive parties, The Lab Goa brings a power-packed line up of DJs hailing from all corners of the country. Fans get a chance to witness the performance of Anyasa, Doctor Dru, Sickflip, Desiree, IncInk Records Showcase and Kiss Nuka to name a few. With the sun kissed weather of Goa, the ocean waves, and the colourful BREEZER flavours, audiences can kick back and enjoy the sundowner with the beats of a new artist every Thursday.

Arti Hajela, Category and Brand Lead, RTD AMEA said, "BREEZER has always had a strong association with fun and vibrant experiences, and we are excited to bring Mixmags global flagship party India. With the launch of The Lab Goa, we want to bring some of the biggest and the best artists of India and give our consumers a head-banging sun-downer every Thursday evening. We look forward to having to having our consumers Live Life In Colour!

Grab your tickets on https://thelabgoawithanyasa.splashthat.com/ , and join us at The Lab Goa, on the hilltops of Salud, Ozran Beach, Vagator, Goa, every Thursday!

Catch all the full artist line up and updates on social media byfollowing BREEZER, Mixmag and #LiveLifeInColour
Creating a niche in the clear aligners industry, direct-to-consumer dental-tech start-up Snazzy has raised a $2.2 million seed funding round from YCombinator, Form Capital, Goodwater Capital, and ANIM Fund. The round saw participation from several angel investors such as Kunal Shah (Founder, CRED), Bobby Goodlatte (Stripe and coinbase angel investor), Eric Idiahi (Partner, Verod Capital), and others. Snazzy is on a mission to deliver a world-class treatment at the convenience of home and the funds will be to strengthen its team across engineering, marketing, operations, dentistry, and sales, to support its accelerated growth plans.

Contrary to general belief, the perfect smile comes with a price tag attached to it and a rather expensive one. This coupled with the restrictions, multiple orthodontic clinic visits and not to mention the painful days where a slice of pizza seems like a distant dream, causes many to shy away from traditional orthodontic treatments.

Snazzy leverages a direct-to-consumer business model, as well as several other technologies, many of which were not available a few years ago, to provide clear aligners at unprecedented prices and in a modern, convenient manner to suit the busy lifestyle of todays consumers. The alignment sets are 3D printed in clear plastic, so there are no brackets or wires to poke at tender gums and can be removed to eat, brush, and floss. The initial scanning is carried at the patients home, and once they start the treatment, individuals are supposed to check in with their remote orthodontists every two weeks. The patients are provided end-to-end support until they reach the smile they love.

As a twentysomething who, like most, neglected to get his teeth corrected in teens, Ayush Pateria, the co-founder and CEO, was frustrated not finding a convenient and affordable solution in the market. It was shocking to find that the existing aligner solutions were priced at upwards of 2 lacs, making it accessible only to a few ultra-privileged. At Snazzy, we have used a tech-first approach to make straighter smiles accessible, convenient and affordable! said Ayush.

There is a massive gap between those who actively seek orthodontic care v/s who can go through the process. About 80% of the people require orthodontic care, yet less than one percent of people can go for it. Right here, the founders Ayush and Keshav decided to innovate and Snazzy was born.

Founded in 2020 by IIT Hyderabad graduates - Ayush Pateria and Keshav Chouksey - Snazzy is on a mission to make the first-of-its-kind cosmetology brand with its software and offline presence, delivering safe, easy, and affordable cosmetic treatments to India. The company follows a vertically integrated model by manufacturing aligners and leveraging teledentistry to provide treatments via its network of orthodontists, helping individuals save more than 70 percent of the amount required on an average in clinics. Ayush (25) majored in computer science from IIT Hyderabad and had a brief stint in a Silicon Valley startup before. Ayush had previously developed an app to send free SMS when he was 15, which was downloaded over a million times in the play store. Keshav (24) was Ayushs batchmate at IIT Hyderabad and previously worked with Mercedes Benz Dealers, where he headed marketing for south India.

The cumulative opportunity in the clear aligners industry over the years has witnessed significant growth and is worth more than USD $35 Billion today. The global opportunity is estimated to be worth more than a trillion dollars. This quarter, the company has doubled its revenue and is profitable on every order. With a focus on middle-class families in India, Snazzy has, since its inception, built a stronghold in Hyderabad, Delhi, and Bangalore and is soon expanding PAN India.

Ayush and the Snazzy team from day one have fundamentally focused on providing access - access to care and a better way of living, regardless of or even in spite of an individuals ability to satisfy incredibly high prices, said Anya Hayden, ANIM General Partner. We respect this underlying motivation tremendously and coupled with the technology and operational savvy the team brings forth, know that Snazzy will only continue to improve lives across the country. To preserve such a high standard of care whilst making it possible for multiple households to experience the process and enjoy the outcome is a feat - and this is just the outset.

Snazzy aims to be the biggest cosmetology brand in India with the long-term vision of being the one-stop shop for various customised cosmetic services in an affordable and convenient manner.
Hinduja Global Solutions (HGS) (listed in BSE & NSE) unveiled a new brand identity for its ongoing evolution into a digital-led, people-driven organization that is transforming customer experiences (CX). Building on its legacy of making clients more competitive, HGS serves as the preferred CX and business process transformation partner for some of the worlds largest brands.

HGS has renewed its vision and mission as it evolves as a comprehensive digital and CX services partner and employer of choice for roles critical to transformation - digital professionals, data analysts, automation experts, and CX ambassadors.

Vision: Be the worlds leading expert in transforming customer experiences for the most admired brands.

HGS will leverage its experience handling billions of interactions every year to keep pace with rapidly rising expectations in the digital CX economy.

Mission: Innovate, optimize, and grow our clients businesses with the perfect balance of people and technology.

Partha DeSarkar, Global CEO of HGS, stated: HGS is positioned at an exciting juncture today, led by technology adoption, changing client demands and rising expectations of the modern customer. We believe its the right time to refresh our value proposition to our stakeholders. Our new brand identity is a distinctive and future-forward expression of how we are evolving as a transformation partner. Critical to the new positioning is attracting and providing opportunities for top talent to drive digital-led customer experiences for our clients and their customers today.

The new brand identity symbolizes the enhanced value of the business and represents HGSs focus on continually creating more satisfying customer experiences, stronger employee engagement, and more rewarding investor outcomes



The contemporary HGS logo is a visual expression of our key pillars: innovation, optimization, and growth. It has synthesized visual depictions of a handshake (trusted advisor and partnership), microchip (digital-first with strong technology integration capabilities), and fingerprint (personalized experiences and security).

DeSarkar added, The focus of HGS in the future is to aggressively grow the business by leveraging an industry-specific go-to-market approach, BPaaS (business process as a service) delivery led by the 3As (automation, analytics and AI), coupled with acquisitions for new capabilities.
Kalyan Jewellers, one of Indias most trusted and leading jewellery brand, has marked its debut on the prestigious Fortune India 500 list. After being successfully listed on the National Stock Exchange in March 2021, Fortune India has ranked the company at 164th position in the overall list and 3rd among the public-listed companies from Kerala.

Fortune India 500 List is a definitive ranking revealed annually, rating the public-listed companies in India, basis a detailed analysis of sales and gross revenue figures. As categorised by Fortune India, Kalyan Jewellers has been awarded 2nd position in the gems and jewellery industry. This showcases the growing dominance of the company in India and West Asia.

In 2019, Kalyan Jewellers was featured in the Deloittes Top 100 Luxury brands list globally. The brand was ranked 35th on the overall list and 2nd among Indian luxury brands.

Kalyan Jewellers which was founded in the year 1993, has been catering to a diverse range of customers from different parts of the country. With its presence across 21 states in India, Kalyan Jewellers has consistently strengthened its brand footprint with 120 showrooms in India and 30 showrooms in West Asia. Apart from completing 28 years in the Indian jewellery industry, the company is Indias only jewellery brand to have over 100 company-owned showrooms in India.
Following a writ petition filed by the Indian Broadcasting and Digital Foundation (IBDF) in the Madras High Court challenging the Code of Ethics concerning the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules 2021 and Cable Television Networks (Amendment) Rules, 2021 (New IT Rules 2021), the Court has asked the Ministry of Information & Broadcasting (MIB) from taking coercive action against the members of IBDF.

The digital media platforms that are members of IBDF have not implemented Part III of the New IT Rules 2021 and has challenged its constitutional validity.

IBDF in its petition stated that it had constituted a self-regulatory body for non-news and current affairs channels  Broadcasting Content Complaints Council. The Foundation has constituted another self-regulatory body to address any complaints related to OTT content  Digital Media Content Regulatory Council.

The next hearing in the case is slated for January 25, 2021.
With many brands adapting their marketing strategies to reach consumers in new ways following the pandemic, some of the best ideas have made the shortlists of the WARC Awards for Media 2021, a comprehensive global awards scheme rewarding communications planning which has made a positive impact on business results.

A total of 81 campaigns from a wide range of markets, categories and brands have been shortlisted across four categories, each judged by its own panel of industry experts examining the insight, strategy and analytics that power effective media investment.

Chiara Manco, Commissioning Editor - Case Studies, WARC, said, The shortlisted campaigns from this years WARC Awards for Media showcase some extraordinary work of numerous brands turning challenges into opportunities.

Effective Channel Integration

Looking for how sophisticated communications architecture have helped boost campaign effectiveness, the jury panel led by Ron Amram, Senior Director, Global Media, Mars, shortlisted a total of 20 papers.

Included are car manufacturer, Volkswagen, which adapted to the new COVID trading environment to reverse plummeting sales with its Virtual Showroom concept in Canada; and the NHS, the world's largest free-to-residents public healthcare system, which used an integrated channel approach to relaunch its recruitment drive during COVID-19 in the UK.

Best Use of Data

Recognising the role of data in an effective communications strategy, the jury chaired by Siew Ting Foo, Chief Marketing Officer, Greater Asia, HP, shortlisted 20 papers from around the world.

Among the shortlist is sportswear manufacturer adidas which grew e-commerce sales by almost 80% across APAC through a Google partnership that added price extensions to the brand's search results; and quick-service restaurant brand McDonald's, which created a dating app mechanic to increase app downloads, usage and sales in Germany during the coronavirus crisis.

Effective Use of Tech

Chaired by Rajoielle Register, Head of Global Brand Experiences, Ford Motor Company, thepanel shortlisted 21 papers that have effectively used or combined emerging platforms or technology in the media mix.

Shortlisted are Burger King, which literally rang the changes in the US with a doorbell camera activation that boosted awareness of its home delivery service; and auto brand Lincoln, which harnessed two innovative technologies to ensure the eyes and attention of China's affluent were completely focused on the launch of its new Nautilus model in an extremely cluttered category.

Effective Use of Partnerships & Sponsorships

Looking for how collaborations with third parties, including native advertising and sponsorships, have helped brands meet business goals, the jury panel, chaired by Sarita Rao, President, Integrated & Partner Solution, AT&T, shortlisted 20 papers.

Included are Redoxon, a vitamin supplement brand, which partnered with Dahmakan, a food delivery service, to provide Redoxon samples with evening meal orders during Ramadan in Malaysia; and the Lebanese Breast Cancer Foundation (LBCF), which, in collaboration with a traditional baker, used a bread-making video to show women how to self-examine.

The winners of the sixth WARC Awards for Media will be announced in January 2022.

The WARC Awards for Media are free to enter and are discipline-neutral and channel-agnostic. Papers are submitted as effectiveness case studies and are entered by media agencies, creative agencies, media owners, digital agencies and data specialists from all over the world.
The Federal Council

Bern, 10.12.2021 - At its meeting of 10 December, the Federal Council adopted the report fulfilling the Graf postulate (19.3618) on causes of female homicide in the home and measures against it. In the report, the Federal Council emphasises the special need for action to reduce domestic homicides and undertakes various preventative measures to this end.

The postulate report, which is based on an externally conducted study, shows that although the number of homicides in Switzerland is low, intimate partner homicides make up a high proportion of all homicides, at approximately 40 per cent. Ninety per cent of victims of intimate partner homicides are women. Switzerland also has a high percentage of intimate partner homicides by international comparison.

Causes and risk factors

The main cause of intimate partner homicides is impending or completed separation or an expressed intention to separate. Other high risk factors include previous domestic violence, overly controlling and jealous behaviour, and stalking. Weapon possession, alcohol and drug use as well as financial difficulties are additional factors that can trigger such homicides. Forty-three per cent of perpetrators had previously been violent at home and were known to the police; one third of these already had a criminal record. In 90 per cent of cases, intimate partner killings

were initiated by men. Forty-four per cent of perpetrators were of foreign nationality, while among the victims it was 37 per cent. One quarter of cases were homicide-suicides, with the perpetrator committing suicide after killing their partner.

Acts of violence must be tackled on a number of different levels

For the Federal Council, combating and preventing serious acts of violence must be approached at various levels. This includes increased preventive measures and early recognition of warning signs, better risk analysis and support of victims of domestic violence as well as addressing perceptions of masculinity that can lead to violence. As part of the implementation of the Istanbul Convention, on 30 April the Confederation, the cantons and civil society organisations adopted a road map to step up the campaign against domestic violence and improve victim protection. As of this year, the Confederation also has three million Swiss francs available annually to support projects preventing and tackling violence against women and domestic violence.



In addition to these ongoing and planned measures, the Federal Council proposes to further reduce the misuse of weapons and raise awareness of domestic violence among health professionals. Some of these new measures will be included and defined in more detail in the National Action Plan implementing the Istanbul Convention.

Supplementary survey on homicide is underway

According to the police crime statistics (PCS), a total of 479 persons were killed in Switzerland from 2011 to 2020. Of these victims, 255 (53%) had a family or intimate relationship with the perpetrator. Of the 147 people killed in an existing or former relationship, 134 (91%) were female. In the same period, firearms were the most common means of committing homicide (31%), followed by knives and other sharp weapons (27%), and physical violence (22%). The Federal Statistical Office (FSO), with the support of the Federal Office for Gender Equality (FOGE), is currently carrying out a supplementary survey on the circumstances, motives and causes of all homicides and attempted homicides. The results are expected to be published in 2025.

Address for enquiries

Sina Liechti, FOGE Communications Officer

media@ebg.admin.ch

+41 58 467 42 04

Publisher

The Federal Council

https://www.admin.ch/gov/en/start.html



General Secretariat FDHA

http://www.edi.admin.ch



Federal Office for Gender Equality

https://www.ebg.admin.ch/ebg/en/home.html



Federal Department of Justice and Police

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The Federal Council

Bern, 10.12.2021 - Switzerland must promote CERN's long-term development potential, particularly in terms of spatial planning, which has prompted the Federal Council to initiate work on a federal sectoral plan focusing on CERN projects. According to the current state of planning, the Federal Council intends to submit a dispatch to Parliament creating the necessary legal basis by the end of 2022.

Situated at the FrenchSwiss border, CERN contributes to Switzerlands international reputation and delivers an important scientific, industrial and economic impact. CERNs infrastructure needs evolve as technology advances and new scientific discoveries are made, and several projects currently under consideration would have an impact on Swiss territory. In order to secure the laboratorys long-term future, the CERN Council, which brings together the representatives of the member states, also launched a feasibility study in 2020 for a new large particle collider, the Future Circular Collider (FCC). The FCC would be built in a 100km-long, circular tunnel under Lake Geneva and the FrenchSwiss border.

The Federal Council will draw up a federal sectoral plan in order to clarify and facilitate the administrative procedures for spatial planning and to improve planning security for all CERN projects, including the FCC in the event of its implementation. The sectoral plan, which also responds to a request from the Republic and Canton of Geneva, will provide a framework for balancing the objectives of research policy, host-state policy and spatial planning policy.

A dedicated legal basis is required in order to develop a federal sectoral plan for CERN projects.

CERN and Switzerland

CERNs mission is to improve our understanding of the composition and functioning of the universe. One important way CERN fulfils this mission is by allowing researchers around the world to use the infrastructure that it builds and operates. CERN was established in 1954 as a Geneva-based intergovernmental organisation with 23 member states, including Switzerland. There are also ten associate member states, most of which are European countries.

In addition to its considerable contributions to science and innovation, CERN has also brought significant economic benefits to Switzerland, and the Geneva region in particular. The organisation has played a central role in several major technological breakthroughs that

are essential to our lives today, such as the World Wide Web and proton therapy for cancer, known as hadron therapy. The laboratory also trains many engineers and scientists, helping them to become the qualified experts required in the academic and industrial sectors. CERN brings together people of 110 nationalities, thereby contributing to Swiss researchers European and global networking and increasing the reach of Switzerland and international Geneva. This is mirrored in the federal governments 20202023 Foreign Policy Strategy, 20212024 Digital Foreign Policy and 20212024 Strategy for Communication Abroad.

Address for enquiries

GS EAER Information Service

info@gs-wbf.admin.ch

+41 58 462 20 07

Publisher

The Federal Council

https://www.admin.ch/gov/en/start.html



Federal Department of Economic Affairs, Education and Research

http://www.wbf.admin.ch




With the loss of Ed Arranga this week, I've been thinking about Ed, Teri and what Autism One meant to, and did for, our community for so many years. Autism One was much more than a conference. Sure, we learned about the newest, sometimes controversial treatments. Glass of helminths anyone? We launched books, a political party, products. We let down our hair, danced in our stocking feet and slept on soft Westin beds. One year I emptied out the mini-bar to take a funny photo, not realizing it was a newfangled weight-regulated minibar so that by removing EVERY SINGLE BOTTLE OF LIQUOR they all went onto my bill! A quick trip to the front desk took care of that mistake. I didn't drink a drop, I swear! We were stalked by old school bloggers who circumvented security to spy on us. I'm talking to you, HeraldBlogger Ken Reibel. I miss those days. I miss it all.



Who remembers seeing CAMELS in the parking lot and going, "What in the Mid-west meets the desert are THOSE doing here?"

This crazy story below reminded me of that year.



Over 40 Camels Barred From Saudi Beauty Contest Over Use of Botox Authorities discovered dozens of breeders had injected camels' heads and lips with Botox to make them bigger and made other cosmetic enhancements



Yes, as we live in a world where camels are getting Botox to have prettier lips. I'm not sure I can add a thing to that statement.
Aaron Place was named the Client of the Year for Alva's Vocational Rehabilitation office, which is part of Oklahoma Department of Rehabilitation Services.

Place was nominated for the honor by VR Specialist Brandi Fulgham who has assisted him with pursuing his career goals. Place was born with dyshydrotic ectodermal dysplasia, a group of disorders in which two or more of the ectodermally derived structures  the skin, sweat glands, hair, nails, teeth and mucous membranes  develop abnormally. Each person with an ectodermal dysplasia may have a different combination of defects.

Place is attending Oklahoma State University College of Osteopathic Medicine in Tahlequah. He is in his second year, and after graduating, plans to practice medicine in an underserved rural community.

"He is incredibly committed to DRS services and is a model client," Fulgham said. "He is communicative, stays in touch, and always provides documentation and information when it is needed, sometimes even before it is requested. I really enjoy working with him. He is friendly and highly motivated."

For more information about DRS services, call 800-845-8476 during business hours to be transferred to the nearest office or visit https://oklahoma.gov/okdrs/independence/blind/older-blind.html.
How far back must we go to discover something that was never hidden? When did it come to light that Dr. Fauci types, rather than applying the scientific method to medical issues, were foolishly pursuing political ends free from science? Could it be when a costly quest to develop an AIDS vaccine failed and they put the fear of God into people with the nonsense that AIDS would have a heterosexual breakout? Of all their deficiencies, tendencies, and psyches, the way COVID tsars reduced science to a belief could be their epitaph.

It took an Orwell to grasp that brilliant and foolish are compatible. The prophetic author of 1984 and Animal Farm saw that very clever people can be very silly. We dont have to upturn rocks to uncover them. Look no further than all-consuming causes to find thembrilliant fools stuck like barnacles to Climate Crisis and COVID mandates. The brainiest of people are convinced that (1) unless we de-carbonize, the planet will burn up and (2) natural anti-bodies do not exempt anti-vaxxers from the compulsory two jabs and a booster.

If brilliant and foolish seem an impossible couplet its because they are not opposites. Wise is the opposite of foolish. To be wise is to be sensible and to have the common sense a fool lacks. What is it about public health that accounts for the preponderance of brilliant idiots?

I got the clue from a catchy headline. Can too many brainy people be a dangerous thing? The article opens with a decade-old quotation from Peter Turchin, at the University of Connecticut, who predicted in Nature magazine that, The next decade is likely to be a period of instability in the USA and Europe.

More than correct, he was perceptive. The cause, said Turchin, would be an overproduction of young graduates with advanced degrees. In other words, too few prestigious jobs for too many educated people. Indeed, some 30% of British graduates today are overeducated for the jobs they fill. Every year, America produces 25,000 surplus lawyers. Who knows how many surplus scientists bask in jobs that a convenient mega pandemic created. Doomsday modelers and pompous virologists have had the time of their lives.

Setting the pace is Dr. Fauci, a political mover, a briber, a bully, and a charmer. Once in power, his mandates to stop the spread turned into devices to monitor the masses. Two years later, failed lockdowns, masking, and travel bans are going strong the world over. No pedestal is more elevated than Dr. Faucis, nursing a fantasy that he and Science are one and the same. To go against him is to endanger the health of every American.

Many countries have their own Fauci. The South African version is Professor Barry Schoub. Fellow experts hail him as a world leader in virology, vaccines, and COVID preparedness, tributes well deserved. But to what extent does he have Faucis hubris? To the extent that, to Schoub, his opponents are also opponents of Science.

The 21st century has spawned a very significant, vocal, and often hostile lobby of opponents to science, are in a war on science. People, Schoub says, have lost trust in his science resulting in a plethora of pseudo-science.

Pseudo-science: Isnt that what dissenting scientists with a longer pedigree than Schoubs are belittled for dabbling in? Close down schools and prayer houses; vaccinate everyone on two legs: And Schoub cant fathom why the pseudo crowd wages war on his Science.

Disinformation is an equal sin for which Ivy League professors have received every mark of divine disfavor. Any disturbance of the settled science can bring down the gavel. Theres a term that Schoub, honest to the day, must smile at the way hed smile at open secret or exact estimate.

A Fauci clone, Schoub protects the right of people to let Schoub think for them. After all, the narrative is licensed to all Faucis: lockdown to stop the spread, mask to stop infection, vaccine that can do only good. Ive yet to meet a COVID-compliant person who is familiar with the name VAERS.

And theres Schoubs telltale habit. When decrying the mess the world is in, he keeps the lockdown Joker card face down. Mass poverty and joblessness? The virus did it. Mental illness? People caught COVID and lost their minds. Bankruptcy? The virus is anti-business. Schools and borders closed? COVID issued the cruel edicts. If tally keepers are allowed to dump road fatalities into the COVID tally, why not?

If Schoub had his way, Facebook and Twitter users would have their accounts closed for fuelling anti-vaccination, anti-masking, chloroquine, and Ivermectin. He wants to keep the public healthy while asserting a responsibility to protect vaccines from the competition by therapeutics, no matter the cost in human life.

Vaccine politics are impenetrable. Governments, were told, have always claimed the right to tell certain groups to vaccinate against viruses like yellow fever or polio. Even if we are free to refuse treatment, we are not free to infect others.

Clearly, the arguments are dishonest on two levels. (1) Vaccines for COVID and vaccines for yellow fever and polio are not comparable. The latter immunize fully and dont need boosters soon after. (2) The argument, you are not free to infect other people is quite brazen. Everyone knows that the fully vaxxed get and spread the virus as prolifically as the unvaxxed.

Apparently then, two types of science are in operation. The one is a racket science followed by anti-lockdown, anti-mask, anti-vax loons. The other science is settled and guarded aggressively by COVID clergy.

Suppose the latter stopped their slanders for a day to debate heretics. What big argument must they present to stave off humiliation? In Schoubs case, hed have to shrug off the fact that he advises a health department more inept and corrupt than most. Politicians and officials thieve and murder under his nose. A whistleblower in the department was taken out before she could testify. Then came Omicron. A dumping of almost 18,000 old COVID cases from 2020 coincided with the day on which the world learned about the new variant, making it appear as if there had been a mass outbreak. Unsurprisingly President Ramaphosa has called the consequent travel ban on South Africa unscientific.

Schoub is apparently in the dark that public health, by definition, involves politics. Competing interests must be considereda kind way of saying that vote-getting and making personal fortunes can and do outweigh virology.

As for what goes on under the Fauci nose, public and private health have been shifting medical science into the pseudo space. After BLM mobs rampaged in 2020, systemic racism was drafted into the settled science. The National Institute of Health apologized for structural racism in biomedical research while the prestigious JAMA declared systemic racism to be a scientific fact. The whole medical fraternity is buttering its bread on both sides. On one side is medicine and on the other Wokeism.

In a memoir of his time on the White House Corona Task Force, Scott W. Atlas details how it was hijacked by three bureaucrats. The troika, he calls them. They stoked fear using worst-case scenarios. Even then Fauci complained that Americans werent taking the virus seriously enough. So you think people arent frightened enough? Atlas asked. Yes, Fauci said, they need to be more afraid.

Afraid! Fear = equals compliance = police state. Schoub with a stovepipe vision is oblivious to the capture of science. But then brilliant fools dont know what they dont know.

Steve Apfel is an economist and costing specialist, but most of all a prolific author of fiction and non-fiction. His blog, Balaams curse, is followed in more than 15 countries.

Image by Andrea Widburg

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American healthcare has lost its way. It has become a medical tyranny that takes away personal freedom. The system is focused on cutting costs; giving government insurance to everyone; and most assuredly, augmenting Washingtons power. Patients medical freedom -- my body, my choice -- has been lost amidst the financial games and political power plays.

President Bidens patience is wearing thin with those Americans who exercise their right to choose, having decided not to inject themselves with an experimental gene therapy (mRNA vaccination) that has no long-term outcome data. Washington has literally taken away medical autonomy with coercive federal mandates that threaten loss of employment for being free and independent Americans.

Washington politicians tell us what medicines we must take. They tell doctors what medicines they cannot prescribe for us. The same politicos, abetted by legacy media, allow us to see only the information that fits official narratives. All other data is labeled misinformation and censored. What happened to freedom of speech and of the press?

Priorities are turned upside down. Federal health policies contradict themselves. Right-thinking and rule following are more prized than patient outcomes. Non-physicians practice medicine. Bureaucrats ration medical care.

To have affordable, timely, quality medical care, healthcare must go back to its roots: restore personal freedom, return our medical autonomy. Medical care should be decided by patients, not by politicians or federal bureaucrats, even (especially) those with MD after their names.

Efficiency, not Effectiveness

Physicians are judged by their efficiency, according to benchmarks of productivity, just like an assembly line worker. Efficient doctors see the most patients and therefore spend the least time with each patient. Efficient doctors are thereby ineffective at providing good care.

As a pediatric cardiologist, my benchmark was seeing 4.2 established patients per hour. That allots 14.3 minutes to take a history, do a physical exam, review past records and tests, assess the literature, make a diagnosis, develop a treatment plan, explain that plan to parents, use the electronic system to prescribe medications, explain the medicines and possible side-effects, and fill out a myriad of forms.

To get a good efficiency score, I was supposed to skip proper medical practice above, which cannot possibly be done in 14.3 minutes. I was an inefficient but effective physician. I had low efficiency ratings on my hospital scorecard but high marks from patients.

Who Practices Medicine?

Bureaucrats, insurance executives, and politicians can (and do) practice medicine on you. Doctors do not, because they cant.

Pharmacy benefit management bureaucrats dictate what medications patients get, physicians dont. Insurance company contracts determine who operates on patients, when, where, and even if. Triage decisions in the ER are now made by state politicians, not the doctor on the scene.

The only person who is legally and morally responsible for your medical care is your doctor. The only person who should be making medical decisions for you is you. American medical autonomy has been taken away by politician-wannabe-doctors and bureaucrat-MDs like Anthony Fauci who has not cared for a single patient in more than four decades.

When bureaucrats practice medicine, they gain power they should not have.

Common Terms Redefined

Washington conflates and redefines words in its continuous drive to expand federal power. Medical care is a service provided by a professional: nurse, doctor, or therapist. Insurance is a contract, a piece of paper. Though politicians, especially President Obama, conflate insurance with care, they are not the same.

People without insurance get care. Many with insurance cant, especially not in time. The catchphrase universal health care actually means universal insurance coverage. Most people believe universal health care means getting the care you need when you need it.

In healthcare, cost does not mean all the money necessary to produce a product or service. It means spending. Adverse patient outcomes are assumed to be provider error. High risk refers to large medical bills, not medical danger.

COVID Provides Proof

The response to COVID is proof how far healthcare has strayed from patients independence.

What matters to those in authority is following their rules and obeying Washington mandates, not patient welfare. Optimal medical care for a patient is prohibited if that care goes against federal guidelines. The advantages of natural immunity over vaccine-induced protection are suppressed. Americans are required to accept experimental gene therapy against their will. Federal officials not only falsely claim to follow the science, they label any evidence disproving their narrative as misinformation and censor such data.

Those who exercise their free will and reject such treatments are punished. They cannot go where they wish, speak freely, read multiple opinions, or even control their own bodies. Americans who dont comply with federal mandates lose their jobs, from Navy SEALs to government employees to healthcare workers.

Firing unvaccinated healthcare workers is especially ironic. These are persons who have medical knowledge superior to Biden; who have access to data not available to the public and ignored by Fauci; who have direct experience with adverse effects of mRNA therapy; and who know their own specific medical circumstances.

Non-physicians have created a new way to practice medicine called, crisis standards of care. When hospital ERs are overwhelmed with sick patients, triage decisions are taken away from doctors on the scene and taken over by bureaucrats.

How can an American exercise his or her constitutionally guaranteed medical freedom when Washington punishes those who demand their right to choose? How can Americans make informed decisions when Washington suppresses vital scientific information? Why are doctors held responsible when bureaucrats practice medicine on their patients?

Federal healthcare has taken away liberty. Americans now live under medical tyranny.

Federal Healthcare is Unconstitutional

According to the Tenth Amendment, Washington is prohibited from having authority or power over healthcare. The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.

Over the past century, health care, the service, has been coopted by healthcare, the system. Care has been called a federal responsibility. If Washington is responsible, then Americans are not. When politicians choose rather than individuals, freedom is gone.

Back to Patients

Self-styled experts and federal politicians say that healthcare is so complex the public cannot possibly understand all the Byzantine intricacies. Our healthcare system is complex, intentionally so, in order to justify making Americans dependent on Washington.

Health care -- the service -- is ridiculously simple and straightforward: one patient and one doctor with direct, fiduciary connection. The patient chooses a provider and contracts with that provider for fiduciary services and pays him or her. Period. No qualifiers or weasel words. With no one and nothing in between patient and doctor.

If Americans want timely, quality, affordable medical services, they must restore patients right to choose. If states want to have safety nets for medically vulnerable individuals, that can easily be done. Washington should play no role whatsoever in healthcare, per the Constitution and the feds abysmal track record, both medical and fiscal, over the past 56 years.

Deane Waldman, M.D., MBA is Professor Emeritus of Pediatrics, Pathology, and Decision Science; former director of the Center for Healthcare Policy at Texas Public Policy Foundation; former Director, New Mexico Health Insurance Exchange; and author of the multi-award-winning book Curing the Cancer in U.S. Healthcare: StatesCare and Market-Based Medicine.

Image: Pixnio

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American Muslims for Palestine (AMP) has come a long way from its shadowy origins as an instrument of Hamas, a designated terrorist organization. Without moderating its hardline anti-Israel views, AMP has reformed its image and cultivated willing advocates among the progressive wing of the Democratic Party. During annual Palestine Advocacy Days on Capitol Hill, AMP lobbyists have met with dozens of members of Congress and their staffs, promoting legislation that would isolate Israel and favor radical jihadist groups.

U.S. Representatives such as Betty McCollum (D-Minn.) and Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) remain steadfast allies of AMP and its newly formed lobbying arm, Americans for Justice in Palestine-Action, championing its legislative proposals and serving as guest speakers at the nonprofits annual conventions. AMPs congressional supporters have maintained these relations despite the Islamist organizations penchant for anti-Semitism and extremism.

On November 21, AMP executive director Osama Abuirshaid attended a conference in Jordan, appearing alongside terrorist members of Hamas and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). Abuirshaid was featured on a panel discussing a New Arab Strategy to confront Israel. Apparently, Abuirshaids plans include exploiting American racial tensions and calling the U.S. an apartheid state to build international support for Palestinians.

Abuirshaid cut his teeth as an anti-Israel activist while working as an analyst and newspaper editor for the Islamic Association for Palestine, a now-defunct Hamas propaganda front that served as a precursor to AMP before it was shut down for aiding and abetting terrorism.

The conference, titled Towards the Features of a New Arab Strategy to Deal with the Arab-Israeli Conflict, discussed options for resisting Israel -- both violent and non-violent. Participants reportedly stressed the need to... adopt plans to build military and economic power while supporting the armed and popular resistance and political and legal efforts.

Sponsored by the Middle East Studies Center of Jordan, the conference included such celebrity terrorists such as Leila Khaled, a PFLP member and serial airplane hijacker who chaired one of the events panels. Abuirshaid hailed Khaleds attendance and lauded her role as a source of inspiration for younger generations.

Other participants to share the stage with Abuirshaid included Sami Khater, a senior Hamas Politburo leader and co-founder, and Mohammad Nazzal, Hamass official representative in Jordan.

Representing the Muslim American community, much of Abuirshaids speech concerned his contempt for his country. I am frankly ashamed of the U.S. as a state whose citizenship I hold, he said.

Abuirshaid was only granted that citizenship in 2017, after fighting for 11 years to convince U.S. courts to make him a citizen, a delay resulting from his failure to disclose his links to terror-tied groups. Similarly, AMP has aggressively lobbied to overturn American national security priorities that make it more difficult for immigrants from high-risk countries to enter the U.S.

Why would Abuirashaid and his organization fight so desperately to settle fellow Muslims in a nation they consider deeply oppressive? Continuing his monologue, the AMP director argued that the U.S. oversees a system of segregation, racial discrimination, [and] apartheid -- an unlikely allure to foreign migrants.

"Today, when I talk about the apartheid in Palestine -- for African-Americans in the U.S., this resonates with the apartheid that exists in America to this day, he said.

For many years, AMP and its allies have referred to Israel as an apartheid state, comparing it to post-colonial South Africa and its segregationist policies. But if AMP claims that the U.S. -- a diverse and tolerant society -- is guilty of institutionalized segregation, then accusations of apartheid against Israel seem all the more hollow and absurd.

Still, Abuirshaid told conference attendees that they should capitalize on the disadvantages of American minorities by convincing them that they, too, live under apartheid and racial separation.

There are many opportunities ahead of us if we excel at the process of exploiting this discourse, developing this discourse, he said.

Indeed, Abuirshaid has exploited class and racial divisions among Americans in the past, pointing to a lack of electricity or clean water in some American cities during a September interview with Jordans Yarmouk TV, while complaining that U.S. taxpayers provide billions in aid to Israel so that its military can continue killing the Palestinian people with American missiles.

According to the AMP director, America is the teat from which Israel suckles, and he predicted that the Jewish state would not last 20, 30, or 40 years without American support. But this wasnt Abuirshaids only doomsday prediction; he also said that America would soon cease to exist as a country.

This is not a philosophical question today, but a realistic question that is asked among prominent scholars, saying that the US may collapse under the pressure of its own weight, he added.

It isnt clear which prominent scholars are forecasting the U.S. governments impending collapse. What is most apparent, though, is that AMP would likely welcome Americas downfall if -- as Abuishaid surmised -- it would lead to Israels demise.

As Abuirshaid patiently awaits Americas final hour, his organization is perfectly content with manipulating the countrys democratic institutions and exploiting its citizens' historical grievances, so long as these subversive pursuits work to cripple and contain Israel. U.S. lawmakers who cater so openly to these extremists are complicit in this outcome.

Benjamin Baird is the Deputy Director of Islamist Watch, a project of the Middle East Forum

Image: American Muslims for Palestine

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The Democrats aren't even pretending anymore that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris like each other. Each sees the other as an enemy, although neither can do without the other. Biden needs Harris as his insurance policy against being pushed out under the 25th Amendment. Harris needs Biden because, bad as she is as vice president, if Biden boots her, she's got nothing. On Thursday, at the memorial service for Bob Dole, these two disgraceful, immature prima donnas finally gave up any pretense and let it all hang out.

Last year, during a discussion about male versus female government leaders, my daughter opined that it's not true that countries led by women would be less likely to go to war. Instead, she said, "They'd go to war but they wouldn't talk to each other for a month first." I thought of that when I saw the video showing the little teen-queen drama that Biden and Harris enacted at Dole's memorial service.

First, Harris and her hubby (whose name I always forget) were led to their seats. If you imagine the seats running from left to right, and numbered 1 through 4, hubby occupied seat 1, and Harris occupied seat 2.

Next, the assembled people stood when Biden and Mrs. Biden entered. As Biden passed Harris, the president of the United States and the person who will take his place should something happen to him showed all the grace of angry teen girls in the silent phase of their fight, looking anywhere but at each other. Biden then stood before seat 3, next to Harris, and Mrs. Biden stood before seat 4.

Biden's and Harris's conspicuous "I'm not talking to you!" moment was bad enough. It got worse after that. Biden, agitated, whispered something to his wife. She whispered back. Then, more agitated, he whispered again to her  at which point Biden and the missus changed sides so that Biden didn't have to stand next to his vice president.

Before you think I'm reading too much into the scene, you should watch it for yourself. Their immaturity is there for all to see, as plain as day:

 AWKWARD, SHADE WAR:

Joe Biden Refuses to acknowledge Kamala as he walks right past her in US Capitol. Then Joe asks Jill to SWITCH SEATS so he wont be close to VP. Neither make eye contact as Joe looks AT THE CEILING and Kamala looks at the floor.



CRINGE. See for yourself: pic.twitter.com/urCVJOq8Qa  Benny (@bennyjohnson) December 9, 2021

Watching that piece of juvenile theater, do you feel that our country's in the very best of hands? What's worse is knowing that Xi Jinping is watching this and rubbing his hands in glee. When he unleashes whatever it is he's going to unleash, he won't be rousing a sleeping giant. He'll be squishing cockroaches.

These people in D.C. are appalling and disgusting. They are the elite at the end of the Roman Empire, when it was disintegrating under the weight of moral and financial corruption.

Image: Twitter screen grab.

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There is much more to this story of Jussie Smollett being convicted of staging a hate crime against himself and lying to police. To understand this, we must acknowledge that there are two types of courts. The court of law plays out in courtrooms and is based on existing laws. However, the court of public opinion is more powerful and changes laws.

Emmett Till was a 14-year-old black American from Chicago when he was lynched by racists in 1955 in the small Southern town of Money, Mississippi. His crime? Talking to a white woman. His mother insisted on an open casket funeral so the whole world could see Emmett's mutilated and bloated body. Tens of thousands of people attended the funeral or saw pictures in magazines and newspapers.

The two killers were white and therefore included de facto in a "protected class" of Southerners. The local law enforcement and judicial system ignored the facts as long as they could. Outrage intensified, and the two killers were eventually put on trial and were acquitted by an all-white jury. Once acquitted the two sold their story to Look magazine and admitted they had killed Emmett Till. The public was outraged, and the tide turned against racism.

Many believed that the racist killers' behavior both before and after the trial as well as the institutions that shielded the killers prevented them from facing justice and was the catalyst that led to the civil rights movement.

Jussie Smollett was found guilty of orchestrating a fake attack on himself. Like Emmett Till's killers, Jussie Smollett was initially protected by the judicial system until outrage forced a trial. Jussie Smollett was also protected by much of the media, which will now have to answer in the court of public opinion for running interference for him.

This leads us to Darrell Brooks, a career criminal and a convicted sex offender. Brooks is charged with killing and injuring many innocent people in the Waukesha Christmas parade attack. Like Emmett Till's killers, Brooks is de facto part of the "protected class." He should never have been out on bail. Many news sources were hesitant to name him or show his picture. One major new source is accused of lightening his face so he didn't look black. Look at the side-by-side photos and decide for yourself.

Darrell Brooks has not had his day in court yet, and it may take several months or even years before he does. However, the court of public opinion on civil rights is moving in the opposite direction from where it went in the 1950s. Jussie Smollett and Darrell Brooks have tarnished and destroyed much the progress made by civil rights.

Image: Dominick D via Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0 (cropped).

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The Jussie Smollett hoax trial has finished, with Jussie found guilty of five out of six felonies. The charges all revolved around Smollett's lies to police officers. None was for a hate crime, but people who lie about hate crime hoaxes should themselves be charged with committing such a crime.

In essence, Jussie Smollett, a Black, gay actor, perpetrated a hoax that involved presenting himself as a victim of a hateful and heinous crime against him based on his race and sexual orientation. He hired two Nigerians to pretend to be White Trump MAGA patriots and to attack him  that is, to beat him, pour bleach on him, and hang a noose around his neck. It became a national scandal that the media, politicians, celebrities, and others ran with for weeks.

Eventually, due to the Chicago Police Department's thorough investigation, helped by video evidence and confessions from the two Nigerians, the story unraveled as more evidence pointed to its being a hoax. It appears that jurors in Chicago were not amused.

Unfortunately, racial hate crime hoaxes, all intended to place blame and shame on people of races other than that of the alleged victim(s), are becoming common. The most common hoaxes are alleged to be against Black, Muslim, and LGBT victims, followed at a great distance by hoaxes purportedly against Asian and Jewish victims. The harm done is tremendous because alleged hate crimes tend to promote actual hatred against innocents of another race. Basically, most of that resultant hatred is aimed at Whites.



Image: Jussie Smollett (edited in befunky). YouTube screen grab.

Hate crime laws are problematic to begin with. Hate is an intangible trait that is invisible compared to visible material evidence. Judging another's heart, mind, or spirit is beyond factual proof. People have quantum difficulty judging their own motives, much less those of someone else. Personally, I find hate crime laws unjust due to their selectivity and inequality. True, genuine justice is always equal and fair to all. Hate crime laws fall far short of that measure and standard.

However, given that hate crimes exist, they should cover hate crime hoaxes falsely directed toward a specific race, religion, or sexual orientation. Why? It takes a good measure of hatred to put so much effort into framing and committing a crime that appears to be committed by innocent people of another race, religion or non-religion, or sexual orientation. The hatred is palpable  more palpable than most other alleged hate crimes. Why? It takes planning and premeditation; it is not a spur-of-the-moment action or a passionate moment.

Enacting a law to deal with hate crime hoaxes, separate from the ordinary felony of lying to law enforcement, is a necessity if hoaxes are to be discouraged. Such a law would represent a force and a preventative measure that achieves true and genuine justice because it protects all against false accusations and false witness. Hateful hate crime hoaxes should be charged as hate crimes!

Jussie Smollett committed a serious crime that harmed race relations and perhaps those related to sexual identity. The verdict represents fairness and justice for all. The last thing America needs is more racial division  especially based on a hoax.

To comment, you can find the MeWe post for this article here.
More than eleven months have elapsed since the events at the Capitol, January 6, 2021  and many people arrested in connection with that physical intrusion into the Capitol building are still held in pre-trial confinement. Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) has published a report on her visit to the D.C. jail, with Rep. Louis Gohmert (R-Texas) on November 4.

The Greene Report points out that the tour was hastily arranged by the office of the mayor after previous attempts by the representatives to visit the January 6 detainees  held for months without trial  had been denied.

On November 4, Representatives Greene and Gohmert were invited to join the tour of members of the D.C. City Council, a tour scheduled after the U.S. Marshals' Service found that the jail did not meet minimum standards for confinement and had arranged for the transfer of 400 detainees to a prison in Pennsylvania. The finding by the Marshals' Service is appended to the Greene Report. And even on the evening of November 4, after visiting other areas of the facility, it took a threat of seeking a court order before Reps. Gohmert and Greene ware permitted into the area of the jail, where some 40 January 6 detainees were confined, restricted to their cells for 19 hours a day, one detainee held since last February 4.

The following is taken from the Conclusion to the Greene Report: "pre-trial inmates related to January 6 are treated more harshly than other inmates in the D.C. jail, even though they have yet to be convicted of any crime." The Greene Report suggested that four members, Reps. Gaetz and Gosar, in addition to Ms. Greene and Mr. Gohmert, have expressed interest in the well-being of the January 6 detainees. Where, one wonders, are the other members of the House Republican Conference? And where are the social organizations concerned about the treatment of prison inmates? Ms. Greene noted in her conclusion that there is a "two-track justice system in the United States, but it is based on politics, not race." One cannot help but believe that if the detainees were members of Antifa and BLM, The New York Times would be screaming from the top of its building at 62 Eighth Avenue for the immediate release of leftist radicals held for nearly a year in pre-trial confinement. Although with respect to the January 6 detainees, one cannot dismiss the thought that such indefinite and harsh pre-trial confinement for Trump supporters is what the Times had in mind when it suggested, in an August 2016 editorial, that after Hillary Clinton wins the presidential election, "The toxic effects of Trumpism will have to be addressed."

The New York Times, to no one's surprise, ignored the Greene Report. The paper did print news that Mark Meadows, former chief of staff to President Trump, was suing to quash the subpoena issued to him by the House Select Committee on January 6, 2021. But the Times account, December 9, by Luke Broadwater gave no information whatsoever as to the substance of the complaint.

As to the substance of the complaint brought by Mr. Meadows, against Speaker Pelosi, the individual members of her puppet panel, and the committee as a whole, well, the complaint expresses what, I believe, all House GOP members, save two, should have protested when the speaker refused the House Republican leader's nominees to the panel. And, as it happens, Pelosi's refusal to permit House minority leader Kevin McCarthy's nominees to sit on the select committee provided Mr. Meadows with the grounds to challenge the committee's existence.

The Meadows complaint alleges that the subpoenas issued against him, and Verizon, his cell phone carrier, are invalid because Pelosi violated the terms of House Resolution 503, which provided, among other things, that the minority members would be appointed in consultation with the minority leader. The complaint cited a judicial opinion holding that Congress cannot violate its own rules. The Meadows complaint also points out that the select committee itself has no legislative purpose; rather, it is acting more like an investigative law enforcement body, and a partisan one at that. House committees must have a legislative purpose. The resolution establishing the select committee prejudges the people who invaded the Capitol on January 6 as "domestic terrorists." Isn't this "Queen of Hearts" justice?

Media reports that I have seen online make more of the executive privilege issue raised in the complaint, but I see a more essential decision throwing out the committee and its subpoenas  as a landmark case  on the nature of our tripartite government. A correct decision, holding that a congressional committee cannot function absent legitimate legislative purpose and must abide by the terms of the resolution authorizing its existence, would be a dagger in the heart of the unconstitutional attempt to transform congressional committees into inquisitorial bodies, which could only lead to tyrannical government.

Why didn't Republican congressmen raise a hue and cry once Pelosi turned the inquisitorial corner? I can't say. They don't return my emails or phone calls. Maybe I should lie and say I'm with The New York Times or The Washington Post?

The Meadows complaint seeks injunctive relief. If granted, and it should be, that would mean the subpoena against him (and all others served by this irregular, unconstitutional select committee?) would be quashed, with the select committee itself left to...what? Utter incantations against Trump and Trumpism? Mr. Meadows also seeks reasonable costs and attorneys' fees  and he richly deserves such compensation, even if the sums would be derived from the taxpayers, as the committee members are sued only in their official capacities. (But if, as alleged, they acted in an ultra vires manner, they ought to pay costs and fees out of their personal pockets  or, if permissible, their PACs?)

Seems to this observer that all individuals plagued by the Pelosi puppet panel should join the Meadows lawsuit against Pelosi and, finally, the House GOP conference ousting the vice chair of the Pelosi cabal, plus the member who plans to resign with the expiration of his current term  if for no other reason than to deny Pelosi the change to yell, "But Meadows is a liar! I did appoint minority members to my select committee!"

By the way, she can't get around the fact that while her select panel has a vice chair, it lacks a ranking member  and House Res. 503 also called for a ranking member. How do you like them apples, Ms. Cheney?

Image: Gage Skidmore via Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0.

To comment, you can find the MeWe post for this article here.
France to open Algeria war archives 15 years in advance Culture Minister Roselyne Bachelot announced

(ANSAmed) - PARIS, DECEMBER 10 - French Culture Minister Roselyne Bachelot announced on Friday the upcoming opening of archives on "judicial investigations" into the war of Algeria (1954-1962), nearly 60 years later and at a time in which French-Algerian relations have been in crisis for months.



"I am opening 15 years in advance the archives on judicial investigations of the gendarmerie and police, in relation to the war in Algeria", said Bachelot, speaking to BFM TV. The statement comes two days after the visit to Algiers of Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian.



"On this issue, which is scandalous, irritating, on which war forgers are at work, I want us to be able to look each other in the eye - we don't build a national novel based on a lie", said the minister. "We have things to rebuild with Algeria and we can build them only on truth", she added. (ANSAmed)
Migrants: Turkey can't host more, Erdogan 'West doesn't share burden of migration crisis'

(ANSAmed) - ISTANBUL, DECEMBER 10 - Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said that Turkey is unable to host more migrants. "Our country already hosts 5 million refugees, including 3.6 million Syrians, it can't deal with a new migration wave", said Erdogan in the inaugural speech of a summit of the parliamentary union of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC)which opened on Friday in Istanbul.



According to the Turkish president, "the risk of a new flow of migrants" is today caused mainly by the crisis in Afghanistan after the Taliban gained power in the summer. "The most significant burden is supported by neighboring States and not by western countries", added Erdogan. (ANSAmed)
(ANSAmed) - TUNIS, DECEMBER 10 - The Tunisian national statistics institute (Ins), in cooperation with the National observatory on migrations (Onm), has recently published a report presenting the main results of the first research on international migrations conducted in Tunisia between July 2020 and March 2021, and provides an insight into migration phenomena from the perspective of Tunisia.



The report, funded by the European Union as part of the ProGreS Migration program, stresses among other things that nearly one person in five (19.9%) of the non-migrant population, aged 15 and older, said they would like to emigrate to live, work or study abroad.



The main reasons of emigration mentioned by potential migrants concerned the search for a job or better working conditions, as well as the opportunity of building a better lifestyle. Europe (mainly France, Italy and Germany) remained the favorite destinations of seven potential migrants in 10, followed by North American and Arab countries. However, the intention to emigrate remained for the majority of potential migrants the expression of a desire without true realization because only 14.3% said they had adopted specific measures to emigrate.



The intention to emigrate changed significantly between the two genders - 25.6% of men compared to 14.7% of women. The results of the survey also revealed that the intention to emigrate decreased with age. While youths expressed the strong desire to leave Tunisia, adults were less interested in going abroad - from 39.5% for 15 to 29-year-olds to 2.2% among people in their 60s.



Meanwhile, the intention to emigrate increased with the level of education - from 2.7% among the illiterate to 29.5% among those with a higher level of education. The will to emigrate was higher among those who had completed a professional training course (32.5%). As far as marriage status was concerned, the intention to meave was higher among singles, those who had separated or divorced - respectively 36.6%, 19.,9% and 14.5%. It was lower among those who had lost a spouse (2.2%) and married couples (9.3%).



The study moreover revealed how unemployment represented a key factor: 35.8% among the unemployed said they wanted to leave Tunisia, while among the employed 18.5% wanted to leave.



The results of the investigation also showed that, based on the level of education, the share of potential migrants who had a departure plan was significant compared to those with a higher degree (18.8%). The full report analyzing all possible aspects of migration in Tunisia is available on suhttp://www.ins.tn/node/1411. (ANSAmed).


(ANSAmed) - ROMA, 10 DIC - From 11 to 15 December, the Embassy of Italy celebrates the sixtieth anniversary of the Italian recognition of the State of Kuwait (1961-2021).



Every day of the week - the Italian embassy informs in a press release - there will be events and initiatives aimed to emphasize the importance and extraordinary quality of a relationship that has grown stronger over the years, reaching the current levels of excellence. The relationship between Italy and Kuwait is a friendship that has also been consolidated through the common will to contribute to regional and international stability and security. A friendship that has developed over the years, tempered by closeness in difficult moments, which are always those in which the meaning of friendship itself is truly measured.



In this regard, the Italian Foreign Minister Luigi Di Maio, writes in the preface to the volume on "Bilateral relations between Italy and Kuwait" published by the Embassy for the occasion: "Our civil societies generously contribute to these profitable dynamics, whose mutual solidarity and closeness has never failed. So it was thirty years ago for Italy in favor of the liberation of Kuwait; so it was in 2020 for Kuwait, in support and in aid of Italy, hit first and, at least initially, more than others during the most acute phase of the pandemic emergency. We look very confidently, with sentiments of friendship and respect, to our common future! " To celebrate this important moment of bilateral relations, the "Quartetto Indaco" (Indigo Quartet) will hold two concerts on 11 and 12 December, the first organized by the Embassy of Italy together with the International Women's Group (IWG) at the Auditorium of the National Library of Kuwait, the second by the Embassy at the Yarmouk Cultural Center Theater.



The Ambassador of Italy to Kuwait, Carlo Baldocci, said he was happy for these two events, which represent, among other things - in compliance with the health rules - a live reopening of the Country to the great Italian musical tradition, after difficult months marked worldwide by the pandemic closures. He added: "I am pleased that this takes place in close collaboration with the Accademia Chigiana, which had already been here twice, in November 2019 and in February 2020, with the Bel Canto and the Duo Federiciano, events that had recorded an important success of public and critics. I would like to underline that these two Concerts, besides celebrating an important anniversary in the history of bilateral relations, open the 2021-2022 musical season of Italy in Kuwait, which the Italian Embassy is currently defining and which will include next year up to six appointments between Ensembles, Soloists and Singing in Kuwait.



" The quality of relations between Italy and Kuwait, will also be sealed through the delivery of the first two Typhoon aircraft to the Kuwaiti Air Force, as part of the Eurofighter Program signed by Leonardo. "A very important moment of the extraordinary collaboration between our two Countries," Ambassador Baldocci underlined.



The inauguration of two important exhibitions, respectively on 14 and 15 December, the first on "Islamic Art, from the Bargello of Florence to Kuwait" at the Amricani Cultural Center, presented by Professor Giovanni Curatola and the second on "Italian Urban Planning in Kuwait", presented by professor Bico Belgiojoso, of the Studio BPPR of Milan, both organized by the Embassy of Italy, represent other highlights of the 5 days of celebrations for the sixtieth anniversary of the Italian Recognition of Kuwait.



"It is also on the basis of these extraordinary successes that we look with confidence and optimism to the next sixty years of the great friendship between Italy and Kuwait", concluded Ambassador Baldocci. (ANSAmed).


The Archbishop of Canterbury has warned against trying to legislate ourselves to good behaviour, insisting Government regulation alone cannot be the answer to protecting freedom of speech.

The Most Rev Justin Welby told peers that fear of reprisal, distortion of truth and the dehumanisation of people others disagree with are three major threats to freedom of speech, adding he was in favour of a maximalist and communitarian approach.

He recalled a columnist suggesting they hoped he would be mugged at knife point by a gang of refugees, adding: I did not feel threatened or for that matter offended.

Not only because I doubt many refugees are avid readers of his column, but because, like my predecessors, I stand here in a position of privilege  which though it makes me noticed, also confers security.

Peers listen to the Archbishop of Canterbury as he leads a debate in the House of Lords (PA)

Mr Welby, leading a House of Lords debate on challenges to freedom of speech, highlighted the struggles faced without such privileges before telling peers: Our understanding of the importance of freedom of speech and the threat to it needs to keep pace with the threat to its existence. Government regulation alone cannot be the answer.

I welcome the Governments moves to tackle online harms, but while we can protect those most at risk, we cannot  and should not  be trying to legislate ourselves to good behaviour.

Dr Martin Luther King said that we cannot restrain hatred, but we can restrain haters. That is the limit of law.

Fittingly robust and vehement debate should characterise our national life.

Online harms bills or cancel culture being itself cancelled cannot make us obey the command to engage with opponents as people, to face them and to destroy our enemies not with forms of suppression or law but by making them our friends  that is another quote from Dr King.

The archbishop had to pause at various points as he delivered his speech due to a cough, but he earlier insisted he had caught his granddaughters cold and reassured peers he had been tested to the limits of testing.

Mr Welby said social media gives voice to those previously unheard and is resented for that reason by those who have always been heard.

He added: We hear much nonsense of the snowflake generation who seek safety.

Younger generations are more concerned than their older counterparts about the safety and protection of minorities, and more willing to call for restrictions on speech to achieve this.

We need to keep a sense of perspective here. No-platforming is not a new phenomenon, and there is evidence to suggest it is very limited.

The way I can remember minorities being addressed 40 to 50 years ago shows that more concern about safety would have been good.

Freedom of speech sometimes means freedom for the powerful to bully and abuse.

Mr Welby highlighted the importance of the BBC in its domestic and World Service forms, noting of course it gets things wrong but it has a history of being banned by tyrants which demonstrates the fear that impartial reporting  true freedom of speech  generates in those who seek to stifle all liberty.

He went on to highlight the robust criticism, abuse and physical threats faced by those in the Commons and the Lords, telling peers: The anticipation of being howled down on social media is a constraint on speaking freely.

It is not fear of being argued with, but of the abusive and threatening hecklers, in their thousands and tens of thousands.

The setting up of fake websites, the use of hacking, the effectiveness of bots all bring the hecklers veto from a point of irritation to a threat to sanity and stability, even to the threat of social chaos.

Mr Welby said peoples exposure to variety is determined by impersonal and market-driven algorithms and all legislation and social pressure must stand against the commodification of speech.

He said: When it becomes a tradable commodity, it ceases to be a freedom-building community.

The archbishop said education is needed to cultivate the culture to encourage a fitting speech rather than attempting to ban bad speech.

Freedom of speech also requires respect for truth, Mr Welby said, as he criticised the spread of misinformation by conspiracy theorists  notably on the Covid vaccine  political agitators and hostile actors.

He added: Its a serious problem that big tech companies and governments must do more to tackle.
The mother of serial killer Stephen Ports first victim has claimed a massive victory as an inquest found police mistakes probably cost lives.

The body of fashion student Anthony Walgate, 23, was dumped outside Ports flat in Barking in June 2014.

Port spun a web of lies to police, whose failure to properly investigate allowed him to carry on attacking young gay men for 16 months.

He killed Gabriel Kovari, 22, Daniel Whitworth, 21, and Jack Taylor, 25, before being caught and convicted of the murders.

Mr Walgates mother Sarah Sak said confirmation that police mistakes likely contributed to the later deaths was massive.

She told the PA news agency: For them, the jury, to come back and say how they messed up Anthonys investigation and had they have done it right it would have saved the other three boys, I think that will be for us a massive victory. It will prove we were right all this time.

Sarah Sak, second right, arriving at Barking Town Hall (Emily Pennink/PA)

Early on, police wrongly decided that her son was a druggie student, Mrs Sak claimed.

She said: It did not matter what his family, his friends, anybody said, I think right from the very beginning they made their minds up and that was it.

The investigation was shut down quickly without proper checks on Ports background or attempts to verify his fake account.

There was an overall lack of basic policing, she said: Had that been done, three lads would not have died. Plain and simple as that.

Recalling her feelings at the time, she said: I found it incredibly frustrating and upsetting.

I kept speaking to the liaison officer saying have you looked at his laptop, have you looked for his phone  hes a young lad, he would not go anywhere without his phone. Have you spoken to his friends?

I literally got shut down every single time with its not suspicious, its unexplained.

I just felt like screaming because nobody would listen.

What really scares me more than anything is if I had not been so vocal  and the Taylor family  he would just have gone on and on.

He was literally playing Russian roulette with these young gay lads. Some died and some did not and he would have carried on and on.

The evidence before the jury exposed complete and utter chaos in the police force, she said.

Its like you cannot just say it was that failing, or that was not done, there is so much of it.

She also criticised the leadership, saying: It was just like everybody doing their own little bit but not doing enough, not joining the dots, and not speaking to each other.

Daniel Whitworth, Jack Taylor, Anthony Walgate and Gabriel Kovari (handouts/PA)

Mrs Sak said she was disappointed when the coroner ruled out underlying prejudice.

Even though officers denied they were biased, Mrs Sak insisted: I think it was the fact he was a young gay lad.

If Anthony, Gabriel, Daniel and Jack had been girls found in such close proximity there would have been an outcry. There would have been a lot more investigation  and there just wasnt.

I genuinely do believe part of that was homophobia.

She called for the police watchdog to reopen its investigation.

Some officers deserved to be sacked for mindblowing failings, such as not contacting Mr Kovaris bereaved family, she said.

By contrast, the team who eventually brought Port to justice was the gold standard.

Even though Mr Walgate was the first to be murdered, Mrs Sak believes his death could have been avoided if others came forward to report abuse earlier.

More needs to be done to engage with the LGBT community and make it easier for male victims to report attacks, she said.

She added: I still think there are some of his (Ports) rape victims out there that have not come forward. He really, literally, thought he was invincible.

Throughout the inquest, the victims families supported each other, sometimes with a simple squeeze of the hand.

Mrs Sak revealed they would also switch seats in Barking Town Hall so they could be seen on the video screens as particular officers gave evidence.

Even though the inquest was delayed due to the Covid-19 crisis, it was worth waiting to have a jury of everyday normal people to hear the case, she said.

Summing up her experience of the inquest, Mrs Sak said: At some points it made me quite angry and at other points it was quite upsetting and it still does not change the fact that he was my son and thats who he was.

She wants him to be remembered as the young crazy fashion designer that he always thought he was going be.

Mrs Sak said: He always said he would get his name up in lights, he would be famous.

Every time he wanted to borrow money he used to say Ill pay you back when Im famous, dont worry, when Im there everybody will know my name.

The thing is they do now  but for the wrong reasons.
Masks must be worn in more settings including cinemas, theatres and churches as measures are tightened in England in a bid to slow the spread of the latest coronavirus variant.

Tougher restrictions have been branded a necessary evil by a scientist advising the Government, who said the new approach absolutely is not an overreaction.

From Friday, in England the legal requirement to wear masks has been extended to more indoor spaces including museums, galleries and community centres.

From 10 December in England, you must wear a face covering in most public indoor venues, other than hospitality venues. There will be exemptions in venues where it is not practical to wear one, such as when you are eating, drinking or exercising.  https://t.co/AJ1DZmrux2 pic.twitter.com/pn06wiBNpl  UK Prime Minister (@10DowningStreet) December 8, 2021

Sports stadia are also included in regulations published on Thursday evening, but the Department of Health confirmed face coverings will only be mandatory in indoor areas.

Meanwhile, The Daily Telegraph cites an anonymous Government source as saying it is very likely visitors in social care settings will be limited to only three designated visitors as part of plans being considered by ministers.

There were a total of 817 confirmed cases of the Omicron variant in the UK as of Thursday, the UK Health Security Agency said.

(PA Graphics)

It comes as Public Health Scotland urged people to cancel their Christmas parties, in a message which clashes with Boris Johnsons suggestion that festive bashes in England should still go ahead despite a call for workers to stay away from offices.

Dr Nick Phin, the organisations director of public health science, said revellers should delay their festive gatherings until another time to help in the effort to slow virus spread.

Professor John Edmunds, a member of the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage), said cases of the variant will keep rising.

On restrictions, he told a Royal Society of Medicine briefing: I think its a necessary evil  its very damaging for parts of the economy, the hospitality sector, retail sector in particular  theyre going to be affected.

(PA Graphics)

Unfortunately, we have to do it. The rate at which this virus is spreading is doubling every two or three days.

He added: Even though theres very few cases here now, and it seems like an overreaction, it absolutely is not an overreaction.

Health Secretary Sajid Javid has warned that the number of UK Omicron infections could hit one million by the end of the month.

#OmicronVariant latest information249 additional confirmed cases of the #Omicron variant of COVID-19 have been reported across the UK. The total number of confirmed COVID-19 Omicron cases in the UK is 817. pic.twitter.com/OpKBg8EBES  UK Health Security Agency (@UKHSA) December 9, 2021

He has insisted the new measures are necessary to build our collective defences through the vaccination programme in the face of the rapidly-spreading variant.

Ministers have faced criticism for introducing tougher measures, with anger in the Conservative party fuelled by suspicions the new restrictions were introduced as an attempt to distract from the Prime Ministers troubles over an alleged staff party in Downing Street during last Decembers lockdown.

Fridays measures come ahead of a return to working from home on Monday and mandatory Covid passports for large venues from Wednesday, as the Governments Plan B comes into force.

People must wear face coverings in more settings such as cinemas and theatres (PA)

The new regulations will be put to a debate and vote in the Commons next week  and with Labours support they are certain to be approved, despite the prospect of a large Conservative revolt.

Despite officials appearing to say that under new rules shoppers could be allowed to remove their face coverings in supermarkets if they walked around the store singing, regulations state that someone may take a mask off if it is reasonably necessary to sing.

The regulations state that such occasions include singing as part of a choir, or during a service or rehearsal, or for performance.

Downing Street has said it would be hard to justify people having a reasonable excuse to remove their masks to sing while getting groceries under the new rules.

Masks do not need to be worn in hospitality settings such as pubs and restaurants, or in gyms or nightclubs.

The Plan B measures will be reviewed on January 5, before their expiry date of January 26.
US private equity giant Elliott Advisors has written to the board of housebuilder Taylor Wimpey, slamming poor decisions by outgoing chief executive Pete Redfern.

Elliott, which is one of the companys biggest shareholders, said the business must win back lost credibility with investors and search for a new chief executive externally after the former boss quit earlier this week after 14 years.

In the letter, the activist investor said: Taylor Wimpey is a business with extraordinary potential, powered by talented employees dedicated to delivering high standards of product quality and customer satisfaction.

Yet for all this promise, the company continues to fall short of achieving the opportunity inherent in the business.

In particular, a series of operational and strategic missteps has resulted in persistent share-price underperformance, leaving shareholders frustrated and lacking confidence in the company.

Taylor Wimpey boss Pete Redfern announced he was resigning this week (Piranha Photography/PA)

With the recent resignation of the CEO following reports of Elliotts involvement, the company has taken an important first step toward the change that Taylor Wimpey needs to restore this lost confidence.

However, the board now finds itself at a critical juncture: To remedy its long-term underperformance and regain credibility with investors, the boards process to find a new CEO must be transparent and thorough; it must focus on external candidates who have not been a party to the underperformance to date; and it must be accompanied by governance enhancements to support the new CEO with the right kind of operational experience and expertise.

Elliott went on to criticise the companys plans laid out in 2018 of focusing on large-scale sites, which it said led to sale-price erosion.

It added that Taylor Wimpey was the worst-performing company in its sector during the Covid-19 pandemic, pointing out its decline was 39% compared to Barratt and Bellways decline of 28% to 29% and Persimmons of 14%.

The investor said: We believe this share price underperformance is primarily due to the collapse in investor confidence in the companys leadership in recent years, the aforementioned strategic failings, together with a history of overpromising and under-delivering.

Taylor Wimpey said: We have not met with Elliott and prior to todays published letter we have not had any proposal from them.

Taylor Wimpey delivered record interim profits and increased guidance for the full year in August.

This follows a successful and well-timed 500 million equity raise in 2020 which enabled the company to invest in a total of 1.7 billion of new land at a time when there was a lack of competition in the land market and prices were considerably lower than they are today.

The company is set for another year of growth in 2022 and given the equity raise will deliver accelerated growth from 2023.
The US Government has won its bid to overturn a judges decision not to extradite WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.

Assange, 50, is wanted in America over an alleged conspiracy to obtain and disclose national defence information following WikiLeakss publication of hundreds of thousands of leaked documents relating to the Afghanistan and Iraq wars.

US authorities brought a High Court challenge against a January ruling by then-district judge Vanessa Baraitser that Assange should not be sent to the US, in which she cited a real and oppressive risk of suicide.

After a two-day hearing in October, the Lord Chief Justice Lord Burnett, sitting with Lord Justice Holroyde, ruled in favour of the US on Friday.

The senior judges found that the judge had based her decision on the risk of Assange being held in highly restrictive prison conditions if extradited.

Supporters of Julian Assange demonstrate outside the Royal Courts of Justice (PA)

However, the US authorities later gave assurances that Assange would not face those strictest measures either pre-trial or post-conviction unless he committed an act in the future that required them.

Lord Burnett said: That risk is in our judgment excluded by the assurances which are offered. It follows that we are satisfied that, if the assurances had been before the judge, she would have answered the relevant question differently.

He added: That conclusion is sufficient to determine this appeal in the USAs favour.

It is expected that Assange will attempt to bring an appeal over this latest decision.

The High Court was previously told that blocking Assanges removal due to his mental health risks rewarding fugitives for their flight.

James Lewis QC, for the US, said the district judge based her decision on Assanges intellectual ability to circumvent suicide preventative measures, which risked becoming a trump card for anyone who wanted to oppose their extradition regardless of any resources the other state might have.

Mr Lewis said that the four binding diplomatic assurances made were a solemn matter and are not dished out like smarties.

Stella Moris reacts after talking to the media outside the High Court at an earlier hearing (PA)

These included that Assange would not be submitted to special administrative measures (SAMs) and detained at the ADX Florence Supermax jail if extradited and that the US would consent to Assange being transferred to Australia to serve any prison sentence he may be given.

The US authorities also argued Assange is well enough to be extradited, with Mr Lewis telling the court his mental illness does not even come close to being severe enough to prevent being sent overseas.

But lawyers representing Assange, who opposed the USs bid to overturn the extradition block, had argued that the assurances over the WikiLeaks founders potential treatment were meaningless and vague.

Edward Fitzgerald QC said the judge had produced a carefully considered and fully reasoned judgment, adding it was clear she had scrupulously applied the test for oppression in cases of mental disorder.

Mr Fitzgerald later said that assurances not to impose SAMs on Assange or hold him at the ADX Florence Supermax jail pre-trial or post-conviction do not remove the risk of conditions of administrative isolation.

The court also heard that Assange had faced a menacing, threatening and frightening situation while under surveillance when he lived at the Ecuadorian embassy in London.

Mr Fitzgerald argued in written submissions that claims of extreme measures of surveillance, alongside subsequent recent disclosures about CIA plans from the same period in time to seriously harm Julian Assange, justified earlier concerns for the safety and privacy of his partner Stella Moris.

Assange has been held in Belmarsh Prison since 2019 after he was carried out of the Ecuadorian embassy by police before being arrested for breaching his bail conditions.

He had entered the building in 2012 to avoid extradition to Sweden to face sex offence allegations, which he has always denied and were eventually dropped.
Chef Daniel Whitworth and his boyfriend Ricky Waumsley were a young couple living happily together in Kent when tragedy struck.

The pair first met in the seaside town Margate, where Mr Waumsley was living and Mr Whitworth was on holiday, in August 2010, and just over a year later they moved in together in Gravesend.

By 2014, Mr Whitworth was working as a chef in Canary Wharf in London and Mr Waumsley for a pharmaceutical company, spending their free time at home, socialising with friends and family and enjoying holidays.

But on September 18 that year, Mr Whitworth did not return home, and was found dead in a churchyard in Barking.

Ricky Waumsley told the PA news agency he felt excluded by the police investigating his boyfriends death. (PA)

Recalling the moment police told him the news, Mr Waumsley told the PA news agency: I broke down and cried and was quite hysterical.

As you can well imagine lots of thoughts go through your mind. I didnt know what I was going to do with myself, I had literally just lost my partner. My life had literally just gone downhill.

Detectives said that 21-year-old Mr Whitworth had left a note stating that he had taken his own life after accidentally causing the death of another man, Gabriel Kovari, whose body had been found nearby just a few weeks before.

Mr Waumsley said: I was absolutely shocked and confused because for a start I didnt know who Gabriel Kovari was, and I didnt see any behaviour change in him in the weeks prior.

It didnt make sense to me. So I just didnt understand why he would have done such a thing.

In fact the note was a fake produced by serial killer Stephen Port, who had murdered both Mr Kovari and Mr Whitworth with overdoses of the drug GHB and wanted to cover his tracks.

The fake suicide note left with Mr Whitworths body. (Metropolitan Police/PA)

But a series of blunders and omissions by police meant they failed to uncover Ports lies.

He had already claimed the life of his first victim Anthony Walgate in June 2014, and would go on to kill Jack Taylor in September 2015 before investigators caught up.

This was despite loved ones of the four men repeatedly raising concerns about the substandard nature of the police inquiries and offering vital information which was ignored.

Mr Whitworth and Mr Waumsley were a couple who would stay in touch every day via text and Facebook messages while they were apart, providing key evidence as to where they were at any one time.

But detectives only asked Mr Waumsley where Mr Whitworth had been on the night before Gabriels body was found.

If proper phone checks had been carried out, it would have been clear that Mr Whitworth had not been in Barking when Mr Kovari died.

Gabriel Kovari, the second victim of serial killer Stephen Port. (Handout picture/PA)

Detectives also failed to properly analyse the handwriting on the fake suicide note, and did not order DNA testing on the bedsheet on which he was found lying.

Mr Waumsley said: If they had done both of those things, the handwriting check and the DNA tests on the bed sheet, they would have found out that one it wasnt Daniels handwriting and two it would have had Stephen Ports DNA (on the sheet).

He felt he was treated differently to Mr Whitworths stepmother Amanda, who was given information about the investigation even though she was not married to his father Adam at that time.

The couple were shown the fake suicide note during a visit to the site in Barking where Mr Whitworth was found in 2014, but Mr Waumsley was not allowed to see it.

I did ask if I could see the letter for myself, but the response I got was sorry youre not next of kin so we cant show you.

I was angry because I wanted to see. If hed done what it said on the letter I wanted to see and read for myself what he had done and why he had done that.

Mandy and Adam were unmarried and they treated them differently to how they treated me.

I felt that they were just pushing me aside, getting the information they wanted regarding who Daniel was as a person and then just not really involving me in anything.

A large maple tree in a corner of the walled cemetery in St Margarets churchyard in Barking, east London, where the bodies of Gabriel Kovari, 22, and Daniel Whitworth, 21, were found dead by the same dog walker three weeks apart in 2014. (Emily Pennink/PA)

Police did not allow Mr Waumsley to see the note until the first inquest into Mr Whitworth and Mr Kovais deaths in June 2015, when he noticed that the contents were completely impersonal and did not mention any loved ones.

The inquest hearing also laid bare the holes in the investigations into the mens deaths.

Four months later in October that year, Port was finally arrested for four murders.

Mr Waumsley, who still lives in Gravesend, believes that as well as being incompetent, police were homophobic towards the victims and made assumptions about their lifestyles.

I believe its a mixture of everything. So a bit of laziness, incompetence, lack of training.

But I absolutely stand by that they were being homophobic towards these four victims and making general assumptions that theyre all young, gay men who take drugs.
Breaking her silence. Jill Duggar addressed the conviction of her brother Josh Duggar after he was found guilty in his child pornography trial.

Read article

Today was difficult for our family, the 30-year-old Growing Up Duggar coauthor wrote in a statement on her and husband Derick Dillards blog on Thursday, December 9. Our hearts go out to the victims of child abuse or any kind of exploitation. We are thankful for the hard work of law enforcement, including investigators, forensic analysts, prosecutors and all others involved who save kids and hold accountable those responsible for their abuse.

The former Counting On star continued: Nobody is above the law. It applies equally to everybody, no matter your wealth, status, associations, gender, race, or any other factor. Today, the people of the Western District of Arkansas made that clear in their verdict. As a Christian, we believe we are all equal at the foot of the cross, and, likewise, we are all equal under the law.

Courtesy of Jill Duggar/Instagram

Jill and her husband, 32, went on to invoke a verse from Lukes chapter of the Bible, in which disciples were warned, Whatever you have said in the dark shall be heard in the light, and what you have whispered in private rooms shall be proclaimed on the housetops.

The pair, who tied the knot in 2014, added: We have been lied to so much that we wanted to hear the evidence for ourselves in court. After seeing all the evidence as it was presented, we believe that the jury reached a just verdict today, consistent with the truth beyond a reasonable doubt.

Read article

The Arkansas native and the recent law school grad attended parts of the trial before Josh, 33, was officially convicted on Thursday. The jury found him guilty of two charges of receiving and possessing child sexual abuse material following his April arrest. Once sentenced, he faces up to 20 years in prison and $250,000 in fines for each count.

News broke of the political activists arrest shortly after his wife, Anna Duggar, announced her seventh pregnancy in early April. The couple share children Mackynzie, 11, Michael, 10, Marcus, 8, Meredith, 6, Mason, 4, Maryella, 2, and welcomed daughter Madyson in October. Throughout the trial, Anna, 33, stood firmly by her husbands side.

While Jill has distanced herself from her 18 siblings and her parents, Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar, in recent years, she shared words of support for her sister-in-law on Thursday.

Joshs actions have rippled far beyond the epicenter of the offense itself. Children have scars, but his family is also suffering the fallout of his actions, her blog post concluded. Our hearts are sensitive to the pains Joshs wife, Anna, and their seven children have already endured and will continue to process in the future. This trial has felt more like a funeral than anything else. Joshs family has a long road ahead. We stand with them, we are praying for them and we will seek to support them however we can during this dark time.

Read article

Hours after the verdict made headlines, Jim Bob, 56, and Michelle, 55, opened up about the very grievous situation their family has been in amid the controversy.

Today, Gods grace, through the love and prayers of so many, have sustained us. Our hearts and prayers are with anyone who has ever been harmed through [child sexual abuse material], the former TLC stars noted in a statement to Us Weekly, adding that they intend to do all we can to surround our daughter-in-law Anna and their children with love and support.

This isnt the first time the Duggar family has been embroiled in a highly publicized scandal. Their reality series 19 Kids and Counting was canceled by TLC in 2015 after Josh was accused of molesting five underage girls years prior. One of his victims was Jill, who left reality TV behind after her family was given their spinoff, Counting On. TLC officially cut ties with the Duggars this summer.

If you or anyone you know has been sexually abused, call the National Sexual Assault Hotline at 1-800-656-HOPE (4673). A trained staff member will provide confidential, judgment-free support as well as local resources to assist in healing, recovering and more.
CHICAGO (AP)  Former Empire actor Jussie Smollett was convicted Thursday on charges he staged an anti-gay, racist attack on himself nearly three years ago and then lied to Chicago police about it.

In the courtroom as the verdict was read, Smollett stood and faced the jury, showing no visible reaction.

The jury found the 39-year-old guilty on five counts of disorderly conduct  one count for each separate time he was charged with lying to police in the days immediately after the alleged attack. He was acquitted on a sixth count, of lying to a detective in mid-February, weeks after Smollett said he was attacked.

The charge is a class 4 felony that carries a prison sentence of up to three years, but experts have said if convicted, Smollett would likely be placed on probation and ordered to perform community service.

The damage to his personal and professional life may be more severe. Smollett lost his role on the TV program Empire after prosecutors said the alleged attack was a hoax, and he told jurors earlier this week that Ive lost my livelihood.

The jury deliberated for just over nine hours Wednesday and Thursday after a roughly one-week trial in which two brothers testified that Smollett recruited them to fake the attack near his home in downtown Chicago in January 2019. They said Smollett orchestrated the hoax, telling them to put a noose around his neck and rough him up in view of a surveillance camera, and that he said he wanted video of the hoax made public via social media.

Smollett testified that he was the victim of a real hate crime, telling jurors there was no hoax. He called the brothers liars and said the $3,500 check he wrote them was for meal and workout plans. His attorneys argued that the brothers attacked the actor  who is gay and Black  because they are homophobic and didnt like who he was. They also alleged the brothers made up the story about the attack being staged to get money from Smollett, and that they said they wouldnt testify against him if Smollett paid them each $1 million.

In closing arguments on Wednesday, a prosecutor told jurors there was overwhelming evidence that Smollett staged the attack, then lied to police about it for publicity. His defense attorney said prosecutors' case was based on lies.

Special prosecutor Dan Webb told the jury that Smollett caused Chicago police to spend enormous resources investigating what they believe was a fake crime.

Besides being against the law, it is just plain wrong to outright denigrate something as serious as a real hate crime and then make sure it involved words and symbols that have such historical significance in our country, Webb said.

He also accused Smollett of lying to jurors, saying surveillance video from before the alleged attack and that night contradicts key moments of Smolletts testimony.

Defense attorney Nenye Uche called the brothers sophisticated liars" who may have been motivated to attack Smollett because of homophobia or because they wanted to be hired to work as his security.

These guys want to make money, he said.

Webb questioned why Smollett didnt turn over his cellphone to police or give them a DNA sample or access to his medical records to help with the investigation. Smollett testified he doesnt trust Chicago police, and that he was concerned about his privacy.

If he was a true victim of a crime he would not be withholding evidence, Webb said.

Uche called it nonsense for Chicago police to ask Smollett for his DNA when he was still considered the victim of a crime. He noted Smollett later provided DNA to the FBI for a separate investigation into hate mail he had received at the Empire studio shortly before the alleged attack.

He wasnt hiding anything, Uche said.

The disorderly conduct charge is a class 4 felony that carries a prison sentence of up to three years, but experts have Smollett would likely be placed on probation and ordered to perform community service.
A Democrat from California and a Republican from Texas have teamed up with an idea to make this months debt limit fight the last of its kind.

Reps. Jodey Arrington (R., Texas) and Scott Peters (D., Calif.) have a bill that's been gaining traction to end this political theater that threatens the national economy while also bring attention to the soaring national debt.

We "have to use these moments to reflect on this tremendous debt that we've amassed," Arrington told Yahoo Finance Live, saying his plan would rein in the drama and lead to "a debate, real proposals and a vote so that we can actually start taking that trend line and bending it down to a more reasonable and responsible level of debt."

"That is a much more productive way to do business," he said.

In a statement, Peters added that the plan would ensure a stronger, more stable economic future.

Rep. Jodey Arrington, R-Texas, during a Republican Study Committee press conference in May. (Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)

The bill brings together two lawmakers from opposite sides of the countrys political divide. Peters is a Democrat from the San Diego area who recently celebrated the just-passed infrastructure deal. Arrington, from Texas, previously worked as a senior advisor to then-President George W. Bush. More recently he voted on Jan. 6 against the certification of Joe Biden's victory even after rioters stormed the Capitol building to disrupt the vote.

They've tried to thread the needle here on something they actually think could pass, said Shai Akabas, director of economic policy at the Bipartisan Policy Center, which supports the bill.

Ending the hand waving about how much debt we have

Washington is emerging from its second debt limit fight in recent months with little to show for it. On Dec. 7, leading lawmakers announced a complex deal that appears set to push the specter of a government default off until after the 2022 elections. The deal is designed to allow Democrats to lift the debt limit without any votes from Republicans.

Arrington voted against the proposal while Peters cast a vote in support. Their hope for next time around would give Congress two additional avenues to tackle the debt limit.

The first option would allow the president alone to suspend the debt limit if Congress passes a concurrent budget resolution which includes specific debt reduction measures.

Failing that, a second avenue to avoid default would also allow the president to act alone. In that case, the debt ceiling could be lifted for a year as long as the president files a written request to Congress laying out specific debt reduction proposals that Congress must consider.

Democratic Congressman Scott Peters at a polling station in La Jolla, California (REUTERS/Mike Blake)

Akabas predicts that the second avenue is the more likely path. Putting this squarely on the table in front of Congress each year will lead to more substantive discussions about what we can do to fix it rather than just hand-waving about how much debt we have, he said.

A politically realistic option

Experts have repeatedly warned about the economic impacts of a government default. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen recently told lawmakers, we will eviscerate our current recovery if the issue is left unaddressed. Others warn that a debt default could cause the stock market to plummet, trigger a recession, and cause chaos in global financial markets.

Raising the debt ceiling  as is often noted  does not impact future spending; rather it allows the Treasury to pay for spending that has already been approved in years past by lawmakers of both parties.

The bipartisan bill to rewrite the rules has been gradually gaining traction across Washington. Maya MacGuineas, president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, said it would effectively nudge lawmakers to make needed fiscal reforms. Former U.S. Sen. Kent Conrad said its a politically realistic way to get beyond the current debt limit fights.

"This one is going to take some time because we have to get the Senate engaged," Arrington said of the timing. But he's optimistic there will be movement in the coming year: "There are plenty of action-forcing moments around spending, around our fiscal affairs and budgeting that we can work to put this in play."

Both parties are trying to find a way out of the box and if that's the case, why not change the box," said Akabas.

Ben Werschkul is a writer and producer for Yahoo Finance in Washington, DC.

Even Trump-aligned lawmakers are resisting his advice on the debt ceiling

Biden's $2.2T spending bill 'likely to boost inflation' in the short term, economist says

Its not a quick hit: Democrats highlight the gradual nature of their spending bills amid inflation worries

Read the latest financial and business news from Yahoo Finance

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Weed edibles often come in the form of sweet treats that look appealing to children. (Photo: Jamie Grill via Getty Images)

Over the summer, a Maryland mother shared a cautionary tale after her toddler consumed 15 gummies containing THC, the high-inducing chemical in marijuana. In April, an 11-year-old and 5-year-old in Utah were hospitalized after eating Medicated Nerds Rope candy that their families received as part of a food bank distribution program. And in May, a 6-year-old was rushed to the emergency room after eating a THC-containing gummy at a pool party in Florida.

Exposure of marijuana products to children has increased since both medical and recreational marijuana has been legalized, especially in Colorado, said Dr. Jim Cotter, an emergency medicine physician at UCHealth Yampa Valley Medical Center in Steamboat Springs.

The most common overdose incidence in children occur when the drug has been combined with a food in an edible form of marijuana, he added. These edibles can have a higher dose of THC, the main psychoactive component in marijuana, and can have profound effects in children. Most of the time kids mistake these edibles  gummy candies, brownies, lollipops  for regular food and eat it unknowingly.

Indeed, as more states legalize recreational marijuana, poison control centers have reported increases in the number of calls they receive regarding children whove ingested weed edibles. According to a research brief published in Pediatrics in 2021, the phenomenon occurs most commonly with 3- to 5-year-olds.

So, what should you do if you find your child in this situation? Below, Cotter and other doctors share their advice.

Know the signs.

Sometimes you might catch a child in the act of eating edibles, but often, the situation doesnt become apparent until they start exhibiting signs.

THC has more severe consequences for children than it does for adults, said Dr. Kevin C. Osterhoudt, medical director of The Poison Control Center at Childrens Hospital of Philadelphia and a member of the American Academy of Pediatrics Council on Injury, Violence, and Poison Prevention.

He explained that children who eat THC edibles might start to lose their balance and act very sleepy or seem out of it.

With big doses, children can become very ill and not breathe right, have seizures, and even go into a coma. Its easy for children to get a big, big dose for their size, he said. THC edible products like gummies and cookies may contain large amounts of THC, and we frequently care for children who are believed to have eaten 100 to 800mg of THC!

Dr. Candice Jones, a pediatrician in Orlando, Florida, noted that THC takes more time to take effect in edible form, compared to smoking or vaping, so it might take time to notice something is wrong.

Ive seen cases where parents rush the child to the ER, asking Why is she asleep? I cant wake her up. Something is wrong, she explained. The THC is often highly concentrated in edibles, so kids who ingest it are getting a more potent form, and symptoms last longer.

Act fast.

If your child has an edible in their mouth, immediately take it out. Cotter said. Monitor for changes to your childs behavior.

Try to remain calm and focus on caring for your child. Osterhoudt recommended taking them to a safe, quiet place.

Try to find out what type of edible the child ate, how much it looks like they ate, and any information on how much THC was in the edible, he said. Otherwise, call your poison control center at 1-800-222-1222 to talk to a nurse or a pharmacist expert and to get help.

The poison control representative will likely ask a number of questions about your childs state and how much THC they consumed and then advise on next steps.

With big doses, children can become very ill and not breathe right, have seizures, and even go into a coma. Its easy for children to get a big, big dose for their size.Dr. Kevin C. Osterhoudt, medical toxicologist

Seek professional treatment.

Poison control might recommend you take your child to the hospital or might even call 911 on your behalf. But if you notice your kid is exhibiting severe symptoms, you should bypass calling the helpline and immediately seek medical treatment.

If a child is having trouble breathing, is unresponsive, or has a seizure, it is best to call 911, Osterhoudt said.

At the hospital, doctors and nurses will check their vital signs and determine the best course of action.

There is no antidote for THC intoxication, Osterhoudt explained. Doctors support severely poisoned children by making sure that they keep breathing and have enough blood sugar, and by making sure that they didnt suffer any other injuries.

Cotter noted that these patients might receive IV fluids for low blood pressure and/or supplemental oxygen in cases of more severe lethargy.

In very rare instances, some children have developed coma and have needed to be placed on ventilators for respiratory support, he said. The duration of coma is typically one to two days and full recovery is expected with supportive care.

Ensure it wont happen again.

These incidents underscore the importance of safe storage when it comes to substances that could be harmful to children.

Children are naturally curious and exploratory, they like to imitate the actions of grown-ups, and they act fast, Osterhoudt said.

He advised against bringing THC edibles in homes that have young children, but if you must, there are important safety measures to follow.

Dont eat THC edibles in front of children, Osterhoudt cautioned. Store THC edibles in a secure place  like a lockbox  that is out of reach and out of sight of children. Never buy THC edibles that are made in counterfeit packages that look just like real candies.

He suggested talking to family and friends about keeping their homes safe environments for children too, just as you would with guns.

Jones also recommended storing these products in a lockbox or safe and keeping them in their original packaging, which regulations typically require to be child-resistant (though theres a push to make such requirements more stringent and widespread).

Adults need to be responsible and only use these things during their own private time when they arent around their children, she said. And supervise your supply, so you notice if some is missing.

This article originally appeared on HuffPost and has been updated.

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Buffalo Bills safety Micah Hyde addressed the tense moment in the media room earlier this week, telling reporters via Zoom "damn right I'm a sore loser" when he met with them on Wednesday.

Hyde and Bills safety Jordan Poyer were answering questions after a 14-10 loss to the New England Patriots on Monday night when they engaged in a terse back-and-force with a local TV reporter and columnist. The moment quickly spread through social media.

Hyde describes anger behind viral question

The duo was asked by Jerry Sullivan if they were "embarrassed" to lose to a team that attempted only three passing plays, the first time that's happened in the NFL since 1974. They took exception to it and Hyde told Sullivan "that's funny. We'll remember that." He continued to speak to Sullivan as he left the podium.

In his first meeting with the reporters after the game, Hyde went back to it when describing the frustrations the team feels in failing to string together wins.

Micah Hyde on not being able to string together wins: "Damn right I'm a sore loser. Show me a sore loser and I'm gonna show you a winner. We want to win everybody in this locker room should be a damn sore loser. We're trying to do stuff right, trying to fix our weaknesses." pic.twitter.com/AU1i7d2APe  Heather Prusak (@haprusak) December 8, 2021

"This even goes back to the postgame stuff," Hyde told reporters, via video by News4Buffalo's Heather Prusak. "Damn right I'm a sore loser. Show me a sore loser and I"m going to show you a winner. We want to win. Everybody in this locker room should be a damn sore loser."

The Bills (7-5) have not won back-to-back games since early October when they closed a four-game winning streak. The loss to the Patriots (9-4) in a primetime showcase was particularly painful for the fanbase. Quarterback Tom Brady's exit from the AFC East was viewed as the Bills chance to finally take control, but instead they're in the last wildcard spot and nearly on the bubble.

Hyde on mutual respect, standards

Buffalo Bills safety Micah Hyde explained his reaction to a columnist he took issue with after a loss to the Patriots on Monday night. (Chuck Cook-USA TODAY Sports)

Hyde explained that he felt in the moment there wasn't a level of respect for the players or team with how Sullivan asked the question. Via New York Upstate:

I respect the s*** out of you guys," Hyde, 30, said. "And then when something like that happens after a game I expect more. Maybe Im naive. Maybe I shouldnt. I hold you guys to a higher standard just like you guys hold me.

Im never gonna attack you guys. My mom taught me better; my home town taught me better. ... I really do appreciate you guys. I know your guys role in this whole situation. You guys are trying to get your job done and feed your family, just like I am. When it comes down to it we all gotta respect each other, and thats all I care about in this situation.

Hyde, a Toledo, Ohio, native who attended Iowa, said the types of relationships he's built with reporters "aren't just BS."

The Bills will face Brady and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers on Sunday as 3.5-point underdogs at Bet MGM.
A British appeals court has handed the United States a major victory in its efforts to bring WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange to trial, overturning a lower court ruling that had blocked his extradition out of fear he would commit suicide while he was in custody in a U.S. prison.

The judges ruling opens the door for Assange  who has been holed up in a British prison while awaiting the decision  to be flown to the U.S. to face charges that he disclosed classified documents harmful to national security in violation of the World War I-era Espionage Act.

But when that will happen is far from clear. Calling the ruling highly disturbing, one of Assanges lawyers said his legal team will appeal to the British Supreme Court, suggesting that the extradition battle in London could drag on for months, if not longer, before the U.S. courts get to decide his fate.

Julian Assange supporters protest in front of the High Court in London on Friday. (Frank Augstein/AP)

The U.K. court reached this decision without considering whether extradition is appropriate when the United States is pursuing charges against him that could result in decades in prison, based on his having reported truthful information about newsworthy issues such as the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Barry Pollack, Assanges U.S. lawyer, said in an email to Yahoo News. Mr. Assange will seek review of this decision by the U.K. Supreme Court.

The largely technical ruling by two judges on the British court did not take into account broader issues raised by the Assange case, such as whether his prosecution violates press freedoms (as has been argued by media and civil liberties groups) or whether the CIA had engaged in improper conduct when, as was reported in September by Yahoo News, it developed plans to abduct Assange from the Ecuadorian Embassy and possibly even assassinate him.

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange on the balcony of the Ecuadorian Embassy in London in 2017. (Matt Dunham/AP)

Instead, the court primarily focused on the risks to Assanges mental health if he is placed under harsh confinement in an Alexandria, Va., jail while awaiting trial or sent to the maximum security prison in Florence, Colo., if convicted. A lower court judge, Vanessa Baraitser, had ruled earlier this year that the risks of suicide were real given Assanges psychological state: He had spent nearly seven years living in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London in order to avoid being extradited to Sweden to face sexual assault charges (which were ultimately dropped) and was described as suffering from an Aspergers-like psychological disorder.

But in overturning that ruling, the British High Court said it was influenced by diplomatic assurances the U.S. gave the British government last February in the form of declarations filed by Gordon Kromberg, an assistant U.S. attorney in Alexandria who had worked on Assanges indictment. Those assurances included a commitment that Assange would not be subject to special administrative measures  such as solitary confinement  in Alexandria, that he would receive psychological care while in jail and that he would not be sent to the Florence facility if convicted. Instead, the U.S. said, it would permit Assange to serve out any sentence in his native Australia.

Assange after a court appearance in London in 2019. (Matt Dunham/AP)

The High Court judges accepted those assurances, calling them solemn undertakings, offered by one government to another, which will bind all officials and prosecutors who will deal with the relevant aspects of Mr Assanges case now and in the future.

But Pollack called the assurances vague, and Assanges British lawyers had argued they could easily be revoked if U.S. officials decide he engaged in further conduct  such as publishing more classified documents that WikiLeaks possesses  while he is in U.S. custody. Pollack also said that Assanges lawyers will seek to raise other issues in the British courts  such as what they view as vengeful conduct by the CIA toward him  that could postpone a final ruling for years. Theres still a lot of legal wrangling left in the U.K., he said. And if those efforts fail, Assange will still have the chance to appeal to the European Court of Human Rights, a move that could delay the matter even further.

Assange has been a target of senior U.S. officials for more than a decade, ever since he began publishing classified documents about errant U.S. military strikes in Iraq and Afghanistan and State Department cables from U.S. embassies abroad. That was followed in 2016 by his publication of internal Democratic National Committee emails embarrassing to Hillary Clinton that had been hacked by Russian military intelligence and, according to a report by Justice Department special counsel Robert Mueller, were provided to WikiLeaks via an encrypted email file on the eve of that years Democratic convention.

Assange presents Iraq War logs at a press conference in London in 2010. (Shutterstock)

But U.S. efforts to apprehend him escalated even more dramatically in 2017, after WikiLeaks began publishing sensitive documents about the CIAs own methods to penetrate iPhones and computers around the world, enraging the agencys then-new director, Mike Pompeo, and prompting him to target the organization as a non-state hostile intelligence service. While Pompeos push to kidnap Assange inside the Ecuadorian Embassy was blocked by Trump White House lawyers, the sharpened focus on Assanges activities led to his first indictment later that year for encouraging one of his sources, former Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning, to hack a classified computer.

Those charges have since been broadened to include an 18-count indictment for his publication of the classified military and State Department documents that U.S. officials say harmed national security and endangered the lives of sources for the U.S. government. But press-freedom advocates have argued it is impossible to meaningfully distinguish between WikiLeaks publication of classified material and similar disclosures by mainstream news organizations.

Todays ruling is an alarming setback for press freedom in the United States and around the world, and represents a notable escalation in the use of the Espionage Act in the War on Whistleblowers that has expanded through the past several presidential administrations, one of those press advocacy organizations, the Freedom of the Press Foundation, said in a statement Friday.
WASHINGTON (AP)  The Supreme Court has ruled that Texas abortion providers can sue over the states ban on most abortions, but the justices are allowing the law to remain in effect.

The court acted Friday, more than a month after hearing arguments over the law that makes abortion illegal after cardiac activity is detected in an embryo. Thats around six weeks, before some women even know they are pregnant. There are no exceptions for rape or incest.

The law has been in place since Sept. 1.

The outcome is at best only a partial victory for abortion providers. The same federal judge who already has once blocked the law almost certainly will be asked to do so again. But then his decision will be reviewed by the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which has twice voted to allow enforcement of the abortion ban.

The case could return to the justices and so far there have not been five votes on the nine-member court to put the law on hold while the legal fight plays out.

The court's conservative majority also seems likely to roll back abortion rights in a Mississippi case that was argued last week, although that decision is not expected until the spring.
When the Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing on the future of the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay this week, no Biden administration witnesses showed up  a glaring absence that underscored the paralysis among White House aides over how to achieve their publicly stated goal of shutting down the facility.

But Mohamedou Ould Slahi, who spent almost 14 years at Guantanamo and says he was brutally beaten and threatened with execution without ever being charged with a crime, has some advice for his onetime captors: Come clean about what was done to the detainees there, and transfer those accused of committing the Sept. 11 attacks to the United States so they can be openly tried in a court of law.

Former Guantanamo prisoner Mohamedou Ould Slahi at a press conference in Nouakchott, Mauritania, in 2016. (Stringer/AFP via Getty Images)

They should take anyone who is alleged of those heinous crimes to court in America and let them face the music, Slahi, 50, now a free man, said during an interview for the Yahoo News Skullduggery podcast. How can you be the leader of the free world if you dont respect the rule of law?

Slahis story serves as a reminder that when Martin Luther King Jr. said the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice, the bending can take an excruciatingly long time. It is a story that is powerfully told in The Mauritanian, a movie released earlier this year starring Jodie Foster as Slahis defense lawyer who helped secure his release after years of legal battles.

An engineering student from Mauritania who had gotten a scholarship to study in Germany, Slahi was swept up in an unrelenting international dragnet in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks. At the request of U.S officials, he was detained by Mauritanian police, flown to Jordan in a secretive procedure known as rendition, and then transferred to Guantanamo in early 2002, where he was accused  falsely, as it turned out  of recruiting the hijackers who flew into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

When Slahi denied the allegations, his interrogators didnt believe him. Then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld ordered that he be subjected to harsh interrogations that went far beyond what was in the Army field manual.

Thats when they start the torture, said Slahi, recounting his experience via Zoom from Dakar, Senegal. I remember one day I almost died because they put me in this fridge. And Im telling you, like, when I say the fridge, people dont understand this because [another detainee] did not survive the fridge. He died in the fridge. It was too cold.

And I remember this Marine guy, he was like, I was in the fridge and he was pouring water over me and I wore only a thin uniform and I was so cold. But I really wanted him to stop, I wanted to talk. But I couldnt talk because my lips couldnt move and my tongue, it was like a stone.

A U.S. Army soldier outside the detention center at Naval Station Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in 2016. (John Moore/Getty Images)

To be sure, U.S. intelligence officials had reason to be suspicious of Slahi. He seemed, at first blush, the Forrest Gump of Islamic terrorism. A devout Muslim, he had gone to Afghanistan in 1990 to fight with the mujahedeen against the Soviet occupation and joined al-Qaida. (This was during a period in which the CIA was arming the mujahedeen and years before al-Qaida was linked to acts of terrorism.)

When Slahi was studying in Germany, he had received a call from his cousin, a member of al-Qaidas Shura Council, that was placed from Osama bin Ladens satellite phone. (According to Slahi, his cousin wanted him to transfer funds for the medical expenses of his father.)

And when he returned to Germany, in 1999, a friend asked him to pick up and bring back to his apartment three visitors from the Middle East, one of whom was Ramzi Binalshibh, one of the organizers of the 9/11 attacks. (Slahi says he had no idea who Binalshibh was and the subject of terror attacks never came up.)

With so many suspicious links, Pentagon interrogators were determined to break him. He was, he says, beaten mercilessly and deprived of sleep for days at a time. Female interrogators  at times wearing masks  disrobed him. They taunted, humiliated, and, he said, sexually assaulted him.

Still to this day, I have a lot of issues and problems when people touch me, you know, when people close to me touch me, I dont want them to get close to me, he said.

There was yet more: He was deprived of sleep for days at a time, bombarded with loud rock music, and, at one point, taken on a boat ride, force-fed seawater and threatened with execution. But what finally broke him was another ploy: His chief interrogator, an ex-Chicago cop with a checkered record of abusing prisoners, told him they were going to arrest his mother and bring her to Guantanamo.

The interrogator came to me and he handed me a letter. He said this is a letter stating that my mother would be kidnapped, and he insinuated that she would be raped. It was, he said, like a stab through my heart.

A detainee inside the U.S. military prison for enemy combatants at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in 2009. (John Moore/Getty Images)

And the only way to stop that from happening was for me to confess to my, quote, unquote, crimes. So I wanted to say anything, everything, whatever he wants.

And so Slahi cracked, signing a lengthy detailed confession to being every bit the al-Qaida operative U.S. officials had accused him of being. In doing so, he was echoing a prewritten script based on what Binalshibh himself had confessed to  Slahi had recruited him for the 9/11 plot. As with Slahis confession, it was made only after similar torture.

When I was tortured, I wanted only to please my interrogator, said Slahi. If they told me I was on Mars, I will tell them I was on Mars. If they told me, You were the hijackers and you died on one of the planes, I would tell them I died on the plane.

As ghastly as Slahis account sounds, much of it was documented in a searing 2009 report by the Senate Armed Services Committee.The report details how Guantanamo commanders, frustrated at Slahis lack of cooperation, proposed special interrogation methods to shock the prisoner into submission. He was to be hooded, shaved and doused in freezing cold water and subjected to sensory deprivation and sleep adjustment, the report states. Female interrogators were to make close physical contact in order to increase his stress level. Even before Rumsfeld signed off, some of those methods had begun, the report states. One of the interrogators told Slahi he would very soon disappear down a very dark hole and his very existence will become erased. He was shown a fictitious letter stating that his mother had been detained and might be transferred to GTMO.

Slahis confession never held up  and he ultimately renounced every word of it. (After reaffirming his denials, he was given two lie detector tests and passed both.) When a Marine officer, Lt. Col. Stuart Couch, was assigned to prosecute Slahi before a military commission, he secured access to the classified records of what was done to him and was appalled. It became clear that what had been done to Slahi amounted to torture, he said. Couch quit the case in protest. In 2010, Slahis lawyer, Nancy Hollander, persuaded a federal judge to order him freed in a habeas corpus hearing.

U.S. Navy guards escort a detainee at Guantanamo Bay in 2008. (Department of Defense/1st Lt. Sarah Cleveland/handout via Reuters)

But even that didnt lead to Slahis release from Guantanamo. The Obama administration appealed the judges order, and his case dragged on for another six years. Finally, the government gave up and let Slahi return to his native Mauritania in October 2016.

By then, Slahi had written a book about his experiences, Guantanamo Diary, that became an international bestseller and turned him into a symbol of the U.S. governments excesses in the war on terror. But still, Slahi says, he holds no personal animus against his interrogators. As documented in In Search of Monsters, a new documentary film by journalist John Goetz that was recently featured on the National Public Radio program This American Life," he has even met and bonded with some of those interrogators.

I tell you a secret, a lot of people really dont believe that I dont hold any grudge, and theyre wrong, he said. Throughout his ordeal, I took it upon myself to be a nice person and took a vow of kindness no matter what. And you cannot have a vow of kindness without forgiving people. This is what matters to me. Im so selfish. I want to feel good, you know? And thats my way to feel good.
Political map of Sudan and South Sudan with capitals Khartoum and Juba, with national borders, most important cities, rivers and lakes. Vector illustration with English labeling and scaling.

CAIRO (AP)  Renewed tribal clashes this week between Arabs and non-Arabs in Darfur have killed at least 33 more people, a Sudanese medical group said, warning of still escalating violence in the war-wracked region.

Thousands have been displaced by the recent fighting in Darfur, with some crossing into neighboring Chad, the United Nations has said. The violence poses a significant challenge to Sudan's transitional government, which is seeking to end decades-long rebellions in Darfur in elsewhere in this African country.

According to a statement from the Sudan Doctors Committee, the clashes took place on Wednesday in the the town of Jebel Moon and the adjacent Tanjeki village in West Darfur province. At least 10 people were also wounded, said the statement, released on Thursday.

The latest death toll raises the number of people killed in tribal fighting since October in Darfur to at least 183. The violence has especially deteriorated in recent weeks. It comes as Sudan is mired in instability following the October military coup that has rattled an already fragile democratic transition.

Sudan has faced uphill security and economic challenges since the 2019 overthrow of longtime autocrat Omar al-Bashir and his Islamist government.

Clashes in Jebel Moon first erupted in mid-November over a land dispute between Arab and non-Arab tribes. At the time, at least 17 people were killed. Another bout of violence earlier this week in the town of Kreinik, also in West Darfur, killed at least 88.

The Darfur conflict began in 2003 when ethnic Africans rebelled, accusing the Arab-dominated government in the capital, Khartoum, of discrimination. Al-Bashirs government has been accused of retaliating by arming local nomadic Arab tribes and unleashing Arab militias known as janjaweed on civilians  a charge it denies.

Al-Bashir, jailed in Khartoum since his ouster, faces international charges of genocide and crimes against humanity related to the Darfur conflict.
JERUSALEM (AP)  Former President Donald Trump lashed out with profanity at Benjamin Netanyahu for congratulating President Joe Biden on his victory in last year's election, an Israeli newspaper reported Friday.

Trump accused the former Israeli leader of disloyalty, saying he had helped Netanyahu in his own elections by reversing decades of U.S. policy and supporting Israel's claims to territory seized in war. Trump is still falsely claiming the U.S. election was stolen from him.

In interviews earlier this year with the Israeli journalist Barak Ravid, Trump expressed fury at a video Netanyahu circulated online in which he congratulated Biden.

Nobody did more for Bibi. And I liked Bibi. I still like Bibi, Trump said, referring to Netanyahu by his nickname, in the remarks published by the Yediot Aharonot newspaper. But I also like loyalty... Bibi could have stayed quiet. He has made a terrible mistake.

Netanyahu congratulated Biden more than 12 hours after the election had been called and after most other world leaders. Netanyahu did not refer to him as president-elect in the tweet, and followed it up with a post praising Trump.

FILE - President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu attend the Abraham Accords signing ceremony on the South Lawn of the White House, in Washington, Sept. 15, 2020. Former President Donald Trump lashed out with profanity at Benjamin Netanyahu for congratulating President Joe Biden on his victory in last year's election, an Israeli newspaper reported Friday, Dec. 10, 2021. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon, File)

Trump appeared to be particularly incensed by a video released by Netanyahu on Jan. 20, the day Biden was inaugurated, in which Netanyahu said he and Biden had a warm personal friendship going back many decades.

I havent spoken to him since. F- him, Trump was quoted as saying.

Netanyahu was replaced as prime minister last summer after he was unable to form a governing majority in the wake of four hard-fought elections in less than two years.

The Trump administration took unprecedented steps to support Israel, including dropping objections to its settlements in the occupied West Bank and recognizing Jerusalem as its capital. After proposing a Mideast plan that was adamantly rejected by the Palestinians, the administration brokered normalization agreements between Israel and four Arab states.

Trump said his decision to recognize Israel's annexation of the Golan Heights, which it captured from Syria in the 1967 war, helped Netanyahu ahead of Israeli elections in April 2019.

I did it right before the election, which helped him (Netanyahu) a lot," Trump said.

The Trump administration also withdrew from the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, to which Israel had been strongly opposed. After he re-imposed U.S. sanctions that had been lifted under the deal, Iran began publicly exceeding the limits it had set on its nuclear program. Biden is now working with world powers to try to restore the agreement.

Ill tell you what  had I not come along I think Israel was going to be destroyed," Trump said. "I think Israel would have been destroyed maybe by now.
The White House announced a new initiative Thursday, bringing to the table items that grassroots organizers have long been pushing for  among those, disaggregation of data under the Asian umbrella and a more diverse array of language options in federal programs.

Spearheaded by Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra, the White House Initiative on Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders also aims to address the impacts of Covid-19 on Asian American livelihoods, including businesses that suffered disproportionately throughout the pandemic.

The Biden-Harris Administration is committed to tackling a wide scope of challenges impacting communities that have been historically overlooked and underserved, Becerra said in a statement.

Asian American civil rights organizations commended the move and hope the initiative will be used as a tool to support lower-income, underrepresented AAPI communities.

At a time when many Southeast Asian Americans are grappling with the physical, mental, and economic impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic and ongoing systemic injustices, this is an important opportunity for our voices to be included in the decisions that impact our lives, Quyen Dinh, executive director of the Southeast Asian Resource Action Center, said in a statement.

Community leaders said they hope the initiative will foster inclusion and education of the general public on historical and present-day issues impacting these communities. Tracking hate incidents, providing career opportunities and focusing on the unique needs of LGBTQ Asians are also high on the priority list, they said.

While Covid-19 has hit all Americans with unprecedented challenges, we appreciate the Administrations recognition of the difficulties that are unique to Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians, and Pacific Islanders, Marielle A. Reataza, executive director of the National Asian Pacific American Families Against Substance Abuse, said in a statement. Community-building and rebuilding are truly necessities during this time, and we look forward to the progress needed to serve and heal our communities.

Data disaggregation, one of the issues mentioned in the announcement of the White Houses new initiative, has been an ongoing conversation for scholars of Asian American issues. The Department of Education currently requires schools to aggregate student data across 48 ethnicities under the label Asian, according to AAPI Data.

But looking at it this way can paint over the issues that each community faces, activists say, and feed into the myth Asians are generally successful and in less need of federal support. A lack of disaggregated data has also diluted the severity of the pandemics impact on individual AAPI groups.

It can make it harder for Asians in need to access pandemic resources, because they simply arent advertised as much in their neighborhoods. This is a particular problem for groups such as Hmong Americans, Indo Caribbeans and Native Hawaiians who experts say can be erased without looking deeper into Asian data.

I call this the gaslighting of the Asian American population, and it has been going on for decades, for every single health condition that I can think of, Tung Nguyen, a professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, told NBC Asian America in October 2020. It is an example of anti-Asian structural racism.

In some cases, even aggregated data has shown a disproportionate level of suffering.

Southern California, for example, saw Asian-owned businesses hit the hardest through the pandemic. Customer-facing operations took huge blows in general, on top of the racism that kept people out of immigrant neighborhoods, Paul Ong, a professor and researcher at the University of California, Los Angeles, said in September.

Many Asian American entrepreneurs are immigrants, he said. They can speak English, they have some rudimentary command of English, but not necessarily at the level that one needs, particularly if the information is only supplied in English.

Older business owners who didnt know programs like the Paycheck Protection Program existed and couldnt get their services online fast suffered the most, Ong said.

There seems to be a double whammy, he said.
YEREVAN, DECEMBER 10, ARMENPRESS. Anyone, especially an Armenian, can and should visit Artsakh only in agreement with the Artsakh authorities. The Azerbaijani authorities have nothing to do here, State Minister of Artsakh Artak Beglaryan said in a press conference at ARMENPRESS media hall, commenting on the announcements of Azerbaijan over the individuals who visited Artsakh.

Thats totally unacceptable for us. Anyone, especially an Armenian, can and should visit Artsakh only in agreement with our Government. The Azerbaijani leadership has nothing to do here. Any Armenian official is free to visit Artsakh. I cannot say what demarches Azerbaijan is carrying out in return, but it is obvious that they are very nervous. If Azerbaijan wants to resolve the conflict, I think it must avoid these convulsions, it must accept that we have our rights, our own homeland, Beglaryan said.
YEREVAN, DECEMBER 10, ARMENPRESS. The first session of the "3 + 3" regional consulting platform was held in Moscow on December 10 with the participation of the Deputy Foreign Ministers of Russia, Armenia, Turkey, Azerbaijan, as well as the Director General of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Iran, ARMENPRESS was informed from the Foreign Ministry of Russia. It is noted that the Georgian representatives, who were also invited, refrained from participating in the meeting.

Prospects for the development of multilateral regional cooperation were discussed during the meeting. An agreement was reached to focus the work of the platform on the practical issues that are of interest to all its participants.

These include confidence-building measures, cooperation in the trade, economic, transport, cultural and humanitarian spheres, and response to common challenges and threats.

The representatives of the five countries expressed interest for Georgia to join the platform, for which the door remain open.

The further activities were discussed, with the possible joining of the sectoral ministries and departments. Deputy FM Vahe Gorgyan took part in the meeting from the Armenian side.
YEREVAN, DECEMBER 10, ARMENPRESS. The Republic of Armenia calls on the Republic of Azerbaijan to refrain from provocative rhetoric and actions, not to hinder the efforts to establish peace and stability in the region, ARMENPRESS reports reads the statement issued by the MFA Armenia.

According to the statement, the armed provocations carried out by the Azerbaijani side along the entire Armenian-Azerbaijani border take place on daily basis.

On December 10, as a result of a regular provocation Vahe Manaseryan, serviceman of the Armed Forces of Armenia, has been killed, another 8 have been injured.

Expressing deep condolences to the family of the killed serviceman, wishing a speedy recovery to the wounded servicemen, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Armenia condemns the provocative actions of Azerbaijan, states that they are planned and are aimed at continuing to aggravate the situation in the region.

This claim is based on the fact that Azerbaijan is constantly developing the absurd rhetoric of the so-called "Zangezur Corridor", which contradicts the trilateral statements of November 9, 2020, January 11, 2021 and November 26 agreements reached in Sochi, and is an open expression of aspirations towards the sovereign territory of the Republic of Armenia, reads the statement.

Noting that the units of the Armed Forces of Azerbaijan illegally invaded the sovereign territory of the Republic of Armenia in May this year, occupying an area of more than 40 square kilometers, the Armenian MFA noted that the incident of December 10 took place in one of those areas.

To date, Azerbaijan has not responded to the proposal of the Republic of Armenia on the simultaneous withdrawal of troops, which was handed over to the Azerbaijani side on November 26 in a written form.

The Republic of Armenia draws the attention of its main security partner Russian Federation, the CSTO, the UN Security Council, the OSCE Minsk Group Co-chair countries to the above-mentioned facts, as well as on the fact that official Baku continues to make clear threats of use of force against the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the Republic of Armenia with belligerent statements, violating the basic principles of international law, including the UN Charter, endangering regional and global security, reads the statement of the MFA Armenia, adding that the Republic of Armenia calls on the Republic of Azerbaijan to refrain from provocative rhetoric and actions, not to hinder the efforts to establish peace and stability in the region.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Armenia thinks that one of the ways to avoid further aggravation of the situation may be the simultaneous withdrawal of troops from the Armenian-Azerbaijani border and the launch of an international monitoring mechanism along the border.
The funeral procession will start from Kamraj Marg after 2 pm and reach Brar Square crematorium

New Delhi: The last rites of Chief of Defence Staff (CDS) General Bipin Rawat and his wife Madhulika Rawat, who died in a chopper crash in Tamil Nadu on Wednesday, will be held on Friday around 5 pm at Brar Square crematorium in Delhi Cantonment.

The last rites of Gen Rawat will be performed with full military honours. The funeral procession will start from Kamraj Marg after 2 pm and reach Brar Square crematorium.

The Army said that civilians can pay tributes to CDS General Bipin Rawat from 1100-1230 hours at his Kamraj Marg residence tomorrow while the military personnel can pay respects between 1230-1330 hours.

The mortal remains of Gen Rawat and others who lost their lives in the Tamil Nadu chopper crash were brought on Thursday evening to Palam Airbase in Delhi from Sulur in caskets wrapped in the Tricolour.

The mortal remains were earlier in the day brought to Madras Regimental Centre from Military Hospital, Wellington in Nilgiris district and then taken to Sulur airbase.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited Palam airbase and paid his last respects to General Bipin Rawat, his wife Madhulika Rawat and other 11 armed force personnel who lost their lives in a chopper crash in Tamil Nadu on Wednesday.

Defence Minister Rajnath Singh, National Security Advisor Ajit Doval and Union Minister Smriti Irani also visited Palam airbase and paid their respects to Gen Rawat, his wife Madhulika Rawat and other 11 armed force personnel who lost their lives in the helicopter crash. The three service chiefs - Army Chief Gen MM Naravane, Navy Chief Admiral R Hari Kumar and IAF chief Air Chief Marshal VR Chaudhari also paid their respects.

Apart from General Rawat and his wife, his Defence Adviser Brigadier Lakhbinder Singh Lidder and Staff Officer Lieutenant Colonel Harjinder Singh also died in the crash.

Other nine defence forces personnel who died in the chopper crash are Wing Commander Prithvi Singh Chauhan, Squadron Leader Kuldeep Singh, Junior Warrant Officer Rana Pratap Das, Junior Warrant Officer Arakkal Pradeep, Havildar Satpal Rai, Naik Gursewak Singh, Naik Jitendra Kumar, Lance Naik Vivek Kumar and Lance Naik B Sai Teja.

Group Captain Varun Singh, who is the lone survivor from the crash, has been shifted to Air Force Command hospital at Bengaluru for further treatment.

The last rites of Brigadier LS Lidder will be held at 9.15 am in Delhi Cantonment tomorrow.

Bodies of General Bipin Rawat, his wife Madhulika Rawat, Brigadier LS Lidder and Lance Naik Vivek Kumar have been identified so far.

The Indian Army has said that the process for positive identification of remaining mortal remains is continuing and the mortal remains will be kept at the Mortuary of Army Base Hospital till the completion of positive identification formalities.

The Army said that the appropriate military funerals of all deceased are being planned and coordinated in close consultation with close family members. The mortal remains will be released to the next of kin for final religious rites as desired by respective families.

The mortal remains of Gen Rawat will be taken in a gun carriage for the funeral in Delhi Cantt Brar Square.

The Defence Minister, Minister of State for Defence Ajay Bhatt, three service chiefs and other senior military officials will be among those present at the cremation of Gen Rawat.

Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath and Uttarakhand Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami are also likely to be present.

Tamil Nadu Chief Minister MK Stalin, Governor of Telangana and Lieutenant Governor of Puducherry Dr Tamilisai Soundararajan visited Madras Regimental Centre in Wellington on Thursday and paid floral tributes to General Rawat and others who had died in the chopper crash.

The Centre has ordered a 'tri service' inquiry into the accident. The inquiry will be headed by Air Marshal Manvendra Singh, Air Officer Commanding-in-Chief Training Command.

The Defence Minister, who briefed the Parliament about the chopper crash, said the IAF helicopter lost contact with the Sulur airbase control room at around 12.08 pm after taking off from there at 11.48 am.

Both Houses of the Parliament observed two-minute silence to pay respects to Gen Rawat and others who died in the chopper crash.

According to the sources, the black box of the chopper has been recovered.

A team of Tamil Nadu's Forensic Science Department also visited the crash site.
by Dario Salvi

Before the war, tourism represented more than 14 per cent of GDP, employing 8.3 per cent of the workforce. Two European tour operators are set to organise trips in 2022. Religious tourism is recovering thanks to Shia pilgrims from Iran, Iraq and Pakistan. For Christian scholar, tourism could jumpstart the economy and renew relations with the outside world.

Damascus (AsiaNews)  Syrians have been punished collectively and unfairly by international sanctions and the Caesar Act imposed by the United States, which are "the main reason for our economic crisis, our poverty, hunger and exhaustion on top of ten years of war. As a result, We feel that we have been exiled. Reviving tourism in our country might be a way to help us revive our collapsed economy, give us hope for a better future, said Michel Azar, a Christian university lecturer in Damascus and an expert in economics and tourism.

For Azar, foreign travel and internal movements could be a turning point after long years of violence, suffering and conflict, which have isolated the country.

The tourist sector has suffered serious damages, compounded by obstacles that emerged following the war and the economic crisis, most notably energy shortages, which make it hard to run tourism-related facilities.

For example, most of the hotels are unable to provide warmth or 24 hours of electricity due to the long cut in electricity and shortage of energy resources (in the countryside, they only have one hour of electricity every three days). We are back to the stone age.

Before the war, tourism was one the mainstays of the Syrian economy, contributing up to 14 per cent of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP), employing 8.3 per cent of the local workforce.

However, despite huge difficulties, the number of foreign visitors in Syria has grown in the last year, this according to Tourism Minister Mohammed Rami Martini, who expects a return of European tour operators.

In 2021, the country had 488,000 foreign visitors, up from previous years. Two European operators  one based in the UL, the other in Germany  are already planning organised travel in 2022.

The country has much to offer, like the traditional markets of Damascus, the ancient city of Palmyra in the middle of the desert, and Krak des Chevaliers, a Crusader castle that is part of a millenary history excluded for far too long from international circuits.

COVID-19, which has decimated world travel, remains a concern; nevertheless, more and more people are back travelling to Syria.

Meanwhile, the Arab country is still at war, under sanctions, and subjected to brutal repression against domestic dissent, with more than a third of the population into exile.

A month ago, my family and I visited Maaloula. We were sitting at a cafe when a group of French people arrived in a bus and entered a nearby convent, said Michel Azar.

We looked at them as if we had seen some aliens coming from outer space. It has been more than ten years that I haven't seen a tourist group in my country and for my children it was the first time. My daughter [. . .] was fascinated by hearing a group of people talking in French.

This should be food for thought about the long-suffering country, which had been a destination for thousands of tourists each year. They (the children) only know war stories and life difficulties that we are facing nowadays after war.

It turned out that French group was part of a visit promoted by SOS Chretiens dOrient, a French Christian charity, which came to Syria for religious work and tourism.

For some travel agencies, A lot of foreign people are entering Syria everyday, but not for tourism, Azar explained. They are mostly engineers, journalists and experts coming for professional reasons.

The only tourism which is still modestly active in Syria is tourism for religious purpose, the Christian scholar noted. A few tourist groups from Iran, Pakistan and Iraq are entering Syria to visit Shia sites.
by Vladimir Rozanskij

The young man was harassing her on the street. Maniza Nazarova also had to spend five days in a cell. The authorities are not respecting commitments made to protect women from sexual harassment, a behavior rooted in Tajik men.

Moscow (AsiaNews) - Tajik police have fined 25-year-old blogger from Dushanbe, Maniza Nazarova, 420 somoni (about 40 euro) for insulting a man who was harassing her in the street, Radio Azattyk reports. The incident took place last December 3 in the capital of Tajikistan.

Nazarova recounted that while crossing the street, a stranger grabbed her by the hand. The girl asked him what he was doing, and the young man allegedly covered her with insults. Then she started filming him with her phone shouting at him out of fear and anger. The police considered the video to be offensive and issued a warning, then published the photo of Maniza on their website.

The blogger was summoned to the Firdousi district police station, where initially there was no talk of fines, but the policemen advised the young harasser to report her so that she could be punished. The officers detained Maniza in the cell for five days "for immoral actions".

Now Nazarova plans to appeal against the police. In her opinion, the policemen photographed her at the police station "for practice," promising not to show anyone the image, which then turned out to be public on the site with the notification of the fine.

"I was supposed to get married in a month," says Maniza, "and my fiance's whole family saw my picture with this notice, and when they see you on the police website, they all think that you have committed who knows what crime... so my wedding has been ruined." Maniza is quite a well-known figure in Dusanbe, where she works in a beauty salon, and has more than 48 thousand followers on Instagram.

In fact, it was thought that the "street machismo" of Tajiks and policemen had been overcome, when last summer Law Enforcement fined 30-year-old Kosim Ojev to the same extent as Maniza for harassing a woman. It was the first case of punishment for male harassment in Tajikistan, after the country's women had made numerous appeals to the authorities for protection from "catcalling" and male advances, which are deeply rooted in Tajik men's traditions.

The son of Tajikistan's president, Rustam Emomali, publicly promised two years ago that he would take women's defense to heart, and the Dushanbe municipality promised to address the problem with "harassment" ordinances, which were never issued.
The Filipino journalist threatened by Duterte at the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo: "A corporate system designed only to make money is having distatrous consequences in real time in countries like mine, Myanmar, India, Sri Lanka and many others." Thoughts on Jimmi Lay convicted in Hong Kong. May elections in Manila "a battle of life and death for democracy".

Oslo (AsiaNews) - On Human Rights Day, the Filipino journalist Maria Ressa, founder of the independent website Rappler, received the Nobel Peace Prize today in Oslo. It was awarded to her together with her Russian colleague Dmitri Muratov. Maria Ressa gave a heartfelt speech at the ceremony in which - starting from her own experience - she also recalled the many other journalists threatened and imprisoned "Jimmy Lai languishing in a Hong Kong prison, Sonny Swe, who after getting out of more than 7 years in jail started another news group  now forced to flee Myanmar. And in my own country, 23 year old Frenchie Mae Cumpio, still in prison after nearly 2 years, and just 36 hours ago the news that my former colleague, Jess Malabanan, was shot dead."

In her speech, the new Nobel Peace Prize winner leveled harsh accusations against the social media industry. "The attacks against us at Rappler - said Maria Ressa - when we demanded an end to impunity on two fronts: Dutertes drug war and Mark Zuckerbergs Facebook. Today, it has only gotten worse  and Silicon Valleys sins came home to roost in the United States on January 6 with mob violence on Capitol Hill. What happens on social media doesnt stay on social media. Online violence is real world violence."

"S

She continued "Social media is a deadly game for power and money, what Shoshana Zuboff calls surveillance capitalism, extracting our private lives for outsized corporate gain. Our personal experiences are sucked into a database, organized by AI, then sold to the highest bidder. Highly profitable micro-targeting operations are engineered to structurally undermine human will  a behavior modification system in which we are Pavlovs dogs, experimented on in real time with disastrous consequences in countries like mine, Myanmar, India, Sri Lanka and so many more. These destructive corporations have siphoned money away from news groups and now pose a foundational threat to markets and elections. Facebook is the worlds largest distributor of news, and yet studies have shown that lies laced with anger and hate spread faster and further than facts on social media. These American companies controlling our global information ecosystem are biased against facts, biased against journalists. They are  by design  dividing us and radicalizing us.."

"How can there be elections with integrity if there is no integrity of facts?" wondered the journalist, who called the upcoming Philippine elections a matter "of life and death." "5 years after the People Power revolt ousted Ferdinand Marcos and forced his family into exile, his son, Ferdinand Marcos, Jr. is the front runner  and he has built an extensive disinformation network on social media, which Rappler exposed in 2019. That is changing history in front of our eyes" She cited "the Chinese information operations blocked by Facebook in September 2020: they were creating fake accounts using AI generated photos for the U.S. election, they were cleaning up the image of the Marcoses, campaigning for Duterte's daughter, and attacking Rappler and me."

"An invisible atomic bomb," she concluded, "hAn invisible atom bomb exploded in our information ecosystem, and the world must act as it did after Hiroshima. Like that time, we need to create new institutions, like the United Nations, and new codes stating our values, like the universal declaration of human rights, to prevent humanity from doing its worse. Its an arms race in the information ecosystem. To stop that requires a multilateral approach that all of us must be part of. It begins by restoring facts" and "standing up to states that target journalists."
The Indian government wants to develop an Indian footwear sizing system, based on the notion that feet are demography dependent, thus variable. Ultimately, the goal is to strengthen the Indian economy.

New Delhi (AsiaNews)  Shoes have become the latest battleground for the Modi governments latest nationalist aspirations.

The authorities plan to develop an Indian footwear sizing system to cover the needs of the local population, the Ministry of Commerce and Industry announced.

The present Indian standard is based on Europes, but the anatomical and functional requirements of footwear for children, youth, and adults are demography dependent.

The Indian standard needs a revision to accommodate for [the] demographic, [and] anthropometric features of Indian feet to develop more comfortable footwear.

The government plans to invest 108 million rupees (US.4 million), taking into consideration all the variations  region, gender, age, health conditions, towards the indigenisation of key products that are essential for the realisation of an Aatmanirbhar Bharat (self-reliant India), the ministry said.

This doctrine is designed to boost the competitiveness of the Indian economy advocated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
The Central American country is the eighth diplomatic ally taken from the island in the past five years. Taiwan now has full formal relations with only 14 states, including the Vatican. Honduras is at risk. Beijing wants to reduce Taipei's international room, while the United States is trying to widen it.

Taipei (AsiaNews)  Nicaragua broke off diplomatic relations with Taiwan yesterday and established them with China.

Beijing has thus taken another diplomatic ally from the island, this on the day US President Joe Biden opened the Democracy Summit, where China wont be present while Taiwan will.

In a televised announcement, Nicaraguan Foreign Minister Denis Moncada said that Managua will cut off any official contact or relationship with Taipei.

The People's Republic of China is the only legitimate government representing all of China, and Taiwan is an inalienable part of Chinese territory," Moncada said in a statement.

According to several observers, the new US sanctions against Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortegas authoritarian government prompted Nicaragua to seek help and support from China.

While condemning the move, the Taiwanese government explained today that for now the free trade agreement with Nicaragua remained in force since the Central American country has not notified Taiwan of its withdrawal.

The Chinese government does not have formal diplomatic relations with states if they recognise Taiwan as a state.

With the loss of Nicaragua, Taiwan now has full diplomatic ties with only 14 states, including the Vatican. However, some reports indicate that Beijing is leaning on the Holy See as well.

Since the election of incumbent Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen, China has taken eight diplomatic partners from the island: Burkina Faso, Panama, Sao Tome and Principe, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, the Solomon Islands, Kiribati and Nicaragua.

For Chinese leaders, Tsai is a dangerous secessionist. China considers Taiwan a "rebel province, and has not ruled out taking the island by force.

The island has been de facto independent since 1949; at the time, Chiang Kai-shek's nationalists found refuge on the island after losing the civil war on the mainland against the Communists, making Taiwan the heir to the Republic of China founded in 1912.

Chinas strategy is to reduce Taiwan's international leeway bit by bit. Prior to her electoral victory on November 28, Honduran President-elect Xiomara Castro declared her willingness to break with Taipei to embrace Beijing, a step that seems to be on hold for now.

For its part, the United States wants to strengthen Taiwan's global profile in order to create international consensus against a possible Chinese takeover.

Despite Chinese protests, Taiwans Digital Minister Audrey Tang is in fact attending Bidens Democracy Summit.

Washington has formal diplomatic ties with Beijing, but does not accept the Chinese claim that Taiwan is part of China.

With the Taiwan Relations Act, the United States promised to defend Taipei, mainly with military supplies.

Adopted in 1979 after the formal diplomatic recognition of Communist China, the law does not specify the actual nature of the US commitment. Such strategic ambiguity is a constant source of tensions with the Chinese government.

Recently, EU member states such as Lithuania, the Czech Republic and Slovakia have also boosted relations with Taipei.

Due to its overtures towards Taiwan, Lithuania has been subjected to a trade boycott by China, which has led the European Union to threaten to bring the case to the World Trade Organisation.
Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan pulls out of the agreement reached with the government last month, accusing the latter of failing to live up to its commitments. Pakistani authorities released prisoners, but not those requested by the terrorists. The TPP wants to turn Pakistan into an Islamic state.

Islamabad (AsiaNews)  The Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), a terrorist organisation inspired by the Afghan Taliban, did not renew a ceasefire agreement with the government, saying that the authorities had failed to respect it.

In an attempt to end the war that extremists have been waging against the state for years, the Pakistani government had agreed to a month-long ceasefire with the TTP on 9 November, with the possibility of extending it.

Yesterday however, the Taliban issued a statement claiming that the authorities had not respected their commitments, which included mediation by the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan and the release of a hundred imprisoned mujahideen.

The TPP also claimed that the government had conducted raids during the ceasefire.

In an audio, the head of the Pakistani Taliban, Noor Wali Mehsud, authorised members of the organization to resume their attacks.

The government did release prisoners linked to the TPP, but only those who had undergone de-radicalisation programme, not those requested by the terrorists.

Speaking to News International, a government official explained anonymously that the release was delayed because it was first necessary to decide whether or not to allow the higher-ranking Taliban to go to Afghanistan or remain in their respective areas in Pakistan.

According to several observers, negotiations between the TTP and the government are a failure and are doomed to fail again in the future because the Taliban aim is to destroy the Pakistani state.

The extremists reiterated their demands in a video posted on 8 December by Umar Media, the TTPs main communication channel.

In the video, Noor Wali Mehsud freely moves in what the terrorists call the Northern Zone, an area that Taliban leaders no longer had access to after the Pakistani military carried out operation Zarb-i-Azb in 2014-15.

In it, Mehsud expresses joy at the victory in Afghanistan, saying that he could not eat nor drink from happiness.

He also reiterated that that the TTP is a branch of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, and stressed that his organisations ultimate goal is to set up an Islamic state in Pakistan and impose Sharia (Islamic law).

To this end, Mehsud argues, the united movement must continue to fight against the Pakistani government.
The rights of workers, migrants, the sick, unborn children, those at the end of their life and the poorest are ever more frequently neglected and or denied in this throwaway culture. Those who do not have the capacity to spend and to consume seem to be worth nothing. But to deny fundamental rights, to deny the right to a dignified life, to physical, psychological and spiritual care, to a fair wage, is to deny human dignity.

Vatican City (AsiaNews)  Pope Francis today met with members of the Italian Union of Catholic Jurists who are holding their 70th National Study Congress in Rome, centred on The last. Legal protection of the weak.

In his address, the pontiff said that respect for the rights of the last is an "intrinsic call to our faith. The weak, the marginalised, the discarded by a society for which only the ability to spend and consume seems to be important have rights that must be respected and not trampled upon, and Catholic jurists are called to contribute to 'reversing the course', favouring awareness and a sense of responsibility.

The topic of the congress was very close to my heart, Francis said. During his visit to migrants on the island of Lesbos (Lesvos) he saw Abuse, violence, negligence, omissions only increase the culture of rejection. And those who have no protection will always be marginalised. You, as Catholic lawyers, are asked to contribute to reversing the course, promoting, according to your skills, awareness and a sense of responsibility.

Never as in these days, as in these times, have Catholic jurists been called to affirm and protect the rights of the weakest, within an economic and social system that pretends to include diversity but in reality, systematically excludes those without a voice.

The rights of workers, migrants, the sick, unborn children, those at the end of their life and the poorest are ever more frequently neglected and or denied in this throwaway culture. Those who do not have the capacity to spend and to consume seem to be worth nothing.

But to deny fundamental rights, to deny the right to a dignified life, to physical, psychological and spiritual care, to a fair wage, is to deny human dignity. We are seeing this: how many labourers are - excuse the word  used to pick fruit or vegetables, and then paid miserably and thrown out, without any social protection.

Recognising rights in principle and guaranteeing them in practice, protecting the weakest, is what makes us human. Otherwise, we allow ourselves to be dominated by the law of the strongest and we give free rein to abuse.

For this reason, the recognition of the rights of the weakest does not derive from a government concession. No. And Catholic jurists do not ask for favours on behalf of the poor, but firmly proclaim those rights that derive from the recognition of human dignity.

The role of the Catholic jurist, in whatever capacity he or she works, as consultant, lawyer or judge, is therefore to contribute to the protection of the human dignity of the weak by affirming their rights. In this way he or she contributes to the affirmation of human fraternity and not to deface the image of God imprinted in each person.
Copyright 2021 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
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Luxury Dutch shipyard Royal Huisman is known for its head-turning creations, where an impeccable finish reveals design and technology innovations. The stunning sailing yacht Ngoni was no exception, with everyone in the industry raving about it when it was delivered in 2017. Affectionately dubbed the Beast, this sleek yet fast and furious vessel was-custom made for a true connoisseur.Its name gives away its ownership  the Ngoni people are an ethnic group from various countries in South Africa, where oil and diamond mining tycoon Tony Buckingham frequently traveled for his businesses. But Buckingham isnt your typical oil industry millionaire  he is also a professional sailor who won numerous trophies on behalf of Great Britain.And, to top it all off, Buckingham also has a very interesting, controversial background in private military affairs, which media has described as a colorful past. The former CEO of Heritage Oil denied these affairs and any connections with powerful people but based on British intelligence documents and other findings, some sources still describe him as a former mercenary.This adventurous background could only lead to an equally impressive yacht , as far as millionaire toys go. The 190-foot (58 meters), designed by Dubois Naval Architects, successfully combined a sleek hull with an enormous rig. The huge 247-foot (75 meters) mast, with 9,183 square feet (853 square meters) of mainsail, is what makes Ngoni a beast. But its design innovations, such as the rounded plumb bow, and top-level engineering, like the manual steering system, enable an experienced owner to tame this impressive vessel.Ngonis molded glass superstructure, with electrically-controlled windows, is also striking. A luxurious spa swimming pool and a large tender await on the premium teak foredeck. Inside the yachts lavish living spaces, designed by Rick Baker, every element exudes luxury. The owners suite includes custom furniture, a large study, generous bathrooms, and access to a large gym.Although built to his exact specifications, the controversial oil millionaire is letting go of the stunning Ngoni, after only four years. For almost $53 million (45 million), a new master can try to tame the Beast.
For six years, the aviation company founded by a former Groupon executive, has been developing a groundbreaking supersonic jet that can carry up to 88 passengers for 4,250 nautical miles (4,888 miles/7,866 km), at stratospheric heights of 60,000 feet (18,288 meters). With United Airlines order for 50 Overture jets, announced earlier this year, the future of supersonic flights seemed to have a clear path ahead. But one question remained  where would these new-generation jets be built?According to recent rumors, the answer is here. Sources in the industry and government told The News & Observer that Boom Supersonic is in the middle of negotiating a spot at Greensboros Piedmont Triad International Airport, in North Carolina, with state officials. In a few months from now, it might become official that the future supersonic jets will be manufactured at the Greensboro facility.According to these sources, Boom Supersonic is the manufacturer name behind the mysterious Project Thunderbird that secured $106.75 million through North Carolinas House Bill 334 . This budget includes site work at the airport, the construction of one or more hangars, plus road improvements. Although the connection between Boom Supersonic and Project Thunderbird hasnt been officially confirmed, it looks like thats the case indeed, and well be able to know for sure in three months at most, when the project is due to begin. The first Overture jets could be rolled out as soon as 2025.The Overture jet, which will not only fly anywhere at supersonic speed but also run on sustainable fuel, could truly revolutionize aviation. If these recent rumors are true, North Carolina could secure a special spot in the history of aviation.
The new version of the Step WGN minivan is expected to be revealed in full on the 7th of January, next year, while the car will first arrive in showrooms in the Spring. The new model will be powered by Hondas e:HEV hybrid powertrain, making it more fuel-efficient than before. According to the models minisite in Japan, customers will also be able to buy a non-HEV version as well.At the front, the new headlights feature dynamic LED turn signals, with a satin-chrome grille surrounding it. The teaser also includes a picture from the inside, with a three-row sitting for six passengers. The second row features what is called captains chairs, each individual seat having armrests and reclining footrests. From the picture we can also see a free-standing central display for the infotainment system.Since Honda has made big advancements with its driving assistance systems, we expect the Step WGN to feature the full Honda Sensing 360 suite, as introduced earlier this year . This includes an omnidirectional sensory range with inputs from five advanced, millimeter-wave radar units placed around the vehicle. The goal of the system is to achieve a cool zero collision fatalities involving Honda vehicles by 2050.Honda missed the opportunity to release the new generation of the Step WGN this year for the models 25th anniversary. The first generation of the model was introduced in 1996, while the current Step WGN was launched in 2016 with a 1.5 VTEC Turbo engine . This is also available with the sports-inspired Modul-X trim, and we expect it to be carried on to the new model.
Earlier this year, Tesla developed a special police version of the Model 3 sedan and offered it to the UKs emergency services for trial and assessment. Nine months into the program, the results are good enough for Tesla to brag about. According to Max Toozs-Hobsons post on LinkedIn , the special police livered Tesla Model 3 was praised by the police forces, and the public alike.The car achieved over 200 miles of Blue Light advanced driving in the test, meaning the car was driven fast during police interventions. The longest run was over four hours in active deployment under advanced driving conditions, while the average blue light run was about 7-15 minutes. Also, charging on shift was a breeze, with 70% power gained on a V3 Supercharger in less than 20 minutes. This gives the car additional 5-6 hours of driving for the shift.Brakes wear has been minimal, after 10,000 miles of driving the first set of pads still had 15-20% use still in them. Tires are the same as I.C.Es and need replacing at around 8,000 miles. After 15,000 miles the only maintenance has been brakes and tires, no annual service schedules mean minimal running costs, time off the road and competitive total cost of ownership, write the post on LinkedIn.Not all was good, and Max Toozs-Hobson complained that the police light bars cause too much drag like running with a parachute. He suggests that the lights should be integrated into the car cabin to minimize the wind vortex as well as the effects on residual values caused by the holes drilled into the roof.Electric vehicles, in general, are very good police vehicles, especially because of the savings allowed by low maintenance and the favorable cost of electricity compared to fuel prices. Not all graduate with flying colors, as can be seen by Ford Mustang Mach-Es experience with the Michigan State Police In the U.S., one police department in Indiana purchased several Tesla Model 3 vehicles. After one year of service, the department saved over $6,000 in fuel and maintenance. Electric cars also have the great advantage of being virtually silent, allowing for more efficient stealth operations.
kW

Together with a Phoenix-based regional air carrier, United purchased 200 electric aircraft from Swedish company Heart Aerospace, with the goal of making regional commercial flights better for the environment while still being fast and comfortable. The ES-19 was designed as a clean energy alternative for short-distance travel to places that are hard to reach by car, such as locations on mountainous terrain.According to the manufacturer, besides from flying with zero emissions, this 19-seater is also exceptionally cost-effective, with an electric motor thats almost 20 times less expensive than a conventional turboprop of the same size and maintenance costs that are 100 times lower. Powered by a 400electric motor and a lithium-ion battery pack, the ES-19 can fly for over 250 miles (400 km), but its range is expected to increase as battery technology continues to evolve.Not just emissions-free, cost-effective and silent, the ES-19 also boasts top-level performance, thanks to the new Garmin G3000 integrated flight deck that was customized and optimized to meet the specific requirements of this electric aircraft . Featuring high-resolution flight displays that are also lightweight, the G3000 integrates perfectly with the airplanes management systems for its electric drivetrain and battery for advanced navigation and communication. Plus, its designed to continue to support future upgrades as electric flight technology keeps evolving.The major purchase agreement signed with United confirmed that island-hopping onboard this 19-seat electric aircraft is a certainty. Located in Gothenburg, Heart Aerospace was born as a spin-off from a government-funded research program and was also awarded a grant from the European Investment Council in 2020. The first ES-19 is expected to take off in 2026.
kWh

If you are not familiar with the term, it means that Utrecht will not only be able to charge its electric cars. It will also get electricity from them. Although that seems like something easy to do, it is far from being that simple.The main problem involved with this ambition is that few electric cars currently have that capability. Apart from the Nissan Leaf, Renault ZOE, Hyundai Ioniq 5, Kia EV6, Genesis GV60, BYD Dolphin , and the Lucid Air, were not aware of many other electric cars that can feed the grid as much as they can feed on the energy it provides. No Tesla can do that, for example.Theres a simple reason for some electric cars not to do that: it reduces the lifespan of their battery packs. Whether it is powering the wheels or feeding a house with energy, a battery pack has a limited number of charging and discharging cycles that it can achieve.According to Robin Berg, director of We Drive Solar , about 10,000 electric cars with bidirectional capacity would be enough to balance Utrecht. The Dutch city now has 140,000 vehicles registered in total, which makes the necessary EVs to balance the grid just a tiny fraction of that fleet.With that many vehicles connected to bidirectional smart grids or chargers, each of these electric cars would just have to spend a bit of the energy they stored during the day. That would also prevent them from spending their battery packs capacity more than it would be advisable.We Drive Solar is a company that has associated with Utrecht to pursue the goal of making the city the largest one with bidirectional capacity. The video was shot in one of its parking spots powered by solar energy . It counts on 2,160 solar panels that can produce 850,000per year on average and 1 million kWh per year on a sunny one.If you think it through, Utrechts ambition is not to become the worlds largest bidirectional city. It is to be the guinea pig in establishing how to do it right. When it achieves that, the Dutch city will be happy to be beaten by larger cities: that will mean that the idea worked fine. With new battery tech such as solid-state cells, charging and discharging may cease to be a concern, making electric cars an integral part of power grids. We cant wait to see that happen.
The Defense Ministry in Yerevan said they suffered casualties while being repelled from the outposts located at a border section in eastern Armenia. One Armenian soldier was killed and several others wounded in the gunfight, it said.

The exchange of gunfire stopped as of 2:30 pm [local time,] the ministry added in a statement.

The Azerbaijani Defense Ministry said, meanwhile, that Armenian army units again fired on its troops deployed in the Kelbajar district bordering Armenias eastern Gegharkunik province. It did not immediately report casualties within its own ranks.

Armlur.am quoted a local government official in Gegharkunik as saying that the epicenter of the fighting was near the Armenian border village of Sotk. They [Azerbaijani troops] tried to advance in the Sotk section but failed, Hakob Avetian told the publication.

Armenian and Azerbaijani forces exchanged fire in the mountainous area on Wednesday and Thursday, blaming each other for the truce violations. One Azerbaijani soldier was reportedly killed and two Armenian servicemen wounded in those skirmishes.

The fighting broke out two weeks after Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev met in Sochi for talks hosted by Russian President Vladimir Putin. The three leaders announced that they agreed to speed up preparations for demarcating the border between the two South Caucasus states.
Two of them were arrested on Friday. An Armenian court did not allow investigators to detain another serviceman.

The Investigative Committee was understood to be seeking arrest warrants for the two other suspects as well. They too were charged with a violation of rules for performing military service that resulted in severe consequences.

The ten soldiers were taken prisoner during the November 16 fighting on the Armenian-Azerbaijani border which left at least 13 troops from both sides dead. The Armenian military said it also lost two border posts in what Yerevan condemned as an Azerbaijani incursion into Armenian territory.

The Investigative Committee already arrested two other soldiers in connection with the territorial loss later in November.

The law-enforcement agency indicted the five soldiers, freed by Baku on December 4, amid a scandal sparked by parliament speaker Alen Simonians disparaging comments about Armenian POWs.

Simonian was caught on camera saying during a recent trip to Paris that many of them laid down their weapons and ran away during fighting with Azerbaijani forces. In a secretly filmed video publicized on Tuesday, he claimed that their relatives have not protested lately because they realize that the soldiers are deserters.

Many of those relatives responded by staging angry protests in Yerevan and Gyumri. Simonian, who is a senior member of Prime Minister Nikol Pashinians Civil Contract party, met with some of them on Wednesday.

Opposition leaders and civic activists also strongly condemned Simonian and demanded his resignation.

By contrast, neither Pashinian nor other any member of his political team publicly criticized or disavowed the speakers controversial comments. The prime minister said on Wednesday that law-enforcement authorities must investigate circumstances in which Armenian soldiers were captured by Azerbaijani troops.

Eduard Aghajanian, a senior pro-government lawmaker, denied on Friday any connection between those political statements and the charges brought against the five former POWs.

Former Defense Minister Seyran Ohanian, who leads the parliamentary group of the main opposition Hayastan alliance, acknowledged the need for thorough investigations into such instances.

But I believe that  it is the people who created conditions for that captivity in the first place who must first and foremost bear responsibility, Ohanian said, referring to Armenias political leadership.
California created the nation's first state reparations task force. Now comes the hard part
Beto ORourke came to Beaumont on Wednesday to meet with local officials and supporters to listen to local concerns and talk campaign priorities on his road to potentially become Texas next governor.

The Democrats stop to talk with Beaumont Mayor Robin Mouton, Port Arthur Mayor Thurman Bill Bartie, other local politicians and supporters was a part of ORourkes tour of Texas  an opportunitiy, he says, to hear from his potential constituents.

We just were really wanting to make sure we understand what drives jobs and economic growth in the cities, he said. Theres nothing more important to anybody  Republican or Democrat  than being able to find and keep a really good job.

As a result, job creation was one of the main issues he stressed during all of the days conversations, including talking with ExxonMobil workers who have been locked out of their jobs as part of a months-long union standoff.

Afterward, he met with Mouton and Beaumont Port Commissioner David Willard. Mouton showed ORourke projects the city council is working on while ORourke streamed to Facebook Live.

Were in Jefferson County. Were in Beaumont, listening to the newly-elected mayor describe an economic development opportunity, he said. What else do people need to know about what makes Beaumont go?

They stood in the parking lot across from Crockett Street, and Mouton explained how the city would like to revitalize the strip.

This is the historic center of Beaumont, she said, pointing out shuttered restaurants and bars and explaining how bringing the Battleship Texas to Beaumont could bring new visitors downtown.

The group also drove across the street to Riverfront Park where the mayor explained the councils vision for stabilizing the banks and pointed out the possible location for berthing the Battleship Texas. And Willard explained the difficulty of retaining youth in Beaumont after they graduate.

Sometimes our best and brightest go off to UT, they go to Texas A&M, Willard said. Sometimes they go to University of Houston, and they dont come home.

ORourke listened to more local politicians, past and present, on the areas economic concerns during a luncheon at Sugas Deep South Cuisine.

In the evening, he wrapped up the day at Lukes Icehouse on Calder Avenue. The parking lot was filled, and attendees who couldnt find a spot walked from bordering neighborhood streets to hear ORourke talk jobs, schools, workers rights, marijuana legislation, abortion policy and how he plans to bring a polarized state together.

ORourke emphasized returning workers to their job, legalizing marijuana in Texas, giving women the right to choose whether or not to have an abortion and building a bipartisan coalition to move Texas forward in ways that satisfy most people.

The crowds chanted, Beto! Beto! Beto! Beto! Afterward, people lined up to take pictures with him.

It was a big turnout  something ORourke expressed enthusiasm for and surprise about after so long dealing with pandemic social distancing. But the crowds echoed a sentiment he shared over lunch at Sugas Deep South Cuisine.

I was born and raised (in Texas), he said. We are a big state. We are big people. We are capable of big things.

rachel.kersey@beaumontenterprise.com

twitter.com/ontheREKord
After 22 years serving in the Texas House of Representatives, Joe Deshotel, D-Beaumont, will be spending some time at home.

Deshotel last month announced he would not be seeking another term as the representative for Texas 22nd District.

I've been in public service almost 40 years, he said. Id like to have some personal time for me and my family to not be tied up with political activities and things of that nature.

He said that after his term ends, politics is not in my future as I see it today. Instead, he plans to devote his time to being a grandfather, traveling and working with different businesses.

He also is getting married to fiance Jennifer Roy. She is a businesswoman in Houston with about three decades of experience in the healthcare sector.

The two met in Washington, D.C. in 2016.

He was hesitant to give anymore details beyond that, but he did say that in retirement, he will be helping Roy to manage her businesses  dealing with regulatory legal issues involved in healthcare and doing the day-to-day operational tasks.

Though Deshotel has many good things on the horizon, he still has a little over a year left in his current role as state representative. His remaining time will be spent conducting hearings for the next legislative session. As chairman of several committees, he will be listening to testimony for legislation that may be proposed in the next session, which would begin January 2023. Deshotel will hold hearings on land and resource management regarding pipelines, annexations of personal property and state lands.

We turn in a committee report to the Speakers Office and let them know what we found in the testimony that may be helpful to those that follow, Deshotel said.

Hes also spending time thinking about who may follow him. Deshotels contributions may live on in his chief of staff Christian Manuel, whose job has included balancing the budget, managing employees and drafting legislation amongst other duties.

This week, Deshotel formally endorsed Manuel.

For the last 15 years, he's been working right beside me as my chief of staff, intricately involved in all the legislation that I've been working on for the district, Deshotel said. Hes chaired a number of committees. Knowledge and experience (and) relationships in Austin are very important for any legislative body, and he definitely has relationships not only with all the staffers but with many of the members he worked directly with on issues.

He believes his office has done well under Manuels leadership, especially as it relates to constituent services.

Having someone who's been around like Christian, he has a relationship that he has developed over the years with all of those agencies, those people that really get the work done, Deshotel said. He just picks up the phone  they know him, they know who he is, and they respond to his request on behalf of the constituents. If hes elected, thats going to be a direct benefit to the constituents.

It turns out the only thing Deshotel believes Manuel doesnt have is seniority, which decides where your office is, where you get to work and where you get to sit on the floor. Time has its perks. Deshotels political career stretches back to 1982, when he was elected to sit on the Beaumont City Council. Sixteen years later, he was elected to the Texas House of Representatives and hes been serving there ever since. Its been a long time serving the people of Southeast Texas.

My hope is that I was always approachable, that I was a straight shooter - honest. My door was always open to listen to the needs and desires of the constituents and respond to those, Deshotel said. I tried to be that way throughout my whole term.

rachel.kersey@beaumontenterprise.com

twitter.com/ontheREKord
Charles O'Rear/Getty Images

Texas Game Wardens are monitoring an Austin pond after an alligator reportedly attacked and killed a dog in a Del Valle neighborhood on Thursday, December 2. According to KVUE, a resident in the area discovered the incident after hearing a dog in distress.

Officials with the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department told the news station it can't prove the attack happened, but confirmed alligators were living in the retention pond in the Berdoll Farms neighborhood.
Striped bass certainly wont win any statewide popularity contests in Texas, but there are a handful of Lone Star lakes where Morone saxatilis kicks butt and grabs plenty of attention along the way.

Anyone who has ever caught one of the saltwater transplants cracking the double digits will agree that stripers are pretty rough customers with nasty dispositions. Think of the tenacious titans like a piscatorial cross between Dick Butkus and Mike Tyson wrapped into a silvery stick of dynamite tipped with a really short fuse.

That fuse tends to become particularly short during late spring, when warming temperatures spur their metabolism and spark violent feeding frenzies on hapless schools of shad.

Sometimes the attacks are so vicious that it sends the succulent bait fish cartwheeling in a last second dash for safety. Toss a topwater plug into an active blood bath and it probably wont dance for long.

Fall and winter assaults on swimbaits, lipless crank baits and other shad imitations arent near as exciting as surface explosions, but they can be equally violent.

Barbara Pope of Frisco knows the scenario well. Pope and some friends were fishing on the Oklahoma-side of Lake Texoma on a chilly December day in 2014, when a heavyweight striper slammed the jig head that fishing guide Chris Carey had tipped with a Zoom Fluke.

The powerful fish peeled line off the reel at will and the lady angler Pope fought to regain it -- a little at a time -- every chance she got. It took some doing but she finally played the striper into the landing net.

Carey said the fish weighed 27.29 pounds on certified scales. Bill Carey, owner of Striper Express guide service in Pottsboro, said its the biggest striper ever hauled into his sons boat in 28 years on the water. The Texas-side Texoma record caught in 1984 still stands at 35.12 pounds.

More Information Texas Striper Facts: TPWD regional director Brian Van Zee of Waco provided some interesting facts about Texas stripers and hatchery production: TPWD hatcheries produce around 2 million fingerlings each year for stocking into 8-9 reservoirs. Most are produced at the Possum Kingdom State Fish Hatchery using brood fish the Lake Livingston tailrace, Texoma tailrace and Granbury tailrace. Hatcheries also maintain captive brood stock for use in fingerling production. Eggs are hatched indoors and prodigy are stocked into ponds as fry, where they raised to 1 1/2 to 2 inches long for stocking. Large, mainstream reservoirs with good water depth make the best striper lakes. Striped bass can experience a temperature/dissolved oxygen pinch during the heat of summer, so they need lakes with adequate water depth that maintain good oxygen levels at or near the thermocline. See More Collapse

Much bigger stripers have been caught elsewhere. Texas Parks and Wildlifes Top 50 striper list ranges from 31.75 pounds to 53 pounds, including 14 fish over 40 pounds.

The state record was caught in 1999 from the Brazos River tailrace below the Possum Kingdom dam. The most recent Top 50 fish was reported from the Guadalupe River in 2006.

As earlier mentioned, there arent a lot of Texas lakes where stripers rule, but there are a few. Here are some of the best:

No. 1: Texoma

Size: 75,000 acres

Lake Record: 35.12 pounds

Comments: This is a five-star impoundment that supports one of the few self sustaining striper fisheries in the U.S. Oklahoma biologists jump started the population with generous stockings from 1965-74. Since then, the fishery has managed to carry itself on bountiful spawning runs that occur each spring in the free-flowing Washita and Red rivers that feed it.

The striper factory cranks out mega numbers of eating-size fish, but its also one where trophy hunters have good shot of connecting with fish in the 14-17 pound range, or quite possibly one over 20, according to Dan Bennett, TPWDs district supervisor based in Pottsboro.

Intensive angler surveys completed in 2019 and 2020 estimated that Texoma striper fishermen catch just over a million striped bass each year and take home about half of those fish to eat, said Bennett.

And those anglers spend a boat load of dough in the process. Economic studies indicate striper fishing pumps around $44 million annually into local businesses.

Amazingly, the fishery is able to maintain that type of output with no outside help from annual stockings that is required to carry some other Texas lakes.

Catch rates in nets indicate that striper abundance is currently more than 10 times what we see in lakes where stocking is required to maintain the fishery, Bennett said.

Anglers may retain 10 per day. There is no minimum length limit, but only two stripers or hybrids over 20 inches may be retained each day. Culling of striped bass and hybrid striped bass is prohibited.

No 2: Whitney

Size: 23,500 acres

Lake Record: 39.69 pounds

Comments: Whitney is on a roll these days thanks to steady inflows from the Brazos and Nolan rivers, which has helped maintain a near constant water level, bolstered vital threadfin shad populations and reduced the threat of fish-killing golden alga blooms.

Those factors, combined with an aggressive approach to stocking and some natural reproduction over the past few years, have resulted in an incredible striper fishery for numbers, said TPWD fisheries biologist John Tibbs of Waco. Theres also an outside chance of catching a big one. It is as good or better as at anytime in the past.

The biologist says anglers can expect to find lots of stripers just making it to legal size (18 inches), most in the 3-4 pound range.

Right now the lake is absolutely full of 17-19 inch fish, he said. Its not unusual to for average fishermen to go out and catch 10-30 fish trolling around on windy points and flats.

Anglers can retain 5 fish, 18-inch minimum length limit per day.

No. 3: Possum Kingdom

Size: 15,588 acres

Lake Record: 34.19 pounds

Comments: TPWD fisheries biologist Robert Mauk says Possum Kingdom has benefited from increased water levels and flows the past few years, resulting enough natural reproduction and recruitment that stocking has not been required since 2017. The lake also maintains a bountiful threadfin shad population to help keep the stripers fat and sassy.

Mauk said the lake currently has good numbers with many fish in the 16- 20 inch range. Fish upwards of 12 pounds are reported on occasion, but not often.

Soaking live shad is a highly preferred tactic on PK, though success also can be had on slabs, jig/swimbait combos and topwaters.

Following working birds is the easiest technique to locate the fish when the birds are working, Mauk said. Otherwise, most anglers rely heavily on their electronics.

An added bonus is fishing the Brazos River tailrace below the dam. This is a great option when the winds get up, or for anglers having trouble locating biting fish on main lake.

The tailrace bite can be outstanding at times, particularly for larger fish upwards of 20 pounds. The state record 53 pounder was caught there in 1999.

Anglers may retain five striped bass/hybrids per day, 18 inch minimum length limit.

No. 4: Buchanan

Size: 22,211 acres

Lake Record: 27.80

Comments: TPWD fisheries biologist Patrick Ireland says the scenic Hill Country impoundment near Burnet is typically big on numbers but light on size. While recreational anglers frequently box limits of 3-5 pounders along with an occasional double digit, fish topping the 10-pound mark arely show up in TPWDs sampling efforts.

A 15-20 pounder be considered a big fish for Buchanan based on our sampling and creel data, Ireland said.

Ireland said guides and weekenders alike typically have the best results trolling with inline spinners, spoons, swim baits, Rat-L-Traps or soaking live bait. Topwaters also can produce outstanding results, especially during the spring months.

The most important aspect is to look for baitfish and do not sit on an unproductive area for too long, Ireland said. Move on until you locate the stripers.

The limit is five fish daily, 18 inch minimum.

No. 5: Canyon Lake

Size: 8,308 acres

Lake Record: 38.12 pounds

Comments: Canyon is fed by the cool, gin-clear waters of the Guadalupe River, just north of New Braunfels. Likewise, the Comal County reservoir experiences moderate fluctuation, maintains excellent water clarity over the course of the year, but lacks in nutrients.

Despite its low productivity, the lake still has an abundant forage base of gizzard shad to feed what is arguably the best trophy class striper fishery in the Hill Country region.

According to TPWD fisheries biologist Patrick Ireland, Canyon is best known for producing larger fish as opposed to big numbers.

Generally, stripers provide a popular catch-and-release fishing opportunity at Canyon as guides and angler reports showcase the availability of quality and trophy-sized fish, he said. A big Canyon striper is 10-17 pounder.

Anglers rely on a variety of tactics to catch fish. Trolling with in-line spinners or casting crank baits and big swim baits are popular methods. The lake also produces some explosive topwater action at times, particularly during low light conditions when surface temps are moderate. Spoons and live bait such as shad or large minnows also work well, Ireland said.

Statewide regulations apply, 5 fish daily, 18 inch minimum.
Word on the street is that early bird Christmas shoppers looking for outdoor gear should tend to business sooner than normal this year, especially those who do their shopping online.

In case youve been living under a rock, the negative impacts of shipping delays and inventory shortages on everything from crappie jigs to tent stakes and ammunition of all kinds have been felt by small and large retailers for quite awhile now.

Its been equally frustrating for consumers.

Ive seen reports that some goodies may not arrive until next spring if you dont get them ordered pronto. The blame falls on everything from Covid to shoddy politics.

Good Reads for Deer Hunters

No worries for holiday shoppers with a studious deer hunter on their gift list. The Boone and Crockett Club has you covered with a couple of good books that just about any whitetail junkie would love to have in their library, or sitting on the coffee table at the camp house.

Established in 1887 by Theodore Roosevelt and George Bird Grinnell, B&C was founded by hunters who dedicated their lives to the conservation of wildlife, wild lands and the creation of laws that protect them. The Lacey Act, Migratory Bird Treaty Act, Wildlife Restoration Act (known as the Pittman-Robertson Act) and the Federal Duck Stamp Act all have early ties to the B&C Club.

The Missoula, Mont.-based organization is well known as the worlds most popular registry for trophy class North American big game animals and for its widely accepted scoring system for measuring them. Thus the foundation for Records of North American Whitetail Deer, Sixth Edition and How to Score North American Big Game, Fifth Edition.

Both publications are currently in stock in large quantity and available for immediate shipping, according to Julie Tripp, B&C director of publications.

Were all set up and ready roll, Tripp said. B&C really stepped it up a notch in quality with the release of the new edition of Records of North American Whitetail Deer. Printed in full color for the first time, this 600-plus page book has something for every whitetail hunter with over 300 color field photographs, state maps showing the densities of record-book deer entries, not to mention the stories and photographs of the top 21st Century whitetails.

Packed full of records

Released last December, the book is a must have for any hunter with the slightest fancy for the countrys most popular big game animal, particularly those bucks with really large antlers. Reader are sure to marvel over the collection of giants inside, while some may find it useful in planning future hunting trips to big buck country.

The hardback book is the most recent edition in an ongoing series dating back to 1987 and the first updated version since 2012. The fifth edition features 500 pages and 12,200 trophy listings of whitetail deer dating back to the late 1800s through December 31, 2011.

At 688 pages, the sixth edition is significantly larger with detailed state and provincial data of more than 17,000 of the biggest whitetails in history. Those listings include gross/net scores, key measurements, location, date, hunter, owner, state/provincial rank and all-time rank of the individual bucks.

Additionally, the new book features a lengthy chapter built around hunter-told stories and full color photos behind the top 37 bucks accepted into B&Cs records program between 2001 and 2019. The areas from which these bucks were taken range from Texas to Canada and Maryland to Nebraska, according to Justin Spring, B&C Director of Big Game Records.

These stories highlight hunts covering the range of methods and tactics common to todays world of whitetail hunting, said Spring.

A pair of the top bucks have ties to the Pineywoods of East Texas. The biggest belongs of Mark Lee of Crosby.

With a net B&C score of 259 3/8, Lees Houston County 29 pointer killed by rifle in 2013 ranks as the No. 53 B&C non-typical of all time and the fourth largest from Texas. Lees buck also is the No. 2 free-ranging non-typical ever entered in the Texas Big Game Awards program.

AJ Downs 27 pointer from San Jacinto County also earned a spot among the Top 37. Downs, of Conroe, arrowed his buck in 2012.

With a net score of 256 7/8, the remarkable non-typical ranks No. 69 of all-time and is the sixth largest Texas buck ever reported to B&C. Downs buck also is the biggest free-ranging buck ever taken by an archer in Texas.

Richard Hale, B&C Vice President of Big Game Records, wrote the introduction page for the new book. He called it the most current and useful tool for the traveling hunter in search of a trophy deer. Hunting clubs will find the book handy to compare their area to others and many will simply enjoy seeing natures most outstanding specimens of whitetail deer.

One thing that sets the sixth edition aside from others is it published in full color. Tripp says the hundreds of photographs tucked away inside include portraits of all the leading state/provincial whitetail deer and 17 new records accepted since the last edition.

There also are state maps showing the distribution of record book entries by county. Plus, tucked inside the back cover, there is a 24X36 poster of the U.S. highlighting the county distribution of whitetail deer entries. The framable poster would look good on the wall at any hunting camp or trophy room.

The book sells for $60 or $48 with a B&C membership.

A scoring bible

The second book  How to Score North American Big Game, 5th Edition  is more of an instructional manual on scoring antlers and horns of big game animals. Released in July, the newly-revised manual is the result of a collaboration between B&C and Pope and Young scoring experts.

P&Y is the official records keeper of archery-killed North American big game animals; the organization uses the B&C scoring system.

The manual offers the most up-to-date scoring techniques with easy-to-follow instructions and more than 100 color illustrations and diagrams. It is available in a softcover, spiral bound edition, or as a downloadable PDF.

It started as a reference for official measurers, however this latest version combines all the experience of both organizations into a manual that answers nearly every scoring question, Spring said. Whether you are scoring your first deer or are a panel judge on a new world record, this manual will instruct you in the proper technique.

The manual sells for $45 or $36 with a B&C membership. Both books are available fororder online, boone-crockett.org.
A Bangladeshi protester begs for mercy from a Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) member during a demonstration in Savar, outside Dhaka, April 30, 2013.

Updated at 2:28 p.m. ET on 2021-12-10

The United States on Friday imposed financial sanctions on the notorious Bangladeshi police unit RAB and six of its current and former officers, saying they were responsible for serious human rights abuses.

In addition, Benazir Ahmed, a former director general of the force, was barred from entering the United States due to his involvement in gross violations of human rights.

Washington announced the move on International Human Rights Day, unveiling sanctions against 15 individuals and 10 entities around the globe.

Widespread allegations of serious human rights abuse in Bangladesh by the Rapid Action Battalion (RAB)  threaten U.S. national security interests by undermining the rule of law and respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms, and the economic prosperity of the people of Bangladesh, the U.S. Treasury Department said in a statement.

The force, which comprises members of the police, army, navy, air force, and border guard, is accused of more than 600 enforced disappearances in the past 12 years, a similar number of extrajudicial killings, and use of torture, the statement noted.

RAB was founded in 2004, and charged with internal security, intelligence gathering related to criminal activities, and government-directed investigations, according to the U.S. treasury.

In Dhaka, prior to the announcement, about 100 relatives of disappeared people marked International Human Rights Day with a protest outside the National Press Club with tears and chants of Give them back!

On Thursday, Human Rights Watch had lodged its strongest call yet for action against RAB, saying that U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres should immediately ban RAB officers from participating in United Nations peacekeeping missions. HRW also called on the world body to ramp up screening of those officers deployed under its blue-and-white flag to ensure that its human rights screening policy was being effectively applied in Bangladesh.

Nobody believes the Bangladesh governments lies about enforced disappearances by its security forces, said Brad Adams. Asia director at Human Rights Watch. The question now is what donors and the U.N. are going to do about it.

The six officers named by the Treasury Department are Chowdhury Abdullah Al-Mamun, the current director general of RAB; Benazir Ahmed, its former director general; Khan Mohammad Azad, an additional director general of the force; and Tofayel Mustafa Sorwar, Mohammad Jahangir Alam, and Mohammad Anwar Latif Khan, all former additional director generals at RAB.

The U.S. Treasury Department sanctions bar U.S. citizens from conducting business with or making contributions to the sanctioned individuals and block access to any property they hold in the United States.

Pantheon

Meanwhile, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken named two Bangladeshis on a list of 12 foreign government officials barred from entering the United States.

He cited a 2021 U.S. law enabling the move against individuals and their immediate family members when there is credible information that officials of foreign governments have been involved in a gross violation of human rights or significant corruption.

The statement named Benazir Ahmed  the former RAB director-general who is currently Bangladeshs police chief  and Miftah Uddin Ahmed, a current lieutenant colonel and former commanding officer of RAB Unit 7, for the May 2018 killing of Teknaf City Municipal Councilor Ekramul Haque in Coxs Bazar, in southeastern Bangladesh.

We are determined to put human rights at the center of our foreign policy, and we reaffirm this commitment by using appropriate tools and authorities to draw attention to and promote accountability for human rights violations and abuses, no matter where they occur, Blinken said.

Benazir Ahmed (center), Bangladeshs police-inspector general and the former head of the Rapid Action Battalion, visits a police checkpoint in Coxs Bazar where a retired army major was gunned down, Aug. 5, 2020. [Sunil Barua/BenarNews]

The U.S. moves placed RAB in a pantheon of the worst rights abusers in the world, including those involved in the racial profiling and mass detention of ethnic Uyghurs in China, the slaughter of civilians in post-coup Myanmar, and the exploitation of North Korean workers abroad.

BenarNews tried to contact RAB authorities for a response to the U.S. sanctions, but phone calls and messages were not answered.

Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan Kamal rejected the U.S. sanctions, saying they were in no way justified.

The basis on which the action has been taken does not reflect the ground reality, Khan told BenarNews Friday night.

Ours is a country of 170 million people. Policing here is not as easy as in other countries. The police officials in Bangladesh discharge their duties with much patience, he said.

While discharging their duties, they must confront many security situations; sometimes they are forced to fire for self-defense. They are entitled to defend themselves, Khan said, referring to allegations of extrajudicial killings.

In case any members of the law enforcement agencies are found to have violated laws, we punish them accordingly, he added.

In August, while responding to a Human Rights Watch report on enforced disappearances, Foreign Minister A.K. Abdul Momen said they were fabricated.

Some people dissociate themselves from their families and then they come back home after some days, he told BenarNews. He said incidents of killings and disappearances happened everywhere.

When people were killed in America by law enforcement agencies they called it in the line of duty, but when it happens in our country you people [journalists] call it extrajudicial killing, he said. This mentality has to be changed.

National shame

Activist Sanjida Islam, whose group Mother is Calling (Mayer Daak) represents relatives of disappeared people, welcomed news of the U.S. sanctions.

Her brother, Sajedul Islam Sumon  a leader of the opposition Bangladesh National Party (BNP)  went missing in December 2013 after RAB officers whisked him away from a residential neighborhood in Dhaka, she said. He has not been seen since.

We are glad. This is the first time the state law enforcement agency RAB comes under question from anyone. No domestic institution could [raise] any question about their unlawful activities in Bangladesh, Islam told BenarNews.

The family members of the victims of enforced disappearances have gone to every institution of Bangladesh to get their sons or brothers back, but in vain, she said.

Nur Khan Liton, a human rights activist and former executive director of the rights advocacy NGO Ain o Salish Kendra, said the U.S. action against RAB was correct.

We, the human rights activists in Bangladesh, have been clamoring for years that the law enforcement agencies such as RAB have been carrying out extrajudicial killings in the pretext of crossfire and are responsible for enforced disappearances, he told BenarNews.

But the state did not heed our concerns. They did not attach importance to our observations. The state repeatedly shrugged off the responsibility for the gross human rights violations, he said.

I think this is a matter of national shame when we see a foreign country adopts a resolution of sanction on a state agency of Bangladesh for the violation of human rights, Khan said.

The sanction would not have come had they taken our concerns and observations seriously.

Ashif Entaz Rabi in Washington contributed to this report.


Afghan refugees sewed their mouths shut and began a hunger strike outside the UNHCR office in Riau province, Indonesia, to protest the lack of prospects to resettle in third countries, Dec. 6, 2021.

Some Afghan refugees in Indonesia have resorted to desperate acts including self-harm as prospects for their resettlement in third countries grow increasingly dim.

One of those refugees, Ahmad Shah, 22, set himself on fire last month during a protest outside the offices of the United Nations refugee agency (UNHCR) in the Indonesian city of Medan. He survived and is being treated at a Medan hospital after suffering severe burns.

This month, several Afghan refugees sewed their mouths shut and went on a hunger strike after they pitched tents outside a building housing the UNHCR office in Pekanbaru, the capital of Riau, another province on Sumatra Island.

Hunger strikers agreed to remove the stitches after friends persuaded them to do so.

Many other refugees begged them to care for their health, he told BenarNews. Besides, the UNHCR organized a meeting to discuss their concerns and problems on Dec. 9.

Nazir said that Muhammad Rafki, a UNHCR official in Pekanbaru, told them that there were limited places available for resettlement.

The answer is not enough, Nazir said. He said they have tried, but this is the reality.

Another refugee said they could not return to their homes in Afghanistan, which earlier this year fell under the rule of the Taliban.

We have lived here for 10 years and its impossible for us to return at this time. But resettlement has not happened, Baman Ali, 33, one of the refugees who protested in Pekanbaru, told BenarNews.



He said he and other refugees were desperate.



We have held demonstrations many times but no one cares, he said.

The UNHCR office in Indonesia has acknowledged that an unspecified number of refugees in Indonesia have committed suicide and said it was providing psychological counseling.

As many as 14 refugees committed suicide and six others made failed attempts, said Zuma Mohsini, a spokesman for the refugees in Medan, the capital of North Sumatra province.

Everyone is depressed because of the uncertainty of life, Zuma said.

Hassan Ramazan, a spokesman for refugees in Jakarta, said suicide by refugees are rarely reported by Indonesian media.



You wont find it in the mainstream media, except in one or two places, Hassan said.



Why? Because the UNHCR and IOM dont want the truth to be exposed, he alleged, referring to the International Organization for Migration, another U.N. body.

Afghan refugees carry out silent protests inside tents in Riau province, Indonesia, Dec. 6, 2021. [Dina Febriastuti/ BenarNews]

Frustrations acknowledged

The UNHCR office said officials were concerned about the refugees plight, and noted that the Indonesia representative, Ann Maymann, had started a series of meetings with the refugees and local authorities.

The UNHCR official acknowledged the frustrations expressed by the refugees and explained the resettlement process as well as its limitations, stressing that resettlement can only be offered to a very limited number of vulnerable refugees, given the low number of places available worldwide, it said in a statement.

Over the last five years, about 3,700 refugees in Indonesia have been referred to resettlement and more than 2,700 refugees have departed, 46 percent of them from Afghanistan, it said.

Mitra Suryono, a UNHCR spokeswoman in Indonesia, said the 20 receiving countries could accept less than 1.5 percent of the 26 million refugees worldwide.



Many of these recipient countries have reduced the number of refugees they take in recent years for various reasons, she said.

We understand the refugees wish to find a long-term solution to their displacement. We have been in regular contact with those protesting, providing counseling and psychological support to those who are willing to accept this assistance, she said.

Mitra said the UNHCR was working to find independent living and education opportunities for refugees.

Indonesia is not a party to the U.N.s 1951 Refugee Convention or its 1967 Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees. The nation prohibits refugees from obtaining jobs and attending formal schools.

The head of the immigration office in Riau, Muhammad Tito Andrianto, said there was nothing the government could do about the refugees demand for resettlement.

Obviously its up to the UNHCR, he said.



The UNHCR said about 13,400 refugees were in Indonesia as of May. About 7,000 of them live in greater Jakarta, while the rest are scattered in cities across the archipelago, including Medan, Pekanbaru, Tanjung Pinang and Makassar.

Indonesia has for years been a transit point for refugees from the Middle East and Central Asia seeking better lives in wealthy countries such as Australia and the United States.



During 2018 and 2019, up to 3,000 refugees arrived in Indonesia in search of asylum elsewhere.

In 2020, fewer than 1,000 asylum seekers made it to Indonesia  mostly Afghanis, Somalis, Iraqis and Rohingya from Myanmar.

Most of the Afghan refugees are ethnic Hazara, who were victims of persecution in their country because of their Shia beliefs. The refugees said they fear for the safety of their families following the return to power of Taliban extremists.

Depressed

Ali, the hunger striker in Pekanbaru, said he and others could take more drastic actions unless something was done about their fate.

We have sent a letter to convey our message to the UNHCR office here. If they dont care, we will take the next step, he said. We will burn ourselves.

Shah, the refugee who set himself on fire in Medan, is being treated in an intensive care unit for his burn injuries, according to Zuma.

His condition is improving, Zuma said. The doctor said he will have to stay in the ICU for another 10 days, after that he may be transferred to the general ward.
Malaysia has placed its security forces in Sabah on heightened alert following an unverified report that leaders from islands in the nearby southern Philippines were planning to invade the state, officials said, while noting the government had not found any evidence of a plot.

Malaysian Defense Minister Hishammuddin Hussein said his ministry was trying to verify information about the alleged plot with his counterparts in the Philippines and Indonesia.

Any form of threat must be independently verified and taken seriously, even if they are not substantiated, he said.

Hishammuddin was responding to a news report in the South China Morning Post about a secret meeting that allegedly took place on Dec. 1 in the Sulu Islands to hatch a plan to send about 600 men from the archipelago to invade Sabah, a state in Malaysian Borneo.

The minister added that the intelligence arm of the Eastern Sabah Security Command, or ESSCOM, was monitoring the situation and assessing indicators pointing to any threat against the state.

I have also instructed the leaders of the three branches of the Malaysian Armed Forces, namely the army, the navy, and the air force, to ramp up their preparedness to the highest possible level, especially in East Coast Sabah, Hishammuddin said in a statement.

The minister said he was working closely with the Philippines Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana, and Indonesian Defense Minister Probowo Subianto, under the Trilateral Cooperative Arrangement, to ensure security in the region where the three countries share sea borders.

Preserving Sabahs safety and wellbeing is the Defense Ministrys utmost priority. Come what may, the ministry and I will ensure that the states safety and sovereignty are not compromised, or violated.

In the Philippines, security officials in the Philippines declined to comment on the news report.

Filipinos from Sulu, an archipelago in the far southern Philippines, did try to take over Sabah eight years ago; the sovereignty of the state is the source of a long-standing dispute between Malaysia and the Philippines.

On Feb. 11, 2013, a group of 200-odd armed members of the so-called Royal Sulu Army entered Sabahs Lahad Datu district, sparking a standoff with Malaysian security officials that lasted a month before officials secured the area.

The clash ended in June with casualties on both sides. Ten members of the Malaysian security forces and six civilians were killed, along with 56 Sulu gunmen, according to media reports from that time.

Always vigilant

Malaysian Armed Forces chief Affendi Buang, earlier on Friday, urged Sabahans to not panic over the unverified information.



To date, intelligence and operations have not shown any evidence that such a threat is looming, he said in a statement separate from Hishammuddins.

Nevertheless, the armed forces will always be vigilant and ready to face any possible threat and to protect the countrys sovereignty.

Police Inspector-General Acryl Sani Abdullah Sani also said that his men were on high alert.

We take the matter seriously and will take immediate steps to heighten security measures to the highest level to face any eventuality, and prevent a recurrence of incursion in Sabah, Acryl said in a statement late Thursday night.

Strict action would be taken against those found to be plotting such plans.

The price to pay is very high

Although the incursion plan sounded highly improbable, the Malaysian security forces still had to take extra precautions, said Ramli Dollah, a security analyst from Universiti Malaysia Sabah.

Normally, issues like this only appear when elections are coming. It was almost the same in the last election, he told BenarNews, referring to a general election scheduled for next May in the Philippines.

If you ask me about the chances of this [attack] happening, I would say no, but it is not impossible.

In his view, the Royal Sulu Army should learn from what happened during the Lahad Datu incursion, where they were not actually prepared to go to war with the Malaysian government. The price to pay is very high.

Any invasion at this time also would not draw support from the people in Sabah, including those with family or ethnic ties with the intruders, Ramli added.

The Lahad Datu incident was a good lesson for the Tausug and Bajau, or Filipino immigrants community in Sabah, as they were subjected to insults, curses, arrests and deportation after the skirmish, he said.

I dont think they would want the tragedy to repeat.
Nobel Peace Prize laureates Maria Ressa of the Philippines (left) and Dmitry Muratov of Russia wave to well-wishers from the balcony of the Grand Hotel in Oslo on Dec. 10, 2021, following the prize award ceremony.

Philippine journalist Maria Ressa took aim at American social media companies for allowing the toxic sludge of disinformation to spread online and impede the work of reporters worldwide, as she accepted the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo on Friday.

The crusading Philippine editor and CEO of the news website Rappler is one of two journalists to receive the rare honor of being named co-winners of the worlds most prestigious peace prize. When she set up the Rappler company almost 10 years ago, Ressa said she tried to put together two sides of a coin that she believes shows all that is wrong in todays world.

Journalists, the old gatekeepers, are one side of the coin, Ressa said during her acceptance speech at Oslo City Hall.

The other is technology, with its god-like power that has allowed a virus of lies to infect each of us, pitting us against each other, bringing out our fears, anger and hate, and setting the stage for the rise of authoritarians and dictators around the world.

According to Ressa, the need of the hour is to transform hate and violence.

[T]he toxic sludge thats coursing through our information ecosystem, prioritized by American internet companies that make more money by spreading that hate and triggering the worst in us well, that just means we have to work much harder.

Press freedom activists said Ressa had been targeted for Rapplers critical coverage of President Rodrigo Dutertes five-year war on illegal drugs, which has left thousands dead. Duterte has accused Ressa of spreading fake news.

In June last year, she and a former colleague were convicted of cyber libel. Ressa and her colleague face up to six years in prison  they are currently free on bail pending an appeal.

In less than 2 years, the Philippine government filed 10 arrest warrants against me. Ive had to post bail 10 times just to do my job, she said in her lecture.

Last year, I and a former colleague were convicted of cyber libel for a story we published 8 years earlier at a time the law we allegedly violated didnt even exist. All told, the charges I face could send me to jail for about 100 years.

Ressa also described social media as a deadly game for power and money.

[D]estructive corporations have siphoned money away from news groups and now pose a foundational threat to markets and elections, she said.

She cited a disinformation campaign waged by China last year that, undermined her own news operation.

To show how disinformation is both a local and global problem, take the Chinese information operations taken down by Facebook in Sept 2020: it was creating fake accounts using AI generated photos for the U.S. elections, polishing the image of the Marcoses, campaigning for Dutertes daughter, and attacking me and Rappler, Ressa said.

Maria Ressa of the Philippines (left) is applauded by Nobel laureate Dmitry Muratov of Russia as she is presented with the Nobel Peace Prize diploma and medal during the award ceremony for the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo, Dec. 10, 2022. [AFP]

Progress without freedom

Meanwhile, Ressas co-winner, Russian newspaper editor Dmitri Muratov, said he believed the world had fallen out of love with democracy and beginning to turn to dictatorship.

Weve got an illusion that progress can be achieved through technology and violence, not through human rights and freedoms, he said in his lecture after being presented the Nobel Peace Prize.

This is progress without freedom. It is as impossible as getting milk without having a cow. The dictatorships have secured access to violence. In our country (and not only) it is common to think that politicians who avoid bloodshed are weak. While threatening the world with war is the duty of true patriots.

In this scenario, he said, it is more important than ever for journalists to distinguish between facts and fiction.

The dictatorships have secured access to violence. But he warned this was a dangerous venture.

Over a hundred journalists, media outlets, human rights defenders and NGOs have recently been branded as foreign agents. In Russia, this means enemies of the people, he said.

Many of our colleagues have lost their jobs. Some have to leave the country. Some are deprived of the opportunity to live a normal life for an unknown period of time. Maybe forever.

Since its launch two decades ago, Muratovs newspaper, Novaya Gazeta, has repeatedly written about alleged corruption in the Russian government  and many link that to the killings of six of the papers reporters.

But this is their mission, he said, speaking of journalists who risk their lives.

As governments continually improve the past, journalists try to improve the future.

Muratov said his Nobel was for all true journalism.

This award is to my colleagues from Novaya Gazeta, who have lost their lives . This award is also to the colleagues who are alive, to the professional community who perform their professional duty, Muratov said.

He then called for a minute of silence to honor fallen journalists around the world.

Let us rise and honor my and Maria Ressas reporter colleagues, who have given their lives for this profession, with a minute of silence, and let us give our support to those who suffer persecution, he said.

I want journalists to die old.

Ressa to co-head new fund for shielding journalists

Earlier this week, United States Secretary of State Antony Blinken, praised the extraordinary work of journalists and media workers worldwide, including Ressa and Muratov.

And yet, as we all know, for too many journalists, doing this work means having to endure threats, harassment, attacks, he said, speaking at a panel ahead of U.S. President Joe Bidens Summit for Democracy held on Dec. 9-10.

The top U.S. diplomat also announced three new funding initiatives to protect reporters and support independent international journalism worldwide.

One of these initiatives, the International Fund for Public Interest Media, will be co-chaired by Ressa and New York Times CEO Mark Thompson, according to an Oct. 1 article in Rappler. The fund is part of a global push to support public interest media organizations worldwide.

Having co-chairs of the stature of Maria and Mark is a testament to the scope and ambition of the Fund, and a sign of the progress weve made, said Sheetal Vyas, the funds founding director.

The International Fund makes supporting independent media simple, effective and most likely to develop the long-term strategies that can address the business model collapse.
Protesters destroy a horned effigy of Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte during a rally to mark the International Human Rights Day at the University of the Philippines in Quezon City, Dec. 10, 2021.

Thousands of Filipino activists marched in Metro Manila to mark International Human Rights Day on Friday, the same day journalist Maria Ressa received her Nobel Peace Prize in Norway.

About 5,000 protesters shouted slogans and carried banners that criticized extrajudicial killings during President Rodrigo Duterte's five-year-old war on illegal drugs.

We had been shedding blood and tears since Duterte stepped into office almost six years ago, said Evangeline Hernandez, chairwoman of Hustisya, a group representing victims of extrajudicial killings.

Instead of addressing poverty and other pressing socio-economic concerns, this bloodthirsty tyrant betrayed the nations trust and killed thousands of innocent people through his administrations futile counterinsurgency program and the war on drugs, she said.

While protesters took to streets in Metro Manila, Ressa, chief executive of the Rappler news site, appeared at the Oslo City Hall to accept the award she shares Russian journalist Dmitry Muratov, editor-in-chief of Novaya Gazeta. The Norwegian Nobel Committee announced the winners last month.

In June 2020, Ressa and a former colleague were convicted of cyber libel and face up to six years in prison. They are free on bail pending an appeal.

Because of Rapplers critical coverage of the drug war, Duterte has criticized Ressa, accusing her of spreading fake news.

Dutertes allies in Congress also shut down ABS-CBN Corp., the countrys leading television station, last year. The two news organizations and the Philippine Daily Inquirer closely followed Dutertes drug war.

An activist joins a protest to mark the International Human Rights Day at the University of the Philippines in Quezon City, Dec. 10, 2021. [Basilio Sepe/BenarNews]

Anti-Terror Law protested

Hernandez blasted the Duterte governments alleged penchant for silencing critics and dissenters, including the critical press.

He has openly sanctioned murder and blatantly disregarded human rights through his militaristic schemes and draconian measures such as the Anti-Terror Law. He is an evil, tyrannical monster, she said during the protest.

The law signed last year was largely upheld as constitutional by the Supreme Court this week, even as it rejected two provisions against lawful dissent.

Data from the human rights alliance Karapatan shows that from July 2016 to November 2021, there were 424 victims of extrajudicial killings in the country, not including Dutertes war on drugs which has killed about 8,000 suspected addicts and dealers, according to an official police count. Rights groups, including Karapatan, estimate the number could be between 20,000 and 30,000.

Philippine journalist Maria Ressa holds up a t-shirt during the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony in Oslo, Dec. 10, 2021. [AP]

On Friday, Karapatan congratulated Ressa for the Nobel win and stressed that it was fitting that she was recognized on Human Rights Day.

We recognize Ressas role as a prominent advocate of press freedom and freedom of expression, the group said, stressing that Ressas Rappler, apart from its reporting of the drug war, had been at the forefront of covering press freedom violations, threats, and attacks against journalists and rights defenders.

Amid attempts to silence critical voices, protests and dissent, those who dare to retell the truth and assert the peoples right to information contribute to the peoples broader movement for justice and accountability, Ressa and Rappler have made such contributions, it said.

Karapatan noted that journalists and press freedom advocates continue to suffer the brunt of a tyrannical Duterte rule.

The president once said journalists were not exempt from being assassinated.

On Wednesday, Jesus Malabanan, who reported for Manila Standard Today and contributed to Reuters news service, was shot and killed in the central Philippines.

Police were investigating his death and if proven it was related to his work, he would be the 22nd working journalist killed in the country since Duterte became president in 2016.

Karapatan said attacks against Filipino journalists should stop and the perpetrators should be brought to justice.

Also, we continue to oppose censorship, criminalization of libel, and politically motivated legal challenges and closure, like what the Duterte administration has done to media outfits like ABS-CBN. Clearly, the fight for press freedom and freedom of expression as well as the peoples right to information is a continuing challenge, Karapatan said.

Meanwhile, Executive Secretary Salvador Medialdea, who serves as Dutertes chief aide, said the president had introduced programs to reduce inequalities and advance human rights.

Duterte had promised to bring about improvement in our peoples welfare and standard of living and make human rights work to uplift human dignity, Medialdea said in a statement to mark rights day.
Bennington, VT (05201)

Today

Rain showers this morning with overcast skies during the afternoon hours. A few flurries or snow showers possible. High 43F. Winds S at 15 to 25 mph. Chance of rain 50%..

Tonight

Mostly cloudy with snow showers developing after midnight. Low 26F. Winds SW at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of snow 40%.
President Joe Biden has reached out to Ukraines leader as the United States moves to take a more direct role in diplomacy between that country and Russia
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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.
RICHMOND  Raised in a home with siblings who were allergic to furry animals, John Reynolds was not permitted to have a dog or a cat. He had to settle for a pet rodent. He named it Jeremy, and his love for Jeremy became a motivator toward a veterinarian career that was as much or more about his love for people as it was for animals.

Reynolds, 58, owner of the Pittsfield Veterinary Hospital and Shaker Hill Pet Resort, died in a kayaking accident Thursday on Richmond Pond, where he kayaked daily. He was a beloved husband, a father of three daughters and a force for good in the community, said his wife, Valeri, on Friday.

He was larger than life, she said of the man whom she first met in 1988, when they were students at Cornell University in New York. He was an incredible human being. Theres no way around it.

He was truly the nicest, nicest, nicest man you could ever meet, said Laurie Tierney, of Pittsfield, who had brought her pets to Reynolds through the years for checkups and treatments. Hed always call at night and check in: Hows Lola?

Beginning in 1996, Reynolds turned a small, one-man veterinary practice run out of a converted house on West Housatonic Street into a large, state-of-the-art facility.

His 40 employees adored him. To be an employee of Dr. Reynolds meant, among other things, agreeing to volunteer in the community. For instance, every 14 weeks, the staff cooks a meal for the homeless or less fortunate at a local kitchen. And Reynolds always made it a point to employ people with disabilities.

He was our friend, our mentor. He was family. Hes who everyone looked up to, and I personally feel that we all strive to be better for him, Jennifer Coughlin, the human resources and marketing director for Pittsfield Veterinary Hospital, said while fighting back tears.

Even when the hospital learned of Reynolds death Thursday and closed early, the employees stayed and celebrated how lucky they were to have known him, she said.

And when we all came in this morning, she said, we did so in the spirit of, Lets continue and keep his dream alive.

Reynolds was born April 17, 1963, to Robert and Phoebe Reynolds. He was raised in New Jersey with two siblings. He was a good student, a member of the school band and an Eagle Scout, his family said.

In a 2019 interview with The Eagle, Reynolds called it corny, but traced his veterinary career back to two key things.

The first: I grew up without dogs and cats in my household because my brother and sister were allergic to many things and my parents were not dog and cat people, he said.

The second: When I was a junior in high school, I read All Creatures Great and Small. Its about a veterinarian, James Herriot, in England (Herriot is the pen name of the late British veterinarian James Alfred Wright). He wrote three books under that name about being a country veterinarian ... I read this book and I completely envisioned myself doing that.

What was in the book that made him feel that way? In addition to an affinity for the natural sciences, he said what also attracted him were the relationships Herriot had with people and animals.

After veterinary school, he said that Herriot remained his role model.

Valeri confirmed that her husband always had wanted to be a veterinarian who was part of the community. After working at clinics in western New York and in New Jersey, Reynolds started looking for an existing practice that he could purchase and operate.

With the help of Bill Davis, the loan officer at the time at Berkshire Bank, and the support of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, in 1996 Reynolds purchased a veterinary clinic run by Dr. Len Perry on West Housatonic Street. He got to work in a manner that would have made Herriot proud.

From the moment he moved into our community, he was at our door asking, How can I help? said John Perreault, executive director of the Berkshire Humane Society. He took a very small practice and built it into what it is today. And he built it on kindness, compassion and community. Hes just that guy that really wanted to make his community better for everybody.

Reynolds served as a board member and veterinary service provider for the Berkshire Humane Society. He served leadership roles in the Rotary Club of Pittsfield. He served as the chair of Pittsfields Animal Control Commission. Through the years, he would provide countless hours of free veterinary service and advice to pet owners who were struggling financially.

If you asked him for something, whether it was a dollar or an hour of his time, he gave it to you, said a longtime friend, Thomas Hamel, an attorney with the Courtney, Lee & Hamel law firm in Pittsfield.

John and Valeri Reynolds, who were married in June 1991, began their life in the Berkshires in a small house in Richmond. They eventually bought a farm in Richmond, where they raised their three daughters: Sonali, now 31; Julia, 25; and Cecilia, 24.

After their daughters all had left home, the couple moved to a home at Richmond Pond, a place that perfectly suited him. He had been an avid kayaker.

He would want people to know that this [kayaking] brought him joy every morning. He kayaked every morning, she said. He kayaked in the Arctic, and he kayaked in the Antarctic, and he kayaked in the islands above Scotland.

Reynolds was pulled from Richmond Pond on Thursday morning, after his kayak overturned. He was taken to Berkshire Medical Center, where he later died, according to a statement released Friday by the Berkshire District Attorneys Office.

Authorities received a 911 call around 7:05 a.m. about a person in Richmond Pond calling for help, the release said.

Valeri confirmed that it was a neighbor who called 911. Before first responders arrived, the neighbor had tried to go out onto the lake to rescue Reynolds, but could not get to him.

First responders also had difficulty reaching him because the annual winter drawdown of the pond had created stretches of mud and chunks of ice.

Reynolds was wearing a life preserver. His wife said he also was clothed fully in a proper wetsuit.

I dont know what happened. It makes no sense. It was an accident, obviously, Valeri said.

Richmond Fire Chief Steven Traver said Reynolds was in the frigid water for about 45 minutes before rescuers reached him. First responders began CPR on Reynolds after he was pulled from the water. He then was taken by ambulance to BMC, where those lifesaving efforts continued.

Traver told The Eagle on Friday morning that Reynolds apparently succumbed to hypothermia. But, it could have been a heart attack, he added.

The chief said that rescuers did all we could to save him, but everything that could have gone wrong, did.

Executive Spotlight: John Reynolds, veterinarian and owner of Pittsfield Veterinary Hospital, Shaker Hill Pet Resort PITTSFIELD  John Reynolds might be a veterinarian, but he grew up in a family in Wayne, N.J., that never owned a dog or a cat. When he was a junior in high school, Reynolds read a book on 

The Berkshire District Attorneys Office said in the release that early evidence shows Reynolds death was accidental. The Office of the Chief Medical Examiner took custody of his body for further examination.

Valeri first became aware that something was wrong about 7:20 a.m.

I came downstairs because he didnt bring me my tea, she said.

That was a morning ritual.

I couldnt find him, she said. I called his cellphone, and I happened to look out at the lake. I pulled the curtains back, and all the rescue crews were over at the boat landing, and I saw that his kayak was gone. I saw his footprints in the snow.

In addition to his wife and three daughters, Reynolds is survived by his mother, Phoebe, who lives in Maryland; his brother, Thomas, who lives in the San Juan Islands; and his sister, Sharon Runge, who lives in Maryland. He is predeceased by his father, Robert. No plans have been set regarding funeral services.

You should know that his body is probably now in Waltham, and hes donating every inch of his body that can be used, Valeri said. That is what he would want. He was a doctor. He was a scientist. So, even in his death, he is still helping people.

What remains of his body will be returned to Pittsfield and cremated at Dery Funeral Home in Pittsfield.
One of three people allegedly involved in a summer incident during which police said a firearm was used in an assault might enter a change of plea, while another Thursday was ordered released from pretrial custody on $5,000 cash bail.
DALTON  A former investigator for the Massachusetts State Police will lead a probe into how the Dalton Police Department, under former Chief Jeffrey E. Coe, handled a rape case that was dropped last month by prosecutors.

Quote "I felt that, based on the history of the department, it was better for someone else to do it."  Deanna Strout, Dalton Police chief, on her decision to recommend that a review of her predecessor's handling of a 2018 rape case be conducted by an outside investigator

Outside help is needed because Police Chief Deanna Strout opted to recuse herself from the investigation. The probe is expected to include a wider review of the departments past investigative practices.

Town Manager Thomas Hutcheson said Dalton will pay a Boston investigator, Steven P. Fennessy, up to $10,000 to conduct the inquiry. Fennessy is a former deputy division commander for the Division of Investigative Services for the state police. He runs Colando Investigative Services, at 36 Granville St. in Boston.

On Nov. 15, the Berkshire District Attorneys Office filed court papers to discontinue prosecution in a 2018 rape case involving a 13-year-old alleged victim. The office acted after learning the weekend before that exculpatory information intentionally was left out of a police report.

According to the officer involved, he removed material recovered from the alleged victims cellphone at Coes request.

It was a purposeful destruction of evidence, Andrea Harrington, the Berkshire district attorney, said in an earlier interview. We no longer have the phone. We no longer have the evidence, which is really the key for us in having to dismiss this charge.

Harrington said her office believes that Coe, who left his post in 2020, told an officer to remove information from a report related to the phones web search history. Attempts to reach Coe for comment have been unsuccessful.

Strout initially began an internal probe, but decided, on Nov. 16, to seek permission from the town manager to have an outside party run the investigation. She said Thursday that while she believes she could have conducted the inquiry, she wanted to ensure that it is viewed as impartial.

I felt it was best for an outside person who had no bias, she said. I felt that with everything that had gone on, that would be our best option for transparency and fairness, she said, citing current litigation.

The town is being sued in U.S. District Court by the mother of a Dalton woman who died by suicide in late 2019; the complaint alleges that police failed to properly respond to a concerns that the woman, Sherilyn Hayes, planned to kill herself.

Strout said she has turned over initial work on the matter of the 2018 rape investigation to Fennessy.

We need to get to the bottom of the concerns, Strout said. Let him do his job.

Quote The missing material was exculpatory because it could have helped lead a judge or jury to find the defendant not guilty.

Harringtons office asked that the review examine whether evidence was withheld from other cases handled by the department, beyond the 2018 rape case. Strout was sworn in as chief in February. She had been out because of an injury at the time the rape was reported in 2018.

They want to know whether this is more than a one-time event. Theres a little more to it, Strout said in a Nov. 15 interview.

The missing material was exculpatory because it could have helped lead a judge or jury to find the defendant not guilty. Exculpatory evidence must be shared with defense attorneys. It was not, in this case, leading the DAs office to drop charges, according to Harringtons office.
A truck passes a container ship Oct. 19 at the Port of Oakland in California, where farmers say they are having trouble exporting their crops because of delays in the global supply chain. Intense demand for products has led to a backlog of container ships outside the nation's two largest ports along the Southern California coast.
A supporter of former Vice President Joe Biden, left, shouts defamatory slurs at supporters of President Donald Trump in Lake Worth, Fla., who had been waving flags outside an early voting center when the man approached and allegedly threatened them.
A recent public hearing began the way that many do nowadays: local advocates and politicos joined an open video call with state officials to discuss an important topic. Unfortunately, attendees had to endure an all-too-common obstacle that we must better repel: Zoom bombs.

For the fortunately uninitiated, Zoom-bombing refers to nefarious and often anonymous intrusions into digital conferences, often held on Zoom or similar virtual meeting platforms, to attack a meeting and its attendees. In this recent case, during a forum on the state Department of Environmental Protections permitting process for a Pittsfield peaker power plant, perpetrators persistently hobbled the process by blasting pornographic sounds and racist slurs into the hearing. The phenomenon can take other, similarly vile forms, such as when a Zoom bomber hijacked a West Stockbridge Select Board meeting earlier this year to hurl racist words at an attendee and profanely threaten everyone.

It should go without saying that it is unacceptable in civil society, especially as it affects participatory democracy and good governance. At the recent peaker plant hearing, for instance, state Sen. Adams Hinds was forced to cut his testimony short, as the meeting couldnt proceed for more than 10 minutes at a time without obscene interruption.

Any well-mannered person would agree this is an awful practice that should be stopped, but there doesnt appear to be any agreement  or, worse, much consideration  as to how. To be clear, we are not blaming the DEP officials who hosted the peaker plant hearing, nor are we blaming municipal boards that are even more tech-strapped but have faced similar disruptions to public business. We have been and will be grappling with remote public meetings and hearings for some time. We are overdue for some broad standards and best defensive practices for COVID-era meetings that a technologically advanced state like Massachusetts is perfectly capable of developing and implementing to help state and local officials deal with this worrisome obstacle to decent democracy.

The peaker plant hearing and others blown up by Zoom bombs are evidence that open links to these meetings are trouble waiting to open. Meetings can be set up in such a way that one or more officials can moderate and control who can attend and when they can be seen and heard; that discretion available at in-person meetings should be the norm for remote meetings as well. All boards should follow the suit of others that have adopted the webinar Zoom format that makes this relatively simple. Further, boards might consider designating a tech-savvy moderator who is not the chair but can respond to the orders of the chair, who can lead meetings without the distracting task of playing digital traffic cop. Some panels also create a separate meeting link for public comments to cut down on the potential for confusion and chaos amid official discussion. This is a wise move, especially when considerable public comment or controversy is expected.

There are plenty of measures like these that are easy to implement and effectively weed out troublemakers and headaches. Stanford University has developed a helpful universal guide on combating Zoom bombers, which all regularly meeting officials should consult. Given the continued prevalence of remote meetings and their importance in the maintenance of democracy, the state should dedicate an agency to develop, recommend and assist with adoption of easy-to-follow protocols to help municipal and other governing groups defuse Zoom bombs.

To some, these measures might seem overly restrictive. We understand those worries in principal, but consider the deleterious effects already gnawing at open and functional democracy in practice here. At in-person meetings, police or sergeants-at-arms maintain order for the common good; its just as reasonable to judiciously employ the mute button and thoroughly screen participants to bring some much-needed order to remote meetings.

The toll exacted by these incidents on our democratic institutions legitimacy is too costly for all. Condemning Zoom bombers isnt enough. We must put a stop to them, or at least do everything reasonably possible to limit the disruptive intrusion into where democracy resides and deserves defending.
As people around the world gather around a Christmas tree to celebrate a day unlike any other, many are unaware of why we recognize Christmas on the 25th of December. The original purpose of Christmas was to recognize the birth of Jesus. Many secular celebrations followed. Today we are going to look into why we celebrate Christmas on December 25th.

Who Chose the Date December 25 and Why?

As you probably have noticed, Christmas is a time of year where we experience a variety of traditions. Some of these stem from faith in Jesus and others do not. There is nothing wrong with participating in the secular fun as long as we are still keeping Jesus first and remembering that He is the reason why we have Christmas in the first place.

Christians celebrate Christmas on December 25th. They say that Jesus exact birthday is unknown, however, based on the Scriptures, some believed it to be in early spring. The Editors of Britannica share that the remembrance of Jesus birth began in the 2nd century.

There are three potential reasons why December 25th was selected.

First, Sextus Julius Africanus was a Roman believer who believed that Jesus conception was March 25th and nine months later would be December 25th. The next is that in the 3rd century, Rome, a secular community, celebrated the winter solace on the 25th. The third is that the believers in Rome started recognizing Christmas on December 25th in 336 AD because of Constantines rule. Constantine supported the Christian faith in Rome and some thought it was a political move to lessen the pagan celebrations in the country. December 25th was not celebrated in the Eastern territory because January 6th was their preference. In the 9th century, they began to celebrate on December 25th as well.

I remember in science class when we would do experiments and I would always hate it when my results were inconclusive. We like answers, but sometimes in life there is mystery. Unfortunately, there is no exact answer to this question, but a few educated possibilities. What we do know and can stand on is that Jesus was born and we can honor His life, death, and resurrection for us.

Do We Know That Jesus Was Actually Born?

Yes, confidently, Jesus was born. On top of the fact that Jesus birth is confirmed by God Himself through the Bible, historically there are other documents that prove that Jesus walked this earth. We can be 100% confident that Jesus was born. For example, The History Channel, a secular group, recognizes that Jesus walked the earth. They share, Within a few decades of his lifetime, Jesus was mentioned by Jewish and Roman historians in passages that corroborate portions of the New Testament that describe the life and death of Jesus. The Jewish historian Flavius Josephus from the first century mentions Jesus twice in his Jewish Antiquities about the Jewish people that he wrote in 93AD. The other is Cornelius Tacitus from the Roman Empire. He wrote Annals of Imperial Rome near 116 AD. In his account, he talks about the crucifixion of Christ by Pilate and the Christian movement when Nero persecuted them.

The Bible is also the most obvious place to go to read the account of Jesuss birth. Luke 1:30-31 says, But the angel said to her, Do not be afraid, Mary; you have found favor with God. You will conceive and give birth to a son, and you are to call him Jesus. Then, in Luke 2:6-7 Jesus is born. While they were there, the time came for the baby to be born, and she gave birth to her firstborn, a son. She wrapped him in cloths and placed him in a manger, because there was no guest room available for them. Matthew 1-2, Isaiah 9:6-7, and Revelation 12 also tell of the birth of Jesus.

Do We Know When Jesus Was Actually Born?

There is no question as to if Jesus was on this earth, the question is just when he was born. Although it is not likely to be December 25th, we can still confidently celebrate and give praise to His gift of His life to us.

Good News at Beyond Today shares the facts that we do know. First, Shepherds were in their fields, so it must have been, this can indicate a late summer or early fall birthday. Second, Mary and Joseph had to register. The censuses were normally taken in warmer months for easier travel.

The scholars concluded based on events that took place that Jesus may have been born in late September because of the details given about Zacharias and Elizabeths conception and birth of John the Baptist. (Luke 1) Good News teaches that historical calculations show that the temple service for Zacharias was likely June 13-19. (The Companion Bible, 1974, Appendix 179, p. 200). They believe if Elizabeth conceived in the latter part of June then, John the Baptist who was due 6 months before Jesus, would have been born at the end of March and six months after late March is late September.

What Has Celebrating Christmas Looked Like across History to Now?

Megan Finley from The Museum of Arts and Sciences tell us that Christmas has looked differently across the span of history.

3rd Century AD: Megan says that it began in the 3rd century when church officials decided on December 25th during another popular pagan holiday called Saturnalia. They would eat, give gifts, and decorate. At this time the secular holiday was separate from Christmas, then they merged into a lot of overlap in celebration styles.

Colonial Times: During this time period, some rejected Christmas like the Puritans. Some celebrated the 12 days of Christmas starting on the 25th. They would eat, hold special church services, visit loved ones, and host parties. The final day, January 6th would be the greatest day of celebration. The main focus was Jesus and spending time with others. Gifts were part of the time together, but not the main point. Only those of German descent had Christmas trees. People thought it was strange.

19th Century: This is the time period that propelled us into a lot of the traditions which we hold today. The majority of people began to celebrate. Christmas cards began in 1843. Now, instead of focusing on community parties, people began to focus more on the home and children. This was especially because the character Santa Claus was created in 1882 when Clement Clark Moore wrote, An Account of a Visit from St. Nicholas, better known as Twas the Night Before Christmas. The German Christmas trees became more widespread when Queen Victoria and Prince Albert made them popular.

20th Century: During this time, traditions continued on, however the stores began to market Christmas. Toy stores did really well this time of the year. Whether people were in times of peace, war, feast, or famine, they kept up holiday traditions. In 1924 the first Macys Day Parade was held to excite people about Christmas and shopping. In 1931, the famous Santa Claus holding and promoting Coca-cola was crafted. Many beloved Christmas movies and songs were created.

21st Century: Today, we live in the 21st century. Our Christmases carry a lot of the same traditions. Jeff Westover from My Merry Christmas shares that people have added or changed things in this latest century. Instead of sending Christmas cards, this technologically savvy generation texts Merry Christmas. Families track Santa Claus online. Ugly Christmas sweaters got started, plus Elf on the Shelf. Lets not forget to mention online shopping.

What amazes me about seeing how Christmas was started and morphed over time is that the central theme and testimony of Jesus birth has not changed. He is the Unchanging One (Hebrews 13:8). Across cultures, in the hard and good times, over centuries, His name and His story are still being told and celebrated at Christmas each year. We have not added to it or taken away from it because it stands the wonderful story of Jesus coming into our imperfect world. He loved us so much to come to us. He is Emmanuel, God with us. Even though we should be honoring Jesus every day, December 25th is a very special day to reflect on Him. The secular traditions can be a blast, but may we never forget to take intentional time to remember and worship our Living King.

Photo credit: GettyImages/ Siri Stafford

Emma Danzeys mission in life is to inspire young women to embrace the extraordinary. One of her greatest joys is to journey with the Lord in His Scriptures. Emma is a North Carolina resident and green tea enthusiast! She is married to her husband Drew and they serve international college students. She enjoys singing, dancing, trying new recipes, and watching home makeover shows. During her ministry career, Emma recorded two worship EP albums, founded and led Polished Conference Ministries, ran the Refined Magazine, and served in music education for early childhood. Currently, she is in the editing stages of her first two writing projects: a Bible study on womanhood and a non-fiction book on singleness. You can visit her blog at emmadanzey.wordpress.com
The Greater Idaho movement to make parts of Eastern and Southern Oregon part of Idaho will be on the ballot in Klamath County in May 2022.

On Thursday, advocates for the movement submitted a petition with 2,897 signatures to the Klamath County Clerk to force a ballot initiative next spring. The clerks office now has to verify those signatures, which should be done before Christmas.

If the ballot initiative is approved by voters, Greater Idaho advocates said the county would create a committee to evaluate the benefits to the county of moving the state border.

The board would take a look at particulars that are unique to Klamath County, so that when the Oregon Legislature and the Idaho Legislature start discussing it, those details important to Klamath County are included in those discussions, Mike McCarter, president of Citizens for Greater Idaho said.

McCarter said the Klamath County Board of Commissioners would be in charge of deciding who and how many people would join the board.

McCarter said the Greater Idaho movements goal is to go county by county to gauge what kind of support there is for changing state borders.

The next step, he said, is bringing the matter to the state legislature.

Hopefully, our goal is to start a committee in the Oregon legislature to start looking into (the Greater Idaho movement) in depth, he said. That is what we are pushing forward to, to get the word to the legislature.

The Oregon Legislature has shown no interest in ceding land to a neighboring state.

Rochelle Long, the Klamath County Clerk, made it clear that the ballot initiative would in no way change the Oregon border. It would, at this time, only create a board of three volunteers who would meet three times to study, evaluate and report on the potential benefits of any border relocation.

The Greater Idaho movement expects three or four counties in eastern and southern Oregon to vote on similar initiatives next May, the movement said in a release Thursday. So far, eight counties have voted for ballot measures submitted by the movement, the release added.
Looking for something to do? The Stay Local events calendar publishes a list of nonprofit events Tuesdays and Fridays. Please check with your club or organization to be certain of meetings, outings and classes, as they may be canceled due to bad weather or COVID-19. If any listing is inaccurate or to submit an event, contact Julie Norwood at 231-592-8358 or julie.norwood@pioneergroup.com.

Sign up for Manna Pantry's Christmas dinner bags: 1-4 p.m. Dec. 6-10 at Manna Pantry, located in the annex of St. Andrews Episcopal Church, 315 South State St., Big Rapids. Must come in to sign up; no phone sign up. Pick up is Dec. 16-17.

Three Girls Bakery Chili Cook Off: 11 a.m-3 p.m. Dec. 10-11, at Three Girls Bakery, 106 N. Michigan Ave., Big Rapids. Vote on the best chili. Proceeds support Our Brothers Keeper.

Nights of Lights: 5:30-9:30 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays from Dec. 11 to Jan. 1, including Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, The Castle in Canadian Lakes, Pere Marquette Dr., Canadian Lakes. Cost: Free. Nonmember may obtain a free vehicle pass at www.nightsoflights.org.

Mecosta County Genealogical Society's Home for the Holidays Open House: 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday Dec. 12, at the Mecosta County Genealogical Society, 424 N. Fourth Ave., Big Rapids. Stop by for coffee and cookies while browsing all the history of the area that has been compiled. Donations of paper items (e.g. scrapbooks, obituaries, article) accepted. Contact: Maureen Nelson at 231-250-5555.

Second Annual Season of Giving Gift Drive to Benefit Eagle Village: 9 a.m.-noon Saturday, Dec. 11, at the Big Rapids Department of Public Safety, 435 N. Michigan Ave, Big Rapids. Santa and his reindeer Boomer will be on site to accept your donation and take pictures with. Masks are encouraged and appreciated.

Chippewa Hills Band Boosters Craft and Vendor Show: 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday, Dec. 11, and 10 a.m.-3 p.m. Sunday, Dec. 12 at Chippewa Hills High School, 3226 Arthur Road, Remus. All registration fees, raffles, cookie and concession sales benefit the CHHS Band program.

Voca Lyrica Holiday Concert: 4 p.m. and 7 p.m. Sunday, Dec. 12, at Big Rapids High School, 21175 15 Mile Road, Big Rapids. Guest artists include Con Brio Voce Brass Quintet; pianist David Husser; pianist Ruth Reeds; TCAPS Central HS Vocal Majorit and TCAPS West SH Bel Canto; and the TrebleMakers Youth Choir. Tickets are $12.50 for adults and $5 for pre-K-12th grade. https://www.facebook.com/VocaLyrica

Symphonic Santa Sunday Family Holiday Concert: 4 p.m. Sunday, Dec. 12, at Williams Auditorium, 630 S. Michigan Ave., Big Rapids. A lively presentation of holiday tunes from the The FSU West Central Concert Band and Chamber Orchestra. Free admission, however, donations of unwrapped toys and food items will be collected to support Angels of Action. Face masks required.

Home for the Holidays: 5-8 p.m. Thursday, Dec. 16, downtown Big Rapids. An event highlighting downtown shops in a holiday atmosphere. Includes Christmas caroling, hot cocoa and horse drawn carriage rides.

Wine & Canvas: 6-9 p.m. Friday, Dec. 17, at Artworks, 106 N. Michigan Ave., Big Rapids. A unique social painting experience. Bring your own beverage and snack. Cost: $40. Register at www.artworksinbigrapids.org/painting-drawing or by calling 231-796-2420.

Tuba Bach Christmas 2021: 4 p.m. Sunday, Dec. 19, at Immanuel Lutheran Church, 726 Fuller Ave. in Big Rapids. Concert features Will Sutton, Remus Webb, Ed Mallett and Noah Mallett. No admission charge; masks required.

VISITS WITH SANTA

Morley Community Center: 6:30-7:30 p.m. Friday, Dec. 10, at 151 E. 7th St., Morley.

6:30-7:30 p.m. Friday, Dec. 10, at 151 E. 7th St., Morley. The Pie wHole: 11 a.m.-2 p.m. Saturday, Dec. 11 at 21220 Northland Drive, Paris.

11 a.m.-2 p.m. Saturday, Dec. 11 at 21220 Northland Drive, Paris. Piggies and Pearls: 2-4 p.m. Saturday, Dec. 11, at 116 N. Michigan Ave., Big Rapids.

2-4 p.m. Saturday, Dec. 11, at 116 N. Michigan Ave., Big Rapids. Patterson's Flowers: Noon to 2 p.m. Sunday, Dec. 12, at 216 Maple St., Big Rapids.

Noon to 2 p.m. Sunday, Dec. 12, at 216 Maple St., Big Rapids. Red Fox Market: 4-7 p.m. Thursday, Dec. 16, at 112 S. Michigan Ave., Big Rapids.

Letters to Santa: RE/MAX Together is accepting letters to Santa until Dec. 22 at 1411 N. State St., Big Rapids. Include your return address to get a reply from jolly old St. Nick.

RECURRING EVENTS

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.,

Mecosta Co. Genealogical Society: Open from 10 a.m.-2 p.m. every second Saturday, at 424 N. Fourth Ave., Big Rapids, next to Recycle, or by appointment. Volunteers needed to help with sorting and indexing. Call Maureen Nelson at 231-250-5555 for more information.

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

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.

Reed City Food Pantry: Open from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Tuesdays at St. Philip Neri Catholic Church, 831 S. Chestnut St., Reed City.

ARTWORKS ONGOING CLASSES, EXHIBITS

106 N. Michigan Ave. in Big Rapids / 231-796-2420 / artworksinbigrapids.org

After School Arts: (On break. Returns in January) 3:45-5:15 p.m. Wednesdays. 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.

Fundamentals of Photography, Intermediate: 5:30-7:30 p.m. Tuesdays, Nov. 9-Dec. 14, Cost: $75. Register at www.artworksinbigrapids.org/photography.

Holiday Market: 10 a.m.-4 p.m. Monday-Saturday, Nov. 15-Dec. 24; Extended hours 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. Thursday, Dec. 16, for the Home for the Holidays event.
BIG RAPIDS  The 2022 Woodbridge Ferris MATHCOUNTS is scheduled for Thursday, Feb. 17, 2022.

Present plans are to have the event on the campus of Ferris State. This all-day event features a variety of challenges for young math minds as Mathletes working as individuals and in teams.

MATHCOUNTS is a nationwide math enrichment program for sixth through eighth-graders. The local event is sponsored by the Big Rapids Chapter of the Michigan Society of Professional Engineers with financial support from the Ferris State College of Engineering Technology and Cargill. Currently, five schools have signed up: Big Rapids, Cadillac, Crossroads, McBain and St Peters Lutheran.

This year individual students may sign up provided their school is not doing such. Home-schooled students are welcome. The required portion of the event this year will be online which provides some flexibility.

Signup is done online through www.mathcounts.org. Registration through a school costs $35 per mathlete with a reduced rate for Title 1 schools or those with a high reduced lunch rate. The cost to register as an individual is $70. Registration closes Dec.17.

Contact local coordinator Chuck Drake with any questions at 231-250-5949.
Plus, Bill's Message of the Day, Joe and Jill, who's really in charge?

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Mainly Jem's Birding & Ringing Exploits in the Eastern Province & Ringing Trips to Bahrain
It's time to officially acknowledge what the industry has achieved amid all the challenges.

After extensive consultation with the restaurant industry, Eat Out is excited to announce a reinvented and transformed Eat Out Restaurant Awards for 2022, with Abigail Donnelly returning as chief judge."When South Africa went into hard lockdown on 26 March 2020, few of us could have imagined just how tough the road ahead would be for our restaurant industry," says Eat Out brand custodian Aileen Lamb. "While there is no doubt that there are still many challenges and unknowns ahead, one thing we know for sure is that the resilient people of our industry deserve to be celebrated. We are, therefore, incredibly excited to look towards the future and announce an all-new Eat Out Restaurant Awards with award-winning food writer, critic and recipe author Abigail Donnelly returning to the helm as chief judge. The revamped approach for 2022 will have inclusivity as its focus, with new awards being introduced that celebrate the industry's unsung heroes across all categories. And, significantly, we will debut a new judging process whereby restaurants will be rated rather than ranked. I would like to take this opportunity to also acknowledge and sincerely thank outgoing chief judge Margot Janse for her professionalism and dedication to the Eat Out Restaurant Awards and her continuous upliftment of the South African restaurant industry."The Eat Out Restaurant Awards will return in November 2022 after a two-year hiatus. On 1 April 2020, Eat Out made the difficult decision to pause restaurant reviews and postpone the next awards, which were due to take place in November 2020. Just a few days into the Covid-19 lockdown, it was clear that eating out would not be the same for the foreseeable future and it would not be fair to judge restaurants while they were going through their toughest period in living memory. For the same reason, there were subsequently no awards in 2021 either.Instead, Eat Out focused on the Eat Out Restaurant Relief Fund and Food School projects. The Eat Out Restaurant Relief Fund injected R2.7 million into the industry in 2020, helping restaurants all over South Africa collectively produce over one million meals for those in need. In 2021, the Eat Out Food School provided a fully funded learnership for 10 students, all of whom are now permanently employed in the industry or furthering their studies.As Eat Out reinvents the Eat Out Restaurant Awards, Abigail Donnelly's long history with the brand and intimate knowledge of the industry make her the perfect choice to lead the judging process.Says Donnelly: "I am delighted to be back as chief judge and to be a part of this new era of the Eat Out Restaurant Awards. We have listened to the diverse voices of our industry, and we have done our research and spoken to both chefs and patrons. With the new Eat Out Restaurant Awards, we want to celebrate the incredible resilience of the industry, while still rewarding the abundance of excellence. Judges will continue to review and judge top restaurants and will continue to dine unannounced and pay for all of their meals. The judging and reviewing process will maintain its high standards but, at the same time, we want to celebrate bravery and survival, recognise resilience and strength, pay tribute to legends, and raise a glass to what we have achieved together as an industry and society."The pandemic has changed eating out  perhaps forever. The simple act of coming together with family and friends to share a meal was something we took for granted. Now we cherish these occasions. As we face the harsh realities of a fourth wave in South Africa, we stand shoulder to shoulder with the chefs, the waitrons, the kitchen teams, restaurant owners and the front-of-house staff who greet us with a smile no matter how tough things are. Supporting our local eateries has been key to keeping our industry alive and we encourage patrons to continue to do so in a responsible manner. The new Eat Out Restaurant Awards honours all the passionate and resilient food heroes who have inspired us over the past two years and who are showing us the way to a thriving future for our industry."Eat Out will announce the team of judges working alongside Donnelly and the new judging methodology early next year, before judging commences in the first quarter of 2022.Limited sponsorship opportunities are available and interested parties can contact az.oc.aidemwen@ffohsob.eninaej
is a unique blend of news, information, analysis and opinion delivered from our newsrooms in Cape Town and Johannesburg, South Africa. There are many ways to describe exactly what we do (and for the price of a cup of coffee were capable of talking your ears off about it), but the best way to understand the end result is to experience it. Every part ofis free-to-air and no payment is required, although free registration is required for a small subset of functions and pages.is run by an independently owned, private company with no affiliation to any other media group (or political party or religious organisation.) Followon Twitter at @dailymaverick Go to: https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/
Creative Director

Location: Johannesburg, Bryanston Remote work: Some remote work allowed Education level: Diploma Job level: Senior Own transport required: Yes Job policy: Employment Equity position Company: Machine_

Relevant creative qualification from reputable tertiary institution.

TTL creative communications/advertising agency experience, with a minimum of 8 years in Art Direction.

Creative accolades (local or international)

Minimum one year experience as Creative Director.

Strong client leadership credentials.

Experience in FMCG is required, experience in skincare will be hugely advantageous.

Deliver creative work that is well thought through to deliver the best solution, considering the most appropriate media channels that will impact the consumer, as well as the practicality of production timelines and client budgets.

Articulate and interrogate client needs based on the brand and business strategy, interpreting these into creative opportunities for the brand.

Work closely with the strategy and account management team to ensure that the strategic platforms and insights are crafted for the best possible creative outcome.

Oversee the execution of large-scale campaigns, leading the practical delivery of high volume, templatised executions and adaptations across platforms and audiences.

Work closely with the core team and research partners to ensure ATL executions will meet the requirements of link testing.

Conduct brainstorming sessions with creative teams, maintaining strategic and creative thinking to develop innovative and actionable creative campaigns.

Review and approve art and copy developed by the team, ensuring deliverables that effectively address marketing goals and challenges.

Have your finger on the pulse of digital and social media developments/innovations and ensure that work delivered in this space is in line with best-practice creative principles.

Provide clear feedback and guidance to creative teams, working with them to deliver the best possible result.

Work closely with global counterparts to ensure that work is best in class.

Build and foster relationships with clients, winning over their trust and confidence.

Demonstrate an exceptional eye for detail to ensure all work that leaves the agency meets the brand guidelines.

Keep up to date with industry trends and standards, ensuring that work is always fresh, world-class, and original.

Interpret latest trends of technology and visual influences across beauty, skin and healthcare sectors.

Think fast and on your feet, particularly during critical or stressful times, keeping the creative team aligned, motivated and on track.

Understand campaign results and identifying opportunities for clear and motivating creative strategies.

Concern yourself with the wellbeing of the agencies culture, people and clients. Always lead by example.

Actively support and involve cross-functional team members at the appropriate time to resolve issues, and successfully deliver an excellent product from ideation through to flawless execution.

Attract top talent and retain best creative and strategic staff.

Curious and solution-orientated mindset

Strong conceptual thinker, inspiring those around you to elevate their thinking

Passion for a detail orientated delivery and executing at scale

Comfortable in a high performance, fast-paced environment

Open and active team player

Commitment to fostering and growing the agencys culture, values and initiatives

Proactive thinker, identifying areas of opportunity

Company Description

Were looking for a cto join our team, working from our Johannesburg office. The successful candidate will be responsible for creatively leading a major client in the skincare category, in South Africa and other major markets in Africa. The creative director will report to the executive creative director.As the creative leader on this large account, you will be responsible for the through-the-line creative output, ensuring best in class delivery. You will set an example to the rest of the team in terms of work ethic, craft and passion for the work that you both do and oversee.You will use your knowledge and natural talent to spot the right idea/solution and inspire dynamic ideas that connect with all types of audiences across any media type. You will need to build, lead, and review work of the creative team in the production of all communication.Candidates must please submit a concise CV and portfolio of work. Only shortlisted candidates will be contacted. Should you not hear from us within 2 weeks after submitting your application, please consider your application as unsuccessful.Publicis Groupe is proud to be an equal opportunity employer and prohibits any forms of Discrimination or Harassment. We celebrate diversity and are committed to creating an inclusive environment for all our employees in line with our Employment Equity Plan. All appointments will be based on qualifications, experience and best fit but preference will be given to candidates from designated groups.Machine_ is a TTL creative solutions agency represented across Cape Town, Johannesburg and Durban, and is home to?over 75 adventurous minds. At Machine_ we dont believe that intuition and gut feel are enough. Thats why everything we do starts with an insight. Our team of experts uses these insights to create impactful and accountable solutions that touch consumers at every point in their connected world.Machine_ is part of Publicis Groupe, one of the fastest-growing global networks.Machines mantra of being Never Afraid, underpins our values of; doing the right thing, being curious, solution orientated and at its core truly caring about the work, our clients and our people. Living this mantra daily helps grow our clients businesses and these are the values we look for when recruiting new talent. The right personality is just as important as the right experience  so we are likely to be very picky when choosing the right candidate. Were here to work hard and have fun while doing it. Posted on 10 Dec 15:13, Closing date 8 Feb
I had difficulty confirming this one, but I did find a Herald Sun story (paywalled) about it: Woman upset by vax mandate in self-harm incident.

The excerpt from the article above indicates that she survived the incident:

A woman who said she lost everything because of Victorias vaccine mandate was saved by emergency services after a dramatic Werribee incident.

Im mostly finding Facebook posts and blogs referring to Facebook posts. Clearly, the Australian media isnt too interested in this, but if you find a mainstream news article about this thats not paywalled, please let me know.

Australia and New Zealand are Potemkin villages at this point, so its not that I consider mainstream media from either country to be useful. Im just curious to know if a woman setting herself on fire in response to government policies will can be effectively ignored in Australia.

The useless New Zealand media can be trusted to cover this by promoting slow cooker recipes by some obese imbecile and sportsball news, along with banners and tickers about how many of the sheep have been vaccinated.

Via: Milne News:

The woman parked her car, blocking off a road in Cherry St, Werribee, a suburb in Victoria, and poured 4 cans of petrol over herself before placing the sign containing her written plea in the window of her car. Police attended and tried to talk her down, but she ultimately set herself on fire after telling the police she had nothing left.
By B.N. Frank

Tech and telecom companies tend to sell products that are privacy invasive (see 1, 2, 3, 4, 5). Collecting personal data on customers can be very lucrative. It allows companies to analyze the data and market additional products and services to customers. They can also sell the data to 3rd parties. This business practice is sometimes referred to as Surveillance Capitalism. As more customers are becoming aware of this, there is a growing demand to be able to opt out of privacy invasive programs. However, Verizon isnt going to make it so easy for theirs.

From Ars Technica:

Verizon overrides users opt-out preferences in push to collect browsing history

Verizon renamed scanning program and enrolled customers who previously opted out.

Verizon is automatically enrolling customers in a new version of a program that scans mobile users browser historieseven when those same users previously opted out of the program when it had a different name.

The carrier announced changes to its Verizon Selects program along with a new name a few days ago. Verizon Custom Experience Plus is the new name of our Verizon Selects program, Verizon said in an FAQ. Verizon is ignoring the previous opt-out preferences for at least some customers by enrolling them in Custom Experience, which collects browser and app-usage history but doesnt use device location data and other personal information collected in Custom Experience Plus.

Verizon says it does not sell the information collected in either version of Custom Experience and that the program no longer supports third party advertising. But Verizon does share the data with service providers who work for us and says it uses the data to personalize our communications with you, give you more relevant product and service recommendations, and develop plans, services, and offers that are more appealing to you. For example, if we think you like music, we could present you with a Verizon offer that includes music content or provide you with a choice related to a concert in our Verizon Up reward program.

How to opt out (again)

Privacy-conscious users will likely want to opt out using the instructions provided by Verizon or in this article. To opt out, go to your Verizon account privacy preferences page. Scroll down a bit and youll see options to Manage Settings for both Custom Experience and Custom Experience Plus. You can also try this link to go directly to the Custom Experience settings, or you can select Manage privacy settings in the My Verizon mobile app.

In either the website or the mobile app, the options to manage settings will let you opt in to or out of the two versions of the Custom Experience program. You can also delete any browsing and location data history that Verizon previously collected by clicking Reset. Additionally, account owners can use the Verizon website to block Custom Experience enrollment for specific phone lines.

Verizon customers have good reason to be wary of the carriers privacy practices. The Federal Communications Commission last year found that Verizon apparently disclosed its customers location information, without their consent, to a third party who was not authorized to receive it. The commission proposed a fine of $48 million. In 2016, Verizon agreed to pay a $1.35 million fine for inserting supercookie identifiers into customers mobile Internet traffic without users knowledge or consent.

In 2017, then-President Donald Trump and the Republican-controlled Congress blocked implementation of FCC privacy rules that would have required home-Internet and mobile broadband providers to get consumers opt-in consent before using, sharing, or selling browser history, app-usage history, and other private information.

Opted out? You will still be included

Verizon has been sending emails to customers notifying them about the program changes. There are different versions of the email, one of which states that Verizon is ignoring previous opt-out preferences in cases where people recently opted out. That email, which was forwarded to Ars by a Verizon customer named Jordan Hirsch, says:

As a Verizon Selects participant, you will automatically be included in the Custom Experience Plus and Custom Experience programs.

If you recently opted out of participating in Verizon Selects, you will still be included in the Custom Experience program unless you opt out.

Hirsch also tweeted a screenshot of the email he received from Verizon. The Verizon email Hirsch received did not state a specific time frame for the recently opted out phrase. We contacted Verizon today and asked for that detail and asked why Verizon is enrolling people who previously opted out of the same program before the programs name was changed. Well update this article if we get any answers.

The Verizon FAQ does not include the recently opted out language and instead makes it sound like all customers may be enrolled in Custom Experience (the non-Plus version) regardless of previous opt-out status:

You will be part of the Custom Experience program unless you opt out. You can opt out using the privacy preferences page on the My Verizon site or the privacy setting page within the My Verizon app.

You must opt in to the Custom Experience Plus program to be a part of it unless you are already participating in Verizon Selects. Verizon Selects participants will automatically be included in the renamed program.

I am also a Verizon customer and got a notification email from the company today. Although I am 99.9 percent sure I opted out of Verizon Selects years ago, the email I received said, Youre in control: You will be part of Custom Experience unless you opt out.

Browsing, location data, and call records

What information does the newly renamed program collect? Both versions of Custom Experience use information about the websites you visit and the apps you use on your mobile device to help us determine your interests, such as sports lover or outdoor enthusiast,' the Verizon FAQ says. We use only the first part of the web addresses (URLs) you visit (the part that includes the top level domain and subdomain of the URL); we do not use information past the first / or ? in the URL. For example, we would be able to infer you are interested in news if you visit a news-related website, but we wouldnt know what news article you read.

Custom Experience Plus uses all of the above plus Device location information we obtain from the Verizon network and from Verizon apps you have permitted to collect location for these purposes; Information about your Verizon FiOS services; and Customer Proprietary Network Information (CPNI), including information about the phone numbers you call or that call you and the times you receive these calls. It also includes information about the quantity, type, destination, location, and amount of use of your Verizon telecommunications and interconnected Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) services and related billing information.

Although general call data is collected, The programs do not use what you or others say during calls or the content of your emails or texts with other people, Verizon says. Custom Experience Plus does use call detail records including the phone numbers you call and those that call you, and the times and durations of the calls.

Verizon says it tries to avoid collecting sensitive browsing and location information:

We make efforts to eliminate the use of websites that may be sensitive in nature; for example, we employ filters that are designed to exclude websites related to adult content, health conditions, sexual orientation and others. We also make efforts to eliminate the use of location information about sensitive points of interest in these same areas.

The make efforts phrasing suggests that these filters will fail to prevent collection of sensitive data in some cases. Verizon also says that if you opt in to Custom Experience Plus, you will automatically be included in Verizons Business and Marketing Insights program.

Verizon shares your data with vendors

Verizon says it shares data collected in Custom Experience with service providers:

We do not share information that identifies you outside of Verizon as part of these programs other than with service providers who work for us. These service providers are required to use the information only for the purposes Verizon defines and not for their own or others marketing or advertising purposes. They are also required to protect the information. We do not sell information we use in these programs to others for them to use for their own advertising.

Verizon said it keep[s] information about the websites you visit for no more than 6 months. We keep location and CPNI information we use for these programs for approximately one year. We regularly refresh the interest categories we develop as part of the Custom Experience programs (e.g., coffee lover or sports enthusiast) and keep them as long as you are participating in the programs or until you reset your line.

Activist Post reports regularly about privacy invasive and unsafe technology. For more information, visit our archives.

Image: Pixabay
Actor Jussie Smollett on Thursday was found guilty on five of six counts of felony disorderly conduct for staging a hate crime hoax and blood libeling all white people by paying his alleged Nigerian gay sex partners to dress up as white Trump supporters and attack him while shouting racial epithets.



WATCH:







From AP, "Jussie Smollett convicted of staging attack, lying to police":

Former Empire actor Jussie Smollett was convicted Thursday on charges he staged an anti-gay, racist attack on himself nearly three years ago and then lied to Chicago police about it.



In the courtroom as the verdict was read, Smollett stood and faced the jury, showing no visible reaction.



The jury found the 39-year-old guilty on five counts of disorderly conduct  for each separate time he was charged with lying to police in the days immediately after the alleged attack. He was acquitted on a sixth count, of lying to a detective in mid-February, weeks after Smollett said he was attacked.

Special prosecutor Dan Webb spoke out about the case after the guilty verdict came in:







The entire Democratic establishment threw their support behind Smollett after he staged his anti-white blood libel and cowardly sellout Republicans led by South Carolina Senator Tim Scott even got on board to help pass an outrageously broad "anti-lynching" hate crime bill off it.





What happened today to @JussieSmollett must never be tolerated in this country. We must stand up and demand that we no longer give this hate safe harbor; that homophobia and racism have no place on our streets or in our hearts. We are with you, Jussie. https://t.co/o8ilPu68CM  Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) January 30, 2019

.@JussieSmollett is one of the kindest, most gentle human beings I know. Im praying for his quick recovery.



This was an attempted modern day lynching. No one should have to fear for their life because of their sexuality or color of their skin. We must confront this hate.  Kamala Harris (@KamalaHarris) January 29, 2019

The reported hate attack on my friend and brother, actor Jussie Smollett is despicable and outrageous. The guilty must face the maximum.  Reverend Al Sharpton (@TheRevAl) January 29, 2019











Racism, homophobia, & all forms of bigotry & hate have no place in this country. The fight for equality isnt over  no one should have to live in fear of being beaten on the street because of who they are. https://t.co/CF0G95CkTc  Elizabeth Warren (@ewarren) January 29, 2019

The racist and homophobic attack on Jussie Smollett is a horrific instance of the surging hostility toward minorities around the country. We must come together to eradicate all forms of bigotry and violence. https://t.co/2accVEJrCG  Bernie Sanders (@SenSanders) January 29, 2019

The vicious attack on actor Jussie Smollett was an attempted modern-day lynching. I'm glad he's safe.



To those in Congress who don't feel the urgency to pass our Anti-Lynching bill designating lynching as a federal hate crime I urge you to pay attention. https://t.co/EwXFxl5f2m  Cory Booker (@CoryBooker) January 29, 2019

This is a sickening and outrageous attack, and horribly, it's the latest of too many hate crimes against LGBTQ people and people of color. We are all responsible for condemning this behavior and every person who enables or normalizes it. Praying for Jussie and his family. https://t.co/eylvxhLT0u  Kirsten Gillibrand (@SenGillibrand) January 29, 2019

There is no such thing as racially charged.



This attack was not possibly homophobic. It was a racist and homophobic attack.



If you dont like what is happening to our country, then work to change it. It is no ones job to water down or sugar-coat the rise of hate crimes. https://t.co/QAi0IYtSeR  Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) January 30, 2019

What happened to Jussie Smollett is vile and tragic; thankfully, he will recover. But hate crimes like this are happening more frequently, egged on by careless hate-filled rhetoric. We start reducing these crimes by rejecting the speech - neither can ever be accepted as normal.  Eric Swalwell (@ericswalwell) January 29, 2019



It came out in court that Smollett did drugs and went to gay bathhouses to have sex with one of his alleged "attackers."





BREAKING: Jussie Smollett testified he did drugs and masturbated with one of his attackers https://t.co/X1rznhrRDK  VICE News (@VICENews) December 6, 2021



From VICE, "Jussie Smollett Testified He Did Drugs and Masturbated With His Attacker":

Jussie Smollett finally took the stand in his bizarre trial Monday and testified that he once masturbated with one of the men hes accused of hiring to attack him for attention.



Smollett said it all went down during a visit to a bathhouse with Abimbola Osundairo, one of the two brothers Smollett is accused of paying to beat him up, yell racist slurs, and pour bleach on him in January 2019.



"We went alone, we got a private room again," Smollett recalled in the courtroom Monday, according to Chicago Tribune reporter Jason Meisner. "We made out a little bit, and this time we masturbated together.



Smollett also testified that after he met Osundairo at a club, they made out and did drugs during a different bathhouse interaction in Boystown, the Chicago Tribune reported.

"Judge James Linn set a post-trial hearing for Jan. 27, and said he would schedule Smolletts sentencing at a later date," the AP reported Thursday evening. "Disorderly conduct is a class 4 felony that carries a prison sentence of up to three years, but experts have said if convicted, Smollett would likely be placed on probation and ordered to perform community service."



Chicago Police had "roughly two dozen detectives" spend some "3,000 hours" investigating this "hate crime" and yet we're being told Smollett isn't going to spend a day in prison for staging this blood libel.



This is what real "privilege" looks like!



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Assiniboine Community College has been hosting a series of Indigenous speakers for the second annual Storytelling Week.

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Assiniboine Community College has been hosting a series of Indigenous speakers for the second annual Storytelling Week.

The event, which wraps up today, has proven to be a great way to connect with the community and help participants learn Indigenous stories, traditions and experiences that have been passed down for generations, said ACC director of Indigenous education Kris Desjarlais.

SUBMITTED Storytelling Week speaker Jasyn Lucas.

"We recognized that there was a lot of calls from staff, students and the community to learn about stories, to hear from elders and knowledge keepers  not just the traditional stories, but about lived experience," Desjarlais said. "We had such a great time putting it on last year  we plan on doing this every year moving forward."

When the snow flies and the winter sets in, he said, Indigenous communities begin to gather, huddle around the fire, look after each other and share stories and traditions; ACC Storytelling Week has been inspired by this cultural tradition.

The event brought together a mix of elders and knowledge keepers. Some speakers have shared time-honoured teachings and oral traditions, while others have had the opportunity to share their lived experiences and the learnings and teachings they have gained on their lifes journey.

Many Canadians have been sitting with truths about the nations history as part of reconciliation, Desjarlais said, and the series provides speakers a platform to share their truths with new audiences.

"I think most Canadians, Indigenous and non-Indigenous, are ready to hear some of this. Its been good to be a part of it."

It is a critical time in the nations history because society is working on truth and reconciliation, priming the population for rich conversations about the Indigenous experience.

Storytelling Week also provides a vital opportunity for those in attendance, and those speaking, to learn new things.

"I think that as much as those who are participating get a lot out of it, I think the elders and knowledge keepers are really enjoying themselves as well," Desjarlais said.

Desjarlais hopes those who engage with Storytelling Week walk away with "their hearts filled" and more questions that have been ignited by what they learn during the talks. The seed of curiosity established during the event can inspire them to learn more and embrace a beautiful oral tradition.

"Even though its elders and knowledge keepers that do a lot of the storytelling, everyone becomes a storyteller eventually," Desjarlais said. "I think that its upon us to learn how to share in that way, and thats one of the best ways to keep the knowledge going between generations and within families."

For those attending a Storytelling Week session, Desjarlais said, he recommends slowing down and taking time to be present and in the moment during the talk. The key is having an open mind and heart to the experience and preparing to listen.

"Take in the experience, be in the moment."

Storytelling Week speaker Jasyn Lucas participated in the event over Zoom.

Lucas is an artist and student and saw the series as a chance to engage with a new audience about his life as a self-employed Indigenous artist living in an urban space.

He can answer questions and foster small discussions that enrich the experience for him as a speaker.

"It just opens up new avenues of questioning and wonder," he said. "Its great because it gives me a chance to really tell my full story, and that helps validate some of the feelings and emotions that I have on my journey ... its a really important part of my healing from intergenerational trauma and being a 60s Scoop survivor."

Lucas, born Jasyn Bighetty, is a member of the Mathias Colomb Cree Nation, but was adopted into the Lucas family.

Growing up was a unique experience, he said, because he was caught between two cultures.

Indigenous people are often forced to navigate through social spaces and situations that can question ones place and status as an Indigenous person, Lucas said, adding he knows others in Canada have had similar experiences and challenges associated with being an urban Aboriginal.

"Are you Aboriginal enough? Am I valid as urban? All that sort of stuff comes into play and for me, to be able to tell that story really helps me on my healing journey, to be able to share those experiences  but, to continue to really inspire younger youth to go after their dreams and of course, pursuing education has really been a key point and factor to me being able to communicate that message clearly," Lucas said.

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission Report includes calls to action that have great value, Lucas said. The traditional Indigenous values centred on leadership are included in the report and can serve to inspire other communities and cultures in a time that really needs to promote, harness and hold up those values to the forefront.

This is especially prescient when it comes to talking about climate change, Lucas said.

Indigenous teachings are coming full circle, and people are now engaging in concepts including sustainable living and stewardship of the land. It is unfortunate it has taken climate change to do so, Lucas said, but it makes it exciting looking toward the future.

"I think the spirit of the Earth is hurting, and I think if we can heal our spirit as individuals and as communities, then we can help others do so as well and perhaps heal some of the damages of climate change, because its all about balance and the teachings of balance."

 ckemp@brandonsun.com

 Twitter: @The_ChelseaKemp
MINNEDOSA  Members of CUPE Local 1630 staged a large demonstration outside the Rolling River School Division head office Thursday morning, managing to attract supporters from a local high school, the national CUPE office and various sympathetic labour groups.

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KYLE DARBYSON/THE BRANDON SUN Minnedosa Collegiate students joined members of CUPE Local 1630 Thursday morning to show support for the group, which has been striking for wage parity since Nov. 1. The sign the middle student is holding, "We miss having paper towel," is a reference to the reports of slipping sanitary standards in local schools, since the Rolling River School Division has had to rely on replacement workers in wake of the strike.

MINNEDOSA  Members of CUPE Local 1630 staged a large demonstration outside the Rolling River School Division head office Thursday morning, managing to attract supporters from a local high school, the national CUPE office and various sympathetic labour groups.

Union leaders told the Sun that Thursdays event marks their largest protest to date since declaring a strike on Nov. 1.

The biggest influx of supporters came from nearby Minnedosa Collegiate at 11:15 a.m., when around 100 high school students exited the building and joined the striking cleaners and custodians.

Carrying CUPE flags and their own custom signs, the students walked a roughly one-kilometre loop around Minnedosas Main Street, prompting passing motorists to honk their horns in solidarity.

These student-organized marches have been a growing trend in Westman the past two weeks, with students from Elton Collegiate and Rivers Collegiate spearheading similar walkouts.

After completing the route three times, the Minnedosa students gathered outside of the RRSD headquarters to take part in some group chanting alongside visiting representatives from the Canadian Labour Congress, CUPE Saskatchewan and CUPE affiliates from school divisions in Winnipeg and Brandon.

Minnedosa Collegiate head custodian Bruce Kingdon told the Sun he was very touched by this large-scale show of support, especially since he and his colleagues have been demonstrating out in the cold for six weeks now.

"After a while, you wonder what youre doing this for. But days like today really makes it worthwhile," said Kingdon, who has worked at the school for 25 years. "We know what were fighting for and to know that the kids are standing behind us 100 per cent really helps us."

CUPE 1630 members have been on strike since negotiations broke down with the school division over wage parity.

The union is looking to secure annual wage increases of 1.6 per cent, 1.4 per cent, 0.5 per cent, and a cost-of-living adjustment for its custodians and cleaners over a four-year period between 2018-19 and 2021-22.

The increase has already been granted to custodians and cleaners in more than 20 school divisions across the province, with Rolling River being one of the few remaining holdouts.

During Thursdays rally in Minnedosa, CUPE national president Mark Hancock made reference to this discrepancy and said custodians and cleaners should not be treated unfairly during a global pandemic when their job is an especially vital service.

"Youve probably seen folks like the prime minister or the premiers ... saying that these folks have been heroes during the pandemic," Hancock said addressing the crowd. "And how is this employer treating these heroes? Its really bad."

According to an RRSD media release from last week Thursday, division officials claim they had already provided a "more than fair" proposal to the union on Nov. 22.

This five-year collective agreement includes a salary increase of 7.6 per cent from July 1, 2018, to June 30, 2023, which averages out to a 1.5 per cent boost per year.

The CUPE 1630 leadership rejected this offer allegedly due to the fact that the division didnt factor in a cost-of-living adjustment.

"These workers deserve to be treated fairly, because times right now are tough," CUPE Saskatchewan president Judy Henley told the crowd on Thursday. "Groceries are going up, gas is going through the roof and yet, they cant pay their workers that take care of our children, our future? Thats not acceptable!"

Thursdays rally also featured an appearance from Manitoba Teachers Society president James Bedford, who said the RRSD is not the only party to blame in this dispute.

He pointed out that the provincial government has been short-changing Manitoba school divisions for years now in terms of education funding, with its plan to eliminate education property taxes being another budgetary hurdle.

"The problem with the shift in property taxes is there isnt a plan. There isnt a plan to say how were going to replace that money," Bedford said.

"Province-wide, were talking about $800 to $900 million, so where is that money going to now come from?"

On Nov. 18, Education Minister Cliff Cullen announced the province has created a consultation team that will guide the development of a new education funding model. This new funding model is expected to be in place for the 2023-24 school year.

In the meantime, Bedford said he was really encouraged by the large show of support for CUPE 1630 on Thursday, which he hopes translates into a new collective agreement for the custodians and cleaners soon.

"Too many people think that public schools are all about teachers and about students. But they forget that our schools can only run efficiently with a whole range of support staff.

"So when theres a labour dispute, were going to work together with them to get them back at work and get them a fair deal."

Rolling River School Division interim Supt. Jason Cline declined to comment on Thursdays demonstration in Minnedosa.

 kdarbyson@brandonsun.com

 Twitter:@KyleDarbyson
WINNIPEG - A judge has reserved his decision in Shelly Glover's court challenge of the vote that saw Heather Stefanson become leader of Manitoba's governing Progressive Conservatives.

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Shelly Glover launches her campaign to become leader of Manitobas Progressive Conservatives in Winnipeg, Friday, Sept. 10, 2021. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Steve Lambert

WINNIPEG - A judge has reserved his decision in Shelly Glover's court challenge of the vote that saw Heather Stefanson become leader of Manitoba's governing Progressive Conservatives.

Justice James Edmond of Court of Queen's Bench said Friday he hoped to give his verdict in a week after hearing a full day of arguments Friday from both sides.

Glover, a former member of Parliament who narrowly lost the Oct. 30 party leadership vote to Stefanson, has alleged there were several irregularities and wants the result overturned.

Her lawyer, Dave Hill, pointed to daily spreadsheets the party gave to both campaigns as mail-in ballots were coming through in the latter part of October. The sheets were meant to keep track of which party members had voted.

The last spreadsheet, after the voting deadline had passed, had about 500 fewer votes than the official results announced some 16 hours later.

Hill also said there was questionable conduct around keeping the ballots secure from interference on the day they were counted. Boxes were moved out of the counting room unsealed after the count, he said.

"My submission is there are so many questions unanswered or rhetorically answered, that those allow you to say ... the election results should be declared invalid," Hill told the judge.

Harley Schachter, lawyer for the PC party, argued that the daily spreadsheets were never an official count and were known by both campaigns to be flawed.

He also said the spreadsheets had no bearing on the number of votes received and counted. Scrutineers from both campaigns oversaw all ballots, both while they were received in the mail and again as they were counted on Oct. 30.

There is no credible evidence that there were any invalid ballots at all, Schachter told court.

The ballots were counted at 18 tables, in the presence of Glover and Stefanson scrutineers, and a tally sheet at each table recorded the number of votes for each candidate.

Glover's lawyer said some sheets were not signed by scrutineers, but Schachter said there was no rule requiring signatures. He also said Glover has not produced any evidence that the tallied numbers were wrong.

"The election was fundamentally fair, Ms. Stefanson won, and there is no basis in law or in fact to challenge or upset that result."

As for securing the ballot boxes, Schachter said, they were under the control of an outside accounting firm and a security firm.

Glover sat in the courtroom the entire day. Stefanson, who was sworn in as premier three days after the vote, was not present, but was represented as an intervener in the case by lawyer Jonathan Kroft.

Like Schachter, Kroft submitted that Glover has not produced evidence that any of the alleged irregularities affected the result.

He also told the judge that a decision to undo the leadership outcome could be decided by party members instead of by a court. The party's constitution allows members to force a new leadership race by a majority vote at any annual general meeting, which means party members could oust Stefanson if they wanted.

"It would be appropriate for the court ... to leave it to the members to decide whether to revisit the election," Kroft said.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Dec. 10, 2021.
Whether growing up as a high school student in Thompson, advocating for better child care, working as a constituency assistant for federal MP Niki Ashton or representing the area in her first term as an MLA, Danielle Adams was well-known in the North.

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Whether growing up as a high school student in Thompson, advocating for better child care, working as a constituency assistant for federal MP Niki Ashton or representing the area in her first term as an MLA, Danielle Adams was well-known in the North.

And that community is now mourning her tragic loss.

Facebook photo Danielle Adams with Niki Ashton

Adams, 38, the married mother of two sons aged 13 and six, died when the SUV she was driving south on Highway 6 collided with a northbound semi-trailer Thursday at about 11:20 a.m.

She was pronounced dead at the scene, about 50 kilometres south of Thompson (roughly 550 kilometres north of Winnipeg). The 54-year-old driver of the truck, from the RM of Alexander, was not injured.

RCMP are still investigating, but said road conditions were poor and neither speed nor alcohol appeared to have been factors.

Adams, who was the NDPs critic for child care, housing, disability and poverty matters and the first woman to represent Thompson in the ridings five-decade history, was on her way to Winnipeg to attend the Leaders Levee Friday night.

The event, which was to be the first large-scale gathering of the party since the pandemic began, was cancelled in the wake of Adams death.

Like all people who call northern Manitoba home, Adams was a regular motorist on the two-lane highway.

Former Thompson NDP MLA Steve Ashton knew Adams and the road well.

Manitoba NDP photo Danielle Adams was the NDPs critic for child care, housing, disability and poverty matters and the first woman to represent Thompson.

"When youre MLA for Thompson, driving is a large part of the job," said Ashton.

"Everyone always emphasizes one thing: be sure to call somebody when you get in. It is mandatory, you have to call. I never questioned the need to not only go to Winnipeg to represent the North, but also to go back home as well. Danielle was like that, too."

Ashton said he met Adams years ago, when she volunteered for the party, and later, when she worked as his daughter Nikis constituency assistant in Thompson before running for the legislature seat in 2019.

"I encouraged her to run," he said. "I 100-per-cent supported her. I cant help think today of what could have been; she was a hard worker and somebody that was engaged.

"She was a true northerner and one of our own. She will be missed."

His daughter said Adams was a grade behind her in high school.

"Ive known her a long time," the New Democrat MP for ChurchillKeewatinook Aski said. "She even worked on my nomination back in 2005  we werent out of high school long at that time.

"She was part of my staff in Thompson and she did everything she really believed in sticking up for people and working to make the world a better place.

"To me, the loss is like losing a member of my family."

Niki Ashton said she was on a Zoom call with Adams and other local NDP supporters the evening before she died.

JESSICA LEE / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS FILES Thompson MLA Danielle Adams speaks during a sitting at the Legislative Building. Adams died in a car crash Thursday near the northern Manitoba city.

"She said she was getting on the road the next day and I wished her a safe travel. The next day the family got the call nobody wants to get."

Adams was a staunch supporter of the region and its residents.

"The PCs must make real investments in health care in the North," she wrote in her last Facebook post Tuesday.

"There needs to be a real plan to address the nurse shortage. I will continue to fight to stand up and fight for better access to health care."

Caitlyn McLeod, a supervisor at the Thompson Childrens World daycare where Adams served as a board member when her children were enrolled, said she was a great mother and child-care supporter.

"She was a great advocate for kids," McLeod said. "She helped them and she sometimes helped here. "She was very friendly. And she also let us know how much she appreciated our help. We appreciated that."

Thompson Mayor Colleen Smook said Adams "was so energetic that she was able to juggle politics and family life uniquely. "

"She proved to the skeptics that thought she was going to be way in above her head very wrong," Smook said. "Her positive attitude served her well. She perceived problems as challenges and was always up for the challenge."

Smook said Adams was a good listener and worked for all her constituents, regardless of their politics.

"She wasnt afraid to tackle any issue pertaining to the North. In two short years she earned the respect of colleagues. I can only imagine her effect on the North if we had her as a seasoned politician. She will be missed."

Thompson Coun. Les Ellsworth knew Adams well. Their families lived on the same street while she was in high school and, as the former president of the United Steelworkers local, he ran into her frequently when she was on the board of the daycare  then located in the unions building.

"She was always an advocate," said Ellsworth. "Im the kind of guy who would tell you what a person is like, living or deceased. To me, Danielle Adams was somebody who cared. She cared about community and she cared about her family."

Manitoba Liberal Leader Dougald Lamont sat beside Adams in the back row of the legislature.

"She was very down to earth," Lamont said. "It was what you see is what you get."

"She really cared about what she talked about. There was nothing false in her. Its just such a shock. Dec. 3 was the last day I saw her. We all stood up and said goodbye to each other.

"You just dont think this is the last time you will see a person."

News of Adams death made it to the floor of the House of Commons Friday when Manitoba NDP MP Leah Gazan shared a few words during her members statement.

"Danielle was a strong advocate for the North and for people, fighting for accessible, affordable child care. She was a kind, loving and respected colleague to many," said Gazan.

"Danielle, may you fly with the eagles. Rest in peace."

Former Alberta premier and NDP leader Rachel Notley said on social media: "I am so sorry to learn of the sudden passing of Manitoba NDP MLA Danielle Adams.

"Our hearts are with Wab Kinew and our brothers and sisters in the Manitoba NDP.... A truly heartbreaking loss."

kevin.rollason@freepress.mb.ca
Casting Crowns - Healer | Merge PR

NASHVILLE, TENN. - GRAMMY Award-winning group Casting Crowns will release their new album, Healer, on January 14, 2022. The pre-order for the new album is available here. The title track for the album is also available now along with the lyric video below. Writing songs as proclamations of faith is the cornerstone of Casting Crowns, and this new album is no different. When the world shut down for the pandemic, frontman and songwriter Mark Hall was faced with the same circumstances as the rest of the world, and he knew he needed to write for the moment. Hall stayed true to his signature straightforward words and wrote from the heart.

I was walking through the world being shut down, just like everybody else," shares Mark Hall. "Ive been a youth pastor for over twenty years and here I was counseling teenagers whod just lost their senior year, lost their friend groups, felt hopeless for the future. As I started working on this record, I realized all the songs I was writing dealt with healing in some way, something we all need. And more than that, we need a Healer. This whole album is about healing, about how God meets us where we are and what His healing looks like.

Listening through the album, its clear the bands intention is to show that healing comes in many different colors and sizes. With songs that feel both familiar and brand new, Healer is a scripture-filled push forward, challenging the listener to seek true healing from Jesus, the only Healer we need. Recently Hall spoke with American Songwriter for their November / December issue about the upcoming album, read the interview here.

Leading up to the new release, Casting Crowns has released selections from the album including the poignant song "Scars In Heaven" and the powerful anthem "The Power of the Cross." As a group that has been known to break records, "Scars in Heaven," broke the global first-day streaming record for a Christian song debut on Amazon Music, received top playlist positioning at all major digital service providers, and was featured on the Digital Billboard on West End Avenue in Nashville.

Currently, the group is on the KLOVE Christmas Tour along with Mac Powell, CAIN, Dante Bowe, and Jordan St. Cyr. The remaining dates can be found here. Supporting the new album, Compassion International presents Casting Crowns "The Healer Tour" with We Are Messengers and Jonathan Traylor in 2022. Tickets will go on sale next Friday, December 17th. Tickets can be purchased through Casting Crowns' website.

Fans can also bring the sound of Casting Crowns into their living rooms this Christmas season through a special YouTube playlist featuring the band's entire Christmas catalog in the form of Yule Log videos. The videos have garnered more than 350,000 views in less than one week. See below.
Rabbi Kirt Schneider - Called to Breakthrough: An Autobiography | TKO Publicity

Lake Mary, FLChristians around the world have experienced massive amounts of persecution. One unique example is the life of a Jewish man who came face to face with Messiah Jesus. Called to Breakthrough: An Autobiography (Charisma House, ISBN-13: 978-1-62999-998-2) is the latest book by Messianic Rabbi Kirt A. Schneider, available today, and in it he shares the dramatic journey that revealed his calling.

After being met by Jesus one night in a vision, Schneider experienced immense backlash from his Jewish family and unexpected trials as he persistently tried to tell them about the truth of Christ. He was subjected to deprogramming, committed to a psychiatric ward, violently assaulted by a member of an extremist Jewish group, and struggled with insecurities and rough edges that needed to be smoothed out. Schneiders is a testimony of how God met him, was with him, and sustained him, even in the very roughest of places, and how he found his purpose, identity, and destiny through a personal relationship with God.

Schneider says the trials he faced only made him grow closer to Christ. Regardless of the cost, though, he writes, my vision of Jesus had so impacted me that I couldnt stop talking about it, and I shared it with everybody.

Without fully realizing it, I had just placed a huge wedge between me and my family, and the more I spoke with them about my Messiah, the deeper the divide became, continues Schneider. Since the day I gave my life to Jesus, I have not been able to have a deep relationship with my own flesh-and-blood relativesit has been this way for over forty years now. To continue relationship with my family would mean never sharing my experiences of Jesus or discussing Him, and that is something I am unwilling to do.

Though his family didnt react too much at first, when they saw how serious Schneider was about pursuing Jesus, they became alarmed. They ended up hiring the most famous deprogrammer in the countryhe and his bodyguards kidnapped me, brought me back to his rehabilitation home in California where they tried to deprogram me, he reveals. This ended up being only the beginning of the tribulations that Schneider would face in the coming years because of his faith.

Later Schneider faced his parents fury when, after deprogramming did not work, they hired a Jewish psychiatrist who used Schneiders testimony of meeting Jesus in a dream to deem him as delusional in front of a court, which led to being placed in a psychiatric ward.

As time went on, he writes, though I was in love with God, full of passion, and running after Him, I was definitely a diamond in the rough and a horse that needed to be tamed. Schneider describes in detail, his transformation  from growing up culturally Jewish to becoming a grateful recipient of the divine mercy and freedom in Jesus Christ.

Rabbi Kirt Schneider says his goal is to help others experience a life profoundly marked by the call of Messiah Jesus. We must have a vision for breakthrough and believe that it is possible by His Spirit, he says. No matter where you are right now, God will bring His own into victory.

For more information about Called to Breakthrough, visit Charisma House.

Called to Breakthrough is released by Charisma House, which publishes books that challenge, encourage, teach, and equip Christians.

Facebook: @rabbischneider

Instagram: @discoveringthejewishjesus

Twitter: @rabbischneider

YouTube: Rabbi Schneider

Website: https://discoveringthejewishjesus.com
As events rapidly escalate, Jeevan takes Kirsten home to the high-rise apartment of his brother Frank (Nabhaan Rizwan), where the three hole up as the world often literally - crumbles before them. Much of the story though, takes place 20 years later.

The story begins as the fast-acting Georgian flu takes hold, during a production of King Lear , in which its star, Hollywood celebrity Arthur Leander (Gael Garcia Bernal) succumbs mid-performance. Audience member Jeevan (Himesh Patel) rushes to help, and comforts eight-year-old actress Kirsten (Matilda Lawler), traumatised by witnessing her hero die.

It might seem like poor timing for a series set in a post-pandemic world, but Station Eleven , based on the 2014 novel by Emily St. John Mandel, portrays a surprisingly buoyant vision of a world in which 99 percent of humanity has been wiped out by a deadly flu.

Directed by Hiro Murai (Atlanta), Station Elevens post-pandemic landscape is at first familiar  people scavenge abandoned shops, cars and trucks are now pulled by horses, everyone is suspicious of strangers  but what is slowly revealed is not a Mad-Max-style dystopia.

Kirsten (played as an adult by Mackenzie Davis) is now an actor with the Travelling Symphony, a troupe of actors and musicians who travel the Midwest performing Shakespeare to those who remember it, and to post-pans, those born in the past 20 years.

A motley crew who have created their own family, their motto is because survival is insufficient, a quote not from Shakespeare, but from Star Trek; humour and pop-cultural references still exist in this new world. When a newcomer auditions for the Symphony, he doesnt deliver a Shakespeare monologue but a rendition of Bill Pullmans stirring speech from the 1996 action film Independence Day.

When shes not performing, Kirsten (played with a kind of defensive melancholy by Davis) finds solace in a graphic novel, Station Eleven, given to her by Arthur and written by his ex-wife Miranda (Danielle Deadwyler), who dedicated much of her life to the project. Miranda (her story also told in pre-pandemic storylines) wrote the comic, about the destruction of an imaginary earth 1000 years in the future, for herself, and only printed a couple of copies.
Take inspiration from some of Australias best living spaces. A historical home in Sydneys eastern suburbs has been brought to life with the love of an interior designer and her family.

Anna van der Gardner: Have a clear idea of what you wish to evoke in decorating a home and take the time to find things you love. Credit:Jennifer Soo

The home

In 1836, the architect Mortimer William Lewis bought land in Nelson Bay (later Bronte, in Sydneys east) and began building a house. Bronte House was purchased by Waverley Council in 1948.

Who lives here

Interior designer Anna van der Gardner, her husband Wes, and their daughters Ada, 11, and Lillie, 7, since 2015.
Sitting in the living rooms of bereaved family members touched by suicide  their disbelief, their search for answers, their trauma  are some of the experiences I remember most clearly. But my role stopped as soon as their beloved family member was in the grave. I never saw the families again. Twenty-year-old Kirstin Ferguson graduating from the Australian Defence Force Academy in 1993. In 1999, just one year after leaving the air force, close friends with whom Id served were killed in an F-111 crash over the South China Sea in Malaysia. Now I was able to observe first-hand the acrimony that followed the pomp and pageantry of a military funeral. I saw the breakdown of relations between grieving families and the military as families fought for answers to what had happened and struggled to be heard. More often than not, legal action followed. That experience and my time as burials officer made me realise the military could do better. Must do better.

I applied for and won a Churchill Fellowship which made it possible for me to share the lived experiences of bereaved families. I interviewed more than 50 families grieving for lost loved ones in an effort to better understand why things go so terribly wrong. Some families had never shared their stories before. Madonna Palmer with photographs of her son Damien, who died by suicide in 1999. She gave evidence to the Senate inquiry in 2004. Credit:Fairfax The report I wrote examined support strategies for Australian Defence Force bereaved families. I met with senior military leaders, including the then chief of Defence Force, General Sir Peter Cosgrove, and then chief of Air Force, Air Marshal Angus Houston. Almost 20 years ago I made 37 recommendations that focused on what is just one element of the current royal commissions terms of reference: systemic issues in the availability and effectiveness of support services for families. In the same month I submitted my report, the federal government convened a Senate Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade References Committee into the effectiveness of Australias military justice system that would submit its final report a year later. The Senate inquiry found that submissions to the inquiry, which numbered more than 150, included recurring themes which echo many of the complaints made in previous inquiries  including suicides. This was not new terrain, then or now.

Among the recommendations of my report, I suggested proactive measures be investigated so that bereaved families feel that an objective, independent investigation is undertaken when there has been a military death. I was a nobody, but surely a Senate inquiry carried some weight to drive change. Its report also made extensive recommendations about overhauling the military investigation procedures after hearing from so many bereaved family members. What has most disappointed me this week is coming to understand the tragic stories I heard in 2004 are the same as those we are hearing from families today. These are the same stories which are always told to anyone who will listen. Bereaved service families in 2004, just like those in 2021, too often found experiences with military justice and boards of inquiry were shrouded in mystery. Families I spoke to said they felt no concern from the ADF towards them and felt the military was much more focused on not telling them too much, not contradicting the investigations findings and not opening themselves up to litigation. One bereaved widow told me that there was no transparency of the investigation and the information for my benefit was severely restricted. The relationship with the ADF deteriorated significantly at this stage and I lost all trust. I lost all faith in the honesty of the senior officers. Madonna Palmer, whose 19-year-old son Damien had taken his life by suicide in 1999, gave evidence to the Senate inquiry in 2004 with her sons photo placed beside her. Her testimony included the view, supported by the findings of the inquiry, that the Defence Force is no longer capable of investigating in-house and can no longer hide from its obligations to its members, members families and the Australian public.

This echoed the message I heard from families time and again. They felt a closing of the ranks if they did attend a military board of inquiry and reported feeling ignored, while others felt isolated. As one widow told me, I desperately needed the information  at that time not legally, just for my own ability to make some sense of the tragedy. In hearings just this week, Nikki Jamieson gave evidence about the death of her son by suicide in 2014 when he was just 21 years old. Just like the grieving mother of Damien Palmer in 2004, Jamieson gave evidence with a photo of her son, Daniel, placed beside her. We as the loved ones want to know what happened to our children, so we can start to work towards some kind of closure, she said. Nikki Jamieson with a photograph of her son Daniel at the Royal Commission hearing last week. The familiarity of the stories we are hearing is an indictment on the inaction of the past. Listening to the brave accounts of bereaved families at the Royal Commission, not nearly enough has changed at all. The sense of exclusion and lack of information for these families continues to compound their grief from the military service that formed such an integral part of their loved ones identity.
NSWs South Coast has been battered by torrential rain prompting major flood warnings, while severe thunderstorms led to flash flooding in Sydney after slow-moving storms rolled through the city on Friday.

In the Snowy Monaro region, a woman died after she was swept away by floods on Friday morning.

Rapidly developing storms formed over southern Sydney and moved north. Credit:Nick Moir

Bureau of Metrology climatologist Agata Imielska said a low-pressure system, which developed off the NSW coast, had driven the very heavy rainfall and severe thunderstorms.

The highest rainfall total in the state was recorded in the South Coast town of Moruya where more than 200 millimetres fell, while the town of Mogo was hit by widespread flooding.
Morrison called the ICAC a kangaroo court in question time. He said it had traduced Berejiklians integrity and invaded her privacy. These [agencies] should be looking at criminal conduct, not who your boyfriend is, he said. The Australian people know that Gladys Berejiklian was done over by a bad process and an abuse of process. Stories soon appeared that said Morrison was confident he could get the former premier to run. Then last weekend, the Herald reported Berejiklian was considering the offer, and that Liberals didnt see the ICAC cloud over her head as an impediment to her candidacy. Prime Minister Scott Morrison said Gladys Berejiklian had been the victim of a pile on. Credit:Dean Sewell On Monday morning, the ABC asked Finance Minister Simon Birmingham about the idea. He said he would love to see Berejiklian run and its pretty sad when ICACs go out and destroy reputations, do so in pretty murky ways, looking into relationships and other things. Later on Monday, journalists asked Morrison about it at a press conference in Woollahra, and he really lit the fuse. The Prime Minister again trashed the ICAC for shaming Berejiklian. He said Warringah was a great opportunity for her. He insinuated there was a political dimension to Berejiklians demise.

Loading What I saw is a pile on and, you know, were all pretty used to pile ons on our side of politics. I see them all the time, Morrison said. A slew of high-profile Liberals - Abbott, John Howard, Bruce Baird among them - backed Berejiklians potential tilt. Baird acknowledged there was some danger in it if the ICACs findings turned out to be worse than expected. But most Liberals were dismissive, believing she would only be pinged for failing to disclose her relationship with Maguire, and that most voters wouldnt care anyway. On Tuesday, hundreds of Liberal Party members and donors gathered for drinks at the Four Seasons hotel on George Street, one of many end-of-year functions keeping gossip in healthy supply. Word went around the room: Berejiklian wasnt going to run for Warringah, and the leading alternative candidate, barrister Jane Buncle, ought to prepare her nomination. Several Liberals lamented that Morrisons attempts to install Baird and then Berejiklian will make Buncle (or whoever is preselected) appear to be a candidate of last resort. The net impact is a bad one in the actual seat itself, said one. Whoever the candidate is looks like a giant loser.

More broadly, there is consternation in the party about Morrison and his lieutenants over-riding local pre-selections to impose hand-picked candidates (though party leaders always do this to some extent). In 2019, Morrison installed Warren Mundine as the Liberal candidate for Gilmore (it became the only seat the government lost to Labor, apart from those with heavy redistributions), and one of the PMs fixers, Scott Briggs, offered Kent Johns a lucrative party job in exchange for discontinuing his preselection challenge against then-Liberal MP Craig Kelly in the seat of Hughes. This election, Morrison has backed former NSW minister Andrew Constance for Gilmore over local lawyer Paul Ell, and wants coffee business owner and Pentecostal preacher Jemima Gleeson in the central coast seat of Dobell. The threat of federal intervention into preselections has prompted some NSW Liberal officials from the partys right faction to seek legal advice, as first reported by The Australian this week. ICAC commentary Yesterday afternoon, Morrison was asked on 2GB if he stood by his kangaroo court remarks about the ICAC. Its about how information was being disclosed in the public arena about some of the most personal things. Thats not justice, its not, he said.

Labor seized on Morrisons ICAC commentary as proof the Coalition was never serious about instituting a rigorous corruption watchdog at a federal level. Opposition Leader Anthony Albanese summarised the Prime Ministers Berejiklian thought bubble as day after day of front-page headlines all leading to nothing except that Scott Morrison has reinforced his contempt for a national anti-corruption commission and his contempt for proper processes in the way he has attacked a body such as the ICAC. It was an own goal ... they really do not get it: Warringah MP Zali Steggall. Credit:Alex Ellinghausen Berejiklians decision to let the speculation run wild for a week provided plenty of opportunity for people to wax lyrical about her popularity and the insignificance of the ICAC cloud. Liberal MP for Mackellar Jason Falinski told the Herald he believed most people in NSW have discounted the ICAC, and only the media gave the agency any credibility.

Loading Those kinds of comments will certainly be picked up by independent candidates putting integrity and due process at the centre of their electoral pitches. Steggall says the public campaign to get Berejiklian into Warringah was definitely a stunt, but one that would backfire. The commentary weve had from very senior people dismissing the implications of an ICAC investigation and allegations of corruption shows the greater malaise around attitudes towards integrity. Where is their moral compass? Where is their sense of right and wrong on matters of public interest? They really do not get it, Steggall said on Friday afternoon. I think it was an own goal in that it put the spotlight on where [Morrisons] compass is in terms of integrity and accountability, and clearly its not pointing in the right direction. In sharp contrast youve got Dominic Perrottet, NSW Premier, saying no I dont agree, we have to respect this process, it has been incredibly effective in catching instances of corruption. [Asked by the Heralds state political editor Alexandra Smith about his colleagues criticism of the ICAC on Wednesday, Perrottet said it was important to instil confidence in integrity agencies, not undermine them.]

It wasnt just Labor or independents who suggested Morrison was using the Berejiklian pipe dream as a useful distraction from other issues - plenty of Liberals thought as much too. And the rampant speculation had an additional benefit; the off chance she might change her mind. Former NSW premier Gladys Berejiklian walking to work on Wednesday morning. Credit:James Alcock That was always going to be unlikely, especially given who it was that was asking for her help. Berejiklian has previously denied a Herald story which said she privately regards Morrison as an evil bully. They both say they enjoyed a good, productive relationship during the most difficult moments of the pandemic. But it is hard to find a Liberal who describes them as close. Liberal MP Tim Wilson said it would be a Christmas miracle if Berejiklian ran, and in the end it proved to be one miracle Morrison couldnt pull off. On Friday morning the former premier called into Ben Fordhams final breakfast show for the year on 2GB radio and made clear just how much thought she had given the Warringah proposition: not a lot. It wasnt something that I intended to do, but out of respect for those people who Ive got respect for I gave it some thought, she said. I promised them I would, and I did for a very short period of time and then obviously let them know that its not something I want to pursue.

Loading The former premier didnt rule out federal politics forever, but she said it was not something I would consider for a very, very, very long time. Like her predecessor Baird, Berejiklian intends to work in the private sector. Before entering state politics she was a Commonwealth Bank manager, and according to people close to her, banks have approached her since she quit the states top job - though any finance role she took now would clearly be much higher up the chain. On Thursday, once Berejiklian had told Morrison thanks but no thanks on Warringah, the Prime Ministers office provided journalists a statement outlining his respect for her decision to go in a different direction. As well as making two references to his wife Jenny, Morrison stressed his commitment to recruiting great women and fielding strong female candidates at the election. His remarks will be a boost to Buncle, a barrister who also does pro bono work for the Refugee Caseworker Service, directs a youth homelessness charity and volunteers as a Manly lifeguard. Buncle is now in the box seat for preselection, and the Herald has confirmed management consultant and NSW Liberal Party state executive member Alex Dore will not nominate. On Friday afternoon, ex-Woolworths boss Roger Corbett, who as former president of the Liberal Partys Warringah electorate committee ran Abbotts campaign, said that like any other seat in Australia, the residents of Warringah are entitled to have a very good representative.
London: The United States is a step closer to extraditing Julian Assange to face trial over the WikiLeaks cables after securing a victory in Englands High Court.

Lord Justice Holroyde overturned a previous judges ruling that Assange should not face legal proceedings in the US because he might take his own life.

He ordered the court to send his case to Britains Home Secretary Priti Patel to determine whether the Australian citizen should be sent to the US. Patel, an arch-Brexiteer, is belligerent when it comes to security, immigration and foreign policy.

Julian Assange, pictured in 2017, at the Ecuadorian embassy. Credit:AP

Assanges partner and mother of two of his children, Stella Moris, said his lawyers would appeal the abusive and vindictive prosecution.
Washington: The Biden administration announced on Saturday (AEDT) that Australia would join the US, Denmark and Norway in a joint effort to curb the export of technology products that are used to aid repression.

The White House said last week it was forming a group to address the misuse of certain dual-use technologies that can lead to human rights abuses and to ensure that critical and emerging technologies work for and not against democratic societies.

On Friday, it revealed the names of countries pledging to work with it on the endeavour, adding that Canada, France, the Netherlands and Britain also supported the move.

US President Joe Biden left China and Russia out of his latest meeting of nations. Credit:Bloomberg

Over the coming year of action, we commit to working to establish a voluntary, non-binding written code of conduct around which like-minded states could politically pledge, to use export control tools to prevent the proliferation of software and other technologies used to enable serious human rights abuses, the member countries said in a statement.
Marty Reid will become Director of SETsquared Bristol from January 2022.

He takes over the role from Monika Radclyffe who has led the University of Bristols world leading tech incubator since 2016 and is leaving to join innovation company, Plexal.

Marty has been the Head of Engine Shed, since January 2020. He will continue in this role alongside his new appointment to ensure alignment and strategic development between the partner companies. SETsquared Bristol and Engine Shed are part of the University of Bristols enterprise brands, which include the Quantum Technologies Innovation Centre (QTIC) and QTEC.

Prior to Engine Shed, Marty was Centre Director for Bristol innovation hub, Future Space, and worked at Rolls-Royce in roles spanning business and technology strategy, global account management and service delivery.

As Director of SETsquared Bristol, Marty will focus on the growth of its incubation and pre-incubation programmes, as well as the development of new sector focused accelerators, corporate partnerships, and investor relations.

Marty said: Im looking forward to joining SETsquared Bristol at a time where there is huge scope for scaling up its business support capabilities and impact to new audiences. Im also committed to taking forward its diversity and inclusion responsibilities to ensure greater inclusivity within the tech sector.

Mustafa Rampuri, Director of Enterprise Services at the University of Bristol said: Im delighted that Marty is bringing his expertise in innovation and strategy to lead the next chapter of SETsquared Bristol. We would like to thank Monika for enabling SETsquared Bristol to be the award-winning incubator it is today.

Monika commented: This is an exciting time for SETsquared Bristol. Im proud to be handing it over to Marty with its fantastic and inspiring ecosystem of members, alumni, advisers and investors, and its recognition as both the Hottest Accelerator in Europe and Global No 1 university incubator.
ANZ has made yet another rate change, hiking their fixed rates by as much as 40 basis points. The long-term rates saw the biggest rises, with the four-year fixed moving from 2.99% to 3.39% and the five-year fixed going from 3.19% to 3.59%.

Those long-term fixed rates are now the highest among the Big Four and have risen almost an entire percentage point in just two months. For borrowers, that represents a $245 monthly rise in repayments compared to October.

The rate rises at ANZ are the latest in a wave of hikes that have come in since it became clear that the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) was abandoning its schedule of raising the cash rate in 2024.

Westpac has moved four times on fixed rates, as has NAB, while CBA and ANZ have moved three times. Variable rates are generally dropping, though not to the levels that were widespread in the middle of the year before lockdowns and term funding changes altered the price of funds for banks.

Read more: AMP sets out stall to broker channel

The ultra-low fixed rate party of 2021 is quickly running out of steam, said Sally Tindall of RateCity.

Like its big bank competitors, ANZ has decided to hike fixed rates several times in the last two months to offset rising funding costs.

There are likely to be a lot of frustrated ANZ customers waiting in the queue who will now be paying a significantly higher rate than the one they initially applied for, unless they paid a rate lock fee.

There are 70 fixed rates under 2 per cent, but the list is shrinking by the day.

People who want to fix but havent, shouldnt give up hope. There are still some good deals out there, however, theyll probably need to look beyond the big four banks.
Latest News Why brokers should be advising their clients to pay rate lock Key tool for brokers in the new rate rise environment of 2022

Could 2022 be the year that the deposit hurdle is broken for young people? House prices have rocketed, taking deposits with them  heres how brokers can help clients to get over the first hurdle

A new survey has revealed that the distance between where investors live and where they buy property has doubled since the pandemic.

The research, compiled by MCG Quantity Surveyors, showed that the average distance rose from 294km to 559km between January 2020 and November of 2021, laying bare how much more willing investors have been to buy sight unseen, as well as the extent of the rentvesting trend.

The quintessential idea for investors was that they bought around the corner from where they lived, because people were more familiar with the market that they lived in, explained Mike Mortlock, managing director of MCG.

In the course of collecting the data that we needed to do tax depreciation schedules, we came across some interesting questions, and of course, we get the address of the investor and the address of the investment property.

The original edition of the study was 2019, where we found that the average distance between where an investor lives and where they invest was 293km.

Read more: Is the broker pay review really necessary?

That told an interesting story in and of itself, because we found that 60% of people are buying within 50km of where they live, but also that almost 30% are buying further than 250k away.

We thought 200km was about the max in terms of them physically inspecting it themselves, and if we were going more than that, the chances are that theyre using a buyers agent or someone else on the ground.

The motivation for redoing the study was to model the impacts of the pandemic. The data sample for this set starts from the beginning of the pandemic all the way through to November this year.

It was a fair indication of the true changes that the pandemic has had on investor behaviour. Of course, we saw that the average distance that people bought from where they live almost doubled, to just under 560km.

The most interesting stat was that the percentage of people buying more than 200km away rose from 29.5% to 44.65%, so were certainly seeing in this data that investors are much more interested in buying further afield.

Rentvesting trend kicks in as buyers go sight unseen

While the obvious reading of the data is that investors are now more willing to buy sight unseen, it also could be seen as displaying that those living in Melbourne and Sydney, where property prices have risen to the point where many are priced out, are now sinking their cash into more affordable regions.

What we saw in the study is that Queensland is the most popular investment state, with 37.4% of people in the study purchasing there. NSW was 34% and Victoria was only 11%, said Mortlock.

To me, it tells a bit of a story, because you wouldnt say that NSW is cheaper than Victoria, though maybe there is more of a regional contingent by virtue of it being a bigger state.

But what is part of it is that a quarter of investors actually occupy the property prior to renting it out.

Though it is what I would call poor property investing advice, people are purchasing investment properties with a dual notion in their heads that they may occupy it later down the track, that they might retire there or use it as a destination.

That speaks to Queensland by virtue of how well it has done during the pandemic from a lockdown perspective. Victoria is the most locked down place on Earth, and it has 11% of people purchasing compared to 37% in Queensland.
The telecom regulator has received the highest number of complaints against followed by and Reliance Jio, Parliament was informed on Friday.

According to the data shared by the minister of state for communications Devusinh Chauhan, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) has received 16,111 service-related complaints against in 2021, followed by 14,487 against and 7,341 against

Of the 14,487 complaints against Vodafone Idea, 9,186 were against Idea and 5,301 against Vodafone.

The data showed that received 732 complaints against MTNL and 2,913 against BSNL.

Chauhan said the Act,1997 does not envisage handling of individual consumer complaints by TRAI.

"However, complaints received in TRAI are forwarded to concerned service providers for appropriate action. TRAI has mandated all Telecom Service Providers to establish a two-tier complaint/grievance redressal mechanism for handling consumer complaints," he said.

Under the complaint redressal mechanism, a consumer can lodge service-related complaints at the complaint center of their Telecom Service Providers (TSPs).

In case a complaint is not redressed satisfactorily by the service provider at the complaint center, an appeal can be registered with the appellate authority of the TSPs, Chauhan 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.)
Byjus has appointed Rachna Bahadur as the senior vice president to lead the global expansion plans of the worlds most valuable firm. In her new role, Bahadur will lead the overall planning, strategy, and roadmap for Byjus expansion in new and existing markets.

With over 15 years of experience, before joining Byjus, Bahadur was a Partner at Bain & Company where she was a leader in the consumer product practice. She also co-led the Women @ Bain India chapter which aims at creating an inclusive and gender non-conforming (GNC) environment for women to thrive in. At Bain, she has advised top Indian and MNC FMCGs on topics ranging across market entry, growth strategy, marketing, sales, M&A and organization design.

For a decade, Byjus has been at the helm of creating value in a students life, and I am thrilled to be a part of the team that is at the forefront of redefining the way education is delivered across the world, said Rachna Bahadur, senior vice president, global expansion, Byjus.

Bahadur has a B.A. (Hons) in Mathematics from St.Stephens College, New Delhi, and has an MBA from The Wharton School of Business. A consistent yoga practitioner, she also has developed a keen interest in art and paints herself. She also likes to explore new cultures and cuisines.

I look forward to working with the team to further build on the foundation and growth potential in the business, said Bahadur. From building new partnerships to expanding existing ones, I look forward to crafting new strategies to take Byjus into its next phase of growth.

This appointment is a step towards strengthening Byjus leadership across verticals as the company aims to further build world-class products, teams, and partnerships. Bahadur would be responsible for designing Byjus next growth phase, creating new partnerships, reinforcing sales, and solidifying the company's market positioning across the globe. She will also be responsible for strengthening the footprint of Byjus recent acquisition of digital reading platform Epic in the US market.

As we continue to evolve and diversify our business across the globe, we are focusing on bringing the best talent in the industry to further drive our mission of creating a community of lifelong learners. Rachna (Bahadur)is a leader with a proven track record, said Pravin Prakash, chief people Officer, Byjus. Her extensive knowledge, depth of experience, and core background in consumer product practice will prove a key asset to us. She will play a vital role in charting a high impact and high growth network for Byjus.

Launched in 2015, Byjus is a leading firm in offering personalized learning programs for school students in India. It has over 115 million students cumulatively learning from the app, 7 million annual paid subscriptions, and an annual renewal rate of 86 per cent.

As Byjus enters the next phase of growth in its continuous mission of helping children fall in love with learning, the company said is further enhancing its leadership to drive excellence, globally. As a purpose-driven, student-centric organisation, Byjus said it is committed to building world-class learning experiences, driven by a unified passion and exceptional teams to impact how millions of children learn.

Bahadurs appointment comes at a time when the Bengaluru-based firm is on an acquisition spree in India and globally as the pandemic has accelerated the adoption of online education. Such acquisitions are helping the firm to dominate the market and compete with players such as SoftBank-backed Unacademy, Vedantu, Simplilearn, UpGrad, Amazon Academy. This month Byjus acquired Austria-headquartered math learning firm GeoGebra for about $100 million. This marked Byjus 9th major buy this year. It has spent more than $2 billion in the past several months on these acquisitions.

In September this year, it acquired US-based Tynker, a leading K-12 creative coding platform for about $200 million, according to the sources. Some of the other deals include the $1 billion buy of New Delhi-based Aakash Educational Services (AESL) in April and the $600 million acquisition of Singapore-headquartered Great Learning, a leading global player in professional and higher education.

In September, it also acquired Gradeup, one of India's largest online exam preparation platforms. In July this year, Byjus acquired US-based digital reading platform Epic for $500 million. In 2019, Byjus bought US-based educational gaming company Osmo for $120 million in a stock-and-cash deal. In August 2020, Byjus also bought WhiteHat Jr, which teaches coding to children, for $300 mn.

Byjus is aiming to become one of the largest players in the space in the US, with a target to hit revenues of $1 billion in the next three years.
Gati-KWE, an Allcargo Group company and express logistics and provider, on Friday launched its largest surface transhipment centre (STC) spread over 1.5 lakh sqft and connecting to all major national highways.

It is located at the Allcargo Logistics 1.8-million sq. ft. logistics park at Farukh Nagar, the state-of-the-art, tech-driven STC will offer customers the added advantages of optimized supply chains, reduced dwell times and access to all major National Highways and seamless connectivity into the countrys hinterlands.

Gati-KWE plans to set up five more similar STCs at Mumbai, Nagpur, Indore, Bengaluru and Hyderabad in the near future.

This will be the first of 12 modern, automated and environmentally friendly STCs we establish across the county as we embark on a new chapter in Gatis journey. This facility will ensure we offer our customers across North India significantly improved transit times, while simultaneously being located so we dont congest the NCR region any further with our line haul movements, said Pirojshaw Sarkari, CEO,

The facility also has a throughput capacity of over 15,000 tonnes with the ability to scale up and daily package volume capacity of over 600,000 tonnes.

An AI-powered round-the-clock tracking system will enable customers to have access to real-time updates and forecasts facilitating the unloading and sorting of cargo in a timely and convenient manner.

The key business verticals of include express distribution, air freight, e-commerce, first and last mile logistics,and others. also offers exclusive B2C services like Laabh, Bike Express, Student Express, and others.
in India is extending the timeline for developers to integrate with the Play store's billing system to 31 October 2022, from the 31 March 2022 deadline earlier.

We recognize the unique needs of the developer ecosystem in India and remain committed to partnering with developers in India on their growth journey. In October 2020, we had announced 31st March 2022 as the timeline for developers in India to integrate with Plays billing system. We are extending this to 31st October 2022 to provide developers in India the required product support for recurring payments through convenient user payment systems, including UPI and wallets, and also provide them more time in light of the changes to Indias recurring digital payments guidelines, said a spokesperson on Friday.

The issue cropped up in 2020 when said its apps that sell digital goods within the Play Store have to use its billing system, which allows the tech giant to collect a percentage of in-app purchases as a fee.

Indian start-ups and unicorns have been claiming since then that Google abuses its monopoly, enforcing the billing system, and takes a 30 per cent commission on the transactions. All apps distributed on the Google Play Store, that offer in-app purchases of digital goods, need to use Google Plays billing system.

The Alliance of Digital India Foundation said the deadline extension was a welcome interim move, and calls for introspection that results in fairer policies for all app owners, but called it short-term relief for developers anxiety.

The reality is that app owners have been in a very tough spot as they are unsure if they should unwillingly comply with Googles new policies and be hopeful of a CCIs intervention on the interim relief petition for maintaining the status quo. Googles deadline extension certainly gives them more time but doesnt take away their uncertainty, said Sijo Kuruvilla George, Executive Director, ADIF.





The core issue for the developers is the gatekeeper tax of 15-30 per cent on a select category of apps and restrictions on the use of other payment options. "We hope that Google makes use of this additional time to actually listen to the problems of app developers and come out with a policy that is fair to all applications on the Play Store," George added.

In order to allow developers time to implement the UPI for subscription payment option on Google Play, the timeline for complying with the billing system was extended in India to March 31, 2022.

All apps distributed on the Google Play Store, that are offering in-app purchases of digital goods, need to use Google Plays billing system. Google said earlier, and reiterated again, that this isn't new and its payments policy has always required this.

Google Play billing has always taken a 30 per cent commission on these transactions, but the announcement in 2020 meant it would enforce these practice more forcefully going forward. It has consistently said this will only apply to less than 3 per cent of developers with apps on Play Store, as 97 per cent are already using the Google Play billing.

Both Google and Apple Stores have been facing backlash from developers in several geographies over their business practices on their app stores.

Some of Google Play's practices, like commissions, have been a contentious issue with developers in India and globally. In March, it lowered commission for developers when they make $1 million in annual revenue for in-app purchases. From July 1, it said it would slash its 30 per cent billing fee to 15 per cent for developers globally when they make the first $1 million of their annual revenue.

In October this year, Google said that starting on January 1, 2022, it will be decreasing the service fee for all subscriptions on Google Play to 15 per cent from 30 per cent, and for developers offering subscriptions, this means that first-year subscription fees will be cut in half.
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The Reserve Bank of India has approved the Life Insurance Corporation of India (LIC) to raise its stake in by up to 9.99 per cent. The insurer holds 4.95 per cent in the private lender.

The bank, in a BSE filing, said it the central bank told it about the approval on Thursday. The approval is subject to compliance with various regulations and rules including Master Direction on 'Ownership in Private Sector Banks and regulations of the Securities and Exchange Board of India.

The approval is valid for one year--that is up to December 8, 2022.

As per norms, approval is required to increase stake in private banks beyond 5 per cent. stock was trading 0.81 higher at Rs 954 per share on the BSE.

In November, the allowed to raise its stake in Kotak Mahinda Bank by up to 9.99 per cent.

is one of the biggest institutional investors in Indias stock market and has a stake in a number of private and public sector banks. It has stakes in as many 24 scheduled commercial banks, data from Capitaline shows.

It holds 49.24 per cent stake in IDBI Bank. Among other major banks, holds 8.8 per cent in Canara Bank, 8.3 per cent in Punjab National Bank and State Bank of India, 8.2 per cent in Axis Bank, and 7.6 per cent in ICICI Bank.
The tri-services team investigating the tragic chopper crash near Coonoor that killed CDS Gen and 12 others is focusing on all possible reasons including whether a human error caused the accident, people familiar with the development said on Thursday.

The black box, comprising the flight data recorder (FDR) and the cockpit voice recorder (CVR), of the ill-fated Mi-17V5 helicopter of the Indian Air Force was recovered from the crash site on Thursday.

While the CVR will provide details about the communication between the pilots and the air traffic control, the FDR will provide information like altitude, speed and other technical data of the chopper.

The Chief of Defence Staff had left the Palam airbase in an IAF Embraer aircraft at 8:47 am and landed at Sulur airbase at 11:34 am. He took off from Sulur in a Mi-17V5 chopper at around 1148 am for Wellington, official sources said.

The chopper crashed at around 12:22 pm, they said, adding it was to land at Wellington at around 12:15 pm.

"All angles including possible human error will be investigated," a senior military offcial said.

In a statement in Parliament, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh announced ordering a tri-services enquiry into the accident.

Air Marshal Manavendra Singh, who is heading the tri-services team investigating the tragic chopper crash near Coonoor, is a helicopter pilot and oversaw probes into various air accidents involving IAF platforms.

Several former and serving military commanders described Air Marshal Singh, currently heading the Bengaluru-headquartered Training Command of the IAF, as the "best" available investigator in the country.

Before taking the reins of the Training Command, the Air Marshal was the Director General (Inspection and Safety) at the Air headquarters and developed various protocols for flight safety while serving in the post.

In a distinguished career spanning over 38 years, the Air Officer has flown a wide variety of helicopters and trainer aircraft. He is a qualified flying instructor with vast instructional experience and over 6600 hours of accident-free flying in various challenging sectors like the Siachen, the Northeast, Uttarakhand, the Western desert and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

The Air Marshal has also served in tri-service joint institutions and was Assistant Chief of Integrated Defence Staff (Joint Operations) at the headquarters of Integrated Defence Staff.

(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.)
Home Minister Amit Shah, Security Advisor Ajit Doval and Congress leader on Friday laid wreaths on the mortal remains of Chief of Defence Staff General and his wife Madhulika Rawat, who were among the 13 killed in the military chopper crash in Tamil Nadu.

The mortal remains of Gen Rawat and his wife were kept at their official residence here before cremation.

Outside Gen Rawat's residence, people raised slogans of 'Bharat Mata Ki Jai', 'Gen Rawat amar rahe', and 'Uttarakhand ka heera amar rahe'.

Uttarakhand Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami, BJP leader Ravi Shankar Prasad and British Ambassador to India Alexander Ellis was among the other leaders who paid their last respects to Gen Rawat and his wife.

Former Defence Minister A K Antony, DMK leader Kanimozhi, Haryana Chief Minister M L Khattar, BJP leader Baijayant Jay Panda, Delhi LG Anil Baijal, Minister of State Jitendra Singh, Minister of State for Social Justice and Empowerment Ramdas Athawale, also paid their respects to Rawat and his wife.

"It's a terrible and an irreparable loss to the country at a crucial time,"



Antony said.

Paying his respects to Gen Rawat, Leader of Opposition in the Rajya Sabha Mallikarjun Kharge described him as a "good man".

"It is a loss to the nation, he was a pride of the nation," Union Information and Broadcasting Minister Anurag Thakur said after paying tributes.

Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal and Delhi Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia also laid their wreaths on the mortal remains of Gen Rawat and his wife.

Gen Rawat, his wife, and 11 other defence personnel were killed when a Mi17V5 helicopter carrying them crashed near Coonoor in Tamil Nadu on Wednesday.

As India's first Chief of Defence Staff, Gen Rawat was tasked to bring in theatre command and jointness among the three services, and he was pushing it with a tough approach and specific timelines in the last two years.

Known to be forthright, fearless, and blunt at times, the 63-year-old strongly backed a policy of hot pursuit in dealing with cross-border terrorism and militancy in Jammu and Kashmir when he was the Army Chief between 2016 and 2019.

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Ashes of Chief of Defence Staff General and his wife, who were given a final send-off with full honours in Delhi this evening, will be taken to Haridwar on Saturday, their family said.

The mortal remains of General Rawat and Madhulika Rawat were consigned to flames at the Brar Square crematorium in Delhi Cantonment, two days after they and 11 others, all from the armed forces, were killed in a helicopter crash in Coonoor in Tamil Nadu.

As millions watched on television and hundreds packed into Brar Square, the couple's daughters Tarini and Kritika conducted the last rites of their parents taken away from them so brutally.

General Rawat's mortal remains were taken to the funeral site in a solemn procession from his official residence -- 3, Kamraj Marg, on a ceremonial gun carriage, which was bedecked with flowers.

Along the way, several people waved tricolours, many ran along the carriage, chanting patriotic slogans, and cries of 'amar rahe' for the Rawats.

Tarini, along with her elder sister Kritika, on Friday afternoon performed traditional rituals at their home, aided by a priest, before the mortal remains of their parents were moved to carriages for taking them to the crematorium.

"After the cremation today at Delhi Cantonment's crematorium, we will be taking his 'asthi' (ashes) to Haridwar tomorrow," Tarini, told PTI, moments before the carriage left General Rawat's official residence.

Earlier in the day, the sisters, stood in sombre silence next to the mortal remains of their father and mother, as a large number of visitors continued to stream in at the official bungalow of the Chief of Defence Staff (CDS), since morning.

"Both General Rawat and my sister were cremated on a common pyre at Brar Square. We will pick the ashes early morning tomorrow in a 'kalash' and then head to Haridwar, where the ashes will be immersed in the holy Ganga and some rituals will be performed," Yash Vardhan Singh, brother-in-law of General Rawat, said after the cremation.

A priest chanted Sanskrit shlokas and a 17-gun salute was accorded to the general in accordance with protocol at the Brar Square crematorium.

Chief Justice of India N V Ramana, Home Minister Amit Shah, Security Advisor Ajit Doval, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, former defence minister A K Antony, a number of Union ministers and senior leaders of political parties, religious gurus, seers and several lawmakers paid their last respects to India's first Chief of Defence Staff and his wife at their Kamraj Marg bungalow.

The mortal remains of General Rawat and his wife were kept at the official residence for the first half of the day on Friday for people to pay their respects.

Jaipur-based Col (retd) Vijay Rawat, 60, younger brother of Gen Rawat, said, "I had spoken to him before he went to Tamil Nadu to attend the function at Wellington. Had never thought, fate would take him away from us".

"We will be taking his ashes to Haridwar tomorrow. We family members will be going to the holy town to immerse his 'asthi' (ashes) into the Ganga river," he said before the funeral procession began.

Around 2:20 pm, amid chants of 'Vande Mataram' and 'General Rawat amar rahe', the funeral procession of the chief of defence staff and his wife left his official residence, for their final journey.

personnel drawn from all the three services marched towards the streets as drummers played along in tribute to the Rawats.

As India's first Chief of Defence Staff, General Rawat was tasked to bring in theatre command and jointness among the three services, and he was pushing these with a tough approach and specific timelines in the last two years.

Earlier in the day, right outside his official residence, several people who had gathered, raised slogans of 'Bharat Mata Ki Jai', 'General Rawat amar rahe', and 'Uttarakhand ka heera amar rahe', while dignitaries paid floral tributes and last respects till the funeral procession left the bungalow.

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An expert panel of India's central drug authority which reviewed Serum Institute's application for approval of Covishield as booster dose against COVID-19 on Friday recommended that the firm submit local clinical trial data and proposal along with justification for the booster dose approval, official sources said.

On December 1, Prakash Kumar Singh, director, Government and Regulatory affairs at Serum Institute of India (SII), had sought approval from the Drugs Controller General of India (DCGI) for Covishield as booster dose, citing adequate stock of the vaccine in the country and a demand for a booster shot due to the emergence of new variants.

Singh had referred to the UK's Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency giving a go-ahead to the booster doses of AstraZeneca ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 vaccine in the application.

"The subject expert committee (SEC) on COVID-19 at CDSCO reviewed SII's application and following detailed deliberation recommended that the Pune-based firm should submit local clinical trial data and proposal along with the justification for booster dose approval," a source said.

Singh is learnt to have said in the application that as the world continued to face the pandemic situation, many countries had started administering booster dose of COVID-19 vaccines.

"You are aware that now there is no shortage of Covishield in our country and the demand for a booster dose is increasing day by day from the people who have already taken two doses in view of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and emergence of new strains," he had said in the application.

The Union government informed parliament that the National Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation and the National Expert Group on Vaccine Administration for COVID-19 are deliberating and considering scientific evidence for the need and justification for a booster dose against Covid.

According to the information available on www.ourworldindata.org, more than 60 countries across the world are providing booster doses of COVID-19 vaccine, Minister of State for Health Bharati Pravin Pawar said in a written reply on Friday.

Recently, states like Kerala, Rajasthan, Karnataka and Chhattisgarh urged the Centre to decide on allowing booster doses of COVID-19 vaccine amid concerns raised by 'Omicron', the new variant of SARS-CoV-2.

The Delhi High Court had on November 25 directed the Centre to clarify its stand on administering booster doses to those who are fully vaccinated against coronavirus, saying it does not want a second-wave-like situation on account of being conservative.

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Brigadier L S Lidder, who died along with 12 others in the chopper crash in Tamil Nadu, was cremated with full military honours at the Brar Square crematorium here on Friday.

Defence Minister Rajnath Singh, Security Advisor Ajit Doval and Haryana Chief Minister M L Khattar earlier in the morning laid wreaths on Lidder's mortal remains, which were kept at Brar Square in Delhi cantonment before the cremation.

Many senior defence personnel also paid their last respects to Lidder.

Geetika Lidder, wife of Brigadier Lidder, told reporters after the cremation that she is feeling more pain than any pride.

"Life is too long to spend but if this is the wish of God, we will live with it. This is not the way we wanted him back," she stated.

She mentioned that he was a very good father and their daughter will really miss him.

"It is a big loss," she added.

Daughter Aashna Lidder said she is 17 years old and she will keep all the good memories of the 17 years she spent with her father.

#WATCH | "...We must give him a good farewell, a smiling send-off, I am a soldier's wife. It's a big loss...," says wife of Brig LS Lidder, Geetika pic.twitter.com/unLv6sA7e7  ANI (@ANI) December 10, 2021

"I am happy he did not have to suffer. It is a loss. My father was a hero," she mentioned.

She said her father was a happy-go-lucky person and was her best friend.

"He used to infuse passion not just in me but in every person. He was a great motivator," she noted.

"I feel scared as I was really pampered by my father," he added.

Along with Chief of Defence Staff Bipin Rawat, Lidder was among the 13 killed when a Mi17V5 helicopter carrying them crashed in Tamil Nadu on Wednesday.

Born on June 26, 1969, Brigadier Lidder was defence assistant to the CDS since January 2021.

He was commissioned in the Jammu and Kashmir Rifles (JAKRIF) in December 1990 and commanded a battalion of the JAKRIF in Congo as UN peacekeeping force. He also commanded a brigade on India's northern borders.

He served as director at the Military Operations Directorate and also as defence assistant at Kazakhstan.

Approved for the Major General rank, he was due to take over a division.

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A contact of an Omicron case in Rajasthan has been found COVID-19 positive in Delhi and she has been admitted to the Lok Nayak Hospital, officials said on Friday.

The woman tested Covid positive on Thursday, is asymptomatic and stable. She did not travel to any foreign country, officials said.

According to an official, 17 members of her family have been also put under home quarantine.

She was taken to the Lok Nayak Jai Prakash Narayan Hospital and her sample has been sent for genomic sequencing to the National Centre for Disease Control (NCDC), the official said, adding her contacts are being traced.

The LNJP has been designated for treatment of patients infected with the Omicron variant of Currently has 30 patients suspected to be infected with the new variant. Eight patients have been discharged till now after testing negative.

Delhi had reported its first case of Omicron on Sunday -- a 37-year-old fully vaccinated man who arrived in Delhi from Tanzania.

The man, a resident of Ranchi, had travelled from Tanzania to Doha and from there to Delhi on a Qatar Airways flight on December 2. He stayed in Johannesburg, South Africa, for a week. The person has mild symptoms.

Results of 12 out of 17 samples sent for genomic sequencing were released on Sunday. Eleven of them tested negative.

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A woman contact of an Omicron case in Rajasthan has been found COVID-19 positive in Delhi and is being shifted to the Lok Nayak Hospital, officials said on Friday.

The woman tested Covid positive on Thursday. She did not travel to any foreign country. 17 members in her family have been also put under home quarantine, an official said.

She is being taken to the LNJP Hospital and her sample has been sent for genome sequencing to the National Centre for Disease Control, the official said, adding her contacts are being traced.

Delhi had reported its first case of Omicron on Sunday -- a 37-year-old fully vaccinated man who arrived in Delhi from Tanzania.

The patient, a resident of Ranchi, had travelled from Tanzania to Doha and from there to Delhi on a Qatar Airways flight on December 2. He stayed in Johannesburg, South Africa, for a week. The person has mild symptoms.

The results of 12 out of 17 samples sent for genome sequencing were released on Sunday. Eleven of them tested negative. PTI GVS



in cross notified by Rajasthan, has tested positive on 8th day testing in South district.

Being shifted to isolation facility.

All the 17 members of the household being put under home quarantine.

More contact tracing being done.

For info and necessary action.

Pls focus on increased coverage for vaccination. Need closure cases status from Dr. Monica



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The president of California's medical board, which issues medical licenses and disciplines doctors, says a group of anti-vaccine activists stalked her at home and followed her to her office where four men confronted her in a dark parking garage in what she described as a terrifying experience.

Kristina Lawson, a former mayor of Walnut Creek who was appointed to the board by former Gov. Jerry Brown, said in social media on Wednesday she grew concerned Monday after she noticed the people in a white SUV parked near her home and saw someone flying a drone over her house.

They watched my daughter drive herself to school and watched me walk out of my house, get in my car, and take my two kids to school, she wrote in a Tweet.

The white SUV then followed her to work and parked head-to-head with her car in a parking garage, she said. Lawson said that when she left the office building and entered the parking garage later that evening, four men jumped out of the SUV with cameras and recording equipment and confronted her.

Lawson contacted Walnut Creek Police, who later told her the men told officers they wanted to interview her.

Instead, they ambushed me in a dark parking garage when they suspected I would be alone, she wrote on social media.

She said the people identified themselves as representing America's Frontline Doctors and had not contacted the state medical board or her workplace to request to speak with her.

Led by Simone Gold, a Beverly Hills doctor who was arrested during the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, America's Frontline Doctors criticizes the COVID-19 vaccine and has been widely discredited for spreading disinformation about the and unproven treatments.

I was concerned when I saw someone flying a drone over my house and saw a mysterious white truck parked outside my home. Later that day, my concern turned to terror, she said in a statement.

Lawson added: I arrived in the dark parking garage behind my office and experienced four men unexpectedly rush towards me, jumping out of the same white truck that had been parked outside my house. I then realized that these four men had been surreptitiously stalking me.

Lawson said she decided to go public with what happened to her to shed light on these reprehensible, unacceptable tactics of intimidation



But like other Californians who believe in both science and fair play, I will not be intimidated, she added.

Walnut Creek Police spokeswoman Lt. Holley Connors said in a statement that a man claiming to be a state detective from Georgia called a police dispatcher on Monday and said that he was conducting surveillance in San Miguel, an unincorporated area near Walnut Creek.

The dispatcher asked the man, whose name was not made public, if he had a weapon, and the man responded that his gun was locked in a case, Connors said. The dispatcher told the man that he should contact Contra Costa County Sheriff's Office, which oversees the area he said he was in.

The Contra Costa County Sheriff's Office did not return email and phone messages seeking comment.

Connors said the same man called the Walnut Creek Police Department again later in the day to let them know he was in a parking lot in Walnut Creek with at least one other person.

The Police Department determine that the man who called earlier in the day claiming to be a detective from Georgia was likely involved, in the incident with Lawson, Connors wrote, adding that police have no evidence of a crime but that investigators are still gathering information.

Bill Prasifka, Medical Board of California's executive director, said he supports Lawson in condemning any attempts to intimidate her or any other member of the board and staff.

Board members and staff have been advised to remain vigilant to their surroundings and provided security reminders," Prasifka said in a statement.

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Daughters of Chief of Defence Staff (CDS) General Bipin Rawat, Kritika and Tarini, on Friday paid floral tributes to their parents here in the capital.

The grandchild of the CDS also paid final respect to grandparents.

General and his wife Madhulika Rawat were among the 13 people who died in the military in Tamil Nadu's Coonnor on Wednesday.

Meanwhile, Home Minister Amit Shah, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi also paid tribute to CDS General

Several political leaders like Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, Uttarakhand CM Pushkar Singh Dhami, Congress leaders Mallikarjun Kharge and Harish Singh Rawat, BJP chief JP Nadda and DMK leaders A Raja and Kanimozhi, among others, paid their last respects to the CDS and his wife Madhulika Rawat.

Delhi Lt Governor Anil Baijal also laid a wreath at the mortal remains of the CDS and his wife.

Also, religious leaders held a multi-faith prayer as they paid their last respects to the CDS and his wife.

5/11 Gorkha Rifles are looking after all the arrangements of the last rites of General Rawat who was commissioned in the unit and also went ahead to command it.

BJP leader Ravi Shankar Prasad termed the death of CDS General Rawat a great loss to the nation and said, "I Had great relations with CDS General ..Such a brave commander...his wife and other soldier leaving like this is very painful. His death is a great loss to the nation. CDS with his courage and bravery made a place in every Indian heart. I express condolence to the loss."

The last rites of General Rawat will be performed later in the day with full military honours. The funeral procession will start from Kamraj Marg and reach Brar Square crematorium in Delhi Cantonment.

An IAF chopper crash near Tamil Nadu's Coonoor on Wednesday claimed the lives of 13 people including CDS Rawat, his wife Madhulika Rawat and his defence adviser Brigadier Lidder.

The Army said the mortal remains of only three persons -- General Rawat, his wife Madhulika Rawat and Brigadier Lidder -- had been positively identified so far.

Brigadier Lidder was cremated earlier today.

Other 10 defence forces personnel who died in the chopper crash are Staff Officer Lieutenant Colonel Harjinder Singh, Wing Commander Prithvi Singh Chauhan, Squadron Leader Kuldeep Singh, Junior Warrant Officer Rana Pratap Das, Junior Warrant Officer Arakkal Pradeep, Havildar Satpal Rai, Naik Gursewak Singh, Naik Jitendra Kumar, Lance Naik Vivek Kumar and Lance Naik B Sai Teja.

Group Captain Varun Singh, the lone survivor in the crash, has been shifted to Air Force Command hospital at Bengaluru for further treatment.

The Centre has ordered a 'tri service' inquiry into the accident. The inquiry will be headed by Air Marshal Manvendra Singh, Air Officer Commanding-in-Chief Training Command.

According to the sources, the black box of the chopper has been recovered from the crash site.

A team of Tamil Nadu's Forensic Science Department also visited the crash site.

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Delhi air remained polluted on Friday as state-backed commission ordered the immediate closure of 228 industria units across the national capital and cities nearby.

The Air Quality Index (AQI) of the national capital was 293 --'poor'-- at 8 am, according to the state-run System of Air Quality and Weather Forecasting And Research (SAFAR). Readings below 50 are considered safe, while anything above 300 is considered hazardous or 'severe'.

The Commission for Air Quality Management (CAQM) said 1,215 sites were inspected till December 7, and gross violations were reported from 228 units across various sectors in Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, Haryana and Rajasthan.

Meanwhile, the commission has set up 40 flying squads to review field-level action and check for compliance in respect of various directions and orders issued by CAQM.

Delhi's air quality in November was the worst in seven years, data showed. The national capital's air quality became worse after Diwali on November 4 as people violated a ban on bursting firecrackers while the pollution compounded due to an increase in stubble burning by farmers in areas adjoining the national capital.

Delhi was this morning the world's seventh most polluted city with an AQI of 175, said iQair, a website that tracks worldwide.

costs Indian businesses $95 billion or roughly 3 per cent of its GDP every year, according to U.K.-based non-profit Clean Air Fund and the Confederation of Indian Industry, Bloomberg has reported.
There is an eerie calm in Oting village in Nagaland's Mon district, where despite the approaching there are no buntings or traditional decorations. Visitors to this remote hilly place are instead greeted with the sight of a lone white banner flapping in the air in memory of the13 hapless young mine workers who fell victim to bullets sprayed at them by security forces a week ago in a botched counter insurgency operation.

The calm speaks of the shock, sorrow and tension after the brutal killing and villagers, yet to come to grips with the tragedy, have put restrictions on accessing the site or visitors speaking to the bereaved families since the past two days.

What strikes a visitor in this hour of grief is the famed Naga hospitality.

A community kitchen has been opened since the incident and all visitors - ranging from government officers, the police, tribesmen and journalists are offered a meal of steamed rice, yellow dal, meat and pickle besides drinking water and black tea.

It is a massive tragedy. We appreciate the concern shown by everyone. We hope we get justice for the bereaved families, an elderly inhabitant of the village told PTI on Friday.

He is, however, firm on visitors not being allowed to meet the victims' families.

The people coming from outside insist on meeting them. They make the families recount the horror over and over again. We decided to put a stop to it as there is no point in making them relive the painful loss," he said.

Another villager, who identified himself at Kheatwang Konyak, tries to explain that the villagers are not against people coming to Oting at this time. We are coordinating with the visitors and providing whatever information or help they need. Earlier, visitors moved around alone, now we are only streamlining it.

He adds, We lost innocent lives in the incident. Families have been shattered. God knows when we can move on from such a tragedy.

Near the hall where food is being served to visitors, villagers sit huddled in a meeting, to which outsiders are disallowed.

When asked, Apo and Alem, who are among the girls of the village who have volunteered to work at the kitchen, said We have been busy helping. The impact of our loss as a community is yet to sink in.

Later, Kheatwang, who accompanied this correspondent to the incident site, which is about 10 km from the village, said that the central government's claim that the youths were gunned down as their pickup van did not stop at check points and that they tried to flee is not acceptable to the villagers.

He points to the road, which is practically a mud track connecting the village to the incident site and is barely wide enough to allow the passage of a single vehicle. You can see for yourself. It is not possible for any vehicle to go beyond 10-20 km per hour on this road.

He vehemently disagrees that the pickup van had not stopped at check points because There are no check points at all, baring the one at the entrance of Oting village. Besides, the van was coming from the opposition direction.

Pointing to the lone army vehicle, which escaped being torched by angry villagers on that fateful Saturday evening, Kheatwang said, The bodies of the six victims who were gunned down were taken from the pickup van and loaded like luggage pieces at the back of this van.

The pickup still lies at the incident site along with three other burnt Army vehicles, including the one used to carry the hapless victims - mute testimonies to one of the worst incidents of killing of civilians by the security forces.

The area is naturally cordoned off and a platoon of police stands in guard.

Local villagers give company to the policemen to ensure that there is no attempt to tamper with any evidence by any person.

Besides the six villagers in the pickup van who were killed in the firing on December 4, another seven were killed by the Army in violence involving irate locals at the incident site later that day. One Army personnel was also killed in the melee.

Another civilian was killed when a mob attacked an Assam Rifles camp at Mon town on Sunday.

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at the Ghazipur border on Friday organised a 'havan' to pray for Chief of Defence Staff General Bipin Rawat, his wife and 11 other defence personnel who were killed in a helicopter crash in Tamil Nadu.

Besides farmers, spokesperson of the Bharatiya Kisan Union (BKU) Rakesh Tikait, BKU Uttar Pradesh president Rajbir Singh Jadaun and other office-bearers attended the 'havan', according to the state vice president of the farmers' group Rajbir Singh.

A Mi-17V5 helicopter carrying Gen Rawat, his wife and 11 other defence personnel crashed near Coonoor in Tamil Nadu on Wednesday.

As India's first Chief of Defence Staff, Gen Rawat was tasked with bringing in theatre command and jointness among the three services, and he was pushing it with a tough approach and specific timelines over the last two years.

Known to be forthright, fearless, and blunt at times, the 63-year-old strongly backed a policy of hot pursuit in dealing with cross-border terrorism and militancy in Jammu and Kashmir when he was the Army Chief between 2016 and 2019.

were also busy dismantling the encampments they set up at the protest site over the past year as they got ready to head back home.

Singh said the community kitchens will be operational till the protest site is completely cleared.

The Ghazipur border is most likely to be vacated by Saturday, he said.

Meanwhile, a Highways Authority of India (NHAI) official said Highway 9 will be opened for commuters after a technical inspection of the stretch where the were camping for over a year and its pillars is completed.

Once the farmers vacate the highway, NHAI engineers will conduct an inspection and repair the damaged portions, if any, Arvind Kumar, project director, NHAI, told PTI.

The Samyukt Kisan Morcha (SKM), which spearheaded the farmers' agitation against the Centre's farm laws, on Thursday decided to suspend the movement and announced that farmers will go back home on Saturday from the protest sites on Delhi's borders.

The agitation, which began in November last year, mainly drew farmers from Punjab, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh.

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The Communications Ministry on Friday informed that the government was not aware of any unlawful interception of any message of any individual.

Minister of State for Communications Devusinh Chauhan replied "No" to questions in Rajya Sabha, asking "whether Government is aware of any 'unlawful learning of the contents of any message'" and "whether the government is aware of any authorised official unlawfully intercepting any message."



To another question on whether reasons are invariably recorded in writing and orders taken from the competent authorities before intercepting any message under Section 5 of the Indian Telegraph Act, Chauhan, in a written reply, stated that the orders for interception under the said section are issued with the approval of the "competent authority" as per sub-rules and rules.

"As per sub-rule (2) of these Rules, these orders contain the reasons for such direction," Chauhan added.

In October, the Supreme Court directed a panel of experts to investigate whether the government used military-grade private Israeli Pegasus spyware to surveil opposition leaders, activists, tycoons, judges and journalists.

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With usage of masks going down in the country and the Omicron variant on the rise, the government cautioned that the global scene of the pandemic was disturbing and India could be in the danger zone with Covid precautions and cases at similar levels now as the pre-second surge period. The remarks came even as seven more people, including a three-year-old  all of them in Maharashtra  tested positive for the Omicron variant on Friday, taking the total number of cases in the country to 32.

Four of the seven fresh cases were fully vaccinated. Of the seven, three had recent travel history to Tanzania, UK and South Africa. The other four patients were contacts of a Nigerian woman already confirmed as an Omicron case.

We are operating at a risky level. We have to remember that both vaccines and masks are important. The scientific community, WHO, is warning that the time has not come to take off masks, V K Paul, member-health, Niti Aayog, told reporters on Friday.

Paul also stressed that it is the priority of the government to ensure that primary vaccination of first and second dose is completed before any booster doses. He said the World Health Organisation too has no stance in favour of booster dose. WHO has emphatically highlighted the need to complete primary vaccination as the most important priority. Our thinking and best understanding is also aligned with the same approach, Paul said.

The government is keeping a close watch on more than 70 clusters of cases in the country across various districts where more infections have been seen.

Nineteen districts in India are reporting a weekly positivity between 5 and 10 per cent. Eight of these are in Kerala, five in Mizoram, two in Manipur and one each in Arunachal Pradesh and Nagaland.

The health ministry also highlighted that reported Covid-19 cases and deaths have doubled in Europe over the past two months.

By and large it is the Delta variant, but we need to remain cautious. There is no need to panic, we must learn from global experiences, Paul added.

Omicron cases in India are less than 0.04 per cent of the total detected variants. The samples will be tested against Covishield and Covaxin vaccines for efficacy. Globally, the variant has been detected in 59 countries with 2,936 confirmed and 78,064 probable cases of Omicron.

The Indian Council of Medical Research is also examining if mixing the doses of Covishield and Covaxin would produce better immunity. On the issue of booster doses, while the government has stressed that completing primary vaccination is the most important thing, ICMRs director general Balram Bhargava said the immunity from vaccines lasts nine months to one year. The antibody immunity lasts for this period. Cellular and mucosal immunity persists, but it is difficult to measure, Bhargava said. India has so far administered the first dose of the vaccine to 86.2 per cent of adult population while more than 53 per cent are fully vaccinated, according to the health ministry data.

The health ministry also told Parliament on Friday that instances of fake Covid vaccination camps or fake vaccines have been noticed in Maharashtra, West Bengal and Uttar Pradesh. States have been asked to increase vigilance within the supply chains and carefully authenticate the product and its physical condition before its use so as to guard against such unscrupulous activities.

While the daily cases have been below 10,000 for 14 consecutive days, more than half of the total cases in the last week were reported in Kerala.

According to sources, the cabinet secretary is expected to hold a meeting to review the Covid situation with the department of biotechnology, pharma, health ministry and Niti Aayog on Saturday.

The meeting is in the backdrop of declining daily cases in the country with some pockets continuing to have high positivity rates and the emergence of Omicron.




A heart harvested from a 45-year-old in here was transplanted to a terminally-ill patient, some 2,500 kilometres away in Chennai, doctors said on Friday.

The donor's harvested liver, kidneys and corneas were transplanted to five patients at the premier Chandigarh-based health institute itself, they said



The harvested heart was sent to the Chandigarh airport from the Post Graduate Institute of Medical Education and Research (PGIMER) by creating a 'green corridor' in 22 minutes and sent to in an aircraft that departed at 3.25 pm on Wednesday, they said.

After landing in at 8.30 pm, the retrieved heart was taken to MGM Healthcare Hospital where it was transplanted to a terminally ill 52-year-old male patient, a statement issued by on Friday read.

Timing is the key in transplantation. It is commendable that the heart was retrieved and transported within such a short span of time despite the matching recipient being 2,500 kilometres away, director Surjeet Singh said.

Expressing his gratitude to the donor family, Singh said, We remain indebted to the donor family for consenting to save and enrich others' lives in their hour of indescribable grief, impacting six lives tangibly and kindling hope in many more 'in-waiting' recipients intangibly.

A 45-year-old man had sustained grievous head injuries in an accident on December 4. He was rushed to PGIMER, where he was declared brain dead three days later, the hospital authorities stated.

The family, amid the grim tragedy of losing their dear one, displayed exceptional courage and magnanimity and consented for organ donation of their deceased relative, when counseled by the transplant coordinator at PGIMER. Following the family's consent, heart, liver, kidneys and corneas were retrieved from the donor for transplantation to save other lives.

Since, there was no matching recipient for heart here; it was allocated for a matching recipient in MGM Healthcare Hospital in with the intervention of Organ and Tissue Transplant Organization (NOTTO)," the PGIMER statement read.

In July, the family of a 13-year-old girl, who suffered cerebral edema and was subsequently declared brain dead donated her organs to four patients suffering from end-stage organ failure in Chandigarh and Mumbai, the hospital authorities 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.)
Huge crowds of mourners gathered outside as armed forces personnel took the mortal remains of Chief of Defence Staff General and his wife Madhulika Rawat inside the Brar Square crematorium in the Cantonment on Friday.

Along with about 800 service personnel, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh, Law Minister Kiren Rijiju, Ambassador of France to India Emmanuel Lenain and British High Commissioner to India Alex Ellis were also in attendance for the military funeral of India's first Chief of Defence Staff.

People showered flower petals and raised slogans in the general's praise as the gun carriage carrying his mortal remains entered the crematorium.

General Rawat, his wife, and 11 other defence personnel were killed when a Mi17V5 helicopter carrying them crashed near Coonoor in Tamil Nadu on Wednesday.

The final journey of Chief of Defence Staff General Rawat and his wife Madhulika Rawat began from his official residence here amid chants of 'Jab tak suraj chand rahega, Rawat ji ka naam rahega'.

As the first Chief of Defence Staff, General Rawat was tasked to bring in theater command and jointness among the three services, and he was pushing these with a tough approach and specific timelines in the last two years.

Earlier in the day, the mortal remains of General Rawat and his wife were kept at their 3, Kamraj Marg official residence before cremation, to allow people to pay their respects.

Several dignitaries also payed floral tributes and last respects till the funeral procession left.

General Rawat's two daughters performed traditional rituals before the caskets of their parents were moved to the gun carriage.

Home Minister Amit Shah, Security Advisor Ajit Doval and Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, and a host of other dignitaries, among others on Friday laid wreaths on the mortal remains of General Rawat and his wife.

(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 has evacuated 104 people, including 10 Indian nationals, from Kabul in a special charter aircraft on Friday.

External Affairs Ministry Spokesperson Arindam Bagchi said the flight was arranged under India's operation Devi Shakti.

The operation was launched to evacuate Indians from after it fell to the on August 15.

"Under Operation Devi Shakti, a special Kam Air flight arranged by India has arrived in New Delhi from Kabul," Bagchi tweeted.

#WATCH | Union Minister Hardeep Singh Puri and BJP chief JP Nadda carry Guru Granth Sahib which has been brought by Sikh delegation from Kabul, Afghanistan this afternoon. The delegation has brought three Guru Granth Sahib with them. pic.twitter.com/2ckZFRd9oP  ANI (@ANI) December 10, 2021

"It has brought 10 Indians and 94 Afghans including members of the Afghan Hindu-Sikh minority community. Among the evacuees are 9 children, including 3 infants," he said.

The flight is likely to fly back over 90 Afghan nationals stranded in India along with some medical supplies, officials said.

The flight brought three copies of the Guru Granth Sahib and Hindu religious texts from the ancient Asamai Mandir in Kabul.

It is learnt that both the Indian government and the Afghan embassy in Delhi coordinated to arrange for the flight.

Puneet Singh Chandhok, president of Indian World Forum, in a statement earlier, said it's a matter of pride that the "three holy Sri Guru Granth Sahib Ji from historical Gurdwaras in and Hindu religious scriptures, including Ramanaya, Mahabharat and Bhagavad Gita," from the fifth century Asamai Mandir in Kabul are being brought to Delhi.

(Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
on Thursday said its 737 Max plane, which was heading from to Kolkata, returned to Maharashtra's capital city due to a technical issue.

All Max planes were grounded in India by the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) on March 13, 2019, three days after the crash of an Ethiopian Airlines 737 MAX plane near Addis Ababa, which had left 157 people, including four Indians, dead.

After Boeing made necessary software rectifications, the DGCA had on August 26 this year lifted the ban on Max planes' commercial flight operations.

resumed operating its Max planes for commercial flight operations last month.

flight SG- 467 operating Mumbai-Kolkata returned back to after take off due to a technical issue. The aircraft landed safely in Mumbai, a SpiceJet spokesperson said on Thursday.

SpiceJet, the only operator of Max planes in the country, had signed a USD 22 billion deal with Boeing for 205 aircraft in 2017, and has 13 of these planes in its fleet at present.

(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.)
recorded 695 new cases including seven Omicron infections in the last 24 hours, the state health department said on Friday evening.

The tally of Omicron variant infections found in the state thus rose to 17, it said. The state also reported 12 new pandemic-related fatalities since Thursday evening. The overall tally of cases rose to 66,42,372 and death toll to 1,41,223.

On Thursday, had recorded 789 new COVID-19 cases and seven fatalities. The case fatality rate in the state stands at 2.12 per cent. As many as 631 patients were discharged from hospitals, taking the tally of recoveries to 64,90,936.

The recovery rate in the state is 97.72 per cent.

As many as 6,66,39,988 tests have been conducted so far in the state, including 1,22,665 in the last 24 hours. Currently 75,290 people are in home quarantine and 870 are in institutional quarantine. The official release said that as per the latest report from the National Institute of Virology, seven new Omicron cases have been reported in -- three in Mumbai and four in Pimpri Chinchwad Municipal Corporation in Pune district. Due to this, the total of Omicron positive cases in the state increased to 17, it added. The three new patients from Mumbai were all male, aged 48, 25 and 37 years with recent history of travel to Tanzania, UK and South Africa-Nairobi, respectively, the statement said. Four new patients from PCMC limits are contacts of a Nigerian woman who was earlier confirmed as an Omicron case. Of the seven new Omicron patients, four were fully vaccinated and one had received a single dose of the coronavirus vaccine, the release said.

One adult patient was not vaccinated, while another is a three-and-half-year-old child and thus not eligible for inoculation.

Four of the new patients are asymptomatic while three have only mild symptoms, the official release said.

Meanwhile, 11 districts and five civic bodies in Maharashtra did not report any new COVID-19 case in the last 24 hours.

The Mumbai division, which comprises the city and satellite townships, reported 327 cases and five deaths.

The Pune division reported 214 new cases, Nashik division 68, Kolhapur 16, Akola four, Nagpur 10, Latur 33 and the Aurangabad division 23 new cases.

Nagpur and Aurangabad divisions did not report any fatality during the day.

Maharashtra's coronavirus figures are as follows: Positive cases 66,42,372, fresh cases 695, death toll 1,41,223, recoveries 64,90,936, active cases 6,534, total tests 6,66,39,988.

(Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Mumbai: Little has changed for informal, who work in the country's medium and small industries (MSMEs), and were one of the worst affected by the Covid-19 pandemic, according to an IndiaSpend analysis of government support for smaller enterprises and informal workers during the pandemic.

The government's attempt to register informal workers, to make it easier for them to access benefits, has only been partially successful, while programmes for in the state they come from were only pilots and did not help long term, our analysis showed. In addition, criteria for relief packages for the MSME sector excluded over 90% of MSMEs and there were few programmes in urban areas to help migrants returning to work.

MSMEs employ about 111 million workers, most of them informal and many of them migrants. As employment hubs in urban India shut down abruptly with the imposition of a nationwide Covid-19 lockdown in late March 2020, the largely informal workforce lost work overnight, prompting a mass exodus of migrant workers to their villages. About 40 million migrant workers returned home, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) estimated in a September 2020 report.

The reverse migration disrupted labour supply in urban areas, impacting MSMEs' productivity, the RBI said. Production in the sector fell from an average of 75% of capacity to just 13% in May 2020, two months into the lockdown, according to a June 2021 report in the Economic and Political Weekly.

Covid-19's impact on MSMEs

The MSME sector contributes around 30% of the gross value added (a productivity measure of a sector's output). Just 13% of India's 63 million MSMEs were registered by August 2021, thus most workers in the sector are informal labourers, who do not have the employment, job or social security afforded to employees in formal sector enterprises.

About 73% of all rural female workers and 67% of urban female workers in the construction sector and 59% of rural and 51% of urban women workers in manufacturing are migrant workers, said RBI, adding that there are no reliable estimates of migrant workers.

MSMEs also took a bigger hit because the spread of the pandemic was initially in states which house a large proportion of MSMEs, the RBI said. Besides the disruption in labour and material supply, MSMEs also suffered shocks from fall in domestic and external demand.

By June 2020, 35% of MSMEs and 37% of self-employed persons began shutting down operations, the Business Standard reported based on a survey by the All India Manufacturers Organisation. On average, MSMEs retained only 44% of their workforce, and 69% reported an inability to survive longer than three months, when the survey was released in June 2020.

The second Covid-19 wave was another jolt to the MSME sector, which had only just begun to pick up in the aftermath of the first wave. Migrant workers who had started returning to urban employment centres found themselves out of work again, IndiaSpend reported in June 2021.

Government programmes to help MSMEs

In May 2020, the central government announced a number of relief packages under the Atmanirbhar Bharat Abhiyaan (ABA), including support to the MSME sector.

The government said it would provide Rs 3 lakh crore collateral-free loans to assist 4.5 million units (7% of all MSMEs) in increasing operational and production capacity. The government also provided additional support of Rs 4000 crore to the Credit Guarantee Fund Trust for Micro and Small Enterprises, to encourage banks to extend loans to stressed MSMEs.

However, only borrowers with an annual turnover of Rs 100 crore were eligible for these schemes. As many as 99% of MSMEs are micro industries with an annual turnover of less than Rs 5 crore, per MSME ministry data. This means that only 1% of MSME enterprises were eligible for the ABA relief packages.

We reached out to the MSME ministry to ask what assistance had been provided to the 99% of MSMEs that did not qualify for the ABA relief packages. We will update the article when they respond.

States, such as Uttarakhand, launched the Mukhyamantri Swarozgar Yojana (MSY) in May 2020, to disburse loans and grants to the MSME sector, including grants of Rs 25 lakh to the manufacturing sector and Rs 10 lakh in the service sector to aid self-employment to returning migrants. Domicile, however, was one of the key criteria to avail the scheme, deterring returnees.

Various state governments also amended labour laws, some of which was expected to help MSMEs ease constraints and increase production. For instance, Gujarat increased its maximum working hours to 12 hours a day and firms that set up new units in the state were freed from labour laws for 1,200 days, according to an RBI report.

But these alone could not mitigate the impact of the pandemic on MSMEs' production capacity, and thus their ability to absorb labour, given the decline in demand and their large outstanding dues, said the RBI, based partly on a survey it conducted among MSMEs in Tamil Nadu.

Further, there are other bottlenecks for MSME growth, such as infrastructure, logistics and investment into the sector, experts told IndiaSpend in January 2021.

Government aid for migrants

In order to mitigate the livelihood crisis, following the return of migrants to their states, the government launched programmes to absorb this workforce in their source states. For instance, in September 2020, the government expanded the Gram Udyog Vikas Yojana (a programme under the Ministry of MSME to develop village industries) to include agarbatti-making, bee-keeping and pottery, but on a pilot basis.

On August 26, 2021, the central government launched the e-SHRAM portal to register workers in the unorganised sector as a step toward delivery of welfare benefits to them. By November 20, over 84 million workers (22% of the workforce) had been registered, per the e-SHRAM dashboard. But there are hurdles. Workers and activists told IndiaSpend in November 2021 that the mandatory use of Aadhaar, slow server speed, inadequate information on the scheme and social security entitlements are slowing down registrations.

"The process for registration of workers in the e-SHRAM portal in itself is very challenging, and how promised welfare benefits to unorganised sector workers will be delivered is still a question," Bhakti Vardam, a researcher at Aajeevika Bureau's Center for Migration and Labour Solutions, told IndiaSpend.

In addition, marginal self-employed workers, who work in micro-units, especially in the manufacturing sector, and are often migrants themselves, do not meet all the criteria to get subsidised loans. They also do not have the necessary details required to make a company profile such properly written orders, advance work orders from vendors etc. to avail loans.

Urban MSMEs ignored

Nearly 49% of all Indian MSMEs are in urban areas and employ 55% of the MSME workforce, according to 2015-16 data from the Sample Survey.

Some government schemes, such as the Prime Minister's Employment Generation Programme, implemented by the Khadi and Village Industries Commission (KVIC), try to "arrest migration" of youth from rural to urban areas, per the MSME ministry's 2020-2021 annual report.

The majority of migrants are located in the urban periphery, where access to crucial services is limited. Yet, there were very few schemes in destination states for workers to secure employment, or to promote employment through the MSME sector for returning migrants, according to an analysis by India Migration Now.

Instead, schemes, such as Gram Udyog Vikas Yojana try to absorb the returning population and to discourage people from migrating again, even as migration is one of the livelihood strategies of low-income households.

Many migrant workers, who lost work because of the pandemic, took to self employment to sustain their livelihoods. The PM Svanidhi Scheme was launched on June 1, 2020, as a part of Atmanirbhar Bharat, to provide affordable working capital loans up to Rs 10,000 to street vendors to resume their businesses. But only 11% benefitted from the PM Svanidhi Scheme, IndiaSpend reported in September 2021.

Further, the working conditions of migrants within some of the states with major MSME clusters has worsened, Indiaspend reported in November 2020. There have been some programmes to help MSMEs and migrants but there have been no significant structural developments to include migrant workers within the social protection ecosystem, such as through e-Shram.

We have reached out to the ministries of MSME and labour and employment and will update the story when they respond.

The government has ensured portability of benefits from government programmes, such as the public distribution system for foodgrains, even when people change states, but its actual implementation has several issues. For instance, access to the public distribution system across India assumes that people own ration cards and shops have access to technology to check the identity of the person, experts have told IndiaSpend.

Although close to 100% of beneficiaries under the Public Distribution System (PDS) had been identified in most states after the nationwide Covid-19 lockdown in March 2020, just 22,087 of the 189 million transactions between April 2019 and November 2020, were inter-state transactions, according to the Parliamentary Standing Committee Report on Food, Consumer Affairs and Public Distribution. This was because state governments were yet to implement biometric authentication of beneficiaries at the point of sale, among other reasons, according to the committee.

Low MSME registration and access to relief programmes

The MSME ministry's Udyam registration portal, launched in July 2020, had registered 5.91 million MSMEs (or 9% of all MSMEs) by December 8, 2021. Of the registered enterprises, micro enterprises stood at 5.59 million (94.6%), followed by small enterprises at 298,621 (5%) and midsize enterprises at 33,243 (0.5%).

But the registration of an enterprise on this portal does not make it a separate legal entity, as with an incorporated company in the formal sector. While the government has said that registration will entitle establishments to receive benefits, such as the ability to participate in government procurement and access credit, the portal has been described as a compliance and data-gathering exercise.

Further, it is unclear what impact the registration of MSMEs on the Udyam portal will have on informal migrant workers, said Swathi Murali, an assistant vice president at Haqdarshak Solutions, a technology company to enable MSMEs to access government schemes. But formalised businesses may be more accommodating towards the idea of registering their migrant workers, especially if they are able to benefit from the formalisation, such as through Udyam, Murali said, adding that it could act as a soft nudge for companies to register migrant workers.

IndiaSpend reached out to the MSME ministry to ask whether MSME units registered on Udyam are considered a part of the formal economy, and whether all workers in MSMEs registered on Udyam would be protected by labour laws and entitled to benefits. We will update the article when we receive a response.
Mayor Kishori Pednekar on Friday said she had filed a complaint with Byculla police station after receiving a threat letter.

She told reporters that the letter, which was received at her old residence in Dadar, was replete with vulgar language with a threat of killing her family members.

She said the letter mentioned one Vijendra Mhatre, adding that she has written to Home Minister Dilip Walse Patil demanding the arrest of the culprit/s and police protection for her family.

(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.)
Small aircraft are not banned at airport, but the flight timings are being changed due to low visibility conditions in winter. ATR-72s and Bombardier Q-400 aircraft of Alliance Air, IndiGo, and SpiceJet are not certified to operate in extremely low visibility conditions.

We had a meeting with the India Meteorological Department. The issue of fog and low visibility primarily impacts airports in northern India and Bengaluru. To avoid passenger inconvenience, flight schedules will be amended. There is no ban, said a senior official at the Directorate General of Civil Aviation.

Airlines operate turboprop aircraft like ATR-72s or Q-400s from to Jodhpur, Shimla, and Kullu, among others. A source said the timings of such would be changed between 10 am and 9 pm. Currently, around 70 per day are operated by turboprop aircraft in

The schedule change will, however, cause delays, the source said. Almost all of the slots have been assigned to airlines and would have to be squeezed into those hours. This would delay the aircraft's arrival and departures, he said.

Separately, the civil aviation ministry is working to decongest a dozen smaller airports by asking the airlines to reschedule their flights. The decision was taken following complaints of overcrowding at the Jodhpur airport. The smaller airports have infrastructure constraints, such as limited number of parking bays, inadequate terminal capacity, or have watch hour restrictions like limited hours of operation. Bunching flights or delays are resulting in overcrowding of terminals and congestion at these smaller airports. The issue attracted greater attention due to ongoing Covid-19 protocols, forcing the ministry to action.

Now, air traffic movements have been checked hour-wise. It is suggested that some peak hour movements be shifted to non-peak hours at these smaller airports. A source said airlines may not get the desired time slots in the summer schedule at these busy airports as authorities tighten their allocation policies.

Flight approvals are granted after checking the runway and passenger handling capacity at the terminals. But there is a mismatch in some cases. For instance, in Bagdogra, there are four parking bays but the terminal is inadequate to cater to the increase in flights that airlines introduced in the winter schedule. The runway, too, is also being upgraded, reducing the hours of operations.

The decongestion exercise, according to the airlines, will have an impact on their schedules. Each aircraft flies on a select number of routes daily and changing timings would impact aircraft rotations across the network. An executive said that in airports like Goa there is no room to make any changes in the schedule as slots have been given out.

It is unfair to blame airports alone for the congestion. We can understand that flights would occasionally get delayed because of weather or technical reasons, but airlines need to maintain the sanctity of the schedule, an airport director said.

The Airports Authority of India did not respond to an email query on the issue.

Vistara has shifted a few flights operating in the busy or peak time slots to reduce overcrowding. However, rescheduling flights can be complicated, considering the limited aircraft available, said a Vistara spokesperson.

A source said IndiGo, too, had started rescheduling its flights in line with the government directive. Passengers are being informed of the change, he said.
The number of beds available at emergency departments accounted for only 3-5 per cent of total hospital beds in the country, says a report that accessed the prevailing status of 100 emergency and injury care centres in government and private hospital settings.

The report titled 'Emergency and Injury Care at Secondary and Tertiary Level Centres in India', prepared by the Department of Emergency Medicine, AIIMS was submitted to Niti Aayog.

As per the report, most of the lacked presence of general doctors, specialists and nursing staff dedicated for emergency departments vis--vis the average footfall of patients, even though the as such, had sufficient overall numbers of required human resource.

The report assessed the prevailing status of 100 emergency and injury care centres in government and private hospital settings in 28 states and 2 union territories of India, in addition to 34 district

Amongst the critical infra-related quality parameters assessed in the emergency departments (EDs), the following were important deficiencies: absence of point of care lab (73 per cent), demarcated triage area (65 per cent), police control room (56 per cent), separate access for ambulance (55 per cent) and adequate spacing for emergency department (52 per cent).

The report said, emergency and injury cases annually accounted for 9-13 per cent of all patients presenting to a health facility and 19-24 per cent of admissions in and 31-39 per cent admissions in private hospitals.

Emergency care can be defined as the delivery of time-sensitive interventions needed to avert death and disability and for which delays of hours can worsen prognosis or render care less effective.

The report noted that while compliance with availability of overall recommended biomedical equipment and critical equipment were largely found satisfactory at all private hospitals (86-93 per cent) and government medical college hospitals (68 per cent), deficiencies were found largely in smaller (45-60 per cent).

Noting that since it is essential to have the complete list of all recommended emergency medicines 24*7 in the emergency departments, the report said assessment done for this aspect revealed that only 9 per cent of all hospitals fulfilled this criterion.

According to the report, many government medical colleges lacked common HDU (55 per cent), Cardiac ICU (55 per cent) and Neuro ICU (55 per cent).

In addition, they also lacked facilities for Coronary Artery By-pass Graft (55 per cent), Cardiac Cath Labs (30 per cent) and interventional radiology (40 per cent), it said.

The report pointed out that most of the hospitals did not have a dedicated blood bank in the emergency department nor an existing standard protocol for massive blood transfusion.

It also said that the patient disposition time for the sickest group (red zone) was high at government medical colleges (90 minutes) vis--vis private hospitals (15 minutes).

The reasons for this delay amongst others were due to: high patient load, lack of in-house specialists in the ED, need for multiple cross referrals, with an overarching lack of a dedicated department for emergency services, it added.

While 91 per cent of hospitals had in-house ambulances, the report said trained paramedics needed to assist ambulance services were present only in 34 per cent.

The report pointed out that only 19 per cent hospitals had a mobile stroke/ STEMI (for heart attack) program, with only 4 per cent having a mobile stroke unit.

Specifically, equipment deficiencies pertained largely to the category of pediatric-care (75 per cent), equipment pertaining to Airway, breathing, circulation and general categories had deficiencies pertaining to a few sets of specific equipment (10-72 per cent), it said.

Violence between relatives of the care-seekers and health care providers were noticed by 22-47 per cent of hospitals, with higher representations from government hospitals, the report 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 will visit Uttar Pradesh's Balrampur district on Saturday and inaugurate the Saryu Nahar Project which will provide assured water for irrigation of over 14 lakh hectares of land and benefit about 29 lakh farmers of the region, his office said.

The Prime Minister's Office (PMO) said the project has been built at a total cost of over Rs 9,800 crore, out of which more than Rs 4,600 crore was provisioned in the last four years.

The project also involves interlinking of five rivers -- Ghaghara, Saryu, Rapti, Banganga and Rohini -- to ensure optimum usage of water resources of the region.

Prime Minister Modi will visit Balrampur, and inaugurate the Saryu Nahar Project on December 11 at around 1 PM, the PMO said in a statement on Friday.

The work on the project started in 1978 but due to lack of continuity of budgetary support, interdepartmental coordination and adequate monitoring, it got delayed and was not completed even after nearly four decades, it said.

The prime minister's vision for farmer welfare and empowerment, and his commitment to prioritise long pending projects of importance, brought much needed focus on the project, the statement said.

Consequently in 2016, the project was brought under Pradhan Mantri Krishi Sinchayee Yojana with the target to complete it in a time-bound manner, the PMO said.

In this endeavour, innovative solutions were found for new land acquisition to construct new canals and fill the critical gaps in the project, and also for resolving the pending litigation related to the previous land acquisitions, it said.

The renewed focus has resulted in the project being completed in only about four years.

The project will provide assured water for irrigation of over 14 lakh hectares of land and benefit about 29 lakh farmers of more than 6,200 villages, the PMO said.

It will benefit nine districts of Eastern Uttar Pradesh, namely Bahraich, Shravasti, Balrampur, Gonda, Siddharthnagar, Basti, Sant Kabir Nagar, Gorakhpur and Maharajganj, the statement said.

The farmers of the region, who were the worst sufferers of the inordinate delay in the project, will now immensely benefit from the upgraded irrigation potential, it said.

They will now be able to grow crops on a larger scale and maximise the agri-potential of the region, it added.

(Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Three passengers, including a British national of Goan-origin, who arrived at the international airport near here on a flight from the United Kingdom on early Friday, tested positive for COVID-19, state Health Minister Vishwajit Rane said. Rane said the three passengers have been shifted to an isolation facility in South Goa, while all other travellers on the flight who tested negative will be kept in strict home quarantine for eight days before undergoing another test at the end of it. The health minister tweeted, This is with reference to flight AI 146 that arrived from the UK today morning. 237 travellers tested on arrival. 3 patients (passengers) have been tested positive. The UK is among a group of countries placed in 'at-risk' category by the central government in view of the recent detection of the Omicron variant of Passengers from these countries have to follow additional COVID-19 testing and quarantine measures. All other negative travellers will be kept in strict home quarantine and will be retested on day 8 or earlier if symptomatic. According to the Government of India Guidelines/Protocols, necessary directions have been issued to DHS (Directorate of Health Services) in this regard, Rane said in another tweet. Earlier in the day, the minister said a 41-year-old British national of Goan-origin tested positive for COVID-19 on arrival from the UK. Rane tweeted, A 41-year-old British national of Goan origin tested positive today morning at the airport. The patient has been isolated at PHC-Cansaulim. Health authorities have isolated the man, whose test at the airport in Dabolim returned positive for COVID-19, at a government-run healthcare facility in Cansaulim. Airport officials said the passenger was on-board the 98th Vande Bharat Mission (VBM) flight that arrived at the Goa airport during the wee hours. Details about the other two passengers who have tested positive for were not available. The Goa airport tweeted, Goa Airport has ramped up the infrastructure reqd for post arrival testing of Int'l arriving passengers. Sufficient Registration counters, swab collection centres, waiting area are provided for smooth management, safety and convenience of pax. In another tweet, it said, 98th in the series of VBM flight arrived from London-Heathrow today early morning at Goa International Airport. Arriving passengers undergoing thermal screening and completing mandatory formalities upon arrival. The VBM is a central government initiative to bring back Indians stranded abroad due to the pandemic and the resultant travel curbs. Authorities in Goa have already isolated five crew members of a merchant navy ship who had tested positive for COVID-19. Their swab samples have been sent to the Pune-based National Institute of Virology for genome sequencing and reports are awaited.

(Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The Health Department has made Covid vaccination mandatory for students above 18 years of age to attend college classes, Health Minister Ma Subramanian said on Friday.

Addressing media persons after attending a high-level meeting of educationists here, he said that the Secretary, Higher Education will write letters to all the educational institutions directing them to make it mandatory for students above 18 years of age to get at least one dose of the vaccine administered to them.

He said that only 46 per cent of engineering students above 18 years have taken the first dose of vaccine and only 12 per cent of the students have taken both the doses of vaccine.

Subramanian said that college administrators should verify the student list and ensure that 100 per cent double doses have been administered.

There have been reports of a higher possibility and risk of spread of infection in college canteens and dining area of the educational institutions.

The Minister also said that student get-togethers and functions must not be held without prior permission from the Health Department. He also said that students must bring in food in disposable containers and be sent to canteens in batches.

With the Omicron variant creating problems in several countries, the Centre has directed all the state governments to be focus on vaccination drives.

--IANS

aal/vd

(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.)
Telcos and satellite communication players are eyeing for a share of the Rs 58,764 crore war chest available through the Universal Service Obligation fund. More on that story in our morning headlines. Keep hands off USO fund, it's our money: Telecom firms to satellite players

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In a speech on Wednesday, Mukesh Ambani, chairman of Reliance Industries, urged the government for the first time to use the USO fund to subsidise smart phones for select target groups. Read more

Surging prices threaten to scupper India's coming-of-age gas party

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Star Health: First major IPO after Paytm's debut to test India's markets

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The wife and brother-in-law of an NRI man, who had been found infected with the Omicron variant of COVID-19 here in Gujarat a week back, were also detected with the new strain, officials of the Jamnagar Municipal Corporation (JMC) said on Friday.



With this, the total number of confirmed Omicron cases in India are 25.

Gujarat now has three patients of Omicron, classified as a 'variant of concern' by the WHO after it was detected in Africa last month. Genome sequencing of swab samples at the Gujarat Biotechnology Research Centre (GBRC) in Gandhinagar has established that both the COVID-19 patients were also infected with the Omicron variant, the officials said.



Gujarat | In Jamnagar, 2 people, who came in contact with #Omicron infected person, tested positive for COVID. Their samples were sent for testing. Tests revealed that they both had Omicron. All 3 are stable, asymptomatic & in hospital: Vijaykumar Kharadi, Municipal Commissioner pic.twitter.com/blrRlMRBSF  ANI (@ANI) December 10, 2021

They were shifted to a special Omicron Ward created in the state-run Guru Gobind Singh Government Hospital in the city, said a release by the JMC. On December 4, genome sequencing of swab sample had established that the 72-year-old NRI man, who arrived here from Zimbabwe, one of the countries categorized as "at-risk" by the central government, had contracted the Omicron variant of COVID-19.The next day, the NRI man's wife, who came with him from Zimbabwe, and his brother-in-law, who lives in Jamnagar, tested positive for the Their swab samples were sent to GBRC to find out whether they were infected with the Omicron variant, said the release. Genomic sequencing is a process to decode genes in SARS-CoV-2, which causes COVID-19, to help scientists find which variant might be present in swab samples.Notably, no other family members or school students who used to visit the house of the NRI man's brother-in-law for tuitions, tested positive for during contact tracing and testing exercise.As a precautionary measure, the municipal corporation had declared the residential society, where the NRI's family resides, a micro-containment zone and restricted the movement of people there by putting barricades. As directed, officials had also conducted an exercise of administering COVID-19 vaccines to people in the area who have not taken the first or second dose till date, the release said.

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A woman, who returned from the UK, tested positive for COVID-19 here on Friday, a senior official of the West Bengal Health Department said on Friday.

The required specimens were collected and sent for genome sequencing to ascertain whether she had contracted the new omicron variant, which has been classified as a highly transmissible virus of concern, he said.

"A patient from the is found positive for COVID-19. She was initially sent to the Beliaghata IDBG Hospital Later she chose to get admitted at a private hospital for institutional quarantine, the official said.

Her condition is stable, he added.

Top officials of the health ministry had on Thursday informed a parliamentary panel that there are 23 cases of the omicron variant across the country, and authorities are closely monitoring the situation.

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About 7,16,662 workers came back from six under the Mission, the Centre said on Friday, asserting that the Indian missions are pursuing with these nations the return of Indian workers, the realisation of payments due to them and new recruitment in the light of economic recovery.

To a question in Lok Sabha on whether a large number of emigrants employed in were forced to return to India in the aftermath of COVID-19 pandemic, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar said that while a large number of in the Gulf returned to India as a result of the impact of COVID-19, the economic recovery in that region and their increasing openness to travel from India has now seen a return by many of them.

"As per government's estimates, about 7,16,662 workers returned from the six under the Mission," Jaishankar said in a written reply.

A total of 3,30,058 returned from the UAE, 1,37,900 from Saudi Arabia, 97,802 from Kuwait, 72,259 from Oman, 51,190 from Qatar and 27,453 from Bahrain, he said.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Indian missions and posts proactively extended support to Indians both directly using the Indian Community Welfare Fund and by coordinating with community associations, Jaishankar said.

This included expenses on a needs basis pertaining to boarding and lodging, air passages, emergency medical care, etc., he said.

The minister said that the robust framework established by the government, especially since 2014, was extremely useful in meeting the emergency needs that arose during the pandemic.

Apart from the liberalisation of the usage of Indian Community Welfare Fund, the role of the Pravasi Bhartiya Sahayata Kendras, Mission/Post helplines, shelter homes, etc. were notable in this regard, he said.

Jaishankar said it was the government's priority to ensure during the pandemic that its impact on in terms of loss of employment was mitigated.

"To that end, the Ministry and all our Missions in the Gulf were continuously engaged with the Governments of the Gulf nations to maintain the workers, ensure their welfare and facilitate financial payments due to them," he said.

As the pandemic has receded in recent months, this focus has shifted to pressing for the return of workers and families on an expeditious basis, the minister said.

To that end, all Gulf nations were pressed to establish air bubbles and ease visa, travel and health restrictions, he said, adding that all the Gulf countries have responded favourably to these efforts by the government as a result of which, there has been a steady flow of returnees.

The government will continue to make this its priority in engagement with the Gulf nations, Jaishankar said.

During 2020-21, the government has received many representations from different quarters, including the state of Kerala, regarding the welfare and livelihood of Indian workers in the Gulf, he said.

"These issues have been taken up by the government with its Gulf counterparts at the highest levels. Since March 2020, Prime Minister has had telephonic conversations with Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi (March, May 2020 & January 2021), King of Saudi Arabia (twice in September 2020) and Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia (March 2020 & March 2021), Amir of Qatar (March, May, December 2020 & April 2021), Sultan of Oman (April 2020 & February 2021), King of Bahrain (April 2020) and Amir of Kuwait (April 2020)," he pointed out.

"Embassies are continuing to pursue with the Governments in the Gulf the return of Indian workers, the realization of payments due to them, new recruitment in the light of economic recovery, and other welfare measures as appropriate," Jaishankar said.

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Union Civil Aviation Minister on Friday said rapid efforts are on to turn India into a global hub of

As part of efforts to achieve this goal, a 'drone mela' is being organised in each state of the country, with one of them being held in Gwalior in Madhya Pradesh on Saturday, he told reporters.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi believes the country should be a leader in the new technology and to this end drone melas are being organised in each state. Such events were held in Gujarat and Uttarakhand. In tomorrow's mela (in Gwalior), software, hardware and technology related to drones will be displayed." he said.

Rapid efforts are on to turn India into a global hub of drone technology, he added.

The mela is being held at Madhav Institute of Technology and Science here by the Civil and the Federation of Indian Chamber of Commerce and Industry (FICCI), with MP Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan, Union Agriculture Minister Narendra Singh Tomar and others scheduled to attend, officials said.

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To achieve the goal of a $1-trillion economy by 2030, the government is now looking to tap investments from Tamil communities abroad--including top business honchos, Tamil diaspora, welfare associations and trade bodies.

The list of Tamil-origin people who made their mark in the global corporate arena includes the likes of Sunder Pichai of Google, former Pepsico chief Indra Nooyi and Novartis chief executive officer Vasant Narasimhan. The government has set up a separate advisory committee chaired by industries minister Thangam Thennarasu.

The state is also planning to come out with a separate platform for interaction with the global Tamil community and to address their investment-related queries. It will also appoint investment ambassadors in various countries, address the issues of non-resident Tamilians, handhold investors and hold an annual cultural event.

"We already had an introductory meeting on Thursday. From $300 billion to $1 trillion we need a growth rate of around 15 per cent (per annum). We have to focus on creating 3,000 to 4,000 start-ups so that Tamil Nadu, which has about 150 major brands, becomes home to 300 more brands in the next ten years," said Suresh Sambandam, chief executive officer of SaaS major KissFlow, who is a member of the advisory panel.

Other members include R Rangaswami, founder and chairman of the board of Indiaspora (a network of global Indian-origin leaders), Bala Swaminathan, president of Bala Family Foundation and secretary, Elanchezhian Loganathan, Chief Executive Officer of Yaal Exports; Ganesh Radhakrishnan, Chief Executive Officer, Wharfedale Technologies; Saravanan M Sinapan, president of DHRRA, Malaysia; M. Arumugam, Chief Executive Officer of Broadline Computer Systems and R M Arun, president, SICCI Tamil Nadu, are part of the panel.
Union Minister for on Friday said will be developed as a 'Special Zone'(SEZ) to groom students as global citizens.

The minister made the remark while addressing the closing ceremony of Maharana Pratap Shiksha Parishad's (MPSP) 89th Foundation Week here.

Gorakhpur, developed as a knowledge city' through three functional and one under-construction university, will be made a 'Special Zone' (SEZ) on the lines of 'Special Economic Zone' as per the Prime Minister's intention and requirement of the new National Education Policy, he said.

The idea behind the SEZ is to groom students as global citizens and to address the problems of the world through academic pursuits," said the minister who was invited as a chief guest.

Pradhan said MPSP and its students will help achieve the city this target.

He said the new Education Policy has been designed in line with strategic changes in global scenario, and aims to make India number one country in the world and its children "global citizens".

Pradhan also praised Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath and termed him an epitome of successful leadership.

"His leadership is never bothered about the issues but always looks at the solutions. Under his leadership, eastern has got the gift of a fertilizer plant," he said.

Appreciating the Gorakshpeeth for the work done by it in the field of service and religion, Pradhan said, Gorakshpeeth steps up and awakens the society whenever it faces serious issues.

Yogi Adityanath, also present on the occasion, said social revolution is not possible without education.

When Mahant Digvijay Nath laid the foundation of MPSP in 1932, he must be having similar thoughts, he said.

Yogi said his religion is not limited to the way of worship but extends to overall philosophy of religion.

The idea of religious places shouldn't be limited to worship but should be extended to leadership. MPSP is named after Maharana Pratap who symbolises sacrifice and valour, he said.

On the occasion, tributes were paid to the soldiers, including Chief of Defence Staff Bipin Rawat, his wife Madhulika Rawat, and Wing Commander Prithvi Singh Chauhan, who lost their lives in a helicopter crash in Coonoor in Tamil Nadu on Wednesday.

Prayers were also offered for the speedy recovery of the lone survivor, Deoria resident Group Captain Varun Singh.

Last year General Rawat was the chief guest of the opening ceremony of MPSP Foundation Week celebrations.

He was an example of an excellent and dedicated soldier. His statement on December 7 shows his farsightedness in which he expressed his apprehensions over Bio war and chemical war, Yogi said in his tribute to Rawat.

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State Bank of India (SBI) has raised about Rs 3,974-crore capital through additional tier 1 bonds (AT1 bonds). The coupon for the was fixed at 7.55 per cent, cheaper by 17-basis points over the last issuance in September 2021.

Bond dealers said the response to SBIs offering was good. While the indicative size was Rs 4,000 crore, the issue received bids over Rs 6,000 crore. It opted for Rs 3,974 crore with a coupon of 7.55 per cent.

In September 2021, the bank had issued for Rs 4,000 crore at 7.72 per cent. There have been rating upgrades for in the third quarter, helping it to raise funds at cheaper rates (lower coupon rate) in fresh issues of bonds, dealers said.

There is increasing interest in the instruments (AT1 bonds) of public sector as the bad loan situation has become better, recoveries have improved and prospects of further stress look less.

In November 2021, Canara Bank raised Rs 1,500 crore through ATI bonds. The bank received a total bid amount of Rs 4,699 crore, out of which issuance of Rs 1,500 crore was accepted at a coupon rate of 8.05 per cent.

Union Bank is likely to hit the market next week with AT1 bond issue of Rs 1,500 crore.

AT1 bonds are perpetual debt instruments that are allowed to raise under the Basel III capital framework. They form a part of tier I capital for SBIs capital adequacy ratio (CAR) stood at 13.35 per cent with tier 1 of 11.02 per cent at the end of September 2021.

CRISIL Ratings has assigned AA+/Stable rating to SBIs Rs 4,000 crore tier-I bonds (under Basel III).

The ratings continue to centrally factor in the dominant market position of the group in the Indian banking industry, its strong resource profile and adequate capitalisation. These bonds would replace SBIs existing AT1 instruments, which are maturing over the period.

The ratings also factor in the continued strong support that the bank is likely to receive from its majority owner, Government of India, both on an ongoing basis and in the event of distress. These strengths are partially offset by the modest asset quality of the group.

Under the Reserve Bank of Indias regulatory norms for AT 1 bonds, the issuing bank has full discretion over coupon payments at all times on these instruments. Therefore, a bank may not pay a coupon if it does not have sufficient distributable reserves to service the coupon on AT 1 bonds.
has shut one of its retail stores in Texas in the US after at least four of its staff members were found Covid-19 positive, the media reported.

According to NBC News, the store in Southlake, Texas, was closed Wednesday through Sunday following an outbreak of positive Covid cases among staff members.

"The store, which has 151 employees, reported four positive cases immediately after Black Friday on November 26," according to an internal email obtained by NBC.

Now, 22 employees "have shared that they're positive for Covid-19," a store manager told staff during a meeting, the report said late on Thursday.

All employees will be required to take a rapid antigen test on Sunday before the store's scheduled reopening on Monday.

NBC spoke with four current and former employees at the Southlake store who said "they've received calls from their manager encouraging them to come to work, even when they called out sick. In two of these cases, the employee had taken the Covid-19 survey and the results said not to come in."

An spokesperson was quoted as saying that the company has prioritised the health and well-being of customers and employees since the early days of the pandemic.

"As we continue to face these ongoing challenges, we remain committed to a comprehensive approach for our teams that combines regular testing with daily health checks, employee masking, deep cleaning and paid sick leave," the spokesperson added.

Apple reopened all of its 270 retail stores in the US last year. It was on March 13, 2020 when Apple closed all of its retail stores outside of Greater China.

The tech giant has set February 1, 2022, as the return date to office for its employees worldwide, as the tech giant prepares for a hybrid workplace in 2022.

Apple had earlier delayed return to office until at least January 2022, as the US witnessed a surge in cases of the Delta variant of Covid-19.

--IANS

na/dpb

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Fortescue Metals Group Ltd said on Friday Elizabeth Gaines will step down as chief executive as the miner extends its transition from a pure play iron ore producer to a and resources firm.

Gaines, who oversaw a tripling in the share price of the world's fourth-biggest iron ore miner in the last four years, will remain on Fortescue's board as a non-executive director and assist in the search for the new CEO.

The move comes as Fortescue's chairman and Australia's richest man, Andrew Forrest, pushes to turn the company into the world's biggest group, with a focus on hydrogen at its green power arm, Fortescue Future Industries (FFI).

Forrest hailed Gaines, a former travel industry executive who joined the company in 2013 and also served as its chief financial officer, as one of Australia's "truly inspiring leaders". The company said she had chosen to assist with the selection of a new CEO with the full support of the board.

It did not set a timeline for the change over.

Fortescue has begun a worldwide search to identify its next chief executive and other leaders with "global experience across heavy industry, manufacturing, and renewable energy," it said in a statement.

Its shares slipped as much as 1.8% and traded 0.6% lower in a broadly weaker market by 1249 GMT, as investors mulled how the transition would fit into the company's strategy.

"Management churn at Fortescue has been an ongoing concern in the market, including risk to CEO tenure in the wake of Elizabeth Gaines selling the majority of her Fortescue shares in September," Credit Suisse analyst Saul Kavonic said.

Fortescue lost its chief operating officer Greg Lilleyman, a highly respected executive in the iron ore industry, and two other senior leaders following a review earlier this year of cost blowouts at its Iron Bridge magnetite project.

Kavonic had flagged the risk of Gaines potentially quitting in a September note after she sold around 65% of her shares, excluding performance rights.

Analysts also pointed to some disenchantment at Fortescue after long-term incentives were cut.

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French President and Germany's new Chancellor Olaf Scholz played down differences on Friday over reform of EU budget rules and the place of nuclear in green investment financing, pledging to keep the Franco-German axis strong

The trip to meet Macron in Paris was Scholz's first foreign visit since he became German leader on Wednesday, ending 16 years of rule by Angela Merkel. Diplomats say the change presents Macron with an opportunity to seize a more senior role in the Franco-German relationship.

"During the last four years I have worked with Angela Merkel on all these subjects ... I know that we will continue together, dear Olaf, this close collaboration," Macron told Scholz at a joint news conference.

The more reserved Scholz, whose three-party coalition has pledged to further strengthen European integration, said they had talked about how to work together to make Europe stronger.

Arriving at the Elysee palace, the new chancellor was greeted with a fistbump by Macron, who then accompanied him up the steps, patting him on the back.

The French president had developed a friendly relationship with Merkel, who broke with German tradition by backing unprecedented joint European Union efforts to raise debt during the COVID-19 pandemic. But the two remained at odds over some key issues, including Germany's gas imports from Russia, defence, and relationships with big political and economic competitors including China.

The size of Germany's economy, the biggest in the 27-nation EU, gives any German chancellor outsized influence. But Macron, who said Merkel had "taught much" to the "impetuous president" he was at the start, will try to use France's six-month presidency of the EU, which starts on Jan. 1, to advance his priorities while Scholz is finding his feet.

With fiscal discipline often a point of dispute between Paris and Berlin, and Macron seeking Germany's support for his plans to overhaul EU budget rules, Scholz - formerly Merkel's finance minister - was cautious on Friday.

"AMBITIOUS"

"I am confident that we can solve the problems ahead of us together and that we can continue to enable the growth that we fostered with the recovery fund - and that at the same time we can ensure solid finances," he said, referring to the 750 billion euros the EU will use to support the pandemic recovery.

"It is possible to achieve both at the same time - they are not opposites. We have promised to use the flexibility that the (EU's) Stability and Growth Pact offers." While the two leaders were united in offering verbal support to Ukraine over Russia's troop build-up, other point of divergence emerged, including on nuclear energy.

Macron wants to build new nuclear reactors in France, while Germany's plans to phase them out are well established. The new German coalition agreement makes no mention of the issue, however, which Paris believes leaves room for compromise.

Asked on Friday about differences between and over whether nuclear power should be labelled sustainable, which wants, Scholz skirted the question.

"It is very clear that each country pursues its own strategy to fight man-made climate change. What unites us is that we recognise that responsibility and are ambitious," he said.

" has decided that it will bank on an expansion of renewable energy."

French diplomats appear optimistic about the outlook for ties with under Scholz, citing "strategic sovereignty" in the coalition deal that took him to power, which they say echoes Macron's push for European "strategic autonomy".
The numbers and rapid deployment of Chinese maritime vessels have "radically changed the peacetime balance of forces in the South China Sea".

According to a new report by the Washington-based Center for Strategic and Studies (CSIS) hundreds of Chinese maritime militia vessels are operating in contested areas of the poses a significant challenge to "maritime order rooted in law."

Citing Radio Free Asia, India-Pacific Defense Forum reported that for years the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has been funding the expansion of the maritime vessels to assert its claims in the

In its report published in November 2021, "Pulling Back the Curtain on China's Maritime Militia," CSIS provided a comprehensive profile of a force that it said has been operating alongside Chinese law enforcement and military to achieve Chinese political objectives in disputed waters.

This is known as "grey-zone tactics" when unconventional forces and methods are used to pursue strategic interests while trying to avoid the possibility of a conflict.

The report said that the creation in recent years of Chinese outposts with large port facilities led to a sharp increase in the number of maritime militia vessels sailing to the disputed Spratly Islands.

"The big picture is that there have been about 300 maritime militia vessels deployed in large groups around the Spratly Islands since August 2018, relying on China's artificial islands for logistics support but no longer cloistering themselves within those harbours," the report alleged.

The report said that the vessels are funded by the Chinese government through subsidies "that incentivize local actors to construct vessels in accordance with military specifications and to operate them."

The authors concluded that "the majority of Chinese fishing vessels in disputed areas of the do not operate as independent commercial actors but instead as paid agents of the Chinese government obligated to help fulfil its political and national security objectives."

Additionally, the report provided a list of 112 Chinese militia vessels allegedly active in the South China Sea, and 52 more ships "likely to be militia."

Radio Free Asia has previously used Chinese corporate records, bidding documents and Chinese state media to determine that numerous "fishermen" are Chinese militiamen responsible for guarding CCP outposts.

The report also said since completing the construction of its artificial island outposts in the Spratly Islands in 2016, the CCP has shifted its focus toward asserting control over peacetime activities across the South China Sea, and the maritime militia is a key component of this shift.

Since then, militia boats have been deployed regularly and in great numbers to disputed waters in the Spratlys. A recent large-scale deployment was in March 2021, when about 200 suspected militia boats gathered near the Whitsun Reef in Union Banks, leading to a diplomatic rift between China and the Philippines.

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President expressed alarm at a backward slide of democracy around the globe on Thursday, calling on fellow world leaders to work with him to bolster democratic institutions as his administration grows increasingly concerned about China's and Russia's push for global influence.

Biden's comments to more than 100 leaders at the White House's first virtual Summit for Democracy came as they pointed to a host of challenges confronting democracies, including corruption, inequality, and limitations on press freedom.

The leaders also expressed increasing worry about the perils of disinformation and strengthening autocracies.

Will we allow the backward slide of rights and democracy to continue unchecked? Biden asked. Or will we together -- together -- have a vision ... and courage to once more lead the march of human progress and human freedom forward?



He didn't mention either or Russia by name. But he has repeatedly made a case that the U.S. and like-minded allies need to show the world that democracies are a far better vehicle for societies than autocracies. It is a central tenet of Biden's foreign policy outlook one that he vowed would be more outward looking than his predecessor Trump's America First approach.

Biden underscored that even long-established democracies, like the United States, haven't been immune to the strains, and he called the moment an inflection point in history.

Local elected officials are resigning at an alarming rate amid confrontations with angry voices at school board meetings, elections offices and town halls. States are passing laws to limit access to the ballot, making it more difficult for Americans to vote.

And the Jan. 6 attack at the Capitol has left many in Donald Trump's Republican Party clinging to his false claims of a stolen election, eroding trust in the accuracy of the vote.

Here in the United States we know as well as anyone that renewing our democracy and strengthening our democratic institutions requires constant effort, Biden said..

Beyond rhetoric, the president announced he was launching an initiative to spend up to USD 424 million for programming around the world that supports independent media, anti-corruption work and more.

Thursday's video gathering drew backlash from the United States' chief adversaries and other nations that were not invited.

The ambassadors to the U.S. from and Russia wrote a joint essay describing the Biden administration as exhibiting a Cold-War mentality that will stoke up ideological confrontation and a rift in the world.

The administration also faced scrutiny over how it went about deciding which countries to invite. and Russia were among those that did not receive invitations.

Other leaders at the summit delivered their own remarks on the state of democracy many prerecorded often reflecting on the stress that rapidly evolving technology is having on their nations. They also bemoaned the increase of disinformation campaigns aimed at undermining institutions and elections.

The democratic conversation is changing, said Denmark's Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen. New technologies and large tech companies are increasingly setting the stage for the democratic dialogue, sometimes with more emphasis on reach than on freedom of speech.

The summit comes as Biden is pressing Russia's Vladimir Putin to step back after a massive buildup of troops on the Ukraine border that has created growing concern in Washington and European capitals as well as Ukraine itself. Biden on Wednesday said that he warned Putin of severe consequences if Russia invaded.

Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who took part in Thursday's summit and later spoke by phone with Biden, said on Twitter, Democracy is not a given, it must be fought for."



Poland's Andrzej Duda spoke out against Russia in his address, decrying Moscow and its support of Belarus.

Poland and Western allies have accused Russian ally Belarus of using migrants as pawns to destabilise the European Union in retaliation for its sanctions on his authoritarian regime. Hundreds of migrants, mostly from the Middle East, have flocked to the Belarus-Poland border.

Poland took on a commitment to be a support for democracy in Eastern Europe, Duda said. It is a beautiful task, but it has its consequences. It has made us the target of the Kremlin propaganda.

Putin made no public comment on the summit Thursday as he took part in his own video call with members of the Kremlin council for human rights.

Biden has said passage of his ambitious domestic agenda at home the USD 1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill he signed into law, as well as the roughly USD 2 trillion Build Back Better Act of social and climate change initiatives moving through the Senate will demonstrate how democracy can improve people's lives.

Some advocates also want Biden to focus more on shoring up democracy at home. One early test came Thursday as the House approved the Protecting Our Democracy Act, the third in a trio of bills alongside the Freedom to Vote Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Act largely backed by Democrats. All three are expected to be stalled by Republicans in the Senate.

Here in the United States, we know that our democracy is not immune from threats," Vice President Kamala Harris said in remarks to close out the first day of the summit. Jan. 6 looms large in our collective conscience, and the anti-voter laws that many states have passed are part of an intentional effort to exclude Americans from participating in our democracy.

The Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance, said in its annual report that the number of countries experiencing democratic backsliding has never been as high as the past decade, with the U.S. added to the list along with India and Brazil.

Chinese officials have offered a stream of public criticism about the summit. They have also expressed outrage over the administration inviting Taiwan to take part. China claims the self-governing island as part of its territory and objects to it having contacts on its own with foreign governments.

Pakistan's Prime Minister Imran Khan declined to attend the conference. In a statement issued ahead of the meeting, the foreign ministry said, "We value our partnership with the U.S., which we wish to expand both bilaterally as well as in terms of regional and cooperation.

Yet Pakistan's relationship with the U.S. has been fraught with suspicion on both sides. Islamabad has balked at Washington's often-stated criticism that Pakistan has not been a reliable partner in the war on terror, accusing it of harbouring the Taliban even as that group fought a U.S.-led coalition.

Pakistan says it has lost 70,000 people to the war on terror since 2001 and is ready to be a partner in peace but not in war.

Other uninvited countries have shown their displeasure.

Hungary, the only European Union member not invited, tried unsuccessfully to block the EU Commission's president from speaking on behalf of the bloc at the summit. Last year, Biden referred to Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban as a thug.

Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto dismissed the summit as a domestic political-type of event where countries whose leaders had a good relationship with Trump were not invited.

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The head of President Joe Bidens security detail is retiring and taking a job with Citadel, billionaire Ken Griffins

David Cho has been with the Secret Service for more than 25 years and is the first Korean American to become special agent in charge of the services Presidential Protective Division. Hell start at $43 billion Citadel on Jan. 3 as deputy head of security, according to a spokesman for the firm.

Cho declined to comment. Spokespeople for the White House and the service also declined to comment.

A person familiar with the matter said that Chos deputy, Darryl Volpicelli, will likely replace Cho as special agent in charge of Bidens protective detail, though another person said the decision hasnt yet been made.

The Secret Service is part of the Department of Homeland Security, and in 2019 Cho received the departments Exceptional Service Gold Medal for his role in negotiations with North Korean leaders for then-President Donald Trumps brief visit to that country.
Surging interest in vaping among young New Zealanders may undermine a government crackdown on the tobacco industry and its aim to get people to kick the habit, healthcare and anti-tobacco experts said on Friday.

New Zealand plans to ban young people from ever buying in their lifetime in one of the world's toughest crackdowns on the tobacco industry, arguing that other efforts to stamp out were taking too long.

The new regulations, however, do not cover vaping, which it said was much less harmful than and can help some people to quit "It's fantastic having a generation that is smoke free but there is some concern around the messaging of using vaping to quit smoking, and that vaping is less harmful or without harm," said Letitia Harding, chief executive of the Asthma and Respiratory Foundation (ARFNZ), which campaigns on behalf of people with asthma and other respiratory conditions.

Vaping involves heating a liquid that contains nicotine in what is called an e-cigarette and turning it into a vapour that users inhale. Its long-term health impacts are largely unknown.

A nationwide survey of 19,000 secondary school students last month showed that more than quarter regularly vaped, while about 15% reported smoking regular, combustible

The findings showed a marked increase in vaping over the past two years ago. The survey by ARFNZ and the Secondary Principals Association of NZ, an independent organisation representing head teachers, found young people are picking up high nicotine vapes without ever having smoked a cigarette, and quickly becoming addicted to nicotine.

"We absolutely have a problem of vaping and in 15 years we'll be trying to get these youth out of vapes," Harding said. New Zealand was late in regulating vaping and is still relatively liberal, allowing up to 60 milligrams of nicotine per millimetre of liquid compared with the EU which has a 20 milligram cap.

Australia said in October that people would no longer be able to buy nicotine vaping products without a prescription. "Ultimately, tobacco is one of the deadliest substances that people can take and vapes do not have the harms associated with them, and that's why we're taking a risk-proportionate approach to these choices," Associate Health Minister Ayesha Verrall said on Thursday while announcing the smoking ban.

Vaping demand

Only some 11.6% of New Zealanders over the age of 15 smoke but a falling smoking rate has been closely linked with a rising vaping rate, with about 600 approved vaping retailers to meet the demand.

The World Health Organization said in July that the tobacco industry's sleek marketing is attracting youngsters to e-cigarettes, which can lead to tobacco addiction.

Large Tobacco firms were quick to switch to e-cigarettes that offer different flavours and create designs targeting a new generation of users. Marlboro cigarette maker Philip Morris now sells IQOS, a device that heats up but does not burn packages of ground-up tobacco, to create a nicotine-filled aerosol similar to that produced by e-cigarettes.

British American Tobacco sells e-cigarettes under the Vuse brand, while Imperial Brands markets Blu e-cigarettes. Vaping can be effective for adults who want to quit but it is being targeted at young people, said Associate Professor Collin Tukuitonga, at the Faculty of Medical and Health Sciences, University of Auckland.

"It's inevitable that people pick up vaping because access to tobacco is becoming really difficult. So there needs to be a planned and considered social media campaign on dangers of vaping," he said.
has issued a navigational warning for ships off the east coast next week over its routine naval firing drills, officials said on Friday.

The Korea Hydrographic and Oceanographic Agency issued the warning earlier this week as the Joint Chiefs of Staff has a plan for "regular maritime firing drills" in waters south of Ulleung Island in the East Sea from Monday through Friday, according to the agency officials.

The agency said it informed Japan of the updated navigational warning on Thursday, reports Yonhap News Agency.

Ulleung Island is located northwest of South Korea's easternmost islets of Dokdo.

has been in effective control of the islets of Dokdo, with a small police detachment, since its liberation from Japanese colonial rule in 1945. Still, Japan repeatedly claims sovereignty to the rocky outcroppings.

Dokdo has long been a thorn in relations between the two countries, as demonstrated in the Japanese Vice Foreign Minister's abrupt boycott of a joint press conference in Washington D.C. last month with his South Korean and American counterparts in protest over a rare visit to Dokdo by South Korea's police chief.

Formally, South Korea's military authorities have not announced any schedule for next week's exercise near Dokdo.

A Navy official neither confirmed nor denied the report of the navigational warning, dismissing a view linking it with any drill to "defend" Dokdo.

In June, the Navy staged a regular Dokdo defence exercise along with the Coast Guard.

Keen attention is being paid to whether the top South Korean and Japanese diplomats will hold separate bilateral talks or a trilateral meeting involving their US counterpart during their visit to the British city of Liverpool this weekend for the G7 foreign ministerial talks.

--IANS

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(Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
has lost Nicaragua as a diplomatic ally after the Central American country said it would officially recognise only China, which claims self-ruled as part of its territory.

The Nicaraguan government issued a statement Thursday announcing the change and Taiwan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs confirmed the news Friday morning.

The Government of the Republic of Nicaragua declares that it recognizes that... in the world there is only one The People's Republic of is the only legitimate government that represents all China, and is an inalienable part of the Chinese territory, the Nicaraguan statement read.

Taiwan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs expressed sadness and regret and said it would immediately recall its diplomatic staff. The move leaves Taiwan with 14 countries globally that recognise it.

The Nicaraguan government is meeting with the Chinese government in the northern city of Tianjin in on Friday, according to state broadcaster CCTV.

China has been poaching Taiwan's diplomatic allies over the past few years, cutting down on the number of countries that recognise the island as a sovereign nation. China views Taiwan as a part of its territory and is against Taiwan representing itself in global forums or in diplomacy.

The democratic island is self-governed but has little diplomatic recognition on the stage.

(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.)
Former President Donald Trump lashed out with profanity at for congratulating President on his victory in last year's election, an Israeli newspaper reported Friday.

Trump accused the former Israeli leader of disloyalty, saying he had helped Netanyahu in his own elections by reversing decades of US policy and supporting Israel's claims to territory seized in war.

Trump is still falsely claiming the US election was stolen from him.

In interviews earlier this year with the Israeli journalist Barak Ravid, Trump expressed fury at a video Netanyahu circulated online in which he congratulated Biden.

Nobody did more for Bibi. And I liked Bibi. I still like Bibi, Trump said, referring to Netanyahu by his nickname, in the remarks published by the Yediot Aharonot newspaper.

But I also like loyalty... Bibi could have stayed quiet. He has made a terrible mistake.

Netanyahu congratulated Biden more than 12 hours after the election had been called and after most other world leaders.

Netanyahu did not refer to him as president-elect in the tweet, and followed it up with a post praising Trump.

Trump appeared to be particularly incensed by a video released by Netanyahu on Jan. 20, the day Biden was inaugurated, in which Netanyahu said he and Biden had a warm personal friendship going back many decades.

I haven't spoken to him since, Trump was quoted as saying.

Netanyahu was replaced as prime minister last summer after he was unable to form a governing majority in the wake of four hard-fought elections in less than two years.

The Trump administration took unprecedented steps to support Israel, including dropping objections to its settlements in the occupied West Bank and recognizing Jerusalem as its capital.

After proposing a Mideast plan that was adamantly rejected by the Palestinians, the administration brokered normalization agreements between Israel and four Arab states.

Trump said his decision to recognize Israel's annexation of the Golan Heights, which it captured from Syria in the 1967 war, helped Netanyahu ahead of Israeli elections in April 2019.

I did it right before the election, which helped him (Netanyahu) a lot," Trump said.

The Trump administration also withdrew from the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, to which Israel had been strongly opposed.

After he re-imposed US sanctions that had been lifted under the deal, Iran began publicly exceeding the limits it had set on its nuclear programme. Biden is now working with world powers to try to restore the agreement.

I'll tell you what had I not come along I think Israel was going to be destroyed," Trump said.

"I think Israel would have been destroyed maybe by now.

(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-General announced the appointment Friday of Catherine Russell, an assistant to US President Joe Biden, as the next head of the UN children's agency

Russell also heads the White House Office of Presidential Personnel and served as the State Department's ambassador-at-large for global women's issues from 2013 to 2017.

She will succeed Henrietta Fore, who resigned in July because of a family health issue. She is married and has four children.

UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric announced the secretary-general's appointment of Russell following consultations with UNICEF's executive board.

He said Guterres wanted to express appreciation to Fore for her inspiring leadership of and in particular, UNICEF's critical role in the global response to COVID-19 and in reimagining education.

As a result of her leadership, he said, now has a broader array of public and private sector partnerships and a bolder focus on achieving UN development goals for 2030.

In a statement, Biden called Russell a trusted and indispensable adviser to him and to his wife, Jill, for nearly 30 years, praising her leadership, experience, wisdom and empathy.

Our loss is UNICEF's gain because children around the world will lead richer, safer, and healthier lives as a direct result of Cathy's leadership in this new role, Biden said.

Russell, a lawyer, has worked in Democratic politics since the mid-1980s. She worked on Capitol Hill and at the White House and State Department during the eight years that Barack Obama was president and Biden was vice president. She is married to Tom Donilon, the former national security adviser to Obama.

The United States is the largest funder of UNICEF and the job has traditionally gone to an American.

UNICEF works in over 190 countries and territories with the goal of saving children's lives, defending their rights and helping them fulfil their potential, from early childhood through adolescence.

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U.S. officials are considering discussing a Defense Department proposal this month to close regulatory loopholes that have allowed Chinese chipmaker SMIC to buy critical U.S. technology, the Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday.

Some Commerce Department officials are trying to block the Defense Department's proposal, the Journal added, citing people familiar with the matter.

Semiconductor Manufacturing Corp (SMIC) was added to a U.S. blacklist last year that denies it access to advanced manufacturing equipment from U.S. suppliers due to its alleged ties to China's military, claims that the company rejects.

SMIC, China's largest contract chipmaker, did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the report.

In the coming months, U.S. officials are also considering adding more Chinese technology companies to the Commerce Department's entity list and to the Treasury list banning U.S. investment, the Journal added.

On Wednesday, the U.S. House of Representatives passed legislation to ban imports from China's Xinjiang region over concerns about forced labor.

(Reporting by Radhika Anilkumar in Bengaluru; Editing by Devika Syamnath)

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
While small countries are often perceived as major havens for hiding or laundering money, enormous amounts of illicit funds end up in the US financial system, Treasury Secretary said.

Theres a good argument that, right now, the best place to hide and launder ill-gotten gains is actually the United States, Yellen said in a speech to the Summit on Democracy.

Switzerland or the Cayman Islands have long been the focuses of regulators looking to find hidden cash. But Yellen challenged the view that the proceeds of corruption or illegal activity are sent only to those countries with histories of loose and secretive financial laws, saying they are instead likely to pass through  or land  in our markets.



She noted that some US states allow for the creation of shell firms without disclosing who really owns them.
The U.S. Senate on Thursday passed and sent to President the first of two bills needed to raise the federal government's $28.9 trillion debt limit and avert an unprecedented default.

The Senate voted 59-35 for the measure, with 10 Republicans, including Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, backing the bill, which allows an upcoming vote on raising the debt ceiling to pass the chamber with a simple majority. McConnell said earlier this week that he believed the procedure was in the best interests of the country because it avoids default.

The Democratic-led House of Representatives approved the legislation on Wednesday night by 222-212, with only one Republican backing it.

Biden is expected to promptly sign the unusual procedural measure that paves the way for the second bill, which would actually increase government borrowing authority, to pass in coming days.

"I want to be clear, this is about paying debt accumulated by both parties. So I'm pleased we were able to facilitate a process with the supportive members from both parties that avoids needless and catastrophic default," the chamber's top Democrat, Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, said in a speech after the vote on the measure, which he had negotiated with McConnell.

"This was a bipartisan process, and I hope there can be more and I want to thank Leader McConnell for working with us in good faith to get to this point," Schumer said.

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has urged Congress to raise the limit before next Wednesday and Congress now appears to be on track to achieve that.

Final votes on the second, debt-limit implementing bill are expected in the Senate and House by Tuesday.

Republicans have been maneuvering for months to try to force Democrats to raise the debt limit on their own, seeking to link the move to Biden's proposed $1.75 trillion "Build Back Better" domestic spending bill.

Democrats note that the legislation is needed to finance substantial debt incurred during Donald Trump's administration, when Republicans willingly jacked up Washington's credit card bill by about $7.85 trillion, partly through sweeping tax cuts and spending to fight the COVID-19 pandemic.

Still to come in the prolonged legislative battle is a disclosure of the actual dollar amount for the new cap on Treasury's borrowing, which is expected to cover Washington's expenses through the 2022 midterm elections that will determine control of Congress.

'RIGHT THING TO DO'

Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski, who is up for re-election in Alaska next year, told reporters that she voted earlier with 13 other Republicans to advance the first bill because "it was the right thing to do."

She added that at a time when Russia is amassing troops on its border with Ukraine, "we don't need to be sending signals anywhere in the world that we're not going to back the full faith and credit in the United States."

Some Republicans, including Senator Shelley Moore Capito, said they were backing the measure because it included provisions to avoid cuts otherwise set to take place next year in the Medicare healthcare program for the elderly.

But Republican Senator Mike Rounds said he voted no because "they (Democrats) have been spending money on a partisan basis without input from Republicans. So they have the obligation to increase the debt ceiling at this point." The break in the legislative deadlock came just two months after Congress agreed on a short-term lift to the debt ceiling, to avert an unprecedented default by the federal government on its obligations, which would have dire implications for the world economy.

In recent years, lawmakers have squirmed over raising the statutory limit on the country's growing debt, fearing voter backlash.

The emergence in 2010 of the conservative, small-government "Tea Party" movement increased the rancor in Congress over such legislation, even as lawmakers voted for tax cuts and spending increases that contribute to the debt.

(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.)
Talks aimed at reaching common ground on the Iranian nuclear situation held in are underway and this is the seventh round of negotiations on the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) currently being negotiated by EU officials and China, France, Germany, Russia, the US and Iran.

The goal of the JCPOA is to restore the 2015 nuclear agreement, which the US withdrew from in 2018 under the administration of former President Donald Trump, unilaterally re-imposing sanctions on Iran, reports Xinhua news agency.

Tehran has retaliated by gradually stopping implementing elements of the deal since May 2019.

Deputy Secretary-General of the European External Action Service Enrique Mora, who chaired Thursday's talks, told reporters later that all parties are "very committed" to "bringing the JCPOA back to life".

A working group on nuclear issues will continue on Friday.

Discussions were difficult due to the parties' different positions, Mora said, but: "We are not starting from scratch. We are starting from very solid work, done over a number of weeks by all the delegations." He emphasized the need to be "extremely realistic about what we can get."

Mikhail Ulyanov, Russia's permanent representative to organisations in Vienna, said on Twitter that Thursday's meeting was "rather short and constructive".

Parties were in agreement over the need to finalize the talks swiftly, he added.

The seventh round of talks started on November 29, lasting for five days, during which Iran submitted draft proposals for a restored 2015 nuclear agreement.

However, senior diplomats from the UK, France and Germany on December 3 voiced "disappointment and concern after thoroughly and carefully analysing Iranian proposed changes to the text negotiated during the previous six rounds".

--IANS

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(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.)
Russian President on Thursday brushed aside complaints about prosecutors' move to close one of the country's most prominent human rights groups, claiming that it listed Nazi collaborators among the victims of Soviet-era repression.

During a video call with members of the Kremlin human rights council, Putin responded to their complaints by asserting that the Memorial group had listed people involved in the killings of Jews during World War II alongside victims of Soviet repression. He didn't elaborate.

Memorial should have conformed to the humane goals it has declared as the core of its activities and it shouldn't have done things that I mentioned," Putin said, according to Russian news reports.

There was no immediate comment from Memorial, an rights group that rose to prominence for its studies of political repression in the Soviet Union and currently encompasses more than 50 smaller groups in Russia and abroad.

Last month, Russia's Supreme Court began proceedings on a request by prosecutors to revoke the legal status of Memorial. The prosecutors alleged that Memorial repeatedly violated regulations obligating it to mark itself as a foreign agent and tried to conceal the designation. Memorial and its supporters have described the accusations as politically driven.

The foreign agent tag that Memorial received in 2016 implies additional government scrutiny and carries strong pejorative connotations. Russian authorities have used the label to tag scores of independent media and nongovernmental organizations that were critical of the Kremlin.

Memorial said it will appeal the ruling if the court decides to shut it down, and will continue operating.

(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.)
Young South Koreans suffered more severe employment shock than older people since the Covid-19 pandemic broke out in March 2020 and fresh college and high school graduates faced greater difficulty in finding jobs, a report revealed on Friday.

The employment rate for Koreans aged 15-34 reached 50.5 per cent in January, down from 52.8 per cent a year earlier, according to the report by the Statistics Korea Institute.

The corresponding rate for people aged 35-64 came to 71.2 per cent in January, down from 73.6 per cent the previous year, Yonhap News Agency quoted the report as saying.

In particular, those who graduated from college or high schools less than a year ago had more difficulty in finding jobs.

Among them, the employment rate for men who graduated from college or university reported a 12.1 percentage point on-year fall in August and September last year when the country was gripped by the second wave of the pandemic.

For women who graduated from high schools less than a year earlier, the employment rate fell 14.4 percentage points on-year in March and April 2020 and 14.9 percentage points in October and November 2020 from the previous year.

--IANS

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(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.)
Star Health and Allied Insurance Company (Star Health) made a weak stock market debut with its equity shares getting listed at Rs 845, a 6 per cent discount to its issue price of Rs 900 per share on the National Stock Exchange (NSE). On the BSE, the stock opened at Rs 848.80, the exchange data shows. Ace investor Rakesh Jhunjhunwala is a promoter of Star Health, which is India's first and largest private standalone health insurance company.

At 10:01 am, the stock was trading at Rs 875.20, after hitting a high of Rs 899 on the BSE in the intra-day trade. On the downside, it hit a low of Rs 827.50 intra-day. On the NSE, the stock hit a high of Rs 895 and a low of Rs 828. A combined 2.6 million shares had changed hands on the NSE and BSE till the time of writing of this report.

Star Health, the largest private-sector health insurance company, got poor response due to expensive valuations, dent in profitability due to Covid-19 and fragile sentiments post a weak listing of Paytm. "The listing was expected to be on a poor note; however, the long-term outlook for the industry and is promising. Therefore, we can expect buying interest at lower levels," said Aayush Agrawal, senior Research Analyst - Merchant Banking at Swastika Investmart.

Star Health's Rs 7,250-crore initial public offering (IPO)  the third largest this year and eighth largest ever  had just about managed to sail through despite a poor response from investors, garnering just 79 per cent subscription.

The retail investor quota in the IPO was subscribed 110 per cent. The qualified Institutional Buyers (QIB) portion just about managed to reach the full-subscription mark of 1.03 times. The high networth individual (HNI) portion and employee quota remained undersubscribed at 19 per cent and 10 per cent, respectively.

"Expensive valuations and dent in profitability due to Covid19 were the key concerns for investors. However, the long-term outlook for the company is bullish, thanks to the strong brand name and low penetration of health insurance in India. Investors who applied for this IPO for listing gain can exit, while long-term investors should hold. Investors can wait for some time before comitting fresh money," said Parth Nyati, Founder, Tradingo.

Star Healthcare is the largest retail health insurer in India with a market share of 31 per cent. In the overall health segment, it has a market share of 16 per cent. In the past five years, it has witnessed a gross premium CAGR of 33 per cent and we expect a CAGR of 26 per cent over the next three years, Motilal Oswal Financial Services said in company update.

The industry is highly underpenetrated with 3 per cent of the population covered under retail health scheme. Furthermore, COVID 19 has created a pull for demand for health insurance products. We expect the momentum in demand to sustain over a longer period of time (18-20 per cent CAGR), the brokerage firm said.
Shares of Hindustan Construction Company (HCC) hit an over three-year high of Rs 17.82, up 14 per cent on the BSE in Fridays intra-day trade. The stock of construction & engineering company was trading at its highest level since May 2018. In the past 14 trading days, it zoomed 88 per cent from Rs 9.47 on November 22, 2021.

At 02:27 pm; HCC traded 12 per cent higher at Rs 17.56, as compared to 0.28 per cent decline in the S&P BSE Sensex. A combined 52.65 million equity shares changed hands on the NSE and BSE. The stock had hit a record high of Rs 125 on January 2, 2008.

Order wins



On November 15, 2021, HCC had announced that the company in consortium with KEC International Limited (KEC), has been awarded Rs 1,309 crore contract by Chennai Metro Rail Limited for the construction of 11.61 km elevated viaduct section and eleven elevated stations on Corridor 5 of phase II of the Chennai Metro. This was the second order secured by the HCC-KEC Consortium for Chennai Metro. HCC's share in the JV stands at 51 per cent (i.e. Rs 668 crore), the company said.

Currently, HCC is executing a section of Mumbai Metro Line Ill, one package of Delhi Metro, two contracts for Pune Metro, one package of Bangalore Metro Rail Project and one package of Chennai Metro.

Earlier, HCC had been associated with six segments of the Delhi Metro, totalling 18.14 km of tunnels and 13 underground stations. In Kolkata Metro, HCC has constructed 6.47 km tunnels in six segments that include four underground stations. In Mumbai Metro I, the company has built eight elevated stations, the company said.

HCC has executed a majority of India's landmark infrastructure projects, having constructed 27 per cent of India's Hydro Power generation and 60 per cent of India's Nuclear Power generation capacities, over 3,960 lane km of Expressways and Highways, more than 360 km of complex Tunnelling and 383 Bridges.
The plaintive strains of bugles sounding the last post broke through the hush, men in uniform clicked their heels and a 17-gun salute rang out as Gen and his wife were cremated on Friday evening  the sun setting on a day written into India's military history and on the life of its most senior military officer.

India's first and his wife Madhulika Rawat were given a send-off with full military honours at the Brar Square crematorium in Delhi Cantonment, two days after they were killed with 11 others, all from the armed forces, in a helicopter crash in Coonoor, Tamil Nadu.

As millions watched on television and hundreds packed into Brar Square, the couple's two daughters Tarini and Kritika conducted the last rites of their parents taken away from them so brutally.

On a day of barely held back tears framed by the solemnity of the formal pageantry of a tri-services ceremony, thoughts were also with the families of those whose last rites could not take place because their bodies are at the Army Base Hospital awaiting identification.





The mortal remains of General at Brar Square cremation ground in New Delhi (Photo: PTI)

Only three of the 13 bodies have been identified so far. Earlier in the morning, Brigadier L S Lidder, who was also on the Russian made Mi17V5 chopper and was defence assistant to the CDS, was cremated with honours at Brar Square. Underscoring the enormity of the tragedy that had befallen the armed forces  and India  the evening was for the Rawats' last rites. About 800 service personnel were in attendance for the military funeral of their CDS.

Defence Minister Rajnath Singh, Law Minister Kiren Rijiju as well as politicians, diplomats and others paid their last respects to Madhulika Rawat and 63-year-old Bipin Rawat, who was tasked to bring in theatre command and jointness among the three services and was pushing it with a tough approach and specific timelines.

As a priest chanted Sanskrit shlokas, the 17-gun salute rang out in accordance with protocol and the twin pyres were lit.

#WATCH | Delhi: #CDSGeneralBipinRawat laid to final rest with full military honours, 17-gun salute. His last rites were performed along with his wife Madhulika Rawat, who too lost her life in #TamilNaduChopperCrash.



Their daughters Kritika and Tarini performed their last rites. pic.twitter.com/uTECZlIhI0  ANI (@ANI) December 10, 2021

Outside the Brar Square, where the funerals were conducted with military precision, huge crowds of mourners gathered to say their goodbyes. People showered flower petals and as the flower-bedecked gun carriage carrying the late general's mortal remains, wrapped in the tricolour, entered the crematorium, the only sounds that could be heard were slogans and chants in praise of him.

The final journey of CDS Rawat and his wife began from his official Kamraj Marg residence amid chants of "Jab tak suraj chand rahega, Rawat ji ka naam rahega".

As the cortege wound its way through the streets of Lutyen's Delhi towards Brar Square, about 10 km away, surging crowds jogged alongside. It was a sea of people, some holding the tricolour aloft and others their mobile phones to capture the moment.

At one point, a man in a white kurta pyjama was seen running along the biers trying to take a selfie. Slogans of Vande Mataram, Gen Rawat Amar Rahe and Bharat Mata ki Jai could be heard too.

Military personnel drawn from all the three services marched on the streets as drummers played along in tribute to India's first CDS.

At several points through the journey, mourners stood with flowers in their hands to offer in tribute. And at some points, groups of people could be seen exchanging places with those who were accompanying the funeral procession on foot.

At the Rawat home in the morning, Union Home Minister Amit Shah, Security Advisor Ajit Doval, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi and Chief Justice of India N V Ramana the host of people, including seers, who laid wreaths on the mortal remains of Gen Rawat and his wife. Among them were some who belonged to Uttarakhand, the general's home state.





Photo: PTI

"After the cremation today at Delhi Cantonment's crematorium, we will be taking his 'asthi' (ashes) to Haridwar tomorrow," the Rawats' younger daughter Tarini told PTI.

The sisters, who stood in sombre silence next to the mortal remains of their father and mother as the large number of visitors streamed in, performed traditional rituals at their home before the funeral procession began around 2.20 pm.

Jaipur-based Vijay Rawat, 60, Gen Rawat's younger brother was there too.

"I had spoken to him before he went to Tamil Nadu to attend the function at Wellington. Had never thought fate would take him away from us," he said.

The Lidder family also spoke briefly of their grief.

Geetika Lidder, wife of Brig Lidder, 52, told reporters after the cremation that she feels more pain than any pride.

"Life is too long to spend but if this is the wish of God, we will live with it. This is not the way we wanted him back It is a big loss," she added.

Her daughter Aashna Lidder said she is 17 and will keep all the good memories of the 17 years she spent with her father.

"I am happy he did not have to suffer. It is a loss. My father was a hero," she said, adding that her father was a happy-go-lucky person and her best friend.

Gen Rawat, the country's first tri-services chief who would have completed two years at the end of this month in the new post after serving as the Army chief, was on his way to Wellington when the crash took place on a hilly, wooded area near Coonoor.

The lone survivor was Group Captain Varun Singh, who is undergoing treatment in Bengaluru.

Besides Gen Rawat and his wife and Brig Lidder, the others who were killed were Lieutenant Colonel Harjinder Singh, Wing Commander PS Chauhan, Squadron Leader K Singh, Naik Gursewak Singh, Naik Jitender Kumar, Lance Naik Vivek, Lance Naik B S Teja, Havaldar Satpal, JWO Das and JWO Pradeep.

(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 (local time) attended the closed-door session of the first Summit for Democracy. As a special gesture, PM Modi was invited to participate in the main Leaders' Plenary Session hosted by US President

This closed-door session saw interventions from 12 select countries, including At President Biden's invitation. The second Leaders' Plenary Session was hosted by the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen.

PM Modi will deliver India's national statement today. This will be open to the public.

According to sources, at the closed-door session, PM Modi said that the democratic spirit, including respect for rule of law and pluralistic ethos, is ingrained in Indians. The Indian Diaspora carries it too, thereby contributing to the economic well-being and social harmony of their adopted homes.

PM Modi emphasized the need for democratic countries to deliver on values enshrined in their Constitutions. He also outlined sensitivity, accountability, participation and reform orientation as four pillars of Indian democratic governance.

He stressed that principles of democracy should also guide global governance; and that given technology's ability to impact democracy positively or negatively, technology companies should contribute to preserving open and democratic societies.

As the world's largest democracy, has commended this innovative initiative. has always stood ready to share its experiences with fellow democracies.

Earlier today, PM Modi said through a tweet, "Happy to have participated in the Summit for Democracy at the invitation of President Biden. As the world's largest democracy, India stands ready to work with our partners to strengthen democratic values globally, including in multilateral fora."

Biden on Thursday kicked off the first-ever Summit for Democracy. Besides PM Modi, around 80 world leaders attended the opening remarks virtually.

The summit focuses on challenges and opportunities facing democracies and will provide a platform for leaders to announce both individual and collective commitments, reforms, and initiatives to defend democracy and human rights at home and abroad.

China was not invited to the summit while Pakistan had declined the invite.

(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 Mainland China share market finished session lower on Friday, 10 December 2021, as investors locked in gains from their strong rally after weaker than expected November money and credit data and uncertainty in the country's property sector after Evergrande and Kaisa Group Holdings officially defaulted on their dollar debt.

At close of trade, the benchmark Shanghai Composite Index declined 0.18%, or 6.69 points, to 3,666.35. The Shenzhen Composite Index, which tracks stocks on China's second exchange, added 0.14%, or 3.49 points, to 2,546.65. The blue-chip CSI300 index was down 0.46%, or 23.57 points, to 5,055.12.

CURRENCY NEWS: China's yuan was down against the U.

S. dollar on Friday after weaker mid-point fixing by the central bank. Prior to market opening, the People's Bank of China (PBOC) set the midpoint rate CNY=PBOC at 6.3702 yuan per dollar, 204 pips softer than the previous fix of 6.3498. In the spot market, the onshore yuan CNY=CFXS was changing hands at 6.3695 at late afternoon, 4 pips weaker than the previous late session close.

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The 15-month old farm agitation came to an end on Thursday. The government has also agreed to form a committee to ensure that farmers benefit from the minimum support price (MSP) across the country. As our editorial notes, the government would be well advised to engage with farmers from across the country to find feasible ways to increase farm incomes.

After the reversal of the farm laws, increasing the ambit of MSP could permanently damage the prospects of reform in the agriculture sector and must be avoided. Read here

In other views:

On present evidence, it does not appear likely that a return to a high growth path will happen on account of market forces alone. A big push from public investment is required, writes T T Ram Mohan here.

The abysmal global co-operation failure to provide sufficient and equitable vaccines during the recent pandemic and the successful multilateral effort to combat and overcome demonstrate the importance of reclaiming multilateral action and initiative, writes Rathin Roy here.
firms should contribute to preserving democratic societies as has the ability to impact democracy "positively or negatively", Prime Minister said on Thursday at a virtual summit hosted by US President Joe Biden.

Biden hosted the summit for democracy and representatives from over a hundred countries are attending it.

In his address, Modi also outlined sensitivity, accountability, participation and reform orientation as four pillars of Indian democratic governance, sources said.

He also stressed that principles of democracy should also guide global governance and highlighted India's civilisational ethos as one of the original sources of democracy, they said.

The prime minister said that the democratic spirit, including respect for rule of law and pluralistic ethos, is ingrained in Indians, the sources said.

The Indian diaspora carries it too, thereby contributing to the economic well-being and social harmony of their adopted homes, they said.

In his remarks, Modi recalled that exactly on this date 75 years ago, India's Constituent Assembly had held its first session.

The prime minister emphasised the need for democratic countries to deliver on values enshrined in their constitutions, the sources said.

"He stressed that principles of democracy should also guide global governance; and that given technology's ability to impact democracy positively or negatively, companies should contribute to preserving open and democratic societies," said a source.

As a special gesture, Modi was invited to participate in the main 'Leaders' Plenary Session' hosted by President Biden. This closed-door session saw interventions from 12 select countries, including India.

On Friday, Modi will deliver India's statement. This will be open to the public.

(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.)
Asserting that protecting democratic norms and values is the challenge of the current times, US President Joe Biden, in a virtual address to world leaders on Thursday, announced an ambitious Presidential Initiative for Democratic Renewal, under which his administration is planning to provide up to USD 424.4 million on a global democratic renewal strategy.

An initiative of Biden, the summit hosted by the White House was attended by leaders from more than 80 countries, including India.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi is scheduled to address the virtual summit on Friday.

In the face of sustained and alarming challenges to democracy, universal human rights and all around the world, democracy needs champions and I wanted to host this summit because here in the United States, we know, as well as anyone, that renewing our democracy and strengthening our democratic institutions requires constant effort, Biden said in his opening remarks to the first Summit for Democracy.

Sharing his thoughts on the challenges being faced by democracy, Biden said by outside pressure from autocrats, they seek to advance their own power, export and expand their influence around the world, and justify the repressive policies and practices as a more efficient way to address today's challenges.

That's how it's shown. By voices that seek to fan the flames of social division and political polarisation, and perhaps most importantly and most worrying of all, by increasing the dissatisfaction of people all around the world with democratic governments that they feel are failing to deliver for their needs.

In my view, this is the defining challenge of our time. Democracy: government of the people, by the people, for the people can at times be fragile, but it also is inherently resilient. It's capable of self-correction and it's capable of self-improvement. And yes, democracy is hard. We all know that, the US president said.

It works best with consensus and cooperation, Biden said.

When people and parties might have opposing views, sit down and find ways to work together, things begin to work. But it's the best way to unleash human potential and defend human dignity and solve big problems. And it's up to us to prove that. Democracies are not all the same. We don't agree on everything, all of us in this meeting today, he said.

Biden told the world leaders that the US is going to lead by example, investing in its own democratic, supporting its partners around the world at the same time.

From the earliest days of my administration, we pursued a broad-based agenda to prove that American democracy can still do big things and take on challenges that matter most, he said.

Announcing the launch of the presidential initiative for democratic renewal, he said this will focus efforts across diplomacy and foreign assistance programmes, to bolster democratic resilience and human rights.

Globally, working with our Congress, we're planning to commit as much as USD 224 million in the next year to shore up transparent and accountable governance, including supporting media freedom, fighting corruption, standing with democratic reformers, promoting technology that advances democracy, and defending what a fair election is, he said.

Biden said that free and independent media is the bedrock of democracy.

It is how the public stays informed and how governments are held accountable. And around the world, press freedom is under threat.

So, we're committing critical seed money to launch a new multilateral effort or Fund for Public Interest Media to sustain independent media around the world, he said.

The fund for democratic renewal and the partnership for our democracy programme is going to allow the State Department and the USAID to surge funds to support our partners working on democratic front lines around the world. My fellow leaders, members of civil society, activists, advocates, citizens, we stand at an inflection point in our history, in my view, Biden added.

He vowed to spend USD 424 million on a global democratic renewal strategy that includes bolstering media freedom, fighting corruption, enlisting technology and defending free and fair elections.

(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.)
Your Majesties, Your Royal Highnesses, Distinguished Members of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, Your Excellencies, Distinguished Guests

I stand before you, a representative of every journalist around the world who is forced to sacrifice so much to hold the line, to stay true to our values and mission: to bring you the truth and hold power to account. I remember the brutal dismemberment of Jamal Khashoggi, the assassination of Daphne Caruana Galizia in Malta, Luz Mely Reyes in Venezuela, Roman Protasevich in Belarus (whose plane was literally hijacked so he could be arrested), Jimmy Lai languishing in a Hong Kong prison, Sonny Swe, who after getting out of more than 7 years in jail started another news group  now forced to flee Myanmar. And in my own country, 23-year-old Frenchie Mae Cumpio, still in prison after nearly 2 years, and just 36 hours ago the news that my former colleague, Jess Malabanan, was shot dead.

There are so many to thank for helping keep us safer and working. The #HoldTheLine Coalition of more than 80 global groups defending press freedom, and the human rights groups that help us shine the light. There are costs for you as well: in the Philippines, more lawyers have been killed  at least 63 compared to the 22 journalists murdered after President Rodrigo Duterte took office in 2016. Since then, Karapatan, a member of our #CourageON human rights coalition, has had 16 people killed, and Sen. Leila de Lima  because she demanded accountability, is serving her 5th year in jail. Or ABS-CBN, our largest broadcaster, a news room I once led, which, last year, lost its franchise to operate.

I helped create a startup, Rappler, turning 10 years old in January  our attempt to put together two sides of a coin that shows everything wrong with our world today: an absence of law and democratic vision for the 21st century. That coin represents our information ecosystem, which determines everything else about our world. Journalists, the old gatekeepers, are one side of the coin. The other is technology, with its god-like power that has allowed a virus of lies to infect each of us, pitting us against each other, bringing out our fears, anger and hate, and setting the stage for the rise of authoritarians and dictators around the world.

Our greatest need today is to transform that hate and violence, the toxic sludge thats coursing through our information ecosystem, prioritised by American internet companies that make more money by spreading that hate and triggering the worst in us well, that just means we have to work much harder. (hold up t-shirt) In order to be the good, we have to BElieve THEre is GOOD in the world.

The last time a working journalist was given this award was in 1936, and Carl von Ossietzky never made it to Oslo because he languished in a Nazi concentration camp. So were hopefully a step ahead because were actually here!

By giving this to journalists today, the Nobel committee is signalling a similar historical moment, another existential point for Dmitry and I are lucky because we can speak to you now, but there are so many more journalists persecuted in the shadows with neither exposure nor support, and governments are doubling down with impunity. The accelerant is technology, at a time when creative destruction takes new meaning.

We are standing on the rubble of the world that was, and we must have the foresight and courage to imagine what might happen if we dont act now, and instead, create the world as it should be  more compassionate, more equal, more sustainable.

To do that, please ask yourself the same question my team and I had to confront 5 years ago: what are you willing to sacrifice for the Truth?
Dubai [UAE], December 10 (ANI/NewsVoir): The India Pavilion at EXPO2020 Dubai has achieved another milestone by recording half a million visitors' mark since its inauguration on October 1, 2021 by Piyush Goyal, Minister of Commerce and Industry, Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution and Textiles.

In his tweet message on this landmark achievement, Goyal said, "(https://twitter.com/hashtag/IndiaAtDubaiExpo?src=hashtag_click) #IndiaAtDubaiExpo stands tall, showcasing our capabilities in achieving ambitious goals for global good, which reflects India's Partnerships, Pride & its People." (https://twitter.com/PiyushGoyal/status/1469215867867000834?s=20).

Talking about the success of the India Pavilion, Sunjay Sudhir, Ambassador of India to the UAE said, "India is honoured to participate in Dubai EXPO - a global platform where different nations have congregated to showcase their business potential and cultural heritage. As India is an important and growing investment destination, EXPO2020 Dubai has given us a unique opportunity to network with global stakeholders and secure investments for our country."

He added, "We are delighted to see the response from the visitors who wish to immerse themselves in Modern India's confluence of opportunities and potential. The visitors have participated enthusiastically and have rejoiced in the festivities at the India Pavilion. We will ensure that the momentum is sustained, and our visitors get to experience the real essence of India as we move ahead in our journey at the Expo."

The India Pavilion has hosted various meetings and events pertaining to investments across focus sectors and states along with cultural events for the visitors since inauguration. Besides showcasing India as an attractive investment destination on an international platform, the Expo has been pivotal in strengthening the bilateral trade relations with the UAE and cultural ties between India and the rest of the world.

The India Pavilion has been recognized as one of the most iconic pavilions at the Expo by American Institute of Architects and is one of the most visited pavilions at the EXPO2020 Dubai. The Pavilion has played a key role in showcasing the Indian start-up ecosystem amongst global audience through the Innovation Hub bus.

Among the states, Gujarat, Telangana, Karnataka, Rajasthan, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh and UT of Ladakh have already showcased their business potential and have secured investment opportunities in key sectors. The Pavilion has also promoted India's key sectors such as New and Renewable Energy, Space, Urban and Rural Development, Oil & Gas and Textile during their respective weeks.

Leading voices from the government and industry including Hardeep Singh Puri, Union Minister for Petroleum and Natural Gas & Minister for Housing and Urban Affairs, Government of India, Dr S Jaishankar, Minister of External Affairs, Government of India, Darshana V Jardosh, Minister of State for Textile & Railways, Government of India, Shanti Kumar Dhariwal, Minister for Urban Development & Housing, Government of Rajasthan, Subhash Desai, Minister of Industries, Government of Maharashtra, Aditi Tatkare, Minister of State for Industries and Tourism, Government of Maharashtra and Dr K. Sivan, Chairman, Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) & Secretary Department of Space have been a part of the sessions at the India Pavilion.

The India Pavilion has hosted several cultural activities during Dusshera and Navratri celebrations. These included folk dances, storytelling and music for countless visitors and dignitaries. It hosted Diwali Week from November 2-5 which was celebrated with great enthusiasm. The festival of Diwali was celebrated with colourful installations and lighting in the form of Swarangoli or LED Rangoli, virtual display of firecrackers and events including performances by leading Indian artists like Salim-Sulaiman, Vipul Mehta and bands like Rooh and Dhruv.

The upcoming weeks at the India Pavilion will witness participation from other states such as Uttar Pradesh, Kerala, Jharkhand, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, UT of Jammu & Kashmir among others and sectors such as Healthcare, Electronics and Information Technology, Energy Conservation, Environment & Sustainability, Tribal Affairs, Spices & Tourism to name a few.

To know more about India Pavilion at EXPO2020 Dubai, please visit:

Website - (https://indiaexpo2020.com)

Facebook - (https://www.facebook.com/indiaatexpo2020)

Instagram -(https://www.instagram.com/indiaatexpo2020)

Twitter -(https://twitter.com/IndiaExpo2020?s=09)

LinkedIn - (https://www.linkedin.com/company/india-expo-2020/?viewAsMember=true)

YouTube - (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6uOcYsc4g_JWMfS_Dz4Fhg/featured)

Koo - (https://www.kooapp.com/profile/IndiaExpo2020)

To know more about EXPO2020 Dubai, please visit - (https://www.expo2020dubai.com/en).

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New Delhi [India], December 10 (ANI/PRNewswire): HarperCollins today announced the launch of a new imprint, HARPER DESIGN, which will focus on all areas of Design, the Arts, Architecture, Lifestyle and Popular Culture.

At HARPER DESIGN, we believe that design should be an inclusive playground of ideas, stories, and creative expression.

Designers are storytellers who try to make sense of the world through their work, evolving intellectual and aesthetic trends that influence and reflect the attitudes of society at large.

HARPER DESIGN in India will be led by Bonita Vaz-Shimray, Art Director and Publisher of the imprint.

Bonita said, "The books to be published under this imprint span a wide range of innovation across the field, and foreground design thinking and its convergence with the everyday. The goal is to make design accessible. With a dedicated imprint, we intend to publish a curated list that reflects the legacy of the tremendous work done by artists and designers in the subcontinent, which will make visible their role in shaping our future."

"In India, within our ten imprints, we publish a diverse catalogue of books across genres, languages, age groups and subjects. With the launch of the HARPER DESIGN imprint, our programme will now also publish the rich diversity of talent in arts and aesthetics." - Ananth Padmanabhan, CEO, HarperCollins India

Despite the increasing number of up-to-date, generally free content on the internet since the early 2000s, print publications have remained relevant, even when the trend was to declare their demise. As part of this imprint, HarperCollins is constantly working with the most talented, curious and passionate creative minds to discover topical content with the most sustainable practices.

In its launch list, beginning in January 2022, HARPER DESIGN will publish three distinct voices. A Full Circle, an exquisitely illustrated book by artist and writer Namrita Bachchan, describes the magic of childhood and what the world looks like through the curious eyes of her free-spirited five-year-old; as she explores the wonder of reading. An ode to the power of poetry, this is a book that will resonate with readers of all ages.

Mumbai: A City through Objects is in collaboration with the Bhau Daji Lad Museum, Mumbai--the erstwhile Victoria & Albert Museum in India--established in 1855 and one of the oldest museums in the subcontinent. The book chronicles the making of the city through object stories, that in turn reflect the history and evolution of the museum. The narrative meticulously researched and woven by the director, Tasneem Zakaria Mehta, equally tells the story of Bombay's impact in shaping the country.

JayaFlava is the story of Sri Lanka told through its diverse food history. With a hundred recipes representing various Sri Lankan communities and their rich traditions, and also including a sumptuous array of the country's street food, this is a cookbook with a difference. Author Tasha Marikkar works in the field of advertising and events in London and Colombo and is passionate about bringing her home cuisine to the world.

For later in the year, we have Influential Dining, that brings together a selection of the finest dining experiences in India. It has been curated by the brothers Ayaz and Zameer Basrai who have conceived and conceptualized some of the best restaurant spaces in India, such as The Bombay Canteen and Blue Frog.

To put the spotlight on the ever-expanding nature of user-centred design, there is Kiran Bir Sethi's Human by Chance, Humane by Design, a unique book on design philosophy in education. Sethi is credited for an initiative to make our cities more child-friendly, and for 'design for change', a global movement to empower children.

Also joining the list is a co-publication with the Alkazi Foundation for the Arts, that highlights photography in the subcontinent through a social, historical, and political lens via seminal essays and works.

This story is provided by PRNewswire. ANI will not be responsible in any way for the content of this article. (ANI/PRNewswire)

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Dubai [UAE], December 10 (ANI/NewsVoir): The state of Uttar Pradesh will be showcasing its business attractiveness, sectoral developmental growth journey and investment opportunities across key sectors like Food processing, Tourism, Textiles, MSMEs, Healthcare, Education and Start-up at the India Pavilion in EXPO2020 Dubai, as the state week commences from December 10 to December 23, 2021.

Manish Chauhan, Director Industries, Government of Uttar Pradesh, in his welcome address, set the objectives of Uttar Pradesh's participation at EXPO2020 Dubai to showcase its growth story and explore areas of collaboration with our investor partners and the diaspora in the UAE. The state has seen tremendous improvement in infrastructure and business environment, under the visionary guidance of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and our dynamic Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, he further added.

The Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh, Yogi Adityanath, through a video message, kickstarted the proceedings at the inauguration of Uttar Pradesh floor at the India pavilion. He stated that, "Uttar Pradesh is one of the biggest industrial market. Under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, by following the principle of 'Reform-Perform-Transform', the state has taken numerous initiatives to transform its industrial landscape."

The state launched Nivesh Mitra; one of the largest single window system and sectoral policies, complimented by ideal law & order environment, which helped the state to achieve the 2nd rank in the Ease of Doing Business (EoDB) in 2019-20, in comparison to 14th rank in 2015-16. He further highlighted the vision & achievements of the state and said:

*Approximately INR 3.5 lakh crore worth of private investment actualized on-ground, as part of investment outreach.

*Highest number of MSMEs in the country.

*Launch of the One District One Product (ODOP) Scheme in 2018 to promote the indigenous craft of each district.

*4 functional expressways i.e. Yamuna Expressway, Agra-Lucknow Expressway, Purvanchal Expressway and Delhi Meerut Expressway. The foundation laying for the Ganga Expressway; one the longest expressway in India, to be done by Hon'ble Prime Minister on 18th December 2021

*10 airports, of which 3 international airports connected with 74 destinations nationally & internationally, and upcoming 11 new airports

*To facilitate fluid local transport, Metro is operational in 4 cities of Uttar Pradesh

*1st Inland Waterways from Haldia to Varanasi has already been inaugurated by the Hon'ble Prime Minister

*Greater Noida being a confluence point in the Eastern & Western Dedicated Freight Corridors providing opportunities to become logistics hub

*The defence corridor in Uttar Pradesh has led to surge in defence manufacturing, with Brahmos missile to be manufactured in Lucknow. In addition, Bharat Dynamics Ltd is investing in Jhansi and INR 12,000 crore worth of investment is realized in Aligarh nod of the defence corridor in Uttar Pradesh

*With 2 IITs, 1 IIM, ~700 engineering colleges, 4 engineering universities, ~2000 polytechnic institutes, ~3500 it is, Uttar Pradesh has sufficient skilled manpower to contribute to the industrial growth of the state

Concluding his address, the Chief Minister said, "Despite highest population in India, the state's effective Covid-19 management and vaccination of 17 crore population is an indicator of the preparedness of the administration. He also highlighted the cultural richness of the state, birthplace of Lord Rama and Krishna, land of Lord Shiva and River Ganga, which continue to guide the people."

K Kalimuthu, Consul (Economic, Trade & Commerce), in his address spoke about Uttar Pradesh being the land of varied cultures, highest registered MSMEs in India, ideal agro-climatic conditions, inspiring youth eager to contribute to the economic growth and nation-building. He added, UAE & India had a trade of USD 60 billion pre-Covid and the recent economic partnership will further bolster the bilateral trade.

Cabinet Minister - NRI, MSME & Textile, Siddharth Nath Singh, in his keynote address stated UAE being the 3rd largest trading partner and 9th largest FDI contributor to India, in infrastructure, power, tourism, metallurgical and services sector. Also, the large Indian community-based in the UAE is a key contributor to economic development. He highlighted the achievements of the state and performances indices as the testimony of the highly effective policy-driven governance and business environment. Achievements include:

*2nd rank on Government of India's Ease of Doing Business ranking (BRAP 2019)

*6th rank in India on Logistics Ease Across Different States (LEADS) index

*India's largest digital single window clearance portal - Nivesh Mitra, providing 340+ services online including land allotment

*Exports growth by 36% (from ~US$ 17 Bn in 2017-18 to ~US$ 12 Bn in 2020-21

*Tag of 'State of Expressways', with recently inaugurated 340 Kms long Poorvanchal Expressway from Lucknow to Ghazipur and 290 Kms long Bundelkhand Expressway from Agra to Chitrakoot to be inaugurated within a month. 91 Kms long Gorakhpur Link Expressway from Azamgarh to Gorakhpur under construction and 600 kms long Ganga Expressway from Delhi NCR to Prayagraj under planning

*With upcoming 2 new international airports at Greater Noida (Jewar) and Ayodhya, Uttar Pradesh will be India's only state to have 5 international airports

*Zero tolerance policy towards violation of law & order

He further added the remarkable growth of the MSME sector in Uttar Pradesh. With ~9 million MSMEs, Uttar Pradesh is the hub of MSMEs in the country, contributing ~14 per cent to the total MSME population in the country. He spoke about the new MSME Act which facilitates operations of MSME units within 72 hours of application, banks loan disbursement worth ~US$ 33 billion to state's MSMEs, in the last four years (2017-18 to 2020-21) and the aspiration 'One District One Product (ODOP) Programme' to develop the indigenous craft & artisans of the state by creating an effective value chain, market linkages and export opportunities. In addition, he highlighted global private sector investment of over ~US$ 59 billion through MoU implementation and dedicated helpdesk, across sectors.

Concluding his address, he stated that Uttar Pradesh is one of the major suppliers of manpower to most of the gulf countries, including UAE. The NRI Department has taken steps like a dedicated recruitment agency - UPFC Overseas Manpower Recruitment Agency (OMRA), to help sourcing employees for potential employers aboard; hosting a 'Migrant Resource Centre (MRC)' at OMRA, which is committed to ensure safe and legal migration of UP labour; and setting up 'UP NRI Grievance Redressal System (GRS)', a single window to resolve all the issues faced by the diaspora.

Cabinet Minister - Industry Development, Satish Mahana, in his keynote address spoke about UAE being the 3rd largest trading partner of India with total trade between estimated to be worth USD 43,302.53 million in FY21 and USD 39,638.51 million in FY22 (April-Sept). He added, "Indian investments in the UAE are estimated at around USD 85 billion. There are 4365 Indian companies, 238 commercial agencies and 4862 trademarks registered in the UAE, and the inward Indian FDI stock into the UAE amounted to USD 6.2 billion (2017)."

He further highlighted the remarkable industrial growth story of Uttar Pradesh. From bagging the 2nd position in India on Ease of Doing Business (EoDB) ranking, to 6th rank on Logistics Ease Across Different States (LEADS), India's largest digital single window portals - 'Nivesh Mitra', establishing itself as a 'State of Expressways', soon to become the only state in India with 5 international airports, India's first inland waterway is coming up, connecting Prayagraj to Haldia port, upcoming 'Multi-Modal Logistics/Transport Hubs' at Greater Noida and Varanasi, upcoming defence industrial corridor, India's 3rd largest fabric producer, largest exporters of consumer electronics, a stronghold in electronics manufacturing and IT/ITes space, contributing nearly 45 per cent of India's total mobile manufacturing and is home to nearly 55 per cent of India's mobile component manufacturers, Uttar Pradesh has witnessed unprecedented comprehensive and inclusive development and emerged as the 'India's New Growth Engine.'

Closing his remarks, he focussed on the policy-oriented governance approach, adoption of 'pro-industry' policies and that led to the investment of over ~US$ 59 billion/ Rs 4.41 lakh Cr through MoU implementation and dedicated Helpdesk. This includes investments intentions of ~USD 1 billion from ~10 countries, including Japan, US, UK, Canada, Germany & South Korea, which clearly positions Uttar Pradesh as the most preferred investment destination.

Concluding the inaugural session, Dr Muthukumarasamy B - Special Secretary, Infrastructure & Industrial Development Department, thanked the dignitaries and reiterated Uttar Pradesh's precise and a clear roadmap on policy-oriented governance approach, which the global business community has acknowledged and invested in. He further invited the global investors community, NRI diaspora and participating country representatives to visit the Uttar Pradesh floor at the India Pavilion, and engage with the vibrant culture of Uttar Pradesh.

Uttar Pradesh high-level delegation will be meetings potential investors and global companies to explore trade and investment opportunities for the state. The delegates from Uttar Pradesh will participate in incubator Meet & Mock Pitching Sessions, panel sessions on 'India's Strength in Education: STEM, Medicine and Business' & 'Liberal Arts Education in the making of a Global Citizen: The India Advantage', industry visit to Allanasons Factory in Sharjah & DP World Jabel Ali Port, business meetings with industry associations (Dubai, Sarjah & Abu Dhabi) and many more business and cultural engagements.

To know more about India Pavilion at EXPO2020 Dubai, please visit:

Website - (https://indiaexpo2020.com/)

Facebook - (https://www.facebook.com/indiaatexpo2020/)

Instagram - (https://www.instagram.com/indiaatexpo2020/)

Twitter - (https://twitter.com/IndiaExpo2020?s=09)

LinkedIn - (https://www.linkedin.com/company/india-expo-2020/?viewAsMember=true)

YouTube - (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6uOcYsc4g_JWMfS_Dz4Fhg/featured)

Koo - (https://www.kooapp.com/profile/IndiaExpo2020)

To know more about EXPO2020 Dubai, please visit - (https://www.expo2020dubai.com/en).

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While Byjus raised over $1 billion from several top notch PE investors to become the first edtech decacorn of the country, Unacademy became a unicorn.

The worlds highest-valued edtech company, Byjus, is on a shopping spree, with an aim to build an edtech empire out of India, encompassing everything from K12 to test preparation to courses for mid-career professionals. Byjus, valued at $18 bn, has been gobbling up smaller startups with niche offerings for the last two years, capitalising on the massive shift to online learning that we have witnessed amid the pandemic. This week, the company acquired Austrian math-learning platform GeoGebra for around $100 mn. Byju's has acquired nine startups so far this year. Last year, it acquired two companies. In 2019, it took over the US-based Osmo for $120 mn. In 2018, it acquired math learning platform Math Adventures. In 2017, it took over TutorVista and Edurite from UK-based Pearson and also acquired Vidyartha. This year alone, Byjus has spent around $2.4 bn in acquisitions. The companys chief strategy officer, Anita Kishore, has talked about how acquisitions as an inorganic growth route have worked well for the company. Let us look at how some of Byjus acquired startups are doing. Byjus acquired Osmo in 2019 to tap into the US market. Osmos revenue was about $25 million at that time. It has now grown four times in two years to around $110 million.

Byjus acquired online coding startup WhiteHat Jr in August last year for $300 million. Anita Kishore has told media outlets that in the one year since the acquisition, WhiteHat Jrs revenue has grown three times.

Byjus acquired Aakash Educational Services for $1 bn earlier this year. In an interview with Business Standard, Aakash Educations CEO Abhishek Maheshwari said that after the deal, AESL was transforming into a hybrid edtech firm. For Byjus too, the partnership with Aakash would allow it to expand its base to tier 2 and 3 cities, where Aakash has a physical presence.

Founder has said that he is expecting his company to clock a revenue of Rs 10,000 crore this year. In FY20, the company reported a revenue of over Rs 2,400 crore.

Industry experts are of the view that mergers and acquisitions help startups do away with long sale cycles. Instead of taking months to develop and deploy a new product, bigger players would rather acquire an existing company with a solid product market fit and scale it up.

However, it is worth mentioning that Byjus, which is growing so aggressively, has faced criticism in the recent past for precisely that reason. The companys pricing of around Rs 15,000-20,000 per year is unaffordable for students living beyond the metro cities, which is why the Aakash acquisition was important.

Former salespeople at Byjus have claimed that by playing on the typical Indian parents fixation with their childrens grades, Byjus pushes its products on parents who cannot afford them.

There is another downside to the consolidation spree in the edtech space. There are hundreds of edtech start-ups right now closing down or getting acquired because they cant raise meaningful funds to grow and build, said Shreyasi Singh, CEO, Harappa Education.

It remains to be seen if growing consolidation in the Indian edtech sector, and the emergence of a few big monoliths will enhance the user experience or kill competition in the space.

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A fourth wave of Covid is starting to sweep across Europes events circuit. The European Film Awards have canceled their in-person edition, which was due to take place in Berlin on December 11, and uncertainty is growing around winter festivals.

The European Film Awards, where a record five animated features are nominated this year, will instead take place online, with both live and pre-recorded components. The decision comes as Germany grapples with rising Covid cases, which has led the federal government to ban the unvaccinated from non-essential shops and events.

Germany is one of the countries to have reported cases of the new Omicron variant, about which much is still not known. The variant, which has been designated as of concern by the World Health Organization, has now been detected in many countries, including the U.S.
Photo: The Canadian Press Isabel Maxwell, sister of Ghislaine Maxwell, is surrounded by reporters as she leaves the courthouse in New York.

Another key accuser at the sex-abuse trial of Ghislaine Maxwell began testifying Friday about her allegations that the British socialite tried to coax her  at just 16  into a sexual encounter with financier Jeffrey Epstein.

Annie Farmer took the stand using her true identity  a departure from the decision by three other accusers with similar stories who testified under pseudonyms or first names only to protect their privacy.

Asked by a prosecutor if she saw anyone in the courtroom who had ever given her a massage, she identified Maxwell, who was sitting at the defence table.

Farmers testimony was originally expected on Thursday at Maxwells closely watched trial in federal court in Manhattan. But it was delayed after U.S. District Judge Alison Nathan announced that one of the attorneys in the case was sick, adjourning the case for the day.

Nathan had said there was no reason to believe the attorney's illness was related to the coronavirus. The attorney was back in court on Friday.

Farmers testimony follows that of three other women who claimed Maxwell recruited them to give Epstein massages meant as a ruse for sexually abusing teens. Two said they were just 14 when the abuse started and that Maxwell sometimes participated in the encounters.

The Associated Press does not identify people who say they were victims of sexual abuse unless they come forward publicly. Although Farmer was not identified by name in court documents, she has been outspoken in describing her experiences in interviews with ABC and The New York Times. When Maxwell sought bail, Farmer asked the judge to deny it, calling her a psychopath.

In earlier civil litigation, Farmer had alleged she was 16 when she was tricked into visiting Epsteins New Mexico ranch in the mid-1990s under the guise of attending an event for college-bound students. But when she arrived, there were no other students.

In the lawsuit, she said Maxwell tried to groom her by taking her to the movies and shopping, and giving her an unsolicited massage while the teenager was topless.

Maxwell has been jailed since she was arrested in New Hampshire in July of the following year.

Farmer's testimony caps the trial's second week. It's unclear whether the government will finish presenting its case Friday, as expected. Nathan suggested that closing arguments in the trial  originally thought to span six weeks  might occur as soon as Dec. 20 if the defense presentation next week only lasts a day or two.
Photo: Steve Dunsmoor

The Kelowna Rockets kick off their final homestand before the Christmas break when they welcome the Prince George Cougars to Prospera Place.

Typically, the Rockets close out the pre-Christmas portion of their schedule on an Eastern road trip but, with interlocking play suspended this season, they will instead finish with a four game homestand.

Kelowna, which dropped a pair of midweek games south of the border, will look to snap a two game losing streak when the Cougars come to town.

They will also try to continue their dominance of the Cougars this season. The Rockets have won all four meetings between the Interior Division rivals by a combined score of 16-4.

The Rockets come into Friday's game third in the BC Division, two points in back of the second place Vancouver Giants and nine up on the Cougars.

Kelowna will be without the services of forward Mark Liwiski, who will serve the final game of a two game suspension.

The Rockets homestand includes visits by Seattle Saturday, Victoria Tuesday and Kamloops next Friday.
Photo: Contributed

Three months after the unsolved killing of Victoria artist Jeremy Gordaneer, his wife is desperate for answers.

Police have provided few details about the Aug. 31 homicide. Officers were called about 5 a.m. to a home owned by Gordaneer and his mother and sister, where they found Gordaneer inside with life-threatening injuries. Despite attempts by first responders to save his life, he died.

VicPD said at the time they did not believe there was a risk to the public. Three months have passed without an arrest or update.

The unanswered questions feel like a tangible and palpable weight on Gordaneers wife, Thea Patterson, who said she cant help running through hypothetical scenarios in her head about what led to his final moments.

I want to know what happened. I want to understand the series of events that could have unfolded for this particular instance that happened, because it makes no sense to me, she said.

I want to know who it was, how they got into the house. I want to know why they were there. I just dont understand.

Gordaneer, who lived in Edmonton at the time of his death, was visiting his mother in Victoria to support her as she recovered from eye surgery. Patterson spoke to him by phone on the night he died, as he walked home from having dinner with his two daughters, Clea, 20, and Sylvie, 22. He was just happy, Patterson said.

She speaks to police periodically, but theyre unable to provide her with any new information. VicPD spokesman Cam MacIntyre said the department is not able to provide an update, but continues to encourage anyone with information to share it with police.

While Patterson understands there are rules guiding what officers can tell her during an open investigation, the lack of answers is hard to bear.

I do really just feel like Im just a piece of laundry hanging out in the breeze, just alone on a line, she said.

Patterson said after the initial shock of Gordaneers death faded, she has felt a growing pressure to know why and how he was killed and to advocate for swifter justice, but she feels powerless.

Theres a person who is capable of doing something like that is just somewhere, and thats a little bit freaky. Its unsettling, she said.

While she knows answers wont bring him back, knowing what led to his final moments would help rein in this far-reaching feeling of bewilderment.
Photo: James Doyle/Local Journalism Initiative

More Site C turbine runners will be transported through the Prince George area this weekend.

The Ministry of Transportation says drivers can expect intermittent closures and overnight delays on Highway 16 from Terrace through Prince George to Bear Lake and Chetwynd Saturday through Monday.

The schedule will depend on weather and road conditions. The ministry says all closures are scheduled during times of expected low traffic volumes to reduce impact on travellers.

The last four turbine runners for the Site C dam arrived last month at the port in Prince Rupert from Sao Paulo, Brazil. Each runner weighs about 170 tonnes, measures 17 feet tall and 26 feet wide, and will be transported one at a time on a customized truck over the next couple of months.

Voith Hydro was awarded a $470-million contract in April 2017 to design, supply, and install six turbines, six generators, and associated equipment for the Site C powerhouse.

The company, headquartered in Montreal, previously completed upgrades to the G.M. Shrum Generating station at the W.A.C. Bennett Dam.

The turbines and generators were custom built to "the site specific conditions" of the dam at Voiths facility in Brazil, which BC Hydro says will generate 5,100 gigawatt hours of electricity each year.

The first two turbine runners arrived in Canada from Sao Paulo, Brazil, in December 2020, and were shipped in January of this year.

Work on turbine installation is expected to peak in 2022. As of Dec. 8, there were 1,444 workers in camp.
Photo: The Canadian Press Ambassador of China to Canada Cong Peiwu speaks as part of a panel at the Ottawa Conference on Security and Defence, in Ottawa, Wednesday, March 4, 2020. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Justin Tang

China's ambassador to Canada says Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor confessed to crimes before their release from his country's prisons this past September.

Envoy Cong Peiwu also said Friday Canada will pay a price if it blocks Chinese telecom company Huawei from participating in the country's 5G internet network as its Five Eyes Allies, the United States, Britain, Australia and New Zealand have already done.

Canada has delayed its decision on 5G out of concern for Kovrig and Spavor who were imprisoned in China for nearly three years in apparent retaliation for the RCMP's arrest of Huawei executive of Meng Wanzhou on an American extradition warrant in December 2018.

China convicted Kovrig and Spavor of espionage in closed trials that were widely criticized by Canada and dozens of Western allies who rejected the charges against the men as trumped-up retaliation.

"The information reviewed by Chinese authorities shows that the evidence of the crimes is indisputable. And also, they have confessed to their crimes," Cong said Friday to a small group of Canadian and Chinese reporters in an invitation-only video press conference.

A Chinese state-controlled newspaper, citing anonymous sources, first reported shortly after their release in September that the two men confessed, and also said they had been released on bail for medical reasons and had to "strictly abide" by conditions.

The initial report in the Global Times newspaper, widely viewed as an organ of the Chinese Communist Party, provided no further details.

"The two Canadians should strictly abide by the decision on bail made by relevant Chinese courts. In case of violation, China can resume, in accordance with law, the trial of the alleged criminal acts any time while on bail," Cong said Friday when pressed for further details by The Canadian Press.

Cong was responding to remarks by Foreign Affairs Minister Melanie Joly, who revived speculation about the matter during an interview with CBC's "Power and Politics" on Wednesday.

"We want to make sure to continue to advocate their case, because there are certain issues that have not been settled yet," Joly told the news program after meeting with Kovrig and Spavor.

When pressed by her interviewer to elaborate on the issues, she replied: "The two Michaels are on bail right now, according to the criminal law in China. And, so we want to make sure that we work that out with the Chinese government. It will be a priority."

Global Affairs Canada had no immediate comment Friday on Cong's remarks. Joly was in Liverpool, England for a G7 foreign ministers' meeting, where China's military provocations in the South China and against Taiwan were to be discussed.

Cong said China wants to move forward with a positive relationship with Canada, noting that their trade volume has risen despite the decline in diplomatic relations over the three years since the onset of the Meng-two Michaels affair.

He dismissed Canada's decision this week to join a diplomatic boycott of the February Winter Olympics as political posturing that would not diminish the spectacle of sport that Beijing would be hosting.

In announcing the boycott. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau cited extensive human rights abuses by China, as did several western allies such as the United States, Britain and Australia that include crimes against its Muslim Uyghur population, Hong Kongs pro-democracy movement and military provocations towards Taiwan.

The Trudeau Liberals are expected to announce a decision soon on Huawei participation in its next-generation 5G internet network, and Cong made clear China will take a dim view of Canada if it follows its intelligence-sharing allies in the Five Eyes.

"Anything they do, we hope that it will be a positive momentum for the relationship, rather than those negative things that will be detrimental to the relationship. Of course, they will pay a price for their erroneous deeds and actions," said Cong.
Sri Lankan High Commissioner to India Milinda Moragoda has said that the demise of CDS General Bipin Rawat is a real tragedy, stressing that many senior military personnel, admirals and others in his country follow him.

While speaking to ANI, Moragoda said it was a real tragedy. "We are all heartbroken, in fact, many of our military senior, personnel, general, admiral know him very well."

"He is a friend of Sri Lanka," he added.

Emphasising that it is a "very sad day," the envoy also said that General Rawat had visited Sri Lanka earlier.

Chief of Defence Staff (CDS) General Bipin Rawat, who died in a chopper crash in Tamil Nadu on Wednesday, was cremated with full military honours at the Brar Square crematorium in Delhi Cantonment on Friday.

They were laid side by side on the same pyre for cremation at the Brar Square crematorium. Their daughters Kritika and Tarini lit the pyre.

CDS Rawat was accorded a 17-gun salute and Last Post and Rouse was played by tri-services buglers, as per the military protocols.

Defence Minister Rajnath Singh, Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, Uttarakhand Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami, Defence Research and Development Organisation chief Dr G Satheesh Reddy, defence attaches of various countries, Ambassador of France in India Emmanuel Lenain and British High Commissioner Alex Ellis, were among the dignitaries who were present at the crematorium to pay their last respect.

(ANI)
Two more people have tested positive for the new COVID-19 variant Omicron, informed Vijaykumar Kharadi, Municipal Commissioner on Friday.

The infected persons had came in contact with a passenger who returned from Zimbabwe and had tested positive for Omicron earlier in December.

"In Jamnagar, two persons, who came in contact with an Omicron patient, tested positive for COVID-19. Their samples were sent for genome testing and the reports revealed that both of them are Omicron positive," said the Municipal Commissioner of Jamnagar civic body.

He further informed that all the three Omicron patients are asymptomatic.

Several cases of the Omicron variant of COVID-19 have been detected in the country with Karnataka, Maharashtra, Rajasthan, and Delhi reporting new cases.

A new variant of COVID-19 was first reported to the World Health Organization (WHO) from South Africa on November 25. As per the WHO, the first known confirmed B.1.1.529 infection was from a specimen collected on November 9 this year.

On November 26, the WHO named the new COVID-19 variant B.1.1.529, which has been detected in South Africa, as 'Omicron'. The WHO has classified Omicron as a 'variant of concern'.

(ANI)
Zimbabwe to keep imports flowing

10 December 2021

This week, Zimbabwe's cement market opted to keep import permits in response to increasing cement shortages. Zimbabwes cement sector has been stretched and reliance on Lafarge Cement (Holcim group) and PPC, the top two domestic producers, has led to the current situation where imports have become a necessity to complete private and public building projects.

The immediate cement shortage in the country has been exacerbated by Lafarge Cements plant breakdown, where a roof collapsed on a cement mill. This has led the company to import from its sister cement plant in Zambia to keep its route to market open. "Lafarge still has production challenges and we will continue issuing import permits until the situation improves," said Commerce Minister, Dr Sekai Nzenza.

Therefore, the Ministry of Industry and Commerce promulgated an import substitution regulation, Statutory Instrument 89 of 2021, which was initially brought in on 2 April 2021, to regulate and control importation of cement into the country. This now remains in place to meet current cement demand.

Increasing pressure on cement prices

Pressure on cement availability has seen prices increase to US$13/50kg bag, while in neighbouring Zambia a 50kg cement bag costs around US$4.50. Cement prices in Zimbabwe began to rise sharply in September, having previously averaged US$10.50/50kg bag. The government noted that the country is an attractive import market for regional producers with excess capacity, supported by high selling prices in the market.

Infrastructure and housing demand

The steep increase in cement prices has threatened to derail construction sector growth, which has been supported by ambitious government plans to spend US$156bn on infrastructure projects. By plugging the gap with imports, it is hoped that delays to the construction of new roads, schools, hospitals and hydroelectric dams will be minimised. However, the private sector is also looking to increase housebuilding resulting in competition for limited cement supply.

The Confederation of Zimbabwe Industries reported in May that the manufacturing capacity utilisation in the country would rise to 61 per cent this year compared to 27 per cent at the end of 2020. Before the recent shortages, ministers were buoyant about the market situation. "The biggest demand is not even from the roads that we are constructing as a government. Its coming from housing and private sector construction activities. It is amazing. Some of the diaspora remittances end up in the construction sector. We are expecting growth in 2021," a government minister added.

Future capacity

Lafarge Zimbabwe is targeting March 2022 for the start-up of its new vertical roller mill at its Manresa cement plant, which should ease the cement shortage with a capacity addition of 0.5Mta. The new mill is part of a US$15m investment plan that was initiated in 2019. The investment also included infrastructure for alternative power and a US$2.8m automated dry-mortar plant.

Current cement production capacity in the country totals around 2.7Mta. Lafarge Zimbabwe and PPC currently control 70 per cent of the domestic market. This market dominance is expected to be challenged when Dangote Group proceeds with its plan to build a 1.5Mta integrated cement works in Harare in 2023.



CMBC (Sinoma International Engineering) is also launching Sino-Zimbabwe Cement Co in Masvungo, which will have a cement capacity of 0.7Mta when the greenfield plant is on-stream in 2023. This will increase the groups cement Zimbabwean capacity from 0.3Mta to 1Mta, building on the companys existing capacity at Gweru. Sourcing raw materials locally has been an important strategy for the company and has made it less dependent on foreign currency. The Chinese operation's Managing Director, Wang Yong, stated in September that: Although a heavy industrial manufacturer, about 85 per cent of our raw materials and other inputs are sourced locally. The remaining 15 per cent are imports in the form of consumables, spares and core services, which are the most critical and yet have become extremely difficult to purchase over the past two years."

PPC has recorded strong volumes in its 1H21 business results in Zimbabwe and is itself looking to generate further sales with its plans for a new 1Mta clinker line at Rushinga. This clinker plant will add to production from the Colleen Bawn site in the south, and will no doubt support the company's two grinding plants that are located at Harare and Bulawayo.

An existing market player, Livetouch Investments (Mortal Investments Manufacturing) is also attempting to boost its market share with a new 0.1Mta grinding plant at Hwange at the start of 2023.

Summary

Presently, Zimbabwe is entering a perfect storm with cement production falling short of demand while importers are benefitting from rising cement prices, and the government needs to implement its infrastructure programme while there is a boom in private housebuilding. The country could be set for another 12 months of tight cement supply, but with Lafarge's new mill starting up at the beginning of 2022 and new capacity due to come on-stream in 2023, Zimbabwe will eventually see cement prices start to ease. Until then, cement imports look to remain a feature of the market.

Published under
Holcim El Salvador awards solar park contract

ICR Newsroom By 10 December 2021

Holcim El Salvador awarded the contract for the construction of a solar park to AES El Salvador. The solar power facility would be built at its El Ronco cement plant in Metapan in the second half of 2022.



As part of the US$19m investment AES would be responsible for the installation of 39,200 solar panels as well as the operation of the photovoltaic park for 15 years. The facility is expected to generate 17MW of renewable energy, accounting for 21 per cent of the energy required for cement production at the plant.







Published under
Taiwan's cement producers announce November results

10 December 2021

Taiwan Cement has posted a 1.5 per cent YoY decline in November revenue to TWD9.75bn (US$351.94m) against TWD9.9bn in the year-ago period. In the first 11 months of 2021, revenue stayed largely consistent at TWD96.22bn from TWD95.81bn.



Asia Cement saw revenue up 13.4 per cent to TWD8.99bn from TWD7.92bn in November 2020, while revenue in the 11M21 climbed 14.8 per cent YoY to TWD80.25bn.



Elsewhere, Chia Hsin Cement reported a 5.3 per cent YoY increase in revenue to TWD197.77m in November 2021. The January-November period of 2021 also saw revenue rise 10.2 per cent YoY to TWD2.05bn from TWD1.86bn.



Finally, Universal Cement announced a 21.2 per cent surge in revenue to TWD592.28m from TWD488.5m in November 2020. Revenue for the 11M21 also grew 13.1 per cent to TWD5.51bn from TWD4.87bn.

Published under
A shoplifting was reported at the Walmart, 2020 Gunbarrel Road. A loss prevention employee told police that a man and a woman entered the store and selected multiple items. She said they went to the self-checkout and scanned multiple items, but did not pay for a chicken sandwich. She said she attempted to stop them after they passed all points of sale, but they would not cooperate with

loss prevention personnel. She said both of them have been seen shoplifting in Walmart in the last couple of weeks and going through vehicles in the parking lot, but they always leave before police arrive. She provided a photo of the man.

* * *

An employee of a business on Miller Drive called police regarding theft of business checks from their office. He said that at least three checks had been taken at an unknown time and had been cashed by an unknown person. The total value of these checks was $3,126. As these were business checks, he thinks the person must have represented themselves as an employee of the company. The checks in question were dated Oct. 19 and Oct. 21. The employee was unable to determine what date two of the checks were cashed, but one was cashed on Oct. 26. The employee further said the office had stopped using the mailbox on site and had switched to a P.O. Box, so this issue should not occur in the future. There is no suspect information and the employee said the banks were not able to provide any information regarding when or where the checks were cashed.

* * *

Police responded to reports of a man walking in the roadway on Standifer Gap Road. Police approached a man, who identified himself as Mr. Butt, walking on the side of the road. Due to the

lack of sidewalks in the area, police offered Mr. Butt a ride to the bus stop. While transporting Mr. Butt to the bus stop, he said he wanted to get out of the vehicle on Commons Boulevard. Police stopped the vehicle and allowed Mr. Butt to exit the vehicle.

* * *

An employee of a hotel at 1100 Carter St. wanted police to have a man trespassed from the hotel. The man was not located and could not be trespassed. Police are fairly confident that the man has already been trespassed from the hotel, along with other places, but cannot find reports to verify this. Police told the employee to contact them when he sees the man again, as the employee said he shows up several times a week.

* * *

A man called police and said that the residence at 2711 N. Orchard Knob Ave. has a window that has been pushed in, as if someone had entered the house. The residence is vacant and he said no one should be on the property. Police were unable to secure the side window. The man said that he will try to keep an eye on the property.

* * *



A woman told police that while she was at work at 1412 Bailey Ave. sometime between 1:30-5:30 p.m., someone broke into her car and stole her wallet. She said she remembered locking her vehicle, but when she returned to it after she got off work, she observed that her vehicle had been gone through with the items inside strewn across the interior of the car. She said that her Alabama ID, a WynnSouth debit card, her WIC card, $80, an insurance card and possibly her one-year-old

daughter's Social Security card were all in her wallet. She said that a neighboring business may have cameras and if there is video of the incident, she will call back and have officers respond to the scene to view it.

* * *

The manager of the Speedway, 6121 Lee Hwy., told police that a person came in with a backpack and mask on, grabbed two cases of beer and left the store, passing all points of sale. She was unable to get a description of the vehicle, but did get the tag (TN). The tag given did not come up to anything. She did not know any other description of the person. The beer looked like it was

one of the bigger cases, but she was not sure what kind it was.

* * *

A disorder was reported on North Hickory Street. Police spoke with a woman who said she had been in a verbal disorder with her husband. She said before police arrived, her husband had left the scene. The police searched the area, but were unable to locate the husband.

* * *

A woman on Bailey Avenue told police she had un-authorized transactions on her credit card starting on Nov. 15 for approximately $281.68. She said at this time all of the transactions were marked as fraud and that all of the money had been charged back to her account. After speaking with her regarding the incident, it is believed that someone had possession of an old phone which was unlocked that had been stolen prior to this event. The woman also showed police where the name of her Google account, as well as her Starbucks app was changed to a Savvian Lemay. Police were also showed that her Google account had a new bank card on it which did not belong to her. Police were unable to identify if this new name on the account was an actual name. Police were also unable to verify that this person was indeed the person in possession of the new

phone. Police informed her of steps to take to help better secure her online accounts. Police also told her she would need to contact the credit reporting agencies to inform them of the fraud which had taken place.

* * *

A suspicious person was reported in the parking lot of the Krystal at 4868 Hixson Pike. Officers saw a person sleeping behind a parked truck in the parking lot of the business. Officers made contact with and later identified him. He said he was homeless in the area and knew some of the Krystal staff who had told him he could sleep there. The man had no warrants and due to no

complaints being received from the business, he was released by officers.

* * *

A shoplifting was reported at the Speedway, 1330 East 3rd St. An employee told police that a regular customer came into the Speedway and went to the beer cooler for some beer. She said that while she was helping gather the beer, the customer said he would carry the two 18-packs of Bud Light to the counter for her while she got the other one for him. She said he then left the store with the two packs of beer. Police asked her for a description of the customer and she said that he was maybe 5'6" with glasses, a brown jacket and blue work pants. Police then asked for a direction he may have gone and she said that she did not know for sure. After closing out the call, the woman called back in with more information and said that the man that took the beer was a regular, whose name she gave. Police followed up with the manager at the Speedway and reviewed the camera footage of the shoplifting occurrence. The man came in with a mask on and never made eye contact with the cameras. He got the beer and left, taking a right out of the store to the end of the parking lot and entered a dark-colored SUV with a spare tire holder on the back. Police were unable to get a make or tag from the footage. Based on the mans history of stealing from this Speedway, police believe they know the man's identify, but do not have sufficient evidence to take this to court.

* * *



Police spoke with a man at the Hampton Inn at 1920 Hamill Road who was clearly intoxicated and said he was staying at the hotel, but was unsure of what room. The man gave the name of his boss, who he said was a guest there, and hotel staff were able to pull up a room number. Police spoke with the man's boss and he was able to take the man back to his room.

* * *

Police found a man asleep on the sidewalk at 2247 Wilcox Blvd. They woke him up and asked him where he was staying. He said he was staying with his sister off Cromwell Road. Police gave the man a ride to his sister's house.

* * *



A man on Norfolk Green Circle told police he received a past due notice from Simply Fast Loans, Inc. He said he contacted Simply Fast Loans because he does not have a loan with them, and they verified his Social Security number and driver's license number. He said they have sent him a six-page form to complete and attach a copy of the police report in order to clear up this matter. He said he is contacting the credit bureaus to freeze his credit and has already reviewed the website identitytheft.gov.

* * *



A woman told police that the day before around 3:30 p.m. she sat on a bench outside of First Horizon Bank, 701 Market St. She said when she got up she must have left her wallet lying on the bench. She said she is in the process of canceling all of the credit and debit cards that were in her

wallet.

* * *

Police were flagged down by a man at 600 Market St. He told police that a woman he identified stole his special coin. He said that he let her look at it and she wouldn't give it back. Police spoke with the woman, who said that he gave the coin to her as a gift. Police asked her if she would give it back to him because he wanted it back and she said that she would. She then pulled out the coin

and gave it to police. Police then gave it to the man and both of them went on their way.

* * *

A woman on Mountain Creek Road told police that over two days ago her Facebook account was hacked and captured. She said her Whatsapp and Cashapp are both connected to her Facebook account. She said that someone was using her Cashapp to make deposits and purchase bit coins with those deposits and had taken $1,200 of her money. She said that she had been sending

explicit pictures of herself using Facebook messenger and Whatsapp to her husband and the person has been posting those pictures on her Facebook. She said she used her husband's Facebook to contact the person. She said the person has a very thick Asian Indian accent and was very difficult to understand. She said he told her he would give her Facebook back to her for

$100.
Members of the Hamilton County Regular Grand Jury said they had varying opinions on the state's position of often no billing marijuana cases.

Grand jurors said they were told "that the cost of testing the drugs was high, and it wasnt worth testing marijuana when other drugs and drug charges were present. There was also some speculation that the laws regarding marijuana in Tennessee may change soon."

The panel headed by Jimmy Anderson said, "Many felt that there wasnt much opportunity to disagree with the Assistant District Attorneys strong recommendation. These cases put jurors in an awkward position of dropping charges rightfully brought by officers. The practice seems to shift accountability for dropping the appropriate charges from law enforcement and the DA to the non-elected Grand Jury. Other jurors disagreed and felt that many of the marijuana charges were, in fact, a waste of time and should be 'no billed.' 

The Hamilton County Regular Grand Jury completed its Fall Term and returned 222 true bills, 43 presentments, and 20 no bills.

The Grand Jurors reported working well together and had some suggestions for improving the system, including a more racially diverse panel, a table of charges to reference, and having a law enforcement officer available to answer questions.

The Grand Jurors said they respected and appreciated the judges, assistant district attorney and law enforcement that spoke with them and answered their questions.

Here is the report of the Regular Grand Jury:

Introduction:

The Grand Jury was made up of men and women from all over Hamilton County. We had a mix of ages, careers, economic strata, and backgrounds. We worked well together, and became more comfortable discussing tough issues as the term progressed. During the term, 285 cases were presented to the Regular Grand Jury. The Grand Jury returned 222 true bills, 43 presentments, and 20 no bills.

The grand jurors appreciated the expertise and insights of Jerry Sloan, the assistant district attorney. He patiently answered our questions and helped us understand the law. Jimmy Anderson, the Grand Jury foreman, helped us get to know each other and ably shepherded us through the process. We truly appreciate Don Ledford, who kept things moving along and cheered us up with his wonderful sense of humor. It was also very helpful that one of the jurors was a law enforcement officer. His experience and expertise helped other jurors make sense of testimony and issues.



The jurors had a positive experience overall. Many commented that they learned a lot about the judicial system, law enforcement, and our community through the process of serving. There were, of course, varying reactions to the work of the Grand Jury. Below are a few observations on the experience of serving:



Comments from Grand Jurors:

"I have a better understanding of how the courts system and its processes work. We saw a lot of the same names coming through the system over and over.



The court system administration is not effectively resourced and appears to be unduly influenced by the ability of the prison system to effectively accomplish the public's expectations for addressing criminal behavior.

I watched the reactions of the other jurors and listened to the comments from everyone when we heard the more serious cases. I heard comments of shock and disbelief on a few cases that were common occurrences for someone in law enforcement. I believe a member of law enforcement should serve on every Grand Jury.

It was discouraging that we were an all white jury. We had one black alternate who was with us, but only for a few days. For a county as diverse as Hamilton County is, the jury did not represent the racial makeup of the community.

I learned a lot about how long the speedy process is. With hearing cases from as far back as 2019, it seems that the time frame for the right to a speedy trial can be a slow and drawn out process. COVID did play a significant part to this but I would hope that a case from early 2019 would have at least been heard before the shut down. If two years for a case to be heard by the grand jury is normal, there is an extreme efficiency issue.

I understand the point of the grand jury, I just dont feel its absolutely necessary. The majority of the time it just felt like we were there to say yes because it was part of the process. If someone has had charges brought against them and ask for a jury trial in general sessions court the sessions court judge should have the authority to decide if theres enough probable cause for a regular jury to deliberate on. Everything that came to us we were able to see pretty clearly and quickly that there was probable cause. I just think this part of the process isnt truly necessary.

Guest Speakers



There were several guest speakers who addressed the grand jury. Judge Poole addressed us and charged us with our duty on the first day, then came back another time to talk to us about the courts. He specifically addressed the Mental Health Court program, which we had the option to observe. Judge Steelman came and talked about several aspects of the criminal justice system.

Sheriff Hammond told us about the recent changes at the Silverdale Jail and other programs that have been initiated lately. Judge Greenholtz told us about the Drug Court and emphasized that the first political principle is liberty. Several jurors visited the Drug Court and were very impressed with the great care taken by Judge Greenholtz for the participants. All the speakers provided helpful information and answered our questions.

Jurors were very impressed with the judges, and appreciated the opportunity to learn from them. We were also impressed with the Drug Court and Mental Health and Drug Court programs, and noted that many citizens do not know these programs exist in Hamilton County.

Testimony & Evidence:

Testimony was presented by officers from a variety of law enforcement agencies. They were professional and willing to answer questions to help us understand. It is also noted that for many night shift officers, the grand jury hours are in the middle of their normal sleeping time. We appreciate them taking the time to testify.

In many cases, the arresting officer was not the person reading the affidavit. Many jurors felt that this was not a good practice. When jurors had questions, the arresting officer wasnt always there to provide the information. It is helpful when the officer in the jury room has knowledge of the case and can clarify when questions arise. However, some jurors felt that it was fine for others to read the testimony since it seemed to make more efficient use of time, both for the jurors and for the defendants awaiting trial.



There is a lot of information given by the assistant district attorney when he calls out the case. Jurors take notes as they listen and try to make sense of the evidence. It would be helpful to have a template for recording the information. Some jurors felt that the gender, address, and date of birth be left out of the presentation of the case since that information is not relevant to the determination of probable cause.

Some of the evidence was understandably disturbing. Photos of injured children, detailed descriptions of sexual assault, etc. In one case, we watched graphic video evidence of a shooting where a juvenile with an automatic rifle shot at other juveniles. It would be helpful if there was some type of debriefing or counseling available to jurors.

Laws & Sentencing:

It is important for the Grand Jury to be given a clear understanding of the law. Since Grand Jurors arent lawyers, we relied heavily on the Assistant District Attorney to help us understand the cases. In many cases, specifically possession of marijuana cases, it was recommended to us that we no bill the charges. It was explained that the cost of testing the drugs was high, and it wasnt worth testing marijuana when other drugs and drug charges were present. There was also some speculation that the laws regarding marijuana in Tennessee may change soon.

The jurors had differing opinions on this matter. Many felt that there wasnt much opportunity to disagree with the Assistant District Attorneys strong recommendation. These cases put jurors in an awkward position of dropping charges rightfully brought by officers. The practice seems to shift accountability for dropping the appropriate charges from law enforcement and the DA to the non-elected Grand Jury. Other jurors disagreed and felt that many of the marijuana charges were, in fact, a waste of time and should be no billed.

Scheduling, Communications, & Logistics:

The Grand Jury meets two days every other week. Many of the jurors were concerned with the amount of time wasted during those two days waiting to see if witnesses will appear. The scheduling of witnesses needs to be mandatory in order to better utilize the jurors time. Officers time would also be more respected if they had a more specific time to testify. Many of them show up at nine, only to wait a long time to be heard. An online tool such as Sign Up Genius could easily connect officers with a more precise time, and would increase the efficiency of the Grand Jury.



Sound was sometimes an issue in the jury room. Jurors agreed to wear masks as a COVID precaution, but witnesses were invited to remove their mask so we could clearly hear them. It was still hard to hear at times. Utilizing the sound system in the jury room for witness testimony would help with this issue, as well as improve the ability of the jurors and court officials to hear each other properly.

Mr. Anderson communicated important dates and details to the Regular Grand Jury very well. However, there was some confusion about dates after the calendar was adjusted. Better communication during the original notification process would help. Everyone who is called is told that the commitment is every other Monday and Tuesday for the next four months, but the exact dates are not given. If all the dates for both juries were communicated before the day we report, jurors would be better able to commit to the regular or concurrent jury.

There is a lot of paperwork involved in these cases. There is always some human error. Additional resources are needed to reduce the errors and disorganization in case paperwork due to personnel changes. We also recommend discontinuing the practice of using a Grand Juror for clerical/notetaking support to ensure that all jurors are able to be fully engaged in the process of evaluating the testimony.

Recommendations:



Based on our experiences and interactions, we make the following recommendations:

Provide desk top name cards for each juror and court officials or distribute seating chart with jurors first names.

Create a visual chart of the organization and flow of cases through the court system for distribution to Grand Jurors.

Create a table of charges (felony, misdemeanor etc.) prioritized by consequence for distribution to Grand Jurors.

Provide access to a law enforcement officer to answer questions if there isnt an officer on the Grand Jury. The officer should be able to give us background and information about the jail and other insights.

Randomly select the entire jury instead of asking for volunteers in order to have a better representation of the racial diversity in Hamilton County.

Allow the Grand Jury to recommend when cases may be suited for Mental Health Court and Drug Court.












Dr. Jill Clevenger Hartness has been named Chief Advancement Officer for the Council for Christian Colleges & Universities (CCCU), effective February 2022. Dr. Hartness is known as a decisive and vibrant leader with a mature and deep Christian faith who comes from a strong legacy of successful leadership, it was stated. As Head of School at the Boyd Buchanan School (BBS) she secured the first multi-million-dollar gift in the schools history.

We are thrilled to welcome Dr.

CCCU President Shirley V. Hoogstra

Hartness whose extensive leadership exemplifies faith and learning, spiritual formation of students, and a global witness to Christs love, said. Dr. Hartness track record at Boyd Buchanan School is a natural foundation for her work in Christian higher education. We look forward to her joining the senior leadership team where she will bring her voice and expertise to the overall organizational leadership of the CCCU as we work to fund the ever-increasing role for Christian higher education in the public square.

Joining the leading national organization that represents Christian higher education in the United States, Dr. Hartness will support CCCU President Shirley V. Hoogstra and the existing development team to lead a strategy to raise the CCCU profile, widen the circle of foundations and friends who love the mission of the CCCU and expand fundraising overall. In her role she will advocate for Christian higher education and religious liberty, proclaim the good work of over 185 institutions around the world and develop the key leaders who serve over 500,000 students annually in the U.S. and abroad.

As a product of Christian education, I am excited for the opportunity to work with the CCCU. God has put a call on my heart to use the skills with which Ive been equipped to further the cause of Christ in this arena, said incoming Chief Advancement Officer Dr. Hartness. I believe in Christian education and the mission of the CCCU and look forward to advocating for and advancing the CCCU, supporting the vision and agenda of President Hoogstra, and building relationships that support our member institutions around common goals and a shared mission of promoting and protecting Christian higher education.

Dr. Hartness comes to the CCCU after serving 10 years as the Head of School at Boyd Buchanan School, a co-educational private Christian school with 140 employees and 1100+ students, located in Chattanooga, Tennessee. As an educational leader she will amplify the natural nexus point of K-12 Christian schools with Christian higher education. Dr. Hartness serves as the Board Chair of the National Christian School Association, on the Board of Directors for the Tennessee Association of Independent Schools, on the Synovus Advisory Board, and the Board of Bible in the Schools. Dr. Hartness is also an accreditation chair for the Southern Association of Independent Schools and a 2017 graduate of Leadership Chattanooga.

Under Dr. Hartness leadership, we have seen so many milestones at BBS, including foundational major gifts and the development of a strong leadership team through her efforts, said Dr. Jason Robertson, chair of the Board of Trustees at the Boyd Buchanan School. Dr. Hartness has been a vital presence in our school community and a part of the fabric of Boyd Buchanan; while she will be greatly missed, we look forward to seeing her talents highlighted in the essential work of Christian higher education.

Dr. Hartness is a Chattanooga native. She holds degrees from Lipscomb University, the University of Tennessee, and Abilene Christian University as well as a certification in Conflict Management and residency in Mediation. She served as a Boyd Buchanan School Trustee for five years, an officer of the board for three years and was honored as the Boyd Buchanan School Distinguished Alumnus of 2010. She and her husband Jeb have two children, Grayson and May.
Tennessee Attorney General Herbert H. Slatery III is responding to recent action taken by Davidson County District Attorney Glenn Funk in Abu-Ali AbdurRahman v. State, No. 87-W-417 (Davidson County. Criminal Court).

In a letter sent to General Funk, General Slatery says the state will not appeal the recent modification of Mr. AbdurRahmans sentence. However, AG Slatery writes, This decision . . . should not be taken by you or anyone else as tacit approval of the order obtained or the position you have taken.

In 2019, General Funk obtained an agreed order modifying Mr. AbdurRahmans death sentence to life imprisonment. AG Slattery said, "This modification violated the law, and the Tennessee Attorney Generals Office appealed. The Court of Criminal Appeals vacated the agreed order and remanded the case for further proceedings.

"Last month, General Funk obtained a new order that resulted in a modification of Mr. AbdurRahmans death sentence to life imprisonment."

Referring to the new order, General Slatery said it violates the law in several ways, including that the underlying juror-discrimination claim had already been rejected by several courts, including the Tennessee Supreme Court. General Slatery also warned that procedures employed to frustrate the appellate process will not be tolerated and are no barrier to an appeal.
Mayor Tim Kelly presented his plan One Chattanooga at the Civitan Club meeting Friday morning. He said there are seven key strategies in his plan including early childhood learning, infrastructure, public health, and building a competitive regional economy. He said he wants to repair the two Chattanoogas referring to his idea that Chattanooga is segregated economically, culturally and otherwise.





Mayor Kelly told the Civitans early childhood learning is the most urgent item to work on despite not being able to see real results until years after his term. He said he has spent time nationally and locally discussing K-12 and the people who need this the most, ironically, cannot afford it. He also said it is critical that they find a way to create and fund a proper early childhood education with help from the federal government.





If Im thinking about what would produce the best Chattanooga in 20 years from now, this would it, Mayor Kelly said. If you get this wrong, all the money in the world would not be able to fix it.





He expressed his urgent concern for this matter by stating only 40 percent of children going into kindergarten in this area know shapes, colors, and letters.





You wonder why we have problems with public safety or people that are unemployable, that's why, he stated.





Mayor Kelly said building a competitive regional economy is also high on his list of priorities. He said many of today's high paying jobs are related to digital and creative economies that are mostly located in larger metros. He said Chattanoogas jobs are growing; however, Nashville and Atlanta are leaving us in the dust. Mayor Kelly said he plans to fix this issue by working closely with the Chamber of Commerce to see what can be done better.





A lot of midsize cities in America run the risk of sliding into economic irrelevance, said Mayor Kelly. That frankly, unattended, is the way things are going for Chattanooga.





He went on to say Chattanooga is fortunate in terms of quality of life and natural environment and those are the things to lean on and leverage in order to create jobs.





A Civitan member asked if he could reach these goals without raising tax dollars. Mayor Kelly said they are getting a good bit of money from the federal government, more specifically for infrastructure, and taxes will not need to be raised. He said the infrastructure bill will massively help with those goals.
A student at Central High School was arrested on Thursday for bringing a gun on school property.

The Sheriff's Office said the student was arrested at 12:30 p.m. by a School Resource Officer.

The SRO recovered a loaded Glock .22 with a high capacity magazine from the student.
The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga's tuition is so high that students are turning to sex work in order to make ends meet. At least, this is the message conveyed in the UTC newspaper. A recent article titled, The Secret Life of the College Sex Worker written by a staff writer at the UTC Echo explains how some students are becoming sugar babies, amateur porn actors, and selling foot fetish pictures to pay their tuition.

The UTC Echo writer states, As tuition prices continue to rise, college students have begun turning to a certain stigmatized profession as a way to make 'easy money' while in school. It was also stated, with the rise of online platforms such as OnlyFans and Seeking Arrangements, students can participate in sex work from the safety of their own dorm rooms. Later the article defined sex work explaining sexual services are provided for compensation, including pornography, working phone lines, dancing, or becoming a sugar baby. In our current economy, there is no shortage of job openings. But there is a shortage of morality. Immorality is often encouraged by certain institutions, including the media.

An anonymous student apparently gave the University paper an inside scoop on their secret life. In the article, an ill attempt to tie sex work to capitalism is made. Jasmine stated, I think everyone is selling their body in one way or another for capitalism. She admittedly makes around $500 a week selling pictures, videos, and participating in video chats.

Furthermore, a sophomore Rachel is a so-called sugar baby who uses the online platform, Seeking Arrangements, to match young people to rich older men and women. As a sugar baby, Rachel was flown to New York by an older man, who provided her with round-trip airfare, an apartment, and spending money for a week. If this wasn't eye-opening enough, Rachel admitted she lied to her parents in order to go on the trip without even considering the risk of being kidnapped.

I wonder if UTC understands that parents, alumni, staff, and current students read the UTC Echo. This doesn't seem like an article that would be beneficial for the recruitment or retainment of students. It's clear that promoting prostitution, sugar babies and foot fetishes doesn't exactly promote women's rights or equality. Additionally, I'm sure capitalism is not the cause of college students turning to sex work. There are plenty of jobs available with increasingly higher wages, so stop encouraging immoral ideologies that will only harm women, families, and humanity in the long run. It's time to see through the smoke and mirrors and realize morality is failing and this is more apparent when reading this article in the UTC Echo.

Source: https://www.theutcecho.com/news/the-secret-life-of-the-college-sex-worker/article_87ea8e9c-5376-11ec-9803-e72f8b4642fd.html

Jeff Irvin Jr.



UTC Alumni Class of 2008

* * *

I usually open the Chattanoogan app each morning along with other news apps to see whats happening locally. Today I read an article on Polyamory studies at UTC. I admit I did not know what this is. Now I do, and I also know that this is not only supported by the university that my family and I attended, but also published in my local daily online newspaper.

My wife and I are seniors and have our perspective of the difference between moral and immoral behavior and this is not moral. Maybe we are in the minority these days so I guess our only alternatives to oppose this garbage are (1) not support a university that condones this charade of higher learning and (2) delete the Chattanoogan app. Goodbye.
The County School Board voted 6-2 on Thursday against a plan by the state to bring a pilot program to Orchard Knob Middle School, saying that school already has another intervention program going on and is enjoying a successful turnaround.

Interim Supt. Dr. Nakia Towns said school officials repeatedly urged the state Department of Education to focus instead on Howard School. However, she said the state insisted on implementing the new program at Orchard Knob Middle. Board members said the state would be "taking the credit" when Orchard Knob Middle likely goes off the Priority School list next fall, though the bulk of the improvement work has already taken place.

School Board Attorney Scott Bennett said the state "needed to find another school" to implement the new program and latched onto Orchard Knob Middle.

Dr. Towns said the state said it was going ahead with the Orchard Knob Middle program, but finally agreed to provide $750,000 for Howard improvements.

The school board vote may have imperiled the $750,000 for Howard, school officials said.

Board member Joe Smith said of the linking of the Howard money with proceeding with the Orchard Knob Middle program, "That's extortion. That's mean. That's wrong. That really makes me angry."

Board Chairman Tucker McClendon indicated he agreed with the extortion statement, saying he was weary with dealing with the state.

Karitsa Mosley Jones said, "I'm tired of the state using our students at Orchard Knob as guinea pigs."

Jenny Hill and Marco Perez were the only board members to vote approval for the state's Orchard Knob Middle program. Ms. Hill said, "I will vote yes to get the money. I will sell us out to get the money." Mr. Perez said, "I will sell my soul for the students of Howard."

Voting against were Mr. McClendon, Ms. Jones, Mr. Smith, Rhonda Thurman, James Walker and Joe Wingate.

Dr. Towns said the state could punish Hamilton County Schools for the action "by taking an unlimited amount out of our budget."
Alec Baldwin was by no means inexperienced with on-set guns before the deadly Rust shooting. In fact, hes handled weapons in both movies and television shows. Over a four-decade career, Baldwin has been seen wearing, handling, and shooting guns of various types. Here are the Alec Baldwin films you may have seen him with a weapon in.

The actors career started in 1980

Alec Baldwin | Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images

Baldwin is a veteran actor whose big break came in 1980 on the soap opera The Doctors. He subsequently appeared in primetime series Knots Landing. However, film is where he would ultimately make his mark. Baldwin debuted on the big screen in 1986s Forever Lulu.

The prolific actors career only got bigger from there. He appeared in Beetlejuice,Working Girl, and Shes Having a Baby, all in 1988. Furthermore, the 1990s brought a slew of more serious roles in action films, including Malice (1993), The Hunt For Red October and Miami Blues (1990), Heavens Prisoners (1996), Mercury Rising (1998), The Juror (1996), The Getaway (1994), and The Edge (1997).

As Baldwins career matured, he began to show up in movies with landmark directors. He appeared in Martin Scorseses The Departed (2006) and The Aviator (2004). He notably scored an Oscar nomination for his role in 2003s The Cooler.

However, as Baldwins roles diversified, so did his experience as an actor. With the action movies came prominent gun-carrying roles. Those roles are notable especially in the aftermath of the fatal on-set shooting that killed one person and injured another.

Alec Baldwin was rehearsing a scene for Rust when he accidentally killed the movies cinematographer

The Rust star and producer was in a church on the Bonanza Creek Ranch set in Santa Fe, New Mexico, when he accidentally shot and killed cinematographer Halyna Hutchins with a prop gun. He additionally wounded director Joel Souza. An investigation into the incident is ongoing.

But in the weeks and months following the shooting, many are asking how it could have happened.

Baldwin, it turns out, has plenty of experience packing heat onscreen. His character, CIA analyst Jack Ryan appears with a gun in The Hunt For Red October. He handles two separate firearms as Frederick Franger, Jr. in Miami Blues. Similarly, he uses two firearms in The Getaway as Carter Doc McCoy.

In scene after scene of 1994s The Shadow, Baldwin carries a gun, appearing as both the title character and his superhero alter-ego Lamont Cranston.

The actor carries two firearms as homicide detective Dave Robicheaux in Heavens Prisoners. He carries four different guns as Teacher in The Juror. He also carries a weapon as photographer Bob Green in survival movie The Edge; as well as Col Kudrow in Mercury Rising; Macklin in Thick as Thieves; as Jack McCallister in Fun With Dick and Jane; and finally, as

Alan Hunley in Mission Impossible: Fallout.

If all that werent enough, Baldwin appears with several different firearms as Jack Donaghy in NBC comedy series 30 Rock. And then there were the roles like Captain Ellerby, in which Baldwin has a gun on his hip, but doesnt necessarily fire it.

So whether a survivalist, spy, CIA analyst, detective, cop, or superhero, Baldwin seems to have done it all when it comes to firearms on set. Unfortunately, his attempt to use one on the set of a Western didnt go well.

Alec Baldwin says hell likely never do another movie with a firearm after the gun accident

In any case, Baldwin denies any wrongdoing when it comes to the Rust accident. And with the amount of firearms hes handled in movies, its difficult to imagine such a dangerous misfire.

According to a recent interview that aired on ABC, Baldwin likewise admitted that he couldnt imagine being in another film with a gun. Furthermore, he said his career may be over.

I cant imagine Id ever do a movie that had a gun in it again, he told George Stephanopoulos in the special Alec Baldwin: Unscripted. I cant.

RELATED: Here Are The Movies Filmed at Bonanza Creek Ranch, The Scene of the Deadly Alec Baldwin Rust Accident
Michelle and Jim Bob Duggar are speaking out following their son Josh Duggars high-profile criminal trial. Josh, 33, was found guilty on Dec. 9. of receiving and possessing child pornography. He faces up to 20 years in prison on each count. His attorneys say they plan to appeal.

Jim Bob and Michelle, who rose to fame on their now-canceled TLC reality series 19 Kids and Counting, issued a statement following their sons conviction. They said they were praying for Josh as well as his wife Anna Duggar and their children.

Michelle and Jim Bob Duggar say they will never stop praying for Josh Duggar

Michelle Duggar and Jim Bob Duggar | Peter Kramer/NBCU Photo Bank/NBCUniversal via Getty Images

Both Anna and Jim Bob were present in court when the guilty verdict was read, according to a report from KNWA. They and several other Duggar family members left the Fayetteville, Ark., courthouse without speaking to the media. Later that day, Jim Bob and Michelle issued a statement on their website.

This entire ordeal has been very grievous, they said. Today, Gods grace, through the love and prayers of so many, has sustained us. Our hearts and prayers are with anyone who has ever been harmed through CSAM [child sexual abuse material].

Jim Bob is currently running for Arkansas State Senate as a Republican. The primary election is scheduled for Dec. 14. In a statement on his campaign website, Jim Bob said that he did not plan to let his familys problems keep him from seeking office.

Cancel culture and the radical left want to keep us from being involved in politics, he said. They say because our family has faced problems we should shrink away  this is why they are often so relentlessly unkind.

The 19 Kids and Counting couple say they will support Josh Duggars wife, Anna

Josh, 33, has seven children with his wife Anna, whom he married in 2008. Anna gave birth to a daughter, Madyson, in October. They also share Mackynzie, 11, Michael, 10, Marcus, 8, Meredith, 6, Mason, 4, and Maryella, 2.

In their statement, Jim Bob and Michelle said they planned to surround our daughter-in-law Anna and their children with love and support.

As parents, we will never stop praying for Joshua, and loving him, as we do all of our children, they added. In each of lifes circumstances, we place our trust in God. He is our source of strength and refuge. Thank you for your prayers.

Jill Duggar and Derick Dillard also pledged to support Anna Duggar

Joshs younger sister Jill Duggar and her husband Derick Dillard also made a statement on their website following Joshs trial, calling it a difficult day for their family.

The couple went on to thank law enforcement and others involved in holding abusers accountable. Nobody is above the law, they said. We have been lied to so much that we wanted to hear the evidence for ourselves in court. After seeing all the evidence as it was presented, we believe that the jury reached a just verdict today, consistent with the truth beyond a reasonable doubt.

Jill had previously identified herself as one of several girls Josh molested when he was a teen. They have been open about their estrangement from some members of her family.

Derick and Jill also pledged to support her brothers family, who is also suffering the fallout of his actions.

Our hearts are sensitive to the pains Joshs wife, Anna, and their seven children have already endured and will continue to process in the future, they added. This trial has felt more like a funeral than anything else. Joshs family has a long road ahead. We stand with them, we are praying for them, and we will seek to support them however we can during this dark time.

How to get help: If you or someone you know has been sexually abused, text HOME to the Crisis Text Line at 741741 for free and confidential support.

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After a three-year feud, Drake and Kanye West joined forces in the name of charity. The two collaborated on a music benefit concert to raise awareness for an inmate currently fighting a life sentence. The benefit is being streamed globally on Amazon Prime Video and related platforms and is Wests idea.

(L ro R) Kanye West, Kenny Burns and Drake attend Compound 2015 | Prince Williams/WireImage

Kanye West and Drake to perform at a benefit concert

Amazon Music and Prime Video announced on Dec. 8 that they are exclusively live streaming Wests concert in honor of current inmate Larry Hoover. The event marks Wests, now known as Ye, first headlining show in five years. Many are both happy and stunned that Drake will also perform, considering the twos tense history.

The Free Larry Hoover Benefit Concert is taking place at the LA Memorial Coliseum on Thursday, Dec. 9 at 8 pm EST. The show is available to stream globally on Prime Video, as well as on the Amazon Music app, and the Amazon Music Twitch channel.

Source: YouTube

Related: Kanye West Allegedly Exposed Drakes Address in Anticipation for DONDA

Ye is dedicating the benefit concert to raising awareness of the need for prison and sentencing reform, to support legal reform and community advocates including Ex-Cons for Community and Social Change, Hustle 2.0, and Uptown Peoples Law Center.

I believe this event will not only bring awareness to our cause but prove to people everywhere how much more we can accomplish when we lay our pride aside and come together, Ye, 44, said in a statement about the concert.

The move comes after the two ended their longstanding feud

The news of the show came after the YEEZY founder and the Canada native made peace. Both shared photos and videos taken together on Tuesday, Nov. 16 posing for the camera in one video and a photo showed them with J Prince. Ye also included clips of Dave Chappelle speaking. Make some noise for Kanye and Drake. And make some noise for our reconciliation, Chappelle said in the clip.

Source: YouTube

Related: Drake Is Still Beefing with Pusha T and Kanye West

Their beef began nearly three years ago in 2018 due to a diss track. Ye produced Pusha Ts Infrared, which took jabs at Drake and started a lengthy beef. Eventually, Pusha broke the news that Drake has a son, Adonis, on The Story of Adidon.

Ye was allegedly the one who told Pusha about Drakes son. Ye, however, denies such. Pusha later confirmed that it was not Ye who spilled the beans to him.

Who is Larry Hoover?

Hoover is the co-founder of The Gangster Disciples. In 1997, he was found guilty of murder, conspiracy, extortion, and money laundering, and other charges. Hoover is currently serving six consecutive life sentences. Since hes been incarcerated, he has disassociated himself with the Chicago street gang altogether.

Source: YouTube

Related: Drake Fans Vandalized Kanye Wests Childhood Home Replica

Hoovers son, Larry Hooever Jr., has been working on the frontlines to have his father freed. He released a statement expressing his appreciation for Ye putting on the benefit. With Ye, Drake, and J Prince United to Advocate For My Fathers Release, We Can Take Our Plea For Redemption Worldwide And Show That We Are Truly Stronger Together On Behalf Of Any and Everyone with a Love One Wrongly Or Unjustly Incarcerated, the statement read.
CHENEY  An exchange student from Santiago, Chile, is enjoying her time here and learning her way around.

Catalina Meneses, a 15-year old junior, is being hosted by local teacher Amye Ellsworth and Jake Andersen.

I like to go around town with friends, since the town is really small, she said. Its really fun  and I also like to go and visit Spokane, visiting all the museums, shops and parks.

Meneses said she likes going to area likes; her favorite is one near Medical Lake, although she said she doesnt know its name.

That is one of my favorite things to do because we also dont have lakes in Chile, she said.

She said she goes there a lot and plans to visit Lake Coeur dAlene in the near future.

Meneses also likes her time at Cheney High School, a place she says she feels welcome.

There is a lot of friendly people and the teachers are really nice, she said, noting she really learning French and participating in Key Club.

School is very different here, Meneses said.

In my school, we all have uniforms, she said. So, that has been a really big change for me, like having to dress up every single day.

We also, we dont move from classroom to classroom, like we only have one classroom. Here, I have had the opportunity to meet a lot of new people, in Chile, its just like 30 people at once.

She said the school day is a lot longer here than in Chile and we have lunch a lot earlier.

She said she feels like Washingtonians are a lot more outgoing than Chileans .

A lot of people compliment me in school and in shops and I dont get that in Chile, she said. In Chile, we are more quiet and reserved and everyone here is really outgoing, as I said, and talkative, and more, like, um  friendly, too.

Meneses didnt have high expectations coming here.

So, its been a nice surprise, she said, adding she is really happy with her host family.

That has been the best part  they have been amazing, she said. I have been, like, really surprised with that.

Meneses also has a lot more friends here than she expected.

I wasnt expecting people to be so nice to me, she said.

Although she talks a lot with her family, she misses home and misses her dog.

She said she had a nice small Thanksgiving dinner with her host dads family and played board games.

The food was really good, I tried mashed potatoes and gravy with turkey, she said. And yeah, that was great.

Regarding her upcoming Christmas break, she said: I am going to travel to Seattle. So, I am really excited about that. I am really excited, too, because it is my birthday on Christmas.

She said in comparison to Chile, Christmas is really big around here.

Before coming here, the thing I wanted to gain the most is like, friendship and connections with people, because I have a big connection with my host parents, and now with friends, she said.

One reason she wanted to be an exchange student is to study in college, here in Washington.

She said upon returning home, she will be spending time with her family and her pet and sharing her experience with others to encourage them to do an exchange.

I encourage people to do an exchange because its a really good experience, she said. You learn a lot, and you grow a lot. And its really nice.

When she returns, she will complete one more year of school.

In college, She also plans to major in English and become a screenwriter.

I hope that I can have the money to come and study here in Washington again, and in Seattle, most likely. she said.

Features reporter Sarah Stephens can be emailed at features@cheneyfreepress.com.
Advent Week 2: Sin and Redemption

John the Baptist played a crucial role in preparing people for the Messiah. This week, we consider what Scripture says about Johns purpose. We reflect on how his teachings about sin and repentance can speak to our own lives of Christian discipleship.

Read Matthew 3:112.

The Gospel writer Matthew preserves the historical setting for John the Baptists ministry with a simple timestamp: In those days (v. 1). To read the previous chapter (as well as Luke 3) is to understand these were the days of megalomaniacal rulerslike Herod the Great who, in bloodthirsty rage, killed the little boys of Bethlehem. After Herod died and his son had risen to power, Joseph remained afraid for his family and moved them to Nazareth so that what was spoken by the prophets might be fulfilled, that he would be called a Nazarene (2:23, ESV).

Matthews gospel is insistent upon the fulfillment of Gods prophetic promises. God saidand it was accomplished, Matthew emphasizes over and over again. This notion isnt to be treated as self-evident, of course, not when visible reality suggests evil is winning. When babies are dead at the hands of an evil king, for example, can we really trust that heaven is breaking in, as John preaches (3:2)?

John the Baptist cuts the figure of Elijah in the Old Testament, dressed in camels hair, eating locusts and wild honey. Elijah was another prophet who ministered under an evil regime. King Ahab, like Herod, also killed for ambition. After Elijahs dramatic victory over the prophets of Baal, his Queen Jezebel put a price on Elijahs head.

Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. This is essentially the word preached by all of Gods prophets, and by Gods grace, it is a word that arrives in the darkness. Its a word of good news: Theres been a change of administration. This proclamation, preached both by John and Jesus, anticipates that another king will ascend to the throne. As the prophet Isaiah himself declared many hundreds of years earlier, the government of this king, unlike the government of King Ahab or King Herod, will be one of peace (Isa. 9:67).

To follow King Jesus is not simply to be saved by him; its to be changed by him. According to Paul, the gospel tells us that Jesus gave himself for us to redeem us from all wickedness and to purify for himself a people that are his very own, eager to do what is good (Titus 2:14).

We know the working of amazing, saving, cleansing grace when Gods people turn from sin and surrender themselves wholly to God. If Advent is the dawning of light, repentance is the daily habit of walking in it.

Jen Pollock Michel is a writer, podcast host, and speaker based in Toronto. Shes the author of four books, including A Habit Called Faith and Surprised by Paradox.

Contemplate Matthew 3:112. How does the idea that the kingdom has come near (v. 2) or is at hand (ESV) add context to Johns call to repent? What does this statement reveal about Jesus? How does it enrich your understanding of the gospel? Of cleansing grace?

[ This article is also available in espanol, Portugues, Francais, , , Indonesian, , and . ]

Have something to add about this? See something we missed? Share your feedback here.
Patrick Marsh worked on the design of the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles and then turned around to help with the renovation of the Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor, which reopened to great fanfare in 1986.

He played a key role in designing two popular rides at Universal Orlando when it opened in 1990Jaws and Kongfrontationand then moved to Japan to design cutting-edge theme parks in Tokyo and the foothills of Mount Fuji.

But he didnt think he had reached the height of his career until he got to Kentucky. He didnt like the mud, he told a local newspaper reporter, but he loved the workdesigning the Creation Museum and Ark Encounter.

Thats probably the most incredible thing Ive had a chance to do, Marsh said. I just feel like all the things that the Lord has been working on my life has led up to actually coming here to Answers in Genesis (AiG).

Marsh, the creative force behind the creationist attractions in Petersburg and Williamstown, Kentucky, died on December 2. He was 77.

Calling him a genius is not an overstatement, Ken Ham, AIG founder and CEO, said in the organizations official announcement. Patricks fingerprints are all over the Creation Museum and Ark Encounter. I have never worked with a more creative person.

Anthropologist James Bielo, who wrote a book about the process of designing the full-scale recreation of Noahs ark and the opening of the park in 2016, said there was always a creative give-and-take between Marsh and his team, and Ham had to sign off on every decision, but Marsh was the undisputed maestro.

Patrick would bring Ken Ham fully fleshed-out design ideas, Bielo told CT. And they butted heads though, from what I saw, Patrick won out whenever it was about design. Patrick had a vision. And the artists had total respect for him.

Marsh was born in 1944 and raised in Southern California. He was a creative child and spent much of his time making things. If he saw something on TV that he wanted but couldnt afford, he would try to create it himself. He once sewed a cowboy jacketan accomplishment he remained proud of decades later.

He wasnt very religious but, as he recalled in later years, he never accepted theories about evolution. Life seemed like it needed a designer.

I know how much work and tears go into making something, and it does not come easily, Marsh said. Every living thing is so complex, so wonderful, so beautiful: each leaf, each insect, each person, each sunset. God is in everything all around us, and we have to be blind not to see that the world was purposefully made by a Designer who cares about everything.

Marsh studied at the University of California, Los Angeles, earning an undergraduate degree and a Master of Fine Arts in design. He graduated in 1971 and went to work in design. By the early 1980s, he had landed a position at Sussman/Prejza & Co. in Santa Monica. The new firm was working on urban branding and heralded for carnivalesque modernity, inspired by punk and postmodernism, as part of the broader New Wave design movement, which broke away from grid structures and stretched the limits of legibility.

At 40 years old, Marsh had proved himself enough to be given responsibility for a team of 50 designers as Sussman/Prejza took on the Olympics account.

After that, he helped with the Statue of Liberty and played a major role in development of several rides for Universal Studios Escape, a theme park designed to let visitors ride the movies.

Just a momentary escape

He loved the workcreating an interactive story, engineering the moods that would affect people, designing every piece of the machine and the illusion and seeing it all come to life exactly as hed imagined it in his mindbut he did wonder, sometimes, if there was any point to it all.

It was just for fun, he explained to an Orlando Sentinel reporter. Just a momentary escape.

In Japan, Marsh worked on Sanrio Puroland, also known as Hello Kitty Land. He met and married to a Japanese woman named Sakae and had a religious conversion.

The Bible is the only thing that gives you the full picture, he said. Other religions dont have that, and as for scientists, so much of what they believe is pretty fuzzy about life and its origins.

A few years later, in 2001, Marsh read about Answers in Genesis plans for a creation museum and wrote an email asking if there was any way he could be part of it.

I want to use my talents for the Lord, Ham recalled the email saying. I want to come and help you build the Creation Museum. Please, will you employ me to build the Creation Museum.

Marsh took over the design for the Creation Museum and brought the 60,000-square-foot vision to life. It opened in 2007. It was popular with conservative Christians and church groupsbut also won a strange respect from self-identified critics and culture war opponents who hated it but also thought it was really well done and, worse, kind of fun.

A New York Times culture critics gave it marks for sheer weirdness and daring.

Whether you are willing to grant the premises of this museum almost becomes irrelevant as you are drawn into its mixture of spectacle and narrative, he wrote. Its 60,000 square feet of exhibits are often stunningly designed by Patrick Marsh.

Atheist blogger Hemant Mehta described it as nothing more than an expensive way to confuse and indoctrinate children, but even he had to admit that the design really is beautiful.

Drawing people in

Marsh, for his part, wasnt worried about whether the museum convinced anyone of creationism or the literalism of the biblical account of Genesis 1 and 2. That wasnt his job.

Either God is going to call you and open your heart to believe what Im showing you, which is really God showing you, or he wont. Thats what the Bible says, he said. If I can get you to be curious about the Bible, and you actually read it and you read stories about the Ark and you read whatever it is, maybe God is going to speak to you and open your heart.

To create the spaces that would draw people in, Marsh and his team studied other museums together. One of his favorites was the Lincoln Museum in Springfield, Illinois. The design team studied the way it created an embodies sensory experience. Another place they looked at was the Holy Land Experience in Florida. According to Marsh, it was a good idea poorly executed. The problem, he said, was the designers didnt seem to understand the spiritual message.

It wasnt a mistake he would make, and in 2010, Marsh got to demonstrate his vision, planning Ark Encounter with Ham from day one. It started with a 500-foot replica of Noahs biblical craft, but for the designer of the 84 Olympics and Hello Kitty Land, it didnt end there. He envisioned a Tower of Babel and a ten plagues ride, complete with sound effects, for a theme park starting with Noahs story but expanding across Genesis.

You never know where God is going to take you in life, he said. He gives you all these experiences, and you want to be able to use them. What a privilege to have the kind of job that I have, and be able to take all those things that Ive enjoyed in life and bring them together. I cant imagine doing anything else.

In 2016, a few days before the grand opening of Ark Encounter, Marsh got to turn the lights on for the first time.

I kept wanting to see what it looked like, he said. I designed the lighting in here, and I didnt get it turned on until last week.

You visualize in your mind what its going to look like, but until you see itI didnt know. Once they got the lights in, and turned on the switchit looks exactly the way that I hoped it would look.

Marsh is survived by his wife, Sakae. Funeral arrangements have not been announced.
As a young mother in Sudan, Susanna al-Nour struggled like many others with rising prices and shortages of goods. International support pledged after the 2019 revolution was slow to materialize. The government struggled to disburse promised aid. And tribal groups protesting in the east were blocking access to essential imports coming through the Red Sea city of Port Sudan.

And then this October things got worse.

Citing divisions among politicians, Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, the general heading Sudans mixed military-civilian Sovereign Council, launched a coup against the popularly selected prime minister, Abdalla Hamdok.

Phone and internet connections were cut, Hamdok was detained, and security forces raided neighborhoods to arrest supporters of his government, roughing up others. Thousands poured into the streets, including Nours husband, an evangelist and pastors assistant at Faith Baptist Church in the Soba area of the capital, Khartoum.

With a small child, I couldnt go because of the tear gas, she said. But it was necessary to demonstrate against the regime.

Sudans Christians were then solidly in support of Hamdok, sources told CT. Two months later, sources no longer speak in consensus.

Image: Courtesy of Susanna al-Nour

At the time, enraged and without communication, the nation went into a standstill. Nours online studies through a seminary in Lebanon became impossible. So did her husbands student ministryas most young people were marching to reverse the coup.

Back in 2019, Hamdok quickly became the symbol of the revolution. Chosen by consensus among the political and revolutionary groups that deposed the 30-year Islamist dictatorship of Omar al-Bashir, his leadership was one of the few unifying factors in a rapidly fraying partnership between civilians and the military.

And then he wasnt.

Amid international condemnation of the October 25 coup and efforts to suppress demonstrations, last month Burhan announced his welcome for Hamdoks returnwithout politicians.

His originally technocratic government had added them following the October 2020 Juba Peace Agreement with rebel forces in Darfur and elsewhere. But this was in response to militia leaders then joining the Sovereign Council, disturbing the military-civilian balance.

The additions threw confusion into an agreement to hand over council leadership to a civilian figure by May 2021. Burhan and Hamdok celebrated an end to the conflict that had riddled Sudan for decades. But the militarys conflict with civilians was increasingly spilling out into the open.

The May deadline came and went, with no clarity. An office established after the revolution to remove Bashir-era corruption from government began challenging the resulting military dominance of the economy. Bashir himself became a point of negotiation, to be handed over to the International Criminal Court in The Hague. But other military officials were implicated also, not only for crimes in Darfur but also for the killing of civilians during the 2019 demonstrations.

And thus came the coup. Burhan denied ill intention, saying he acted to protect the democratic transition from the squabbling politicians. Under house arrest, Hamdok was a crucial lynchpin. He was welcome to returnbut only with a technocratic government.

After three weeks of pressure, on November 11 he agreed. Too much blood had been shed in protest, he said. The military couldnt be allowed to take over everything, he hinted. And the economy needed international support, suspended after the coup.

Hamdoks 14-point agreement with Burhan returned Sudan to constitutional legitimacy, reestablishing a military-civilian partnership. Political detainees were released, and a civilian government was promised after democratic elections in July 2023. Promised steps toward a legislature, judiciary, and constitutional convention would also be expedited.

But by then Burhan had already hand-picked new civilian members of the Sovereign Council, and there was no mention of a midway switch in leadership.

The streets exploded in angerthis time also against Hamdok.

Christians, however, were not so sure.

Image: Courtesy of Susanna al-Nour

Most Christians support Hamdok in returning to his position, said Nour. But a smaller part rejects him, saying he should not cooperate with a criminal.

At issue, however, is most.

Christians are in great disagreement with this step, a Sudanese Christian leader told CT, requesting anonymity because of the sensitivity of the situation. Some in Khartoum support him, but they are very few.

This leader spoke of Bashir-era evangelicals who cooperated with the government in order to seize control of church properties. And after the coup, Burhan moved to place members of Bashirs now-dissolved political party into key positions of the administration. Hamdok has since called for a review of all recent dismissals and appointments, but the damage had been donehe aligned with the coup.

The military is causing all the problems it lists as reasons to intervene, said this leader. The state is controlled by security, but it is not offering security to the people.

In addition to the at least 44 demonstrators killed since Hamdok was deposed, about 100 have been killed in renewed ethnic conflict in Darfur. Dozens more have been killed in the Nuba Mountains. And the tribal blockade in East Sudan, the leader asserted, was coordinated from the beginning by the military.

The Juba Peace Agreement has not brought peace, said Aida Weran, academic officer for Nile Theological College, which has campuses in Khartoum and Juba. But it was a way to delay democratic progress.

She respects Hamdok for not breaking his oath, as he returns to office with constitutional legitimacy. This is unlike the most prominent Christian in the government, Raja Nicola. The sole joint selection in the Sovereign Council, the Coptic Sudanese accepted reappointment under Burhans coup.

But it was a mistake to add politicians to the government, Weran said, and their opposition to the coup is driven by partisan interest. They should instead prepare for their own legitimacy through coming elections, as a technocratic governmentled by Hamdokis a good result given all that has come before.

But she is still protesting.

Entering our third year, we are still at the starting block, with no justice and no real freedom, Weran said. And while we demonstrate, people are going hungry. Even this is a delay.

Not demonstrating at all is Hassan James.

As Christians, we have the responsibilityas a minorityto be neutral, said James, the assistant bishop of the Anglican diocese of Kadogli, in the Nuba Mountains state of South Kordofan. Supporting one side or the other is not wise.

James believes that stability is paramount. Currently Sudan is in a fog, while constant protests amid regional violence are filling many with fear. But democratic transition is impossible without peace, he said, and partnership with the military is necessary.

What happened has divided us as a people, he said. But no one side can afford to isolate the other, and none can lead the country alone.

Guma Komey reached the same conclusion but from an entirely different path.

If someone has a gun, how can you take him to the gallows? said the head of peace programs at Sudans branch of the Carter Center in Khartoum. The country is held hostage by the collective concern of Sudans military leaders.

An elder in the Evangelical Presbyterian Church in Bahri, Khartoum, Komey served as an official advisor to Hamdok before taking his current position. Amnesty was discussed behind the scenes, he said, to be granted after the democratic transition was complete.

But as the military-civilian partnership began to drastically deteriorate, rhetoric from certain politicians called to sideline the military and fully investigate their role in the deaths of protesters. Threatened, Burhan decided to fight.

Hamdok did the best he could in a tough situation, said Komey. And while Christians have no unified position toward the prime minister, they cannot put him in the same box as Burhan and Bashir. (Burhan gave the order to overthrow Bashir during the revolution.)

Yet many Sudanese do. Though numerous, these are only the loudest voices on the street, and the ones who control the social media accounts of political and revolutionary movements. But others, like Weran, are protesting also.

A different approach is needed, said Komey. Some sort of package deal is needed to institute a program of transitional justice while putting the generals at ease. The deal made could have been better, but it was the best of a bad situation. The protesting youth want democracy, but in their zeal must first ensure they can reach power.

If the opposition weakens Hamdok, it strengthens the military leadership, said Komey. He is under extensive pressure, but I think he will absorb it over time.

There is a window of opportunity. The United Nations general secretary expressed sympathy for protesters, but stated that common sense demands working together. The US has called it a good first step but stated that more progress is needed before resuming its $700 million in suspended aid to Sudan.

In the meanwhile, Nour and her husband have returned to ministry, paying home visits to church members without working electricity. Internet service has resumed, tribal leaders unblocked Port Sudan after the coup, and most importantly, the prime minister has returned.

Hamdok is intelligent and wise, and knows how to plan, said Nour. I believe he will put things right in Sudan.
Bidens Build Back Better plan botches Gods role for government

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President Bidens grandiose Build Back Better plan seeks to expand the size and scope of the federal government to a degree not seen since Johnsons Great Society. But mention any limits to the power of government and people on the left and right bare their fangs. If they were porcupines, they would raise their quills. Most people assume that the state must have absolute power, or we will kill and eat each other.

God disagrees. Lets look at the most famous passage on government in the New Testament, Romans 13. Paul launches the discussion with what appears to be an absolute command:

Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God.

Verse four continues,

For he is Gods servant for your good

Few theologians read past the first half of verse four and conclude that God has written a blank check to governments to do anything they desire if someone views it as good. They employ the first half of verse four to justify setting minimum wages and maximum prices, providing healthcare, welfare and education, building roads and airports and many other activities.

However, the second half of verse four reads, He is the servant of God to execute wrath on the wrongdoer. That sentence gives us a clue as the role God thinks government should play  to punish evil people.

The great political theologian Oliver ODonovan wrote in his book, Desire of Nations, that Paul had pruned the role of government back to its original one of punishing evil because the Father had given Christ all authority, as he said in Matt. 28:18, All authority in heaven and earth has been given to me.

Statists of the left and right bristle at such a suggestion and argue that Paul is merely giving us one of the many jobs of government, not all them. Specifying some activities of the state doesnt exclude it from engaging in others. If authority is a public good, like air, so that my use of it doesnt diminish yours and both could have as much as we wanted, then critics of ODonovan would be right.

But authority isnt a public good; its a private one. Competing authorities is a zero-sum game like poker in which the winner of a hand takes money from the losers. The one who has power over me diminishes my power. If I take back that power, I diminish his. An officer in the military has power that the enlisted men under him dont. He has reduced their power to act. If they rebel and take back some of that authority, the officer loses what authority he had.

Paul wrote in Romans 13 that governing authorities are servants of God. The Greek word is the same as the one for deacon. Governments have no authority but that given to them by God. He assigned government the role of punishing evil people, those who violate the God-given rights to life, liberty and property of others. If the state takes on more roles, it steals the authority from God and from citizens.

And the states role is even more limited because the state has no money of its own. All it has comes from taking the property of others through taxation. The state diminishes the wealth of individuals to perform its God-given duty. God has given the state the authority to tax people to perform its role. Jesus said to give to Caesar what belongs to him (Luke 20:25). Paul confirms it in Romans 13:6 and Peter agrees in I Peter 2:19.

But for the state to expand its role beyond that of punishing evil, it must take more of the peoples wealth to pay for it. As with authority, it must reduce the wealth of citizens to expand its role and in doing so conflicts with citizens right to property. Thou shalt not steal applies to governments as much as citizens. At what point does taxation become theft?

Statists argue that under a democracy the government cannot steal because the people give their consent to the taxes. But God never said, Thou shalt not steal unless the majority approves of the theft. Individuals have rights to life, liberty and property that the state cannot infringe upon. The right to life is the positive restatement of Thou shalt not murder. The right to property is the positive of Thou shalt not steal, including the government. If the state steals from its citizens, then democracy becomes the tyranny of the majority.

Wealth is limited, so if the state wants more of it to perform roles other than its God-given one, it must take wealth from citizens who have the right to it. It must increase its authority and wealth and reduce those of individuals. But who gave the state the authority to do so?

The theologians at the University of Salamanca, Spain, during the Reformation arrived at the principles of limited government centuries before ODonovan. They determined that the state has no authority beyond that to punish evil people. God had given individuals the rights to life, liberty and property and the people contracted with the government to protect those rights because they understood the benefits of specialization before Adam Smith. John Locke learned his contract theory of government from those scholars. If the state goes beyond its God-given duties and raises the necessary taxes, it commits theft.

This argument wont convince statists because they love the state and most pick a verse from the Bible, plant a flag on it and camp there. They read, Let every person be subject to the governing authorities and stop. They ignore the principles of hermeneutics that instruct us to consider all verses on a topic to distill systematic theology about it. Good systematic theology is hard work, and few people want to do it.

The theologians of Salamanca and Oliver ODonovan have done the hard work for us. Whether we like it or not, God in the Bible has given the government a very limited role, that of punishing evil people and nothing more. The Magna Carta and the U.S. Constitution instantiate that principle.

A strong argument against Bidens Build Back Better leviathan is that it is illegal under the Constitution and violates Gods role for government.
Theologian John Piper lists 7 ways Christians can battle a 'critical spirit'

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Theologian and Bible teacher John Piper listed seven strategies Christians can employ to combat the tendency toward having a "critical spirit."

On Monday's episode of the Desiring God podcast Ask Pastor John, a listener identified as Alan asked: What does the Bible say about a critical spirit? What is a critical spirit? I assume holding high expectations is not the same thing as having a critical spirit.' So when do high expectations become sinful judgmentalism? And how can I fight against this tendency inside of me to focus mostly on the failures of others?

Starting with the premise that all people are wired to be critical, Piper went on to list seven ways he found through personal experience and reading the Bible to battle a critical spirit.

The first was to recognize ones own faults, with Piper pointing to a passage in Matthew Chapter 7 in which Jesus warns His followers about being hypocrites when judging others.

The second was to remember what one is saved from, the third was to be thankful, and the fourth was to meditate on what love is and how essential love is to the Christian.

I think most of us should memorize all of First Corinthians 13. That chapter is only 13 verses long. Its the most important chapter on love in the Bible, Piper stressed.

And you can memorize it in a week if you put your mind to it, and then say it to yourself over and over again for a year or so, and see what happens.

Fifth, Piper recommended that believers ask themselves how being constantly critical is truly beneficial, noting that Jesus said thats a good question to ask when it comes to a lot of sins: What good are they doing? How are you helping anybody with that particular bent?

The sixth strategy Piper advised was to look at the whole of nature and cultivate a view of life, hour by hour, that is more expansive  bigger heart, global, universal, all-encompassing, God-entranced.

Finally, Piper recommended to always be focused on praise, with the theologian telling listeners to fill your mind and your heart and your mouth with praise.

The remedy to not be a cranky, hypercritical misfit is to be full of praise. So fix your eyes on God and the wonders of His creation and redemption, and be filled with praise, he concluded.

The Christian apologetics website Got Questions described a person with a critical spirit as being someone who is prone to complaining, seeing the glass as half-empty, ruing unmet expectations, sensing failure (in others more than in oneself), and being judgmental.

Regarding the issue of overcoming a critical spirit, Got Questions stated that the condition of our heart is crucial to dealing with the problem.

Critical words spring from a critical heart. And a critical heart generally comes from a misunderstanding of Gods grace  either due to pride or a simple lack of information about Gods character and the meaning of salvation, the website added.

Only when we understand our depravity apart from God and the depth of His grace will we be able to bestow grace to others.  The better we understand Gods grace, the more gracious we will be with others.
Josh Duggars family members react to child porn guilty verdict: 'Felt more like a funeral'

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Family members have reacted after former reality television star Josh Duggar was found guilty by a federal jury in Arkansas on Thursday of receiving and possessing child pornography and could face up to 20 years in prison.

This entire ordeal has been very grievous, his parents, Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar, said on their website. Today, Gods grace, through the love and prayers of so many, have sustained us. Our hearts and prayers are with anyone who has ever been harmed through CSAM [Child Sexual Abuse Material].

The couple vowed to do all we can to surround their daughter-in-law Anna Duggar and their seven children.

As parents, we will never stop praying for Joshua, and loving him, as we do all of our children, they assured. In each of lifes circumstances, we place our trust in God. He is our source of strength and refuge. Thank you for your prayers.

Amy Duggar King, the cousin of the accused and niece of his parents, overtly praised the jurys decision.

King, who made appearances on the familys TLC show 19 Kids and Counting when on air, regularly spoke out against her cousin. Upon hearing of his conviction, she tweeted that her heart was for the victims.

May the jurors and Judge Brooks seek healing/counseling from all that was exposed to them, King wrote on Twitter.

May the children grow up with real Godly men as father figures who will guide and protect them. May the people who were once in disbelief have their eyes opened for the first time.

May the jurors and Judge Brooks seek healing / counseling from all that was exposed to them.

May the children grow up with real Godly men as father figures who will guide and protect them.

May the people who were once in disbelief have their eyes opened for the first time.  Amy Rachelle King (@amyduggar) December 9, 2021

Kings mother, Deanna Duggar, also shared in an Instagram Story that JUSTICE WAS SERVED!!! Praying for all involved in the case!!!

Josh Duggar, 33, had previously admitted to molesting his sisters when he was younger. His history of abuse resulted in the cancelation of the familys reality show highlighting their large family and ultra-conservative Christian faith.

Derick Dillard, the husband of Jill Duggar and Josh Duggars brother-in-law, shared his thoughts after he and his wife attended the trial.

We just wanted to, among other things, see the facts for ourselves, he told People. America is the best country to get justice.

The couple shared further in a lengthy statement on their family website.

Today was difficult for our family, the statement read. Our hearts go out to the victims of child abuse or any kind of exploitation. We are thankful for the hard work of law enforcement, including investigators, forensic analysts, prosecutors, and all others involved who save kids and hold accountable those responsible for their abuse.

Joshs actions have rippled far beyond the epicenter of the offense itself, they added. Children have scars, but his family is also suffering the fallout of his actions. Our hearts are sensitive to the pains Joshs wife, Anna, and their seven children have already endured and will continue to process in the future. This trial has felt more like a funeral than anything else. Joshs family has a long road ahead. We stand with them, we are praying for them, and we will seek to support them however we can during this dark time.

The jury in Fayetteville found the 19 Kids and Counting star guilty of one count of receiving child pornography and one count of possessing child pornography. After hearing the verdict, he told his wife he loved her and was taken into custody.

Josh Duggar was accused of having over 200 images of child porn ranging from about 18 months of age to 12 years of age.

The images were found in a computer at a car dealership that he owned. Duggar had pled not guilty to the charges. His defense claimed someone else was responsible for the illegal files on the computer, a claim investigators found to be unlikely.

According to People magazine, the allegation that Duggar had porn images of children on devices was made by Homeland Security Investigations Special Agent Gerald Faulkner, who testified for the prosecution.

Homeland Security seized the devices in March 2020. Agent Faulkner provided a summary of the forensic analysis.

The files downloaded of child abuse were within the top five of the worst of the worst that Faulkner said he ever had to examine in his line of work.

Judge Timothy Brooks said Duggar will be sentenced in about four months and faces up to 20 years in prison and $250,000 fines.

Federal prosecutor Dustin Roberts said during a press conference after Thursdays hearing that although Duggar was convicted on both charges, Duggar will be sentenced for the charge of receiving child pornography.

Possession of child pornography is a lesser included offense, he said. By function of law, you cant be convicted of both.
Less than half of Americans, 63% of churchgoing Christians believe Jesus existed before Christmas

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Less than half of Americans, including just 63% of churchgoing Christians, believe Jesus existed before His virgin birth in Bethlehem, a new study from Lifeway research shows.

The study, conducted Sept. 3-14 through an online survey of a national pre-recruited panel of 1,005 Americans, shows that only 2 in 5 or 41% of American adults, in general, believe Jesus existed before His Bethlehem birth. Some 32% disagree with the idea that Christ existed before His Bethlehem birth, while 28% say theyre not sure.

Researchers also found that even among Christians who attend church four times a month or more, only 63% agree that Jesus existed before His Bethlehem birth even though many Scriptures from the Bible support that position.

Prophecies such as those in Isaiah 9 reflect that the Messiah would be the Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father and Prince of Peace. While these titles reflect the Trinity, some Americans do not connect the Jesus born in Bethlehem with the Messiah who already existed as God now coming in the flesh, said Scott McConnell, executive director of Lifeway Research.

The religiously unaffiliated were the least likely among respondents in the survey to believe Jesus existed before Bethlehem, with fewer than 15% of them supporting the notion.

In John 6:62 for example, Jesus asks His many disciples at the time: What and if ye shall see the Son of man ascend up where he was before?

The Scripture further highlights how difficult it was for many of them to embrace the idea of His divinity and pre-existence when it notes in John 6:66 that: From that time many of his disciples went back, and walked no more with him.

In a 2016 presentation in New York City, the American Bible Society explained that despite the Bible being the most printed and sold book in the world over the last five decades, less than half of practicing Christians in the U.S. spend serious time engaging with their Bible and the rest of the country is even worse.

At the time, Samuel Harrell, director of Project Ignition at the American Bible Society, presented evidence gathered from a six-year assessment of the state of the Bible conducted by the Barna Group which showed that just 18% of the American population 18 years and older read the Bible. Among practicing Christians, only 37% were found to engage with their Bible.

A recent survey from Probe Ministries, a nonprofit that seeks to help the Church in renewing the minds of believers with a Christian worldview, also reflected unorthodox theology among born-again Christians when it found that nearly 70% of them disagree with the biblical position that Jesus is the only way to God.

Another study from Arizona Christian University published earlier this year, showed that among an estimated 176 million American adults who identify as Christian, just 6% or 15 million of them actually hold a biblical worldview.

The study showed that while a majority of Americans self-identified as Christians, including many who identify as evangelical, believe that God is all-powerful, all-knowing and is the Creator of the universe, more than half reject biblical teachings and principles, including the existence of the Holy Spirit.
Supreme Court says abortion providers can sue Texas, but heartbeat law remains in effect

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The United States Supreme Court has released a decision allowing some lawsuits against Texas heartbeat abortion ban to move forward, but has not blocked the law that prohibits abortion once a baby's heartbeat can be detected.

In a ruling released Friday morning in the case of Whole Womans Health et al. v. Jackson et al., the high court examined whether certain abortion providers could pursue a pre-enforcement challenge.

We conclude that such an action is permissible against some of the named defendants but not others, wrote Justice Neil Gorsuch, who authored most of the majority opinion.

This Court has never recognized an unqualified right to pre-enforcement review of constitutional claims in federal court. In fact, general federal question jurisdiction did not even exist for much of this Nations history.

The Supreme Court also rejected an appeal by the Biden administration against Texas' law, labeling it improvidently granted, or something that shouldn't have been brought before the justices.

Planned Parenthood denounced the Supreme Court decision in a post on its Twitter account and promised to keep fighting against the heartbeat abortion ban.

The Supreme Court has once again failed to put an end to Texas bounty hunting scheme and protect our constitutional rights, tweeted Planned Parenthood. They have failed to bring relief to Texas patients and providers whove suffered for 100 days under this unconstitutional law.

Justice Clarence Thomas pointed out during arguments in the case of Dobbs v. Jackson Womens Health Organization on Dec. 1 that the U.S. Constitution doesn't include the right to abortion, despite what Planned Parenthood and pro-choice activists have long claimed.

Thomas noted: If we were talking about the Second Amendment, I know exactly what were talking about. If were talking about the Fourth Amendment, I know what were talking about, because its written. Its there. What, specifically, is the right here that were talking about?

Texas Right to Life Director of Media and Communication Kimberlyn Schwartz emailed a statement to supporters celebrating the Supreme Courts rejection of the Biden administration's challenge.

We are grateful that the Supreme Court practiced judicial restraint today and stopped the Biden administrations pro-abortion campaign against the strongest pro-life law being enforced today, stated Schwartz.

While we continue to fight for this policy in the lower courts, Texas Right to Life celebrates that the Texas Heartbeat Act will continue saving between 75-100 preborn children from abortion per day.

In May, Texas' Republican Gov. Greg Abbott signed the ban into law, which prohibits most abortions after a fetal heartbeat is detected, generally around six weeks into a pregnancy.

The law is not enforced through state officials but rather through private citizens who are given financial incentives to sue abortion providers or anyone who helps a woman obtain an illegal abortion.

Despite multiple pre-enforcement legal challenges, including one from the U.S. Department of Justice, the Supreme Court allowed the law to take effect on Sept. 1.
Texas Right to Life receives bomb threat at Austin office: 'This is a spiritual war'

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A Texas-based pro-life activist organization received a new bomb threat against one of its offices, allegedly due to its support for the states controversial heartbeat abortion ban restricting abortion as early as six weeks into pregnancy.

Texas Right to Life released a statement Monday explaining that its legislative office in Austin had received a bomb threat that morning.

The threat came in the form of what the lobbying group labeled a suspicious letter sent to the office, which threatened to bomb the organization and said that they should expect to receive the bodies of aborted babies.

Authorities arrived at the office at 11:40 a.m., according to the statement. The Austin Police Department is investigating the incident.

Devaluing life inside the womb inevitably leads to violence outside the womb, Texas Right to Life President Elizabeth Graham said in a statement. These recent crimes demonstrate the brokenness, anger, and pain of the pro-abortion movement. We pray for the perpetrator, that he or she may find healing in Christ, and we ask for prayers for our staff.

Kimberlyn Schwartz, director of media and communication for Texas Right to Life, told The Christian Post in a statement Thursday that the most recent threat and other threats they have received are heartbreaking.

These threats are heartbreaking, not only because they endanger our staff, but also because they reveal the anger and pain that abortion leaves on the hearts of its proponents, stated Schwartz.

Ultimately, this is a spiritual war. Texas Right to Life is taking ground from deep in the Evil Ones territory and proclaiming the sanctity of Life. Now is the time for all Christians to stand up for preborn children and pray for the end of abortion.

In another email cited by The Texas Citizen Journal, Graham said the organization is working with the Austin Police Department and the FBI to determine the validity of the threat.

According to Texas Right to Life, the threatening letter stated: LETS BOMB TEXAS FOR LIFE AND CHANGE IT TO  TEXAS FOR DEATH.

Texas Right to Life, which was instrumental in helping craft Texas new abortion law, received an email in September from someone threatening to blow up its headquarters in Bellaire. A suspicious package was delivered to that office later that day.

The facility was evacuated and bomb experts from Houston checked the package, which turned out to not have an explosive device inside.

Texas Right to Life did the right thing in contacting the police, said the Bellaire Police Department in a statement to CP in September.

It was fortunate that our officers were on scene when the suspicious package was delivered and we appreciate the occupants of the building working with police to quickly clear out in the event that this was an actual bomb.

In May, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott signed the Texas Heartbeat Act prohibiting most abortions after a fetal heartbeat is detected, usually about six weeks into a pregnancy.

The law is not enforced through state officials but rather through private citizens given financial incentives to sue abortion providers and anyone who helps a pregnant woman procure an abortion.

Despite multiple pre-enforcement legal challenges, including from the Biden administration, the U.S. Supreme Court allowed the controversial legislation to take effect on Sept. 1.

On Nov. 1, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments for around three hours on the Texas law, focusing on the means through which the ban was enforced.

Since the Texas Heartbeat Act took effect September 1, abortion advocates wished rape upon our female staff and their daughters, left vicious voicemails, circulated the home addresses of employees online, and threatened to bomb our offices twice within four months, Texas Right to Lifes Monday statement reads. Texas Right to Life has taken proactive measures to ensure the safety of our staff since we became the target of violent messages online and by phone due to the Texas Heartbeat Act.

In September, an Oklahoma man was arrested for making death threats to pro-life Texas legislators.
The Ukraine: A litmus test for Western civilization

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Once again, the specter of armed conflict and military aggression is casting its deadly and ominous shadow over Europe. Vladimir Putin, the Russian oligarch and old KGB colonel who has said that the greatest geopolitical tragedy of the century was the collapse of the evil empire of the old Soviet Union, is threatening to invade the sovereign country of Ukraine.

Everyone needs to understand that Putin cannot fulfill his lifes ambition to rebuild the old Soviet Union under the banner of Russia without putting Ukraine once again under Russian control and rule.

For example, the old Soviet Union had a population of just over 293 million people when it ceased to exist as a political entity in 1991. Today, Russia has a population of 146 million people. Ukraine has a population of 41.5 million people. If you combine the two countries populations, you have 187 million people or approximately 65% of the population of the former Soviet Union.

Putin has already forcibly put Crimea and parts of eastern Ukraine back under Russian control and now he is casting a covetous eye on the rest of Ukraine and all its tremendous natural resources.

Why would Putins Russia threaten to invade Ukraine now and amass troops along the border? Quite simply, the profound weakness and odd obtuseness of the Biden administration is more temptation than the Putins of the world can withstand. When the bad actors in the world are confronted with the opportunity to further long-held territorial ambitions and their national interests and the only thing standing in their way is the bluster and empty talk of the Biden foreign policy team, they are almost certain to act.

The Russians, the Chinese, the North Koreans, and the Iranians, among other bad actors, are taking notes and preparing aggressions of their own. The greatest danger to world peace for the vast majority of the worlds population is American weakness or lack of resolve to resist aggression by the bad actors and bullies of the world.

As Putin amassed troops on the Ukraine border, President Biden ruled out the use of military force and said that NATO troops on the ground in Ukraine is not on the table. Instead, Biden told Putin that Russia would face economic consequences like none hes ever seen if he invaded Ukraine.

I am not advocating that American military personnel be involved in combat with Russians in Ukraine, but how foolish (and may I say, stupid!) to announce that in advance and remove any hesitancy on Putins part.

The situation is complicated by the fact that in 2008, NATO entered into an arrangement with Ukraine as a partner, but not a member of NATO (Ukraine has sent soldiers to fight on several NATO missions such as Iraq and Afghanistan.)

Mr. Putin views Ukraine as an inalienable part of Russia, an opinion not shared by a majority of Ukrainians themselves. NATO (The North Atlantic Treaty Organization) was founded in 1949 to resist Soviet aggression in Europe or, as was infamously explained by a British general, to keep the Russians out, the Americans in, and the Germans down!).

If Mr. Putin launches a military invasion into Ukraine and the West allows him to do so successfully, the world instantaneously becomes a more dangerous and volatile place.

As I wrote in March 2014, Since the end of World War II, America has been the reluctant, but necessary, chief of police, making sure there are cops on the beat who prevent bigger countries and their regimes from brutalizing and conquering weaker countries. This policy successfully kept a significant portion of the world free from Soviet and Communist domination until the Soviet Unions demise in 1991.

When the U.S. has appeared weak and indecisive, the worlds bad actors have been emboldened (the Iran hostage crisis and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1980 providing prime illustrations of this truth) under the criminally weak foreign policy of President Carter. I am told by reliable, but confidential military sources, that at the time of the Russian invasion of Afghanistan, President Carter had allowed our military to deteriorate to the point that only two of the U.S. Armys combat divisions were considered well-provisioned enough to go into battle.

Another important factor to consider in the Ukrainian situation is the nuclear equation. In 1991, when the Soviet Union ceased to exist, the newly independent Ukraine (inheriting part of Moscows nuclear arsenal) was for one brief moment the worlds third-leading nuclear power. Ukraine had control of over 1,800 nuclear weapons, more than any nation except the U.S. and Russia.

The Clinton administration, rightly concerned about nuclear proliferation and about these weapons falling into the hands of terrorists, made it a high priority to urge Ukraine to give up its nuclear weapons for economic and security guarantees. Ukraine did so in return for the Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances in which Ukraine gave up its nukes and signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and Russia, Britain and the U.S. pledged to protect Ukraines territorial integrity.

This pledge has proven to be the emptiest of promises as the Russian aggression in Crimea and its threat to seize further Ukrainian territory illustrates vividly. Does anyone really think that if Ukraine still possessed even a small portion of its former nuclear arsenal that Crimea would now be annexed by Russia? And the new threats of invasion would not be happening if Ukraine were even a minor nuclear power.

The annexation of Crimea in 2014 was a violation of both the Budapest Memorandum and the bilateral 1997 Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Partnership between Ukraine and the Russian Federation. And in important respects, Ukraine is the canary in the coal mine.

As NATO has neglected its military deterrent, Russia has attempted to fill the void and exploit the strategic opportunity.

What should America and her fellow Western European allies (Britain, France, Germany, Belgium, Holland, etc.) do? They should commence immediately to arm the frontline states from the Baltic to the Black Sea to make it very painful and costly for the Russians to use military force.

We should not send American or Western European troops, but sophisticated weaponry (stinger missiles, the most advanced anti-tank and anti-aircraft weapons) beginning first with the Ukrainians and then the other frontline states.

We should do our best to make Ukraine the military equivalent of an angry porcupine, making the cost in Russian lives too expensive for Putin to justify it to his people.

After all, the Ukrainians are not asking us to spill our blood for their freedom. They are asking us to give them the weapons to defend themselves against Russian aggression.

Bernard Lewis, the late Middle East scholar, once observed that while it is dangerous to be Americas enemy, it can be fatal to be its friend. (Their Friends the Americans, The Wall Street Journal, Dec. 9, 2021.)

We owe a debt of honor to the Ukrainians. We as a nation promised them that if they gave up their nuclear weapons, we and our allies would protect them from Russian invasion. Will we fulfill our promise, give them weapons to make invasion a heavier price than the Russians are willing to pay, or will we go back on our word?

If we do, our word will become meaningless, our allies will not trust us, and as many of them as possible will seek to obtain nuclear weapons themselves, making the world a vastly more dangerous place. The more nations that possess nuclear weapons, the more likely they are to be used.

A great deal is at stake in the decisions being made in the next six weeks or so. I wish I had more confidence that President Biden and his security team had more understanding of just how immense their responsibilities are. Frankly, I dont have any confidence they have a clue.

As instructed by Scripture, I pray for all who are in authority every day, and that includes President Biden and the members of his administration. May God give them wisdom, courage and insight.
Plumber who found missing money at Joel Osteen's Lakewood Church says he deserves reward

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A plumber who claims to have found wads of checks and cash inside a wall in Joel Osteens Lakewood Church in Houston says he deserves an award for the finding as authorities believe it may be linked to a 2014 theft of over $600,000 from the church.

The plumber, who wishes to remain anonymous, discovered missing money in the Texas megachurch while working on a toilet on Nov. 10. After turning in the money, he went public with his finding during a radio interview on 100.3 The Bull with host George Lindsey.

After Houston Police said the checks he discovered appeared to be linked to the 2014 robbery, the unnamed plumber said in an interview with a local news outlet published this week that he thinks he should get something in return, although the case remains unsolved.

I didnt solve their case, but I solved very key important clues as to what could or may have happened there, the plumber was quoted as saying. I feel like I should get something. I feel like some type of reward should get offered to me.

Houston Police believe the money found is linked to a March 2014 theft from a church safe. About $200,000 in cash along with $400,000 worth of checks reportedly went missing.

At the time of the 2014 robbery, Crime Stoppers had stated that anyone who provides any information leading to an arrest would receive a $25,000 reward.

Police say the investigation is ongoing. However, the statute of limitations on the felony theft case is now expired and the plumber may not be entitled to any reward money.

That doesnt preclude Lakewood from giving him a reward or a combination from HPD congratulating him on doing the right thing, Deputy Director of Crime Stoppers Houston, Nichole Christoph, told ABC 15. Unfortunately, Crime Stoppers is out of the picture at that point.

The Houston Police Department said in a statement last Friday that evidence from checks recovered suggests they are connected to March 2014 theft. The checks, cash and money orders have been inventoried and left in the custody of Lakewood Church.
Keith Getty on dangers of modern worship, tells pastors: 'Love your people enough to care about what they sing'

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At a time when deconstructing ones faith almost seems trendy, hymn writer Keith Getty is emphasizing the important role theologically sound, biblically-grounded hymns play in strengthening the next generation of believers.

In an interview with The Christian Post, the In Christ Alone writer lamented a movement hes seen permeate churches of all denominations, sizes and demographics across the United States in recent years.

The pastor goes, I preach the Word. Everybody else do the rest, and I'll just concentrate on the sermon. Well, that's, that's stupidity. That's not how the Bible was written. That's not how the Church fathers behaved, Getty said.

Everyone from the great reformers like Martin Luther and John Calvin to revivalists including Jonathan Edwards and Dwight Moody understood that, Yes, you preach the Word, but what your congregation sings and the shape of your services, from the prayers to the Bible readings, is crucially important," he continued.

We have to be able to do that, Getty stressed. What if we don't do that? What will happen is, we've got a generation of children going to churches that are imaginative and lively and fill their imaginations but are shallow. Or else, we get people going to churches that are full of truth, but they're so boring and so loveless and joyless, that there's none of the attractiveness of Christianity to draw people. The first thing that actually attracts their imagination will draw them away."

He added, "There's a huge danger with it. I would say to any pastor or teacher out there  love your people enough to care about what they sing.

Keith Getty and his wife, Kristyn, are behind some of todays most beloved hymns, including He Will Hold Me Fast, Christ Our Hope in Life and Death and The Power of the Cross. The Irish-born duos organization, Getty Music, includes a publishing company of modern hymn writers, a record label, touring company and an online learning company.

Through their platform, Getty said he and his wife seek to write great modern hymns that would transform the world for Christ and strengthen and transform children while championing others to do so as well.

The father of four daughters, ages 10, 7, 6 and 3, Getty feels strongly about instilling Scripture through song in children at a young age. Thanks in part to the rise of social media, the challenges facing children today are unprecedented, he stressed, and thus, parents can get away with less.

I think we have to make sure that our children know the Scriptures better than they know us, better than even they know their own careers, he said. I think they have to be more passionate and be more creative and imaginative in love for the Lord than their love for Disney. If we do not put songs that so fill their emotions with the Lord, then Frozen will take those songs, and Frozen is anti-Christian. They're great songs  but they're not Christian.

He added: We have to, as families, I think, work harder at keeping the unity in our families and logically keep the unity in our churches. People keep talking about  there's so much breakdown and  split and anarchy in the Church, but of course. Look at the culture around you. What do you expect? Look at social media  thats going to happen. We shouldn't be surprised at that. But we've got to work harder. Weve got to pray  and weve got to make sure that our families are more biblical than ever before.

The Gettys latest album,Confessio  Irish American Roots, contains songs filled with traditional Irish melodies, new songs and timeless hymns. Getty described the albums lead track, Pass The Promise, as having a lovely kind of almost Appalachian simplicity to it.

The album also features guest artists including Alison Krauss (In Christ Alone), Sandra McCracken (All My Heart Rejoices Pass The Promise), Kirk Whalum and Dana Masters (Amazing Grace).

Confessio, Getty said, was inspired by the hymn writers of old: We went back to Ireland and we thought about all the 17th centuries of Christianity since St. Patrick brought Christianity to Ireland  of course, St. Patrick was a hymn writer himself  we thought about 17 centuries of Christianity in Ireland, and we thought about all the faithful pastors and farmers and tradesman and teachers who had faithfully passed on the faith for generations. Kristyn and I were just overwhelmed.

He added, We want to be part of that legacy. We want to, in our lives and in our witness and in the hymns that we sing, pass on songs to our children that they can carry with them through their life.

Commenting on the modern worship movement, Getty said hes concerned by the number of pastors, parents and teachers who blindly accept much of the theologically shallow music released today.

At the end of the day, modern worship, call it what you want, it's largely an industry run by Wall Street, he said. None of us should be acting like this is some great Christian resource that we should take blindly. How many things in the history of the world has Wall Street made more godly? These songs are oftentimes written by people who you wouldn't trust to be your kids' Sunday school teachers. Some of these people are great, but a lot of them aren't. And we've got to be wiser. We've got to own up to the responsibilities in our lives, the short life we have, and give our kids the things that are beautiful.

The artist clarified that hes not condemning the modern worship movement as a whole, stressing there are wonderful people who write and release beautiful music. But overall, he said, modern worship music shouldnt be trusted in the same way the Bible or the hymns of old should be.

The Psalms, for example, deal with many of the issues facing people today, from doubt to lament.

So many of the questions, so much of this deconstruction we're seeing online from people, are people who either never understood the Gospel in the first place or people who never understood the benefit of the Psalms, he explained.

If they read the Psalms, most of their issues  the Psalmists are having these issues thousands of years ago. This is not some new thing that's happened because we have the internet or because we have artificial intelligence. These are things that are as old as the Psalms.

What we sing, Getty said, profoundly shapes and affects us, adding: Were concerned the next generation are not singing enough of the hymns that they will carry for life. And they have such an amazing influence in our lives ... that's really the calling of our lives.
Nick Cannon prays for a miracle, says God gave him strength following death of 5-month-old son

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Actor and media personality Nick Cannon shared the shocking news that his youngest child, 5-month-old Zen, died over the weekend. He credited his strength in God for helping him through the tragic event.

The entertainer shared the news on the Nick Cannon Show Tuesday with a photo of his son, whom he shares with Alyssa Scott. The audience and crew were not aware of what Cannon was about to share and he went on to talk about his excitement over the summer, with the arrival of Zen on June 23.

He described that his son was born with what he thought was a sinus thing. Cannon also joked about Zens nice-sized head, something he said he and all of his children had  a Cabbage Patch Kid head.

After realizing that Zens cough was not going away, the father of seven took his son to be medically evaluated.

Following the examination, it was discovered that the infant had fluid buildup in his head.

We found it was a malignant tumor in his head, Cannon emotionally revealed, adding that Zen had to have a shunt put in to drain the fluid. We were faithful and hopeful for that time. He was still playing with all his brothers and sisters. I embraced every moment.

A photo of Zen with some of his siblings, including Monroe and Moroccan from Cannons ex-wife Mariah Carey, was displayed on the screen.

On Thanksgiving, Zens health took a turn for the worse.

The tumor began to grow a lot faster, Cannon explained. This weekend I made a valiant effort to spend the most quality time with Zen.  We woke up on Sunday and I was like, I feel like I want to go to the water, be close to the ocean.

He added, Holding my son for the last time, it was a beautiful setting.

While in tears, Cannon told viewers he was receiving tremendous support from his family as well as supernatural strength.

You grow through it, you keep pushing. I have so much faith in the Lord, I have so much faith in God. People were often telling me I should pray for miracles, and I did pray for the miracle. I prayed for the miracle of Gods strength. And thats why Im here with you guys today, he declared.

He puts the most and heaviest weight on the shoulders of his strongest soldier, Cannon concluded. So Im here to show that I can fight through this. Im feeling it, Im vulnerable, Im open, but Im going to make it through and this is a special show dedicated to my beautiful son, Zen.

The TV personality was raised in a Christian home. His father, James Cannon, is a TV evangelist.

Throughout his career, Cannon has affirmed his Christian roots, citing it as the reason he married Mariah Carey in 2008. Last year he released a gospel song with Kiera Sheard.

However, as seen in an interview on The Breakfast Club, Cannon mixes other religions into his theology by promoting teachings of the Nation of Islam, The Moorish Science Temple and mystical religions that do not align with Christianity.

Last year, ViacomCBS cut ties with Cannon after he made controversial comments on his podcast, referring to black people as the true Hebrews and suggesting that people who lack sufficient melanin are a little less and savages. He added that he was referring to Jewish people, white people, Europeans.
18 school board groups cut ties with NSBA for likening parent protests to 'domestic terrorism'

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The fallout over a letter from the National School Boards Association comparing parent protests and threats to domestic terrorism continues as 18 state affiliates have announced intentions to cut ties with the national education organization, according to a watchdog group.

The letter at issue, sent by NSBA leadership to President Joe Biden on Sept. 29, requested federal assistance to stop threats and acts of violence against public schoolchildren, public school board members, and other public school district officials and educators.

After expressing concern about the increased acts of malice, violence, and threats against public school officials, NSBA President Viola Garcia and Interim Executive Director and CEO Chip Slaven urged Biden to classify these heinous actions as domestic terrorism and hate crimes.

In October, U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland sent a memorandum directing the FBI to convene meetings with federal, state, local, Tribal, and territorial leaders within 30 days to facilitate the discussion of strategies for addressing threats against school administrators, board members, teachers, and staff.

While the NSBA apologized for the letter three weeks after its publication and it has since taken it offline, outrage over the tone of the request still looms large.

In the weeks and months following the letters publication, the number of state school board associations that have either distanced themselves from the NSBA letter or withdrawn from the organization entirely continues to grow.

The advocacy group Parents Defending Education, which vehemently opposes the rhetoric of the NSBA letter, has compiled a list of actions taken by state school board associations in response to the letter.

In the past three weeks alone, state school board associations in Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Illinois, Mississippi and Virginia have voted to withdraw from the NSBA.

The school board associations in these states join their counterparts in Kentucky, Louisiana, Missouri, Montana, New Hampshire, New Jersey, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee and Wisconsin in announcing their departure from the NSBA immediately or in the near future.

Additionally, several additional states have distanced themselves from the rhetoric in the NSBA letter without formally withdrawing from the national organization. Most notably, the Delaware School Boards Association, based in the presidents home state, issued a forceful response to an inquiry from Parents Defending Education.

The DSBA disagrees, in the strongest possible terms, with parents and citizens protesting school board meetings being characterized as domestic terrorists and their protests being likened to hate crimes, the organization said in a statement. The DSBA firmly asserts that citizen and public engagement in school board meetings is an integral and vital aspect of school board governance. We also made it clear that any attempt to silence citizens voices is a clear violation of their rights to free speech.

The DSBA also lamented that the NSBA did not consult with them before sending the letter, noting that had they done so, the state organization would NOT have allowed the DSBA to be associated with the letter and would have asked that the language be changed to reflect the fact that the DSBA does not support the letter and should not be generally included in it.

The NSBA letter stated that it was sent on behalf of our state associations and more than 90,000 school board members who govern our countrys 14,000 local public school districts.

Nine other state school board associations responded to Parents Defending Education, expressing some degree of disagreement with the rhetoric of the NSBA letter or stressing a belief in the ability of parents to speak out about their childrens education. Those states are Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, New Jersey, North Dakota, Texas, West Virginia and Wyoming.

Hawaii is not part of the NSBA. An email obtained via public records request revealed the head of the Rhode Island Association of School Committees telling his board that he thinks they should ignore the email from Parents Defending Education.

The remaining state school board associations did not respond to the inquiry from the advocacy group.

The NSBA letter followed a summer defined by intense protests at school board meetings in some localities nationwide as parents and community members had expressed outrage about policies allowing trans-identified students to use bathrooms that correspond with their gender identity as opposed to their biological sex, the use of sexually explicit material in the curriculum and the incorporation critical race theory components into the curriculum.

Specific examples cited by the NSBA letter of heinous actions taken by parents speaking out at school board meetings include anti-mask proponents [who] are inciting chaos during board meetings, confrontation of school board members by angry mobs that have forced meetings to end abruptly and a resident of Alabama who describes himself as vaccine police calling school administrators while filming himself on Facebook Live.

Another occurrence cited as problematic in the letter was the mocking of a Tennessee student during a board meeting for advocating masks in schools after testifying that his grandmother, who was an educator, died because of COVID-19.

Five days after the NSBA letters publication, Garland wrote the memorandum directing federal law enforcement agencies to work with their counterparts at the local level to facilitate the discussion of strategies for addressing threats." The move led to further criticism and a lawsuit.

Opposition to critical race theory and sexually explicit material in public schools played a significant part in last months off-year elections.

In last months election, candidates who campaigned in opposition to critical race theory performed well in school board races.

At the same time, Virginias Democratic gubernatorial nominee Terry McAuliffe, who proclaimed in a debate with his Republican opponent, Glenn Youngkin, that I dont think parents should be telling schools what they should teach, lost the election. A recent poll from the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty found that 63% of Americans think parents should have the final say in what children are taught at school.
Louie Giglio warns many will lose Satan's 'game' of deception before Jesus returns

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In light of the Advent season of waiting, Louie Giglio, the pastor of Passion City Church in Atlanta, Georgia, shared with his congregation that Jesus is coming back soon yet many wont make it to Heaven and some will be deceived by Satans game of deception.

The enemys plan for you and for me, in light of the fact that Jesus is coming soon, is that you would get deceived, Giglio preached in a sermon delivered on Nov. 29.

If you ask the average psychologist to describe the psyche of the human condition, they would say to you futile, meaningless and empty, he said later in the sermon. Why? Because man is already trying to plant God and already its fall in the Church, and hearts are growing cold.

The pastor and author lamented that many will stand in the Church and say, Forget about the blood of the lamb. We are good to save ourselves. He emphasized that the state of the world will get worse before it gets better.

Faith is going to wane. [Matthew 24:12] says that as wickedness increases, ... the faith of most will grow cold, Giglio told the crowd.

Theres something you can be sure of, even in a time of uncertainty and chaos: Jesus is coming soon, he stressed.

He warned, however, that everyone wont make it and urged those watching the sermon to live alert, not alarmed.

You dont need to be alarmed. What I would prefer you to be is alert, he said. I prefer you to wake up tomorrow and go, Jesus is coming soon, and He could come imminently, immediately, today. He could come in 100 years, which is also soon. But he could come right now.

The pastor said he aims to be alert but not frantic about the Lords coming. He advised his listeners to do the same.

Jesus said, Dont be alarmed. Im going to put my confidence in Him, Giglio said. Stay close to the original. If the enemys game is deception, then whats the best way to not get deceived?  Keep your eyes on Jesus. Keep your ears attuned to Jesus. Think your life in the words of Jesus. And dont listen to anything else but Jesus.

Deception from the enemy tries to take a Christians eyes off of who God is and overthink false prophecies, according to Giglio.

Keep your eyes on the revealed Jesus, not on some hidden prophecy, Giglio continued. In other words, just keep leaning into Jesus every day versus digging around and looking for and listening to the next prophecy that someones going to say. Just keep your eyes on Jesus because if Hes coming soon, then youll have your eyes locked in Him when he arrives.

People should live ready, he said, since the Son of Man will come at an hour when you do not expect him.

Everyone wont make it to Heaven in the end, Giglio said.

Two men are in a field, and one is taken, and one is left, he described.

He said that all Christians have the responsibility to become evangelists by sharing the Word of God without quarreling.

Everybody deserves an opportunity to hear the Gospel, he said. Skip the debate and spread the news. Go to your work, family, neighborhood, wherever you go, become an evangelist.  Youre an evangelist for your people. You want to arrive in Heaven as an evangelist.

Giglio encouraged his listeners to stay close to the flame, or the Lords Holy Spirit.

In Scripture, the flame is the Holy Spirit of God.  Draw close to the flame.  And live in a community of people who want to get around the flame, the pastor stressed.

Live in a community of people who know Jesus is coming soon; a kingdom mindset, a people who have hearts that are on fire for Jesus, he continued. And youre not just hanging out with people who are talking about the wind. Youre hanging out with people who want to stay close to the flame.  So what am I doing today to make sure that my heart stays close to the flame?

Because in the end, the tell-tell sign of the Son of Man coming is that most peoples hearts are going to grow cold, he concluded. Start now, knowing Jesus is coming soon by making the move  the move from earth to Heaven.

During the sermon, Giglio showed a graphic defining what soon means in the biblical sense. "Soon" is defined as a relative term used in relation to the external nature of the ALMIGHTY, who exists outside time and space, yet concurrently operates within the confines of finite human history. Soon could mean right now or within the next 100-1000 years, the latter of which, in God time, is the equivalent of one human day.
Parents to protest library where Christmas display featured sex books next to the Bible

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Parent activists are expected to stage a protest outside a Virginia public library in response to sexually explicit books and troll dolls dressed in LGBT colors being displayed next to The Holy Bible as part of its Christmas display, which many Christians saw as an attack on their faith.

Stacy Langton, Xi Van Fleet and other parents affiliated with the Mama Grizzly movement comprised of mothers who vehemently oppose the inclusion of critical race theory and sexually explicit material in public education, will hold a Holiday Hate Protest outside Dolley Madison Library in McLean, Virginia, Saturday.

The protest comes in response to outrage over a Christmas display where the books Gender Queer and Lawn Boy, which promotes pedophilia, was displayed next to The Holy Bible.

Langton shared pictures of the display on her Twitter account Tuesday. She contended that the library's display, mocks my efforts to remove #PornInSchools and mocks Christianity!

In another tweet, Langton said that to display the Holy Bible alongside pedophilia & pornography & #LGBTQ rainbow flags during #Advent at the library was a disgusting slap in the face to @fairfaxcounty taxpayers. She reported that by the time she went to the library that same day to confront library officials over the display, it had been removed.

3. Library staff put Branch Mgr. #NancyRyan on phone. Ryan said display was idea of a staffer & approved by Prisbey. Ryan got complaints from library patrons, who disapproved of "inappropriate" porn/pedo books posed next to #HolyBible.

Gee, ya think?? #MerryChristmas, taxpayers! pic.twitter.com/ZkYYT7njes  Stacy Langton (@StacyLangton) December 7, 2021

Was told Librarian, Mary Prisbey, would talk 2 me in 15 mins. She never did & left out the back door! she added. Library staff put Branch Mgr. #NancyRyan on phone. Ryan said display was idea of a staffer & approved by Prisbey. Ryan got complaints from library patrons, who disapproved of inappropriate porn/pedo books posed next to #HolyBible.

Jessica Hudson, the director of the Fairfax County Public Library, denied that the Christmas display resulted from any ill will in a statement released to multiple media outlets, including Fox News' affiliate in Washington, D.C. The Dolley Madison Library holiday reading display was intended to highlight the freedom to read and the fact that many library patrons have more time during the holidays to do so, she said. It was not the intention of staff to create a display that could be construed as offensive. The display has been removed.

Langton previously raised concerns about the books Gender Queer and Lawn Boy during a Fairfax County Public Schools board meeting on Sept. 9. She read aloud excerpts from one of the books to prove that they contain sexually explicit content that promotes pedophilia.

From the book Gender Queer, Langton read the text of a character telling another character I cant wait to have your c--- in my mouth. I am going to give you the b--- job of your life and then I want you inside me. The part of Lawn Boy she read aloud featured a character talking about how he s---ed Doug Gobles d---, the real estate guy, adding he s---ed mine too.

Both books describe different sex acts, Langton told the school board. One book describes a fourth-grade boy performing oral sex on an adult male. The other book has detailed illustrations of a man having sex with a boy.

Langton noted that Gender Queer and Lawn Boy were available at several high schools in Fairfax County. While the school district temporarily pulled the books from the shelves, they were reinstated to the libraries late last month. The concerned parent attended a Dec. 2 school board meeting to protest that decision.

In remarks at the most recent Fairfax County school board meeting, Langton discussed the contents of Gender Queer and Lawn Boy as well as additional books available in Fairfax County Public Schools that contained sexually explicit material and maintained that by allowing the books back in school libraries, the school board made clear that they are in favor of pornography in the schools.

Laws at the federal and state level prohibit obscene materials in the presence of minors, Langton stressed in her remarks.

Thursday @StacyLangton returned to @fcpsnews and called out the 12 Democratic school board members for returning porn and pedophilia to #FairfaXXX school libraries. Watch the activists who woke-wash the porn and pedophilia. They gesticulate and flail, beside themselves, enraged. https://t.co/dJAGpYVsslpic.twitter.com/hTc1xQ45R4  Asra Q. Nomani ????Mama Bear???? (@AsraNomani) December 4, 2021

The assistant superintendent of instructional services stated that the books are not obscene and do not contain pedophilia. That is a lie, she declared. The book shows a bearded adult male with an erect penis engaged in a sex act with a child. That is the definition of pedophilia.

Langton concluded her remarks by proclaiming that this school district is in violation of the law every single day that the pornography remains on the shelves. She received applause from much of the crowd gathered at the meeting.

The outrage over the display at Dolley Madison Library comes at a time when parents and community members across the country have descended on school board meetings to express their concerns about the implementation of critical race theory and trans bathroom policies as well as the inclusion of sexually explicit material in public school curriculum. The issue has become particularly contentious in Virginia and loomed large in the Virginia gubernatorial race.

At a debate with his Republican opponent Glenn Youngkin, Democratic gubernatorial candidate Terry McAuliffe declared: I dont think parents should tell schools what they should teach. McAuliffe lost to Youngkin as opponents of critical race theory performed very well in school board races across the U.S.
Seminary head releases new 'through-the-Bible' Advent devotional to prepare hearts for Christmas

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In time for Advent, Dallas Theological Seminary President Mark Yarbrough has released a new Christmas devotional that uses the whole Bible to explain the significance of the nativity story.

Titled Tidings of Comfort and Joy: 25 Advent Devotionals Leading to Christmas, the devotional book was released in October by Lexham Press.

Amid the hustle and bustle of a hectic holiday season, the 25 devotionals spread across about 176 pages aim to help readers focus December on Jesus and prepare their hearts for the true meaning of Christmas.

In an interview with The Christian Post, Yarbrough said he was inspired to write the devotional because he is, as he put it, a Christmas nut.

I love Christmas, Yarbrough, who took over as DTS' sixth president in July 2020, said. For believers, it is our holiday, when we get to revel in the greatest story ever told, where the Word became flesh. It was fun to write a Christmas book in the middle of a Texas summer.

Yarbrough, a professor of Bible Exposition, discussed how his book differs from other Christmas devotionals and why he included Bible passages in his book that do not directly talk about the nativity story. Below are edited excerpts from the interview:

CP: How would you say this book contrasts with other Christmas-centered devotionals?

Yarbrough: There is a lot of it that is the same.

What is unique about this is that it is a through-the-Bible devotional. So, in other words, we start in Genesis and end up in the New Testament, even way beyond the nativity accounts that we get in Matthew and Luke. So, its kind of a Genesis to Revelation. Were going to hit various passages of Scripture along the way.

A lot of devotionals will just zero in on the nativity.

Another thing that is different about it is that it is an action-oriented devotional. In other words, I have something that I call for every devotion, an advent application. So, theres some challenges that come out of this.

Heres something to do with the text, not to just ponder it. Thats part of it. But something to do with it for parents, for grandparents, for families, for all of us as believers.

Because I think that we learn best by doing, so we ponder the passage and look at the text, and then theres a call to action.

CP: In keeping with the Genesis-to-Revelation format you mentioned, how important is it to draw from the Old Testament when telling the Christmas story?

Yarbrough: I think we miss it if we dont.

The New Testament account that we get of the incarnation is best understood in the grand narrative of the Bible.

While its fascinating, as you know, to zero in the mystery that we see in the babe of Bethlehem when we see that Jesus is the fulfillment of all of the Old Testament covenant promises. When we see that, we have a more grand understanding that God has been on the move all along.

CP: For the Dec. 21 entry, you centered on a passage from the New Testament book of John even though that book does not overtly mention the nativity story. How come?

Yarbrough: We dont want to lose Johns message in all of this. Even though he doesnt, to your point, have the nativity, the huge theme that we have of the fact that Jesus is God.

The orthodoxy of the faith is that Jesus is both deity and perfect humanity. In Johns emphasis in the shock of all shocks, that God Himself became flesh and dwelt among us, is just an amazing thing that is presented in Johns Gospel.

So John is just in awe of the fact that God stepped into time in the person of Jesus Christ in order to come as the sacrificial lamb. So, its very Christmasy, if I can phrase it that way. John just goes about it in a very different way.

CP: What do you hope people take away from your devotional?



Yarbrough: I hope we marvel at the incarnation. I hope we revel in the fact that this is the greatest story ever told and that Jesus is the fulfillment of all the Old Testament covenant promises.

I also hope, though, that Christmas should make us look to Advent No. 2. So if lap No. 1 of the Messiah is the babe in Bethlehem, it should also remind us that Christians hold to the fact that Jesus is coming again and that lap No. 2 is promised.

Lap No. 1 of the Messiah has saved our souls from Hell and has provided us purpose here and now. In other words, were not just saved from something; were saved for something, and that the best is yet to come.

Lap No. 1 reminds us that lap No. 2 is on its way.
Kill God: Pennsylvania church vandalized with satanic messages

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A Pennsylvania church was vandalized by unknown assailants who desecrated the property with graffiti depicting satanic symbols and the words "kill God."

The Lititz Church of the Brethren in Lancaster County was vandalized sometime between Thursday evening and Friday morning, police said, according to The Morning Call.

The chalk graffiti displayed the phrases kill God and hail Satan, as well as the satanic symbol of a star inside a circle. The vandalism also featured the number 666, the biblical number for the Antichrist.

Eric Landram, the lead pastor of Lititz Church of the Brethren, told The Christian Post on Monday that the chalk which was used left no permanent damage and clean up was minimal.

Landram explained that such vandalism has not occurred on his churchs property in the past, so they are are treating it as a one-time prank and are not concerned by the antics. He added that apart from what has already been reported, we have no additional comments to make at this time.

News of the church vandalism grabbed the attention of the editorial board for Lancaster Online, which denounced the actions as egregiously wrong and especially disturbing.

There is something especially disturbing about vandalism directed at a place of worship or a religious symbol. It seems designed to rattle people of faith who regard their sacred spaces as sanctuaries to which they go in times of both grief and joy, wrote the editors.

There was no lasting damage to the church. But memories of the desecration likely will linger. Even if it turns out to be the work of clueless young people. Or the product of a disturbed mind.

The editorial board also cited a report by Axios published in October, which concluded that houses of worship of various faiths were experiencing high amounts of vandalism, arson and other property damage.

2021 is on track to exceed last year's spike in hate crimes in the U.S., many of them linked to religious bigotry, Axios reported.

The number of hate crimes reported in FY 2020 was the highest since 2001, when a wave of Islamophobia followed the 9/11 attacks, according to updated FBI data.
Man accused of killing woman in church shouldn't be held criminally responsible, lawyer says

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A man accused of murdering 69-year-old retiree Evelyn Player inside a bathroom at the Southern Baptist Church in East Baltimore, Maryland, should not be held criminally responsible for her death, his lawyer argued as charging documents revealed how the praying grandmother fought her attacker to stay alive.

Baltimore Police Commissioner Michael S. Harrison told reporters at a press conference last Thursday that Manzie Smith Jr., a 62-year-old ex-convict with a lengthy rap sheet, was arrested and charged with Players Nov. 16 murder at Southern Baptist Church.

Smiths attorney, Warren Brown, told Fox Baltimore Monday that even though his client had not yet been indicted, Smith has no recollection of the day Player was killed. Smith plans to plea not criminally responsible, Marylands equivalent to an insanity defense.

This is not just somebody who just decides to murder someone. I dont know whether he did it or not, quite frankly. But I do know that if he did do it, it has to be attributed to his mental health, Brown said.

He has a lot of baggage, mental health issues, whether its schizophrenia, bipolar, delusional thoughts. Hes been in and out of various mental health hospitals.

An autopsy report on Player cited by CBS Baltimore shows that she suffered multiple stab wounds, including on both of her hands, which suggests she tried to defend herself. Police used DNA evidence to link Smith to the crime.

Its not something that you can really say every time theres a struggle. Youre going to have a lot of DNA there. But if you can, scratching someone is definitely going to get DNA under their fingernails, Rana Dellarocco, director of the Baltimore Police Departments Forensic Laboratories, explained to Fox Baltimore.

If youre lucky enough to land a good punch and the person bleeds on you, then thats going to give DNA from that suspect thats going to get on you.

Southern Baptist Church pastor, Bishop Donte Hickman, told the news outlet that he was disgusted by the argument Smith should not be held criminally responsible.

Im disgusted by that characterization of a man who brutally took a womans life in our churchs restroom for the disabled, he said in a statement. I cannot believe that someone that did this in our church so early in the morning didnt premeditate this evil attack.

Brown called the pastors statement an emotional response to whats going on, but he could clearly understand that.

Players murder has made national headlines. Community members, along with city and state officials, agreed that it was the place where she was killed that made it especially shocking.

Just hours after her murder, Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott said her death inside the independent multi-campus church her family had attended for four generations was an unspeakable, cowardly murder.

He described her as a dedicated member and staff member of the church and her killer as cowardice scum.

Bishop Hickman also noted in the early aftermath of Players death that she had been intensely praying at the church days before her killing. Hickman said she was perhaps at the church early on the day she was killed for similar devotion.

Typically, Evelyn would not come as early. We have other male sextons that come to the church; she just beat everybody here, he said. She had been praying all week, praying and crying, and she may have come to the church early to have some time to pray by herself.
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It may sound harmless, but the Canadian Senates decision to fast track and pass a bill prohibiting Conversion Therapy is terribly dangerous and, to date, without precedent worldwide. How on earth did this happen?

An article on Canadas CTV news referred to the harmful practice of conversion therapy, noting that this will now be banned for people of all ages, part of a promise made to the LGBTQ2S+ community by the government.

As to why the bill was fast-tracked, Sen. Leo Housakos, a member of Canadas Conservative (?!) Party, explained, I think we have to get to the reflex in this institution, that when something is in the universal interest, public interest, that we should not create unnecessary duplication and engage into unnecessary debates.

In other words, when there is such widespread agreement that something is so evil and dangerous, we must ask quickly and decisively, without debate and discussion. Lets get this thing done!

How does CTV News define conversion therapy (a name created by the critics, not the practitioners)?

It states, Conversion therapy, as it has been called, seeks to change a person's sexual orientation to heterosexual or gender identity to cisgender. It can include seeking to repress someones non-heterosexual attraction or repressing a persons gender expression or non-cis gender identity.

These practices can take various forms, including counselling and behavioural modification, and they have been opposed by numerous health and human rights groups.

So were not just talking about trying to force gays to try to become straight. Or kidnapping children and subjecting them to torture in a secret reprogramming camp. God forbid.

There is not a genuine Christian I know on the planet who would agree to such practices, nor is there a counselor I know who would engage in them.

If that is what was meant by conversion therapy, then of course, we should all oppose it.

But thats only the tip of the iceberg.

The reality is that this new bill actually prohibits Christians from practicing their faith when it comes to homosexuality and bisexuality and transgenderism. It also prohibits people who want to get help to pursue change, whatever their age, from pursuing that change  as long as it is change away from being gay or bi or trans.

Not only so, but the bill prohibits any attempt at behavioral modification, meaning, simply wanting to lessen ones same-sex attractions or actions. This is now forbidden by law.

As expressed by Jose Ruba, communications director of Free to Care, This means heterosexual Canadians could get support to reduce their unwanted sexual behavior but non-heterosexuals could not. That is a violation of our Charter rights.

Talk about dangerous government overreach. Talk about yet another step toward banning the Bible.

This bill is actually the worst thing of its kind that has ever been passed  and it was passed unanimously, with the help of Conservative senators. Did we not tell you this was coming?

What happens to a 30-year-old married man with children who secretly struggles with same-sex attraction? Under the new law, could he receive professional counseling to help him deal with these attractions? Not a chance.

He could, however, get counseling to help him embrace his homosexual desires, even if it destroyed his marriage.

What about a 19-year-old woman who feels tormented within her own skin, as if shes a man trapped in a female body? If she wanted to find wholeness from the inside out, rather than getting on hormones for life and having radical sex-change surgery, could she receive professional counseling? Absolutely not.

But if youre a 10-year-old child who identifies as trans, you can get a doctor to prescribe puberty blockers for you. And you can start to plan for the first of several sex-change operations when you reach 18.

How utterly perverse.

The opening text of the bill reads:

This enactment amends the Criminal Code to, among other things, create the following offences:

(a) causing another person to undergo conversion therapy;

(b) doing anything for the purpose of removing a child from Canada with the intention that the child undergo conversion therapy outside Canada;

(c) promoting or advertising conversion therapy; and

(d) receiving a financial or other material benefit from the provision of conversion therapy.

So based on provisions c and d, if you are a professional counselor who has helped people with unwanted same-sex attractions or gender-identity confusion for years, you can neither advertise such services nor receive payment for them. Talk about discrimination under the law.

You might say, Youre getting this all wrong. The issue is dangerous conversion therapy. Theres no problem with a counselor or a pastor helping someone deal with unwanted same-sex attractions or the like. Thats where youre mistaken.

Quite the contrary.

Instead, all positive attempts to help the countless LGBT individuals who want to change for personal or religious reasons are branded conversion therapy. And any belief that homosexual practice is wrong or that God created only two sexes, male and female is now labeled as bigoted.

But dont take my word for it. Listen to the bills Preamble:

Whereas conversion therapy causes harm to the persons who are subjected to it;

Whereas conversion therapy causes harm to society because, among other things, it is based on and propagates myths and stereotypes about sexual orientation, gender identity and gender expression, including the myth that heterosexuality, cisgender gender identity, and gender expression that conforms to the sex assigned to a person at birth are to be preferred over other sexual orientations, gender identities and gender expressions;

And whereas, in light of those harms, it is important to discourage and denounce the provision of conversion therapy in order to protect the human dignity and equality of all Canadians;

Now, therefore, Her Majesty, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate and House of Commons of Canada, enacts as follows ...

So under Canadian law, you are believing in myths and stereotypes if you affirm what the Bible teaches, namely, that: 1. marriage is the union of one man and one woman; 2. homosexual practice is always sinful in Gods sight; 3. heterosexuality is Gods intended norm for the human race; 4. there are only two sexes, male and female; 5. it is better to be at home in your biological body than to pursue sex-change; 6. with Gods help, all people can change; and 7. there are many ex-gay and ex-trans individuals.

As expressed by a Canadian pastor, the LGBT movement, which fought for tolerance, equality and acceptance  now denies these rights for others and demand[s] those with deeply rooted religious convictions deny who they are and conform to a society that hates them.

And what happens to the professional counselor or pastor who offers help to someone struggling? They could be fined or, worse still, go to jail.

When California almost passed a similar bill in 2018, also banning professional help for people of all ages, I dubbed it the Must Stay Gay bill, asking if California would ban the Bible and religious books next.

But Canada has long been ahead of America in this regard, to the point that decades back, when Dr. James Dobson would address these issues on his Focus on the Family radio broadcast, the shows could not be aired in Canada.

Now, the nation has taken a very dangerous plunge, awaiting the official signature on the bill from the governor general or her designate.

The only solution is for Christian leaders to refuse to comply, preaching the Word openly and saying that change is possible, and for counselors and therapists to do the same, continuing to serve those who willingly come for help.

As for America, wake up! Otherwise, what happened in Canada wont stay in Canada.
3 more missionaries kidnapped in Haiti released; prayers urged for release of remaining 12

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Three more of the 17 Christian Aid Ministries missionaries kidnapped in Haiti on Oct. 16 were released Sunday night, the Ohio-based international aid ministry announced Monday as it urges continued prayers for 12 colleagues still held captive by the notorious 400 Mawozo gang.

We are thankful to God that three more hostages were released last night, Christian Aid Ministries said in a statement Monday morning.

Those who were released are safe and seem to be in good spirits, the organization added. As with the previous release, we are not able to provide the names of the people released, the circumstances of the release, or any other details.

The nonprofit urged supporters to participate in fasting and prayer over the next three days for the remaining hostages.



Please continue to intercede for those who are still being held as well as those who have been released, the statement reads. We long for all the hostages to be reunited with their loved ones. Thank you for your prayer support.

The news comes just two weeks after the gang released two missionaries described as sick adults.

A source with knowledge of the first two releases told The Miami Herald that no ransom was paid even though the 400 Mawozo gang leader Wilson Joseph had threatened to kill all the missionaries if his group did not receive $1 million each for their release.

When the kidnapping occurred, the abducted group included six men, six women and five children, of which 16 are Americans and one is Canadian. They range in age from 8 months old to 48 years.

While negotiations for their release were ongoing between the gang and officials from Haiti and U.S. governments, a video of Joseph circulated on social media showing that the crime boss wasnt pleased with the pace of negotiations.

I swear by thunder that if I dont get what Im asking for, I will put a bullet in the heads of these Americans, Joseph threatened in late October, according to a translation cited by Bloomberg Quicktake.

U.S. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said in a press briefing late last month that President Joe Biden continued to be briefed daily about the missionaries status and noted that the president is particularly concerned about the five children who were abducted.

I personally give an update on this issue every single day to the president, who is taking a deep interest in making sure we get every single one of those people home safely, Sullivan said.

Shortly after the kidnapping, three FBI agents were deployed to Haiti. Since then, Sullivan said the U.S. has sent a significant number of law enforcement specialists and hostage recovery specialists to work closely with the ministry, the families and the Haitian government to try to coordinate and organize a recovery.

We are looking at every possible option for how to go about doing that, Sullivan explained. I will be sensitive to what obviously is a delicate situation, not say more here, other than we have put the assets and resources in place that we believe can help bring this to a successful conclusion.
The California wines every collector wants to have in their cellar

From the estate that brought California to the forefront of the wine world to wines of an Austrian emigre who eschews convention  these are the names that excites connoisseurs of California wine.

1

Chateau Montelena One of the regions most collectible wines

Mixed California. 6 bottles. Estimate: $600-1000. Offered in Fine & Rare Wines Including Two Outstanding Private Collections on 18 January-1 February 2022 at Christie's Online

The estate that brought California to the forefront of the wine world is not surprisingly one of the most collectible from the region. Even before the 1976 Judgment of Paris, when Chateau Montelenas 1973 Chardonnay was rated above all other wines (including four of Burgundys finest), this forward-thinking producer has been crafting classically styled, age-worthy wines. Montelena is one of the most European-style wines, crafted in the image of the great wines of Bordeaux. In great vintages, it is one for the long haul, but when the tannins do soften out and yield, the elegance and grace of Montelena sets it apart.

2

Heitz Cellars Napas most acclaimed vineyard

Mixed Heitz Cellars, Cabernet Sauvignon. 10 bottles. Estimate: $2,000-$3,000. Offered in Fine & Rare Wines Including Two Outstanding Private Collections on 18 January-1 February 2022 at Christie's Online

Heitz is a legend that has helped shape the history and notoriety of California winemaking, including the introduction of Napas first vineyard-designated Cabernet Sauvignon, the globally celebrated Marthas Vineyard. It is arguably the single-most acclaimed vineyard in the Napa Valley, an icon since the first vintage in 1966. The wines produced at Heitz are truly individual in nature, with structure and character to age beautifully for decades.

3

Screaming Eagle The 'cult' classic

Screaming Eagle 1997. 3 bottles. Estimate: $10,000-$15,000. Offered in Fine & Rare Wines Including Two Outstanding Private Collections on 18 January-1 February 2022 at Christie's Online

One of Californias original cult wines, Screaming Eagle sits perennially atop lists of Californias most expensive wines. This small production estate, which had its first vintage in 1992, shocked the wine world when in 2000, a 6 Liter bottle of the 92 vintage sold for $500,000 at Auction Napa Valley.



4

Harlan One of the best expressions of California Cabernet

Mixed Harlan Estate. 2 bottles. Estimate : $800-$1,200. Offered in Fine & Rare Wines Including Two Outstanding Private Collections on 18 January-1 February 2022 at Christie's Online



Its only fitting that Napas First Growth should be one of the most collectible producers from the New World. From its Estate red to The Maiden, each vintage surpasses expectation in terms of balance and finesse. Harlans prime location on some of the better elevations and soils in the Oakville region gives it one of the best expressions of California Cabernet. Its a truly impressive wine, often fetching 100-point scores and boundless praise. As far as a safe bet for longevity goes, Harlan is as good as it gets.

5

Eisele Vineyard The vineyard once known as Araujo Estate

Mixed Araujo Estate, Eisele Vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon 2005. 2 bottles, 1 magnum. Estimate: $600-$1,000. Offered in Fine & Rare Wines Including Two Outstanding Private Collections on 18 January to 1 February 2022 at Christie's Online



Formerly known as Araujo Estate, Eisele Vineyard had originally been planted in the 1880s to Zinfandel and Riesling, while its first Cabernet Sauvignon vines were planted in 1964. The vineyard has a rich history of producing excellent wines for several top tier California producers including Joseph Phelps and Ridge, but its cult status was cemented when the Araujos began bottling the Eisele Vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon in 1991. Its wines invariably express the exceptional depth, elegance and longevity which are hallmarks of the Eisele Vineyard.



6

Opus One A staple in any serious collectors cellar

Mixed Opus One. 4 bottles. Estimate: $800-$1,200. Offered in Fine & Rare Wines Including Two Outstanding Private Collections, on 18 January-1 February 2022 at Christie's Online



The realisation of the shared dream of Robert Mondavi and Baron Philippe de Rothschild, Opus One is a staple in any serious collectors cellar. Mixing elements of classical European and contemporary style, in winemaking and architecture, Opus One produces only two wines: Opus One and a second wine, Overture, made of the fruit that doesnt quite make the cut. At the inaugural Napa Valley Wine Auction in 1981 a case sold for $24,000  a price that was unheard of a the time.

7

Colgin Cellars One of the greatest wine estates in the world

Mixed Colgin. 3 bottles. Estimate: $600-$1000. Offered in Fine & Rare Wines Including Two Outstanding Private Collections on 18 January-1 February 2022 at Christie's Online



Founded in 1992, Colgins vineyards are among the best hillside plots in the Napa Valley; the oldest of which is Tychson Hill. The vineyard was owned Josephine Tychson in the late 19th-century, who was first woman to build a winery in the Napa Valley. It was removed during Prohibition and rediscovered by founder Ann Colgin in the mid-1990s. In 2005, Robert Parker named Colgin, One of the Fifty Greatest Wine Estates in the World.

8

Ridge Wines from historic vineyards throughout the state

Mixed California Cabernet Sauvignon. 2 bottles and 2 magnums. Estimate: $500-$800. Offered in Fine & Rare Wines Including Two Outstanding Private Collections on 18 January-1 February 2022 at Christie's Online



From the slopes of the Santa Cruz Mountains, Ridges flagship Monte Bello is recognised as having helped to change the perception of California wine with the success of the 1971 vintage at the 1976 Judgment of Paris. It also took first place in the 30th-anniversary re-tasting. Though Cabernet is a sure bet, the Zinfandel is equally impressive in terms of structure, length and age-ability. Its estate in Lytton Springs, Sonoma, is an exceptional piece of ground, and it consistently produce wines that are cellar-worthy yet understated and sophisticated.

9

Marcassin The best that Sonoma has to offer

Mixed Marcassin Chardonnay. 10 bottles. Estimate: $1,800-$2,600. Offered in Fine & Rare Wines Including Two Outstanding Private Collections on 18 January-1 February 2022 at Christie's Online



French for young wild boar, Marcassins wines are undoubtedly among the best that Sonoma has to offer. They regularly hold their own against their Burgundian counterparts in the minds of critics and connoisseurs. Winemaker Helen Turley, who was recently inducted into the California Hall of Fame, perfected her craft at other famed California estates including Turley, Peter Michael, Bryant Family, and Colgin.



10

Sine Qua Non Part of a highly collectible tradition

Mixed Sine Qua Non 2014. 5 bottles Estimate: $900-$1,300. Offered in Fine & Rare Wines Including Two Outstanding Private Collections on 18 January-1 February 2022 at Christie's Online



Iconoclast vintner Manfred Krankl has a seemingly never-ending waiting list for his Sine Qua Non wines, which hail from some Californias lesser-known wine regions and are predominantly made from Rhone varietals. Sine Qua Non has a unique and highly collectible tradition, in which each wine has a distinct name, label and occasionally bottle style. Each label is designed by Krankl, often with linocut artwork of his own creation.


They had a strong belief in painting things as they saw them  a collectors guide to the Barbizon school

In the 1830s, the tiny French village of Barbizon became the centre of a quiet revolution in landscape painting that would have a defining influence on the Impressionists and their successors. Illustrated with lots offered in the British and European Art sale at Christies

When the painter Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot (1796-1875) first came to the forest of Fontainebleau in 1822, he was in search of subject matter that would offer an antidote to Frances urban and industrial ills. Disillusioned with Napoleons wars and what he saw as his countrys materialism, he was like the world-weary protagonist of Etienne de Senancours 1804 novel Obermann  exhausted by the evils of life and indignant at the perfidious seduction of pleasures. Only 40 miles southeast of Paris, Fontainebleau was a place of extraordinary beauty where Corot could paint directly from nature. Setting out each morning, he recorded the changing effects of light and weather before returning home to transcribe these observations into melancholy landscapes suffused with a pale, silvery light. The Barbizon colony By the late 1830s, other painters keen to escape the dehumanising effects of modern civilisation had joined Corot in this bucolic wilderness. They were not Romantic artists, says Arne Everwijn, senior specialist in 19th Century European Art at Christies. There was nothing melodramatic in their intentions. They had a strong belief in painting things as they saw them.

The artists stayed in the village of Barbizon, which was situated between the plains and the forest, offering them a choice of vistas. They were the first artists to paint en plein air, says the specialist. Thanks to technical developments in paint manufacturing, there was no longer any need to mix up pigments in the studio  they could just take their paint with them. Key artists of the Barbizon school Today, Corot is considered the forerunner of the Barbizon movement  sometimes called the beautiful school of 1830  which played a major role in establishing naturalism in French landscape painting. Other artists associated with the group include Theodore Rousseau, Jean-Francois Millet, Charles-Francois Daubigny, Narcisse-Virgile Diaz de la Pena, Jules Dupre, Constant Troyon, Leon Richet and Honore Daumier. By all accounts, the colony was a busy network of creative energy and congenial company. Friendships were sustained by painting excursions, shared accommodation and financial assistance for those who needed it. Rousseau spent his days in the forest, striving to penetrate the heart of discoveries. Daubigny built a floating studio from which to observe the riverbank and its mirrored effects on the water. Diaz, the most sociable of the group, made things happen, inviting like-minded artists to Barbizon and organising exhibitions.

There were discreet acts of generosity: Rousseau bought one of Millets paintings anonymously; Corot purchased a house for the penniless Daumier; and Daubigny came to Claude Monets aid in London by introducing the young Impressionist to an art dealer. Barbizon versus the Salon Such support was critical. It is difficult to imagine now, but in 1830 landscape painting was not an officially recognised art form. Historical paintings in a landscape setting were fashionable, but to display a direct study from nature was unthinkable. This put the Barbizon artists in a precarious position. They needed the support of the Paris Salon for commercial success, yet rejected the standards it imposed. Their objections were summed up by the poet Charles Baudelaire, who described the Salon as a place where the frills and excesses of bourgeois stupidity are paraded every year as though on the Tuileries Terraces. Theodore Rousseau

Theodore Rousseau (French, 1812-1867), Paysage d'Auvergne, 1830. Oil on paper laid down on board. 10 x 12 in (25.4 x 31 cm). Sold for 68,750 on 14 December 2017 at Christies in London

One artist who was consistently snubbed by the Salon  becoming known as le grand refuse  was the charismatic, quietly revolutionary Theodore Rousseau (1812-1867). He first came to the forest in his early twenties, staying at the Ganne Inn, whose garrulous owner was generous with credit. Baudelaire, who considered Rousseau to be the best of the Barbizons, championed his restless originality and direct observation of nature. As Everwijn notes, Rousseau was also a technical innovator: He was one of the first artists to use the newly invented green and yellow pigments. Those fresh colours are very immediate and modern. He was also very experimental in the way he applied paint. Jean-Francois Millet

Jean-Francois Millet (1814-1875), La fin de la journee; effect du soir. Oil on canvas. 23 x 28 in (59.7 x 73 cm). Sold for $1,538,500 on 26 January 2011 at Christies in New York

If Rousseau was Barbizons leader, then Jean-Francois Millet (1814-1875) was its mainstay, living in the village until his death. The son of devoutly Catholic Normandy farmers, Millet saw in Barbizon a place where he could convey the spiritual relationship between humanity and nature.

To me, Millet is that essential modern painter who opened the horizon to many  Van Gogh

He took it upon himself to celebrate sowers, milkmaids and farm labourers, arguing that the beauty of the landscape could not be considered in isolation from those who worked the land. The Barbizon school, Realism and Impressionism By the 1860s, Corot was so famous that painters travelled to Barbizon from all over Europe, Russia and the United States to meet him and his fellow sons of light. In one year, the Ganne Inn hosted 28 aspiring artists from across the world. The Barbizon school also became associated with the wider art movement known as Realism, which included Gustave Courbet and Jules Breton, painters who sought to record modern life in meticulous detail.

Jules Breton (French, 1827-1906), Les amies, 1873. Oil on canvas. 26 x 39 in (66.7 x 100.6 cm). Sold for $876,500 on 31 October 2018 at Christies in New York

The Barbizon schools greatest influence, however, was on the Impressionists and post-Impressionists. Those early, nuanced attempts at capturing the fleeting play of light on nature inspired Claude Monet, Berthe Morisot and Camille Pissarro to come to Barbizon, while Vincent van Goghs admiration for Millet was so intense he made countless studies of the artists work. In a letter to his brother Theo in 1884, he wrote: To me, Millet is that essential modern painter who opened the horizon to many.

The market for Barbizon artists, then and now While the French art market was slow to embrace natural Realism, demand from abroad was considerable. Thanks to the well-connected American artist and Barbizon disciple William Morris Hunt, Corot was overwhelmed with commissions from the United States. He eventually established an atelier and employed his fellow Barbizon artists to assist him. (This demand also resulted in forgeries: There are more Corots in America than he could have painted in his lifetime, says Everwijn.) Today, the strongest market for the Barbizon group is Asia. The appreciation of nature has a long tradition in Japan and China, and landscape painting is something the Asian market is very comfortable with, says the specialist. Rousseau and Millet collected Japanese prints, so there is a reciprocal relationship there too. The eco-artists of Barbizon

Vocal about their belief in the preciousness of nature, the Barbizon artists battled to preserve the forest of Fontainebleau from destruction, with Rousseau petitioning Napoleon III. Yet by 1870, the forests exalted silence had been replaced by the rattle of trams, Daubignys river had been diverted for industrial farming, and Millets open skies were clouded with factory smoke.

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The richest people on earth typically devote a share of their vast resources to charity. That is the bargain and the expectation, anyway.

Jeff Bezos, until very recently the worlds richest human, has been applying himself dutifully if a bit cautiously to the task, giving money to food banks and homeless families while pledging $10 billion of the fortune he earned through the online retailer Amazon to fight climate change.

The latest richest human, Elon Musk, has taken a rather different tack. There was the public spat with the director of the World Food Programme on Twitter, for instance, announcing, If WFP can describe on this Twitter thread exactly how $6B will solve world hunger, I will sell Tesla stock right now and do it.

There was the online poll asking whether he should sell 10% of his Tesla shares in order to pay taxes on at least part of his wealth, like most people do without running a survey first. And, of course, there is the ongoing insistence that his moneymaking efforts, running both the electric carmaker Tesla and the rocket company SpaceX are already bettering humankind, thank you very much.

Musk is practicing troll philanthropy.

Thats what Benjamin Soskis, senior research associate in the Center on Nonprofits and Philanthropy at the Urban Institute, has called it, noting that Musk seems to be having fun with this novel approach.

He doesnt seem to care much about using his philanthropy to curry public favor, Soskis said. In fact, he seems to enjoy using his identity as a philanthropist in part to antagonize the public. Before this year, one estimate put his giving at $100 million, a lot by almost any standard, except for multibillionaires like Musk.

Most wealthy people do the opposite. They use philanthropy to burnish their image or distract the public from the business practices that earned them their enormous wealth in the first place.

When, how and why the ultrarich choose to give their fortunes away matters more than ever because so much money is concentrated in their hands and so little of it is taxable under current rules. Society is to some extent presently stuck relying on voluntary disbursements from those with the greatest means.

The idea that philanthropy, that any single individual, has enough money to affect something at a global scale is a very new phenomenon, said Homi Kharas, a senior fellow at the Center for Sustainable Development at the Brookings Institution in Washington. Most billionaires have accumulated their wealth because the world economy is now globalized, but to sustain a globalized world economy we need to have more inclusive growth.

There are many different kinds of givers, like Bezos ex-wife, MacKenzie Scott, who has focused her billions on diversity and equity. There are the self-declared effective altruists, like the Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz and his wife, Cari Tuna, part of a movement searching for evidence-based approaches to find causes where their money does the most good. And there are the traditionalists, like Bill Gates and Michael Bloomberg, who have built institutions to handle their funding.

Musk and Bezos are, with $268 billion and $202 billion respectively, the two richest Americans for the time being, drawing sharper contrasts between their approaches to giving back.

Earlier this year, Bezos took the stage with United Nations Deputy Secretary General Amina J. Mohammed and listened as former U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry sang his praises, saying, He is stepping up in a way that an awful lot of people who have the wherewithal do not step up.

Musk, meanwhile, replied to a tweet by Sen. Bernie Sanders demanding that the extremely wealthy pay their share, by replying, I keep forgetting that youre still alive.

Musks nontraditional approach to giving doesnt stop people who need his donations, like David Beasley, executive director of the World Food Programme, from seeking his help. The resources at his disposal are so vast and potentially consequential that we have to engage him, and accept some of that trolling, if we want to try to exert some pressure on him and shape his somewhat inchoate philanthropic priorities, Soskis said.

Musk did not respond to an email asking him to discuss his philanthropic giving.

The notion that rich people have a moral obligation to give is an ancient one. Soskis, a historian of philanthropy, notes that wealthy citizens in ancient Rome tried to outdo one another paying for public baths and theaters. The inscriptions on those edifices could count as a form of early donor lists.

The idea that the richest might need charity to improve their public relations is also longstanding, driven home in the Gilded Age by the 1882 outburst by railway magnate William Henry Vanderbilt, The public be damned! that shadowed him to the end of his days.

Efforts to track the charitable giving of the very wealthy in the United States date to the late 19th century, when the ranks of millionaires exploded. Before long, newspapers were running front-page lists of who had made the biggest gifts. The original duo to capture public attention were John D. Rockefeller and Andrew Carnegie, whose feelings on publicizing philanthropy were diametrically opposed.

Cartoons from the era showed Carnegie, often dressed in a kilt to reference his Scottish origin, showering coins from enormous bags of money. The man who dies thus rich dies disgraced, Carnegie wrote in The Gospel of Wealth, his treatise on giving. Rockefeller preferred to keep his giving more private and had to be convinced to announce his gifts.

To those who think the trolling started on Twitter, philanthropy was never quite as polite as we imagine today. George Eastman, one of the founders of Eastman-Kodak, called those who did not give their money away during their lifetimes pie-faced mutts. Julius Rosenwald, the chairman of Sears, Roebuck and Co. and a major philanthropist in his day, insisted that the accumulation of wealth had nothing to do with smarts, adding, Some very rich men who made their own fortunes have been among the stupidest men I have ever met in my life.

But the idea that giving helps the reputation is at best only partially true. Givers are celebrated at times but just as often the higher profile means their motives and choices are picked apart. Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison and Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin are each worth over $120 billion, per Forbes, but none of them receives the level of scrutiny that Gates does, for instance.

If you put your head above the philanthropic parapet and say, Im interested in the environment, or whatever cause area, people can start to question it, said Beth Breeze, author of the recent book In Defence of Philanthropy. Breeze has pushed back against the recent trend of criticizing philanthropists, who, she says, are regularly described as tax dodging, egotistical, irritating  criticism they may earn, but not comments that she views as useful to the greater good.

My concern is not for the thin skins of the rich people. They can take care of themselves. My concern is if the money dries up, said Breeze, who was a fundraiser for a youth homeless center before becoming an academic and identifies as a left-wing Labour Party supporter in Britain.

A troll philanthropist might be an easy target for criticism. But donating money in all the usual ways is no break from critical rebukes.

There are several different schools of criticism deployed for different kinds of givers. There is the structural argument that philanthropy serves as another means of using wealth to cement power and influence. Large grants are often compared with the givers total net worth to show that as a percentage of their wealth the gifts are much smaller than they appear in absolute terms. Gifts to cultural institutions like the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Ivy League schools are now regularly assailed for reinforcing the status quo. Even gifts to rebuild the Notre Dame cathedral in Paris after it caught fire earned significant blowback.

Technocratic institutions that set exacting benchmarks for gifts and place strict limits on how their money can be spent are tagged as controlling and hierarchical. In contrast, general operating support without guidance on how the money can be used has been applauded by many lately as the best approach.

Bezos was named by the Chronicle of Philanthropy this past February to the top spot on its 2020 Philanthropy 50 list, even though most of that was for his $10 billion pledge to his own Bezos Earth Fund, which had barely gotten up and running. It was a bit like Barack Obamas surprise Nobel Peace Prize less than a year into his presidency in the way that it seemed to sharpen critiques rather than dull them.

But after a slow start to his giving, Bezos has begun to look like the good pupil. He gave $100 million to the Feeding America food bank network and another $100 million to Obamas presidential center. The money has been flowing more quickly out of the Bezos Earth Fund as well. Just this past week he announced another 44 grants worth a total of $443 million to groups working on issues including climate justice and conservation, part of that $10 billion pledge.

You need to have a pretty sharp pencil of analysis in order to allocate funds well, said Andrew Steer, president of the Bezos Earth Fund, in an interview.

Musk himself started out with what seemed like a somewhat conventional approach to giving. He created the Musk Foundation in 2002 and signed the nonbinding Giving Pledge to give away half his wealth in 2012. (The Musk Foundation website could, itself, be considered a bit of a troll, with its 33 words in black text on a white background.)

For the fiscal year ending June 2020, the Musk Foundation made donations of a little less than $3 million to nine groups, mostly related to education, and gave $20 million to Fidelity Charitable, which operates the kind of donor-advised funds that critics say can function as a parking lot for charitable dollars. That was out of nearly $1 billion available in the Musk Foundation coffers by the end of the fiscal year.

Since then he has announced $150 million in gifts, including a $100 million innovation prize for carbon removal and $30 million to nonprofits in the Rio Grande Valley in South Texas. Those may have been at least as much about a legal requirement as a newfound sense of munificence. Tax laws require private foundations to pay out roughly 5% of their endowments annually.

The particular barrier for donors from a tech background is they dont just think their genius has made them good at what they do, they also think what they do commercially also makes society better, said Rhodri Davies, a philanthropy commentator who wrote a piece on Musk called The Edgelord Giveth.

Musk, for instance, has said that getting humankind to Mars through SpaceX is an important contribution and has written and spoken acerbically about what he calls anti-billionaire BS, including attempts to target taxes at billionaires.

It does not make sense to take the job of capital allocation away from people who have demonstrated great skill in capital allocation and give it to an entity that has demonstrated very poor skill in capital allocation, which is the government, Musk said Monday at an event hosted by The Wall Street Journal.

At the same time, Kharas said a more charitable reading of Musks exchange with the World Food Programme is possible. He could just genuinely want to know how the money will be spent and is putting in public, on Twitter, the due diligence work that institutional giving does behind closed doors.

I think this idea that he was willing to engage was really good, Kharas of the Brookings Institution said of Musk. I think his response was extremely sensible. It was basically, Show me what you can do. Demonstrate it. Provide me with some evidence. Ill do it. The WFP published a breakdown of how they would spend the $6.6 billion, but theres no word yet on whether Musk will make a donation.

MacKenzie Scotts latest letter about her giving included a lot of philosophical musings most billionaires do not routinely share. But she left out precisely the details everyone was waiting for  how many billion dollars went to which groups? Instead she said, stop paying so much attention to billionaires and think about what you can give.

In a winking gesture to everyone waiting for the latest cash tally, she wrote the whole thing without using a single dollar sign. Classic troll move.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
DETROIT (AP)  General Motors and a joint-venture partner plan to build an electric vehicle battery factory in Lansing, Michigan, their third such factory in the U.S.

The companies' plans were revealed Friday in documents posted on the city's website. They say the plant would cost up to $2.5 billion and employ as many as 1,700 workers.

The factory would be built on the site of GM's Lansing Delta Township Assembly factory, which has been annexed by the city under a revenue-sharing agreement. A joint venture between GM and LG Energy Solution called Ultium Cells LLC would build the plant.

The selection is a big win for Michigan, which missed out on three Ford Motor Co. battery factories and an electric vehicle assembly plant that were placed in Kentucky and Tennessee.

The documents seeking Renaissance Zone and industrial tax breaks say the joint venture is obligating itself to investment and job creation. It says the building and related site improvements would be about 2.5 million square feet (230,000 square meters) with two-thirds of the building being a clean room environment for battery cell manufacturing.

The machinery and equipment consists of electrode mixing, coating, assembly and formation areas, the documents say.

The plants first year of operation would be in 2025. It would start with 750 workers, with 1,700 by the end of 2026.

GM would not comment specifically on the factory's location but said it is developing business cases for potential future investments in Michigan. The company said it is discussing incentives with local officials.

These projects are not approved and securing all available incentives will be critical for any business case to continue moving forward, spokesman Dan Flores said. Im not going to speculate on the timing of when GM leadership will make a decision on potential future investments in Michigan.

The step came as Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and the state Legislature work to quickly enact economic development incentive bills focused on critical industries and preparing shovel-ready sites for business expansions. It is not clear what new incentives Michigan could offer GM, though it has billions of dollars in federal discretionary pandemic rescue aid and surplus state tax revenues.

A spokesman for the Michigan Economic Development Corp. said it is premature to comment on any potential state support for GM.

Fords decision in September to build electric vehicle and battery plants in southern states was a blow to the nations auto hub, particularly because Ford said Michigan did not have the types of sites it needed.

The Lansing City Council will meet Monday and the following week to approve the tax breaks, president Peter Spadafore said.

Its my understanding theres a competition for a battery plant and Lansing will do everything we can to make sure we are competitive to bring those jobs and billions of dollars of investment to our community, he said.

GM also has applied for tax breaks in Orion Township, Michigan, where a factory that builds the Chevrolet Bolt electric car and SUV is located. The company wants to build an addition to the plant to assemble battery cells into packs that would go into electric vehicles.

This likely means GM plans to designate the Orion plant as its third electric vehicle assembly plant, along with factories in Detroit-Hamtramck, Michigan, and Spring Hill, Tennessee. Flores would not comment beyond the company statement.

The company has said it would spend about $2 billion upgrading factories to build EVs, so that would bring the total new investment in Michigan to about $4.5 billion. Shares of GM closed Friday up 6%, at $63.21.

GM has said the joint venture will build four North American factories to make EV battery cells.

Two other locations have been announced, in Spring Hill and Lordstown, Ohio. The fourth location has not been disclosed.

GM has set a goal of selling only electric passenger vehicles by 2035. The company plans to roll out 30 electric vehicles globally by 2025. It also has pledged to invest $35 billion in electric and autonomous vehicles from 2020 through 2025.

Details of GM's plans come amid a race to build North American battery factories to supply what is expected to be exponentially increasing demand for electric vehicles as the world transitions away from internal combustion engines.

Earlier this week, Toyota announced it would build a $1.3 billion battery plant in North Carolina. Stellantis, formerly Fiat Chrysler, has said it will build two battery plants in North America. Ford announced three plants in Kentucky and Tennessee.

The LMC Automotive consulting firm expects U.S. sales of new fully electric vehicles to hit nearly 400,000 this year, almost double last years figures. They still make up only about 2.6% of sales, but the firm expects sales to grow to more than 730,000 next year and more than 2 million by 2025. Even at 2 million, EV sales still would be only about 12% of U.S. new vehicle sales.

___

Eggert reported from Lansing, Michigan.
The Texas Workforce Commission issued a letter to Texas employers earlier this week reminding them about the states COVID-19 vaccine mandate laws.

Executive Order GA-40, which was signed into law by Governor Greg Abbott, states that employers cannot impose a vaccine mandate on employees who qualify for an exemption for religious, personal or medical reasons.
MEXICO CITY (AP)  Mexican actor Carmen Salinas, known for movies like Danzon, Man on Fire and Bellas de Noche and telenovelas and series including Maria la del Barrio and Mujeres Asesinas, has died. She was 82.

Relatives of the actor announced her death Thursday night on Salinas Twitter account.

With great sorrow, we inform you that leading actress Carmen Salinas passed away today, says the message along with a black and white photograph of the artist, thanking her fans for their support.

Salinas had been in a coma after suffering a stroke in November. Details about her funeral services would be released later, her family said.

Jocular but always affable, Salinas could go from comedy to drama with ease.

Born to a humble single mother in Torreon, Coahuila, on October 5, 1939, she only went to elementary school and started her acting career as a child, in the 50's, following into her sister Finita's footsteps.

Salinas sang and did impersonations on the radio, and when she was a little older she participated in beauty and talent contests. Soon she began to perform in Coahuila and Mexico City venues including the famous El Patio nightclub, where she said she liked to party with actress Evita Munoz Chachita and actor Pedro Infante.

By the 1960s, she was appearing in telenovelas like Casa de Barrio," Frontera and Sublime Redencion before making her big screen debut in Roberto Gavaldon's 1970's La Vida Inutil de Pito Perez and later acting in El Crimen del Cacaro Gumaro, La Misma Luna, Todo el Poder, Danzon, Cartas a Elena, Esta Noche Cena Pancho, Que Viva Tepito! and Bellas de Noche.

She also appeared in Tony Scott's Man on Fire, a 2004 thriller filmed in Mexico starring Denzel Washington.

Her many TV credits also included telenovelas Hasta que el Dinero nos Separe, Maria Mercedes and 2021 Mi Fortuna es Amarte and Eugenio Derbez's series La familia P. Luche. And in theater she not only acted in several plays but produced a musical, Aventurera, starring Edith Gonzalez, Itati Cantoral, Niurka Marcos, Ninel Conde and Maribel Guardia.

She was a member of Mexico's Institutional Revolutionary Party, for which she was elected plurinominal federal deputy in 2015, a position she held until 2018. She came to be criticized for falling asleep in a session of the radio and television commission, and she told the press that she preferred the money she earned as an actor than as a legislator.

In 1956 she married the pianist Pedro Plascencia, with whom she had two children  Maria Eugenia and Pedro  before parting ways in the 1960s. Her son Pedro, who was also a musician, died of cancer in 1994 and Salinas spoke openly about the pain this caused her.

She is survived by her daughter Maria Eugenia and her grandchildren.
The House Select Committee to Investigate the Jan. 6 Attack on the Capitol on Thursday released slides from a PowerPoint calling for former President Trump to declare a national security emergency in order to delay the certification of the results of the 2020 election. The presentation was referred to in an email provided to the committee by Mark Meadows, the former White House chief of staff whos had a rough couple of weeks, to say the least.

The revelation is the latest piece of evidence that Trump and his inner circle, including his allies in Congress, were very actively and very aggressively trying to overturn the results of the election, which Trump lost handily.

The PowerPoint presentation, which spanned 38 pages and was titled Election fraud, Foreign Interference & Options for 6 JAN, was part of an email sent on Jan. 5, the day before the attack on the Capitol. The email pertained to a briefing that was to be provided on the hill. Hugo Lowell of The Guardian tweeted slides from the presentation on Thursday detailing a conspiracy theory-laden plan for Vice President Pence to install Republican electors in states where fraud occurred, and for Trump to declare a national emergency and for all electronic voting to be rendered invalid, citing foreign control of electronic voting systems.

In the 13 months since the election, no evidence has emerged that foreign entities influenced the election, or that any significant fraud occurred.

Latest: Trump White House chief Mark Meadows turned over to Jan. 6 committee an email that referred to a PowerPoint calling for Trump to declare a NatSec emergency and have VP Pence delay Bidens certification pic.twitter.com/D2wgLS6AoD  Hugo Lowell (@hugolowell) December 9, 2021

The release of the PowerPoint slides laying out options to overthrow democracy comes a day after the committee noted in a letter that Meadows had provided text messages in which he discussed a highly controversial plan to overturn the election results by appointing alternate electors in certain states. I love it, Meadows replied to the idea, which was sent to him by a lawmaker. Meadows discussed the same plan, which was described as a direct and collateral attack, in a separate email. The letter referenced the PowerPoint presentation, as well, but did not provide details of its contents.

The letter sent on Wednesday, which was addressed to Meadows attorney, explained that the committee had no choice but to move to hold Meadows in contempt of Congress for his refusal to comply with his subpoena. How, if Meadows is refusing to comply, did the committee get ahold of all of these damning documents from the former chief of staff? Meadows last week reached an agreement to cooperate, turned over the material, and then earlier this week changed his mind and is now stonewalling the committee. Hes now suing the committee in an attempt to block his subpoena.

Its unclear what exactly inspired the reversal. Meadows says the committee was not respecting his claims of executive privilege, to which Chairman Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) said the committee tried repeatedly to identify with specificity the areas of inquiry were subject to privilege, but Meadows wouldnt cooperate. Its also possible that Meadows decided to buck the committee after reports began to circulate that Trump was pissed at him for revealing a bunch of damning information about how the White House covered up details of Trumps bout with Covid last year. Its also possible that Meadows just isnt very bright.

Regardless, the committee is now in possession of a trove of his documents indicating the extent of Trumpworlds very real efforts to overturn the election results, efforts that culminated in a throng of supporters storming the Capitol in a violent attack that resulted in five deaths and dozens of injured police officers.

The material turned over by Meadows may be the tip of the iceberg. Committee Vice Chair Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) said last week that the committee is preparing to hold several weeks worth of public hearings that will tell the story of the riot at the Capitol in vivid color. She added on Thursday that the committee has met with nearly 300 witnesses, that it is conducting multiple depositions and interviews every week, and that it expects a ruling imminently on whether it can obtain Trumps White House documents. The investigation is firing on all cylinders, she wrote.

Hours after Cheney teased an upcoming ruling on Trumps executive privilege claim, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals struck it down.
This article was originally published in January 2021.

While the pandemic has had a massive negative effect on small businesses in the U.S., Black-owned businesses in particular have suffered devastating effects since lockdowns and other precautions began in 2020.

In July, National Geographic reported that more than half of Black-owned businesses in the U.S. may not survive COVID-19 due to a systemic lack of resources and little government assistance.

"Honestly, much like everyone else, I was very uncertain how things would go for my business when COVID started," said Yinka Fey, owner of The Minka Collection in Houston. "I was very discouraged and wasnt sure The Minka Collection would survive. But I knew I didnt have this passion in my heart for no reason, and I owed it to myself and the people who supported me to show up and show out everyday."

The Minka Collection is one of many Black-owned boutiques in the Houston area relying on local customers to keep them afloat.

Here are a few others that are worth your time and money.

Screengrab courtesy of The Minka Collection via Instagram

Whether youre looking for a statement piece or something to lounge in, you're bound to turn heads when you're dressed in a piece from The Minka Collection. Fey's fashion-forward fall and winter outfits include fringed sweater-pant sets, belted sherpa denim jackets, vegan leather outerwear and more.

Boutique owner Karissa Lindsay says that A Leap of Style "empowers women to embrace the bolder side of their style," with clothing that reflects the African Diaspora. "We exist to make and curate beautiful clothing and accessories that reflect a womans inner light and confidence," Lindsay said.

When I think Lux Life Boutique, I think "down-to-earth." The shop has perfect pieces if you're looking to be comfortable for a day or night out on the town.

With a piece from Rocky Boston, you can expect not to look like anyone else. Boutique owner Rocky Boston stitches each piece by hand, guaranteeing tons of fashion and even more love.

Screengrab courtesy of The Vanity Kloset via Instagram

Take pride in your appearance with a piece from Vanity Kloset. Store owner Carmen Cooper said she had "a strong desire to create a site where women of all ages could find a look that spoke to them, and complimented their unique style and self esteem."

If you're looking for the perfect birthday staple, Boss Lady Couture is likely to have something for you. The luxury, high-end fashion boutique is located in the Montrose area.

The name speaks for itself. Headed by Jamaica Booker, Perfectly Unique features contemporary apparel for the "confident and chic woman."

If you're interested in clothing and accessories designed specifically for Houstonians, Diversity Clothing Company is the place for you.

Sisterly Village produces affordable and stylish pieces for womens organizations. At the end of every year, the business donates 7 percent of campaign proceeds in support of the purchasing organizations community service mission.

If you're looking for sophisticated fashion with a twist, head to Flair by Ashi. The shop sell clothes in sizes up to 3XL, making for an inclusive shopping experience for all women.
MANISTEE  The state of Michigan has awarded over $600,000 in funding for drinking water improvements under the Drinking Water Asset Management grant program.

"Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy (EGLE) announced (on Dec. 7) that six communities will receive more than $2 million in grants awarded under the umbrella of the MI Clean Water plan that supports work including replacing lead service lines, enhancing water affordability plans, and connecting homes with contaminated drinking water wells to safe community water supplies," read a news release from Whitmer's office.

The grants will "help protect access to safe drinking water" by investing in communities.

Todays grants will invest in communities across Michigan because every Michigander deserves access to safe drinking water," Whitmer said in the news release. "With the $500 million MI Clean Water plan, we are helping communities replace lead service lines, tackle toxic contaminants like PFAS, repair failing septic systems, lower water rates, and do so much more for their residents.

The MI Clean Water plan is a $500 million investment announced by Whitmer last year in order to rebuild the states water infrastructure to help provide clean, affordable water to Michiganders through investments in communities, the release said.

The grants are intended to address water infrastructure issues that Michigan faces such as lead-laden water service lines, toxic contamination like polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), undersized sewers, failing septic systems, unaffordable water rates and constrained local budgets.

The release said, "the Drinking Water Quality portion of this historic investment has already been approved and includes federal dollars for lead service line replacement in low-income communities ($102.1 million) and General Fund programs that address PFAS or other contaminants, planning and/or rate studies, asset management plan development and lead service line identification ($105M). Gov. Whitmer continues to advocate for the Wastewater Protection program that would be funded through the existing bonding authority ($293 million)."

According to the release, more than half of EGLEs budget is funneled to Michigan communities in the form of financial assistance to help address water infrastructure and other environmental  and health-protection efforts.

We recognize that Michigan communities often struggle to find resources to address the threat of lead in drinking water, said Liesl Clark, EGLE director, in the news release. These problems are decades in the making and will take a coordinated effort of local, state and federal commitments. These grants help move these communities forward in addressing those challenges.

The Drinking Water Asset Management grant assists water supplies in asset management plan development or updates, and/or distribution system materials inventory as defined in Michigan's Lead and Copper Rule. All funds have been allocated and EGLE is no longer accepting applications.

The Affordability and Planning Grant (AP) grant is also available to any community water supply and local unit of government, including counties, townships, cities, villages and others to assist in planning and/or rate studies. EGLE is not currently accepting applications.

Another program, the Consolidation and Contamination Risk Reduction (C2R2) grant, funds projects that remove or reduce PFAS or other contaminants, as defined under state or federal drinking water regulations, or efforts to consolidate systems or connect private residential wells to a local municipal system. All funds have been allocated and EGLE is no longer accepting applications, the release said.

The grants were all awarded in November through the Drinking Water Asset Management program and the cities include Manistee, Livonia, Owosso, Oak Park and Fennville as well as the Village of Howard City. Manistee received a total of $606,932 in DWAM grant funding.
Several weeks ago, I gave a talk, and afterward the questions from the audience came to me on index cards. Most of the questions were about politics or society, but one card read: What do you do when youve spent your life wanting to be dead?

I didnt answer that card because I didnt know anything about the person who wrote it and because I didnt know what to say. But it has haunted me, and Ive kept the card on my nightstand ever since.

I wish Id said that I dont have any answers for you, but I do have a response. My response would start with the only things I know about you: Youve been through a lot of pain over the course of your life. You have amazing powers of endurance because you are still here. I know youre fighting still because you reached out to me. My response begins with deep respect for you.

The other thing I know is that you are not alone. There is always a lot of suffering in the world, and over the past few years we have seen high tides of despair. The sources of peoples pain may be different  grief, shame, exclusion, heartbreak, physical or mental health issues  but they almost always involve some feeling of isolation, of being cut off from others.

In my own seasons of suffering, Ive been shocked at how emotional pain feels like searing physical pain in the stomach and chest, by how tempting it is to self-isolate and rob yourself of the very human contact you need most. But when it comes to extreme suffering, I must look to people who know more about it than I do, and one of those people is Viktor Frankl, who survived the Nazi death camps.

Frankl argued that we often cant control what happens to us in life, that we can control only how we respond to it. If we respond to terrible circumstances with tenacity, courage, unselfishness and dignity, then we can add a deeper meaning to life. One can win small daily victories over hard circumstances.

There were many people in the camps who wanted to die more than live. In Mans Search for Meaning, Frankl wrote that he would try to help them recognize that life was still expecting something from them; something in the future was expected of them. Frankl liked to paraphrase Nietzsche: He who has a why to live for can bear with almost any how.

The Bible is filled with characters who are at times overwhelmed with life and wish they could be rid of it  Jonah, Elijah, Job and even Moses. They are so central to the biblical story because desolation is part of the human experience, part of the bricks and mortar out of which we construct our lives.

Suffering had such profound and unpredictable effects on those characters, as it does on all of us. Suffering can make people self-centered, loveless, humorless and angry. But we all know cases where suffering didnt break people but broke them open  made them more caring toward and knowledgeable about the suffering of others. And the old saying that we suffer our way to wisdom is not wrong. We often learn more from the hard times than the happy ones.

And so we are right to treat those who have suffered with respect and credibility. Without your wound where would your power be? Thornton Wilder wrote. It is your very remorse that makes your low voice tremble into the hearts of men. The very angels themselves cannot persuade the wretched and blundering children on earth as can one human being broken on the wheels of living. In loves service only the wounded soldiers can serve.

This doesnt mean that those who have suffered should go out giving sermons and lectures. We all know the weakness of words in these circumstances. But having tasted desolation, those who have suffered do powerfully sit with others in their desolation.

Rabbi Elliot Kukla once described a woman with a brain injury who would sometimes fall to the floor. People around her would rush to immediately get her back on her feet, before she was quite ready. She told Kukla, I think people rush to help me up because they are so uncomfortable with seeing an adult lying on the floor. But what I really need is for someone to get down on the ground with me.

Kukla pointed out that getting on the floor can be anxiety-producing and, when someone is in deep despair, even dangerous to the strongest caregiver. But sometimes you just get on the floor.

We all need witnesses  to witness others, to be witnessed, to draw inspiration from each other. Consolation is an act of solidarity in space, Michael Ignatieff wrote in his new book, On Consolation.

I asked a pastor what he says to people in pain. One thing he says is, I want more for you. I repeat that sentence to you not with any illusion that the world does what I want, but simply as an expression of goodwill, an acknowledgment of how we all sit with our common fragility, and a recognition that life is unpredictable. It changes. In many pilgrims progress, the slough of despond gives way to enchanted ground.

David Brooks is a columnist for the New York Times. If you are having thoughts of suicide, in the United States call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 800-273-8255 (TALK) or go to SpeakingOfSuicide.com/resources for a list of additional resources.
SAN FRANCISCO (AP)  The president of Californias medical board, which issues medical licenses and disciplines doctors, says a group of anti-vaccine activists stalked her at home and followed her to her office  where four men confronted her in a dark parking garage in what she described as a terrifying experience.

Kristina Lawson, a former mayor of Walnut Creek who was appointed to the board by former Gov. Jerry Brown, said in social media on Wednesday she grew concerned Monday after she noticed the people in a white SUV parked near her home and saw someone flying a drone over her house.

They watched my daughter drive herself to school and watched me walk out of my house, get in my car, and take my two kids to school, she wrote in a Tweet.

The white SUV then followed her to work and parked head-to-head with her car in a parking garage, she said. Lawson said that when she left the office building and entered the parking garage later that evening, four men jumped out of the SUV with cameras and recording equipment and confronted her.

Lawson contacted Walnut Creek Police, who later told her the men told officers they wanted to interview her.

Instead, they ambushed me in a dark parking garage when they suspected I would be alone, she wrote on social media.

She said the people identified themselves as representing Americas Frontline Doctors and had not contacted the state medical board or her workplace to request to speak with her.

Led by Simone Gold, a Beverly Hills doctor who was arrested during the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, Americas Frontline Doctors criticizes the COVID-19 vaccine and has been widely discredited for spreading disinformation about the coronavirus and unproven treatments.

I was concerned when I saw someone flying a drone over my house and saw a mysterious white truck parked outside my home. Later that day, my concern turned to terror, she said in a statement.

Lawson added: I arrived in the dark parking garage behind my office and experienced four men unexpectedly rush towards me, jumping out of the same white truck that had been parked outside my house. I then realized that these four men had been surreptitiously stalking me.

Lawson said she decided to go public with what happened to her to shed light on these reprehensible, unacceptable tactics of intimidation

But like other Californians who believe in both science and fair play, I will not be intimidated, she added.

Walnut Creek Police spokeswoman Lt. Holley Connors said in a statement that a man claiming to be a state detective from Georgia called a police dispatcher on Monday and said that he was conducting surveillance in San Miguel, an unincorporated area near Walnut Creek.

The dispatcher asked the man, whose name was not made public, if he had a weapon, and the man responded that his gun was locked in a case, Connors said. The dispatcher told the man that he should contact Contra Costa County Sheriffs Office, which oversees the area he said he was in.

The Contra Costa County Sheriffs Office did not return email and phone messages seeking comment.

Connors said the same man called the Walnut Creek Police Department again later in the day to let them know he was in a parking lot in Walnut Creek with at least one other person.

The Police Department determine that the man who called earlier in the day claiming to be a detective from Georgia was likely involved, in the incident with Lawson, Connors wrote, adding that police have no evidence of a crime but that investigators are still gathering information.

Bill Prasifka, Medical Board of California's executive director, said he supports Lawson in condemning any attempts to intimidate her or any other member of the board and staff.

Board members and staff have been advised to remain vigilant to their surroundings and provided security reminders," Prasifka said in a statement.
YEREVAN, Armenia (AP)  The Armenian military reported Friday that one of its soldiers was killed and eight more were wounded in yet another clash with Azerbaijani forces on the border between the two countries, where tensions have simmered for months.

Armenia's Defense Ministry blamed the casualty on aggressive actions by Azerbaijan's troops, alleging they attacked Armenian positions on the eastern section of the border. The Azerbaijani Defense Ministry, in turn, claimed Armenian forces opened fire first.
RICHMOND, Va. (AP)  Virginias governor has granted a conditional pardon to a 26-year-old Colonial Heights woman serving 20 years for second-degree murder.

Kelly Thomasson, Virginias secretary of the commonwealth, said the paperwork for Margaret Daceys pardon was to be delivered to her at the Virginia Correctional Center for Women, The Richmond Times-Dispatch reported. Of four young defendants in the case, only Dacey was convicted in the 2013 death of Russell Mack.

Ms. Dacey has served over seven years of her sentence of incarceration and has shown remorse and a commitment to public safety, Thomasson said in a statement. Aided by state Sen. Joe Morrissey, a Richmond Democrat, Dacey submitted a petition for a conditional pardon, and Thomasson said it had been under review since Gov. Ralph Northam received it earlier this year.

Dacey must complete a re-entry program before release and undergoing supervised probation for three years, Thomasson said. Under a conditional pardon, an inmates sentence is reduced but the conviction remains on his or her record.

Four defendants were charged similarly with murder and murder by mob offenses. After a jury acquitted Jonathan Guy, then-Commonwealths Attorney William Bray said there wasnt sufficient evidence to proceed with the charges against two other defendants, leaving Dacey, then 17, as the sole defendant. She was convicted in 2014 and sentenced to 30 years in prison with 10 suspended for second-degree murder.

The confrontation that led to Macks death occurred when the four defendants drove to Macks apartment after he challenged Guy and Ashley Mack to come over, according to court documents. At the time, Guy was seeing Macks estranged wife.

During the confrontation, Dacey kicked Mack in the head, causing him to fall backward and fracture his skull, according to evidence presented at trial. The impact caused internal bleeding and Macks brain to swell, and he died 17 days later after he was removed from life support.

Prosecutors argued that the kick delivered by Dacey, an accomplished soccer goalie, was not incidental or causal. But the defense argued Dacey was startled by a splash of cold rain water when Mack, who was heavily intoxicated, fell backward into a puddle after being pushed by his estranged wife.

Northam's decision surprised Macks parents, who didn't know a pardon was being considered until a Virginia Parole Board representative called Monday with the news that it was granted, according to Mack's father, Mike. He said he believes Dacey should serve more of her sentence.

Its very displeasing to the family  all of us, the father said. It would have been a very nice courtesy for one of the governors people to call saying, Were sorry but were looking into releasing (Dacey) and we feel that shes been rehabilitated.

Former House Speaker Kirk Cox and Delegate-elect Mike Cherry, both Republicans from Colonial Heights, said they are both deeply concerned by the way Northam issued the pardon.

The sheer lack of input from Rusty Macks family is wrong, and once again confirms that the Governors version of justice ignores victims, Cox and Cherry said in a joint statement Friday.
MADISON, Wis. (AP)  A judge on Friday delayed until at least next month any action in a lawsuit that seeks to force the mayors of Madison and Green Bay to face jail or sit for depositions with the attorney hired by Republicans to investigate the 2020 election.

Waukesha County Circuit Judge Ralph Ramirez set the next hearing in the case after a Dane County judge hears arguments in a separate case filed by Democratic Attorney General Josh Kaul.

A ruling in that case would likely affect the lawsuit targeting the mayors, leading the judge on Friday to delay any action until after that Dec. 23 hearing. Attorneys for the mayors and Michael Gableman, the lead investigator, did not object to the delay.

Kaul argues that the subpoenas issued to state elections officials as overly broad, unenforceable and illegal because the attorney hired by Republicans wants to conduct the interviews in private, not before a legislative committee in an open hearing.

Gableman was hired by Republican Assembly Speaker Robin Vos and has a budget of nearly $680,000 in taxpayer money.

Democrats decry the investigation as a sham given that some of those hired by Gableman worked in the administration of former President Donald Trump or have supported conspiracy theories about the 2020 election.

Vos and Republicans defend the probe, saying they are trying to address issues raised by voters and others about procedures in place, and private grant money awarded to heavily Democratic cities, during the election.

Gableman and his attorney asked a judge last week to consider jailing the Madison and Green Bay mayors if they did not sit for depositions related to the probe. Attorneys for Madison Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway and Green Bay Mayor Erich Genrich said Gableman's claims are without merit.

Genrich's attorney Jeffrey Mandell said he planned to pursue legal sanctions against Gableman. Rhodes-Conway's attorney Michael Haas said Gableman's threat to jail the mayor for noncompliance was unprofessional, an abuse of process, and a bad-faith effort to publicly harass local officials with no legal basis.

At Friday's hearing, the mayors' attorneys again strongly objected to Gableman's claims that the mayors failed to appear as ordered.

Attorneys for both mayors said their offices had been in touch with Gableman in October and the understanding was that Gableman was not seeking interviews immediately with Genrich or Rhodes-Conway. Both mayors said Gableman had not provided any exact date for them to sit for a deposition.

Kevin Scott, Gableman's attorney, argued that the mayors failed to appear.

I did not dream up our understanding," Haas said in explaining why Rhodes-Conway did not appear. "That was based on conversations with the special counsels office.

Rhodes-Conway has repeatedly said she would provide testimony publicly, but not behind closed doors as Gableman wants.

Mandell argued that Gableman filed the wrong kind of lawsuit and in the wrong court. Ramirez told Gableman's attorney to be prepared to explain his reasoning at the next hearing on Jan. 21.

The hearing in Kaul's lawsuit attempting to block the subpoenas issued to the elections commission is set for Dec. 23 in Dane County. The Gableman lawsuit is in Waukesha County because that's where his office is located.

Gableman's investigation is focusing largely on $8.8 million in grants given to the state's five largest cities, including Madison and Green Bay, to help run the 2020 presidential election. The money came from the Mark Zuckerberg-funded Center for Tech and Civic Life and was part of $350 million it gave to communities in 49 states. More than 200 communities in Wisconsin received funding, but the vast majority went to Milwaukee, Madison, Green Bay, Racine and Kenosha.

Gableman wants to interview the mayors to discuss how that funding was used.

Multiple courts and the state elections commission have repeatedly determined that the grants were legal, but Republicans argue it was unfair because so much money went to cities with large Democratic populations.

President Joe Biden beat Trump by nearly 21,000 votes in Wisconsin, an outcome that has withstood recounts and lawsuits. False claims of widespread fraud have not been proven, with just five people out of more than 3 million who cast ballots in 2020 charged with election fraud.
OKLAHOMA CITY (AP)  A former member of Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt's cabinet has filed a claim for $60 million damages with the state attorney generals office, alleging he was wrongly charged with bribery.

Former Secretary of Digital Transformation and Administration David Ostrowe filed the tort claim Thursday. He alleges he was wrongly charged by a multi-county grand jury during the term of former state Attorney General Mike Hunter.

Hunter resigned in May, citing personal matters, and dropped the charges against Ostrowe, saying his office faced a potential conflict of interest because Stitt, who appointed Ostrowe, would appoint the new attorney general.

The charge alleged Ostrowe attempted to bribe two members of the three-person Oklahoma Tax Commission by threatening that state appropriations to the agency would be withheld if they did not waive interest and tax penalties levied against a company owned by former state Sen. Jason Smalley.

Ostrowe, a businessman who was appointed to the unpaid post in 2019 and resigned in September, denied wrongdoing and said in his claim that he has lost $60 million in business opportunities because of the charge.

A former spokesman for Hunter previously said Ostrowe's case was referred to Hunter by state officials and undertaken the same as all cases taken before a grand jury.

Rachel Roberts, spokesperson for current Attorney General John O'Connor, said it is the attorney general's job to investigate allegations of crimes.

Concerns regarding Ostrowes conduct were referred to our office and investigated in accordance with our duties, Roberts said in a statement. "We have nothing further to add at this time.

Bob Nance, an attorney for Hunter deferred to the statement from O'Connor's office and declined further comment.

The tort claim alleges Hunter sought to bolster a planned 2022 challenge to Stitt in the Republican gubernatorial primary.

The former attorney general weaponized his office for personal gain and to protect corrupt state officials, Ostrowe said in a statement.

Hunter never announced he was entering the race for governor, but filed paperwork for reelection as attorney general. He has since withdrawn as a candidate.

The attorney general's office has 90 days to respond to the claim, which said Ostrowe will file a lawsuit if the claim is denied.
BILLINGS, Mont. (AP)  A former official for a central Montana coal mine pleaded guilty Thursday to conspiring with others to not make required reports about workplace accidents that injured employees, the U.S. Attorney's Office for Montana said.

Dale Lee Musgrave of Pompeys Pillar  who was vice president of underground operations at Signal Peak Mine near Roundup from 2013 to 2019  pleaded guilty to conspiracy to submit false statement in records. He faces a maximum sentence of five years in prison and a $250,000 fine.

The plea agreement calls for federal prosecutors to seek the dismissal of two counts of cocaine trafficking and two other false statement charges. A sentencing date has not been set.

In 2018, a worker had his fingers crushed while loading mining materials, causing an injury that required a partial amputation, prosecutors said.

As the worker was being taken to the hospital, he received a call from Musgrave, who told him to claim that the injury was not related to his mine work and that Musgrave would make it worth his while, court records said.

In 2019 another worker was injured when dirt and debris fell from an excavated mine wall, partially burying him and injuring his leg, which required surgery, prosecutors said.

Based on encouragement from Musgrave and others, the worker told doctors he injured his leg in an all-terrain vehicle crash, officials said. Other employees eventually learned the accident had been concealed and reported it to the Mine Safety and Health Administration.

In October, the mining company pleaded guilty to federal charges that it violated environmental and employee safety regulations in an agreement that calls for a $1 million fine.

The prosecution of the mine was part of a broad corruption investigation into mine management and operations that led to convictions of former mine officials and associates for embezzlement, tax evasion, bank fraud, money laundering and firearms violations.
SAN DIEGO (AP)  A former San Diego-area police officer who pushed a Black man during an arrest last year was acquitted Friday of lying on his report about the incident, which was captured on video and sparked widespread looting and arson amid nationwide racial unrest.

A jury deliberated over three days before finding former La Mesa police Officer Matthew Dages not guilty on one count of providing false testimony. Dages, 30, dropped his head to his chest in relief after the verdict was read.

Defense attorney Jeremiah J. Sullivan III criticized San Diego County District Attorney Summer Stephan for prosecuting the case.

The progressive DA is choosing criminals over cops," he said in a text to The Associated Press.

Stephan released a statement saying she was proud that my team courageously fought for justice without prejudice against or favor towards anyone."

The integrity of our criminal justice system depends on police officers filing truthful police reports, and our thorough review of the facts and evidence led us to bring the charge and present the case to the jury," she said.

Dages testified he was truthful when he wrote in his report that Amaurie Johnson, 24, balled his fists and took a fighting stance when he stopped him for smoking on a trolley platform on May 27, 2020. He also said Johnson hit his arm.

Video taken by a witness and posted to social media showed the white police officer grabbing and pushing Johnson onto a concrete bench. Johnson was taken into custody on accusations of resisting arrest but was not charged with a crime and was not cited for smoking.

The incident fueled racial tensions in the normally sedate suburb as protesters claimed Johnson was singled out for being Black. It happened two days after the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis unleashed nationwide protests over police brutality.

The witness's video shows Johnson telling the officer to shut the (expletive) up. At one point, the man says he is being arrested because hes Black. Thats what the issue is, he said.

Body camera footage shows the back-and-forth continued on the drive to the police station.

The officer says, Did I feel threatened when you put your hands on me? No, because Im not scared of you, but Im not going to let you put your hands on me. Johnson denied the allegation and says he was trying to get the officers hands off him.

Johnson testified at the officer's trial that he was not smoking. He acknowledged he swatted the officers hand but said he did not ball his fists or take a fighting stance.

Dages, who served two years on the La Mesa police force, was fired after the incident. He faced up to three years in prison if he had been convicted.

The tensions over Johnson's treatment exploded into violent protests in La Mesa on May 30, 2020. Two banks were burned to the ground, a fire truck set ablaze and other businesses looted in the city of about 60,000 that is east of San Diego.

Authorities fired tear gas to disperse the crowd. Demonstrator Leslie Furcron, 59, was shot between the eyes with a bean-bag round and hospitalized.

The county called in the California National Guard, which arrived five days later to prevent additional violence.

___

Associated Press writer Elliot Spagat in San Diego contributed to this report.
BEIRUT (AP)  Arms stored for the Palestinian Hamas group exploded in a refugee camp in southern Lebanon on Friday night, killing and wounding a number of people, the state-run National News Agency reported.

A Lebanese security official said authorities have no exact numbers of the casualties yet but that there could be as many as 12 dead in the Burj Shamali camp in the port city of Tyre. He spoke on condition of anonymity in line with regulations.
On Thursday, Texas Land Commissioner and candidate for Texas Attorney General George P. Bush visited the Gateway City to meet with local Border Patrol officers in efforts to see how the border situation is while also providing comments to the media.

Bush is the son of former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, the nephew of former President George W. Bush and the grandson of former President George H.W. Bush.

Bushs visit is part of his four-day tour known as the Secure the Border Tour, which will traverse several cities along the Texas border. Bush came to the city to see how the ongoing efforts of Operation Lone Star, which is a Texas mission to combat the smuggling of people and drugs into Texas, is going. Gov. Greg Abbott recently allowed DPS State Troopers to assist in any efforts that might be ongoing in terms of illegal activity in the area.

During his border tour, he spoke about how he believes the illegal activity along the border is a big problem which makes some parts of the state highly unsafe. He also said he hoped Mexico could do more to stop the flow of illegal activity to the United States via the Texas border.

I believe that Mexico could do more in its part to secure the border and help our officials, not just in the parts with Texas, but rather in all of the parts around the country that share a border with Mexico, Bush said.

He said the current reinstatement of the Remain in Mexico Policy is a good thing in efforts to curtail some numbers as Border Patrol officials have had a lot of work in recent months as groups of various caravans have been arriving to the area.

During a press conference in Eagle Pass right before he arrived to Laredo, Bush also said he had talked with several of the mayors along the border area and they have all told him they really need help in efforts to control criminal activity. He wants to tell them the state government is here to help and provide them with the assistance needed.

This whole tour is from El Paso to McAllen, and we are going to visit the Border Patrol of each area, the areas of security responsibility, as there are five in total which include El Paso, Big Bend, Del Rio, Laredo and McAllen, Bush said.

Prior to his tour, Bush also said the federal government has a lot of responsibility in trying to fix this issue as well and that the tour is to help make the federal government do more for the border states and border cities in Texas.

Joe Biden and Kamala Harris have strategically eroded the laws that kept our borders secure and left behind open borders policies that put our communitys safety at risk, Bush said. Texas must step up to fight back against the violent cartels who are trafficking illicit drugs, rampant human smuggling and scores of human trafficking victims. Our border communities are overrun with violence and chaos and have been left without a strong voice that stands up for Texas values. This tour is about rolling up our sleeves, showing what the reality of our border looks like and what actions we must take to secure our state.

He said the purpose of the tour is simply to listen and understand what officials of each of the border cities are facing and to see how the state can help while also make the federal government move more in efforts to bring more help to the area. He said visits like this would be common under his administration as attorney general in efforts to provide better help to areas that might need major assistance when it comes to illicit activities in the border areas.

Also during the tour, he said he decided to run for attorney general because he considers himself someone who both the people and law enforcement can trust in the position. He said he believes the current administration cannot be trusted because of the current criminal charges the attorney general of the state faces.

In June of this year, Bush filed suit against President Bidens administration and the federal government on grounds they misused the funding congress and President Donald Trump duly appropriated for the completion of the wall. This suit is currently moving through the legal process in the Southern Texas District Federal Court, McAllen Division.

After Laredo, Bush was set to visit McAllen and speak with local law enforcement and Border Patrol officials from there to see how the situation is ongoing.

jorge.vela@lmtonline.com
ATLANTA (AP)  A suspended Georgia Court of Appeals judge has agreed to pay a $25,000 fine to settle ethics charges that he spent campaign funds for personal use.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports that the Georgia Government Transparency and Campaign Finance Commission voted Thursday to approve a consent decree with Judge Christian Coomer.

Commission staff said it was the largest fine ever against a Georgia judge in an ethics case.

A 2020 ethics complaint accused Coomer, a former state House member, of transferring money from his old legislative campaign account to financially prop up his former law firm between 2015 and 2019. Ethics officials called the transfers short-term loans.

The complaint said Coomer used campaign money to pay for trips to Hawaii and Israel.

State law bars candidates from using campaign funds for personal expenses.

The complaint also alleged that Coomer failed to disclose the spending on required reports

Doug Chalmers, Coomer's lawyer, said Coomer could have fought the complaint but wanted to take responsibility for what happened. He said Coomer cooperated with the ethics investigation.

The judge is pleased we have been able to work out a resolution in this matter, Chalmers told the commission.

Chalmers had earlier said Coomer had transferred the money unintentionally when using online banking, in part because all his accounts are at the same bank. He had said errors were quickly reversed.

The judge has not been personally enriched and he owes no money to the campaign, there were no knowing or willful violations, and the judge self-reported certain transactions, Chalmers said in a statement Thursday.

David Emadi, the commissions executive secretary, said commission investigators believe Coomer intentionally made the transfers. But he said the commission didn't have to prove intent to bring the charges.

Coomer has been under criminal investigation involving fraud claims made in a lawsuit by Nathan Filhart. The man said Coomer procured loans from the man on extremely unfavorable terms while a private lawyer in Cartersville.

Coomer was elected to the General Assembly in 2010. He was House majority whip in 2018 when then-Gov. Nathan Deal appointed him to the appeals court.

Georgias judicial watchdog agency, the Judicial Qualifications Commission, filed charges against Coomer late last year, alleging he violated the code of judicial conduct, as well as campaign finance and lending laws.

Coomer, who strongly denied allegations of fraud, has paid back the loans in full, said Filharts lawyer, Wright Gammon. In July 2020, Coomer settled the lawsuit filed by Filhart under terms that remain confidential.

Coomer voluntarily agreed to a suspension from his judicial duties during the judicial disciplinary proceedings. While he is suspended, the state is paying his $196,000 salary and paying for another judge to do his job.
MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP)  An Alabama teen was taken into custody by police after a gun was found at a high school in Montgomery.

A faculty member at Lee High School alerted security employees after getting a tip Thursday that the student might have a weapon, Montgomery Public Schools spokeswoman Jade Jones told the Montgomery Advertiser. Security personnel did a search and found the gun.
U.S. Border Patrol agents arrested a migrant wanted in Mexico for a robbery, authorities said.

On Wednesday, agents assigned to the Cotulla Station encountered a group of six individuals inside a ranch located west of Encinal. All were determined to be migrants in the country illegally.

One migrant was identified as Bryan Pineda-Lopez, a 25-year-old Mexican citizen. Further investigation revealed that Pineda-Lopez had an active warrant for robbery in the State of Nuevo Leon, Mexico.

Laredo Sector Foreign Operations Branch agents verified that the warrant was extraditable before turning over Pineda-Lopez to Mexican authorities.

To report suspicious activity such as human and/or drug smuggling, contact the Laredo Sector Border Patrol toll free at 1-800-343-1994.
COPENHAGEN, Denmark (AP)  The two journalists who shared this year's Nobel Peace Prize received their awards Friday during a pomp-filled ceremony in Norway, with both warning that the world needs independent reporting to counter the power of authoritarian governments.

Maria Ressa of the Philippines and fellow laureate Dmitry Muratov of Russia gave their Nobel lectures at Oslo City Hall. The Norwegian Nobel Committee awarded them the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize for their separate fights for freedom of expression in countries where reporters have faced persistent attacks, harassment and killings.

Yes, we growl and bite. Yes, we have sharp teeth and strong grip, Muratov said of journalists. But we are the prerequisite for progress. We are the antidote against tyranny.

Muratov also used his speech to give a dire warning about the potential for a war between Russia and Ukraine. A massive Russian troop buildup near Ukraine's border has led to Western diplomatic efforts to prevent an invasion, which the Kremlin has denied it is planning.

"In (the) heads of some crazy geopoliticians, a war between Russia and Ukraine is not something impossible any longer. But I know that wars end with identifying soldiers and exchanging prisoners, Muratov said.

Ressa, 58, co-founded Rappler, a news website critical of the Philippine government, in 2012. Muratov, 59, was one of the founders in 1993 of the independent Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta.

Ressa, the first person from the Philippines to win the Nobel Peace Prize, offered a bleak assessment of the journalism industry, saying the era of competition for news is dead.

We need to help independent journalism survive, first by giving greater protection to journalists and standing up against states which target journalists, she told the audience of 200 people, including Norwegian royals and officials who sat with a meter (3 feet) separating them for the pandemic-curtailed ceremony. Normally the Oslo event is attended by 1,000 people.

Ressa, who was visibly moved, couldnt resist taking a selfie with Muratov inside the Oslo City Hall before the arrival of the Norwegian royals.

Together with the medals featuring the effigy of the prizes founder Alfred Nobel and diploma, came 10 million kronor ($1.1 million) to be shared between them.

Norwegian Nobel Committee chairwoman Berit Reiss-Andersen said free speech and information are a basic prerequisite for democracy itself. The laureates are participants in a war where the written word is their weapon, where truth is their goal and every exposure of misuse of power is a victory."

Muratov said that in Russia, journalism is going through a dark valley with many reporters and human rights activists being branded as foreign agents.

"Many of our colleagues have lost their jobs. Some have to leave the country. Some are deprived of the opportunity to live a normal life for an unknown period of time. Maybe forever

Muratov ended his lecture by asking the assembly to honor reporters "who have given their lives for this profession, with a minute of silence. I want journalists to die old.

On Thursday, the Brussels-based International Federation of Journalists said that imprisonments of media workers are on the rise, with 365 journalists behind bars compared with 235 last year. Nine journalists have been killed in the line of duty in Afghanistan alone and 102 imprisoned in China.

Russia still has 12 journalists behind bars, and three reporters were killed in the Philippines, it said.

David Beasley, head of the World Food Program that won the 2020 Nobel Peace Prize, also gave a lecture in Oslo and called on world leaders to assert your power and stop all of these horrible wars. Beasley was given the award last year at a ceremony in Rome, due to the pandemic.

He said that the combination of conflict, climate and COVID has created an unprecedented perfect storm, adding 45 million in 43 countries are knocking on famines door and it is within our power to save them.

He also urged billionaires to give us the $6.6 billion we need to prevent famine now and save 45 million lives now, and said they know how to revolutionize phones, cars, rockets, and retail. Help us revolutionize how the planet eats.

Ceremonies honoring all of the newest Nobel laureates are usually held in Oslo and Sweden's capital, Stockholm, on Dec. 10, the anniversary of prize founder Alfred Nobel's death. However, due to the pandemic, the awards in physics, chemistry, medicine, literature and economics were presented during ceremonies in the laureates hometowns.

The ongoing coronavirus pandemic still affects our lives in a profound manner. Like last year, the Nobel award diploma and medals have been handed over to you, Carl-Henrik Heldin, chairman of the Nobel Foundation, said later Friday at a ceremony to pay tribute to the laureates at Stockholm City Hall.

The 250-strong audience included Swedens King Carl XVI Gustav, senior members of Swedens royal family, scholars and officials. Normally, approximately 1,250 people attend.

Wrapping up the nearly 90-minute event, actress Lena Olin who hosted the ceremony said the 2021 laureates are dedicated to truth in various forms  scientific knowledge, the human experience and the fundamental right of journalists to report facts.

In Oslo, the day is to end with a torchlit procession from the city's Central Station to the Grand Hotel, where the Peace Prize laureates are to greet the parade from a balcony.
PARSONS, Kan. (AP)  Parsons police said someone beheaded a 3-month-old puppy that belonged to one of their officers in what they called a targeted attack."

The officer reported last Friday that she let the German shepherd puppy, named Ranger, out into a fenced yard about 7 a.m. and found the puppy in the yard with its head severed about 2 p.m.
HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP)  A statewide mask mandate for Pennsylvania schoolchildren was thrown out by the state Supreme Court on Friday, raising the prospect that at least some students in the state may soon be allowed to attend classes without a face covering.

The justices announced their decision to invalidate the Wolf administration's statewide mandate for masks inside K-12 school buildings and child care facilities but did not issue a written opinion that explains their reasoning.

They upheld a lower-court decision that the mandate was imposed by Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf's acting health secretary without legal authorization. The practical impact of the decision will depend on what the justices say in the written opinion or opinions they will issue in the case and which schools and school districts impose their own masking requirements.

The court took action amid a statewide surge in new infections and hospitalizations. Pennsylvania is reporting an average of 7,571 infections per day, up over 20% in two weeks. Hospitalizations have risen 55% since mid-November, to an average of more than 4,000 per day, and acute-care facilities are becoming overwhelmed.

Wolf press secretary Beth Rementer described the decision as extremely disappointing.

The administration recognizes that many school districts want to ensure a safe and healthy learning environment for students and staff, and we are hopeful they will make appropriate mitigation decisions moving forward, Rementer said.

She urged districts to prioritize health and safety, calling masks a proven and simple way to keep kids in school without interruption and participate in sports and other extracurricular activities.

The justices upheld a Commonwealth Court ruling that Alison Beam, the acting state health secretary, lacked authority to require masks, did not follow state laws about enacting regulations and acted without a required existing disaster emergency declared by the governor in place.

The lower court found Pennsylvanias disease control law does not give health secretaries the blanket authority to create new rules and regulations out of whole cloth, provided they are related in some way to the control of disease or can otherwise be characterized as disease control measures.

The decision will be left to the 500 school districts in Pennsylvania, with respect to what to do with the implications of this order, said Thomas W. King III, a lawyer for the Republican lawmakers, school districts, schools and parents who sued to challenge it.

King, who has advised against mask mandates, said school boards will have to consult their own lawyers about what policy to now adopt. As of the end of July, 59 of 474 school districts submitted plans to the state Education Department that mandated masks for the current school year.

This is a great day in Pennsylvania for the rule of law, King said. The Supreme Court has proved that no one is above the law, and that includes the secretary of health or the governor.

The decision comes just two days after the high court heard oral arguments in the case.

The lawsuit was filed by Senate President Pro Tempore Jake Corman, R-Centre; state Rep. Jesse Topper, R-Bedford; two religious schools; three public school districts; and several parents of schoolchildren.

Beams actions, the litigants argued, left the public unable to voice their opinions and the General Assembly unable to review the policys legality or necessity, and violated state law.

The attorney general's office, representing Beam, told the court earlier this week there does not appear to be anything to prevent schools and school districts from issuing their own masking orders.

The mask mandate took effect in early September. Wolf announced in November he intends to return authority over masking decisions to local school districts in January, but will continue to require masks in child care centers and early learning programs.

___

AP writer Michael Rubinkam contributed from northeastern Pennsylvania.
PEMBROKE PINES, Fla. (AP)  A 12-year-old South Florida middle school student was accused of bringing weapons onto school property after being found with a slingshot, two rocks and four knives in his backpack, police said.

The student at Walter C. Young Middle School in Pembroke Pines was arrested on Thursday. Police said the school's resource officer heard rumors that the boy had a slingshot and found the items in his backpack when he questioned him.

The boy did not make any threats or brandish the weapons.

He was taken to a juvenile assessment center.

The arrest follows a recent rise in threats at South Florida schools, authorities said.

Last week, a 17-year-old student at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School was arrested on a count of writing threats to conduct a mass shooting after making a threat against the school in a group text, police said. The Parkland school was the site of a mass shooting that killed 17 on Valentine's Day in 2018.

On Tuesday, a student was arrested in connection with threats made at Miami Lakes-Hialeah Senior High School. On Monday two other student were arrested after police said they made threats at other schools in Miami-Dade County.

And in central Florida on Thursday, a 15-year-old student was arrested after threatening a mass shooting at Lyman High School in Longwood, police said. Messages listing Friday's date and threatening a shooting were found on multiple bathroom walls, an arrest affidavit said.

Parents, please take this moment to speak with your children about the severe consequences of bringing weapons of any kind onto school property, Pembroke Pines police said in a news release. These are serious charges and may result in an arrest, regardless of the age of the suspect.
WARSAW, Poland (AP)  The diversion to Minsk of a Lithuania-bound flight carrying a self-exiled Belarusian journalist was an act of state terrorism carried out to detain an opponent of Belarus' government, Polish security officials said Friday.

Polands Internal Security Agency and prosecutors investigated the May 23 incident in which a Ryanair jetliner registered in Poland was ordered to land in the capital of Belarus due to an alleged bomb threat. Journalist Raman Pratasevich, who lived in Lithuania, was removed from the plane and arrested. He remains under house arrest in Belarus.

The fact that there were Polish citizens among the other 125 passengers led to the probe.

A security services spokesperson, Stanislaw Zaryn, presented findings from Polands investigation, which concluded there was no bomb and that Belarusian security officers were at an air traffic tower in Minsk where they gave a controller instructions to order the plane to turn back and land.

Zaryn played journalists a recording of what he said was the conversation between the pilot of the Ryanair flight and an air traffic controller in Belarus. The pilot is heard asking where the bomb threat information came from and is told the source was Belarusian special services. Someone speaking Russian gives the controller information to relay to the pilot,

Belarusian authorities have said the plane was diverted after they received a warning that a bomb was on the plane. Polands investigators said an email with the alleged threat was sent some 30 minutes after the controller relayed the message to the pilot, and came from an address that likely was generated for that purpose only.

Zaryn said the diversion was aimed at detaining a political opponent of the regime of (Belarusian President) Aleksander Lukashenko and can be considered an act of state terrorism.

On Thursday, the head of the aviation department at the Belarusian Transport and Communications Ministry, Artem Sikorsky, dismissed a similar account of the events published in The New York Times, which reported that a former air traffic controller in Minsk had defected to Poland.

Sikorsky told Belarus state news agency Belta that an air traffic controller cannot exert pressure on the pilot's decision-making. He said the Belarusian government has requested additional information, including the pilot's conversation with air traffic control in Lithuania.

We are seeing that this information dump is occurring at the moment when we ask our Polish partners and the ICAO (International Civil Aviation Organization) commission to provide objective control data, in particular conversations between the Vilnius air traffic controller and the pilot and in-cabin conversations between the crew members, Sikorsky said Thursday.

_____

Uliana Pavlova in Moscow contributed to this report.
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U.S. Border Patrol halted the human smuggling attempt of five migrants near Hebbronville, authorities said.

The incident unfolded on Dec. 8, when agents pulled over a white sport utility vehicle on FM 649 southwest of Hebbronville. Agents then discovered five migrants from the countries of Mexico, El Salvador, and Honduras lying down on the back passenger area.
AUSTIN, Texas (AP)  Since early September, Texas has banned most abortions under a new law that has created the biggest curb to abortion in the U.S. in nearly 50 years.

Texas clinics have spent months asking courts to halt the the law, known as Senate Bill 8, which bans abortions once cardiac activity is detected. That is usually around six weeks, which is before some women even know they are pregnant.

The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday again allowed the law to remain in a place in a ruling that allows abortion clinics to continue their legal fight. In the meantime, most abortions in Texas are still banned.

Here is a timeline of key events so far:

____

MAY 19: Republican Gov. Greg Abbott signs the law in a ceremony at the Texas Capitol that is closed to the press and public. The law is solely enforced by private citizens, who are entitled to $10,000 in damages if they successfully sue abortion providers.

JULY 13: Texas abortion clinics sue in federal court in Austin.

AUG. 25: U.S. District Judge Robert Pitman, an appointee of President Barack Obama, denies Texas' efforts to dismiss the lawsuit.

AUG. 27: The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals orders a halt on the lawsuit in Austin, eventually leading abortion clinics to ask the U.S. Supreme Court to intervene.

SEPT. 1: The law takes effect. Late that night, Supreme Court issues a 5-4 decision allowing the law to remain in place, without ruling on its constitutionality. Texas abortion clinics say they will abide by the restrictions.

SEPT. 6: Defending how the law makes no exceptions in cases of rape or incest, Abbott says Texas would strive to eliminate all rapists from the streets," drawing swift criticism. He also falsely asserts that women have at least six weeks" under the law to get an abortion.

SEPT. 9: The Justice Department sues Texas, saying the law was enacted in open defiance of the Constitution."

SEPT. 15: Two weeks into the law, Texas abortion providers tell a court that the impact has been exactly what we feared." Out-of-state clinics say appointments are quickly filling as the majority of their patients now come from Texas.

OCT. 6: Pitman issues an order suspending the law. Some Texas clinics quickly resume abortions for patients beyond six weeks, but many physicians still won't, fearing lawsuits.

OCT. 8: The 5th Circuit reinstates the law. Texas clinics cancel appointments booked over the previous 48 hours.

OCT. 15: The Justice Department says it will take case to the Supreme Court.

NOV. 1: The Supreme Court hears oral arguments for the first time.

DEC. 9: A Texas judge rules that the enforcement scheme that critics call a bounty is unconstitutional. The narrow ruling still leaves the law in place.

DEC. 10: The Supreme Court again allows the law to stand for now, but lets clinics continue efforts trying to overturn it. The court dismisses the Justice Departments separate challenge.
UNITED NATIONS (AP)  Secretary-General Antonio Guterres announced the appointment Friday of Catherine Russell, an assistant to U.S. President Joe Biden, as the next head of the U.N. childrens agency UNICEF.

Russell also heads the White House Office of Presidential Personnel and served as the State Departments ambassador-at-large for global womens issues from 2013 to 2017.

She will succeed Henrietta Fore, who resigned in July because of a family health issue. She is married and has four children.

U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric announced the secretary-generals appointment of Russell following consultations with UNICEFs executive board.

He said Guterres wanted to express appreciation to Fore for her inspiring leadership of UNICEF and in particular, UNICEFs critical role in the global response to COVID-19 and in reimagining education. As a result of her leadership, he said, UNICEF now has a broader array of public and private sector partnerships and a bolder focus on achieving U.N. development goals for 2030.

In a statement, Biden called Russell a trusted and indispensable adviser to him and to his wife, Jill, for nearly 30 years, praising her leadership, experience, wisdom and empathy.

Our loss is UNICEFs gain, because children around the world will lead richer, safer, and healthier lives as a direct result of Cathys leadership in this new role, Biden said.

Russell, a lawyer, has worked in Democratic politics since the mid-1980s. She worked on Capitol Hill and at the White House and State Department during the eight years that Barack Obama was president and Biden was vice president. She is married to Tom Donilon, the former national security adviser to Obama.

The United States is the largest funder of UNICEF and the job has traditionally gone to an American.

UNICEF works in over 190 countries and territories with the goal of saving childrens lives, defending their rights and helping them fulfil their potential, from early childhood through adolescence.
MESQUITE, Texas (AP)  A suburban Dallas police officer who was fatally shot while responding to a domestic dispute in a supermarket parking lot was remembered Thursday for his devotion to his family, faith and job.

Mesquite police Officer Richard Houston, 46, was fatally shot on Dec. 3. Hundreds of mourners attended the funeral for the married father of three children Thursday at Lake Pointe Church in nearby Rockwall.
Rapper Travis Scott this week broke his silence for the first time since the deadly events of November's Astroworld Festival tragedy, but attorneys representing victims and their families are saying it only further proved the artist was aware of the dangers of the festival. Scott opened up about the incident in an interview with The Breakfast Clubs Charlamagne Tha God posted to YouTube Thursday morning.

In the near hour-long interview, Scott said he did everything he could to help his fans the night of a tragic crowd surge at his concert on Nov. 5 that resulted in the deaths of 10 attendees and injuries to hundreds. Scott, whose real name is Jacques B. Webster II, denied knowing about the deaths or injuries during the show.

Houston attorney James Lassiter, who is representing the family of 22-year-old victim Bharti Shahani, called Scotts interview an hour-long exercise in classic gaslighting of victims, their families and the community. Gaslighting is a form of manipulation seen in abusive relationships where its an attempt to manipulate the facts so that the victims begin to question their own experiences of reality, Lassiter said. Thats what was going on there.

Scott and event organizers face hundreds of lawsuits totaling more than $10 billion in damages alleging the named parties failed to provide adequate safety for fans. Earlier this week, the hip hop artist requested to be dismissed from all 11 lawsuits filed against him, denying all allegations. Lassiter said that in the interview, Scott was playing the victim, and that while he and his team are still gathering facts to present to the jury in the case, its clear that the rapper encourages dangerous behavior at his performances.

Thats his brand. Thats what he does, Lassiter said. For him to act surprised that people got hurt and even killed at his show is perplexing. It wont work on a Harris County jury who hears all the facts because the fact is Travis Scott has an abusive relationship with his fans and hes used that to build his fame and fortune risking peoples lives and their livelihood.

Lassiter said he did not know at the time whether Shahanis family had been aware of or watched the interview, but he hopes that they dont. There was nothing in that episode that would give any comfort or solace to the devastation that they experienced.

In the interview, Scott spoke about how the tragedy could serve as inspiration for new music and held out hope that one day he'd be able to host another Astroworld in Houston. Lassiter called out these remarks, saying such things are too soon to bring up given the magnitude of the tragedy. Hes using this PR opportunity to try and salvage his career, Lassiter said. Its very transparent to me and I hope it is to the whole world.

Dallas attorney Robert Hilliard, who is representing 500 concert-goers, including the family of 9-year-old victim Ezra Blount, said its clear from the interview that Scott and others were aware of the potential safety dangers at the concert and of the catastrophic deficiencies that lead to deaths and injuries. Hilliard and other attorneys have rejected offers from Scott to cover victims' funeral expenses.

Throughout the interview, he seems intent on not lawyering up just to benefit his civil case, Hilliard said in a Thursday news release. If he does want to lead as he says, he must understand that he cannot protect the business of Travis Scott or protect other defendants who may attempt to dodge responsibility for this tragedy.

Hilliard said he is asking Scott and other defendants to not allow litigation, and the pain of families as a result, to be prolonged through delay. We need to get to the full unvarnished truth as quickly as possible so healing can begin.

Houston attorney Tony Buzbee, who filed a $2 billion lawsuit against Scott, concert promoter Live Nation and other organizers and is representing the family of 21-year-old victim Axel Acosta, said he and the family were disgusted by the interview. Were taught as kids, when you make a mistake, the best thing you can do is admit it and take responsibility, Buzbee told ABC 13. Travis Scott has not done that. Made no effort to. In fact, in 50-some-odd minutes, he didnt even say Im sorry. Every time he tries to shift blame, every time he makes excuses, he just adds to the pain of the families that have lost loved ones.

Chicago-based attorney Philip Corboy, Jr, representing the families of Franco Patino and Jacob Jurinek, two best friends that died at the festival, released a statement Thursday saying the families were deeply offended by Scotts latest pre-packaged public relations stunt.

The families are smart, and they saw it for what it was," Corboy said. "In his interview, Travis Scott talked about his fans at Astroworld being his family and that hes right there with their families now. The families needed him to be there during the show when Travis Scott could have and should have saved the lives of their children.

Corboy also said Scott saying he is with the families couldnt be further from the truth. The only time Travis Scott will be with them is in court.
A federal judge this week temporarily blocked President Joe Biden's administration from enforcing a COVID-19 vaccine requirement for employees of federal contractors, effectively freezing mandates for contractors, certain health care workers and employees of large companies nationwide including Texas.

Gov. Greg Abbott's executive order GA-40, which he issued in October, is now fully in effect following the ruling. The order prohibits employers from imposing the vaccine on an employee who qualifies for an exemption for religious, personal or medical reasons. The governor's mandate conflicted with Biden's order mandating that employees working on or in connection with a federal contract must be fully vaccinated by Jan. 18.

U.S. District Court Judge R. Stan Baker Tuesday issued a stay to bar enforcement of the mandate nationwide, stating that the Biden administration may have overstepped its authority in requiring the COVID-19 shots.

Abbott celebrated the ruling Tuesday, tweeting "Now ALL of the Biden Administration vaccine mandates have been halted. Now, under my order, vaccine mandates are not allowed in Texas." In addition, Abbott on Wednesday created a hotline for Texas employees to report vaccine mandates, saying "While I encourage Texans to get the vaccine, it will always be voluntary, and never enforced, in Texas, and we are committed to ensuring Texans' livelihoods are not jeopardized by federal overreach."

Randall Erben, a University of Texas law professor states that under the order, vaccine policies are still allowed, but employers can't "compel" individual employees to receive the jab. Erben says Senate Bill 968, which Abbott signed in June, is also now currently in effect in the state. That order prohibits businesses from requiring customers to provide any documentation of their COVID-19 vaccination to be served.

"So if an employee or customer brought suit against a business saying 'they're making me get a vaccination in order to work here or be served here, I think they'd probably win under the executive order," Erben said. "Under the law today, you could probably prevent somebody from requiring to be vaccinated."

The question that remains is whether the order will get largely ignored since many businesses have already required employees to get vaccinated and with less than a month left to comply, not much time is left to implement changes."They have to start implementing a program and that's the problem with this starting and stopping... it takes time," Erben says. "They may proceed on the assumption that this is going to be enforceable but I don't know and that's the problem with it. Every week something changes."

Erben also pointed to some entities, like school districts, ignoring Abbott and continuing with mask mandates. Whether the order will actually be enforced is also an issue, which Erben says can only be done through a district attorney. Those who violate the executive order can only be fined $1,000 but can't be jailedwhich Abbott did away with after a Dallas salon owner was jailed for violating executive orders shutting down businesses.

"Without the district attorney, the governor or the attorney general can't bring prosecution and can't enforce that order," Erben says, adding cities with Democratic DA's are likely to be supportive of mask and vaccine mandates. "You've got to see where you work, what state you are in... it depends on that and how long these temporary injunctions are issued for."

Until a DA receives a blanket order from the Supreme Court, they will only be able to sue entities violating the order that they actually know about, which Erben likened to a game of "Whack-A-Mole." Such a ruling may not come until next June, he says, adding that a definitive order from the court in the near future is unlikely.

In that instance, Erben says the Supreme Court would have precedent to rely on since it previously ruled in 1905 in Jacobson v. Massachusetts that jurisdictions can require vaccinations, even over objections, and authorized fines for people who did not get them. In Zucht v. King in 1922, the court also allowed state laws requiring children to be vaccinated before attending public schools. Subsequently in 2002, the federal district court declined to find exemptions for mandatory vaccination laws for "sincerely held religious beliefs."

"This is not a new debate," Erben says. "This is just because of the political polarization of the time and it's turned into one that's pretty contentious. This whole thing underscores how difficult this pandemic is from a public policy perspective."

Erben says that anything done to promote public health will get criticized by the right, while anything done to promote the opening of businesses will be criticized by the left. "It's a very difficult public policy conundrum for governors, mayor, counties judges and presidents."
Kent Nishimura/Los Angeles Times via Getty Imag

Some Texas politicians took to social media to celebrate while others condemned the Supreme Court's latest ruling on state Senate Bill 8, which prohibits abortion after six weeks of pregnancy and has been dubbed the nation's most restrictive abortion law. The country's highest court is allowing the bill to remain in effect, but ruled that abortion providers may sue the state over the ban.

The decision comes more than a month after the court listened to arguments over the law, which went into effect on Sept. 1 and makes no exceptions for pregnancies resulting from rape or incest. While the outcome is at least a partial victory for abortion providers, Texas GOP members claimed the decision as a victory for the new measure, which will remain enforceable and authorizes lawsuits against clinics, doctors and anyone who aids or abets an abortion.
Speeding up Highway 1 past rolling green hills and boats bobbing in the deep blue of Tomales Bay, you could almost miss the seafood shack on the side of the road. But when you see the blissed-out crowds slurping oysters on picnic tables, youll know youve found the right place.

The Marshall Store, a restaurant in Marshall (population 400), just north of Point Reyes National Seashore, is the platonic ideal of coastal Northern California dining. That windswept, rugged seafood spot on the water you dream of? Yep, its real. Its unfussy, the views are straight out of Big Little Lies, and the food is way, way better than it needs to be.

On a recent trip to the Marshall Store, my partner and I parked, took a left at the little weathered sea captain statue, walked past the yellow and green surfboard and through a gate to the sunny patio by the dock. Its tempting to order the entire menu. But when youre just two people, you have to make some tough decisions, so we went with two plates of oysters and a bowl of clam chowder and called it a day.

Minutes after settling into our table overlooking Tomales Bay, two silver platters arrived: the Rockefeller, a decadent combination of grilled oysters with garlic butter, parmesan and Toma cheese, spinach, and breadcrumbs served with grilled bread; and the smoked oysters, balanced atop crostini with Cowgirl Creamery Fromage Blanc cheese, chipotle aioli, chives and lemon. We slurped in reverent silence, chasing the briny bivalves with swigs of Anchor Steam beer.

The Marshall Store was already locally famous as a weekend trip from the Bay Area, but a few months ago, the whole world learned its name. In October, the little oyster oasis made it on the New York Times best 50 restaurants in America.

It was awesome, said Marshall Store owner Shannon Gregory. The photographer turned up, he said, Do you guys know what this is for? I said I had no idea. He said, It's for the best 50 places to eat in America for the New York Times. I was like, Youre kidding!

The national press brought in a lot of new faces, but after 15 years in business, the Marshall Store had already attracted a worldwide audience.

I've been in the Frankfurt Airport and seen people with Marshall Store hats on, said Gregory. ... We have some Europeans that come in, and as soon as they get off the plane they dont even go to their hotel. They just go straight to the Marshall Store.

Gregory, along with his father Tod Friend (who also owned the Tomales Bay Oyster Co.) and sister Heidi Gregory, first took over the Marshall Store from the previous owner in 2006, back when it was a general store that sold charcoal and jars of pasta sauce. Tragically, Friend, a beloved figure in the Marshall community, passed away in 2017 after a boat accident.

The two siblings took over their oyster farmer fathers legacy: Heidi now runs Tomales Bay Oyster Co., and Gregory the Marshall Store, which serves oysters exclusively from their familys oyster farm, just a few miles down the road.

Gregory was born in Marshall, but moved to Australia, where his mother is from, to attend boarding school. He worked in prestigious Sydney restaurants for many years, but eventually, his home state called him back.

My sister was living in California and I went to visit her, said Gregory. And then my dad was working for Hog Island [Oyster Co]  and I was like oh, this is kind of cool. So I didn't continue my flight back to Sydney.

He ended up working at the now defunct Cafe Rouge in Berkeley and the San Francisco Ferry Building location of Hog Island Oyster Co. Then, the previous owner of the Marshall Store, a historic building erected by a Croatian family of boat builders and fishermen, asked his family if they wanted to take over the lease. So they did.

It took a lot of time for it to get going, he recalled. In the beginning, we were doing in the wintertime $50 or $100 days. Wed sell a couple of packs of cigarettes and some chowder and thatd be it for the day.

But having worked at restaurants in Berkeley and San Francisco, he had a good idea of what customers wanted. What Gregory wanted: someplace welcoming and casual.

I've worked in fine dining. It's not really my thing, said Gregory. ... I mean, it's expensive to go and eat oysters  why do you want to go sit at some rustic restaurant on the bay and have dine-in service and have it be more expensive? I think people like the fact that it's casual. Anybody can come here. We're not just for the blue collar workers, were not just for the wealthier people. Were for everybody.

A plate of six oysters here will still set you back upwards of $20, but the vibe is approachable, with friendly counter service and picnic tables. Its a community here, and many of Gregorys staff are his friends kids. The Marshall Store loves its locals  theyre the ones who kept the restaurant alive during the pandemic.

But unlike some Bay Area institutions, its also out-of-towner-friendly. Our menu is always static, explained Gregory. Because we do have a lot of travelers, it's always the same. So when you come back three or four years later, you're still going to get the same thing, the same recipes, and most likely the same person cooking it.

If you make the trip to West Marin with a large enough group, Gregory recommends ordering one of everything, from the ceviche tostadas to the crab sandwiches they serve during crab season. And soon, customers will be able to bring Tomales Bay home with them, too: the Marshall Store is currently building its own fish market downstairs, which will sell local oysters, rock cod, salmon, crab and smoked fish.

There actually used to be a fish market back there in the 40s, said Gregory. So we're just sort of rejuvenating some of what it used to be.

Its a clever way to meet all the demand, particularly on weekends, which are always nuts, says Gregory. Even after 15 years, he still seems taken aback explaining his seafood shacks popularity.

Every year, it's slowly grown and grown and grown. And now, the New York Times. Can you believe it?
We're always interested in hearing about news in our community. Let us know what's going on!

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Digital Sense is well known among private sector enterprises and government agencies throughout Queensland for its full suite of cloud solutions. The companys products and services address everything from data sovereignty and data protection to the demand for low-latency, cloud-native applications. We spoke with Digital Senses Head of Sales and Commercial Jon Pannell to learn more about the companys offerings, the demands driving Australias enterprises to the cloud and what it means to be VMware Cloud Verified.

Our goal is to make it easy for customers to harness the power of the cloud to grow their businesses, says Pannell. Prioritizing simplicity in our product set and customer deployments is the most important element of our approach. We deliver a simple and proven integration with a customers existing VMware infrastructure for high-performance, high availability solutions. Whether the customer resides in our VMware-based private cloud, is integrated with public clouds from a hyper-scaler, or is part of a hybrid deployment, our focus is always on consistency in delivery.

Simple, elegant solutions are a hallmark of Digital Sense and have been the philosophy that has shaped the company since its inception in 2006.

From an architectural standpoint, the best technology solutions typically arent the most complicated or that cost the most, Pannell says. Customers want simple solutions that deliver real value and work flawlessly in complex environments and deployments. We offer tailored solution platforms that deliver this while overcoming common challenges related to resources, cost optimization, security, agility and speed to market.

Pannell says the pandemic exacerbated many of these challenges but also accelerated cloud adoption in the country. Its a trend he doesnt expect to slow anytime soon.

More of our customers need cloud platforms that support remote working, he says. This necessitates the management of multiple cloud solutions and hybrid deployments that address specific requirements of various workloads. New requirements for security, application delivery, storage and other cloud services come with this shift. Enabling remote, distributed workforces is where our ability to deliver efficiency through our solutions comes into play in a big way.

The VMware advantage

Pannell notes that working with VMware technologies provided customers with an additional level of comfort throughout the development and deployment process. Notably, Digital Senses private cloud is VMware Cloud Verified and delivered from the companys own data center, a high-performance facility in Kenmore, Brisbane, and across other local third-party data centers.

Our team is acutely aware of the importance of using technologies that we and our customers can trust, says Pannell. Holding VMware Cloud Verified status demonstrates our ability to deliver consistency to customers in multiple availability zones and regions. The peace of mind that customers gain from being backed by industry-leading infrastructure is invaluable. It delivers the confidence that our platform will handle a customers requirements as they evolve.

Its a formula that is winning business. Digital Sense recently used advanced VMware HCX technologies to complete a large customer onboarding initiative. The sizable migration was completed rapidly and without impacting users or application performance. The company also recently developed a holistic network security and automation platform based on VMware technologies for the digital transformation of a large government agency. The solution reduced operational costs, increased the agencys ability to be agile in its operations and maintains security controls at the strictest levels. The Digital Sense team also managed to complete the project early and under budget.

Learn more about Digital Sense and its partnership with VMware here.
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The Asian Foundation for Help and the Humanitarian and Saving Lives Trust were both found to have breached aspects of the Code of Fundraising Practice, according to investigations.

The Fundraising Regulator published four investigations yesterday . In one case a trustee forced their way into a shielding person's house to collect a cheque.

Another charity continued fundraising outside supermarkets during lockdown, and the volunteer had an argument with the member of the public.

In two cases, Operation Smile UK and the Wildheart Trust, the regulator concluded that no breach had happened.

Where breaches occurred, the charity has agreed to follow the regulators recommendations.

Asian Foundation for Help

According to the Fundraising Regulators summary, a complainant was unhappy that a trustee came to their home to collect a cheque from an elderly relative.

The elderly relative was a long-term supporter of the charity and they wanted to donate to it via cheque, the summary says. They called the charity to arrange collection of the cheque, however this request was not actioned immediately. Meanwhile, the complainant spoke to the charity to explain that their relative was suffering from poor health and they considered them to be vulnerable.

However, months later and during the pandemic when the individual was shielding, a trustee turned up at their house to collect the cheque.

There was a heated exchange between the trustee and the complainant. However, the trustee still entered the property to collect the cheque, the regulator said.

When the charity was approached it did not admit to wrongdoing and made disparaging remarks about the complainant, but did refund the donation.

The Fundraising Regulator said the charity had failed to take into account the needs of a vulnerable donor and showed a lack of empathy for the complainant and the elderly relative.

Asian Foundation for Help has agreed to follow the Fundraising Regulators recommendations and is introducing new guidelines about vulnerable donors.

A spokesperson for the charity, told Civil Society News: One small mistake is now tarnishing our charity, which is totally out of order. We have been operating since 1983 and we have done so much good work.

The Humanitarian and Saving Lives Trust

Someone complained the Humanitarian and Saving Lives Trust was fundraising during the Covid-19 pandemic.

A fundraiser was collecting donations outside a supermarket in February 2021 and, according to the Fundraising Regulators summary, the complainant approached the fundraiser twice, donating some loose change on both occasions.

However, the complainant accused the fundraiser of not saying which charity they were collecting for, and insisted on 5 or 10 notes because coins make the collection bucket heavy.

The Fundraising Regulator said that the complainant and the fundraiser recalled the incident differently.

The fundraiser recalled they had asked the complainant to leave, because they were preventing them from giving attention to other potential donors. The fundraiser apologised if the complainant found they were rude, it said.

The complainant disputed the response from the charity and raised concerns about the fact it was conducting public fundraising during the Covid-19 pandemic.

The Fundraising Regulator said it could not draw any conclusion about the dispute between the individuals, because we were unable to reconcile the two conflicting accounts we were presented with.

But because the national guidelines at the time were to cease fundraising and the charity could not show it had down a risk assessment, there was a breach.

The regulator recommended the charity learn from the complaint and provide better guidance to volunteer fundraisers.

The Humanitarian and Saving Lives Trust agreed to comply with the recommendations.

The Wildheart Trust

A member of the public complained about a fundraising appeal from the Wildheart Trust for suggesting that that some of the animals in its zoo had suffered cruel treatment in the circuses that had previously owned the animals.

They said the appeal could damage the reputation of circus families.

The regulator said that the charity was able to provide enough evidence to support its claims.

We found that the video set out a strong position on opposing the use of animals in circuses, but the charity did not criticise or insult any specific people or organisations. We decided that the charity had handled the complaint fairly and proportionately. We therefore found no breach of the code by the charity, the regulator said.

Operation Smile

A complainant was concerned about their name and address being used on fundraising material posted to them and suggested that Operation Smile had breached GDPR.

The charity apologised to the complainant, but said it used legitimate interest and had made a note to ensure it did not mail the complainant again.

We found that the charitys decision to use data from a third party was not a breach of the sections of the code relating to personal data, the regulator said.

When the complainant made their complaint, the charity responded and acted promptly.

Editor's note - 13 December

This article has been updated to include comment from Asian Foundation for Help.

Fundraising Live and the Charity Technology Conference return next year. Both conferences will take place in-person in London on Wednesday 2 March 2022, and the theme will be Strategies and tools for success in the new world. Find out more and book your place here. return next year. Both conferences will take place in-person in London on Wednesday 2 March 2022, and the theme will be Strategies and tools for success in the new world.
At the end of last month, Alden Global Capital, a notorious newspaper-owning hedge fund, sought to stake its claim on one of the last newspaper chains it hasnt yet touched: Lee Enterprises, which owns 90 publications across the country. Alden, which currently owns six percent of Lees stock, sent an unsolicited offer to purchase the newspaper chain for $24 per share. Later, it nominated three of its own candidates to Lees eight-person board of directors.

It was par for the course for Alden; in recent years, the hedge fund has taken over Tribune Publishing and MediaNews Group in a similar fashion, putting it in control of hundreds of newspapers across the country. Since May, when Tribunes sale was officially approved, those papers include storied and award-winning titles: the New York Daily News, the Denver Post, the Chicago Tribune, and many more. While the Tribune sale had its fair share of ups and downs, and journalists attempted to fight back, Alden ultimately prevailed.

Its unclear if this time will be any different. Still, so far, Lee Enterprises has put up a respectable fight. Last Friday, Lees board rejected all of Aldens nominees, noting in a news release, Aldens hasty and convoluted attempt to work around our simple and common procedure on the eve of the nomination deadline does not meet the clear requirements of Lees bylaws. Aldens failure is entirely of its own making. Alden is not entitled to invent its own process for its convenience.

On Wednesday, Harris Kupperman, Lees second-largest shareholder, wrote in a letter to fellow board members that Aldens acquisition offer is clearly insufficient and opportunistic, grossly undervaluing the company. In an interview with NPRs Midwest Newsroom, Kupperman elaborated. You need to protect the newsroom so you can have a product, he said. As a shareholder, I see this being a long-term investment. If you have a quality product, you have more subscriptions and you can hire more journalists.

Yesterday morning, the newspaper chains board unanimously rejected Aldens offer, in language that mirrored Kuppermans. Lees Board determined that Aldens proposal grossly undervalues Lee, the board wrote, and is not in the best interests of the Company and its shareholders.

Aldens proposal is also not in the best interest of American journalism. The hedge fund is notorious for buying newspapers then slashing jobs and consolidating operations in order to turn a quick profit. (In a recent article, NiemanLabs Josh Benton referred to Alden as a cost-cutting omnivore that makes every newsroom it touches worse, and King Midas in reverse.) They dont care one way or the other about journalism, Neil Chase, who used to be the top editor at an Alden paper, told me last year. Its all about the spreadsheets and the numbers.

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Below, more on Alden and the business of local news:

Tribunes unions put out a statement warning against what Alden ownership means for its newspapers communities, writing that its staff are down by an average of 20%. It continues: Every newsroom ha s lost reporters, editors, designers, photographers and other workers, leaving entire swaths of our already underserved communities intentionally ignored.  It concludes with a  demand that Lee put service to its communities ahead of a naked grab for fleeting profit marginsand to take the opportunity to protect the newspapers of Lee from destruction by Alden.

While ownership by Alden is a worst-case scenario for many newspaper employees, Lee Enterpriseswhich owns newspapers in metropolises across the country, from Buffalo, New York, to St. Louis, Missouri, to Casper, Wyominghasnt exactly been a beacon of hope either. Many of the newspapers that Lee now owns used to be owned by Warren Buffetts Berkshire Hathaway, which sold the papers to Lee for $140 million in 2018. Those papers, the Washington Post writes , saw major cuts following the Lee takeover. In October 2020, Poynter tallied fifty layoffs at Lee-owned papers during the pandemic, when many newspapers were cutting staff.

Also in October 2020, WVTFa Roanoke, Virginia-based NPR affiliate interviewed Ashley Spinks, who was then the sole full-time staff member at the Floyd Press , a Lee newspaper also in Virginia. The article noted that Lee had fired reporters, outsourced work, and furloughed staff. Days later, WVTF reported that Spinks had been fired: She says one reason management cited was that she gave this interview and that she made disparaging comments about Lee Enterprises.

Other notable stories:

After the Federal Trade Commission said it would increase its enforcement on certain news-industry practices, including procedures that made it difficult to cancel subscriptions. Nieman Labs Sarah Scire checked in on whether the announcement forced any papers into action. The result: not really.



The Wirecutter union says that the New York Times withheld their holiday pay in retaliation for their strike. Wirecutter, the Times s product-review vertical, went on strike from Thanksgiving through Cyber Mondaythe USs major holiday shopping days. The union has asked for a $300,000 increase in total to their units minimum salaries. (Or, as Study Hall put it , 0.029% of the $1 billion the Times recently reported it now has in cash.) According to the Wall Street Journal , the unions GoFundMe raised $42,000 during the strike.

Yesterday, the Committee to Protect Journalists released their 2021 prison census , which found that the number of imprisoned journalists has reached a record high: 293, up from 280 last year. China remains the worlds worst jailer of journalists for the third year in a row it wrote, with Myanmar coming in second, followed by Egypt, Vietnam, and Belarus. (For more on the press freedom situation in Belarus, read Charles McPhedrans report for CJR from October.)

This morning, a British court ruled that Julian Assange could be extradited to the United States, where hes been charged with violating the Espionage Act for his role in making US intelligence documents public. Assange is a controversial figure, but most people concerned with First Amendment rights have criticized the USs pursuit of spying charges against him.

On Thursday, the Senate Judiciary Committee advanced a bill that would make downloading files from PACER, an electronic court document database, free. PACER has long kept court filings prohibitively expensive, limiting access for many independent journalists and cash-strapped newsrooms. While this ruling does not apply to filings at the state or county level, it would nevertheless be an undeniable win for journalism and government transparency.

Has America ever needed a media watchdog more than now? Help us by joining CJR today

Savannah Jacobson is a contributor to CJR and a reporter and writer based in New York.
Two lawsuits seeking $100 million each have been filed against a Michigan school district, its superintendent and others after four students were fatally shot and others wounded at Oxford High School, a lawyer announced Thursday.

The lawsuits were filed in federal court in Detroit by Jeffrey and Brandi Franz on behalf of their daughters, Riley, a 17-year-old senior who was shot in the neck Nov. 30, and her sister Bella, a 14-year-old ninth grader who was next to her at the time, attorney Geoffrey Fieger said.

Theyre the first known civil suits filed in connection with the shooting. Named in the suits are the Oxford Community School District, Superintendent Tim Throne, Oxford High School principal Steven Wolf, the dean of students, two counselors, two teachers and a staff member.

The Associated Press sent an email Thursday seeking comment from the district.

Ten students and a teacher were shot at the school in Oxford Township, roughly 30 miles (50 kilometers) north of Detroit.

Ethan Crumbley, a 15-year-old sophomore at the school, was arrested at the school and has been charged as an adult with murder, terrorism and other crimes. His parents, James and Jennifer Crumbley, later were charged with involuntary manslaughter and arrested.

Personal-injury lawyers have expressed doubt that the school district could be successfully sued for letting Crumbley stay in school. Thats because Michigan law sets a high bar to wring liability out of public schools and other arms of government.

You have to show that the administration or faculty members were grossly negligent, meaning they had a reckless disregard for whether an injury was likely to take place, said attorney A. Vince Colella.

The gun used in the shooting was bought days before by James Crumbley and their son had full access to it, prosecutors said.

The morning before the shooting school officials met with Ethan Crumbley and his parents after the school after a teacher found a drawing of a gun, a bullet and a person who appeared to have been shot, along with messages stating My life is useless and The world is dead.

The Crumbleys flatly refused to take their son home, Throne has said.

The Franz family lives in Leonard, just northwest of Oxford. One of the lawsuits criticized school officials for not expelling, disciplining or searching Crumbley prior to the shooting which allowed Crumbley to return to his classroom and carry out his murderous rampage.

The lawsuit also said the school district knew or should have known that the policies, procedures, training supervision and discipline staff members named in the suit were inadequate for the tasks that each defendant was required to perform.

On Wednesday, a statement posted on the districts website by Throne said that after all the facts have been obtained and released through the course of the prosecution, he will recommend to the Oxford Board of Education that the district initiate a review of its entire system as other communities have done when facing similar experiences.

Our goal with all of this is to bring together all of the facts of what happened before, during and after this horrific incident, he wrote. We are committed to doing this in a way that allows our community to move forward and does not re-traumatize our community members, who are reeling and suffering from this horrible event.

The criminal cases against Ethan Crumbley and his parents are being overseen by the Oakland County prosecutors office, and Michigans attorney general said Tuesday her office will review events that occurred before the mass shooting, despite the districts rejection of her offer to be its third-party investigator.

The districts lawyer told the attorney generals office Monday it was fully cooperating with local law enforcement.

Associated Press reporter David Eggert in Lansing, Michigan, contributed to this story.

About the photo: Four roses are placed on a fence to honor Hana St. Juliana, 14; Madisyn Baldwin, 17; Tate Myre, 16 and Justin Shilling, 17, the four teens killed in last weeks shooting, outside Oxford High School in Oxford, Mich., on Tuesday, Dec. 7, 2021. (Jake May/The Flint Journal via AP)

Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Automobile insurance carriers in Florida may limit reimbursement to health providers in keeping with a fee schedule in a personal injury protection policy, the Florida Supreme Court decided in a decision posted today.

We agree with the Second District Court of Appeal that the PIP policy issued by State Farm was effective to authorize the use of the schedule of maximum charges under the relevant provisions of a 2013 state law, the court said in its opinion in MRI Associates of Tampa vs. State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance.

MRI Associates had filed suit against State Farm over 19 PIP claims. The imaging firm argued that the much-debated Florida PIP insurance law demands that insurers choose one of two reimbursement methodologies: a fact-based calculation of reasonable charges, or the schedule of maximum charges. State Farm used both methods in an unauthorized hybrid model, costing the imaging firm revenue, MRI Associates said.

The high courts per curiam opinion, which answered a question from the appeals court, disagreed.

We have never held that the reasonable charge method and the schedule of maximum charges are mutually exclusive methods for determining the reasonableness of reimbursements, the court wrote.

The auto policies at issue noted that State Farm would pay properly billed and documented reasonable charges for bodily injury. The policies also said those charges are defined by the statutory fee schedule of maximum charges, which takes into account usual and customary charges, Medicare pricing, and other factors.

The policies also cautioned that the insurer would in no event pay more than 80% of the no-fault insurance statutes schedule of maximum charges.

The Supreme Court noted that this is the third time in the last decade that it has considered a case in which a health care provider challenged an insurers use of the PIP statutes schedule of maximum charges. In the previous cases, the court held that the insurer must properly notify providers in order to take advantage of the fee schedules.

This may not be the last time the court reviews a PIP case. A move to repeal the Florida PIP insurance requirement passed the Legislature early this year but was vetoed by the governor. Legislative leaders have said the issue will probably not go far if raised again in the session that begins Jan. 11, but that it could be considered in 2023.
SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP)A father and son were arrested Wednesday on suspicion of starting a massive California wildfire that destroyed many homes and forced tens of thousands of people to flee Lake Tahoe communities earlier this year, authorities said.

David Scott Smith, 66, and his son, Travis Shane Smith, 32, are accused of reckless arson in a warrant issued before formal charges are filed, the El Dorado County District Attorneys office said.

Mark Reichel, the attorney for both men, said they were arrested Wednesday afternoon and that reckless arson means starting a blaze by accident but to such a degree that it was considered reckless.

Authorities allege they caused homes to burn and people to be seriously injured in the fire that began in August. The Caldor fire scorched more than 346 square miles (897 square kilometers) from east of Sacramento to the Nevada border, threatening ski resorts and other prominent recreational areas.

The fire destroyed more than 1,000 homes and other buildings while crossing a mostly remote forested area of seasonal cabins.

The fire crossed through three northern counties, destroyed much of the small community of Grizzly Flats and forced tens of thousands of people to evacuate the resort town of South Lake Tahoe before it was contained in October. Five people were injured.

It was one of two massive fires last summer that for the first time in modern history crossed the Sierra Nevada range.

El Dorado County District Attorney Vern Pierson provided few details about the arrest of the Smiths, citing the investigation.

Reichel, the mens lawyer, said: They are absolutely 100% innocent.

Reichel said he did not know details of the accusation, such as how authorities allege the fire was set.

He said Travis Smith is an electrician and was with his father near where the fire started. The son called 911 to report seeing flames, Reichel said.

The son made several 911 calls because the calls kept dropping in the rugged area, and both men also warned campers about the fire, Reichel said.

Neither one has ever been in trouble with the law in their life. Theyre very law-abiding people, he said.

The pair have a scheduled court appearance on Friday, Reichel said.

There has been no evidence submitted into a court subject to my cross-examination  that proves any of the prosecutions evidence yet. So I urge everyone to wait and hear what really happened before they form any opinions, Reichel added.

The district attorneys office said the case was developed with the U.S. Forest Service, Californias firefighting agency and the California Department of Justice, with help from the Sacramento County District Attorneys crime lab.

Associated Press Writer Robert Jablon contributed from Los Angeles.

About the photo: Seen in a long camera exposure, the Caldor Fire burns at Sierra-at-Tahoe ski resort on Monday, Aug. 30, 2021, in Eldorado National Forest, Calif. A father and son have been arrested on suspicion of starting a massive California wildfire that forced tens of thousands to flee the Lake Tahoe area earlier this year, officials said Wednesday, Dec. 8, 2021. The El Dorado County District Attorneys office said in a statement that David Scott Smith and his son, Travis Shane Smith, are accused of reckless arson in a warrant issued before formal charges are filed. (AP Photo/Noah Berger, File)

Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, December 9)  The national government will settle its multibillion-peso debt with the central bank weeks ahead of its supposed deadline, while requesting less liquidity support in 2022 with the countrys economic outlook having improved.

Finance Secretary Carlos Dominguez III has informed the Monetary Board that state authorities will repay the full amount of its outstanding 540-billion provisional advances to the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) this week, ahead of the January 12, 2022 maturity date, the agency said on Wednesday.

The extension of provisional advances ensures the government access to sufficient cash resources while its revenue collection efforts are hampered and the scale of debts needed and market unpredictability challenge the states borrowing program. It is a temporary arrangement between the national government and the BSP.

Dominguezs letter stated the government now seeks 300 billion in provisional advance in the second week of January 2022.

To recall, advances from the BSP were worth 300 billion in the form of a zero-interest repurchase agreement. Granted in March and fully repaid in September last year, these were eventually turned into 3-month loan worth 540 billion with zero interest.

The central bank has since granted the government three separate 540-billion loans: in October 2020, then in January and July this year.

The lower amount sought by the state hints to the market that we are on track with the unwinding of liquidity support on firmer evidence of return to economic strength, according to the DOF chief.

The extension of new 300-billion provisional advances will ensure sufficient resources for the government to safeguard this promising but still fragile recovery, further explained Dominguez.

The DOF likewise noted the requested funds will rather serve as a liquidity gap measure ensuring the government will be able to incur large spending ahead of anticipated revenue collections or regular borrowing proceeds.

The new borrowing will also have zero interest and mature in three months coupled with a three-month extension, as per the Treasurys recommendation.

"We have seen economic recovery already begin to take root as more businesses embark on a safe reopening with the successful rollout of the governments mass vaccination program," said the DOF chief.

With economic output expanding faster than expected at 7.1% in the third quarter, the National Economic and Development Authority projects growth returning to pre-pandemic level by next year.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, December 10) -- The country received a new shipment of Moderna shots on Friday morning.

According to state-run People's Television Network (PTV), 2,102,000 doses procured by the government and 846,000 by the private sector arrived in the country.

Pandemic task force adviser Ted Herbosa, who welcomed the new delivery, expressed hope that the arrival of more Moderna doses can help achieve the government's goal of administering seven million doses during the second round of the mass vaccination drive from Dec. 15 to 17. Aside from a primary dose, the Moderna vaccine can be given to kids aged 12 to 17 and used as a booster.

Government data as of Dec. 8 showed there are over 39 million fully vaccinated individuals in the country. The government only has a few more weeks to reach its adjusted target of completing the vaccination of 54 million Filipinos by the end of 2021.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, December 10) After almost two years, Ateneo de Manila University will soon open its doors for in-person classes.

In a statement on Friday, the Katipunan-based university announced it will gradually resume face-to-face learning starting January 2022.

The pilot run for onsite classes will be carried out in phases, beginning with the Loyola Schools and the Professional Schools, Ateneo said. Classes for graduating students will be prioritized, it added.

In its gradual reopening, the campus will also allow other academic activities such as research and teacher consultations, as well as counseling and psychological services.

Strict safety and health protocols are in place to protect the Ateneo community. All employees and guests entering our campuses (Loyola Heights, Rockwell, Pasig, and Salcedo) should be fully vaccinated, or undergo the appropriate COVID-19 testing required by government regulations, Ateneo said.

The university clarified that all plans are still subject to change, depending on the COVID-19 situation and new directives that may be issued by the national and local government.

Detailed guidelines will be released in the coming days, it added.

A separate announcement will be made for the Basic Education schools (senior high school, junior high school, and grade school) in due time, Ateneo said.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, December 10)  The Department of Health on Friday said 48.5% of all hospitals in the country reported no admissions of COVID-19 patients in the last five days.

Health Undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire said 598 out of the 1,232 health facilities in the country did not receive patients seeking COVID-19 treatment from Dec. 5 to 9.

Several hospitals have been taking to social media to share the good news over the past few days. Health workers now have more time to tend to non-COVID patients.

The country and majority of the regions are currently under minimal risk case classification. Metro Manila, the country's capital region, is the latest to downgrade from low to minimal risk as its average daily attack rate from Nov. 28 to Dec. 9 dropped to below one at 0.87 for every 100,000 people.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, December 10)  The government is targeting to release soon the promised meal and transportation allowance to over 400,000 health care workers, a Health official said on Friday.

Health Undersecretary Leopoldo Vega said the money will come from the contingency fund of the Office of the President.

"Kung [matapos] namin yung guidelines by next week, maibigay na po namin ito sa 426,000 health care workers na hindi pa naka-avail ng meal and transportation allowance," Vega said in a briefing.

[Translation: If we could finish the guidelines next week, we can already give the cash benefits of 426,000 health care workers who have yet to avail themselves of the meal and transportation allowance.]

The Department of Health earlier said it has yet to finish the distribution of allowances of medical workers as regional hospitals have failed to submit a complete list of recipients among their workforce.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, December 10) The government will not push back its plans to expand the conduct of limited face-to-face classes amid the threat of the Omicron variant, the Department of Education (DepEd) said.

In a media conference on Friday, Education Secretary Leonor Briones said they continue to hope that Omicron may not be as vicious as previous variants.

So tuloy pa rin tayo (well continue), Briones said.

So far, walang (there are no) infections and as you can see from report from regions, every precaution to protect our children and staff is being undertaken so that we can proceed with face to face, she explained.

One hundred schools started holding limited in-person classes for certain grade levels last Nov. 15 as part of the DepEds pilot study. The list of participating schools has since increased to almost 300.

The pilot will run until the end of December. Education officials are hoping to expand this by January.

The DepEd issued a memorandum directing all public and private schools to prepare for limited face-to-face classes.

This includes coordination with local government units to fast-track vaccination of teachers, and plan for orientation of parents and students.

The expanded phase shall already cover all grade levels from K-12, the memo reads.

The DepEd said no COVID-19 cases have so far been confirmed among schools holding limited face-to-face classes.

There have been absences in some schools, however, as some students are reported to have cough, colds, or fever.

Siguro malamig na kasi ngayon eh baka change of temperature or climate baka ito yung normally effect sa atin lalo sa mga kabataan, DepEd director Roger Masapol said.

[Translation: Maybe because its cold, maybe its the change of temperature or climate, so this may be the normal effect especially for the children.]
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, December 10)  Health Secretary Francisco Duque III on Friday urged medical workers to provide assistance as vaccinators for the government's second wave of mass immunization program next week.

"I appeal to our healthcare workers in coordination with their local government units, to please sign up and form part of the vaccination teams that are extremely important in realizing targets set during this three-day vaccination program," he told CNN Philippines' The Source.

The second round of the mass immunization program is scheduled for Dec. 15 to 17.

The government is hoping to administer 7 million coronavirus shots.

"We are in great anticipation that we will be able to reach our target as well," Duque added.

From Nov. 29 to Dec. 3the first national vaccination drive, Health Usec. Maria Rosario Vergeire said the government administered a total of 9,937,827 COVID-19 vaccine doses.

So far, 54 million Filipinos have already received at least one COVID-19 vaccine dose, Duque said on Thursday.

Government data as of Dec. 8 showed over 39 million people in the country have been fully vaccinated. The government only has a few more weeks to reach its adjusted target of completing the vaccination of 54 million Filipinos by the end of 2021.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, December 10)  Health Secretary Francisco Duque III is looking at the possibility of publishing the names of travelers who will not provide correct personal details in their health declaration forms upon arrival in the Philippines.

Speaking to CNN Philippines' The Source, Duque said he will consult with the Inter-Agency Task Force for the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases, the Department of Justice, and the Department of the Interior and Local Government on the legal implications of the proposal.

"There are legal implications in having their names printed or published para malaman ng kapitbahay, na 'ito pala yun hinahanap ka' (so that the neighbors would know and alert them), that could be helpful but it's not without possible legal consequences," Duque said.

"For now, we just continuously remind people to please, pwede lang po ilagay natin ng tamang kasagutan sa mga tanong sa inyong (let's put the correct answer to the questions in the) health declaration form," he added.

Duque said the government will have to make sure up to what extent personal information can be disclosed to the public, but he said he personally feels that this should be done under the health crisis.

"We will push it," he said. "I will see to what extent I can do that because I strongly feel that this is a weakness in the system and sometimes unintended consequences of laws that weaken the ability to do more effective contact tracing or backtracing."

Meanwhile, DOH spokesperson Undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire believes there is no need for now to expose the identities of erring travelers since all of them are eventually traced. She added an investigation is needed to find out the circumstances why the person gave incorrect information.

"Sa ngayon wala pa ho tayong nakikitang rason para ipagalam sa public ang kanilang pangalan because we still would want to preserve the rights of these individuals. Kailangan po idaan natin sa tamang proseso," she said in a media briefing.

[Translation: For now we don't see the reason why we should divulge their names to the public because we still would want to preserve the rights of these individuals. It needs to go through due process.]

Providing misinformation and non-cooperation of persons or entities "that should report and/or respond to notifiable diseases or health events of public concern" are prohibited Under Republic Act 11332 or the Mandatory Reporting of Notifiable Diseases Law. Violators may be fined up to 50,000 or jailed for up to six months.

Vergeire said the government has not yet imposed sanctions since the start of the pandemic, but the delinquents are given stern warnings.

The Department of Health has so far located six of the eight missing Filipinos who returned to the country from South Africa, where the potentially more transmissible Omicron COVID-19 variant was first reported.

The government initially struggled to contact most of the travelers who provided inaccurate contact details upon arrival in the country.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, December 10) The work continues for Philippine democracy, President Rodrigo Duterte said Friday as he vowed to implement more reforms for Filipinos for the remainder of his term.

"Philippine democracy is indeed [a] work in progress, but the Filipino is free. The Philippines is free," Duterte said during his intervention at the virtual Summit for Democracy organized by the United States.

"I step down in June 2022. The work of our imperfect democracy will certainly continue," he added.

Duterte noted that while the Philippines is considered the oldest democracy in Asia, its system of governance is "not perfect." He cited how corruption, poverty, and peace and order issues continue to be major challenges for the country.

"They weaken our institutions and deprive many Filipinos of democratic agencies," the chief executive said. "In the remaining months of my term, we will forge ahead, with reforms ensuring that no one is left behind."

The President tackled how he previously pushed for federalism, but did not get the support of Congress.

Duterte also vowed that his administration will ensure a peaceful and free elections in May next year.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, December 10)  The government is studying the possibility of administering COVID-19 booster shots at least three months after the second dose, Health Secretary Francisco Duque III said Friday.

During an interview with CNN Philippines' The Source, Duque floated this possible approach to further boost Filipinos' protection against the virus amid the looming threat of the new variant Omicron.

"We are looking at advancing the booster jabs, maybe three months after, if the response is truly much higher in terms of antibody levels," he said.

"We are looking into it  what would be the comparative advantage of giving earlier booster shots... What if we give it after three months of the second dose? Will that confer much higher level of protection?" Duque added.

Vaccine Experts Panel member Dr. Rontgene Solante noted there are studies on booster shots given within 3-4 months that had "good" results, but the "more compelling data now is the six months and above."

"But we will review the data  which specific vaccines can be administered less than six months or earlier na maganda ang antibody level kumpara sa six months (that have better antibody levels)  then we may adopt that," he said.

Amid the continuous supply of fresh vaccines, the government on Dec. 3 started providing booster shots to all fully vaccinated adults.

The administration of the additional doses was initially offered only to priority groups  health workers, senior citizens, and individuals with weakened immune systems.

Boosters are given at least six months following the second COVID-19 shot of any of the vaccines: Pfizer, Moderna, Sinovac, AstraZeneca, and Sputnik V.

Boosters are given at least six months following the second COVID-19 shot of any of the vaccines: Pfizer, Moderna, Sinovac, AstraZeneca, and Sputnik V.

Filipinos who received the single-shot Janssen vaccine, meanwhile, may get their additional doses three months after their shots.

Duque earlier said eligible recipients may choose a homologous booster, or the same vaccine brand as their two primary doses, or a heterologous or a different one.

CNN Philippines' Currie Cator contributed to this report.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, December 10)  The Inter-Agency Task Force for the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases (IATF) has approved the conduct of mock elections across the country on Dec. 29.

IATF spokesperson Karlo Nograles announced the approval of the Commission on Elections' (Comelec) request during a virtual briefing on Friday.

The Comelec said last month that the mock polls will be held in select precincts in Metro Manila, Davao Del Sur, Maguindanao, Isabela, Albay, Negros Oriental, and Leyte to observe if health protocols can be implemented and vote counting machines will function properly.

The poll body said it hopes to see up to a hundred voters show up in the trial.

About 10 to 15 voters may cast their ballots at a time except in classrooms and voting areas with bigger space to allow for physical distancing.

More than 65 million Filipinos are eligible to vote in the national elections on May 9, 2022.

CNN Philippines correspondent Melissa Lopez contributed to this report.
San Andres, Manila City (CNN Philippines, December 10)  Manila Mayor and presidential aspirant Isko Moreno will not stop his so-called "listening tours" even after the Commission on Elections (Comelec) called for a limit to such gatherings in light of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Moreno's recent visits to Malabon and Navotas drew huge crowds - with many seen ignoring social distancing, while some were not wearing their masks properly.

The presidential hopeful himself would also take his mask off as he spoke to the audience at a distance. But he did urge supporters to wear masks and get vaccinated.

"It would be better for our people to have this kind of activity kasi mas maririnig nila yung intensyon ng mga kandidato at mas maririnig ng kandidato yung hinaing ng tao, (as they will better hear the candidates' intentions and candidates can better hear their concerns,)" Moreno said in Malabon yesterday.

Comelec earlier said it will prohibit activities that require candidates to move closer to their supporters. These include but are not limited to crowding around the candidate, physical contact like handshakes, hugs or kisses, taking selfies, "and other similar activities that require close proximity between the candidate and their companions in public."

However, Moreno's camp said "the rules will only apply during the official campaign period that begins on Feb. 8 for national candidates, and on March 25 for local candidates."

"I will touch everyone. Hindi naman ako takot (I am not afraid), because at the end of the day, these are the same people that we are going to govern. Bakit ka mandidiri sa kanila (Why would I avoid them)?" Moreno said.

Also In Malabon, Moreno denied spending over 305 million on broadcast and print ads - contrary to a report published by the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism, which cited Nielsen's study on the ad spending of various aspirants. "Study nila yun, hindi ko alam kung saan nanggaling (That's their study. I don't know where that figure came from)," he said.

He also cautioned supporters against unnamed aspirants offering people cash to join rallies and motorcades. In Manila, the mayor claimed people were paid 300-500 to join ralies and 1,500 to join motorcades.

Moreno's camp earlier suspended their own motorcades in light of the anticipated traffic jams due to the Christmas holiday rush.

Meanwhile, Moreno said he will also waive his rights under the Bank Secrecy Law. "Oo naman, wala naman tayong tinatago. (Yes, we're not hiding anything.)" Moreno's rival and Partido Reporma standard bearer Panfilo Lacson earlier said he will do the same as his first official act if elected President.

The 47-year-old mayor also said help is welcome and appreciated in Manila - regardless if it came from political allies or rivals. "Thank you very much kung tutulungan nila yung mga kababayan ko sa Maynila. Eh kasi, kailangang kailangan ng tulong ng taong nasunugan. Kaya kung sino man ang tutulong like in the case of President Duterte or Senator Bong Go, hindi lang welcome na welcome. Maraming maraming salamat sa pagtulong ninyo sa mga kababayan ko sa lungsod ng Maynila," he said.

[Translation: Thank you very much if they decided to help my fellow residents of Manila. People need help, especially those who were affected by the fire. If anyone wants to help - like in the case of President Duterte or Senator Bong Go, it's not just welcome - we're truly, truly grateful for your help for my fellow Manila citizens.]

Go held an event blocks away from Moreno's own. The senator brought aid to 195 families who lost their homes to a fire that broke out along Onyx Street in Barangay 775.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, December 10)  The governments One Hospital Command Center  which facilitates COVID-19 patient referral  has seen a huge decline in the number of calls it has been receiving lately, the treatment czar said Friday.

Health Undersecretary Leopoldo Vega said from 485 to 500 daily calls recorded on the first and second week of November, the average went down to 76 to 86 in December.

"Itong last week of November and December, nakikita po natin bumabagsak na talaga iyong calls," Vega said in a government briefing.

[Translation: On the last week of November and in December, we really saw a drop in the number of calls.]

Vega said aside from assisting coronavirus-infected individuals who need help in finding a hospital or an isolation facility, the command center also facilitated the transfer of non-COVID-19 patients to hospitals and answered questions on where to get financial assistance for medical treatments.

"Nagkakaiba na po iyong mga tawag ngayon," he noted.

[Translation: We are now getting calls from people who have different requests.]
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, December 10)  The Philippine government has included Portugal in its "red list" countries, or those considered as high-risk for COVID-19.

Acting presidential spokesperson Karlo Nograles announced Friday that the Inter-Agency Task Force has approved the directive, which is set to take effect on Dec. 12 at 12:01 a.m.

Fully vaccinated passengers who have been to Portugal 14 days prior to arrival should undergo facility-based quarantine and take an RT-PCR test on the 7th day. They may be discharged upon the release of negative test results, but they must observe home quarantine until the 14th day.

Unvaccinated and partially vaccinated travelers, and those whose vaccination status cannot be confirmed, shall undergo the mandatory 10-day facility-based quarantine and take the RT-PCR test on the 7th day. The two-week quarantine must be completed at home after discharge.

All inbound passengers, regardless of vaccination status, are also required to present a negative RT-PCR test result taken within 72 hours before their departure from Portugal.

Minors shall comply with the same testing and quarantine protocols as their parents. Children below 3 years old need not show negative COVID-19 test results, except if they exhibit symptoms.

Meanwhile, effective Dec. 15, only returning Filipinos will be allowed to enter the country, whether they were onboard government or non-government-initiated repatriated flights and Bayanihan flights.

Nograles noted passengers who only transited Portugal and were not cleared by respective immigration authorities for entry into the European country are not included.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, December 9)  Experts did not detect the Omicron variant in the latest genome sequencing run involving 48 samples, the Department of Health (DOH) announced Thursday.

The tested specimens belonged to 12 returning overseas Filipinos and 36 local cases from areas with high-risk average daily attack rates and clusters of infection, according to DOH.

The DOH said in a statement that of the 48 samples sequenced on Wednesday, 38 or around 79% were found to have the Delta variant, while "the rest had non-VOC (variant of concern) lineages or had no lineages detected."

This brings the total Delta variant cases detected in the country to 7,886.

Of the additional 38 Delta cases, 31 are local cases and seven are returning Filipinos. Two of the returning Filipinos had a history of travel to Turkey, the DOH said. Others have been to Jordan, Mexico, Netherlands, Panama, and Peru, DOH added.

The department said six of the 31 local Delta cases had "indicated addresses" in Cagayan Valley, while five were from the Cordillera Administrative Region, three each from Mimaropa, Bicol, Western Visayas, Soccsksargen, and Metro Manila, two each from Central Luzon and Calabarzon, and one from the Davao Region.

One local patient is currently ill, while 27 local cases and the seven returning Filipinos have been tagged as recovered, DOH said. The health status of three other local cases were still being verified, it added.

Meanwhile, the samples of two travelers -- one from South Africa and another from Burkina Faso -- are at the Philippine Genome Center for sequencing and the specimen of the passenger from Egypt is set to be sent to the PGC, DOH said.
Aurora's City Council on Monday night approved a consent decree between the city and the attorney general's office for systemic changes to the police and fire department's policies and training. The vote came a few months after a report found patterns of bias, excessive force and failures to document police stops in the police's ranks.
Emergency Shelters

The following list of shelters is available on the city's website.

Salvation Army Harbor House

Location: 602 N. Ann St.

Contact: 573.442.1984

Hours: Open 24 hours a day, every day, including holidays

Room at the Inn (winter only)

Location: Shelter Locations

Contact: roomattheinncomo@gmail.com

Hours: 7 p.m. - 7 a.m., overnights only

Rainbow House (for children/youth)

Location: 1611 Towne Dr.

Contact: 573.474.6600

True North (for domestic violence)

Location

Contact: 573.875.1370

Welcome Home (for veterans)

Location: 2120 Business Loop 70 E

Contact: 573.443.8001

New Life Evangelistic Center (for men)
A study recently caught my eye that dramatizes the extent to which the changing workplace is reshaping company culturesfor better and for worse. It indicates that fast-growing organizations are embracing the new organizational structures wrought by COVID-19 and will be better equipped to weather both this storm and others that arrive in the future.

The global survey of 7,600 professionals conducted by VMware found that the use of digital collaboration tools has given rise to tribes, or groups of employees who regularly connect and interact based on shared interests. Most tribes are defined by work function, but nearly half of respondents said shared interests and frequency of collaboration are also defining factors, far more than geographical proximity.

The global office

In other words, the office has gone global. Organizations now have the means to create bonds around mentoring, community support, peer-to-peer education, and shared values that they never before considered. Its a transformative idea that will propel forward those companies that take advantage of it.

The study also found that, paradoxically, an overwhelming majority of people at high-growth firms said collaboration and emotional support have improved in the remote work environment. In fact, it appears that distributed work has been good for morale and productivity overall; two-thirds of respondents said collaboration in the organization has improved, and just over 60% said they feel more valued by colleagues than before lockdowns.

At high-growth companies, a remarkable 88% said their personal connections with colleagues have improved, a figure that researchers noted was up significantly from a year ago. And 80% of all respondents agreed that allowing employees to work remotely helps their organization get more out of diverse talent pools with three-quarters saying its also created an environment thats more tolerant of diverse viewpoints.

Nearly one-third of high-growth organizations have even gone so far as to create the position of chief remote officer. That indicates that the leaders of those companies are thinking about how to turn the current lemons theyve been handed into long-term lemonade.

Nowhere to hide

The study also has a lesson for remote employees: Hiding in your home office is a bad strategy. Among people who have been promoted since remote work began, a significantly higher percentage said they communicate regularly with their managers via chat, text message, and video. More than four in five of those recently promoted people also said they turn on their camera during meetings most of the time, compared to 55% of those who havent been promoted. And by a two-to-one margin, people who regularly turn on their cameras say their personal connection with colleagues has improved.

Theres obviously a connection when you see someone on camera and this study validated that, said Teresa Chen, Director of Solutions Marketing at VMware.

But old biases die hard. The study also found that a remarkable 70% of organizations are monitoring employee productivity using tactics such as email monitoring, video surveillance, attention tracking via webcams, and keylogger software. People appear to be largely unaware of this oversight as only about half as many employees as human resource leaders said they believe their organization is monitoring them. Not surprisingly, companies that are using device monitoring have also seen significantly higher turnover.

The fact that theres a correlation between monitoring and turnover shows that organizations havent been as transparent as they want to be, Chen said. Transparency is key to productivity in the hybrid workplace.

Id like to think that the organizations that monitor employees online activities are doing so to be sure they dont work too hard because that turns out to be a bigger problem than people sloughing off. Researchers didnt ask, but I dont think they had to.

Make lemonade

While Im reluctant to take any single research study at face value, the size and scope of the VMware survey is impressive. So is the message: Business leaders who hunker down and hope everything will get back to normal once this crisis recedes are failing their people, their stakeholders, and their customers. A virus has given us a once-in-a-generation opportunity to rethink the workplace, and business leaders who see that as a gift are fortifying their companies for the future.

As I noted previously, I once worked for a startup that was all in on workplace flexibility. There were no set hours, no office-hour requirements, and no vacation quotas. I hired more than 100 people during my six years there and fired exactly one for abusing the privileges. I learned that if you hire smart, motivated people and show you trust them to do their best, theyll amaze you with their ability to route around adversity.

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WASHINGTON (AP)  The top U.S. commander for the Middle East said Thursday that the United States will keep the current 2,500 troops in Iraq for the foreseeable future, and he warned that he expects increasing attacks on U.S. and Iraqi personnel by Iranian-backed militias determined to get American forces out.

Marine Gen. Frank McKenzie said in an interview with The Associated Press at the Pentagon that despite the shift by U.S. forces to a non-combat role in Iraq, they will still provide air support and other military aid for Iraqs fight against the Islamic State.

Noting that Iranian-backed militias want all Western forces out of Iraq, he said an ongoing uptick in violence may continue through December.

They actually want all U.S. forces to leave, and all U.S. forces are not going to leave, he said, adding that as a result, that may provoke a response as we get later into the end of the month.

The Iraqi government earlier Thursday announced the conclusion of talks on ending the U.S. combat mission against IS. U.S. forces have been largely in an advisory role for some time, so the announced transition changes little. The announcement reflects a July decision by the Biden administration to end the U.S. combat mission in Iraq by Dec. 31.

Weve drawn down from bases we didnt need, weve made it harder to get at us. But the Iraqis still want us to be there. They still want the presence, they still want the engagement, said McKenzie. So as long as they want it, and we can mutually agree thats the case  were going to be there.

He said he believes Islamic State militants will continue to be a threat in Iraq and that the group will keep recreating itself, perhaps under a different name. The key, he said, will be to ensure that IS is not able to coalesce with other elements around the globe and become increasingly strong and dangerous.

America invaded Iraq in 2003, and at the peak point had more than 170,000 troops battling insurgents in the country and later working to train and advise Iraqi forces. All U.S. forces were withdrawn at the end of 2011, but just three years later, American troops were back to help Iraq beat back the Islamic State group, which had swept across the border from Syria to gain control of a large swath of the country.

The U.S. presence in Iraq has long been a flash point for Tehran, but tensions spiked after a January 2020 U.S. drone strike near the Baghdad airport killed a top Iranian general. In retaliation, Iran launched a barrage of missiles at al-Asad airbase, where U.S. troops were stationed. More than 100 service members suffered traumatic brain injuries in the blasts.

More recently, Iranian proxies are believed responsible for an assassination attempt last month on Iraqs Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi. And officials have said they believe Iran was behind the October drone attack at the military outpost in southern Syria where American troops are based. No U.S. personnel were killed or injured in the attack.

I think an attack to kill the prime minister is a pretty significant event, McKenzie said. I think thats a signpost of the desperation that theyre under right now. Iranian officials have said Tehran and its allies had nothing to do with last months drone attack that lightly injured the Iraqi prime minister.

McKenzie, who has headed U.S. Central Command for nearly three years and traveled extensively throughout the region, painted a picture that reflected the recent upheaval in Afghanistan, where U.S. troops departed at the end of August.

On Afghanistan, McKenzie said the al-Qaida extremist group has grown slightly since U.S. forces left and that the ruling Taliban leaders are divided about their 2020 pledge to break ties with the group. He said the departure of the U.S military and intelligence assets from the country has made it very hard, not impossible to ensure that neither al-Qaida nor the Islamic State groups Afghanistan affiliate can pose a threat to the United States.

Like the Talibans long campaign to get Americans out of Afghanistan, Iran and its proxies have battled to get the U.S. out of Iraq and the broader Middle East.

Iran still pursues a vision of ejecting us, he said. And they see the principal battleground for that as being in Iraq. And I believe they are under the view that they can increase friction in Iraq to where we will leave.

Iran, he said, believes that campaign wont affect the nuclear negotiations that were long stalled but are now restarting. But, he said, I think its a dangerous position for the Iranians to maintain, because I think theyre not going to be able to decouple those two things.

McKenzie said that as NATO begins to expand its presence in Iraq as planned, the U.S. will refine its force there. And the total U.S. force presence will depend on future agreements with Iraqs government.

The U.S. troops in Syria, currently numbering about 900, will continue to advise and assist Syrian rebel forces in the fight against IS, McKenzie said. He said its not clear how much longer that will be necessary but said, I think we are measurably closer than we were a couple of years ago. I still think we have a ways to go.

More broadly, McKenzie noted that the U.S. troop presence across the Middle East has significantly dropped since last year, when it peaked amid tensions with Iran, at as much as 80,000. The U.S. has identified China and Russia as the top national security threats, labeling China as Americas pacing challenge, and has looked to focus more effort and assets in the Pacific.

In its recent review of the positioning of U.S. forces around the world, the Pentagon said little about removing or repositioning troops in the Middle East. McKenzie and other top military leaders have long worried that the U.S. military is concentrated in too few locations in the Middle East and must disperse more to increase security.

We think it is important to work with our partners in the region to present a more complex targeting problem to Iran, he said, adding that U.S. will look at other bases and opportunities to move troops around to achieve that goal.

McKenzie said he is particularly concerned by Irans development of ballistic and cruise missiles as well as armed drones.

And so those things are very concerning to me because they continue to develop them, he said. And they show no signs of abating in their research in this field, and their fielding of new and increasingly lethal and capable weapons.
One day after the COVID positivity rate soared past 8 percent, Connecticut hospitalizations jumped by 50 patients on Wednesday in one of the states largest single-day increases since the height of the pandemic, data shows.

While the daily positivity rate dipped to 4.98 percent on Wednesday with 789 new cases found among 15,841 tests, statewide hospitalizations increased to 575.

Even with the recent surge, Gov. Ned Lamont was confident Wednesday that hospital capacity was still in good shape  for now.

Theres no capacity issue and no need to throttle back on electives, which as you remember last time around, we had to do to make sure we had capacity for all the COVID-related (patients). But, were watching it closely, Lamont said.

The state data shows the seven-day positivity rate still remains about 6 percent, which is double what it was before Thanksgiving.

The rise in Connecticut, attributed to the delta variant, comes amid the threat of omicron, a new strain first found last month in South Africa, that is being closely monitored to determine if its 34 mutations on its spike gene make it more contagious or able to better evade immunity.

Officials said Tuesday that two cases of omicron had been confirmed among Connecticut residents  a person in their 20s in Fairfield County and an individual in their 60s in Hartford County.

Greenwich Hospital said Wednesday one of its testing facilities detected two cases of omicron on Tuesday. The cases involved a Fairfield County resident and one from Westchester County, a hospital spokesperson said. Both people were experiencing mild symptoms and did not need to be hospitalized, the spokesperson said.

Only a small sampling of cases statewide are tested to determine the type of variant, leading health officials to believe there are many more omicron infections in Connecticut that have not been detected.

Doctors from all of Connecticuts major hospitals and health networks said Wednesday that the most severe hospitalizations continue to be mostly unvaccinated patients.

This is definitely still an unvaccinated issue, said Dr. Ulysses Wu, chief epidemiologist for Hartford HealthCare. He said he noticed recently that the number of vaccinated people in the hospitals had been dropping.

Dr. Asha Shah, director of infectious disease of Stamford Health, said at Stamford Hospital, 100 percent of the individuals that are requiring critical care are unvaccinated.

But with numbers on the rise, all hospitals are keeping an eye on the trends in order to best respond if theres a substantial surge, like last year when hospitalizations reached 1,269 on Dec. 14, 2020.

We evaluate the bed capacity of our hospitals every day. Our communities can rest assured knowing we are fully prepared for potential surge scenarios, including leveraging the resources of our seven-hospital health system for continued access to medical care, said Dr. Christopher Lehrach, chief physician executive at Nuvance Health, which operates hospitals across western Connecticut.

Few hospitals have made any substantive changes to operations to address the recent bump in COVID patients, like during the peak of the pandemic when certain elective procedures were suspended and staff was shifted toward COVID-19 patient care.

But the recent rise in COVID-19 infections and hospitalizations comes at a time of year when demands are already high on hospitals.

We are really in a position wheres theres really extraordinary demand on really all of our hospitals. Some of it is from COVID, some of it is from other respiratory viruses. A lot of demand for elective surgeries, said Dr. Rick Martinello, medical director for infection prevention at Yale New Haven Health.

Typically in the winter time, we have increased demands on hospital services due to respiratory viruses, now we have COVID atop those demands, he added. Thats further stressing our resources.

Connecticut health experts also said the severity of the COVID illnesses and the length of time patients are staying in the hospital has not changed much since last year, in part because many are not vaccinated.

People are still being put on ventilators, Wu said. Thats definitely still happening, people are staying in the hospital for extended periods.

While hospitalizations continue to rise, Lamont said he saw the decline of the daily positivity rate on Wednesday as a bit of a relief after it surged past 8 percent on Tuesday.

I mean that was a shocker, 8.3 (percent). But we know were creeping up and we also know we have the tools to stop it, said Lamont, who has been repeatedly pushing residents to get COVID-19 vaccine boosters in recent weeks.

While little is known about the omicron variant, Pfizer-BioNTech said laboratory data showed that three doses of its vaccine neutralized the strain, but two doses appeared less effective at stopping it.

With this news, experts echoed the calls for people to get booster doses as soon as possible.

I think the bottom line, if somebody has not been boosted, they should go out today and get a booster shot.  And if they have not been vaccinated, it is the single most important thing they can do, Martinello said.

Staff writer John Moritz contributed to this story.
NEW LONDON  A former Coast Guard Academy cadet, who was dismissed weeks before he was due to graduate after revealing he and his fiancee at the time had a child, is suing over an academy policy banning cadets from being parents.

Isaak Olson, in a lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Hartford Wednesday, claims the parenthood ban is unconstitutional. Olson is seeking to end the ban and to be granted his bachelors degree in mechanical engineering and commission, which he did not receive because he was dismissed from the Connecticut academy.

The Academys blanket ban on parents infringes on all cadets constitutional right to parenthood and is based on outdated and harmful stereotypes about gender, the suit states.

David Santos, a spokesman for the academy, said by email Thursday that the Coast Guard does not comment on pending legal matters.

The defendants are Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, Coast Guard Commandant Adm. Karl L. Schultz and Coast Guard Academy Superintendent Rear Adm. William G. Kelly.

The Veterans Legal Services Clinic at Yale Law School, the American Civil Liberties Union Womens Rights Project, and the ACLU of Connecticut filed the federal lawsuit on behalf of Olson.

Olson attended the academy from June 2010 until June 2014. He learned in April 2013, at the end of his third year, that his girlfriend, now wife, was 19 weeks pregnant. He did not inform academy officials of the pregnancy, the lawsuit stated. The child was born in August 2013.

Olson knew that he could be dismissed from the academy for becoming a parent due to its regulations, which state that a cadet may not have any maternal or paternal obligation or responsibility at the time of appointment or while enrolled as a cadet.

Pregnancy past fourteen (14) weeks will be considered an obligation and will be applicable to both prospective parents, the rule states. A cadet who incurs a maternal or paternal obligation may resign, be disenrolled, or may apply for a hardship resignation to return upon resolution of parental responsibilities.

The Coast Guard is not unique in its policy, which also is in place at other military service academies.

Olson knew if he resigned the Coast Guard had the legal right to recoup the cost of his education, estimated to be as much as $500,000, and was concerned that he would have to surrender his parental rights to be eligible for readmission if he chose to apply for a hardship resignation, according to the lawsuit.

He hoped the sparse guidance provided under the regulation and the use of the permissive phrasing  may resign and may apply  meant the academy was encouraging cadets to exercise caution, rather than imposing a blanket ban on parenthood, the lawsuit stated. He also noted another academy regulation that cadets are not required to self-incriminate.

Olson kept the pregnancy and the child a secret, which caused him significant stress and anguish, the lawsuit stated. In March 2014, he had to complete a screening application for his assignment post-graduation, which, among other things, required him to disclose whether he had dependents, the lawsuit stated.

This was the first time since the birth of his child that the Coast Guard had asked Mr. Olson if he was a parent, the lawsuit stated. He promptly disclosed that he was.

Olson and his girlfriend then took steps to legally relieve him of his parental rights, hiring a lawyer to file a custody and visitation agreement in a California family court, stipulating that Olsons girlfriend would have sole legal and physical custody of their child, the lawsuit stated.

The court granted the request on April 24, 2014  10 days after the academys superintendent informed Olson he would be dismissed, the lawsuit stated. That decision became final in June 2014.

Olson is filing the lawsuit now  more than six years later  after going through a lengthy administrative process seeking to reverse the decision and correct his military record, his lawyers said.

Mr. Olson contested the Academys decision for a number of reasons, including that the Academy rules against parenthood are arbitrary, based on invidious social discrimination rather than the services needs, and deprived him of substantive due process, the lawsuit stated.

The only way for Olson to continue his service in the Coast Guard, and avoid paying back the cost of his education, was to enlist at a much lower rank, which he did on the same day his dismissal became effective.

But his lawyers argue the harm done by his dismissal persist because he makes far less money as an enlisted member of the Coast Guard than he would have if he was a commissioned officer. At the time of the filing, Olson and his family receive approximately $3,000 less per month than they would receive if he was an officer, the lawsuit stated.

Without a college degree, Olsons job prospects outside the Coast Guard are significantly limited, the suit argued.

julia.bergman@hearstmediact.com
SANTA FE, N.M. (AP)  A New Mexico state senator said Thursday that he has tested positive for COVID-19 and will quarantine at home, with a special legislative session underway on political redistricting.

Democratic Sen. Bobby Gonzales of Taos told The Associated Press that he tested positive for the coronavirus Wednesday through a rapid test. He informed Senate leadership out of concern for anyone who might also have been exposed through close contact.

Gonzales said he was scheduled on Thursday to undergo another coronavirus test at a hospital in Taos. He is fully vaccinated, including a recent booster shot, and was experiencing some mild nasal discomfort.

Gonzales said he also was tested on Saturday with a negative result before meeting that day with Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham. He underwent another test Wednesday as required by the governor's office in anticipation of another meeting with Lujan Grisham that did not occur.

In response to Gonzales situation, contact tracing was underway at the state Capitol. A Senate floor session was canceled for unspecified reasons.

A member of the governor's staff is quarantining out of an abundance of caution after interacting with Gonzales on Wednesday, Lujan Grisham spokeswoman Nora Sackett Meyers said in an email. She said a coronavirus PCR test of the governor came back negative on Thursday.

The governor is tested regularly and has never returned a positive test, Meyers said. After the senators positive rapid test, the governors scheduled meeting with legislative leadership this morning was conducted remotely ... out of an abundance of caution.

Meyers said the legislative session presents a heightened COVID-19 risk and that those meeting in-person with the governor are being asked to take a rapid test before. She did not address whether there are health concerns related to Saturdays meeting between Gonzales and the governor.

Gonzales said a prolonged quarantine would likely exclude him from participation in Senate decisions, under rules that restrict online participation.

Gonzales said he was open to sharing his medical information to help others make informed decisions.

I have nothing to hide, Gonzales said. The more people are aware of it, fine. That's the world we are in today.

Legislative leaders are requiring proof of vaccination for the public to gain entrance to the Capitol during the current legislative session. Masks are required indoors with few exceptions.

News about the positive test prompted a Navajo Nation delegation to cut short its stay in Santa Fe.

We're very concerned, said Leonard Gorman, executive director of the Navajo Nation Civil Rights Commission. We prefer to protect our families and not be in this situation. ... I think, for the Navajo Nation, we will be returning home this evening.

New Mexico legislators are not required to be vaccinated for COVID-19, while immunizations are required under a state public health order for employees of the governors office  located on the top floor of the state Capitol.

Lujan Grisham has been vaccinated for COVID-19, including a booster shot.
Santas are set to descend on New York City on Dec. 11 for the SantaCon bar crawl for the first time since 2019. Ahead of the merrymakers arrival in the Big Apple for the day-long event, the Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA) announced an alcohol ban on Metro-North and Long Island Railroad trains for the event.

The ban, which also applies to MTA station platforms, is set to go into effect at 4 a.m. on Dec. 11 and remain in place through noon on Dec. 12. MTA Police will station extra officers at Penn Station and Grand Central Station to enforce the ban and confiscate any alcoholic beverages, according to a news release.
WASHINGTON (AP)  The head of Instagram on Wednesday met with deep skepticism on Capitol Hill over new measures the social media platform is adopting to protect young users.

Adam Mosseri appeared before a Senate panel and faced off with lawmakers angry over revelations of how the photo-sharing platform can harm some young users. Senators are also demanding the company commit to making changes and increase its transparancy.

Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., who heads the Senate Commerce subcommittee on consumer protection, dismissed as a public relations tactic some safety measures announced by the popular photo-sharing platform.

I believe that the time for self-policing and self-regulation is over, Blumenthal said. Self-policing depends on trust. Trust is over.

Under sharp questioning by senators of both parties, Mosseri defended the companys conduct and the efficacy of its new safety measures. He challenged the assertion that Instagram has been shown by research to be addictive for young people. Instagram, which along with Facebook is part of Meta Platforms Inc., has an estimated 1 billion users of all ages.

On Tuesday, Instagram introduced a previously announced feature that urges teenagers to take breaks from the platform. The company also announced other tools, including parental controls due to come out early next year, that it says are aimed at protecting young users from harmful content.

Senators of both parties were united in condemnation of the social network giant and Instagram, the photo-sharing juggernaut valued at some $100 billion that Facebook acquired for $1 billion in 2012.

The hearing grew more confrontational and emotionally charged as it went on.

Sir, I have to tell you, you did sound callous, Sen. Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee, the panels senior Republican, told Mosseri near the end of the hearing.

Senators repeatedly tried to win commitments from Mosseri for Instagram to provide full results of its internal research and its computer formulas for ranking content to independent monitors and Congress. They also tried to enlist his support for legislation that would curb the ways in which Big Tech deploys social media geared toward young people.

Mosseri responded mostly with general endorsements of openness and accountability, insisting that Instagram is an industry leader in transparency.

The issue is becoming increasingly urgent. An alarming advisory issued Tuesday by U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy warned about a mental health crisis among children and young adults that has been worsened by the coronavirus pandemic. He said tech companies must design social media platforms that strengthen, rather than harm, young peoples mental health.

Meta, which is based in Menlo Park, California, has been roiled by public and political outrage over the disclosures by former Facebook employee Frances Haugen. She has made the case before lawmakers in the U.S., Britain and Europe that that the company's systems amplify online hate and extremism and that the company elevates profits over the safety of users.

Haugen, a data scientist who had worked in Facebooks civic integrity unit, buttressed her assertions with a trove of internal company documents she secretly copied and provided to federal securities regulators and Congress.

The Senate panel has examined Facebooks use of information from its own researchers that could indicate potential harm for some of its young users, especially girls, while it publicly downplayed the negative impacts. For some Instagram-devoted teens, peer pressure generated by the visually focused app led to mental-health and body-image problems, and in some cases, eating disorders and suicidal thoughts, the research detailed in the Facebook documents showed.

The revelations in a report by The Wall Street Journal, based on the documents leaked by Haugen, set off a wave of recriminations from lawmakers, critics of Big Tech, child-development experts and parents.

As head of Instagram, I am especially focused on the safety of the youngest people who use our services, Mosseri testified. This work includes keeping underage users off our platform, designing age-appropriate experiences for people ages 13 to 18, and building parental controls. Instagram is built for people 13 and older. If a child is under the age of 13, they are not permitted on Instagram.

Mosseri outlined the suite of measures he said Instagram has taken to protect young people on the platform. They include keeping kids under 13 off it, restricting direct messaging between kids and adults, and prohibiting posts that encourage suicide and self-harm.

But, as researchers both internal and external to Meta have documented, the reality is different. Kids under 13 often sign up for Instagram with or without their parents knowledge by lying about their age. And posts about suicide and self-harm still reach children and teens, sometimes with disastrous effects.

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Ortutay reported from Oakland, California.

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This story has been corrected to reflect that Adam Mosseri is the head of Instagram, not the CEO.

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Follow Marcy Gordon at https://twitter.com/mgordonap
NEW YORK (AP)  Books and authors mattered in 2021, sometimes more than the industry wanted.

A 22-year-old poet became a literary star. The enthusiasms of young people on TikTok helped revive Colleen Hoover's It Ends With Us, and other novels released years earlier. Conservatives pushed to restrict the books permitted in classrooms at a time when activists were working to expand them. And the government decided that the merger of two of the country's biggest publishers might damage an invaluable cultural resource: authors.

Everything feels very magnified, says the prize-winning novelist Jacqueline Woodson, whose books have been challenged by officials in Texas and elsewhere.

One day I hear that Texas is trying to ban (the Woodson novels) Red at the Bone and Brown Girl Dreaming, and the next moment we see Amanda Gorman speaking truth to power. Maybe it's because of social media or the pandemic, but it all feels much more intense," she says.

Sales were strong in 2020, the first year of the pandemic, and climbed higher in 2021. The number of books sold through the end of November increased by 10% over 2020, and by 20% over the pre-pandemic year of 2019, according to NPD BookScan, which tracks around 85% of the print market. The Association of American Publishers reported revenues of $7.8 billion for trade books through the first 10 months of 2021, a 14% jump over last year.

You're not hearing much these days about how people don't read anymore, says Allison Hill, CEO of the American Booksellers Association, the trade group for the country's independent bookstores.

A year after the ABA worried that hundreds of stores could shut down because of the pandemic, Hill says membership is growing, with more than 150 new stores opening and around 30 going out of business.

Fiction was especially strong in 2021 as sales tallied by BookScan jumped more than 20% from the previous year, driven by everything from TikTok and Reese Witherspoon's book club to a surge in manga and a wave of literary bestsellers that included Jonathan Franzen's Crossroads and Anthony Doerr's Cloud Cuckoo Land.

The CEO of Penguin Random House U.S., Madeline McIntosh, called the popularity of fiction the greatest sign we have of long-term growth for the industry.

It's one thing when you're grabbing books when you want to learn how to do something or to keep with current events, but it's a different impulse when you're grabbing a book because you want to fill your hours with reading. And that's what we're seeing with fiction," she said.

With Donald Trump no longer in the White House, sales for political books dropped nearly 25%, according to BookScan. But the book world grew more politicized  starting with the question of who might, or should, release a memoir by the former president.

Multimillion-dollar deals for presidents have been a tradition. But New York publishers were uneasy with Trump before the Jan. 6 siege of the U.S. Capitol by his supporters and have since openly distanced themselves from him and such allies as Sen. Josh Hawley, whose The Tyranny of Big Tech was dropped by Simon & Schuster.

In response, a network of independent conservative publishers has emerged, whether such established entities as Regnery, which acquired Hawleys book, or new companies like All Seasons Press or the Daily Wires DW Books. Trumps first post-White House book project, the photo compilation Our Journey Together, will be released by Winning Team Publishing, founded by son Donald Trump Jr. and campaign aide Sergio Gor.

Throughout 2021, books made news. The year was barely three weeks old when millions watched Gorman become the country's best-known poet and a cultural phenomenon. Her poised, forceful reading of her commissioned work The Hill We Climb was a highlight of President Joe Biden's inauguration. It brought her recognition more in line with stars of fashion or movies, including a contract with IMG Models and a cover story for Vogue. A bound edition of The Hill We Climb sold hundreds of thousand of copies even though readers could find the text for free online.

Gorman's appearance at the inaugural was made possible by first lady Jill Biden, who in 2017 had attended a reading Gorman gave at the Library of Congress as the country's Youth Poet Laureate.

Countless authors, famous and little-known, found an unexpected supporter in Attorney General Merrick Garland. In November, the Department of Justice announced that it would sue to block Penguin Random House's planned purchase of Simon & Schuster, the first time in years the government had tried to stop a major publishing consolidation. The DOJ's objection was rooted as much in art as in commerce  concern that authors would not make enough money to write.

Books have shaped American public life throughout our nations history, and authors are the lifeblood of book publishing in America," Garland announced. If the worlds largest book publisher is permitted to acquire one of its biggest rivals, it will have unprecedented control over this important industry. American authors and consumers will pay the price of this anti-competitive merger  lower advances for authors and ultimately fewer books and less variety for consumers.

Woodson says she and other writers were stunned by the DOJ's announcement and remembers thinking, Wait, they're speaking for us!

The debates about literature were never more passionate than in the country's classrooms and libraries.

Grassroots activists such as #disrupttexts.org pushed for teachers to diversify curricula with such novels as Woodson's Another Brooklyn, Jesmyn Ward's Salvage the Bones and Louise Erdrich's The Round House. Independent bookstores worked to donate to schools free copies of the book-length edition of the Pulitzer-winning 1619 Project, which places slavery at the center of American history. The book sold more than 100,000 copies in its first two weeks on sale, according to BookScan.

Meanwhile, an ad for Virginia's Republican gubernatorial candidate Glenn Youngkin, who won the race, featured a white conservative activist alleging that her son had been traumatized by an assigned high school text, Beloved, Toni Morrison's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel about a Black woman who had fled enslavement and murdered her daughter rather than allow her to be captured.

Dozens of bills around the country have been proposed or enacted that call for restrictions on books seen as immoral or unpatriotic. A state legislator in Texas, Republican Matt Krause, sent a 16-page spreadsheet to the Texas Education Agency listing more than 800 books he thought worthy of possible banning, including works by Woodson, Ta-Nehisi Coates and Margaret Atwood. Nine novels by the award-winning young adult author Julie Anne Peters, whose narratives often feature LGBT characters, were cited.

I think one reason this happens is because books have staying power, Peters said. You always remember the great books you've read. They are so influential, especially the ones in school. Everything else is so fleeting, and changes. But once a book is there and it's available and it represents our history and our culture, it becomes a historical reference you go back to.
NEW YORK (AP)  Prosecutors completed presenting their case against Ghislaine Maxwell on Friday, after a key accuser at the British socialite's sex-abuse trial testified that Maxwell and her companion, Jeffrey Epstein, forced themselves on her when she was just 16.

Annie Farmer told jurors she accepted an invitation to the financiers sprawling New Mexico ranch in 1996 hoping that Maxwell and Epstein would help her with academic endeavors. Instead, she said, Maxwell ended up massaging her breasts and Epstein climbed into bed without her permission.

Three others have asserted at the trial that began two weeks ago that Maxwell recruited them to give Epstein massages meant as a ruse for sexual abuse.

Maxwell, 59, has denied charges she groomed underage girls for Epstein, who killed himself in jail in 2019. Her lawyers say the government is making her a scapegoat for alleged sex crimes committed by her onetime boyfriend and moved immediately for a judgment of acquittal after prosecutors rested Friday afternoon.

U.S. District Judge Alison J. Nathan heard brief arguments and rejected the request that she acquit Maxwell without the jury ever getting the case.

The judge told the jury they will return Thursday to hear the defense case, which an attorney estimated would likely last two to three days. The judge has suggested that closing arguments  at a trial originally projected to last six weeks  might occur as early as Dec. 20 if the defense presentation next week only lasts a day or two.

In her testimony, Farmer recalled the unwanted physical contact making her feel like she "just wanted the weekend to be over.  I wanted to be done with it.

She added: All these experiences made me feel like they had a very different interest in me."

Asked by a prosecutor at the start of her testimony if she saw anyone in the courtroom who had ever given her a massage, Farmer identified Maxwell, who was sitting at the defense table looking at Farmer.

Farmer, now 42, took the stand using her true identity  a departure from the decision by three other accusers with similar stories who testified under pseudonyms or first names only to protect their privacy.

Two of the others who testified said they were just 14 when the abuse started and that Maxwell sometimes participated in the encounters.

Farmer testified that she met Epstein at age 16 on a 1996 trip to New York City to visit her older sister, who was working for him at his Manhattan mansion. When they visited him at the home, he seemed very friendly and down to earth, and even offered to mentor her, she said.

She said that during an outing to the movies with Epstein, he reached over to hold her hand and caress her leg.

I felt sick to my stomach, she said. It was not something I was expecting at all.

When Farmer returned home, she stayed in touch with the wealthy financier and accepted an invitation to travel to New Mexico with a plane ticket he paid for even though, she said, after what happened in the movie theater, I didnt want to be alone with him."

She said she initially felt more comfortable because Maxwell was there. But when they took her to the movies, he right away began to hold my hand and rub her foot and arm throughout the film with no effort to hide the behavior from Maxwell, she said.

Once home, Maxwell insisted on giving Farmer a massage and told her to take off her clothes, Farmer testified. Maxwell pulled down the sheet and exposed my breasts and starting rubbing on my breasts, Farmer said.

It didnt make sense to me that would happen, she said. I so badly wanted to get off the table and have the massage be done.

Farmer accepted $1.5 million from a fund set up to compensate Epstein victims, she testified.

The encounters occurred in New Mexico, which did not have a specific age of consent statute, although its laws criminalized all sexual contact of a minor under the age of 13 when coercion or force is involved.

On cross examination, a defense lawyer repeatedly emphasized through her questions that Maxwell was not involved in the most egregious behavior described by Farmer and elicited that Farmer was not sure she was naked during her massage, although she was certain that her breasts were exposed.

Prosecutors also called Farmer's former boyfriend and her mother as witnesses to support her testimony.

David James Mulligan, 42, testified that Farmer told him that she was touched on the breast when she was massaged in New Mexico.

She told me that she felt fearful and awkward and helpless, he said.

Janice Swain, 71, Farmer's mother, testified that Epstein told her before the New Mexico trip that her daughter would be joined by 20 to 25 other students there.

Swain said when Farmer arrived home from the trip, she was quiet and withdrawn. When Farmer finally did say something at a later date, she said: I don't want to talk about it and I'm not going to let it ruin my life, the mother recalled.

The Associated Press does not identify people who say they were victims of sexual abuse unless they come forward publicly. Although Farmer was not identified by name in court documents, the practicing psychologist has been outspoken in describing her experiences in interviews with ABC and The New York Times.

Maxwell has been jailed since she was arrested in New Hampshire in July 2020. When she sought bail, Farmer asked the judge to deny it, calling her a psychopath.
NEW YORK (AP)  Noncitizens in New York City would gain the right to vote in municipal elections under a measure approved Thursday by the City Council that would give access to the ballot box to 800,000 green card holders and so-called Dreamers.

Only a potential veto from Mayor Bill de Blasio stood in the way of the measure becoming law, but the Democrat has said he would not veto it. It's unclear whether the bill might face legal challenges.

The Council's vote was a historic moment for an effort that had long languished.

Councilman Francisco Moya, whose family hails from Ecuador, choked up as he spoke in support of the bill.

This is for my beautiful mother who will be able to vote for her son, said Moya, while joining the session by video with his immigrant mother at his side.

More than a dozen communities across the United States already allow noncitizens to cast ballots in local elections, including 11 towns in Maryland and two in Vermont. But New York City is the largest place by far to give voting rights to noncitizens.

Noncitizens still wouldnt be able to vote for president or members of Congress in federal races, or in the state elections that pick the governor, judges and legislators.

The citys move could enflame the national debate over voting rights, particularly among some who wrongly assert that rampant fraud by noncitizens has taken place in federal elections.

Last year, Alabama, Colorado and Florida adopted rules that would preempt any attempts to pass laws like the one in New York City. Arizona and North Dakota already had prohibitions on the books.

The bill were doing today will have national repercussions, said the councils majority leader, Laurie Cumbo, a Democrat who opposed the bill. She expressed concern that the measure could diminish the influence of African American voters.

Legally documented, voting-age noncitizens comprise nearly one in nine of the citys 7 million voting-age inhabitants. The measure would allow noncitizens who have been lawful permanent residents of the city for at least 30 days, as well as those authorized to work in the U.S., including so-called Dreamers, to help select the citys mayor, city council members, borough presidents, comptroller and public advocate.

It is no secret, we are making history today. 50 years down the line when our children look back at this moment they will see a diverse coalition of advocates who came together to write a new chapter in New York Citys history by giving immigrant New Yorkers the power of the ballot, Council Member Ydanis Rodriguez, a main sponsor of the bill, said in a statement after Thursdays vote.

The law would direct the Board of Elections to draw up an implementation plan by July, including voter registration rules and provisions that would create separate ballots for municipal races to prevent noncitizens from casting ballots in federal and state contests. Noncitizens wouldnt be allowed to vote until elections in 2023.

Even if de Blasio were to decide to veto the bill, there was enough support to override it. The measure would become law by default if the mayor decides not to act on it. Incoming mayor Eric Adams has said he supports the bill.

City Councilman Joseph Borelli, the Republican leader, said a legal challenge is likely. Opponents say the council lacks the authority on its own to grant voting rights to noncitizens and should have first sought action by state lawmakers.
McALESTER, Okla. (AP)  Oklahoma executed a man Thursday for the 1985 shooting death of an Oklahoma City-area schoolteacher after courts rejected his claim that the states lethal injection method would result in unconstitutional pain and suffering.

Bigler Stouffer II, 79, received a three-drug lethal injection at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAlester.

Stouffer was the first person executed in Oklahoma since John Grant convulsed on the gurney and vomited during his lethal injection in October as the state ended a six-year execution moratorium brought on by concerns over its protocols.

Thursday's execution process that began at 10 a.m. appeared to go more smoothly. After receiving lethal drugs, Stouffer was declared unconscious at 10:07 a.m., and his breaths became shallower at 10:09 a.m. He was declared dead at 10:16 a.m.

Oklahoma Attorney General John OConnor said in statement that the execution was carried out with zero complications. The Rev. Howard Potts, who was in the death chamber with Stouffer, said Stouffer "was totally at peace.

Stouffer's last words were: My request is that my father forgive them. Thank you.

Stouffer has maintained his innocence in the attack that left Linda Reaves dead and her boyfriend, Doug Ivens, seriously injured. He and his attorneys argued in court filings that the states three-drug execution method poses a risk of unconstitutional pain and suffering and that Stouffer should be included among other death row plaintiffs in a federal lawsuit challenging the protocols. But his request for a stay of execution was denied by a federal district judge and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit. A final appeal with the U.S. Supreme Court was denied Thursday morning, less than two hours before the scheduled execution

Stouffer was convicted and sentenced to death in 2003 after his first conviction and death sentence were overturned. At a parole board hearing last month, he said Ivens was shot as the two men fought over a gun at Ivens' home, and that Reaves was dead when he arrived.

I am totally innocent of the murder of Linda Reaves and my heart goes out to the family of Linda Reaves that have suffered as a result of her murder," Stouffer told the board during a video appearance from prison.

Prosecutors said Stouffer went to the home to borrow the gun from Ivens, then fatally shot Reaves and wounded Ivens to gain access to Ivens $2 million life insurance policy. At the time, Stouffer was dating Ivens ex-wife.

Despite being shot three times with a .38-caliber pistol, including once in the face, Ivens survived and testified against Stouffer. Ivens has since died.

Stouffer's heinous actions against Doug and Linda, his lies and manipulations in the years to follow, and his complete lack of sorrow and remorse for the hurt he caused should dictate one conclusion  the jury's death sentence must be carried out," attorneys for the state wrote in asking the Pardon and Parole Board to reject Stouffer's request for clemency.

Several members of the board voiced concerns about the state's ability to humanely execute people. But Republican Gov. Kevin Stitt ultimately rejected the boards recommendation that Stitt commute Stouffers sentence to life in prison without parole.

Reaves' cousin, Rodney Thomson, spoke to reporters after Stouffer's execution, saying the killing had consumed his family members. He thanked the attorney general and staff and other prosecutors and investigators who worked on the case.

Today we witnessed the law of the land carried out on behalf of my cousin, Thomson read from a statement. Although long in coming, justice has prevailed.

Stitt did grant clemency to another man on death row, Julius Jones, last month just hours before his scheduled execution, commuting his sentence to life in prison without the possibility of parole. That case had drawn outcry and protests over doubts about his guilt in the slaying of a businessman more than 20 years ago.

Executions in Oklahoma have typically been held in the evenings, but prison officials moved Stouffer's execution to 10 a.m. to make it easier for the prison to return to normal operations, said Department of Corrections spokesman Josh Ward.

Oklahoma had one of the nations busiest death chambers until problems in 2014 and 2015 led to a de facto moratorium. Richard Glossip was just hours away from being executed in September 2015 when prison officials realized they received the wrong lethal drug. It was later learned the same wrong drug had been used to execute another man in January 2015.

The drug mix-ups followed a botched execution in April 2014 in which inmate Clayton Lockett struggled on a gurney before dying 43 minutes into his lethal injection  and after the states prisons chief ordered executioners to stop.
PHOENIX (AP)  The Phoenix Zoo is the latest among several dozen in the United States to vaccinate animals considered susceptible to getting COVID-19 from close contact with people.

Big cats such as Sumatran tigers, jaguars and African lions; many of the zoo's primates like Bornean orangutans and tiny emperor tamarins; and Egyptian fruit bats, armadillos and two-toed sloths are among the 75 animals that have already received their first shots.

Veterinarian Dr. Gary West, the zoo's senior vice president of animal health and living collections, said Thursday that staff members are now giving the second jabs that will serve as boosters and should keep them protected for a year.

The big cats were vaccinated from a distance with the use of darts.

They take it way better than people do, West said of the animals. They don't like it, but they bounce right back and go back to their lives.

There have been no cases of coronavirus infection detected among Phoenix Zoo animals

The vaccine being used at the Phoenix Zoo was developed specifically for animals by Zoetis, a global animal health company based in in New Jersey that donated the doses. The vaccine is authorized for emergency use to protect endangered species.

West said the Phoenix Zoo has been taking precautions to protect the animals throughout the pandemic with distancing and protective equipment. The inoculations should give the most susceptible animals an added layer of protection, he said

Zoetis first got a permit from the U.S. Department of Agriculture early this year to provide the doses on an experimental basis to the San Diego Zoo Safari Park, where a troop of western lowland gorillas in January became the first apes known to test positive for the coronavirus.

There have only been a few known cases of zoo animal deaths from COVID-19 complications, including three rare snow leopards that died recently at the Lincoln Childrens Zoo in Nebraska.

Zoos across the country, including at the St. Louis Zoo and the Denver Zoo, have recently grappled with COVID-19 outbreaks among their animals.
Ned Gerard / Hearst Connecticut Media

BRIDGEPORT  A police chase involving an alleged shooter resulted in a crash and someone injured Thursday evening, according to a city official.

Around 8:20 p.m., the Bridgeport Emergency Communications Center received several 911 calls and a notification from the citys gunshot detection system regarding shots fired on Stratford and Union avenues, according to Scott Appleby, the director of Bridgeports Office of Emergency Management.
ALBANY, N.Y. (AP)  Thirty-two upstate New York hospitals had to suspend performing non-essential elective surgeries starting Thursday under an emergency order from Gov. Kathy Hochul.

The previously announced order is designed to ease capacity strains on hospitals as COVID-19 cases surge. The order applies to hospitals that have less than 10% bed capacity available.

This is what keeps me up at night, Hochul said at a news briefing. We continue to see an uptick in hospitalizations.

She said the state will reassess the pauses on Jan. 15.

State Health Commissioner Dr. Mary Bassett said despite concerns about the omicron variant, the uptick in hospitalizations and cases reflects the delta variant's spread.

There are now 20 confirmed cases of the new omicron variant in the state, with 13 of them in New York City, three in Suffolk County, two Oneida County, one in Westchester County and one in Broome County, Hochul said.

We expect these numbers to continue to rise, and at this point, we are prepared to say what we have is community spread, Hochul said. It is not coming from people who have traveled.

As cases increase, several counties have started imposing mask requirements.

In central New York, Oneida County officials announced that starting Monday they will require masks to be worn in indoor public places and for temperature checks to be conducted at social gatherings taking place outside of private residences, though there will be an opt-out if proof of vaccine is required for entry.
A Connecticut resident and CNN employee is facing federal charges after enticing women and their underage daughters to engage in illegal sexual activity at his home in Vermont, federal prosecutors said Friday.

John Griffin, 44, of Stamford, was arrested Friday by the FBI after a federal grand jury in Vermont charged him with three counts of using a facility of interstate commerce to attempt to entice minors to engage in unlawful sexual activity.

Griffin appeared Friday afternoon in New Haven federal court via Zoom. Judge Robert Spector said he would file an order for Griffin to be transferred to Vermont.

According to his LinkedIn profile, Griffin has been a CNN employee since 2013.

We take the charges against Mr. Griffin incredibly seriously, a CNN spokesperson told Hearst Connecticut Media on Friday. We only learned of his arrest this afternoon and have suspended him pending investigation.

Griffin was once a producer for the Chris Cuomo show and was most recently a producer for CNN senior political analyst John Avlon.

The indictment alleges that from April to July of last year, Griffin used the alternative website, alt.com, to seek women who were submissive and open-minded.

Griffin then used messaging features on Kik and Google Hangouts to communicate with some of the women, pretending to be the parents of underage girls. In the communications, Griffin tried to persuade parents to let him train their daughters to be sexually submissive toward men, the indictment stated.

In June 2020, Griffin told a mother of 9- and 13-year-old girls that she needed to have her daughters trained properly, the indictment stated. Griffin then transferred about $3,000 to the woman for plane tickets so she and her 9-year-old could fly from Nevada to Bostons Logan airport, the indictment stated.

The mother and child flew to Boston in July 2020. Griffin picked them up and drove them to his home in Ludlow, Vt., where prosecutors said the girl was forced to engage in illegal sexual contact.

The indictment details other allegations that Griffin tried to entice two other children over the internet to participate in sexual activity.

In April 2020, Griffin coordinated a virtual training session where he instructed a woman and her 14-year-old daughter to remove their clothes during the video chat, prosecutors said.

In June 2020, prosecutors said, Griffin offered a trip to a woman and her 16-year-old daughter to his Vermont ski house for sexual training involving the child.

In one of the conversations, Griffin told someone claiming to be a father that he sexually trained girls as young as 7 years old, the indictment stated.

If convicted on each federal count, Griffin faces 10 years to life in prison.

The indictment alleges that the federal government intends to seek the forfeiture of Griffins Vermont home, two of his vehicles and any other property allegedly used in the commission of the offenses.

An arraignment for Griffin has been tentatively scheduled for Dec. 15 in Vermont, according to court records.
League presidents and League chairs at the American Association of Credit Union Leagues Winter Meeting. (AACUL photo)

With a focus on collaboration for advancing the credit union movement, credit union leagues gathered in Arizona last week for the American Association of Credit Union Leagues (AACUL) winter conference. They heard from a notable lineup of speakers including NCUA Chairman Todd Harper (virtually), NCUA Board Member Rodney Hood and CUNA President/CEO Jim Nussle.

AACULs annual conference provides a valuable forum for leagues and other system leaders to share ideas, discuss emerging trends, strategize on advocacy issues, and collaborate to further strengthen the credit union system.

Nussle and National Credit Union Foundation Executive Director Gigi Hyland provided an overview of the Financial Well-Being for All initiative and priorities at the national level. In turn, League executives shared the financial well-being initiatives happening across the states and discussed the myriad of ways Leagues, State Foundations, and credit unions are involved.

A panel discussion with African American Credit Union Coalition President/CEO Renee Sattiewhite, Defense Credit Union Council President/CEO Anthony Hernandez, and Inclusiv President/CEO Cathie Mahon highlighted the ways those organizations are working with Leagues to advance the credit union movement.
Credit unions over the course of the last few years have been navigating a combination of challenges with digital demands. A critical need for remote work capabilities, an increased demand from members to drive mobile and web-based services, and the ongoing security threats the market faces have strained traditional IT systems and exposed a need for modernization.

Innovative credit unions are turning to the cloud to meet these demands. With the ability to maximize uptime, prevision and automatically analyze against threats, and scale up and down based on consumption, the cloud is helping credit unions pivot to a digitally modern infrastructure that focuses on the goals of the credit union and the member experience.

In our October webinar: CU blueprint for Secure cloud first strategies, Chad Ritchie, CIO, Ventura County Credit union states its a matter of relevancy for credit unions[innovative companies] have set this digital experience bar for the rest of us on what consumers expect when they go online. And for the credit union industry were dramatically behind that bar so we have to have a plan to compete and agility is key. Being able to provide a simple and seamless banking experience for our members and our staff is absolutely necessary.

Ritchie continues to talk about the importance of your vendor relationship. When working with an IT vendor, it is imperative that you choose someone who understands the goals of your organization, and acts as a partner to help achieve those goals.
Allegra Stratton, holding what seemed to be a shopping list, walked out of her pale blue North London front door on Wednesday night dressed as if for a quick trip to Tesco.

What else could possibly explain the unkempt appearance of this highly polished professional and adviser to the Prime Minister, now dressed in a puffer coat, Fair Isle sweater (seen better days) and with little make-up and no hairdo?

But then she stopped in front of a TV camera and an unforgiving close-up revealed that her eyes were puffy and red-rimmed. Her skin was flushed and blotchy. She must have been crying for hours. And then, as she read from the notes in her hand, the crying began all over again.

Visibly distressed, Allegra began to apologise profusely for her part in a mock Press conference last year in which she faced questions about a Downing Street Christmas party that may or may not have happened.

I will regret those remarks for the rest of my days I am truly sorry, she faltered, adding that she was offering the PM her resignation.

Allegra Stratton (pictured) began to apologise profusely for her part in a mock Press conference last year in which she faced questions about a Downing Street Christmas party that may or may not have happened

I couldnt believe my eyes. Not because a governmental figure had finally done the decent thing  although that has been a rarity of late  but because she was doing so with tears openly streaming down her face.

Once feted for her communication skills, Allegra was struggling to get her words out.

And although it would have been the last thing on her mind, I believe her performance has taken working women back a century, to the days before we even had the vote.

In all my years as a professional working in the highly pressurised TV industry  I have been a producer for ITV, BBC and Channel 4, and made a documentary about Margaret Thatcher  I have never seen behaviour like this before. And its shocking.

Much as I was often tempted when things went wrong on the studio floor  and believe me they did  I never cried in public. Far better to be blamed for being aggressive or labelled a difficult woman  a badge thats increasingly worn with pride  than to dissolve in self-pitying tears.

To do so is a betrayal of everything women have worked for in our bid to be taken seriously in the workplace. And when that workplace is the Palace of Westminster, Im sorry to say, the betrayal is all the greater.

I should know, for while juggling my work in TV, I also had a birds-eye view of the Westminster cauldron. Married for 45 years to Austin Mitchell, the late MP for Grimsby, I saw first-hand how women fought for their place at the table.

Westminster women know perhaps better than anyone else how carefully they have to tread: one wrong step and youll set the cause back decades was what we all believed.

We felt that if we were going to have any chance of beating the boys at their own game then tears and breakdowns and guilt-trips were for the ladies room or behind closed doors at home.

Thankfully, since then, the part played by women at Westminster has steadily grown and improved over the past few decades.

Announcing her intention to stand down as MP for Camberwell and Peckham this week, Harriet Harman said there were only ten female Labour MPs when she joined the Commons in 1982. Now its pretty much equal numbers. The need for Labours all-women shortlists is a thing of the past.

'What else could possibly explain the unkempt appearance of this highly polished professional and adviser to the Prime Minister, now dressed in a puffer coat, Fair Isle sweater (seen better days) and with little make-up and no hairdo?', writes LINDA MCDOUGALL

In the world of media, too, where Allegra was formerly editor of ITV news, women find themselves in much more powerful and influential positions.

No longer confined to being the pretty face in front of the camera, female editors and channel controllers rule the airwaves  and never with a hair out of place. Only last week Alex Mahon, boss of Channel 4, defended her organisation against claims of Left-wing bias while dressed in a ballgown and stilettos.

So what went so wrong for Allegra Stratton? And can she ever come back from this?

The only virtue of her appearance, so vulnerable and needy at her own front door, can be to act as a warning signal to talented young women headed for the world of politics.

Namely, that however stellar your career might be, we are not yet in a place where big girls can cry and get away with it.

NO WAY: She showed she was a real person

By Flora Gill

Were all well aware that Allegra Stratton resigned this week, but no one seems to be able to recall any of the actual words she said during her speech. Instead, all we can remember are the tears. Oh, the tears.

What happened to Allegra is every professional womans worst nightmare, though no doubt something most of us have come close to. As a woman, crying in the office is the ultimate embarrassment. It sparks a reaction from any surrounding men akin to if youd suddenly whipped out your tampon: inappropriate, unsightly, and inherently womanly.

If you see a female colleague well up, youll be straight to her side with a hushed, Quick, lets go to the ladies loos so she can release her pent up tears out of sight.

Years ago in my office, a young woman burst into tears in the open-plan space, having been loudly scolded  by a man  following a stressful week. The crying immediately halted the shouting, but not out of sympathy.

He was irritated, rolling his eyes at what I knew he thought was a hysterical reaction. This reputation stuck with her for years.

His response was, quite frankly, appalling  not to mention unfair.

She was brilliant at her job, yet overnight the respect shed earned from her career was gone. And all because tears are immediately associated with weakness.

But theres really no reason that should be the case. After all, whats the alternative?

What happened to Allegra is every professional womans worst nightmare, though no doubt something most of us have come close to

For some, the way they reveal a loss of control over their emotions is by screaming, shouting or even throwing things. This is seen as a more masculine response and, while not necessarily encouraged, its somehow less damaging to a persons reputation.

Yet in my view, taking out your emotions on your colleagues is a far more cowardly response than crying. Gordon Brown allegedly once threw a stapler at an aide and broke multiple phones by smashing them against the wall  a response that was literally damaging (though it did little harm to his reputation as a leader).

Unlike screaming yourself into a rage, crying does not harm others. It doesnt even harm you. In fact, it is a cathartic process that actually releases feel-good endorphins.

As a general rule, women cry more than men  likely a result of societal pressures that give men years of training in how not to appear womanly and weak.

But crying can also be a sign of strength. When Allegra burst into tears, it was a rare glimpse of remorse and humanity in the frequently callous world of politics; a sign that she was a person like the rest of us, rather than a heartless Westminster robot.

While some may have shied away from her behaviour, I suspect many more felt closer to her.

Of course, there will be a few people who cynically say that women use tears as a weapon, turning on the waterworks to their advantage. But, if anything, thats even more of a reason to stop making a big deal out of crying.

Its time we destigmatised tears and got over the idea that the world of work is a cry-free zone.

Because the reality is that all of us  men and women alike  wear our emotions differently.

And I hope that one day the women, and men, of Westminster will finally realise this.

PS: We men cant deal with waterworks

By Boris Starling

How did you feel when you saw Allegra Stratton crying during her resignation speech? The answer will depend on your politics, your beliefs, your values  but perhaps most of all, it will depend on your sex.

If youre a man, the sight of her tears may have made you uncomfortable. Men have traditionally been bad at dealing with crying women: its not so long ago that any overt display of female emotion in an office would have men ushering the woman in question from the room so they wouldnt have to deal with her.

And, though things are getting better, many offices are still male-dominated, and crying in the workplace remains a no-no, especially for work-related reasons such as stress or co-worker disputes (personal reasons such as death or divorce get cut a bit more slack.)

Some men find that a womans tears make them feel softer and protective towards her.

People cry when theyre in emotional or physical pain  that is, when theyre vulnerable  and this naturally prompts many (but by no means all) men to downplay machismo and aggression in favour of comfort.

Other men regard female crying as manipulative or emotional blackmail and refuse to engage with it no matter how valid the underlying reasons.

'If youre a man, the sight of her tears may have made you uncomfortable. Men have traditionally been bad at dealing with crying women', writes BORIS STARLING

Mens reactions vary so much because our own relationship with crying is complex.

Men cry less than half as often as women, which is partly physiological (testosterone may inhibit tears, while prolactin, which measures higher in women, may encourage it) and partly psychological (boys are socialised not to weep or show overt weakness).

Again, this is slowly changing. Barack Obama cried several times on TV during his presidency. The nation took Andy Murray to its heart when he wept having lost the 2012 Wimbledon final to Roger Federer, not least because it was the first time that his hitherto unemotional public facade had cracked.

In that respect, the gap between the sexes is perhaps less than might be thought.

People remember Margaret Thatchers tears as she was driven away from Downing Street for the last time in 1990, and those of Theresa May as she stepped down two years ago, because these remote and aloof figures had  finally!  shown some emotion.

Yes, they cried for themselves, but then again so do we all.

Strattons tears were surely the same, even though she apologised to all of you who lost loved ones, who endured intolerable loneliness and who struggled with your businesses.

After a day or two of being the biggest story in the land and vilified on social media, with presumably not much sleep and a family to consider, I dare say many of us, man or woman, would have cried, too.

She apologised to all of you who lost loved ones, who endured intolerable loneliness and who struggled with your businesses

Tears are a natural human reaction when you reach the end of any project to which youve given time and effort: that sense of letting go, of having run out of road, of an unexpected freedom which youve half-wanted and half-feared for so long.

So the question with Allegra Stratton is not why did she cry, but why did she do so in public?

She could easily have released a written statement on social media, the way many people  even ministers  do when they resign. She didnt take questions from the Press and she wasnt leaving the house to go somewhere else, so she didnt need to come out at all.

Perhaps she felt, consciously or not, that tears would offset the damage caused by the image of her laughing  because we all understand the twin theatrical masks of comedy and tragedy, no matter who we are.
Many years ago, when our boys were still at school, I had the misfortune of finding myself sitting next to a very haughty woman at a dinner party. Our brief conversation has stayed in my memory ever since.

She opened with the familiar, ice-breaking question: 'Do you have children?' When I told her that, yes, we had four sons, I waited for the usual reaction: either 'Oh, your poor wife!', or 'Goodness, they must keep you busy!'

But instead of saying either of those things  or asking 'Are you a Catholic, then?'  she stuck her nose in the air and remarked: 'Isn't that rather selfish of you?'

The real worry, as Mr Musk argues, is that numbers are falling, or about to fall, over almost all of the developed world, with poorer countries predicted to follow the same downward path by the end of this century

She then turned to the guest on her other side and ignored me for the rest of the meal.

Of course, my accuser was far from the first person to think that parents who produce more than a couple of children are guilty of a crime against humanity and the planet (I wonder what she would have made of the fact that Mrs U's maternal grandmother was one of 22).

As long ago as 1798, in his hugely influential An Essay On The Principle Of Population, Thomas Malthus wrote that population growth was an obstacle to human progress and led inevitably to famine and want.

Evolved

Since then, legions of others have piled on to the Malthusian bandwagon  including, I'm sorry to say, several members of the Royal Family.

I'm thinking particularly of the publicity-shy Prince Harry, who said in one of those innumerable interviews for which he thrusts himself forward that he was limiting himself to a maximum of two children for the sake of the planet and the environment.

'I've always thought this place is borrowed,' he said. 'And surely, being as intelligent as we all are (all of us, Harry?), or as evolved as we are all supposed to be, we should be able to leave something better behind for the next generation.'

Clearly, he meant that the world would be a richer, happier and more bountiful place if only selfish swine like me would stop producing multiple offspring.

To be fair to the Prince, I should perhaps point out that in saying this, he was merely echoing his late grandfather, the Duke of Edinburgh, who went on record with similar views.

Indeed, one of the rare occasions on which the Duke seemed lost for words came when a cheeky reporter asked him how he could rail against population growth, given that he himself was a father of four. To his credit, if my memory serves me, Prince Philip conceded that this was a fair point.

Indeed, one of the rare occasions on which the Duke seemed lost for words came when a cheeky reporter asked him how he could rail against population growth, given that he himself was a father of four. To his credit, if my memory serves me, Prince Philip conceded that this was a fair point

This week, I thought of my sneery fellow guest at that dinner party when the Tesla and SpaceX entrepreneur Elon Musk, who vies with Amazon's Jeff Bezos for the title of the world's richest man, attracted gales of derisive laughter for declaring that one of the biggest problems facing humanity is not that there are too many of us, but too few.

'So many people, including smart people, think that there are too many people in the world and think that the population is growing out of control,' he said. 'It's completely the opposite. Please look at the numbers. If people don't have more children, civilisation is going to crumble, mark my words.'

Now, if only my accuser had let me speak, all those years ago, I would have said something very similar. And no, it's not because I was baptised a Roman Catholic.

As it happens, I'm an extremely bad Catholic, and I have no objection whatsoever to contraception (though, as long-suffering readers will be aware, I abhor abortion on demand).

I would have started by saying that, far from being selfish, my fathering of four sons was, and is, one of the few truly selfless things I've done in my life.

Valuable

All right, it wasn't and isn't entirely altruistic, because it gives me great satisfaction and pride to have reared four healthy sons, who in their different ways are all making a valuable contribution to society: one social worker, two teachers and a journalist.

What is certainly true is that Mrs U and I would be an awful lot richer  in material terms, at least  if only we'd remained childless, or stopped at one or two (though admittedly, Mr Musk somehow managed to accumulate his zillions, despite being a father of six).

Yes, I know it's tempting to think that life would be more agreeable if there were fewer people about, with less crowded trains, fewer traffic jams, cleaner air, more pandas and polar bears, cheaper housing and millions more acres of rainforest left undisturbed by the chainsaw and the plough.

But, counter-intuitive though it may sound, the fact is that Mr Musk is right  and Malthus was plain wrong. You have only to consider that in the Georgian economist's day, when he predicted imminent disaster and mass starvation from a population explosion, there were only about one billion people in this world.

Today, there are well over seven billion. And thanks to the miracle of modern capitalism, most of them are better fed and lead more comfortable lives than their ancestors at any other moment in the world's history.

The real worry, as Mr Musk argues, is that numbers are falling, or about to fall, over almost all of the developed world, with poorer countries predicted to follow the same downward path by the end of this century.

Even in Britain, the population is rising only because of the mass immigration of recent years (which brings problems of its own), while the fertility rate in England and Wales has fallen well below replacement level to only 1.58 per woman.

Disaster

If you think this is a healthy trend, just ask the Chinese, whose one-child policy proved such an unmitigated disaster that it has had to be abandoned.

Or ask yourself this: where are we to find the able-bodied people we will need to look after us in our old age, keeping the wheels of the economy turning, manning the factories, producing the food, driving the lorries and staffing the health service?

Where will we find the epidemiologists and doctors to protect us from deadly plagues, the bar staff to pull our pints  and the scientists to come up with new ways of producing food and keeping the lights on without harming the environment?

Already in this country, we're suffering from a labour shortage, which will only get worse if current trends continue, with fewer and fewer people of working age to care for the growing army of the elderly.

Indeed, who would there be to look after my haughty accuser at that dinner party, if everyone in the world had followed her example by remaining childless? When she reaches her dotage, maybe she'll learn to be grateful to the parents of future generations of workers.

But I can't end without congratulating the Prime Minister and his current wife on the birth of their healthy daughter yesterday  Carrie's second child and the seventh (or possibly the eighth) fathered by Boris.

I must say that Mr Johnson, my former colleague, has been a great disappointment to me since he took his high office in 2019. But as he stumbles from scandal to scandal, and crisis to crisis, at least he's doing something right.
Partygate - triggered by revelations surrounding a Downing Street party held on December 18 last year- shows no sign of going away.

With details emerging about other Whitehall office parties held while the country was in lockdown (and such gatherings were banned), public anger is reflected in the polls.

The shine has well and truly worn off Brand Boris - one poll shows 63% think he should resign. In another, Labour has a four-point lead, their best rating since the 2019 General Election.

We've always suspected that Boris operates within a special version of the truth. Now Partygate shows how the deep rot has spread to those around him, as minister after minister previously claimed this event had 'never taken place'.

The shine has well and truly worn off Brand Boris - one poll shows 63% think he should resign. In another, Labour has a four-point lead, their best rating since the 2019 General Election

We've always suspected that Boris operates within a special version of the truth. Now Partygate shows how the deep rot has spread to those around him, as minister after minister previously claimed this event had 'never taken place'. (Above, the PM arriving at hospital on Thursday, after the birth of his baby daughter)

For days, they paraded on TV and radio claiming there were no parties, then - when it emerged that was not true - they spouted 'no rules were broken' and started talking about 'gatherings' instead.

Yes, they must think we're a bunch of mugs.

I was furious (as was every person I've spoken to) as details filtered out.

My fellow Loose Woman, Christine Bleakley was 'incandescent' - she had spent Xmas 2020 alone without her parents or husband Frank Lampard who was working abroad.

She was just one of millions of Brits who had a miserable festive period.

The full extent of the double standards, the yawning chasm between politicians and party workers and how the rest of us dutifully conduct our lives during a pandemic is now being exposed.

My fellow Loose Woman, Christine Bleakley (above) was 'incandescent' - she had spent Xmas 2020 alone without her parents or husband Frank Lampard who was working abroad. She was just one of millions of Brits who had a miserable festive period

While we sat at home and stuck to the rules, we discover that on Fridays, Downing Street staff regularly had a table set with wine so they could enjoy drinks at their desks to celebrate the 'end of the week'.

Not something normal workplaces were doing in November and December 2020 as it contravened guidelines.

But these 'special' people have different rules to the rest of us, just like Boris bends the truth.

In Toryland, such secret privileges pass without comment.

In Tier 3 last November and early December, and then Tier 4, the rest of the nation cancelled office parties, didn't mingle and celebrated the festive season at home alone.

In Tory Towers, life was very different.

There seems to have been a leaving do at Downing Street on November 27 at which Boris Johnson gave a speech. A party at the Department of Education on December 10, another 'raucous' event for the Mayoral candidate Shaun Bailey at Tory party headquarters on December 14 at which a door got broken.

According to deposed advisor Dominic Cummings, there were parties upstairs at the Prime Minister's flat hosted by Carrie, and during December, a Christmas Quiz was held with officials and advisors taking part in Downing Street offices.

The recurring charge that Boris can be elastic with the truth when it comes to funding his private life, his holidays and his home decorations, is borne out by revelations that he messaged the Tory donor who paid for redecorating the Downing Street flat.

The Prime Minister has always claimed he 'didn't know' who paid, but now a WhatsApp message he sent to the Tory donor asking for the works to go ahead has emerged, and Lord Geidt, who carried out an inquiry into the cost of the project, is said to be furious.

Thank God Boris Johnson was not in charge of the weather bulletins during the recent storms - we'd be getting forecasts at random times of the day and night telling us it was a heatwave.

Just like the conflicting advice we've been given to wear a mask most of the time but not if you want to sing carols or drink a pint.

There are headless chickens squawking behind the filing cabinets hoping they won't be sacked. Allegra Stratton (above), the world's most disastrous political PR, has already shuffled off sobbing in front of an incredulous bunch of journos, and she won't be the last

There's no need to buy a ticket for the panto at the Palladium, the Hackney Empire or Wimbledon theatres this year - real-life events playing out behind the doors at 10 Downing Street are equally side-splitting.

There are headless chickens squawking behind the filing cabinets hoping they won't be sacked.

Allegra, the world's most disastrous political PR, has already shuffled off sobbing in front of an incredulous bunch of journos, and she won't be the last.

As for the boss - just back from donning a uniform to that macho Drug Bust in Liverpool - he's been blessed with a lovely new baby daughter along with a massive headache.

Video of his aides joking about the party that 'never was' resulted in a grovelling apology in the Commons on Wednesday - although he still seemed to be evasive about whether or not it actually took place, hoping that asking a civil servant to handle an inquiry might make the criticism go away.

As for the boss - just back from donning a uniform to that macho Drug Bust in Liverpool - he's been blessed with a lovely new baby daughter along with a massive headache

Later that day, a new set of confusing Covid Plan B restrictions were rushed out as a diversionary tactic - supplying ample proof (as if any more was needed) that the chaotic clown in Downing Street couldn't run a pie and mash shop let alone the hub of governance in the UK.

You have to wear a mask to a nightclub, a cinema and a theatre, but not a pub or a restaurant.

The ultimate Marmite politician has reached a crossroads, with up to 60 Tory MPs saying they will vote against imposing the new restrictions next Tuesday.

Consider his plus points: the Prime Minister is charismatic with huge people skills. He has a brand like no other. He's madly enthusiastic, a libertarian who hates excessive rules and regulations. He also wants to be loved.

All these qualities are endearing and won over Labour voters in the North and waverers all over the country at the last election. Yes, his bombast secured Brexit as the man who said he 'got things done' delivered what Mrs May failed to.

But - on the negative side  there's the blathering and waffle (masking a failure to grasp detail), his incapacity to make timely decisions and the dithering that have brought his time as Prime Minister to crisis point.

The Peppa Pig speech was a catastrophe. Suddenly, Boris stopped being a comic turn, and became a liability, just as a new strain of Covid took hold.

He has squandered his considerable charisma with a series of sloppy decisions, seeming to think he can bounce back. First, the public was asked to accept that Dominic Cummings' trip to Barnard Castle during lockdown was not a sacking offence.

Now, we are expected to believe Boris was unaware that while he was pontificating, Churchill-style at his briefing room lectern and ordering us to be sensible, stay at home and not mingle - parties were being held by his staff, breaking the very rules he was ordering outsiders to comply with.

After details of the secret December 18, 2020 Downing Street party emerged, the Ministers blandly promoting the official denials look like craven fools unable to think for themselves.

Not only was there allegedly a party, but also that the invitation was circulated on WhatsApp well in advance, there was wine and food and Secret Santa gifts.

And that various officials made speeches, including Jack Doyle, the PM's director of communications - one of the people who has been saying there was 'no party'.

I suppose if you work for the Tories - the kind of people who will nitpick about whether a toilet is a WC or lavatory but never a loo - you have your own 'special' language in which an illegal party of several dozen workers designated a 'gathering'.

The word 'gathering' almost has religious connotations - an event where no germs were spread because these attendees are 'special' people.

Now, we know that these 'special people' think the rules that the rest of us have been trying to follow just don't apply to them.

I hope every person who was fined for breaking Covid rules in November and December 2020 will now receive a refund from the Bank of Boris.

And maybe it's time for the bloke who once said he wanted to be 'King of the World' to think about bowing out to spend more time with the Pampers.
For millions of us fans of the original Sex And The City series, finally sitting down to watch the much-hyped reboot 20 years on was like getting ready for the Second Coming.

But few had any inkling of the horror that was to come.

The girls we knew and loved  vivacious, fun-filled Carrie (Sarah Jessica Parker), Miranda (Cynthia Nixon) and Charlotte (Kristin Davis)  still dress like they're 30. But they've been gruesomely transformed into a trio of surgically enhanced harridans lamenting missed opportunities and moaning that 'this is what 55 looks like'.

Not for most us it doesn't.

We may be getting on but in the main we embrace our age and relish it. No mid-life women I know have let themselves go like Carrie and Co in this new series And Just Like That.

The plot includes Miranda being incontinent and constantly desperate for the loo. Goodness, she's in her early 50s, not her 80s!

Kristin Davis, Sarah Jessica Parker and Cynthia Nixon on the set of 'And Just Like That...' the follow up series to 'Sex and the City'

The big dilemma for Charlotte is what to do with her grey hair  should she carry on dyeing it; should she use hair extensions? Get over it, woman! Oh, and she's struggling with the (yawn) modern-day storyline of a daughter who wants to dress as a boy.

Meanwhile, our heroine, the once feisty feminist and ex-New York newspaper columnist Carrie, is on a podcast with a transgender host asking her if she's ever pleasured herself on public transport. As you do.

And since the inevitable criticism that the original SATC had an all-white cast, we now have a host of black characters chastising our gals for their white privilege. It is so tiresome, the reboot should have been titled Sexless And Woke In The City.

Most depressing is that the women we loved and laughed with should end up shallow, soulless  and all convinced they're old before their time.

The magic of the show was the way it explored the friendship of a spirited, sexy, clever group of young women who were trying to find both themselves and, of course, love. We understood them and, crucially, identified with one character or another.

Twenty years on we hoped our magical heroines would be mellowed by wisdom and maturity. We wanted a window into the lives of real women a little more at ease with themselves. We didn't want old crones trying to squeeze their bunions into Manolo Blahnik 6in heels.

The new show is miserable and depressing  and without a shred of humour. Although  spoiler alert for those who have not watched the first two episodes  I did get one laugh, when Carrie's husband Mr Big died of a heart attack in the shower.

No need for method acting there, he just remembered how he felt when he first read the script.

Was it genuine regret as Allegra Stratton resigned, sobbing on the steps of her Islington home (pictured)  or an application by the ex-Guardian journalist for a job back where she belongs on the luvvie Left?

Was it genuine regret as Allegra Stratton resigned, sobbing on the steps of her Islington home  or an application by the ex-Guardian journalist for a job back where she belongs on the luvvie Left? As anyone in politics knows  and as Frankie Valli sang  big girls don't cry.

Foreign Office whistle-blower Raphael Marshall says that, when Kabul fell, orders were given for animal charity worker Pen Farthing and his dogs to be evacuated ahead of Afghan translators, some of whom have since been murdered by the Taliban. Operation Pet Rescue with its specially chartered canine flight makes even people who care for animals howl at the injustice.

Is there not some method in the PM's madness? Just as the nation rails against him for No 10's 'rule-breaking' Christmas parties, he hands millions of workers a vote- winning, two-week Christmas holiday with his Plan B work-from-home diktat.

Jennifer Aniston has spoken for many other childless women by challenging those who say she put her career before motherhood: 'You have no clue what's going on with me personally or medically, why I can't have kids,' she says. 'It was really hurtful and just nasty.' Good on you, Jen. For my part, having spent many desperate years trying to conceive, I would have very happily given up my career in exchange for the chance of a child in my arms.

Who knows if Ghislaine Maxwell was victim or vulture in Jeffrey Epstein's evil empire?

I met her long ago  she was draped glamorously on the arm of her father, my then boss, Robert Maxwell.

It's no surprise she ended up with sugar-daddy Epstein, who provided her with the mansions and private jets to which she was accustomed.

Because the one thing Ghislaine is guilty of is an addiction to being a pampered princess.

Now 79 and no longer able to perform on stage due to Parkinson's disease, comedy legend Billy Connolly reminisces: 'I've never really had an 'I've made it moment',' adding that he's still haunted by his impoverished Glasgow childhood and being abused by his family.

Sadly, such traumas never go away. But Billy has prevailed by giving us a lifetime of laughter. His countless fans will never stop chuckling over his oh-so-wise advice, such as: 'Before you judge a man, walk a mile in his shoes.

'After that who cares? He's a mile away and you've got his shoes!'

Foolish Fergie claims she's 'the most persecuted woman in royal history'. Divorced from Prince Andrew 25 years ago but still living with him in his 15 million Royal Lodge in Windsor. Still using the title Duchess of York for her mostly disastrous commercial ventures. Surely she was misquoted. Most 'parasitic', not 'persecuted'?

What is not to love about the Wills and Kate Christmas card, a joyful family picture with their children?

Prince William is second in line to the throne, yet happy to share his family with a grateful nation, while his brother Harry is yet to show any pictures of both his children.

Perhaps Harry is saving the precious photos for his book, an 'intimate and heartfelt' memoir due to be released next year to coincide with the Queen's Platinum Jubilee. Or maybe he's just sent them to Oprah Winfrey.

When BBC Breakfast's Dan Walker was voted off Strictly, he wept, saying of his 'amazing' dance partner, the sexy Nadiya Bychkova: 'There are some people who walk into your life and turn some lights on, and that's what she has done to me.'

So why won't he be taking part in the show's live 2022 tour?

Perhaps it's because his wife of 20 years threatened to punch his lights out if he did.

When BBC Breakfast's Dan Walker was voted off Strictly (left), he wept, and called his sexy dance partner Nadiya Bychkova 'amazing'. Miss Bychkova made a brave appearance (right) looking stunning in a strapless silk dress as she makes her final appearance on It Takes Two with her dance partner Dan Walker

The revelation that Geronimo the alpaca was put down by Government vets despite not having bovine tuberculosis is heartbreaking proof that we animal-lovers always know what's best for our pets.

When I was told by a vet that my moggie Ted's ears would have to be cut off because they had minor tumours, I said: 'Over my dead body.'

A year later, Ted is happily alive, ears slightly awry, purring beside me as I write.

Owner Helen Macdonald with her aplaca Geronimo, who was sentenced to death and executed

Of his role as Phileas Fogg in the BBC adaptation of the Jules Verne novel Around The World In 80 Days, David Tennant says he addresses the 'alarming nature of the British Empire'. Also, that he explores 'the racial and sexual politics of Victorian England'.

Crikey, it's just a daft story about an eccentric Englishman who took a wager in a gentleman's club! What next, the achingly woke Tennant transitioning into a woman mid-Atlantic?

'Whatever Boris's failings, he has just become a dad again and Carrie has a new baby girl'

There is something horrible about the PM's former adviser Dominic Cummings ranting yesterday on a blog that Boris 'got a wrong'un pregnant' and that marrying Carrie would lead to 'inevitable disaster' as she wants to 'control the country' through him.

Whatever Boris's failings, he's just become a dad again and Carrie has a new baby girl.

I'd say that Cummings of Barnard Castle is the 'wrong'un'.
He is the man with arguably the toughest job in British politics right now. As the Tory candidate in perhaps the most pivotal by-election for a political generation, Neil Shastri-Hurst unwittingly finds himself the lightning conductor for a monumental series of self-inflicted Conservative catastrophes.

In the first instance, this by-election is only happening because the previous Tory MP, Owen Paterson, stood down after a lobbying scandal (involving companies which had been paying him 100,000 a year).

From sleaze to cheese and wine, via Peppa Pig, No 10 wallpaper and the dismal failures over the fall of Kabul, along with the opinion polls falling and a growing backbench Tory Plan B mutiny, the other candidates here in North Shropshire scarcely know where to start when lobbing bricks at Dr Shastri-Hursts campaign.

On top of all the above, their chief weapon of choice is the simple fact that he is not local. A major player in regional Tory politics, Dr Shastri-Hurst has been parachuted in from Birmingham.

As the Tory candidate in perhaps the most pivotal by-election for a political generation, Neil Shastri-Hurst unwittingly finds himself the lightning conductor for a monumental series of self-inflicted Conservative catastrophes

Yet it falls to him to sell Boris Johnsons increasingly tarnished wares to the electorate here next Thursday.

Dr Shastri-Hurst does, at least, have two very useful qualifications on his CV. As a former Army doctor and GP, he is well trained in being shot at and in dressing wounds. Right now, he is coping with a lot of both, even when he is just dodging a downpour on the campaign trail.

I join him canvassing in Pant, a village on the Welsh boundaries of this sprawling agricultural constituency. And the blue rosette is like a rifle target.

Your lot are just a bloody disgrace. I dont know how you can show your face with that man of yours in charge. He should resign  or be arrested, like he would be in any other job, thunders retired toolmaker Graham Yapp, sitting at the bar of the Cross Keys, to appreciative nods from other drinkers. Dr Shastri-Hurst hasnt even had time to order his cup of tea.

Nor is Mr Yapp some foam-flecked Trot pining for Jeremy Corbyn. He is a Margaret Thatcher devotee and  until the other day, at least  was a lifelong Tory voter. The lobbying scandal that created this by-election was bad enough, he says, almost trembling with rage. But the mess-up over the Downing Street lockdown party (or was it parties?) has really riled him: You can say what you like but youve lost my vote!

Dr Shastri-Hurst lets him vent his very considerable spleen and then calmly explains that he himself was very disappointed by what he has read about the Downing Street party, that wrongdoing must be punished and so on.

In the first instance, this by-election is only happening because the previous Tory MP, Owen Paterson, stood down after a lobbying scandal (involving companies which had been paying him 100,000 a year). The candidates are pictured above

He doesnt try to duck Mr Yapps stream of invective and takes it on the chin. By the end, he even coaxes a handshake out of his assailant. There still is not a chance in hell that Mr Yapp will return to the Tory fold next week, but the Conservative candidate can console himself with the fact that he wont be voting for anyone else either.

Amazingly, this is not even an unusual scene in Shropshire right now. It seems mind-boggling that there should be the faintest prospect of anyone other than the Tories winning a rural gem comprising five handsome market towns plus a lot of pretty villages and country estates in between.

I find a buoyant and mustard-keen Liberal Democrat campaign headquartered in the former stable block of a charming Tudor mansion, no less. Soulton Hall, in the hands of the Ashton family for centuries, is not far from where Charles Darwin unearthed his first fossil. There is no shortage of fascinating history hereabouts  but this area could be adding a new chapter next week.

For if Boris Johnsons Tories lose this seat, the party will be consumed with wrath and fear in equal measure. Safe-as-houses Tory MPs and their activists will be asking themselves: if it can happen in true-blue Shropshire, then is anywhere going to be secure next time round?

And the bookies  always the safest pointer in these quirky contests  have just put the Lib Dems ahead as favourites. Labour activists are calling it a perfect storm. One Tory minister has called it a clusterf***; another says it is the beginning of the end.

Of course, by-elections have a long and noble tradition of giving incumbent administrations a bloody nose. This one feels different, though. For if the Tories lose, it will not just be symptomatic of the midterm woes of a flabby Government. It will hasten what has already been a very sudden and dramatic change in the political weather.

That change began last month when the PM tried to rig an inquiry into that lobbying scandal involving the then Tory MP, Owen Paterson, only to flip-flop and leave Paterson to fall on his sword. Since when, the list of Tory disasters has been mounting, all of them of the partys own making.

Just yesterday, a YouGov poll gave Labour its highest rating in almost a year. A four-point Opposition lead is not, on paper, grounds for panic, except that the last time Labour were in this position was in the midst of last winters Covid shambles. In other words, it was not during a crisis that was the Governments fault.

Similarly, the summers by-election result in suburban Chesham & Amersham was a heck of a result for the moribund Lib Dems.

However, that one occurred against the backdrop of a hugely unpopular blot on the local landscape, in the form of HS2 building works, which are still gouging vast holes out of the once-lovely Chilterns. An element of Remainer revenge among a middle-class commuter-professional cohort was a factor, too.

For if the Tories lose, it will not just be symptomatic of the midterm woes of a flabby Government. It will hasten what has already been a very sudden and dramatic change in the political weather. That change began last month when the PM tried to rig an inquiry into that lobbying scandal involving the then Tory MP, Owen Paterson, only to flip-flop and leave Paterson to fall on his sword

Here in North Shropshire, there are no vast, unsightly developments in prospect. The area was heavily in favour of Brexit (by nearly two to one in places) and I hear no grumbles about that. The issue here is the Prime Ministers personal integrity and competence. For, remove those issues from the equation, and the other parties really would not have much to go on here.

The Lib Dem candidate is Helen Morgan, a chartered accountant with a teenager at a local school, who came third here at the last General Election. She is making as much noise as she can about the recent closure of a local ambulance station. Were not focusing on sleaze, she says, which seems to be true largely because she doesnt need to. The Tories are doing a better job of it themselves.

I hear similar arguments from Labours Ben Wood, 26, an articulate and confident parliamentary adviser who was born and bred here but seems destined for greater things on safer turf elsewhere.

I am getting four or five Tories a day telling me theyre voting Labour this time, says Mr Wood.

The Downing Street party is the big issue because it reminds people of what a horrible time they were having last year.

There is currently a spat between these two rival camps over suggestions that one should make way for the other in order to oust the Tories.

The Guardian has been urging Labour to step aside, much to the disgust of Labour fans who argue that they have traditionally been runners-up here. The Green candidate, Duncan Kerr, a local councillor, offers a dispassionate overview. The fact is angry Tories wont vote Labour but they might just vote Lib Dem.

He is frank about the outlook. Last week, I didnt imagine that the Lib Dems could get over the line, but thats all changed after whats happened in Downing Street. They could take it.

We are chatting in an Ellesmere car park following a debate arranged by the local National Farmers Union. This seat is not just rural but overwhelmingly agricultural. Even the larger industrial employers here are in the farming game  Oaklands (eggs) and Muller (yoghurts).

You need to know your Defra jargon, which is why Owen Paterson, a former Defra minister, was so popular. For once, the Tory candidate is delighted to get a question about muck-raking  literally. Local farmer Bruce Edwards is angry about Whitehall plans to impose restrictions on when farmers can spread manure on their own fields.

Its hardly Dr Shastri-Hursts area of expertise but he agrees that it should be left to farmers. He has secured Mr Edwardss vote. Hes the only one worth voting for, says the organic dairy farmer.

The Tories have come under attack for hiding their candidate from the media. When Dr Shastri-Hurst is ambushed by a BBC crew on the way out, he actually makes a fairly decent fist of handling the lengthy charge sheet of What about . .? allegations. I notice that he doesnt curtail the interview but lets it run its course.

A Birmingham-born former deputy chairman of the Tories West Midlands group, he is a more experienced operator than some of the partys by-election candidates in recent years. He seems quite capable of fighting his own fights without handlers, which is just as well in the circumstances.

Now 38, he is still a qualified doctor, despite retraining as a barrister, and returned to the NHS during the pandemic. His Indian-heritage father was a devoted lifelong GP in Birmingham, he explains, and his Surrey-born mother was a nurse.

Boris Johnson came up to support his campaign the other day and managed to get his name wrong (he called him Shastri-Hughes). Toe-curling stuff. The would-be MP laughs it off. Ive had much worse, he says.

The other candidates are making much of the fact that he is from far-off metropolitan Brum. He is adamant that he will be making his home here with his wife, Naomi, and baby son, George, should he be elected.

However, that has not been enough to avert defections from the local Tory party. Mark Whittle, another former soldier, was a local Tory association chairman and is a former mayor of Market Drayton. He has just defected to Reform, the party born from the remnants of the Brexit Party and the rubble of UKIP.

The Tories just dumped Neil on us as the candidate before we had a say. I showed him round town and I wasnt impressed and then I decided to leave the party, says Mr Whittle, who served in the Falklands and Kosovo. People here want someone who actually knows that there isnt a bus service to Telford Hospital.

As an ambulance driver himself, Mr Whittle describes other candidates complaints about ambulance station closures as a complete red herring. Its the fact that the Tories are fielding a non-Salopian, he says, and raising two fingers at the general public with their raucous parties, that will do for them here.

He adds that he was expecting a lot of grief and abuse from local Tories when he defected.

In fact, everyone has been very nice about it, he says. The Reform candidate, Kirsty Walmsley, 39, a local businesswoman and mother of two young children, insists that she is a wild card in the election. She will not, of course, win next week but her result is one that the Conservative high command will be watching extremely closely.

Walking the streets of delightful places like Wem  birthplace of the sweet pea  and pub-filled Oswestry, I sense that the Tories still have a strong residual support from voters, especially older ones, for whom the Downing Street party row is just London noise.

It might bias the vote I suppose but its just tit-for-tat stuff, says retired chef John Robinson. Ive had my booster, things are OK. Ill stick with the Conservatives.

Carer and hairdresser Jane Skone speaks for many, however, when she says her erstwhile Tory vote is now very much afloat  if not at sea  after the latest shenanigans.

For there is now another huge problem to park at Boris Johnsons door. At the last election, he saw off the UKIP/Brexit/Reform threat, as a result of which dozens of his candidates became MPs and he won a thumping majority. It was a seismic political achievement.

If Reform now make respectable inroads into the Tory majority next week by appealing to the furious Right of the party, then many sitting MPs will begin to fear a return to the vote-splitting era of Nigel Farage.

That would be an even bigger long-term nightmare than who drank what with whom under the Downing Street mistletoe last Christmas.
All prime ministers start out the same. On those steps of No. 10, the morning after their election, telling us how they will use their new power to make this a better country. To right the wrongs of their predecessors. To do things differently.

But they will also be aware of the old maxim that has stood the test of time: all political careers end in failure.

Thats not as bleak as it sounds. Sometimes it is noble to fail.

Hitler boasted that Dunkirk was a massive defeat for the Allied forces, but history records the evacuation as a triumph of the human spirit.

And so it was. The skippers of those little boats who rescued a seemingly doomed army remain heroes 80 years later.

And in the end, what matters most to every prime minister, however powerful they may have been in their heyday, is something over which they have no influence: that verdict of history.

If Boris Johnson is  as some are speculating  now facing the first stirrings towards his own departure, it will not be because he misjudged the public mood on a question of supreme national importance

Boris Johnson would be less than human if he were not contemplating that this weekend. He may or may not regard his days in Downing Street as numbered, but what he must surely fear as a student of Classics is that his tenure will be seen not as a Greek tragedy, but as a Greek farce.

And he will get little comfort if he looks even to those predecessors whove made the greatest recent impact.

Winston Churchill, the prime minister who led us to victory in 1945, was dumped by that same grateful nation at the first opportunity. They chose a Labour government that promised to build a new land for the returning heroes.

But Churchills place in history was at least secure.

So it was for Margaret Thatcher.

She was dumped by her own party  the one she had led to resounding victories at one election after another  but not before she had transformed the economy by seeing off what she viewed as the over-mighty trade unions.

Then Tony Blair won more elections than any other Labour leader in history.

Pictured: Owen Paterson, who served as MP for North Shropshire from 1997 until his resignation earlier this year

He rescued his party from the hard-Left. But that party eventually turned against him, too, for he had led the nation into a disastrous war based on falsehoods.

And, of course, there was David Cameron  forced to resign when the country rejected his high hopes of a future inside the European Union.

But if Boris Johnson is  as some are speculating  now facing the first stirrings towards his own departure, it will not be because he misjudged the public mood on a question of supreme national importance.

Nor because his grand vision for the future of the United Kingdom was rejected by a sceptical public.

No. It will be because of a Christmas party. Not even a party if we believe the official line. A work gathering.

Its not as if Johnson has been secretly filmed in his boxer shorts tooting on a toy trumpet as he led his drunken staff in a conga last December.

People would have certainly turfed him out for that  but wed have enjoyed the outrage, too.

One to tell the kids about in years to come. The historians would have loved it!

But no. Instead, hes been accused of taking people for fools.

And the best he could muster when a surprisingly effective Keir Starmer fired round after devastating round at him in the House of Commons on Wednesday was: hes playing politics. You know things are desperate when politicians try that whiskery old tactic.

It is not playing politics to point out that there appears to be one law for them and one law for everyone else.

It is not playing politics to remind the Prime Minister that many people in this country were unable to hold the hand of a dying loved one because the law did not allow them into the nursing home last Christmas. The same law that should have barred civil servants from congregating en masse for parties. Sorry. Gatherings.

Wallpaper-gate is rearing its ugly head again, with more questions being raised about Johnsons honesty after the Electoral Commission fined the Conservative Party 17,800 for breaking the law over its recording and reporting of who paid for redecorations at the PMs personal flat

But Johnsons greatest miscalculation is to have ignored the basic lesson of political scandals through the ages. The cover-up is always more harmful than the deed itself.

When all else fails, try telling the truth.

Imagine if Johnson had said something like this when the story about a Downing Street party was first broken by the Mirror: I wasnt there and I didnt hear anything untoward. I was probably in the flat over No. 11 at the time. But Im as shocked as you are.

Ive ordered an immediate inquiry and Ill be asking a few questions myself. If its true, I promise you heads will roll.

We would have tutted a little and reminded Johnson that the Prime Minister is the boss and if he really didnt know, then he damned well should have.

We might even have suggested it wouldnt have happened under, say, Theresa May. But, of course, he said nothing of the sort. Instead we got a string of denials and endless guff about gatherings being different from parties.

He tried, too, to keep Matt Hancock in his job after the then health secretary conducted an affair in his office  again, breaking Covid restrictions

It took that devastating video of the mock press conference to destroy any remaining shreds of credibility.

And the only head that has rolled so far is that of the woman who was Johnsons press secretary at the time, Allegra Stratton. As Sarah Vine wrote in the Mail this week: thats not a good look.

The single question that dominates British politics as I write is: could the eventual head to roll from all this be that of Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson?

A ridiculous question? Perhaps.

He has weathered more scandals and storms than most of us have had hot dinners and has come up grinning every time. And anyway we are still only halfway through the parliamentary term. He might well have a couple of years to recover from this crisis.

Lets assume Omicron turns out to be a sheep in wolfs clothing. That Plan B does the trick and theres no need for another lockdown Christmas.

Lets imagine the NHS gets on top of its appalling waiting lists. That the Brexit deal gives the economy just the boost it needs  and President Macron suddenly gives Boris a big Gallic hug and promises to do whatever it takes to stop migrants crossing to Britain.

Indeed, its certainly possible that in a couple of years, the PM will have persuaded the nation to give him the keys to No. 10 all over again.

But its also at least possible that hell no longer be the leader of the Conservative Party by then.

His problem is that many of his own MPs cant stomach him.

I was often stunned by the contempt leading figures showed for him when we were off mic outside the Today studio.

But then again, politics being the brutal game it is, that doesnt necessarily matter.

Most MPs have one single requirement of their leader  that he helps them keep their seat. And hes been good at that so far.

But the latest opinion polls show the Boris effect is fading.

This Christmas parties saga is only the latest in a long list of calamities. He gave Dominic Cummings his support after his flagrant breach of the Covid rules last year. It ended only when their personal relationship broke down.

He tried, too, to keep Matt Hancock in his job after the then health secretary conducted an affair in his office  again, breaking Covid restrictions.

And now Wallpaper-gate is rearing its ugly head again, with more questions being raised about Johnsons honesty after the Electoral Commission fined the Conservative Party 17,800 for breaking the law over its recording and reporting of who paid for redecorations at the PMs personal flat.

Just look at that trivial, pathetic list. If Johnson fears the verdict of history hes right to do so.
Get your tutus ready because the Sex and the City girls are back in town - exclusively on Sky Comedy!

The highly anticipated new chapter, titled And Just Like That... will see New York friends Carrie Bradshaw (Sarah Jessica Parker), Miranda Hobbes (Cynthia Nixon) and Charlotte York Goldenblatt (Kristin Davis) reunite once again - but this time they're trying to navigate life in their 50s.

Fans will be treated to a whole host of familiar faces, including Mr. Big, Stanford Blatch and Steve Brady, giving us a welcome wave of 90s nostalgia. Plus, there are some new cast members to feast our eyes on, too!

So dust off those Manolo Blahniks and cancel your plans because our favourite girl gang are back and hitting our screens in style on 9 December.

It really is like an early Christmas present!

The Sex and the City new chapter, titled And Just Like That... will see New York City friends Carrie Bradshaw (Sarah Jessica Parker), Miranda Hobbes (Cynthia Nixon) and Charlotte York Goldenblatt (Kristin Davis) reunite once again - but this time they're trying to navigate life in their 50s (pictured) 2021 WarnerMedia Direct, LLC. All Rights Reserved

Boys in the big city! They won our hearts almost two decades ago - and now the men of SATC are back: Chris Noth as Mr Big Mr Big first met Carrie, who he nicknamed 'Kid,' when she accidentally bumped into him on the streets of Manhattan. The handsome commitment-phobe then went on to become Carrie's longtime on-off lover. Despite often being emotionally unavailable, he realised the true extent of his feelings for her when she made the bold decision to move to Paris with her Russian lover. Carrie and Big were then reunited in extravagantly romantic fashion in the French capital and a marriage proposal beckoned. In the two Sex and the City movies we got a peek into the couple's married life together. David Eigenberg as Steve Brady Eigenberg will reprise his role as the occasionally geeky and all round nice guy, Steve. Despite first appearing as Miranda's one-night-stand bartender who wouldn't take no for an answer, he soon became her on-off boyfriend. Miranda then unexpectedly fell pregnant with Steve's baby and they welcomed son Brady in season four. The couple later declared their love for each other at Brady's first birthday party, before tying the knot in a community garden in season six. Evan Handler as Harry Goldenblatt Fan favourite Harry was first introduced to Sex and the City in season 5 when he served as Charlotte's divorce lawyer after she split from husband, Trey MacDougal. The unlikely duo started a relationship and got married. After struggling to conceive, Charlotte and Harry adopted a baby girl, Lily, from China and went on to have a biological daughter they named Rose. Willie Garson as Stanford Blatch And Just Like That... will also see the final screen appearance of Willie Garson, who plays Stanford, after he sadly died in September, aged 57. In Sex And The City 2, Carrie's flamboyant best friend tied the knot with Charlotte's wedding planner Anthony Marentino in a lavish ceremony in the Hamptons. And who could forget the big day? Officiated by the one and only Liza Minnelli and with Carrie acting as Stanford's 'best man,' it was definitely one to remember! Will fans get to see what married life is like for them? Only time will tell! Mario Cantone as Anthony Marentino The no-nonsense wedding planner worked with Charlotte before becoming her good friend. Charlotte tried to set Anthony up with Carrie's closest confidante Stanford, but it backfired when Anthony savagely rejected him. The pair went on to be enemies, before a New Year's Eve party finally brought them together.

Over the course of six seasons and two films, we've been through it all with the girls - from Carrie's tumultuous love affair with Big and Charlotte's infertility struggles, to Miranda's unexpected pregnancy.

And there are plenty more ups and downs to come. But this time, the crew will meet the funny and surprising moments with the wisdom of being that little bit older, and a whole lot wiser.

In a seriously stylish trailer, Miranda and Charlotte are seen back together looking as fabulous as ever on the streets of Manhattan.

Similar to the original series, Carrie narrates, telling viewers: 'They say some things never change. But the truth is, life is full of surprises.'

'And as your story unfolds, the city reinvents itself. And just like that... a new chapter begins.'

The hit franchise first aired in 1998 and not only made a huge mark on the narrative surrounding sexuality - but on our wardrobes, too!

From Carrie's Manolo Blahniks (who can forget the blue satin jewel buckle pumps Big proposed with?) to Charlotte's Prada lipstick print skirt, it's no surprise generations continue to be inspired by the show's fashion trends almost two decades on.

And much to our relief, the trailer and first-look photographs show that style very much remains a central theme throughout the 10-episode spin-off.

So fashion fans, prepare to get sent into a frenzy all over again!

In the promo shot, Carrie is seen putting her best foot forward in towering patent platform heels, paired with a very chic, high waisted black-and-white gingham skirt.

So far... so Carrie Bradshaw!

Oh, and did we forget to mention this new chapter in the lives of Carrie, Miranda and Charlotte is written by executive producer Michael Patrick King, who also wrote and directed the two Sex And The City films?

So it's sure to be a hit! So what's in store for our favourite BFFs?

CARRIE BRADSHAW

Where we left her: It may have been 17 years since the groundbreaking series aired its last episode, but we're still drying our eyes from the unforgettable happy ending which saw commitment-phobe Big go to Paris and finally claim his girl.

Despite not always being his biggest fan, Carrie's pals urged Big to jet off to The City of Light to rescue their lonely friend, who had followed her Russian boyfriend Aleksandr Petrovsky to the French capital.

For Carrie, Paris didn't live up to her expectations, with the artist spending all of his time on his new exhibit, rather than with her.

But her knight in shining armour soon came in the form of her hunky Manhattan businessman, Big, who FINALLY declared she was 'the one.'

The happy couple later tied the knot at New York City Hall.

But fast-forward to the second movie - set two years later - Carrie was left questioning their marriage.

With Big preferring to spend the evening at home watching TV, she found herself feeling far from the party girl she once was.

So has their relationship stood the test of time? You'll have to wait and see!

What's next for Carrie? A quick clip in the latest trailer shows Carrie and Big sharing a romantic embrace in their very lavish kitchen and rustling up dinner together.

But while any gossip about their relationship has remained very tight-lipped, one thing's for sure - Carrie's walk-in-wardrobe will be bustling with more luxury labels than ever before.

From strutting around in two-toned Chanel booties to flaunting her figure in that iconic pink tutu or super sexy 'newspaper' patterned dress, Carrie is famous for her unforgettable array of fun and flirty outfits.

So there's no doubt she'll be returning to the box in true Bradshaw style!

So has Carrie's relationship with Mr Big stood the test of time? You'll have to wait and see!

Get your tutus ready because the Sex and the City girls are back in town - exclusively on Sky Comedy!

CHARLOTTE YORK GOLDENBLATT

Where we left her: After converting to Judaism and marrying Harry Goldenblatt (Evan Handler), Charlotte's dreams of becoming a mother were dashed when she suffered a heartbreaking miscarriage.

For much of the series, Harry and his wife were seen struggling to conceive, before deciding to begin a highly emotional adoption journey.

The final episode ended with the pair being approved to adopt a baby girl from China who they named Lily.

By the time Sex and the City 2 arrived, Charlotte was a proud mother-of-two after she and Harry expanded their brood with a daughter named Rose.

In her terrible twos, Rose proved to be quite the handful. But that wasn't Charlotte's only worry...

She grew increasingly concerned that her husband had eyes for the family's new Irish nanny, Erin (Alice Eve), who she amusingly referred to as 'Erin Go Braless' (for obvious reasons!)

Thankfully, there was nothing to worry about after she discovered Erin was gay.

What's next for Charlotte? And Just Like That... will focus on the iconic trio, Charlotte, Carrie and Miranda.

However, it's likely the children - Lily and Rose plus Miranda's son Brady - all of whom have now been recast as teenagers, will play key characters as they make up a new generation of Sex and the City characters.

After suffering many struggles - from finding a man to going through divorce - fingers crossed Charlotte will finally get the happy ending she deserves.

And let's not forget Elizabeth Taylor - Charlotte's Cavalier King Charles Spaniel. Will she be making her stylish return in Burberry accessories? Let's hope so!

MIRANDA HOBBES

Where we left her: In the first Sex and the City movie, the fiery lawyer who was forever cynical about relationships and men was living with husband Steve (David Eigenberg) and their son, Brady, then five, in Brooklyn.

Sadly, viewers learned that Steve's mother Mary's health had deteriorated following a stroke, and that she had moved into a home.

During a coffee date with the girls, Miranda blurted out that she and Steve hadn't been intimately involved in six months, and to make matters even worse, he'd slept with another woman.

Despite Steve begging for forgiveness, Miranda called it quits on their relationship. Thanks to the encouragement of her friends, however, the pair went to couples' therapy to try and work things out.

They both met up on Brooklyn Bridge a couple of weeks later - a pact they'd decided to go ahead with if they both wanted to forget the past and embark on a future together.

When it came to the redhead's professional life, however, things didn't work out quite so neatly.

In the second Sex and the City film, Miranda quit her job after her sexist boss continued to disregard her opinion, just because she was a woman. With nothing else lined up, her future career remained uncertain.

What's next for Miranda? After joining a more relaxed firm who appreciated her expertise, it's likely Miranda will remain as career-driven as ever.

And avid fans of the franchise will no doubt be looking forward to catching up on her personal life, when we reunite with her once again.

But whatever happens, the trio will laugh through the good times and the bad thanks to the self-awareness and growth they've experienced over the last two decades.- with Miranda sure to remain as witty as ever!

And with only hours until it hits our screens, we really can't wait to catch up with the girls.

Homeland and Little Fires Everywhere actress Sarita Choudhury has landed the role of single, self-made powerhouse Manhattan real estate broker Seema Patel.
The Duchess of Cambridge has adopted a 'powerful' red as her 'go-to statement colour' for big public events, a stylist has revealed.

Kate Middleton, 39, stepped out in a 30,000 Catherine Walker coat in a vibrant scarlet colour as she hosted a Christmas carol service in London this week.

The royal has also worn the statement colour for other significant events over the past year, including the launch of her Hold Still photography book, a milestone Covid-19 solo project, and an Action for Addiction event where she delivered the keynote address.

A stylist has revealed how the choice might be an indication of the mother-of-three's growing confidence, with Rochelle White telling FEMAIL: 'I feel that Kate has chosen red because it can come across as highly charged as well as warm. It draws the attention and catches the eye more than most colors.

The Duchess of Cambridge, 39, has adopted 'bold and striking' red as her 'go-to statement colour' for big public events, a stylist has revealed. Pictured above, in a 30,000 Catherine Walker coat to host a Christmas carol service in London this week

She continued: 'As red is a hard colour to pull off, Kate does it well.

'Red is a powerful colour and the association with it can have a strong pull and can make a statement.

'As Kate is seen as a fashion figure to many, when she wears this colour, I think it shows her personality and adventurous side which is very relatable.'

Stylist Hannah Eichler added that the Duchess of Cambridge made the 'provokating' colour work with tailored cuts.

'A red coat is an essential in Kates wardrobe  from Catherine Walker to Eponine London and Hobbs, its her instant trick to adding a statement to simple outfits, whether shes going head to toe red or wearing with wintery boots or camel colours,' she said.

'Kates secret to wearing red is to opt for tailored cuts which balance the punchy hue and keep her looking presentable for public engagements.

The mother-of-three has worn the statement colour for other significant events over the past year, including to launch her Hold Still photography competition in October 2020 (left) and on the UK train tour (right) around the UK in December 2020

'Kate will then add texture, such as with her Christopher Kane pleated skirt or tartan look by Emilia Wickstead,' she added.

And the stylist added Kate was showing her 'fierce' side by picking the colour.

'Colour psychologists state red is known for provoking the strongest emotions  often seen as a fierce colour, when it comes to the Duchess, Kate will wear red for engagements in which she feels passionate or cares deeply about about,' she said.

'Red is famous for being the warmest colour, which will make Kates public feel drawn to her, while its also used to assert power which will work as a confidence booster,' she added.

In October last year, the Duchess stepped out in a bold crimson coat as she joined by Prince William to meet with one of the subjects from her lockdown photography competition at Waterloo Station.

The Duchess wore the Alexander McQueen coat as she joined the Duke to visit Waterloo in south London to view one of the 112 Hold Still community exhibition sites.

And just two months later, she donned the same pillar-box red coat as she stepped out on a UK wide train tour with the Duke.

The Duchess repeated a similar look as she launched her Hold Still photography book at the National Portrait Gallery in London in May 2021 (pictured). She wore a vibrant red coat from London boutique Eponine

That time, the mother-of-three paired the coat with a red tartan scarf and matching skirt.

The Duchess donned her black Ralph Lauren boots for the occasion, and stayed warm with a pair of black leather gloves.

She swept her hair into a bouncy half updo, revealing her gold hoop earrings from independent Welsh designer Hayley Jones' brand Spells of Love.

The Duchess repeated a similar look as she launched her Hold Still photography book earlier this summer.

To mark the release, the Duchess of Cambridge met with contributors at the National Portrait Gallery and launched a royal treasure hunt in collaboration with the Book Fairies organisation.

The Duchess appeared animated as she arrived at the gallery in central London, cutting a striking figure in a vibrant red coat from London boutique Eponine.

The piece, which is from their Autumn/Winter 2018 collection but hasn't been seen on the Duchess in public before, features a mandarin collar and pretty button detailing.

And she opted for a similarly striking crimson outfit as she met with presenters Ant and Dec at an Action for Addiction event in October, where she wore a customised 845 red Christopher Kane skirt and a 225 Ralph Lauren jumper

The Duchess paired the striking coat with simple brown accessories, including her new DeMellier micro-handbag, and opted for a pleated tan midi skirt beneath the coat.

Online, the 295 bag is described as a 'perfectly proportioned statement piece' which can fit 'handbag essentials' including 'most phones' as well as keys and a small purse.

And she opted for a similarly striking crimson outfit as she met with presenters Ant and Dec at an Action for Addiction event in October 2021.

On that occasion, Kate looked radiant in a customised 845 red Christopher Kane skirt and a 225 Ralph Lauren jumper.

She cut an elegant figure as she stepped out for the Together At Christmas event in London, which celebrates the 'incredible work' of pandemic heroes including charity workers, teachers and volunteers

The mother-of-three debuted a new red Catherine Walker coat dress for the outing, which featured a large bow detailing across the bodice, as she arrived at the event alongside Prince William, 39

And days ago, she cut an elegant figure as she stepped out for the Together At Christmas event in London, which celebrates the 'incredible work' of pandemic heroes including charity workers, teachers and volunteers.

The mother-of-three debuted a new red Catherine Walker coat dress for the outing, which featured a large bow detailing across the bodice, as she arrived at the event alongside Prince William, 39.

The coat dress, thought to be worth around 3,000, is a new ensemble for the Duchess, who previously wore a black version of the coat to attend Prince Philip's funeral in April.

Meanwhile the royal added a touch of glamour to her outfit with the Queen Mother's sapphire and diamond fringe earrings, and recycled her 640 red suede bag by Miu Miu for the occasion, first worn in September 2016.
An Australian mum-of-two has shared how to wrap up a gift to look like a miniature shirt and bow tie.

Chantel Mila who posts videos online as 'Mama Mila', has shared the wrapping style just in time for Christmas to give people a new and easy way to wrap gifts.

The mum begins by wrapping gift wrap paper around the present and base as normal.

Chantel Mila who posts videos online as ' Mama Mila ', has shared the miniature shirt wrapping style just in time for Christmas to give people a new and easy way to wrap gifts

Next she flips the gift over onto its side and rolls the top paper down twice, once the paper is rolled she makes two slits toward the centre.

Mama Mila then folds the slits into a shirt collar shape and secures the gift wrap paper with sticky tape.

She finishes the gift wrap with a matching bow tie made from the same patterned paper.

The wrapping style will add an extra festive flair to gifts and will stun friends and family with your whimsical wrapping skills.

'This is super cute, wow I love this idea,' a woman commented online.

'I wish I saw this TikTok before I wrapped all of my mans shirts for Christmas,' another said.

Melbourne blogger Chantel Mila (pictured right), who goes by MamaMila online, shared her technique of creating a stunning bow for your Christmas gifts in a viral video posted to TikTok

The handy mum from Melbourne also shared her tip for making the bowtie detail featured on the shirt, in an online video.

She starts by getting a long strip of scrap wrapping paper, folding it in half lengthways and cutting it into a fish-like or untied bowtie shape.

After cutting a triangle out of the 'tail', Chantel snips two small slits at the narrowest points on either side, one at the top and one at the bottom.

She then slides the slits into one another and pushes down the opposite side to the centre to create a bow shape.

Chantel then secures the bow by using another small strip of wrapping paper in the centre and sticks it to her gift.

'I love it, can't believe you made this all out of scraps,' a woman commented online.
Princess Charlene of Monaco has missed her twins' seventh birthday after being admitted to a treatment facility with 'emotional and physical exhaustion'.

The royal, 43, shared photos of her twins Gabriella and Jacques celebrating their 7th birthday on Instagram today, with the caption: 'Happy birthday my babies. Thank you God for blessing me with such wonderful children. I'm truly blessed. Love mom.'

The snaps show the twins, dressed in matching pyjamas, blowing out candles on a cake shaped like the number '7', in a room decorated with balloons and birthday banners. It appears to have been taken in a royal residence.

Speaking to People, Prince Albert confirmed that the children had celebrated without their mother, but said that it's the family's greatest wish for them to visit Charlene before Christmas

'It's what we most hope for, but there is no definite date at this time,' he said.

Prince Albert revealed last month his wife had been admitted to a European treatment facility within days of her return to Monaco following a 10-month absence in her native South Africa.

He said she is suffering from 'exhaustion, both emotional and physical', while friends recently told Page Six that the mother-of-two 'almost died' while she was in South Africa.

Proud mother: Princess Charlene of Monaco has broken her silence after being admitted to a treatment facility while suffering from 'emotional and physical exhaustion' to wish her twins a happy birthday, sharing these beautiful family photos (one pictured)

Celebration: The snaps show the twins, dressed in matching pyjamas, blowing out candles on a cake shaped like the number '7', in a room decorated with balloons and birthday banners

Touching words: The royal, 43, shared photos of her twins Gabriella and Jacques celebrating their 7th birthday today, with the caption: 'Happy birthday my babies. Thank you God for blessing me with such wonderful children. I'm truly blessed. Love mom'

Speaking to the publication, a source described as the royal's friend said: 'It is unfair that she is being portrayed as having some kind of mental or emotional issue.

'We don't know why the palace is downplaying that she almost died in South Africa.'

The source explained the royal had a severe ear, nose and throat infection, which resulted in 'severe sinus and swallowing issues stemming from an earlier surgery'.

The friend added: 'She has not been able to eat solid food in over six months because of all the surgeries she has since gone through. She has only been able to take in liquids through a straw, so she lost nearly half her body weight.'

Elsewhere friends of Princess Charlene gave Tatler a rare insight into what the royal is really like, insisting that the former swimmer is a force to be reckoned with.

One source rubbished any public perception that Charlene is 'naive' and trapped in an unhappy marriage with Albert, saying: 'I don't for one second think she did not know what she was doing when she married him.'

Prince Albert revealed last month his wife had been admitted to a European treatment facility within days of her return to Monaco following a 10-month absence in her native South Africa. The royal looked frail in this Instagram post shared from South Africa in October

Princess Charlene was reunited with her family in Monaco on November 8 and the palace released this photo. However days later she was admitted to a treatment facility

Missing their mother: Meanwhile Prince Albert has continued to make public appearances with their six-year-old twins, Jacques and Gabriella, who held up these signs to Charlene during the Monaco National Day celebrations on November 19

But one warned the mother of Prince Jacques and Princess Gabriella, seven, is not the type to be blindly controlled by the Monaco royal household.

'Charlene is no Princess Di.' one said. 'She may come across as being extremely naive, but nothing could be further from the truth. She is very good at keeping her smarts under wraps.'

Meanwhile Prince Albert has continued to make public appearances with their twins, Jacques and Gabriella. The trio attended a tree planting event in Monaco and the Monaco National Day celebrations, where the children held up heartrending signs saying, 'Miss you Mommy' and 'Love you Mommy'.

Timeline: Prince Albert and Princess Charlene's 10 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 September 1 - Charlene is admitted under an alias to the Netcare Alberlito Hospital after suddenly 'collapsing' September 2 - She is discharged, with a statement from the Palais Princier reading: 'Her Highness is closely monitored by Her medical team who said that Her condition was not worrying' September 23 - Prince Albert attends the 2021 Monte Carlo Gala for Planetary Health September 29 - Prince Albert is joined on the red carpet by actress Sharon Stone for a first look at the eagerly anticipated James Bond release September 30 - Charlene releases a stylish video promoting her anti-poaching campaign from her South African bolthole October 3 - Princess Charlene shares a photograph of herself smiling in front of a bible in her first snap since being discharged from hospital following her health scare October 5 - Prince Albert attends Sportel Awards Ceremony in Monte Carlo with nephew Louis Ducruet October 6 - Albert tells RMC radio Charlene is 'ready to come home' October 8 - Princess undergoes surgery in South Africa November 8 - Charlene arrives back in Monaco. Prince Albert said within hours it became clear she was 'unwell' November 13 - Prince Albert attends Expo 2020 in Dubai without Princess Charlene Following his return from the trip, Prince Albert holds an intervention with Charlene's brothers and a sister-in-law in which Charlene 'confirmed' she would seek 'real medically framed treatment' outside of Monaco November 16 - Royal household confirms Princess Charlene will not attend National Day celebrations on November 19 - Prince Albert attends a Monaco Red Cross event without Princess Charlene November 17 - Prince Albert reveals Princess Charlene has left Monaco and is recovering in a secret location November 19 - Prince Albert reveals Charlene is in a treatment facility 'elsewhere in Europe' after a family intervention Advertisement

In interviews, Albert explained he had stepped up to play a bigger role in his children's lives as the family copes with Charlene's ongoing health issues.

Jacques and Gabriella are homeschooled at the palace after being taken out of the classroom due to Covid.

'For me, it's pretty simple  my priority is my family,' he said in an interview this month. 'Of course, without neglecting state affairs... I hope everyone understands that. When I can be with my kids, I do it without hesitation.

'This is an extremely important time in their life  the way they grow up helps them see the world.

'And if one of the parents is away for medical reasons, the other parent has to be there. I have heard too many friends and acquaintances telling me that they wish they had been there for their children, at a certain age, taken up by their work or their professional life. I don't want to have these regrets.'

Charlene returned to her husband and twins Jacques and Gabriella in Monaco earlier this month following a 10-month absence, while she recovered from surgery following a sinus infection she contracted during a solo charity trip to her native South Africa earlier this year.

In the days after her arrival, Charlene's sister-in-law Chantell Wittstock, told MailOnline the princess may not be returning to the palace and did not plan to immediately return to public engagements, although she later retracted the remark.

Charlene's time away followed fresh allegations last December that Albert had fathered a love-child (which would be his third, if proven) with an unnamed Brazilian woman during the time when he and Charlene, a former Olympic swimmer for South Africa, were already in a relationship.

Photographs of their reunion earlier this month were greeted with a hefty dose of scepticism by the French media.

Albert was waiting for her at the Monte Carlo helipad, along with their six-year-old twins, Princess Gabriella and Prince Jacques. The family were joined by a hand-picked photographer inside the Palace walls for the 'reunion' photos.

Albert said the family reunion in Monaco last week after she spent six months in her native South Africa initially went 'pretty well' in the first few hours, but it then became 'pretty evident' that Charlene was 'unwell.'

He said the former Olympian 'realised she needed help', adding: 'She was overwhelmed and couldn't face official duties, life in general or even family life.'

Albert explained: 'I'm probably going to say this several times, but this has nothing to do with our relationship. I want to make that very clear. These are not problems within our relationship; not with the relationship between a husband and wife. It's of a different nature.'

He went on to tell the magazine her current state was a result of 'several factors which are private'.

Albert continued: 'She hadn't slept well in a number of days and she wasn't eating at all well. She has lost a lot of weight, which made her vulnerable to other potential ailments. A cold or the flu or God help us, COVID.'

He said it is 'not cancer-related or personal relationship issue.'

He later confirmed Charlene has been admitted to a treatment facility for undisclosed medical issues, as she works through a period of ill health. The location of the facility was not confirmed, though several sources claim it is in Switzerland.

The prince also said rumours around the state of his marriage 'don't bother him too much'.

Doubts about the central relationship of Monaco's royal family are not new.

Several residents living in the narrow medieval alleys of Monaco Ville confirmed to MailOnline that before she left for South Africa Charlene was spending most of her time outside the Palace, living in a modest two-bedroom apartment above an old chocolate factory about 300m away, rather than in the 12th Century Palace itself.

'We often saw her outside the Palace and she would usually be alone or with a bodyguard,' said one source, 'but she was never with Albert - it was obvious she chose to spend most of her time in the apartment rather than the palace.'

Princess Charlene met Prince Albert in 2000 during a swimming competition in Monaco and the pair married in 2011, before welcoming twins Gabriella and Jacques in 2014.

Born in Rhodesia- a previously unrecongised state in Southern Africa colonised by the British, she relocated to South Africa aged 11.

She had a successful swimming career and went on to win three gold medals and a silver medal at the 1999 All Africa Games in Johannesburg, as well as representing South Africa at the 1998 and 2002 Commonwealth Games and winning a silver medal in the 4  100 m medley relay in the latter competition.

However the pair's marriage has made numerous headlines over the years, with a third paternity suit emerging last year.

Soon afterwards Charlene infamously shaved half her head in the style of a punk rocker last December.

This was seen as the first public sign of a worsening crisis that could end in a multi-million pound divorce.

Charlene's exile in South Africa began a month after it emerged last December that Albert was facing yet another paternity suit.

A Brazilian woman who cannot be named for legal reasons said her 15-year-old daughter was the result of an affair with Albert in 2004.

Princess Charlene - whose frail appearance has sparked concerns - shared controversial photos of the couple hugging in South Africa earlier this year

Albert and Charlene were not yet engaged at this time, but they had known each over for four years after meeting at a swimming gala in Monaco in 2000.

Lawyers for the claimant were scheduled to demand a DNA test from Albert at a court in Milan earlier this year, while his own counsel branded the action 'a hoax'.

Neither party is now commenting, suggesting some kind of generous settlement may have been reached, as happened with Albert's earlier love children.

They are Jazmin Grace Grimaldi, who is now 29 and the result of Albert's affair with an American estate agent, and Alexandre Coste, 17, whose mother is a former Togolese air hostess.

Both children were struck off Monaco's line of succession in return for vast financial settlements.
A takeaway owner has claimed he's been hit with a wave of fraudulent refund requests after Just Eat changed its policy for diners who ask for their money back.

Hassan Habib owns Lucky's diner in Oldham, Greater Manchester, said he's noticed his restaurant, which has a rating of 5.5 stars out of six on the takeaway platform, has noticed a sudden spike in complaints.

He's said one of the most brazen requests complained that an order including cheesecake, milkshakes and ice-cream was 'cold,' the Manchester Evening News reported.

He claimed dodgy clients are taking advantage of a new policy on refunds that Just Eat introduced earlier this year to match what competitors like UberEats and Deliveroo.

Before the change, Just Eat would contact the restaurants to check if complaints were legitimate. The restaurant would have ten days to give a 'yes or no' answer, and the request would then be accepted or dismissed and a refund issued when appropriate.

Under the new system, Just Eat automatically charges restaurants for any food-related complaints, such as quality or missing items. The restaurant then have 30 days to question the refund and prove the request was legitimate.

Hassan Habib owns Lucky's diner in Oldham, Greater Manchester, said he's noticed his restaurant, which has a rating of 5,5 stars on the takeaway platform, has been receiving much more complains than before on Jus East

Just Eat told MailOnline that the ne system gives restaurant more time to dispute refunds, and that they are working hard on blocking fraudulent accounts from the platform and return the money to restaurant if they can prove fraudulent activity.

Hassan said that while the fraud issue existed prior to Just Eat changing its policy, this change has made the problem worse.

'They just order food, put down X, Y, Z is wrong with it, do a refund and leave us to the costs,' he said.

Often the accounts that request refunds are new to Just Eat and have never ordered before, signifying that they may be scammers.

Pictured: the milkshakes served at Lucky's. One brazen refund request complained that an order consisting of cheesecake, milkshakes and ice-cream arrived 'cold,' Hassan claimed

Under the old refund system, Just Eat would contact restaurants after receiving a complaint, and would ask them if they thought the request was legitimate or not. The restaurant then had ten days to respond and dispute the refund.

Within the new system, the restaurants will be charged for complaints, and then have 30 days to dispute refund requests, but the onus is on them to prove the claim wasn't legitimate.

Hassan said he understands that some orders can go wrong, and has been making it up to customers with either full refunds or replacing items when issues have occurred in the past.

Hassan said Lucky's, pictured, has been working with Just Eat for over two years. Just Eat have claimed that the fraud issue was separate from the new refund system

'But now some really bad, evil people are taking advantage of this loophole and it's left us in a really bad position,' he said.

Having worked with Just Eat for more than two years, Hassan claimed the refund issues have only started to arise recently.

He claimed the new system has made it easier for customers to get refunds, but harder for restaurant owners to dispute the charges.

Hassan said he wants other business owners to know what he's been through, and has called on Just Eat and its competitors to make it harder for fraudulent accounts to game the system.

The restaurant owner is also trying to stage a protest with other owners, and is hoping to gather 50 to 100 companies who partner with Just Eat willing to switch their takeaway order machines for an hour to express their discontent.

He said: 'Weve got dining facilities but what about the restaurants that rely on deliveries?

'People are literally crying - what is going on?'

A spokesperson for Just Eat said: 'Just Eat is only successful if our restaurant partners are successful and we have a track record of helping restaurants prosper.

'The recent measures weve put in place are in line with industry standards and are to ensure an even fairer refunds process for all, such as increasing the time for restaurants to raise any disputes.

'Restaurant partners are always refunded in full when we find any fraudulent activity taking place.

'Were keen to maintain an open dialogue with the restaurants on our platform and continue to review our policies and processes in this space to support both customers and restaurants alike.'
The husband of BBC broadcaster Rachael Bland, who died from breast cancer in 2018, has revealed that he is to wed again - after romantically proposing to his girlfriend while on a trip to Denmark.

Steve Bland, who replaced his late wife as one third of the BBC podcast You, Me and the Big C following her death, shared his happy news with his 14,600 Instagram followers on Thursday.

Posting a string of romantic photos showing off his new fiancee Amy's sparkly engagement ring, the 41-year-old, who lives in Cheshire, captioned the images with a simple 'She said YES!'

The proposal came while Steve, who has a seven-year-old son, Freddie, by his late wife, and the NHS nurse were enjoying a romantic getaway in the Danish capital of Copenhagen.

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A delighted Steve Bland, who lost BBC broadcaster wife Rachael to breast cancer in 2018, told his followers that his new partner, NHS nurse Amy, has agreed to marry him after a romantic proposal while on a mini break in Denmark

Steve and Rachael Bland pictured before her death from breast cancer in 2018; the widower has previously spoken about how he doesn't feel guilty about moving on with his life

Steve met his new partner Amy, an advanced nurse practitioner in 2019 at a cancer conference in Manchester. Yesterday he shared this photo to his Instagram page celebrating the proposal

The couple were congratulated by hundreds of friends on Instagram, with Deborah James, aka Bowel Babe, one of Bland's co-hosts on the You, Me and the Big C podcast writing: 'Congratulations' alongside a string of emojis.

And fellow podcast co-host Lauren Mahon added her own best wishes, writing: 'THE BEST BEST BEST BEST BEST NEWS!!!!!! F***ing love the pair of you.'

The widower has spoken out in the past about refusing to feel guilty about finding love again with the NHS nurse Amy following Rachael's death from breast cancer in 2018.

In May this year, he told ITV's Lorraine show that people often asked him if he felt guilty about dating again.

He said: 'It's one of the most common questions I get asked: 'Do I feel guilty? 'Why should I? I'm 40-years-old and I've got the rest of my life ahead of me.'

Bland warmed fans that his Instagram stories would be full of 'overly cheesy' posts following the couple's engagement announcement

Ahead of the proposal, the couple shared a photo of their mini break, chinking glasses as they headed to the Danish city

Earlier this year, Bland, pictured with Amy, told Lorraine: 'We need to break down the taboo' of dating again after the loss of a partner

The former BBC radio presenter Rachael (right with Steve and Freddie) was diagnosed with triple negative breast cancer in 2016 and died in 2018

Referencing the son, Freddie, seven, that he shares with Rachael, he said: 'Rachael wanted me to be happy and wanted Freddie to be happy.

'We need to break down the taboo and stop worrying about being judged for it. We're trying to be happy and to make the most of life.'

Steve met Amy, an advanced nurse practitioner at a cancer conference in Manchester in 2019, after he gave a talk about his late wife and her death from primary triple-negative breast cancer.

Speaking in 2020 about getting together with new love Amy, he told the Daily Mail: 'We took our time but, of course, my life revolves around Freddie so it's difficult to get to know someone properly without involving them in his life, too'.

'Going out in the evening is a military operation for a lone parent, organising babysitters, and my parents are a huge help, looking after Freddie when I go to London for work, but I don't want to put upon them too much, so Amy would mostly come to us.'

While Amy (pictured with Steve's son Freddie) does not relish the limelight, it was out of respect to her that Steve decided to go public with their relationship in 2020

The broadcaster has said that dating after loss isn't always easy for the person in the relationship who hasn't lost someone.

'It's about looking forward and can be a tricky balance, it's something Amy and I have talked about it. There's a lot of focus on the widow/widower. Rachael was high profile and it's really difficult to feel like you're not living in their shadow.

Rachael (pictured) was a BBC Radio 5 Live broadcaster who also hosted the podcast You, Me And The Big C, a role that Steve has now taken over

He also praised Damien Lewis and Helen McCrory for going public with a conversation they'd had about dating after loss before Helen's death from cancer aged 52 on April 16th.

Bland said: 'It's amazing they talked so openly about it; that does wonders for breaking down taboos.'

Following Rachael's death, Bland took over on the podcast You, Me and the Big C airs tomorrow alongside co-hosts Deborah James and Lauren Mahon.
A Nevada stripper sought the ultimate revenge after one of her mother's co-workers threatened to 'out' her job to her mom - only for her to end up getting the woman 'fired' for trying to expose her.

Exotic dancer Alaska Young, who is based in Reno, took to TikTok to call out her mother's former colleague, sharing screenshots of the threatening DMs she sent after discovering Alaska's social media accounts and realizing what she does for a living.

Alaska regularly posts videos and images of herself at work, and also shares stories about her experiences as a stripper on her social media accounts, suggesting that she is in no way trying to hide her choice of career from the world.

But her openness about her job didn't stop one woman from taking aim at her via DM, while threatening to tell Alaska's mother about her 'stripping career'.

A stripper revealed that one of her mother's co-workers threatened to 'out' her career to her mom, only to get fired for making the threat in the end

The stripper, who is named Alaska, regularly posts videos of herself dancing and often shares stories from her experiences at work online

She received a nasty message from one of her mom's co-workers, and the woman said she 'couldn't wait to see the look on her mom's face' when she told her about her 'stripper career'

Nice try: It turns out, Alaska's mom already knew about her job, and was totally accepting of it

In the end, the move totally back-fired on the woman and she got fired from her own workplace, after Alaska showed the messages to her HR department

In the first message, which appears to have been sent shortly after the woman found Alaska's Instagram account, she writes: 'Does your mom know [you're] a stripper!!! Lol lol.

'I can't wait to see the look on her face when I ask her about our stripper career.'

Sharing the DM in a TikTok video captioned, 'That one time my mom's coworker tried to out me as a stripper,' Alaska went on to reveal her quick clapback to the woman.

She wrote: 'She knows [because] she's accepting and loves her kids no matter what,' before adding a threat of her own: 'How will your HR department feel about this?'

Still, the woman refused to back down, replying: 'Oh she knows!! Bwahahaha that's even better. Thank you for that.'

Although Alaska didn't share anymore details about her interactions with her mom's colleague, she went on to claim that the woman had actually 'been fired' as a result of her threat.

Alaska shared what went down in a now-viral TikTok video, which has gained more than one million views and 200,000 likes

Unbothered! Alaska joked that her mom is her 'best friend' and the 'first person she called about what happened'

In the comment section, Alaska explained that this was 'one of many inappropriate things she did' and it seemed to be the 'last straw' for the HR department.

'She had been reported multiple times,' she wrote. 'This was just the last straw.'

Many people flooded the comments with support for Alaska and praised her for sticking up for herself.

One person wrote: 'Normalize people putting people in their place and giving them the consequence they deserve.'

'People like that are just bummers to be around in general,' another added. 'You probably did everyone there a big favor.'

In the comment section, Alaska explained that this was 'one of many inappropriate things she did' and it seemed to be the 'last straw' for the HR department

Showing support: Many people flooded the comments with love for Alaska and praised her for sticking up for herself

Other TikTok users joked that now that the woman was out of a job, she may have to become a stripper herself

Someone else said: 'Yeah, she crossed several lines with that one. I bet a lot of people at her job are relieved she's gone. Good on you guys for standing up to that.'

'It's crazy how people can hate on you to the point they're obsessing over trying to hurt you but end up hurting themselves,' another viewer commented.

'Damn, she could have minded her own business and still had a job, yet here we are,' one message read.

She even joked that her mom is her 'best friend' and the 'first person she called about what happened.'

Someone wrote, 'Miss ma'am my mom would be the first person I would call, she's my bestie,' to which Alaska agreed.

'That's exactly what happened,' she replied.

Other TikTok users joked that now that the woman was out of a job, she may have to become a stripper herself.

'Good for you,' a fellow stripper, named Kareena, wrote. 'People are so miserable, especially towards our lifestyle. Now, she may have to dance.'
Heir-to-the-throne got the opportunity to sign the same visitors' book he wrote in when he enrolled as a student in 1969

The Prince of Wales took a trip down memory lane this afternoon, visiting Aberystwyth University, where he was a student more than 50 years ago.

The royal, 73, looked on jovial form as he donned a mask to officially open the institute's new Veterinary Education Centre.

Charles arrived just after midday on Friday at the university, which sits on the north Welsh coast, to speak to the first cohort of veterinary students who began their studies in September this year.

Reminiscing about his own time at the university, he quipped: 'I have a horrifying feeling it's 52 years since I was here. But I have very special memories of that time.'

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Five decades on, the Prince of Wales looked delighted to be back at Aberystwyth University on Friday as he opened the new Veterinary Education Centre - and enjoyed a cup of tea as he took a tour of the campus

Dem bones! The royal, 73, donned a mask supporting the Turquoise Mountain charity as he adhered to the university's mask-wearing rules

The heir to the throne got the opportunity to sign the same visitors' book he wrote in when he enrolled as a student in 1969

The royal shook hands with a member of staff at Hafod Hardware store in East St, Rhayader, Wales, to celebrate independent businesses and show support for the local high street

Royally good cheer! The Prince looked in great spirits as he shared a joke with members of the public on his way to visit a hardware store

The royal wore a snug-looking camel-coloured coat to keep warm in the brisk temperatures, and while indoors he followed the university's mask-wearing policy, donning a mask with a Turquoise Mountain design, referencing one of the charities he supports.

It's been a busy few weeks for the Prince, who visited Jordan and Egypt in November before heading to Barbados to mark the Caribbean country becoming independent of the British Commonwealth on November 30th.

Today, travelling solo, the Prince was greeted by the Lord-Lieutenant of Dyfed, Sara Edwards, the University's chancellor, Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd, and vice chancellor Professor Elizabeth Treasure, along with other local dignitaries.

He unveiled an official plaque to mark the official opening of the school. The centre on the Penglais campus has been opened jointly with the Royal Veterinary College as Wales' first and only School of Veterinary Science, and funded by 500,000 in donations from alumni.

Those who attend will spend the first two years at Aberystwyth University followed by three years at the Royal Veterinary College's Hawkshead Campus in Hertfordshire.

They will also have the opportunity study specific areas of veterinary science through the medium of Welsh.

After touring the centre, the Prince even got the opportunity to sign the same visitors' book he wrote in when he enrolled as a student in 1969.

The Prince of Wales walks with the Lord-Lieutenant of Dyfed, Sara Edwards, as he arrives to open Aberystwyth University's new School of Veterinary Science at Aberystwyth University

The 73-year-old heir to the throne whips off a satin cloth from the official opening plaque to announce the facility open

He told students: 'I have a horrifying feeling it's 52 years since I was here. But I have very special memories of that time.'

One isn't horsing around: the Prince listened intently as he chatted to students at the educational facility about their studies

The Prince passes a life-size model of a horse, with the internal organs chalked on the outside

The Prince of Wales passes an animal skeleton as he enjoys a tour of the state-of-the-art facilities

The new Veterinary Education Centre has opened as part of Wales' first and only School of Veterinary Science and represents more than 2 million of investment in new teaching facilities on the University's Penglais campus (Pictured: Prince Charles listens in as a skull is examined)

The royal, wearing a sharp grey suit with a blue shirt and red white and green tie, toured the university's new anatomy and study facilities

Gifts including Bara Brith tea bread, made by 15-year-old Aberystwyth resident Elin Gore, and pots of honey from bees that live on campus, were presented to him.

During his time in Aberystwyth, Charles learned Welsh, even giving his July 1969 investiture speech in the language.

Prior to the unveiling, Charles said: 'I'm very glad indeed to have this opportunity of coming back to Aberystwyth. I have a horrifying feeling it's 52 years since I was here. But I have very special memories of that time.

The Prince of Wales inspects a veterinary specimen while touring the facility

As part of his mini tour of the Welsh town, the Prince of Wales will also visit the family-run Hafod Hardware store (Pictured: at the School of Veterinary Science this afternoon)

The Prince looked animated as he learned more about what the students study at the centre, which includes brand new anatomy and study facilities

'I'm delighted to have a very small part to play in helping to open it (the school) having met some of the students and interrupted their studies most successfully.

'I do hope they will have great success in the future and the school will flourish.'

Vice chancellor Treasure said: 'This has been a long time in the planning. Veterinary school this year, and a nursing school next year. Both will be hugely important for Wales.'

The Prince looked a little emotional as he put pen to paper in his former university's visitor book

Charles meets members of the public ahead of his visit to Hafod Hardware store in East St, Rhayader, Wales

A royal pops to the shops: The Prince kept his mask on in line with guidance as he paid a visit to a local hardware store in Rhayader

The Prince seemed impressed by the eco-friendly products on display at the traditional hardware store

We're wearing face masks but we can still shake hands; the royal offers a friendly greeting to the trader at the long-standing store

A little gift for the Duchess? The Prince of Wales browses some of the store's merchandise

Brolly good show! Charles makes his way across a rainy pavement to an awaiting car

The Prince shares a joke with well-wishers who turned out to see the royal at the store in Rhayader

The streets of the small town were lined with members of the public - in spite of the rainy weather

The Prince also took time to address guests - and enjoy another cup of char - at a reception for PRIME Cymru at the Metropole Hotel and Spa

The Prince spoke words of encouragement about the organisation's volunteer mentoring programme, which is expanding

The Prince of Wales will also visit the family-run Hafod Hardware store on Friday afternoon to celebrate independent businesses and show support for the local high street.

The shop is known for creating a Christmas advert that went viral in 2019, featuring four-year-old Arthur Jones, who starred as the store manager. The video was watched almost three million times on YouTube.

The hardware store is one of the oldest businesses in Rhayader, dating back to 1895, and is now one of the 'must-see' attractions of the town.
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Two royal Christmas cards featuring very different designs were released today - with Prince William and Kate opting for a family holiday photo while his father Prince Charles made a nod to the Covid pandemic.

A family holiday in the desert with Dad in shorts, the youngsters in their summer gear and Mum showing off her sunkissed glow is the theme for this year's greeting from the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, who have delighted fans with a family portrait taken on a secret trip to Jordan earlier this year.

The Cambridges appear with their three children in the family snap. Kate looks glowing in a khaki dress, while Princess Charlotte looks all grown up as she perches on a stool in a gingham dress from Mango. Prince George beams as he poses in a 14.95 camo t-shirt from GAP and grey shorts.

Meawhile, Prince Louis sits cross-legged at the front in a stripey 32 polo shirt from Rachel Riley - a bigger version of the top Prince George wore from the brand during an official visit to Taronga Zoo in Sydney when he was nine-months-old, as well as laceless slip-on sneakers by Hampton Canvas, which have been worn by both his older brother and sister.

It's not been revealed exactly when the family travelled to Jordan, but the visit is likely to have taken place in the later part of the year when travel restrictions were relaxed.

During the summer, Jordan was on the amber list, meaning that after 19 July fully vaccinated arrivals into the UK did not have to quarantine, as long as they took a pre-departure test and a PCR test on day two and eight after coming home. On 4th October the pre-departure and day eight tests were scrapped.

No details of the visit would have been announced to the public at the time because it was a private family holiday, rather than an official royal tour.

Jordan holds a special significance for the family because the Duchess of Cambridge spent part of her childhood in the country where her father worked as a flight dispatcher for British Airways, and when William visited the Middle East in 2018 on an official tour, he spoke of their intention to come back with their children in the future.

The Cambridges were not the only royals to share their Christmas card today, with Prince Charles releasing an image of himself fixing the Duchess of Cornwall's face mask at the races for his festive offering.

The picture, taken on the second day of Royal Ascot in June, shows the heir-to-the-throne, 72, helping his wife, 73, to adjust her face mask beside the racetrack.

The snap, which will be the Prince of Wales' festive greeting this year, seems especially fitting in light of new restrictions requiring people in England to wear masks on public transport, shops and indoor public spaces such as post offices, theatres and hairdressers.

But it also depicts Charles as a loving husband to Camilla, whom he married in April 2005 after a love affair that lasted decades.

The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge have delighted fans with the release of their 2021 Christmas card showing the family on holiday in Jordan earlier this year. Pictured, William and Kate with Charlotte (left), Louis (centre) and George (right)

Jordan holds a special significance for the family because the Duchess of Cambridge spent part of her childhood in the country where her father worked as a flight dispatcher for British Airways. Pictured, Kate as a young girl (left) with her father Michael and sister Pippa (right) in a photo previously made public. The Middleton family spent two and a half years in Jordan

Prince William visited Jordan in July 2018, shortly after the birth of their son Louis, and visited a spot where Kate had posed for a photo with her father and sister Pippa as a child

Supportive husband! Prince Charles chose a somewhat unusual image for his Christmas card, featuring himself and the Duchess of Cornwall at Royal Ascot. The image shows Charles helping his wife with her face mask, in a nod to the ongoing Covid pandemic

In his Christmas card, Prince Charles is dapper in a grey three-piece suit, which he paired with a white shirt, a smart lavender tie and a lilac pocket square.

As Camilla adjusts her white mask on her chin, Charles, who is already wearing his black face covering gently extends a hand to his wife's cheek to help her fix the mask behind her ear.

The couple shared the sweet, intimate moment before mixing with crowds at the event.

The Cambridges' Christmas card is a departure from their usual offering, which have in recent years been family snaps taken at their Norfolk home Amner Hall with a distinct English countryside feel - with cosy jumpers and boots to match.

The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge are seated in the centre of the photo, grinning broadly.

Kate, her long brown locks cascading in curls down past her shoulders, has one hand resting on her husband's knee, the other arm around George, eight, who is seated to her left.

Clearly relaxed, the mother-of-three is wearing a button-down dress with three-quarter length sleeves, which cinches in at the waist. The dress appears to be full length and falls well below her knees.

Prince George pictured at Taronga Zoo in Sydney aged nine months in April 2014, wearing his Rachel Riley polo shirt (left). Prince Louis was today pictured in a bigger version of the same shirt On holiday in Jordan, and also appeared to be wearing his brother's hand-me-down blue trainers

George previously wore the shoes to watch his dad compete in the Maserati Royal Charity Polo Trophy in 2018, pictured left. Right, Charlotte wore the same pair of shoes for her fourth birthday portrait in 2019

Next to her, a sun-kissed Prince William is dressed down in a khaki polo shirt, beige shorts and suede loafers. He has a hand on his wife's knee and the other arm around his daughter Princess Charlotte, six, who is on his right.

In front of the couple is smiling Prince Louis, who is wearing navy plimsolls that match his sister's.

The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge shared the photo on Instagram with the caption: 'Delighted to share a new image of the family, which features on this years Christmas card.'

The couple released the photo almost a week earlier than last year, when it was leaked on social media before its official unveiling. Fans were delighted with the image, with several noting how grown-up the children look.

It's a departure from the Cambridges' usual Christmas cards, which have in recent years been family snaps taken at their Norfolk home Amner Hall. Pictured, the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge's Christmas card from 2020

Prince William and Kate Middleton shared this photo on their Christmas card in 2019, which was leaked online. The family were seen posing around a vintage motorbike with a sidecar. It is not known where the photo was taken

For their first Christmas with Prince Louis, in 2018, the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge chose this casual photograph, taken in the grounds of Anmer Hall. George and Charlotte posed playfully on a fallen branch, with their arms around Prince William

One commented: 'Beyond precious! So much love and joy in this picture. Thank you for sharing it with us all.' Another wrote: 'What a beautiful family photo. Thank you for sharing. Its lovely to see the children.'

A third added: 'Im melting! Such a beautiful family.'

Prince William visited Jordan in July 2018, shortly after the birth of their son Louis, and visited a spot where Kate had posed for a photo with her father and sister Pippa as a child.

Kate did not join him because she was on maternity leave, but William stated his intention to come back with his family, saying: 'We'll have to bring the kids next time.'

During a speech, he said: 'My wife Catherine is very sorry she cannot be here with me so soon after the birth of our son Louis, but her family remembers very fondly the almost three years she spent here as a child when her father worked for British Airways in Amman.

'Catherine's experience is not unique - the interchange between our two countries is real and deep: work, study, tourism and family links. Our historic ties and friendship are played out in the lives of thousands of people who consider both countries home.'

The couple released the photo almost a week earlier than last year, when it was leaked on social media before its official unveiling. Fans were delighted with the image, with several noting how grown-up the children look

Speaking to a charity boss during the visit, William said: 'She loved it here, she really did. She is very upset that I am coming here without her.'

The Duchess of Cambridge learned Arabic, recited verses from the Quran and celebrated Ramadan when she attended nursery in Jordan.

Kate's family moved to Jordan in May 1984 when she was aged two and her sister was just eight months old, after father Michael, a British Airways manager, relocated to the Jordanian capital of Amman for work.

Kate was in a class of 12, while the nursery looked after 100 chlidren aged three to five from Jordan, Britain, Japan, India, Indonesia and American.

In the morning, everyone was grouped together to learn Arabic before separating into different classes.

'We would read one verse from the Quran to improve the children's Arabic and tell stories about the Prophet's companions, like Omar Bin Khattab. The idea was to reinforce concepts such as respect and love,' her former teacher Sahera al Nabulsi previously told The National.

Earlier this week the Duchess of Cambridge hosted a carol service at Westminster Abbey, attended by Prince William (pictured) and senior members of the Royal Family

'The teacher used to ask in Arabic, 'Who is wearing red today?' so that the children would recognise the colours,' Ms al Nabulsi recalled.

The nursery founder would dress up as Santa Claus at Christmas to entertain the children, and celebrated Eid al-Fitr at the end of Ramadan when a drummer would visit to entertain the children.

Children also enjoyed school trips twice a month to places of interest such as the Haya Cultural Centre.

Ms al Nabulsi recalled how Carole usually did the school run, but that Michael Middleton sometimes collected Kate in his work uniform

'The kids used to get very excited and run to see him,' she said.

After Michael's work in Jordan came to an end, the family moved back to Berkshire where Kate spent the rest of her childhood.
Queen Letizia of Spain showed she's well-versed in fashion as she attended a literary event in Madrid today.

The mother-of-two, 49, accompanied her husband King Felipe VI, 53, to mark the 70th anniversary of the Association of Academies of the Spanish Language (ASALE) at Madrid's Royal Spanish Academy today.

For the occasion, thrifty Letizia opted for a white blouse from Spanish Maksu she first premiered in January, which she paired with a flattering black midi skirt.

She added chic flair to the look by wrapping up in a black cape elegantly resting on her shoulder and reaching down to her skirt.

Queen Letizia, 49, showed she was well-versed in fashion as she attended the 70th anniversary of the Association of Academies of the Spanish Language in Madrid

The Association of Academies of the Spanish Language was created in 1951 in Mexico and represents the union of all Spanish-speaking entities in the world.

It aims to promote the unity, longevity and evolution of the Spanish Language, as well as cooperation between academics from the different Spanish speaking countries.

The Spanish royal is an expert at breathing new life into old garments by pairing them with exciting accessories, and today was no exception.

She tucked the stylish silky white blouse, which is adorned with three statement buttons on the side, into a high waisted midi skirt tied at the waist with a black leather belt.

The Spanish Queen and her husband King Felipe VI, pictured, attended the event at Madrid's Royal Spanish Academy

She sashayed through the Royal Spanish Academy in a pair of black leather stilettos.

Known for the attention to detail which makes her stand out, the button on Letizia's coat matched those of her blouse.

The mother-of-two wore her hair up in a sleek high ponytail, and donned a glamourous makeup, with her signature smokey eye and a dash of bronzer complimenting her healthy glow.

She kept her accessories discreet with a pair of amber drop earrings, and wore a face mask throughout the event.

The couple, who presided over the anniversary, where handed four books as part of the celebrations, pictured

The Spanish royal couple made a stylish pair as they arrived at the Royal Spanish Academy today

Her husband King Felipe looked stylish in a dark grey suit, which he wore with a crisp white shirt and an assertive red tie.

This year marked ASALE's 70th anniversary, and the pair attended an event which celebrate the Association's reach history of promoting the Spanish language around the world.

The organisation holds a world congress every four to five years, and varies in location each time.

King Felipe VI looked dashing in a black suit, which he wore with a crisp white shirt and an assertive red tie, pictured

Stylish Letizia wore her recycled silky blouse with a black coast she wrap over her shoulders at the event

The last congress to take place in Spain was in Madrid in November 2019 and was organised by the Royal Spanish Academy, who is also overseeing this anniversary's celebration in Spain.

It is the second time this week that Letizia turned heads with a white top and elegant skirt.

Yesterday, she donned a gorgeous pair of knee-high red boots as she delivered a speech at the 75th anniversary of UNICEF.

Wearing a long-sleeved white roll-neck top tucked into a red mid-length floral skirt, the mother-of-two struck a strong contrast with her bright Carolina Herrera skirt teamed with Magrit over-the-knee boots in an audience wearing mostly black and grey suits
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A brutal review of a Michelin-starred restaurant in Italy has gone viral, delighting readers with its descriptions of the 'disastrous' meal that included slivers of edible paper, 'rancid ricotta,' foam served in a plaster cast of the chefs mouth, and 'an oyster loaf that tasted like Newark airport.'

Everywhereist travel writer Geraldine DeRuiter, 41, and seven of her friends visited Bros', a restaurant in Lecce, Italy with a coveted Michelin star. But not only were they left unimpressed by the 27 courses they were served  they also walked away starving.

While it was no doubt a terribly unpleasant experience, DeRuiter, from Seattle, found the humor in it and wrote a scathing yet colorful review, entitled 'We eat at the worst Michelin-starred restaurant, ever', that readers find hilarious.

Everywhereist travel writer Geraldine DeRuiter and seven of her friends visited Bros', a restaurant in Lecce, Italy with a coveted Michelin star

They paid 200 each for the four-and-a-half hour meal that left them starving because nothing actually 'resembled dinner'

The restaurant is helmed by Chef Floriano Pellegrino, who responded to the criticism by saying he is a 'great cook' and 'master chef'

DeRuiter and her friends were expecting a wonderful multi-course tasting menu when they visited Bros', which is helmed by Chef Floriano Pellegrino.

The restaurant has earned a single Michelin star, and the guide describes it as serving up 'innovative and surprising, as well as 'creative and exuberant in equal measure.'

DeRuiter's take was wildly different, and she described the whole experience as 'forever indelible in [her] memory because its so uniquely bad, it can only be deemed an achievement.'

Still seemingly bewildered by the whole ordeal, she said it made her wonder 'whether or not [she was] living in a simulation in which someone failed to properly program this particular restaurant.'

The main issue was that they weren't served anything that they would claim was real food, which 'made me feel like I was a character in a Dickensian novel.'

On the restaurant's website, it says they serve eight- and 13-course meals  but DeRuiter and her friends had a whopping 27 mini courses served over four-and-a-half hours  and they were still hungry.

'Some courses were slivers of edible paper. Some shots were glasses of vinegar. Everything tasted like fish, even the non-fish courses,' she wrote.

The main issue was that they weren't served anything that they would claim was real food, which 'made me feel like I was a character in a Dickensian novel'

Dishes included slivers of edible paper, 'rancid ricotta,' and an oyster loaf that tasted like Newark airport' (pictured)

They were confused when they were served a citrus foam that came inside a plaster cast of the chefs mouth - and were told to 'lick it out of the chefs mouth'

They were served a dozen types of foam, a tablespoon of crab meat, a teaspoon of savory olive-flavored ice cream, and something she describes as 'an oyster loaf that tasted like Newark airport.'

They were alarmed when a server told them that a dish was 'made with rancid ricotta,' and confused when they were served a citrus foam that came inside a plaster cast of the chefs mouth  and were told to 'lick it out of the chefs mouth.'

At one point, a server squirted drops of gelee infused with meat molecules into their mouths, before presenting them with a fish called 'frozen air', which DeReuiter joked 'literally melted before you could eat it, which felt like a metaphor for the night'.

They finished the 'abhorrent' meal with a dessert of 'marshmallow flavored like cuttlefish.'

DeRuiter was in desperate need of real food when each person in the group was given a single 'reconstituted orange slice,' which was plated with a real orange. When DeRuiter asked if she could eat the orange, the server responded with annoyance and took it away before she could finish.

Several of the dishes have been illustrated with photos by The World and Then Some editor-in-chief Elle-Rose Moogan.

At one point, a server squirted drops of gelee infused with meat molecules into their mouths, and they finished with a dessert of 'marshmallow flavored like cuttlefish'

'I was not expecting a 4-hour hunger induced fever dream,' she said

The whole group was horrified by the meal and became giddy by the end of it

Here are some photos I took of the experience to add to the story  pic.twitter.com/SqPZHrHpB9  Elle-Rose Moogan (@ellerosetweets) December 8, 2021

'We kept waiting for someone to bring us something  anything!  that resembled dinner,' she wrote.

Yet it wasn't just the food that was strange. She describes the setting as a 'bunker where one would expect to be interrogated for the disappearance of an ambassadors child,' and recalls how someone scolded her friend to sit when he tried to take a cigarette break between courses.

As for why they didn't just leave, she wrote: 'Wed been beaten into some sort of weird psychological submission. Like the Stanford Prison Experiment but with less prison and more aspic.'

To add insult to injury, the bill was massive: The 13-course menu is 200 ($226.43) per person, and that does not include wine.

Speaking to Today, DeRuiter said that the meal was nothing she could have expected.

'I'm pretty used to experimental cuisine, and I've been to a few Michelin-starred restaurants. So I was anticipating something a little unusual and fun. I was not expecting a 4-hour hunger induced fever dream,' she said.

As for why they didn't just leave, she wrote: 'Wed been beaten into some sort of weird psychological submission'

She also wrote about rude and inattentive waitstaff who didn't explain the dishes and even scolded one person for standing up

'They're either comedic geniuses or sadists, and hey that's fine if that's what your audience is expecting, but we sort of wanted to eat dinner,' she added.

Meanwhile, Chef Pellegrino responded to the negative review with a three-page letter in which he described himself as a 'great cook' and 'master chef' who has 'studied the history of food making' and 'taken years of lessons to make great dishes.'

'What is art?' he wrote. 'What is food? What is a chef? What is a client? What is good taste? What looks beautiful?'

He continued: 'Here at Bros' we strive every day for avant-garde. We have undertaken this risk since we decided to return to our territory, after international experiences. We invest to revolutionize it and make it grow with us.

'We know very well where we are and what we are doing,' he went on.

'We thank Mrs. XXX  I don't remember her name  for making us get to where we had not yet arrive,' he concluded.
A TikTok star has revealed how the app saved his life  after his fans spotted a worrisome-looking mole on his back that was on the verge of being cancerous.

Alex Griswold, 25, a software developer and creator from Florida, posted a video of his wife, Melinda, rubbing his shirtless back in 2019, prompting two viewers to message him to say he should get his mole checked out.

The influencer, who has more than 3.5 million followers, later took to TikTok to update his followers on the situation, explaining that the mole was indeed turning into skin cancer and his fans likely saved his life.

Story time: Alex Griswold, 25, a software developer and creator from Florida, revealed how TikTok saved his life after his fans spotted a mole on his back that looked cancerous

Caution: When Alex went to see a dermatologist, he was told the mole (left) 'might be cancer' and had it removed (right)

Up until that point, Alex had never thought about going to see a dermatologist about the large moles on his back, but he decided to err on the side of caution and visited a dermatologist.

Alex said his doctor agreed that the mole 'might be skin cancer' and had the growth removed. Shockingly, it was confirmed the mole was in fact turning into skin cancer after it was sent to the lab for testing.

'So they cut me up more, and now my back looks like this,' he said, turning around to reveal the scar on his back.

'The doctor was like, "Whoever told you probably saved your life"  so because of two kind strangers, I avoided skin cancer and this is the perfect reminder that the world is a wonderful place.'

The popular clip has been viewed more than 5.8 million times and has racked up 1.5 million likes from stunned followers.

Life-changing moment: Two of Alex's fans had warned him about the mole after he posted a video of his wife, Melinda, rubbing his shirtless back in 2019

Decision: Up until that point, Alex had never thought about going to see a dermatologist about the large moles on his back, but he decided to err on the side of caution

Incredible: After the mole was sent to a lab, it was confirmed it was turning into skin cancer. Alex's doctor said, 'Whoever told you probably saved your life'

'TikTok really out here saving lives,' one person commented, while another added: 'Me now thinking all my freckles are skin cancer.'

'That's very heartwarming especially from a platform like this,' someone else wrote.

'This is the hope I need rn,' one TikToker shared.

And it turns out that wasn't the only cancerous mole Alex had.

'After the video was posted, I also ended up having another mole removed in the same year,' he told Jam Press.

'If that mole or the one that the video focuses on was never checked up on, I couldve developed skin cancer and would have had no idea.'

Scary: Alex ended up having to have another mole removed that year. 'If that mole or the one that the video focuses on was never checked up on, I couldve developed skin cancer,' he said

New reality: Alex now has regular check-ups every six months to ensure he doesn't have any other cancerous growths, which he will have to do for the rest of his life

Going viral: Alex's video about TikTok saving his life has been viewed more than 5.8 million times and has racked up 1.5 million likes from stunned followers

Alex now has regular check-ups every six months to ensure he doesn't have any other cancerous growths, which he will have to do for the rest of his life.

'My doctor says that since Ive already shown signs of atypical moles in the past, that Ill have to always be monitoring my skin,' he explained.

'My health is great now. I only had to have a second mole removed after the video was posted, but I havent had any other issues since.'

The alarming diagnosis has also made Alex more cautious about protecting his skin when he is outdoors.

'Im definitely much more conscious of wearing sunscreen and making sure that Im not careless when spending lots of time in the sun,' he said.

'I know that the video has helped others. Ill occasionally have people reach out to let me know that they have also had moles removed after watching the video.'
Kim Eldridge was 21 when she decided she wanted to see the world. Like many young people, the desire to wander before adulthood and responsibilities set in became a dream, then a fierce ambition.

Yet how to fund such an adventure? With no trust fund or wealthy parents to indulge her, it was down to Kim, from East London, to raise the money.

So she came up with a unique, highly controversial  and, some might argue, morally questionable  plan to raise the cash. She'd become a surrogate for an infertile couple and spend the year-long maternity leave, which she'd be legally entitled to just like any other parent in paid employment, travelling.

While it may sound like a fanciful idea, it is precisely what Kim, now 26, has done.

While many will disapprove or think that she is being naive, Kim, who is engaged to her girlfriend, says she has always known that she has no maternal instincts.

She is also no stranger to the concept of surrogacy: her own mother, Emma, now 50, was herself a surrogate  six times over.

Kim Eldridge (pictured today) was 21 when she decided she wanted to see the world. With no trust fund or wealthy parents to indulge her, it was down to Kim to raise the money. So she came up with a highly controversial plan to raise the cash. She'd become a surrogate for an infertile couple and spend the year-long maternity leave, which she'd be legally entitled to just like any other parent in paid employment, travelling

So, having given birth to a baby boy, via Caesarean section in March, expressing breast milk to feed him for the first six weeks and allowing time for her C-section scar to heal, Kim set off for Spain in September and intends to keep travelling until her return to work date which, after tagging on six weeks' holiday allowance, will be next May.

And, what's more, this is something she plans to do again and again. If the next pregnancy, like this one, ends in a Caesarean delivery, she will be restricted to having three surrogate babies.

Otherwise, she plans to have at least four. And she has no plans to leave the 'very supportive' railway company for whom she has worked for the past five years and sees no reason why they might not want to facilitate several more pregnancies and maternity leaves.

'This has been years in the planning,' says Kim, from her youth hostel in the Croatian capital of Zagreb.

'I'm heading for Greece next, before flying home for Christmas, and then heading to Thailand in the New Year, where I aim to spend a month. I'm hoping that some other parts of Asia (currently inaccessible due to Covid) will open up. If not, then I'll fly back to Europe and do the east part of Spain, Portugal and Morocco.

'I just love meeting new people, other travellers and locals, eating different cuisine and that unsettled feeling you get when you arrive somewhere new.'

It's fair to say that not everyone has been struck by Kim's sense of enterprise.

When her story was featured on the parenting forum Mumsnet, many accused her of taking advantage of a system set up to enable mothers to spend precious time with their newborns.

And Kim's own father was more than a little uneasy when she announced her plans.

'I remember speaking to my dad when I first had the notion, trying to get his blessing, mentioning that I would get a full year's maternity leave to travel and he said: 'Is that a good enough reason to bring a life into the world?'

Kim, above, during her pregnancy. She received 12,000 in expenses from the couple for whom she carried the baby  but says that money was used for exactly that  expenses. Paying surrogates is illegal in the UK

'Well, it's not the only reason,' I told him. 'It's just a really good benefit for me.' '

And we can only guess what her employers think, though Kim stresses that her bosses and colleagues have been 'very supportive'.

She has worked for the same unnamed railway company for five years, the past four as a signaller.

And, although she doesn't want to discuss her salary, most earn in the region of 48,000. She is entitled to take off 26 weeks on full pay, 13 weeks on statutory maternity pay and 13 weeks unpaid maternity leave for each pregnancy.

'There are no specific surrogacy laws in the UK. I showed my employer my MAT B1 certificate (which verifies a pregnancy and entitles a woman to maternity pay) so, just like any other woman who's given birth, that entitles me to 52 weeks off work,' she says.

'I know of surrogates who don't want to take the whole year off because they feel like they're taking advantage or they don't want to jeopardise their own careers, but employers simply can't discriminate over maternity leave.

'Pregnancy takes a huge toll on your body and your mind and however you want to spend that year off work afterwards, you should enjoy it. It's a big sacrifice, so I'm going to be selfish for a bit.'

Kim also received 12,000 in expenses from the couple for whom she carried the baby  but says that money was used for exactly that  expenses. Paying surrogates is illegal in the UK.

She was matched with the parents through COTS (Childlessness Overcome Through Surrogacy) and, while they support Kim sharing her experience on social media, they have no desire to be in the limelight.

Consequently, she is fiercely protective of their privacy, but will say that the baby's mother has blue eyes and blonde hair, just like her.

It took four attempts for Kim to conceive. Each time the couple would visit her flat on ovulation day, the man would 'produce a sperm sample' in her bathroom, which they would then leave her to inseminate alone, using a syringe.

Having felt wretched each time she had to tell them that she wasn't pregnant, Kim was ecstatic to be able to break the news of her positive pregnancy test back in June 2020.

'I called them on WhatsApp video first thing in the morning and held up the positive test stick,' says Kim. 'I'll never forget the look of sheer joy on their faces.

'I've kept all of the cards and notes that she (the mum) sent me. She always says there are not enough words to thank me.

'Having visited them twice since the birth, when the baby was six weeks old and then again when he was six months old, I can see how happy he's made them. I couldn't be a surrogate who never had any contact with them because the whole point, for me, is creating this family and watching them grow.'

The highly unusual quid pro quo that Kim, who has a YouTube channel and calls herself 'the travelling surrogate', has entered into is taking some explaining to those she meets along the way.

Kim happily shows off her Caesarean scars and stretch marks, not only to fellow travellers  many of whom, due to language and cultural barriers, are utterly baffled  but also to the hundreds of followers her unique story has attracted, both on YouTube and Instagram.

'Some of the people I've met have said: 'Oh but you've ruined your body.' I haven't though. It's changed  I've got stretch marks, loose skin, a big scar and my boobs hang a bit lower  but it's not ruined.

'I feel like I have a woman's body now, rather than a girl's, and I'm embracing that. I've created a life, regardless of the fact it's not my baby, and my body has matured as a result of that.

Kim is pictured with the baby she delivered as a surrogate. 'When they pulled him out of me, I felt such relief. I couldn't see him because of the screen in front of me, but when he cried I looked at my mum, who was my birthing partner, and said: "I still don't want kids"'

'Other people have said to me: 'Oh, it's so selfless what you've done. And I'm like: 'No, it's not! I've got a year off work and I'm travelling the world.'

But surely it can't be that simple?

Carrying a baby, her first child, for nine months, going through 24 hours of labour, leading to an emergency Caesarean, after which the newborn was handed directly to his intended parents, while Kim was left to express colostrum and nurse the six-inch wound across her belly, sounds challenging enough.

Add to that the knowledge that the baby is genetically hers as she self-inseminated, using the father's sperm, and it sounds like a recipe for significant postnatal depression.

But Kim is insistent that's not the case. It might help that she watched her mother go through the same experience multiple times. She has been 'fully supportive' of Kim's decision to follow in her footsteps.

Her mother's only child, Kim has two older half-sisters from her father's previous marriage and was aged five the first time her mum carried a baby which, like the ones that followed, was biologically hers, for another couple.

'Mum loved being pregnant with me but was adamant that she only wanted one child,' says Kim. 'She saw an advert for the agency COTS and thought: 'I could do that.'

'And she got addicted to it. She'd say to me: 'If I don't use my egg it will just be wasted, so why not put it to good use for a woman who's desperate for a baby?'

'Mum had two babies for two couples, so we got to know them and see how happy it made them. It felt normal.

'But it was confusing for other people who, seeing Mum pregnant, would congratulate her, and my dad would tell them: 'It's not mine.' Then Mum would say: 'Well, it's not mine either.'

The only voice of dissent, back then, came from Kim's maternal grandfather, who had been adopted and felt that carrying a child for someone else was akin to giving one up, as his biological mother had done. 'He took a bit of educating initially,' says Kim.

Kim insists her background made her mentally prepared for surrogacy. 'From the moment of conception, I told myself: It's not my baby, it's just a bit of genetic material I'm babysitting. When the baby kicked I'd ring his mum and say "Oh my God, your baby's going mad, he won't sleep tonight". I had no maternal feelings towards him.

'When they pulled him out of me, I felt such relief. I couldn't see him because of the screen in front of me, but when he cried I looked at my mum, who was my birthing partner, and said: "I still don't want kids."

'They wrapped him up and took him into the anaesthetist's room, where the parents were waiting, and I saw him for the first time in the recovery room, after I'd been stitched up. I asked my mum to take a picture of us all. I had no interest in the baby, but it was incredible to see how over the moon his parents were.

'I've no idea how women who deliver their own babies by Caesarean are then meant to be able to look after them.'

Kim didn't even hold the baby, to lessen the risk of any bond before the couple, first-time parents, whisked him off to his new life.

Five days later, back home and using a pump to express breastmilk every two-and-a-half hours to ensure the little boy, a nine-pounder, got the early protective and nutritional benefits, the baby blues kicked in.

'It was like the worst PMS; very intense, very sudden. It felt like I'd been hit by a car,' recalls Kim. 'I phoned my mum and broke down, saying 'I don't feel very good'.

She came round the following day, cleaned my flat and made me a nice lunch. It only lasted a few days and wouldn't put me off being a surrogate again but the hardest part of the whole thing was expressing milk for six weeks  I felt like a cow.'

Nevertheless, Kim is already thinking about the next baby she will carry, either for the same couple or, if they decide not to extend their family, someone else, as well as the adventures that will follow.

She will, however, wait the two years that the World Health Organisation recommends before becoming pregnant after a C-section.

Kim is hoping that her fiancee, Dilara, 24, who she started dating when she was six months pregnant and proposed to last month, will be able to take a career break to join her on her next postnatal voyage around the world.

Like Kim, Dilara has no interest in being a mum and knew all about her decision to be a surrogate and has been very supportive.

She will need to be understanding, too, as any wedding plans are likely to have to wait until after Kim has finished having babies for other people, otherwise, as a married couple, UK laws mean that Dilara's name, like Kim's, would initially go on the birth certificates.

The intended parents must apply through the courts for a parental order, to have the certificate changed to include their names.

Kim was in Valencia when the family court sat a couple of months ago and linked in via the video calling platform Microsoft Teams.

'The judge said to me: 'Thank you for your considerable contribution to this family', a very British assessment,' says Kim. 'But it was moving nonetheless.'

If ever she needs grounding on her travels, Kim watches a video filmed shortly after the birth.

'I've lost count of how often I've watched the video of the parents holding the baby for the first time,' she says. 'I cry every single time. It's so beautiful.'
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Dr Gregory Poland (pictured) warns that there are 32,000 Americans alive right now who will be dead because of Covid by the end of the year, and do not even know it yet

The Omicron COVID-19 variant is now in half of U.S. states, after Arizona, Iowa, Michigan and Virginia joined the growing list on Thursday or Friday morning.

Now, 25 states have recorded at least one Omicron case.

While Omicron dominates headlines, the Delta variant continues its spread nationwide, causing a 30 percent increase in new daily cases and 20 percent increase in deaths over the past two weeks.

America's worsening Covid situation, combined with the Omicron variant and general apathy the population has for the pandemic at this point has one expert sounding alarms that things may get worse for the nation.

Dr Gregory Poland is one of the nation's top experts on vaccination and immunology, and works as an epidemiologist for the Mayo Clinic and is editor-in-chief of the scientific journals 'Vaccine'.

As deaths in America continue to rise, he warns that people should not let their guard down.

'32,000 Americans who think they're going to be alive to celebrate Christmas and New Years are, no pun intended, dead wrong,' he told DailyMail.com, as his calculations show that with the current death rate in America, around 32,000 more people are likely to die between now and New Years.

'Not one of them believes [they will die].'

While early data about the Omicron variant is promising - showing that the highly infectious variant does not cause as severe cases as Delta and other Covid strains - he fears that people will see those messages and expose themselves to the existing dangers of virus.

'Everybody's comforting themselves with the idea that Omicron is less severe,' he said.

'It may well be but that is very, very, preliminary information that comes from one specific area of the world where Delta has not been as deadly as it has here.

'It fascinates me that a tiny little preliminary report like that makes its way around the world. Everybody fixes on that belief. And yet, look at the last year of work trying to get people immunized and they ignore it.'

Poland urges Americans to get fully vaccinated as soon as they can, and for those already fully vaccinated to get their booster shot.

He is echoing the calls of many other health officials since the discovery of the Omicron variant, with Dr Anthony Fauci - the nation's top infectious disease expert - even saying earlier this week that the definition of 'fully vaccinated' would eventually be changed to only include people who have received their booster doses.

On Friday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention published a report finding the first 43 cases of Omicron sequenced in the U.S. were all mild infections, with no severe complications reported so far.

Officials in the UK, which is experiencing a Covid surge of its own and is among the world leaders in sequenced Omicron cases, are sounding alarms as well.

Health minister Sajid Javid said this week that there could be up to one million cases of the variant in the UK by the end of the year, and Prime Minister Boris Johnson enacted drastic mandates like work from home orders, mask mandates and use of a vaccine passports to attend certain events in the country.

In Scotland, First Minister Nicola Sturgeon referred to the Covid situation as a potential 'tsunami', and issued an order that all people who either test positive for the virus or are exposed to it quarantine for at least ten days.

South Africa, the nation where the Omicron variant was first discovered late last month, is still in the midst of one of the sharpest spikes in Covid cases any country has felt during the pandemic, and recorded 22,000 new cases on Thursday.

The Omicron COVID-19 variant has now been sequenced around 80 times in at least 25 U.S. states, half of America

Covid cases in the UK are approaching all time highs as the Omicron variant is believed to account for around 8% of cases in the nation, or around 4,000 new cases per day. Prime Minister Johnson issues strict orders Wednesday to combat the spread of the virus

Poland says that much of America's failures to deal with the pandemic draws back to humans inability to understand the scale as to which how quickly the virus can spread.

'What we're fundamentally discussing is a concept called exponential reality... and there are no circumstances in which humans don't fail in decision making under conditions of exponential reality,' he said.

Because of the nature of Covid, and especially the more infectious variants like Delta and Omicron, cases can double in a matter of only a few days if spread is not mitigated - meaning a situation that seems controlled can quickly become overwhelming.

Poland supports vaccine mandates and believes that no one should be able to travel into the United States without showing proof of a negative test.

He also supports the 'pre-emptive' strike against Covid that New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio announced earlier this week - implementing vaccine mandates on the private sector workforce and requiring proof of two vaccine doses for a person to go to many indoor events and facilities.

'I thought that was a very wise and courageous action that most people will not want to do, not realizing the value of that to them,' Poland said.

Pfizer finds that third shot is needed to protect from Omicron The pharma giant Pfizer revealed data Wednesday showing that its two-dose Covid vaccine regimen may not be effective at preventing infection from the Omicron variant Data published by AHRI on Tuesday found that the jab had 41 times less antibodies effective against Omicron as it had against over variants Pfizer reports that a booster dose increases Omicron-fighting antibodies 25-fold when compared to only receiving the two-shots Officials could not say whether the jab is still effective at preventing severe Covid infection The Pfizer vaccine is the most popular in the U.S., having been administered over 275 million times to fully vaccinate more than 110 million people Advertisement

While his outlook on the pandemic is not the rosiest, Poland still thinks it is ok for people to travel for Christmas and New Years this holiday season, as long as they understand they are absorbing some risk in doing so.

'I have no problem with that. Just [make sure] they're fully vaccinated and boosted and they were a proper mask properly,' he said.

'We were built for community, we were built for social interaction, we must have that. That question is how to do it safely. And [how to] balance risks and benefits.'

There is no such thing as doing anything 'safe', Poland said, even adding that the act of driving a car can be extremely dangerous, but people could do things 'safer' by taking some precautions like wearing a mask and getting vaccinated.

The United States reached 60 percent of its population fully vaccinated earlier this week, a milestone reached only days before the one year anniversary of the first vaccine doses becoming available.

Some officials are pushing to bring that rate even higher, including New York Gov Kathy Hochul.

On Friday, Hochul announced that all indoor businesses in New York would have to either institute a vaccine mandate or mask mandate, a drastic move that will go into effect on Monday.

On Wednesday, Pfizer, who manufactures the most commonly used vaccine in the U.S. - used to fully vaccinated over 110 million people - announced it had data showing that the first two doses of its vaccine were not as effective against the new variant.

It came a day after the African Health Research Institute released a study finding that people who were fully vaccinated with the Pfizer vaccine had 40 times less antibodies available for fighting Omicron that they did other strains.

Pfizer did say that it had data showing the booster shot would get protection levels back up, though, and increases antibody levels 25-fold.

On Thursday, the Food and Drug Administration expanded eligibility of the Pfizer booster shot to also include people aged 16 and 17.

Nearly 50 million, or 15 percent of the population, has received a booster shot, with half receiving the Pfizer shoot as their booster.

America is also averaging around 120,000 new daily Covid cases, a 30 percent increase over the past two weeks.

Deaths in the U.S. are up 18 percent over the past two weeks, up to nearly 1,300 per week, and the 62,000 Americans in the hospital due to severe cases of the virus is a 20 percent increase over the past two weeks.

Dr Michael Osterholm, a public health expert at the University of Minnesota said this week that he believes Omicron could become the dominant strain within the next few weeks.

'I think Omicron is going to be remarkable in how fast it takes,' Osterhold said.

'If you look at what it took for Alpha and Delta to prevail, it took really two months before they became the dominant variants around the world, some countries sooner than others. I think youre going to see this one become the dominant variant in just a matter of weeks.'

What are the new Covid rules in England? Boris Johnson announced this evening that the Government is implementing its Covid Plan B. It means: WFH The return of work from home guidance. People will be told to work from home in England from Monday if they are able to. Face masks Face masks will be made compulsory in most public indoor venues including in cinemas and theatres from this Friday. They will not be required in pubs, restaurants and gyms. Vaccine passports The NHS Covid pass will be compulsory to gain access to nightclubs and other large venues where large crowds gather. This will apply to all unseated indoor venues with more than 500 people, unseated outdoor venues with more than 4,000 people and any venue with more than 10,000 people. Two vaccine doses will be treated as fully-vaccinated but this will be kept under review because of the booster program. A negative lateral flow test will also be sufficient. This requirement will be rolled out in one week's time to give businesses time to prepare. Contact testing Contacts of Omicron cases will be told to take daily coronavirus tests instead of having to self-isolate. They will have to quarantine if they test positive. Advertisement

In the UK, health officials believe the Omicron variant is behind around 4,000 new cases every day, as the nation once again nears 50,000 new cases per day.

London, the UK's largest city, accounts for around 30 percent of those cases, as it has become one of the global virus hotspots.

To get ahead of the crisis, Prime Minister Johnson announced drastic measures on Wednesday to curb the spread of the variant.

Face masks will also now be compulsory in most public, indoor, venues, though restaurants, bars and gyms will be exempt from the order.

People who are believed to be a close contact to someone with a confirmed case of the Omicron variant will also be ordered to take daily Covid tests, and will have to enter quarantine if they test positive for Covid.

He also announced plans to use a vaccine passport titles the 'NHS Covid pass', which will be needed to attend many events, whether indoor or outdoor, though presentation of a negative Covid test will suffice in most cases.

The new mandates went into effect on Friday.

Nearly 1,000 cases of the variant have been confirmed in the UK, but health officials find that eight percent of sequenced cases are Omicron.

Scotland is one of the hardest struck areas of the current UK Covid surge.

The country reported more than 5,000 new Covid cases on Friday, its highest total in three months and two-fold increase over the amount of cases reported a week ago.

'The fact is we do face a renewed and very severe challenge in the face of the new Omicron variant,' First Minister Sturgeon said a news conference.

'To be blunt, because of the much greater and faster transmissibility of this new variant, we may be facing  indeed we may be starting to experience  a potential tsunami of infections.'

'...'I think we can now say with some confidence that we expect it to overtake Delta within days, not weeks  we estimate this could be as early as the very beginning of next week.'

Denmark is also among the world's leader in sequenced Omicron cases, having confirmed around 600 new infections of the variant as of Friday morning.

The nation's largest outbreak has been tied to a Christmas lunch event in the Viborg region, attended by 150 students on November 27 from two local high schools.

At least 64 case of the Omicron variant have been tied to the event.

More than 1,000 people have been deemed close contacts to those infected at the event, and it is believed to be among the largest outbreaks of the variant detected so far.

Covid cases in Denmark have jumped to around 7,000 new cases per day as of Friday, the highest total ever recorded in the Nordic nation.

In response the surge in cases, Prime Minister Mette Fredericksen announced new measures to prevent spread of the virus on Wednesday.

People who can will now be ordered to work from home, and virtual schooling has been extended as well.

Denmark high school Christmas lunch leads to Omicron surge A Christmas lunch event in the Viborg region of Denmark has been tied to an Omicron variant outbreak of at lest 64 cases on November 27 The lunch was attended by 150 students from two high schools After the event, 64 people tested positive for Covid, and all were sequenced to have the Omicron variant More than 1,000 people in the area have been deemed close contacts to the infected Denmark is among the world leaders in sequenced Omicron cases, with 398 as of Wednesday morning Covid cases in the Nordic nation have jumped 20 percent over the past two weeks Advertisement

Bars and nightclubs will also have reduced operating hours, being forced to close at midnight now, in an effort to prevent transmission.

Another outbreak of the variant may have occurred at a holiday party held by Scatec, a Norwegian energy company.

The Oslo based company held a Christmas party in Cape Town, South Africa, in November, bringing dozens of employees to the nation before the discovery of the new strain.

Now, 70 employees of the company have been tested positive for Covid in the weeks since, with 50 others outside the company who were present at the same restaurant the party was held at also testing positive.

Only 13 of the 120 cases have been sequenced as a confirmed Omicron case, though it is believed that all the related cases may be of the new strain.

One Scatec staffer is believed to be 'patient zero' with the related infections all being tied back to them.

Those who were not a part of the party but were infected are believed to have contracted the virus during a period after the festivities where Scatec employees began to mingle with others in the bar.

All of the cases tied back to the event were reported to be mild.

The event turned into a warning call for many in Europe, as all the staffers were fully vaccinated yet the variant was still able to cause breakthrough infections in all of them.

Cases in Norway have doubled since the event in mid-November reaching 4,200 new cases every day in the Nordic nation - with more than 5,200 positive cases reported of Friday, a new record for the country.

In South Africa, Covid related hospitalizations have increased for the fifth consecutive week, eclipsing 3,800 this week, nearly a three-fold increase from the 1,300 figure two weeks ago.

In The Gauteng province, where the variant was first sequenced during the week of Thanksgiving, hospitalizations have decreased this week, down to 1,700 from 2,200 last week, though the current figure is still double the 833 hospitalizations from two weeks ago.

While hospitalizations are rising in the country, MailOnline.com reports that only eight percent of people admitted require ICU treatment - around a third of the usual rate of ICU admittance.

The figure is further evidence that the new Covid variant may be more mild than previous strains of the virus.

Travel to the U.S. from South Africa, along with seven other nations in its region, is still restricted despite the variant already being detected in much of America.
A public health expert who has previously made dark predictions about the Covid pandemic - only to be correct - believes the new Omicron variant will soon take over the U.S.

Dr Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, told Intelligencer that he believes the Omicron variant could overtake the Delta strain as America's dominant Covid variant in a matter of weeks.

In April, Osterholm said that based on available information that another Covid surge would happen in the coming months - which ended up coming over summer with the Delta wave.

At the time, cases and deaths were both dwindling, and it looked like the pandemic was winding down to an end.

He also believes that the definition of 'fully vaccinated' should change to only include people who have received their booster shot - echoing calls by the nation's top infectious disease expert Dr Anthony Fauci.

Despite the Omicron variant dominating the conversation around Covid in America recently, the Delta variant still accounts for 99 percent of new cases in the U.S., according to the Centers for Disease for Control and Prevention (CDC).

Dr Michael Osterholm (pictured) said that he believes the Omicron variant will over take the Delta strain as the nation's most dominant strain within the coming weeks

Despite Omicron dominating headlines in recent weeks, the Delta variant (orange) still accounts for 99% of sequenced cases in the U.S.

'I think Omicron is going to be remarkable in how fast it takes,' Osterhold said.

'If you look at what it took for Alpha and Delta to prevail, it took really two months before they became the dominant variants around the world, some countries sooner than others. I think youre going to see this one become the dominant variant in just a matter of weeks.'

He calls the current moment of the pandemic one of the most important yet, and there are even scenarios where the Omicron variant taking over could be positive.

The Delta variant is highly infectious, and Americans became very familiar with how severe infection can be as hospitals around the country were once again overwhelmed by the virus.

Early data from South Africa shows that the Omicron variant could be more infectious than Delta, but also more minor in severity.

If the Omicron variant does quickly spread around the country, and fails to cause many severe infections, it could super-charge the end of the pandemic by quickly giving tens-of-millions of people Covid antibodies that would protect them from reinfection.

'Would it be an ironic situation if, in fact, Mother Nature herself helps us out of this pandemic?' he said.

It is still too early to deem the variant as more 'safe' though, since all the data experts have on it is still very preliminary.

'In South Africa or elsewhere, we just havent seen a developing wave of severe illness  which isnt to say it cant happen or wont happen,' he said.

'Ive been one of those people out there talking about lagging indicators and how important they are to understand that severe illness, hospitalization, and death often occur two-to-four weeks after cases. So we need to be very careful about that.'

The variant was first detected by South African officials in late-November, but the earliest cases found were people who tested positive in mid-November - with it likely that they caught the variant from other people who had contracted it even earlier.

Now weeks after Omicron's discovery, not a single death has been attributed to it, and confirmed cases are almost all mild and resolve very quickly.

On Friday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention published a report finding the first 43 cases of Omicron sequenced in the U.S. were all mild infections, with no severe complications reported so far.

Osterhold notes that even though deaths and hospitalizations lag behind cases, if Omicron was extremely dangerous than it would have likely shown as such by now.

Still, though, he wants people to keep their guard up and protect themselves from the still-existing threat of Covid.

He encourages people to get their vaccine booster shot if they have not already, and even believes the definition of 'fully vaccinated' should be changed to include only those who have gotten their boosters.

'Ive been saying that since August!' he said.

'.... I think the data are clear and compelling. All along, Ive said it should be a three-dose prime and a two-dose prime for the mRNA and adenovirus platforms both. Theres no debate anymore.

'Everyone recognizes that, with Omicron, we clearly need to have that third dose on the board.'

The idea of changing the definition of fully vaccinated was first introduced by Dr Rochelle Walensky, director of the CDC, in October.

Since the emergence of Omicron, many others have begun to hint at the change coming in the future.

Initial data from Pfizer recipients shows that the first two doses do now provide adequate prevention against infection from Omicron.

The company said this week that it has data showing a booster shot brings back that effectiveness for many, though.

In response, Fauci said Thursday that the definition would eventually change, and even introduced the idea of approving fourth doses of the vaccine in the future.

Currently in the U.S., 60 percent of the population is fully vaccinated under the current definition - having received both shots of either the Pfizer or Moderna vaccine, or one shot of the Johnson & Johnson jab.

If the term is adjusted to include booster shots, then only the 15 percent of the country that has received the additional shot so far would count as 'fully vaccinated'.
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Michigan hospitals are being swarmed by Covid patients, and many are having trouble dealing with stress put on the state's health care system.

The Great Lake state currently leads the nation in rate of Covid hospitalizations, with 46 out of every 100,000 residents currently receiving treatment for a severe case of the virus - a rate nearly 20 percent higher than any other state.

Officials from one hospital in Lansing, the state's capital city, tell CNN that almost all of the patients it is receiving at the moment are unvaccinated, and are describing it as the worst situation of the pandemic so far.

They also report that no one who has received their booster shot so far has died, and that some of the people who are being admitted for care are younger than the usual person someone would think is at risk from Covid.

Michigan also confirmed its first case of the new Omicron variant on Thursday, a harbinger of future a Covid surge to come.

While the Mitten is currently dealing with the worst of it, many states - particularly those where it is already very cold in early December - are seeing large spikes in hospitalizations.

With winter just around the corner, the upcoming Christmas holiday and the Omicron variant, some fear it could be a dark winter for much of the country.

Hospitals in Michigan are being overwhelmed by COVID-19 patients as the state suffers what might be the early stages of a massive winter surge. Michigan leads the U.S. in hospitalizations and deaths from Covid per every 100,000 residents over the past seven days. Pictured: Health care workers treat a Covid patient in Robbinsdale, Michigan, on November 16

Cases in the state have remained steady over the past two weeks, though Michigan is third in the nation with 84 out of every 100,000 residents testing positive for the virus every day

'We're seeing more people die at a rate we've never seen die before,' said Jim Dover, CEO of Sparrow Health System in Lansing, told CNN.

'Since January, we've had about 289 deaths, 75% are unvaccinated people.'

Dr Karen Kent-VanGorder said that most hospitals are unable to accept transfers from elsewhere in the state as their own emergency units are overwhelmed.

This can have a cascading effect across the state, as smaller, less resourced, hospitals in less populated areas will lose their safety net, and potentially become overwhelmed as well.

'Perpetually, we have had ... emergency department patients in our emergency department that need to be on the floors ... we're stepping on the hose up here. There's nowhere for them to go,' Dover said.

The most harrowing part, is that Dover only expects the situation to get worse over the coming weeks. '

'And as we go into the holidays, if the current growth rate that we're at today (holds), we would expect to see 200 inpatient Covid patients by the end of the month -- on a daily basis,' he said.

'We've already discontinued inpatient elective surgeries.

'In order to create capacity, we took our post-anesthesia recovery care unit and converted it into another critical care unit.'

He said if his projections are correct, his system will be totally overwhelmed.

Michigan is also leading the nation in death rate from the virus by a significant amount, with 121 out of every 100,000 residents dying from the virus every day, 50 percent higher than the next highest state.

The rise in cases has slowed - staying about even over the past two weeks - but the state still holds the third highest rate of positive cases of any state, with 84 of every 100,000 residents testing positive for the virus every day.

In October, Dr Scott Gottlieb, former Food and Drug Administration (FDA) commissioner, warned that cold weather states would eventually start suffering Covid surges as many gathering move inside, and less people would have windows open - which helped with air circulation and the prevention of virus transmission.

Despite being the nation's leader in vaccination rate, Vermont recorded a record 92 new hospitalizations on Wednesday

New daily cases in Rhode Island have doubled over the past two weeks, and hospitalizations have increased by 70%, despite the state having one of the nation's highest vaccination rates

At the time, Alaska - which gets cold before any other state - was dealing with a massive surge that overwhelmed hospitals in the area, even forcing one to ration care.

Now, two months later, the winter weather is sweeping into the U.S. mainland, and the states feeling it first are experiencing surges of cases and hospitalizations.

Michigan is joined by New Hampshire (96 cases per 100,000 residents), Rhode Island (87), Minnesota (78), Vermont (73), Massachusetts (70) and Indiana (70) as the seven states with the highest infection rate as of Friday afternoon.

For the states in the Northeast, like Rhode island, Vermont and Massachusetts, the high case rate is especially worrying as they are among those with the highest vaccination rate in the country.

Vermont has the highest vaccination rate in the nation - with 74 percent of the population fully vaccinated - and set a record on Wednesday with 92 patients hospitalized with Covid symptoms.

Janet Mills, the governor of Maine, the state with the third highest vaccination rate in America at 83 percent, activated the state's national guard on Wednesday to deal with a surge in hospitalizations her state is suffering from.

Rhode Island is near even with Vermont in vaccination rate, also at 74 percent, but has seen its cases almost double over the past two weeks, and hospitalizations have increased 70 percent over the past 14 days.

Both of those figures represent the second highest growth in the nation, only trailing Connecticut, another state among the leaders in vaccination rate - with 73 percent of the population fully vaccinated.

While the new case rate and hospitalization rate in the Nutmeg state remain low, the 123 percent increase in cases and 77 percent increase in admitted patients over the past two weeks - both the biggest increases in the nation.

Massachusetts has suffered a sharp increase in cases in recent weeks, setting a record for new cases of Thursday, despite 70% of the population being fully vaccinated

Connecticut has experienced the sharpest increase in both new cases and hospitalizations over the past two weeks

Dr Mark Levine, Vermont's health commissioner, pointed to a variety of factors on Wednesday for his state - and its neighbors - are having so much trouble despite high vaccination rates during a health conference this week.

First he blamed the Delta variant, which still accounts for almost all new COVID-19 cases sequenced in the U.S.

'An infected person can spread the virus to five people or more, far faster than the original strain,' Levine said.

'This means it can spread faster than we can trace and alert contacts.'

The states also had relative success compared to their peers earlier during the pandemic. While that is certainly a good thing, it also means less people have natural antibodies for the virus.

Levin mentions that the recent surge is an example of why states can not let their guards down in the fight against Covid.

'I know for many of us it can be frustrating to see Vermont looking so different from how we once did during the pandemic, but even after all this time, the virus is not something we have absolute control over,' he said.

These states have fueled a nationwide surge two weeks before Christmas - when millions of Americans will travel and gather, usually indoors, for festivities.

Nationwide, nearly 120,000 people are testing positive for the virus every day, a 30 percent increase over the past two weeks.

Hospitalizations are up 20 percent, to nearly 63,000 a day, and deaths are up nearly 20 percent to almost 1,300 per day.

Last year around this time, cases were already trending upwards, but accelerated immediately after Christmas.

The daily case average on December 10, 2020, was just over 200,000, with that figure reaching a record 250,000 by January 8.

The Omicron variant is also gaining steam in the U.S., being sequenced around 80 times in 25 U.S. states.

The new variant may not be as dangerous as the Delta strain, though, with the CDC publishing a report Friday finding the first 43 cases of Omicron sequenced in the U.S. were all mild infections, with no severe complications reported so far.

While the Covid vaccine - for which 60 percent of the population is fully vaccinated and 15 percent is boostered - and the number of people with natural antibodies from previous infection will prevent cases from reaching anywhere near that point, another post-Christmas case spike is almost a certainty.

The U.S. is not alone in struggling with the virus during these winter months.

In the UK, health officials believe the Omicron variant is behind around 4,000 new cases every day, as the nation once again nears 50,000 new cases per day.

On Friday, 58,194 cases were recorded, the largest single day increase since January, and one of the highest single day totals of the pandemic so far.

To get ahead of the crisis, Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced drastic measures on Wednesday to curb the spread of the variant.

Face masks will also now be compulsory in most public, indoor, venues, though restaurants, bars and gyms will be exempt from the order.

People who are believed to be a close contact to someone with a confirmed case of the Omicron variant will also be ordered to take daily Covid tests, and will have to enter quarantine if they test positive for Covid.

He also announced plans to use a vaccine passport titles the 'NHS Covid pass', which will be needed to attend many events, whether indoor or outdoor, though presentation of a negative Covid test will suffice in most cases.

The new mandates went into effect on Friday.

Denmark is among the world's leader in sequenced Omicron cases, having confirmed around 600 new infections of the variant as of Friday morning.

Covid cases in Denmark have also jumped to around 7,000 new cases per day as of Friday, the highest total ever recorded in the Nordic nation.

In response the surge in cases, Prime Minister Mette Fredericksen announced new measures to prevent spread of the virus on Wednesday.

People who can will now be ordered to work from home, and virtual schooling has been extended as well.

Bars and nightclubs will also have reduced operating hours, being forced to close at midnight now, in an effort to prevent transmission.

In South Africa, Covid related hospitalizations have increased for the fifth consecutive week, eclipsing 3,800 this week, nearly a three-fold increase from the 1,300 figure two weeks ago.

In The Gauteng province, where the variant was first sequenced during the week of Thanksgiving, hospitalizations have decreased this week, down to 1,700 from 2,200 last week, though the current figure is still double the 833 hospitalizations from two weeks ago.

While hospitalizations are rising in the country, MailOnline.com reports that only eight percent of people admitted require ICU treatment - around a third of the usual rate of ICU admittance.

The figure is further evidence that the new Covid variant may be more mild than previous strains of the virus.

Travel to the U.S. from South Africa, along with seven other nations in its region, is still restricted despite the variant already being detected in much of America.
Later today, we will learn whether LV, Britains second largest mutual insurer, has succeeded in persuading its 1.2m members to sell out to Bain Capital, a US private equity firm.

Members have been bombarded with figures ostensibly proving they will be best off with Bain. They have not, however, been given proof, only assertions.

Chief executive Mark Hartigan and chairman Alan Cook have been asking members, politicians and the media to take their arguments on trust. Yet trust requires openness and transparency. Both have been lacking.

Lack of proof: LV Members have been bombarded with figures ostensibly proving they will be best off with Bain

It is still not clear why a bid from fellow mutual Royal London was ruled out.

Claims by Hartigan and his advisers that LV members would inevitably lose their mutual rights under Royal London turned out not to be entirely correct.

In fact, Royal London has said it is prepared to consider a deal that would preserve mutual benefits for LV savers, if it re-enters the fray.

This was not the only example of LV chiefs appearing to be economical with the actualite. They also gave the impression a minimum turnout was not needed for the Bain deal to go through.

In reality, they have been trying to gerrymander by asking members to agree to waive a requirement for 50 per cent of members to cast their vote.

One thing on which everyone can agree is that life assurance companies face tough challenges. Post financial crisis, regulators insist they must have bigger capital cushions which is a particular problem for mutuals that have no shareholders to tap.

LV appeared to have dealt with this when it sold its general insurance business to German giant Allianz for a total of 1.1billion in a series of transactions that completed in May 2019.

There has never been a satisfactory explanation of why a sale, which bosses claimed was required because LV was sub-scale with an insufficiently strong capital structure, was deemed necessary so soon after the deal with Allianz.

As well as unanswered questions, inconvenient facts were not volunteered, but had to be truffled out.

These included such salient details as the 43million in fees members will have to pay deal advisers and the interesting point that, under Bain, the business will be owned through a Jersey tax-haven company.

Even the fact that members would have to wait until October to receive their miserly 100 was tucked away in a lengthy document.

LV was reluctant to release the strategic review which set out the rationale for the sale and only published some information very belatedly last month, after political and media pressure.

This kind of behaviour does not inspire confidence in the deal. If it really is so wonderful, why the half-truths, the withholding and the evasion?

Employees have asked members to back Bain because they believe their jobs will be protected. That is not a plea lightly to be dismissed, but Im sorry to say it would be unwise to set much store by warm words from a private equity firm on that front.

This vote is a big moment, but however it goes, uncertainty about LVs future will remain. A favourable result for Bain is by no means sure to take savers to the sunlit uplands.

And despite painting itself as the respectable face of private equity, it may not turn out to be a responsible long-term owner after all, but could sell on in a few years, plunging savers into a fresh round of upheaval.

Even assuming Bain is utterly sincere in its regard for LV staff and policyholders, it will always put its own self-interest and its own profits first: thats the private equity business model.

A No will send LV back to the drawing board. It will amount to a no confidence vote in Hartigan and Cook, so a credible industry heavyweight chairman and chief executive will need to be installed.

Regulators, who have as usual stood on the sidelines, will need to ensure members interests are protected in any subsequent bids.

Because it did not involve a quoted company, the Bain deal was not overseen by the Takeover Panel, which ensures bids for stock market listed firms are conducted according to a set of rules. That is unsatisfactory for such a large mutual.

Voting down the deal will give LV policyholders the satisfaction that they have struck a blow for mutuality.

They will also have given a bloody nose to arrogant bosses and private equity barons, who assumed they could bulldoze members into compliance.

If the vote goes against them, LVs top brass have only themselves to blame.
This newspaper has campaigned vigorously against the takeover of LV by private equity firm Bain Capital, along with politicians from each side of the House.

Unable to garner enough support from their own members, LV's hapless bosses yesterday were forced to abandon a deal that offered little benefit to anyone but themselves.

Above all, this is a victory for the LV savers who made their voices heard and for the mutual movement, which has been under siege for the past three decades.

Under siege: this is a victory for the LV savers who made their voices heard and for the mutual movement

The real culprits in the saga are not Bain but LV's chairman Alan Cook and chief executive Mark Hartigan, who had been hoping for a well-cushioned future with Bain but handled the process atrociously.

Cook is leaving, and Hartigan cannot be far behind. LV does not set a precedent for private equity defeat but it will give pause for thought.

The clue's in the name with private equity: firms deeply dislike public scrutiny, preferring to work in the shadows. This will make buyout barons think a lot harder before swooping on UK companies that have until now seemed easy meat. It will also be a deterrent to bosses who think they can sell out their customers with impunity.

Fallen star

Few in Whitby, I suspect, will shed a tear for Chris Fraser, the Australian investment banker who founded Sirius Minerals.

It must have been a bruising experience for him to see the ambitious Woodsmith fertiliser mine he conceived slip out of his grasp. Not half as painful, though, as for the 85,000 small shareholders, many of them local, who have lost large chunks of their life-savings in a deep dark pit of broken promises.

Anglo American, the FTSE 100 mining giant which bought Sirius in a rescue takeover in March last year, has removed Fraser from Woodsmith. He has been shunted onto what are diplomatically described as 'strategic projects'. Woodsmith will now be overseen by a capable-sounding chap called Tom McCulley, who has led Anglo's huge Quellaveco copper development in Peru.

The Anglo takeover, at the equivalent of 5.5p a share, infuriated many small investors who had purchased their holdings at the peak of around 45p.

The latest accounts, however, reveal Anglo has written down the value of the Sirius assets by nearly 540million, significantly more than the 405m it paid.

Fraser's exit, along with other mood music, suggests turning the project around may be harder than Anglo initially thought.

Shift: Anglo American, the FTSE 100 mining giant which bought Sirius in a rescue takeover in March last year, has removed Fraser from Woodsmith

It commented yesterday that a 'number of elements of the project's original design would benefit from modification', which sounds like corporate-speak for a total mess to sort out.

The PR toiler who came up with that deliciously dry statement deserves an award for services to euphemism.

Despite his defenestration, Fraser himself has done pretty well out of Woodsmith, having made nearly 5million between 2011 and 2018 from salary, bonuses and shares.

His scheme to sink a mile-deep mine in a national park, and to construct a 23-mile tunnel to a port on Teesside, was always risky if not vainglorious. Everyone wanted him to succeed, because it could have delivered much needed jobs and wealth to North Yorkshire and Teesside. It still could. Anglo has brilliant mining expertise, honed over many years around the world, coupled with a big balance sheet. Even so, Woodsmith is quite the challenge.

Bleak midwinter

Optimism is an essential quality for entrepreneurs, along with adaptability and resilience. All of these have been on display in spades since the pandemic broke out.

Yet the latest figures, showing the economy grew by just 0.1 per cent in October, cannot be anything but dispiriting. It shows just how fragile and tentative the recovery is  and bear in mind, these numbers are for a period before the Omicron variant.

Firms are going to be hammered in the pre-Christmas period, when many make a large proportion of total annual profit.

Then in spring they will be hit by National Insurance and corporation tax increases. If the Government continues to impose restrictions every time there is a new variant, it will cause untold damage to the economy.
Ministers must consider an online sales tax to ease the burden on the High Street, MPs have urged.

The Government should also push ahead with a sweeping review of neglected town and city centres post pandemic, according to a report from Parliament's levelling up, housing and communities (LUHC) select committee.

While the committee praised Boris Johnson's government for measures such as the furlough scheme and VAT cuts during the pandemic, it criticised a 'lack of co-ordination' across departments and the failure to implement plans which would ensure the 'long-term health' of the High Street.

Closures: Parliament's levelling up, housing and communities select committee criticised the failure to implement plans which would ensure the 'long-term health' of the High Street

Since retailers are facing 'pressing challenges', it added, the review should be completed as a matter of urgency.

Bricks-and-mortar shops were already struggling before the pandemic with shoppers moving online and firms being burdened by business rates.

The pandemic exacerbated the problem, causing more shoppers to stay indoors and switch to the internet, while home-working has driven commuters away from city centres.

Even in November, when most Covid restrictions had been lifted, 47.5 per cent of non-food purchases were made online  compared to 30.8 per cent in February 2020, before the pandemic.

Business rates are only charged on firms' physical premises, meaning companies operating mainly online tend to have a much lower bill.

Several bricks-and-mortar retailers and campaigners have claimed this is unfair, and have called for an online sales tax to even the playing field.

The Government had made moves to boost Britain's shopping hotspots with its Build Back Better High Streets Strategy, announced this summer.

But MPs on the committee complained that there were holes in the strategy.

Funding streams for regeneration were 'disparate and competitive', it added.
HS2 has signed a 2billion contract with Hitachi and French manufacturer Alstom to build 54 high-speed trains for the controversial rail line.

The trains, which will travel at 225 mph and be the fastest made on British soil, will be manufactured at the Japanese multinational s plant in Newton Aycliffe, County Durham, and finished at Alstoms sites in Crewe and Derby, supporting 2,500 jobs.

Each train will be around 660 ft long with an option to link two together to create a 1300 ft train with up to 1,100 seats.

Hitachi's HS2 trains, which will travel at 225 mph and be the fastest made on British soil, will be manufactured at the Japanese multinational s plant in Newton Aycliffe, County Durham

The first one is expected to roll off the production line in 2027, with the first passengers to be carried between 2029 and 2033.

Built on the technology used in Japans Shinkansen bullet train, the project will aim to create some of the fastest, quietest and most energy-efficient trains in the world, serving destinations including Liverpool, Glasgow, Birmingham, and London.

Transport Secretary Grant Shapps said: This is another landmark step in the delivery of HS2 which will open up new employment and leisure opportunities for millions of people.
Under pressure: LV boss Mark Hartigan

LV boss Mark Hartigan faced calls to resign last night as members of the historic mutual shattered his hopes of selling out to private equity.

The former army colonel's job was hanging in the balance after policyholders rejected the proposed 530m deal with Bain Capital.

LV required 75 per cent of voting members to back the deal  but only got 69 per cent.

It followed a campaign by the Mail to save LV from private equity sharks. Hartigan and chairman Alan Cook were instrumental in soliciting the offer from Bain and pushing it to members. Just minutes after the results of the vote were announced yesterday afternoon, Cook fell on his sword. The 68-year-old said he would leave 'as soon as a way forward is agreed'.

But LV insisted that Hartigan, 58, still had the board's 'absolute and full support'.

Labour MP Gareth Thomas, who heads the all-party parliamentary group for mutuals, said Hartigan 'needs to go too'. He said: 'There needs to be a new leadership who are much more open and transparent and who learn lessons from this awful episode.'

Regarding Cook's replacement, he added: 'An orderly transition must happen to a chairman who is committed to a mutual future for the business.'

Hartigan, who had no experience of working at a mutual before joining LV at the start of 2020, was hoping to be kept on by Bain as LV chief executive.

He admitted his pay package  worth 1.2m last year  would have been much more lucrative under the private equity firm's ownership, and Bain may even have offered him a stake in the company.

But Hartigan will now have no such luck  and could struggle to survive in his role.

Tory MP Kevin Hollinrake said: 'It is a relief to see the back of Cook and he should never be allowed near a great British company for the rest of his days. Hartigan needs to go too  and the rest of the board, who tried to pull off what would have been a great robbery.'

Cook drew criticism earlier in his career for his role in a mortgage scandal at Permanent TSB, the disastrous prosecution of innocent postmasters at the Post Office, and the removal of safety refuges on so-called smart motorways.

But Hartigan's reputation has also been tarred by the LV debacle, as members felt he failed to give them the information they needed and questioned his motives for the deal.

Peter Hunt, managing director of consultancy Mutuo, said there was 'no role left' for Hartigan at LV. He added: 'You have to ask questions not just about Hartigan and Cook but all the rest of the board. What were they thinking?'

LV insisted it needed to sell itself so it could afford to invest in its expansion and new technology. It is now considering its options, and has already received an offer from fellow mutual Royal London which will allow it to remain owned by its members.

As a mutual, LV is owned by its 1.2m customers which means it is operated entirely for their benefit. Under Bain, it would have been wrung for cash by the profit-hungry investor. Royal London made an initial offer to buy LV last year, which was rejected in favour of the deal with Bain.

But while members and campaigners were unconvinced of LV's arguments to favour Bain over Royal London, they raised eyebrows over the fact that Hartigan and Cook would both have lost their jobs under the latter's ownership. Last night, Cook reassured members that their money was safe. He said: 'The business is trading strongly and remains appropriately capitalised. Our chief executive, Mark Hartigan, has delivered on the board's requirements throughout this strategic process. The board continues to provide its absolute and full support to his ongoing work to address the long term challenges facing LV.

Your savings are safe, customers told

LV members do not need to do anything now that the vote has concluded.

The company said the outcome will have 'no impact on trading' and that it will continue to serve customers as usual.

Members' money is safe and policies are secure and protected by the same safeguards  nothing about them has changed.

LV has also said it has the 'appropriate capital', which is City speak for 'enough money', to carry on as normal. Bosses said the priority now is to 'swiftly reassess' the company's options and explore alternative options  which could include a sale to another company.

Hailing an 'improved trading performance' this year, LV chairman Alan Cook said: 'The business is trading strongly. We want to reassure policyholders that this outcome will mean no changes to their policies or our ongoing commitment to the highest standards of service from LV.'
Banco Santander has been ordered to pay 58million to Italian banker Andrea Orcel after it withdrew its offer to make him the boss.

The Spanish lender, which owns Santander UK, was planning to make Orcel, 58, its chief executive in 2018.

Change of heart: Banco Santander, which owns Santander UK, was planning to make Orcel its chief executive in 2018

Orcel wanted the deferred pay he was giving up from leaving UBS, and Santander had expected the Swiss bank to pay at least half of it. Eventually Santander withdrew its offer, sparking a furious two-year legal battle.

Orcel secured his first major victory in the battle yesterday when a Madrid court ruled that Santander broke a contract when it decided not to hire Orcel.

Santander is planning to appeal the decision.
Royal London last night revived its bid to merge with LV  offering a deal that would preserve its cherished mutual status.

The company proposed immediate talks with LV in the wake of the collapsed takeover attempt by US private equity group Bain Capital.

It said its latest proposal would see LV members' life savings 'protected and invested by a mutual'.

Royal London was an original bidder when LV put itself up for sale in 2020 and tabled an offer 10m higher than Bain. But Bain's deal was picked by LV's board.

Deal: Royal London proposed immediate talks with LV in the wake of the collapsed takeover attempt by US private equity group Bain Capital

The initial Royal London offer, like Bain's, would have seen LV no longer run as a mutual but as a separate entity within its larger rival.

But last night it offered a full-blown merger that would see LV members  those 1.2m customers with life and pensions policies  become members of Royal London, which has 1.6m members.

LV's brand would likely be sold off under the deal, potentially to German insurer Allianz, which bought its general insurance business in 2019.

Royal London said the merger would create a 'growing, well capitalised, modern mutual' as well as 'opportunities' for LV staff  though it was not clear what commitments it would make around jobs.

LV said its board was 'evaluating' Royal London's proposal.

It said the offer was 'substantially different' to the one in 2020 and included the possibility of continued mutuality.

Peter Hunt, managing partner of mutual advocacy organisation Mutuo, said a merger with Royal London was a 'natural fit' as it preserves mutuality. But he did add that LV should also consider the possibility of remaining independent.

He said: 'If they have enough money to stay independent then that should be considered, and the option to merge with Royal London should also be considered.

'LV belongs to its members and they have clearly voted against demutualisation. That means remaining a mutual is the only show in town and the board must explore that.'

Major blow for Bain Capital

The failed takeover of LV is a bruising setback for Bain Capital.

The Boston-based firm was set up in 1984 by former Republican Presidential candidate Mitt Romney.

Over the years it has become a titan of the buyout industry. It is used to having its own way and is known as one of the most ruthless practitioners in the sector.

But yesterday Bain was licking its wounds after a rare defeat for private equity which has been accumulating UK companies on the cheap throughout the pandemic.

The failed takeover is also a hammer-blow to the reputation of Matt Popoli, the man fronting the Bain bid, and renowned at closing deals.

The 46-year-old had been hoping to use LV as a springboard into the UK mutual sector  but his plans have been left in tatters.
Gareth Shaw, Head of Which? Money, says banks must halt their closures if they cannot provide suitable alternatives.

What do the constituencies of Bradford South, Erith and Thamesmead in south London, Sheffield Hallam, Wentworth and Dearne in South Yorkshire and Warrington North have in common?

It's not the scenic beauty of these historic parts of England, but that none of them have any permanent bank branches left.

The impact of this isn't just a reduction in customers' ability to access cash - something that millions of people in this country still depend on to pay for everyday essentials - but also the stripping away of vital in-branch services that so many people tell Which? they rely on.

Bank closures strip away vital in-branch services that so many people tell Which? they rely on

It is the elderly and most vulnerable in society who feel the effects of their absence most keenly.

It can often feel like every week a bank will announce branch closures and consumers are right to be concerned.

Which?'s latest analysis has revealed that the rate of branch closures increased significantly in 2021, peaking with an average of 99 closures per month between June and August when 298 bank branches shuttered their doors.

This marks a 90 per cent rise on the previous six years when an average of 52 branches were closing per month, with the impact on the cash network deepened by further closures and the announcement of future ones in recent weeks.

Of course, most people can now bank digitally, and the days of multiple banks competing for customers on the same high street are largely gone.

Digital payments make up an ever-increasing share of transactions, and less digitally savvy consumers will require support as their banking activities change.

Which? will work with the industry, regulators and other consumer groups to help manage that transition.

However, until then it is vital that those who want to access cash can still do so.

The current rate of branch closures suggests that some banks are rushing to shut branches before solutions to protecting cash can take effect, and flies in the face of the work being done by the banking industry to protect access to cash.

That work includes the Access to Cash Action Group, chaired by Natalie Ceeney, which comprises eight of the country's largest banks and building societies, as well as the Post Office, LINK, the UK's largest cash machine network, Age UK and Toynbee Hall.

Set up in May by UK Finance, the collective voice for the banking and finance industry, its stated aim is to 'develop and agree the practical details of how access to cash will be protected in the long term.'

The culmination of seven months' work will be its 'action plan', expected to be published before Christmas.

The current rate of branch closures suggests that some banks are rushing to shut branches before solutions to protecting cash can take effect

However, Which? is seriously concerned that any proposals made by the group could be undermined by the commercial decisions taken by individual members of the group to close their branches before solutions to protect cash can take effect.

That's why the consumer champion has this week written to each bank on the Access to Cash Action Group asking them to immediately pause their bank branch closure plans.

This pause must continue until the banks can demonstrate that branch closures are subject to greater scrutiny, so that whenever a decision to close a bank branch is taken, there are independent and, crucially, public assessments of the community's local cash needs.

These assessments must ensure that if an area is losing a bank branch, seamless access to the most appropriate alternative type of provision is offered, shared bank hubs or a Post Office with the right facilities, for example, to ensure customers, especially the elderly and more vulnerable, aren't left in the lurch.

If banks cannot demonstrate that this is happening, the pause on bank branch closures should be extended until legislation to protect cash is in place.

This isn't about halting the march of progress or blocking banks from making commercial decisions.

A pause on closures until these safeguards are in place would demonstrate that banks do care about their customers as much as their profits.

It's not the banks alone who need to act. The proposals from the industry still require urgent action from the Government.

Its long-promised and much-needed legislation to protect access to cash must still be swiftly introduced.

Without it, laudable but voluntary and easily reversible schemes like banking hubs and cashback without purchase will not be enough to plug gaps in the UK's fragile cash system.

Most importantly, a temporary pause on bank closures would prevent the creation of any new cash deserts, where too many consumers up and down the country already face a daily struggle to access their money and vital banking services.
Why should I care about lithium?

No, Lithium is not a small Roman village on the Via Appia. Rather, this astonishing metal is in increasing demand  but with a constricted amount of production.

It is used to make lithium batteries, which themselves are subject to growing demand, it plays a part in ceramic and glass, the nuclear industry and medical applications.

There are clearly some very significant channels of increased usage and demands in key areas of our economy.

Fantastic future or fad?: Lithium is an astonishing metal in increasing demand  but with a constricted amount of production

It is even involved in fireworks. I think the firework linkage is especially appropriate as the companies involved in its production and usage may well see their share values swing between dramatic peaks and troughs  and some will inevitably go bust with a bang.

Production

The main producers are Australia, Argentina, Chile and China, but the users are global. One comfort is that we are not constricted by limited supplies at risk of political spats and interference  a refreshing situation when compared with the constricted supply of the very vital 'rare earth' metals, most of which are under the control of the Chinese.

Increasing demand

Frankly, the uses and applications of lithium appear almost legion, as can be especially illustrated by the demand, usage and development of all the electrical vehicles around the globe at what is really at an astonishing speed.

However, if we then add the broader concerns of the current supply line risks, and we could be seeing a very volatile market not only in price but also reliability of delivery. Such interference will inevitably be affecting those companies involved, and thus a rather erratic valuation on those shares made even more fractious by 'illiquidity' (constricted supply of easily traded shares  such that if you own such companies they can be difficult to sell swiftly).

How to benefit?

There are only a limited number of companies that specialise in lithium, and most of those not quoted on our UK markets. There is, however, one exception and that is Bacanora Lithium, which has focused its production away from the potential political threats and grasping control of the Chinese authorities. It was originally listed on the Toronto stock exchange in 2009, but more beneficially for us changed to a dual listing on AIM in 2014.

The price peaked in 2018 at 1.37 with a nadir of 15p in March 2019, and is currently around 64p.

As a relatively small company, it obviously has a higher level of risk, and also please be aware that trading is thin and thus the 'liquidity' (the ability to buy and sell the shares) will make trading very restricted.

However, you do have a choice as there are funds which will allow you to invest on a more diversified investment across a number of companies. In my view the best way would be though the Global X Lithium & Battery Technical ETF, which is a low-cost passive fund that tracks the prices of a basket of similar companies.

Justin Urquhart Stewart co-founded fund manager 7IM and is chairman of investment platform Regionally.
Embattled actor Jussie Smollett nearly got away with staging his own assault when a Chicago District Attorney made an effort to help him and prosecutors dropped the initial charges.

Cook County State Attorney Kim Foxx - at the behest of MeToo leader and former Michelle Obama aide Tina Tchen - liaised with the Empire star's relatives and tried to persuade the FBI to assume the investigation days after the attack, the Chicago Tribune reported.

Foxx was working to get the federal agency involved because Smollett's supporters were concerned his purported assault wouldn't be taken seriously by local cops.

The state attorney, who recused herself from the case against Smollett, later complained to her deputy that the new charges against the actor were too harsh and that 'just because we can charge something doesn't mean we should.' The deputy reportedly replied that they would speak to colleagues who had taken over the case to 'take a hard look' at how they should charge the case.

Smollett, 39, was originally charged with 16 counts of filing a false police report and faced up to 48 years behind bars for staging a racist, anti-gay attack in Chicago to bolster his career.

But the case took an unexpected turn when prosecutors dismissed the charges in exchange for the Empire actor forfeiting his $10,000 bond and doing community service.

When police still considered Smollett to be a victim of assault, Foxx lobbied for the case to be transferred to the FBI after Tchen, a friend of Smolletts family, contacted her with 'concerns' about the local investigation, the Chicago Tribune reported.

Before the charges came down, Foxx lobbied for the case to be transferred to the FBI after Tchen, a friend of Smollett's family, contacted her with 'concerns' about the local investigation, the Chicago Tribune reported.

Cook County State Attorney Kim Foxx recused herself from the case

Tina Tchen, a former Michelle Obama aide who helped lead the MeToo movement, connected Smollett's family with Foxx

Jussie Smollett, 39, was originally charged with 16 counts of filing a false police report and faced up to 48 years behind bars for allegedly staging a racist, anti-gay attack in Chicago

Relatives said they were worried about the amount of information that was being leaked to the media from the start of the investigation.

Tchen persuaded Foxx to try to escalate the case to the FBI, according to text messages obtained by USA Today.

Foxx said she was 'trying' and had spoken to Chicago's top cop to try to 'convince' him to let the FBI take the lead on the investigation.

She also exchanged text with one of Smollett's relatives who replied: 'Omg this would be a huge victory,' when Foxx mentioned her efforts.

The dismissal of charges outraged former Chicago Police Chief Eddie Johnson and then-mayor Rahm Emanuel, who decried it as a 'whitewash of justice' and said Smollett got off 'scot-free' because he is famous.

Much criticism was fired at Foxx, who recused herself from the case. But questions loomed about whether she acted improperly for speaking to a Smollett relative and colleagues before the charges were dismissed.

Despite recusing herself, Foxx sent messages to her deputy on March 8 after a grand jury indicted Smollett, saying that she felt the charges were excessive because other people had been let off the work for more serious crimes.

The charges were dropped two weeks later.

Kim Foxx sent these text messages to her deputy on March 8 after a grand jury indicted Smollett on 16 counts of lying to police. She had already 'recused' herself for speaking to Smollett's family but continued to interfere in the case by telling her deputies that the charges were excessive. The charges were dropped two weeks later

The city's mayor at the time decried the decision to drop the charges and went on Good Morning America to demand answers.

'This does not add up. They better get their story straight, this is making fools of us all,' Emanuel said.

'He abused the city of Chicago, he committed a crime here. He lied about something,' he went on, adding that it was not just the state but also a grand jury who thought Smollett was guilty.

'He said he wanted to get his name clear. Let's get to the bottom of this, let's find out what happened,' Emanuel said.

Protestors gathered outside Foxx's office to oppose the dismissal of charges, led by the Fraternal Order of Police (FOP).

The president of the Chicago Police Union also expressed fury over the case, and called on Foxx to resign, claiming she displayed a trend of not prosecuting felony charges.

Smollett is pictured in the hospital after he was attacked; police said he staged the assault to bolster his acting career

Kevin Graham said the decision to drop all charges against Smollett was the 'tip of the iceberg' for local authorities upset with Foxx, noting that the city's Fraternal Order of Police took a formal vote to show the group's lack of support for her.

'We're saying: this is enough,' Graham said during an appearance on 'America's Newsroom' in April 2019 'We're asking for her to step down, the FOP in Chicago took a vote of no confidence and so did the police chiefs around Cook County.'

In announcing her bid for re-election in 2019, Foxx acknowledged that she had regrets about the case, saying: 'I didn't handle it well. I own that.'

Special prosecutor Dan Webb was appointed in August 2019 to investigate why Foxx's office dropped the charges. He himself faced criticism and claims of another conflict of interest when it emerged he had donated $1,000 to Foxx's re-election campaign once.

In February 2020, some charges were restored after grand jury returns six-count indictment against Smollett, accusing him of lying to police.

The prosecutor who decided to drop the original charges against Smollett in March 2019 admitted that he did not believe the celebrity was innocent, but claimed he dropped the case because the actor had no background.

First Assistant State's Attorney Joe Magats told CBC at the time that he thought Smollett was guilty but that 'based on the facts and circumstances' of the case and his 'lack of criminal background', the decision was made not to pursue the 16 felony disorderly conduct charges that a grand jury returned.

In a news release on the probe, Webb sharply criticized the handling of the Smollett case by Foxx and her assistant prosecutors.

He said their handling was marked by disarray and misleading statements - but concluded that they did nothing criminal.

The dismissal of charges outraged former Chicago Police Chief Eddie Johnson and then-mayor Rahm Emanuel, who decried it as a 'whitewash of justice' and said Smollett got off 'scot-free' because he was famous
The cream of liberal society, including President Joe Biden himself, have been mocked over old tweets backing Jussie Smollett in the wake of his conviction.

President Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris and a host of other liberal celebrities face questions over their tweets, backing Smollett on the same day as the alleged January 2019 attack, which he was convicted of faking on Thursday.

Hours after the staged beating Biden, then a presidential hopeful, tweeted: 'What happened today to @jussiesmollett must never be tolerated in this country.

'We must stand up and demand that we no longer give this hate safe harbor; that homophobia and racism have no place on our streets or in our hearts. We are with you, Jussie.'

Referring to Jussie Smollet, President Joe Biden tweeted shortly after the incident in 2019: What happened today to @Jussie Smollet must never be tolerated in this country. We must stand up and demand that we no longer give this hate safe harbor; that homophobia and racism have no place on our streets or in our hearts. We are with you, Jessie.'

The Democratic Candidate had previously written: 'Jussie Smollett is one of the kindest, most gently human beings I know. Im praying for his quick recovery. This was an attempted modern day lynching. No one should have to fear for their life because of their sexuality or color of their skin. We must confront this hate'

Meanwhile, Vice President Kamala Harris - who was then a California senator and presidential candidate - shared her own simpering tweet the very same day.

She wrote: '@jussiesmollett is one of the kindest, most gentle human beings I know. Im praying for his quick recovery. This was an attempted modern day lynching. No one should have to fear for their life because of their sexuality or color of their skin. We must confront this hate.'

Their now-embarrassing tweets still sit on their accounts, and attracted a host of mocking comments on Thursday in the wake of Smollett's guilty verdict.

Donald Trump Jr also got in on the act, sharing a collage of pro-Jussie tweets sent by top liberals, including the Biden and Harris missives.

Donald Trump shared many of the old tweets siding with Jussie in the wake of the faked attack, and added his own sarcastic commentary

He captioned his post: '#JusticeForJussie we got him guys we got the guy that did this heinous act. #juicy'

Over on Twitter, Don Jr replied to another old tweet from civil rights campaigner the Reverend Al Sharpton saying 'the guilty must face the maximum.'

The former president's son added: 'Im with you Al, I think all of America is with you on this one. The guilty must face the maximum.'

Smollett could face 20 years in jail. While he's widely expected to get a custodial sentence, his

Trump Jr later added his own thoughts to the matter, tweeting: 'Im just happy to live in a country where people will go to jail for attacking a gay black man... Theres absolutely no place for that s**t in America, or anywhere else, and I am happy the perpetrator was brought to justice.'

Other liberal stars whose pro-Jussie tweets have now aged very poorly include Democratic representatives and Squad members Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez as well as Rashida Tlaib.

AOC tweeted: 'There is no such thing as racially charged. This attack was not possibly homophobic. It was a racist and homophobic attack.

'If you dont like what is happening to our country, then work to change it. It is no ones job to water down or sugar-coat the rise of hate crimes.'

And Tlaib said: 'When one of the most famous black and gay men in America is not safe, the message is clearer than it has ever been." The dangerous lies spewing from the right wing is killing & hurting our people. Thinking of you @jussiesmollett, and my LGBTQ neighbors.'

Other top Democrats who railed against the now debunked beating include House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders.

Pelosi soapboxed: 'The racist, homophobic attack on @JussieSmollett is an affront to our humanity. No one should be attacked for who they are or whom they love.

Liberal Democrats, including House majority speaker Nancy Pelosi and 'squad members' Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and Rashia Tialb (D-MN) added their voices to the clamor, demanding justice for the actor who conjured up painful images of not-so distant American history

'I pray that Jussie has a speedy recovery & that justice is served. May we all commit to ending this hate once & for all.'

And Bernie railed: 'The racist and homophobic attack on Jussie Smollett is a horrific instance of the surging hostility toward minorities around the country. We must come together to eradicate all forms of bigotry and violence.'

Smollett, 39, told Chicago police he had been accosted on a darkened street by two masked strangers. According to his account of the attack, the assailants threw a noose around his neck and poured chemicals on him while yelling racist and homophobic slurs and expressing support for then-President Donald Trump.

A host of other political bigwigs and A-list stars' messages backing Jussie have come back under the spotlight after his conviction for lying.

Sen. Cory Booker, rushing to his defense, echoed Harris' claims that the attack was equivalent to a lynching and cited it as reason for Congress to pass an anti-lynching bill.

'The vicious attack on actor Jussie Smollett was an attempted modern-day lynching. I'm glad he's safe,' Booker tweeted in January 2019. 'To those in Congress who don't feel the urgency to pass our Anti-Lynching bill designating lynching as a federal hate crime I urge you to pay attention.'

CNN host Don Lemon (right), who had also come to Smollett's (left) defense, allegedly alerted his longtime friend shortly after the hoax attack that Chicago police didn't believe his tale, Smollett testified in court Monday. Lemon has remained silent about the allegations

Supermodel Naomi Campbell also supported Smollett in the wake of his attack

Mayor of Chicago Lori Lighfoot chose to criticize the investigation led by officials over the incident, tweeting that she 'will make sure that, regardless of the victim's stature, hate crime incidents and complaints are fully investigated.'

Despite what prosecutors said was 'overwhelming evidence' that the actor staged the attack and then lied to police about it, Smollett maintained his innocence, denying that he faked the attack.

Smollett made numerous television appearances after the alleged attack, claiming he may 'never heal' if he didn't get justice. Meanwhile, it became painstakingly clear that he staged his own assault, not only damaging the validity of future victim statements, but also wasting police resources and time.

The former 'Empire' actor, who is black and openly gay, was found guilty of five felony counts of disorderly conduct on Thursday over accusations that he made false reports to the police.

Dozens of celebrities, including Reese Witherspoon, Zendaya and Ariana Grande among other celebrities and politicians, some now part of the Biden Administration, backed Jussie Smollet and asked for change in the way hate crimes are currently investigated

In the weeks to follow his alleged attack - as Smollett's tale began to unravel - the left faced scrutiny, yet several celebrities continued to stand by him.

'He is adamant that he's telling the truth. Also, everyone that I know who knows him says that he is not the kind of person who would make up such a horrible and awful thing,' comedian Tyler Perry wrote in Facebook post at the time, though he admitted the 'evidence seems to state otherwise.'

'The Jussie I know could never even conceive of something so unconscious and ugly. His innocence or judgment is not for any of us to decide,' actor Terrence Howard, who worked with Smollett on Empire said at the time.

'Stay in your lane and my lane is empathy and love and compassion for someone I've called my son for five years. It's God's job to judge and it's ours to love and hope, especially for those that we claim to have loved.'

His former co-star Taraji P. Henson added: 'I know him and I know his track record. I'm not going to jump on clickbait just because someone says something derogatory about a person I know and love. I'm not easily swayed like that.

Among the first to leap to Smollett's defense were Kamala Harris (left) and Cory Booker (right), both of whom referred to the attack as a 'modern day lynching'

'Those little clickbait [reports] weren't enough to deter me from his immaculate track record. I know the type of activism this young man does in his community, I know that he's a giver  he's not an attention-seeker,' the actress continued.

However, others slammed the actor for his lies.

Harris retracted her statement original statement saying: 'Like most of you, I've seen the reports about Jussie Smollett, and I'm sad, frustrated, and disappointed.'

The then-senator, who has a long history of believing accusations that support her political agenda - as demonstrated by her instant belief that Christine Blasey Ford's allegations of sexual assault against Brett Kavanaugh were true, a claim she later called a 'sham' - said his false accusations were damaging to America's progress.

'When anyone makes false claims to the police, it not only diverts resources away from serious investigations but makes it more difficult for other victims of crime to come forward.'

Despite expressing her frustrations, Harris pushed on, claiming that hate crimes were rising in America, citing an FBI figure of a 17 percent increase.

'Part of the tragedy of this situation is that it distracts from that truth and has been seized by some who would like to dismiss and downplay the very real problems we must address,' she wrote.

'We should not allow that. I will always condemn racism and homophobia. We must always confront hate directly and we must always seek justice. That is what I will keep fighting for.'

'I stand by what I say always. I felt for him when the attack happened and the current reports have made me feel like I was being played. Straight up,' echoed Straight Outta Compton actor O'Shea Jackson Jr.

Smollett, 39, (seen in this court sketch from his Dec. 2021 trial) told Chicago police he had been accosted on a darkened street by two masked strangers. According to his account of the attack, the assailants threw a noose around his neck and poured chemicals on him while yelling racist and homophobic slurs and expressing support for then-President Donald Trump

However, as his tale began to derail, many people slammed Smollett (pictured in his Dec. 2021 trial) for his lies

Similarly to Harris, as information about the attacked unfolded and it became obvious Smollett had lied, Booker refrained from passing judgement on the actor.

'The information is still coming out, and I'm going to withhold until all the information comes out from on-the-record sources,' he told reporters in February 2019.

CNN host Don Lemon, who had also came to the star's defense, allegedly alerted his longtime friend shortly after the hoax attack that Chicago police didn't believe his tale, Smollett testified in court on Monday.

In the days after the alleged attack, Lemon told his viewers he was in constant communication with Smollett because the story was 'personal' to him since the pair were friends.

He claimed the actor was 'innocent until proven guilty' and will have 'squandered the good will of a whole lot of people' if he was lying.

Lemon has since remained silent about the allegation that he tipped off Smollett.

Meanwhile, unlike most, comedian Dave Chappelle expressed his outrage with the left's silence on Smollett's lies, noting that not discrediting the actor's claims only made the situation worse.

Jussie Smollett's (pictured) hoax attack trial demonstrated just how quickly one man's lies and automatic support from left-wing leaders can damage the civil rights movement in America

'What they didn't understand is that we were supporting him with our silence,' he stated in his 2019 Netflix special Sticks & Stones.

'Because we understood that [he] was clearly lying. None of these details added up at all...If you a racist and homophobic you don't even know who [he] is! You don't watch Empire!'

Similarly, civil rights advocates have called the lies a hinderance to their efforts.

'Black people will see this as a black mark,' Georgetown University sociologist Michael Eric Dyson told the Associated Press in February 2019.

'Given what the consequences are, this does not help anybody. It doesn't help the police department. It doesn't help black activism. It doesn't help Mr. Smollett. Everybody loses and nobody wins.'

'This casts a shadow of whether [victims are] telling the truth, and he did this all in the name of self-promotion,' the-then Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel Emanuel told reporters at a news conference in 2019.

'He used the laws of the hate crime legislation that all of us collectively over years have put on the books to stand up to be the values that embody what we believe in. This is a whitewash of justice.'
Pictured: Tessa McDougal, 24, and Tom Hennessy, 23

A young couple who snapped up their own slice of paradise in outback Australia for just $12,500 breathed a sigh of relief after blocks around them sold for up to six times the asking price, and it's all thanks to a clever marketing scheme by the local council.

Tessa McDougal, 24, and Tom Hennessy, 23, bought their 1000 square-metre block in Quilpie, 900km west of Brisbane, in October after the local council announced it was offering 'free land' to new home builders.

The initiative began because the town, which boasts a population of 800, has more job vacancies than houses.

To entice newcomers, the council set the reserve price for each parcel at $12,500 - which is the same amount as the homeowner grant offered by the council if the owners agree to develop the land and live there for at least six months.

Essentially, it meant anyone who meets the requirements will get their money back after the initial six-month period.

But councillors were floored on Wednesday when six blocks sold at online auction for between $45,000 and $70,000 each.

The hammer went down for $50,000 each on the four remaining blocks on Thursday.

By comparison, Australia's median house and unit price surged by 22.2 per cent over the last year to a staggering $698,170 - making it difficult for low income earners and first home buyers to enter the market.

The couple are pictured standing at their block of land, which they bought for $12,500

Quilpie (pictured) is a small town 900km from Brisbane which has more jobs than houses

Mr Hennessy initially wondered of the grant was too good to be true, but told Daily Mail Australia that he is now 'very happy' with his investment.

'It's boosted the value of the land - we didn't expect this to take off,' he said.

The couple, who will get married in Quilpie in April, had a pre-fabricated house delivered to the plot the day the sale settled and are living in a rental while the place is renovated.

'The land was $12,500, but with the grant we can get all that back,' he explained.

'The house was about $100,000.'

Mr Hennessy has lived in Quilpie his entire life, and believes people are interested in moving there because the blocks are comparatively affordable and many workers are now able to work remotely.

Buyers flocked to the auction website to bid for the land, which had a reserve price of just $12,500 (pictured)

Ms McDougal worked as a teacher in Toowoomba before she made the move to her finance's hometown - and she now works in Catholic education.

According to Quilpie Shire Council CEO Justin Hancock, there are plenty of opportunities for skilled newcomers like Ms McDougal, including mechanics, child care, teaching, and bar tenders in the small town.

'Were also hopeful that other young people will look at the job opportunities out here along with these great property deals and make the move to Quilpie,' Mr Hennessy said.

'Its a great lifestyle and small town vibe, theres no crime and everyone is pretty laid back. And COVID really hasnt touched Western Queensland.'

Quilpie (pictured) has just 800 people. Quilpie Shire Council CEO Justin Hancock said the bids exceeded expectations

Mr Hancock said the online auction determined the 'true value' of the land.

'We have already had a higher return than council was expecting for the sale  it means we will be able to invest more into this initiative,' he said.

A council spokesperson said three sales fell through due to hiccups with the online auction, which means they will be re-offered in the new year.

The council is also redeveloping another area of Quilpie into ten lots, with the potential of up to forty three-bedroom townhouse villas.
A US-British financier who once described himself as Vladimir Putin's 'number one enemy' has claimed that if Donald Trump was re-elected in 2020 he would have handed him over to Russia.

Bill Browder, who inspired America's Magnitsky act targeting Russian officials, insisted he would have been 'thrown under a bus' by the former US President if he had beaten Biden and stayed in the White House.

Browder, 57, claimed Trump had considered it a 'great idea' to allow Russian investigators to question him about alleged tax evasion and funneling money overseas after Putin raised the possibility at the Helsinki Summit in 2018.

It then took the US Senate to vote 98-0 against the idea before Trump backed down.

But Mr Browder, who was born in New Jersey and now lives in the UK, said if Trump had been re-elected in the 2020 US Presidential elections, he would have 'absolutely' thrown him under the bus and handed him over to Putin.

Mr Browder has previously voiced his fear that being turned over to Russia would essentially be 'handing him over to his death'.

Speaking to Andy Coulson on his podcast Crisis What Crisis, he claimed that over the years the Russian authorities have done a 'lot of nasty stuff', such as threatening to kill him and claimed a kidnapping squad had once been hired to seize him.

Mr Browder, the CEO and co-founder of Hermitage Capital management, has been a thorn in the side of the Russian authorities for more than a decade after he tried to expose the 'looting' of his investments in the country by corrupt officials.

Bill Browder, who inspired America's Magnitsky act targeting Russian officials, insisted he would have been 'thrown under a bus' by the former US President if he had beaten Biden and stayed in the White House

US President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin give a joint press conference at the Helsinki Summit in Finland in 2018

Bill Browder, 57, claimed Trump had considered it a 'great idea' to allow Russian investigators to question him about alleged tax evasion and funneling money overseas after Putin raised the possibility at the Helsinki Summit in 2018. It then took the US Senate to vote 98-0 against the idea before Trump backed down

In 2009, Sergei Magnitsky, 37, a lawyer Browder hired to investigate what had happened to his money, was arrested after accusing Russian officials of involvement in a tax fraud scheme. He died in November 2009 after nearly 11 months in prison awaiting trial, sparking global outrage.

Mr Browder then became the driving force behind the Magnitsky Act - intended to punish Russian human rights violators - which became a sore point between the U.S. and Russia after it was signed into law by former President Barack Obama in 2012.

Who is Bill Browder and what are his dealings with Russia and Putin? Bill Browder - who dubs himself 'Putin's enemy number one' formally fell foul of the Russian authorities in 2005. But his family is steeped in the history of the country. His grandfather was Earl Browder - the leader of the US Communist Party who twice ran for President. And his father Felix was a maths prodigy and graduate from MIT - but could not find work during the McCarthyite purges of the 1960s. Bill Browder was born in Chicago in 1964 and carved out a career in fund investments. He set up Hermitage Capital Management in Russia in 1996, when the country's markets were opening up to capitalist investment following the fall of Communism. He was once Russia's biggest foreign investor and earned hundreds of millions of pounds from his funds. But he fell foul of the Kremlin in 2005 and was black listed from Russia, while many of his assets were seized. He has spent the following decade exposing Russian officials for corruption and plundering many millions from Russian businesses. Browder chronicled his battle against Russian corruption in a book about his career titled Red Notice: A True Story of High Finance, Murder, and One Man's Fight for Justice. And he has travelled the world pressing governments to pass the Magnitsky Act. The law is named after Russian lawyer Sergei Magnitsky who was jailed , beaten and died in custody after exposing corruption. It intends to punish the Russian officials responsible for his death. It was passed in the US but while some MPs support it Britain has not passed it. Advertisement

Mr Browder revealed that he continues to fight against the Russian human rights violations as a 'duty' to his friend and lawyer Magnitsky, but he remains cautious over how his safety is dictated by the shifting sands of global politics

Speaking on the podcast Crisis What Crisis, Mr Browder said: 'When Donald Trump was President, he was asked by Putin to hand me over at the Helsinki summit [in 2018], and he said 'I think that's a great idea'.'

At the time, Trump was considering allowing prosecutors from the Kremlin to question American officials - including Mr Browder - about crimes Moscow alleged they committed.

Putin had raised the idea in his press conference with Trump in Helsinki, offering special counsel Robert Mueller access to 12 Russians for his probe into Russian interference in the 2016 Us elections in exchange for US citizens such as Mr Browder.

Mr Browder said: 'And it took [Trump] four days to back off and say he wasn't going to do it. It required a vote in the Senate, 98 - 0 not to hand me over before they shut that one down.'

Mr Browder also pointed to the fact that at this stage, the then President Trump was being investigated by Mueller as part of his probe into Russian election interference.

He explained: 'If [Trump] hadn't been under that cloud, god knows what he would have done.

'And if he had been re-elected and there would have been no down side then he probably would have [handed me over to the Russians]. He's the President, he's the Commander-in-Chief.'

When asked by Coulson whether Trump 'would have absolutely thrown you under the bus,' Mr Browder replied: 'Absolutely. There's no question.

'I've heard from people in the room that he was saying 'we should of course do that'. I mean there were arguments saying this is not a good idea Mr President.'

Speaking about how he is able to deal with the shifting tides in global politics, with various leaders coming and going, Mr Browder said he 'ducks and dives' and makes sure he's not in the 'wrong place at the wrong time'.

Mr Browder also said he was relieved when former UK Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn was not elected as Prime Minister as he was a 'big Putin apologist'.

He said: 'You duck and dive and weave and try to make sure that you don't find yourself in the wrong place at the wrong time.

'I was pretty worried about Jeremy Corbyn, he was a big Putin apologist. I was very happy that he wasn't made Prime Minister.

'Now these are things that I have to watch for all the time, because you just don't know who is going to be in power.'

Mr Browder has previously voiced his fear that being turned over to Russia would amount to a death sentence.

He told CNN in 2019: 'To hand me over to Putin is basically to hand me over to my death.

Mr Browder has previously said he feared that he could fall victim to a Novichok attack like former spy Sergei Skripal in 2018.

When asked about the risk of being a Putin critic, Mr Browder told the CWC podcast: The thing is I don't spend time being afraid of it. I take precautions wherever I can.

'But if you live in fear then they've already accomplished about 90 per cent of what they are attempting to do which is to get you to modify your behavior and not be critical, not take the actions that are necessary.'

Mr Browder said that despite the Russians trying to arrest him multiple times, kill him and kidnap him, he remains defiant as he owes it to Magnitsky.

Mr Browder said that despite the Russians trying to arrest him multiple times, kill him and kidnap him, he remains defiant as he owes it to his friend and lawyer Sergei Magnitsky who was murdered while in Russian custody

He said: 'I don't live in fear, I take precautions and they've done a lot nasty stuff. They've threatened me with death, they've tried to organize an illegal kidnapping squad to come and grab me.

'They've gone to Interpol eight times to have me arrested, they've approached the British government on numerous occasions to have me extradited. They are suing me, they are making movies about me, there's a troll factory in St Petersburg which is defaming me.'

In 2018, Mr Browder was detained in Spain on an expired Moscow warrant and was later freed.

In December 2017, a Moscow court sentenced Browder to nine years in prison in absentia over tax evasion and funneling money overseas. He has dismissed the accusations against him.

But he said that when he feels upset about the constant threat, he said he just thinks about Sergei and what he went through when he was tortured and murdered by Russian authorities while in custody.

Mr Browder explained: 'For me, this is nothing compared to what he went through. And I owe it to him to not be afraid and not to be in any way intimidated by this, and I haven't been, and I won't be because he's already paid the ultimate price and it's my duty to him to carry on in his name fighting these people.'

Mr Browder became a harsh critic of Moscow's weak corporate governing standards, earning him the wrath of the Kremlin.

His offices in Moscow were raided and one of his top aides, Sergei Magnitsky, was arrested.

Magnitsky, 37, died in November 2009 after nearly 11 months in prison awaiting trial. Browder charges he was tortured during that time.

Magnitksy's death sparked the billionaire into action. He lobbied Congress to pass the Magnitsky Act, signed into law by President Barack Obama in December 2012.

The law imposed visa sanctions on and froze the assets of those involved in Magnitsky's detention. It was the first time in 35 years the U.S. had sanctioned Russia.
An Afghan mother has been forced to sell one of her newborn twins to get money to feed the other amid the country's rapidly worsening food crisis.

The 40-year-old woman, from northern Jawzjan province, gave the baby to a childless couple in return for $104 which she hoped would buy enough food to last her family for another six months.

Drought had forced the couple off of their farm earlier this year and into a nearby city, where her husband and second-eldest son worked as labourers before the Taliban take-over in August collapsed Afghanistan's economy and work dried up.

The UN now warns that more than half of Afghanistan's population faces starvation this winter, a problem compounded by the fact that many aid agencies fled the country as the government collapsed and international aid dried up.

This family's plight was uncovered by Save the Children, which does still have workers on the ground who are distributing what food they have to those in need.

A 40-year-old mother from Afghanistan has told how she was forced to sell her newborn twin son to get enough food to feed his sister (pictured, the woman holds her baby girl)

The mother said her family were forced off their farm in Afghanistan's Jawzjan province earlier this year by drought, and the collapse of the economy has made it impossible to find work

Speaking to the charity workers, the Afghan mother explained that she had given birth to the twins - a boy and a girl - around four or five months ago, shortly after leaving their farm due to drought.

Sitting in a bare room carpeted in rugs donated by a local mosque, the woman explained that all of the children's clothes are secondhand and donated by locals.

She had initially planned to keep both children, but was barely able to get hold of enough food for even one of them - typically bread, and sometimes milk powder.

Her husband, 45, works as a labourer but says there are only enough jobs for one day of work in five - and the day's wages, around $1, are enough for just two days of food.

The second-eldest son also works in the nearby market, the mother said, pushing carts that stall owners use to carry their produce.

But because he is young, owners often prefer to use stronger children and he frequently goes without work as well.

With the new babies crying continually from hunger, the woman says a childless couple approached her and offered $104 to take her newborn son away.

Initially she refused, but after several days of seeing the boy cry with nothing to eat - she decided that giving him away was the best option to provide for him and for her remaining children.

She said: 'It was hard. Harder than you can imagine. I gave my child away because of destitution... I was unable to take care of him and I could not afford anything.

The woman's husband, 45, holds the hand of another of their seven children near the home where they now live - wearing clothes donated by others

The family survives almost completely on bread which they bake from flour, and are sometimes able to get milk powder to give to the baby

'I gave all of the money to my husband. He bought some rice, oil, and flour. We already finished them.'

Her husband added: 'We need help, we are hungry and poor.

'There are no work opportunities in Afghanistan. We have children. We need flour and oil the most, which we dont have. Its also good to have firewood.

'I could not afford to buy meat in the last two or three months. We only have bread for the children which is not always available.'

Save the Children provided the family with emergency packages for their home.

They were given items for the kitchen, blankets, winter clothing, shoes, tool kits and other essential items such as a gas cooking stove.

Workers also learned of a second case where another mother of twins was pressured by her family to leave one of them to die because she was suffering from malnutrition - but she refused to give up on the girl.

The woman's 18-month-old twins , are both unwell and weak. With the weather getting colder and the little suffering from severe malnutrition, the woman explained she cant afford to care for her children as a single parent.

'My son and my daughter cried all last night because they were hungry. We have nothing in my house. We have no food, no flour, we have nothing,' she said.

'My husband doesnt send us money. (He says) "let her die". Everyone was telling me, "We will buy her", but I didnt give her up.'

Another woman, also the mother of twins, told how her daughter is malnourished and her relatives have urged her to leave the girl to starve or else sell her

Save the Children estimates that 3.2million young Afghans will be facing acute malnutrition before the winter's end.

Nora Hassanien, acting Country Director in Afghanistan said: 'It is absolutely heartbreaking that some Afghan families are being pushed to such extreme, desperate measures in order to survive and feed their other children.

'No parent should ever have to make the impossible decision to give up a child.

'Millions of children in Afghanistan, who have already lived their entire lives through war, are now being pushed to the brink of starvation.

'As temperatures drop to well below freezing, thousands of families will not be able to afford fuel to keep warm this winter, putting children at risk of illness or death.

'Time is running out to get children the life-saving help they need to survive the winter. And aid efforts are being hampered by sanctions and counter terror policies, which prevent aid from getting to the families who desperately need it.'

Save the Children is calling for governments to make urgent exemptions to existing counterterror and sanctions policies, to allow for the swift and uninterrupted delivery of lifesaving humanitarian aid.
Jeffrey Epstein victim Annie Farmer took the witness stand on day ten of Ghislaine Maxwell's sex trafficking trial.

Farmer, whose older sister Maria was the first person to report Epstein and Maxwell's alleged sexual abuse of underage girls in 1996, is the only accuser in the case to testify under her real name.

She was initially expected to give evidence on Thursday, but the trial was paused after an attorney fell ill.

Farmer, now 42, described meeting the late pedophile in New York in 1995 when she was 16, and how he brought her to his ranch in Santa Fe, New Mexico, where she met Maxwell.

She described how the two lavished her with gifts and offered to help her academic endeavors, before subjecting her to unwanted fondling and cuddling instead.

Wearing a white and black patterned top, black pants, and shoulder length blonde hair on Friday, Farmer stared down Maxwell as she entered the court looking over to her left to eyeball the accused.

Farmer testified that she was living in Phoenix, Arizona with her mother and younger sister. Her older sister Maria Farmer, who is nine years older than her, was living in New York and working for Epstein.

Annie Farmer, one of the four accusers in Ghislaine Maxwell's sex trafficking trial took the stand on Friday. Farmer, who is the only accuser in the case to testify under her real name, described meeting the late pedophile in New York in 1996 when she was 16. She told how Epstein brought her to his ranch in Santa Fe, New Mexico where she met Maxwell

Farmer testified that she was introduced to Epstein by her older sister, Maria Farmer, and he took them to see the 'Phantom of the Opera' and then a movie in New York, where she sat next to the pedophile. At some point during the movie she said Epstein 'caressed' her hand and then her leg. 'I felt sick to my stomach,' she told the court.

Farmer told the court she first met Maxwell in 1996 when she was taken to Epstein's New Mexico ranch and got the impression that the two were 'romantic partners'

In December 1995 Farmer flew to New York on a trip paid for by Epstein because money was 'tight' in their house and they couldn't afford it.

Epstein also paid for a ticket for Farmer and her sister to see the Broadway show The Phantom of the Opera.

Describing meeting Epstein at his home in New York, Farmer said: 'He seemed very friendly and down to Earth'.

Epstein was dressed 'casually' while the sisters were 'dressed up because it was a big deal and we were excited about seeing the production'.

Farmer said that Epstein's home, a nine story property that was the largest private residence in Manhattan was 'very grand', especially as Maria's apartment where they were staying was 500 sq ft.

She said that Epstein 'asked me about my plans for after high school' and said she should consider applying to UCLA as he had 'connections' there that could help her.

Epstein said that he could potentially help her with her education and they talked about the idea of him paying for her doing a trip abroad that could help with her college application.

Afterwards Epstein's driver took them to see the play, Farmer said,

She said: 'I was very excited. He was very friendlyhe seemed very nice. I was excited and reassured'.

Farmer met Epstein for a second time on the same trip when she, Epstein and her sister went to see the film Five Monkeys (note: she appeared to mean the film 12 Monkeys which came out in 1995).

Annie Farmer (pictured as a young girl) says she was introduced to Epstein and Maxwell when she was 16

Farmer said: 'Initially when the lights went down we watched the movie and at some point he reached over and puts his hand on the arm rest between our seats and started to reach for my hand and caressed my hand, interlocking his hand with mine and holding my hand'.

Farmer said he legs were crossed and Epstein 'was rubbing the bottom of my shoe and rubbing my foot and my leg'.

She said: 'I was very surprised. It was very surprised and anxious. I felt sick to my stomach. It was not something I was expecting. I noticed that when he integrated with my sister he's stop doing that. When he was looking forward again he would return to touching me'.

Farmer said that she didn't tell her sister because she was 'very protective' and she would have got 'upset'.

In addition Epstein was her employer and she worried Maria 'could lose her job'.

The jury were shown an entry from Farmer's diary from January 7th 1996 in which she said that 'the best night' of her trip was when she 'went to Jeff Epstein's house and had champagne' followed by The Phantom of the Opera.

She wrote that Epstein seemed 'down to Earth'.

The jury were shown another diary entry from January 25th 1996 in which Farmer caught up on recent events, including more about her trip to New York.

She recounted the incident while watching the film and said it was 'a little weird, one of those things that's hard to explain'.

She wrote that Epstein reached for her hand and they were 'holding hands' and that he 'rubbed my arm'.

Farmer wrote: 'It gave me a weird feeling but it wasn't that weird', adding that it was 'probably normal'.

Farmer wrote that it made her feel 'mad' because Epstein stopped doing it whenever he was talking to Maria.

Witness Annie Farmer displays cowboy boots Jeffrey Epstein she says he purchased for her as she is questioned by defense attorney Laura Menninger during the trial

In her testimony, Farmer recalled the unwanted physical contact making her feel like she 'just wanted to be done with it'

She wrote that Maria 'worships' Epstein who she thought was a 'relaxed guy and likes to flirt or was being fatherly'.

Looking back at her diary now, Farmer said she appeared to be 'conflicted' at the time because she knew what had happened was 'not normal'.

Farmer stayed in touch with Epstein by phone and in Spring of 1996 she was invited to his ranch in Santa Fe, New Mexico for the weekend.

She said that she was 'not eager' to go after what happened in New York.

Farmer said: 'I had been told that Maxwell would be in New Mexico with Epstein so that made me feel more comfortable'

Farmer said she learned this from her mother.

She said she understood that Maxwell and Epstein were in a 'romantic relationship' so Epstein 'couldn't do anything while they were together'.

When Farmer arrived at the ranch having flown commercial and been picked up by Epstein's driver, she recalled Maxwell as being 'trim, attractive' with short dark hair and a British accent.

Farmer observed Maxwell and Epstein being 'very intimate with each other, touching each other'. Farmer thought they were in a relationship because of the 'way they spoke and interacted'.

Farmer said that it seemed 'unusual' that a 16-year-old would be on the ranch alone with them, apart from staff, but she felt 'special' that they wanted to spend time with her.

Farmer was also conscious of the possibility of a foreign trip that Epstein said he could pay for and she couldn't otherwise afford.

Farmer stayed in touch with Epstein by phone and in Spring of 1996 she was invited to his ranch in Santa Fe, New Mexico for the weekend

It was at Epstein's Zorro Ranch that Farmer first met Maxwell

Maxwell began to talk to Farmer about her life, her school and her plans for the future, she told the jury.

The three of them went shopping and Maxwell and Epstein bought Farmer a pair of cowboy boots costing over $100 from a Western style store.

Farmer said that they seemed 'very expensive' and even though they were not the kind of thing she normally wore she accepted the gift.

On a trip to the movies to see Primal Fear things took a more disturbing turn and before the movie Farmer said she saw Epstein and Maxwell 'being very playful with each other and grabbing each other'.

She saw Maxwell 'wanted to pull Epstein's pants down' which seemed 'odd' to her.

Farmer said that kind of behavior was 'something you expect from younger people' than her.

During the film Epstein did the same thing as he did as before only this time it was more 'blatant'. Farmer sat next to Epstein once again, she said.

Farmer said: 'He right away began to hold my hand and caress it and rubbed my foot and my arm. It was for the majority of the movie'.

The difference this time was that Epstein didn't stop when he was talking to Maxwell, Farmer said.

Later on Maxwell 'wanted to show me how to rub his (Epstein's) feet' so they sat together in an area she called a 'den' inside the house.

Farmer said that Maxwell 'instructed' her on how to hold Epstein's foot and where to press it.

Maxwell told her to 'pull back his big toe' and to press on a certain part of Epstein's foot.

When asked by a prosecutor at the start of her testimony if she saw anyone in the courtroom who had ever given her a massage, Farmer identified Maxwell, who was sitting at the defense table looking at Farmer

Epstein made 'groaning noises' and appeared to enjoy it, Farmer said.

Farmer said it left her feeling 'very uncomfortable, I didn't want to be touching his foot'.

Maxwell asked Farmer if she herself had had a massage and when she said no, Maxwell insisted upon giving her one.

They went to the room Farmer was staying in and Maxwell pulled out a fold-up massage table. Maxwell put a sheet on top and told Farmer to get on it.

Farmer said: 'I was wearing nothing. She told me to get undressed and lay under the sheet and I did.

'She started rubbing my body, rubbing my back and she's making small talk and then at some point she had me roll over so I was laying on my back.

'She pulled the sheet down and exposed my breasts and started rubbing on my chest and upper breasts'.

Prosecutor Lara Pomerantz asked what Farmer's reaction was. She said: 'When she pulled down the sheet I felt frozen because it didn't make sense to me. I was surprised and I wanted so badly to get off of the table and have that massage be done'.

Asked who was in the room, Farmer said it was just Maxwell.

She said: 'The door to the room was open and I was fearful, especially at that moment. I had this sense that Epstein could see me'.

She added that she did not remember anyone being in the door but she had this 'sense' that Epstein may be there

The next incident happened one morning when Epstein 'suddenly opened my (bedroom) door and bounded into the room in a playful way saying he wanted a cuddle', Farmer said.

She said: 'He climbed into bed and lay behind me and reached his arms around and pressed his body against me'

Asked if Farmer wanted this, she said: 'No'.

She said that she felt 'isolated' and if I could 'get through this it would be fine'. She said: 'I didn't say anything' while it was happening.

He said: 'He had his arms around me and I felt frozen'.

Farmer said that she had to go to the bathroom as an 'excuse' to get out there, went to the toilet and shut the door.

She said: 'I can't remember how long I was in there. I wanted to be in there long enough that this situation would be over'.

By that point Farmer said that she 'just wanted the weekend to be over'.

She said that she thought she was going there because of Maxwell and Epstein's interest in her academic pursuits.

In fact she now realized they had a 'very different interest in me'. Farmer said she felt 'extremely disoriented and I wanted to be done with it'.

After returning home she told her mother briefly that something unpleasant had happened but did not tell her the details.

Farmer spoke to a reporter from Vanity Fair in 2002 about her experience with Epstein but her account did not make it into the final version of the story - Epstein reportedly personally spoke to former editor Graydon Carter.

Farmer said she felt 'more comfortable' going to Epstein's New Mexico ranch (pictured) after learning from her mother that Maxwell and Epstein were in a 'romantic relationship' so Epstein 'couldn't do anything while they were together'

She did speak to law enforcement in 2007 and again in 2019 after Epstein died.

Farmer kept the boots that Maxwell and Epstein gave her because she wanted to 'reclaim' them for herself.

She said she was conflicted about telling her story because it was 'shameful' but at some point she felt 'compelled' to speak out.

She wanted 'accountability' for what happened and to stop Maxwell and Epstein from doing it again.

Asked by the prosecution if she had any financial stake in the outcome of the trial she answered no.

Under cross-examination by Maxwell's lead defense attorney Laura Menninger, Farmer testified that in 2019 she sued Epstein and Maxwell and participated in the Epstein victims compensation fund. She was awarded $1.5 million.

Farmer was asked by Menninger if Maxwell had any role in her travel to New York. Farmer said she did not, Epstein purchased her plane ticket.

Menninger then questioned Farmer about sexual activity in New York, establishing that that there was no sexual activity in Epstein's New York home.

Menninger: 'No one showed you any vibrators, massagers or anything like that in that home?'

Farmer: 'No.'

Menninger then switched her line of questioning to what took place at the New Mexico ranch, asking her about remembering a cook at the ranch, which she did not recall.

Menninger: 'You mentioned the boots. But on the trip you spent a significant amount of time horseback riding.'

Farmer: 'Is that a question?'

Menninger: 'You told the FBI that in 2006, right?'

Farmer: 'Yes.'

Menninger: 'Are these the boots?'

Farmer: 'Yes.'

At that point Menninger asked that the books are admitted into evidence.

Menninger: 'You decided to wear the boots, even when you knew they were evidence. You wore them frequently?'

Farmer: 'I didn't wear them to work. I wore them when I was two-stepping.'

Menninger: 'So you wore the boots Jeffrey Epstein gave you when you danced.'

Menninger switched gears again: 'In the movie theater there was no touching of your genitalia or private parts, was there?'

Farmer: 'No.'

Menninger continued: 'And you said you were naked for the full body massage.

'But you only told the journalist you had no bra on ... in 2019 you were unsure if you had your underwear on,' she said prompting an objection from the prosecution.

'You do not recall Jeffrey Epstein pushing an erect penis into your back, do you?' then asked.

Farmer: 'I do not recall that.'

Menninger: 'You told your mother that you were not raped or sexually abused, right?'

Farmer: 'I said I was not raped.'

'So you told the Epstein Victims Compensation Fund that the hand-holding in movie theaters was sexual abuse?' Menninger asked.

Farmer replied that she had told the fund 'in detail what happened.'

'But you checked the box, New York. So you think hand holding is sexual abuse?' the attorney pressed.

Menninger also pointed out that in a her application for the victims compensation fund, Farmer said that Maxwell groped' her breasts but did not use that word in her testimony.

Farmer said: 'I don't see how that's a significant difference. Rubbed, groped, massaged.'

The defense attorney then went on to ask Farmer about the law firm representing her, Boies Schiller.

'Do you know how much that firm has made in connection with representing Epstein accusers?' she asked Farmer, prompting an objection from the judge.

Farmer, wearing a white and black patterned top, black pants and had shoulder length blonde hair, stared down Maxwell as she entered the court looking over to her left to eyeball the accused

On redirect, prosecutor Lara Pomerantz asked why the movie Primal Fear stuck in her head.

Farmer said there was a 'theme of sexual abuse and sexual misconduct'.

Recounting the incident with Epstein in bed again, Farmer said that he 'crawled into bed with me' and then pushed his body against hers.

Asked what she thought was the nature of her sexual experience with Maxwell and Epstein, Farmer said: 'I think this was all a pattern of them working on confusing my boundaries and making me question myself about what was right and what was not right with the ultimate goal of sexually abusing me.'

The prosecution called two more witnesses, Farmer's former high school boyfriend David Mulligan, and her mother Janice Swain, for brief questioning before resting their case Friday afternoon.

Under questioning, Mulligan told the court that Farmer had told him Epstein had 'touched her leg in the theater and that she didn't want to say anything because Epstein was helping her sister Maria's artistic career.'

When asked if she told him that Maxwell had touched her breasts during the massage, he replied: 'Yes.'

Under cross-examination, defense attorney Bobbi Sternheim asked Mulligan if he knew about Farmer's $1.5million payout to which he replied: 'I do not.'

The government then moved on to Swain, 71.

The mom told the court that she had spoken to Epstein when he wanted to take Farmer's sister Maria on his plane to Florida on a work trip.

'Then Epstein told me about a meeting of students at his ranch in New Mexico, to talk about college plans. I asked who would be chaperoning? He said his wife Ghislaine would be,' Swain said.

'Annie returned with a pair of black boots. She said Jeffrey Epstein bought them for her. She seemed very tired. Later I asked what happened in New Mexico,' she added.

When asked what Farmer said, Swain replied: 'That she didn't want to talk about it.'

After a brief cross examination by the defense, the prosecution rested its case and the jury was let go.

The judge told the jury they will return Thursday to hear the defense case.

The judge has suggested that closing arguments - at a trial originally projected to last six weeks - might occur as early as December 20 if the defense presentation next week only lasts a day or two.

Maxwell, 59, has denied charges she groomed underage girls for Epstein, who killed himself in jail in 2019.

Maxwell's lawyers say the government is making her a scapegoat for alleged sex crimes committed by her onetime boyfriend and moved immediately for a judgment of acquittal after prosecutors rested Friday afternoon.

U.S. District Judge Alison J. Nathan heard brief arguments and rejected the request that she acquit Maxwell without the jury ever getting the case.

Maxwell's lawyer Christian Everdell requested to dismiss all the charges - a standard move in federal trials - and claimed that Maxwell had done nothing to entice the first accuser, Jane, to travel for sexual activity.

Everdell said likened Maxwell to a 'travel agent' who just made some bookings instead of sex trafficking.

Judge Alison Nathan denied the request.

Everdell said that some of the defense witnesses wanted to give evidence anonymously for fear of being associated with the case.

The alleged victims have been allowed to give evidence using pseudonyms.

Everdell said: 'People who testify might get a lot of unwanted attention, especially if they are testifying on behalf of Ms. Maxwell'.

Judge Nathan said she would make a decision later and urged both sides to discuss it.

Maxwell's lawyers said that their defense case would take two or three days, meaning that the jury could go out before Christmas.

Such a short amount of time suggests they are not planning to call Maxwell herself to give evidence.

Bobbi Sternheim pointed to the celebratory mood this Christmas after the pandemic last year ruined the holiday season as a source of concern about the timing of when the jury went out.

She said that if the jury began to deliberate the day before Christmas they may 'not want to come back' and 'rush to judgement'.

Sternheim said that if the jury were just given a few hours to deliberate before the Christmas break it could be 'very dangerous'.

Judge Nathan said such concerns were 'premature' and would be addressed nearer the time.

Last year, Farmer gave an emotional statement to a Manhattan court about why Maxwell should not be granted bail following her arrest last July.

Farmer had described her first meeting with Epstein to the New York Times last year, revealing that a sweatpants-clad Epstein welcomed her into his home with champagne and conversation about her college plans.

During her visit, she went with Epstein and her sister Maria to a movie, where the financier began rubbing her hand and lower leg.

She wrote about the incident in a diary entry from January 1996, which reads: 'It was one of those things that just gave me a weird feeling but wasn't that weird + probably normal.

'The one thing that kind of weirded me out about it was he let go of my hand when he was talking to Maria.'

Epstein later invited Annie to visit his ranch in New Mexico for a weekend and she accepted, expecting that other students would be there as well.

When she arrived and found it was only her, Epstein and Maxwell, the weekend took an uncomfortable turn.

She said Epstein subjected her to more intimate touching, and that one morning he came into her room and got into her bed because he wanted to cuddle.

She remembers Maxwell persuading her to give Epstein a foot massage and then teaching her how to do it.

Maxwell also repeatedly asked her if she wanted a massage and wore her down until she finally undressed and got on a massage table, where Maxwell groped her bare chest, she claims.

'I don't think there was any reason for her to be touching me that way,' Annie said.

Epstein did not participate in the massage, but Annie sensed that he may have been watching the encounter.

Maria has expressed guilt over having accidentally helped Maxwell and Epstein prey on her younger sister, who was 16 at the time.

She mentioned that Annie was looking at colleges, and Epstein offered to fly the younger Farmer out to New York from Arizona.

Maria, who is not a part of this case, was unaware of what went on with her sister at the New Mexico ranch until after her own abusive encounter with the pair.

Annie claimed she had been introduced to Maxwell and Epstein through her sister Maria Farmer (pictuted) who was 25 at the time

Annie Farmer and Virginia Roberts appeared in 2019 for a hearing in the Jeffrey Epstein case in New York City

Around that time, the summer of 1996, Maria was focusing on her painting at Epstein's estate in Ohio when he and Maxwell came to visit her.

She recalls one night when Epstein asked her to give him a foot massage, saying that during the 'brief and awkward' encounter Epstein 'groaned with what seemed like exaggerated pleasure, followed by a yelp of pain'.

Afterward he invited her to watch TV in his bed and Maxwell joined them, Maria said.

The pair began to violently grope her, 'rubbing her body, commenting on her features, and twisting her nipples to the point of bruising', until she ran away and hid.

Maria soon discovered that three nude photographs of Annie and their then-12-year-old sister, who had modeled for her paintings, had gone missing from the storage box where she kept them.

During her desperate search for the intimate photos Maria called her art mentor, Eric Fischl, and told him about the disturbing incident with Maxwell and Epstein.

'I just kept telling Maria: 'You've got to get out of there. You've got to get out of there,'' Fischl told the Times more than two decades later.

The girls' father Frank Farmer picked Maria up from the estate.

Maria confided in Annie soon after and learned that she had similar experiences with Epstein and Maxwell.

After Maria returned to New York she got a call from Maxwell, who threatened to burn all of her artwork and ruin her career.

The call prompted Maria to file a report with the NYPD about the Ohio assault and the stolen art.

Officers referred her to other agencies, including the FBI, because the assault was out of their jurisdiction, Maria said.

She said she spoke with an FBI agent but received little support and was not told whether any action would be taken.

Maria would go on to share her story with others in the art community who knew Epstein, but got the impression that none believed her.

The six charges against Maxwell: THE CHARGES Conspiracy to entice minors to travel to engage in illegal sex acts (5 years max sentence) Enticement of a minor to travel to engage in illegal sex acts (20 years) Conspiracy to transport minors with intent to engage in criminal sexual activity (20 years) Transportation of a minor with intent to engage in criminal sexual activity (10 years minimum, life maximum) Sex Trafficking Conspiracy Sex Trafficking of a Minor Ghislaine Maxwell also faces two charges of perjury but those counts are due to be tried after her sex crimes trial. The charges relate to testimony she gave in 2016 in a defamation case filed against her by Epstein accuser Virginia Giuffre. THE 'FACTS' Prosecutors say Maxwell groomed three girls between 1994 and 1997 for Epstein. They are not named in the indictment, but she allegedly targeted them in London, Florida, New York and New Mexico. Maxwell, it is alleged, would befriend the girls by asking them about their life and their schooling. She would put them at ease by taking them to the movies and taking them shopping, winning their trust to later deliver them to Epstein, it's alleged. To 'normalize' the abuse that would come later, prosecutors say she undressed in front of the girls herself and asked them sexual questions. She then not only facilitated Epstein abusing them, prosecutors say, but took part in some of it herself. The alleged sex abuse includes 'sexualized group massages'. The indictment also says Maxwell made the girl feel 'indebted' to Epstein by encouraging them to take money from him and let him pay for their education and travel. Advertisement

In 2003 she and Annie gave their story to a Vanity Fair reporter commissioned to write an article about Epstein's finances and proclivity for young girls, but when it came out it had no mention of the Farmers.

Years later that reporter, Vicky Ward, said the article went in a different direction because they couldn't corroborate what the girls had said.

Ward accused Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter of squashing the story under pressure from Epstein.

Maxwell caught wind of the story and allegedly told Maria: 'Better be careful and watch your back. I know you go to the West Side Highway all the time. While you're out there, just be really careful because there are a lot of ways to die there.'

Maria eventually abandoned her dream of becoming an artist because of the influence Epstein and Maxwell had in the industry.

She spent years in therapy trying to erase Epstein's impact and even underwent breast reduction surgery because she was haunted by his and Maxwell's comments about her chest.

Annie fared better, going on to get her PhD and become a psychotherapist. But, of course, the abuse still haunted her.

In 2006 the sisters were given new hope of justice when FBI agents contacted them during an investigation into allegations of underage sex abuse by Epstein in Florida.

That investigation resulted in a sweetheart plea deal that landed Epstein in jail for just 13 months.

The Farmers' said the outcome of that case was 'deeply demoralizing'.

Everything resurfaced in 2018 when the Miami Herald published a report about the plea deal, sparking an onslaught of allegations that led to Epstein being charged again this summer.

Hearing all of the new allegations caused Maria renewed pain as she wonders if she could have stopped him earlier by pushing her own story harder and louder.

'Every time I hear one of the girls tell their story, it devastates me,' she said.
Former Labor Leader Bill Shorten has publicly expressed his doubt surrounding Jacinda Arden's radical proposal to make New Zealand the world's first smoke-free nation.

Speaking on Channel Nine's The Today Show, the Shadow Minister for Government Services told co-host Sylvia Jeffreys the aim to eradicate the deadly habit across the Tasman was a healthy approach - but also fraught with danger.

'I was uneasy when I read about this....Both my parents died of catastrophic heart attacks and they were both long-term smokers. I'm no fan of smoking,' Shorten said on Friday morning.

'On the other hand, we've had a lot of government in our lives... we are basically saying smoking is illegal, it will lead to a black market in cigarettes.

Former Opposition Leader Bill Shorten has publicly expressed his doubt surrounding Jacinda Arden's radical proposal to make New Zealand the world's first smoke-free nation by 2025

The government proposal led by the New Zealand PM will see smoking eventually eradicated from society

Officials in NZ believe the country will save $5billion in health costs related to smoking as a result of the smoke-free 2025 action plan (stock image)

'(At first) I thought "are they joking",' Shorten said.

On Thursday, the New Zealand PM announced the radical smoking plan, which will see the age limit increased each year until the expensive habit is eventually made illegal for all residents.

The mandate will also see 7,500 of the country's 8,000 suppliers and tobacconists out of business, with the unrelenting government saying they will have to find a new model.

Officials believe the country will save $5billion in health costs related to smoking as a result of the smoke-free 2025 action plan.

'We want to make sure young people never start smoking so we will make it an offence to sell or supply smoke tobacco products to new cohorts of young people,' Associate Health Minister Dr Ayesha Verrall said.

'People aged 14 when the law comes into effect will never be able to legally purchase tobacco.'

Perth based breakfast radio identity Gareth Parker agreed with Mr Shorten, stating a section of people will resist the proposal in New Zealand.

'I'm not usually a fan of government telling us how to live our lives,' he said.

'With black markets, kids will still get their hands on them (cigarettes).

'But I will say, if it discourages people from taking up a habit (from a young age) with no redeem value, I agree with it (plan).'

Australia has taken similar steps in curbing cigarette smoking and led the world with its plain packaging and shocking warnings (pictured)
A British TV host has slammed Australia as a 'wasteland' that he wishes the world could get rid of, brutally describing its two main exports as 'brunch and casual racism'.

Heydon Prowse, who is best known for his environmental activism and working as a writer on BBC series 'The Revolution Will Be Televised', took aim at the country in a viral video.

'Seriously, it's a cultural and physical desert,' Mr Prowse said during an interview with social media publisher Political Joe.

'They're quite good at brunch. Brunch and casual racism are their two main exports.'

Mr Prowse made the comments while criticising the country's lack of commitment to reduce carbon emissions, shut down coal industries and tackle climate change.

Heydon Prowse took aim at the country and compared it to a wasteland before declaring he wanted to 'get rid of Australia'

'It's a cultural and physical desert,' Mr Prowse said during an interview with Political Joe

In October, prime minister Scott Morrison committed Australia to achieve net zero carbon emissions by 2050 - but still faces mounting calls to do more.

Mr Morrison said the country can reach the target by relying on technology such as solar power and green hydrogen and without introducing any taxes.

Australia is one of the world's highest per head of population greenhouse gas emitter and will not rule out building more coal-fired power stations, in a move that has disappointed the UK.

During the interview, Prowse pointed out Australia was still a major contributor to carbon emissions.

'Isn't per head of their population close to the US in terms of carbon emissions?' he said. 'They just drive around in SUVs.'

Mr Prowse criticised deputy prime minister Barnaby Joyce after he mocked the British chair of the Glasgow climate summit Alok Sharma.

'They're quite good at brunch. Brunch and casual racism are their two main exports,' Mr Prowse said (pictured, Sydneysiders at Opera Bar)

Mr Prowse (right) has worked as a writer and performed for hit BBC series 'The Revolution Will Be Televised' (left, co-writer Jolyon Rubinstein)

Mr Sharma became visibly emotional as last minute changes were made to the wording of the climate pact during the Cop26 at Glasgow in November.

The commitment to 'phase-out' coal was watered down to 'phase down' under the insistence of India and China.

'May I just say to all delegates: I apologise for the way this process has unfolded and I am deeply sorry,' Mr Sharma said.

'I also understand the deep disappointment, but I think as you have noted, it's also vital that we protect this package.'

Mr Joyce accused Mr Sharma of attempting to shut down industries in 'other people's countries'.

'You know, it annoys me  what's the guy's name? Was it the chairman Sharma in Glasgow,' Joyce said to the ABC.

Mr Prowse (pictured) has also staged several prank calls to high-profile figures in the past

Mr Morrison said the country can reach the target by relying on technology such as solar power and green hydrogen and without introducing any taxes - but he did not announce any new initiatives or funding

'He was with his gavel and oh, I'm almost crying, I can't do this.'

Mr Prowse was critical of the deputy prime minister for 'taking the p***' out of Mr Sharma before warning Australia needed to take stock of its own commitment to tackling climate change.

'I don't know what Australia is offering to the planet at this point?' he said.

Mr Prowse's comments struck a chord with Australians after a snippet of the interview was uploaded to TikTok.

Social media users were quick to step in and defend their country.

'Tell me you know nothing about Australia without telling me know nothing about Australia,' one person commented.

Another one added: 'Umm Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures? The oldest culture in the world.'

Nuclear power is off the table but Mr Morrison did not rule out building more coal-fired power stations in a move that will disappoint allies such as the UK who want to phase out coal around the world
A Sydney man has been hard at work in Australia for 58 years but Centrelink wouldn't give him his pension because of a name change made seven decades ago.

Joseph Finianos first arrived in Australia from Lebanon when he was just 22. As soon as he arrived he has been a diligent worker who paid his taxes the entire time.

The now 80-year-old, who works at a supermarket, had hoped to receive the aged pension so he could reduce his workload but Centrelink denied his application saying they couldn't identify him.

Joseph was born as Youssef but as a schoolboy in French colonised Lebanon his schoolteacher changed his name to assimilate him to Western culture.

And Joseph has used the name ever since. It's on his Medicare card, it's the name the Australian Tax Office has but his birth certificate and passport still have the name 'Youssef' on them.

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Joseph Finianos has been working in Australia for 58 years and has been using the name a schoolteacher gave him for some 70 years rather than his birth name 'Youssef'

So when Joseph took his documents to Centrelink to apply for a pension he was told he wasn't eligible as his documents couldn't properly identify him.

Joseph was told to go to immigration and ask them to change his documents to the name 'Joseph' instead of 'Youssef' but they refused.

'Immigration wouldn't give me a citizenship with 'Joseph' on it, only 'Youssef.' So I have to keep working to pay my expenses and all that,' he told A Current Affair.

His frustrated family turned to the team at A Current Affair who then helped them organise a case manager for Joseph at Centrelink.

The now 80-year-old man was hoping to receive pension payments so he could reduce his workload but was denied by Centrelink because they 'couldn't identify him'

With the help of a Centrelink case manager Joseph was able to prove that he was both 'Youssef' and 'Joseph' and has since been approved for pension payments

Eventually he was able to meet with a Centrelink identity expert who was able to prove Joseph and Youssef were the same person.

Now Joseph has been able to reduce his workload as pension payments will soon commence.

'I still want to keep working at the IGA in Bondi Beach, the people here are kind and like family,' he said.

Daily Mail Australia has contacted Services Australia for comment.
Australian officials are frantically scouring the world for a key chemical needed for diesel truck engines to start - as a minister admits the country only has five weeks' supply left.

Stockpiles of additive urea, a main ingredient of AdBlue, are running low globally after China this year banned exports in a bid to contain fertiliser prices - a key component of food production.

Modern diesel engines powering trucks, utes and four-wheel drives won't start unless AdBlue has been added to the exhaust system to reduce the levels of nitric oxide pollution.

With half of Australia's trucks having a diesel engine, that means many goods may not reach supermarket shelves this Christmas as many family cars are forced off the road.

Now Energy Minister Angus Taylor has admitted Australia's existing supplies were likely to run out by the middle of January and has appointed a former Donald Trump adviser to help devise a solution.

Service stations are now running low on stock and are banning customers from panic buying more AdBlue than they need as Australia's only urea maker, Incitec Pivot, prepares to cease production next year.

Australia is in a panic about a key chemical needed for diesel truck engines to start with a cabinet minister admitting there was only five weeks' of supply left (pictured is a Woolworths truck in Sydney)

Mr Taylor's office released a statement late on Thursday night revealing Australia had 15million litres left of AdBlue in storage 'which is equivalent to close to five weeks of business-as-usual demand'.

What is urea? Urea is commonly used as a fertiliser but a more refined version is added to diesel engines to reduce nitric oxide exhaust fumes This diesel exhaust fluid is marketed in Australia as AdBlue containing 32 per cent urea and 68 per cent de-ionised water The product, injected into the exhaust system, is used in diesel cars along with civil construction and farming machinery China supplies 80 per cent of the Asia-Pacific region's diesel-grade urea Source: National Road Transport Association Advertisement

Shipments en route to Australia would provide another 'two weeks of additional supply to the market.'

Mr Taylor blamed China, Australia's biggest trading partner, for the crisis without specifically citing their export ban on refined urea.

'Global supply pressures, stemming from increased domestic use in China, have led to international issues in securing refined urea, which is key to producing AdBlue,' he said.

Mr Taylor has done a round of media interviews calling on motorists to avoid hoarding AdBlue.

'We are on top of the situation, but I understand the global shortage may alarm people,' he told Melbourne radio station 3AW.

In a bizarre setback, Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce was meant to be spearheading Australia's response to the urea crisis but he is now quarantining in Washington with Covid only a week after his advisers met with the National Road Transport Association.

In his absence Mr Taylor and Trade Minister Dan Tehan have assembled industry leaders.

'I can assure Australians that the government is working to ensure we do not face any shortages,' Mr Taylor said.

'We are quickly and actively working to ensure supply chains of both refined urea and AdBlue are secure so that industry can have certainty on their operations.'

Now Energy Minister Angus Taylor has admitted Australia's existing supplies were likely to run out by the middle of January and has appointed a former Donald Trump adviser to help devise a solution

Mark McKenzie, the chief executive of the Australasian Convenience and Petroleum Marketers Association, told Daily Mail Australia his service stations, including BP, were now banning customers from panic buying more AdBlue than they needed.

'In relation to our fuel retailers, we're getting a bit of a run on the product at service stations for obvious reasons,' he said.

'We are using measures such as price to discourage bulk purchases but because it's such a prime issue, that doesn't seem to be deterring them either.

'If we continue to see this behaviour, we'll move to a strategy that prevents runout.'

Mr McKenzie said service stations had yet to resort to rationing but would stop customers from topping up jerrycans.

'We'll allow them to get the normal level they need to put into the AdBlue reservoir but we won't be allowing people to fill up jerrycans and the like at service stations,' he said.

'It's panic buying because they're trying to just fill every vessel they can.'

Modern diesel engines powering trucks, utes and four-wheel drives won't start unless urea has been added to the exhaust system to reduce the levels of nitric oxide pollution

Ben Nix, the chief financial officer of SRH Milk Haulage, said they had no more AdBlue at their NSW depots, with wholesale urea prices surging six-fold since October, and feared deliveries from the farm to factory would cease once service stations ran out in coming weeks.

'Effectively, it's just every man and their dog,' he told Daily Mail Australia.

'We only found out we were running low on AdBlue last week when everyone else did - our old supplier just said, "We've got none, we're just going to sort of try and limit it" and we haven't got a single drop from it since.

'We've got nothing in our depots in New South Wales - we're sending trucks effectively to service stations to get it. If the service stations start running low, that just creates uncertainty in the market.

'At some point, there will be something that runs out and the truck just won't start that day. We've got a supply crisis going on.'

Australian Trucking Association chair David Smith said the government was unable to guarantee AdBlue supplies beyond February 2022.

'We were told there was no need to panic about the supply of AdBlue, but no one was prepared to back this assurance up with any numbers about AdBlue supply,' he said.

'The supply of AdBlue is just as important as the supply of fuel.

'We need transparency about the stocks of material that are in Australia and the ability of suppliers to deliver the AdBlue we need throughout the first half of 2022.

'We are already seeing suppliers restricting orders or raising prices.'

Mark McKenzie, the chief executive of the Australasian Convenience and Petroleum Marketers Association, told Daily Mail Australia service stations were now banning customers from panic buying more AdBlue than they needed.

Chemical maker Incitec Pivot supplies 10 per cent of Australia's AdBlue and is the only company that makes urea in Australia.

But in November, chief executive Jeanne Johns announced it would stop making urea and other fertilisers at its Gibson Island plant in Brisbane from December 2022, citing a failure to secure a natural gas deal.

Mr Taylor blamed insufficient natural gas supplies for low urea production in Australia.

'This is exacerbated by the global shortage of natural gas, the essential ingredient used to make urea,' he said.

Incitec Pivot has signalled to Daily Mail Australia a willingness to ramp up domestic production before shutting down manufacturing in a year.

DGL makes urea but it imports AdBlue from New Zealand and has 60 per cent of the Australian market, leaving the other 40 per cent of supply at the whim of either Incitec Pivot or other imports.

China supplies 80 per cent of the Asia-Pacific's diesel-grade urea but its National Development and Reform Commission in July announced it would crack down on fertiliser hoarding, which led to state-owned firms restricting their exports.

Mr Taylor has formed an AdBlue Taskforce featuring Andrew Liveris, the former chairman and chief executive of The Dow Chemical Company who previously adviser led former US President Donald Trump's American Manufacturing Council

This has seen other countries scramble for supplies from alternative markets with South Korea on Tuesday signing a deal with Indonesia for 120,000 tonnes a year.

Saudi Arabia and Qatar also manufacture refined urea, with Europe also competing for supplies following the end of Covid restrictions.

AdBlue, a diesel exhaust fluid, contains 32 per cent urea and 68 per cent de-ionised water.

Mr Taylor has formed an AdBlue Taskforce featuring Saudi Aramco director Andrew Liveris, the former chairman and chief executive of The Dow Chemical Company who previously adviser led former US President Donald Trump's American Manufacturing Council.

James Fazzino, a former CEO of Incitec Pivot who chairs of Manufacturing Australia, will lead this taskforce that will also include Dr Cathy Foley, Australia's Chief Scientist.
Mexican authorities have launched a search for a model and former Venezuelan beauty pageant contestant who has been reported missing.

Rossana Gil, 29, who competed in Miss World Venezuela 2015, has not been seen or heard from since November 19 when she visited the Hard Rock Guadalajara in Guadalajara, Jalisco.

Hard Rock Guadalajara executive Rebecca Castellanos confirmed to DailyMail.com on Friday that Gil 'was never staying with us.'

Castellanos declined to comment any further because of the ongoing investigation into the 29-year-old woman's disappearance.

Gil has been living in Mexico since moving there four years ago in the hope of advancing her career in the modeling industry.

Gil won her first pageant, Miss Aragua 2015, at the age of 23 in her home state of Aragua, Venezuela.

Former Venezuelan beauty queen Rossana Gil has been reported missing in Mexico

Gil won her first pageant, Miss Aragua 2015, at the age of 23 in her home state of Aragua

Venezuelan model Rossana Gil was last seen November 19 when she visited the Hard Rock Hotel Guadalajara, pictured, in Guadalajara, Jalisco

The beauty queen went on to compete at Miss World Venezuela 2015 contest, but came up short.

Gil decided then to give up her future pageant aspirations and concentrated on her career as a model.

In 2017, the Venezuelan moved to Mexico where she landed several modeling gigs promoting a wide range of products, online digital outlet Infobae reported.

DailyMail.com's calls and messages made to a number listed on a missing person's poster linked to Gil's family in Venezuela went unanswered.

Mexico government data shows that 95,121 people have been reported missing in the country, including nearly 25,000 since December 2018 when President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador entered office.

Gil was reported missing by her Venezuela-based family December 3. The 5-foot-8, dark skinned complexion model has brown hair and a tattoo on her right wrist with the name 'Oswaldo'
Former President Donald Trump wants to personally reshape the Republican Party ahead of the 2022 midterm election cycle, a new report claimed on Thursday.

Trump and his allies have been working to install a network of loyalists across local and state governments while also pushing primary challenges against GOP lawmakers he views as 'weak' or 'disloyal,' sources close to him told Axios.

In particular he appears to be taking aim at Republicans who have rebuked or opposed his claim the 2020 presidential election was unfairly stolen from him.

Trump is demanding his party 'get smart' on the subject of election 'audits,' people who have spent time with Trump at Mar-a-Lago were quoted in the report as saying.

'We try to get him onto other topics, but you always get dragged back,' an adviser reportedly said.

The former president already has endorsed 66 candidates for next year's election, by one count. Dozens more could be on deck in the next 11 months as more Republicans are emboldened by Democrats' lackluster showing in this year's races.

Trump has endorsed more than 60 candidates for various state, federal and local races in 2022

Most recently Trump endorsed former Georgia Senator David Perdue's primary challenge against incumbent Governor Brian Kemp.

Kemp took over the governorship with Trump's backing but the ex-president soured on him for not intervening in Georgia's presidential election count.

But Perdue told Axios on Wednesday that he wouldn't have signed the vote certification if he was in Kemp's seat.

'Not with the information that was available at the time and not with the information that has come out now. They had plenty of time to investigate this. And I wouldnt have signed it until those things had been investigated, and thats all we were asking for,' the former senator said.

When Kemp signed his state's election certification he stated that he was required by law to do so.

Trump is also working to take down Rep. Liz Cheney in Wyoming. She's the vice chair of the House committee investigating the Capitol riot and voted to impeach Trump over his role on January 6.

Cheney's vocal opposition to Trump got her removed from House GOP leadership by the ex-president's supporters within her caucus. Similarly, the Wyoming Republican Party voted to disavow the conservative lawmaker in November.

In his endorsement of Cheney primary opponent Harriet Hageman, Trump said the Wyoming attorney 'adores the Great State of Wyoming, is strong on Crime and Borders, powerfully supports the Second Amendment, loves our Military and our Vets, and will fight for Election Integrity and Energy Independence.'

Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney, the ranking Republican on the House committee investigating the Capitol riot, is one of the elected GOP officials facing a Trump-backed primary challenge

The former president is also endorsing ex-Georgia Senator David Perdue to replace incumbent Republican Governor Brian Kemp (pictured) after the former Trump ally signed the certification of the battleground state's 2020 election results

Rep. Anthony Gonzalez of Ohio announced he's retiring from the House in 2022 after being confronted with a primary challenge from a former Trump White House aide accused of abuse by his ex-girlfriend.

Additionally, Trump has endorsed primary challengers for the Secretaries of State in Georgia, Arizona and Michigan - all battleground states that he narrowly lost to Biden in 2020.

All three have expressed doubt over last year's presidential vote count. If successful those candidates will have a direct and critical role in their states' 2024 elections.

The Thursday report notes that believers of Trump's baseless voter fraud claims are running in Nevada and Wisconsin as well.

Also at the state level, Trump has targeted Texas State Senator Kel Seliger - the lone GOP lawmaker there to vote against conducting a 2020 election audit.

Similar to Trump-backed Perdue in Georgia, the ex-president's favored candidate to lead Arizona is Kari Lake, who told One America News Network in July that she would not have certified Biden's victory if she was governor.

Even before the election Trump loyalists in Republican-dominated states have been working to pass election security laws that could make ti difficult for some people to vote.

So far 19 of 50 states have enacted more than two dozen such laws, according to the Brennan Center for Justice.
A woman who died after driving her car into the freezing waters of Niagara Falls did so deliberately, investigators say.

The unidentified woman, who is in her 60s, was killed after the vehicle plunged into the freezing rivers of the Niagara River in upstate New York on Wednesday, with State Police saying Thursday that the tragedy was not the result of an accident.

Recovery efforts continue to retrieve her wrecked car, which has floated closer to the edge of the iconic falls, and now sits just 30 feet from their summit.

The investigation tied to the incident remains ongoing.

New York State Parks Police said it was informed about the vehicle floating into the stream shortly before 12p.m. on Wednesday, before it got caught into a set of rocks, just some 50 yards short of the extremity of the Falls.

The car, which is said to have flipped over, moved 20 feet closer to the brink of the American Falls, one of three waterfalls that make up Niagara Falls, on Thursday.

One person, a woman who was pronounced dead at the scene, was said to be in the vehicle before being retrieved by the U.S. Coast Guard Great Lakes on Wednesday at around 12:30p.m.

Her cause and manner of death have yet to be determined. A drone was used by the State Parks Police to identify her in the vehicle.

A vehicle is submerged in rushing rapids just yards from the brink of American Falls, one of three waterfalls that make up Niagara Falls, Wednesday, Dec. 8, 2021, in Niagara Falls, N.Y.

People look at a car submerged in rapids near the edge of American Falls in Niagara Falls

'Due to the area where the vehicle was, our swift water team was not able to make a recovery,' Rola said. 'We contacted the Coast Guard and their helicopter ... came out and was able to make a recovery.'

Rola added that the woman was found in the driver's seat by a rescue swimmer.

Petty Officer 2nd class Derrian Duryea, wearing an orange suit, was lowered 80 feet to the car through the the snowy conditions. After slowly circling around the car, he was finally able to grab hold of the driver's side and open the door.

'As I was coming down I was just really focused on how am I going to get in this car when there's, you know, pretty much rapids coming over the car right next to Niagara Falls,' Duryea said by phone later after returning to Selfridge Air National Guard Base, northeast of Detroit, where the crew is stationed. 'My sole focus was which window or door am I going in.'

'Luckily, the car was unlocked and I didn't have to break out any windows and I was able to open up the passenger side door and push it up against the current,' he said.

A U.S. Coast Guard diver is lowered from a hovering helicopter to pull a body from a submerged vehicle stuck in rushing rapids just yards from the brink of American Falls, one of three waterfalls that make up Niagara Falls on Wednesday

A U.S. Coast Guard diver,tethered to a hovering helicopter, pulls an unidentified woman from a submerged vehicle stuck in rushing rapids just 30 yards from the brink of American Falls

Emergency personnel gather at the edge of the where where the woman was removed from her submerged vehicle stuck in the Niagara River. Authorities are trying to figure out a way to remove the car

The woman was the only person trapped in the vehicle, which entered the river through an area between two nearby bridges, one for pedestrians and one for vehicles, according to the US Coast Guard.

The victim was a local, Rola added, but declined to reveal her address. Her body was taken to the Erie County Medical Examiner's Office for review.

Meanwhile, New York State Parks Police will continue to work with other agencies to figure out the safest way to remove the unidentified vehicle from the water.

The car is currently nearly full submerged with its trunk open. Officials are unable to identify the car's model and brand.

A State Parks Police spokesperson said Wednesday evening that there were no plans to monitor the car or the area over the next couple of days.

New York Governor Kathy Hochul shared her sadness by 'the tragic loss of life at the Niagara River' on Twitter on Wednesday. She thanked emergency crews and the New York Power Authority 'for lowering river levels to assist first responders'.
A glamorous Australian lollipop lady has revealed she will pursue a career in nursing, despite making $5,400 for just four days of work as a traffic controller.

Melbourne based lollipop lady Unity Adams, who is also an online bikini model, says that while traffic control pays big money, she is also 'hit on 24/7,' in the role.

She also exposed other harsh realities of the job, which included getting cat-called every 20 minutes, having angry men repeatedly yell at her to get off the road and being forced to listen to tradies constantly talk about other women.

She was quick to add the video wasn't largely directed at any of her colleagues and followed her interactions with the general public.

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Ms Adams hopes to pursue a career in nursing once she has completed her studies

The glamorous online bikini model pointed out the aspects of the job she finds challenging - including getting 'cat called' every 20 minutes by members of the public

A number of traffic controllers have taken to TikTok in recent months, sometimes boasting about their pay - which can be up to $5,000 a week in some cases - and other times complaining about boring work exposed to hot and cold weather.

'For everyone hyping traffic control as a good job, why are you lying?' said Paris Taylor, who described the role as the 'worst job ever'.

When another woman asked about the pay, Ms Taylor said: 'Only pays well if you are doing long hours.'

Last month another Melbourne woman Maria Kefalas, 21, vented on social media that traffic control is often seen as 'easy money'.

'I've been seeing a lot of TikTok (videos) in regards to traffic control, and they are all positive,' she ranted in her post.

Breakdown of Unity Adams' jaw-dropping weekly salary from night shifts as a lollipop lady: Friday - $1500 (14 hours) Saturday - $1300 (12 hours) Sunday - $1300 (12 hours) Monday - $1300 (12 hours) Total - $5400 Source: TikTok Advertisement

'They tell you how much money they make and how many hours they work.

'They are giving people false hope about traffic control... it has got to be the most inconsistent job I have ever done in my life.'

'Some weeks yes, I had five days of work - but then I was off for two weeks,' she told Daily Mail Australia.

'On other occasions I had phone calls at 11pm asking me to be on a job site at 6am the following day or to drive two hours out of Melbourne on short notice for a 12 hour shift.

'It isn't a stable income by any means.'

Another Aussie female traffic controller, Paris Taylor (pictured above), also told her TikTok video followers it can be a brutal and sexist line of work
Almost a third of employers have sacked staff members for refusing to get the Covid-19 vaccine, according to a new survey.

The Human Resources Institute carried out the survey of 760 human resource professionals in November.

The peak body for human resources executives found 25 per cent of companies have cut ties with at least one of their employees over the jab.

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CEO Sarah McCann-Bartlett said the vaccination status of employees had also created tension among staff

The peak body for human resources executives found 25 per cent of companies have cut ties with at least one of their employees over the jab

CEO Sarah McCann-Bartlett said the vaccination status of employees had also created tension among staff.

'The vaccination conversation between those who are vaccinated and those who are not vaccinated has caused tension and a bit of a culture split between employees,' she told Channel Nine's Today Show on Friday.

'Employers are really quite worried about that because workplace culture is so important.'

Sixty per cent of bosses have introduced a vaccine mandate at their workplace with the majority making it compulsory for all their workers - while others have only made it mandatory for some.

Some 85 per cent of staff agree with the decision while six per cent disagree.

'Culture split may be a little extreme, I'd probably use the term friction in the workplace,' Ms McCann-Bartlett said.

'Therefore, employers are concerned about the effect on culture: you will have two different groups of employees, (some of whom) are perhaps not demonstrating the values and behaviours of the organisation.'

Sixty per cent of bosses have introduced a vaccine mandate at their workplace with the majority making it compulsory for all their workers - while others have only made it mandatory for some

Only one in five bosses have also created remote working conditions for their unvaccinated staff.

Some 62 per cent of employers will not allow unvaccinated employees if they do not have a valid medical exemption while 16 per cent said they would and 22 per cent said they were unsure.

Ms McCann-Bartlett pointed out businesses were not required to introduce vaccine mandates.

Instead, bosses had made the decision with the health and safety of their workforce in mind.

'They have understood what their broader obligations are and have been prepared to make the hard decisions,' she said.
A 22 year-old student from the University of New Hampshire who was found dead in a wooded area on Sunday died of accidental drowning, according to an autopsy released on Wednesday.

The body of 22-year-old Vincenzo Lirosi was found close to campus in a marshy area, with cops saying the student's death is not being treated as suspicious. Those autopsy results were released Wednesday, and Durham Police Chief Rene Kelley said that there was 'no further information at this time' that would be released to the public.

Lirosi, who was known as 'Vinny' to his friends, had disappeared following a night of drinking at a fraternity party where he had been involved in a fight.

'It's pretty uncharacteristic of him,' friend Jordan Blanchard told WMUR. 'This is his first fight ever.' No further details on the disagreement, including what prompted it and whether it got physical, were shared.

Vincenzo Lirosi, 22, a University of New Hampshire student who went missing early Saturday morning, was found dead on Sunday afternoon

Lorisi left a frat house close to the University of New Hampshire, pictured left, and his body was found in a marshy area close to Coe Drive, pictured center

'They kicked him out and told him to go home. That's when he went into the woods.'

University of New Hampshire's Sigma Chi fraternity said in a statement that Lirosi wasn't invited to the party, which they said was a 'welcome home' event for a member who had just returned from military service.

'We are saddened to learn of the death of Vincent Lirosi, an uninvited guest who died after leaving an event held by some members of our chapter,' the fraternity said.

'We are cooperating with authorities as they investigate the circumstances of his death.'

The University of New Hampshire has suspended the fraternity as they investigate the fight that preceded the history major's death.

Lirosi located by a New England Search and Rescue K-9 team in a marshy area close to the campus

Durham police used a K-9 and thermal drone to search woods while New Hampshire State police and Fish and Game using a helicopter to search for him

Lirosi had attended a frat party at which he got into a fight and was told to go

'As is common practice when an investigation involved a fraternity, we were in touch with the organization's national headquarters and collectively agreed to interim suspend the organization effective immediately,' said the school's dean of students, Michael Blackman.

A vigil was held for Lirosi at the University on Monday, and a GoFundMe fundraiser toward his funeral expenses surpassed $77,000, according to the New York Post.

Lirosi's brother, Giovanni, thanked those who attended a Monday vigil.

'All of you who were there at the vigil and everyone that have been sending messages and those of you who were silently supporting us we love all of you so much,' he said on the GoFundMe page.

The student was last seen walking along a wooden path toward his home around 1am on Saturday. He was reported missing two hours later at around 3am.

'We started to think how he would think, and we started walking through the woods on different trails,' Blanchard explained. 'We walked all the way to Jackson's Landing to see if he was over there, and we could not find anything.'

Vincenzo 'Vinny' Lirosi, left, is seen in Facebook photos posted by his mother, Robin Nichols Lirosi. He's seen with her and brother Giovanni 'Gio' Lirosi

The body of Lirosi, who was from Whitman, Massachusetts, was found around 1:20pm on Sunday.

Durham police used a K-9 and thermal drone to search woods while New Hampshire State police and Fish and Game using a helicopter to search for him.

Lirosi's wallet was found in a parking lot while his cellphone was found at the fraternity house.

'Though this is not the outcome we all had hoped for, we are grateful that we were able to find Vincenzo and bring some closure to his family, Durham Police Chief Kelley said.

'Though this is not the outcome we all had hoped for, we are grateful that we were able to find Vincenzo and bring some closure to his family, Durham Police Chief Rene Kelley said.

Vincenzo 'Vinny' Lirosi, right, was walking back to his residence after 1am with the alarm raised at 3am

On Sunday night, the university released a statement to students following the news.

'It is with very heavy hearts that we write to share that the search for Vincenzo Lirosi did not end as we had hoped. The university student was found in the wooded area off Coe Drive this afternoon. State & local authorities continue to investigate the cause of death but at this time it is not believed to be suspicious.

'Our thoughts and prayers are with Vincenzo's family & friends. This is a very sad day for our community and right now we are focused on providing the support and resources needed for everyone who knew him or is impacted by his death. We ask all faculty and staff to be considerate of students impacted by this tragedy and offer accommodations for assignments and attendance.

'A sudden death brings a range of feelings, especially shock and disbelief. Please take care of yourself and seek help if you need it,' the university wrote.

The cause and manner of Lirosi's death, right, will be determined after an autopsy although it is not thought to be suspicious
A beloved zoo that almost burned down by horror bushfires two years ago has been devastated by flash flooding.

Mogo Wildlife Park on the NSW south coast has been inundated with water after heavy rain battered the region overnight.

Up to 200mm of rain saw parts of the zoo and the adjoining camp ground go underwater, forcing some animals to flee to higher ground.

The zoo was closed for the day on Friday as the massive clean up began.

These zebras at Mogo Wildlife Park were forced to flee to higher ground after heavy rain lashed the region

Fallow deer (pictured) at Mogo Wildlife Park were also surrounded by flash flooding

'It's made a mess of the zoo,' director Chad Staples told Daily Mail Australia.

'We should see the water subside once the high todays

He assured all animals are safe, despite some enclosures being inundated.

Photos show zebras and fallow deer stranded in their enclosures surrounded by floodwater.

'All the enclosures have shelter and higher points for the animals so they're all fine,' he said.

No one was staying in the campground at the the time, which is only open on weekends.

'The flash flooding hit so fast we couldn't save a thing, as you can see we have been devastated,' camp ground operator Graham told 2GB morning host Ray Hadley.

Mogo Wildlife Park's adjoining camp ground (pictured) was flooded. No one was staying at the site at the time

Parts of Mogo Wildlife Park have gone underwater (pictured) as 200mm of rain lashed the region

The SES has conducted at least eight flood rescues stranded campers and motorists across the region.

It's the second time in two years Mogo Zoo has come under threat.

An 'apocalyptic' blaze crossed the Princes Highway and surrounded the zoo during the 2019-20 Black Summer bushfires, putting 200 animals in danger New Year's Eve 2019

Mr Staples and 15 staff battled for hours to defend the zoo by dousing the grounds with hundreds of thousands of litres of water as the inferno approached.

Almost 200 animals at Mogo Wildlife Park were under threat during the 2019-20 bushfires

The youngest survivor was a seven-day-old lion cub who was later named Phoenix to symbolise the extraordinary recovery the zoo made since.

Mr Staples took over the management of Mogo two months prior to the bushfires and had no hesitation in his decision to out his life on the line to defend the zoo and save the animals.

The zoo reopened two months later, just weeks before the Covid-19 pandemic forced the tourist attraction to temporary shut its doors again
Importing hunting trophies from lions, rhinos, elephants and polar bears are to be outlawed by one of the worlds toughest bans.

Environment Secretary George Eustice today announces plans to protect thousands of the worlds threatened species.

The legislation will sit alongside the Governments ivory ban and is expected to be introduced in spring next year.

It will apply to imports of trophies from animals including Africas Big Five  lions, leopards, rhinos, elephants and buffalos.

Ministers claim the ban will be among the toughest in the world and will protect a range of species including nearly 6,000 animals that are currently at risk.

Environment Secretary George Eustice pictured arriving in Downing Street on Tuesday

It will also cover more than 1,000 other species which are considered under threat, including the African buffalo, zebra and reindeer.

The trophy is the animals head, skin or any other body part that the hunter keeps as a souvenir.

Photos of rich tourists posing with the carcasses of animals they have killed have caused widespread public revulsion.

The Government consulted on a ban in 2019 and received 44,000 responses with 86 per cent supporting further action.

Mr Eustice said: More animal species are now threatened with extinction than ever before and we are appalled at the thought of hunters bringing back trophies and placing more pressure on some of our most iconic and endangered animals.

An undated handout photo issued by Campaign to Ban Trophy Hunting of hunters who have killed a lion

This would be one of the toughest bans in the world meaning we will be leading the way in protecting endangered animals.

Worldwide some 1.7million trophies were legally traded between 2004-14. Around 200,000 were from threatened species.

Of these, 2,500 were brought home by British hunters.

Eduardo Goncalves, founder of the Campaign to Ban Trophy Hunting, said: Endangered animals are cruelly and needlessly killed every day.

'I urge the Government to bring the bill to Parliament as soon as possible, and will be asking MPs and peers to get behind it.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison has claimed the Omicron Covid variant is milder than previously feared and could be a 'game changer' in ensuring Australia never goes back into lockdown.

Mr Morrison on Friday morning said the emergence of the seemingly less harmful variant was a promising sign the virus was 'stepping down' in its severity.

'Were not going back to what Australians have had to go through,' he said. 'Were going to go forward and were going to live with this virus.'

He told a press conference in Sydney the illness had so far not proven to be as severe as 'the early indications'.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison (pictured) has claimed the Omicron Covid variant is milder than previously feared and could be a 'game changer' in Australia's fight against the virus

'I think its fair to say that is potentially quite a game changer with the pandemic around the world about how the virus may well step down,' Mr Morrison said.

Department of Health secretary Dr Brendan Murphy said vital health data from South Africa - where the new variant was first reported - indicated Omicron was less harmful than other strains.

'Information out of South Africa suggests that were not seeing a high incidence of hospitalisation and severe disease,' he said.

'But we still need to learn more, we have to get information from other countries who now have significant clusters of this virus and were still doing lab tests on this variant.'

Their remarks echo those of Australia's Chief Medical Officer Paul Kelly - who late last month said Omicron could be his 'number one Christmas present' by boosting immunity levels without causing mass hospitilisations and deaths.

Mr Morrison also on Friday flagged bringing forward Covid booster shots in the fight against the new strain of the disease.

The vaccine rollout for children as young as five at pharmacies and GPs across the country will begin on January 10.

He said he would be discussing accelerating the booster shots with state and territory leaders at National Cabinet later in the day.

A man has a Covid test at a pre-departure area at Sydney International Airport on November 28. New health data from South Africa - where the new variant was first reported - indicates the virus is less harmful than other strains

'We are continuing to review the evidence about how that time period for the booster shot might be able to be reduced,' Mr Morrison said.

'We're working with the medical experts on those issues.'

He added: 'I want to encourage Australians, if you're eligible for your booster, go and get it.'

But the move to speed up the booster programme comes just a week after the Australian Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation had ruled it out.

Passengers are seen at Sydney Airport on December 1. 'Were not going back to what Australians have had to go through,' Mr Morrison said on Friday

Currently everyone must wait six months from the date of their second shot before being eligible for the third booster shot.

Chief Medical Officer Paul Kelly said last Friday there was no evidence to show a benefit to speeding up that cycle, despite the new Omicron variant.

'Is [Omicron] more severe? We don't know yet. But at the moment, there is the evidence that it's mild or the same,' he said in Canberra.

The PM said he would be discussing accelerating Covid booster shots with state and territory leaders at National Cabinet later on Friday

'It is only in the last few weeks this has been circulating in South Africa and elsewhere. They are seeing a rise in hospitalisations there.

'But even hospitalisations they are seeing with the Omicron variant are not any more severe than previous.'

ATAGI has now signed off the Pfizer vaccine rollout for children aged 5-11 from next month, but the PM stressed parents would decide if their child would be jabbed.

Pfizer vaccines to be given to children contain one-third of the standard dose.

'This is another important step forward in our vaccination program,' said the PM on Friday.

ATAGI has now signed off the Pfizer vaccine rollout for children aged 5-11 from next month, but the PM stressed parents would decide if their child would be jabbed

'There are no more important decisions that you make, then those you make about the health and wellbeing of your children.'

Mr Morrison said the approval of vaccines for younger children would come as a relief to parents.

'They can have peace of mind knowing this has the tick from the best medical regulators in the world,' he said.

Polling by the Royal Children's Hospital in Melbourne shows about half of parents surveyed intend to get their children aged between five and 11 vaccinated.

One-quarter of 1259 parents surveyed in July were against it while almost one-third were unsure.

Side effects, convenience and accessibility were key factors influencing parents' willingness to vaccinate their children.

Pfizer vaccine shots to be given to children contain one-third of the standard dose

Poll director and paediatrician Anthea Rhodes was not surprised a significant chunk of parents were undecided because trials and testing remained underway at the time of the survey.

The biggest questions parents had were 'is it safe enough?' and 'does it work well enough to be worth having?', Dr Rhodes said.

She said it highlighted the need to give parents reliable and clear information about the safety and efficacy of vaccines.

Mr Morrison hailed the impact of the vaccination rollout which has seen an average of 137,000 jabs a day across the country to reach it current stage.

Polling by the Royal Children's Hospital in Melbourne shows about half of parents surveyed intend to get their children aged between five and 11 vaccinated (pictured, 12 year old Harry Gooidson checks in for his Pfizer jab in Melbourne)

He said the focus now should not be the daily case numbers, but the numbers in hospital.

'The issue now is not case numbers,' he said. 'The issue is now the impact on on the hospital system and the public health system.

'And what we've already seen in New South Wales and in Victoria is that the hospital systems are managed incredibly as those states have opened up.

'That has occurred at the same time as them going past those 80 per cent vaccination rates.'

He added: 'We're going to go forward and we're going to live with this virus.

'The reason we can do that is because of the decisions we've taken, the achievements that have been made in the vaccination program, the strength of our economy, the resilience of our people.

About 2.3 million children will be able to receive the vaccine from January 10, with bookings for the age cohort to open from late December.\

'And now by bringing five to 11 year olds into that only further strengthens us to be able to deal with and live with this virus and live with it together.'

About 2.3 million children will be able to receive the vaccine from January 10, with bookings for the age cohort to open from late December.

The Australian Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation recommended doses be spaced eight weeks apart for the age group.

It's expected GPs and pharmacies will largely be delivering doses of the vaccines to children.
As the truck toppled over, it hit the base of a steel pedestrian bridge. There was a curve in the road near the accident scene that may have contributed

Authorities said the apparent cause of the tragedy was the speed at which the truck was going combined with the weight of the truck's human cargo

The truck rolled over and crashed into a pedestrian bridge over a highway, an accident that killed at least 54 people and injured at least 21 people

The deceased were believed to be Central American migrants, some from Guatemala and Honduras, who were packed in a cargo truck

Dozens of bodies were arranged in rows covered in white sheets were photographed laid across a roadway in the southern Mexican state of Chiapas

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At least 54 US-bound migrants died when the container truck they were in crashed in Mexico - with one official blaming the speed of the vehicle and the weight of its human cargo for the tragedy.

Dozens of bodies arranged in rows covered in white sheets were photographed laid across a roadway in the southern Mexican state of Chiapas On Thursday. At least 54 further people were wounded, 21 seriously, in the horror smash.

The deceased were believed to be Central American migrants, some from Guatemala and Honduras.

As many as 200 migrants were packed in a cargo truck used to transport perishable goods that rolled over and crashed into a pedestrian bridge over a highway, causing dozens of deaths and serious injuries.

The trailer broke open and spilled out migrants when the truck crashed on a sharp curve outside the city of Tuxtla Gutierrez in the state of Chiapas, according to video footage of the aftermath and civil protection authorities.

It is one of the worst accidents to befall migrants risking their lives to reach the United States since the 2010 massacre of 72 migrants by the Zetas drug cartel in the northern Mexican state of Tamaulipas.

'It took a bend, and because of the weight of us people inside, we all went with it,' said a shocked-looking Guatemalan man sitting at the scene in footage broadcast on social media.

'The trailer couldn't handle the weight of people.'

The deceased were believed to be Central American migrants, some from Guatemala and Honduras, who were packed in a cargo truck

107 migrants were reportedly packed in a cargo truck used to transport perishable goods that rolled over and crashed into a pedestrian bridge over a highway

Dozens of bodies were arranged in rows covered in white sheets were photographed laid across a roadway in the southern Mexican state of Chiapas

Luis Manuel Moreno, the head of the Chiapas state civil defense office, said about 21 of the injured had serious wounds and were taken to local hospitals

Workers remove the container from the trailer of a truck that crashed with migrants aboard during a road accident in Tuxtla Gutierrez, Chiapas state, Mexico, on December 9

A scene of chaos saw victims covered with cloth while paramedics tended to the injured in the crash

Many of the injured, including a mother holding her child (left), were treated by the side of the road by paramedics

Luis Manuel Moreno, the head of the Chiapas state civil defense office, said about 21 of the injured had serious wounds and were taken to local hospitals. Dozens of Guatemalan migrants were named in lists of the injured published on social media.

Moreno said the apparent cause of the tragedy was the speed at which the truck was going combined with the weight of the truck's human cargo that may have caused it to tip over.

Moreno reported that some of the survivors said they were from the neighboring country of Guatemala, including survivor Celso Pacheco who said the truck felt like it was speeding and then seemed to lose control under the weight of the migrants inside, AP reported.

Pacheco estimated there were eight to 10 young children in the cargo truck and said he was trying to reach the United States, but now he expected to be deported to Guatemala.

The migrants inside the cargo trailer were flipped, tossed and crushed into a pile that mingled the living and the dead.

Volunteer rescuers hauled bodies off the pile by their arms and legs, while some migrants scrambled and limped to extract themselves from the twisted steel sheets of the collapsed container.

One young man, pinned in a heap of unmoving bodies, wriggled to free the lower half of his frame from the weight of the dead piled atop him, his face wrenched into a grimace of life extracting itself from the clutches of death.

A witness heard cries and sobs among survivors as emergency personnel rushed to the site of where the overturned truck shuddered to a halt by a highway footbridge.

Images showed a white trailer on its side, with injured people splayed out on tarps on the ground. There were also rows of what appeared to be bodies wrapped in white cloth.

Bodies covered in white sheets are line-up at the site of a trailer accident that left at least 54 people dead

Paramedics help a man injured at the site of a trailer accident and hold out a stretcher for him, as bodies are seen covered in white sheets in the background

The extent of the damage to the trailer of the truck caused by the crash is seen in this image

Workers remove the container from the trailer of a truck that crashed with migrants aboard during a road accident in Tuxtla Gutierrez, Chiapas state, Mexico

The bodies of the victims of the crash are seen laid out on the ground, with white sheets placed over them

Emergency crew assist an injured person after a trailer crash in the southern Mexican state of Chiapas killed at least 54 people

A video of the scene streamed on social media showed a woman holding a child wailing in her lap, both covered in blood. Another video showed a man curled up in pain inside the destroyed trailer, hardly moving as helpers pulled out bodies.

Men, women and children were among the dead, the Chiapas state government said, and President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador on Twitter expressed his sorrow at the 'very painful' incident.

Survivors said they boarded the truck in Mexico, near the Guatemalan border, and paid between $2,500 and $3,500 to be transported to Mexico's central state of Puebla.

According to survivors, once in Puebla they would presumably have contracted with another set of migrant smugglers to take them to the U.S. border.

He said that as the vehicle toppled over, it hit the base of a steel pedestrian bridge. There was a curve in the road near the accident scene that may have contributed to the crash.

That meant around 200 people were crowed into the vehicle, which is not an unusual amount for freight trucks to carry in migrant-smuggling operations in southern Mexico.

But according to rescue workers who first arrived at the scene, even more migrants had been aboard the truck when it crashed and some had even fled to avoid being detained by immigration agents.

One paramedic said some of those who fled into surrounding neighborhoods were bloodied or bruised, but still limped away in their desperation to escape.

Video footage showed the dead and injured migrants jumbled into a pile inside the collapsed freight container, with some struggling to extract themselves from the weight of bodies piled atop them.

Paramedics assist a man injured in a trailer accident that left at least 54 people

Police officers seal the area of a traffic accident that killed migrants from Central America on December 9

Authorities said the apparent cause of the tragedy was the speed at which the truck was going combined with the weight of the truck's human cargo

A police officer raises his arm to block photographers to to avoid taking pictures at the site of a trailer accident

Migrants fleeing poverty and violence in Central America typically trek through Mexico to reach the U.S. border, and sometimes cram into large trucks organized by smugglers in extremely dangerous conditions.

Guatemalan President Alejandro Giammattei posted his condolences for the families of those affected by the tragedy on Twitter.

'I deeply regret the tragedy in Chiapas state, and I express my solidarity for the victims' families, to whom we will offer all the necessary consular assistance, including repatriation,' he wrote.

'This shows us that irregular migration is not the best way,' Kevin Lopez, a spokesman for Guatemala's presidency, told Milenio television after the accident.

He did not know how many Guatemalan victims there were.

El Salvador's foreign minister, Alexandra Hill, said her government was working to see if Salvadorans had died.

Mexico offered lodging and humanitarian visas to the survivors, and Chiapas Governor Escandon said those responsible for the accident would be held to account.

In recent months, Mexican authorities have tried to block migrants from walking in large groups toward the U.S. border, but the clandestine and illicit flow of migrant smuggling has continued.

In October, in one of the largest busts in recent memory, authorities in the northern border state of Tamaulipas found an 652 mainly Central American migrants jammed into a convoy of six freight trucks heading toward the U.S. border.

Irineo Mujica, an activist who is leading a march of a couple of hundred migrants who have been walking for more almost 1 1/2 months across southern Mexico, blamed Mexico's policies of cracking down on migrant caravans for the disaster.

Mujica and his group had almost reached the outskirts of Mexico City on Thursday, after weeks of dealing with National Guard officers who tried to block the march. Mujica said the group would stop Thursday and offer prayers for the dead migrants.

'These policies that kill us, that murder us, is what leads to this type of tragedy,' Mujica said.

In fact, they are two very different groups. Caravans generally attract migrants who don't have the thousands of dollars needed to pay migrant smugglers.

Migrants involved in serious accidents are often allowed to stay in Mexico at least temporarily because they are considered witnesses to and victims of a crime, and later Thursday Mexico's National Immigration Institute said it would offer the humanitarian visas to the survivors.

The agency also said the Mexican government would help identify the dead and cover funeral costs or repatriation of their remains.

Mass deaths of migrants are something that President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has been desperate to avoid, even as his administration has accepted requests from the U.S. government to stem the flow of migrants moving north. 'It is very painful,' he wrote on his Twitter account.

It was one of the worst single-day death tolls for migrants in Mexico since the 2010 massacre of 72 migrants by the Zetas drug cartel in the northern state of Tamaulipas.

The journey north from Mexico's border with Guatemala is perilous and expensive, and many migrants fall prey to criminal gangs en route. In January, 19 people, mostly migrants, were massacred with suspected police involvement in northern Mexico.

Record numbers of people have been arrested on the U.S.-Mexico border this year as migrants seek to capitalize on President Joe Biden's pledge to pursue more humane immigration policies than his hardline predecessor, Donald Trump.

Mexican authorities in Chiapas have attempted to persuade migrants to not form caravans to walk thousands of miles to the U.S. border, and have begun transporting people from the southern city of Tapachula to other regions of the country.

The Biden administration has also urged migrants not to leave their homelands for the United States, and this week saw the restart of a policy initiated under Trump to send asylum seekers back to Mexico to await their court hearings.

Some critics argue that tougher policies push migrants into the hands of the human smugglers, putting their lives at risk.

'(Authorities) generate smuggled migration that generates billions of dollars in profits,' said migrant activist Ruben Figueroa.
A woman became trapped in a car and drowned after flood waters swept the vehicle away from a Hungry Jack's drive-thru and into a nearby creek.

The 44-year-old was a passenger and had been visiting the fast food restaurant with her 52-year-old partner and driver at Aspley, in Brisbane's north, on Thursday.

Wild storms and heavy rain had been battering southeast Queensland with flood waters cutting off several roads.

Sydney is also being lashed with heavy rainfall on Friday as a storm strikes the city and suburbs reported flash flooding.

The couple had been pulling out of the drive-thru and attempted to cross flood waters before the white sedan was carried 200 metres to Little Cabbage Tree Creek.

The 44-year-old was a passenger and had been visiting the fast food restaurant with her 52-year-old partner and driver at Aspley, in Brisbane's north, on Thursday (pictured, car found at Little Cabbage Tree Creek)

Some 90 calls were made to the SES with emergency services called out to Brisbane, Moreton and the Gold Coast (pictured, flood waters at Warroo Bridge at Wanganui)

Emergency crews were alerted about the car trapped in the floodwaters at 8pm but did not find the vehicle until three hours later at 11.15pm.

The 52-year-old driver managed to escape from the vehicle before he was treated by paramedics and taken to Prince Charles Hospital in a stable condition.

The 44-year-old woman, from South Toowoomba, was found dead inside the car.

Queensland Police Sergeant Mark Jones said police were investigating the incident.

'We had a significant amount of rain overnightLittle Cabbage Tree Creek was flooded at this stage that the vehicle entered into flood water and has subsequently been swept into the creek,' he said.

'As they were exiting the drive-through to go back on to Gympie Rd that part of that road was underwater so they've driven into the floodwater and the force of the floodwater has swept them into the creek.

'The male occupant was able to free himself and swim to an embankment'.

A father said his daughter was in the car behind the couple and watched the floodwaters carry the sedan away.

'She was pretty shook up last night and video-called me as it was happening and showed me,' he told Courier Mail.

The couple had been pulling out of the drive-thru and attempted to cross flood waters before the white sedan was carried 200 metres to Little Cabbage Tree Creek (pictured, Hungry Jacks at Aspley)

Heavy rain pummelled southeast Queensland on Thursday (pictured, Brisbane residents in November)

He insisted his daughter wait for the flood waters to pass before attempting to leave the Hungry Jacks drive-thru.

'They were about to drive through as well as it was the only way out because of all the cars stuck behind them,' he said.

'But I was very stern to stay the hell out of the water and wait.'

Resident Jim Williams said he watched water levels rise rapidly in the creek as the area was pummelled by heavy rain.

The tragedy comes after a 75-year-old woman from Taringa died when her car became submerged in floodwaters in West Brisbane on Wednesday night.

Wild storms and heavy rain had been battering southeast Queensland with flood waters cutting off several roads

Some 90 calls were made to the SES with emergency services called out to Brisbane, Moreton and the Gold Coast.

Sydney meanwhile on Friday was lashed with lightning strikes, damaging wind and rain about midday, with the metropolitan area's south-west bearing the brunt of severe thunderstorms.

The State Emergency Service reported flooding in the Macarthur area as storms pummeled the region.

'Multiple flood rescues are underway in the Macarthur area with a multi-agency response underway,' the SES said.

Sydney, I dont think its raining enough. Its the wetter than wet summer.



Like tears in rain pic.twitter.com/8cZVabsdCm  Philippa Bateman (@PhilippaBateman) December 10, 2021

Heavy rainfall and storms are due to strike Sydney imminently, the Bureau of Meteorology has warned. Pictured is the band of rain heading towards the Harbour City from the south

A woman's body has also been recovered in the state's Snowy Monaro region after her car was reportedly trapped in floodwater.

Police were told the female occupant left the car before being swept away.

Her body was found downstream near Tuross about 7.15am on Friday.

The Bureau of Meteorology issued a severe thunderstorm warning on Friday afternoon

Pictured: The Mooney Mooney Bridge north of Sydney on Friday. The State Emergency Service reported flooding in the Macarthur area as storms pummeled the region

The Bureau of Meteorology had warned of a risk of flash flooding and dangerous driving conditions.

The 'slow moving' storm hit Sydney Airport about midday and the CBD by 12.25pm. By 12.30pm conditions in the city eased and the system had moved offshore.

A BoM spokesman told Daily Mail Australia there was a risk of severe thunderstorms throughout Friday afternoon and into the evening.

'These storms are associated with a broader system bringing rain to the south coast,' BoM ACT and NSW meteorologist Agata Imielska said.

'Given its a Friday it's really important for anyone commuting home or driving away for the weekend to look for flash flooding warnings.'

The NSW south coast has copped heavy rainfall in recent days and is already under a flash flooding warning that will likely to continue until Saturday.

Parts of Sydney were hit by hail early on Friday afternoon as the storm swept across the city. The Bureau of Meterology expects the risk of severe thunderstorms to continue into Friday evening

Bureau meteorologist Johnathan How said a low pressure system in the country's south is causing the recent downpours.

'There is the potential for flash flooding as soils are already saturated and rivers will respond to rain quickly' Mr How said.

'The three-day forecast into Saturday night shows broad agreement between the computer models - widespread moderate falls through the east.'
Childcare costs are set to become more affordable for families, with a limit on fee relief set to be removed.

The federal government will from Friday remove the childcare subsidy cap of $10,655.

The removal of the annual cap will be applied retrospectively for the 2021/22 financial year.

Families who reached the cap before the changes come into effect will have out-of-pocket costs for the financial year reimbursed.

The federal government will from Friday remove the childcare subsidy cap of $10,655 among a raft of changes to help mums and dads work more (stock image)

Women's Economic Security Minister Jane Hume said the change would allow for parents from more than 18,000 families to return to work or pick up more hours.

'The Morrison government supports choice for Australian families and is committed to increasing the economic opportunities for Australian women to participate in the workforce,' she said.

It also comes as the current subsidy will increase from March next year for families with two or more children.

From March 7, the subsidy will increase for families with multiple children by 30 per cent.

It's expected about 250,000 families will benefit from the changes when they are introduced

Treasury estimates have shown both measures would mean about 40,000 parents would be able to work an extra day per week.

As a result, the department said the economy would be boosted by $1.5 billion.
Carrie Johnson knew that she was having a girl from her second scan, it emerged yesterday.

The PMs wife, 33, gave birth to a healthy baby girl at a London hospital yesterday  her second child with Boris Johnson, 57, and his seventh.

The couple announced they were expecting at the end of July, after Mrs Johnson described her heartbreak following a miscarriage in early 2021.

She has called the newborn their rainbow baby  a term used by parents having a child after losing an infant to miscarriage, stillbirth or neonatal death.

It signifies the arrival of something beautiful after a storm.

It also emerged that Mr Johnson will take time off work with his family, but not the two weeks paternity leave that he is entitled to.

Carrie Johnson was pictured arriving before she gave birth to the Prime Minister's seventh child on Thursday - a baby girl

Boris Johnson (pictured) leaves a London NHS hospital on Thursday after his wife Carrie gave birth to a baby girl - their second

His spokesman said the Prime Minister played a unique role and would continue to lead after introducing Covid restrictions on Wednesday.

He is expected to continue to monitor his Red Box and will take part in Prime Ministers Questions.

You can expect the Prime Minister to take some time with his family. As ever he has to balance that with his responsibilities as Prime Minister in leading the country, which he will continue to do, the spokesman said.

I think theres a recognition the Prime Minister has a unique role and this is a particularly challenging time for the country and the Prime Minister will continue to lead, as the public would expect, while making time for his family.

Boris Johnson (L) and his wife Carrie (R) arrive for the official leaders welcome during the G7 Summit in Carbis Bay earlier this year

Asked how long that time off will be, his spokesman said: Im not setting a time limit on it.

He will spend some time with his new family and will continue to maintain his responsibilities as Prime Minister.

The PM is entitled to take up to two weeks paid leave.

His son Wilfred was born on April 29 last year, a fortnight after Mr Johnson left hospital following his admission to intensive care with coronavirus.

He did not take leave at the time, claiming he would take it at a later date, but is not believed to have done this.
A writer who worked on the BBC's Bafta-winning series The Revolution Will Be Televised has slammed Australia as a 'wasteland' that he wishes the world could get rid of.

Heydon Prowse, also known for his environmental activism, described the country's two main exports as 'brunch and casual racism' in a viral video.

'Seriously, it's a cultural and physical desert,' the 40-year-old Londoner said during an interview with social media publisher Political Joe.

'They're quite good at brunch. Brunch and casual racism are their two main exports.'

Mr Prowse, who is half-Australian, made the comments while criticising the country's lack of commitment to reduce carbon emissions, shut down coal industries and tackle climate change.

Warning: Contains graphic language

Heydon Prowse (above) - a writer who worked on the BBC's Bafta-winning series 'The Revolution Will Be Televised' - has slammed Australia as a 'wasteland' that he wishes the world could get rid of

Prowse, 40, from London, described Australia as 'a cultural and physical desert' during an interview with Political Joe

In October, Australia's prime minister Scott Morrison committed the nation to achieve net zero carbon emissions by 2050 - but still faces mounting calls to do more.

Mr Morrison said the country can reach the target by relying on technology such as solar power and green hydrogen and without introducing any taxes.

Australia is one of the world's highest per head of population greenhouse gas emitters and will not rule out building more coal-fired power stations, in a move that has disappointed the UK.

During the interview, Prowse pointed out Australia was still a major contributor to carbon emissions.

'Isn't per head of their population close to the US in terms of carbon emissions?' he said. 'They just drive around in SUVs.'

Mr Prowse criticised Australia's deputy prime minister Barnaby Joyce after he mocked Alok Sharma, president of the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow.

In a video, that has since gone viral, Mr Prowse said of Australians: 'They're quite good at brunch. Brunch and casual racism are their two main exports'. (Above, file image of diners in Sydney)

Mr Prowse with his Bafta award after The Revolution Will Be Televised won Best Comedy Programme in 2013. He has also presented a BBC Radio 4 documentary Green Inc

Mr Sharma became visibly emotional as last-minute changes were made to the wording of the climate pact in November.

The commitment to 'phase-out' coal was watered down to 'phase down' under the insistence of India and China.

'May I just say to all delegates: I apologise for the way this process has unfolded and I am deeply sorry,' Mr Sharma said.

'I also understand the deep disappointment, but I think as you have noted, it's also vital that we protect this package.'

Mr Joyce accused Mr Sharma of attempting to shut down industries in 'other people's countries'.

'You know, it annoys me  what's the guy's name? Was it the chairman Sharma in Glasgow,' Joyce said to the ABC.

Mr Prowse (pictured) has also staged several prank calls to high-profile figures in the past

Australia's prime minister Scott Morrison said his country can reach the target by relying on technology such as solar power and green hydrogen and without introducing any taxes - but he did not announce any new initiatives or funding. (Above, wind turbines near Canberra)

'He was with his gavel and oh, I'm almost crying, I can't do this.'

Mr Prowse was critical of Joyce for 'taking the p***' out of Mr Sharma before warning Australia needed to take stock of its own commitment to tackling climate change.

'I don't know what Australia is offering to the planet at this point?' he said.

Mr Prowse's comments struck a chord with Australians after a snippet of the interview was uploaded to TikTok.

Social media users were quick to step in and defend their country.

One person commented: 'Umm Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures? The oldest culture in the world.'

Nuclear power is off the table in Australia - but Mr Morrison did not rule out building more coal-fired power stations in a move that will disappoint allies such as Britain, which wants to phase out coal around the world
The gunman continues to shoot the rapper who keeps moving towards the street before he flees the scene

The gunman was captured firing at the rapper three times as Slim 400 lunges at the shooter as they steps back

Newly-released surveillance footage captured the chilling moment a gunman strolled up to rapper Slim 400's Los Angeles driveway and shot him eight times, killing him.

The grim black and white footage, whose authenticity has been confirmed by police, shows an unidentified gunman pull up to the rapper's Inglewood driveway with a gun in his hand and approach a parked vehicle where Slim 400 was seated.

The gunman ambushed the 33-year-old performer, whose real name was Vincent Cohran, at around 7.50pm on Wednesday.

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Surveillance footage shows a gunman pull up to the rapper's Inglewood driveway with a gun in his hand and approach a parked vehicle where Slim 400 was seated

The gunman was captured firing at the rapper three times as Slim 400 lunges at the shooter as they steps back

The gunman was captured firing at the rapper three times as Slim 400 lunges at the shooter as they steps back.

As he is being shot Slim 400 looks to be reaching or holding on to the gun or the shooter's arm.

The gunman continues to shoot the rapper who keeps moving towards the street before he flees the scene.

Law enforcement eventually arrived to the scene after calls of shots fired and transported the rapper to a local hospital where he died from his injuries.

Police have still not made an arrest in the murder and no motive for the shooting has been announced.

The execution came just hours after Slim 400 released a new music video for the song Caviar Gold, and follows a brush with death in 2019 when the rapper was shot eight times.

Separately, Slim 400 has also feuded with snitch rapper Tekashi 69 and got into a public shouting match with him in 2018.

Born in Frankfurt, Germany to a military family, Cohran moved back to Los Angeles at a young age and grew up in Compton.

The rapper Slim 400 has been shot and killed in Los Angeles hours after releasing a new video

Vincent Cohran, aka Slim 400, was gunned down at around 7.50pm on Wednesday in Inglewood near the intersection of Manchester Boulevard and 7th Avenue

He was signed by the now-defunct label Pu$haz Ink and is best known for his 2015 album Foe Block.

On Wednesday, hours before his death, Slim 400 released the video for his new song Caviar Gold, which appears to reference a brand of high-THC cannabis products.

Slim 400 is also known for his association with the rapper YG, collaborating with him and Sad Boy Loko on the 2016 single Bruisin.

Slim 400 also feuded with Tekashi 69 and got into a shouting match with him outside the Hyatt Regency in Long Beach in November 2018, according to TMZ.

The two could be heard yelling at each other in a video, and at one point Tekashi's security detail had to hold him back and rush him off before things could spiral out of control.

Tekashi 69, whose real name is Daniel Hernandez, has been a pariah in the hip-hop industry ever since turning state's witness against his fellow Nine Trey Gangsters in 2019 in a deal to avoid lengthy prison time.

In June 2019, Slim 400 was shot eight times in Compton and barely escaped death after emergency surgery.

That attack on Slim occurred on the three-month anniversary of the murder of Nipsey Hussle in Los Angeles.

YG, who has also had a rivalry with Tekashi 69, apparently remained with Slim 400 at the hospital through the night following the 2019 shooting.

Slim 400's death comes weeks after the murder of Memphis rapper Young Dolph, who was shot and killed on November 17.
Queensland has announced six new community cases of Covid as the state's border prepares to re-open to travelers from hotspots next Monday.

Three other cases were detected in quarantine, two interstate arrivals and one from interstate.

Health Minister Yvette D'Ath said the new community cases were all on the Gold Coast, where vaccination levels are below those in Brisbane.

'This is what we planned for, we said there would be cases,' Ms D'Ath said.

'One is a male who is vaccinated with one dose and recently moved into the state, he has been infectious for five days.'

Another case involved three family members, including a fully vaccinated female who works in the border zone.

'Her partner and child are all infectious, the child is student at Broadbeach State School,' said Ms D'Ath.

The new cases of community transmission on the Gold Coast, Queensland, cover Broadbeach (above), Mermaid Beach, Mermaid Waters and Mudgeeraba, with more contact sites expected to be announced by Queensland Health

Broadbeach State School (above) alerted parents on Friday that the school would be closed for the day, the final day of the 2021 school year

Broadbeach State School alerted parents on Friday that the school would be closed for the day, the final day of the 2021 school year.

The woman had been infectious in the community eight days, her partner for six days and the child had been at school for a number of days.

'Were quarantining the class and the close friends of that child,' Ms DAth said.

The cases covered Broadbeach, Mermaid Beach, Mermaid Waters and Mudgeeraba on the Gold Coast, with more contact sites expected to be announced by Queensland Health.

'Another male has recently been in Byron Bay, he plays in a band.

'Other band members have transferred to WA so we have notified the WA government.'

The man in his 30s also worked as a disability worker and all those he had come in contact with had been tested. He was infectious in the community for three days.

Another female who tested positive was a close contact of first person who moved from interstate.

'This is what we planned for, we said there would be cases,' Queensland Health Minister Yvette D'Ath said on Friday, as she announced six new cases of community Covid transmission on the Gold Coast

Ms D'Ath said health authorities did not yet know the level of transmission on the Gold Coast and strongly recommended residents wear masks indoors.

'We can assume there is likely to be transmission happening across the Gold Coast,' she warned.

'The number of cases in Queensland is going to go up, not down, so get vaccinated today.'

'It's a huge wake-up call for the Gold Coast.'

Ms D'Ath said a number of the new cases had symptoms but 'were not unwell'.

'In all honesty I'm surprised we haven't had these cases come through from NSW already... but it's a timely warning that as we open up our borders, we will get more cases coming through,' acting chief health officer Dr Peter Aitken said.

The new cases come as the state prepares to re-open its border to interstate travellers from hotspots in NSW, Victoria and the ACT next Monday.

Ministers in Annastacia Palaszczuk's government have constantly warned that the state's relatively few cases of Covid would spike once the border restrictions ended.

A bakery at Currumbin also announced it had been forced to close after two Covid-positive customers visited the store.

Fuel Bakehouse on Currumbin Creek Rd at Currumbin announced on its social media channels on on Thursday afternoon that it was temporarily closing to protect its workers.

The new cases come as the state prepares to re-open its border to interstate travellers from hotspots in NSW, Victoria and the ACT next Monday

There now 44 active cases of Covid in Queensland, Ms D'Ath announced.

She said 87.9 per cent of eligible Queenslanders had now received a first dose of a Covid vaccine, with 80.11 per cent of people now fully vaccinated.

Ms D'Ath said new border passes required to enter Queensland from next Monday would not be available until this Sunday.

'We can't have them go live today or tomorrow and have people incorrectly download the wrong pass.

'It's instantaneous, once you can check those boxes, upload your vaccination status and your negative PCR test, you're going to be able to get our pass instantaneously.'

Ms D'Ath said she had been reassured the website for pass applications will be able to handle 'the demand coming its way'.
New Zealand will ban future generations from ever smoking under radical new laws that could be copied worldwide.

Wellington will effectively make it illegal for anyone born after 2008 to buy cigarettes or tobacco in their lifetime.

Under legislation announced yesterday, the minimum purchasing age which currently stands at 18  would keep rising year after year.

This means that 65 years after the law takes effect, only those aged over 80 will be able to purchase tobacco. However, officials hope to kill the habit decades earlier, with a goal of having fewer than five per cent of the population smoking by 2025.

New Zealand will ban future generations from ever smoking under radical new laws that could be copied worldwide (file image)

British experts described the policy as an experiment but admitted it could be used as a global template for the eradication of smoking if it succeeds.

Critics warn that any attempt to introduce similar prohibition measures in the UK will be fiercely resisted.

Other parts of the plan, designed to cut the 5,000 annual deaths linked to tobacco in New Zealand, include only allowing the sale of tobacco products with very low nicotine levels and slashing the number of stores which can sell them.

Dr Ayesha Verrall, the countrys associate health minister, who is spearheading the law change, said her work at a hospital in Wellington involved telling smokers they had developed cancer. You meet, every day, someone facing the misery caused by tobacco, she said. Its a really cruel product.

Smoking rates have steadily fallen in New Zealand for years, with only about 11 per cent of adults now smoking and 9 per cent smoking every day.

The sale of vaping products, which are already restricted to people aged 18 and over in New Zealand, will not be affected by the law change. Sunny Kaushal, chairman of the countrys Dairy and Business Owners Group, said: We all want a smoke-free New Zealand but this is going to hugely impact small businesses. It should not be done so it is destroying [convenience stores], lives and families in the process. Its not the way.

John Britton, emeritus professor of epidemiology at the University of Nottingham, said: These are bold plans that will struggle to succeed without widespread public support...However, the basic principle of targeting tobacco smoking rather than nicotine use, and endorsing vaping as an alternative source of nicotine for smokers who want or need to carry on using nicotine, makes this approach far more pragmatic and far more likely to succeed than the outrightly prohibitionist approaches... The world will watch this experiment very closely. If it succeeds, it will set a global template for the eradication of smoking.

However, Simon Clark, director of the smokers rights group Forest, said: This is prohibition in all but name and prohibition very rarely works. If tobacco is made illegal to people born after 2008 it wont stop younger generations smoking.

The sale of tobacco will simply be driven underground. The impact of this policy will hit non-smokers as well because the government will have to replace lost revenue by taxing something else.

He added: Any attempt to introduce a similar law in the UK would be fiercely resisted.
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Boris Johnson's leadership of the Conservative Party and the country was plunged further into crisis last night as it emerged that his own sleaze tsar could quit after the PM was accused of lying to him about the lavish makeover of the Downing Street flat.

An official report revealed that the Prime Minister had texted Tory donor Lord Brownlow asking for more cash more than a year ago.

But Mr Johnson previously assured Lord Geidt, the Independent Adviser on Ministers' Interests, that he did not know who was paying for the 112,549 refurbishment - which was ordered by his wife Carrie Johnson - at the time.

He could now face yet another probe into the 'Wallpapergate' scandal, exposed by the Daily Mail, in the wake of the damning findings by the Electoral Commission yesterday.

The commission fined the Conservative Party 17,800 for breaking political finance law over the saga.

Downing Street insisted Mr Johnson had not lied to his adviser and said: 'The Prime Minister has acted in accordance with the rules at all times and he acted following discussions with Lord Geidt. He has made all necessary declarations.'

But there were reports last night that Lord Geidt is on the brink of resigning over claims the PM misled him.

The standards adviser could quit as soon as today if Mr Johnson does not satisfactorily explain why he did not share vital information with him, The Daily Telegraph reported.

The PM was also put under fresh pressure by his former right-hand man Dominic Cummings, who was in Downing Street when the expensive redecoration works were being planned for the living quarters above No 11.

He wrote on Twitter that he had told the PM 'in extremely blunt and unrepeatable terms' in January and the summer of 2020 'his desire for secret donations to fund wallpaper etc was illegal and unethical'.

Mr Cummings said: 'He pursued it throughout the year trying to keep me/others in dark and lied to Geidt/CCHQ [Conservative Party headquarters] to cover it up.'

He added: 'I've said repeatedly for months: a) obviously PM lied to Geidt, b) Geidt could only conclude as he did by ... not interviewing anybody actually involved with the flat!'

Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer also took to Twitter to take aim at the PM and branded him 'unfit to lead'.

The new revelations plunge the PM further into crisis after his Government was rocked by news earlier this week that an 'illegal' Christmas Party was held at Downing Street when the capital was in Tier 3 lockdown restrictions last year.

The leader of the Scottish Conservatives said he would have to quit if he was found to have lied about the party when he denied it had taken place in the House of Commons.

He is also set to face a war with at least 50 Tory backbenchers who are furious with his decision to impose Plan B measures to combat the Omicron variant of coronavirus.

To make matters worse for the beleaguered PM, two national polls showed how the the Conservatives have slumped in popularity in recent days, with one showing how Labour now have a six-point lead.

Boris Johnson's leadership of the Conservative Party and the country was plunged further into crisis last night as it emerged that his own sleaze tsar could quit after the PM was accused of lying to him about the lavish makeover of the Downing Street flat. Mr Johnson previously assured Lord Geidt, the Independent Adviser on Ministers' Interests, that he did not know who was paying for the 112,549 refurbishment - which was ordered by his wife Carrie Johnson (pictured with the PM at the G7 summit in June) - at the time

The Electoral Commission fined the Conservatives 17,800 for failing to properly declare almost 68,000 mostly used to pay for the refurbishment of the private quarters used by Mr Johnson, his wife Carrie and their son Wilfred. Above: The flat was designed by Lulu Lyttle in a similar style to the above

There were reports last night that Lord Geidt is on the brink of resigning over claims the PM misled him

In February this year this newspaper told how Mr Johnson's wife Carrie had been plotting against a 'female Whitehall official who refused to sign off a large taxpayers' bill for her refurbishment of the Downing Street flat, including expensive wallpaper'.

What happened in the 'Wallpapergate' scandal? What work was done? interior designer Lulu Lytle transformed the living quarters from what the PMs wife Carrie reportedly felt was a John Lewis furniture nightmare left behind by Theresa May. The new look included gold wallpaper costing 840 a roll. How much did it cost? The designer was paid 112,549.12. Who paid for it? Initially the Cabinet Office settled the bill. But because it was significantly above the 30,000 annual public grant for work to the flat, officials set up a charitable trust for donations to cover the costs. The Tory party repaid the Cabinet Office, then Tory donor and trust chairman Lord Brownlow and his firm made a donation to the party as well as paying some money directly to the supplier. Eventually the PM paid the designer personally. Did this break any rules? The Electoral Commission has found that the Conservative Party broke the law by failing to declare most of the money it received from Lord Brownlow as a donation. What about the PMs role? He had been cleared by sleaze watchdog Lord Geidt of breaching the ministerial code on the basis that he claimed he knew nothing about the complex funding arrangements until February. This has been called into question as the Electoral Commission has found evidence that Mr Johnson messaged Lord Brownlow asking for money the previous November. What happens next? Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards Kathryn Stone may choose to investigate Mr Johnson for breaking the MPs Code of Conduct by failing to declare donations. Advertisement

The Mail then revealed how secret plans had been hatched to get Tory donors to pay for the decoration by interior designer Lulu Lytle, as the PM privately complained he could not afford the 'gold wallpaper' Mrs Johnson was buying. There was also a scheme to set up a charitable trust for the maintenance of the historic Downing Street buildings, with Tory donor Lord Brownlow made its chairman.

Cabinet Secretary Simon Case, who learned of the machinations through this newspaper, began investigating and passed his findings to ministerial watchdog Lord Geidt.

In May Lord Geidt cleared the PM of breaching the ministerial code, only saying that he had 'unwisely' 'allowed the refurbishment of the apartment at No 11 Downing Street to proceed without more rigorous regard for how this would be funded'.

This conclusion was based on Mr Johnson telling him 'that he knew nothing about such payments until immediately prior to media reports in February 2021'.

But a separate investigation by the Electoral Commission uncovered evidence that on November 29, 2020, the PM 'messaged Lord Brownlow via WhatsApp asking him to authorise further, at that stage unspecified, refurbishment works on the residence'.

The report provides the most detailed account yet of the complex web of payments, totalling 112,549.12, involved in doing up the flat.

The Cabinet Office paid the invoices initially, the money was subsequently repaid by CCHQ and then Lord Brownlow and his firm Huntswood Associates made donations to the party to cover the costs. To clear up the mess, Mr Johnson settled the bill directly with the designer earlier this year.

The Electoral Commission found that the majority of the 67,801 given to the Tories by Lord Brownlow's firm last October should have been reported as a donation, but was not.

The party was fined for 'failing to accurately report the full value of the donation' and 'contravening the requirement to keep proper accounting records'.

Labour's deputy leader Angela Rayner said: 'The Prime Minister must now explain why he lied to the British public saying he didn't know who was behind No 11 flat refurb  all the while he was WhatsApping the donor asking for more money.

'He's not only broken the law but made a mockery of the standards we expect from our prime ministers.'

She has asked Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards Kathryn Stone to investigate.

A spokesman for the watchdog's office declined to comment.

A CCHQ spokesman said: 'We have been in constant contact with the Electoral Commission and have sought their advice as to how the transaction should be reported since it was made. We are considering whether to appeal.'

The revelations come after new polls carried out yesterday showed how the Tories have slumped in popularity in recent days after being rocked by the Christmas party revelations.

A YouGov poll carried out for The Times found that Labour now has a four-point lead, its biggest in 11 months.

The commission's investigation found that decisions relating to the handling and recording of the donation reflected 'serious failings in the party's compliance systems'.

The PM's wife Carrie gave birth to a daughter, the couple's second child, this morning. Mr Johnson is pictured at the hospital

More than two thirds of voters are now said to be questioning Mr Johnson's integrity over his response to the Downing Street party scandal. The PM has consistently said that there was no party and no rules were broken.

Downing Street party was planned for three weeks The Number 10 Christmas party had been planned for three weeks, it was reported last night. According to The Times, invitations were sent to attendees on WhatsApp at the end of November, when the whole country was in full lockdown. The Times reported that invitations were sent around at the end of November. They asked people to attend the Number 10 press office's 'secret Santa' gathering with an exchange of gifts. The invitation said there would also be food and wine. The messages are likely to form a part of an inquiry into the event by Cabinet Secretary Simon Case. He is trying to find out if the event was an actual party, which would have broken lockdown rules. Advertisement

If enough Tory backbenchers rebel when Plan B measures announced on Wednesday are voted on next week, the PM could face the terrible optics of needing Labour votes to push the laws through.

Tory MPs were reportedly speculating that more letters of no confidence in the PM were being handed to Sir Graham Brady, the leader of the immensely powerful 1922 Committee.

However, at this stage, there is said to be little chance that the PM will be forced out.

A minister told The Times that Mr Johnson would stay in his job by 'default' because no potential challenger would be able to unify critics.

They said the PM had committed 'a series of unforced errors' and the party was 'lucky' that Labour's Sir Keir is 'useless'.

The YouGov poll added that three quarters of people believe there was a Christmas Party where Covid-19 rules were broken and 68 per cent said they thought Mr Johnson was lying when he denied it.

A separate survation poll poll suggested that Labour's poll lead may be even bigger, at six points.

Lord Geidt's previous probe cleared Mr Johnson of wrongdoing, saying there was 'no evidence that the Prime Minister had been informed by Lord Brownlow that he had personally settled the total costs'.

Mr Cummings said in another tweet yesterday that the PM had 'obviously lied to Geidt'.

Downing Street insisted yesterday that the PM knew Lord Brownlow was in charge of a blind trust being used to fund the flat renovation, not that he was also the source of the donation.

'The PM was not aware of the details of the underlying donor until prior to media reports (in February),' Mr Johnson's spokesman told reporters, saying the PM had not lied to Lord Geidt.

A separate investigation by the Electoral Commission uncovered evidence that on November 29, 2020, the PM 'messaged Lord Brownlow (pictured) via WhatsApp asking him to authorise further, at that stage unspecified, refurbishment works on the residence'

Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer also took to Twitter to take aim at the PM and branded him 'unfit to lead'

The PM was also put under fresh pressure by his former right-hand man Dominic Cummings, who was in Downing Street when the expensive redecoration works were being planned for the living quarters above No 11

However the Commission report on Thursday noted that at the time in November 'the proposed trust had not yet been set up'.

Boris's flat saga: a timeline January 2020: Plans are submitted for the refurbishment of the No11 flat, a month after Mr Johnson wins 2019 election. February 2020: Officials decide to set up a blind trust to fund the six-figure renovation. The system is designed to ensure the beneficiary is not aware of the source of the money, to prevent corruption. May 2020: Lord Brownlow is approached to set up and then chair the trust, and agrees. June/July 2020: The Cabinet Office, which is responsible for the Downing Street estate, pays three invoices totalling 52,801.72 for work carried out, and then bills the Conservative Party. August 2020: The Conservatives Party pays the bill. October 2020: Lord Brownlow emails the party and asks how much the bill is, and says he will make a donation to cover it. He does so. November 29, 2020: Boris Johnson contacts Lord Brownlow on WhatsApp 'asking him to authorise further, at that stage unspecified, refurbishment works'. Lord Brownlow agrees and explains that the Downing Street Trust has not yet been set up. December 18, 2020: Lord Brownlow donates a further 33,484.80 to the firm refurbishing the flat. February 2021: Lord Brownlow donates a further 13,295.30 to the firm refurbishing the flat, taking his total contribution to 112, 549.12 March 2021: The scale and cost of the renovations, and the way it was funded, is revealed by the Daily Mail. Boris Johnson repays the supplier personally and the firm then re-reimburses Lord Brownlow. May 2021: Ministerial Standards watchdog Lord Geidt clears the PM of wrongdoing. He says officials assured him that Mr Johnson was not aware that Lord Brownlow paid for the work personally until it was revealed in the media. The PM also told him the same thing directly. December 2021: The Electoral Commission fines the Conservatives Party 17,800 for failing to declare Lord Brownlow's original donation. It reveals that he received the WhatsApp messages about money from the PM. Advertisement

It found that the Conservative Party failed to 'fully report' a donation of 67,801.72 from Brownlow made in October 2020, of which 52,801 which was connected to the refurbishment of the 11 Downing Street flat where Boris Johnson lives.

The probe found that when the payment was flagged by a junior member of Conservative staff, they were told the cash was for 'something else' and 'don't worry'.

It also revealed that the PM personally begged Lord Brownlow for more cash via Whatsapp just weeks after his initial donation.

The result of its investigation is also likely to lead to a new probe by the Parliamentary Standards Commissioner Kathryn Stone.

The commission's investigation found that decisions relating to the handling and recording of the donation reflected 'serious failings in the party's compliance systems'.

A fine of 17,800 was levied for 'failing to accurately report a donation and keep a proper accounting record'.

Louise Edwards, director of regulation at the Electoral Commission, said: 'The party's decisions and actions reflected serious failings in its compliance systems.

'As a large and well-resourced political party that employs compliance and finance experts, and that has substantial sums of money going through its accounts, the Conservative Party should have sufficiently robust systems in place to meet its legal reporting requirements.'

The Daily Mail revealed details of the lavish redecoration of the apartment shared by the PM and his then fiancee in March.

The revamp at No11 by upmarket designer Lulu Lytle is said to have included gold wall coverings.

But the funding of the work did not appear in the list of political donations published by the Commission or in Mr Johnson's Commons register of interests.

It prompted demands from the Labour Party for a full investigation into how the extravagant work was paid for and whether rules were broken.

The Electoral Commission said that Huntswood Associates transferred 67,801.72 to the Conservative Party on October 19, 2020.

Some 15,000 of that amount was for an event, but the commission said he 'specifically identified the remaining 52,801.72 as a donation to cover an earlier payment of that value made by the party to the Cabinet Office'.

The Cabinet Office had paid three invoices over summer 2020, totalling the same amount, for the refurbishment of the Prime Minister's flat at 11 Downing Street, and these were made on the agreement that the sum would be repaid by the party.

At a Downing Street press conference, the PM declared that people should once again work from home where possible, as well as extending use of masks and introducing Covid passports for nightclubs

But the commission said that in donation records submitted on January 27, 2021, while the party reported the 15,000 from Huntswood Associates, it failed to report the 52,801.72.

What did Boris know and when? Accounts of what Boris knew and when appear to differ between the Electoral Commission investigation and that carried out by his own ministerial standards adviser Lord Geidt earlier this year. Lord Geidt's report noted: 'The Prime Minister ... confirms that he knew nothing about such payments until immediately prior to media reports in February 2021. At that point, the Prime Minister immediately sought the necessary advice about his interests and, as a consequence, settled the full amount himself on 8 March 2021.' But the Electoral Commission's version of events says: '29 November 2020: the Prime Minister messaged Lord Brownlow via WhatsApp asking him to authorise further, at that stage unspecified, refurbishment works on the residence. Lord Brownlow agreed to do so, and also explained that the proposed trust had not yet been set up but that he knew where the funding was coming from.' Advertisement

The commission also concluded that the reference in the party's financial records to the payment of 52,801.72 made by the party for the refurbishment was not accurate as it was referred to as a 'blind trust loan'.

However a trust to refurbish the flat had not been created.

The Tories are considering whether to appeal against the Electoral Commission fine over the donation linked to Boris Johnson's flat refurbishment.

Liberal Democrat MP Alistair Carmichael said it remained to be seen if Lord Geidt will feel able to continue in his role, adding whoever does that role they will have to 'exhibit perhaps a greater degree of curiosity, and perhaps a little less trust, than has been the case to date'.

The MP for Orkney and Shetland said in the Commons: 'The report of the Electoral Commission today in relation to donations for the refurbishment of the Downing Street flat states that the Prime Minister was WhatsApping Lord Brownlow asking for money in November 2020.

'But it would appear that the Prime Minister also told Lord Geidt, the independent advisor, that he had only become aware of the funding source in February 2021.

'Now it remains to be seen whether in these circumstances Lord Geidt will feel able to continue in the role of independent advisor.

'But whoever does that job will have to do it with every assiduousness, shall we say, and exhibit perhaps a greater degree of curiosity, and perhaps a little less trust, than has been the case to date.'
Alec Baldwin emceed a human rights event in New York City on Thursday night, his first public event since he fatally shot Halyna Hutchins in October and just days after he menaced out at a reporter with an umbrella outside Woody Allen's townhouse.

Baldwin, 63, was the master of ceremonies at the Robert F. Kennedy Ripple of Hope Awards Gala at the New York Midtown Manhattan Hotel with his Boston-born wife Hilaria Baldwin, 37. He opened the event by telling the audience 'it's great to be together in person.'

He introduced the late Bobby Kennedy's daughter, lawyer Kerry Kennedy, to the stage, and her daughters with disgraced former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo were in attendance.

Kennedy sang Baldwin's praises, rattling off a list of public service engagements to human rights the actor had supported since she met him at a cocktail party in 1980, according to Yahoo! News.

'He's there. He's there in good times and bad, in your good times and bad and his good times and bad, he always shows up,' she lauded. 'I'm so proud.'

Alec Baldwin (pictured), 63, hosted the Robert F. Kennedy Ripple of Hope Award Gala with his Boston-born wife Hilaria Baldwin, 37. He opened the event by telling the audience 'it's great to be together in person'

Alec and Hilaria are pictured with Kerry Kennedy, left. Kennedy praised Alec at the gala: 'He's there. He's there in good times and bad, in your good times and bad and his good times and bad, he always shows up,' she lauded. 'I'm so proud'

Alec Baldwin looked absolutely jubilant while chatting with former Congresswoman Stacey Abrams (left)

Hilaria and Alec Baldwin were photographed leaving their Manhattan apartment for the Hilton for the Robert F. Kennedy Ripple of Hope Awards Gala

Michaela Kennedy-Cuomo (left), Kerry Kennedy (center), and Cara Kennedy-Cuomo (right) attend the 2021 Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Ripple of Hope Award Gala

Kerry Kennedy (left), Elizabeth Frawley Bagley (center) and George Vradenburg (right)

Alec Baldwin is seen getting into his car to head to the Ripple for Hope Awards Gala on Thursday

Vice President Kamala Harris appeared virtually at the event. This year's honorees were Stacey Abrams, Amanda Gorman, Deven Parekh (managing director of Insight Partners), Jose E. Feliciano (co-founder and managing partner of Clearlake Capital Group), and Hans Vestberg (chairman and CEO of Verizon)

Vice President Kamala Harris appeared virtually at the event. This year's honorees were Stacey Abrams, Amanda Gorman, Deven Parekh (managing director of Insight Partners), Jose E. Feliciano (co-founder and managing partner of Clearlake Capital Group), and Hans Vestberg (chairman and CEO of Verizon).

The actor earned laughter from the event's 750 attendees, who all shared proof of vaccination, when he reminded them that he and Hilaria 'have six kids,' and he would do 'anything to get out of the house for 30 minutes.'

Hilaria shared a family photo with of those children - daughters Carmen Gabriela, 8, Maria Lucia Victoria, 8 months, Rafael Thomas, 6, Leonardo Angel Charles, 5, Romeo Alejandra David, 3, and Eduardo Pao Lucas, 13 months - as they shopped for a Christmas tree yesterday.

Hilaria shared a family photo with of those children - daughters Carmen Gabriela, 8, Maria Lucia Victoria, 8 months, Rafael Thomas, 6, Leonardo Angel Charles, 5, Romeo Alejandra David, 3, and Eduardo Pao Lucas, 13 months - as they shopped for a Christmas tree yesterday

In her Instagram story, an uncharacteristically vibrant-looking Baldwin hefted a tied tree over his shoulder: 'swear this tree is 25 feet long and 5 thousand pounds'

In her Instagram story, an uncharacteristically vibrant-looking Baldwin hefted a tied tree over his shoulder: 'swear this tree is 25 feet long and 5 thousand pounds.'

Days earlier, on Monday, New York Post reporter Jon Levine was sent scrambling back onto the sidewalk when he confronted the Baldwin couple outside Woody Allen's townhouse on the Upper East Side.

When he kept grilling Alec Baldwin as he waited on Allen's front doorstep, despite HIlaria Baldwin's outstretched cellphone and repeated invocations to 'go away,' Baldwin whipped around and brandished an umbrella at the reporter, telling him that he wasn't 'supposed to photograph onto private property.'

When the reporter asked whether Alec maintained that he never pulled the trigger of the Colt .45 that discharged on the Rust set, killing Halyna Hutchins, they shut the door behind them.

NEW  I ran into Alec Baldwin on the Upper East Side pic.twitter.com/8pG5Vpshw2  Jon Levine (@LevineJonathan) December 7, 2021

Hilaria recounted the incident on social media today before the pair left for the gala, sharing the video that she took of the reporter. When she told Levine to 'please walk away,' he calmly replied 'I'm allowed to stand here, this is public property.'

'You were walking in that direction, I'm going to call the police if you don't leave,' she said.

'Call the police, please,' Levine shot back.

Hilaria took to Instagram to tell her side of the Monday interaction with the New York Post reporter

Hilaria penned paragraphs of text to accompany her video, writing that she 'needed to speak up about this.'

'This mans eyes light up, when he saw us, as if he were a kid in a candy shop. He tried to talk to us and we said no... I asked him many times to please stop & leave us alone. I started filming. He snickers, loves his harassment,' she wrote.

'My husband has PTSD, has had for a long time, now, worse than ever. Some take advantage by poking at him, trying to rile him up, messing with his mental health. It works sometimes. I try to ward it off. This is a good example.'

Alec hopped into the comments on the post, writing 'I want all of your followers to get ready for my new book, GO F*** YOURSELF. Its about cancel culture.'

Hilaria made claims that her embattled husband is suffering from PTSD earlier that day, and said it began 'long before the Rust shooting.'

'It's something that is not just from what happened recently but he's been suffering from this for a very, very, very long time...'

The posts come as Alec shared an open letter from members of the Rust film crew and cast members on Instagram, hitting back at claims that the set was 'chaotic, dangerous and exploitative' in the days leading up to the fatal shooting of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins.

The open letter Alec shared on Instagram, which was signed by over 20 crew and cast members, begins by saying the writers of the letter were not influenced to make such a statement by any of the producers on set, including Baldwin.

It adds that the signing crewmembers 'believe the public narrative surrounding our workplace tragedy is inadequate and wish to express a more adequate account of our experience.'

Last Thursday, Baldwin tearfully maintained that he didn't pull the trigger and that the gun just 'went off' while in his hands on the set of the movie in New Mexico on October 21, killing Hutchins and injuring director Joel Souza.

Filming a scene inside an Old West-style church, Baldwin apparently aimed towards the camera and pulled the trigger, accidentally killing Halyna Hutchins (pictured) as she filmed him, and injuring Souza, who stood behind her.

'I let go of the hammer, bang. The gun goes off. Everyone is horrified. They're shocked. It's loud,' he said in an interview with ABC.

'Someone is responsible for what happened, and I can't say who it is, but it's not me.'

Baldwin said he 'would have killed [himself]' if he felt responsible for shooting Hutchins in the Thursday ABC interview, where he discussed the aftermath of the fatal shooting for the first time since it took place.

'She's getting me to position the gun - everything is at her direction. I draw the gun, to her marker. I'm not shooting to the camera lens, I'm shooting just off. In her direction. This was a completely incidental shot, that may not have ended up in the film.'

Baldwin said he 'would have killed [himself]' if he felt responsible for shooting Hutchins in the Thursday ABC interview (pictured) where he discussed the aftermath of the fatal shooting for the first time since it took place

Baldwin says he cocked the gun, and was discussing with Hutchins how it looked on camera.

'I'm just showing. I go, 'How 'bout that? Does that work? You see that? Do you see that?' And then she goes, "Yeah, that's good."

'I let go of the hammer, bang. The gun goes off. Everyone is horrified. They're shocked. It's loud. They don't have their earplugs in.

'No one was - the gun was supposed to be empty. I was told I was handed an empty gun. If they were cosmetic rounds, nothing with a charge at all, a flash round, nothing.

'She goes down, I thought to myself, "Did she faint?" The notion that there was a live round in that gun did not dawn on me 'till probably 45 minutes to an hour later.'

He added: 'Well, she's laying there and I go, "Did she hit by wadding? Was there a blank?" Sometimes those blank rounds have a wadding inside that packs, it's like a cloth that packs the gunpowder in. Sometimes wadding comes out, it can hit people, and it could feel like a little bit of a poke.

Baldwin said he 'would have killed [himself]' if he felt responsible for shooting Hutchins in the Thursday ABC interview, where he discussed the aftermath of the fatal shooting for the first time since it took place.

'She's getting me to position the gun - everything is at her direction. I draw the gun, to her marker. I'm not shooting to the camera lens, I'm shooting just off. In her direction. This was a completely incidental shot, that may not have ended up in the film.'

The colt pistol accidentally went off and pierced Halyna Hutchin's chest on Thursday

Baldwin says he cocked the gun, and was discussing with Hutchins how it looked on camera.

'I'm just showing. I go, 'How 'bout that? Does that work? You see that? Do you see that?' And then she goes, "Yeah, that's good."

'I let go of the hammer, bang. The gun goes off. Everyone is horrified. They're shocked. It's loud. They don't have their earplugs in.

'No one was - the gun was supposed to be empty. I was told I was handed an empty gun. If they were cosmetic rounds, nothing with a charge at all, a flash round, nothing.

'She goes down, I thought to myself, "Did she faint?" The notion that there was a live round in that gun did not dawn on me 'till probably 45 minutes to an hour later.'

He added: 'Well, she's laying there and I go, "Did she hit by wadding? Was there a blank?" Sometimes those blank rounds have a wadding inside that packs, it's like a cloth that packs the gunpowder in. Sometimes wadding comes out, it can hit people, and it could feel like a little bit of a poke.

'But no one could understand. Did she have a heart attack? Because remember the idea that someone put a live bullet in the gun was not even in reality."

'I never pulled the trigger. No, no, no. You would never do that.'

But many have continued to question Alec Baldwin's version of events since the interview aired on Thursday.

Bryan W. Carpenter, a weapons armorer who works for Dark Thirty Film Services, said he was skeptical that Baldwin never pulled the trigger.

'In order to make it fire, you have to put your thumb up onto the hammer, cock the hammer all the way back, and then as the hammer is completely cocked back, then you pull the trigger and then the gun fires,' Carpenter told Fox News. 'So that's very important because that gun had to have two step process to fire. It had to be cocked and the trigger pulled to fire.'

Carpenter continued: 'Once you cock the hammer back on one of those old west guns, it doesn't take a lot to set that trigger off.'

His comments come after Santa Fe Sheriff Adan Mendoza told the outlet that 'guns don't just go off. So whatever needs to happen to manipulate the firearm, [Baldwin] did that and it was in his hands.'

Some on social media were also skeptical of Baldwin's claim that he didn't pull the trigger.

'The only way any firearm is going to fire is if the trigger mechanism is pulled or jolted hard on older weapons. I.E. dropped, banged hard,' tweeted one user. 'Do you truly believe people are so stupid to believe your nonsense?'

'Good grief his "acting" is horrendous,' tweeted another. 'Western style handguns either require the shooter cock the weapon first or don't. Either way, this weapon had the trigger pulled. It wasn't dropped.

'@AlecBaldwin had it in his hands and killed Halyna and wounded another. Man up, already.'

Detectives are now investigating whether Seth Kenney, a 51-year-old Hollywood veteran who was supposed to provide the film with dummy rounds and blanks, may have sent recycled bullets from a previous set, according to an affidavit filed by the Sante Fe County Sheriff's Office.

Investigators there continue to probe Hutchins' death, and have yet to file any criminal charges.

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Alec Baldwin turned on his heels and sprang toward reporter Jon Levine, as he continued to ask him questions outside the director Woody Allen's Upper East Side home

Before fed-up Alec Baldwin snapped at Jon Levine, Hilaria Baldwin scolded him and brandished her phone camera

Woody Allen invited the disgraced actor to his family home (pictured), assessed at over $17 million, where he lives with wife Soon-Yi and youngest daughter, Manzie.

Baldwin and Woody Allen are pictured in 2013 while filming Blue Jasmine. They are longtime friends, with Baldwin defending his pal against sex abuse claims

Halyna Hutchins was described by Baldwin as 'fantastic', as he paid tribute to her vision and professionalism in a Thursday interview with ABC

Baldwin said he 'would have killed [himself]' if he felt responsible for shooting Hutchins in the Thursday ABC interview, where he discussed the aftermath of the fatal shooting for the first time since it took place.

'She's getting me to position the gun - everything is at her direction. I draw the gun, to her marker. I'm not shooting to the camera lens, I'm shooting just off. In her direction. This was a completely incidental shot, that may not have ended up in the film.'

Baldwin says he cocked the gun, and was discussing with Hutchins how it looked on camera.

'I'm just showing. I go, 'How 'bout that? Does that work? You see that? Do you see that?' And then she goes, "Yeah, that's good."

'I let go of the hammer, bang. The gun goes off. Everyone is horrified. They're shocked. It's loud. They don't have their earplugs in.

'No one was - the gun was supposed to be empty. I was told I was handed an empty gun. If they were cosmetic rounds, nothing with a charge at all, a flash round, nothing.

'She goes down, I thought to myself, "Did she faint?" The notion that there was a live round in that gun did not dawn on me 'till probably 45 minutes to an hour later.'

He added: 'Well, she's laying there and I go, "Did she hit by wadding? Was there a blank?" Sometimes those blank rounds have a wadding inside that packs, it's like a cloth that packs the gunpowder in. Sometimes wadding comes out, it can hit people, and it could feel like a little bit of a poke.

'But no one could understand. Did she have a heart attack? Because remember the idea that someone put a live bullet in the gun was not even in reality."

'I never pulled the trigger. No, no, no. You would never do that.'

But many have continued to question Alec Baldwin's version of events since the interview aired on Thursday.

Bryan W. Carpenter, a weapons armorer who works for Dark Thirty Film Services, said he was skeptical that Baldwin never pulled the trigger.

'In order to make it fire, you have to put your thumb up onto the hammer, cock the hammer all the way back, and then as the hammer is completely cocked back, then you pull the trigger and then the gun fires,' Carpenter told Fox News. 'So that's very important because that gun had to have two step process to fire. It had to be cocked and the trigger pulled to fire.'

Carpenter continued: 'Once you cock the hammer back on one of those old west guns, it doesn't take a lot to set that trigger off.'

His comments come after Santa Fe Sheriff Adan Mendoza told the outlet that 'guns don't just go off. So whatever needs to happen to manipulate the firearm, [Baldwin] did that and it was in his hands.'

Some on social media were also skeptical of Baldwin's claim that he didn't pull the trigger.

'The only way any firearm is going to fire is if the trigger mechanism is pulled or jolted hard on older weapons. I.E. dropped, banged hard,' tweeted one user. 'Do you truly believe people are so stupid to believe your nonsense?'

'Good grief his "acting" is horrendous,' tweeted another. 'Western style handguns either require the shooter cock the weapon first or don't. Either way, this weapon had the trigger pulled. It wasn't dropped.

'@AlecBaldwin had it in his hands and killed Halyna and wounded another. Man up, already.'

Detectives are now investigating whether Seth Kenney, a 51-year-old Hollywood veteran who was supposed to provide the film with dummy rounds and blanks, may have sent recycled bullets from a previous set, according to an affidavit filed by the Sante Fe County Sheriff's Office.

Investigators there continue to probe Hutchins' death, and have yet to file any criminal charges.
Warmest congratulations to Boris and Carrie Johnson on their daughters birth.

After the happy news, the Mail is tempted to jest that the Prime Minister can expect plenty of sleepless nights.

But his travails over a relentlessly dispiriting few weeks mean hes probably already having quite a few.

For politically, Mr Johnson has been lurching from crisis to crisis. And  to his supporters intense frustration  they have been solely of his own making.

First, he sparked a sleaze row by trying and failing  to rip up Commons disciplinary rules to save Owen Patersons skin.

Next, evidence emerged that  despite his denials  he had intervened to prioritise the rescue of Afghan animals, not people.

Boris Johnson has been lurching from crisis to crisis. And  to his supporters intense frustration  they have been solely of his own making

Then, he obfuscated over whether No10 staff held a Christmas knees-up last year in defiance of tough lockdown rules, while the rest of the country was forbidden from even comforting dying loved ones.

Now, another unholy mess. The PM has been forced to deny misleading his own standards adviser over who paid what  and when  for the lavish makeover of his Downing Street flat.

The Mail does not diminish the seriousness of these episodes. Although as scandals go, they are hardly Watergate. But Mr Johnsons tendency to be cavalier with the truth damages his credibility and authority  and hands ammunition to his enemies.

To avoid stepping on political landmines, he must embrace discipline and propriety.

Its impossible to say, of course, whether these recent scrapes will have long-term repercussions at the ballot box.

What will undeniably harm the Government, however, is the mounting fury  and Tory mutiny  over the absurd decision to impose tougher Covid restrictions.

Whatever ministers insist, Plan B curbs (covering work-from-home orders and vaccine passports) are not footling regulations. They are profound curtailments of our personal liberties.

The PM ought to take on board the cataclysmic collateral damage of such ruinous constraints: To businesses, to livelihoods, to health and to society

And will the creep end there? We fear not. Already, the authoritarian Left  including politically-motivated Sage scientists whose forecasts have proved so pitifully wrong  are howling for a full lockdown.

Yet there is mounting proof the Omicron variant is milder than previous strains. Indeed, not one single person has been hospitalised here, let alone died. Nor is the NHS anywhere near to collapse.

The PM ought to take on board the cataclysmic collateral damage of such ruinous constraints: To businesses, to livelihoods, to health and to society.

He solemnly told us that we must learn to live with this virus. He should let us do so.

Good sense on gender

Liz Trusss commendable decision to drop anchor on plans to ban conversion therapy is an outbreak of common sense.

Hijacked by militant trans activists, the legislation risked criminalising parents, teachers and doctors who questioned any youngster wanting to change gender.

Liz Trusss (pictured) commendable decision to drop anchor on plans to ban conversion therapy is an outbreak of common sense

Yet such conversations are not transphobic. They stem from a desire to ensure a child is sure before they pursue a course of life-altering drugs and surgery.

This complex bill could inflict inadvertent harm. It is far too important to rush.

Keep China in check

The fact that ministers are probing Chinas malign influence on Britains scientific community is very reassuring.

Too reliant on Chinese funding, many of our universities are pawns in the totalitarian regimes ruthless propaganda war. One example? Their swift dismissal of concerns that Covid leaked from a Wuhan lab.

And they are equally eager to swap ultra-sensitive research with colleagues linked to the Chinese Communist Party.

These useful idiots must wake up. Their naivety and greed jeopardises our security.
You can take off your mask in the theatre or in church  as long as you are singing, the Covid rules state.

Downing Street even said shoppers would be allowed to remove their face coverings in supermarkets if they walked around the store singing.

But later in the day a spokesman clarified this, saying this would be hard to justify.

The exemption comes even though, under previous restrictions, singing was banned because it increases the risk of transmitting the virus.

Last night the regulations were published. They state that someone may remove a face covering if it is reasonably necessary to sing, adding that the occasions when it is reasonably necessary for P [a person] to sing include singing as part of a choir, or during a service or rehearsal, or for performance.

It appears to be another example of how the new measures appear to have some idiosyncrasies.

For example, people are being told to work from home if they can from next week, but Boris Johnson said it was still possible for Christmas parties to go ahead.

And the guidance will not stop colleagues gathering at a pub to do their jobs.

Taking off a mask to sing along to Mamma Mia! in a theatre will not be in breach of the rules, new Covid guidelines have stated

Under Plan B, which was enacted by the Prime Minister on Wednesday, face coverings will become compulsory in most public indoor venues from today.

They will be needed in cinemas, theatres and places of worship, although they will not be needed in gyms, bars or restaurants. Masks are already required on public transport and in shops.

On Wednesday, Boris Johnson said there was an exemption for singing.

This was mainly seen as being applicable to places of worship, where a mask should be worn during the service but could be removed for carols and hymns.

But officials confirmed this would also be applicable to other indoor settings, such as a West End musical.

Asked whether a shopper could remove their mask in Tesco if they were singing, it was confirmed that would be within the rules as would removing the mask to sing in a theatre.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson rolled out Plan B Covid restrictions during a Downing Street press conference on Wednesday

Later, however, Downing Street clarified the remarks.

The Prime Ministers official spokesman said: We were absolutely clear there is a reasonable excuse required for someone who is seeking to do that.

'I think it would be hard to justify.

It might be for the police to decide what is appropriate, as has been the case throughout the pandemic.
A man who's admitted to bludgeoning and stabbing his former partner to death in a Sydney driveway will face a sentence hearing in April.

Jason Lloyd, then 39, was arrested in October 2020 after neighbours found 39-year-old Lynda Greenwood critically injured outside a block of flats at Como.

She was unable to be revived and died at the scene.

Jason Lloyd, then 39, was arrested in October 2020 after neighbours found 39-year-old Lynda Greenwood critically injured outside a block of flats at Como

Her ex-partner was arrested at a home in Sylvania and charged with domestic violence murder.

Lloyd, who pleaded guilty in the local court, appeared in the NSW Supreme Court on Friday via video-link from jail.

Justice Robert Allan Hulme listed his sentence hearing for April 8.
A high-rolling Singapore billionaire being sued over an eye-watering $43 million lost over a week at the baccarat tables has failed in his legal bid to have the case thrown out of court.

VIP Dr Wong Yew Choy lost a staggering $43, 209, 853.34 during his week-long losing streak playing cards at the luxury Star Gold Coast in July 2018.

The billionaire staked his gambling spree with two blank cheques drawn, only to dishonour them when the Star attempted to settle his outstanding debts.

The 56-year-old (pictured) who calls himself 'Dr Wong', was seduced to the casino during a marketing junket

After losing an international bid to pursue Dr Wong over the debt in the Singapore courts, Star Casino is now pursuing the rich lister through the Queensland Supreme Court.

Dr Wong appealed the bid to recover the $43 million, accusing Star of 'hedging its bets' after its legal challenge failed in the international court.

Wong Yew Choy is being sued by Star Gold Coast in Queensland

'Star's conduct has occasioned unjustifiable oppression to him, and it has brought the administration of justice into disrepute,' Dr Won'g legal team argued.

'He is again forced to confront the same allegations in a different proceeding ... which constitutes the vexation inherent in Star's conduct.

'This is a case where Star has engaged in 'staged conduct' of litigation using this court's processes to 'hedge its bets'.'

The Queensland Court of Appeal on Friday dismissed Dr Wong's appeal.

'Dr Wong should not have considered that his dispute with Star was at an end once the Singapore proceeding was dismissed,' the court ruled.

'The judge was correct to hold that this proceeding was not an abuse of process and to dismiss Dr Won's application.'

In 2019, the Singapore court dismissed a lawsuit filed against Wong, citing legislation prohibiting the government from assisting foreign companies seeking to recover debts related to overseas gambling.

The Appeal Court awarded costs against Dr Wong with the case expected to continue next year.
A young woman is facing a race against time to marry the love of her life after being diagnosed with an incurable breast cancer and told she has just six months to live.

Auckland psychology graduate Geneva Wilson, 26, was first diagnosed with breast cancer in 2019 but believed she had beaten the disease after battling through six months of chemotherapy.

She tried to move on with her life and met her now-fiance, but in August received the devastating news doctors had found a nodule on her lungs.

Within two months the malignant mass was 9mm along and had almost doubled in size.

Geneva Wilson, 26, has been given six to 12 months to live after being diagnosed with an incurable breast cancer

Auckland psychology graduate Geneva Wilson, 26, hopes marry her fiance James soon before she ends up on a ventilator

The cancer had by this point metastasised to her lungs and doctors told her she likely had only six months to a year left to live.

'When I next went back to see my oncologist I kind of knew it was bad news because they couldn't look me in the eye,' she told Stuff.

She has since accepted a marriage proposal from her partner James and wants to be able to enjoy it before she is too ill.

'I want to have my first dance. I don't want to be walking down the aisle with a ventilator,' she said.

Her fiance said the couple just wanted to have fun over the next few months given they likely only had limited time left together.

'This will be our first  and unless some sort of miracle happens, only  summer together, so we're going to make it big.'

Ms Wilson's sister Emily is raising money on a Givealittle fundraiser in the hope it can help pay for immunotherapy that may give the 26-year-old more time.

Ms Wilson has accepted a marriage proposal from her partner James and wants to be able to enjoy it before she is too ill. 'I don't want to be walking down the aisle with a ventilator,' she said

More than $56,000 has been raised towards the cause in only 12 days.

Any money raised will go towards Ms Wilson's hospital appointments, medication and ultimately, if needed, hospice and funeral expenses.

Emily Wilson said her sister has 'spent her life dedicated to caring for others'.

Her sister said she has volunteered for a 'multitude of charities such as the Breast Cancer Foundation, Youthline and Coastguard'.

'Geneva has a degree in psychology where she had planned to devote her life to helping people with mental health problems,' the fundraiser reads.

'But those who benefited the most are the people closest to her.'
New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern says mortality rates were enough for her to push past civil liberties concerns in her government's eye-catching new Smokefree 2025 plan.

The plan, which aims to get smoking rates down to five per cent by the middle of the decade, captured enormous attention around the world after its launch on Thursday.

To get there, NZ will water down the nicotine content of cigarettes - thought to be a world first - and drastically cut the number of stores that can sell them.

Jacinda Ardern (above) has announced a new hard-line policy against smoking in New Zealand

The new ban will mean anyone born in 2011 or later will never legally be able to buy cigarettes

The most radical proposal is the creation of a 'Smokefree generation' by stopping anyone born after a certain year from ever buying cigarettes.

'When I saw that the BBC had picked it up, "I thought, yeah, I can see why",' Ms Ardern told AAP from her Wellington office on Friday.

'For the outside looking in, a Smokefree generation captures the imagination.

'When we discussed this in cabinet, it wasn't lost on us that it was groundbreaking.

Jacinda has said she didn't receive much opposition to her new plan saying no one would object to preventing children from adopting a deadly habit

'But if you say, "Does anyone object to the idea of preventing children (from) picking up a cigarette? Would anyone object to the idea of stopping a young person from taking up something that they had a 50 per cent chance of killing them?"

'When you present it like that, who wouldn't want to prevent a child from doing that?'

The cigarette-buying ban will mean anyone born in 2011 or later will never be able to buy them.

Opposition parties have attacked the policy suite, suggesting prohibition will cause other challenges, but public health experts have been unanimous in their praise.

The new plan has been praised by health experts as a 'game changer' that will help to reduce preventable death and disease i the country

'It's truly a game changer ... New Zealand once again leads the world,' Natalie Walker, University of Auckland population health associate professor, said.

'The proposed combination of policies is perfect.'

Chris Bullen, public health professor at the University of Auckland, was just as effusive.

'All I wanted for Christmas this year was evidence of a serious commitment from government to tackle our tobacco smoking problem ... all my wishes have come true,' he said.

'If implemented as outlined, it could just be the single most significant step we take as a nation to reducing preventable death and disease and reducing health inequities in the next few years.'

Jacinda previously showed she priorities public health during her government's hard-as-nails approach to Covid-19

The plan is in keeping with the government's well-known focus on public health above other priorities, best displayed through its hard-as-nails approach to COVID-19.

NZ successfully eliminated the virus in 2020 as it raged in other countries, and is keeping borders shut to the rest of the world until at least May as it tackles a Delta outbreak.

Ms Ardern said the experience helped her shrug off protesters.

'I've been around politics a long time ... and I still do all my own social media,' she said.

'(Fringe elements like anti-vaxxers) has always been there. There's just a particular rallying point at the moment. So I keep it in perspective.

'Here, we just focus on making something that works for us.'
Some of Sydney's major carparks are charging close to $50 an hour - meaning drivers could be forking out more to park than they would be paying for a fine.

Spots in select Wilson carparks on O'Connell Street in the city's CBD cost as much as $39 and $49 for one hour.

With the cost of a parking fine in NSW currently at $116, drivers wanting to park closer to the office could instead risk receiving a penalty by parking on the street - which could end up being cheaper than three hours in a carpark.

Parking fines in NSW cost $116 but some carparks charge as much as $49 per hour (stock image)

As residents are starting to commute back into the city for work post Covid-19 lockdowns, more workers are expected to be making their way by car to avoid the risk of catching the virus.

NRMA spokesperson Peter Khoury said the amount of commuters on public transport 'plummeted' during Covid-19 lockdowns.

'A lot of people are working from home and there was a lot less mobility during the lockdown and a lot more reliance on cars,' he told The Daily Telegraph.

'We'll start to see that balance reconfigure to what it was before but it'll take a while. There's no doubt the car was king during the lockdown.'

Wilson carparks, however, do offer a range of other lots with prices at a more affordable $12 an hour.

The company is also offering a $20 all day flat rates for select carparks to celebrate the end of Covid-19 restrictions for Sydneysiders.

Select Wilson carparks on O'Connell Street in the city's CBD are charging as much as $39 and $49 for one hour

This is available online until January 22 next year.

A spokesperson for Wilson Parking said the average daily flat rate for parking in Sydney carparks had fallen by 10 per cent within recent years.

'Wilson Parking has focused on creating value-based online offers that are driving customers to plan their travel ahead of time and booking bays via the Wilson Parking App or Online Booking via the Wilson Parking website,' they said.
Bitcoin has plunged after the IMF warned cryptocurrencies were risky and suggested Australia's crackdown would fail.

After a volatile year, mainly marked by growth, the world's first digital currency fell back below $A67,000 early on Friday morning for the first time since early October.

This occurred after the International Monetary Fund based in Washington said cryptocurrencies were a financial risk.

While Australia is preparing to regulate cryptocurrency trading platforms, the IMF is skeptical about the ability of individual national governments to crack down on dubious activity.

'Policymakers struggle to monitor risks from this evolving sector, in which many activities are unregulated,' it said in a blog post.

'In fact, we think these financial stability risks could soon become systemic in some countries.'

Bitcoin has continued to plunge as the Australian government prepares for a crackdown on cryptocurrencies - with the IMF doubtful about a national approach

The IMF wants the Financial Stability Board, established at the London G20 summit in 2009 during the Global Financial Crisis, to regulate cryptocurrencies.

'Crypto's cross-sector and cross-border remit limits the effectiveness of national approaches,' it said.

'Countries are taking very different strategies, and existing laws and regulations may not allow for national approaches that comprehensively cover all elements of these assets.'

Only a month ago, Bitcoin was worth $91,000 with Finder co-founder Fred Schebesta predicting it would reach $100,000 by mid-November.

While that prediction didn't materialise, Bitcoin's value even now is triple the $24,000 level of a year ago.

Investors, however, face uncertainty over crypto trading platforms with major exchange MyCryptoWallet this week appointing administrators.

Treasurer Josh Frydenberg has announced new rules next year will regulate cryptocurrency trading and buy now, pay later apps in the biggest shake-up of Australia's payment system since the mid-1990s.

A general distrust of banks has seen more than 800,000 Australian investors put their money into crypto since 2018.

After a volatile year, mainly marked by growth, the world's first digital currency fell back below $A67,000 early on Friday morning for the first time since early October after the International Monetary Fund issued a warning. While Australia is preparing to regulate cryptocurrency trading platforms, the IMF is skeptical about the ability of individual national governments to crack down on dubious activity

Treasury will begin putting together a licensing system for digital currency exchanges, with policy idea flagged on Wednesday just five weeks after a Senate committee on financial technology recommended regulating that sector.

Crypto changes in 2022 LICENSING: New regulations would cover digital currency trading platforms CENTRAL BANK DIGITAL CURRENCY: Government exploring the idea of a retail central bank digital currency in Australia REGULATION: Treasury argued Australian regulation was needed so Australian businesses and consumers weren't governed by foreign government and big corporation rules Advertisement

Canberra bureaucrats will also be exploring the idea of a central bank digital currency, with recommendations by the end of next year.

Australian Taxation Office figures showed 819,000 Australians have bought a cryptocurrency since 2018, with the number of transactions in 2021 increasing by 63 per cent compared with 2020.

The Council of Financial Regulators - comprising Treasury, the Reserve Bank of Australia, the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority and the Australian Securities and Investments Commission - will be providing recommendations by mid-2022.

The volatility has prompted Reserve Bank of Australia Governor Philip Lowe to urge investors to be careful about investing in cryptocurrencies.

'Anyone purchasing these assets should take care,' he told the Australian Payments Network Summit on Thursday.

'There is still a lot of uncertainty about the long-term usefulness of these assets.

'Before investing, it is best to understand fully the underlying value proposition.'

Last month Tony Richards, the head of the Reserve Bank of Australia's payments policy section, warned cryptocurrency prices could crash.

Treasurer Josh Frydenberg has announced new rules in 2022 that would regulate cryptocurrency trading and buy now, pay later apps in the biggest shake-up of Australia's payment system since the mid-1990s

'There are plausible scenarios where a range of factors could come together to significantly challenge the current fervour for cryptocurrencies, so that the current speculative demand could begin to reverse, and much of the price increases of recent years could be unwound,' he said.

In May, Bitcoin lost a third of its value within a week, plunging from $74,000 to $50,000, after billionaire Tesla founder Elon Musk changed his mind on accepting Bitcoin as payment for his electric cars.

The 50-year-old tycoon argued cryptocurrency mining, creating Bitcoin by solving complex mathematical puzzles, used too many fossil fuels and his declaration causing a 16 per cent plunge in just one day.
Alex Murdaugh, 53, is facing a total of 51 charges related to money laundering and forgery, after a South Carolina jury indicted him on Thursday

Disgraced lawyer Alex Murdaugh faces yet more scandal after he was charged with 21 new counts of fraud, over claims he conned six victims out of close to $1 million.

A South Carolina grand jury indicted Murdaugh, 53, with seven new indictments today, including charges related to computer crimes, money laundering and forgery. The latest charges come just a month after Murdaugh was indicted with the rest of the total amount of charges mounting almost to 50. The amount he's said to have conned now sits at $6 million.

The latest charges filed on Thursday seem to only dig a deeper hole in Murdaugh's attempt to distance himself from alleged efforts to defraud his clients.

He shot to notoriety after his wife and son were murdered at their South Carolina hunting lodge in May. Their deaths remain unsolved. Murdaugh's late son Paul was linked to two deaths, with Murdaugh Sr also being probed over the 2018 death of the family housekeeper.

In June 2016, prosecutors allege that 'while relaying on his prestige and reputation as a lawyer,' Murdaugh reportedly told one of his clients, Johnny Bush, that he allocated $100,00 of his settlement money on 'accident reconstruction' for his case. However, an indictment obtained by DailyMail.com shows that Murdaugh transferred $95,000 to his fraudulent bank account for his personal gain.

'Murdaugh had created this bank account for the purpose of misappropriating funds belonging to others with the illusion that the money was being paid 'to a legitimate business, the indictment read, noting the lawyer used the money stolen from his clients to pay for his own credit card bills, cash, and checks to associates.

Two months later, Murdaugh allegedly rerouted a $90,000 trust account check that 'was supposed to be compensated to Jamian Risher for his injuries' into his secret bank account.

Another indictment reads that Murdaugh had another of his clients, Randy Drawdy, 'sign a settlement disbursement form which reflected the withholding of $8,819.30 for medical bills and $750.00 for private investigator services' in November 2017.

Murdaugh is facing claims from prosecutors that he stole $112,500 from the estate of Blondell Gray in April 2019

But instead of using Drawdy's settlement fees to pay the other clients he had stolen from, Murdaugh allegedly put the $9,569.30 into his fake bank account.

Nine months later, in August 2018, prosecutors allegedly found records of Murdaugh stealing $85,000 from Jordan Jinks, portrayed as a 'longtime friend of the family who had come to Murdaugh for help.'

Murdaugh allegedly told Jinks he needed to hold the settlement proceeds to 'satisfy a medical insurance lien', according to the Daily Beast. The indictment reads that two months later, Murdaugh then sent a $65,000 check to his personal, hidden bank account.

Prosecutors further allege Murdaugh stealing $112,500 in April 2019 from the personal representative for the estate of Blondell Gary for his own gain.

Nine months later, between February and July 2020, Murdaugh scammed another client who came to him for help. In time, Murdaugh moved a $750,000 check meant for the client and his injuries to his fraudulent account, according to the indictment.

Between November and December 2020, prosecutors claim Murdaugh assured a client representing the estate of Sandra Taylor that 'the total wrongful death recovery would only be $30,000' and that he was not even going to charge a fee because the recovery was so 'low.'

However, the indictment alleges, Murdaugh managed to recoup 'over $180,000' in the wrongful death settlementbefore eventually wiring more than $150,000 to his fraudulent bank account.

Murdaugh's attorney, Jim Griffin, tweeted that his client's bond hearing for the first series of charges 'will be res-scheduled next week, after last minute charges brought by AG.'

'We are not surprised by these new charges relating to Alex's handling of client funds and law firm fees,' Murdaugh's spokesperson said last month after the first round of indictments were made public.

'We have made it clear that Alex regrets that his actions have diverted attention from solving the murders of his wife, Maggie, and son, Paul,' he added.

Alex Murdaugh (pictured) walks into court for his bond hearing, in Varnville, South Carolina. The family is at the center of an unfolding legal drama after Paul and Maggie Murdaugh were shot and killed at their family's home. Alex Murdaugh found the bodies of his wife and son

Murdaugh's attorney, Jim Griffin, tweeted on December 9 that his client's bond hearing is set for tomorrow to be re-scheduled next week 'after last minutes charges brought by AG'

Maggie Murdaugh (second from left), 52, and her son Paul Murdaugh (center), 22, were shot several times and their bodies were found near a dog kennel, on the family's property on June 7

The disgraced lawyer diverted millions of dollars to a fake bank account from a wrongful-death settlement meant for the sons of the back-then family housekeeper, Gloria Satterfield

The disgraced lawyer is already fighting against charges related to his decision to hire a hitman to kill him in September, and sending millions of dollars to a fake bank account from a wrongful-death settlement intended to the heirs of the family's former housekeeper, Gloria Satterfield.

Murdaugh also faces several lawsuits, all related to allegations concerning his plans to influence an investigation in a 2019 boat incident, when his now-deceased son Paul murdered 19-year-old Mallory Beach.

He faces further claims of stealing millions from his former law firm PMPED, which fired him earlier this year when the scandal began to snowball.
Don Lemon turned on his old pal Jussie Smollett hours after his conviction for faking a hate crime - but continued to avoid claims he'd offered the actor inside information about the police probe into his claims.

Speaking hours after Smollett was convicted of faking a racist and homophobic hate crime, Lemon said: 'He had to make up too many lies as to why he didn't want to do certain things,' said Lemon on Thursday night.

'To cover. Like another lie - and I guess he got caught up in that because he took the stand himself.

'He got angry with the prosecutor as the prosecutor poked holes in his story - calling the only other witnesses liars.'

Lemon also blasted Smollett for making it harder for real victims of hate attacks to be taken seriously.

And he listened intently while his legal analyst Joey Jackson called for Smollett to face jail

Asked by Lemon what he thought of the verdict, Jackson said: 'I think it's the proper result.'

Don Lemon, who was previously friends with Jussie Smollett, on Thursday turned against the actor and accused him of being a liar

Lemon's guest, legal analyst Joey Jackson, said he felt that the jury got the verdict right

'When you look at the case, the verdict, everything else - many people have said this is a case about credibility; and he said, she said. I disagree.

'This is a case - every case relies upon credibility, but it's also about a narrative that makes sense.

'We lawyers before we go before juries and pick them, we say always use your common sense and good judgment.

'And when you weave a web and tell a tale, it becomes problematic.

'I think that's what happened here.

'His narrative - Mr Smollett's - didn't carry the day and the jury discerned something was amiss and they found him accountable. So that was the right result.'

Jackson said there were far too many inconsistencies in Smollett's story, pointing out that he told differing versions of events at different times, and noting that there were many unexplainable pieces of the puzzle.

Jackson said that Smollett's time on the stand, testifying in his own defense, was 'devastating' to the case.

Lemon added: 'Here's what folks are concerned about - that what he did might undermine future victims, legitimate victims of hate crimes.'

Asked by Lemon was sentence he was expecting, Jackson added: 'Look, I think there's a few things a judge is going to look at.

'When you look at sentencing, you always look at punishment, deterrence, rehabilitation.

'Obviously he's a young man with what was a bright future. His prospects of rehabilitation are absolutely there.

'But when you look to punishment, you have to punish conduct like this.

'Why? Two reasons. You mentioned one of them.

'There are people legitimately who were the victims of hate crimes, and how do you diminish them by coming up with something that's a farce? That's troubling and you have to punish that.

'Secondly, there are resources expanded from a police perspective in a city that needs them, right? Why do we take away those resources to focus on something that didn't happen when there's so many things that did happen that we really should be focusing on?

'So that's the second thing.

'The third thing is if you come into a courtroom and you take the stand, which is your right, but you fabricate and you're caught in those lies I think a judge really is taken aback by that. I think that's what he's looking at.'

Lemon, 55, is seen with Smollett, 39, at a June 2018 gala in New York City

Asked by Lemon if he expected Smollett to get prison time, Jackson said he did.

'A judge can give him probation,' said Jackson.

'But I think when a judge looks at all those things, punishment, deterrence.

'You don't want people acting this way. Hate crimes, you made it up. People really have hate crimes.

'You left the issue of expending of resources. That's a problem.

'You get on the stand and lie about it.

'I think the judge has to fashion a remedy appropriate not only to him but to send a message to all others that you probably should not be doing this.'

Smollett, the star of Empire, was found guilty earlier on Thursday by a jury in Chicago of staging a 'racist and homophobic hate crime' in January 2019, in a bid to make the producers of the show have more sympathy for him.

Smollett on the stand on Monday shocked many by testifying that Lemon, 55, contacted Smollett to tell him Chicago police did not believe his story.

While not proven, the allegation is sure to spook CNN bosses, who just last week fired star anchor Chris Cuomo after he was exposed as meddling in his brother Andrew's defense of sex pest allegations.

The jury took nine hours to convict Smollett on five of the six counts, and Lemon had little sympathy for his former friend, who he admitted in 2019 he texted 'every day' until it emerged the incident was a hoax.

Smollett is seen on Thursday leaving court after being convicted on five of six counts

Smollett is pictured in his mugshot after he was arrested on suspicion of faking the attack, which he said was racist and homophobic
A man in his 40s has suffered suspected spinal injuries after being hit by a light rail tram on a busy street on Friday afternoon.

Ambulance crews were called to the scene on Anzac Parade in Kingsford in Sydney's east about 2.45pm.

A NSW Ambulance spokesman told Daily Mail Australia the man was taken to St Vincents Hospital in a stable condition.

A man in his 40s has suffered suspected spinal injuries after being hit by a light rail tram (file image of trams in the Sydney CBD)

The man was struck near the corner of Anzac Parade and Meeks Street - a busy thoroughfare in the centre of Kingsford in Sydney's east

He was struck near the corner of Anzac Parade and Meeks Street - a busy thoroughfare in the centre of Kingsford.

'The patient had been hit by the light rail and thrown a few metres,' NSW Ambuance Inspector Dominic Wong said.

'Understandably he was quite distressed. Paramedics worked to calm him down and prepare him for transport to hospital.

'As in all suspected spinal cases, we took great care in preventing head and neck movement before we loaded him into the ambulance.

'In these wet conditions pedestrians need to take extra care, because visibility is low and accidents can happen in an instant.'
The coroner presiding over the inquest into Theo Hayez's disappearance in Byron Bay burst into tears on its final scheduled day.

Coroner Teresa O'Sullivan on Friday heard heartrending testimonies from the family of the Belgian teenager, who vanished during a night out in Byron Bay, NSW, in May 2019.

Coroner O'Sullivan then said she wanted to say a few words.

But she was overcome with emotion as she tried to address the inquest and had to adjourn to take a break while she composed herself.

'That was an extraordinary experience for me and the other people in this courtroom,' she said, as she choked back tears.

'Everyone in this courtroom these last two weeks has felt your pain.

Coroner Teresa O'Sullivan (pictured) has burst into tears on the final scheduled day of the inquest into the disappearance of Belgian backpacker Theo Hayez

The inquest had heard heartrending testimonies from the missing teenager's mother Vinciane Delforge (pictured here with son, Theo) and his brother Lucas

'What we've experienced also through these last two weeks, and so much so today hearing your words, is your love - it could not be clearer.'

The coroner paused as she battled with her emotions.

'It's made me very emotional. I may not be able to speak,' she said, her voice breaking as she tried not to sob.

As it became clear she couldn't hold back her tears, she said: 'I'll take a short break.'

The inquest reconvened 15 minutes later to hear the coroner reiterate her admiration for the family and for the missing backpacker, who vanished on May 31, 2019.

'I just wanted to say thank you to Theo's family for the words that they have just spoken today,' she said, having composed herself during the adjournment.

Theo's family - grandmother Jacqueline Jourquin (pictured left), mother Vinciane Delforge (second left), brother Lucas Hayez (centre) and father Laurent Hayez (right) - have flown from Belgium to be at the Byron Bay inquest

'It's incredibly generous and gracious to hear from the family, to hear everything that you've said about Theo.

'It is such a privilege for me to hear more about him from those who knew and loved him best. He sounds like he was the most incredible, beautiful young man.

'There is no doubt about how well he was loved and how much he loved you, so thank you.'

The coroner revealed the inquest would now be extended a further three days, with an additional sitting in Sydney next year, to hear from at least three more witnesses who were not identified.

Earlier the inquest had heard from Theo's grandmother Jacqueline Jourquin, mother Vinciane Delforge, brother Lucas Hayez and father Laurent Hayez.

'Before leaving I had asked him for a jumper with his smell in memory of him waiting for his return,' Theo's little brother Lucas told the inquest, sobbing between every sentence.

'He took me in his arms for the last time saying he was not leaving forever and he promised me to come back really fast.'

Theo's mother Vinciane Delforge thanked the local Byron Bay community (pictured) for their help in trying to find her son

Theo vanished after he was kicked out of a nightclub in Byron Bay on the NSW north coast. Google Maps data revealed he searched for directions to his hostel - but walked off in the opposite direction.

Lucas stressed that his brother was not someone who would take drugs or drink heavily.

'He always told me that you can have fun without substances,' he said. 'That's a sentence he loved telling me over and over again.'

Mobile phone data revealed Theo eventually walked a treacherous route in the pitch dark on a bitterly cold night to a remote beach at the foot of the town's lighthouse .

He sent friends relaxed and calm messages and watched a video at the spot before the phone mysteriously switched off and no trace was ever found of him again.

However the alarm was not raised until June 6, 2019, and his family flew out from Belgium to assist the hunt for him.

His mother said Theo Hayez (pictured) had been looking forward to the trip ever since his godfather had moved to Australia with his wife

On Friday his mother Vinciane Delforge thanked the local community for their help in trying to find her son.

'Not knowing is unbearable,' she said. 'Our life, if we still have one, is a daily struggle and life doesn't have the same taste anymore.

'Part of me left with Theo, staying alive is a struggle.'

She said Theo had been looking forward to the trip ever since his godfather had moved to Australia with his wife, but at the time he vanished, he was literally counting the days until he returned home.

'I found in his belongings the notebook on which he was counting those days,' she said. 'He wanted to see his friends again and to have a party with them.

'The date was already planned.'

In an emotional family statement, translated by an interpreter, she told the inquest: 'I have lost a child, but I have won a family on the other side of the world.

'My heart and my soul I share between my home country and this land that has taken Theo from me.

'Australian family, Belgian family, all the friends, I love you.'

The inquest will now reconvene in Sydney for three additional days on February 21, 2022.
As many as 80,000 South Australian government workers may have had their personal details hacked after a ransomware cyber attack directed at an external payroll provider.

The government said it was recently informed by Frontier Software that it was the victim of a ransomware attack, and confirmed on Thursday that significant personal information had been stolen from Frontier's systems.

As many as 80,000 South Australian government employees have been affected by a major cyber attack.

The previous day, Frontier had also confirmed some state government data had been stolen from its network and published on the dark web.

'I have been advised that the records of at least 38,000 employees were accessed and that up to 80,000 employees might have been accessed,' Treasurer Rob Lucas said.

'The government is currently working with Frontier to try and establish a more accurate estimate.'

The data accessed includes names, tax file numbers, bank account details, dates of birth, payroll information and superannuation contributions.

Employees have been advised to contact their financial institutions and monitor statements for any unauthorised transactions.

The government said people should consider adding additional security, by changing passwords or adding two-factor authorisation.

They should also be alert to any emails, text messages or phone calls from people requesting personal or account information, including access to devices.

'The government's priority is the safety and security of every employee affected by this incident and we are doing all we can to provide assistance to impacted employees,' Mr Lucas said.

'We are deeply disappointed that this breach occurred and are working closely with Frontier Software to investigate how this incident happened.

'We apologise to all South Australian government employees affected.'

The treasurer said the government had partnered with cybersecurity support service IDCARE to work with employees to develop a response plan and provide personal support throughout the process.

All public sector employees have been sent an email advising of the level of information that was compromised and providing information on how to access help and support.
Burglars were caught clearing out a Florida wig boutique just a month after it opened, grabbing up 34 wigs worth $13,000 and leaving the floor littered with broken glass and toppled mannequin heads.

The three hoodie-clad thieves had cleared out, taking the entire cash register with them, by the time police responded to Sassy Sistas Boutique in Altamonte Springs. They still have yet to the apprehended.

The cash register was found in Ashford at Altamonte Springs apartment complex, but police said no cash was taken. It is unclear if that is because the burglars were unable to get into it.

CCTV footage from 3.35 am on Monday shows the men, who police said were wearing gloves and masks, stuffing plastic bags with the wigs and throwing the mannequins they were carefully displayed on to the floor.

They run outside three times, arms laden with wigs, and back in to grab more.

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CCTV footage from 3.35 am on Monday shows the men, who police said were wearing gloves and masks, stuffing plastic bags with the wigs and throwing the mannequins they were carefully displayed on to the floor

The boutique's owners shared the aftermath of the Monday burglary on Instagram

Jasmine Jackson, the co-owner of the newly-opened shop, had a message for the criminals: 'just stop.'

'You're hurting people, you're harming people mentally... there's no telling what you're doing out there, but stop, because karma is definitely going to come around,' she told Click Orlando.

The owners of Sassy Sistas posted photos of some of the hand-made wigs that were taken on Monday night

'The time and the work we put into each wig. We spend long days and nights in here getting these wigs ready for these ladies. So, to have someone come in here and do something like that it's very heartbreaking and devastating.'

'The time and the work we put into each wig. We spend long days and nights in here getting these wigs ready for these ladies. So, to have someone come in here and do something like that it's very heartbreaking and devastating.'

Co-owner Jasmine Jackson said that the store is their livelihood, how they 'take care of [their] families.'

'For us, $13,000 is a lot, that's a pretty big deal. It hurt us financially [and] mentally.'
Two men were killed and two others were injured in two separate shootings in Brooklyn on Thursday night - one of which happened beside a busy subway station during rush hour.

Augustin Santiago, 34, was fatally shot in the chest in Williamsburg right by the Marcy Avenue J-M-Z Subway station at 5:50pm, while 28-year-old Aaron Vincent died after being struck in the throat during a triple shooting in Canarsie.

Suspects in both shootings fled the scene and no arrests have been made as of yet, NYPD said.

The shootings are the most recent ones in a violent week that has seen New York City record a staggering 26 percent spike in shootings over the last month compared to the same period last year.

Over the last 28 days, there have been 151 shootings, a 26 per cent jump compared to the 120 recorded for the same period last year.

The deadly shootings also come the same week that a Bronx man was shot in the head and killed, and his 18-year-old girlfriend was injured in their white BMW after three masked men pulled up beside them and fired multiple times at the couple.

Two men were killed and two other were injured in two separate shootings in Brooklyn on Thursday night. Pictured is the scene of the Williamsburg shooting

Shortly before, 6pm police responded to a 911 call of a male shot in the vicinity of 296 Broadway, right by the Marcy Avenue subway station

Responding officers encountered an unconscious 34-year-old male with a gunshot wound to the chest

The shootings are the most recent ones in a violent week that has seen New York City record a staggering 26percent spike in shootings compared to the same period last year

Several bullet holes were seen on the car following the shooting in Bronx on Sunday

Police responded to a shooting in Williamsburg shortly before 6pm on Thursday after residents made 911 calls reporting that a man had been shot near the Brooklyn-bound steps of the Marcy Ave subway stop.

When officers arrived at the scene, they found 34-year-old Augustin Santiago with a gunshot wound to the chest.

Santiago was taken to the nearly Woodhull NYC Health hospital, where he was pronounced dead.

Police said the suspect fired at least three rounds in what sources have described as 'a drug-related shooting,' before fleeing the scene on foot.

In a separate shooting in Canarsie, Aaron Vincent, 28, was fatally struck in the throat outside a restaurant at 80th Street and Flatlands Ave around 6.30pm

When they arrived to the crime scene, officers found a 28-year-old male with a gunshot wound to the throat

Aaron Vincent was found lying unconscious on the sidewalk by police and was taken to Brookdale University Hospital, where he was later pronounced dead

In a separate shooting in Canarsie, Aaron Vincent, 28, was fatally struck in the throat outside a restaurant at 80th Street and Flatlands Ave around 6.30pm.

Vincent was found lying unconscious on the sidewalk by police and was taken to Brookdale University Hospital, where he was later pronounced dead.

Two other men, 32 and 38, were struck in the right arm and in the right foot, respectively.

Police said the men arrived at Brookdale on their own and are being treated for their injuries at the hospital. Their condition is stable.

The are being 'highly uncooperative' when questioned, police said.

The shooting appeared to be targeted and all the victims had criminal records, police added.

In the Canarsie shooting, two other men, 32 and 34, were struck in the right arm and in the right foot, respectively

Police said the injured men arrived at Brookdale on their own and are being treated for their injuries at the hospital. Their condition is stable

According to witnesses who spoke to officers, a man dressed in black fled the scene of the shooting in Canarsie in a white sedan after firing shots at Vincent and other two men

There are no arrests in regard at this time and the investigation remains ongoing, police said. Above, investigators search for evidence at East 80 Street and Flatlands Avenue

Investigators at the crime scene in Canarsie. Police have asked anyone with information about the shootings to call the Crime Stoppers line at 800-577-TIPS (8477)

According to witnesses who spoke to officers, a man dressed in black fled the scene in a white sedan after firing shots at Vincent and the other two men.

Police have said both investigations are ongoing and no arrests have been made as of yet.

Police have asked anyone with information about the shootings to call the Crime Stoppers line at 800-577-TIPS (8477).

In the Bronx on Sunday, men pulled up in their black BMW sedan beside Sergio Jimenez, 21, with one of the killers sticking his body out of the car's sunroof armed with a gun.

Another man is seen in the horrifying footage firing from the back seat while a third gunman leaps out of the car to begin shooting at the couple.

The third gunman appears to have trouble reloading his gun after firing multiple shots, giving up and getting back into the car before all three of them drove off.

EMS pronounced Jimenez, the father of a three-year-old boy, dead, and his girlfriend was taken to BronxCare Health System to be treated for gunshot wounds to her hand and back. She was listed in stable condition.

Sergio Jimenez, 21, (left) was shot in the head and killed inside his BMW on Sunday night. He is pictured with family during a birthday party
A Delta flight from Washington DC to Los Angeles was diverted on Thursday evening after a passenger attacked a flight attendant and then turned on an Air Marshal, moments caught on cell phone footage show.

Flight DL342 took off from Reagan National Airport at 5:16 p.m. local time, but a mid-air altercation broke out. It's not yet clear what sparked the dispute.

The plane had to be diverted to Oklahoma City, and the male suspect, said to be in his 30s, was taken off the plane in handcuffs, CBS reported.

The flight then continued to Los Angeles, where it was scheduled to land at 10:17 p.m. Pacific Time, about two hours late. Delta apologized for the delay.

The officer and the flight attendant did not sustain any serious injuries and did not require hospitalization, according to CBS.

The incident is just the latest example of unruly passengers in the sky, as airlines cope with rocketing incidents of violence - either between passengers or flight attendants - with many involving feuds over the federally imposed mask mandates.

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Flight DL342 took off from Reagan National Airport at 5:16pm local time, but a mid-air altercation broke out

An unnamed passenger attacked a flight attendant, and then turned on an air marshal.

It is unclear what the altercation was over

The plane had to be diverted to Oklahoma City, and the male suspect, said to be in his 30s, was taken off the plane in handcuffs

Combative passenger on @Delta flight assaults flight attendant and Air Marshal, according to OKC police. Flight #342 from Washington D.C. to Los Angeles was diverted to Oklahoma City where police arrested the passenger. Story: https://t.co/3u0zKJrOQs pic.twitter.com/RHnZX60z3M  Eric Resendiz (@abc7eric) December 10, 2021 Twitter Privacy Policy

It is not clear whether the man's rage on Thursday's flight was due to COVID-19 measures. Axios reported that he was not wearing a face mask when he was arrested.

Bayne Bunce, 59, told Axios that he was on the plane and answered a call to assist federal air marshals.

He said he saw a man trying to 'get at' a flight attendant.

Captain Arthur Gregory with the Oklahoma City Police said an Air Marshal attempted to take the suspect into custody after he 'assaulted a flight attendant,' but he 'proceeded to assault the air marshal.'

'Delta applauds the quick action and professionalism of the crew and Federal Air Marshals on Delta flight 324 from Washington, D.C. to Los Angeles, which diverted to Oklahoma City after a customer became unruly and was removed from the flight by local law enforcement,' Delta Airlines said in a statement.

'We apologize to our customers for the inconvenience.'

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) confirmed the diversion to Axios in an email and said it 'investigates every unruly passenger report it receives from the airlines.'

Violent incidents on airplanes have soared since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, largely due to passenger frustrations at measures in place to stem the spread of the virus, including compulsory masks while in the air, except when eating or drinking.

The plane was forced to make an unscheduled emergency landing in Oklahoma City before continuing on to Los Angeles (pictured: its flight map after the unplanned landing)

A survey undertaken last month found 85 percent of flight attendants had been confronted by unruly passengers during the pandemic, the New York Post reported.

It also found that nearly one in five had been attacked.

The FAA has received more than 5,000 complaints about unruly passengers so far this year, and has investigated more than 1,000 incidents - five times more than in 2020.

Unruly airline passengers in at least 37 incidents could be charged with assault for attacking crew members or other fliers after the FAA announced referrals the federal agency made to the FBI for possible prosecution.

An FAA spokesman said in November that the agency has initiated 227 enforcement cases and referred 37 to the FBI for review. The agency did not identify any individuals.

Through November 1, there had been 5,033 reports of unruly passenger incidents, including 3,642 related to pandemic face covering regulations.

'Let this serve both as a warning and a deterrent: If you disrupt a flight, you risk not just fines from the FAA but federal criminal prosecution as well,' FAA Administrator Steve Dickson said at the time.
LA's woke DA George Gascon has been forced to apologize to the city's cops after likening one to a pig during a fraught press conference.

Gascon was referring to L.A. Sheriff Alex Villanuevas during a Wednesday question and answer session, when he responded to criticism made by the cop with: 'My dad used to say that when you wrestle with a pig, you both get muddy and the pig likes it,' Gascon said at a 90-minute Wednesday press conference before quickly adding, 'and thats not pig in terms of using the term as law enforcement.'

But his clarification was met with some skepticism, amid anger over the DA's woke policies which critics say have made cops' jobs much harder.

Since Gascon took office a year ago, Villanuevas been critical of his approach to crime, calling his time in office 'God awful.' But, as he attributed the perception of rising crime in the city to 'fear mongering and misinformation.

But crime is on the upswing, according to police statistics. Homicides are up by 46 percent, car thefts are up 53 percent and shootings have risen by a staggering 51 percent in Los Angeles compared with the same time frame through November 27 of 2019.

'My dad used to say that when you wrestle with a pig, you both get muddy and the pig likes it,' Los Angeles District Attorney Gascon said before quickly adding, 'and thats not pig in terms of using the term as law enforcement.' He has faced harsh criticism from LA County Sheriff Alex Villanueva and others since he took office a year ago for his progressive policies

LA crime is on the upswing, according to police statistics. Homicides are up by 46 percent, car thefts are up 53 percent and shootings have risen by a staggering 51 percent in Los Angeles compared with the same time frame through November 27 of 2019

Gascon also pushed for softer sentenced for gun offenders, sending out a fundraising email on the very same day music industry boss Clarence Avant's 81 year-old wife Jacqueline was shot dead by a home invader at their Beverly Hills mansion.

However, property crime has decreased by 6.6 percent, robberies are down 13.6 percent and burglary has decreased by 7.7 in 2021 as compared to 2019.

'Its not a question of whether I assume responsibility or not. I readily would if I thought there was a correlation,' Gascon said Wednesday, flanked by Cook County, Illinois, States Attorney Kim Foxx, whose area of jurisdiction just surpassed 1,000 homicides this year, and Suffolk County, Massachusetts, District Attorney Rachael Rollins.

Foxx was also linked to the Jussie Smollett case after trying to persuade the FBI to take over the probe into his January 2019 hate attack, which Smollett was convicted of faking on Thursday.

'The reality is that we go through these cycles, and we go through the cycles for a variety of reasons  In many ways we cannot prosecute our way out of social inequalities, income inequalities, the unhoused, the desperation that we have,' Gascon said.

Villanueva has been particularly critical of Proposition 47, which reduces many crimes from felonies to misdemeanors.

'Then he comes into office and decides not to even prosecute the misdemeanors,' Villaneuva told KTLA. 'So, youre doubling down on a really bad idea and now were seeing the consequences of it.'

Villanueva said that a recent string of high-profile crime, like smash-and-grab robberies that have been caught on tape and disseminated through social media, have left L.A. residents 'afraid to come out of the house.'

There were 7,542 robberies in Los Angeles this year through November 27, the LAPD's most recent data indicate, which represents a 3.9 per cent increase from last year

At his Wednesday press conference, the District Attorney touted his dismissal of over 60,000 marijuana convictions during his tenure, and boasted that the potential prison exposure of L.A. county defendants had dropped by a collective 18,000 years through one of his policies, which bans the use of sentencing enhancements.

Days before the conference, Gascon skipped gun enhancement that would add 25 years to his sentence when charging Aariel Maynor, the suspect in the murder of 81-year-old philanthropist Jacqueline Avant, filing minor gun charges that carry less time instead.

Maynor, 29, was arraigned on Tuesday. Avant was killed while her 90 year-old husband, legendary music producer Clarence Avant, was at home but was not injured.

Maynor, who has a lengthy criminal record, is also charged with the attempted murder of the Avants' security guard, whom he allegedly shot at during the December 1 robbery but did not wound.

'Mrs. Avant was a treasured member of our community. Her generosity and goodwill touched so many lives,' Gascon said in a news release.

Gascon has advocated against sentence enhancements for using a gun, belonging to a gang, and causing great bodily injury.

The murder of Clarence Avant's (right) 81-year-old philanthropist wife, Jacqueline (left) inside her $7 million Beverly Hills home on December 1 is part of a recent string of smash-and-grab robberies plaguing Southern California

'Mrs. Avant was a treasured member of our community. Her generosity and goodwill touched so many lives,' Gascon said in a news release

Prosecutor Eric Siddall was among those infuriated by the timing of Gascon's fundraising email.

'After a year of record homicides, smash-and-grab robberies and the day of the callous murder of an 81-year-old woman in her own home, George Gascon sent a letter to his supporters asking for money to further his efforts to eliminate our ability to prosecute crime and protect the public,' he told the Washington Examiner.

Siddall is the vice president of Association of Los Angeles Deputy District Attorneys, an organization representing roughly 1,000 Los Angeles County prosecutors.

Siddall told FOX on Monday that Gascon had 'created an atmosphere devoid of accountability,' as organized groups of thieves continue to terrorize LA, brazenly looting retail stores for thousands of dollars-worth of goods, often in front of customers and staff.

Merely hours after Avant's death in her $7 million Beverly Hills mansion, Gascon, who has been criticized for being 'soft on crime' and supporting the zero-bail policy, sent a fundraising email to promote a bill removing extra prison time for using a gun during a crime.

Shocking photos obtained by DailyMail.com show the sliding glass door that was smashed by home invader who killed the wife of legendary music executive Clarence Avant

When charging the suspect of Avant's murder, Aariel Maynor, Gascon skipped gun enhancement that would add 25 years to his sentence, filing minor gun charges that carry less time instead

Shocking photos obtained by DailyMail.com show the musician's decimated sliding glass doors, though police pointedly declined to confirm that robbery was the suspected motive, saying all possibilities are under consideration.

Law enforcement sources told the LA Times that at least one burglar made it into the mansion before Jacqueline was killed.

'If you don't have time to read it, here's a quick ask: we're just weeks away from our $75,000 End-of-Year goal and we've still got 20% left to rise. Can you chip in a donation today to fund our community outreach efforts?' the email read, according to The Washington Examiner.

It continued: 'More than 80 percent of people serving time in California state prisons have had sentence enhancements applied to their time servedsentence enhancements have never been shown to reduce the rate of crime, and excessive sentence enhancements can actually drive up reoffense.'

Merely hours after Jacqueline Avant's death, Gascon, who has been criticized for being 'soft on crime' and supporting the zero-bail policy, sent a fundraising email to promote a bill removing extra prison time for using a gun during a crime

'If you don't have time to read it, here's a quick ask: we're just weeks away from our $75,000 End-of-Year goal and we've still got 20% left to rise. Can you chip in a donation today to fund our community outreach efforts?' the email read

The email, with a subject that said 'We've got to reform outdated sentence enhancement policies,' was branded 'tone-deaf' by Los Angeles County Sheriff Alex Villanueva.

'I don't think you can begin to explain this one,' Villanueva told the Examiner.

'That is amazing but not surprising at the same time. He is trying to nullify the legislative intent, and he is undermining the entire system and not reforming it.'

'Reckless, feckless, crass are some of the more charitable words that come to mind,' Siddall said about Gascon's email.

A map shows the locations of some of the major smash-and-grab robberies that have recently taken place in Southern California

Gascon has faced rampant criticism since assuming office last year over his progressive policies - such as allowing suspects to go free as they await their day in court.

The message went on to say that sentence enhancements have disproportionately impacted sentencing for people of color.

Gascon, one of many 'woke' DAs bankrolled by billionaire Democrat donor George Soros, has survived one recall effort and faces another that was launched Monday.

Gascon's silence in the face of the lawlessness has only infuriated his critics.

Last week, LA police arrested 14 suspects alleged to have been involved in 11 recent smash-and-grab robberies at stores last month, where nearly $340,000 worth of merchandise was stolen in strikes on an LA Nordstrom, a Lululemon in Studio City, a Fairfax district store, and a CVS pharmacy in South LA.

Eric Siddall of the Association of Los Angeles Deputy District Attorneys slammed LA DA George Gascon Monday for his silence on the recent string of smash-and-grab robberies

However, due to city's zero-bail policies, the suspects were all released within hours of being handcuffed and are currently walking the streets while they wait for their cases to go to court.

'If you look at the 14 people arrested, they could have been charged, there could have been bail amounts set, but none of that was done because the district attorney refuses to take a leadership position on this issue,' Eric Siddall told Fox, slamming Gascon office's do-nothing approach to the rampant crime wave currently afflicting cities all across the Golden State.

In a statement sent to the outlet Monday, Gascon's office said that it was looking into the suspects' cases with LAPD officials and 'will hold those responsible accountable.'

'Our Organized Crime and Cyber Crime Divisions are involved because often many of these cases can be interconnected and part of these crimes happens online,' an adviser to the prosecutor, Alex Bastian, asserted in the statement.

'These brazen acts hurt all of us; retailers, employees and customers alike. We will hold those responsible accountable.'

Billionaire donor George Soros has been quietly pumping millions into the campaigns of Democratic District Attorneys across the country - including Gascon

Policies raising criticism are tied to Soros' effort to overhaul the criminal justice system by giving millions to a network of woke prosecutors in Democratic races.

Gascon raked in more than $2.5 million last year from the Hungarian-American financier, who boasts a reported net worth of $8.6 billion and is most known for giving to Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama.

Soros has also donated to the campaign of Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner to the tune of $1.7 million.

In 2016, Soros pumped $3million into seven local district-attorney campaigns, including races in Louisiana, Mississippi, New Mexico and Texas.

In May, Gascon's opponents organized a recall effort to oust him from office.

However, despite garnering more than 200,000 signatures from LA citizens in a matter of months, the campaign fell short in October, failing to amass the needed 580,000 LA County voters needed to remove Gascon.

The recent rash of 'flash mob'-style robberies have only made matters worse for Gascon, with a second recall effort launched against the DA on Monday.

The renewed recall attempt looks to have been spurred by the string of smash-and-grab attacks, which have seen a variety of high-end retailers in the city relentlessly ransacked in recent months.

This year alone, through November 27, there were 7,542 robberies in Los Angeles, LAPD's most recent data, as compared to 7,258 last year - a 3.9 per cent increase.

Among the latest of the brazen of robberies in LA was a pair or robbers who cornered a mother with her baby on the driveway of her mansion as she waited for its electronic gates to close on Sunday.

The Los Angeles Police Department, which shared footage of the crime on Twitter, is asking for help finding the suspects who robbed the mother in broad daylight.

The unidentified woman is seen in the video walking into her driveway with her infant in a stroller.

The two robbers walk past the home, then turn around and walk inside before the electronic gates could close.

They then back the woman against the wall of her property, take a diaper bag off her back and grab a cooler from inside her stroller before fleeing in a car parked outside.

'Fearing for her and her child's safety, the victim complied' with the thieves demands that she hand over her belongings, the LAPD wrote in its Twitter post.'

On November 22, about two dozen robbers smashed their way into an LA Nordstrom, making off with $5,000 worth of merchandise. A CVS pharmacy in the city was struck just an hour later, where looters stole $8,000 from a cash register. Police said that the 14 arrests made last week were in connection to these attacks.

Two days later, police in Palo Alto announced that two women had been arrested in connection with an attempt to steal items from the RealReal clothing boutique downtown.

Los Angeles police say at least 20 people used sledgehammers to break the glass at a Nordstrom on November 22 and ransack its shelves before fleeing. Fourteen suspects were arrested last week in connection to the brazen heist, but have since been released

At the time, cops detailed how 30 to 40 people arrived in some 20 cars and tried to break down the glass front door but it held. A security guard then reported the effort via a 911 call, which spurred the crowd to flee as police started to arrive.

The suspects were subsequently stopped in a car near the scene, where police said they found at least $15,000 in clothes from a second RealReal location that was burglarized in Larkspur earlier that night.

In another incident later that day, five more people pleaded not guilty to felony charges involving thefts - this time in San Francisco.

Nine people were initially charged in the string of attacks on San Francisco stores such Louis Vuitton, Burberry and Bloomingdale's in the city's downtown area and in Union Square - a posh shopping district popular with tourists that was teeming with holiday shoppers.

Among the latest of the brazen of robberies in LA includes a pair or robbers who cornered a mother with her baby on the driveway of her mansion as she waited for its electronic gates to close on Sunday

Aside from the organized crime rings, the growing problem has been attributed to police officers' apparent reluctance to pursue such criminals in the current political climate, prosecutors' failure to prioritize larceny and theft, and the decriminalization of low-level offenses in some jurisdictions.

Two weeks ago, the San Francisco Bay Area saw a relentless string of audacious 'smash-and-grab' robberies, including an incident involving a gaggle of hammer-wielding masked bandits who ransacked jewelry, sunglasses and clothing stores at the Southland Mall in the San Jose suburb of Hayward on November 21.

A suspect wields a hammer during a jewelry store robbery in Los Angeles in November

That same evening, packs of thieves ransacked a sunglasses store and a Lululemon store in San Jose, stealing nearly $50,000 in merchandise - an incident also related to the recent arrests made by LAPD.

The day prior, on November 20, police said as many as 80 suspects, some wearing ski masks and carrying crowbars, targeted a Nordstrom in the San Francisco suburb of Walnut Creek, assaulting employees and stealing merchandise before fleeing in waiting cars, police and witnesses said.

Another incident, on November 19, saw roving bands of thieves brandishing hammers and crowbars hit a string of high-end retailers, including Louis Vuitton, Burberry and Bloomingdales, as well as a Walgreens pharmacy and several marijuana dispensaries, in the vicinity of Union Square in San Francisco, a high-end area popular with tourist that was crowded with holiday shoppers.

California's Proposition 47 - lighter sentences for thieves Proposition 47 was passed by California voters on November 5, 2014. It made some 'non-violent' property crimes, where the value of the stolen goods does not exceed $950, into misdemeanors. It also made some 'simple' drug possession offenses into misdemeanors, and allows past convictions for these charges to be reduced to a misdemeanor by a court. Under California law, though, if two or more person's conspire to 'cheat and defraud any person or any property, by any means which are in themselves criminal' they can face no more than one year in county prison, a fine of $10,000 or a combination of the two. Advertisement

Similar strikes have been reported in other parts of the country as well, in fellow crime-ridden metropolises like Chicago and New York.

Both Los Angeles and San Francisco recently placed in the top 10 for the National Retail Federation's list of cities most impacted by organized retail theft - with LA earning the dubious honor of the top spot. Southern California cities San Francisco and Sacramento each took the 8 and 9 spots, respectively.

The zero-bail strategy currently employed by Gascon's office - a policy that was statewide until last year but kept in place within the LA County Superior Court system - was initially intended to reduce the city's jail populations, as The City of Angels grappled with the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic.

However, Los Angeles police Chief Michel Moore said Monday that the effort is ill-founded.

'There are individuals in communities that look at that as a lack of consequences, a lack of deterrence and open season in which to go and commit these types of crimes,' LA's top cop told KNX Radio on Monday.

'The crisis during COVID, while well-intended, the impact it had on the criminal justice system was significant and severe that it's developing another crisis in public safety. We have an offender base that commits and are willing to commit serious and violent crimes and we need to make sure the criminal justice system acts as a deterrent.'

Officials in San Jose and Santa Clara County slammed zero-bail last week when two suspects allegedly involved in a Halloween murder were freed to await trial outside of jail walls.

Another case in Los Angeles County resulted in a car-theft suspect being arrested 13 times over 12 weeks.

Others blame the voter-approved measure Proposition 47 -passed by California voters on November 5, 2014 - which reclassified felony thefts cases under $950 to misdemeanors.

Siddall, however, disagrees, and said Monday that Gascon bears sole responsibility for the dangerous phenomenon.

'We didn't have these flash mobs for many, many years,' Siddall said. 'You really cannot blame Prop 47. When people are engaged in a conspiracy to commit larceny, that becomes a felony. You can't say that the law is weak on these issues. You can't say that the judiciary is weak on these issues.'

On November 26, Black Friday, LA looters ransacked a Home Depot, taking a slew of tools such as crowbars, mallets and sledgehammers that LAPD officials say will likely be used in future heists. Thieves also busted into a Bottega Veneta store.
Police are probing the 'unexplained' death of a Royal Navy serviceman at Britain's nuclear submarine base in Scotland.

Emergency services were scrambled to Faslane on the Clyde at around 12.30pm yesterday following the tragedy.

The Royal Navy confirmed the death but declined to comment further.

Faslane inspired the fictional base used in hit BBC drama Vigil, starring Suranne Jones and Martin Compston, and in James Bond film The Spy Who Loved Me, the secret agent - then played by Roger Moore - was briefed about submarines at Faslane.

Police are probing the 'unexplained' death of a Royal Navy serviceman at the UK's nuclear submarine base

Emergency services were scrambled to Faslane on the Clyde at around 12.30pm yesterday following the tragedy

Police Scotland are investigating the death and said a post mortem will now be carried out to establish exactly what happened.

A spokesman said: 'Around 12.30pm on Thursday, 9 December, officers were called to Faslane naval base following the death of a man.

'A post mortem examination will be carried out to establish the exact cause of death, which is currently being treated as unexplained.

'A report will be submitted to the Procurator Fiscal.'

A Royal Navy spokesman said: 'It is with sadness that we can confirm a member of the Royal Navy has died.

'Our thoughts and sympathies are with the family and friends at this difficult time and we request their privacy is respected.

'At this stage, it would be inappropriate to comment further.'

The SNP warned the Government earlier this year they will reject any attempt to keep Britain's nuclear submarines north of the border in the event of an independence vote.

It emerged recently that the Ministry of Defence has considered the possibility of leasing its existing nuclear sites in Western Scotland from the Scottish Government if the nation were to vote to break away from the UK.

The suggestion was reportedly dubbed a 'Nuclear Gibraltar' by insiders, in what was a nod to Britain's territory on the southern tip of the Iberian Peninsula, which is bordered by Spain.

The UK's four nuclear submarines, armed with Trident missiles since 1996, have been based at HMNB Clyde at Faslane since 1968. A secondary base at Coulport, less than ten miles away, is where missiles are routinely stored.

Around 6,500 people are employed at Faslane, with a further 200 at Coulport. But ministers are said to have drawn up plans to move the vessels to naval bases in the US or France in the event of the break-up of the Union.

Faslane inspired the fictional base used in hit BBC drama Vigil, starring Suranne Jones and Martin Compston (pictured)

In James Bond film The Spy Who Loved Me, the secret agent - then played by Roger Moore - was briefed about submarines at Faslane

According to the Financial Times, the MoD has also considered moving the home of the nuclear submarines to France of even the US. It is also possible that they could move to the Royal Navy's Devonport base in Plymouth.

But the SNP's defence spokesman Stewart McDonald said the nuclear bases in Scotland would be removed 'at pace' after an independence vote and defiantly added at the country 'will not be home to nuclear weapons'.

While HMNB Clyde at Faslane is the home base of the submarines themselves, the Royal Naval Armaments Depot at Coulport is responsible for storing, processing and maintaining missiles when they are not loaded on submarines.

The Royal Navy's association with Faslane - which lies on the eastern shore of Gare Loch - stretches back as far as the First World War.

It was in the loch that the steam-propelled HMS K13 sank in 1917 after her engine room flooded during sea trials.

In the Second World War, large jetties and a railway were built at Faslane to accommodate arrivals of troops and supplies on large ships from across the Atlantic.

After the conflict ended in 1945, the base was used to break up old navy vessels. The last battleship to be scrapped in Britain, HMS Vanguard, was taken apart at Faslane in 1962. The base was also used as a home for submarines.

But its long and controversial link with nuclear weapons began in 1968, after navy chiefs and politicians had made the decision that the UK should have its own lethal deterrent amid the threats posed by the Soviet Union during the Cold War.

On May 10, 1968, after the Polaris Sales Agreement with the US - which allowed Royal Navy submarines to carry lethal UGM-27 nuclear missiles - the new nuclear base at Faslane came into being.

Then known as HMS Neptune, it was opened by the Queen Mother. Later that year, the first patrol was carried out by the HMS Resolution, which was launched in 1963 and was the first of the four Resolution-class submarines.

The following year, the UK had committed to the policy which remains in place today - Continuous At Sea Deterrence (CASD).

Whilst details were top secret when the operation first began, it is now public knowledge that any one of four nuclear submarines are guaranteed to be deployed at any given time.

Faslane's long and controversial link with nuclear weapons began in 1968, after navy chiefs and politicians had made the decision that the UK should have its own lethal deterrent amid the threats posed by the Soviet Union during the Cold War. Above: The base in 1967

In 1969, the UK committed to the policy which remains in place today - Continuous At Sea Deterrence (CASD). Above: Faslane in the 1980s

On May 10, 1968, after the Polaris Sales Agreement with the US - which allowed Royal Navy submarines to carry lethal UGM-27 nuclear missiles - the new nuclear base at Faslane came into being. Later that year, the first patrol was carried out by the HMS Resolution (above), which was launched in 1963 and was the first of the four Resolution-class submarines

If Britain were to move its nuclear submarines, they could be based in Brittainy, northern France, or even the US

The second submarine used for the Polaris programme was HMS Renown, which was launched in 1964. It was followed by HMS Revenge in May 1965 and HMS Repulse in June of that year.

The Resolution-Class submarines and their Polaris missiles began to be phased out in 1992, when the first of the four Vanguard submarines were built. They were set to carry the new Trident system, which is still in place today.

The four submarines carrying Trident missiles are HMS Vanguard, HMS Victorious, HMS Vigilant and HMS Vengeance.

Each missile carried on the submarines has warheads which are more powerful than the bombs dropped on the Japanese city of Hiroshima in World War Two.

The reasoning behind basing the UK's nuclear weapons at Faslane was centred around the fact it is deep, easy to navigate and offers easy access to the North Atlantic.

However, the decision to place nuclear weapons on UK territory met fierce opposition from anti-nuclear campaigners. Hundreds of protests have taken place in the decades since the weapons arrived.
Chinese troops will attack any US forces sent to defend Taiwan in the event a war over the island breaks out, Beijing's state-back media has warned.

The Global Times newspaper, a mouthpiece for China's Communist rulers, issued the threat after US national security adviser Jake Sullivan vowed that Washington will 'never allow' a Chinese invasion to take place.

Such threats are not credible because the US 'cannot afford' the cost of defending Taiwan, the newspaper said, urging Sullivan to shut his 'big mouth' and avoid 'creating more embarrassment for your country'.

As if to underline the threat, China on Friday sent 13 warplanes to menace Taiwan's airspace, including eight fighters and two nuclear-capable bombers.

Chinese troops will attack US forces sent to 'rescue' Taiwan from an invasion and destroy American weapons meant to defend the island, Beijing's state media has said (file image)

Taipei said 13 Chinese warplanes, including eight fighters and two nuclear-capable bombers, flew into its 'air defence identification zone' on Friday

Taipei said the sortie included six J-16 fighters, two J-10 fighters, two H-6 bombers, one Y-8 spy plane, one Y-8 anti-submarine plane, one KJ-500 spy plane.

The fighters, anti-submarine aircraft and KJ-500 plane all made a short incursion into Taiwan's 'air defence identification zone (ADIZ)' on Friday, the defence ministry said.

Taiwan requires all aircraft flying into its ADIZ to identify themselves and state their intentions. The zone is different to the country's territorial airspace.

The bombers and the Y-8 spy plane flew a much longer route, around the southern end of the island and on to its eastern side before turning around.

It is the largest such mission since November 28, when 27 aircraft flew a similar route. China typically flies one such mission per day and has done for months, which Taiwan's government says amounts to harassment.

'Nobody believes the US has the true will to defend Taiwan at all costs,' the Global Times wrote, adding that: 'The US is far away from "defending Taiwan" at the cost of a deadly war.'

Washington may believe that sending US troops to the island is a 'deterrent', the editorial added, but in reality they would simply find themselves under attack.

'The US mainly provides military support to Taiwan by selling weapons. Those weapons are generally destined to be destroyed by the People's Liberation Army as soon as the reunification by force takes place,' the newspaper said.

'It is credible that the PLA will heavily attack US troops who come to Taiwan's rescue. Such credibility is increasingly overwhelming the deterrence that US troops have.'

To avoid a conflict the US should encourage Taiwan to return to diplomacy with the mainland, the newspaper editorial said (file image, Taiwanese troops)

In order to truly avoid a Chinese invasion of Taiwan, the state-backed newspaper said, the US should encourage Taiwan's government to engage in diplomacy.

'If the US continues to regard the Taiwan island as a pawn to contain the Chinese mainland and send wrong signals to the [government], then the situation will keep on worsening,' it says.

'Resolving the Taiwan question by force will become the inevitable and only choice for the Chinese mainland.'

Taiwan is home to the People's Republic of China, the mainland's old rulers who were deposed by the 1946 revolution which brought the Communist Party to power.

Tensions between the island and the mainland have been simmering for decades, but ramped up when the nationalist DPP party won elections there in 2016.

Xi Jinping then vowed to reunify the island, by force if necessary, in a speech in 2019 - and ever since the situation has been threatening to boil over into conflict.

America is a long-standing ally of Taiwan's rulers, and is legally bound to provide the island with weapons to defend itself due to treaties passed in the 1970s.

Officially, the US has a policy of 'strategic ambiguity' towards the island - refusing to say what it would do in the event of a Chinese attack.

But Biden has said in interviews that he would send US forces to defend the island if attacked, though aides later insisted he had misspoken.

In recent months, China has been menacing the island with show-of-force aerial drills close to its airspace - sometimes involving dozens of fighter jets, bombers, spy aircraft and refuelling planes.

The threat comes after US national security adviser Jake Sullivan said the US will 'never' allow China to invade the island (pictured, US naval drills in the region)

In response, the US has been forging new alliances with powers in the region including India, Australia and Japan to counter-balance the pressure from Beijing.

China is also on diplomatic manoeuvres, with Nicaragua on Friday announcing that it will officially break off diplomatic relations with Taiwan and recognise the government in Beijing instead.

The move leaves the island with just 14 diplomatic allies, most of them small, largely poor nations in the Western Pacific, the Caribbean and Latin America.

The loss of formal allies further constrains the Taiwanese leadership's ability to make state visits abroad and feeds into Beijing's narrative that reunification with the mainland is inevitable.

Nicaragua's authoritarian President Daniel Ortega has increasingly found himself an international pariah, with the United States denouncing last month's presidential polls as a "pantomime election."

That may have prompted Ortega to take up an offer from China, which has been steadily luring away Taiwan's remaining allies by promising trade and development assistance while ignoring political controversies.

China has also been engaged in a decades-long programme of shadow diplomacy, offering poor countries with authoritarian leaders shunned by the US cheap loans and workers in return for political backing.
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Revellers hit the town for a night out yesterday before Plan B curbs meaning clubbers must show a Covid pass come into force next Wednesday.

In Newcastle and Manchester, revellers were spotted donning festive headgear and celebrating with work colleagues as they got in their Christmas bashes early.

Long queues were also seen outside nightclubs in Leeds as pubs and bars remained as packed as ever - ahead of restrictions being tightened in England this morning in a bid to slow the Omicron coronavirus variant.

The legal requirement in England to wear masks has been extended to more indoor spaces including museums, galleries and community centres.

Friday's measures were introduced ahead of a return to working from home on Monday and mandatory Covid passports for large venues from Wednesday, as the Government's Plan B comes into force.

The passports will apply to all unseated indoor venues with more than 500 people, unseated outdoor venues with more than 4,000 people and any venue with more than 10,000 people.

The festive celebrations come as Public Health Scotland urges people to cancel their Christmas parties, in a message which clashes with Boris Johnson's suggestion that bashes in England should still go ahead despite a call for workers to stay away from offices.

Revellers in Leeds were seen getting in their Christmas celebrations early - ahead of restrictions being tightened in England this morning in a bid to slow the Omicron coronavirus variant

One reveller is seen taking a selfie during a night out in Leeds. Meanwhile, the legal requirement in England to wear masks has been extended to more indoor spaces including museums, galleries and community centres

A man donning a festive suit is seen on a night out in Leeds. Friday's measures were introduced ahead of a return to working from home on Monday and mandatory Covid passports for large venues from Wednesday, as Plan B comes into force

Long queues were also seen outside nightclubs in Leeds as pubs and bars remained as packed as ever. The festive celebrations come as Public Health Scotland urges people to cancel their Christmas parties

The NHS Covid pass will be compulsory to gain access to nightclubs and other large venues where large crowds gather.

Two vaccine doses will be treated as fully-vaccinated but this will be kept under review because of the booster programme.

A negative lateral flow test will also be sufficient under the requirement, which will be rolled out in one week's time to give businesses time to prepare.

Meanwhile Dr Nick Phin, the organisation's director of public health science, has said revellers should delay their festive gatherings until another time to help in the effort to slow virus spread.

Professor John Edmunds, a member of the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage), said cases of the variant will keep rising.

On restrictions, he told a Royal Society of Medicine briefing: 'I think it's a necessary evil ... it's very damaging for parts of the economy, the hospitality sector, retail sector in particular - they're going to be affected.

'Unfortunately, we have to do it. The rate at which this virus is spreading is doubling every two or three days.'

He added: 'Even though there's very few cases here now, and it seems like an overreaction, it absolutely is not an overreaction.'

People enjoy a Christmas night out in Bristol. Dr Nick Phin, the organisation's director of public health science, has said revellers should delay their festive gatherings until another time to help in the effort to slow virus spread

Revellers get in their Christmas celebrations early in Leeds. There were a total of 817 confirmed cases of the Omicron variant in the UK as of Thursday, the UK Health Security Agency said

Thursday night revellers brave the rain to enjoy a cold night out on the town in Newcastle in the run-up to Christmas

A group of revellers are spotted on a night out in Leeds. Health Secretary Sajid Javid has warned that the number of UK Omicron infections could hit one million by the end of the month

A man is pictured appearing to be restrained as two police officers stand nearby in Newcastle on Thursday evening

Two men don festive headgear in Manchester. The new regulations will be put to a debate and vote in the Commons next week - and with Labour's support they are certain to be approved, despite the prospect of a large Conservative revolt

Sports stadia are also included in regulations published on Thursday evening, but the Department of Health confirmed face coverings will only be mandatory in indoor areas.

People attending churches or other places of worship will have to wear a face mask  but will be allowed to take it off to sing, making people question whether the face covering will make any difference to the spread of Omicron.

The exemption has created confusion amid concerns that singing creates a higher risk of spreading Covid-19 by making droplets travel further.

Meanwhile, The Daily Telegraph cites an anonymous Government source as saying it is 'very likely' visitors in social care settings will be limited to only three designated visitors as part of plans being considered by ministers.

There were a total of 817 confirmed cases of the Omicron variant in the UK as of Thursday, the UK Health Security Agency said.

People are seen on a night out in Manchester ahead of coronavirus restrictions being tightened in England this morning

A group of revellers go pub golfing as they brave the rain to enjoy a night out in the town on Newcastle on Thursday evening

Revellers in Manchester enjoy a night out as Covid restrictions tighten in England. Plan B measures will be reviewed on January 5, before their expiry date of January 26

Police are seen in Leeds as people enjoyed a night out. Under new measures, masks do not need to be worn in hospitality settings such as pubs and restaurants, or in gyms or nightclubs

Two revellers in Manchester hit the town ahead of coronavirus restrictions being tightened in England this morning

But Health Secretary Sajid Javid warned that the number of UK Omicron infections could hit one million by the end of the month.

He has insisted the new measures are necessary to 'build our collective defences' through the vaccination programme in the face of the rapidly-spreading variant.

The new regulations will be put to a debate and vote in the Commons next week - and with Labour's support they are certain to be approved, despite the prospect of a large Conservative revolt.

Despite officials appearing to say that under new rules shoppers could be allowed to remove their face coverings in supermarkets if they walked around the store singing, regulations state that someone may take a mask off if it is 'reasonably necessary' to sing.

The regulations state that such occasions 'include singing as part of a choir, or during a service or rehearsal, or for performance'.

Downing Street has said it would be 'hard to justify' people having a 'reasonable excuse' to remove their masks to sing while getting groceries under the new rules.

Masks do not need to be worn in hospitality settings such as pubs and restaurants, or in gyms or nightclubs.

Ministers have faced criticism for introducing tougher measures, with anger in the Conservative party fuelled by suspicions the new restrictions were introduced as an attempt to distract from the Prime Minister's troubles over an alleged staff party in Downing Street during last December's lockdown.

The Plan B measures will be reviewed on January 5, before their expiry date of January 26.
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Poachers mercilessly slaughtered four rhinos including a pregnant female at a private game reserve and wounded a fifth with a shot to the head - just to saw off their horns for cash.

The gang used high powered rifles fitted with silencers to butcher the herd and even sawed off a prosthetic fibreglass horn which had been fitted to one rhino in a vain bid to protect it.

The poaching was carried out at the Inverdoorn Game Reserve near Ceres in the Klein Karoo a two-and-a-half drive from Cape Town.

The anti-poaching patrol were on a routine sweep of the 10,000-hectare reserve which is home to the Big Five of elephant, rhino, buffalo, lion and leopard on Wednesday night.

At 10.30pm they came across the bodies of two rhinos which had been shot several times and then found two other wounded close by, including a pregnant female.

A fifth member of the herd was missing but was tracked and found several hours later still alive but severely injured having suffered gunshot wounds to the head.

Poachers mercilessly slaughtered four rhinos including a pregnant female at a private game reserve and wounded a fifth with a shot to the head - just to saw off their horns for cash

The gang used high powered rifles fitted with silencers to butcher the herd and even sawed off a prosthetic fibreglass horn fitted to one rhino in a vain bid to protect it

The anti-poaching team called out veterinary experts to the three severely injured rhinos but two could not be saved and quickly died from high calibre bullet wounds.

The fifth rhino which suffered a severe gunshot wound has made it through two nights and is being monitored by vets and rangers waiting for the right time to dart it and treat its bullet injuries.

The gang sawed off at least the three biggest front horns and on the black market the haul could be worth over 350,000 but the poachers will get a pittance from the king pins.

Inverdoorn owner Searl Derman said: 'All the staff and management and those on the rhino patrol are severely traumatised. They even cut the horn off our pregnant female'.

In 2011 Mr Derman, owner of the neighbouring Aquila Game Reserve, lost two of his rhinos to poachers when they were hacked to death with machetes and dehorned.

Mr Derman said: 'I'm horrified to now be reliving the nightmare of Aquila at Inverdoorn and I am offering R100,000 (5000) for information that leads us to the poachers.

'This comes when the SA wildlife tourism industry is being decimated by a continued and unjustified international travel ban which brings in revenue to protect wildlife.

'As in the previous poaching incident at Aquila we will spare no expense or effort in the pursuit to catch and bring to justice the vicious perpetrators who massacred our rhinos.

Inverdoorn had begun a ground breaking technique of dehorning some of their rhinos and replacing them with synthetic ones and publicised it with signs around the reserve, but the bid to protect the endangered animals appears to have been in vain

An anti-poaching team at Inverdoorn Game Reserve found the bodies of two shot rhinos around 10:30pm on Wednesday and then found two other wounded close by, including a pregnant female

The anti-poaching team on Wednesday night called out veterinary experts to the three severely injured rhinos but two could not be saved and quickly died from high calibre bullet wounds

Inverdoorn had begun a ground breaking technique of dehorning some of their rhino and replacing them with synthetic ones and publicised it with signs around the reserve.

Mr Derman said:'We hoped it would deter poachers but it did not. One had a realistic fibreglass horn of zero value to the poachers but they still killed it and took it'.

Spokesman for the Aquila Collection which covers both reserves Johan van Schalwyk said:'This nightmare comes at a terrible time for the private game reserve industry.

'This is our festive season and what should be our busiest time but the tourism industry and the private game reserves of South Africa are being throttled by world travel bans.

'The tourism industry is being obliterated and many private game reserves have gone insolvent or have been forced to cull their wild animals and reduce staff to survive'.

A rhino horn can sell for up to as much as 75,000 a kilo in countries like China and Vietnam. Poachers will even kill a mother rhino in front of her calves to take her horns and in many cases orphans have been found trying to still nurse from their limp bodies.

Four large seizures of smuggled rhino horns have been made in the last four years at the Oliver Tambo International Airport in Johannesburg worth 12m on the black market.

South Africa is home to 80 per cent of the world's rhino population and despite only 200 white rhinos being left in 1970 intense conservation efforts have brought them up to 18,000.

But due to poaching they are still endangered though numbers have dropped from 769 poached in 2018 to 594 to in 2019 and a big drop to 394 in the 2020 official figures.

However the drop has not just been down to successful anti-poaching but to a switch from smuggling horns to tobacco and alcohol during the lockdown period.

A spokesman at the Department of Environment, Forestry and Fisheries said strict night time curfews made it impossible for poachers to move about which saved many.

The gang sawed off at least the three of the biggest front horns on the rhinos and on the black market the haul could be worth over 350,000 but the poachers will get a pittance from the king pins

The anti-poaching patrol were on a routine sweep of the 10,000 hectare reserve, home to the Big 5 of elephant, rhino, buffalo, lion and leopard, on Wednesday night when they discovered the dead rhinos

In September on World Rhino Day 2500 rhino horns, with a black market value of 60million, were burned on a pyre in India to send an anti-poaching message to the world.

Rhino horn is made of keratin which is basically a protein found in human finger nails which many in the Far East wrongly believe can cure hangovers, impotence and cancer.

Aquilla Collection's group manager Johan van Schalwyk added: 'I cannot believe people can believe such stupid things in this day and age.

'We lost three male rhinos and a pregnant female in this barbaric attack and we have a badly wounded female still in the wild who is very stressed but in stable condition.

'Our veterinary team is monitoring her and letting her de-destress and eat and get some water and settle down before we move in to dart her and treat her for bullet wounds.

'We are not releasing any information as to the size of the gang we are tracking but believe from the shell that the weapon used was a 416 silenced assault rifle.

'For obvious reasons we do not reveal how many rhinos we have at our reserves but we have a healthy number but when something like this happens it is just devastating to all.

'The people who work with our animals do not do it 9-5 and go home, it is 24/7, passion and a lifestyle and it has hit them to the core and they have to deal with the aftermath.

'But we will pick ourselves up, carry on, and get the evil people who did this.'
A gate-crasher has been branded a 'monster' after he hid inside a woman's home and then raped her as revenge for her throwing him out of a house party.

Adam Howard, 29, had been told to leave the victim's property after turning up uninvited - but instead he sneaked into a side room and waited for guests to leave.

After the party ended Howard, from Oldham, then watched the 21 year old victim go upstairs to bed before ambushing her in the bathroom.

As she screamed for help, he then forced himself on the woman in her mother's bedroom and punched her and bit on her shoulder when he tried to resist. He eventually fled the property and was arrested later.

Inquiries revealed the woman, a mother of one, who cannot be named for legal reasons, had repeatedly rebuffed Howard's friend requests on Facebook. He had 23 previous offences on his record including violence against lone women in their own homes.

In a statement the victim said: 'I was raped on my home by a stranger and I don't want to be on my own anymore and have to be with my mum all the time.

Adam Howard, 29, pictured, attempted to befriend his 21-year-old victim over Facebook. He was described as a 'monster' at Minshull Street Crown Court, Manchester

Howard, from Moorside, Oldham went to the woman's house when she was throwing a party and failed to leave when he was asked. He hid and attacked the woman when she was on her own

Judge John Potter condemned Howard's actions saying the rapist had degraded his victim

'I was just so scared when he did what he did to me. What he did was unforgiveable. He took from me something I will never get back as he violated me like a monster.

'I have tried to put what happened at the back of my mind and forget about it but it just comes back and haunts me. I do hope that one day I will be ok but I honestly think I will never get over this.'

At Minshull Street Crown Court, Manchester, Howard was jailed for 12 years after being convicted of rape and assault occasioning actual bodily harm. He will serve at least eight years and will be on licence until 2037 under the terms of an extended sentence.

The incident occurred after Howard, from Moorside, Oldham, had sent friend requests to the woman via Facebook but she did not respond. She later threw a house party and had friends round while her mother was out for the evening.

At a sentencing hearing, Judge John Potter told Howard: 'You had gone to that home at the invitation of another approximately an hour before. You had never met your victim before and you had sent her friend requests online which she had ignored.

'When you arrived at the address, your victim became upset that you were present as she hardly knew you and she had rejected your friends requests. You were asked to leave but you then pretended to do so.'

Judge Potter praised Howard's victim saying she had shown 'remarkable courage' for giving evidence against the rapist

Judge Potter said Howard 'brutally raped' his victim and subjected her to 'degradation by biting her on the shoulder'.

He said at the time of the 'planned and predatory' attack the woman was 'drunk and vulnerable'

Judge Potter praised the woman saying she had shown 'remarkable courage' in giving evidence.

The court heard the vicious rape left the woman with bruising across her body including her shoulder, back, arms and legs. Howard left the home 56 minutes after he had first arrived and the victim reported the attack to the police.

He handed himself in and in a prepared statement he said that he had consensual sex with the woman and 'blamed' the victim. Howard was found guilty in a trial in October. He was also ordered to sign the Sex offender Register for life and was banned from contacting the woman indefinitely under the terms of a restraining order.

After the case Detective Constable Kate Dawson, of Greater Manchester Police said: 'The victim was not only sexually assaulted, but she was also punched and covered in bruises.

'The impact of Howard's predatory and wicked actions will be something she will have to live with for the rest of her life. While justice may have been served, today's sentence will sadly never take away from the pain he put her through.'
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Boris Johnson and the Tories are eight points behind Sir Keir Starmer and the Labour Party in a new opinion poll as the Prime Minister continues to be battered over an array of scandals.

A snap poll conducted by Focaldata has put Labour on 41 per cent of the vote while the Conservatives are way back on 33 per cent.

That survey followed YouGov research which found the PM's personal ratings have plunged to an all-time low of minus 42, down 11 points in a month.

The numbers came as Dominic Cummings today claimed Mr Johnson will be 'gone next year' and Tories warned patience is 'running out'.

The former chief aide waded in as the PM battles on multiple fronts, with his main spin doctor dragged into the 'Partygate' row, his sleaze watchdog demanding answers over 'Wallpapergate' and Tory MPs slamming Covid curbs.

Mr Johnson was forced to deny losing confidence in director of communications Jack Doyle after claims he gave a speech and handed out prizes at a lockdown-busting festive gathering in Downing Street last year.

Meanwhile, the row over the No11 residence refurbishment is blazing again, following the Electoral Commission's revelation that Mr Johnson personally messaged a Tory donor to ask for works to be underwritten. The premier's spokesman said ministerial adviser on standards Lord Geidt is 'liaising' with officials over the disclosure, which contrasts with the peer's previous report on the issue.

Tories are also in open revolt about new coronavirus restrictions to combat the surging Omicron strain, while long-running sleaze accusations appear to be hitting the party's support ahead of a crucial by-election in North Shropshire next week.

Despite his huge 80-strong majority won just two years ago, Mr Johnson - who must contend with sleepless nights after becoming a father again yesterday - is now facing serious speculation about his future.

In a Q&A session on his blog, Mr Cummings claimed Mr Johnson 'throws everybody under the bus' to save himself but predicted Tory MPs will wield the axe in the New Year.

'I know 15 year-olds who would do a better job at PM in all ways than Boris, except giving a speech - he cant actually do anything other than the words/bullsh*t side of things,' he said.

'He's done, gone by this time next year, probably summer', he said.

Ex-Cabinet minister Andrew Mitchel warned that the 'mood of the Conservative Party is sulphurous and we need to see some grip from No10'.

'The history of the Tory Party is littered with ruthlessness on these occasions but I'm confident that Boris will get a grip,' he told the BBC.

Geoffrey Clifton-Brown, treasurer of the powerful 1922 Committee of backbench Tory MPs, delivered a thinly-veiled warning this morning, saying that Mr Johnson must stabilise the ship over Christmas.

'He's got to come clean on a lot of the issues that you mentioned in your opening news,' the veteran MP said.

'We're all about to go for a Christmas break. If he comes back in the new year refreshed, able to differentiate between his private life and public life, and clarify all the issues and then start to do the really big issues that this country needs... we can really get onto that agenda away from these other, sort of, personal issues, then I think he's fine.

'But if we go on having these  what I call personal issues, issues of judgment by the Prime Minister  then I think that's a very different scenario.'

A senior Tory source told MailOnline that there had been a lot of 'unexploded bombs' for Mr Johnson up to now.

'When he spoke to the '22 over sleaze he notably failed to get the audience back with his normal charm and wit and jovial manner,' they said.

'They didn't respond to it, which was an indication that patience was running short. Now you've got this week.'

The Conservative warned that the 'polls are all going in one direction' and it will not be a 'comfortable Christmas' for Mr Johnson. 'I don't think he is in danger this week or over Christmas, but come the end of January that is probably when he really will be in danger  if he is.'

They also pointed to Sajid Javid's refusal to conduct interviews defending the bombshell video of No10 staff giggling about their party, and the fact the Health Secretary openly admitted afterwards that he had refused.

'It was pretty 'over to you b******s at No10'.' the Tory said. 'When you get a secretary of state who's only just been re-promoted distancing himself in the way he did it is pretty brutal.'

In the latest bombshell developments today:

Downing Street has cancelled plans for a Christmas party this year 'following the decision on Plan B and the latest data';

The great Christmas exodus has begun after Mr Johnson announced Plan B, with Tube and bus travel down and road traffic also plunging to its lowest level since October;

Labour has written to Lord Geidt urging him to reopen his investigation into the No11 flat refurbishment;

Keir Starmer's MPs are set to bail out Mr Johnson by supporting 'Plan B' Covid restrictions in a crunch vote next week, with scores of Tories vowing to rebel;

New figures showed the economy stalled in October, growing just 0.1 per cent, even before the measures to tackle Omicron come into effect.

Dominic Cummings (right, file picture) today trolled that Boris Johnson (left) will be 'gone next year' as Tories warned that patience is 'running out' amid a bewildering array of scandals

A stark focaldata poll showed Labour eight points in the lead, compounding the Tory anxiety over the PM's stewardship

There were reports last night that Lord Geidt (left) is on the brink of resigning over claims the PM misled him. Meanwhile, Jack Doyle (right), the PM's top spin doctor, has been dragged into the 'partygate' row with claims he made a 'thank you' speech to up to 50 people who attended the Downing Street bash on December 18 last year

YouGov research today found that the PM's personal ratings have plunged to an all-time low of minus 42, down 11 points in a month

The Electoral Commission fined the Conservatives 17,800 for failing to properly declare almost 68,000 mostly used to pay for the refurbishment of the private quarters used by Mr Johnson, his wife Carrie and their son Wilfred. Above: The flat was designed by Lulu Lyttle in a similar style to the above

Mr Johnson's wife Carrie has just given birth to their second child (pictured together in June this year)

YouGov research for the Times showed the Conservatives slumping to just 33 per cent - four behind Keir Starmer 's party

Why is Boris accused of lying about Wallpapergate and what is his excuse? One of Lord Geidt's first actions after being appointed as adviser on ministerial interests was to probe the saga over the lavish No11 refurbishment. Boris Johnson wanted a charitable trust to cover the huge bill for improvements to the grace-and-favour residence beyond the 30,000 a year that the taxpayer foots. Lord Brownlow was drafted in to head the theoretical trust - but the whole idea was later ditched as impractical under government rules. In the meantime the Conservative Party had repaid the Cabinet Office for the works using funds provided by Lord Brownlow, and the peer also met other invoices directly. The PM subsequently resolved the chaos by paying out of his own pocket, and Lord Geidt concluded that while he had been 'unwise' not to keep closer track of how the work was being funded, no rules had been broken. However, critically the peer's report noted that officials told him Mr Johnson had not been aware of the 'fact or the method of the costs of refurbishing the apartment having been paid' until February this year. 'I have also spoken in similar terms to the Prime Minister who confirms that he knew nothing about such payments until immediately prior to media reports in February 2021,' the report said. That seemed to clash with an Electoral Commission investigation published yesterday, which revealed that Mr Johnson WhatsApped Lord Brownlow in November last year asking him to authorise work on the flat. 'The Prime Minister messaged Lord Brownlow via WhatsApp asking him to authorise further, at that stage unspecified, refurbishment works on the residence,' the commission stated. 'Lord Brownlow agreed to do so, and also explained that the proposed trust had not yet been set up but that he knew where the funding was coming from.' No10 insists the premier messaged Lord Brownlow in his role as head of the supposed trust, and did not know the source of the money. The Downing Street position might be bolstered by the fact Lord Geidt's report stated: 'Lord Brownlow behaved in a confidential manner consistent with his own experience of blind trusts.' Advertisement

What happened in the 'Wallpapergate' scandal? What work was done? interior designer Lulu Lytle transformed the living quarters from what the PM's wife Carrie reportedly felt was a 'John Lewis furniture nightmare' left behind by Theresa May. The new look included gold wallpaper costing 840 a roll. How much did it cost? The designer was paid 112,549.12. Who paid for it? Initially the Cabinet Office settled the bill. But because it was significantly above the 30,000 annual public grant for work to the flat, officials set up a charitable trust for donations to cover the costs. The Tory party repaid the Cabinet Office, then Tory donor and trust chairman Lord Brownlow and his firm made a donation to the party as well as paying some money directly to the supplier. Eventually the PM paid the designer personally. Did this break any rules? The Electoral Commission has found that the Conservative Party broke the law by failing to declare most of the money it received from Lord Brownlow as a donation. What about the PM's role? He had been cleared by sleaze watchdog Lord Geidt of breaching the ministerial code on the basis that he claimed he knew nothing about the complex funding arrangements until February. This has been called into question as the Electoral Commission has found evidence that Mr Johnson messaged Lord Brownlow asking for money the previous November. What happens next? Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards Kathryn Stone may choose to investigate Mr Johnson for breaking the MPs' Code of Conduct by failing to declare donations. Advertisement

In one of the potentially explosive situations for the premier, there are reports that Lord Geidt, his Independent Adviser on Ministerial Interests, is considering his position.

Mr Johnson previously assured Lord Geidt, a former private secretary to the Queen, that he did not know who was paying for the refurbishment - which was ordered by his wife Carrie Johnson - until February.

But an official report by the Electoral Commission yesterday revealed that the Prime Minister had texted Tory donor Lord Brownlow in November asking for more works to be signed off.

The findings open the door for yet another probe into the 'Wallpapergate' scandal, exposed by the Daily Mail.

Downing Street insisted Mr Johnson had not lied to his adviser, pointing out that Lord Brownlow was head of a proposed trust that was meant to raise money for the refurbishment - although the idea was later abandoned - and the premier did not know the source of the money.

The PM's official spokesman said today that Lord Geidt is 'liaising' with Downing Street.

'We are liaising with Lord Geidt to any answer further questions he may have,' the spokesman said.

The commission fined the Conservative Party 17,800 for failing to declare donations properly over the saga, although it is mulling an appeal.

According to the Daily Telegraph, the standards adviser could quit if Mr Johnson does not satisfactorily explain why he did not share vital information with him - although the BBC said sources had played down the prospect of an imminent departure.

Dominic Cummings, who was in Downing Street when the expensive redecoration works were being planned for the living quarters above No 11, has waded into the spat again.

He wrote on Twitter that he had told the PM 'in extremely blunt and unrepeatable terms' in January and the summer of 2020 'his desire for secret donations to fund wallpaper etc was illegal and unethical'.

Mr Cummings said: 'He pursued it throughout the year trying to keep me/others in dark and lied to Geidt/CCHQ [Conservative Party headquarters] to cover it up.'

He added: 'I've said repeatedly for months: a) obviously PM lied to Geidt, b) Geidt could only conclude as he did by ... not interviewing anybody actually involved with the flat!'

The new revelations plunge the PM further into crisis after his Government was rocked by news earlier this week that an 'illegal' Christmas Party was held at Downing Street when the capital was in Tier 3 lockdown restrictions last year.

Mr Doyle, then the PM's Deputy Director of Communications, is said to have made a 'thank you' speech to up to 50 people who attended the bash on December 18 last year.

ITV News claimed that Mr Doyle also handed out paper certificates to members of the communications team as part of a 'joke awards ceremony'.

The former journalist has been overseeing the response to the allegations, with Number 10 denying that it amounted to a 'party'. But extraordinary leaked video footage of a mock press conference showed Downing Street staff giggling about the 'cheese and wine' gathering, sparking the resignation of spokeswoman Allegra Stratton.

The controversial gathering is now the subject of an internal investigation by the Cabinet Office, along with another leaving do where Mr Johnson is said to have given a speech.

Mr Johnson has flatly denied being aware a party had happened, but the apparent attendance by one of his closest aides raises fresh questions.

The leader of the Scottish Conservatives said he would have to quit if he was found to have lied about the party when he denied it had taken place in the House of Commons.

Asked if the PM had confidence in Mr Doyle, his official spokesman replied: 'Yes.'

On whether Mr Doyle had offered his resignation, the spokesman said: 'Not that I'm aware of.'

The spokesman also said Mr Johnson retains full confidence in adviser Ed Oldfield after he appeared in the leaked footage that prompted Allegra Stratton to resign.

Mr Cummings said on Twitter Mr Doyle was a 'gonner' (sic) but predicted Mr Johnson would keep him on staff until after the Cabinet Secretary's inquiry, then use him 'as the sacrifice'.

He said on Twitter: 'Also there's lots of pictures of the parties which will inevitably get out. And invite lists beyond No10, to other departments'

Mark Spencer insisted Downing Street staff 'were not drinking alcohol' and partying during Covid restrictions as he claimed the PM can not know everything going on in Downing Street with its 'hundreds of offices and rooms'.

Mr Spencer said he was 'assured that everybody in that building played by the rules' as he sought to explain how Mr Johnson may not know what was going on under his own roof.

'When you describe it as a house, it's a department of Government, this is a huge, huge building, literally with hundreds and hundreds of offices and rooms,' the Sherwood MP told BBC Radio Nottinghamshire.

'No single person could account for what's happening in those buildings  they are huge buildings.'

Told people are furious after suffering a miserable Christmas under Covid restrictions, Mr Spencer replied: 'And so did the Prime Minister, believe me, he also had a miserable Christmas dealing with all of this and dealing with the coronavirus epidemic as many people did in No 10 working day and night trying to solve the challenges the country was facing.

'I'm told they were not drinking alcohol and having parties while that was going on.'

Asked if Mr Johnson should resign if he lied, the whip said: 'The Prime Minister will not have lied about any parties. My understanding is that there was no party but we need to investigate that, the Cabinet Secretary will investigate it and we will establish the facts.'

'Patience running out' as Labour takes poll lead and Tories 'despair' ahead of North Shropshire by-election next week Boris Johnson was warned that 'patience is running out' today as polls showed Labour leading by up to six points - and the Tories were hit with a barrage of council seat losses. YouGov research for the Times showed the Conservatives slumping to just 33 per cent - four behind Keir Starmer's party. And a Survation poll was even worse, putting Labour on 40 per cent while the Tories trailed behind on 34 per cent. Meanwhile, anxiety has been heightened by the loss of three council seats in Rotherham and Bracknell overnight, with another three in Tonbridge also looking doomed. There is a mood of 'despair' over the prospects for holding the previously rock-solid North Shropshire Commons seat next week, with senior figures telling MailOnline they will be 'astonished' if the Lib Dems do not win the by-election triggered by Owen Paterson's resignation. Advertisement

Mr Spencer was also questioned over the mock press briefing on December 22 during which No 10 aides joked about Covid restrictions and a supposedly 'fictional party' days earlier.

Asked why Allegra Stratton, who resigned as a Government adviser after footage of the rehearsal leaked, was unable to say if Mr Johnson condoned a Christmas party, the whip said: 'Because there was no party, that's where the joke was.'

Mr Scully said it was key to 'get to the bottom' of allegations about parties and gatherings.

He told BBC Breakfast an investigation had been launched because 'we want to see beyond doubt that there were no rules broken, which is what the assurances have been to the Prime Minister, and that's what I've heard.

'I wasn't there. I don't know.'

But he would not be drawn on whether Mr Doyle should still be in his job.

Lockdown-sceptic Tories say at least 60 Tory backbenchers are ready to rebel in a vote next week on Mr Johnson's imposition of Plan B measures to combat the Omicron variant.

To make matters worse for the beleaguered PM, two national polls showed how the the Conservatives have slumped in popularity over recent weeks, with one giving Labour a six-point lead.

Earlier this year the Mail revealed how secret plans had been hatched to get Tory donors to pay for the overhaul of the No11 flat by interior designer Lulu Lytle, as the PM privately complained he could not afford the 'gold wallpaper' Mrs Johnson was buying.

There was also a scheme to set up a charitable trust for the maintenance of the historic Downing Street buildings, with Lord Brownlow made its chairman - although the idea was later abandoned.

Currently there is 30,000 a year of taxpayer funding available for maintaining the grace-and-favour residence.

Cabinet Secretary Simon Case, who learned of the machinations through this newspaper, began investigating and passed his findings to ministerial watchdog Lord Geidt.

In May Lord Geidt cleared the PM of breaching the ministerial code, only saying that he had 'unwisely' 'allowed the refurbishment of the apartment at No 11 Downing Street to proceed without more rigorous regard for how this would be funded'.

This conclusion was based on Mr Johnson telling him 'that he knew nothing about such payments until immediately prior to media reports in February 2021'.

But a separate investigation by the Electoral Commission uncovered evidence that on November 29, 2020, the PM 'messaged Lord Brownlow via WhatsApp asking him to authorise further, at that stage unspecified, refurbishment works on the residence'.

The report provides the most detailed account yet of the complex web of payments, which it has now emerged totalled 112,549.12, involved in doing up the flat.

The Cabinet Office paid the invoices initially, the money was subsequently repaid by CCHQ and then Lord Brownlow and his firm Huntswood Associates made donations to the party to cover the costs. To clear up the mess, Mr Johnson covered the bill personally earlier this year.

The Electoral Commission found that the majority of the 67,801 given to the Tories by Lord Brownlow's firm last October should have been reported as a donation, but was not.

The party was fined for 'failing to accurately report the full value of the donation' and 'contravening the requirement to keep proper accounting records'.

Lord Brownlow and his company also settled a number of invoices directly.

Deputy Labour leader Angela Rayner has called for Lord Geidt to reinvestigate the refurbishment.

After writing to Lord Geidt, Ms Rayner said: 'We now know that in the days before he imposed the 2021 winter lockdown, the Prime Minister went from allegedly hosting an illegal party in Downing Street to asking super rich Tory donors to secretly fund the luxury refurb of his flat.

'Not only has the Conservative Party broken the law, but its Prime Minister has made a mockery of the standards we expect.

'If Boris Johnson refuses a fresh investigation, that standard will be lowered significantly - setting the bar woefully low for our country's public life.'

Parliamentary standards commissioner Kathryn Stone has also been urged to probe whether Mr Johnson should have declared any personal donations. A spokesman for the watchdog's office declined to comment.

A CCHQ spokesman said: 'We have been in constant contact with the Electoral Commission and have sought their advice as to how the transaction should be reported since it was made. We are considering whether to appeal.'

The revelations come after new polls carried out yesterday showed how the Tories have slumped in popularity in recent days after being rocked by the Christmas party revelations.

A YouGov poll carried out for The Times found that Labour now has a four-point lead, its biggest in 11 months.

A YouGov poll carried out for The Times found that Labour now has a four-point lead, its biggest in 11 months

More than two thirds of voters are now said to be questioning Mr Johnson's integrity over his response to the Downing Street party scandal. The PM has consistently said that there was no party and no rules were broken.

Downing Street party was planned for three weeks The Number 10 Christmas party had been planned for three weeks, it was reported last night. According to The Times, invitations were sent to attendees on WhatsApp at the end of November, when the whole country was in full lockdown. The Times reported that invitations were sent around at the end of November. They asked people to attend the Number 10 press office's 'secret Santa' gathering with an exchange of gifts. The invitation said there would also be food and wine. The messages are likely to form a part of an inquiry into the event by Cabinet Secretary Simon Case. He is trying to find out if the event was an actual party, which would have broken lockdown rules. Advertisement

If enough Tory backbenchers rebel when Plan B measures announced on Wednesday are voted on next week, the PM could face the terrible optics of needing Labour votes to push the laws through.

Tory MPs were reportedly speculating that more letters of no confidence in the PM were being handed to Sir Graham Brady, the leader of the immensely powerful 1922 Committee.

However, at this stage, there is said to be little chance that the PM will be forced out.

A minister told The Times that Mr Johnson would stay in his job by 'default' because no potential challenger would be able to unify critics.

They said the PM had committed 'a series of unforced errors' and the party was 'lucky' that Labour's Sir Keir is 'useless'.

The YouGov poll added that three quarters of people believe there was a Christmas Party where Covid-19 rules were broken and 68 per cent said they thought Mr Johnson was lying when he denied it.

A separate survation poll poll suggested that Labour's poll lead may be even bigger, at six points.

Downing Street insisted yesterday that the PM knew Lord Brownlow was in charge of a blind trust being used to fund the flat renovation, not that he was also the source of the donation.

'The PM was not aware of the details of the underlying donor until prior to media reports (in February),' Mr Johnson's spokesman told reporters, saying the PM had not lied to Lord Geidt.

A separate investigation by the Electoral Commission uncovered evidence that on November 29, 2020, the PM 'messaged Lord Brownlow (pictured) via WhatsApp asking him to authorise further, at that stage unspecified, refurbishment works on the residence'

Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer also took to Twitter to take aim at the PM and branded him 'unfit to lead'

The PM was also put under fresh pressure by his former right-hand man Dominic Cummings, who was in Downing Street when the expensive redecoration works were being planned for the living quarters above No 11

Boris's flat saga: a timeline January 2020: Plans are submitted for the refurbishment of the No11 flat, a month after Mr Johnson wins 2019 election. February 2020: Officials decide to set up a blind trust to fund the six-figure renovation. The system is designed to ensure the beneficiary is not aware of the source of the money, to prevent corruption. May 2020: Lord Brownlow is approached to set up and then chair the trust, and agrees. June/July 2020: The Cabinet Office, which is responsible for the Downing Street estate, pays three invoices totalling 52,801.72 for work carried out, and then bills the Conservative Party. August 2020: The Conservatives Party pays the bill. October 2020: Lord Brownlow emails the party and asks how much the bill is, and says he will make a donation to cover it. He does so. November 29, 2020: Boris Johnson contacts Lord Brownlow on WhatsApp 'asking him to authorise further, at that stage unspecified, refurbishment works'. Lord Brownlow agrees and explains that the Downing Street Trust has not yet been set up. December 18, 2020: Lord Brownlow donates a further 33,484.80 to the firm refurbishing the flat. February 2021: Lord Brownlow donates a further 13,295.30 to the firm refurbishing the flat, taking his total contribution to 112, 549.12 March 2021: The scale and cost of the renovations, and the way it was funded, is revealed by the Daily Mail. Boris Johnson repays the supplier personally and the firm then re-reimburses Lord Brownlow. May 2021: Ministerial Standards watchdog Lord Geidt clears the PM of wrongdoing. He says officials assured him that Mr Johnson was not aware that Lord Brownlow paid for the work personally until it was revealed in the media. The PM also told him the same thing directly. December 2021: The Electoral Commission fines the Conservatives Party 17,800 for failing to declare Lord Brownlow's original donation. It reveals that he received the WhatsApp messages about money from the PM. Advertisement

However the Commission report released yesterday noted that at the time in November 'the proposed trust had not yet been set up'.

It found that the Conservative Party failed to 'fully report' a donation of 67,801.72 from Brownlow made in October 2020, of which 52,801 which was connected to the refurbishment of the 11 Downing Street flat where Boris Johnson lives.

The probe found that when the payment was flagged by a junior member of Conservative staff, they were told the cash was for 'something else' and 'don't worry'.

It also revealed that the PM personally asked Lord Brownlow to sign off more works via WhatsApp.

The commission's investigation found that decisions relating to the handling and recording of the donation reflected 'serious failings in the party's compliance systems'.

A fine of 17,800 was levied for 'failing to accurately report a donation and keep a proper accounting record'.

Louise Edwards, director of regulation at the Electoral Commission, said: 'The party's decisions and actions reflected serious failings in its compliance systems.

'As a large and well-resourced political party that employs compliance and finance experts, and that has substantial sums of money going through its accounts, the Conservative Party should have sufficiently robust systems in place to meet its legal reporting requirements.'

The Daily Mail revealed details of the lavish redecoration of the apartment shared by the PM and his then fiancee in March.

The revamp at No11 by upmarket designer Lulu Lytle is said to have included gold wall coverings.

But the funding of the work did not appear in the list of political donations published by the Commission or in Mr Johnson's Commons register of interests.

It prompted demands from the Labour Party for a full investigation into how the extravagant work was paid for and whether rules were broken.

The Electoral Commission said that Huntswood Associates transferred 67,801.72 to the Conservative Party on October 19, 2020.

Some 15,000 of that amount was for an event, but the commission said he 'specifically identified the remaining 52,801.72 as a donation to cover an earlier payment of that value made by the party to the Cabinet Office'.

The Cabinet Office had paid three invoices over summer 2020, totalling the same amount, for the refurbishment of the Prime Minister's flat at 11 Downing Street, and these were made on the agreement that the sum would be repaid by the party.

But the commission said that in donation records submitted on January 27, 2021, while the party reported the 15,000 from Huntswood Associates, it failed to report the 52,801.72.

The commission also concluded that the reference in the party's financial records to the payment of 52,801.72 made by the party for the refurbishment was not accurate as it was referred to as a 'blind trust loan'.

However a trust to refurbish the flat had not been created.

The Tories are considering whether to appeal against the Electoral Commission fine over the donation linked to Boris Johnson's flat refurbishment.
Doctors in Russia have 'safely removed' a 'Batman mask' birthmark from a two-year-old girl from Florida using pioneering surgery.

Luna Tavares-Fenner, from Florida, had a huge nevus birthmark covering her nose and eyelids, and she made regular trips with her mother to Russia for more than two years for treatment.

The toddler had been receiving photodynamic therapy, a treatment which is not available in the US.

Luna was born with congenital melanocytic naevus, a skin condition that produces abnormally dark blemishes, usually across the face.

Luna Tavares-Fenner had a huge nevus birth mark covering her nose and eyelids, and she made regular trips with her mother Carolina (both pictured) to Russia for treatment

After six operations, Luna (pictured after treatment), aged two years and nine months, has had her birthmark removed and will return to Russia in the New Year for cosmetic treatment

The treatment is said to work by doctors injecting an unnamed drug into a patient, which then accumulates in the birthmark and causes the tissue to die, with new and healthy skin growing beneath.

After six operations, Luna, aged two years and nine months, has had her birthmark removed and will fly home for Christmas before returning to Russia in the New Year for cosmetic treatment.

In an exclusive interview, Dr Pavel Popov told East2West News: 'Luna has already started speaking and she says herself: 'My black spot has gone. I am a princess'.'

Luna had surgery at a clinic in Krasnodar - a Russian city close to Ukraine amid high tension over reports of a new conflict between the two countries.

Luna was born with congenital melanocytic naevus, a skin condition that produces dark blemishes, usually on the face. Pictured: Carolina and Luna wearing bandages after surgery

The toddler (pictured after the treatment) had been receiving photodynamic therapy, a treatment which is not available in the US, where Luna and her family live

Dr Pavel Popov said the treatment was a 'success' and added he is not yet sure how long Luna's cosmetic treatment will take. Pictured: Luna wearing bandages after treatment

THE TREATMENT Luna was born with congenital melanocytic naevus, a skin condition that produces abnormally dark blemishes, usually across the face. The treatment is said to work by doctors injecting an unnamed drug into a patient, which then accumulates in the birthmark. This causes the tissue to die, with a crust forming over the skin. Beneath the crust, new, healthy skin grows. This is done alongside laser surgery, which helps to 'clean up' the edges and reduce pigmentation. After the pioneering procedure only pink skin and small crusts are still there but will soon fall off. Advertisement

It also coincided with the Covid-19 crisis, yet Luna and her mother Carol Fenner, 37, managed to keep returning so the girl could receive the groundbreaking treatment.

And there has been a heartwarming result from the operations which medics say has prevented possible skin cancer for the toddler.

'We only had six operations to remove the nevus and have succeeded in making it disappear,' explained Dr Popov.

'The main medical part of the task is done. This does not mean that we have finished treatment at all.

'We are letting Luna rest from the treatment she has undergone and then we will undertake the aesthetic surgeries.

'Later we aim to make sure Luna will not have any complexes when she comes to the age where she is concerned about her appearance.'

He added that the treatment was a 'success' and said he is not yet sure how long Luna's cosmetic treatment will take.

He said: 'I am completely satisfied with the result of the surgery.

'Luna is very loyal to us. Often there is an aversion to the medical staff. Children are afraid of doctors.

'But Luna brings her dolls to the appointment every time - and asks me to treat their faces.

'I attach a plaster to the doll's face. Luna is happy that the doll is also treated. I guess the lack of pain in the treatment allows her to be so loyal.

The treatment is said to work by doctors injecting an unnamed drug into a patient, which then accumulates in the birthmark and causes the tissue to die. Pictured: Luna after treatment

There has been a heartwarming result from the operations which medics say has prevented possible skin cancer for the toddler (pictured left and right with her birthmark)

Luna's mother (pictured with her daughter) said she was grateful that the treatment did not involve invasive and 'aggressive' surgery, which would have been the case elsewhere

'I can't tell you how long the cosmetic part of Luna's treatment will take. It depends on too many factors - pandemics, lockdowns, visas.'

Luna's mother said she was grateful that the treatment did not involve invasive and 'aggressive' surgery, which would have been the case elsewhere.

WHAT IS A CONGENITAL MELANOCYTIC NAEVUS? Around one per cent of babies are born with a CMN. However, they are often much smaller. In some cases, they can be hairy. CMNs are sometimes called 'brown birthmarks' by medics. They get bigger as children age. They don't usually cause any complications but they can be itchy. There is a slight risk of melanoma, thought people with bigger CMNs face the highest risk - but it is still low. Dr Adil Sheraz, consultant dermatologist and British Skin Foundation spokesperson, told MailOnline: 'The word melanocytic refers to being composed of melanocytes - these are cells that produce pigment or colour. 'A naevus is another word for a mole. A mole that is present form birth is known as a congenital melanocytic naevus (or birthmark).' Treatment is usually surgery to remove the blemish. Full-thickness grafts may be required for large growths. If surgery is not possible due to the size, location or thickness of the blemish, laser therapy may help to reduce pigmentation and make it less hairy. Dermabrasion may also be used. This involves resurfacing the skin so it grows back smoother. Advertisement

'Luna is good now,' she said. 'Her bandages are off.

'We're going to fly away for Christmas and come back for the final cosmetic surgeries at the end of January.

'I don't regret at all having the treatment here. Luna doesn't feel the pain.

'She dances a few hours after the surgery.'

Carolina, a US citizen originally from Brazil, is 'really happy' and speaks to other mothers receiving different treatments in the US.

'I spoke to a lot of mothers doing traditional surgeries in the US and they are more susceptible to infections.

'The kids stay in hospital a long time, and undergo general anaesthetics.

'Multiple anaesthetics would have demolished Luna's physical and mental health. She had only local.'

Carolina and her husband Thiago Tavares, 33, raised tens of thousands of dollars for their daughter's treatment in Krasnodar and also had the support of an anonymous Russian donor, which they called a 'miracle'.

Before she left the US a cruel woman in a Florida church branded her lovable daughter a 'monster', an insult that prompted Carolina to put her daughter through surgery, setting her on a path that took her to Russia for the first time.

Speaking in 2019 about her daughter's treatment, Carolina said: 'When I decided to come few months ago everybody called me crazy.

'But something in my head was telling me I should try.

'People say mothers feel something, I feel it's true.

'I knew I needed to try and come.

'I don't know why, I just decided to give it a try.'

Dr Popov convinced her online that he could cure her child without putting her through debilitating agony.

'I wanted to avoid the aggressive surgeries that I was seeing with the other doctors in the US,' she said.

Dr Popov is a cancer specialist who has been 'working in photodynamic therapy for over 20 years'.

Luna is clear of cancer but the technique can also be used for patients with her condition.
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Rupert Murdoch has landed one of the most extraordinary deals of his epic career by spending a staggering $280million to snap up a picturesque American ranch that was once home to wild west cowboys.

The media giant, 90, and wife Jerry Hall, 65, bought the 340,000-acre Beaverhead cattle ranch in Montana from the billionaire Koch family, which had owned the property for 70 years.

The ranch, located near Yellowstone National Park, is one of the largest in the state, and has a nearly 28-mile long private trout fishing river and is populated by elk, antelope and mule deer.

Murdoch, now 90 years old, is believed to be worth around $30billion and has long been friendly with the Koch family. He and Hall now plan to spend a lot of time on the ranch the Wall Street Journal reports, after dividing up much of his business empire and selling 21st Century Fox to Disney for $71 billion in 2019.

The couple, married in 2016, have been looking to buy a ranch for about a year, to expand their LA properties.

'This is a profound responsibility,' Murdoch told the Wall Street Journal.

'We feel privileged to assume ownership of this beautiful land and look forward to continually enhancing both the commercial cattle business and the conservation assets across the ranch.'

Media mogul Rupert Murdoch bought the 34,000-acre Matador Ranch (pictured), for $280 million

The ranch is located near Yellowstone National Park on a 50-mile long property in Montana

The Matador Cattle Company ranch was once home to some wild west cowboys in Montana

The property is home to elk, antelope and mule deer, and houses a number of horses

Murdoch's deal to buy Beaverhead ranch (pictured) is the biggest in Montana history. It was first owned by two butchers who were eventually inducted into the state's Cowboy Hall of Fame

The media giant and wife Jerry Hall (pictured together), bought the 139,000-hectare Montana property from the billionaire Koch family, whom they have been friends with for years

The sprawling property is a working cattle ranch that is home to 15 employee families.

Of the property's 340,000 acres, 113,000 are deeded and about 226,000 are leased for grazing rights. It spans 50 miles from north to south, crossing two separate Montana counties, and is home to about 4,000 elk, 800 antelope and 1,500 mule deer.

The property also includes 25 workers' homes and according to the ranch's website, was home to a pair of cowboys in the 1880s, whose families decided to sell the property to the wealthy Koch clan.

The billionaire family are industrialists known widely for their financial backing of conservative politicians in the US Republican party.

They bought it from the families of the original owners, Philip Poindexter and William Orr, who settled there in 1865 and were both Democrats.

The pair were inducted into the Montana Cowboy Hall of Fame in 2013.

They started out as butchers in mining towns and were the first cowboys to breed cattle and sheep in Montana.

The 139,000 hectare ranch has a 27-mile long private trout fishing river running through it

A view from outside the historic ranch, located near Yellowstone National Park

The ranch dates back to the 1800s, when it was purchased by Philip Poindexter and William Orr, who settled there in 1865

The property has since become the first ranch in the United States to receive Wildlife at Work certification from the Wildlife Habitat Council for outstanding natural resource management programs

A couple of horses are pictured in one of the stables on the wide-open Montana ranch

A 2007 award given to Beaverhead noted the historic buildings had been preserved, along with evidence of cowboy life there

The ranch is 'home to nearly 7,000 cow/calf pairs of a variety of breeds, along with a large variety of wildlife including wild game, land and water fowl, large and small mammals, fish and plant life'

Over the years, Beaverhead has won several environmental and preservation commendations.

In 2002 it became the first ranch in the United States to receive Wildlife at Work certification from the Wildlife Habitat Council for outstanding natural resource management programs.

And a 2007 award given to Beaverhead noted the historic buildings had been preserved, along with evidence of cowboy life there.

'Interior walls that had to be replaced were kept, including one with signatures of cowboys dating back to the 1880s,' Matador Cattle Company said.

The ranch is now a working ranch and is home to 15 employee families

Murdoch, now 90 years old (pictured second from right), is believed to be worth around $30billion and has long been friendly with the Koch family. David H. Koch is pictured at right

But the sprawling ranch is just one of several Western properties Koch Industries has sold off in recent months.

In March, the Journal reports, Koch Industries sold Spring Creek Ranch, a roughly 11,000-acre ranch in Kansas, according to listing agent John Wilden of Hall and Hall. He would not disclose the sale price, but it was listed for about $23.2 million last year.

Matador Ranch, meanwhile, was listed several months ago for $124.45 million, nd over the past few months, roughly 100,000 acres of noncontiguous land comprising the ranch has been sold off in chunks to different buyers, according to Sam Middleton of Chas S. Middleton and Son.

He said the sales prices have ranged from $900 to $1,000 per acre, and roughly 27,000 acres remain - priced at $875 per acre, or $23.625 million.

'Hopefully we'll have it sold in the next 35 to 40 days,' he told the Journal, noting: 'A lot of people are waiting to get out in the country' and 'there's been a lot of demand for rural real estate.'
Hate crimes targeting Christians in Germany have nearly trebled in a year amid a wave of religious discrimination across Europe.

From 2019 to 2020, the majority Christian nation saw a rise in attacks from 57 to 141.

This included seven physical assaults against Christians for their beliefs, three thefts or robberies, one desecration of a grave and 24 verbal threats.

Overall, hate crime in Germany rose by 19 per cent last year.

The Vienna-based Observatory on Intolerance against Christians in Europe (OIDAC), which has compiled a report on anti-Christian hate crime in the continent, says the two main threats come from 'secular intolerance' and 'Islamic oppression'.

Hate crimes targeting Christians in Germany have risen by nearly 150 per cent in a year amid a wave of religious discrimination across Europe. Pictured: Berlin Cathedral

The figures were submitted by the German police and Federal Statistics Office to the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), the world's largest security-oriented intergovernmental body.

There were also an additional 172 anecdotal reports from church groups which detailed how members are being targeted with vandalism and physical attacks.

One report said: 'A 77-year-old female Jehovah's Witness, while engaging in religious activities, was hit by a woman on the street. The victim fell to the ground and hit her head.'

A Jehovah's Witness kingdom hall was also 'desecrated when its mailbox was filled with urine', the church claimed.

In another alleged attack, a Protestant church was vandalised with swastika graffiti and other far-right symbols.

In 2016, 12 people were killed after an attack on a Christmas market in Berlin carried out by an ISIS asylum seeker

OIDAC said in its report that secular intolerance, which is a major threat to Christians in Europe, is the marginalisation or exclusion of religion from public and private life.

The report states: 'Some of the ideologies that infuse the secular intolerance that is at play in politics and universities today are specifically anti-Christian, like neo-Marxist undercurrents.'

They claim this has led to the censorship of Christian teaching, banning Christian symbols from public places, ignoring parental rights at schools and limiting the freedom of expression.

This has led to dismissals from work, no-platforming and police investigations over the expression of Christian faith, according to the study.

The report also claims that 'Islamic oppression' has led to 'violent attacks' against Christians.

They said: 'Islamic Oppression can mostly be seen in what we call "hotspot areas" of European cities and suburbs, where they impose unique legal and moral codes, which are often in contradiction to democratic principles and human rights.'

On Germany, the OIDAC report says: 'Freedom of expression has been limited in Germany when it comes to discussions about gender, marriage, bioethics, and sexuality.'

German hate crimes ncluded seven physical assaults against Christians for their beliefs, three thefts or robberies, one desecration of a grave, 24 verbal threats. Pictured: graffiti in Cologne Cathedral

They said this has led to police investigations over Christians asserting their traditional religious beliefs.

The report also claims that Christian students have had access to facilities limited because of their beliefs which have led to them being labelled 'homophobic' or 'anti-feminist'.

They said: 'Some forms of discrimination are that the groups are denied use of campus facilities and renting rooms, they are prohibited to share flyers, and they do not receive accreditation by student councils.

'Some students have also received threats.'

A study by Matthias Revers and Richard Traunmuller at the Goethe University Frankfurt found that a third of German students are in favour of banning controversial books from the student library.

Meanwhile between a third and a half of university students would not allow a controversial speaker on campus.

Gynaecologist Michael Kiworr was blocked from speaking at Gottingen University about abortion after being invited by Christian student group Reformatio 21.

The group Alternative Linke Liste Gottingen staged protests and forced the university to rescind the invitation.

The move was criticised by The Professor's Forum, an 800-member strong association of academics in Germany.

They said: 'There are frequent incidents in which aggressively appearing political groups sabotage the right to freedom of expression.'

OIDAC added: 'Germany must react more effectively to protect Christians from attacks initiated by radical groups.'
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As many as 4,000 Britons may be catching Omicron every day with the super-variant on track to replace Delta in in a matter of days, official data suggests  as the mutant pushes Scotland's Covid cases to a three-month high.

The highly-evolved virus is now behind 8.5 per cent of coronavirus cases across England and 13.3 per cent north of the border, and is doubling every two to three days.

With an average 48,000 Britons testing positive for Covid every day, it suggests more than 4,000 of them are the new Omicron variant  even though fewer than 1,000 cases have been confirmed.

Scotland, which along with London has become one of the UK's Omicron hotspots, today reported 5,018 positive Covid tests, which is the highest number in three months and double the number a week ago.

First Minister Nicola Sturgeon today told Scots to brace for a 'tsunami' of infections, as she warned the new super-variant posed a 'severe challenge'.

At a press conference in Edinburgh, she said: 'The fact is we do face a renewed and very severe challenge in the face of the new Omicron variant. To be blunt, because of the much greater and faster transmissibility of this new variant, we may be facing  indeed we may be starting to experience  a potential tsunami of infections.'

Public health chiefs expect Omicron to outstrip Delta nationally by Christmas and even sooner in the epicentre of London, with its rapid spread prompting No10 to resort to its Plan B strategy.

But Ms Sturgeon believes the variant to become dominant much more rapidly north of the border, adding: 'I think we can now say with some confidence that we expect it to overtake Delta within days, not weeks  we estimate this could be as early as the very beginning of next week.'

Public Health Scotland projections estimate that Omicron will be dominant by Tuesday and will make up virtually every infection by December 20.

A senior member of the Government's scientific advisory group SAGE yesterday warned that Omicron was spreading even faster in the UK than it is in South Africa  where cases have rocketed 10-fold in a fortnight.

Confidential UK Health Security Agency data showed that Omicron may now be behind 8.5 per cent of infections. The figures are based on the proportion of PCR tests failing to detect a specific gene, an early indicator of the variant. PCRs look for three genes to confirm a Covid infection, but with Omicron one is so mutated that they only pick up two of them. The analysis was done by Professor Alastair Grant, a Covid modeller at the University of East Anglia, who has access to the secret statistics

Scotland, which along with London has become one of the UK's Omicron hotspots, today reported 5,018 positive Covid tests, which is the highest number in three months and double the number a week ago. First Minister Nicola Sturgeon today told Scots to brace for a 'tsunami' of infections, as she warned the new super-variant posed a 'severe challenge'

Omicron makes up 13.3 per cent of Covid cases in Scotland and is doubling every two to three days

Public Health Scotland estimates the new variant will be dominant next week, accounting for more than 50 per cent of all Covid cases, and make almost all new infections by the end of the year

The above map shows the ten areas that have the most confirmed and suspected Omicron cases in England, according to the UK Health Security Agency. West Northamptonshire is the country's hotspot for the mutant strain, although eight in ten areas on the list are in London

 Slide me  The UKHSA found that cases rose in 90 per cent of local authorities last week in England. It comes amid the spread of the Omicron variant

The UK Government hopes Plan B restrictions will be enough to slow the spread of the mutant strain, buying the NHS precious time to dish out millions more booster jabs.

The first part of Boris Johnson's Plan B came into force in England today, with the introduction of compulsory face masks in indoor settings such as theatres, cinemas and churches.

New work-from-home guidance will come into effect on Monday, and MPs will vote the next day on the introduction of vaccine passports for nightclubs and large venues.

But officials are already drawing up a 'Plan C', which would see care homes slapped with fresh restrictions in the run up to Christmas and masks made compulsory in pubs and restaurants.

Nicola Sturgeon launches new Covid crackdown by forcing everyone who lives with infected to isolate even if they test NEGATIVE Nicola Sturgeon today announced entire families in Scotland will have to self-isolate for 10 days if one member of the household tests positive for coronavirus as she unveiled new Covid restrictions and warned the nation is facing a 'tsunami' of Omicron cases. The Scottish First Minister said that as of tomorrow 'all household contacts of any confirmed Covid case should isolate for 10 days, regardless of their vaccination status and even if they initially get a negative PCR test'. Ms Sturgeon said she knew this would not be 'easy' and that there will be 'careful exemptions for critical services'. However, she insisted the move is 'essential at this moment' because of the rapid spread of the new variant. The SNP leader said non-household contacts of a positive case should continue to self-isolate, pending a PCR test and if that test is negative they can leave isolation as long as they are double-jabbed. Meanwhile, Ms Sturgeon also urged people in Scotland to defer work Christmas parties as she said limiting 'unnecessary contacts' is the 'sensible' thing to do to slow transmission of the disease. It came as it emerged that the UK Government is already working on a 'Plan C' of Covid restrictions, just days after Boris Johnson triggered his 'Plan B'. Michael Gove is due to hold a COBRA meeting this afternoon with the first ministers of the devolved administrations to discuss the latest Covid data and the UK response. Ms Sturgeon told a coronavirus briefing in Edinburgh at lunchtime that as of yesterday at 5pm there were 110 confirmed Omicron cases in Scotland and 10 days ago the number was just nine. She warned the latest figure is likely to be the 'tip of the iceberg' and the data suggests the current spread of Omicron represents the 'fastest exponential growth that we have seen in this pandemic so far'. Ms Sturgeon said the number of Omicron cases is doubling every two to three days and the variant could overtake Delta as the dominant strain 'within days'. She said the R number in Scotland - the average number of secondary infections produced by a single infected person - had been 'hovering' around one in recent weeks but the R number for Omicron is 'likely to be well over two and possibly closer to three' which could result in a 'rapid rise' in cases in the days ahead. 'The fact is we do face a renewed and very severe challenge in the face of of the new Omicron variant, ' she said. 'To be blunt, because of the much greater and faster transmissibility of this new variant, we may be facing  indeed we may be starting to experience  a potential tsunami of infections.' She added: 'Indeed, I think we can now say with some confidence that we expect it to overtake Delta within days, not weeks  we estimate this could be as early as the very beginning of next week.' Advertisement

Controversial vaccine passports could also be extended to more venues as part of contingency measures being floated within Downing Street if Omicron proves to be as dangerous as scientists fear.

SAGE modelling warns Britain could face up to 1,000 hospital admissions a day by the New Year because of the mutant strain, bolstering calls for the UK to ramp up its booster vaccine drive. Health chiefs had also warned of a million cumulative cases by the end of 2021.

Scientists can estimate Omicron's spread with PCR tests without sequencing every case. These search for three genes to detect an infection, but the variant is missing one, known as the 'S' gene. Researchers can estimate which ones are Omicron because Delta has all three.

An evidence paper published ahead Ms Sturgeon's briefing today showed that 13.3 per cent of all PCR tests had the S gene dropout, the equivalent of one in eight. It suggests more than 600 Scots caught Omicron in the last 24 hours.

It said: 'Based on the data presented in this paper which is up to and including December 9, it is highly probable that Omicron will outcompete Delta and become the dominant variant within Scotland very quickly, with the potential to cause high case numbers.'

The document stated the rate at which cases of the new variant double is between 2.16 days and 2.66 days and that the R rate could be 3.

England has yet to publish the same data but it is being circulated within Government. Professor Alastair Grant, a modeller from the University of East Anglia who has access to the confidential data, warned of a similar story.

He claimed the R rate, which measures the spread of the virus, may be as high as four in England. This suggests every person who catches the virus will pass it on to four others.

Professor Grant's analysis also suggested there may have been 7,000 Omicron infections in the UK since November 20, more than eight times the official tally.

Britain has confirmed only 817 infections to date but Government scientists admit the true total may be more than 20 times higher because only a fraction of PCR tests are sent on for further analysis.

West Northamptonshire is the Omicron capital of England, where 83 confirmed or suspected infections with the mutant strain have been detected.

Regionally, London is the epicentre with eight of the ten areas with the most infections with the mutant strain. These are Croydon (up to 10 cases), Hackney (14), Lambeth (16), Newham (22), Brent (14), Greenwich (16), Wandsworth (13) and Lewisham (26).

Professor Kevin Fenton, public health director for London, has warned that the mutant strain could be behind more than five in ten cases in the capital within two weeks.

He told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: 'We are very concerned about its spread.

'Although we have limited diagnostic capabilities to identify the variant at the moment, the samples that we're taking are confirming that we are seeing a growth in the number of cases every two to three days.

'At this rate we should be seeing thousands of diagnosed cases by next week and certainly in the next two to four weeks it should account for the majority of cases that we see in the city, so we are taking this extremely seriously.'

It comes as it was claimed today that care homes could be slapped with fresh restrictions in the run up to Christmas and masks made compulsory in pubs and restaurants under a tougher 'Plan C' being considered by ministers.

A Government source said it was 'very likely' care home residents could be banned from seeing more than three visitors over the festive period to prevent another explosive outbreak in the sector.

And as shops, pubs and restaurants warn of the millions they face losing at their busiest time of year under Plan B measures , officials are already working on a potential 'Plan C' package.

This includes having to 'check in' with the NHS Covid app again to go to a pub or restaurant, using face masks in all indoor spaces, and having to show a vaccine passport at even more venues.

The first part of the Government's Plan B came into force on Thursday with the introduction of compulsory face masks in indoor settings such as theatres, cinemas and churches.

The looming threat of even tighter restrictions comes amid fury at Mr Johnson's decision to impose Plan B measures yesterday, on the same day that he tried to grapple with the fallout of the Downing Street Christmas party scandal.

England's Covid outbreak remained flat last week with around one in 60 people infected on any given day despite the super mutant Omicron variant being detected, Office for National Statistics (ONS) data showed today

The ONS data shows Covid cases increased in people in school Year 7 to school Year 11 and for those aged 25 to 49 years old

No10's Plan C to fight Omicron could limit care home visits BEFORE Christmas Care homes could be slapped with fresh restrictions in the run up to Christmas and masks made compulsory in pubs and restaurants under a tougher 'Plan C' being considered by ministers. Controversial vaccine passports could also be extended to more venues as part of the contingency measures being floated within Downing Street if the Omicron super variant proves to be as dangerous as scientists fear. A Government source said it was 'very likely' care home residents could be banned from seeing more than three visitors over the festive period to prevent another explosive outbreak in the sector. But campaign groups warned the plans could be 'devastating' and 'heartbreaking' with many families forced to pick loved ones on what could be their last Christmas. Other curbs would include having to 'check in' with the NHS Covid app again to go to a pub or restaurant, using face masks in all indoor spaces, and having to show a vaccine passport at even more venues. The first part of the Government's Plan B came into force today with the introduction of compulsory face masks in indoor settings such as theatres, cinemas and churches. Advertisement

He is set to face a 'war' with his backbenchers when the measures are voted on next week. They reacted furiously to the planned introduction of vaccine passports next week  and took aim at the 'conflicting' guidance on working from home and socialising.

At least 50 Tories have publicly expressed concerns, and a senior Conservative said Mr Johnson needed to 'get a grip'.

Ringleaders have told MailOnline that it will be the biggest mutiny yet, with at least 60 expected to defy the government whip.

It comes after the UK Health Security Agency's weekly Covid surveillance report found cases were now rising in nine of ten local authorities in England amid the spread of the variant.

They found infections were ticking up in all age groups, and were highest among 10 to 19-year-olds and 20 to 29-year-olds. Across England, infections also rose in every region.

But the country's biggest Covid symptom-tracking study yesterday claimed infections in the UK grew by just four per cent last week despite warnings Omicron is quickly outstripping Delta.

King's College London scientists estimated 83,658 people caught the virus on average each day in the week to December 4, up from 80,483 the seven days prior.

Cases are stagnant or falling in all over-55s thanks to the booster rollout but are rising in all younger age groups, especially children who make up about 30,000 daily cases alone, they said. Broken down within the UK, London, the South East and Wales saw cases rise.

Professor Tim Spector, who leads the ZOE symptom study, said that while it was too early to see Omicron in the data, he warned the NHS could be overwhelmed if cases of the super-strain begin to skyrocket as predicted.

He said the evidence  alongside claims it may be more mild than other strains  was no reason to be 'relaxed', adding: 'The higher rate of transmission even in the vaccinated could have devastating consequences... Hundreds of people continue to die every week as we head into our second Christmas of this pandemic.'

Professor Spector, who has been calling for more restrictions since September, welcomed Boris Johnson's Plan B announcement last night but feared it is 'too little, too late'.

From next week, people in England will be advised to work from home, wear face masks in cinemas and theatres, and use vaccine passports for large events.
Brian Williams has hosted his final episode of MSNBC's The 11th Hour after 28 years at NBC with a warning of a 'mob' threat to democracy.

Williams, who remade his career as an MSNBC host after losing his job as NBC Nightly News anchor for making false claims about a wartime story, said in his final monologue that his 'biggest fear is for my country'.

He also accused politicians who swore an oath to the U.S. Constitution of deciding to 'burn it all down - with us inside'.

The anchor, 62, also used the three-minute speech to keep the door open for future possibilities away from NBC, saying that he would 'find it impossible to stay away' from his viewers and TV cameras.

Williams' final show comes after he said in a note to colleagues last month that 'following much reflection,' he had decided to exit when his contract ends in December.

Williams, 62, said he will take a few months off to spend time with his family.

Brian Williams has hosted his final episode of MSNBC's The 11th Hour after 28 years at NBC with a warning of a 'mob' threat to democracy

Brian Williams is seen in 2005 marking his first anniversary in the anchor chair at NBC Nightly News after taking over for Tom Brokaw

Speaking during his final show, Williams said: 'My biggest worry is for my country. The truth is, I'm not a liberal or a conservative. I'm an institutionalist. I believe in this place. And in my love of my country, I yield to no one.

'But the darkness on the edge of town has spread to the main roads and highways and neighborhoods. It's now at the local bar, and the bowling alley, at the school board, and the grocery store. And it must be acknowledged and answered for.'

Williams continued: 'Grown men and women who swore an oath to our Constitution, elected by their constituents possessing the kinds of college degrees I could only dream of have decided to join the mob and become something they are not while hoping we somehow forget who they were.

'Theyve decided to burn it all down  with us inside. That should scare you to no end as much as it scares an aging volunteer fireman.'

The concerns he raised follows his tenure reporting an era of U.S. politics which saw the rise of Donald Trump and the January 6 Capitol Riots, as well as extreme political factions growing on both the right and left.

Anchors Brian Williams and Rachel Maddow host the 2016 presidential elections on MSNBC

Williams did not reveal what his plans are next, but did keep the door open for future opportunities in front of the camera.

He said: 'I will probably find it impossible to be silent and stay away from you and lights and cameras after I experiment with relaxation and find out what Ive missed and whats out there.'

Williams replaced legendary NBC News anchor Tom Brokaw in 2004 and held the coveted position until 2015 - when he was suspended for falsely claiming that he had been in a helicopter hit by enemy fire during the Iraq War.

A subsequent investigation found that he had made other inaccurate statements about his experiences covering events, and he lost the job.

He was later given the 11pm hour at MSNBC, which he turned into a fast-moving, entertaining newscast summing up the day's news.

Williams replaced legendary NBC News anchor Tom Brokaw in 2004 and held the coveted position until 2015 - when he was suspended for falsely claiming that he had been in a helicopter hit by enemy fire during the Iraq War. Pictured: Williams with the American military reports from the Camp Liberty in Baghdad, Iraq

Announcing his exit from the network in November, Williams wrote: 'This is the end of a chapter and the beginning of another. There are many things I want to do, and I'll pop up again somewhere.'

'For the next few months, Ill be with my family, the people I love most and the people who enabled my career to happen. I will reflect on the kindness people have shown me, and I will pay it forward.

Williams and his wife Jane have two adult children, including actress Alison Howell Williams, who gained acclaim on the HBO series Girls.

Brian Williams began broadcasting his current show, The 11th Hour, shortly before the 2016 presidential election. His current contract expires at the end of 2021.

Williams got his start in broadcast journalism at KOAM-TV in Kansas, and worked his way up to bigger markets before landing a job at New York's WCBS in 1997.

Williams began broadcasting his current show, The 11th Hour, shortly before the 2016 presidential election. His current contract will lapse at the end of 2021

Brian Williams and wife, Jane, are seen arriving at the Obama White House in 2009 for a State Dinner for Prime Minister Manmohan Singh

The newsman joined NBC News in 1993 as chief White House correspondent, also anchoring the weekend nightly news.

Following Tom Brokaw's retirement in 2004, Williams took over the top job at NBC News, anchoring the weekday national news broadcast.

He won praise early on for his coverage of Hurricane Katrina, including harsh criticism of the Bush administration over failures in the government's response.

Under Williams, NBC Nightly News consistently led in the ratings, beating rival broadcasts from ABC and CBS. Williams was showered in plaudits, including 12 Emmy Awards.

Over the years, however, there were numerous incidents in which Williams was accused of embellishing or fabricating details of certain events.

In 2008, for example, conflicting accounts called into question his statement that he was at the Brandenburg Gate of the Berlin Wall 'the night the wall came down.'

Brian Williams prepares for the nightly news broadcast in 2005. He won praise early on for his coverage of Hurricane Katrina, including harsh criticism of the Bush administration

Williams is seen interviewing then-Vice President Joe Biden during his tenure as anchor of NBC Nightly News

He also once claimed to have flown into Baghdad with SEAL Team Six, which was contradicted by a Special Operations official who said that the SEALs do not embed journalists.

These and similar questionable incidents flew under the radar for the most part, until Williams in 2015 was forced to apologize and recant for telling a disproven story about his experiences in the Iraq War.

He had claimed on a Nightly News broadcast that he was on a military helicopter in Iraq that was 'forced down after being hit by an RPG'.

Tape of the original reporting from the incident in 2003 showed Williams saying that the helicopter traveling ahead of him had been targeted by an RPG and forced to make an emergency landing.

The story evolved over the years in multiple retellings, but soldiers aboard the helicopter Williams was traveling in said that no rocket-propelled grenades had been fired at that specific aircraft.

In a public statement announcing Williams' suspension, then NBCUniversal Chairman Steve Burke said: 'By his actions, Brian has jeopardized the trust millions of Americans place in NBC News. His actions are inexcusable and this suspension is severe and appropriate.'

Lester Holt took over for Williams as Nightly News anchor, and remains in that position to this day.
A replacement Fox News Christmas tree has been relit after the original festive display was set on fire by a homeless man.

Craig Tamanaha, 49, was arrested in New York City after climbing the All-American Christmas Tree and setting it on fire using a lighter on Tuesday night.

The homeless man was taken into custody and charged with six counts including arson, reckless endangerment, criminal mischief and criminal trespassing. He is now back on the streets, as he waits for his next court date.

But less than 48 hours later, a new Christmas tree was erected outside News Corp HQ in Times Square and was relit on Thursday evening during Fox News' show The Five.

Excited crowds cheered as they gathered outside Fox News' headquarters to watch the 50-foot tree light up for the second time this month.

A new Christmas tree was erected outside News Corp HQ in Times Square and was relit on Thursday evening (pictured) during Fox News' show The Five

Craig Tamanaha, 49, was arrested after climbing the All-American Christmas Tree and setting it on fire (left) using a lighter on Tuesday night. Fox has now rebuilt the tree, right

Tamanaha was taken into custody and charged with six counts including arson and reckless endangerment. He is now back on the streets (pictured), as he waits for his next court date

According to Fox News, the new Christmas tree boasts 100,000 lights and 10,000 ornaments, while the damage to the original tree was estimated to be $500,000.

The cast of 'The Five' - Jeanine Pirro, Jessica Tarlov, Jesse Watters, Dana Perino and Greg Gutfeld - all presented the heartwarming ceremony and led the eager crowds in a countdown before the multicoloured tree lit up the night sky once again.

They were joined by a host of invited guests, including Canadian meteorologist Janice Dean, lifestyle host Abby Hornacek and Reverend Jacques A DeGraff.

Members of the New York fire and police departments were also invited to attend the event after their hard work in putting out the fire on Wednesday was widely praised.

Speaking at the relighting ceremony, TV host Greg Gutfeld: 'Take that, arsonist. We are live here on FOX Square for a reason. As you know yesterday a cowardly Christmas creep burned down our All-American Christmas tree.'

According to The Sun, he added: 'We put this tree up outside of our building not for ourselves, but for all of you.'

According to Fox News, the new Christmas tree (pictured during ceremony) boasts 100,000 lights and 10,000 ornaments. The damage to the original tree was estimated to be $500,000

Speaking at the relighting ceremony (pictured), TV host Greg Gutfeld warned the 'bad guys' that they would keep putting another Christmas tree up if it was burnt down again

Excited crowds cheered as they gathered outside Fox News' headquarters to watch the 50-foot tree light up for the second time this month

Christmas carolers sing at the relighting of the All-American Christmas Tree outside News Corporation at Fox Square on Thursday evening

Gutfeld also praised the NYPD and FDNY, who were present at the relighting ceremony, for their quick response in putting out the fire and arresting the suspect.

The host also warned the 'bad guys' that they would keep putting another Christmas tree up if it was burnt down again to keep with the 'real holiday spirit'.

Political commentator Dana Perino added: 'This holiday season serves as a reminder that at the end of the day, there will always be more that unites us than divides us.'

Fox News Media CEO Suzanne Scott, who attended the relighting ceremony, previously told staff in a memo the tree would be rebuilt as a message that 'there can be peace, light and joy even during a dark moment'.

The original Christmas tree had only been up for three days when Tamanaha torched the festive display on Tuesday night.

Tamanaha was taken into custody shortly after midnight on Wednesday morning for setting fire to the tree.

It was not a political attack - the homeless man targeted the tree at random, climbing it as Fox News staffers watched on then using a lighter to set it alight.

He tried to scramble away but was arrested by NYPD police officers and he was charged with six counts including arson, reckless endangerment, criminal mischief and criminal trespassing.

The cast of 'The Five' - Jeanine Pirro, Jessica Tarlov, Jesse Watters, Dana Perino and Greg Gutfeld - all presented the heartwarming ceremony

The cast of 'The Five' and invited guests watch as the All-American Christmas Tree outside News Corporation at Fox Square on Thursday evening

Tamanaha is back on the streets without any form of supervision or support, despite being a repeat criminal whose own father says he is mentally ill and can't be controlled

But because of New York City's soft bail limits, he walked free. All of the charges are misdemeanors, meaning the judge couldn't set a bail for him.

Now, he is back on the streets, without any form of mental health support or supervision, awaiting his next court date.

The news organization and Fox Corporation donated $100,000 each to Answer The Call, a charity that supports the families of fallen NYPD and FDNY servicemembers, after the tree blaze.

Little is known about Tamanaha. Before Wednesday's incident at Times Square, he had been arrested in New York City twice on minor drugs possession charges.

He has a lengthy criminal record spanning at least 20 years and two states, and he was arrested last month for exposing himself outside the Ghislaine Maxwell trial in the city.

In 2002, the then-30-year-old Tamanaha was picked up in Abilene, Texas, on a public intoxication charge.

Between 2017-2018, he was arrested on three separate occasions and charged with public intoxication, burglary and resisting arrest.

Tamanaha is shown being arrested next to the tree on Tuesday night shortly after midnight. He had a lighter on him

Craig Tamanaha is arraigned in Manhattan Criminal Court for setting fire to the Christmas Tree outside of Fox Studios on 6th Avenue in Midtown Manhattan. He was released under supervised release an has to report back to court on Jan 4th 2021

Craig Tamanaha is arraigned in Manhattan Criminal Court for setting fire to the Christmas Tree outside of Fox Studios on 6th Avenue in Midtown Manhattan

Tamanaha's father, Richard Tamanaha, from Hawaii, told The New York Post that his son is a drug addict and is prone to destructive behavior.

'Oh, he's a nut. I can't control him,' the elder Tamanaha told the tabloid. 'Mentally, he's not all there.'

Craig Tamanaha, the 49-year-old alleged arsonist who torched Fox News' Christmas tree, is back on the streets just hours after his arrests because all of his charges are misdemeanors, meaning that a judge can't set bail

According to a newly released criminal complaint, when police picked up the accused arsonist, he was quoted as telling a detective: 'I have been thinking about lighting the tree on fire all day long.'

A work crew put up and decorated a new 50-foot Christmas tree on Thursday, which Fox News Media CEO Suzanne Scott said in an internal memo to staff would serve 'as a message that there can be peace, light and joy even during a dark moment like this.'

Tamanaha, who is described as unhoused and 'emotionally disturbed', faces six misdemeanor charges and under the 2020 criminal justice reform laws, judges are advised to release the accused.

Arson is only considered a felony in New York if the arsonist harms or attempts to harm a person, or carries out the attack as a hate crime.

Outgoing Mayor Bill de Blasio supported the bail reforms in 2019 before they came in, saying: 'With the lowest rate of incarceration of any major city, New York City is proving you don't need to arrest your way to safety.'

Crime has since spiraled out of control, with with violent attacks on subways and random assaults in the street happening far more frequently than in the past two years.

The latest NYPD data show robberies spiking 24.1 percent in November compared with November 2020. Grand Larceny has skyrocketed 40.6 percent last month, compared with November 2020.

The accused arsonist - wearing a blue jacket and jeans - was asked what happened and appeared incoherent.

'You see, the mother society that raped the daughter's mom, they set it on fire,' he said.

'Ask the moms who molest their daughters how they feel about it.' It was not clear what this was in reference to.

Tamanaha then asked for a cigarette and said he was going home. He then denied the charges before leaving.

Craig Tamanaha was seen on video being arraigned and released after allegedly torching Fox News' All-American Christmas Tree on 47th Street and Avenue of the Americas in Midtown Manhattan

An NYPD spokesperson said that Tamanaha had three prior arrests: two earlier this year in March for controlled substances in March and one in 2015 for an open container

'There's no question that the legislature has got to reevaluate the nooks and crannies of the bail statute because it's leading to absurd outcomes,' Mark Bederow, a former Manhattan prosecutor turned criminal defense lawyer, told Fox News.

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio is notoriously soft on crime and an advocate of bail reform

In order for a judge to set bail, Tamanaha would have to have been charged with at least third-degree arson, which constitutes a hate crime.

'You'd have to intentionally damage a building or vehicle by starting a fire or explosion as a hate crime, which is an extraordinarily high bar for bail eligibility. Having a personal bias or animus toward Christmas doesn't legally cut it,' Bederow added.

When a suspect is released on bail for a crime against another person, that person can be granted an order of protection to make sure the suspect stays away from them.

But there is no legal order a judge could give to prevent Tamanaha from approaching the Fox News tree again. 'You can't give the Christmas tree an order of protection, so security will have to stand guard,' Bederow told Fox News.

Tamanaha caused about $500,000 in property damage, sources told the New York Post.

NYPD detectives told DailyMail.com that it was a completely random act and not politically motivated against Fox News or News Corp, which owns The New York Post and The Wall Street Journal.
This is the heart-stopping moment a teenage girl is saved from death by her quick-thinking family after getting her long hair trapped in a swimming pool filter pump.

The 13-year-old survived despite being underwater for more than two minutes before a relative cut her hair away using a knife.

The drama began as the teen, identified locally as Maria Rita, played in the pool at her house in Agua Branca in Piaui, Brazil, on Sunday.

Footage showed other youngsters in the water alerting the adults relaxing nearby.

It then shows the grown-ups desperately trying to save the stricken girl as the difficulties she was in became apparent.

This is the heart stopping moment Maria Rita, 13, was saved from death by her quick-thinking family after getting her long hair trapped in a swimming pool filter pump

Adults used a knife to slice away the 13-year-old's hair and free her from the swimming pool filter pump in Brazil

A CCTV camera overlooking the pool had picked up the moment a few seconds earlier when Maria Rita, wearing a turquoise blue swim top, dangled her legs over the side and put her head underwater as the other kids swam round her.

She then rolled backwards, splashing around in the water before suffering her freak and nearly fatal accident.

Just over a minute passed between the instant a man, thought to be Maria Rita's dad, was made aware of the danger she was in and dived into the water to try to save her and the moment she was pulled out of the pool.

Family members had to rush back inside the house to find a blade to free her in an agonising rescue that must have seemed an eternity to those at the centre of the drama.

Fortunately she was moving her legs seconds after being helped to safety and recovering consciousness and although she was taken to hospital for tests, was released hours later after being given a clean bill of health.

Maria Rita, 13, (right, with her mother Rozana Pimentel) survived the ordeal despite being underwater for more than two minutes and looking lifeless when she was first dragged out of the pool by her anguished loved ones

Mum Rozana Pimentel, who released footage of the incident, said in an Instagram message: 'I wouldn't wish the fear and desperation of knowing we could have lost her on anyone.

'I decided to share these images so people are made aware of the dangers of this type of apparatus.

'Teach your children to know where these suction pumps are and what dangers they can pose so no-one goes near them.

'Adults accompanying children should always watch over them at all times.'

Recalling Sunday afternoon's drama, she told local media: 'She dived in and her hair got stuck. She thought someone had stepped on her hair and tried to surface but couldn't.

'That's when my daughter realized it was the filter pump. She kept calm, held her breath, and started kicking her leg so someone could see her.

'People jumped into the water and tried to free her hair, but couldn't. Turning the electricity off in the house didn't work either.'

Adults rushed to help 13-year-old Maria Rita after realising her long hair was stuck in the swimming pool filter pump

Footage of the terrifying incident was released by her mother Rozana Pimentel as a warning to other parents of the danger of filter pumps

She added: 'For me as a mother, seeing her come out of the water unconscious, I see it as a miracle. We didn't know anything about this pump, at least I didn't.

'Now that I've started researching, I hope this information gets to more people, that everyone knows what a danger a pool can be. My daughter could have died.'

She also wrote alongside a picture of her with her daughter which she posted on her Instagram after Maria Rita's full recovery: 'She is my miracle. My daughter is fine now despite the scare we had on Sunday. I am a mother who is eternally grateful for this blessing in our lives.'

Last month a 10-year-old Brazilian girl died in the southern Brazilian state of Santa Catarina after getting her hair stuck in the draining system of her swimming pool.

Tragic Laise Pegorini Franzen was rushed to hospital but couldn't be saved following the horrific accident.

In August 2019 Russian Alisa Adamova, 12, reportedly died after her arm was sucked into a swimming pool's pump at a hotel in Turkey.
Coronavirus may have leaked from a high-security laboratory in Taiwan after a female worker was bitten by a mouse infected with the disease, health officials say.

The woman, aged in her 20s, was confirmed as the island's first case of local transmission in more than a month on Thursday after testing positive the same day.

Health officials are not yet certain she caught the virus from the mouse, but say she has no history of travel or contact with another known case meaning the lab is being treated as the likely source.

If confirmed, the case adds credibility to the theory that Covid may have originally leaked from a laboratory in Wuhan and sparked the pandemic.

Coronavirus may have leaked from Taiwan's top-security biolab at Academia Sinica (pictured) after a female lab worker was twice bitten by an infected rat

Heath officials are not yet certain the woman was infected within the Level 3 lab (interior pictured) but say she has no travel history or contact with any other known case

Chen Shih-chung, head of Taiwan's disease control institute, revealed the case late Thursday, saying the woman is a worker at the bio-lab located within Academia Sinica, the island's top research institute.

Chen said the woman was likely exposed to the virus in mid-November, when she was twice bitten by a mouse that was infected.

Her first symptoms developed on November 23 when she reported a slight cough, and the coughing intensified on December 6 prompting her to take a PCR test.

The test results came back on December 9 and confirmed that she was infected with the Delta variant of Covid.

Chen added that the woman had been double-vaccinated against Covid, with two shots of the Moderna jab.

She is now in isolation, and Taiwanese authorities have traced 94 people deemed to be close contacts - mainly colleagues and close friends.

They have also been placed in isolation and told to take PCR tests, 80 of which have so-far come back negative.

Chen sought to reassure the public, saying the chances of the leak causing a widespread outbreak are small given the number of negative tests.

Asked whether the bite had been the source of the outbreak, Chen said: 'I don't yet dare say that.

'Their internal investigation found that there was this kind of situation, but whether the infection was caused by this, we do not yet have a way to determine that, and further investigation is needed.'

But the mere possibility of such a leak adds credibility to the theory that the pandemic could have been sparked by a similar leak from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, located in the city where Covid first emerged.

If confirmed, the infection gives credibility to the theory that the Covid pandemic was sparked by a leak from the lab in Wuhan - something China has long-insisted was impossible

The Wuhan lab has a higher level of security - Level 4 - than the Taiwan lab, but workers had been caught on camera getting bitten by bats in the past

China has long insisted that such a leak would not have been possible, but video that resurfaced earlier this year confirms that lab workers were bitten by bats and occasionally spattered by blood during their field work.

A leak from the Wuhan lab is less-likely than a leak from Academia Sinica because the former has the highest level of security, Level 4, while the latter is ranked one stage lower, at Level 3.

But concerns about the Taiwan lab make it harder to rule out the possibility of a leak in Wuhan, something China has tried hard to do in the past.

Having initially dismissed the lab leak theory as a conspiracy, US intelligence now gives at least some credence to the theory - with President Biden saying it is a possibility that is being investigated.

WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has also refused to rule out the lab leak theory, insisting it remains 'on the table'.

European leaders have also refused to rule the theory out, calling for a full and transparent investigation into the virus's origins in Wuhan.

China has so-far dismissed the possibility of such a probe, allowing just one team from the WHO limited access in a stage-managed investigation that concluded with a widely-panned report that critics said did little more than push Beijing propaganda.

While China has been unable to prove where the virus originated, mandarins in Beijing have given air time to theories that the virus could have originated overseas and been brought into the country - either by travel or in imported food.

Government figureheads have alternatively pointed the finger of blame at the US, Europe and India - all geopolitical rivals of China - as possible sources.

However, most experts agree that China was almost certainly the source of the outbreak and that the disease was likely circulating for weeks or potentially months before first being detected in Wuhan in December 2019.
A driving test examiner who overdosed on Red Bull and ended up in hospital after drinking 'a couple' of large cans before his shift has been handed compensation.

Alan Leslie, 62, had to be treated at A&E after downing the energy drink over two days left him suffering 'intense abdominal pains'.

The ex-police officer was having trouble sleeping and spooked by a near-miss on a roundabout so he began buying heaps of the caffeinated drink.

He told his bosses at the Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency (DVSA) that he was having a 'couple of large cans' before each shift and had 'plenty' stocked up.

But after finishing a shift he had to go to hospital for 'overdosing on caffeine' and was not released until 3.30am the next day.

An employment tribunal in Croydon, London, heard his Red Bull bingeing was 'not wise'.

Mr Leslie's energy drink health scare was revealed as part of his evidence after he successfully sued DVSA for unfair dismissal and disability discrimination.

Driving test examiner Alan Leslie, 62, had to be treated at A&E after downing the energy drink over two days left him suffering 'intense abdominal pains' (file photo)

The hearing was told he joined the DVSA a new examiner in Burgess Hill, East Sussex, in October 2015 following a career in the police and Ministry of Justice.

The tribunal heard he suffered from depression, anxiety and post traumatic stress disorder.

In November 2017 he argued with bosses and was relocated to Hastings after complaining he was 'openly bullied' at a test centre.

He claimed two female colleagues 'humiliated' him by ridiculing a manoeuvre he did during a test.

His mental health worsened and he believed he was subjected to a 'prolonged and pernicious campaign of ostracism, a campaign which threatened his health and safety'.

Over the course of his employment, Mr Leslie had multiple periods of absence due to sickness as a result of his mental health.

In August 2018 he suffered anxiety after a performance review, leading to his Red Bull episode.

A tribunal report said: 'His mental health was also badly affected by this exchange. He was having more trouble sleeping.

'He lost concentration on his way to work and reacted late for a roundabout.. It was a near-miss.

'He telephoned [line manager Nicola McLaren] to let her know that he was worried about being so tired.'

The ex-police officer was having trouble sleeping and spooked by a near-miss on a roundabout so he began buying heaps of the caffeinated drink (file photo)

Ms McLaren suggested he go back to occupational health for an assessment.

Mr Leslie replied: 'My concern at the moment is the next two days* Places to stop are minimal. I'll buy plenty of Red Bull this evening and be sure to have a couple of large cans before I set out each day.'

The tribunal report continued: 'That did not prove a wise approach.

'After work, after only two more days of work, he had intense abdominal pains and had to go to A&E, which he left at 3.30 am.

'They told him that it was down to an overdose of caffeine. The root of the problem, once again, was his determination to avoid taking any time off work and so put his job at risk.'

Mr Leslie's absences continued and bosses grew fed up particularly with his refusal to stop bringing up old grievances with the way he had been treated.

He was declared medically fit to work and told bosses he was eager to return, but was sacked in May 2019 with bosses claiming he would not put the past behind him despite agreeing to do so.

Employment Judge Eoin Fowell ruled Mr Leslie was unfairly sacked and was discriminated due to his disability.

Judge Fowell said: 'The whole approach and reasoning justifying the dismissal were misguided, with its excessive focus on this issue of putting the past behind him.

'The focus by the agency on his moving on from previous events, and their concern that he will not let them go and will continue to argue and absorb management time, perhaps causing further absences, appear to amount to a decision to dismiss squarely as a result of these effects.'

Mr Leslie, who lost other claims of discrimination and harassment, will be awarded compensation at a future hearing.
A 'Real Housewives of Jersey' star has been banned from driving and hit with a hefty fine after she drunkenly slammed her car into a wall.

Catherine 'Kate' Taylor, 53, who appears on the hit ITV reality show, was fined 1,500 and disqualified from driving for 15 months after the Mercedes she was driving hit the boundary of a home on the Channel Island in October.

Ms Taylor, who is understood to have caused 'thousands of pounds worth of damage' to the property, will also have to resit her driving test.

A blood sample taken at the scene revealed she was over the limit, with her breathalyser showing 111mg of alcohol per 100ml of blood in her system.

The drink-driving limit in the UK is 35mg of alcohol per 100ml of blood.

Catherine 'Kate' Taylor, 53, was fined 1,500 and disqualified from driving for 15 months after the Mercedes she was driving hit the boundary of a home on the Channel Island in October

Taylor, who stars on the hit ITV reality show 'The Real Housewives of Jersey', hit the wall of a home near St Clements Parish Hall on Grande Route de la Cote in October

Jersey Magistrates Court was told Ms Taylor committed the offence in October, when she hit the wall of a home near St Clements Parish Hall on Grande Route de la Cote.

Assistant Magistrate Peter Harris warned Ms Taylor if she did not pay the fine, she would spend six weeks in prison.

Jerseys police launched its annual anti-drink-driving campaign recently, with a greater number of road checks being carried out in the past few weeks.

Hundreds of vehicles have been stopped since the initiative began at the start of the month.

Ms Taylor, who is understood to have caused 'thousands of pounds worth of damage' to the property, will also have to resit her driving test

Taylor was born in Cleethorpes, near Grimsby, Lincolnshire, and moved to Jersey around 30 years ago.

Of her journey to the island, Kate added: 'I was brought over with an ex boyfriend and we just ended up living here, it was fantastic.'

She became widely known for her gregarious character and extravagant outfits following the launch of ITVs Real Housewives of Jersey show.

On the ITV website, she describes herself as a happy go lucky girl who loves to party, as well as being a fundraiser for a number of charities.

Filming for the shows second series began in April. It was originally scheduled to air late that month but it is now unclear when it will be broadcast.
A landlord has been mocked for pretending a garage is a bedroom in a shocking rental listing.

The advertiser positioned a bed and small table with a pot plant on it in a concrete-floored garage in photos posted online.

They asked $225 a week for the room, which was pictured with a silver sedan parked less than a metre from the bed.

A landlord has been mocked for pretending a garage is a bedroom in a shocking rental listing (pictured)

The listing appeared in a Facebook group pitched to tenants looking for rooms in West Auckland, New Zealand - where the price of rentals has risen sharply.

The listing was removed and replaced to obscure the fact it was a garage, not a bedroom. It was then deleted after the owner received abuse.

Greens MP Chloe Swarbrick told Stuff the listing was 'cooked'.

'Most young Aucklanders, strangely, wouldn't be particularly shocked, given the state of housing that many of us have lived in,' Ms Swarbrick said.

'Georgie' of advocacy group Renters United said the listing was 'an unfortunate reality' of the housing market.

The advertiser positioned a bed and small table with a pot plant on it in a concrete-floored garage in photos posted online

Greens MP Chloe Swarbrick (pictured) said the $225 listing was 'cooked' - adding that many renters in the area wouldn't be surprised

He said while the room would be unlikely to meet building code definitions of a room, some shared houses allowed such private arrangements.

There is a housing crisis in the city which has become worse during the pandemic.

The Auckland median house price have risen by more than $100,000 in under two years to $1.25million.

The median rental for Auckland is at a current record high $600 per week, but prices have fallen in some parts of the city.
One of Britain's top lawyers today blamed 'diktats and restrictions caused by this damned virus' for the shock death of a leading Scottish QC, who was found dead at his Edinburgh home at the age of 45.

Stephen O'Rourke's body was discovered just three months after being appointed Scotland's Principal Crown Counsel.

Roddy Dunlop QC, dean of the Faculty of Advocates, said Mr O'Rourke had been an 'inspiration to many and a friend to all'. Although the cause of his death has not been revealed, Mr Dunlop's tribute hinted it was to do with his mental health.

He added: 'I grow increasingly concerned at the isolating effect and impact on wellbeing created by the ongoing (and understandable) diktats and restrictions caused by this damned virus.

'I would please ask all to remember that support is available for anyone who is struggling. Do not suffer in silence.'

He spoke out as Nicola Sturgeon announced more restrictions today having warned that Scotland may face 'tsunami of infections' before Christmas in the face of Omicron variant.

Mr O'Rourke's new role is one of the most senior in the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service (COPFS) - the equivalent of the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) north of the border.

Stephen O'Rourke's body was discovered just three months after being appointed Scotland's Principal Crown Counsel

Mr O'Rourke is believed to have lived at a property in Moray Place, an upmarket Georgian square in Edinburgh

It saw him heading the Advocate Depute team of more than 60 legal representatives in Scotland, who prosecute serious, complex or sensitive cases, deal with conviction appeals and decide which cases should be indicted in the High Court.

Police Scotland said: 'The death is not being treated as suspicious and a report has been submitted to the procurator fiscal.'

Mr O'Rourke is believed to have lived at a property in Moray Place, an upmarket Georgian square in Edinburgh.

Mr O'Rourke, who was born in Greenock and brought up in Port Glasgow, previously studied law at universities in Edinburgh and Bologna, had a mixed practice at the bar and was a member of the Institute of Chartered Arbitrators.

He went on to serve as an advocate depute himself from 2010 to 2013, after which he was a standing junior counsel. He took silk in 2017.

Mr O'Rourke was also an author, publishing the novel, The Crown Agent, in 2019 - a work compared to the likes of Robert Louis Stevenson.

Speaking to Edinburgh News about the start of his career, he said: 'I did law and then my solicitor traineeship here and have now been an Advocate at the Bar for nearly 20 years.

'It's funny, because when I came here in 1994 there was still very much a sense Edinburgh was the other side of the world  I could count on one hand the number of times I'd been to Edinburgh in my life although there is a picture of me, aged four, sitting on Mons Meg.'

In the interview, published earlier this year, he explained how he was mainly doing 'very demanding' civil cases, as opposed to prosecuting and defending in the High Court as he had done previously.

He added that he felt writing was his favourite hobby and 'a complimentary release for the kind of work I do'.

As news emerged of his deaths, tributes flooded in from across the Scottish legal community.

The Scottish Sentencing Council, of which Mr O'Rourke was a former advocate member, tweeted that he was a 'highly valued and much liked colleague and friend', and the Parole Board for Scotland that he was a 'much liked and respected [former] member'.

Individual tributes described him as 'one of the nicest people you could ever meet', 'a very fair and kind man', and 'an inspiration to me and so, so very loved'.

Lord Advocate Dorothy Bain QC told Scottish Legal: 'It was with deep sorrow that I heard the tragic news that our dear colleague and friend Stephen O'Rourke QC has died suddenly.

'Stephen made a lasting impression on everyone he met and his loss will be sorely felt by his family, friends, colleagues and the many, many people who were privileged to have known him.

'I was delighted when he agreed to become principal crown counsel earlier this year and was very grateful for the depth of knowledge, enthusiasm, integrity and leadership he brought to Crown Office in that role.

'My thoughts are with all those who held Stephen dear while we all come to terms with this profound loss.'

Colleagues said Mr O'Rourke (pictured) 'made a lasting impression on everyone he met'

He headed up a team more than 60 legal representatives in Scotland, who prosecute serious, complex or sensitive cases, deal with conviction appeals and decide which cases should be indicted in the High Court (pictured)

Tributes were also paid from Tumbling Lassie - a Scottish campaign to raise funds for charities fighting modern slavery and people trafficking in Scotland and abroad.

A spokesperson said: 'On 9th December 2021, the Tumbling Lassie Committee heard the tragic news that it had lost one of its very best friends, Committee member Stephen O'Rourke QC.

'Stephen was an enthusiastic supporter of the Tumbling Lassie appeal from its inception. He had generously dedicated a proportion of the royalties from his debut novel, The Crown Agent, to the appeal.

'He then joined the Committee and we benefitted profoundly from his encouragement, his readiness to be involved in all aspects of the appeal and his openness to new ideas and opportunities.

'We want to record here our deep sorrow at this loss, not only for the Committee and the appeal but for so many others whose lives he had touched, and our determination to continue in his memory to take forward the campaign of which he was so dedicated a supporter. May he rest in peace.'
Two disgraced NSW police officers have revealed they received threats from prisoners and guards while in jail on remand after filming themselves having sex with a schoolgirl, a court has heard.

James Delinicolis, 30, and Angelo Dellosa, 31, fronted Downing Centre District Court on Friday after pleading guilty to misconduct in public office.

The long-time friends were suspended without pay after having sex with a 17-year-old girl, known by the pseudonym Violet, at a Cabramatta hotel in March last year.

James Delinicolis, 30, (left) and Angelo Dellosa, 31, (right) fronted Downing Centre District Court on Friday after pleading guilty to misconduct in public office over an incident involving a 17-year-old schoolgirl

Agreed facts state Delinicolis approached Violet at a train station before he and Dellosa later had consensual sex with her in a hotel room.

While giving evidence Dellosa broke down revealing he contemplated suicide during his three weeks in custody, reports The Daily Telegraph.

'There was a correctives (officer) punching and banging my door, he was saying: "Did you rape that little girl?" and I said: "No I didn't",' Dellosa said.

Dellosa (pictured) broke down while giving evidence in court on Friday revealing he contemplated suicide while on remand in Silverwater Jail

'There were also inmates in there who were saying: "Just go kill yourself' you have no hope here, just go hang yourself"  that really affected me, I thought about ending it all.'

Delinicolis told the court he grew 'very scared' after receiving threats during his time at Silverwater Jail.

'I was getting threats from other prisoners from the cells next door, they knew that I was a police officer,' he said.

The pair were initially charged with aggravated sexual assault in company but the charges were later dropped and replaced with misconduct in public office.

Delinicolis' lawyer Phillip Strickland SC argued in August that the sex with Violet was consensual.

The pair can be heard saying 'double impact' and 'double trouble' from footage recorded by Dellosa during the hotel room encounter.

Dellosa (pictured) told the court inmates threatened him and said 'Just go kill yourself' while he was on remand

Both officers were married and had children at the time of the incident.

Delinicolis has since split with his wife, while Dellosa told the court his wife was a 'wonderful woman' who had forgiven him.

The court heard Delinicolis kept a pile of post-it notes with his mobile phone number written on them with a fake name in case he met women while on duty.

He said he felt 'disgusted' by his actions and acknowledged there was a power imbalance between him and the schoolgirl.

Both Delinicolis and Dellosa (pictured) were married police officers with children at the time of the incident

Dellosa was also remorseful of his actions and accepted his behaviour had 'tainted' the NSW Police Force.

His defence barrister, Margaret Cunneen SC, said he should be punished at his sentencing date but he should not be sent back to jail in the meantime.

'It's obvious that police officers in uniform must not conduct themselves in this way. They must not trawl the areas in which they work for sexual conquests of any kind or sexual relations of any kind  this was very wrong,' she said.

Delinicolis' lawyer Mr Strickland SC, said it would be better for him to remain in the community with his family instead of being sent back to jail with prisoners who threatened his life.

The pair will be sentenced next Friday by Acting Judge Peter Berman SC.
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The US government has won its High Court bid to extradite WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.

Assange, 50, is wanted in America over an alleged conspiracy to obtain and disclose national defence information following WikiLeaks's publication of hundreds of thousands of leaked documents relating to the Afghanistan and Iraq wars.

A US grand jury indicted him on 18 charges last year - 17 of which fall under the Espionage Act.

Assange's lawyers claim he faces up to 175 years in jail if convicted, while adding that he would be sentenced to a hell-hole US supermax prison.

In January, district judge Vanessa Baraitser that Assange should not be sent to the US, in which she cited a real and 'oppressive' risk of suicide.

However, the US government appealed the ruling, insisting it had given diplomatic assurances that Assange would not face those strictest measures either pre-trial or post-conviction. It also suggested that Assange's sentence will probably be between four and six years.

After a two-day hearing in October, the Lord Chief Justice Lord Burnett, sitting with Lord Justice Holroyde, ruled in favour of the US on Friday.

The case will now be sent to Priti Patel who will make the final decision on Assange's extradition, though he is expected to appeal today's ruling. His father Richard has previously said that they would take the legal battle all the way to the Supreme Court if necessary.

He was supported at court today by his fiancee Stella Morris, the lawyer who he secretly fathered two children with while she helped fight against his extradition.

Speaking afterwards, she said: 'We will appeal this decision at the earliest possible moment. How can it be fair, how can it be right, how can it be possible, to extradite Julian to the very country which plotted to kill him?'

Julian Assange, 50, is wanted in America over an alleged conspiracy to obtain and disclose national defence information

Supporters of Assange join his partner Stella Morris outside the High Court following the ruling

Stella Morris, partner of Julian Assange, speaks to journalists in front of the High Court after the ruling

The Colorado Supermax prison where Assange fears to be sent It's a fate that may strike many as worse than the death penalty as they are locked up to rot. Since it opened in 1994 at a cost of $60 million, America's only Supermax prison, whose official name is ADX (or Administrative Maximum Facility) Florence, has housed the country's most notorious and violent criminals. Prisoners go to the 'Alcatraz of the Rockies' not in any hope of rehabilitation but purely for the purposes of punishment and assured incarceration. It is designed for male inmates (there are no women) deemed the most dangerous and so contemptuous of human life that they require the tightest control. In many cases, their escape is considered to pose a serious threat to national security. Nobody has ever escaped from Supermax and, more to the point, few are ever heard from again once they pass through its encircling fortress of reinforced concrete walls, its fields of razor wire and gun towers. Inside, inmates begin a new life inside a tiny concrete cell with absolutely minimal human contact. Supermax has been variously described as 'the prison of prisons', 'life after death', and a 'high-tech version of Hell, designed to shut down all sensory perception'. Advertisement

She added: 'I want to emphasise that the High Court accepted all the medical evidence and the conclusions of the magistrate that if Julian is extradited and placed under extreme conditions of isolation it will drive him to take his own life, that extradition is oppressive.

'They incorporate the possibility of breaking those assurances in their very wording.

'Today, it's been almost a year since I stood outside court with our victory of the blocking of the extradition.

'To have the foremost publisher, journalist, of the past 50 years in a UK prison, accused of publishing the truth about war crimes, about CIA kill teams.

Ms Morris, flanked by Assange supporters outside court, added: 'In fact every time we have hearings, we know more about the abusive nature, the criminal nature, of this case.

'This goes to the fundamentals of press freedom and democracy.

'We will fight. Every generation has an epic fight to fight and this is ours, because Julian represents the fundamentals of what it means to live in a free society, of what it means to have press freedom, of what it means for journalists to do their jobs without being afraid of spending the rest of their lives in prison.

'Julian represents all our liberties and all our rights.'

South African-born lawyer Ms Morris fell in love with the controversial WikiLeaks founder five years ago while visiting him to work on a legal bid to halt the extraditions. The couple have been engaged since 2017.

Ms Morris and Julian had children Gabriel, 3, and Max, one, while he was holed up in the Ecuadorian embassy in London, keeping their relationship and family a secret from the outside world until last September.

The senior judges found that the previous judge had based her decision on the risk of Assange being held in highly restrictive prison conditions if extradited.

However, the US authorities later gave assurances that Assange would not face those strictest measures either pre-trial or post-conviction unless he committed an act in the future that required them.

Lord Burnett said: 'That risk is in our judgment excluded by the assurances which are offered. It follows that we are satisfied that, if the assurances had been before the judge, she would have answered the relevant question differently.'

An emotional Ms Morris said outside court: 'We will appeal this decision at the earliest possible moment. How can it be fair, how can it be right, how can it be possible, to extradite Julian to the very country which plotted to kill him?'

Stella Morris, partner of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, arrives at the Royal Courts of Justice following the appeal against Assange's extradition in London

Julian Assange will NOT be held in a supermax jail if he's extradited, US assures UK - so where will he be held? If Assange is extradited to the US he has now been assured that he will not got to a SuperMax jail such as ADX Florence in Colorado where Abu Hamza and other terrorists are held in solitary confinement after being brought there from the UK. One likely destination is Allenwood prison in Pennsylvania, a federal jail used by the US before to house extradited prisoners. These included Orpington's Christopher Tappin, 65, pleaded guilty to selling missile batteries in a Texas court after a two year extradition battle in 2013. Allenwood also holds a number of hackers, including Andrew Auernheimer, better known by his pseudonym weev, who became a well known cyber criminal and Internet troll who exposed flaws in the systems of big businesses and published data about Government officials  crimes similar to the ones Assange is accused of. It also holds a number of notorious murderers including James Eagan Holmes, an American mass murderer responsible for the 2012 Aurora, Colorado shooting in which he killed 12 people and injured 70 others. American officials have told the High Court in London that Assange could apply for a transfer to a jail in his native Australia, but his lawyers believe this could take up to ten years. He could be sent to the country's highest security prison, the Goulburn Correctional Centre in New South Wales, around two hours south-west of Sydney. It has the nickname 'Hell'. The male-only prisoner hold Australia's mist dangerous murderers, robbers and terrorists including Matthew De Gruchy, who is serving 28 years for murdering his mother and two siblings. It also holds Australia's worst serial killer, Ivan Milat, who is serving seven life sentences in Goulburn's Supermax, who has caused prison authorities the most headaches, making several escape attempts, swallowing metal objects and chopping off a finger with a plastic knife in order to get outside to a hospital from which he hoped to escape, and staging a hunger strike after the prisons commissioner confiscated the sandwich maker and television from his cell. If he is sent to a low security jail it could be the Lotus Glen Correctional Centre is northern Queensland, close to his home town of Townsville. Advertisement

He added: 'That conclusion is sufficient to determine this appeal in the USA's favour.'

Lord Justice Holyrode said today: 'For the reasons given in the judgement which is today handed down, the court allowed the appeal on the grounds that the district judge, having decided that the threshold for discharge under Section 9 of the Extradition Act 2003 was met, ought to have notified the USA of her provisional view, to afford it the opportunity to offer assurances to the court.

'The USA has now provided the United Kingdom with a package of assurances which respond to the DJ's specific findings.'

The journalist's friends watched the handing down of the decision and left the court in silence.

In a statement following the High Court's ruling, WikiLeaks editor-in-chief Kristinn Hrafnsson said, 'Julian's life is once more under grave threat, and so is the right of journalists to publish material that governments and corporations find inconvenient.

'This is about the right of a free press to publish without being threatened by a bullying superpower.'

The High Court was previously told that blocking Assange's removal due to his mental health risks 'rewarding fugitives for their flight'.

The charges against Assange relate to the 2010 release by WikiLeaks of 500,000 secret files detailing aspects of military campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq and secret cables about Guantanamo Bay.

This included the notorious 'Collateral Murder' video, which showed the July 2007 killing by an American Apache helicopter crew of eleven civilians, including Reuters journalists Namir Noor-Eldeen, 22, and Saeed Chmagh, 40.

The video, recorded by the helicopter gunsight, showed the helicopter crew firing into a group of Iraqi civilian men in New Baghdad after being given permission from a commanding officer, killing 11 men and seriously wounding two children.

James Lewis QC, for the US, said the district judge based her decision on Assange's 'intellectual ability to circumvent suicide preventative measures', which risked becoming a 'trump card' for anyone who wanted to oppose their extradition regardless of any resources the other state might have.

Mr Lewis said that the four 'binding' diplomatic assurances made were a 'solemn matter' and 'are not dished out like smarties'.

These included that Assange would not be submitted to special administrative measures (SAMs) and detained at the ADX Florence Supermax jail if extradited and that the US would consent to Assange being transferred to Australia to serve any prison sentence he may be given.

The US authorities also argued Assange is well enough to be extradited, with Mr Lewis telling the court his mental illness 'does not even come close' to being severe enough to prevent being sent overseas.

But lawyers representing Assange, who opposed the US's bid to overturn the extradition block, had argued that the assurances over the WikiLeaks founder's potential treatment were 'meaningless' and 'vague'.

South African-born lawyer Stella Morris (right) and Assange (left) began dating in 2015 after she helped work on a legal bid to halt his extraditions

Gabriel, four, and his brother Max, two, were conceived while Assange was hiding out in the Ecuadorian embassy in London

Supporters of Julian Assange comfort each other, outside the Royal Courts of Justice in London

It is expected that Assange will attempt to bring an appeal over this latest decision

Edward Fitzgerald QC said the judge had produced a 'carefully considered and fully reasoned judgment', adding it was 'clear' she had 'scrupulously applied the test for oppression in cases of mental disorder'.

Mr Fitzgerald later said that assurances not to impose SAMs on Assange or hold him at the ADX Florence Supermax jail pre-trial or post-conviction do not remove the risk of 'conditions of administrative isolation'.

Julian Assange ruling blasted as a 'travesty of justice' by human rights groups Human rights and press freedom groups have condemned a High Court ruling that Julian Assange can be extradited to the US as a 'travesty of justice' and 'hammer-blow to free expression'. Responding to the decision on Friday, Christophe Deloire, secretary-general of Reporters Without Borders (RSF), said: 'We condemn today's decision, which will prove historic for all the wrong reasons. 'We fully believe that Julian Assange has been targeted for his contributions to journalism, and we defend this case because of its dangerous implications for the future of journalism and press freedom around the world. 'It is time to put a stop to this more than decade-long persecution once and for all. It is time to free Assange.' Nils Muiznieks, Amnesty International's Europe director, said: 'This is a travesty of justice. 'By allowing this appeal, the High Court has chosen to accept the deeply flawed diplomatic assurances given by the US that Assange would not be held in solitary confinement in a maximum security prison. 'The fact that the US has reserved the right to change its mind at any time means that these assurances are not worth the paper they are written on.' He added: 'If extradited to the US, Julian Assange could not only face trial on charges under the Espionage Act but also a real risk of serious human rights violations due to detention conditions that could amount to torture or other ill-treatment. 'The US government's indictment poses a grave threat to press freedom both in the United States and abroad. If upheld, it would undermine the key role of journalists and publishers in scrutinising governments and exposing their misdeeds would leave journalists everywhere looking over their shoulders.' Michelle Stanistreet, general secretary of the National Union of Journalists (NUJ), said that for Assange to be extradited 'to answer charges for cultivating a source and encouraging the revelation of criminality' would be 'a hammer-blow to free expression'. She continued: 'Any journalist who thought they might upset a US administration will reasonably fear that they too could be targeted by a judicial snatch squad. 'When the freedom of our judiciary is under threat, it is disappointing that senior judges should buckle in the face of such unconvincing US blandishments.' Trevor Timm, executive director of the US non-profit Freedom of the Press Foundation, labelled the High Court ruling as 'a black mark on the history of press freedom'. He added: 'That United States prosecutors continued to push for this outcome is a betrayal of the journalistic principles the Biden administration has taken credit for celebrating. 'As brave whistleblowers have explained for decades, this kind of abuse of the Espionage Act against sources - and now journalists and publishers - is an embarrassment to basic ideals of justice and to core First Amendment values.' Advertisement

The court also heard that Assange had faced a 'menacing, threatening and frightening' situation while under surveillance when he lived at the Ecuadorian embassy in London.

Mr Fitzgerald argued in written submissions that claims of 'extreme measures of surveillance', alongside subsequent 'recent disclosures about CIA plans from the same period in time to seriously harm Julian Assange', justified earlier concerns for the safety and privacy of his partner Stella Morris.

Assange has been held in Belmarsh Prison since 2019 after he was carried out of the Ecuadorian embassy by police before being arrested for breaching his bail conditions.

He had entered the building in 2012 to avoid extradition to Sweden to face sex offence allegations, which he has always denied and were eventually dropped.

James Lewis QC, for the US, previously told the Court of Appeal it should grant the extradition as the US government has given diplomatic assurances about Assange's treatment that fundamentally alter the nature of the case.

He also criticised Professor Michael Kopelman for not revealing Assange was in a relationship with Stella Morris when he first gave evidence about Assange's mental state last year.

The US argued that Professor Kopelman's assessment should have been 'excluded or given little weight' because he allegedly knew of Assange's two secret children when he made his first mental health assessment - but withheld the information.

The US prosecution team insisted he 'misled' Judge Vanessa Baraitser who then relied on it in her judgment where in January not to extradite the WikiLeaks founder to face espionage charges.

In the judgement today, Lord Chief Justice Ian Burnett said: 'With all respect to the judge, we cannot agree with her implicit finding that Professor Kopelman's failings could be excused or overlooked merely because his conduct could be viewed as 'an understandable human response'.

'Many people mislead courts for reasons which might be understandable but that does not excuse the behaviour and we it is incompatible with the obligations of an expert witness to do so.

'Nor was it relevant to the judge's assessment of his evidence that she had learned of Mr Assange's relationship with Ms Morris before she read the medical evidence: it was no thanks to Professor Kopelman that she had done so.'

Human rights and press freedom groups condemned the ruling as a 'travesty of justice' and 'hammer-blow to free expression'.

Responding to the decision on Friday, Christophe Deloire, secretary-general of Reporters Without Borders (RSF), said: 'We condemn today's decision, which will prove historic for all the wrong reasons.

'We fully believe that Julian Assange has been targeted for his contributions to journalism, and we defend this case because of its dangerous implications for the future of journalism and press freedom around the world.

'It is time to put a stop to this more than decade-long persecution once and for all. It is time to free Assange.'

Nils Muiznieks, Amnesty International's Europe director, said: 'This is a travesty of justice.

'By allowing this appeal, the High Court has chosen to accept the deeply flawed diplomatic assurances given by the US that Assange would not be held in solitary confinement in a maximum security prison.

'The fact that the US has reserved the right to change its mind at any time means that these assurances are not worth the paper they are written on.'

He added: 'If extradited to the US, Julian Assange could not only face trial on charges under the Espionage Act but also a real risk of serious human rights violations due to detention conditions that could amount to torture or other ill-treatment.

'The US government's indictment poses a grave threat to press freedom both in the United States and abroad. If upheld, it would undermine the key role of journalists and publishers in scrutinising governments and exposing their misdeeds would leave journalists everywhere looking over their shoulders.'

Michelle Stanistreet, general secretary of the National Union of Journalists (NUJ), said that for Assange to be extradited 'to answer charges for cultivating a source and encouraging the revelation of criminality' would be 'a hammer-blow to free expression'.

She continued: 'Any journalist who thought they might upset a US administration will reasonably fear that they too could be targeted by a judicial snatch squad.

'When the freedom of our judiciary is under threat, it is disappointing that senior judges should buckle in the face of such unconvincing US blandishments.'
Parliament's Intelligence and Security Committee has claimed it was 'misled' over the resignation of a former director of GCHQ.

The ISC today published its annual report in which it expressed concerns about the behaviour of senior former intelligence staff.

The ISC said it had not been told the full story over the circumstances under which Robert Hannigan quit the spy agency in 2017.

Mr Hannigan stood down as director of GCHQ after less than three years in the post, citing 'family reasons'.

However, The Mail on Sunday later revealed his departure followed the discovery that in 2013 he had given a character reference on behalf of a Catholic priest charged with possessing child pornography.

The ISC said in its report that as the 'body that is entrusted with oversight of the Intelligence Community' the committee 'must be fully informed of the circumstances' surrounding the departure of senior figures.

It also said that 'given the investigative powers with which we trust our Intelligence Community, it is imperative that they are above all suspicion'.

Robert Hannigan stood down as director of GCHQ in 2017 after less than three years in the post

Parliament's powerful Intelligence and Security Committee has claimed it was 'misled' over the resignation

Mystery had surrounded the 2017 departure of the spy chief until the Mail on Sunday discovered he had helped a paedophile priest escape jail by giving him a character reference, only to see him reoffend.

Then-PM Theresa May was accused of a cover-up after allowing the powerful director of Britain's listening station and largest spy agency to quietly resign when alerted that Mr Hannigan's connection to Father Edmund Higgins had been unearthed by a sister intelligence agency.

At the time of his departure, Mr Hannigan had cited 'family reasons', with the crucial Higgins link kept secret even after the paedophile was jailed for child abuse in 2018.

The report said that the previous Intelligence and Security Committee had asked the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in 2017 following the resignation 'whether there was anything surrounding the resignation of which the Foreign Secretary considered the Committee should be aware'.

The report said: 'The FCO had assured the Committee that there was nothing further to add beyond the "family reasons" cited publicly.'

Following the Mail on Sunday article in February 2019, the ISC then wrote to the National Security Adviser 'to ask why the Committee had been misled on this issue'.

The committee sought answers and asked whether Mr Hannigan  at the time a Foreign Office official  had 'given a character reference in his official capacity' in the form of a 2013 letter.

The letter was written before he was promoted to his role at GCHQ in November 2014 and the letter helped Higgins receive a suspended sentence.

Within months, he went on to reoffend by peddling sick online child abuse images, before being snared by the National Crime Agency.

The report said the ISC was initially 'provided with a short response, which did not answer its question or concerns'.

Following further inquiries, the committee said it was then told that 'the reference was given in a personal capacity; however, Mr Hannigan had included his FCO title in the reference'.

The ISC said it was also told that 'at the time of his resignation as Director, a further criminal investigation into Father Higgins was in the evidence-gathering phase, before submission to the Crown Prosecution Service for consideration; and a limited number of staff in GCHQ, Cabinet Office, Government Legal Department (GLD) and the NCA were aware of the association between the Director and Father Higgins, and 'it would not have been appropriate to share information outside this group, including with the ISC, during the investigation''.

The GCHQ headquarters is pictured in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire in October 2005

The ISC said in its report: 'While recognising that there was a criminal investigation under way, the Committee considers nevertheless that where the Head of an intelligence Agency steps down unexpectedly, then as the body that is entrusted with oversight of the Intelligence Community, and ensuring their probity, then this Committee must be fully informed of the circumstances.

'Given the investigative powers with which we trust our Intelligence Community, it is imperative that they are above all suspicion.'

The ISC said it was also worried about 'the actions of senior staff when they leave the agencies and the extent to which they are still bound by their former duties'.

The committee's report said there were particular concerns about former intelligence staff speaking to the media and becoming 'talking heads'.

Dr Julian Lewis, the Tory chairman of the ISC, said: 'In 2017 the committee was misled regarding the reasons for the sudden departure of the Head of GCHQ: as the body that is entrusted with oversight of the Intelligence Community, and ensuring their probity, this Committee must be fully informed in such circumstances.

'Given the investigative powers with which we trust our Intelligence Community, it is imperative that they are above all suspicion.'
Vladimir Putin says fighting between Russian separatists and Ukrainian forces along the border 'looks like genocide', ramping up tensions amid fears he will invade.

Putin, answering a question about threats against Russians living overseas, denounced what he called 'Russophobia' saying it is a 'first step towards genocide'.

He then pointed to the war simmering in Ukraine's Donbass region, on Russia's border, saying: 'You and I know what is happening... It certainly looks like genocide.'

Though Putin has used similar words before, they will cause fresh alarm amid a huge Russian troop build-up on Ukraine's border.

Russian state propaganda has, in the past, used 'threats' to Russians living overseas as pretext for invasion - including during the annexation of Crimea in 2014.

Putin made the remark on Thursday as Russian anti-aircraft missile batteries were filmed being taken to the frontlines, further bolstering his forces in the region.

It came ahead of a Russian demand on Friday that NATO rescind a 2008 commitment to Ukraine and Georgia that they would one day become members.

Russian anti-aircraft missile batteries are seen at a railway yard near Voronezh, close to the Ukrainian border, as Putin continues to build up his forces in the region

More footage captured Russian artillery pieces and support vehicles sitting close to the Ukrainian border, as Putin continues massing his forces

A Russian soldier fires his weapon during training exercises at a military base in Rostov-on-Don, close to the Ukrainian border, on Friday

Russian troops disembark from an armoured personnel carrier during drills taking pace in Rostov-on-Don, on the Russian side of the border, on Friday

Washington has been warning for weeks that Russia appears to be gearing up to invade Ukraine with a force of up to 175,000 men

Videos posted on TikTok and analysed by experts at Conflict Intelligence Team identified the vehicles as BUK-M1 missile launchers of the 49th zenite rocket brigade division being sent to Voronezh.

More footage showed support vehicles along with tanks and artillery sitting in what analysts said was Maslovka railway yard in Russia, close to the Ukrainian border.

The BUK-M1 is the same weapon system that shot down passenger flight MH-17 in the region in 2014, after troops mistook it for a Ukrainian transport.

More footage shows support vehicles for what analysts said was a battalion-sized force of M1 launchers, along with T-80U tanks and Msta-S artillery units.

The video appears to have been recorded on December 6, according to the train driver's console panel, the same day that Washington warned Putin will be ready to invade with a force 175,000-strong within weeks.

Ukraine's Donbass region, where fighting with Russian separatists is taking place, is majority-Ukrainian but contains significant Russian minorities with Russian being the dominant language in many southern and eastern districts.

Donetsk and Luhansk, the two regions which collectively make up the Donbass, are 38 per cent and 39 per ethnically Russian, respectively.

Many observers fear that Putin could invade on the pretext of protecting those people from the 'threat' of genocide.

The United States and its allies have for weeks accused Russia of planning an invasion of Ukraine with the apparent goal of annexing territory.

Biden earlier this week spoke with Putin via video link and warned Russia of crippling sanctions and US boots on the ground if he took military action against Ukraine.

Russia today spelt out demands in its fullest statement yet on the security guarantees that Putin says he wants to obtain from the United States and its allies.

It called on NATO to promise not to deploy weapons in countries bordering Russia that could threaten its security.

Putin has made similar remarks in the past, but they will ring alarm bells in light of the Russian troop build-up amid fears he could use the 'threat' as a pretext to invade

Putin made the remark as Biden (left) shared a phone call with Ukrainian president Zelensky (right), assuring him of 'strong' US support in the event of a Russian attack

The US President then had a call with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky, who said he gave 'strong' backing and vowed support in the event of a Russian attack.

Zelensky issued a statement late Thursday, thanking Biden for his support following a phone call that he said lasted an hour and a half.

The White House said Biden 'reaffirmed the United States' unwavering commitment to Ukraine's sovereignty and territorial integrity.'

Biden also placed a separate call to the leaders of NATO members Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania and Slovakia - eastern European nations which fear the ramifications of a Russian attack.

They 'discussed Russia's destabilizing military buildup along Ukraine's border and the need for a united, ready, and resolute NATO stance for the collective defense of allies,' the White House said.

Biden had already spent two hours talking to President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday, warning him that if Russian troops now massed next to Ukraine launch a major attack, Moscow would then face US economic sanctions 'like none he's ever seen.'

But the White House stressed that Biden was also pushing for reinvigorated diplomacy, including the stalled peace talks between Ukraine and Russia.

'Within the next couple days, we're obviously going to continue talking with our European partners, we're going to continue talking with our Russian partners and finding a way forward,' a senior administration official told reporters.

Western and Ukrainian officials say they fear Russia - which already seized Ukraine's entire Crimea region in 2014 and also backed a separatist rebellion in the east - is preparing an even larger scale invasion.

Smoke grenades are set off as Russian troops take part in training exercises on the Russian side of the border, close to Ukraine, on Friday

Washington has been warning that Russian will be ready to invade Ukraine in the coming weeks with a force of 1750,000 (pictured, Russian troops training in Rostov-on-Don today)

Zelensky (pictured on the frontlines this week) has been pushing for Ukraine to be admitted to NATO, something that Putin has declared a Russian 'red line'

Russia says it has deployed troops, estimated to number about 100,000, on the border only out of fear that the former Soviet republic is becoming an outpost of the NATO alliance.

Ukraine is nowhere near to entering NATO, although Washington insists that Russia should not have a veto on Kiev's ambitions.

Beyond the battlefields of eastern Ukraine, however, the dispute has turned into a much broader struggle over the path for eastern Europe, where for decades the Soviet Union had total dominance but most countries now are part of Western institutions.

At the same time, neither the United States nor any European powers want open war with Russia over Ukraine, and Biden appears to be seeking a return to negotiations.

Zelensky said that he and Biden 'discussed possible formats for resolving the conflict' in eastern Ukraine, where the Russian-backed separatists have a self-declared state.

The senior US official said 'we are of course prepared to talk to the Russians about this whole set of issues.'

But the official bristled at media reports that Biden had pressured Zelensky into accepting concessions to Russia.

'There very clearly were not' concessions being discussed, the official said, adding that Biden 'stood by our principles.'

Biden is closely coordinating with major European powers, reaching out to the leaders of Britain, France, Germany and Italy both before and after his session with Putin on Tuesday.

A camp containing five battalions of Russian troops is pictured near Yelna, 150 miles from Ukraine's border, within the last month as US intelligence warns Putin now has 50 battalions camped out on Europe's doorstep

Another view of the newly-built Russian military camp near Yelna, as US intelligence claims that Putin will be ready to invade Ukraine with an army of 175,000 men within weeks

Russian tanks, artillery pieces and support vehicles are seen at a newly-built camp at Novoozerne, in Crimea, which is located around 80 miles from the Ukrainian border

US options for assisting Ukraine are limited, as the country is not in NATO and direct intervention would mean almost certain clashes with Russia.

Still, the United States helps train Ukrainian forces and has committed more than $2.5 billion to bolster a military that crumpled in the face of the Russian assault back in 2014.

Biden said that deliveries of that kind of 'defensive capability' would be boosted if the conflict escalates.

The US president says the possibility of sending American troops into Ukraine's fight is 'not on the table.' But when it comes to the nine eastern flank NATO countries, Biden is promising the opposite.

'We would probably be required to reinforce our presence in NATO countries to reassure particularly those in the eastern front,' he said this week.

Biden and European leaders are also talking up their willingness to impose harsh economic penalties on Moscow over any further Russian attack.

Among them, the new German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, warned of 'consequences' for the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, a controversial Russian project to deliver natural gas to Germany.
A father with 'the kindest heart' has died after being punched in a quiet country village - after he was reportedly flagged down in his car.

Council worker Matthew Oubridge, 56, was found unconscious in the street in the sleepy village after the alleged assault.

Paramedics battled to save him but later died from his injuries in Trellech, Monmouthshire.

A man, 40, from the Bristol area, had been arrested on suspicion of his murder and bailed.

Mr Oubridge's heartbroken family has now paid tribute to him, saying he 'will be sorely missed.'

In a statement, they said: 'Matthew was an amazing father, uncle, brother and son, who was tragically taken away too soon.

Council worker Matthew Oubridge, 56, was found unconscious in Trellech, Monmouthshire

'He was adored by his family and friends; he had the kindest heart and would always be there for his loved ones.

'He will be sorely missed, and our lives will never be the same again.

'We will cherish the memories we have for the rest of our lives.'

Police say a 40-year-old man from the Bristol area was arrested on suspicion of murder and released on conditional bail.

Paramedics rushed to the scene on Saturday but were unable to save him despite best efforts

A Gwent Police spokesman said: 'We received a report of a serious assault in Church Street, Trellech, near Monmouth, at around 8.40pm on Saturday 4 December after a man was found unconscious and unresponsive.

'Officers attended along with paramedics from the Welsh Ambulance Service who confirmed that a 56-year-old man from the Chepstow area had died. He has been named as Matthew Oubridge.

'His family have been informed and are receiving support from specialist officers.'

Police are appealing to anyone who has CCTV or dashcam footage on Saturday 4 December between Chepstow and Trellech.
A Russian politician stripped off and got into the shower after failing to turn off his Zoom camera during a disciplinary meeting for a fellow official.

Maxim Petlin, 48, a member of the anti-Kremlin Yabloko party, was seen getting up from his desk, undressing and parading naked in front of the camera at his home in Yekaterinburg.

The other participants appeared to try not to focus on Petlin, who is the chairman of Yabloko's Sverdlovsk branch, and continued their meeting as if nothing was happening.

Maxim Petlin, 48, stripped off and got into the shower after failing to turn off his Zoom camera during a disciplinary meeting for a fellow official

Petlin, a member of the anti-Kremlin Yabloko party, was seen getting up from his desk, undressing and parading naked in front of the camera at his home in Yekaterinburg

But the footage, from a disciplinary hearing for a municipal MP, was leaked to Mash news outlet.

Asked about the 'embarrassment' by URA.ru Petlin said: 'Did I appear naked? What is this nonsense?

'There was an online meeting today. I don't seem to remember that I appeared naked.'

Maxim Petlin, a member of the anti-Kremlin Yabloko party, stood up and took his trousers of while on a Zoom call for a disciplinary hearing for a municipal MP

Petlin then disappeared from the frame before walking through the shot completely naked and apparently getting into the shower

His party has not commented on the episode.

Eight years ago, his party stood by the then Ekaterinburg MP when he was convicted of extortion and sentenced to a three years in jail.

The party said the case against him had been 'fabricated' by the authorities and that Petlin was a 'political prisoner'.
Walkers has been forced to pull its seasonal mince pie-flavoured crisps from the shelves after they failed to warn customers the product contains milk.

The brand, which is advertised by former England captain Gary Lineker, was forced to act following a warning by the Food Safety Agency.

The regulator warned the product represents a danger to anyone with 'an allergy or intolerance to milk or milk constituents'.

Crisp fans had already expressed mixed reviews about the festive product. Writing on Twitter, one fan said: 'Bravo for the truly delectable Mince Pie flavour. It shouldn't work and they should be an abomination but it actually really does and they're not!'

Another added: 'Have to say mince pie flavour are weirdly wonderful'.

PepsiCo has been forced to pull festive packets of Walkers Mince Pie flavour crisps from the shelves after the company failed to include milk on the list of ingredients

Milk was not included in the list of ingredients, although it there was a warning in the 'allergy advice' section

Walkers said the product was safe for anyone without an allergy to milk or an intolerance to lactose

A third wrote: 'Taste exactly like mince pies!!! My mind is going mad over this'.

However, others were less than optimistic - with some branding them 'gross' and 'criminal' and 'wrong'.

'They are quite certainly the most disgusting thing I have ever had in my mouth,' said one.

'These are vile and just plain wrong,' added another.'

A spokesperson for PepsiCo, who own the Walkers brand said: 'Although this product includes precautionary allergen labelling for milk, it is not declared in the ingredients list and will pose a risk to people with an allergy to milk.

'This product is safe for those without an allergy to milk or an intolerance to lactose.'

Last month, the company had warned its customers of shortages after an IT upgrade affected production.

On in four shops visited by market research company Kantar on behalf of the Office for National Statistics reported only having 'limited supplies'.

Some four per cent of shops visited between November 12 and November 15 had no multipacks of crisps for sale.

Kantar said on average, Britons each two packets of crisps a week, with Walkers being the most popular.
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England's Covid outbreak didn't grow in the first week the Omicron variant was detected, according to official estimates released today.

But the same surveillance data suggests around 891,500 people, or one in 60, were still infected with Covid on any given day in the week ending December 1. The size of the outbreak dipped by 0.8 per cent on the previous week but the trend remains 'uncertain', the Office for National Statistics said.

Infections have been ticking upwards since mid-November, after dipping slightly from a record high of around 1million during the back-to-school wave in October.

Omicron infections remained 'very small', the ONS said, meaning it was impossible to estimate just how far and wide the super-mutant variant has spread. But Government data suggests up to 13 per cent of all cases are now triggered by Omicron, the equivalent of 5,000 per day.

Meanwhile, the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) today estimated England's R rate  the number of people someone with the virus infects  is between 0.9 and 1.1, the same level as last week.

Amid growing fears about Omicron, Nicola Sturgeon today warned Scotland faces a 'tsunami' of cases as she toughened up isolation restrictions for entire families ahead of Christmas.

Meanwhile, it emerged today the UK Government is already working on a 'Plan C', just days after Boris Johnson triggered his 'Plan B'. Care homes could be slapped with fresh restrictions in the run up to Christmas and masks made compulsory in pubs and restaurants under tougher proposals considered by ministers.

England's Covid outbreak remained flat last week with around one in 60 people infected on any given day despite the super mutant Omicron variant being detected, Office for National Statistics (ONS) data showed today

The ONS data shows Covid cases increased in people in school Year 7 to school Year 11 and for those aged 25 to 49 years old

The percentage of people testing positive increased in the South East and London last week and also increased in the North East in the two weeks up to December 1, but the trend was uncertain in the most recent week

Nicola Sturgeon dangles threat of tougher restrictions Britons were told to brace for a 'tsunami' of Omicron cases today by Scotland's First Minister Nicola Sturgeon as she warned the new super-variant posed a 'severe challenge' to the entire UK. Care homes could be slapped with fresh restrictions in the run up to Christmas and masks made compulsory in pubs and restaurants under a tougher 'Plan C' being considered by ministers. Controversial vaccine passports could also be extended to more venues as part of the contingency measures being floated within Downing Street if the Omicron super variant proves to be as dangerous as scientists fear. A Government source said it was 'very likely' care home residents could be banned from seeing more than three visitors over the festive period to prevent another explosive outbreak in the sector. But campaign groups warned the plans could be 'devastating' and 'heartbreaking', with many families forced to pick loved ones on what could be their last Christmas. Other curbs would include having to 'check in' with the NHS Covid app again to go to a pub or restaurant, using face masks in all indoor spaces, and having to show a vaccine passport at even more venues. Advertisement

The ONS data, based on random tests of up to 100,000 people, suggests Covid outbreaks grew in secondary school children.

The percentage of people testing positive for Covid was highest in school-aged children, with 4.18 per cent of children from age two to Year 6 and 3.87 per cent of Years 7 to 11 testing positive in the most recent week data is available for.

The percentage of people testing positive increased in the South East and London last week and also increased in the North East, but the trend was uncertain in the most recent week.

Cases fell in the East Midlands, the West Midlands and the East of England, while the trend was uncertain for the North West, the South West and Yorkshire and The Humber.

Test positivity rates were higher in Wales  with one in 50 people testing positive for the virus, and lower in Scotland  where one in 80 were infected  than in England.

Meanwhile, the UKHSA estimated the reproduction rate has remained flat across most of England, only growing in London to between 1.0 to 1.2.

It fell in the South East from between 1.0 and 1.2 last week to 0.9 to 1.1 this week.

Both the ONS and UKHSA data are lagging indicators, reflecting the state of the situation in Britain a week ago, instead of the current situation on the ground.

It means the rapid spread of Omicron across the UK has yet to be seen in any official surveillance reports, which are closely watched by ministers.

Meanwhile, separate official data shows at least 4,000 Britons may be catching Omicron every day with the super-mutant variant on track to become the dominant strain in a matter of weeks.

The highly-evolved virus is now behind 8.5 per cent of coronavirus cases and is doubling every two to three days in England, according to an analysis of UK Health Security Agency data.

But the figure is up to 13.3 per cent in Scotland, separate documents revealed today.

With an average 48,000 Britons testing positive for Covid every day, it suggests more than 4,000 of them are the new Omicron variant  even though fewer than 1,000 cases have been confirmed.

It comes as it was claimed today that care homes could be slapped with fresh restrictions in the run up to Christmas and masks made compulsory in pubs and restaurants under a tougher 'Plan C' being considered by ministers.

A Government source said it was 'very likely' care home residents could be banned from seeing more than three visitors over the festive period to prevent another explosive outbreak in the sector.

And as shops, pubs and restaurants warn of the millions they face losing at their busiest time of year under Plan B measures , officials are already working on a potential 'Plan C' package.

The above map shows the ten areas that have the most confirmed Omicron cases in England, according to the UK Health Security Agency. West Northamptonshire is the country's hotspot for the mutant strain, although eight in ten areas on the list are in London

There are currently 817 confirmed cases of Omicron in the UK so far but thousands are said to be flying under the radar because not all positive samples are analysed

Confidential UK Health Security Agency data showed that Omicron may now be behind 8.5 per cent of infections. The figures are based on the proportion of PCR tests failing to detect a specific gene, an early indicator of the variant. PCRs look for three genes to confirm a Covid infection, but with Omicron one is so mutated that they only pick up two of them

 Slide me  The UKHSA found that cases rose in 90 per cent of local authorities last week in England. It comes amid the spread of the Omicron variant

This includes having to 'check in' with the NHS Covid app again to go to a pub or restaurant, using face masks in all indoor spaces, and having to show a vaccine passport at even more venues.

The first part of the Government's Plan B came into force on Thursday with the introduction of compulsory face masks in indoor settings such as theatres, cinemas and churches.

The looming threat of even tighter restrictions comes amid fury at Mr Johnson's decision to impose Plan B measures yesterday, on the same day that he tried to grapple with the fallout of the Downing Street Christmas party scandal.

He is set to face a 'war' with his backbenchers when the measures are voted on next week. They reacted furiously to the planned introduction of vaccine passports next week  and took aim at the 'conflicting' guidance on working from home and socialising.

At least 50 Tories have publicly expressed concerns, and a senior Conservative said Mr Johnson needed to 'get a grip'.

Ringleaders have told MailOnline that it will be the biggest mutiny yet, with at least 60 expected to defy the government whip.
Jill Biden defended Joe Biden's mental health, calling questions about her husband's capabilities 'ridiculous' and saying he works 'almost 24 hours' a day.

Biden sat down with CBS' Rita Braver at Camp David to talk about life in the White House - a rare TV interview from the private presidential retreat in the Maryland mountains.

In the conversation, she admitted being first lady was a 'little harder' than she expected, expressed optimism at what her husband can do in a highly-charged political environment of Washington, and dismissed recent polls showing Americans have questions about the president's mental fitness.

'I think that's ridiculous,' she said about those polling numbers.

Jill Biden defended Joe Biden's mental health, calling questions about her husband's capabilities 'ridiculous'

First Lady Jill Biden opens up this Sunday about her life, her efforts to support her husband and looks back at their first year in office, in a rare interview at Camp David, the Presidential retreat in rural Maryland pic.twitter.com/lC7gpUSqjZ  CBS Sunday Morning  (@CBSSunday) December 9, 2021

The first lady, who has gone on national tours to sell parts of the president's congressional agenda to the country, particularly in red states that supported Donald Trump, said her husband works 'almost 24 hours a day.'

'He keeps working at it. He's an eternal optimist, and he keeps working, Rita, like almost 24 hours a day, at creating relationships with Republicans as well as Democrats. To push his agenda forward. It's that important,' she said in excerpts of the interview that aired Friday morning on CBS This Morning.

Asked if the president ever got frustrated, the first lady conceded: 'Well, he might make a disparaging remark once in a while.'

In a Politico/Morning Consult poll out earlier this month, voters were evenly split when asked if Biden is 'mentally fit': 46 per cent said he is and 48 per cent disagree.

The poll came out three days ahead of his 79th birthday. Biden was the oldest person to assume the presidency when he was sworn into office at the age of 78.

The president was declared 'fit for duty' after his annual physical, which took place the day before his birthday. The checkup included an 'extremely detailed neurologic exam.

'There were no findings that which would be consistent with any cerebellar or other central neurological disorder,' Dr. Kevin O'Connor, the president's longtime physician, wrote, saying the 'extremely detailed neurologic exam was reassuring.'

Jill Biden sat down with CBS' Rita Braver at Camp David in Maryland for an interview about life in the White House

Jill Biden, 70, sat down with Braver at Camp David, the presidential retreat in rural Maryland, to reflect on her first year in the White House, admitting life as first lady was 'harder' than she imagined.

The interview that will air this weekend on CBS Sunday Morning.

It touched on a number of subjects, including adapting to life in the spotlight; working to unify the country; and the president having to cut a free community college provision from his Social Safety Net bill.

'I think it's a little harder than I imagined,' Jill said of being first lady. 'It's not like a job that you do, it's a lifestyle that you live.'

Biden, who spent eight years as second lady of the United States, said there was no clocking out at the end of the day with life in the White House.

'It's not something you leave at 5:00 or at 3:00. And it's 24 hours a day.'

Biden is the first modern first lady to have a job outside of the East Wing. She teaches two days a week at a community college in Northern Virginia.

The long-time educator said she accepted the fact the president had to drop free community college tuition from his $1.9 trillion Build Back Better social safety net program and said it could come to fruition at a later date.

'No, I understand compromise. And I knew this was not the right moment for it. But that doesn't mean it might not get passed somewhere down the future,' she said.

Rita Braver also talked with Joe and Jill Biden in the Blue Room of the White House

The first lady also said the couple was working to unify the country.

'I don't care if it's a red state or a blue state, I think you know, Joe is the president for all Americans,' she said.

Jill Biden has traveled to many states that supported Trump in the presidential election - such as Mississippi, Texas, Florida, Tennessee - to push for Americans to get their COVID vaccines and tout benefits people will see from the president's congressional agenda.

Braver also spoke with both Bidens at the White House for the interview. CBS released excerpts on Thursday.

In the Blue Room of the White House, which is decorated for the Christmas holidays, President Biden bragged about his wife of 44 years: 'I'm a lucky man. Jill is the life of my love and the love of my life.'
The owner of Australia's last ugg boot manufacturer is planning to launch a 'crazy' sale in order to pay $3million in court costs after losing a trademark battle.

Ugg boots may be an Australian icon for many but the name 'UGG Australia' is actually trademarked to an American-owned company that has legally stopped local companies from using the term.

Eddie Oygur, who owns and operates Australian Leather in Western Sydney, lost a huge court case in 2019 against US company Deckers when he tried to get the ban overturned.

A jury in Chicago found Mr Oygur's business wilfully infringed trademark law by selling his iconic ugg-branded shoes in the US.

Eddie Oygur, (pictured) who owns and operates Australian Leather has promised a 'crazy' online sale on Saturday December 11 to help pay back $3million in court fees after a trademark name loss to US company Deckers

This week, there was even more pain when his appeal in the US Supreme Court was dismissed.

Mr Oygur says he's at a loss after being ordered to pay more than $3million in penalties and fees to the Deckers' legal team.

'There's absolutely no way I can pay that amount, I can't,' he told A Current Affair.

'If they bankrupt me, it'll all be over, I won't be able to do anything.'

Mr Oygur was sued by Deckers in 2016 for using the UGG Australia trademark - but he argues 'ugg' was a generic term well known by Australians

Mr Oygur was sued by Deckers in 2016 for using the 'UGG Australia' trademark - which Deckers acquired in 1995.

He argued 'ugg' was a generic term and emphasised his products were made locally in Australia while Deckers uses manufacturers in China.

'If you show this to a 90-year-old grandma who lives in Wagga somewhere  you show her a pair of these and she'll go, "Yeah they're bloody ugg boots, mate",' he said.

Mr Oygur has also previously argued the name originated in Australia's surfing community in the 1960s.

Mr Oygur has been left with no choice but to let go a number of staff and cancel work for contractors since losing the court battle

Since losing the case, Mr Oygur has been left with no choice but to let go a number of staff and cancel work for contractors.

Despite the devastating blow, Mr Oygur hasn't given up yet and says he is planning a fire-sale to help repay the crippling court costs.

He plans to do 'something stupid or maybe crazy' online via Australian Leather on Saturday December 11, which involves clearing stock at less than cost price.

'I want that money to pay them [Deckers] to make them happy,' he said.

Mr Oygur is still permitted to continue selling the boots in Australia, or could rebrand to sell in overseas markets, but he claims his business is already being outrun by Deckers imports.

'Ugg boots are a quintessentially Australian product - the product and name were invented here,' Australian Leather wrote in an open letter

The founder of the family business has been making and selling ugg boots since the early 1990s and had been involved in the sheepskin industry for 35 years.

'Ugg boots are a quintessentially Australian product - the product and name were invented here,' Australian Leather wrote in an open letter when the lawsuit began.

'This form of legal bullying has already forced other companies to stop exporting Ugg boots and in another case from even using the words Ugg boots.'

Former senator Nick Xenophon, who originally flew to the US to help Mr Oygur fight the case pro-bono, encouraged Australians to back the business .

'He's already spent everything he owns, sold every asset he owns or mortgaged it in order to fund this case for his American lawyers,' he said.

'We need to get behind him because he's a good man that was standing up for Australia.'
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Grieving families of serial killer Stephen Port's four victims heaped shame onto the Met Police today - after a jury found force failings on his first murder let him kill three more young men.

An inquest into all of Port's four victims said 'fundamental' mistakes looking at Anthony Walgate's death 'probably' contributed to Gabriel Kovari, Daniel Whitworth and Jack Taylor being subsequently killed.

The devastating ruling was summed up best by Mr Whitworth's stepmother who sobbed: 'These three boys could have been still walking around today had they investigated Anthony's death properly.'

Port, 46, lured the unsuspecting victims to his east London flat then plied them with a fatal dose of date rape drug GHB before dumping their bodies nearby as part of a sick fetish for sex with unconscious men in 2014 and 2015.

Today the IOPC announced it was considering reopening its probe into 17 officers involved in the case. Nine officers were given re-training but were not formally disciplined after the investigation in 2018.

Families of all four victims said through lawyer Neil Hudgell: 'The inadequate investigations by the Metropolitan Police into the deaths of Anthony, Gabriel, Daniel and Jack should be on public record as one of the most widespread institutional failures in modern history.

'The jury has been unanimous in identifying fundamental failings and basic errors in the investigation into Anthony's death which meant that Port was not stopped, and was allowed to carry on with his terrible acts.

Sex predator Port (pictured) gave fatal doses of date rape drug GHB to four young gay men, and dumped their bodies near his flat in Barking, east London

Anthony Walgate (left) and Gabriel Kovari (right) were Port's first two victims

An inquest heard if police had followed up leads, Port could have been caught before the deaths of Daniel Whitworth (left) and Jack Taylor (right)

Families of those murdered by Stephen Port at the conclusion of their inquest at Barking Town Hall today after the jury result

The 19 failures that left Port free to kill time and time again 1. Fashion-conscious first victim's back-to-front underwear failed to arouse suspicion with officers It was Port himself who called 999 to report 'finding' Mr Walgate unconscious outside his flat, although he later admitted dumping his body after the pair met for sex. He killed three men by the time he was jailed in March 2015 for perverting the course of justice in the Walgate case. Fashion-conscious Mr Walgate was found with his underpants on back to front and inside out, but police said this was 'unusual, not necessarily suspicious or sinister'. 2. Police did not background check Port, only his victim Investigators at the scene were not told of a previous allegation of rape against Port on the police national computer from 2012, who was traced as being the person who called 999 to report the body. In fact, police only checked the national database for Mr Walgate, not Port. 3. Police decided bruising under Mr Walgate's arms did not suggest assault and sex swabs were not sent for testing Another officer deduced there was 'nothing to suggest the victim had been assaulted', despite bruising under Mr Walgate's arms, while sex swabs taken from his body were not submitted for DNA testing. 4. Port's laptop - stuffed with searches for drug rape videos - was not opened for ten months Perhaps most crucially, police failed to submit a laptop belonging to Port for forensic analysis for 10 months after it was seized in the wake of Mr Walgate's death, and then missed repeated searches for drug rape videos contained on the device. 5. CPS were not told Port could have been a sex offender when making their charging decision The Crown Prosecution Service was also not given information that Port was a suspected sex offender when they ruled out a homicide charge over Mr Walgate's death. 6. Police ignored information in Port's first interview that police had looked at him over sexual assaults before Police soon knew that Port had lied to them from the outset, eventually charging him with perverting the course of justice. But they did not follow up information he volunteered during his initial interviews about his previous involvement with police on suspicion of sexual assault. 7. Local police requests for murder squad to take over were repeatedly turned down Requests from the local police officers for the Met's specialist murder investigation team to take over the investigation were repeatedly dismissed, meaning inexperienced officers were in charge of the case. 8. Police were convinced Mr Walgate had died of an overdose because he was a sex worker Two of Mr Walgate's friends were convinced his death was suspicious and aired their concerns, but said they believed police assumed he had overdosed on drugs simply because he was a gay sex worker. Sarah Sak, the victim's mother, told police she was convinced it was 'murder', but said police told her 'it was probably drugs'. 9. Police dismissed Mr Kovari's murder as non-suspicious so took no samples to analyse Aspiring English teacher Mr Kovari was found slumped in a graveyard near Port's home. But the scene was not declared suspicious, so his body was not subjected to a forensic post-mortem examination. His clothing was not seized and so was not analysed, and no samples were taken from his body. 10. Police missed chance to speak to friend, who had evidence on his phone victim had been in Port's flat before his murder Police did not follow up leads to trace Mr Kovari's friend, Karl Kamgdon, who Mr Kovari sent pictures to from inside Port's flat when he arrived there, and was the last person he spoke to. 11. Friends found evidence Port had killed Mr Kovari but were ignored by the police John Pape, Mr Kovari's friend, effectively turned detective to find the victim's boyfriend in Spain, Thierry Amodio, who had been contacted by Port masquerading as another man. Both men supplied the police with information which would have led them to the serial killer, but they were repeatedly ignored. 12. Family liaison office did not contact the victim's family, which could have produced clues something was amiss A family liaison officer assigned to the Kovari case failed to contact the victims' loved ones at all, and even referred to him as being from Lithuania rather than Slovakia. 13. Key tests that would have found Port's DNA were not carried out at scene of third murder Detectives failed to carry out key forensic tests including on the bed sheet on which chef Mr Whitworth was found, his clothes, so-called sex swabs taken from his body, and the drugs bottle planted on him - all of which carried Port's DNA or fingerprints. 14. Police did not question the fake suicide note Port had planted at the scene to try and escape justice Perhaps most crucially, the 'suicide note' planted by Port on Mr Whitworth's body taking responsibility for Mr Kovari's death appeared to be taken on face value by police. Only a section of its contents was sent to Mr Whitworth's family, with disputes over whether his father was able to identify the handwriting as that of his son. The note was not shown to Mr Whitworth's long-term boyfriend, Ricky Waumsley, for a year, and he said he felt cut out of the investigation entirely. He later raised concerns about the 'really impersonal' nature of the content, that it did not mention any family members and that he could not be sure it was his partner's handwriting. 15. Police missed unwitting clue Port put in the fake note, as they thought it referred to a homeless man The note also contained a veiled reference to Port, asking police not to 'blame the guy I was with last night' in case the investigation eventually linked the victim with the serial killer. However, police arriving on the scene thought 'the guy' was a homeless man sleeping in the graveyard where Mr Whitworth was found. It was much later that a handwriting expert concluded the script matched Port's while the notepad on which the suicide note was written was recovered from Port's address. There was no evidence Mr Kovari and Mr Whitworth had ever met or contacted each other. 16. Note's claims that the third victim killed the second could have been disproved if police had checked phone data Police also failed to obtain full phone data that would have shown Mr Whitworth was not in Barking on the night of Mr Kovari's death - creating an inaccuracy with the suicide note that claimed Mr Whitworth killed Mr Kovari. Mr Walgate also showed signs of bruising under the arms consistent with being moved or carried before or after his death. 17. The same woman coincidentally found two victims, but still police did not entertain possibility they could be linked Bizarrely, dog walker Barbara Denham, who discovered Mr Kovari's body, was also the first on the scene for Mr Whitworth's death. She told police: 'I was the same woman that found the other body a few weeks ago ... I found another young boy.' 18. Police were told by family and coroner deaths may be connected but little was done The final death was not linked to the previous three until a chance discovery nearly a month later - this was despite similarities that all four victims were young, gay men, with no links to the area, who were found dumped in public, within a short distance of each other. Mr Taylor's family shared with police their concerns that the death might be linked to others in the area, as did the coroner. 19. Mr Taylor's sisters clues were unheeded, along with victim's anti-drugs views In fact, his sisters kept notes of their own investigations, establishing similarities between the four deaths, referencing GHB and identifying Port's address in Cooke Street. The family were particularly suspicious that Mr Taylor - who wanted to become a policeman and was said to be resolutely anti-drugs - had apparently taken something on the night he died. But their suggestions were dismissed by police who said there was 'no reason to think they are connected'. It was only when a detective working on the Walgate investigation chanced upon a print-out of a CCTV still of Mr Taylor with a 'mystery man' on the night he was last seen alive that he recognised him as Port and made the link with Mr Walgate's death. Another officer then linked them with the Kovari and Whitworth investigations. Advertisement

'We continue to believe that had the police done their jobs properly in the first place, Gabriel, Daniel and Jack would not have been killed and other young men would not have been drugged and raped by him.'

Mr Whitworth's former partner Ricky Waumsley said current Met Commissioner Cressida Dick - who was not in charge at the time of the murders - should resign over the findings.

Police watchdog the IOPC also said it may open its investigation into officers following the evidence heard at the inquest.

Despite at first finding no evidence of misconduct, Regional Director Graham Beesley said: 'Our thoughts remain with the families and friends of Anthony Walgate, Gabriel Kovari, Daniel Whitworth and Jack Taylor - we recognise how distressing it will have been to revisit the deaths of their loved ones over the past few months.

'As the inquest has progressed, we have been assessing whether to reopen - either in full or in part - our investigation into the way the Metropolitan Police Service (MPS) handled inquiries into their deaths, and that process is on-going.

'The men were all murdered by Stephen Port in Barking between June 2014 and September 2015.

'We can reopen an investigation where there are compelling reasons to do so. Those reasons could arise if new information has a real possibility of affecting our decisions and findings and is in the public interest.

'We investigated the actions of 17 officers, all but one gave no comment interviews and provided written responses to our investigators.

'We are examining if anything was said by the officers who gave evidence during the inquests which could alter our findings and give grounds to re-open our investigation.

'In line with our our policy on re-opening investigations, and given the significant impact any decision may have on all of those involved, we will be seeking representations from all affected parties.

'No individual officer had a case to answer for gross misconduct but the performance of nine officers fell below the standard required.

'Of these nine officers, seven received feedback from their manager, known as management action. One of those also received informal learning for another related matter.

'The remaining two officers were subject to formal unsatisfactory performance procedures and attended meetings to discuss their performance and appropriate action going forward.

'We found no case to answer for the remaining eight officers in terms of misconduct. However, one of those eight officers underwent informal learning to improve their practice.

'Our investigation report and a separate report focusing on organisational learning recommendations will be published at the conclusion of all proceedings.'

This is the latest in a string of scandals to hit confidence in the force.

It is still reeling from the crimes of serving Met Police officer Wayne Couzens, who faked an arrest to kidnap, rape and murder innocent Sarah Everard off the street.

Earlier this week PCs Deniz Jaffer and Jamie Lewis were jailed for 33 months after sharing on Whatsapp pictures of murdered sisters Nicole Smallman and Bibaa Henry, whose bodies they were supposed to be guarding.

Today jurors returned a conclusion that Mr Walgate, a 23-year-old fashion student who did occasional escort work, was unlawfully killed.

Mr Walgate, originally from Hull, went to meet Port in Barking on June 17, 2014, and was not seen again until his lifeless body was discovered, outside Port's flat, in the early hours of June 19.

It was Port who contacted the emergency services, repeatedly changing his account of how he came to find the young man.

Inquest jurors assembled at Barking Town Hall to deliver their conclusions over the deaths of Mr Walgate, Mr Kovari, 22, and the further two killings of Mr Whitworth, 21, and Mr Taylor, 25.

The four men were all murdered by Port between June 2014 and September 2015.

He plied them each with a fatal dose of date-rape drug GHB and dumped their bodies in public areas.

In written conclusions, the jury acknowledged officers' 'heavy workload' but said there were failures that 'cannot be overlooked'.

The jury said: 'We believe there were fundamental failures in these investigations, which were at a basic level.'

It followed weeks of hearings at Barking Town Hall in which police admitted failing to carry out basic checks, send evidence to be forensically examined, and exercise professional curiosity during the 16-month killing spree, from June 2014 to September 2015.

Port, 46, a bus depot chef, will die in prison after being handed a whole life sentence at the Old Bailey for the murders and a string of sex assaults.

Since the inquests began, a new alleged victim has come forward to say they believe they were drugged and sexually assaulted by Port in the same period.

The victims' loved one claimed failings stemmed from prejudice, because the victims were gay and their deaths were drug-related.

Officers had denied it, blaming mistakes on being understaffed and lacking resources, with some acting up in senior positions.

Coroner Sarah Munro QC barred jurors from deciding on the issue of homophobia for legal reasons.

Jurors deliberated for a week before returning their conclusions, after hearing that none of the victims was from the area, and was either anti-drugs or had no known use of GHB.

Mr Kovari's friend, John Pape, maintained that 'institutional homophobia' played a part.

He said: 'You have to hope prejudice did play a part.

'Because if the Met were this incompetent with every serious crime, regardless of the victim's origin, sexuality or the setting in which they are found, rapists and murderers would be going unpoliced and no-one would be protected.'

Mr Whitworth's partner, Ricky Waumsley, said: 'I believe it's a mixture of everything - so, a bit of laziness, incompetence, lack of training.

'But I absolutely stand by that they were being homophobic towards these four victims and making general assumptions that they're all young, gay men who take drugs.'

Mr Walgate's mother, Sarah Sak, said the jurors' conclusion is a 'massive victory' but she is 'disappointed' they were not allowed to consider prejudice.

She said: 'If Anthony, Gabriel, Daniel and Jack had been girls found in such close proximity there would have been an outcry. There would have been a lot more investigation - and there just wasn't.'

Mr Taylor's sister Donna called on the Independent Office for Police Complaints (IOPC) to 'rip up' its report and reopen the investigation into the officers involved.

She said she feels strongly about the issue of homophobia, which the coroner had ruled the jury could not make a finding on for legal reasons.

Ms Taylor said: 'Every one of the boys was not treated like individual humans and we have said that they were discriminated against from the very beginning.

'The way they were seen as a druggie, homeless, gay. It's not acceptable.'

Mrs Sak called for the police watchdog to reopen its investigation and for some police officers to be sacked.

Human rights campaigner Peter Tatchell, who raised his concern about a serial killer after the first three deaths in 2014, criticised the police for failing to engage with the LGBT community and follow their own guidance.

He said: 'Evidence given at the Stephen Port inquest revealed the police to be incompetent, negligent, unprofessional and homophobic.

'Every gay person who expressed concerns about the deaths was ignored, dismissed and treated with contempt, even the partner of one of the victims.

'That's institutional homophobia. The officers involved must face disciplinary action.'

The stepmother of Daniel Whitworth, the youngest victim of Stephen Port, sobbed as she heard inquest evidence laying police failings bare.

Amanda Whitworth called it 'a huge tragedy' that three of the four men Port killed would still be alive had police properly investigated the first death.

Porn-obsessed loner Port murdered fashion student Anthony Walgate before claiming the lives of Gabriel Kovari, Mrs Whitworth's stepson Daniel and Jack Taylor.

Mrs Whitworth said she had been left sobbing at times listening to evidence in the inquests into the men's deaths, held at Barking Town Hall.

'We're still in shock, really, that we've seen what we've seen over these weeks,' she said. 'I'm still trying to process what we've seen.

'It's been very hurtful at times. We've felt angry enough at times to where, even though we've been in Barking, we've stayed upstairs and watched it in the family room because you just can't trust yourself not to get angry in the courtroom.

'So, we've been upstairs and that's resulted in tears. Sometimes I've just sat up there and sobbed.'

Mrs Whitworth went on: 'You find out the real detail of everything.

STEPHEN PORT VICTIMS - WHAT HAPPENED IN EACH CASE? Stephen Port murdered four young men during a 16-month period between 2014 and 2015, luring them to his one-bed flat in Barking before fatally plying them with date-rape drug GHB and then dumping their bodies nearby. Port was initially arrested days after he killed his first victim, but was not charged with murder until after he struck for a fourth time. Police said they were inexperienced to deal with such cases and were struggling with a large workload at the time of the deaths. Here is what happened in each investigation: Anthony Walgate Anthony Walgate, June 19 2014 It was Port himself who called 999 to report 'finding' Mr Walgate unconscious outside his flat, although he later admitted dumping his body after the pair met for sex. He killed three men by the time he was jailed in March 2015 for perverting the course of justice in the Walgate case. Fashion-conscious Mr Walgate was found with his underpants on back to front and inside out, but police said this was 'unusual, not necessarily suspicious or sinister'. Investigators at the scene were not told of a previous allegation of rape against Port on the police national computer from 2012, who was traced as being the person who called 999 to report the body. In fact, police only checked the national database for Mr Walgate, not Port. Another officer deduced there was 'nothing to suggest the victim had been assaulted', despite bruising under Mr Walgate's arms, while sex swabs taken from his body were not submitted for DNA testing. Perhaps most crucially, police failed to submit a laptop belonging to Port for forensic analysis for 10 months after it was seized in the wake of Mr Walgate's death, and then missed repeated searches for drug rape videos contained on the device. The Crown Prosecution Service was also not given information that Port was a suspected sex offender when they ruled out a homicide charge over Mr Walgate's death. Police soon knew that Port had lied to them from the outset, eventually charging him with perverting the course of justice. But they did not follow up information he volunteered during his initial interviews about his previous involvement with police on suspicion of sexual assault. Requests from the local police officers for the Met's specialist murder investigation team to take over the investigation were repeatedly dismissed, meaning inexperienced officers were in charge of the case. Two of Mr Walgate's friends were convinced his death was suspicious and aired their concerns, but said they believed police assumed he had overdosed on drugs simply because he was a gay sex worker. Sarah Sak, the victim's mother, told police she was convinced it was 'murder', but said police told her 'it was probably drugs'. Gabriel Kovari Gabriel Kovari, August 28 2014 Aspiring English teacher Mr Kovari was found slumped in a graveyard near Port's home. But the scene was not declared suspicious, so his body was not subjected to a forensic post-mortem examination. His clothing was not seized and so was not analysed, and no samples were taken from his body. Police did not follow up leads to trace Mr Kovari's friend, Karl Kamgdon, who Mr Kovari sent pictures to from inside Port's flat when he arrived there, and was the last person he spoke to. John Pape, Mr Kovari's friend, effectively turned detective to find the victim's boyfriend in Spain, Thierry Amodio, who had been contacted by Port masquerading as another man. Both men supplied the police with information which would have led them to the serial killer, but they were repeatedly ignored. A family liaison officer assigned to the Kovari case failed to contact the victims' loved ones at all, and even referred to him as being from Lithuania rather than Slovakia. Daniel Whitworth Daniel Whitworth, September 20 2014 Detectives failed to carry out key forensic tests including on the bed sheet on which chef Mr Whitworth was found, his clothes, so-called sex swabs taken from his body, and the drugs bottle planted on him - all of which carried Port's DNA or fingerprints. Perhaps most crucially, the 'suicide note' planted by Port on Mr Whitworth's body taking responsibility for Mr Kovari's death appeared to be taken on face value by police. Only a section of its contents was sent to Mr Whitworth's family, with disputes over whether his father was able to identify the handwriting as that of his son. The note was not shown to Mr Whitworth's long-term boyfriend, Ricky Waumsley, for a year, and he said he felt cut out of the investigation entirely. He later raised concerns about the 'really impersonal' nature of the content, that it did not mention any family members and that he could not be sure it was his partner's handwriting. The note also contained a veiled reference to Port, asking police not to 'blame the guy I was with last night' in case the investigation eventually linked the victim with the serial killer. However, police arriving on the scene thought 'the guy' was a homeless man sleeping in the graveyard where Mr Whitworth was found. It was much later that a handwriting expert concluded the script matched Port's while the notepad on which the suicide note was written was recovered from Port's address. There was no evidence Mr Kovari and Mr Whitworth had ever met or contacted each other. Police also failed to obtain full phone data that would have shown Mr Whitworth was not in Barking on the night of Mr Kovari's death - creating an inaccuracy with the suicide note that claimed Mr Whitworth killed Mr Kovari. Mr Walgate also showed signs of bruising under the arms consistent with being moved or carried before or after his death. Bizarrely, dog walker Barbara Denham, who discovered Mr Kovari's body, was also the first on the scene for Mr Whitworth's death. She told police: 'I was the same woman that found the other body a few weeks ago ... I found another young boy.' Jack Taylor Jack Taylor, September 14 2015 The final death was not linked to the previous three until a chance discovery nearly a month later - this was despite similarities that all four victims were young, gay men, with no links to the area, who were found dumped in public, within a short distance of each other. Mr Taylor's family shared with police their concerns that the death might be linked to others in the area, as did the coroner. In fact, his sisters kept notes of their own investigations, establishing similarities between the four deaths, referencing GHB and identifying Port's address in Cooke Street. The family were particularly suspicious that Mr Taylor - who wanted to become a policeman and was said to be resolutely anti-drugs - had apparently taken something on the night he died. But their suggestions were dismissed by police who said there was 'no reason to think they are connected'. It was only when a detective working on the Walgate investigation chanced upon a print-out of a CCTV still of Mr Taylor with a 'mystery man' on the night he was last seen alive that he recognised him as Port and made the link with Mr Walgate's death. Another officer then linked them with the Kovari and Whitworth investigations. Advertisement

Met police assistant commissioner Helen Ball speaks to the media after the conclusion Barking Town Hall today after verdict

Seven cops investigated over failure to stop Stephen Port have since been promoted Scotland Yard faced fury yesterday as it emerged the blundering officers who failed to stop Stephen Port have been promoted. None of the 17 investigated by the Independent Office for Police Conduct over the botched inquiry have lost their jobs or faced disciplinary action. Seven officers have since been promoted, including five whose performance was found to be below standard. All but one refused to answer questions from investigators and all were cleared of misconduct in 2019. Yesterday the families of Ports victims called for the watchdog to revisit the issue  and suggested it had swallowed police spin. The Met said its officers are performing to the expected standards. Advertisement

Stephen Port - The quiet, porn-obsessed loner who turned into a serial killer The softly spoken bus depot chef had a 'strange' obsession with children's toys and rarely socialised, instead spending his free time in his flat on his laptop or internet dating, rarely going too far from work and home. But the reality, unbeknownst to the few who knew him, was that the 6ft 5in former escort was obsessed with drug-rape pornography, and lured unwitting, boyish-looking, gay men to his flat through websites such as Grindr before fatally plying them with GHB, sexually abusing them, and disposing of their young corpses. Port then weaved an unending web of lies to cover his tracks and muddy the waters, allowing him to strike again and again until police finally pieced together Port's murderous involvement in the four deaths. Evidence at the inquests suggested Port had more aliases, used to spread rumours in the aftermath of each murder, than he had genuine friends. Port, originally from Dagenham, trained as a chef after dropping out of art school. He lived at home until his early 30s, having come out as gay, and part-bought a one-bedroom flat in Barking that would eventually become the grim theatre for his depraved acts. As he approached his 40s, but with his desire for much younger male company unrelenting, the balding Port began to wear a floppy blond hair-piece atop his athletic frame in an effort to persuade people he was closer to their age. Port became a GHB user towards the end of 2013, and by then had come to the attention of police for allegedly drugging and raping a man on New Year's Eve. He was said to have had a 'revolving door of boys coming and going' at his flat, some of whom he boasted he would wed, only for them to disappear out of his life as quickly as they arrived. Indeed, one of his few friends, neighbour Ryan Edwards, remarked how Port had a 'voracious appetite' for meeting 'very young' men. But he later became so concerned that Port was spending time with 'vulnerable' boys that he considered he might have 'paedophile tendencies'. Mr Edwards said he also had concerns about Port's drug use, but was reassured by the predator that his interest in young males was legal, and that the drugs were for personal use only. The truth, as police would later come to discover, was far more sinister. Advertisement

'What we suspected to be true, which was that these three boys could have been still walking around today had they investigated Anthony's (death) properly.

'They're not and that is a huge tragedy.'

Loved ones of the four men have accused the Metropolitan Police of homophobia over the series of failings in its investigations into the deaths.

Mrs Whitworth said that officers had made assumptions that the victims had been to chemsex parties because they were gay and had drugs planted on them.

Referring to homophobia, she said: 'There is an element of that there.

'Whether they're aware of it or not, it is there.

'The boys were depersonalised. There's lots of ingredients in this particular recipe, but that's one of them.'

She and Daniel's father both criticised the attitude of several of the officers who gave evidence at the inquests.

Mr Whitworth said: 'Even right up to date now in these new inquests at Barking, still by the evidence they've given and their indifferent attitude and the evidence that's ranged from mindless to indifferent and bordering on criminal in places really.

'They've proved that they're still unfit for duty.

'Still, even now. They've no idea that they've got a case to answer.'

Referring to officers based in Barking, he said: 'The fact remains that while they're still on duty, the wider Met has got a problem, they are tarnished.

'It's a big blot on their reputation.'

Mrs Whitworth added: 'We didn't know what to expect from the inquest, but it really has been an eye opener.

'With the way they've given evidence and the way some of them, well a lot of them, have just been a bit shoulder-shrugging.

'I wasn't expecting that.'

The Met police says that the nine officers who were identified as having performance failings were properly dealt with by their managers.

'The six who remain with the Met today have been checked again recently and are meeting expected standards.

Assistant Commissioner Helen Ball apologised on behalf of the Met but denied the force was homophobic.

She said: 'We don't see institutional homophobia.

'We don't see homophobia on the part of our officers.

'We do see all sorts of errors in the investigation, which came together in a truly dreadful way.'

Port's killing spree began when he hired fashion student Mr Walgate, from Hull, as an escort.

Instead, Port killed him, dragged his body outside and called 999 anonymously, claiming to have found him collapsed as he was passing.

The families of Stephen Port's victims at Barking Town Hall in east London, after an inquest jury found that police failures in the investigation into the death of Port's first victim Anthony Walgate 'probably' contributed to the death of three further young men

Pictured: Stephen Port now 46, was handed a whole-life order in 2016 for the murders of Anthony Walgate, 23, Mr Kovari, 22, Daniel Whitworth, 21, and Mr Taylor, 25

Pictured: The spot in the walled cemetery at St Margaret's church, Barking, where Mr Kovari's body was found - the body of Daniel Whitworth, 21, was also later found here

Victims' families to sue Met over failings The beleaguered Metropolitan Police is facing legal action over its bungled investigations into the deaths of the victims of Stephen Port. Failures by a string of detectives saw basic evidence-gathering opportunities missed and a serial killer left free to carry out a series of murders as well as drug and sexually assault more than a dozen other men. Seventeen officers were investigated by watchdog the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC), and nine were found to have performance failings. None of the nine were disciplined or lost their jobs, and five have since been promoted. Assistant Commissioner Helen Ball apologised to the loved ones of all the victims over the way the investigations were mishandled. She said: 'Our thoughts are with everybody who loved Anthony Walgate, Gabriel Kovari, Daniel Whitworth and Jack Taylor, we are so sorry for their loss. 'And we're also deeply sorry, I want to give my own and the Met's deepest apologies that there were failings in the police response to the murders. 'It has been clear, and we have said for a long time, that we didn't respond as we should have done. 'All those who loved Anthony, Gabriel, Daniel and Jack expected a professional and a thorough police investigation into their deaths. 'And it's hugely disappointing to me and everybody at the Met, that that didn't happen.' Civil claims have been lodged by relatives against the force, but no further details have yet been made available. Advertisement

Requests were rejected for a specialist homicide team to take over the case, which was instead left in the hands of borough officers.

Port was swiftly identified as the caller but in a police interview concocted another web of lies.

A basic check on the police national database would have flagged up Port as a suspected rapist and his involvement in a suspicious incident at Barking station days before.

Port's laptop computer, which would have revealed his obsession with rape pornography, was not examined for many months.

Port was charged with perverting the course of justice and given bail.

It meant he was free to lure Slovakian Mr Kovari to his flat on the false promise of a room to rent.

Port dumped his body in St Margaret's churchyard, where a dog walker made the grim discovery in August 2014.

Three weeks later, the same dog walker found Kent chef Mr Whitworth in almost exactly the same spot.

Port planted a fake suicide note on his body suggesting Mr Whitworth had accidentally killed Mr Kovari.

Port was later jailed for perverting the course of justice, but was freed to kill Mr Taylor. Mr Taylor's sisters launched their own investigation and pushed officers to do more.

Leni Morris, CEO of LGBT+ anti-abuse charity Galop, said today: 'It's a common experience for members of the LGBT+ community to have been subjected to some form of anti-LGBT+ prejudice as part of our interaction with an institution, whether that's in healthcare, education, or a police response.

'In the case of the Stephen Port investigation, it's clear to see that there were assumptions made about the victims  because they were young, gay men  around hook-up apps, drug use, and the disregard of evidence from friends and family.

'All of this amounted to an unacceptable delay in the connection of the victims, the investigation of the case, and ultimately the identification of the perpetrator.

'We need to get out of a victim-blaming narrative around all forms of sexual violence, and get to a place where we ensure all victims receive a fair and equal response, whoever they are.'
Woke school districts are facing backlash for screening their teacher applicants about their political beliefs because they favor left-wing ideology on race and gender.

The controversial hiring practice, which is being use in more than 500 districts across the US, asks applicants how they would incorporate race and gender into their daily lessons and about what they have done to combat racism in their personal and professional lives.

A recent report from Ed Week detailed how US school districts are screening teachers' racial biases during the hiring process through these 'cultural competency' questions.

Although the method is primarily used to promote inclusion and diversity, some districts, like the Shaw Elementary School, in Boston, have gone beyond the norm and asked questions like, 'What have you done personally or professionally to be more anti-racist?'

Samuel Goldman, a writer for The Week, criticized the relevance of these types of questions for a teaching position and said, 'They're making progressive political views a requirement for the job.'

About 500 school districts in the US use Nimble, a teaching-hiring software, to help them sort out applicants. Nimble said more and more districts are including 'cultural competency' questions in their hiring process after the Black Lives Matter movement erupted last year

At Shaw Elementary School, in Boston, Massachusetts, teachers are asked, 'What have you done personally or professionally to be more anti-racist?'

'Cultural competency' questions being asked to teaching applicants What have you done personally or professionally to be more anti-racist?

How do you ensure that the values of diversity and cultural awareness are reflected in your practice?

How do you incorporate gender diversity and the different racial and cultural backgrounds of your students and families into your daily instruction and classroom environment?

How do you connect with the backgrounds of your students?

How do you ensure that student outcomes are not predictable by race, ethnicity, culture, gender, or sexual orientation?

Why do you think that low-income students predictably perform lower on standardized tests than their more-affluent peers? Advertisement

Goldman also criticized how some of the teacher's answers are filtered through Nimble, a teaching-hiring software company working with about 500 school districts across the nation.

'It's bad enough for principals or hiring managers to pry into applicants' opinions on matters irrelevant to classroom content and conduct. It's even worse when they rely on proprietary, woke AI to do the job for them.'

Goldman says the 'cultural competency' would ultimately favor liberals as a conservative might have trouble giving 'favorable' answers if they support things like an end to affirmative action.

Nimble founder and CEO Lauren Dachille told Ed Week that the demand for cultural competency reviews have shot up following the death of George Floyd and the Black Lives Matter movement last year.

'Now that we've become a little more aware of the concept of anti-racism and maybe a little more woke as a culture, I do think that districts have started to emphasize these questions a little bit more,' Dachille said. 'They might be more common, they might be more explicit.'

Dachille did not clarify what districts use the 'cultural competency' questions nor did she respond to DailyMail.com's request for more information.

Among the school administrators asking these questions is Shaw Elementary School Principal Ashley Davis, who pries into teacher's personal and professional commitments to anti-racism. The school also asks teachers how they 'ensure that the values of diversity and cultural awareness are reflected in their practice.'

Similar questions are asked in the Montgomery County Public School District, in Maryland, where teaching applicants are asked how they would incorporate race, gender and cultural diversities of students into their daily instruction plan.

Shaw Elementary School Principal Ashley Davis asks teaching applicants about their personal work to combat anti-racism

Other questions asked include: How do you connect with the backgrounds of your students? How do you ensure that student outcomes are not predictable by race, ethnicity, culture, gender, or sexual orientation?

In the Indianapolis Public School District, in Indiana, administrators ask applicants their thoughts on students of color and students from low-income families.

Alex Moseman, the district's director of talent acquisition, said these types of questions were used so applicants would know the values of the district.

'Sometimes, candidates will talk about equity and justice but not talk about race. Sometimes, they're not comfortable yet having a specific conversation about race in the classroom. Moseman said. 'That's finethat's where [they] can grow as an employee.'

These hiring practices have garnered backlash on social media, with many on Facebook questioning why a person's political inclination should affect their ability to get hired for a teaching position.

Many on Facebook criticized the need for testing a teachers politics during the hiring process

On Facebook user, David Rigotti, wrote, 'A good teacher should keep their politics out of the classroom, regardless of what they happen to be.'

Another user, Vincent DiCarlo, said the cultural competency questions would only lead to more staffing shortages, which have been exacerbated by the pandemic.

'There is such of wide standard for qualifying teacher's competence that I don't think it will ever be resolved. Throw in a political requirement on top of that, and we are doomed,' DiCarlo wrote.

Yet another Facebook user, Dave McDonald, echoed sentiments that politics should be removed from the classroom.

'If your students know what your political affiliation is, then you need to find a new profession.'

The debate over politics in schools was thrust into the national spotlight during last months Virginia gubernatorial race, where Republican Glenn Youngkin defeated Democrat Terry McAuliffe on a platform that promised to end critical race theory and wokeism in schools.

McAuliffe, who was favorited to win in the months leading up the election, had said parents should not have a say in what's taught in schools, which eventually led to his loss.
The owner of an alpaca who was executed despite fresh claims insisting he did not have tuberculosis has insisted Boris Johnson must resign over the fiasco.

Geronimo was put down by Government vets in August over disputed claims he had the disease.

But post-mortem examinations carried out on the animal have found no trace of bovine tuberculosis.

Geronimo's owner Helen Macdonald, 50, was adamant that he was not infected and launched a campaign to save him.

But after she lost her lengthy legal fight, officials escorted by police dragged him from her farm near Wickwar, Gloucestershire, to be killed.

Now Miss MacDonald, a registered veterinary nurse who is considering suing ministers over his slaughter, has called for the PM and Environment Secretary to step down.

Her call comes amid a catastrophic few days for Mr Johnson, in which he has faced a huge backlash over allegations Christmas parties have been held at Downing Street, as well as his 'Plan B' for Covid, which has seen certain restrictions reintroduced.

Geronimo's owner Helen Macdonald, 50, was adamant that he was not infected and launched a campaign to save him

She has now called on Boris Johnson (pictured yesterday) to resign over the fiasco

A number of policemen arrive at the farm of Helen McDonald in August to take Geronimo away

'This Government are letting down the UK farming community as a whole,' she said today.

'Everyone involved in this debacle need to be held to account, and Boris Johnson and George Eustice should resign now.

'It is incredibly sad and personally devastating that the truth only emerges after the senseless death of Geronimo, and that the Government are still refusing to do anything to prevent this happening again.

'This latest episode is yet another example of this Government's blind adherence to a flawed policy and their own flawed version of events, regardless of the consequences.'

Geronimo's killing was the culmination of a David and Goliath legal fight between her and Defra that gripped the nation.

The eight-year-old champion alpaca, who was born in New Zealand before being brought to Britain, was consigned for slaughter after he twice tested positive for bTB in 2017.

Miss Macdonald has always disputed the results  but the legal battle concluded with a High Court ruling in July that he should be destroyed.

In August, Defra officials and dozens of police officers forced their way on to Miss Macdonald's farm to take Geronimo away.

She said Avon and Somerset Police had questions to answer for 'facilitating murder' and accused Defra of 'bully boy tactics' that are 'frankly unforgivable'.

Then, early tests carried out in September were inconclusive on whether the animal had bovine tuberculosis.

No lesions were found on Geronimo's lungs or respiratory tract  the most common place they are exhibited in an animal with the disease.

However, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) said its vets had discovered a 'number of TB-like lesions' in the liver and lymph nodes.

Further tests have been carried out since to try to establish whether the animal in fact had the disease, including the developing of bacteriological cultures from tissue samples.

The results, which have been finalised in the past week, showed no traces of the disease.

In not confirming these results, Miss Macdonald accused Chief Veterinary Officer Christine Middlemiss of being 'a political stooge to cover up the Government's incompetence'.

She added: 'For nearly five years, we have asked the Government to retest, reconsider and review their Bovine TB policy, appealing directly to the Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, and Secretary of State, George Eustice.

'We offered Geronimo as part of a medical research project to develop a new bTB vaccine, we went through the courts multiple times to try and get to the truth, we offered for him to be retested, and at each turn we were blocked.

'Instead, I have been subjected to years of bullying and harassment by DEFRA. George Eustice has spent a ridiculous amount of British taxpayers' money and resources on trying to prove that this one imported alpaca had Bovine TB, when we knew all along that he didn't, and ultimately, he personally ordered for Geronimo to be condemned to an unjust death.'
A Nobel Peace Prize winner lashed out at US tech giants, accusing them of fuelling a 'toxic sludge' on social media as she received her award today.

Philippine journalist Maria Ressa, the co-founder of news website Rappler, which runs articles highly critical of president Rodrigo Duterte, used her speech to blast Silicon Valley for 'triggering the worst in us'.

She said big tech 'has allowed a virus of lies to infect each of us, pitting us against each other, bringing out our fears, anger and hate, and setting the stage for the rise of authoritarians and dictators around the world.'

Philippine journalist Maria Ressa launched a vitriolic attack on US tech giants as she received her Nobel Peace Prize today

She added: 'Our greatest need today is to transform that hate and violence, the toxic sludge that's coursing through our information ecosystem, prioritised by American internet companies that make more money by spreading that hate and triggering the worst in us.

'What happens on social media doesn't stay on social media. Online violence is real world violence.'

Ressa, the first person from the Philippines to win the coveted prize, shared the award with Russian journalist Dmitry Muratov, the editor-in-chief of the independent Novaya Gazeta, for their separate fights for freedom of expression.

She said facts and truth were at the heart of solving the biggest challenges facing society today.

'Without facts, you can't have truth. Without truth, you can't have trust. Without trust, we have no shared reality, no democracy, and it becomes impossible to deal with our world's existential problems: climate, coronavirus, the battle for truth.'

She shared the award with Russian journalist Dmitry Muratov (pictued), the editor-in-chief of the independent Novaya Gazeta

Ressa is the subject of seven lawsuits in her country that she says risk putting her in jail for 100 years.

Currently on parole, pending an appeal after being convicted of defamation last year, she needed to ask four courts for permission to travel and collect her Nobel in person.

In his speech, Muratov called for a minute of silence during the ceremony to honour journalists killed in the line of duty.

'Let us rise and honour my and Maria Ressa's reporter colleagues, who have given their lives for this profession, with a minute of silence, and let us give our support to those who suffer persecution,' Muratov said, adding: 'I want journalists to die old.'

'Yes, we growl and bite. Yes, we have sharp teeth and strong grip,' Muratov said of journalists. 'But we are the prerequisite for progress. We are the antidote against tyranny.'

Ressa is the co-founder of news website Rappler, which runs articles highly critical of president Rodrigo Duterte (pictured)

Muratov also used his speech to gave a dire warning about the potential for a war between Russia and Ukraine. A massive Russian troop buildup near Ukraine's border has led to Western diplomatic efforts to prevent an invasion, which the Kremlin has denied it is planning.

'In (the) heads of some crazy geopoliticians, a war between Russia and Ukraine is not something impossible any longer. But I know that wars end with identifying soldiers and exchanging prisoners,' Muratov said.

Together with the medals with the effigy of the prizes founder Alfred Nobel and diploma, came 10 million kronor (840,000) to be shared between them.

Ceremonies honouring all of the newest Nobel laureates are held in Oslo and Sweden's capital, Stockholm, on December 10, the anniversary of prize founder Alfred Nobel's death.

But due to the pandemic, the awards in physics, chemistry, medicine, literature and economics were presented during ceremonies in the laureates' hometowns.
The U.S. government has won the latest round of its bid to extradite WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange from the UK

Assange, 50, is wanted in America over an alleged conspiracy to obtain and disclose national defense information following WikiLeaks' publication of hundreds of thousands of leaked documents relating to the Afghanistan and Iraq wars.

Judge Lord Ian Burnett, sitting with Judge Lord Justice Timothy Holroyde, ruled in favor of the U.S. on Friday, following a two-day hearing in October.

A U.S. grand jury indicted Assange on 18 charges last year - 17 of which fall under the Espionage Act.

Assange's lawyers claim he faces up to 175 years in jail if convicted, while adding that he would be sentenced to a U.S. supermax prison.

In January, British district judge Vanessa Baraitser said that Assange should not be sent to the U.S., citing a real and 'oppressive' risk of suicide.

But the U.S. government appealed the ruling, insisting it had given diplomatic assurances that Assange would not face those strictest measures either pre-trial or post-conviction. It also suggested that Assange's sentence will probably be between four and six years.

The case will now be sent to British Home Secretary Priti Patel who will make the final decision on Assange's extradition, though he is expected to appeal the ruling. Julian's father, Richard Assange, has previously said that they would take the legal battle all the way to the Supreme Court if necessary.

Assange was supported at court Friday by his fiancee Stella Morris, 38, the lawyer whom he secretly fathered two children with while she helped fight against his extradition.

Speaking afterward, she said: 'We will appeal this decision at the earliest possible moment. How can it be fair, how can it be right, how can it be possible, to extradite Julian to the very country which plotted to kill him?'

Julian Assange, 50, is wanted in America over an alleged conspiracy to obtain and disclose national defense information

Supporters of Assange join his partner Stella Morris, 38, outside the High Court following the ruling

Stella Morris, partner of Julian Assange, speaks to journalists in front of the High Court after the ruling

She added: 'I want to emphasize that the High Court accepted all the medical evidence and the conclusions of the magistrate that if Julian is extradited and placed under extreme conditions of isolation it will drive him to take his own life, that extradition is oppressive.

'They incorporate the possibility of breaking those assurances in their very wording.

'Today, it's been almost a year since I stood outside court with our victory of the blocking of the extradition.

'To have the foremost publisher, journalist, of the past 50 years in a UK prison, accused of publishing the truth about war crimes, about CIA kill teams.

Morris, flanked by Assange supporters outside court, added: 'In fact every time we have hearings, we know more about the abusive nature, the criminal nature, of this case.

'This goes to the fundamentals of press freedom and democracy.

'We will fight. Every generation has an epic fight to fight and this is ours, because Julian represents the fundamentals of what it means to live in a free society, of what it means to have press freedom, of what it means for journalists to do their jobs without being afraid of spending the rest of their lives in prison.

'Julian represents all our liberties and all our rights.'

South African-born lawyer Morris fell in love with the controversial WikiLeaks founder five years ago while visiting him to work on a legal bid to halt the extraditions. The couple have been engaged since 2017.

Morris and Julian had two children Gabriel, three, and Max, one, while he was holed up in the Ecuadorian embassy in London, keeping their relationship and family a secret from the outside world until last September.

An emotional Morris said outside court: 'We will appeal this decision at the earliest possible moment. How can it be fair, how can it be right, how can it be possible, to extradite Julian to the very country which plotted to kill him?'

Stella Morris, partner of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, arrives at the Royal Courts of Justice following the appeal against Assange's extradition in London

The senior judges found that the previous judge had based her decision on the risk of Assange being held in highly restrictive prison conditions if extradited.

However, the US authorities later gave assurances that Assange would not face those strictest measures either pre-trial or post-conviction unless he committed an act in the future that required them.

Lord Burnett said: 'That risk is in our judgment excluded by the assurances which are offered. It follows that we are satisfied that, if the assurances had been before the judge, she would have answered the relevant question differently.'

Julian Assange will NOT be held in a supermax jail if he's extradited, US assures UK - so where will he be held? If Assange is extradited to the US he has now been assured that he will not got to a supermax jail such as ADX Florence in Colorado where Abu Hamza and other terrorists are held in solitary confinement after being brought there from the UK. One likely destination is Allenwood prison in Pennsylvania, a federal jail used by the US before to house extradited prisoners. These included Orpington's Christopher Tappin, 65, who pleaded guilty to selling missile batteries in a Texas court after a two year extradition battle in 2013. Allenwood also holds a number of hackers, including Andrew Auernheimer, better known by his pseudonym weev, who became a well known cyber criminal and Internet troll who exposed flaws in the systems of big businesses and published data about government officials  crimes similar to the ones Assange is accused of. It also holds a number of notorious murderers including James Eagan Holmes, an American mass murderer responsible for the 2012 Aurora, Colorado shooting in which he killed 12 people and injured 70 others. American officials have told the High Court in London that Assange could apply for a transfer to a jail in his native Australia, but his lawyers believe this could take up to ten years. He could be sent to the country's highest security prison, the Goulburn Correctional Centre in New South Wales, around two hours south-west of Sydney. It has the nickname 'Hell'. The male-only prison holds Australia's most dangerous murderers, robbers and terrorists including Matthew De Gruchy, who is serving 28 years for murdering his mother and two siblings. It also holds Australia's worst serial killer, Ivan Milat, who is serving seven life sentences in Goulburn's Supermax, and has caused prison authorities the most headaches, making several escape attempts, swallowing metal objects and chopping off a finger with a plastic knife in order to get outside to a hospital from which he hoped to escape, and staging a hunger strike after the prisons commissioner confiscated the sandwich maker and television from his cell. If Assange is sent to a low security jail it could be the Lotus Glen Correctional Centre is northern Queensland, close to his home town of Townsville. Advertisement

He added: 'That conclusion is sufficient to determine this appeal in the USA's favor.'

Lord Justice Holyrode said today: 'For the reasons given in the judgement which is today handed down, the court allowed the appeal on the grounds that the district judge, having decided that the threshold for discharge under Section 9 of the Extradition Act 2003 was met, ought to have notified the USA of her provisional view, to afford it the opportunity to offer assurances to the court.

'The USA has now provided the United Kingdom with a package of assurances which respond to the DJ's specific findings.'

The journalist's friends watched the handing down of the decision and left the court in silence.

In a statement following the High Court's ruling, WikiLeaks editor-in-chief Kristinn Hrafnsson said: 'Julian's life is once more under grave threat, and so is the right of journalists to publish material that governments and corporations find inconvenient.

'This is about the right of a free press to publish without being threatened by a bullying superpower.'

The High Court was previously told that blocking Assange's removal due to his mental health risks 'rewarding fugitives for their flight'.

The charges against Assange relate to the 2010 release by WikiLeaks of 500,000 secret files detailing aspects of military campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq and secret cables about Guantanamo Bay.

This included the notorious 'Collateral Murder' video, which showed the July 2007 killing by an American Apache helicopter crew of eleven civilians, including Reuters journalists Namir Noor-Eldeen, 22, and Saeed Chmagh, 40.

The video, recorded by the helicopter gunsight, showed the helicopter crew firing into a group of Iraqi civilian men in New Baghdad after being given permission from a commanding officer, killing 11 men and seriously wounding two children.

British lawyer James Lewis, for the US, said the district judge based her decision on Assange's 'intellectual ability to circumvent suicide preventative measures', which risked becoming a 'trump card' for anyone who wanted to oppose their extradition regardless of any resources the other state might have.

Lewis said that the four 'binding' diplomatic assurances made were a 'solemn matter' and 'are not dished out like smarties'.

These included that Assange would not be submitted to special administrative measures (SAMs) and detained at the ADX Florence Supermax jail if extradited and that the US would consent to Assange being transferred to Australia to serve any prison sentence he may be given.

The US authorities also argued Assange is well enough to be extradited, with Lewis telling the court his mental illness 'does not even come close' to being severe enough to prevent being sent overseas.

But lawyers representing Assange, who opposed the US's bid to overturn the extradition block, had argued that the assurances over the WikiLeaks founder's potential treatment were 'meaningless' and 'vague'.

British lawyer Edward Fitzgerald said the judge had produced a 'carefully considered and fully reasoned judgment', adding it was 'clear' she had 'scrupulously applied the test for oppression in cases of mental disorder'.

Fitzgerald later said that assurances not to impose SAMs on Assange or hold him at the ADX Florence Supermax jail pre-trial or post-conviction do not remove the risk of 'conditions of administrative isolation'.

The court also heard that Assange had faced a 'menacing, threatening and frightening' situation while under surveillance when he lived at the Ecuadorian embassy in London.

Fitzgerald argued in written submissions that claims of 'extreme measures of surveillance', alongside subsequent 'recent disclosures about CIA plans from the same period in time to seriously harm Julian Assange', justified earlier concerns for the safety and privacy of Morris.

South African-born lawyer Stella Morris (right) and Assange (left) began dating in 2015 after she helped work on a legal bid to halt his extraditions

Gabriel, four, and his brother Max, two, were conceived while Assange was hiding out in the Ecuadorian embassy in London

Supporters of Julian Assange comfort each other, outside the Royal Courts of Justice in London

It is expected that Assange will attempt to bring an appeal over this latest decision

Assange has been held in Belmarsh Prison since 2019 after he was carried out of the Ecuadorian embassy by police before being arrested for breaching his bail conditions.

He had entered the building in 2012 to avoid extradition to Sweden to face sex offence allegations, which he has always denied and were eventually dropped.

Lewis, for the US, previously told the Court of Appeal it should grant the extradition as the US government has given diplomatic assurances about Assange's treatment that fundamentally alter the nature of the case.

He also criticized Professor Michael Kopelman for not revealing Assange was in a relationship with Morris when he first gave evidence about Assange's mental state last year.

The US argued that Professor Kopelman's assessment should have been 'excluded or given little weight' because he allegedly knew of Assange's two secret children when he made his first mental health assessment - but withheld the information.

The US prosecution team insisted he 'misled' Judge Baraitser who then relied on it in her judgment where in January not to extradite the WikiLeaks founder to face espionage charges.

In the judgement today, Lord Chief Justice Ian Burnett said: 'With all respect to the judge, we cannot agree with her implicit finding that Professor Kopelman's failings could be excused or overlooked merely because his conduct could be viewed as 'an understandable human response'.

'Many people mislead courts for reasons which might be understandable but that does not excuse the behavior and we it is incompatible with the obligations of an expert witness to do so.

'Nor was it relevant to the judge's assessment of his evidence that she had learned of Mr. Assange's relationship with Ms. Morris before she read the medical evidence: it was no thanks to Professor Kopelman that she had done so.'
Kamala Harris' chief spokesperson and senior adviser Symone Sanders looked jubilant and carefree as she celebrated her 32nd birthday at a hookah lounge Thursday, days after it was revealed she would be leaving her job in the vice president's office.

Sanders posted a series of photos of her smiling, drinking and dancing with friends, and even one that noted how 'demanding' her job has been.

'When the friends you've neglected because your job is so demanding still think of you!' she posted in an Instagram story, along with a photo of flowers.

The vice president is facing a slew of reports of 'bullying' and dysfunction in her office, and four staffers have eyed the exits in the matter of a month.

Sanders appeared to celebrate her birthday with friends with dinner and champagne followed by drinks and hookah at Washington DC's Rosebar Lounge.

Sanders is pictured above smiling with a knife to cut her birthday cake and a bottle of champagne

Sanders posted a series of photos of her smiling, drinking and dancing with friends, and even one that noted how 'demanding' her job has been

Sanders appeared to celebrate her birthday with friends with dinner and champagne followed by drinks and hookah at Washington DC's Rosebar Lounge

A friend posted a photo of the affair: 'Out for @symonedsanders!!!'

Sanders posted a series of photos of her smiling, drinking and dancing with friends, and even one that noted how 'demanding' her job has been

Meanwhile, Politico Playbook reported that the vice president's office celebrated Sanders' birthday on Thursday with cupcakes. The outlet said it had been told the cupcakes were from Baked & Wired, a D.C. favorite, and there was a special German chocolate cupcake for Harris.

Last week Harris' office tried to tamp down rumors of low morale with cupcakes. Harris' personal aide, Opal Vadhan, posted a photo of the VP's team all smiling as they celebrated the birthday of Deputy Director of Advance, Juan Ortega.

'A favorite tradition in the @VP's office is celebrating staff birthdays with cupcakes! Happy Birthday, @JuanoBano!' she wrote.

Days later, aide David Gins took to Twitter to proclaim he 'absolutely' loves his job  amid reports that a quartet of aides are jumping ship.

He did so in a post that showed him typing away at a computer behind a large wooden desk  with a smiling picture of Harris and first gentleman Doug Emhoff in the background. It drew instant ridicule online.

'Hi. My name is David Gins. I work for Vice President Harris on behalf of the American people as Deputy Director for Operations and absolutely love my job. Just thought some of you should know,' the official wrote.

He posted an emoji with a broad smile on its face.

Sanders' exit follows news that Ashley Etienne, the office's communications director, is also leaving.

Sanders told the Washington Post that leaving was not due to unhappiness but that she had 'earned a break.'

'I'm getting married next year. I would like to plan my wedding. You know, I have earned a break. So me deciding that I'm leaving has absolutely nothing to do with my unhappiness. I feel honored every single day to work for the vice president who gave me an opportunity to be her spokesperson at the highest levels.'

Officials maintain Sanders and Etienne's departures were long-planned and not evidence of the reported turmoil.

Peter Velz, director of press operations, and Vince Evans, deputy director of the Office of Public Engagement and Intergovernmental Affairs, have both told others in the vice president's office that they are also leaving, administration officials told the Washington Post.

Even more staffers are considering leaving Vice President Kamala Harris' office after four aides announced their exit in two weeks

Last week Harris was branded a 'bully' who inflicted 'constant-soul destroying criticism' on her office staff in a damaging expose by the Washington Post.

The piece - a result of interviews with 18 people connected to the VP - also alleges that she'd fail to read briefings they'd prepared, only to turn on them if she was subsequently criticized for being unprepared.

'It's clear that you're not working with somebody who is willing to do the prep and the work,' a former colleague told the Washington Post.

'With Kamala you have to put up with a constant amount of soul-destroying criticism and also her own lack of confidence.'

People familiar with the office dynamics told Politico that even more 'key members of Harris' orbit' are 'eyeing the exits' and have expressed interest in leaving less than a year into her vice presidency.

Harris' poll numbers have tanked to the high 20s, with top Democrats said to be appalled at the idea of her running for president in 2024 should Joe Biden decide not to seek a second term.

Sanders is pictured above at a dinner table with friends

Sanders smiles with friends at Rosebar in Washington DC

Sanders is pictured holding a hookah pipe with her fiancee and another friend

Harris tamped down rumors of tension as she addressed Sanders' departure during a gaggle on her trip to North Carolina last week.

'I love Symone,' the vice president said. 'And I mean that sincerely.'

'I can't wait to see what she will do next. I know that it's been three years jumping on and off planes, going around the country ' Harris continued.

Sanders joined President Joe Biden's presidential campaign in 2019.

Harris declined to answer further questions on the wave of departures.

'Well, I told you how I feel about Symone,' Harris said.

Sanders is engaged to Shawn Townsend, who was known as D.C.'s 'Night Mayor' and worked as the city's Director of Nightlife & Culture until recently. As of July 2021, he works as a principal at Dewey Square Group, according to his Linkedin.

Sanders previously served as national press secretary to Bernie Sanders' campaign in 2016 and was a senior advisor to the Biden campaign.
The rookie Brooklyn Center Police officer who was training with Kim Potter on the day she fatally shot a black man during a traffic stop said the victim never reached for a gun, nor did he make any threatening gestures toward the officers.

Anthony Luckey made the shocking revelation as he testified on Wednesday as the state's second witness in the trial of Potter, who is facing charges of first- and second-degree manslaughter in the death of 20-year-old Daunte Wright in Minneapolis in April.

It came one day after jurors were shown never-before-seen dash cam footage of the moment on April 11 when Potter collapsed to the ground screaming 'I shot him, oh my God' after she had aimed her gun instead of her Taser at fleeing Wright.

Luckey said he heard Potter yell 'Taser! Taser! Taser!,' a warning officers are supposed to give so their partners have time to move away. But almost immediately he saw a flash and smoke and heard the bang of Potter's gun.

Luckey was so close to Potter when the shot was fired that the casing hit him in the face as it discharged. He said he still had hands on Wright when the bullet hit.

Prosecutors played distressing incident that also showed how Wright sped off in his car shortly after being shot, before coming to a stop when he hits another vehicle down the road.

Luckey's account ultimately undermined the defense's attempts to depict Potter's decision to reach for a weapon as a justifiable move to protect the two officers in the event that Wright attacked or injured them in an effort to flee the scene.

Potter, who resigned from the police force five days after the fatal shooting, claims she mistakenly grabbed her gun instead of a Taser during the traffic stop.

SCROLL DOWN FOR VIDEO

Pictured: Anthony Luckey, Kim Potter's trainee and witness to the shooting of Daunte Wright testifies on the first day of trial on Wednesday

Potter, a 26-year veteran in the force, claims she accidentally shot Daunte Wright (right) when she reached for her gun instead of her taser during a traffic stop over his expired plates in Brooklyn Center, Minnesota

The jury was shown body cam and dash cam footage of the dramatic moment Potter shot Wright dead after 'accidentally' pulling out her gun instead of her taser

Luckey was training with Potter when they pulled Wright over for a traffic stop before discovering he had an outstanding warrant for a weapons charge, he said during his testimony Wednesday.

Wright's mother, Katie Bryant, 43, also testified on Wednesday while his girlfriend, Alayna Albrecht-Payton, 20, who was present in the car when the deadly shooting took place, took the stand on Thursday.

In the footage shown at the trial, the stunned Potter can be heard shouting hysterically, 'I just shot him. I grabbed the wrong f**king gun' immediately after firing her weapon.

Body camera footage of the stop shows Wright breaking free and getting back into his car while the officers attempted to detain him.

The word 'Taser' can be heard being repeated several times before Wright is fatally shot.

During cross-examination, Luckey said he had an 'intuition' to pull Wright over due to the 'behavior of the vehicle,' claiming it had a right blinker on despite the vehicle being in a left-turn lane.

Luckey said Wright was pulled over in a 'high crime area' known for 'a lot of shootings.'

Matthew Frank, the assistant Minnesota Attorney General who also led the prosecution of ex-Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin, asked Luckey if Wright or his girlfriend ever reached for a weapon or made any threatening moves.

The officer testified that they did not.

Eldridge took the jury through the events from the moment Potter and her trainee, rookie officer Anthony Luckey first stopped Wright for having an air-freshener hanging from his rear view mirror and expired tags

A fellow cop is pictured on bodycam consoling Potter after Daunte Wright was shot and killed in Brooklyn Center, Minnesota

The jury was shown harrowing video of Wright's distraught mother, pictured, arriving on the scene following a Facetime call in which she had seen her apparently lifeless son in his car

Wright's girlfriend, who was in the car with him during the fatal traffic stop, recalled the shot being fired and the crash that followed as Wright struck another vehicle after driving off

Meanwhile, Albrecht-Payton took the stand at the start of the second day of the trial of Potter on Thursday, in testimony so emotional that the 20-year-old was at times almost unintelligible as she struggled to hold back her tears.

She told the court that she and Wright, both 20, were 'just at the start' of becoming boyfriend and girlfriend having only met a couple of weeks earlier over social media.

Later in the day the judge in the case, Regina Chu, slapped down a defense move for a mistrial. Potters lawyers argued unsuccessfully that prosecutors had spent the second day presenting 'prejudicial evidence that had no relevance to the central questions of the case.

But it was Albrecht-Payton who provided the day's most dramatic evidence. She was the one who answered Wright's mother Katie Bryant's frantic calls, turning the camera of her phone onto Bryant's dying son.

She told the court about that call, saying: 'It was his mom. She was asking what happened and I was delirious. I was screaming, 'They shot him they shot him!' and then I pointed the camera on him, and I'm so sorry I did that.

Albrecht-Payton told the court that she did not know what to do in the aftermath of the shooting. All she had in her head was images of CPR she had 'seen on the movies or on TV.'

'I didn't know what to do I just put my hands over his chest and tried to hold it and scream his name and have him talk to me,' she said.

'I kept saying, 'Daunte say something please, just talk to me,' and he just didn't. I know he wanted to. I replay that image in my head daily.'

In a brief cross-examination, defense counsel Earl Gray focused in on the hours before the traffic stop.

Albrecht-Payton admitted that she and Wright had split a joint at her mother's home that morning but said that it didn't have 'any disabling effects,' on either of them.

Albrecht-Payton said she did not recall if the car engine was off or on during the entire interaction with police.

She told Gray that she could only recall that 'his hands were never on the wheel, only his foot was on the gas.'

Former Brooklyn Center cop Kim Potter, 49 (center), sits with her legal team during day two of her trial on Thursday

Location of the stop and crash: Officers tried to arrest Wright after pulling him and his girlfriend over for a traffic violation at about 2pm on April 11 before realizing he had an outstanding warrant

Officer Daniel Irish, of Champlin Police Department, took the stand Thursday afternoon to tell jurors how he and other officers battled in vain to save Wright

Eldridge and Gray repeatedly circled back on this point in both of their rebuttals. Whether or not the car engine was running is a central part of the state's case that Potter's behavior was reckless and in breach of Brooklyn Center Police Department's own taser policy.

The second witness of the day gave testimony in an apparent bid by prosecutors to bolster their claims that Potter was reckless and endangered others with her use of force.

Patricia Lundgren was the 84-year-old driver of the car struck by Wright when he lost control of his car after he sped away having been shot.

Assistant Attorney General Matthew Frank questioned Lundgren, drawing out the sequence of the crash in which her husband, who was her passenger, was injured.

What Lundgren's testimony lacked in drama was made up for by pictures of her smashed-up Subaru which were shown to the jury.

Jurors were later shown disturbing footage of Wright being pulled from his car, at gun point, his head lolling back as he was carried unconscious and bleeding and placed on the ground.

The images of officers administering CPR were shown in court but not broadcast according to an earlier order from Judge Regina Chu.

She has also ruled that autopsy photographs will be shown to the jury but not seen via the trial livestream.

The footage was shown as Officer Daniel Irish, of Champlin Police Department, took the stand Thursday afternoon to tell jurors how he and other officers battled in vain to save Wright.

Irish told jurors that he had checked for a pulse on Wright's wrist and neck but found none.

Jurors saw bodycam footage of hysterical Albrecht-Payton immediately after Wright crashed his car after being shot

He placed a chest seal over the exit wound on Wright's side then held the young man's chin and kept his airways clear as a fellow officer administered CPR.

Defibrillator electrodes were applied to his chest and side to determine whether there was enough of a heartbeat to respond to a shock. There was not.

Ultimately, he said, a paramedic told officers to stop and pronounced Wright dead on the scene. Irish then helped get a sheet to cover up his body.

On audio of the bodycam footage a paramedic can clearly be heard saying, 'No pulse. Grab that sheet.'

Jurors were also shown several still images.

The pictures were not broadcast and were shown to the court despite the defense's objections.

They included a picture of Wright slumped at the wheel of his car, an image of officers attempting to save his life and one of a paramedic checking for a pulse.

Potter, a police officer for 26 years before she resigned five days after the shooting, has been charged on two counts; first-degree manslaughter predicated on reckless use/handling of a firearm and second-degree manslaughter.

With no criminal history, she is unlikely to receive the maximum sentence on either count should she be convicted. The maximum penalty for first degree manslaughter in Minnesota is 15 years but sentencing guidelines of 7-10 years mean she could be looking at less than half of that time behind bars.

But the prosecution has made it known that they intend to press for an upward departure from these sentencing guidelines and more prison time.
It sounded so unimaginably cruel, so repulsive, that for years it was dismissed as an urban myth.

Little wonder then that when hardened investigators looking for evidence to nail perverts like Josh Duggar finally viewed a copy of Daisys Destruction they broke down in tears and couldnt believe their eyes.

The warped movie depicts an 18-month-old infant being hung upside down, beaten and tortured in what is widely regarded by law enforcement as the most gruesome example to date of hurtcore  a sub-genre of child porn where perverts get off on seeing kids in pain.

It was just one of the horrifying titles reeled off by prosecutors this past week in the federal trial of former reality TV star Duggar, 33, who faces decades in jail for downloading a trove of outlawed material.

Hunched over a computer in the shabby office of his Arkansas car lot and hiding behind the anonymity afforded by the Dark Web, the dad-of-seven repeatedly searched for Daisys Destruction, according to the government.

Josh Duggar smiles in his booking photo after being found guilty of child porn charges in federal court in Fayetteville, Arkansas

Australian Peter Scully is serving a life sentence in the Philippines. He made the child 'hurtcore' video Daisy's Destruction that was for years thought to be an urgent legend

Josh Duggar, 33, (pictured with wife Anna on Thursday) was found guilty on two counts of downloading and possessing child pornography

Investigators didnt find the video itself but as they burrowed deep into his seized HP device they uncovered two telltale torrent files marked DD and DD1.

Likened to library index cards, torrent files contain a set of instructions that can be fed into peer-to-peer software to locate and download the real thing on the shadowy BitTorrent network.

When James Fottrell, Director of the FBIs High Technology Investigative Unit, punched the same file names into a government database of known child pornography his worst suspicions were confirmed.

DD is associated with Daisys Destruction. Its one of the most offensive video series that Im familiar with throughout my career, Fottrell told jurors at a federal courthouse in Fayetteville, Arkansas.

Daisys Destruction, he went on, depicted various depraved scenes including a distressed little girl child being tied upside down, beaten on the hands and feet and doused in hot wax.

The infant is screaming and crying, added Fottrell, whose extensive forensic analysis of the HP computer helped convict Duggar on charges of receipt and possession of child porn.

Josh Duggar, when he was an innocent young child

As the once clean-cut star of TLCs 19 Kids and Counting languishes in the Washington County Detention Center ahead of sentencing, DailyMail.com can reveal that the true story behind Daisys Destruction is every bit as disturbing as the abuse outlined by Fottrell.

The infamous video is the work of Australian predator Peter Scully, 58, who is currently serving a life sentence in the Philippines for human trafficking and raping minors.

Scully fled Melbourne in 2011 after he was implicated in a multi-million dollar real estate scam and settled in Mindanao, where authorities say he launched a worldwide pedophile ring offering encrypted pay-per-view streams of children being viciously beaten and molested.

Most of his victims were impoverished local kids procured from their parents for food or promises of work. Others were lured into his home by a harem of teenage prostitutes groomed to be his accomplices.

One told 60 Minutes Australia in 2015 how she brought two young cousins back to Scully who kept them in chains and dog collars. He later ordered them to dig graves in the basement and threatened to bury them unless they carried out depraved sex acts.

The series of videos comprising Daisys Destruction became Scullys highest grossing production, with VIP pedophiles from the US, UK and Germany paying $10,000 per viewing.

But as it grew in infamy in pedophile forums and chatrooms across the globe it also brought him into the crosshairs of law enforcement, triggering an investigation in the Netherlands which grew into a global manhunt.

Hunched over a computer in the shabby office of this now-defunct Arkansas car lot and hiding behind the anonymity afforded by the Dark Web, the dad-of-seven repeatedly searched for Daisys Destruction, according to the government

Josh and Anna Duggar, pictured with six of their seven young children, subscribed to a service in 2013 called Covenant Eyes that monitors adult internet use and would report 'objectionable material' to wife Anna, the court heard

Anna - who attended every day of trial with her husband - had remained composed throughout the hearing but started weeping as it ended. She left court alone after her husband was convicted and taken into police custody

Scully was tracked back to the Philippines where investigators located three of his victims, including the young child known as Daisy who was alive but deeply traumatized.

His face was blurred on film but investigators recognized the monsters Australian accent and arrested him in February 2015.

Three years later Scully was convicted of one count of human trafficking and five counts of rape by sexual assault, the first of 75 charges he is still being tried for.

Prosecutors said that many of the investigators, journalists and officials who watched and listened to his videos were reduced to tears.

Scully is also charged with the murder of an 11-year-old girl whom authorities suspect he strangled with a rope and buried under a house he rented.

They were the most devastating thing I have ever seen, Ruby Malanog, one of the lawyers prosecuting Scully, told the Sydney Morning Herald in 2016.

I cried when I was watching them ... in fact I feel like crying just now while talking about it. It was hard to believe what I was seeing ... that somebody could do those things to children.

Josh Duggar is put into a Sheriff's SUV to be taken away from court to be taken to jail after being convicted of child porn offenses

Duggar is spending his first nights in custody in the Washington County Detention Center in Fayetteville, Arkansas

Forensic computer experts in the Duggar case did not find evidence that he watched Daisys Destruction, just that he searched and sought out the torrent file associated with it.

However they did establish that he downloaded numerous other titles including Pedo Mom, Play Tot Sweetie and more than 60 porn images known as the Marissa series using a peer-to-peer application called uTorrent.

Duggars downfall began on May 14, 2019 when his system made the first of two digital handshakes, not with another pervert, but with Detective Amber Kalmer of the Little Rock Police Department.

Kalmer was using a specialist police program called Torrential Downpour which targets pedophiles by catching them in the act of sharing child pornography files online.

Kalmer tipped off Feds who traced the IP address to Duggar's used car dealership, Wholesale Motorcars, in Springdale, Arkansas, and seized his office HP desktop, iPhone and MacBook.

After volunteering to speak with agents - but without knowing anything about the nature of the probe - Duggar asked them: 'Has someone been downloading child pornography?'

When forensic scientists studied the HP they found someone had installed complicated software called a Linux partition which creates a second, independent operating system within the same device.

The partition could only be accessed by rebooting, hitting F9 and entering the password intel1988 - the same password used for Duggars internet banking and the Duggar family Instagram and Twitter accounts.

It provided the secret online space where he could search for, download, then delete child pornography, all behind the innocent veneer of a standard work computer with a wallpaper of his family.

Josh Duggar made his name as the oldest of Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar's 19 kids on the TLC show 19 Kids and Counting that ran for seven years before its 2015 cancellation

Defense lawyers contended that a former employee or hacker could have exploited Duggars lax internet security to hijack his computer and remotely download the material without anyone knowing.

But prosecutors branded their arguments a fantasy and used texts and images to place the accused at the keyboard; jurors unanimously agreed with them.

The court also heard from a close family friend this week who shed new light on the molestation scandal that engulfed the Duggars in 2015, tarnishing their wholesome image and leading to the cancellation of their hit TLC show.

Bobye Holt choked back tears as she revealed how Duggar had confessed at age 15 to groping and penetrating his younger sisters during bible time and while they slept.

The defense fought to exclude her testimony but the judge ultimately agreed that it provided important clues about his sinister appetite for minors.

Duggar, the eldest of Jim Bob and Michelle Duggars nine daughters and ten sons, will be sentenced in the new year and faces up to 20 years in jail and a fine of $250,000 on each of two counts.

His lawyers say he will appeal the verdicts.

Jurors deliberated for six hours before returning guilty verdicts on Thursday on charges of possessing child pornography and receipt of child pornography, both punishable by 20 years in jail and a $250,000 fine.

Duggar glanced anxiously toward his wife Anna and dad Jim Bob but showed little emotion as each juror was asked individually to reaffirm their decision.

The once clean-cut Christian star of 19 Kids and Counting finally broke down in tears, however, as marshals placed him in handcuffs but they allowed him to linger for a few moments beside his family in the public gallery.

'I love you', he mouthed towards Anna, also 33, who remained composed throughout the brief hearing before burying her head in a supporter's arms and weeping as it ended.
Benjamin Netanyahu defended his congratulatory message to Joe Biden on the 2020 presidential election in the wake of Donald Trump's criticism, saying it was 'important' for him to do so.

The former Israeli prime minister spoke of his gratitude for all Trump did for Israel after the former president slammed him for his message to Biden, saying 'f*** him.'

'I highly appreciate President Trumps big contribution to Israel and its security. I also appreciate the importance of the strong alliance between Israel and the U.S. and therefore it was important for me to congratulate the incoming President,' Netanyahu said in a statement to Axios.

Trump railed against Netanyahu in an interview that ran in the news outlet, calling him disloyal and ungrateful after the former PM congratulated his election rival for the November 2020 victory.

'I haven't spoken to him since. F*** him,' Trump said.

Trump and Netanyahu touted their close relationship and mutual admiration when Trump was president and Netanyahu was Israeli prime minister, but Trump said he values 'loyalty' and he claimed Netanyahu was disloyal for congratulating Biden.

'I liked Bibi. I still like Bibi. But I also like loyalty. The first person to congratulate Biden was Bibi. And not only did he congratulate him, he did it on tape,' Trump told Axios, referring to Netanyahu by his nickname.

Netanyahu was not the first world leader to congratulate Biden and he waited more than 12 hours after the U.S. networks called the election to send his felicitations.

He did post his congratulations on Twitter and in a video on November 8, 2020, the day after the race had been called in Biden's favor. In the post, he and Biden have had a 'long & warm' personal relationship for almost 40 years and sees him as 'a great friend of Israel' and looks forward to working together.

'Bibi could have stayed quiet. He has made a terrible mistake,' Trump said.

Donald Trump slammed his former ally Benjamin Netanyahu for congratulating Joe Biden on winning last year's presidential election, saying 'f*** him - the two men are seen together at the White House on September 15, 2020

Trump claimed he did more to help Israel than any one else

Trump has continued to push the lie that he was the actual winner of the 2020 election.

He accused the former Israeli leader of disloyalty, saying he had helped Netanyahu in his own elections by reversing decades of U.S. policy and supporting Israel's claims over the Golan Heights, captured from Syria during a war in 1967.

In a separate Twitter post at the time, Netanyahu thanked Trump 'for the friendship you have shown the state of Israel and me personally, for recognizing Jerusalem and the Golan, for standing up to Iran, for the historic peace accords and for bringing the American-Israeli alliance to unprecedented heights.'

Trump, however, argued to Axios that Russian President Vladimir Putin and Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro waited to congratulate Biden. For months after the election was called, the Trump campaign sued in various states and demanded recounts - the results of which showed Biden's victory.

'There was no one who did more for Netanyahu than me. There was no one who did for Israel more than I did. And the first person to run to greet Joe Biden was Netanyahu,' Trump complained.

'And not only did he congratulate him -- he did it in a video. If you look at the leaders of other countries - like Brazil - he waited months. Putin. Many other leaders. Mexico. All of them also felt that the election was over. But they, too, were waiting. No one did more than me for Bibi. Money too. We gave them a lot of money and gave them soldiers. We did everything,' he said.

Netanyahu was replaced as prime minister last summer after he was unable to form a governing majority in the wake of four hard-fought elections in less than two years.

He is waging a continuous campaign to win back the Prime Minister's office while on trial for corruption.

The Trump administration took unprecedented steps to support Israel, including dropping objections to its settlements in the occupied West Bank and recognizing Jerusalem as its capital. After proposing a Mideast plan that was adamantly rejected by the Palestinians, the administration brokered normalization agreements between Israel and four Arab states.

Trump said his decision to recognize Israel's annexation of the Golan Heights, which it captured from Syria in the 1967 war, helped Netanyahu ahead of Israeli elections in April 2019.

'I did it right before the election, which helped him (Netanyahu) a lot,' Trump told Israeli journalist Barak Ravid for his forthcoming book 'Trump's Peace: The Abraham Accords and the Reshaping of the Middle East.'

The Trump administration also withdrew from the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, to which Israel had been strongly opposed. After he re-imposed U.S. sanctions that had been lifted under the deal, Iran began publicly exceeding the limits it had set on its nuclear program. Biden is now working with world powers to try to restore the agreement.

'Ill tell you what - had I not come along I think Israel was going to be destroyed,' Trump said in the remarks published by the Yediot Aharonot newspaper. 'I think Israel would have been destroyed maybe by now.'
Rep. Brett Guthrie (R-KY) said he was experiencing 'mild symptoms' of COVID-19 after managing a debate on the House floor for several hours on Wednesday afternoon.

'Out of an abundance of caution, I took a COVID-19 test, and it came back positive today,' the 57-year-old said.

'I am glad I decided to get fully vaccinated, and I am experiencing mild symptoms.

'My offices in Kentucky's Second District and D.C. will stay open to assist constituents.'

Guthrie is the most senior Republican on the House Committee on Energy and Commerces Health Subcommittee and had been managing a debate on bills related to the treatment of diseases.

House records show that Guthrie cast floor votes by proxy on Wednesday night, according to The Hill.

Rep Brett Guthrie announced he had tested positive for COVID-19 on Wednesday evening shortly after appearing on the floor of the House

Guthrie received his first dose of the vaccine in December 2020. 'I took it for the purpose of illustrating that I find it extremely safe, extremely effective, and I have no concerns about taking the vaccine,' he said at the time

On Wednesday evening he revealed he was experiencing mild symptoms

The congressional news outlet's tally show he is one of at least 19 members of Congress - 15 in the House and four in the Senate - who have tested positive for COVID-19 in recent months despite being vaccinated.

It comes as the number of cases around the country surge and the world grapples with the impact of the new Omicron variant.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says the variant has been detected in 19 U.S. states although the Delta variant remains the most common.

Overall the average number of daily cases being reported has risen from 95,000 at the end of November to 119,000 a day this week.

Health officials continue to urge those eligible to have a booster vaccination, and the unvaccinated to get their shots.

Dr. Rochelle Walensky, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, told a news briefing: 'We must act together, in this moment, to address the impact of the current cases we are seeing, which are largely Delta, and to prepare ourselves for the possibility of more Omicron.'

Pfizer's boss says FOURTH Covid jab will be needed next winter but warns Omicron's spread could see top-up vaccine required SOONER than 12 months after third dose

Pfizer boss Dr Albert Bourla said: 'I think we will need the fourth dose. Ive said that multiple times. With the previous [variants], I was projecting that that will be on 12 months after the third dose. With Omicron, we need to wait and see because we have very little information. We may need it faster'

The boss of Pfizer confirmed that a fourth Covid jab will be needed to deal with Omicron and warned it will likely be required within a matter of months.

Dr Albert Bourla, chief executive of the pharmaceutical giant, has for weeks been floating the idea of annual boosters, even before concerns about the new super mutant variant were raised.

Now the Pfizer CEO claims vulnerable people might need two boosters in the same year to protect them against the highly-evolved variant which is thought to make vaccines significantly weaker at preventing infection, especially just two doses.

Dr Bourla said that three doses 'will give very good protection' against Covid this winter but scientists are unsure how fast immunity wanes.

He told CNBC: 'I think we will need the fourth dose. Ive said that multiple times.

'With the previous [variants], I was projecting that that will be on 12 months after the third dose. With Omicron, we need to wait and see because we have very little information. We may need it faster.'

Full vaxxed is TRIPLE vaxxed says Fauci - while also saying a FOURTH Covid vaccine dose may be needed later as well Dr Anthony Fauci, the US's top infectious disease expert, said on Wednesday that the definition of 'fully vaccinated' in America will eventually change to require a booster dose as well. The director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease (NIAID) said that the change is unlikely to happen in the next week, but he expects it to happen at some point in the future. He also said the health officials are already investigating the potential need for a fourth dose of the vaccine after people receive their boosters. Fauci's statements come the same day that Pfizer announced that people who had received its jab require a Covid booster shot to keep the same level of protection against the Omicron variant - and that those who have only received two doses are now at risk of a breakthrough infection. The variant, which was discovered last month by South African health officials, has already managed to spread around the world, being sequenced 2,324 times in 61 countries across the world. Officials around the world are instituting measures to prevent the spread of the new variant, which could be the most infectious yet and can evade protection provided by the Covid vaccines. Advertisement

It comes after Pfizer yesterday warned two doses of its vaccine won't prevent Omicron infections but 'may still offer protection against severe disease'. Independent scientists believe the same will be the case for other vaccines, such as AstraZeneca's.

But preliminary lab tests showed a third Pfizer vaccine triggers a 'more robust' antibody response to Omicron, similar to two doses against previous strains of Covid  suggesting the boosters will beat the mutant strain.

The company  which has earned billions through the pandemic after making an effective jab  also revealed millions of doses of a new version of its vaccine tailored to the mutant strain won't be ready until March if the current crop of jabs fail in the real world.

It comes as Dr Anthony Fauci, the US's top infectious disease expert, today said the definition of 'fully vaccinated' in America will change to require a booster dose as well. Health officials are already investigating the potential need for a fourth dose of the vaccine after people receive their boosters, he said.

Meanwhile, two separate studies released on Wednesday showed vaccines appear to work better than expected against Omicron.

Dr Bourla said a third dose 'will give very good protection' and allow countries to 'go without concerns through the winter'

'I think we should be in very good safe to control the winter based on what we say right now,' Dr Bourla said.

'And then if there is a need for something different better, we will be able to have in months,' he added.

His comments come after Pfizer announced results yesterday based on a laboratory study using the blood of 20 people, who were either double-jabbed three weeks earlier or triple-jabbed one month earlier with its vaccine, which Britain is using for its booster programme.

The results showed the third dose may provide a 'more robust protection', triggering a 25-fold jump in antibody levels.

Pfizer, which manufactured the jab with German partner firm BioNTech, said the levels equated to a 'high efficacy' based on data against other variants.

A booster jab offered a boost in antibody levels that are 'comparable to those observed' for the original Wuhan virus after two doses, the company said.

The level of neutralising antibodies against Omicron after three jabs was 154, compared to 155 against the Wuhan strain after two jabs.

But the figure was 60 per cent lower than levels seen for three doses against Delta.

Experts cautioned that a drop in antibody levels doesn't necessarily translate into vaccine efficacy, but merely gives an indicator as to what can be expected
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Boris and Carrie Johnson's son Wilfred is thought to be meeting his newborn sister in hospital today after the 20-month-old boy was carried out of Downing Street by the best friend of the Prime Minister's wife.

The Prime Minister, who was present at a London hospital yesterday throughout the birth of what is believed to be at least his seventh child, was himself also seen leaving No10 today holding a pink gift bag emblazoned with the words: 'Hello Baby Girl'.

Mrs Johnson's friend Nimco Ali, who is a Home Office adviser on tackling violence against women and girls, was photographed carrying Wilf out of the gates of Number 10 alongside a police officer and another young woman.

Wilf was seen with a huge mop of white-blond hair just like his father, under a cute orange and red bobble hat, an orange animal backpack and a blue and red coat. He was also wearing blue jeans and tiny red boots.

It comes after Mrs Johnson gave birth to her second child with her husband after a tumultuous 24 hours for the PM, with the couple announcing the birth of a 'healthy baby girl' at a London hospital yesterday morning.

Women's rights campaigner Miss Ali, 38, is a close friend of Mrs Johnson who formed a 'childcare bubble' with the couple last Christmas and stayed with them while looking after Wilf, with No10 insisting the rules were followed.

Miss Ali is also an author, podcast host and chief executive of The Five Foundation, a London-based organisation which campaigns towards the elimination of female genital mutilation. She received an OBE for her activism in 2019, and her book 'What Were Told Not To Talk About But Were Going To Anyway' was published the same year.

His visit to see his third wife today comes at the end of an extraordinary week for the Prime Minister in which he:

Announced England is entering Plan B measures to combat the spread of the Omicron variant of coronavirus;

Battled the fallout of an allegedly rule-breaking No10 Christmas party last year that saw a senior aide resign;

Saw the Conservatives fined 17,800 over a donation to help cover refurbishments to his Downing Street flat;

Endured his former chief advisor Dominic Cummings saying he 'got a wrong'un pregnant' in Mrs Johnson.

Mr Johnson is seen leaving Downing Street this afternoon holding a pink gift bag emblazoned with the words: 'Hello Baby Girl'

Nimco Ali, a Home Office adviser, is pictured walking out of No10 in London today carrying 20-month-old Wilfred Johnson

Nimco Ali is photographed this afternoon carrying Wilfred Johnson out of the gates of 10 Downing Street in London

A spokesman for Mr and Mrs Johnson said yesterday: 'Both mother and daughter are doing very well. The couple would like to thank the brilliant NHS maternity team for all their care and support.'

The couple announced they were expecting their second child together at the end of July, as the 33-year-old environmental campaigner spoke of having a miscarriage earlier in the year.

Dominic Cummings says Boris 'got a wrong'un pregnant' and she 'wants to control the UK via him' in scathing attack blaming Carrie Johnson for the PM's 'disaster' Dominic Cummings today declared Boris Johnson 'got a wrong'un pregnant' in Carrie Johnson who he claims 'wants to control the country' via her husband. The Prime Minister's former chief aide (right), who left Downing Street last December after losing a power struggle with Mrs Johnson, claimed the decision to marry Carrie was an 'inevitable disaster'. His extraordinary attack on the Prime Minister's wife came as she remained in hospital just 24 hours after giving birth to a baby girl - believed to be Mr Johnson's seventh child. In a Q&A on his blog, where he urged subscribers to 'ask me anything', he said of Boris: 'He's a shambles but the shambles has been made worse by hooking up with a wrong un [Carrie Johnson] who wants to control the country via him. He got a wrong un pregnant, listened to her insane advice/screaming, and went into a flat spin'. He said Mr Johnson 'hasn't heard the last' of the Christmas party scandal, claiming there will be pictures proving it took place, and said that he knew teenagers who would be better at the job than the Prime Minister. Advertisement

The birth of a sister for Wilf came the morning after the Prime Minister announced England is entering Plan B to combat the spread of the Omicron variant of coronavirus.

As well as facing Tory anger over the latest restrictions, Mr Johnson was battling the fallout of an allegedly rule-breaking No10 Christmas party last year which forced the resignation of senior Government aide Allegra Stratton.

The Prime Minister's former chief adviser Dominic Cummings asked on social media earlier this week whether the Cabinet Secretary's investigation into the Downing Street pre-Christmas bash would also look into the 'flat party on Fri 13 Nov' as well as 'the other flat parties, and the flat's 'bubble' policy'.

The mention of the 'bubble' is thought to refer to the decision to allow Miss Ali at No10 over the festive period 'to help support and look after' baby Wilf.

Asked during Prime Minister's Questions on Wednesday if a party took place on that date, Boris Johnson said: 'No, but I'm sure that whatever happened the guidance was followed and the rules were followed at all times.'

Also yesterday morning, the Conservatives were fined 17,800 over a controversial donation which helped cover the lavish refurbishments to the couple's Downing Street flat.

The pair were photographed walking into the hospital, reportedly at 7.40am. Mr Johnson will spend some time with his family, although it appears he is unlikely to take an extended period of paternity leave.

The Prime Minister's official spokesman said: 'I think there's a recognition the Prime Minister has a unique role and this is a particularly challenging time for the country, and the Prime Minister will continue to lead, as the public would expect, while making time for his family.'

Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer sent his congratulations to the couple on the arrival of their baby, and added: 'Wishing your family health and happiness.'

The new arrival means Mr Johnson has at least seven children, although he has frequently obfuscated when asked exactly how many.

Wilfred Lawrie Nicholas Johnson was born in April last year and was named in partly in tribute to two doctors, Nick Hart and Nick Price, who helped saved the Prime Minister's life when he was admitted to hospital with Covid-19 earlier that month.

The couple married during a secretly-planned wedding at Westminster Cathedral in May.

Mr Johnson, 57, has four children with his barrister ex-wife Marina Wheeler.

It emerged during a court hearing in 2013 that he had fathered a daughter during an affair when he was London mayor in 2009.

Boris Johnson (left) leaves a London NHS hospital at 11.45am yesterday after his wife Carrie gave birth to a baby girl - their second - and his seventh child. At 7.40am yesterday (right), Carrie Johnson was pictured arriving before she gave birth

The PM, wearing a mask and a trademark wooly hat, was flanked by two police officers as he followed Carrie in yesterday

The PM had Wilfred with his third wife Carrie Johnson, pictured at the G7 summit in Cornwall in June

The couple (pictured in October) moved into No10 when Mr Johnson became Tory leader and Prime Minister in July 2019

At a Downing Street press conference on Wednesday night, the PM declared that people should once again work from home

Seven or eight.... How many children does Boris Johnson REALLY have? The Prime Minister and Marina Wheeler, who separated in 2018, have four children together: Lara Lettice, 26, Milo Arthur, 24, Cassia Peaches, 22, and Theodore Apollo, 20. He also has a fifth child, Stephanie Macintyre, with art consultant Helen Macintyre (right). Ms Macintyre's daughter is allegedly one of two children he may have fathered as a result of an affair. The Appeal Court ruled in 2013 that the public had a right to know that he had fathered a daughter during an adulterous liaison while Mayor of London in 2009 - but also mentioned the possibility of a second baby. Lara attended Bedales school - which costs 33,000-a-year - in Hampshire and went on to read Latin at St Andrews University. She reportedly branded her father a 'selfish b******' after his split with her mother. Milo went to 27,000-a-year Westminster School and can speak Arabic, Russian and French, The Mirror reports. Cassia went to Highgate School - which costs 18,000 per year - and Theodore went to Cambridge University. Boris' son Wilf, born on April 29, 2020, is from his relationship with new wife Carrie, who lives with him in Downing Street. His second baby with Carrie was born yesterday, his seventh child officially. Advertisement

In October Boris and Carrie Johnson insisted they did not break Covid rules at Christmas because Miss Ali who stayed with them was looking after their son.

The couple initially insisted they had broken no rules and officials soon followed that up by saying this was because they had formed a 'childcare bubble' with Miss Ali.

However this explanation later drew fresh scrutiny because such an arrangement was allowed only in very specific circumstances.

Guidance in place at the time said: 'You can only use a childcare bubble for childcare. You cannot use a childcare bubble to mix with another household for other reasons.'

Published on the government website, special guidance further warned that a childcare bubble was not appropriate 'if you want to meet socially'.

'You can continue to use a childcare bubble on December 25 but only if reasonably necessary for the purposes of childcare and where there are no reasonable alternatives,' it added.

London was under Tier 4 restrictions last Christmas, banning mixing indoors with other households, except in support and childcare bubbles.

But a Downing Street spokesman insisted that the Prime Minister and Mrs Johnson followed the coronavirus rules at all times.

He added: 'The rules made clear you could continue to use a childcare bubble at Christmas itself, including in a Tier 4 area.'

Miss Ali tweeted at the time that she had faced 'two days of racist and disgusting tweets' because of 'untrue' stories about what happened.

'No, I did not break any rules but you all knew that and just wanted a reason to tweet hate,' said the political campaigner.

In January this year it was reported that Mr and Mrs Johnson had formed a 'support bubble' with her mother Josephine McAfee so she could help look after Wilfr.

Under the Covid rules, people could have both a childcare bubble and a support bubble simultaneously. No10 said Mrs Johnson's mother had not joined them in Downing Street at Christmas.

The couple moved into No10 when Mr Johnson became Tory leader and Prime Minister in July 2019. The Johnsons announced their engagement in February last year and Wilfr was born a few months later in April.

The childcare bubble rules were open to anyone living in a household with a child aged under 14, allowing friends or family from one other household to provide help.
Six Egyptians have been arrested in Sicily after 10 underage girls were raped daily at a migrant reception centre, police said.

Police said the victims are mainly from Egypt and Tunisia and are all minors who were in Covid quarantine.

Five of the arrested Egyptians are under 18 while one is an adult and they have been held on suspicion of kidnap and rape.

Six Egyptians have been arrested in Sicily after 10 underage girls were raped daily at a migrant reception centre, police said. Pictured: migrants arrive in Sicily (file image)

The 'rape gang' raided the girls' quarters at the Villa Sikania Centre where they carried out the brutal attacks, police said.

The alleged victims said the gang went to the large reception rooms in the middle of the night almost daily where they forced the young girls to perform sexual acts.

They then threatened and blackmailed them to keep quite about the abuse, it has been claimed.

Migrants at the reception centre are undergoing Covid quarantine upon their entry to Sicily.

Police said the victims are mainly from Egypt and Tunisia and are all minors who were in Covid quarantine. Pictured: a migrant boat is anchored off Sicily (file image)

Police are continuing the investigation to find other potential suspects after the alleged abuse was brought to light.

They said the probe could highlight 'other episodes of sexual violence and crimes against personal freedom and property'.

Villa Sikania is managed by a private association and has been used as a process centre for migrants for a number of years.

The centre has previously seen riots, migrants escaping during quarantine and reports of widespread sexual promiscuity, according to La Stampa.
Are you the party who donated the food? Or have you given or received a generous donation? Email l.dollimore.mol@mailonline.co.uk Advertisement

A group forced to cancel their Christmas party because of Omicron has won praise online after paying for the food anyway and donating it to a local homeless charity.

The unsung heroes have been lauded by Manchester locals and the restaurant's marketing manager, who sent them 'massive love' on Twitter.

It comes as the hospitality industry is being hit hard by a wave of cancellations amid fears of the new Covid variant, and after prime minister Boris Johnson announced the country would be adopting 'Plan B' level restrictions at a press conference this week.

And Brits elsewhere havent lost their Christmas spirit as companies in London also donated food they would have eaten at parties to homeless kitchens.

Fiona King, who works for the Three Little Words bar and restaurant in Manchester city centre, said: 'Cancellations are absolutely s***e, but MASSIVE love to the party that cancelled, then still paid for their pre-ordered food, which they collected and donated to a homeless kitchen.'

She added: 'Don't cancel. But if you do, here's how to do it.'

The unknown customers were heaped with praise from social media users, who branded the tale 'a true Christmas story' and 'the kind of cancel culture we need.'

Fiona King, who works for the Three Little Words bar and restaurant in Manchester city centre (pictured), said: 'Cancellations are absolutely s***e, but MASSIVE love to the party that cancelled, then still paid for their pre-ordered food, which they collected and donated to a homeless kitchen'

It comes as the hospitality industry is being hit hard by a wave of cancellations amid fears of the new Covid variant, and after prime minister Boris Johnson announced the country would be adopting 'Plan B' level restrictions at a press conference this week (Pictured: Three Little Words, Manchester)

Marketing manager Ms King sends 'massive love' to unsung heroes who paid for their cancelled Christmas party

One wrote: 'What a brilliant gesture that ensures the business didn't lose out, that the hungry were fed and that keeping safe was thought about.

'A true Christmas story, well done.'

Another wrote: 'Wow, wow, wow, this is the kind of news I want to wake up to, off to work feeling a little more warm and fuzzy now.'

One quipped: 'This is the cancel culture we want to see', as others said they hoped the action would kickstart a trend.

It comes Christmas parties and events are being cancelled in venues across the country in what is an essential time of year for the industry.

But would-be diners across the country are staying true to the season's meaning and are donating food they would have eaten to local kitchens - or donating the money they would have spent.

Food For All in London has had six such offers in the past two days alone.

Director for the kitchen Peter O'Grady, 59, told Mail Online: 'We're getting lots of offers of food from people who are cancelling their Christmas events and it's great and always welcome.

'We are serving around 2,500 meals every day so we take what we can.

'Many restaurants now find themselves with leftover stock due to cancellations and they are asking us to come and visit them and are letting us raid their fridges.'

A nearby law firm's catering department will also be donating meals after much of the workforce will be ordered to work from home from Monday following the announcement of the PM's Plan B.

A Hogan Lovells employee told Mail Online: 'We're also going to offer a couple of staff members to help Food For All prepare their meals.

Food For All in City of London has also received several offers of food stemming from cancelled Christmas parties (Pictured: Volunteers at Food For All, with director Peter O'Grady, second from left)

'They do great work and it's important to support local charity.'

It comes after Boris Johnson said office Christmas parties should still go ahead - despite bringing back tougher restrictions from Monday.

At a Downing St press conference Wednesday the Prime Minister rejected the idea that office workers must scrap their festive dos because of creeping infection numbers.

With city workers already in Christmas party season, a reporter from The Telegraph asked the Prime Minister if his message to companies was to cancel office parties.

The PM replied: 'No in my view they should not be (cancelled) We think that its ok currently on what we can see to keep going with Christmas parties but obviously everybody should exercise due caution.

'Have ventilation, wash your hands, get a test before you go - a sensible thing to do - to give everybody else at the party the confidence to know theyre going to be meeting someone who is not contagious.

'Those are simple things that people can do.'

Of the companies who are going ahead with their dos, most are turning instead to smaller departmental gatherings as the pandemic threatens the festive season for a second year.

Law firm Osborne Clarke in London said it was now opting for 'low key festivities' rather than 'big shindigs'.

The firm's managing partner Ray Berg told MailOnline: 'We asked our people and their preference is for local team-level celebrations, so we're opting for low key festivities rather than big shindigs this year.

Chief executive of UK Hospitality Kate Nicholls says businesses have 'invested heavily' in making their venues safe for the public

'Given the emergence of a new variant I think we made the right call, no one wants to have a second lockdown Christmas.'

And while the UK's hospitality sector said businesses recovering from the pandemic had 'invested heavily' in making their venues safe for the public with measures including ventilation, hygiene and sanitation, events planners said the Omicron variant was causing concern.

One senior events planner in London said they were now 'on the cusp' of clients stalling with balance payments for New Year's parties.

They said: 'I definitely sense that we're on the cusp of people stalling with balance payments for New Year parties now. By Friday I think it'll be panic stations for corporations who are planning bashes.'

Elsewhere the UK chair of the accounting group EY said they would not be hosting any Christmas parties this year amid fears of hosting festive bashes that would turn into super spreader events.

Hywel Ball, UK chair of the company, told The Financial Times: 'We used to have big London office parties with thousands [of people] but we're not doing any of that.'

And chief executive of the catering group Compass, Dominic Blakemore, said that companies were 'reluctant to fully commit to [Christmas bookings] at this point.'

But a spokesperson for the pub chain Mitchells & Butlers, said they had 'no plans' to make any changes and will instead have Covid protocols in place.

They told MailOnline: 'We are excited to be heading into the busy festive period and celebrating Christmas with our guests and colleagues.

'We have no plans to make any changes to our Christmas party plans but we will have Covid protocols in place and continue to monitor Government guidance to ensure we maintain a safe environment for everyone.'

The emergence of the new Omicron variant has forced companies to cancel large parties in favour of smaller department gatherings. (Stock image)

And a spokesperson for health insurance provider Aviva said: 'Christmas events are going ahead as planned, and with sensible precautions in place such as taking a lateral flow test on the morning of the event.'

Chief executive for UK Hospitality, Kate Nicholls, told MailOnline: 'We support the Government's proportionate response to the new variant, which strikes the right balance between swift action to protect health while avoiding the significant economic, social and mental health harms associated with broader restrictions.

'It is important to remember that hospitality operators have invested significantly to ensure the safety of staff and customers, focusing on better ventilation, hygiene and sanitation, measures which SAGE recommend are the most effective measures of infection control.

'This means hospitality venues will be far safer places to socialise with family and friends this Christmas than at home.

'However despite this, the chilling talk of Plan B is already being felt across hospitality as bookings are cancelled and plans changed.

'There is no doubt that this will have a damaging effect on businesses, just as they head into their key trading period.

'This all comes at a critical time for the sector, as costs are rising across the board, supply chain issues continue, chronic labour shortages show no sign of easing and next year will see a return of 20% VAT rate.'
'I wasn't there to sell my art,' Hunter Biden says of his LA gallery opening

Hunter Biden is defending his glitzy art exhibition where his paintings were listed at upwards of $500,000  telling an interviewer he was thrilled because 'I wasn't there to sell my art.'

The president's son opens up in an interview with Vanity Fair, where the gallery owner who helped nurture his new career and arrange showings revealed he has brought in friends as well as big-name collectors at night for special evening viewings to avoid press scrutiny.

'If I say who, all of a sudden the right-wing press is going to run with it, and I would be doing these people a disservice,' said New York gallery owner Georges Berges.

Wrote Vanity Fair: 'Berges snuck in some of his big-name collectors and art-world friends who wanted to view the exhibit in New Yorkbut not be photographedafter dark, sending his staff home and keeping the lights dim so the shutterbugs would go home.'

The identities of those who purchase the paintings by the president's son aren't made public and are not told to the artist, in a process set up by the White House with Berges meant to avoid the appearance of conflict  though some ethics experts said it raises serious red flags.

The highly sympathetic profile does mention the ethical concerns of people by high prices to the president's son in an industry notorious for money laundering. It reports that Berges got death threats and had to hire security while organizing 'The Journey Home' art shows for Hunter.

'It is crazier than I ever could have imagined. Everyone has lost their minds,' he said.

Berges would not confirm the prices that Hunter's work sold for.

'We are overachieving,' he says.

Hunter claims about 95 per cent of the people at his opening were people he knew. They included such celebrities as Moby, graphic artist Shepard Fairey  who designed the famous Obama 'Hope' poster  and Sugar Ray Leonard.

Fairey discussed the prices Hunter was charging in the context of far more established artists.

'There are plenty of artists that have been making work for decades whose work I like less than what I saw at Hunter Bidens show,' he said.

Gallery owner Geroge Berges says he and Hunter are 'overachieving' in sales

Some works have listed above $300,000, according to the report

Hunter's artistic process sometimes involves using alcohol ink on top of Japanese Yupo paper

His work includes abstractions and figurative pieces

'When I looked at some of the prices on the work, I thought, There are a lot of very established artists whose work isnt this expensive, but it is so subjective that art pricing is not something that theres some sort of easy evaluation for,' Fairey said after the LA show. 'And so I was like, Hey, good for him if he can get these prices for the work. But hes clearly put a huge amount of effort into it so that this is a substantial body of work. Hes not messing around.'

Hunter gushed about the opening itself, after being observed with no hint of nervousness.

'I wasnt there to sell my art. I wasnt there to talk about my art. I wasnt there to explain myself, or explain what my art represented. All I had to do was watch people go, "Wow,"' he said.

'And I knew that thats what they would do, not because I was overly confident about it. Im sure some people didnt like some paintings, or some people thought that that was too abstract, or some people thought that that was too figurative. But I didnt care. I truly didnt care.'

He called painting 'the most true thing that Ive ever done.'

Hunter Biden arrives at the Georges Berges Gallery in Manhattan for his painting exhibition, Manhattan New York , U.S., November 10, 2021

Art gallery owner George Berges says he has gotten death threats subsequently increased security

The piece says Hunter met Berges through a 'friend of a friend,' who it does not identify.

Amid all the attention as his father achieved his dream of the presidency, a friend of Hunter's asked why he couldn't just work as an EMT and paint on the side  his lucrative career has caused numerous political headaches.

'Well, for starters, I dont want to be a f***ing EMT,' Hunter said.

'If youre going to make a painting thats five feet high and 22 feet long, youre going to want to show it to somebody. And if youre going to want to show it to somebody, youre going to want to show it to them in a place and in a way that brings to life what you are attempting to express. And if you do that, then you have to find a gallery in order to be able to do that,' he said, continuing the chain of logic that leads him all the way from large works to high priced sales for the president's son.

'And if you find a gallery, the reason that galleries stay in business is because they sell the f***ing art,' he said, defending the arrangement worked out with White House lawyers for sales. 'So thats why Ive turned over the entire business of it to somebody who has a track record, whos a professional and somebody I trust, somebody I think is a good person.'

Some works have listed above $300,000, according to the report, which notes that Berges listed some 'in the six figures' with some 'that reached above $300,000'  without a clear indication of what they went for. Berges said in previous reports the art is listed for up to $500,000.

'Were breaking records,' according to Berges.

The White House issued a new report on countering corruption, including in art and land sales

This week, a former top White House ethics official called out the Biden White House for a new report pointing to the potential for corruption in the murky art industry  at a time when the president's son Hunter is exhibited his expensive artwork at glitzy gallery shows.

Walter Shaub, who served as head of the Office of Government Ethics during the Obama Administration, pointed out the issue in a tweet Monday.

'The White House just issued a report flagging that money laundering is a problem in the wait for it art sale industry,' he wrote. Then he quoted the report saying: 'The markets for art and antiquitiesand the market participants who facilitate transactionsare especially vulnerable to a range of financial crimes.'

He continued by quoting the report, which also pointed to real estate as an area for potential fraud.

'Built-in opacity, lack of stable and predictable pricing, and inherent cross-border transportability of goods sold, make the market optimal for illicit value transfer, sanctions evasion, and corruption,' it said.

The story also provides glimpses into Hunter's home life with wife, Melissa, and young son Beau, one and a half.

He works out of a garage space, starting early in the morning.

Beau, named after his later brother, goes with him to start the day, using his own toddler workstation while his dad creates art. Sometimes Beau finds a way to draw outside the lines  and onto his mini table.

'There are way too many pen marks on that table that Melissa doesnt know about, so dont say anything,' quips Hunter.

Hunter's artistic process sometimes involves using alcohol ink on top of Japanese Yupo paper. The painter himself joked that it was a strange medium for him to use, given his struggles with alcohol and drugs, which he wrote about in his memoir.
Rightwing firebrand Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene hit back at her Republican colleague Rep. Dan Crenshaw, a former Navy SEAL, saying he was 'shooting with blanks' after he launched an outspoken attack against 'grifters' in the party.

Crenshaw is the latest to raise concerns about the likes of Greene and other members of the House Freedom Caucus who have discovered they can generate headlines with outlandish statements.

But she hit back in a tweet.

'Recent attacks from our conference on the @freedomcaucus not only misses the mark, it tells more about the guy shooting with blanks,' she wrote on Wednesday.

'It's a lot better for him to move to the right than disappoint the audience he performs for.'

Greene has a record of making incendiary comments, from sharing QAnon conspiracy theories to apparently condoning violence against Democrats.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene hit back at criticism of 'grifters' in the Republican Party, claiming a battle for the identity of the Republican Party was under way that would make it stronger

Greene defended her approach, saying that

She was stripped of committee assignments in February amid concern about her past comments.

But Greene defended her approach and painted it as a battle for the identity of the Republican Party.

'While publicly it might look ugly, when we take back the House in '22, we'll be a force to be reckoned with,' she tweeted.

'Taking our issues to the mat and working it out will unite us to be stronger to defeat our enemies.'

Several House Republicans have said that the likes of Greene are drowning out more moderate voices with extreme views.

Last month Rep. Paul Gosar, another member of the House Freedom Caucus, was stripped of his committee assignments after sharing a video that showed a cartoon version of himself attacking Democrats with a sword.

While their efforts guarantee headlines, they worry some Republican leaders who fear a vocal fringe will put off voters in next year's midterm elections.

'There are two types of members of Congress: there is performance artists and there is legislators,' Crenshaw said during a campaign event in Houston, Texas, on Sunday.

'Performance artists are the ones who get all of the attention, the ones you think are more conservative because they know how to say slogans real well.

'They know how to recite the lines that they know our voters want to hear.'

Rep. Dan Crenshaw used an appearance in Houston, Texas, to condemn 'performance artists' as 'the ones you think are more conservative because they know how to say slogans real well'

Crenshaw pointed the finger at the rightwing House Freedom Caucus, which includes Rep. Paul Gosar and Marjorie Taylor Greene who were both this year stripped of their committee assignments after being accused of glorifying violence

He went on to point to members of the House Freedom Caucus, which includes the likes of Gosar, Greene, Matt Gaetz, and Jim Jordan, for failing to vote with former President Trump.

'What you hear so often is not true,' said the former Green Beret, who has found a niche as Trump supporter that is not afraid to speak out against the worst excesses of the MAGA movement.

'Its not true. We have grifters in our midst I mean in the conservative movement.

'Lie after lie after lie because they know something psychologically about the conservative heart.

'Were worried about what people are doing to do to us, what people are going to infringe upon us, thats the nature of conservatism.'

Crenshaw's comments, made at the Texas Liberty Alliance PAC event, feed into a debate about the future of conservativism.

Some moderate Republicans are pondering how to use the energy of Trump and his supporters, without turning off mainstream voters.

Crenshaw praised Rep. Adam Kinzinger who has also spoken out against an extremist Republican fringe in Congress

Crenshaw has tamped down on speculation that he is considering a 2024 presidential run. But his conservative credentials and independent spirit are seen by some as marking him out as someone who might please the base while winning over independents.

For his part, Crenshaw praised Rep. Adam Kinzinger - hated by much of MAGA world for joining the Jan. 6 House investigation - for voting with former President Trump 99 percent of the time.

And his words echoed those used by Kinzinger recently, when he accused House minority leader Kevin McCarthy of pandering to the party's fringe to curry favor with Trump and neglecting mainstream members.

'These aren't the ones that you know, tweet all the time,' he told MSNBC's 'Morning Joe' program last week.

'They're not the ones that are going to you know, talk about Jewish space lasers and make, you know, crazy racist jokes just so that they can get more Twitter followers because they don't take governance seriously.

'These are actually members of Congress that take governance seriously.'
New York Governor Kathy Hochul announced Friday that masks will be required in all indoor public places unless the businesses or venues implement a vaccine requirement.

Businesses will be forced to either check the vaccination status of employees and customers entering the building, or force everyone to wear a mask.

The order will go into effect on Monday, December 13 and is scheduled to end on January 15, 2022.

Each violation of the rule will carry a maximum $1,000 fine, a press release from the governors office said.

If a business opts for the vaccine requirement, employees and patrons must be 14 days removed from the final shot of a COVID-19 vaccine sequence - either the second shot of the Pfizer or Moderna vaccines or the first shot of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine.

Mask requirements will apply to all patrons two years or older.

The mandate would apply to office workspaces as well.

Local health departments around the state will be responsible for enforcing the new mandates.

Hochul cited the rising cases in the state as reason for the move, along with the new threat of the Omicron variant - for which New York is the leader in sequenced cases.

It comes days after New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio announced drastic measure to combat the spread of Covid, including vaccine mandates for private sector employees.

Gov Kathy Hochul (pictured) announced Friday that she is instituting a masking or vaccine mandate on businesses in New York. Businesses will have the option to either set a vaccine requirement, or force all employees and patrons to mask indoors

More than 80% of New York adults have received at least one shot of a Covid vaccine, and more than 90% of adults in the city are at least partially jabbed. The vaccination rates are among the highest in America. Pictured: A New York City man wears a face masks on December 2

'As Governor, my two top priorities are to protect the health of New Yorkers and to protect the health of our economy,' Hochul said in a statement.

She also said that order like this would not be necessary had more people gotten vaccinated.

'We shouldn't have reached the point where we are confronted with a winter surge, especially with the vaccine at our disposal, and I share many New Yorkers' frustration that we are not past this pandemic yet,' she said.

'...I have warned for weeks that additional steps could be necessary, and now we are at that point based upon three metrics: Increasing cases, reduced hospital capacity, and insufficient vaccination rates in certain areas.'

Around 80 percent of New Yorkers have received at least one shot of a COVID-19 vaccine, and 70 percent are fully vaccinated.

In New York City, where the population is the densest and often is the source of much of the state's Covid issues, nearly 90 percent of adults have received at least one vaccine shot, and 80 percent are fully vaccinated.

These are incredibly high vaccination rates compared to the rest of the country, and place the city, and most of the state, in the range in which experts believe 'herd immunity' should be possible.

Hochul has also been a proponent of abandoning remote, work from home, office environments, calling for employers to force workers back to the office under the implication that it was now safe to do so.

Nearly 90% of New York City residents have received at least one shot of a COVID-19 vaccine (left) and 82% of the population is fully vaccinated (right)

Cases in the state continue to rise, just as they are across the nation.

New daily cases in the state have grown by 30 percent since Thanksgiving, from around 7,000 cases per day then to nearly 10,000 now.

The state is approaching the 10,000 new daily case mark for the first time since March.

Statewide death totals remain low, though - possibly a credit to the effectiveness of the vaccines - and have remained steady around 30 to 40 per day over the past few weeks.

The holiday season was brutal to the state last year, though - before the vaccines were widely available - with cases getting up to 16,000 per day, and deaths per day reaching the 200s.

New York officials are also having to deal with the specter of the new Omicron variant.

The state has recorded 21 of the 77 confirmed cases of the new variant confirmed in the U.S.

Another case recorded in Minnesota was in a man that had recently traveled to New York City for a convention in Manhattan.

'Community spread requires a community-minded solution, as the Omicron variant emerges and the overwhelmingly dominant Delta variant continues to circulate,' Health Commissioner Dr Mary Bassett said in a statement.

'We have the tools we need to protect against the virus - and now we must ensure we use them.'

The variant was first discovered by South African health officials during the week of Thanksgiving.

The strain includes more than 50 mutations, including 30 on its spike protein, which many experts believe make it able to evade protection provided by the vaccines.

Cases of the variant detected have been relatively minor when compared to those of the Delta variant so far, though, a positive sign that Omicron may not be particularly dangerous strain of the virus.

In New York City, strict vaccine requirements are set to go into effect by the end of the year.

Earlier this week, Mayor de Blasio announced that private employers in his city that have in-person works would have to institute a vaccine requirement.

Children as young as five years old will also have to show proof of full vaccination before being able to enter dining, fitness or entertainment venues.

He called the controversial measure a 'pre-emptive strike' as cases began to rise once again in the city.

New cases in New York have increased 60 percent since the Thanksgiving holiday, from around 1,500 cases per day to over 2,400 per day being recorded.

Deaths from Covid being recorded in the city remain minimal.

The national Covid situation is beginning to spiral out of control during the holiday season again this year.

America is averaging around 120,000 new daily Covid cases, a 30 percent increase over the past two weeks.

Deaths in the U.S. are up 18 percent over the past two weeks, up to nearly 1,300 per week, and the 62,000 Americans in the hospital due to severe cases of the virus is a 20 percent increase over the past two weeks.
Vice President Kamala Harris told reporters that Friday's Supreme Court ruling leaving in place a Texas abortion law was 'an attempt to undo 50 years of precedent.'

In a statement Saturday, the vice president also called woman's rights to terminate a pregnancy 'non-negotiable.'

'Yesterday's Supreme Court decision allows SB8, which threatens women's health and rights, to remain in effect,' Harris added. 'The ban on abortion after six weeks of pregnancy remains. The cash incentives for vigilantes remain. And the harm to women remains.'

'We must protect the constitutional right recognized under Roe v. Wade by codifying it into law. We must pass the Women's Health Protection Act. And we must continue to do everything in our power to defend women's reproductive rights.'

The court ruled Friday that a lawsuit by abortion providers in Texas can move forward but left the ban on abortions after about six weeks in place as challenges are being litigated.

The high court punted the law's legality. Its action today sends the case by abortion providers back to a district court, which could lead to it being suspended.

'As far as I'm concerned, and as far as our administration is concerned, a woman's right to make decisions about her own body is non-negotiable,' Harris told reporters on Friday.

'And so, we will continue to fight for the constitutional rights of all women to make decisions about their own body without interference by some legislative group of people that think that they can replace their judgment with hers.'

The Justice Department also released a statement promising to fight against the law.

'The Department of Justice brought suit against Texas Senate Bill 8 because the law was specifically designed to deprive Americans of their constitutional rights while evading judicial review,' the DOJ said in a statement.

'The department will continue our efforts in the lower courts to protect the rights of women and uphold the Constitution.'

White House press secretary Jen Psaki called Friday's ruling a 'reminder of how much [abortion] rights are at risk.'

'I would just like to reiterate that the President is deeply committed to the constitutional right, recognizing Roe v. Wade, and he has argued and advocated in the past for codifying Roe through passing the Women's Health Protection Act,' Psaki said.

The Texas law, which bans abortions after a fetal heartbeat is detected, with no exceptions for rape or incest, took effect on September 1.

Its unusual enforcement measures were meant to insulate it from legal challenges - anyone can bring forth a case against anyone who aids a woman in getting an abortion, other than the woman herself. Such a plaintiff could be entitled to up to $10,000.

The law has not yet been enforced on anyone for helping to terminate a pregnancy after six weeks, but pregnant women have been pouring in to surrounding states for the later term procedures.

The decision is only a partial victory for abortion providers, as the federal judge who will take up the case again once blocked it and will likely do so again. But then his decision will be reviewed by the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which has twice voted to allow enforcement of the abortion ban.

The Supreme Court ruled Friday that a lawsuit by abortion providers can move forward but left the ban on abortions after about six weeks in place as challenges are being litigated

The Texas law, which bans abortions after a fetal heartbeat is detected, with no exceptions for rape or incest, took effect on Sept 1. Activists are seen above protesting the law

The court in an 8-1 ruling allowed the suit to proceed by noting 'other viable avenues to contest the law's compliance with the Federal Constitution also may be possible and the Court does not prejudge the possibility.'

The court said that the abortion providers cannot sue a state court clerk, a Texas judge or Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton. However they can proceed with the suit with other named defendants executive directors of three state health boards Medical, Nursing and Pharmacy  as well as Allison Benz, the executive commissioner of the Texas Health and Human Services Commission.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor criticized her colleagues' decision in a partial dissent.

'The Court should have put an end to this madness months ago,' Sotomayor wrote. 'It failed to do so then, and it fails again today.'

The court dismissed a separate appeal filed by the Biden administration.

The case could return to the Supreme Court.

The law's enforcement structure threw a curve ball to abortion providers ready to sue, as the case raised the question of who, if anyone, can sue over the law in federal court, the typical route for challenges to abortion restrictions. Indeed, federal courts routinely put a hold on similar laws, which rely on traditional enforcement by state and local authorities.

Another issue is whom to target with a court order that ostensibly tries to block the law. Under Supreme Court precedents, its not clear whether a federal court can restrain the actions of state court judges who would hear lawsuits filed against abortion providers, court clerks who would be charged with accepting the filings or anyone who might some day want to file a lawsuit.

Protesters gather around the Supreme Court as it is caught up in the midst of two state abortion laws

The Texas law is the most restrictive on abortion in any state since the 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling.

In a 5-4 decision, the court declined to block enforcement of the Texas law on Sept. 1 on jurisdictional grounds.

The ruling comes more than a week after the court heard oral arguments in a case that could lead to the overturning of Roe. In that case, Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health, the state has asked the 6-3 conservative majority court to rule again on Roe's constitutionality. The landmark 1973 case said that abortion must be protected pre-viability, and if it were overturned, abortion rights would return to states.

A decision in that case is not expected till the spring, but on Dec. 1 six conservative Supreme Court justices on Wednesday seemed poised to uphold Mississippi's ban on abortions after 15 weeks.

Even Chief Justice Roberts, who has become a swing vote on the court, questioned why 15 weeks is 'not enough time' for a woman to choose, Brett Kavanaugh hinted that abortion rights should be left up to the states and Amy Coney Barrett brought up alternatives to termination including adoption.

Liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor warned ruling in favor of Mississippi would be a stain on the court's distinction in being above politics.

'Will this institution survive the stench that this creates in the public perception that the constitution and its reading are just political acts?' Sotomayor asked.

'If people believe it's all political, how will we survive? How will the court survive?'
A motorist in South Africa has been caught driving along with his car balanced on a trolley in the place of his rear wheel.

Footage posted online showed the unidentified owner taking the white Opal Corsa for a spin in Bellville, Cape Town.

The car has its hazard lights on and is moving much slower than the rest of the traffic.



A motorist in South Africa has been caught driving along with his car balanced on a trolley in the place of his rear wheel

Footage posted online showed the unidentified owner taking the white Opal Corsa for a spin in Bellville, Cape Town

The driver had bought the vehicle, with four wheels, only a few months ago and was confronted by its previous owner after the footage surfaced online, Times Live reported.

The former owner said the car was still registered in his name because the new owner had not yet changed the documentation.

'I went and confronted him myself. I said, "No, my friend, that car is still in my name and you're trouble like this.",' the previous owner said.

'He said he didn't have a choice. He had to do it. He knows it wasn't the right thing to do and he was wrong.'

In the footage, the car has its hazard lights on and is moving much slower than the rest of the traffic

The driver reportedly explained there were several problems with the car, apparently forcing him to resort to using a trolley instead of a wheel.

'He said something about a bearing which broke. They put in a new bearing and then one also broke. Then they had no other choice but to do that. That's the story he told me.'

The driver assured the previous owner the car was being fixed at his house, in Delft, a suburb of Cape Town, adding that he had not yet been approached by police over the video.
A former Conservative minister who quit after sending 2,000 texts to a barmaid and her friend about 'violent sex acts' also raped and physically abused his wife who has succeeded him as an MP, a judge has found.

Judge Elizabeth Williscroft concluded that Andrew Griffiths, 51, pressurised Kate Griffiths - who is now the current Conservative MP for Burton - Staffordshire, into engaging in sexual activity, and used 'coercive and controlling behaviour'.

The couple split in 2018 when it emerged that he had been sexting two barmaid constituents, sending over 2,000 explicit messages. He demanded they send him something 'f****** filthy' and told them he would rather be 'licking naughty girls' instead of 'running the country'.

He was forced to quit as a minister after the revelations of the texts in July 2018, but did not stand down as an MP. Ms Griffiths stood against her disgraced husband when he tried to be reselected, and the local Tory party selected her as candidate and she won the constituency.

The judge is currently overseeing an ongoing family court dispute between Mr Griffiths and his ex-wife, centred on a child.

Ms Griffiths raised concern about the amount of contact Mr Griffiths should have with their child - and made a series of allegations about the way he had treated her when they were married.

She said that he raped her in her sleep and put his hands on her throat during their relationship. She has not made a complaint to police.

A judge concluded that Andrew Griffiths, 51, pressurised Kate Griffiths, the current Conservative MP for Burton, Staffordshire, into engaging in sexual activity, and used 'coercive and controlling behaviour'

Mr Griffiths was replaced by his wife as the Conservative MP for Burton after he bombarded a barmaid and her friend with explicit texts

Mr Griffiths sent the string of messages to barmaid Imogen Treharne, 28, (pictured) and her friend whom he paid 700 and offered to rent out a flat for 'something filthy'

Mr Griffiths, who was replaced by his wife as the MP for Burton and also used to be the minister for small business and once worked as Theresa May's chief of staff, resigned in July 2018 after a Sunday newspaper reported that he had sent 'depraved' messages to two women constituents.

He was said to have bombarded a 28-year-old barmaid and her friend with lewd comments over social media during a three-week period. When Griffiths sent the string of messages to barmaid Imogen Treharne, 28, and her friend, Ms Griffiths had just given birth to the couple's first child.

He also gave the pair 700 to and offered to rent out a flat so that they could hook up while demanding they send him something 'f****** filthy'.

Describing himself as 'evil', he detailed degrading sex acts and demanded explicit pictures and videos. He even said he'd rather be 'licking naughty girls' instead of 'running the country'.

In the case of his wife, judge Williscroft made findings, on the balance of probabilities, against Mr Griffiths, in November 2020. The findings were initially kept private but have now been made public.

The Court of Appeal yesterday ruled that the former MP can be publicly named, following a year-long battle by Tortoise Media and PA Media.

The judge had been overseeing a dispute between Mr and Ms Griffiths, who are now divorced, centred on a child at private family court hearings in Derby.

The judge heard that the Griffiths married in 2013 after forming a relationship about five years earlier.

She heard that Mr Griffiths became an MP in 2010 and was a minister between January and July 2018.

Ms Griffiths became an MP in 2019. Judge Williscroft said she was sure that they had been a 'glamourous couple'.

In 2010, Ms Griffiths found out that Mr Griffiths had been having a 'long affair', the judge said in a ruling.

The woman he was involved with had appeared at the 2010 Conservative Party Conference.

He had accepted threatening the woman that 'he would go to the press if she spoke to his wife'. Ms Griffiths also discovered that Mr Griffiths had been sending 'sexual texts' to 'someone else' in 2011.

Judge Williscroft said Mr Griffiths 'described how he had engaged in what he described as sexually risky behaviour for many years, as he enjoyed it'.

He told the judge that he had been 'addicted to pornography'.

The couple separated after Mr Griffiths was 'exposed' as having sent 'kinky and depraved ... sexual text messages' to two women constituents in July 2018.

Judge Williscroft concluded that Mr Griffiths' 'own needs' took 'precedence' during the marriage.

When Griffiths sent the string of messages to barmaid Imogen Treharne, 28, and her friend, Ms Griffiths had just given birth to the couple's first child

Describing himself as 'evil', he detailed degrading sex acts and demanded explicit pictures and videos from the barmaid

He had accused Ms Griffiths of 'being frigid' in order to persuade her to 'give in to his sexual demands'.

The judge said it seemed to her that it had 'never crossed Andrew Griffiths' mind' that Ms Griffiths would not do what he liked her to do. She said Mr Griffiths had 'undermined' Ms Griffiths' 'self-esteem'.

He accepted that he had called Ms Griffiths 'fat and lazy'. The judge said Ms Griffiths had 'proved in her oral evidence to me' that Mr Griffiths 'did rape her when sexual intercourse took place'.

She said Ms Griffiths' allegations had been 'confirmed' by Mr Griffiths' 'responses'.

'Andrew Griffiths adamantly denied these allegations saying he had never had any form of sexual contact that was not consensual,' said Judge Williscroft. 'I could not accept there was sexual 'give and take' in their relationship.'

Ms Griffiths said rapes had begun while she was asleep.

Judge Williscroft said: 'I accept that Kate Griffiths proved in her oral evidence to me and I find confirmed by Andrew Griffiths' responses that he did rape her when sexual intercourse took place when he had already penetrated her when she was asleep.'

Ms Griffiths, who gave evidence behind a screen at court hearings so she could not see Mr Griffiths, had also given accounts of 'physical abuse'.

The judge said she found those accounts 'proved'.

She alleged that during an argument he knelt on her and put his hands on her throat, trying to strangle her. Mr Griffiths said no assault had taken place.

Judge Williscroft said she 'preferred' Ms Griffiths' account. The judge found that Mr Griffiths had pushed Mrs Griffiths when she was heavily pregnant.

She said there had been an argument about Mr Griffiths' 'continued wish' that Ms Griffiths should move to London with him.

Mr Griffiths had 'wanted to be able to have family time in London 'like David Cameron'', the judge said. Judge Williscroft said there had been an incident in a hotel where Mr Griffiths had thrown a passport and money at Ms Griffiths, pushed her on to a bed and told her to 'f*** off home'.

In the case of his wife, judge Williscroft made findings, on the balance of probabilities, against Mr Griffiths, in November 2020 (couple pictured on their wedding day in 2013)

Mr Griffiths (pictured with Boris Johnson) became an MP in 2010 and was a minister between January and July 2018

The judge described a 'frightening loss of control' and said his 'excessive response' was 'worrying'.

Mr Griffiths had accepted being 'abusive' to Ms Griffiths verbally and 'hurt her when drunk'.

Initially, the judge decided the findings should not be made public, in order to protect the child at the centre of the case.

A more senior High Court judge then ruled that Judge Williscroft's findings should be revealed and Mr and Ms Griffiths named, after two journalists learned about the case and argued that the public had a right to know.

Judge Williscroft had asked Mrs Justice Lieven, who is based in the Family Division of the High Court, to consider arguments about publicity.

Mrs Justice Lieven heard the journalists' application to be allowed to report Judge Williscroft's findings, and name Mr and Ms Griffiths, at a private hearing in London, and ruled in their favour.

Mr Griffiths challenged Mrs Justice Lieven's ruling and asked Court of Appeal judges to consider the case.

Three appeal judges on Friday dismissed his appeal and findings made by Judge Williscroft, and Mrs Justice Lieven, could be made public.

Ms Griffiths had backed the journalists' fight for publication and agreed to be named in media reports - even though victims of sexual abuse have a legal right to anonymity. Mr Griffiths was against publication.

He argued that revealing Judge Williscroft's findings, and publishing his name and Ms Griffiths' name, would harm the child at the centre of the case and harm his relationship with the child.

Mrs Justice Lieven ruled against Mr Griffiths. But she said the child at the centre of the case could not be named in media reports.

'(Judge Williscroft) found that the father had been physically abusive to the mother on more than one occasion,' said Mrs Justice Lieven in a written ruling on the publicity arguments.

'The judge found that the father had used coercive and controlling behaviour, including to pressurise the mother to engage in sexual activity.

'The judge found that the father raped the mother... on more than one occasion.'

Mrs Justice Lieven said she had balanced the media's right to free speech against rights to respect for family and private life.

She said she had carried out an 'intensive and fact-specific investigation' and concluded that Judge Williscroft's findings should be made public.

'I accept that, on the specific facts of this case, there is considerable and legitimate public interest in the publication of the judgment including the parties being identified,' said Mrs Justice Lieven.

'The father was in a prominent and powerful position in the UK.

'Importantly, his role as an MP and a minister meant that he had a role in law-making, including in respect of issues concerning domestic abuse.

'The mere fact that he was an MP, let alone a minister, means that there is a strong public interest in the public knowing about a finding by a judge of the conduct of the nature of that set out in the judgment.

'The democratic system relies upon the media being able to publish information about elected representatives, particularly where the information comes from findings in a court judgment.'

Charlotte Proudman, a barrister representing Ms Griffiths, had told Mrs Justice Lieven that another woman had previously made a harassment complaint about Mr Griffiths to police.

Reacting today, Ms Griffiths said: 'I welcome this decision as a positive step forward in a legal battle that has taken a huge emotional and financial toll on my family.

'I supported publication of the Family Court's findings - and waived my right to anonymity - because I recognise the unique position I am in to campaign to improve the outcomes of cases such as this, for those who endure domestic violence, and the actions taken to protect the children involved.

'When I stood for election as Member of Parliament for Burton and Uttoxeter, I promised I would be a voice for those who have been victims of domestic abuse.

'I am committed to working with colleagues across Parliament to improve both the support available to - and the outcomes for - those who have been through similar experiences to me.'
The COVID pandemic drove the largest increase in life insurance payouts since the Spanish Flu spread across the United States in 1918.

A recent study by the American Council of Life Insurers found that death benefits rose 15.4 percent in 2020, to a whopping $90.43 billion - up from $78.36 billion the year before.

That is the largest it has increased year-over-year since 1918, when payments surged 41 percent, the data shows.

The COVID-related increase was less than expected early in the pandemic because many of the victims were older Americans, who typically have smaller policies - if they even have a policy.

But the pandemic also spurred the fastest rise in the sales of insurance policies in 25 years, with assets increasing 7.7 percent to $8.2 trillion in 2020, when combined with returns on some of the insurers' investments.

'The data tells a compelling story about the resiliency of life insurers and their ability to protect Americans' financial futures at all times,' Andres Melnyk, ACLI vice president of research and chief economist said in a statement.

'In a year that was taxing for everyone, life insurance benefits provided families with the means to endure financially after the loss of a loved one.'

More than 385,000 Americans died of COVID last year, but it is unclear how many of them had life insurance policies

Last month, the number of COVID-related deaths recorded in 2021 surpassed the total in 2020, the Wall Street Journal reports, with more than 770,800 deaths.

It is unclear how many of the 385,343 deaths in 2020 identified by the Centers for Disease Control as being COVVID-related were people who owned life insurance.

The deaths have mainly been among the elderly, who tend to have smaller policies than those still in the workforce, if they even have a policy, causing some publicly traded life insurers to reduce their estimates of exposure - as measured by payouts per 100,000 COVID fatalities.

The Delta variant this year changed those dynamics slightly, the Journal reports.

While about 80 percent of COVID-related deaths in 2020 occurred among those 65 and older, the figure dropped this year to about 69 percent of deaths occurring in the 65 and older group, with 25 percent occurring in the 45 to 65 age group.

During the Spanish Flu, meanwhile, the number of deaths reached about 675,000 with mortality rates high in those younger than 5, those 20 - 40 and those 65 and older.

The ACLI data shows just two other years - both during other flu outbreaks in the 1920s - when year-over year increases topped 15 percent.

The COVID pandemic has also resulted in an increase in both life and annuity products, the data shows.

According tot he ACLI's 2021 Fact Book, total life insurance coverage reached $20.4 trillion in 2020, with a record $3.3 trillion in life insurance coverage purchased.

In total, it reports, 43.1 million new life insurance policies were purchased last year, as people throughout the country tried to grapple with the loss of loved ones.

The constant news about COVID-19 related deaths 'is not as visceral of a realization as it was last year, but people still have that thought of family members and close friends they lost,' Collis Temple, a national sales director for Primerica Inc. told the Wall Street Journal.

His company's claims increased 15.8 percent to $1.7 billion last year, when compared to 2019, and industry-wide, total new life insurance premiums increased 18 percent in the first nine months of 2021 - the largest growth recorded in a nine-month period in 25 years, according to industry-funded research firm Limra.

As a result, AM Best Co. upgraded its outlook of the life insurance industry from 'negative' to 'stable,' the Journal reports.
In a verdict that will surprise few, the actor Jussie Smollett was found guilty of making a false report to Chicago police.

In January 2019, Smollett told police he was attacked by two men in ski masks who beat him up and used racial and homophobic slurs, saying 'This is MAGA country now,' pouring bleach on him and tying a noose around his neck.

It turned out that the 'attack' had been paid for by Smollett himself, who hired two Nigerian coworkers to simulate a hate crime.

To many, including perhaps most famously the comedian Dave Chappelle, Smollett's story seemed too cartoonish to be true from the get-go.

And yet, for too many liberal journalists, influencers and politicians, it was too delicious a confirmation of their dystopian fantasies to be verified.

From Joy Reid to AOC to Kamala Harris to Lori Lightfoot, Smollett's false attack seemed to confirm everything they wanted to believe about their fellow Americans across the political divide.

These liberal elites, who defended a hoax artist have also abandoned the victims of real crimes. Their worldview - not imaginary MAGA white supremacists - truly threatens black lives.

Then-candidate Joe Biden (left) immediately pledged to support Jussie Smollett after the alleged attack. Kamala Harris (right) alleged a 'modern day lynching' had been carried out against Smollett.

'What happened today to @JussieSmollett must never be tolerated in this country,' tweeted then-presidential candidate Joe Biden.

'We must stand up and demand that we no longer give this hate safe harbor; that homophobia and racism have no place in our streets or in our hearts. We are with you, Jussie.'

Now that a jury has decided that the attack didn't happen, most of these voices have gone mum.

Mostbut not all.

'In our commitment to abolition, we can never believe police, especially the Chicago Police Department (CPD) over Jussie Smollett, a Black man who has been courageously present, visible, and vocal in the struggle for Black freedom,' wrote the Black Lives Matter movement in a statement this week ahead of the verdict.

The statement was widely condemned, including by some on the Left.

Supporting a liar and a hoaxerone who tried to frame two other black people for a crime he paid them to simulatewas finally a bridge too far.

And yet, the statement revealed something deeper at work in our culture on the Left when it comes to the relationship between race and the criminal justice system.

The moral force of Black Lives Matter comes from the way the movement pointed to a standard of justice that is still not being met for black Americans.

The way black Americans are treated by the criminal justice system remains a blight on our nation; our failure to ensure equality before the law is a moral emergency that all Americans of conscience should object to vocally and vigorously.

But in their support for Jussie Smollett, BLM betrayed that cause, demanding that Smollett be held to a lower standard of justice because he is 'a Black man.'

The statement called the trial 'a white supremacist charade.'

Melina Abdullah, a co-founder of BLM's Los Angeles chapter, on Tuesday defended Smollett

If the jury system is itself a white supremacist charade, then there can be no standard of equality before the law to even aspire to.

Worse, BLM has elevated race over justice, over equality, even over the truthwhich is exactly what a white supremacist charade would do.

The statement was egregious.

And yet, the sentiment it expressed is omnipresent, the animating principle at play in the tweets that still have not been deleted by Biden, Harris et al.

They were willing to believe the worst of their fellow Americans because of the racial dynamics at playjust like they called Kyle Rittenhouse a white supremacist when those dynamics were reversed.

Rittenhouse shot three men and killed two of them at a Kenosha Black Lives Matter rally turned riot and was recently found not guilty due to the overwhelming evidence that he had acted in self-defense.

Yet the same people who tweeted vigorously in defense of Smollettmembers of the Squad, Joy Reid, the Presidentwent out of their way to imply Rittenhouse as a white supremacist.

'There's no other way to put it: the President of the United States refused to disavow white supremacists on the debate stage last night,' Biden tweeted in 2020 over a compilation of photos that included Rittenhouse.

What kind of worldview demands you defame a kid defending himself against a pedophile and domestic abusera kid who supports Black Lives Matter and pointed out racism in the criminal justice systembut support a rich hoaxer who tried to get two black men falsely imprisoned by lying about being called a racial slur?

We've abandoned a worldview based on right vs. wrong for a worldview based on powerful vs. powerless, and then superimposed a racial binary onto it.

What kind of worldview demands you defame a kid defending himself against a pedophile and domestic abuser but support a rich hoaxer who tried to get two black men falsely imprisoned by lying about being called a racial slur? (Left: Biden's tweet on Kyle Rittenhouse shortly after the Kenosha shootings) (Right: Biden's tweet on Jussie Smollett immediately after hate crime allegations)

Believability, like all virtue, is now a quality associated exclusively with people of color, irrespective of their actions, while everyone else is just one move away from being smeared as a white supremacistespecially if they disagree politically with the reigning narrative.

But this worldview is not just racist, depriving people of color of any kind of agency or the most basic recognition of their humanity, that their actions will be judged by a standard shared by all.

It's resulted in a veritable taboo against covering crime in minority communities, whose chief victims are poor black Americans.

Because the perpetrators of these crimes are mostly also people of color, to a liberal media in thrall to a diseased worldview that ascribes virtue to those without white privilege, crimes perpetrated by people of color are not just embarrassing but invisible.

If you can't blame your political opponents and smear them as racists, the liberal mainstream media and Left-wing politicians don't want to hear about it.

And this means that a murder spree that has resulted in the deaths of hundreds and hundreds of poor black children goes virtually unreported. Their names are never mentioned. And this signals to politicians that they can ignore it.

Their lives matter.

They deserve good policing that is neither abusive nor neglectful. They deserve a media that says their names.

And despite the fiction scripted by Jussie Smollett and his defenders in the liberal media, in the activist set and in the political class, the threat to these children's lives doesn't come from MAGA-hat wearing white supremacists, a mirage created in the liberal imagination that Smollett knew all too well.

The threat comes from an apathetic liberal elite that would rather not read about crime because it offends their worldview.

The blood is on their hands.

Members of the liberal elite defended a hoax artist who invented a crime while abandoning the victims of very real crimes.

It's today's reigning liberal orthodoxy - not imaginary MAGA white supremacists - that truly threatens black lives.
Disgraced former MP Charlie Elphicke has been pictured for the first time following his release from prison.

The ex-MP for Dover, who was jailed for sexual assault, was released in September having served half of his two-year sentence for three sexual assaults on two women.

He has today been pictured outside his Fulham home for the first time since his release.

Elphicke, 50, had last month spoken of his financial woes during a court appearance over unpaid costs.

He had been ordered to pay a 35,000 sum within a year towards the cost of the prosecution.

Elphicke, who is on licence until next year, offered to repay at a rate of 1 a month. The court rejected his offer.

Disgraced former MP Charlie Elphicke, who was jailed for sexual assault, has been pictured for the first time following his release from prison

The ex-MP for Dover, who was jailed for sexual assault, was released in September having served half of his two-year sentence for three sexual assaults on two women

Uxbridge Magistrates' Crown Court had heard that the former Government whip had received 51,000 from the sale of his marital home, but most of the money has been used 'in legal fees and to pay rent'.

He said he had paid six months' rent up front for a one-bedroom flat, valued online at nearly 475,000, in Fulham, south-west London, adding: 'That is why I have very limited cash to meet my living expenses.'

'I have made a claim for Universal Credit that is currently being processed,' Elphicke said. 'They are going to come back to me on December 12 to make sure I can pay the rent in an ongoing way.'

'I have no job, I have no career, I am long-term unemployed,' said Elphicke. 'I am working with the job centre and my probation officer to find a new career.

'I have made a claim for Universal Credit. I am separated from my wife who has filed for divorce. I have had to find a new place to live.'

Elphicke's barrister Ian Winter QC had told the court his client had 'a fair bit of debt', and that his estranged wife, Natalie Elphicke, now the MP for Dover, loaned him 100,000 to pay for legal bills.

Former Conservative MP Charlie Elphicke, with MP for Dover Natalie Elphicke, arriving at Southwark Crown Court in London in July 2020

He has today been pictured outside his Fulham home for the first time since his release

Magistrates agreed to adjourn the case to December 17, while Elphicke is waiting for his benefits claim to be assessed, with a payment order expected to be made at the next hearing.

Chair of the bench Andrew Gell said: 'It does not seem clear as what will be possible over the next 12 months so I think we wait until Universal Credit has been done, adjourning the matter until that has been completed and look at the matter again.'

Elphicke had in March lost a Court of Appeal challenge against his jail sentence after his lawyers argued it was too long and should have been suspended.

The sentencing judge had described Elphicke as a 'sexual predator' who used his 'success and respectability as a cover'.

During his trial, jurors heard how he had asked one of his victims about bondage and sex, then kissed her and groped her breast before chasing her around his home, chanting: 'I'm a naughty Tory.'

Elphicke had become a Government whip during David Cameron's premiership in 2015 but went back to the backbenches when Theresa May came to power the following year.

He had the party whip suspended in 2017 when allegations of sexual assault first emerged but it was controversially reinstated a year later for a crucial confidence vote in then-prime minister Mrs May.

The whip was withdrawn again the following summer when the Crown Prosecution Service announced its decision to charge Elphicke.
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A new photograph has emerged of Alec Baldwin on the set of Rust, immediately after shooting Halyna Hutchins dead, speaking with someone on the phone while sitting with other cast and crew in front of sheriffs and the roped off church where the accident happened.

The picture was shown on Good Morning America on Friday as the special effects coordinator from the film and another of the actors told of the harrowing moments Halyna was shot, and when they learned that she'd died by reading it in the press.

Until now, the first pictures of Baldwin after the shooting were taken in the parking lot of the Santa Fe County Sheriff's Department. He was buckled over with grief, having just learned that she'd died, and after being grilled by investigators about how he accidentally shot her.

The new photograph was taken from behind and does not show his face. By his own recollections of the day, he didn't yet know that it was a live round that had struck Halyna, much less killed her, and was confused as to what happened.

'She goes down, I thought to myself, "Did she faint?" The notion that there was a live round in that gun did not dawn on me 'till probably 45 minutes to an hour later,' Baldwin said in an interview with ABC News last week.

He said he was in the room with her for only around 60 seconds after the shot went off and was then ushered out.

Thomas Gandy, the special effects coordinator, told Good Morning America on Friday that he was standing behind her when she fell to the ground and that she 'immediately' started bleeding 'profusely'.

Alec Baldwin is shown on the set of Rust in the immediate aftermath of the shooting that killed Halyna Hutchins. He is on the phone. It's unclear who he is sitting next to but the man to his right resembles assistant director Dave Halls, who handed him the gun

Baldwin is shown in the same waistcoat, hat and outfit on the set of Rust, standing next to Halyna, in the days before she was killed in October

Baldwin is shown after being told that Halyna had died in the hospital. He was outside the Santa Fe County Sheriff's Office and had been interviewed about what happened

Baldwin, 63, insists it was a misfire and that he did not pull the trigger. Gandy did not speak to that in his interview with Good Morning America on Friday morning. He however told of the 'bedlam' that came after everyone realized she had been struck.

'Immediately, you can hear the bedlam going off inside this building. People were scrambling, running. No one even thought that it might have been a real bullet.

'Halyna had her back to me directly, she was wearing, I'll never forget, a sort of silvery, shiny coat. There was a hole in it and immediately, bleeding. Bleeding profusely.

'Right then, like I said, that's when it got real and still not even knowing Joel poor guy is writhing. We don't even know he's been shot through the chest at that point,' he said.

He was referring to Joel Souza, the director who was shot in the shoulder but recovered. Halyna died in the hospital afterwards.

His description of what happened is far more graphic than Baldwin's, who said he first thought Halyna might have had a 'heart attack' or 'fainted' when she fell to the ground.

Special effects coordinator Thomas Gandy told GMA that Halyna started bleeding 'immediately and profusely' when she wa shot and that the bullet 'left a hole in her coat'

Baldwin is shown sitting on the set next to a fire and a long rifle in the days before he accidentally shot Hutchins

Halyna Hutchins is shown on the set of Rust in the days before she was killed. She was described by cast and crew as being at the 'heart' of the production

The actor and his wife Hilaria - who has argued with reporters and photographers for confronting them since the shooting - were seen out last night in New York City to attend their first public event since the tragedy.

Baldwin, who has cooperated with police and who says he does not think he will be criminally charged, posted an open letter written by several of the crew on Instagram on Thursday to squash descriptions of the set as 'chaotic' or 'exploitative.'

Gandy. the special effects coordinator, is among those who signed the letter.

It says: 'This letter is written on behalf of the cast and crew of the film production, Rust. It has not been sanctioned or influenced in any way by the producers.

'We, the undersigned, believe the public narrative surrounding our workplace tragedy to be inadequate and wish to express a more accurate account of our experience.

Baldwin was back on stage on Thursday night at the RFK Ripple of Hope Gala, where he was the host. He didn't mention the tragedy but said he was glad to be out of the house

Baldwin with his wife Hilaria, right, and Kerry Kennedy at the gala on Thursday night. It was the Baldwins first official event since the October 21 shooting

The couple are shown leaving their Manhattan apartment after Hilaria took to Instagram to complain about media attention

Hilaria Baldwin's Instagram story on Friday morning where she told followers to reclaim their voices and speak their truths. Alec is shown, right, buying a Christmas tree in New York City on Thursday

'We are hurting for the loss of our friend and colleague Halyna Hutchins. We are hurting for our friends that have been targeted by the public as they themselves grieve.

'Unfortunately, in the film industry, it is common to work on unprofessional or hectic productions.

'Rust was not one of them. Rust was professional. The descriptions of Rust as a chaotic, dangerous and exploitative workplace are false and distract from what matters the most: the memory of Halyna Hutchins.'

Baldwin was hosting a human rights event last night.

He joked on the podium about wanting to get out of his home where he lives with Hilaria and their six children, telling the crowd: 'I would do anything to get out of the house for 30 minutes.'

Baldwin posted this open letter on his Instagram page which was written by dozens of Rust cast and crewmembers where they said the set was safe and not exploitative

Before they went out for the night, Hilaria took to Instagram to complain about being hounded by the press.

She said Baldwin has 'PTSD' and said reporters 'mess with his mental health.'

She shared a video of a New York Post reporter confronting them on the steps of Woody Allen's townhouse earlier this week as an example.

The reporter was asking Baldwin whether or not he had pulled the trigger on the gun on the set of Rust.

Hilaria, as she has done in the past, started filming the reporter and asking him to leave.

She wrote in a caption alongside it: 'My husband has PTSD, has had for a long time, now, worse than ever. Some take advantage by poking at him, trying to rile him up, messing with his mental health.

'It works sometimes. I try to ward it off. This is a good example.'

No one has been charged in the Rust shooting but Sante Fe sheriffs continue to investigate exactly what happened.

Hutchins' widower, Matt, said in October, after the accident, that he had spoken with Baldwin and that Baldwin was being 'very supportive'.
A Ryanair pilot is facing career ruin after police found an amateur Top Gear film showing him driving his Porsche at 105mph on a country road.

Ryanair captain Timur Khayrov, 30, posted a video onto his YouTube channel called Vehicle Villains which was seen by police.

It showed him speeding on the wrong side of the 60mph road before touching his tyres to feel the heat coming off them.

Khayrov's lawyer said a prison sentence would impact on his career as one of Britain's youngest commercial airline pilots.

Ryanair captain Timur Khayrov, 30, posted a video onto his YouTube channel called Vehicle Villains which was seen by police

But a judge said his driving crossed the custody threshold and gave him a suspended prison sentence.

Khayrov and friend David Murray, 30, drove from Scotland in their white and yellow Porsches on a pre-lockdown trip in March last year.

The pair were due to visit a racetrack but arrived a day early and went to a famous stretch of road in North Wales known as the Evo Triangle.

They put up a drone and mounted cameras inside and outside their 80,000 Porsches to make the Top Gear-style video shown to Caernarfon Crown Court.

Undated screen grab of a video issued by Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) of David Murray who along with Timur Khayrov (not pictured), both 30, have been given suspended jail terms and were also ordered to carry out 200 hours of unpaid work and banned from driving for 18 months

Neither man had previous convictions and didn't expect their 'hobby' to land them in court

Khayrov (right) and friend David Murray (left), 30, drove from Scotland in their white and yellow Porsches on a pre-lockdown trip in March last year

The film's commentary described the B4391 in Snowdonia as 'the greatest driving road in the world' and explained how the men planned to avoid average speed cameras.

Khayrov was caught doing 105mph in his 130,000 Porsche 911 while Murray hit speeds of 116mph in his yellow 45,000 Porsche 718.

An earlier hearing was told the pair used the B4391 in Snowdonia as if it was their own private racetrack.

Footage of the pair driving along the B4501 shows them using part of the EVO Triangle not covered by the average speed cameras. They then moved further into Snowdonia beauty-spots and on to the B4391 with 60mph limits.

The pair were due to visit a racetrack but arrived a day early and went to a famous stretch of road in North Wales known as the Evo Triangle

There was 17 minutes of film as they enjoyed the so-called 'greatest driving road in the UK.'

'They comment upon the heat of the tyres and brakes of the vehicles, demonstrating how hard the vehicles had been driven,' counsel said.

Khayrov called it the 'greatest road' and Murray declared: 'That was just unbelievable.'

Ben Rich, defending, said Murray was ashamed. It was the 'stupidest' thing the car enthusiast had ever done. They'd come to the area for a track event in Chester.

Mr Rich said there were 'short bursts of speed' and the cars crossed the centre lines on occasions. 'There was no racing going on here,' counsel said.

Murray was engaged and had done charitable work. 'Prior to this Mr Murray was a decent young man with a responsible job,' his lawyer said.

'They comment upon the heat of the tyres and brakes of the vehicles, demonstrating how hard the vehicles had been driven,' counsel said. Khayrov called it the 'greatest road' and Murray declared: 'That was just unbelievable'

Neither man had previous convictions and didn't expect their 'hobby' to land them in court.

Sophia Dower, defending Khayrov, said: 'He is in a position of considerable trust as captain of an aircraft carrying hundreds of passengers and crew a day.

'It does beggar belief that he could have been so stupid to behave in such a way as seen on the film.

'He has a YouTube channel called Vehicle Villains but despite its ominous name it does not promote dangerous driving.

'It's an amateur Top Gear car review type platform.'

The court heard Vehicle Villains has more than 6,000 followers.

Ms Dower said: 'He is deeply embarrassed and extremely appalled - there are references about his dedication to achieving his dream career.

'He grafted his way to become a commercial pilot and a captain at the age of 27, one of the youngest of his cohorts.'

Ms Dower said Khayrov had lived in a caravan at an airfield in High Wycombe to get his flying hours and train as a pilot which he funded himself.

She added: He is not a young man with more money than sense - that could not be further from the truth.'

Ms Dower urged the judge to give Khayrov a 'high level' community sentence saying: 'He now has a criminal conviction but a custodial sentence on his record will put him in a far worse position.

'He is not sure he will be able to keep his position.'

But Judge Nicola Saffman said both men had passed the custodial threshold by driving at speeds of more than 100mph on roads used by walkers and cyclists.

She said filming their dangerous driving on YouTube would encourage others to visit the Evo Triangle and drive in the same way.

Khayrov, of Glasgow, and Murray, of Aberdeen, admitted dangerous driving and were both given eight month suspended sentences, banned from driving for 18 months and ordered to carry out 200 hours community service.

The judge said she would have confiscated the Porsches but both drivers had sold them following their arrest.

Senior Crown Prosecutor Andrew Warman said after the case: 'The two men showed a complete disregard for the safety of other road users which could have had devastating consequences.

'They treated these public roads as if they were a private racetrack and it's fortunate that nobody was seriously injured.

'The CPS authorised charges of dangerous driving after reviewing the evidence submitted by the police.'

The Vehicle Villains video has been taken down from YouTube.
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This is the luxury 18th Century French chateau where top Foreign Office mandarin Sir Philip Barton holidayed while thousands of desperate Afghans tried to flee Kabul in fear of the murderous Taliban.

Sir Philip, 58, the 185,000-a-year head of the Diplomatic Service, and his wife Amanda enjoyed a two-week break at this imposing stone-brick property in the heart of the Dordogne - one of the most picturesque regions of France.

The Permanent Secretary remained on holiday in France after Kabul fell to the Islamist fanatics last August, while his staff oversaw a shambolic system for allocating places on mercy flights.

Sir Philip stayed in France until 26 August  11 days after the fall of Kabul - and during a car crash appearance before the Foreign Affairs Select Committee, he admitted this was a mistake.

'I have reflected on this very carefully and if I had my time again I would not have done it,' he told MPs this week.

Situated a short drive from the popular tourist town of Sarlat-la-Caneda and close to the beguiling Dordogne river, the chateau is estimated to be worth 1.2 million (1 million). The Dordogne region is highly prized by expat Britons, Dutchmen and Germans who are willing to pay dearly for their dream French home.

Sir Philip and his wife Amanda enjoyed a two-week break at this imposing stone-brick property in the heart of the Dordogne

Sir Philip, right, and his wife were guests of her sister Susan Colley, left, and husband Daryl, the CEO of a telecoms firm

The career civil servant, who has represented Britain in embassies across the world, stayed with his in-laws at the beautiful chateau set in the rolling hills in the Dordogne region which boasts numerous bedrooms and a vine-shaded terrace overlooking the valley below.

Horses graze in a paddock behind the house next to purpose-built stables.

Sir Philip, 58, and his wife Amanda were guests of her sister Susan Colley and her husband Daryl, the CEO of a French telecoms firm.

Mrs Colley today confirmed the Foreign Office chief had stayed at her home in the hamlet.

Standing on the doorstep of her 18th century, three-storey, mansion, she told MailOnline: 'Philip Barton is my brother-in-law and he was here in the summer.

'But I don't want to discuss it. I know he has been criticised about what happened and I'm very upset about it.'

Sir Philip's situation in the idyllic setting was in stark contrast to the scenes of chaos within the Foreign Office described to MPs by whistleblower Raphael Marshall in a damning 34-page dossier.

He told the committee that the operation was marked by a 9 to 5 culture, lack of coordination and overwhelmed officials unable to cope with the sheer scale of their task.

Mr Marshall estimated only five per cent of those Afghans seeking safety were given sanctuary by the British and pointed out that the chaotic prioritisation system meant that some of those most deserving of help were left behind.

A family friend of the Bartons back in Britain has defended the civil servant's absence, claiming he was supporting his wife Amanda, following the death of her mother Joyce.

The beautiful chateau is set in the rolling hills in the Dordogne region and is surrounded by many trees and acres of grass

The door - like most other - has a letterbox but a handwritten bit of paper giving the family name of the people staying there

The friend told MailOnline: 'Philip is a lovely guy and extremely hard working. He 's never at home. He leaves home early in the morning and returns late a night.

'In August Philip and Amanda went on holiday to France to visit her sister Sue.

'Their mother had died earlier in the year and they wanted to spend some time together to help each other through their grief.

'I know he's been criticised for not coming back to london when Kabul fell but he was on the phone all the time.

'He wanted to be there for Amanda.'

Mrs Colley added: 'It's been a really tough year.'

On the day Sir Philip finally returned to work, an Isis-K member deployed a suicide bomb outside the gates of Kabul's airport, killing at least 183 people.

Sir Philip said he regretted his decision to stay away and claimed that on 9 August, the day his holiday began, there was no certainty that Kabul would fall.

However that same day, it was widely reported that the Taliban had seized five provincial capitals in three days while Afghan air force pilots had deserted after a colleague was murdered.

Stables of French Chateau where Foreign Office chief Philip Barton was on holiday in the countryside of France

He began a three-week holiday two days before the Foreign Office internally accepted Kabul was about to fall to the Taliban

Faced by claims from MPs that his continued absence represented a dereliction of duty, the civil servant repeated that he regretted his decision, saying his staff needed his visibility, but also claimed his absence had no impact on the number of people Britain was able to evacuate.

He said: 'We are not saying we did a good job but we did get out 15,000 people.'

Responding to 25-year-old Mr Marshall's testimony, Sir Philip said there 'isn't a clocking-off culture' in the FCDO but that staff had been kept to eight-hour shifts to prevent 'burnout'.

During his appearance before MPs, Sir Philip refused to say where he was on holiday, but disclosed it was partly in the UK and partly abroad.

The father-of-two has spent almost his entire career in the Foreign Office, joining in 1986 after a degree in economics and politics from Warwick University and a Masters at the London School of Economics.

His overseas postings have included Caracas, New Delhi, Cyprus and Gibraltar as Deputy Governor and Washington as Deputy Ambassador. He was British High Commissioner to Pakistan from 2014 to 2016.

He was Private Secretary to Prime Ministers John Major and Tony Blair.

The Permanent Secretary remained on holiday in France after Kabul fell to the Islamist fanatics in Afghanistan last August

Sir Philip stayed in France until 26 August  11 days after the fall of Kabul - which has raised questions about his leadership

He has also worked in the Cabinet Office as Director General on the 2016 Anti-Corruption Summit and as Director Foreign Policy and Afghanistan/Pakistan Coordinator supporting the National Security Council.

Kabul was overrun by the Taliban on Sunday August 15. Former Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab was severely criticised for not cutting short his holiday to Crete, and the permanent secretaries at the Home Office, Matthew Rycroft, and the Ministry of Defence, David Williams also came under fire for remaining on leave.

Mr Raab faced down calls for his own resignation in the Summer after it emerged he did not make a phone call to the Afghan foreign minister about getting interpreters out while he was at a five-star resort in Crete.

Officials initially claimed the task was delegated to a junior minister, but later it emerged that thecall never took place. The Foreign Office said it 'was not possible to arrange a call before the Afghan government collapsed'.

A month later, the beleaguered Mr Raab was demoted from from the Foreign Office to the Ministry of Justice, though he was also granted the title of deputy Prime Minister and shared use of the 115-room grace-and-favour mansion and 3,000 acre estate at Chevening, Kent with his successor Liz Truss.

A spokesperson for the FCDO told MailOnline: 'The Permanent Under-Secretary remained in close contact with the department throughout the time he was on leave.'
An aspiring painter accused of murdering one of Britain's richest men sent voice notes to friends claiming he 'had never had to work a day in his life' because of his inherited wealth, a court heard today.

Thomas Schreiber, of Gillingham, Dorset, is on trial at Winchester Crown Court accused of the murder of 83-year-old Sir Richard Sutton and the attempted murder of his mother, Anne Schreiber, on April 7, 2021.

In voice notes allegedly sent by Schreiber to a friend in March this year, he can be heard describing Sir Richard, his mother's partner as 'horribly racist, horribly backwards' and Mrs Schreiber as a 'gold digging f****** b****'.

The 35-year-old has previously admitted the manslaughter of Sir Richard - his mother's partner - and pleaded guilty to driving a Range Rover dangerously on the A303, A4 and M3.

Schreiber however told Winchester Crown Court today that he was 'a peaceful man' who had simply wanted to 'hug her, not hurt her', referring to his mother, Anne.

Thomas Schreiber, of Gillingham, Dorset, is on trial at Winchester Crown Court accused of the murder of 83-year-old Sir Richard Sutton and the attempted murder of his mother, Anne Schreiber (pictured with Thomas), on April 7, 2021

Sir Richard (pictured), an 83-year-old baronet who owned a string of hotels including the Sheraton Grand on London's prestigious Park Lane, died in the knife attack in April

But, he then 'snapped' in an 'uncontrollable explosion' of violence when she likened him to his alcoholic late father, who had died on the day of the frenzied attack eight years before.

Sir Richard, a hotelier, had a knife plunged five inches into his heart while Mrs Schreiber, 66, was stabbed so many times during the 'vicious assault' at Sir Richard's 2m country mansion that she was left paralysed from the neck down and breathing through a ventilator.

The 'Moorhill' estate in the hamlet of Higher Langham near Gillingham, Dorset, was left covered in blood and looking like a 'warzone'.

Sir Richard died following the attack, which came after months of resentment at how he and Anne Schreiber had treated Schreiber's father David following their divorce.

A series of voice note recordings were played to jurors in the courtroom in which Schreiber made several comments about his mother and her partner.

In November 2020, Schreiber sent a voice note to his friend Josh Adamson to say: 'I heard [Sir Richard] on the phone slagging me off to whoever he was talking to... and he was going on about how I don't want to work, I've never wanted to work, I've never wanted to have a job and how apparently in his eyes I've told him that I can't work.

Police guard Sir Richard's 2million property in the Dorset hamlet of Higher Langham in April

'Which is complete nonsense, I've just explained to him that because of my neuro-diverse brain I'm less able to do most things and more able to do less things.

'He was just slagging me off and slagging me off to his daughter... the irony of course is that he's never actually had a job in his life, he's inherited everything and his daughter's never worked and his son's never worked.... it's all very poisonous here and it's very hateful and horrible.'

In March 2021 he messaged a friend known only as Fedor: 'The short story is, my mum is a gold digging f*****g b****, she is a selfish, manipulative, toxic, gold digging b****.

'We moved here 17 years ago, this huge house, with her partner... she's only there to cook for him and take his money.

'He's a multi multi-millionaire, he's never had to work a day in his life, he inherited everything, all property, all land basically around the world. He's an absolute c***.

'He thinks that art and creativity isn't work, he's old-fashioned, thinks that the man should do all the work and women should never have to work.

'He's horribly racist, horribly backwards, horribly old-fashioned, horribly English... I don't have a good word to say about him frankly and I can't stand him.'

Sir Richard Sutton, pictured with his wife Lady Sutton and their children David and Caroline

Schreiber ended the note by saying that he may however be 'a bit of a hypocrite' because he was dependent upon Sir Richard's money.

Today at Winchester Crown Court, Hants, Schreiber said he was 'on edge but cheerful' after drinking two or three double gin and tonics because 'that day was a big day for me but I didn't perceive it as a big day for mum and Richard and that made me a bit nervous'.

He said Sir Richard was showing him pictures of his father on a shooting trip to Lincolnshire before he 'snapped' when his mother said he was 'drunk just like your father'.

Schreiber told jurors: 'I think I said [to his mother] "Hello, how was your day?" and then I remember suggesting [having a toast to his father].

'She didn't even... I think she ignored the question and said "you're drunk, you're drunk just like your father" very high pitched... It was a snap remark.

'I just went completely crazy, completely snapped and I just launched for her and started attacking her uncontrollably.'

He claimed it was 'ridiculous' that he'd wanted to kill his mother, adding: 'We had some tricky times but I didn't want to hurt her... she's my mother, we were joined at the hip. I wanted to hug her.

'I didn't want to hurt her, I couldn't physically stop, I couldn't physically control myself.'

Adam Feest QC, prosecuting, said: 'Are you seriously suggesting, with a knife in your hand, repeatedly stabbing her, that you didn't want to hurt her?'

Schreiber replied: 'I didn't want to hurt her, it sounds crazy I know. I didn't want to hurt my mum but I couldn't physically stop what I was doing.

A jury has been shown footage released by the Metropolitan Police of Schreiber being chased at 135mph before armed police seized him

'I'm not a monster, but right there I was a monster... I'm a peaceful man, a calm man, but there and then I was a monster.'

He added: 'If I had gotten help, the help that I needed then none of this would have happened, if there was more communication between us siblings and as a family.

'If I had possibly stopped being such a coward and stopped being so obnoxious and arrogant then I could have got more help and if I was more aware and less blind then that could have been a saviour for me.'

Schreiber said he was 'incredibly paranoid' and felt like a 'scapegoat' in his family and messaged friends about wanting revenge on his family as a 'cry for help'.

He denied being angry when he stabbed his mother, adding: 'What happened on 7th April was more than anger, it was an explosion, an uncontrollable explosion, a complete loss of control... that's not who I am, that's not me and I have been angry before but I have never lost it like that before.'

Schreiber said Moorhill was a 'toxic environment', adding: 'I felt mum absolutely hated me and wanted me dead... I was convinced they all hated my guts.'

Schreiber claimed he picked up the knife when he heard a voice in his head saying 'attack, attack' after he 'completely lost it' when his mother branded him 'drunk just like your father'.

Mrs Schreiber, the only living witness of the attack which left her paralysed and suffering from poor memory, said she remembered hearing a 'kerfuffle' which made her turn around to see her son walk into the kitchen and pick up the knife from a block on the kitchen island.

Speaking from Salisbury hospital's spinal unit after the attack she said: 'Thomas looked unusual... His eyes were quite weird... I would say almost frightening to look at because they looked terribly, terribly determined.'

The jury previously heard how Schreiber living with the couple at the sprawling country estate became a 'vicious triangle' as Sir Richard became 'consumed' with trying to get rid of the aspiring painter.

His daughter Caroline Sutton even revealed the hotelier paid Schreiber 100,000 for a house deposit in a desperate attempt to get him to leave his home.

Sir Richard, who last year was listed at number 435 in the Sunday Times Rich List with an estimated family fortune of 301 million, was killed following rows with Schreiber about the inheritance of a family chandelier and a day at the races.

The 83 year old owned a sprawling property empire and more than 7,000 acres of land, including the five-star Sheraton Grand on London's Park Lane and the Athenaeum hotel in Mayfair.

Schreiber has admitted manslaughter over the hotelier's death but denies murdering him. He pleads not guilty to the attempted murder of his mother.

He has also pleaded guilty to dangerous driving on the night of the killing, after he fled in a Range Rover and was captured by police after a 135mph high speed chase from Wiltshire to London.

Sir Richard's body was found on the landing, after he was initially attacked downstairs and limped upstairs where Schreiber is said to have stabbed him a further five times in the chest with a kitchen knife.

The prosecution say Schreiber repeatedly knifed his 'toxic and gold digging' mother and Sir Richard after fantasising for months about their murders.

Sir Richard had two children by his first wife Fiamma, and five grandchildren.

Mrs Schreiber, a Danish-born physiotherapist who has a practice in Milborne Port, Dorset, has three grown-up children including son Thomas.

The trial continues.
A bomb squad spent 17 hours working to make a potential explosive device safe after police in Bolton stopped two 'suspicious' men today.

Shops near Bolton police station were closed after patrol officers stopped two 'suspicious males' on Blackburn Road in Bolton just after 2.45am on Friday.

They arrested one of the men, 50, on suspicion of making and possessing an explosive substance and seized a 'suspicious item'.

The 'suspicious item' was taken to Bolton police station, where the Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) unit examined it.

Pictured: A bomb squad rushed to Bolton police station on Friday after a potential explosive device was found when patrol officers stopped two men at 2.45am

Greater Manchester Police in Bolton North said there was 'no wider threat to the public'.

A spokesperson said: 'A cordon is currently in place and shops have been evacuated as a precaution by experts from EOD at Bolton police station and the nearby area after a suspicious item was recovered in the early hours from two males following a stop search on Blackburn Road.

'A 50-year-old man was arrested on suspicion of making and possessing an explosive substance and remains in custody at this time.

'There is no wider threat to the public and a cordon remains in place. We'd like to thank those nearby for their patience whilst enquiries are on-going.'
A lorry driver was yesterday jailed for seven years after trying to sneak 650,000 of cocaine into the UK hidden in the battery space of his HGV.

Romans Gzibovskis, 38, travelled to the UK from Latvia in the lorry and had removed the large HGV battery, replacing it with smaller car batteries wired together.

Class A drugs were stashed into the space left between the power cells.

He was stopped at Dover's Eastern Docks in Kent after travelling from Kastire in Latvia, on August 24.

Romans Gzibovskis, 38, (pictured) travelled to the UK from Latvia in the lorry and had removed the large HGV battery, replacing it with smaller car batteries wired together

Officers from Border Force scanned the lorry, which was carrying empty plastic pallets, and saw something strange in the external battery compartment.

Searches of the lorry found 16 kilos of cocaine and experts from the National Crime Agency estimated it would have been worth around 650,000 on the street.

Gzibovskis pleased guilty to one count of being involved in the importation of a controlled drug at Canterbury Crown Court.

He was yesterday jailed for seven years at the same court.

Officers from Border Force scanned the lorry (pictured), which was carrying empty plastic pallets, and saw something strange in the external battery compartment

Mark Howes, branch commander at the NCA, said today: 'Gzibovskis clearly thought this concealment method would leave his lethal cargo undetected. Thankfully it didn't.

'Not only has it deprived organised criminals of their profits but prevented class A drugs from reaching our streets, where they fuel violence and exploitation of vulnerable people.

'Working alongside Border Force, we will continue the fight against illegal drugs which pose such a threat to the public.'
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The Chicago Police Chief who arrested Jussie Smollett for lying to cops back in 2019 has revealed he would let him off with an apology and wouldn't have pursued criminal charges if he'd admitted lying three years ago.

Eddie Johnson was in charge of the force when Smollett staged the hoax attack. He has since been fired for misconduct, after he was found drunk at the wheel of his parked patrol car, and after it emerged he'd had affairs with female staff.

Smollett told the police, and later the world, that he was jumped by two white Trump supporters on his way home from Subway in the middle of the night on the coldest night of the year while out buying a sandwich. He was found guilty yesterday of staging the attack to boost his career, paying brothers Abel and Ola Osundairo to carry it out.

Johnson was the first and most vocal to shame Smollett for lying about the fake attack in January 2019, and he was bold enough to arrest him despite the actor claiming the police force was only going after him because he is a black man.

Johnson, another black man, appeared on NewsNation's Morning in America on Friday to talk about the verdict - Smollett was found guilty on five counts of lying to police. He revealed that he would not have pursued a prosecution against Smollett or even charged him if the actor had just apologized and admitted that he made it all up.

'Let me say this: Myself and Mayor [Rahm] Emanuel were upset at the time that [he] stained our city and you put all that manpower into it but I want people to understand this. This was not the most heinous crime of the century. He didn't kill anybody. He didn't blow up a building.

'We would have been more than happy with just an apology at the end of all that we uncovered but for some reason, he just wanted to keep going down this road that he was actually a victim,' he told host Adrienne Bankert on Morning in America.

Former Chicago Police Department Chief Superintendent Eddie Johnson appeared on Morning in America on NewsNtion

Johnson said the first thing he thought was suspicious that Smollett had kept the noose around his neck that he claimed his attackers placed on him. He is shown in police bodycam footage back at his apartment on the night in question, showing it to the officers. Johnson said: 'I don't think there's many black people in America with a noose around their neck and wouldn't immediately take it off'

Johnson said he had to convince other Chicago PD cops to keep treating Smollett as a victim and not a suspect.

He was immediately suspicious, he said, after he saw the video of Smollett being interviewed in his apartment by police detectives.

'I have to be honest, when I first saw the video of him in his apartment with the noose around his neck I was concerned because I don't think there's many black people in America with a noose around their neck and wouldn't immediately take it off.

'I have to be honest, when I first saw the video of him in his apartment with the noose around his neck I was concerned because I don't think there's many black people in America with a noose around their neck and wouldn't immediately take it off.

'And the way he was so nonchalant handling it gave me cause for concern. But I would not let the police department make him an offender until the evidence just go to be so overwhelming. I stopped the department from calling him an offender for quite a while.

'To use a symbol like a noose to promote yourself is just unconscionable to me.

'The city of Chicago, we'd been making so much progress at that time in terms of violent crime, it just hurt me that a black person would use a black symbol like that and create a crime where no crime occurred. It was tough. It really was,' he said.

Aside from the noose - which prosecutors say Smollett tightened for effect - Johnson said he was also suspicious that the actor managed to preserve his tuna Subway sandwich and bring it home with him, in tact, after being apparently beaten by thugs.

'Looking back on it, the part about the noose but what really struck us oddly , I'd been a cop, 30 or 31 years. I'd been in the detective division working homicides, a lot. What really struck us all was the fact that he got attacked on the coldest night of the year during a polar vortex. It was insanely cold. Nobody was out.

'But I tell you one thing that really tipped us off that told us there was a problem... if somebody gets jumped like that - let me back up a bit. He went to a Subway sandwich shop at like two in the morning to get a sandwich, OK, that's fine.

Smollett is shown in surveillance camera footage from his apartment building walking out of his building before the attack (right) and (left) leaving court yesterday after being found guilty

Johnson famously tore Smollett apart at this February 21 press conference in 2019 where he told the world how the actor had lied

Johnson on NewsNation on Friday morning. He said he would have let Smollett off with an apology had he just admitted that he lied

'He comes back, gets attacked in a hate crime supposed hate crime, and during all this scuffle, they poured bleach on him, when he got up and went into his apartment building, he got up and still had that Subway sandwich with him. That doesn't happen.

Jussie Smollett is shown in his mugshot from February 21 2019

'When people get attacked like that, whatever belongings they have out there, they usually leave it until the police can go back with them because they're afraid.

'This guy had the sandwich in his hand and it had never been touched. That was a real tipping point to us that something was a miss,' he said.

Johnson added that he 'still made it a point' to treat Smollett like a victim until the evidence became too overwhelming to ignore.

'As the days went on and we started recovering that video, it became fairly obvious that something was amiss.

'When we found out about the Osundairo brothers, they had fled the country at the time, they came back to Chicago. I made it a point to not let the detectives get that out there. We wanted them to come back to Chicago.

'When we arrested them and brought them in, when I saw the videos of their statements, then I could no longer protect [Smollett]', he said.

Johnson tore through Smollett on February 20, 2019, for wasting police resources - namely $100,000 and 26 cops working full-time.

He said it was 'painful' that he'd used the symbolism of a noose to try and boost his own profile, and that there was proof beyond doubt that Smollett had lied.

The actor, in response, said he never trusted the Chicago Police Department and that's why he was accused of lying.

He maintains his innocence and his lawyer has already indicated that he plans to file an appeal. Smollett's sentencing date has not yet been set.

He faces up to 20 years behind bars.
The top U.S. commander for the Middle East has said the United States will keep the current 2,500 troops in Iraq for the foreseeable future, and he warned that he expects increasing attacks on U.S. and Iraqi personnel by Iranian-backed militias determined to get American forces out.

Marine Gen. Frank McKenzie said in an interview with The Associated Press Thursday at the Pentagon that despite the shift by U.S. forces to a non-combat role in Iraq, they will still provide air support and other military aid for Iraq's fight against the Islamic State.

Noting that Iranian-backed militias want all Western forces out of Iraq, he said an ongoing uptick in violence may continue through December.

Gen. Frank McKenzie (pictured in July) revealed the US will keep the current 2,500 troops in Iraq

'They actually want all U.S. forces to leave, and all U.S. forces are not going to leave,' he said, adding that as a result, 'that may provoke a response as we get later into the end of the month.'

The Iraqi government earlier Thursday announced the conclusion of talks on ending the U.S. combat mission against IS. U.S. forces have been largely in an advisory role for some time, so the announced transition changes little. The announcement reflects a July decision by the Biden administration to end the U.S. combat mission in Iraq by December 31.

'We've drawn down from bases we didn't need, we've made it harder to get at us. But the Iraqis still want us to be there. They still want the presence, they still want the engagement,' said McKenzie. 'So as long as they want it, and we can mutually agree that's the case - were going to be there.'

He said he believes Islamic State militants will continue to be a threat in Iraq and that the group will 'keep recreating itself, perhaps under a different name.' The key, he said, will be to ensure that IS is not able to coalesce with other elements around the globe and become increasingly strong and dangerous.

America invaded Iraq in 2003, and at the peak point had more than 170,000 troops battling insurgents in the country and later working to train and advise Iraqi forces. All U.S. forces were withdrawn at the end of 2011, but just three years later, American troops were back to help Iraq beat back the Islamic State group, which had swept across the border from Syria to gain control of a large swath of the country.

The U.S. presence in Iraq has long been a flash point for Tehran, but tensions spiked after a January 2020 U.S. drone strike near the Baghdad airport killed a top Iranian general. In retaliation, Iran launched a barrage of missiles at al-Asad airbase, where U.S. troops were stationed. More than 100 service members suffered traumatic brain injuries in the blasts.

U.S. soldiers are seen during a handover ceremony of Taji military base from US-led coalition troops to Iraqi security forces, in the base north of Baghdad, Iraq, in August 2020

More recently, Iranian proxies are believed responsible for an assassination attempt last month on Iraqs Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi. And officials have said they believe Iran was behind the October drone attack at the military outpost in southern Syria where American troops are based. No U.S. personnel were killed or injured in the attack.

'I think an attack to kill the prime minister is a pretty significant event,' McKenzie said. 'I think thats a signpost of the desperation that theyre under right now.' Iranian officials have said Tehran and its allies had nothing to do with last month's drone attack that lightly injured the Iraqi prime minister.

McKenzie, who has headed U.S. Central Command for nearly three years and traveled extensively throughout the region, painted a picture that reflected the recent upheaval in Afghanistan, where U.S. troops departed at the end of August.

On Afghanistan, McKenzie said the al-Qaida extremist group has grown slightly since U.S. forces left and that the ruling Taliban leaders are divided about their 2020 pledge to break ties with the group. He said the departure of the U.S military and intelligence assets from the country has made it 'very hard, not impossible' to ensure that neither al-Qaida nor the Islamic State group's Afghanistan affiliate can pose a threat to the United States.

Like the Taliban's long campaign to get Americans out of Afghanistan, Iran and its proxies have battled to get the U.S. out of Iraq and the broader Middle East.

'Iran still pursues a vision of ejecting us,' he said. 'And they see the principal battleground for that as being in Iraq. And I believe they are under the view that they can increase friction in Iraq to where we will leave.'

Iran, he said, believes that campaign won't affect the nuclear negotiations that were long stalled but are now restarting. But, he said, 'I think it's a dangerous position for the Iranians to maintain, because I think they're not going to be able to decouple those two things.'

McKenzie said that as NATO begins to expand its presence in Iraq as planned, the U.S. will refine its force there. And the total U.S. force presence will depend on future agreements with Iraq's government.

The U.S. troops in Syria, currently numbering about 900, will continue to advise and assist Syrian rebel forces in the fight against IS, McKenzie said. He said it's not clear how much longer that will be necessary but said, 'I think we are measurably closer than we were a couple of years ago. I still think we have a ways to go.'

More broadly, McKenzie noted that the U.S. troop presence across the Middle East has significantly dropped since last year, when it peaked amid tensions with Iran, at as much as 80,000. The U.S. has identified China and Russia as the top national security threats, labeling China as America's 'pacing challenge,' and has looked to focus more effort and assets in the Pacific.

In its recent review of the positioning of U.S. forces around the world, the Pentagon said little about removing or repositioning troops in the Middle East. McKenzie and other top military leaders have long worried that the U.S. military is concentrated in too few locations in the Middle East and must disperse more to increase security.

'We think it is important to work with our partners in the region to present a more complex targeting problem to Iran,' he said, adding that U.S. will look at other bases and opportunities to move troops around to achieve that goal.

McKenzie said he is particularly concerned by Iran's development of ballistic and cruise missiles as well as armed drones.

'And so those things are very concerning to me because they continue to develop them,' he said. 'And they show no signs of abating in their research in this field, and their fielding of new and increasingly lethal and capable weapons.'
Austrians aged 14 and over who refuse Covid-19 vaccinations will be fined 1,000 per month as Vienna rolls out a jab mandate to last until 2024.

The country's conservative-led government on Thursday announced the details of its plan to make coronavirus vaccines compulsory, as the country prepares to to end its lockdown on Sunday, that was announced last month.

Roughly 68 percent of Austria's population is fully vaccinated against COVID-19, one of the lowest rates in western Europe. Many Austrians are sceptical about vaccines, a view encouraged by the far-right Freedom Party, the third biggest in parliament.

Austrians aged 14 and over who refused Covid-19 vaccinations will be fined 1,000 per month as Vienna tolls out a jab mandate to last until 2024. Pictured: A man is given a Covid-19 vaccine in Vienna, Austria on November 23

Pictured: Graphs showing Austria's seven-day rolling average new Covid-19 cases and related deaths. Austria went into lockdown two weeks ago to counter a surge in daily coronavirus infections to record levels. Infections have plunged, with deaths also showing signs of easing

As infections set records three weeks ago, the government announced a fourth national lockdown and said it would make vaccinations compulsory for all, the first European Union country to do so.

Vaccine holdouts now face fines of up to 3,600 euros (3,070) every three months.

People's income and other financial obligations will be taken into account in calculating fines. Alternatively, officials can opt to impose a fine of up to 600 euros (about $680) in shortened proceedings.

Authorities will write to unvaccinated people every three months reminding them to get their shots or get a doctor to certify their right to an exemption before the next cutoff date.

If they continue not to comply, fines can be imposed every three months. Proceedings will be dropped if people produce proof of vaccination in the meantime.

'We still have an obligation and a need to increase vaccination coverage so that we don't go from lockdown to lockdown, next year as well,' said Karoline Edtstadler, the Cabinet minister responsible for constitutional issues.

People wait in lines to register for COVID-19 vaccination on the second day of a national lockdown to combat soaring coronavirus infections, in Vienna, Austria, Nov. 23, 2021. Roughly 68 percent of Austria's population is fully vaccinated against COVID-19, one of the lowest rates in western Europe. Many Austrians are sceptical about vaccines, a view encouraged by the far-right Freedom Party, the third biggest in parliament

'There are still well over a million Austrians who aren't vaccinated. That is too many,' she added, speaking during a new conference with Health Minister Wolfgang Mueckstein.

'I say very clearly that we don't want to punish the people who aren't vaccinated. We want to bring them along, we want to convince them of this vaccination and we want them to show solidarity with everyone so that we can regain our freedom.'

The vaccine mandate, which must be approved by parliament, is due to start in February and last through January 2024. Two opposition parties support it, suggesting it will pass easily.

There will be quarterly vaccination deadlines, Mueckstein said, adding that the authorities will check a central vaccination register to see if members of the public are in it.

'If that is not the case, proceedings will be brought. In regular proceedings the amount of the fine is 3,600 euros,' Mueckstein said, adding that fines would be means-tested.

'As an alternative, the authorities have the option to impose a fine in shorter proceedings immediately after the vaccination deadline.

Seats and tables of a closed cafe are seen during the fourth national coronavirus disease (COVID-19) lockdown in Salzburg, Austria, December 8, 2021. Austria's lockdown - announced last month - is set to end on Sunday after cases fell

'Here the amount of the fine is 600 euros,' he said, adding that if this was not paid it would lead to regular proceedings.

The announcement from Austria that it would introduce a general vaccine mandate came on November 19 - at the same time the government decided to lock down the country to curb a surge of new infections.

The country's seven-day infection rate has declined during the lockdown. It stood at 432.6 new cases per 100,000 residents on Thursday, down from more than 1,100 on the day the lockdown started.

Austria's government announced on Wednesday that it would let a wide range of businesses, from non-essential shops to theatres, restaurants and hairdressers reopen when its COVID-19 lockdown ends on Sunday, but many regions will open up more cautiously.

The new Austrian Chancellor Karl Nehammer speaks at a news conference about his plans for the upcoming weeks in Vienna, Austria, Tuesday, Dec. 7, 2021

Vienna opera ball cancelled for second year running Austria has cancelled its famous Vienna Opera Ball for the second year running over the coronavirus pandemic, the government said Wednesday. Keeping the February 24, 2022 date would have sent 'the wrong signal' as the country is only to start emerging from a partial lockdown this Sunday, state secretary for culture Andrea Mayer said. 'The Opera Ball is typically the kind of event at which social distancing is impossible,' she told the Austrian news agency APA. The ball, a major event in Austria's cultural calendar attended by the country's political and economic elites as well as foreign celebrities, was also cancelled last year over the Covid-19 pandemic. Before that, it was called off during the 1991 Gulf War. The event usually attracts thousands of guests, with ordinary tickets costing 315 euros ($350) and circle boxes available for 23,600 euros ($26,700), according to the Vienna Opera's website. Reporting by AFP Advertisement

The move means switching from a single set of rules for the whole country to a patchwork varying between nine provinces.

Adding to the confusion, those opening up the fastest included the western provinces of Vorarlberg and Tyrol, which have the highest and fourth-highest infection rates in the country.

'Some (provinces) will act gradually over time, and Burgenlend, Vorarlberg and Tyrol will (immediately) adopt this federal arrangement,' Tyrol's governor, Guenther Platter, told a joint news conference with Chancellor Karl Nehammer and Health Minister Wolfgang Mueckstein.

Vorarlberg and Tyrol are Alpine provinces that rely heavily on winter tourism. Hotels across Austria have been closed to tourists during lockdown, though ski lifts are open.

Austria went into lockdown two weeks ago to counter a surge in daily coronavirus infections to record levels.

Infections have plunged but intensive-care bed occupancy is still rising.

The government pledged when the lockdown was introduced that it would last no longer than 20 days, until this Sunday.

The list of businesses that can reopen from Sunday applies provided the local province is not keeping tighter restrictions. The province of Upper Austria, which long had Austria's highest infection rate and borders both Germany and the Czech Republic, plans to stay in lockdown until Dec. 17.

Vienna will only let cafes and restaurants fully reopen a week after the national lockdown lifts, while non-essential shops and Christmas markets will reopen from Monday. Austrian media said three other provinces would take a similar approach, only letting hotels and restaurants reopen on Friday, December 17.
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Firefighters rushed to rescue residents in France today as homes were drenched in three weeks of rain in just 12 hours, causing landslides and swollen rivers.

Heavy rains lashed a large swath of southwest France and northern Spain overnight, leading to evacuations of dozens of residents and rivers overflowing their banks. One person was reported dead in Spain.

Warm southern winds that have melted snowbanks in the Pyrenees mountains in recent days also contributed to the flooding, which could persist for several days.

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Pictured: Bayonne, southwestern France, where cars were submerged by water in flooded streets on December 10, 2021. The flooding comes after heavy rains lashed a large swath of southwest France overnight, leading to evacuations of dozens of residents and rivers overflowing their banks

Pictured: Pedestrians look on flooded streets of Bayonne, southwestern France, on December 10, 2021

Floods in Bayonne, France. The Nive river reached 6.15m, a record according to local reports

The Ebro River surrounds the Cathedral-Basilica of Our Lady of the Pillar in Zaragoza, Spain, December 10, 2021. Warnings have been issued due to the possibility of an overflow of the river following heavy rains registered in the region

Several regions have an 'orange' warning in place until at least Sunday, with local media reporting that one region - Pyrenees-Atlantiques - saw almost five inches of rain at 4am in Friday.

'Despite one person injured, we have no serious accidents or deaths, with firefighters responding to more than 250 calls in the past few hours,' Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin told journalists after discussions with local officials.

The Meteo France weather agency also warned of high avalanche risks in the Pyrenees, which separate France from Spain, where local flooding was also reported.

Warm southern winds that have melted snowbanks in the Pyrenees mountains in recent days also contributed to the flooding, which could persist for several days. Pictured: A man walks in flooded streets of Bayonne, southwestern France on Friday

Workers of restaurant look on flooded streets of Bayonne, southwestern France, on December 10, 2021

This photograph taken on December 10, 2021, shows flooded streets in Bayonne, southwestern France

Pictured: Cars are submerged in Bayonne, southwestern France following heavy rain and flooding

The regional government in Spain's Navarre region said a woman died Friday in her car after a landslide that followed two weeks of heavy rains.

Pictures from the Spanish city of Zaragoza showed the banks of the river Ebro, that runs through the centre and past a cathedral, bclose to bursting.

According to Euro Weekly News, a man in Spain was killed in the town of Sunbilla when the roof of a shed collapsed on to the top of his vehicle.

Eric Spitze, the French government's top official for the Aquitaine region that includes Bordeaux, said that while the situation was 'under control,' forecasts of more rain to come could see floodwaters rise further in several towns and cities.

In the coastal city of Bayonne, loudspeakers carried warnings for crowds of people who gathered along the banks of the Nive river to take pictures of the torrents.

Emergency workers walk on a flooded road, following heavy rainfall in Pamplona, Spain, December 10, 2021

A woman is helped by fireman while walking in a flooded area near the Arga River in the neighborhood of Huarte-Pamplona, near to Pamplona, northern Spain, Friday, December 10, 2021

A flooded area in the aftermath of heavy rains in Pamplona, Spain, December 10, 2021. The Arga River has overflown following heavy rains in the early of Friday

A road with a traffic signal covered with flood water, near the Arga river, in Pamplona, northern Spain, Friday, December 10

A flooded area in the Behobia neighborhood after the Bidasoa river overflowed due to heavy rains, in Irun, Spain, December 10, 2021

Firefighters use a dinghy to inspect the flooded streets in Pamplona, where River Arga has overflown due to the heavy rains registered during the early hours, in Pamplona, Spain, December 10, 2021

Authorities cancelled a Friday night rugby match in Bayonne between Aviron Bayonnais and US Montauban, and Mayor Jean-Rene Etchegaray also urged businesses along the Nive river to close.

Classes were called off at several schools and some roads were closed, while train services were disrupted and electricity cuts were reported at hundreds of homes across the region.

Further inland, the flooding caused a landslide in the Pyrenees village of Itxassou, with one resident, a 37-year-old who gave his name as Jean-Claude, said his home was swamped in 16 inches of water - for the second time in seven years.

'In 2014, they said it was once-in-a-century flooding, and now it's already happening again,' he told AFP.
Days of Our Lives star Rhonda Stubbins White, who also starred in Tyler Perry's 'Ruthless,' died of ovarian cancer at home in Los Angeles on Monday, her friend and producer Todd Baker confirmed on Thursday. She was 60.

'It is with great sadness that I announce the passing of my dear friend Rhonda Stubbins White. She was an amazingly talented woman, full of positivity and energy, and grounded by her faith,' Baker wrote in comment on her Facebook page.

'We were all fortunate to have known her and shared her short time on this earth.'

The veteran actress had 35 acting credits to her name, according to IMDb.

Aside from her recurring role of Lady Vi on NBC's popular daytime soap opera, White was well-known for portraying cult leader Agnes on Tyler Perry's BET drama series 'Ruthless.'

She is survived by her partner, Cedric Starling, as well as her siblings Gregory and Annette.

Days of Our Lives star Rhonda Stubbins White, 60, pictured, died of ovarian cancer on Monday

The veteran actress, who was 60 at the time of her death, had 35 acting credits to her name

The Brooklyn native graduated from New York Universitys Tisch School of the Arts in 1982.

She had her onscreen debut in 1992 on an episode NBC's 'Here and Now.'

White then relocated to Los Angeles, where she appeared in such popular television shows as 'ER,' 'NYPD Blue,' 'The West Wing,' 'Crossing Jordan' and 'The Comeback.'

She was nominated for a CableACE award for actress in a movie or miniseries for her role as Rolanda on the HBO miniseries 'Laurel Avenue' in 1993.

A potential Zoom memorial for White is being planned with a livestream for her fans to watch, according to Baker.

White also appeared alongside Diana Ross in ABC's 1994 television movie 'Out of Darkness,' playing a woman with schizophrenia.

She won the Victoria TX Indie Film Fest award for best actress in 2017 for her role in 'Rose's Turn.'

A potential Zoom memorial for White is being planned with a livestream for her fans to watch, according to Baker.
A Capitol Hill staffer who was arrested at the Longworth House Office Building on Thursday morning for bringing a loaded gun into the complex was not stopped for 12 minutes, Capitol Police said Friday.

Jeffrey Allsbrooks, 57, told Capitol Hill Police that he forgot the firearm was in his bag.

The gun was not detected by U.S. Capitol Police until after Allsbrooks had cleared security  they said in a release Thursday that they were able to track him down four minutes after detected.

A USCP investigation found that police spent four minutes locking down the Capitol and another eight minutes passed until Allsbrooks was confronted by police. The finding is sure to raise questions as the Capitol has been trying to beef up its security for the last year in the wake of the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.

'We are charging him with Carrying a Pistol without a License,' USCP said in a statement, claiming the case is under investigation.

Allsbrooks is a staffer with the House Chief Administrative Office. He pleaded not guilty in court in Arlington on Friday, NBC Washington reported.

Charging documents say the gun was not registered in D.C., had 14 rounds of ammo and a 15-round magazine.

Allsbrooks was subsequently also charged with possession of unlicensed ammunition and possession of a 'large capacity ammunition feeding device,' or a gun magazine that holds more than 10 rounds.

Allsbrooks was released and is due back in court in February. He is prohibited from owning a firearm as part of his release conditions.

UPDATE | The security threat ended. The Intercom says its all clear now.



Earlier security guards seemed to be looking for a suspicious person. They asked one of the ABC staff members who was with me if she had just entered the building or not. pic.twitter.com/JhNtocU6gu  Em Nguyen (@EmNewsDC) December 9, 2021

A reporter inside the Capitol complex on Thursday posted video of a voice over the intercom system informing people within Longworth that the threat had cleared and the building could return to normal operations

The initial security threat alert informed staff in Longworth to 'move inside your office or the nearest office' and 'close, lock and stay away from external doors and windows.'

About 10 minutes after the alert was sent, USCP said they were able to 'clear the internal security threat incident' and said the building and staff could 'return to normal operations.'

Over the intercom system at the Capitol, a woman's voice said: 'The internal threat at the Longworth House Office Building has been cleared. Return to normal operations.'

Hours later, President Biden, First Lady Jill Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris and Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff all made their way to Capitol Hill to pay their respects to Bob Dole as the late Republican senator's remains lie in state at the Capitol Rotunda.

Biden also delivered live-streamed remarks honoring Dole's life and service to his country.

The Longworth House Office Building, part of the Capitol Hill Complex, received a security threat Thursday morning when a man going through security was arrested after a gun was found in his bag

The Capitol has been on high alert over the past year, beginning in January when hundreds of Trump supporters breached the premises as Congress was certifying the results of the 2020 election. Then on April 2, one police officer was killed and another badly injured as a man rammed a car into a Capitol barricade and exited his vehicle wielding a knife.

In August, a man in a pickup truck drove onto the sidewalk outside the Library of Congress and claimed to have explosives in his vehicle.
An all-out brawl erupted in Atlantic City's Harrah's Resort on Tuesday as dozens of suited-up men punched each other and threw chairs across the casino floor.

Dramatic footage captured the moment the fight suddenly broke out just before 3 a.m., as the men began yelling and beating each other in the dining area.

The panicked crowd begins to flee as the brawlers attack one another and pick up chairs as weapons, while others took out their cellphones to record the fight.

One of the witnesses arrives and suddenly strikes another spectator in the face, all while another onlooker yells 'Boom' at the moment of every strike.

A lone security guard arrives, but cannot do much against the violent crowd until more arrive to help put an end to the fight.

Police didn't say why the fight broke out at the hotel, which has rooms that go for as high as $1,674 a night. The average rate is $113 a night.

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A fight suddenly broke out at the Harrah's Resort in Atlantic city as dozens of men in suits began beating one another and throwing chairs

As chairs and fists were thrown, one spectator suddenly attacked another onlooker

Many began to flee the all-out brawl while others took their phones out to record the chaos

Atlantic City Police confirmed on Friday that one person was taken to AtlantiCare Regional Medical Center for non-life-threatening injuries, the Press of Atlantic City reported.

Near the ending of the fight, several men could be seen descending on a single man who was lying on the floor in a fetal position.

The men could be heard screaming, 'You're a b***h,' as they swung wildly at the man.

Police Lt. Kevin Fair said the fight was over once police arrived at the scene and that none of the men involved in the fight wanted to sign a criminal complaint.

A group of men began punching someone crawled in the fetal position as onlookers recorded

A lone security guard arrived at the scene but could not do much along against the crowd

Guards eventually quelled the fight, which left one sent to the hospital. Police said no one wanted to press charges

The Harrah's Resort did not immediately return the DailyMail.com's request for comment.

The New Jersey resort features luxury hotels, a casino and hosts Gordon Ramsay's Steakhouse.

It had been hosting a real estate convention that brought hundreds of mortgage lenders and realtors to Atlantic City on Tuesday.

Police did not say if those involved at the fight were there for the convention.
New Yorkers salivating over the prospect of tucking into a luscious slice of Junior's cheesecake this holiday season batter have a back-up plan after the classic eatery temporarily halted production of its world-famous dessert.

The 70-year-old restaurant chain and bakery announced this week that it was forced to shut down production at its commercial kitchen in Burlington, New Jersey, on December 3, and then again on Thursday, because of ongoing supply chain woes, which have been seen in a growing number of retail sectors in recent months.

Junior's owner, Alan Rosen, told CNN that his company, which bills itself as home of the world's best cheesecake, has been struggling to procure the main ingredient - cream cheese - for weeks now.

Junior's restaurant and bakery chain says a dire cream cheese shortage forced it to halt cheesecake production on December 3 and again on December 9. The chain's original location on Flatbush Avenue in Brooklyn is pictured on Friday

Junior's signature cheesecakes are made from 85 per cent cream cheese

Despite the supply chain woes, Junior's shelves appeared well-stocked with sweet, creamy goodies in Brooklyn on Friday

'Weve been scraping by,' Rosen told the outlet, also revealing that Junior's has been 'getting cream cheese in sporadic supply and praying.'

Junior's is not the only business feeling the squeeze when it comes to cream cheese.

Delis across New York have been dealing with a dire shortage of their breakfast staple in recent weeks.

From Zabar's to Pick-a-Bagel in Manhattan, bagel makers citywide say they barely have a few days' supply of schmear left, threatening to take Big Apple's classic delicacy off the menu indefinitely.

'I've never been out of cream cheese for 30 years,' said Joseph Yemma, the owner of F&H Dairies in Brooklyn, a dairy product distributor for many of the city's bagel shops.

Junior's signature cheesecakes, which are sold at stores, served at the chain's four restaurants and shipped directly to consumers around the US for $46 to $56 each, are made from 85 per cent cream cheese, and the company goes through about 4 million pounds of the product a year.

Junior's owner said he has been talking directly to Kraft Heinz, the parent company of the popular Philadelphia brand cream cheese, pleading for additional supplies

US Senator Charles Schumer, of New York, tucks into a slice of cheesecake as he attends a ribbon cutting and official opening of Junior's restaurant in Times Square, which had been closed during the pandemic on May 6, 2021

Then-President Barack Obama walks out with two bags of cheesecake from Junior's Restaurant next to Bill de Blasio, who was a mayoral candidate at the time, in 2013

Rosen said that Junior's original recipe for its trademark New York-style cheesecake has not changed since 1950, so there can be no talk of substitutions for its highly coveted, silky-smooth main ingredient.

Desperate for supplies during the busy holiday season, when desserts are at an especially high demand, Rosen said he has been talking directly to Kraft Heinz, the parent company of the popular Philadelphia brand cream cheese.

'We're getting on the phone with them. We're talking, we're pleading, we're moving trucks around where we can,' Rosen said.

Kraft said it is ramping up production to meet 'the unprecedented demand.' The company said it is now shipping up to 35 per cent more cream cheese to restaurants compared to last year.

Besides the increased demand, Kraft cited the ongoing supply chain problems, which have seen products, from shoes to toys and cars, run out due to issues including a shortage of truck drivers, and shortages of other vital staff due to COVID vaccine mandates that many have refused to comply with.
Jana Duggar has pleaded not guilty to charges of endangering the welfare of a child in Arkansas - news that comes just one day after her brother Josh was found guilty of child porn charges.

The reality TV star from 19 Kids and Counting, 31, has been charged with the misdemeanor, an Elms Springs District clerk confirmed to DailyMail.com on Friday.

The local county clerk said Duggar was cited on September 9, 2021 but said she wasn't at liberty to say if the charge was connected to Josh.

Jana has entered a plea deal and is expected to appear in the Washington County District Court on January 10, the clerk said. The 31-year-old has no children of her own and is the eldest unmarried Duggar child.

She has been silent on social media since October.

If convicted, she could face 30 to 90 days in jail behind bars or fines.

The news comes one day after her brother Josh, 33, was found guilty of downloading a vile trove of 'the worst of the worst' child porn.

He had been charged with two counts of downloading and possessing child pornography, and faces up to 20 years in prison.

Jana Duggar, 31, has been charged with endangering the welfare of a child in Arkansas

Jana has entered a plea deal for her misdemeanor charge which she cited on September 9 (Pictured: Jason Duggar and Janna Duggar leave the court after attending their brother Josh Duggar's child pornography charges)

The news of Jana's child endangerment charge comes a day after her brother Josh Duggar was found guilty on two counts of child pornography (Pictured: The Duggar family Christmas card)

Jana was spotted attending her brother's trial in Fayetteville, Arkansas on Tuesday. She appeared in 'high spirits laughing and mingling with family during breaks, including Josh,' The Sun reported.

Jana is the second child and first daughter of Jim and Michelle Duggar. The 31-year-old still lives with her parents and many of her younger siblings.

The family still lives on the compound where Counting On was filmed for 11 seasons starting in 2015.

Disgraced reality TV star Josh Duggar faces decades in prison after he was found guilty on child pornography charges.

Jurors deliberated for six hours before returning guilty verdicts on charges of possessing child pornography and receipt of child pornography, both punishable by 20 years in jail and a $250,000 fine.

Duggar, 33, glanced anxiously toward his wife Anna and dad Jim Bob but showed little emotion as each juror was asked individually to reaffirm their decision.

A week-long federal trial in Fayetteville, Arkansas heard how Duggar used his considerable tech skills to scour the dark web for videos of little girls being tortured, humiliated and abused.

The Duggars rose to fame after their reality TV show 19 Kids and Counting aired in 2008

Their first TLC show spun off into several spin-off shows featuring different family members

Josh Duggar smiles in his booking photo after being found guilty of child porn charges in federal court in Fayetteville, Arkansas

Josh Duggar, 33, (pictured with wife Anna on Thursday) was found guilty on two counts of downloading and possessing child pornography

Duggar had previously made headlines in 2015 when police reports stating that he had molested his four of his young sisters when he was 12 became public. His parents said he had confessed to the fondling and apologized.

Jurors on Monday heard testimony from a family friend who said Duggar had told her about the abuse.

Statement from Jim Bob and Michelle: A statement regarding Joshua Duggars guilty verdict 'This entire ordeal has been very grievous. Today, Gods grace, through the love and prayers of so many, has sustained us. Our hearts and prayers are with anyone who has ever been harmed through CSAM. 'In the days ahead, we will do all we can to surround our daughter-in-law Anna and their children with love and support. As parents, we will never stop praying for Joshua, and loving him, as we do all of our children. In each of lifes circumstances, we place our trust in God. He is our source of strength and refuge. Thank you for your prayers.' Advertisement

Judge Timothy Brooks remanded Duggar in custody under a mandatory rule based on the seriousness of his crimes and said he will have to wait around four months to be sentenced.

Speaking outside court, defense attorney Justin Gelfand announced immediate plans to appeal.

'We respect the jurors' verdicts and we look forward to continuing this fight,' he said. 'We plan to appeal at the appropriate time.'

David Clay Fowlkes, Acting U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Arkansas, told reporters: 'This case represents a significant milestone for the Western District of Arkansas in our continued efforts to combat child abuse.

'Those who would say that children who were photographed and videoed in a manner similar to the evidence in this case are not abused and are not victims, are clearly wrong.

'Children who are photographed and videoed in manner such as this are the victims and every time their videos and photos are traded online, uploaded and downloaded from the internet, they are victimized all over again, every single time that that happens.'

It has also been revealed that Josh Duggar attempted to find Daisy's Destruction, the most notorious 'hurtcore' video in the world as part of his perversion.

The warped movie depicts an 18-month-old infant being hung upside down, beaten and tortured in what is widely regarded by law enforcement as the most gruesome example to date of hurtcore  a sub-genre of child porn where perverts get off on seeing kids in pain.

Investigators reportedly broke down in tears and couldnt believe their eyes when they found the video.
Every morning Helen Macdonald opens the back door of her Gloucestershire farmhouse and looks out onto the empty field beyond.

Some days I think hes still there, just out of my sightline, she says. Then I have to confront the fact hes gone all over again.

He, of course, being Geronimo, Helens adored eight-year-old chocolate alpaca who, for four years, grazed contentedly there until he was put down  though executed is the word she feels is more apt  following a legal battle which gripped not only the UK but the entire world.

Government vets claimed he had tuberculosis, while Helen vociferously disputed this, asserting that a validated test would have shown he was clear  and yesterday, as the Mail revealed, she was vindicated when test results on tissue samples taken from Geronimo showed no trace of it.

It is a bittersweet moment, for no amount of exonerating test results can bring her beloved animal back. Theres only one thing that gives Helen a little solace. Thats the fact that something of funny, happy, cheeky Geronimo does actually live on.

Pictured: Helen Macdonald stands alongside Geronimo the alpaca who was sentenced to death earlier this year

Today, we can share the news that Geronimo sired calves (called cria)  two daughters and a grandson  what some might call his Geroni-minis.

Before he came to the UK, Geronimo mated with two lady alpacas, producing females Nevalea La Cherie and London, the latter of which has since given birth herself to a healthy boy, Oakwood. So Geronimo is a grandad, says Helen, 50, even now unable to use the past tense.

And, even though she has been vindicated, there is no triumph in Helens voice when we speak in the aftermath of news of his negative test. Theres no cause for celebration  how could there be? This result just showed what I have known all along: Geronimo never had TB.

I have always said this and I have never deviated, which is why I asked for another test before he was killed. But they wouldnt listen, she says. Now he is dead for no reason at all.

Government vets maintain that the test results do not mean the animal had been free of tuberculosis but Ms Macdonald labels his death on August 31 as state-sponsored slaughter.

Footage of the day Geronimo was removed from his home by Defra officials, accompanied by dozens of police officers after they forced their way onto Helens farm, distressed animal lovers around the world.

Pictured: Officials are seen in an animal pen alongside Geronimo the alpaca moments before taking him away on August 31, 2021

Geronimo was a lovely boy and no one should have had to witness a veterinary official drag him to his death, she says, her eyes filling with fresh tears at the memory.

He was taken in his prime by supposed experts who should have known better.

The way he was taken was horrific and defied basic decency and moral and ethical behaviour. That is why what happened touched such a chord with the public.

Certainly never before has an alpaca garnered such widespread fame: Helen received letters and emails from all over the world in support of her fight to save Geronimo. He was special because people thought that he was theirs, she says. People had this sense of outrage at what was happening, about the fact that people werent engaging reasonably.

I have had my door open for nearly five years asking people in Government to talk to me and everyone has been too frightened to walk through it. Instead, they have tried to bully me. And if they can do this to me then they can do this to other people.

Indeed, half of Geronimos shortened life  alpacas typically live to 20  took place under a question mark. The pedigree beast, worth 15,000, had been earmarked for execution ever since he was brought to the UK aged four from his native New Zealand in August 2017 by Helen, who intended to introduce a new bloodline to the herd she keeps at her farm, using their wool to make luxury scarves and pashminas.

Although he had tested negative for bovine tuberculosis (bTB) before he left in an internationally recognised test, Helen decided to give him an additional and newer voluntary blood test, administered by an external Government-approved company. She thought it was the right and responsible thing to do. Instead, it was the start of a legal and ethical nightmare when this test showed antibodies to TB.

Helen believes it was a false positive because Geronimo had been primed, meaning he had already been injected with a small amount of bovine tuberculosis, gauging immune response, twice within ten months. A subsequent test also produced a positive.

So her fight became the right for another straightforward blood test  with no prior priming  which was denied. We tried everything to get officials and ministers to see reason.

Vain battle: Helen with her beloved Geronimo

But at every juncture they just kept saying that he failed these tests and that if they tested him again and he didnt have it, it would be a false negative and would not prove anything.

This isnt rational behaviour and its certainly not scientific. No test is perfect but all I wanted was a dialogue. Instead, I was confronted with brick wall after brick wall.

Helens legal battle ended at the High Court in July, when a judge issued a final warrant to allow Government vets access to Helens property to remove Geronimo for execution, although by then the battle for the publics hearts and minds had been won.

Around 147,000 people put their name to a petition begging Prime Minister Boris Johnson to save him, while celebrities from Chris Packham to Joanna Lumley also voiced their support for Helens cause. It all ended in failure.

At the end of August, Government vets arrived at Helens farm in Wotton-under-Edge and a clearly distressed Geronimo could be seen being dragged by a cow rope into the back of a trailer.

Helen can hardly bear to recall it. It causes me huge anguish to think about his final hours, she says. At the very least they could have brought an appropriate head collar and they could have tried to remove him calmly.

Geronimos legacy: Oakwood, left, and London

Instead, they brought a rope and dragged him in panicked desperation into the back of a trailer. He could not have feasibly sat down with the rope tied so short.

I cant even think about him in the truck  I have nightmares about it. As far as I am concerned, he was tortured. Helen says that post-mortem tests carried out in September showed the presence of blood cells in Geronimos airways, indicating that he had suffered trauma.

What they did not show were any lesions on the lungs or respiratory tract, the most common place for manifestation of bovine tuberculosis, although Defra said its vets had discovered a number of TB-like lesions in the liver and lymph nodes. However, only atypical lesions were documented on the pathology report. Defra also say that the purpose of the recent tests was not to confirm whether infection was present or to validate previous test results, but to identify which strain of the disease is present and help inform decisions on testing other animals in the herd.

It has taken a further 12 weeks for results of the latest set of tests to emerge, among them on bacteriological cultures from tissues samples taken by APHA (the Animal and Plant Health Agency).

Helen learned the news in an impersonal email. No one has ever done me the courtesy of making a personal phone call to me, even though everyone involved in this is only too aware of the distress I have been in, she says.

The email informed her that the culture result for the above camelid [the biological family alpaca belong to] was attached.

His other girl: Sash-wearing Nevalea

She admits that she opened it with some trepidation. In the event, the message could not be clearer. It read: M.bovis (mycobacterium bovis) not detected.

In other words, no TB says Helen, of the Latin name. But of course, I already knew that. On one level I felt flat. Because I knew that is what it would say.

But then all the anger came again. They have slaughtered a healthy animal and they knew it, thats the worst thing.

She adds: They just tried to wear me down and tried to convince me I was wrong and when that didnt work, they tried to bully and threaten me.

They were always going to kill him  I believe they had decided that already  and they made it impossible to do it otherwise.

Helen believes it goes on today: after the latest results, Chief Veterinary Officer Christine Middlemiss issued a statement pointing out that the animal tested positive on two separate occasions using highly specific tests and claiming that due to the complexity of tuberculosis, testing had not enabled them to understand how the animal became infected in the first place.

Helen says: She is still insisting that Geronimo did in fact have the disease. Not only is she saying that just because we dont find disease doesnt mean he wasnt infected, but she is saying he was infected because a test that wasnt validated confirms disease.

Helens outrage and grief is shared by many: at home she has boxes of hand-drawn cards sent by children touched by Geronimos plight. Ive also had heart-breaking letters from parents who say their children cried when they heard Geronimo had been killed, she says. She received a similar outpouring yesterday when news of the latest test results broke. Ive had emails from all over the world from people who are angry and upset by what has happened, she says. Nonetheless, if not a happy ending, one element to this sorry tale gives Helen hope.

While Geronimo did not get chance to breed in the UK as Helen had intended  he spent every day of his life here in quarantine, segregated from Helens herd  it is a different story over in New Zealand where his family live on.

Could she contemplate bringing his grandson or one of his offspring over here? She is too emotional to commit to such a decision, but nor is she ruling it out.

I trust the breeder so I would definitely go back to that same farm and there is something lovely about the idea of that connection with Geronimo, she says.

For now, she has more pressing matters, not least deciding whether to sue the Government.

One thing I do know, she says. People should not be treated like this. What has happened didnt need to happen. It has caused huge distress and is plain wrong.
They take free speech seriously at Durham University. Well, in theory. The 190-year-old establishment carries a policy statement to this effect on its website, trumpeting its belief that 'freedom of expression is a fundamental right, essential for upholding democracy, a free media and political, artistic, and scientific development'.

Academia, the page-long document suggests, is no place for cancel culture and of particular importance is the right of visiting speakers to explore contentious topics.

Or as Durham grandly puts it: 'The University has a legal duty to take such steps as is reasonably practicable to ensure that freedom of expression within the law is secured for staff, students, and visiting speakers.'

All this, it explains, is enshrined in laws such as the Human Rights Act. So every citizen has the right to, as George Orwell famously wrote, 'tell people things they do not want to hear'.

These are principles entirely in keeping with the ethos of a prestigious seat of learning. They will also prevent Durham falling foul of the Government's Free Speech Bill, currently moving through Parliament.

Rod Liddle was invited by Professor Tim Luckhurst, an old friend and former newspaper editor who is now the College's Principal

It bestows on all UK universities a legal duty to actively promote free speech. But does Durham actually adhere to its own lofty standards?

Events this week suggest otherwise, and have propelled this university and its 20,000-strong student body on to the front line of the latest campus culture war.

At stake, as so often in these controversies, are vexed issues. Among them: is anyone, in modern academia, free to challenge Left-wing convention?

Can undergraduates tolerate other people expressing views they dislike, without seeking to have them silenced? Are universities actively facilitating insidious cancel culture?

The flashpoint centres on Rod Liddle, a columnist, former BBC journalist and noted controversialist who spent the night of December 3 at South College, one of the 17 'colleges' where Durham students live and socialise.

He was invited by Professor Tim Luckhurst, an old friend and former newspaper editor who is now the College's Principal.

The occasion was a 'formal' Christmas dinner in the college dining hall. It was attended by some 200 students  in suits, ties and academic gowns  who paid 10-a-head for a three-course meal including turkey and trimmings.

Importantly, the vast majority of students didn't know who he was. So they used mobile phones to search for 'Rod Liddle' via Google. Pictured: Durham students protest after Rod Liddle's speech

Liddle was seated at the 'high table' along with his host and a selection of worthies. The university authorities had been apprised of the event and says 'arrangements were discussed with the College' in the usual fashion.

However, the columnist's attendance was not advertised to students when they purchased tickets. Instead, Liddle was introduced at the start of the dinner when it was also announced that he would be saying a few words.

Importantly, the vast majority of students didn't know who he was. So they used mobile phones to search for 'Rod Liddle' via Google. Many came across a Wikipedia page which contains a number of sections detailing incidents that have seen him accused of 'misogyny and racism' in columns or interviews, as well as being criticised for making unflattering remarks about 'disabled and transgender people', and so on.

Having swotted up on such versions of his life, a group of between 15 and 20 students took the view that they did not wish to hear Liddle speak. During the meal, they therefore arranged, via phone message groups, to stand up and leave the hall when he was announced. When this happened, Professor Luckhurst, who was doing the introduction, loudly described the walkout as 'pathetic'.

Liddle's speech, which lasted just over ten minutes, duly followed.

In the reception area, Luckhurst (pictured) and Liddle were confronted by angry students. Video footage shows Luckhurst telling one critic 'speech does not cause pain' and telling another to 'calm down'

Its contents have since been the subject of endless claims, and counter claims, of varying accuracy. Various student groups have alleged those who stayed were subjected to abuse, including accusations of transphobia, homophobia, racism, and sexism.

Ironically, given that Liddle is a comprehensive-educated son of a train driver from Middlesbrough, the largely middle-class undergraduates also claim he committed an offence called 'classism'.

According to witnesses, around half a dozen more students walked out during the speech. When it finished, there was scant applause, and while protocol is for guests at Durham's 'formal' dinners to rise at the end of the evening for the high table to process out, nearly all of the students stayed seated.

Some shouted 'disgusting' and 'racist' in their general direction.

In the reception area, Luckhurst and Liddle were confronted by angry students. Video footage shows Luckhurst telling one critic 'speech does not cause pain' and telling another to 'calm down'. Meanwhile, Luckhurst's wife, Dorothy, was filmed asking a female student 'what are you frightened of, you silly woman?'

An open letter from students claiming to be 'distressed' and 'emotional' due to Liddle's remarks garnered more than 1,000 online signatures. Pictured: A Durham student at the protest

Later, in the somewhat chaotic altercation, she was also filmed chanting 'arse, arse, arse, arse, arse' before continuing: 'I'm not allowed to say 'arse', apparently. Don't we all have one?'

Mrs Luckhurst has subsequently said her bizarre remarks followed an incident in which she'd been called a 'b****'.

She also described the students responsible for the walkout as a 'bunch of inadequates'.

When reports of the event circulated, a Twitter storm erupted.

Over the weekend, a number of student groups, ranging from Durham's Working Class Students' Association to the Intersectional Feminism Society issued angry statements claiming members had been 'insulted,' 'violated' and 'humiliated' by having to listen to Liddle's 'transphobia and racism'.The Durham Branch of the University and College Union, representing lecturers, weighed in declaring itself 'utterly appalled'.

An open letter from students claiming to be 'distressed' and 'emotional' due to Liddle's remarks garnered more than 1,000 online signatures. It cited several undergraduates. 'Durham is not a safe space for LGBT individuals such as myself,' said one. 'If there is no apology or repercussions, I cannot see myself remaining here.'

By Monday, with the affair generating national headlines, Prof Luckhurst had been suspended from public roles and removed from a forthcoming fundraising trip to the U.S. Pictured: A female student holds a placard at the protest

By Monday, with the affair generating national headlines, Prof Luckhurst had been suspended from public roles and removed from a forthcoming fundraising trip to the U.S.

He issued a statement saying he regretted calling students who walked out 'pathetic'. They had 'as much right to absent themselves from the speech as my guest had to make it,' he added.

'My anger reflected my sincere commitment to freedom of speech. However, I was wrong to describe the students' action as pathetic and I apologise unreservedly for doing so.'

That did little to calm things.

The student union called for Luckhurst to be sacked. Labelling his position 'untenable', it said: 'No principal gets to abuse their students, call them 'pathetic', and then attack them for wanting to just be safe in their home.'

On Wednesday, protesters congregated outside South College clutching Black Lives Matter placards and chanting 'Hey, hey, ho, ho, Tim Luckhurst has got to go!'

Around this time, it emerged that Seun Twins, the president of the student union, was in no position to lecture others on hate speech. She had used her private Instagram account to write that, while she didn't condone violence, she sometimes felt like saying, 'We need to take these Tories to South London and let roadmen deal with them'.

According to Collins dictionary, 'roadman' is slang for a young person who 'spends a lot of time on the streets in a group' and 'may be involved in selling drugs'.

I can further reveal Durham's student union responded to this revelation by instructing student groups to 'speak out' in support of Ms Twins.

A round-robin email suggested they use social media to 'shift the narrative'. The email contained 'lines we ask to you to use to frame your response'.

On Wednesday, protesters (pictured) congregated outside South College clutching Black Lives Matter placards and chanting 'Hey, hey, ho, ho, Tim Luckhurst has got to go!'

One was subsequently quoted verbatim in a statement issued by the university on Twitter. It read: 'Seun Twins is a success story. Durham University is proud of her leadership.'

In other words, the hard-Left student union appears to be writing the university's PR statements on the controversy.

Lost in the noise, however, was a crucial question: what exactly did Rod Liddle say to spark this dispute? Were his words, as critics so angrily suggest, really so offensive and prejudicial as to constitute a hate crime?

The exact answer can, for the first time, be found on these pages where the Mail prints an abridged transcript, taken from a recording of the speech.

Liddle had begun with a topical gag: 'I am disappointed not to see any of your esteemed sex workers here tonight.'

This was a reference to a recent controversy in which Durham University was criticised by MPs for offering training sessions to students involved in the sex trade.

He then explained how he'd become politically engaged as a member of the Socialist Workers' Party in the 1970s, before meeting Luckhurst while they both worked for the Labour Party in the 1980s, at a time when the party's leadership was involved in long-running and damaging disputes with its hard-Left.

A round-robin email suggested they use social media to 'shift the narrative'. The email contained 'lines we ask to you to use to frame your response'

Liddle then rattled through a host of hot topics  from transgender rights to colonialism and sexual politics. He sought to argue that while his audience might disagree with his opinions, they would nonetheless benefit from hearing them.

Liddle's broader point, he said, was that today's Left-leaning establishment is 'intolerant'.

Some might say the reaction to his speech has proved his point.

Durham's acting Vice Chancellor, Professor Antony Long, has meanwhile launched a formal investigation into the affair.

In the short term her findings, expected next month, will decide the fate of Mr Luckhurst.

But they will be an important guide as to whether British academia remains a place where, as George Orwell said, everyone is free to 'tell people things they do not want to hear'.

Thought crime or thought-provoking? We reveal his speech

Rod Liddle, 61, is associate editor of The Spectator magazine and writes columns for The Sunday Times and The Sun. Previously, he worked for the Labour Party as a speech writer and researcher before joining the BBC where he was editor of Radio 4's Today programme from 1998 to 2002. Below is a transcript of the allegedly offensive section in Liddle's speech.

I joined the Socialist Workers Party when I was 16 and we had a lecture from a chap called Allan  a kindly man, a decent man. He told us about economics, geo-politics, foreign affairs, gender equality and racial equality.

Afterwards, a steelworker came up to me and said: 'It's great to have your vote, lad. And everything Allan said is absolutely right  apart from the bits about women and homosexuals.'

It was not long before I had my doubts about the far-Left. Not so much its ideas  more its intolerance, its intolerance of what others have to say, its absolutism.

Its insistence that it, and only it, can ever be right.

And I often wonder what we would have made of today's climate and culture, and if being younger we would have loathed it every bit as much as I do now, or whether we would have just gone along with it.

Because to me, it's a stunted and authoritarian agenda rooted in a 'tyranny of now' and in which history should be abolished all together and seen solely through the prism of identity politics and hierarchies of present-day victimhoods.

Outspoken: Journalist Rod Liddle

History is thus stripped of context and meaning. The people pursuing this agenda do not actually see the world as what it is but as they fervently wish it might be.

The science and facts are not allowed to intrude into the make-believe world. So it is with the liberal Left today.

The more easily it is disproved by the science or by pure facts, the more they rail against it.

The most obvious example is that a person with an X and a Y chromosome, that has a long, dangling penis, is scientifically a man, and that is pretty much, scientifically, the end of the story.

Another facet of this fairytale world in which these people live is the shrieking intolerance of contending arguments, even, and especially, if those facts are indisputable. They simply will not listen.

Similarly, it is fairly easily proven that colonialism is not remotely the major cause of Africa's problems, just as it is very easy to prove that the educational under-achievement of British people of Caribbean descent or African Americans is nothing to do with institutional or structural racism but to do with other, much more complicated factors.

And yet to advocate one of those unequivocal truths is to open yourself up to a whole s***-load of cancelling and screaming and in the end, you lose your job.

And the reason they shriek so loudly, and the reason they will not listen is because their entire ideology is hopelessly flawed and it is very vulnerable to such examination.

There is a demand for Boris Johnson to apologise to women who had their babies taken away from them in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s- a line from Mr Liddle's speech at Durham

Pull on one thread and it all comes unravelling like a rainbow mohaired jumper knitted by an imbecile. There is a shrieking intolerance to news stories.

I'll give you an example, which epitomises this notion of the 'tyranny of now'. There is a demand for Boris Johnson to apologise to women who had their babies taken away from them in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s. These babies were taken because the women were single parents, and because of their poor mental health.

Now that story is reported from only one side, and this is a problem with the 'tyranny of now', which says that these women had been transgressed.

But there is another side to the story, which is that Boris Johnson didn't apologise to the hundreds of thousands of children who were brought up under strained economic circumstances and later mental health problems, low earnings expectations, run-ins with the police  all of which were far more likely caused by a single parent rather than two parents.

And yet that never gets looked at.

What we do is we look back at the Sixties and say how terribly wrong we were to take those children off those women. But our focus in the Sixties and Seventies was then on the child. It was not on the woman. It was on the child first, society second, and then the woman who had the child.

And liberals think they are better because today, their focus is on the woman first, and nothing else.

This is just one example of stories seen solely through the prism of the 'tyranny of now'  that we are not allowed to challenge, or it is very difficult to challenge.

You'll never hear anything on the BBC about the counter-side to that story. All I'm arguing is that there should be a counter-side  for there to be a contrasting argument.

The thing you need is what Edmund Burke called 'doubt'. Have doubt in your own belief, just as I have doubt in my mind  I am very often wrong  have doubt in the beliefs of others, have doubts in what you're told by newspapers.

Most of all, doubt your past self, too. From that, all else follows and we can all get on happily together.
The Jetstar pilot charged with murdering missing lovers Russell Hill and Carol Clay allegedly burned their bodies in an attempt to destroy their remains.

Gregory Lynn, 55, allegedly murdered the pair while they were camping at a remote site in Wonnangatta Valley in the Victorian Alps on March 20, 2020.

Police allege Lynn lit a fire in bushland near Arbuckle Junction before attempting to incinerate their remains and burying their bodies, Herald Sun reported.

Detectives discovered a burial ground close to the site of the fire on November 30.

The shallow grave was found near the Union Spur Track, about 30 kilometres from the campsite.

Detectives have yet to determine if the remains belong to missing lovers Mr Hill and Mrs Clay.

Lynn has been charged over the murders of the two campers and will face court on May 31, 2022.

Gregory Lynn, 55, allegedly murdered the pair while they were camping at a remote site in Wonnangatta Valley in the Victorian Alps on March 20, 2020

Police allege Lynn lit a fire in bushland near Arbuckle Junction before trying to incinerate their remains and burying their bodies (pictured, Russell Hill)

Detectives discovered a burial ground close to the site of the fire on November 30 (pictured, Mrs Clay)

Police are still hunting for vital evidence including a trailer that was allegedly used to transport the remains of Mr Hill and Mrs Clay from the campsite to the burial ground.

They have employed the help of one of the state's top forensic experts professor Soren Blau to help them examine evidence found at the crime scene.

Jewellery and a set of dentures found near the shallow grave are among the objects being examined.

They could also be crucial in proving they belong to the missing elderly campers.

Bone fragments will also be forensically examined in the expectation the couple have finally been found.

Police had descended on the precise location three days after Mr Lynn's arrest, who spent four days in custody before being charged.

Police warned it would take 'quite some time' to determine if the remains are in fact those of Ms Clay, 73, and Mr Hill, 74.

While fingerprints and dental records of the bodies could reveal their identities within minutes, it is understood detectives will need to rely on DNA samples due to the devastating toll of the harsh environment on their bodies.

The terrain is deemed some of the harshest on the planet, with predators including wild dogs roaming the wilderness.

Early reports suggest the remains were found in what appeared to be a shallow grave.

Russell Hill (pictured, right) and Carol Clay (left) are alleged to have been murdered during a camping trip in March 2020

DNA testing on recently deceased corpses can take a matter of hours, but analysis on older bodies becomes more complex, particularly if all that remains are bones.

Experts in the field of forensic science claim techniques are constantly changing as new methods become available and validated, but the extraction of DNA from bone material remains for now a time-consuming and laborious process.

Bones need to be cleaned and powdered to enhance access of extraction chemicals.

The extraction procedure itself may take several hours or days depending on the condition of the test sample.

Footage of the search showed plain clothes officers sifting through dirt by hand as an excavator worked ahead turning the soil over and digging up the packed ground

Greg Lynn is seen with his wife Melanie - who is a flight attendant with Jetstar - with the pair meeting through work

Human remains have been found in the search for missing campers Russell Hill and Carol Clay

Victoria Police also have the added burden of a forensic team still struggling to catch-up with a backlog of analysis brought on by the Covid-19 pandemic.

Six hard lockdowns have seen routine forensic examinations pushed back for months on end, with some court cases being delayed for years.

Despite the backlog, the remains are expected to jump the queue in the hope of finally providing the families of Mr Hill and Ms Clay the opportunity to give them a proper burial.

Forensic experts made the grisly find off a remote track north of Dargo in the state's east within dense bushland often frequented by deer hunters

Mystery remains, for now, over what else police have found at the burial site.

While police were keen to use the media to catch the alleged killer, it now refuses to answer basic questions on the still active case.

On Monday, police refused to say if the alleged killer's trailer had yet been located, or whether Mr Hill's missing drone was found at the same location as the remains.

Despite having near GPS-quality information on the bush burial site, it still took expert officers days to extract the human remains.

Officers endured treacherous conditions in the search for the missing campers

On Monday, temperatures climbed into the 30s as plain clothes officers sifted through dirt by hand and an excavator dug up packed ground.

Detectives believe the bodies had been dumped in the area the very day they went missing on March 20 last year.

Over that period, the rugged terrain has endured two winters, with the area prone to rain, hail, sleet, snow, frost, strong winds, low temperatures and frequent blizzards, especially during winter and spring.

Many people who go missing in the Victorian Alps remain that way.

Detectives are hopeful they'll finally be able to provide some sense of closure to Mr Hill and Ms Clay's grieving families

Barwon prison boss David Prideaux was 50 when the experienced hunter went on a trip with his brother-in-law in Victoria's rugged Alpine National Park and simply vanished.

More than 100 police, search and rescue officers, State Emergency Service and volunteers from the Bush Search and Rescue had descended on the area at first light.

To this day, his remains have not been accounted for.

Former Victorian Water Minister Tim Holding, who fell off Mount Feathertop while attempting a solo hike back in 2009, was only found due to good luck and better contacts.

Footage of the search showed plain clothes officers sifting through dirt by hand as an excavator worked ahead turning the soil over and digging up the packed ground

A breakthrough in the missing campers case came just last week when police arrested Lynn in the bush on November 22.

They seized the Caroline Springs man's Nissan Patrol after tracking his movements and flying into remote bushland by helicopter.

A trailer being towed by an off-road vehicle - also captured on CCTV the night the secret lovers vanished, remains missing.

The charred remains of the couples' tent were found by fellow campers a day after they vanished

Human remains have been found in the search for the 'secret lover' missing campers Russell Hill and Carol Clay in Victoria's Gippsland region

For 20 months police have been investigating what happened to the two missing campers

Police believe it was likely sold on Gumtree.

A subsequent search of his home did not uncover the trailer, which police claimed last week could be the final piece of the puzzle.

Lynn was stood down from his job as a Jetstar pilot after his arrest.
WHO says 'the number of admissions is very low' in South Africa compared to during country's Delta wave

The data has led to suggestions the Omicron outbreak has already peaked in South Africa's 'ground zero'

Figures also show the Gauteng region, South Africa's epicentre for Omicron, saw cases drop by 19.9 per cent

However only 20 deaths were recored in the last 24 hours - a drop of around 20 per cent over a week ago

South Africa has seen 18.5 per cent rise in Covid cases and 81 per cent rise in hospitalisations on last week

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Omicron-stricken South Africa today saw a huge rise in Covid-related hospitalisations as the highly infectious variant continued to spread through the country.

Data from the country's National Institute for Communicable Diseases (NICD) reported 507 people being taken to hospital with the virus, an 81 per cent rise on last week.

There were also 19,018 new COVID-19 cases, bringing the total number of laboratory-confirmed cases to 3,112,463.

Deaths however fell by 20 per cent, although sadly 20 people were reported to have died with the virus in the last 24 hours.

The majority of new cases today are from Gauteng region (49 per cent), the epicentre of the virus which covers Johannesburg and Pretoria, South Africa's largest city.

This is followed by KwaZulu-Natal (13 per cent), and Western Cape which accounted for 11 per cent. North West accounted for 6 per cent; Eastern Cape, Free State, Limpopo and Mpumalanga each accounted for 5 per cent respectively; and Northern Cape accounted for 1 per cent.

While Gauteng still produces a huge number of cases, Mail analysis has suggested that the country's Omicron outbreak has now peaked after the epicentre today saw a drop in cases of 20 per cent.

Data from South Africa's National Institute for Communicable Diseases (NICD) reported 507 people being taken to hospital with the virus, an 81 per cent rise on last week

There were also 19,018 new COVID-19 cases, bringing the total number of laboratory-confirmed cases to 3,112,463. Deaths however fell by 20 per cent, although sadly 20 people were reported to have died with the virus in the last 24 hours

The majority of new cases today are from Gauteng region (49 per cent), the epicentre of the virus which covers Johannesburg and Pretoria, South Africa's largest city

Gauteng province has seen a meteoric rise infections since mid-November, when the first cases of the highly-evolved strain started appearing  jumping from 58 to 11,703 as of yesterday.

Professor Christina Pagel, a mathematician at University College London who has been following the outbreak, said infections have been increasing at a rate of around 25 per cent per day in the region since November 15.

She said infections over the last four days have dipped below this trend, suggesting cases may be rounding off their previous exponential rise.

Omicron may be milder than Delta, WHO chief claims Early data indicates the Omicron Covid variant may cause milder disease than previous variants but could also more easily reinfect people who have already had the virus or been vaccinated than previous variants, the WHO said Wednesday. 'Emerging data from South Africa suggests increased risk of reinfection with Omicron,' World Health Organization chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told reporters, adding that 'there is also some evidence that Omicron causes milder disease than Delta'. But he stressed that more data was needed before drawing firm conclusions, and urged countries everywhere to boost their surveillance to help provide a clearer picture of how Omicron is behaving. The hopeful assessments came as global concern grew over the heavily mutated variant, which has forced dozens of nations to re-impose border restrictions and raised the possibility of a return to economically punishing lockdowns. Even if it does turn out that Omicron causes less severe disease, Tedros warned against slacking off vigilance against the virus. 'Any complacency now will cost lives,' he warned. WHO emergencies director Michael Ryan agreed, pointing out that so far the data indicates the variant is 'efficiently transmitting, and probably more efficiently transmitting even than the Delta variant.' 'That does not mean that the virus is unstoppable,' he said. 'But it means the virus is more efficient at transmitting between human beings. And therefore we have to redouble our efforts to break those chains of transmission to protect ourselves to protect others.' Even if the new variant turns out to be less dangerous than previous variants, if it transmits more rapidly, it could still sicken more people, overburden health systems, 'and more people die,' he said. The WHO experts stressed the importance of vaccination, highlighting that even if vaccines prove less effective against Omicron, as some data indicates, they are still expected to provide significant protection against severe disease. Chief WHO scientist Soumya Swaminathan cautioned against knee-jerk reactions to early studies hinting that the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine may have reduced efficacy against the new variant. She pointed out that the studies done so far were small and that the reduction in the 'neutralising activity' varied dramatically between different studies, from four to five fold in some experiments to up to 40-fold in others. They also only looked at the neutralisation of antibodies, when 'we know the immune system is much more complex than that,' she said. 'So I think it's premature to conclude that this reduction neutralising activity would result in a significant reduction in vaccine effectiveness,' she said. 'We do not know that.' Advertisement

As a member of the UK's Independent Sage Group, Professor Pagel has typically pushed for tougher restrictions and accused ministers of underestimating outbreaks. But her optimistic prediction suggesting Omicron may have burnt itself out in just a month in South Africa's 'ground zero' province could suggest the UK's outbreak will not be as large as some experts fear.

Writing on social media, she said: 'There is some tentative good news out of Gauteng this week, suggesting that cases might be reaching a peak there.'

South Africa will next month start giving Pfizer booster shots against coronavirus, a health official said Friday, a day after the country reported a near-record high in daily cases of the disease.

'The first people who will qualify for the booster dose in South Africa will be people over the age of 60 years,' Dr Nicolas Crisp, director general at the health ministry, told a weekly news conference.

Experts are working to determine whether current Covid vaccines will work against the new highly-mutated variant, which was discovered by South African scientists last month.

The daily number of new Covid infections surged to 22,391 on Thursday, when nearly 30 percent of tests were positive.

The highest daily tally so far was in early July, when the country hit more 26,000 new infections.

Health practitioners last month had already started being offered Johnson & Johnson shots as boosters.

South Africa is the worst-hit country in the continent for coronavirus, recording a cumulative 3.09 million cases, of which over 90,000 have been fatal.

A small study this week by the country's African Health Research Institute, not yet peer reviewed, suggested that Omicron may be able to evade some of the antibody immunity from the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine.

But, its authors said, there was no reason to believe that vaccination would not protect against from severe disease caused by the variant.

Slightly more than a quarter of South Africa's population are fully vaccinated, with the figure among adults being 43 percent.

Despite the low vaccine uptake blamed on widespread hesitancy, South Africa is targetting to inoculate around 70 percent of its population by March 2022.

Last month it deferred taking delivery of more ordered doses because 'we are getting vaccines in faster than we are using' them, according to Crisp.

Omicron accounts for around 70 percent of new infections being detected in South Africa, 'very quickly' displacing the Delta variant, Health Minister Joe Phaahla said.

The economic hub of Gauteng province - which houses Johannesburg and the capital Pretoria - being the hotspot.

However, hospitalised patients are so far showing mild symptoms, he said.

An analysis of wastewater by the South African Medical Research Council (SAMRC) also established that Omicron is now the dominant variant in parts of the country including the tourist city of Cape Town.

'We found the Omicron variant in 11 of 12 (92 percent) samples of wastewater collected from Cape Town treatment plants on 30 November,' said Rabia Johnson, deputy director at the government research outfit in a Friday statement.
The man could not be saved and was declared dead at the scene, police said

Police have launched a murder investigation after a young man was brutally stabbed to death on a Birmingham street during rush hour this .

Emergency services rushed to the scene of a reported stabbing in the Small Heath area of the city around 5.30pm.

Police said they discovered a young man who had been stabbed and was in cardiac arrest.

By-standers had tried desperately to save him but sadly he was declared dead at the scene shortly afterwards.

West Midlands Police have launched a murder probe to find the person responsible for an knife attack that left a young man dead this evening

Emergency services rushed to the scene of a reported stabbing in the Small Heath area of Birmingham around 5.30pm where they found a man with stab wounds in cardiac arrest

West Midlands Police have now launched a murder probe to find the knifeman responsible for the attack.

Detective Superintendent Wendy Bailey, from Force CID, said: 'A major investigation is underway to find the person responsible. A large number of officers are at the scene and in the area to establish the facts.

'I'd like to thank people in the area who gave first aid to the young man and I offer my condolences to his family and friends.

'If you saw that happened or have something captured on your dashcam, CCTV or doorbell camera, tell an officer at the scene or call us now on 101.'

Detective Superintendent Wendy Bailey, from Force CID, said: 'A major investigation is underway to find the person responsible. A large number of officers are at the scene and in the area to establish the facts'

The scene has been cordoned off for forensic workers and police are trying to piece together the attack on public CCTV cameras.

Locals living close to the stab scene tonight spoke of their shock at the attack.

'I've seen nothing like this before. There's been stabbings in the area but nothing of this scale. It's horrible,' one person told BirminghamLive.

Another added: 'Every time to hear something like this its so horrible, but its happening way too often.'

Police have asked anyone with information that can help detectives find the person responsible to message us via Live Chat on our website west-midlands.police.uk or call us on 101 quoting reference number 3643 10/12/21.

To stay anonymous, call the independent charity Crimestoppers on 0800 555 111.
David Perdue is joining a lawsuit with President Trump seeking to prove they were both cheated out of victory, nearly a year after their losses in the Peach State.

The suit comes just days after Perdue, a former Senator who lost reelection this year, announced he will challenge GOP Gov. Brian Kemp in the 2022 gubernatorial race. Kemp was a frequent target of Trump who said the governor did not do enough to overturn his election loss.

The suit claims that fraudulent and counterfeit ballots were counted in Fulton County, the state's most populous.

Perdue, who served in the Senate from 2015 to 2021, was recruited to run by Trump after he turned on Kemp. The former president even quipped during a rally that he would rather see Democrat Stacey Abrams in charge of Georgia than Kemp.

Trump's claims about widespread election fraud have been blamed for dividing Georgia Republicans ahead of a pair of U.S. Senate run-off elections last January, in which Perdue was defeated by Democratic Senator Jon Ossoff.

Perdue, who served in the Senate from 2015 to 2021, was recruited to run for governor by Trump after he turned on Kemp

Trump's claims about widespread election fraud have been blamed for dividing Georgia Republicans ahead of a pair of U.S. Senate run-off elections last January, in which Perdue was defeated by Democratic Senator Jon Ossoff

Former Republican Senator Kelly Loeffler also lost to Democrat Raphael Warnock in the run-offs.

Perdue lost to Sen. Jon Ossoff, above, by about 55,000 votes, 1.2 percentage points

Perdue conceded his loss to Ossoff last January, telling supporters: 'Although we won the general election, we came up just short of Georgia's 50 percent rule, and now I want to congratulate the Democratic Party and my opponent for this runoff win.'

Perdue lost by about 55,000 votes, 1.2 percentage points.

A Kemp spokesperson pointed out that Perdue had waited almost a year to file suit.

'David Perdue is so concerned about election fraud that he waited a year to file a lawsuit that conveniently coincided with his disastrous campaign launch,' said Kemp spokesperson Cody Hall. 'Keep in mind that lawsuit after lawsuit regarding the 2020 election was dismissed in part because Perdue declined to be listed as a plaintiff.'

The suit is not seeking to overturn the 2020 election results but to to examine paper ballots and other ballot materials in Fulton County, saying that it will prove fraud.

'I want to use my position and legal standing to shine light on what I know were serious violations of Georgia law in the Fulton absentee ballot tabulation,' Perdue said in a statement released by lawyers. 'We are asking a judge to consider the evidence after our forensic examination of the absentee ballots is completed and hold those persons responsible who engaged in this wrongful conduct.'

Responding to reports that Perdue would challenge Kemp earlier this week, Hall blasted Perdue as 'the man who lost Republicans the United States Senate.'

'Governor Kemp has a proven track record of fighting the radical left to put hardworking Georgians first,' he said in a statement.

Kemp had previously said he was informed by Perdue himself that he was not planning on running against him in the future.

Trump is furious at Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp for not overturning Joe Biden's presidential win in the state last year

'All I know is what Senator Perdue has told me, I hope he'll be a man of his word, but again that's not anything I can control,' Kemp told POLITICO.

Tacking further to the right than Kemp, Perdue said earlier this week that he would not have signed the certification of Georgia's 2020 election results if he had been governor at the time.

'Not with the information that was available at the time and not with the information that has come out now. They had plenty of time to investigate this. And I wouldn't have signed it until those things had been investigated, and that's all we were asking for,' he told Axios.

There has been no evidence of widespread fraud in Georgia's election results, and the votes were tallied three times, once by hand.

Georgia election law also does not allow for the governor or the secretary of state to certify results. Any challenge to election results must happen through the courts.

Trump endorsed Perdue's run for governor soon after the former governor announced it.

'Kemp has been a very weak Governorthe liberals and RINOs have run all over him on Election Integrity, and more,' Trump said in a statement. 'Brian Kemp has failed Georgia. He caved to Stacey Abrams before the 2020 Election and allowed massive Election Fraud to take place.'

Trump called Perdue a 'Conservative fighter who isn't afraid of the Radical Left, and is the only candidate in Georgia who can beat Stacey 'The Hoax' Abrams in November.'

Even though Perdue has Trump's backing, Kemp has maintained his image as a well-respected politician as he has served two terms as secretary of state and has acquired about $12 million in campaign funds.

In the end, either Perdue or Kemp will be facing Democratic candidate Abrams in the election.

Abrams lost to Georgia's GOP Gov. Brian Kemp in 2018 by 1.4 percentage points, though she never conceded that race, citing 'gross mismanagement' by Kemp in his role as secretary of state overseeing the election.
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Women voters are deserting Boris Johnson as the Conservatives sink to their worst poll rating in more than two years.

A survey for the Daily Mail today reveals that a third of the public are now less likely to follow Covid rules in the wake of the Downing Street Christmas party row.

Worryingly for the Prime Minister, two in three people said they do not trust him.

Among female voters, Labour's lead has grown from six points to 14 points in just the past few days. It is now on 45 per cent  compared to the Tories who fell by four points to 31 per cent.

The Savanta ComRes poll found a dramatic change in the past week as Mr Johnson has battled with claims of lockdown-busting parties in No 10 and imposed new restrictions in response to the Omicron variant.

Support for the Tories has dropped five points since last weekend to 33 per cent. This is their lowest since October 2019.

Women voters are deserting Boris Johnson as the Conservatives sink to their worst poll rating in more than two years. A survey for the Daily Mail today reveals that a third of the public are now less likely to follow Covid rules in the wake of the Downing Street Christmas party row

One in seven (14 per cent) of voters who backed the party at the last election now say they are undecided, while 6 per cent have switched to Labour.

Sir Keir Starmer's party, which had been one point behind the Tories in a poll conducted by Savanta ComRes last weekend, is now six points ahead after it rose two points to 39 per cent.

Worryingly for the Prime Minister, two in three people said they do not trust him

The parties are almost neck-and-neck when it comes to male voters, with the Tories on 35 per cent and Labour on 34 per cent.

According to the survey, many voters are concerned about Mr Johnson's integrity. Two-thirds (66 per cent) said they do not trust him  more than double the proportion who say they do (31 per cent).

Nearly one in three (32 per cent) said they are less likely to abide by coronavirus restrictions after claims emerged that a Christmas party was held in No 10 last year.

The festive bash on December 18, which allegedly involved staff and aides drinking alcohol, eating cheese and swapping secret Santa presents, was in breach of lockdown rules in place in London.

Indoor gatherings were not allowed at the time. Some 68 per cent think Downing Street staff who attended the gathering should be sacked.

As ministers consider plunging the country into further lockdown measures, the poll found the public are against shutting down hospitality venues and stopping people from seeing family members.

Around half (49 per cent) said they were opposed to closing pubs and restaurants with 31 per cent in favour.

There was similar resistance to the idea of banning people from meeting other households indoors, with 47 per cent against and 30 per cent in favour.

However, more than half (54 per cent) said they would support the Government introducing limits on the number of people who can attend indoor gatherings as well as banning international travel (54 per cent).

Among female voters, Labour's lead has grown from six points to 14 points in just the past few days. It is now on 45 per cent  compared to the Tories who fell by four points to 31 per cent. The Savanta ComRes poll found a dramatic change in the past week as Mr Johnson has battled with claims of lockdown-busting parties in No 10 and imposed new restrictions in response to the Omicron variant

According to the survey, many voters are concerned about Mr Johnson's integrity. Two-thirds (66 per cent) said they do not trust him  more than double the proportion who say they do (31 per cent). Above, outside Downing Street as the Conservatives celebrated a sweeping election victory in 2019

One in seven (14 per cent) of voters who backed the party at the last election now say they are undecided, while 6 per cent have switched to Labour. Sir Keir Starmer's party, which had been one point behind the Tories in a poll conducted by Savanta ComRes last weekend, is now six points ahead after it rose two points to 39 per cent

And a majority (56 per cent) support giving Covid jabs to children aged five to 11. Chris Hopkins, associate director of Savanta ComRes, said that the results showed that the Downing Street party row 'has cut through to the electorate' and 'caused a shift' in the polls.

However, he said it still 'does not appear that 2019 Conservative voters are abandoning the party en masse'.

Mr Hopkins added: 'While we are seeing lower than usual loyalty from those who voted Conservative last time, they're not all switching to Labour, and are more likely than ever to just be undecided.

'These voters, of course, are easier to win back than those who have switched allegiances. Labour, frankly, aren't all that popular either, and in any case this six-point lead is unlikely to be enough to allow Labour to govern alone if an election were tomorrow.'

Mr Hopkins said: 'The Conservatives and their well-oiled electioneering machine may well already be dusting off 2015-era 'vote Labour, get Sturgeon' leaflets, with Labour likely to need a much bigger poll lead than this to be able to govern without SNP support at the next election.'

Savanta ComRes interviewed 2,118 UK adults online between December 8 and yesterday.

Seven parties... and the explanations that just did not stack up Nov 30: After story about first Downing Street party breaks, No 10 spokesman says: 'Covid rules have been followed at all times.' Dec 1: Health Secretary Sajid Javid tells LBC: 'I didn't attend. I don't know who attended these parties, but I don't even think there were parties that I'm aware of. But the point is, whether it's in No10 or any government department, all rules would have been followed at all times.' At a Downing Street press briefing, the PM's spokesman denies there was a party and says: 'We don't recognise these accounts.' At PMQs, Boris Johnson insists: 'All guidance was followed completely in Number 10.' Dec 2: Mr Johnson refuses to give reporters further details 'because I have told you [what happened]'. Dec 3: Vaccines Minister Maggie Throup tells BBC's Question Time that 'all guidance was followed', dismisses the reports as 'rumour and hearsay', and says she wasn't aware of a party. Dec 5: Justice Secretary Dominic Raab insists the rules were followed, but tells the BBC's Andrew Marr: 'Of course, if there was a formal party held, of course that it something that is clearly contrary to the guidance. If anyone held a party that is contrary to the rules, of course that is the wrong thing to do.' Dec 6: The PM's spokesman reiterates the Government's denial, saying: 'There was not a party and Covid rules have been followed at all times.' Policing Minister Kit Malthouse tells LBC: 'Officials at No 10 have assured me, as part of my briefing... that no regulations were broken.' Dec 8: Mr Johnson tells PMQs: 'I repeat... that I have been repeatedly assured since these allegations emerged, that there was no party and that no Covid rules were broken.' Dec 9: Mr Javid on LBC: 'I have received assurances that there were no [Covid] rules that were broken at any time in Downing Street. That means a party could not take place. If the rules were not broken, then a party could not take place.' Advertisement

PM gives assurances to his standards chief over flat By CHIEF POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT for the Daily Mail Boris Johnson was yesterday forced to placate his standards adviser after being accused of lying about the lavish makeover of his Downing Street flat. Lord Geidt demanded clarification following an Electoral Commission investigation that raised doubts about Mr Johnson's denial that he knew a Tory peer was behind donations. An official report revealed that the Prime Minister had texted Tory donor Lord Brownlow asking for more cash more than a year ago. Mr Johnson had assured Lord Geidt, the Independent Adviser on Ministers' Interests, that he did not know who was paying for the 112,549 refurbishment at the time. No 10 did not deny that Lord Geidt was angered by the apparent discrepancy, and had sought assurances he was not misled. The Prime Minister's official spokesman said: 'We are liaising with Lord Geidt to answer any further questions he may have but beyond that I wouldn't get into any private conversations he has with his independent adviser.' The spokesman declined to say whether the peer has been provided with the WhatsApp messages between Mr Johnson and donor Lord Brownlow that the Electoral Commission saw and which prompted Labour to accuse the PM of lying to the adviser. Advertisement

Top spin doctor in Xmas row has full confidence of the PM

By HARRIET LINE for the Daily Mail

Boris Johnson was last night standing by his top spin doctor despite claims he attended a lockdown-busting Christmas party in No 10 last year.

Downing Street said the PM has 'full confidence' in his director of communications, Jack Doyle, and that he remained in post.

Last night it was reported that Mr Doyle offered to quit but Mr Johnson refused to accept his resignation.

Mr Doyle, a former Daily Mail journalist, is alleged to have 'made a thank-you speech and handed out awards' at the controversial bash on December 18.

Boris Johnson was last night standing by his top spin doctor despite claims he attended a lockdown-busting Christmas party in No 10 last year. Downing Street said the PM has 'full confidence' in his director of communications, Jack Doyle (above), and that he remained in post

Up to 50 staff are said to have attended the 'boozy' party, at which revellers reportedly drank past midnight and exchanged Secret Santa gifts.

But an insider said the then-deputy communications director had made a short speech to press office staff that evening to thank them for their work responding to the pandemic.

He was said to have spent most of the evening locked in Covid meetings with ministers and officials preparing for the 'Tier Four' announcement the following day.

Mr Johnson's former aide Dominic Cummings  who left Downing Street weeks before the alleged party following a behind-the-scenes power struggle  yesterday tweeted that Mr Doyle was 'a gonner' but that he would remain in post until the conclusion of Cabinet Secretary Simon Case's inquiry into the parties.

He wrote on Twitter: 'Jack D is gonner but [the PM] will be thinking, 'not now, gotta keep him as the sacrifice for Case's inquiry then  I'm shocked shocked I tell you to discover there was a party and I was misled - do a deal with Jack to keep all the wallpaper horror buried...'

He also claimed there would be 'lots of pictures of the parties which will inevitably get out'.

Mr Cummings also tried to rubbish claims the PM would not have known about the parties inside No10.

Senior Tory MP Sir John Redwood yesterday urged Mr Johnson to speed up the report into the alleged parties and 'take action' against anyone who broke the rules.

He wrote on Twitter: 'The PM must speed the report into parties by officials at No 10.

'He must take action against any who broke the covid rules as they were the rule makers telling the rest of us to obey. Time to work closely with a slimmed down team he trusts.'
Care home residents will be banned from seeing more than three named visitors in an attempt to protect them from the Omicron variant.

Last night's move was the first additional restriction  dubbed Plan C  introduced since Plan B measures to tackle rising Covid-19 cases were announced this week.

Communities Secretary Michael Gove hinted last night that further curbs could be brought in if infections continue to increase.

He said: 'We recognise the importance of balancing people's ability to get on with their lives with the need to protect them against this virus.

'But action is absolutely required and as new data comes in we will consider what action we do require to take in the face of that data.'

New guidelines mean care home residents who are unvaccinated will also be forced to isolate for two weeks on their return if they go on a trip out.

Care home residents will be banned from seeing more than three named visitors in an attempt to protect them from the Omicron variant

Even residents who are fully jabbed will have to take a lateral flow test on alternate days for a fortnight if they leave homes.

Current guidelines do not place any restrictions on family and friends visiting their loved ones in care homes. According to official guidance, the homes are expected 'to facilitate visits wherever possible and to do so in a risk-managed way'.

But the Government announced last night the number of visitors will be limited to three per resident, plus an essential caregiver. It is understood this will come into force from Wednesday.

Campaigners criticised the move for forcing relatives to make the 'devastating' choice of which family members can see loved ones for what may be their last Christmas.

The first part of the Government's Plan B package came into force yesterday with the introduction of compulsory face masks in indoor settings such as theatres, cinemas and churches.

New working from home guidance will come into force on Monday and MPs will vote the following day on the introduction of controversial vaccine passports for nightclubs and large venues.

Communities Secretary Michael Gove hinted last night that further curbs could be brought in if infections continue to increase

Other potential Plan C measures being considered include forcing pub and restaurant goers to 'check in' with the NHS Covid app, extending the use of face masks and widening the range of venues required to use vaccine passports.

The campaign group Rights for Residents described the new cap on care home visitors as 'hugely disappointing' and said families will have to make 'heartbreaking choices'.

Ministers urged to rethink Covid Plan B restrictions as figures show the economy stalled even BEFORE the Omicron alert Lucy White, City Correspondent for the Daily Mail Ministers were urged to rethink new Covid restrictions yesterday as figures showed the economy stalled even before the Omicron scare. The Office for National Statistics said output edged up by just 0.1 per cent in October, down from 0.6 per cent in September, leaving the economy 0.5 per cent below pre-pandemic levels. Economists warned that Boris Johnson's 'Plan B' measures announced this week could send the country sliding back a step. The re-introduction of working from home, combined with cuts to Christmas spending as households become more wary of Covid, could cause output to shrink by up to 0.5 per cent in December, according to Capital Economics' chief UK economist Paul Dales. And a January lockdown could shave off another 3 per cent. Advertisement

A spokesman added: 'The impact it will have on families will be devastating. It is absolutely heartbreaking for families to have to choose who can visit them. How do you pick those three people?'

Age UK called on ministers to consider alternatives, such as increased use of PPE, saying the way care home residents had previously been cut off from loved ones was 'one of the greatest tragedies of the pandemic'.

The Department of Health and Social Care said it will allow visits to continue because of 'the importance of companionship for the health and wellbeing of residents'.

But it added it was limiting the number of visitors 'in order to balance the current Covid-19 risk and the need to keep people safe in line with clinical advice'.

Testing of care home staff will be increased from two lateral flow tests a week to three, as well as a weekly PCR test.

All care home residents were entitled to their booster vaccinations by November 1 but so far only 75 per cent have had one, according to NHS England.

Specialist vaccination teams will now be expanded to ensure boosters are offered to all care home residents and staff, as well as people who are housebound and their caregivers, as soon as possible.

Caroline Abrahams, of Age UK, said: 'One of the greatest tragedies of the pandemic has been the way in which many older people living in care homes have been cut off from loved ones for long periods.

'Concern about the Omicron variant is increasing and must be factored in but it's important that ministers and care providers do not rush to reduce visiting in care homes before there is clear evidence that there really is no other choice.

'Before we consider constraining face-to-face visiting we must make full use of all the other measures available to keep everyone safe, including testing and PPE.'

James White, of the Alzheimer's Society, said: 'It's deeply concerning to hear that limits on care home visits will return.

'More than 70 per cent of care home residents are living with dementia and we know restricting their contact with loved ones can lead to significant and irreversible deterioration in their symptoms.'

Care minister Gillian Keegan said: 'Our priority throughout the pandemic has been the safety of those who are the most vulnerable.

'However, we need to balance this with the tremendous benefits that visiting provides.

'These changes are in line with the latest clinical advice and are designed to support our social care staff in the months ahead.'

Omicron 'tsunami' is about to hit UK: Super-mutant cases jump 54% in a day and EVERY Covid case in Scotland is predicted to be variant within 10 days - as overall infections start to spike north of border and rise by 15% across UK to highest since January

Jack Maidment, Deputy Political Editor, Connor Boyd, Deputy Health Editor and Joe Davies for MailOnline

Fears Britain will be stung by even tougher restrictions before Christmas because of Omicron grew today as the number of cases of the super-mutant jumped by 54 per cent in a day and overall daily Covid infections breached levels not seen since the UK's devastating second wave.

Nicola Sturgeon today warned of an impending 'tsunami' triggered by the highly-transmissible variant, based on grisly data suggesting Omicron could become completely dominant in Scotland within days. Cases north of the border have doubled in a week.

In the face of the ever-worsening threat, she announced entire families in Scotland will have to self-isolate for 10 days if one member of the household tests positive for coronavirus to help tackle the strain and keep a lid on the impending crisis.

Meanwhile, UK-wide statistics showed cases have risen by 15 per cent in a week to 58,194  making it the highest daily toll since the darkest depths of January, when Britain was being battered by the Alpha variant but had yet to dish out any vaccines.

Hospitalisations crept up by six per cent on last week but deaths fell by around 16 per cent over the same time-frame. Both measures are just a fraction of the level seen during previous waves because of the success of jabs but will rise over the coming weeks because of a delay between getting infected and becoming seriously ill.

Health chiefs today recorded another 448 cases of Omicron, taking the official toll to 1,265. The true toll will be much higher because not every sample is rigorously analysed in a lab.

Separate estimates suggest the real toll could be more than 4,000 cases per day based on evidence showing the strain is already making up nearly 13 per cent of new infections.

It came as reports emerged that the UK Government is already working on a 'Plan C' of Covid restrictions, just days after Boris Johnson triggered his 'Plan B'.

But No10 insists it has 'no plans' for a Plan C or a circuit breaker lockdown over Christmas. The Prime Minister's official spokesperson said: 'We think the Plan B measures are the right approach and strike the right balance.'

And promising Government data released tonight revealed booster Covid jabs offer up to 75 per cent protection against mild illness caused by the variant.

Public Health Scotland estimates the new variant will be dominant next week, accounting for more than 50 per cent of all Covid cases, and make almost all new infections by the end of the year

Omicron makes up 13.3 per cent of Covid cases in Scotland and is doubling every two to three days

The above map shows the ten areas that have the most confirmed Omicron cases in England, according to the UK Health Security Agency. West Northamptonshire is the country's hotspot for the mutant strain, although eight in ten areas on the list are in London

There are currently 1,265 confirmed cases of Omicron in the UK so far but thousands are said to be flying under the radar because not all positive samples are analysed

 Slide me  The above map shows the % change in Covid cases in different areas of London over the weeks ending November 27 (left) and to December 4 (right), the latest available. It reveals that cases are rising in all boroughs. Public health chiefs say they are taking the situation 'extremely seriously' as it is confirmed that Omicron may have spread to every borough

Confidential UK Health Security Agency data showed that Omicron may now be behind 8.5 per cent of infections. The figures are based on the proportion of PCR tests failing to detect a specific gene, an early indicator of the variant. PCRs look for three genes to confirm a Covid infection, but with Omicron one is so mutated that they only pick up two of them

A Pfizer booster provides between 70 and 75 per cent protection against mild Omicron illness, regardless of which vaccine was originally used, compared to 90 per cent for Delta. Two doses of Pfizer may offer just 37 per cent protection after three-and-a-half months compared to 60 per cent for Delta. Two shots of AstraZeneca offered virtually no protection after the same amount of time. But the scientists caution that data for AstraZeneca was less reliable due to the fact the vaccine was restricted in some age groups and typically used at the very start of the initial vaccine rollout in vulnerable people

The first part of the Government's Plan B came into force today with the introduction of compulsory face masks in indoor settings such as theatres, cinemas and churches. Boris Johnson said on Wednesday that ministers hope the measures will be enough to 'slow the spread' of the Omicron variant while more booster jabs are rolled out

The great Christmas exodus from the office began hours after Boris Johnson announced his Omicron Plan B with Tube and bus travel down and road traffic also plunging to its lowest level since October, MailOnline can reveal today

Up to 4,000 Britons are catching Omicron each day: Scotland's Covid cases DOUBLE in a week to three-month high amid fears mutant variant will become dominant in DAYS As many as 4,000 Britons may be catching Omicron every day with the super-variant on track to replace Delta in in a matter of days, official data suggests  as the mutant pushes Scotland's Covid cases to a three-month high. The highly-evolved virus is now behind 8.5 per cent of coronavirus cases across the UK and is doubling every two to three days, according to an analysis of UK Health Security Agency data. With an average 48,000 Britons testing positive for Covid every day, it suggests more than 4,000 of them are the new Omicron variant  even though fewer than 1,000 cases have been confirmed. Scotland, which along with London has become one of the UK's Omicron hotspots, today reported 5,018 positive Covid tests which is the highest number in three months and double the number a week ago. The mutant strain makes up 13 per cent, or one in eight, of overall cases in Scotland. Public health chiefs expect it to outstrip Delta nationally by Christmas, with its rapid spread prompting No10 to resort to its Plan B strategy. A senior member of the Government's scientific advisory group SAGE yesterday warned that Omicron was spreading even faster in the UK than it is in South Africa  where cases have rocketed 10-fold in a fortnight. Advertisement

The latest coronavirus developments came as:

Ministers insisted they are ' trying to get the balance right between not shutting the economy down' and protecting against coronavirus by rolling out 'Plan B' restrictions.

Scotland recorded 19 coronavirus-linked deaths and 5,018 cases recorded in the past 24 hours. Cases of the new Covid-19 variant could reach just shy of 25,000 a day before the end of the month, a Scottish Government evidence paper said.

Sir Keir Starmer said Labour will support the rollout of 'Plan B' in a House of Commons vote next week because ' in this pandemic we have always put the public interest and public health first and that's what we'll do next week in supporting these measures'.

Downing Street said it was up to individual businesses to decide whether Christmas parties should go ahead as Number 10 cancelled its own gathering.

Omicron currently makes up 13.3 per cent of Covid cases already in Scotland, which has become a hotspot for the super-strain along with London, but it's doubling every two days. Scotland today reported 5,018 positive Covid tests, which is the highest number in three months and double the number a week ago.

Nicola Sturgeon announced entire families in Scotland will have to self-isolate for 10 days if one member of the household tests positive for coronavirus to help tackle the strain as she warned it posed a 'severe challenge'.

The Scottish First Minister said that as of tomorrow 'all household contacts of any confirmed Covid case should isolate for 10 days, regardless of their vaccination status and even if they initially get a negative PCR test'.

Ms Sturgeon said she knew this would not be 'easy' and that there will be 'careful exemptions for critical services'. However, she insisted the move is 'essential at this moment' because of the rapid spread of the new variant.

The SNP leader said non-household contacts of a positive case should continue to self-isolate, pending a PCR test and if that test is negative they can leave isolation as long as they are double-jabbed.

Meanwhile, Ms Sturgeon also urged people in Scotland to defer work Christmas parties as she said limiting 'unnecessary contacts' is the 'sensible' thing to do to slow transmission of the disease.

Ms Sturgeon told a coronavirus briefing in Edinburgh at lunchtime that as of yesterday at 5pm there were 110 confirmed Omicron cases in Scotland and 10 days ago the number was just nine.

She warned the latest figure is likely to be the 'tip of the iceberg' and the data suggests the current spread of Omicron represents the 'fastest exponential growth that we have seen in this pandemic so far'.

Ms Sturgeon said the number of Omicron cases is doubling every two to three days and the variant could overtake Delta as the dominant strain 'within days'.

She said the R number in Scotland - the average number of secondary infections produced by a single infected person - had been 'hovering' around one in recent weeks but the R number for Omicron is 'likely to be well over two and possibly closer to three' which could result in a 'rapid rise' in cases in the days ahead.

'The fact is we do face a renewed and very severe challenge in the face of of the new Omicron variant, ' she said.

'To be blunt, because of the much greater and faster transmissibility of this new variant, we may be facing  indeed we may be starting to experience  a potential tsunami of infections.'

Scotland, which along with London has become one of the UK's Omicron hotspots, today reported 5,018 positive Covid tests, which is the highest number in three months and double the number a week ago. First Minister Nicola Sturgeon today told Scots to brace for a 'tsunami' of infections, as she warned the new super-variant posed a 'severe challenge'

Omicron is in almost in every region of England and is expected to be dominant in the whole of the UK by Christmas

SCOTLAND: Covid hospitalisations have been tumbling downwards since September, with just 38 patients hospitalised on Sunday, compared to 87 one month earlier

ENGLAND: Some 799 Covid-infected patients were hospitalised on Tuesday, the most recent day figures are available for. Hosptitalisations had been flat in England but appear to be creeping upwards upwards

SCOTLAND: Daily Covid deaths have been falling in Scotland, with an average of nine fatalities per day within 28 days of a positive test in the week up to December 1. Zero deaths were recorded on Wednesday, the most recent date figures are available for, but this may be adjusted upwards in the coming days due to registration days

ENGLAND: Covid fatalities in England have been trending downwards, with 90 daily deaths recorded in the week to December 1. Some 21 deaths were registered on Wesnesday, but the figure will likely go up in the coming days due to recording delays

 Slide me  The UKHSA found that cases rose in 90 per cent of local authorities last week in England. It comes amid the spread of the Omicron variant

The above graph shows Covid cases in London. They are starting to tick up as the more transmissible Omicron variant begins to spread in the capital

But hospitalisations in the city are yet to tick up and remain level with around 110 new admissions recorded every day on average, according to the latest data. But in a sign of what could be to come on December 7, the latest available, there were 148 admissions which was a 40 per cent rise on the same time last week

The number of PCR tests carried out in London has risen 15 per cent in a week but the positivity rate  the number that detect the virus  has remained level suggesting there is a real-terms surge in cases. The above graph shows the number of lateral flow tests completed which has remained level so far

Boosters DO beat Omicron and cut risk of falling ill by 75% Booster Covid jabs offer up to 75 per cent protection against mild disease caused by the super Omicron variant, official UK Government analysis revealed tonight. Experts are confident that three doses will offer significantly higher immunity against severe illness and death from the highly-evolved strain. In people who had their second dose more than three months ago, effectiveness against symptomatic disease could be lower than 40 per cent, according to the real-world analysis. But officials stress that even two vaccines should still offer high protection against severe illness, in the most promising sign yet that the incoming wave of hospital admissions and deaths will not surpass previous peaks. The UK Health Security Agency looked at 581 people with confirmed Omicron and compared their vaccine status to a control group of people who tested positive for Delta. It estimated that a Pfizer booster provides between 70 and 75 per cent protection against mild Omicron illness, regardless of which vaccine was originally used, compared to 90 per cent for Delta. Two doses of Pfizer may offer just 37 per cent protection after three-and-a-half months compared to 60 per cent for Delta. Two shots of AstraZeneca offered virtually no protection after the same amount of time. But the scientists caution that data for AstraZeneca was less reliable due to the fact the vaccine was restricted in some age groups and typically used at the very start of the initial vaccine rollout in vulnerable people. Advertisement

She added: 'Indeed, I think we can now say with some confidence that we expect it to overtake Delta within days, not weeks  we estimate this could be as early as the very beginning of next week.'

The highly-evolved variant is now behind 8.5 per cent of the UK's coronavirus cases compared to just four per cent at the start of the week, according to an analysis of UK Health Security Agency data.

Scotland  where it's feared Omicron was seeded during the Cop26 climate change summit in early November  and London are being hit hardest by Omicron but the strain has been detected in every country in the UK and nearly every region.

The UK Government is already considering a tougher 'Plan C' to tackle Omicron which could see care homes slapped with fresh restrictions in the run up to Christmas and masks made compulsory in pubs and restaurants.

Controversial vaccine passports could also be extended to more venues as part of the contingency measures being floated within Downing Street if the Omicron super variant proves to be as dangerous as scientists fear.

A UK Government source said it was 'very likely' care home residents could be banned from seeing more than three visitors over the festive period to prevent another explosive outbreak in the sector.

But campaign groups warned the plans could be 'devastating' and 'heartbreaking', with many families forced to pick loved ones on what could be their last Christmas.

Other curbs in a 'Plan C' could include having to 'check in' with the NHS Covid app again to go to a pub or restaurant, using face masks in all indoor spaces, and having to show a vaccine passport at even more venues.

The first part of the Government's Plan B came into force today with the introduction of compulsory face masks in indoor settings such as theatres, cinemas and churches. New work-from-home guidance will come into effect on Monday, and MPs will vote on Tuesday on the introduction of vaccine passports for nightclubs and large venues.

Labour has said it will support the rollout of Plan B, despite a suggestion that many opposition MPs could vote down the measures in protest against ongoing accusations that Number 10 held a number of lockdown-breaking parties last winter.

But backbench Tory MPs have told MailOnline that the Government could face its biggest mutiny yet, with at least 60 Conservative MPs expected to defy the government whip and vote down the plans.

Ms Sturgeon announced two new interventions at lunchtime in a bid to slow the spread of the Omicron variant: Tougher isolation rules and strengthened guidance to defer Christmas parties.

'Given that Omicron is now becoming dominant, our response to it has to become more general because it will quickly be the case that most people who have Covid have the Omicron variant and we must do all we can in that context to break the transmission chains,' she said.

'Therefore from tomorrow our advice will be that all household contacts of any confirmed Covid case should isolate for 10 days, regardless of their vaccination status and even if they initially get a negative PCR test.

'I know that this is not easy and we will obviously keep it under review. We will also ensure careful exemptions for critical services.

'But we believe this to be essential at this moment to help slow transmission. Non-household contacts should continue to isolate pending a PCR result. If that is negative they can leave isolation at that point as long as they are double vaccinated.'

Public Health Scotland yesterday published new advice on work Christmas parties and Ms Sturgeon urged Scots to follow it.

'This is not easy advice to give or to hear but it is incumbent on public health experts to set out very clearly and frankly the risks we face and it is incumbent on me and government to pay attention to that advice,' she said.

What can England expect? Public Health Scotland tells people to CANCEL Christmas and New Year parties due to fears over rising Omicron cases Public Health Scotland has told people they should delay Christmas parties and Hogmanay celebrations due to fears over the rising number of Omicron cases in the country. A total of 108 cases of the mutant Covid strain were reported in Scotland between November 1 and December 8, with official figures showing nearly half of all positive tests are in the 20-39 age bracket. Dr Nick Phin, the director of public health science and medical director at Public Health Scotland, has now urged families to put off any planned Christmas and Hogmanay celebrations to help in the battle against the raging variant. He said: 'To help minimise the further spread of Covid-19, and Omicron in particular, I would strongly urge people to defer their Christmas parties to another time.' Last year's celebrations were also cancelled because of rising cases, with Ms Sturgeon suggesting that the public 'should ring in 2021 in our own homes'. Latest Scottish Government figures also show there were 16 coronavirus deaths and 3,196 cases recorded within the past 24 hours. It brought Scotland's Covid death toll, under the daily measure of people who first tested positive within the previous 28 days, to 9,688. In a plea to Scotland residents, Dr Phin said: 'There is much that we still need to learn about Omicron, but early evidence suggests that this new Covid variant is much more transmissible. 'The impact of this transmissibility has been seen in recent weeks, with a number of Omicron outbreaks linked to parties. 'We still need to learn more about the severity of disease caused by Omicron and the effectiveness of vaccines, but there are important things that we can do to help protect ourselves and our families now. 'I appreciate that everyone is keen to celebrate this festive season, particularly after the pressures of the last 20 months, but by postponing some plans we can all do our bit to protect ourselves and our loved ones.' Advertisement

'There is a significant risk with Omicron and we are already seeing the reality of it, of Christmas parties or events with lots of people becoming super-spreaders.

'If that happens, lots of people get infected and if these are work events as well as the risk to individual health there is a risk to the ability of the workplace to operate as people have to isolate.'

She added: 'The public health advice, which I have no alternative but to agree with given the evidence of risk that I know about and have now shared with you, is that we should all think a bit more carefully about unnecessary contacts, especially in crowded places just now and that it would be sensible to defer work Christmas parties.'

Ms Sturgeon said that while evidence suggests Omicron can evade some immunity given by vaccines, people should still get jabbed.

'Based on preliminary laboratory trials, the best evidence suggests it can evade to some extent the immunity conferred by vaccination,' she said.

'Now, and I want to triple underline this point, that does not mean that the vaccines will not significantly help us  being less effective is not the same, nowhere near the same, as vaccines being ineffective and booster doses in particular will help retain a higher level of vaccine efficiency.'

Ms Sturgeon said the greater transmissibility of the new variant represents a threat to the NHS even if the strain is found to be less severe than its predecessors.

She said that 'a smaller percentage of a bigger number will still result in a massive number of cases who might need hospital care'.

She added: 'Given the volume of people who could be infected by Omicron because of its greater transmissibility, even if most of those cases are mild, the number of cases of serious illness will put massive strain on the ability of the NHS to cope.'

Ms Sturgeon also said she cannot rule out further restrictions being put in place in Scotland as a result of the Omicron variant.

Ministers are hoping the Government's 'Plan B' will be enough to slow the spread of Omicron in England while more booster jabs are administered.

But as shops, pubs and restaurants warn of the millions they face losing at their busiest time of year under the new measures, officials are already working on another back-up strategy.

The looming threat of tighter restrictions in the run-up to Christmas, which has echoes of this time last year, come amid fury at Mr Johnson's decision to impose 'Plan B' measures yesterday, on the same day that he tried to grapple with the fallout of the Downing Street Christmas party scandal.

He is set to face a 'war' with his backbenchers when the measures are voted on next week. They reacted furiously to the planned introduction of vaccine passports next week  and took aim at the 'conflicting' guidance on working from home and socialising, with no official advice to cancel festive parties.

A source told The Telegraph that it is 'highly likely' care homes will once again be hit by restrictions, with ministers looking at limiting the number of visitors to three.

The move would reportedly come in time for Christmas to limit the amount of mixing in homes during the festive period.

But the plans have been slammed by campaign groups, who say they will force families to make 'devastating' decisions about who gets to see loved ones on possibly their last Christmas.

Rights for Residents told the newspaper: 'It just takes us back to where we were many months ago, and the impact it will have on families will be devastating.

'It's absolutely heartbreaking for families to have to choose who can visit them. How do you pick those three people?'

Mr Johnson is facing a Tory rebellion next week when the 'Plan B' rules will be voted on in the House of Commons.

At least 50 Tories have publicly expressed concerns, and a senior Conservative said Mr Johnson needed to 'get a grip'.

Ringleaders have told MailOnline that it will be the biggest mutiny faced by the PM yet, with at least 60 expected to defy the government whip.

Backbencher Marcus Fysh said on Thursday that the latest curbs are an 'utter disgrace', while former chief whip Mark Harper has questioned whether the government has the moral authority to impose the limits given the row over rules being flouted in Downing Street.

Under-40s are being invited for Covid boosters in defiance of guidelines as NHS faces demands to loosen advice and allow EVERYONE to book online Under-40s are getting Covid boosters in defiance of NHS guidelines, it was revealed today. Officials have yet to officially start inviting younger adults, despite huge pressure to ramp up the booster roll-out and save the nation from even tougher restrictions over Christmas. But GPs involved in the scheme have began texting thirty-somethings, inviting them to make appointments. Some claim to have been able to get scheduled in within 36 hours. Currently only over-40s can use the online booking system to pencil in a top-up jab, yet plans are in pace to expand the programme to all eligible adults next week. Anyone given their second jab three months ago can get a walk-in booster, even if they are under-40 and can't officially book. And those who were last vaccinated six months ago, the original gap between doses, will still be invited through the normal channels, regardless of their age. The online booking system, only opened to over-40s this week, has already been hit by chaos, with dozens of eligible adults turned away even though they had managed to book a top-up jab because of a communications blunder. NHS bosses last night launched a crack down to get a grip of the scheme, which No10 has vowed to put 'on steroids' to fight off the oncoming Omicron wave. Advertisement

There was a further setback when the NHS Covid pass website crashed for several hours last night.

In signs of Cabinet tensions, Sajid Javid yesterday dismissed a hint from the PM that mandatory vaccination might be looked at in future, saying that would be 'ethically wrong'.

And the Health Secretary revealed that he refused to continue with a scheduled round of broadcast interviews on Wednesday because he was 'upset' by the bombshell video of No10 aides giggling about an alleged lockdown-busting festive gathering last year.

The scale of the damage to the Tories from the partying revelations, which followed the Westminster sleaze row, has been underlined with a poll showing 63 per cent of voters think the PM should resign.

Labour also had a four-point lead in the Redfield & Wilton poll, the largest since the 2019 general election.

On Wednesday, Mr Johnson announced a sudden shift in the Government's approach to tackling coronavirus, with an extension of mask-wearing from Thursday, a return to working from home on Monday and mandatory Covid passports for large venues from Wednesday.

The move provoked a barrage of Tory criticism, fuelled by suspicions the measures were introduced as an attempt to distract from the Prime Minister's troubles over an alleged staff party in Downing Street during last December's lockdown.

Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown, a senior member of the 1922 Committee of backbench Conservative MPs, said Mr Johnson must 'get a grip' or risk losing the backing of his party.

He warned the PM that if his 'bad month'  which also saw fury over Tory sleaze  continued in the New Year, 'then I think there would be a serious change of mind of giving him the benefit of the doubt'.

The scale of the Tory revolt means Mr Johnson may have to rely on Opposition support if his Plan B measures are to clear the Commons on Tuesday. Labour has said it will back the regulations, while the Liberal Democrats will support working from home but not vaccine passports.

A senior Tory source warned: 'I think we will get it through with Opposition support, but there will be such a bloodbath within our party when the dissatisfaction sets in.'

Tory MP David Warburton labelled Plan B 'confused, contradictory, arbitrary and wholly disproportionate', adding: 'This insanity needs to end.' The new measures will not stop colleagues meeting at a pub to work, and officials suggested an exemption on face-covering rules would allow people to remove their masks in shops or cinemas to sing.

Tory Greg Smith said: 'Go to the pub, but don't go to work, wear a mask when shopping (unless you want to sing)... where will this end?'

Mansfield MP Ben Bradley branded vaccine passports 'ineffective and discriminatory', and said he could not 'vote for restrictions 'just in case' at a time when hospitalisations and deaths are falling'.

Asked whether Tory rebels will be putting lives at risk, the Prime Minister's official spokesman said: 'The advice that we have received is without action  given the incredibly fast growth rate of this variant  the consequences, in terms of hospitalisations and deaths, could be severe.'

Sir Keir today said that Labour will vote in favour of the 'Plan B' measures. He said: 'Obviously, we're being urged to vote against them  because there's a rebellion on the Government side.

'But in this pandemic we have always put the public interest and public health first and that's what we'll do next week in supporting these measures.'

He said his party would decline the temptation of trying to take political advantage of any Tory rebellion.

'I think that's the wrong thing to do in a pandemic because it's very important the Labour Party acts in the national interest,' he said.

'Having listened to the medical advisers, I am convinced that in the national interest we should support these measures, and therefore that's what we will do.'

Several Cabinet ministers, including Kwasi Kwarteng, Jacob Rees-Mogg and Grant Shapps, are understood to feel Plan B is unnecessary at this point.

Tory former leader Sir Iain Duncan Smith said the Cabinet was 'full of scaredy-cats' who panic rather than resist fresh curbs.

Questioned in a round of interviews on Thursday morning over whether it makes sense to instruct staff to work from home but go to parties and other social events, Mr Javid said: 'I think it is proportionate, actually, when you look at these measures, whether it is the working-from-home guidance, the rules around face masks, the NHS Covid pass, and all of these.

'It is a real sort of spectrum of response that you can have.

'It could be guidance, you could have Covid passes clearly in more settings, you could have face masks in more settings, but you have to take a balanced decision that takes into account a number of factors and, of course, the key here is to slow the spread of the new variant, and these measures will help do that.'

He told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: 'We, of course, keep them under review, but they will have a significant impact in slowing the spread of the variant.'

Economic experts have criticised the restrictions ahead of the crucial pre-Christmas period, warning they could cost the economy 4billion a month and 'easily' knock two per cent off the size of the economy.

The hospitality industry said Plan B will kill off festive trade - a period when pubs, nightclubs and restaurants make a third of their annual profits. There are calls for a return to furlough and cash grants for restaurants, pubs, cafes, and bars.

Clive Wilson, Chairman of The City Pub Company, said together with rising energy costs and other pressures he expected to price of a pint to rise by around 40p.

'For restaurants and the late night economy - a third of your profit is made in December. People have described this as a body blow - it's more than that - it's taking off the life support machine yet again,' he said.

'And I notice that the Chancellor is not providing any further state aid. 'The current state aid is not enough. Please please give us that enhanced state aid to help us get through those leaner months otherwise a lot of businesses in our sector will run out of cash.'

The current rate of the booster rollout means Britain will miss the deadline to offer every eligible adult a Covid booster shot by the end January, instead hitting this target by 10 February

According to NHS data, many older age groups who have been eligible to get a Covid booster since September still have double digit percentage figures of people who are yet to get a third dose. Yesterday, the NHS online booking system for Covid boosters was opened up to the over 40s. 81 per cent of people aged 40-to-49 have yet to have a booster.

Economic experts also criticised the move ahead of the crucial pre-Christmas period, warning they could cost the economy 4 billion a month and 'easily' knock 2 per cent off the size of the economy.

Lord Sugar tweeted that the Prime Minister must be removed from office, saying: 'Plan B. Boris is mental. Work from home but you can go to nightclubs and football matches if you are double vax. The man must go. Correct me if I am wrong but I have not heard of any one who had to go to hospital with this new strain let alone die. Small BIZ will collapse'.

Road congestion in London was on Thursday at its lowest level of the week so far for the morning rush hour, with TomTom data giving a figure of 68 per cent between 8am and 9am this morning.

This was down from 75 per cent yesterday, 79 per cent on Tuesday and 69 per cent on Monday for the same time period. It was also down on Thursday of last week, which was 73 per cent.

TomTom data also revealed that Thursday saw the lowest congestion on a midweek day of Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday since the start of November.

It was last at such a low level when Thursday, November 4 had the same figure as Thursday of 68 per cent.

The midweek day analysis is important because in recent months many workers have been working from home on Mondays and Fridays but going into the office from Tuesday to Thursday.

The congestion level represents the extra travel time for drivers on average compared to baseline uncongested conditions - so a 68 per cent level means a 30-minute trip will take 20 minutes more than with no traffic.

In the Commons last night, Mr Harper said the evidence on the spread of Omicron, which has yet to hospitalise a single person in the UK, simply 'doesn't support the introduction of these measures'.

He told MPs: 'Over the past couple of weeks the Government's credibility, whether it's on Paterson or on the Christmas parties, has taken a hit.

'Why should people at home, listening to the Prime Minister and the Health Secretary, do things that people working in No10 are not prepared to do?'

Fellow Tory Philip Davies criticised the 'latest in a long line of arbitrary, unnecessary, socialist measures' and suggested Mr Javid had 'gone native'.

The Covid clampdown came just hours after the PM issued a rare apology over a leaked video that showed his former press secretary Allegra Stratton and other No10 aides appearing to laugh and joke about the alleged Christmas party during a mock press conference.

No 10 said that it was 'categorically untrue' to suggest the move to Plan B had been accelerated to divert attention from the disastrous coverage of alleged rule-breaking by the PM's staff.
A bear cub has been spotted attacking an inflatable reindeer Christmas decoration in California.

Neighbor Donna Hargett of Monrovia shot video of the amusing scene on Wednesday, showing the cub grappling with the large inflatable of Rudolph the Reindeer.

'I looked up and there it was jumping on the reindeer,' she told KCBS-TV. 'I was laughing to myself out in the street.'

Video shows the young cub wrestling with the inflatable in vain as a larger bear believed to be its mother looks on calmly

A bear cub has been spotted attacking an inflatable reindeer Christmas decoration in California

Video shows the young cub wrestling with the inflatable in vain as a larger bear believed to be its mother looks on calmly.

The cubs efforts to vanquish its foe are in vain, as the large decoration repeatedly springs back up after its attacks.

'I think it was pissed (for) coming on its territory,' said Hargett. 'And then you could tell it was the momma behind the baby.'

Neighbor Donna Hargett of Monrovia shot video of the amusing scene on Wednesday, showing the cub grappling with the large inflatable of Rudolph

The cubs efforts to vanquish its foe are in vain, as the large decoration repeatedly springs back up after its attacks

Hargett said that bear sightings are a regular occurrence in Monrovia, which sits in the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains on the northeast outskirts of Los Angeles.

'We see these two around all the time,' Hargett said. 'They're trouble.'

Hargett said that bears once even entered her home.

'Through the window one time,' said Hargett. 'There were scratches on the wall and one got up on the bed. There were paw prints.'
A former head of GCHQ wrongly escaped censure after revealing secret information about the hunt for Jihadi John, a parliamentary report has said.

Robert Hannigan gave away tactically significant details about attempts to track down the British-raised Islamic State executioner in a Channel 4 documentary, according to the Commons intelligence and security committee (ISC).

In the report, released yesterday, MPs expressed their dismay about Mr Hannigans remarks  seemingly in breach of the Official Secrets Act  and the apparent failure to hold him to account.

Mr Hannigans tenure as director of the government spy agency coincided with its bid  along with the CIA and other international intelligence agencies  to find, fix and finish Jihadi John.

Former head of GCHQ Robert Hannigan (pictured) wrongly escaped censure after revealing secret information about the hunt for Jihadi John, a parliamentary report has said

Mr Hannigan, who has built a lucrative second career as a security expert, headed GCHQ from 2014 until 2017. Pictured: The GCHQ building

The security expert told documentary makers about the lengths the terrorist, real name Mohammed Emwazi, went to shield his whereabouts. He also revealed the tactics used by the agencies to find him.

The report indicates Mr Hannigan gave his account without getting prior approval. Afterwards he received a letter from his GCHQ successor requesting he refrain from repeating what he divulged  but he was not subject to a criminal investigation.

Kuwaiti-born Emwazi, who grew up in west London, became the worlds most wanted man in 2014 when he was filmed beheading IS hostages in Syria, including British aid workers David Haines and Alan Henning.

He went on the run and was eventually killed, aged 27, in a drone strike on Raqqa, Syria, in November 2015.

The security expert told documentary makers about the lengths 'Jihadi John', real name Mohammed Emwazi, went to shield his whereabouts. He also revealed the tactics used by the agencies to find him

Mr Hannigan said in the documentary: He [Emwazi] had taught himself a lot. He communicated very rarely and when he did, mainly around the hostages, he used a series of commercially available products to obscure his identity. These encryption products made it very difficult for an agency to tackle him. He was layering these products on top of each other.

Mr Hannigan also revealed that Emwazi was identified by his size, his hands and above all his voice, which were so distinctive it was quite easy to find out who he was. The difficult part was finding him.

The ISC report said: It is very surprising to this committee that a previous head of one of those organisations [ie part of the Secret Intelligence Services] can appear on television and divulge secrets and yet no substantive action be taken.

It sends entirely the wrong message to those who may be tempted to breach those obligations themselves, and to those who risk their lives to protect them.

Mr Hannigan, who has built a lucrative second career as a security expert, headed GCHQ from 2014 until 2017.

He was unavailable for comment last night.
Hillary Clinton believes former President Donald Trump will run again in 2024, she said in an interview to be broadcast on Sunday, offering the nation what she described as a 'make or break' moment.

Clinton also discusses the victory speech that she was never able to deliver in November 2016, when Trump stunned the world with his shock election win.

And she said there would be dire consequences for the country if Trump won again, in excerpts released by the 'Today' show on Friday.

'If I were a betting person right now, I'd say Trump is going to run again,' she said.

'But I want people to understand that this is a make-or-break point.'

For his part, Trump has danced around the issue. Although he has hinted he wants to run, aides believe he will not announce any decision until after next year's midterms.

Voters would have a clear choice, said Clinton, if he did decide to run.

'Are we going to give in to all these lies and this disinformation and this organized effort to undermine our rule of law and our institutions, or are we going to stand up to it?' she asked.

Hillary Clinton said she believes Donald Trump will run again in 2024, in an interview with the 'Today' show, creating a 'make-or-break point for the nation

'Are we going to give in to all these lies and this disinformation and this organized effort to undermine our rule of law and our institutions, or are we going to stand up to it?' she asked NBC's Willie Geist in an interview that will be shown on Sunday

Trump has teased a 2024 run repeatedly even as he obsesses over defeat in the last one. Aides say he likely will not make any announcement until after next year's midterm elections

The interview ties in with NBC's new Masterclass streaming platform, which features lessons from 'luminaries from all walks of life.'

Clinton revisits her 2016 defeat in 'The Power of Resilience,' in which she grows emotional talking about her late mother as she reads the speech she hoped to deliver if she won.

In the interview with Willie Geist, she confirmed that she did not write a concession speech.

'Even though we had a lot of bumps those last 10 days, I still thought we could pull it out so I worked on a speech that really was about my journey and had a real emphasis on my mother's life and journey as a way of making it clear that, yes, I would be the first woman president, but I like everybody stood on the shoulders and lived the lives and experiences of those who came before us,' she told him.

The former secretary of state, senator and first lady used her would-be victory speech to set out what it meant to be the first woman president.

'I've met women who were born before women had the right to vote. They've been waiting a hundred years for tonight,' she said.

'I've met little boys and girls who didn't understand why a woman has never been president before. Now they know, and the world knows, that in America, every boy and every girl can grow up to be whatever they dream  even president of the United States.'

The former Democratic nominee became tearful as she talked about her mother, Dorothy Rodham, who died in 2011. Clinton has said her mother had a difficult childhood.

'I dream of going up to her, and sitting down next to her, taking her into my arms, and saying, "Look at me. Listen to me. You will survive. You will have a good family of your own. And three children.

'"And as hard as it might be to imagine, your daughter will grow up and become the president of the United States."

In the end, she had to make a concession speech after Trump pulled off an upset in 2016

Clinton then detailed the version of America she believed she would have ushered in.

'An America where women are respected and immigrants are welcomed. Where veterans are honored, parents are supported, and workers are paid fairly. An America where we believe in science, where we look beyond people's disabilities and see their possibilities, where marriage is a right and discrimination is wrong. No matter who you are, what you look like, where you come from, or who you love.'

In the waning days ahead of the 2016 election, it often seemed as if Clinton was unable to shake old scandals.

For many of the critical months of her campaign, she was under an active investigation by the FBI for potential mishandling of classified information.

Her husband's foundation was revealed to have accepted seven-figure donations from foreign monarchs. News outlets chronicled a series of relationships between foundation donors who then sought or got meetings, face time, or invitations.

And her cozy speeches to financial institutions were labeled unseemly by Democratic challengers and worse by Republicans.

Then, during the final weeks of the campaign when most voters are paying the most attention, FBI Director James Comey dropped a bombshell - that the bureau was taking another look at Clinton's emails.
NSW has recorded 560 new COVID-19 cases and three deaths, as the number of daily infections continues to surge.

The new cases mark the highest-daily tally recorded in NSW since October 9, two days before lockdown lifted, and the second day in a row with more than 500 cases.

Health authorities are concerned festive season celebrations are driving the spike in cases, and are urging caution.

NSW has recorded 560 new COVID-19 cases and three deaths, as the number of daily infections continues to surge

NSW Health has also issued alerts for the Golden Sheaf Hotel in Double Bay and the Albion Hotel in Parramatta

'The transmission in these types of settings is contributing to the increase in cases in NSW,' Dr Jeremy McAnulty said on Friday.

'We urge people not to attend any of these social functions or venues if you have any symptoms at all, even if mild.'

NSW Health is already battling to contain several large transmission events.

A trivia night at a Sydney pub sparked a new cluster of cases, with at least 46 patrons testing positive to the virus after attending the Oxford Tavern in Petersham on November 30.

Authorities are also concerned about 140 passengers who embarked on a Sydney Harbour cruise on Friday night which has so far resulted in five cases of the Omicron variant.

The number of people diagnosed with the Omicron variant of COVID-19 in NSW has reached 42.

NSW Health has also issued alerts for the Golden Sheaf Hotel in Double Bay and the Albion Hotel in Parramatta.

Woody's Surf Shack Night Club in Byron Bay has also been linked to at least three cases, while an event at the Coorabell Hall on Saturday night has resulted in 16 cases so far.

Health authorities are concerned festive season celebrations are driving the spike in cases, and are urging caution

There are 150 COVID-19 cases in hospital, with 25 people in intensive care.

Premier Dominic Perrottet is urging "confidence, hope and optimism" ahead of the end of most restrictions next week.

From December 15 density limits will be scrapped, QR check-ins will only be required at high-risk venues, and masks will only have to be worn on public transport, at airports and on planes.

There are currently 158 COVID-19 cases admitted to hospital, with 24 people in intensive care, nine of whom require ventilation.

The government has also announced a boost to rebate relief available to eligible sole traders, not-for-profit organisations and small businesses across the state.

They will be able to access up to $2000 - up from $1500 - to offset some NSW and local government fees, including food and liquor licences, event fees and council rates.
Appearing via videolink from her barrister's office in Melbourne, Muhammad Jan proceeded into a rant upon being asked to enter her plea

The mother of a young Afghani woman killed by her cruel husband has been warned not to pursue any kind of vendetta against the woman who introduced her to him.

Sakina Muhammad Jan, 45, on Friday pleaded not guilty to a single charge of causing another person to enter a forced marriage.

She will now front the County Court of Victoria in an anticipated jury trial next year.

Appearing via videolink from her barrister's office in Melbourne, Muhammad Jan proceeded into a rant upon being asked to enter her plea.

'No I didn't. I did not do any crime and I do not accept any guilt,' she said through an interpreter.

Police allege Muhammad Jan pressured her daughter Ruqia Haidari, 21, to marry 25-year-old Uber driver Mohammad Ali Halimi in November 2019.

She had been told if she married the complete stranger she could move from Melbourne to Perth and attend university there.

Sakina Muhammad Jan, 45, is facing a single charge of causing another person to enter a forced marriage, and faced Shepparton Magistrates Court for the first time this week

Halimi was sentenced in August in the Supreme Court of Western Australia to life imprisonment with a 19-year minimum for murdering his wife.

The 26-year old had used a kitchen knife to twice slash Ms Haidari's throat in January last year after she refused to consummate their marriage.

The Shepparton Magistrates' Court - 180km north of Melbourne - had heard Ms Haidari, who had just graduated Year 12, had been desperate to get out of the arranged marriage.

Family friend Shukria Muqadas, 31, told the court Ms Haidari's mum had asked her daughter's soon-to-be killer for $20,000 to marry her, but accepted $15,000.

Ms Muqadas had been the person who first introduced Ms Haidari to her killer.

On Thursday, she claimed she had now been forced to live in fear for providing police with information on the alleged arrangement.

'I'm stuck inside the house. I can't get outside,' she said through an interpreter. 'Everywhere I go, I have to go with my husband. '

Abbey Gawne, Ms Haidari's best friend (pictured together on the day of graduation), previously told Daily Mail Australia she had dreams of travelling

On Friday, more claims were made to the court suggesting sections of the Afghani community lived in fear of reprisals for speaking up about the alleged arranged marriage.

Forced marriage is considered a form of slavery in Australia and a criminal offence, but statistics show up to 80 have taken place in the last financial year alone.

Nobody has ever been convicted for orchestrating a forced marriage in Australia.

An interpreter who became involved in the case later told police she did not wish to provide a statement due to fear of what may come.

Detective Senior Constable Jacob Purcell noted the woman feared for her family, her own life and that of her young son.

Such was the concern, Crown prosecutors asked three additional witnesses be added to a list of people Muhammad Jan ought not contact between now and her trial.

Muhammad Jan's barrister Shaun Ginsbourg told the court 'strong emotions' continued to be held by her client's family toward Ms Muqadas.

'But I'll certainly emphasise to my client that she should not incite, or herself make reprisals of that kind,' he said.

Ms Haidari (right) married Halimi (centre) in November 2019, and by January 2020, she had been killed

During the preliminary hearing, which determines if there is enough evidence for a jury to convict beyond reasonable doubt, the court heard Ms Haidari had been too scared to raise her concerns with her mum over the arranged marriage.

Zarah Haydar Big claimed her friend She told the court her friend believed it was 'culturally inappropriate' to do so.

Ms Haydar Big said her friend was told her marriage would provide her with 'freedom'.

'She said that everything was going to be fine. She somehow was hoping she would get to her dream job, she could study, she could be free, she could have freedom of movement,' she said.

Ms Haydar Big said Ms Haidari was promised by both her mother and husband that she could enrol in university after the wedding in January - the eventual month she was murdered.

Ms Haidari had been keen to continue working with the Afghan community and study to become a social worker.

Jenny Patterson, who had taught the young Afghani woman to drive, told the court Ms Haidari had been afraid of upsetting her mother.

Ms Haidari had been open in revealing her plight from their very first lesson, she said.

'She felt her choices were being taken away from her,' Ms Patterson said.

The court heard Ms Haidari had repeatedly failed to convince her mother to call-off the wedding.

The couple had met just four times before they were married in front of hundreds of guests just outside of Shepparton in a community hall in November 2019.

The marriage quickly soured upon returning to Perth, with Halimi complaining that she had failed to cook and clean for him adequately.

Ms Muqadas, who had been friends with Halimi, told the court in the weeks before he murdered Ms Haidari, he had complained his wife was 'not very experienced'.

In actual fact, a medical condition had halted her from consummating their marriage even if she had wanted to.

Ms Muqadas told the court Halimi had blamed his wife's mother for the marriage and that he was frustrated.

Police taped off Ms Haidari's home home and conducted forensic testing after her husband led them to the body

During Halimi's sentence, the Supreme Court of Western Australia heard that on January 18 last year, Ms Haidari's brother Muhammad Taqi Haidari had listened helplessly on the phone as the pair argued - not realising it would be the last time he would hear his sister's voice.

Mr Haidari would however, speak to his brother-in-law again, when he phoned back to tell him: 'If you're a man, come get your sister's dead body.'

During the time between calls, Halimi found a stainless steel knife from the kitchen and slit Ms Haidari's throat twice, that court eventually determined.

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www.mybluesky.org.au assists people who are at risk of a forced marriage
Scientists are conducting a 'Darwin experiment' to speed up coral's evolutionary clock to breed 'super corals' that can better withstand the impacts of global warming.

The research is being performed in Hawaii, where more than half of the state's corals were lost to bleaching from 2014 to 2015, and after five years, the team led by the University of Hawaii is getting ready to plant laboratory-raised corals in the ocean to see how they survive in nature.

The corals are bred in a way that makes them more resistant to heat, which is done by choosing corals with desirable traits, and are then exposed to increasing heat so they can acclimate to such conditions in the wild.

For more than a decade, scientists have been observing corals that have survived bleaching, even when others have died on the same reef- and these hardy survivors are being bred to produce super corals.

Scientists are conducting a 'Darwin experiment' to speed up coral's evolutionary clock to breed 'super corals' that can better withstand the impacts of global warming

The experiment is based on Darwin's theory of evolution, which states all species of organisms arise and develop through the natural selection of small, inherited variations that increase the individual's ability to compete, survive, and reproduce.

Crawford Drury, chief scientist at Hawaiis Coral Resilience Lab, said in a statement: 'Corals are threatened worldwide by a lot of stressors, but increasing temperatures are probably the most severe.

'And so thats what our focus is on, working with parents that are really thermally tolerant.'

Coral reefs, often called the rainforests of the sea, provide food for humans and marine animals, shoreline protection for coastal communities, jobs for tourist economies and even medicine to treat illnesses such as cancer, arthritis and Alzheimers disease.

The world has lost 14 percent of its coral in the last decade, which expert say is mainly due to a warming world, and scientists are tirelessly working to save the underwater creatures from going extinct  and the latest attempt uses assisted evolution.

The corals are bred in a way that makes them more resistant to heat, which is done by choosing corals with desirable traits, and are then exposed to increasing heat so they can acclimate to such conditions in the wild

For more than a decade, scientists have been observing corals that have survived bleaching, even when others have died on the same reef- and these hardy survivors are being bred to produce super corals

However, this method is not widely accepted  some critics compare it to playing God.

Madeleine van Oppen of the Australian Institute of Marine Science told AP: 'Well, you know, (humans) have already intervened with the reef for very long periods of time. All were trying to do is to repair the damage.'

Rather than editing genes or creating anything unnatural, researchers are just nudging what could already happen in the ocean, she said. 'We are really focusing first on as local a scale as possible to try and maintain and enhance what is already there.'

Still, there are lingering questions.

Steve Palumbi, a marine biologist and professor at Stanford University, said in a statement: 'We have discovered lots of reasons why corals dont bleach.

'Just because you find a coral that isnt bleaching in the field or in the lab doesnt mean its permanently heat tolerant.'

The world has lost 14 percent of its coral in the last decade, which expert say is mainly due to a warming world - and the latest attempt uses assisted evolution. Pictured test tube full of coral eggs and sperm collected from a reef in Kaneohe Bay

Corals have been on Earth for about 250 million years and their genetic code is not fully understood.

'This is not the first time any coral on the entire planet has ever been exposed to heat,' Palumbi said. 'So the fact that all corals are not heat resistant tells you ... that theres some disadvantage to it. And if there werent a disadvantage, theyd all be heat resistant.'

But Palumbi thinks the assisted evolution work has a valuable place in coral management plans because 'reefs all over the world are in desperate, desperate, desperate trouble.'

Test tubes are set up to collect spawning coral eggs in a lab at the University of Hawaii's Institute of Marine Biology in Kaneohe

Kira Hughes, a coral researcher at the University of Hawaii's Institute of Marine Biology, holds a juvenile coral that is growing in a tank at a lab in Kaneohe

The project has gained broad support and spurred research around the world. Scientists in the UK, Saudi Arabia, Germany and elsewhere are doing their own coral resilience work. and the US government is also backing the effort.

Jennifer Koss, the director of NOAA's Coral Reef Conservation Program, said in a statement: 'Assisted evolution is really impressive and very consistent with a study that we conducted with the National Academies of Sciences.

'We asked them to gather all the most recent cutting-edge science that was really centered on innovative interventions in coral reef management,' Koss said. 'And certainly, this assisted gene flow fits right in.'

There are still serious challenges, with scalability being a major hurdle.

The team notes that transporting the lab-grown coral to the ocean is difficult, but them surviving on their own is the real challenge, especially since reintroduction has to happen on a local level to avoid bringing detrimental biological material from one region to another.

James Guest, a coral ecologist in the UK, leads a project to show selectively bred corals not only survive longer in warmer water, but can also be successfully reintroduced on a large scale.

The research is being performed in Hawaii, where more than half of the state's corals were lost to bleaching from 2014 to 2015, and after five years, the team led by the University of Hawaii is getting ready to plant laboratory-raised corals in the ocean to see how they survive in nature

'Its great if we can do all this stuff in the lab, but we have to show that we can get very large numbers of them out onto the reef in a cost-effective way,' Guest said.

Scientists are testing delivery methods, such as using ships to pump young corals into the ocean and deploying small underwater robots to plant coral.

No one is proposing assisted evolution alone will save the worlds reefs. The idea is part of a suite of measures - with proposals ranging from creating shades for coral to pumping cooler deep-ocean water onto reefs that get too warm.

The advantage of planting stronger corals is that after a generation or two, they should spread their traits naturally, without much human intervention.

Over the next several years, the Hawaii scientists will place selectively bred coral back into Kaneohe Bay and observe their behavior. Van Oppen and her colleagues have already put some selectively bred hybrid corals - where the eggs of one species are fertilized by the sperm of another - back on the Great Barrier Reef.

With the world's oceans continuing to warm, scientists say they are up against the clock to save reefs.

'All the work we are going to do here,' said Hawaii's Drury, 'is not going to make a difference if we dont wind up addressing climate change on a global, systematic scale.

'So really, what were trying to do is buy time.'
Scientists have developed a new face mask that uses ostrich antibodies to detect Covid-19 by glowing under ultraviolet light.

It is hoped the innovation could enable low-cost testing of the virus at home.

The non-woven mask features a filter coated with ostrich antibodies targeting Covid, based on the idea that previous research has shown the birds have strong resistance to disease.

These antibodies were extracted from the eggs of ostriches that had been injected with an inactive, non-threatening form of the coronavirus, as antibodies transfer to the offspring through the yolk.

They also form far more quickly in ostriches  in just six weeks compared to 12 in chickens  and are nearly 24 times bigger, allowing more room for them to form.

Innovation: Scientists have developed a new face mask (pictured) that uses ostrich antibodies to detect Covid-19 by glowing under ultraviolet light

The non-woven mask features a filter coated with ostrich antibodies targeting Covid. If the mask is worn by people infected with Covid it glows around the nose and mouth (pictured)

The antibodies were extracted from the eggs of ostriches that had been injected with an inactive, non-threatening form of the coronavirus. It was part of a small study led by Yasuhiro Tsukamoto (pictured) and his team at Kyoto Prefectural University in western Japan

HOW DO OSTRICH ANTIBODIES DETECT COVID ON A FACE MASK? A non-woven face mask has been created by Japanese researchers that features a filter coated with ostrich antibodies targeting Covid. These antibodies were extracted from the eggs of ostriches that had been injected with an inactive, non-threatening form of the coronavirus, as antibodies transfer to the offspring through the yolk. Ostrich eggs were used because the birds have strong resistance to disease. After the face mask has been worn, the filter is removed and sprayed with a chemical that glows under ultraviolet light if Covid is present. A small study of 32 people infected with the virus showed that the filter glowed around the nose and mouth. Researchers at Kyoto Prefectural University in western Japan hope their innovation could enable low-cost testing of the virus at home within the next year. No cost has yet been given for the special masks. Advertisement

In a small study by Yasuhiro Tsukamoto and his team at Kyoto Prefectural University in western Japan, participants wore the masks for eight hours before the filters were removed and sprayed with a chemical that glows under ultraviolet light if Covid is present.

Those that had been worn by people infected with the virus glowed around the nose and mouth, researchers found.

They said the LED light of a smartphone could also be used to detect the virus, which would greatly widen those able to use the face mask.

The scientists hope to further develop the masks so that they will glow automatically, without special lighting.

'It's a much faster and direct form of initial testing than getting a PCR test,' Tsukamoto, a veterinary professor and the president of the university, told VICE World News.

He added that it could potentially detect asymptomatic carriers of the virus, who may not get tested because they feel healthy.

Tsukamoto and his team experimented over ten days with 32 Covid-19 patients.

'The ostrich antibody for corona placed on the mouth filter of the mask captures the coronavirus in coughing, sneezing, and water,' the researchers said.

'Next, a fluorescent dye-labelled ostrich antibody is reacted and the virus is visualised by irradiating with light.

'We also succeeded in visualising the virus antigen on the ostrich antibody-carrying filter when using the LED ultraviolet black light and the LED light of the smartphone as the light source.

'This makes it easy to use on the mask even at home. Visualisation of the illness is possible.'

The experts added: 'The presence of the virus can also be confirmed from the ostrich antibody-carrying mask used by a person infected with the new coronavirus for eight hours.'

In the study, participants wore the masks for eight hours before the filters were removed

They were then sprayed with a chemical that glows under ultraviolet light if Covid is present

The face mask filters worn by people infected with Covid glowed around the nose and mouth

Researchers said the LED light of a smartphone could also be used to detect the virus, which would greatly widen those able to use the face mask

Tsukamoto told the Kyodo news agency he discovered that he had Covid after wearing one of the masks.

He has studied ostriches for two decades, looking for ways to adapt their immunity power to fight bird flu, allergies, and other diseases.

Tsukamoto has previously made masks to help detect swine flu.

A patent application has been filed for the special face masks, and there are plans to commercialise inspection kits and sell them in Japan and overseas within the next year.

However, Tsukamoto and his team are yet to carry out large-scale testing of the mask filters or secure the government approval they need for mass production.

They have not revealed how much the masks cost to make.
A stunning gold earring discovered in Denmark may have been gifted by the Emperor of Byzantium to a Viking chief 1,000 years ago, experts claim.

Dating from the 11th century, the 'completely unique' gold jewellery has never been seen before in the Nordic countries.

Likely one of a pair, it was found by a metal detectorist in a field near Bvling in West Jutland, Denmark.

It's thought to have been originally crafted in Byzantium or Egypt and is potential evidence the Vikings had connections all the way around the Mediterranean.

The Byzantine Empire (395 to 1204 and 1261 to 1453), also known as the Eastern Roman Empire or Byzantium, was a powerful civilization based at Constantinople (modern-day Istanbul).

The earring has an email, now slightly cracked, formed in a motif of two stylised birds around a tree or a plant, which symbolises the tree of life

The earring is probably from Egypt and reached all the way to Bvling, where Frants Fugl Vestergaard found it on a field with a metal detector

BYZANTINE EMPIRE The Byzantine Empire (395 to 1204 and 1261 to 1453), also known as the Eastern Roman Empire or Byzantium, was a powerful civilization based at Constantinople (modern-day Istanbul). Constantinople was the capital of the ancient Byzantine empire. The empire held sway over much of Italy, Greece and Turkey for more than 1,000 years, the only one in history to have lasted a millennium. In 1202, the Crusaders ransacked the city, stealing many of its treasures, and more was looted in later centuries. Advertisement

It's now being exhibited in Denmark National Museum's Viking exhibition 'Togtet', which translates as 'The Cruise' and is all about Viking travels to the Middle East.

Experts have so far been unable to find a similar earring in the area that may have formed a pair.

'It is completely unique to us, we only know of 10 to 12 other specimens in the whole world, and we have never found one in Scandinavia before,' said Peter Pentz, inspector at the National Museum Denmark.

'We had expected to find such a fine and invaluable piece of jewellery like this together with a large gold treasure or in a royal tomb and not on a random field in Bvling.'

The find consists of a crescent-shaped gold plate inserted in a frame made of gold threads adorned with small gold balls and gold ribbons.

Its crescent-shaped plate is covered with an enamel, now slightly cracked, which would have been created by a special technique involving breaking and powdering glass before melting it with metal so it becomes opaque.

The motif of the enamel is two stylised birds around a tree or a plant, which symbolises the tree of life.

Vikings had connections all the way to the Mediterranean, according to the National Museum Denmark

Back of the earring. The find consists of a crescent-shaped gold plate inserted in a frame made of gold threads adorned with small gold balls and gold ribbons

This type of jewellery is known especially from Muslim Egypt and Syria and from Byzantium and Russia.

In terms of style and craftsmanship, it's similar to the Dagmark cross  an 11th or 12th-century Byzantine relic.

The earring and the Dagmark Cross are thought to both date from the Viking Age or the earliest Middle Ages and were likely not traded but donated by kings and emperors.

That explains why the Dagmark cross was found in a queen's grave, at St. Bendt's Church in Ringsted, Denmark in 1683.

The earring and the Dagmark Cross (pictured) are thought to both date from the Viking Age or the earliest Middle Ages

In contrast, the new treasure was found in a field in Bvling without known Viking sites nearby, so how it ended up there is therefore a bit of a mystery.

The discoverer of the priceless find was 54-year-old Frants Fugl Vestergaard, who had searched the field many times before in the hunt for 'danef'  gold and silver in the earth without an owner.

As his detector gave a faint bleep, he picked up a clump of earth and crushed it in his hand to find the earring peeping out.

'"Stop it", I think, and then time stands still for me,' he told the National Museum.

'I get very humbled and wondered why I should find that piece and then even in West Jutland, where there is so much between the finds. It's like getting a text from the past.

It's now being exhibited in Denmark National Museum's Viking exhibition 'Togtet', which translates as 'The Cruise' and is all about Viking travels to the Middle East

The earring is the first of its kind in Scandinavia, and there are only 10 to 12 pieces of the same kind worldwide

'You always yearn to find something beautiful, a top find, and then you suddenly have it in your hands. It is completely inconceivable.'

One explanation for how it got there may be that many Vikings went into war service for the Byzantine emperor, who had a bodyguard consisting of warriors from Scandinavia.

Icelandic sagas show that mercenaries came home from the East with silk and weapons, and it is also said that the emperor occasionally donated fine gifts to his bodyguard.

So the earring could have been given personally by the emperor to a trusted Viking in the bodyguard and was then lost under unknown circumstances in Denmark.

The find confirms that West Jutland has always had strong connections around the world,' said Astrid Toftdal Jensen, an inspector at Holstebro Museum, which is near its finding place.

Jensen hopes the earring can be lent to the museum at a later date so that it can be seen in the area where it was found.
Comet Leonard, which was expected to light up the skies throughout this month, appears to be fading, scientists say - but they don't know why.

Since its discovery in January this year, the comet has been fast approaching both the Sun and Earth, at nearly 160,000 miles per hour.

But according to scientists, it may already be splitting up less than a year after it was first discovered, or it will begin to split up soon.

The cosmic ice ball is still set to offer stargazers a rare treat this weekend as it passes by Earth for the first time in 70,000 years.

It's expected to be visible in the Northern Hemisphere's pre-dawn sky as it increases in brightness during December, but after this it might disintegrate.

Visibility will be best through binoculars or a telescope, and in dark sky areas from this Sunday (December 12).

The comet will likely be lost to view after Christmas, reaching its closest point to the Sun on January 3 at a distance of 57.2 million miles (92 million km).

Once it rounds our star, it will be thrown out of the solar system into a slightly hyperbolic orbit, never to be seen again.

The newly discovered Comet Leonard (pictured) is set to light up the sky this month, as it passes by Earth for the first time in 70,000 years

LEONARD: AN INBOUND LONG PERIOD COMET Catalogued as C/2021 AI, comet Leonard is named after the astronomer that first discovered it. Gregory J Leonard spotted the comet using the Mount Lemmon Observatory on January 3, 2021 . This was a year before it hit perihelion (the closest approach to the sun). It last appeared in the inner solar system 70,000 years ago and so is on a 70,000 year orbit of the sun. This will be its last orbit as it is on a hyperbolic trajectory, meaning it will leave the solar system after its close approach to our host star. Advertisement

Comet Leonard was discovered by astronomer Gregory J Leonard on January 3 at the Mount Lemmon Infrared Observatory in Arizona and catalogued as C/2021 AI.

Quanzhi Ye, an astronomer at the University of Maryland, told Space.com that the comet is already fading as it approaches Earth, which is strange because it should be getting brighter before a close approach.

When a comet's orbit brings it close to the Sun, it heats up and spews dust and gases into a giant glowing head larger than most planets.

'It's not great news. The comet should be brighter and brighter,' said Ye, who has mainly been observing the comet using the 4.3-m Lowell Discovery Telescope in Arizona.

'If it's not getting brighter then something's wrong, but we don't know exactly what at this stage.'

Comets  also called 'cosmic snowballs' or 'icy dirtballs'  are conglomerations of frozen gas, dust and ice left over from the formation of the solar system.

Comets go around the sun in an orbit that's highly elliptical, meaning they're not perfectly circular.

They can spend hundreds and thousands of years out in the depths of the Solar System before they return for their 'perihelion'  their closest approach to the Sun.

But Comet Leonard has a hyperbolic orbit, meaning once it passes the Sun it will be ejected out of the Solar System and never seen again by Earthlings.

Comet Leonard is already showing signs of a tail as it begins to warm up on its approach towards the inner solar system, astronomers explained

Comet C/2021 A1 Leonard on February 12. If it does fall apart, researchers may never know why

DIFFERENT TYPES OF SPACE ROCKS An asteroid is a large chunk of rock left over from collisions or the early solar system. Most are located between Mars and Jupiter in the Main Belt. A comet is a rock covered in ice, methane and other compounds. Their orbits take them much further out of the solar system. A meteor is what astronomers call a flash of light in the atmosphere when debris burns up. This debris itself is known as a meteoroid. Most are so small they are vapourised in the atmosphere. If any of this meteoroid makes it to Earth, it is called a meteorite. Meteors, meteoroids and meteorites normally originate from asteroids and comets. Advertisement

Comet Leonard likely spent about 35,000 years coming inbound from about 323 billion miles (520 billion km) away and may have last visited the inner solar system about 70,000 years ago.

Ye said that the first sign a comet is doomed is that it loses its ion tail  a stream of charged particles pointing from the comet in the direction opposite the sun.

'Comets do all sorts of weird things  sometimes they disintegrate before reaching perihelion, sometimes after, and there are even hypotheses saying that comets can disintegrate when they're farther out from the Sun,' Ye said. 'So we won't know until we see it happen.'

'Why it's fading, there are all kinds of hypotheses,' Ye said. 'The simplest and the most obvious one is something unhealthy is happening to the comet.'

One possibility, he told Space.com, is that it could it be running out of ice for the Sun to vaporise. Another is that the gravitational tug of the Sun or a large planet could pull it apart.

If it does fall apart, experts may never know why. However, Ye said the public will be able to enjoy 'something pretty bright' this month because it takes time for comets to fully disintegrate.

Comet Leonard makes its closest approach to Earth on Sunday, December 12, prior to its perihelion on January 3. On Sunday, it will be around 21.7 million miles away from our home planet.

Starting around December 14, the comet will appear in the evening sky for viewers in both hemispheres, according to the Planetary Society, before sweeping by Venus on December 18.

The newfound comet C/2021 A1 (Leonard) will make its closest approach to Earth on Dec. 12, 2021. Once it rounds our star it will be thrown out of the solar system into a slightly hyperbolic orbit, never to be seen again

People in the Southern Hemisphere should get their best view on December 14, when the comet may be visible above the horizon after sunset.

Throughout the month, including Christmas Day, it may even be possible to spot the bright green iceball briefly in the evening shortly after sunset, astronomers say.

The comet has a green tail because its icy rock interior heats up the closer it gets to the sun, first emitting a blue dust, then yellow or white and finally green.

When it turns this teal colour, it means the comet is warm, contains lots of cyanide and diatomic carbon and the potential for it to break up is at its highest.
Speaking to your baby in exaggerated, high-pitched and singsong tones can help them learn to make words, a new study claims.

Researchers at the University of Florida found babies aged six-to-eight months reacted to the sound of 'baby talk' with 'visible lip and tongue movement'  a potential sign that they were trying to prime themselves for speech.

So when parents impersonate a baby when they talk to their infants, they might be helping them learn to produce speech sooner.

Baby talk uses proper words, but spoken in a drawn-out and exaggerated singsong pattern of intonation, usually at a higher pitch.

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When parents baby talk to their infants, they might be helping them learn to produce speech, researchers in Gainesville, Florida report (stock image)

WHAT IS BABY TALK? Baby talk is a certain style of speech employed by adults when talking to an infant. It is characterised by higher and wider pitch, slower speech rate and a 'sing song' pattern of intonation that differentiates it from the more monotone style used when adults speak normally. When parents or other caregivers use baby talk, they use normal language. But they make it simpler by repeating words a lot and speaking slower. Baby talkers also exaggerate facial expressions  they open the mouth wider, raise eyebrows and smile a lot. Scientists claim that talking to babies gives them advantages in life far beyond a larger vocabulary. They say that chatting to babies under the age of one, helps them make friends, as well as making them brighter because they are better able to discover the world around them. Advertisement

It's already thought the way we instinctively speak to babies helps them understand what we're saying.

Now, the new research suggests this 'baby talk' also helps babies learn to produce their own speech. This was a previously unknown benefit, the authors claim.

'It seems to stimulate motor production of speech, not just the perception of speech,' said study author Matthew Masapollo at the University of Florida. 'It's not just goo-goo ga-ga.'

By mimicking the sound of a smaller vocal tract, the researchers think, we're 'cluing babies in' to how the words should sound coming out of their own mouths.

Though baby talk may sound simple, it's accomplishing a lot, according to co-author Linda Polka at McGill University in Canada.

'We're trying to engage with the infant to show them something about speech production,' she said. 'We're priming them to process their own voice.'

For the study, the researchers changed the frequency of sounds to mimic either an infant or adult vocal tract, and then tested how infants reacted.

They recruited just over 60 babies, who sat on their parent or caregiver's lap while they played the two different computerised vocal sounds.

Researchers wanted to assess the babies' preferences for either the adult vocal sounds or infant vocal sounds, as Polka explains.

'We presented the baby with two different kinds of sounds (the baby can control when the sound plays by looking at a visual pattern),' she told MailOnline.

'We measure how long they listen to each sound to see if they choose to listen more to one sound compared to the other.'

The six-to-eight-month-olds 'displayed a robust and distinct preference' for speech with resonances of a vocal tract similar in size and length to their own, they found.

A small vocal tract, like what babies have, leads to more high-pitched sounds, while the large vocal tract of an adult creates a lower pitch.

Interestingly, previous research has shown that four-month-olds to six-month-olds didn't have that preference.

So the researchers think that six to eight months is the age where babies have a dawning realisation that they can control their voices and make words out of babble.

Overall, the experiments showed that babies react more to the sound of baby noises  higher in pitch, as if they're coming from a fellow baby's vocal tract  with subtle signs that they're trying to speak, compared to when they hear adult-like noises.

So the message for parents is that speaking more like a baby may be an effective way of triggering speech from their offspring.

'There is some evidence that when mothers talk to their baby (as compared to when they talk to another adult), they raise their larynx and spread their lips, which shortens their vocal tract length,' Masapollo told MailOnline.

'While caregivers certainly cannot shorten their vocal tract enough to match the vocal tract length of their infant, this modification in speaking may nevertheless make caregivers sound more infant-like, which in turn, may help attract infant attention.

A research paper published earlier in 2021 found babies will pay more attention to baby talk than regular speech, regardless of which languages they're used to hearing

'From this perspective, infant-directed speech (or baby talk) will prime infants for processing their own voice and stimulate them to be more vocally active.'

The fact babies reacted to infant vocal sounds with visible lip and tongue movement is something the team is examining more directly in ongoing experiments, he said.

Parents are sometimes discouraged from engaging in baby talk, but patterns associated with that speaking style could be a key component in helping babies make words, the team claim

Their study has been published today in the Journal of Speech, Language and Hearing Research.

Earlier this year, researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) found that babies prefer baby talk whether they're learning one language or two.

While previous research has shown that monolingual babies prefer baby talk, this UCLA study found that it is also the case for babies exposed to two languages.

Dr Marina Kalashnikova from Western Sydney University explains the importance of baby talk
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There is an alien-like fish that lives some 2,000 feet below ocean off the coast of California that has a translucent head that exposes its glowing eyes.

Called the barreley fish, the deep-sea creature was spotted by the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI) using its remote-operated vehicle (ROV).

'MBARI's remotely operated vehicles Ventana and Doc Ricketts have logged more than 5,600 successful dives and recorded more than 27,600 hours of videoyet we've only encountered this fish nine times,' the video description reads.

The elusive fish has two small indentations where its eyes would normally be, but instead, its eyes are two glowing green orbs behind its face that gaze up towards the top of its head.

Its eyes are in that position to allow the creature to scan the waters above it for food, since it lives so deep where food is scares, along with allow it to rotate its eyes forward.

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There is an alien-like fish that lives some 2,000 feet below ocean off the coast of California that has a see-through head that exposes its glowing eyes

The barreley fish was spotted on an expedition led by Rachel Carson in Monterey Bay off the coast of California last week, but it was first described in 1939, CNET reports.

While its body is mostly dark, the top part of its head is transparent and its eyes are clearly visible.

According to evolutionary biologists, the fish developed such a powerful sense of sight as a result of the harsh environment it lives in, where no sunlight can reach.

Its eyes are known as tubular eyes, which are typically among deep-sea creatures, consisting of a multi-layer retina and a big lens, what allows them to detect the maximum quantity of light in one direction.

Called the barreley fish, the deep-sea creature was spotted by the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI) using its remote-operated vehicle

The elusive fish has two small indentations where its eyes would normally be, but instead, its eyes are two glowing green orbs behind its face that gaze up towards the top of its head

However, the eyes were believed to be fixed in place and seemed to provide only a 'tunnel-vision' view of whatever was directly above the fish's head  this was the theory until 2019.

In 2019, a new study showed that the fish's unusual eyes can rotate within a transparent shield that covers its head, allowing it to look up for food and forward to see what it is eating.

The marine biologists also found that it uses its large, flat fins to remain motionless in the water.

The barreley fish was spotted on an expedition led by Rachel Carson in Monterey Bay off the coast of California last week, but it was first described in 1939

This means that creatures around it cannot see it clearly. Predators lurking above it cannot spot it either, however it can look upwards to hunt for the small fish and plankton it lives off.

When a suitable morsel is identified, the barreleye fish attacks out of the darkness and swiftly engulfs its prey.

To avoid looking at the sun when it moves into shallower waters, the creature's eyes can rotate to look forward so it can see where it is swimming.

Its amazing eyes glow a bright-green and researchers believe it may have developed a form of light filter which allows it to ignore the sunlight and spot the bioluminescence of small fish and jellyfish - it's favorite food.
Veterinarians at the Phoenix Zoo in Arizona are giving the first dose of the coronavirus vaccine to 75 animals to stop the virus from spreading to the animals that come in close contact with visitors.

Big cats such as Sumatran tigers, jaguars and African lions; many of the zoo's primates like Bornean orangutans and tiny emperor tamarins; and Egyptian fruit bats, armadillos and two-toed sloths are among the 75 animals that have already received their first shots.

The vaccine given to the animals is different from what is given to humans, as it targets the antigen of the spike proteins.

Many of the animals have been given a jab, but big cats are being vaccinated from a distance with the use of darts.

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Veterinarians at the Phoenix Zoo in Arizona are giving the first dose of the coronavirus vaccine to 75 animals to stop the virus from spreading to the animals that come in close contact with visitors. Pictured is a an Emperor tamarin, a small primate, getting its vaccine

Veterinarian Dr Gary West, the zoo's senior vice president of animal health and living collections, said in a statement: 'They take it way better than people do.

'They don't like it, but they bounce right back and go back to their lives.'

There have been no cases of coronavirus infection detected among Phoenix Zoo animals

The vaccine being used at the Phoenix Zoo was developed specifically for animals by Zoetis, a global animal health company based in in New Jersey that donated the doses. The vaccine is authorized for emergency use to protect endangered species.

Big cats such as Sumatran tigers, jaguars and African lions; many of the zoo's primates like Bornean orangutans and tiny emperor tamarins; and Egyptian fruit bats (pictured), armadillos and two-toed sloths are among the 75 animals that have already received their first shots

West said the Phoenix Zoo has been taking precautions to protect the animals throughout the pandemic with distancing and protective equipment.

The inoculations should give the most susceptible animals an added layer of protection, he said.

Zoos across the country, including at the St. Louis Zoo and the Denver Zoo, have recently grappled with COVID-19 outbreaks among their animals and zoos are now moving to vaccinate their animals.

In March, nine great apes at the San Diego Zoo became the first non-humans to receive a COVID-19 vaccine.

Four orangutans and five bonobos at the California zoo were given doses of an experimental coronavirus vaccine developed specifically for animals last month.

One of those orangutans, whose name is Karen, was the first in the world to undergo open-heart surgery back in 1994.

The vaccines, which are not designed for humans, were handed out after eight gorillas at the zoo tested positive for COVID-19 back in January after becoming infected by a zoo keeper.

Staff at the zoo were able to administer the shots after distracting the apes with treats.

However, not all zoo animals have been lucky enough, as three snow leopards at the Children's Zoo in Lincoln, Nebraska died of the virus in November.

A trio of snow leopards at the Lincoln Children's Zoo, in Nebraska, died from COVID-19 complications in November. Pictured is one of the leopards that died

The three leopards, named Ranney, Everest, and Makalu, contracted the virus in October.

The trio of snow leopards had nasal swabs and fecal samples taken after animal keepers had 'observed symptoms consistent with the virus in felids,' which can include difficulty breathing or shortness of breath.

The zoo said that the snow leopards and tigers were being treated 'with steroids and antibiotics to prevent secondary infection,' but it was not enough to save the majestic creatures.
Roberto Firmino has returned to training after picking up a hamstring injury during Liverpool's 2-0 win over Atletico Madrid in November.

Firmino was forced off the pitch during the Reds' Champions League clash with Atletico at Anfield, having only played 27 minutes as a second-half substitute.

Liverpool have gone on to win six of their seven games in all competitions since the Brazil international was sidelined but his team-mates have expressed their excitement about seeing him back on the pitch.

Roberto Firmino has returned to Liverpool training after picking up a hamstring injury

Firmino has been out of action since suffering the injury against Atletico Madrid in November

Firmino was greeted by a delighted Jurgen Klopp, who will be pleased to have his No 9 back

The lads are buzzing to have Bobby back 



You'll enjoy the latest edition of     Liverpool FC (@LFC) December 9, 2021

Virgil van Dijk said it was a 'beautiful sight' to see him return to training following the injury

Manager Jurgen Klopp initially said that Firmino's injury did 'not look good' and admitted his side could be without the 30-year-old for a prolonged period.

The Liverpool boss said: 'We've known for two or three days it's a serious injury.

'We are talking about weeks, I don't know exactly but more than four  which I would consider a serious injury. Then we have to see.

'It is Bobby and he is quick healer it's just usually before the international break you think they will be ready again after the international break then you take that but that it is not directly in the moment he will be ready again. So, no  it is not good.'

However, Firmino has returned to the pitch sooner than expected after being seen in pictured from Liverpool's session on Thursday.

He was back on the training pitch with Joe Gomez and Naby Keita - who made their returns from injury off the bench against AC Milan on Tuesday night.

The rehab crew were greeted by Virgil van Dijk - who recently graduated from the not-so exclusive group following his horrific knee injury.

Naby Keita is also returning from injury and should be involved against Aston Villa at Anfield

Defender Joe Gomez sprints with the ball in training after coming off the bench at AC Milan

Speaking to the camera, the Dutchman said: 'Bobby, Naby, Joe - beautiful. What a sight'.

It is thought Saturday's home game with Steven Gerrard's Aston Villa will come too soon for Firmino but Keita and Gomez are expected to be involved.

Prior to his injury, Firmino was on fine form - having scored six goals (including a hat-trick against Watford) during his 11 appearances for the Reds this season.

Firmino's potential return will hand Klopp a major boost going into the festive period as he will be without Mohamed Salah and Sadio Mane during the Africa Cup of Nations.
Manchester United and their new boss Ralf Rangnick have been handed a major fitness boost with the news that Raphael Varane will return to full training on Friday.

Varane has been involved in non-contact training with his team-mates this week, but it has now been reported that the France international is ready to re-join full-contact sessions on Friday, ahead of the trip to Norwich on Saturday.

The Sun report that the 28-year-old has been given the green light, and he could even make the bench for Rangnick's first away game in charge of the team.

Raphael Varane, pictured on Tuesday, is set to return to full-contact training on Friday morning

The former Real Madrid centre back's return will be a huge boost for Manchester United

United travel to relegation-threatened Norwich, who are much-improved following the arrival of Dean Smith as manager and have recently moved off the bottom of the Premier League table.

Rangnick has so far had to cope without his best centre back, with Varane having not played a game since the first week of November.

He returned from international duty with France in October with a groin issue, but is now back to full fitness and ready to return to the team.

Ralf Rangnick is preparing for his first away game in charge of United, at Norwich on Saturday

Nemanja Matic played as a makeshift centre back against Young Boys earlier this week

The news will come as a huge boost for Rangnick with the matches coming thick and fast, and a trip to Brentford just three days after the Norwich game.

The German had to cope with a makeshift defence against Young Boys on Tuesday, moving Nemanja Matic back from his usual midfield berth to a centre back role alongside Eric Bailly.

Harry Maguire and Victor Lindelof were both rested for the dead-rubber game, and with Varane soon to return Rangnick will be blessed with more defensive options.
Atletico Madrid have reportedly told Joao Felix he is able to leave if a suitable offer arrives - placing Manchester United, Liverpool, Arsenal and Newcastle on red alert.

Felix's game time has been hit by the return of old favourite Antoine Griezmann to the Wanda Metropolitano, and a series of injuries have also derailed his season.

And now, according to AS, club president Gil Marin has told Jorge Mendes, Felix's agent, that if a big enough bid is tabled then the wonderkid will be able to go.

Joao Felix has been told he can leave Atletico Madrid for a suitable offer, reports have claimed

The playmaker, 22, was left on the bench for Atletico's crunch Champions League group stage clash against Porto - and it has not been ruled out that he leaves soon.

Sensationally, four Premier League teams have been identified as potential suitors.

It is little surprise to see United among them, in light of the club's previous interest in signing the starlet. It was even claimed that they lodged a lucrative bid.

Felix (left) has struggled for game time this season and was left on the bench against Porto

Manchester United, managed by interim boss Ralf Rangnick, are one of the clubs keen on Felix

The shock name is Newcastle, however, despite their money-spinning takeover from a Saudi-led consortium and the departure of the much-maligned Mike Ashley.

Despite the expected difficulties facing the club, with teams understood to be reluctant to offload stars to St James' Park, Newcastle expect to be busy this winter.

Indeed, the same report from AS goes as far as saying that they have made a approach for Felix, although the player is not convinced by them.

Former Benfica man Felix himself is open to leaving Atletico, and will be able to take his pick over his next destination.

A number of injuries have also derailed Felix's campaign, and his departure now looks likely

Eddie Howe and Newcastle are reportedly in for Felix, but the ace is not convinced by the offer

As it stands, Newcastle's offer is the highest, but is the one the player likes the least.

Felix joined Atletico in an eye-watering deal worth 113million in January 2019, and is the winner of the coveted Golden Boy award from the same year.

Despite the uncertainty over a move, there is no doubting he has a bright future.
Pep Guardiola has claimed the Premier League Manager of the Month award for November, making it his tenth time receiving the accolade and bringing him up to third on the all-time list.

Manchester City won all five of their Premier League fixtures across November, including a dominant 2-0 victory in the Manchester derby against United.

Their impressive form over the month has seen Guardiola's side return to the summit of the table, leapfrogging Thomas Tuchel's Chelsea in the process.

Man City's Pep Guardiola earned his tenth Premier League Manager of the Month award

The accolade brings the City boss up to third on the all-time list for the award, level with West Ham boss David Moyes and just five behind Arsene Wenger.

Sir Alex Ferguson leads the list by a long way, however, with the former United boss claiming a whopping 27 Manager of the Month awards.

The Citizens suffered a rocky October where they dropped points against Liverpool and Crystal Palace, and were knocked out of the Carabao Cup on penalties by West Ham.

However, last month Guardiola's side secured victories over Everton, West Ham, Manchester United and beat PSG and Club Brugge in the Champions League to ensure their space in the next round of the competition.

Guardiola's side won every Premier League game across November as they returned to the top

Only Arsene Wenger (L) and Sir Alex Ferguson (R) have won the award more than Guardiola

The former Barcelona manager has an even busier December schedule having already beaten Aston Villa and Watford - Man City still have five more league fixtures remaining.

Ahead of his team's trip to Wolves this weekend, Guardiola said: 'The schedule is good, it's historic.'

'I like to play in the winter time - my words will not change anything. If you have just two days rest between games, no time to recover, every season nothing changes, but just adapt and pray for no injuries.

'We go forwards, the players have ability to go to their limits as much as possible.

'What is next for us is tomorrow at 12.30 and we don't think about other things. The next one is the most important.'
Manchester United may reportedly struggle to keep Edinson Cavani over the winter window, and outlets have now linked the club to four main targets should they have to replace the veteran striker.

Cavani, who is currently injured but edging closer to a return, has been touted to move to Barcelona with Sergio Aguero suffering from a heart problem, and he is said to be keen to fulfil a long-held ambition to play for the Catalan giants.

As a result, United may be forced into the transfer market to bolster their attacking options - and The Express have drawn up a shortlist of potential incomings.

Manchester United striker Edinson Cavani has been linked with a move away from the club

Ralf Rangnick may be forced into the transfer market to bring in a new striker at Old Trafford

First on their list, unsurprisingly, is Borussia Dortmund frontman Erling Haaland.

Haaland came close to joining United under Ole Gunnar Solskjaer in January 2020, but headed to Bavaria instead from Red Bull Salzburg.

His goal record of 74 goals in just 72 Bundesliga games has more than justified his decision, however, although United remain keen on him.

Erling Haaland is a target for United, and Rangnick has a close connection with the frontman

The connection between interim boss Ralf Rangnick and Haaland, which dates back to his Salzburg days, may swing the saga in their favour.

United have also been linked with Atletico Madrid's Joao Felix more recently.

According to reports, wonderkid Felix has been told that he can leave the club if a suitable offer arrivals - and the Old Trafford outfit are among his potential suitors.

This season, Felix has found himself behind Antoine Griezmann in the pecking order and has also been disrupted by a series of niggly injuries.

According to reports, Joao Felix has been told he can leave Atletico Madrid for a suitable offer

Alexander Isak has impressed for club and country, and United may look to move in for him

His versatility across the front line and young age makes him an exciting prospect for United supporters, should the club move in for him.

Another player with time on their side is Real Sociedad ace Alexander Isak.

Despite his poor time at Dortmund, Isak has since gone on to become one of the continent's best prodigies, and has impressed for both club and country.

Chelsea ace Timo Werner is another striker to have been linked with United in recent weeks

The Express say that United held interest in the 22-year-old during his time at AIK in Sweden - and, years on, they may reignite this if Cavani does depart.

In a more bizarre rumour, United have also been linked with Timo Werner.

Chelsea man Werner has struggled to make an impact at Stamford Bridge since arriving from RB Leipzig, and has played under Rangnick in the past.


Elliot Garnaut is a massive player in Melbourne's fashion circles, and is one of Australia's most in-demand celebrity stylists.

So it's no surprise that the fashion guru's Christmas party on Thursday appeared to be quite the wild affair, with guests including his clients Rebecca Harding and Rozalia Russian, who gathered at Di Stasio Citta in the city.

The group looked to be having a ball at the stunning venue, enjoying oysters and cocktails while posing for photos with their pals.

Scroll down for video

Bottoms up! Rebecca Harding (left) and Rozalia Russian (centre) joined Melbourne-based designer Elliot Garnaut (right) for a VERY wild Christmas party at Di Stasio Citta on Thursday

There was also a hilarious secret Santa session, in which Rozalia was gifted with a funny T-shirt of with a lingerie-clad tattooed woman printed on the front and the back.

Rozalia shared giggly footage of herself drinking a cocktail while spinning around in the outrageous T-shirt while her pals howled around her.

She captioned it: 'Secret Santa gifts coming through with the goods!'

Underneath the T-shirt, Rozalia looked nothing short of sensational in a white cut-out crop top and thigh split skirt, which she teamed with a pair of nude heels.

How funny! There was a hilarious secret Santa session, in which Rozalia Russian was gifted with a funny T-shirt of with a lingerie-clad tattooed woman printed on the front and the back

Funny: Rozalia shared giggly footage of herself drinking a cocktail while spinning around in the outrageous T-shirt while her pals howled around her, captioned: 'Secret Santa gifts coming through with the goods!'

Meanwhile, Rebecca stunned in black-and-white long-sleeved top, which she teamed with a pair of smart black trousers.

Elliot of course looked suave in a black shirt and matching trousers.

Sharing a picture of the trio together, he captioned it: 'The Garnautgirls annual. To the women who make me me, I love you. Merry Christmas.'

He was also joined at the soiree by his mother Kath Garnaut, stylist Kate Keogh, makeup artist Chantelle Baker and creative agency director Eugene Canty.

Gorgeous! Rebecca (second right) looked ultra glam in black-and-white long-sleeved top, which she teamed with black trousers. Pictured L-R Rozalia, Kath Garnaut, Rebecca and Chantelle Baker

You can't sit with us! Elliot was also joined at the soiree by his mother Kath Garnaut, stylist Kate Keogh, makeup artist Chantelle Baker and creative agency director Eugene Canty

Eugene shared a funny picture of Rebecca to his own Instagram page, where he caught her off-guard as she bit her lip during a selfie.

'Did I leave the stove on?' he captioned the hilarious snap.

The venue itself was decorated to perfection, with gorgeous bouquets of flowers present across the table as the group sat down to their lunch.

Pals: Eugene shared quite a funny picture of Rebecca to his own Instagram page, where he caught her off-guard as she bit her lip during a selfie

Gorgeous: Rebecca, Kath and Rozalia posed up a storm for the camera as they enjoyed the lavish event

Luxury: The group enjoyed oysters and cocktails at the stunning venue, with gorgeous bouquets of flowers present across the table as the group sat down to their lunch

After a few cocktails in the venue, Rozalia was later spotted energetically spritzing some expensive perfume all over her body as she stood outside the venue.

Elliot is one of Melbourne's most highly-sought after stylists, with other clients including Phoebe Burgess, Elyse Knowles, Nadia Fairfax, Kate Waterhouse, Karl Stefanovic and Shanina Shaik.

His tagline '#GarnautGirls' is the name he sweetly titles his rolodex of clients.
Blac Chyna is under police investigation for an alleged incident that resulted in a woman being held 'hostage' in her Sacramento hotel room for 20 minutes.

The 33-year-old former reality star was said to have hosted an after-party at the Sheraton Grand after a 'Black Friday' event, where things escalated verbally to the point where one woman was barred from leaving Chyna's hotel suite.

A portion of the alleged incident  which went down around 3AM  was captured on video by The Sun as shared by a partygoer who recorded his hysterical friend sobbing after she fled the hotel room.

Chyna's attorney however maintained: 'the story is false.'

In hot water: The 33-year-old former reality star is under police investigation after she allegedly held a woman 'hostage' in her hotel room at the Sheraton Grand in Sacramento on November 26; Blac Chyna pictured October 27

Partygoer Ron Knighton provided The Sun with two minutes worth of video and recounted the events of the evening of November 26, into the early AM on the 27th.

Following a Black Friday party at the 3M Event Center in Penryn, California  where Chyna was a special guest  she hosted an after-party in her hotel suite.

'Everyone was enjoying themselves; the drinks were flowing and the energy in the suite was real good,' Knighton shared.

'Suddenly out of nowhere Chyna just yelled at my friend to "shut the f**k up or she'd beat both our a**es".'

'The vibe immediately changed so at that point we thought it was best to leave - but when I went to walk out she shut the door behind me and kept my friend in the room,' he continued to share.

Rocking party: Video captured by attendee Ron Knighton - who recounted the evening to The Sun - showed Chyna at the event beforehand (pictured there above) and the aftermath of his friend being held in her hotel room for 20 minutes

Close call: 'The vibe immediately changed so at that point we thought it was best to leave - but when I went to walk out she shut the door behind me and kept my friend in the room,' Knighton recounted

Under the influence: Video footage also captures one person claiming that Chyna was 'high on cocaine and crazy,' but the footage shows no indication that drugs were present or capture what actually went down inside the hotel room

Knighton maintained: Chyna 'wouldn't let her leave even though my friend was crying and shouting - she was being a total bully.'

In the video his sobbing friend was seen escaping the hotel room once Chyna opened the door to let a few people in  at which point she tried to grab the girl back inside by her hair.

After fleeing, the Rob & Chyna star could be heard telling them to come back in. 'We aren't staying anywhere. We are leaving! You crazy?,' Knighton says.

The pair then try and make their way to the elevators at which point he tells his friend he 'wanted to kick the door in,' as she sobs.

As the elevator door opens and they go to get in, Chyna is seen with a group in the hall trying to get to Knighton and his friend but is restrained by a larger gentleman.

Black Friday: Following a Black Friday party at the 3M Event Center in Penryn, California  where Chyna was a special guest  she hosted an after-party in her hotel suite where the incident in question went down; flyer for the event pictured above

Under investigation: 'The department is actively investigating the circumstances surrounding the incident and the investigation remains active,' a spokesperson for the Sacramento Police Department told Page Six; pictured promoting the November 26 event

The friends successfully make it into the elevator at which point they have a conversation where the woman cries 'she's so mean' at which point a friend says: 'It's not your fault  she's high on cocaine and crazy.'

Despite the claim that there were drugs present, the video doesn't indicate such or capture what actually went down inside the hotel room.

Rob Kardashian's baby mama is now being actively investigated by police for the incident.

The Sacramento Police Department told Page Six: 'A dispute between two parties occurred, and the incident was resolved at the scene by the individuals involved. No injuries were reported.

'False': 'This latest false accusation of criminal conduct is just the most recent in a long line of false accusations against Blac Chyna,' her attorney Lynne Ciani stated; pictured December 7

'The department is actively investigating the circumstances surrounding the incident and the investigation remains active.'

Chyna's attorney, Lynne Ciani, denied any wrongdoing on Chyna's part to the publication and called it a 'false accusation.'

'This story is false. This latest false accusation of criminal conduct is just the most recent in a long line of false accusations against Blac Chyna,' Ciani's statement began.

'We are hopeful that one day people will stop falsely accusing Blac Chyna of criminal conduct. Until that day, we will continue to disprove these false allegations to law enforcement and in the courtroom, if necessary.'
Eric Bana didn't have to stretch his vocal cords too far to play Zookeeper Chaz Hunt in the new Australian animated film Back to the Outback.

The actor said he had no trouble using his 'bogan' voice in the flick on Friday's Kyle and Jackie O' show when he spoke about his character with fill-in host Mitch Churi.

Churi asked Eric if he had to 'brush up' on his bogan voice for the movie.

As Aussie as it gets: Eric Bana says he didn't have to 'brush up' on his bogan voice for the animated film Back to the Outback

'No. Living here certainly helps,' the Chopper actor jokingly responded.

Eric, 53, told Churi that he was most excited about the potential reach the 'uniquely Australian' film would have thanks to Netflix.

'The thing I'm really excited about, with Netflix, it's a huge audience potentially that we reach internationally,' The Troy star said.

'And the fact that it's such a big Australian production with Australian actors playing Australian characters with Australian accents is so incredibly unique in an animated feature, and it was definitely one of the appeals of this project.'

Eric said he hopes to hear more Australian accents and see more Australian characters in international cinema.

Natural: Eric Bana admitted he didn't have to stretch his vocal cords too far to play Zookeeper Chaz Hunt in the Australian animated film Back to the Outback

'I'm a big proponent of the idea that we hear more Australian accents in international cinema and this film will do that,' he continued.

'There will be kids all around the world who watch these little animals and enjoy them and connect with an Australian accent for the first time.'

Back in the Outback stars Eric along with other famous Australians such as Isla Fisher, Tim Minchin, Guy Pearce, Miranda Tapsell, Keith Urban, Jacki Weaver and Kylie Minogue.

Reach: The Troy star says he was most excited about the potential reach of the movie through Netflix and how people around the world will hear and connect with the Australian accent

The movie sees a group of Australia's deadliest animals plot a daring escape from their zoo to the outback.

Eric's character, Zoopkeeper Chaz, will be in tow trying to recapture the animals.

Back in the Outback is available to watch on Netflix and in cinemas now.
She turned 45 this year.

But Isla Fisher looked half her age as she showed off her youthful visage in a series of selfies during a press day for her new Netflix film, Back To The Outback, on Thursday.

The Aussie star looked flawless made up with a smokey eye and nude lip and her long red locks coiffed in cascading waves.

45 and fabulous! Actress Isla Fisher, 45, showed off her youthful visage in selfies from a press day for her new Netflix film Back to the Outback

Isla showed her support for Australian label Macgraw by wearing a body-hugging, button-down dress from their recent collection.

The Wedding Crashes star finished the look with a pair of strappy black heels which elongated her trim pins.

'Final press day for my new animated film Back To The Outback out on Netflix December 10th,' Isla wrote in the caption.

Leggy: Isla showed her support for Australian label Macgraw by wearing a body-hugging, button-down dress from their recent collection, and a pair of strappy heels

She went on to describe the plot of the film, describing it as 'fun' for the entire family.

'A ragtag group of the world's deadliest creatures - and one cute but utterly obnoxious koala -escape from Sydney zoo to find their home in the Outback, where they'll be loved for who they are and not what they look like,' she wrote.

It comes only days after Isla gushed over her husband Sacha Baron Cohen as they celebrated their anniversary together.

Lighting! The Aussie star looked flawless made up with a smokey eye and nude lip and her long red locks coiffed in cascading waves

Celebration: Isla shared a gushing tribute to her husband Sacha Baron Cohen as they celebrated their 20-year anniversary on Wednesday

She posted a series of sweet couples' photos to her Instagram and wrote: 'Happy Anniversary. 20 YEARS.'

'If there ever comes a day when we can't be together keep me in your heart. I'll stay there forever,' she added, quoting Winnie the Pooh.

In one image, Sacha wrapped his arm around Isla as they posed for the camera.

Tribute: The star posted a series of sweet photos of the couple to her Instagram and wrote: 'Happy Anniversary 20 YEARS'

Isla also shared another image of Sacha wearing a black wig while she smiled and held a beer.

Sacha and Isla met at a party in Sydney in 2002 and married eight years later.

The couple are parents to three children, Olive, 12, Elula, eight, and Montgomery, four.

Isla told Marie Claire in May last year, meeting Sacha was like 'winning the lottery'.

Family: Sacha and Isla met at a party in Sydney in 2002 and married eight years later. The couple are parents to three children, Olive, 12, Elula, eight, and Montgomery, four

She said their relationship was built on 'a shared sense of humour and a willingness to be married'.

The Confessions of a Shopaholic star, who relocated to America early in her career, also admitted that 'juggling' a family in LA wasn't easy.

'There's not really a culture of bringing your kids to dinner parties or to restaurants past 6pm. I tend to entertain at home because I want to be with my family - it's easier to put your kids to bed and have a wine with friends,' she said.
She recently lost 20kg after signing on with iconic weight loss company, Jenny Craig.

And Married At First Sight star Jules Robinson showed off her slimmed-down figure as she attended the screening of Binge Original, Love Me, on Thursday.

The reality TV favourite looked stunning in an eye-catching orange floral suit.

Now and then: Married At First Sight star Jules Robinson showed off her slimmed-down figure as she attended the screening of Binge Original, Love Me, on Thursday, left, after dropping 20kg. She is pictured earlier this year, right

The beauty paired the suit with a plunging lingerie-style top, along with a pair of gold heels and a Valentino handbag.

Jules rocked her new fringe hairstyle and glowed in a glossy makeup palette.

The mother-of-one was in good spirts as she snapped selfies with husband Cameron Merchant at the event.

Tangerine dream! The reality TV favourite looked stunning in an eye-catching orange floral suit

The screening was held at Sydney's State Theatre.

Jules revealed in October she had nearly lost '20 kilograms' after signing on as the face weight loss company, Jenny Craig.

She debuted jaw-dropping figure in sleek activewear after confirming she was 'so so close' to the goal after only 15 weeks.

Racy: The beauty paired the suit with a plunging lingerie-style top, along with a pair of gold heels and a Valentino handbag

Jules posed up a storm on Instagram looking healthy and happy as she beamed at the camera.

'NSW gyms re-open tomorrow!' Jules captioned the post. 'I'm returning healthier & fitter, maybe not stronger (pump class here I come) than I was going into the 3.5 month lockdown - which is a great feeling and pretty amazing!'

Fun times! The mother-of-one was in good spirts as she snapped selfies with husband Cameron Merchant at the event

She added that she achieved her goal due to 'determination' and help from Jenny Craig, adding: 'I'm so sooo close to my goal! So close!

'For any one wanting to know details.. I'm doing #rapidresultsmax and have been for 15weeks and I'm nearly at my 20 kilos goal, back to what I was pre pregnant.'

She claims that 20 kilos had 'crept on' her figure after she had welcomed her son Ollie last October.

Goals: Jules revealed in October she had nearly lost '20 kilograms' after signing on as the face weight loss company, Jenny Craig

'It was my own kinda lockdown working non stop from home and full-time mum. It happens! Familiar story right!' she added.

'I love my curves, I've embraced every part of postpartum and felt like I had the energy to focus on me about 8 months in.'

'If I can do this through lockdown, so can you,' she concluded.
Oscar-winning screenwriter Adam McKay nearly injured his former producing partner and Anchorman star - Will Ferrell - while shooting a hanging scene on the set of the sequel in 2013.

'It was really scary,' the 53-year-old filmmaker recalled in Wednesday's edition of THR Magazine.

'It was a scene where Ron Burgundy was going to hang himself. It was a silly joke. For a half a second, the rig didn't operate properly and there was actual tension on the rope.

'It was really scary': Oscar-winning screenwriter Adam McKay (L) nearly injured his former producing partner and Anchorman star - Will Ferrell (R) - while shooting a hanging scene on the set of the sequel in 2013

'But then it gave way and Will was okay. Thank god no one was hurt. We were sick about it for two days. We said, "All right, let's stop. Let's have a meeting."'

Adam experienced another scary incident with his cast interacting with bears nine years earlier on the original 2004 film, Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy.

'The bear did a hint of a bluff charge for a second,' McKay said.

'From that moment on, I said, "I will never put a live animal in a shot with an actor ever again." So every time I do it, it's a composite shot because it's not worth it.'

The 53-year-old filmmaker recalled in Wednesday's edition of THR Magazine: 'It was a scene where Ron Burgundy was going to hang himself. It was a silly joke. For a half a second, the rig didn't operate properly and there was actual tension on the rope'

Adam continued: 'But then it gave way and Will was okay. Thank god no one was hurt. We were sick about it for two days. We said, "All right, let's stop. Let's have a meeting"'

'The bear did a hint of a bluff charge for a second': McKay experienced another scary incident with his cast interacting with bears nine years earlier on the original 2004 film, Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy

That same five-year-old grizzly bear called Rocky went on to kill its trainer Stephan Miller in 2008 with a bite to the neck - according to the AP.

The Hyperobject Industries founder said the October 21 shooting death of DP Halyna Hutchins and wounding of director Joel Souza on the Rust set is his 'greatest single fear as a producer and a director.'

'We've used blanks on our set, including on Don't Look Up, and everything is quadruple-checked,' Adam noted.

'No one is ever in front of that pointed gun, and the chamber is triple-checked. When I heard what happened, I was like, "How could that possibly have happened?" That set sounded sloppy and dangerous.'

'That set sounded sloppy and dangerous': The Hyperobject Industries founder said the October 21 shooting death of DP Halyna Hutchins and wounding of director Joel Souza (both circled) on the Rust set is his 'greatest single fear as a producer and a director'

Adam (pictured Sunday) noted: 'We've used blanks on our set, including on Don't Look Up, and everything is quadruple-checked. No one is ever in front of that pointed gun, and the chamber is triple-checked. When I heard what happened, I was like, "How could that possibly have happened?"'

Negligent: McKay 'was horrified' to discover some of the Rust crew were non-union because 'unions do an extra level of safety for their members'

'I would never point a gun at anyone': Rust executive producer and star Alec Baldwin 'feels terrible' - but not guilty - for the antique revolver discharging a live bullet into Hutchins and Souza but denied 'pulling the trigger' on ABC News (pictured December 2)

McKay 'was horrified' to discover some of the Rust crew were non-union because 'unions do an extra level of safety for their members.'

Rust executive producer and star Alec Baldwin 'feels terrible' - but not guilty - for the antique revolver discharging a live bullet into Hutchins and Souza but denied 'pulling the trigger' on ABC News.

The incident is being investigated by the New Mexico Occupational Health and Safety Bureau, the New Mexico First Judicial District Attorney, as well as the Santa Fe County Sheriff's Office.

Meanwhile, much ado has been made over the two-time Emmy winner's estrangement from Will after 14 years of work together through Gary Sanchez Productions.

'I love Ferrell': Meanwhile, much ado has been made over the two-time Emmy winner's estrangement from Will (L, pictured in 2013) after 14 years of work together through Gary Sanchez Productions

Premiering March on HBO! The final straw seemed to be when Adam cast John C. Reilly (pictured) rather than the 54-year-old SNL veteran in the role of late Lakers owner Jerry Buss for his 10-episode drama Winning Time

McKay (pictured in 2011) explained: 'It felt like a breakup. I'm looking forward to when the dust has settled. I'd love to just go watch a Lakers game with him and kick back and get back to our old kind of rhythm. But, yeah, I can't lie, at the end of it, we were both kind of bummed out'

The final straw seemed to be when Adam cast John C. Reilly rather than the 54-year-old SNL veteran in the role of late Lakers owner Jerry Buss for his 10-episode drama Winning Time premiering March on HBO.

'I love Ferrell. Always will. I had the best, most fun run of my life with him. Yes, I wish I had talked to him about it out of respect, but we were both focused on our new companies and life just took over,' McKay explained.

'It felt like a breakup. I'm looking forward to when the dust has settled. I'd love to just go watch a Lakers game with him and kick back and get back to our old kind of rhythm. But, yeah, I can't lie, at the end of it, we were both kind of bummed out.'

$100M budget! The brother-in-law of Jeremy Piven (2-L) directed the satirical comet disaster comedy Don't Look Up, which hits limited US theaters this Friday before streaming December 24 on Netflix

'All the Bells Say': Adam also executive produces the hit series Succession and the third season finale airs this Sunday on HBO

The brother-in-law of Jeremy Piven directed the satirical comet disaster comedy Don't Look Up, which hits limited US theaters this Friday before streaming December 24 on Netflix

The $100M-budget sci-fi ensemble flick stars Leonardo DiCaprio, Jennifer Lawrence, Meryl Streep, Cate Blanchett, Timothee Chalamet, Ariana Grande, and many more.

Adam also executive produces the hit series Succession and the third season finale airs this Sunday on HBO.
Machine Gun Kelly opens up about his mental health while appearing on The Drew Barrymore Show Friday.

The 31-year-old musical artist/actor, whose real name is Colson Baker, said that he's often channeled his emotions into his work, and that he's 'new to being vulnerable outside of songs.

'I see a lot of pictures of me and there's like, smiles on them,' the Houston native said. 'It's just weird though because I didn't feel good at all that day and I kind of am sick of smiling on days when I don't feel like smiling.'

The latest: Machine Gun Kelly, 31, opens up about his mental health while appearing on The Drew Barrymore Show Friday

MGK, who wore a lavender suit from Dzojchen for his appearance, continued: 'And I feel like this odd pressure because I don't want my fans to think that I'm taking something for granted so if I accept an award and I'm, like, super-smiley but behind the scenes, there was stuff going on.'

MGK said that while he would prefer to talk about 'fun stuff' in the appearance, he was speaking out about his personal experiences to try and help others dealing with mental health issues.

'A lot of what I do is for other people,' he said, 'and I haven't given myself the time to just accept that it's OK to not be OK.'

The Papercuts artist, who has been dating Megan Fox for more than a year, painted Barrymore's nails in the appearance, in which he promoted his unisex nail polish line, UN/DN LAQR.

Details: The 31-year-old musical artist/actor, whose real name is Colson Baker, said that he's often channeled his emotions into his work, and that he's 'new to being vulnerable outside of songs'

MGK said that while he would prefer to talk about 'fun stuff' in the appearance, he was speaking out about his personal experiences to try and help others dealing with mental health issues

He said, 'A lot of what I do is for other people and I haven't given myself the time to just accept that it's OK to not be OK'

Barrymore, 46, told the candid musical artist, 'I don't mean to sound creepy but I like you so much more. I really do.'

She opened up about how she dealt with issues in the wake of her 2016 split from ex-husband Will Kopelman, who she shares daughters Olive, nine, and Frankie, seven, with.

'I wasn't doing very well and I just wanted to go talk to some people and how to pull myself out of a hole and I had these two kids that I had to fight for and I needed help,' Barrymore said. 'So I started reaching out to different people and eventually, I really made some big, sweeping changes in my life and I got on a whole new track - not back on track, but a brand new one that I helped build.'

The Papercuts artist, who has been dating Megan Fox for more than a year, painted Barrymore's nails in the appearance

Barrymore praised the musical artist for his candor in the chat

Barrymore, in a subsequent interview with Gayle King on CBS Mornings, praised the musical artist for his candor in the chat.

'We were just sent to do an interview about his nail polish, UN/DN,' she said. 'I'm just a really big fan, so I'd been chasing him to do an interview, and he doesn't do a lot of press. So I don't know what it was that he felt safe, but ... he broke a sort of pattern.'

Barrymore said she 'was so surprised by his vulnerability' in the interview, and said she hopes it sets an example for others.

'I think it is time for us, especially coming out of what we've come out of, is how can we show our vulnerability?' she said. 'How can we talk about, if something is going on, what is the path to getting better? And then talking about that journey and being more communicative.

'I wouldn't be surprised if there is a revolt against the perfection right now that we are all forced to see and feel through social media.'
Ben Affleck and Ana de Armas' erotic thriller Deep Water has been pulled from Disney's release schedule.

Disney has not provided a reason for removing the film from its release schedule, according to Deadline. The movie was originally set for theatrical release on January 14, 2022.

Affleck, 49, met Armas, 33, on the set of the film and they soon started dating. They split in early 2021, and the actor rekindled his romance with ex-fiancee Jennifer Lopez.

Ben Affleck and Ana de Armas' erotic thriller Deep Water has been pulled from Disney's release schedule

Based on the book by Patricia Highsmith, the movie is centered on Vic and Melinda Van Allen, a married couple played by Affleck and de Armas.

The sexy thriller sees the actor portray a husband who allows his wife to have affairs in hopes of saving their marriage from divorce.

But things get suspicious when Affleck's character is implicated in the disappearances of his several of his wife's suitors.

The film is directed by Adrian Lyne, who is famous for directing the erotic thriller genre's most famous works like Indecent Proposal and Fatal Attraction. The last time Lyne directed a film was 2002's Unfaithful.

Moving on: Ben rekindled his romance with Jennifer Lopez after splitting up from Ana earlier this year

The ex-factor: Armas and Affleck were nearly inseparable during the beginning of lockdown

Deep Water also stars Tracy Letts, Rachel Blanchard, Lil Rel Howery, Finn Wittrock, and Jacob Elordi.

Affleck and de Armas met on the set Deep Water when production kicked off in November 2019.

They were then spotted on a romantic getaway to Ana's native Cuba in March 2020 before heading to Costa Rica and getting back to Los Angeles just before the lockdowns started.

'She broke it off': But in early January 2021 it was reported they had split up

They spent much of 2020 inseparable, enjoying walks in LA with their dogs and casual outings for coffee.

But in January 2021 it was reported they had split up.

'Ben is no longer dating Ana,' a source told People. 'She broke it off. Their relationship was complicated. Ana doesn't want to be Los Angeles based and Ben obviously has to since his kids live in Los Angeles.'.

Affleck and Lopez rekindled their relationship in April, nearly 17 years after calling it quits on their engagement and only weeks after she broke things off with her ex-fiance, Alex Rodriguez, 46.

The couple even celebrated Thanksgiving together.

'Jennifer flew back to LA from Vancouver to celebrate Thanksgiving with her kids and Ben,' a source told PEOPLE. 'The last few weeks have been intense for her. It's been hard for her to be away from her kids and Ben.'

'They are doing really well. Jennifer loves being with Ben. She feels it's truly meant to be,' the source said.
He recently revealed he was taking some time away from the spotlight to work on his new debut album.

But The Kid Laroi, 18, took a break from work on Wednesday to enjoy a date night with his stunning TikTok star and model girlfriend, Katarina Deme, 17.

The pair were spotted packing on the PDA outside celebrity hotspot Sushi Park in West Hollywood.

Cute! The Kid Laroi packed on the PDA with his model girlfriend Katarina Deme during a date night in Los Angeles on Wednesday night

The Kid Laroi, whose real name is Charlton Kenneth Jeffrey Howard, was seen kissing the brunette beauty before they headed home.

Both dressed casually for the outing - with Katarina rocking baggy denim jeans and a leather jacket.

She accessorised with a Fendi handbag and a pair of giant gold hoop earrings.

Meanwhile, Laori kept cosy in jeans and a white shirt.

Kiss me quick! The Kid Laroi, whose real name is Charlton Kenneth Jeffrey Howard, was seen kissing the brunette beauty before they headed home

Casual date night: Both dressed casually for the outing - with Katarina rocking baggy denim jeans and a leather jacket

He added a touch of designer to his ensemble by covering his longer locks with a Prada bucket hat.

Last month, the rapper announced he's taking a break from the spotlight to work on his debut album.

He shared the shock news on Instagram, and deleted the rest of his posts on his social media page.

The Without You hitmaker told his more than 3.9 million followers: 'Goodbye for now, I love you all.'

'Goodbye for now': Last month, the rapper announced he's taking a break from the spotlight to work on his debut album

He explained in a lengthy statement that after a 'wild year' he's taking some time out.

He thanked fans for supporting his debut commercial mixtape, F*ck Love, but said he needs time off to focus on new work.

'My life has also changed so much this past year because of it [F*ck Love] and I owe it all to every single one of you. There is no way I will ever be able to repay you,' he said.

A much-needed break: He explained in a lengthy statement that after a 'wild year' he's taking some time out

'Last week I went on a small vacation for the first time in a while. During that time I started thinking and I made the decision that I need to take some time away from everything and focus on the next project; my debut album,' he wrote in his post

'Last week I went on a small vacation for the first time in a while. During that time I started thinking and I made the decision that I need to take some time away from everything and focus on the next project; my debut album.'

The Kid Laroi promised his fans that he'll be back soon.

'I'm going to miss you all beyond words can describe, but I do believe that this is what I need to do to give you all the best music possible,' he finished.

'I'll be back soon, I promise. I love you, Laroi.'

Dans were supportive, with one writing: 'Take care, we love you.' Another added: 'Take your time'

The Kid Laroi, who hails from Sydney's Waterloo, has had incredible success in the United States.

He recently opened the 2021 MTV VMAs with good pal Justin Bieber.

In September, he announced he's bringing his End of the World tour to Australia.

'I am beyond excited to share this experience with you all,' he said in a statement at the time.

'It's always been a dream of mine to headline a global tour. I cannot wait to see my fans all around the world and give them something that they won't ever forget. It's been a long time coming.'

He will kick off his End of the World tour in the U.S. early next year before bringing it Down Under in May.

Although it remains unclear if the dates will be changed to align with his break.
Camilla Thurlow took to Instagram on Thursday to showcase her growing baby bump, after announcing her pregnancy news on Sunday.

The reality star, 32, who met husband Jamie Jewitt, 31, on Love Island in 2017, looked radiant in a dazzling navy dress as she decorated her gorgeous Christmas tree.

She wore her light brown locks in a chic bob and painted her pout a stunning shade of bubblegum pink.

Glowing: Camilla Thurlow took to Instagram on Thursday to showcase her growing baby bump, after announcing her pregnancy news on Sunday

Later in the day, her other half took to the photosharing platform to share an adorable snap of himself pointing at Camilla's ultrasound scan on a monitor.

Carrying daughter Nell, 13 months, he sported a navy knitted sweatshirt featuring white panels along with a face mask amid the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.

The model wrote in his caption: 'We know you're gonna be the best big sister this little peanut could ever ask for  what do you think boy or girl? X @camillathurlow.'

Camilla and Jamie revealed their joyous news on Instagram on Sunday, writing: 'We had an early gift this year and we couldnt be more grateful 3 soon to be 4, June 2022,' followed by a slew of festive emojis.'

They shared a heartwarming video with their delighted followers, set to The Drifters' White Christmas, which began with Jamie and little Nell creating gingerbread baubles.

Doting dad: Later in the day, her other half took to the photosharing platform to share an adorable snap of himself pointing at Camilla's ultrasound scan on a monitor

Cute: The model wrote in his caption: 'We know you're gonna be the best big sister this little peanut could ever ask for  what do you think boy or girl? X @camillathurlow'

Camilla was then filmed writing their names in gold pen on four separate gingerbread men, accompanied by their year of birth.

As the montage progressed, the couple, who tied the knot in September, hung the gold-hooked creations on their gorgeous Christmas tree, with the tot even getting a helping hand from her doting parents.

Their unborn child was marked with a question mark, followed by, 'June 2022.'

The video was bound to melt hearts with the sweet ending, which saw the family-of-three smiling into the camera as Camilla cradled her blossoming bump.
Their romance has gone from 'zero to 100' in a matter of weeks.

And The Bachelor's Abbie Chatfield and Konrad Bien-Stephens looked incredibly loved-up in sweet selfies the Bachelorette star shared on his Instagram page on Thursday evening.

In the images, the couple are seen kissing and cuddling as their romance continues to blossom.

Happy couple: The Bachelor's Abbie Chatfield and Konrad Bien-Stephens looked incredibly loved-up in sweet selfies the former Bachelorette star shared on his Instagram page on Thursday evening

Simply captioning the gallery with a sunflower, Konrad documented some of his recent adventures, with most including Abbie.

Over the weekend, Abbie revealed that she hopes she and Konrad will one day tie the knot and is even meeting Konrad's parents in Melbourne this week.

When asked about marriage plans, she told The Daily Telegraph: 'I think so, I hope so.'

The podcast host, who said she's dated a lot over the past two years, went on to say that she's 'never had anything like this before'.

It's getting serious! In the images, the couple are seen kissing and cuddling as their romance continues to blossom

The bubbly blonde described their whirlwind romance as having gone from 'zero to 100'.

Last week, Abbie issued a lengthy apology after she was criticised by Brooke Blurton for announcing their relationship the night before The Bachelorette finale.

In a lengthy Instagram post on Thursday, Abbie explained her decision to go public with Konrad, claiming she believed she had Brooke's blessing.

'This is to address the post made by Brooke. A month ago, a video of Konrad and I kissing was secretly captured by a patron and made public,' she began.

'Following this, Brooke and I had a conversation in which I apologised and expressed regret multiple times for our public affection as this was prior to Konrad's exit from the show. Konrad had a similar conversation with Brooke.

'We met as a result of him coming along to a catch up with a mutual friend, the public setting was an accident.

Date night: Konrad shared a beautiful picture of his girlfriend as they dined at China Diner in Bondi Beach

'We absolutely should have waited to be in private as we are public figures and these are things we need to consider, but we didn't. We also didn't consider the possible ramifications of our actions.

'Immediately following this, we intentionally kept things quiet, and did not leave the house together in an effort to not be photographed out of respect for the show and to minimise press surrounding the spoiler of Konrad's exit.'

Abbie later shared a series of photos of herself and Konrad on Instagram the day before The Bachelorette finale, confirming their relationship.

But she insisted 'it was not with malice', and fan favourite Konrad had already been eliminated from the show when she made the announcement.

'The morning of, I mistook a message from Brooke expressing her happiness for and approval of our relationship as a green light to upload a post. Following the post, Konrad received an equally supportive message,' she continued.

'I see with hindsight that this assumption was naive. I now understand the timing of publicly sharing our relationship should have been more considered and that is my fault. I acknowledge that impact outweighs intent.'

Referencing Brooke's comment about 'another white woman displaying what white privilege looks like', Abbie admitted she 'didn't take into account... the inherent privilege that I hold as a white woman'.

'My actions had the potential to undermine the importance that this pivotal season of The Bachelorette holds to the First Nations and LGBTQIA+ Communities,' she added.

'This is an extremely important conversation to be having. In future, this will be at the forefront of my mind and I will continue to listen to and amplify minority communities, and endeavour to learn.'

She simply finished the post: 'I'm sorry.'

War of words: Last week, Abbie issued a lengthy apology after she was criticised by Brooke Blurton for announcing their relationship the night before The Bachelorette finale

Without naming names, Brooke spoke about a 'close friend' who had pulled the focus from The Bachelorette finale with her actions.

Brooke said the person's behaviour 'hurts me' and 'literally pains me'.

'I've reached out to this person to resolve this "conflict" which in fact, classic naive me, adult me went to this person to communicate openly about the layers of complexity that this person's actions show and take away from NOT only me but what it meant for a queer woman of colour,' she said in part of her post.
James Bond bosses are reportedly clashing with Amazon bigwigs over plans for the action franchise.

The streaming giant, which announced its plans to acquire MGM Studios in May, is said to be hoping to make several spin-offs from the film franchise.

However Eon Productions, the British company that owns the rights to the James Bond films, is against the idea, reports The Sun.

Loggerheads: James Bond bosses are reportedly clashing with Amazon bigwigs over plans for the action franchise

The publication reports that Amazon hopes to turn James Bond into a media franchise similar to the Marvel films.

A source said: 'It's very early days but there are ideas being considered including looking at prequels based on Charlie Higson's book series Young Bond.

'These are set when the character is at Eton. There are even thoughts about whether other characters could appear elsewhere, but Eon are dead against it.

'They want to keep it purely as blockbuster cinema, which already makes huge amounts of money. Yet spin-offs could make it even more lucrative.'

Changes: The streaming giant, which announced its plans to acquire MGM Studios in May, is said to be hoping to make several spin-offs from the film franchise

The inside added that talks will pick up pace once Amazon's deal goes through but Eon bosses are not interested in the changes.

According to an Amazon spokesperson, the deal isn't closed and the two companies continue to operate separately.

MailOnline has contacted Eon Productions for comment.

It comes after an Oscar-nominated screenwriter who penned two James Bond movies has pleaded with Amazon's Jeff Bezos not to meddle with his newly-acquired spy franchise's creative processes.

John Logan, 59, who received also Academy Award nominations for Gladiator, The Aviator and Hugo, said he felt a 'chill' when he learned Amazon had purchased MGM Studios for $8.45billion.

Logan says he fears Amazon could try and interfere with the series' trademark violent plots, or push for spin-off series that could dilute the Bond brand.

Franchise: However Eon Productions, the British company that owns the rights to the James Bond films, is against the idea, reports The Sun

Writing a guest essay for the New York Times, Logan said the Bond films were a 'family business' that had been carefully nurtured by producers Barbara Broccoli, whose late father Albert 'Cubby' Broccoli is credited as the mastermind behind the success of the long-running franchise, and her half-brother Michael Wilson.

Logan said Bond's enduring appeal was that it had protected the Bond character 'through the thickets of moviemaking and changing public tastes'.

Logan acknowledged the Amazon-MGM deal included 'ironclad assurances of continued artistic control', but questioned what guarantees there were that these would remain in place.

Screenwriter John Logan pleaded with Amazon's Jeff Bezos not to meddle with the spy franchise's creative processes

'What happens if a bruising corporation like Amazon begins to demand a voice in the process? What happens to the comradeship and quality control if theres an Amazonian overlord with analytics parsing every decision? What happens when a focus group reports they dont like Bond drinking martinis? Or killing quite so many people?'

And he pleaded with the studio's new tech overlords: 'Please let 007 drink his martinis in peace. Dont shake him, dont stir him.'

Broccoli and Wilson inherited the the production rights from Albert in 1995. they have been credited with nurturing the franchise through movies starring Pierce Brosnan and Daniel Crag.

007 films continue to be so popular that movie theater bosses hoping the latest installment, No Time To Die, will revitalize the COVID-ravaged movie theater industry when it is released in November after multiple pandemic delays.

The rights to the Bond movies were shared by MGM and Eon Productions, owned by the half-siblings. MGM's share now passes to Amazon but Broccoli and Wilson will keep a firm grip on the creative side, from plot to director and who gets to play the suave MI6 agent, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Barbara Broccoli was on the set nearly every day during shooting of the most recent installment, No Time to Die, and handpicked Daniel Craig as Pierce Brosnan's successor.
Joanna Scanlan appears in the highly anticipated second season of Gentleman Jack, which has become a global phenomenon. Joanna is wearing a suit from Beige Plus.

Joanna Scanlan enjoyed being invited into the 'licentious' world of Gentleman Jack, the hit TV drama starring Suranne Jones as the swaggering 19th-century title character.

Scanlan appears in the highly anticipated second season of the show, which has become a global phenomenon.

She plays Isabella 'Tib' Norcliffe, a 'wild and great spirit' who was a friend  and sometime lover  of Anne Lister, real name of Jones's Regency era 'Gentleman Jack'.

'The more you look into the history and reality of what happened, the more exciting it becomes,' said Scanlan, who described Norcliffe as a 'hunting, shooting, fishing country landowner' who enjoyed a good time.

'She was fearless,' she told me. 'A lot of women were doing their own thing  if they were fortunate enough to have the means.'

Such women are rarely heard about today, because of what she termed the 'Jane Austefication' of that period, when 'licentiousness and sexuality' was frowned upon. But they did exist.

The actress was in an ebullient mood, following her triumph at the annual BIFA Awards last Sunday, where she was named best actress for her acclaimed performance in Aleem Khan's sublime film After Love.

The actress was in an ebullient mood, following her triumph at the annual BIFA Awards last Sunday, where she was named best actress for her acclaimed performance in Aleem Khan's sublime film After Love (pictured)

Pictured: (2L to R) Aleem Khan, Matthieu de Braconier, Joanna Scanlan, guest and Gerardine O'Flynn celebrate the Best British Independent Film award for 'After Love' poses in the winners room at the 24th British Independent Film Awards at Old Billingsgate on December 5, 2021

She plays Mary, an Islamic convert who travels to Calais, in an attempt to uncover the truth about her late husband.

Scanlan, who starred in No Offence, The Thick Of It, Getting On and more recently The Larkins (as Ma), has been praised before for big screen performances, as when she played Charles Dickens's long-suffering wife Catherine, opposite Ralph Fiennes, in The Invisible Woman. But this is her first entry into the UK film awards season.

I sincerely hope the BFI is screening After Love to BAFTA voters.

The actress was speaking to me from Wales, where she has been filming The Light In The Hall, aka Y Golau, a thriller, for S4C and Channel 4.

Shooting the six-part drama is a lengthy process because it's being done in Welsh and in English. 'I'm filming in the Welsh language for the first time in my life!' she told me.

Scanlan, who was born in the Wirral, took part in the Welsh language channel's Language And Journey programme, where she was taught by Welsh speakers. The filmmakers saw her and offered her the role of a mother seeking restitution following the murder of her daughter 18 years before.

As she was preparing for the role, Scanlan found herself drawn to stories involving the families of murder victims ... Bibaa Henry and Nicole Smallman, Sarah Everard, Sabina Nessa ... 'there are, sadly, so many examples,' she said.

Drifting the night away to a sublime soundtrack

Beverley Knight and her leading men in The Drifters Girl  Adam J Bernard, Tarinn Callender, Matt Henry and Tosh Wanogho-Maud  are heading to the recording studio soon, to lay down the show's cast album.

Their versions of Drifters hits such as Saturday Night At The Movies and Under The Boardwalk have had audiences jumping out of their seats to dance in the aisles.

Beverley Knight and her leading men in The Drifters Girl  Adam J Bernard, Tarinn Callender, Matt Henry and Tosh Wanogho-Maud (pictured)  are heading to the recording studio soon, to lay down the show's cast album

The show's been playing to full houses at the Garrick Theatre and producer Michael Harrison, who is giving the five headliners a share of the profits, has extended the booking period until July 2  a major vote of confidence at a tricky time for West End productions.

The musical has amended its schedule  effective from February 22  to include matinee and evening performances on Wednesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays; with single performances on Tuesdays and Fridays, to reflect new audience patterns in London.

I had John Kerry, the U.S. climate envoy and former Secretary of State, sitting in front of me at the theatre on Wednesday night.

I thanked him for his service, as you do, as we sat down to watch James Graham's scintillating new play, Best Of Enemies, at the Young Vic.

It's easy to see what drew Kerry's interest. David Harewood and Charles Edwards portray American political firebrands William F. Buckley Jr and Gore Vidal, who were pitted against each other in a now infamous series of televised verbal fist fights during the hotly contested 1968 Republican and Democratic presidential conventions (which went for Richard Nixon and Hubert Humphrey).

Pictured: David Harewood (left) and Charles Edwards in Best of Enemies

I could see Kerry, himself a one-time presidential candidate, nodding in agreement  and letting out the occasional laugh  as events he was familiar with unfolded.

The drama, a co-production between the Young Vic and Headlong, directed by Jeremy Herrin, runs until early January, though I sense it will transfer to the West End . . . and New York.
In Aaron Sorkin's Being The Ricardos, Nicole Kidman (pictured) and Javier Bardem portray legendary comedy couple Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz

Nicole Kidman was positively overjoyed when she learned that her new leading man was going to be Javier Bardem. She joked that the first thing she asked the ruggedly handsome Spaniard was: 'Can we touch?!'

It's not that the 54-year-old Oscar-winner was thinking of running off with Penelope Cruz's husband. Her tactile inclinations were purely professional.

In Aaron Sorkin's Being The Ricardos, Kidman and Bardem portray legendary comedy couple Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz.

At the time, Ball was billed as the world's most famous redhead  a boast that was not hyperbole.

From October 1951, she had an unbroken 23-year run on CBS, in I Love Lucy, The Lucy Show and Here's Lucy.

At the height of her fame, her programmes garnered audiences of 60 million viewers; with millions more tuning in around the world.

As a kid I loved Lucy, too. As a cub reporter, I snuck into a Press conference for her film musical, Mame.

When I asked some nonsensical question, Ball just glared at me. It was my first time being put in my place by a big star (though not the last).

'She was huge!' Kidman agreed, as we chatted over Zoom. The actress was at home in Nashville, holed up with hubby Keith Urban and their girls, Sunday and Faith. We'd been scheduled to meet in London, but Omicron scuppered that reunion.

Kidman said the first question she put to Sorkin after being cast was: 'Who's playing Desi?!'

The party-boy bandleader with a head for business was a star in his own right: and brave enough to tell Ball, whose career at the time had dwindled to radio roles, that she should dare to dream big again.

'He believed in her when she'd been counted out,' Kidman agreed. 'And she gets back up again. She's crazily in love with Desi: this sexy, sensual man. They had a great time together  romantically, too. They had two kids.'

Kidman and Bardem started work on the project in Hollywood last autumn. 'I was like, 'I don't really know you, Javier.' But we just collided at the height of the pandemic.

Pictured: Nicole Kidman and Javier Bardem star in Being The Ricardo, as legendary comedy couple Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz

Pictured: Legendary comedy couple Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz

'We had to learn to dance together  that was one of the first things we did. We channelled Lucy and Desi to help us. We had an abandonment with each other. I was like: 'Let's get tactile!'

'I'm vaccinated and tested; and I said to Javier: 'Can we please touch?' And we committed to it. They were this sexy couple  they had to be able to touch!'

There was strong prejudice against Latin Americans in the States at the time and the Cuban-born Arnaz was often dismissed as a bongo-playing Lothario. Those impressions could not have been more wrong. Arnaz had a head for business and technology, an infectious personality, and talent galore.

He ensured Ball got back on her professional feet and she returned the favour by insisting the studio get over its bias and hire him to play her husband on I Love Lucy.

It was a bold but brilliant move; their chemistry (even in a prime time sitcom) was palpable. 'Hey, it was a great love story,' Kidman said. Arnaz certainly loved Lucy. But there were other women, too.

After 20 years of marriage, the relationship went kaputt and they divorced in 1960. Later on, in interviews, Ball was frank about Desi's cheating.

Thinking of celebrity couples  Ball and Arnaz, Kidman and her former husband Tom Cruise (though I didn't name him specifically)  I asked her if artistic couples could ever work together, and survive. 'Yeah, sure they can!' came her immediate response.

At the height of her fame, Lucille Ball's programmes garnered audiences of 60 million viewers; with millions more tuning in around the world

'They can create incredible things together. But eventually you're going to have a problem. Every relationship can end. It's just how it is,' she said, shrugging her shoulders.

Kidman threw herself into portraying Lucy, undertaking a mountain of homework to ensure she was word perfect for Sorkin on day one of filming.

I've watched countless YouTube videos of Ball in action  and Kidman's portrayal is remarkable. Which is lucky, because Kidman told me the first time she watched the completed film was at a screening ... where Ball's daughter Lucie Arnaz was one seat away from her.

'Thank God Keith was next to me, because what if she hadn't liked it?' she said. 'Javier was there, and I was like: 'What if they boo!' '

But there were no complaints from Arnaz, who during pre-production had allowed Kidman to listen 'to these secret recordings of Lucy talking to her kids; and talking to Desi'.

She promised Lucie that she wouldn't reveal what was on the tapes. But she did say they showed that Ball 'wasn't a natural funny lady. She could be sharp; and she wasn't the Lucy you see in the shows.'

Ball's true talent was her ability to visualise comedic scenarios, and devise the physical choreography from which extraordinary comedy moments emerged.

Nicole Kidman attends the Los Angeles Premiere of Amazon Studios' 'Being The Ricardos' at Academy Museum of Motion Pictures on December 6, 2021 in Los Angeles, California

Kidman watched footage of Ball overseeing various skits and scenes. 'Talk about knowing what she wants,' she said, admiringly. Yet Lucy and Desi had to fight for that kind of control. The studio kingpins derided her to start with, referring to her as 'the little lady'.

It wasn't long, though, before the 'little lady' and her husband owned the studio. 'She'd been slapped down, told she wasn't good enough  and that she was too old,' Kidman said. 'I can relate to Lucille Ball, where you're told: 'You're past it now. You're over.'

'I've been in this industry for decades now; and I've been 'finished' more than once,' she said, grimly.

A couple of weeks ago, George Clooney told me how it's easier for older leading men than for female stars as they age. 'But it's changing,' he added, citing Kidman as an example of someone who re-ignited her career with success on the small screen  in her case, smash hit Big Little Lies.

'I was 'relegated' to TV,' the actress agreed. 'But the irony is that TV came through. In terms of trajectory, it changed my career. Reese [Witherspoon] and I did that show and I never thought what it would lead to. The same for Lucille Ball when she moved to TV.'

Clooney is certainly right about Kidman being at the top of her game once again.

Her performance in Sorkin's film puts her right in the centre of the awards season mix, in a year dominated by women ... Olivia Colman in The Lost Daughter, Lady Gaga in The House Of Gucci, Kristen Stewart in Spencer, Rachel Zegler in West Side Story, Jessica Chastain in The Eyes Of Tammy Faye, Frances McDormand in The Tragedy Of Macbeth  and Javier Bardem's wife, Penelope Cruz, in Parallel Mothers.
The Book Of Dust: La Belle Sauvage (Bridge Theatre, London)

Rating:

Verdict: Pullman on repeat

Every new adaptation of Philip Pullman's best-selling novels is greeted with huge excitement by his many fans.

How will they capture the author's adventure, which races through magical worlds and parallel universes?

And how will they bring to life the animal daemons, which are a unique expression of each character's soul?

The 2007 film (starring Nicole Kidman) and subsequent TV series (with Ruth Wilson) had the luxury of computer animation.

But Nicholas Hytner, the Bridge's artistic director, keeps faith with the theatricality of the puppets and projections from his 2003 production of His Dark Materials, back when he was boss at the National.

Nativity Scene: (l-r) Heather Forster, Samuel Creasey, Ella Dacres and Sky Young in The Book Of Dust

That starred Anna Maxwell Martin as Pullman's heroine, Lyra Belacqua: the girl destined to save the world.

Pointedly timed for Christmas, The Book Of Dust is the prelude to Pullman's supposedly anti-Christian trilogy and is the tale of Lyra's nativity.

We follow gutsy young Malcolm, the bright, independent-minded son of an innkeeper (more seasonal echoes), tasked with saving Lyra from the Magisterium's religious Gestapo or 'CCD'.

Once again, Bob Crowley's design saturates us in the book's dark, brooding dystopian nostalgia of a lost Oxford consumed in a Biblical flood (the Almighty may have serious copyright issues with Pullman when he eventually shuffles off this mortal coil).

Projections on screens around a stage which thrusts into the auditorium present picture-book graphics, with shimmering trees, seething rivers and wind-swept fens.

As it did at the National, the puppetry stands out, with every actor having their own paper lantern daemon  rather like a personalised Christmas decoration (the main characters have theirs operated by puppeteers wearing woolly hats and dungarees).

But Hytner also toys with scale, as when Malcolm's tiny canoe (La Belle Sauvage of the title) is caught in floods and he's rescued by Lyra's father, Lord Asriel, in his miniature 'gyro-copter'.

Pulling all this together is quite an achievement, but it comes at a cost. We're left with a frenetic performance, fearful of stopping to reflect. There is certainly little prospect of taking time to ponder Pullman's gnomic revelation that 'dust is only a name for what happens when matter begins to understand itself'.

The characters in Bryony Lavery's Famous Five-ish adaptation feel like puppets of the plot. With Pullman setting up simplistic conflicts between religion and science, the men of the Magisterium (including a reptilian Nick Sampson) are merely straw Nazis.

At least the warm-hearted nuns who hide baby Lyra get more colour  including Dearbhla Molloy as the sort of lyrical Irish nun everyone likes to believe in.

A real-life, gasp-inducing baby is interchanged with a doll for Lyra, to raise the sometimes faltering stakes.

But the standout performance is from newcomer Samuel Creasey as our hero Malcolm. Just out of drama college, he is James Corden, Mark II: a stout, cheeky youth who turns the otherwise earnest Malcolm into a loveable clown.

As his gobby accomplice Alice, Ella Dacres is notable for her excoriating tongue, including one line worthy of a Glaswegian navvy: 'The CCD are here with a stuck-up b**** and the nuns are s****ing themselves.'

The 'stuck-up b**** in question is Lyra's wicked mother, Marisa Coulter (Ayesha Dharker), who has been transformed into a Priti Patel lookalike  her officious character even gets to invoke 'emergency powers'. Could Sir Nicholas be making a point?

Inevitably, there is solemn reference to climate change and even workplace sexism.

The latter reaches its queasy apotheosis in Pip Carter's paedophile scientist Gerard Bonneville, who preys on Alice and tries to kiss her. Yuck! Some parents may prefer not to expose their children to this.

Elsewhere, I struggled to share Malcolm's faith in John Light's slightly drawn Lord Asriel. We must assume Light hopes for a bigger role in the next instalment.

But my main problem is that neither Pullman's story, nor Hytner's production, feel as though they are covering any new ground.

Isn't this yarn  about a child messiah, hunted by the authorities  basically a re-run of His Dark Materials?

Haven't we all been here before . . . and got the alethiometer?

This Robin is Strictly Come Jousting

Robin Hood (Bristol Old Vic)

Rating:

Verdict: Robin and the Merry Men rather miss the target

Bonnie Tyler's 1980s hit Holding Out For A Hero sets the tone for this year's Christmas show at Bristol Old Vic, which dusts off the story of Robin Hood.

Thanks to a kind librarian who has dug up a poster of The Prince Of Thieves, starring Kevin Costner, and an old book, Tales Of A Forgotten Forest, introverted, innocent schoolboy JJ (cuddly Dorian Simpson), turns time-traveller.

He falls, with a bump, into Sherwood Forest, where the nasty narcissistic Sheriff of Nottingham, who makes his entry blowing his own, er, trombone, is clamping down on those who can't afford to pay their taxes.

Otherwise, things have moved on since medieval times.

Thanks to a kind librarian who has dug up a poster of The Prince Of Thieves, starring Kevin Costner, and an old book, Tales Of A Forgotten Forest, introverted, innocent schoolboy JJ (cuddly Dorian Simpson), turns time-traveller

Robin Hood has retired from being a legend. She is a girl; and she and her ex, Maid Marian (a terrific boxer), are avoiding one another. Friar Tuck is a female monk who has hit the 'holy water'. Will Scarlet is distracted, having become a dad (his dad-dancing scene is a highlight).

Somehow JJ forces a comeback of the Merry Men, if more in the mode of Ocean's Eleven.

Recharged with a blast of that irresistible music from the original movie and the old team-spirit, they plan an ingenious heist to retrieve the stolen dosh from the castle vaults.

Bristol's Wardrobe Ensemble's rollicking romp ticks dozens of boxes.

It's action-packed, punctuated by cheery sing-alongs of Bryan Adams's Everything I Do (courtesy of the 1991 Costner movie).

It's also tactfully right-on, without being uncomfortably in-yer-face. And it's stuffed with wholesome lessons: that heroes come in all guises, including overgrown kids, girls, old women and dancing dads.

As does heroism, because it takes real courage to reach out and be friendly.

The fencing is fantastic; the kissing restrained (credit to Fight and Intimacy Directors).

Entertaining and enjoyable but without real edge or spark, it hits the target as Strictly Come Jousting, but rather misses the X Factor.

Georgina Brown

Aladdin (Lyric Hammersmith)

Rating:

Verdict: Satirical family fun

The Emperor has a blond shock wig and wears an ill-fitting blue suit  and clown shoes.

I suspect the Prime Minister will be the butt of many a joke during this pantomime season, and writer Vikki Stone leans to the satirical in this uneven but good-hearted run out of Aladdin.

The Emperor (Kate Donnachie) wants to marry off his daughter, Jasmine (Ellena Vincent), to a rich prince. But she's having none of it. Along comes lovelorn Aladdin (Qasim Mahmood), and he has to work hard to win her over.

The Emperor has a blond shock wig and wears an ill-fitting blue suit  and clown shoes

The Emperor's palace looks suspiciously like the infamous new Downing Street briefing room, where evil henchman Abanazer (an excellent Irvine Iqbal) issues diktats while barking 'next slide . . . next slide', and plots to marry Jasmine himself.

Much of the humour is aimed at the adults and the Boris Johnson satire doesn't entirely gel. But Vincent and Mahmood have chemistry as the young lovers, the singing is top-notch, and the 'magic' carpet ride will enthral the youngsters.

Veronica Lee
She is set to walk the red carpet at the Australian premiere of her new film, Being the Ricardos, next week.

And Nicole Kidman touched down in Sydney via private jet late on Thursday night ahead of the much-anticipated event with her two lookalike daughters, Sunday Rose, 13, and Faith Margaret, 10.

The Hollywood star dressed very casually for her flight from Los Angeles, covering her slender figure in baggy black trousers, a long sleeve white top and a black vest over the top.

My, how they've grown! Nicole Kidman jetted into Sydney on a private jet with her two lookalike daughters Sunday (left) and Faith on Thursday night

She teamed the outfit with crisp white sneakers and a beige leather tote, and stayed COVID-safe with a black face mask.

Appearing makeup-free, Nicole's signature curly red hair was straightened and fastened in a plait.

The Undoing actress was trailed closely by her two daughters as they were escorted through Sydney Airport.

Red carpet ready: The actress flew over to Sydney for the Australian premiere of her new movie Being the Ricardos, which takes place next week

Keeping it casual: The Hollywood star dressed very casually for her flight from Los Angeles , covering her slender figure in baggy black trousers, a long sleeve white top and a black vest over the top

Both Sunday and Faith pulled their own suitcases behind them as they walked through the airport, before being led outside to a waiting car.

Like their famous mum, both Sunday and Faith wore face masks as they walked through the quiet airport and made their way home.

During an appearance on The Tonight Show on Thursday, Nicole told host Jimmy Fallon that her husband of 15 years, Keith Urban, was at home in Australia.

The Braid-y bunch: Appearing makeup-free, Nicole's signature curly red hair was straightened and fastened in a plait

Back on home soil: During an appearance on The Tonight Show on Thursday, Nicole told host Jimmy Fallon that her husband of 15 years, Keith Urban, was at home in Australia

Heading home: Both Sunday and Faith pulled their own suitcases behind them as they walked through the airport, before being led outside to a waiting car

She added that she was returning home to spend Christmas with her family, following a stint in the US to promote the new movie.

Nicole plays Lucille Ball in the upcoming biopic, and is already generating Oscars buzz with her role as the beloved 1950's comedienne.

The film depicts the often complicated relationship between real-life Hollywood power couple Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz, played by Javier Bardem, as they filmed their hit 1950's sitcom, I Love Lucy.

Blast from the past: Nicole plays Lucille Ball in the upcoming biopic, and is already generating Oscars buzz with her role as the beloved 1950's comedienne. Pictured with co-star Javier Bardem

Home sweet home: Nicole told talk show host Jimmy Fallon that she was returning home to spend Christmas with her family, following a stint in the US to promote the new movie

Reservations: Appearing at the Deadline Contenders Film event in Los Angeles last month, Nicole admitted she was apprehensive about taking on the role of such a beloved and iconic figure

It's set to premiere in cinemas this month, before streaming on Amazon Prime from December 21, and has already generated plenty of awards season buzz.

Appearing at the Deadline Contenders Film event in Los Angeles last month, Nicole admitted she was apprehensive about taking on the role of such a beloved and iconic figure.

'I had massive trepidation about a month prior, and [director] Aaron [Sorkin] had to get on the phone and send me emails saying, "You've got this,"' she said, as reported by Variety.
Denzel Washington and Michael B. Jordan put on a chummy display as they attended the premiere of A Journal For Jordan held at AMC Lincoln Square in New York City on Thursday night.

The A-list actors were joined by the forthcoming drama film's leading lady Chante Adams, who wowed on the red carpet in a dramatic fuchsia high-low gown.

A Journal For Jordan is based on the true story of First Sergeant Charles Monroe King (Jordan) and the journal he kept for his newborn son while stationed overseas in Iraq.

Big premiere: Michael B. Jordan, Denzel Washington and Chante Adams led stars at the premiere of A Journal For Jordan held at AMC Lincoln Square in New York City on Thursday night

Washington directed the heartwarming feature which hits theaters on Christmas Day.

The script for A Journal For Jordan was adapted by screenwriter Virgil Williams from author Dana Canedy's novel of the same name.

Washington and Jordan also serve as executive producers of the film.

Michael B. Jordan cut a stylish figure for the big premiere in a marled grey coat layered over a plain white tee.

Stylish: Michael B. Jordan cut a stylish figure for the big premiere in a marled grey coat layered over a plain white tee

Reunion: Michael couldn't help but beam while reuniting with director Denzel Washington at the NYC premiere

The 34-year-old hunk completed the ensemble with some cuffed slacks and a pair of black lace-up dress shoes.

Missing from the action was Jordan's model girlfriend Lori Harvey, 24, who he celebrated his first anniversary with last month.

Michael couldn't help but beam while reuniting with director Denzel Washington at the NYC premiere.

Sweet: The 66-year-old Hollywood veteran posed with his arm wrapped around the young star as they worked the event's step-and-repeat photo op

Monochrome moment: Denzel rocked an all-black outfit consisting of a button-up shirt, baggy trousers, and a pair of his go-to sneakers with white soles

Premise: A Journal For Jordan is based on the true story of First Sergeant Charles Monroe King (Jordan) and the journal he kept for his newborn son while stationed overseas in Iraq

The 66-year-old Hollywood veteran posed with his arm wrapped around the young star as they worked the event's step-and-repeat photo op.

Denzel rocked an all-black outfit consisting of a button-up shirt, baggy trousers, and a pair of his go-to sneakers with white soles.

Chante Adams was a sight to behold in her stunning one-shoulder gown with a dramatic puff sleeve.

Fabulous in fuchsia: Chante Adams wowed on the red carpet in a dramatic fuchsia high-low gown

Dramatic dress: A large bow fastened to the rear of her dress acted as a train that gracefully trailed behind her as she posed on the red carpet

A little boost: The 26-year-old starlet added height to her petite frame with a pair of understated strappy heels

A large bow fastened to the rear of her dress acted as a train that gracefully trailed behind her as she posed on the red carpet.

The 26-year-old starlet added height to her petite frame with a pair of understated strappy heels.

Chante's brunette hair was neatly slicked down and styled in a voluminous ponytail.

Sleek: Chante's brunette hair was neatly slicked down and styled in a voluminous ponytail

Golden girl: She accessorized her glamorous getup with some sparkly gold hoops and several matching rings

Nice touch: For added feminine flair, Adams toted her essentials in an adorable rose-shaped clutch

She accessorized her glamorous getup with some sparkly gold hoops and several matching rings.

For added feminine flair, Adams toted her essentials in an adorable rose-shaped clutch.

Other red carpet attendees included Patina Miller, Tamara Tunie, Laya DeLeon Hayes, Danielle Mone and Robert Wisdom.

Coming soon: Denzel Washington directed the heartwarming feature which hits theaters on Christmas Day; Patina Miller pictured

From book to screen: The script for A Journal For Jordan was adapted by screenwriter Virgil Williams from author Dana Canedy's novel of the same name; Tamara Tunie and Patina Miller pictured

Producers: Washington and Jordan also serve as executive producers of the film; Danielle Mone Truitt and Laya DeLeon Hayes pictured
Halo Infinite (Xbox, PC, 49.99 or included with Xbox Game Pass)

Verdict: The future of the past

Rating:

What do you get a mega-armoured space solider for his birthday? How about his own game release? Almost exactly 20 years since the launch of the original Halo, we have this, the sixth main title in the Xbox's biggest franchise. It's called Halo: Infinite. And it happens to be, at once, both the most backward-looking and the most forward-looking game in the series.

Let's start with the nostalgia. If you played the first Halo all those years ago, then Infinite's single-player campaign is as familiar as your own family. Once again, you are that space solider, the gold-visored Master Chief. And, once again, you and a holographic companion are taking the battle to a bunch of hostile aliens on a ringworld.

On modern systems, everything looks prettier and sounds grander than it did back then, but the feelings evoked are almost identical. That sense of awe when you first see the landscape arcing up in front of you. The satisfying feedback from each of the guns. The hum of a Warthog transport.

If you played the first Halo all those years ago, then Infinite's single-player campaign is as familiar as your own family

It's an amazing tribute act by Infinite's developers, but sometimes the past is also the problem. After so long, Master Chief's 'Oorah!', action-man personality is getting a little tired. And good luck following the plot if you haven't played the first and all subsequent Halos.

Thank the Chief, then, that 343 have also stirred in some new ingredients. Two are especially apparent. The first is the grappling hook that means you can quickly pull yourself from platform to platform. Halo's gun battles always were full of movement and flow; now they're even more so.

And the second is the open world of Infinite's campaign. This is a series that's always thrived in airy spaces, rather than in the tight corridors of some shooters, but now you have more choice about where to go on the map  and what to do once you get thre. The extra latitude is enjoyable, even if it's nowhere near that offered by, say, the Far Cry games.

Many players, of course, won't spend much time on that world, whether it's open or not. They'll be too busy having a blast in Infinite's multiplayer modes  and understandably so. Joining with a team of other marines to capture another team's flag is still some of the best fun in gaming.

But now we've got Master Chief his birthday present, I have another question: what comes after infinity?
She never puts a foot wrong when it comes to fashion and style.

And Isla Fisher knocked it out of the park on Friday when she rocked a glamourous little black dress during a press day for her upcoming Stan Original series, Wolf Like Me.

The beloved Australian actress, 45, looked incredible in the cleavage-baring frock, which also showed off her trim pins.

Howl at the moon! Isla Fisher rocked a glamourous little black dress during a press day for her upcoming Stan Original series, Wolf Like Me, on Friday

The Wedding Crasher star completed her look with matching high heels.

She wore her fiery red locks out and added a swipe of scarlet lipstick to her pout.

'Press Day for #wolflikeme dropping all 6 episodes January 13th on @peacocktv featuring me and the brilliant @joshgad and directed and written by the talented @abyforsythe,' she captioned a series of pictures of her outfit she posted on Instagram. 'GET READY'.

Isla stars in Wolf Like Me alongside American actor Josh Gad.

Smoking: The beloved Australian actress, 45, looked incredible in the cleavage-baring frock, which also showed off her trim pins

The series will premiere on streaming service Peacock TV in the US, as Isla mentions in her post, and on Stan in Australia.

The six-part outing centres around Mary (Fisher) and Gary (Gad), two strangers brought together in a twist of fate, whose relationships suffers the ultimate test.

Gary is described as an 'emotional wreck', who 'struggles to provide for his daughter since the death of his wife'.

Meanwhile, 'Mary has a secret she can't bring herself to share with anyone'.

Together: The six-part drama centres around Gary (Gad) and Mary (Fisher), two strangers who are brought together in a twist of fate

Wolf Like Me is written and directed by three-time AACTA Award nominee Abe Forsythe and is inspired by his own experiences searching for love as a single parent.

In a statement to Stan, Forsythe said: 'Wolf Like Me is a very meaningful project for me, the stakes are extremely high but grounded by things we can all relate to.

'I'm so excited to have Isla and Josh on board, and I know the audience will be surprised seeing them in a different way as these characters.'

The Stan Original Series Wolf Like Me premieres January 13 on Stan
Common addressed his split with Tiffany Haddish during Thursday's episode of Fox Soul's Hollywood Unlocked with Jason Lee Uncensored.

During the interview, the 49-year-old rapper and actor made a point of expressing that the separation was entirely 'mutual' and that he and the 42-year-old actress still cared about each other deeply.

The former couple's split was initially revealed to the public this past November after they had dated for just over a year.

Addressing the matter: Common addressed his split with Tiffany Haddish during Thursday's episode of Fox Soul's Hollywood Unlocked with Jason Lee Uncensored; they are seen in 2020

Common spoke highly of his former partner during the interview, and noted via People that Haddish was 'one of the best-hearted and most authentic and caring people that I've met in life.'

The John Wick: Chapter 2 actor expressed that the actress' affable personality was 'what made me love her and be in love with her and want to be in a relationship with her and grow with her.'

He also recalled that their partnership was 'the most mature relationship I have been in ... meaning the communication, the respect, just all around.'

Common went on to express that although he and Haddish were able to 'navigate' the early stages of the pandemic, stress was placed on their relationship once they 'got back on the move.'

No hard feelings: Common spoke highly of his former partner during the interview, and noted via People that Haddish was 'one of the best-hearted and most authentic and caring people that I've met in life'; he is seen on Thursday

'It really didn't allow for us to spend as much time and put as much energy into our relationship,' he stated.

The performer then remarked that he and the actress were drawn apart by their respective professional committments and aspirations.

'I think the energy that has been put into our careers and continuing to want to do the things that we do for ourselves and for people ... it was hard for me to balance all of that and keep the relationship fed,' he said.

He then expressed that both he and his former partner 'came to the understanding that this is what's going to be best for us. To still continue to love each other and be there for each other is to not be in a romantic relationship.'

Career-focused: The performer then remarked that he and the actress were drawn apart by their respective professional committments and aspirations; they are seen in 2018

Common added that he and Haddish found it particularly difficult to spend time with each other while managing their professional careers.

'It's really honestly, it's actually committing to so much work that we do. It's hard when the other person is working just as much, to actually give time and love and nurture into the relationship,' he said.

The former couple initially met on the set of the 2019 feature The Kitchen, in which they both appeared.

Starting off strong: The former couple initially met on the set of the 2019 feature The Kitchen, in which they both appeared

The actress confirmed that she was in a relationship last December, when she appeared on Steve-O's Wild Ride podcast.

The pair's split was initially reported last month by People, when a source spoke to the media outlet and noted that the two had grown apart due to multiple factors.

The insider noted that 'they are never in the same city together and both of them are just too busy for a serious relationship.'
Idris Elba made his explosive debut as fan favorite Knuckles The Echidna in a new trailer released Thursday for the upcoming sequel Sonic The Hedgehog 2.

The 49-year-old English actor provided the voice of the short-beaked spiny anteater in the sequel featuring Ben Schwartz, 40, as Sonic The Hedgehog.

'Face it, you're never going to get my power,' Sonic told Knuckles as he hurled a blue burst of energy at his opponent.

Spiky anteater: Idris Elba made his explosive debut as fan favorite Knuckles in a new trailer released Thursday for the upcoming sequel Sonic The Hedgehog 2

'Do I look like I need your power?,' Knuckles replied menacingly as he easily absorbed the energy burst before striking it with a spiked hand.

Doctor Ivo 'Eggman' Robotnik, played by 59-year-old Jim Carrey, then peered out from behind a broken wall.

'Where are my manners? Sonic, meet Knuckles,' Robotnik told the dazed hedgehog.

Knuckles was then shown knocking his fists together as he prepared to deliver a powerful blow.

Fan favorite: The 49-year-old English actor, shown last month in Scotland, provided the voice of the short-beaked spiny anteater in the sequel featuring Ben Schwartz as Sonic

Super fast: Sonic The Hedgehog can run at supersonic speeds

The trailer opened in Seattle with Sonic showing off his speed while fighting crime.

'Sonic, I love that you want to help make a difference. But you're being reckless. Pretending to be Batman. You're still just a kid,' warned his friend Tom Wachowski, played by James Marsden, 48.

Robotnik was then shown arriving with a new mustache and claimed that he discovered a new source of 'ultimate power'.

Seattle setting: The trailer opened in Seattle with Sonic showing off his speed while fighting crime

Too much: Sonic ambitiously tried to tackle crime as the trailer opened

Duly warned: 'Sonic, I love that you want to help make a difference. But you're being reckless. Pretending to be Batman. You're still just a kid,' warned his friend Tom Wachowski, played by James Marsden, 48

Facial hair: Robotnik was then shown arriving with a new mustache and claimed that he discovered a new source of 'ultimate power'

Sonic during the trailer also was introduced to Miles 'Tails' Prower with the anthropomorphic fox piloting an airplane while Robotnik fired missiles them.

Tails was voiced by Colleen O'Shaughnessey, 50, who is the only voice cast member from the Sonice The Hedgehog video games to reprise her role for the film.

Sonice The Hedgehog 2 is scheduled to be released by Paramount Pictures in theatres on April 8, 2022.

Ultimate power: Robotnik was after a source of 'ultimate power'

Strong anteater: Knuckles handled the blast from Sonic and exploded it with a punch

Knocked out: Sonic was knocked out after Knuckles showed off his strength
Her love for her husband Chandler Powell knows no bounds.

And Bindi Irwin posted yet another gushing tribute to her hubby on Friday, along with a sweet photo of the pair hiking together.

Chandler looked at the camera as he protectively put his arm around a shy-looking Wildlife Warrior in the snap.

Forever: Bindi Irwin posted yet another gushing tribute to her husband Chandler Powell on Friday, along with a sweet photo of the pair hiking together

'Shoutout to my incredible husband. I love you more every day. Forever and forever,' Bindi wrote in the caption.

Chandler and Bindi wore near-matching outfits for the hike, with both clad in jeans and T-shirts.

It comes just days after the couple's adorable daughter Grace Warrior met a giant tortoise at Australia Zoo.

Following in her family's footsteps! Bindi shared footage of her eight-month old daughter Grace meeting a giant tortoise named Igloo at Australia Zoo on Tuesday

In a sweet video, Bindi can be seen carrying little Grace as she reached out to rub the reptile.

'Tortoise smiles. Absolutely love spending time with Igloo. Grace is fascinated by this gentle giant,' Bindi captioned the post.

Bindi and Grace have spent the past few days spending quality time together at the zoo.

So cute! In the sweet footage, Bindi can be seen carrying little Grace as she reached out to rub the reptile

On Sunday, little Gracie posed for a smiling photograph in front of a water feature.

Bindi shared a photo to Instagram of the lively toddler looking very excitable as she sat in a pink coloured pram.

'She loves watching the water splash. Best. Backyard,' Bindi wrote in the caption alongside the image.

Home: Bindi and Grace have spent the past few days spending quality time together at the zoo

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.

She 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.
She's the AFL WAG who has become known for her impeccable taste in fashion.

And Bec Judd even managed to turn heads on a casual trip to a bakery on Thursday, as she stepped out in a pair of 70s inspired flared jeans in Melbourne.

The 38-year-old teamed her fabulous light-denim trousers with a pair of sneakers, while keeping cosy in a black coat with blue material at the pockets and collar.

Groovy baby! Bec Judd managed to turn heads on a casual trip to a bakery on Thursday, as she stepped out in a pair of 70s inspired flared jeans in Melbourne

Bec sported a protective face mask for the trip, and appeared to wear minimal makeup as she grabbed some baked goods at the store.

She wore her hair in a high ponytail, which highlighted her stunning complexion.

The outing comes days after Bec celebrated her and her husband Chris Judd's 18-year anniversary.

The brunette beauty posted a photo to Instagram of herself and Chris last week, and wrote in the caption: '18 years' alongside a blue heart.

Style icon: The 38-year-old teamed her fabulous light-denim trousers with a pair of sneakers, while keeping cosy in a black coat with blue material at the pockets and collar

Treats: Bec wore a protective face mask for the trip, and appeared to wear minimal makeup as she grabbed some baked goods at the store

Bec went on to ask her followers if anyone else has has met their husband during a Sunday session at The Cottesloe Beach Hotel.

The Judds met at a pub in Perth 18 years ago when they were both teenagers, and wed on December 31, 2010, at Melbourne's Albert Park.

They have since welcomed four children, son Oscar, 10, daughter Billie, seven, and five-year-old twin boys Tom and Darcy.

Last year, Rebecca shared her secret to a long and happy relationship on KIIS FM's 3pm Pick-Up radio show.

Tribute: The outing comes days after Bec celebrated her and husband Chris' 18 year-anniversary with a touching post shared to Instagram

She explained how a bad sleeping arrangement can lead to tension in a marriage, so she makes sure Chris never interrupts her.

'If he comes anywhere near me or if he has a toe touching me at night time, I'll like wake him up [and] push him over,' she said.

'I cannot sleep if you're touching me. You actually need to be at least half a metre away from me, so if I want to roll and turn in the night, I can turn and still not have to touch you.'

How romantic: Bec posted this photo to Instagram of herself and her partner, and wrote in the caption: '18 years' before asking if any of her followers met their partners at the same pub

However, Rebecca added she and Chris make sure to have a 'quick kiss and cuddle' before turning out the lights and enforcing the no-touching policy.

'When we were first together, it was better to sleep knowing he was there,' she explained.

'We would be like completely entwined in each other and have the best night's sleep.

'Now, we'll have a quick kiss and a cuddle and then it's like, "See you in the morning!" Maybe that's why our marriage is almost at 10 years.'
After 25 years on the air and more than 6000 episodes, Judge Judy is finally coming to an end.

The reality courtroom series will screen its final episodes over the coming days before it wraps up on Channel 10 for good after becoming a staple afternoon program in Aussie households for so many years.

The star of Judge Judy, judge Judith Sheindlin, has since begun airing her brand new spin-off series in the US titled Judy Justice, reports TV Blackbox.

End of an era: Judge Judy comes to an end after 25 years on Channel 10 with judge Judith Sheindlin starring in a brand new spin-off courtroom series

Judge Judy's 25th season began airing in the US in early 2020 and concluded with its final episode in July 2021.

Channel 10, which is far behind the US schedule of Judge Judy, will screen the show's final episode on Monday, December 13.

The concluding episode will be on the network's streaming service 10play for a week before Channel 10 will begin to air reruns of the program.

Hanging up the gavel: The reality courtroom series will screen its final episodes over the coming days before it wraps up on Channel 10 for good after becoming a staple afternoon program in Aussie households for so many years

Judge Judy has always been widely popular with Australian audiences and a consistent TV ratings winner for the network.

The courtroom show first premiered in the US in September 1996 and began screening on Channel 10 in Australia soon after.

Judy's new spin-off series, Judy Justice, aired on Amazon Studio's new streaming service iMDb TV in November.

120 episodes have been ordered by Amazon for the series, which is the largest order package that's ever been made for a first-run streaming series.

New: Judy's new spin-off series, Judy Justice, aired on Amazon Studio's new streaming service iMDb TV in November

iMDb TV is currently only available in the US and UK, with no plans announced yet to bring the streaming service to Australia.

Aussie fans of Judge Judy can still tune in for reruns of the popular series on Channel 10.

It's not yet known whether 10 will pick up Judy Justice or another streaming service in the country will acquire the Australian license.

The final episode of Judge Judy airs on Channel 10, Monday, December 13 at 3:00pm
Blac Chyna shopped at a Los Angeles-area Target on Thursday, as news broke that she's under a police probe in connection with an incident at a Sacramento hotel last month.

The 33-year-old was seen stocking up on toys and Red Bulls, spread across multiple shopping carts.

The Washington D.C. native, whose real name is Angela Renee White, was clad in a textured black activewear ensemble of a top and leggings, with a black beanie cap that read 'Dolls' and a face mask.

The latest: Blac Chyna, 33, shopped at a Los Angeles-area Target on Thursday, as news broke that she's under a police probe in connection with an incident at a Sacramento hotel last month

The celebrity, who is mother to five-year-old daughter Dream with Rob Kardashian, 34, and son King, nine, with rapper Tyga, 32, rounded out her outfit with white sneakers with black and blue trimming.

She is under police investigation for an alleged incident on November 27, Page Six reported, in which a woman said she was held 'hostage' in a Sacramento hotel room for 20 minutes.

The reality star was said to have hosted an after-party at the Sheraton Grand after a Black Friday event, where things escalated verbally to the point where one woman was barred from leaving Chyna's hotel suite. A portion of the alleged incident - which went down around 3 a.m. - was captured on video by The Sun as shared by a partygoer who recorded his hysterical friend sobbing after she fled the hotel room.

Chyna's attorney said that 'the story is false.'

She was seen stocking up on toys and Red Bulls, spread across multiple shopping carts

In hot water: The reality star is under police investigation after she allegedly held a woman 'hostage' in her hotel room at the Sheraton Grand in Sacramento on November 26; Blac Chyna pictured October 27

Partygoer Ron Knighton provided The Sun with two minutes worth of video and recounted the events of the evening of November 26, into the early morning hours on November 27.

Following a Black Friday party at the 3M Event Center in Penryn, California  where Chyna was a special guest  she hosted an after-party in her hotel suite.

'Everyone was enjoying themselves; the drinks were flowing and the energy in the suite was real good,' Knighton shared.

'Suddenly out of nowhere Chyna just yelled at my friend to "shut the f**k up or she'd beat both our a**es".'

'The vibe immediately changed so at that point we thought it was best to leave - but when I went to walk out she shut the door behind me and kept my friend in the room,' he continued to share.

Rocking party: Video captured by attendee Ron Knighton - who recounted the evening to The Sun - showed Chyna at the event beforehand (pictured there above) and the aftermath of his friend being held in her hotel room for 20 minutes

Close call: 'The vibe immediately changed so at that point we thought it was best to leave - but when I went to walk out she shut the door behind me and kept my friend in the room,' Knighton recounted

Under the influence: Video footage also captures one person claiming that Chyna was 'high on cocaine and crazy,' but the footage shows no indication that drugs were present or capture what actually went down inside the hotel room

Knighton maintained: Chyna 'wouldn't let her leave even though my friend was crying and shouting - she was being a total bully.'

In the video, Chyna's sobbing friend was seen escaping the hotel room once Chyna opened the door to let a few people in  at which point she tried to grab the girl back inside by her hair.

After fleeing, the Rob & Chyna star could be heard telling them to come back in. 'We aren't staying anywhere. We are leaving! You crazy?,' Knighton says.

The pair then try and make their way to the elevators at which point he tells his friend he 'wanted to kick the door in,' as she sobs.

As the elevator door opens and they go to get in, Chyna is seen with a group in the hall trying to get to Knighton and his friend but is restrained by a larger gentleman.

Black Friday: Following a Black Friday party at the 3M Event Center in Penryn, California  where Chyna was a special guest  she hosted an after-party in her hotel suite where the incident in question went down; flyer for the event pictured above

Under investigation: 'The department is actively investigating the circumstances surrounding the incident and the investigation remains active,' a spokesperson for the Sacramento Police Department told Page Six; pictured promoting the November 26 event

The friends successfully make it into the elevator at which point they have a conversation where the woman cries 'she's so mean' at which point a friend says: 'It's not your fault  she's high on cocaine and crazy.'

Despite the claim that there were drugs present, the video doesn't indicate such or capture what actually went down inside the hotel room.

The Sacramento Police Department told Page Six: 'A dispute between two parties occurred, and the incident was resolved at the scene by the individuals involved. No injuries were reported.

'False': 'This latest false accusation of criminal conduct is just the most recent in a long line of false accusations against Blac Chyna,' her attorney Lynne Ciani stated; pictured December 7

'The department is actively investigating the circumstances surrounding the incident and the investigation remains active.'

Chyna's attorney, Lynne Ciani, denied any wrongdoing on Chyna's part to the publication and called it a 'false accusation.'

'This story is false. This latest false accusation of criminal conduct is just the most recent in a long line of false accusations against Blac Chyna,' Ciani's statement began.

'We are hopeful that one day people will stop falsely accusing Blac Chyna of criminal conduct. Until that day, we will continue to disprove these false allegations to law enforcement and in the courtroom, if necessary.'
Yvonne Strahovski is now a proud mum-of-two after welcoming her second child with husband Tim Loden earlier this week.

The 39-year-old Handmaid's Tale actress announced the happy news in a post on Instagram on Friday, sharing a photo of herself cradling her newborn son.

'An angel joined our world this past week. Welcome to the family my love. I love you so very much. #mamaoftwo,' she captioned the post.

New addition: Yvonne Strahovski is now a proud mum-of-two after welcoming her second child with husband Tim Loden earlier this week

It's the second child for Yvonne and her actor husband of four years, with the couple also parents to a three-year-old son, William.

The Aussie actress announced her second pregnancy by showing off her baby bump at the premiere of her movie, The Tomorrow War, in Los Angeles in July.

'I'm super excited to be here, and this is a very special moment,' she told ET at the premiere, adding, 'I'm having a boy! You heard it first!'

He's here! The 39-year-old Handmaid's Tale actress announced the happy news in a post on Instagram on Friday

Yvonne announced the arrival of her first son with another heartfelt post on Instagram back in October 2018.

'My heart has melted into a billion pieces a thousand times already. We have been blessed with the greatest joy of our lives, our baby boy,' she wrote at the time.

'Welcome to the world Peanut, your parents love you beyond measure and you are already my little dream boat. My heart has been stolen!'

Growing family: It's the second child for Yvonne and her actor husband Tim Loden, with the couple also parents to a three-year-old son, William

In an interview with Glamour UK in July 2019, Yvonne spoke about returning to work on The Handsmaid's Tale shortly after welcoming her first child.

'It was definitely one of the hardest and most challenging moments ever in my entire career. Coming back to work with a newborn and all the sleep deprivation that comes with that, plus I was breastfeeding,' she recounted.

Describing it as 'crazy', she added: 'I was running in between set and my trailer, breastfeeding on demand and doing scene work.'
Lourdes Leon gave her ultra famous mother a run for her money in a sultry cover shoot for PAPER magazine's January issue, captured by photographer Indiana Piorek.

For the stylized snaps, Madonna's 25-year-old daughter channeled '90s vibes as she modeled a myriad of barely-there ensembles in a variety of indoor and outdoor settings.

But not to be outdone, Madonna herself posted an Instagram image Thursday in which she had edited herself into one of her daughter's saucy new snaps.

Wow: Madonna upstaged her daughter Lourdes Leon by editing herself into a picture from the 25-year-old new model's latest photo-shoot

Seeing red: In the original photo, which was snapped by Indiana Piorek, Lourdes was pictured with the shirtless model Zach Necht

Bringing it together: Madonna chose to splice that image together with a recent picture of herself in London in front of a Tracey Emin drawing

In the original picture Lourdes flashed her cleavage and midriff while posing in front of shirtless model Zack Necht in a spartan setting.

Madonna however took that photo, gave it a sleek metallic background and edited in a recent photo of herself wearing a see-through LBD over a kinky bodysuit.

The Material Girl was using a picture of herself taken in London by photographer Ricardo Gomes as she stood by a Tracey Emin drawing.

Lourdes' photoshoot comes just weeks after Madonna, 63, went viral for exposing her bare breast on Instagram in a series of explicit bedroom shots that were later removed from the platform for violating community guidelines.

All grown up: Madonna's little girl simply sizzled as she struck a sultry pose as the cover star of PAPER magazine's January issue

Stylized: The images were captured by photographer Indiana Piorek

Lourdes, who goes by Lola, slipped into a shimmering blue halter top which crossed at the neck and matched a pair of bikini bottoms.

Leon, whose father is Madonna's ex Carlos Leon, sprawled out across the top of a BMW with her long blonde hair cascading down the hood for one photo.

She shared a few behind-the-scenes snaps earlier in the year of makeup artist loftjet applying a shimmering pink shade to her overlined lips.

She hopped into the back of a limousine wearing a strappy one-piece white lace lingerie set with black straps wrapped around her back.

Lourdes went all out with the aesthetic and showed off a hot pink manicure with leopard print tips.

Scandalous: The sizzling photoshoot comes just weeks after Madonna, 63, went viral for exposing her bare breast on Instagram in a series of explicit bedroom shots that were later removed from the platform for violating community guidelines

Her legs appeared to be endlessly long as she towered over the room wearing white knee-high fuzzy boots with thick heels, a look she put together with silver briefs and a pink crop top.

While Lourdes has dabbled in modeling through the years, dancing is where her heart is most content.

'With dance, and specifically performance, it's really an area where if you're not present and being authentically, fully immersed in the movement  you're half-a**ing it or you're nervous or shy  people can tell,' she said. 'There's no hiding in dance because it's an art form where you're wearing your emotions.

'And that's taught me in life to be authentically myself in any situation, because as soon as you're not, people clock you. And I'm not the one to be clocked. You know what I mean?'

Oiled up: The 25-year-old professional choreographer channeled '90s vibes in a series of sexy ensembles as she discussed looking toward the future for 'something bigger' with her dancing career

Model moment: Lourdes, who goes by Lola, slipped into a shimmering blue halter top which crossed at the neck and matched a pair of bikini bottoms

Casual: Leon, who's father is Madonna's ex Carlos Leon, sprawled out across the top of a BMW with her long blonde hair cascading down the hood for one photo

When it comes to her career, she explained: 'I want to choreograph for artists, people that make music, visual artists. I want to choreograph mainly, but there is a big part of me that still does want to perform.

'I don't know if I'm ready to throw that away yet, that performance side, but I think there's a way I can do both. Now I'm dipping my toes in the pond of choreography for music videos and stuff like that. I think something bigger will end up manifesting itself, but I have to take other steps in order to find that sweet spot of what is actually going to end up being my ... '

Interviewer and friend Raul Lopez helped Lourdes complete her sentence with 'aesthetic and legacy.'

Lourdes said: 'Exactly. I don't really have a huge end result, what I dream in mind. I just know what I love to do and I know that if I keep doing that then I'll get somewhere eventually.'

Wow: She hopped into the back of a limousine wearing a strappy one-piece white lace lingerie set with black straps wrapped around her back

Gorgeous: Her legs appeared to be endlessly long as she towered over the room wearing white knee-high fuzzy boots with thick heels, a look she put together with silver briefs and a pink crop top

When asked if she would consider dipping her toes in the music industry, Leon admitted that she's thought about it in the past despite revealing earlier this year that she 'doesn't have a passion for it' like her mother.

'I think about it, I have nothing against it. The thing is, I'm not really much of a writer,' she said, adding that if she were to make music of her own it would most likely be something with an 'electronic, experimental vibe.'

While citing some of her favorite underground pop artists, Lourdes revealed that it's the beats, not the vocals, that truly draw her in and that she'd need to 'find someone to produce my tracks' if she were to enter the scene.

Lourdes briefly mentioned her pop star mom while discussing her often 'hyper-sexualized' persona and the unfair equating of 'showing skin with wanting attention or being a hoe.'

Bold and beautiful: Leon switched gears into a black patent leather bikini top paired with a matching black skirt

'With dance, and specifically performance, it's really an area where if you're not present and being authentically, fully immersed in the movement  you're half-a**ing it or you're nervous or shy  people can tell,' she said.

She believes that she's often a target of unfair backlash and criticism on social media due to her being Madonna's daughter.

'I have a base layer of hatred because so many people like to hate on my mom, so it's obviously like I'm the spawn, I'm the oldest daughter, I'm going to see the tail end of that hate. So anything I do negative, it's "Like mother, like daughter.''

Lourdes has been opening up more about her relationship with the Material Girl hitmaker in recent months, including a bombshell Interview magazine feature in October where she labeled her mother a 'control freak.'

'My mom is such a control freak, and she has controlled me my whole life,' Leon told Madonna' longtime pal Debi Mazar in the interview. 'I needed to be completely independent from her as soon as I graduated high school.'

Work: She shared a few behind-the-scenes snaps earlier in the year of makeup artist loftjet applying a shimmering pink shade to her overlined lips

The model said that she gained a sense of independence by paying for her college and apartment, going into detail on her upbringing.

'We don't get any handouts in my family,' Leon said, adding that she 'obviously ... grew up with extreme privilege.'

She explained of Madonna's parenting philosophy, 'I think my mom saw all these other kids of famous people, and she was like, 'My kids are not going to be like this.' Also, I feel like if your parents pay for things, then it gives them leverage over you.'

Though her parenting philosophy may be strict, Madonna has no rules when it comes to her own self expression, as proven by an explicit slideshow shared last month where she exposed her bare breast to her 17.2million Instagram followers.

In the series of images taken on a bed, the sexagenarian mother-of-six wore lingerie while positioning herself in a number of compromising snaps, including images showing her breast and her fishnet-clad bottom.

Free as a bird: Madonna shocked fans last month by sharing an explicit slideshow to Instagram last month

Walking the line: In the series of images taken on a bed, the sexagenarian mother-of-six wore lingerie while positioning herself in a number of compromising snaps, including images showing her breast and her fishnet-clad bottom

Her astounded fans swiftly flooded the comment section, with a majority in shock over the 'porn' esque shots, while others praised the star for her daring post, which comes after courting further controversy on the site.

Madonna was seen showing off her breasts in a bondage-inspired bra with cut outs in the body to best showcase her ample cleavage. She put her pert behind on display while kneeling before the bed with her thong-clad derriere front and center and later bending over to show even more flesh.

A further image saw the Like A Virgin hitmaker lose her top altogether, while using a duvet to partially cover her eye-popping cleavage but still baring much of her naked breast.

Since the scantily-clad snapshots violated community guidelines due to their elements of nudity, they were swiftly removed from Instagram.

Removed: Since the scantily-clad snapshots violated community guidelines due to their elements of nudity, they were swiftly removed from Instagram

Back with a vengeance: Madonna, enraged by the removal, returned to the platform the following day to share edited versions of her NSFW images and penned a scathing caption aimed at Instagram's 'sexist' nudity policies

Madonna, enraged by the removal, returned to the platform the following day to share edited versions of her NSFW images.

In a lengthy caption, the hitmaker branded Instagram's strict nudity policies as 'sexist' and compared the unwavering social stigma around the female nipple to that of the 'lies' told about the Pilgrims' 'peaceful' treatment of Native Americans at Thanksgiving.

'I'm reposting photographs Instagram took down without warning or notification.. The reason they gave my management that does not handle my account was that a small portion of my nipple was exposed,' she began.

'It is still astounding to me that we live in a culture that allows every inch of a woman's body to be shown except a nipple. As if that is the only part of a woman's anatomy that could be sexualized. The nipple that nourishes the baby!

Unique upbringing: Lourdes has been opening up more about her relationship with the Material Girl hitmaker in recent months, including a bombshell Interview magazine feature in October where she labeled her mother a 'control freak'; Lourdes and Madonna pictured in 2016

'Can't a mans nipple be experienced as erotic ??!! And what about a woman's a** which is never censored anywhere.

'Giving thanks that I have managed to maintain my sanity through four decades of censorship sexismageism and misogyny.

'Perfectly timed with the lies we have been raised to believe about the pilgrims peacefully breaking bread with the Native American Indians when they landed on Plymouth Rock! God bless America,' concluded the songwriter before adding the hashtag '#artistsareheretodisturbthepeace'

Instagram's official Community Guidelines state that nudity is not allowed on the platform and that the female nipple is included under that umbrella.

There are exceptions to the rule such as 'photos in the context of breastfeeding, birth giving and after-birth moments, health-related situations (for example, post-mastectomy, breast cancer awareness or gender confirmation surgery) or an act of protest are allowed.'

Nudity shown in paintings and sculptures is also allowed.
She's always been known for her megawatt smile, and Julia Roberts, 54, certainly turned heads as she enjoyed a shopping trip on the Gold Coast on Friday.

The American actress beamed as she perused some clothing stores in Burleigh Heads, after flying into Coolangatta Airport with her Ticket to Paradise co-star George Clooney, his wife Amal and their two children from The Whitsundays.

Julia and George, 60, started filming Ticket to Paradise last month on the Gold Coast and in Brisbane, and then moved to The Whitsundays shortly afterwards.

Pretty woman: She has always been known for her megawatt smile, and Julia Roberts, 54, certainly turned heads as she enjoyed a shopping trip on the Gold Coast on Friday

The Pretty Woman star looked stunning, completely makeup free and dressed down in a black boiler suit.

She teamed the outfit with black leather sandals, a colourful crochet beach bag and a pair of designer sunglasses.

Julia wore her golden locks back in a messy no-fuss bun and had not a scrap of makeup on her incredibly youthful visage.

Hollywood beauty: The American actress beamed as she perused some clothing stores in Burleigh Heads, after flying into Coolangatta airport with her Ticket to Paradise co-star George Clooney, his wife Amal and their two children from The Whitsundays

Casual: The Pretty Woman star looked stunning, completely makeup free and dressed down in a black boiler suit

Retail therapy: Julia wore her golden locks back in a messy no-fuss bun and had not a scrap of makeup on her incredibly youthful visage

The Ocean's Eleven beauty also sported a golden tan after weeks of filming in The Whitsundays.

At one point, she enjoyed some banter with her bodyguard as she tried on a bucket hat she had purchased at one of the stores.

He playfully pulled the hat over her face as they joked around on the street.

It was revealed back in March that George and Julia were heading to Australia to film the hotly anticipated project.

Bronzed beauty: The Ocean's Eleven beauty also sported a golden tan after weeks of filming in The Whitsundays

Lots of laughs: Julia's bodyguard playfully pulled hat over her face as they joked around on the street

Capping it off: At one point, she enjoyed some banter with her bodyguard as she tried on a bucket hat she had purchased at one of the stores

The film received a $6.4million grant from the federal government's Location Incentive Program.

George and Julia play a divorced couple who travel to Bali in a desperate bid to stop their daughter, played by Kaitlyn Dever, from getting married.

The movie also stars Billie Lourd as Dever's best friend, who travels with her to Bali, where she decides to marry a local.

The two-month project will be filmed entirely in Queensland, with the picturesque Whitsundays doubling for Bali.

The production is expected to generate $47million for the Australian economy and create more than 270 jobs.

Ticket to Paradise is written and directed by Ol Parker, who helmed The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel and Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again.

Down Under: It was revealed back in March that George and Julia were heading to Australia to film their hotly anticipated project

Big money: The film received a $6.4million grant from the federal government's Location Incentive Program

Longtime friends George and Julia have starred in three films together - Oceans Eleven (2001), Oceans Twelve (2004) and Money Monster (2016).

George relocated to Australia in October with his human rights lawyer wife Amal and the couple's five-year-old twins, Alexander and Ella.

Despite spending their mandatory 14-day quarantine period at a sprawling NSW Southern Highlands estate rather than the usual hotel, George still complained about the conditions.

Break from filming: George and Julia will play a divorced couple who travel to Bali in a desperate bid to stop their daughter, played by Kaitlyn Dever, from getting married

Stunning backdrop: The two-month project will be filmed entirely in Queensland, with the picturesque Whitsundays doubling for Bali

'You have to stay in one place for 14 days until you're finally allowed to go out and breathe,' he told WTF podcast host Marc Maron.

Meanwhile, Julia also jetted into Australia in October, spending her quarantine period at a $56.9million mansion in Sydney's Vaucluse.

The property was the former rental home of Lachlan and Sarah Murdoch, the son and daughter-in-law of Australian-born media mogul Rupert Murdoch.

Bringing in the money: The production is expected to generate $47million for the Australian economy and create more than 270 jobs

The home was patrolled by around-the-clock armed guards, while multiple chefs, waiters and housekeepers stayed with Julia as part of her travel bubble.

George and Julia are good friends in real-life, having first met on the set of Ocean's Eleven back in 2001.

But Julia admitted she initially wasn't a huge fan of the Hollywood hunk, because he was always pranking her, revealing their relationship only changed for the better when she was pregnant.

'At George's house, I remember walking down this path pregnant with Phinn and Hazel and turning the corner, and all the boys were sitting at the table having lunch,' she told Allure in September 2015 of a lunch with her Ocean's 11 co-stars.

'They were like, "Oh, come sit down." I wasn't allowed to walk the stairs. It was such a sweet shift in our relationships because originally, it was all pranks and teasing each other.

'And here I am pregnant, so it's like pulling out my chair and just making sure I have enough water and, "Are you feeling OK? You look a little peaked." "I'm fine."'

In an interview with People in April 2016, Julia said it was a 'relief' that she and George aren't just 'Hollywood friends'.

'I just said to him an hour ago, "Thank God we really do like each other, or we'd be in hell,"' she said at the time.

Frequent collaborators: Longtime friends George and Julia have starred in three films together - Oceans Eleven (2001), Oceans Twelve (2004) and Money Monster (2016). Pictured together at the Cannes Film Festival in May 2016

Furthermore, George said their families are also good friends, which 'makes it easy' for them to collaborate regularly.

'Danny [Moder] and I are great friends and love each other. What's fun is it's really like a family,' he told People.

'It makes it easy. It's really fun to go, "Hey, let's do this movie together."'

Added Julia: 'What he's saying is we've just stitched our lives closer together. All these people that come into our lives; my husband, my children, his wife Amal Clooney. We just keep stitching our lives closer together.'

According to a report by Closer last month, Julia travelled to Australia with her sister, Lisa, while Danny stayed at home in California with their three teenage children.

'Julia's in Sydney with her sister Lisa, who is also a producer on the film, and a team that includes writers, wardrobe people and crew. It's a group that's close to Julia,' revealed a source.
Holly Madison was seen shopping in Los Angeles on Thursday amid news she says felt trapped in a 'cycle of gross things' during her time residing at the Playboy Mansion.

The 41-year-old model and reality star donned a long-sleeved green top with a white skirt, holding a red sweater over her blonde locks on the rainy day in Southern California.

The Oregon-born beauty carried a festive red backpack with holiday print and wore a pair of white Nike sneakers with red and black trimming.

The latest: Holly Madison, 41, was seen shopping in Los Angeles on Thursday amid news she says felt trapped in a 'cycle of gross things' during her time residing at the Playboy Mansion

Madison made headlines this week as excerpts from an upcoming A&E docuseries Secrets of Playboy were released, as she spoke about her feelings of living at the Playboy Mansion with her former boyfriend, the late Hugh Hefner.

'I felt like I was in the cycle of gross things and I didn't know what to do,' she said in the special, in which she opened up about her experiences as a Playboy Playmate from 2001 to 2008.

The Girls Next Door alum opened up about the pressures of conformity she experienced as one of Hefner's girlfriends.

'I got to a point where I kind of broke under that pressure and being made to feel like I needed to look exactly like everybody else.'

The model and reality star donned a long-sleeved green top with a white skirt, holding a red sweater over her blonde locks on the rainy day in Southern California

Madison made headlines this week as excerpts from an upcoming A&E docuseries Secrets of Playboy were released

Madison was pictured with the late Playboy founder Hugh Hefner in May of 2008 at the Playboy Mansion

Madison recalled an instance in which Hefner - who died at the age of 91 in 2017 - 'flipped out on' her after she got a short haircut to distinguish herself from her housemates.

'He was screaming at me and said it made me look old, hard and cheap,' she said.

In the special, Madison's Girls Next Door costar Bridget Marquardt, 48, said that Hefner could 'be pretty abrasive in the way he said things to Holly,' calling it 'very frustrating to live with every day.

'All of the drama that was going on and the tension,' Marquardt said. 'I could definitely see that [Madison] was getting depressed and sad and her demeanor was starting to change.'

Secrets of Playboy is set to be released January 24.
Stephen Sondheim's Company made its long-awaited return to Broadway on Thursday night just two weeks after the famed composer/lyricist's passing at the age of 91.

And Sarah Paulson and her girlfriend Holland Taylor were just some of the industry figures who eagerly attended the musical comedy's opening night at the Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre in New York City.

Paulson, 46, and Holland, 78, put on a cozy display while posing on the step-and-repeat photo op before the start of the show.

Opening night: Sarah Paulson and her girlfriend Holland Taylor were just some of the industry figures who eagerly attended opening night of Stephen Sondheim's Company at the Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre in New York City

Loved up: Paulson, 46, and Holland, 78, put on a cozy display while posing on the step-and-repeat photo op before the start of the show

The couple, who have been romantically linked since 2015, posed closely beside one another in matching black coats.

Paulson was captured beaming in the direction of her girlfriend, who had a beautiful green scarf wrapped around her neck.

As for the American Horror Story actress, she layered her coat over a chic black turtleneck and gave her look a pop of color with some bold berry lipstick.

Naomi Watts wowed in a trendy blue velvet blazer and matching trousers for the star-studded event.

Strike a pose: The couple posed closely beside one another in matching black coats

Beaming: Paulson was captured beaming in the direction of her girlfriend, who had a beautiful green scarf wrapped around her neck

Chic: As for the American Horror Story actress, she layered her coat over a chic black turtleneck and gave her look a pop of color with some bold berry lipstick

Going strong: Sarah and Holland have been romantically linked since 2015

The 53-year-old actress layered up her look with a long, houndstooth coat and slipped her feet into a pair of bright white ballet flats.

Her signature blonde strands were slightly bumped under and parted to one side.

Watts carried her essentials in a red leather purse that coordinated perfectly with her ruby toned lipstick.

Coming off the premiere of the highly-anticipated Sex And The City reboot, Cynthia Nixon oozed confidence in an oversized black peacoat.

On trend: Naomi Watts wowed in a trendy blue velvet blazer and matching trousers for the star-studded event

Layered up: The 53-year-old actress layered up her look with a long, houndstooth coat

Classic footwear: Naomi slipped her feet into a pair of bright white ballet flats

Ruby red: Watts carried her essentials in a red leather purse that coordinated perfectly with her ruby toned lipstick

The 55-year-old actress tied the coat tightly at the waist and wrapped her neck with a cozy cream scarf.

Jane Krakowski showed off her tanned and toned legs in a plunging black blazer dress with satin lapels.

The 30 Rock star, 53, paired her mini dress with some black stiletto heels and an overcoat that she held in one hand as she posed.

Her blonde hair was swept into a romantic updo and she accessorized with a pair of glitzy earrings.

Talk of the town: Coming off the premiere of the highly-anticipated Sex And The City reboot, Cynthia Nixon oozed confidence in an oversized black peacoat

Cozy: The 55-year-old actress tied the coat tightly at the waist and wrapped her neck with a cozy cream scarf

Mark Ronson and wife Grace Gummer, who tied the knot in September, looked very much in love as they attended opening night with his mother Ann Dexter-Jones.

Jesse Tyler Ferguson looked ultra stylish in a beige coat and a maroon turtleneck as he arrived with husband Justin Mikita.

The Modern Family star finished off his ensemble with a pair of plaid trousers and some red patent leather shoes.

Leggy lady: Jane Krakowski showed off her tanned and toned legs in a plunging black blazer dress with satin lapels

Finishing touches: The 30 Rock star, 53, paired her mini dress with some black stiletto heels and an overcoat that she held in one hand as she posed

Other attendees included Hamilton's Leslie Odom Jr, actor Matthew Broderick, designer Zac Posen, and renown theatre producer Jordan Roth.

Marianne Elliott's gender-swapped revival of Company was forced to shutdown in March 2020 in wake of the coronavirus pandemic and its subsequent lockdown.

It was one of many productions, including the 10 time Tony Award-winning musical Moulin Rouge and the popular stage adaptation of Tim Burton's Beetlejuice, that remained in limbo for a year in a half as the virus wreaked havoc on the globe.

Upon the reopening of Broadway in September, Company was one of the lucky few to return to the roster with a preview date set for November 15 and an official opening date scheduled for Thursday, November 9.

Family affair: Mark Ronson and wife Grace Gummer looked very much in love as they attended opening night with his mother Ann Dexter-Jones

Newly weds: Mark and Grace tied the knot in September

Cool pair: Mark and Grace looked undeniably cool in complimentary outfits

Date night: Jesse Tyler Ferguson looked ultra stylish in a beige coat and a maroon turtleneck as he arrived with husband Justin Mikita

Nailed the look: The Modern Family star finished off his ensemble with a pair of plaid trousers and some red patent leather shoes

Riding solo: Bobby Cannavale attended opening night without his longtime partner Rose Byrne

Just 11 days before his passing, Stephen Sondheim - who wrote the music and lyrics for the beloved comedy - attended the musical's November 15 preview where he was greeted with a standing ovation.

Prior to the start of the show, Company's leading lady Patti LuPone took to the stage to dedicate the night's performance to Sondheim.

Company made its original Broadway debut in 1970 at the Alvin Theatre and would go on to snag a record-breaking 14 Tony nominations and six wins.

Tackling the complexities of commitment, coupledom, and emotional vulnerability, Company is deemed as one of the first modern musicals to revolve around adult themes.

Star-studded: Other attendees included Hamilton's Leslie Odom Jr (pictured), actor Matthew Broderick, designer Zac Posen, and renown theatre producer Jordan Roth

Big return: Marianne Elliott's gender-swapped revival of Company was forced to shutdown in March 2020 in wake of the coronavirus pandemic and its subsequent lockdown; Matthew Broderick pictured

The musical was just one of the many contributions Sondheim made to the world of theater during the span of his remarkable 50 year career.

On Friday, November 26, it was revealed that the legendary American composer had suddenly passed away in his Connecticut home the day after celebrating Thanksgiving with friends, as confirmed by his lawyer F. Richard Pappas.

Shortly after the news broke, Company's director Marianne Elliott published a statement on behalf of the production: 'We have lost the Shakespeare of musical theatre.'

Survived: Upon the reopening of Broadway in September, Company was one of the lucky few to return to the roster with a preview date set for November 15 and an official opening date scheduled for Thursday, November 9; Zac Posen pictured

Memorable moment: Just 11 days before his passing, Stephen Sondheim - who wrote the music and lyrics for the beloved comedy - attended the musical's November 15 preview where he was greeted with a standing ovation; Zac Posen pictured
Real Housewives of Melbourne's Gamble Breaux, 49, has tested positive for Covid-19.

The reality star, along with her eye surgeon husband Dr Rick Wolfe, both found out that they'd come down with the virus earlier this week.

Speaking to the RHOM Exclusive Podcast, Gamble joked: 'I asked my husband for Chanel No. 5 and he gave me Covid-19!'

Positive: Real Housewives of Melbourne's Gamble Breaux, 49, has tested positive for Covid-19. The reality star, along with her eye surgeon husband Dr Rick Wolfe, both found out that they'd come down with the virus earlier this week

The reality star also joked that she 'thought she was dying' after getting the sniffles from the virus, but clarified that she's handling it okay.

She originally thought that she'd come down with hay fever, before taking at at-home test and discovering that it was Covid.

Gamble confirmed that she's double vaccinated with AstraZeneca, while husband Rick has also been double vaccinated in addition to receiving a booster shot and is 'doing great' as a result.

The blonde socialite has been busy in recent weeks promoting the new season of RHOM along with her budding music career.

Laughter is the best medicine! Speaking to the RHOM Exclusive Podcast, Gamble joked: 'I asked my husband for Chanel No. 5 and he gave me Covid-19!'

Gamble recently released her new single, Barrenjoey Road, which just hit No. 1 on Australia's independent streaming chart.

In the song's music video, the star walks down Victoria's Portsea Beach on the Morning Peninsula in an altered bathing suit gown by Patbo.

'After the filming wrapped, I jumped in the water with the dress and nearly got pulled out to sea,' she told Daily Mail Australia.

The song was written by Gamble alongside co-writers and producers Leon Todorovic and Troy Nababan at Hammerspace Perth.

Vaxxed: Gamble confirmed that she's double vaccinated with AstraZeneca, while husband Rick has also been double vaccinated in addition to receiving a booster shot

Speaking about the song, Gamble said it was inspired by memories of her late grandmother's house.

'Theres a place in all of us that wasnt necessarily home, but felt safe and comfortable and where your spirit could be free,' she explained.

'Barrenjoey Road is about summer in Sydney, going somewhere you feel safe and about that moment of time that isnt here now but is within us.'

The Real Housewives of Melbourne is currently airing on Foxtel and is the No. 1 most streamed show on the Binge app.
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Kanye 'Ye' West begged Kim Kardashian to 'run right back to me' amid their divorce during a Free Larry Hoover concert on Thursday night which his estranged wife attended.

It was also at the event where he and Drake proved that their years-long feud is finally behind them as they joined forces for a benefit concert to free gang-member Larry Hoover who is serving a life sentence for murder.





The two top rappers had fans at the over 78,000 capacity Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum on their feet as they walked out side-by-side down the iconic venue's steps as the show was also livestreamed on Amazon Prime Video.

West, 44, and Drake, 35, have been advocating for the release of Hoover, a former gang leader who was convicted of murder in the 1970s and is currently serving a life sentence.

Dedication: Kanye 'Ye' West begged Kim Kardashian to 'run right back to me' amid their divorce during a Free Larry Hoover concert on Thursday night which his estranged wife attended

Reconciliation: It was also at the event where he and Drake proved that their years-long feud is finally behind them as they joined forces for a benefit concert to free gang-member Larry Hoover who is currently serving a life sentence for murder

Kanye previously made his case on a track on his recent Donda album where he had a voice recording of Hoover's son Larry Hoover Jr. thanking him for bringing attention to his father's case.

Back in 2018, Kanye had asked then US President Donald Trump to pardon Hoover but the request was not granted.

Regardless, Ye and Drake continued the fight as they delighted fans with an energetic concert which saw them perform separately.

Epic: The two top rappers had fans at the over 78,000 capacity Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum on their feet as they walked out side-by-side down the iconic venue's steps as the show was also livestreamed on Amazon Prime Video

United: West, 44, and Drake, 35, have been advocating for the release of Hoover, a former gang leader who was convicted of murder in the 1970s and is currently serving a life sentence

Format: Regardless, Ye and Drake continued the fight as they delighted fans with an energetic concert which saw them perform separately

Bond: Ye then played his own 2008 hit Can't Tell Me Nothing when Drake joined him on stage before the Canadian crooner carried on with his solo set

Who is Larry Hoover? Larry Hoover, also known as "King Larry," is the notorious former leader of the Black Gangster Disciple Nation, a Chicago street gang that spread nationwide. Larry Hoover seen in 1993 Larry Hoover grew up in Chicago and became the leader of the Supreme Gangsters, which merged with a rival gang to become the Black Gangster Disciple Nation. In 1973, Hoover was sentenced to 150 to 200 years in prison for killing a drug dealer. Despite attempts to portray himself as reformed, he was indicted in 1995 for continuing to orchestrate gang activity from prison. Hoover was born on November 30, 1950, in Jackson, Mississippi. His parents moved the family north to Chicago, Illinois, when Hoover was 4 years old. By age 13, he was on the streets with a group called the Supreme Gangsters, engaging in petty crimes such as theft and mugging. His criminal activity soon evolved to shootings and assaults. Hoover ascended to a leadership role as the Supreme Gangsters grew, and he later joined forces with rival gang kingpin David Barksdale to form the Black Gangster Disciple Nation. In 1969, after Barksdale was wounded in a shooting, Hoover took charge of the Gangster Disciples. The gang assumed control of the South Side drug trade, making more than $1,000 a day in profits. By his early 20s, Hoover had been in and out of prison several times and had endured at least six separate shooting attempts on his life. However, he was unable to escape the reach of the law when he and another Gangster Disciple, Andrew Howard, were charged with murdering dealer William Young on February 26, 1973. The two men were sentenced to 150 to 200 years in prison, with Hoover sent to the maximum-security Stateville Correctional Center in Crest Hill, Illinois. But Hoover's power seemed only to grow inside Stateville. He began protecting other inmates, who in turn became devotees and new recruits for the Gangster Disciples. His control over the other prisoners was recognized by the warden's office, which began looking to Hoover as a positive influence to quell riots and uprisings within the prison system. Hoover, inspired by the biography of Mayor Richard J. Daley, began discouraging violence among his followers. Instead, he made education mandatory for members of the Gangster Disciples and instructed his army to "go to school, learn trades and develop ... talents and skills, so that we will become stronger in society." Changing the G.D. of "Gangster Disciple" to "Growth and Development," Hoover's move to reform began gaining positive attention from the outside. Growth and Development created nonprofit organizations that registered voters, a music label that helped needy children, a series of peaceful protests to fight the closing of public programs and even a clothing line. Dubious prison officials, however, saw Hoover's good intentions as a ploy to get out of prison and resume his illegal activities. While friends and allies on the outside lobbied to get Hoover paroled for his contributions to society, law enforcement agents insisted that he was finding new ways to expand his criminal ventures. The Gangster Disciples had grown to more than 15,000 members in at least five states. Their drug profits had also risen well into the millions of dollarsall of which gang members attributed to the leadership of Hoover. Transferred to another prison in Vienna, Illinois, Hoover was living a luxurious lifestyle that involved new clothes, expensive jewelry, specially prepared meals and private visitations from friends and loved ones. Suspicious authorities began wire-tapping Hoover's private meetings, and discovered that he was running the Gangster Disciple group from within the prison system. Worse still, informants revealed that Hoover's nonprofit organizations were actually fronts for laundering drug money. According to the testimony of Gangster Disciple members, none of the proceeds for any of the so-called charities actually went to helping anyone in need. On August 31, 1995, after a five-year undercover investigation by the federal government, Hoover was indicted on drug conspiracy charges. He was taken from his prison cell and moved to the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Chicago to stand trial. In 1997, Hoover was found guilty on all charges, and sentenced to six life sentences. He is currently serving his sentence at the United States Penitentiary Administrative Maximum Facility in Florence, Colorado. Source: Biography.com Advertisement

However the biggest thrill for diehards no doubt was when Kanye performed Drake's 2010 hit Find Your Love which he produced.

Ye then played his own 2008 hit Can't Tell Me Nothing when Drake joined him on stage before the Canadian crooner carried on with his solo set.

The estranged husband of Kim delighted fans with older hits from his catalogue including Jesus Walks, All Falls Down, and Gold Digger.

Old school cool: The estranged husband of Kim delighted fans with older hits from his catalogue including Jesus Walks, All Falls Down, and Gold Digger

Fashion forward: He donned a shirt which had 'free Hoover' emblazoned on the back along with jeans with the same print and massive knee-high boots

Undying love: However the biggest eyebrow raising moment of the night came when he did his hit Runaway and added a verse just for the 41-year-old SKIMS mogul

He sang: I need you to run right back to me. More specifically, Kimberly'

Moving on? Kardashian - who is currently romantically linked to SNL funnyman Pete Davidson - filed for divorce in February after nearly seven years of marriage

Kim, Kanye and Drake: What's the (former) beef? A huge reason behind the rift between Ye and Drake is centered around Kim as the rapper made multiple references in his lyrics to her and even previously alluded to an affair between the two in his song Wants And Needs in 2018. Making amends: A huge reason behind the rift between Ye and Drake is centered around Kim as the rapper made multiple references in his lyrics to her and even previously alluded to an affair between the two in his song Wants And Needs in 2018 He even namechecked Ye on the track as he said: 'Yeah, I probably should go link with Yeezy, I need me some Jesus / But soon as I started confessin my sins, he wouldnt believe us.' The track comes after it was widely speculated that Drake suggested he and the Keeping Up With the Kardashians starlet had a fling on his 2018 track In My Feelings. He famously repeats the line 'Kiki, do you love me?' on the hit song, leading fans to point out that Kiki is a nickname Kim's sisters sometimes use for her. Drake also spit bars the 2018 song Cant Take a Joke about taking an 'UberX to Hidden Hills' to 'give me somethin I can feel. He was poking fun at the fact that he was neighbors with the estranged couple in the same Calabasas enclave. Kim went on to publicly warn Drake to 'never threaten' her family as she waded into her husband Kanye West's latest explosive feud. The war broke out between Kanye, 41, and Drake after the Canadian musician, 32, reportedly asked for permission to use a sample from West's track Say You Will. Kim warned Drake to stay away from her partner and their children. The Keeping Up With The Kardashians star directly addressed @drake with the eyes of her 59million Twitter followers as her witness to her social media rant. She penned: 'Never threaten my husband or our family. He paved the way for there to be a Drake.' The mother-of-three defended her rapper husband as the 'most brilliant' person she knows as she gushed over his 'genius' and innovative work. She elaborated: 'My husband is the most brilliant person, the most genius person that I know. Advertisement

However the biggest eyebrow raising moment of the night came when he did his hit Runaway and added a verse just for the 41-year-old SKIMS mogul. He sang: I need you to run right back to me. More specifically, Kimberly.'

Kardashian - who is currently romantically linked to SNL funnyman Pete Davidson - filed for divorce in February after nearly seven years of marriage.

A huge reason behind the rift between Ye and Drake is also centered around Kim as the Canadian rapper has made multiple references in his lyrics to her and even previously alluded to an affair between the two in a song tiled Wants And Needs released in March.

Not seeing eye to eye: A huge reason behind the rift between Ye and Drake is also centered around Kim as the Canadian rapper has made multiple references in his lyrics to her and even previously alluded to an affair between the two in a song tiled Wants And Needs released in March

Ouch: He even namechecked Ye on the track as he said: 'Yeah, I probably should go link with Yeezy, I need me some Jesus / But soon as I started confessin my sins, he wouldnt believe us'

Low blow? The track comes after it was widely speculated that Drake suggested he and the Keeping Up With the Kardashians starlet had a fling on his 2018 track In My Feelings

Moved on? Regardless, the drama between the two rappers seems to be all in the past

All good: The two A-list rappers shared an embrace during the epic concert

He even namechecked Ye on the track as he said: 'Yeah, I probably should go link with Yeezy, I need me some Jesus / But soon as I started confessin my sins, he wouldnt believe us.'

The track comes after it was widely speculated that Drake suggested he and the Keeping Up With the Kardashians starlet had a fling on his 2018 track In My Feelings.

He famously repeats the line 'Kiki, do you love me?' on the hit song, leading fans to point out that Kiki is a nickname Kim's sisters sometimes use for her.

Paying homage: However the biggest thrill for diehards no doubt was when Kanye performed Drake's 2010 hit Find Your Love which he produced

They're back: There was plenty of respect between the two as they watched each other's sets from the bleachers and even animatedly rapped each other's lyrics

Together again: The two then finished off the show together as they did one of their few hits together, 2009's Forever, which was off of the More Than A Game soundtrack

Drake also spit bars the 2018 song Cant Take a Joke about taking an 'UberX to Hidden Hills' to 'give me somethin I can feel. He was poking fun at the fact that he was neighbors with the estranged couple in the same Calabasas enclave.

Kim went on to publicly warn Drake to 'never threaten' her family as she waded into her husband Kanye West's latest explosive feud. The war broke out between Kanye, 41, and Drake after the Canadian musician, 32, reportedly asked for permission to use a sample from West's track Say You Will.

Kim warned Drake to stay away from her partner and their children. The Keeping Up With The Kardashians star directly addressed @drake with the eyes of her 59million Twitter followers as her witness to her social media rant. She penned: 'Never threaten my husband or our family. He paved the way for there to be a Drake.'

Stunning: Kim donned a all black couture outfit as she arrived

Aww: Their eldest child North was also seen with some friends

The mother-of-three defended her rapper husband as the 'most brilliant' person she knows as she gushed over his 'genius' and innovative work. She elaborated: 'My husband is the most brilliant person, the most genius person that I know.

Regardless, the drama between the two rappers seems to be all in the past as there was plenty of respect between the two as they watched each other's sets from the bleachers and even animatedly rapped each other's lyrics.

The two then finished off the show together as they did one of their few hits together, 2009's Forever, which was off of the More Than A Game soundtrack.

The event also brought the stars out as Kendall Jenner, Lizzo, Chance The Rapper, Machine Gun Kelly, and Megan Fox were all seen supporting the cause as they attended the one night only event.

Family first: Kendall Jenner rocked leather pants as she arrived

Good as hell: Lizzo wore all white upon her arrival

Power couple: Machine Gun Kelly was seen with actress girlfriend Megan Fox

Pals: Chicago native Chance The Rapper also attended the show

Boxing up: Mike Tyson was in attendance at the bash

Ye and Drake made waves last month when they put their differences aside when the father of four posted a friendly photo of the two together to his Instagram account.

Kanye and Drake were seen standing next to each other and looking relaxed while accompanied by the music executive James Prince outside of Drake's Toronto mansion.

The apparent reconciliation came just over a week after the Jesus Walks rapper shared rare praise for the Canadian actor-turned-musician during his Drink Champs interview, even as he blasted him over threatening lyrics.

Hold me close: The Kardashian-Jenners were supporting the rapper

Here we go: Kendall was joined by her basketball star boyfriend Devin Booker

Stepping out: Corey Gamble, Yellow Beezy and Alexander 'AE' Edwards were all in attendance

Kanye and Drake were seen standing next to each other on stone steps leading up to a stone building's front entrance.

The Donda rapper was dressed casually in a black hoodie with matching jeans and tall black rain boots, and he sported a badge on a lanyard around his neck.

Drake had his hands in the pockets of his plaid jacket and wore dark jeans with white trainers, while Prince cocked a finger gun at the camera.

Kanye, who has changed his legal name to Ye, cleared up any confusion about the meeting by simply captioning the photo with an emoji of a dove holding an olive branch in its beak.

Reunited and it feels so good! Ye and Drake made waves last month when they put their differences aside when the father of four posted a friendly photo of the two together to his Instagram account; pictured with James Prince (L)

Making amends: Kanye cleared up any confusion about the meeting by simply captioning the photo with an emoji of a dove holding an olive branch in its beak

Having a blast: Drake revealed that the former collaborators were spending time together in his hometown of Toronto in a subsequent video on his own Instagram account

Drake revealed that the former collaborators were spending time together in his hometown of Toronto in a subsequent post to his own Instagram account.

The newly reunited friends mugged for the camera and were bathed in purple light.

Drake waved at the camera as Kanye began to bizarrely let out a buzzing, whining sound.

Another video featured controversial comedian Dave Chappelle as he warmed up a crowd inside Drake's Toronto mansion.

'You have to admit to yourself, this s*** is impressive. I cannot believe I'm in a n***a's house,' he said, before praising Drake for how far he had come in the world.

Letting loose: Drake waved at the camera as Kanye began to bizarrely let out a buzzing, whining sound

'N***a's ran from slavery to this place,' he said of the Canadian city. 'But tonight, we feel free.'

Kanye also shared more of Chappelle's toast to the two rappers in his Instagram Stories.

'Make some noise for Kanye and Drake,' he said to cheers from the audience. 'And make some noise for our reconciliation,' he continued, adding, 'We got work to do.'

Drake captioned his post, 'You have reached your destination,' and he tagged the photos to make clear that they were in Toronto.

Star power: Another video featured controversial comedian Dave Chappelle as he warmed up a crowd inside Drake's Toronto mansion

Still work to do: 'Make some noise for Kanye and Drake,' he said to cheers from the audience. 'And make some noise for our reconciliation,' he continued, adding, 'We got work to do'

In Prince's post with the same photo Kanye originally shared, he suggested the once-estranged rappers might join each other on stage soon.

'What a beautiful night I had last night in Canada. Lets make history December 9 Free Larry Hoover Concert,' he wrote.

Last week, Kanye invited Drake to perform at the benefit concert in an Instagram video featuring Prince.

Open invitation: Last week, Kanye invited Drake to perform at the benefit concert in an Instagram video featuring James Prince

Earlier this month, Kanye both continued his feud with Drake and suggested there was a possibility of a reconciliation during his appearance on Drink Champs.

The pair have been in a war of words since 2009, when Kanye critiqued one of Drake's lyrics on the Young Money song Every Girl.

In response, days later Drake said in an interview, 'Before I met him, I had the utmost respect for Kanye West. Id even go as far as to say hes the most influential person as far as a musician that Id ever had in my life.'

Since then, the two have continued to exchange barbs via their music and interviews.

Early on in his chat, Kanye shared some rare praise for the hitmaker, calling him a very important artist who added something to the algorithm.'

He added: 'The style of rap that he was doing was more sophisticated than the style of rap that I grew up on,' noting that Drake's song had 'good melodies' and 'good music.'

But after he was asked if he could 'smoke' Drake in a Verzuz battle, Kanye replied, 'Yeah, absolutely.'

He went on: 'It already happened. He played one of my leaked songs and it was better than every other song this year,' he said of a track that featured Outkast's Andre 3000.

Going strong: Earlier this month, Kanye both continued his feud with Drake and suggested there was a possibility of a reconciliation during his appearance on Drink Champs

Kanye also denied leaking Drake's address. In August, he estranged husband of Kim Kardashian shared, then deleted, a map detailing the purported location of Drake's Toronto home, which appeared to be in response to Drake's jab at him on a collaboration with Trippie Redd, in which he referred to Kanye as 'burned out.'

Explaining his post, Kanye said: 'No, he advertised it when he was building the house. Everyone knows it. It's like a place in Canada you go by. It's like a monument.

'You can find it. That's how I was able to find it. It's Googleable. It's on Google Maps.'

He also complained that those close to him worried he was having an 'episode' whenever he referenced his feuds in his music.

Mixed bag: He praised Drake's 'sophisticated' version of rap, even as he accused Drake of threatening him in his lyrics and wondered whether he had had an affair with Kim Kardashian; seen with Kenny Burns in 2015

He defended his reactions after believing that Drake threatened him on a track.

'A man threatening my life on a song and they wonder why you end up in the hospital,' he said, adding that Drake was 'driving me crazy' with his jabs in songs.

He claimed that Drake said to him, 'I never f***ed Kim.'

'But you acted like you did,' Kanye continued. 'You've got bars, it's like, "Hidden Hills, give your wife the chills."'

He said it was disrespectful and said he asked Drake if he ever 'DMed' Kim.

Getting personal: Kanye and Drake's feud hit its nadir in 2018, when Kanye produced Pusha T's diss track The Story Of Adidon, in which Pusha revealed that Drake had a child with former adult actress Sophie Brussaux; Drake seen in 2019 in LA

Although Kanye and Drake have had minor clashes throughout the years, their relationship took a significant blow after Kanye produced Pusha T's album Daytona in 2018.

Pusha went after Drake with his song Infrared, which accused the Certified Love Boy rapper of using a ghostwriter.

He followed it up with The Story Of Adidon, in which Pusha revealed to the world that Drake had fathered a child with former adult actress Sophie Brussaux.

Kanye reportedly knew of Drake's child, so the former Degrassi star reportedly became convinced that he had shared the information with Pusha T, though Kanye has since denied revealing that Drake had a son.

In a 2019 interview with Rap Radar, Drake claimed he had 'no desire to mend anything with' Kanye or Pusha, though he seems to have changed his tune with the Runaway rapper.

Their feud continued until just months ago, as some fans speculated that one of the reasons Kanye repeatedly pushed back the release date of Donda was to steal some of Drake's thunder with the release of his album Certified Lover Boy.

But fans may soon have a chance to hear the rap titans working together again if they're able to bury their feud for good.
Megan Fox dazzled on Thursday when she stepped out with boyfriend Machine Gun Kelly to attend the Free Larry Hoover concert in Los Angeles, a benefit concert to free gang-member Larry Hoover who is currently serving a life sentence for murder.

Megan looked sensational in a long black leather coat that boasted faux fur detailing around the sleeves and neckline.

Underneath the actress, 35, opted to wear casual blue jeans which she teamed with strappy black high heels.

Couple: Megan Fox held hands with boyfriend Machine Gun Kelly at Kanye 'Ye' West and Drake's Free Larry Hoover concert at the LA Memorial Coliseum on Thursday

The Jennifer's Body star wore her raven tresses in bouncy waves and finished off her look with a swipe of lipgloss.

Machine Gun Kelly clutched her hand in his as they walked into the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum.

He donned a black hoodie emblazoned with a sparkly skeleton for the event, pairing it with black vinyl trousers, black boots and a pink cap.

Loved up: Machine Gun Kelly clutched her hand in his as they walked into the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum

The benefit concert saw Kanye 'Ye' West and Drake put their years-long feud behind them to join forces to try and free Hoover.

The two top rappers had fans at the over 78,000 capacity Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum on their feet as they walked out side-by-side down the iconic venue's steps as the show was also livestreamed on Amazon Prime Video.

Kanye, 44, and Drake, 35, have been advocating for the release of Hoover, a former gang leader who was convicted of murder in the 1970s and is currently serving a life sentence.

Reunion: The benefit concert saw Kanye 'Ye' West and Drake put their years-long feud behind them to join forces to try and free Hoover

Kanye previously made his case on a track on his recent Donda album where he had a voice recording of Hoover's son Larry Hoover Jr. thanking him for bringing attention to his father's case.

Back in 2018, Kanye had asked then US President Donald Trump to pardon Hoover but the request was not granted.

Regardless, Ye and Drake continued the fight as they delighted fans with an energetic concert which saw them perform separately.

Coming together: They walked out side-by-side down the iconic venue's steps as the show was also livestreamed on Amazon Prime Video

However the biggest thrill for diehards no doubt was when Kanye performed Drake's 2010 hit Find Your Love which he produced.

Ye then played his own 2008 hit Can't Tell Me Nothing when Drake joined him on stage before the Canadian crooner carried on with his solo set.

The estranged husband of Kim Kardashian delighted fans with older hits from his catalogue including Jesus Walks, All Falls Down, and Gold Digger.

The two then finished off the show together as they did one of their few hits together, 2009's Forever, which was off of the More Than A Game soundtrack.

Kanye last month was seen in an Instagram clip uploaded by music executive and promoter J. Prince, 57, in which he spoke about his past rivalry with Drake and his wish to put it behind them to help 'with the ultimate purpose being to free Larry Hoover.'

In the clip, Kanye stood alongside J. Prince and said, 'This is Ye and J. Prince. I'm making this video to address an ongoing back-and-forth between myself and Drake. Both me and Drake have taken shots at each other and it's time to put it to rest.'

Ye referenced the commercial success of his album Donda and Drake's Certified Lover Boy in extending the invitation for his event.

'I'm asking Drake ... to join me onstage as a special guest to share the two biggest albums of the year live in Los Angeles,' he said, adding the event 'will not only bring awareness to our cause, but prove to people everywhere how much more we can accomplish when we lay our pride to the side and come together.'

Reunited and it feels so good! Ye and Drake made waves last month when they put their differences aside when the father of four posted a friendly photo of the two together to his Instagram account; pictured with James Prince (L)
Douglas Booth cut a dapper figure in a tailored grey suit as he stepped out after the Dior Men's fashion show on Thursday in London.

The actor, 28, looked incredible as he made his way to Dior creative director Kim Jones' star-studded after party.

Douglas oozed sophistication as he made his way out of the venue in an unbuttoned white shirt.

Looking good: Douglas Booth cut a dapper figure in a tailored grey suit as he stepped out after the Dior Men's fashion show on Thursday in London

The Worried About The Boy star completed his smart style with black leather shoes.

Inside the venue, earlier in the night Douglas posed up a storm on the red carpet.

Dior showcased its Fall/Winter 2022 runway show in London instead of Paris where it unveiled last years collection.

The location holds a special significance to Dior Men creative director Kim Jones, who was born in London.

Dapper: he actor, 28, looked incredible as he made his way to Dior creative director Kim Jones' star-studded after party

Work it: Inside the venue, earlier in the night Douglas posed up a storm on the red carpet

In a statement, Dior CEO Pietro Beccari shared: 'We are proud and excited to be bringing this unique event to life in London, a particularly symbolic destination dear to Monsieur Dior and the House since 1947.

'London is, of course, also the city closest to Kim Jones' heart, where he was born and where he lives, which inspires him with its inexhaustible creativity and which he loves deeply.'

It comes after Douglas got engaged to his girlfriend Bel Powley earlier this year.

Pose: The Worried About the Boy star completed his smart style with black leather shoes

The star shared the happy news with his Instagram followers in July, as he revealed he had popped the question to the actress, 29.

Douglas shared an adorable loved-up snap with Bel as she flashed her dazzling engagement ring to the camera, while also bearing a beaming smile.

Bel held up her hand to reveal a stunning solitaire diamond ring with a gold band.

Douglas also shared images of the picturesque setting as they sat on a picnic blanket and enjoyed a feast of nibbles, surrounded by bouquets of flowers.

Happy news: It comes after Douglas got engaged to his girlfriend Bel Powley earlier this year

Congratulations! The star shared the happy news with his Instagram followers in July, as he revealed he had popped the question to his actress girlfriend, 29

Cute: Douglas also shared images of the picturesque setting as they sat on a picnic blanket and enjoyed a feast of nibbles, surrounded by bouquets of flowers

He captioned the gallery: 'Very, VERY happy! @belpowley'

Later on in the evening Douglas shared a radiant snap of his love flashing her ring yet again as they dined at The Ivy.

Douglas has been linked to Bel since 2016, after the pair were spotted kissing on a night out.

Bel and Douglas are thought to have met on the set of period romance A Storm In The Stars, which was filmed in Dublin and in Luxembourg in 2016.

Haifaa Al-Mansour's film looked at the romance between 18-year-old Mary Shelley, played by Elle Fanning, and Douglas Booth's Percy Bysshe Shelley.

Glowing: Later on in the evening Douglas shared a radiant snap of his love flashing her ring yet again as they dined at The Ivy

Bel previously told Browns Fashion: 'He was playing Percy Shelley and Elle Fanning was playing Mary; I played Claire Clairmont, Mary's stepsister. That's when we fell in love  ahhh!'

During filming Douglas shared several loved-up snaps with Bel to his Instagram account.

The actor has been linked with several woman including Prince Harry's ex girlfriend Cressida Bonas after the pair arrived at Centre Court at Wimbledon together in 2016.

Pride And Prejudice And Zombies actor Douglas starred in The Riot Club alongside Freddie Fox, who Cressida was previously linked to.

Romantic: Bel and Douglas are thought to have met on the set of period romance A Storm In The Stars, which was filmed in Dublin and in Luxembourg in 2016

Douglas has also been said to have dated his former co-stars Ellie Bamber and Vanessa Kirby.

Another potential famous beau includes Miley Cyrus who he worked alongside in teenage drama LOL.

Bel is best known for her role in coming-of-age drama The Diary of a Teenage Girl opposite Kristen Wiig and Alexander Skarsgard, as well as appearances in Benidorm and A Royal Night Out.

Having fun: Douglas and Bel are pictured on a night out with pals in 2018

After wrapping filming on Pride And Prejudice And Zombies in 2016 - a tongue in cheek retelling of the Jane Austen classic - Douglas announced he was looking for a girlfriend.

'I'd love to have a girlfriend. I don't think Tinder's the way I'm going to find her somehow,' he told Metro.

'I don't think it would go down very well. I'm not sure how it would work. Some of the people would just think it was fake.'
Stranger Things couple Natalia Dyer and Charlie Heaton left the Dior afterparty in London together on Thursday night.

The Nancy Wheeler actress, 26, and Jonathan Byers actor, 27, made a rare public appearance for the bash, with Natalia looking chic in a red ensemble.

She showed off her sense of style in the bright buttoned jacket which she teamed with matching suit trousers.

Together: Stranger Things couple Natalia Dyer and Charlie Heaton left the Dior afterparty in London together on Thursday night

The beauty completed her look with a pair of chunky white shoes and carried a brown leather handbag with her.

Natalia wore her red tresses in loose waves over her shoulders and opted for a naturally pretty makeup look.

Meanwhile Charlie looked dapper in a smart brown coat and navy trousers which he wore with a white roll neck.

Out and about: The Nancy Wheeler actress, 26, and Jonathan Byers actor, 27, made a rare public appearance for the party, with Natalia looking chic in a red ensemble

Style: She showed off her sense of style in the bright buttoned jacket which she teamed with matching suit trousers

The pair have kept their relationship status fairly private over the years after starting dating in 2016.

Last year Charlie explained to GQ that his romance with co-star Natalia wasn't necessarily a secret from the start.

The actor admitted that the couple had a difficult time even defining what their new status meant.

When asked what took so long for the couple to make things official publicly, Heaton revealed that there wasn't a reason.

Stepping out: The beauty completed her look with a pair of chunky white shoes and carried a brown leather handbag with her

'We didn't really know what the relationship was,' Heaton said. 'The caginess, anyway, might have been unnecessary.'

Heaton and Dyer met in a casting room before officially landing their respective roles on the popular Netflix show.

And Stranger Things co-creator Matt Duffer admitted that the pair's chemistry was out of control when they first read for their parts, with Heaton landing the role as Jonathan Byers and Natalia playing Nancy Wheeler.

'That first audition, we did a chemistry read with [Heaton and] Natalia, and sparks were flying,' Duffer said.

Glowing: Natalia wore her red tresses in loose waves over her shoulders and opted for a naturally pretty makeup look

Stranger Things follows a group of teenagers in the fictional town of Hawkins during the '80s, and also stars Millie Bobby Brown, Winona Ryder, David Harbour and Finn Wolfhard.

Natalia previously explained to InStyle magazine that she likes to give her relationships '100 percent' and keep her love life out of the spotlight and off social media.

'It's [social media] a great platform, but it scares me. I'm fearful of general accessibility,' she said. 'I got rid of my Facebook; I don't do Twitter. I prefer to keep my personal life separate. My Instagram is a lot more work-based than life-based.'
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Kim Kardashian and her family led the stars attending her ex-husband Kanye 'Ye' West and Drake's charity show obn Thursday, held in an effort to free Larry Hoover from prison and raise funds for prison reform organizations.

West, 44, and Drake, 35, alongside a slew of other stars, have been advocating for the release of Hoover, a former gang leader who was convicted of murder in the 1973 and is currently serving a life sentence.

Stars including the Kardashians, Megan Fox, Machine Gun Kelly and Lizzo, gathered at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum for the $10million show, which Kanye dreamed up - putting his differences with Drake aside in a bid to help Hoover, following his meeting with Donald Trump in the same capacity.

Supportive star: Kim Kardashian and her family led the stars attending her ex-husband Kanye 'Ye' West and Drake 's charity show obn Thursday, held in an effort to free Larry Hoover from prison and raise funds for prison reform organizations

Kim was spotted in the venue with her and Kanye's daughter North, eight, son Saint, six, her sister Kendall Jenner, sister Kylie Jenner's ex Tyga, her mum Kris Jenner and Kris' boyfriend Corey Gamble.

She wore her current wardrobe staple of a head-to-toe black body suit while she was flanked with friends, family and security to strut her stuff into the event alongside a host of stars.

Kim's presence at the gig was particularly poignant as Kanye referenced his ex while he performed his hit Runway - adding a new verse, directed at Kim, saying: I need you to run right back to me. More specifically, Kimberly.'

Kim filed for divorce in February after six years of marriage yet Kanye has made several public and increasingly bizarre bids to reunite with the stunner in interviews and on-stage.

The stars: Stars including the Kardashians, Megan Fox, Machine Gun Kelly and Lizzo, gathered at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum for the $10million show, which Kanye dreamed up - putting his differences with Drake aside

Dedication: Kanye 'Ye' West begged Kim to 'run right back to me' amid their divorce during a Free Larry Hoover concert on Thursday night which his estranged wife attended

Moving on? Kardashian - who is currently romantically linked to SNL funnyman Pete Davidson - filed for divorce in February after nearly seven years of marriage

Support: Kim and Kanye's daughter North, eight, joined pals at the event

Stunning: Kim donned a all black couture outfit as she arrived

Other stars in her wake included Machine Gun Kelly, and Megan Fox who stayed close together after watching the dazzling performance from the star-studded line-up.

Megan opted for her usual rocker style in a lengthy black leather coat with a fur trim paired with wide-legged jeans as she headed out hand-in-hand with her boyfriend.

Kanye previously made his case to free Hoover on a track on his recent Donda album where he had a voice recording of Hoover's son Larry Hoover Jr. thanking him for bringing attention to his father's case. Back in 2018, Kanye had asked then US President Trump to pardon Hoover but the request was not granted.

Supportive family: Kim held hands with North as they left the concert

Stepping out: The whole clan left together while joined by security

Holding on: Kim held on to a cap from the merchandise for the gig

Family first: Kendall Jenner rocked leather pants as she arrived

Out and about: It was a family affair for Kim and the Jenners as well as the West clan

Regardless, Kanye and Drake continued the fight as they delighted fans with an energetic concert which saw them perform separately. However the biggest thrill for diehards no doubt was when Kanye performed Drake's 2010 hit Find Your Love which he produced.

Kanye then played his own 2008 hit Can't Tell Me Nothing when Drake joined him on stage before the Canadian crooner carried on with his solo set.

He delighted fans with older hits from his catalogue including Jesus Walks, All Falls Down, and Gold Digger. The two then finished off the show together as they did one of their few hits together, 2009's Forever, which was off of the More Than A Game soundtrack.

Her love: Kenall was later joined by her boyfriend Devin Booker

Out and about: Lizzo looked sensational in the sheer ensemble with a boned corset and sheer trousers

Good as hell: Lizzo wore all white upon her arrival at the star-studded venue

Power couple: Machine Gun Kelly was seen with actress girlfriend Megan Fox

Reconciliation: It was also at the event where he and Drake proved that their years-long feud is finally behind them as they joined forces for a benefit concert to free gang-member Larry Hoover who is currently serving a life sentence for murder

Stepping out: Corey Gamble, Yellow Beezy and Alexander 'AE' Edwards were all in attendance

Who is Larry Hoover? Larry Hoover, also known as "King Larry," is the notorious former leader of the Black Gangster Disciple Nation, a Chicago street gang that spread nationwide. Larry Hoover seen in 1993 Larry Hoover grew up in Chicago and became the leader of the Supreme Gangsters, which merged with a rival gang to become the Black Gangster Disciple Nation. In 1973, Hoover was sentenced to 150 to 200 years in prison for killing a drug dealer. Despite attempts to portray himself as reformed, he was indicted in 1995 for continuing to orchestrate gang activity from prison. Hoover was born on November 30, 1950, in Jackson, Mississippi. His parents moved the family north to Chicago, Illinois, when Hoover was 4 years old. By age 13, he was on the streets with a group called the Supreme Gangsters, engaging in petty crimes such as theft and mugging. His criminal activity soon evolved to shootings and assaults. Hoover ascended to a leadership role as the Supreme Gangsters grew, and he later joined forces with rival gang kingpin David Barksdale to form the Black Gangster Disciple Nation. In 1969, after Barksdale was wounded in a shooting, Hoover took charge of the Gangster Disciples. The gang assumed control of the South Side drug trade, making more than $1,000 a day in profits. By his early 20s, Hoover had been in and out of prison several times and had endured at least six separate shooting attempts on his life. However, he was unable to escape the reach of the law when he and another Gangster Disciple, Andrew Howard, were charged with murdering dealer William Young on February 26, 1973. The two men were sentenced to 150 to 200 years in prison, with Hoover sent to the maximum-security Stateville Correctional Center in Crest Hill, Illinois. But Hoover's power seemed only to grow inside Stateville. He began protecting other inmates, who in turn became devotees and new recruits for the Gangster Disciples. His control over the other prisoners was recognized by the warden's office, which began looking to Hoover as a positive influence to quell riots and uprisings within the prison system. Hoover, inspired by the biography of Mayor Richard J. Daley, began discouraging violence among his followers. Instead, he made education mandatory for members of the Gangster Disciples and instructed his army to "go to school, learn trades and develop ... talents and skills, so that we will become stronger in society." Changing the G.D. of "Gangster Disciple" to "Growth and Development," Hoover's move to reform began gaining positive attention from the outside. Growth and Development created nonprofit organizations that registered voters, a music label that helped needy children, a series of peaceful protests to fight the closing of public programs and even a clothing line. Dubious prison officials, however, saw Hoover's good intentions as a ploy to get out of prison and resume his illegal activities. While friends and allies on the outside lobbied to get Hoover paroled for his contributions to society, law enforcement agents insisted that he was finding new ways to expand his criminal ventures. The Gangster Disciples had grown to more than 15,000 members in at least five states. Their drug profits had also risen well into the millions of dollarsall of which gang members attributed to the leadership of Hoover. Transferred to another prison in Vienna, Illinois, Hoover was living a luxurious lifestyle that involved new clothes, expensive jewelry, specially prepared meals and private visitations from friends and loved ones. Suspicious authorities began wire-tapping Hoover's private meetings, and discovered that he was running the Gangster Disciple group from within the prison system. Worse still, informants revealed that Hoover's nonprofit organizations were actually fronts for laundering drug money. According to the testimony of Gangster Disciple members, none of the proceeds for any of the so-called charities actually went to helping anyone in need. On August 31, 1995, after a five-year undercover investigation by the federal government, Hoover was indicted on drug conspiracy charges. He was taken from his prison cell and moved to the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Chicago to stand trial. In 1997, Hoover was found guilty on all charges, and sentenced to six life sentences. He is currently serving his sentence at the United States Penitentiary Administrative Maximum Facility in Florence, Colorado. Source: Biography.com Advertisement

Boxing up: Mike Tyson was also in attendance to support the cause

There was no general admission to the show, and the concert seats have been reserved, sources told the outlet. Organizers have been focused on beefed-up security just a month after the Astroworld tragedy in Houston in which 10 people died after a crowd surge.

The concert has been streamed on Amazon Prime and in IMAX theaters.

Kanye has past sought to free Hoover, the founder of Chicago's Gangster Disciples street gang, who in 1973 received a life sentence in prison following a murder conviction. Hoover was subsequently sentenced to six additional life sentences in 1997 after he was found guilty in connection with ongoing gang involvement.

United: West, 44, and Drake, 35, have been advocating for the release of Hoover, a former gang leader who was convicted of murder in the 1970s and is currently serving a life sentence

Ye collaborated with Hoover's son, Larry Hoover Jr. on the song Jesus Lord earlier this year, in which Hoover Jr. showed his gratitude for West's continued efforts.

In his October 11, 2018 meeting with former President Donald Trump in the Oval Office, Ye lobbied the president to free Hoover 'because he started doing positive for the community' in Chicago.

'Its very important for me to get Hoover out because in an alternate universe, I am him and I have to go and get him free,' he said at the time.

This past July, a federal judge denied a motion to grant Hoover, 71, an abridged sentence under the FIRST STEP Act, a law that grants prisoners sentence leniency based on good behavior and training for a job. Hoover is currently in custody at the ADX federal prison in Florence, Colorado.

Epic: The two top rappers had fans at the over 78,000 capacity Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum on their feet as they walked out side-by-side down the iconic venue's steps as the show was also livestreamed on Amazon Prime Video

Kanye 'Ye' West begs Kim Kardashian to 'run right back to me' as he and Drake prove their bitter feud is behind them by joining forces for Free Larry Hoover concert in LA

Kanye 'Ye' West begged Kim Kardashian to 'run right back to me' amid their divorce during a Free Larry Hoover concert on Thursday night which his estranged wife attended.

It was also at the event where he and Drake proved that their years-long feud is finally behind them as they joined forces for a benefit concert to free gang-member Larry Hoover who is currently serving a life sentence for murder.

The two top rappers had fans at the over 78,000 capacity Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum on their feet as they walked out side-by-side down the iconic venue's steps as the show was also livestreamed on Amazon Prime Video.

West, 44, and Drake, 35, have been advocating for the release of Hoover, a former gang leader who was convicted of murder in the 1970s and is currently serving a life sentence.

Dedication: Kanye 'Ye' West begged Kim Kardashian to 'run right back to me' amid their divorce during a Free Larry Hoover concert on Thursday night which his estranged wife attended

Reconciliation: It was also at the event where he and Drake proved that their years-long feud is finally behind them as they joined forces for a benefit concert to free gang-member Larry Hoover who is currently serving a life sentence for murder

Kanye previously made his case on a track on his recent Donda album where he had a voice recording of Hoover's son Larry Hoover Jr. thanking him for bringing attention to his father's case.

Back in 2018, Kanye had asked then US President Donald Trump to pardon Hoover but the request was not granted.

Regardless, Ye and Drake continued the fight as they delighted fans with an energetic concert which saw them perform separately.

United: West, 44, and Drake, 35, have been advocating for the release of Hoover, a former gang leader who was convicted of murder in the 1970s and is currently serving a life sentence

Format: Regardless, Ye and Drake continued the fight as they delighted fans with an energetic concert which saw them perform separately

Bond: Ye then played his own 2008 hit Can't Tell Me Nothing when Drake joined him on stage before the Canadian crooner carried on with his solo set

However the biggest thrill for diehards no doubt was when Kanye performed Drake's 2010 hit Find Your Love which he produced.

Ye then played his own 2008 hit Can't Tell Me Nothing when Drake joined him on stage before the Canadian crooner carried on with his solo set.

The estranged husband of Kim delighted fans with older hits from his catalogue including Jesus Walks, All Falls Down, and Gold Digger.

Old school cool: The estranged husband of Kim delighted fans with older hits from his catalogue including Jesus Walks, All Falls Down, and Gold Digger

Fashion forward: He donned a shirt which had 'free Hoover' emblazoned on the back along with jeans with the same print and massive knee-high boots

Undying love: However the biggest eyebrow raising moment of the night came when he did his hit Runaway and added a verse just for the 41-year-old SKIMS mogul

He sang: I need you to run right back to me. More specifically, Kimberly'

However the biggest eyebrow raising moment of the night came when he did his hit Runaway and added a verse just for the 41-year-old SKIMS mogul.

He sang: I need you to run right back to me. More specifically, Kimberly.'

Kardashian - who is currently romantically linked to SNL funnyman Pete Davidson - filed for divorce in February after nearly seven years of marriage.

They're back: There was plenty of respect between the two as they watched each other's sets from the bleachers and even animatedly rapped each other's lyrics

Together again: The two then finished off the show together as they did one of their few hits together, 2009's Forever, which was off of the More Than A Game soundtrack

There was plenty of respect between the two as they watched each other's sets from the bleachers and even animatedly rapped each other's lyrics.

The two then finished off the show together as they did one of their few hits together, 2009's Forever, which was off of the More Than A Game soundtrack.

The event also brought the stars out as Kendall Jenner, Lizzo, Chance The Rapper, Machine Gun Kelly, and Megan Fox were all seen supporting the cause as they attended the one night only event.

Reunited and it feels so good! Ye and Drake made waves last month when they put their differences aside when the father of four posted a friendly photo of the two together to his Instagram account; pictured with James Prince (L)

Ye and Drake made waves last month when they put their differences aside when the father of four posted a friendly photo of the two together to his Instagram account.

Kanye and Drake were seen standing next to each other and looking relaxed while accompanied by the music executive James Prince outside of Drake's Toronto mansion.

The apparent reconciliation came just over a week after the Jesus Walks rapper shared rare praise for the Canadian actor-turned-musician during his Drink Champs interview, even as he blasted him over threatening lyrics.

Making amends: Kanye cleared up any confusion about the meeting by simply captioning the photo with an emoji of a dove holding an olive branch in its beak

Kanye and Drake were seen standing next to each other on stone steps leading up to a stone building's front entrance.

The Donda rapper was dressed casually in a black hoodie with matching jeans and tall black rain boots, and he sported a badge on a lanyard around his neck.

Drake had his hands in the pockets of his plaid jacket and wore dark jeans with white trainers, while Prince cocked a finger gun at the camera.

Kanye, who has changed his legal name to Ye, cleared up any confusion about the meeting by simply captioning the photo with an emoji of a dove holding an olive branch in its beak.

Having a blast: Drake revealed that the former collaborators were spending time together in his hometown of Toronto in a subsequent video on his own Instagram account

Drake revealed that the former collaborators were spending time together in his hometown of Toronto in a subsequent post to his own Instagram account.

The newly reunited friends mugged for the camera and were bathed in purple light.

Drake waved at the camera as Kanye began to bizarrely let out a buzzing, whining sound.

Another video featured controversial comedian Dave Chappelle as he warmed up a crowd inside Drake's Toronto mansion.

'You have to admit to yourself, this s*** is impressive. I cannot believe I'm in a n***a's house,' he said, before praising Drake for how far he had come in the world.

Letting loose: Drake waved at the camera as Kanye began to bizarrely let out a buzzing, whining sound

'N***a's ran from slavery to this place,' he said of the Canadian city. 'But tonight, we feel free.'

Kanye also shared more of Chappelle's toast to the two rappers in his Instagram Stories.

'Make some noise for Kanye and Drake,' he said to cheers from the audience. 'And make some noise for our reconciliation,' he continued, adding, 'We got work to do.'

Drake captioned his post, 'You have reached your destination,' and he tagged the photos to make clear that they were in Toronto.

Star power: Another video featured controversial comedian Dave Chappelle as he warmed up a crowd inside Drake's Toronto mansion

Still work to do: 'Make some noise for Kanye and Drake,' he said to cheers from the audience. 'And make some noise for our reconciliation,' he continued, adding, 'We got work to do'

In Prince's post with the same photo Kanye originally shared, he suggested the once-estranged rappers might join each other on stage soon.

'What a beautiful night I had last night in Canada. Lets make history December 9 Free Larry Hoover Concert,' he wrote.

Last week, Kanye invited Drake to perform at the benefit concert in an Instagram video featuring Prince.

Open invitation: Last week, Kanye invited Drake to perform at the benefit concert in an Instagram video featuring James Prince

Earlier this month, Kanye both continued his feud with Drake and suggested there was a possibility of a reconciliation during his appearance on Drink Champs.

The pair have been in a war of words since 2009, when Kanye critiqued one of Drake's lyrics on the Young Money song Every Girl.

In response, days later Drake said in an interview, 'Before I met him, I had the utmost respect for Kanye West. Id even go as far as to say hes the most influential person as far as a musician that Id ever had in my life.'

Since then, the two have continued to exchange barbs via their music and interviews.

Early on in his chat, Kanye shared some rare praise for the hitmaker, calling him a very important artist who added something to the algorithm.'

He added: 'The style of rap that he was doing was more sophisticated than the style of rap that I grew up on,' noting that Drake's song had 'good melodies' and 'good music.'

But after he was asked if he could 'smoke' Drake in a Verzuz battle, Kanye replied, 'Yeah, absolutely.'

He went on: 'It already happened. He played one of my leaked songs and it was better than every other song this year,' he said of a track that featured Outkast's Andre 3000.

Going strong: Earlier this month, Kanye both continued his feud with Drake and suggested there was a possibility of a reconciliation during his appearance on Drink Champs

Kanye also denied leaking Drake's address. In August, he estranged husband of Kim Kardashian shared, then deleted, a map detailing the purported location of Drake's Toronto home, which appeared to be in response to Drake's jab at him on a collaboration with Trippie Redd, in which he referred to Kanye as 'burned out.'

Explaining his post, Kanye said: 'No, he advertised it when he was building the house. Everyone knows it. It's like a place in Canada you go by. It's like a monument.

'You can find it. That's how I was able to find it. It's Googleable. It's on Google Maps.'

He also complained that those close to him worried he was having an 'episode' whenever he referenced his feuds in his music.

Mixed bag: He praised Drake's 'sophisticated' version of rap, even as he accused Drake of threatening him in his lyrics and wondered whether he had had an affair with Kim Kardashian; seen with Kenny Burns in 2015

He defended his reactions after believing that Drake threatened him on a track.

'A man threatening my life on a song and they wonder why you end up in the hospital,' he said, adding that Drake was 'driving me crazy' with his jabs in songs.

He claimed that Drake said to him, 'I never f***ed Kim.'

'But you acted like you did,' Kanye continued. 'You've got bars, it's like, "Hidden Hills, give your wife the chills."'

He said it was disrespectful and said he asked Drake if he ever 'DMed' Kim.

Getting personal: Kanye and Drake's feud hit its nadir in 2018, when Kanye produced Pusha T's diss track The Story Of Adidon, in which Pusha revealed that Drake had a child with former adult actress Sophie Brussaux; Drake seen in 2019 in LA

Although Kanye and Drake have had minor clashes throughout the years, their relationship took a significant blow after Kanye produced Pusha T's album Daytona in 2018.

Pusha went after Drake with his song Infrared, which accused the Certified Love Boy rapper of using a ghostwriter.

He followed it up with The Story Of Adidon, in which Pusha revealed to the world that Drake had fathered a child with former adult actress Sophie Brussaux.

Kanye reportedly knew of Drake's child, so the former Degrassi star reportedly became convinced that he had shared the information with Pusha T, though Kanye has since denied revealing that Drake had a son.

In a 2019 interview with Rap Radar, Drake claimed he had 'no desire to mend anything with' Kanye or Pusha, though he seems to have changed his tune with the Runaway rapper.

Their feud continued until just months ago, as some fans speculated that one of the reasons Kanye repeatedly pushed back the release date of Donda was to steal some of Drake's thunder with the release of his album Certified Lover Boy.

But fans may soon have a chance to hear the rap titans working together again if they're able to bury their feud for good.
Ozzy Osbourne was in high spirits as he met up with friends in Beverly Hills this week, including Red Hot Chili Peppers drummer Chad Smith.

The Black Sabbath frontman, 73, closed his eyes as he warmly hugged Chad, 60, in a meet-up coming nearly two years after they collaborated on Ozzy's solo album Ordinary Man, which was released in February last year.

Hot of their heels was another friend offering Ozzy, who revealed he was diagnosed with Parkinson's Disease last year, a helping hand.

Friends in high places: Ozzy Osbourne, 73, was in high spirits as he met friends in Beverly Hills this week, including Red Hot Chili Peppers drummer Chad Smith, 60, who hugged him

Ozzy was clad in his trademark all-black clothes while his long hair rested on his shoulders, with a hint of grey visible amongst the brown.

The pair were joined by a number of pals who dressed casually for their meeting.

He previously told Louder of their collaboration: 'Chad came in and we would go in and jam during the day and I would go work out the songs in the evenings.

'I previously had said to [wife] Sharon I should be doing an album, but in the back of my mind I was going, "I haven't got the f**king strength." I really hope people listen to it and enjoy it, because I put my heart and soul into this album.'

Dressed to impress: Black Sabbath frontman Ozzy wore a long-sleeved black top and had a gold chain hanging over it to the front, which he was wearing around his neck

Musical pals: Ozzy and Chad have been collaborated on Ozzy's solo album Ordinary Man, which was released in February last year

Last year, Ozzy and his family revealed publicly that the Grammy winner had been diagnosed with Parkinson's disease.

'It was like that one after the other and it's like, woah, just a minute, you know?' Sharon reflected. 'It breaks your heart that he wants to get back. He misses his friends, his musicians, they're his partners. He misses that life.'

She added: 'But with his Parkinson's, he's fine. He's fine, he's got it under control.'

Following his meet with Chad, a detective was later pictured in the street close to Ozzy's home, investigating an incident amid Los Angeles' current crime wave.

Tourists have been advised to stay away from the city as their safety cannot be guaranteed.

Fame game: Chad (right) is known for playing drums with the world famous band Red Hot Chilli Peppers (pictured 2019)

Jamie McBride, the head of the LA Police Protective League, the union representing LAPD officers told CBS Los Angeles: 'My message to anyone thinking about coming to Los Angeles, especially during the holiday season, is dont.'

He added: 'We cant guarantee your safety. It is really, really out of control. I said it to people before, its like that movie Purge, you know, instead of 24 hours to commit your crime, these people have 365 days days to commit whatever they want.'

His comments come after armed robbers stole $100,000 (75,759) in jewellery from the downtown Intercontinental Hotel early Tuesday morning, following a string of smash-and-grab and home invasion robberies across the city.
Stephen Sondheim's Company made its long-awaited return to Broadway on Thursday night just two weeks after the famed composer/lyricist's passing at the age of 91.

In attendance at the opening night at the Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre in New York City were Mark Ronson and his new wife Grace Gummer, who tied the knot in September.

The songwriter, 46, looked handsome in a long black coat, which he teamed with with black trousers, a striped white shirt and quirky black and beige shoes.

Newlyweds: Mark Ronson and his wife Grace Gummer attended the opening night of Stephen Sondheim's Company at the Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre in New York City on Thursday

Grace, 35, looked stunning in a grey checkered coat which she wore with black smart trousers and black boots.

The actress - who is the daughter of Meryl Streep - wore her tresses in loose waves and opted for minimal makeup to show off her natural beauty.

The newlyweds were joined by Mark's mother Ann Dexter Jones who looked lovely in a black jumper and trousers underneath a cream coat.

Look of love: The actress, wore her tresses in loose waves and opted for minimal makeup to show off her natural beauty

Dapper: The songwriter, 46, looked handsome in a long black coat, which he teamed with with black trousers, a striped white shirt and quirky black and beige shoes

Beauty: Grace, 35, looked stunning in a grey checkered coat which she wore with black smart trousers and black boots

She wore her locks in their natural curls and finished her look with a swipe of pink lipstick.

Joining the trio at the opening was actress Naomi Watts who wowed in a trendy blue velvet blazer and matching trousers.

The 53-year-old actress layered up her look with a long, houndstooth coat and slipped her feet into a pair of bright white ballet flats.

Gorgeous: The newlyweds were joined by Mark's mother Ann Dexter Jones who looked lovely in a black jumper and trousers underneath a cream coat

Ageless: She wore her locks in their natural curls and finished her look with a swipe of pink lipstick

Her signature blonde strands were slightly bumped under and parted to one side.

Watts carried her essentials in a red leather purse that coordinated perfectly with her ruby toned lipstick.

Coming off the premiere of the highly-anticipated Sex And The City reboot, Cynthia Nixon oozed confidence in an oversized black peacoat.

On trend: Naomi Watts wowed in a trendy blue velvet blazer and matching trousers for the star-studded event

Layered up: The 53-year-old actress layered up her look with a long, houndstooth coat

The 55-year-old actress tied the coat tightly at the waist and wrapped her neck with a cozy cream scarf.

Jane Krakowski showed off her tanned and toned legs in a plunging black blazer dress with satin lapels.

The 30 Rock star, 53, paired her mini dress with some black stiletto heels and an overcoat that she held in one hand as she posed.

Talk of the town: Coming off the premiere of the highly-anticipated Sex And The City reboot, Cynthia Nixon oozed confidence in an oversized black peacoat

Cozy: The 55-year-old actress tied the coat tightly at the waist and wrapped her neck with a cozy cream scarf

Her blonde hair was swept into a romantic updo and she accessorized with a pair of glitzy earrings.

Marianne Elliott's gender-swapped revival of Company was forced to shutdown in March 2020 in wake of the coronavirus pandemic and its subsequent lockdown.

It was one of many productions, including the 10 time Tony Award-winning musical Moulin Rouge and the popular stage adaptation of Tim Burton's Beetlejuice, that remained in limbo for a year in a half as the virus wreaked havoc on the globe.

Leggy lady: Jane Krakowski showed off her tanned and toned legs in a plunging black blazer dress with satin lapels

Finishing touches: The 30 Rock star, 53, paired her mini dress with some black stiletto heels and an overcoat that she held in one hand as she posed

Upon the reopening of Broadway in September, Company was one of the lucky few to return to the roster with a preview date set for November 15 and an official opening date scheduled for Thursday, November 9.

Just 11 days before his passing, Stephen Sondheim - who wrote the music and lyrics for the beloved comedy - attended the musical's November 15 preview where he was greeted with a standing ovation.

Prior to the start of the show, Company's leading lady Patti LuPone took to the stage to dedicate the night's performance to Sondheim.

Company made its original Broadway debut in 1970 at the Alvin Theatre and would go on to snag a record-breaking 14 Tony nominations and six wins.

Tackling the complexities of commitment, coupledom, and emotional vulnerability, Company is deemed as one of the first modern musicals to revolve around adult themes.

Big return: Marianne Elliott's gender-swapped revival of Company was forced to shutdown in March 2020 in wake of the coronavirus pandemic and its subsequent lockdown; Matthew Broderick pictured

Survived: Upon the reopening of Broadway in September, Company was one of the lucky few to return to the roster with a preview date set for November 15 and an official opening date scheduled for Thursday, November 9; Zac Posen pictured
Michael Gudinski will be honoured by the Australian Open at Melbourne's Rod Laver Arena.

A tribute wall inside the arena will be raised to celebrate the legacy of the late music industry legend, the Herald Sun reported on Friday.

Gudinski brought dozens of local and international acts to Australian audiences over the decades, many of whom performed at the arena.

Memorial: Music industry legend Michael Gudinski to be honoured by the Australian Open at Rod Laver Arena. Pictured attending the 2015 Australian Open

His son, Matt, has been involved with creating the dedication which will feature a mixture of digital, printed and painted tributes.

He told the publication: 'It's just great to see dad's spirit and legacy continue to be showcased and to educate local and international attendees about his impact and influence on Melbourne as a city.'

'And obviously his involvement in bringing music to the Australian Open and helping them see the vision of how it can be included in the event.'

Matt, who has taken over as CEO of Mushroom Records, said the gesture would have been appreciated by his late father.

Honour: A tribute wall inside the arena will be raised to celebrate the legacy of the late music industry legend. It is set to feature a mixture of digital, printed and painted tributes from acts he brought to Melbourne Park

Legacy: Michael's son, Matt, has been involved with creating the dedication and said: 'It's just great to see dad's spirit and legacy continue to be showcased and to educate local and international attendees about his impact and influence on Melbourne as a city'

'To see them acknowledge him in the way they are I know would put a smile on his face and definitely makes me and my family proud,' he added.

In March, Michael died in his sleep earlier this year after consuming a fatal mix of drugs.

His death certificate, made public in court documents at the Supreme Court of Victoria, revealed he was also suffering cirrhosis of the liver and ischaemic heart disease, and had recently fractured his spine.

Tragic: Gudinski's passing was met with deep grief in the Australian music industry and beyond, with tributes flowing in from stars like Bruce Springsteen, Ed Sheeran, Madonna and Kylie and Dannii Minogue (both pictured)

Gudinski's passing was met with deep grief in the Australian music industry and beyond, with tributes flowing in from stars like Bruce Springsteen, Ed Sheeran, and Madonna.

Michael founded his famous record label, Mushroom Records, in 1972 and slowly built a musical empire.

In 2012, he was voted the most powerful person in Australian music and in the same year was named Melburnian of the year.
Supermodel Karlie Kloss looked chic as she stepped out for lunch in New York City on Thursday.

The new mom, 29, wrapped up in a camel hair coat as she added a white turtleneck, white jeans and ankle boots .

The Koding With Karlie teacher was leaving Soho's Sant Ambroeus, a high-end group of Italian-themed restaurants, coffee bars and a gelaterias.

Getting out: Supermodel Karlie Kloss looked chic as she stepped out for lunch in New York City. The new mom, 29, wrapped up in a camel hair coat

Kloss wore gold-hooped earrings and a black face mask as she walked through the crowded streets of New York on Wednesday.

Her neatly coiffed blonde locks were pulled back into a tight bun, while she carried a black leatherbound day planner with her right arm and a matching purse over her left shoulder.

In one photo, Kloss carried a light blue shopping bag with a purchase from the ritzy Sant Ambroeus.

Looking sharp: Kloss is married to Joshua Kushner, who is the brother of Jared Kushner, the investor, real estate developer and son-in-law and advisor to former U.S. President Donald Trump

Kloss is married to Joshua Kushner, who is the brother of Jared Kushner, the investor, real estate developer and son-in-law and advisor to former U.S. President Donald Trump.

The former Victoria's Secret model gave birth to her first child, Levi, in March.

The Chicago-born Kloss recently opened up about her political beliefs and criticism she's faced in a cover interview with the Wall Street Journal.

Kloss said that she has 'had to grow a really thick skin' in relation to other people's opinions, saying she's 'learned to stay away from the comments section' on social media.

The Project Runway host said that it has been difficult being a liberal and having Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump as in-laws since her wedding to Joshua Kushner in October 2018.

Family ties: The Project Runway host said that it has been difficult being a liberal and having Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump as in-laws

Thick skin: Kloss said that she has 'had to grow a really thick skin' in relation to other people's opinions, saying she's 'learned to stay away from the comments section'; seen in November

In the interview, the supermodel said she has faced backlash from both Democrats and Republicans over her relationship with Joshua Kushner.

The model showed her support for Joe Biden and other Democrats in the 2020 presidential election, despite her connection to the Trump family.

Jared and Ivanka both worked as White House senior advisers when former President Donald Trump was in office.
The trailer for Guy Ritchie's latest blockbuster, Operation Fortune: Ruse de guerre, dropped on Thursday and certainly includes plenty of high-octane action.

Packed into a three-minute masterpiece, Jason Statham stars as super spy, Orson Fortune, who will stop at no costs to prevent the sale of a futuristic deadly weapon.

Hugh Grant plays billionaire arms broker, Greg Simmonds, who is at the centre of Orson's mission along with a star-studded crew of the talented operatives.

Wow! The trailer for Guy Ritchie's latest blockbuster, Operation Fortune: Ruse de guerre, dropped on Thursday and certainly includes plenty of high-octane action (pictured, Jason Statham, left, Josh Hartnett, centre, and Aubrey Plaza, right)

With plenty of jokes thrown into the mix, the Notting Hill star does a stellar job with a Cockney accent while an idyllic backdrop fills viewers with envy.

Aubrey Plaza, Cary Elwes and Bugzy Malone convince Josh Hartnett, who transforms into Danny Francesco, to travel the world with them on their expedition.

It follows reports that Jake Gyllenhaal is currently in negotiations with Miramax to star in a still untitled film that will be directed by Guy.

Suave: Hugh Grant (pictured) plays billionaire arms broker, Greg Simmonds, who is at the centre of Orson's mission along with a star-studded crew of the talented operatives

Hilarious: With plenty of jokes thrown into the mix, the Notting Hill star does a stellar job with a Cockney accent while an idyllic backdrop fills viewers with envy

The Oscar-nominated actor, 40, currently has his name attached to no less than three new films, and he's currently out promoting The Guilty, which received stellar reviews after premiering at the 2021 Toronto International Film Festival.

So far there's no official word on any plot details or other potential cast members, but the project will reportedly be in the vein of Ritchie's 'visual style that audiences have loved for years.'

The movie is slated to start shooting by the end of the year.

Spellbinding: Packed into a three-minute masterpiece, Jason Statham (pictured) stars as super spy, Orson Fortune, who will stop at no costs to prevent the sale of a futuristic deadly weapon

Woah: Aubrey Plaza, Cary Elwes and Bugzy Malone convince Josh Hartnertt, who transforms into Danny Francesco, to travel the world with them on their expedition

Guy has earned his legion of fans with such films as Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels (1998), Snatch (2000), RocknRolla (2008), Sherlock Holmes (2009) and Sherlock Holmes: Game Of Shadows (2011).

In his most recent project, the British filmmaker helms the spy film Operation Fortune: Ruse de guerre, with Jason Statham, that's slated to premiere on January 21, 2022.

If Jake does in fact land a role in the upcoming Ritchie-led movie, it will be the next film that he works on.

Operation Fortune will hit the cinemas on January 21.

Coming soon: It follows reports that Jake Gyllenhaal is currently in negotiations with Miramax to star in a still untitled film that will be directed by Guy
Like true New Yorkers, the Baldwin family picked up the ultimate symbol of the holiday season, their Christmas tree, from a sidewalk vendor in Manhattan on Thursday.

Hilaria Baldwin shared a snap of her whole family - all six children included - alongside her husband Alec Baldwin during the festive outing on Instagram.

Her post comes after she went on a long social media rant revealing that Alec was 'suffering from PTSD right now' and the actor had been dealing with the mental health condition since before the fatal shooting on the set of Rust.

Trying to stay festive: Alec Baldwin and his family picked up their Christmas tree from a sidewalk vendor in Manhattan on Thursday on the same day Hilaria claimed her actor husband was long suffering from PTSD

'We got a nyc Christmas tree. Possible holiday card photo??? We arent all looking, but gangs all here, candy canes and all,' Hilaria penned in a caption.

The image sees both Alec and his wife smiling - albeit looking in different directions - in front of a row of Christmas trees propped up on the sidewalk.

Their two youngest children were nestled warmly in a double seated pram while the four eldest stood by happily enjoying candy canes.

Hilaria and Alec share six kids together; Carmen, eight, Rafael, six, Leonardo, five, Romeo, three, Eduardo, one, and Lucia, seven months.

'We got a nyc Christmas tree. Possible holiday card photo??? We arent all looking, but gangs all here, candy canes and all,' Hilaria penned in a caption.

Troubled times: The family outing comes amid the fallout from the shooting on the set of Baldwin's Western, Rust, when cinematographer Halyna Hutchens was shot and killed by a gun the actor was holding

The family outing comes amid the fallout from the shooting on the set of Baldwin's Western, Rust, when cinematographer Halyna Hutchens was shot and killed by a gun the actor was holding.

The same day that they got their Christmas tree, Hilaria Baldwin has claimed her husband is suffering from PTSD and has been battling it for a 'long time'.

'My husband is suffering from PTSD right now,' the 37-year-old said, adding that it has been something he's dealt with long before the Rust shooting.

'It's something that is not just from what happened recently but he's been suffering from this for a very, very, very long time...'

Hilaria and Alec share six kids together: Carmen, eight, Rafael, six, Leonardo, five, Romeo, three, Eduardo, one, and Lucia, seven months.

Telling their side: The same day that they got their Christmas tree, Hilaria Baldwin has claimed her husband is suffering from PTSD and has been battling it for a 'long time'

Prior to her post, Alec shared an open letter from members of the Rust film crew and cast members on Instagram, hitting back at claims that the set was 'chaotic, dangerous and exploitative' in the days leading up to the incident.

The open letter, which was signed by over 20 crew and cast members, begins by saying the writers of the letter were not influenced to make such a statement by any of the producers on set, including Baldwin.

It adds that the signing crewmembers 'believe the public narrative surrounding our workplace tragedy is inadequate and wish to express a more adequate account of our experience.'

The letter explains that it is common in the film industry to work on productions that are 'unprofessional' and 'hectic' in order to 'gain experience and credits,' adding that many of the staffers signing the letter have worked on such productions.

Holiday card material: Despite turmoil in the fallout from the shooting, the Baldwin's managed to keep things festive and snap a photo all together

Holiday time: Hilaria kept things upbeat on social media, sharing photos of her kids with the tree workers

Strike a pose: She shared a snap of Alec hoisting the tree over his shoulder and carrying down the block to their luxury NYC apartment

'Rust was not one of them,' it adds. 'Rust was professional. We do acknowledge that no set is perfect, and like any production, Rust had its areas of brilliant and its areas that were more challenging.'

The crewmembers add that they 'stand firmly' with their unions and 'strongly support the fight for better working conditions' across the industry, but asserts that the set of Rust is not an example of the circumstances they are 'fighting against.'

'The descriptions of Rust as a chaotic, dangerous and exploitative workplace are false and distract from what matters the most: the memory of Halyna Hutchins, and the need to find modern alternatives to outdated industry firearm and safety practices.

The writers of the letter admit that a 'few' crew members quit before the tragedy, but says 'the vast majority of us remained, never feeling the need to protest or quit. We were enjoying our workplace. Those disgruntled few do not represent the views of all of us.'

The writers of the letter also fire back against claims of crew being overworked, saying that their wages and working hours, which were 12 hours a day and typically from 6am to 6pm, were 'fair and consistent with our expectations.'

'My husband is suffering from PTSD right now,' the 37-year-old said, adding that it has been something he's dealt with long before the Rust shooting. ' It's something that is not just from what happened recently but he's been suffering from this for a very, very, very long time...'

The location and transportation requirements of the production were also 'well understood' by cast and crew willing to work on the historic film set at Bonanza Creek Ranch, the letter says, adding that housing was provided and required by their union and payments were made 'generally' on time.

The letter also says that employee morale was 'high' and 'laughter and optimism' was common, adding that 'from the director down to the production assistants, all departments worked well together, collaborating and helping each other achieve shared artistic goals.'

'We were well aware that we were producing good work, capturing beautiful imagery and great performances, and we were proud to be doing so. The work was hard, but meaningful.'

'Please do not let the view of a few disgruntled employees to affect your view of the rest of us,' the letter concludes before adding that the cast and crew 'kindly request' that the 'speculation' and 'generalizations' made by the general public be 'sympathetic' of them until the investigation concludes.

Standing together: Alec Baldwin sent out a letter from members of the Rust cast and crew firing back at criticisms of a lack of safety on set

Alec denied firing the gun that killed Hutchins during a teary-eyed interview with George Stephanopoulos earlier this month, insisting he did not feel guilty because he bore no responsibility for her death.

Halyna, who was a cinematographer, was fatally wounded after live containing live rounds was fired on the set.

Two days later both he and Hilaria deleted their Twitter accounts following the interview.

Alec, 63, has never mentioned having PTSD in the past, but Hilaria has said in previous interviews that he could have developed the disorder following the Rust incident.

RIP: Halyna Hutchins was fatally wounded after a gun containing live rounds was fired on the California set of his now scrapped western, Rust

In her latest Instagram Story video, Hilaria also complained that life in the 'famous world' has been a struggle, vowing to speak her 'truth' in 2022.

Meanwhile, on Thursday, Hilaria also posted a video of her telling a reporter to 'please go away' alongside a caption: 'I need to speak up about this. Not only for my family, but for those who were hurt before me.'

In the video on her Instagram Stories, Hilaria talked about the negative sides to fame and struggles with being a celebrity.

'One thing I've learned from entering this famous world is that when you get negative attention whether its from trolls or tabloid media and people say to you just ignore it, that's what they want.'

'If you give them attention, that is literally what they want. The issue is if you don't say anything, you're giving them a space to speak for you and your silence sometimes speaks enough for them to be able to commandeer your story.'

Adding: 'But it's tricky because because you don't want to be constantly just responding to every single crazy thing they say.'
She's a world famous supermodel.

And Heidi Klum proved her talents run deep in the family as she praised 17-year-old daughter Leni's Harper's Bazaar Kazakhstan cover released on Friday morning.

The 48-year-old stunner then channeled a classic '70's superstar while wearing floral bell bottoms and a matching blazer for a few snaps posted online for her devoted following on Instagram.

Bold and beautiful: Heidi Klum turned an ordinary city sidewalk into her very own runway for an impromptu photo shoot shared to Instagram on Friday

Impressive: She shared the cover of her little girl's latest work with the caption 'MEOW' to her nearly nine million followers

She shared the cover of her little girl's latest work with the caption 'MEOW' to her nearly nine million followers.

Heidi proved to know a thing or two about the perfect catwalk as she sauntered down the street wearing an Alex Perry ensemble.

Her gorgeous black blazer was perfectly tailored to her body and featured vibrant green and red flowers as she turned an ordinary city sidewalk into her very own runway for an impromptu photo shoot.

Peeks of her abs peered out from the top of her high-waisted trousers which billowed at the knee into floaty bell bottoms.

Walk this way: The 48-year-old stunner channeled a classic '70's superstar while wearing floral bell bottoms and a matching blazer for a few snaps posted online

Vibes: Heidi proved to know a thing or two about the perfect catwalk as she sauntered down the street wearing an Alex Perry ensemble

She added a flashy touch with a glittering bra to match a diamond pendant wrapped around her neck.

Heidi's golden blonde hair was worn in loose waves and cascaded down her chest as she strolled past a brick wall.

Wispy fringe framed her face and hid her blonde brows, with glam including a smoky eye and nude lips.

Keeper: Her gorgeous black blazer was perfectly tailored to her body and featured vibrant green and red flowers

Strike a pose: Heidi's golden blonde hair was worn in loose waves and cascaded down her chest as she strolled past a brick wall

Heidi secretly married Tokio Hotel musician Tom Kaulitz in February 2019 before hosting a wedding in Italy a few months later.

She jumped back into the judging panel for season 16 of AGT after serving as a judge for a number of seasons, which crowned a winner in September.

Dustin Tavella  the magician  earned the $1million prize and joined the cast of America's Got Talent Las Vegas Live at Luxor Hotel and Casino in the fall.
Leonardo DiCaprio said he hopes his new Netflix film will open viewers' eyes to the threat of climate change in a new interview on Today.

The 47-year-old Oscar winner was joined by his costar Jennifer Lawrence and writerdirector Adam McKay to chat about the satire, in which politicians, the media and even ordinary citizens are unconcerned about a world-ending comet flying toward Earth.

But despite his hopes that the Netflix film's audience will see the movie as an allegory about the dangers of not address climate change, he didn't address his own well-documented habit of jetting around the globe in carbon-polluting private jets.

Mixed messages: Leonardo DiCaprio, 47, spoke Thursday on Today about his new film Don't Look Up and how he hopes fans will be moved by it to act on climate change, despite his own carbon-polluting behaviors

After host Savannah Guthrie quizzed DiCaprio on the film's connections to both the climate crisis and the ongoing battle against the novel coronavirus, DiCaprio said he hoped the film would be a 'wake-up call.'

'If you do a film about climate change, its nearly impossible to get people to get a sense of urgency and hold a mirror to our culture and media and politics and all of these things,' the Once Upon A Time In Hollywood star said. 'And I just felt like this was an incredible gift to be a part of a movie that encapsulated exactly what were going through at this particular moment in time.

'But yeah, I am a bit of a Debbie Downer because the clock is absolutely ticking,' he added.

Although the film was first inspired by world leaders' failures to take greater action to combat the threat of devastating climate change, DiCaprio also highlighted how well Don't Look Up works as an allegory about refusal to fight Covid-19.

Inaction: 'If you do a film about climate change, its nearly impossible to get people to get a sense of urgency and hold a mirror to our culture and media and politics and all of these things,' DiCaprio said; seen with Jennifer Lawrence in Don't Look Up

Not optimistic: He said he wanted the film to be a 'wake-up call,' but admitted he was 'a bit of a Debbie Downer'; pictured with Lawrence and director Adam McKay

'After seeing the movie last night, something kind of resonated in me,' he said. 'Its how we process bad news and how it becomes a debate, how truth and facts can be distorted or politicized.'

The Revenant star noted how there was a 'whole new wave of denial of science' once the pandemic took root.

'It was amazing to witness what was going on in real time as we were making this movie. Were sitting there trying to explain science as [Dr. Anthony] Fauci was doing the same thing. It was a bizarre experience,' he added.

DiCaprio and Lawrence both star in the film as astronomers who discover a comet with a '100 percent' likelihood of hitting Earth and ending all life as we know it.

But in clips from the film, they're seen arguing about the importance of acting to avert the disaster while the President of the United States (played by Meryl Streep) ignores them for fear that acting will harm her poll numbers, and her son and Chief of Staff (Jonah Hill) also brushes them off.

The actors didn't go into detail on Don't Look Up's ending, but DiCaprio found it 'incredibly emotional.'

True to life: The actor compared Don't Look Up to a 'whole new wave of denial of science' he observed amid the coronavirus pandemic

Hypocrisy? Despite his advocacy about climate change, DiCaprio has continued to fly on private jets, which create more carbon pollution than commercial flights

'Had this movie had a different ending, it wouldnt be the story that it is,' he said. 'And were not going to give that away, but it needed to have this ending. Its a wake-up call. Its an alarm clock.

'If it didnt have that ending, there was no way we were going to be a part of it,' he added.

Despite DiCaprio's longstanding advocacy for addressing climate change, he appears to be continuing his pattern of using private jets to take trips around the world.

Earlier this month, sources told Page Six that the actor took a jet from Miami to New York  and then back  within a single day.

He was in Florida for the Art Basel and had been seen viewing some of the exhibitions and later partying on November 30, before he was supposed to co-host a benefit at Soho Beach House with Sean Penn for his CORE (Community Organized Relief Effort) organization, which has lately been focused on Covid-19 relief.

Guests at the benefit were told that DiCaprio was unexpectedly called away to New York, though he would be returning for the event.

Sources said he ended up being delayed and only arrived back at the charity function by 11 p.m., which left some guests concerned about the necessity of the trip.

Necessary trip? Sources told Page Six earlier this month that he flew from Miami to New York and back in a single day; picture with Jonah Hill, Meryl Streep and Lawrence in Don't Look Up

Taking action: However, the advocate claims he's a 'CarbonNeutral citizen' after paying a company to plant a forest of trees in Mexico, according to Forbes

DiCaprio hasn't shied away from raising awareness about climate change, and he even referenced it in his Academy Award acceptance speech in 2016 when he won Best Actor for The Revenant.

'Climate change is real, it is happening right now. It is the most urgent threat facing our entire species, and we need to work collectively together and stop procrastinating,' he said from the stage.

Despite his use of private jets, DiCaprio claims that he is 'CarbonNeutral citizen' after a London-based company planted thousands of trees in his name in Mexico to offset the carbon he produces, according to Forbes.

But sources close to the actor claimed that he has begun to use more commercial flights, which produce fewer carbon emissions per passenger, than private flights, according to Page Six.

They added that when he flew to the COP26 Climate Summit in Scotland last month, he opted for a commercial jet flight, rather than a private flight.

Stuck in the middle: Elsewhere in the Today interview, Jennifer Lawrence said Don't Look Up encapsulated the 'helplessness' that she feels about major world issues

Adding emotion: McKay said that he originally wanted to make an humorous escape from darker subject matter before opting for a more poignant take

Elsewhere in the Today interview, Jennifer Lawrence said Don't Look Up encapsulated the 'helplessness' that she feels about major world issues.

'It was also so poignant that all of the ire kind of landed squarely on her shoulders because she was saying something that people didnt want to hear,' she said of her character.

She joked that her character has a 'glassy stare' in parts of the Netflix film because she was written as a stoner.

McKay, who directed The Big Short and Vice after previously making broader comedies, said that he originally wanted to make an humorous escape from darker subject matter before opting for a more poignant take.

'We made this movie during the pandemic, before there was even a vaccine. So, I think we were all in the mood to laugh because things were so grim,' he explained. 'But at the same time, we needed to feel some other feelings as well.'

Don't Look Up is currently in limited release in theaters and will be available to stream on Netflix starting December 24.
Production is underway on season three of the Netflix dark comedy Dead to Me.

Stars Christina Applegate, 50, and Linda Cardellini, 46, were spotted filming together near the beach on a rainy day in Los Angeles this week.

The taping comes several months after production was paused when Applegate revealed publicly her battle with multiple sclerosis.

Back to work: Stars Christina Applegate, 50, and Linda Cardellini, 46, were spotted filming season three of Dead to Me together near the beach on a rainy day in Los Angeles this week

Christina was dressed in head-to-toe black in a classic cut blazer, blouse and slim cut slacks.

Her blonde hair was left down and a bit worse for the wear after getting caught in some unseasonably rainy weather. She kept warm against the chill in the air with a cozy pair of Ugg boots.

Co-star, Linda Cardellini, was a bit more colorful in her costume - as befitting her more bohemian character on the show.

Cardellini was rocking her hair down with thick blunt bangs and wearing a purple printed dress and a coat.

On camera: The taping comes several months after production was paused when Applegate revealed publicly her battle with multiple sclerosis

Her health came first: Production had begun on new episodes in early May, though Netflix revealed in August that filming had been paused temporarily to give Christina time to herself

The show follows two grieving women - Jen Harding and Judy Hale (Applegate and Cardellini) - who learn they have strange connection to each other, with James Marsden playing Steve Wood, Judy's ex-fiancee.

Netflix revealed in early July 2020 that they had renewed the show for a third and final season.

Production had begun on new episodes in early May, though Netflix revealed in August that filming had been paused temporarily to give Christina time to herself.

'We love and support Christina and respect her privacy as she takes the time and space she needs in this moment,' a Netflix statement read at the time.

TV stars: The show follows two grieving women - Jen Harding and Judy Hale (Applegate and Cardellini) - who learn they have strange connection to each other, with James Marsden playing Steve Wood, Judy's ex-fiancee

Earlier this year, Christina revealed on Twitter that she suffers from MS, an autoimmune disease which affects the central nervous system.

She went public with her diagnosis several months after learning the news, needing time to process and explaining that it has been 'a tough road'.

At the end of November, the former Married With Children star celebrated her 50th birthday and reflected on the diagnosis in a social media post.

'Yup. I turned 50 today,' she wrote. 'And I have MS. Its been a hard one. Sending so much love to all of you this day. Many are hurting today, and I am thinking of you. May we find that strength to lift our heads up. Mine currently is on my pillow. But I try.'

Her battle: Earlier this year, Christina revealed on Twitter that she suffers from MS, an autoimmune disease which affects the central nervous system

According to the National MS Society the disease is an 'unpredictable disease of the central nervous system that disrupts the flow of information within the brain, and between the brain and body.'

MS is a condition that can affect the brain and spinal cord, causing a wide range of potential symptoms, including problems with vision, arm or leg movement, sensation or balance.

It's a lifelong condition that can sometimes cause serious disability, although it can occasionally be mild.

It is treatable in most cases, though life expectancy is slightly reduced. It is twice or three times more common in women than men.

Brave: At the end of November, Christina took to social media to celebrate her 50th birthday and reflected on social media on her health struggle

Applegate, who shares a daughter Sadie, ten, with her second husband, Dutch musician Martyn LeNoble, has previously been very candid about her health battles over the years.

In 2008, she revealed that she had undergone a double mastectomy to treat breast cancer, explaining that she made the decision to have the surgery because she wanted to ensure that she wouldn't have to deal with the risk of the disease spreading in the future.

'It came on really fast. It was one of those things that I woke up and it felt so right,' Applegate told CNN of her decision to have a mastectomy.

'It just seemed like, "I don't want to have to deal with this again. I don't want to keep putting that stuff in my body. I just want to be done with this," and I was just going to let them go.'

Then, in 2018, she revealed that she'd had both of her ovaries and her fallopian tubes removed in order to 'take control' of her health and reduce the risk of another cancer diagnosis.
Emma Roberts took to Instagram on Friday to share a photo with her and Garrett Hedlund's son Rhodes.

In the image the 30-year-old actress sat on a large, pillow-filled couch as she held the blonde baby in her arms.

'The best,' the star wrote in her caption as there was no sign of her partner Hedlund, 37. There has been speculation this fall that the two have broken up.

Sweet: Emma Roberts took to Instagram on Friday to share a photo with her and Garrett Hedlund's son Rhodes

The Scream Queens actress wore light wash blue jeans in the picture and paired it with a button up white shirt.

She smiled a toothy grin in the snapshot, delighting in the quality time with her little one.

The mom-of-one added a red heart emoji and gave her friend and stylist Brit Elkin Hines photo credit.

Unclear couple status: Emma's post comes amid speculation that she and Hedlund, 37, have broken up

Emma's long blonde hair was in a center part and soft, loose curls.

Her nails were painted red and she looked relaxed as she was captured with her legs propped up on the neutral-colored piece of furniture.

Her son looked equally cozy in a light-colored short-sleeve shirt and grey pants. The tot was without socks as he cuddled up to his mother.

Mom life: Emma and Garrett welcomed their son last December, days after Christmas

Emma and the Tron: Legacy actor welcomed a son named Rhodes Robert Hedlund last December 27.

But rumors of a rift began after investigative fans discovered the pair were no longer following each other on Instagram.

The last time the pair was photographed together was at an Oscars Party celebrating Andra Day and the cast of The United States Vs. Billie Holiday back on April 25.

New mom: Though the couple has kept quiet about their relationship, back in June sources told E! News that Emma and Garrett were closer than ever

Though the couple has kept quiet about their relationship, back in June sources told E! News that the duo was closer than ever.

'Emma and Garrett are in a much better place since welcoming their son,' the insider dished, also admitting the pair hit a 'rough patch' during her pregnancy.

Last month, Emma attended Paris Hilton's star-studded wedding with her best friend Cade Hudson.
Demi Moore, 59, took a blast to the past by posting on her Instagram 40-year-old negative images with John Stamos, 58, during their time filming General Hospital.

The Golden-Globe nominated actress thanked John and artist Jim Warren, 72 for uncovering the pictures on Thursday.

'Wow, negatives from 40 years ago filming General Hospital\ the beauty wrote in her caption. 'Thank you @johnstamos @justjimwarren for unearthing these! #FBF.'

Long time friends: Demi Moore, 59, took a blast to the past by posting on her Instagram 40-year-old negative images with John Stamos, 58, during their time filming General Hospital

Blast from the past: The Golden-Globe nominated actress thanked John and artist Jim Warren, 72 for uncovering the pictures on Thursday

In the pictures, you will see the two teenage stars hugging each other and lounging on a couch. John is even rocking a classic 80's hair style while Demi has much shorter hair than what she has now.

Demi was only 19-years-old when she was cast for the role. She played the investigative journalist role of Jackie Templeton during her time on General Hospital.

Moore spent two years filming 38 episodes for the show.

The soap opera star and then teen heartthrob became the best of friends during their time together on set.

On the carpet: Moore attend The Fashion Awards 2021 at the Royal Albert Hall in November

Having fun on set: The two teenage stars rock classic 80's looks from John's hairstyle to Demi's cropped shirt

Flirty Demi: In this image the former fashion model put her leg over John

The whole page: The proof sheet was seen with red crayon marks around certain images

John played the role of Albert 'Blackie' Parrish, the troubled teenager, on the daytime drama.

He was also only 19 when he was casted. He was on the show the same duration as Demi, from 1982-1984.

The soap opera has a total of 59 seasons, with episodes still being aired today. This daytime drama is in the Guinness Book of World Records as being the longest-running American soap opera in production.

This year: Stamos attends Wheelhouse and Rally's celebrity and content-creator private fund raise event, in October in Los Angeles

Demi went on to star in a string of high-profile movies such as St Elmo's Fire and About Last Night...

In 1990 she gained recognition for her role opposite Patrick Swayze in the blockbuster movie Ghost.

The star married Bruce Willis in 1987 and went on to have three daughters: Rumer, Scout and Tallulah. The actors divorced in year 2000.

She wed Ashton Kutcher in 2095 and they divorced in 2013.
Zendaya and Tom Holland addressed constant chatter about their height difference and the absurd notion that kissing must be 'difficult' for the pair on Friday.

The romantic couple and Spider-Man co-stars appeared on SiriusXM Town Hall where they had a discussion about 'ridiculous' stereotypes for tall women and short men.

Holland, who is 5ft8in, and Zendaya, who is 5ft10in, spoke in-depth about the gendered construct of height in real life and as it relates to the movie, maintaining above all that it shouldn't be a 'thing.'

Unbothered: The romantic couple and Spider-Man co-stars had a discussion about 'ridiculous' stereotypes for tall women and short men and incessant talk of their height difference on Friday at SiriusXM Town Hall; pictured above

The on and offscreen couple were joined by their co-star Jacob Batalon as they sat down with host Jessica Shaw at the New York based studio.

'Zendaya. I wanted to ask. And actually, and Tom, I wanted to ask you guys because in the first, in, in Far from Home when MJ and Peter kiss and Zendaya, you're taller than Tom and it became this, this thing,' Shaw said as the pair laughed.

Holland, 25, humorously interjected: 'Not that much taller. Let's just, let's put this out there. Maybe like an inch or two at best.

'It's not like, people say like "how did you guys kiss? It must have been soo difficult",' he recalled which drew a laugh from Zendaya.

Getting into it: 'I wanted to ask you guys because in the first, in, in Far from Home when MJ and Peter kiss and Zendaya, you're taller than Tom and it became this, this thing,' host Jessica Shaw said as the pair laughed alongside co-star Jacob Batalon

Heightened awareness: Tom spoke about how absurd it was that people have asked 'how did you guys kiss?' - a remark made about their height difference

Messed up thinking: Zendaya agreed that it was a 'screwed up' mentality to think it was odd that she was taller than Tom and cited that her mom is 'taller than her dad' as well

Shaw clarified that she thinks the gendered view of height in society is both 'misogynistic' and 'problematic' and asked them to weigh in on the 'assumption' that men should be taller than women.

Zendaya, 25, agreed that it was a 'screwed up' mentality. 'Yeah, this is normal too,' the 5ft10in beauty said of her being taller than Tom, which he agreed with: 'Yeah it's a stupid assumption.'

'My mom is taller than my dad. My mom is taller than everyone,' the Euphoria star went on to say, while Holland called the whole subject 'ridiculous.'

Speaking up: The British actor interjected that in reality he was 'maybe like an inch or two' shorter than Zendaya 'at best'

Oblivious: 'I didnt know that people cared until life, you know, but before that I had, no, I have no construct of it,' she said as she called being taller than Tom 'normal too'

More thoughts: 'It's like not a weird thing for women to be tall,' Batalon (left) said weighing in, with Tom adding: 'No, not at all. It's ridiculous.'

'It's like not a weird thing for women to be tall,' Batalon said weighing in, with Tom adding: 'No, not at all. It's ridiculous.'

Holland  who stands at 5'8  went on to say that when they were doing screen tests for Spider-Man every girl reading as MJ was taller than him.

'I remember when we were doing the Spider Man screen tests, I mean  you'd have to ask Jon Watts this question  but every girl that we tested for both roles was taller than me,' Holland recalled.

'And I wonder whether Jon, that was a decision that Jon had made. There was, there was no one that tested that was shorter than I was. To be fair - I am quite short. But, uh, but yeah, so maybe that was a decision Jon Watts made and something he was aware of and wanted to break the stereotype. I think it's great.'

Confident: Zendaya called the pair's on-screen kiss in Far From Home a 'sweet moment' and said that she hates 'having to cheat it [her body] and pretend,' she's shorter

Casting process: Holland went on to say that when they were doing screen tests for Spider-Man every girl reading as MJ was taller than him which led him to believe it was an intentional choice on the part of director Jon Watts

Zendaya called the pair's on-screen kiss in Far From Home a 'sweet moment' and said that she hates 'having to cheat it [her body] and pretend,' she's shorter. 'Why not just let it be what it is.'

'I honestly never thought of it as a thing,' she continued to say. 'Because my parents were always that way.

'So I, I didn't know that people cared until life, you know, but before that I had, no, I have no construct of it.'

Zendaya and Tom sealed their rumored romance with a kiss back in July, but neither have publicly spoken about their relationship.
Julia Fox dressed grunge chic on Friday afternoon as she pushed her son through New York City in a stroller.

The Uncut Gems star, 31, gave birth earlier than expected last January after blood pressure issues accelerated her pregnancy.

She shares the little boy with her private pilot husband Peter Artemiev, whom she married in 2018.

Stylish: Julia Fox dressed grunge chic on Friday afternoon as she pushed her son through New York City in a stroller

Ahead of the weekend the Italian actress wore an oversize plaid green jacket with a black crewneck shirt underneath.

She matched it with fitted plaid red pants and black footwear.

The Italian actress' long, thick, brunette hair was styled straight with a center part.

With some pieces tucked behind her ears, it flowed well below her shoulders as it was arranged to one side.

New mom: The Uncut Gems star, 31, gave birth earlier than expected last January after blood pressure issues accelerated her pregnancy

The bombshell entertainer looked beautiful as she braved the northeast cold with several friends in tow.

Her posse was equally stylish as they complemented their friend's bold wintry look.

She had on a light face of makeup and wore stud earrings as she pushed her baby in a black stroller with a leopard-print interior.

Her young son was in a white hooded onesie coat and a grey hat.

Marriage and motherhood: She shares the little boy with her private pilot husband Peter Artemiev, whom she married in 2018

Last week the Milan-born beauty was in Miami to attend Art Basel in the colorful city.

She was photographed at Playboy's Big Bunny Launch at Casa Tua.

The gorgeous movie star stunned in a yellow, sleeveless, turtleneck mini dress that had a square cutout on the chest.

She topped it with black bunny ears and punctuated the leggy look with a pair of backless yellow heels.

Florida trip: Last week the Milan-born beauty was in Miami to attend Art Basel in the colorful city

Before that, the blue-eyed vixen attended the CFDA awards in New York City.

She turned heads in a fitted, mint green turtleneck with reflective gemstones throughout.

It was paired with a nude colored sequin skirt that had a fur-lined hem.

On Instagram she shared photos from the star-studded event and said: 'Thank you so much to the @cfda awards and @nordstrom for an incredible evening!'
UNITED NATIONS (AP) - The U.N. humanitarian chief warned that Afghanistans economic collapse "is happening before our eyes" and urged the international community to take action to stop "the freefall" before it leads to more deaths.

Martin Griffiths said in an interview with The Associated Press on Thursday that donor nations need to agree that in addition to emergency humanitarian aid they need to support basic services for the Afghan people including education, hospitals, electricity and paying civil servants - and they must inject liquidity into the economy which has seen the banking system ""pretty well shut down."

"Were seeing the economic collapse being exponential," he said. "Its getting more and more dire by the week."

Griffiths said the liquidity issue must be settled by the end of the year and money must be funneled to front-line service workers during the winter, adding that he had to revise his earlier view that Afghanistan could get through the winter on pure humanitarian assistance because of the worsening economic situation.

As one example, he said, 4 million children are out of school and 9 million more will be soon and the reason is simple -- 70% of teachers havent been paid since August. "And if we dont make that happen, all that discussion about the right of women and girls going to school becomes academic," he said.

"So, my message today is a wake-up call about the humanitarian consequences of an economic collapse and the need to take urgent action," Griffiths said.

Two Afghan children sit next to a spigot as people of Kamar Kalagh village outside Herat, Afghanistan, try to fill their plastic containers with water, on Friday, Nov. 26, 2021. Afghanistan's drought, its worst in decades, is now entering its second year, exacerbated by climate change. (AP Photo/Petros Giannakouris)

The Taliban overran most of Afghanistan as U.S. and NATO forces were in the final stages of their chaotic withdrawal from the country after 20 years. Taliban forces entered Kabul on Aug. 15 without any resistance from the Afghan army or the countrys president, Ashraf Ghani, who fled. The Taliban initially promised tolerance and inclusiveness toward women and ethnic minorities but their actions so far, including renewed restrictions on women and the appointment of an all-male government, have been met with dismay by the international community.

Afghanistans aid-reliant economy was also thrown into deep turmoil following the Taliban takeover. The Afghanistan central banks $9 billion in reserves, most of which is held in the United States, were frozen and the International Monetary Fund blocked about $450 million because of a "lack of clarity" about a new government.

The Taliban leadership has banned all foreign currency transactions and urged the U.S. to ease sanctions and release Afghanistans overseas assets in order for the government to be able to pay teachers, doctors and other public sector employees.

Griffiths said the U.N. is asking the U.S. and other donors for money, which he insisted will not go to the Taliban but through U.N. channels to get directly to the people who need it -- teachers, doctors, electricity providers and other civil servants.

Griffiths said the consequences of Afghanistans collapsing economy are becoming more apparent -- reports of hospitals without electricity, severe malnutrition and three or four children in one hospital bed, and tens of thousands of unpaid doctors, teachers and civil servants struggling to survive.

He recalled that the United States always supported the provision of electricity in Afghanistan, but 80% of electricity sources are "now at the brink of stoppage, and without electricity you have automatic consequences."

Griffiths said the World Bank, the United Nations and the U.S. government are making "an enormous effort" to address the liquidity crisis. He said he will head to Washington on Dec. 21 to meet with U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken to discuss Afghanistans collapsing economy.

"By the end of the year, Id like to see the beginnings of liquidity receding as a problem," he said.

Griffiths said the U.N. would like to see $700 million come through by Jan. 31 which would be earmarked for services to help the Afghan people.

He said the World Bank reprogrammed $280 million for Afghanistan into humanitarian assistance which was "really good."

Griffiths said the U.S. Treasury also needs to provide letters for traders in Afghanistan saying they are not breaking sanctions. The U.S. has carved out humanitarian exemptions from sanctions, and he said the U.N. Security Council has to do the same.

Griffiths warned that if critical services arent provided to the Afghan people "we know whats going to happen."

"They didnt leave in August, did they?" he asked. "They didnt leave the country because they dont want to. They wont leave the country unless they have to. If that happens, where have we seen this movie before?"
Metaverse, the 3D version of the internet, is getting upgrades faster than we can imagine. With weddings moving from Zoom to Anime, companies are working 24*7 to create fantasy imagination into reality.

via GIPHY

Here are 6 new things you can do in the metaverse:

1. HUMANOID ROBOT SOPHIA TO ENTER METAVERSE

Humanoid robot Sophia, who has created records by speaking at the United Nations, having Saudi citizenship, and being on the cover of Cosmopolitan India, will set another record by entering the metaverse for a project called 'Noah's Ark'. She will enter the metaverse with an anime version of herself, named 'Sophia beingAI', and beingAI will help launch the same.

via GIPHY

Being AI is set to launch 100 intelligent non-fungible tokens (NFTs) between December 16 and 21. 20 NFTs are being auctioned each day over a 5-day event. The collection is called The Transmedia Universe of Sophia beingAI and will feature on Binances NFT marketplace. Here's a video interaction launched by beingAI on YouTube.

2. ONERARE LAUNCHES THE FIRST EVER FOODVERSE

Supreet Raju, has created a new metaverse for food, called Foodverse. A food metaverse would be a place to celebrate food in all its forms and would consist of 4 elements:

Farms for farmers to grow ingredients Farmers market to trade items from farmers and collectors The Kitchen to create new recipes and mint dish NFTs and The Playground for NFT owners to battle it out in games

View this post on Instagram A post shared by OneRare (@onerarenft)

This is meant to encourage more people to join the metaverse, encourage more gamers and foodies to hang out, and also for celeb chefs like Reynold Poernomo of Masterchef Australia (famous for creating incredible desserts with 50+ ingredients) to create more dishes and interact with people.

3. NON-EXISTENT YACHT SELLS FOR $6,50,000 IN MOST EXPENSIVE NFT DEAL

The Metaflower Super Mega Yacht is a digital NFT yacht and was sold for 149 Ether in Sandbox, which is a virtual world where players can build, own and monetise their gaming experience. The yacht is a part of "The Fantasy Islands", which is a self-described "luxury real estate development project of 100 NFT private islands (comprised of NFT land in the Sandbox + architecturally unique 3D NFT villas)".

149 ETH / 650000$ pour l'acquisition de cet asset @TheSandboxGame ? ?Someone bought a $650,000 NFT yacht for a game that hasn't been released https://t.co/c5ZlCTACme  Les Collectionneurs - legrenier.eth (@Collections_NFT) November 30, 2021

This will be created on the Ethereum blockchain and what will the owner enjoy? A DJ booth, helicopter landing pad, and hot tub. Its details are available for everyone to watch. This is what it will look like:

4. TOP REAL ESTATE DEALS IN METAVERSE

Get ready for some eye-popping real estate deals that the metaverse has been seeing these days. Projects like Decentraland, Sandbox are providing virtual land for sale and investors are flocking in to trade in virtual land units which are also considered NFTs. The deal is similar to the one in the physical world - the owner owns the rights to the virtual land and can do anything on it: rent it, create an advertisement board and rent that, create a monument, whatever. As if buying property in real world isn't tough, there is a new variety of choice in the metaverse!

On November 30, Sandbox sold a piece of land for US $4.3 million, while Decentraland sold a piece of its land for US $2.43 million. How do you buy virtual land? Using virtual currency, of course! Eg: To buy property in Decentraland, you use currency called MANA. What's its value? Check it here.

The larger-than-life Metaverse. Illustration: Seemon, DailyO

5. GETTING MARRIED IN THE METAVERSE

Yes, someone got married in the metaverse. Apparently, a free game called "Final Fantasy XIV" allows users to get married, and the couple gets a ring which allows free transportation to the event once a day. If you pay, you can get a fancier location and more frequent trips. You can also get a range of formalwear to choose for your wedding. We wonder what they do for honeymoon...

virgin metaverse wedding versus chad ffxiv wedding pic.twitter.com/E8v9kOUPxR  sisi jiang /  (@six6jiang) December 8, 2021

Seems like some people who got married in real life coudn't digest the news:

Final Fantasy XIV sitting over here being like "Good for the Metaverse? We did this fucking years ago."Heck, I married @Cenauru in it. And still have the ring and outfit. :3 https://t.co/Sfn5C7pIJ7  Sophia (@Shiori_Ishimaru) December 8, 2021

6. RALPH LAUREN IN METAVERSE (ADDICTION ALERT!)

#RalphLauren is pitching popped collars and sundresses to a new generation of #avatars as the iconic clothing brand moves into selling #digital apparel inside of the #metaverse.Ralph Lauren Is Now Selling #DigitalApparel For Avatars Inside Of #Zepeto https://t.co/HxYL9nzpA7 pic.twitter.com/wCCEM3dGzu  CathyHackl.eth - Godmother Of The Metaverse (@CathyHackl) September 1, 2021

Ralph Lauren Winter Scape is a virtual experience replete with digital Ralph Lauren garments and holiday activities like Treasure Hunt that will be open till January 3, 2022. The intention is to lead the digital space and engage with customers on the platform. The company will track it's growth by using metrics like user engagement, time spent by users in gaming, and units of digital goods sold on the metaverse. Ralph Lauren tweeted this:

Youre invited to Ralph Lauren: The Winter Escape on @RobloxA first-of-its kind winter experience, Ralph Lauren on #Roblox presents the ultimate holiday adventureJoin us on Roblox at The Winter Escape: https://t.co/1ZC9EMdyJ2#RLxRoblox #RLHoliday pic.twitter.com/Dhb9J3Uk8b  Ralph Lauren (@RalphLauren) December 8, 2021

OH BTW, ICYMI, ICELAND TOURISM MOCKED ZUCKERBERG FOR ITS META VIDEO, AND MARK RESPONDED.

Iceland Tourism created a fun video on the lines of Mark Zuckerberg's Meta reveal video, and invited viewers to the real-life "Icelandverse" instead. The actor here was dressed like Mark and was called 'Zack Mosbergsson', the Chief Visionary of Icelandverse. The video is a total mockery of Metaverse - right from how it allows people to connect in a place which already exists (i.e Iceland) without being super weird, to being in an actual reality without silly-looking headsets. The actor tries to mimick Mark's postures (and fails to do so which is fabulous because it shows how orchestrated Mark's one-hour talk was), and takes a dig at Mark's recent viral post about sunscreen. After this was launched, Zuckerberg even replied to the fun video which was posted from the Inspired by Iceland account:

Our very own Zack Mossbergsson even managed to convince his friend Mark Zuckerberg on Facebook to enter the #Icelandverse! Yes, really! pic.twitter.com/9D4EeALqsi  Inspired by Iceland (@iceland) November 14, 2021

So, which one caught your interest?
Police have no right to seize passports of citizens without any valid reasons. They should return the passports and instead take agents into custody for misleading these workers, says the advocate representing the domestic workers.  Representational image/DC

HYDERABAD: Around 44 illiterate migrant domestic workers from Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Goa, who were detained when they were about to board a flight to Kuwait on Tuesday for carrying tampered visas, are a worried lot.

Although they have been released, their passports remain in police custody. Stating that they have been misguided by agents, they are seeking that their documents be returned so that they can try for a job in the Middle East, all over again. Malladi Satyavathi from Pallam village in East Godavari district said I wanted to work in Kuwait and I approached an agent. With two sons and a daughter and a bedridden husband, I have to take care of my family. I can now go abroad on a job only if my passport is returned to me.

Nalli Shankar, an advocate representing the domestic workers said Police have no right to seize passports of citizens without any valid reasons. They should return the passports and instead take agents into custody for misleading these workers.

Sister Lissy Joseph, chairperson, national workers welfare Trust, said They have been punished for no fault of theirs. They paid the agents by taking loans. If their passports are submitted in court, it will take a long time and will crush the livelihood aspirations of these debt-ridden women. However, if the authorities are likely to submit the passports in court, then the government should take this matter into a fasttrack court.
Daughters of CDS Gen Bipin Rawat and Madhulike Rawat - Kritika and Tarini - pay their last respect to their parents. (Photo: ANI)

New Delhi: Daughters of Chief of Defence Staff (CDS) General Bipin Rawat, Kritika and Tarini, on Friday paid floral tributes to their parents here in the national capital.

The grandchild of the CDS also paid final respect to grandparents.

General Bipin Rawat and his wife Madhulika Rawat were among the 13 people who died in the military helicopter crash in Tamil Nadu's Coonnor on Wednesday.

Meanwhile, Home Minister Amit Shah, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi also paid tribute to CDS General Bipin Rawat.

Several political leaders like Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, Uttarakhand CM Pushkar Singh Dhami, Congress leaders Mallikarjun Kharge and Harish Singh Rawat, BJP chief JP Nadda and DMK leaders A Raja and Kanimozhi, among others, paid their last respects to the CDS and his wife Madhulika Rawat.

Delhi Lt Governor Anil Baijal also laid a wreath at the mortal remains of the CDS and his wife.

Also, religious leaders held a multi-faith prayer as they paid their last respects to the CDS and his wife.

5/11 Gorkha Rifles are looking after all the arrangements of the last rites of General Rawat who was commissioned in the unit and also went ahead to command it.

BJP leader Ravi Shankar Prasad termed the death of CDS General Rawat a great loss to the nation and said, "I Had great relations with CDS General Bipin Rawat...Such a brave commander...his wife and other soldier leaving like this is very painful. His death is a great loss to the nation. CDS with his courage and bravery made a place in every Indian heart. I express condolence to the loss."

The last rites of General Rawat will be performed later in the day with full military honours. The funeral procession will start from Kamraj Marg and reach Brar Square crematorium in Delhi Cantonment.

An IAF chopper crash near Tamil Nadu's Coonoor on Wednesday claimed the lives of 13 people including CDS Rawat, his wife Madhulika Rawat and his defence adviser Brigadier Lidder.

The Army said the mortal remains of only three persons -- General Rawat, his wife Madhulika Rawat and Brigadier Lidder -- had been positively identified so far.

Brigadier Lidder was cremated earlier today.

Other 10 defence forces personnel who died in the chopper crash are Staff Officer Lieutenant Colonel Harjinder Singh, Wing Commander Prithvi Singh Chauhan, Squadron Leader Kuldeep Singh, Junior Warrant Officer Rana Pratap Das, Junior Warrant Officer Arakkal Pradeep, Havildar Satpal Rai, Naik Gursewak Singh, Naik Jitendra Kumar, Lance Naik Vivek Kumar and Lance Naik B Sai Teja.

Group Captain Varun Singh, the lone survivor in the crash, has been shifted to Air Force Command hospital at Bengaluru for further treatment.

The Centre has ordered a 'tri service' inquiry into the accident. The inquiry will be headed by Air Marshal Manvendra Singh, Air Officer Commanding-in-Chief Training Command.

According to the sources, the black box of the chopper has been recovered from the crash site.

A team of Tamil Nadu's Forensic Science Department also visited the crash site.
There are 63 Police Commissionerates in the country, of which, the highest number, 11 are in Maharashtra, followed by 9 in Telangana. (DC Photo)

HYDERABAD: The state during the past few weeks has witnessed several police brutality and high-handed behaviour cases. Even as the state police faced criticism over such incidents, police personnel said that such behaviour is the result of the working conditions of the officers.

The Telangana state police is reportedly understaffed and police personnel, mostly at the lower level, are said to be under a lot of work-related stress. Not condoning such acts, senior police officials said the stress of work, lack of rest and shortage of staff could be resulting in some men in uniform going beyond their brief when it comes to discharging their duties.

According to the latest Data on Police Organisations (DOPO) released by the Bureau of Police Research & Development (BPR&D), a Central government organisation, the Telangana police department is severely understaffed. The state has 113.67 police personnel for 1 lakh population in the state, against the sanctioned strength of 476.54 personnel for 1 lakh people.

There are 63 Police Commissionerates in the country, of which, the highest number, 11 are in Maharashtra, followed by 9 in Telangana. Few recent police brutality incidents include the merciless beating up of a tribal man in Suryapet, a commuter getting slapped in front of his daughter in Mahbubabad, torturing of a Dalit man in Nalgonda. The most shocking incident was the custodial death of a Dalit woman, who was locked up by the Addagudur police in Yadadri-Bhongir district in a robbery case.

Speaking to Deccan Chronicle about such incidents, Additional Director General of Telangana Police Dr Jitender said these are isolated incidents and strict action is taken against those involved in such cases. It is the state of mind of some officials, and it is not about them losing self-control. We surely do not justify these acts. Every day, police perform lakhs of operations at junctions, routine checks, and apprehend criminals, and sometimes, somebody makes a mistake like this. It should not happen and it is wrong, which is why appropriate actions are taken, he said.

Asked about the action taken against officers involved in such incidents, he said that depends on the gravity of the offence  officials either get suspended, are counselled, punished or even dismissed from service. Additional DG of Railways and Road Safety Sandeep Shandilya said such incidents occur as the public does not care about genuine directions and police viewing it seriously.

Violent protests where the police are outnumbered and lack of rest lead to such incidents, he added. When asked about such behaviour by police in Hyderabad, Police Commissioner of Hyderabad Anjani Kumar said, These do not happen in Hyderabad. We in Hyderabad city conduct regular training and counselling for our officers periodically. We keep a system of check and balance and keep identifying black sheep regularly.

However, 2020 saw numerous incidents of highhandedness by the city police. In April 2020, a video of Moghalpura police station sub-inspector Chandramouli abusing locals and confiscating vehicles of those who had stepped out to get ration had gone viral on social media. Similarly, an auto-rickshaw driver, on his way to refill his LPG gas cylinder, was stopped at Etebar junction by the Mir Chowk traffic police and was assaulted with lathis.
With nine students testing Covid-19 positive at the Anna University, Chennai, recently, the Higher Education Ministry should issue an advisory that vaccinated students alone be allowed to enter the colleges and universities, Subramanian said. (PTI Photo)

Chennai: The Health Department in Tamil Nadu on Friday urged the Higher Education Ministry in the State to allow only vaccinated students to enter the premises of universities and colleges in a bid to control the spread of virus after nine students tested Covid-19 positive at a college in the city.

Minister for Medical and Family Welfare Ma Subramanian, along with the Hindu Religious and Charitable Endowments Minister Sekar Babu, chaired a meeting of top officials of various universities and colleges on the Covid-19 protocols that need to be intensified in educational institutions.

During the meeting, Subramanian said the institutions should function by adhering to the Covid-19 protocols, including wearing a facial mask, maintaining social distancing and conducting classes on a rotational basis. With nine students testing Covid-19 positive at the Anna University, Chennai, recently, the Higher Education Ministry should issue an advisory that vaccinated students alone be allowed to enter the colleges and universities, Subramanian said. He cited lack of vaccination of students was one of the reasons for the decision.

"Till date, only 46 per cent of students in Tamil Nadu have received the first dose of the vaccine while 12 per cent of students got the second," he said. Institutions should ensure that Covid-19 behaviour be followed by students while attending classes and even in the canteen, he said and added that cultural programmes and other events which would see gathering of students should be banned.

"The Higher Education Ministry has been requested to direct the colleges and district administration that the plans discussed in the review meeting be implemented," he told reporters later.

Subramanian said there were four lakh students studying in private engineering colleges. Mass vaccination programmes, along with the Greater Chennai Corporation, would be conducted by the Health Department to ensure students receive the vaccine, he said.
Kolkata: West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee has again been denied permission by the Centre for a foreign visit, this time to neighboring country: Nepal. She was invited by Nepal Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba to attend the annual conference of his party, Nepali Congress, starting from Friday, according to sources. The event will end on December 12.

According to state government sources, a permission was sought from the ministry of external affairs (MEA) which however reportedly objected to it on the grounds of the purpose of the invitation to the CM and her plans of visit. The Trinamul Congress supremo earlier was prevented by the MEA from visiting Rome to attend a global event on peace in October this year.

Lashing out at the BJP, TMC state general secretary Kunal Ghosh alleged, "It is true that the Centre did not give permission to the CM for her Nepal visit on an invitation. This is nothing but revenge and vindictiveness of the BJP which can not do anything on its own. Moreover people have started rejecting them. At the international stage, India under their rule are getting discriminated against. If an alternative leader is invited overseas, they get jealous. So it reflects how much the BJP is scared of Ms Banerjee and her growing popularity abroad."

State BJP vice president Joyprakash Majumdar claimed, "In such cases, the decision of the MEA is final. There is no politics behind it. When a CM goes on a foreign visit, he or she represents the country, not a party. So the foreign policy, present situation and rules of the MEA become important. It must have taken the decision for a logical purpose. It is better not to see politics in it and follow it."

He added, "I will ask the TMC leaders not to play politics over everything including military and border security force and the foreign policy of the government because the nation gets involved there. It is a different issue when you indulge in politics within the country. All political parties understand this. But the TMC understands this a bit less."
The tick-tock of hundreds of antique clocks fills a small hall in the southwestern Pakistani city of Quetta, where collector Gul Kakar swears he will spend all the time he has left caring for them.

Delicate wristwatches, weighty pocket pieces and battered table models clutter every surface, while the pendulums of wall-mounted and standalone grandfather clocks sway as their deep bongs mark each new hour.

"I know their language," Kakar, a 44-year-old police officer, tells AFP during a visit to his collection.

"They tell me their problems, and I understand."

Kakar's collection, some of which dates back to 1850, is housed inside the city's police headquarters compound.

That means they are behind heavy gates and high concrete blast walls in a province that for years has been rife with ethnic, sectarian and separatist violence.

The tight security may contribute to the lack of traffic, though Kakar admits he has found few other aficionados to admire his museum and there are hardly any visitors.

"People in Quetta don't show much interest," he confesses.

Kakar's obsession began decades ago, when two family clocks fell out of order and were sent for repairs.

"I started taking an interest... then I got the idea that I should get more clocks."

Soon he began collecting in earnest and his museum today is the result of more than 18 years of scouring the internet for antiques -- even persuading friends overseas to buy secondhand pieces and ship them to him.

He has also lost count of how many he has -- or how much he spends on his collection -- but income from a family-run landholding means a "major portion" of his police salary goes to clocks.

"For as long as I am alive, I will take care of them," says Kakar, dressed in a smart black vest and carrying a brass-topped walking stick.

He admits, however, that nobody in his family shares the passion, and that after his death, the collection may simply be sold.

He is ready to donate everything if an official or the private sector steps in to fund a museum in his name.

"I have not so far received any such offer," Kakar admits.

Despite all the pieces, he still yearns for one last item -- a grandfather clock similar to a famed 19th-century timepiece kept in Jacobabad, in Sindh province.

That clock -- said by some to be the oldest in what is present-day Pakistan -- was handmade in 1847 by John Jacob, the East India Company colonial administrator who gave the town its name.

Kakar lights up as he explains the mechanism of the clock, whose pendulum is sunk 32 feet deep in a well.

He has never seen it, but is keen to one day.

"I would give up my entire collection for that one."

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Two Singapore residents may have caught the Omicron variant even after receiving Covid-19 booster shots, in cases which may shed light on the protection offered by a third dose of vaccine.

A 24-year-old female airport passenger-service worker has returned a preliminary positive test to Omicron, in what would be the city-states first local case of the variant, the health ministry said in a statement late Thursday. The second person is considered an imported case after returning from Germany via the vaccinated travel lane on Dec. 6. Both had received a third dose of vaccines, the ministry said.

Pfizer Inc. and BioNTech SE earlier this week said initial lab studies show a third dose of their Covid-19 vaccine may be needed to neutralize the Omicron variant. Company researchers observed a 25-fold reduction in neutralizing antibodies that fight the variant, compared with the original strain of the virus, in people who got just two shots. However, boosting with an additional shot of the vaccine restored protection to a level similar to the initial two-dose regimen.

Also read: 23 Omicron variant cases across India, health officials inform standing committee

Given its high transmissibility and spread to many parts of the world, we should expect to find more Omicron cases at our borders and also within our community, Singapores health ministry said.

Both people are recovering in isolation at the National Centre for Infectious Diseases, and all close contacts will be placed in 10-day quarantine at designated facilities, the ministry said.

The airport worker had been tested as part of weekly testing for frontline border workers. She was asymptomatic when detected through the testing, according to the statement. In the second case, the 46-year-old had tested negative with a polymerase chain reaction test on arrival. However, she developed a runny nose the next day and sought medical treatment the day after that, when she tested positive.

Singapore has seen a sharp drop in community cases over the past month, along with a significant easing in hospital loads. the city-state has one of the worlds best vaccination rates, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. 87% of the total population is fully vaccinated, while 96% of those eligible are fully inoculated, most with Pfizer or Moderna. Some 29% have also received booster jabs. Government officials have said jabs for those age 5-11 will be offered soon.

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Chinese human rights lawyers and activists said they have been blocked from leaving their homes this week ahead of events to mark Friday's UN Human Rights Day.

China has seen a dramatic crackdown on civil liberties and freedoms since President Xi Jinping took power in 2012, with hundreds of human rights lawyers and activists detained or placed under monitoring in recent years.

Wang Quanzhang, a human rights lawyer detained for four-and-a-half years as part of a sweeping crackdown on human rights defenders, told AFP that police were blocking him and his wife from leaving their Beijing apartment unattended.

"They told us directly that there were two reasons, one was the US democracy summit, and they were also worried we would take part in World Human Rights Day," Wang, who was released last year, told AFP on Friday.

US President Joe Biden on Thursday held a virtual summit of more than 100 nations to discuss threats to democracy -- with China pointedly left off the guestlist.

Beijing police could not be reached for comment.

Xu Yan, a rights campaigner and the wife of imprisoned high-profile lawyer Yu Wensheng, posted on her verified Twitter account that a group of people had blocked her from opening her front door and said she would have to stay in until Friday night.

All Chinese activists invited to a European Union-organized Human Rights Day event Friday had also been blocked from attending in person.

The EU Delegation to China hit out at what it called "systematically violated" civil and political rights in the country in a statement Friday.

Pointing to a slew of issues including mass detention of minorities in Xinjiang as well as reported organ harvesting from detainees, the Delegation called for China to "thoroughly investigate" allegations and immediately release political prisoners.

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Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan has said that there were no possibilities of any meaningful dialogue with the current leadership in India because of its "religious nationalism".

He said that South Asia had been held back by political differences and conflicts, putting Kashmir dispute between India and Pakistan as the biggest problem holding back the region's development and prosperity.

"Meaningful negotiations with India are impossible as long as the government there is inspired by this ideology.

"I hope someday India could have a rational government with which resolution of disputes could be sought through logical and sane discussions," Imran Khan said.

He highlighted that India and Pakistan, being arch rivals, have been fighting against each other for decades, adding that once core disputes would be resolved, especially that of Kashmir, both countries could jointly fight against the menace of terrorism and climate change.

He said that he was disappointed to have all his peace overtures to India being seen as a sign of weakness.

About regional conflicts, Imran Khan said that those countries who were seeking to resolve disputes through war were badly mistaken.

"They are either unaware of history or they are too proud of their weapons. They certainly have no consideration for humanity. This has led to grave miscalculations," Khan said hinting his comments towards India.

Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi, who said that there were serious concerns over major regional powers drifting towards a extremist approach of confrontation, seconded the Prime Minister's comments.

"This can lead to new rivalries and push the world again into bloc politics. A new Cold War seems to be taking shape," he said.

"Pakistan's primary interest was in seeking a peaceful and stable international order that takes everyone on board. Pakistan will remain committed to peaceful coexistence, cooperative multilateralism, and consensus-driven outcomes," he added.

Pakistan has been consistent with its anti-India and especially anti-Modi stance since the time Imran Khan took office as the country's Prime Minister.

It maintains that India's ideology is being shifted from being secular to what it called an "extremist RSS vision", which it claims that has made lives of minorities difficult.

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A landmark lawsuit by Rohingya refugees against Meta Platforms Inc, formerly known as Facebook, is a "wake-up call" for social media firms and a test case for courts to limit their immunity, human rights and legal experts said.

The $150 billion class-action complaint, filed in California on Monday by law firms Edelson PC and Fields PLLC, argues that Facebook's failure to police content and its platform's design contributed to violence against the Rohingya community.

British lawyers also submitted a letter of notice to Facebook's London office.

While analysts are split over the merits of the case and its chances of success, Rohingya activists said their status of being deemed illegal immigrants in Myanmar left them with few options.

"The Rohingya lost everything. But in Myanmar, there is no law for the Rohingya," said Nay San Lwin, co-founder of advocacy group Free Rohingya Coalition, who has faced abuse on Facebook.

Also Read | Rohingya refugees sue Facebook for $150 bn over Myanmar violence

"Facebook profited from our suffering. The survivors have no option other than a lawsuit against Facebook. It will be an injustice if Rohingya survivors are not compensated for their losses," he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

Meta did not respond to a request for comment.

In an earlier statement in response to the lawsuit, a Meta spokesperson said the company was "appalled by the crimes committed against the Rohingya people in Myanmar."

"We've built a dedicated team of Burmese speakers, banned the Tatmadaw (Myanmar military), disrupted networks manipulating public debate and taken action on harmful misinformation to help keep people safe. We've also invested in Burmese-language technology to reduce the prevalence of violating content."

A day after the lawsuit was filed, Meta said it would ban several accounts linked to the Myanmar military, and said on Wednesday it had built a new artificial intelligence system that can adapt more easily to take action on new or evolving types of harmful content faster.

It was a sign that the tech giant was rattled, said Debbie Stothard, founder of the Alternative ASEAN Network on Burma (ALTSEAN), an advocacy group.

"The timing of these announcements shows the lawsuit is a wake-up call. The lawsuit itself is quite a bold move, but the Rohingya clearly felt there were sufficient grounds," she said.

"Strategic litigation like this - you never know where it can go. In recent times we have seen climate-change litigation becoming more commonplace and getting some wins," she added.

No precedent

More than 730,000 Rohingya Muslims fled Myanmar's Rakhine state in August 2017 after a military crackdown that refugees said included mass killings and rape. Rights groups documented killings of civilians and burning of villages.

Myanmar authorities say they were battling an insurgency and deny carrying out systematic atrocities.

United Nations human rights investigators said in 2018 that the use of Facebook had played a key role in spreading hate speech that fuelled the violence against the Rohingya.

A Reuters investigation that year, cited in the US complaint, found more than 1,000 examples of posts, comments and images attacking the Rohingya and other Muslims on Facebook.

But in the United States, platforms such as Facebook are protected from liability over content posted by users by a law known as Section 230.

The Rohingya complaint says it seeks to apply Myanmar law to the claims if Section 230 is raised as a defence.

"Based on the precedents, this case should lose," said Eric Goldman, a professor of law at Santa Clara University School of Law. "But you've got so much antipathy towards Facebook nowadays - anything is possible."

While the technology industry and others have long held that Section 230 is a crucial protection, the statute has become increasingly controversial as the power of internet companies has grown.

Earlier this year, Meta chief executive Mark Zuckerberg laid out steps to reform the law, saying that companies should have immunity from liability only if they follow best practices for removing damaging material from their platforms.

The lawsuit is a good test case for courts to limit how much immunity platforms are afforded, said David Mindell, a partner at Edelson PC, one of the law firms that brought the suit.

"This case is about what happens when a powerful company has this unchecked power over the world," he said.

Whistleblower complaints

Goldman and Mindell said that recent whistleblower complaints from inside Facebook, which allege the company did not act even when it knew its platform was being used for human rights abuses, could buttress the lawsuit, as could the company's admission that it was "too slow" to contain the abuse.

The lawsuit highlights that "a company can apologise all they like, but at the end of the day, people were harmed," said David Kaye, a human rights lawyer who chairs the board of the Global Network Initiative, a group that includes Facebook and other tech firms.

"And those stateless people can't go to the government of Myanmar for remedy. And if they can't go to the company - what's the remedy?"

The International Criminal Court has opened a case into the accusations of crimes. In September, a US federal judge ordered Facebook to release records of accounts connected to anti-Rohingya violence in Myanmar that the social media giant had shut down.

The progress of the lawsuit would be keenly watched by not just the Rohingya, but also other groups and individuals who have been harmed by online hate speech, said Stothard.

"Refugees, migrants, LGBT people, other minorities - they have all suffered serious harm," she said.

"The question to ask is not, will the lawsuit succeed, but why was it necessary? It's about making social media companies accountable," she said.
The US government on Friday won an appeal against a London court ruling that had blocked the extradition of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange from Britain.

Washington challenged the decision made in January that the 50-year-old Australian would be a suicide risk if he was transferred to the US justice system.

Assange is wanted to face trial for the publication by WikiLeaks in 2010 of classified military documents relating to the US wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

A two-day hearing was held in October where US lawyers argued that the original judge had not given sufficient weight to other expert testimony about Assange's mental state.

They also sought to assure the court that he would not be held in punishing isolation at a federal supermax prison, and would receive appropriate treatment.

Two appeal judges at the High Court in London accepted US assurances that Assange would not face the strictest measures before any trial or after conviction.

"That conclusion is sufficient to determine this appeal in the USA's favour," they said.

Also read: Julian Assange gets permission to marry in UK prison

The case will now go back to the lower court to be considered again.

But Assange's partner, Stella Moris, said they would "appeal this decision at the earliest possible moment".

The long-running case has become a cause celebre for free speech, with Assange's supporters arguing WikiLeaks has the same rights as other media to publish secret material in the public interest.

Pro-Assange supporters gathered outside the court, waving placards and demanding his immediate release from a high-security jail in southeast London.

The US government has indicted Assange on 18 charges relating to WikiLeaks' release of 500,000 secret files on the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq.

If extradited, tried and convicted, he could be jailed for up to 175 years, although the exact sentence is difficult to estimate and could be shorter.

Assange has been in custody since 2019, despite having served a previous sentence for breaching bail conditions in a separate case.

The maverick publisher spent seven years at Ecuador's embassy in London to avoid being removed to Sweden to face sexual assault allegations that were later dropped.

While at the South American country's mission, he fathered two children with Moris, who is a member of his legal team.

British prison authorities last month gave the couple permission to marry at the Belmarsh high-security prison in southeast London.

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There are 18 cases of Covid-19 Delta sub-variant AY.4.2 that have been detected in India, Minister of State for Health Bharati Pravin Pawar informed the Lok Sabha on Friday.

Such mutated variants of coronavirus are likely to evolve as like all viruses, SARS-CoV-2 also evolves over time, Pawar said in a written reply.

Of the 18 cases of AY.4.2 detected so far in the country (as on December 3, 2021), 10 cases are from Gujarat, four from Tamil Nadu, two from Assam, and one each from Maharashtra and Telangana, she said in response to a question on whether the central government is aware that amid worries about a potential third wave of Covid-19, as many as 17 cases of the Delta variant AY.4.2 strain, which is spreading rapidly in the United Kingdom, has emerged in India.

Also Read | Mandaviya says first Covid vaccine dose given to 86% of eligible population

Responding to a question on whether the central government is aware that Biotech Lab namely HLL Biotech Limited Integrated Vaccine Complex (IVC), a public sector vaccine manufacturing plant in Chengalpattu, near Chennai, Tamil Nadu is lying idle for a long period, Pawar said that the Health Ministry has proactively explored various possibilities to operationalise the facility, including HLL, publishing a tender on the Central Public Procurement Portal inviting bids for selection of IVC facility user on an "as is where is" basis through competitive bidding.

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The government on Friday said 25 cases of the Omicron variant of coronavirus have been detected in India so far and that mostly mild symptoms have been noted in all the cases.

Clinically, Omicron is not posing a burden on the healthcare system yet but the vigil has to be maintained, according to the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR).

At a joint press briefing, the government said 25 cases of the Omicron variant have been reported in India -- 10 in Maharashtra, nine in Rajasthan, three in Gujarat, two in Karnataka, and one in Delhi.

"Mainly mild symptoms have been seen in the cases of Omicron variant detected so far," Health Ministry Joint Secretary Lav Agarwal said.

Also Read | UK returnee tests positive for Covid-19 in Kolkata, genome sequencing underway for omicron variant

He said 2,936 cases of the new variant have been found in 59 countries so far. As many as 78,064 probable cases are presently under testing and genomic sequencing, Agarwal said, adding meetings are being held regularly to keep a watch on the global scenario and examine the situation in India.

An ICMR official said that scientific evidence for diagnosis and treatment are being reviewed regularly and the treatment remains unchanged at the moment.

According to the government, the WHO has highlighted that compliance to public health and social measures is declining globally with the increase in vaccination rates.

Also Read | 5 of 7 Omicron patients in Pune test Covid negative: Ajit Pawar

Another official said the government has not received any recommendation from the National Technical Advisory Group on Immunization (NTAGI) on the pediatric vaccination against COVID-19 yet.

The government said 86.2 per cent of the country's adult population received the first dose of Covid-19 vaccine, while 53.5 per cent has been administered both doses.

It said the weekly positivity rate in 19 districts was between five and 10 per cent and it was over 10 per cent in eight districts of three states.

Also Read | Mandaviya says first Covid vaccine dose given to 86% of eligible population

India's coronavirus tally climbed to 3,46,74,744 with the addition of 8,503 infections in a day, while the number of active cases rose to 94,943, according to the Union Health Ministry data updated on Friday.

The death toll mounted to 4,74,735 with the addition of 624 new fatalities, according to the data updated at 8 am.

The daily rise in new coronavirus infections has been recorded below 15,000 for the last 43 days now.

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As a priest chanted mantras, military personnel accorded gun salute and hundreds raised Vande Mataram slogans, the mortal remains of Gen Bipin Rawat and his wife Madhulika Rawat were consigned to flames at a crematorium in Delhi Cantonment on Friday  two days after they died in a helicopter crash in Tamil Nadu.

The couple's daughters  Tarini and Krittika  lit the pyres, as the nation bid adieu to its first Chief of Defence Staff and his wife. I had never thought that he would be taken away from us in this way, Vijay Rawat, the younger brother of Gen Rawat, said, guiding his nieces in performing the last rites.

Defence Minister Rajnath Singh paid his last tribute to the late CDS and his wife.

Also Read | After cremation, ashes of General Rawat to be taken to Haridwar tomorrow: Family

General Rawat devoted his life to serving and protecting our nation. India will remember his courage, valour and patriotism. Farewell General! Singh tweeted after placing wreaths on the caskets at the crematorium at Brar Square in Delhi Cantonment where top military officials were also present during the funeral.

The coffins of Gen Rawat and Madhulika Rawat as well as 11 others  all draped in national flags  were flown to New Delhi on Thursday and taken to the official residence of the CDS on Kamraj Marg early on Friday.

Home Minister Amit Shah, National Security Advisor Ajit Doval, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, BJP president J P Nadda, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar and the chief ministers of Delhi, Uttarakhand and Uttar Pradesh, Arvind Kejriwal, Pushkar Singh Dhami, Yogi Adityanath, respectively were among the many dignitaries, who paid homage.

Chief Justice of India N V Ramana and the chiefs of the army, navy and air force, Gen M M Naravane, Admiral R Hari Kumar and Air Chief Marshal V R Chaudhary respectively also paid tribute to the late military leader. So did the envoys of the United Kingdom, Israel and France to India, Alex Elis, Naor Gilon and Emmanuel Lenain, respectively/

Senior military officials from Bhutan, Sri Lanka and Nepal also arrived in New Delhi to pay homage to Gen Rawat.

The final journey of Gen Rawat and his wife commenced at around 2 pm. As the cortege proceeded from Kamraj Marg to the crematorium in Delhi Cantonment, hundreds of people lined up on the side of the roads, chanting General Rawat Amar Rahe and showering flower petals on the caskets.

The military buglers played the Last Post and Rouse to bid farewell to the late CDS amid a sombre 17-gun salute.

Onlookers showered flowers on his coffin during the procession, and dozens holding the Indian flag ran alongside the carriage, some shouting "Hail mother India".

The bodies of Rawat, his wife and 11 defence personnel who also died in the crash were brought to New Delhi late on Thursday, where Prime Minister Narendra Modi and others laid wreaths before the flag-draped coffins.

Also Read | Tamil Nadu Police felicitates locals involved in rescue operation in M1-17V5 chopper crash

"India will never forget their rich contribution," Modi said.

'Clear headed'

Modi had handpicked Rawat, a decorated general, as CDS in late 2019 with a mission to reorganise India's army, air force and navy into a single, modern force with U.S.-style joint theatre commands.

Rawat's death comes at a critical time for India, which is embroiled in a months-long standoff with China along the parts of their shared border.

Also Read | Avoid uninformed speculation on Coonoor crash, urges IAF

Tensions also remain high on India's heavily-militarised frontier with arch-rival Pakistan, which New Delhi accuses of stoking an armed insurgency in disputed Kashmir.

"Clear-headed and plain-spoken, Gen. Rawat became India's public face on China's aggression," said Brahma Chellaney, a specialist on India-China ties.

"Filling the void won't be easy."
The Union Health Ministry on Friday admitted that wrong Covid-19 vaccine certificates against dead individuals were issued, but said that such errors happened due to data entry errors.

In occasional isolated cases, vaccination certificates are generated for people who were deceased or those who did not receive the vaccine, Bharati Pravin Pawar, the minister of state for health said responding to a written question in the Lok Sabha.

Also Read | Use of masks declining in India amid Omicron scare, warns Centre

These cases were due to inadvertent data entry errors by vaccinators in updating the vaccination data of the second dose of beneficiaries, she said in response to a question raised by Trinamool Congress MP Abhishek Banerjee.

The admission from the government came in the wake of several revelations on such fraudulent certificates, including the latest one from Bihar in which false Covid-19 vaccination certificates were issued in the name of public figures such as Prime Minister Narendra Modi and film actor Priyanka Chopra.

When asked what the Union Health Ministry is doing to stop bogus beneficiaries, officials said that such reports were anecdotal in nature. The reports are anecdotal in nature. I don't think there is any major mettle in such reports, said Balram Bhargava, director-general of the Indian Council of Medical Research.

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The Union government on Friday said that no farmer died due to police action during the year-long protests by farmers. Various farmer groups were protesting against three new farm laws, which have now been scrapped.

The year-long protest at the Delhi borders was suspended by the Samyukta Kisan Morcha (SKM) on Thursday after the Union government accepted their key pending demands, including withdrawal of police cases against the protesters and on Minimum Support Price (MSP).

In a written reply to the Rajya Sabha, Agriculture Minister Narendra Singh Tomar on Friday said, "the subject of compensation, etc. to the families of the deceased farmers in the farmers movement is with the concerned state governments". "No farmer died as a result of police action during the farmers' agitation," he said.

Tomar was responding to a joint question by Congress leader Dhiraj Prasad Sahu and AAP leader Sanjay Singh. The members had asked whether the government is planning to provide or made any provision towards livelihood monetary compensation to the families of the farmers who died during farmers' protests.

Also read: To keep memories 'alive', farmers plan 'protest monuments' in villages

Opposition parties, including the Congress, have been raising the issue of deaths of farmers during the year-long protests. The SKM, which suspended the protests after receiving a formal letter from the Union government accepting their key pending demands, on Thursday also said that farmers would celebrate December 11 as 'Vijay Diwas' and take out victory marches following which they will head home.

The SKM is an umbrella body of 40 farm unions. Thousands of farmers, mainly from Punjab, Haryana and Western Uttar Pradesh, were protesting at various Delhi borders from late November 2020, seeking repeal of the three farm laws. On November 29, Parliament passed a Bill to repeal the three laws.

Replying to separate queries on the MSP, Tomar said, "a formal formation of a committee to promote zero budgeting based agriculture, to change crop pattern as per the changing needs of the country and to make MSP more effective and transparent is under consideration."

Asked if the government proposes to bring a law to give legal guarantee to MSP for every crop as recommended by Swaminathan Commission, the minister said the government has already implemented in 2018-19 the recommendation made by the National Commission on Farmers (NCF) to fix MSP at at least 50 per cent profit on weighted average cost of production.

The Centre fixes MSP for 22 mandated agricultural crops and Fair and Remunerative Price (FRP) for sugarcane on the basis of the recommendations of the Commission for Agricultural Costs and Prices (CACP). The MSP for toria and de-husked coconut are also announced based on the MSP of rapeseed and mustard and copra, respectively.

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As the country pays respects to Chief of Defence Staff General Bipin Rawat and 12 others who were killed in a military chopper crash in Tamil Nadu, the Indian Air Force (IAF) cautioned against "uninformed speculation".

The Air Force said that an inquiry into the chopper crash "would be completed expeditiously" and facts would be brought out but till then any "uninformed speculation may be avoided". It added that the IAF has constituted a tri-service court of inquiry to investigate the cause of the tragic helicopter accident on December 8, 2021.

IAF has constituted a tri-service Court of Inquiry to investigate the cause of the tragic helicopter accident on 08 Dec 21. The inquiry would be completed expeditiously & facts brought out. Till then, to respect the dignity of the deceased, uninformed speculation may be avoided.  Indian Air Force (@IAF_MCC) December 10, 2021

Defence Minister Rajnath Singh on Thursday said that a tri-service enquiry regarding the incident has been ordered.

The team will be headed by Air Marshal Manvendra Singh.

Those who were killed in the crash include the spouse of the CDS, Madhulika Rawat, his Defence Adviser Brig Lakhbinder Singh Lidder, Staff Officer Lt Col Harjinder Singh and nine other Armed Forces personnel including the Air Force helicopter crew. Their names are Wing Commander Prithvi Singh Chauhan, Squadron Leader Kuldeep Singh, Junior Warrant Officer Rana Pratap Das, Junior Warrant Officer Arakkal Pradeep, Havildar Satpal Rai, Naik Gursewak Singh, Naik Jitendra Kumar, Lance Naik Vivek Kumar, Lance Naik B Sai Teja.

Also Read | Bipin Rawat senior-most military official to die in an air crash

The lone survivor Group Captain Varun Singh is a hospital in Bengaluru.

The Chief of Defence Staff would be cremated with full military honours later today.

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The Gorkha identity (in the hills) is more important than the politics of development, a BJP MLA from Kurseong in north Bengal said.

Bishnu Prasad Sharma, who recently wrote to his party president J P Nadda reminding him of the long pending demand of the Gorkhas on separation from West Bengal, on Friday stirred another debate by raising concerns over Chief Minister Mamata Banerjees recent comments that job-seekers in the state should have proficiency in Bengali language, adding that knowing the language will be a prerequisite for public jobs in the state.

Sharma wrote to the chief minister, saying, Madam, it is good to learn any language but it is not good to make any of the language learning as compulsory exercise. Sharma also mentioned, ... I would like to express my sincere concerns on the decision of making Bengali language compulsory, in purview of the state job aspirants from North Bengal region.

Talking to DH, Sharma said that for the Gorkhas, residents of Darjeeling and adjoining regions in the northern part of the state, it is the identity that supersedes politics around development.

Also Read | BJP MLA writes to Nadda, demands separation of Darjeeling from Bengal

Sharma said that the BJPs Bengal unit is supposed to indulge in state politics, and as the matter concerns Gorkhas, he has written directly to the central leadership. In the letter, Sharma stated that Darjeeling hills gave three MPs to the party and voters in the adjoining region, too, voted for the BJP in 2019 and 2021. I had raised the demand earlier as well. Despite that, I was given an opportunity to contest. This indicates that the party is with our aspirations, Sharma said.

The long-pending demand of Gorkhas means separation in any form of our land from the state of West Bengal in an appropriate political manner, taking in context the concerned historical and majoritarian political landscape, he stated in the letter to Nadda.

Darjeeling BJP MP Raju Bista said that a permanent solution in accordance with the Constitution is required which also meets the aspirations of the people. Talks have been initiated in New Delhi. The second meeting is expected in late December or January, Bista said.

The Gorkha Janmukti Morcha (GJM), which has over the years agitated for separate statehood (and had split into two factions), called the BJP politicians demand as one meant to mislead people. We are for a political solution, Roshan Giri, general secretary, GJM, said. He did not clarify his position when asked about the statehood issue GJM has associated itself with over the years.

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After over a year of braving extreme weather, the Covid-19 pandemic and living in tents on highways, farmers' unions have decided to honour locals who helped farmers during their protest at Delhi's Singhu, Tikri and Ghazipur borders.

Farmers' leaders said locals offered "immense help" to the protesters in different ways such as providing electricity and water connections from their homes.

They said now it is time for them to show their gratitude towards such people and honour them.

The Samyukt Kisan Morcha (SKM), which spearheaded the farmers' protest, on Thursday decided to suspend the long-drawn agitation after the government agreed to consider all its other demands, days after the repeal of the three contentious farm laws.

Also read: To keep memories 'alive', farmers plan 'protest monuments' in villages

The SKM leaders announced that the stir will be suspended and the farmers would go back home in a victory march on December 11.

Farmer leader and a member of the SKM's empowered committee, Shiv Kumar Kakka said the SKM will honour those locals who helped farmers selflessly during the course of the agitation and strengthened the movement.

"We have formed a committee to make a list of such locals so that we can honour them. Before going home, a ceremony will be held at the Singhu border tomorrow to honour them. We will garland them and present shawls and sweets," Kakka told PTI.

Kakka said that some local residents and traders became good friends with farmers and their bond will remain intact.

He said the SKM used to hold all its important meetings at the Kajaria Tiles showroom at the Singhu border. The shop owner gave the entire space to farmers.

"So we all became good friends. We can never forget this gesture," he added.

Also read: To keep memories 'alive', farmers plan 'protest monuments' in villages

Kakka said locals helped the agitating farmers in many ways such as providing water, electricity, shelter, places for holding meetings, tents and food etc.

"So we have decided to thank and honour them. A similar ceremony is also likely to be held at other border points of Delhi," he said.

SKM member Sudesh Goyat said at the Tikri border that a ceremony has been planned near the KMP (Kundali-Manesar-Palwal) Peripheral Expressway to honour locals who helped farmers during their protest.

"We will apply 'tilak' on their foreheads and present them with sweets and shawls on Saturday," he said.

Goyat said the locals helped the farmers when the government was hell-bent on breaking them.

"When our electricity and water supply was disconnected by the government, the locals gave us electricity and water from their homes. They helped us in every way and that's how we won the battle.

"Now it's time to show our gratitude towards these people. We will honour people of villages and towns near the Tikri border before going back home," he said.

A leader of the Bharatiya Kisan Union Ekta (Ugrahan), who did not wish to be named, said farmer leaders are also visiting villages located near the Tikri border protest site to thank the people who supported the agitation.

"We cannot forget the contribution of residents of villages and towns located around the protest sites. We visited them and offered them sweets to thank them for supporting us throughout our agitation," the BKU Ekta (Ugrahan) leader said.

Thousands of farmers from Punjab, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh were protesting at the borders of the national capital since November 26 last year to demand the repeal of the three farm laws.

On November 29, a bill was passed in Parliament to repeal the laws, one of the main demands of the farmers.

However, the farmers refused to end their protest, demanding that the government fulfil their other demands that included a legal guarantee for minimum support price (MSP) and the withdrawal of cases against farmers.

The SKM on Thursday decided to suspend the movement and announced that farmers will go back home on Saturday from the protest sites on Delhi's borders after the central government formally agreed to consider their demands.

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The final journey of Chief of Defence Staff General Bipin Rawat and his wife Madhulika Rawat began from his official residence here to a cremation ground where they will be laid to rest.

General Rawat, his wife, and 11 other defence personnel were killed when an Mi17V5 helicopter carrying them crashed near Coonoor in Tamil Nadu on Wednesday.

The general will be laid to rest at the Brar Square cremation ground. A ceremonial Battery of the 2233 Field Regiment provided the gun carriage.

About 800 service personnel are expected to be in attendance for the military funeral.

Also read: Amit Shah, Ajit Doval, others pay last respects to CDS Bipin Rawat, wife

The final journey of General Rawat and his wife began amid chants of 'Jab tak suraj chand rahega, Rawat ji ka naam rahega', 'Indian Army Zindabad' and bharat mata ki jai', and people showered flower petals as the convoy passed.

The mortal remains of General Rawat and his wife were kept at their official residence before cremation, and Home Minister Amit Shah, National Security Advisor Ajit Doval and Congress leader Rahul Gandhi paid tributes and laid wreaths.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the country's top military brass paid homage to the victims of the crash after their bodies were brought to Delhi in a military aircraft on Thursday.

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The next Chief of Defence Staff (CDS) will have to pick up the threads and carry on the task his predecessor General Bipin Rawat left unfinished when he died in the helicopter crash in Tamil Nadu  'theaterization' of the military commands to enhance 'jointness' among the army, navy and air force.

The government will expect the new CDS to go full steam ahead to implement the proposed military reforms, taking all stakeholders, especially the three service chiefs, on board and avoiding any controversy.

General Rawat, who also held the office of the Secretary of Department of Military Affairs, had a meeting with the three service chiefs a few weeks back and advanced the deadline from September 2022 to April 2022 for the army, navy and air force to conclude internal studies and submit their reports and views on the proposal of creation of the theatre commands.

A source said that the Ministry of Defence expected the theatre commands to be in place in two or three years and would like to stick to the timeline. General Rawat's death in the helicopter crash created a void in the top echelon of the military establishment, but the government would fill it up soon and would not allow the reform initiatives spearheaded by him to lose momentum, the source told the DH in New Delhi.

The differences within the military establishment over basic structure of the theatre commands came to public domain earlier this year when General Rawat said that the Indian Air Force (IAF) remained a supporting arm of the ground forces just like the artillery or the engineers support the combatant arm in the army. The then IAF chief, Air Chief Marshal R K S Bhadauria, however, publicly argued that the air force had a greater role to play in any integrated theatre.

Defence Minister Rajnath Singh recently stressed that inputs of all stakeholders must be taken into consideration to bring about reforms in the military structure and enhance jointness among the armed forces.

The proposed 'theaterization' of the armed forces will integrate all the 17 single-service commands into at least five Theatre Commands  an Air Defence Command led by the IAF, a Maritime Theatre Command led by the Indian Navy and three land theatre commands led by the Indian Army. The Eastern Theatre Command and Northern Theatre Command led by the Indian Army will be tasked to respond to any threat from across the disputed India-China boundary. The Western Theatre Command, which will also be led by the Indian Army, will defend the disputed and undisputed stretches of India-Pakistan border. A training command and a logistics command have also been proposed. The number and nature of the commands have not yet been finalized though.

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India never had its own footwear sizing system. The British introduced English sizes, which are still followed. This is one of the reasons most Indian footwear is not suited to Indian wearers, whose feet characteristics are different than that of Europeans and Americans.

It is for this reason the Centre has initiated the first-ever development of the Indian footwear sizing system to standardise the footwear size ranges required to cover the need of the local population. The Rs 10.80 crore project launched by the ministry of commerce and industry will soon initiate an anthropometric survey, statistical analysis, gait study, wear trials and other specifications for indigenisation of footwear under the Atmanirbhar Bharat scheme.

The footwear sizing will be developed in consultation with Central Leather Research Institute (CLRI), Chennai to identify the footwear size ranges required to cover the need of the local population for footwear.

The present Indian Standard IS 1638:1969 specification for sizing and fitting of footwear is based on the European and French Standards. This standard requires a revision to accommodate for demographic, anthropometric features of the Indian feet, leading to more comfortable footwear and health of the individual, the Ministry of Commerce said.

Since the anatomy and functional requirements of footwear for children, juveniles and adults (both men and women) are demography dependent, it is necessary to design and develop correct footwear exclusively for the Indian population, it said.

This project will lead to carrying out accurate measurements taking into consideration all the variations due to region, gender, age, health condition towards indigenisation of key products essential for the realisation of an Atmanirbhar Bharat, the ministry said.

The survey will be conducted in about 100 districts of the country and over 1 lakh samples will be collected from across the country. The team is expected to visit schools, offices, business clusters, households and the likes.

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On Human Rights Day, individuals and 30 Indian diaspora groups, as well as international organisations from over 15 countries on Friday, came together for a social media campaign to draw attention to alleged growing attacks on human rights in India.

In a joint statement, UK's Anti-Caste Discrimination Alliance (ACDA), US's Coalition of Seattle Indian Americans, US's Dalit Solidarity Forum, Australia's The Humanism Project, US's Hindus for Human Rights, among others, condemned the growing attacks on human rights in India.

Posters with Speaking up is not anti-national, silencing people is! slogan were displayed in numerous cities around the world, including Paris, Sydney, Melbourne, Kuala Lumpur, Cape Town, Tokyo, New York and Amsterdam, according to the statement.

"We find it empowering to see so many members of the Indian diaspora, and even partners and allies, come together to make this strong statement.

"With all the noise made by those who want to divide and destroy, we hope others will find it hopeful, too. That is why we are raising our voices as Indian diaspora and allies to highlight that India - just like every country - needs a free press, and needs youth, Dalit, Muslim and all kinds of activists, because we can only guarantee the best possible world for all if everyone can speak, Alena Kahle from Foundation The London Story said.

On the importance of global solidarity, Michael Gottlob from the India Coordination Group (IndienKoGruppe) at Amnesty Germany said, The utopian idea of solidarity across boundaries still inspires millions of Amnesty activists from many countries in the world.

That is why we are glad to join the common protest on the Human Rights Day. Let us make sure that the world is watching India - as Indians are watching the world. So that the movement for human rights will become truly global," he said.

Expressing the pride and hope that the diaspora feels about the native country, Haroon Kasim, co-founder, The Humanism Project based in Australia, said, We stand proudly as Indians who will speak out loudly against any efforts to compromise or threaten India's proud history of diversity, inclusiveness or her democratic values.

Governments will come and go, but we remain committed to standing up and protecting India's proud multicultural, multi religious, multilingual and democratic ethos. We will not have it any other way, he asserted.

Sunita Viswanath from Hindus for Human Rights-US asserted, We are progressive Hindus who respect the egalitarian and inclusive principles in the Indian constitution. For us, vasudhaiva kutumbakam means a world where no one is superior to another (which means an end to caste), and all live in peace and harmony.

"We call on the Indian citizenry -- particularly the Hindu majority -- to wake up to the horrors taking place before their eyes, and remove Hindutva hatred from their hearts and their government, she said.

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All democratic nations must constantly enhance inclusion and transparency, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said on Friday, as he participated in the virtual Summit for Democracy convened by the United States President Joe Biden.

The Prime Minister also stressed shaping global norms for emerging technologies like social media and cryptocurrencies, so that they could be used to empower democracy, not to undermine it.

The Modi Government was earlier this year at loggerheads with Twitter and WhatsApp over the implementation of the new Information Technology rules. The social media companies had reservations about the new IT rules and they argued that some sections of it might be in conflict with the right of privacy and freedom of speech of the users.

Modi took part in the Summit for Democracy even as China made Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan decline the invitation from the US to attend it.

Also read: PM Modi to take final call on crypto regulatory framework: Report

The Prime Minister had taken part in a closed-door session of the summit on Thursday and presented the national statement in an open session on Friday.

Different parts of the world have followed different paths of democratic development. There is much we can learn from each other, he said, addressing over 85 leaders, including the US President. We all need to constantly improve our democratic practices and systems. And, we all need to continuously enhance inclusion, transparency, human dignity, responsive grievance redressing and decentralization of power.

The Biden Administration has been tacitly conveying to the Modi Government concerns in the US over the perception that India was backsliding on human rights and freedom of speech and religion. The US President, as well as his Vice President Kamala Harris, subtly nudged the Prime Minister to protect the democratic principles of India, when they had hosted him in Washington DC on September 24.

The Prime Minister on Friday said that the democratic spirit was integral to the civilization ethos of India. He noted that the elected republican city-states such as Lichhavi and Shakya had flourished in India as far as 2500 years back and the 10th Century "Uttaramerur '' inscription that codified the principles of democratic participation.

This very democratic spirit and ethos had made ancient India one of the most prosperous. Centuries of the colonial rule could not suppress the democratic spirit of the Indian people. It again found full expression with India's independence, and led to an unparalleled story in democratic nation-building over the last 75 years, he said.

He said that the story of India had one clear message to the world. That democracy can deliver, that democracy has delivered and that democracy will continue to deliver.

He said that the basic strength of democracy was the spirit and ethos within citizens and societies. Democracy is not only of the people, by the people, for the people but also with the people, within the people.

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In what may turn out to be a shot in the arm of Samajwadi Party (SP) supremo Akhilesh Yadav, an influential 'Brahmin' leader from Gorakhpur, the home town of Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath, is likely to join the former's party in the next few days.

Pandit Hari Shankar Tewari, one of the tallest 'Brahmin' leaders in 'Poorvanchal' (eastern region), who was a six-term MLA in the state assembly from Chillupar seat and hailed from Gorakhpur, and his two sons one of whom was a BSP MLA and another a former MP, could join the SP on Sunday.

Also Read | Along with Muslim-Yadav equation, Samajwadi Party engaging other castes to defeat BJP in UP

Tewari, a former mafia don, who faced several criminal cases and was once a history-sheeter, wielded considerable influence of the 'Brahmin' community in Gorakhpur and its adjoining districts. Eighty-five-year-old Tewari, a former UP minister, was once the tallest brahmin leader in the region. Tewari stopped contesting polls in 2012.

His son Vinay Shankar Tewari became an MLA from the constituency in 2017 on a BSP ticket. Tewari's other son Bhishma Shankar alias Kushal Tewari was an MP from Sant Kabir Nagar seat in 2007 and 2009 on a BSP ticket.

Both Vinay and Kushal were expelled from the BSP three days back amid speculations that they could switch over to the SP.

Read more: UP women line up for Congress tickets after Priyanka announces 40% reservations for polls

''The Tewari family has considerable influence over Brahmin voters in the region....SP will stand to benefit immensely if it joins hands with Akhilesh Yadav,'' said a Lucknow based political analyst.

The development assumes significance as it comes amid a fit of perceived anger in the electorally influential Brahmin community against the BJP in the state.

BJP was pushed on the defensive after its own leaders had voiced concern over 'persecution' of the Brahmins under the current dispensation. A BJP legislator from Lambhua assembly seat in Sultanpur district Deomani Dwivedi, who hailed from the 'Brahmin' community, had sought to know from the state government about its future plan to ensure the community's security. The legislator also wanted to know about the number of 'brahmins' murdered in the state since the BJP came to power in UP and in how many cases the police were able to arrest the culprits.

Read more: Shiv Sena may form alliance with Congress in Goa and UP, says Sanjay Raut

The saffron party, in an apparent bid, to douse the anger had senior Congress leader Jitin Prasada join it and also made him a minister in the Yogi Adityanath government.

'Brahmins' who formed around ten per cent of the electorate in the state, were a deciding factor on around a dozen Lok Sabha and over 50 assembly seats.

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RJD leader Tejashwi Yadav's maternal uncle Sadhu Yadav on Friday went all out at his nephew over his inter-community marriage to former schoolmate Rachel Godinho.

Sadhu Yadav, the former Gopalganj MP, did not pull his punches in his attack on Tejashwi.

"He has demeaned the image of Lalu Prasad's family after did the marriage with a girl belonging to another community. He doesn't deserve to be called Leader of Opposition in the Bihar Assembly.

Also Read | In Pics | Tejashwi Yadav marries Rachel Iris in Delhi

"He is doing arbitrariness in the family and party. He wants to rule us. We cannot allow him to do so. We will boycott him. We will teach him a lesson," said Sadhu Yadav, whose rage also owed to the fact that he was not invited to the ceremony.

He said that Lalu Prasad's old aide Prem Gupta, who attended the marriage, was a "corrupt person". "In fact all the invited persons who were participated in the marriage are corrupt," he said.

Tejashwi Yadav got married to Rachel Godinho in south Delhi's Sainik farm locality on Thursday in presence of all family members. He has invited a limited number of people for the marriage. Even RJD's Bihar President Jagadanand Singh and other top leaders were not invited to the event. Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar was not invited as well.

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West Bengal Governor Jagdeep Dhankhar firing a fresh salvo at the TMC government on Thursday said Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee's stand on the expansion of BSF's jurisdiction in the state is "potentially alarming for national security", eliciting a strong response from the ruling party which accused him of acting like a "BJP spokesperson".

In a letter to the chief minister, Dhankhar urged Banerjee to take appropriate steps urgently and address the issue in public and national interests and revise her stance to generate an environment of harmony and cooperation.

The governor's letter was prompted by the chief minister's recent directive to the state police not to allow the BSF to enter areas outside its jurisdiction. At an administrative review meeting on December 7 in Uttar Dinajpur district, Banerjee had directed the police administration not to allow BSF to breach its jurisdiction limits and get involved in law and order of the state.

She gave the same order on Thursday at another meeting in Nadia district. There was no immediate reaction from the state government on the governor's letter. \

"Deeply concerned at your directives concerning BSF including 'BSF is allowed for 15 km that too with the permission of state police' to state apparatus during the course of the official administrative meeting at Ganga Rampur on December 7. These are not in sync with law or the recent Union Home Ministry notification increasing the jurisdiction of the BSF in the state from 15 km to 50 km. Your stance has sent disturbing signals and is potentially alarming for federal polity and national security," Dhankhar said in the letter which he shared on Twitter.

He said there is need to generate "bonhomie and not confrontation" between the central security agencies and the state police.

"This imperatively calls for, in public and national interest, that your directives, instructions as also stance regarding functioning of BSF in the state be revisited so as to generate an environ of harmony and cooperation," the letter read.

"In the state having international border with Bangladesh, Nepal and Bhutan, BSF and Central Armed Police Force play significantly well defined crucial role from the perspective of national security and containing criminal illegal activities," Dhankhar said in the letter.

The Centre has recently amended the BSF Act to authorize the force to undertake search, seizure and arrest within a larger 50 km stretch, instead of 15 km, from the international border in Punjab, West Bengal and Assam.

Banerjee has criticized the decision, alleging that it is an attempt to interfere with the country's federal structure. She has also claimed that the move is aimed to torture the people in those areas. She had met Prime Minister Narendra Modi in New Delhi in November and demanded a rollback of the decision.

At the administrative meeting held at Krishnagar in Nadia district on Thursday, Banerjee said, "I ask the ICs (inspectors-in-charge) to increase their mobility and step up naka checking. You have borders with Bangladesh starting from Karimpur. You have to keep an eye on that too."

"You have also to see that BSF does not get into villages without your permission and get involved with anything. The BSF will do their work and you will do yours. Always remember that law and order is your subject," Banerjee said.

For the last couple of days, Banerjee has been directing the police administration not to allow BSF to breach its jurisdiction limits and get involved in law and order of the state. Earlier, referring to the killing of 13 civilians in firing by security forces in Nagaland, she had alleged that West Bengal had witnessed incidents of BSF getting into villages beyond its jurisdiction in Murshidabad, Malda, Uttar and Dakshin Dinajpur districts.

West Bengal Assembly had last month passed a resolution against the Centre's decision to extend BSF's jurisdiction. Echoing Dhankhar, the opposition BJP accused Banerjee of driving a wedge between BSF and the state police despite taking the oath to have allegiance to the Constitution.

"I wonder how, the Chief Minister of a State, bound by the oath taken by her, to bear true faith and allegiance towards the Constitution of India & supposed to uphold the sovereignty and integrity of India; could repeatedly malign @BSF_India, who are assigned to do just that," BJP leader Suvendu Adhikari tweeted.

He drew the attention of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Union Home Minister Amit Shah and Governor Dhankhar on the issue and requested the Raj Bhawan to inform the Rashtrapati Bhawan about it.

"She is a repeat offender, wilfully trying to drive a wedge between @BSF_India & @WBPolice. Kindly request @PMOIndia, @HMOIndia, @DefenceMinIndia to take this into cognizance. WB Governor @jdhankhar1 Ji, please apprise Hon'ble @rashtrapatibhvn regarding this matter," he said in a series of tweets. Reacting to the Governor's letter, TMC state general secretary Kunal Ghosh said Dhankhar should stop behaving like a "BJP spokesperson".

"The Governor should maintain the dignity of his office. He should stop behaving like a BJP spokesperson. He is talking about federal polity and national security. We would like to know his stance on the demand by a BJP MLA on the separation of Darjeeling hills from West Bengal. Why is he silent on it ? Ghosh said.

Senior Trinamool Congress leader and party's Deputy Leader in Rajya Sabha, Sukhendu Sekhar Roy, said the chief minister is well within her rights about alerting the police and flagging the issue of BSF atrocities against villagers in many border villages.

The Trinamool Congress government headed by Banerjee has had several run-ins with Dhankhar over a number of issues since he took over as the state governor in July 2018.

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Home Minister Amit Shah on Friday laid wreaths on the mortal remains of Chief of Defence Staff General Bipin Rawat and his wife Madhulika Rawat, who were among the 13 killed in the military chopper crash in Tamil Nadu.

The mortal remains of General Rawat and his wife were kept at their official residence here before cremation.

NSA Ajit Doval also paid floral tribute to CDS Gen Bipin Rawat and his wife Madhulika Rawat. Uttarakhand Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami, BJP leader Ravi Shankar Prasad, Delhi Lt Delhi Lt Governor Anil Baijal and British Ambassador to India Alexander Ellis were among the other leaders who paid their last respects to Gen Rawat and his wife.

Also Read  IAF chopper crash: Mortal remains of only 4 identified

Gen Rawat, his wife, and 11 other defence personnel were killed when a Mi17V5 helicopter carrying them crashed near Coonoor in Tamil Nadu on Wednesday.

As India's first Chief of Defence Staff, Gen Rawat was tasked to bring in theatre command and jointness among the three services, and he was pushing it with a tough approach and specific timelines in the last two years.

Known to be forthright, fearless, and blunt at times, the 63-year-old strongly backed a policy of hot pursuit in dealing with cross-border terrorism and militancy in Jammu and Kashmir when he was the Army Chief between 2016 and 2019.

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In a significant decision, the Allahabad High Court has said that a rape survivor can not be forced to put her child to a DNA test to ascertain its paternity.

A single bench comprising Justice Sangeeta Chandra of the Lucknow bench of the Allahabad High Court passed the order on a petition filed by the mother of a rape survivor seeking to challenge the order of a POCSO Court directing the victim for the DNA test of her child to determine paternity of the baby.

The POCSO court had given the order on an application moved by the minor rape accused seeking DNA test of the child.

The high court said that the rape survivor could not be "forced" to allow her child to undergo the DNA test to ascertain the baby's paternity. ''The consent of the rape survivor is essential for the DNA test,'' the court said in its order.

It also said that the question before the POCSO court was whether the offense of rape had been committed and not who the father of the baby was.

According to the prosecution, an FIR was lodged with the police in Sultanpur district in 2017 by a woman, who had alleged that the accused had raped her 14-year old daughter and that she was seven months pregnant.

Since the accused was a minor, the case was heard by the Juvenile Justice Board (JJB). During the pendency of the case, the victim gave birth to a baby. The accused filed an application before the JJB seeking a DNA test of the baby but the Board rejected the application.

The accused thereafter moved the POCSO Court which ordered for the DNA test of the child.

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The Centre Friday informed Rajya Sabha that the government was not aware of any unlawful interception of any message of any individual.

Minister of State for Communications Devusinh Chauhan said that the government was not aware of any authorised official unlawfully intercepting any message.

To another question, the Minister said approval of the competent authority before intercepting any message.

Earlier this year, a row erupted over Israeli spyware Pegasus allegedly being used for targeted surveillance in India. In October, the Supreme Court set up a three-member independent expert panel to probe the alleged use of the spyware for targeted surveillance in India.

The apex court had also observed that the state cannot get a ''free pass'' every time the spectre of national security is raised and that its mere invocation cannot render the judiciary a ''mute spectator'' and be the bugbear it shies away from.

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Union Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya on Friday said that out of the total 157 newly approved medical colleges in the country's backward areas, only 70 institutes have become functional to date.

"Health is a state subject, and primary responsibility to ensure availability of public health facilities lies with the state government. However, the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare administers a Centrally Sponsored Scheme for 'Establishment of new Medical Colleges attached with existing district and referral hospitals' with preference to under-served areas and aspirational districts where there is no existing government or private medical college," he said in the Parliament.

This step will help to improve the healthcare delivery system in these areas. In this scheme, the Central government has approved the establishment of 157 new medical colleges in three phases. Out of these, 70 medical colleges have become functional till date.

Answering another question on the steps taken by the Centre for making healthcare facilities affordable for patients, he said, "To provide affordable and quality tertiary health care facilities, the government is setting up new All India Institute of Medical Science (AIIMS) and upgrading Government Medical Colleges under the Pradhan Mantri Swasthya Suraksha Yojana. The state governments are also supported for setting up of new medical colleges as well as for increasing undergraduate and postgraduate medical seats."

"Further, under the National Health Mission (NHM), technical and financial support is provided to states and union territories for strengthening their healthcare systems up to district hospital level, based on the proposals submitted by them in their Program Implementation Plans (PIPs), subject to availability of resources. NHM adopts a health system approach and targets to build a network for public health facilities with health and wellness centres at the grassroots level and district hospitals, with robust referral linkage, to offer comprehensive primary and secondary care services to citizens," the minister added.

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Prime Minister Narendra Modi will take a final decision on the regulatory framework for cryptocurrencies, amid conflicting views, The Economic Times reported on Friday.

The draft bill for cryptocurrencies has been finalised by the finance ministry but certain sections of the government felt more detailed discussions might be required, according to the report citing two persons familiar with the development.

Also read: Global action needed to regulate technology like cryptocurrency, says Nirmala Sitharaman

The officials are likely to meet later in the day to form a final consensus on the Bill, the report added. The bill is expected to be tabled in the current session of the parliament.

The finance ministry didn't immediately respond to Reuters' request for a comment.

Earlier this week, Reuters reported that the proposed legislation to ban the use of cryptocurrencies as a method of payment in India also seeks to make those who infringe the law subject to arrest without a warrant.

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Polling was under way amid tight security on Friday for biennial elections to six seats of Telangana Legislative Council from local authority constituencies.

Local body representatives including corporators, councilors, ZPTC and MPTC members were casting their votes in five undivided districts of Adilabad, Karimnagar, Khammam, Medak and Nalgonda.

The polling was on for two seats in Karimnagar district and one each in the remaining four districts.

According to poll officials, a total of 5,326 voters will decide the political fortunes of 26 candidates.

The polling, which began at 8 am at all 37 polling stations in the six constituencies, will continue till 4 pm. Counting of votes will be taken up on December 14.

State Chief Electoral Officer Shashank Goel said all arrangements were made to ensure free and fair polling. He was monitoring the poll process from Hyderabad. District collectors, police commissioners, superintendents of police and other officials were supervising the arrangements in their respective districts.

The officials were also taking steps to ensure strict adherence to Covid-19 protocol during the polling. They banned mobile phones and cameras in the polling centres.

Facing rebel trouble, ruling Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) had shifted its local body members to Bengaluru, Goa, Delhi and other places to prevent the opposition parties from poaching its voters. They were brought to a resort on the outskirts of Hyderabad on Thursday and left for their respective districts on Friday morning.

TRS rebel candidate and former Karimnagar mayor Sardar Ravinder Singh is contesting from one of the seats in Karimnagar district. The BJP is supporting him. Congress candidates are in the fray in Medak, Khammam and Adilabad.

The Election Commission of India had last month issued notification for election to six seats of the Council from local authority constituencies.

Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao's daughter K Kavitha and five other candidates of ruling Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) were declared elected unanimously.

Kavitha was elected from Nizamabad constituency. The others who were elected to upper house of the state legislature are Patnam Mahender Reddy, Shambipur Raju (both from Rangareddy district), Pochampally Srinivas Reddy (Warangal), Kasireddy Narayana Reddy and Kuchumalla Damodar Reddy(both from Mahabubnagar district).

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Tamil Nadu police on Friday felicitated the villagers and estate workers who were the first to reach the spot when the helicopter M1-17V5 carrying Chief of Defence Service (CDS) General Bipin Rawat, his wife Madhulika Rawat and 12 others crashed at Kateri near Coonoor.

Tamil Nadu police DGP, C. Sylendra Babu was personally present while felicitating the local and estate workers who had helped to recover the mortal remains and provided blankets and other clothes to carry the injured to the Wellington Army hospital.

Also Read | Avoid uninformed speculation on Coonoor crash, urges IAF

While handing over blankets, clothes, and eatables to the local estate workers in Conoor, the DIG told media, "The local people who are workers in tea estates have done a yeoman service by rushing to the place on hearing about the accident. The service of these people have to be recorded and hence we are felicitating them."

Meanwhile, he said that the state police, under the leadership of ADSP Muthumanickam, who is heading the special team investigating the case, have recorded eyewitnesses' statements.

"We have already taken the account of 25 people and will be handing over these statements to the Army special team led by Air Marshall Manavendra Singh," he told the media.

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Tamil Nadu BJP state president K. Annamalai on Friday alleged that YouTuber Maridhas's arrest was the result of a political vendetta by the DMK government.

The YouTuber was arrested on Thursday night for posing questions on social media as to whether Tamil Nadu has turned into Kashmir. BJP state president said that the DMK government was suppressing the freedom of expression and said that the state leader of the BJP, Kalyam Raman, and other nationalists were arrested by the DMK government to satisfy their egos.

Annamalai in a tweet on Friday said that the Tamil Nadu BJP was doing everything possible to get the nationalists released. He tweeted, "@BJP4TamilNadu would fight tooth&nail to get all of them out of their judicial confinement. Our party would take care of them and their families in all respect."

Kalyam Raman and 10 other BJP cadres were arrested in October and according to the police, he was arrested for offensive tweets that allegedly promoted enmity and hatred.

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State force should never be used to either browbeat a political opinion or journalists, the Supreme Court has said, calling for "introspection from the political class across the country" over debasement in dialogue which is taking place even as it asked scribes to be more responsible in the Twitter age.

A bench comprising Justices S K Kaul and M M Sundresh made these observations while quashing the FIRs against editors of a news web portal and others, in connection with articles published in West Bengal.

In a country that prides itself on its diversity, there are bound to be different perceptions and opinions which would include political opinions, the apex court said.

That is the very essence of a democracy, it said.

State force should never be used to either browbeat a political opinion or the journalists suffer the consequences of what is already in the public domain.

Also Read | Sycophancy weakens our democracy

We hasten to add that this does not take away the responsibility of the journalists in how they report the matters, more so in a Twitter age, the bench said.

The observations came after senior advocate Siddhartha Dave, appearing on behalf of the West Bengal government, informed the bench that the state has decided to withdraw the FIRs registered against Nupur J Sharma, the editor of English language Opindia.com, YouTuber Ajeet Bharti and others including its founder and CEO.

The top court said that it was not inclined to let go of the opportunity of saying something which is troubling the society and the court.

It is undoubtedly the debasement in the dialogue which is taking place which needs introspection from the political class across the country. In a country that prides itself on its diversity, there are bound to be different perceptions and opinions which would include political opinions.

Also Read | Accountability central to governance in a parliamentary democracy: Kovind

The present proceedings in a way emanate from the same. We say so as what the petitioners have done is to reproduce what the political class has stated against each other and which is already in the public domain, an aspect pointed out eminently by senior counsel for the petitioners, it said.

The bench said that no doubt by the very nature of the job required to be performed by the political class, at times their exchanges may get heated.

But it should not explode. We are sure difference in perceptions can be expressed in better language, it said in its order uploaded today.

The top court had earlier stayed further proceedings in a fresh FIR lodged in West Bengal against them.

Read | Venkaiah Naidu calls for wider debate on 'freebies' during polls

On June 26 last year, the top court had stayed further proceedings in three FIRs lodged in West Bengal against petitioners.

In their intervention application, Sharma and others had said that they are constrained to move the top court due to persistent hounding and victimisation by the West Bengal government, who in its endeavour to scuttle inconvenient media reports registered multiple FIRs against them.

The application had further said, "That the order dated June 26, 2020, came as a respite to the petitioners whose honour, life and liberty were sought to be repeatedly undermined by the state..."

However, "it appears that the respondents are unrelenting in the efforts to persecute the petitioners/ applicants as the petitioners/applicants have recently on August 5, been served with a notice under section 41A of the CrPC from CID, West Bengal concerning FIR registered with Bhadreshwar police station, it had said.

Also Read | Free speech not to be exercised only if in line with majority: Delhi HC

It had been said that the FIR relates to media reports published in 'opindia.com' about Telenipara communal riots of May 2020 and were registered contemporaneously around the same time as FIRs, which forms the subject matter of the writ petition.

The petitioners had said the FIR came to their notice only on the receipt of the notice under section 41 CrPC on August 5 this year requiring them to appear before the investigating officer on August 13, but later the investigating officer through an email dated August 12 asked the petitioner to appear on August 23.

They had sought a stay on the investigation emanating from the FIR registered at Bhadreshwar police station and the notice issued to them for appearing before the investigating officer. They had also sought quashing of the FIR.

On June 26 last year, the apex court, while staying the three FIRs, issued notices to the West Bengal government and the Centre seeking their replies on the plea.

Also read: BJP govt in Madhya Pradesh to get Salman Khurshid's book banned, says Narottam Mishra

The main writ petition filed by Sharma and others including the founder and CEO of the news portal and the editor of its Hindi language publications claimed that the West Bengal government and its "authoritarian Kolkata Police" are misusing FIRs and "brute police powers" to intimidate journalists.

"The petitioners are constrained to invoke the extraordinary writ jurisdiction of this court under Article 32 of the Constitution against the patent extortionist and mala fide actions of the Government of West Bengal to impose illegal censorship in the state by threatening, scuttling, and gagging honest media houses through misuse of state police," the plea claimed.

The petitioners had claimed they were informed that the cause of one of the FIRs lodged by police was an article published by the news web portal on the issue of alleged hiding of data related to COVID-19.

The plea had claimed that one of the FIRs lodged pertained to a news report published by the web portal in October last year.

It alleged that to undermine the freedom of the press, the state has rather chosen to "hound down" the petitioners by registering multiple FIRs in order to "bargain for deletion of news articles by putting the petitioner's life and liberty at bait".

It had claimed the state and the police are not only intimidating the journalists but also threatening their family members to seek deletion of media reports which bring to the public notice "the actual state of affairs in the state of West Bengal during these difficult times".

It had also alleged that the police had intimidated some of the petitioners to get the news articles deleted.

"Accordingly, the officers while insulting and demeaning the petitioner no. 1, asked her to use her influence to get the articles removed or to face the brunt of state's political executives," it had claimed.

The plea had claimed that deleting any content from the internet has a nationwide effect and any decision to delete any content has to be left to be taken by the Centre and not by state governments.

It had also sought a direction to exclude the role of police in the matter of deletion of content on the internet particularly since there exists a regulatory mechanism for overseeing such content and restricting any mischievous contents.

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Goa BJP president Sadanand Shet Tanavade on Friday called for a curb on the mass influx of Trinamool Congress party workers in the state, accusing the West Bengal-based party's cadre of having a 'khooni' (bloody) mentality.

"They have a 'khooni' mentality. People are joining them against their own wishes for fear of their lives. Their politics is vulgar. There should be a control over the volume (of TMC workers) coming into Goa," Tanavade told reporters in Panaji.

The state Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) president also said that while visits to the poll-bound states by party leaders were fair, the influx of hordes of party workers to a poll-bound state posed concerns.

Also Read | Don't go to Kolkata even by mistake: Goa CM to locals

"Leaders of every party are welcome in Goa, like P. Chidambaram, CT Ravi, (Devendra) Fadnavis. We have no objection to that. If Mamata Banerjee comes to Goa we have no issue. But (the concern) is about the low-level workers. They have a different mentality. They should not get them here to carry out their agenda. They should not do it. A lot of things could happen on account of this," he added.

The issue of an alleged mass influx of TMC workers to Goa was first put in the public domain by the official handle of the Goa BJP, which uploaded a video of Bengali-speaking persons alighting at a Goa railway station.

Also Read | Upping the ante against BJP, Priyanka Gandhi to hit Goan streets on December 10

TMC has claimed that the video is fake.

Tanavade also said that there was a vast gulf between the political cultures in Goa and West Bengal, adding that in West Bengal post-poll violence was common, unlike Goa.

"In Goa, we have a different mentality. Political workers from across parties are not enemies after elections, even though in the run-up to polls political allegations are made. But outside the political realm, we are friends. Finally, we are human beings. But in West Bengal, the nature of politics is different," Tanavade said.

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For over a year, a 2,400-square-foot tent at the Singhu border was home to Gurinder Singh, Butta Singh Shadipur and their fellow villagers who were protesting the contentious farm laws. On Friday, the two friends pulled down this pavilion of protest but said they intend to rebuild it at their village in Punjab's Bhatinda district to keep the memories of the movement alive.

As the farmers prepare to leave their protest sites on Delhi's borders on Saturday after the government repealed the farm laws and acceded to their other demands, many say they will reinstall their tents in their villages as a symbol of their long, arduous struggle.

When Gurinder Singh, Butta Singh Shadipur and 500 others from their Ram Nawas village reached the Singhu border on November 26 last year, they had to unroll their mattresses on the floor and sleep under the open skies.

Over the next few months, the two built a makeshift structure that has three rooms, a bathroom and a meeting area together measuring 2,400 square feet. They used bamboo for partitions and tinshed for roof.

Around 70-80 people would sleep in the meeting area and the three rooms every night.

Also read: Farmers finally end year-long agitation, to vacate protest sites by December 11

They then brought television, cooler, gas stove, a small fridge -- everything they needed for a comfortable stay at what would be their home till the government conceded their demands of repeal of the three contentious farm laws and a panel on legal guarantee for minimum support price for crops among others.

Now, the two friends plan to rebuild the structure in their village to keep the memories of the movement alive.

"We spent around Rs 4.50 lakh on this structure. We had everything we needed. Now, we plan to shift it to our village and rebuild it," Gurvinder Singh said.

Butta Singh Shadipur said the structure will also serve as a memorial to those who died during the farm movement.

"We will also keep some of our pictures in it to remind us of the time spent here," he added, recalling the initial days of the movement when they faced tear gas shells, water cannons and batons.

Bakshish Singh, who managed a 10-bed 'Kisan Mazdoor Ekta Hospital' at the protest site, rode a wave of conflicting emotions as the protest draws to an end.

The smiles and hugs hide the pain of parting, Bakshish said.

Also read: OPINION | Back to square one for farmers: Govt proposals merely a face-saver to end agitation

The 30-year-old man from Patiala said the Life Care Foundation-run makeshift hospital started with one stool and medicines to control sugar and blood pressure.

"We scaled it up seeing that a large number of farmers, especially the elderly, had some health issues or other," Bakshish said.

The hospital recorded over a lakh OPD visits in the last one year and local residents accounted for more than 50 per cent of them, doctors said.

Free diagnostic tests were conducted at the facility for dengue, malaria, chikungunya, typhoid, etc.

"We got a lot of cases of heart attack and seizure. I can say the number of deaths during the protest would have been higher had the hospital not been there," the supervisor said.

The Life Care Foundation now plans to shift the hospital to a place near Jalandhar to provide free medical treatment to the needy there.

"We will take it down and reassemble it again. A part of the hospital will be converted into a museum having pictures and records of persons treated during the protest," Bakshish said.

The Samyukta Kisan Morcha, a forum of 40 farmer unions, Thursday announced that the stir will be suspended and the farmers would go back home in a victory march on December 11.

The announcement came after the Centre accepted most of their other demands, including withdrawal of "fake case" against farmer protesters.

Jarnail Singh from Mohali said they had built two temporary structures with bamboo and tarpaulin for around 500 people from 12 villages.

"It cost us Rs 4 lakh -- Rs 2 lakh for each structure. Everybody contributed something. Inverter battery, air conditioners, television we had everything," he said climbing a ladder to take the tarpaulin off.

Jarnail Singh and others now plan to reassemble the structure in Buta Singh Wala village as a symbol.

"We will plant a lot of flowers around the structure...make it more beautiful. We will also keep one of the tractors we drove to Delhi there," he said.

Sardar Gurmukh Singh of the Bharatiya Kisan Union (Doaba) built a structure with bricks and cement mortar having three rooms in March.

Since Friday morning, at least five persons have been working non-stop to dismantle it.

"I spent around Rs 4 lakh on the structure. We can salvage around 20,000 bricks which will be used to build a memorial to those who died here," he said.

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A resident of Dharavi area here who recently returned from Tanzania was found to have contracted Omicron infection on Friday, taking the number of cases of the new coronavirus variant in Maharashtra to 11, officials said.

The 49-year-old man, who is a `Maulavi' (Muslim cleric), was asymptomatic and was isolated before he could mingle in the community, said a Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) official. The man landed in Mumbai from Tanzania on December 4 and his samples were sent for genome sequencing when he tested positive for coronavirus. With this, the number of Omicron-infected patients in Mumbai rose to three.

One case had been found in neighbouring Thane district. Seven cases have been found in Pune district, but deputy chief minister Ajit Pawar said earlier in the day that five out of them have now tested negative for the infection.

Tanzania does not figure in the list of `at-risk' countries, but the Dharavi resident tested positive for COVID-19 during the mandatory random checking of two per cent of arrivals at the Mumbai airport. When his test came out positive, a medical team from G-North ward (where Dharavi falls) tracked him down immediately. The man was shifted to BMC-run Seven Hills hospital, the official said, adding that he was asymptomatic and is not vaccinated.

Dharavi in central Mumbai is known as the biggest slum in Asia where over six lakh people live in a 2.5 square km area. The area has recorded 7,073 coronavirus cases since March 2020, but there are only seven active cases at present, as per the BMC.

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The Goa Congress faced a spate of resignations and confusion prevailed over its alliance with like-minded parties for the upcoming polls in the coastal state as the opposition party was getting ready for a series of meetings by general secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra on Friday.

A group of Congress leaders from the Porvorim assembly constituency tendered their resignations on Friday morning. The group, supported by Independent MLA Rohan Khaunte, claimed the Congress was not serious about contesting the assembly polls likely to be held in early 2022.

The Congress party does not seem to be interested in contesting the upcoming Goa elections seriously. It is a non-starter due to the attitude of some of its leaders, Gupesh Naik, a former zilla panchayat member, who led the group from Porvorim, told reporters.

In yet another setback for the Congress, its senior leader from South Goa Moreno Rebelo tendered his resignation. The resignation letter by Rebelo claims he was upset after the party announced the "candidature" to sitting MLA Aleixo Reginaldo Lourenco from the Curtorim constituency "despite he working against the party".

Also read: Chidambaram backs Sanjay Raut's call urging Congress to lead UPA revival

Rebelo hails from Curtorim. Aleixo Reginaldo Lourenco, who has never participated in any party activity for the last four-and-a-half years and on the contrary only abused party leaders and yourself, worked against the official candidate of Curtorim in the recently held Zilla Panchayat election, is promoted as working president of the party and is declared as a candidate by senior leaders during a recently held convention, Rebelo said in the letter addressed to Goa Pradesh Congress Committee (GPCC) president Girish Chodankar.

The spate of resignations came after differences emerged in the Congress over the nature of its understanding with the Goa Forward Party (GFP) for the assembly polls. AICC Goa election in-charge P Chidambaram on Thursday said the GFP had only extended support to the Congress and refused to term it as an alliance at this stage.

On the other hand, senior Congress leader Dinesh Gundu Rao has proposed a meeting between GFP chief Vijai Sardesai and Chodankar on Saturday.

I have invited Sri @VijaiSardesai, President of @Goaforwardparty for a meeting with Sri @girishgoa, President of @INCGoa and others on 11/12/21, 10.00am at Congress Election Office, Patto Plaza, Panjim.

 Dinesh Gundu Rao/  (@dineshgrao) December 9, 2021

Talking to reporters in Panaji, Chidambaram had said, So far we had one party leader Vijai Sardesai who came to Delhi and said, 'in order to defeat BJP, my party offers support to the Congress party'. Rahul Gandhi said we accept the support. All other details have to be discussed further."

Within minutes of his statement, Rao had tweeted, I have invited Sri @VijaiSardesai, President of @Goaforwardparty for a meeting with Sri @girishgoa, President of @INCGoa and others on 11/12/21, 10 am at Congress Election Office, Patto Plaza, Panjim. Priyanka Gandhi Vadra is scheduled to address various events and interact with youngsters and women during her day-long visit to Goa.

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Covid-19 has ravaged many countries and claimed millions of lives in the past two years. In India, too, a pandemic caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus had affected many between April and May 2021 and before that. The national sero-survey conducted post-second wave showed a seropositivity rate of about 80 per cent, including in children, which means this population has developed antibodies against the contagion, either through exposure to the virus or through vaccination.

After the second wave, the world's largest adult vaccination programme launched on January 16, 2021, by the prime minister accelerated coverage of the maximum eligible population in record time. Presently, over 50 per cent of the adult population is fully vaccinated, and more than 85 per cent of them have received at least one dose of the Covid-19 vaccine. It indicates that a large proportion of the population has developed a hybrid immunity through both natural infection and vaccination.

When a human body is exposed to a natural infection or is being inoculated, it generates an immune response that helps fight infections in the future. This helps protect the body against pathogens, such as Covid-19, which may lead to severe disease or even death. Hybrid immunity is believed to provide greater protection against SARS-CoV-2 variants.

Also Read  Here's what scientists are doing to figure out Omicron variant of Covid-19

It has also been observed that people who have received one dose of vaccine after being infected have developed a fairly good level of immunity against Covid-19 mutants, including Omicron. First reported in South Africa, the Omicron variant has now been found in more than 57 countries. It has about 30 mutations on its spike protein and is said to be a few times more transmissible than the Delta variant, which caused the severe second wave in India and other countries. The Omicron variant has become a cause of great concern worldwide, with many countries imposing restrictions and taking severe measures to contain its spread.

Though the initial scientific evidence suggests that Omicron is causing a milder form of the disease with symptoms such as body aches, sore throat, cough, and mild fever, it is better to be more cautious and prepared.

Also Read  Reinfections 3 times more likely with Omicron compared to Delta: South African research

People worldwide have also realised that timely precautions can prevent the spread of the virus to a great extent. So, we need to follow personal protective measures such as wearing masks, maintaining a safe distance, avoiding gatherings, and sanitising hands regularly. Besides, those who have not taken their first or second dose of vaccine should now take it on a priority basis.

Alongside, by making air travel, both domestic and international, as safe as possible through rigorous testing and screening at the airports, contact tracing, and quarantining of positive as well as suspected cases, we can prevent its spread at an early stage. Stringent surveillance will also help keep a tab on its outbreak in the country.

The pattern of the pandemic in the last two years has shown us that a global health crisis like this can be dealt with collectively. Many countries have found innovative ways to safeguard their population. Germany, for example, does not allow gatherings at restaurants until one is fully vaccinated or tested negative for Covid-19. Britain has reinforced masking and other restrictions. In November 2021, India too had launched the Har Ghar Dastak campaign, which had healthcare workers go door to door addressing various contextual concerns that may stop people from taking the vaccine. The ongoing campaign is receiving good support from the vaccine eligible population. Many have taken their scheduled vaccine, thus protecting their communities and society from the virus.

From our past experiences, we find that a virus dies its natural death, provided we keep ourselves safe and be patient till it does. After all, Covid is a community disease.

(Dr Vikas Bhatia is Director, AIIMS, Bibinagar)

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.
The Covid-related restrictions may have impacted the movement of many goods but not gold. Indias gold imports not just went on unabated but increased manifold. Imagine, in a single month this year, a little ahead of the beginning of the festive season, the gold-hungry country imported as much gold as it had shipped in the full six months of last year  a whopping 120 tonne of gold in August alone. And it that was through official channel alone.

The story of bringing in gold through non-official channels and the modus operandi, that too when the country grappled with the pandemic, is breathtaking. An official report suggests that restrictions put on the movement of people across our borders caused smuggling syndicates to graduate to ingenious concealment methods of not only gold but also narcotics. Official agencies seized gold and narcotics even from ingeniously created cavities in vehicles and from fuel tanks of trucks. The gold had to be carefully extracted from the tanks after cutting them open. Narcotics were seized from the buttons sewed on the garments.

Pandemic was the time when gold also changed its route from air and sea to land, an uncommon travel path for the yellow metal brought from across the borders. In a shift in the trend from 2019-20, when the biggest gold originating region was West Asia, the largest chunk in 2020-21 was sourced from Myanmar. Data shows nearly 70 per cent of total seizures made in 2020-21 were of Myanmarese-origin gold. Only about 13 per cent came from the United Arab Emirates.

India and Myanmar share a 1,643 km border along with four states  Manipur, Mizoram, Nagaland and Arunachal Pradesh. The strategic importance of Myanmar is that it lies between two regional giants  China and India  right in the middle of supply and demand of contraband ranging from cheap cigarettes and exotic animals to gold.

The two routes that cut through the Myanmar border to connect with India are the old Tamu-Moreh-Imphal trajectory in Manipur and the Zokhatwar route in Mizoram. The two are popular from the point of view of trade and transit of both legal and illegal gold. The first stop of gold, smuggled through this route is, Imphal is, followed by Guwahati for aggregation and subsequent distribution to all parts of the country, predominantly by road. Official agencies seized a massive 240 kg of gold of Myanmarese origin in the North-East region last year. The restrictions on air travel throughout the pandemic saw a shift in the modus operandi of smugglers from air to land route through the Indo-Myanmar border. Since the restrictions were also put on rail travel, the yellow metal reached its consumption centres mainly through road  in trucks, passenger vehicles and even two-wheelers.

The resumption of air traffic when the Covid wave ebbed saw a new class of smugglers, the carriers hired specifically for smuggling gold into India. They would make visits ranging from a few days to a couple of weeks to the Gulf countries and return with gold. This was the period when Indians stuck abroad were also used by criminal masterminds to smuggle gold  these were the regular blue-collar workers there who had lost jobs. Conversion of gold to paste and powder and concealing that in the rectum of passengers became a popular method. Each passenger could conceal up to 900 grams of paste or powder wrapped in the capsule of which solid gold extracted could be 90 per cent of the weight of the capsule, the official report suggested.

Tax evasion

So, while India, the globes second-largest gold consumer after China, imported nearly 633 tonnes of gold, unofficial estimates suggest yet nearly 400 tonnes were added to the market. Tax evasion is one of the main factors due to which illegally trafficked gold lands into India. Higher taxes on gold have hardly yielded any desired revenue to the government.

Import duty on gold in India was 2 per cent in 2004. It was raised to as high as 12.5 per cent in 2019. Though it was cut to 7.5 per cent in the last years budget, the effective import duty remained 10.75 per cent after imposition of various cesses, surcharges and a 3 per cent GST. Experts opine that minor tax cuts do not help reduce gold smuggling because gold is used in the unofficial mode of transferring money into India from overseas, especially Gulf countries.

India normally imports up to 1,000 tonnes of gold every year, another 200 tonnes are added through unofficial channels. In the pandemic year, it was more. The 240 tonnes of Myanmarese origin gold seized by officials was only 69 per cent of the total gold seized in 2020-21. This is a huge dent on taxes in India. The 3 per cent GST on gold has become the major reason for the yellow metals unabated smuggling.

The World Gold Council expects the demand for gold in India to remain high. With higher demand, smuggling is also expected to be higher each year. India does not produce gold and almost all of its consumption is taken care of through imports. This, in turn, implies a huge outgo of foreign exchange from the country. This also means a rise in trade and current account deficits. Official data shows Indias trade deficit has been rising continuously since July. With the reopening of the economy and the rise in demand for oil and gold, the trade and current account deficits are expected to rise further. After gold, the second-biggest imported commodity is oil for India, meeting close to 85 per cent of its demands

Since amassing currency notes is not a viable option after demonetisation, gold has emerged even more as a safe haven. As the Union budget nears, the only desired way to reduce gold trafficking appears to be a further cut in duty.

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By Ruth Pollard

Tens of millions of women have disappeared from the workforce in India over the last decade. Thats before Covid-19 worsened female employment prospects by displacing another 6.7 million from their jobs. So how did India  which until the pandemic hit was one of the worlds fastest-growing large economies  fail to increase womens participation in line with that expansion?

In a new book, economist Shrayana Bhattacharya has used the career of Bollywood leading-man Shah Rukh Khan to emphasize the barriers that prevent women from stepping outside the home and into the workplace. They include safety concerns, family pressures, the burden of housework and inter-generational care, and chronic underinvestment in child care. Khan, whose fame extends far beyond India to South Asias vast diaspora and into the Middle East and North Africa  he even has an orchid named for him in Singapore  exhibits freedom of choice and movement that women can only dream of. As Bhattacharya writes in Desperately Seeking Shah Rukh, women dont want to marry Khan. They want to be him.

A Bollywood fixture for 30 years, Khan mostly plays the outsider in love stories  taking on fragile, vulnerable characters worried about finding happiness and avoiding the standard hyper-masculine tropes of Indian cinema. In real life, hes been married to his high school sweetheart  a Hindu  for three decades. As a Muslim, hes repeatedly spoken out about extreme intolerance in India and received an award at the World Economic Forum in Davos in 2018 for his work on womens and childrens rights.

Even expressing love for his films is a form of protest for poor and working-class women, Bhattacharya notes. This is a country where the entire conversation about the economy, how it will grow and in which direction, is still largely dictated  and dominated  by men. The focus is on the market, and the market is outside the home. The economy isnt just a bunch of us trading money; it is a whole range of interactions and if women arent allowed to leave home, how can they participate in that market? she said.

There is, she says, shocking inequality between men and women in todays India. Despite rapidly increasing educational attainment for girls along with declining fertility, a 2020 World Economic Forum report placed the nation in the bottom five countries, with Pakistan, Syria, Yemen and Iraq on gender gaps in economic participation. In 2021, the WEF further laid bare the disparities. Just 22.3 per cent of Indian women participate in the labour market, translating to a gender gap of 72 per cent. That compares with Turkey (38.5 per cent womens participation, 50 per cent gap), Mexico (49.1 per cent and 40 per cent), Indonesia (56 per cent and 33 per cent).

Men cornered most of the employment gains in post-liberalization India, where households that managed to move into higher income brackets took on more conservative values, forcing women to leave their jobs and return to the home full time, Bhattacharya said.

For all of Prime Minister Narendra Modis programs to foster womens empowerment, including a financial inclusion scheme encouraging them to open bank accounts and the provision of cooking gas and toilets in rural areas, the reality is that not much has changed under his seven years in power. Until women can safely commute to work and then do their jobs without fear of harassment, theyll remain shut out from large parts of the economy. Their place outside the home must be as valued as inside of it.

Womens physical movements are constantly policed in India, particularly in the more conservative and densely populated north, home to the capital, New Delhi. Its not unusual to visit a village in the populous, Hindi-heartland state of Uttar Pradesh and struggle to find a woman to speak to, and certainly not without a man present. Instead, women are cloistered in the home, where 66 per cent of their labour goes unpaid. This work contributes 19 trillion rupees ($252 billion) to the economy, which, Bhattacharya writes, is built by the money men make and trade held together by the invisible love and unpaid care women offer.

Even as Indias economy grew at an annual average of 7 per cent between 2004 and 2011, the share of women in the labour force fell to 32.6 per cent before hitting a historic low of 23.3 per cent between 2011 and 2017. All this comes at a cost. As Bloomberg previously reported, India could increase its gross domestic product by $770 billion by 2025 by getting more women to work and increasing equality, according to data from McKinsey Global Institute.

So Modis big message to global investors  that India is open for business  should be treated with caution. Yes, there are tax incentives for manufacturers and other opportunities, but firms should be aware: If they employ locally, they will mostly be employing men. Any woman on staff will likely have to navigate a complex web of family permissions and other restrictions to make it onto the payroll. Chances are the company will have to provide a special bus or taxi service to ensure a safe commute to work, and there is no established culture of workplace-based child care to help parents manage their family responsibilities.

Indias state-run enterprises are already way behind global counterparts when it comes to environment, social and governance scores, which now play an increasingly important role in guiding investment decisions. According to S&P Global, companies are under pressure to increase the representation of women on corporate boards and in leadership positions and to provide equal compensation and career mobility for women and people of colour.

Through that lens, its difficult to see how investing in India is an attractive prospect for firms that care what their shareholders think.

There may well be a post-pandemic economic recovery underway and India could play a larger part in global value chains, but its clear women wont benefit from this shift. They were badly affected by pandemic job losses and, unlike their male counterparts whove mostly gone back to work, women account for half of all those forced out, and kept out. Thats despite the fact that they were less than a quarter of the pre-pandemic workforce, according to the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy.

We should look at these numbers and weep, Bhattacharya said, and yet there are no protests in the street pressing for change. Yes, the percentage of women turning out to vote in state and federal elections has increased and is now on par with mens, but it hasnt moved the needle either inside or outside the home.

So where does Shah Rukh Khan fit in?

Our economic lives and romantic lives are closely intertwined, Bhattacharya notes, and Khans films provide women with a different life to aspire to: one where they are free to do what they want and where men will treat them with respect, share the load of caring for a large, multi-generational household, and acknowledge that they, too, need to go out and have fun. To buy their own movie ticket and go to the cinema in a country where a significant percentage of women arent allowed to leave the house and visit the local market alone.

That means having some economic power and the independence to spend it. Most women, especially those in the vast hinterland where 65% of people live, are still a long way from Khans Bollywood fantasy.
By Peter Kasson for The Conversation

Scientists around the world have been racing to learn more about the new omicron strain of SARS-CoV-2, first declared a variant of concern on November 26, 2021 by the World Health Organisation.

Officials cautioned that it would take several weeks before theyd know whether the recently emerged coronavirus variant is more contagious and causes more or less serious Covid-19 than delta and other earlier variants, and whether current vaccines can ward it off.

Peter Kasson is a virologist and biophysicist at the University of Virginia who studies how viruses such as SARS-CoV-2 enter cells and what can be done to stop them. Here he explains what lab-based scientists are doing to help answer the outstanding questions about Omicron.

Also read: Omicron: All 9 patients in Rajasthan test negative, discharged from hospital

Does prior immunity protect against omicron?

These are the key lab results everyone is waiting for: How effective are the antibodies people already have at fighting off Omicron? If you got the booster shot, are you protected? Or if you had Covid-19 and then were vaccinated?

The goal is to see how well antibodies from real people who have had Covid-19 or have been vaccinated against it can hold off Omicron in petri dishes in the lab.

Scientists expect that antibodies from people exposed to other variants wont work as well against Omicron because of its mutations, but they need to measure how much less well and whether its still enough to stop the virus.

To answer these questions, most researchers first make a version of the SARS-CoV-2 virus that can enter cells but not reproduce. A few specialized labs with extra levels of biosecurity use the actual virus. Scientists add antibodies from the blood of people vaccinated against or recovered from Covid-19 to the virus. They then mix this with human lung cells to see whether the antibodies can stop the virus from infecting the cells.

My laboratory performs this kind of work with SARS-CoV-2 and other emerging viruses. Researchers have used these well-established techniques to test out antibodies after Covid-19 recovery, as well as different vaccines and different variants.

If antibodies people made against prior variants cant stop Omicron from infecting lung cells in the lab, then those antibodies probably wont protect people out in the world either.

The very first early results are starting to come back, and it looks like antibodies against earlier variants are less successful at blocking omicron. Researchers took antibodies from six people who each had two doses of vaccine and from six other people who each had two doses of vaccine and had also recovered from an earlier Covid-19 infection.

Antibodies from both groups of people were about 40 times worse at stopping omicron than original SARS-COV-2 strains, based on how much antibody was needed to prevent infection. But the people whose immune systems had seen the virus three times  that is, were doubly vaccinated and had also recovered from Covid-19  had antibody levels that were high enough to still stop infection.

Id expect people who have received booster vaccines will have similar or greater levels of immunity and will be at least moderately protected from Omicron. But it will need to be tested. Pfizer has said their early results agree with this prediction, but the data is not yet publicly available. All of this work is not yet peer reviewed and still very preliminary.

Scientists will need to determine how a drop in neutralization titer, or how good antibodies are at blocking the virus in the lab, corresponds to a drop in vaccine effectiveness or how likely a vaccinated person is to get Covid-19 compared to an unvaccinated one. Scientists know that better antibodies correspond to more effective vaccines, but the precise numerical relationships need to be determined.

Also read: Omicron variant may change course of Covid-19 pandemic: WHO chief

How contagious is Omicron compared to delta?

The past pandemic year has shown that contagiousness, or transmissibility, has been the key factor in determining whether a coronavirus variant becomes dominant. Deltas transmissibility has made it the current dominant variant because it simply outran others. But that situation may change with time.

The basic elements of the viral life cycle are getting into cells, making more virus, and getting out. Scientists can measure each of these stages in the lab and report what aspects of a variant make it more or less transmissible. In addition to binding to human cells better, some mutations enhance the packaging of new virus and the delivery of its genes once the virus gets into the cell.

While lab-based science can help people understand the biology behind just why a variant is more or less contagious, right now nature is doing a much bigger real-world experiment. Disease surveillance data from the UK and other countries where delta has been dominant suggest that omicron is gaining share and may eventually displace delta.

Exactly how this plays out may differ from one country to another, depending on factors like the number of vaccinated people and which variants were previously in circulation, but this news about how good omicron is at spreading is concerning.

Also read: Omicron found in two people with booster shots in Singapore

Does omicron make people more or less sick?

This is again a question that will be answered much more quickly by the thousands of people infected with Omicron than by work in the lab. Its important to remember, though, that natures experiments are not as carefully controlled as lab experiments. Precise lab work will help explain why omicron might be different, but the first answers here will come from hospitals.

Lab-based scientists will be working with hospitals to analyze what makes some patients more or less sick once they contract Omicron. Some early numbers suggest that the first Omicron cases are mostly mild, but public health officials urge caution: Most cases of all Covid-19 variants are mild, and many of those infected so far with omicron are younger. Hospitalisation counts tend to increase somewhat after the initial increase in cases. So this question will take time to answer.

How are lab data and public health data complementary?

Laboratories will provide the first results on immune protection against Omicron, although this will be followed up with public health data that will likely confirm the lab results. Public health data will bring the first results on contagiousness and disease severity, which will then be explained by laboratory results.

Once the initial answers from public health data are in, laboratory results are still important to understand why these changes happened and to help predict what future variants will do. How do officials declare a variant of concern in the first place? Its a combination of public health data and understanding from the lab.

What do we know already?

Variants of SARS-CoV-2 dont change the laws of physics and biology. They cannot leap tall buildings in a single bound. Physical barriers like high-grade masks and good ventilation will still stop the virus. And, very likely, vaccines will continue to provide some amount of protection. The question is how much, and whether the world needs to change the current vaccines or just provide more of them.

(The author is with University of Virginia)

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Polling for the election for the Legislative Council from the twin-member Belgaum Local Authorities Constituency began at about 8 am on Friday.

Early birds to cast their votes included MLAs Abhay Patil and Anil Benake and MP Mangala Angadi.

Also Read  Stakes high for BJP, Congress in Karnataka Council polls

The winter chill also resulted in voters who were also local body members preferring to cast votes late.

It's a triangular contest in Belgaum with six candidates in fray. BJP has fielded sitting MLC Mahantesh Kavatgimath. Congress has fielded MLA Laxmi Hebbalkar's brother Channaraj Hattiholi. Independent Lakhan Jarkiholi with three others is in the fray.

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BJP Rajya Sabha member KC Ramamurthy on Friday urged the Centre to take steps to increase the number of psychiatrists in the country by hiking the number of seats in medical colleges to meet the growing demand.

As per one estimate, nearly 160 million people in the country need mental therapy, whereas, only about 30-35 million are seeking advice and taking care. The National Mental Health Survey also revealed that India has 0.75 per cent psychiatrists for one lakh problems; whereas the desirable number is 3 psychiatrists, per one lakh of population, he said in Rajya Sabha.

As per an estimate of the Government of India itself, the country needed about 13,000 psychiatrists but had only 3,500. Against the required 20,000 chemical psychologists, they have only a little more than 1,500 available. We need 35,000 psychiatrist social workers, but we have only 2,000. We need 30,000 psychiatrist nurses, but we have only 2,500, he said.

The government should increase the number of seats in psychiatry at various levels and

encourage the students to take psychology as a subject. Services of psychiatrists should be provided in all districts and important hospitals, he demanded.

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Visit Derry has been voted the Best Local Tourist Board in Ireland at the Irish Travel Trade Awards 2021 held recently in The Medley in Dublin.

The awards, which were chosen by reader vote, recognises the best tourism providers and operators across the island of Ireland and internationally.



Visit Derry secured the top spot in the local tourist board category and was recognised among other award winners from Ireland including Dublin Airport, Aran Island Ferries and Galway Bay Hotel.



A key component in the award win was Visit Derry's new state-of-the-art visitor information centre which opened in 2020.

Located beside the iconic city walls at Waterloo Place, the Visit Derry Visitor Information Centre is a vital information hub for visitors to the Walled City and North West region.

The centre offers a full range of visitor services including expert advice, digital information kiosks, interactive maps and videos, tourism literature, tickets, and gift shop.

Visit Derry also recently launched the Visit Derry Pass, an integrated digital ticket and the first-of-its-kind digital pass to be launched in Northern Ireland.

The Visit Derry Pass provides visitors with access to 10 attractions and activities, making it easier for visitors to plan a trip to the Walled City.

Visit Derry is a public/private membership organisation representing more than 200 local tourism businesses.

The organisation is responsible for communicating the city's brand to national and international audiences and delivers the provision of visitor services, before and during a visit to the destination.

Odhran Dunne, Chief Executive at Visit Derry, said: "We are delighted to have won Best Local Tourist Board at this year's Irish Travel Trade Awards and are grateful to all those who voted.

"This win recognises the work and passion that goes into the promotion of the city and region and, of course, the excellent partnerships we have with our industry.

"We are continually looking at innovative and engaging ways to raise awareness of the destination and to provide world-class visitor servicing when visitors arrive here.

"As tourism recovery continues into 2022, the award is an endorsement in the work we do, as the city's destination management organisation, to support our 200 industry partners."

Congratulating Visit Derry on their win, Mayor of Derry City and Strabane District Council, Alderman Graham Warke, said: "This is fantastic news for our tourism sector.

"Whether it's our strong cultural heritage offering, unique sense of place or leading foodie scene, Derry offers a vibrant destination for visitors.

"As a crucial cog in the tourism ecosystem, I would like to congratulate Visit Derry on their recent award win.

"The performance of Visit Derry is vital to supporting the tourism industry as it recovers, and this award reinforces the city's position as a must-visit destination."

For more information on Visit Derry visit www.visitderry.com
Niamh Hawes has been taking part in Miss Bikini Ireland for the last year throughout Covid and last weekend, she travelled to Limerick for the finals and made the top six.

The 19-year-old currently works full-time, while modelling part time, but hopes to make modelling a full-time career.

Niamh said: I want to model full time which is one of the reasons I entered the competition. I model around Derry and Belfast and one of the photographers I work with in Derry sent me a link online to enter the competition.

The next day the organiser of the competition, Greg, rang me and told me I was accepted and walked me through the next steps.

It was my first ever show and I had no experience in runway modelling. I wanted to enter because I thought it would be a great way to get experience of runway modelling and performing in front of crowds. Its also a great way to get more exposure all around Ireland and beyond.

In a normal year, without Covid restrictions, the competition normally has three stages; A photoshoot workshop, a fitness workshop and then the finals.

This year, due to Covid, there was one photoshoot workshop in October last year in Dublin and the fitness workshop was cancelled as it wasnt possible to do with social distancing.

The finals which were originally supposed to be held in December 2020 but they were delayed to January this year as a result of lockdown. This was then delayed again to allow for a more normal setting for the finals.

Niamh continued: The finals took place this weekend, December 5, so its been a long road.

The competition is full of challenges and tests to see that the winner is fit to head off and represent Ireland at swimsuit USA in America.

So, throughout the competition the photoshoots and workshops and working with other brands is all a test for how professional you are and how well you can work with photographers, brands and other models.

Its also about a healthy body and lifestyle so theyre looking for someone who is passionate about physical and mental health.

For example, one of our challenges throughout was promoting our sponsor, Beauty Belle, on social media platforms and doing weekly posts. Then, the big challenge at the final; to test how confident you are in front of a crowd.

I absolutely loved the experience and Im so grateful for it, the final really was a night Ill always remember.

I was terrified when I was travelling to Limerick but when I got there and out on stage I was really in my element and it confirmed this is exactly the kind of thing that I want to continue doing in the future.

I love the rush I get being out of my comfort zone and that's what modelling does for me, nerves are good.

I was disappointed that so many of the opportunities throughout were held off or not able to happen because of Covid, I wouldve really liked to spend more time with the other girls and get to know them more as they were lovely and made the whole experience.

"I was one of two girls from the North, I didnt get to see much of them. I was also really pleased with placing top six at my first ever show, I wouldve just been happy to complete it. The whole experience really boosted my confidence.

I really want to say a big thank you to The Beauty Edit makeup shop in Foyleside, my personal trainer, Peter Ward, and my friends and family who supported me especially my Mammy, Shauna and my best friend, Erin who travelled to Limerick with me.

Over the next year, in preparation for Miss Bikini 21/22, I will be taking up any opportunities I can to grow my confidence and to grow as a person and grow my platform. I will be training so I can be the best candidate possible next year.

This year, I did the show for the experience and fun but its made me realise how much I want the title now and I dont plan on letting anything distract me from it in the next year.

To support Niamhs journey for the next year, follow her on Instagram at: niamh.hawes
Statement

We also discussed key global challenges, including in the context of Irelands Security Council term. Ireland and Japan share a common approach and commitment to ending hunger and I thanked the Minister for Japans leadership in hosting this weeks successful Nutrition for Growth Summit.

I updated the Minister on the development of Ireland House in Tokyo, a flagship build under the Governments Global Ireland programme which reflects our commitment to growing our ties with Japan.

I was very pleased to be able to congratulate Minister Hayashi on his recent appointment as the Foreign Minister of Japan. Ireland and Japan share a close and warm relationship with great potential for development, as well as shared values and global priorities.

Minister Coveney thanked Japan for hosting the Nutrition for Growth Summit in Tokyo on 7 and 8 December 2021. At the Summit, both Ireland and Japan announced significant and comprehensive pledges to tackle hunger and support nutrition globally. Ireland pledged 800 million over the next five years on nutrition programmes and interventions.

The Ministers affirmed their commitment to strengthening the excellent bilateral relations between Ireland and Japan. They also exchanged views on global security challenges.

Notes for Editors:

Ireland House

Ireland House Tokyo will be the centre of Irelands presence in Japan, the third largest economy in the world. It will promote Irelands track record as a global centre of innovation and a great place to do business within the European Union. It will be a venue to learn about Ireland and will advertise Ireland as somewhere to study, do research and to visit. It will project all aspects of Irish culture, heritage and the arts, and will be the heartbeat of the Irish community in Japan.

Nutrition for Growth Summit (Tokyo), 7-8 December 2021

Borne out of our historical memory of famine, the eradication of hunger and a particular focus on tackling undernutrition has been a cornerstone of Irelands development programme since its inception, and a key pillar of our foreign policy.

Since the launch of the Hunger Task Force in 2008, Ireland has become a committed clear global leader in this space with prominent political leadership and funding on the world stage.

At the Nutrition for Growth Summit, Ireland championed a focus on hunger and acute malnutrition, with our emphasis on the furthest behind first and support to assist other countries in developing a sustainable food systems approach.

155 million people in 55 countries faced acute hunger in the past year. This is an increase of 20 million, with conflict as the main reason, combined with climate change challenges and economic shocks caused by the COVID -19 pandemic.

Irelands pledges responded to this stark context and included two policy pledges and one financial pledge as follows:

Policy Pledge 1: Hunger

Ireland pledges support for innovative programming approaches for the prevention and treatment of hunger, with a particular focus on tackling wasting for children aged 0-6 months. Zero hunger is the ultimate test of an effective sustainable food system. Wasting is the most visible form of malnutrition and carries the highest risk of death. Some 45 million children under the age of five currently suffer from wasting. This commitment positions Ireland to take a leadership role on the issue of wasting globally, backed up by programming targeted at small and nutritionally at-risk infants and children.

Policy Pledge 2: Food Systems Transformation

Ireland commits to providing technical and financial assistance to partner countries for the implementation of sustainable food systems pathways, emphasising nutrition and context specific approaches. We will do so by offering appropriate and realistic expertise and advice, as well as tools (from a range of partners) to bring about transformational systems change.

Ireland has developed its Food Strategy (Food Vision 2030) using a food systems and partnership approach. Ireland recognises many countries will need to draw on a partnership approach, as they pursue planning using a food systems approach. Each country embarking on its food systems journey must take account of its history, natural resources, human and social capital, and the current level of development of its agri-food sector. A food systems strategy must take account of these national realities: there is no single blueprint or one size fits all. The Irish experience of developing Food Vision 2030 produced some important lessons and Ireland commits to sharing this experience broadly and to working with partner countries as they develop their own strategies.

Financial Pledge

Ireland pledges to spend 800 million over the next 5 years on nutrition programmes and interventions. Equating to 160 million a year, this will include funding to multilateral organisations, country based NGOs, recipient governments and international NGOs.
Google has issued a list of best Chrome browser extensions for 2021 that it claims will help people in better browsing, get things done, and have fun while doing so. There are over dozen Chrome extensions, which are grouped into different categories based on the capabilities they provide. These Chrome add-ons are designed to help you get more done with Chrome by improving productivity and personalizing your experience. 'Communicate and cooperate,' 'Stay productive,' 'Learn online,' and 'Make some coin' are the four categories of Google's favorite Chrome extensions for 2021. All of these categories feature extensions for Chrome that are meant to 'make browsing easier'. But before you download any of the Chrome extension we'd suggest users to be wary of how these browser extensions/addons work in perspective of digital security and privacy, as downloading new extensions from unknown developers can lead to data theft and account hacks.So back to the topic, Loom is one of Google's best Chrome extensions for the year 2021. It allows you to make recordings of your screen, voice, and face that you can share with new workers or clients to assist them understand your job. It aids in reducing the time and effort required to type and explain various jobs.Mote is the next extension in this category, which allows you to include voice comments and audio material in shared documents, assignments, emails, and forms. You may also use any website or app to generate voice notes and distribute them as a QR code.Wordtune has also been selected by Google as one of its top selections for 2021. Artificial intelligence (AI) is used in the browser extension to help you produce more relevant emails and documents while avoiding mistakes. Because being productive when working or studying from home is just as vital as having clear communication and virtual collaboration these days, Google has included some solutions for that as well. Forest, which self-motivates users and aims to improve productivity through virtual tree planting and prizes, is one of the top options in this category.Dark Reader has also been chosen as one of Google's favorite Chrome extensions of the year. By adopting a dark tone to the pages you view in the browser, it helps you safeguard your eyes. Additionally, you may change the brightness, contrast, sepia filter, dark mode, and font settings. It also has an ignore-list feature that allows you to exclude specific sites from going black.Add-ons that can help with virtual learning are included in Google's top Chrome extensions list. Kami is one of them, and it allows you to build an interactive online learning environment utilizing PDFs, photos, and papers all in one place. Live annotations, video and audio recordings, and drawings allow teachers and students to communicate in real time. You may also import student work from Google Classroom, Canvas, Schoology, and Microsoft Teams, among other learning management systems.Read next: Google may change the outlook of the search engine with changes in top stories, suggested videos and image extensions displays
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Photo by Colliers [enlarge] Looking southeast, the Walgreens sites are indicated in orange. Fields recently sold the dark M tower, and its now redeveloping the former Safeway (seen here with excavators but now well above ground).





A vacant former Walgreens, at 1205 N.E. 50th St., has sold for $13 million, according to King County records. The deal also included a parking lot east across the alley, on Brooklyn Avenue Northeast.





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SEATTLE  A steam plant currently being demolished at 1318 Western Ave. sold for $8 million, according to King County records.

The seller was an LLC associated with CenTrio (formerly Enwave, formerly Seattle Steam), which acquired the property in 2014 as part of a larger deal worth almost $18 million.





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SEATTLE  An industrial property at 1408 Elliott Ave. W. sold for $8.6 million, according to King County records. The seller was the Smith family, which had owned the property for decades.

The buyer was Spence Group, which is associated with next door neighbor Bradlee Distributors, at 1400 Elliott.





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Local Dundalk Grammar student Grace Kenneally has won the East region category of Junk Kouture, a fashion competition aired on RTE on Thursday night.

Grace battled it out with other secondary school students to impress a star-studded panel of judges including model Roz Purcell, former X Factor judge Louis Walsh and fashion designer Stephen McLaughlin.

The competition challenged students to create 100% recycled high-end fashion pieces.

Graces winning piece Songge Da Long was an outfit inspired by her Vietnamese and Chinese heritage that drew on influence from ancient Eastern designs.

The materials used in her design were Vintage Vietnamese silk Ao Dai coatballet, leotard,pillowcase, duvet and chiffon curtains donated from a local hotel.

Bamboo sticks, ribbons from horse riding rosettes and old work trousers were also used in the creation.

Speaking to the Democrat last week, Grace gave the reasoning behind her design:

I was adopted from Vietnam at a really young age but recently discovered that I am ethnically Chinese. I know that a lot of people have difficulty with identity and I am no different. I wanted to pay homage to my heritage through the Junk Kouture platform and I hope that I have done that.

Grace had a clear design vision and was determined that her outfit would be practical as well as stylish:

I wanted it to be wearable and something that would travel well without any issues. To be honest, I felt a bit insecure about whether my design was extravagant enough after seeing some of the other entries, but I stuck to my guns and it paid off. It still feels like a dream to have made it this far, especially considering Im the only one from Louth.
Project to improve sanitation standards and reduce river pollution in northern Kosovo

EBRD to lend 13.5 million and EIB to co-finance another 13.5 million loan

EU to provide 5 million grant through the Western Balkans Investment Framework

The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), the European Investment Bank and the European Union (EU) are financing a new wastewater treatment plant in northern Kosovo to improve sanitation standards and reduce wastewater pollution in South Mitrovica, Vushtrri and the surrounding areas.

The EBRD is extending a 13.5 million loan to Regional Water Company Mitrovica, a state-owned water utility company, to finance the construction of the new treatment plant, as well as the rehabilitation and extension of the wastewater network in South Mitrovica and Vushtrri. The plant will benefit more than 123,000 people living in the companys service area.

The European Investment Bank (EIB) will co-finance the project with another 13.5 million loan, while the EU will provide a 5 million grant through the Western Balkans Investment Framework (WBIF). The Project will also benefit from technical assistance provided by WBIF and Swiss State Secretariat for Economic Affairs.

Matteo Colangeli, EBRD Regional Director for the Western Balkans, said: There has never been greater momentum to invest in green infrastructure. The EBRD is keen to increase its support for Kosovo to create a healthier environment for its citizens.

Hekuran Murati, Minister of Finance of Kosovo, added: This project is a high priority for our government as it will improve the life of the citizens in Mitrovica region by providing improved sanitation services to local population through enhanced wastewater collection and treatment capacities.

The new treatment plant will significantly reduce pollution from wastewater flowing into four of the regions rivers and provide residents with access to cleaner water. It will also benefit neighbouring municipalities in Serbia.

The water quality of Kosovan rivers has deteriorated in recent decades due to a lack of proper wastewater and solid-waste treatment. The EBRD is helping Kosovo to address these challenges and invest in modern environmental infrastructure with well-structured finance through the WBIF. This will be the second wastewater treatment plant that the EBRD and the EU have supported in the country; construction is scheduled to start on the Gjilan plant in 2022.

The EBRD has invested 545 million in Kosovo since it began operating there in 2012. The Banks strategic priorities in Kosovo are to promote the green economy, support the competitive development of the private sector and foster regional integration.
A digest of recent news from the EBRD. You can also subscribe to instant email updates on EBRD news about our countries, sectors and topics such as climate finance. Sign up And you can follow us on social media Twitter LinkedIn Facebook Instagram You Tube

Jurgen Rigterink reappointed First Vice President

The EBRD Board of Directors has reappointed Jurgen Rigterink to his current role as First Vice President, head of Client Services Group, and extended his tenure to 2 July 2025.

EBRD President Odile Renaud-Basso said: Jurgen has been at the forefront of increased focus on quality over investment volume, and of many initiatives at the Bank to improve the ways we work and communicate, showing leadership, commitment and empathy.

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What explains vaccination rates in the EBRD regions?

The regression analysis conducted by EBRD economists Cevat Aksoy, Maxim Chupilkin and Zsoka Koczan links differences in vaccination rates across more than 100 economies (including 28 economies in the EBRD regions) to average beliefs about safety of vaccines.

Economies with higher income per capita and better economic institutions tend to have higher vaccination rates, owing to better administrative capacity to roll out vaccination campaigns and higher levels of trust (which tend to be highly correlated with income and institutions).

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Project signings and agreements

Residential energy efficiency in Poland

Thanks to a landmark scheme agreed between the EBRD and Polands major lender BNP Paribas Bank Polska (BNPPL), Poles will have the chance to improve the energy efficiency of their homes and cut their energy bills.

The EBRD is extending a local currency loan of PLN 450 million (around 100 million equivalent) to BNPPL for on-lending to private individuals willing to invest in energy-saving solutions and high-performing technologies in residential buildings across the country.

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100 green buses for Mersin

The EBRD has extended a 15 million loan and a 7 million grant to ease the strain on public transport system in Mersin, a city in Turkeys south. 100 new compressed natural gas (CNG) powered buses are set to replace an ageing fleet and improve the urban environment for almost 2 million people.

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Supporting the tourism recovery in Turkey

The EBRD has extended a 25 million loan to Bartu Turizm Yatirimlari, a hotel joint venture between German travel and tourism company TUI Group and the Barut family in Turkey. The loan will refinance the companys existing loans and expand training and career opportunities for youth and women in tourism sector.

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Lending RSD 2.3 billion to OTP Banka Serbia

The EBRD is extending a loan of RSD 2.3 billion (equivalent to 20 million) to OTP banka Serbia AD Novi Sad for on-lending to small and medium-sized businesses (SMEs) in Serbia. The credit line will bolster lending to private businesses in the form of working capital lines and investment loans, in particular, to SMEs operating in economically less-developed areas of the country.

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New electric buses for Novi Sad

Citizens of Serbias second-largest city will benefit from more comfortable, greener public transport thanks to an 8 million loan to the city of Novi Sad from the EBRD to finance the purchase of up to 10 electric buses and accompanying charging infrastructure. The new buses will be used on two of the citys busiest routes and will replace old, polluting diesel buses, thus helping to reduce air pollution in the city centre.

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Stepping up support for tourism and agribusiness in Albania

Together with the government of Albania and the European Union (EU), the EBRD is committing up to 7.11 million of loans to eligible firms in the agribusiness and tourism sector, risk-shared with its partner bank, OTP Bank Albania. The funds will be provided through the Albania Agribusiness and Tourism Support Facility (AATSF), a framework aimed at improving access to finance for small and medium-sized businesses.

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5 million loan to Kosovos Banka per Biznes

A 5 million loan to Banka per Biznes in Kosovo from the EBRD will support the competitiveness of SMEs in the country as part of the Western Balkans SME Competitiveness Support Programme, under which the EBRD provides loans and the European Union (EU) contributes incentive payments and technical assistance. The goal is to help SMEs modernise their activities and take advantage of trade opportunities in the Western Balkans region and wider European market.

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Supporting Azerbaijani manufacturer GemZA Group

The EBRD is extending a 8 million loan to GemZA Group, a leading provider of engineering, procurement and repair services for rotating equipment, such as pumps and valves in Azerbaijan to enable the company to launch a new production facility that will increase the complexity of its repair work, produce a greater variety of spare parts and optimise costs and delivery times.

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Irrigation upgrade in southern Tunisia

The Bank is improving access to irrigation water for more than 6,800 farmers and their families, with a 49 million loan to the Ministry of Agriculture, Hydraulic Resources and Fisheries in Tunisia to help to restore and rehabilitate the ageing water infrastructure serving 37 oases in the countrys southern governorates of Gabes, Gafsa, Kebili and Tozeur. The oases are the primary source of employment and income in the region, with irrigated agriculture providing jobs to 35 per cent of the working population.

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EBRD, Attijari bank and Enda Tamweel to support small businesses in Tunisia

The EBRD is firming up access to finance for Tunisian MSMEs with providing Attijari bank with a second unfunded risk-sharing guarantee of 50 per cent on a loan to Enda Tamweel, the countrys leading microfinance institution.

Under the EBRDs Risk Sharing Framework (RSF), Attijari bank will extend a loan of up to TND 40 million to Enda Tamweel for on-lending to local MSMEs, its core customers, which need financial support to cover liquidity shortages arising from the coronavirus pandemic.

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EBRD and EU fund overhaul of Jordans largest landfill

To strengthen the resilience of Jordans infrastructure, the EBRD is providing a new financing package worth 14.7 million to the Greater Amman Municipality (GAM) under the EBRDs GAM Solid Waste Crisis Response Programme. It consists of a JOD 7.9 million EBRD loan to the GAM, backed by a 5 million grant from the EU.

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Supporting MMK AGROs operations

Customers across Tajikistan will benefit from a greater variety and availability of fresh vegetables thanks to cooperation between the countrys largest private lender Bank Eskhata and the EBRD. The two financial institutions are providing new funds to support operations of the countrys leading vegetable grower MMK AGRO with a senior loan of up to US$ 2.2 million split into three tranches to finance MMK AGROs expansion, while half of the risk on the loan will be shared by the EBRD under the risk sharing agreement between the two banks.

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Donor Update

The EBRD issued its new donor update, which includes the launch of a new multi-donor partnership on climate action, how the Bank and its partners promote gender equality in climate finance, and other green news stories and highlights.

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EBRD helps Armenian telecom provider realise true potential

FNET is a burgeoning internet and telecommunications provider in Armenia, which recently sought support from the EBRD and the European Union to achieve a strategic approach to human capital management and enhance its website and marketing activities.

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EBRD in the media

First Vice President on climate action and private sector

To succeed in climate action, writes EBRD First Vice President Jurgen Rigterink in an op-ed for International Banker, we need the private sector. It has the power to channel trillions into the green transitionnot only because of its financial power but also its innovative genius and ability to find new and inventive solutions.

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The EBRD on social media

We congratulated Edward Bannerman on his new role as Director, Shareholder Relations.

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Were also getting in the mood for the holidays and the end of the year!

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I LOVE books, and I love to talk about books, so Im definitely in the right job, says Lily Keohane with a laugh.

Commercial manager of Waterstones Cork, the Bantry native orders all of the books for the Leeside shop, and it is the fulfilment of a lifes ambition.

Im in a job where I get to read a book and say Ill have 50 of these! Its my dream job. When I was a kid, I always wanted to be around books.

Lily had wanted to be a librarian when she grew up, but a stint as a temporary librarian in UCC made her rethink that. She doesnt elaborate, but is clear that she is now where she wants to be.

I came to Waterstones Cork as a Christmas temp six years ago, and Ive been here ever since. This is my seventh Christmas.

She believes booksellers are a definite tribe of their own, united by a common love for books, and says a particular honour is in welcoming to the shop young readers who might be interested in a series or a writer she loved when she was their age, and in recommending to them similar or related books.

Bookshops are a safe space. We regularly get people of all ages calling in just looking for directions. I think people just associate us with libraries and trust us. We do our best to live up to that trust.

Although part of a UK chain, she says, Waterstones Cork has always prided itself as a champion of local authors and books, and while the parent company has a book of the year, so too does the Cork branch.

This years Waterstones book of the year is Paul McCartneys The Lyrics, and it does look gorgeous, even if its massive enough to have its own gravity well and costs a whopping 90, even with its own tote bag.

Were offering 10 off, and your loyalty card will come in handy, she says with a smile.

The Waterstones Cork book of the year is Claire Keegans Small Things Like These, which Lily calls a perfect little novel. Its set in a small Irish town in 1985, in the shadow of a mother and baby home.

Its not an easy topic, but this offers a beautiful, emotional take on the subject. The only complaint Ive had about it is that its too short.

Not that people felt short-changed, she stresses, its 13 in hardback and runs to 116 pages, rather that they wished they could have spent a little more time in the world of the novel.

Describing herself as a stereotypical late-20s reader, Lily loved Sally Rooneys Beautiful World, Where Are You - a phenomenon - but her own personal book of the year was Meg Masons Sorrow and Bliss, which she calls a perfect book. It got lost a bit in the third lockdown, and she suggests it deserves a paperback second wind.

Its hard to predict the big Christmas stand-out, she says, but really thats not the point. Irish publishing has had an incredible year and there really is something for everyone.

Teen books are booming now, and just as JK Rowling proved the gateway drug for an earlier generation of young readers - Harry Potter is still flying like Hedwig off the shelves - she says TikTok has been a huge driver of reading, with the tag #BookTok making a sensation of Madeline Millers The Song of Achilles. The similarly themed Medusa, by Jessie Burton, is going down a storm. Murders are huge too with young people, Lily says.

As a parting recommendation, she suggests It Rose Up: A Selection of Lost Irish Fantasy Stories, a thematic sequel to A Brilliant Void: A Selection of Classic Irish Science Fiction, and says that with genre, as with teen books, there should be no room for snobbery.

Whatever gets you into reading, whatever gets you into books, theres no judgement. Theres a place for everyone here.

Local recommendations

John Breen, a bookseller at Waterstones in Patrick Street, Cork.

John Breen has been a bookseller with Waterstones Cork for 30 years, and his passion for Cork writers is legendary.

These are some of his local picks this Christmas.

Pancho and Lefty Ride Again by Conal Creedon

Pancho and Lefty Ride Again, by Conal Creedon.

What can you say about Conal? Documentarian, playwright, film-maker, and accidental author as he calls himself, hes such a gifted writer, so evocative and lyrical, and hes Cork to the core.

This is a reissue from 25 years ago, a self-described digital remaster with 11 bonus tracks, or new stories. Thoroughly recommended. Irishtown Press, 15.

Coastal Atlas of Ireland

This is a massive work of scholarship, extremely readable, and a beautiful book. At nearly 1,000 pages, its a steal at 59. Cork University Press.

Ireland: An Aerial Journey, by Dennis Horgan

A stunning book of aerial photography, but this isnt drone footage, Dennis goes up in a small aircraft and takes the most fantastic shots. Described by The Echo as a masterpiece. Red Stripe Press, 35.

Flor MacCarthy, has written The Presidents' Letters.

The Presidents Letters, by Flor MacCarthy

This is a lovely collection of letters to and from Irish presidents. Some real gems in here. New Island Press, 25.

Liberty Terrace by Madeleine DArcy

A fantastic writer, DArcys second collection of short stories is set in a fictional area of Cork City before and during lockdown. Doire Press, 15.

The Art of Falling, by Danielle McLaughlin

This was our One City One Book choice this year. Its the debut novel of the author of Dinosaurs on Other Planets, and its excellent. John Murray, 12.

56 Days, by Catherine Ryan Howard

Winner of the Crime Fiction book of the year. Atlantic Press, 18.

Utter Disloyalist, by Donal O Drisceoill

This riveting, enlightening book tells the story, until now largely forgotten, of Tadgh Barry, the last high-profile victim of the crown forces during the War of Independence. The Mercier Press, 20.

Yvonne Cohen, daughter of Lionel Cohen, pictured with Prof Dermot Keogh, Emeritus Professor of History, Emeritus Jean Monnet Professor and member of RIA at University College Cork, and Patricia Looney, Senior Executive Librarian, at the launch of Lionel's "Memoir of an Irish Jew", recently. Picture: Michael O'Sullivan /OSM PHOTO

Memoir of an Irish Jew, by Lionel Cohen

Beautiful, affecting autobiography that has flown out the door. Only a few copies left. Cork City Library, 15.

Smugglers in the Underground Hug Trade, by William Wall

A lovely collection from local poet/novelist William Wall, Corks official poet laureate, twice longlisted for the Booker Prize. Doire Press, 14.

Thomas McCarthys Journal

A Waterford man living in Cork, Thomas worked in Cork City Library and this memoir covers the 1970s up to almost now. Its due very soon on Gallery Press, and Thomas will  Covid permitting  do a reading in Waterstones in January, 2022, alongside William Wall.

Apathy is Out, by Sean O Riordain

Greg Delantys excellent translation of selected poems by O Riordain. Bloodaxe Books, 16.15 Big Dance by Aoife Greenham. A charming kids book about the importance of being yourself, beautifully illustrated by the author. Childs Play International, 9.50.
A book of evidence has been served in the case against a Romanian national accused of murdering a man whose dismembered body was found in the grounds of a derelict house at Boreenmanna Road in Cork during Christmas 2019.

Sergeant Pat Lyons confirmed at Cork District Court that the book of evidence was ready to be served.

However, the accused man, Ionut Cosmin Nicholescu with an address at Branistea Village, Branistea Communve, Damovita County, Romania, did not appear at Cork District Court by video link from prison.

Judge Olann Kelleher was told that the man who was remanded in custody to Cork Prison at a special sitting of Cork District Court on Friday night was presently in isolation due to Covid-19 protocols in prison.

The book of evidence was served by Detective Garda Alan McCarthy on the defendants solicitor, Shane Collins-Daly.

Judge Kelleher adjourned the case until December 20 for a prosecution application to have the case sent forward for trial at the Central Criminal Court.

The defendant is charged with the murder of Francis (Frankie) Dunne.

Nicholescu is charged that on a date unknown between December 27 and December 28, 2019, he murdered Francis Dunne at Castlegreine House, Boreenamanna Road, Cork, contrary to Common Law.

Det Garda Alan McCarthy gave evidence previously of arresting Mr Nicholescu at Dublin Airport, Swords, Co Dublin and later charging him with the murder of Mr Dunne.

Nicholescu replied I didnt do that when the charge was put to him after caution.

Inspector Ray Dunne applied said the Director of Public Prosecutions had directed trial by indictment at the Central Criminal Court.

Judge Kelleher previously agreed to a defence application to direct the prison authorities that Mr Nicholescu receive any necessary medical attention in prison.
As debate rages on the application of the Supreme Court's decision imposing 25% of teaching time in Castilian on Catalan students, and as negotiations also go on over the issue of protecting Catalan and other minoritized languages in Spain's new audiovisual law, Catalan president in exile Carles Puigdemont has asserted the need to "move into action" in defence of the language. "Taking an attitude of reducing one's demands does not prevent aggressive and xenophobic campaigns against speakers of a minoritized language," advises Puigdemont in a Twitter thread in which he calls for the defence of Catalonia's own language from all possible areas: the administration, the courts and, if necessary, the European Court of Human Rights. The pro-independence MEP asserts that the right to linguistic choice must be respected by everyone and in this regard, it is the Catalan speakers who have the most to gain, and for that reason he makes a strong defence of the laws that protect language rights - and calls for their compliance.

In a thread which takes a broad perspective to the issue and does not quote the Catalan government or the pro-independence parties at all, Puigdemont begins by warning against any relaxation in the defence of the Catalan language, affirming that the Spanish state and its government only protect the Castilian (Spanish) language - "the strong language", which "is not in any danger".

The president warns that campaigns against Catalan will exist whatever they do, and he therefore makes a call to "move into action". "We have laws that we have to use to assert our language rights. Everyone needs to abide by the law, and those who don't have to face the consequences," he asserts before ending with an ironic: "That was how it worked, wasn't it?"

For this reason, the pro-independence leader believes that it is necessary to appeal to the administration, the courts and even go to the European Court of Human Rights "whenever necessary". "Any breach of the laws that oblige to attend in Catalan must have consequences. Because ours is a minoritized and threatened language and must be the object of special respect and protection," he states.

Puigdemont warns that the linguistic rights of everyone, Castilian speakers and Catalan speakers, must be respected. "Those who have the most to gain are the Catalan speakers, because our language is systematically ignored in areas where the law says that it should be respected," he argues.

He also asserts that neither the state nor the Spanish government "have ever come out in defence of the rights of Catalan speakers breached by public officials and by public and private companies", which shows that "they are neither our state nor our government, because they have never raised their voices for us."

In the main image, Catalan president in exile Carles Puigdemont in a press conference at the European Parliament / Efe
Hu Xijin, the editor of the Chinese Communist Party's newspaper Global Times, has threatened Taiwanese president Tsai Ing-Weng on social media. And he did so by presenting the example of the Spanish state as a country that represses independence movements. "If you were a separatist leader in Spain's Catalonia region, you would have been in prison now. So be grateful that you are still living freely in Taiwan province of China," tweeted Hu, quoting an earlier message on Tsai's Twitter account.

Earlier, the Taiwanese president had denounced via Twitter the fact that Nicaragua, with which Taiwan had had diplomatic relations since 1990, has decided to sever ties with the Asian country. "I would like to stress that no amount of external pressure can shake our commitment to freedom, human rights, the rule of law and to partnering with the international democratic community as a force for good," said Tsai, in the tweet which provoked Hu Xijin's irritation. The Global Times editor responded to the president that the "democracy" she spoke of "is not an excuse to divide the country" - implying that as, the official Communist Party line asserts, Taiwan is a rebel Chinese province rather than an independent and democratic country.

Puigdemont's response

Catalan president in exile Carles Puigdemont was one of the Twitter users who expressed indignation at the response from the Chinese journalist, and also wanted to have his say. In particular, the MEP noted that Hu Wijin had cited Spain "as the model of 'democracy' in supressing 'separatism'. This is the way that Beijing has found to attack Taiwan's freedom," he said - holding up the contradiction of a Western country, supposedly an upholder of fundamental freedoms and rights, which, in fact, has notoriously repressed the rights of some its citizens. For example, by jailing independence movement leaders.

Puigdemont then went further and criticized the European Union for not taking action to end this hypocrisy, saying that the EU was "solely responsible for giving arguments to the authoritarian Chinese regime." This was stated in a tweet in English.

Josep Lluis Alay also reacted to the journalist's attack on the Taiwanese president. The director of Puigdemont's office in Belgium quoted Hu Xijin's message, describing him as "the voice of the dictatorial Chinese regime," noting that he was threatening Tsai Ing-Wen with imprisonment, "as Spain has done with the Catalan independence leaders." Like Puigdemont, Alay also lamented that "Around the world, European values are trading right now at rock-bottom level thanks to Spain."

Nicaragua and China resume relations

This morning, China announced the resumption of diplomatic relations with Nicaragua after the country broke off the ties it had maintained with Taiwan since 1990. Now Nicaragua has recognized the territorial principle of "a single China", as proposed by Beijing. The Chinese foreign ministry announced the signing of a joint communique stating that, as of today, there would be "mutual recognition" and the re-establishment of diplomatic relations "at the level of ambassadors."

The Chinese foreign ministry states that Managua's decision is "the right choice, in line with the global trend and with the support of the people." "China is deeply grateful for this decision," reads the document in which Beijing pledges to "work with Nicaragua to strengthen friendly cooperation in various fields, with the aim of benefiting both countries and their peoples."
LG's latest OLED TV was created for those who prefer something with an unusual design and wouldn't look out of place with their furniture and painting collection. The Korean company has given its 65-inch LG OLED Evo TV a makeover, made it part of its Objet Collection and gave it a cover that you can move up or down using a dedicated remote control.

If you're not watching anything and just want to use the TV as a clock or to play music  the device's speaker has an 80-watt output  you can roll down the cover halfway and only show a part of the screen. That said, you can choose from the themes LG provides if you want the whole display to be visible. Since it's meant to invoke the look of an art piece, the model is mounted on a metal easel and can simply be leaned against a wall instead of hanged. Even its moving cover resembles canvas, since it uses fabric, particularly fabric by Danish premium textile brand Kvadrat.

The LG OLED Evo TV Objet Collection costs a lot more than its ordinary OLED Evo counterpart, as you probably already expected. It will be available starting on the 15th in Korea for US$8,381 and will have three Kvadrat cover colors to choose from: beige, redwood and green. Customers will also be able to purchase extra covers if they want, so they can change it according to their space's current color scheme.
A UK appeals court has reversed a previous ruling that Wikileaks founder shouldn't be extradited to the US due to mental health concerns, the Associated Press has reported. The decision opens the door for Assange to be extradited to the US, where he'd face charges of espionage over Wikileaks' publication of government documents.

Lower court Judge Vanessa Baraitser originally ruled that the US criminal justice system presented a risk to Assange's physical wellbeing. "The overall impression is of a depressed and sometimes despairing man, who is genuinely fearful about his future," the judge ruled in January. "For all of these reasons I find that Mr. Assanges risk of committing suicide, if an extradition order were to be made, to be substantial."

In its appeal, however, the US government argued that Assange had no history of "serious and enduring mental illness" that would suggest any risk of self-harm. US lawyers also told British judges that if they extradited Assange, he could serve his US prison sentence in his home country of Australia.

The High Court in London decided that those assurances were enough to guarantee Assange would be treated humanely. The final decision for his extradition is now in the hands of the UK home secretary, though Assange has the option of appealing. Assange's camp has argued that his work constitutes journalism and so his extradition would be a violation of press freedom.

The US government indicted Assange on 17 espionage charges along with one charge of computer misuse over Wikileaks' publication of leaked military and diplomatic documents. The maximum penalty is 175 years in prison, though US lawyers said "the longest sentence ever imposed for this offense is 63 months." Assange was denied bail for risk of flight and is being held at Londons high-security Belmarsh Prison.
Carmen Salinas, a renowned Mexican actress, left her fans heartbroken over her shocking death.

Long-time fans of the iconic Mexican actress were surprised after seeing Salinas' name on the internet's trending list. Unfortunately, it led them to discover that the actress recently died at the age of 82.

Salinas' fans and former colleagues shared some of her images and paid tribute to her and her contributions to the film and TV industry.

One said, "As A Young Child When I Starting Watching Telenovelas, I Grew Up Watching Carmen Salinas. An Amazing Actress Who Brought Smiles & Laughter On My Face. Descanse En Paz Carmelita~ I Send My Condolences To Her Family & Close Friends."

"She was AUTHENTIC. She was like our Tia who told it like it is. May she rest in peace. QEPD Carmen Salinas," another wrote.

Carmen Salinas' Cause Of Death: What Happened To Mexican Actress?

The actress' official Twitter account shared an image of Salinas alongside a lengthy message for the actress. Several news outlets also shared the same saddening news, confirming that the actress died on Thursday at the age of 82.

According to NBC Los Angeles, her death soon came after she suffered from a stroke that left her in a coma. On Wednesday night, her nephew and personal assistant Gustavo Briones Gonzales revealed that Salinas had a cerebrovascular event and that her condition was delicate.

READ ALSO: Alec Baldwin Shocking Connection With Jeffrey Epstein Revealed? Actor's Name Found In Late Convicted Trafficker's 'Little Black Book'

"The Salinas family shares with them that the leading actress, Mrs. Carmen Salinas, is going through a difficult health situation, which is why she remains in the intensive care area where specialist doctors treat her," Briones said. "Because of the respect and affection that my aunt expresses to the press, they will be kept informed about the state of health and evolution."

Before her death, her family was still able to rush her to a hospital in Colonia Roma of Salinas, where she was admitted to an intensive care unit with respiratory assistance.

Her doctors initially thought the inflammation in her brain would subside. The family even hired an external neurologist to take a second opinion on her condition. Unfortunately, Salinas eventually succumbed, leaving her family and the industry behind.

Salinas was survived by her only daughter, Maria Eugenia Plascencia, and seven grandchildren.

READ MORE: Travis Scott Tries Cleaning His Name By Doing Charlamagne Interview? Astroworld Victim's Rep Infuriated Over Rapper's Excuses
With local governments facing increasing cyberattacks, the city of San Antonio on Friday announced the official launch of its $4.2 million Alamo Regional Security Operations Center at Port San Antonio.

The city and CPS Energy worked together to establish the center, which is already in operation. For the past two months, its housed about 60 staff from the city, CPS and VIA Metropolitan Transit on around-the-clock cyber teams. Leaders now are pursuing partnerships with as many as 12 more groups including school districts, housing authorities, the San Antonio Water System and regional municipalities to join in the efforts.

The stakes could not be higher, Mayor Ron Nirenberg told hundreds of public officials, stakeholders, educators and others who gathered Friday morning for the event. He said the new center would be a model for other parts of Texas and indeed other parts of the nation if not the world.

CPS Energy Interim CEO Rudy Garza said hes stayed up at night worrying about the effects of cyberattacks on the city and utility systems. The new center, he added, would now allow the community to stay ahead on the cyber side to protect our assets.

The ARSOC launch comes amid a rise in cyberattacks across the state. Over the past two years, at least 115 ransomware attacks have hit city and county governments, school districts and universities, and state agencies, according to the state Department of Information Resources.

During an interview, Craig Hopkins, the citys chief information officer, said the city has been hit with thousands of cyberattacks a day from low to high criticality. He wouldnt disclose whether the city has ever paid ransomware or received damage from an attack.

In June, a ransomware attack wreaked havoc on the Judson Independent School District, which ended up paying hackers nearly $550,000 to keep its sensitive information private and regain access to its systems.

The idea for the regional center was hatched in 2017 when local leaders in cybersecurity began discussions about working together to provide defenses for the city and mutual aid for regional municipalities. Last year, the San Antonio City Council approved an agreement with Port San Antonio to lease a 20,000-square-foot space rent-free for 15 years, with a renewal option after five years.

While cyber teams at the ARSOC are focused on regional cyber threats, local leaders said they planned on sharing intelligence with state and federal agencies.

Currently, local municipalities arent required to report cyberattacks to the state. Thats only required of state agencies, higher education institutions and county election officers. A new state law requires the Texas Education Agency to create a system for school districts to anonymously share information on such attacks.
Housing, infrastructure and economic development are the immediate priorities residents want to see funded through San Antonios federal COVID-19 relief dollars. In the long term, people also want to see mental health and child care boosted, according to feedback to the city.

Other suggested ideas ranked lower with the public. Youth, homelessness, the digital divide and domestic violence werent considered as high a priority.

Housing far outperformed other categories as an immediate community need. It came in at the top of the list for residents of all but two City Council districts. District 5 on the West Side ranked economic development at the top, while District 9 on the far North Side listed infrastructure.

San Antonio has been gathering public feedback on how it should spend the federal funding for about a month through eight in-person public meetings, a virtual survey and other methods of engagement. The city has around $200 million  most of which it wont receive until May  remaining to budget from the American Rescue Plan Act.

City Council already approved a utility assistance fund of about $30 million to help CPS Energy and San Antonio Water System customers pay overdue bills. Staff proposed using $35 million on continued COVID-19 response  down from the initial $50 million recommendation because of other health grants the city can use.

In San Antonios most recent proposals, the city would spend about $36 million on immediate community needs: housing, infrastructure and economic development, among other categories. About $128 million would be budgeted for impactful investments, which are long-term plans for areas like mental health, child care and more housing.

The city still hasnt proposed any specific programs or organizations to fund those needs. City Council could approve the general spending buckets in early February. Then, subcommittees would work out the details before bringing a plan back for final approval.

Officials also stressed that the citys federal COVID funds should work in tandem with other large funding programs currently in the works, from San Antonios proposed five-year bond to the money its expecting from the recently passed bipartisan infrastructure law.

Premium pay for city employees

A union for the citys civilian workers is pushing San Antonio to spend some relief money on premium pay. Its allowed under federal guidelines, but City Manager Erik Walsh didnt initially include it in the citys draft plans earlier this fall, saying the city couldnt maintain those raises when funds run out.

But after most council members voiced support for premium pay for essential city workers, staff proposed two different scenarios in which employees could see a one-time bonus.

Walsh said if the city uses COVID funds for premium pay, it should look at giving it to all employees, not just the ones immediately eligible.

More than 5,900 city employees qualify for premium pay because they worked on-site during the pandemic. But under another scenario, the city could also extend premium pay to everyone  more than 11,000 city employees, including executives, regardless of where they worked.

Most council members said they still want to see premium pay in some form. Current proposals show one-time payments ranging anywhere from $250 to $3,000, depending on how many employees the city includes and the pay they already earn.

District 3 Councilwoman Phyllis Viagran wanted to see a third option that would give more money to people who worked in person than remotely during the pandemic.

The people we continue to lose to COVID-19 deserve some sort of scenario C, she said.

Housing relief

Some council members, including District 2s Jalen McKee-Rodriguez, expressed interest in shoring up the citys emergency housing assistance program with the funds.

At the rate the city is going, that money may run out by early next year, Walsh said. Additionally, the city hopes to get extra federal funds for housing relief pulled from other cities or states that havent disbursed the money quickly enough.

But there could be a gap between when existing funding runs out and when new dollars arrive.

Small-business support

Outside of its regular town halls, the city also sought feedback on what would help small businesses specifically. San Antonio heard from nonprofits and chambers of commerce, too.

More than 150 people who participated in the citys business survey said access to capital, building capacity and local support were high priorities.

They also identified placemaking, a community-centered approach to urban design, and ecosystem enhancements as investments that would help small businesses.

Some council members, like District 5s Teri Castillo, said they were interested in seeing rent relief for small-business owners struggling with those costs.

Whos represented

Overall, 477 people attended San Antonios town halls on COVID funding, according to the city. More people  789  participated in the telephone town halls. Another 271 people viewed video presentations at senior centers. Yet another 62 people showed up to small-business advisory commission meetings.

The city also conducted a survey about the relief funds with live polling. Of those who self-reported their race or ethnicity, about 43 percent were non-Hispanic white and 37 percent were Hispanic  almost 13 percent identified as multiracial, 4.3 percent as Black and 1.6 percent as Asian American.

Of those who reported their gender, 64 percent were female.

City Council District 9, represented by John Courage, had the highest survey participation rate at 16 percent. District 4 on the Southwest Side, represented by Adriana Rocha Garcia, had the lowest participation rate at 4.4 percent.

megan.stringer@express-news.net
BOSTON (AP)  Massachusetts announced more measures on Friday to give hospitals dealing with critical staffing shortages and an influx of patients more flexibility to ensure sufficient acute care capacity.

The state Department of Public Health in conjunction with the Massachusetts Health & Hospital Association announced guidance to reduce certain nonessential, elective services and procedures by 50%, starting next Wednesday.
ISLAMABAD (AP)  The Pakistani Taliban said Thursday they will not extend a cease-fire agreed to last month, accusing the government in Islamabad of not honoring the truce and failing to release 102 of their fighters.

The militant group, also known as Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, has been behind numerous attacks on Pakistani security forces and civilians over the last 14 years. TTP was also behind a 2014 attack on an army-run school in the northwestern city of Peshawar that killed 154 people, mostly schoolchildren.
UPDATE: U.S. Supreme Court leaves Texas 6-week abortion ban in effect as legal challenges proceed

A Texas judge on Thursday ruled that parts of the states new abortion ban violate the state constitution, but stopped short of declaring an injunction against its enforcement.

The ruling, by state District Judge David Peeples, is the first opinion issued on the laws legality in state courts, where it is designed to be enforced. It was not immediately clear if the ruling, which is certain to be appealed, would lead to any change in abortion access.

Abortions in Texas have been effectively banned after about six weeks of pregnancy since Sept. 1, when the law took effect.

In a three-page ruling, Peeples said the laws enforcement design, which relies upon private citizens to sue those who they believe violated the law in civil court, is unconstitutional under Texas law. Specifically, it violates the defendants right to due process, he wrote, as well as unfairly grants standing to litigants even if they werent directly harmed by the procedure.

Under the law, those who successfully sue under the law can earn at least $10,000, while defendants are barred from collecting attorney fees even if they prove that the claim was frivolous.

RELATED: Supreme Court still mulling Texas abortion ruling

Peeples, a Republican-appointed judge, heard arguments on the consolidated cases in early November. At the time, he raised concerns that the novel enforcement approach could be used in the future to take out other businesses we dont like.

The ruling comes as a decision is still pending from the U.S. Supreme Court on the federal merits of the law. Abortion providers and the Biden administration have both sued, saying the law violates nearly 50 years of precedent that protects the right to abortion until a fetus is viable, usually at around 23 weeks of pregnancy.

The high court could rule on those cases at any time. Meanwhile, a decision on a separate Mississippi case in which the justices could overturn some or all of that five decades of precedent, is expected next year.

jeremy.blackman@chron.com
A self-proclaimed member of the anti-government extremist group Boogaloo Boys was sentenced Thursday to two years in prison on federal weapons charges, the Department of Justice said.

Authorities found a semi-automatic rifle in the home of 22-year-old San Antonio resident Cameron Emerson Casey Rankin, who was prohibited from possessing a firearm after spending time in a mental institution in 2009.

When FBI agents executed a search warrant at his Northwest Side home last year, they also found loaded magazines and a ballistic plate tactical vest, the Express-News reported.

On ExpressNews.com: A Boogaloo Boy from San Antonio was indicted Wednesday. Heres what you need to know about the case.

The Boogaloo Boys, also referred to as the Boogaloo Bois, aim to drive confrontation to bring down the government. They are anti-police and pro-gun, often recognizable by their signature Hawaiian shirts.

In May 2020, Rankin and other members of the group stood outside the Alamo with long guns and rifles to protect the site during protests in reaction to the death of George Floyd. Video of Rankin from that day shows him telling protestors that they could burn down the police station but that the extremist group didnt want them touching the monuments.

On Facebook the next day, Rankin posted anti-police comments with photos of him carrying his gun, including hope they burn down the precinct and Im a BOOGALOO we hate police, the DOJ said.

Now Playing: Members of the Boogaloo Boys, an anti-government extremist group that sprang two years ago from online message boards with an expressed desire for civil war. Bryan Ramirez, a local filmmaker documenting San Antonios weekend protests, captured the exchange on video. Video: San Antonio Express-News

Months later, federal agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives stopped Rankin in a New Hampshire airport and served him with a written notice telling him he was prohibited from carrying a firearm. Officials said they seized a handgun and ammunition from Rankins luggage but that he threw the federal documents in the trash before leaving the airport.

Federal documents said Rankin possessed the capability and means to affect violence in furtherance of his beliefs and has expressed a desire to overthrow the government.

Rankin has been in federal custody since his arrest in October 2020. In April, he pleaded guilty to one count of possession of a firearm by one who has been judicially committed to a mental institution.

taylor.pettaway@express-news.net
Google Maps screenshot

A 17-year-old student at Davenport High School in San Antonio was arrested on Wednesday after they allegedly threatened to shoot up the school while in class, according to Steve Sanford, a spokesman for Comal ISD.

During his threat, the student referenced the recent school shooting in Oxford, Michigan, and expressed that they wanted to harm students at Davenport, the district said in a letter sent to parents earlier this week.
The remains of an 18-year-old male  missing for more than three months  were found in Southwest Bexar County and identified Thursday by authorities.

Anthony Xavier Luna was last seen getting into a black vehicle and leaving Southwest High School on Aug. 27, Sheriff Javier Salazar said. Lunas family reported him missing on Sept. 11. The sheriff did not address the 15 days between when Luna was last seen and when he was reported missing.

On Saturday, a rancher was preparing his land for cattle in the 11000 block of Kearney Road when he smelled a foul odor. He then found what were later determined to be Lunas remains, deputies said.

Salazar said Lunas lower extremities were found first and that his body had been scattered by animals. Investigators mapped out a crime scene of about 100 square yards.

A cadaver dog with the Texas Game Warden helped find more of Lunas remains Monday.

On ExpressNews.com: San Antonio teen arrested on murder charge after fatal shooting

The sheriff said investigators found several indicators that the teens death may be a homicide, though he stopped short of categorizing it as such and did not elaborate on the evidence.

He said the Bexar County Medical Examiners Office has yet to determine Lunas manner of death.

Family members told deputies that Luna was in the engineering program at Southwest High. He was not living a high-risk lifestyle, opting mostly to stay home and play video games, Salazar said.

Luna also planned to join the Marine Corps.

When he left Southwest on the day he went missing, he appeared to know the people he was getting in the car with, the sheriff said. He also did not appear to be under duress, witnesses told investigators.

Whether he knew what they were up to remains to be seen, Salazar said.

There is also evidence that at some point, Luna was in the vicinity of Loop 410 and Highway 90, near Gunsmoke Drive. But investigators could not ascertain whether he was alive when he was there.

Salazar said there may be at least two suspects involved.

To do what was done to him with only one person would have been difficult, he said.

On ExpressNews.com: San Antonio teen arrested after 16-year-olds body found in East Side road

Salazar said Lunas remains were in a marshy ground that was heavily wooded with chest-high undergrowth.

The property is sectioned off by a barbed wire fence.

I dont think someone found this (location) while they had the victim, Salazar said in speculation. Its almost like they knew the property was there already.

The stretch of Kearney Road is only wide enough for one car to pass at a time.

The remains were 50 yards from the road by a game trail accessible to deer, coyote and other wildlife.

It wouldve been difficult to navigate at night without a light, Salazar said.

Investigators ask anyone with tips or knowledge of details in the case to call their office at 210-335-6070.

jbeltran@express-news.net
Alana Castaneda can feel her scar tissue hardening, pulling her jaw to the left. She cannot close her left eye, and she must wear an eye shield to keep it moist. Doctors are also monitoring an accumulation of a jelly-like" substance in her eyeball that, if it fails to dissipate, could sever her retina.

But after explaining the precarious status of her recovery, she says with a shrug and a smile: Its all good. Everything in time.

The 27-year-olds optimism exceeds what one might expect from someone who, just five weeks ago, was shot in the face and left on the brink of death by a would-be carjacker outside Whole Foods at Alamo Quarry Market. Alana has maintained an upbeat outlook that friends and family say has been part of her since growing up in San Antonios Medical Center area.

Shes not going to change, even though she faced what she faced, said her father, Johnny Castaneda, who projects a similar energy. She still has a positive attitude that a lot of people dont have.

Sitting in her downtown-area apartment with a view overlooking the River Walk, Alana and Johnny spoke with the San Antonio Express-News about her optimism and confidence, how she cultivates both and how they contributed to surviving her attack and continue to foster her recovery.

Its not even just physical, you know. Its a mental thing too, she said. I want to be in high spirits and laugh. I feel like that helps a lot with the healing process.

Now Playing: Alana Castaneda, 27, is recovering from being shot in the face on Nov. 2 during an attempted carjacking outside Whole Foods at Alamo Quarry Market. Video: Jacob Beltran

Art and outlook

Johnny describes his daughter as immersed in art. Her expressions of creativity with a focus on the abstract are a part of her life that contributes to her bold outlook on the world.

Growing up, art was more than a hobby for Alana. She studied at Southwest School of Art for 11 years, then Say Si, a tuition-free arts program for high school and middle school students for seven years.

She entered art contests at a young age, her father said, and went on to graduate from Northeast School of the Arts, a magnet school thats part of what is now Legacy of Educational Excellence.

Art runs in her family. Her aunt is the late Nivia Gonzalez, a renowned local artist known for her images of serene-looking, brown-skinned women painted in lush colors that are featured on the cover of The House on Mango Street.

Alana turned her passion into her profession as a graphic designer working with a local studio. And while the shooting has paused her constant movement and meeting with clients in person, it hasnt dimmed her artistic light.

Having worked with nearly every medium from digital to physical, including stain glass, origami, oil painting and acrylics, it all brings her joy.

I love painting, she said. Painting was just very therapeutic to me.

RELATED: 2021 San Antonio Homicide Map

Sam Owens /San Antonio Express-News

An evil presence

At about 9 p.m. on Nov. 2, Alana had just placed a bag of groceries on her cars passenger seat and was reaching to close the drivers side door without looking when she sensed a presence.

It felt evil, she said.

She turned her head to find herself looking down the barrel of a .40-caliber Glock 22. There were no footsteps, nor rustling of clothing, she recalled, just a gun suddenly pointed at her head.

Get out of the car, the man said.

OK, she replied, stepping out with her hands up and leaving her keyless entry fob inside.

As she faced 18-year-old Julio Caeser Rivera Jr., she saw that he was wearing a hoodie but didnt conceal his face. He was hurried, Alana recalled.

It was like he was under a lot of pressure, she said.

Give me the keys, Rivera said while cursing.

Alana told Rivera that he could take the car, trying to explain that the keys were inside and that the ignition had a push-to-start button. But he appeared to not understand as he again demanded her keys.

I dont have have them, Alana said.

Suddenly, Rivera pistol whipped her. At that point, even as her forehead took the tremendous impact, she refused to cower.

She wasnt made that way, and she certainly wasnt trained that way.

At that point, she had one thought: Im not going to take this.

The real Wonder Woman

Krav Maga is a style of self-defense developed by Israeli forces and designed for real-world situations by fine tuning a persons natural response to an attack.

Alana has been a student of Krav Maga since high school, making it part of her life to stay fit not only physically, but also mentally.

She was training in a basic combative track at STW Krav Maga in Balcones Heights, said Henry Hernandez, who has been an instructor there for more than 15 years. The gym is frequented by people in many walks of life, including law enforcement and people wanting to stay in shape.

As Alana visited Hernandez at the gym for the second time since being shot, instructors embraced her and told her that she was an inspiration.

Although she isnt considered practiced on wrestling a gun from an attacker, she has studied how to defend herself against knives.

Hernandez said that whatever Rivera perceived that led him to target Alana outside Whole Foods, he was mistaken.

They probably thought she was weak, but she wasnt, Hernandez said. She proved that, and shes still proving that.

Hernandez said that while instructors encourage their students to give up anything an attacker demands, Rivera changed the dynamics of the situation by bringing a gun.

And when Rivera struck her with that gun, her training kicked in. She retaliated quickly, she recalled, with two punches to Riveras jaw.

Hernandez said she increased her chances of surviving by fighting back and throwing her attacker off balance.

Shes my hero, Hernandez said. Shes Wonder Woman to me  the real Wonder Woman.

The family that talks together

Growing up, Johnny took Alana and her friends on trips to fun cities such as New Orleans, Las Vegas and Port Aransas  a staple among Texas vacation spots.

He believes parents should take their children anywhere they can.

Once they grow up, they might not want to go with you, he said.

He said its also important for parents and children to talk to each other, especially during their teenage years.

A lot of parents dont do that, Johnny said. I think thats why a lot of things escalate.

Johnny and his wife made it priority to spend time talking with Alana and maintaining an open line of communication. After she moved out on her own, they continued to be physically present.

I see my parents religiously once or twice a week, Alana said.

And throughout her life, Johnny has imparted wisdom accumulated as an Army soldier and a Marine, and from his mother, a single parent who always maintained a positive attitude while working to provide for her children.

Among his bits of advice are to thank God for one day at a time and be grateful you can get up in the morning and walk and talk. Theres a lot of people who cant.

Perhaps thats why Alana, who has an older half-brother and older half-sister, didnt need a near-death experience to make her more appreciative of life and the people around her.

Ive always been close to my parents, especially my father, Alana said. Hes the closest person to me.

Sam Owens /San Antonio Express-News

Surviving the shot

Having compelled her attacker to flee, Alanas fight transitioned from fending off her attacker to surviving the gunshot he fired during their struggle.

Just after landing her punches, she felt a force so strong that it rotated her face and sent her to the ground. The pain was hot and constant, she said. Her ear was ringing.

The bullet struck her right cheek, and part of it burst into shrapnel that remains embedded in her neck. It damaged her eye socket and sinuses before it traveled past her ear canal and eventually protruded from her skin just below her ear.

On the ground, she lost track of Rivera. Her only focus was on standing. Using all her strength to get up, she made her way into Whole Foods.

Someone call 911, Ive just been shot, she said as she walked inside.

It was difficult for her to see as blood streamed down her face, partly obscuring her vision.

As she put her hands on a womans wrists, she kept repeating her name and birth date.

I wanted someone to be able to identify me to my family, she said.

2 1 of 2 Sam Owens /San Antonio Express-News Show More Show Less 2 of 2 Sam Owens /San Antonio Express-News Show More Show Less



The sweet woman I owe my life to

Back inside Whole Foods, Alanas strength waned and she fell again.

As patrons and staff surrounded her, the woman who had served her a sandwich earlier asked Alana whether she remembered her.

Alana said she did and wrapped her arms around the sandwich ladys leg.

As she started to fade and momentarily felt her pain leave, she asked for somebody to help her call her mother, Marisa Castaneda.

I needed to hear her voice one last time, she said.

Teetering at the brink of death, it took all of Alanas strength to dial the number. Once she reached her mother, she calmly told her that she had been shot.

Seconds later, first responders arrived and said she needed a blood transfusion.

All the while, the sandwich lady put pressure on Alanas wound.

If she had not have done that, I wouldnt be here ... today, Alana said. Shes the sweet woman I owe my life to.

Resilience runs in the family

At Brooke Army Medical Center, Johnny was the first person to see his daughter before and after she went into a seven-hour surgery.

He was shocked when he saw what had been done to his daughter.

Doctors have told Alana that her left eye is sinking because the bullet destroyed her orbital floor. When the bullet severed her jaw bone, it struck a gland that produces saliva, which now leaks through the back of her neck. More than a month since the shooting, she still has inflammation in her face that prevents her from opening her jaw enough to eat solid food.

Johnny had seen his friends suffer horrific combat injuries, but he never imagined something like that happening to his daughter. What he did foresee, however, was his daughters resilience, as he sees much of himself in her.

Ive faced fear a lot of times, and it doesnt bother me, he said with a smile. Ive been up and down that ladder so many times.

Being there for his daughter reminds Johnny of how she was constantly by his side during his recovery from open-heart surgery three years ago.

She was there making sure the nurses gave me the right medicines, he said with a laugh.

While her recovery has even exceeded his high expectations for her, remaining upbeat through adversity is part of who she is.

She tries to be happy-go-lucky all the time.  She tries not to let things bother her, he said. Every child should be like that growing up.

They got him

Alana recalls not being afraid until after she was shot. What scared her was not knowing where Rivera had gone.

I thought he was going to come in and finish me, she said, or that he would come inside and start shooting other people.

When that didnt happen, she thought Rivera would have disappeared into the night, evading police through the trees and a nearby creek.

Instead, police said, Rivera went to a nearby movie theater, where officers spotted him and a brief chase through the parking lot ensued.

Meanwhile, Alana was in an ambulance with paramedics on either side. The one on her left was injecting her with pain medication as the one on her right said, They got him.

I smiled, she said. Knowing that he would not do this to anyone else, it made me happy.

Sam Owens /San Antonio Express-News

A long road ahead

A photo of Alana, bloodied with a hole in her check, captures a moment after she underwent surgery to have two plates drilled into her skull.

Is that really me? she asked herself two weeks after the incident.

Much of her time had been spent at home, maintaining a daily routine of creams, medicines and self-therapy techniques  including the use of multiple tongue depressors to help her open her jaw wider.

I just want a hamburger, she said with a sigh. Im tired of yogurt and smoothies.

About a month after the incident, she was able to open her jaw a considerable amount  seven tongue depressors stacked tall to be exact  meeting her doctors expectations.

Facing a year of recovery, including more surgeries to secure her eye in its socket, she remains hopeful.

Affirmations written on her bathroom mirror  such as I am blessed, I am strong and brave  were part of her daily routine even before the attack. Now, they are as important to her as ever, particularly the last one.

I am alive.

jbeltran@express-news.net
Vehicle owners are urged to lock them after two armed suspects burglarized 19 vehicles left unlocked in a North Bexar County neighborhood.

Sheriff Javier Salazar said the suspects were walking up to homes and checking cars around 3 a.m. Sunday in the Canyon Crest neighborhood.

Investigators have released images and security camera footage of the suspects and are asking the public for help identifying them.

Now Playing: Deputies are stepping up patrols in the areas hit by suspected burglars. Video: San Antonio Express-News

Also, Salazar is encouraging people to fall into the 9 p.m. routine, saying that by that time each night, people should have removed all valuables from their cars and locked them.

Salazar said that while car burglary is often a misdemeanor, the armed suspects pose a threat with unknown intentions.

These folks are literally walking from house to house, car to car in the middle of the night down the street brandishing firearms in their hands, Salazar said.

On ExpressNews.com: Two men accused of shooting at deputies on far West Side ID'd by BCSO

Investigators do not know whether it is an intimidation tactic or a way for the suspects to defend themselves when confronted by area residents.

It is also not known whether the weapons belong to the suspects or whether they were taken during the spree of burglaries.

Its a trend that weve seen a lot here recently where some of the weapons that were dealing with on the street are being stolen from cars, Salazar said.

The sheriff recalled a similar situation in which two suspects were arrested on Sept. 9 after they allegedly fired at deputies responding to reports of a burglary in West Bexar County.

If they are willing to attack deputies in full uniform, think about what they will do to John Q. Citizen, the sheriff said.

Salazar said deputies have stepped up their patrols in the neighborhood and other areas.

The suspects were also seen in security camera footage using credit cards at an area store. Anyone who knows them is urged to call Crime Stoppers at 210-224-7867 (STOP). Callers may remain anonymous, the sheriff said.

jbeltran@express-news.net
Michael OBrien, Texas A&M University-San Antonio's provost and vice president for academic affairs, has resigned effectively immediately, the university announced on Thursday.

OBrien's departure comes less than a month after he told faculty during a town hall that the school had a budget shortfall of $4 million and blamed it on a comedy of errors.

O'Brien could not be reached, and a university spokeswoman declined to comment.

On ExpressNews.com: Some Texas religious leaders live in lavish, tax-free estates thanks to obscure law

In September, A&M-San Antonio announced that it had launched a national search to find a provost to replace OBrien, who would transition to the universitys first Senior Vice President for Research and Health Science once a replacement was found.

Cynthia Teniente-Matson, the university's president, informed faculty and staff of the resignation at the end of an email. Teniente-Matson did not give a reason for his resignation, but said OBrien will remain on staff after a brief sabbatical.

In the email, she also defended the schools financial management and its student enrollment against recent media reports that have been circulating.

On ExpressNews.com: Man insulted Joel Osteen on TikTok. He said he was fired days later.

The university is fiscally sound and enrollment continues its upward trend, albeit at a slower pace in the wake of the pandemic, Teniente-Matson said in the email.

She also pointed out in the email that the university has not had layoffs or furloughs during the pandemic.

Local media outlets have reported on the Nov. 22 town hall, when OBrien revealed the $4 million budget shortfall and attributed it to a comedy of errors.

On ExpressNews.com: Some Texas religious leaders live in lavish, tax-free estates thanks to obscure law

The shortfall came all over the place  not put in the right categories, OBrien said. Monies were spent twice. Thats the big problem that we have.

OBrien also warned during the town hall of a loss of positions funded through federal pandemic money earmarked by the Higher Education Emergency Relief Fund program.

Weve got a lot of personnel that were going to end up losing because normally we would say, Alright, lets create a line and put them on it. We dont have any money for lines, OBrien said.

On ExpressNews.com: Nationwide sells big West Side office campus to Dallas-based fund as it moves to hybrid work model

In Teniente-Matsons email to faculty on Thursday, she said the federal funds helped buffer the impacts of the pandemic.

Specifically, the one-time funding allowed the university to fill temporary positions to provide additional instructional and student services support.

Teniente-Matson also said that the effects of the pandemic have made enrollment less predictable, and we are seeing a trend of later registration and students taking fewer credit hours. This is not unique to A&M-San Antonio. We are doing all that we can to encourage our students to continue their academic trajectories.

As provost and vice president for academic affairs, OBrien oversaw the recruitment, hiring and retention of faculty, including the implementation of faculty policies. His department works with faculty leaders to create new academic programs and courses and coordinates the universitys efforts to meet accreditation standards.

An interim provost has not been announced.

Timothy.Fanning@express-news.net
Law enforcement officials among multiple agencies in the San Antonio area were busy this week investigating possible threats involving at least six middle and high schools.

Education leaders in San Antonio, Boerne, and Comal and Medina counties were notified of threatening social media posts.

These incidents follow a deadly shooting on Nov. 30 at Oxford High School in Michigan, where Ethan Crumbley is accused of killing four students and injuring seven others. Crumbley has been arrested and faces terrorism and murder charges.

In the San Antonio area, all the threats made against schools were determined to not be credible and authorities dont believe any students are in danger.

On ExpressNews.com: Comal ISD high school student facing terroristic threat charges, district says

FBI officials said historically they see an uptick in reports of threats at schools after a school shooting occurs.

While local law enforcement agencies typically take the lead in these cases, the FBI regularly coordinates with them through its Joint Terrorism Task Force.

Law enforcement depends on the public for tips regarding suspicious persons and activity, as many times it is these tips which help us stop school shootings before they occur, the FBI said in a statement to the Express-News.

These schools were involved in threats this week:

Southwest High School  On Friday, Southwest Independent School District officials were made aware of an anonymous statement on social media that was threatening in nature, the district said in a Facebook post. Officials said the threat is not credible, though they have increased the presence of police on campus. Davenport High School  A 17-year-old student was arrested and charged with making terroristic threats after making comments in class about the deadly school shooting in Michigan and doing harm to students at Davenport, according to a letter from Comal ISD. Champion High School  Officials on Thursday were made aware of threats made against the Boerne high school. Investigators determined that the threat was a hoax and said the 14-year-old involved does not live in Boerne or Fair Oaks Ranch. Krueger Middle School  A seventh grader is facing felony charges after allegedly posting threats against Krueger Middle School on Instagram Wednesday night, North East ISD officials said. The threat was not found to be credible. Medina Valley High School  School officials were made aware on Dec. 3 of rumors circulating on social media that a student was planning to shoot up the school, Medina County Sheriff Randy Brown said. The investigation revealed that the threat was a rumor about a fight between students that got blown out of proportion. Dobie Junior High School  Cibolo police on Dec. 6 investigated a video of a student making nonspecific threats that was on social media, officials said. It was learned that the video was recirculating from an incident six months ago and that there was no credible threat to the school.

taylor.pettaway@express-news.net
Matthew Dowd and Mark McKinnon are old friends who have followed similar paths.

They both got involved in Democratic politics in the 1980s, worked for Democratic Lt. Gov. Bob Bullock in the 90s and, through Bullocks connection to Republican Gov. George W. Bush, switched party allegiances and joined Team Bush.

In 2004, Dowd was the chief strategist for Bushs presidential re-election campaign, while McKinnon served as chief media adviser.

Eventually, both of them got gigs on television, with Dowd working as a political analyst for ABC News and McKinnon co-hosting Showtimes political series The Circus.

A fundamental difference between Dowd and McKinnon, however, was that Dowd, unlike McKinnon, always craved center stage. He wasnt content to be the person advising candidates. He wanted to be a candidate himself.

He has had the bug for years, McKinnon said in a 2004 interview.

In 2004, Dowd flirted with a Republican candidacy for Texas comptroller. In 2017, he hinted at an independent run for U.S. Senate against Ted Cruz.

Two and a half months ago, he finally stepped out on the stage, announcing his candidacy in the Democratic primary for lieutenant governor.

The bug, however, must have worn off. On Tuesday, Dowd pulled the plug on his candidacy.

His rationale was puzzling and patronizing.

Dowd cited a September 2018 op-ed he wrote for ABC News, in which he argued that progress most often comes from underserved groups pushing for a seat at the table.

Instead of waiting for the diverse population of America to keep pushing and prodding, Dowd wrote in the 2018 op-ed, I would humbly suggest that we as white male Christians take it upon ourselves to step back and give more people who dont look like us access to the levers of power.

Dowd explained his withdrawal by saying that when he entered the race in September, he was running against a fellow white male Christian, Mike Collier. Now, with a diverse field emerging, he didnt want to stand in the way of the greater diversity we need in politics.

Last month, state Rep. Michelle Beckley, D-Carrollton, announced her candidacy for lieutenant governor. In addition, Dr. Carla Brailey, an African American educator who serves as vice chair of the Texas Democratic Party, has expressed an interest.

Dowds explanation suggests he doesnt believe a woman or a person of color has any chance of beating him and could achieve success only if he stepped aside.

Dallas Mayor Eric Johnson, a Democrat who is African American, tweeted that he was confused and a little disturbed by Dowds reasoning.

For white male candidates to stop running as Democrats to give us a chance feels wrong to me, Johnson added.

I havent spent too much time considering whether Dowds stated rationale was an act of generosity or condescension. Because I dont buy the rationale.

When Dowd launched his candidacy in late September, we were still a month and a half away from the beginning of the filing period for the 2022 primaries. Are we really supposed to believe that this savvy operator with 35 years of political experience never considered the possibility that a woman or minority candidate would enter the race?

All he had to do was take a look at recent history.

In 2018, Michael Cooper, an African American pastor from Beaumont, finished less than 5 percentage points behind Collier in the Democratic primary for lieutenant governor.

In 2006, 2010 and 2014, Democrats nominated Latina candidates for lieutenant governor.

Given this history, it doesnt make much sense to believe that Dowd was prepared, all along, to drop out of a race he entered with great fanfare at the first sign that a woman or minority candidate might run.

Back in September, Dowd defined his candidacy not merely as a slightly different flavor of white male Christianity but as a unifying antidote to the culture wars divisiveness of current Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick.

As recently as Monday, Dowd was retweeting messages of support for his candidacy. That same day, he touted a planned campaign stop in McKinney next Tuesday. A little more than 24 hours later, his campaign was kaput.

Collier supporters would say Dowd backed out because he had come to the conclusion that he couldnt win.

To be sure, Colliers strong run against Patrick in 2018 has earned him some loyalty with the Democratic base. A week ago, 26 members of the State Democratic Executive Committee endorsed him.

State Party Chairman Gilberto Hinojosa also delivered a pretty clear statement of support, saying, Mike Collier has been a champion for our Democratic values, and Im proud to call him my friend.

Dowd had nearly 10 times as many Twitter followers as Collier and infinitely more star power. But he didnt have a fraction of Colliers commitment.

ggarcia@express-news.net | Twitter: @gilgamesh470
Bexar County District Attorney Joe Gonzales officially filed for re-election this week.

A former private practice defense attorney and prosecutor, he was elected as the top law enforcement official in Bexar County in 2018.

I want to continue with what were doing in the District Attorneys Office, Gonzales said Wednesday in a video on social media announcing his re-election campaign. Im hopeful and confident that the voters will see that we made some huge progress.  Together, we can bring meaningful reform that makes sense while keeping the citizens of Bexar County safe.

During his initial campaign  a heated Democratic primary during which Gonzales defeated the incumbent, Nico LaHood  Gonzales described himself as a hard worker from a family of modest means who relied on part-time jobs and financial assistance to pay for college and law school.

So far, Gonzales has no opponent in the Democratic primary, which will be held March 1. The deadline to file is Monday.

On ExpressNews.com: Ex-prosecutor Meredith Chacon running for Bexar County district attorney

Gonzales will likely face Meredith Chacon in the November 2022 general election. Chacon, a Republican, is a local defense lawyer and former prosecutor who has championed herself as a district attorney who would be tough and smart on crime.

Gonzales joined the District Attorneys Office in 1990, and he worked as a prosecutor in Bexar and Harris counties until 1998. That year, Gonzales opened his law practice, and he later served as a magistrate and municipal judge for the city of San Antonio.

After taking the helm at the DAs Office in 2019, he advocated for criminal justice and bail bond reform, including limiting pretrial incarceration to the most dangerous suspects. Gonzales said Wednesday that hes proud of what hes accomplished so far.

Among the initiatives he cited is reviving a seldom-used program known as cite and release, which allows people suspected of certain low-level misdemeanors, including possession of small amounts of marijuana, to take a class and pay a fine to prevent having an arrest on their record.

LaHood, his predecessor, had unveiled a similar program, but it was seldom used.

After two years of cite and release, weve had 5,000 people take advantage of that program, Gonzales said. Weve saved the county $3.8 million just in booking costs. That doesnt cover court-appointed fees.

eeaton@express-news.net
WASHINGTON  A veteran Houston police officer on Friday was sentenced to 45 days in jail for his role in the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol.

Your role was very minor on that day, D.C. District Judge Timothy J. Kelly said as he sentenced Tam Dinh Pham, who served for 18 years as a Houston Police Department patrol officer. On the other hand, without people like you, the collective force of the mob would not have been the same.

Pham pleaded guilty Sept. 20 to a misdemeanor charge of parading, demonstrating or picketing inside the Capitol building. Federal prosecutors said pictures and video recovered from Phams cell phone show he spent about 20 minutes inside the Capitol, where he can be heard chanting stop the steal and were taking the House back!

BACKGROUND: Feds say veteran Houston cop deserves jail time for role in Jan. 6 Capitol riot

Justice Department / Courtesy

Pham gave a tearful apology in federal court on Friday, saying he brought shame to his family in Houston and in Vietnam, which he left for the U.S. when he was 17.

The United States has given me so many opportunities, Pham said. I know I am fortunate to be here. I am sorry. Very, very sorry.

Pham said he had made the worst choice of my life when he stupidly followed the crowd from former President Donald Trumps rally on the National Mall to the Capitol, where Congress was working to certify President Joe Bidens electoral victory.

He explained that when he arrived at the Capitol, he saw barricades and police and he initially turned around. But then he heard shouting from others in the crowd that they were being let in. When he returned, he said the barricades were no longer in the way, so he thought it was OK to enter. Pham said he took pictures and walked around until a police officer told him he needed to leave.

Pham said he sullied his reputation and ruined his career. He resigned his job with the Houston Police Department, likely ending his service in law enforcement just three years before he was planning to retire. Pham said his sister called from Vietnam after news of his involvement broke and said he was an embarrassment to the family. Pham has had to repeatedly console his children, including his daughter, who hides in the closet anytime news of his case comes on TV, his attorney, Nicole DeBorde, said.

I have embarrassed myself, but worse, my family, Pham said through tears.

A COP, A BAKER AND A FLORIST: Meet the Texans charged in the Capitol riot

Kellys sentence was less than the 60 days federal prosecutors sought, and he said he strongly considered giving Pham probation.

Kelly said Pham had lived an exemplary life before Jan. 6, calling his immigrant story inspiring and saying he wasnt worried about Pham committing future crimes. Kelly agreed Pham had already faced a penalty harsher already than what some others may have.

But Kelly said Phams police service cuts both ways. He agreed with federal prosecutors, who argued that Pham, then an active-duty police officer, should have known better than to enter the Capitol that day. Pham had worked crowd control during large protests in Houston, including a peaceful 2020 demonstration in Houston in the wake of George Floyds killing.

I just dont think its credible that you didnt know when you walked into the Capitol building that you shouldnt be there, Kelly said.

Pham had also initially told FBI officers at his Richmond home that he had not joined the Capitol breach, but agents found dozens of photos and videos Pham had deleted from his phone of himself breaching barriers and wandering through the Capitol building and grounds Jan. 6.

Kelly also said he believes Pham was more invested in the mobs actions than he had let on.

DeBorde said Pham was in D.C. with his wife on a business trip and they had only planned to attend the presidents speech, which they thought would be entertaining. They had no intention of marching to the Capitol afterward, she said.

But Kelly noted that in videos from that day that Pham said excitedly and with a smile: Were taking back the House.

YOU CANT STOP US: FBI timeline depicts roles Texans played in Capitol siege

Pham is the fourth Texan to receive jail time after the insurrection, according to George Washington Universitys Program on Extremism, which has tracked cases related to the Capitol riots. Texas is second only to Florida in the number of residents arrested for storming the Capitol on Jan. 6, with at least 60 facing charges so far.

Others sentenced to jail time include Matthew Mazzocco, a former loan officer for Synergy One Lending in San Antonio who can be heard in video posted on social media telling others not to take or destroy anything, and warning that they were probably going to get in trouble for what they were doing. He was sentenced to 45 days in jail.

Jennifer Ryan, a Frisco real estate agent who took a private jet to D.C. for the rally, went viral earlier this week for saying of her 60-day sentence: If I can lose 30 pounds, itll be so worth it.

Troy Smocks, a 58-year-old Dallas man who on social media called for Trump supporters to hunt these cowards down like the traitors that each of them are, was sentenced to 14 months in prison for making interstate threats.

Editor's note: An earlier version of this story had incorrect sentencing information for Smocks.

ben.wermund@chron.com
This article was originally published by Votebeat, a nonprofit news organization covering local election integrity and voting access.

The Potter County Republican Party plans to conduct its own election during the Texas primary on March 1, independent of the county election administration. People voting in Republican races on Election Day will cast hand-marked ballots that will be hand counted, which the party believes to be more secure. Experts say the move will introduce a higher risk of fraud, confuse voters, and likely result in legal challenges.

This introduces a lot of potential mistakes and it also introduces opportunities for fraud, said Christina Adkins, the legal director of the Texas Secretary of States elections division. The candidates on this ballot really need to think about whether this is how they want their election run.

JAIL TIME: Ex-Houston cop learns fate for his role in Jan. 6 Capitol riot

The plan is the brainchild of county GOP chair Dan Rogers. He said repeatedly that turnout in the county, home to Amarillo, had gone down since the county introduced voting machines and voting centers in 2015. The more they try to make it easier and add gadgetry, it goes down, he said. This is false. Historical voting data shows no significant change in county turnout patterns since the introduction of the technology.

The decision comes after an Arizona congressional candidate who participated in the Jan. 6 insurrection gave an election integrity symposium to the party in October. The presenter, Jeff Zink, is a candidate for Arizonas 7th Congressional District who falsely says that the Cyber Ninjas investigation report released in September hid rampant fraud about Maricopa Countys 2020 election results. Around 50 people attended the event and listened to Zink expound on the benefits of hand counting.

CRENSHAW VS. GUN OWNERS: 'They want to make you outraged' to raise money

Zink and his son, Ryan, participated in the Jan. 6 U.S. Capitol insurrection. His son now faces federal criminal charges. Ryan Zink filmed himself and the other rioters entering the Capitol. We knocked down the gates! Were storming the Capitol! You cant stop us! he said, facing his video camera. Were about to bum rush this shit! Jeff Zink denies that his son was involved and says he was falsely accused. Jeff Zink has spoken at multiple events supporting the insurrectionists as part of his congressional campaign and has repeatedly claimed that voting machines were the source of significant fraud.

Rogers said he doesnt know if the countys machines are error-ridden or not. The county currently uses Hart InterCivic direct-recording electronic machines that do not produce a paper ballot but will be modified next year to comply with a new Texas law that requires such a printout. He said voters do not trust the technology and would prefer to vote on paper. Asked for survey data to support this claim, he said he didnt need it, and instead recounted a conversation with his mechanic. I know my voters, he said.

On Dec. 3, Rogers sent out an email titled Potter County (Amarillo) takes the first step toward real election integrity to Republican Party chairs in every Texas county, encouraging them to copy his plan. We would like to see other County Committees follow our lead and we will help any County Chair interested in having real secret ballot elections, he wrote. He has received no interest.

Chris Davis, the election administrator in Williamson County and vice president of the Texas Association of Elections Administrators, learned of Rogers plan from an email forwarded by the local party chair. This will end badly, Davis said, predicting extreme voter confusion. He said his county party has no desire to move in that direction and he is unaware of any county making a similar decision.

Potter County has nearly 60,000 registered voters and shares its largest city, Amarillo, with neighboring Randall County. Nearly 70 percent of Potter County voters cast their ballots for Donald Trump in 2020.

While neither the state nor the county can stop Rogers from carrying out this plan  the parties are entirely responsible for the conduct of primary elections on Election Day  officials at both levels of government have repeatedly warned Rogers that his move will confuse voters. By state law, the county must manage early voting and vote by mail, which is how local administrators anticipate most county voters will cast their ballots. The county will use voting machines, as required by county statute. Typically a minority of voters do present in person on election day and thus, under Rogers plan, would be subject to entirely different rules and would have to report to different voting locations than they have in the past.

While Potter County uses a voting center model  relying on epollbooks and voting machines to allow voters to cast ballots anywhere in the county  Rogers has decided that the party will use only paper pollbooks and that voters must report to their assigned precinct.

Melynn Huntley, the election administrator for the county, said that Rogers may alienate his own voters with the plan. Suddenly, they are going to show up to vote and realize its not in the same location, she said. Running a quality election is hard for even the most experienced counties.

The lack of epollbooks also means that election workers will have no means to ensure that individuals who cast a ballot in the Democratic primary are not also casting ballots in the Republican primary. One of the biggest problems with this is that its throwing the doors wide open to voter fraud, said Huntley, an assertion Adkins agreed with.

Rogers acknowledged he would not be able to check for double voting but said he doesnt believe anyone will try. Theyd be charged with a felony, he said. He acknowledged there would be no way to remove these individuals votes from the total count after election day. I trust people, he told me. You are the one that doesnt trust people.

Multiple studies have shown that hand counting ballots leads to higher rates of inaccuracy than ballots counted by scanners or other machines. Rogers rejected this, saying hand recounts would be 100 percent accurate.

I dont need studies. They are a waste of money, he said. Any time you count anything you have two people counting. I do this when Im dealing with my cattle  we have two cowboys, and they better come up with the same number.

Rogers said that he believes the hand counting will take around 30 minutes, despite there being more than two dozen races on the March ballot. He offered no basis for his calculation. In 2020, a recount of a single race in Potter County took several dozen poll workers 8 hours to count, said Huntley. Rogers said hed arrived at the estimate using logic.

Ryan Macias, a Dallas-based elections consultant who has overseen or assisted with recounts nationwide, said the 30 minute estimate was not at all logical. Individuals counting votes go down the ballot in pairs, checking each others interpretation of the ballot while making hand tallies on a separate sheet, typically race by race. It takes a long time, he said. Look at what just happened in the state of Arizona. It took twice as long as they thought to count only two races and the cost was astronomically higher than they originally envisioned.

Federal law requires every polling location in a federal election, of which 2022 is one, to have an ADA-compliant voting machine on hand for disabled voters who prefer to vote on a machine. Rogers said this wasnt necessary. All the handicapped people I know prefer paper and theyve told me that, he said. Well change the law.

Even in non-federal elections, Texas law requires that polling locations have such machines. Well change state law too, he said. (The Texas Legislature will not be in session prior to the March primary.)

Under Texass new voting law, passed this year, election administrators and party chairs can be held personally liable for violations of Texass Elections Code. While the county party is allowed to hold the election in the manner that its leaders choose, Rogers must ensure that any changes follow the code exactly. In addition to loss of their jobs, those found to be in violation of the law would be fined $1,000 per violation.

Adkins said that she is concerned that Rogers decision will open the county party up to risk of litigation. If you have close races or contested races and there is a problem, be it fraud or human error, they are the ones that will bear that risk and responsibility, she said. I want to make sure they are going into this with their eyes wide open.

Rogers was not deterred. Bring it on, he said.

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization covering local election integrity and voting access. Sign up for their newsletters here.
The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday largely dismissed challenges to the new abortion ban in Texas, protecting the law for now and potentially paving the way for other states to restrict constitutional rights with laws that delegate enforcement to private citizens.

In a 5-4 split, the courts five most conservative justices declined to let abortion providers sue state officials including judges, court clerks and the Texas attorney general. They also tossed out a related challenge from the U.S. Justice Department.

The decision leaves in place the strictest abortion law in decades and comes months before the court is expected to decide whether states can prohibit abortion access altogether in a separate case. The justices did allow a narrow portion of the providers original challenge  against Texas licensing officials  to proceed. But it was unclear how that litigation could stop the law altogether.

Legal experts speculated that the Legislature could simply tweak the law, Senate Bill 8, by removing the role of the licensing officials. Those officials include members of the medical, pharmacy and nursing boards, as well as Cecile Young, head of the Texas Health and Human Services Commission.

The key for providers is to be able to block *all* enforcement of #SB8, Steve Vladeck, a constitutional law professor at the University of Texas at Austin, tweeted after the ruling. Being able to sue clerks would allow that to happen. Not clear that being able to sue these four officials could achieve the same result.

IMPLICATIONS: UT law professor warns Congress of broader threat from Texas abortion ban

The law is designed to evade judicial intervention by delegating enforcement to private citizens who can collect $10,000 bounties for lawsuits brought against those who help women obtain the procedure after six weeks, or when fetal cardiac activity is first detected. The abortion providers had argued that judges and court clerks are critical to the setup, even if they are not directly named as enforcers of it.

Writing for the conservative majority, Justice Neil Gorsuch said barring those officials from hearing litigation would set a dangerous precedent.

If it caught on and federal judges could enjoin state courts and clerks from entertaining disputes between private parties under this state law, what would stop federal judges from prohibiting state courts and clerks from hearing and docketing disputes between private parties under other state laws? Gorsuch wrote.

The high courts decision not to intervene further was opposed by its three liberal justices and by Chief Justice John Roberts.

Justice Sonya Sotomayor, writing a stiff dissent, said the court should have put an end to this madness months ago.

By foreclosing suit against state-court officials and the state attorney general, the court effectively invites other states to refine S. B. 8s model for nullifying federal rights, she wrote. The court thus betrays not only the citizens of Texas, but also our constitutional system of government.

Gorsuch responded for the majority, saying challenges such as the one the court is permitting against licensing officials may be available in federal court to test the constitutionality of those laws.

The new abortion restrictions are expected to most affect low-income women and women of color, many of whom cant afford the time or money to travel out of state. Poorer women also tend to seek out care later in pregnancies.

ALSO THIS WEEK: Texas judge finds state abortion ban unconstitutional

Researchers at UT-Austin reported this fall that the number of documented abortions had fallen by half in September from the same month in 2020. The law took effect Sept. 1, after the Supreme Court first declined to intervene.

Anti-abortion rights activists described Fridays ruling as a clear victory.

The decision today will allow civil lawsuits over illegal abortions to continue, Chelsey Youman, the legislative director for Human Coalition Action Texas, said in a statement. Texas abortion providers will have to defend themselves in court like any other citizen accused of breaking the law.

Amy Hagstrom Miller, who runs four abortion clinics in Texas, said the decision still provides hope for an end to this horrific abortion ban.

Our fight against this law is not over, and Whole Womans Health is here for the long haul, she said in a statement. We hope this law is blocked quickly so we can resume the full scope of abortion care we are trained to provide.

In a media call, Marc Hearron, a senior attorney for the Center for Reproductive Rights, and other lawyers for abortion providers were unable to identify a path through which providers could now fully block the laws enforcement.

This is a dark day for abortion patients and for physicians and providers, Hearron said. It is also a dark day for anyone who cares about constitutional rights.

A separate challenge to the law in Texas courts is ongoing and will likely become more important after Fridays ruling, according to legal experts. It targets only one anti-abortion group, Texas Right to Life.

A Republican-appointed state court judge declared Thursday that parts of the laws enforcement mechanism violated the Texas Constitution. But he stopped short of prohibiting enforcement through an injunction. That decision has been appealed to the state Supreme Court by Texas Right to Life.

The full weight of the federal ruling was just beginning to take shape Friday. Some other Republican-led states have already begun drafting identical laws to SB8. But providers and advocates on all sides of the abortion issue have warned that private enforcement could become a way to restrict other rights, from same-sex marriage to the right to bear arms.

During oral arguments on the challenge last month, Justice Brett Kavanaugh, one of the conservatives who voted not to intervene Friday, asked Texas Solicitor General Judd Stone about ripple effects, noting a legal brief from a gun rights organization that raised concerns that states could set up similar laws targeting gun owners and dealers.

So we can assume that this will be across the board, equally applicable, as the Firearms Policy Coalition says, to all constitutional rights? Kavanaugh asked.

Yes, Stone replied, pointing to Congress for any potential remedy.

Fridays ruling may also add to speculation of a more sweeping anti-abortion ruling next year when the justices weigh in on a separate Mississippi case, Dobbs v. Jackson Womens Health Organization, in which the state wants to ban abortions after 15 weeks. Abortion access is now protected until viability, or about 23 weeks into a pregnancy. The court seemed poised during arguments this month to roll back some or all of Roe v. Wade, the 1973 decision establishing that standard.

It feels like this is kicking the can down the road until the Dobbs decision basically very much restricts or overturns Roe v. Wade, said Seema Mohapatra, visiting professor of law at Southern Methodist University.

Taylor Goldenstein contributed to this report.

jeremy.blackman@chron.com
WASHINGTON (AP)  President Joe Biden expressed alarm at a backward slide of democracy around the globe on Thursday, calling on fellow world leaders to work with him to bolster democratic institutions as his administration grows increasingly concerned about China's and Russia's push for global influence.

Biden's comments to more than 100 leaders at the White House's first virtual Summit for Democracy came as they pointed to a host of challenges confronting democracies, including corruption, inequality, and limitations on press freedom. The leaders also expressed increasing worry about the perils of disinformation and strengthening autocracies.

Will we allow the backward slide of rights and democracy to continue unchecked? Biden asked. Or will we together -- together -- have a vision ... and courage to once more lead the march of human progress and human freedom forward?

He didnt mention either China or Russia by name. But he has repeatedly made a case that the U.S. and like-minded allies need to show the world that democracies are a far better vehicle for societies than autocracies. It is a central tenet of Bidens foreign policy outlook  one that he vowed would be more outward looking than his predecessor Trumps America First approach.

Biden underscored that even long-established democracies, like the United States, haven't been immune to the strains, and he called the moment an inflection point in history.

Local elected officials are resigning at an alarming rate amid confrontations with angry voices at school board meetings, elections offices and town halls. States are passing laws to limit access to the ballot, making it more difficult for Americans to vote. And the Jan. 6 attack at the Capitol has left many in Donald Trumps Republican Party clinging to his false claims of a stolen election, eroding trust in the accuracy of the vote.

Here in the United States we know as well as anyone that renewing our democracy and strengthening our democratic institutions requires constant effort, Biden said..

Beyond rhetoric, the president announced he was launching an initiative to spend up to $424 million for programming around the world that supports independent media, anti-corruption work and more.

Thursday's video gathering drew backlash from the United States chief adversaries and other nations that were not invited.

The ambassadors to the U.S. from China and Russia wrote a joint essay describing the Biden administration as exhibiting a Cold-War mentality that will stoke up ideological confrontation and a rift in the world. The administration also faced scrutiny over how it went about deciding which countries to invite. China and Russia were among those that did not receive invitations.

Other leaders at the summit delivered their own remarks on the state of democracy  many prerecorded  often reflecting on the stress that rapidly evolving technology is having on their nations. They also bemoaned the increase of disinformation campaigns aimed at undermining institutions and elections.

The democratic conversation is changing, said Denmark's Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen. New technologies and large tech companies are increasingly setting the stage for the democratic dialogue, sometimes with more emphasis on reach than on freedom of speech.

The summit comes as Biden is pressing Russia's Vladimir Putin to step back after a massive buildup of troops on the Ukraine border that has created growing concern in Washington and European capitals as well as Ukraine itself. Biden on Wednesday said that he warned Putin of severe consequences if Russia invaded.

Ukraines President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who took part in Thursdays summit and later spoke by phone with Biden, said on Twitter, Democracy is not a given, it must be fought for."

Poland's Andrzej Duda spoke out against Russia in his address, decrying Moscow and its support of Belarus.

Poland and Western allies have accused Russian ally Belarus of using migrants as pawns to destabilize the European Union in retaliation for its sanctions on his authoritarian regime. Hundreds of migrants, mostly from the Middle East, have flocked to the Belarus-Poland border.

Poland took on a commitment to be a support for democracy in Eastern Europe, Duda said. It is a beautiful task, but it has its consequences. It has made us the target of the Kremlin propaganda.

Putin made no public comment on the summit Thursday as he took part in his own video call with members of the Kremlin council for human rights.

Biden has said passage of his ambitious domestic agenda at home  the $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill he signed into law, as well as the roughly $2 trillion Build Back Better Act of social and climate change initiatives moving through the Senate  will demonstrate how democracy can improve peoples lives.

Some advocates also want Biden to focus more on shoring up democracy at home. One early test came Thursday as the House approved the Protecting Our Democracy Act, the third in a trio of bills  alongside the Freedom to Vote Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Act  largely backed by Democrats. All three are expected to be stalled by Republicans in the Senate.

Here in the United States, we know that our democracy is not immune from threats," Vice President Kamala Harris said in remarks to close out the first day of the summit. Jan. 6 looms large in our collective conscience, and the anti-voter laws that many states have passed are part of an intentional effort to exclude Americans from participating in our democracy.

The International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance, said in its annual report that the number of countries experiencing democratic backsliding has never been as high as the past decade, with the U.S. added to the list along with India and Brazil.

Chinese officials have offered a stream of public criticism about the summit. They have also expressed outrage over the administration inviting Taiwan to take part. China claims the self-governing island as part of its territory and objects to it having contacts on its own with foreign governments.

Pakistans Prime Minister Imran Khan declined to attend the conference. In a statement issued ahead of the meeting, the foreign ministry said, "We value our partnership with the U.S., which we wish to expand both bilaterally as well as in terms of regional and international cooperation.

Yet Pakistans relationship with the U.S. has been fraught with suspicion on both sides. Islamabad has balked at Washingtons often-stated criticism that Pakistan has not been a reliable partner in the war on terror, accusing it of harboring the Taliban even as that group fought a U.S.-led coalition. Pakistan says it has lost 70,000 people to the war on terror since 2001 and is ready to be a partner in peace but not in war.

Other uninvited countries have shown their displeasure. Hungary, the only European Union member not invited, tried unsuccessfully to block the EU Commission's president from speaking on behalf of the bloc at the summit. Last year, Biden referred to Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban as a thug.

Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto dismissed the summit as a domestic political-type of event where countries whose leaders had a good relationship with Trump were not invited.

___

Associated Press writers Lisa Mascaro in Washington, Justin Spike in Budapest, Munir Ahmed in Islamabad, Vladimir Isachenkov in Moscow and video producer Liu Zheng in Beijing contributed to this report.
GROTON  Brooklyn Fineran is used to having her dad away from home, out to sea for long stretches of time, sometimes missing important events like holidays and birthdays. The special guest she introduced Thursday night also understands that hardship.

Fineran, a student at East Lyme Middle School, introduced First Lady Jill Biden, the daughter of a Navy veteran and mother of an Army National Guard soldier, during a visit to Groton as part of her duties as the sponsor of the attack submarine USS Delaware.

Being a military kid can be hard sometimes, especially when I miss my dad and being away from family in Arkansas and North Carolina, said Fineran, whose father, Dan, is assigned to the Delaware.

The holiday gathering at the U.S. Submarine Veterans Club was Bidens first real opportunity to interact with the families of the crew in person. As sponsor, she will maintain a relationship with the crews and families assigned to the Delaware throughout the life of the ship.

This is so special to me to be here tonight as part of the USS Delaware family, Biden said, addressing the crowd of 80 or so mostly women and young children.

Growing up, Biden said her father would frequently take the family to see the Blue Angels, a flight demonstration squadron for the U.S. Navy. She used to love wearing her dads sailors hat as a young girl and still has his military ribbons.

Her late son, Beau Biden, served in the Delaware Army National Guard and was deployed to Iraq.

I saw that empty chair at the table whether it was Thanksgiving or Christmas or birthdays, she said, describing a feeling the families in the room knew all too well.

When her dad is home, Fineran said they spend as much time together as possible.

We watch movies, go out to eat, play outside, and have as much fun as possible, she said.

After Bidens brief remarks, she walked around the room to greet the families, who were seated at tables lined with poinsettias, and topped with green, red and silver Hershey kisses and crayons in red-striped Dixie cups in a room with three decorated Christmas trees.

Biden shook their hands, posed for pictures and even signed copies of her two childrens books in a visit that lasted about 40 minutes. She was joined by Secretary of the Navy Carlos Del Toro, Gov. Ned Lamont, U.S. Rep. Joe Courtney, D-2nd District, and Groton Mayor Keith Hedrick.

Victoria Miles, whose husband Derek Johnson is a nuclear engineer on the Delaware, was excited for the opportunity for her and her 9-year-old son to meet the First Lady.

Ive explained Dr. Bidens work in cancer research specifically, and of course, her dedication to education, Miles said. But, you know, for a child, its just the presidents wife.

For Miles, Bidens dedication to cancer research is personal. Her maternal grandmother is fighting stage four brain cancer and her aunt was recently diagnosed with cervical cancer. She was able to thank the First Lady for that work during a brief interaction at the gathering.

She mentioned that she thinks of it as a non-partisan issue and that shes happy to help for whoever may need it, Miles said. She was just absolutely delightful.

julia.bergman@hearstmediact.com
CHICAGO (AP)  Jussie Smolletts conviction Thursday for lying to police about a racist, homophobic attack came nearly three years after his report of a horrifying hate crime quickly became part of a polarized political landscape, with people  including the president of the United States  weighing in from all over.

A prosecutor said the verdict was a resounding message by the jury that Mr. Smollett did exactly what we said he did  recruit two brothers to fake an attack so it could be recorded by a surveillance camera and posted on social media for publicity.

The brothers testified that the former Empire actor paid them $3,500 for the hoax and gave them lines to yell, including about MAGA country, an apparent reference to then-President Donald Trumps Make America Great Again slogan.

The report made headlines around the world and prompted a massive manhunt in Chicago, with roughly two dozen police joining the investigation. It also drew criticism from Trump, who called the police departments handling of the case an absolute embarrassment to our country.

Not only did Mr. Smollett lie to the police and wreak havoc here in the city for weeks on end for no reason whatsoever, but then he compounded the problem by lying under oath to a jury, special prosecutor Dan Webb said after Thursday's verdict.

Smollett, who is Black and gay, maintained throughout the nearly three-year legal battle that he was attacked in downtown Chicago in January 2019 by people who yelled racist and anti-gay slurs and put a noose around his neck.

His attorney declared Smollett's innocence again Thursday after the jury found him guilty on five of six counts of disorderly conduct for lying to police. Nenye Uche said Smollett would appeal the conviction, and is 100% confident his name will be cleared by an appellate court.

Unfortunately we were facing an uphill battle where Jussie was already tried and convicted in the media and then we had to somehow get the jury to forget or unsee all the news stories that they had been hearing that were negative for the last three years, Uche told reporters after the verdict.

The jury convicted the 39-year-old on five counts of disorderly conduct  for each separate time he was charged with lying to police in the days after the alleged attack. He was acquitted on a sixth count, of lying to a detective in mid-February, weeks after Smollett said he was attacked.

Smollett stood and faced the jury, showing no visible reaction as the verdict was read. He and his family later left the courthouse without comment.

Judge James Linn set a post-trial hearing for Jan. 27, and said he would schedule Smollett's sentencing at a later date. Disorderly conduct is a class 4 felony that carries a prison sentence of up to three years, but experts have said if convicted, Smollett would likely be placed on probation and ordered to perform community service.

The damage to his personal and professional life may be more severe. Smollett lost his role on the TV program Empire," which was filmed in Chicago, after prosecutors said the alleged attack was a hoax, and he told jurors earlier this week, Ive lost my livelihood.

The jury deliberated for just over nine hours Wednesday and Thursday after a roughly one-week trial.

Smollett testified that he was the victim of a real hate crime, telling jurors there was no hoax. He called the brothers who testified against him liars and said the $3,500 check he wrote them was for meal and workout plans.

His attorneys argued that the brothers attacked the actor because they are homophobic and didnt like who he was. They also alleged the brothers made up the story about the attack being staged to get money from Smollett, and that they said they wouldnt testify against him if Smollett paid them each $1 million.

Asked Thursday if Smollett could be charged with perjury for lying on the witness stand, Webb said perjury charges generally dont happen after a defendant is convicted, but that it was unclear what would happen in Smollett's case.

He also said the Chicago Police Department was vindicated by the jury's verdict.

A lot of times people say, Well, police officers sweep things under the rug. This police department responded by absolutely testifying in this trial that they took it seriously," Webb said. "They believed he was a victim of a crime and they worked so hard for the next three weeks.

But Uche said Chicago police should have investigated the case much more," and that there were some witnesses who were never interviewed.

He called the jury's split verdict inconsistent, saying it made no sense for Smollett to be convicted of five counts but not the sixth charge, since everything stems from one incident.

An attorney for Abimbola and Olabingo Osundairo, the brothers who testified against Smollett, said her clients could not be more thrilled and pleased with the results."

Chicago police got this one right, Gloria Rodriguez said.

___

Associated Press reporter Sophia Tareen contributed to this report.

___

Check out the APs complete coverage of the Jussie Smollett case.
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The government has been told to stop imports of pork from EU countries with confirmed cases of African swine fever (ASF) as fears of the disease reaching the UK grows.

The lethal pig disease is currently spreading in domestic animals across Germany, and has also been found in Belgium, Romania, and Poland.

Asian countries  including major pig producing countries such as China and Vietnam  have been hit particularly hard by it, and cases have also been reported in Sub Saharan Africa.

The disease has resulted in the loss of hundreds of thousands of pigs and wild boar in Europe, and millions in Asia.

NFU Scotland has written to the government calling for urgent action to stop imports of pork from entering the UK from EU countries with confirmed cases of ASF.

Without action the risk of ASF entering the UK remained high, it said, and if it did it "has the economically important potential to devastate the domestic pig sector".

Around 40% of the meat consumed in the UK is pork and the economic output of impacted pig farmers would be significant, the union warned.

ASF has up to 100 percent mortality rate on farm and there is no vaccine for the disease.

In a letter written to Defra Secretary George Eustice, NFU Scotland President Martin Kennedy voiced producers' concerns over the worsening situation.

Since January 2021, no checks have been carried out on EU pork imports to the UK," he said, "At a time when there is a serious biosecurity risk to our country, this cant be allowed to continue.

He said the disease was 'moving fast' across Europe, with the union receiving reports that the situation was only worsening.

"It is spreading across Germany, is in Belgium, Romania, Poland and is now not far from France," Mr Kennedy warned.

The union has accused the government of taking no action to date due to concerns about breaking compliance with the Trade and Cooperation Agreement.

Mr Kennedy said: "We have been told that action would be permitted if Europe is having difficulties in controlling disease outbreak.

"Following discussions with European colleagues, this is clearly now the case."

Christine Middlemiss, the UK's Chief Veterinary Officer said keeping African swine fever out of the UK was one of her top priorities

"As we have seen around the world, its impact on pig farmers and the wider pork industry has been devastating," she said.

The virus survives incredibly well in pork meat and can survive for months in smoked, dried and cured meats and likely years in frozen meat.

That is why it is crucial that anyone travelling from affected regions takes this advice seriously in order to ensure that there is no spread of the disease to animals in the UK.

The government has estimated that a reasonable worst-case scenario ASF outbreak could cost the United Kingdom 90 million.

African swine fever can only be transmitted to pigs and wild boars, and does not affect humans.
The government's own tests on 'Geronimo' the alpaca - euthanised due to a belief he had bovine TB - have failed to provide conclusive evidence that the animal had the disease.

Geronimo was euthanised in August by government vets following a four-year battle by his owner Helen Macdonald and animal rights campaigners to save him.

The government insisted that the animal had to be culled due to tests which had twice tested positive for bovine TB.

But Ms Macdonald has always disputed the tests' findings, claiming that Geronimo was never infected by the disease.

Now the Animal and Plant Health Agency (APHA) has released findings of its culture testing work for the alpaca.

In September, government vets completed an initial post-mortem examination of the animal, which they say revealed the 'presence of TB-like lesions'.

These have since been undergoing further testing at APHA Weybridge to determine the source of infection.

But APHA said on Friday (10 December) that it was "not possible to culture bacteria from tissue samples taken at post-mortem examination".

This means, it added, that it will "not be possible to carry out whole genome sequencing in order to try to understand how the alpaca caught the disease."

"This does not mean the animal was free of bTB infection because it had previously twice tested positive using highly specific, validated and reliable tests," the agency said.

The UK's Chief Veterinary Officer Christine Middlemiss said further testing had not enabled the government to use genome sequencing to try to understand how the animal became infected in the first place.

"Our sympathies remain with all those with animals affected by this terrible disease which devastates farmers livelihoods," she said in a statement issued today.

"It is important to remember that infected animals can spread the disease to both animals and people before displaying clinical signs, which is why we take action quickly to limit the risk of the disease spreading.

"We are grateful for the cooperation of livestock farmers to allow this to happen."
China's changing pork market conditions and the UK's international post-Brexit trade deals are dominating the pig industry's discussions, according to the latest analysis by Quality Meat Scotland.

In addition to Brexit, there have been two other topics dominating the discussion about international trade in red meat in 2021.

One is the ongoing impact of the changing pork market conditions in China, with the other the potential future impact of proposed trade agreements between the UK and Australia and New Zealand.

QMS senior economics analyst, Iain Macdonald, says that Chinas pork market has been through a highly volatile period since the major African swine fever (ASF) epidemic of 2018/19.

According to the USDA, production fell from an average of 54m tonnes in 2016-18 to 43m tonnes in 2019 and 35m tonnes in 2020.

To help ease the supply shortage, Chinas pork imports surged from a 2016-18 average of 1.66m tonnes to 2.45m tonnes in 2019 and 5.28m tonnes in 2020.

With this surge unable to fill the gap in overall protein demand in China, imports of beef, lamb and chicken also soared," Mr Macdonald said.

"For example, USDA figures point to a doubling of Chinas beef imports between 2018 and 2020, reaching 2.78m tonnes.

The severe shortage of supply caused market prices to surge in 2019 and remained elevated until early 2021.

Wholesale pork climbed from around 18 yuan/kg (2.10/kg) in March 2019 to a peak of 52 yuan/kg (6.10/kg) in November 2019, before fluctuating at 40-50 yuan/kg until early 2021.

"Prices on wholesale markets for beef, sheepmeat and chicken also increased significantly, he explained.

These impacts were felt outside China, driving up livestock prices in the global market, QMS analysis shows.

This included the UK, where China went from accounting for around 20-25% of UK pork exports to over half in Q1 2021.

However, between spring and autumn 2021, Chinese pork market conditions completely changed.

"By late August, wholesale pork prices had fallen below pre-ASF levels, and after Chinas holiday period in October, they slipped below 18 yuan/kg, down over 60% from January, Mr Macdonald said.

This reflected a quick rebound in local production, which had been incentivised by large profit margins in 2019 and 2020.

However, as local production increased through the spring and summer, farmgate prices fell well below production costs, encouraging herd liquidation.

This liquidation then sped up the production rebound, placing further downwards pressure on the market.

Chinese trade data showed a sharp reduction in imports in the summer, highlighting an adequately supplied market and contributing to reduced prices across the world.

Mr Macdonald said: Things quickly changed again in October. Wholesale pork prices jumped 35% in just five weeks and they closed November around 18% above the 2016-18 average, at 24.5 yuan/kg (2.90/kg).

"It is likely that the market quickly became under-supplied as a result of local production rebalancing lower after the liquidation cycle plus the reduction in imports.

One interesting feature of pork market volatility is that while beef and lamb wholesale prices were pulled higher by the protein shortages of 2019 and 2020, they did not readjust significantly lower again in 2021 in line with pork."

Sheepmeat wholesale prices showed a modest dip between spring and summer but held well above pre-ASF levels, while beef prices appeared to be immune to the change in pork market conditions.

In late November, beef and lamb traded at attractive levels for exporters on the Chinese wholesale market, equivalent to 9.10/kg and 8.30/kg respectively; both around 2% higher than last year.

It seems likely that reduced pork availability in 2019-20 led Chinese consumers to try alternative proteins more often, giving some degree of permanence to the lift in demand for beef and sheepmeat, while pork demand may not have fully recovered.

"Indeed, the USDA projects that pork consumption will remain 10% below 2016-18 levels this year and by 13% in 2022, explained Macdonald.

Currently, the USDA is forecasting beef import growth of 8% both this year and next, while pork imports are projected to fall 15% this year before partially recovering in 2022, up 6%.

FAO/OECD forecasts point to sheepmeat consumption growth of 1% in 2021 and 2022, with imports 40% above their 2016-18 average.

Therefore, China will continue to offer a significant opportunity to its overseas suppliers of beef and sheepmeat in 2022.

Meanwhile, although below their peak, Chinas pork import requirements are expected to remain elevated at nearly three times their 2016-18 average.

The volatility in the Chinese market in recent years demonstrates how quickly global markets can shift, causing large knock-on effects which are difficult to plan for, said Mr Macdonald.

One concern over the increased preferential access to UK beef and lamb markets offered to Australia and NZ in agreements in principle on free trade agreements (FTAs) is that UK beef and lamb producers and processors would become more exposed to volatility in the global market.

If Australia and NZs currently strong beef and sheepmeat export trade with China was to come under threat for any reason, the UK could become an outlet for this substantial volume of product once these FTAs enter force," Mr Macdonald said.

Market fundamentals in China, which saw little impact on beef and lamb prices from changing pork supplies this year, suggest that such a scenario is unlikely to have occurred in 2021 had these FTAs been in place.

"It would however be more likely in a severe crisis, such as Chinese authorities suspending imports," Mr Macdonald explained.

"Under these conditions, the UK could be one of the alternative destinations for this product to be diverted to.
Over 100 festive tractors took to Staffordshire's country lanes last weekend as part of a charity tractor run raising over 6,000 for Midlands Air Ambulance.

Staffordshire YFC and South Staffs Water drove the decorated tractors along a 20 mile route around the Ridware, Colton and Abbots Bromley area.

The tractors were lit up with Christmas lights, inflated Santas and one even had a rotating Christmas tree.

The event raised valuable funds which will be split equally between the Midlands Air Ambulance and Staffordshire YFC.

This year's tractor run, which took place on Sunday 5 December, was the second time a cavalcade of tractors travelled the route in aid of charity.

The first event was held in 2019, with 80 tractors joining the convoy helping to raise over 4,000. No event took place last year due to lockdown restrictions.

Julia Taylor, county organiser at Staffordshire YFC, said: The Christmas Tractor Run was a first of its kind for us to organise, working alongside South Staffs Water.

"We were completely overwhelmed by the amount of people who came out to support."

Nina Yiannoukos-Benton, senior catchment advisor at South Staffs Water, added: We work really closely with farmers, to ensure we maintain good wholesome drinking water for our customers so its amazing to be involved in the tractor run."

Midlands Air Ambulance Charity is responsible for funding and operating three air ambulance helicopters and two critical care cars serving the communities of the Midlands.

Since 1991, the charity has responded to more than 63,000 missions, making it one of the longest established and busiest air ambulance organisations in the UK.

Donations for the tractor run are still being accepted through an online GoFundMe page.
A garlic extract product has been authorised by the Health and Safety Executive to help sugar beet growers control free-living nematodes.

NEMguard DE has been given the green light by the safety watchdog for use in sugar beet following work by the British Beet Research Organisation (BBRO).

The product is a granule formulation containing 450g/kg garlic extract, which is applied at drilling via a granule applicator.

It controls Docking disorder, which is the name given to the symptoms of free-living nematode (FLN) damage characterised by stunted plants, root fanging and reduction in root size.

Docking disorder is named after a village in the north-west of Norfolk where the condition was first recorded.

FLN damage is usually more common on light sandy soils and is more severe in years with heavy rainfall in the spring.

In fields with a history of Docking disorder, yield losses were minimised by the use of nematicides, such as Vydate (oxamyl), but this is no longer available.

"BBRO has sought alternative options for protection," a BRRO spokesperson explained.

"In conjunction with manufacturer Ecospray, we established three in-field strip trials in 2021 to test NEMguard DE against Vydate, and untreated controls, on FLN vulnerable sites.

"Following these trials in 2021, a year with perfect conditions for FLN, we are confident that NEMguard DE worked as well as Vydate for FLN management."
The UK is seeing its worst ever outbreak of highly-pathogenic avian influenza, George Eustice has told MPs, as further cases of the disease were recorded on Thursday.

Concern is growing among the government and the poultry sector as the country's 'largest ever' bird flu outbreak continues to worsen.

Hundreds of thousands of birds have been culled as a result of the 38 confirmed UK-wide outbreaks, all recorded as being highly-pathogenic and extremely contagious among birds and poultry.

It comes as Defra recorded two new cases of the disease on Thursday (9 December), on premises in Cumbria and Dumfries and Galloway.

All birds on the infected premises will be humanely culled, the department explained, and a 3km Protection Zone and 10km Surveillance Zone have been put in place.

Defra Secretary George Eustice gave an update on the situation to the House of Commons on Thursday: "This year we are seeing the largest-ever outbreak of avian influenza in the UK.

Our chief veterinary officer continues to lead the response to this episode," he said.

Christine Middlemiss, who is the UK's chief veterinary officer, told BBC Radio 4s Today programme that around 500,000 birds had been culled as a result of the outbreaks.

All the birds on the premises have to be culled because of the ongoing risk of infection that they pose," she said.

"We are going to need to keep up these levels of heightened biosecurity for all that time."

The chief veterinary officer recently agreed to bring in mandatory housing measures to protect poultry and captive birds.

The tougher rules, which came into force on 29 November, means that it is now a legal requirement for all keepers across the UK to keep their birds indoors.

They build on the strengthened biosecurity regulations that were brought in across Britain as part of the Avian Influenza Prevention Zone (AIPZ) on 3 November and in Northern Ireland on 17 November.

Wild birds migrating to the UK from mainland Europe during the winter months can carry the disease and this can lead to cases in poultry and other captive birds.

Public health advice remains that the risk to human health from the virus is very low and food standards bodies advise that it poses a very low food safety risk for consumers.

Ms Middlemiss told BBC Radio 4 that the government was working not just with British scientists but international ones, to "understand more of what we can do about whats behind it."

Asked if bird flu was still spreading, she added: Were continuing to get the new detections. I confirmed another two last night and thats the rate weve been going at for the last week or so.

"Were seeing this as a huge pressure of infection from our wild birds.
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TOKYO, June 16, 2021 - (JCN Newswire) - Mitsubishi Corporation (MC) has reached agreement to invest in Impact Energy Asia Development Limited (IEAD), the developer of a 600MW capacity onshore wind farm project in Laos. MC will invest through an intermediate holding company together with a group company of Impact Electrons Siam Co., Ltd. in Thailand. The initiative is being executed through Diamond Generating Asia, Limited (DGA), MC's wholly owned subsidiary in Hong Kong.The onshore wind farm will be located in Sekong and Attapeu Provinces in southern Laos. The wind farm will be the first wind farm in Laos and the largest in South East Asia. By installing a dedicated power transmission line to Vietnam, power from the wind farm is planned to be sold to Vietnam Electricity, a state-owned electric power company in Vietnam, for 25 years.In Vietnam, in addition to the need for further power supply to support its growing economy, it is crucial to secure a power source in the dry season, when the operating rate of one of Vietnam's main power sources, hydro power generation, is limited. The onshore wind farm is expected to operate at a high rate during the dry season, when hydro power generation is limited, and is expected to contribute to the stabilization of Vietnam's power system while making country's energy mix greener.The onshore wind farm is being developed as part of a memorandum of understanding on power interchange signed between the Vietnamese and Lao governments in October 2016. If electricity exports from this project are realized, it is expected to be the first cross-border electricity interchange from wind power generation in South East Asia as planned by Lao government.We will continue to contribute to the realization of a decarbonized society by striving to achieve both a stable supply of electricity in Vietnam and addressing the environmental challenges for the stable society.Source: Mitsubishi CorporationCopyright 2021 JCN Newswire . All rights reserved.
TORONTO, ON / ACCESSWIRE / December 9, 2021 / Aberdeen Asia-Pacific Income Investment Company Limited (TSX:FAP) (the "Company"), a closed-end investment company trading on the Toronto Stock Exchange, announced today that it will pay a monthly distribution of CAD 2.25 cents per ordinary share on January 11, 2022 to all ordinary shareholders of record as of December 30, 2021 (ex-dividend date December 29, 2021).

The policy of the Company's Board of Directors is to maintain a stable monthly distribution out of net investment income and realized capital gains supplemented with paid-in capital as required. This policy is subject to regular review at the Board's quarterly meetings. For the 12 months to November 30, 2021, the Company has paid total distributions amounting to CAD 27.00 cents per ordinary share.

Due to the Company's re-domicile to Singapore, the distribution paid in November 2021 will be the final return of par value capital of the shares as Singapore legislation does not provide for paid-in capital or par value. All other dividends paid by the Company after this date will be dividends treated as income for Canadian income tax purposes.

Shareholders with registered addresses in Canada will receive distributions in Canadian dollars unless they have elected otherwise. Although a portion of any distribution may be recorded as a return of capital for financial statement purposes, the full amount of the distribution (other than a return of capital out of par value, if any) will be foreign income for Canadian income tax purposes.

Information in this press release that is not current or historical factual information may constitute forward-looking information within the meaning of securities laws. Implicit in this information, particularly in respect of future financial performance and condition of the Company, are factors and assumptions which, although considered reasonable by the Company at the time of preparation, may prove to be incorrect. Shareholders are cautioned that actual results are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties, including general economic and market factors, including credit, currency, political and interest-rate risks and could differ materially from what is currently expected. The Company has no specific intention of updating any forward-looking information whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as required by law.

Aberdeen Standard Investments ("ASI") is the registered marketing name in Canada for the following entities, which now operate around the world under the abrdn brand: Aberdeen Standard Investments (Canada) Limited, Aberdeen Standard Investments Luxembourg, abrdn Private Equity (Europe) Limited, abrdn Capital Partners LLP, abrdn Investment Management Limited, Aberdeen Standard Alternative Funds Limited, and Aberdeen Capital Management LLC. Aberdeen Standard Investments (Canada) Limited, is registered as a Portfolio Manager and Exempt Market Dealer in all provinces and territories of Canada as well as an Investment Fund Manager in the provinces of Ontario, Quebec, and Newfoundland and Labrador.

Closed-end funds are traded on the secondary market through one of the stock exchanges. The Company's investment return and principal value will fluctuate so that an investor's shares may be worth more or less than the original cost. Shares of closed-end funds may trade above (a premium) or below (a discount) the net asset value (NAV) of the Company. There is no assurance that the Company will achieve its investment objective. Past performance does not guarantee future results.

If you wish to receive this information electronically, please contact Investor.Relations@abrdn.com

https://www.abrdn.com/en-ca/canadaclosedend

For More Information Contact:

Aberdeen Standard Investments Inc.

Investor Relations

1-800-992-6341

Investor.Relations@abrdn.com

SOURCE: Aberdeen Asia-Pacific Income Investment Company Limited

View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/676925/Aberdeen-Asia-Pacific-Income-Investment-Company-Limited-Announces-Monthly-Distribution-and-Estimated-Earnings
PHILADELPHIA, PA / ACCESSWIRE / December 9, 2021 / The Board of Trustees of Aberdeen Income Credit Strategies Fund (the "Fund"), has declared a cash distribution of $0.328125 per share of the Fund's 5.250% Series A Perpetual Preferred Shares (NYSE:ACP PRA) ("Series A Preferred Shares"). The distribution is payable on December 31, 2021 to holders of Series A Preferred Shares of record on December 20, 2021 (ex-dividend date December 17, 2021).

The Series A Preferred Shares trade on the NYSE under the symbol "ACP PRA", are rated "A2" by Moody's Investors Service and have an annual dividend rate of $1.3125 per share. The Series A Preferred Shares were issued on May 10, 2021 at $25.00 per share and pay distributions quarterly.

Distributions may be paid from sources of income other than ordinary income, such as net realized short-term capital gains, net realized long-term capital gains and return of capital. The actual amounts and sources of the amounts for tax reporting purposes will depend upon the Fund's investment experience during the remainder of its fiscal year and may be subject to changes based on tax regulations. In January 2022, a Form 1099-DIV will be sent to shareholders, which will state the amount and composition of distributions and provide information with respect to their appropriate tax treatment for the 2021 calendar year.

You should not draw any conclusions about the Fund's investment performance from the amount of this distribution.

In the United States, abrdn is the marketing name for the following affiliated, registered investment advisers: Aberdeen Standard Investments Inc., Aberdeen Asset Managers Ltd., abrdn Australia Limited, abrdn Asia Ltd., Aberdeen Capital Management, LLC, Aberdeen Standard Investments ETFs Advisors LLC and Aberdeen Standard Alternative Funds Limited.

Closed-end funds are traded on the secondary market through one of the stock exchanges. The Fund's investment return and principal value will fluctuate so that an investor's shares may be worth more or less than the original cost. Shares of closed-end funds may trade above (a premium) or below (a discount) the net asset value (NAV) of the fund's portfolio. There is no assurance that the Fund will achieve its investment objective.

If you wish to receive this information electronically, please contact Investor.Relations@abrdn.com For More Information Contact:

Aberdeen Standard Investments Inc.

Investor Relations

1-800-522-5465

Investor.Relations@abrdn.com SOURCE: Aberdeen Income Credit Strategies Fund Aberdeen Income Credit Strategies Fund

View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/676926/Aberdeen-Income-Credit-Strategies-Fund-Declares-Quarterly-Dividend-for-Its-525-Series-a-Perpetual-Preferred-Shares
PHILADELPHIA, PA / ACCESSWIRE / December 9, 2021 / The following Aberdeen Standard Investments U.S. Closed-End Funds announced today that the closed end funds in the chart directly below will pay the distributions indicated on a per share basis on January 11, 2022 to all shareholders of record as of December 30, 2021 (ex-dividend date December 29, 2021).

Ticker Exchange Fund Amount ACP NYSE Aberdeen Income Credit Strategies Fund $ 0.10 AEF NYSE American Aberdeen Emerging Markets Equity Income Fund, Inc. $ 0.15 AGD NYSE Aberdeen Global Dynamic Dividend Fund $ 0.065 AOD NYSE Aberdeen Total Dynamic Dividend Fund $ 0.0575 ASGI NYSE Aberdeen Standard Global Infrastructure Income Fund $ 0.1083 AWP NYSE Aberdeen Global Premier Properties Fund $ 0.04 FAX NYSE American Aberdeen Asia-Pacific Income Fund, Inc. $ 0.0275 FCO NYSE American Aberdeen Global Income Fund, Inc. $ 0.07 IFN NYSE The India Fund, Inc. $ 0.64

At the end of each calendar year, a Form 1099-DIV will be sent to shareholders, which will state the amount and composition of each fund's distributions and provide information with respect to their appropriate tax treatment for the prior calendar year. You should not draw any conclusions about any of these fund's investment performance from the amount of the distributions.

MANAGED DISTRIBUTION POLICY FUNDS

ANNOUNCE DISTRIBUTION PAYMENT DETAILS

Aberdeen Standard Global Infrastructure Income Fund ("ASGI")

Aberdeen Asia-Pacific Income Fund, Inc. ("FAX")

The India Fund, Inc. ("IFN")

The above-noted Aberdeen Standard Investments U.S. Closed-End Funds (the "Funds" or individually the "Fund"), today announced that the Funds will pay the distributions noted in the chart above on January 11, 2022, on a per share basis to all shareholders of record as of December 30, 2021 (ex-dividend date December 29, 2021).

Each Fund has adopted a distribution policy to provide investors with a stable distribution out of current income, supplemented by realized capital gains and, to the extent necessary, paid-in capital in reliance on an exemptive order granted by the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Under applicable U.S. tax rules, the amount and character of distributable income for each Fund's fiscal

year can be finally determined only as of the end of the Fund's fiscal year. However, under Section 19 of

the Investment Company Act of 1940, as amended (the "1940 Act") and related rules, the Funds may be required to indicate to shareholders the estimated source of certain distributions to shareholders.

The following tables set forth the estimated amounts of the sources of the distributions for purposes of Section 19 of the 1940 Act and the rules adopted thereunder. The tables have been computed based on generally accepted accounting principles. The tables include estimated amounts and percentages for the current distributions to be paid as well as for the cumulative distributions paid relating to fiscal year to date, from the following sources: net investment income; net realized short-term capital gains; net realized long-term capital gains; and return of capital. The estimated compositions of the distributions may vary because the estimated composition may be impacted by future income, expenses and realized gains and losses on securities and currencies.

Each Fund's estimated sources of the current distributions to be paid and for its current fiscal year to date are as follows:

Estimated Amounts of Current Distribution per Share Fund Distribution Amount Net Investment Income Net Realized Short-Term Gains** Net Realized Long-Term Gains Return of Capital ASGI $0.1083 $0.0022 2% $0.0011 1% $0.1050 97% - - FAX $0.0275 $0.0179 65% - - - - $0.0096 35% IFN $0.6400 - - $0.0320 5% $0.6080 95% - -

Estimated Amounts of Fiscal Year to Date Cumulative Distributions per Share Fund Fiscal Year* to Date Distribution Amount Net Investment Income Net Realized Short-Term Gains** Net Realized Long-Term Gains Return of Capital ASGI $0.3249 $0.0065 2% $0.0032 1% $0.3152 97% - - FAX $0.0550 $0.0358 65% - - - - $0.0192 35% IFN*** $3.2100 - - $0.1605 5% $3.0495 95% - -

*ASGI has a 9/30 fiscal year end; FAX has a 10/31 fiscal year end; IFN has a 12/31 fiscal year end.

**includes currency gains

*** The amount reflected is inclusive of the Fund's four quarterly distributions for 2021 and the special cash election distribution which is disclosed in an additional press release.

Where the estimated amounts above show a portion of the distribution to be a "Return of Capital," it means that Fund estimates that it has distributed more than its income and capital gains; therefore, a portion of your distribution may be a return of capital. A return of capital may occur for example, when some or all of the money that you invested in a Fund is paid back to you. A return of capital distribution does not necessarily reflect the Fund's investment performance and should not be confused with "yield" or "income."

The amounts and sources of distributions reported in this notice are only estimates and are not being provided for tax reporting purposes. The final determination of the source of all distributions for the current year will only be made after year-end. The actual amounts and sources of the amounts for tax reporting purposes will depend upon the Fund's investment experience during the remainder of the fiscal year and may be subject to change based on tax regulations. After the end of each calendar year, a Form 1099-DIV will be sent to shareholders for the prior calendar year that will tell you how to report these distributions for federal income tax purposes.

The following table provides the Funds' total return performance based on net asset value (NAV) over various time periods compared to the Funds' annualized and cumulative distribution rates.

Fund Performance and Distribution Rate Information Fund Average Annual Total Return on NAV for the 5 Year Period Ending 11/30/2021  Current Fiscal Period's Annualized Distribution Rate on NAV  Cumulative Total Return on NAV  Cumulative Distribution Rate on NAV  ASGI 14.06%3 5.88% 0.34% 0.98% FAX 4.08% 7.67% (1.16%) 0.64% IFN 13.05% 9.75% 14.78% 7.25%

1 Return data is net of all Fund expenses and fees and assumes the reinvestment of all distributions reinvested at prices obtained under the Fund's dividend reinvestment plan.

2 Based on the Fund's NAV as of November 30, 2021.

3 The Fund launched within the past 5 years; the performance and distribution rate information presented reflects data from inception (July 29, 2020) through November 30, 2021.

Shareholders should not draw any conclusions about a Fund's investment performance from the amount of the Fund's current distributions or from the terms of the distribution policy (the "Distribution Policy").

While NAV performance may be indicative of the Fund's investment performance, it does not measure the value of a shareholder's investment in the Fund. The value of a shareholder's investment in the Fund is determined by the Fund's market price, which is based on the supply and demand for the Fund's shares in the open market.

Pursuant to an exemptive order granted by the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Funds may distribute any long-term capital gains more frequently than the limits provided in Section 19(b) under the 1940 Act and Rule 19b-1 thereunder. Therefore, distributions paid by the Funds during the year may include net income, short-term capital gains, long-term capital gains and/or a return of capital. Net income dividends and short-term capital gain dividends, while generally taxable at ordinary income rates, may be eligible, to the extent of qualified dividend income earned by the Funds, to be taxed at a lower rate not to exceed the maximum rate applicable to your long-term capital gains. Distributions made in any calendar year in excess of investment company taxable income and net capital gain are treated as taxable ordinary dividends to the extent of undistributed earnings and profits, and then as a return of capital that reduces the adjusted basis in the shares held. To the extent return of capital distributions exceed the adjusted basis in the shares held,

capital gain is recognized with a holding period based on the period the shares have been held at the date such amount is received.

The payment of distributions in accordance with the Distribution Policy may result in a decrease in the Fund's net assets. A decrease in the Fund's net assets may cause an increase in the Fund's annual operating expense ratio and a decrease in the Fund's market price per share to the extent the market price correlates closely to the Fund's net asset value per share. The Distribution Policy may also negatively affect the Fund's investment activities to the extent that the Fund is required to hold larger cash positions than it typically would hold or to the extent that the Fund must liquidate securities that it would not have sold, for the purpose of paying the distribution. Each Fund's Board has the right to amend, suspend or terminate the Distribution Policy at any time. The amendment, suspension or termination of the Distribution Policy may affect the Fund's market price per share. Investors should consult their tax advisor regarding federal, state and local tax considerations that may be applicable in their particular circumstances.

Circular 230 disclosure : To ensure compliance with requirements imposed by the U.S. Treasury, we inform you that any U.S. tax advice contained in this communication (including any attachments) is not intended or written to be used, and cannot be used, for the purpose of (i) avoiding penalties under the Internal Revenue Code or (ii) promoting, marketing or recommending to another party any transaction or matter addressed herein.

In the United States, abrdn is the marketing name for the following affiliated, registered investment advisers: Aberdeen Standard Investments Inc., Aberdeen Asset Managers Ltd., abrdn Australia Limited, abrdn Asia Ltd., Aberdeen Capital Management, LLC, Aberdeen Standard Investments ETFs Advisors LLC and Aberdeen Standard Alternative Funds Limited.

Closed-end funds are traded on the secondary market through one of the stock exchanges. A Fund's investment return and principal value will fluctuate so that an investor's shares may be worth more or less than the original cost. Shares of closed-end funds may trade above (a premium) or below (a discount)

the net asset value (NAV) of the fund's portfolio. There is no assurance that a Fund will achieve its investment objective. Past performance does not guarantee future results.

If you wish to receive this information electronically, please contact Investor.Relations@abrdn.com

https://www.abrdn.com/en-us/cefinvestorcenter/fund-centre/closed-end-funds

For More Information Contact:

Aberdeen Standard Investments Inc.

Investor Relations

1-800-522-5465

Investor.Relations@abrdn.com

SOURCE: Aberdeen Standard Investments Inc.

View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/676928/Aberdeen-Standard-Investments-US-Closed-End-Funds-Announce-Distribution-Payment-Details
CLEVELAND, Dec. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The Austin Company, a design-build firm established more than 140 years ago, welcomes The Austin Company of UK back into its organization.

The Austin Company (US) founded The Austin Company (UK) in the 1920s as Austin was developing into an international company. Operations were suspended due to WWII and then resumed in 1948. During the 70s and 80s, Austin UK established a strong reputation and loyal customer base within the manufacturing, life science, biosciences, food, and beverage markets. These sectors became their primary source of business and remain so today. In 2005, The Austin Company sold the UK business to local managers.

"Rejoining The Austin Company (US) is fantastic for our business. It enhances our resources and enriches relationships. Together, we will advance professionally while keeping our identity and culture unique. Partnering with Austin US is strengthening the brand, bringing exciting new opportunities, challenges, and expanding our area of service," said Prakash Davda, Managing Director of The Austin Company of the UK.

The UK team leadership team includes Adrian Ward - Construction Director, Allan Huke - Commercial Director, Barrie Pond - Financial Controller, George Lowney - Projects Director, Karl Butler - Director of Engineering, Pankaj Raithatha - Deputy Director of Engineering, and Michael Blake - Director of Design.

Mike Pierce, the President and CEO of The Austin Company (US), said, "This is an exciting and historic time for The Austin Company as we reunite to expand our services within the pharmaceutical and food and beverage industry."

The Austin Company is a member of the Kajima Corporation. To learn more about The Austin Company - http://theaustin.com , Austin UK - http://austin.co.uk/ , and Kajima https://kajimausa.com/ .

Logo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1168438/The_Austin_Company_Logo.jpg
Toronto, Ontario--(Newsfile Corp. - December 9, 2021) - Aurelius Minerals Inc. (TSXV: AUL) (OTCQB: AURQF) (the "Company" or "Aurelius") announces its Annual General Meeting ("AGM") will be held on Thursday, December 16, 2021 at 11:00 am EST at the Company's Toronto office at 19th Floor, 110 Yonge Street, Toronto, Ontario.

In response to the continuing public health impact of COVID-19, and to mitigate risks to the health and safety of its shareholders and employees, the Company is urging shareholders not to attend the AGM in person.

Registered shareholders and duly appointed proxy holders may participate in the AGM via a live conference call. Registered shareholders and duly appointed proxy holders who have properly registered prior to the AGM as outlined below will be able to ask questions of management via the conference call at the conclusion of the AGM.

Shareholders should vote on the matters before the AGM by proxy or voting instruction form prior to the proxy cut-off on Tuesday, December 14, 2021 at 11:00 am EST.

Joining the AGM

In order to participate in the AGM, registered shareholders and duly appointed proxy holders must register via the following link prior to the proxy cut-off at 11:00 am EST on Tuesday, December 14, 2021.

Registration link: https://event.cwebcast.com/ses/ZY6GVSxWTcyXh5ZoheUlng~~

After you register, you will be provided with call in details including a Conference ID and your PIN. Please note that phone networks are currently very busy due to the pandemic, and it is recommended that you attempt to connect at least fifteen minutes prior to the scheduled start time of the AGM.

Registered shareholders and duly appointed proxy holders who regard their physical attendance at the AGM as essential are asked to contact Lorna MacGillivray, Secretary of the Company at 416 304-9093 or lorna@aureliusminerals.com prior to 11:00 am EST on Tuesday, December 14, 2021, so that appropriate measures can be put in place to facilitate physical distancing and other precautions or alternative participation arrangements made to ensure the health and safety of all attendees. The Company will follow the guidance and orders of Provincial and Federal public health authorities in that regard, including those restricting the size of public gatherings.

AGM Materials

Shareholder materials for the AGM were filed and mailed to shareholders on November 23, 2021, and can be found on the Company's website via the following link:

https://aureliusminerals.com/investors/annual-general-meeting/

About Aurelius

Aurelius is a well-positioned gold exploration company focused on advancing its recently acquired and renamed Aureus Gold Properties, including Aureus East and West, the Tangier Gold Project and the Forest Hill Gold Project located in Nova Scotia and described in detail in the Company's press release of November 18, 2019.

Aurelius is also focused on advancing two district-scale gold projects in the Abitibi Greenstone Belt in Ontario, Canada, one of the world's most prolific mining districts; the 968-hectare Mikwam Property, in the Burntbush area on the Casa Berardi trend and the 12,425-hectare Lipton Property, on the Lower Detour Trend.

The Company has a management team with experience in all facets of the mineral exploration and mining industry who will be considering additional acquisitions of advanced staged opportunities in Nova Scotia, the Abitibi and other proven mining districts.

On Behalf of the Board

AURELIUS MINERALS INC.

For further information please contact:

Aurelius Minerals Inc.

Mark N.J. Ashcroft, P.Eng., President and CEO

info@aureliusminerals.com

Tel.: (416) 304-9095

www.aureliusminerals.com

Neither TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

Cautionary Note Regarding Forward-Looking Information

This news release contains "forward-looking information" under the provisions of applicable Canadian securities legislation, concerning the business, operations and financial performance and condition of Aurelius. All statements in this press release, other than statements of historical fact, are "forward-looking information" with respect to Aurelius within the meaning of applicable securities laws, including statements with respect to the Company's planned drilling and exploration activities, the anticipated benefits of the Acquisition and the development of the Aureus Gold Properties, the future price of gold, the estimation of Mineral Resources, the realization of Mineral Resource estimates, success of exploration activities, permitting time lines, currency exchange rate fluctuations, requirements for additional capital, government regulation of mining operations, environmental risks, unanticipated reclamation expenses, title disputes or claims and limitations on insurance coverage. Generally, this forward-looking information can be identified by the use of forward-looking terminology such as "plans", "expects" , "is expected", "budget", "scheduled", "estimates", "forecasts", "intends", "anticipates" , "believes", or variations or comparable language of such words and phrases or statements that certain actions, events or results "may", "could", "would", "should", "might" or "will be taken", "occur" or "be achieved" or the negative connotation thereof. Forward-looking information is necessarily based upon a number of factors and assumptions that, if untrue, could cause the actual results, performances or achievements of Aurelius to be materially different from future results, performances or achievements expressed or implied by such statements. Such statements and information are based on numerous assumptions regarding present and future business strategies and the environment in which Aurelius will operate in the future, including the price of gold, anticipated costs and ability to achieve goals.

Certain important factors that could cause actual results, performances or achievements to differ materially from those in the forward-looking information include, among others, gold price volatility, mining operational and development risks, litigation risks, regulatory restrictions (including environmental regulatory restrictions and liability), changes in national and local government legislation, taxation, controls or regulations and/or change in the administration of laws, policies and practices, expropriation or nationalization of property and political or economic developments in Canada, delays, suspension and technical challenges associated with projects, higher prices for fuel, steel, power, labour and other consumables, currency fluctuations, the speculative nature of gold exploration, the global economic climate, dilution, share price volatility, competition, loss of key employees, additional funding requirements and defective title to mineral claims or property. Although Aurelius believes its expectations are based upon reasonable assumptions and has attempted to identify important factors that could cause actual actions, events or results to differ materially from those described in forward-looking information, there may be other factors that cause actions, events or results not to be as anticipated, estimated or intended. Mineral Resources are not Mineral Reserves and do not have demonstrated economic viability. There is no certainty that all or any part of the Mineral Resources will be converted to Mineral Reserves. Inferred Mineral Resources are based on limited drilling which suggests the greatest uncertainty for a resource estimate and that geological continuity is only implied. Additional drilling will be required to verify geological and mineralization continuity and it is reasonable that most of the Inferred Mineral resources could be upgraded to Indicated Mineral Resources.

The Company provides forward-looking information for the purpose of conveying information about current expectations and plans relating to the future and readers are cautioned that such statements may not be appropriate for other purposes. By its nature, this information is subject to known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other important factors that may cause the actual results, level of activity, performance or achievements of Aurelius to be materially different from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements, including but not limited to: risks related to difficulties in executing exploration programs at the Mikwam, Lipton and Aureus Gold Properties on the Company's proposed schedules and within its cost and scheduling estimates, whether due to weather conditions, availability or interruption of power supply, mechanical equipment performance problems, natural disasters or pandemics in the areas where it operates, the integration of acquisition; risks related to current global financial conditions including market reaction to the coronavirus outbreak; competition within the industry; actual results of current exploration activities; environmental risks; changes in project parameters as plans continue to be refined; future price of gold; failure of plant, equipment or processes to operate as anticipated; mine development and operating risks; accidents, labour disputes and other risks of the mining industry; delays in obtaining approvals or financing; risks related to indebtedness and the service of such indebtedness, as well as those factors, risks and uncertainties identified and reported in Aurelius' public filings under Aurelius' SEDAR profile at www.sedar.com. Although Aurelius has attempted to identify important factors that could cause actual actions, events or results to differ materially from those described in forward-looking information, there may be other factors that cause actions, events or results not to be as anticipated, estimated or intended. Accordingly, readers should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements. There can be no assurance that such information will prove to be accurate as actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements. Forward-looking statements are made as of the date hereof and, accordingly, are subject to change after such date. Aurelius disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking information, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise unless required by law.

To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/107259
CHONGQING, China, Dec. 9, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Located near the Daba Mountains and the Yangtze River, Chongqing Jiaotong University (CQJTU), with virtues cultivating generations of talents and expertise empowering transportation projects, marks its 70th anniversary on December 12 with a celebration event as well as a summit on the transportation development of Chengdu-Chongqing economic circle.

CQJTU is a distinctive, multi-disciplinary university with a primary focus in transportation engineering. In 1951, in order to train talents for the building of a road from Chengdu to Lhasa, the school, then named Southwest Transportation Technological Academy, was established. In 1960, the School was renamed Chongqing Institute of Communications by merging with the Civil Engineering Department of Chengdu Technological College, the Metallurgical Department of Sichuan Metallurgical College, and the Hydraulic Engineering Department of Wuhan Institute of Water Transportation Engineering. In 1985, the school became one of the third batch of postgraduate degree conferring institutions. In 2006, it was again renamed Chongqing Jiaotong University, and listed as a doctoral degree conferring institution.

Seven decades of development and deposits have made CQJTU a unique university.

The university has three campuses: Nan'an, Western (Chongqing) Science City and Daping. Together, they occupy an area of nearly 200 hectares in total and over 820,000 square meters of school buildings. It has one national and six municipal experimental teaching demonstration centers. It offers 16 doctoral programs and three postdoctoral programs. With 19 schools (departments), the university offers 13 national first-class undergraduate programs and 38 Chongqing first-class undergraduate programs.

Highlighting "Transportation+" education, the university pursues creative ways to produce the best minds. Today, it's home to over 30,000 full-time students. The initial employment rate for undergraduates has exceeded 90 percent for 23 years in a row. It is also listed in the first batch of the "Chinese Exemplary University of Employment" and "Chinese Exemplary University of Innovation and Entrepreneurship".

The university has seen improving technological innovation capabilities in the past seven decades. It has formed a comprehensive scientific research platform with three national key research platforms, including the State Key Laboratory of Bridge and Tunnel Engineering in Mountainous Areas, the National Research Center of Inland Waterway Regulation Engineering and Technology, and the National and Local Joint Engineering Laboratory of Transportation and Civil Engineering Materials, 41 provincial and ministerial-level platforms and more than 20 R&D institutions. A string of influential accomplishments in the field of transportation infrastructure in mountainous areas, ecological waterways, railway transport equipment, transportation and logistics, and green aviation earned 16 titles in national science and technology progress awards and national technological invention awards, and over 500 provincial and ministerial level science and technology awards for the university.

CQJTU initiated the Sino-Polish University Consortium under the Belt and Road Initiative and established two Confucius Institutes in Benin and the United States respectively. It is a training institution authorized by the Chinese Government Scholarship and the International Chinese Language Teachers Scholarship, offering six joint programs cooperating with universities in the UK and Australia, and three programs outside China cooperating with universities and institutions in Thailand, Sri Lanka and Benin.

Looking forward, CQJTU will always follow the motto of "Virtues in Mind & Transport Worldwide", and the tradition of "Paving Stone Spirit" to expand influence beyond the western region and even China to establish an internationally renowned distinctive university with a primary focus on engineering, coordinating the development of multiple disciplines, and contributing to the transportation industry, the local economy, and social development.
DGAP-Ad-hoc: Dexus Finance Pty Limited / Key word(s): Real Estate

Dexus Finance Pty Limited: New investor secured for Dexus Australian Logistics Trust



10-Dec-2021 / 05:25 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 10 December 2021 New investor secured for Dexus Australian Logistics Trust Dexus today announced that Blackstone's Core+ Real Estate strategy in Asia has signed a binding agreement to acquire GIC's 49% joint venture interest in the Dexus Australian Logistics Trust ("DALT Partnership"). The 49% interest has been acquired as a result of an unsolicited proposal by Blackstone with the existing management arrangements for DALT remaining unchanged. Blackstone's Core+ strategies focus on logistics, residential, office, life science office, and retail assets in global gateway cities. The DALT Partnership was established in November 2018 and seeded with 55 assets from the Dexus industrial portfolio (with GIC acquiring an initial 25% interest) comprising core logistics properties and a development landbank. Since its establishment, DALT has grown through GIC's acquisition of an additional 24% interest in the DALT portfolio, external acquisitions and the build out of the development pipeline to currently have exposure to 77 assets. The portfolio features a circa 90% exposure to the strong performing Sydney and Melbourne markets and is weighted to traditional logistics facilities, which are leveraged to the growth of e-commerce. Darren Steinberg, Dexus CEO, said: "We are pleased to have worked with GIC to grow this high-quality portfolio. This new relationship provides a stable long-term source of capital to invest alongside us. We welcome Blackstone onto our platform and look forward to continuing to drive the Partnership's strong performance." Authorised by Brett Cameron, General Counsel and Company Secretary of Dexus Funds Management Limited For further information please contact: Investors

David Yates

Executive General Manager, Investor Relations

+61 2 9017 1424

+61 418 861 047

david.yates@dexus.com Media

Elle Twight

Communications and Corporate Affairs Manager

+61 2 9017 1337

+61 402 518 454

elle.twight@dexus.com 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 $15.4 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 10-Dec-2021 CET/CEST The DGAP Distribution Services include Regulatory Announcements, Financial/Corporate News and Press Releases.

Archive at www.dgap.de


ZURICH, SWITZERLAND, Dec 10, 2021 - (JCN Newswire) - Hitachi Energy and National Grid have successfully energized a pilot project replacing SF6 in installed high-voltage gas-insulated lines with an eco-efficient fluoronitrile based gas mixture. This retrofill solution, in Richborough, UK is part of Hitachi Energy's EconiQTM(1) portfolio which is designed to deliver a superior environmental performance compared to conventional solutions.As one of the world's largest investor-owned transmission and distribution utilities, National Grid has the ambition to remove all SF6 from its fleet by 2050. In this pioneering project, National Grid has replaced SF6 from 420-kilovolt (kV) gas-insulated lines installed in 2016, eliminating 755 kilograms of SF6. This is equivalent to taking approximately 100 passenger cars(2) off the road.For decades, SF6 has been used in the electrical industry due to its excellent insulation and current interruption properties. However, it has a high Global Warming Potential (GWP) and requires careful handling. Hitachi Energy is continuously reducing the use of SF6, improving its lifecycle management, and accelerating the development of eco- efficient products."We have a responsibility to help our customers like National Grid to accelerate the energy transition," said Markus Heimbach, Managing Director of High Voltage Products business in Hitachi Energy. "Innovative EconiQ retrofill technology for installed gas- insulated lines along with the new EconiQ switchgear and breakers portfolio will enable our customers and the industry as a whole to reduce carbon footprint and rapidly transition to eco-efficient solutions.""Climate change is the greatest challenge of our time and this new transformational green technology will help achieve wide-scale decarbonization on our electricity transmission network. The retrofill solution re-places SF6, cutting emissions and network outages at the same time as saving costs by avoiding the need to spend on costly replacement equipment," said Chris Bennett, Acting President of National Grid. "We are proud to be working with Hitachi Energy, and to demonstrate a practical solution to a significant issue in the energy industry's transition to net zero."EconiQ is Hitachi Energy's eco-efficient portfolio for sustainability, where products, services and solutions are proven to deliver exceptional environmental performance. Recently, the company announced the acceleration of its development of eco-efficient solutions, outlining its extensive EconiQ roadmap(3) of switchgear and breakers in various voltage levels. Hitachi Energy has placed sustainability at the heart of its Purpose and is advancing a sustainable energy future for all.(1) EconiQ - Eco-efficient high-voltage portfolio | Hitachi Energy(2) Based on the assumption that a car emits 19 kg CO2 equivalent per 100 km, drives 10,000 km per year, and an estimated leakage rate of 1 % per year for gas-insulated lines.(3) Hitachi ABB Power Grids announces EconiQ High-voltage Roadmap at CIGRE 2021 (hitachienergy.com)NotesRetrofill is the process of replacing SF6 in an existing equipment with a new eco-efficient gas mixture to improve the environmental and life-cycle performance of the equipment.About Hitachi EnergyHitachi Energy is a global technology leader that is advancing a sustainable energy future for all. We serve customers in the utility, industry and infrastructure sectors with innovative solutions and services across the value chain. Together with customers and partners, we pioneer technologies and enable the digital transformation required to accelerate the energy transition towards a carbon-neutral future. We are advancing the world's energy system to become more sustainable, flexible and secure whilst balancing social, environmental and economic value. Hitachi Energy has a proven track record and unparalleled installed base in more than 140 countries. Headquartered in Switzerland, we employ around 38,000 people in 90 countries and generate business volumes of approximately $10 billion USD. https://www.hitachienergy.comhttps://www.linkedin.com/company/hitachienergyhttps://twitter.com/HitachiEnergyAbout Hitachi, Ltd.Hitachi, Ltd. (TSE: 6501), headquartered in Tokyo, Japan, contributes to a sustainable society with a higher quality of life by driving innovation through data and technology as the Social Innovation Business. Hitachi is focused on strengthening its contribution to the Environment, the Resilience of business and social infrastructure as well as comprehensive programs to enhance Security & Safety. Hitachi resolves the issues faced by customers and society across six domains: IT, Energy, Mobility, Industry, Smart Life and Automotive Systems through its proprietary Lumada solutions. The company's consolidated revenues for fiscal year 2020 (ended March 31, 2021) totaled 8,729.1 billion yen ($78.6 billion), with 871 consolidated subsidiaries and approximately 350,000 employees worldwide. For more information on Hitachi, please visit the company's website at https://www.hitachi.com.Source: Hitachi, Ltd.Copyright 2021 JCN Newswire . All rights reserved.
TA Associates,a leading global growth private equity firm, today announced a strategic growth investment in Adcubum AG, a leading Swiss health and property casualty (P&C) insurance software provider, and tech11 GmbH, a fast-growing insurance software provider serving the P&C market in Germany and across Europe. The investment will create a leading software provider in the health and P&C markets in Europe, leveraging the momentum of both Adcubum and tech11. Financial terms of the transactions were not disclosed.

This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20211209006140/en/

Through its modern core insurance software platform Syrius, Adcubum offers a broad array of modules to support insurance processes, including policy administration, quotation, pricing, claims management and settlements, collections and disbursements, as well as partner and commission management. Adcubum is a market leader for health insurers in Switzerland, with emerging expertise and growth in P&C, primarily in Germany. Founded in St. Gallen, Switzerland in 1997, the company has offices in Switzerland and Germany, and a development center in Croatia.

tech11 offers a holistic, digital P&C core insurance platform designed to help insurance companies and managing general agents (MGAs) meet the complexities of digitalization in the insurance industry. The tech11 Insurance Platform, available via a cloud-based SaaS subscription or deployed on-premises, can be utilized for the replacement of legacy systems and as Digital Speedboat for any insurance greenfield approach in fast growing ecosystems, supporting the entire end-to-end policy and claims management lifecycle across Europe. Founded in 2018, tech11 is headquartered in Wurzburg, Germany.

"Adcubum is widely considered the leader of its kind in the Swiss health insurance market and continues to demonstrate growth in P&C, a segment tech11 has built great momentum serving in Europe with its innovative platform," said Stefan Dandl, a Principal at TA. "Given their complementary expertise and resources, Adcubum and tech11 offer a compelling opportunity for innovation and growth. We look forward to working with the management teams to create an industry-leading player in the health and P&C segments across Europe."

"We have known the team at TA for many years and it is a pleasure to welcome the firm as an investor," said Emanuele Diquattro, CEO, Adcubum. "With the ongoing push for insurers to further digitize their infrastructure, we see significant potential for continued innovation and new business opportunities in our work. We look forward to partnering with TA and tech11 as we pursue additional organic and acquisitive growth, including possible expansion into new business lines and geographies."

"Considering their decades of experience investing in growing software businesses, including many SaaS-based companies, we are convinced TA is an ideal financial and strategic partner," said Pierre Dubosq, Co-Founder and Managing Director, tech11. "Since our founding, we have focused on helping customers modernize their core insurance systems and realize greater efficiencies by fully automating the P&C insurance business. With TA's support and in combination with Adcubum, we will look to bring our scalable insurance platform to additional health and P&C carriers in Germany and across Europe."

Alvarez and Marsal is serving as financial and tax advisor, and Bar Karrer and Latham Watkins are providing legal counsel to TA.

About Adcubum AG

Adcubum is a leading software manufacturer for the international insurance industry. Founded in St. Gallen, Switzerland in 1997, Adcubum has offices in Germany and Switzerland and around 400 employees across eight locations, including an R&D center in Croatia. Its core product, Adcubum Syrius, is a flexible, modular and cloud-capable system for health and property casualty insurers. Together with its customers, Adcubum develops solutions for the insurance market of the future and creates an ideal environment for agile work processes. More information about Adcubum can be found at www.adcubum.com.

About tech11 GmbH

tech11 is a digital core insurance platform for the property casualty insurance industry in Europe. Founded in 2018 by Pierre Dubosq and Matthias Reining in Wurzburg, Germany, the company has grown to more than 50 employees and is in the process of opening more branches in Germany. More information about tech11 can be found at https://tech11.com.

About TA Associates

TA is a leading global growth private equity firm. Focused on targeted sectors within five industries technology, healthcare, financial services, consumer and business services the firm invests in profitable, growing companies with opportunities for sustained growth, and has invested in more than 550 companies around the world. Investing as either a majority or minority investor, TA employs a long-term approach, utilizing its strategic resources to help management teams build lasting value in high quality growth companies. TA has raised $47.5 billion in capital since its founding in 1968. The firm's more than 100 investment professionals are based in Boston, Menlo Park, London, Mumbai and Hong Kong. More information about TA can be found at www.ta.com.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20211209006140/en/

Contacts:

Marcia O'Carroll

TA Associates

+ 1-617-574-6796

mocarroll@ta.com

Stephen Fishleigh

BackBay Communications

+44-203-475-7552

Stephen.fishleigh@backbaycommunications.com

Daniel Abramson

BackBay Communications

+ 1-857-305-8441

Daniel.abramson@backbaycommunications.com
Herve Gisserot will join Vifor Pharma as Chief Commercial Officer on 17 January 2022

Responsibilities of Sales, Marketing and Market Access to be streamlined under Chief Commercial Officer role to prioritize commercial execution

Regulatory News:

AD HOC ANNOUNCEMENT PURSUANT TO ART. 53 LR

Vifor Pharma Group today announced the appointment of Herve Gisserot as Chief Commercial Officer and member of the Vifor Pharma Executive Committee as of 17 January 2022.

Herve Gisserot, a French citizen, is an experienced industry executive and has a proven track record of building and leading organizations across the U.S., Europe and Asia Pacific with extensive launch and market access experiences. He joins from GlaxoSmithKline where he served in multiple Senior Vice President roles in the last 13 years. He is a graduate of the Institute of Political Science Paris (IEP), and has completed the General Management program at INSEAD.

With this new appointment, the President US, the Regional Commercial Heads, the Rare Disease BU, the central commercial, marketing and pricing teams, will report to the Chief Commercial Officer. This is to lead the organization ahead of expected approvals and subsequent launches of four pipeline products in the next 18 months, and to maximize opportunities of our iron portfolio.

Abbas Hussain, Chief Executive Officer of Vifor Pharma Group, commented: "I am delighted that Herve joins Vifor Pharma. He brings a wealth of commercial experience from leading pharmaceutical companies at an international level, delivering profitable growth across multiple therapeutic areas and markets. His professional background makes him ideally suited to lead the commercial organization and to put a strong focus on execution as we accelerate growth to become a multi-brand organization focused on in-licensing, partnering and commercializing products worldwide."

Photo:

A picture of Herve Gisserot is available for download at viforpharma.com/media/media-library

About Vifor Pharma Group

Vifor Pharma Group is a global pharmaceuticals company. It aims to become the global leader in iron deficiency, nephrology and cardio-renal therapies. The company is a partner of choice for pharmaceuticals and innovative patient-focused solutions. Vifor Pharma Group strives to help patients around the world with severe and chronic diseases lead better, healthier lives. The company develops, manufactures and markets pharmaceutical products for precision patient care. Vifor Pharma Group holds a leading position in all its core business activities and consists of the following companies: Vifor Pharma and Vifor Fresenius Medical Care Renal Pharma (a joint company with Fresenius Medical Care). Vifor Pharma Group is headquartered in Switzerland, and listed on the Swiss Stock Exchange (SIX Swiss Exchange, VIFN, ISIN: CH0364749348).

For more information, please visit viforpharma.com.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20211209005908/en/

Contacts:

Media Relations

Nathalie Ponnier

Global Head Corporate Communications

+41 79 957 96 73

media@viforpharma.com



Investor Relations

Julien Vignot

Head of Investor Relations

+41 58 851 66 90

investors@viforpharma.com
NOT FOR RELEASE, PUBLICATION OR DISTRIBUTION, IN WHOLE OR IN PART, DIRECTLY OR INDIRECTLY, IN OR INTO THE UNITED STATES, CANADA, AUSTRALIA, CAYMAN ISLANDS, JAPAN OR SOUTH AFRICA OR ANY OTHER JURISDICTION IN WHICH SUCH RELEASE, PUBLICATION OR DISTRIBUTION WOULD BE IN VIOLATION OF THE RELEVANT LAWS OF SUCH JURISDICTION OR WOULD REQUIRE REGISTRATION OR OTHER MEASURES. THIS ANNOUNCEMENT DOES NOT CONTAIN OR CONSTITUTE AN OFFER OF SECURITIES FOR SALE OR AN INVITATION OR OFFER TO THE PUBLIC OR FORM OF APPLICATION TO SUBSCRIBE FOR SECURITIES.

This announcement is an advertisement for the purposes of Regulation EU 2017/1129 (such Regulation, together with any amendments thereto, the "Prospectus Regulation") and is not a prospectus nor an offer of securities for sale in any jurisdiction. Neither this announcement, nor anything contained herein, shall form the basis of, or be relied upon in connection with, any offer or commitment whatsoever in any jurisdiction. Investors should not purchase or subscribe for any securities referred to in this announcement except on the basis of information in the prospectus, including the risk factors set out therein, published by the Company in connection with the admission of Ordinary Shares and Warrants to trading on Euronext Amsterdam (the "Prospectus"). Copies of the Prospectus are available from the Company's registered office and on the Company's website at https:// www.BrigadeM3EAC.com, subject to certain access restrictions.

Brigade-M3 European Acquisition Corp. (the "Company") a special purpose acquisition company sponsored by Brigade SPAC Sponsor II LLC (the "Sponsor Entity"), with the strategic partner M3 Euro SPAC Sponsor I, LP ("M3")today announces that it has successfully raised $250 million (excluding any Option Units (as defined below) sold in connection with the Over-allotment Option (as defined below)) in a private placement for the purposes of effecting a merger, share exchange, asset acquisition, share purchase, reorganisation or similar business combination (a "Business Combination") with an operating company with significant operations in Europe which has positively benefited from a structural shift caused by the COVID-19 pandemic or has been negatively impacted by a temporary dislocation caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Company will have 18 months from 14 December 2021 (the "Settlement Date") to complete a Business Combination (the "Business Combination Deadline"). Prior to the consummation of the Business Combination, the Company will not engage in any operations, other than in connection with the selection, structuring and consummation of the Business Combination.

DETAILS OF THE OFFERING

The Company has completed the private placement of units (the "Units"), each consisting of one ordinary share (an "Ordinary Share") and one-half (1/2) of a warrant (a "Warrant"), which was launched on 8 December 2021 (the "Offering"). The Offering consists of a private placement of 25,000,000 unit shares (or up to 25,500,000 Units if the Over-allotment Option is exercised in full) at a price of $10.00 per Unit (the "Offer Price"), raising proceeds of $250,000,000 (or up to $255,000,000 if the Over-allotment Option is exercised in full).

The final Offering statistics are as follows:

Total number of Units in the Offering 25,000,000 Total number of Over-allotment Units Up to 500,000 Total number of Sponsor Shares 6,375,000 if the Over-allotment Option is exercised in full Total number of Sponsor Warrants 10,950,000 if the Over-allotment Option is exercised in full Proceeds from the Offering $250,000,000 (or $255,000,000 if the Over-allotment Option is exercised in full)

Trading on an "as-if-and-when-issued/delivered" basis on Euronext Amsterdam in the Units is expected to commence at 09:00 CET on 10 December 2021 (the "First Trading Date") under ISIN KYG137071158 and symbol BACEU. Payment for, and delivery of, the Units is expected to take place on 14 December 2021.

The Ordinary Shares and the Warrants can be traded separately on Euronext Amsterdam only from the 37th calendar day after the First Listing and Trading Date (or, if such date is not a Trading Day, the following Trading Day) under ISIN KYG137071075 and symbol BACE for the Ordinary Shares and ISIN KYG137071232 and symbol BACEW for the Warrants.

The Company has granted Cantor-Aurel, a division of Aurel BGC SAS ("Cantor-Aurel"), in its capacity as stabilising manager, or any of its agents (the "Stabilising Manager"), an option (the "Over-allotment Option"), exercisable within 30 calendar days after the First Listing and Trading Date (or, if such date is not a Trading Day, the Trading Day preceding such date), pursuant to which the Stabilising Manager may require the Company to deliver up to 500,000 Units (the "Over-allotment Units") at the Offer Price, comprising up to 2% of the aggregate number of Units sold in the Offering (excluding the Over-allotment Units), to cover over-allotments, if any, in connection with the Offering or to facilitate stabilisation transactions, if any.

In connection with the Offering, the Stabilising Manager may (but will be under no obligation to) to the extent permitted by applicable law, over-allot Units or effect other stabilisation transactions with a view to supporting the market price of the Units at a higher level than that which might otherwise prevail in the open market. The Stabilising Manager is not required to enter into such transactions and such transactions may be effected on any securities market, over-the-counter market, stock exchange (including Euronext Amsterdam) or otherwise, and may be undertaken at any time during the period commencing on 10 December 2021 (the "First Listing and Trading Date"), and ending no later than 30 calendar days thereafter. However, there will be no obligation on the Stabilising Manager or any of its agents to effect stabilising transactions and there is no assurance that stabilising transactions will be undertaken. Such stabilisation, if commenced, may be discontinued at any time without prior notice and must be discontinued within 30 calendar days after the First Listing and Trading Date. In no event will measures be taken to stabilise the market price of the Units above the Offer Price. Except as required by law or regulation, neither the Stabilising Manager nor any of its agents intends to disclose the extent of any over-allotments made and/or stabilisation transactions conducted in relation to the Offering. The Stabilising Manager may, for purposes of stabilising transactions, over-allot Units up to 2% of the aggregate number of Units sold in the Offering (excluding Over allotment Units), or up to 500,000 Units assuming the maximum number of Units is offered and sold in the Offering.

Investing in the Company involves certain risks. A description of these risks, which include risks relating to the Company as well as risks relating to the Offering, the Ordinary Shares and the Warrants is included in the ProspectusThis announcement also serves as the pricing statement related to the Offering as required by article 17(2) of Regulation (EU) 2017/112 (the Prospectus Regulation).

Cantor-Aurel, a division of Aurel BGC SAS and Cantor Fitzgerald Europe will be acting as Joint Global Coordinators. Cantor-Aurel will be acting as Sole Bookrunner.

HOME MEMBER STATE DECLARATION

Article 5:25a(2) of the Dutch Financial Supervision Act requires all listed companies to publicly announce which country is their "home member state" for the purposes of regulation of their disclosure obligations under Directive 2004/109/EG of the European Parliament and of the Council of 15 December 2004 on the harmonisation of transparency requirements in relation to information about issuers whose securities are admitted to trading on a regulated market and amending Directive 2001/34/EC (the EU Transparency Directive).

Brigade-M3 European Acquisition Corp. hereby announces that its home member state is the Netherlands. This disclosure is also available on www.BrigadeM3EAC.com and in the Prospectus.

DISCLAIMER

This announcement is not for distribution or release, directly or indirectly, and should not be distributed in or sent into, the United States, Australia, Canada, Japan, Cayman Islands or South Africa or any other jurisdiction in which such distribution or release would be unlawful or would require registration or other measures. This announcement does not contain or constitute an offer of securities for sale or an invitation or offer to the public or form of application to subscribe for securities.

The release, publication or distribution of this announcement in certain jurisdictions may be restricted by law and therefore persons in such jurisdictions into which they are released, published or distributed, should inform themselves about, and observe, such restrictions. No action has been taken by the Company that would permit an offer of securities or the possession or distribution of this announcement or any other offering or publicity material relating to such securities in any jurisdiction where action for that purpose is required.

This announcement is not and does not form a part of, and should not be construed as, an offer for sale of or solicitation of an offer to buy the securities in the United States. The securities referred to in this announcement have not been and will not be registered under the U.S. Securities Act, as amended, and may not be offered or sold in the United States absent registration or an exemption from the registration requirements of the U.S. Securities Act and in accordance with the applicable securities laws of any state or other jurisdiction of the United States. The Company does not intend to register any portion of the offering in the United States or to conduct a public offering of securities in the United States. Any public offering of the securities to be made in the United States would be made by means of a prospectus that may be obtained from the Company and that will contain detailed information about the Company and its management, as well as financial statements.

In the EEA, this announcement is only directed at persons who are "qualified investors" within the meaning of Article 2(e) of the Prospectus Regulation (EU 2017/1129) as amended.

In the United Kingdom, this announcement is directed only at "qualified investors" within the meaning of Article 2(e) of the Prospectus Regulation (EU) No 2017/1129 as it forms part of UK domestic law by virtue of the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018 (the "EUWA") (the "UK Prospectus Regulation") as amended, who are also (i) persons having professional experience in matters relating to investments who fall within the definition of "investment professionals" in Article 19(5) of the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000 (Financial Promotion) Order 2005 (the "Order"); (ii) high net worth bodies corporate, unincorporated associations and partnerships and trustees of high value trusts as described in Article 49(2) of the Order; or (iii) persons to whom it may otherwise lawfully be communicated (all such persons being referred to as "relevant persons"). This announcement must not be acted on or relied on by persons in the United Kingdom who are not relevant persons. Any investment or investment activity to which this announcement relates is available only in the United Kingdom to relevant persons and will be engaged in only with relevant persons.

This announcement does not constitute a prospectus. An offer to acquire securities pursuant to the proposed Offering will be made, and any investor should make his investment, solely on the basis of information contained in the Prospectus made generally available in the Netherlands in connection with the admission of Ordinary Shares and Warrants to listing and trading on Euronext Amsterdam ("Admission"). Copies of the Prospectus may be obtained from the website of the Company.

Matters discussed in this announcement may constitute forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements are statements that are not historical facts and may be identified by words such as "believe," "expect," "anticipate," "aim," "intends," "estimate," "plan," "forecast", "project," "will," "may," "continue," "should" and similar expressions. The forward-looking statements in this announcement are based upon various assumptions, many of which are based, in turn, upon further assumptions, such as no changes in existing political, legal, fiscal, market or economic conditions or in applicable legislation, regulations or rules (including, but not limited to, accounting policies, accounting treatments and tax policies), which, individually or in the aggregate, would be material to the results of operations of the Company or its ability to operate its businesses and that the Company does not become a party to any legal or administrative processes that may have a material effect on the Company. Although the Company believes that these assumptions were reasonable when made, these assumptions are inherently subject to significant known and unknown risks, uncertainties, contingencies and other important factors, which are difficult or impossible to predict and are beyond its control. Such risks, uncertainties, contingencies and other important factors could cause actual events to differ materially from the expectations expressed or implied in this release by such forward-looking statements. In addition, the information, opinions, targets, and forward-looking statements contained in this announcement are not guarantees of future financial performance and the actual results of the Company could differ materially from those expressed or implied by these forward-looking statements. The Company expressly disclaims any obligation or undertaking to release any updates or revisions to these forward-looking statements to reflect any change in the Company's expectations with regard thereto or any change in events, conditions or circumstances on which any statement is based after the date of this announcement or to update or to keep current any other information contained in this announcement. Accordingly, the Company urges readers not to place undue reliance on any of the statements set forth above.

The information, opinions, and forward-looking statements contained in this announcement speak only as at the date of this announcement, and are subject to change without notice.

Any purchase of any securities in the Offering should be made solely on the basis of information contained in the Prospectus. The information in this announcement is subject to change. Before purchasing any securities in the Offering, persons viewing this announcement should ensure that they fully understand and accept the risks which are set out in the Prospectus. No reliance may be placed for any purpose on the information contained in this announcement or its accuracy or completeness. This announcement shall not form the basis of or constitute any offer or invitation to sell or issue, or any solicitation of any offer to purchase any securities nor shall it (or any part of it) or the fact of its distribution, form the basis of, or be relied on in connection with, any contract therefor.

The date of Admission may be influenced by a variety of factors which include market conditions. There is no guarantee that Admission will occur. You should not base your financial decision on this announcement. Acquiring investments to which this announcement relates may expose an investor to a significant risk of losing all of the amount invested.

Persons considering making investments should consult an authorised person specialising in advising on such investments. This announcement does not form part of or constitute a recommendation concerning any offer. The value of securities can decrease as well as increase. Potential investors should consult a professional advisor as to the suitability of a possible offer for the person concerned.

No representation or warranty, express or implied, is made or given, and no responsibility is accepted, by, or on behalf of, Cantor-Aurel or any of its affiliates or representatives, or their respective directors, officers or employees or any other person, as to the accuracy, fairness, verification or completeness of information or opinions contained in this announcement and nothing in this announcement is, or shall be relied upon as, a promise or representation by Cantor- Aurel or any of its affiliates or representatives, or their respective directors, officers or employees or any other person, as to the past or future. None of Cantor-Aurel or any of its affiliates or representatives, or their respective directors, officers or employees or any other person in any of their respective capacities in connection with the Offering, accepts any responsibility whatsoever for the contents of this announcement or for any other statements made or purported to be made by either itself or on its behalf in connection with the Company, the Offering, the Units, the Ordinary Shares and/or the Warrants. Accordingly, Cantor-Aurel and its affiliates or representatives, and their respective directors, officers or employees or any other person disclaim, to the fullest extent permitted by applicable law, all and any liability, whether arising in tort or contract or which they might otherwise be found to have in respect of this announcement and/or any such statement.

Cantor-Aurel is acting exclusively for the Company and for no one else in connection with the Offering and will not regard any other person as their respective client in relation to the Offering and will not be responsible to anyone other than the Company for providing the protections afforded to its clients or for giving advice in relation to the Offering, Admission or any transaction or arrangement referred to in this announcement.

Cantor-Aurel and/or its affiliates may in the future, from time to time, engage in commercial banking, investment banking and financial advisory and ancillary activities in the ordinary course of their business with the Company or any parties related to any of it, in respect of which they have and may in the future, receive customary fees and commissions. Additionally, Cantor-Aurel and/or its affiliates may in the ordinary course of their business hold the Company's securities for investment purposes for their own account and for the accounts of their customers. Also, Cantor-Aurel is entitled to receive a deferred fee conditional on the completion of a Business Combination. The fact that Cantor-Aurel or its affiliates' financial interests are tied to the completion of a Business Combination may give rise to potential conflicts of interest in providing services to the Company, including potential conflicts of interest in connection with the sourcing and completion of a Business Combination or the rendering of a fairness opinion. As a result, these parties may have interests that may not be aligned, or could possibly conflict with the interests of investors or of the Company. In respect hereof, the sharing of information is generally restricted for reasons of confidentiality, by internal procedures and by rules and regulations.

In connection with the Offering, Cantor-Aurel and any of its affiliates, acting as an investor for its own account, may take up Units in the Offering and, in that capacity, may retain, purchase, subscribe for, or sell for its own account such securities and any Units or related investments and may offer or sell such Units or other investments otherwise than in connection with the Offering. Accordingly, references in this announcement to Units being offered or placed should be read as including any offering or placement of Units to Cantor-Aurel or any of its affiliates acting in such capacity. In addition, Cantor-Aurel or its affiliates may enter into financing arrangements (including swaps) with investors in connection with which Cantor-Aurel (or its affiliates) may from time to time acquire, hold or dispose of Units, Ordinary Shares and Warrants. None of Cantor-Aurel or its affiliates intends to disclose the extent of any such investment or transactions otherwise than pursuant to any legal or regulatory obligation to do so. As a result of these transactions, Cantor-Aurel and its affiliates may have interests that may not be aligned, or could potentially conflict, with the interests of the Ordinary Shareholders or Warrant Holders, or with the Company's interests.

This announcement contains information that qualifies as inside information within the meaning of Article 7(1) of Regulation (EU) No 596/2014 on market abuse.

Information to EEA Distributors

Solely for the purposes of the product governance requirements contained within: (a) EU Directive 2014/65/EU on markets in financial instruments, as amended ("MiFID II"); (b) Articles 9 and 10 of Commission Delegated Directive (EU) 2017/593 supplementing MiFID II; and (c) local implementing measures (together, the "MiFID II Product Governance Requirements"), and disclaiming all and any liability, whether arising in delict, tort, contract or otherwise, which any "manufacturer" (for the purposes of the MiFID II Product Governance Requirements) may otherwise have with respect thereto, the Units, Ordinary Shares and Warrants have been subject to a product approval process, which has determined that: (X) the Units are: (i) compatible with an end target market of investors who meet the criteria of professional clients and eligible counterparties only, each as defined in MiFID II; and (ii) appropriate for distribution through all distribution channels to eligible counterparties and professional clients as are permitted by MiFID II; (Y) the Ordinary Shares 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 MiFID II; and (ii) eligible for distribution through all distribution channels as are permitted by MiFID II; and (Z) the Warrants are: (i) compatible with an end target market of investors who meet the criteria of professional clients and eligible counterparties only, each as defined in MiFID II; and (ii) appropriate for distribution through all distribution channels to eligible counterparties and professional clients as are permitted by MiFID II (each, an "EEA Target Market Assessment

Any person subsequently offering, selling or recommending the Units, the Ordinary Shares and/or the Warrants (a "Distributor") should take into consideration the manufacturers' relevant EEA Target Market Assessment(s); however, each Distributor subject to MiFID II is responsible for undertaking its own target market assessment in respect of the Units, the Ordinary Shares and/or the Warrants (by either adopting or refining the manufacturers' EEA Target Market Assessments) and determining, in each case, appropriate distribution channels.

In respect of the Ordinary Shares, notwithstanding the EEA Target Market Assessment, Distributors (for the purposes of the MiFID II Product Governance Requirements) should note that: (i) the price of the Ordinary Shares may decline and investors could lose all or part of their investment; (ii) the Ordinary Shares offer no guaranteed income and no capital protection; and (iii) an investment in the Ordinary 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.

The EEA Target Market Assessments are without prejudice to the requirements of any contractual, legal or regulatory selling restrictions in relation to the Units, the Ordinary Shares and the Warrants. Furthermore, it is noted that, notwithstanding the EEA Target Market Assessments, the Joint Global Coordinators will only procure investors who meet the criteria of professional clients and eligible counterparties.

For the avoidance of doubt, the EEA Target Market Assessments do not constitute: (i) an assessment of suitability or appropriateness for the purposes of MIFID II; or (ii) a recommendation to any investor or group of investors to invest in, or purchase, or take any other action whatsoever with respect to the Units, Ordinary Shares and Warrants.

Information to UK Distributors

Solely for the purposes of the product governance requirements of Chapter 3 of the FCA Handbook Product Intervention and Product Governance Sourcebook (the "UK Product Governance Requirements"), and disclaiming all and any liability, whether arising in tort, contract or otherwise, which any "manufacturer" (for the purposes of the UK Product Governance Requirements) may otherwise have with respect thereto, the Units, Ordinary Shares and Warrants have been subject to a product approval process, which has determined that: (X) the Units are: (i) compatible with an end target market of investors who meet the criteria of eligible counterparties, as defined in the FCA Handbook Conduct of Business Sourcebook ("COBS"), and professional clients, as defined in COBS; and (ii) all channels for distribution to eligible counterparties and professional clients are appropriate; (Y) the Ordinary Shares are: (i) compatible with an end target market of investors who meet the criteria of retail clients, professional clients, and eligible counterparties each as defined in COBS; and (ii) all channels for distribution are appropriate; and (Z) the Warrants are: (i) compatible with an end target market of investors who meet the criteria of eligible counterparties and professional clients, as defined in COBS; and (ii) all channels for distribution to eligible counterparties and professional clients are appropriate (each, a "UK Target Market Assessment

A Distributor (as defined above) should take into consideration the manufacturers' relevant UK Target Market Assessment(s); however, each Distributor subject to UK Product Governance Requirements is responsible for undertaking its own target market assessment in respect of the Units, the Ordinary Shares and/or the Warrants (by either adopting or refining the manufacturers' UK Target Market Assessments) and determining, in each case, appropriate distribution channels.

In respect of the Ordinary Shares, notwithstanding the UK Target Market Assessment, Distributors (for the purposes of the UK Product Governance Requirements) should note that: (i) the price of the Ordinary Shares may decline and investors could lose all or part of their investment; (ii) the Ordinary Shares offer no guaranteed income and no capital protection; and (iii) an investment in the Ordinary 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.

The UK Target Market Assessments are without prejudice to the requirements of any contractual, legal or regulatory selling restrictions in relation to the Units, the Ordinary Shares and the Warrants. Furthermore, it is noted that, notwithstanding the UK Target Market Assessments, the Joint Global Coordinators will only procure investors who meet the criteria of professional clients and eligible counterparties.

For the avoidance of doubt, the UK Target Market Assessments do not constitute: (i) an assessment of suitability or appropriateness for the purposes of Chapters 9A or 10A of COBS; or (ii) a recommendation to any investor or group of investors to invest in, or purchase, or take any other action whatsoever with respect to the Units, Ordinary Shares and Warrants.

Prohibition of sales to EEA retail investors

The Units and the Warrants are not intended to be offered, sold or otherwise made available to and should not be offered, sold or otherwise made available to any retail investor in the European Economic Area ("EEA"). For these purposes, a retail investor means a person who is one (or more) of: (i) a retail client as defined in point (11) of Article 4(1) of MiFID II; (ii) a customer within the meaning of Directive (EU) 2016/97 (as amended, the "Insurance Distribution Directive"), where that customer would not qualify as a professional client as defined in point (10) of Article 4(1) of MiFID II; or (iii) not a qualified investor as defined in the Prospectus Regulation. Consequently no key information document required by Regulation (EU) No 1286/2014 (as amended the "PRIIPs Regulation") for offering or selling the Units and the Warrants or otherwise making them available to retail investors in the EEA has been prepared and therefore offering or selling the Units and the Warrants or otherwise making them available to any retail investor in the EEA may be unlawful under the PRIIPs Regulation.

Prohibition of sales to UK retail investors

The Units and the Warrants are not intended to be offered, sold or otherwise made available to and should not be offered, sold or otherwise made available to any retail investor in the United Kingdom. For these purposes, a "retail investor" means a person who is one (or more) of: (i) a retail client, as defined in point (8) of Article 2 of Regulation (EU) No 2017/565 as it forms part of domestic law by virtue of the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018 (the "EUWA"); (ii) a customer within the meaning of the provisions of the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000 (the "FSMA") and any rules or regulations made under the FSMA to implement the Insurance Distribution Directive, where that customer would not qualify as a professional client, as defined in point (8) of Article 2(1) of Regulation (EU) No 600/2014 as it forms part of domestic law by virtue of the EUWA; or (iii) not a qualified investor as defined in Article 2 of the UK Prospectus Regulation. Consequently, no key information document required by Regulation (EU) No 1286/2014 as it forms part of the domestic law of the United Kingdom by virtue of the EUWA (the "UK PRIIPs Regulation") for offering or selling the Units and the Warrants or otherwise making them available to retail investors in the United Kingdom has been prepared and, therefore, offering or selling the Units and the Warrants or otherwise making them available to any retail investor in the UK may be unlawful under the UK PRIIPs Regulation.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20211209006196/en/

Contacts:

ENQUIRIES

Brigade-M3 European Acquisition Corp.

c/o Brigade Capital Management, LP

399 Park Avenue, 16th Floor

New York, NY 10022

Email: BrigadeM3EAC@brigadecapital.com


Navya Arma

TOKYO, Dec 10, 2021 - (JCN Newswire) - Mitsubishi Corporation (MC) is pleased to announce that its joint venture with Macnica Inc. (Macnica) will be taking advantage of support from the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) to carry out a proof-of-concept (PoC) autonomous-driving pilot project in Bumi Serpong Damai(BSD) City located in Tangerang, Banten, Indonesia. JICA's support comes via its second plan to assist small and medium enterprises with their efforts to grow, validate and commercialize businesses aimed at helping to achieve the UN's sustainable development goals (SDGs). JICA announced this second round of support in fiscal year 2020.JICA's plan has several aims. Not only does it seek to leverage the advanced technologies, products and ideas of Japan's private sector to help address challenges being faced in developing countries, but it is also designed to promote those enterprises' overseas businesses, and by extension, invigorate the Japanese economy. Having praised MC's ongoing city-management operations in Indonesia, JICA has adopted as part of its support plan our proposed driverless-vehicle mobility service, which aims to further improve BSD City as a smart city in Indonesia. The period of the MC-Macnica consignment contract with JICA will run from December, 10 2021 until September, 29 2023.MC has been promoting its city-management (smart city) operations both in Japan and around the world. They are new businesses and an example of what we intend to build on as next-generation earnings drivers. We are also confident of their potential as a business model that can effectively marry digital data platforms born of digital transformation (DX) with energy transformation (EX) initiatives aimed at decarbonization.One of these businesses is a collaboration with Sinar Mas Land(SML) that is being undertaken to raise the value of municipal infrastructure and services throughout BSD City. Having already entered into a basic agreement, MC and SML, which is one of Indonesia's largest and diversified real estate developers in Indonesia, have now begun working together in the aspect of town management by equipping it with smart / digital city services.This new PoC project through our joint venture with Macnica represents the first offering on the MC-Sinar Mas Land city-services menu. It will endeavor to assess the needs of the region's residents, workers and visitors with respect to driverless mobility services, the aims of which are to make municipal transportation more convenient. It should also validate the region's commercial potential for large-scale mobility services. The pilot project, which will run for one year, will involve the operation of autonomously controlled electric vehicles (EVs) throughout office and commercial-facility areas in the bustling BSD City zone. Residents, workers and visitors alike will be encouraged to actually take rides in the EVs, which will be equipped with Japanese technologies.MC shall continue to work with SML and its other partners, whether they be within or outside the MC family. Through our collaborations, we shall strive to introduce a variety of smart- or digital-city services that are driven primarily by data on basic city infrastructure, as well as renewable energies aimed at carbon neutrality. We hope that these and other efforts like them will help to complete a BSD City as smart city that can serve as a model for future autonomous distributed communities.BSD City, located in Tangerang, Banten, is SML's flagship town development that encompasses a total land area of approximately 6,000 hectares. Developed since the mid-1980s, BSD City is a thriving development area with businesses, schools, shopping malls, hospitals, hotels, and convention centers. This undertaking will enlarge BSD City's existing development footprint and add to its current population of 200,000 residents. BSD City is home to the Apple Developer Academy, co-run by Apple and several local Indonesian universities, as well as international universities such as Monash University from Australia.Mitsubishi CorporationTelephone:+81-3-3210-2171Facsimile:+81-3-5252-7705Source: Mitsubishi CorporationCopyright 2021 JCN Newswire . All rights reserved.
BRUSSELS/FRANKFURT/PARIS (dpa-AFX) - Hilton Food Group has agreed to acquire Dutch Seafood Company B.V., which trades as Foppen, an international manufacturer of branded and private label premium smoked salmon products. Foppen's key customers are major retailers in the US and the Netherlands. Hilton's CEO, Philip Heffer, said: 'The acquisition of Foppen is an exceptional opportunity for Hilton and another step towards our goal of becoming the global protein partner of choice.' Hilton has also launched an equity placing to raise gross proceeds of approximately 75 million pounds to part fund the acquisition. 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.
DGAP-News: Aroundtown SA / Key word(s): Real Estate/Miscellaneous

Aroundtown SA convening notice to all shareholders



10.12.2021 / 08:38

The issuer is solely responsible for the content of this announcement.



/

AROUNDTOWN SA

Societe Anonyme

40, Rue du Cure

L-1368 Luxembourg

R.C.S. Luxembourg: B217868 CONVENING NOTICE TO ALL SHAREHOLDERS All shareholders of Aroundtown SA (the "Company") are hereby given notice upon instruction of the board of directors of the Company (the "Board of Directors") that an ORDINARY GENERAL MEETING OF THE COMPANY (the "OGM" or "General Meeting") will be held on 11 January 2022, at 1:30 p.m. (Central European Time, "CET") with the agenda as set out below. Important information:

In accordance with article 1 (1) of the Luxembourg law of 23 September 2020 on measures concerning the holding of meetings in companies and other legal entities, as amended, the Company will not hold a physical meeting. Shareholders have the opportunity to follow the OGM live via an audio webcast which will be available on 11 January 2022 at https://www.webcast-eqs.com/register/aroundtown20220111ogm starting at 1.30 p.m. CET. Shareholders may refer to the section "Attendance and Registration Procedures" in this convening notice for further information. AGENDA AND PROPOSED RESOLUTION FOR THE OGM Decision to: (i) increase the maximum aggregate nominal amount of the shares of the Company which may be acquired under the Company's buy-back programme, as approved by the ordinary general meeting of the shareholders of the Company on 6 May 2020 and as approved and increased by the annual general meeting of the shareholders of the Company on 30 June 2021 (the "Buy-back Programme"), from 30% of the aggregate nominal amount of the issued share capital of the Company from time to time by 20% to 50% of the aggregate nominal amount of the issued share capital of the Company from time to time; and (ii) to approve the amendment of the first paragraph of the Buy-back Programme. Resolution proposed by the Board of Directors: "The General Meeting resolves to: (i) increase the maximum aggregate nominal amount of the shares of the Company which may be acquired under the Company's buy-back programme, as approved by the ordinary general meeting of the shareholders of the Company on 6 May 2020 and as approved and increased by the annual general meeting of the shareholders of the Company on 30 June 2021 (the "Buy-back Programme"), from 30% of the aggregate nominal amount of the issued share capital of the Company from time to time by 20% to 50% of the aggregate nominal amount of the issued share capital of the Company from time to time; and (ii) amend the first paragraph of the Buy-back Programme to read as follows: "The General Meeting grants all powers to the Board of Directors, with option to delegate, to buy-back, either directly or through a subsidiary of the Company, shares of the Company for a period of five (5) years following the date of the present General Meeting. In particular, the General Meeting resolves that the aggregate nominal amount of the shares of the Company which may be acquired may not exceed 50% of the aggregate nominal amount of the issued share capital of the Company from time to time, at the date of exercise of the present authorisation"." Subject to the approval of this resolution by the shareholders, the Board of Directors will convene at least once a year an extraordinary general meeting of the shareholders of the Company ("EGM") to decide on a reduction of the share capital of the Company, if the Company has acquired under its Buy-back Programme more than 30% of the aggregate nominal amount of its issued share capital from time to time. The reduction amount to be decided on such EGM shall be equal to the total number of shares with a nominal value of one cent (EUR 0.01) each exceeding the 30% threshold, as described above. QUORUM AND MAJORITY REQUIREMENTS There is no quorum of presence requirement for the General Meeting. The agenda items are adopted by a simple majority of the votes validly cast by shareholders duly present or represented. Each share is entitled to one vote. SHARE CAPITAL AND VOTING RIGHTS At the date of convening of the General Meeting, the Company's subscribed share capital equals EUR 15,370,256.09 and it is divided into 1,537,025,609 shares having a nominal value of EUR 0.01 each, all of which are fully paid up. At the date of convening of the OGM, the voting rights attached to a total number of 431,335,729 shares of the Company are suspended according to Luxembourg law. The Company's subscribed share capital and number of voting rights suspended may vary at the date of the OGM due to capital increase(s) and share buy-back(s). AVAILABLE INFORMATION AND DOCUMENTATION The following documents will be available for inspection by the shareholders at the registered office of the Company at 40, Rue du Cure, L-1368 Luxembourg, Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, starting on the day of publication of this convening notice in the Luxembourg electronic gazette (Recueil Electronique des Societes et Associations - RESA) and on the Company's website at https://www.aroundtown.de/investor-relations/general-meeting/ogm-2022/: (a) this convening notice including the draft resolution proposed to be adopted; (b) the total number of shares and attached voting rights issued by the Company as of the date of publication of this convening notice; and (c) the Voting and Proxy Form (as further mentioned below). ATTENDANCE AND REGISTRATION PROCEDURES a) Attendance In accordance with article 1 (1) of the Luxembourg law of 23 September 2020 on measures concerning the holding of meetings in companies and other legal entities, as amended, the Company will not hold a physical general meeting. Shareholders or their proxies will not be able to attend the OGM in person. b) Webcast Shareholders may follow the OGM remotely via the live audio-webcast of the OGM, which will be available on 11 January 2022 at https://www.webcast-eqs.com/register/aroundtown20220111ogm starting at 1.30 p.m. CET. c) Voting Shareholders can exercise their voting rights only by (i) voting remotely in writing or (ii) authorising the secretary of the OGM or a proxyholder to cast votes on their behalf in the secretary's or such proxyholder's discretion using the voting and proxy form (the "Voting and Proxy Form"). In order to exercise voting rights in the OGM, shareholders must provide the Company with (i) the Record Date Confirmation, as indicated below, and (ii) the duly completed, dated and signed Voting and Proxy Form, as indicated below, at the latest until 6 January 2022 at midnight (24:00) (CET). Record Date Confirmation : Only shareholders who were holders of record of shares on the fourteenth (14th) day prior to the OGM at midnight, i.e. on 28 December 2021 at midnight (24:00) (CET) (the "Record Date"), can participate in and vote at the OGM. Shareholders are obliged to obtain a confirmation letter (the "Record Date Confirmation") issued by the depository bank that is safe-keeping their shares in the Company stating the number of shares held by the shareholder on the Record Date. The Record Date Confirmation must be made in writing and sent by e-mail to generalmeeting@aroundtown.de or by postal services to Aroundtown SA, Attn. General Meeting/Jelena Afxentiou, 40, Rue du Cure, L-1368 Luxembourg, Grand Duchy of Luxembourg. Proxy Form : All shareholders who plan to participate in the OGM and either (i) vote remotely in writing or (ii) authorise the secretary of the OGM or a proxyholder to cast votes on their behalf in the secretary's or such proxyholder's discretion shall duly complete and sign the Voting and Proxy Form, which can be retrieved from the Company's website at https://www.aroundtown.de/investor-relations/general-meeting/ogm-2022/ specifying the number of shares held by the represented shareholder on the Record Date. The dated and signed Voting and Proxy Form shall be sent by e-mail to generalmeeting@aroundtown.de or by postal services to Aroundtown SA, Attn. General Meeting/Jelena Afxentiou, 40, Rue du Cure, L-1368 Luxembourg, Grand Duchy of Luxembourg. Please note that only persons who are shareholders of the Company at the Record Date and who have timely submitted the Record Date Confirmation and the Voting and Proxy Form shall have the right to participate in and vote at the OGM. ADDITIONAL IMPORTANT INFORMATION FOR SHAREHOLDERS Transfer of shares after the Record Date Shareholders are hereby informed that exercise of voting rights is exclusively reserved to such persons that were shareholders on the Record Date (or their duly appointed proxyholders). Transfer of shares after the Record Date is possible subject to usual transfer limitations, as applicable. However, any transferee having become owner of the shares after the Record Date has no right to vote at the OGM. Ability to add agenda items or table alternative resolutions One or more shareholders holding together at least 5% of the issued share capital of the Company have the right to add items to the agenda of the OGM and/or to table draft resolutions for items included or to be included on the agenda of the OGM. Any such request must: - be received by the Company before 20 December 2021 at midnight (24:00) (CET); - be made in writing and sent by e-mail to generalmeeting@aroundtown.de or by postal services to Aroundtown SA, Attn. General Meeting/Jelena Afxentiou, 40, Rue du Cure, L-1368 Luxembourg, Grand Duchy of Luxembourg; - be accompanied by either (a) the text of the new agenda item and/or draft resolution and a background explanation or (b) an alternative resolution for an existing agenda item, with a clear identification of the agenda item concerned, the text of the proposed alternative resolution and a background explanation; - include the name of a contact person and a postal address or e-mail address at which the Company can confirm receipt within forty-eight (48) hours; and - be followed by a Record Date Confirmation (as defined above under Attendance and Registration Procedures), proving that the requesting shareholder is a shareholder of the Company on the Record Date (as defined above under Attendance and Registration Procedures) holding alone or together with other requesting shareholders at least 5% of the issued share capital of the Company. The Company will publish a revised agenda at the latest on 27 December 2021. Right to ask questions Shareholders have the right to ask questions about items on the agenda of the OGM before the meeting. In accordance with the Luxembourg law of 23 September 2020 on measures concerning the holding of meetings in companies and other legal entities, as amended, shareholders may submit their questions electronically. The Company asks shareholders wishing to exercise this right to send their questions by e-mail to generalmeeting@aroundtown.de at least ten (10) business days prior to the OGM together with evidence establishing the holding of shares on the Record Date. The submitted questions will be answered at the reasonable discretion of the Company and the Company is not required to answer all questions. In particular, questions may be summarized, reasonable questions may be selected in the interest of the other shareholders, and questions from shareholders' associations and institutional investors with significant voting interests may be given preference. Publication of voting results The results of the vote will be published on the Company's website within fifteen (15) days following the OGM. After the OGM, a shareholder can obtain upon request and within a period not exceeding two months from the date of the vote, confirmation that his/her vote has been registered and counted by the Company. For further information you may contact Jelena Afxentiou, telephone: +352 288 313, e-mail: generalmeeting@aroundtown.de. Further information about the processing of data in connection with the OGM is available on the Company's website at https://www.aroundtown.de/investor-relations/general-meeting/ogm-2022/. Luxembourg, 10 December 2021 Aroundtown SA The Board of Directors

10.12.2021 Dissemination of a Corporate News, transmitted by DGAP - a service of EQS Group AG.

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COURBEVOIE (dpa-AFX) - French building materials firm Saint-Gobain (CODGF.PK) Friday said it has sold its regional glass transformation business Glassolutions in Denmark to the German glass manufacturer Semcoglas Holding GmbH. The financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. Glassolutions in Denmark employs around 160 people across 4 distribution sites and 2 production sites. The unit recorded sales of around 30 million euros in 2020. Saint-Gobain said the divestment is part of its continued portfolio optimization strategy to enhance its growth and profitability profile in line with the 'Grow & Impact' plan objectives. 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.
As the shift towards software as a service continues, BusinessesForSale.com compiles a top 10 list for e-entrepreneurs looking to buy or expand their business.

LONDON, Dec. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- As remote working and cloud-based software become increasingly popular, purchasing a credible and sustainable business in the digital realm is a smart way to pursue growth in the new year.

SaaS (software as a service) has become one of the fastest-growing market sectors. In 2020, there were 4,443 digital-related listings on BusinessesForSale.com. 2021 has seen a significant increase in these types of businesses, now sitting at 7,398 active listings.

"We're not only witnessing new types of businesses at play here, but a restructuring of business models that put customer engagement at the forefront - a unique way of reimagining how businesses operate", says Andrew Markou, CEO of BusinessesForSale.com.

SaaS businesses are in high demand due to the value and alignment it brings to its customers, so why not add these digital opportunities to your Christmas stocking?

Top 10 SaaS opportunities on BusinessesForSale.com:

1) Software company with a proven SaaS model, designed to manage and automate biological research service requirements:

https://uk.businessesforsale.com/uk/saas-lims-for-the-medical-research-sector-for-sale.aspx

2) Software developer with innovative SaaS-based applications designed for wholesalers and manufacturers:

https://uk.businessesforsale.com/uk/software-developer-with-innovative-suite-saas-business-applications-for-sale.aspx

3) Digital agency with numerous franchises and software assets, specialising in SEO and SaaS software:

https://uk.businessesforsale.com/uk/digital-agency-specialising-online-seo-and-saas-software-for-sale.aspx

4) SaaS solutions for asset and service management in the oil and gas industries:

https://uk.businessesforsale.com/uk/a-highly-regarded-software-solution-developer-for-sale.aspx

5) Engineering business that delivers 'big data' solutions for food, beverage, and power markets:

https://uk.businessesforsale.com/uk/engineering-business-providing-specialist-software-safety-electrical-solutions-for-sale.aspx

6) Healthcare management software provider that offers app-based service to efficiently manage relationship between healthcare providers and patients:

https://uk.businessesforsale.com/uk/highly-regarded-provider-of-healthcare-management-software-for-sale.aspx

7) SaaS cyber security platform that enables clients to monitor how their data is being used, aiding in increased cyber security efforts:

https://uk.businessesforsale.com/uk/software-as-a-service-saas-cyber-security-platform-for-sale.aspx

8) Innovative SaaS company that benefits users and retailers operating in the automotive industry:

https://uk.businessesforsale.com/uk/saas-company-specialising-in-the-automotive-sector-for-sale.aspx

9) Profitable SaaS business that offers a fully connected digital ecosystem for the hospitality sector, focusing on order, collect and pay solutions:

https://uk.businessesforsale.com/uk/saas-business-order-pay-software-solution-hospitality-sector-for-sale.aspx

10) GDPR focused SaaS business that offers four services, aiding in eliminating expensive and time-consuming consultancy resources:

https://uk.businessesforsale.com/uk/saas-approach-to-privacy-services-and-gdpr-compliance-for-sale.aspx

The relationship between SaaS and the structure of businesses will continue to grow in fascinating ways. Globally, businesses are searching for inventive SaaS models that can target specific objectives, and BusinessesForSale.com is the first port of call to discover these incredible opportunities.

While this digital landscape continues to reshape itself each year, BusinessesForSale.com offers an abundance of options that will fit your search criteria, no matter where you are in the world.

Follow this link to explore them: https://www.businessesforsale.com/search/businesses-for-sale-in-all-countries

For more information about working with BusinessesForSale.com, contact our Commercial Director, Saleem Anwar at saleem@dynamis.co.uk
Kelowna, British Columbia--(Newsfile Corp. - December 10, 2021) - Fission 3.0 Corp. (TSXV: FUU) (OTCQB: FISOF) ("Fission 3.0 Corp" or the "Optionor") is pleased to announce that, further to the news release dated November 1, 2021, it has entered into two option agreements with Traction Uranium Corp. (CSE: TRAC) ("Traction") respecting options to acquire up to a 70% interest in two properties located in Saskatchewan's Athabasca Basin region (the "Properties"): the Hearty Bay Project, comprised of 6 mineral claims covering approximately 10,604 hectares (the "Hearty Bay Project"); and the Lazy Edward Project, comprised of 11 mineral claims covering approximately 1,828 hectares (the "Lazy Edward Project").

The Hearty Bay property surrounds the historic Isle Brochet radioactive boulder trains. Boulder prospecting by Fission 3 on Isle Brochet in 2019 led to the discovery of 45 radioactive boulders with assay values up to 8.23% U 3 O 8 with over 24% of them returning assay values of >1% U 3 O 8 . A marine seismic survey completed in the up-ice direction to the northeast was interpreted to indicate multiple basement structural and lithological features which have defined drill targets. The objective of further exploration on the property is to discover the source of the uraniferous boulder field.

The Lazy Edward Project is located in the south-eastern margin of the Athabasca Basin, between the historic Key Lake Mine and Cameco Corporation's Centennial deposit. The Lazy Edward Project has been identified to have potential for unconformity-type, high-grade uranium deposits typical of the Athabasca Basin. Further, as the Lazy Edward Project is near the edge of the basin, the depth of the drill targets at Lazy Edward Bay are shallow, giving the advantage of relatively inexpensive exploration. Historic drilling in the late 1980's identified very prospective geology with intersections of strong bleaching, limonitization and strong fracturing in the lower sandstone above strongly altered, brecciated and sheared graphitic basement rocks with up to 170ppm uranium. These are a number of the attributes required to host high-grade uranium deposits, and Fission 3.0 Corp has concluded that follow up drilling is highly warranted.

Terms of the Option Agreements

Pursuant to the Option Agreement in respect of the Hearty Bay Project (the "Hearty Bay Agreement"), the Optionor has granted an option to Traction to acquire a 50% interest in the Hearty Bay Project through (i) cash payments to the Optionor of an aggregate of C$650,000 (C$100,000 of which has been paid by Traction in connection with the execution of the Hearty Bay letter of intent, dated October 30, 2021), (ii) the issuance to the Optionor of such number of common shares of Traction as is equal to 7.5% of the number of issued and outstanding common shares of Traction that are outstanding as of such date, provided Traction has completed one or more equity financings for gross proceeds of $2,000,000 by such date, and (iii) the completion of $3,000,000 in exploration work on the Hearty Bay Property, all spread out over two years (the "Hearty Bay Commitments"). The Optionor will retain a 2.0% NSR. Pursuant to the terms of the Hearty Bay Agreement, Traction will have the option (the "Hearty Bay Bump-Up Option") to increase its interest in the Hearty Bay Project to 70% by making additional cash payments totalling $350,000 and completing an additional $3,000,000 in exploration work on the Hearty Bay Property on or before the date that is three years following the date of the Heart Bay Agreement (the "Hearty Bay Bump-Up Commitments").

Pursuant to the Option Agreement in respect of the Lazy Edward Project (the "Lazy Edward Agreement") the Optionor has granted an option to Traction to acquire a 50% interest in the Lazy Edward Project through (i) cash payments to the Optionor of an aggregate of C$650,000 (C$100,000 of which has been paid by Traction in connection with the execution of the Lazy Edward letter of intent, dated October 30, 2021); (ii) the issuance to the Optionor of such number of common shares of Traction as is equal to 7.5% of the number of issued and outstanding common shares of Traction that are outstanding as of such date, provided Traction has completed one or more equity financings for gross proceeds of $2,000,000 by such date; and (iii) completion of $4,500,000 in exploration work on the Lazy Edward Property, all spread out over two years (the "Lazy Edward Commitments"). The Optionor will retain a 2.0% NSR. Pursuant to the terms of the Lazy Edward Agreement, Traction will have the option (the "Lazy Edward Bump-Up Option") to increase its interest in the Lazy Edward Project to 70% by making additional cash payments totalling $350,000, and completing an additional $4,500,000 in exploration work on the Lazy Edward Property, on or before the date that is three years following the date of the Lazy Edward Agreement (the "Lazy Edward Bump-Up Commitments").

Qualified Person

The technical information in this news release has been prepared in accordance with the Canadian regulatory requirements set out in National Instrument 43-101 and reviewed on behalf of the company by Raymond Ashley, P.Geo., Vice President, Exploration of Fission 3.0 Corp., a Qualified Person. Raymond Ashley has an arm's length relationship with Traction.

About Fission 3.0 Corp.

Fission 3.0 is a uranium project generator and exploration company, focusing on projects in the Athabasca Basin, home to some of world's largest high grade uranium discoveries. Fission 3.0 currently has 14 projects in the Athabasca Basin. Several of Fission 3.0's projects are near large uranium discoveries, including, Arrow, Triple R and Hurricane deposits. Fission 3.0 has recently completed an $8 million funding with Red Cloud Securities and is currently planning a winter exploration/drill program on its PLN project. It is also entertaining JV partners with some of its other projects.

About Traction Uranium Corp.

Traction is a mineral exploration company with an objective to locate and develop economic mineral properties. The Company is based in Vancouver, BC and holds options over the Hearty Bay and Lazy Edwards properties, located in the Athabasca Basin region of Saskatchewan, and the Whitewater property, located in the Slocan Mining Division, Kaslo, British Columbia.

For more information, investors should review the Company's filings that are available at www.sedar.com.

Fission 3.0 Corp. Contact Information

Investor Relations

Telephone: 778 484 8030

Email: ir@fission3corp.com

Traction Contact Information

Michael Malana

Director and CEO

Telephone: 604 561 2687

Email: michael.malana@gmail.com

Forward-Looking Statements

This news release contains certain forward-looking statements within the meaning of applicable securities laws. All statements that are not historical facts, including without limitation, statements regarding future estimates, plans, programs, forecasts, projections, objectives, assumptions, expectations or beliefs of future performance, including statements regarding the suitability of the Hearty Bay Project and Lazy Edward Project for mining exploration, future payments, issuance of shares and work commitment funds, are "forward-looking statements." These forward-looking statements reflect the expectations or beliefs of management of the Company based on information currently available to it. Forward-looking statements are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties, including those detailed from time to time in filings made by the Company with securities regulatory authorities, which may cause actual outcomes to differ materially from those discussed in the forward-looking statements. These factors should be considered carefully and readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on such forward-looking statements. The forward-looking statements and information contained in this news release are made as of the date hereof and the Company undertakes no obligation to update publicly or revise any forward-looking statements or information, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, unless so required by applicable securities laws.

The TSX Venture Exchange and the Canadian Securities Exchange have not reviewed, approved or disapproved the contents of this press release, and do not accept 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/107283


PARIS (dpa-AFX) - Societe Generale SA (SCGLF.PK, SCGLY.PK) Friday said its Board of Directors approved the adaptations of the organisation of its General Management team, aiming to better meet the challenges of ESG and digital technology. The new organisation will be effective from January 17.



The company said Diony Lebot, Deputy Chief Executive Officer, will be responsible for overseeing all ESG policies and their effective incorporation into the strategic trajectories. She also retains supervision of the specialised financial services and insurance activities



Further, Gaelle Olivier is appointed Deputy General Manager of the Group and Chief Operating Officer. In this role, she will supervise the company's resources and be responsible for coordinating the IT, digital transformation and Innovation function.



She will be replaced as CEO of the Asia region by Cecile Bartenieff, currently Chief Operating Officer for Global Banking & Investor Solutions and a member of the Management Committee, in compliance with local regulations.



The company expects the major transformations will structure its strategic roadmap, meeting the increasing importance of ESG and digital issues.



Following the completion of the remediation programmes concerning US legal proceedings, supervised until their termination by Diony Lebot, Frederic Oudea, Chief Executive Officer of the Group, will take over the direct supervision of the Risk and Compliance control functions. This is in addition to the General Inspection and Audit function, the Finance function, the Corporate Secretary and Human Resources and Communications.



Philippe Aymerich remains Deputy Chief Executive Officer in charge of all Retail Banking activities. Sebastien Proto remains Deputy General Manager in charge of the French Retail Banking networks and Private Banking.



Slawomir Krupa remains Deputy General Manager and Head of Global Banking and Investor Solutions.



Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX

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Representing the city of Shanghai , REFIRE exhibited its latest PRISMA fuel cell systems at the Expo's cloud exhibition

REFIRE strengthens its industry partnerships and aims to reach more customers around the globe

DUBAI, UAE, Dec. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- At the Expo 2020 Dubai, which officially opened on 1 October 2021, Shanghai REFIRE Technology Co. Ltd. (REFIRE), a leading provider of hydrogen fuel cell technologies, showcased its medium- and high-power PRISMA hydrogen fuel cell systems as well as core components - fuel cell stacks. This is the first time REFIRE has exhibited its products to global visitors through World Expo's online exhibition.

Founded in 2015 and headquartered in Shanghai, China, REFIRE is one of the most vocal promoters of the fuel cell vehicle industry and pioneers its way with continuous innovation, industry collaboration and cultivation of the value chain.

REFIRE joined the Expo as a representative of Shanghai's most technologically innovative companies. In line with China's 2060 carbon neutrality goal, REFIRE presented its latest fuel cell technologies that offer clean hydrogen energy solutions for future mobility.

PRISMA hydrogen fuel cell systems are the latest result of REFIRE's innovation. The systems were developed based on the typical application scenario of commercial vehicles, especially heavy-duty vehicles. To guarantee the vehicles can run in all conditions and can deal with high-intensity situations while emitting zero pollutants, REFIRE massively improved the key technical indicators in its latest PRISMA XII+ fuel cell system, ensuring durability, reliability and system safety.

Robin Lin, Founder, Chairman and CEO of REFIRE said: "REFIRE is honored to be one of the representative companies of China and Shanghai at the World Expo. Although unable to travel to Dubai due to the ongoing pandemic, we were pleased to showcase our technological innovation and products under multiple application scenarios to the global audience online.

"For us, the Expo is a great international exchange platform so we may strengthen our global collaborations in the hydrogen industry, accelerate our global business expansion, and offer even more quality and reliable products to global customers. We are committed to providing green power to the world's economic growth and sustainable development."

Over the past six years, REFIRE has actively collaborated with multiple partners in the global industry chain to build an ecosystem for hydrogen energy applications and promote the large-scale development of fuel cell technology. The company's technology is not only adopted in the Yangtze River Delta and Pearl River Delta regions, Central and North China, but has also been expanded to international markets, such as Germany, Japan, Malaysia and the United States of America.

Against the background of promoting sustainable green growth, REFIRE has been committed to accelerating the mass adoption of zero-emission fuel cell mobility across the globe, and this year marks another fruitful year for its international business. In May, REFIRE has been granted certificates from authorised EU authority RDW through TUV Nord, further paving way for REFIRE's European market expansion. In August, REFIRE has collaborated with eCap Mobility, a strategic partner in northern Europe, and commissioned a fuel cell bus in Germany's Lower Oder Valley National Park. In addition, REFIRE inked two partnerships this year with Schaeffler AG and Toyota respectively to accelerate fuel cell technology innovation.

One of the largest pavilions at the Expo, the China Pavilion showcases the country's scientific and technological innovations and promotes international exchange and cooperation. The "Shanghai Day Exhibition on Cloud" featured at the Pavilion saw nearly 60 high-tech enterprises from Shanghai and Yangtze River Delta region showcase over 300 cutting-edge products, which is a reflection of the region's achievements and applications in technological innovation and digital transformation.

Enter the REFIRE Expo Cloud Exhibition Hall and learn more about REFIRE's cutting-edge clean power solutions via the link https://exposhanghai.digitalexpo.com/pc/exhibitor/detail?eid=10015032021110500016360923453874500745259704025&id=10017012021111100016366184541919536445877542354.

About REFIRE

Headquartered in Shanghai, China, REFIRE is a leading global provider of hydrogen fuel cell technologies. The company specializes in the design, testing, prototyping, application engineering and production of integrated fuel cell systems for buses, trucks, specialized vehicles, and marine applications. As of December 2021, REFIRE's fuel cell technologies and products are powering fuel cell vehicles (FCVs) in daily use in 17 cities in China and 5 overseas countries.
The Korea Pavilion at EXPO 2020 Dubai has opened its virtual doors for the public to easily access, guided by K-pop stars with 360 3D VR Experiences.

DUBAI, UAE, Dec. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Korea Pavilion has been gaining momentum at the EXPO 2020 Dubai providing a glimpse into the beautiful future of mobility. This architectural wonder includes attractions such as its dynamic facade that constantly changes through the day, ramps giving access to some of the best views of the EXPO, and many more. During the first 8 weeks since it's opening, the Korea Pavilion has received a footfall of more than 300,000 visitors, making it one of the most visited pavilions in the EXPO 2020 Dubai.

In response to its growing popularity, Korea Pavilion has officially launched its Virtual Tours around the entire pavilion from the comfort of a screen and access to the internet. Adding to the appeal of the tour, the renowned K-pop group "Stray Kids", ambassadors of the pavilion will guide the visitors. It is all just a click away; anyone can access the Virtual Korea Pavilion from anywhere by visiting https://koreapavilion2020virtualtour.kr/ and selecting the preferred language. It is a fully paved through experience designed to leave the visitors with the facts and cultural experience of the Republic of Korea.

[Yu Jeoung Yeol, President & CEO of Korea Trade-Investment Promotion Agency(KOTRA) and Commissioner General of Korea Pavilion], said, "While non-face-to-face services are in the spotlight amid the pandemic situation, the open of the Virtual Korea Pavilion will provide opportunities to experience the Korea Pavilion without visit it in person, allowing all people around the world can fully enjoy it."

The Virtual Korea Pavilion combines video material that describes the attributes of every corner, far or near, implemented in a 3D VR, allowing visitors to explore authentic locations that appear as realistic as it would be if they had physically stepped into it. Not only can one see into every corner of the Korea Pavilion scanned with a 360-degree 3D VR but can also assess the distance from each point. This provides the virtual visitors with the flexibility of being able to stroll along or pace through bits.

It also includes the Korea Pavilion map, which enables you to navigate the complete Korea Pavilion at a glance, 360-degree turnaround, and zoom capability, as well as the ability to walk straight to the desired location and enjoy freely.

Visitors can now experience 'Smart Korea, Moving the World to You,' effortlessly merging the future of innovative technology with augmented reality, accessible from the convenience of any location. The pavilion offers architecture, exhibitions, and performances that demonstrate Korea's distinctive culture, new technology, and future vision. It also emphasizes Korea's dedication to guiding humanity toward a brighter future along with the transformation and importance that mobility will bring to future societies with its limitless possibilities.

Photo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1707244/Korea_Pavilion_EXPO_2020_Dubai.jpg

Photo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1707245/Korea_Pavilion_EXPO_2020_Dubai.jpg
WALLIX boasts robust foundations following the implementation of its Ambition 21 plan: a leading offer in the PAM[1] market, an installed customer base and an extensive geographic footprint;

The digital transformation and the inherent boom in access stemming from new digital uses offer WALLIX the prospect of particularly buoyant market momentum, with the PAM market set to double in size by 2025;

The "PAM for all" strategic vision aims to position WALLIX as a leading player striving to build a trusted digital world;

A primarily organic growth trajectory backed up by 10 million in self-funded investments;

A target of 100 million in turnover and an operating margin of 15% by 2025.



Paris, December 10, 2021 - WALLIX (Euronext ALLIX), a European cybersecurity software company and expert in access and identity security, is unveiling its strategic plan for the 2022-2025 period, and reaffirming its aim of becoming a leading player in creating a trusted digital world.



Jean-Noel de Galzain, Chairman of the WALLIX GROUP Management Board, said: "In only a few years WALLIX has become a go-to cybersecurity supplier and European leader recognized by top industry analysts such as Kuppingercole and Gartner, with a global footprint underpinned by a powerful ecosystem of integrator partners and trained and certified resellers. As a result, the Group possesses major technological and strategic advantages in order to continue to grow and contribute to the emergence of an independent European cybersecurity offer that meets new regulatory requirements in terms of information risk management and responsibility expectations.

This ambitious strategy, driven by our new UNICORN 25 plan, aims to respond to the security challenges linked to digital transformation, with the need for openness and the inevitable and exponential growth of access to digital systems, whether in organizations or in society. With our "PAM for all" vision, we are offering support for these defining developments on a global scale by providing security solutions for access across the board, for users and for tomorrow's industrial objects and systems.

This is a great opportunity for WALLIX to scale up and become a global leader in digital transformations' security, with the goal of reaching 100 million in turnover by 2025 and delivering an operating margin at the high end of industry standards. Spearheading Digital Corporate Responsibility, WALLIX seeks to build a trusted digital world and to be a structuring player in the Cybersecurity sector in Europe."



The "Ambition 21" plan enabled WALLIX to lay down the robust foundations necessary for its new cycle of sustainable growth

Thanks to the structural investments made since 2018, WALLIX now has a comprehensive PAM offering expanded into adjacent market segments (WALLIX Bastion, WALLIX BestSafe launched in February 2020, WALLIX Trustelem launched in May 2020) enabling it to address all the threats posed by the implementation of new technologies (IoT, Cloud, etc.) and new digital services (telemedicine, WFH, smart city, predictive maintenance, etc.). This technological know-how has seen WALLIX recognized as an "Overall Leader" among international players in the PAM sector identified by consultancy Kuppingercole and named Challenger and the only European publisher among the 10 world leaders in the 2021 Gartner PAM Magic Quadrant.

WALLIX greatly extended its geographical footprint under its "Ambition 21" plan, increasing its operations in Germany and opening offices in Spain, Italy, and the United Arab Emirates. On top of its extensive geographical footprint in Europe, WALLIX has built and mobilized a network of approximately 300 partners (resellers & distributors), allowing the Group's sales force to cover 80% of the global market. In Europe, the Group recently signed partnerships with TechData in Spain and the UK and with IT2Soft in Scandinavia. WALLIX has also taken the first steps towards establishing operations in North America, opening offices in the United States and Canada, both of which offer significant growth potential for the Group.

To boost its growth, WALLIX has developed high-potential business verticals such as healthcare and manufacturing. In the manufacturing sector, WALLIX will also offer its embedded technology for Industry 4.0, WALLIX Inside, which combines WALLIX access and identity security solutions integrated by design into business solutions.

With strong market traction and an innovative approach to its offers, WALLIX now has a base of nearly 1,600 customers equipped with its solutions, which the Group aims to leverage in order to perpetuate its strong growth trajectory.

WALLIX generated turnover of 20 million in 2020 and aims to continue the strong growth seen in the first half of 2021 throughout the full year. WALLIX is reaping the rewards of Its conquest strategy rolled out as part of the "Ambition 21" plan, with a clear improvement in operating income in the first half of 2021 and the prospect of reaching profitability in the second half of the year.



Market growth of 20% per year, driven by the acceleration of the digital transition and the resulting increase in accesses

WALLIX operates in a particularly favorable market: the accelerating digital transition brings new use cases and calls for growing investment in cybersecurity in response to the proliferation of cyberattacks.

The health crisis stemming from the Covid-19 pandemic has spurred the digitization of the economy to an unprecedented degree. In order to ensure viability and productivity, companies across all business sectors are rethinking their channels of communication between employees, customers and suppliers. Interactions and exchanges are instantaneous and mobile, and vastly more numerous than before. The security of access to information and data ranks more than ever as a major challenge in securing a successful digital transformation.

At the same time, the stellar increase in digital accesses and resources is prompting an increase in inherent risks, with an upsurge in cyberattacks - and fourfold growth in 2020 according to ANSSI[2]. The cost of cybercrime, estimated at $6 trillion, makes it the third largest economy in the world in 2021 and is forecast to almost double by 2025.

This fundamental trend, with ever-greater mobility and a growing number of identities to manage, for individuals and objects alike, is set to gain pace in the years to come. The proliferation of accesses is a real growth driver for the access and identity protection industry. Kuppingercole sees the PAM market doubling to $3.1 billion by 2025, implying a CAGR of 21% over the 2021-2025 period.



A defining medium-term vision: PAM for all

In response to the growing number of accesses and mounting demand from companies to secure their digital assets, WALLIX has developed a vision referred to as "PAM for all," enabling it to offer to its customers the promise of a secure digital transformation, for everyone and everything, anywhere and anytime. This strategy is built on three main pillars:

PAM leadership: WALLIX aims to roll out security technologies including Bastion and BestSafe to all - and not simply users of privileged accounts - building on the principle of least privilege to secure all of an organization's at-risk users and workstations. This extension also includes the rollout of full Cloud solutions (Bastion for Cloud) to address the needs of Cloud or native SaaS players such as the retail and media sectors.

WALLIX aims to roll out security technologies including Bastion and BestSafe to all - and not simply users of privileged accounts - building on the principle of least privilege to secure all of an organization's at-risk users and workstations. This extension also includes the rollout of full Cloud solutions (Bastion for Cloud) to address the needs of Cloud or native SaaS players such as the retail and media sectors. the extension of WALLIX's offer to IAM: WALLIX aims to support its customers in their adjacent identity and access management and governance issues. To that end, WALLIX plans to develop additional offers around identities (multi-factor identification, IDaaS, IGA, SSO), with the objective of increasing customer value.

WALLIX aims to support its customers in their adjacent identity and access management and governance issues. To that end, WALLIX plans to develop additional offers around identities (multi-factor identification, IDaaS, IGA, SSO), with the objective of increasing customer value. embedded cybersecurity: To meet the future challenges of IT/OT interconnection and the advent of the Internet of Things, WALLIX is pursuing the development of embedded cybersecurity solutions, including WALLIX Inside and the Oscar platform, winner of the Grand Defi Cyber[3]. In the wake of inaugural partnerships with Fives and Schneider Electric, WALLIX Inside is intended to offer manufacturers the possibility of providing secure solutions by design; it will be a powerful lever for profitable growth for WALLIX in the medium term.



Continued international expansion and enhancement of distribution models

International expansion remains a pillar of WALLIX's growth, with the aim of consolidating the Group's leadership in Europe and significantly extending its footprint in the North American market. In the United States, WALLIX will be able to consolidate its development by leveraging, as a first step, the large-scale partnership signed last May with Arrow Electronics, a leading IT distributor, giving it access to over 1,000 resellers and integrators supporting millions of US customers spanning all sectors. This partnership will boost the distribution of WALLIX solutions in the United States, thereby offering US companies all the Group's expertise in access and identity security.

WALLIX aims to have increased its international turnover by a factor of 7.5 by the end of the Unicorn 25 plan.

In addition to geographic coverage, WALLIX plans to add new go-to-market models to its current "Channel" model (300 resellers and value-added distributors). It will do so first and foremost by developing a direct management approach for strategic key accounts (Global Account Management), with a dedicated WALLIX team serving as cyber expert in the field alongside major integrators. For the distribution of products and services integrating WALLIX technologies to reach the largest number of people possible, the Group plans to implement an alliance strategy with Industry 4.0 players, managed shared service providers or technology partners so that they can distribute offers integrating WALLIX cybersecurity solutions. WALLIX Inside already provides the groundwork for this OEM model, which is set to grow significantly during the Unicorn 25 plan period.

WALLIX is accordingly working to promote a genuine cybersecurity ecosystem, not only by strengthening its links with its commercial partners, but also by forging alliances with technological players, research laboratories and business solution integrators.



Target of 100 million in turnover and an operating margin above 15% by 2025

WALLIX estimates the investments necessary to achieve its organic growth objectives at around 10 million. These investments, of which 40 to 50% should be realized in 2022, will be self-funded by the Group. They will focus on product innovation and R&D, and the expansion of marketing and sales activities.

The Unicorn 25 plan is designed to enable WALLIX to bring its turnover to 100 million by 2025, with a target operating margin above 15%. Strong organic growth projected to average 30% per annum over the entire plan will be key to achieving these objectives, rounded out by an external growth component.

Unicorn 25 will take WALLIX into a new era of development that will enable it to consolidate its leadership in access and identity security and position it as a unifying force in cybersecurity, guaranteeing the protection of organizations in the digital era. WALLIX is positioning itself today to meet the future needs of the fully digital world.

ABOUT WALLIX

A software company providing cybersecurity solutions, WALLIX is the European specialist in Identity and Access Security Solutions. WALLIX's unified solutions portfolio enables companies to meet today's data protection challenges. WALLIX solutions guarantee detection and resilience to cyberattacks, thus enabling business continuity. They also ensure compliance with regulatory requirements regarding access to IT infrastructure and critical data. The unified solutions portfolio is distributed through a network of more than 316 resellers and integrators around the world. Listed on Euronext (ALLIX), WALLIX supports more than 1,500 organizations in securing their digital transformation. WALLIX is a founding member of the HEXATRUST group and was included in Futur40, the first ranking of growth companies on the stock market published by Forbes France and is part of the Tech 40 index.

WALLIX affirms its digital responsibility and undertakes to contribute to the construction of a European digital space of trust, guarantor of the security and confidentiality of organizations' data but also for any individual concerned about the protection of their digital identity and the respect for his private life. Digital technology, whether for professional or personal use, must be ethical and responsible in order to experience a secure societal digital transformation that respects individual freedoms.

www.wallix.com | info@wallix.com



FINANCIAL COMMUNICATION CONTACTS

ACTUS Finance & Communication

Investor Relations - Olivier LAMBERT

+33 1 53 67 36 33 / wallix@actus.fr

Press Relations - Deborah SCHWARTZ

+33 6 27 09 05 73 / dschwartz@actus.fr

[1] Privileged Access Management

[2] France's national agency for IT systems security

[3] OSCAR is the winner of the Grand Defi Cyber, a call for projects launched as part of the France's national cybersecurity strategy supported by the Programme d'investissements d'avenir (PIA) and France Relance.

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NEW YORK CITY (dpa-AFX) - Dexus said Blackstone's Core+ Real Estate strategy in Asia has signed a binding agreement to acquire GIC's 49% joint venture interest in the Dexus Australian Logistics Trust. The transaction was a result of an unsolicited proposal by Blackstone. The existing management arrangements for the Dexus Australian Logistics Trust remains unchanged. Blackstone's Core+ strategies focus on logistics, residential, office, life science office, and retail assets in global gateway cities. Darren Steinberg, Dexus CEO, said: 'This new relationship provides a stable long-term source of capital to invest alongside us.' Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX

Werbehinweise: Die Billigung des Basisprospekts durch die BaFin ist nicht als ihre Befurwortung der angebotenen Wertpapiere zu verstehen. Wir empfehlen Interessenten und potenziellen Anlegern den Basisprospekt und die Endgultigen Bedingungen zu lesen, bevor sie eine Anlageentscheidung treffen, um sich moglichst umfassend zu informieren, insbesondere uber die potenziellen Risiken und Chancen des Wertpapiers. Sie sind im Begriff, ein Produkt zu erwerben, das nicht einfach ist und schwer zu verstehen sein kann.
The "Spain Construction Industry Databook Series Market Size Forecast (2016 2025) by Value and Volume (area and units) across 40+ Market Segments in Residential, Commercial, Industrial, Institutional and Infrastructure Construction Q1 2021 Update" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering.

The Spanish construction industry has done well to withstand the impact of economic slowdown along with negative business and consumer sentiment due to disruption caused by Covid-19 outbreak.

Though growth in certain sectors will continue to remain subdued in near term, overall outlook for the industry is positive. According to the Q4 2020 Global Construction Survey, construction industry in Spain is expected to grow by 19.3% to reach US$ 84894.1 million in 2021.

Despite near-term challenges in certain construction sectors, medium to long term growth story in Spain remains intact. The construction industry in Spain is expected to grow steadily over the next four quarters. The growth momentum is expected to continue over the forecast period, recording a CAGR of 3.8% during 2021-2025. The construction output in the country is expected to reach US$ 98597.3 million by 2025.

This report provides data and trend analyses on construction industry in Spain, with over 100 KPIs. This is a data-centric report and it provides trend analyses with over 140+ charts and 110+ tables. It details market size forecast, emerging trends, market opportunities, and investment risks in over 40 segments in residential, commercial, industrial, institutional, and infrastructure construction sectors.

It provides a comprehensive understanding of construction industry sectors in both value and volume (both by activity and units) terms. The report focuses on combining industry dynamics with macro-economic scenario and changing consumer behavior to offer a 360-degree view of the opportunities and risks.

Market Data and Insights:

This report provides market size and forecast across 40+ construction segments for a period of 10 years from 2016-2025 in Spain.

KPIs covered include the following:

Market size by value

Market size by volume of construction

Number of units

Coverage Includes:

Spain Residential Building Construction Coverage: 10-year market size forecast in value and volume (area and units) terms

Spain Residential Green Building Construction Coverage: 10-year market size forecast in value and volume (area and units) terms

Spain Commercial Building Construction Coverage: 10-year market size forecast in value and volume (area and units) terms

Spain Commercial Green Building Construction Coverage: 10-year market size forecast in value and volume (area and units) terms

Spain Industrial Green Building Construction Coverage: 10-year market size forecast in value and volume (area and units)



Spain Institutional Building Construction Coverage: 10-year market size forecast in value and volume (area and units) terms

Spain Institutional Green Building Construction Coverage: 10-year market size forecast in value and volume (area and units) terms

Spain Infrastructure Construction Sectors: 10-year market size forecast in value terms

Spain Green Infrastructure Construction: 10-year market size forecast in value terms

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Werbehinweise: Die Billigung des Basisprospekts durch die BaFin ist nicht als ihre Befurwortung der angebotenen Wertpapiere zu verstehen. Wir empfehlen Interessenten und potenziellen Anlegern den Basisprospekt und die Endgultigen Bedingungen zu lesen, bevor sie eine Anlageentscheidung treffen, um sich moglichst umfassend zu informieren, insbesondere uber die potenziellen Risiken und Chancen des Wertpapiers. Sie sind im Begriff, ein Produkt zu erwerben, das nicht einfach ist und schwer zu verstehen sein kann.
MoneyTV with Donald Baillargeon television program, Copyright MMXXI, all rights reserved. MoneyTV does not provide an analysis of companies' financial positions and is not soliciting to purchase or sell securities of the companies, nor are we offering a recommendation of featured companies or their stocks. Information discussed herein has been provided by the companies and should be verified independently with the companies and a securities analyst. MoneyTV provides companies a 3 to 4 month corporate profile with multiple appearances for a cash fee of $6,950.00 to $11,995.00, does not accept company stock as payment for services, does not hold any positions, options or warrants in featured companies. The information herein is not an endorsement by Donald Baillargeon, the producer, publisher or parent company of MoneyTV.

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.
NEW YORK CITY (dpa-AFX) - Philip Morris International Inc. (PM) said, in marking the 10-year anniversary of its decade-long Agricultural Labor Practices (ALP) program and the International Year for the Elimination of Child Labor, the company has developed a comprehensive report on agricultural labor practices. Jennifer Motles, Chief Sustainability Officer, PMI, said: 'We are acutely aware that poverty and inequality are at the root of child labor and other human rights issues. Through our focus on living income, we aim to build resilience in our farming communities, provide new and alternative sources of revenue, and improve income levels and households' livelihoods.' The company is also partnering with Verit to integrate its learnings into an open-source toolkit that will aid companies, suppliers, and producers in driving improvements in labor practices of agricultural supply chains around the world. 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.
-Phosphorescent pigments market is projected to expand at a CAGR of 4.9% from 2021 to 2031. Rise in the demand for photoluminiscent markings in order to illuminate hazardous bends, pedestrian crossings, and speed bumps is boosting market growth.

-Surge in the popularity of innovative and top-performing inorganic phosphorescent pigments is estimated to fuel expansion avenues in the market

ALBANY, N.Y., Dec. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Several market enterprises are growing efforts toward the development of eco-friendly phosphorescent pigments. For instance, Unilever is gathering traction, owing to its first-of-its-kind, glow-in-the-dark signage on Hive buildings developed using human- and eco-friendly phosphorescent pigments. This highlights the growing popularity of sustainable buildings concept across the globe.

Following the path of Unilever, many enterprises are diverting considerable sum of money toward R&D projects, which are focused on human- and eco-friendly phosphorescent pigments that flow according to the weather. Key specialty of these pigments is that they demonstrate a bright light on sunny days and a little less light on cloudy days.

Read Report Overview at https://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/phosphorescent-pigments-market.html

Several players are using the strategy of blending advanced technologies in order to produce outdoor signage, which visually glow at night when artificial light sources of streetlights and buildings are available.

Players are increasing investments in R&D projects, which aim at boosting the performance of human- and eco-friendly phosphorescent pigments suitable for aircraft, mining equipment, and sustainable buildings.

Phosphorescent Pigments Market: Key Findings

Market Observes Surge in Demand for Photoluminiscent Markings for Illuminating Pedestrian Crossings and Dangerous Bends

Enterprises are experiencing promising growth in demand for phosphorescent paints and coatings. Moreover, many players are advancing the quality of their products in order to attract customer base. A case in point here is a product launch by OliKrom, which is a France-based startup. The latest phosphorescent paint by the firm has been tested in real conditions, and assures enhanced and stable lighting performance, which is useful for road infrastructures.

Surge in the need of illuminating pedestrian crossings, speed bumps, and dangerous bends is boosting the sales opportunities in the global phosphorescent pigments market. Thus, to fulfill the current demand, major market players are increasing the production of phosphorescent paints.

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Strontium Oxide Aluminate Chemistry Assists Luminescence in Phosphorescent Pigments

Companies are expanding their portfolio as well as strengthening their production capabilities in different phosphorescence masterbatches and compounds for majority of polymers. For instance, RTP Company is expanding its product portfolio in phosphorescent pigments that are able to give an afterglow period of around 10 longer than Zinc Sulfide (ZnS)-based phosphorescent pigments. For the development of phosphorescent pigments, the company has focused on innovations in the strontium oxide aluminate chemistry.

Players are mainly focused on fulfilling present market demand for improved luminescence and afterglow together with increased activation time. Moreover, they are increasing their dependability by avoiding the hazardous substances for use in the production of phosphorescent pigments.

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Phosphorescent Pigments Market: Growth Boosters

Increase in the use of phosphorescent pigments in the paint and coating industry is resulting into increased sales opportunities for market players

Surge in the use of phosphorescent pigments for military and road infrastructures applications is estimated to generate lucrative avenue for market players

Phosphorescent Pigments Market: Regional Analysis

Asia Pacific is a prominent region for companies operating in the phosphorescent pigments market

is a prominent region for companies operating in the phosphorescent pigments market The regional market is projected to expand at a CAGR of over 5.6% during the forecast period, 2021-2031

Rise in in demand for plastics and paints & coatings in the region is boosting the sales of phosphorescent pigments

China is an important country in the Asia Pacific phosphorescent pigments market. The country is projected to maintain its dominance in the region in the upcoming years.

is an important country in the phosphorescent pigments market. The country is projected to maintain its dominance in the region in the upcoming years. The market in Europe is projected to gather lucrative opportunities, owing to surge in product demand from regional automotive industry

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Phosphorescent Pigments Market: Key Players

Some of the key players in the phosphorescent pigments market are:

Lightleader Co. Ltd.

Honeywell International Inc

Nemoto Lumi-Materials Co. Ltd

GloTech International Ltd

Organic Dyes and Pigments

Allureglow International

Yixing Luminous Material Co. Ltd

Kremer Pigmente

Badger Color Concentrates Inc.

SINLOIHI CO., LTD

Phosphorescent Pigments Market Segmentation

Product

Zinc Sulfide

Strontium Aluminate

End Use

Paints & Coatings

Plastics

Printing Inks

Textiles

Others (including Electronics)

Region

North America

Latin America

Europe

Asia Pacific

Middle East & Africa

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Chemicals & Materials Industry battles Tangible Impact of Economic and Cultural changes, Explore Transparency Market Research's award-winning coverage of the global Chemicals & Materials Market:

Paper Pigments Market - https://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/paper-pigments-market.html

Water-based Pigments Market - https://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/water-based-pigments-market.html

Cadmium Pigments Market - https://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/cadmium-pigments-market.html

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TAIPEI (dpa-AFX) - ChipMOS Technologies Inc. (IMOS), a provider of outsourced semiconductor assembly and test services, reported Thursday that revenue for the month of November was NT$2.24 billion or $80.8 million, an increase of 9 percent from last year's NT$2.05 billion. Revenues, meanwhile, declined 2.3 percent from the preceding month of October. The company noted the sequential decline reflects 1 less working day in November. In the first eleven months of 2021, revenue increased 21 percent. 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.
Additional research from the real-world FLEX Registry focuses on age effect and lymph node status for patients with breast cancer

Agendia, Inc., a world leader in precision oncology for breast cancer, announced that it will present a spotlight poster at the 2021 San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium (SABCS 2021) which confirms the utility of BluePrint in guiding neoadjuvant treatment decisions.

The spotlight presentation, resulting from a research collaboration between Agendia and the Netherlands Cancer Institute and titled Effect of pertuzumab plus neoadjuvant trastuzumab-based chemotherapy in early-stage HER2-positive breast cancer according to BluePrint molecularly defined breast cancer subtypes [PD15-07], evaluates the BluePrint 80-gene molecular subtyping test for predicting response to neoadjuvant trastuzumab-based chemotherapy with or without pertuzumab in a large nationwide cohort of patients from the TRAIN2 study (NCT01996267) and the Netherlands Cancer Registry.

Results showed that BluePrint reclassified 15% of the IHC/FISH HER-2+ patients in this study to a different molecular subtype. These reclassified patients typically do not respond as expected to HER2-targeted therapies, indicating a potential role for genomics in treatment planning for HER2+ patients. The data also support the pronounced benefit of adding pertuzumab to neoadjuvant trastuzumab-based chemotherapy in patients with the BluePrint-defined HER2-subtype, with other subtypes having a less pronounced benefit from pertuzumab. These new findings reinforce the heterogeneity of pathologically HER2+ breast cancer and provide support for the results of a prior translational analysis of the APHINITY trial, which also showed that BluePrint may identify subgroups of HER2+ patients with differing degrees of benefit from the addition of pertuzumab based on gene expression.

"In addition to these results reclassifying 15% of patients in this cohort, the data confirm the genomic heterogeneity of clinically HER2+ patients, and suggest that genomic information could help make more precise decisions following diagnosis," said William Audeh, MD, Chief Medical Officer at Agendia. "HER2 is an extremely complex histological subtype of breast cancer. The results presented in this spotlight poster show again the incredible diversity of this subtype, and the importance of looking at these tumors at a genomic level in order to adjust treatment appropriately even before surgery."

In addition, Agendia shared updates and study results from the 30,000-patient breast cancer genome project, the FLEX study:

[OT2-07-01] The FLEX real-world data platform explores new gene expression profiles and investigator-initiated protocols in early stage breast cancer shares data from some of the 38 investigator-initiated sub-studies approved within the FLEX Registry, the real-world, large-scale, prospective, observational breast cancer study (NCT03053193) intended to enable the discovery of novel genomic profiles to improve precision in the management of breast cancer. With purposefully-wide inclusion criteria, and more than 9,000 patients enrolled towards the 30,000-patient goal, the registry aims to enable researchers to investigate the differences and trends between breast cancer subgroups and allow focus on smaller, more diverse patient populations, which have traditionally been challenging to recruit in sufficient numbers for clinical trials.

shares data from some of the 38 investigator-initiated sub-studies approved within the FLEX Registry, the real-world, large-scale, prospective, observational breast cancer study (NCT03053193) intended to enable the discovery of novel genomic profiles to improve precision in the management of breast cancer. With purposefully-wide inclusion criteria, and more than 9,000 patients enrolled towards the 30,000-patient goal, the registry aims to enable researchers to investigate the differences and trends between breast cancer subgroups and allow focus on smaller, more diverse patient populations, which have traditionally been challenging to recruit in sufficient numbers for clinical trials. [P5-07-05] Deciphering the inferior prognosis of young women with estrogen receptor-positive early-stage breast cancer through full transcriptome analysis: a FLEX database sub-study aims to better understand the biological basis for the disparity in outcomes between older and younger women with early-stage breast cancer by identifying genes that distinguish tumors in these two groups. Data demonstrated that there were relatively few gene expression changes identified by age, and that few transcriptional differences were observed between tumors from women aged 40-54 and women older than 55. These results suggest that observed chemotherapy benefit represents differences in host biology rather than intrinsic tumor biology. Additionally, these findings indicate that age is potentially a more relevant cutoff than menopausal status when observing genes to aid in treatment decisions, reinforcing the need for genomic testing to be available to all women with early stage breast cancer regardless of menopausal status.

aims to better understand the biological basis for the disparity in outcomes between older and younger women with early-stage breast cancer by identifying genes that distinguish tumors in these two groups. Data demonstrated that there were relatively few gene expression changes identified by age, and that few transcriptional differences were observed between tumors from women aged 40-54 and women older than 55. These results suggest that observed chemotherapy benefit represents differences in host biology rather than intrinsic tumor biology. Additionally, these findings indicate that age is potentially a more relevant cutoff than menopausal status when observing genes to aid in treatment decisions, reinforcing the need for genomic testing to be available to all women with early stage breast cancer regardless of menopausal status. [P2-08-06] Defining transcriptomic profiles of breast cancer with early lymph node metastases: a FLEX database sub-study provides a foundation for understanding the mechanisms that promote lymph node (LN) metastasis, with data indicating more biological differences between MammaPrint risk and BluePrint subtype than by pathological stage. Early LN metastasis often precedes systemic metastasis and corresponds with a 20% decrease in 10-year survival compared to patients without LN metastasis,1 underscoring the importance of understanding biologic pathways involved in early LN metastasis to identify promising drug targets for early-stage breast cancer treatment.

"The robust variety and value of the data being collected by the FLEX project cannot be overstated," said Cynthia X Ma, MD, PhD, oncologist and FLEX national principal investigator at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. "In the data presented at SABCS 2021 alone, we see insights that can be turned into clinical actions immediately. Especially interesting is the representation of extreme MammaPrint risk groups, with over 1,100 Ultra Low Risk and over 1,200 High Risk 2 patients enrolled in the study. The insights from these analyses will guide physicians supporting the entire breast cancer community in hard-to-treat cases they may see in their practice today. This project could be one of the most impactful, inclusive studies in breast cancer research to date, and the constant learnings from it allow us to better understand biologic drivers of breast cancer and ultimately result in more personalized, precise treatment plans."

Agendia will present six posters that were accepted to SABCS 2021, highlighting Agendia's mission to help guide the diagnosis and personalized treatment of breast cancer for all patients throughout their treatment journey.

About Agendia

Agendia is a mission-driven company focused on enabling optimized treatment planning by providing physicians with next-generation diagnostic and information solutions that can be used to help improve outcomes and quality of life for breast cancer patients worldwide. The company currently offers two commercially-available genomic profiling tests that help surgeons, oncologists and pathologists to personalize treatment for women at critical intervention points throughout their patient journey.

MammaPrintis a 70-gene prognostic test that, along with other clinicopathologic factors, determines a specific patient's breast cancer recurrence risk. BluePrint is an 80-gene molecular subtyping test that identifies the underlying biology of an individual breast cancer to provide information about its behavior, long-term prognosis and potential response to systemic therapy. Together, MammaPrintand BluePrint provide a holistic view of an individual patient's breast cancer, enabling physicians to objectively select the best treatment plan.

For more information on Agendia's assays and ongoing trials, please visit www.agendia.com.

_______________________

1 Fisher ER, et al. Cancer. 1993;71(6)2141-2150.

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Contacts:

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MIAMI, FL / ACCESSWIRE / December 10, 2021 / Star8 Corp. (OTC PINK:STRH), a publicly traded technology and eCommerce holding company, is pleased to announce it has appointed Bart Butler as Strategic Advisor to the CEO and Board Member. Mr. Butler will being his new position immediately.



Mr. Butler has an impressive background with more than 30 years of industry experience, including holding senior-executive and C-Suite positions with Walt Disney World and European Wax Center. Additionally, Mr. Butler was awarded with seven patents and Disney Inventor Awards - an accolade considered to be the pinnacle of recognition within the Disney corporation.

"Bart has a proven track record as a leader and innovator who motivates his team to strive for excellence," said Mario Diez, Chief Executive Officer of Star8 Corp. "His guidance and insights will be invaluable as he joins Star8 in this new role."

"I appreciate the warm welcome from everyone at Star8 and look forward to contributing to the growth and advancement of our company," added Mr. Butler.

Mr. Butler will be responsible for Advising the CEO on Strategic Growth and Innovation Initiatives based on Market Trends and the overall direction of the Star8 Corporation.

For more information about Star8 Corp. and its subsidiary businesses, please visit Star8Corp.com.

About Star8 Corporation

Star8 Corporation (OTC PINK:STRH) is a publicly traded company with expertise in technology and eCommerce driven solutions. Additionally, Star8 Corp. provides sustainable marketing, technology, sales and distribution consulting for clients. Its subsidiary companies are TempuCheck, RARI Nutrition, and Media Hawk. To learn more about Star8 Corp. please visit Star8Corp.com.

For inquiries please contact: info@star8corp.com | 1-866-316-0808

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1-866-316-0808

Safe Harbor

Statements about the Company's future expectations and all other statements in this press release other than historical facts, are "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, and as that term is defined in the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. The Company intends that such forward-looking statements be subject to the safe harbors created thereby. The above information contains information relating to the Company that is based on the beliefs of the Company and/or its management as well as assumptions made by and information currently available to the Company or its management. When used in this document, the words "anticipate," "estimate," "expect," "intend," "plans," "projects," and similar expressions, as they relate to the Company or its management, are intended to identify forward-looking statements. Such statements reflect the current view of the Company regarding future events and are subject to certain risks, uncertainties and assumptions, including the risks and uncertainties noted. Should one or more of these risks or uncertainties materialize, or should underlying assumptions prove to be incorrect, actual results may vary materially from those described herein as anticipated, believed, estimated, expected, intended or projected. In each instance, forward-looking information should be considered in light of the accompanying meaningful cautionary statements herein. Factors that could cause results to differ include, but are not limited to, successful performance of internal plans, the impact of competitive services and pricing and general economic risks and uncertainties. The Company disclaims any obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements.

SOURCE: Star8 Corp.

View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/676943/Star8-Corp-Welcomes-Business-Industry-Veteran-Bart-Butler-as-Strategic-Advisor-to-the-CEO-and-Board-Member
WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - Iron Mountain Inc (IRM) said that it has agreed to acquire ITRenew, a global leader in mission critical data center lifecycle management solutions. As per the terms of the deal, Iron Mountain will acquire 80 percent of shares of ITRenew for approximately $725 million in cash. The remaining 20 percent will be acquired in cash within three years from close, with a minimum payment of $200 million and the final amount subject to the performance of the business. The transaction implies a minimum enterprise value of $925 million. Previous investor ZMC, a private equity firm focused on technology, media and communications investments, will exit its position as part of this transaction. Iron Mountain anticipates the acquisition will be immediately accretive to 2022 AFFO and positively enhance the Company's long-term revenue and cash flow growth. The company has secured financing commitments and expects to fund the transaction through a combination of new debt and borrowing capacity under its current revolver with modest impact on leverage in the short term. The transaction is expected to close in the first quarter of 2022. 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.
LIAOCHENG, China, Dec. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The 2021 China (Liaocheng)-Hungary Economic, Trade and Cultural Exchange Conference & Signing Ceremony between Liaocheng and Paks for Establishing a Friendly and Cooperative Relationship was held on December 8. Representatives from the Hungarian Embassy in China, the Chinese Embassy in Hungary, Hungarian Export Promotion Agency, Shandong Provincial Foreign Affairs Office and the city of Paks attended the ceremony via video. Li Changping, Deputy Party Secretary and Mayor of Liaocheng, attended the ceremony and delivered a speech.

At the ceremony, the Hungarian Ambassador to China Mate Pesti made a speech by video. Other speakers included Liu Zhenhua, Chief of Political Section of the Chinese Embassy in Hungary, Li Yongsen, Deputy Director of Shandong Provincial Foreign Affairs Office, Szabo Peter, Mayor of Paks City, Laszlo Krisar, Honorary Foreign Economic Counsellor of Hungary and Honorary Citizen of Liaocheng City, Adam Daniel, Cultural and Educational Officer of the Hungarian Embassy in China and Deputy Director of Liszt Institute - Hungarian Cultural Center Beijing, and Huang Chenfeng, Chairman of the Hungarian Wink Group. In their speeches, they all expressed congratulations on the establishment of a Friendly and Cooperative Relationship between Liaocheng and Paks, hoping that the two cities seize this opportunity to tap the potential of cooperation, carry out deeper pragmatic cooperation on a larger scale, and make efforts to achieve mutual benefit and win-win results, according to the Information Office of Liaocheng Municipal Government.

On behalf of Liaocheng Municipal Party Committee and Municipal Government, Li Changping expressed her gratitude to the guests and friends for their long-term care and support to Liaocheng and made a brief introduction of Liaocheng City. She said that the establishment of a Friendly and Cooperative Relationship between the two cities opened a new chapter of mutual benefit, win-win cooperation and common development. She hoped the two cities can take this opportunity to achieve better results by broadening cooperation, strengthening mutual communication, and promoting people-to-people exchanges.

At the ceremony, Li Changping and Szabo Peter signed the Agreement on Establishing a Friendly and Cooperative Relationship on behalf of their respective cities. Liaocheng Techgong Health Science and Technology Co. Ltd. donated 30,000 European standard (FFP2) masks to Paks City. Mingshang Trading Company signed a series of agreements with Hungarian Wink Group and Hungarian Cathedral Winery.

Image Attachments Links:

Link: http://asianetnews.net/view-attachment?attach-id=410543

Caption: Scene of the signing ceremony

Link: http://asianetnews.net/view-attachment?attach-id=410550

Caption: The Hungarian Ambassador to China Mate Pesti made a speech.

Link: http://asianetnews.net/view-attachment?attach-id=410551

Caption: Laszlo Krisar, Honorary Citizen of Liaocheng City, delivered a speech.

Link: http://asianetnews.net/view-attachment?attach-id=410552

Caption: Liaocheng Techgong Health Science and Technology Co. Ltd. donated 30,000 European standard (FFP2) masks to Paks City.

Photo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1707322/1_Signing_ceremony.jpg

Photo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1707321/2_Ambassador.jpg

Photo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1707320/3_Honorary_Citizen.jpg

Photo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1707319/4_Donation.jpg
LONDON, Dec. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Advanced Biofuel Solutions Ltd ('ABSL'), a developer and producer of advanced biofuels, and Greenergy, a leading manufacturer and supplier of waste-based biofuels, announce the signing of a Joint Development Agreement to develop, construct and operate up to five municipal waste-based biofuel plants in the UK.

Design work for the first plant to be situated at Ellesmere Port near Liverpool is underway and commercial production is due to commence in 2025. Subsequent plants are planned over the following years.

Using ABSL's proven and patented RadGas technology, the first plant will convert annually 133,000 tonnes of municipal waste into biomethane for gas vehicles or biohydrogen for hydrogen vehicles.

Together, the five plants would replace millions of litres of fossil petrol and diesel used in transport fuels, saving 800,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide per year, with the output of the plants equivalent to powering 5,000 HGVs.

The fuels will qualify as development fuels under the UK's Renewable Transport Fuel Obligation.

Nathan Burkey, Executive Chairman of ABSL, said:

"Today's announcement enables ABSL to accelerate significantly the speed and scale of the deployment of our RadGas technology. The partnership brings together cutting-edge technology with the experience of large-scale fuel production and distribution to produce low carbon fuels for transport critical to achieving Net Zero."

Christian Flach, Greenergy CEO added,

"We are continuing to progress innovative waste-based fuel projects that divert waste from landfill or incineration and create low carbon fuels for the transport sector at scale. This agreement is a further expansion of our leading renewables business and will enable us to continue to support our customers through the energy transition."

Greenergy

Europe's largest manufacturer of biodiesel from waste, Greenergy operates three waste-to-biodiesel plants: two on the east coast of England and a third in Amsterdam. Greenergy is continuing to invest and progress other renewable transport fuel projects, including turning waste tyres into advanced biofuels.

Greenergy is an established supplier and distributor of transportation fuels with a proven track record as the low-cost supplier delivering highly reliable customer service. Greenergy markets in the UK, Ireland, Canada and Brazil as well as through a joint venture in Bahrain.

www.greenergy.com

ABSL

Advanced Biofuel Solutions Ltd (ABSL) is a technology company dedicated to providing solutions to the challenges of Net Zero. By deploying its proprietary technology, RadGas, it is able to transform household waste into low carbon biofuels that can replace fossil fuels in parts of the economy that are hard to electrify. In the production of those much-needed low carbon biofuels, RadGas is also able to capture the carbon in the waste as carbon dioxide, supporting the transition Net Zero.

ABSL was founded in March 2019 and is based in Swindon, UK. It is a private company backed by investment funds, high net worth individuals and supported with external funding from the UK Government.

For more information on ABSL, or the RadGas process, click here: https://absl.tech/

Market context

The Renewable Transport Fuel Obligation (RTFO) legislation requires that transportation fuels must contain a growing percentage of renewable Development Fuels (dRTFC). Development Fuels are defined as new types of advanced biofuels made from sustainable wastes, such as municipal waste. This content target was introduced at 0.1% of total fuel by volume in 2019 and continues to increase each year to 2.8% by 2032.

The disposal of municipal waste in the UK is a significant problem, with a significant amount of waste from UK homes and businesses sent to landfill or incinerated.

When complete, the first project will transform 133,000 tonnes of waste into renewable fuels for transportation.
New integration deepens relationship between Cloudflare and Microsoft in the Zero Trust market

Cloudflare, Inc. (NYSE: NET), the security, performance, and reliability company helping to build a better Internet, today announced it has joined the Microsoft 365 Networking Partner Program (NPP). Customers of Cloudflare's Zero Trust platform, Cloudflare One, will now benefit from enhanced connectivity to Microsoft 365 services, enabling them to get faster performance and optimal user experience with Microsoft 365.

"Network design is critical for organizations in any stage of their digital transformation. By deepening our partnership with Microsoft, we are enabling customers and users to achieve optimal connectivity to Microsoft 365 locally and directly," said Alex Dyner, SVP, Special Projects at Cloudflare. "Joint Cloudflare and Microsoft 365 customers will now benefit from reduced network complexity and cost, while achieving greater levels of security and network performance."

Cloudflare One stops data loss, malware, and phishing with a Zero Trust application access and Internet gateway platform. It leverages Cloudflare's security, performance, and reliability services through the same Cloudflare global network that spans more than 250 cities in over 100 countries and blocks an average of 76 billion cyber threats each day. Organizations use Cloudflare's network to optimize, simplify, accelerate and secure their most sensitive corporate traffic.

"We're thrilled to welcome Cloudflare into the Networking Partner Program for Microsoft 365," said Scott Schnoll, Senior Product Marketing Manager, Microsoft. "Cloudflare is a valued partner that is focused on helping Microsoft 365 customers implement the Microsoft 365 Network Connectivity Principles. Microsoft only recommends Networking Partner Program member solutions for connectivity to Microsoft 365."

The Microsoft 365 Networking Partner Program consists of partners whose deployment practices and guidance are aligned with Microsoft's networking recommendations for Office 365. NPP validation adds to the growing collaboration between the two companies, including Cloudflare joining the Microsoft Intelligent Security Association (MISA) early in 2021 and participating in Microsoft Azure Data Transfer Routing Preference to enjoy lower data transfer costs.

To learn more about Cloudflare's partnership with Microsoft, check out the resources below:

Microsoft Networking Partner Program Landing Page

Cloudflare Joins Microsoft 365 Networking Partner Program Blog

CIO Week

About Cloudflare

Cloudflare, Inc. (www.cloudflare.com @cloudflare) is on a mission to help build a better Internet. Cloudflare's suite of products protect and accelerate any Internet application online without adding hardware, installing software, or changing a line of code. Internet properties powered by Cloudflare have all web traffic routed through its intelligent global network, which gets smarter with every request. As a result, they see significant improvement in performance and a decrease in spam and other attacks. Cloudflare was named to Entrepreneur Magazine's Top Company Cultures 2018 list and ranked among the World's Most Innovative Companies by Fast Company in 2019. Headquartered in San Francisco, CA, Cloudflare has offices in Austin, TX, Champaign, IL, New York, NY, San Jose, CA, Seattle, WA, Washington, D.C., Toronto, Lisbon, London, Munich, Paris, Beijing, Singapore, Sydney, and Tokyo.

?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, which statements involve substantial risks and uncertainties. In some cases, you can identify forward-looking statements because they contain words such as "may," "will," "should," "expect," "explore," "plan," "anticipate," "could," "intend," "target," "project," "contemplate," "believe," "estimate," "predict," "potential," or "continue," or the negative of these words, or other similar terms or expressions that concern Cloudflare's expectations, strategy, plans, or intentions. However, not all forward-looking statements contain these identifying words. Forward-looking statements expressed or implied in this press release include, but are not limited to, statements regarding Cloudflare's participation in the Microsoft 365 Networking Partner Program (NPP) and the potential resulting benefits to Cloudflare customers, the potential benefits to customers of integrating Cloudflare and Microsoft products, the potential opportunity for Cloudflare to attract additional customers and to expand sales to existing customers through Cloudflare's participation in NPP, the expected functionality and performance of Cloudflare One and Cloudflare's other products and technology, Cloudflare's technological development, future operations, growth, initiatives, or strategies, and comments made by Cloudflare's CEO and others. Actual results could differ materially from those stated or implied in forward-looking statements due to a number of factors, including but not limited to, risks detailed in Cloudflare's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), including Cloudflare's Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q filed on November 5, 2021, as well as other filings that Cloudflare may make from time to time with the SEC.

The forward-looking statements made in this press release relate only to events as of the date on which the statements are made. Cloudflare undertakes no obligation to update any forward-looking statements made in this press release to reflect events or circumstances after the date of this press release or to reflect new information or the occurrence of unanticipated events, except as required by law. Cloudflare may not actually achieve the plans, intentions, or expectations disclosed in Cloudflare's forward-looking statements, and you should not place undue reliance on Cloudflare's forward-looking statements.

2021 Cloudflare, Inc. All rights reserved. Cloudflare, the Cloudflare logo, and other Cloudflare marks are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Cloudflare, Inc. in the U.S. and other jurisdictions. All other marks and names referenced herein may be trademarks of their respective owners.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20211210005030/en/

Contacts:

Daniella Vallurupalli

press@cloudflare.com
Vancouver, British Columbia--(Newsfile Corp. - December 10, 2021) - Cross River Ventures Corp. (CSE: CRVC) (OTCQB: CSRVF) (FSE: C6R) (the "Company") is pleased to announce the launch of a 12-month online marketing campaign through AGORACOM for the purposes of targeting new potential investors that would be specifically interested in the Company's business model, as well as engaging current shareholders. The Company is paying $0 in cash for the program due to AGORACOM's cashless and fully compliant shares for services program.

SIGNIFICANT EXPOSURE THROUGH AGORACOM DIGITAL NETWORK

In 2019, AGORACOM surpassed 600 million page views, exceeded industry engagement metrics by over 400% and has served over 350 public companies.

The Cross River HUB containing multiple landing pages, videos, photos, and other helpful information updated in real-time over the next 12 months will be live on December 6 and can be found at:

https://agoracom.com/ir/CrossRiverVentures

The Cross River HUB will receive significant exposure through continuous brand impression, content marketing, search engine marketing and social media engagement throughout the entire AGORACOM network. AGORACOM is the only small cap marketing firm to hold a Twitter Verified badge, averaging 4.2 million Twitter impressions per month in 2019.

MODERATED DISCUSSION FOR MANAGEMENT AND SHAREHOLDERS

The Company has also launched a "CEO Verified" Discussion Forum on AGORACOM to serve as the Company's primary social media platform to interact with both current and prospective shareholders in a fully moderated environment.

The Cross River discussion forum can be found at:

https://agoracom.com/ir/CrossRiverVentures/forums/discussion

Terms & Conditions

December 10, 2021 - December 31, 2022

Fees: $CDN 100,000 + HST to be paid via Shares for Services under CSE: Policy 6 (Distributions)

$20,000 + HST Shares for Services upon commencement December 10, 2021 for setup and creation of: Custom Hub Verified CEO + Other Officers and/or Staff Profile Page Advertising Modules (Banner, Skyscraper, Social Media Badges) Custom Zoom Background Multimedia Marketing Materials Messaging (Short, Medium and Long) Marketing Plan

$20,000 + HST Shares for Services at end of third month (March 10, 2022)

$20,000 + HST Shares for Services at end of sixth month (June 10, 2022)

$20,000 + HST Shares for Services at end of ninth month (September 10, 2022)

$20,000 + HST Shares for Services at end of term (December 31, 2022)

The deemed price of the securities to be issued will be determined after the date services are provided to advertiser in each period and are to be calculated using the closing price on the Canadian Securities Exchange on each of the dates as stated above. Share issuances to AGORA under this Shares for Services Agreement should be effected pursuant to the "consultant exemption" contained in Section 2.24 of National Instrument 45-106 Prospectus Exemptions.

Each issuance shall be subject to a 4-month hold period.

About AGORACOM

AGORACOM is the pioneer of online marketing, broadcasting, conferences, and investor relations services to North American small and mid-cap public companies, with more than 300 companies served. AGORACOM is the home of more than 7.7 million investors that visited 55.2 million times and read over 600 million pages of information over the last 10 years. The average visit of 8min 43sec is more than double that of global financial sites, which can be attributed to the implementation and enforcement of the strongest moderation rules in the industry.

About the Company

Cross River is a gold exploration company focused on the development of top tier exploration properties located in emerging Greenstone Districts of NW Ontario, Canada. The Company controls a 28,000-ha, multiple project portfolio with highly prospective ground in and among prolific, gold bearing greenstone belts. Cross River's common shares trade in Canada under the symbol "CRVC" on the CSE, and in the US under the symbol "CSRVF" on the OTCQB. Please visit www.crossriverventures.com for more information.

On behalf of the Board of Directors of

CROSS RIVER VENTURES CORP.

Alex Klenman

CEO

604-227-6610

aklenman@crossriverventures.com

www.crossriverventures.com

Neither the Canadian Securities Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the Canadian Securities Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

This news release may contain forward-looking statements. These statements are based on current expectations and assumptions that are subject to risks and uncertainties. Actual results could differ materially because of factors discussed in the management discussion and analysis section of our interim and most recent annual financial statement or other reports and filings with the Canadian Securities Exchange and applicable Canadian securities regulations. We do not assume any obligation to update any forward-looking statements, except as required by applicable laws.

To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/107281


WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - With nearly 40 percent of the U.S. population still not fully vaccinated, and nearly 30 percent not even preferring to get a single dose, all Covid metrics are soaring again in the country.



Daily coronavirus infections climbed by 30 percent in just two weeks. With 117619 new cases reporting on Thursday, the national total has reached 49,664,506, as per the latest data from Johns Hopkins University.



Deaths are back up to where they were in October, and the overall U.S. death toll caused by the pandemic is nearing the bleak 800,000 mark.



There is an 18 percent increase in Covid fatalities in a fortnight. An additional 1419 Covid deaths on Thursday took the national total to 794,648.



Covid hospitalizations are up 21 percent from a month ago. 62,971 people are currently hospitalized due to the viral infection, according to the New York Times.



New York is the worst state in terms of daily infections, with 11,680 new cases. Florida led in casualties, reporting 218 deaths Thursday.



39,815,866 people have so far recovered from the disease in the country.



As per the latest data published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 200,717,387 Americans, or 60.5 percent of the eligible population, have been administered both doses of Covid vaccine so far. This includes 87 percent of people above 65.



When compared to the first two doses, the speed at which and volume of people receiving a third booster dose of vaccination is much higher in the United States.



Nearly 50 million Americans, or a quarter of the eligible population, have already received a booster shot within three months of its introduction in the country.



In an important development Thursday, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration authorized the use of a single booster dose of Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine for people in the age group of 16-17.



Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX

Kostenloser Wertpapierhandel auf Smartbroker.de
Award-Winning Home Renovation Company EA Home Design Continues Tradition of Success. The five-star rated business brings over two decades of home renovation excellence to clients across the globe

STERLING, VA / ACCESSWIRE / December 10, 2021 / One northern Virginia-based home renovation company has garnered positive attention the past few years for its quality, innovative designs. EA Home Design is based in Sterling, Virginia, and is known in the area for its exceptional home design and quality renovation services. Though the firm's team is located in Virginia, it is eager to assist clients across the globe with their home renovation projects by offering quality designs tailored to their needs.

EA Home Design has been a staple in Northern Virginia's home renovation scene since 2009. The firm was founded by Ali Meshksar, a civil engineer, and Kevin Kamali, a home improvement professional with over two decades of experience. With Meshksar's expertise in structural design and sales and Kamali's eye for detail and installation and building knowledge, the duo has led the EA Home Design team to incredible success in its 11 years in business.

In 2016, the team's innovative designs earned them a nod from Waypoint Living Spaces in its home remodel contest. EA Home Design was recognized as the Best Kitchen Design, transforming a dark, drab, and dated kitchen into a light, airy, and functional modern space.

In addition to the accolades from Waypoint Living Spaces, EA Home Design has received high marks from previous clients, maintaining five-star ratings across the board on all review and rating sites online. The company has also received recognition on Houzz, earning the Best of Houzz award for 2017-2021.

For clients in Northern Virginia, EA Home Design offers full remodeling design and on-site installation services. The company is also positioned to share its expertise with a worldwide audience by providing its design-only services to clients located anywhere across the globe.

"With each project, our goal is to capture our client's unique personality and understand their needs and design vision," said Meshksar. "Whether a client is looking for only design services or our full-service design and renovation packages, we aim to deliver exceptional customer service and create a space that truly transforms our clients' lives in every way."

"No matter where you are located in the world, EA Home Design is poised to deliver designs to transform one space or your entire home," added Kamali. "We invite clients across the globe to reach out with their design visions, as it would be our honor to make them a reality."

To learn more about EA Home Design, visit https://eahomedesign.com/.

About EA Home Design

EA Home Designs is an award-winning home renovation company located in Sterling, Virginia. Founded in 2009 by civil engineer Ali Meshksar and longtime home renovation professional Kevin Kamali, EA Home Designs is committed to delivering innovative, functional, and beautiful home designs for today's busy lifestyle. With over 25 years of collective home design and renovation experience, EA Home Designs is poised to bring clients' design visions to life in Northern Virginia and across the globe. Visit https://eahomedesign.com/ to learn more.

Media Contact

Brand: EA Home Design

Contact: Ali Meshksar

E-Mail: ali@eahomedesign.com

Telephone: 703-687-1818

Address: 44225 Mercure circle #180, sterling, VA, 20166

Website: https://eahomedesign.com/

SOURCE: EA Home Design

View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/677023/EA-Home-Design-Earning-the-Best-of-Houzz-Award-for-2017-2021-on-Houzz
DIVIDEND DECLARATION

FlexShares ICAV (the "Fund") wishes to announce the following details with respect to an interim dividend to be paid with respect to the following sub-fund:

Sub-Fund:FlexShares Developed Markets High Dividend Climate ESG UCITS ETF

ISIN: IE00BMYDBM76

Declaration Date: 10/12/2021

Ex-Date: 16/12/2021

Record Date:17/12/2021

Payment Date:31/12/2021

Dividend Rate: 0.1247

Currency: US

Type: Confirmed

Please note that the above dates are in respect of the primary market of the Fund.

All dividend proceeds are paid in the Fund's base currency (USD). The amount that is actually received by an investor will depend on whether the investor receives the proceeds in the same currency as the base currency of the Fund. If an investor will receive the proceeds in a currency other than the base currency of the Fund, then the amount the investor will receive will be affected by the FX rate at which the investor's broker/nominee converts the proceeds.

If you purchased your investment on the secondary market (for example, on a stock exchange), please liaise with your broker/nominee. As a large proportion of the Fund's shareholders are broker/nominees who hold the shares in the Fund on behalf of their underlying investor clients, it is up to the relevant brokers/nominees to ensure that the proceeds are distributed to their underlying investor clients in accordance with the contractual arrangements they have in place with their clients.

Should you have any queries, please do not hesitate to contact FlexShares:

Tel: +44 207 982 1866

Email: EMEA_FlexShares@ntrs.com

___________________________

Director

FlexShares ICAV

10/12/2021
MINSK, Belarus, Dec. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- As an enterprise in CBIP, the New Era Biotechnology Co., Ltd. participated in the fourth edition of the China International Import Expo (CIIE) which opened in Shanghai on November 5, 2021.

Located in Minsk, capital of the Republic of Belarus and a major hub of the Silk Road Economic Belt, CBIP is helping boost cooperation between China and Belarus. In recent years, China and Belarus have carried out fruitful exchanges and cooperation in the field of traditional medicine, and CBIP lately saw new achievements in facilitating cooperation between the two countries in fighting Covid-19 and developing Chinese pure herbal medicine. With the support from the governments of the two countries, CBIP has played an increasing role in promoting regional cooperation and economic and trade exchanges between the two countries, and also serves as a platform for international production capacity cooperation and science and technology innovation along the Belt and Road. Currently, it is home to 80 enterprises.

In March 2021, the Jintai Institute of Culture and Economics of China, led by Dr. Cai Chuanqing, founded the New Era Biotechnology Co., Ltd. in CBIP. It is the 69th company in CBIP, and the first engaged in Chinese pure herbal medicine in it. Belarus' unique folk medicine tradition and rich medicinal plant resources provide broad prospects for the two countries to cooperate in traditional medicine.

In June 2021, Belarus issued a presidential decree on improving the business environment of CBIP. The presidential decree allows enterprises in CIBP to provide medical services using traditional Chinese herbal therapies without mandatory registration with and license from Belarusian authorities.

Video - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=48bS1JH9b9E

Logo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1707423/NovaEra_Logo.jpg

Contact:

Ms. Xing Nizhen

Tel: 0037533-6249999

E-mail: novaerabiotech@mail.ru

YouTube Link:https://youtu.be/48bS1JH9b9E
NEW YORK, NY / ACCESSWIRE / December 10, 2021 / Madison Technologies, Inc., (MDEX) today announced the signing of a Purchase Agreement for WANN-CD, a Class A television station in Atlanta, GA, the number 10 ranked DMA (Designated Market Area) in the nation. The acquisition adds to the already purchased stations in LA, Houston and Seattle and the signed APA 's in Chicago, San Diego, New York and Phoenix as well as the signed LOI's for stations in Miami, Tampa, Nashville, St. Louis, Minneapolis and Kansas City.

Madison's goal is to continue with it's acquisition strategy focusing on the top 50-100 DMA's with the objective of building out a state of the art broadcast and OTT platform. The result will be a broad, nationwide, OTA independent distribution platform to host various content providers and data transmissions of many sorts, creating not only a unique, independent platform but an alternative to the existing Cable, OTT, and Internet platforms for those seeking to expand viewership of their content.

"We continue to be very pleased with our progress and very excited about the ability to participate in an industry that is poised for change as viewing habits and new technology play a role not seen before in the broadcast industry", said Philip Falcone, Founder, and CEO of Madison Technologies, Inc. "The continued build out of our broadcast platform coupled with our recent acquisition of Los Angeles based production company "The Jay & Tony Show" puts us in a position to bring unique content to the OTA marketplace and to capitalize on these changes".

Strong Tailwinds for OTA TV and Online Streaming

Consumers have embraced cutting the cord trend and moving to broadband (Netflix, Apple, Disney) and OTA (to continue to watch the basics). OTA households alone have doubled over the last 10 years to 20MM, becoming a material part of the addressable TV universe.

As cord-cutting continues to accelerate in conjunction with other factors (e.g., censorship) affecting distribution, the need for an alternative distribution platform will accelerate, ultimately driving higher rates and higher valuation all without even factoring in the true value of the spectrum.

The OTA market represents a compelling market opportunity. With an estimated 107MM TV households in the U.S., 57.9MM households use Cable, 28.7MM use alternative or satellite dish delivery systems while 20.4MM use OTA antennas - representing 44.8MM people. As any TV set purchase comes equipped by federal law to be OTA accessible, the adoption opportunities are massive if the right offer is presented to the market that is already growing weary of the recurring costs associated with content subscriptions.

An even bigger opportunity lies in the forthcoming advent of NextGen TV. In late 2017, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) voted to allow broadcasters to use the Next Gen TV using the new ATSC 3.0 broadcast standard on a voluntary basis. This new OTA broadcast technology offers high definition, mobile video, 4K resolution video, interactive features like polling and voting as well as e-Commerce capabilities for TV-based shopping. Sovryn's plans include leveraging these innovations and others to bring a truly modern interactive experience to consumers for free.

About Madison Technologies

Press Contact:

Investor Relations

Madison Technologies, Inc.

770-235-6053

info@go.tv

SOURCE: Madison Technologies, Inc.

View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/677026/Madison-Technologies-Inc-Announces-the-Purchase-of-WANN-CD-Atlanta
AM Best has affirmed the Financial Strength Rating of B (Fair) and the Long-Term Issuer Credit Rating of "bb" (Fair) of Life Insurance Corporation (International) B.S.C. (c) (LICI) (Bahrain). The outlook of these Credit Ratings (ratings) is negative.

The ratings reflect LICI's balance sheet strength, which AM Best assesses as strong, as well as its adequate operating performance, neutral business profile and weak enterprise risk management (ERM).

The negative outlooks reflect the company's ongoing breach of its regulatory solvency requirement in the United Arab Emirates, which could impact its ability to do business there, which is LICI's core market.

LICI's balance sheet strength assessment is underpinned by its strongest level of risk-adjusted capitalisation, as measured by Best's Capital Adequacy Ratio (BCAR). The company's BCAR strengthened materially over 2019 and 2020 from a very weak level at year-end 2018, driven by an increase in available capital due to capital gains. LICI's risk-adjusted capitalisation has further strengthened during 2021 from a capital injection by its parent, Life Insurance Corporation of India (India). Offsetting factors to LICI's balance sheet strength assessment include significant volatility in its capital adequacy, which is highly sensitive to financial markets, as well as concerns over the adequacy of its asset-liability management.

LICI has a track record of adequate but volatile operating performance, with a positive, albeit low, five-year average return-on-equity (ROE) of 1.6% (2016-2020). The five-year average includes an after-tax loss of BHD 14.2 million incurred in 2018, primarily caused by a downturn in financial markets coupled with bonuses credited to policyholders, which translated into an ROE of -28% for that year. AM Best expects LICI's prospective performance to revert to historical averages, remaining supportive of its adequate assessment over the cycle.

LICI benefits from its niche market position, targeting India's ex-patriate community in Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states by leveraging its parent's strong brand in the region, as well as the portability of its policies back to India.

LICI's ERM framework is assessed as weak, as a result of poor capital management capabilities, demonstrated by the ongoing breach of regulatory solvency requirements in the UAE and by its regulatory solvency margin in Bahrain falling below management trigger points in early 2020. Risk management of the company has proven to be more reactive than proactive.

AM Best remains the leading rating agency of alternative risk transfer entities, with more than 200 such vehicles rated throughout the world. For current Best's Credit Ratings and independent data on the captive and alternative risk transfer insurance market, please visit www.ambest.com/captive.

This press release relates to Credit Ratings that have been published on AM Best's website. For all rating information relating to the release and pertinent disclosures, including details of the office responsible for issuing each of the individual ratings referenced in this release, please see AM Best's Recent Rating Activity web page. For additional information regarding the use and limitations of Credit Rating opinions, please view Guide to Best's Credit Ratings. For information on the proper use of Best's Credit Ratings, Best's Preliminary Credit Assessments and AM Best press releases, please view Guide to Proper Use of Best's Ratings Assessments.

AM Best is a global credit rating agency, news publisher and data analytics provider specialising in the insurance industry. Headquartered in the United States, the company does business in over 100 countries with regional offices in London, Amsterdam, Dubai, Hong Kong, Singapore and Mexico City. For more information, visit www.ambest.com.

Copyright 2021 by A.M. Best Rating Services, Inc. and/or its affiliates. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20211210005378/en/

Contacts:

Anna Sheremeteva

Financial Analyst

+44 20 7397 4397

anna.sheremeteva@ambest.com

Christopher Sharkey

Manager, Public Relations

+1 908 439 2200, ext. 5159

christopher.sharkey@ambest.com

Michael Dunckley, CFA

Associate Director

+44 20 7397 0276

michael.dunckley@ambest.com

Jim Peavy

Director, Communications

+1 908 439 2200, ext. 5644

james.peavy@ambest.com
Westinghouse Electric Company announced it has signed a contract with RWE Nuclear GmbH to dismantle two reactors in the Gundremmingen nuclear facility in Germany.

"This is one of the most technically demanding scopes in the decommissioning of the Gundremmingen site," said Plant Manager, Dr. Heiko Ringel. "For this reason, we selected Westinghouse as an experienced partner who can efficiently and reliably manage the complexity of the project at the highest level of safety and quality."

Westinghouse offers the full lifecycle of nuclear power plants from new plant design, plant maintenance and operations all the way through deactivation and decommissioning. The company is a leader in specialized decommissioning of reactors, with the largest number of successfully executed decommissioning scopes over the last decade. This includes the dismantling and safe removal of reactors in Spain, France, Belgium, Germany, Slovakia, the United Kingdom, Sweden and the United States.

"We appreciate the trust that RWE has placed in Westinghouse to deliver this critical phase of the Gundremmingen decommissioning project," said Sam Shakir, President of Environmental Services at Westinghouse. "Our decades of hands-on experience and depth of services enable us to reduce risk and deliver confidence when partnering with customers to retire plants and restore landscapes."

The contract includes several scopes to deliver higher efficiency in execution. This includes dismantling and packaging of the reactor pressure vessels, reactor heads, reactor internals, storage racks, and adjacent concrete shielding structures.

About Westinghouse Electric Company

Westinghouse Electric Company is shaping the future of carbon-free energy by providing safe, innovative nuclear technologies to utilities globally. Westinghouse supplied the world's first commercial pressurized water reactor in 1957 and the company's technology is the basis for nearly one-half of the world's operating nuclear plants. For over 130 years, innovation makes Westinghouse the preferred partner for technologies covering the complete nuclear energy life cycle. For more information, visit www.westinghousenuclear.com and follow us on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.

About RWE Nuclear GmbH

RWE Nuclear GmbH has encompassed all nuclear energy activities of the RWE Group since early 2018. With more than 1,300 employees, the company is concerned with the operation and operational management of nuclear power plants, as well as directing investments. RWE Nuclear GmbH also secures the post-operation, shutdown and legally prescribed decommissioning process of nuclear power plants, in addition to the proper packing of radioactive waste. Two power plant units in Lingen and Gundremmingen currently provide a capacity of around 2,800 megawatts. The Essen-based company is a wholly owned subsidiary of RWE AG and its operations are managed by RWE Power AG.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20211210005383/en/

Contacts:

Cathy Mann

media@westinghouse.com
Yili Group's First Self-Built Factory in Southeast Asia Is Put into Operation, Forming A "Dual Center" in Indonesia and Thailand

Yili Group strengthens its presence in Southeast Asian markets by launching its first self-built factory in the region.

Featuring cutting-edge technology, green operations, and deep involvement with the local community, the project aims to accelerate dairy manufacturing and innovation to better serve Indonesian consumers.

BEKASI CITY, Indonesia, Dec. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Asia's leading dairy producer, Yili Group, held an opening ceremony to celebrate the official launch of the first phase of the Yili Indonesia Dairy Production Base. Upon completion of its second phase, the production base will become the country's largest ice cream factory with a daily production capacity of four million ice cream products.

The state-of-the-art facility was established due to the surging popularity of Joyday ice cream, a brand that has rapidly expanded its reach to 260 local cities in 26 provinces, covering nearly all of Indonesia, since its entry into the market in 2018.

"Local consumers' clear preference for and trust in our products has reinforced Yili's confidence about our long-term investment and development in Indonesia," said Pan Gang, the Chairman and President of Yili Group, in a virtual speech delivered at the ceremony. "Yili is always dedicated to following the highest standards to drive quality, sustainable development over the long term and establishing localized operations that benefit the communities where we operate. This ensures that we can better serve local consumers and make deep contributions to socio-economic development throughout the region."

Catering to local needs while leveraging the global resources brought together by Yili Group, the Indonesia-based hub aims to speed up Joyday's product manufacturing, R&D and marketing efforts, with more new products to come, in order to bring more unique services and consumer experiences to local customers.

An innovative, green, and open factory

As Yili's first self-built plant in Southeast Asia, Yili Indonesia Dairy has adopted cutting-edge technology and equipment, including the Internet of Things and big data analytics, to build an innovative and smart factory. The production base integrates advanced digital technologies throughout its entire production chain. Robotics solutions are introduced to provide automated packing, palletizing, and warehousing.

The construction of infrastructure and buildings has been undertaken strictly in line with Yili Group's global quality management standards. To date, the factory has already passed the ISO22000, HALAL, and BPOM certifications and been rated A grade by LPPOM MUI, the largest food and drug certification agency in Indonesia.

As part of its efforts to build a sustainable and environmentally friendly production facility, Yili Indonesia Dairy has built a wastewater treatment system with a daily treatment capacity of 2,800 tons. Reclaimed water is then used for the irrigation of plants in the factory.

To ensure high levels of visibility and transparency, the site will be open to the public whenever the factory is in full operation, and consumers can watch the whole production process as it unfolds.

Ready to grow together with local partners

While deepening its presence in global markets, Yili follows the principle of "global mindsets and local operations," with a focus on building highly localized factories that benefit local communities.

Today, Yili Indonesia Dairy has a total of 383 employees, with local employees accounting for 95% of the workforce. The project is expected to create more than 5,000 new jobs for local communities, directly and indirectly.

Yili Indonesia Dairy is also actively pursuing further opportunities for cooperation with local partners. To date, the company has already established cooperative relationships with more than 90 suppliers in Indonesia. Moving forward, its partnerships will expand to local distributors with 200,000 sales outlets. Yili is also dedicated to promoting the highly rated Indonesian flavors to global consumers through its worldwide marketing channels.

Yili's "Southeast Asia dual centers" established

The completion of Yili Indonesia Dairy sets up another key pillar for Yili's development in the Indonesian and the broader Southeast Asian markets. Together with the company's Thailand-based ice cream production base, Yili's "Southeast Asian dual centers" and Southeast Asia Innovation Center have taken shape, and are expected to accelerate product manufacturing and R&D in the region.

As a platform designed to facilitate cooperation on innovation with universities and R&D institutions throughout the region, the Yili Southeast Asia Innovation Center will also work together closely with Yili's innovation centers spread across China, Japan, Europe and Oceania, with the aim of rolling out more localized innovation solutions that are carefully tailored to fulfill consumer needs.

In the pursuit of building a "global health ecosystem", Yili Group has been dedicated to reaching markets where consumers' demands for quality dairy products have yet to be fulfilled. As an important base facilitating Yili's engagement with global markets, Yili Indonesia Dairy will coordinate and share resources with other subsidiaries of Yili Group to serve consumers with world-class products and share its business success with partners.

Photo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1707442/image.jpg
PARIS, Dec. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The idea of buying an artwork collectively goes back a long way and has been entertained in various schemes and formats. But the problem of how to resell your 'shares' was always a complicated obstacle.

However, according to Artprice, this problem has finally found a solution with NFTs. Anonymous artist Pak put "mass units" up for sale on Nifty Gateway for 48 hours. The final work, titled The Merge, is made up of 266,445 "units" that can be sold separately and instantly on the blockchain.

[https://imgpublic.artprice.com/img/wp/sites/11/2021/12/Invader-Joconde.jpg]

thierry Ehrmann, CEO and Founder of Artmarket.com and its Artprice department: "Blockchain and NFTs have at last made it possible to design properly effective forms of securitization on the art market. Non-fungible tokens open up endless possibilities for the acquisition of shares in a work, as Pak has demonstrated with this extraordinary sale. This represents a veritable paradigm shift for the art market".

28,000 collectors

From now on, the unknown factor is no longer the sale price (fixed in advance) but rather the number of units purchased. Moreover, Pak and Nifty Gateway developed a whole strategy to boost demand during the 48 hours that the sale lasted:

initial price of $299 for loyal collectors of Pak and $400 for new entrants

for loyal collectors of Pak and for new entrants increasing price by $25 every six hours

every six hours for 10 units purchased an eleventh is free; for 1,000 units purchased 300 more are free

a continuous real-time ranking of the best buyers (under pseudonyms)

the work Alpha Mass offered to the largest buyer

In total, 266,445 "mass units" were purchased for $91.8 million by 29,000 different buyers. This makes an average price of $316 per unit and an average of 9 units acquired per buyer. According to Artprice by Artmarket, the result is a genuine 'community' that the artist has brought together to create a gigantic and dematerialized work, in which everyone is free to resell their shares at any time.

Typically, works of art are auctioned off as one-offs rather than as a series. Jeff Koons'Rabbit sculpture (1986) made Koons the most expensive living artist in 2019 when it sold for $91.12 million.

One or more works?

In April 2021, Pak organized a sale with Sotheby's called The Fungible Collection. For three days, for only 15 minutes each day, anyone could acquire "cubes" at a fixed price:

1st day: 19,737 cubes sold at $500 = $9,868,500

= 2nd day: 3,268 cubes sold at $1,000 = $3,268,000

= 3rd day: 593 cubes sold at $1,500 = $718,500

While the cubes in each buyer's wallet were linked, the 23,598 cubes did not make a total work per se: each purchaser acquired his own set of cubes with an average purchase price of $587. Similarly, Beeple's The first 5,000 days (sold at Christie's in March 2021 for $ 69.4 million), is theoretically made up of 5,000 full works, the average price of which is therefore around $14,000.

By way of comparison, the sale of the Macklowe Collection on 15 November 2021 at Sotheby's New York raised $676 million from 35 works; that's an average value of $19.3 million per lot. The comparison doesn't make a lot of sense except from the point of view of the homogeneity of the works and their securitization. Imagine you'd been given the opportunity of acquiring a share in Mark Rothko's No. 7 (which entered the Macklowe Collection in 1987) for $500. After its sale for $82.5 million, you would own a 165,000th part of the painting.

However, Pak's approach is the opposite since the work, The Merge, did not yet exist at the time of the sale. No-one knew what it was going to look like. By buying a part of this unknown work, each collector contributes to it. Encouraged by a low starting price but also encouraged to acquire the largest number of units in order to receive a reward, The Merge is a game that brings together technology buffs, cryptocurrency and NFT devotees and art enthusiasts increasingly fascinated by this universe.

Artists have now moved into the primary position around which the art market revolves.

According to Artmarket.com, NFTs represent a genuine grassroots movement that has created its own ecosystem, with a virtuous economy and exponential growth potential.

Indeed, the turnover generated by NFTs so far this year (to 9 December 2021) - as measured by ERC 721 and ERC 1155 Ethereum smart contracts relating to the art market and collections - is 26.9 billion dollars (source Chainalysis).

Image: [https://imgpublic.artprice.com/img/wp/sites/11/2021/12/Invader-Joconde.jpg]

Copyright 1987-2021 thierry Ehrmann www.artprice.com - www.artmarket.com

Don't hesitate to c ontact our E conometrics Department for your requirements regarding statistics and personalized studies: econometrics@artprice.com

for your requirements regarding statistics and personalized studies: econometrics@artprice.com Try our services (free demo): https://www.artprice.com/demo

Subscribe to our services: https://www.artprice.com/subscription

About Artmarket:

Artmarket.com is listed on Eurolist by Euronext Paris, SRD long only and Euroclear: 7478 - Bloomberg: PRC - Reuters: ARTF.

Discover Artmarket and its Artprice department on video: www.artprice.com/video

Artmarket and its Artprice department was founded in 1997 by its CEO, thierry Ehrmann. Artmarket and its Artprice department is controlled by Groupe Serveur, created in 1987.

See certified biography in Who's who :

Biographie_thierry_Ehrmann_2022_WhosWhoInFrance.pdf

Artmarket is a global player in the Art Market with, among other structures, its Artprice department, world leader in the accumulation, management and exploitation of historical and current art market information in databanks containing over 30 million indices and auction results, covering more than 770,000 artists.

Artprice by Artmarket, the world leader in information on the art market, has set itself the ambition through its Global Standardized Marketplace to be the world's leading Fine Art NFT platform.

Artprice Images allows unlimited access to the largest Art Market image bank in the world: no less than 180 million digital images of photographs or engraved reproductions of artworks from 1700 to the present day, commented by our art historians.

Artmarket with its Artprice department accumulates data on a permanent basis from 6300 Auction Houses and produces key Art Market information for the main press and media agencies (7,200 publications). Its 5.4 million ('members log in'+social media) users have access to ads posted by other members, a network that today represents the leading Global Standardized Marketplace to buy and sell artworks at a fixed or bid price (auctions regulated by paragraphs 2 and 3 of Article L 321.3 of France's Commercial Code).

Artmarket with its Artprice department, has been awarded the State label "Innovative Company" by the Public Investment Bank (BPI) (for the second time in November 2018 for a new period of 3 years) which is supporting the company in its project to consolidate its position as a global player in the market art.

Artprice's 2020/21 Contemporary Art Market Report by Artmarket.com:

https://www.artprice.com/artprice-reports/the-contemporary-art-market-report-2021

Artprice by Artmarket's 2020 Global Art Market Report published in March 2021:

https://www.artprice.com/artprice-reports/the-art-market-in-2020

Index of press releases posted by Artmarket with its Artprice department:

serveur.serveur.com/Press_Release/pressreleaseEN.htm

Follow all the Art Market news in real time with Artmarket and its Artprice department on Facebook and Twitter:

www.facebook.com/artpricedotcom/ (over 5,4 million followers)

twitter.com/artmarketdotcom

twitter.com/artpricedotcom

Discover the alchemy and universe of Artmarket and its artprice department https://www.artprice.com/video headquartered at the famous Organe Contemporary Art Museum "The Abode of Chaos" (dixit The New York Times): https://issuu.com/demeureduchaos/docs/demeureduchaos-abodeofchaos-opus-ix-1999-2013

L'Obs - The Museum of the Future: https://youtu.be/29LXBPJrs-o

www.facebook.com/la.demeure.du.chaos.theabodeofchaos999

(4.4 million followers)

https://vimeo.com/124643720

Photo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1707373/Artmarket_Invader_Joconde.jpg

Logo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1009603/Art_Market_logo.jpg

Contact Artmarket.com and its Artprice department - Contact: ir@artmarket.com
Manchester & London Investment Trust Plc - Appointment of Non-Executive Director

MANCHESTER AND LONDON INVESTMENT TRUST PLC

(the "Company")

Appointment of Non-Executive Director

The Company is pleased to announce that Daren Morris has been appointed as a non-executive Director of the Company and Chairman of the Audit Committee with effect from 10 December 2021.

Daren is currently CFO of Big Technologies PLC, a company listed on AIM and active in the provision of advanced technology for the electronic monitoring of individuals. Daren was previously CFO of Volex PLC from 2015 to 2020. He was part of the executive management team that led a turnaround of Volex and drove a quadrupling of the share price over the period. Daren spent the first eighteen years of his career in investment banking and accountancy and was a Managing Director at both UBS Investment Bank and Morgan Stanley, advising manufacturing and technology companies on their expansion and financing strategies. Daren's public company board experience includes Big Technologies plc, Volex plc, Easynet plc and Nexen Tech Corporation. Daren is a qualified chartered accountant (ICAEW ACA 1997) and read Physics at Trinity College, Oxford.

Details of directorships held by Daren in other publicly quoted companies in the previous five years are set out below:

Big Technologies PLC30/06/21 to present

Volex PLC17/01/14 to 12/11/20

Nexentech Corporation01/08/17 to 10/04/19

Daren currently holds 5,000 Ordinary Shares in the Company.

The Company confirms that there are no other matters which are required to be disclosed under Listing Rule 9.6.13 (2) to (6).

Daniel Wright, Chairman, commented, "We are delighted that Daren is joining us and look forward to his contribution to the development of the Company".

10 December 2021

LEI: 213800HMBZXULR2EEO10
Dynaplan's technology will work hand in hand with Concentra's leading organisational planning and design platform, orgvue, to make end-to-end workforce planning a reality for businesses

Concentra Analytics Ltd, the analytics technology firm and creators of orgvue, an enterprise organisational design and planning platform, has completed the acquisition of Dynaplan, a Swiss-Norwegian software and services provider of strategic workforce planning.

The transaction represents the continued investment by Concentra in developing best-in-class analytics software, used by the world's largest companies and management consultancies, to build more adaptive organisations in a changing world.

The driver-based simulation approach behind Dynaplan's dynamic workforce planning capability, combined with orgvue's traditional strength in robust position-level modelling and visualisations, is fundamental to its broader business ambition to make ongoing, end-to-end workforce planning a reality and episodic organisational design a thing of the past.

Martin Moran, CEO of Concentra Analytics, said: "Dynaplan will provide the technology and expertise to accelerate our product roadmap. This acquisition is a critical step in our strategy to become the leading platform for managing the workforce and workplace of the future. For our customers this will be game-changing as disruption continues to force businesses into shorter planning cycles and the constant need to redesign, redeploy and acquire talent."

Magne Myrtveit, founder and Executive Partner of Dynaplan, said: "Without a solid strategy behind it, agile planning can become an instrument for making mistakes faster.? In a world full of change, data from the past rapidly loses value. Dynaplan's technology is a sandbox for simulating possible decisions with "data from the future" providing a new kind of input to decision-making. Through the integration into orgvue, customers will be getting access to technology that covers strategy on top of planning and organisational design."

Kai Berendes, Executive Partner, added: "We are very excited to be linking arms with orgvue. Together we reinforce our clients' ability to shape the future workforce and generate business impact. Our combined solutions offer an efficient and effective technology for bridging a challenging gap for most organisations: the gap between strategy and people."

Together, orgvue and Dynaplan will harness the power of data visualization and modelling to build better performing organisations. The solution will unite HR, Finance and business leaders to make decisions faster with more confidence amidst constant disruption and change.

ENDS

Notes to editors

About Concentra Analytics

Concentra Analytics builds SaaS data products that enable businesses to capture, manage and analyse data to improve their operations. Its flagship product, orgvue, is the leading SaaS organizational planning and design solution used by business, finance, and HR leaders to plan and optimize organizations on an ongoing basis. Alongside orgvue, Concentra's other products include TrueCue for data warehouse automation.

Concentra Analytics is headquartered in London and works with over 100 enterprise clients from offices in Philadelphia, The Hague, Toronto and Sydney.

About orgvue

orgvue, the leading organizational planning and design software platform, harnesses the power of data visualization and modelling to build more adaptable, better performing organizations in an era of constantly changing market dynamics. HR, finance and business leaders use the platform to take control of their organizations and, with data evidence, make faster, more confident decisions that get the right people doing the right work, in the right places, at the right costs.

Founded in 2008 and funded by 41M in growth equity investment (May 2018), orgvue has been implemented by the world's largest enterprises and leading management consulting firms to fearlessly build the organizations they want tomorrow, today.

About Dynaplan

Dynaplan provides cutting-edge scenario-based simulation technology for business planning. Since its incorporation in 2004 global and regional leaders across multiple industries have partnered with Dynaplan to establish robust and impactful workforce planning solutions to get transparency about risks and opportunities to cope successfully with the megatrends around demographic change, labour scarcity and digitalization. From offices in Manger, Norway and St.Gallen, Switzerland Dynaplan serve customers in Europe and beyond.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20211210005453/en/

Contacts:

For media enquiries and comment requests, please contact:

Jamie Weeks

orgvue@dontcrywolf.com

+44 (0) 20 3633 1090

www.orgvue.com
Peru's rich cultural heritage is globally admired thanks to a Nativity Scene comprising more than 30 life-sized figurines created by artisans from Huancavelica.

The traditional manger scene created by the Chopcca Nation from the Huancavelica region, located in the Peruvian heartland, is being shown at St. Peter's Square in Vatican City as of December 10th, according to PROMPERU.

This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20211210005490/en/

Peruvian Nativity scene is displayed at Saint Peter's Square in Vatican City, Vatican. PROMPERU

For 45 days, devotees and tourists from the world over will be able to admire this scene, which includes more than 30 figures made by five expert artisans from Huancavelica, using fiberglass, ceramic, and maguey wood, among other materials.

"This is an activity with a huge spiritual transcendence that confirms the good relationship with the Vatican State in the context of our independence's 200th anniversary. This exhibition will also create interest in Peruvian nations. We are confident that the world will pay more attention to Peruvian cultural heritage and our artisans' talent," said Amora Carbajal, Executive Director of PROMPERU.

One of the main features of this Nativity Scene is its colorfulness, prominently displayed in the figures decorated with the Chopcca Nation's typical costumes, which were declared Peruvian Intangible Cultural Heritage in 2014 due to their uniqueness, representativeness, and importance within indigenous culture.

Another unique trait of this Nativity Scene is the way the child is represented. Jesus has the look of a "Hilipuska" child, wrapped in a typical Huancavelican blanket. Likewise, the Wise Men's gifts reflect part of Peru's wealth, its agricultural products, superfoods that the South American country sells to the world.

Since this is a rural Nativity Scene, some native Peruvian animals have been included in the representation, such as llamas, condors, vizcachas, Andean flamingos, and alpacas, among others. The stage design also alludes to Huancavelican landscapes and architecture, using typical local materials.

The celebration of Christmas has a deep-rooted tradition in Peruvian art. This religious festivity, introduced during Viceroyalty times, has been preserved throughout the country's history in countless representation forms and iconographic variants, figurines being one of them.

This action is the result of the joint work between Huancavelica's Regional Government, Huancavelica's Diocese, the Ministry of Foreign Relations, the Embassy of Peru to the Holy See, and the Ministry of Foreign Trade and Tourism (Ministerio de Comercio Exterior y Turismo, MINCETUR).

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20211210005490/en/

Contacts:

Karla Acuna, Comunicaciones@promperu.gob.pe
Vancouver, British Columbia--(Newsfile Corp. - December 10, 2021) - StraightUp Resources Inc.(CSE: ST) (OTCQB: STUPF) ("StraightUp"or the "Company") is pleased to announce it has closed the final tranche of its non-brokered private placement, through the issuance of 4,405,250 units. In this final tranche $324,000 was raised through the issuance of 1,620,000 common shares and 810,000 warrants (the "Securities"). All common shares are subject to a four-month and a day hold period. The warrants are exercisable at $0.30 for a two-year term and are also subject to a four-month and a day hold period the hold period.

There were $60,900 in finder's fees and 12,180 broker's warrants issued in this tranche. The broker warrants are exercisable at $0.30 for a two-year term and are subject to a four-month and a day hold period.

A total of $1,762,100 was raised over the course of this financing. The net proceeds from the financing are intended to be used for the funding of exploration projects and property expenditures. The Offering is being made available to accredited investors under applicable securities laws. The Company has entered into a binding commitment letter with the accredited investors with respect to the Offering, where such parties have agreed, subject to certain customary conditions and the execution of a formal subscription agreement, to purchase the Units.

About StraightUp Resources

StraightUp is engaged in the business of mineral exploration and the acquisition of mineral property assets in Canada and the US. Its objective is to locate and develop economic, precious and base metal properties of merit. StraightUp intends to conduct exploration on the RLX North, RLX South, Belanger and the Ferdinand Gold Property, all located in the Red Lake Mining Division, as well as the recently acquired Bear Head Gold Project, located within the Meen-Dempster Greenstone Belt of the Uchi Subprovince, approximately 80 kilometers west of the Pickle Lake Gold Camp. The Company's recently acquired West Cat Mine includes an Unpatented Mining Claim on Federal Land, located in the Historic Beatty Mountain Nevada Mining District / Nye County, Nevada, about 15 kilometers east of U.S. Route 95, approximately 20 kilometers from Beatty, Nevada, at the base of the Bare Mountain Range.

On Behalf of the Board of Directors

Mark Brezer Chief Executive Officer, President and Director

For further information, please contact:

Mark Brezer

Chief Executive Officer, President and Director

(604) 989-6275

Neither the CSE nor its Market Regulator (as that term is defined in the policies of the CSE) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release).

Not for Distribution to United States News Wire Services or for Dissemination in the United States

To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/107228
Seattle, Washington--(Newsfile Corp. - December 10, 2021) - Pervasip Corp. (OTC Pink: PVSP) ("Pervasip" or the "Company"), a developer of companies and technologies in high value emerging markets, and its subsidiaries, Artizen Corporation ("Artizen") and Zen Asset Management LLC ("ZAM"), a diversified asset management company that was founded to acquire, develop, and support companies and technologies in the cannabis industry, are pleased to announce that Artizen-branded flower products ranked amongst the top ten selling brands nationally in September 2021, according to MJBiz Magazine and data produced by Headset, Inc.

"Flower sales industry-wide make up more than half of the total national market share for cannabis products," said German Burtscher, the Company's president and chief executive officer. "As one of Washington's original cannabis brands, Artizen-branded products have tremendous consumer and retailer recognition. We earned that following by keeping our heads down and offering exceptional experiences and results with products grown by our independent cultivators that reflect our core values of innovation, excellence, integrity and value. Our goal has always been to bring the best and highest quality products to our home state as a prelude to national market development. We are proud and excited to see that our efforts to date rank so impressively against the nation's leading brands."

Artizen-branded products have earned the all-time fourth best-selling position in Washington across all product categories, and the all-time third position in flower, with five of the all-time top ten selling products in flower. Eighths of Artizen's flagship Dutchberry flower are the all-time top selling flower product in Washington. Artizen's commitment to quality and consistency have fueled more than $69 million in wholesale sales to a distribution network with more than 200 retailers, corresponding to more than $200 million in retail value since inception in 2015.

Pervasip Corp.

Pervasip Corp., a developer of companies and technologies in high value emerging markets, owns Artizen Corporation and its subsidiary, Zen Asset Management LLC, a diversified asset management company founded to acquire, develop, and support companies and technologies in the cannabis industry. ZAM's existing clients operate four licensed cannabis cultivation and one processing facility in Washington. Most of the biomass produced by these independent cultivators has been sold historically under the Artizen brand, including all-time top selling products in flower in Washington state. Additional information on Artizen-branded products is available online at www.artizencannabis.com. Pervasip additionally owns 5% of KRTL Biotech, Inc., a developer of biotechnologies with a focus on pharmaceutical applications of cannabinol and psilocybin. Additional information on KRTL is available online at www.krtlbiotech.com.

Forward-Looking Statements

This news release contains statements and information that, to the extent that they are not historical fact, may constitute "forward-looking information" within the meaning of applicable securities legislation. Forward-looking information may include financial and other projections, as well as statements regarding future plans, objectives, or economic performance, or the assumption underlying any of the foregoing. In some cases, forward-looking statements can be identified by terms such as may, would, could, will, likely, except, anticipate, believe, intend, plan, forecast, project, estimate, outlook, or the negative thereof or other similar expressions concerning matters that are not historical facts. Examples of such statements include, but are not limited to, statements with respect to the objectives and business plans of the Company; ability to realize benefits from its recent corporate appointments; ability to retain its key personnel; the intention to grow the Company's business and operations; the competitive conditions of the industries in which the Company operates; and laws and any amendments thereto applicable to the Company. Forward-looking information is based on the assumptions, estimates, analysis and opinions of management made in light of its experience and its perception of trends, current conditions and expected developments, as well as other factors that management believes to be relevant and reasonable in the circumstances at the date that such statements are made, but which may prove to be incorrect. The material factors and assumptions used to develop the forward-looking information contained in this news release include, but are not limited to, key personnel and qualified employees continuing their involvement with the Company; and the Company's ability to secure financing on reasonable terms. Forward-looking information involves known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause the actual results, performance or achievements of the Company to differ materially from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by the forward-looking information, including, without limitation, risks relating to the future business plans of the Company; risks that the Company will not be able to retain its key personnel; risks that the Company will not be able to secure financing on reasonable terms or at all, as well as all of the other risks as described in the Company's periodic disclosure statements. Accordingly, readers should not place undue reliance on any such forward-looking information. Further, any forward-looking information speaks only as of the date on which such statement is made. New factors emerge from time to time, and it is not possible for the Company's management to predict all of such factors and to assess in advance the impact of each such factor on the Company's business or the extent to which any factor, or combination of factors, may cause actual results to differ materially from those contained in any forward-looking information. The Company does not undertake any obligation to update any forward-looking information to reflect information or events after the date on which it is made or to reflect the occurrence of unanticipated events, except as required by law, including securities laws.

For further information, please contact:

T: 855-464-2535, Extension 1

E: info@pervasip.net

To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/107321


THE HAGUE (dpa-AFX) - Shareholders of oil giant Royal Dutch Shell plc (RDS-B, RDSB.L, RDSA.L, RDS-A) on Friday voted in approval for the company's plans to overhaul its tax residence and shift its headquarters to the U.K. from the Netherlands.



The shareholders also approved the proposal to simplify its share structure to eliminate the complexity of Shell's A/B share structure.



Nearly 58% of outstanding shares cast their votes, with preliminary results showing that nearly 99.8% of shareholders supported the special resolution enabling the corporate structure change.



Shell's Chair, Sir Andrew Mackenzie, said: 'This resounding support from shareholders to amend Shell's Articles of Association will enable a simplification of the company's share structure and an increase in the speed and flexibility of capital and portfolio actions.'



'The Board believes that the simplification will strengthen Shell's competitiveness and accelerate both shareholder distributions and delivery of its strategy to become a net-zero emissions energy business by 2050, in step with society,' he added.



'A final Board decision will be taken following completion of the consultation with the relevant Shell staff councils. The Board intends to proceed with the simplification as soon as reasonably practicable provided that it remains, in the Board's view, in the best interests of the company and shareholders as a whole. In making its final decision, the Board will take into account all relevant factors.'



The company's board had presented the proposal in November, stating that it would simplify its share structure and increase the speed and flexibility of capital and portfolio actions.



'We have considerable operations here in the Netherlands ... and that will not be changed one bit by the possible change in location,' Chairman Andrew Mackenzie said ahead of the vote.



Meanwhile, according to critics, Shell's decision to shift its headquarters was driven by a recent Dutch court ruling that ordered the company to cut its carbon emissions by 45% by 2030.



Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX

SHELL-Aktie komplett kostenlos handeln - auf Smartbroker.de
Not for distribution to U.S. Newswire Services nor for dissemination in the United States. Any failure to comply with this restriction may constitute a violation of U.S. Securities laws.

LONDON, UK / ACCESSWIRE / December 10, 2021 / Poko Innovations Inc. (formerly Brunswick Resources Inc.) (CSE:POKO) ("Poko" or the "Company"), is pleased to announce that, it has granted a total of 3,990,000 incentive stock options to directors, officers and consultants under the newly adopted Stock Option Plan dated December 10, 2021 (the "Plan").The Options, subject to the terms of the Plan and the corresponding option agreement, are exercisable at a price of CAD $0.15 per share for a period of up to five years expiring on December 10, 2026.

Poko also announces that it settled a total of CAD$246,000 of debt (the "Debt") for service provided to the Corporation by issuing 2,050,000 common shares of the Corporation at a deemed price of $0.12 per common share ("Shares for Debt Settlement").

The Corporation negotiated the Shares for Debt Settlement in order to preserve capital to fund the development of the Corporation's projects.

All securities issued in connection with the Shares for Debt Settlement will be subject to a statutory hold period of four months plus a day from the date of issuance in accordance with applicable securities legislation.

About The Poko Group, Ltd

The Poko Group is a collection of CBD focused companies that bring innovative, inspiring solutions to the CBD industry through the company's leading platforms which, when working together, form a complete ecosystem. The Poko Group has is an award-winning UK CBD company that has developed a unique business model comprising complete "turnkey solutions," including fintech payment processing and white label opportunities. Poko plans to export its signature products to the EU and the USA. For more information, please visit https://www.pokogroup.com/.

Forward-Looking Statements

With the exception of the historical information contained in this news release, the matters described herein, may contain forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended. Statements preceded by, followed by, or that otherwise, include the words "believes," "expects," "anticipates," "intends," "projects," "estimates," "plans" and similar expressions or future or conditional verbs such as "will," "should," "would," "may" and "could", are generally forward-looking in nature and not historical facts, although not all forward-looking statements include the foregoing. These statements, involve unknown risks and uncertainties that may individually or materially impact the matters discussed, herein for a variety of reasons that are outside the control of the company, including, but not limited to, the company's ability to raise sufficient financing to implement its business plan, the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the company's business, operations and the economy in general, and the Company's ability to successfully develop and commercialize its proprietary products and technologies. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward- looking statements, as actual results could differ materially from those described in the forward-looking statements contained herein. Readers are urged to read the risk factors set forth in the company's filings with the SEC, which are available at the SEC's website (www.sec.gov). The company disclaims any intention or obligation to update, or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.

Investor Relations

Michael J. Porter, President

Porter, LeVay & Rose, Inc.

T: (973) 865-9357

E: mike@plrinvest.com

LinkedIn: @PlRinvest

SOURCE: Poko Innovations Inc.

View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/677042/Poko-Innovations-Inc-Announces-Grant-of-Options-and-Entering-into-Shares-for-Debt-Agreements
For EU Trade and Medical Media Only. Not to Be Distributed to UK and Benelux Based Media

Conditional Marketing Authorisation is based on results from the Phase 1 CHRYSALIS study evaluating amivantamab as a monotherapy in patients after previous treatment with platinum-based therapy1,2,3

Janssen EMEA Receives Conditional Marketing Authorisation for RYBREVANT? (amivantamab), the First Treatment Approved for Patients With Advanced Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer (NSCLC) With EGFR Exon 20 Insertion Mutations After Failure of Platinum-Based Therapy

The Janssen Pharmaceutical Companies of Johnson Johnson announced Conditional Marketing Authorisation (CMA) of RYBREVANT? (amivantamab) for the treatment of adult patients with advanced NSCLC with activating epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) exon 20 insertion mutations, after failure of platinum-based therapy.1 Amivantamab is the first approved treatment in the European Union specifically targeting EGFR exon 20 insertion mutations for NSCLC.1,2,4

"Patients with NSCLC harbouring EGFR exon 20 insertion mutations represent a specific population who have been underserved by current treatment options that are limited in both number and efficacy.5 The decision made by the European Commission represents an important milestone and recognises that amivantamab offers a new treatment specifically targeted for patients with this alteration," said Antonio Passaro, M.D., Ph.D, Medical Oncologist at the Division of Thoracic Oncology of the European Institute of Oncology in Milan, Italy.

The CMA is based on results from the Phase 1 CHRYSALIS study, a multicentre, open-label, clinical study evaluating amivantamab as a monotherapy in patients after previous treatment with platinum-based therapy, which demonstrated efficacy and a generally well-tolerated safety profile.4,6 The investigator-assessed overall response rate was 37 percent (95 percent CI, 28% 46%), with a median duration of response of 12.5 months (95 percent CI, 6.5 16.1) and 64 percent of patients having a duration of response greater than or equal to 6 months.4 These results were consistent with those reported by blinded independent central review assessment, which showed an overall response rate of 43 percent (34% 53%), with a median duration of response of 10.8 months (95 percent CI, 6.9 15.0) and 55 percent of patients having a duration of response greater than or equal to 6 months.4

Analysis showedthe median progression-free survival (time experienced without progression or death) was 8.3 months (95 percent CI, 6.5 10.9) and the median overall survival in patients treated with amivantamab was 22.8 months (95 percent CI, 14.6 not reached).6

The most common adverse events (AEs) at all grades included rash (76 percent), infusion-related reactions (67 percent) and nail toxicity (47 percent), and these were predominantly Grade 1-2.4 Treatment-related discontinuations due to adverse events were seen in three percent of patients.4 Ninety-nine percent of infusion-related reactions occurred with the first infusions and rarely impacted the ability to continue with subsequent treatments (1.1 percent led to treatment discontinuation).4

"This marketing authorisation addresses a high unmet need by bringing a new treatment option to this patient population and their healthcare professionals for the first time in Europe. It is an important step towards our goal to deliver innovative therapies that will transform the trajectory of lung cancer," commented Peter Lebowitz, M.D., Ph.D., Global Therapeutic Area Head, Oncology, Janssen Research Development, LLC.

Conditional marketing authorisation is the approval of a medicine that addresses unmet medical needs of patients based on less comprehensive data than normally required, where the benefit of immediate availability of the medicine outweighs the risk, and the applicant is able to provide comprehensive clinical data in the future.7 This CMA follows other recent approvals for amivantamab, including the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), who approved the treatment in May 2021 for the treatment of adult patients with locally advanced or metastatic NSCLC with EGFR exon 20 insertion mutations, whose disease has progressed on or after platinum-based chemotherapy.8 Additional regulatory applications have been submitted and are being reviewed by other regulatory bodies worldwide.

"We are committed to changing the face of cancer care," said Mathai Mammen, M.D., Ph.D., Global Head, Janssen Research Development, Johnson Johnson. "At Janssen, we're striving to transform long-term patient outcomes and improve quality of life with the right treatment, for the right patient, at the right time."

Dr Passaro has previously provided paid consultancy services for Janssen in relation to research and advisory boards. He has not been compensated for any media work.

Results reported in the SmPC are from 114 patients with a median follow up of 12.5 months.4 Results reported in Park et al are from 81 patients and a median follow up of 9.7 months.6 Not all efficacy endpoints were reported in the SmPC.4,6

About Amivantamab

Amivantamab is a fully-human EGFR-MET bispecific antibody with immune cell-directing activity that targets tumours with activating and resistance EGFR mutations and MET mutations and amplifications, approved for patients with advanced non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) with EGFR exon 20 insertion mutations after failure of platinum-based therapy.1,9,10,11,12 Amivantamab is being studied in multiple clinical trials, including:13

the Phase 1/1b, CHRYSALIS-2 (NCT04077463) study assessing the combination of amivantamab and lazertinib in patients who have progressed after treatment with osimertinib and chemotherapy, as well as lazertinib as a monotherapy 14

as first-line therapy in the Phase 3 MARIPOSA (NCT04487080) study assessing amivantamab in combination with lazertinib, a novel third-generation EGFR tyrosine kinase inhibitor (TKI), against osimertinib and against lazertinib alone in untreated advanced EGFR-mutated NSCLC 15

the Phase 3 MARIPOSA-2 (NCT04988295) study assessing the efficacy of lazertinib, amivantamab and carboplatin-pemetrexed vs. with carboplatin-pemetrexed in participants with locally advanced or metastatic EGFR Exon 19del or Exon 21 L858R substitution NSCLC after osimertinib failure 16

the Phase 3 PAPILLON (NCT04538664)study assessing amivantamab in combination with carboplatin-pemetrexed vs carboplatin-pemetrexed for patients with advanced or metastatic EGFR-mutated NSCLC with exon 20 insertion mutations 17

in combination with carboplatin-pemetrexed vs carboplatin-pemetrexed for patients with advanced or metastatic EGFR-mutated NSCLC with exon 20 insertion mutations the Phase 1 PALOMA (NCT04606381) study assessing the feasibility of subcutaneous (SC) administration of amivantamab based on safety and pharmacokinetics and to determine a dose, dose regimen and formulation for amivantamab SC delivery with the aim to find effective solutions that positively impact patient management.18

About the CHRYSALIS Study

CHRYSALIS (NCT02609776) is an open-label, multicentre, first-in-human Phase 1 study to evaluate the safety, pharmacokinetics and preliminary efficacy of amivantamab as a monotherapy, in combinations with lazertinib and in combination with platinum-based chemotherapy, in patients with advanced NSCLC with various EGFR mutations.3 In the study, investigators assessed efficacy using overall response rate per Response Evaluation Criteria in Solid Tumours Version 1.1* (RECIST v1.1), clinical benefit rate, median duration of response and median progression-free survival, as well as the safety profile of amivantamab.3,19

The study will enrol 780 patients with advanced NSCLC.3 The study consists of two parts: the first consists of amivantamab monotherapy and combination dose escalations, and the second consists of amivantamab monotherapy and combination dose expansions.3

The first cohort of participants received intravenous infusions of amivantamab as monotherapy.3

*RECIST (version 1.1) refers to Response Evaluation Criteria in Solid Tumours, which is a standard way to measure how well solid tumours respond to treatment and is based on whether tumours shrink, stay the same or get bigger.3

About Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer (NSCLC)

In Europe, it is estimated that 477,534 patients were diagnosed with lung cancer in 2020, with around 85 percent diagnosed with NSCLC.20,21 Lung cancer is Europe's biggest cancer killer, with more deaths than breast cancer and prostate cancer combined.20

The main subtypes of NSCLC are adenocarcinoma, squamous cell carcinoma and large cell carcinoma.21 Among the most common driver mutations in NSCLC are alterations in EGFR, which is a receptor tyrosine kinase supporting cell growth and division.22 EGFR mutations are present in 16 to 19 percent of Caucasian patients with NSCLC and present in 37 to 41 percent of Asian patients who have NSCLC adenocarcinoma.23 The five-year survival rate for all people with metastatic NSCLC and EGFR mutations who are treated with EGFR TKIs is less than 20 percent.24 Patients with EGFR exon 20 insertion mutations have a real-world five-year overall survival (OS) of 8 percent in the frontline setting, which is worse than patients with EGFR exon 19 deletions or L858R mutations, who have a real-world five-year OS of 19 percent.25

About the Janssen Pharmaceutical Companies of Johnson Johnson

At Janssen, we're creating a future where disease is a thing of the past. We're the Pharmaceutical Companies of Johnson Johnson, working tirelessly to make that future a reality for patients everywhere by fighting sickness with science, improving access with ingenuity and healing hopelessness with heart. We focus on areas of medicine where we can make the biggest difference: Cardiovascular Metabolism, Immunology, Infectious Diseases Vaccines, Neuroscience, Oncology and Pulmonary Hypertension.

Learn more at www.janssen.com/emea/. Follow us at www.twitter.com/JanssenEMEA for our latest news. Janssen Research Development, LLC; Janssen-Cilag, S.A. and Janssen Biotech, Inc. are part of the Janssen Pharmaceutical Companies of Johnson Johnson.

Cautions Concerning Forward-Looking Statements

This press release contains "forward-looking statements" as defined in the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 regarding amivantamab and lazertinib. 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 materialise, actual results could vary materially from the expectations and projections of Janssen Research Development, LLC any of the other Janssen Pharmaceutical Companies, and/or Johnson Johnson. Risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to: challenges and uncertainties inherent in product research and development, including the uncertainty of clinical success and of obtaining regulatory approvals; uncertainty of commercial success; manufacturing difficulties and delays; competition, including technological advances, new products and patents attained by competitors; challenges to patents; product efficacy or safety concerns resulting in product recalls or regulatory action; changes in behaviour and spending patterns of purchasers of health care products and services; changes to applicable laws and regulations, including global health care reforms; and trends toward health care cost containment. A further list and descriptions of these risks, uncertainties and other factors can be found in Johnson Johnson's Annual Report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended January 3, 2021, including in the sections captioned "Cautionary Note Regarding Forward-Looking Statements" and "Item 1A. Risk Factors," and in the company's most recently filed Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q, and the company's subsequent filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Copies of these filings are available online at www.sec.gov, www.jnj.com or on request from Johnson Johnson. None of the Janssen Pharmaceutical Companies nor Johnson Johnson undertakes to update any forward-looking statement as a result of new information or future events or developments.

References:

_________________________

1 European Medicines Agency. Rybrevant CMA Approval. December 2021.

2 Remon, J et al. EGFR exon 20 insertions in advanced non-small cell lung cancer: A new history begins. Cancer Treatment Reviews. 90 (2020).

3 ClinicalTrials.gov. Study of Amivantamab, a Human Bispecific EGFR and cMet Antibody, in Participants With Advanced Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer (CHRYSALIS). Available at: https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT02609776. Accessed November 2021.

4 European Medicines Agency. Rybrevant Summary of Product Characteristics. December 2021.

5 Vyse S et al. Targeting EGFR exon 20 insertion mutations in non-small cell lung cancer. Signal Transduct Target Ther 2019; 4: 5. 2, Riess J et al. JTO 2018; 13(10): 1560-1568.

6 Park et al. Amivantamab in EGFR Exon 20 Insertion-Mutated Non-Small-Cell Lung Cancer Progressing on Platinum Chemotherapy: Initial Results From the CHRYSALIS Phase I Study. Available at https://ascopubs.org/doi/10.1200/JCO.21.00662?url_ver=Z39.88-2003&rfr_id=ori:rid:crossref.org&rfr_dat=cr_pub%20%200pubmed. Accessed November 2021.

7 Conditional marketing authorisation. The European Medicines Agency. Available at: https://www.ema.europa.eu/en/human-regulatory/marketing-authorisation/conditional-marketing-authorisation

8 Johnson and Johnson. RYBREVANT (amivantamab-vmjw) Receives FDA Approval as the First Targeted Treatment for Patients with Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer with EGFR Exon 20 Insertion Mutations. Available at: https://www.jnj.com/rybrevanttm-amivantamab-vmjw-receives-fda-approval-as-the-first-targeted-treatment-for-patients-with-non-small-cell-lung-cancer-with-egfr-exon-20-insertion-mutations. Accessed November 2021.

9 Grugan et al. Fc-mediated activity of EGFR x c-Met bispecific antibody JNJ-61186372 enhanced killing of lung cancer cells. MAbs. 2017;9(1):114-126.

10 Moores et al. A Novel Bispecific Antibody Targeting EGFR and cMet Is Effective against EGFR Inhibitor-Resistant Lung Tumors. Cancer Res. 2016;76(13)(suppl 27216193):3942-3953.

11 Yun et al. Antitumor Activity of Amivantamab (JNJ-61186372), an EGFR-MET Bispecific Antibody, in Diverse Models of EGFR Exon 20 Insertion-Driven NSCLC. Cancer Discov. 2020;10(8):1194-1209.

12 Vijayaraghavan et al. Amivantamab (JNJ-61186372), an Fc Enhanced EGFR/cMet Bispecific Antibody, Induces Receptor Downmodulation and Antitumor Activity by Monocyte/Macrophage Trogocytosis. Mol Cancer Ther. 2020;19(10):2044-2056.

13 ClinicalTrials.gov. Study of Amivantamab, a Human Bispecific EGFR and cMet Antibody, in Participants With Advanced Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer. Available at: https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT02609776. Accessed November 2021

14 A Study of Lazertinib as Monotherapy or in Combination With Amivantamab in Participants With Advanced Non-small Cell Lung Cancer. Available at: https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT04077463. Accessed November 2021

15 ClinicalTrials.gov. A Study of Amivantamab and Lazertinib Combination Therapy Versus Osimertinib in Locally Advanced or Metastatic Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer (MARIPOSA). Available at: https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT04487080. Accessed November 2021

16 ClinicalTrials.gov. A Study of Amivantamab and Lazertinib in Combination With Platinum-Based Chemotherapy Compared With Platinum-Based Chemotherapy in Patients With Epidermal Growth Factor Receptor (EGFR)-Mutated Locally Advanced or Metastatic Non- Small Cell Lung Cancer After Osimertinib Failure (MARIPOSA-2). Available at https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT04988295 Accessed November 2021

17 ClinicalTrials.gov. A Study of Combination Amivantamab and Carboplatin-Pemetrexed Therapy, Compared With Carboplatin-Pemetrexed, in Participants With Advanced or Metastatic Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer Characterized by Epidermal Growth Factor Receptor (EGFR) Exon 20 Insertions (PAPILLON). Available at: https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT04538664?term=PAPILLON&cond=NSCLC&draw=2&rank=1. Accessed November 2021.

18 ClinicalTrials.gov. A Study of Amivantamab Subcutaneous (SC) Administration for the Treatment of Advanced Solid Malignancies. Available at: https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT04606381. Accessed November 2021.

19 Park et al, Amivantamab (JNJ-61186372), an anti-EGFR-MET bispecific antibody, in patients with EGFR exon 20 insertion (exon20ins)-mutated non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). Available at https://ascopubs.org/doi/abs/10.1200/JCO.2020.38.15_suppl.9512. Accessed November 2021.

20 Globocan 2020. Estimated number of incident cases deaths in 2020, Europe, both sexes, all ages. Available at: www.gco.iarc.fr. Accessed November 2021.

21 Zappa C et al. Non-small cell lung cancer: current treatment and future advances. Transl Lung Cancer Res 2016; 5(3): 288-300.

22 Wee,P, Wang, Z. Epidermal Growth Factor Receptor Cell Proliferation Signaling Pathways. Cancers (Basel). 2017 May; 9(5): 52.

23 Zhang et al. The prevalence of EGFR mutation in patients with non-small cell lung cancer: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Oncotarget 2016. 7 (48): 78985 78993.

24 Lin JJ, Cardarella S, Lydon CA, Dahlberg SE, Jackman DM, Janne PA, et al. Five-Year Survival in EGFR-Mutant Metastatic Lung Adenocarcinoma Treated with EGFR-TKIs. J Thorac Oncol. 2016 Apr;11(4):556-65.

25 Girard N, BazhenovaL, MinchomA, OuSI, GadgeelSM, Trigo J, et al. Comparative clinical outcomes for patients with NSCLC harboring EGFR exon 20 insertion mutations and common EGFR mutations. Abstract presented at: World Conference on Lung Cancer Annual Meeting; January 29, 2021; Singapore.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20211210005550/en/

Contacts:

Media:

Noah Reymond

+31 621 38 5718

NReymond@its.jnj.com

Sarah Jones

+44 7917 849 211

SJones39@its.jnj.com

Investor Relations:

Jessica Moore

+41 79 395 4823

Jmoore29@its.jnj.com
OLD BRIDGE, NJ / ACCESSWIRE / December 10, 2021 / Blonder Tongue Laboratories, Inc. (NYSE American:BDR) announced that it received notice today from NYSE American LLC ("NYSE American" or the "Exchange") stating that the staff of NYSE Regulation has determined to commence proceedings to delist the common stock of the Company from the Exchange because the Company was unable to demonstrate that it had regained compliance with Sections 1003(a)(i), (ii), and (iii) of the NYSE American Company Guide, relating to maintaining a certain level of stockholder's equity if the company has a history of reported losses from continuing operations, by the end of the maximum 18-month compliance plan period, which expired on December 10, 2021. The Company intends to exercise its right to appeal the staff's determination.

The Company has been advised that the shares of the Company's common stock will continue to be listed and traded on NYSE American during the pendency of the Company's appeal, subject to NYSE American's discretion to suspend trading if it believes suspension to be in the public interest. Following the appeal, the decision of the committee of the Board of Directors of the Exchange hearing the appeal will be announced by NYSE Regulation regarding either proceeding with suspension and delisting or continued trading in the Company's common stock.

Receipt of the notice does not affect the Company's business, operations or reporting requirements with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

About Blonder Tongue

Blonder Tongue Laboratories, Inc. is the oldest designer and manufacturer of cable television video transmission technology in the USA. The majority of our products continue to be designed and built in our state-of-the-art New Jersey facility, which has been the Company's home for more than 50 years. Blonder Tongue Labs offers U.S.-based engineering and manufacturing excellence with an industry reputation for delivering ultra-high reliability products. As a leader in cable television system design, the Company provides service operators and systems integrators with comprehensive solutions for the management and distribution of digital video, IPTV and high-speed data services, as well as RF broadband distribution over fiber, IP, and Coax networks for homes and businesses. Additional information on the Company and its products can be found at www.blondertongue.com.

Safe Harbor" Statement under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995: The information set forth above includes "forward-looking" statements. The forward-looking statements relate to future events regarding such matters as anticipated financial performance, business prospects, technological developments, new products, research and development activities and similar matters. In order to comply with the terms of the safe harbor provisions, the Company notes that a variety of factors could cause our actual results and experience to differ materially and adversely from the anticipated results or other expectations expressed in the forward-looking statements. The risks and uncertainties that may affect the operation, performance, development and results of the Company's business include, but are not limited to, those matters discussed in the Company's Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2020 in the sections entitled "Management's Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations" and "Risk Factors," and in the same sections of the Company's subsequently-filed Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q, as may be further updated by any Current Reports on Form 8-K that we may file. The words "believe," "expect," "anticipate," "project," "target," "intend," "plan," "seek," "estimate," "endeavor," "should," "could," "may" and similar expressions are intended to identify forward-looking statements. In addition, any statements that refer to projections for our future financial performance, anticipated growth trends in the Company's business and other characterizations of future events or circumstances are forward-looking statements, including statements regarding the Company's ability to continue as a going concern, the Company's ability to maintain the listing of its shares on the NYSE American and the Company's intention to appeal the NYSE American staff's determination to seek delisting of the Company's shares. Readers also should carefully review the risk factors included in other documents the Company files from time to time with the Securities and Exchange Commission. You are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, which speak only as of the date hereof, or, in the case of other documents referred to herein, the dates of those documents. The Company undertakes no obligation to publicly revise or update these forward-looking statements to reflect events or circumstances that arise after the date hereof, except as may be required under applicable law. The Company's actual results may differ from the anticipated results or other expectations expressed in these forward-looking statements.

Contacts

Eric Skolnik

Chief Financial Officer

eskolnik@blondertongue.com

(732) 679-4000

Ted Grauch

Chief Executive Officer

tgrauch@blondertongue.com

(732) 679-4000

SOURCE: Blonder Tongue Laboratories, Inc.

View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/677105/Blonder-Tongue-Announces-Receipt-of-Notice-of-Delisting-from-NYSE-American--Common-Stock-Expected-to-Continue-Trading-on-NYSE-American-During-Appeal-Process


REDMOND (dpa-AFX) - American tech giant Microsoft Inc. (MSFT) is going to get another green signal to its multi-billion dollar acquisition of artificial intelligence company Nuance.



Reuters reported Friday that the European Union will also allow the deal to go through unhindered. The decision is yet to be announced on December 21 and both parties have not commented on the subject.



Microsoft announced the deal in April and has already gotten antitrust approval in the United States and Australia. The approval from the EU will take the company one step closer to completing its second-largest acquisition after it bought LinkedIn for $26.2 billion back in 2016.



Nuance has been one of the most successful AI-based speech recognition tech makers in the country. It is famous for its Dragon speech recognition system. The company also collaborated with Apple Inc. (AAPL) in setting up Siri, Apple's voice assistant. Presently, the company operates in 77% of the hospitals in the country, and by acquiring it, Microsoft will not only gain a lot of ground in its cloud business for healthcare, it can also use the company's AI tech to make advancements in its research.



The Nuance deal was originally dubbed as a 'killer acquisition' where larger companies kill minor competitors by buying them, the approval from three antitrust bodies will make Microsoft confident about the situation. However, Microsoft will still have to wait for the UK's verdict on the matter which will be filed in January.



The leading tech companies have started to acquire smaller but niche companies lately. This does not only reduce competition but also helps the company incorporate the acquired company's research into its own use. The breakdown of the payment is yet to be clarified but according to reports $3 billion of the fee will be used to clear the debt.



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Donna Parr and Annie Theriault

Cross-Border Impact Ventures, a Toronto, Canada-based impact venture capital firm, has launched the Womens and Childrens Health Technology Fund, with US$30m in commitments.

Limited Partners (LPs) include :

Childrens Investment Fund Foundation (CIFF), a philanthropic organization focused on transforming the lives of children and adolescents.

Global Health Investment Corporation (GHIC), a non-profit organization catalyzing the development of technologies to improve health worldwide. GHIC is investing in the Womens and Childrens Health Technology Fund with the financial support of the German government through its KfW Development Bank.

Grand Challenges Canada (GCC), a Canadian not-for-profit organization that invests in local innovations that address critical global health, humanitarian, and Indigenous community challenges in Canada and low-resource countries.

Hamilton Community Foundation, a public foundation whose activities include investing in organizations that create positive impact beyond financial returns.

Rally Total Impact Fund, a multi-asset class impact investment fund that uses capital to generate financial returns and create positive social and environmental impact.

RockCreek, a leading global investment firm that applies data-driven technology and innovation to create long-term value.

CBIV also has the support of a strategic healthcare investor, as well as Sida  the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency, which provides a guarantee to investors in the fund to encourage private sector participation in the firms impact investing strategy.

The fund, which has an ultimate target of more than US$100, will invest in health technology companies that address the health needs of women, children, and adolescents or make health systems more resilient.

The vehcile will invest in health technology companies with global growth, high return, and impact potential. Its primary focus is on medical device, diagnostic, and digital health companies based in North America, Europe, and Israel. Its secondary focus is on commercial stage companies in emerging markets with global technology transfer potential.

Target investments include healthcare software companies with $1MM  $10MM in revenue, as well as companies developing technology that requires regulatory approval and have at least one product that is CE Mark or FDA approved. The fund will invest and will work with portfolio companies to improve their diversity and ensure products meet the needs of more users of diverse backgrounds.

Led by Managing Partners Donna Parr and Annie Theriault, CBIV Womens and Childrens Health Technology Fund plans to make its first investments in Q1 2022. In addition to sourcing deals, undertaking due diligence, making investments, and working at the board level to support company growth and exit opportunities, CBIV will also target, measure, monitor, and report on impact in terms of health outcomes.

As an Impact Fund, the firm is working towards SFDR Article 9 compliance in Europe, and will be signing on to the UN-developed framework for the Principles for Responsible Investment and the International Finance Corporations (IFC) Operating Principles for Impact Management.

CBIV has a Scientific Advisory Board composed of medical experts in womens, childrens, and adolescents health and innovation. This Board will provide the investment management team with objective and expert scientific views related to clinical trial protocols, product design needs, adoption issues, and trends in health technology.

Advisors include:

Dr. Majorie Jenkins, Dean of UofSC School of Medicine Greenville and Chief Academic Officer for Prisma Health-Upstate with prior experience with the Office of Womens Health at the FDA;

Dr. Alyson McGregor, Director of the Division for Sex and Gender in Emergency Medicine at Brown Universitys Department of Emergency Medicine and expert on gender differences in chronic disease;

Dr. Zulfiqar Bhutta, Co-Director at The Hospital for Sick Children (SickKids) Centre for Global Child Health; and

Dr. Mario Merialdi, former Senior Director at Becton Dickinsons Global Health division and prior World Health Organization (WHO) research coordinator for maternal and perinatal health.

CBIVs Strategic Advisory Board includes experts in mergers and acquisitions, technology, international sales and marketing, strategic partnerships, and global health. Strategic advisors include:

Sanjay Cherian, Chief Strategy Officer at ClearDATA, with past roles at TELUS Health, Shoppers Drug Mart, and Accentures Healthcare practice;

Colleen Hancock, member of the mothers2mothers board of directors, and past COO at Baby Center and VP within the Johnson & Johnson Family of Companies;

Renuke Gadde, global health leader and former business lead for the Becton Dickinson Global Health division;

Alice Fabiano, Global Director, Social Innovation & Investment at Johnson & Johnson; and

Karlee Silver, Co-CEO at Grand Challenges Canada.

CBIV was incubated in partnership with Grand Challenges Canada (GCC), one of the countrys largest impact-first investors. Funded by the Government of Canada and other partners, GCC funds and supports innovators in low- and middle-income countries and Canada to seed and transition to scale their Bold Ideas with Big Impact. Over the past 11 years, GCC has funded over 1,300 projects in more than 105 countries. These innovations are expected to save up to 1.78 million lives and improve up to 64 million lives by 2030.

In addition to providing initial funding to develop the strategy and facilitate the first close of the Womens and Childrens Health Technology Fund, GCC also supports CBIV with access to expertise in health and health impact modeling. CBIV also benefits from GCCs connections with other global health organizations and on-the-ground implementation partners. While CBIV is an independent firm, GCC will remain an advisor to CBIV. This includes supporting the evaluation of portfolio company impact, and serving on several fund advisory committees, including the Impact Committee.

FinSMEs

10/12/2021
Rapid Liquid Print, a Mountain View, Calif.-based maker of 3D printers for elastomers,, raised a seed funding round of undisclosed amount.

The round was led by BMW i Ventures with participation from MassMutual through the MM Catalyst Fund (MMCF).

The company intends to use the funds to develop their 3D-printing solutions to expand within existing customers and into new customers with additional applications and materials.

Rapid Liquid Print (RLP) brings the benefits of 3D printing to elastomers with a revolutionary gel-printing technology that uses industry-standard materials, such as soft rubber, silicone and foams, to produce soft, flexible products without retooling or post-processing.

The company has an exclusive license from MIT for technology originally developed in MITs Self-Assembly Lab.

The team includes:

Founder & CEO, Schendy Kernizan, who previously co-directed and managed researchers and students at MITs Self-Assembly Lab to deliver projects for the likes of Google, BMW and Steelcase.

Co-Founder & CTO, Bjrn Sparrman, who managed the technical operations at the MIT Self-Assembly Lab and, since RLPs 3D printing technologys inception, led the charge for its development.

co-founders Skylar Tibbits and Jared Laucks  both Directors at MITs Self-Assembly Lab.

They work directly with companies around the world on applications including automotive components, aviation, furniture, home goods and medical devices.

FinSMEs

09/12/2021
If you run a small business, you need insurance. There are various types of coverage available and the exact insurance you need will depend on your industry and precise circumstances.

However, some insurance policies are vital for every type of small business. Here are some of the most common types of insurance policies that small businesses could require.

General Liability Insurance

If someone makes a claim against your business because he or she has suffered a bodily injury while on your premises, such as slipping in a store, general liability insurance will protect you and help to pay for things like medical expenses. General liability insurance covers property damage too.

Also, if your business sells products, you should get general liability insurance that includes product liability insurance to help protect your business against property damage or injuries caused by the products you sell.

Professional Liability Insurance

Professional liability insurance protects your business against claims related to mistakes in your professional services.

For example, if a customer has to pay a penalty due to an accounting mistake that your business made, the person could sue your company.

By having professional liability insurance in place, legal costs for such lawsuits will be covered.

Cyber Liability Insurance

In todays world, most businesses, both big and small, have some kind of digital infrastructure. While the digital world has enabled operations to become more efficient and productive in numerous ways, the drawback is your company can potentially be a victim of cybercrime.

Therefore, you should consider getting a business insurance policy known as cyber liability insurance. It can cover your business in the event of things like data breaches and theft or loss of customer data.

Commercial Property Insurance

Whether you own or rent a building, you should take out commercial property insurance. It covers the building and the equipment in the building should a thief break in and steal items.

So, if laptops are stolen, for example, commercial property insurance can help to cover the replacement cost.

Workers Compensation Insurance

Most states in the US require businesses to have workers compensation insurance. It provides employees with benefits to cover things like medical treatment should they experience work-related injuries or illnesses.

Employment Practices Liability Insurance

Also known as employers liability insurance, employment practices liability insurance helps to protect your small business from employment-related claims. That includes claims like sexual harassment, discrimination, and wrongful termination.

Business Income Coverage

When your small business cannot operate due to property damage, you can help to replace your loss of income when you have business income coverage.

Also known as business interruption insurance, the coverage protects your loss of income when your property has been damaged by things like a fire, a storm, or theft.

Business Owners Policy

If you are planning on getting business income insurance in addition to general liability insurance and commercial property insurance, you should go with the umbrella business owners policy, which covers all three types of insurance policies.

Commercial Auto Insurance

Should you or an employee be involved in an accident that causes injuries or property damage while driving a company vehicle, damages can be paid for when you have commercial auto insurance in place.

That means you or the employee can gain financial compensation for things like repairing property and getting medical treatment.

Personal Accident Insurance

If you should experience an injury or illness that stops you from performing your regular work duties, your loss of income can be covered when you have a personal accident insurance policy.

As a small business owner, it makes sense to have personal accident insurance should the unexpected occur.
Whitecap Venture Partners, a Toronto, Canada-based early stage venture capital firm, closed its new fund, Whitecap V, at C$140m.

Returning investors included Kensington Capital Partners, BMO Capital Partners (BMOCP), Inuvialuit Investment Corporation, and several other institutional investors and high-net-worth family offices. Ontario Capital Growth Corporation is one of several new LPs in Whitecap V.

Whitecap V will continue the firms long-standing thesis of leading or co-leading (7  10) Series A financings in high growth technology companies. The funds geographical focus has been expanded to cover all of Canada and, in addition to a core focus on Series A investments, the team is allocating more capital to seed and pre-seed funding rounds.

The vehicle has already completed its first investment from Whitecap V in InvestNext, a real estate investment management platform.

Whitecap Venture Partners is a diversified early-stage venture capital firm investing in high growth B2B software and MedTech companies across Canada. The new fund brings its total assets under management to C$365m.

The launch of Whitecaps latest fund follows on Whitecap III and IV, which invested in 18 companies. Fund III, a 2015 vintage fund, has had notable exits from Real Matters (TSX IPO in 2017) and Clearwater Clinical (acquired by Sivantos/EQT). Whitecap IV portfolio companies include Bolt Logistics  an e-commerce fulfillment and last mile logistics company that recently raised a $115MM Series B financing round from leading investors including Ingka Investments (IKEAs corporate venture arm); and Silofit  which leverages industry leading software and private micro-gyms to empower fitness trainers. Earlier this year, Silofit raised US$10.25MM in Series A financing and signed a commercial agreement with TechnoGym.

The team includes:

Carey Diamond, MP

Blaine Hobson, Chair of Investment Committe

Russell Samuels, Partner

Shayn Diamond, Partner

Melissa Belbeck, Senior Associate

Sarah Hartkorn, Associate

Natalie Smith, Senior Analyst

Kim Coote, VP Finance

FinSMEs

12/12/2021
Samsung has been experimenting with its foldable and rollable displays on various devices now. Recently, a patent filing suggests that Samsung is working on a Galaxy Watch with a rollable display and inbuilt camera.

On June 2, Samsung Electronics filed a patent with the World Intellectual Property Office (WIPO) for an Electronic device comprising a rollable display and display method therefor. The 96-page documentation was released and published on December 9, 2021.

According to a newly released patent, Samsung is working on a Galaxy Watch with two semicircular display parts, which can be expanded from the centre frame, as you can see from the diagram.

The default form factor of the watch is compact, but in a fully extended position, the screen surface is approximately 40% larger. Users can expand and shrink the screen of the Samsung rollable watch accordingly by pressing the crown on the side of the watch case, says the patent.

The Samsung Galaxy Watch has an oval display instead of a circular one. The middle frame also houses a camera for photos and video recordings. However, when Samsung intends to release a rollable Galaxy Watch remains unknown for the time being.

The patent also discusses in-depth the various operating options of the Watch.

Source | Via
Lund's scientific career took off in 2008, when she was a postdoctoral researcher in the University of Washington lab of Dr. Alexander Rudensky, now chair of the immunology program at New Yorks Sloan Kettering Institute. Lund set out to determine if depleting T-regs in herpes-infected mice might unleash a strong inflammatory response that could finally clear out the famously persistent herpes simplex type 2 virus.



To everyones surprise, the mice free of T-regs quickly died of an uncontrolled herpes infection. In the absence of regulatory T cells, other types of T cells, which move in to eliminate infected cells, seemed to be standing down. The results showed that, at least in the case of herpes, T-regs must have been promoting the immune response they were thought to suppress.

Lund was lead author of the paper, published in Science in 2008, a seminal study that made T-regs much more interesting, and puzzling.

It was just an unexpected finding in the field, Lund said. That paper kind of set the stage for all the work Ive done thereafter.

Complex, contradictory roles in immunity

Previously, T-regs had been known for their calming effects on other, more celebrated T cells. They could prevent those aggressive T cell defenders from mistakenly, like an out-of-control mob, attacking its own healthy tissues. Lack of T-regs has been implicated in autoimmune diseases such as eczema and diabetes.

T-regs are mostly recognized for their role in preventing autoimmunity, but clearly theyre doing something as well in the context of infection, Lund said. And now we have shown in many different mouse models of different infections  and also in humans  that they do different things at different times and in different places. So, theres just so much exciting work to be done.

The normal function of most T cells is an aggressive one: to seek out tissues that have been infected by viruses or show signs of cancer, and either mark them for death by other immune cells or kill them directly. These T-cell weapons include CD4 helper cells, which are so essential that, when HIV targets and wipes them out, a person becomes vulnerable to lethal infections and cancers  in other words, they develop AIDS.

T-regs in fact are a subtype of CD4 T cells. In the human body, regulatory T cells account for only about 2% of all white blood cells and about 10% of all CD4s. Yet in areas where our bodies have lots of interaction with the outside world  such as in the mucosal tissues that line the gut  they comprise 20% or more of the local complement of CD4 T cells.

Like all T cells, T-regs come in a wide variety of flavors, and the work they do  whether quieting down inflammation or ramping it up  has a lot to do with which receptors they carry. Their task is also defined by the chemical chatter they have with other cells in their environment. It is a language of molecular communication among immune cells  commands, for example, to activate, rest, attack, retreat, attract, repel, multiply or die  that scientists are very keen to decode.

So, when Lund and other scientists are exploring the immune signature of viral infection, they are not just counting T-regs, T cells and other components of the immune system. They are also logging long lists of chemical signals provoked by the interaction of cells when they encounter a threat.

The immune signature created by COVID-19

In the recent study of the immune signature created by COVID-19, Lund and her colleagues relied on a complex computer algorithm. It evaluated populations of dozens of different immune cell types  distinguished by different receptors  and traces of 71 different kinds of soluble, chemical signals. This mix of cells and signals together forms that signature of the immune response to the coronavirus, which can be compared to the patterns of immune responses to other viruses.

While T-regs are best known for tamping down the immune system, Lunds herpes research had already proven that this is not always the case. So, it is unclear what this telltale COVID-19 signature means. The next step is to find out whether this increase in regulatory T cell levels is good or bad for patients.

In the case of COVID-19, Lund noted that the build-up of T-regs was found in circulating blood, while studies by other researchers have shown deficient levels of these cells in the airways itself, which is battling tissue-damaging inflammation. Lund hypothesizes that, in cases of severe COVID-19, T-regs are not functioning properly in lung mucosal tissue, and that a lack of T-regs tamping down the raging response of T cells to the infection could be contributing to disease.

Maybe theyre not getting to the place where you need them, Lund said. Current research by the group is looking to confirm that model.
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.
Berkeley, Calif. and Berlin, Germany, Dec. 09, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Rigetti Computing, a pioneer in full-stack quantum computing, today announced its partnership with PlanQK (Platform and Ecosystem for Quantum-Assisted Artificial Intelligence), a German consortium that joins end users with quantum hardware to advance quantum computing research and identify real-world artificial intelligence use cases.

PlanQK members will have access to Rigettis latest quantum processors to develop and test a variety of industrial use cases for quantum computing. PlanQK consortium members D-Fine, Deutsche Bahn, QAR-Lab of Ludwig Maximilian University Munich (LMU), University of Stuttgart and StoneOne AG will collaborate with Rigetti to evaluate the optimal use of Rigetti hardware, with a focus on quantum machine learning and optimization applications. By joining hardware and use case expertise, and a large network of end users across industries, Rigetti and PlanQK plan for this partnership to strengthen the quantum computing ecosystem and accelerate application development.

Our partnership with PlanQK is an exciting opportunity to expand access to our latest generation of quantum processors, and to drive the industry towards commercialization with critical use case development. With the industry expertise of our PlankQK collaborators well be able continue developing our hardware to create functionality thats applicable to a broad user base, says Mandy Birch, Rigetti SVP, Partnerships.

Andreas Liebing, CEO StoneOne AG and consortium lead PlanQK says, We are very excited to have Rigetti join us as a hardware partner for the PlanQK platform. We have had insightful discussions during the setup phase; both on a use case as well as a platform integration level and are now looking forward to taking the next step in enabling the quantum ecosystem together with Rigetti.

Prof. Frank Leymann, scientific director of PlanQK, adds, One of the goals of PlanQK is to strengthen the application competence of industry in the field of quantum computing. This naturally includes the use of as many different quantum computers as possible. Therefore, I am pleased that PlanQK partners can now use Rigetti's platform.

About Rigetti Computing

Rigetti Computing is a pioneer in full-stack quantum computing. The company has operated quantum computers over the cloud since 2017 and serves global enterprise, government, and research clients through its Rigetti Quantum Cloud Services platform. The companys proprietary quantum-classical infrastructure provides ultra-low latency integration with public and private clouds for high-performance practical quantum computing. Rigetti has developed the industrys first multi-chip quantum processor for scalable quantum computing systems. The company designs and manufactures its chips in-house at Fab-1, the industrys first dedicated and integrated quantum device manufacturing facility. Rigetti was founded in 2013 by Chad Rigetti and today employs more than 140 people with offices in the United States, U.K., and Australia. Learn more at rigetti.com.

About PlanQK

PlanQK (Platform and Ecosystem for Quantum-Assisted Artificial Intelligence) is a lighthouse project of the AI Innovation Competition of the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy. As a common crystallization point for quantum-assisted artificial intelligence (QAI) it is intended to ensure that Germany maintains a technological expert role in the development and use of this key technology, particularly to enable small and medium-sized enterprises. PlanQK will provide easy access to expertise, algorithms and implementations/apps. Supported by more than 60 associated partners, the consortium consists of 19 industrial and academic partners; the Berlin software house StoneOne AG is the consortium leader and the University of Stuttgart is the scientific leader. Together, all participants contribute a large number of use cases that are being evaluated today, so that the use of quantum computers in industrial applications can be demonstrated and the platform immediately proves its marketability.

More information: https://planqk.de

Additional Information and Where to Find It

Supernova Partners Acquisition Company II (Supernova) (NYSE:SNII) has filed a registration statement on Form S-4 with the Securities Exchange Commission (the SEC), which includes a proxy statement/prospectus, that will be both the proxy statement to be distributed to holders of Supernovas common shares in connection with its solicitation of proxies for the vote by Supernovas shareholders with respect to the proposed business combination and other matters as may be described in the registration statement, as well as the prospectus relating to the offer and sale of the securities to be issued in the business combination. After the registration statement is declared effective, Supernova will mail a definitive proxy statement/prospectus and other relevant documents to its shareholders. This communication does not contain all the information that should be considered concerning the proposed business combination and is not intended to form the basis of any investment decision or any other decision in respect of the business combination. Supernovas shareholders and other interested persons are advised to read, when available, the preliminary proxy statement/prospectus included in the registration statement and the amendments thereto and the definitive proxy statement/prospectus and other documents filed in connection with the proposed business combination, as these materials will contain important information about Rigetti Holdings, Inc. (Rigetti), Supernova and the business combination. When available, the definitive proxy statement/prospectus and other relevant materials for the proposed business combination will be mailed to shareholders of Supernova as of a record date to be established for voting on the proposed business combination. Shareholders will also be able to obtain copies of the preliminary proxy statement, the definitive proxy statement and other documents filed with the SEC, without charge, once available, at the SECs website at www.sec.gov, or by directing a request to Supernovas secretary at 4301 50th Street NW, Suite 300 PMB 1044, Washington, D.C. 20016, (202) 918-7050.

Participants in the Solicitation

Supernova and its directors and executive officers may be deemed participants in the solicitation of proxies from Supernovas shareholders with respect to the proposed business combination. A list of the names of those directors and executive officers and a description of their interests in Supernova is contained in Supernovas prospectus dated March 3, 2021 relating to its initial public offering, which was filed with the SEC and is available free of charge at the SECs website at www.sec.gov. To the extent such holdings of Supernovas securities may have changed since that time, such changes have been or will be reflected on Statements of Change in Ownership on Form 4 filed with the SEC. Additional information regarding the interests of such participants will be contained in the proxy statement/prospectus for the proposed business combination when available.

Rigetti and its directors and executive officers may also be deemed to be participants in the solicitation of proxies from the shareholders of Supernova in connection with the proposed business combination. A list of the names of such directors and executive officers and information regarding their interests in the proposed business combination will be included in the proxy statement/prospectus for the proposed business combination when available.

No Offer or Solicitation

This communication does not constitute (i) a solicitation of a proxy, consent or authorization with respect to any securities or in respect of the proposed business combination or (ii) an offer to sell, a solicitation of an offer to buy, or a recommendation to purchase any security of Supernova, Rigetti, or any of their respective affiliates.

Forward-Looking Statements

Certain statements in this communication may be considered forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements generally relate to future events and can be identified by terminology such as pro forma, may, should, could, might, plan, possible, project, strive, budget, forecast, expect, intend, will, estimate, anticipate, believe, predict, potential or continue, or the negatives of these terms or variations of them or similar terminology. Such forward-looking statements are subject to risks, uncertainties, and other factors which could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward looking statements. These forward-looking statements are based upon estimates and assumptions that, while considered reasonable by Supernova and its management, and Rigetti and its management, as the case may be, are inherently uncertain. Factors that may cause actual results to differ materially from current expectations include, but are not limited to: the outcome of any legal proceedings that may be instituted against Supernova, Rigetti, the combined company or others following the announcement of the business combination and any definitive agreements with respect thereto; the inability to complete the business combination due to the failure to obtain approval of the shareholders of Supernova or to satisfy other conditions to closing; changes to the proposed structure of the business combination that may be required or appropriate as a result of applicable laws or regulations or as a condition to obtaining regulatory approval of the business combination; the ability to meet stock exchange listing standards following the consummation of the business combination; the risk that the Business Combination disrupts current plans and operations of Rigetti as a result of the announcement and consummation of the Business Combination; the ability to recognize the anticipated benefits of the business combination, which may be affected by, among other things, competition, the ability of the combined company to grow and manage growth profitably, maintain relationships with customers and suppliers and retain its management and key employees; costs related to the business combination; changes in applicable laws or regulations; the possibility that Rigetti or the combined company may be adversely affected by other economic, business, or competitive factors; Rigettis estimates of expenses and profitability; the evolution of the markets in which Rigetti competes; the ability of Rigetti to implement its strategic initiatives, expansion plans and continue to innovate its existing services; the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on Rigettis business; and other risks and uncertainties set forth in the section entitled Risk Factors and Cautionary Note Regarding Forward-Looking Statements in the registration on Form S-4 and proxy statement/prospectus discussed above and other documents filed with Supernova from time to time with the SEC.

Nothing in this communication should be regarded as a representation by any person that the forward-looking statements set forth herein will be achieved or that any of the contemplated results of such forward-looking statements will be achieved. You should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements, which speak only as of the date they are made. Neither Supernova nor Rigetti undertakes any duty to update these forward-looking statements.
BOULDER, Colo., Dec. 09, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Commutifi, the leading data-driven commuting platform, announced today a free suite of tools for Transportation Management Associations (TMAs) and Transportation Management Organizations (TMOs).



"TMAs and TMOs are critical to achieving the sustainable transportation future we're working toward at Commutifi," said Andy Keeton, Commutifi's Head of Insights. "But in speaking with many of them, it became clear that most mobility technology providers are ignoring these important organizations. That seemed like a huge oversight."

TMAs and TMOs using the new Commutifi for TMAs/TMOs product will be able to offer a complete, data-driven commuting platform to commuters in their regions at no cost. The platform includes dedicated portals for each registered commuter, through which they can:

Access transportation resources provided by the TMA and region

Understand the impacts of their commute

Find alternative routes



By aggregating anonymous regional data, Commutifi's data portal will unlock insights for TMAs, too, including:

Heatmaps to visualize how and where commuters in their region travel

Data exports that will offer insights into trends, impacts, and more

Additionally, TMAs will be able to:

Embed Commutifi's Commute Calculator on their websites, which allows commuters an easy way to measure the impact of a trip without making an account

on their websites, which allows commuters an easy way to measure the impact of a trip without making an account Access a TMA Directory through which they can connect with peer organizations and collaborate to solve common challenges

"We can't wait to take advantage of Commutifi for TMAs/TMOs," said Bronwen Keiner, Director of Go Glendale and Burbank TMO , two TMAs/TMOs in Southern California. "We'll be able to equip everyone in our regionfrom SMEs to major corporations to local residentswith insights that will improve their commuting approaches. And on our end, we'll have access to data that will help us better understand how to serve our region."

Commutifi for TMAs/TMOs is the first technology of its kind to be designed explicitly for transportation non-profits. "There are a lot of innovative transportation technologies on the market," said Kaite Justice, Director of City Go , the local TMA in Boise, ID. "Unfortunately, TMAs can rarely take advantage of these platforms because either the cost is untenable or because it does not meet to unique regional and individual business needs of a TMA. Getting this platform for free would enable us to do even more for our business members and commuters in Boise."

The Commutifi for TMAs/TMOs platform is only the beginning of the company's plans to partner with TMAs across the country. "A multi-modal future is possible," explained Keeton, "but it won't happen unless we all work together. More than anyone, that includes TMAs."

To learn more about Commutifi for TMAs, as well as how member employers can augment the free offering with their own programs, visit commutifi.com/get/tma .

About Commutifi

Commutifi is the worlds most trusted data-powered commuter platform for businesses, commercial real estate, TMAs, and individuals. Their patented Commuter Score provides a standardized methodology to compare commutes and identify the best option for each individual according to time, cost, and carbon. Through the complex information they collect about each commuter, transportation managers can easily plan, measure, monitor, manage, report, and predict commuter behavior. Commutifi customers include the City of Boulder, CDPHE, and Fortune 500 Companies.

To learn more, visit commutifi.com .
NEW YORK, Dec. 09, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- WHY: Rosen Law Firm, a global investor rights law firm, reminds purchasers of the securities of Vipshop Holdings Limited (NYSE: VIPS) between March 22, 2021 and March 29, 2021, inclusive (the Class Period), of the important December 13, 2021 lead plaintiff deadline.



SO WHAT: If you purchased Vipshop 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 Vipshop class action, go to http://www.rosenlegal.com/cases-register-2178.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 December 13, 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. Many of these firms do not actually litigate securities class actions. 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 firms attorneys have been recognized by Lawdragon and Super Lawyers.

DETAILS OF THE CASE: According to the lawsuit: (1) defendants Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Morgan Stanley obtained the material non-public information pursuant to their agreements with Archegos Capital Management's (Archegos) and as serving as prime brokers of Archegos; (2) defendants knew, recklessly disregarded, or should have known that they owed a fiduciary duty, or obligation arising from a similar relationship of trust and confidence, to Archegos to keep the information confidential; and (3) despite this, while in possession of material, non-public adverse information, defendants collectively sold billions of dollars worth of Vipshop shares. When this information became publicly know, Vipshops stock price declined sharply, damaging investors.

To join the Vipshop class action, go to http://www.rosenlegal.com/cases-register-2178.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 investors 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
NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION TO UNITED STATES NEWS WIRE SERVICES OR FOR DISSEMINATION IN THE UNITED STATES



VANCOUVER, British Columbia, Dec. 09, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- P2 Gold Inc. (P2 or the Company) (TSX-V:PGLD) reports that it intends to complete a non-brokered private placement of flow-through units (the FT Offering), premium flow-through units (the PFT Offering) and non-flow-through units (the NFT Offering) (collectively, the FT Offering, PFT Offering and NFT Offering are the Private Placement).

Flow-Through Offering

The FT Offering will consist of up to three million flow-through units in the capital of the Company (the FT Units) at a price of $0.77 per FT Unit for gross proceeds of up to $2.31 million.

Each FT Unit will consist of one flow-through common share in the capital of the Company (a FT Share) and one non-flow-through common share purchase warrant (a FT Warrant). The FT Shares will qualify as flow-through shares for purposes of the Income Tax Act (Canada). Each FT Warrant will entitle the holder to purchase one additional non-flow-through common share in the capital of the Company at an exercise price of $0.90 per common share for a period of two years from the date of issue (the FT Expiry Time), provided that, if after four months from the date of issue, the closing price of the common shares of the Company on the TSX Venture Exchange (the Exchange) is equal to or greater than $1.75 for a period of 10 consecutive trading days at any time prior to the FT Expiry Time, the Company will have the right to accelerate the FT Expiry Time of the FT Warrants by giving notice to the holders of the FT Warrants by news release or other form of notice permitted by the certificate representing the FT Warrants that the FT Warrants will expire at 4:30 p.m. (Vancouver time) on a date that is not less than 15 days from the date notice is given.

The gross proceeds of the FT Offering will be used to fund exploration expenditures on the BAM Property and other Canadian Exploration Expenses that will qualify as flow through mining expenditures as defined in subsection 127(9) of the Income Tax Act (Canada), and BC flow-through mining expenditures, as defined in the Income Tax Act (British Columbia).

The FT Offering will close on completion of documentation and is conditional upon receipt of all necessary regulatory approvals, including the approval of the Exchange.

Premium Flow-Through Offering

The PFT Offering will consist of up to 1.21 million flow-through units in the capital of the Company (the PFT Units) at a price of $0.84 per PFT Unit for gross proceeds of up to approximately $1.01 million.

Each PFT Unit will consist of one flow-through common share in the capital of the Company (a PFT Share) and one non-flow-through common share purchase warrant (a PFT Warrant). The PFT Shares will qualify as flow-through shares for purposes of the Income Tax Act (Canada). Each PFT Warrant will entitle the holder to purchase one additional non-flow-through common share in the capital of the Company at an exercise price of $0.90 per common share for a period of two years from the date of issue (the PFT Expiry Time), provided that, if after four months from the date of issue, the closing price of the common shares of the Company on the Exchange is equal to or greater than $1.75 for a period of 10 consecutive trading days at any time prior to the PFT Expiry Time, the Company will have the right to accelerate the PFT Expiry Time of the PFT Warrants by giving notice to the holders of the PFT Warrants by news release or other form of notice permitted by the certificate representing the PFT Warrants that the PFT Warrants will expire at 4:30 p.m. (Vancouver time) on a date that is not less than 15 days from the date notice is given.

The gross proceeds of the PFT Offering will be used to fund exploration expenditures on the BAM Property and other Canadian Exploration Expenses that will qualify as flow through mining expenditures as defined in subsection 127(9) of the Income Tax Act (Canada), and BC flow-through mining expenditures, as defined in the Income Tax Act (British Columbia).

The PFT Offering will close on completion of documentation and is conditional upon receipt of all necessary regulatory approvals, including the approval of the Exchange.

Non-Flow-Through Offering

The NFT Offering will consist of up to two million non-flow-through units (the NFT Units) at a price of $0.58 per NFT Unit for gross proceeds of up to $1.16 million.

Each NFT Unit will consist of one non-flow-through common share in the capital of the Company and one non-flow-through common share purchase warrant (a NFT Warrant). Each NFT Warrant will entitle the holder to purchase one additional non-flow-through common share in the capital of the Company at an exercise price of $0.90 per common share for a period of two years from the date of issue (the NFT Expiry Time), provided that, if after four months from the date of issue, the closing price of the common shares of the Company on the Exchange is equal to or greater than $1.75 for a period of 10 consecutive trading days at any time prior to the NFT Expiry Time, the Company will have the right to accelerate the NFT Expiry Time of the NFT Warrants by giving notice to the holders of the NFT Warrants by news release or other form of notice permitted by the certificate representing the NFT Warrants that the NFT Warrants will expire at 4:30 p.m. (Vancouver time) on a date that is not less than 15 days from the date notice is given.

The NFT Offering will close on completion of documentation and is conditional upon receipt of all necessary regulatory approvals, including the approval of the Exchange. The proceeds of the NFT Offering will be used to fund exploration expenditures and for general corporate purposes.

Private Placement

The Private Placement will be offered to accredited investors in all Provinces of Canada pursuant to applicable securities laws. In connection with the Private Placement, the Company may pay finders fees as permitted by the policies of the Exchange. All securities issued pursuant to the Private Placement will be subject to a four-month hold period. The securities offered pursuant to 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 the registration requirements of such Act.

About P2 Gold Inc.

P2 is a mineral exploration and development company focused on advancing precious metals and copper discoveries and acquisitions in the western United States and British Columbia.

For further information, please contact:

Joseph Ovsenek

President & CEO

(778) 731-1055



P2 Gold Inc.

Suite 1100, 355 Burrard Street

Vancouver, BC

V6C 2G8

info@p2gold.com

(SEDAR filings: P2 Gold Inc.) Michelle Romero

Executive Vice President

(778) 731-1060





Neither the Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

Forward Looking Information

This press release contains forward-looking information within the meaning of applicable securities laws that is intended to be covered by the safe harbours created by those laws. Forward-looking information includes statements that use forward-looking terminology such as may, will, expect, anticipate, believe, continue, potential or the negative thereof or other variations thereof or comparable terminology. Such forward-looking information includes, without limitation, information with respect to the Companys expectations, strategies and plans for exploration properties including the Companys planned expenditures and exploration activities, the Private Placements, the use of proceeds from each of the FT Offering, the PFT Offering and the NFT Offering and the issuances of securities pursuant to the Private Placement.

Forward-looking information is not a guarantee of future performance and is based upon a number of estimates and assumptions of management at the date the statements are made, including without limitation, that the Exchange will accept the Private Placement, the issuance of securities under the Private Placement will be approved, the Company will be able to use the proceeds from each of the FT Offering, the PFT Offering and the NFT Offering as anticipated, required fundraising will be completed, as well as the other assumptions disclosed in this news release. Furthermore, such forward-looking information involves a variety of known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors which may cause the actual plans, intentions, activities, results, performance or achievements of the Company to be materially different from any future plans, intentions, activities, results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by such forward-looking information, including without limitation, failure to obtain Exchange acceptance of the Private Placement and/or the issuance of securities pursuant to the Private Placement, the inability to use the proceeds from each of the FT Offering, PFT Offering and NFT Offering as expected, failure to raise sufficient funds on the proposed terms or at all, and risks associated with mineral exploration, including the risk that actual results and timing of exploration and development will be different from those expected by management. See Risk Factors in the Companys annual information form dated August 9, 2021 filed on SEDAR at www.sedar.com for a discussion of these risks.

The Company cautions that there can be no assurance that forward-looking information will prove to be accurate, as actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such information. Accordingly, investors should not place undue reliance on forward-looking information.

Except as required by law, the Company does not assume any obligation to release publicly any revisions to forward-looking information contained in this press release to reflect events or circumstances after the date hereof.
RADNOR, Pa., Dec. 09, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The law firm of Kessler Topaz Meltzer & Check, LLP informs investors that a securities class action lawsuit has been filed in the United States District Court for the Central District of California against Owlet, Inc. (Owlet) (NYSE: OWLT) f/k/a Sandbridge Acquisition Corp. (NYSE: SBG) (Sandbridge). The action charges Owlet with violations of the federal securities laws, including omissions and fraudulent misrepresentations relating to the companys business, operations, and prospects. As a result of Owlets materially misleading statements to the public, Owlet investors have suffered significant losses.



CANNOT VIEW THIS VIDEO? PLEASE CLICK HERE

CLICK HERE TO SUBMIT YOUR OWLET LOSSES

LEAD PLAINTIFF DEADLINE: January 18, 2022

CLASS PERIOD: March 31, 2021 through October 4, 2021

CONTACT AN ATTORNEY TO DISCUSS YOUR RIGHTS:

James Maro, Esq. (484) 270-1453 or Toll Free (844) 887-9500 or Email at info@ktmc.com

OWLETS ALLEGED MISCONDUCT

Owlet, headquartered in Lehi, Utah, operates as a digital parenting platform, focusing on giving real-time data and insights to parents. Its products include: Owlet Monitor Duo that gets the snapshot of babys wellbeing; Owlet Smart Sock that tracks babys heart rate and oxygen while sleeping and gets notifications if baby needs to be checked on; Owlet Cam, a smart HD video baby monitor; and Dream Lab, an online and personalized infant sleep solution.

On July 15, 2021, Sandbridge combined with the company Owlet Baby Care Inc., and the combined company was renamed Owlet. Then, on October 4, 2021, Owlet disclosed that it received a warning letter from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The FDAs letter informed Owlet that its marketing for the Owlet Smart Sock in the United States renders the Smart Sock a medical device requiring premarket clearance or approval from FDA, and that [Owlet] has not obtained such clearance or approval in violation of the Federal, Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act. In the letter, the FDA requested that Owlet take prompt action to remedy the alleged violations and that Owlet cease commercial distribution of the Smart Sock for uses in measuring blood oxygen saturation and pulse rate where such metrics are intended to identify or diagnose desaturation and bradycardia using an alarm functionality to notify users that measurements are outside of preset values.

Following this news, Owlets stock price fell $1.29, or 23%, to close at $4.19 per share on October 4, 2021.

WHAT CAN I DO?

Owlet investors may, no later than January 18, 2022 , seek to be appointed as a lead plaintiff representative of the class through Kessler Topaz Meltzer & Check, LLP or other counsel, or may choose to do nothing and remain an absent class member. Kessler Topaz Meltzer & Check, LLP encourages Owlet investors who have suffered significant losses to contact the firm directly to acquire more information.

CLICK HERE TO SIGN UP FOR THE CASE

WHO CAN BE A LEAD PLAINTIFF?

A lead plaintiff is a representative party who acts on behalf of all class members in directing the litigation. The lead plaintiff is usually the investor or small group of investors who have the largest financial interest and who are also adequate and typical of the proposed class of investors. The lead plaintiff selects counsel to represent the lead plaintiff and the class and these attorneys, if approved by the court, are lead or class counsel. Your ability to share in any recovery is not affected by the decision of whether or not to serve as a lead plaintiff.

ABOUT KESSLER TOPAZ MELTZER & CHECK, LLP

Kessler Topaz Meltzer & Check, LLP prosecutes class actions in state and federal courts throughout the country and around the world. The firm has developed a global reputation for excellence and has recovered billions of dollars for victims of fraud and other corporate misconduct. All of our work is driven by a common goal: to protect investors, consumers, employees and others from fraud, abuse, misconduct and negligence by businesses and fiduciaries. At the end of the day, we have succeeded if the bad guys pay up, and if you recover your assets. The complaint in this action was not filed by Kessler Topaz Meltzer & Check, LLP. For more information about Kessler Topaz Meltzer & Check, LLP please visit www.ktmc.com.

CONTACT:

Kessler Topaz Meltzer & Check, LLP

James Maro, Jr., Esq.

280 King of Prussia Road

Radnor, PA 19087

(844) 887-9500 (toll free)

info@ktmc.com

A video accompanying this announcement is available at: https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/cc930dd4-bb8c-464b-8e49-974fa4630d55




Fort Myers, United States, Dec. 09, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) --



Sunbelt Business Brokers, one of Floridas leading experts on valuing and selling businesses in more than twenty-five different industry sectors, announced a free valuation consultation to help business owners sell their companies as quickly as possible.

Using their extensive knowledge of the market, Sunbelt Business Brokers will work with business owners to assist them in determining the best asking price for their company and guide them on what buyers are looking for regarding the purchase price and terms.

More information is available at https://sunbeltofflorida.com/free-valuation/

Accurately pricing a business is one of the essential steps when listing a business for sale. Determining the right asking price is vital to finding a buyer willing to pay what the company is worth.

Sunbelt has helped business owners sell businesses for over 20 years, said Joe Alter, managing broker and owner of Sunbelt Business Brokers of Naples, Fort Myers, and Sarasota, Florida. We understand the importance of a quick and successful sale, which is why we are now offering this free consultation.

With a focus on selling companies with annual revenues of $50,000 to $50 million, the professionals at Sunbelt Business Brokers advise company owners in every stage of the business selling process.

Their professional business brokers know how to market and sell a business effectively. The team takes care of all advertising and marketing and negotiates on behalf of sellers allowing a company owner to focus on running their business until it sells.

Sunbelt Business Brokers has successfully sold internet services, pharmaceuticals and biotechnology, construction and civil engineering firms, retail distribution businesses, healthcare, restaurants, and many more.

Their in-depth broker services cover business analysis & preparation, value estimates, deal structures, marketing asset development, and confidential promotion.

With their experienced consultants educated on how to sell any firm, these various sectors may also employ online and offline marketing methods to advertise businesses for sale.

In addition to selling a business, Sunbelt Business Brokers of Naples, Fort Myers & Sarasota assist entrepreneurs who want to buy a business. They are well-versed in buying and selling all types of companies, including single proprietorships and multi-layered organization deals.

Interested parties looking to sell a business may receive a free valuation & consultation by visiting https://sunbeltofflorida.com/.

Website: https://sunbeltofflorida.com/fort-myers/
VANCOUVER, British Columbia, Dec. 09, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Prime Mining Corp. (Prime, or the Company) (TSX.V: PRYM) (OTCQB: PRMNF) (Frankfurt: O4V3) is pleased to report its operating and financial results for the second quarter of fiscal 2022, ended October 31, 2021. Unless otherwise stated, all amounts are presented in Canadian dollars.



Prime is focused on the exploration and development of its wholly owned Los Reyes Gold-Silver Project in Sinaloa State, Mexico (Los Reyes or the Project).

Corporate Highlights During the Quarter

On August 30th, the Company reported the exercise of 19,040,256 common share purchase warrants issued in August of 2019 resulting in gross proceeds of $ 9.52 million.

On September 27th, Prime appointed Ms. Edie Hofmeister to the board as an independent director. Ms. Hofmeister brings tremendous strength and wealth of knowledge in ESG matters and governmental affairs. She is an attorney who has counselled large and small multinational resource companies on legal and ESG matters for over 20 years. Most recently, she served as executive vice-president, corporate affairs, and general counsel of Tahoe Resources Inc., where she headed the legal, sustainability and government affairs departments, as it moved from a small junior explorer to a mid-cap producer.

In addition, Mr. Scott Smith was appointed as Executive Vice President, Exploration, replacing Kerry Sparkes who remains active with the Company as a Senior Technical Advisor and supports Scott who will now lead exploration in our quest to continue the discovery process. Mr. Smith is a registered professional geologist, a qualified person and has over 25 years of experience in mine production, exploration, mine start-up and advanced projects at world-class operating mines, and brownfield and greenfield situations in Canada, the United States, Peru and Chile. Mr. Smith recently worked as chief geologist for Taseko Gibraltar Mines Ltd., where he was responsible for managing geology, geotechnical, dewatering, grade control, reserve reconciliation and conversion, exploration, performance standards, quality assurance/quality control for both production and exploration. Mr. Smith is a highly experienced manager of Latin American exploration and operating teams; his prior positions include exploration manager for Teck Resources Ltd. for Chile and Argentina based in Santiago; exploration manager for Newmont Mining Corp. at Minera Yanacocha in Peru; and senior mine geologist at Antamina Mine in Peru for Compania Minera Antamina SA. Mr. Smith holds a BSc (geology) from the University of Alberta.

Exploration Highlights During the Quarter

On August 4th, the Company announced the discovery of gold-silver zones in San Miguel East Pit-Constrained Resource in addition to near surface mineralization at Las Primas.

On September 8th, the Company reported additional high-grade results expanding the open-pit potential at Guadalupe East.

On October 12th, the Company confirmed strike and depth potential of the Zapote-Tahonitas mineralized structure.

Subsequent Event Highlights

Exploration Update

On November 16th, the Company provided an update on its planned Phase 2 drill program. The Phase 2 program will run from approximately November 2021 to October 2022 and will consist of approximately 250 new drill holes, for a minimum of 50,000 metres (m). There are currently seven drill rigs operating on the property.

Other continuing subjects and activities critical to progress and the overall success of the Project include:

Maintaining Health and Safety Protocols

The Company successfully minimized the impact of Covid-19 on operations. To-date Covid-19 has not had a material effect on the Companys activities. Prime remains engaged with local stakeholders and is proactive in monitoring employees and contractors during this uncertain period. The Company continues to closely adhere to the directives of all levels of government and relevant health authorities in Mexico and Canada.

Continuing Community Engagement and Environmental Stewardship

The responsible stewardship of the local environment where we operate is at the heart of our corporate values. We strive to minimize the environmental impact of our activities at all times. Plus, we aim to offset our activities by engaging in outreach initiatives to improve the local environment.

Selected Financial Data

The following selected financial data is summarized from the Companys condensed interim consolidated financial statements and related notes thereto (the Financial Statements) for the three months ended October 31, 2021. A copy of the Financial Statements and MD&A is available at www.primeminingcorp.ca or on SEDAR at www.sedar.com.

Q2 2022

Q2 2021

Loss and comprehensive loss $(5,600,423) $(2,548,756) Loss per share - basic and diluted $(0.05) $(0.03)





October 30, 2021



April 30,2021 Cash $29,848,024 $32,026,806 Total assets $43,961,419 $44,791,540 Total current liabilities $472,903 $894,128 Total liabilities $1,396,764 $1,812,746 Total shareholders equity $42,564,655 $42,978,794

AGM Results

On Thursday December 9, 2021, the Company held its Annual General and Special Meeting of Shareholders where the shareholders voted in favour of all the items put forward by the Board of Directors and Management.

Shareholders voted in favour of the election of all director nominees: Murray John (Chairman), Daniel Kunz, Andrew Bowering, Paul Larkin, Marc Prefontaine, Paul Sweeney and Edie Hofmeister.

The shareholders also approved the following items:

1) Re-appointment of Davidson & Company LLP, Chartered Professional Accountants, as auditor of the Company for the ensuing year and authorize the Board to fix the remuneration of the auditor;

2) Fixing the number of the directors of the Company for the ensuing year at seven (7);

3) Election of directors to hold office for the ensuing year;

4) Approval of the Companys stock option plan (see Information Circular); and

5) Ratification by disinterested shareholders of the long-term incentive plan (see Information Circular).



A total of 60,222,302 Prime common shares were voted representing 53.50% of the total issued and outstanding as at the record date of this meeting.

Qualified Person

Scott Smith, P.Geo., Executive Vice President of Exploration, is a qualified person for the purposes of National Instrument 43-101 and has reviewed and approved the technical content in this news release.

Los Reyes Gold and Silver Project

Los Reyes is a rapidly evolving high-grade, low sulphidation epithermal gold-silver project located in Sinaloa, Mexico, within the prolific Sierra Madre mining region. Historic operating results indicate that an estimated 1 million ounces of gold and 60 million ounces of silver were recovered from five separate operations at Los Reyes between 1770 and 1990. Prior to Primes acquisition, recent operators of Los Reyes had spent approximately USD 20 million on exploration, engineering, and prefeasibility studies. The Project remains underexplored as only 40% of the known structures have been systematically drilled, leaving 10 kilometres of untested strike length. Los Reyes holds potential for additional discovery and resource expansion.

Prime Mining acquired Los Reyes is 2019, completed initial data compilation, field mapping and trenching in 2020, and in 2021, executed a Phase 1 exploration program that included 25,650 metres of drilling. Results suggest the deposits are much larger than previously reported and potential exists for new discoveries outside of current defined resources. The Company is currently undertaking a 50,000 metre Phase 2 exploration program.

About Prime Mining

Prime Mining (member of the TSX Venture 50) is an ideal mix of successful mining executives, strong capital markets personnel, and experienced local operators focused on unlocking the full potential of the high-grade Los Reyes Gold-Silver Project in Mexico. Prime Mining has a well-planned capital structure with significant team and insider ownership.

The TSX Venture 50 is a ranking of the top performers in each of 5 industry sectors on the TSX Venture Exchange over the last year.

ON BEHALF OF THE BOARD OF DIRECTORS

Daniel Kunz

Chief Executive Officer

For further information, please contact:

Daniel Kunz

Chief Executive Officer and Director

Prime Mining Corp.

1307 S. Colorado Ave.

Boise, Idaho 83706

Telephone: 1-208-926-6379 office

email: daniel@primeminingcorp.ca

Andrew Bowering

Executive Vice President and Director

Prime Mining Corp.

710  1030 West Georgia Street

Vancouver, BC, V6E 2Y3

Telephone: (604) 428-6128

Facsimile: (604) 428-6430

E: andy@primeminingcorp.ca

Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

Forward Looking Information

Information set forth in this document may include forward-looking statements. While these statements reflect management's current plans, projections, and intents, by their nature, forward-looking statements are subject to numerous risks and uncertainties, some of which are beyond the control of the Company. Readers are cautioned that the assumptions used in the preparation of such information, although considered reasonable at the time of preparation, may prove to be imprecise and, as such, undue reliance should not be placed on these forward-looking statements. There is no assurance the activities described in this release will be completed as planned, or at all. The Companys actual results, programs, activities, and financial position could differ materially from those expressed in or implied by these forward-looking statements.
London, UK , Dec. 09, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Ever Wallpaper sells premium quality, eco-friendly and sustainable wallpapers for homes. With the premium mural wallpapers offered by Ever Wallpaper, customers can bring together a stunning design, imagery and creation to all the rooms in their house. The company offers a variety of wallpapers, so there is a design suitable for any customer out there.



A wide selection of wallpapers categories is available for customers to browse their websites, such as 3D wallpapers and Graffiti wallpapers design. Through the proper use of wallpapers such as 3D wallpapers design, customers can enhance the atmosphere and dimensions of the space available in the room. More proper furnishing as complimentary decor will revive the room and exhilarate all who enter.

Apart from browsing through categories of wallpaper design on the website, customers can also navigate and use the type of room as a reference in their search for the more suitable wallpaper. Some examples of room type that can be found are home office wallpaper, nursery wallpaper and dining room wallpapers. Every parent wants the best for their kids and with a limitless selection of wallpapers designs, the kids rooms are filled with infinite possibilities. From a fairy-style theme nursery to a cool and colourful style or even a neutral style for the room, there is always a perfect find for every parent.

Colors play a big role in interior design, and it is important to use them correctly to create the right mood for the customers home. Colors such as blue and green can often be used to represent a more calming and relaxing ambiance, while warmer colors such as yellow and orange are more ideal for creating a cheerful and energetic atmosphere. Ever Wallpapers offered a wide selection for every suitable mood.

The company also offers custom murals to be made as long as the wall dimensions and the art designs are able to be provided by the customers. There are 3 types of different paper types offered for custom wall murals: medium, heavy, and peel and stick. Medium paper type offers a sharp point of definition and excellent color vibrancy. The heavy medium type has a canvas-like textured feel which offers great durability and super easy-to-clean surfaces. The peel and stick paper, it is able to be installed and removed easily without additional tools. This selection is a perfect choice for beginners and customers who are into DIYs projects.

From the website, potential customers looking for inspiration can also browse through different customers room designs and the beautiful wallpaper and mural gallery. The website offers a large number of stunning wall decor pictures in different styles and designs for customers to go through and get inspiration from. Through the images, potential customers are able to discover more about each product being shown.

About Ever Wallpaper

Ever Wallpaper was founded in 2002 in London, UK and its a world-class high-tech enterprise specializing in the production of hot-melt adhesive materials. The company aims to make home space more comfortable, healthy and stunning through the services being offered. The company aims to go green at work and focuses on environmental protection. In addition, the company believes in making eco-conscious decisions wherever and whenever possible.

Website: https://www.everwallpaper.co.uk/




SYDNEY, Australia, Dec. 09, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Total Image Group is pleased to announce the launch of their latest customised designs for uniforms. Total Image Group is Australia's uniform specialists. They offer fashion forward uniforms and workwear for clients in the corporate, hospitality, sporting, education, fitness, retail, automotive, healthcare, and industrial sectors. Workplace uniforms demonstrate the brand in unique and fashionable ways. The customised designs are attractive, industry-specific, and well-fitted. Depending on the industry, the colour, comfort, and fit add to the pride of the employee who knows they would look good.

Many businesses are not aware of the importance of branding for their businesses. Workwear, regardless of the industry, is a way of identifying the image which the client wishes to portray. Some of the businesses that have appeared in the Total Image portfolio include supermarkets, food, retail liquor outlets, fast food, department stores, and specialty stores. The uniform experts help identify ways in which the customers can provide unique work uniforms that have a strong connection to the brand.

Today, more than ever businesses are aware of the importance of a strong purpose and culture and its direct impact on staff morale, sales and performance. Communicating that message across multiple locations and even countries can be difficult and a uniform is a key part of achieving consistency and confidence in messaging. A company uniform defines what you are about as a business and ensures, regardless of what location the team is based at, that they are on the same page. said Pamela Jabbour - CEO of Total Image Group

A consultation with the experts at Total Image can include a full uniform range or just key components that help create the perfect look. The size of the uniform order can be scaled to roll out smoothly and effectively. The leading uniform specialists in Australia ensure that each step of the process, from initial consultation to delivery of the finished product, is completed with total customer satisfaction. Some of the elements considered in creating a design for workwear include fit, comfort, colour, durability, and more.

Additional details are available at https://totalimagegroup.com.au/

The company has been working to create workplace garments and accessories that are fully suited to the wearer's work. The completed garments are high quality and aesthetically pleasing. Since 2005, the expertise of Total Image has been available to clients in a variety of fields and industries.

About the Company:

Total Image Group is pleased to announce that the company has been providing custom workwear in Australia for more than sixteen years. The designs are appropriate for retail, industrial, high visibility, healthcare, and more. The family-run business understands the importance of enhanced branding and employee morale.

Website: https://totalimagegroup.com.au/

Location: Total Image Group - Google Maps
NEW DELHI, India, Dec. 10, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- From December 14-16, 2021, Carnegie India will co-host the 6th edition of its annual flagship event, the Global Technology Summit (GTS) with the Ministry of External Affairs, Government of India, themed Global Meets Local.



The three-day event will convene world decision-makers, experts, and practitioners from all over the world to discuss topics such as encryption, vaccine supply chains, data protection, fintech, innovation for sustainable development, the QUAD, cryptocurrency, and much more. All the conversations happening at the Summit can be accessed free of cost by registering on GTS2021.COM.

The growing list of 100+ notable speakers include:

Boris Johnson, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

S. Jaishankar, External Affairs Minister of India

Katherine Charlet, Director, Data Governance, Google

Abhijit Bose, Head of India, Whatsapp

Ajay Kumar, Defence Secretary of India

Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw, Executive Chairperson, Biocon

Ajit Mohan, Vice President and Managing Director, India, Meta

Rajesh Bansal, Chief Executive Officer, RBI Innovation Hub

Nivruti Rai, Country Head, Intel India and Vice President, Intel Foundry Services, Intel Corporation

Akhil Gupta, Vice Chairman, Bharti Enterprises

Indrani Bagchi, Associate and Diplomatic Editor, Times of India

Miriam Wimmer, Director, Brazilian Data Protection Authority, ANPD

Melinda Claybaugh, Privacy Policy Director-Legislation, Meta

Keyzom Ngodup Massally, Senior Advisor, Chief Digital Office, UNDP

Cedric O, Minister of State for Digital Transition and Electronic Communication, France

V. Muraleedharan, Minister of State for External Affairs and Parliamentary Affairs, Government of India

Tarun Chhabra, Special Assistant to the President of the United States and Senior Director for Technology and National Security, National Security Council, the White House

Meenakashi Lekhi, Minister of State for External Affairs and Culture, Government of India

Rajkumar Ranjan Singh, Minister of State for External Affairs and Education, Government of India

Nguyen Huy Dung, Deputy Minister of Information and Communications, Government of Vietnam

Christian Klein, Chief Executive Officer, SAP

Arundhati Bhattacharya, Chief Executive Officer and Chairperson, Salesforce

Salil Parekh, Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director, Infosys

Marshall Erwin, Chief Security Officer, Mozilla

Mahima Datla, Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer, Vaccines and Branded Formulations, Biological E. Limited

Manish Gupta, Director of Google Research, India

And many other distinguished speakers.

The latest agenda for the Summit is available here.

All public sessions will be broadcast live on GTS2021.COM, with conversations running throughout the three days from December 14, 9:55 am IST up to December 16, 7:30 pm IST. Attendees will have the opportunity to ask questions during the live broadcast, and all conversations will be available to watch afterward on Carnegie India's YouTube page and the GTS 2021 website. Join the conversation on social media with #GlobalTechSummit and follow Carnegie India on Twitter @CarnegieIndia.

The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace is a nonpartisan foreign policy think tank with centers in Washington, D.C., Moscow, Beirut, Beijing, Brussels, and New Delhi. In an increasingly crowded, chaotic and contested world and marketplace of ideas, the Carnegie Endowment offers decisionmakers global, independent, and strategic insight and innovative ideas that advance international peace.

Contact

Sanya Budhiraja

Communications and Program Coordinator, Carnegie India

sanya.budhiraja@ceip.org
NOT FOR RELEASE, PUBLICATION OR DISTRIBUTION IN WHOLE OR IN PART, DIRECTLY OR INDIRECTLY, IN OR INTO THE UNITED STATES, CANADA, AUSTRALIA OR JAPAN OR ANY OTHER JURISDICTION IN VIOLATION OF THE RELEVANT LAWS OF SUCH JURISDICTION.



Offering upsized by additional 10 million due to strong investor demand



Strong alignment with investors thanks to sponsor commitment of up to 81 million

including an unconditional Forward Purchase Agreement of up to 50 million from

institutional sponsors Tikehau Capital SCA and Financiere Agache SA

Pegasus Entrepreneurs now targets a combination with an entrepreneurial European growth business drawing on the teams entrepreneurial experience and

operational, deal sourcing, capital markets and M&A expertise

AMSTERDAM, The Netherlands, Dec. 10, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Pegasus Entrepreneurial Acquisition Company Europe B.V. (Pegasus Entrepreneurs), the newly formed Special Purpose Acquisition Company (SPAC) focussed on European growth companies and backed by serial entrepreneur Pierre Cuilleret and institutional sponsors Tikehau Capital SCA (Tikehau Capital) and Financiere Agache SA (Financiere Agache), today announces that it has successfully raised 210 million in the Offering (as defined below). The Offering was upsized by 10,000,000 due to strong investor demand.

Pegasus Entrepreneurs also announces the admission of all of the Units, the Class A Ordinary Shares and the Warrants (the Admission) to listing and trading on Euronext Amsterdam, which is expected to commence at 09:00 CET this morning.

Pierre Cuilleret, Sponsor & CEO, Pegasus Entrepreneurs, said: We are pleased to have successfully raised 210 million on Euronext Amsterdam on this upsized SPAC. We saw strong demand from likeminded long-term investors who share our passion for supporting growth companies. We are excited to start the process of finding a promising European, entrepreneurial business to partner with. Pegasus Entrepreneurs combines real-world experience of nurturing entrepreneurial DNA with the long-term vision, committed capital and unique deal sourcing of our institutional sponsors to create real value.

In aggregate, the Sponsors, Pegasus Acquisition Partners Holding B.V. (jointly controlled by Pierre Cuilleret, Diego De Giorgi and Jean Pierre Mustier), Tikehau Capital, Financiere Agache, Diego De Giorgi and Jean Pierre Mustier (collectively, the Sponsors), have invested 31 million by subscribing for Units in the Offering. The Sponsors have also subscribed for founder shares and founder warrants for a total amount of 8,032,500 to be used to cover commissions and costs in connection with the Offering, the Admission and the business combination. In addition, Pegasus Entrepreneurs may call upon an unconditional Forward Purchase Agreement of up to 50 million, provided by institutional sponsors Tikehau Capital and Financiere Agache. Pegasus Entrepreneurs also retains the flexibility to raise significant additional funding through a PIPE (private investment in public equity) to provide further investment in the business.

The significant investment of the Sponsors ensures strong alignment with investors and has allowed Pegasus Entrepreneurs to attract a broad and high-quality investor base.

Certain investors have individually subscribed for 5% or more of the Units offered in the Offering (each a "Major IPO Shareholder"). The Major IPO Shareholders in aggregate will subscribe for 7,000,000 Units in the Offering at the Offer Price for an aggregate subscription price of 70,000,000. The Sponsors have offered at no cost each Major IPO Shareholder that is allocated at least 2,500,000 Units in the Offering a number of Class A Ordinary Shares corresponding to 2% of the number of Class A Ordinary Shares (forming part of the Units) such Major IPO Shareholder is allocated in the Offering, or if less, that such Major IPO Shareholder will hold upon the completion of the Business Combination; provided that, on the date that is two Trading Days after the Redemption Date (as defined in the Prospectus), such Major IPO Shareholder (i) has not redeemed any of its Class A Ordinary Shares subscribed for in the Offering to the extent that such redemption would lead to such Major IPO Shareholder holding fewer than 2,500,000 Class A Ordinary Shares at any time and (ii) owns at least 2,500,000 Class A Ordinary Shares. The Sponsors may deliver such additional Class A Ordinary Shares to the Major IPO Shareholders from Class A Ordinary Shares they already own or Class A Ordinary Shares they have purchased in the market. The Company will not issue new Class A Ordinary Shares for such purpose.

Pegasus Entrepreneurs intends to partner with a European headquartered business that has a track record of achieving high growth. Potential targets will have a clear growth and value creation plan which can be further developed thanks to the expertise, additional capital and listing obtained by entering into a business combination. These targets may include a broad range of business models and financial characteristics including mature businesses with established franchises and strong competitive positions.

The Pegasus Entrepreneurs team combines entrepreneurial, operational and deal making experience, as well as long-term managerial, risk and governance expertise. Pierre Cuilleret will be supported by CFO Baptiste Desplats, a Capital Markets and M&A execution specialist, who has advised leading companies in diversified sectors in Europe.

Pegasus Entrepreneurs will have 18 months from the Settlement Date (as defined below), subject to a six-month extension period if approved by a shareholder vote, to complete a business combination. Pegasus Entrepreneurs shareholders will also benefit from approval rights on any proposed transaction via a general meeting.

Citigroup Global Markets Europe AG, Goldman Sachs Bank Europe SE and BNP Paribas are acting as joint global coordinators and joint bookrunners (the Joint Global Coordinators) in the Offering.

Details of the Offering

Pegasus Entrepreneurs has completed a private placement of units (the Units) at a price of 10.00 per Unit (the Offer Price), raising gross proceeds of 210 million (the Offering). Each Unit comprises one Class A ordinary share in the share capital of Pegasus Entrepreneurs with a nominal value of 0.01 per share (a Class A Ordinary Share) that entitles its holder to receive an additional one-third (1/3) of a redeemable warrant (a Warrant).

Trading on an as-if-and-when-issued/delivered basis on Euronext Amsterdam in the Units is expected to commence at 09:00 CET this morning (the First Listing and Trading Date). Payment (in euro) for, and delivery of, the Units is expected to take place on 14 December 2021 (the Settlement Date).

The Class A Ordinary Shares and the Warrants will trade as Units on Euronext Amsterdam for the first 35 calendar days from the First Listing and Trading Date under the symbol PEACE (same symbol as the Class A Ordinary Shares). On 14 January 2022, which is the Conversion Trading Date, whole Warrants will automatically commence trading separately under the symbol "PEACW". On 18 January 2022 (the date that is two Trading Days' after the Conversion Trading Date), the Company will distribute whole Warrants to each holder that owned at least three Class A Ordinary Shares (or a whole multiple thereof) at the end of 17 January 2022 (the first Trading Day after the Conversion Trading Date). For the avoidance of doubt, none of the Joint Global Coordinators will undertake any stabilisation transactions following Admission.

Investing in Pegasus Entrepreneurs involves certain risks. A description of these risks, which include risks relating to Pegasus Entrepreneurs as well as risks relating to the Offering, the Ordinary Shares and the Warrants is included in the Prospectus (as defined below).

This announcement also serves as the pricing statement related to the Offering as required by article 17(2) of Regulation (EU) 2017/112 (the Prospectus Regulation) and has been filed with the Netherlands Authority for the Financial Markets (Autoriteit Financiele Markten, the AFM). This announcement and the listing prospectus (the Prospectus) prepared by the Company in connection with the Admission and approved by the AFM this morning are available free of charge on the corporate website of the Company (www.pegasuseurope.com/investor-relations/peace), subject to securities law restrictions in certain jurisdictions.

Article 5:25a(2) of the Dutch Financial Supervision Act requires all listed companies to publicly announce which country is their home member state for the purposes of regulation of their disclosure obligations under Directive 2004/109/EG of the European Parliament and of the Council of 15 December 2004 on the harmonisation of transparency requirements in relation to information about issuers whose securities are admitted to trading on a regulated market and amending Directive 2001/34/EC (the EU Transparency Directive).

Pegasus Entrepreneurs hereby announces that its home member state is the Netherlands.

Media Contacts

Pegasus Entrepreneurs

FinElk: Robin Haddrill / Cornelia Schnepf: +44 7920 016 203/ +44 7387 108 998

pegasus@finelk.eu

Tikehau Capital

Tikehau Capital: Gregoire Lucas & Valerie Sueur, Tel : +33 (0)1 40 06 11 48 / +33 (0)1 40 06 39 30

France - Image 7: Florence Coupry, Tel: +33 (0)1 53 70 74 70

UK  Prosek Partners: Henrietta Dehn  Tel: +44 (0)20 8323 0475

press@tikehaucapital.com

Shareholder and Investor Contact: Louis Igonet, Tel: +33 (0)1 40 06 11 11 shareholders@tikehaucapital.com

Website: www.tikehaucapital.com

Financiere Agache

DGM Conseil : Olivier Labesse, Hugues Schmitt, Thomas de Climens : +33 1 40 70 11 89

About Pegasus Entrepreneurial Acquisition Company Europe B.V.

Pegasus Entrepreneurial Acquisition Company Europe B.V. (Pegasus Entrepreneurs) is a Special Purpose Acquisition Company (SPAC) focussed on entrepreneurial European growth companies. Backed by serial entrepreneur Pierre Cuilleret and institutional sponsors Tikehau Capital SCA and Financiere Agache, Pegasus Entrepreneurs successfully raised 210 million in gross offering proceeds and listed on Euronext Amsterdam (ticker code: PEACE and PEACW) on 10 December 2021. Pegasus Entrepreneurs now targets a business combination with a European headquartered business that has a track record of achieving high growth and has a clear growth and value creation plan which can be further developed with the expertise, additional capital and a listing obtained by entering into a business combination.

For further information please visit www.pegasuseurope.com/investor-relations/peace

Disclaimer

This press release contains information that qualifies or may have qualified as inside information within the meaning of Article 7(1) of the EU Market Abuse Regulation.

These materials are not for release, distribution or publication, whether directly or indirectly and whether in whole or in part, in or into the United States, Canada, Australia or Japan or any other jurisdiction where to do so would constitute a violation of the relevant laws of such jurisdiction. These materials are for information purposes only and are not intended to constitute, and should not be construed as, an offer to sell or a solicitation of any offer to buy the Units, Class A Ordinary Shares or Warrants of Pegasus Entrepreneurial Acquisition Company Europe B.V. (the "Company", and such securities, the "Securities") in the United States, Canada, Australia or Japan or in any other jurisdiction in which such offer, solicitation or sale would be unlawful prior to registration, exemption from registration or qualification under the securities laws of such jurisdiction.

This announcement is not for publication or distribution, directly or indirectly, in or into the United States. This announcement is not an offer of securities for sale into the United States. The Securities 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. The Company will not be registered in the United States as an investment company under the U.S. Investment Company Act of 1940. No public offering of securities is being made in the United States.

In the United Kingdom, this document and any other materials in relation to the Securities is only being distributed to, and is only directed at, and any investment or investment activity to which this document relates is available only to, and will be engaged in only with, "qualified investors" within the meaning of Article 2(e) of Regulation (EU) 2017/1129 as it forms part of domestic law by virtue of the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018 (the EUWA) and who are also (i) persons having professional experience in matters relating to investments who fall within the definition of "investment professionals" in Article 19(5) of the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000 (Financial Promotion) Order 2005 (the Order); or (ii) high net worth entities falling within Article 49(2)(a) to (d) of the Order (all such persons together being referred to as "relevant persons"). The Securities are only available to, and any invitation, offer or agreement to subscribe, purchase or otherwise acquire such Securities will be engaged in only with, relevant persons. Persons who are not relevant persons should not take any action on the basis of this document and should not act or rely on it.

In relation to each member state of the European Economic Area, no Units, Class A Ordinary Shares or Warrants have been offered or will be offered, except to any legal entity which is a qualified investor as defined in Article 2 of the Prospectus Regulation, provided that no such offer of Units, Class A Ordinary Shares or Warrants shall require the Company to publish a prospectus pursuant to Article 3 of the Prospectus Regulation or supplement a prospectus pursuant to Article 23 of the Prospectus Regulation. In Switzerland, no Units, Class A Ordinary Shares or Warrants have been offered or will be offered and the materials are addressed to, and directed only at, persons who are professional or institutional clients within the meaning of Article 4(3) and Article 4(4) of the Swiss Financial Services Act.

The Units, the Class A Ordinary Shares and the Warrants are not intended to be offered, sold or otherwise made available to and, should not be offered, sold or otherwise made available to any retail investor in the EEA. For these purposes, a retail investor means a person who is one (or more) of: (i) a retail client as defined in point (11) of Article 4(1) of Directive (EU) 2014/65/EU on markets in financial instruments (as amended) (MiFID II); (ii) a customer within the meaning of Directive 2016/97/EC (as amended or superseded, the Insurance Distribution Directive), where that customer would not qualify as a professional client as defined in point (10) of Article 4(1) of MiFID II; or (iii) not a qualified investor as defined in the Prospectus Regulation. Consequently no key information document required by Regulation (EU) No 1286/2014 (as amended the PRIIPs Regulation) for offering or selling the Units or the Warrants or otherwise making them available to retail investors in the EEA has been prepared and therefore offering or selling the Units or the Warrants or otherwise making them available to any retail investor in the EEA may be unlawful under the PRIIPs Regulation.

No action has been taken by the Company that would permit an offer of Securities or the possession or distribution of these materials or any other offering or publicity material relating to such Securities in any jurisdiction where action for that purpose is required.

The Units and the Warrants are not intended to be offered, sold or otherwise made available to and should not be offered, sold or otherwise made available to any retail investor in the United Kingdom. For these purposes, a retail investor means a person who is one (or more) of: (i) a retail client, as defined in Directive (EU) 2014/65/EU on markets in financial instruments (as amended) and implemented in the United Kingdom as it forms part of the domestic law of the United Kingdom by virtue of the EUWA (UK MIFID II); (ii) a customer within the meaning of Directive (EU) 2016/97 (as amended) as it forms part of the domestic law of the United Kingdom by virtue of the EUWA, where that customer would not qualify as a professional client as defined in UK MIFID II; or (iii) not a qualified investor as defined in Article 2 of the UK Prospectus Regulation. Consequently, no key information document required by the Regulation (EU) No 1286/2014 as it forms part of the domestic law of the United Kingdom by virtue of the EUWA (the UK PRIIPs Regulation) for offering or selling the Units and the Warrants or otherwise making them available to retail investors in the United Kingdom has been prepared and, therefore, offering or selling the Units and the Warrants or otherwise making them available to any retail investor in the UK may be unlawful under the UK PRIIPs Regulation.

The release, publication or distribution of these materials in certain jurisdictions may be restricted by law and therefore persons in such jurisdictions into which they are released, published or distributed, should inform themselves about, and observe, such restrictions.

These materials may include statements, including the Companys financial and operational medium-term objectives that are, or may be deemed to be, ''forward-looking statements''. These forward-looking statements may be identified by the use of forward-looking terminology, including the terms ''believes'', "aims", "forecasts", "continues", ''estimates'', ''plans'', ''projects'', ''anticipates'', ''expects'', ''intends'', ''may'', ''will'' or ''should'' or, in each case, their negative or other variations or comparable terminology, or by discussions of strategy, plans, objectives, goals, future events or intentions. Forward-looking statements may and often do differ materially from actual results. Any forward-looking statements reflect the Companys current view with respect to future events and are subject to risks relating to future events and other risks, uncertainties and assumptions relating to the Companys business, results of operations, financial position, liquidity, prospects, growth or strategies. Forward-looking statements speak only as of the date they are made.

This announcement does not constitute a prospectus. Copies of the prospectus may be obtained at no cost from the Company or through the website of the Company.

Each of the Company, Citigroup Global Markets Europe AG, Goldman Sachs Bank Europe SE and BNP Paribas (together, the Joint Global Coordinators) and their respective affiliates expressly disclaims any obligation or undertaking to update, review or revise any forward-looking statement contained in these materials whether as a result of new information, future developments or otherwise.

The Joint Global Coordinators are acting exclusively for the Company and no one else in connection with any offering of Securities. It will not regard any other person as its respective clients in relation to any offering of Securities and will not be responsible to anyone other than the Company for providing the protections afforded to their respective clients nor for providing advice in relation to any offering of Securities, the contents of these materials or any transaction, arrangement or other matter referred to herein. The Joint Global Coordinators or any of their respective subsidiary undertakings, affiliates or any of its respective directors, officers, employees, advisers, agents, alliance partners or any other entity or person accepts any responsibility or liability whatsoever for, or makes any representation, warranty or undertaking, express or implied, as to the truth, accuracy, completeness or fairness of the information or opinions in these materials (or whether any information has been omitted from these materials) or any other information relating to the Company, 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 these materials or its contents or otherwise arising in connection therewith. Accordingly, each Joint Global Coordinator disclaims, to the fullest extent permitted by applicable law, all and any liability, whether arising in tort or contract or that they might otherwise be found to have in respect of these materials and/or any such statement.
New York, Dec. 10, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Reportlinker.com announces the release of the report "Site Management Organizations Market by Therapeutic Areas, Trial Phases, Clinical Trial Components, Type of Interventions and Key Geographies : Industry Trends and Global Forecasts, 2021-2035" - https://www.reportlinker.com/p06189683/?utm_source=GNW

However, the conduct of such trials is often fraught with challenges, including scientific and operational complexity, concerns associated with recruitment and retention of suitable patients, issues related to data handling and increasingly stringent regulatory guidelines. Further, owing to the inherent complexity of the overall process and involvement of several different stakeholders, these trials are prone to delays. In fact, over 80% of the clinical trials are delayed by at least one to six months, while only 10% of the studies are completed on time. Therefore, innovators in the pharmaceutical industry are constantly developing ways to improve the process of conducting clinical trials and managing research sites. Amidst other alternatives, outsourcing various trial operations to a specialized service provider, such as site management organizations (SMOs), has emerged as a viable option for various developers. The advantages of engaging such specialized service providers are numerous and enable sponsors to meet their clinical research timelines. In addition, SMOs can facilitate rapid patient recruitment, reduce study timelines, and manage the entire clinical trial processes and administrative work for their clients. Moreover, drug / medical device developers, and even the contract research organizations (CROs), can employ the therapeutic and operational expertise, global site networks and well-established processes and tools offered by SMOs in order to carry out their clinical research and site management activities in a cost and time efficient manner.



Currently, around 250 companies claim to be actively providing clinical site management services to drug and medical device developers across the world. Recently, there has been a lot of activity within the site management market, primarily focused on consolidation of affiliated capabilities, service portfolio expansions and collaborations to extend geographical reach. The aforementioned developments may be attributed to the growing preference for one-stop-shops among sponsor companies, and the gradual acceptance of outsourcing as a viable and beneficial operating model for conducting clinical trials and managing research sites. With the growing complexity, as well as rise in the number of clinical trials being registered, the demand for SMOs is anticipated to grow at a steady pace in the coming years.



SCOPE OF THE REPORT

The Site Management Organizations Market  Distribution by Therapeutic Areas (Oncological Disorders, CNS Disorders, Infectious Diseases, Cardiovascular Diseases and Others), Trial Phases (Phase I, Phase II, Phase III and Phase IV), Clinical Trial Components (Site Management, Onsite Monitoring, Project Management and Others), Type of Interventions (Therapeutics, Devices and Surgical Procedure) and Key Geographies (North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific, Latin America, MENA, and RoW): Industry Trends and Global Forecasts, 2021-2035 report features an extensive study of the current market landscape and future potential of the site management organizations market. The study features an in-depth analysis, highlighting the capabilities of clinical trial site management service providers engaged in this domain.



Amongst other elements, the report features:

A detailed review of the overall landscape of companies offering clinical trial site management services to various organizations, including CROs, and pharmaceutical, biotechnology and medical devices companies, along with information on their year of establishment, company size (in terms of employee count), location of headquarters and geographical reach of the companies. The chapter also covers details related to type of service(s) offered (site identification and selection, study feasibility, study protocol development, patient recruitment, patient retention, project management, regulatory support, clinical monitoring, site management, clinical trial data management, patient follow-up, real-time enquiry / information support, study contract, budget and expense management / contract negotiation, hiring / training study investigator, logistics management, quality control and quality assurance and others) and therapeutic expertise of service providers.

An insightful 22 representation of the competitiveness analysis of various service providers segregated into three peer groups based on location of their headquarters (North America, Europe, and Asia-Pacific and RoW). The companies were further distributed across the geographies, based on their employee count, into three categories, namely small (1-200 employees), mid-sized (201-500 employees) and large (>500 employees), highlighting the top players in this domain, based on their respective capabilities.

An analysis of the partnerships that have been inked by stakeholders engaged in this domain, during the period 2016-2021 (till August). The various types of partnerships captured in our study include (in alphabetical order) acquisitions, clinical trial agreements, clinical trial site agreements, joint ventures, mergers, product / technology integration agreements, research agreements, service alliances, technology licensing agreements, technology utilization agreements and other related agreements. Further, the partnership activity in this domain has been analyzed based on various parameters, such as year of partnership, type of partnership, focus area and most active players (in terms of number of partnerships). It also highlights the regional distribution of the collaborations.

A detailed analysis of various investments received by players engaged in this domain during the period 2015-2021 (till August), based on several relevant parameters, such as year of investment, number of funding instances, amount invested, type of funding (grant, seed, venture capital, secondary offering, other equity, debt and others) and type of investor, along with information on the most active players (in terms of number of funding instances and amount raised), most active investors (in terms of number of funding instances) and geographical distribution (in terms of number of funding instances and amount invested).

An in-depth analysis of completed, ongoing and planned clinical studies during the period 2016-2021 (till August), to present clinical trial key insights, based on several relevant parameters, such as trial registration year, number of enrolled patients, trial status, trial phase, type of sponsor and geographical distribution of number of trials and enrolled patient population.

An informed estimate of the annual demand for clinical study participants, taking into account the target patient population in ongoing and planned clinical trials, sponsored by both industry and non-industry players.

Elaborate profiles of prominent players (shortlisted based on a proprietary criterion) that offer various clinical trial site management services, across North America, Europe and Asia-Pacific. Each profile provides an overview of the company, featuring information on the year of establishment, number of employees, location of their headquarters, details related to its site management service portfolio, recent developments, and an informed future outlook.



One of the key objectives of the report was to evaluate the current opportunity and the future potential of the site management organizations market over the coming decades. We have provided an informed estimate of the likely evolution of the market in the short to mid-term and long term, for the period 2021-2035. Our year-wise projections of the current and future opportunity have further been segmented on the basis of [A] therapeutic areas (oncological disorders, CNS disorders, infectious diseases, respiratory disorders, cardiovascular diseases, endocrine disorders, gastrointestinal disorders, musculoskeletal diseases, immunological disorders and others), [B] clinical trial phases (phase I, phase II, phase III and phase IV), [C] clinical trial components (site management, onsite monitoring, project management, data management, regulatory affairs, logistics, quality control and others), [D] types of interventions (therapeutics, devices and surgical procedure) and [E] key geographical regions (North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific, Latin America, MENA and RoW). To account for future uncertainties in the market and to add robustness to our model, we have provided three forecast scenarios, portraying the conservative, base and optimistic tracks of the markets evolution.



The opinions and insights presented in the report were also influenced by discussions held with senior stakeholders in the industry. The report features detailed transcripts of interviews held with the following individuals:

Vinod Gyanchandani (Country Head - Clinical Operations, GDD Experts)

Marisa Vico (Medical Director and Operations Manager, SMO  Dra. Marisa Vico)

Eugene Winifred (Project Manager, Syncretic Clinical Research Services)



RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

The data presented in this report has been gathered via secondary and primary research. For all our projects, we conduct interviews / surveys with experts in the area (academia, industry, medical practice and other associations) to solicit their opinions on emerging trends in the market. This is primarily useful for us to draw out our own opinion on how the market will evolve across different regions and technology segments. Wherever possible, the available data has been checked for accuracy from multiple sources of information.

The secondary sources of information include

Annual reports

Investor presentations

SEC filings

Industry databases

News releases from company websites

Government policy documents

Industry analysts views



All actual figures have been sourced and analyzed from publicly available information forums and primary research discussions. Financial figures mentioned in this report are in USD, unless otherwise specified.



KEY QUESTIONS ANSWERED

Who are the leading players in the clinical trial site management domain?

What is the relative competitiveness of different site management organizations?

What type of partnership models are commonly adopted by stakeholders in this industry?

What is the capital investments trend in site management organizations domain?

Which are the most active clinical trial centers?

What are the major market trends and driving factors that are likely to impact the growth of site management organizations market?

How is the current and future market opportunity likely to be distributed across key market segments?



CHAPTER OUTLINES

Chapter 2 is an executive summary of the key insights captured during our research. It offers a high-level view on the likely evolution of the site management organizations market in the short to mid-term, and long term.



Chapter 3 provides a general introduction to SMOs, featuring information on their working model and major differences between a SMO and CRO. Further, it provides details related to the various services offered by SMOs. Additionally, it highlights the advantages offered by SMOs acting as one-stop-shops. The chapter concludes with a discussion on the anticipated opportunity areas for SMOs and inputs on their projected growth in the coming years.



Chapter 4 features a detailed review of the current market landscape of around 250 companies offering clinical trial site management services. Additionally, it features an in-depth analysis of service providers, based on a number of relevant parameters, such as year of establishment, company size (in terms of employee count) and location of headquarters. The chapter also covers details about type of site management service(s) offered (site identification and selection, study feasibility, study protocol development, patient recruitment, patient retention, project management, regulatory support, clinical monitoring, site management, clinical trial data management, patient follow-up, real-time enquiry / information support, study contract, budget and expense management / contract negotiation, hiring / training study investigator, logistics management, quality control and quality assurance and others), therapeutic expertise of service providers (oncological disorders, CNS disorders, infectious diseases, respiratory disorders, cardiovascular diseases, endocrine disorders, gastrointestinal disorders, musculoskeletal diseases, immunological disorders, dermatological disorders and others) and geographical reach of the companies.



Chapter 5 presents an insightful competitiveness analysis of the site management organizations, located in North America, Europe and Asia-Pacific. The companies are further segmented based on their employee count, into three categories, namely small (1-200 employees), mid-sized (201-500 employees) and large (>500 employees) across these geographies. The analysis compares the service providers on the basis of various parameters, such as site management services offered, therapeutic expertise, geographical reach and year of establishment. In the chapter, stakeholder entities have been plotted on a 22 matrices, having a companys experience (based on its year of establishment) (abscissa) and company competitiveness (ordinate) as the two axes.



Chapter 6 provides detailed profiles of the prominent players (shortlisted based on a proprietary criterion) that are active in offering clinical trial site management services in North America. Each profile provides an overview of the company, information related to its site management service portfolio, and details on recent developments, as well as an informed future outlook.



Chapter 7 provides detailed profiles of the prominent players (shortlisted based on a proprietary criterion) that are active in offering clinical trial site management services in Europe. Each profile provides an overview of the company, information related to its site management service portfolio, and details on recent developments, as well as an informed future outlook.



Chapter 8 provides detailed profiles of the prominent players (shortlisted based on a proprietary criterion) that are active in offering clinical trial site management services in Asia-Pacific. Each profile provides an overview of the company, information related to its site management service portfolio, and details on recent developments, as well as an informed future outlook.



Chapter 9 features an analysis of the various collaborations and partnerships that have been inked by stakeholders engaged in this domain, during the period 2016-2021 (till August). It includes a brief description of the partnership models (including service alliances, clinical trial agreements, acquisitions, product / technology integration agreements, technology utilization agreements, R&D agreements, mergers, joint ventures, clinical trial site agreements, technology licensing agreements and others) adopted by stakeholders in this domain. Further, it comprises of analysis based on year of agreement, type of agreement, focus area and most active player(s) (in terms of number of partnerships inked). Further, the chapter includes a world map representation of all the deals inked in this field in the period 2016-2021, highlighting both intercontinental and intracontinental partnership activity.



Chapter 10 presents details on various investments received by various players engaged in clinical trial site management domain. It also includes an analysis of the funding instances that have taken place in the market, during the period 2015-2021 (till August), highlighting the growing interest of the venture capital community and other strategic investors within this market.



Chapter 11 provides a detailed analysis of completed, ongoing, and planned clinical studies during the period 2016-2021 (till August), to present clinical trial key insights, highlighting prevalent trends across various relevant parameters, such as trial registration year, number of enrolled patients, trial status, trial phase, type of sponsor and geographical distribution of number of trials and enrolled patient population.



Chapter 12 provides an informed estimate of the annual demand for clinical study participants, taking into account the target patient population in ongoing and planned clinical trials, sponsored by both industry and non-industry players.



Chapter 13 presents an insightful market forecast analysis, highlighting the likely growth of the site management organizations market till the year 2035. In order to provide details on the future opportunity, our projections have been segmented on the basis of [A] therapeutic areas (oncological disorders, CNS disorders, infectious diseases, respiratory disorders, cardiovascular diseases, endocrine disorders, gastrointestinal disorders, musculoskeletal diseases, immunological disorders and others), [B] clinical trial phases (phase I, phase II, phase III and phase IV), [C] clinical trial components (site management, onsite monitoring, project management, data management, regulatory affairs, logistics, quality control and others), [D] types of interventions (therapeutics, devices and surgical procedure) and [E] key geographical regions (North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific, Latin America, MENA and RoW).



Chapter 14 summarizes the overall report. In this chapter, we have provided a list of key takeaways from the report, and expressed our independent opinion related to the research and analysis described in the previous chapters.



Chapter 15 provides the transcripts of interviews conducted with representatives from renowned organizations that are engaged in the site management domain. In this chapter, we have presented the details of our conversation with Vinod Gyanchandani (Country Head - Clinical Operations, GDD Experts), Marisa Vico (Medical Director and Operations Manager, SMO  Dra. Marisa Vico) and Eugene Winifred (Project Manager, Syncretic Clinical Research Services).



Chapter 16 is an appendix, that provides tabulated data and numbers for all the figures included in the report.



Chapter 17 is an appendix that provides the list of companies and organizations that have been mentioned in the report.

Read the full report: https://www.reportlinker.com/p06189683/?utm_source=GNW



About Reportlinker

ReportLinker is an award-winning market research solution. Reportlinker finds and organizes the latest industry data so you get all the market research you need - instantly, in one place.



__________________________
Dublin, Dec. 10, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The "High Performance Alloys Market: Global Industry Trends, Share, Size, Growth, Opportunity and Forecast 2021-2026" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering.



The global high performance alloys market exhibited negative growth in 2020. Looking forward, the market is projected to grow at a CAGR of 6% during 2021-2026.



A considerable rise in the use of high performance alloys in the defense sector for enhancing operational efficiency represents one of the primary factors positively influencing the market. Moreover, there is an increase in the demand for next-generation aircraft and building fuel nozzles of jet engines in the aerospace industry. This, in turn, is positively driving the sales of high performance alloys across the globe. Additionally, these alloys are used in industrial gas turbines as they help increase the overall performance.

Furthermore, the market is driven by the rising utilization of high performance alloys in the oil and gas industry for onshore and offshore exploration, drilling, and production activities. Besides this, due to the rising environmental concerns and stringent regulations implemented by governing agencies of numerous countries, there is a significant rise in the demand for fuel-efficient vehicles. Consequently, leading vehicle manufacturers are relying on high-performance alloys for reducing the overall weight of the vehicle.

Other major factors anticipated to support the growth of the market include developments in aluminum and magnesium mining and increasing extraction of metals used for alloying.



Market Segmentation

The report provides an analysis of the key trends in each sub-segment of the global high performance alloys market, along with forecasts at the global, regional and country level from 2021-2026. The report has categorized the market based on region, product, material and application.



Breakup by Product

Non-ferrous Metal

Platinum Group Metal

Refractory

Superalloys

Breakup by Material

Aluminum

Titanium

Magnesium

Others

Breakup by Application

Aerospace

Industrial Gas Turbine

Industrial

Automotive

Oil and Gas

Electrical and Electronics

Others

Competitive Landscape

The competitive landscape of the industry has also been examined along with the profiles of the key players being:

Alcoa Corporation

Allegheny Technologies Incorporated

Aperam SA

Carpenter Technology Corporation

Haynes International Inc.

Hitachi Metals Ltd. (Hitachi Ltd.)

Outokumpu Oyj

Precision Castparts Corp. (Berkshire Hathaway Inc.)

The Timken Company

ThyssenKrupp AG

VSMPO-AVISMA Corporation

Key Questions Answered in the Report

How has the global high performance alloys market performed so far and how will it perform in the coming years?

What has been the impact of COVID-19 on the global high performance alloys market?

What are the key regional markets?

What is the breakup of the market based on the product?

What is the breakup of the market based on the material?

What is the breakup of the market based on the application?

What are the various stages in the value chain of the industry?

What are the key driving factors and challenges in the industry?

What is the structure of the global high performance alloys market and who are the key players?

What is the degree of competition in the industry?

For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/9g2ose
Dublin, Dec. 10, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The "GCC Halal Cosmetics Market: Industry Trends, Share, Size, Growth, Opportunity and Forecast 2021-2026" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering.



The GCC halal cosmetics market grew at a CAGR of around 14% during 2015-2020. Looking forward, the market is expected to continue its strong growth during 2021-2026.

Keeping in mind the uncertainties of COVID-19, the report continuously tracks and evaluates the direct as well as the indirect influence of the pandemic. These insights are included in the report as a major market contributor.



In the GCC region, the wide presence of the Muslim population along with the increasing compliance of halal certification is currently augmenting the demand for halal cosmetics. Additionally, the rising health concerns towards the high prevalence of various skin disorders due to synthetic and alcohol-based cosmetic ingredients are also bolstering the market growth. Apart from this, the market is also driven by the rising working women population in the region, thereby catalyzing the purchase of high-quality and premium halal cosmetics.

Moreover, several foreign brands are introducing halal cosmetics into their product portfolios to cater to the specific needs and preferences of the consumers in the GCC region. Additionally, the emergence of e-commerce platforms that offer diverse product options, door-step delivery, secured payment gateways, etc., are also expected to drive the market for halal cosmetics across the region.



Key Market Segmentation:

The report provides an analysis of the key trends in each sub-segment of the GCC halal cosmetics market, along with forecasts at the region level from 2021-2026. The report has categorized the market based on region, product type and distribution channel.



Breakup by Product Type:

Personal Care

Skin Care

Hair Care

Fragrances

Others

Color Cosmetics

Face Cosmetics

Eyes Cosmetics

Lips Cosmetics

Nail Cosmetics

Breakup by Distribution Channel:

Supermarkets and Hypermarkets

Specialty Stores

Online Stores

Others

Breakup by Country:

Saudi Arabia

UAE

Oman

Qatar

Turkey

Others

Competitive Landscape:

The competitive landscape of the industry has also been examined with some of the key players being Amara Halal Cosmetics, Clara International Beauty Group, Iba Cosmetics, Lush, OnePure LLC, PHB Ethical Beauty Ltd., Sampure Minerals and The Halal Cosmetics Company.



Key Questions Answered in This Report:

How has the GCC halal cosmetics market performed so far and how will it perform in the coming years?

What has been the impact of COVID-19 on the GCC halal cosmetics market?

What are the key regional markets?

What is the breakup of the market based on the product type?

What is the breakup of the market based on the distribution channel?

What are the various stages in the value chain of the industry?

What are the key driving factors and challenges in the industry?

What is the structure of the GCC halal cosmetics market and who are the key players?

What is the degree of competition in the industry?

Company Profiles:

Amara Halal Cosmetics

Clara International Beauty Group

IBA Cosmetics

Lush

OnePure LLC

PHB Ethical Beauty Ltd.

Sampure Minerals

The Halal Cosmetics Company

For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/gvnae1

About ResearchAndMarkets.com

ResearchAndMarkets.com is the world's leading source for international market research reports and market data. We provide you with the latest data on international and regional markets, key industries, the top companies, new products and the latest trends.
Dublin, Dec. 10, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The "Chile Minimally Invasive Surgical Instruments Market Size, Share & Trends Analysis Report By Device (Handheld Instruments, Electrosurgical Devices), By Application (Orthopedic, Cosmetic), And Segment Forecasts, 2021 - 2028" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering.

The Chile minimally invasive surgical instruments market size is expected to reach USD 101.4 million by 2028 and is expected to expand at a CAGR of 8.9% from 2021 to 2028

Minimally invasive surgery is highly efficient as it enables the surgeons to use advanced technology and surgical techniques during surgery in a less harmful manner. It reduces the number and size of incisions made, lowering the risk of complications and damage to surrounding muscle and tissue.

The improving healthcare infrastructure and the ease with which the instruments are accessible are contributing to the market growth. In addition, the growing geriatric population is expected to boost the market growth. For instance, as per the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Chile's population over age 65 is expected to reach 24.9% by 2050.

Minimally invasive surgery (MIS) has become the standard of treatment in almost every field owing to advancements in technology and methodologies. MIS offers reduced pain, increased accuracy, quicker recovery, shorter length of hospital stay, decreased risk of infection, lower incidence of post-surgery complications, and overall improved quality of life compared to conventional open surgeries.



In Chile, as budgets allow, hospitals exhibit a willingness to invest in the highest-quality products available. For medical devices and supplies, Chile is 95% reliant on imports. The medical device market in Chile is competitive, with numerous companies from around the world easily finding their way in.

In addition, the rise in public hospital infrastructure will create an increased demand for minimally invasive surgical instruments as the Chilean government will invest large sums in hospital construction in the future years. However, longer surgery wait times and inequalities in healthcare access are anticipated to hinder the growth of the Chilean market for minimally invasive surgical devices.

Chile Minimally Invasive Surgical Instruments Market Report Highlights

By device, the handheld instruments segment accounted for a leading revenue share in 2020 owing to its higher precision and versatility

The electrosurgical devices segment is expected to grow at a significant rate during the forecast period

Based on application, the orthopedic segment accounted for the largest revenue share in 2020 owing to the effectiveness of MIS in this application

The cosmetic application segment is predicted to witness the fastest growth over the forecast period on account of the rising demand for technologically improved minimally invasive equipment

Market Dynamics

Market driver analysis

Improving health infrastructure

Ageing population

Ease of market access

Market restraint analysis

Long waiting time for surgeries

Inequality in healthcare accessibility

Chile Minimally Invasive Surgical Instruments Market Analysis Tools

Industry Analysis - Porter's

PESTEL Analysis

Major Deals & Strategic Alliances Analysis

Market Entry Strategies

Companies Mentioned

Medtronic

Stryker

Smith & Nephew

Abbott

CONMED

Zimmer Biomet

Intuitive Surgical, Inc.

For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/cr31oy
Dublin, Dec. 10, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The "Emerging Opportunities of Advanced Materials in Biosensors" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering.

In recent decades, there has been an increase of possibilities in the use of conducting polymers, carbon nanotubes, and graphene for building novel biosensors, due to the advancement of polymers and carbon nanomaterials.

The use of polymers, CNTs and graphene as sensor components, due to their exceptional features, are intended to make sensors increasingly trustworthy, precise and speedy. Various techniques can be employed to design sensing devices based on the type of target molecule.

Point of care (POC) testing and diagnostics are a major growth area for biosensors, enabling remote health monitoring in real-time. Biosensor systems are used to detect diseases and infections, including diabetes, heart disorders, cancer, and contagious diseases more conveniently, efficiently and sensitively. Biosensor opportunities will also be pushed by the increased spread of mobile telephones to make health data easier to communicate.

Wearable biosensors discover expanding possibilities in remote places, which do not include medical and healthcare facilities, to continue monitoring of vital signs of patients, preterm infants, children, athletes, or fitness enthusiasts.

Factors influencing development and adoption - Key drivers and challenges

Patent landscape

Funding Insights

R&D ecosystem

Key growth opportunities

Advancements in Nanotechnology-based Materials Encouraging Biosensor Development in Remote Health Monitoring Applications

Advancements in Materials Enabling Flexible Hybrid Electronics Trend in Industries

Organ-on-a-chip Biosensor Expected to Disrupt Healthcare Market



Key Topics Covered:





1. Strategic Imperatives

2. Growth Environment

2.1 Scope of the Technology and Innovation Research

2.2 Research Methodology

2.3 Research Process and Methodology

2.4 Summary of Key Findings

3. Technology Overview

3.1 Overview and Competencies of Advanced Materials for Sensors

3.2 Biosensors Addressing Common Needs in the Market

3.3 Role of Advanced Materials in Biosensor Technology Development

3.4 Graphene as an Essential Material in Biosensor Development

3.5 Conducting Polymers Gaining Attention in Biosensor Applications

3.6 CNT Materials Important for Developing Unique Biosensor Devices

4. Application Impact Analysis, Driving and Challenging Factors

4.1 Nanotech-based Biosensors and Noninvasive Sensing as Key Driving Factors

4.2 Government Regulatory Hurdles and High Production Costs as Major Challenge Factors

4.3 Key Application Impact of Biosensing Technology

4.4 Key Developments from Research Universities on Advanced Materials-based Biosensors

5. IP Innovation Trends & Funding Assessment

5.1 Key Patent Trends and Innovation Focus

5.2 Key Patent Trends in Materials Innovation for Biosensor Development

5.3 Funding Focus Areas and Regional Impact Analysis

5.4 Important Funding Grants for Developing Biosensors with Advanced Materials

6. Companies to Action

6.1 Archer Materials

6.1.1 Graphene Biosensors for Detecting Diseases

6.2 Cardea Bio

6.2.1 Graphene Biosensors for Detecting COVID-19 Virus

6.3 Grapheal

6.3.1 Graphene-based Biosensors for Smart Wound Management

6.4 HeMemics Biotechnologies

6.4.1 CNT-based Biosensors for POC Solutions

6.5 Sparc Technologies Limited

6.5.1 Noninvasive Graphene Biosensors for Breath Analysis

7. Growth Opportunities

8. Key Contacts



Companies Mentioned

Archer Materials

Cardea Bio

Grapheal

HeMemics Biotechnologies

Sparc Technologies Limited

For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/hcqff3

About ResearchAndMarkets.com

ResearchAndMarkets.com is the world's leading source for international market research reports and market data. We provide you with the latest data on international and regional markets, key industries, the top companies, new products and the latest trends.
Dublin, Dec. 10, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The "Brazilian Natural Gas Market Growth Opportunities" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering.

This study looks at the transformation of the gas landscape and identifies the key trends shaping the coming decade. It also highlights business opportunities for participants to consider when designing their growth strategies to stay relevant and agile in the market.

Brazil's natural gas market is in the midst of profound transformation driven by recent changes in market design and the promulgation of a new regulatory framework. Although regulatory gaps and uncertainties about how the market will develop persist, national and international players are cautiously initiating strategic moves to take advantage of the untapped potential in gas reserves and end-user demand.

The retreat of Petrobras, the national oil company, from a series of businesses across the gas value chain, puts an end to its monopoly. This is expected to attract new investment and players, create a supply shock, and stimulate demand and investment across gas infrastructure, industries, and thermal generation, creating a virtuous cycle for Brazil's development.

The country's gas business potential is enormous, though its market peculiarities should be carefully assessed to identify growth areas.

Key Trends Covered

Increasing energy consumption and natural gas leadership

End of Petrobras's monopoly encouraging private investment

Promulgation of the new gas law driving market development

LNG as a critical element to sustain early market growth

Biomethane takes off as an alternative gas supply

Increasing gas supply through virtual pipelines

Key Topics Covered:

1. Strategic Imperatives

Why Is It Increasingly Difficult to Grow?

The Strategic Imperative

The Impact of the Top 3 Strategic Imperatives on the Brazilian Natural Gas Market

Growth Opportunities Fuel the Growth Pipeline Engine

2. Overview of the Brazilian Natural Gas Market

Natural Gas Consumption by End-user Segment

Natural Gas Supply by Source

Natural Gas Domestic Production

Natural Gas Transportation Pipelines

Natural Gas Distribution

Natural Gas Value Chain and Key Market Participants

3. Growth Opportunity Analysis

Major Trends Shaping the Brazilian Natural Gas Market

Increasing Energy Consumption and Natural Gas Leadership

End of Petrobras's Monopoly Encouraging Private Investment

Promulgation of the New Gas Law Driving Market Development

LNG as a Key Element to Sustain Early Market Growth

Biomethane Takes off as an Alternative Gas Supply

Increasing Gas Supply through Virtual Pipelines

4. Growth Opportunity Universe, Brazilian Natural Gas Market

Growth Opportunity 1 - Natural Gas Trading

Growth Opportunity 2 - Investment in Gas Pipelines and Gas-intensive Industries

Growth Opportunity 3 - Onshore Gas

Growth Opportunity 4 - Biomethane

Growth Opportunity 5 - Underground Gas Storage

For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/2q170j
English French

MONTREAL, Dec. 10, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The future of cancer treatment is one step closer to reality thanks to a transformative $2 million donation from BMO Financial Group to the MUHC Foundation. The gift will help cancer experts at the Research Institute of the McGill University Health Centre (RI-MUHC) develop the hospitals precision oncology programpersonalized treatment tailored to each patient.



Precision oncology means providing the right treatment to the right patient at the right time. Using advanced tools and techniques, the MUHCs oncologists can understand exactly what type of cancer a patient has and they can test treatment options in the laboratory to ensure they have the optimal effect.

Precision oncology is the future of cancer care. It decreases use of one-size-fits-all treatments in favour of a personalized approach to each patients disease. We are incredibly grateful to BMO for supporting the development of the Precision Oncology Program at the Research Institute of the MUHC.

Dr. Rhian Touyz, Executive Director and Chief Scientific Officer, RI-MUHC

BMOs gift will support a range of specialized techniques, including creation of organoids, patient tumours and tissue grown in the lab. Organoids allow the MUHCs oncologists to test treatments externally before administering them to the patient. This helps ensure each patient receives the optimal treatment right away, avoiding excessive or unnecessary therapies.

At BMO, we believe that the strongest progress can be made through collaborative and innovative approaches to solving complex problems. Were proud to help grow the good in Montreal  and beyond  with this investment in the MUHCs Precision Oncology Program that will pioneer new cancer treatments, leading to transformational change in healthcare for all Canadians.

 Darryl White, Chief Executive Officer, BMO

The gift is part of the MUHC Foundations $20 million campaign to End Cancer as a deadly disease. A priority of the $200 million Dream Big Campaign to change the course of lives and medicine, End Cancer is helping pioneer new cancer treatments, improve patient care and ensure more people survive.

The RI-MUHC is home to some of the top oncologists and cancer researchers in the country, and the MUHC Foundation is committed to supporting ongoing, innovative research that will not only increase survival rates in cancer patients but ultimately help to end cancer for good.

Suzanne Legge Orr, Dream Big Campaign Co-chair, MUHC Foundation

Organoids are just one of a suite of new approaches that make up the Precision Oncology Program at the RI-MUHC. The program will help ensure more lives are saved with the help of personalized cancer treatment.

As an academic health centre, the MUHC aims to give cancer patients the greatest odds of survival and the best quality of life throughout and beyond treatment. The MUHC thanks BMO Financial Group for its leadership gift and appeals to other organizations to help us develop the next generation of precision medicines against cancer. Sustained investment in research will fuel our success and change the lives of countless patients.

Dr. Pierre Gfeller, President and Executive Director, MUHC

About the McGill University Health Centre Foundation

The McGill University Health Centre (MUHC) Foundation raises funds to support excellence in patient care, research and teaching at the McGill University Health Centre, one of the top university hospitals in Canada. Our Dream Big Campaign to change the course of lives and medicine is raising millions of dollars to solve humanitys deadliest puzzles: infectious diseases; end cancer as a life-threatening illness; fix broken hearts through innovative cardiac care; detect the silent killersovarian and endometrial cancersearly; create the best skilled health care teams in Canada; and much more. We are rallying our entire community to solve the worlds most complex health care challenges.

About the Research Institute of the McGill University Health Centre (RI-MUHC)

The Research Institute of the McGill University Health Centre (RI-MUHC) is a world-renowned biomedical and healthcare research centre. The institute, which is affiliated with the Faculty of Medicine of McGill University, is the research arm of the McGill University Health Centre (MUHC)  an academic health centre located in Montreal, Canada, that has a mandate to focus on complex care within its community. The RI-MUHC supports over 450 researchers and around 1,200 research trainees devoted to a broad spectrum of fundamental, clinical and health outcomes research at the Glen and the Montreal General Hospital sites of the MUHC. Its research facilities offer a dynamic multidisciplinary environment that fosters collaboration and leverages discovery aimed at improving the health of individual patients across their lifespan. The RI-MUHC is supported in part by the Fonds de recherche du Quebec  Sante (FRQS). rimuhc.ca

About the McGill University Health Centre (MUHC)

The McGill University Health Centre (MUHC) is one of the worlds foremost academic health facilities. Building on the tradition of medical leadership of its founding hospitals, the MUHC provides exceptional multidisciplinary patient-centric care. Affiliated with the Faculty of Medicine of McGill University, the MUHC continues to shape the course of adult and pediatric medicine by attracting clinical and research expertise from around the world, assessing the latest in medical technology, and training the next generation of medical professionals. In collaboration with our network partners, we are building a better future for our patients and their families; for our employees, professionals, researchers and students; for our community and above all, for life. www.muhc.ca

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 $988 billion as of October 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.

Tarah Schwartz

Director, Communications & Marketing

McGill University Health Centre Foundation

tarah.schwartz@muhc.mcgill.ca

Marie-Catherine Noel

BMO Financial Group

MarieCatherine.Noel@bmo.com

A photo accompanying this announcement is available at: https://prdesk.globenewswire.com/api/ResourceLibraryFile/DownloadFile?Id=570a134a-7528-4faa-b8c9-60cf2335af31
TORONTO, Dec. 10, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Shawcor Ltd. (Shawcor or the Company) (TSX: SCL) today announced that it has successfully closed its previously announced private offering (the Offering) of C$150 million aggregate principal amount of 9.00% senior unsecured notes due 2026 (the Notes). As previously stated, the Company will utilize net proceeds of the Offering to repay amounts outstanding under its existing syndicated credit facility.



The Offering was underwritten by a syndicate of underwriters, led by National Bank Financial and TD Securities.

The Notes were offered for sale in Canada to accredited investors on a private placement basis, in accordance with Canadian securities laws. The Notes were not registered under the U.S. Securities Act, or any state securities laws, and were offered and sold in the United States to qualified institutional buyers only, pursuant to Rule 144A of the U.S. Securities Act, and outside of the United States in accordance with Rule 903 of Regulation S under the U.S. Securities Act.

About Shawcor

Shawcor Ltd. is a growth-oriented, global material sciences company serving the Infrastructure, Energy, and Transportation markets. The Company operates through a network of fixed and mobile manufacturing and service facilities. Its three business segments, Composite Systems, Automotive & Industrial and Pipeline & Pipe Services enable responsible renewal and enhancement of critical infrastructure while lowering risk and environmental impact.

For further information, please contact:

Meghan MacEachern

External Communications & ESG, Director

Telephone: 437.341.1848

Email: meghan.maceachern@shawcor.com

shawcor.com

Forward Looking Information

This news release contains forward-looking information within the meaning of applicable securities laws. Words such as "may", "will", "should", "anticipate", "plan", "expect", "believe", "predict", "estimate" or similar terminology are used to identify forward-looking information. This forward-looking information is based on assumptions, estimates and analysis made in the light of the Company's experience and its perception of trends, current conditions and expected developments, as well as other factors that are believed by the Company to be reasonable and relevant in the circumstances. Forward-looking information involves known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors which may cause actual results, performance or achievements to be materially different from those predicted, expressed or implied by the forward-looking information. The forward-looking information is provided as of the date of this news release and the Company does not assume any obligation to update or revise the forward-looking information to reflect new events or circumstances, except as required by law.

Source: Shawcor Ltd.
Dublin, Dec. 10, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The "Capnography Devices Market Research Report: By Product, Technology, Component, Application, End User - Global Industry Analysis and Growth Forecast to 2030" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering.



The global market for capnography devices is set to increase to $736.6 million by 2030 from $422.1 million in 2020, at a 5.7% CAGR between 2020 and 2030, according to the market research report.

The COVID-19 pandemic has boosted the capnography devices market growth as COVID-19 is a respiratory disease. Capnography's ability to measure the concentration of carbon dioxide (CO2) in exhaled air is being leveraged in acute- and long-term-care settings to track the status of infected patients and ascertain the likelihood of unfavorable events. Thus, despite the closure of most non-essential hospital departments, the demand for capnography devices has increased during these times.



The hand-held category is set to dominate the capnography devices market in the coming years, based on product. These devices are small, easy to use, and portable. As a result, they are allowing doctors to conduct point-of-care respiratory monitoring of COVID patients.



In the years to come, the highest capnography devices market CAGR, of 7.7%, within the technology segment, will be seen in the micro-stream category. Capnography devices using this technology are quick to warm up, which allows for their usage in emergencies, and they also do not require calibration before usage.



The capnography devices market garnered the higher revenue from the original equipment manufacturer (OEM) modules bifurcation in the past, under the component segment. These components make measuring CO2 and end-tidal CO2 (EtCO2) more accurate and simpler even in portable and smaller monitors.



North America has been the largest capnography devices market till now because of the presence of numerous companies offering these products, increasing prevalence of respiratory diseases, and advanced healthcare infrastructure. Considering the total case and death counts, the U.S. is the worst affected by the ongoing pandemic, which has propelled the demand for capnography devices.

The following are the major driving factors for the industry:

Increasing Prevalence of Respiratory Diseases: Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) led to 3.2 million deaths in 2019, while asthma led to 0.5 million deaths, as per the World Health Organization (WHO). This is driving the need for capnography devices to monitor the lung function of patients in acute- and long-term-care facilities.

Technological Advancements: The capnography devices market is also being driven by technological advancements, which have made these systems more accurate and safer. Some of the latest innovations are photo detectors, miniaturized main-stream multi-gas monitors, and laser-based molecular correlation spectroscopy (MCS).

The key companies in the global capnography devices market are

Diamedica (UK) Limited

Shenzhen Comen Medical Instruments Co. Ltd.

Edan Instruments Inc.

Nonin Medical Inc.

Dragerwerk AG & Co. KGaA

Nihon Kohden Corporation

Masimo Corporation

Becton, Dickinson and Company

Medtronic plc

Smiths Group plc

Koninklijke Philips N.V.

Welch Allyn Inc.

Zoll Medical Corporation

Shenzhen Mindray Bio-Medical Electronics Co. Ltd.

Market Dynamics

Trends

Increasing number of acquisitions and partnerships

Drivers

Growing prevalence of respiratory diseases

Technological advancements in capnography devices

Rising government initiatives

Restraints

Availability of alternative products at lower prices

Opportunities

Improving healthcare infrastructure in emerging economies

Pricing Analysis

Multi-Parameter Capnography Devices

Hand-Held Capnography Devices

Stand-Alone Capnography Devices

Regulations for Capnography Devices

North America

Europe

APAC

LATAM

MEA

Porter's Five Forces Analysis

Impact of COVID-19

For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/ykwwwf
OCEAN TOWNSHIP, N.J., Dec. 10, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- via InvestorWire -- Fresh off making the Inc. 5000 2021 list of fastest-growing private companies, Advisors Mortgage Group (Advisors or the Company), based in Ocean Township, New Jersey, announces the grand opening of its newest branch located in Linwood, New Jersey. This flagship office, led by top-producing Branch Manager Greg Parker, relocated to Linwood due to the tremendous growth experienced over the last four years. Parker has grown a team of industry veterans since joining the company in 2017 and has been the driving force behind their success as one of the top lenders in Atlantic and Cape May County, New Jersey.

According to metrics provided by Marketrac, a premier online portal that provides intelligent, on-demand data and analysis on real estate transactions, Advisors is the top purchase lender on the Jersey Shore.

Greg has been instrumental in our companys growth in the southern Jersey Shore area, said Sean Clark, vice president of Advisors Mortgage Group. He has assembled a team of loan officers and support staff who continue to provide top-notch customer service and a stress-free loan process to our clients. Greg is one of the best in the business and we are very proud to have him in our court as he is well-respected in the industry.

We are very excited about our move into this larger space as it will help us to facilitate our growing team and better meet our clients needs with easier access and greater visibility. We look forward to continuing to deliver an excellent customer experience on every transaction and being the local lender of choice in our new location, said Parker.

If you are looking to buy a new home or refinance your existing home, please contact Greg Parker today at GParker@AdvisorsMortgage.com or visit his website at http://gparker.advisorsmortgage.com .

About Advisors Mortgage Group

With big dreams and even more determination, Advisors Mortgage Group, LLC was founded in October 1999 by a single loan officer in a 400-square-foot office in Shrewsbury, New Jersey. In the years since its formation, Advisors has grown to serve not only the greater New Jersey area but also a vast portion of the United States. With branch offices up and down the East Coast and its corporate office in Ocean Township, New Jersey, Advisors Mortgage has established itself as a pillar of excellence in the mortgage industry. Our immense experience is our greatest asset and is the foundation of the success of the company and every Advisors' branch and loan officer.

In 2005, Advisors Mortgage Group was designated by the Federal Housing Authority as a Full Eagle FHA Underwriter. As a Full Eagle, Advisors has been able to expand its loan volume by approving loans, which a majority of the competition could not dream of. We have built a platform for a seamless and stress-free mortgage process for all of our customers, and we have that same mission throughout all of our offices. We understand that success cannot be attained without teamwork and communication, two of our most important strengths.

Company Contact:

Kelly Ragan

Marketing Director

Office: 732-292-3133 ext. 263

Email: KRagan@AdvisorsMortgage.com

Website: www.AdvisorsMortgage.com
Farmington Hills, Mich., Dec. 10, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Beztak Companies, in conjunction with Wexford Real Estate Investors LLC (WREI), has announced the $12.65M acquisition of a 4.1 acre site located within the AMTEC Business Park in Boca Raton, to develop an eight-story, 277 unit luxury multifamily apartment community. The project, named Bocora, is currently in pre-development and construction is expected to begin in late summer of 2022. This is the sixth joint venture parternship between the two companies.

We are thrilled to bring this project to life, said Sam Beznos, CEO of Beztak Companies. Development has been at the forefront of Beztaks success for more than 60 years, and we are commited to continue innovating as we work with WREI to bring this unique, high-end community to Boca Raton.

The luxuriously appointed one, two, and three bedroom apartments, all with oversized windows and terraces, will feature spacious floorplans, courtyard views, stainless steel appliances and high-end finishes. The 282,850 square foot community is expected to boast two expansive courtyards, a swimming pool with sundeck and cabanas, private sitting areas, an outdoor kitchen, private party areas, a state-of-the-art fitness center, cyber cafe, on-site dog park and grooming area, and a six-story parking garage.

This is an ideal continuation of our highly successful partnership with Beztak, said Joseph Jacobs, President of WREI. WREI Managing Principal, Philip Braunstein added, This will be our second development in Boca Raton and together, we are thrilled to find ways to contribute to the continued growth of this city. Boca Raton is a tremendous market with its central location in south Florida and strong demographics appealing to both employers and residents.

Located off Congress Ave and Clint Moore Road, with close proximity to I-95, the development is minutes from high end grocers, the Tri Rail, shopping, major employers and lifestyle venues including Town Center, Boca Center and Mizner Place. The project is positioned to be best in class and recognized as the premiere luxury rental community in the area.

About Beztak Companies

For more than six decades, Beztak has developed, built, managed, and invested in luxury residential, senior living, commercial and industrial real estate throughout the United States. Today, Beztak owns and manages a diverse portfolio multi-family residential and senior living real estate and continues to develop and construct new properties around the country, as well as renovate existing properties to add value or reposition them in the market. Beztak also offers comprehensive and customizable fee-based property management services for companies seeking to generate higher revenues from their assets while improving overall performance.

Headquartered in Farmington Hills, Michigan, Beztak has offices in Boca Raton, Florida and Tucson, Arizona, with communities currently located in Alabama, Arkansas, Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Michigan, Mississippi, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Washington DC. For more information, visit www.beztak.com.

About WREI

Wexford Real Estate Investors (WREI), headquartered in West Palm Beach, was formerly the private market real estate investing arm of Wexford Capital LP (WCLP) and in 2020 was spun out of WCLP as a dedicated, standalone real estate platform. WREI sources, invests and executes in value and growth driven real estate transactions using an opportunistic investment philosophy. WREI currently focuses its investments in sunbelt markets with an emphasis on residential rentals and condominiums, hospitality and other opportunistic investments and has invested in excess of $650 million in equity since 2010 in real estate transactions with a total value in excess of $1.3 billion. For more information, visit www.wexfordrei.com.

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SAN LEANDRO, Calif., Dec. 10, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Simplicity, a tech start-up that provides a communication platform for public agencies and residents, announced that the City of San Leandro joined the Simplicity App alongside other cities in the Bay Area. Simplicity platform allows city officials to manage all city-related communications in real-time, including daily announcements, road closures, upcoming events, and emergency notifications.



San Leandro Mayor Pauline Russo Cutter commented on the City of San Leandro and Simplicity partnership with the following statement:

Continual and appropriate communication is a reasonable expectation voiced by many San Leandro residents. Years ago, continual communication advertised in traditional media outlets was an expensive line item for the City. Today, that expense is not an issue thanks to social media platforms such as Simplicity. I encourage every San Leandro resident to download the Simplicity App to stay informed with City news and event announcements.

Simplicity provides essential announcements from the city in one place, in a single application, for residents convenience. Residents can download the free Simplicity Mobile App to their smartphone and choose which topics they want to receive notifications about.

We are thrilled to welcome San Leandro, the first city from Alameda County, onto our platform, commented Martin Ragan, Customer Success Manager at Simplicity.

By using the Simplicity App, cities and residents can combat the growth of misinformation on social media, improve the speed of information sharing, and reduce the number of printed announcements.

You can download the Simplicity Mobile App from the App Store or Google Play and subscribe to the City of San Leandro by following https://simplicity.app.link/san-leandro .

About Simplicity:

Simplicity is a smart communication app that helps cities and public agencies connect with residents in real-time. After successfully delivering the Simplicity platform to over 50 cities in Europe, the company raised $8.5m in seed funding for its U.S. expansion, backed by American and European VCs. For more information, visit www.onesimplicity.com

Photos accompanying this announcement are available at

https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/69c65b7b-f5ec-4c75-8ec7-686073225beb

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Coral Gables, Dec. 10, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Laurie Silvers learned the art of analysis in law school. Her favorite activity during her three-year legal education? Reading Supreme Court briefs and deconstructing the arguments.

After she graduated, Silvers parlayed her knack for detailed examination into a brilliant career in communications law, then went on to become a savvy entrepreneur, building a media conglomerate of radio, TV, cable, and internet and founding what would become one of cable televisions most popular networks: the SyFy Channel.

Along the way, she never forgot to pay it forward, giving generously to the university she describes as having a profound influence on her life.

Now, the double University of Miami alumna and current chair of the institutions board of trustees has once again made a substantial contribution to her alma mater. Silvers, along with her husband, Mitchell Rubenstein, has donated $2.5 million to the Universitys School of Law.

The gift is part of the new fundraising initiative Ever Brighter: The Campaign for Our Next Century. The most ambitious in the Universitys history, the campaign already has raised more than $1.6 billion toward its $2.5 billion goal and is set to end in 2025, when the University celebrates its centennial.

One of our most distinguished alumni, Laurie has long known that higher education is a pathway to achievement and has strived through her illustrious service to the U to extend opportunities to others, said President Julio Frenk. We are grateful for Laurie and Mitchells generous gift, which will help ensure that the School of Law excels at a time in history when the nations legal system is facing some of its greatest challenges.

Josh Friedman, senior vice president for development and alumni relations, echoed Frenks sentiments. We are so grateful to Laurie and Mitch for stepping forward as we unveil our Ever Brighter campaign publicly, Friedman said. Their continued generosity is an expression of their own gratitude for the influence this University had in their lives and an investment in future generations to experience the benefits of a University of Miami education.

The donation is an example of Silvers and Rubensteins largesse to the University over the years. Their generosity created an endowed distinguished professorship and created student scholarships, including one for students committed to public service. The Laurie Silvers and Mitchell Rubenstein Hall, which houses the schools award-winning clinics, is named in their honor.

This is my way of giving back and saying thanks for the education I received at Miami Law, which has helped me achieve so much, said Silvers, who also studied psychology, political science, and philosophy as an undergraduate at the University, of her latest contribution.

Silvers is co-CEO of Hollywood.com, the majority owner of four Florida FM radio stations, and a co-founder and the majority owner of the global esports organization Misfits Gaming Group (MGG)which also includes the Miami Heat, Orlando Magic, and Cleveland Browns as minority owners. Based in South Florida, MGG competes in some of the most successful video game titles worldwide and is a permanent partner in three franchised esports leagues.

The former chair of Miami PBS station Channel 2 and co-chair of South Florida PBS, Silvers also accomplished what others had failed to do for 20 years: She oversaw the merger of Miami and Palm Beach Countys PBS stations, creating South Florida PBS, the seventh largest PBS station in the country.

Indeed, I credit a lot of what Ive been able to accomplish in my professional career to the education that I received at the University of Miami, both as an undergraduate and as a law school student, Silvers pointed out. It is out of an abundance of appreciation for and a recognition of the importance of that education that I make this gift. Its part of strengthening and supporting the goals of the law school so that our students have the best opportunities and the best education possible with the greatest faculty, scholarships, and programs all combined.

Supporting the School of Law is critical, Silvers said, for the field of law is the foundation for society, touching virtually every aspect of life. From innovation to technology to business to health care, law has an impact over just about everything. Its truly overarching.

Silvers said she is delighted that her latest gift will help push the University closer to its Ever Brighter goal.

Ever Brighter will ensure the Universitys growththat well be able to attract the best and the brightest faculty and students and build facilities where cutting-edge research will be conducted, Silvers said. Itll be a quantum leap forward.

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MOUNT VERNON, N.Y., Dec. 10, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Bona Fide Masks Corp. (www.bonafidemasks.com), part of the Ball Chain Manufacturing Co., Inc. (Ball Chain) family of companies out of Mount Vernon, New York, is proud to announce a donation of 25,000 Powecom KN95 masks and Harley Commodity N95 masks to the student-led non-profit organization, PPE4ALL. A group of university students looking to address the growing PPE shortages at the onset of the pandemic formed PPE4ALL. A simple idea by a group of students has evolved into a vast network of volunteers and creators working together to distribute PPE equipment such as masks, hand sanitizer, gloves, and shields.

Setting out to address the challenges our healthcare system faced in the early stages of the pandemic, PPE4ALL initially focused on the PPE demand for healthcare and hospital workers. Today, PPE4ALL serves hospitals, governments, nursing homes, small businesses, first responders, homeless shelters, and other communities in need across the U.S. To date, they have provided over 120,000 pieces of PPE to all 50 states.

"We are so impressed by PPE4ALL and their ongoing efforts. The story of how they got their start reminds us of our story. We started Bona Fide Masks in response to a community leader's request for our support to alleviate the shortage of PPE during the pandemic. Given the critical medical supply chain issues, we were uniquely positioned to help. Our family-owned and -operated company has 80+ years of manufacturing expertise and a trusted global supply chain. We are proud to be the most trusted and authentic mask provider in the marketplace, based on our direct relationships with reputable mask providers such as Powecom and Harley. We continue to work hard to deliver authentic masks at a reasonable price, with the goal of keeping everyone safe. We are thrilled to donate our masks to PPE4ALL and support their mission." - Bill Taubner, President of Bona Fide Masks.

"As the pandemic continues, we continue to establish ourselves as a stabilizing force for the communities at large. We are thankful for Bona Fide Masks and their donation to help provide for communities who have been overlooked during the pandemic. It's organizations like Bona Fide Masks that enable our mission and empower us to deliver life-saving materials to those most in need." - Emme Magliato, Chief Operating Officer of PPE4ALL

To learn more about Bona Fide Masks, visit www.bonafidemasks.com. To learn more about PPE4ALL, visit www.ppe4all.net.

More about Ball Chain Manufacturing. Co., Inc.:

Family-owned and -operated since 1938, Ball Chain is the only major U.S. manufacturer of metal ball chain and attachments. The company's ball chain is featured in window roller shades, light fixtures, plumbing devices, keychains and jewelry items. Headquartered in Mount Vernon, New York, with global distribution, Ball Chain designs and fabricates innovative products while providing exemplary customer service. After entering the interior design market with ShimmerScreen decorative metal curtains, the company further diversified its offerings with the launch of LogoTags, a promotional products division. Ball Chain is proud of its commitment to the American workforce and the environment. The company has earned industry recognition for its responsible business practices, including "green business" certification from the Green Business Bureau (GBB) and certification from the International Organization for Standardization (ISO).

Media Contact:

914.664.7500

Bill Taubner, President

Cristina Chianese, Director of Marketing

Ball Chain Mfg. Co., Inc. / Bona Fide Masks Corp.

info@bonafidemasks.com

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VILNIUS, Lithuania, Dec. 10, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Kettle, the most popular charcoal grill item of all time, finally has a premium quality standard nest. KamadoSpace, a European ready-to-assemble outdoor kitchen brand, has launched an add-on to its flagship product Infinite Island that will surely please all those backyard cooks in love with the kettles.

Rather than having free-standing grills, nowadays the majority of people prefer them built into an outdoor kitchen. However, Kettles unique design with the lower intake vents that double as an ash catcher and the three legs make it rather difficult to build-in. Luckily, now European mechanical engineers have designed a specific stainless steel tray with vertically and horizontally adjustable three legs so that a kettle can be built into any KamadoSpace kitchen in no time.

Born from a buoy back in 1952, Weber's kettle has evolved over the years but always stayed true to its roots, providing the most incredible flavour experience. Kettle, a free-standing grill, maintained its popularity even after in the last decade outdoor kitchens moved from being reserved for higher-end homes to becoming mainstream.

Two mainstream trends - kettles and outdoor kitchens - coexisted in the backyards but were separated for too long. We could not turn a blind eye to the inconvenience experienced by BBQ folks globally, said Gediminas Balodas, KamadoSpace Co-founder and VP Engineering.

The innovation that made grilling and cooking outdoors so popular came in 1951 when George Stephen Sr. was frustrated by his inability to control the heat in his backyard grill. The Kettle was born and introduced a year later, and so Weber's journey began. Today's design is not far from the original one and it is by far the most popular backyard grill in the world, with many rival kettle manufacturers constantly popping-up in the market.

Consumers should note that some kettle grill manufacturers may choose not to honor the terms of a warranty by declaring it void if a grill was built-in.

Grill tables or BBQ islands are essential for those who regularly grill outside. They are handy for storing barbecue accessories and preparing food.

KamadoSpace is the fastest growing ready-to-assemble outdoor kitchen equipment brand in Europe with 100 independent retailers offering off-the-shelf kitchens to local BBQ communities. It designs brand-neutral grill kitchens that fit Kamado Joe, Big Green Egg, Primo, Monolith Grills, Bastard, Yakiniku grills, and now Weber Original Kettle and Master-Touch, among others.

Media contact:

Irma Pranaityte

irma@kamadospace.com

The photos accompanying this announcement are available at:

https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/9b08189a-ce92-47c1-b02c-0fd61160adc1

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Moscow, Dec. 10, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- A seminar on small aircraft aviation in the Arctic was held in Moscow within the framework of the action plan of Russias Chairmanship of the Arctic Council, the operator being the Roscongress Foundation. Representatives from transportation agencies and organizations of the Arctic states and Indigenous peoples of the Arctic attended the seminar. The Chair of the Sustainable Development Working Group provided welcoming remarks. The Ministry of Transport of the Russian Federation and the Federal Air Transport Agency (Rosaviatsia) were the official organizers.

The participants considered such topics as improving the route network in the Arctic region, development of air transportation, the introduction of unmanned aircraft and coordination in the field of search and rescue between the Arctic countries.

The seminar noted the need to strengthen cooperation between the Arctic states on infrastructure development in the region, including the development of the route network to ensure transport accessibility of Arctic residents.

Due to the lack of alternative modes of transport in the Arctic, transporting people and delivering goods is impossible without aviation. The insufficiently developed airfield network of the Arctic region dictates the need to develop small aircraft aviation, including unmanned aircrafts that can carry out transportation with small landing grounds and unpaved runways, stressed Igor Chalik, Deputy Minister of Transport of the Russian Federation.

Artur Chilingarov, a special envoy of the President of the Russian Federation for International Cooperation in the Arctic and Antarctic, noted in his greeting that small aircrafts in the Arctic both deliver people and cargo to remote areas and carry out scientific research and implementation of international scientific projects, as well as search and rescue operations.

The Ministry for the Development of the Far East and the Arctic, together with the Ministry of Transport of Russia and the Federal Air Transport Agency, are working to improve aviation accessibility of the Arctic territories and modernize the airport infrastructure. Today, there are at least 39 airports in the Arctic zone of Russia, ten of which will be modernized by 2027.

The participants also discussed the prospects for developing the air navigation services and route network in the Arctic zone. Amendments to the federal aviation regulations are currently being prepared and will allow the use of remote video surveillance for air traffic control. The technology will be especially relevant for remote airports of the Far North. In particular, such equipment is supposed to be installed in Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, Yakutsk and Magan airports.

The seminar also considered the technologies for building runways in the Arctic regions of Russia and Canada, the experience of operating aviation equipment, the specific features of pilot training for the Arctic zone, the prospects of using helicopter technology, and the plans of Russian Post JSC for unmanned cargo delivery. A separate discussion was held on the development of tourist routes in the region to increase the flow of tourists between the Arctic states.
LAS VEGAS, NV, Dec. 10, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- GPO Plus, Inc. (OTCQB: GPOX), a publicly traded company of diversified industry-specific Group Purchasing Organizations (GPOs), today announced the airing of CEO, Brett H. Pojunis s, interview on MoneyTV hosted by Executive Producer and anchor, Donald Baillargeon .

MoneyTV is accessible in over 200 million households in more than 75 countries. For a complete list of the global TV Listings, syndication, and content partners, please visit; http://moneytv.net/global-tv-listing .

Bretts interview can also be viewed online immediately on GPOPlus+s website, https://gpox.cc/3ydppMv , or GPOXs YouTube channel, https://youtu.be/wie1vkKeGwA .

During the interview, Brett and Mr. Baillargeon discussed the following topics:

the GPOX business model of creating industry-specific GPOs compared to business models of traditional Group Purchasing Organizations and/or Buying Groups

leaderships focus on HealthGPO and further developing its business model

the Companys exiting stealth mode with a new sustainable and disruptive business model

how GPOX achieved a significant milestone generating over $1 Million in revenue

the expansion of its Leadership team to include a new Chief Financial Officer (CFO), Laurence Ruhe, and new President, Ron McCormick

the Companys $5 Million Equity Crowdfunding Offering is open for the public and viewable at invest.gpoplus.com

and viewable at why its a good time for investors to look at GPOPlus+, ticker: GPOX

SPOILER ALERT! If you havent watched Bretts interview yet, stop reading and watch it now !

The interview started with a description by Brett explaining the typical business model of established GPOs and why he feels the GPOX business model of creating industry-specific GPOs is better for our company. Brett said, Costco is to Consumers, what we (GPOX) is to businesses, providing an analogy that MoneyTV viewers could easily understand.

According to Brett, GPOX has been focusing on developing HealthGPO and he explained the business model and how HealthGPO generates revenue. He continued by explaining how cbdGPO got started by initially aggregating the purchases of raw materials such as CBD isolate and distillate, expanding its product offering to white label and private label services.

He discussed launching future industry-based GPOs, using the analogy and similarity of how Amazon changed the buying habits of Consumers, GPOXs vision is to change the buying habits of businesses and save them more money.

Brett stated that GPOX exited from stealth mode with a fantastic business model thats highly scalable across multiple GPOs in multiple industries. Brett continued, we wanted to stay in stealth mode, develop the business model, and go out and generate revenue. Also mentioning GPOX achieved a milestone of generating over $1 million in revenue.

He addressed questions about the expansion of the GPOXs new leadership team and provided a brief background, accomplishments, and achievements of the Companys new CFO, Laurence Ruhe , and new President and Board Member, Ron McCormick .

in addition, Brett discussed GPOXs $5 Million Equity Crowdfunding Offering thats available to the public now. He went over the structure of the Units in the offering and explained that each Unit is $1,500.00 and consists of 1,000 common shares of GPOX stock valued at $1.50 per share and a $2.00 bonus Warrant. To explain what a Warrant is in laymans terms, he compared it to a coupon for investors to buy stock directly from the company at a fixed price of $2.00 per share, even if the stock is trading higher.

He closed by encouraging viewers to visit the GPOX Crowdfunding page on invest.gpoplus.com . The crowdfunding page has a lot of information on the company, videos, and links to information on the offering.

Sign up for your FREE account on the GPOX Investor Relations Portal:

Once you Activate your GPOX Investor Account you will have immediate access to real time information available on GPOX. Sign up for alerts (email and SMS) to be the first to know about news, SEC Filings, Investor Events, updated Investor Presentations, and more: www.GPOPlus.com/ir .

About MoneyTV + Donald Baillargeon

The MoneyTV Network was established in 1996 and now 25 years later and with over 1,000 original episodes, MoneyTV is the longest-running business television program of its kind. MoneyTV is the internationally syndicated television program all about money and what makes it happen, featuring informative interviews with company CEOs and executives, providing insights into their operations and outlooks for their futures. For more information on MoneyTV, and Executive Producer and Anchor, Donald Baillargeon, please visit the Companys website at http://moneytv.net . For a complete list of content partners and the global TV Listings, http://moneytv.net/global-tv-listing/ .

Donald Baillargeon is a broadcast industry veteran of more than 30 years and is also the host of MoneyRap Radio, http://www.moneyrap.com , and the television program Crowdfund Television, http://www.crowdfundtelevision.com .

About GPO Plus, Inc. (GPOX)

Headquartered in Las Vegas, Nevada, GPOPlus+ (OTCQB: GPOX ) is a publicly traded company of diversified industry-specific Group Purchasing Organizations (GPOs).

Our Purpose is to create efficient GPOs and our Mission is to create value for our GPO Members, partners, and suppliers while creating long term shareholder value.

Our Mantra:

We Aggregate, Negotiate + Share!

Aggregate - We aggregate the purchasing power of our Members.

- We the purchasing power of our Members. Negotiate - We leverage buying power to negotiate discounts.

- We leverage buying power to discounts. Share - We share the discounts with our Members and save them money.

For more information, please visit www.GPOPlus.com . To activate your free GPOX Investor Account at www.GPOPlus.com/ir .

Information about Forward-Looking Statements

This press release contains forward-looking statements that include statements regarding expected financial performance and growth information relating to future events. Forward-looking statements include statements with respect to beliefs, plans, objectives, goals, expectations, anticipations, assumptions, estimates, intentions, and future performance, and involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors, which may be beyond the control of the Company and its officers and managers, and which may cause 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 should not be read as a guarantee of future performance or results and will not necessarily be accurate indications of the times at, or by which, that performance or those results will be achieved. Forward-looking statements are based on information available at the time they are made and/or managements good faith belief as of that time with respect to future events and are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual performance or results to differ materially from those expressed in, or suggested by, the forward-looking statements. Important factors that could cause these differences include, but are not limited to; inability to gain or maintain licenses, reliance on unaudited statements, the Companys need for additional funding, governmental regulation of the cannabis industry, the impact of competitive products and pricing, the demand for the Companys products, and other risks that are detailed from time-to-time in the Companys filings with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission. All statements other than statements of historical fact are statements that could be forward-looking statements. You can typically identify these forward-looking statements through use of words such as may, will, can anticipate, assume, should, indicate, would, believe, contemplate, expect, seek, estimate, continue, plan, point to, project, predict, could, intend, target, potential, and other similar words and expressions of the future. The Company expresses its expectations, beliefs and projections in good faith and believes that its expectations reflected in these forward-looking statements are based on reasonable assumptions. However, there is no assurance that these expectations, beliefs and projections will prove to have been correct. Such statements reflect the current views of the Company with respect to its operations and future events, and are subject to certain risks, uncertainties and assumptions relating to its proposed operations, including the risk factors set forth herein. Should one or more of these risks or uncertainties materialize or should the underlying assumptions prove incorrect, the Companys actual results may vary significantly from those intended, anticipated, believed, estimated, expected or planned. In light of these risks, uncertainties and assumptions, any favorable forward-looking events discussed herein might not be realized and occur. The Company has no obligation to update or revise its forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise. For a more detailed description of the risk factors and uncertainties affecting GPO Plus, Inc. GPOX, please refer to the Companys recent Securities and Exchange Commission filings, which are available at www.sec.gov. The Company undertakes no obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise.

GPOPlus+s Contacts:

Investor Inquiries:

Brett H. Pojunis, CEO

Email: ir@gpoplus.com

Shareholders Line: 855.935.GPOX (4769)

MoneyTV Contact:
ATLANTIC CITY, N.J., Dec. 10, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Today the Atlantic City Housing Authority (ACHA) and The Michaels Organization broke ground on a major rehabilitation effort for Buzby Homes, the 126-unit affordable housing community that has remained largely untouched since its construction in 1952. The Atlantic City Housing Authority Board of Commissioners, including Vice Chair Dr. La'Quetta Small, Treasurer Stephanie Marshall, Assistant Treasurer Eli Gbayee, Commissioner Jesse Kurtz, Commissioner Patricia Tweedle, Commissioner Mauro Sandoval, and Commissioner Geoff Dorsey, joined Atlantic City Mayor Marty Small Sr., Assemblyman-elect Don Guardian, Assemblywoman-elect Claire Swift, Atlantic City Council members, the New Jersey Housing and Mortgage Finance Agency, The Michaels Organization, and neighborhood residents in officially launching the reconstruction.

The plans for the new Buzby homes include new sustainability and flood-resiliency designs, as well as job opportunities for Buzby and surrounding residents. Current Buzby management staff will be rehired when the $15.4 million project is completed, which is projected to be in March 2023.

"Today is a great day for Buzby Homes residents," said Mayor Marty Small Sr. "Over the past few decades, Buzby Homes has fallen into great disrepair, with serious issues that can no longer be addressed with a band-aid. This project is a major step forward in strengthening our City, and we applaud the Atlantic City Housing Authority and The Michaels Organization for not only renovating Buzby Homes with the comfort of residents in mind, but for ensuring that the renovations are built to withstand the unique coastal weather challenges we experience."

"We're so proud to work with The Michaels Organization to develop modern and environmentally equitable affordable housing for Buzby residents," said Denise Gordy, Interim Executive Director of ACHA. "Too often, communities like these were originally constructed without a resiliency plan in place to mitigate changes in the natural environment. But by the time our work here is finished, Buzby will be primed to withstand the literal and figurative storms Atlantic City has grown to face."

Once complete, Buzby will be one of the most energy-efficient and resilient communities in the City. The community room will in particular feature many resiliency upgrades, including solar panels, an emergency generator, potable water storage tank, and energy-efficient appliances. The plans were developed by SOSH Architects and Urban Practice , and the engineers on-site will be Arthur W. Ponzio Co. & Associates and RPM Engineering.

"The Michaels Organization built our first-ever affordable housing community in Atlantic City nearly 50 years ago, and we still help manage it and several others throughout the city today," said Nick Cangelosi, Vice President of Michaels Development. "Michaels plays the long game. Once we invest in a project - and in people - we see everything through until the end and are committed to helping find success in both the short and long term. And now we greatly look forward to helping Buzby succeed and in maintaining its transformation."

"We are pleased to be a part of this project to restore 126 affordable family units in Atlantic City," said NJHMFA Executive Director Melanie R. Walter. "As the majority of renters in Atlantic City and surrounding metro area are housing cost-burdened, building and supporting affordable housing is critical to the comprehensive revitalization of Atlantic City. As the city continues to redevelop, NJHMFA looks forward to supporting further affordable housing development opportunities in the community."

Michaels met with residents several times this year to gather input on the homes' new interior finishes, which will include granite countertops, in-unit laundry, upgraded wood-tone vinyl plank flooring, ceramic tile bathroom floors, covered front porches, new individual room control heating and air conditioning systems, and energy-efficient lighting and appliances. A refurbished community center will also include commercial laundry machines, new flooring, lighting, restrooms, and a game room. There will also be four fully accessible apartments added to the site, for a total of six ADA apartments.

"I have lived in Buzby Homes for 28 years now and have experienced first-hand its decline," said Rose Alicea, a long-time resident of Buzby Homes. "But it has been great to work closely with ACHA and Michaels on the plans to rehabilitate, and we are all so excited to see them come to fruition. We can't wait to move in!"

Affordable housing development can often be a challenge, given financing and many other regulatory constraints. But Atlantic City also faces unique challenges with its ocean-side location and rising sea levels, and several affordable housing sites scattered throughout the city still desperately need upgrades -- perhaps most notably Stanley Homes on Adriatic Avenue. In fact, Stanley Homes is the oldest affordable housing community in the state of New Jersey. However, the Michaels Organization recently received a Choice Neighborhoods Implementation planning grant from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development to help turn Stanley around - so be sure to stay tuned for updates on this exciting endeavor in the future.

About The Michaels Organization

The Michaels Organization is a national leader in residential real estate, offering full-service capabilities in development, property management, construction, and investment management. Serving more than 175,000 residents in more than 440 communities across 37 states, the District of Columbia, and the U.S. Virgin Islands, Michaels is committed to crafting housing solutions that jumpstart education, civic engagement and neighborhood prosperity and to creating Communities That Lift Lives.

Media Contact: Gretchen Dlugolecki, Rapport Communications; 401-301-0138; gretchen@rapportcommunications.org

Related Images











Image 1: Buzby Home Rehabilitation Rendering





An artist rendering of how Buzby Homes will look following a major rehabilitation and preservation effort.

















Image 2: Buzby Groundbreaking





Atlantic City Dignitaries and Residents participate at the ceremonial groundbreaking for Buzby Homes









This content was issued through the press release distribution service at Newswire.com.

Attachment
MAYFIELD VILLAGE, OHIO, Dec. 10, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The Board of Directors of The Progressive Corporation (NYSE:PGR) today declared an annual common share dividend, in the amount of $1.50 per share, and a quarterly common share dividend, in the amount of $0.10 per share.



The annual common share dividend of $1.50 per share is payable December 29, 2021, to shareholders of record at the close of business on December 20, 2021 (ex-dividend date of December 17, 2021). The 2021 annual dividend amount was determined by the Board based on our capital position, existing capital resources, and expected current and future capital needs.

The quarterly common share dividend of $0.10 per share is payable January 14, 2022, to shareholders of record at the close of business on January 7, 2022 (ex-dividend date of January 6, 2022). The Board is expected to continue to target the quarterly dividend to be approximately $0.10 per common share for 2022.

In addition, the Board declared a dividend on our outstanding Series B Fixed-to-Floating Rate Cumulative Perpetual Serial Preferred Shares in the amount of $26.875 per Series B Share, or $13.4 million in the aggregate. The dividend, which is based on the annual rate of 5.375% of the stated amount of $1,000 per Series B Share, will be paid on March 15, 2022, to shareholders of record at the close of business on March 1, 2022.

The Board also set the close of business on March 18, 2022, as the record date for the determination of shareholders entitled to notice of, and to vote at, Progressives Annual Meeting of Shareholders, which will be held on May 13, 2022.



About Progressive

Progressive InsuranceSM makes it easy to understand, buy and use car insurance, home insurance, and other protection needs. Progressive offers choices so consumers can reach us whenever, wherever and however it's most convenient - online at progressive.com, by phone at 1-800-PROGRESSIVE, on a mobile device or in-person with a local agent.

Progressive provides insurance for personal and commercial autos and trucks, motorcycles, boats, recreational vehicles, and homes; it is the third largest car insurer in the country, a leading seller of motorcycle and commercial auto insurance, and one of the top 15 homeowners insurance carriers.

Founded in 1937, Progressive continues its long history of offering shopping tools and services that save customers time and money, like Name Your Price, Snapshot, and HomeQuote Explorer.

The Common Shares of The Progressive Corporation, the Mayfield Village, Ohio-based holding company, trade publicly at NYSE: PGR.



Company Contact:

Douglas S. Constantine

(440) 910-3563



The Progressive Corporation

6300 Wilson Mills Road

Mayfield Village, Ohio 44143

http://www.progressive.com


Dallas, Texas, Dec. 10, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Alternet Systems, Inc. (OTC Pink: ALYI) and WaterPure International, Inc. (OTC Pink: WPUR) today announced the companies are partnering on the implementation of an off grid electric vehicle (EV) charging solution to be rolled out in Kenya.

Next week, on Thursday, December 16th, the two companies will publish an overview presentation on the off grid electric vehicle charging solution program.

ALYI has already started deploying electric motorcycles and electric three-wheel vehicles in East Africa into the taxi and delivery markets as one component of ALYIs overall EV Ecosystem solution.

WPUR has recently refreshed its commitment to delivering water management technologies to the water utilities market and added electric technology innovations for the electric utilities market as an additional focus.

WPUR recently announced completing the acquisition of a company operating in East Africa, East African Development Partners (EADP). EADP brings existing contracts and relationships in East Africa that will contribute to WPURs business development focus in Africa. Dr Torno, in addition to being the CEO of ALYI, was the majority shareholder of EADP and has now joined the WPUR Board of Directors in conjunction with the acquisition.

ALYIs EV Ecosystem strategy is concentrating efforts first on developing solutions for the East African market where per capita transportation is low, and EV solutions have the potential to be a first to market transportation solution rather than a replacement of an existing solution.

EV solutions rugged enough to endure the East African environment are also likely to be viable solutions everywhere else in the world, and ALYI does plans to expand globally.

ALYI has designed its EV Ecosystem solution to include democratized participation. ALYI has partnered with Revolt Token to finance ALYIs growth by offering participation in the EV Ecosystem through the sale of Revolt Tokens.

In a move to accelerate ALYIs EV Ecosystems expansion, ALYIs cryptocurrency funding partner, Revolt Token (RVLT) will now be developing direct investment partnerships with ALYI EV Ecosystem partners. WPUR is in discussions with RVLT now.

To learn more about Revolt Token and how to participate in ALYIs electric vehicle ecosystem through the purchase of Revolt Tokens, visit https://rvlttoken.com/ .

For more information and to stay up to date on ALYI's overall latest developments, please visit www.alternetsystemsinc.com .

To learn more, visit https://www.wpurinc.com/ .

Disclaimer/Safe Harbor: This news release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Securities Litigation Reform Act. The statements reflect the Company's current views with respect to future events that involve risks and uncertainties. Among others, these risks include the expectation that any of the companies mentioned herein will achieve significant sales, the failure to meet schedule or performance requirements of the companies' contracts, the companies' liquidity position, the companies' ability to obtain new contracts, the emergence of competitors with greater financial resources and the impact of competitive pricing. In the light of these uncertainties, the forward-looking events referred to in this release might not occur.

Contact:

WaterPure International, Inc.

Sean Mathis

info@wpurinc.com

972-918-5256
Houston, TX, Dec. 10, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Pyrophyte Acquisition Corp. (NYSE: PHYT.U) (the Company) today announced that, commencing December 17, 2021, holders of the units sold in the Companys initial public offering may elect to separately trade the Companys Class A ordinary shares and warrants included in the units.

No fractional warrants will be issued upon separation of the units and only whole warrants will trade. The Class A ordinary shares and warrants that are separated will trade on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbols PHYT and PHYT WS, respectively. Those units not separated will continue to trade on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol PHYT.U. Holders of units will need to have their brokers contact Continental Stock Transfer & Trust Company, the Companys transfer agent, in order to separate the units into Class A ordinary shares and warrants.

A registration statement relating to these securities was declared effective by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (the SEC) on October 26, 2021. This press release shall not constitute an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to buy, nor shall there be any sale of these securities in any state or jurisdiction in which such offer, solicitation or sale would be unlawful prior to registration or qualification under the securities laws of any such state or jurisdiction.

The offering was made only by means of a prospectus. Copies of the prospectus relating to this offering may be obtained from UBS Investment Bank, Attention: Prospectus Department, 1285 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10019, telephone: (888) 827-7275 or email: ol-prospectusrequest@ubs.com.

Cautionary Note Concerning Forward-Looking Statements

This press release contains statements that constitute forward-looking statements, including with respect to the Companys search for an initial business combination. Forward-looking statements are subject to numerous conditions, many of which are beyond the control of the Company, including those set forth in the Risk Factors section of the Companys registration statement and prospectus for the initial public offering filed with the SEC. Copies are available on the SECs website, www.sec.gov. The Company undertakes no obligation to update these statements for revisions or changes after the date of this release, except as required by law.

Contact
SAN JOSE, Calif., Dec. 10, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- MarCom Awards announced the Meriwest Credit Union and Mnemonic Agency TV advertisement as a MarCom Gold winner in the 2021 International Creative Competition for Marketing and Communication Professionals. With more than 6,000 applications registered from the United States, Canada and 39 other countries, this is a highly prestigious achievement awarded to Print, Web, Video, and Strategic Communications that exceed the high standards of the industry norm.



MarCom Award winners range from large international creative agencies and Fortune 500 companies to individual creative professionals who are selected from more than 300 categories that recognize their outstanding accomplishments. Judges are industry experts who look for companies and individuals whose talent exceeds a high standard of excellence and whose work serves as a benchmark for the industry.

MarCom is sponsored and ranked by the Association of Marketing and Communication Professionals (AMCP), a 25-year international organization with a membership of several thousand creative experts. As part of its mission, AMCP promotes and supports the efforts of their members who donate their unique talents to community organizations and have donated over $250,000 in grants to support philanthropic efforts over the past few years.

As one of the largest and most-respected creative competitions in the world, MarCom Awards is a welcome recognition from the creative industry of Meriwest Credit Union. Teresa Caseras, Meriwests Vice President of Marketing, remarked on receiving this distinguished award, Meriwest has been around for 60 years and remains passionate about serving those in our Community. In developing this commercial, we put a lot of thought into showcasing our efforts in building Community and helping our members thrive. We are thrilled and honored to receive this award as it was indeed a team effort to get our vision into a 30 second spot!

The Meriwest Credit Union TV advertisement can be viewed on our YouTube channel. List of Platinum and Gold Winners can be found on the MarCom Awards website.

About Meriwest Credit Union

Founded in San Jose, California on May 5, 1961, Meriwest Credit Union, one of Silicon Valleys largest and most established financial institutions, provides proactive, personal, convenient, and innovative financial services to over 80,000 businesses and families throughout the San Francisco Bay Area and Tucson, Arizona. Meriwest is one of the top-200 largest credit unions in the United States with assets in excess of $1.9 billion, and offers a wide array of personal banking, business banking, and wealth advisory products and services to members. In 2020 & 2021, the credit union was voted a Best Place to Work by the Silicon Valley Business Journal and was included in The Mercury News 20th Annual Best in Silicon Valley Readers Choice Awards in 2021. More information can be found at www.meriwest.com.

Contact:

Helen Grays-Jones

Meriwest Credit Union

Community Relations Manager

Direct Line: 408-365-6328

hgrays@meriwest.com

A video accompanying this announcement is available at https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/9647610e-344b-4399-8685-4c25fcc91ba8
NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION TO UNITED STATES NEWSWIRE SERVICES OR FOR DISSEMINATION IN THE UNITED STATES



VANCOUVER, British Columbia, Dec. 10, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- ExGen Resources Inc. (TSX.V: EXG; OTC: BXXRF) (ExGen, the Company) is pleased to provide an update in respect of Phoenix Copper Ltd.s (Phoenix) exploration and development activities at the Empire Mine Project in Idaho, USA. Further to previous ExGen news releases, ExGen owns 20% and Phoenix owns 80% of Konnex Resources, Inc. (Konnex), which holds the leases and claims to the Empire Mine Project. ExGen also owns 1,330,000 common shares of Phoenix.



ExGen is pleased to report that Phoenix, (the operator of the Empire Mine Project), has provided further analytical results from the 2021 Deep Sulphide core drilling program, below the known open pit oxide resource, at the Empire Mine in Idaho, USA (Empire).

The following program highlights were provided by Phoenix:

Assay results from Holes KXD21-04, KXD21-05, and KXD21-06 intercept high-grade mineralisation across a suite of metals, summarized below:

Hole KXD21-04 At 64.5 metres (m) depth 1.0 m of 134 g/t silver, 2.94% lead, 4.59% zinc At 97.2 m depth 1.5 m of 0.80% tungsten At 115.8 m depth 1.5 m of 0.44 g/t gold, 68.7 g/t silver, 1.45% copper, 1.37% zinc

Hole KXD21-05 At 60.5 m depth 0.7 m of 0.42 g/t gold and 187 g/t silver

Hole KXD21-06 At 152.2 m depth 2.1 m of 4.93% zinc At 166.4 m depth 1.5 m of 2.9 g/t gold At 191.4 m depth 0.6 m of 0.88 g/t gold and 1.17% copper

Anomalous molybdenum and tungsten mineralisation also intercepted

A total of 979 m of the current 4,500 m deep sulphide programme have been completed to date (excluding 68 m long KXD21-01, which was abandoned due to interference with underground workings)



Phoenix noted:

The four core holes intercepted high-grade gold, silver, copper, lead and zinc, as well as tungsten as high as 0.80% (8,030 ppm).

All holes, KXD21-03 through KXD21-06, targeted the sulphide zone below the Empire open pit oxide resource.

The results provide further evidence of a metal-rich system below the open pit oxide resource.

The next round of drilling in the deep sulphide system is scheduled for this winter. A core rig is anticipated to arrive during December.

In addition to the elevated gold, silver, copper, lead, and zinc values, tungsten is present in anomalous concentrations as high as 8,030 ppm (0.80%) and molybdenum as high as 1,275 ppm (0.13%). These values support the conclusions of Nigel Maund in his 2019 Empire Mine report A Report on a Field Visit Made to the Empire Cu  Au  Ag  (Zn) Project, Idaho, USA, wherein evidence is presented for an underlying molybdenum/tungsten porphyry at Empire. The Maund report can be viewed on Phoenixs website at:



https://phoenixcopperlimited.com/documents/maund-report-april-2019.pdf.

Phoenix continues to await the ground magnetic survey results for the Horseshoe-White Knob extension area to the north of the Red Star silver-lead deposit, as well the Navarre Creek gold project.





Table 1  Empire Drilling Results

Note  downhole not true widths

Drill Hole Intersection Metres g/tonne % % % Mo W Number From To Interval Au Ag Cu Pb Zn ppm ppm KXD21-04 64.5 65.5 1.0 0.04 134 0.05 2.94 4.59 572 110 KXD21-04 67.2 67.8 0.5 0.02 52.5 0.06 1.92 1.17 31 70 KXD21-04 97.2 98.8 1.5 0.1 26.3 0.37 0.32 0.33 727 8030 KXD21-04 115.8 117.3 1.5 0.44 68.7 1.45 0.53 1.37 166 570 KXD21-04 133.2 136.2 3.0 0.08 78.6 0.08 0.72 1.91 57 330 KXD21-05 60.5 61.1 0.7 0.42 187 0.01 0.17 0.87 24 <10 KXD21-05 71.5 74.4 2.9 0.02 31.4 0.01 2.36 0.59 49 <10 KXD21-05 103.3 105.5 2.2 0.82 41.4 0.83 0.58 0.53 183 120 KXD21-06 123.9 125.4 1.5 0.05 9.2 0.26 0.02 0.07 16 2360 KXD21-06 140.9 142.3 1.4 0.16 19.6 1.01 0.01 0.24 180 90 KXD21-06 152.2 154.3 2.1 0.03 8.2 0.31 0.12 4.93 18 90 KXD21-06 166.4 167.9 1.5 2.9 2.4 0.05 0.01 0.03 21 100 KXD21-06 191.4 192.0 0.6 0.88 9.6 1.17 0.01 0.05 1275 10 *KXD21-02 reported 1 Sept 2021 Drill Hole Intersection Metres g/tonne % % % Mo W Number From To Interval Au Ag Cu Pb Zn ppm ppm *KXD21-02 85.6 87.7 2 0.78 64.09 0.98 0.05 0.21 171 93 including 86.9 87.7 0.8 1.1 80.7 1.44 0.11 0.33 214 190 *KXD21-02 98.1 98.6 0.5 0.01 258 0.29 0.01 0.11 27 1710 *KXD21-02 111.5 111.9 0.4 0.21 72.4 0.51 1.14 0.38 119 1600 *KXD21-02 142.6 147.6 5 0.3 19.3 0.77 0.21 0.53 40 127 including 145.2 146.9 1.7 0.72 33.8 1.1 0.6 1.08 58 290 *KXD21-02 173.4 175 1.5 <0.01 0.6 0.03 0 0 14 <10 175 176.5 1.5 <0.01 0.8 0.03 0.01 0.02 28 <10 176.5 178 1.5 <0.01 0.5 0.02 0.01 0.02 33 10 178 179.4 1.4 0.13 8.7 0.64 0.02 0.06 83 30 179.4 180.1 0.8 0.03 1.6 0.05 0.01 0.03 109 20 180.1 181.7 1.5 0.01 2.4 0.16 0.03 0.05 105 50 181.7 183.5 1.8 0.14 5.2 1.11 0 0.01 10 150 183.5 184.4 0.9 0.56 15.6 0.85 0.03 0.1 22 190 184.4 185.9 1.5 0.5 4.1 0.17 0.03 0.06 233 190 *KXD21-02 185.9 187.9 2 0.38 34.38 2.28 0.01 0.14 66 35 including 187.5 187.9 0.5 1.31 120 8.38 0.01 0.48 10 20 *KXD21-02 203 204.5 1.5 0.05 3 0.11 0.01 0.02 1365 10

*(Hole KXD21-01 was abandoned at a depth of 68 m due to interference with underground workings. Hole KXD21-03 did not contain assay values considered significant for this reporting).

**Due to the limited amount of drilling in the area, the orientation and true thickness of mineralization are not yet understood.

2021 DRILLING PROGRAMMES

The 2021 drilling plan includes 4,500 m of diamond core in the Deep Sulphide (979 m completed to date), 3,000 m of dual-rotary drilling for hydrological characterisation (2,600 m completed to date), 2,300 m of reverse-circulation drilling at Navarre Creek, and 3,000 m of diamond core at Red Star and the Horseshoe-Whiteknob target.

QUALITY ASSURANCE AND QUALITY CONTROL PROTOCOLS

Rock, drill core and reverse circulation samples were analyzed by ALS Global, Reno, an ISO/IEC 17025:2005 accredited facility. Copper, zinc, silver, lead, molybdenum, and tungsten were determined by ICP method. Copper, zinc, and lead >1% ICP are assayed using four-acid digestion and silver >100ppm by four acid digestion, whereas gold was determined by a 30gm fire assay followed by atomic absorption. Standards, duplicates and blanks were inserted into the sample stream for QA/QC purposes. Blanks and duplicates were inserted roughly every 50ft and standards were inserted roughly every 100ft. Core samples are saw cut in half and stored in a secure facility. RC chips and channel samples are stored in the same secure facility. All samples are delivered to the laboratory under chain of custody protocol and submitted using sub-form sample numbers.

QUALIFIED PERSON

Kieran Downes, Ph.D., P. Geo., a Qualified Person as defined by National Instrument 43-101, has reviewed and verified the technical information provided in this release.

ABOUT EXGEN RESOURCES INC.

ExGen, formerly Boxxer Gold Corp, is a project accelerator that seeks to fund exploration and development of our projects through joint ventures and partnership agreements. This approach significantly reduces the technical and financial risks for ExGen, while maintaining the upside exposure to new discoveries and potential cash flow. The company intends to build a diverse portfolio of projects across exploration stages and various commodity groups. ExGen currently has 6 projects in Canada and the US.

For more information on ExGen please contact ExGen Resources Inc.

Jason Tong

Chief Financial Officer

Email: jason@catapultgroup.ca

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.
Joe Biden will come to the presidency with close to a clean slate on the issue of federal-state-local relations. How will he tackle the big issues he can't escape?The best insight into the former vice president's approach to federalism comes from his work in directing the Obama administration's American Recovery and Reinvestment Act . The core of that effort was pumping out more than $800 billion to stimulate the economy following the 2008 economic collapse, an amount that at the time seemed nearly unthinkable. A big chunk of the money went to state and local governments for health care and infrastructure.Biden's strategy: Get the money out fast, warn state and local governments about the risks of mismanaging the cash, and reinforce that warning with full transparency. His office created a website, remarkable for the time, that allowed anyone to track, in real time, what money was flowing where, for which projects. It was a GIS-based map that drilled down to what was happening, quite literally, on any block anywhere in the country.The do-it-fast, do-it-in-the-spotlight approach is something sure to carry over into Biden's administration. So too, perhaps, is the idea of having the vice president play a central role in directing such an effort, which might be a clue to Kamala Harris' the role in the next four years.But what will be Biden's federalism agenda for 2021 and beyond? Here are five issues where he's likely to act.We will soon add to the battle about containing the virus the question of how best to distribute a vaccine (or, more likely, vaccines). This is sure to be even more difficult than the mask/no-mask melee of the last months. There's the tough question of who gets it first, but even more difficult is the puzzle of how to get shots to the arms of hundreds of millions of Americans.The Trump administration is leaving behind an 11-page "Operation Warp Speed" game plan to distribute the vaccine. It's remarkably thorough, and it builds on the assumption that the effort will work through partnerships between the federal and state governments and between government and the private sector.But that's not so much an answer as it is a door into much bigger questions. Just what role will the states play in the vaccination process? Although government has gotten much better at supply chain management since the disaster of Hurricane Katrina, the production and distribution of the vaccine will be a supply chain challenge unlike anything the government has seen in recent decades. The Defense Department will be deploying its vast expertise to help the effort, but the federal government itself doesn't have the capacity to get the vaccine into the hands of those giving the inoculations. The states inevitably will play a big role in directing the front-line effort.State and local governments have administered a bit more than 155 million coronavirus tests in the first 10 months of the pandemic, and that has been an enormous struggle. We will have the bulk of more than 330 million Americans to vaccinate, and some vaccines will require a booster within a few weeks. To meet the demands of the vaccine, we'll need to quadruple the distribution capacity, and we'll need to do that in half the time we've spent testing Americans for the virus.Moreover, state governments simply don't have the capacity to store and distribute the vaccine at the super-cold temperatures many of them will require. That means that companies like CVS, Walgreens and Walmart will inevitably be on the front lines to deliver at least some of the vaccines, with heavy transportation support from UPS and FedEx. But if much of the effort will be in private hands, what role will already taxed state public health systems play? The vaccinations will require unprecedented collaboration between state governments and private companies, in a complex system where public trust is already suffering.So how will the Biden administration attack the problem of running the vaccine supply chain  and of managing the ticklish balance between the feds and the states and between the states and private companies?If any bipartisan deal seemed possible in the early months of the Trump administration, it was for a big infrastructure program. Trump had doubled Hillary Clinton's infrastructure plan with a pledge to invest $1 trillion . State and local governments eagerly put together their lists and lobbied hard for the plan, and even in the tumultuous start of the Trump administration it seemed the one big initiative that might pass Congress.But Republicans on Capitol Hill regularly blocked the plan, asking how the federal government would pay for it (although Democrats grumbled that Republicans had no such worries about the big tax cut plans Congress passed). Now, with state and local governments reeling from the effects of the COVID-19 economic collapse, will Biden step forward with a new infrastructure plan? He campaigned on just that , and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has offered it as a possible bipartisan deal . But Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and his chamber's Republicans remain as implacable as ever on infrastructure, and they'd like nothing better than to spike Biden's ambitions.Can Biden roll his infrastructure promises, especially to large Democratic cities that proved so important in helping him win the presidency, into a state and local government relief bill? That raises the larger question of Biden's plan for the next phase of economic stimulus.Before the election, one of the biggest stumbling blocks to a bipartisan stimulus bill was the size of federal relief to state and local governments . Democrats initially wanted $900 billion. Republicans drew the line at no more than $400 million. Democrats will now want more than that and, with the election behind them, Republicans might not be inclined to give even that much. That, in turn, will only double down on McConnell's role in shaping Biden's prospects on the Hill.We're going to have another stimulus bill, perhaps in December and certainly by the early days of the Biden administration. How will Biden steer his way through the need for a stimulus, Democrats' eagerness to capitalize on Biden's victory for a sweeter deal, the Republicans' readiness to embarrass Biden on the first outing, and Republican grudges about the role that Philadelphia and Milwaukee and Detroit played in pushing Biden over the top?COVID-19 isn't going away anytime soon, and that's going to heat up the debate over providing health care  and Medicaid-based health insurance  to poorer Americans. There will be a pledge to ensure that every American can get the vaccine, regardless of income, and that's a step down the road of providing help to Americans who lost health coverage after COVID-19 layoffs and continue to struggle to get back on their feet.If the Republicans win their challenge to the Affordable Care Act before the U.S. Supreme Court, they'll face their recurring dilemma about how to protect elements of Obamacare that people like, especially coverage for pre-existing conditions. If the Democrats win in the high court, there will be an effort to expand coverage even more. One way or another, the front lines of these national health-care battles will end up in the states. Does that mean that the health-care divides in the U.S. are sure only to grow as the states go in different directions?Biden's speech after winning the election called this "a time to heal," and he clearly sees his most important job as bringing a divided country together. Many of these divisions, however, depend far more than we often acknowledge on the decisions of state and local governments. One of this year's most horrific events, the killing of George Floyd, occurred at the hands of Minneapolis police officers, but it also reflected the broader problem of policing in many communities across the country. And Trump's campaign promise to keep the suburbs safe was a dog whistle about the spread of Section 8 subsidized housing beyond the cities.No matter how soaring Biden's rhetoric, his success in healing America will depend ultimately on building partnerships with state and local governments. The forces of national polarization grow from local divisions, in fierce debates raging from policing to housing to homelessness to mask-wearing and, especially, to race.It's hard to imagine an election where the federalism issues were more hidden below the surface but more clear in their underlying importance. Biden's administration might have an explicit federalism strategy, or it might pick these issues off one at a time. One way or another, we're surely heading for a massive rethinking of federal-state-local relations in the months to come.
Governor Northam Announces Major New Funding for Historically Black College and UniversitiesTotal Soars 87% Over Term to More Than $500 Million

Major new funding for operations, building construction, creation of first-ever HBCU Opportunity Fund, and increasing Tuition Assistance Grant to $5,000, a 50% increase over the past four years

RICHMONDGovernor Ralph Northam today continued his Thank You, Virginia Tour, announcing that his proposed two-year state budget will increase funding for Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) to record numbers. The proposal also raises the Tuition Assistance Grant to $5,000 from $4,000. TAG helps Virginia students attend private colleges, including HBCUs.

The Governors proposal includes the creation of an unprecedented HBCU Opportunity Fund, to provide scholarships for students at Virginias eligible private HBCUs. Virginia Union University and Hampton University together will receive $10 million per year. Governor Northam is proposing $277 million in funding for operating costs and building construction at Virginias two public HBCUs. Norfolk State University will receive $164 million and Virginia State University will receive $113 million. The total budget amount going to Virginias HBCUs is $297 million.

The budget will allocate an additional $20 million in 2023 and $20 million in 2024 to increase the affordability of Norfolk State and Virginia State University. More students will be able to access a high-quality education thanks to these state funds.

Virginia's higher education system is parallel to none, said Governor Northam. HBCUs have long been underfunded, and we have worked tirelessly over the past four years to fix that. We are closing the funding gap and making college more accessible to all Virginians.

Virginias Historically Black Colleges and Universities have been systemically underfunded for years. In 2019, Governor Northam proposed and allocated nearly $300 million in new funding for Virginia State University and Norfolk State University, as well as additional capital support and funding for programs to help first-generation students overcome barriers to graduation.

HBCUs are a critical asset to Virginias higher education system and this funding will be game-changing for these institutions, said Secretary of Education Frances Bradford. Proper funding for these schools means better resources for students. Students will also benefit from increasing TAG Program funding. These grants help Virginians overcome barriers to going to college.

This new investment permanently changes the way Virginia invests in HBCUs like Virginia Union and Hampton, said Dr. Hakim Lucas, President of Virginia Union University, the historic university founded at Devils Half Acre in Richmonds Shockoe Bottom when the Civil War ended. This is a new beginning, and a dramatic step forward.

Governor Northams proposal also calls for an increase in the Tuition Assistance Grant Program from $4,000 to $5,000 per student over the next two years. The TAG Program provides grants to Virginia residents who attend eligible accredited private, nonprofit colleges and universities in Virginia.

In 2019, Governor Northam proposed raising the TAG Program maximum award money from $3,400 to $4,000 per student. If the new proposal is adopted by the legislature, funding under the TAG Program would have increased by 50% during Governor Northams term.

Governor Northam announced his proposal for additional funding to public HBCUs at Norfolk State University.

He announced the creation of the HBCU Opportunity Fund and an increase to the TAG Program at Virginia Union University in Richmond.

Virginia Offers a World-Class Education

Under Governor Northam, early childhood education is now available to more Virginia families than ever before

 Since 2018 Virginia has more than doubled public Pre-K funding to serve a record total of more than 25,000 three and four year olds.

 Virginia has expanded access to affordable child care to more families than ever before, serving over 27,000 children and exceeding pre-pandemic participation.

 The Commonwealth has received national attention for investing in an early childhood teacher incentive grant program that has cut turnover in half in participating classrooms.

Virginias tuition-free community college now helps working people who choose career paths in high-demand fields.

 You may be eligible, if you pursue a career in Healthcare, Information Technology, Manufacturing and Skilled Trades, Early Childhood Education, or Public Safety.

 The message is simple: Get skilled, get a job, give back.

Virginias K-12 public schools benefit from record funding:

 Virginia has increased teacher salaries more than 10% under Governor Northam--the largest increase in 15 years.

 Virginia is helping students by hiring more counselors. School counselors are now responsible for 325 students on average, down from as many as 500.

Virginia is making it easier to go to college.

 Virginia has made the largest-ever investment in Historically Black Colleges and Universities$328 million over three years. This includes $297 million for capital projects and nearly $32 million in operating support.

 Students attending Virginia high schools are now eligible for financial aid and in-state tuition, regardless of their citizenship status.

Virginia is expanding need-based financial aid for public undergraduate studentsa $64 million investment is more than any Governors administration in Virginia history. And students at private universities benefit toothanks to Virginia increasing the Tuition Assistance Grant to $4,000 per student up from $3,400 previously.

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Mercedes-Benz is the first automotive company to meet the demanding legal requirements of UN-R157 for a Level 3 system for conditionally automated driving. The German Federal Motor Transport Authority (KBA) has granted system approval for this on the basis of the technical approval regulation UN-R157 (UN Regulation No. 157 - Automated Lane Keeping Systems (ALKS)), thus paving the way for offering such a system internationally, provided that national legislation allows it.

Germany has taken a pioneering role in this with the opening of the Road Traffic Act (StVG) for Level 3 systems in 2017. As a result, the first customers will be able to buy an S-Class with DRIVE PILOT the first half of 2022, enabling them to drive in conditionally automated mode at speeds of up to 60 km/h (37 mph) in heavy traffic or congested situations on suitable stretches of highway in Germany.





The special DRIVE PILOT equipment takes the strain off the driver and allows them to perform ancillary tasks on the central display such as online shopping or sending e-mails in their in-car office. The system approval also applies to the EQS.

For many years, we have been working to realize our vision of automated driving. With this LiDAR-based system, we have developed an innovative technology for our vehicles that offers customers a unique, luxurious driving experience and gives them what matters most: time. With the approval of the authorities, we have now achieved a breakthrough: We are the first manufacturer to put conditionally automated driving into series production in Germany. With this milestone, we are once again proving our pioneering work in automated driving and also initiating a radical paradigm shift. For the first time in 136 years of automotive history, the vehicle takes over the dynamic driving task under certain conditions. At the same time, we are pleased that Germany is continuing its pioneering role in automated driving with this approval. Markus Schafer, Member of the Board of Management of Daimler AG and Mercedes-Benz AG, Chief Technology Officer responsible for Development and Purchasing

The technical approval regulation with which such a system can be certified did not come into force until the beginning of 2021. Since then, it can be implemented in European opportunity that Mercedes-Benz was quick and the first manufacturer to seize. With the opening of the Road Traffic Act (StVG) for Level 3 systems in 2017, Germany was the first country to create a legal basis for the intended use of these systems.

Mercedes-Benz is initially offering DRIVE PILOT on 8,197 miles of highway in Germany. Extensive test drives for this systems are already underway, in the US and China. As soon as there is a national legal framework for conditionally automated operation in additional markets, the technology will be rolled out step by step.





On suitable highway sections and where traffic density is high, DRIVE PILOT can offer to take over the driving, initially up to the legally permitted speed of 37 mph. The controls needed for this are located in the steering wheel rim, on the left and right above the thumb recesses. When the driver activates DRIVE PILOT, the system controls the speed and distance, and effortlessly guides the vehicle within its lane. The route profile, events occurring on the route and traffic signs are correspondingly taken into consideration. The system also reacts to unexpected traffic situations and handles them independently, i.e. by evasive maneuvers within the lane or by braking maneuvers.

LiDAR sensor and supplemental systems. DRIVE PILOT builds on the surround sensors of the Driving Assistance Package and comprises additional sensors that Mercedes-Benz considers indispensable for safe conditionally automated driving. These include LiDAR, as well as a camera in the rear window and microphones, particularly for detecting blue lights and other signals from emergency vehicles, as well as a moisture sensor in the wheel well.

In addition to the sensor data, the DRIVE PILOT receives information about the road geometry, route profile, traffic signs and unusual traffic events (i.e. accidents or roadworks) from a digital HD map. This is made available and updated via a backend connection.

The S-Class with the optional DRIVE PILOT also has supplemental steering and braking systems and a supplemental on-board electrical system, so that it remains maneuverable even if one of these systems fails and the safe handover to the driver can be ensured.

If the driver fails to take back control even after increasingly urgent prompting and expiry of the takeover time, i.e. due to a severe health problem, the system brakes the vehicle to a standstill in a controlled manner and with suitable deceleration. At the same time the hazard warning lights and, once the vehicle has come to a standstill, the Mercedes-Benz emergency call system is activated and the doors and windows are unlocked, to make access to the interior easier for any first responders.

High-precision positioning system. The top priority for Mercedes-Benz when introducing such a system is safety, which includes high demands on operational reliability. The exact location of the S-Class is determined using a highly accurate positioning system. This is much more powerful than conventional GPS systems. In addition, data obtained from satellite navigation are matched with sensor data and data from an HD map. Sensor data collected by LiDAR, camera, radar and ultrasonic sensors can be, for example, information on road geometry, route characteristics, landmarks or traffic signs.

The HD map provides a three-dimensional street and environment image. The map data is stored in back-end data centers and updated constantly. Each vehicle also stores an image of this map information on board, constantly compares it with the backend data and updates the local data set if necessary. The HD map thus offers stable positioning through a representation of the surroundings independent of i.e. shadowing effects or a soiled sensor. It also provides information on road geometry or special traffic events such as roadwork. This high-precision map differs from maps for navigation devices by, among other things, its meticulous focus on the inch-by inch-range and its detailed intersection and track model.

A powerful central control unit provides the necessary sophisticated software functions for conditionally automated driving. Within the framework of modern security architecture, important algorithms are calculated additionally.
Stormie Prime remembers the day she decided to enroll in Climb Wyoming.

The Green River native had noticed an advertisement for the program, which aims to help single mothers learn job skills in high-demand and high-paying fields such as truck driving and nursing, and quickly became interested in what it offered. An unemployed recovering alcoholic who wanted to provide a better life for her children, she talked a friend into enrolling with her. That was the day when Prime began to feel empowered.

Climb Wyoming was originally founded in Cheyenne in 1986 by Dr. Ray Fleming Dinneen as a summer program for teen mothers. Celebrating its 35th anniversary this year, the program has spread throughout Wyoming, with a Sweetwater County branch in Rock Springs opening in 2007. Since its establishment, the Sweetwater County branch has helped 250 mothers and 515 children. According to data provided by Climb Wyoming, the program has saved the state an estimated $117 million through decreased dependence on public assistance programs initially used by its graduates.

Your kids dont have to be on Medicaid, Prime said.

Prime graduated from the program in 2018, earning a Class A CDL that allowed her to enter into the trucking industry. Prime said the program wasnt easy, but is designed to support women as they receive their education. One example she noted of this support related to some difficulties arising due to what she described as working with a group consisting solely of other women. Prime said the program offered therapy sessions to help her and other students cope with the stresses that came with the program. Brittany Grey, Climb Wyomings program director for the Sweetwater County area, said the program offers students tools to help manage conflict as part of the curriculum.

Prime said the support continued when she first sat behind the wheel of a truck, recalling how intimidated she felt as she did. Even after earning the license, Climb Wyoming helped give her tools needed to find employment.

I learned how to basically get a job, Prime said.

The program placed her with Basic Energy Services after graduating.

Following some time at the company, Prime applied to work as a school bus driver in what she believed would be a better opportunity for her, but the COVID-19 pandemic resulted in her being laid off.

With the pandemic impacting driving jobs, Prime said she waited for something to happen that she could apply herself to. That something turned out to be a phone call that would involve her with Climb Wyoming again.

Prime said Mountain West Commercial Driving School contacted her to help train a CDL class for Climb Wyoming.

Prime described the experience as the best opportunity shes had thus far, enjoying the chance to train Climb Wyoming students.

Right now, Prime is driving a mixer truck in the off season, making what she describes as awesome money.

As for Primes children, she said her new career has allowed her to take them to events and theme parks she otherwise wouldnt have been able to afford. She laughingly said they are spoiled, but said the program has benefitted them because theyre not living under the stress that comes from living with a parent who struggles to provide for them.

Im so empowered, words cant even describe how it feels, she said.

Gray said the program is conducting a commencement ceremony for its fall Certified Nursing Assistants course next week and is in the planning phase for a second CNA course for spring 2022.

Gray said the program usually alternates professions, but the severe lack of healthcare workers in the area and the fields ability to pay self-sufficient wages prompted them to host the second nursing course.
Green River Police Department reports for Nov. 30

At 8:36 a.m., officers responded to a report of a two-vehicle collision in the parking lot of Green River High School. It was reported one vehicle was attempting to park in a parking spot adjacent to another vehicle, which was parked and occupied, when the front passenger side of the first vehicle struck the drivers side rear bumper of another vehicle.

At 12:32 p.m., officers responded to a report of a found bicycle at the intersection of Uinta Drive and East 4th South Street. Officers located a black and pink Kent bicycle by the green belt, collected and booked it in for safekeeping, and completed a report of the incident.

At 1:17 p.m., officers responded to a report of an emergency school safety drill at Truman Elementary. The drill was completed successfully.

At 1:50 p.m., officers responded to the lobby of the GRPD to empty the prescription medication drop off box. Officers collected the medications, booked them in for future destruction, and completed a report of the incident.

At 3:34 p.m., officers responded to a report of a stolen vehicle on Schultz Street. Officers met with an individual who reported they had lent their vehicle to an individual but the individual has not returned the vehicle. Officers attempted to locate the vehicle and completed a report of the incident.

Dec. 1

At 12 a.m., officers responded to a report of a disturbance on Upland Way. Officers made contact with the resident, advised of the complaint, and completed a report of the incident.

At 12:10 p.m., officers responded to a report of found property at Edgewater Park. Officers collected and booked in a Kent Tempest bicycle for safe keeping, and completed a report of the incident.

At 5:48 p.m., Animal Control Officers responded to a report of a dog that attacked another dog on Bridger Drive. It was reported a dog jumped out of a parked vehicle and attacked another dog. Officers attempted to locate the dog and completed a report of the incident, which is still under investigation.

At 5:54 p.m., officers responded to a report of a two-vehicle collision. It was reported two vehicles were traveling east on Uinta Drive approaching the intersection of Uinta and River View Drive. One vehicle stopped at the intersection when the other vehicle struck the rear of the stopped vehicle. Officers met with the drivers and subsequently placed Christian Hossele, 32, of Green River, under arrest for alleged driving while under the influence of alcohol. Officers issued citations for alleged following too closely and failure to maintain liability insurance, transported Hossele to the Sweetwater County Detention Center, and completed a report of the incident.

At 6:25 p.m., officers responded to a report of a single-vehicle collision. It was reported the vehicle was traveling south on Hitching Post Drive when the vehicle left the roadway and struck a fence at a residence. EMS was called to the scene and the driver was transported. Officers notified the home owner and completed a report of the incident.

Dec. 2

At 6:57 a.m., officers responded to a report of a disturbance on East Teton Boulevard. Officers met with the individuals involved in a dispute. The parties separated, and officers completed a report of the incident.

At 9:23 a.m., School Resource Officers responded to a report of a student with a tobacco device at Green River High School. Officers met with the student, school administration, and a parent or guardian. Officers issued the juvenile, 15, of Green River, a citation for alleged use/possession of tobacco by a minor, and completed a report of the incident.

At 3:26 p.m., officers responded to a report of threats or harassment. Officers met with an individual who reported receiving threatening messages from a known individual. Officers attempted to contact the individual and completed a report of the incident. The GRPD did not release the address officers responded to.

At 4:28 p.m., officers responded to a report of threats or harassment. Officers met with an individual who reported receiving threatening messages from an unknown individual. Officers completed a report of the incident. The GRPD did not release the address officers responded to.

From 5

Dec. 3

At 10:45 a.m., officers conducted a traffic stop at the intersection of East Flaming Gorge Way and Uinta Drive and issued the driver, Danyka Cross, 23, of Green River, citations for alleged right of way for emergency vehicle violation, expired temporary license permit or improper registration, compulsory auto insurance violation, valid drivers license violation, and vehicle superintendents speed zone violation.

At 10:52 a.m., officers responded to a report of vandalism at Anvil Park. Officers met with a City Parks employee who reported that a piece of park equipment had been vandalized with graffiti. Officers completed a report of the incident.

At 12:16 p.m., officers responded to a report of a hit and run collision at the intersection of River View Drive and Uinta Drive. It was reported that a tractor trailer and a passenger vehicle were stopped at the intersection facing west, the tractor trailer in the left turning lane and the passenger vehicle in the right-hand turning lane. As the tractor trailer initiated the left-hand turn the rear of the trailer struck the drivers side of the passenger vehicle. Officers located the tractor trailer and made contact with the driver. Officers completed a report of the incident and no citations were issued.

At 1:38 p.m., officers responded to a report of larceny on River View Drive. Officers met with an individual who reported their bank card had been stolen from their vehicle and unauthorized charges were made. Officers were able to identify a possible suspect but were unable to make contact. Officers completed a report of the incident, which is still under investigation.

Dec. 4

At 9:19 a.m., officers responded to a report of a disturbance at the Flaming Gorge Motel. Officers met with the individuals involved in a verbal dispute. Officers completed a report of the incident.

At 12:16 p.m., officers conducted a traffic stop at the intersection of Indian Hills Drive and Uinta Drive and issued the driver, a juvenile, 17, of Green River, a citation for alleged speed.

At 4:09 p.m., officers responded to a report of threats. Officers met with an individual who reported receiving threatening messages from a known individual, which was a violation of a current no contact order. Officers completed a report of the incident and forwarded the case to the Sweetwater County Attorney. The GRPD did not release the address officers responded to.

Dec. 5

At 12:58 a.m., officers conducted a traffic stop at the intersection of West 2nd South Street and South 1st West Street and the occupants were discovered to be in violation of curfew and in possession of tobacco and marijuana. Officers issued the two juveniles, both 16, of Green River, citations for alleged curfew violation, possession of tobacco by minor, and unlawful possession - plant form. Officers then released the juveniles to their respective parents or guardians and completed a report of the incident.

At 1:08 a.m., officers responded to a report of a disturbance on South Wagonwheel Drive. Officers met with an individual who reported a verbal dispute and requested assistance. Officers contacted travelers assistance for the individual and completed a report of the incident.

At 11:37 a.m., officers responded to a report of a disturbance on Stephens Street. Officers met with the individuals involved in a verbal dispute. The parties separated and officers completed a report of the incident.

At 12:06 p.m., officers responded to a report of a hit and run collision at the Hampton Inn and Suites. It was reported that a vehicle was damaged while it was parked and unoccupied in the parking lot. Officers completed a report of the incident.

Dec. 6

At 9:58 a.m., officers responded to a report of fraud reported at the GRPD office. Officers met with an individual who reported their identity had been stolen and used to open a bank card account. No monetary losses were reported and officers completed a report of the incident.

At 10:15 a.m., officers responded to a report of a larceny on Moran Drive. Officers met with a representative from AAA Properties in reference to missing items from a vacant residence under foreclosure. Officers completed a report of the incident.

At 11:35 a.m., officers responded to a report of domestic violence. Officers met with an individual that was involved in a verbal dispute. Officers were unable to make contact with the other party and completed a report of the incident. The GRPD did not release the address officers responded to.

At 11:55 a.m., officers responded to a report of threats or harassment. Officers met with individuals involved in a verbal dispute. Officers completed a report of the incident. The GRPD did not release the address officers responded to.

At 12:02 p.m., officers responded to a report of vandalism at Immaculate Conception Catholic Church. Officers met with the groundskeeper who reported the far east door had been spray painted with graffiti. Officers completed a report of the incident.

At 12:28 p.m., officers responded to a report of an individual with an active arrest and hold order at the probation and parole office. Officers met with the individual and placed Samuel Foresman, 23, of Rock Springs, under arrest for the probation or parole violation. Officers transported Foresman to the Sweetwater County Detention Center and completed a report of the incident.

At 5:07 p.m., officers responded to a report of a vehicle that struck a deer at Mission at Castle Rock Rehabilitation Center and the Villa. It was reported the vehicle was traveling south on Uinta Drive when the vehicle struck a deer that was in the roadway. The deer was fatally injured and officers completed a report of the incident.

At 9:10 p.m., officers responded to a disturbance at The Hitching Post. Officers met with the bartender who reported an individual who was causing a disturbance and requested to have them removed from the property. Officers escorted the individual from the property and completed a report of the incident.

Dec. 7

At 12:59 a.m., officers responded to a report of a disturbance on Schultz Street. Officers met with individuals who reported an altercation and damage to a window of the residence. No contact with the suspected individual was made at the time officers completed a report of the incident. The case is still under investigation.

At 1:33 a.m., officers, while on scene for an unrelated incident on Schultz Street, observed accidental property damage and completed a report of the incident.
Paul Bartek, 80, passed away Sunday, November 7, 2021 at Providence St. Joseph Hospital in Orange, California. He died following a lengthy illness. He was a resident of Orange, California since 1967 and former resident of Rock Springs, Wyoming.

He was born March 21, 1941 in Rock Springs, Wyoming; the son of William Joseph Bartek and Mary Copjan.

Mr. Bartek attended schools in Rock Springs, Wyoming and was a 1959 graduate of Rock Springs High School. He obtained his Bachelor's Degree in Biology at Creighton University in Omaha, Nebraska. Mr. Bartek received his Masters Degree in Zoology and Physiology from the University of Wyoming.

He worked for McDonnell Douglas Aerospace Company for seven years as an Engineer Specialist. Mr. Bartek also worked for the State of California for 35 years having retired in 2005 as Engineer Scientist in Government Aerospace.

He was a member of the Holy Spirit Catholic Community.

Mr. Bartek enjoyed music, traveling to Europe and helping Slovakian People to get on their feet to escape communism. He met Pope John Pall II and while talking about it he would just beam.

Survivors include three nephews; two nieces.

He is preceded in death by his parents; one brother, Joseph; two half brothers; Bill ; Clarence and one half sister, Elizabeth Bartek.

A Mass of Christian Burial will be conducted at 11:00 A.M. Wednesday, December 8, 2021 at Our Lady of Sorrows Catholic Church, 116 Broadway, Rock Springs, Wyoming. A Vigil Service with Rosary will be recited at 5:00 P.M. Tuesday, December 7, 2021 at Vase Funeral Home, 154 Elk Street, Rock Springs, Wyoming. Interment will be in the Rock Springs Municipal Cemetery

In Christian love of neighbor, face coverings are strongly encouraged.

Condolences may be left at http://www.vasefuneralhomes.com.
Baked goods, gift baskets, crafts, jewelry, home goods and more covered tables at Holy Communion Episcopal Church in Rock Springs Saturday - all available to raise money for the Woman's Club of Rock Springs during their annual "Holiday House."

"Normally of course we do have the Holiday House," Cindy Wakefield, the Woman's Club vice president, said. She explained the fundraiser is usually hosted at the house of a community member who decorates their home for Christmas and opens it to the Woman's Club for the event.

"But with Delta variant and COVID, it wasn't an option," Wakefield said.

This is the second year the Holiday House event couldn't be hosted in a house like usual because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Last year the event was held entirely online. This year, however, the Woman's Club had the ability to host the event in-person thanks to the Holy Communion Episcopal Church.

"The church was really nice and they donated the space to us this year," Wakefield said, adding the Woman's Club also gave a donation to the church in gratitude for letting them use the building.

While the challenges of hosting the Holiday House during the pandemic have also made the event smaller than normal, it has still been a successful fundraiser.

"We've done really well and so we're pleased with the turnout," Wakefield said during the event.

She noted club members had been working hard to advertise the event and sell raffle tickets for the gift basket giveaways in the month leading up to the Holiday House.

Woman's Club members not only run the Holiday House event every year, they also donate all the items that are sold during the event. Members baked breads and desserts, made jewelry and crafts, donated decorative items, and put together gift baskets for a raffle.

"Everything is from our group," Wakefield explained. She said members usually work on items for the Holiday House throughout the year.

"It's the biggest fundraiser that we have all year," she added.

Club Member Marcia Volner explained the Holiday House usually brings in between $4,000 and $6,000 for the Woman's Club. Even last year, when the event was held online and had to be smaller than normal, it still brought in over $3,000.

"Then we distribute the money throughout the year," Wakefield said.

The money raised by the Holiday House, as well as other smaller fundraisers the Woman's Club hosts, goes toward projects that help the community.

Woman's Club donations and projects have included scholarships for local students, "buddy benches" for schools, protective dogs vests for the Rock Springs Police Department, money and "comfort kits" for the Green River Police Department and Buddy the therapy dog, money for benches at the columbarium in the Rock Springs Cemetery, donations to the VA hospital, books for the Child Developmental Center, a refrigerator for the Sweetwater County Family Resource Center, food drive donations for Loaves and Fishes Soup Kitchen, and, this year, 877 Christmas cards for active military service members.

"Anything to help out the community," Volner said.

Wakefield agreed they're always looking for new ways to help, adding, "We're really fortunate to have a great group of women that care about our community."
Viktoria Sundqvist / Hearst Connecticut Media

A Russian national was sentenced in Connecticut federal court Thursday to four years in prison for running a encrypting service used to conceal malware from antivirus software, allowing hackers to infect hundreds of thousands of victim computers worldwide, prosecutors said.

Oleg Koshkin, 41, formerly of Estonia, was convicted by a federal jury on June 15 of computer fraud and abuse and conspiracy to commit computer fraud and abuse. He was sentenced to 49 months in prison during an appearance in Hartford federal court Thursday.
COCONUT ISLAND, Hawaii (AP)  On a moonless summer night in Hawaii, krill, fish and crabs swirl through a beam of light as two researchers peer into the water above a vibrant reef.

Minutes later, like clockwork, they see eggs and sperm from spawning coral drifting past their boat. They scoop up the fishy-smelling blobs and put them in test tubes.

In this Darwinian experiment, the scientists are trying to speed up corals evolutionary clock to breed super corals that can better withstand the impacts of global warming.

For the past five years, the researchers have been conducting experiments to prove their theories would work. Now, they're getting ready to plant laboratory-raised corals in the ocean to see how they survive in nature.

Assisted evolution started out as this kind of crazy idea that you could actually help something change and allow that to survive better because it is changing, said Kira Hughes, a University of Hawaii researcher and the project's manager.

SPEEDING UP NATURE

Researchers tested three methods of making corals more resilient:

 Selective breeding that carries on desirable traits from parents.

 Acclimation that conditions corals to tolerate heat by exposing them to increasing temperatures.

 And modifying the algae that give corals essential nutrients.

Hughes said the methods all have proven successful in the lab.

And while some other scientists worried this is meddling with nature, Hughes said the rapidly warming planet leaves no other options. We have to intervene in order to make a change for coral reefs to survive into the future, she said.

When ocean temperatures rise, coral releases its symbiotic algae that supply nutrients and impart its vibrant colors. The coral turns white  a process called bleaching  and can quickly become sick and die.

For more than a decade, scientists have been observing corals that have survived bleaching, even when others have died on the same reef.

So, researchers are focusing on those hardy survivors, hoping to enhance their heat tolerance. And they found selective breeding held the most promise for Hawaii's reefs.

Corals are threatened worldwide by a lot of stressors, but increasing temperatures are probably the most severe, said Crawford Drury, chief scientist at Hawaiis Coral Resilience Lab. And so thats what our focus is on, working with parents that are really thermally tolerant.

A NOVEL IDEA

In 2015, Ruth Gates, who launched the resilience lab, and Madeleine van Oppen of the Australian Institute of Marine Science published a paper on assisted evolution during one of the world's worst bleaching events.

The scientists proposed bringing corals into a lab to help them evolve into more heat-tolerant animals. And the idea attracted Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, who funded the first phase of research and whose foundation still supports the program.

Weve given (coral) experiences that we think are going to raise their ability to survive, Gates told The Associated Press in a 2015 interview.

Gates, who died of brain cancer in 2018, also said she wanted people to know how intimately reef health is intertwined with human health.

Coral reefs, often called the rainforests of the sea, provide food for humans and marine animals, shoreline protection for coastal communities, jobs for tourist economies and even medicine to treat illnesses such as cancer, arthritis and Alzheimers disease.

A recent report from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and other research organizations concluded bleaching events are the biggest threat to the world's coral reefs. Scientists found that between 2009 and 2018, the world lost about 14% of its coral.

Assisted evolution was not widely accepted when first proposed.

Van Oppen said there were concerns about losing genetic diversity and critics who said the scientists were playing gods by tampering with the reef.

Well, you know, (humans) have already intervened with the reef for very long periods of time, van Oppen said. All were trying to do is to repair the damage.

Rather than editing genes or creating anything unnatural, researchers are just nudging what could already happen in the ocean, she said. We are really focusing first on as local a scale as possible to try and maintain and enhance what is already there."

MILLIONS OF YEARS IN THE MAKING

Still, there are lingering questions.

We have discovered lots of reasons why corals dont bleach," said Steve Palumbi, a marine biologist and professor at Stanford University. Just because you find a coral that isnt bleaching in the field or in the lab doesnt mean its permanently heat tolerant.

Corals have been on Earth for about 250 million years and their genetic code is not fully understood.

This is not the first time any coral on the entire planet has ever been exposed to heat, Palumbi said. So the fact that all corals are not heat resistant tells you ... that theres some disadvantage to it. And if there werent a disadvantage, theyd all be heat resistant.

But Palumbi thinks the assisted evolution work has a valuable place in coral management plans because reefs all over the world are in desperate, desperate, desperate trouble.

The project has gained broad support and spurred research around the world. Scientists in the United Kingdom, Saudi Arabia, Germany and elsewhere are doing their own coral resilience work. The U.S. government also backs the effort.

Assisted evolution "is really impressive and very consistent with a study that we conducted with the National Academies of Sciences, said Jennifer Koss, the director of NOAA's Coral Reef Conservation Program.

We asked them to gather all the most recent cutting-edge science that was really centered on innovative interventions in coral reef management, Koss said. And certainly, this assisted gene flow fits right in.

MAJOR HURDLES

There are still serious challenges.

Scalability is one. Getting lab-bred corals out into the ocean and having them survive will be hard, especially since reintroduction has to happen on a local level to avoid bringing detrimental biological material from one region to another.

James Guest, a coral ecologist in the United Kingdom, leads a project to show selectively bred corals not only survive longer in warmer water, but can also be successfully reintroduced on a large scale.

Its great if we can do all this stuff in the lab, but we have to show that we can get very large numbers of them out onto the reef in a cost-effective way, Guest said.

Scientists are testing delivery methods, such as using ships to pump young corals into the ocean and deploying small underwater robots to plant coral.

No one is proposing assisted evolution alone will save the worlds reefs. The idea is part of a suite of measures  with proposals ranging from creating shades for coral to pumping cooler deep-ocean water onto reefs that get too warm.

The advantage of planting stronger corals is that after a generation or two, they should spread their traits naturally, without much human intervention.

Over the next several years, the Hawaii scientists will place selectively bred coral back into Kaneohe Bay and observe their behavior. Van Oppen and her colleagues have already put some selectively bred hybrid corals  where the eggs of one species are fertilized by the sperm of another  back on the Great Barrier Reef.

With the world's oceans continuing to warm, scientists say they are up against the clock to save reefs.

All the work we are going to do here, said Hawaii's Drury, is not going to make a difference if we dont wind up addressing climate change on a global, systematic scale.

So really, what were trying to do is buy time.

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This story has been corrected to show that van Oppen's team has planted hybrid corals  not corals with modified symbiotic algae  on the Great Barrier Reef.

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Follow Caleb Jones on Twitter: @CalebAP
GREENWICH  As a review of a proposed new entryway for Greenwich High School continues, neighbors are calling for additional trees and landscaping in the area.

Stephen Walko, chair of the Greenwich High Vestibule Building Committee, told the Planning & Zoning Commission that modifications have been made to the proposal aimed at accommodating neighborhood concerns.

The $2.7 million project would meet new state mandates for school building security after the fatal shootings at Sandy Hook School in Newtown in December 2012.

One modification in the latest site plan was made to lower the light poles at the revamped entrance, bringing them down, to meet concerns about how nighttime lights would impact nearby residences, Walko said at the P&Z meeting on Tuesday evening.

We do listen and we listen intently, Walko told the commission and a number of local residents monitoring the latest discussions. Lighting is a great concern to the neighborhood, so is traffic and landscaping. To the point we can make it better for the neighborhood, we will certainly do so.

Lowering the lighting stanchions around the entrance to the high school, to near ground level, he said, would be less intrusive for the neighborhood.

The Vestibule Building Committee had a very limited directive  to add security features and to give the high school an entrance-way that its lacking right now, Walko said.

Walko and the Vestibule Building Committee have given limited information about the planned security upgrades at the high school, other than to note that the proposed entrance would provide better visibility for security personnel and would allow for improved video surveillance.

Neighbors said they wanted more trees and landscaping around the high school campus, saying that the area has been neglected through the years.

We agree there could be some enhancements, architect David Stein said.

Katherine Pushkar, a neighbor, said Greenwich High School is in desperate need of an entrance. On the landscaping issue, she said the outlay for new plantings of less than $100,000 was underwhelming.

Visitors to the Hillside Road campus are now met with a utility box and a garbage can, and she said visual improvements could be made in the area.

Optics matter, Pushkar said, calling on the Planning & Zoning Commission to push for the most robust landscaping plan possible for approvals.

Added another neighbor, Gabriel Saffioti, agreed. The landscaping concerns are enormous, Saffioti said. A decent budget should be allocated.

The proposal also received support. A town resident, Clare Kilgallen, said, The work needs to be done, I think its high time the school had these improvements made.

The goal is to have the new vestibule completed by mid-January 2023. Under that timeline, construction would start in June 2022.

The application for the vestibule plan will be reviewed again at a later meeting. The Architectural Review Committee is set to further review the plan as well.

Planning Commission Margarita Alban told Walko, Youre heading in the right direction. ... Youve heard about the landscaping.

She also said she wanted to move the process along, by working on the lighting and landscaping issues, but not to reinvent the wheel on the overall design of the vestibule for the high school.

Come back to us when youre ready, hopefully it will be in short order, Alban told the design team on the project.

The structure would be 71 feet wide, 28 feet deep and 25 feet tall, according to the application file. It would be enhanced with blast-resistant and bullet-resistant properties.

rmarchant@greenwichtime.com
BANGKOK (AP)  Myanmars military-installed government has described as fake news reports that its troops were involved in a widely reported massacre in the countrys northwest in which soldiers allegedly rounded up and killed 11 civilians whose charred bodies were later discovered by fellow villagers.

The denial was published Friday as opponents of the military's February takeover put on a show of strength, with citizens staying off the streets in cities and towns in what was called a silent strike.

A report in the state-run Global New Light of Myanmar newspaper accused the nation-destroying media of spreading a video that it said misrepresented the massacre as having been carried out by Myanmar security forces.

The initial on-ground investigation revealed that such a video file was not (at all) related to undertakings of the Tatmadaw and that it was a conspiracy to tarnish the image of the Tatmadaw, the report said, using the formal name for the countrys military. It gave no further details about the killings.

The video has been immediately and widely circulated on social media because of a conspiracy by local and international connections, the report said.

Photos and video of smoldering corpses in Done Taw village in Sagaing region circulated widely, sparking outrage. They were said to be have been taken shortly after the men were killed and their bodies set on fire.

Independent media in Myanmar, generally forced to operate underground due to government restrictions and intimidation, issued accounts of the killings based on interviews with witnesses and residents of the area. Their reports said it was believed to have been in retaliation for an attack on government forces by members of a local unit of the Peoples Defense Force, a lightly armed militia that confronts security forces.

Opposition to military rule has been widespread and constant since the army ousted the elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi. There has been an upsurge in violence since security forces used lethal force to crush peaceful demonstrations, but much of the resistance remains nonviolent.

In an action designed to coincide with International Human Rights Day, streets in cities and towns around the country appeared to be deserted Friday as people overwhelmingly heeded a call to stay home. Row of businesses and markets were shut in the largest city, Yangon, and normally jam-packed roads were empty of traffic. There were similar scenes in the second-largest city of Mandalay.

The silent strike provided a cover of safely expressing opposition to the military authorities, and was due to last for six hours, ending in late afternoon.

Resistance activities have been taking place in the cities and the countryside, but the fighting is deadliest in rural areas where the army has unleashed greater force. In recent months the fighting has been sharpest in Sagaing and other areas of the northwest.

Fridays newspaper story, which was headlined Press Release on Misinformation and Disinformation Appearing on Social Media, accused unnamed countries wishing to disintegrate Myanmar of inciting bloodshed to spread hatred and to escalate the conflict.

In such doing, they provided fake news about the casualties of security forces in order to inspire and motivate terrorists and their supporters, it said, referring to allegations of killings by the army.

It alleged there was a conspiracy spending a huge amount of money and providing technical support to spreading misinformation across social media in synchronization domestically and internationally.

The same newspaper report cited an incident on Sunday in which a military vehicle deliberately plowed into a small group of non-violent pro-democracy protesters in Yangon, the countrys biggest city. Witnesses said that at least three people appeared grievously injured, and photos showed them lying in the street. News reports said it appeared that three to five people had been killed in the attack.

The report accused the protesters of consisting of terrorists, and would be transforming into terrorism, said that security forces have to undertake counterterrorism measures."
GREENWICH  Police responded to a report of a disturbing message found in a womens bathroom at Greenwich High School on Thursday morning, and more officers will be posted at the school in coming days, police and school officials said.

We cleared the school and there were no incidents, Police Capt. Mark Zuccerella said Thursday afternoon about the message, which was reported at 9:30 a.m.

There are rumors about an arrest, a gun, as well as other claims, he said. There were no arrests or weapons-related issues. There was a medical incident unrelated to the issue and an accident that occurred in front of the school.

School district spokesman Jonathan Supranowitz said email advisories were sent to parents, noting there was no imminent threat at the time. School officials said an ambulance responded to an unrelated medical incident.

Additional police personnel will be stationed at Greenwich High School for the near future, and detectives were assigned to the case, Zuccerella said.

At the request of GHS, we will have a presence at the school, in addition to the two school resource officers. The Special Victims Section is conducting the investigation, he said Thursday afternoon.

At this time, we are not releasing any further information. The detectives have several leads they are working on, Zuccerella said.

In a Thursday evening email to Greenwich Public Schools families, Superintendent Toni Jones called for calm.

We are asking to work together as a community to stop the spread of rumors about dangerous weapons, using individual student names, and other social media untruths which are circulating about todays events, Jones said in the message.

She also shared facts about the incident to hopefully dispel any fictional stories going around our community. Jones said:

 The message in a GHS bathroom was discovered Thursday morning.

 Greenwich Police were called and their response time was immediate.

 There were no additional messages or threats to any of the schools in the district.

 No guns or weapons were found at the school.

 No arrests had been made regarding this situation at this time.

Classes continued Thursday as scheduled, according to an earlier email from Jones.

The building continues to conduct classes, and the students are passing in a pre-COVID route utilizing the inside of the building versus traveling outside on the sidewalk, she said in that email. While some families have chosen to pick up their children, or checked out their older children to drive home, the building is continuing the school day as advised by the police department.

It is understandable that students, staff and families (especially at GHS) experienced a level of high anxiety, Jones said in the email.

Additional counseling support will be available at GHS for students on Friday as we know today caused a great deal of anxiety, she said. In addition, there will be a greater police presence at school (Friday) to help all of our students and staff feel safe and secure. We want students to know that the building is safe and that we would not hesitate to cancel school if there were concerns.

Zuccerella said additional officers had been dispatched to the school after the message was found at 9:30 a.m. out of an abundance of caution. The police department also advised the public there that there was no imminent threat, he said.

The email from Jones also noted other recent threats at schools in nearby communities.

Unfortunately, Fairfield County has seen a wave of inappropriate phone calls and threats deemed not credible over the past week or so. Just today, our neighbors in Norwalk announced that they have arrested a juvenile who made at least three threats in the past nine days, she said.

In that incident, a 14-year-old male from Norwalk is facing multiple charges of conspiracy, threatening, falsely reporting an incident and breach of peace after allegedly making multiple false threats at Norwalk High School over the last week.

In Greenwich, Zuccerella said anyone with information about the message in the bathroom at Greenwich High is asked to contact police at TIPS@greenwichct.org or 203-622-3333.

We take matters like this very seriously and work in conjunction with the Board of Education to act with the best interest of the children and school staff in mind, he said.

Threats of harm to students, or anyone, will never be tolerated by the Greenwich Police Department. We will use all of our resources to identify the person responsible and hold them accountable for any threats of harm made to any school regardless if the threat was meant as a prank or not, the captain said.

Jones also praised the work of the police department. There is nothing more important than the safety of our students and staff. We are grateful for the strong support we have with the Greenwich Police Department, she said in an email.

Editors note: This story has been updated.
A former inmate at a Kansas jail alleges in a federal lawsuit that deputies fired a flash grenade and nonlethal bullets at her while she was having a panic attack inside an isolation cell in 2019.

The lawsuit, filed last month by an attorney for 25-year-old Realiti Courson, alleges that deputies targeted her because she is Black. It also alleges that the Reno County sheriff's department persuaded the local prosecutor to charge Courson with three felonies after her attorney contacted the department about the incident.

The defendants are former Sheriff Randy Henderson; Shawn McClay, a captain at the jail; jail deputies Jake Harrison, Cody Blake and Kaitlynn Hazell; and the Reno County Commission.

A spokeswoman for the county did not immediately return messages seeking comment Friday. Reno County Undersheriff Shawn McHaley told The Wichita Eagle the department would not comment on an ongoing lawsuit.

According to the lawsuit, Courson was serving a 30-day sentence in August 2019 for violating her parole when she was falsely accused of bullying other inmates and going into other inmates cells without permission.

Later that night, deputies told her she was being taken to an isolation cell but gave differing reasons.

Courson, who had a history of anxiety and mental health challenges, hit and kicked her cell door, rang the buzzer and covered the surveillance camera twice while inside the cell. The lawsuit said she was having a panic attack, but deputies said she was throwing a "temper tantrum."

When Courson refused deputies' orders to cuff up inside the cell, Harrison fired a flashbang round into her cell, which gave off a deafening sound and a blinding flash, according to the lawsuit, causing Courson more fear and panic.

Harrison yelled at Courson, who couldn't hear him, then fired nonlethal ammunition, also known as rubber or plastic bullets, according to the lawsuit. Courson suffered numerous scars and bruises from the bullets and required surgery.

The amount of force used in this case was grossly disproportionate to the need to apply force or maintain discipline, the lawsuit says, noting that Courson was alone in a cell and posing no danger to anyone.

Caged dogs are afforded better treatment than Realiti was given when she was shocked and shot while caged in a cell, the lawsuit says.

The lawsuit claims the jail had a history of disregarding inmates rights and subjected them to time in isolation cells, beatings and the use of unnecessary physical restraints, but The punishment of sound bombs and shotgun shootings is a punishment reserved for African American detainees.

The deputies said the actions were taken because Courson was noncompliant, according to the lawsuit.

Shortly after the sheriff's department was contacted by Courson's attorney, the department sent an affidavit to the district attorney's office claiming Courson had threatened a deputy and another inmate and interfered with law enforcement.

She was acquitted in March.

The defense argued that these charges were based on fiction designed to protect the Sheriff from this anticipated civil suit. The criminal court agreed, the suit says.

It alleges Henderson, who retired as sheriff in December 2019, did nothing to stop the poor treatment of inmates and the lack of training and supervision provided by the former sheriff and McClay led to the sadistic assault on Courson.

Courson is seeking a jury trial and punitive damages but the lawsuit does not name a specific amount.
GREENWICH  In the largest one-day number seen this fall, the Greenwich schools reported 21 new cases of COVID-19 on Friday, pushing the the total to more than 200 cases since the first day of classes and impacting nearly every public school in town, according to the districts online tracker.

It was the fourth straight double-digit report, bringing the total to 52 cases of COVID-19 so far in December and 204 cases since Sept. 1, according to the district.

There were 41 active cases of COVID-19 as of Friday, affecting 14 building  every school except North Street and Windrose.

As of Friday, there were eight active cases of COVID-19 at Greenwich High; seven cases at International School at Dundee; five cases at Central Middle; four cases at Riverside; three cases each at Eastern Middle and Julian Curtiss; two cases each at Glenville, North Mianus and Old Greenwich; and one each at Cos Cob, Hamilton Avenue, New Lebanon, Parkway and Western Middle, according to the tracker.

A total of 14 cases were reported Dec. 7, with 17 cases reported on Dec. 3 and 10 cases on Nov. 30, according to the tracker, which the district updates every Tuesday and Friday.

The uptick comes in the weeks following the Thanksgiving holidays, and the school district has seen that following holiday breaks, positive cases trend up, according to Jonathan Supranowitz, director of communications for the Greenwich Public Schools.

There is a correlation between the increased number of COVID-19 cases in the schools and in the town, where there were 98 active cases reported as of Wednesday, according to the town Health Department.

There were also 10 patients at Greenwich Hospital diagnosed with COVID-19, with one in the intensive care unit as of Wednesday, Hospital President Diane Kelly said. Of those 10 patients, only one had been vaccinated, she said.

Greenwich Hospital also reported it detected its first cases of the omicron variant of COVID-19 at its testing site on Tuesday, but officials said both cases were mild and did not require hospitalizations.

One patient with the omicron variant is from Fairfield County and the other is from Westchester County, N.Y., Kelly said.

One patient showed no symptoms, and one had very mild symptoms, she said.

COVID cases and vaccines

Of the 41 active cases in Greenwich schools, 33 cases were reported among students, four cases with teachers, two cases with non-teaching staff and one case each affecting a service provider and an administrator, the district said. Of the active cases, 19 were attributed to infection from family or outside activity, 21 were of undetermined origin and one was due to in-school transmission, according to the district.

Since the start of the school year, a total of 32 families in the district have reported multiple cases of COVID-19 affecting 72 individuals, according to the tracker.

The district reported 52 cases of COVID-19 so far in December, 65 cases in November, 29 cases in October and 58 cases in September, according to the tracker.

The town is also preparing for more COVID-19 vaccine clinics for students ages 5 to 11 after the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in early November approved size-appropriate doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine for that age group.

The Connecticut Department of Public Health and Griffin Hospital held weekend vaccine clinics at three local schools in November for children in the age 5-to-11 cohort and second doses clinics earlier this month at two schools. A second-dose clinic will be held from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Dec. 12 at Julian Curtiss.

Children can also receive COVID-19 vaccines at some drug stores and pediatricians offices.

A total of 16.7 percent of children ages 5 to 11 in the town of Greenwich are already fully vaccinated, according to the tracker. At Greenwich High, more than 83 percent of all students are fully vaccinated, Supranowitz said. The town reports that 88.6 percent of town residents ages 12 to 17 are fully vaccinated.

The state is reporting a total of 2,265 cases of COVID-19 as of Thursday across all public and private schools in Connecticut, with 1,881 cases reported among students and 384 cases among staff.

Tracker links

The website for the tracker for the Greenwich Public Schools moved to a new location. It can now be found at: www.greenwichschools.org/teaching-learning/special-education/student-support-services/health-services/covid-19/covid-19-tracker-2021-2022-school-year.

The district says it updates the online tracker every Tuesday and Friday to keep the community informed on the pandemic.

For the 2020-21 school year, a total of 697 cases of COVID-19 were reported across the Greenwich school district.
The head of law enforcement in the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands on Friday provided testimony to CNMI lawmakers, who have been gathering information about alleged misuse of public funds and resources by Gov. Ralph Torres.

Some of the allegations involve the use of large Department of Public Safety security details  as many as four officers  for off-island trips by Torres and his family, including to Guam and the Philippines, and the use of government boats and personnel to escort the governor and his family on recreational boating trips.

Officers testify

Lawmakers said officers assigned to provide security have testified that they sometimes traveled separately from the officials they were assigned to protect and sometimes returned to the CNMI before those officials. Lawmakers noted that first lady Diann Torres is the only first lady in the CNMIs history to have full-time security assigned to her.

An officer traveled with her during a February 2019 personal trip to the Philippines, according to information gathered by lawmakers.

Department of Public Safety Commissioner Robert Guerrero, who was subpoenaed to testify before the House Judiciary and Governmental Operations Committee, on Friday told lawmakers he never questioned whether off-island trips were business or personal and never has denied a request to provide security for those trips.

Guerrero said he relied on recommendations by the DPS security chief, Sgt. Joey Cruz, when deciding whether to approve resources for personal security.

Gov. Torres also has been subpoenaed to testify before the committee.

Lt. Gov. Arnold Palacios testified before the committee in September, weighing in on the many allegations against Torres, stating it appears Torres misused public funds.

The allegations include: excessive utility costs at Torres private home, paid for by taxpayers; the use of public safety boats and personnel for fishing trips and other personal reasons; bypassing customs screening at the airport; flying first-class at public expense; using public funds and resources for personal reasons; releasing deer, an invasive species, in the Northern Islands; and having a large security detail, which sometimes runs his personal errands.

The FBI in November 2019 raided Torres office, home and vehicle, examining and removing documents and computers. The reason for the raid is unclear, and the Justice Department has not brought any charges related to the raid.

According to the committee, records show the governor took 85 boat trips, and it has received testimony that some were personal fishing trips, sunset cruises and happy hour trips.

Rep. Donald Manglona on Friday asked whether the security service is justified, because officers have testified there have been no safety threats.

They have testified that they have never received any alert of any imminent danger to the governor or Mrs. Diann Torres, Manglona said. Can you please justify what the reason was behind providing security details to the governor or Mrs. Diann Torres  as many as four (personal security details) for these trips?

Guerrero said the security assignments were based on requests from the security chief. He said the law allows DPS to provide safety for public officials, and an attorney generals opinion states family members also are entitled to protection.

Torres published two videos online, responding to some of the allegations.

Our people deserve the truth directly from me and not through a political body like the JGO Committee, the Republican politician posted on his Facebook page. You deserve the full story, and I hope this addresses these abusive allegations by officials that prioritize politics over our people.

Torres, in a November video, said public money was not used to pay the large water bill for the piggery on his property. He said when he received the bill he paid it using personal money and had another water meter installed for the piggery, separate from his residential meter. He noted that the CNMI government has paid the utility bills for the governor and lieutenant governor at their personal residences for about 20 years, since their official residences were condemned.

Torres, in a December video, defended the $70,000 boat trip he took to the Northern Islands last year, accompanied by the producer of a YouTube show called Deer meat for dinner.

Torres said one reason for the trip was to highlight the Northern Islands for tourism purposes.

I have not once, not once, ever used any federal funded vessel, DPS vessel for any recreation purposes. Ive never fished on them, Torres said.
Guam expanded its eligibility for booster shots Friday and the number of new COVID-19 infections on the island continue to drop.

Three new cases of COVID-19 were reported out of 611 tests performed Thursday. Two cases were identified through contact tracing, the Joint Information Center stated in a news release.

Four people were hospitalized with the virus Friday, including three vaccinated and one unvaccinated. Nobody was in intensive care.

To date, there have been a total of 19,303 officially reported cases of COVID-19, with 267 deaths and 263 people in active isolation.

The CAR Score is 0.7.

Booster shots

After federal officials approved the Pfizer-BioNTech booster shot for 16- and 17-year-olds Friday, Guam time, the shot became available here.

Those ages 16-17 are eligible six months or more after completing their second shot in the two-shot series.

Only the Pfizer-BioNTech booster vaccine is authorized and recommended for adolescents aged 16 and 17, according to the Joint Information Center.

For minors to receive the booster:

Parent/legal guardian must provide minors birth certificate.

Parent/legal guardian must have a government-issued photo identification.

Minor must be accompanied by a parent or legal guardian.

Guardians must present legal guardianship or power-of-attorney documents.

Vaccines

As of Dec. 9, a total of 126,679 of Guams eligible population age 5 years and older is fully vaccinated. This total includes 12,052 residents ages 12-17.

There have been 3,672 residents ages 5-11 who received their first dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech two-dose series, with 853 having completed their two-dose series.

There have been 30,929 booster shots administered to eligible residents.
A woman pleaded not guilty to possessing and intending to distribute methamphetamine.

Rebecca Rose San Nicolas Morta made her first appearance at the District Court of Guam to plead not guilty to the charge of attempted possession with intent to distribute 50 or more grams of methamphetamine hydrochloride.

Morta was arrested Thursday after being indicted in September, according to court records.

Details of the case were sealed. However, the indictment states between Jan. 31 and Feb. 4, 2020, Morta knowingly and intentionally attempted to possess with intent to distribute methamphetamine.

Following the not guilty plea, Morta was put on conditional release.

One condition includes not associating with federal defendant Albert Portusach Mendiola Jr. while he has an outstanding warrant of arrest, documents state.

Portusach is a twice-convicted drug dealer who spent four years in federal prison after confessing to dealing meth in 2006. He was arrested in 2012 again for drug charges and sentenced to 46 months and three years of supervised release in 2015, according to court records. An arrest warrant was issued for Portusach after violating the conditions of his supervised release.
Department of Public Health and Social Services Nurse Practitioner Teo Cruz preloads a syringe with a measured dose of Moderna vaccine at a vaccination clinic at the Northern Region Community Health Center in Dededo Dec. 9, 2021.




Haiti - Politic : Fight against corruption speech by Prime Minister Henry





On Thursday as part of the ceremony to celebrate the International Day against Corruption, Prime Minister ai Ariel Henry delivered a speech aimed in particular at highlighting his government's will to tirelessly fight against this scourge at all levels of Public Administration.



Speech by Prime Minister Henry :

"[...] The fight against corruption to which we are invited must be that of the whole Nation, that of women and men anxious to see and contribute to improving living conditions and reversing the trend and perception of a country where corruption reigns https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-29882-haiti-flash-haiti-12th-most-corrupt-country-out-of-180.html



It is inconceivable to envisage sustainable development if we do not first try to clean up and moralize public administration. The fight against corruption goes hand in hand with the political stability, the economic progress, the security that we all need.



I urge senior officials, public officials to do more to break the chain of corruption. On behalf of my government, I call on all State administrators to endorse the values of ethics, honesty, transparency and probity.



Today everyone knows that corruption makes us unable to build good schools, health centers, roads, bridges... I am committed to the whole government to fight against corruption and waste in the State which already has few resources. We have to manage our small resources well.



We must all remember that the fight against corruption will not be possible if the authority of the State is not restored, if our judicial system does not regain its image.



I therefore invite our fellow citizens to denounce acts of corruption, to support the State in this vast republican project for the well-being of the community. Because our future and that of future generations depend on it.



It is time for justice to start handcuffing some corrupt people. All the bad deals in corruption at customs, DGI, immigration, OAVCT, APN...



I encourage the supervisory and investigative bodies, in particular the ULCC, to increase their energy tenfold in the battle against corruption, so that the meager resources at our disposal are put at the service of the most vulnerable in our society, in the service of the country [...]"



See also :

https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-29882-haiti-flash-haiti-12th-most-corrupt-country-out-of-180.html

https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-34410-haiti-flash-initiation-of-public-action-against-dozens-of-businessmen-officials-and-former-officials.html

https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-34406-haiti-corruption-ulcc-handed-70-lawsuits-against-former-mayors-and-personalities.html

https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-34367-haiti-justice-the-ulcc-and-the-oas-sign-a-mou-on-the-fight-against-corruption.html

https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-34061-haiti-justice-ulcc-orders-banks-to-freeze-260-million-embezzled-gourdes.html

https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-33530-haiti-flash-search-at-the-state-lottery-marie-margareth-fortune-resigns.html

https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-32695-haiti-flash-ulcc-opens-5-major-corruption-investigations.html



HL/ HaitiLibre






















Haiti - Petion-ville : Arrest of the leader gang Ti Jonas and 2 of his men





Thursday, December 9, 2021, agents of the National Police of Haiti (PNH) proceeded in Petion-ville, to the arrest of the gang leader Clerny Jonas aka "Ti Jonas", a repeat offender well known of the police services and two of his men Kenny Sanon and Joissaint Sonnel who were actively wanted.



"Ti Jonas" whose gang operated in Jalousie, a locality in the commune of petion-ville, is accused of murdering the so-called Vilson known that he beheaded. Members of this gang are specialized in motorcycle theft, ransom and burglary.



Let's recall that on August 8, 2012, "Ti Jonas" had already been imprisoned at the National Penitentiary for illegal possession of a firearm, attempted murder and criminal conspiracy...



HL/ HaitiLibre






















Haiti - Protection : Donation of 6.9 million from the CBD to pay Haitis insurance premium





Thursday, December 9, 2021, the Board of Directors of the Caribbean Development Bank (CDB) has today approved funding for the full premium for natural hazard insurance for Haiti. The Bank is providing US$6.9 million as a grant on a one-time request by the Haitian Government to cover the premium of the Caribbean Catastrophe Risk Insurance Facility Segregated Portfolio Company (CCRIF SPC) for the period 2021/22.



Note that it will be 11 years that the CBD has assumed in part or in whole, instead of Haiti, the parametric insurance premiums against damage resulting from hurricane, earthquake and excess precipitation https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-21157-haiti-security-cdb-will-once-again-pay-insurance-premiums-for-haiti.html



"Haiti faces serious challenges due to the combined shocks of natural disasters, the COVID-19 pandemic, climate change, political instability, and the heightened insecurity in several parts of the country, which contribute to financial uncertainty," said CDB Vice-President of Operations, Isaac Solomon.



Haiti suffered its latest disaster in August this year, with the occurrence of a 7.2 magnitude earthquake, epicentred in the southwest peninsula, close to Les Cayes https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-34681-haiti-earthquake-latest-assessment-of-civil-protection.html



This event triggered the largest single pay-out by CCRIF SPC, with a total of US$40 million https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-34551-haiti-earthquakethe-ccrif-will-pay-nearly-$40m-compensation-to-haiti.html



Having been a member of CCRIF SPC, co-founded by CDB, since its start in 2007, Haiti partly covered its annual insurance premium since 2018. However, the Haitian Government is unable to contribute to the payment of the CCRIF SPC premium this policy year.



See also :

https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-34551-haiti-earthquakethe-ccrif-will-pay-nearly-$40m-compensation-to-haiti.html

https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-25610-haiti-economy-official-opening-of-the-national-office-of-the-cbd-in-haiti.html

https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-25382-haiti-security-grant-of-$3m-from-the-cbd-to-help-haiti-pay-its-insurance-premiums.html

https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-22994-haiti-economy-the-cbd-proposes-a-$100m-program-for-haiti.html



HL/ HaitiLibre






















Haiti - NOTICE : Call for applications, seminars in art criticism





The Art Center informs that seminars in art criticism will be organized following the crossed artistic residencies carried out in 6 Caribbean countries. The works of art, produced by the 10 artists, will be included in the seminars. Each seminar is formed from a guiding question aimed at supporting participants' ability to respond meaningfully and generatively to works of art. These questions will be held and deepened through oral discussions, written and practical exercises as well as integrated exercises.



The seminars will be given online by art critic Ada Patterson on the zoom platform and presented live to participants at the Art Center in Haiti.



The seminars (5) will take place once a week on Fridays from 10 a.m. to 12 p.m. (Haiti) from January 14 until February 11.



Participants will actively contribute to the writing of art reviews that will appear in the exhibition catalog with works of art made by contemporary women artists from Haiti, Barbados, Jamaica, the Dominican Republic and from Trinidad and Tobago, as part of a cross-residency program organized by Le Center d'Art. Artist residencies are an integral part of the program funded by UNESCO's International Fund for Cultural Diversity.



How to apply :

- Bachelor / Master in Art Art criticism / History of Art / Cultural management / Journalism;

- Proficiency in French and English;

- Computer skills.

- A cover letter;

- Curriculum Vitae, including elements retracing the training courses, the course



Applications and any other request should be sent by email to : contact@lecentredart.org Cc: fannyvg@outlook.com



Application deadline : December 30, 2021 midnight (GMT)



Selection committee :

The selection will be made by a selection committee composed in particular of the members of the Board of Directors of the Art Center, its executive team and the art critic.



For more information download (PDF) : https://www.haitilibre.com/docs/seminaires-critique-dart-2.pdf



HL/ HaitiLibre


















Published on 2021/12/09 | Source

Rookie actress Roh Yoon-seo has confirmed her appearance in "Our Blues".

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Roh Yoon-seo was cast Bang Yeong-joo, the Jeju girl in Noh Hee-kyeong's new drama "Our Blues" which will premiere next year.

"Our Blues" is a drama about Bang Yeong-joo, a high school girl from Jeju who is the top student in her school but actually is a rebel who dreams of getting out of Jeju as quickly as possible and live in Seoul.

Roh Yoon-seo will play the role of a Jeju-born high school student who wants to leave Jeju as soon as possible and escape to Seoul, giving her innocent visuals and cheerful charm.

Roh Yoon-seo is in the spotlight by confirming her appearance in a series of anticipated films that attract attention from Netflix's original film "20th Century Girl" along with "Our Blues".

"Our Blues" is a work by writer Noh Hee-kyeong and director Kim Kyoo-tae. Lee Byung-hun, Shin Min-a, Cha Seung-won, Lee Jung-eun, Han Ji-min, Kim Woo-bin and Uhm Jung-hwa will appear in the drama in 2022.
A HAIRDRESSER in Henley has complained that his unofficial fire exit for disabled clients has been blocked off by builders.

Bruno Giamattei, who runs Marc Antoni in Hart Street, said he was shocked when large pieces of timber were erected outside the salons back door and window and set in concrete.

The work to create screening was done by builders at the neighbouring property on the corner of Bell Street, which is to become a branch of the restaurant chain Cote Brasserie.

An area behind the businesses owned by the restaurant is being turned into a covered courtyard with fitted seats.

Mr Giamattei, who lives above the salon, said he had never used the area but would do so if there was an emergency.

He said: I have no other way out of the building. A fire chief came out and said that my back door was not a fire exit but my official fire exit is upstairs and I do have disabled clients.

Obviously its the restaurants land and Id only use it in an emergency but now were blocked in.

South Oxfordshire District Council, the planning authority, has granted planning permission for the courtyard work.

Timber screening will be built in front of the salon door and window.

In a planning and design statement, development consultancy Pegasus group said: Access to the rear courtyard is possible via a door to the rear of No 5 Hart Street [the salon].

However, this property has no rights of access over the site, including for a fire escape, and therefore this door does not serve a purpose.

The back door and window are part of the salons staff room, which was created as part of an extension built 26 years ago.

Mr Giamattei said: My employees are now worried it will feel like a prison cell as all the light is going to be blocked out. I think it violates my right to light and Im not happy about it.

In its statement, Pegasus Group said: The proposed fixed screening against the rear of No 5 will not result in the harmful loss of light nor detract from the function of this property. This is because the rear window serves as a storage room for the hairdressers, not a habitable room, and the door is not afforded rights through to the application site.

The erection of the screen along the rear of No 5 Hart Street is appropriate as it will enclose the external dining area, add visual interest to a former blank facade and separate this neighbouring property.

Mr Giamattei, who has been running the salon since 1984 when his father Bruno Giamattei Snr bought it, also fears the cost of his insurance will increase.

He said: I now have to redo my insurance because theres no door at the back and I have no access to my roof either.

If I have any brick damage I cant get to it and I cant manage my window. Theres no longer access to the roof to manage my air conditioning units. I would need scaffolding out the front, which would cost thousands.

This has also decreased the value of my property but increased the value of theirs by making a courtyard.

Mr Giamattei said he had had to put up with the noise from the work and the builders damaged an internal wall of the salon. He said: They smashed through the wall by the stairs. I am not sure how they managed that because they had to come through red brick and breeze block.

It has since been replastered and I stayed amicable. However, when I tried to speak to them about what they were doing they told me it was the law and to go and speak to my solicitor.

Theres no reasoning with them. I put up with the drilling and banging and then they come through my wall and I dont say anything.

Now I want to do something but I feel that, coming out of covid and the debt Ive accumulated, I dont have the funds to take them on.

A spokesman for the district council said: Our planning team have confirmed that the concern over access and light is a private matter between the landowners.

During the course of the planning application, we were not advised of this issue.

However, the owner of the courtyard area can undertake such works which appear to be permitted development and are therefore outside the councils control.

Cote Brasserie did not respond to requests for comment.
As West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee is driving a wedge between the BSF and the Bengal police and asking her police to not allow BSF personnel to enter villages without their permission, Governor Jagdeep Dhankhar has said that her stance is potentially alarming for federal polity and national security.

Your (Mamata Banerjee) stance has sent disturbing signals and is potentially alarming for federal polity and national security, Governor Jagdeep Dhankhar said in a letter shot to the Chief Minister.

Governor sent a letter in response to Chief Minister during her regular administrative review meetings issuing directives to concerned district police to ensure BSF operates within 15 km inside the international border, that too with permission of local police.

Urged @MamataOfficial to urgently revisit directives concerning @BSF_India , including BSF is allowed for 15 km, that too with permission of the police being not in sync with law. The stance is potentially alarming for federal polity and national security. pic.twitter.com/naHWUahFBg  Governor West Bengal Jagdeep Dhankhar (@jdhankhar1) December 9, 2021

The Governor has urged her to urgently revisit directives concerning BSF as her directives are not in sync with law or the recent Union Home Ministry notification increasing the jurisdiction of the BSF in Bengal from 15 km from the border to 50 km.

In the State having international border with Bangladesh, Nepal and Bhutan, BSF and Central Armed Police Forces play significantly well defined crucial role from the perspective of national security and containing criminal illegal activities, he said. He said that the law and order agencies of the State and the central armed forces play their respective roles and perform their assigned duties in a coordinated and synergic manner to ensure overall safety and security.

The Governor said that hence it would not be good to create confrontation and combat amongst these agencies and State apparatus. This imperatively calls for, in public and national interest, that your directives, instructions as also stance regarding functioning of BSF in the State be revisited so as to generate an environ of harmony and cooperation, he said.

Mamata Banerjee asks police to check the BSF movement

Chairing an administrative review meeting at Gangarampur in Dinajpur district on December 7, the West Bengal CM had issued the instruction that BSF will be allowed to operate only within 15 km of the border, that too with police permission. Again on December 9 she chaired a meeting at Krishnanagar in Nadia district, where she ordered the district police to carry out rigorous searches at security checkpoints (naaka) and increase mobility.

She said that as the border with Bangladesh starts from Karimpur, district police will have to keep their eyes open. She directed police to ensure that the BSF doesnt enter the border villages and carry out any activity and operation without the knowledge of local police. Stating that law and order is the state subject and the BSF should do what it is mandated to, she said that the torture of common people will be not be tolerated.

Bengal and Punjab opposed extension of BSF jurisdiction

Mamata Banerjee has been opposing the decision of the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) to extend the jurisdiction of the Border Security Force (BSF) from 15km to 50km inside the international border in West Bengal, Assam and Punjab that share their borders with Bangladesh and Pakistan.

Although the BSF has denied any parallel policing and any encroachment on the jurisdiction of local police, the CM is ready to create a confrontation that will have a negative impact on the integrity and security of the country. She also met Prime Minister Narendra Modi to revoke the order.

Governor snubs CM on worrisome human rights condition in Bengal

In a fresh development, the Governor on the Human Rights Day also snubbed the Chief Minister over human rights violations in Bengal.

Worrisome HUMAN RIGHTS violations. Only Rule of Ruler and not of law, the Governor said. He added that a highly Politicised bureaucracy constitutes severe threat to democracy.

In the video message, the Governor said that human rights violations in Bengal are on the extreme. The administrative setup and officials act like political workers and people are so scared that they even dont talk about this. He said that the situation is so painful that the human rights commission which is supposed to protect human rights is on a ventilator according to its chairperson.

Source : OpIndia
Mary Ann passed peacefully in her home with her loving family by her side on July 12, 2021.
Appointment

10 December 2021

Weber has served as interim global communications lead since July 2021.

Hyatt Hotels Corporation (NYSE: H) today announced the appointment of Franziska Weber as senior vice president and head of global communications, effective immediately. Weber, who joined Hyatt in 2017, will oversee integrated global communications across all stakeholder groups for the company. She will report to Mark Vondrasek, Hyatt's chief commercial officer.

Weber began her communications career at Lufthansa Group in her homeland of Germany. Prior to joining Hyatt, she worked for Weber Shandwick and Gagen MacDonald, advising clients on internal and external communications, business transformation and culture change efforts. After joining Hyatt in 2017 to lead internal communications, Weber's role quickly expanded to include oversight of corporate and strategy communications. Since taking on interim leadership of Hyatt's global communications function in July 2021, she has overseen communications for the launch of Hyatt's Environmental Social Governance (ESG) framework World of Care, the Thompson Hotels brand's Culture Lives Here campaign and Hyatt's acquisition of Apple Leisure Group, which created one of the largest collections of luxury all-inclusive resorts in the world.

In her role, Weber will lead integrated communication initiatives supporting Hyatt's strategic growth vision, its role as a leader in the luxury all-inclusive space as well as Hyatt's commitments to diversity, equity and inclusion (DE&I) and holistic wellbeing.
Appointment

10 December 2021

Commonwealth Hotels announced today that Ginger Thompson has been appointed the Director of Sales and Marketing of the Home2 Suites El Reno Oklahoma. Ms. Thompson brings over 25 years of hospitality experience to her new role as Director of Sales and Marketing having previously served as the Convention Sales Manager for the Oklahoma City Convention and Visitors Bureau.

A performance oriented sales leader with proven expertise in account management, Ms. Thompson built her career with multiple brands in key markets. In addition to the Oklahoma City Convention and Visitors Bureau she has served in various leadership roles at the following: Embassy Suites Country Club Plaza, Hilton Kansas, Renaissance Waterford and BancFirst. Ms. Thompson is a graduate of Oklahoma State University with a Bachelor of Science degree in hotel and restaurant administration.
Press Release

10 December 2021

Launched ahead of the 24th UNWTO General Assembly, the competition was designed to recognize the best visual storytellers from every global region. Submissions were judged in two categories.

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Tourism and the Decade of Action

Participants were asked to use film to show how the tourism sector is advancing the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development through references to one or several of the 17 Global Goals.

Exceptional Stories of Sustainable Tourism

Participants were asked for remarkable examples which showcase the human face of tourism and make clear the positive social impact the sector can have through generating opportunities for all.

All submissions were viewed by an independent jury made up of international media gathered in Madrid for the UNWTO General Assembly.

The 2021 winners are:

Promotion and the Decade of Action

Africa: Seychelles - Experience Seychelles

Americas: Bahamas - Exuma Land and Sea Park

Asia & Pacific: Macao, China - Sustainable Gastronomy Day 2021

Europe: Georgia - The Grand Tour of Samegrelo

Middle East: Egypt

Exceptional Stories of Sustainable Tourism

Africa: Seychelles - Creole Rendezvous

Americas: Puerto Rico - Agrotourism Puerto Rico (affiliate member)

Asia & Pacific: The Philippines - Have A Safe Trip, Pinas

Europe: Slovenia - Slovenian Gastronomy. You can't spell Slovenia without love. Your plate awaits.

Middle East: The Red Sea Company - Seeds of Hope (affiliate member)

RELATED LINKS:
Press Release

10 December 2021

AUSTIN, Texas - Summit Hotel Properties, Inc. (the Company) today announced that Dan Hansen will retire from his role as the Companys Executive Chairman effective December 31, 2021. Mr. Hansen will continue to serve on the Companys Board of Directors for the remaining term of his current nomination through the 2022 annual meeting of stockholders. Jeff Jones, currently the Companys Lead Independent Director, will assume the role of Non-Executive Chairman of the Board effective January 1, 2022.

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It has been a tremendous privilege to have led Summit as its CEO for over 10 years and as Executive Chairman during this past year. While I will be leaving my formal role with the Company to pursue other interests, the transition plan we put in place at the beginning of last year has been completed and I believe Jon Stanner, who became President and CEO on January 15th, 2021, is fully prepared to lead the Company in its next phase of growth. I continue to fully support the strategic direction of the Company and believe with our current management team and continued support by our Board of Directors we are well equipped to lead the Company going forward, said Mr. Hansen.

I will forever be grateful for Dans guidance, mentorship and friendship. As he transitions to the next phase of his life, he leaves behind a lasting legacy of success, underpinned by a tremendous track record and unwavering commitment to transparency and integrity. His influence at Summit and our industry more broadly has been inspirational for me, and I look forward to continuing his unrelenting pursuit of excellence, commented Jonathan P. Stanner, the Companys President and Chief Executive Officer.

On behalf of the entire Board of Directors, Id like to sincerely thank Dan for his tremendous efforts and congratulate him on his many accomplishments as a leader of Summit since our IPO in 2011. He has been an integral part of the growth of our company and is widely respected for his dedication and commitment to our industry, commented Mr. Jones. The Board has been pleased with the significant progress we have made through the leadership transition, and we look forward to building on the growth being created by our recently announced $822 million transformational acquisition of a 27-hotel portfolio from NewcrestImage, continued Mr. Jones.

Mr. Jones joined the Companys Board of Directors in July 2014 and currently serves as the Lead Independent Director, is chairman of the audit committee and a member of the compensation committee. In addition, he is currently Chairman of the Board of Directors, chairman of the audit committee and a member of the compensation committee for Noodles & Company, a publicly held fast-casual restaurant chain. Mr. Jones also serves on the Board of Directors, is the Lead Independent Director, chairs the audit and finance committee and is a member of the compensation committee for Hershey Entertainment and Resorts, a privately held entertainment and hospitality company. He also serves on the Board of Directors of ClubCorp and is a member of the US Bank Advisory Board. Mr. Jones previously served as the President and Chief Financial Officer of Vail Resorts, Inc. where he also sat on the companys Board of Directors.

In addition, as previously announced in conjunction with the acquisition of the NewcrestImage portfolio, NewcrestImage will have the right to nominate one director to the Companys Board of Directors at the closing of the transaction which is expected to occur later this year or in the first quarter of next year.
Supplier News

10 December 2021

Fornova, the hospitality intelligence solutions provider recognized for its leading rate integrity and business intelligence management platform, yesterday welcomed Ira Vouk, MBA, as the newest member of its advisory board. Ira, a hospitality revenue management professional with almost 20 years of practical experience within the sector, will support Fornova with its product development and business strategy.

The software entrepreneur from San Diego, California is best known for her role in developing a new performance index for profit maximization, building a pioneering automated revenue management tool, iRates - the first RMS that adopted Machine Learning algorithms - and bringing to market Pricing Intelligence Engine (PIE), which has become the fastest growing RMS in the history of hospitality.

With a passion for innovation and technology, Ira was selected as one of the Top five Revenue Managers in the US by Hospitality Sales and Marketing Association in 2013 and was added to the board of directors at the HSMAI San Diego chapter. This year she was recognized within the top 17 professionals inspiring innovation in the US hotel industry by Advanced Hospitality Technologies.

Ira published her first book Revenue Management Made Easy for Midscale and Limited Service Hotels in 2018 and is a contributing writer to HSyndicate, HospitalityNet WorldPanel, HSMAI blog and numerous other online media. She is a frequent speaker on the topics of hospitality, technology, distribution, and revenue management and is currently writing a new book, due to be published within the next year.

The software product specialist is joining Fornova at an exciting time as it focuses on an intense growth phase across all its services and products. The business recently became the first in its industry to enable hotels to seamlessly connect to and automatically monitor Google Pay Per Stay (PPS) and had three of its solutions featured on the 2021 Hotel Distribution Technology Chart - an annual infographic produced by the Shiji Group which offers an overview of the current hotel technology vendor landscape.

Ira said: Fornova is not afraid to step out of their comfort zone in their bid to develop and deliver new and innovative distribution technology solutions to the sector. Their clients are at the very heart of their decisions as shown by the recently launched Hotel Listings tool (Fornova HL) which is being offered to businesses at no cost to help them control their distribution in a post pandemic world. Their ethos and values are evident and align very closely with my own as a professional and an innovator. I cant wait to immerse myself into their business, meet more of the inspiring team and support them on their journey.

Fornova has advised some of the worlds largest hotel chains and global OTAs for the last ten years. Its solutions enable an entire organization to make better decisions faster, navigate through changing markets and stay ahead of the competition. Through its patented VisualScan technology the company monitors more than 100,000 websites every day and conducts more than 1.25 billion price comparisons every month.

Dori Stein, Fornovas CEO added: We are thrilled to welcome Ira on board and have no doubt that the diverse experience that she brings will help us to meet the ever-changing demands of our growing client base.

For further information visit: www.fornova.com.
Opinion Article

10 December 2021

Sonder, a company managing hotels and short-term rentals, is having an IPO in December 2021 at a valuation of over $1.9 billion. Sonder describes itself as A better place to stay. Inspiring, award-winning design meets modern, mobile-first service. Welcome to the future of hospitality.

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Why is Sonders IPO important for the future of the hotel industry?

Currently, for lending purposes, hotels are considered commercial real estate from both the equity investor and lender perspectives. The other commonly defined sectors of commercial real estate are office, retail, industrial, multifamily and special purpose. This real estate classification creates the wrong mindset among many hotel owners and operators who operate the properties like real estate businesses.

True, any hotel operates from and within the physical confines of a real-estate asset, but so do retail stores, colleges, hospitals, manufacturing, etc. Do you consider the retailer Target a real-estate company because it operates out of 2,000 big box stores with multi-million dollar real estate value each? Is Amazon a real estate company, since it leases more than 160 million sq.ft. of warehouses out of which the company conducts its business? Or Tesla with its 8 gigafactory manufacturing plants? Of course not.

Why does operating hospitality as real estate industry is detrimental? In my view, it shackles the industry to old-fashioned and even obsolete business models and operations, stifles innovations and adoption of technologies, and ensures an outsized role of ownership in day-to-day decision making.

A hotel operator needs owners approval for any capital investment, technology implementation or personnel and marketing expenditure, whether it is a much-needed cloud PMS and AI-powered RMS to better handle demand in this crazy-dynamic marketplace or a must-have CRM system to increase repeat business. How about updating the 5-year old property website and finally moving it to a mobile-first design or investing in omni-channel marketing campaign to boost occupancy?

How about investing in technology to respond to the urgent demands imposed by the pandemic, such as a) contactless guest experience and mobility: mobile check-in and checkout technology, mobile keys, mobile issue resolution applications, virtual concierge, voice assistants, IoT enabled guest rooms, guest messaging applications, touch-less upsell and upgrade applications, etc., and b) cleanliness protocols: UV-C light devices and robots, electrostatic sprayers and housekeeping robots to assure cleanliness protocols and replace the highly ineffective spray-and-swipe techniques? How about much-needed investments in technology to solve the current labor shortages through innovations, automation, mobility, robotization and next gen technology applications?

More often than not, ownership approval does not come. Its not in the budget is the usual answer. Interesting, does Amazon need approval by the owners of the warehouses it operates from to hire additional personnel or introduce automated fulfillment technology, AI and robotics? Of course not!

The current situation of dominant owners and subservient operators is the reason why hospitality is the most tech-averse and innovation-averse industry today, far behind even traditional sectors like agriculture and construction.

In its current state, hospitality simply cannot adequately service the exceedingly tech-savvy guests and their exceedingly high technology expectations. Gone are the days when hotels offered a home away from home with comparable amenities and technologies. Unfortunately, many hotels nowadays offer a subpar home away from home experience as far as amenities, technologies and innovations is concerned.

This is why innovative consumer hotel brands like Sonder are worth watching and emulating. Sonder is definitely into something: turning the hospitality industry from a real-estate industry into a consumer brand industry. By renting hotel buildings from their owners, Sonder de facto removes the disproportionate control ownership has over hotel operations.

In my view, the future is in the creation of consumer hotel brands similar to Sonder, Selina, etc. that lease a building from ownership and turn it into highly desirable hotel, laser-focused on customer service via world-class technology and innovations. A consumer brand that can make instant decisions to improve guest services, implement next gen technology, change operations and tweak space utilization or invest in marketing. The consumer brand and its unique value proposition becomes the main asset of the hotel, not the building it rents and operates from.

Just like a celebrity chef that moves his/her Michelin star restaurant from place A to place B and the patrons follow. The actual restaurant premises does have real estate value, but it remains secondary to the overall value of the celebrity restaurant. Similar is the situation with Amazon and the warehouses it leases or Target and the big box stores it operates from.

In other words, the future is in separating hotel ownership from hotel operations. Operators should be leasing the properties from ownership, paying them rent and then managing the hotel as they see fit and as customers and market conditions demand. Not run every day to get approval for practically everything from ownership. Think Sonder, think Selina and...Airbnb.

Back in 2019 Airbnb leased several floors at the venerable Rockefeller Center in Manhattan with the intention of converting the office space into an Airbnb Hotel. There were similar projects in Miami, Florida. The pandemic interfered but I do not doubt even for a second that we will be seeing dozens and dozens of Airbnb hotels using the same formula.

So what is the future of hospitality? Continue operating as a real-estate industry where day-to-day operations are controlled or disproportionately influenced by ownership or become a consumer brand industry, obsessed with world-class customer service and technology innovation?
Update: A spokeswoman for United Memorial Medical Center said the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services will delay terminating the hospital systems Medicare contracts pending a new inspection. The deficiencies have been corrected, the spokeswoman said. A spokesman for the federal agency could not immediately confirm that it had delayed the termination, scheduled for Saturday, Dec. 11.

The story has been updated to reflect the new information.

United Memorial Medical Center, a hospital system with four locations in Houston, was set to lose its contracts with Medicare after several inspections found health and safety violations from failing to screen staff for COVID-19 to rusted equipment to cockroaches in the operating room, according to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

The agency, which oversees the government health insurance for the elderly, said it would terminate the contract with United Memorial Medical Center on Saturday, meaning Medicare will no longer cover patients who use the hospital system. That would likely will cost United Memorial millions of dollars in reimbursements and potentially force the closure of the hospital system.

Intitially, United Memorial Medical Center initially did not respond to requests for comment. After publication, UMMC director of public relations and communications Duni Hebron said the termination has been delayed. She said the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services is working with the hospital, and it will undergo another inspection. The deficiencies have been corrected, she added.

They will do one more inspection, and if all is well the hospital will continue to have Medicare and Medicaid, Hebron said. And all will be well.

A spokesman for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid could not immediately confirm that the agency was holding off on the termination, pending the a new inspectioon. He said the agency had had nothing more to share at this time.

Termination of contracts for Medicaid, the government health insurance for the poor, typically follows Medicare termination, according to Centers for Medicare and Medicaid said. No hospital can survive for long without revenue from Medicare and Medicaid, said Vivian Ho, a health economist at Rice University.

Its often half of a hospitals revenue, because elderly and lower-income people are most vulnerable to health problems, Ho said. It can also cause private insurers to terminate contracts, because insurers dont want their customers going to substandard facilities for care.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services conducted four inspections from Jan. 8 to Sept. 10 at locations of United Memorial Medical Center. In July, the federal agency sent a notice of a termination that would go into effect Sept. 13 if the hospital failed to fix the deficiencies. The federal agency extended the termination twice, according to Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

The agency sent its final termination letter in late November stating that patients health and safety are in immediate jeopardy.

On HoustonChronicle.com: Medicare premiums rising by 15 percent this year, the highest increase in programs history

Involuntary termination of a provider agreement is generally a last resort after all other attempts to remedy the deficiencies at a facility have been exhausted, said a spokesperson for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. In this instance, CMS has found that UMMC  despite proposed corrective actions  is out of compliance with CMS basic health and safety requirements.

The inspections found rusted equipment, such as operating tables and stools, and cockroaches in the operating rooms. More than 90 percent of the 35 nurses contracted from a staffing agency were missing at least one required certification. Seven of 24 hospital-employed intensive care unit registered nurses, or 29 percent did not meet all of the requirements for their position.

The nursing directors of UMMC North, located north of Beltway 8, and the Sugar Land location did not meet the educational requirements, including holding a masters degree. The main campus, in Houstons Northside, did not have a director of nurses or an emergency department nurse director.

The hospital also was not screening staff for COVID-19, according to a report filed in January by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. None of the follow-up reports indicated that this issue was addressed.

There are not any newly created or updated policy and procedures regarding COVID-19 and the need for the hospital to screen staff before their assigned shifts, one nurse said in an interview with CMS.

The loss of Medicare and Medicaid coverage often results in hospital closures, experts said. The end of the government programs is often followed by the exit of private insurers, many of which wont consider hospitals without Medicare contracts for their networks. Medicare coverage indicates that the hospitals meet standards of care, experts said.

Its rare for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services to terminate contracts with hospitals, so the action suggests that deficiencies at United Memorial Medical Center were serious, said Jessica Mantel, co-director of the Health Law & Policy Institute at the University of Houston Law Center.

CMS does not take this step lightly, Mantel said. Communities rely very heavily on their hospitals. CMS will only take the step of terminating a hospitals provider agreement if it has really lost faith in the hospitals ability to make those corrective actions.

Losing Medicare and potentially Medicaid coverage can have a tremendous impact on access to care, experts said, particularly in poorer communities more likely to depend on the government health care programs. The hospitals flagship location is in a ZIP code where the median household income is $36,000, about half that of the Houston metropolitan area, according to census data.

On HoustonChronicle.com: Texas ranks among worst in the nation for racial health disparities

The decision by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services can still be overturned. The hospital has until Jan. 24 to request a hearing before an administrative law judge of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services departmental appeal board.

If there arent nearby alternatives, sometimes community leaders will rally to keep a hospital open, Mantel said. Thats what happened with St. Joseph Medical Center in 2015. U.S. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Houston, and Texas Rep. Garnet Coleman, D-Houston, assisted in the effort to negotiate a solution with the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services to save Houstons only downtown hospital.

United Memorial Medical Center, has had other problems. Recently, its chief medical officer prescribed patients with anti-parasite medication ivermectin to treat COVID despite warnings from the FDA and CDC that the drug was ineffective against the coronavirus and potentially dangerous. It also filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2005.

If the hospital decides not to appeal, and the termination goes through, Medicare and Medicaid will stop reimbursing the hospital for patients admitted after Dec 11. For patients admitted prior to that date, payment may continue to be made for up to 30 days after the services were performed.

becca.carballo@chron.com
In India, government officials use the term clean energy to describe building LNG terminals and pipelines so households dont have to burn wood or cow dung. In Nigeria, clean energy means developing offshore natural gas fields, instead of capping them and moving on to search for oil.

For all the discussion in the United States and Europe about reducing reliance on natural gas to get to net-zero greenhouse gas emissions, much of the rest of the world views gas as a critical vehicle to meet their national climate targets.

Natural gas produces carbon dioxide, sure. But it does so at much lower rates than coal and fuel oil, an alluring prospect for poor countries unwilling to sacrifice long-term plans to expand access to energy and build their economies.

On HoustonChronicle.com: Biden official stresses need for 'affordable' energy transition

Sitting on stage with the deputy U.S. energy secretary at the Word Petroleum Congress in Houston this week, Egyptian oil minister Tarek El-Molla listed one natural gas project after another as sign of his countrys commitment to reducing emissions, including switching oil-burning power plants to gas and pushing vehicles that run on compressed natural gas.

We do implement. We do not just talk, he said. But this transition period should be realistic and doable.

The developing worlds embrace of natural gas stands in stark contrast to western nations pledges to do away with fossil fuels all together unless their emissions can be captured and stored underground  a technology that for now carries little economic incentive. The resistance in Asia and Africa to abandoning fossil fuels could extend the runway for the oil and natural gas industries that support the Texas economy.

The United States and Europe enjoyed the cheap energy that comes from burning oil and coal for centuries, building sprawling societies with a standard of living far ahead of much of the world. Now, African and Asian leaders are asking why they should sacrifice their development to solve a climate problem that was largely caused by the West.

It is not feasible for oil and gas to be taken offline in the short- and medium-term because of the state of our development, said Lawrence Apaalse, chief director at Ghanas Ministry of Energy. Were just beginning to industrialize.

Under current climate pledges, natural gas demand is set to peak in 2025 and then begin a slow decline to less than 90 percent of current levels by 2050, according to the International Energy Agency. But developing nations embrace of natural gas could push out natural gass peak decades, said Michael Stoppard, chief global gas strategist at the consulting firm IHS Markit.

Fuel Fix: Get energy news sent directly to your inbox

Were expecting natural gas demand to grow through 2050 on the back of emerging economies, he said. Under any scenario, gas demand is going to grow more in the developing world than the (wealthier) nations, where there is already decline.

In India, gas demand is expected to increase fourfold over the next 20 years. Likewise, oil demand there is projected to double over the next decade, said SSV Ramakumar, research and development director at Indian Oil Corp., a state-owned energy company.

Under its climate policy, India is planning to invest heavily in electric vehicles and solar, with the goal of getting 20 percent of its energy from renewable sources by 2030. But the costs of building out Indias power grid, along with concerns about the intermittent nature of solar energy, are limiting that expansion.

Our goal is to be net zero by 2070, Ramakumar said. But a lot of energy appetite is there, so we cant shoo away fossil fuels yet.

A similar scenario is playing out in developing economies around the globe.

In Asian countries such as China, Vietnam and Thailand, a big push is underway to switch off coal-fired energy in favor of natural gas to improve the horrific air quality in that regions cities. In Africa, where access to electrical power is limited, the focus is on shifting populations away from polluting energy sources such as wood and fuel oil in favor of gas delivered by special LNG trucks and canisters of liquid propane.

And while South America gets the majority of its electricity from hydroelectric dams, governments there are also looking to shift away from the coal and fuel oil they do use in favor of gas.

More: Read the latest oil and gas news from HoustonChronicle.com

Its not just about greenhouse gas emissions. Its about pollution and clean skies. Thats a huge attraction for emerging economies with urban populations, Stoppard said. They are investing in solar and wind, but those technologies dont give you 24-7 power.

Investing in gas pipelines, storage terminals and other infrastructure designed to operate for decades promises to delay efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, even as scientists warn that doing so would likely have cataclysmic repercussions for the planet. Countries represented by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, which includes the United States, Europe and most of the worlds wealthier nations, are responsible for only about a third of global carbon emissions, not much more than China alone produces each year.

There is a growing realization among U.S. officials that the developing world is simply not going to move at the same pace as the United States and Europe. Asked about developing nations investment in gas, a spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Energy said it was understood that climate action would be taken in a way that is affordable, reliable and equitable.

Combating climate change is a shared responsibility, and it requires continued focus on technologies that reduce and remove carbon, the spokesperson said.

On HoustonChronicle.com: Oil companies warn transition from fossil fuels could be chaotic, with skyrocketing prices

The developing worlds desire for natural gas comes as oil and gas companies face declining interest from investors, who are putting their money into emissions-free energy sources, such as wind and solar.

While oil and gas demand in wealthy countries is projected to fall, developing nations represent a booming market  not only for exploiting those nations natural gas fields, but also for liquefied natural gas exports. The Energy Department recently forecast that United States will have the worlds largest LNG exporting capacity by next year, most of it built along the Gulf Coast.

In Nigeria, where Royal Dutch Shell and Exxon Mobil are both major operators, there are plans to expand gas production twentyfold in the years ahead, said Nigerian oil minister Timipre Sylva.

We have a responsibility to give power to our people. We also have our commitment to net zero by 2060, he said. Its a delicate balancing act.

james.osborne@chron.com
MIDLAND  The temperatures were mild Wednesday, but the below-freezing temperatures of Februarys winter storm were not far from the thoughts of Texas oil and gas operators and managers of the electric grid.

On the same day the Public Utility Commission vowed the lights would stay on this winter, the trade group Texas Oil and Gas Association, or TXOGA, led a tour of well sites and natural gas facilities in the Permian Basin to show the industrys preparedness for cold winter weather. The natural gas industry has come under criticism for failing to winterize its operations  a failure that has been highlighted by federal officials as a major cause of the power plant shutdowns in February that led to widespread outages that lasted for days, contributing to the deaths of some 200 people.

A recent report by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission found that shortage of natural gas during the winter storm that swept Texas and other south-central states in February was primarily the result of the oil and gas industrys failure to weatherize its systems. Those shortages contributed to outages at natural gas-fired plants, which account for about half the states electricity generating capacity, according to FERCs report.

The industry has pushed back at those and similar findings, blaming power outages that shut down natural gas operations. Todd Staples, president of TXOGA, said no single segment of the power system is to blame. Rather, the February storm underscored the intricacy of the network of pipes, processors, power lines and generators neee to produce electricity. Ultimately, the failure of one component can cascade throughout the system, he said.

Its a complex supply chain to move natural gas from the Permian Basin 600 miles, Staples said. He added that natural gas producers have built a great depth of winterization technology  methanol injection, insulation, windbreaks.

TXOGAs tour stopped at production facilities of two leading oil and gas companies, Diamondback Energy of Midland, and the Canadian exploration and production company Ovintiv. Both companies blamed power outages for knocking out their production.

On HoustonChronicle.com: Regulators promise Texas the lights will stay on this winter

Until it lost power as temperatures plunged Feb. 14, Ovintiv said it had approximately 80 percent of its production online. Diamondback said it had 90 percent of its production online until rolling blackouts cut its power.

Diamondback said it has followed extensive winterization protocols since 2014. At its Gridiron North processing facility, workers showed the measures aimed at protecting operations from the cold, including injecting methanol into the pipes, which acts much as antifreeze does in automobiles, building shelters for equipment, and insulating meters. The bottoms of the storage vessels will also be wrapped with insulation to avoid the contents freezing

The Gridiron North facility takes in oil and gas production from nine wells to the west, with 10 additional wells expected to come online. About 95 percent of Diamondbacks production is carried through pipes that are buried at least 3 feet underground, which protects them from extreme temperatures

At Ovintivs Abbie Laine site, workers displayed the atomizers that inject methanol into pipes to prevent freezing. Meters there are insulated. Infrared thermometers and cameras are linked to the iPhones and iPads to of workers to alert them temperature changes. A number of Ovintivs Permian Basin workers came from the companys Colorado operations, so they are used to cold weather.

Ovintiv pointed out that production is actually more vulnerable to downtime in the summer, which brings electrical storms, rain, and high winds that can knock out power.

Both companies said efforts are also made to station personnel closer to the sites in case of issues, but only if its not dangerous for them to travel to the site.

Staples said one of the benefits coming from the legislation enacted after the storm was significant improvement in communications between operators, processers, power generators and grid operators.

In addition, facilities like Ovintivs Abbie Raine and Diamondbacks Gridiron North are now eligible to receive critical load designation, which would exempt them from rolling blackouts should the states grid manager, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, or ERCOT, order them in the event of severe power shortages, Staples said. He called it a game changer.

More: Read the latest oil and gas news from HoustonChronicle.com

The Railroad Commission is mandating that energy companies list facilities as critical and ensure that winterization steps are being taken. Already, Railroad Commission inspectors have conducted over 2,300 inspections comprising 10,000 wells and 200 pipelines and storage facilities.

A project led by the Railroad Commission, Public Utility Commission and ERCOT to map all assets that make up the electric supply chain will also improve the reliability of the system by ensuring those facilities dont lose power, Staples said. The mapping is scheduled to be completed in September.

This story has been updated to reflect the following correction. An earlier version incorrectly stated that weatherization failures caused almost 60 percent of outages at gas plants. A recent FERC report found that weatherization failures by natural gas producers were the primary cause of gas shortages but did not specifically say what proportion of gas plant failures were due to weatherization.
LEWISTON, Idaho (AP)  An Idaho man facing two murder charges waived his right to a preliminary hearing on Wednesday, which means the case will automatically move forward in court.

Prosecutors have accused Richard Ross, 56, of killing 76-year-old Edwina Eddy Devin at her Grangeville home on Sept. 30 and then killing her 57-year-old son, Michael Devin, early the next morning in Lewiston.

Ross has not yet entered a plea, but is scheduled to be arraigned on the felony charges next week.

At this point he is going to let the process work itself out, Ross' defense attorney, Gregory Rauch, said Thursday.

As Wednesday's preliminary hearing was set to begin, Nez Perce County Prosecutor Justin Coleman said he planned to call up to nine witnesses to the stand in an attempt to show the judge the case should move forward in court, The Lewiston Tribune reported. But the hearing was delayed while Ross met with his attorney for about 20 minutes. Then the pair told the court Ross wished to waive the hearing.

Ross had earlier been scheduled to undergo an evaluation at the request of his attorneys to determine if he is competent enough to assist in his own defense. However, Ross declined to take part in the evaluation.

Chief Deputy Criminal Prosecutor April Smith told the court last month that Ross is also the lead suspect in a cold case that happened roughly 27 years ago. Bruce and Lynn Peeples were strangled to death at their Grangeville home in 1994. Ross has not been charged in that case, but the investigation into the deaths has been reopened.
JACKSON, Miss. (AP)  A Mississippi man has been charged with capital murder and arson after three dead men were found inside a house that burned.

Jackson police told news outlets Thursday that Charles Robinson III is accused of intentionally setting the fire Wednesday night. It was not immediately clear whether Robinson is represented by an attorney.
Houston Chronicle file

American flags were desecrated at two HISD campuses during a spate of late-November vandalism at some schools.

The flag desecrations occurred at Parker Elementary, 10626 Atwell, and nearby Anderson Elementary, 5727 Ludington, on the southwest side. At both sites, students scrawled the initials "K.C." or "K.C.S." on the walls and blackboard. The initials stood for King Cutters Society, a gang of sorts that was made up of a few students at Johnson Junior High, also on the southwest side.
One lucky Houston ISD elementary student became the 100,000th child to receive a My Home Library from the Barbara Bush Houston Literacy Foundation on Friday.

After third-grader Isabella Lopez, 9, was surprised with the home library of six new books, the rest of the 620 students at Scarborough Elementary received home libraries, too. Foundation Chairman Neil Bush, Scarborough Elementary School Principal Miriam Medina and HISD Superintendent Millard House II hosted a reading celebration at the school.
A group of Clear Creek ISD parents are calling for the districts superintendent to resign less than a year into his tenure, saying he has put into place lessons that indoctrinate students with anti-white sentiment, an accusation that appears to have followed him from his last job in Virginia.

Eric Williams came to Clear Creek in February from Loudon County Public Schools in northern Virginia, which has become a national flashpoint of right-wing activism over critical race theory.

What I want to emphasize for people, both before and after I arrived at CCISD, our district has been focused on providing an outstanding education to students, said Williams this week. Our focus is not CRT. CRT is not in our curriculum and its not in our instructional resources. In fact, our board adopted a policy prohibiting district resources from doing any sort of scapegoating or stereotyping based on race.

Nonetheless, a group of parents plan to call for Williams resignation during public comment at Clear Creek ISDs board of trustees meeting Monday night. A recent post by right-wing opinion website The Daily Caller highlighted those parents concerns, once again putting the superintendent under national conservative scrutiny.

On HoustonChronicle.com: Clear Creek ISD superintendent finalist faced scrutiny over racist incidents at Virginia schools

Critical race theory, a term first coined 40 years ago as an academic concept taught in law schools that racism is systematically entrenched in society and its institutions, has become a political talking point on the right in recent years. State and national conservative leaders have taken steps to attempt to ban it from public education, saying it is divisive and teaches children to blame white people for the ills of society. Education advocates insist CRT is not taught in public schools and that the term is being applied to any lessons that focus on race.

Gov. Greg Abbott in June signed a bill banning critical race theory in Texas public schools. Supporters of House Bill 3979 argued it keeps politics out of schools. Those against the bill said it whitewashes history curriculum.

The issue already has had impacts in Texas.

In Tarrant County, a Black principal in Grapevine-Colleyville Independent School District was forced to resign last month after being accused of indoctrinating students.

In the Houston region, several school board candidates won their races in November by decrying critical race theory and touting conservative and religious values for positions that traditionally are nonpartisan.

The movement against CRT has become entwined with a growing effort on the part of parents and politicians to censor books and other material from students over concerns about children being exposed to sexuality and LGBTQ+ issues, in addition to works that depict racism.

After parents complained about elementary school students having access to Sex is a Funny Word by Cory Silverberg, which discusses sexuality and gender identity, Clear Creek ISD quickly took action. The book, which won the 2016 Stonewall Honor for Books in Childrens and Young Adult Literature, was accessible as an ebook through an online app managed by Harris County Public Library. The district turned off elementary student access to the entire app because it was unable to remove access to Sex is a Funny Word.

The complaints about the book prompted Williams to announce plans for a new online portal for parents to challenge material they believe is inappropriate and to consider a new process for reviewing material.

I think it was a knee-jerk reaction, said Candace Smith, parent of a student in the district. In my opinion, I do believe (Williams) is afraid of backlash from conservative parents. I think hes shellshocked. This man has been bullied into the ground.

On HoustonChronicle.com: Clear Creek ISD superintendent pick seeks to calm nerves in visits with public

The parents calling for Williams to step down take issue with programs that teach character and focus on social and emotional learning. They argue the schools role should be solely ensuring students master core subject areas.

I have a problem with it, said Mandy Feltner, parent of four children in Clear Creek ISD who wants Williams to resign I feel like its my responsibility, in conjunction with my husband, to teach our children what our social and moral values are.

The Texas Education Code requires districts to teach positive character traits as essential knowledge and skills. The law says that schools must include lessons in instructions that foster traits such as caring, empathy, freedom from prejudice and fairness.

Feltner said that she believes terms such as social and emotional learning are used as vehicles to sneak in CRT.

The districts social and emotional learning goals predate Williams, Clear Creek ISD Board President Jay Cunningham said, noting the concept was introduced to the school system in 2016.

The Leader in Me program, which many critics of Williams take issue with because it promotes equity, was adopted at that time, Cunnigham said. Many of the parents blame Williams for what they call an anti-white leadership program.

It helps students to collaborate in groups, tackling complex issues and coming up with solutions, Cunningham said of the program. Weve been doing that since long before Dr. Williams got here and we plan to continue it.

The board president said that program and others like it were developed to meet the goals set in the districts strategic plan years ago. The plan was informed by community input, including surveys of parents and community members.

I find it interesting that five years later, this is coming up, the board president said. Maybe its because the national conversation is targeting certain buzz words.

Though public comment can get heated, Williams said he welcomes conversation and involvement from the school community.

On HoustonChronicle.com: Conservative Houston area school board candidates win by campaigning against critical race theory

Ive encouraged our staff members to really listen, he said. A natural reaction may be to be defensive, depending on tone or word choice. We really need to listen to parents and community members because those partnerships are incredibly important.

Other parents and community members have lauded Williams for the work hes done since his hiring.

So far, hes been very innovative and hes really bringing something new and exciting to the district  and its not CRT, said Jamieson Mackay, a parent of former Clear Creek ISD students and a longtime active member of various school committees. I feel like a lot of people are over-simplifying and picking out buzzwords and making an entire platform around that. They should get to know (Williams) and actually talk with him.

The board is pleased with its selection of Williams and the progress hes made in developing more robotics and STEM resources, Cunningham said.

Knowing our value system, we feel that Dr. Williams will help take our district to that next level, he said. We chose him based on his knowledge of content, curriculum and finance. You name it, he checked all of those boxes.

Williams, who came from a district of more than 83,000 students, said he is happy with his decision to move to Clear Creek ISD, a school system about half the size. Williams said he is setting roots in the community and plans to stay in the district for the long haul.

Im absolutely loving it, he said.

The superintendent said he respects his critics and genuinely listens to all of their concerns.

I think parents appropriately want to know that the focus of our schools is on kids having the knowledge and traits they need to be successful, he said. Im not surprised that people want the best for their kids. That unites us.

hannah.dellinger@chron.com
COVID-19 booster shots are hot.

Houston hospitals and clinics report an uptick in people receiving their supplementary vaccine dose as the omicron variant spreads throughout the globe.

The variant, publicly identified Nov. 25 in South Africa, was first detected in Texas on Monday when public health officials confirmed a Harris County woman had contracted the strain. Houston Methodist has since identified another 18 samples of the variant, from COVID patients throughout the greater Houston area, and the city found traces of omicron in eight of its wastewater treatment facilities. Three cases were also detected in Fort Bend County.

COVID HELP DESK: How do the symptoms of omicron differ from delta?

I want us to assume that omicron is widely prevalent in Houston at this point, said Dr. Luis Ostrosky, chief of infectious diseases with McGovern Medical School at UTHealth Houston. Weve heard about one case, which means theres transmission in the community. And the fact that its present in eight wastewater samples makes me think its everywhere already.

In Harris County, 481,718 people  about 10 percent of the population  have received their booster shots, according to Harris County Public Health. That includes 13,403 people boosted by the county health department, which last week hit daily records of people seeking the shots. The Houston Health Department, Baylor College of Medicine and Memorial Hermann Health System also reported upticks.

This is really good news going into holiday travel season, said Dr. Linda Yancey, infectious disease specialist at Memorial Hermann Health System. We really hadnt seen that (increase) before the Thanksgiving holiday.

Between Nov. 8 and Nov. 25, the daily number of people seeking the booster shot from the county health department hovered between 46 and 213. From Nov. 26 to Dec. 7, the number of daily booster shots ranged from 100 to 612, the all-time high set on Dec. 4. The county saw the second-highest total on Dec. 3, when 402 people received their booster shots.

The Houston Health Department administered 1,219 booster shots last week  more than quadruple the 265 recorded the previous week. Memorial Hermann Hospital System reported a 25 percent increase in booster shots since Nov. 25. And Baylor College of Medicine, which normally administers about 80 booster shots per day, doled out 251 boosters on Dec. 3.

Omicrons mutations could help the variant escape some immunity from vaccines, according to infectious disease experts. More data is needed to draw definitive conclusions, but the current shots are expected to offer at least some protection from omicron.

On HoustonChronicle.com: Why this Houston-made COVID shot is a major win for vaccine equity

Pfizer this week announced that omicron greatly reduces the immunity from its two-dose series. A third dose, however, offers robust protection against the variant, similar to the protection against previous strains, the company said.

Its unclear whether people will need an omicron-specific booster shot, said Yancey. Moderna and Pfizer are working on one just in case.

They also worked on delta-specific boosters and we ended up not needing it, she said. Hopefully (omicron) will act like delta and it just wont be necessary.

Francisca Zosalla-Perez sought the booster shot with her daughter at the Houston Health Departments vaccine clinic at La Nueva Casa de Amigos Health Center, north of downtown Friday. She is afraid the new variant could be stronger when its in the body, and said she wants to protect her family and co-workers.

Preliminary evidence from South Africa suggests omicron may cause milder sickness than earlier strains, but Ostrosky cautions against making definitive statements before more information becomes available.

Others at the vaccine clinic were not as concerned by the growing number of omicron cases in the Houston-area. Some, like Donna and Marti Rickard, simply took advantage of a slow day at work.

It was just the time to do it, Donna Rickard said. (Omicron) didnt really affect our decision. We just always want to be the ones who are doing the most to protect people.

julian.gill@chron.com
If we still hope to beat COVID-19  including highly transmissible variants such as delta and omicron  all Americans could use ready, reliable access to free or cheap self-test kits.

Thats not a controversial statement. And yet, unfortunately, the Biden administration doesnt seem to agree with it.

At a Monday briefing, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki was unmoved when NPRs Mara Liasson pointed out that many countries  including Germany, the United Kingdom and South Korea  have massive testing, free of charge or for a nominal fee.

Why not just make them free and give them out too  and have them available everywhere? Liaison asked.

Psaki asked, Should we just send one to every American?

If she meant it as a rhetorical or sarcastic question, jokes on her. Theres obviously a case to be made that the federal government should be sending COVID tests to every American. At the very least, the White House should be going to greater lengths to ensure that free or nearly-free COVID tests are readily available to everyone.

Scoffing at the very suggestion, by contrast  thats not a good look.

On Wednesday, as it happens, I strolled over to my local drug store for a booster shot, which I had scheduled online several days earlier. The booster shots are free to the person receiving one, and  under CDC guidance issued last month  all adults are now eligible for them, unless theyve only recently received the vaccine itself.

While waiting for the pharmacist to summon me for the shot, I took a look around the store. Oximeters were back in stock, along with toilet paper and hand sanitizer  vital supplies that were hard to find on store shelves at the outset of the pandemic. But affordable, at-home COVID-19 tests were completely sold out. The only self-testing kit in the store was a Pixel by Labcorp COVID-19 PCR Test Home Collection Kit, with an eye-watering list price: $124.99.

In addition to being expensive, the test in question requires the user to mail a sample to a lab for processing, meaning it isnt particularly rapid. Also, this particular kit would expire at the end of the month, according to its box. Still, it was the only one left on the shelf: evidently, the market will support this.

The rest of us shouldnt. When I posted a snapshot of the nearly empty shelf on Twitter, a number of people took issues with its implication: while there may not have been affordable tests available in person at your local drugstore, they argued, you can simply order them online.

This isnt wrong. Relatively affordable self-tests are currently back in stock online at many retailers, even as finding them on store shelves remains a bit of a wild goose chase. As of Thursday morning, for example, Wal-Mart, was listing a two-pack of Binax tests for $14, or $19.99 with shipping, and a delivery date of Saturday, Dec. 11.

You can also schedule a free drive-thru COVID test at most major pharmacy chains, such as Walgreens. And readers in the Houston area should be aware that both Harris County and the city of Houston are offering free tests at various fixed sites and kiosksmost of which accept patients on a walk-in basis.

But is that sufficient? A person who can order self-tests online has a variety of advantages that many lack  internet access, a spare $20, a safe and reliable place to receive packages, and the ability to wait several days for results.

Drive-through testing, similarly, is only an option for Americans who have cars.

Such barriers to access should concern everyone, even if you arent personally experiencing them. The world is, after all, facing off against a highly transmissible virus.

I agree, said Dr. Peter Hotez, dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine, in response to my tweet. We must make a $1-2 test available if we are serious about expanding testing across the nation.

That really shouldnt be too much to ask. We are, still, the worlds largest economy. We boast wells of scientific, logistical, and managerial expertise that would make most nations blush. There are challenges too complicated for the United States to tackle, or to resolve on its own, but making at-home COVID-19 tests readily available to everyone isnt one of them. As Liasson noted, many other nations have already done so.

And if the White House doesnt think this is an issue worth taking seriously, Americans should also have a problem with that.

erica.grieder@chron.com
Schiller, Dane

Authorities are seeking a 33-year-old Houston man who was convicted after he sex trafficked a 16-year-old, according to the Harris County District Attorneys Office.

DeAundric Jaquay Dorsey, who had been released on a reduced bail of $15,000, didnt return to court after the first day of his trial, according to a news release from the district attorneys office. He was convicted this week and given a 40-year prison sentence.
The idea grew out of a gathering of friends in the early 70s at a hole-in-the-wall bar called Swiggers on Navigation Boulevard, in Houstons East End.

As they chatted over beer one day, they shared their concerns about Latino kids dropping out of school. They wanted to do something to steer young people away from the lure of gangs and the street life.

The Latino family members involved in those discussions created the Association for the Advancement of Mexican Americans in 1970. The volunteer enterprise went on to become one of the most impactful Latino nonprofits in Houston with two charter schools and numerous social programs. It will mark its 50th anniversary with a gala Saturday in Houston.

CHANGEMAKERS: 10 Houston Latinos who are making a difference

While the nonprofits accomplishments are highly visible, less well-known is that those original dreamers consisted of families behind some of the citys most popular Mexican-American restaurants: Ninfas, El Tiempo Cantina, and the Villa Arcos Taqueria (where Swiggers used to be located).

We were very serious about it, and it felt good, said Roland Laurenzo, 74, an AAMA cofounder who participated in that seminal conversation and will be honored.

Interested in AAMA? - General information: (713) 967-6700 or visit https://www.aama.org. - For donations: Online donations on www.aama.org/donate-to-aama, or (713) 929-2322, email dortiz@aama.org. See More Collapse

Laurenzo is the eldest son of the late Maria Ninfa Rodriguez Laurenzo, better known as Mama Ninfa, who founded the Ninfas restaurants empire from her struggling beginnings as a single mother of five children. She, too, was a cofounder of AAMA.

Our desire was to help people. That was the bottom line. And so, we talked about it, and we decided to do it, said Laurenzo.

The other honoree Saturday is restaurateur Froilan Hernandez, 76. Shortly after the bar chat, he recalled, the founders determined they were going to create a community center for kids with recreational and educational programs.

The next day we talked about it and formed the organization, said Hernandez. They didnt have money for the project but were not intimidated by the uphill task of raising funds in their working-class community.

In the deep of my soul I knew (that AAMA) was going to grow, said Hernandez, now the director of operations for El Tiempo Restaurant Group. Our organization was going to be helping kids and families.

Marie D. De Jesus, Houston Chronicle / Staff photographer

In the beginning, there were not many available resources to invest in community projects in the barrios.

There seemed to be little interest or no interest at all at this time in the educational problems of Chicano kids in Houston, and I was appalled, former teacher Luis Cano said in a recorded oral history filed with the Houston Public Library and The Portal to Texas History.

Cano was invited to join AAMA by another pioneer of the project, Yolanda Black Navarro. Considered among the most engaged civic and feminist activists in Houstons Latino history and called the East End Reina by some, she owned and operated the Villa Arcos Taqueria until her death in 2015. The restaurant is now owned by her son, Christian Navarro, also a chair of the gala and AAMA board member.

More from Olivia P. Tallet: UH research uses soap operas to tackle Alzheimers among Hispanics

In the early years, AAMA was viewed as a group operating on a shoestring budget that only existed because of what Cano described as a bunch of young idealists willing to put in many hours volunteering to help kids stay out of gangs and away from drugs.

Initially, most of the money to run the programs  after-school theater, general arts and educational sessions came from grassroots fundraising such as bake sales, or what they called tamaladas; making and selling tamales, said Alexandria Hernandez, a daughter of founder Froilan Hernandez, who was the director at the time. She is serving as chair of the gala and said that, although she wasnt born when AAMA started, she has heard the stories from family and friends.

AAMA opened its first school in 1973 at 3518 Polk St. in what used to be a rundown warehouse. It was in such disrepair that the initial staff members had to clean up and do plumbing themselves. They heated the premises the first winter with a kerosene heater brought in by a staff member from his garage.

Cano left Austin High School, where he had taught English and Mexican American studies, to become the first school director. The first class of students was drawn from nearby schools, according to AAMA and historical records.

How can we help you, Mr. Cano? a principal would greet the visiting AAMA leader.

Send me all the kids you don't want. We'll take the kids you don't want, Cano responded during a visit to Jackson Intermediate School in Pasadena, he later recalled.

The school began with 13 Latino students, most of whom had previously dropped out of school or had substance abuse issues. AAMA funders and early leaders attribute the success in keeping them in school to an alternative educational model that emphasized self-esteem and cultural pride by teaching about their heritage and history, at a time when Mexican Americans and Spanish-speaking families confronted significant discrimination, according to historians.

Marie D. De Jesus, Houston Chronicle / Staff photographer

Since then, AAMA has grown to an institution that serves an average of 10,000 people per year, said Debbie Ortiz, its chief development officer and spokeswoman.

It has built two George I. Sanchez charter school campuses that serve kids who werent successful or accepted in traditional school settings, Ortiz said. They may have been affected by homelessness, gang involvement, substance abuse, early parenthood, a lack of self-esteem or having assumed the role of caretaker of younger siblings while their parents worked.

Rather than considering struggling students as a problem, Ortiz said, we see them as an opportunity. Ortiz noted that the Sanchez schools, which are free of charge, have an average graduate rate of 85 percent.

We take them wherever they are, Ortiz said. I think what drives the people who work at AAMA, we want to help people get where they can be. And it's just something that's in our hearts.

More from Olivia P. Tallet: Latina named to top spot at Rice Universitys Kinder Institute

Other educational programs include the Adelante (move forward) free adult-literacy program and the Work and Learn Center offering career training in graphic design, digital literacy, and career readiness skills for opportunity youth. They are defined as people ages 16 to 24 who need an opportunity to reconnect with school while earning some income in the program.

AAMA also has an early childhood center and a department that provides alcohol and substance abuse prevention and treatment, the organization said. A rehabilitation facility that was among it services closed during the pandemic.

The schools are financed principally by the Texas Education Agency while the other programs are funded with federal grants, private foundations, corporate support and individual donations.

Many alumni of Sanchez schools have excelled despite their early struggles. They include John Gonzalez, a Class of 93 graduate who is now the general manager of the George R. Brown Convention Center in Houston.

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.

As a child growing up, sometimes you are not given the best opportunities to succeed, Gonzalez said. Sanchez (school) gave me the opportunity to say, You can do this, and you can do good things with your life.

After graduation, Gonzalez served 16 years in the U.S. Army. He now sponsors a small celebration every year at which he delivers a speech to graduates about what AAMA did for him.

Getting my diploma from there really set the path for me to be destined to move into leadership roles through my career; it really set the tone for my future, he said.

Fifty years ago, it would have been difficult to imagine that those precarious AAMA beginnings would lead to an institution that has helped some 300,000 individuals find opportunities to better their lives, Ortiz said.

AAMA founders like to believe they had a premonition of sorts.

Its very inspirational. Its unbelievable really, said Laurenzo. But I had a feeling that we were starting something really important.

olivia.tallet@chron.com

Twitter.com/oliviaptallet
George W.S. Abbey never saw a Saturn V rocket launch in person. He always watched from a screen in Houstons control center, where he was working diligently to ensure the mission was a success.

Still, he was in awe of its size and the strength of its engines. Apollo 8 stands out for him.

That was a very emotional moment when we left Earths orbit and actually went on our way to the moon the first time, Abbey, 89, said of the mission where three astronauts circled the moon.

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Abbeys NASA career ranged from Apollo to the space shuttle to the International Space Station. But for visitors to Space City, his name will now be linked to the historic rocket.

On Friday, NASAs Johnson Space Center dedicated Rocket Park to Abbey. This park has one of three Saturn V rockets on display in the world.

And Houstons rocket, on loan from the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum collection since 1977, is the only one comprised of all flight-certified hardware capable of pushing a spacecraft into orbit around the moon. The other two are made of flight hardware, mock-ups and test components.

The Johnson Space Center display is now called George W.S. Abbey Rocket Park. NASA held a dedication ceremony Friday morning.

He touched so many different people by helping with their careers, said Vanessa Wyche, director of the Johnson Space Center. But mostly people are coming to honor his legacy and his role in the success of human exploration. He is a legend at NASA.

Abbeys NASA career began in 1964 when he was assigned to the Apollo Program as an Air Force captain. Three years later, he became a NASA civil servant and technical assistant to Apollo Spacecraft Program Manager George Low, according to a news release.

Every Friday, a group of people would meet to discuss problems with the Apollo spacecraft and how those would be addressed. It was Abbeys job to create the agenda for these meetings  which meant he had to know what problems were occurring and what major issues needed to be resolved to stay on schedule.

Abbey was sitting with Joseph Shea, the former manager of the Apollo Spacecraft Program, when astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed on the moon. And he was technical assistant to Johnson Space Center (originally called the Manned Spacecraft Center) Director Robert Gilruth and Deputy Director Christopher Kraft when an oxygen tank exploded on the Apollo 13 mission.

Abbey and the Mission Operations Team earned the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honor in the U.S., for bringing home the Apollo 13 astronauts. Abbey also received the NASA Distinguished Service Medal for his contributions to the Apollo Program.

To have them name something like the Rocket Park after me, its a great honor, Abbey said.

But the Apollo Program was just the start of Abbeys career. He became director of Flight Operations at the Johnson Space Center in 1976, and he led the selection committee for the first group of space shuttle astronauts.

It was the first astronaut class to recruit women and people of color.

In 1988, Abbey moved to NASA Headquarters to serve as the deputy associate administrator for spaceflight, and he was later named both the National Space Council's senior director for civil space policy and special assistant to the NASA administrator.

He was critical in early negotiations with Russia, which created the foundation for collaborating on the International Space Station. He also helped get the space station hardware ready to fly.

Many people feel that we would not have the International Space Station flying today had it not been for his role as a leader in bringing all of the teams together; bringing the engineering teams, bringing the program teams together, Wyche said. We fondly refer to meetings that he would have on Saturday as GASR. And that was in honor of George Abbey Saturday Review.

Abbey became deputy director of the Johnson Space Center in 1994 and then center director in 1996.

In his efforts to engage more broadly with Houstonians, he opened 53 acres of pastureland adjacent to Rocket Park to become an agricultural education facility where students could learn about longhorns and agriculture, according to the news release.

He was thinking about STEM outreach before it became the hip thing, Wyche said.

Abbey led the Johnson Space Center until February 2001, and he left NASA in 2003 to focus on space policy at Rice Universitys Baker Institute for Public Policy. He is still there as the senior fellow in space policy.

The idea to rename Rocket Park originated with Mark Geyer, the former director of the Johnson Space Center. Geyer died on Tuesday after battling pancreatic cancer, but he knew the dedication ceremony had been planned.

Mark wanted to acknowledge all of the contributions that Mr. Abbey gave to NASA, Wyche said. His spirit is very pleased that were able to make this happen.

As for Abbey, he hopes the Artemis Program returns NASA astronauts to the moon and then goes farther into space. And he hopes the agency achieves this by working with Russia and other international partners.

Seeing it evolve from a competitive program to a cooperative program, I hope that legacy will continue, Abbey said. As we continue to explore space, we can do it together.
Theres a reason Texas lawmakers, Republican and Democrat, got rid of the biggest corporate welfare program Texas.

Many reasons, actually.

Chapter 313, as its known, is a $10 billion boondoggle. The program let wealthy corporations keep a portion of their property values off school district tax rolls for a decade, when property values are often at their peak. It was rife with abuse  some companies claimed they needed tax incentives to lure them to Texas when in fact theyd already broken ground on their Texas projects. It was poorly regulated, with lax standards and oversight, allowing companies to enjoy subsidies even if they failed to deliver on the number of jobs or competitive pay promised to Texas.

Sen. Lois Kolkhorst, R-Brenham, knew about the waste, calling it a program run amok.

So did Gov. Greg Abbott, who cited the programs cost per job as a reason for vetoing a 2015 bill that would have expanded the program.

So did Houston Chronicle reporters Mike Morris and John Tedesco, whose investigation into the parasitic Chapter 313 program helped inform ordinary Texans about what officials had known for decades: Taxpayers and children whose public schools depend on property taxes were getting robbed. School districts that make these deals negotiate extra payouts and arent hurt by the initial loss in property taxes, but the lost revenue affects the majority of districts due to statewide funding formulas.

How did they all know?

Because the paper trail was publicly available by way of disclosure forms that companies were required to submit, records kept by the Texas Comptrollers Office and a spreadsheet the agency produced that was the only source of centralized data on the 313 agreements.

But now, that paper trail is in danger of hitting a dead end.

Texas Comptroller Glenn Hegar has proposed a rule that would reduce information his office collects and makes publicly available on the program and specific projects, mostly wind and solar farms and manufacturing led by huge oil and gas companies.

Under the rule, information on the total value of the companies tax breaks and the deals future costs would no longer be available, and information about jobs and wages on each project would be reduced.

Without that information, Morris and Tedesco couldnt have completed their revealing investigation of Chapter 313 in their Unfair Burden series. They couldnt have alerted readers to one of the most jaw-dropping and infuriating statistics:

Texas is paying companies in the Chapter 313 program a whopping $211,600 in tax incentives for each job created. Each job.

The comptrollers office still plans to estimate the programs future cost in a biennial report tallying the value of Texas tax exemptions, but the devil, as we all know, is in the details. Sure, the data currently available is like a half-lit room, incomplete in places, but thats no reason to turn the light out altogether.

The plan to end certain disclosure requirements of 313 applicants and to stop producing the spreadsheet that helped journalists and watchdogs determine the true cost of the program is being portrayed as the natural outcome of the Legislatures decision to let the program expire at the end of 2022.

Hegars office apparently doesnt see the need to keep detailed information on a program that is winding down. Of course, the problem with that rationale is that the program is nowhere near winding down. Its ramping up.

In fact, Hegars office is bracing for a veritable gold rush as companies race to get their piece of Texas easy treasure while the gettin is still good. The comptrollers office is on pace to get a near-record 140 applications this year, with most submitted after it was clear that the program would expire, Tedesco and Morris reported recently.

With the comptrollers office known to accept nearly all applications  less than 2.5 percent were denied during the time period the Chronicle examined  the biggest losses to Texas tax rolls may be yet to come.

Over their decadelong agreements, companies with active deals in early 2020 were projected to receive $10.8 billion  more than 76 percent of that projected to come after 2019.

And while Texas lawmakers did the right thing in ending Chapter 313 after 20 years of waste, theyll almost certainly be lobbied to bring it back, under assurances that the bugs have been worked out.

Without recent data on costs and projects approved, lawmakers might not have the information theyd need to argue against those efforts.

Taxpayers deserve to see the size and impact of these types of incentives, Kolkhorst says.

Shes right. No government should be allowed to throw away billions of dollars in potential tax revenue in a locked room with nobody watching.

The only silver lining here is that the proposed rule to limit information isnt a done deal. Its a proposal that ordinary Texans have the right to weigh in on until Dec. 19, when the public comment period ends.

Chris Bryan, a comptroller spokesman, told the editorial board this week that the agency will factor public feedback into its decision.

We are gathering comments, listening to stakeholders, and the decision has not been finalized, Bryan said. Of Hegar, he said: I think he has an open mind about it.

We hope so.

We urge any Texan who is concerned, appalled or downright fighting mad about what youve read here to speak out. You can do so by emailing the comptrollers manager of data analysis and transparency: John.Villarreal@cpa.texas.gov.

Demand that the comptrollers office provide more information on Chapter 313 in its waning days, not less.

Maybe there is a way to develop an incentive program that doesnt rob Texans blind and deprive Texas public schoolchildren of desperately needed contributions to the property tax rolls that fund their classrooms.

But if Texas couldnt find a better program in a half-lit room of information, well certainly never find it in the dark.
The Soviet anthem hailed the socialist union that it celebrated as indestructible. Yet 30 years ago this week, then Russian president, Boris Yeltsin, together with the leaders of Ukraine and Belarus, signed the agreement that created the Commonwealth of Independent States. It was the end for the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR).

Events unfolded in a deliberately discrete location: a hunting lodge for the Soviet elite tucked away in a forest in Belarus. As historian Vladislav Zubok writes in his new book Collapse: The Fall of the Soviet Union, previous guests had included Cuban president Fidel Castro and the East German communist leader Erich Honecker. By Sunday December 8, he wrote: Some 160 journalists had arrived, intrigued by the proceedings.

Their presence was more than appropriate. This was one of those occasions when journalism had truly written the first draft of history. Since the launch of the perestroika reforms in the mid-1980s, Soviet and international correspondents had been allowed unprecedented freedom to write about the USSR. They were not to be denied a front row seat in the audience for this final act.

Perestroika - meaning reconstruction - was the policy that the Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, had intended should reinvigorate the moribund Soviet system. Instead it led to its downfall, finally confirmed that cold weekend in late 1991.

Gorbachev had not expected the path ahead to be easy. Still, as Zubok argues, he could have prepared himself better. Instead, as he recounts, Gorbachev willingly overlooked history lessons apparent to those who had read widely on world and Russian history. Many conservative elements in the Soviet political elite were wary of change. So along with perestroika came glasnost - meaning openness - licence for unprecedented public discussion of the problems that beset the Soviet system.

Journalists could cover stories that had previously been taboo. In effect, Gorbachev enlisted them to promote his cause. They willingly took on the role. As journalist and academic Ivan Zassoursky put it in his 2004 book Media and Power in Post-Soviet Russia: with the sanction of the general secretary, journalists also attacked the party establishment.

An amazing time

Optimism characterised both the Soviet and international reporting of that period. This was the era of the end of history  in Francis Fukuyamas phrase  a time when he and many others hailed what they believed they saw coming: an unabashed victory of economic and political liberalism.

Even those who might not have shared this great enthusiasm for the triumph of Western liberalism remember an era more exciting than any other. You could practically talk to anybody, fear dissipated, it was an extraordinary time, remembered Moscow-based Canadian journalist Fred Weir in an interview for my 2020 book: Assignment Moscow: Reporting on Russia from Lenin to Putin.

Weir first arrived in Moscow in 1986, the year after Gorbachev came to power. He came to the Soviet Union as the correspondent for a communist newspaper, The Canadian Tribune. So he was not a natural ally of those who enthusiastically embraced the collapse of Soviet socialism. Still he remembers, an amazing time.

The end of communism was the start of my own career reporting international news. I went to Moscow as a producer for the TV news agency Visnews (later Reuters Television). I was just in time to see the world that I had grown up in change forever. The Cold War, in which the rival power blocs of Soviet communism and American capitalism, faced off against each other was ending.

Historical differences

Three decades later, I have been reflecting a lot on the relationship between journalism and history. I have been remembering how quickly those feelings of excitement and optimism in Russias relations with the West fizzled out. The consequences of the Soviet collapse are still felt today in the conflict in Ukraine, and the confrontation between the Kremlin and the West that has resulted from that conflict.

Part of that confrontation has arisen from differing interpretations of the second world war. If you have not read it, I recommend the excellent 2020 paper by Andrei Kolesnikov, an expert on Russian domestic politics at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace on the subject: Our Dark Past is our Bright Future.

Think of Black Lives Matter and the discussion it has led to over the legacy of empire and slavery. Or of how both sides in the Brexit debate co-opted Britains role in the second world war. Think too of Vladimir Putins broadside against the West on the 75th anniversary of the end of that conflict when he warned, in an article for the National Interest: Historical revisionism, the manifestations of which we now observe in the West, primarily with regard to the subject of the second world war and its outcome, is dangerous.

Now, 30 years after the end of the Soviet Union, Russias relations with the West are worse than at any time since the end of the Cold War. In June 2021 - referring to the current focus of greatest tension between Russia and the West, Ukraine - Putin insisted, that Russians and Ukrainians were one people - a single whole. More recently, UK and U.S. foreign policy chiefs have been keen to stress their support for Ukraines sovereignty.

Here are two vastly differing interpretations of distant and recent history casting a shadow over current events. Anyone seeking to write the first draft of history, therefore, needs to know history themselves.

James Rodgers teaches international journalism at the University of London. This piece was first published by the Conversation
As an existing print subscriber it is easy to get FREE access to all our online content.

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IT IS VERY IMPORTANT TO USE THE NUMBER OFF OF THE MOST RECENT ISSUE OR ANYTHING AFTER JANUARY 28, 2019 TO GAIN ACCESS!

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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.
5 reasons you should promote your music on TikTok

TikTok has made the climb to the top social media platforms in the last two years. With the way its algorithm works, almost anyone could blow up overnight, and many have. So here are 5 more reasons you should use this platform to grow as an artist.

Guest post by Sammy Hakim of BandZoogle.

By now it should come as no surprise to anyone that in 2021, TikTok has established itself as one of the leading platforms for music promotion and discovery. Not only has it launched several successful music careers in the last year alone, but its given hundreds of musicians a viable platform for independent success, and a blueprint for what often appears to be a recipe for overnight success.

If that hasnt sold you on why you should use TikTok to promote your music online, here are five reasons that can help you catch up to speed.

1. Exposure to new fans

TikToks unique, yet often infamously frustrating, algorithm works in a unique way to any other social media platform. Instead of promoting your videos to your followers, the videos you are posting are pushed to unique viewers as soon as theyre uploaded.

This means that every time you post youre more likely to rack up new viewers, instead of people who have already heard of you or enjoyed your content. That allows you to spread your music to so many more people and audiences than youd likely find on any other platform, which is a huge advantage for you and your promotional team.

After all, reaching the largest new audience possible is a huge part of what you usually pay to do with promotional ads  for free!

Build a professional website to showcase your music in minutes! Try Bandzoogle today.

2. Building a fan base

Additionally, TikTok is an amazing platform to build a fanbase on. I know before we talked about the fact that videos are pushed to new viewers. However, theres a section of users pages that allows them to view videos posted only by the people they follow. That means youve got an avid chance to have your viewers viewing each video you post as well.

As a result, TikTok is a great platform to push your music to both new AND returning viewers, giving it an edge over other social media and promotional sites.

3. Encouraging fan interaction

TikTok is known for its rabid followers and wild interaction rates. In fact, videos with higher interaction from users actually do better and are pushed to more viewers. This is perfect because it means youve got an excuse to request likes, shares, comments, and rewatches from your viewers in exchange for helping promote your dream.

With TikTok, many of the videos do state their wants as simply as that. Youll often see videos stating Watch this twice to support my small business or Get this to a million likes so my label will let me release it! going viral quite frequently.

Additionally, chatting with your fans, and even pinning top comments, is a great way to encourage more interaction and boost your posts even further. Building engagement through TikTok can lead to even more chances to connect with fans as well.

4. The potential for growth

All the interaction and exposure you get on TikTok can lead to one amazing benefit: Growth! Using TikTok will undeniably help you grow your brand as a musician online.

Still not sure? A quick google search will pull up hundreds of undeniable success stories of all levels. No, going on TikTok doesnt guarantee youll go viral tomorrow, but whether youre gaining ten, a hundred, or two hundred thousand followers overnight, its still growth from where you started. And each follower counts!

5. Musical experimentation

Last, but certainly not least, lets talk about experimenting with new material. TikTok is an amazing platform for experimenting with new material. Because youre getting a mix of unique and loyal viewers, your new material is shown to people who know your current material well, and those who are just discovering it.

That allows you to get samples and snippets of feedback from both parties, letting you know if something is commercially working or not. It can even help you decide which direction to go on future tracks, merchandising options, or branding moves.

In conclusion, TikTok is a one stop shop for all things promotion in the music industry. Whether youre trying to grow your fanbase, experiment with new trends or sounds, or even just interact with fans, it can help you do all of that in a single video.

Know any other great promotional tips for TikTok users just starting out? Comment below. Were always looking for great new tools to help musicians reach their goals. And remember, like all other social media, TikTok is just that, a tool. Have fun with it, and be yourself. You never know which audience has been waiting to find you.

Happy Tokking!



Sammy Hakim is an up and coming young songwriter based in Los Angeles. In May 2018 she graduated from Berklee College of Music with a Major in songwriting and a focus in music business. These days she spends most of her time in songwriting sessions with artists all over the country.

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Lets Get Digital online indie music conference starts today

Its not too late to attend A2IMs Lets Get Digital online indie music summit running today and tomorrow December 9-10.

The online conference starts at 1PM ET today with the goal of creating opportunities between independent record labels, digital service providers, tech solutions and more.

Join fellow music industry professionals as they discuss the latest trends in music-tech. Topics include digital trends, music marketing and music NFTs.

MUST ATTEND

Shaping up to be a must attend is NFTs: Are They Worth It For Independents?. Jesse Kirshbaum (Dreamstage CMO/NUE Agency CEO) will moderate the discussion which explores the opportunities that are available for independents in the NFT world. The panel features an artist-to-artist conversation between internationally-acclaimed dance artists Aluna (Mad Decent) and Barclay Crenshaw, a.k.a. Claude Von Stroke (Owner of Dirtybird Records), along with Chloe Jeniky, NFT/Marketing Manager at Mau5trap Recordings.

Learn more about A2IMs Lets Get Digital here.

Bruce Houghton is Founder and Editor of Hypebot and MusicThinkTank and serves as a Senior Advisor to Bandsintown which acquired both publications in 2019. He is the Founder and President of the Skyline Artists Agency and a professor for the Berklee College Of Music.

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BHS, BHCS Concludes Shared Services Agreement

PITTSFIELD, Mass.  Berkshire Health Systems (BHS) and Berkshire Healthcare Systems (BHCS) announced a structural reorganization between the two entities that will conclude a shared services management agreement between the two nonprofit organizations.

The two organizations, each with their own governing boards, recently concluded that BHCS has independent capabilities strong and comprehensive enough to no longer benefit from additional administrative support of a management services arrangement through a BHS affiliate known as BHS Management Services (BHSMS).

BHSMS allowed BHCS to share in the health system's administrative strengths and efficiencies.

"BHS and BHCS are proud of all we have jointly accomplished to provide high quality care to so many of our region's most vulnerable residents for more than 30 years," said David E. Phelps, President and CEO of BHS. "As our organizational relationship evolves, we are looking forward to focusing on specific clinical collaborations to effectively support the health and well-being of the communities we serve."

BHCS was established under BHS sponsorship in 1987, with the mission of providing high quality services to individuals needing short term rehabilitation and long-term care. BHCS operates a variety of skilled nursing and rehabilitation facilities, assisted living facilities and other senior housing and hospice care services in Berkshire County as well as across Massachusetts.

"This transition will allow both entities to more closely focus on their respective missions and areas of expertise, working together when it will best serve the community," said Phelps. "For Berkshire Health Systems, that means delivering excellent clinical services to patients in Berkshire County across the full spectrum of care. Berkshire Healthcare Systems, in turn, will continue to provide outstanding long-term care to not only residents of Berkshire County in collaboration with BHS, but throughout the state."

BHS and BHCS have effectively partnered in numerous clinical areas from behavioral health to respiratory programs to antibiotic stewardship. For decades, the opportunities BHS and BHCS have pursued together have created an environment for long-term care, senior housing, and hospice and palliative care in Berkshire County.

"We will continue to strategically coordinate patient transitions and care opportunities between BHS and BHCS facilities in the Berkshires to ensure that everyone receives the best care possible," said William Jones, President of Berkshire Healthcare Systems. "We will also continue our close working relationships with the Berkshire community organizations and local governments that have been our faithful partners for decades."

To complete this transition, each BHCS staff member now employed by BHSMS will be offered the opportunity to continue in their current roles, although under an employment arrangement with a BHCS entity, effective Feb. 1, 2022.
The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) and the Network of Women in Media, India (NWMI) have launched a joint report titled In Their Own Words: Afghan Women Journalists Speak, telling the lived experiences of women journalists struggling for their rights and their professions since the Taliban takeover in August, 2021.

The report, supported by Norsk Journalistlag and launched on Human Rights Day on December 10, marks the culmination of 16-Days of Activism Against Gender Based Violence. Through commissioning this report, the IFJ continues to shine a spotlight on Afghan women journalists and urges the international community to extend support in the shape of humanitarian assistance, visas, relocation, work permits and support for women journalists to continue their profession.

Comprising several interviews with women journalists both inside and outside of Afghanistan, the report highlights the threats to life and livelihood imposed by the new regime. As the Taliban imposes new restrictions on the media, including a dress code on women journalists, there is continued resistance, with women journalists determined to continue their work and tell the world their stories.

According to UNHCR estimates, as of November 2021, 3.4 million people in Afghanistan have been uprooted by conflict, with a large majority being women and children. In September, a group of UN human rights experts identified Afghan journalists and media workers, particularly women, at heightened risk and called on all States to provide urgent protection to those seeking safety abroad.

The IFJ is working with its affiliates in Afghanistan to provide humanitarian assistance and advocate for the cases of those most at risk.

Under the banner Journalists for Afghanistan, the Network of Women in Media, India, in collaboration with the Media Safety and Solidarity Fund (MSSF), launched a photo-fundraiser to support Afghan women journalists. Approximately US $100,000 raised is now being disbursed to cover daily costs of living, visas, travel out of Afghanistan and equipment to upskill and pursue a livelihood.

IFJ Deputy General Secretary, Jeremy Dear, said, the IFJ has been asking governments to target development assistance to help sustain media, either inside Afghanistan or in exile, with many journalists who have fled wanting to continue their work in media.

The global theme for the 16 Days of Activism against Gender-Based Violence set by the UN Secretary-Generals UNiTE campaign, Orange the World: End Violence against Women Now! is increasingly pertinent as Afghan women journalists face high levels of violence and intimidation.

The IFJ said, This report underscores the plight of Afghan women journalists and the intensification of the Talibans campaign against womens rights, to stifle press freedom and to cripple Afghanistans media. On Human Rights Day and to mark the end of 16 Days of Activism against Gender-Based Violence, the IFJ calls on the international community to do more to support Afghan women journalists and ensure their safety and protect their livelihoods.
Jesus Jess Malabanan was killed on December 8 by two unidentified assailants at his familys store in Calbayog City, Samar. The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) and its affiliate, the National Union of Journalists of the Philippines (NUJP) is deeply concerned by the killing.

According to the police report, the two assailants have not been arrested.

Malabanan was a Pampanga correspondent for the national newspaper, Manila Standard Today and was part of the Reuters team in 2018 who won the Pulitzer Prize in International Reporting for reporting on the Philippine war on drugs. According to the Pulitzer citation, the stories exposed the brutal killing campaign behind Philippines President Rodrigo Dutertes war on drugs.

Reports suggest Malabanan received threats whilst living in Pampanga, following which he decided to move to Samar in central Philippines. The nature and the extent of these threats are not known.

The IFJ is currently investigating Malabanans death and whether it was related to his work.

Prior to Malabanans killing, the NUJP reported that 21 journalists have been murdered since Duterte assumed power in 2016.
The judge accepted Assange suffers from depression and that there is a high risk of suicide. If extradited, she considered it likely the US would send him to prison under special administrative measures (SAMs) and wouldnt prevent Assange from committing suicide. Therefore, she considered his extradition unfair.

This ruling, appealed by the US government, has now been rejected by judges from the UK High Court in London, who were reassured by US promises to reduce the risk of suicide, challenging medical evidence.

Assanges fiancee Stella Moris said they intended to appeal against the ruling and called it "dangerous and misguided".

"For the past... two years and a half, Julian has remained in Belmarsh prison, and in fact he has been detained since 7 December 2010 in one form or another, 11 years. For how long can this go on?", she said in a statement.

A long fight against Assange's extradition

If convicted, Assange could face up to 175 years in prison. The US government accuses him of encouraging whistleblower Chelsea Manning to break into the government's computer system in 2010 and to provide information containing clear evidence of war crimes, including the publication of the video Collateral murders. One video released showed, via an onboard camera on a US Apache helicopter in Iraq, the deliberate shooting of civilians by the US military in Baghdad on 12 July 2007. At least 18 people were killed in the incident, including two Reuters journalists.

The IFJ raised Assange's case at the United Nations and joined more than 40 press freedom, human rights and privacy groups to call on the UK government to release Mr. Assange without further delay.

The IFJ and its affiliates all over the world have also repeatedly called on US President Joe Biden to end years of politically motivated prosecution of Julian Assange by dropping the charges against him.

IFJ General Secretary, Anthony Bellanger, said: Todays ruling is a major blow to our hopes to see Assange free. Its clear, and it has been widely proved, that extraditing Assange to the United States would put his life in extreme danger. We therefore oppose this ruling and will support Assanges legal team's appeal against it. Assange must be released immediately.

Chair of the IFJ Surveillance Working Group, Tim Dawson, said: "How two of the most senior judges in England could take at face value assurances from the US government is extraordinary. Only a few months ago we learned that the US plotted to kidnap or even assassinate Julian Assange. If Assange does ultimately face trial in the US, it will cast a shadow over journalists the world over. Who, that upsets the US government will not fear that they will be next?"
For many solopreneurs, the digital nomad lifestyle is a dream that fuels career ambitions. These self-employed entrepreneurs enjoy an autonomy that eludes business leaders with larger teams. This freedom makes it possible for them to make strategic decisions that other entrepreneurs can't make--like moving to a beautiful tropical island that just so happens to have zero percent income tax, for instance. However, before you pack your laptop and hop on a plane in search of warmer climates and bigger savings, make sure you understand how expat tax regulations impact self-employed Americans living abroad.

US Tax Basics for Solopreneurs Abroad

Thanks to a policy called citizenship-based taxation, all Americans are required to file and pay taxes based on their worldwide income--no matter where they live. However, because most countries have residency-based models of taxation, the US government has put in place several ways to avoid double taxation.

One of the most common ways to avoid being taxed twice on the same income is the Foreign Earned Income Exclusion (FEIE). This tax-saving tool allows you to exclude a certain amount of foreign earned income from your US taxes (up to $108,700 in 2021). To qualify, you must have lived outside the US for at least 330 out of any 365 days--or you'll need to show that you are a bona fide resident of a foreign country where you have lived for at least one year.

Despite these benefits, the FEIE doesn't help reduce self-employment taxes for solopreneurs. Americans abroad with self-employment income over $400 are required to pay taxes of 15.3% for Social Security and Medicare. Fortunately, the US does have agreements with several countries to help entrepreneurs avoid paying social insurance taxes twice.

Tax Havens for Solopreneurs in 2021

For solopreneurs who have the freedom to conduct business remotely from anywhere in the world, the best-case scenario is to set up shop in a country with zero income tax. This means you can claim significant US tax savings through the FEIE without paying an extra income tax bill in your host country.

While several countries have no income taxes by default, some governments have introduced digital nomad visas with tax exemptions to attract remote workers following the COVID-19 pandemic.

Bermuda: This popular vacation destination does not levy income taxes by default and offers a digital nomad visa that allows remote workers to stay up to one year.

Croatia: A new digital nomad visa program that began in 2021 offers a year of residence in this Mediterranean gem tax-free.

The Bahamas: Work remotely from any one of 16 islands through the Bahamas Extended Access Travel Stay program while paying zero local income tax.

Costa Rica: A favorite among expats, this Central American country has announced plans to offer a year-long digital nomad visa that exempts holders from local income taxes.

Cayman Islands: One of the world's most famous tax havens, this tropical country boasts a zero percent income tax rate and a Global Citizen Concierge Program that caters to wealthier remote workers ($100,000 for singles, $150,000 for married couples).

Antigua and Barbuda: Like several of its neighbors, this Caribbean beach destination has no personal income tax and offers a visa program for digital nomads.

Choosing the Right Location for You and Your Business
Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the countrys top military brass paid homage to Indias first Chief of Defence Staff Gen Bipin Rawat, his wife Madhulika, Brig LS Lidder and 10 more defence personnel at the Palam air base after their bodies were brought to Delhi in a military aircraft.

The CDS is being accorded a 17 gun salute, as per laid down protocols. A total of 800 service personnel will be in attendance for the military funeral of the Gen Bipin Rawat. Take a look:
We have all thought about living in the middle of nowhere - away from all the noise and annoying neighbours. And there are various isolated houses across the world that are a perfect definition of living secluded. None more so than Buffa di Perrero.

Dubbed the 'world's loneliest house', Buffa di Perrero is located high up in the Italian mountains and has baffled onlookers for decades.

Flickr

Located on Monte Cristallo in the Dolomite Mountains, this remarkable home is embedded in the side of the rockface, and overlooks a sharp and deadly drop, The Sun reported.



It has brick walls, a slanted roof, four framed windows, and a set of camping chairs  leading many people perplexed as to how building materials and objects were taken up to the hard-to-reach structure in the first place.



What is astonishing is the fact that the impressive property is believed to have been constructed over 100 years ago during World War I.



Flickr

Savvy Italian soldiers are said to have built the shelter as a place to rest while battling the Austro-Hungarians across the rugged terrain, as per The Sun.



Logically, they created the spot to rest, store items, and gain a strategic advantage over the enemy.

The only way to access the unique structure would have been by rope ladders and makeshift cable carts  or the treacherous mountain trail that only those brave enough would have dared to tread.



Soccorso Alpino e Speleologico Veneto

Explorers have warned that the path, part of the Via Ferrata Ivano Dibona, requires a high level of fitness to climb.



The Via Ferrata  Italian for iron path  is fitted with steel ladders, rungs and cables built into the mountain for ramblers to use to navigate difficult sections.

Though not currently usable as a rest spot, the Buffa di Perrero still offers a good vantage point for unrivalled views of the impressive Dolomite range.



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A woman in US' Missouri stole her estranged daughters identity so she could enrol in college, secure student loans and date younger men.

Now, after embezzling almost $25,000 (Rs 19 lakh), Laura Oglesby is facing jail time.



Mountain View Police Department

In an elaborate plan, Oglesby fooled both the federal government and locals in the small town of Mountain View, the New York Post reported.

She enrolled at Southwest Baptist University, and by using the Social Security card, Oglesby also secured a driver's license in her daughters name.

Oglesby reportedly also started dating young men in their 20's by convincing them that she was just 22 and even made Snapchat accounts using her daughter Lauren Hays' identity.



"She had completely adopted a younger lifestyle: clothing, makeup and personality. She had completely assumed becoming a younger person in her early 20s," Detective Stetson Schwien told KY3.



Mountain View Police Department

Oglesby moved in with local couple Avery and Wendy Parker, a pair of apparently kind strangers in Mountain View who believed she was a young woman running away from an abusive relationship.



She applied for financial aid and received $9,400 in federal student loans, $5,920 in Pell Grants, and $1,863 in finance charges.

Oglesby even worked at the local Mountain View library where locals knew her as Lauren Hays.

However, she ran out of luck as the plot unravelled in 2018, after authorities in Arkansas contacted the police in Mountain View on reports of financial fraud committed by Oglesby using her daughter's identity. Though Oglesby initially denied committing the crime, she later admitted it and was arrested.

Laura A. Oglesby (Mountain View) used a stolen identity to enroll in college, pleads to Social Security fraud. https://t.co/SwQU9iyhup  U.S. Attorney WDMO (@USAO_WDMO) December 6, 2021

After pleading guilty to one count of intentionally providing false information to the Social Security Administration, Oglesby now faces five years in prison, as per New York Post.

In addition, she also has to pay $17,521 (Rs 13 lakh) in restitution to her daughter and the university in Missouri.

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A file photo taken on July 22, 2014 shows solar panels at Apple Data Center in Maiden, North Carolina. The U.S. International Development Finance Corporations acting CEO Dev Jagadesan said that the agency "is thrilled to be in a position to support First Solar's new venture in India. (representational image/Xinhua/IANS)
Misko Hevery is the CTO of Builder, the online visual site designer. He is also the creator of Qwik, a next-generation JavaScript framework. Before his Builder and Qwik days, Hevery created Angular, one of the flagship JavaScript frameworks, and Karma, the popular JavaScript test runner.

Clearly Hevery has a long history of involvement in the JavaScript world. I had a chance to talk with him about Qwik, Builder, reactivity challenges, speeding up web apps, helping content creators and engineers coexist, and more.

Matthew Tyson: Im excited to talk to you. I discovered Qwik, and that led me to Builder and your bio. You have a really interesting history, including the creation of both Karma and Angular, so Im eager to hear what you think about some of the latest JavaScript trends.

Lets start with reactivity. Reactivity is one of the most significant developments in front-end code, but it is not a perfect world.

Misko Hevery: It is complicated. Reactivity has many great properties, but also many problems. The basic issue with reactivity is that it requires a lot of compute resources to set up and then to tear down. This negatively affects the performance and memory utilization. The implication of all of this is that a framework must download all of the application before reactivity works.

Qwik needs to be reactive, because we want to be lazy, but at the same time we need an approach to reactivity which allows the framework to reason about the application without loading it. Qwik does this by storing reactive subscription information in the DOM.

I would love to know more about how you discovered Qwik so that more people can do the same.

Tyson: I became aware of Qwik by watching Rich Harriss recent Jamstack Conf presentation. He describes how several projects attempt to address the shortcomings of reactive frameworks.

Hevery: Thank you, Rich!

Tyson: Qwik is a rethinking of reactivity from first principles. Its really interesting how you have kind of enabled app construction with built-in lazy-loading boundaries. How did you become motivated to do this and arrive at this approach?

Hevery: So the idea actually came from my talk at ng-conf a few years back. There I basically described what today is Qwik. I kept seeing other frameworks basically rehashing the same old problems, and none of the frameworks seem to address the elephant in the room. They all seem to treat lazy loading as an afterthought, and I wanted to change that.

I set a goal of having a fully lazy-loadable system and worked backward to see what kind of framework I could build which would satisfy these constraints. Most frameworks care about framework size, but not application size. Application size is not their problem. I wanted a framework which specifically addresses the application size problem. Any real-world application is orders of magnitude bigger than the framework, so that is what we should be focusing on.

Tyson: Interesting!

So you are the CTO of Builder as well as the creator of Qwik. Builder is an impressive WYSIWYG editor. Does it use Qwik under the hood?

Hevery: We are about to release our new home page which will showcase all of the latest which Qwik has to offer. It will only load HTML above the fold, lazy load interactivity, and run all of the third-party scripts in the web worker. Our goal is to get 100/100 on Google PageSpeed and show that e-commerce sites can be fast.

Our home page is being built on top of Qwik, and as soon as we release it we will be able to offer the same capability to our customers. So we will be providing Qwik as both an open source project and as a service for making blazing fast e-commerce sites.

Tyson: Builder allows you to pick a variety of frameworks for output from the visual designer (React, Vue, etc.). I imagine Qwik will be another output option in the future?

Hevery: Yes, we already have Qwik working with Builder and soon it will be available to all of our customers.

Tyson: Is having multiple export targets as tough a technical challenge as it sounds?

Hevery: That is solved by Mitosis. Mitosis is a project which allows you to write a component once and then export it to all of the common web frameworks. This gives you write once run anywhere capabilities.

Tyson: Qwik allows you to build an app with boundaries at resource, state, and event handlers. This means the app can achieve fine-grained control of what is loaded. Is that a fair description?

Hevery: Yes! Qwik needed to solve several hard technical challenges which other frameworks simply ignore.

First, how do you break up large applications into many small lazy-loadable chunks? This is harder than it sounds, because at the time of writing the application you dont know where the best lazy-loaded boundaries are. Only after running the application and observing real-world usage can you determine which features are used the most.

Second, the framework must not require that all of the visible components on the page be downloaded and executed. This is what all existing frameworks require: If you see a component, then you must download and execute all of its code before you can make it interactive.

Third, the framework must serialize all of the event listeners into HTML. Without this all of the applications templates need to be downloaded eagerly.

Fourth, the framework must serialize data relationships between components (reactivity). Without this any mutation of state would require that the whole application be downloaded and executed.

Tyson: That is really a helpful breakdown. It captures where much of the action in the world of JavaScript is happening right now.

Can you describe a bit about what you mean by Qwik being resumable?

Hevery: Perhaps this demo can better explain it? But the basic idea is that the state of the application is serialized into HTML and therefore the framework can continue execution where the server left off. The big advantage of this is that the client does not have to redo all of the work which the server just did. This makes client startup instantaneous and greatly adds to the user experience of the application. Because Qwik only loads code for the component when the component needs to be mutated, the static section of the site will never have their code downloaded.

Tyson: Qwik is in early releases (although it is able to demonstrate all the core ideas). What areas are you most focused on advancing to arrive at a 1.0 drop?

Hevery: We are intentionally trying to keep the first release minimal. The key feature is the optimizer that enables Qwik to break up your application into a lot of fine-grained lazy-loading chunks. As you can imagine, the optimizer design is quite tricky, but it is the thing that enables all of the Qwik magic. So for 1.0 we just want to have a way to build an end-to-end app and show fine-grained lazy loading as never seen before.

Tyson: What is the relationship between Qwiks take on app construction and the builder/bundler?

Hevery: We want to be able to create the fastest possible sites for our customers, and Qwik is the way to get there. Because most of our customers are in the e-commerce space, speed is something which directly impacts conversion and hence revenue.

Tyson: Is there anything else you want to touch on?

Hevery: A key part of the Qwik strategy is Partytown. Qwik can make your application fast, but it turns out third-party scripts can completely destroy all of the performance which Qwik worked so hard to create.

For this reason Qwik not only needs to make your app start up fast, but it also needs to offload all of the third-party scripts to web workers to maintain fast performance. Partytown does just that. It allows you to have your cake and eat it too, by creating an environment in the web worker which can execute the scripts, leaving the main thread for the user.

Tyson: Wow, interesting, I wasnt aware of Partytown. A framework to run expensive scripts in a worker thread... It sounds like it could make a huge impact across all kinds of apps. It kind of reminds me of the ability in Astro to hydrate a component once the thread is idle.

Are you guys using Partytown in Builder?

Hevery: Yes, Partytown is a key piece of the strategy. Without Partytown it would not be possible to showcase 100/100 on Google PageSpeed for our sites.

Tyson: Builder is useful for marketing folks, to enable them to build sites without tech knowledge, but you also feature a lot of support for developers. Would you talk a bit about what makes Builder compelling for the coders out there?

Hevery: Actually, Builder is useful for both content creators as well as software engineers. Content creators want to constantly tweak things, and engineering just wants to build new features. The two groups have different release schedules. Marketing wants things to go live at midnight on Black Friday, and engineering just wants to release things (not on Fridays so that any surprises will not destroy their weekend). So the tool really allows for the two groups of people to coexist in a more complementary way.

Tyson: Hah! Those are some funny and true-to-life observations about software development.

Besides improved tooling like Builder, how do you try to balance the demands of the business side and the engineering side from the CTO seat?

Hevery: Haha, not sure I balance! But yes I try to break my week into three days focusing on business and two days focusing on coding. You need to have clear separation otherwise you get sucked into a black hole and you never come out.

Tyson: Is there a way to take an export from Builder and modify the code by hand, then import it into Builder and edit it again with the designer?

Hevery: Yes, we have both importers and exporters. HTML is just one of many formats we support. For example, one can create a design in Figma, and then import it into Builder. Similarly, we can take an HTML site and push it to Figma for creative folks to improve it, so there are quite a few import/export choices available.

Tyson: Fair enough!

I noticed there are several data integration options in Builder, for consuming data stores and APIs. Can you tell folks a bit about them?

Hevery: People think of Builder as a drag-and-drop UI editor. But in reality, it is a lot more. The key aha moment with Builder is when developers and content creators realize that they can drag their own components into the page.

The components have inputs/props and so Builder also understands data binding. Where does the data come from? Well, the integrations listed there show you all of the places where you can get data from. For example, your catalog comes from Shopify but you feed it into your custom components.

Tyson: Would you say that Builder is moving towards becoming a full-blown web IDE? I noticed you have introduced inline code editing as a beta feature.

Hevery: I dont think that is accurate. IDEs require a lot of things that Builder does not have, nor does it need, so I dont think that is a correct characterization.

I would say that Builder only does as much as is needed by creative folks to do their job in a way that fits well with the engineering development lifecycle. For that you dont need a full IDE.

Tyson: I am looking forward to seeing where you and the Builder team take the editor. And as a coder, I cant wait to get my hands on Qwik 1.0.

Thanks again for your time, Misko.
Pharmaceutical company Allergan Finance LLC will pay $200 million to New York state and two of its counties as part of an agreement that removes it from an ongoing state lawsuit over the opioid crisis, state Attorney General Letitia James announced Wednesday.

As part of the agreement with the state and Suffolk and Nassau counties, Allergan did not admit to any liability.

For more than two decades, opioids have wreaked havoc on New Yorkers and Americans across the nation  causing pain, addiction, and death, James said in a statement. Our ongoing trial has been about the role companies like Allergan and its predecessors played in helping grow this epidemic, profiting while Americans suffered.

In a statement, the company said it was pleased to have reached the settlement.

The settlement will provide up to $200 million to address opioid-related issues, as well as reimburse attorneys fees and costs that specifically account for the advanced stage of this trial, it said. Allergan previously made the decision to voluntarily discontinue its branded prescription opioid business, which had a minimal market share of less than 1% of nationwide prescriptions.

The agreement with Allergan means Teva Pharmaceuticals is remaining as a manufacturing defendant in a trial that has been taking place in Suffolk County in recent months; closing arguments were scheduled to start Wednesday. Teva and the regional drug distribution company Anda are also defendants in a county lawsuit.

In September, the state reached an agreement with another company that had been named in the suit, Endo International. Other settlements had been reached earlier in the trial process and before it began.

The lawsuit is one of thousands filed by state and local governments, Native American tribes, unions, school districts and others seeking to hold companies in the drug industry accountable for the opioid crisis, which has been linked to more than 500,000 deaths in the U.S. in the last two decades.

Cases have only begun reaching verdicts, and the results have been split so far. An Oklahoma judge ruled against drugmaker Johnson & Johnson in 2019, but the states supreme court overturned that in November.

Also in November, a California judge ruled in favor of drugmakers and a federal judge in Cleveland sided with two Ohio county governments who had claims against pharmacy chains.

A trial has been completed but a judge has not yet ruled in a West Virginia case, and a trial is ongoing in Washington state. Thousands of other cases are being queued up for trial.

Some of the biggest players in the industry, including the distributors AmerisourceBergen, Cardinal Health and McKesson and drugmakers Johnson & Johnson, Mallinckrodt Pharmaceuticals and Purdue Pharma have reached nationwide settlements with a cumulative value potentially well over $30 billion, with most of the money being directed to fight the epidemic.

But most of those deals have not been finalized.

Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Topics New York
Two conservation organizations have filed a federal lawsuit against Henrico County in Virginia, alleging the county allowed tens of millions of gallons of raw sewage to seep into the James River and its tributaries over the last five years.

The James River Association and the Chesapeake Bay Foundation announced the lawsuit, describing it as a call to fix a failing sewage system, news outlets reported.

The lawsuit alleges that the county has violated the Clean Water Act, neglected its sewer system and failed to protect public health for nearly 30 years. Since 2016, Henricos system has released more than 66 million gallons of sewage, according to the lawsuit, including 49 million in 2018, when the Richmond area experienced near record rainfall.

According to the lawsuit, the countys sewage plant violated permitted limits for discharging into the river at least 10 times over the last three years, creating a public health hazard.

Ben Sheppard, a spokesperson for Henrico County, said Henrico is dedicated to protecting the health of the public and is committed to environmental stewardship. The county is reviewing the lawsuit, he said.

Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Topics Lawsuits Pollution Virginia
Consistent with Governor Larry Hogans commitment to address and mitigate the effects of climate change, the state of Maryland has joined the Sustainable Insurance Forum (SIF) of the United Nations Development Program (UNDP).

The UNDP SIF is a global network of insurance regulators and financial supervisors working together to address sustainability challenges in the insurance sector. Maryland Insurance Commissioner Kathleen A. Birrane will serve as the principle contact for the Maryland Insurance Administration (MIA), the states representative to the SIF.

The SIF was established by the UNDP in December 2016 to provide an international platform for insurance supervisors to collaborate on regulatory responses to climate related financial risks and opportunities faced by the insurance sector. Maryland is the fifth U.S. state to join the SIF, following New York, California, Washington and Vermont. The National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC) and the Federal Insurance Office (FIO) were also recently accepted as members.

Insurance is a $5 trillion industry, said Birrane in an MIA press release. And, as with every other dimension of climate change, Maryland is playing a leading role in assuring that the insurance sector is engaged on climate issues and that insurance regulatory frameworks are appropriately adjusted to identify and account for climate-related financial risks.

Representing Maryland at the NAIC, Birrane is a vice-chair of the Climate and Resiliency Task Force formed by the NAIC in 2020 and, in that capacity, chairs the Solvency Workstream, which is charged with considering how the financial surveillance tools used by U.S. regulators should be adjusted to account for the financial risks arising from climate change.

Internationally, Birrane is one of three U.S. members on the Steering Committee of the E.U.-U.S. Insurance Dialogue Project  an initiative started in 2012 to enhance cross-border cooperation and regulatory modernization to address current and emerging risks in the insurance sector. The projects Climate Risk and Resilience Workstreams are focused on identifying sustainability, resilience and mitigation issues related to the insurance sector, including through technology and modeling.

In Maryland, Governor Hogan has both enacted and supported numerous bipartisan laws codifying Marylands commitment to reduce statewide greenhouse gas emissions, to ban hydraulic fracturing, to accelerate clean energy innovations and investments in green infrastructure, and to build resilience to the impacts of climate change on the Chesapeake Bay.

MIA regulates the nearly 1,600 licensed insurers that are authorized to do business in the state and that generate approximately $41 billion annually in direct written premium through transactions in the state.

Source: The Maryland Insurance Administration

Topics USA Maryland
British mutual life insurer LV= on Friday abandoned a proposed 530 million pound ($701 million) takeover by private equity giant Bain Capital after it lost a member vote, and rival Royal London put forward an alternative proposal for the insurer.

The Bain deal had faced resistance from many of the 1.2 million members who currently own LV=, who said they were not being sufficiently compensated for the loss of the insurers mutual status.

The deal would have given LV= members 100 pounds each if it had gone ahead.

But a lawmakers report in April had said it was very difficult for LV= members to assess if demutualisation was in their best interests or not.

LV=, which was founded in 1843 to help people with funeral costs and was formerly known as Liverpool Victoria, needed support for the deal from 75% of members who voted, but only 69% backed it.

We will continue to do everything possible to find a solution that can deliver a continuation of the LV= brand and security for our 1,300 employees, Chairman Alan Cook said in a statement, adding that he intended to step down once a way forward had been found.

Royal London, a former bidder for the life insurer, said in a separate statement that it had offered to enter exclusive talks with LV= for a merger which would enable LV= members to remain part of a mutual insurer.

LV= said it would consider the proposal.

A spokesperson for Bain Capital said the firm respected the outcome of the vote and had always wanted LV= to flourish. ($1 = 0.7561 pounds)

(Reporting by Pushkala Aripaka in Bengaluru and Carolyn Cohn in London; Editing by Louise Heavens and Keith Weir)

Topics Mergers Carriers London
This is part of a series of articles from Insurance Journals annual Insuring Cannabis Summit on Oct. 14. You can find more articles from the summit at the bottom of this one.

Sabrina Alkire is a broker who it can easily be said has more interest in the insuring cannabis space than most.

Alkire got into the insuring cannabis business while battling brain cancer in 2018.

So when Alkire, who comes from an insurance background, saw her state of Oklahoma legalize cannabis for medicinal use the same year that she was dealing with cancer, she saw the clear signs in the wall.

Alkire, who is now the director of the cannabis division at Frates Irwin Risk Management in Oklahoma City, shared her inspirational story in a bonus video during Insurance Journals annual Insuring Cannabis Summit on Oct. 14.

She was diagnosed with pituitary cancer when most people have just gotten out of high school and are trying to figure out what to do with their lives.

I was 20 when I got in a car accident, I fell asleep at the wheel, she said. They went in and they brought me in to do brain scans and such to figure out why I had passed out. Thats when they discovered the pituitary tumor.

The cancer started to attack her endocrine system, her thyroid, her reproductive system, and more. Following her diagnosis, she had her thyroid removed, and ultimately had a hysterectomy.

The cancer and the treatments began to take a toll in the ensuing years.

In 2018 was when I started feeling different, Alkire said. I started getting really bad fatigue. I was gaining weight at a rapid rate.

Blood work revealed that chemicals in her body were making her gain the weight, and feel fatigue. At the time, she was a single mom of two.

My world just fell apart at one all at the same time as soon as it went active, she said. I was lucky if I made it to 7 p.m. at night, being able to stay awake. It was just taking a toll. During that time, I planned my estate, I planned my funeral, I planned where my kids were going, all sorts of things at an age that shouldnt have to deal with that.

She ended up being treated with three rounds of chemotherapy in four-hour increments, with treatments six weeks apart. The side-effects were considerable, including nausea, and she was on over a dozen medications.

It was 24/7, nothing would curb it, she said. I wasnt eating. And so CBD was basically my first introduction and that helped with inflammation. It helped with migraines. It helped with my appetite, everything. I originally did tinctures, which is basically oil that you put on your tongue. That was helping.

She also began decreasing her pill intake.

My pharmaceuticals went from 13-14 down to probably lower than seven by the end of this, she said.

She began missing less and less work, and this enabled her to return to the business she grew up in, and she began to grow in the business.

I recently switched to Frates Irwin, which is an Acrisure agency, she said.

Before the switch, it was just she and an account manager, and they were maxed out of bandwidth.

They made the switch three months ago, and she has expanded her business across numerous states.

Thats my focus once againI want to educate everybody so much, she said.

She added: And so its been a new opportunity and my focus from now on is purely just growth and education, not only for myself and clients, but also for other agents. Thats why I was so lucky to have this opportunity, was because I want agents to feel the love that I do for the cannabis industry and realize how important it truly is and what a good industry it is to be in.

Topics Agencies Cannabis
Automaker Toyotas insurance arm has begun selling its first branded insurance coverage, Toyota Auto Insurance, in Arizona, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio and South Carolina, and will soon be offering the coverage in Georgia, Missouri, Tennessee and Texas.

The insurance agency said additional states will be added in the coming months.

The agency, Toyota Insurance Management Solutions, is a joint venture between Aioi Nissay Dowa Insurance Services, Toyota Financial Services International Corp., and Toyota Connected. It is a licensed property/casualty independent insurance agency.

The car manufacturer launched the agency in April 2016 to offer car insurance online. The agency has since expanded to also offer home, renters, recreational vehicle and pet insurance. In 2018, Toyota began offering a usage-based auto insurance product using telematics. This new Toyota branded auto insurance is the latest addition. Toyota now sells insurance via its mobile app, call center agents, dealerships and the Toyota website.

Toyota Auto Insurance is being underwritten by digital and embedded insurance company Toggle, part of Farmers Insurance. Toggle will also handle claims. The insurance will work with Toyota-certified collision centers, rental car programs and roadside assistance. Coverage options include coverage for rideshare drivers or pet passengers. Non-Toyota vehicles in customers households can be covered as well.

With Toyota Auto Insurance, we can truly enhance the complete Toyota ownership experience for our customers, said Will Nicklas, chief operating officer of Toyota Insurance Management Solutions.

Toyota is not alone among automakers looking to veer into insurance. Others looking to leverage their data collection capabilities and customer reiationships into insurance revenues include General Motors, Stellantis and Tesla.

Related:

Topics Auto Agribusiness
The more than 300 lawsuits that have been filed so far in Houston following a massive crowd surge at the Astroworld festival that left 10 people dead have been consolidated and will be handled by one judge as the cases proceed through thecourtsystem, a judicial board ruled.

In an order issued on Tuesday, the Board of Judges of the Civil Trial Division of the Harris County District Courts in Houston granted a request by attorney Brent Coon to have all pretrial matters in the various lawsuits be handled by one judge. If any of the lawsuits go to trial, the case would return to its originalcourt.

This consolidation will promote the expeditious and efficient administration of justice, the two-page order said.

All pretrial motions and issues in the lawsuits will be heard by state District Judge Kristen Hawkins.

Those who have been sued include rap superstar Travis Scott, who created the festival and was the headliner, concert promoter Live Nation and other companies connected to the event.

The 10 people who died were among 50,000 who had attended the festival and were in the audience on Nov. 5 when Scotts concert turned deadly as fans surged toward the stage during his set.

The youngest victim was 9-year-old Ezra Blount. The others who died ranged in age from 14 to 27. Some 300 people were injured and treated at the festival site and 25 were taken to hospitals.

Coon, who is representing about 2,000 concertgoers and is asking for $10 billion in damages, made his consolidation request last month. He said Wednesday that having all the cases before one judge will create efficiency, eliminate redundancy and spread costs in the cases to everyone involved in the litigation.

You dont want to have all the same issues argued and all the same witnesses deposed over and over again in every courtroom, Coon said.

But the consolidation that was granted on Tuesday might conflict with a similar request made by lawyers for ASM Global Parent, Inc. and its subsidiaries, which manage events at NRG Park, where the Astroworld festival was held.

Lawyers for ASM Global have also asked in a motion filed with the Texas Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation, which is overseen by the Texas SupremeCourt, to consolidate the lawsuits but assign them to a different Harris County judge, Lauren Reeder.

Counsel representing more than 2,500 plaintiffs or potential plaintiffs and all principal defendants have agreed to this motion, ASM Globals attorneys said in their motion, which was filed on Dec. 1.

ASM Globals attorneys have asked that all discovery in the lawsuits _ when attorneys can request or obtain documents or other information or depose witnesses _ be halted until the state panel issues a ruling.

Attorneys for ASM Global didnt immediately return emails on Wednesday seeking comment.

Coon said he believes the companys request is no longer needed. If the state panel were to issue a decision, it would overrule the local order.

Harris County has already addressed that with this order. So, if the (Texas) SupremeCourtdid anything now, they would just be meddling, Coon said.

Earlier this week, Scotts attorneys also filed his first response to several of the lawsuits, denying the accusations against him and asking that the cases be dismissed.

Coon said Scotts denial of the accusations and his request for dismissal are standard in such lawsuits and similar to an individual entering a not guilty plea at the start of a criminal case.

Scott and the event organizers are the focus of a criminal investigation by Houston police. No one has been charged, and no timetable has been set for when the investigation would be completed.

Scotts attorney had previously reached out to the families of the 10 who died, offering to pay for their loved ones funeral costs. Several of the families turned down the offer.

Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Topics Lawsuits Legislation
The Florida Supreme Court has suspended a Tampa plaintiffs lawyer for the second time in three years after judges and the Florida Bar charged that he had wrongly accused courts and other lawyers of racial bias, then disrupted and prolonged court proceedings unnecessarily.

Kelsay Dayon Patterson, who is listed on legal websites as having specialized in personal injury law and in litigating health insurance denials, has been suspended from practice for two years, the court said in an opinion posted Thursday. Patterson was suspended in 2018 for one year for similar misconduct.

The court ruling overrode a referees recommendation of a 90-day suspension. It is the third time in the last three months that the high court has signaled its willingness to impose much stiffer sanctions than those suggested by court-appointed referees.

The justices said that Patterson had engaged in misconduct between 2011 and 2018. In a federal lawsuit, filed on behalf of the mother of a young man who died after fighting with police in a hospital emergency room lobby, Patterson antagonized the court and caused interruptions to the proceedings. The federal judge wrote a 42-page order detailing Pattersons actions.

This court has repeatedly admonished plaintiffs counsel from failing to comply with court orders, U.S. District Judge Carlos Mendoza wrote, as recounted by the state Supreme Court. Patterson also was guilty of improperly deviating from the legal issues in this case; and baselessly suggesting that defendants, defense counsel, and the judges presiding over this case have been motivated by some racial or other bias.

In one deposition, defense counsel asked Patterson to request his client to stop making faces and grunting noises. Instead, Patterson asserted that white American attorneys and white police officers always love to accuse Africans and blacks of always being hostile, of always being argumentative and always being nasty,' the court wrote.

In another instance, a police officer inadvertently sent Patterson a faxed interrogatory report that was intended for the officers attorney. Instead of divulging that or turning it over to the opposing counsel, Patterson used the information improperly, the court said. The lawyer also failed to comply with numerous court orders.

The lawyer must now pay $8,548 in costs expended by the Florida Bar in the case.

Topics Florida
Carrabbas Italian Grill, a nationwide chain, and a restaurant staffing firm must pay $690,000 to settle a sexual harassment lawsuit, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission announced.

The federal agency said that Carrabbas and OS Restaurant Services violated federal civil rights law when a manager at a Brandon, Florida, Carrabbas subjected female workers to sexual harassment. The agency filed suit in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida, in Tampa.

The settlement money will be distributed to the victim employees, and Carrabbas and OS must implement a new sexual harassment policy and must train management on preventing the violations.

This case makes clear that sexual harassment remains a serious problem, EEOC Chairwoman Charlotte Burrows said in a news release. Its critical that employers have effective policies and programs to prevent workplace harassment.

The agency said that it had attempted reach a settlement before the litigation was filed. The EEOC attorney in the case also commended Carrabbas for working with the EEOC to resolve the matter and address the employees concerns.

Topics Lawsuits
A property insurer has, for now, dodged an $18 million bullet on hail damage coverage for a South Florida condominium complex, after a state appeals court ruled partly in the carriers favor.

In American Coastal Insurance Co. vs. Hansons Landing Association, Floridas 4th District Court of Appeal found that an appraisal of the property was not authorized because the insurer had denied the claim. The circuit court in Martin County must now review the case again.

Because American Coastal has pled denial of coverage under the policy, and because the trial court must resolve the extent of coverage under the policy prior to ordering an appraisal, we reverse and remand for further proceedings consistent with this opinion, the appeals court wrote last week.

The condo complex in Port Salerno, on Floridas southeast coast, suffered through a hailstorm in April 2015. More than two years later, the condo association filed a claim for roof damage, arguing it had only then become aware of the damage.

American Coastal, part of United Property and Casualty Insurance, Floridas largest private insurer of property, sent an adjuster, who determined a replacement cost of $1.1 million, the court explained. The condo association countered with its own estimate of $6.8 million to replace all the roofs in the complex, but it did not provide supporting documentation.

Seven months later, in 2019, Hansons Landing submitted a revised claim, this one for $18.3 million, along with an engineers report.

American Coastal denied the claim altogether, contending that the condo association did not provide prompt notice of damage and did not provide adequate documentation. The insurer also charged that Hansons Landing violated the policy by inflating the amount of the claim and misrepresenting the facts.

The condo association filed suit for breach of contract. The Martin County trial judge, Gary Sweet, granted the condos motion to compel an appraisal on the property. And thats what was at issue on appeal.

The appellate court opinion, written by Chief Judge Burton Conner, said that the Florida Supreme Court had decided in 2002 and 2010 that an appraisal is appropriate only when an insurer has admitted a covered loss but the amount is in dispute. In the Hansons Landing case, the insurer said it had denied the claim outright. At the least, a question remained over coverage, the appeals court wrote.

We have required that coverage disputes be resolved prior to appraisal because a finding of liability necessarily precedes a determination of damages,' Conner wrote, quoting from previous court rulings.

The condo associations case may have been complicated by the fact that at one point in the trial court proceedings, the associations president testified that he was not aware of any significant damage to the property after the hailstorm.
The ruptured offshore pipeline that spilled tens of thousands of gallons of crude oil off the Southern California coast this fall did not have a fully functioning leak detection system at the time, according to a report obtained by The Associated Press.

The report was compiled by pipeline operator, Beta Offshore, a subsidiary of Houston-based Amplify Energy, and filed with federal regulators. It reveals Amplify is investigating whether personnel or control room issues contributed to the accident but does not explain what was wrong with the detection system.

The report, filed last week and released to the AP under a public records request, gives no new details on a possible anchor strike on the pipeline from a cargo ship suspected to be the cause of the roughly 25,000-gallon spill. Coast Guard investigators have said they suspect the pipeline began leaking long after it was snagged by the drifting cargo ship during strong winds in January.

Its not clear why it took so long for the 1/2-inch thick steel line to leak, or whether another anchor strike or other incident led to the rupture and spill. But experts say that a properly functioning leak detection system might have been able to catch that things were amiss before an oil sheen spotted on the surface led to the leaks discovery.

The fact that they did not have the leak detection system working is surprising, University of Houston pipeline expert Ramanan Krishnamoorti said, noting that the companys accounting of the accident appeared inconsistent. For experienced hands at this, when youve got a leak like this, youd have seen signatures of it with pressure drops and flow rates.

The spill came ashore at Huntington Beach and forced about a weeklong closure of that citys beaches and others along the Orange County coast. Fishing in the affected area resumed only last week after testing confirmed fish did not have unsafe levels of oil toxins.

In its report, Beta said the pipelines leak detection system, while not fully functional, still helped to detect and confirm the leak. Federal investigators have previously said a low-pressure alarm went off at 2:30 a.m. on Oct 2, indicating a possible failure.

But in its report the company says the leak wasnt discovered until 8 a.m. that day, by a third-party contractor who reported an offshore slick and notified personnel on a nearby Beta oil platform. The spill wasnt reported to authorities until more than an hour later.

Spokesperson Amy Conway with Amplify Energy declined to answer questions from AP about the leak detection system, citing the ongoing investigation.

Amplify continues to remain committed to working with the regulatory agencies investigating this event, she said.

Accident reports filed with the U.S. Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration require companies to disclose the pressure of pipelines that fail. Beta said the line did not exceed maximum pressure but declined to answer what the pressure was when the line leaked. It said it would supplement its response when it determines the exact time the accident occurred.

The break in the pipe that runs along the sea floor 100 feet under water was less than one-hundredth of an inch wide and more than 20 incheslong, the report said. That means the line could have been leaking for hours or days, according to Krishnamoorti and a second expert, pipeline accident consultant Richard Kuprewicz.

It isnt like a rupture thats wide open, but its going to move some oil, Kuprewicz said. He added that the report leaves unresolved questions about the spill and the companys response.

We dont know how their leak detection system is set up. People think we ought to be able to see a pressure loss, but sometimes pressure loss wouldnt show up even when you have big pipeline ruptures, he said.

As of Nov. 11, the cleanup from the spill had cost the company more than $17 million. It also lost up to about $45,000 in oil, based on an estimated 588 barrels lost at a price of $76 each.

The damaged section of pipeline was expected to be removed under an order from pipeline safety officials that required a metallurgical analysis of why the line failed within 45 days of receiving the Oct. 4 order. However, that hasnt happened.

Amplify attorneys said in a civil lawsuit related to the spill that it is awaiting approval of a repair plan the company submitted to federal officials on Nov. 19.

Because a dive team that was to perform the work was called away by the U.S. Navy to the Persian Gulf, the earliest the repairs would happen would be Dec. 15, and next February is more likely, the companys attorneys said in a report to the federal court filed last week.

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****

Still one of the most underrated actors in Hollywood, and especially in terms of her range, Sandra Bullock stars in The Unforgivable (15A), which opens with her character, Ruth Slater, being released from prison after serving a 20-year sentence for the murder of a police officer.

Warned by her parole officer not to contact the family of her crime, Ruth sets out to find her sister Katie (Aisling Franciosi), who was adopted as a little girl by the Ingrams (Viola Davis and Vincent DOnofrio) when Ruth went to prison.

Nora Fingscheidts film is a multi-layered piece that focuses on Ruths quest to find Katie, but also explores the ripple effect of a violent crime, and how its consequences can continue to haunt its victims many years after.

An emotionally charged drama and a gripping thriller, The Unforgivable delivers plenty of unexpected twists (albeit, in the latter stages, one twist too far).

Theres good support from Jon Bernthal as Ruths empathic co-worker and from Vincent DOnofrio in his role as a conflicted lawyer, but Sandra Bullock dominates proceedings as a woman who acknowledges her guilt but refuses to allow her second act to be defined by a single tragic mistake. (Netflix)
One hundred passengers have entered Ireland without a negative Covid-19 test since new rules were introduced on Sunday, an Oireachtas committee has heard.

Fears over the Omicron variant brought about the introduction of fresh restrictions on travel, requiring all travellers to Ireland from overseas to have a negative PCR or antigen test.

The Oireachtas Committee on Transport heard on Wednesday that since the rules came into effect, 100 passengers arriving at Dublin Airport have been referred to Gardai for failure to comply.

Those arriving without tests were required to undergo a Covid-19 test and self-isolate.

An arrivals board in Terminal 2 at Dublin Airport (Brian Lawless/PA)

Despite the arrival of passengers without negative tests, the committee heard there were no penalties for airlines that failed to ensure their passengers had valid tests.

The obligation in the first instance rests with the travelling passenger, but the airline at the point of boarding carries out checks that each passenger has a receipt indicating completion of the passenger locator form and a negative test, said Fintan Towey, assistant secretary at the Department of Transport.

There is a legal obligation for carriers to carry out the checks, but its not a penal provision.

So carriers dont commit an offence if they allow a person to board inadvertently without the required test.

Mr Towey said it was likely that legal issues would arise if it was made a criminal offence for airlines that failed to ensure passenger compliance.

What were trying to ensure is that we have a system that works and provides appropriate levels of safeguards, he said.

I think that if we wanted to devise in legislation an offence provision, in relation to the role of carriers, I think that would bring us into a lot of legal difficulty, in seeking to identify exactly what the requirements would be, and what an offence might be for carriers.

It would also open up the issue of what kind of data retention carriers might need to engage in order to defend their conviction, in terms of checks that might be carried out in relation to any individual or passenger.

Oonagh Buckley, assistant secretary at the Department of Justice, said there was generally a very high level of compliance among passengers and airlines.

She added: The new requirements or checks have only been in situ since the early hours of Sunday morning.

In that time, though, to offer some reassurance to the committee, some 80,000 passengers had immigrated through Dublin Airport.

In that mix, we checked more than 10% at all times. But in fact, in many flights, we checked 100% of passengers.

We referred in those three days only 100 people to An Garda Siochana for failure to comply with the test requirements.

Of the 100, 95 had no documentation, while another five had tests that were invalid.

She said that of that number, around three-quarters arrived in Ireland from Great Britain, in small numbers and spread across numerous flights.

The majority would have been on Irish airlines, she said.

She added: I cant really say how they got through. Were not standing over boarding procedures in other airports, in other countries.

She said that throughout the pandemic there will often have been one or two, people do manage to get through.

Its not that thats deliberate, its just that people are rushing or people are busy, she added.

I wouldnt necessarily say that theres anything particularly malign about it in that regard.

Committee chairman and Fine Gael TD Kieran ODonnell called on the officials to engage with the airlines on the need for substantive checks.

You don't want to have a situation where someone slips through with the Omicron variant undetected while there's a huge burden placed on the rest of the population

Id ask you to engage with the airlines that fly those routes, to reinforce the need for proper testing, checking, prior to boarding, he said.

The fact that its the UK, our nearest neighbour, means that they are regular flights.

He added: Were placing a huge burden on people returning to Ireland, in terms of now testing.

If that burden is there when it comes to getting PCR and antigen tests pre-departure, then its only fair that the system operates.

You dont want to have a situation where someone slips through with the Omicron variant undetected while theres a huge burden placed on the rest of the population.
THE difficulty is in organising a detente between the squabbling sides. But that is exactly what is needed to repair relations between the Government and Nphet.

Group hugs are not currently allowed and its likely to take more than a paintball session in some woodland. For maximum chances of success, we may be looking at a Zoom weekend retreat with a highly experienced facilitator  either way this situation needs sorting and fast. Standing back from it, the row is hardly a surprise when you consider the pressure-cooker conditions that both sides have been operating under for such a sustained period of time.

Repairing this bust-up will take patience and humility on both sides and a healthy dose of perspective. It will also require the setting aside of petty jealousies, less bullheadedness, a genuine recognition of the fragility of the human condition, and less concentration on party politics. There is also no getting away from the very robust egos in this mix. On this, we plead: Please park them, lads.

It is worth reflecting on past, impressive, successes in terms of how Ireland has managed such incredible social cohesiveness through a global pandemic that keeps taking us to places we simply do not want to be.

It should help that there is fault on both sides here  although, as mentioned earlier, this sort of acknowledgement is often only achieved through the interventions of an expert facilitator. Any volunteers out there? The politicians need to acknowledge to themselves how they have been so jealous for so long of the profile of Nphet, particularly of chief medical officer Tony Holohan. In turn, Nphet, in particular Dr Tony, needs to have respect for the job the Government needs to do.

This all appears very basic stuff, but unfortunately its where things are at right now.

Just as you might say to your child having trouble on the playground, its often worth seeing where the other person is coming from and try and recognise what is motivating them.

There are, of course, strong shades of pot, kettle, and black in the Government accusing Nphet of being leakier than a colander. After all, it is not that long ago we heard of leaks texted directly from the Cabinet table regarding decisions that were being taken by ministers. Who knows better only Taoiseach Micheal Martin and Tanaiste Leo Varadkar how leaky it can be when you get a large group of people together  once the Fianna Fail and Fine Gael parliamentary party meetings went online, there were shades of a weekly soap opera as journalists tweeted the human drama, I mean, proceedings, virtually in real time.

The Government has covered itself in little glory in recent times with its mixed messaging, whether that be to do with pantomimes, antigen tests, testing for travel, or Varadkar describing the latest restrictions as peculiar.

But there is no doubt that some of the communications we have had from Nphet of late  both officially and unofficially  have not been largely helpful.

This is in terms of people maintaining the trust that has largely served us so well so far. I think its worth going back to that meeting in Government Buildings , over three weeks ago, attended by members of the Cabinet subcommittee on Covid: Tony Holohan, his deputy Ronan Glynn, HSE boss Paul Reid, and Colm Henry, chief clinical officer.

This column previously addressed the complicated dynamics at play that night and the overspill from a year ago when Nphets sudden recommendation for tougher restrictions drew strong criticism  most publicly by the Tanaiste on Claire Byrne Live.

Rocky relationship

The HSE personnel present did not feel heard by the Cabinet members present in terms of the pressure hospitals were coming under from the latest surge. The CMO took rather a passive role that night. Remember also that a rocky relationship exists between Holohan and Reid.

In the intervening weeks, that baggage has not disappeared and the situation has been added to by the appearance of the Omicron variant and the huge uncertainty that has surrounded it. Its been well-rehearsed that Glynn posted a video in October advising people to work from home where possible when this was not official Government policy.

It was rather waspishly observed at the time that this video had been recorded from his own workplace the Department of Health. Then, last week, Holohan wrote directly to the parents of Ireland. Like he is the president of Ireland or something, said one well-placed source, who went on to compare the wider Nphet body as being like the Seanad in terms of usefulness.

The meetings go on forever, but even then its well known that members think Tony has already decided before he goes in what the result is going to be.

Still there was a time when Holohan was our absolute rock in this pandemic and we would be foolish to forget that. It was January 27, 2020, when the National Public Health Emergency Team for Covid-19 was established at a time when political parties all had their eye on an upcoming general election. Remember that a Government was not subsequently formed until almost July. Holohan was the bulwark we needed during those long months. The politicians seething at how well-regarded he was simply had to swallow hard.

But times have changed and undoubtedly got more complicated. Lockdowns are difficult but they are fairly clearcut in terms of what is being demanded. The territory has become far more complicated of late, with vaccinations, personal choice, further restrictions, advice, and new variants.

Our collective state of being beyond exhaustion with all of this does not help either.

So, as often happens with the Government, the intent in trying to keep the central message clear is a good one, but the execution leaves a lot to be desired.

It would be a disaster for public trust if people felt that the public health advisers had been muzzled. Yet those advisers have to realise that the politicians also have a job to do, and theirs is actually a more complicated one with all the competing demands of keeping the economy going and also keeping everyone safe.

Preserving that sense of unity is important. Weve gotten so much done so far, by fostering that, and using persuasion.

Everyone is tired, not least those have been in positions of leadership these past two years. But the important fact remains: We are all in this together, still.
Human rights and press freedom groups have condemned a High Court ruling that Julian Assange can be extradited to the US as a travesty of justice and hammer-blow to free expression.

Responding to the decision on Friday, Christophe Deloire, secretary-general of Reporters Without Borders (RSF), said: We condemn todays decision, which will prove historic for all the wrong reasons.

We fully believe that Julian Assange has been targeted for his contributions to journalism, and we defend this case because of its dangerous implications for the future of journalism and press freedom around the world.

It is time to put a stop to this more than decade-long persecution once and for all. It is time to free Assange.

Nils Muiznieks, Amnesty Internationals Europe director, said: This is a travesty of justice.

By allowing this appeal, the High Court has chosen to accept the deeply flawed diplomatic assurances given by the US that Assange would not be held in solitary confinement in a maximum security prison.

The fact that the US has reserved the right to change its mind at any time means that these assurances are not worth the paper they are written on.

He added: If extradited to the US, Julian Assange could not only face trial on charges under the Espionage Act but also a real risk of serious human rights violations due to detention conditions that could amount to torture or other ill-treatment.

The US governments indictment poses a grave threat to press freedom both in the United States and abroad. If upheld, it would undermine the key role of journalists and publishers in scrutinising governments and exposing their misdeeds would leave journalists everywhere looking over their shoulders.

Michelle Stanistreet, general secretary of the National Union of Journalists (NUJ), said that for Assange to be extradited to answer charges for cultivating a source and encouraging the revelation of criminality would be a hammer-blow to free expression.

She continued: Any journalist who thought they might upset a US administration will reasonably fear that they too could be targeted by a judicial snatch squad.

When the freedom of our judiciary is under threat, it is disappointing that senior judges should buckle in the face of such unconvincing US blandishments.

Trevor Timm, executive director of the US non-profit Freedom of the Press Foundation, labelled the High Court ruling as a black mark on the history of press freedom.

He added: That United States prosecutors continued to push for this outcome is a betrayal of the journalistic principles the Biden administration has taken credit for celebrating.

As brave whistleblowers have explained for decades, this kind of abuse of the Espionage Act against sources  and now journalists and publishers  is an embarrassment to basic ideals of justice and to core First Amendment values.
Burma Is Yangons Resistance Against Myanmar Regime Still Strong?

A vehicle on fire after being attacked with a grenade in Lanmadaw Township, Yangon, on Nov. 10, 2021.

Since the former National League for Democracy lawmaker U Phyo Zeya Thaw, who has been accused of masterminding deadly attacks on regime targets in Yangon, was arrested along with weapons by Myanmars junta in November, observers have been asking if guerilla resistance has failed in the city.

His arrest came a month after veteran democracy activist Ko Jimmy, one of the leaders of the 88 Generation Students Group, was arrested with weapons and ammunition in Yangon.

The regime has accused U Phyo Zeya Thaw, 40, of supporting civilian resistance forces and orchestrating 178 explosions and 36 fatal attacks on junta targets in Yangon. It detained 293 people in follow-up arrests.

Junta sources say the security forces have controlled 70 percent of guerilla warfare in Yangon since the arrests and now consider resistance in the city to have been broken.

A resistance source in Yangon told The Irrawaddy: Guerilla resistance is not failing. There is no reason that it will fail. The revolution will go on.

However, there have been few attacks on junta targets since U Phyo Zeya Thaws arrest.

Junta soldiers have increasingly been emerging from their sandbag bunkers. On Dec. 5, protesters were crushed to death by a regime truck which rammed an anti-regime protest in Yangon.

But guerilla resistance continues in the commercial capital. On Thursday resistance fighters targeted a South Okkalapa police station.

The arrests of U Phyo Zeya Thaw and hundreds of others caused chaos in Yangons war against the regime, forcing resistance groups to change their structures and missions, relocate bases, rebuild networks and set new targets.

The arrest of prominent figures came as a mental blow to groups across Myanmar, according to resistance sources.

We have had to abort many missions and lost support to carry out further attacks. This has made it difficult to continue our work and we have had to change our entire framework, said a guerilla fighter in Yangon.

As part of its psychological warfare against revolutionary groups and to mislead the international community about the armed resistance, the regime exaggerated the amount of seized weapons and dragged ordinary civilians into the urban war, said a Yangon-based guerilla group.

We have not ceased our operations. We are just taking time to make some adjustments, said a guerilla fighter from Yangon.

Groups said large operations are still underway and that only a few fighters have fled to rebel-held territory.

A source said nearly half of resistance fighters may have been detained but recruits are ready to replace them and new weapons continue to arrive.

Many groups have been reviewing their operations since the arrests.

U Phyo Zeya Thaw and Ko Jimmy were too recognizable and had too little training to be effective underground rebels, said a military analyst.

The former parliamentarians hideout and arms cache were too easy to locate and there were too many information leaks, the source said.

Posting videos of attacks on junta targets on social media made it easy for the regime to trace attackers and prevent further attacks, the analyst added.

A political observer said: I dont think Ko Jimmy would reveal all the names in a single day. There might have already been an information leak before his arrest.

Files leaked after U Phyo Zeya Thaws arrest suggest the ex-lawmaker appeared to have been careless in storing information and reportedly did not delete his phones call history and text messages.

A technician from Yangon Peoples Defense Force told The Irrawaddy: Data should be prepared and stored online. Nothing should be left on a computer. It is a big loss that they could arrest all those people from one laptop.

Former Major Aung Ling Htut, who served in military intelligence under previous regimes, posted on Facebook that the resistance groups should only give information to those who need it and units should be strictly segregated.

A civilian resistance fighter from Sagaing Region called on those detained not to reveal the identities of their comrades during torture.

Comrades must remain loyal, despite the pain, they said.

Observers will be watching to see if Yangons resistance can recover and push junta forces back inside their sandbag bunkers in the months to come.



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Burma Myanmar Junta Among the Worlds Worst Offenders For Jailing Journalists

CPJ graphic on the imprisonment of journalists.

The number of journalists imprisoned around the world for their work hit a new record in 2021, with Myanmar ranked among the worlds worst countries for jailing journalists since the coup, according to an annual prison census by the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ).

The New York-based NGO said in a report issued December 9 that the 293 journalists imprisoned around the world was the highest number since the CPJ started tracking the jailing of journalists in 1992.

At least 24 journalists were killed in 2021 while working, and 18 others died in circumstances too unclear to determine whether they were specific targets, the CPJ said.

Myanmar, which had no journalists in jail last year, came second in the list of worst countries for imprisoning journalists, with only China ahead of it. Since the militarys February 1 coup there has been a significant crackdown on the Myanmar media, with at least 26 media professionals incarcerated at the time the CPJs census was conducted.

Neighboring China remains the worlds worst jailer of journalists for the third year in a row, with 50 behind bars. Egypt, Vietnam, and Belarus, respectively, rounded out the top five.

The situation in Myanmar is even more dire than the numbers suggest, the CPJ said, as many journalists were released ahead of the survey after being detained for several months in notorious interrogation centers and prisons.

There may also be others in custody who have yet to be identified as reporters, out of concern that they could face harsher penalties from the junta if they are found to be associated with the media, added the CPJ.

Since the military takeover, the regime has targeted journalists with arrests, lawsuits, raids on newsrooms and violence in an attempt to suppress coverage of the juntas lethal crackdowns on pro-democracy protesters.

Around 110 journalists have been arrested since the coup. Many of them were charged with incitement and contacting an illegal organization just for doing their jobs.

U Myint Kyaw, a member of the Myanmar Press Council under the ousted civilian National League for Democracy (NLD) government, noted that the junta arrested journalists while covering protests at first, but later followed them even when they were not working, as well as checking up on former journalists.

Those hostile arrests show that the regime wants to silence press coverage of anti-coup protests and the activities and opinions of the parallel National Unity Government (NUG) and its parliamentary committee, the Committee Representing Pyidaungsu Hluttaw.

The junta has branded the NUG and its related organizations as terrorist groups.

In the latest incident of junta violence towards the media, two journalists covering a flash mob protest in Yangon were severely injured and then arrested after regime forces deliberately rammed protesters with a pick-up truck. Ma Hmu Yadanar Khet Moh Moh Tun, a female video journalist with the Myanmar Pressphoto Agency, is in critical condition after suffering a serious head injury. Photojournalist Ko Kaung Sett Lin from the same agency was also injured.

Almost all independent journalists have been forced into hiding by the juntas media crackdown, while the rest are keeping a low profile as they continue to document the regimes atrocities.

The CPJ noted in its annual report on imprisoned journalists that the number of reporters forced underground or into exile is also a significant blow to the gains made by the independent media under the ousted NLD government.



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Burma Myanmar Resistance Claims to Kill Around 80 Junta Troops

Remains of a house burned down by regime forces after a clash with the Chin Defense Force in Kanpetlet Township, Chin State, on Thursday. / Kanpetlet Peoples Administration Group.

Around 80 junta soldiers were reportedly killed during attacks by civilian resistance forces in Magwe, Sagaing, Mandalay and Yangon regions and Chin and Kayah states on Thursday.

The Irrawaddy could not independently verify any of the reports.

On Thursday afternoon, two civilian resistance groups from Kani and Mingin townships ambushed a military convoy, which included motorbikes, on the Monywa-Kalewa highway in Mingin, Sagaing Region, using mines, according to the Kani Peoples Defense Forces (PDF).

Seven motorbikes and two other military vehicles were damaged, leaving more than 30 regime troops dead, the group claimed.

On Friday morning, Mingin PDF said it attacked 11 ships, including military gunboats, carrying jade from Kachin State to Monywa on the Chindwin river.

The military casualties are unknown, the PDF said.

The Democratic Guerrilla Force in Sagaing Region claimed to have killed 10 junta troops, including an army captain, during an ambush on a military convoy in Yinmabin Township on Thursday morning.

Seven combined civilian resistance forces used 11 mines and said two military trucks were damaged.

Triple Two, a civilian resistance force, claimed to have used 30 mines on a bus carrying regime troops in Yinmabin Township, Sagaing Region, on Thursday morning in response to the juntas alleged atrocity where 10 villagers were burned alive in Don Taw village, Salingyi Township, this week.

The group told the media that the bus was carrying troops responsible for burning the villagers alive.

It said more than 10 troops were killed in the attack.

A video from the group shows a bus amid explosions.

Pale PDF said it ambushed junta police in a civilian vehicle in Pale Township, Sagaing Region, on Thursday using two homemade, remote-controlled mines. The casualties are unknown, it said.

The resistance group said around 20 junta reinforcements arrived and opened fire at random.

The Peoples Revolution Army claimed to have killed six regime troops when it attacked a foot patrol in Myaing Township, Magwe Region, using six mines on Thursday afternoon.

After the attack, villages fled their homes to avoid a possible junta raid in revenge.

On Thursday, two attacks were reported in Mandalay Region.

Two resistance groups used a grenade to attack regime forces at a ward administration office in Aungmyaythazan Township, Mandalay Region, on Thursday afternoon.

Three regime troops and a junta-appointed ward administrator were reportedly killed and two pedestrians suffered minor injuries in the blast, said Mandalay Phoenix Force, which claimed responsibility.

Three junta police were killed in an ambush by five resistance groups on three motorbikes and another vehicle in Myingyan Township, Mandalay Region, on Thursday morning, said 27 Revolution Force, one of the groups which claimed responsibility.

A junta policeman was killed and two others wounded when an unknown group bombed South Okkalapa police station in Yangon on Thursday evening, according to media reports.

The Chin Defense Force in Kanpetlet said seven junta soldiers were killed and six others wounded during three hours of fighting with regime forces in Kanpetlet Township, Chin State, on Thursday morning.

Although regime forces used artillery, the resistance fighters escaped without casualties, the group said.

The peoples administration in Kanpetlet said regime forces burned seven houses and crops and stole two motorbikes in a village after the clash.

On Thursday evening, Demoso PDF said it attacked sentries at Battalion 427 in Demoso Township, Kayah State.

During 45 minutes of fighting, seven junta soldiers were killed and 10 others wounded with the PDF claiming it suffered no casualties.

During the firefight, a house in Nyaungkon village in the township was damaged by a 120mm artillery shell fired from Loikaw, the state capital.

Junta forces are facing attacks from PDFs and many ethnic armed groups across the country.

The regimes atrocities continue, including arbitrarily killing civilians, burning people alive, using civilian detainees as human shields, bombarding residential areas, looting and burning houses and committing acts of sexual violence, especially in Sagaing and Magwe regions and Chin, Shan, and Kayah states.

By Thursday, the regime forces had killed an estimated 1,323 civilians and detained 10,815 people, including elected government leaders, since the Feb. 1 coup, said the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners that records deaths and arrests.



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A normally traffic-choked road in downtown Yangon is deserted during the silent strike on Dec. 10. / Clean Yangon

Myanmars people collectively showed their defiance of the junta with a successful nationwide silent strike on Friday, making it clear once again that the regime would never be allowed to rule them, despite its seizure of power from the countrys democratically elected government in a Feb. 1 coup.

Roads in cities across the country, including the commercial capital Yangon, the second-biggest city Mandalay and the administrative capital Naypyitaw, were deserted as people stayed home and shut down their businesses to join the strike.

Small vendors, local wet markets and wholesale markets were no exception, having shared the call to strike by word of mouth in the preceding days.

A local resident living near Hledan junction in Yangons Kamayut Township said the usually busy roadsides of her neighborhood had been quiet since morning, with shops and stalls closed and people staying off the street.

Maha Aung Myay, a grocery shop owner in Mandalays Sein Pan ward, told The Irrawaddy that he closed his shop for the whole day to participate in the silent strike.

He said junta forces on Thursday told people not to participate in the strike and promised to provide sufficient security for those who kept their businesses open. But the people defied their announcement and joined the strike anyway.

Nearly all supermarkets, shops and restaurants in Mandalay, including the Zay Cho marketthe citys busiestand the Mahaaungmyay gem market, were closed on Friday.

In Meiktila, where the militarys proxy Union Solidarity and Development Party has a strong presence, authorities traveling in cars instructed locals to keep their shops open and not to participate in the silent strike.

A resident said, however, that only a few shops linked to the military and ward administrators were open in the town.

Even in Mandalay Regions military-dominated town of Pyi Oo Lwin, which is home to the armys officer training academies, photos shared by locals showed deserted streets and markets.

In Naypyitaw, the normally bustling Thapyaygone and Myoma markets were deserted after 10 a.m.

This time the silent strike is more successful than the previous one [on March 24], with the whole city totally deserted, and not even a passerby or deliveryman in sight, a Yangon resident said.

Myanmar people staged a silent strike on March 24 to disprove the juntas claim to have reasserted normalcy in the country after the coup. It had a big impact, with the streets of Yangon and other cities practically deserted.

Timed to coincide with Human Rights Day, which falls on Dec. 10 every year, Fridays silent strike was intended to demonstrate the Myanmar peoples continued opposition to the junta and to send a message to the world about the regimes ongoing human rights violations and atrocities.

In response to the strike, the junta forces seized some goods from roadside stalls left unattended in Kamayut Township, and arrested three people for clapping in Mayangone Township, Yangon, when locals broke into a round of applause at 4 p.m. to celebrate the success of the strike. A small pro-junta rally was also held in Yangon amid the silent strike.

In Bago Regions Pyay, local media outlet Myaelatt Athan reported that regime forces kicked and destroyed the doors of closed shops. Three shop owners who were spotted by patrolling regime forces were beaten and sworn at for closing their businesses.

The military seized power from the democratically elected government led by Daw Aung San Suu Kyi on Feb. 1 and formed its so-called governing body, the State Administration Council. Struggling to rule the country in the face of public resistance, the regime has in recent months escalated its crackdown on opponents of its rule.

According to one rights groups count, regime forces have killed at least 1,323 civilians and arrested some 10,800 people over the past 10 months.



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Guest Column Indias Dilemma Over Ties With Myanmar Military

Myanmar military chief Senior General Min Aung Hlaing (left) and Indias Prime Minister Narendra Modi in New Delhi in July, 2019. / Snr-Gen Min Aung Hlaing.com

A little more than a month remains before India celebrates its Republic Day, and speculation has already begun about who might be invited as special guests. While India became independent from colonial rule on August 15, 1947, it was not until January 26, 1950 that the last ties to the British crown were severed and a new, republican constitution was adopted. Republic Day is a colorful event with parades, shows and events, and spectacular displays by the armed forces.

In 2018, all ten leaders of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations were among the special guests, including Myanmars State Counselor Daw Aung San Suu Kyi. Now, in the run-up to the January 26, 2022 celebrations, the Indian media has reported that preparations are underway to host the heads of the Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation, or BIMSTEC, a seven-nation regional grouping that besides India includes Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Nepal, Bhutan and Myanmar. According to a November 22 report in the Indian Express newspaper, This will be the first opportunity for the Indian leadership to engage directly with Gen. Min Aung Hlaing, who seized power in February this year.

That very same day, Indias Ministry of External Affairs scotched the report saying that there had been no move to invite the coup leader Senior General Min Aung Hlaing to observe the main parade along New Delhis central Rajpath. All the BIMSTEC leaders attended Prime Minister Narendra Modis second swearing-in as prime minister on May 30, 2019, but at that time there was a democratically elected government in office in Naypyitaw. Myanmar was represented by President U Win Myint.

Regardless of who will be there next month, the controversy surrounding Snr-Gen Min Aung Hlaings possible participation reflects Indias dilemma when it comes to relations with the Myanmar military. On the one hand, India is right now taking part in the Summit of Democracies, a global meeting convened by United States President Joseph Biden with the aim of defending the world against authoritarianism, fighting corruption and promoting respect for human rights.

The Economist stated on December 6 that the countries invited reflected American politics rather than any adherence to democratic values. Be that as it may, it will not be to Indias advantage if a blood-stained dictator like Snr-Gen Min Aung Hlaing is one of the guests of honor at Indias Republic Day celebrations.

On the other hand, however, India is facing two main security challenges along its eastern frontier which over the past few years have led to increased cooperation with the Myanmar military: cross-border insurgencies and concern over the growth of Chinas influence in Myanmar.

Ethnic separatist rebels from the northeastern Indian states of Assam, Nagaland and Manipur have for years had bases in remote, mountainous areas of Myanmars Sagaing Region. From there, they have launched armed raids into India and then retreated back across the border beyond the reach of Indian security forces. India shares a 1,643-kilometer-long, porous border with Myanmar and the rugged terrain makes it easy for the rebels to slip back and forth between their camps and points of ambushes on the Indian side.

Myanmars inability or unwillingness to uproot those rebel sanctuaries has been a persistent thorn in the side of the two neighbors bilateral relations, contributing to mutual distrust and suspicion. Much to New Delhis chagrin, the Myanmar authorities until recently denied the existence of such camps on their territory. But it was believed that Myanmars policy of benign neglect towards those groups changed when the Myanmar military overran one of their main camps in January 2019. That clearance operation, which drove Naga, Manipuri and Assamese rebels from their de facto headquarters at Taga in northern Sagaing Region, was followed by markedly improved relations between the Indian military and its Myanmar counterpart, an entirely new and precious friendship that the Indians did not want to upset by, for instance, condemning the February 1 coup.

Immediately after the military takeover, Indias army chief, Manoj Mukund Naravane, stated that a series of operations together with the Myanmar military has witnessed growing cooperation and synergy between the soldiers on ground with reasonable operational dividends. Significantly, India was among eight countries that sent a representative  its military attache  to attend the Myanmar Armed Forces Day parade in Naypyitaw on March 27. The others came from China, Russia, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Vietnam, Laos and Thailand.

And then there is growing concern over Chinas influence, which after a few years of setbacks for Beijing as Naypyitaws relations with the West improved, was re-ignited in 2016 and 2017. At first, Western powers turned their backs on Myanmar in the wake of the bloody campaign against the Rohingya in those years and then, again, and in an even more forceful way, after the February coup. Indias chief of defense staff, General Bipin Rawat, stated at a July 24 military webinar on Opportunities and Challenges in North East India that India needs to closely monitor the emerging situation in Myanmar where China is making further inroads after international sanctions were re-imposed on the country after the February 1 coup. He added, The BRI of China is bound to get further impetus with the sanctions on Myanmar. Rawat died in a helicopter crash in southern India on December 8, but the policy is unlikely to change.

Indian security planners often tie the two issues  cross-border insurgencies and Chinas machinations  together. Beginning in the 1960s, hundreds of Naga and later also Mizo rebels trekked through northern Myanmar to China, where they received political and military training, and returned to Indias northeast with modern Chinese weapons. In the 1970s, a smaller group of Manipuri insurgents went through Nepal to Tibet, where they were trained at a Chinese army camp outside Lhasa.

Direct Chinese support ceased after the death of Mao Zedong in 1976 and Beijing changed its foreign policy from exporting revolution to promoting trade with its neighbors and beyond. But Manipuri and Assamese rebels still have unofficial representatives in Ruili and other towns in Yunnan Province near Chinas border with Myanmar. Even the top leader of the once-mighty United Liberation Front of Asom (Assam), Paresh Baruah is residing in Yunnan, and so are militants from the Peoples Liberation Army of the Revolutionary Peoples Front (PLA/RPF) and the Peoples Revolutionary Party of Kangleipak, two groups active among Manipurs majority Meitei population.

That issue was not high among Indias security priorities  not until October 2020. China does not normally object when other countries trade with Taiwan as long as it is done on a private level. But when news reports began circulating at that time about the possibility of an official Indian-Taiwan trade pact, the Chinese authorities hit back via their mouthpiece The Global Times with unprecedented threats. Long Xingchun, president of the Chengdu Institute of World Affars, a think tank administered by Chinas Ministry of Foreign Affairs, wrote in the Chinese Communist Party-run paper on October 22 that once a country wants to develop official trade ties [with Taiwan], is it by no means a purely trade issue. Then came a stern if not ominous warning. If India supports Taiwan secessionist forces, China and India will come to hostility, especially if the India moves force China to support secessionist forces in India as a countermeasure. Each would attack the weakness of the other, added Long Xingchun.

Theres no indication of renewed material support from China for Indias northeastern rebels, but the means are there should Beijing want to take action against India: Indian rebel liaison officers in Yunnan, and a difficult-to-control, mountainous terrain in northern Myanmar that connects China with Indias northeast. In recent months, the Myanmar military on its part has begun to use some of the Indian rebel forces which are still encamped in Sagaing to fight local anti-coup Peoples Defense Forces. In return, those rebels from India  mainly Manipur  can stay and are left alone to do whatever they want. On November 13, a combined force of militants from PLA/RPF and a smaller group, the Naga Manipur Peoples Front, came across the border and ambushed an Assam Rifles convoy, killing seven, including a commanding officer, his wife, their six-year-old son and four riflemen. The ambush could be seen as a return to the bad old days, before relations between the Myanmar military and the Indian military began to improve.

The Indians seem damned if they do, damned if they dont. If previously cordial relations with the Myanmar military are not restored, it could open the floodgates for a potentially dangerous security situation along the traditionally volatile and difficult-to-control India-Myanmar border. But a cosy relationship with the Myanmar military could be seen as an endorsement of their coup and a recognition of the junta which has ruled Myanmar since February 1, and that would upset Indias geostrategic partnership with the United States and other allies. India, the United States, Australia and Japan are members of the Quadrilateral Security Dialog, or the Quad, an informal gathering that is widely viewed as a pact aimed at curbing Chinas growing influence in the Asia-Pacific region.

It remains to be seen what India intends do to in order to tackle its many challenges on the eastern border. But the first indication of what direction Indias relations with Myanmar may take should be seen on the grandstand for foreign guests on the Rajpath on January 26. Will the coup leader be there, or wont he? And what price will India have to pay if he is not, or indeed if he is?



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Cambodia, ASEAN and Myanmar

UN Envoy Joins Her Predecessors in Myanmars Graveyard of Diplomats

A Textbook Example of Authoritarian Rule in Myanmar
Guest Column Myanmar Needs Urgent Humanitarian Assistance

Riot police before their crackdown on anti-regime protesters in Yangon in late February 2021. / The Irrawaddy

The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) published a report recently titled Impact of the Twin Crises on Human Welfare in Myanmar. The report paints a bleak picture of the humanitarian situation the country has faced since the juntas February 1 coup.

In July 2021, in its publication Myanmar Economic Monitor, the World Bank predicted that the number of people living in poverty in Myanmar would double by early 2022, an increase to over 46 per cent of the population, a level not seen since 2005. According to the UNDPs report, urban poverty will increase threefold, mainly in Yangon and Mandalay, and more than half of Myanmars children will be living below the poverty line.

Ayeyarwady Region is expected to have the largest number of people living in poverty, followed by Yangon and Sagaing regions. Poverty is also expected to increase in Rakhine and Chin states, the two poorest states in Myanmar. Job losses and a significant reduction in household incomes are major contributing factors to increased poverty. A massive amount of humanitarian assistance, estimated to be 4.5 per cent of pre-COVID 19 Gross Domestic Product, is needed to lift the newly poor out of the poverty trap. Yangon alone is estimated to require US$500 million out of a total estimated figure of US$3.5 billion.

There is very little chance of meeting these humanitarian needs. A statement from the Emergency Response Coordinator of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA) on the increasing violence and humanitarian needs in Myanmar revealed that over three million people are in need of life-saving humanitarian assistance, while less than half of the US$385milllion required under UNOCHAs emergency response plan for 2021 has been received

It is very obvious that the international community cannot mobilize adequate resources to respond effectively to the worsening humanitarian situation, which is man-made rather than a natural disaster. It is the military regimes coup and its ruling body, the State Administration Council (SAC), that is completely responsible for the refugees, internally displaced people, killings, arrests and the starvation of millions of innocent civilians.

There are no signs that the SAC will cease violence against unarmed civilians, as it agreed to do under the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) five-point consensus. The militarys recent ramming of protesters in Yangons Kyimyindaing Township, and the alleged burning alive of villagers in Tabayin Township in Sagaing Region have made that clear. Junta forces are continuing to bombard villages and employ airstrikes in their raids against Peoples Defense Forces (PDF) in Chin State and Sagaing and Magwe regions. As a result, people have resorted to all means of resisting the regime, including armed struggle. An escalating civil war between junta forces and civilian resistance fighters can be expected in the coming months.

Meanwhile, the SAC is launching diplomatic and media campaigns in an effort to gain legitimacy, despite its failure to attain a seat at the United Nations and not being invited to attend the last ASEAN summit. Hence, there is the possibility that the SAC will attempt to use humanitarian assistance as a gateway to international recognition, while at the same time cynically holding hostage people who are in dire need of humanitarian assistance.

The Myanmar military has used this strategy before. They will use the suffering of the people and humanitarian assistance as a way to gain international legitimacy and for winning political support, just as the previous military regime did in its response to the 2008 Cyclone Nargis disaster. In reality, the junta doesnt care about the welfare of the people, as the UNDP report indicates.

For that reason, it is very important for the international community to consider carefully how to provide humanitarian assistance to the suffering Myanmar people. Most important of all, it must avoid giving legitimacy to the junta which has no popular support at all. It is very clear whose side the Myanmar people are on. Time and again, people express their support for the parallel National Unity Government. Fridays nationwide Silent Strike is another example of how the country is rejecting military rule.

Myanmars situation is quite similar to the crisis in Ethiopia at the moment. The international community should apply non-consensual and unconventional humanitarian intervention strategies such as airlifts into conflict-affected areas where the junta refuses to provide humanitarian access, as well as cross-border humanitarian assistance. At the same time, the international community led by the UN must increase pressure on the junta by applying targeted sanctions, an arms embargo and by using international money-laundering laws.

But, as the UNOCHA statement makes clear, the international community will not be able to mobilize sufficient resources to respond adequately to the scale of the humanitarian crisis that Myanmar faces. Nor can aid do anything to remove the brutal military dictatorship.

In these tragic times, the international community needs to stand on the side of the Myanmar people, refuse to give recognition to the junta and increase the pressure on the regime as much as possible. The vast majority of Myanmar citizens are determined to eradicate this national cancer of military dictatorship once and for all and establish an inclusive, federal democratic union.

Lin Htet Myat analyzes public policy with a focus on economic governance and Public-Private Partnership Projects in Myanmar.



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December 9, 2021



After an extensive national search, Idaho State University has appointed Valerie Martin Conley as Vice President of Academic Affairs and Provost.

Conley is currently the Dean of the College of Education at University of Colorado Colorado Springs. She was chosen to assume the role at Idaho State after an extensive search process that included input from faculty, staff, students, and the community.

Valerie will bring a wealth of experience to this role at our University, said President Satterlee. I am confident in her ability to successfully enhance our strategic planning efforts and support our mission of educating students. I am excited for the future of our University with the addition of Valeries strong leadership and talents.

Conley comes to Idaho State with more than 30 years of experience in higher education. She has served as dean and professor at UCCS since 2015. As dean, Conley led the launch of new degree programs, increasing enrollment, and putting the college on sound financial footing. Prior to that, she was department chair and professor in the department of Counseling and Higher Education in the Gladys W. and David H. Patton College of Education at Ohio University, where she also served as director of the Center for Higher Education.

I am delighted to join Idaho State University, a community focused on student success in an environment of trust, compassion, and hope, said Conley. I am looking forward to working with and supporting President Satterlee, deans, enrollment management staff, and faculty in maximizing the strengths of the institution and moving ISU's academic mission of excellence forward.

A mission driven and collaborative leader, Conley has a clear vision of the role of a 21st century university, and the skills necessary to provide leadership for success. She spent nearly the first decade of her career working as a consultant to the National Center for Education Statistics in Washington, DC. During this time, Conley developed a nuanced understanding of the complexity of higher education. In 1997, she began working on a college campus. As an institutional researcher, Conley developed an understanding of culture and context within colleges and universities, as well as an in-depth knowledge of organization and administration of higher education and the changing needs of diverse learners.

Conley received her bachelors and masters degrees from the University of Virginia and her doctorate in Educational Leadership and Policy Studies from Virginia Tech. She holds among her most notable accomplishments being named the Ohio University Outstanding Graduate Faculty Member, an award given by graduate students to recognize an individual professor who has made a difference in their lives.

Conleys first day at Idaho State will be in Summer 2022.
COMPANY NEWS: Australian tech company Taguchi and Italian scale-up The Data Appeal have won the first travel retailing challenge sponsored by Travelport Accelerator, a program launched in collaboration with technology company Travelport and Amazon Web Services.

Travelport Accelerator was created to foster collaboration with innovative thinkers who bring revolutionary ideas to the table, explains Travelport chief product and technology officer Tom Kershaw.

Together with a panel of leading industry experts, we heard some truly unique concepts and viable product ideas. In the end, the solutions presented by Taguchi and Data Appeal were the most compelling as they have the potential to quickly deliver a significant improvement to the personalisation of travel marketing by utilizing Travelport+, Kershaw says.

One hundred and twenty tech startups and innovative companies participated into the Travelport Accelerator program this year, bringing a variety of digital marketing capabilities to the table such as creating dynamic, personalised video content, ensuring price consistency across multiple retailing channels, and visualising data and sentiment based on social and review posts.

Six companies were then selected to pitch their solutions to experts and decision-makers from some of the worlds most renowned travel companies during an exclusive Industry Pitch Day event held in New York City. The six finalists selected to pitch their solutions were:

Taguchi

Adobe

Stackla

Everymundo

Dynamo Video

The Data Appeal

The panel of industry judges were represented by American Express Global Business Travel, Priceline, Southwest Airlines, Internova Travel Group, Direct Travel and Christopherson Business Travel.

Travelport says the challenge was to introduce digital marketing technology for travel companies and to deliver targeted and personalised offers to customers using artificial intelligence and machine learning.

The winners were chosen after multiple judging rounds where they pitched their solutions to a panel of industry experts on how each would revolutionise customer acquisition and retention for travel brands.

Taguchi supports marketing automation programs with its platform designed to optimise dynamic marketing content to deliver the right message, to the right people, at the right time. The company received the highest collective score from the judging panel of all Travelport Accelerator finalists for its concept that combines the Taguchi automation platform with Travelport data and AWS Cloud scalability. Together, it has the ability to bring marketing automation to the masses within the travel sector. Taguchi gains simplified access to the Travelport+ platform and AWS Cloud tools to bring its concept to life with a viable proof of concept.

The Data Appeal, on the other hand, analyses the sentiment across all points of interest in a destination, in real-time, from over 100 sources and 500 million social posts and reviews each day.

With Data Appeal Studio, their territory analysis platform, users can visualise all of the data and compare and contrast time periods, source markets, and competitors. The companys winning concept will help travel brands, tourism boards, and destinations enhance their marketing operations with the ability to transform data into real-time actionable insights.

Data Appeal will utilise Travelport+, Travelports next-generation travel marketplace, and technology from AWS to progress the development of its digital marketing solution for travel.

Among the exceptional finalists, a submission that garnered attention was Adobe, which pitched its Adobe Real-Time Customer Data Platform under the premise that by working together with Travelport and AWS, the companies have the opportunity to solve complex digital marketing challenges by building the worlds largest unified travel ID. Both Travelport and AWS plan to continue discussions with Adobe about this solution.

The Travelport Accelerator was designed to tackle real industry challenges, and I am very impressed with the innovative ideas that Taguchi and Data Appeal, and so many others, presented to solve the industrys challenges in digital marketing, concludes AWS Travel and Hospitality managing director David Peller. Im confident that, together, AWS and Travelport will impact the future of the industry and transform the way businesses in travel connect with their travel customers.
Today

Partly cloudy this morning, then becoming cloudy during the afternoon. High 54F. Winds SW at 5 to 10 mph.

Tonight

Some clouds. Low 31F. Winds light and variable.

Tomorrow

Partly cloudy skies during the morning hours will give way to occasional showers in the afternoon. High 51F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 70%.
Veteran Philippine journalist Maria Ressa, who will accept the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo on Friday, has battled multiple legal cases and online abuse in her campaign for press freedom under President Rodrigo Duterte.

The former CNN correspondent co-founded investigative news site Rappler in 2012, bringing together multimedia reporting and social media to offer an edgy take on Philippine current events.

Ressa, 58, has been a vocal critic of Duterte and the deadly drug war he launched in 2016, triggering what media advocates say is a grinding series of criminal charges, probes and online attacks against her and Rappler.

She was named a Time Person of the Year in 2018 for her work on press freedom, but a series of arrests and one conviction for cyber libel further grew her international profile and drew more attention to her struggle.

Rappler has had to fight for survival as Dutertes government accused it of violating a constitutional ban on foreign ownership in securing funding, as well as tax evasion.

It has also been accused of cyber libel  a new criminal law introduced in 2012, the same year Rappler was founded.

Duterte has attacked the website by name, calling it a fake news outlet, over a story about one of his closest aides.

Though the government has said that it has nothing to do with any of the cases against her, press freedom advocates disagree.

Yet through the campaign against her, Ressa, who is also a US citizen, has remained based in the Philippines and continued to speak out against Dutertes government despite the risks.

Ressa is on bail pending an appeal against a conviction last year in a cyber libel case, for which she faces up to six years in prison.

It is one of seven cases she is fighting after two cyber libel suits were dismissed earlier this year.

 Threats and abuse 

Ressas position at the head of the Rappler news site meant getting, by her own estimate, up to 90 abusive messages per hour online at one point towards the end of 2016.

The threats came in the months after Duterte took power and launched his narcotics crackdown that rights groups estimate has killed tens of thousands of people.

Rappler was among the domestic and foreign media outlets that published shocking images of the killings and questioned its legal basis.

International Criminal Court judges have authorised a full-blown investigation into a possible crime against humanity during the bloody campaign.

It was an entirely new set of threats for Ressa, who was a veteran of conflict zones before co-founding Rappler.

As CNNs former bureau chief in Manila and Jakarta, Ressa specialised in terrorism, where she tracked the links between global networks like Al-Qaeda and militants in Southeast Asia.

The Princeton graduate later returned to the Philippines to serve as news chief at the nations top broadcaster ABS-CBN, which has also fallen foul of the Duterte administration.

Ressas new book How to stand up to a dictator is due to be released ahead of the countrys 2022 presidential elections, which Duterte is not allowed to contest due to constitutional term limits, although he is planning to run for the Senate.

But the son and namesake of former dictator Ferdinand Marcos has a commanding lead among front runners for the top job.

After the Nobel Prize was announced in October, Ressa was defiant in her defence of her battle for freedom of expression and independent journalism.

What we have to do as journalists is just hold the line, she said.
This is a big achievement, a great moment for us. We are seeing that for genocide you can seek justice anywhere, and we are grateful for that, says Tun Khin, president of Burmese Rohingya Organisation UK (BROUK), an NGO. His enthusiastic reaction follows the Argentine judiciarys decision, announced on November 26, to open an investigation into genocide committed against the Rohingya in Myanmar (Burma). The procedure has been triggered under the universal jurisdiction of Argentine courts, following a complaint filed by BROUK in November 2019. For Tun Khin, the preliminary hearing before the Court of Appeal of Buenos Aires last August was a milestone. For the first time, we are giving testimony at a court. There is a chance we can get justice, he says. I have faced restriction and discrimination. I could not move around in Burma without a permit. I have seen my elder brothers waiting to get a permit to get married, my fatherland being confiscated by the military. That gives me a little bit of [relief] that the judge listened.

Six women also testified remotely from Coxs Bazaar, Bangladesh, where they live in a refugee camp. Aged in their twenties, they described the violence committed by the Burmese army in 2017 in their villages in Arakan province, western Myanmar. They spoke of the rapes they were subjected to, their relatives killed before their eyes, their villages burned.

From institutional discrimination to genocidal intent

The Rohingya minority has been the target of institutional discrimination for decades in Myanmar, particularly under the 1982 Citizenship Law. As Muslims in a majority Buddhist country, the Rohingya are considered illegal migrants from neighbouring Bangladesh. The countrys 2012 democratic transition has been accompanied by increased violence against them. In 2017, following attacks on police stations by Rohingya insurgents, the Burmese military conducted brutal reprisals against Rohingya villages, causing more than 700,000 people to flee to Bangladesh. The United Nations called the operations ethnic cleansing and accused the army of genocidal intent.

For Tomas Ojea Quintana, the lawyer of BROUK and the six women, the case could progress quickly with the first hearings, notably of Tun Khin, by the end of the year in Buenos Aires. This is an achievement for this jurist who knows the situation in Arakan very well. As a former UN special rapporteur for human rights in Myanmar between 2008 and 2014, he constantly sounded the alarm, particularly on the situation of the Rohingya.

Fighting a common enemy

The Argentine judiciarys decision comes ten months after the February 1 military coup in Myanmar. The army, which had ruled the country with an iron fist between 1962 and 2011, ended a decade of democratic transition (2011-2021) by overthrowing the elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi. Since then, she has been detained in a secret location and was sentenced on December 6 by a military court to four years in jail for inciting an uprising. The sentence was reduced by half the same day, by decision of General Min Aung Hlaing, head of the military junta. Prosecuted in several other cases, Aung San Suu Kyi could face more than 100 years in prison.

For the past ten months, fighting has been increasing throughout the country. More than 7,800 people have been arrested and 839 killed by the junta, according to the Association for Assistance to Political Prisoners, a Burmese NGO based in Thailand. A whole generation, those who grew up during the decade of democratization, are fighting the return of the army. This Spring Revolution is also bringing about a change in the perception of ethnic minorities, especially the Rohingya, according to Aung Myo Min, Minister of Human Rights of the Government of National Unity (GNU), formed by opponents of the military coup. Many people thought the Rohingya made up the story but after the coup, many people in the cities and [other] areas never experienced the human rights violations like right now, says Tun Khin. It was the first time they saw soldiers shooting into the crowd, the first time they saw dead bodies and houses being burnt down. So it is a shock. And they realize it is done by the military and they recall prior accusations, and so those accusations were true and reliable. Now we are fighting a common enemy.

Who will defend the Burmese State before the ICJ?

The contrast with the scenes in December 2019 is stark. Images of Aung San Suu Kyi and Min Aung Hlaing were then painted side by side on large posters in the streets of Rangoon, the economic capital, as a sign of support against the accusations of genocide made by the UN. The majority of Burmas population, despising the Rohingya, stood united behind the army and the head of government, outraged by these accusations from abroad.

On December 10, 2019, Aung San Suu Kyi listened impassively to the judges of the International Court of Justice (ICJ). This court based in The Hague had been seized by Gambia, acting on behalf of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) under the 1948 Convention on the Prevention of Genocide. The 1991 Nobel Peace Prize laureate took the floor to defend her countrys policy, denying any genocidal intent in the violence committed by the military against the Rohingya community. Now she is a prisoner of those she defended at the time.

Who will come to take her place on behalf of Myanmar at the ICJ hearing scheduled for January? Both the military junta and the GNU claim to be the legitimate representatives of Myanmar. At its December 1 meeting, the UN accreditation committee did not make a decision, so the issue remains pending until the next UN General Assembly in September 2022. Gambias lawyer, Arsalan Suleman, is not commenting on this highly symbolic and political issue. But he assures us that the coup has had no impact on the ICJ proceedings. On January 23, 2020, the ICJ asked the Burmese authorities to put in place measures to prevent further violence against the Rohingya. According to Suleman, Myanmar has submitted the reports required by the court on time. Since the coup, Arakan has been one of the quietest regions in the country, notes International Crisis Group analyst Richard Horsey, who adds that the Burmese army is too busy elsewhere.

Support of the UN Mechanism

We will fully cooperate with all efforts that make the perpetrators accountable, says the GNUs minister of human rights. The objective of his tiny team, he says, is to collect and collate as much evidence as possible of abuses committed by army units in the country. We have received thousands of cases and we secure them in order to prepare for possible legal proceedings. We used the human rights defenders network that we knew before. We try to have the victims interviewed by [them] but it is complex and dangerous.

This painstaking task is also being done by the Independent Investigative Mechanism for Myanmar (IIMM), established by the UN Human Rights Council in 2018 to ensure the collection and preservation of evidence of crimes committed in Myanmar. It is an asset on which Tomas Quintana Ojea also intends to rely before the Argentine judiciary: It has most of the evidence that prove the crimes committed in Rakhine [formerly Arakan]. We are pushing for the court and the prosecutor to engage with them. IIMM has of course been established to support these kind of cases.
France will open classified police files from the Algerian war 15 years ahead of schedule in order to look the truth in the eyes, the government announced on Friday.

The files cover judicial proceedings by the French police and military forces during the 1954-1962 war of independence.

They are likely to confirm widespread use of torture and extra-judicial killings by French forces.

We have things to rebuild with Algeria. They can only be rebuilt on the truth, said Culture Minister Roselyne Bachelot on BFMTV.

I want this question  which is troubling, aggravating, and where falsifiers of history are at work  I want us to be able to look it in the eyes. We cant build a national story on a lie, Bachelot added.

The announcement comes as France seeks to defuse a major diplomatic crisis between the two countries.

It was triggered in October when President Emmanuel Macron accused Algerias political-military system of rewriting history and fomenting hatred towards France.

 Never fear the truth 

The trauma of the Algerian War has poisoned French politics for more than half a century.

A key strand of todays far-right nationalism has its roots in the war and former president Charles de Gaulles abrupt decision to grant Algeria independence in 1962  for which he faced assassination bids and attempted military coups.

Asked about the likelihood that incidents of torture will be uncovered in the archives, Bachelot said: It is in the interest of the country that they are recognised.

We should never fear the truth. We must put it in context.

Macron, Frances first leader born after the colonial era, has made a priority of reckoning with its past and forging a new relationship with former colonies.

He has recognised the killing of anti-colonial activists by French forces during the war, including Algerian lawyer Ali Boumendjel and communist activist Maurice Audin.

Macron also in October condemned inexcusable crimes during a 1961 crackdown against Algerian pro-independence protesters in Paris, during which police led by a former Nazi collaborator killed dozens of demonstrators and threw their bodies into the river Seine.

 No apology 

A report commissioned by the president earlier this year urged a truth commission over the Algerian war.

However, Macron has ruled out an official apology  such a move could give ammunition to his far-right opponents in next years presidential election.

And despite his efforts at reconciliation, Macron has triggered one of the worst diplomatic crises with Algeria in years with his remarks about the current government, reported by Le Monde in October.

Speaking to descendants of independence fighters, Macron also questioned whether Algeria had existed as a nation before the French invasion in the 1800s.

It came a month after Paris also sharply reduced visa quotas for North African citizens.

Algeria responded by withdrawing its ambassador and banning French military planes from its airspace, which they regularly use for anti-jihadist operations in the region.
The UN on Friday labelled as deeply disturbing a report by a London panel of lawyers and rights experts accusing China of genocide against its Uyghur minority.

UN rights office spokesman Rupert Colville said the agency had not verified the findings presented in Britain on Thursday and did not comment on the conclusion that China had committed genocide through population control measures.

But he told reporters in Geneva that the informal panel, set up at the request of exile group the World Uyghur Congress, had brought to light more information that is deeply disturbing in relation to the treatment of Uyghurs and other Muslim and ethnic minorities in Xinjiang.

He said credit was due to the many victims or witnesses who took great risk in coming forward, stressing that it was extremely important therefore to give them full protection from any reprisals.

Nine lawyers and human rights experts were involved in the London panel and heard allegations of torture, rape and inhumane treatment at two evidence sessions this year.

The tribunal, which has no powers of sanction or enforcement, concluded that Chinas rulers intended to destroy a significant part of the Muslim Uyghur minority through population control measures and as such had committed genocide.

Beijing dismissed its findings, and said the World Uyghur Congress had paid for liars, bought rumours and gave false testimony in an attempt to concoct a political tool to smear China.

Colville said the UN rights office investigators had similarly identified patterns of arbitrary detention and ill-treatment in institutions, coercive labour practices and an erosion of social and cultural rights in general.

He stressed the need for an independent and comprehensive assessment of rights abuse allegations in Xinjiang.

The UN rights office was finalising its own assessment, he said, and its conclusions were likely to be published in the coming weeks.

UN rights chief Michelle Bachelet has for years been asking Beijing to provide her and other independent observers with meaningful and unfettered access to the region, but Colville said so far no such visit had been made possible.
Customized Gift Baskets: Gifts for Pinoys this Holiday 2021

Christmas is inarguably one of the most community-fueled annual events all over the world. Because giving holiday gifts is such a routine and yearly task that many, especially the holiday-loving Filipinos, put a lot of thought and effort intoit can definitely feel like its harder each year to think of fresh gift ideas and unique gifts.





You might ask, how can you step up your yearly gift-giving checklistwhether for personal or work use? Well, in this very tumultuous time, you can try gifting something practical yet whimsical at the same time.





Customized Gift Baskets: Gifts for Pinoys this Holiday 2021

image from pexels.com

A customized gift basket: whats that?





Imagine receiving a cake on your birthday, and when you open it, it says your name and a list of all the people wanting to greet you on your special day. Definitely more touching than a regular chocolate cake, right? Thats what customized gifts are, essentially! They can come in many forms, such as the customized birthday cake, orone of the best kindsa customized gift basket.





Customized Gift Baskets: Gifts for Pinoys this Holiday 2021





For the boss looking for a special way to motivate employees, for the friend wanting to reach out, or that partner who wants to make their beloved feel more specialA customized gift basket makes your recipient feel unique and shows that you put thought into the gift. Gift baskets can be made out of anything that is most special to your recipient. If your giftee is more of the practical type, you can put in food and grocery items for their home. Or, if theyre more lighthearted and upbeat, why not add in self-care items, and indulgent comfort treats like chocolate and wine?





After choosing what to put into your gift basket, you can make it even more unique by adding simple decorations. Some like to print Christmas cards with their faces on it (if you got it, why not flaunt it, right?), and some opt for a simple heartfelt message for their loved ones. In the corporate world, companies can also incorporate their branding into the gift baskets, making their employees feel a deeper connection to their community.





Where can you customize your gifts?





You might be surprised that small details make up most of what makes gifts unique. Though, its not always easy to look for a place who can create a gift basket based on your needs. Most of the time, stores sell pre-made deals you can choose from. These are convenient but lack that extra oomph to make your gift special.





Customized Gift Baskets: Gifts for Pinoys this Holiday 2021





Luckily for many of us, there are gift delivery services that make this task possible! SpeedRegalo, a Philippine-based gift delivery servicefor examplemakes it possible for individuals anywhere in the world to pick items in their gift baskets. SpeedRegalo also offers affordable personalized gifts, plus you can order gifts online, and have them delivered nationwide in the Philippines.





Love can be expressed in many ways, but gifts are a proven and tested formula for showing your affection. More and more, people are becoming more creative with gift ideas. Customized gift baskets are an awesome way to make your gifts for your parents, loved ones, boyfriend or girlfriend, even employees and clients, stand out!





Want to learn more about customized gifts?

You can send SpeedRegalo an email at hello@speedregalo.ph

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Follow them on Instagram: @speedregaloinc
SBS has officially unveiled the Kdrama lineup for 2022, which includes Lee Je Hoon's "Taxi Driver" and a new project written by 'Kingdom' writer Kim Eun Hee.

The broadcast network announces the return of their top-rating series as well as new Kdramas in the coming year.

Kim Nam Gil's New Drama Included in SBS' 2022 TV Program Lineup

Although SBS recently released a captivating and entertaining series this December with Choi Woo Shik and Kim Da Mi's "Our Beloved Summer" and "Now, We Are Breaking Up" starring Song Hye Kyo and Jang Ki Yong who is currently generating more hype and viewership since it debuted, the network teases fans with new Kdramas set to be released in 2022.

The lineup starts with Kim Nam Gil and Kim So Jin's "Through the Darkness."

Slated to premiere on January 14, the thriller mystery series is based on the novel of the same name co-written by Kwon Il Yong and Go Na Moo.

It follows the story of Song Ha Young, known as South Korea's first criminal profiler, working under the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency's Scientific Investigation of Criminal Behavior Analysis team.

"Through the Darkness" highlights the challenges he faces meeting and looking into the hearts of serial killers.

Meanwhile, Kim So Jin took on the character of Mobile Investigation Unit team leader Yoon Tae Goo who has an animal-like instinct and is known for handling difficult cases.

'Why Oh Soo Jae?' Starring Seo Hyun Jin and Hwang In Yeop

Joining the list of SBS Kdramas for 2022 is the melodrama "Why Oh Soo Jae."

Helmed and written by the genius behind "Dr. Romantic," Park Soo Jin and Kim Ji Eun, it depicts the story of a woman who falls in love with a younger man.

"Why Oh Soo Jae" cast members also include Seo Hyun Jin, Hwang In Yeop, Bae In Hyuk, veteran actor Heo Joon Ho and more.

The upcoming Kdrama is set to debut sometime in March 2022.

Ahn Hyo Seop and Kim Sejeong's 'The Office Blind Date'

Following his successful historical fantasy Kdrama "Lovers of the Red Sky," Ahn Hyo Seop is making a comeback with another highly anticipated series, "The Office Blind Date," which is based on the webtoon of the same name.

The South Korean heartthrob will portray Kang Tae Mu, a third-generation chaebol and his complicated office romance with Kim Sejeong, who took on the role of Shin Ha Ri.

Lee Joon Gi and Kim Ji Eun's 'Again My Life'

Another actor who is making a comeback to the small screen is Lee Joon Gi and his fresh teamed up with Kim Ji Eun for the forthcoming series "Again My Life."

He will transform into a hot-heated prosecutor named Kim Hee Woo, who meets her unfortunate fate but returns for vengeance.

"Again My Life" release date is scheduled for the first quarter of 2022.

'Taxi Driver 2'

Probably the much-awaited SBS series that is set to return for a sequel is none other than Lee Je Hoon's Kdrama "Taxi Driver."

According to outlets, viewers could expect familiar faces, including the versatile actor who will reprise his role as Kim Do Ki.

Rumored to join "Taxi Driver 2" are Esom, Kim Eui Sung, and Pyo Ye Jin, but SBS and the drama have yet to confirm this.

'Kingdom' Writer Kim Eun Hee Returns to SBS after 8 Years

Lastly, SBS also announced the return of Kim Eun Hee, who is the creator behind "Signal" and the blockbuster hit Kdrama "Kingdom."

Her last project with the broadcast network was in 2014 with Son Hyun Joo and Park Yoochun in "Three Days."

According to a representative, they are "currently in positive negotiations for Kim Eun Hee's new project in 2022."

IN CASE YOU MISSED: 6 Non-Romantic K-Dramas To Watch this 2021 If You are Not Into Heart Fluttering Love Stories

KDramastars owns this article

Geca Wills wrote this
Netflix unveils a glimpse of Gong Yoo and Bae Doona's team-up alongside the elite space crew in the highly anticipated Kdrama "The Silent Sea."

The streaming giant released a sneak peek of the upcoming sci-fi series featuring an electrifying main trailer.

The two-minute and 15-second teaser starts with the team's journey as they head to the abandoned lunar base.

'The Silent Sea' Trailer: Gong Yoo, Bae Doona and the Special Team Face a Deadly Mission

Set in 2075, Korea Space Aviation Administration's resource team leader Kim Jae Sun, played by the "Squid Game" actor Heo Sung Tae, sought the help of the astrobiologist Song Ji An, portrayed by Bae Doona, to take part in a special mission.

Song Ji An was stunned to hear the location of their assignment, the Balhae Station, often referred to as "the silent sea."

The space crew was briefed to undergo a top mission: to retrieve an important sample from the abandoned lunar station and return to the earth safely.

Gong Yoo took on the role of team leader Han Yoon Jae, with senior engineer Ryu Tae Seok, portrayed by Lee Joon.

Joining the elite space crew is Gong Soo Hyuk (Lee Moo Saeng), the head of security, team doctor Hong Ga Young (Gong Soo Hyuk) and spaceship pilot Kim Sun (Lee Sung Wook.)

After a successful take-off, the group's unexpected nightmare begins.

"The Silent Sea" trailer showcases how the special team enters the abandoned lunar base, seeing corpses and mysteries unveiling right before their eyes.

"We need to do what we're told and focus on the mission," team leader Han Yoon Jae mentions to the team.

However, Song Ji An and the rest of the space team will face a deadly mission.

"What if the government report wasn't true?" the astrobiologist wonders, adding, "There are too many things we don't know."

In the teaser, Han Yoon Jae was heard declaring that they have to leave the base now before things get worse.

'The Silent Sea' Release Date and Everything we Need to Know

The Netflix series is based on the 2014 film "The Sea of Tranquility" written and helmed by Choi Hang Yong, who is also the PD of the upcoming sci-fi Kdrama.

Interestingly, award-winning actor Jung Woo Sung joins the team as "The Silent Sea" executive producer.

In one of the interviews, the South Korean star revealed why he made it into an eight-part episode series.

"I loved the idea so I wanted to make a longer version, and I started to take on the challenge without fear. I've ended up producing it after coming together with this amazing cast," he said.

The same goes for Bae Doona, who also fell in love with the short film, which made her say yes to join the cast.

Moreover, she also hinted that "the project has two 'hidden cards,'" saying that she was mesmerized by it.

"The Silent Sea" release date is set on December 24, exclusively airing on Netflix.

KDramastars owns this article

Geca Wills wrote this
SBS TV's forthcoming Friday and Saturday drama "Through the Darkness" (formerly "Those Who Read the Minds of Evil") starring Kim Nam Gil, Jin Sun Kyu and Kim So Jin teased the fans and potential viewers with a set of stills on December 10.

'Through the Darkness' Features Kim Nam Gil in New Character Stills

"Through the Darkness" follows the story of a criminal profiler who struggles to read the minds of serial killers during a time where serial murders were rapidly increasing.

Actor Kim Nam Gil, one of South Korea's best actors, leads the drama as Song Ha Young, a criminal profiler of the Criminal Behavior Analysis team at Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency.

On December 10, "Through the Darkness" released stills of pensive Kim Nam Gil, who steals attention for his expressive eyes.

In the released stills, Kim Nam Gil investigates a criminal case as a profiler. His neutral expression evokes thousands of emotions, creating a heavier atmosphere. The actor perfectly synchronizes with Song Ha Young's psychology and temperament.

IN CASE YOU MISSED IT: Kim Nam Gil, Kim So Jin, Jin Sun Kyu and More Display Synchronization With Respective Roles in New Drama Script Reading

The production unit of "Through the Darkness" stated that Kim Nam Gil, as a trusted actor, is the center of the drama with excellent acting skills and powerful presence.

"He doesn't not only look after himself but also takes great care of his junior actors, staff and crew," they continued, heaping praises for the actor.

In addition to that, attention is given on how Kim Nam Gil will lead the play dubbed as "SBS TV's well-made crime psychological drama of 2022."

'Through the Darkness' Drama Details and What We Know

Kim Nam Gil's "Through the Darkness" is based on the 2018 non-fiction book of the same name written by Kwon Il Yong and Ko Na Mu, which depicts criminal profiler Kwon's field experiences.

The drama also stars Lee Dae yeon, Kim Won Hae and Jung Man Shik.

YOU MIGHT BE INTERESTED IN: 3 Reasons Why Kim Soo Hyun and Cha Seung Won's 'One Ordinary Day' is Loved By Many

"Though the Darkness" was reported to air in October, but it was later confirmed that it would premiere in the first month of 2022.

The much anticipated crime investigation drama airs for the first time on Friday, January 14, 2022 at 10:00 p.m. KST on SBS TV, following the conclusion of Song Hye Kyo and Jang Ki Yong's hit romance drama "Now, We Are Breaking Up."

Follow KDramaStars for more KMovie, KDrama, and celebrity updates!





KDramaStars owns this article.

Written by Elijah Mully.
MEDFORD, Ore.  An Applegate Valley man accused of murdering his wife before attempting suicide in October has been deemed unfit to proceed with his defense, according to court documents.

54-year-old David Allen Karnes was rushed to the hospital with a self-inflicted gunshot wound on October 20 after members of the Jackson County SWAT team breached his home south of Ruch. Officers reported finding Karnes' estranged wife, 54-year-old Constance Maria Murphy, dead at the scene with visible gunshot wounds.

Karnes remained hospitalized in serious condition for weeks afterward, through his indictment in Murphy's killing. He was released from the hospital and appeared for an arraignment in Jackson County Circuit Court on November 9.

The next court appearance for Karnes was scheduled for February 14, but concerns about his ability to proceed with his defense arose in the meantime.

"The court finds reason to doubt Defendants fitness to proceed by reason of incapacity in this case and, therefore, Defendant may be unable to understand the nature of the proceedings, assist and cooperate with defense counsel, or participate in Defendants defense of the case," read an order signed by Judge Lorenzo Mejia.

Karnes underwent a fitness evaluation on November 10 with Lithia Forensics & Consulting, a Salem-based private practice that specializes in mental health evaluations and consultation. The contents of the evaluation are sealed, but Judge Laura Cromwell issued an order on December 2 declaring Karnes unfit to proceed and suspending criminal proceedings.

Due to Karnes' felony charge of second-degree murder, he could be committed to the Oregon State Hospital in Salem for as many as three years, though it will be shorter if a subsequent evaluation finds him fit to proceed.

Karnes remained in the Jackson County Jail as of Thursday, but Judge Cromwell's order tasks the Sheriff's Office with transporting Karnes to OSH pending further hearings. There is a final hearing set for December 14, and the original pre-trial conference has been canceled.
SHADY COVE, Ore. 

UPDATE: The Jackson County Sheriff's Office reports that 30-year-old Samuel McKown was found dead on Friday.

According to the agency, McKown was in a single-vehicle crash along Highway 234. His next of kin have been notified.

A search and rescue aircraft spotted his truck while helping ground crews and K-9 units search for the missing man. Detectives from the Jackson County Medical Examiner's office and troopers from Oregon State Police are now investigating the crash.

"Thank you to the SAR volunteers that came out to help search," JCSO said. "Our hearts go out to Samuels family. Please respect their privacy in this time of grieving."

(Updated 4:22 p.m. on 12/10/21)

INITIAL REPORT: Jackson County Search & Rescue teams are trying to find 30-year-old Samuel E. McKown, last seen in the Shady Cove area on December 1.

McKown is considered missing and endangered, according to the Sheriff's Office. At the time of his disappearance, McKown was driving a 1989 Nissan truck with Oregon license plate number 361CUG.

A missing poster for McKown described him as a white man, 6-feet tall, about 215 pounds, with blond hair and blue eyes.

If you have seen McKown, please contact Sergeant Shawn Richards at (541) 774-6801 or through Dispatch at (541) 776-7206.
MEDFORD, Ore.  As federal investigators work to piece together what went wrong before a plane crash in Medford that claimed two lives, more details are emerging about the circumstances surrounding the deadly incident. On Thursday, NewsWatch 12 spoke with the lead investigator from the National Transportation Safety Board and a local flight instructor about what we know so far.

On Wednesday, NTSB investigators packed up and hauled away the charred wreckage of the Piper PA-31-350 "Navajo Chieftain" twin-propeller plane, which went down just outside of the Biddle road Airport Chevrolet dealership on Sunday evening.

The wreckage is being brought to up NTSB's regional field office near Seattle so that experts can deconstruct each component, looking for clues. NTSB senior aircraft accident investigator Zoe Keliher said she'll be working closely with experts on the different parts involved.

"Me, a representative from the engine manufacturer and from the airplane manufacturer  those are, respectively, Lycoming Engines and and Piper Aircraft  will be convening up there and doing an entire aircraft examination layout ... tearing down the engines and looking at all aspects of the airplane to see if here's any mechanical anomalies that we could detect," Keliher said.

Meanwhile, Keliher said, specialists in Washington, DC will be looking at radar data, video footage, and audio recordings from the ill-fated flight in an effort to understand what happened prior to impact.

Keliher also confirmed what several other sources NewsWatch 12 spoke to had previously said; that the plane was in Medford for maintenance.

The Piper plane was owned and piloted by 69-year-old Donald Sefton. Both Sefton and the passenger who died in the crash, 67-year-old Valerie Serpa, were from Fallon, Nevada, a small city located east of Reno and Carson City.

According to flight logs, Sefton flew the plane from Fallon to Medford on November 24. Keliher said that Sefton was having the plane serviced at Jet Center, a Medford-based aircraft maintenance company. This was for a relatively minor repair to the Navajo Chieftain's fuel line, according to Keliher.

Sefton did not stay in Medford while his Piper was being serviced, and he returned to Fallon at some point in the intervening days. Sources close to Serpa told NewsWatch 12 that the reason she was with him on the day of the crash was that she had accompanied him on the more than six-hour drive from Fallon back up to Medford so that they could both then fly back.

Though Sefton's plane was being serviced, there are no indications that a malfunction in the plane caused Sunday's crash. Keliher said that the repairs are not currently of significant concern in their investigation.

Some pilots have weighed in with their own theories based on the conditions, air traffic chatter, flight data, and video of the plane crashing into the dealership lot. On Thursday, NewsWatch 12 spoke to Jeffrey Nielsen, a flight instructor and experienced pilot, about what he could see from video and flight data in the minutes just before the crash that claimed two lives.

Nielsen viewed previously unseen footage captured by a security camera at Empire Lockers, which shows Sefton's plane prior to the crash apparently fighting to gain altitude  swooping down into the frame and pulling back up, remaining out of the frame for several long seconds, then reappearing in a terminal loop earthward.

"They told him he was low, so it looked like he was attempting to go back up," said Nielsen. "He must have been awfully low to be able to see him from that camera ... the clouds were about 200-300 feet above the ground, so he had to be low."

Flying is a highly visual activity, Nielsen said, and pilots require a special rating to be be able to fly in fog. When a pilot can't see out the window, they should be looking at instruments like an artificial horizon to tell how they're oriented. If the pilot isn't comfortable flying by instruments, it can quickly become a dangerous situation.

Spatial disorientation of this kind was implicated in a July 2016 crash near Brookings that killed pilot John Belnap, his teenage son, and another high school student.

"Because he can't see out the window, he can't tell which way he is relative to the earth," said Nielsen. "He's only got his instruments to look at  if you trust them, that's what part of the instrument flight rating is  you can manage it."

Whatever caused the crash  mechanical failure, pilot error, or something else entirely  a definitive conclusion will have to wait. The NTSB anticipates having a preliminary report on the crash released within the next two weeks, though a full report detailing the likely cause could take as much as two years to come out.
CORONADO, Calif.  Oregon's regional vaccine safety group gave its blessing Thursday evening for people ages 16 or 17 to receive a booster dose of the Pfizer coronavirus vaccine, Governor Kate Brown's office announced.

Just hours after authorization from the FDA and CDC, the Western States Scientific Safety Review Workgroup provided its confirmation to the governors of Oregon, California, Washington, and Nevada.

With the workgroup's approval granted, the Oregon Health Authority is expected to inform local healthcare providers that administration of booster doses for those 16 and older can begin.

Its great news that now even more Oregonian adolescents are eligible for booster shots, said Governor Kate Brown. We know the measures that are effective in protecting against COVID-19 and variants: vaccinations, boosters, and masks. These measures are key to ending the pandemic and keeping our friends and loved ones safe.

Oregon, Washington, Nevada, and California have had this third step in the process via the COVID-19 Scientific Safety Review Workgroup since October of last year. After authorization from the FDA and recommendation by the CDC, the workgroup has been tasked with going over data to review the safety of coronavirus vaccine-related decisions. The group is made up of peope with experience in immunization and public health.
CENTRAL POINT, Ore.  A student of Crater High School has been taken into custody after officers from the Central Point Police Department investigated a report of "vague threats" made on campus, according to the agency.

Just after 10 p.m. on Thursday, the police department received a report from a student who believed they had overheard another student making threats against Crater High School.

"The comments were overheard in a crowded hallway and by the time the reporting student turned to see who made the comments, they were unable to identify the source of the comments," CPPD said in a statement.

Police began an investigation and have been working with the Central Point School District to ensure the safety of students and staff. CPPD said that it stepped up its presence on school campuses during the investigation.

"Central Point Police Department has two School Resource Officers assigned to the schools and they are both trained in threat assessment and school safety measures," the agency said. "We will continue to update our community on the status of this investigation."

The investigation did lead to the student who prompted the threat report, according to CPPD. After interviewing multiple witnesses and the student involved, officers ultimately determined that the student "made comments that were alarming to others." The student was taken into custody on a charge of first-degree disorderly conduct.

According to Jackson County District Attorney Beth Heckert, the student is a 14-year-old male. Right now, he's scheduled for a hearing at 8:30 a.m. on Monday in juvenile court.

"School District 6 and the Central Point Police Department would like to commend those students who stepped forward to report this incident and/or speak with investigators," the agency said.

"Remember if you 'see something, say something,'" CPPD said earlier in the day. "The Central Point Police Department takes every threat to our schools seriously and the safety and security of every student and staff member in our schools is our primary concern."

Anyone with more information on the case is asked to call CPPD at 541-664-5578.

South Medford High School experienced a similar threat report earlier this week, but Medford Police determined that comments had been taken out of context and did not pursue it as a criminal matter. The recent school shooting at Oxford High School in Michigan has likely elevated both vigilance and anxiety at schools across the country.
A high-speed pursuit and crash in Kenosha Wednesday left three in custody facing a series of charges.

Members of the Kenosha Police Departments Special Investigation Unit had their sights set on a Kenosha residence Wednesday.

As officers began to move in, the targets of an ongoing methamphetamine investigation fled, which led to some tense moments, a high-speed chase and a violent crash before all three were taken into custody.

The Kenosha County District Attorneys Office on Thursday issued several charges against all three  Felix E. Guadarrama, 28, of Waukegan, Ill.; Brandon M. Vice, 34, of Fox Lake, Ill.; and Gregory G. Kloss-Bliznick, 24, of McHenry, Ill.

Guadarrama is charged with a felony count of possession of methamphetamine as a party to a crime and misdemeanor charges of obstructing an officer and possession of drug paraphernalia, while Vice faces the same charges, along with a misdemeanor count of bail jumping.

Kloss-Bliznick, the driver, faces additional felony charges of second-degree recklessly endangering safety and attempting to flee or elude an officer, along with misdemeanor counts of obstructing an officer, possession of THC and possession of drug paraphernalia.

The felony methamphetamine charge carries a maximum prison term of 18 months, two years of extended supervision and a fine of $10,000. The second-degree recklessly endangering charge filed against Kloss-Bliznick carries a possible prison term of five years, five years of extended supervision and a fine of $25,000, while the eluding charge carries a prison term of 18 months, two years extended supervision and a fine of $10,000.

All three defendants, who remained in custody in the Kenosha County Jail, made their initial appearances Thursday afternoon before Commissioner Larry Keating.

According to the criminal complaint, police were conducting surveillance of a residence in the 2000 block of 54th Street in relation to an ongoing drug investigation. A detective stated he had received information about the sale of methamphetamine from that residence.

As officers attempted to stop the vehicle with all three defendants inside, Kloss-Bliznick reportedly sped away into the oncoming eastbound lane on 60th Street, then back to the westbound lane as he approached the intersection of 60th Street and 30th Avenue.

Kloss-Bliznick then ran a red light at that intersection and another at 80th Street and 30th Avenue, where the truck he was operating collided with an eastbound vehicle in the intersection, according to the complaint.

A woman and her 1-year-old child were in the other vehicle, and both escaped injury, the complaint states. The collision disabled the defendants vehicle and sent truck parts airborne across the roadway.

Guadarrama and Vice exited the vehicle and fled westbound on foot, while Kloss-Bliznick attempted to exit before an officer used his Taser and took him into custody. Vice was found in the doorway of a nearby apartment building, while Guadarrama was taken into custody in the mens bathroom of an apartment building in the 8700 block of 32nd Avenue, the report states.

During a search of the truck, police reportedly found a water bong that contained a methamphetamine pipe, along with a digital scale in the center console. Police also retraced the path of where the defendants fled and found a baggy with 7 grams of methamphetamine. Also seized was a pill container with 5.6 grams of methamphetamine, along with .9 grams of methamphetamine in Kloss-Bliznicks possession, the report states.

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FLORENCE, Ore. -- The supply chain crisis has left businesses across the country waiting for essential supplies, including ones on Oregon's coast.

Under normal circumstances, usually it's anywhere from two days to two weeks, and now it's months on end, said Daniel Lofy, the owner of Lofy Construction, about the delays.

Lofy said supply chain shortages have forced him to change the way his business operates.

In the past, we used to start a job when we knew we had most products and continue on doing it. Now, we're at the point where we don't start a job until we have every piece of that job to do the job because we've had some jobs that were held up for six to eight months waiting, Lofy said.

That's because some materials have been delayed for months. For example, Lofy said it normally takes about two weeks to get tile, but now he said it could take several months.

Restaurants are also feeling the strain of supply shortages. In the past, the owner of the Hukilau said he's been able to call suppliers and get food the next day, but now, it's more difficult.

"Some items are up to two weeks out where I can't get get certain things. The crabs been a real issue and sushi items have been a real issue," said Christian Jakobsen, the owner and chef.

Jakobsen said the shortages have impacted the prices of some products.

Meat items have gone up in price. Crab has definitely gone up in price. Sushi items have gone up in price, Jakobsen said.

Jakobsen said the supply struggles started about six months ago.

I can't charge so much or people aren't going to show up. So you know, I've got to raise my prices but I've still got to eat the cost too, Jakobsen said.

Both business owners say customers have been understanding of their supply struggles, likely because it's an issue impacting nearly ever industry on the coast.
EUGENE, Ore. -- More people are flying, and not just for the holidays. Many are itching to go international after months of hunkering down at home due to COVID-19.

But before you book a flight, local travel agents told KEZI 9 News there are some things to keep in mind when traveling to unfamiliar places.

Lauri Quinby, a travel agent at Premier Travel in Eugene, said there are many eager travelers out there.

"People are back traveling internationally, not the same as it was pre-COVID, but people are very excited. We have a lot of people booked into next year into May, June, July, August during the summertime, so people are definitely excited to get back out there," Quinby said.

She said two hot spots for travel right now are Hawaii and Mexico, and domestically, places like Florida and Disneyland.

However, there are some concerns when it comes to traveling to places like Mexico right now. On this website, you can find a list of travel destinations and their current advisory level, including:

LEVEL 1: Exercise normal precautions

LEVEL 2: Exercise increased caution

LEVEL 3: Reconsider travel

LEVEL 4: Do not travel

Mexico is among the countries listed at Level 3. According to the site, this is due to COVID-19, as well as high crime and abduction rates. This means the government is asking you to proceed with caution when it comes to traveling there. To read more about the travel advisory for the country, CLICK HERE.

RELATED: France bans unvaccinated American travels

Despite warnings like these from the government, Mexico is still one of the top choices of places to go for travelers, according to Quinby.

"There's a lot of all-inclusive resorts that people and families really enjoy going. You've prepaid all of your drinks and all of your meals everything so it's a very good way to travel," she said.

Quinby also said when traveling somewhere new, you should talk to a travel agent.

"The countries are open to travel so it's just a matter of what people are comfortable doing. And not everyone is the same," Quinby said.

But there are travelers like Sara Gore who are holding back when it comes to packing their bags and going on a big trip.

"I think there's great value in traveling. I think it's so important, just like learning a second language, when you do that you become a second person and it widens your perspective, and I think it generates tolerance and I think it's really important in this day and age. However, I'm being really careful with traveling, and I think there's too many unknowns with COVID," Gore said.

Quinby also said it's most important right now that travelers know the current COVID-19 situation where they are headed.

"I think the biggest thing is to check with your travel agent, and have at the time that you're considering going somewhere, and seeing what those COVID requirements are and then keeping in mind when you're booking your trip out six months, that things can change," Quinby said.
EUGENE, Ore.  Eugene Springfield Fire responded to three small fires at Hamilton Hall on the University of Oregon campus on Thursday.

The fire marshals office has determined that the fires were set intentionally, and the University of Oregon Police Department is investigating. A $1,000 reward is being offered for information leading to the identification of the person or people responsible.

At about 1:10 a.m., firefighters headed to campus after a fire alarm notification at the residence hall. Students evacuated the building after hearing the alert.

Crews put out the fires in the basement and searched the area to make sure there were no more fires in the building. Officials said the fires were contained and did not cause significant damage. No injuries were reported.

This isn't the first time fires have been reported at the hall. Police said there have been other similar incidents at Hamilton Hall over fall term, but the causes for those fires remain undetermined.

Police will be providing enhanced monitoring at the hall for the next day and a half at least

If you have any information, contact police at 541-346-2919 or the anonymous tip line at 541-525-8178.
AIB Highstreet Branch, partner of the GOAL Mile, has teamed up with GOAL CEO Siobhan Walsh to encourage communities across Kilkenny to step up together and take part in the GOAL Mile this Christmas season.

For over 40 years, the GOAL Mile has seen tens of thousands of people run or walk a mile to raise funds for GOAL at Christmas to enable its work supporting vulnerable communities in 14 countries across the globe. In Ireland a mile is simply 2,000 steps but for many in the developing world it takes thousands of steps to simply access water, get to school or even reach a hospital.

AIB is committed to building sustainable communities. In supporting GOAL and encouraging communities across the island of Ireland to step up together and take part in the GOAL Mile this Christmas, AIB is helping reach vulnerable communities already suffering deeply from the impact of crises, poverty and climate change.

People can take part in the GOAL Mile in a number of different ways, be it in one of the more than 150 GOAL Miles events being organised in Ireland and internationally or simply by registering with GOAL at www.goalmile.org and completing a mile in any place, at any time during the month of December.

The GOAL Mile location in Kilkenny is at Market Street, Thomastown. AIB will also be supporting GOAL by encouraging people to take part in the GOAL Mile through a radio, print and on-line advertising campaign asking people to step up together this Christmas season.

The GOAL Mile, which is already a well-established event in many of the communities that we serve, helps transform the lives of the worlds most vulnerable people," said AIB Branch Manager Jason Dempsey.

"This year we are committed to working with GOAL to make it the biggest GOAL Mile yet and are asking people across Kilkenny to step up together to complete a mile for GOAL. In doing so, together we can help GOAL reach vulnerable communities that are already suffering deeply from the impact of crises, poverty and climate change.

GOAL CEO Siobhan Walsh said: Hundreds of communities across Ireland already know and love the GOAL Mile. They show incredible compassion for communities in need across the world that this event supports. GOAL helped more than 14 million people in Africa, the Middle East and Latin America last year. We could not have achieved this without the continued support of the Irish people.

We look forward to AIBs 9,000+ staff and wide customer base standing with GOAL as we continue our mission to help communities to respond to and recover from humanitarian crises.

People can step up together to take part in the GOAL Mile by visiting www.goalmile.org. They can register to take part in one of the hundreds of AIB GOAL Mile events taking place across the island of Ireland, sign-up to organise a new event, or pledge to take their 2,000 steps at any time throughout the month of December. Donations to GOAL can be made at www.goalglobal.org/donate.
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New photographs show a planet orbiting around a two-star system, something thought to be impossible until now.

B Centauri  which can be seen with the naked eye  is the hottest and biggest planet-hosting star system found to date.

Some scientists believed planets were not able to orbit stars as hot as B Centauri before the images were caught by the European Southern Observatorys Very Large Telescope (ESOs VLT).

The two-star system is around 325 light years away and has at least six times the mass of the Sun.

Its main star is more than three times as hot as our sun.

The VLT is the flagship facility for European ground-based astronomy and is the worlds most advanced optical telescope.

It includes four unit telescopes which work together to allow astronomers to see up to 25 times finer than with individual telescopes.

It has already witnessed new discoveries, including the orbiting of B Centauri, and has provided the first image of an extrasolar planet, tracked individual stars moving around the supermassive black hole at the centre of the Milky Way and has seen the afterglow of the furthest known Gamma-Ray burst.

The planet was seen orbiting B Centauri at 100 times the distance Jupiter orbits the Sun  and pictures show it at different stages of its orbit around the stars.





Markus Janson, an astronomer at Stockholm University in Sweden, said: Finding a planet around b Centauri was very exciting since it completely changes the picture about massive stars as planet hosts.

B-type stars are generally considered as quite destructive and dangerous environments, so it was believed that it should be exceedingly difficult to form large planets around them.

It will be an intriguing task to try to figure out how it might have formed, which is a mystery at the moment.
Dublin Airport is estimating that an average of 45,000 people per day will pass through its doors from Friday December 17th to Tuesday January 4th 2022.

It compares to an average of 12,000 passengers per day during the Christmas season last year, and 77,000 in the same period in 2019.

Although it marks a significant increase on numbers in December 2020, the total 850,000 passengers expected to come through Dublin Airport this Christmas still marks a 42% drop from pre-pandemic numbers.

Almost 1.5 million flew in and out of the airport in 2019, before Covid-19 caused havoc for air travel.

The busiest day during the Christmas season this year is expected to be December 19th, followed closely by December 23rd.

New travel restrictions introduced for arrivals into Ireland, amid fears over the Omicron variant, have made predicting passenger numbers more difficult, Dublin Airport said in a statement.

It is expected that some passengers who have already booked will decide not to travel.

Dublin Airport has asked those who do travel this Christmas to be mindful of the Covid-19 rules.

Face masks are mandatory at Dublin Airport and must be worn when in the terminal buildings the statement said.

In addition, social distancing protocols should be observed and there are more than 1,000 hand sanitisers located throughout the Dublin Airport campus.

Anyone planning to greet passengers should arrange to meet them outside the terminal buildings.

There are new meeting points just outside Terminal 1 and at the glass walkway between the Terminal 2 car park and arrivals.

It is recommended that anyone who is collecting passengers at Dublin Airport plan and arrange pick-ups in advance.
I'm currently a senior majoring in broadcast journalism and minoring in political science. I'm a fan of all St. Louis sports, Oasis and pretty much any Kurt Russell film. Feel free to reach out to me at mgp89g@umsystem.edu or on Twitter @MattPasz2000.

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Japanese Foreign Minister Yoshimasa Hayashi speaks during a press conference after holding a bilateral meeting with his Paraguayan counterpart Euclides Acevedo Candia in Tokyo, in this Nov. 22 photo. AP-Yonhap



By Jung Da-min



With Foreign Minister Chung Eui-yong and his Japanese counterpart Yoshimasa Hayashi set to attend the G7 summit of foreign and development ministers to be held in the U.K. over the weekend, political watchers here are paying attention to whether the two ministers will sit down with each other for the first time since the Japanese minister took office in early November.



Korea has been invited to the G7 foreign ministers' meeting along with other guest countries including Australia, India and South Africa. The Korean foreign ministry said Wednesday that Chung will attend the meeting on Saturday and Sunday.





Foreign Minister Chung Eui-yong speaks during the first session of the 2021 Seoul UN Peacekeeping Ministerial at Grand Hyatt Seoul, Dec. 7. Yonhap
Kendallville, IN (46755)

Today

Cloudy and windy. A few flurries or snow showers possible. High around 25F. Winds WSW at 25 to 35 mph..

Tonight

Mostly cloudy skies. Low 12F. Winds WSW at 15 to 25 mph.
Angola, IN (46703)

Today

Windy conditions and snow showers. Morning high of 26F with temps falling to near 15. Winds WSW at 20 to 30 mph. Chance of snow 40%. Winds could occasionally gust over 40 mph..

Tonight

Overcast. A few flurries or snow showers possible. Low 12F. Winds WSW at 15 to 25 mph.
BURLINGTON  A band teacher at an elementary school in Wheatland in Kenosha County has been charged with sexually assaulting a 16-year-old girl and possession of child pornography in Burlington.

Zachary Wendt, 38, who lives in Burlington and was arrested by Burlington police, is being held in the Racine County Jail on $500,000 bond, following an initial court appearance Thursday on six felonies and two misdemeanors.

Wendt is charged with:

Two felony counts of sexual assault of a child by a person who works or volunteers with children.

Three felony counts of possession of child pornography.

One felony count of exposing genitals or other intimate parts.

Two misdemeanor counts of sexual intercourse with a child aged 16 or older.

If convicted on all charges, he could face up to 75 years in prison.

A criminal complaint issued by the Racine County District Attorneys Office describes the alleged victim as a 16-year-old girl who knew Wendt through Musicology, a retail store in Burlington where Wendt was offering music lessons.

The store, located at 452 N. Pine St., lists Wendt on its website among four music teachers associated with the business. Officials at Musicology could not be reached for comment Thursday.

Allegations

According to the criminal complaint, the 16-year-old girl told police that she, too, provided music lessons at Musicology, and that Wendt asked her out on a date because he thought she was 20 years old. After she told him that she was only 16, the complaint states, he continued pursuing her.

Wendt is accused of taking the girl to his home in the 600 block of Meadow Lane, getting her drunk and then having sexual intercourse with her. The complaint later states that in either May or June (the 16-year-old) had been drinking and walked over to Wendts home, continued to drink with him and had sexual intercourse.

The girl told investigators that the two also engaged in sexting on their cellphones and that she sent him nude photos of herself.

According to the complaint, Wendt urged the girl not to say anything to anyone because he would lose his children. In exchange, he allegedly offered to send students to her for music lessons.

The complaint indicates that police executed a search warrant at Wendts home and seized cellphones and a laptop computer.

Burlington Police Sgt. Robert Jones said in a statement Thursday that the police received a tip via the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children about a male schoolteacher having a possibly sexual relationship with a 16-year-old girl.

After interviewing the alleged victim, her mother and others, Jones said, police took Wendt into custody.

As this is an ongoing investigation, the sergeant continued, the Burlington Police Department is asking potential victims related to this case to reach out.

School and court

Wendt serves as a band teacher on the faculty at Wheatland Center School, located in the Town of Wheatland in Kenosha County.

During an initial appearance Thursday in Racine County Circuit Court, defense attorney Gregory Holdahl argued for a low pre-trial bond by noting that Wendt has no previous criminal history and that he has a job.

However, Holdahl added, hes obviously not going to be able to go back to that employer.

Court Commissioner John Bjelajac set bond at $500,000  twice what the district attorney had suggested.

Wendt is due back in court Dec. 16 for a preliminary hearing.

Wheatland School District Administrator Marty McGinley sent a note home to parents Wednesday announcing that an unidentified employee had been arrested for an alleged situation. McGinley wrote that the allegations stem from circumstances outside the Wheatland district and not involving any Wheatland student.

McGinley also announced that a school band concert scheduled for Thursday was being postponed due to the circumstances surrounding this investigation. McGinley told parents that the unidentified employee has been suspended without pay.

Contacted at his office Thursday, McGinley declined to comment.

The schools website identifies Wendt as a band teacher and as band director. A Milwaukee TV station last year featured Wendt for recording a video of himself playing several musical instruments in a unique rendition of Bohemian Rhapsody by the rock band Queen.

Wheatland Center School, 6606 368th Ave., has about 580 students in kindergarten through eighth grade. It is not affiliated with the Burlington Area School District, although its mailing address is in Burlington.

McGinley assured parents that counselors and other officials would be available to answer any student questions about the situation.

As a school district, our first and most important responsibility is to ensure the safety of our students, he wrote. We will continue to do everything we can to make that happen.

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Kristine Coshuns son Collin was on the floor, screaming, crying and vomiting repeatedly. There was nothing she could do. She'd gotten him to the hospital. But no one was available to help him.
Two residents who live in the area of 26th Street and 23rd Avenue in Kenosha described their neighborhood as a mostly quiet one.

But early Friday morning, that quiet was quickly interrupted by the sounds of gunfire  and that gunfire ended in the 16th homicide in Kenosha County this year.

Kenosha Police Sgt. Leo Viola confirmed early Friday morning that police continue to investigate a fatal shooting that left a 35-year-old male dead.

According to a press release, officers responded at approximately 7:13 a.m. to the area after receiving several reports of shots being fired.

Officers provided lifesaving efforts until relieved by Kenosha Fire Department paramedics. Lifesaving efforts were unsuccessful and the victim was pronounced dead on scene. The Kenosha County medical examiner was called to the scene.

The victims identity was not being released as of Friday afternoon pending notification of next of kin.

There was no suspect in custody as of Friday morning. Kenosha Police investigators are actively investigating this case.

Awakened by gunshots

Ralph Covelli, who has lived on 23rd Avenue since 1960, said he heard several gunshots just after 7 a.m.

It was about five after seven, and I heard, boom, boom, boom, boom, probably about seven or eight like that, he said. About 45 minutes later, I came out to check the front porch because I was supposed to have something delivered today, and I see all these (police) squads all over the place, and they were roping everything off.

I didnt know what was going on. A short while ago I walked over here and could see what it is.

Covelli never would have expected the commotion on his block, he said.

Its real quiet, he said. Im really surprised someone gets killed around here. We dont have problems here.

Another nearby resident, Joe ODay, gave a similar account as Covelli.

It was about 12 after seven, and I heard five or six shots, I think, in quick succession, he said. I didnt know it was shots when I first heard it, but it didnt seem to match anything else. And a neighbor driving by said it was a shooting.

Viola said that Bose, Harvey, Jefferson and Grant Elementary Schools and Washington Middle School were not officially locked down during the incident, but all five buildings had limited access for a brief period of time.

Tanya Ruder, chief communications officer for Kenosha Unified School District, said in an email the schools were informed by police at 9:13 a.m. Friday that there no longer was a threat and that schools could return to business as usual.

Parents at the affected schools received two messages from the district. Teachers and staff assisted with getting all students safely into the buildings as the school day began, and all others were kept indoors until the situation was deemed safe, the message said.

Anyone with information regarding the investigation is asked to contact the Kenosha Police Department Detective Bureau at 262-605-5203 or the Kenosha Area Crime Stoppers at 262-656-7333.

This is a developing story. More information will be posted as it becomes available.
Wisconsin water utilities and local governments are joining industry groups seeking to stop the state from limiting toxic forever chemicals in the states drinking water.

The Municipal Environmental Groups water division  a trade association whose members include water utilities in Madison, Green Bay, Sun Prairie and 66 other communities  is urging the Department of Natural Resources to scrap rules developed over the past two years that would add certain fluorinated compounds to the list of regulated drinking water contaminants.

In comments submitted Tuesday, the group says the state should wait for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to adopt federal standards.

The Wisconsin Rural Water Association, which represents 586 municipal water and sewage utilities, and the League of Wisconsin Municipalities made similar requests, echoing comments made by industry groups including Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce, the Wisconsin Paper Council and the American Chemistry Council.

The EPA has announced plans to set limits for PFOA and PFOS, two of the thousands of synthetic chemicals collectively known as PFAS that have been found in public and private wells across the state.

However, those standards would likely not be in effect before 2026. By then it would be too late to spend an estimated $150 million in funding allocated through the new federal infrastructure law, said division administrator Darsi Foss.

The utility groups argue that the DNRs proposed standards, based on recommendations from the Department of Health Services, do not account for the costs and benefits in the way the EPAs would.

MEG-Water is concerned with the Departments proposal to establish drinking water standards without weighing the relative costs and benefits of those standards and the precedent that this may set for establishing future state drinking water standards for other emerging contaminants, the group wrote in comments submitted Tuesday.

Both trade groups say water utilities are under pressure to keep rates affordable in the face of expensive challenges, such as replacing lead service lines and aging water mains, and must already remove contaminants like radium, arsenic and nitrate. It argues newer contaminants like PFAS should get the same scrutiny and analysis as those other contaminants.

Found in wells

Tests have found PFAS in all of Madisons 23 municipal wells, though none are above the proposed limit. The city has taken one East Side well offline while exploring treatment options.

A spokesperson for the Madison Water Utility said that while utility leaders agree with many of the trade groups comments, including the need for a cost-benefit analysis, they support immediate state regulation.

Both federal and state standards will eventually be implemented, Marcus Pearson said. We know that, but we presume a federal standard could take years to implement.

Madison Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway said she supports state regulations, but urged the DNR to hold polluters accountable.

While water utilities are faced with addressing the contamination, they did not cause the pollution, Rhodes-Conway wrote. The best policy would be to require producers of PFAS containing products to take responsibility for remediation.

The state regulations, which received broad public support at a Dec. 1 hearing, are expected to come before the DNRs policy board in February before heading to the Republican-controlled Legislature, which has the power to alter or kill them.

Health problems

Manufactured for decades under brand names like Scotchguard and Teflon, the synthetic chemicals have been linked to health problems including low birth weight, cancer and liver disease, and have been shown to make vaccines less effective. Though discontinued in 2015, they do not break down naturally and remain ubiquitous in the environment.

In line with DHS recommendations, the DNRs draft rule establishes a combined limit of 20 ppt for PFOA and PFOS in drinking water. It would also require routine testing of municipal and some private water supplies, including mobile home parks and some workplaces.

Systems that exceed the limit would have to install filters or drill new wells.

Foss said the regulations would provide certainty for the 1.7 million residents who drink water from public water supplies.

The public wants to know if the water they are drinking is safe, Foss said.

The DNR estimates the total cost to businesses and local governments would be about $5.6 million in the first year and about $3.9 million per year going forward. Nine municipal water systems are expected to exceed the limits, requiring treatment systems that could together cost about $3.7 million per year over two decades.

But the agency says cleaner water could save Wisconsin residents at least $100 million a year in medical bills.

The proposed drinking water standards are similar to those adopted by Illinois but less restrictive than those in Minnesota and Michigan.

More analysis

While the EPA has said its safe to drink water with PFOS and PFOA concentrations up to 70 ppt, the agency now says there may be health risks at levels below just 1 ppt. An analysis of hundreds of new studies must now be reviewed by outside scientists before the agency sets standards based on what it determines is economically feasible.

All indications are it will be lower, said Jim Zellmer, deputy administrator of the DNRs environmental management division. And then we would move to develop and revise our rules based on that.

Pearson said the proposed state standard  which is 10 times higher than PFOA and PFOS levels in any active city well  should reassure the more than 260,000 Madison-area residents that our water is undeniably safe to drink.

As knowledge and understanding about PFAS changes, so will Madison Water Utilitys mitigation strategies, he said.
With Wisconsins wolf hunt on hold, a wildlife protection group is offering a $10,000 reward for tips that lead to prosecution of poachers.

Animal Wellness Action says it is alarmed by online chatter from people saying they plan to take matters into their own hands after a judge suspended the statutory hunting season for gray wolves.

Paul Collins, the state director for Animal Wellness Action, said the group has been monitoring endless online chatter since hunters killed at least 218 wolves  more than the state and tribal quotas combined  in less than three days during a court-ordered hunt in February.

I paid for a point I will pay for a fine they are not endangered anymore so not a big fine, one user on the Wisconsin Wolf Hunting Facebook page said in response to a post about cancellation of the fall season.

Well I guess I will just shoot large coyotes then, said another.

Your local Dnr doesnt care if you start your own wolf elimination program  SSS! a Minnesota resident posted, using a common abbreviation for shoot, shovel and shut up.

A 2011 state law requires the state Department of Natural Resources DNR to hold an annual wolf hunt between November and February when wolves are not subject to federal protections.

The law also allows people to shoot wolves in the act of killing, wounding or biting a domestic animal on private property. Such killings must be reported to the DNR and the wolf carcass turned over.

DNR spokesperson Sarah Hoye said the agency has received three reports this year of wolves killed in the act of depredation  all in Price County  but has not encountered any trend of unlawful harvest arising this fall or related to the injunction.

Hoye said the DNR monitors comments on its social media accounts.

We send any comment that mentions poaching to law enforcement for investigation, Hoye said. Additionally, if someone mentions that they know of someone who is poaching, we encourage them to report the information they have via our violation hotline.

In his October order, Frost said the law creating the wolf season is constitutional, but the DNR failed to create permanent regulations enacting it.

Frost said his injunction will remain in place until the DNR implements updated regulations on determining quotas and the number of licenses it issues and updates its wolf management plan with new wolf population goals for the state. Its not clear how long that will take.

The DNR announced in October that it would not issue licenses for the fall season.

The state is facing a separate challenge from six Native American tribes that have sued in federal court to block the hunt, accusing the DNR of violating treaty rights and endangering an animal they consider sacred.

Anyone with knowledge of illegal wolf hunting can submit a report through the DNR Tip Hotline at 1-800-847-9367.
CDS Bipin Rawat and his wife Madhulika Rawat laid side by side on same pyre for cremation (Photo/ANI)

New Delhi, December 10: Family members of Chief of Defence Staff General Bipin Rawat have planned to take his ashes to Haridwar on Saturday after completion of cremation rituals in Delhi, his daughter said on Friday.

He is being laid to rest at the Brar Square Crematorium at the Delhi Cantonment, where his mortal remains were taken to in a solemn procession from his official residence at 3, Kamraj Marg, on a ceremonial gun carriage, which was bedecked with flowers. Also Read | OnePlus 9RT & OnePlus Buds Z2 Spotted on India Website, Launch Expected Soon.

"After the cremation today at Delhi Cantonment's crematorium, we will be taking his 'asthi' (ashes) to Haridwar tomorrow," General Rawat's younger daughter Tarini, told PTI. Also Read | General Bipin Rawat, Wife Madhulika Rawat Cremated With Full Military Honours At Brar Square Crematorium in Delhi, Daughters Kritika and Tarini Light Funeral Pyres.

General Rawat, 63, his wife Madhulika Rawat, and 11 other defence personnel were killed when a Mi17V5 helicopter carrying them crashed near Coonoor in Tamil Nadu on Wednesday.

Tarini, along with her elder sister Kritika, on Friday afternoon performed traditional rituals at their home, before the mortal remains of their parents -- General Rawat and Madhulika Rawat -- were moved to carriages for taking them to the crematorium.

The sisters, stood in sombre silence next to the mortal remains of their father and mother, as a large number of visitors, including dignitaries, continued to stream in at the official bungalow of the Chief of Defence Staff (CDS), since morning.

Chief Justice of India N V Ramana, Home Minister Amit Shah, National Security Advisor Ajit Doval, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, former defence minister A K Antony, a number of Union ministers and senior leaders of political parties, religious gurus, seers and several lawmakers paid their last respects to India's first Chief of Defence Staff and his wife.

Jaipur-based Vijay Rawat, 60, younger brother of General Rawat, and a former Army officer, said, "I had spoken to him before he went to Tamil Nadu to attend the function at Wellington. Had never thought, fate would take him away from us".

"We will be taking his ashes, after cremation, to Haridwar tomorrow. We family members will be going to the holy town to immerse his 'asthi' (ashes) into the Ganga river," he said.

Around 2:20 pm on Friday, amid chants of 'Vande Mataram' and 'General Rawat amar rahe', the funeral procession of the Chief of Defence Staff General and his wife Madhulika Rawat left his official residence for the last rites at the Brar Square crematorium.

Military personnel drawn from all the three services marched towards the streets as drummers played along in tribute to India's first Chief of Defence Staff.

As the mortal remains of General Rawat, carried in a casket wrapped in a tricolour, was moved to a gun carriage, decorated with flowers, people showered petals and raised slogans in his praise.

As India's first Chief of Defence Staff, General Rawat was tasked to bring in theatre command and jointness among the three services, and he was pushing these with a tough approach and specific timelines in the last two years.

The mortal remains of General Rawat and his wife were kept at their official residence here before cremation, to allow people to pay respects.

Earlier in the day, right outside his official residence, several people who had gathered, raised slogans of 'Bharat Mata Ki Jai', 'General Rawat amar rahe', and 'Uttarakhand ka heera amar rahe', while dignitaries payed floral tributes and last respects till the funeral procession left the bungalow.

(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from Syndicated News feed, LatestLY Staff may not have modified or edited the content body)
Guwahati, Dec 10 (PTI) Bold, thematic imagery and innovative use of words coupled with a humble demeanour has been the hallmark of Jnanpith Award winning Assamese poet Nilamani Phookan, which garnered admiration from contemporaries and attracted younger writers and readers.

A socially conscious poet, Phookan experimented for decades with thoughts and words since he began writing in the 1950s, and continued to do so till two years ago, when ill-health forced him to stop his pen from creating more poetry.

Also Read | Moto G51 5G To Be Launched Today in India; Check Expected Prices & Other Details Here.

A fading memory notwithstanding, when the news of his winning the highest literary award was conveyed to him by wife Dulumoni Phookan earlier this week, it brought a smile to his face and the 88-year old Padma Shri awardee responded: 'Bhal khobor, bhal khobor (it is a good news).

The family, though elated, also regrets that the recognition has come at a time when he is not in a position to enjoy the honour bestowed on him due to ill-health, his wife said.

Also Read | Andhra Pradesh: Five Feared Dead in Nellore as Autorickshaw Falls into Stream.

The award will, however, inspire and encourage young poets and writers who in turn will surely go on to enrich Assamese literature, his son Amitav Phookan said.

The octogenarian litterateur is the third recipient of the Jnanpith Award from the north-eastern state after Birendranath Bhattacharya and Mamoni (Indira) Raisom Goswami.

Phookan's works have taken Assamese poetry to new heights as his writings reach out to people's hearts, Assam Sahitya Sabha President Kuladhar Saikia told PTI.

'His translation of foreign language poems, particularly Japanese, introduced the readers to their images and emotions expressed in the local language, Saikia said.

The Assam Sahitya Sabha has already conferred on him the title of Jatiya Kabi' and Sahityacharya', and 'we will take more steps in the near future to ensure that his works are accessible to more people within the state and outside'', Saikia added.

Phuli Thoka Suryamukhi Phulor Phale' (To a Sunflower in Bloom), Golapi Jamur Lagna' (The Raspberry Moment), Kobita' (Poems) and Nrityarata Prithivi (Dancing Earth) are among some of the Sahitya Akademi winning author's principal works, which will remain etched in the annals of Assamese literature.

A retired college professor, Phookan was born and brought up in the sylvan surroundings of the Upper Assam town Dergaon, which left a lasting impression on his poetic sensibilities as he often sought refuge amid nature, and used it as a metaphor to delve deep while analysing the complexities of life and living.

Noted author and editor of Assamese literary magazine Satsori', Anuradha Sarma Pujari, told PTI that the new generation of poets have much to learn, particularly the use of traditional words in the modern context, from Phookan's poetry.

'His poetry falls in the modern genre, but his language and imagery is traditional. Many may find his poems complex and the poet may appear to be confused but he delved deep within himself searching, introspecting and finally creating incisive, insightful and magical poetry', she said.

Indian classical music, art and nature had a profound influence on the poet and his 'poetry reflects a combination of all three'', she said.

Art, particularly, was very close to Phookan's heart, which led him to study in detail the ancient and modern art forms of the state, along with introducing people and artists in Assam to their varied nuances, President of Gauhati Artists' Guild Aminul Haque told PTI.

'He was an art critic par excellence who closely followed the works of artists in the state, and encouraged as well as inspired them to experiment with different art forms, he added.

Referring to Phookan's works, another prominent poet of the state, Nilima Thakuria Haque, said the sensitive portrayal of nature, history, the joys and pain of ordinary people, momentous events and disasters, pain, longing, despair and other varied emotions have rarely been depicted with such finesse by any other Assamese poet.

'His poems have set exalted standards and the efforts made by younger poets will definitely lead Assamese literature to find a place of pride in world literature, she said.

Careful study and observation of his poetical journey reveal how passionately he has studied poetry traditions of different countries and origin. His literary pursuits that include both studying literature and art are great sources of inspiration, pointed out author and journalist Ratna Bharali Talukdar.

Great creators always leave footsteps in their works so that the next generation can learn, and Phookan Sir' has always extended a helping hand to his younger friends, she said.

'Till he fell seriously ill and became almost bed-ridden, nobody needed an appointment to visit him. He was always there to listen, share moments and pose for a photograph, Talukdar added.

(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from Syndicated News feed, LatestLY Staff may not have modified or edited the content body)
Mumbai, Dec 10 (PTI) A resident of Dharavi area here who recently returned from Tanzania was found to have contracted Omicron infection on Friday, taking the number of cases of the new coronavirus variant in Maharashtra to 11, officials said.

Also Read | Gurgaon: Complaint Against Two For Attempting to Extort Rs 3 Crore Claiming To Be Gangster Neeraj Bawana's Associates.

The 49-year-old man, who is a `Maulavi' (Muslim cleric), was asymptomatic and was isolated before he could mingle in the community, said a Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) official.

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The man landed in Mumbai from Tanzania on December 4 and his samples were sent for genome sequencing when he tested positive for coronavirus.

With this, the number of Omicron-infected patients in Mumbai rose to three. One case had been found in neighbouring Thane district.

Seven cases have been found in Pune district, but deputy chief minister Ajit Pawar said earlier in the day that five out of them have now tested negative for the infection.

Tanzania does not figure in the list of `at-risk' countries, but the Dharavi resident tested positive for COVID-19 during the mandatory random checking of two per cent of arrivals at the Mumbai airport.

When his test came out positive, a medical team from G-North ward (where Dharavi falls) tracked him down immediately.

The man was shifted to BMC-run Seven Hills hospital, the official said, adding that he was asymptomatic and is not vaccinated.

Dharavi in central Mumbai is known as the biggest slum in Asia where over six lakh people live in a 2.5 square km area.

The area has recorded 7,073 coronavirus cases since March 2020, but there are only seven active cases at present, as per the BMC.

(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from Syndicated News feed, LatestLY Staff may not have modified or edited the content body)
Chandigarh, December 10: In view of the return of farmers to their homes in Punjab, passing through the various districts of Haryana, after the end of farmers' agitation, Haryana Police has made elaborate arrangements to ensure hassle-free movement of traffic on the national highways in the state.

According to a statement issued by the Haryana Police, District Superintendents of Police have been instructed to ensure appropriate traffic, security and law and order arrangements to ensure smooth flow of traffic in all districts between Delhi to Ambala and Bahadurgarh towards Hisar/Jind. Also Read | Maharashtra: Minor Boy Killed in Hit-And-Run Case in Pune; Case Registered.

It is expected that farmers from Kundli and Tikri Borders will go back to various destinations in Punjab (passing through the districts of Sonipat, Panipat, Karnal, Kurukshetra, Ambala, Jhajjar, Rohtak, Jind, Hansi, Hisar, Fatehabad and Sirsa) in large groups that will become a large motorcade. Keeping this in view, adequate arrangements to ensure normal movement of traffic have been put in place by the police. Also Read | Weather Forecast: Jammu, Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh Likely to Receive Rainfall, Snowfall During December 13-15.

At the same time, citizens are also being informed in advance so that they can able to plan and modify their journey on highways in the above districts accordingly to avoid any inconvenience.

Farmers, who were protesting against the three farm laws on different borders of Delhi since November 26 last year, announced on Wednesday that they are suspending their year-long agitation and would vacate the protest sites on December 11.

The announcement came after the protesting farmers received a letter from the Central government, with promises of forming a committee on Minimum Support Price (MSP) and withdrawing cases against them immediately.

"As far as the matter of compensation is concerned, UP and Haryana have given in-principle consent," it read. While addressing a press conference, farmer leader Gurnam Singh Charuni had said, "We have decided to suspend our agitation. We will hold a review meeting on Jan 15. If the government does not fulfil its promises, we could resume our agitation."

"Protesting farmers will vacate the protest sites on December 11," another farmers' leader Darshan Pal Singh said. On November 29, both the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha passed the Farm Laws Repeal Bill on the first day of the winter session of Parliament.

(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from Syndicated News feed, LatestLY Staff may not have modified or edited the content body)
New Delhi, Dec 10 (PTI) India has 21.03 judges per million people, Lok Sabha was informed on Friday.

In a written reply, Law Minister Kiren Rijiju said, "The judge to population ratio (judge per million population) with respect to sanctioned strength of judges is 21.03 as on October 31, 2021."

Also Read | Gurgaon: Complaint Against Two For Attempting to Extort Rs 3 Crore Claiming To Be Gangster Neeraj Bawana's Associates.

In order to calculate the judge-population ratio per million population in a particular year, the Department of Justice uses the criterion of using the population as per Census 2011 and as per available information regarding sanctioned strength of judges in Supreme Court, the high courts and district and subordinate courts in the particular year, he explained.

The data pertaining to the number of judges per million of population is not maintained state or union territory wise, he said.

Also Read | WBPSC AE Result 2020 Released, Candidates Can Check The Results Online at wbpsc.gov.in.

He said the Law Commission had not considered the judge population ratio to be a scientific criterion for determining the adequacy of the judge strength in the country.

"The Law Commission found that in the absence of complete and scientific approach to data collection across various high courts in the country, the 'rate of disposal' method, to calculate the number of additional judges required to clear the backlog of cases as well as to ensure that new backlog is not created, is more pragmatic and useful," he said.

(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from Syndicated News feed, LatestLY Staff may not have modified or edited the content body)
Jammu, Dec 10 (PTI) Pakistan is trying to involve Jammu and Kashmir youths in the drug menace as they did in Punjab after their other nefarious designs failed, J&K Director General of Police Dilbag Singh said Friday.

The police chief asked officers to strengthen the intelligence grid and ensure input-sharing for rapid action by the forces.

Also Read | Maharashtra: Man, Arrested by NCB in Drugs Case, Dies in Nanded Prison.

He said the twin border districts of Rajouri and Poonch of Jammu have been witnessing terrorist infiltration bids sponsored by the Pakistani authorities.

Many such attempts were thwarted on the border and in the hinterland successfully due to the synergy and close liaison between the Police, Army and other security forces, he added.

Also Read | Covidengue in Telangana: COVID-19 Patients in the State Getting Infected With Dengue.

Pakistan is attempting to involve our youths in the drug menace as they did in Punjab after their other nefarious designs failed, he said.

Singh visited Poonch to review internal and border security arrangements in joint officers' meetings, a police spokesman said.

During the visit, the DGP was given a detailed presentation by senior officers on the security measures put in place along the Line of Control to foil attempts by Pakistani agencies to push in terrorists, the spokesman said.

Pakistani agencies are indulging in narcotics and weapon smuggling and transportation of cash across the LoC for funding terrorist activities. Many of such consignments have been interrupted by the JKP and the security forces deployed in the area, he said.

He emphasised strengthening of Naka points on Mugal road and also on national highway to keep check on transportation of drugs, weapons and other criminal activities.

The DGP stressed for stepping up operations to check the movement of criminals and terrorists and other suspicious elements.

The DGP said that police -public meetings especially in border villages should be conducted on a regular basis.

He said that people's cooperation in the fight against narco-terrorism and other crimes is a must.

(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from Syndicated News feed, LatestLY Staff may not have modified or edited the content body)
New Delhi, Dec 10: Prime Minister Narendra Modi will visit Uttar Pradesh's Balrampur district on Saturday and inaugurate the Saryu Nahar National Project which will provide assured water for irrigation of over 14 lakh hectares of land and benefit about 29 lakh farmers of the region, his office said.

The Prime Minister's Office (PMO) said the project has been built at a total cost of over Rs 9,800 crore, out of which more than Rs 4,600 crore was provisioned in the last four years.

Also Read | Karnataka Legislative Council Elections 2021: Polling Begins For 25 Seats of Legislative Council.

The project also involves interlinking of five rivers -- Ghaghara, Saryu, Rapti, Banganga and Rohini -- to ensure optimum usage of water resources of the region.

Prime Minister Modi will visit Balrampur, Uttar Pradesh and inaugurate the Saryu Nahar National Project on December 11 at around 1 PM, the PMO said in a statement on Friday.

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The work on the project started in 1978 but due to lack of continuity of budgetary support, interdepartmental coordination and adequate monitoring, it got delayed and was not completed even after nearly four decades, it said.

The prime minister's vision for farmer welfare and empowerment, and his commitment to prioritise long pending projects of national importance, brought much needed focus on the project, the statement said.

Consequently in 2016, the project was brought under Pradhan Mantri Krishi Sinchayee Yojana with the target to complete it in a time-bound manner, the PMO said.

In this endeavour, innovative solutions were found for new land acquisition to construct new canals and fill the critical gaps in the project, and also for resolving the pending litigation related to the previous land acquisitions, it said.

The renewed focus has resulted in the project being completed in only about four years.

The project will provide assured water for irrigation of over 14 lakh hectares of land and benefit about 29 lakh farmers of more than 6,200 villages, the PMO said.

It will benefit nine districts of Eastern Uttar Pradesh, namely Bahraich, Shravasti, Balrampur, Gonda, Siddharthnagar, Basti, Sant Kabir Nagar, Gorakhpur and Maharajganj, the statement said.

The farmers of the region, who were the worst sufferers of the inordinate delay in the project, will now immensely benefit from the upgraded irrigation potential, it said.

They will now be able to grow crops on a larger scale and maximise the agri-potential of the region, it added.

(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from Syndicated News feed, LatestLY Staff may not have modified or edited the content body)
New Delhi [India], December 10 (ANI): Sri Lankan High Commissioner to India Milinda Moragoda has said that the demise of CDS General Bipin Rawat is a real tragedy, stressing that many senior military personnel, admirals and others in his country follow him.

While speaking to ANI, Moragoda said it was a real tragedy. "We are all heartbroken, in fact, many of our military senior, personnel, general, admiral know him very well."

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"He is a friend of Sri Lanka," he added.

Emphasising that it is a "very sad day," the envoy also said that General Rawat had visited Sri Lanka earlier.

Also Read | UNHCR Expresses Concern About Rapid Migration Under Taliban Rule in Afghanistan.

Chief of Defence Staff (CDS) General Bipin Rawat, who died in a chopper crash in Tamil Nadu on Wednesday, was cremated with full military honours at the Brar Square crematorium in Delhi Cantonment on Friday.

They were laid side by side on the same pyre for cremation at the Brar Square crematorium. Their daughters Kritika and Tarini lit the pyre.

CDS Rawat was accorded a 17-gun salute and Last Post and Rouse was played by tri-services buglers, as per the military protocols.Defence Minister Rajnath Singh, Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, Uttarakhand Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami, Defence Research and Development Organisation chief Dr G Satheesh Reddy, defence attaches of various countries, Ambassador of France in India Emmanuel Lenain and British High Commissioner Alex Ellis, were among the dignitaries who were present at the crematorium to pay their last respect.(ANI)

(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from Syndicated News feed, LatestLY Staff may not have modified or edited the content body)
Geneva [Switzerland], December 10 (ANI): Despite significant progress since the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) 73 years ago, the COVID pandemic has "fed a frightening rise in inequalities", and laid bare "many of our failures to consolidate the advances made", said UN rights chief Michelle Bachelet, in a message marking Human Rights Day.

Bachelet and UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres took the opportunity to take stock of progress made, lessons learned, and put forward a new Agenda for Peace that presents a multidimensional vision of global security.

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"This is an agenda of action - and an agenda of rights," Bachelet said.

'Our Common Agenda', a framework set out by the UN Secretary-General in September 2021, is a new social contract firmly anchored in human rights, calling for renewed solidarity across the world.

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The Agenda proposes to deepen collective action by addressing the root causes of insecurity, increasing investment in resilience and early warning systems, developing multilateral partnerships, and more sustained efforts in peacebuilding and fighting the effects of climate change.

Bachelet acknowledged that since the UDHR was first signed, "the world as a whole grew richer, and people lived longer. More children went to school, and more women were able to gain a greater measure of autonomy. More people in more countries had more opportunities to break the shackles of poverty, class, caste and gender."

Despite this progress, however, she noted that over the past twenty years, a succession of global shocks and the onset of the pandemic in 2020 undermined these developments.

With the world "at a crossroads", new threats have emerged to basic human rights, such as the pandemic, digital technology's overreach, and the climate crisis, said UN chief Guterres, in his message for Human Rights Day, marked on Friday.

"Public space is shrinking. Poverty and hunger are rising for the first time in decades. Millions of children are missing out on their right to education. Inequality is deepening - but we can choose a different path", he assured.

Guterres noted that recovery from the pandemic "must be an opportunity to expand human rights and freedoms, and to rebuild trust."

Trust needs to be restored in the justice and impartiality of laws and institutions everywhere, he added, and dignity restored, together with the faith that "people can get a fair hearing, and resolve their grievances peacefully."

"The United Nations stands for the rights of every member of our human family", he continued, pledging that "today and every day, we will continue to work for justice, equality, dignity and human rights for all." (ANI)

(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from Syndicated News feed, LatestLY Staff may not have modified or edited the content body)
New Delhi, December 10: Union Minister Hardeep Singh Puri and BJP chief JP Nadda carried Guru Granth Sahib brought by a Sikh delegation from Kabul, Afghanistan on Friday afternoon.

The delegation has brought three copies of the Guru Granth Sahib to New Delhi in a special repatriation flight. The flight from Kabul with over 100 people including Afghan citizens belonging to the Hindu and Sikh communities arrived in New Delhi. Also Read | Union Minister Hardeep Singh Puri and BJP Chief JP Nadda Carry Guru Granth Sahib Brought by Sikh Delegation From Kabul (Watch Video).

The flight was operated under Operation Devi Shakti and bought 10 Indians and 94 Afghans including members of the Afghan Hindu-Sikh minority community. Also Read | Joe Biden Set to Make First Late-Night TV Appearance as President on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon.

"Under Operation Devi Shakti, a special Kam Air flight arranged by India has arrived in New Delhi from Kabul," the Ministry of External Affairs spokesperson Arindam Bagchi said in a tweet.

"It has brought 10 Indians and 94 Afghans including members of the Afghan Hindu-Sikh minority community. Among the evacuees are 9 children, including 3 infants," Bagchi added in the tweet.

The Sri Guru Granth Sahib is expected to be moved to Gurdwara Guru Arjan Dev Ji, Mahavir Nagar and the Hindu religious scriptures will proceed towards Asamai Mandir in Faridabad.

India has evacuated over 565 stranded persons from Afghanistan since August when Kabul fell to the Taliban fighters, the Government stated last week in the Lok Sabha.

Answering a question from Congress MP Hibi Eden, Minister of State for External Affairs V Muraleedharan said officials of the Ministry of External Affairs were in contact with the Indians left behind. The statement, however, did not elaborate whether the airlifted individuals also included some Afghans.

(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from Syndicated News feed, LatestLY Staff may not have modified or edited the content body)
Vienna, Dec 10 (AP) Negotiations between Iran and world powers aimed at salvaging a tattered 2015 nuclear deal resumed in Vienna on Thursday, with tensions high after Tehran made demands last week that European countries strongly criticised.

The talks' chairman said he detected a renewed sense of purpose.

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Diplomats from Britain, France and Germany had urged Tehran to come back with realistic proposals after the Iranian delegation made numerous demands last week that other parties to the accord deemed unacceptable. Last week's talks were the first in over five months, a gap caused by a new hard-line government assuming power in Tehran.

European Union diplomat Enrique Mora, who chaired Thursday's meeting of all the deal's remaining signatories  Iran, Britain, France, Germany, Russia and China  said afterward that he felt a renewed sense of purpose on the need to work and to reach an agreement on bringing the (agreement) back to life.

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Whether that will be confirmed and endorsed by negotiations on the details, we will see in the coming days, Mora said, adding that the positive impression "has to be tested.

He said that it is becoming more imperative with time to reach an agreement quickly.

The United States has participated indirectly in the ongoing talks because it withdrew from the accord in 2018 under then-President Donald Trump. President Joe Biden has signalled that he wants to rejoin the deal.

Washington plans to send a delegation led by Robert Malley, the special U.S. envoy for Iran, to Vienna over the weekend.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki said later Thursday the U.S. has made clear to Iran that the only path out of sanctions is through nuclear compliance.

If diplomacy cannot get on track soon, and if Iran's nuclear program continues to accelerate, then we will have no choice but to take additional measures to further restrict Iran's revenue-producing sectors, Psaki said. She added that she wouldn't get into additional specifics about that.

The accord sealed in Vienna in 2015, formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, was meant to rein in Iran's nuclear programme in return for loosened economic sanctions.

Following the U.S. decision to withdraw and reimpose sanctions against Iran, Tehran has ramped up its nuclear programme again by enriching uranium beyond the thresholds allowed in the agreement. Iran has also restricted monitors from the U.N. atomic watchdog from accessing its nuclear facilities, raising concerns about what the country is doing out of view.

Russia's delegate to the talks, Mikhail Ulyanov, described Thursday's talks as constructive" and tweeted that there were important commonalities, including on a need to conclude the talks quickly and successfully.

Mora said participants are approaching the task with the realism necessary to get an agreement, because it's difficult, because there are different positions, because some points are still extremely open.

We have to close them, and we don't have all the time of the world, he said. (AP)

(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from Syndicated News feed, LatestLY Staff may not have modified or edited the content body)
New Delhi, December 10: Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday (local time) attended the closed-door session of the first Summit for Democracy. As a special gesture, PM Modi was invited to participate in the main Leaders' Plenary Session hosted by US President Joe Biden.

This closed-door session saw interventions from 12 select countries, including India. At President Biden's invitation. The second Leaders' Plenary Session was hosted by the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen.

PM Modi will deliver India's national statement today. This will be open to the public.

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According to sources, at the closed-door session, PM Modi said that the democratic spirit, including respect for rule of law and pluralistic ethos, is ingrained in Indians. The Indian Diaspora carries it too, thereby contributing to the economic well-being and social harmony of their adopted homes.

PM Modi emphasized the need for democratic countries to deliver on values enshrined in their Constitutions. He also outlined sensitivity, accountability, participation and reform orientation as four pillars of Indian democratic governance.

He stressed that principles of democracy should also guide global governance; and that given technology's ability to impact democracy positively or negatively, technology companies should contribute to preserving open and democratic societies.

As the world's largest democracy, India has commended this innovative initiative. India has always stood ready to share its experiences with fellow democracies.

Earlier today, PM Modi said through a tweet, "Happy to have participated in the Summit for Democracy at the invitation of President Biden. As the world's largest democracy, India stands ready to work with our partners to strengthen democratic values globally, including in multilateral fora."

Biden on Thursday kicked off the first-ever Summit for Democracy. Besides PM Modi, around 80 world leaders attended the opening remarks virtually.

The summit focuses on challenges and opportunities facing democracies and will provide a platform for leaders to announce both individual and collective commitments, reforms, and initiatives to defend democracy and human rights at home and abroad.

China was not invited to the summit while Pakistan had declined the invite.

(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from Syndicated News feed, LatestLY Staff may not have modified or edited the content body)
Washington [US], December 10 (ANI/Sputnik): A US judge sentenced Russian national Oleg Koshkin to four years in prison for cybercrimes, Justice Department spokesperson Tom Carson told Sputnik.

Koshkin will serve 48 months in prison after being convicted in June of running a so-called "crypting" service used to conceal malware from antivirus software. He was arrested by authorities in California in September 2019.

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Koshkin, 41, formerly of Estonia, operated the websites "Crypt4U.com," "fud.bz" and others, the Justice Department said in a statement. The websites promised to render malicious software fully undetectable by nearly every major provider of antivirus software, the release said.

The Justice Department also said he worked with Peter Levashov, the operator of the Kelihos botnet, to develop a system that would allow Levashov to crypt the Kelihos malware multiple times each day.

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In September 2018, Levashov pleaded guilty to various computer crime-related offenses.

His co-defendant, Pavel Tsurkan, pleaded guilty on June 16 to one count of causing damage to a protected computer, the Justice Department said. (ANI/Sputnik)

(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from Syndicated News feed, LatestLY Staff may not have modified or edited the content body)
Mumbai, December 10: In yet another drugs bust, the Air Intelligence Unit (AIU) of customs at Mumbai international airport arrested two Zimbabwean nationals in possession of Heroin on Thursday. The AIU officials seized Heroin weighing 35 kg from the duo. As per the AIU, the value of said Heroin is approximately Rs 240 crores. This is one of the biggest drugs seizures of this year, said the AIU official.

As per the report published by TOI, the AIU received a tip-off, based on which they intercepted the duo, a man and a woman, and searched their bags. The AIU found the white powder from the duo. Upon checking the white powder with the first test kit, it was confirmed that the white powder is Heroin. The AIU officials subsequently arrested the duo and seized the banned contraband. Maharashtra: Nigerian Among Two Arrested With Mephedrone Worth Rs 37.5 Lakh in Navi Mumbai.

The seized narcotics were sent to the lab for further analysis. The duo has been booked under the NDPS Act. The duo will be produced before the court on Friday, said the AIU. Foreign Drug Peddler Held in Karnataka, Drugs Worth Rs 20 Lakh Seized.

As per the reports, a mother-daughter duo from Uganda was arrested at the Mumbai airport for illegal possession of heroin worth Rs 20 crore November 22. The mother-daughter duo was travelling from Juba via Dubai.

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Dec 10, 2021 04:56 PM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).
Johannesburg, Dec 10: While Covid cases in South Africa driven by the super mutant Omicron variant have surged 255 per cent in the last week, the infections are showing milder symptoms than seen in the last three waves, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).

According to the WHO, Africa currently accounted for 46 per cent of reported Omicron cases globally, while the variant has spread to nearly 60 countries so far. Omicron Variant: BioNTech CEO Ugur Sahin Says Vaccine for New COVID-19 Variant Should Be A 3-Dose Vaccine

South Africa's biggest private healthcare provider Netcare revealed that the recent rise in infections, which includes the Omicron and Delta variants, has been accompanied by a much smaller increase in admissions to intensive care beds, Dailymaverick reported.

"Having personally seen many of our patients across our Gauteng hospitals, their symptoms are far milder than anything we experienced during the first three waves," Netcare's Richard Friedland was quoted as saying to the South African daily.

"Approximately 90 per cent of Covid-19 patients currently in our hospitals require no form of oxygen therapy and are considered incidental cases. If this trend continues, it would appear that, with a few exceptions of those requiring tertiary care, the fourth wave can be adequately treated at a primary care level," he added.

According to Friedland, "all patients had presented with mild to moderate flu-like symptoms, including a blocked or runny nose, headache and a scratchy or sore throat".

During the first three waves, the overall community positivity rate breached 26 per cent across South Africa.

Friedland said that in the first three waves of the pandemic, Netcare treated 126,000 Covid-19 patients, of which 44 per cent required admission and 26 per cent were treated in high care and intensive care units.

"Significantly, all Covid-19 patients admitted were sick and required some form of oxygen therapy. The high admission rate, as well as the high percentage of patients requiring ICU or high care is indicative of the severity of cases during the first three waves," he added.

But, now the hospital has 337 Covid-19 positive patients admitted. Of these, approximately 10 per cent (33 patients) are on some form of oxygenation versus 100 per cent in the first three waves.

Further, eight patients (2 per cent) are being ventilated and of these, two are primary trauma cases that are also Covid-19-positive, Friedland said.

"At present the 337 patients represent a fraction compared to previous waves," Friedland said.

"The very rapid rise in community transmission as compared to previous waves may partially explain this relatively low hospital admission ratea there does appear to be a decoupling in terms of the rate of hospital admissions at this early stage in the evolution of the fourth wave," he said.

Friedland's comments echo earlier analysis from Dr Fareed Abdullah, of the South African Medical Research Council, who said many of the patients diagnosed with Covid in hospitals in badly hit Gauteng province and elsewhere were often "incidental" identifications in patients presenting with other conditions.

"The main observation that we have made over the last two weeks is that the majority of patients in the Covid wards have not been oxygen dependent. Sars-CoV-2 has been an incidental finding in patients that were admitted to the hospital for another medical, surgical or obstetric reason," Abdullah said. Omicron Infected People Not Permitted To Leave South Africa, Says Embassy in Moscow

"A snapshot of 42 patients in the ward on December 2 reveals that 29 (70 per cent) are not oxygen dependent. These patients are saturating well on room air and do not present with any respiratory symptoms. A significant early finding in this analysis is the much shorter average length of stay of 2.8 days for patients admitted to the Covid wards over the last two weeks, compared to an average length of stay of 8.5 days for the past 18 months."

However, experts have said it is still too early in the Omicron outbreak to determine the longer-term course of the illness. Moreover, the country has reported an increase in infections in the younger population.

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Dec 10, 2021 03:34 PM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).
Christmas is around the corner. With Christmas, all we can think of is snow and winter chills. But it might surprise you that there are a few countries in the world, that experience summers during Christmas. This is because they are a part of the southern hemisphere, therefore, they have summer season instead of winter at that time.

Are you more of a summer Christmas person than a snowy Christmas one? We at LatestLY, have curated a list of countries that you must visit if you plan to see a summery Christmas. Is It Bad Luck to Sing Xmas Songs Before December 25 and Not Kiss Under the Mistletoe? 6 Interesting Things You Should Know of

Bolivia

Bolivia is a country in South America and due to its location, it experiences summers during Christmas time. The Christians here celebrate Christmas till January 6. Also, they exchange gifts on this day instead of December 25.

South Africa

It is another country of the southern hemisphere, where Christmas falls in summer. Being summers, people love to celebrate it outside if it isnt too hot. People enjoy Christmas pudding as a part of the tradition of the festival.

Rio De Janeiro, Brazil

This is the hottest place to visit in December with temperatures rising as high as 30 to 34 degrees Celsius.

Phuket, Thailand

If you want to enjoy the sun at a beach during the winters, then Phuket is the best destination. You can enjoy here with a temperature of 25 degrees Celsius.

New Zealand

In New Zealand, Christmas is celebrated in the middle of the summer holidays. The Santa in New Zealand is seen wearing sandals and a rugby shirt.

Australia

Christmas in Australia is hot and people enjoy cold dishes and fresh sea food. The beaches witness a heavy crowd on this day as people enjoy celebrating the festival by the beach.

Christmas is not just about white snow and red blazer Santa. Experience a hot and lively Christmas by visiting the above-mentioned places during Christmas time. Wishing everyone a Merry Christmas 2021!

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Dec 10, 2021 10:22 AM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).
Jammu and Kashmir Lieutenant Governor Manoj Sinha on Friday condemned the terrorist attack in Bandipore district claiming the lives of two police personnel and extended his condolences to their families.
First case of omicron was found in Dharavi area of Mumbai as one person who had returned from Tanzania was found positive. The person has now been admitted at SevenHills Hospital.

One #Omicron case found in Dharavi area of Mumbai. The person had returned from Tanzania; now admitted at SevenHills Hospital: BMC (Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation)  ANI (@ANI) December 10, 2021

(SocialLY brings you all the latest breaking news, viral trends and information from social media world, including Twitter, Instagram and Youtube. The above post is embeded directly from the user's social media account and LatestLY Staff may not have modified or edited the content body. The views and facts appearing in the social media post do not reflect the opinions of LatestLY, also LatestLY does not assume any responsibility or liability for the same.)
Washington, Dec 10: Amazon founder Jeff Bezos' space firm Blue Origin's Crew-3 flight that will carry daughter of the first American in space has been delayed till Saturday due to bad weather.

Blue Origin's Crew-3 Mission to Space Which Will carry Laura Shepard Churchley, Daughter of 1st American in Space, Delayed Due to Bad Weather

The flight -- a first to carry six astronauts to space -- was initially set for December 9. The last two missions carried only four.

"Due to forecasted winds on December 9 and 10, the New Shepard launch team has made the call to delay the launch of NS-19 to December 11," the company said in a statement on Thursday. Blue Origin's Next Flight to Carry, Laura Shepard Churchley, Daughter of 1st American in Space.

The new liftoff is targeted for 8.45 a.m. CST (8.15 p.m. IST) from Launch Site One in West Texas.

The company said that the team has completed Flight Readiness Review and the vehicle has "met all mission requirements for launch".

But, "weather remains as the only gating factor for launch", it added.

The crew will include two honorary guests -- 'Good Morning America' co-anchor Michael Strahan and Laura Shepard Churchley, the eldest daughter of Alan Shepard, who was the first American to fly to space.

The other are four paying customers -- space industry executive and philanthropist Dylan Taylor, investor Evan Dick, Bess Ventures founder Lane Bess, and Cameron Bess. Lane and Cameron Bess will become the first parent-child pair to fly in space, the company said.

The Crew-3 mission furthers the company's vision of millions of people living and working in space for the benefit of Earth.

It will be New Shepard's third human flight this year, the sixth for the programme in 2021, and the 19th in its history.

Blue Origin's blasted off its second human flight to space on October 13, with the original Star Trek's Captain James T. Kirk (actor William Shatner) who became the oldest man ever to travel to space, along with NASA engineer Chris Boshuizen, Glen de Vries, a co-founder of software company Medidata, and Audrey Powers, Vice President of missions and flight operations.

On July 20, Blue Origin carried its first human flight which included Jeff Bezos, his brother Mark Bezos, aviation pioneer Wally Funk, and Blue Origin's first customer, Oliver Daemen.

In October, Bezos' space firm has also announced plans to build a commercial space station called Orbital Reef by second half of this decade.

For the project Blue Origin has partnered with spaceflight company Sierra Space, a subsidiary of the Sierra Nevada Corporation, Boeing, Redwire Space, Genesis Engineering Solutions, and Arizona State University.

"The station will open the next chapter of human space exploration and development by facilitating the growth of a vibrant ecosystem and business model for the future," the company had announced.

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Dec 10, 2021 04:25 PM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).
U.S. President Joe Bidens's administration will return the land of a Texas family. The land was seized for the purpose of construction of the border wall on the U.S.-Mexico border.

The Cavazos family of Texas has been fighting the federal government for their land for several years. It was passed on to them before the Rio Grande River became an international border, according to an Independent report.

A nonprofit representing the family, the Texas Civil Rights Project, said in a tweet that their client Eloisa Cavazos had her land returned after fighting against the government's seizure and border wall construction since 2018.

The group described the construction of the border wall as "needless and wasteful."

The civil rights group noted that the Cavazos family will be able to continue their life beside the Rio Grande.

READ NEXT: Illegal Immigrants Broke Inside a Texas Ranch House, Stole Weapons and Food

Texas Family's Land Seized By Federal Government

The federal government seized a total of 6.5 acres of land through eminent domain in 2018.

Owner Eloisa Cavazos and her family filed legal measures to fight the seizure. It was only legally seized until earlier this year, according to a Huff Post report.

Cavazos's sister, Baudila Cavazos Rodriguez, said that the land has been in their family for generations.

The Cavazos grandmother originally owned the property. It was then passed on to their father when he returned from World War II. Today, the Cavazos siblings make a living through the property by renting small houses on it to travelers who enjoy boating and fishing on the river.

She said that it was kind of their livelihood, adding that they were afraid they would lose all of it because of the border wall.

Rodriguez said that the properties were already developed for this kind of purpose.

She noted that one of the walls was built directly on the banks of the Rio Grande and is already eroding.

It was privately funded by an organization related to Donald Trump's former chief strategist, Steve Bannon.

Rodriguez said that it was a "useless waste of money," adding that it could have been used for better things.

A spokesperson for the Texas Civil Rights Project noted that this was the organization's final case regarding land being seized for the border wall.

U.S.-Mexico Border Wall

A BBC News report in October 2020 noted that about a further 350 miles of the barrier had been built, according to the Customs and Border Protection. Meanwhile, around 378 miles were either under construction or in the "pre-construction phase."

CBP said at the time that less than half of the miles will be in locations where no barriers currently exist.

Trump said last June during his visit to the wall that his administration has done more than any administration in history to secure the southern border.

Rodriguez said that they saw people crossing the river growing up. However, she said that it was people seeking a better life and never what was reported in the news.

The Cavazos family member further noted that they were always taught to treat people the same.

READ MORE: Biden Administration Owes More Than $200,000 to a Texas Hospital Treating Migrant Children

This article is owned by Latin Post.

Written by: Mary Webber

WATCH: Land seized for border wall returned to Texas family | Rush Hour - from NewsNation Now






The Department of Homeland and Security (DHS) on Thursday sought the help of the Americans, as the agency asked for suggestions on how to prevent separating migrant families from the borders.

The move from the DHS came in the light of a Trump-era policy "Remain in Mexico" or Migrant Protection Protocol's (MPP) reinstatement in the U.S.-Mexico border, New York Post reported.

READ NEXT: DHS Watchdog Declines to Investigate Claims of Horse-Mounted Border Agents 'Whipping' Haitian Migrants

DHS Asks for Americans' Help in Suggesting Ways to Deter Migrant Family Separations

The DHS said that suggestions or comments from the Americans will be accepted until January 10.

The department also pointed out in a statement that the feedback from the Americans will be used to develop recommendations to President Joe Biden. The said recommendations will focus on how to avoid inhibiting the Federal Government from enforcing the "cruel and inhumane" practice of separating migrant families in the future.

"It is unconscionable to separate children from their parents as a means to deter migration... I have met with separated families and heard firsthand of the immense trauma they have suffered," DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said.

The DHS secretary added that their agency has the role to "reunite separated families" and make sure that the cruel practice of separating them from each other never happens again.

This move of the DHS came days after the department identified more than 280 children separated from their migrant families are now under the process of reunification, Axios reported.

The said children to be reunited with their migrant families were reportedly from Honduras, El Salvador, Venezuela, Brazil, and Guatemala.

A DHS spokesperson revealed that as of Monday, the family reunification task force reunited at least 63 families, bringing the total of reunited children to 2,234. The other 2,171 was reported to be reunited through non-government organizations.

First 2 Migrants Sent Back to Mexico Over Reinstated Trump-Era Policy

As the "Remain in Mexico" policy was reinstated in the U.S. borders, the United States sent at least two migrants back to Mexico on Wednesday, Al Jazeera reported.

The two men were transported at a border crossing in Ciudad Juarez, an area opposite of El Paso, Texas.

CBP told us the 2 adult men returned to Cd. Juarez at 9:20am today, the first people subjected to Remain in Mexico/MPP 2.0, would be the only MPP returns today. CBP escorted them to the MX boundary line at the center of the bridge, where Mexican immigration and military met them. https://t.co/FVdkumOLza pic.twitter.com/oDEyc0aU2x  Julia Neusner (@JuliaNeusner) December 8, 2021

Refugee Attorney Julia Neusner said that the two men were escorted by the Customs and Border Protection (CBP) to the boundary line of Mexico at the center of the bridge. Neusner added that authorities from the immigration of Mexico and military met the two migrants.

One of the migrants sent back to Mexico was identified as Enrique Manzanares from Nicaragua. Manzanares said that he felt a little sad about what happened, but he still thanks God for he is alive.

The MPP, also known as the "Remain in Mexico" policy, requires the asylum seekers attempting to enter the United States through the southern border to wait in Mexico until their cases are heard. President Joe Biden attempted several times to suspend the said Trump-era policy since he took office in January.

READ NEXT: Biden Admin to Restart Donald Trump's 'Remain in Mexico' Policy 'as Soon as Next Week'

This article is owned by Latin Post.

Written By: Joshua Roldan

WATCH: First Migrants Returned Under 'Remain in Mexico' Policy - From NewsNation Now
After the discovery of the remains of the California man who killed himself using his owned makeshift guillotine in an unusual and macabre case, authorities arrested an alleged squatter who police revealed was the person behind the tampering of the victim's remains.

California Man Dies in His Homemade Guillotine

According to The Guardian, the Santa Rosa Press Democrat mentioned in its report that the California police believed that the victim, Robert Enger, built the contraption at his home in Santa Rosa as early as 2019. The victim's neighbors shared that Enger was friendly and an "unbelievable craftsman."

However, the neighbors mentioned that the California man struggled with mental health problems for many years.

READ MORE: 4 California Children, Grandmother Shot to Death by 29-Year-Old Father

More Revelations in California Man's Remains

The nature of the victim's death did not become clear until after a woman came across a skull in the bushes near her brother's home. The woman reported the discovery to the police earlier this year.

Moreover, officials determined that the skull had been scraped as they discovered marks on it and a wire handle, which was that of Enger. The 62-year-old California man was last seen alive in July 2019 when he was treated at a local hospital due to an injury in his head.

The California police now suspected that the injury was a result of a failed attempt to use the homemade device. Police also suspected that the victim died by suicide using the contraption. The remains went undiscovered, and his home was empty until a man named Robert Melvin Ross III started squatting there in 2020.

Police alleged that Ross lived in the house despite the presence of the remains of Enger for months. Police also said that the suspect for tampering even invited other individuals in the property for parties and to use methamphetamine.

Based on the report of the Press Democrat, the law enforcement was called to the property on multiple occasions and said that it was "filthy" and "filled with debris, trash, foods, and piles of stuff." Officials added that the invited persons were allegedly not aware that Enger's remains were under the debris.

However, in 2021, a man shared to the police that he was able to attend one of the parties organized by the suspect at the property and saw what he believed were the decomposed remains of a human.

The newspaper reported that the witness said that Ross at one point "proceeded to remove the skull" and scraped it with a knife. Police later found out that Ross told them he had discovered Enger's body at the bottom of the contraption.

Anthony Turner, a violent crimes detective with the Santa Rosa police, said that Robert Enger placed himself under that contraption, manipulated it, and was killed by his homemade device. The detective added that his body was later manipulated by Robert Ross and other individuals.

Furthermore, Ross has been charged with the unauthorized entry of a dwelling and unlawful handling of human remains and pleaded no contest to possession of a memento from human remains but has since asked to withdraw that plea and said he signed it "under duress, meaning the contract is null and void."

READ NEXT: 11-Year-Old Girl Fatally Shot by Her Own Father While on Hunting Trip in Texas

This article is owned by Latin Post.

Written by: Jess Smith

WATCH: How Long did a Person Stay Alive after being Guillotined? -Simple History


At least 53 people died, and 58 were injured after a cargo truck rolled over and crashed into a bridge in Mexico on Thursday.

The crash happened on a highway near Tuxtla Gutierrez, the state capital of Chiapas, The Guardian reported. According to BBC, the truck overturned on a dangerous bend and hit a pedestrian bridge on a main road leading to Tuxtla Gutierrez.

Mexico's President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador took to Twitter on Thursday to share his condolences. He said what happened was "very painful."

"I deeply regret the tragedy caused by the overturning of a trailer in Chiapas carrying Central American migrants. It is very painful. I hug the families of the victims," the Mexican president said in his translated tweet.

Lamento profundamente la tragedia ocasionada por la volcadura de un trailer en Chiapas que transportaba migrantes centroamericanos. Es muy doloroso. Abrazo a los familiares de las victimas.  Andres Manuel (@lopezobrador_) December 10, 2021

READ NEXT: 1 Dead, 4 Injured After Mexican Forces Open Fire on Vehicle Carrying Migrants

Victims of the Truck Crash in Mexico

Authorities said more than 100 people, believed to be migrants, crammed into the truck's trailer as it sped along the highway.

Local officials noted that most of the migrants were from Central America, particularly from Honduras and Guatemala. But the Los Angeles Times reported that some of the victims were also from Asia and Africa. Emergency responders have yet to confirm the nationalities of the said victims.

Local officials said the weight of the truck's human cargo might have triggered the accident. The Mexican attorney general's office said at least 40 people of those injured had serious wounds and were taken to local hospitals.

Photos of the scene showed rows of what appeared to be bodies covered in white sheets, while the other victims, who survived, strewn across the road next to the overturned truck.

The incident smashed open the container due to the impact of the crash. It was unclear whether the driver survived the accident. The truck was reportedly used for transporting perishable goods.

Rescue workers, who first arrived at the scene, said more migrants had been aboard the truck when it crashed, and many had fled for fear of being detained by immigration agents.

A paramedic noted that some migrants, who fled the scene to the surrounding neighborhoods, were bloodied or bruised. Chiapas, which neighbors Guatemala, is a significant transit point for undocumented migrants.

Guatemalan President Alejandro Giammattei has offered consular assistance, including the repatriation of bodies.

"I deeply regret the tragedy in the State of Chiapas and I sympathize with the families of the victims to whom we offer all the necessary consular assistance, including repatriations," Giammattei tweeted.

Lamento profundamente la tragedia en el Estado de Chiapas y me solidarizo con las familias de las victimas a quienes ofrecemos toda la asistencia consular necesaria incluyendo las repatriaciones.  Alejandro Giammattei (@DrGiammattei) December 10, 2021

The incident is reportedly one of the worst accidents of its kind in Mexico.

Migrants in Mexico Paid $2,500-$3,500 to Smugglers

The Guardian reported that those who spoke to survivors said the migrants were told to pay between $2,500 and $3,500 to board the truck and be transported to Mexico's central state of Puebla.

They would then be contracted with another set of migrant smugglers after their arrival in Puebla to take them to the U.S. border.

Hundreds of thousands of migrants from Central America reportedly flee from their country over poverty and violence. Many of them pay smugglers to illegally transport them into the U.S. borders via crowded and dangerous trucks.

READ MORE: 5 Dead, More Than 25 Injured in Fatal Weekend of Multi-Vehicle Crashes in Mexico

This article is owned by Latin Post.

Written by: Joshua Summers

WATCH: Preventable Accident Tips For Truckers That Really Work - From Smart Trucking
Travis Scott claimed that he did not hear the screams of his fans, urging him to stop his Astroworld concert.

The rapper made his comments during his interview with radio personality Charlemagne Tha God that was posted on YouTube on Thursday. The Grio reported that it was Scott's first interview since the tragic Astroworld music festival, which killed at least 10 people.

According to Scott, his visibility from the stage while he was performing was limited, but what he did see, he acted upon, and he has stopped the show twice - one to call on security to help a fan who had passed out. He added that the noise on stage plus the pyrotechnics also made it difficult for him to fully grasp what was happening.

"You want to make sure fans get the proper attention they need... Anytime I could see anything like that, I did (stop the show). I stopped it a couple times to just make sure everybody was okay. And I really just go off the fans' energy as a collective, call and response. I just didn't hear that," Scott said.

On November 5, a crowd surge at the Astroworld Festival in Houston, Texas killed 10 people and injured some 300 individuals during Scott's performance.

The concertgoers reportedly pushed toward the front of the stage when the rapper was performing. Some attendees were seen in videos climbing on top of a camera platform and begging staff to stop the show as the deadly chaos unfolded in the crowd below.

However, sources close to the rapper said Travis Scott was at least 50 yards from that camera operator and did not hear the pleas to end the concert.

READ NEXT: Travis Scott Faces New Milion-Dollar Lawsuit Filed by Astroworld Security Guards After Texas Concert Tragedy

Travis Scott Says He's Been on an 'Emotional Rollercoaster' Since the Astroworld Festival

In Thursday's interview, Travis Scott also said he's been on an "emotional rollercoaster" since the Astroworld concert.

"It really hurts... It hurts the community. It hurts the city [Houston]. It's a lot of feelings, a lot of grieving," Scott noted. The rapper said it gets "so hard" because he always feel "connected" to his fans.

"I went through something and my fans went through something and people's parents went through something and it really hurts," he noted.

Scott also claimed that he did not initially know that the concertgoers had been hurt, saying he did not know the exact details until minutes before the press conference after his performance.

Some of the victims' attorneys spoke out against the rapper's remarks. Tony Buzbee, the lawyer representing the family of Axel Acosta, who died at the Astroworld festival, said Acosta's family does not want to hear Travis Scott's excuses.

"Excuses do not assuage their grief and pain," said Buzbee told CNN.

Travis Scott Files Document to Dismiss One Civil Lawsuit Against Him Over Astroworld Festival Tragedy

Travis Scott has asked a judge to dismiss at least one civil Astroworld lawsuit in which he has been named, The Daily Mail reported.

The rapper filed the legal documents on Monday. He requested that a lawsuit filed by Astroworld concert attendee Jessie Garcia against him and some of his businesses be dismissed.

Travis Scott reportedly issued a "general denial" to all the allegations in Garcia's suit. According to sources close to the rapper, Scott plans to issue the same response to the dozens of cases filed against him in connection with the Astroworld Festival tragedy.

READ MORE: Travis Scott Slammed With $750M Lawsuit Over Astroworld Festival Tragedy

This article is owned by Latin Post.

Written by: Joshua Summers

WATCH: A Conversation with Travis Scott and Charlamagne Tha God - From CThaGod
A faction of the Jalisco Cartel has launched a drone attack at a community in Mexico's Michoacan state on Tuesday night.

Mexico News Daily reported that the incident involving drones that carried explosives had spread terror through the Villa Victoria community in Chinicuila before the National Guard drove the attackers out of town.

Residents were reportedly awoken by gunshots and explosions as Jalisco cartel hitmen moved into the town. According to El Universal, several families fled while others hid in bedrooms and bathrooms as drones armed with C-4 explosives targeted homes. The drone attack also reportedly caused significant damage to the houses in the community.

There was security footage showing members of the Jalisco cartel shooting at homes and kicking down doors. Some residents said the armed men entered homes and beat the occupants, who are "innocent people."

Luckily, no deaths or serious injuries were reported from the attack. Local reports said the Jalisco cartel members immediately fled into the nearby hills when the National Guard personnel arrived.

According to The Yucatan Times, the orders of the plaza chiefs to carry out the attack were heard in audios of the communication radios, intervened by the security authorities.

Local reports said the armed group reappeared in the early hours of Wednesday and attacked the National Guard forces, which lasted for at least two hours. There were no reports of any casualties or injuries from the attack yet.

READ NEXT: Jalisco Cartel Boss El Mencho's Wife, La Jefa, Arrested in Mexico on Money Laundering Charges

U.S. Offers $5 Million Reward for the Stepson of Jalisco Cartel Boss' El Mencho'

The attacks at Villa Victoria community in Chinicuila, Mexico came days after the U.S. Department of State offered a reward of up to $5 million for information leading to the arrest of the stepson of Jalisco cartel leader Nemesio "El Mencho" Oseguera.

The State Department announced on December 1 that Juan Carlos Valencia Gonzalez, known by his aliases "El Pelon" and "El R-3," was one of the alleged leaders of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel or Cartel de Jalisco Nueva Generacion (CJNG).

The State Department noted that the Jalisco cartel is considered "to be the most violent drug trafficking organization currently operating in Mexico, with the highest cocaine, heroin and methamphetamine trafficking capacity."

In an October 8, 2020 indictment, U.S.-born Valencia Gonzalez has been charged by the U.S. District Court of the District of Columbia with conspiracy and distribution of a controlled substance for unlawful importation to the U.S. and use of a firearm during a narcotics transaction.

El Mencho's stepson has been charged with conspiring to traffic more than five kilograms of cocaine and more than 500 grams of methamphetamine as early as 2007.

Valencia Gonzalez was identified by Mexico's Defense Secretary Luis Cresencio Sandoval as one of the leaders of the Jalisco cartel's "Grupo Elite." The armed wing, formed in 2019, reportedly operates in Zacatecas, Guanajuato, and Michoacan states.

Valencia Gonzalez's mother, Rosalinda Gonzalez, is married to El Mencho. Rosalinda was 14 when she gave birth to Valencia Gonzalez. Rosalinda met and fell in love with El Mencho two years later.

Rosalinda and El Mencho eventually got married and had three children, namely Laisha Michelle Oseguera, Ruben Oseguera, and Jessica Johana Oseguera.

The Jalisco Cartel

The Jalisco cartel is currently being led by El Mencho, according to an InsightCrime report. The CJNG came out from the Sinaloa Cartel in 2010 after the death of former Sinaloa Cartel capo Ignacio Coronel, known as "Nacho," who was killed by Mexican security forces.

Nacho's death resulted in the split into two factions - "La Resistencia" and "Torcidos" - of the Sinaloa Cartel. The "Torcidos" became what is now the Jalisco cartel, which has since expanded rapidly in Mexico.

The CJNG involves itself in many criminal activities, including international drug trafficking. Most recently, the drug cartel got involved in synthetic drugs and powerful opioids like fentanyl.

El Mencho continues to evade capture, and the U.S. government offered a $10 million reward for information leading to his arrest. The State Department also offered a $5 million reward each for Jalisco cartel leaders Audias "El Jardinero" Flores Silva and Erick Valencia Salazar.

El Mencho remains to be the most elusive criminal and is reportedly hiding in Mexico.

READ MORE: La Negra, Daughter of Jalisco Cartel Boss El Mencho, Gets 2 1/2 Years in Prison for Violation of Kingpin Act

This article is owned by Latin Post.

Written by: Mary Webber

WATCH: Cartel Jalisco Nueva Generacion Ataca Comunidad en Michoacan - From Noticias Telemundo






The Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) announced Thursday that in this year alone, they had seized a huge volume of fentanyl crossing the border that was enough to kill 200 million individuals.

Based on the new data provided by the Texas DPS, the drug seizures in the state were part of Operation Lone Star, a state initiative targeting to curb the entry of human traffickers and drug runners into Texas.

More Victims of Fentanyl Overdose Victims Expected in Texas

According to Fox News, the data showed that Operation Lone Star has seized 160 pounds of fentanyl within its targeted area.

Aside from fentanyl, other drugs seized within the area included 13,494 pounds of marijuana, 1,647 pounds of methamphetamine, 2,430 pounds of cocaine, and 37 pounds of heroin.

Based on the DPS data presented in a slide presentation, if the activities inside and outside of Operation Lone Star's area of interest will be combined, the department has seized a total of 886 pounds of fentanyl which were approximately 200,790,522 lethal doses.

READ NEXT: Guatemalan Man Gets 11 Years in Prison for Role in Smuggling Cocaine From Colombia to U.S.

Texas Officials Alarmed by the Surge of Fentanyl in the State

According to DPS seized drug system trainer Jennifer Hatch, traffickers tried to sell fentanyl as "synthetic heroin" to increase their profits.

However, Hatch noted that their strategy ended up with unfortunate circumstances as the users ended up dead because people did not know that fentanyl was in the drugs they were ingesting.

She added that most recently, fentanyl has been found in ecstasy tablets. A DPS spokesperson also presented data that showed Operation Lone Star has resulted in about 165,497 migrant apprehensions and referrals.

Operation Lone Star also reportedly resulted in the additional seizure of 477 firearms and over 10,000 criminal arrests. Operation Lone Star was formed in March under the supervision of Republican Texas Governor Greg Abbott.

At the time of the operation's launch, Abbott said the state's southern border crisis had escalated because of the Biden administration's lax border policies. In particular, Abbott cited the Biden administration policies that invite illegal immigration and refuse to secure the border.

The Republican governor noted that Texas supported legal immigration. But he said his administration would not be an accomplice to the open border policies "that cause" a humanitarian crisis" in the state and endanger the Texans' lives.

Abbott noted that they would surge the resources and add law enforcement personnel to confront the crisis. Meanwhile, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said the U.S. recorded its highest number of drug overdose deaths in a 12-month period, exceeding the 100,000-mark for the first time.

The latest CDC data showed an estimated 100,306 drug deaths in the 12 months running through April. The recent numbers marked a 29 percent rise from the deaths recorded in the same period a year earlier, indicating that the country is heading for another full-year record after drug deaths soared during the COVID-19 pandemic.

READ MORE: $1 Million Worth of Cocaine Found Floating at Sea Near Florida Keys

This article is owned by Latin Post.

Written by: Jess Smith

WATCH: Texas is Experiencing More Problems With Fentanyl & Opioid Addiction - From More Than Rehab
A Labour Party Area Representative in Laois is aiming to replace Ivana Bacik in Seanad Eireann as a representative of Trinity College Dublin graduates in Leinster House.

Mr Eoin Barry, a Wolfhill native, has announced his intention to run in the upcoming by-election cause by Ms Bacik's election to the Dail.

Today Im confirming my intention to run in the upcoming Trinity by-election," he said.

The social worker and family therapist, who lives in Killeshin near Graiguecullen on the Carlow border, explained what motivated him to run.

"The last two year have been very difficult on people and politics is becomingly increasingly divisive. For too many people in Ireland politics simply isnt working.

Buying a home is too difficult and the cost of rent is too high. For working parents accessing affordable childcare is almost impossible in many areas. It is no surprise that mental health problems are on the rise.

While these challenges can seem insurmountable, I believe they can be tackled. There is no reason that a wealthy, modern and well educated country like Ireland cant create services that work for all. It require changing how the system works and challenging the structures between government departments so that they work together.

This election is about the type of long term change that we need to make. Im running because I believe that by working together we can bring about positive change and develop public services that work for everyone.

We can develop structures that support our front line health care workers and gives them the resources they need to do their jobs.

We can reform our mental health services to meet the growing needs of young people including those experiencing eating disorders.

We reform services so that anyone in mental health distress who seeks support can access it.

To improve the mental health of young people we can develop regulations to tackle new issues that have arisen from social media and we create policies and laws to tackle to tackle the old problems associated with bullying.

As a country we have all the resources we need to develop public services that simply work," he said. MORE BELOW TWEET.

Im running for Seanad Eireann.



This election is an opportunity for us to focus on the long term policies that we need.



I look forward to sharing more in the weeks ahead.



Sign up: https://t.co/sb9aD6WSUU pic.twitter.com/bQkkYK63F8  Eoin Barry (@EoinFBarry) December 9, 2021

Married to Karen, Eoin lives in Killeshin with his wife and one year old son. He worked as a Youth Worker in Gragiuecullen and later worked with the housing charity Focus Ireland.

He says grew up on a small dairy farm in Wolfhill and went to school in Newtown NS and the Presentation Carlow. After school, he completed a degree in Social Care in Athlone IT.

Mr Barry undertook further training in Criminology and Social Policy with the Open University before completing his social work training at Trinity University. In the last year he completed his training as a Family Therapist in UCD.

He ran in the 2019 Local Elections in County Laois and is currently the Labour Party area representative in Graiguecullen  Portarlington. His name was mentioned as a possible candidate for Labour in the 2020 general election.
Once off funding of 1 million is in the bank for the backers of a new hospice facility for the Midlands after the the Minister for Health, Stephen Donnelly TD, has announced 10 million in once-off funding for palliative and end-of-life care around Ireland.

A statement from the Department of Health said the funding would go to the development of the hospice at the HSE designated site in Tullamore.

The Department said the money will help to progress national priorities, including increasing the equitable access to palliative care services across Ireland. It added Funding will also be used to support palliative care services provided by voluntary organisations and support the financial sustainability of the voluntary hospice sector.

There is no designated standalone 'Level 3' hospice for Laois, Offaly, Westmeath and Longford.

Minister Donnelly said the availability and range of services grow significantly over the last 20 years but accepted the provision of services is not equally spread across the country.

"I have secured 3 million of this once-off funding to progress our commitment to develop hospices in Cavan, Tullamore, and Drogheda. The development of these units will result in a hospice serving every region of the country, he said.

A Level 3 Hospice is a specially designed and equipped building where end of life care is provided, by specially trained doctors, nurses and other healthcare staff, to patients most in need of specialist palliative care at the end of their lives.

The funding will be used to develop the design of a 20-bed palliative care unit with auxiliary services on the selected site at the Midland Regional Hospital Tullamore.

The Offaly Hospice Foundation committed 500,000 towards the project. In January 2020 Tullamore Lions Club and the Irish Hospice Foundation kick started the fundraising drive by each donating 25,000.

A key fundraiser is the Hooves for Hospice campaign which involves midlands farms selling cattle to raise funds for the new facility.

At the start of 2021, it was estimated that donations received and the proceeds of the animals currently being reared when they are sold would exceed 600,000.

The Minister for Health also announced funding for other hospices around Ireland as well as the LauraLynn Irelands Childrens hospice, Jack and Jill Childrens Foundation, the Irish Hospice Foundation, the Irish Cancer Society, bereavement organisations and the All-Ireland Institute of Hospice and Palliative Care.

Of the 10 million, 3 million will be equally distributed to progress the development of hospices in Drogheda, Cavan and the Midlands which are currently in the planning stages

5.2million will be distributed to the members of the Voluntary Hospice Group to support the valuable work of members. 200,000 will be provided to the Waterford Hospice Foundation to clear the debt on the new 20 bed specialist inpatient unit. The removal of this debt will allow Waterford Hospice Foundation to direct funds towards patient services.

The remaining 1.6 million will be distributed across a number of national organisations in the palliative care and bereavement sector. 800,000 will be granted to LauraLynn Irelands Childrens Hospice, 150,000 granted to the Jack and Jill Childrens Foundation, and 300,000 will be distributed equally between the Irish Hospice Foundation and the Irish Cancer Society. In addition, 100,000 will be granted to the All-Ireland Institute of Hospice and Palliative Care, and 100,000 distributed equally between bereavement organisations Anam Cara and First Light.

The announcement follows the budget day commitment by the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform, Michael McGrath TD, to the provision of this funding.
Relatives of Troubles victims have held protests at Stormont and police headquarters to voice opposition to controversial plans to end prosecutions linked to the conflict.

The demonstrations outside the Northern Ireland Office at Stormont House and the nearby PSNI HQ in east Belfast were timed to mark International Human Rights Day.'

People who lost loved ones in incidents involving the security forces were among those who took part.

Letters were handed in to outline the relatives views. At PSNI headquarters, Assistance Chief Constable Alan Todd came out to speak to some of the protestors and receive the letter.

On International Human Rights Day, our families are protesting this morning at Stormont Northern Ireland Office and .@PoliceServiceNI Headquarters because our human rights are under attack #TimeForTruth https://t.co/gglE5d456h pic.twitter.com/n8EL66VhQN  Time for Truth Campaign (@tftcampaign) December 10, 2021

The demonstration at Stormont House focused on the Governments contentious legacy plans while the protest at the PSNI HQ criticised ongoing delays in resolving long-running cases.

Claims that the authorities are trying to cover up their involvement in past crimes were aired.

In July, the Government published a command paper outlining its intention to prohibit future prosecutions of military veterans and ex-paramilitaries for Troubles incidents pre-dating April 1998.

Contending the criminal justice route was not delivering for victims, the command paper said a move to a new truth recovery model would help bereaved families gain information about the deaths of their loved ones.

The Government has not yet published draft legislation that would give effect to the plan, having previously indicated it would be tabled in Parliament in the autumn.

Fridays protests were organised by the Time for Truth campaign.

Campaign spokesman Niall OMurchu heavily criticised the Governments legacy plans.

Domestically and internationally in law they have been discredited and yet it looks like the British government are just going to railroad them through, he told the PA news agency.

Theyre outrageous, theyre worse than anything that happened under (General) Pinochet in South America many years ago.

And, internationally, they are the worst set of legacy proposals in terms of any post-conflict situation.

Theyre just absolutely outrageous.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson has said the Government plan will allow Northern Ireland to draw a line under the Troubles.

The proposals also envisage an end to all legacy inquests and civil actions related to the conflict.

They are opposed by all the main parties at Stormont, the Irish government and many victims groups.

In 2014, the UK and Irish governments and a majority of Stormont parties agreed to a range of proposals to deal with legacy issues, including a new independent investigations unit to probe unsolved killings.

Those Stormont House Agreement measures have never materialised amid years of political wrangling over the thorny issue of the regions troubled past.

The Governments plan represents a significant unilateral step away from the Stormont House structures
They say school days are the happiest of our lives and they must hold fond memories for one hugely successful businessman if his recent sponsorship of his primary school charity calendar is anything to go by.

Rath NS in Ballybrittas has brought out its much anticipated charity calendar and this year it has been sponsored by Sean Hall, a former pupil of the school and Managing Director of Manguard Plus, Irelands largest privately owned Irish security company.

The calendar is the result of much hard work by the school, spearheaded by a dedicated committee, who were determined to find a sponsor to ensure all monies raised would go directly towards the purchase of much needed digital equipment for its pupils with special educational needs.

Tommy Fitzgerald is Principal of Rath NS.

"On behalf of our entire school community, I wish to sincerely thank Sean Hall, a past pupil of Rath N.S., and everyone associated with Manguard Plus for their extremely generous sponsorship. The funds provided will assist us purchase extra iPads for our pupils with special educational needs. This will greatly enhance the learning experience for these children. We are extremely grateful, he said.

The school contacted Sean who, true to form, didnt hesitate to stump up the funds to cover the printing costs of the calendar.

I am delighted to support this initiative. I have great memories of Rath NS - its a small school with a big imprint. School sets down so many foundations for young people and I passionately believe that giving kids the best possible educational advantages sets them up for life, it is crucially important.

"I have great admiration for schools who do all they can to provide their pupils with the best start in life, educationally and personally. They are constantly looking out for opportunities that will enrich the school and provide a full educational advantage and putting this lovely calendar together is yet another example of the real effort that is synonymous with Rath NS, he said. MORE BELOW PICTURE

A total of 200 copies of the calendar have gone on sale from the school and local retailers Iosa Linn Playschool, Village Coffee, Donoher's Service Station and Early Scholars Creche, all located in the village of Ballybrittas.

The calendars cost 8 for 1, 15 for 2 and 20 for 3. They.

So, put them on your Santa list ; the perfect stocking filler and a lovely record of Rath NS school activities!

More about Sean Hall's business success below his picture.

Founded in 1996, Manguard Plus is the largest privately owned Irish security company in Ireland.

It employs over 1000 people from offices in Naas, Cork, Waterford and Belfast. It has recently expanded into Co. Laois with a full mobile service. It also has offices in London.

It numbers Dublin Port Company, Aer Lingus, DSV and Virgin Media amongst its clients.

The company, which prides itself on excellent customer service has seen its professional ethos recognised ,being awarded the much sought after ISO awards, namely ISO 9001:2015, ISO 45001:2018 and 1SO 14001:2015 quality awards.

The independent assessment was conducted by the leading certification body, European Quality Assurance (EQA) and demonstrates the companys commitment to customer service and quality in service delivery, its impact and contribution to environmental standards and health and safety practices within the company.

It has now earned the right to display the coveted ISO certification marks to demonstrate its adherence to these standards.
A technology company has proposed the construction of a new building in County Kildare.

Planning permission documents show that Classic Technology Limited is asking Kildare County Council for permission to construct a two storey office/laboratories building with reception entrance area, staff toilets, shower room with goods-in delivery area and storage on ground floor with managers office and staff canteen facilities and staff toilets on first floor at Millennium Park in Osberstown, Naas.

In addition, the company is also seeking permission for the installation of new foul sewer and surface water sewer and connection into the existing Millennium Park drainage system and connection into the existing water mains.

Permission is also being sought for 27 surface car parking spaces including four E-Car charging points, 20 covered cycle parking spaces, delivery area and turning area on south east elevation and all site drainage/site development works.

The date received is listed as December 8, while the submission-by date is January 20 next and the due date is listed as February 10 next.

It is understood that the application is currently in the pre-validation stage.

According to its website, Classic Technology Ltd. is Irelands "countrys foremost independent test instrument supplier, representing many world leaders in their field."

It also says that it covers parameters such as Pressure, Mass, Temperature, Flow, Level, pH, Conductivity and Calibration Management Software, and is also the nation's only GE Druck Approved Service Centre.
A woman's facial injury was so obvious that a garda initially thought it was a birthmark, Naas District Court heard on December 8.

Peter Collins, 52, of no fixed abode faces an allegation of assault on a date unknown between October 11 and October 13 at Main Street, Donnybrook and alleged breach of the Public Order Act at Main Street, Newbridge, on October 13.

He appeared in court on December 8.

Garda Conor Sheehan told of arresting the defendant and charging him with assault causing harm on December 8. He cautioned him and the man said he had nothing to say.

Read more Kildare news

The court heard that the State would be withdrawing the assault allegation.

Gda Sheehan told of encountering the defendant and the injured party .

He said the injured party was trying to get away.

Gda Sheehan said they were lying in undergrowth off the main street in Newbridge and it appeared that the woman was being held down.

There was bruising to her face and she indicated she was in fear for her safety, he added.

He said he believed that she sustained the injuries a short time previously in Dublin and she identified the defendant.

The court also heard that they had a relationship and both had issues with alcohol and it spiralled down.

Gda Sheehan said the woman's finances were allegedly controlled by him and he had not complied with a request to keep away from her.

He said she has extensive facial injuries and I dont recall it as bad.

He added: At first I thought it was an extensive birthmark.

However the woman suffered no fractures at all and sustained soft tissue injuries.

A previous hearing was told that after being detained the defendant was cautioned and made no reply to the allegations.

Gda Conor Sheehan told an earlier court hearing that the defendant and the injured party were in a relationship for several years. He told the court of arresting the defendant shortly before 1am on October 13 in Newbridge.

When the defendant appeared by videolink on December 1 he stated wanted to change his legal representative and barrister Aisling Murphy is now representing him.

Judge Desmond Zaidan adjourned the matter to December 15 when the defendant is likely to appear via video link.
The North West Hospice is to receive an allocation of 250,00 which was announced by government today.

The Minister for Health, Stephen Donnelly TD, announced 10 million in once-off funding for palliative and end-of-life care.

The funding will help to progress national priorities, including increasing the equitable access to palliative care services across Ireland. Funding will also be used to support palliative care services provided by voluntary organisations and support the financial sustainability of the voluntary hospice sector.

Minister Donnelly said: "We are rightly, very proud of our palliative care services in Ireland. We have seen the availability and range of services grow significantly over the last 20 years. At the same time, we are aware that the provision of services is not equally spread across the country. I have secured 3 million of this once-off funding to progress our commitment to develop hospices in Cavan, Tullamore, and Drogheda. The development of these units will result in a hospice serving every region of the country.

In addition, funding will be used to support the crucial work of a number of national organisations in the palliative care and bereavement sector. I am delighted that we can provide this once-off funding to support the work of voluntary groups including LauraLynn Irelands Childrens hospice, Jack and Jill Childrens Foundation, the Irish Hospice Foundation, the Irish Cancer Society, bereavement organisations and the All-Ireland Institute of Hospice and Palliative Care.

Minister Donnelly continued: I am delighted to announce that funding will also be allocated to members of the Voluntary Hospice Group. We value the essential palliative care services provided by members of the Voluntary Hospice Group and this funding is in recognition of, and to support, their valuable services.

Of the 10 million, 3 million will be equally distributed to progress the development of hospices in Drogheda, Cavan and the Midlands which are currently in the planning stages. 5.2million will be distributed to the members of the Voluntary Hospice Group to support the valuable work of members. 200,000 will be provided to the Waterford Hospice Foundation to clear the debt on the new 20 bed specialist inpatient unit. The removal of this debt will allow Waterford Hospice Foundation to direct funds towards patient services.

The remaining 1.6 million will be distributed across a number of national organisations in the palliative care and bereavement sector. 800,000 will be granted to LauraLynn Irelands Childrens Hospice, 150,000 granted to the Jack and Jill Childrens Foundation, and 300,000 will be distributed equally between the Irish Hospice Foundation and the Irish Cancer Society. In addition, 100,000 will be granted to the All-Ireland Institute of Hospice and Palliative Care, and 100,000 distributed equally between bereavement organisations Anam Cara and First Light.

Todays announcement follows the budget day commitment by the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform, Michael McGrath TD, to the provision of this funding.
Anyone arriving from Britain into Ireland will be asked to take daily antigen tests for five consecutive days after arriving in the country, the Government has said.

Taoiseach Micheal Martin said that the advice, which will not be placed on a legal footing, had been taken due to the high volume of travel between the two countries.

Speaking yesterday evening (December 9th), he described the new guidance as a precautionary measure and urged people to exercise a high degree of caution when youre travelling.

Citing advice from the World Health Organisation, Taoiseach Martin said: Were not going to stop Omicron, but we can try to delay it as best we can.

He indicated it was not about curbing the spread of the virus forever, but instead taking steps to protect people.

Most of all, he urged people to take the booster jab as soon as possible.

The booster, he told the Tonight Show on Virgin Media, would offer some protection against the new variant.

As part of the advice, people will also be advised to consider the spread of the Omicron variant in any country they are considering travelling to, under new advice agreed by the Government on Thursday.

The advice, issued late yesterday evening, comes after ministers received an updated public health assessment in relation to the Omicron variant.

Six cases of the new Omicron variant have now been confirmed in Ireland, with health officials warning that the country should be braced for more.

Earlier, HSE chief executive Paul Reid said it was likely that the new variant will become dominant.

The new advice also calls on anyone eligible for a booster vaccine to take it as soon as possible, especially if considering international travel in the near future.

The Government has said that airline and ferry companies will continue to be asked to check if passengers have a negative test result before arrival.

Fears over the Omicron variant have brought about the introduction of fresh restrictions on travel, requiring all travellers to Ireland from overseas to have a negative PCR or antigen test.

In a statement, the Government said that the new advice takes into account relevant factors including the intention to continue to align with the overall European Union approach to travel, and the particular circumstances of the Common Travel Area.
A new study has shown that nearly four in five people believe that climate change should be a top priority for the Irish government.

The findings result from a survey from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), in collaboration with its academic partner, the Yale University Programme on Climate Change Communication.

The survey, titled "Climate Change in the Irish Mind," involved 4,000 people.

The EPA reported that 79 per cent of participants said climate change should be "a very high or high priority for the Government."

In addition, it found that 96 per cent of people believe climate change is real, while 90 per cent believe Ireland has a responsibility to act on climate change.

Almost all the people surveyed, 94 per cent, said that they trust scientists as a source of information about climate change.

Conversely, over half said that they distrust political leaders.

Furthermore, the EPA survey showed that almost two thirds of people (64 per cent) want to see a reduction in the national herd.

RTE News has reported that EPA Director General Laura Burke said the findings of the survey "clearly demonstrate that the Irish people overwhelmingly recognise the threat, feel personally affected and want to see real change".

Green Party leader Eamon Ryan has also welcomed the report, saying that it will provide "valuable insights" into guiding the nation's environmental policies.

Dr Margaret Desmond, one of the authors of the report, added that she believed it was "very encouraging" that almost two thirds of Irish people think acting on climate change will improve economic growth and create jobs.

The results of the survey can be read in its entirety by clicking here.
The Minister for Further and Higher Education has launched new resources to help migrant learners improve their English language skills and adjust to Irish life.

The news was announced this morning on International Human Rights Day with the publication of guidelines and toolkits to assist learners.

Minister Simon Harris called competence in English as well as strong literacy and numeracy "a necessary foundation" for success in life and work in Ireland.

He said, "Our Further Education and Training (FET) sector aims to drive not only Ireland's economic success, but also to advance social cohesion and inclusion. Every individual must have a path to future that they want, through the means that best suit them. Investment made by government in FET is an investment in our country's future.

"Those who have come to Ireland and chosen to make their home here have made a huge contribution to our society. Not only do our migrant communities contribute to our economy, most importantly, they enrich our culture and provide vibrancy and diversity to Irish life. It is incumbent, therefore, on all of us however to ensure we take all the steps we can to make it easier for migrants to adjust to life in Ireland and to be able to participate in our society in the most fulfilling way."

Hope you enjoy this short animation on Initial and Ongoing Assessment of English Language Competency of Migrant Learners in Further Education and Training  Report, Guidelines and Toolkit. Reports at https://t.co/KlV5Qwjspx @CavMonETB @DeptofFHed @ETBIreland pic.twitter.com/xpacQPmFRg  SOLAS #StaySafe #HoldFirm (@SOLASFET) December 10, 2021

The minister stated the sector is "fully committed" to building inclusive teaching and learning environments.

He said, "All actions and practices embrace and promote diversity and build a sense of belonging for all in every interaction, in every lesson and in every classroom or teaching and learning place."
A report into the Health Service Executive (HSE) ransomware attack has found there were several missed opportunities to detect malicious activity.

An independent review, carried out by PricewaterhouseCoopers, found that the HSE failed to respond to several alerts after a phishing email was opened, weeks before the system was crippled by a ransomware attack.

The report found that the health service was operating on a frail IT system that does not have the required resilience and security, and does not have the proper resources.

The report found that the low level of cybersecurity, combined with the frail IT system, enabled the attackers to access the HSE system with relative ease.



HSE director-general Paul Reid launches the HSE Covid Tracker contact tracing app at the Department of Health in Dublin (Niall Carson/PA)

The ransomware attack on the HSE, which occurred in May, caused major disruption to the Irish health service.

It led to mass cancellations of appointments and surgeries.

The report found that the gang behind the ransomware attack was able to use well-known and simple attack techniques to move around the HSEs system.

The attackers first accessed the system on March 18, after someone opened a phishing email that contained a malicious Microsoft Excel file.

It triggered access to the IT system, allowing the hackers to operate across the system for a further eight weeks.

The gang was able to extract data and deploy ransomware software over large parts of the system without detection.

There were several detections of the attackers activity prior to 14 May 2021, but these did not result in a cybersecurity incident and investigation initiated by the HSE, and as a result opportunities to prevent the successful detonation of the ransomware were missed, the report added.

The report said that the HSE did not have a single responsible owner for cybersecurity at either senior executive or management level to provide leadership and direction.

This is highly unusual for an organisation of the HSEs size and complexity, with reliance on technology for delivering critical operations and handling large amounts of sensitive data, the report added.

As a consequence, there was no senior cybersecurity specialist able to ensure recognition of the risks that the organisation faced due to its cybersecurity posture and the growing threat environment.

HSEs chief executive, Paul Reid, said the network was not strategically designed as HSEs system evolved, describing it as an obvious weakness.

The report also said the HSE did not have suitably resourced roles for those with cyber-specific skills and leadership.

The report recommended that the HSE establish an oversight body for cybersecurity and appoint a chief technology and transformation officer.

Mr Reid said the HSE published the report to be open and transparent.

HSEs interim chief information officer, Fran Thompson, said: Part of the challenge was that the significance of those (alerts) was missed, and maybe not fully comprehended at the time.

Therefore when the detonation came, we werent prepared for that.

Mr Reid said: The cyber evolution has outpaced our technology management and that was a risk.

The report said there was a need for very significant investment to have a state-of-the-art IT infrastructure for the HSE, adding that it was still vulnerable to another attack.

Mr Reid added: Were concerned. Its quite clear the risks are there. Were not waiting and many of the actions that we have taken have obviously been to mitigate the exposures highlighted in the report.

We have taken a very significant range of actions.

We see that there is an exposure, but a lot of actions have taken place in the last few weeks and months in terms of monitoring, security, user access, third-party access, controls and 24-hour monitoring.
KIERAN Murphy, who has been the GP in Athea and Carrigkerry for the past 37 years, retired from his practice at the weekend.

Happily, for his patients and for the community he serves, his replacement, Dr Brid Wallace, has taken over seamlessly from him, and took up her post on Monday.

Meanwhile, Dr Murphy is hoping to spend some of his retirement hours in the air. A keen pilot, he has retained his share in a Piper Cherokee 180 four-seater, single engine plane based at Farranfore and plans to get back into the cockpit more next year.

With just 330 hours clocked up, he would have loved to have done more flying over the years. But there were just so many other things, he explained.

On any given free day, he added, the airfield had to be right, the weather had to be right, the plane and pilot had to be right before he could take off.

But he also has plans to have some more family time, and perhaps also to put pen to paper to describe his many years as a practicing rural GP.

However, he isnt intending to hang up the stethoscope completely and will retain his aviation links, providing medicals to pilots and commercial pilots on a part-time basis.

But Fridays retirement still comes as a bit of wrench. Of course there are mixed feelings, he said this week. I have loved doing the job. I still love it. I enjoy the contact with people, meeting people and using the skills I have to help people.

But I will be 67 next week and what I am looking forward to is the freedom to not have to be here in the surgery every Monday morning, he continued.

During most of his 37 years in Athea and 43 years as a qualified doctor, Dr Murphy has been involved in training. We were one of the first training practices in this part of the country, he explained. A key element of that involved the men and women registrars doing their two-year GP training but his practice also hosted trainee occupational therapy students, nursing students and medical students on placements. Dr Murphy was also deeply involved in training community first responders and in supervising advanced paramedics.

He is particularly pleased that with Dr Wallace taking over, there will be significant continuity within the practice.

There was, he admitted, enormous relief in Athea and Carrigkerry when it was confirmed that there would be a full-time replacement from December 6.

A number of local politicians, among them Minister of State Niall Collins TD and Cllr Liam Galvin, cathaoirleach of Newcastle West Municipal District, had raised the issue and lobbied to ensure that Athea and Carrigkerry would not be left without a doctor, like so many other towns and villages in rural Ireland.

Minister Collins welcomed the confirmation of a full-time replacement for Dr Murphy as very good news.

And he thanked him for his many years of dedicated service and commitment to the people of Athea and beyond and wished him and his family a happy and long retirement.

Community events in Athea and Carrigkerry to mark Dr Murphys retirement have been postponed until the New Year because of the high Covid-19 figures.
IT scooped the Audience Award for Best Short Film at this years Cork International Film Festival. Now, Only in Askeaton: Seanie Barron, the film featuring Askeaton wood-artist, Seanie Barron, is in with a chance of reaching the Oscars, having been longlisted for the next Academy Awards.

It is a wonderful outcome, said Michele Horrigan, artistic director of Askeaton Contemporary Arts who commissioned filmmaker Michael Holly to create the film about Seanie and his work.

Seanie is the creator of exceptionally beautiful and highly individual walking sticks and his work has been exhibited in various galleries around Ireland, in London and in Brussels.. Now, this 15-minute film brings Seanie to life on the big screen, following him on his rambles in search of his raw material, becoming his eyes as he spies a good, straight stick. It also brings us into Seanies workshop where he shows the treasures he has collected and where we see his imagination at work, explaining what he sees emerging from each piece of wood. Here, he says, is a sea-horse and there is a dog and this, he adds, hefting another treasure in his hand, is the Hunchback of Notre Dame.

Winning the Audience Award at the festival is a bit of a coup for Askeaton Contemporary Arts (ACA) which commissioned the film. But the Oscar longlist nomination is the icing on the cake. It is really great for a small town in West Limerick, that the ambition is stretched like that, says Michele.

It is also a great validation of last years decision by ACA to launch a new media channel Only in Askeaton. The decision was prompted by Covid-19 restrictions but also by the realisation that it was a very valid and rewarding way to showcase artworks and artists. Some of the first offerings featured artists who had previously taken up residencies during ACAs annual Welcome to the Neighbourhood Contemporary Art Festival. But art-films made by visiting artists have now also been included.

Working with film-maker Michael Holly, the film about Seanie Barron was shot last summer and then submitted and accepted for the Cork Film Festival which has just concluded. You could make a full length feature film about Seanie to be honest, Michele said.

But they were all overjoyed at the films success. It was so wonderful that all of Seanies family came to support him and got to see him on the big screen, Michele said.

At the film premiere at the Cork International Film Festival, with Seanie and some of his family in attendance, the audience were obviously charmed by this character, said filmmaker Michael Holly.

We spent a blissful couple of days following Seanie around his stick-hunting grounds and at his workshop behind his house in Askeaton. It was a great pleasure and an honour to work on this short documentary about the great Seanie Barron with Askeaton Contemporary Arts.

I am delighted with it, Seanie told the Limerick Leader. Its great for the oul town, a bit of excitement. He was also pleased for film-maker Michael Holly. Its great for him to get an award.

Totally self-taught, Seanie works at his sticks every day. It keeps me alive in the head, he said. He also creates priests on occasion, when the wood is right. A priest, he explains, is used to hit a caught fish and put him out of his misery.

To watch the film, which is free to all, go to https://www.youtube.com/ channel/UCkQfznveZE8rqp PAVGqLJcA or https://askeatonarts.com/ media

If you want to find out more about Seanie Barron, go https://askeatonarts.com/ publications/barron
THREE LIMERICK students are celebrating this week after they won big at the 2021 Junk Kouture Grand Final.

Brenda Lim, Brianna Sheehan and Molly Jackson from Colaiste Nano Nagle took home the prize for south region winner in the competition.

The girl's design Ephemeral Bloom featured on the RTE show yesterday as talented young designers made their bid for Junk Koutute glory.

The design was made from bedsheets, construction mesh, paper coasters, wire, Pearl necklaces, lace, a corset from a wedding dress, cardboard, copper, yoga mats, copper wires, flip-flops, socks, Styrofoam and newspaper.

The influence of an Asian heritage and designer Yumi Katsura inspired their creation.

The outfits were made of 100% recycled materials and this year's students pushed the boundaries using things like silage wrap and bike helmets in their creations.

The girl's teacher Sarah Nestor also took home the award for Teacher of the Year at the Grand Final.

Limerick was also represented on the judging panel by the Head of Department of Fine Art and Education in Limerick School of Art and Design Dr Tracy Fahey.

Dr Fahey judged the designs alongside Roz Purcell, Louis Walsh, Michelle Visage, and Stephen McLaughlin and Programme Director for Fashion Design at Griffith College Jane Leavy.

Speaking about the winning design, Junk Kouture judge Roz Purcell said: There was over 100 seatbelts gathered from a scrapyard and you would not even notice. When she walked in, it looked like it had come off the runway.

"Only when you came up close you realised this couture gown was made out of junk. It was absolutely fantastic, extremely well-executed and she did it all by herself. I would wear it!

Commenting on the high standard of designs in the Grand Final, Junk Kouture judge Michelle Visage added: They are all unbelievable.

"Each year it gets more difficult  theyre just superb and the future of fashion, its just amazing. But I think tonight, Iconoclastic Fantastic chose us  they knew what they wanted to do and we were all smitten. It was hard but the right person has won.

Meanwhile, fellow judge Louis Walsh said he wouldnt be surprised if the students who appeared on the show will be curating their own fashion collections in the future.

Junk Kouture gets better and better each year and we are going to have some amazing designers out of this! he said.

Anyone who wants to get involved in next year's event can submit their completed designs between January 20 and February 3 2022.

Head to the Junk Kouture website for more information.
Christmas at the Milk Market 2021

Christmas Message from Limerick Milk Market

The Milk Market, Limerick

Friday 10th to Sun 12th December

Friday 17th to Sun 19th December

Wed 22nd to Friday 24th December

Christmas at the Limerick Milk Market 2021 gets underway this weekend. This year they have a range of traditional day time Christmas Markets of festive foods mixed with some special once off Christmas Markets  Sun 13th December Christmas Art Fair and Sunday 19th will feature a Christmas Antique and Vintage Fair.

Each Friday will see an Xmas Open Air Cafe (featuring Country Choice Farm Shop & Grill, Bon Appetit Creperie, Harpers Coffee, Greenacres Cafe, Mas Kitchen, The Edge Clothing, Restory Crafts, Antique Loft & Vintage Gem Store and Vito Vintage Clothing) 11am to 3pm.

Each Saturday will see the Famous Food Market Xmas edition, featuring the best of Local Limerick seasonal Food with a Christmas twist, Saturdays in Dec 8am to 3pm. The team at The Milk Market would like to encourage customers to shop early on Saturdays to guarantee their Christmas Food Favorites including: Artisan Christmas Food Hampers, Minced Pies, Specialty Hot Drinks, Puddings, Christmas Hams & Turkeys (Order in advance), Chestnuts, Brandy Butter, Christmas Deserts/Baked Goodies, and last but not least some traditional in season fruit and vegetables ready for all to enjoy and savour!

Santa will be visiting the Milk Market on Saturday 18th December and those who wish to get a picture with him are advised to bring their phone/camera for your 2021 picture, donations can be given to Limerick Suicide Watch on the day

Wednesday 22nd Dec 11am to 3pm will see a fundraiser day for Limerick Suicide Watch sponsored by Lyons Of Limerick who will operate an Open Air Courtyard with a FREE concert by the excellent Downtown Dixieland Jazz band.

There will be a Christmas Famous Food Market (featuring the best of Local Limerick seasonal Food with a Christmas twist) Thursday 23rd Dec 8am to 3pm

The Final Farmers Market of the year will take place on Christmas Eve, the Famous Food Market Friday Xmas Eve 24th Dec 8am to 2pm, which will finish out the three-day run into Christmas Eve and the Christmas Series 2021. Said David Fitzgerald Limerick Milk Market Manager.

This Year the Milk Market hopes to dazzle you with their Christmas Canopy of Lights and Warm your soul with delicious food and their new HEATED SEATs sponsored by Limerick City and County Council for you to check out this festive season.

Speaking to the Limerick Leader, David Fitzgerald was very grateful to the people of Limerick.

This has been another challenging year for everyone including all of us at the Limerick Milk Market, we are however immensely grateful to the People of Limerick for their kindness, support and understanding during this difficult time. I would like to take this opportunity to once again thank the Customer, Staff and Traders who have been amazing this year for their flexibility, adaptability and sense of community spirit. Finally I would like to offer my thanks to the Management Team and Board for their support.

We would like to wish you and yours a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year from All of us at the #LimerickMilkMarket

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The Delhi University's academic council on Friday approved conducting entrance test for admissions from next year, reported news agency PTI , quoting sources.

Despite some members of the academic council giving a note of dissent, the proposal was passed and will now come up for discussion in the executive council meeting scheduled for 17 December.

Delhi University Vice-Chancellor Yogesh Singh had constituted a nine-member panel earlier, which had recommended that the varsity hold a common entrance test to ensure 'substantial objectivity' in the admission process.

The move came in the backdrop of a large number of students, particularly cent-per-cent scorers from Kerala, getting admission to Delhi University.

The committee, formed under the chairmanship of Dean (examinations) DS Rawat, was supposed to examine the reasons for over and under admissions to undergraduate courses, study the board-wise distribution of admissions in all undergraduate courses, suggest alternate strategies for the optimal admissions in undergraduate courses, and examine the OBC admissions with reference to the non-creamy layer status.

It had analysed the data of admissions which are cut-off based and saw that it showed the highest intake of students from the CBSE Board, followed by the Kerala Board of Higher Secondary Education, Board of School Education, Haryana, ICSE and Board of Secondary Education Rajasthan.

The committee is of the considered view that as long as undergraduate admissions in the university are cut-off based, there is no way that fluctuations, sometimes significant, can be avoided to maintain equity," the committee had said in a report.

"Any effort to normalise marks awarded by various boards may be fraught with the danger of devising a formula which may not be equitable on some scale or the other," it added.

Noting that the normalisation of marks of various boards may not stand the test of legality, if contested in a court of law, the report said that "neither cut-off based admissions nor admissions through normalisation of awarded marks by various boards are options which observe maximum objectivity in admissions".

"... the Committee is of the considered view that admissions may be carried out through a Common Entrance Test (CET).

"It may be conducted through an appropriate mode by the University through a well-devised internal arrangement or through any external agency depending upon prevailing operational feasibility and administrative convenience at that time," said the report.

With inputs from agencies.

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Brian Williams didnt go gentle into that good night.

In a noticeable break from the journalistic demeanor he has projected for nearly three decades at NBC News and MSNBC, the veteran anchor used the final minutes of his tenure on MSNBCs 11th Hour to warn viewers of the frailty of American democracy and urged them to keep it safe  if they could.

My biggest worry is for my country. Im not a liberal or a conservative. Im an institutionalist, he told viewers as the clock neared midnight on the east coast and his five-year term on the show came to a close. I believe in this place and in my love of country. I yield to no one, but the darkness at the edge of town has spread to the main roads and highways and neighborhoods. Its now at the local bar and the bowling alley, at the school board and the grocery store, and it must be acknowledged and answered for.

The agitated sign-off came from an anchor who has rarely, if ever, used the anchor chair as a bully pulpit. And they marked the end of an era for Williams and NBC News, who have been together for a nearly three-decade run.

And yet, the concerns he explored are among the topics that have often played at the forefront of 11th Hour, a program that has served as a place to help viewers make sense of a confusing era in U.S. history, with the rise of Donald Trump and extreme political factions growing on both right and left. At its launch, the show marked a bold new effort. Most of the cable-news outlets went to repeats of their primetime schedule after 11 p.m. Now, none of them do. Even so, Williams segments havent been filled with the usual cable-news talking heads screaming at each other, but actual experts. The reporters who visit have spent the day covering the stories theyre talking about, and the guests are usually attorneys or former government officials who know what happens in a courtroom or the halls of Congress.

Williams has stayed at the task longer than expected. When he launched the program in the fall of 2016, he cautioned his viewers not to grow too accustomed to seeing him. He originally billed the 11 p.m. program as a pop-up show that would air nightly from now until Election Day, when we will cancel ourselves.

Five years later, hes finally shown he wasnt kidding.

The anchor bade farewell to NBC News at the tail end of Thursday night after a career that revved up at MSNBC in 1996, when he anchored a show called The News, and came to its denouement in 2021 on the same network. Between those two assignments, Williams rose to the top of the news business. He succeeded Tom Brokaw in 2004 as the anchor and managing editor of NBC Nightly News, which was the most-watched of the evening-news programs when Williams had to leave in 2015. He even began to show up in other places, hosting Saturday Night Live, turning up on the comedy 30 Rock and even doing voice-over work on the animated Fox series Family Guy. NBCUniversal suspended him for six months in 2015 and removed him from Nightly after determining he had misrepresented details about a story he had long told about a reporting trip in Iraq in 2003, some of which made it onto a Nightly broadcast.

In the moment, Williams went through the proverbial wringer. But when he returned, assigned to lead MSNBC during breaking news and, later, to host 11th Hour, he focused on the task he has performed for years  helping people make sense of the news. You could make the case that Williams spent the last few years at NBC working to redeem himself. Other anchors have in recent years committed more egregious offenses, both on camera and behind it. Williams has tried to help viewers understand whats been going on in the world around them.

He spent his final 11th Hour trading bon mots with frequent guests, including Nicolle Wallace, the MSNBC afternoon anchor who started at the network as a sort of sidekick to Williams on the late-night show. The Washington Posts Philip Rucker and Eugene Robinson also visited, as did historians Michael Beschloss and Jon Meacham, along with political consultant James Carville. An end-of-show retrospective burnished Williams talent at making guests look good and his zeal for well-turned phrases and in-the-moment narration.

His final words mixed alarm with a farewell, telling viewers that the United States in 2021 was a nation unrecognizable to those who came before us and fought to protect it  which is what you must do now.

Asked on Thursday what hed most like to be remembered for during his NBC tenure, Williams replied via email: Its a tough call but Im proudest of our work covering Katrina. Before, during and after the storm  and for months on end. NBC News work around that disaster was awarded the Peabody. I was very proud that we established a bureau in Nola [New Orleans] and kept the focus on that region. Its one of the special places in my life, he added.

He did not respond to a query about what, if anything, he might do next, but two people familiar with his thinking have suggested he is likely to take a break, and then seek new opportunities that might put him back in touch with his current audience, as well as some that might help him connect with new people, too. There is already speculation that Williams could fit in well over at CNN, which needs to replace Chris Cuomo in primetime, or that Williams might seek something different, like leading a talk show, or showing a different set of talents.

Williams did not address the controversies of his career directly on TV, but told the audience that regrets, Ive had a few, but then again, too few to mention.

In the final moments of the show, with a chyron beneath him that read Until We Meet Again, Williams suggested he would be back in a new job. I will probably find it impossible to be silent and stay away from you and lights and cameras after I experiment with relaxation and find out what Im missing, and whats out there.

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If you want to win an Oscar, does it help to have a nude scene? That depends on if youre competing in the best actor or actress category.

In the past, weve seen victories for actresses who bare it all onscreen  such as Halle Berry in Monsters Ball (2001) or Kate Winslet in The Reader (2008). Still, there havent been as many accolades for men who do the same. Just look at Michael Fassbenders performance as a sex addict in Shame (2011), which was egregiously ignored despite critical acclaim.

This year, there seems to be one thing that several of the best male performances of the year have in common  full-frontal nudity. Benedict Cumberbatch coats his nude body in mud before his hand discreetly drops his phallus in Netflixs The Power of the Dog. At the same time, Bradley Coopers manhood is submerged but visible in a bathtub before Toni Collette reaches for it in Searchlight Pictures Nightmare Alley. Theyre considered among the frontrunners for best actor.

Simon Rexs visceral work as a former porn star in A24s Red Rocket is on the long list of best actor hopefuls. Still, it includes an extended streaking scene with the 47-year-old running through the streets of Texas City, Texas. At the Cannes Film Festival, where Red Rocket premiered in July, the actor declined to elaborate on whether its really him or wearing a prosthetic in the scene. But does it really matter?

Harvey Keitel knows what it feels like to be overlooked by AMPAS all too well. He landed some of the best reviews for Abel Ferraras Bad Lieutenant (1992), which won him an Independent Spirit Award, and Jane Campions The Piano (1993). The latter drama picked up eight Oscar noms, but nothing for Keitels soaring work. Hes fully nude in both of the movies.

When it comes to actors showing it all, Hollywood has been a bit conservative. Directors and cinematographers have navigated various ways to shoot blink-and-you-miss-it nudity (even The Full Monty, with its four Oscars nominations in 1998, didnt live up to its title). That helped past nominees such as Edward Norton (American History X), but not Ben Affleck (Gone Girl). Mark Wahlberg, who wore a prosthetic in Boogie Nights (1997), also didnt feel any Academy love.

The truth is, theres no rhyme or reason for what will work with voters when it comes to nudity. These issues can be traced back to the MPAA. Showing a penis in your film typically has been an express pass to a no rating, which means that United States exhibitors wont show your feature. But they receive an R rating when breasts and lady parts are displayed.

In 1968, MPAA had the X rating to designate explicit and excessive violence and sexuality in films. In 1990, NC-17 replaced it to prevent anyone under 17 from being admitted, regardless of parental accompaniment. Societys acceptance of unfamiliar imagery and themes have made many fearful of what art can possibly influence upon youngsters as what was given to the only X-rated best picture winner Midnight Cowboy (1969), which was later changed to R in 1971.

But, of course, its the studios job to sell to Oscars voters that any such nudity is in the name of art and not gratuitous. The one actor who seems to have walked this line? Viggo Mortensen. He disrobed in Eastern Promises (2007) and Captain Fantastic (2016), and voters still invited him to put on a tux to the Oscars for both those films.

2022 Academy Awards Predictions

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The U.S. government has won the latest round in its bid to extradite Wikileaks founder Julian Assange from the U.K.

In January, a London court turned down a request for Assange to be extradited to the U.S. to face espionage charges, over mental health concerns. Assanges clinical depression could be compounded and he might commit suicide if extradited stateside, District Judge Vanessa Baraitser had ruled then.

The U.S. government appealed the decision.

On Friday, a U.K. High Court overturned the previous ruling after U.S. officials gave the court assurances that Assange wouldnt face the strictest prison conditions, including solitary confinement, unless he performed an act that merited them.

Lord Chief Justice Lord Burnett said: That risk is in our judgment excluded by the assurances which are offered. It follows that we are satisfied that, if the assurances had been before the judge, she would have answered the relevant question differently.

U.S. prosecutors have indicted Assange on 17 espionage charges and one charge of computer misuse over WikiLeaks publication of leaked military and diplomatic documents detailing alleged U.S. military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, in 2010 and 2011. The charges could lead to a maximum sentence of 175 years in prison.

The case will now go to U.K. Home Secretary Priti Patel who will take the final call on Assanges extradition.

Following the High Court ruling, WikiLeaks editor-in-chief Kristinn Hrafnsson said in a statement: Julians life is once more under grave threat, and so is the right of journalists to publish material that governments and corporations find inconvenient. This is about the right of a free press to publish without being threatened by a bullying superpower.

Assange, an Australian national, is expected to appeal the decision.

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UPDATED: Jussie Smollett, the former star of Empire who ignited a firestorm in 2019 when he claimed to be the victim of a homophobic and racist assault, was convicted on Thursday of five counts of lying to the police about the incident. He was acquitted on a sixth charge.

Smollett faced six counts of disorderly conduct, a Class 4 felony in Illinois  a relatively minor offense. The charges carry a potential maximum sentence of three years in prison, but are more likely to result in a sentence of probation.

Dan Webb, the special prosecutor who tried the case, said the verdict was a complete vindication for the Chicago Police Department. He said that Smolletts false report had harmed the city, and argued that Smollett had compounded his misconduct by lying on the witness stand. He said he would raise that point at sentencing.

Defendants do not have the right to go in front of a jury and lie under oath, Webb said. I was very proud this jury came to the conclusion he was guilty.

Smolletts attorney Nenye Uche told the Associated Press that Smollett would appeal the conviction and is committed to clearing his name.

Unfortunately we were facing an uphill battle where Jussie was already tried and convicted in the media and then we had to somehow get the jury to forget or unsee all the news stories that they had been hearing that were negative for the last three years, Uche told reporters.

Megan Crepeau of the Chicago Tribune and Charlie De Mar of CBS Chicago tweeted the verdicts live. The five guilty verdicts pertained to statements Smollett made to the police the day of the alleged assault, while the sixth count pertained to a police interview two weeks later. No sentencing date was set, and Smollett remains free on bond.

The jury began deliberating on Wednesday and reached its verdict late Thursday afternoon. The deliberations lasted a total of nine hours.

Smollett told Chicago police on Jan. 29, 2019, that he was attacked by two men in the street, who yelled slurs at him, put a noose around his neck and said, This is MAGA country. The police aggressively investigated the case, only to announce three weeks later that it was a hoax, and that Smollett had paid $3,500 to two men  Abimbola and Olabinjo Osundairo  to stage the attack.

Both brothers testified at the trial, telling jurors that Smollett had taken them on a dry run, given them money to buy supplies, and told them to hit him but not too hard.

Smollett, however, has continued to maintain his innocence. He testified in his own defense on Monday and Tuesday, saying that the Osundairo brothers are liars and that he really was assaulted.

There was no hoax, Smollett testified.

The case touched a nerve across the country, coming at the height of Trump-era cultural conflict and combining elements of celebrity, race, sexual orientation, violence and fraud. The case also became a scandal within Chicago politics, as States Attorney Kim Foxx faced questions about why her office initially dropped the charges in what appeared to be a sweetheart deal. A special counsel investigation found her office committed substantial abuses of discretion in its handling of the case.

The charges were reinstated after a retired judge filed a petition seeing the appointment of a special prosecutor. Webb, a former U.S. attorney in Chicago, was appointed to take over the case, and he obtained an indictment in February 2020. Smolletts attorneys argued that the new charges violated the principle of double jeopardy, but Judge James Linn denied their motions to have the charges thrown out.

Smollett was written off of Empire in the wake of the incident, and testified that his career had been damaged.

Ive lost my livelihood, he said on the stand.

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If you werent around at the time, its hard to communicate just what a splashy, dominating place the Italian filmmaker Lina Wertmuller occupied during the 1970s. Wertmuller, who died on Thursday at 93, was far from the first celebrated woman director  just think of Agnes Varda, Shirley Clarke, Elaine May, Lois Weber, Ida Lupino, Dorothy Arzner, or Barbara Loden. But apart from the infamous Leni Riefenstahl, its fair to say that Wertmuller was the first woman filmmaker to become a household name. She was the first to receive an Academy Award nomination for best director (in 1976, for the riveting and outrageous Seven Beauties), the first to adorn the cover of major magazines (the critic John Simon, who revered her, wrote a cover story on Wertmuller for New York with the headline The Most Important Film Director Since Bergman), the first to rule and own the zeitgeist.

And rule it she did. Swept Away, Wertmullers controversial 1974 drama about a wealthy snob (Mariangela Melato) and one of her lowly yacht crew members (Giancarlo Giannini), who wind up swapping roles after the two are stranded on a desert island, was the kind of movie that audiences lined up around the block to see and emerged from feverishly chattering and arguing about. Wertmuller didnt just tap the tangled sexual politics of the 70s  she lit a fuse under them. Was she a feminist? An impishly perverse anti-feminist? A Marxist? A flamboyant entertainer? A creator of lumpen fairy tales for adults that could dip, all too easily, into crassness? Or an original and volatile artist?

She was all of the above. One element of her cachet was that Wertmuller didnt necessarily direct movies from the point-of-view that one might have expected of a trailblazing woman filmmaker. That was part of their provocation; Wertmuller wasnt about to let herself be pigeonholed. Her films were over-the-top, in-your-face, antically liberated, and defiantly incorrect before the term politically incorrect was even invented. Every relationship in them became, on some level, an operatic power duel.

Wertmuller started off as a protege of Federico Fellini, working as an assistant director on 8 1/2 (1963), and her first film, The Lizards, came out the same year. It was a knockoff of another Fellini film, I Vitelloni (his portrait of small-town cronies that would become a major influence on films from Mean Streets to Diner), and it was focused on the follies of the male ego. Her second feature, in 1965, was Lets Talk About Men, and its title pointed the way to how Wertmuller would construct her career.

Confronted with the entrenched machismo of Italian society, she didnt create her own Anna Magnani or Sophia Loren. She created her own Marcello Mastroianni: the comically handsome matinee idol Giancarlo Giannini, who became her alter ego. He starred in four of the films that dominated her 70s moment  The Seduction of Mimi (1972), Love & Anarchy (1973), Swept Away (1974), and Seven Beauties (1976)  and Wertmuller used his persona, a kind of Mastroianni meets noble Chaplin mutt, to project her comic vision of what she saw as the romantic war between men and women. That war culminated in the sex/class standoff of Swept Away (full title: Swept Awayby an Unusual Destiny in the Blue Sea of August), a movie that turned work and gender dynamics inside out with a what-the-hell-lets-see-what-this-looks-like transgressive blitheness that one couldnt easily imagine today. There was a masochistic quality to it, yet what a performance Mariangela Melato gave! It was like watching some special shipwreck episode of The Real Housewives of Bologna. (When Guy Ritchie remade it in 2002, with Madonna in the lead role, audiences were stupefied, though maybe it should one day be tried again with Lady Gaga.)

Wertmuller grew up in Rome, where as a girl she was obsessed with comic books, and she became (among other things) an avant-garde puppeteer before moving into the world of film. Her movies had a voluptuous outsize quality, which is part of what made them popular. Seven Beauties, a spectacular grubby Candide picaresque in which Giannini played a small-time hood during World War II who winds up being sent to a German concentration camp, was a film that offended as many people as it enthralled. The episode its best remembered for is the one where the hero saves himself by launching a calculated campaign to seduce the corpulent camp commandant, played with a terrifying sullen smirk by Shirley Stoler. This was extreme filmmaking in every way, yet its intent wasnt to reduce the Holocaust to a sordid circus. It was all about the meaning of survival, a theme it explored memorably.

Pauline Kael wrote of Seven Beauties that the box-office success of the picture represents a triumph of insensitivity. But in the late 70s, when Wertmuller was all the rage on campuses, I went to see Seven Beauties over and over, hooked on the jovially audacious, irrepressible quality of Wertmullers filmmaking. Her movies were successful, at times breaking records for foreign films. So while it was overstating things for John Simon to put her on a pedestal with Ingmar Bergman, Wertmullermania was not to be underestimated. She herself got to be a celebrity, parodied on Saturday Night Live, as the image of the feisty Italian auteur barking out pensees in her trademark white glasses became as iconic as anything in her films.

Whatever ones opinion of those films, it would be hard to think of another European director who flew this high only to slide off the radar virtually overnight. Seven Beauties, Wertmullers most celebrated film, won her entree to Hollywood. So she came there to make A Night Full of Rain (1978), which paired Giannini as an Italian journalist high on male privilege and Candice Bergen as a feminist American photographer. It was a soft-pedaled Swept Away in English. But this was a movie that got swept away by audience indifference.

Every filmmaker is entitled to a high-profile dud, but Wertmuller, retreating to Italy, where she continued to make dramas and documentaries, never again connected in a headline way. Her defenders (like Simon) made no great claims for her latter-day movies, even as she clung to her fondness for long titles (sample: Too Much RomanceIts Time for Stuffed Peppers, from 2004). In hindsight, her films are quintessentially of their era, to the point that theyre more than a little stuck in it. Yet their resonance was real. They were grounded in the flux and the muck of the 70s, the grand descent from idealism, all of which Wertmuller captured with a wistful look back at the world that was gone.

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BBC One and Amazon Studios have revealed the first trailer for upcoming series A Very British Scandal, featuring Claire Foy, two-time Emmy winner for Netflixs The Crown.

Foy stars as Margaret Campbell, Duchess of Argyll, alongside Paul Bettany (WandaVision) as Ian Campbell, 11th Duke of Argyll, and Julia Davis (Nighty Night) as Maureen, Marchioness of Dufferin and Ava.

Written by Sarah Phelps (The Pale Horse), the series is from the makers of the award-winning A Very English Scandal, Blueprint Pictures. It focuses on the divorce of the Duke and Duchess of Argyll, one of the most notorious legal cases of the 20th century. Famed for her charisma, beauty, and style, Margaret, Duchess of Argyll, dominated the front pages as the divorce exposed accusations of forgery, theft, violence, drug-taking, bribery, and an explicit Polaroid picture that was to haunt her for the rest of her life.

A Very British Scandal explores the social and political climate of post-war Britain, looking at attitudes towards women, and asking whether institutional misogyny was widespread at the time. As her contemporaries, the press, and the judiciary sought to vilify her, Margaret refused to go quietly as she was betrayed by her friends and publicly shamed by a society that revelled in her fall from grace.

The series is directed by Anne Sewitsky and produced by Chris Ballantyne. Executive producers are Graham Broadbent, Pete Czernin, Diarmuid McKeown, and Delyth Scudamore for Blueprint Pictures, Lucy Richer for the BBC, Sarah Phelps, Anne Sewitsky, Claire Foy, Kate Triggs, and Dominic Treadwell-Collins. It was commissioned by Piers Wenger, director of BBC Drama and Charlotte Moore, BBC chief content officer. Amazon Studios is co-producing in the U.S. Sony Pictures Television are the international distributors and brokered the deal with Amazon Studios.

The three episodes of the series will air on BBC One over consecutive nights, beginning Dec. 26 and be available to watch immediately as a boxset on BBC iPlayer. It will be available in 2022 on Amazon Prime Video in the U.S., Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.

Watch the trailer here:

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The American Electric Power (AEP) Foundation continues to share in the vision of Texas A&M International Universitys (TAMIU) Robotics Program by providing a $2,000 grant recently.

The funding supports the purchase of structural materials and components for the Robotics Programs space mining robot part of an upcoming NASA Robotics Lunabotics Competition at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

AEP Foundation was represented by Tony Arce, Jr., manager of External Affairs, AEP Texas who joined TAMIU representatives and students to present the grant at the Universitys Academic Innovation Centers Robotics Lab.

TAMIU assistant professor Dr. Tariq Tashtoush said the AEP Foundations support also helps to drive other relevant and rich experiences for School of Engineering students.

This experience will offer students an opportunity to represent TAMIU, the City of Laredo, and the State of Texas at national events. It will provide a unique learning experience with hands-on activities, build team management skills and communication skills - both written and oral. Most importantly, students will be able to share their insights with the community through student presentations at career days, science fairs, technology fairs , exhibits, and more.

Support like that provided by the AEP Foundation is a value-added partnership that helps expose our engineering students to the real-life engineering field, inspire future generations of TAMIU engineering students, and provide graduates with networking opportunities as they move on to their career choices, Dr. Tashtoush said.

The AEP Foundation has been an enthusiastic and longtime partner with the School of Engineering. In 2020 the Foundation provided a $50,000 grant in support of the robotics program, Arce noted.

American Electric Power, parent company of AEP Texas, created the AEP Foundation in 2005 to continue the tradition of AEP corporate philanthropy and its regional utilities, and to support and play an active, positive role in communities like Laredo where AEP employees live and work.

AEP Texas is part of the American Electric Power system. AEP maintains the nations largest electricity transmission system and more than 219,000 miles of distribution lines to efficiently deliver safe, reliable power to nearly 5.4 million regulated customers in 11 states.

AEP Texas serves over one million electric meters in the deregulated Texas marketplace. As an energy delivery (wires) company, AEP Texas delivers electricity safely and reliably to homes, businesses, and industry across its nearly 100,000-square mile service territory in south and west Texas. AEP Texas also builds new power lines, restores service following outages and records electric usage using advanced meters for retail electric providers (REPs) throughout its service territory. The company also connects or disconnects service upon the orders of the REPs.

TAMIUs School of Engineering has attracted a gifted and highly qualified faculty focused on both teaching and service. With the opening of the Academic Innovation Center in 2019, the School manages six laboratories equipped with state-of-the-art computers and instruments to facilitate teaching and research.

TAMIUs School of Engineering offers three different programs and a pre-engineering program:

B.S. in Systems Engineering. ABET-accredited. B.S. in Computer Engineering, launched in Spring 2021. B.S. in Petroleum Engineering, launched in Spring 2021.

Pre-Engineering Program that makes it possible for Laredo students to have access to Engineering programs of their choice at other institutions.

To learn more about TAMIUs School of Engineering and expanded engineering degrees, call 956.326.2446, email Dr. Mahmoud T. Khasawneh, Director of the School of Engineering at mahmoud.khasawneh@tamiu.edu, or click on http://www.tamiu.edu/coas/soen

Registration for TAMIUs Spring Semester 2022 is underway. Classes begin Tuesday, Jan. 18, 2022. Late registration ends Monday, Jan. 24, 2022.

For more information, contact the Office of the University Registrar at 956.326.2250, email registrar@tamiu.edu or visit offices in the University Success Center, suite 121.

To learn more about TAMIUs Registration processes, visit the dedicated Registration Hub at https://go.tamiu.edu/registration.

University offices close for the holidays on Friday, Dec. 24, 2021 and reopen Monday, Jan. 3, 2021.
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP)  Attorney General Herbert Slatery announced Friday he wouldn't appeal the resentencing of a Tennessee death row inmate to life in prison after initially resisting the move just two years prior.

Last month, Judge Monte Watkins vacated the conviction of Abu-Ali AbdurRahman (ah-BOO-ah-LEE) (AHB-dur-RAK-mahn) after finding his Constitutional right to a fair trial had been violated because his trial was marred by racism during jury selection. According to the court order, AbdurRahman pleaded guilty to charges of murder, attempted murder and armed robbery for which he received three consecutive life sentences.

My office has reviewed the courts order, and we have significant concerns about its legality," Slatery wrote in a letter to Nashville's District Attorney Glenn Funk. "Despite these concerns, we have decided not to appeal, in part, because we think it would be unfair to expose Mr. AbdurRahman to continued uncertainty about his sentence.

Now that Slatery has decided he won't appeal, AbdurRahman will spend the rest of his life in prison but without the threat of execution.

AbdurRahman was originally sentenced to die in 1987 for the murder of Patrick Daniels, who was stabbed to death. Norma Jean Norman was also stabbed but survived. The stabbing took place in Normans house while her two young daughters, Katrina and Shawanna, huddled in a back bedroom.

In 2019, Slatery appealed Watkin's first attempt to throw out AbdurRahmans death sentence. AbdurRahman, who is Black, had petitioned to reopen his case, presenting evidence that prosecutors at his trial treated Black potential jurors differently from white potential jurors.

His attorneys eventually signed an agreement with Funk to reduce his sentence in return for AbdurRahman agreeing to drop any future appeals.

However, Slatery had argued that Watkins did not have the authority to modify AbdurRahmans sentence based merely on an agreement with the district attorney. The Tennessee Court of Criminal Appeals agreed. It said Watkins could review the petition again but ordered him to follow procedures outlined in the appeals courts decision. That order set the stage for November's do-over.

Although we have chosen not to appeal this order, we will continue to monitor all efforts to unlawfully modify or vacate final judgments, and we will take whatever action is necessary and appropriate to ensure that the law is followed, Slatery said.
MEXICO CITY (AP)  Allegations from the United States government that President Nayib Bukeles administration negotiated with El Salvador's powerful street gangs touched a sensitive topic. Previous administrations in El Salvador both from the left and right have done so and paid a political price. Prosecutions of some former officials are ongoing for past pacts. The U.S. Treasury said an investigation had revealed that officials with Bukele's government offered financial benefits to the gangs, as well as perks to their imprisoned leaders like prostitutes and cellphones, in exchange for lowering the homicide rate and political support in this years legislative elections. The U.S. government did not present evidence and Bukele has vehemently denied any deal with the gangs.

WHY ARE GANGS A SENSITIVE TOPIC IN EL SALVADOR?

The street gangs, which originated in the United States and took root in El Salvador when gang members were deported, are a force in Salvadoran society. They control neighborhoods and swaths of territory. There is no reliable figure on how many member the gangs have, but estimates are in the tens of thousands. They extort businesses, move drugs, murder, recruit children and restrict the free movement of people. Much of their leadership is imprisoned, but continues to run the criminal enterprises.

The problem of the gangs is like a cancer, said Carlos Carcach, the research coordinator at the Higher School of Economics and Business in San Salvador. It is something so present in everything that occurs in the country that it is difficult, if not impossible, to eradicate it.

IS NEGOTIATING DEALS WITH GANGS NEW IN EL SALVADOR?

No. Past governments have been accused of doing it for short-term political gain.

In 2012, officials with the government of then President Mauricio Funes negotiated the truce with the country's gangs that lowered the homicide rate, but has been blamed for allowing the gangs to strengthen and expand their territory. There were a variety of carrots offered to the gangs, including payments to members, but the most significant was moving imprisoned gang leaders from maximum security facilities to less secure prisons where they could continue running their criminal activities.

A number of former officials are being prosecuted for crimes related to that pact. Funes fled to Nicaragua where he received asylum. Bukele has been extremely critical of previous governments for making deals with the gangs.

The U.S. governments allegations are not the first against Bukeles government. Local news outlet El Faro reported last year that officials were secretly meeting with gang leaders to make a deal, which the president also denied at the time.

IF IT RESULTS IN FEWER MURDERS, WHY SHOULDN'T THE GOVERNMENT NEGOTIATE A TRUCE?

On the surface, the idea of the government making a deal with organized crime is distasteful. The government is responsible for citizens safety. At a deeper level, its an illustration of who really has power.

A drop in homicides is great, but must be accomplished with good public policies, security and effective investigations and prosecutions, said Leonor Arteaga, program director at the Due Process of Law Foundation, a regional rule of law organization based in Washington.

What has happened is that the gangs are the ones imposing the conditions and the government the one that has accepted them, she said. Given that this reduction is in reality a pact, a negotiation, its the gangs who have control and who just as theyve now reduced homicides, they could raise them again tomorrow.

A problem is motivation, Arteaga said. The governments objective in entering these negotiations is not to obtain a benefit for the people ... but rather to obtain a political benefit, she said.

WILL THIS HURT BUKELE'S POPULARITY?

Bukele is extremely popular. He rolled to victory over the traditional parties from the right and left in 2019 after corruption scandals largely discredited them. His New Ideas party romped to victory earlier this year in legislative elections that gave them control of the congress.

Bukele supporters laud him for the drop in murders, early acquisition of COVID-19 vaccines and government handouts of food and laptops for school children.

I dont see his popularity levels reducing dramatically, Arteaga said. The people are more interested in having some way to survive and get along to a certain point with the gangs.
Republicans in the fast-growing suburbs north of Dallas had a scare last year.

Democrat Joe Biden came within a single percentage point of then-President Donald Trump in the congressional district represented by Republican Van Taylor. Though Taylor easily won reelection to the U.S. House, Trumps narrow margin was a warning sign that a typically easy win might not be so easy anymore.

So when Republicans, who control the Texas Legislature, redrew the state's congressional maps this fall, they protected Taylor. They scattered his constituents into multiple districts, consolidating GOP voters to make safe districts. One is a bizarrely shaped tripod: a narrow leg jabs into a suburb to grab Republican-leaning voters, while the other two legs reach into rural areas all the way to the Oklahoma border.

Taylors new district isnt competitive anymore. It voted for Trump by 15 percentage points. The Justice Department this week sued Texas, saying the state's new district lines discriminate against minority voters.

As the country approaches the halfway mark in its once-a-decade redrawing of political maps, competitive congressional districts are becoming rarer and rarer. Lawmakers in both parties, but especially Republicans, are creating districts that shore up their vulnerable members and trying to ensure easy reelections.

The new maps are likely to accelerate the demise of competitive elections, a warning sign for the health of democracy, experts say. Increasingly, party primaries are the contests most likely to unseat an incumbent. That leaves representatives catering to their party's base, with little incentive to appeal to middle-of-the-road voters. Ultimately, it feeds the heightened partisan polarization that has poisoned Washington.

It's definitely a problem and you see it to some degree every cycle, said Joe Kabourek of RepresentUS, an advocate for overhauling redistricting. What the lack of competitive seats means is elections are basically over before they begin.

In the last presidential election, only 13 of 435 House seats switched between the two parties. It's evidence of a decline in competitiveness that dates from the middle of the 20th century and has accelerated as the two main political parties have become more ideological. In the 1950s, political handicappers ranked about 130 of the seats in the House as competitive, but now only categorize about 48 like that, said Josh Huder, a senior fellow at Georgetown Universitys Governmental Affairs Institute.

Huder notes redistricting isn't the only cause. An even bigger factor is that voters are choosing to live in places where they are surrounded by like-minded neighbors  Democrats clustering in cities, Republicans in rural areas, for example. That makes it more likely that districts will be dominated by voters of just one party.

The decline of competition has helped lead to growing partisanship. Just 19 of 213 House Republicans recently voted for the new infrastructure bill, a measure with broad bipartisan support in polls and in the Senate.

It shifts the dynamics and incentives of members of Congress pretty dramatically when you have safe seats, Huder said. He noted that most representatives only need to win over partisans who are typically much more extreme to stay in power.

This redistricting cycle is poised to make it worse.

Its almost inevitable that were going to see polarization in these really safe districts, said Adam Podowitz-Thomas of the Princeton Gerrymandering Project, which monitors redistricting. Its going to be harder for moderates or people who work with the other side to get elected in these districts.

Both parties agree that the number of potential swing districts is dwindling.

The main Republican redistricting organization, the National Republican Redistricting Trust, found that, in the states that have drawn new maps, there are now 15 fewer seats where the margin of victory was 10 percentage points or less in 2020. Its Democratic counterpart, the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, tracks competitiveness slightly differently but finds 16 fewer seats.

The examples are widespread in the 21 states that have finished redistricting. In Illinois, one of the last remaining moderate Republicans, Rep. Adam Kinzinger, announced he would not run for reelection after Democrats dismantled his district west of Chicago district.

In this day, to prevail, you must belong to a tribe, Kinzinger said in a video announcing his retirement. Our political parties only survive by appealing to the most motivated and extreme elements within it.

In Georgia, the Republican-controlled legislature eliminated two competitive suburban Atlanta congressional districts represented by Democrats, turning Rep. Lucy McBath's swing district into a heavily Republican one and Rep. Carolyn Bourdeaux's district into a safe Democratic seat. In Utah, Republicans transformed a Salt Lake City-based swing seat into one Trump won by 16 percentage points.

Colorado firebrand Republican Lauren Boebert, who won her 2020 race by 6 percentage points, now has a easier path to reelection. But the independent commission that drew Colorado's lines created a swing seat north of Denver.

More swing districts may be on the chopping block:

In Florida, Republicans are mulling turning Democratic Rep. Stephanie Murphy's seat into safe GOP district.

Democrats worry that Kansas Republicans could target Rep. Sharice Davids, who ousted a Republican in 2018 in Kansas City's western suburbs.

In New York, multiple moderate Republicans, including John Katko upstate and Nicole Malliotakis on Staten Island, could see their swing seats changed

In Virginia, newly proposed maps eliminate the district of a prominent Democratic moderate, Rep. Abigail Spanberger, although overall they maintain the same number of competitive districts in the state.

But no state is likely to outdo Texas, which transformed as many as nine competitive into safe seats. That was part of an explicit strategy from Republicans who watched anxiously as their state became a congressional battleground.

Democrats picked up two House seats in the 2018 election and then fought the GOP to a standstill last year. With the state's growth powered by voters of color who lean Democratic, Republicans drew a map that would lock in their gains and avoid having to worry about the Texas seats. The map spurred the legal challenge from the Biden administration, alleging the restricting plan dilutes Latinos' votes, particularly in the Dallas area.

Dallas' northern suburbs are a case study in killing competition. The Democratic voters in the southern end of Taylor's district were moved to create a newly safe Democratic district. In exchange, Taylor's district expanded into conservative rural areas east of the suburbs.

For Republicans the moves save incumbents  and money. Republicans and their allies spent $20 million defending Texas' vulnerable, GOP-held congressional seats last year, said Adam Kincaid, executive director of the National Republican Redistricting Trust.

Now they can go spend that money on places where they can go on offense, Kincaid said. You'd always rather be on offense than defense.
WASHINGTON (AP)  Bob Dole was honored Friday at Washington National Cathedral and the World War II monument he helped create as top leaders from both parties saluted the longtime Kansas senators ability to practice bare-knuckle politics without compromising his civility.

Displaying a bipartisanship rare in modern government, politicians in office and out came together to pay homage to Doles hard-scrabble rise from wounded war veteran to Senate stalwart to three-time, unsuccessful presidential candidate.

He could be partisan, and that was fine, said President Joe Biden. Americans have been partisan since Jefferson and Hamilton squared off in George Washingtons Cabinet. But like them, Bob Dole was a patriot.

Joining Biden at the funeral service were members of Congress, Cabinet officials, three Republican former vice presidents and Bill Clinton, who beat Dole to win reelection as president in 1996.

Theres something that connects that past and present, war time and peace, then and now, said Biden, who touched Doles casket before addressing the service and mentioned their 50 years of friendship. The courage, the grit, the goodness and the grace of 2nd Lt. Bob Dole, who became Congressman Dole, Senator Dole, statesman, husband, father, friend, colleague and  a word thats often overused, but not here  a genuine hero.

Dole, who died Sunday at age 98, was severely wounded during World War II, served nearly 36 years in Congress and was GOP Senate leader for more than a decade. Besides his sharp, often sarcastic tongue, among Doles best-known attributes were his pragmatism and self-deprecating wit  representing the sense of compromise of a bygone era.

While calling him a giant of our time and of all time, Biden said Dole was worried at the end of his life about American democracy being threatened by bitter political battles and had noted that infighting from both parties grows more unacceptable day by day.

Still, Democrats and Republicans coming together to praise Doles ability to put country and public service over ideology was the overriding theme.

Biden offered vivid, visceral details during his eulogy, speaking about Dole being born a child of the Dust Bowl, volunteering as a young man for military service and how he came back to painful years recovering from his wounds.

God, what courage Bob Dole had, the president said.

Former Republican Kansas Sen. Pat Roberts said Dole used humor as a political tool, delivering deadpan punchlines which helped let the air out of the partisan balloons. Doles daughter, Robin, read a letter her father wrote to his staff in which he said I believe in the future of the United States of America.

After the funeral service, Doles casket traveled to the World War II Memorial on the National Mall, which opened in 2004 and which Roberts said would not have existed with Dole spending years spearheading the legislation that erected it.

Bob Dole understood that it was just not enough recognition that this Greatest Generation deserved," Roberts said. It was reflection and renewal, and it was for the Greatest Generation to inspire the next generation.

He also recalled Dole often spending Saturday mornings at the memorial, greeting veterans visiting as part of trips he helped organize. Dole was a longtime advocate for the Honor Flight Network, which arranges for veterans to travel to Washington to see memorials dedicated to their service.

Former Democratic Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle said Dole once told him he thought about being buried at the World War II memorial. Daschle also said Doles sense of duty extended beyond veterans, including when he left the presidential campaign trail to attend the 1996 graduation party of a girl paralyzed in a car crash.

Addressing the crowd at the memorial, actor Tom Hanks asked, How many structures in this city exist but for the efforts of one man?

It was Bob Dole who willed this memorial into place, said Hanks, who starred in the World War II drama Saving Private Ryan.

Dole suffered paralyzing, near-fatal wounds during World War II. Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, recalled how, after Dole was hit amid fighting in the Italian mountains in 1945, he was dragged behind a wall by a fellow soldier and lay there, facing up in the dirt. Not knowing if he would live or die. Unable to move as the battle raged around him. And he lay there for 10 consecutive hours before medics were able to reach him."

He served the army. He served the state of Kansas. He served his political party. But, above all, he served his country and he served his fellow Americans, Milley said. Bob Dole always, always put his country first.

The service ended with Milley escorting Dole's wife, former North Carolina Sen. Elizabeth Dole, as she and Robin touched a wreath in his honor, then bowed their heads in prayer as taps was played.

Doles body is also traveling to Kansas, where weekend events include a public viewing in his hometown of Russell. He will eventually be interred at Arlington National Cemetery.

Fridays services followed Dole lying in state on Thursday under the dome of the U.S. Capitol he so loved. Dole served as a Kansas state legislator before running for Congress in 1960, joining the House for eight years then going on to win the Senate seat.

Dole was early in his career seen as a GOP hatchet man. He was a mentee of Richard Nixon and chairman of the Republican National Committee during the Watergate era. During his Senate career, though, Dole grew to see the value of reaching across the aisle and secured his more lasting achievements.

Those included the Americans with Disabilities Act that to this day ensures a level of accessibility as a civil right. Dole also fought to protect Social Security benefits for elderly Americans and supported civil rights  even if such actions weren't always politically popular with everyone.

Over the opposition of many in his party and some in mine, he managed a bill to create a federal holiday in the name of Martin Luther King, Jr., Biden said. Bob Dole did that.
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

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A Garda has claimed that his promotion to the rank of inspector was held up for over seven months after he was the subject of "false" and "baseless accusations" of wrongdoing in an incident where he had to shoot a large dog that was set on him.

Inspector Tom Quinn. who was fully vindicated following a GSCO investigation of an incident that occurred in December 2018, was due to be promoted to Inspector in January 2019.

However due to the accusations against him, the High Court heard, his promotion was held up until late August 2019.

As that delay had pension, pay, seniority, reputational and future promotion implications for him, the Inspector sought to have his promotion backdated to January.

That application was refused by the Commissioner.

As a result, Inspector Quinn, who is stationed in Mullingar Co Westmeath, has brought judicial review proceedings aimed at having the Commissioner's refusal to backdate his promotion quashed.

The inspector, represented by Paul McGarry SC, John Berry Bl instructed by Philip Denieffe of Sean Costello solicitors, also seeks an order that his promotion be backdated and declaration that the failure to backdate it beaches natural and constitutional justice.

The Commissioner, who fully accepts that Inspector Quinn was cleared of any wrongdoing, opposes the application, and rejected claims that the refusal to backdate breached the Inspector's rights or impugned his good name.

Paul McGarry SC for the Inspector said his client had been "fully exonerated" following a GSOC investigation to the firearm incident.

His client has, throughout his career in An Garda Siochana, an impeccable disciplinary record.

When serving in the Roscommon-Longford Division in December 2018 the Garda was investigating a criminal operation involving stolen vehicle parts and fraudulent repairs.

When attending a property near Granard in Co Longford, with a civilian, counsel said an altercation broke out.

The property owner, it is alleged, produced a slash hook, and goaded a Belgian Shepherd Malinois dog to attack the Inspector.

The Inspector, who warned the property owner that he was armed, drew his weapon.

Fearing for his own safety after the dog came at him, the then Sergeant Quinn fired one shot, wounding the animal.

A ricochet from that shot caused a minor injury to the property's owner's leg.

The property owner then made a complaint to GSOC, and Inspector Quinn strongly rejected the property owner's account of what happened.

In addition, counsel said that the incident was recorded on a mobile phone, and extracts that suited the complainant's allegations were posted on social media causing distress and upset to Inspector Quinn.

The complainant also alleged to GSOC that the Inspector made some remarks, and laughed at him, when they met at a shop some months later.

That allegation was also denied.

GSOC, in dismissing the complaints, determined that Inspector Quinn had discharged his firearm in a lawful and justified manner.

Mr McGarry said his client had in 2018 gone through the promotion process and was informed he was successful.

He expected that he would be promoted along with the other successful candidates to the rank of inspector when the results of that process were published in January 2019.

It was accepted that the complaints had to be investigated.

Counsel said that as it was accepted by the Commissioner that the accusations were false and baseless his client was entitled to have his promotion backdated from August to January.



Counsel added that criminal proceedings have been brought against the person who made them.

Counsel said that because of the refusal his client had been "left in a worse position" compared to if no accusation had been made against him at all.

This had not been taken in consideration by the Commissioner when asked to backdate Inspector Quinn's promotion, counsel said.

Opposing the application, the Commissioner, represented by Shane Murphy SC, with Gerard Meehan Bl, argued that he retains a discretion under the Garda Siochana's Promotion regulations in recommending a candidate to the rank of inspector.

The Commissioner, it was claimed said he was entitled to await the outcome of the GSOC investigation, given the very serious incident involving a firearm, before recommending the applicant for promotion to the rank of inspector.

Once he was cleared, he was promoted immediately, the commissioner said.

The applicant was not entitled to be treated as holding the rank of inspector between January and August 2019,and therefore was not entitled to have his promotion backdated.

It is also argued that the action was not brought within the legal time limit allowed.

It was further claimed that the action amounts to a challenge against the decision not to promote Inspector Quinn in January 2019 rather than over a failure to backdate his promotion.

The matter was heard by Mr Justice Charles Meenan on Thursday.

Following the conclusion of submissions from the parties, the Judge reserved his decision, and said he would give judgement in the New Year.
The chief medical officer for Ireland has urged the public to get the booster jab as the Omicron variant will spread more quickly than Delta.

Dr Tony Holohan said he expected the Omicron variant of Covid-19 to become the dominant one, but said it was too early to provide data on when it would happen.

He said that countries across the world were beginning to report widespread community transmission of the variant.

All of the evidence seems to be that the Omicron will spread more quickly than weve seen with Delta, Dr Holohan told RTE News at One.

If you haven't had your vaccine yet, or you've missed your second dose, you're more at risk of serious illness from COVID-19. Register for your free vaccine online or visit a walk-in clinic. Times and locations are here: https://t.co/gYsObYmxQo#COVIDVaccines | #ForUsAll pic.twitter.com/Pu5S1v6v0j  HSE Ireland (@HSELive) December 10, 2021

The so-called doubling time has been identified as being at much shorter intervals than weve experienced previously.

The important message for people to hear is that we have confidence boosters will have a particularly protective effect.

On Thursday, the Government announced that anyone arriving in Ireland from Great Britain would be asked to take daily antigen tests for five consecutive days after arrival.

Taoiseach Micheal Martin said that the advice, which will not be placed on a legal footing, had been taken due to the high volume of travel between the two countries.

Dr Holohan said that some parts of Britain were reporting challenges with widespread transmission.



Dr Tony Holohan said he expected the Omicron variant of Covid-19 to become the dominant one, but it was too early to provide data on when it would happen (Brian Lawless/PA)

He said that nine out of the 14 district authorities in Scotland had reported cases associated with the Omicron variant.

We expect that pattern might repeat itself in other countries in Europe, but at this point in time, the UK has identified it has a significant challenge, he added.

He said the early evidence was very clearly pointing towards an increase in transmissibility.

The UK, not exclusively so, but its one of the countries that has reported widespread community transmission. We clearly have a close relationship to travel in terms of the Common Travel Area, Dr Holohan continued.

As part of the advice, people are also advised to consider the spread of the Omicron variant in any country they are considering travelling to.

The advice comes after ministers received an updated public health assessment in relation to the Omicron variant.

Six cases of the new Omicron variant have been confirmed in Ireland, with health officials warning that the country should be braced for more.

Asked whether people should reconsider plans to travel to Ireland from Britain, Dr Holohan added: People will make different risk assessments, depending on their individual circumstances.

Its important that people be aware and understand what the pattern of this disease is, and it is changing on an almost daily basis.

We have to remember that the measures that we have in placed in terms of prevention of transmission of Delta will have the same effect in helping to prevent transmission of Omicron.

The boosters that we have on top of the vaccine, all the early evidence suggests will have a good effect, in particular, in preventing the severe effects of Omicron and the Delta infection.

He added: We are 14 days away now from Christmas Eve, so people will be thinking about trying to keep themselves safe, thinking about meeting up with other members of their family, in particular people who are in vulnerable groups.

The measures that you take now will help to reduce that kind of risk.
Local News, Business & Finance

By Chris Boyle Published: December 10 2021

Loiacono will serve as the 81st President of LIBOR.

REALTOR Kevin Loiacono was recently installed as 2022 President of Long Island Board of REALTORS (LIBOR) at its Virtual Installation and Awards Event. The event included the installation of LIBOR Executive Committee, Board of Directors and Young Professionals Network for 2022.

Loiacono will serve as the 81st President of LIBOR, a leading regional REALTOR trade association that serves over 28,000 real estate professionals throughout Queens, Nassau and Suffolk Counties. He is joined on LIBORs Executive Committee by President Elect, Gina Marie Bettenhauser and Secretary/Treasurer, Kevin Leatherman.

Loiacono brings to his new position as President over 35 years of experience in the real estate industry and an unwavering commitment to upholding the highest ethical and professional standards of LIBOR.

A REALTOR since 1986, Loiacono is currently Broker Owner of BrookHampton Realty in Center Moriches, NY. His involvement with the Association began on the Chapter level, as a Director for the Central Suffolk Chapter in 2009. He then served as Vice President and President of the Chapter in 2013. He served as LIBOR Suffolk County Vice President from 2019 through 2020, and as President Elect in 2021.

As a former Director of the Multiple Listing Service of Long Island (MLSLI), Loiacono served as Suffolk County Vice President in 2014 and 2015, Treasurer in 2016, and President in 2017.

Loiacono also served on numerous LIBOR and MLSLI committees, most recently on LIBORs Bylaws Committee, Strategic Planning Committee, Rebranding Task Force, Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Committee and as the Chair of the Awards Committee.

Loiacono is actively involved at the state and national levels, presently serving on various committees for National Association of REALTORS (NAR) and New York State Association of REALTORS (NYSAR), including its Board of Directors.

In 2019, Loiacono was named LIBOR REALTOR Broker of the Year for his outstanding contributions to the real estate industry and as leader in his local community.

With Kevin Loiaconos vision and a dynamic leadership team at the helm, 2022 will be an outstanding year for Long Island Board of REALTORS, said LIBOR CEO Tessa Hultz.
(Alliance News) - France is threatening to push for EU legal action against Britain if it does not show a "sign of goodwill" in the post-Brexit fishing row by a Friday deadline set by the EU, while the European Commission has said it expects the dispute to be resolved by midnight.

France's European Affairs Minister Clement Beaune echoed earlier threats to ask the European Commission to launch legal proceedings against the UK if it failed to grant more licences to French fishermen.

But he also suggested the talks could be extended past the deadline as long as the UK shows goodwill.

Beaune told France Info radio: "We won't get all the licences that we have a right to by tonight.

"If the British say today 'we'll give you a and this isn't a scientific number a a few dozen extra licences as a gesture of good faith to show that the dialogue is bearing fruit and we're interested in continuing,' we'll take that into account and make an evaluation with the European Commission and perhaps we'll continue."

But if Britain refuses to budge on the roughly 100 outstanding licences, France will ask the commission at the weekend to announce the launch of legal proceedings, Beaune said.

He said: "A legal procedure does not just involve papers and courts, it's also measures, for example customs measures, that Europe can take collectively to tell the British in certain sectors 'since you do not respect the agreement, some of your products are not recognised'."

Beaune also accused the UK prime minister of trying to isolate France in the row.

He said: "(Boris Johnson) told himself he could isolate the French and divide the Europeans. He didn't manage and we have re-mobilised."

The European Commission has said the dispute must be settled by December 10 a but Downing Street said on Thursday it did not recognise the cut-off point.

Beaune said the UK government's comment was "surprising".

"It's not really a sign of trust," he said.

Meanwhile, the European Commission suggested talks could still conclude on Friday.

Asked about the state of the negotiations, Vivian Loonela, the Commission's spokeswoman on maritime affairs and fisheries, said: "Where we are is that on both sides a with the European Commission and with the UK a we have agreed that we have this mutual commitment to end these discussions with a successful outcome today."

She said the commission does not use the term "ultimatum", but that negotiators will "try to finish these discussions today".

The row centres on licences to fish in UK and Channel Islands waters under the terms of Britain's post-Brexit trade deal with the EU a the Trade & Co-operation Agreement.

The main source of contention is the number of licences to fish in waters around the British coastline for smaller French vessels that can prove they operated there before Brexit.

France says Britain has not handed out enough licences to its fishermen, while the UK government has insisted applications have been granted to those who have the correct documentation.

France's maritime minister, Annick Girardin, said on Thursday that if the deadlock remained by Friday night, France would request a meeting of the partnership council, which oversees the implementation of the Brexit agreement, to "note the UK's failure to respect its signature".

"If that is not satisfactory, we ask that litigation proceedings be opened by the European Commission," Girardin told a senatorial committee.

She said the proceedings could take "many months" but that "France will never give up its rights".

When asked about the negotiations over fishing licences, the Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs referred to a written statement from a minister at the department, Victoria Prentis, which said that trilateral talks with EU and Norway on jointly managed stocks were fruitful, but failed to refer to the fishing row specifically.

source: PA

Copyright 2021 Alliance News Limited. All Rights Reserved.
(Alliance News) - HgCapital Trust PLC announced on Friday it has invested in Fonds Finanz, a financial intermediary pool in the German insurance sector.

The Munich-based private equity firm said it is investing GBP8.0 million into Fonds Finanz, with other unnamed institutional clients investing alongside, through the Hg Mercury 3 Fund.

The full terms of the deal were not disclosed.

HgCapital said that the partnership will enable Fonds Finanz to further optimise its business, give it an opportunity to enter several additional customer segments, and allow it to acquire attractive businesses to further broaden the Fonds Finanz service offering and to drive innovation by acquiring complementary technology.

The investment will reduce HgCapital's outstanding commitments to invest in Hg transactions to around GBP410 million. HgCapital's liquid resources available for future deployment are estimated to be GBP303 million.

Director Benedikt Joeris said: "Fonds Finanz occupies a central position in the insurance eco-system across Germany. Over the last decade we've got to really know this sector and we instantly recognised Fonds Finanz as a high value-add channel for insurance companies. We're really excited to support Fonds Finanz on its journey, not least because we think technology will play an ever increasing role for the business going forward."

Shares in HgCapital were down 0.1% at 420.50 pence on Friday in London.

By Heather Rydings; heatherrydings@alliancenews.com

Copyright 2021 Alliance News Limited. All Rights Reserved.
(Alliance News) - Shareholders in oil giant Royal Dutch Shell PLC will vote Friday on plans to switch its headquarters from the Netherlands to the UK after a century and drop Royal Dutch from the name.

Europe's biggest energy firm says the move would simplify its tax and share arrangements, and accelerate its transition to net-zero emissions.

But its chair also admitted the plan was driven by the Dutch government's scrapping of plans to withdraw a tax on dividends.

The Dutch government said it was "unpleasantly surprised" by the plan, while Britain has hailed it as a vote of confidence in the British economy post-Brexit.

The meeting of shareholders is due to start at 0900 GMT in Rotterdam's Ahoy auditorium, which just months ago hosted the Eurovision Song Contest.

They will be voting on plans for Royal Dutch Shell to switch its tax residence and top executives including Chief Executive Ben van Beurden to London.

Because of the Covid-19 pandemic, shareholders have been "strongly" asked to stay away, watch online and vote remotely where possible, a Shell spokesman told AFP.

They may ask questions before the vote but there will be no presentation by Shell officials.

"Shell is proud of its Anglo-Dutch heritage and will continue to be a significant employer with a major presence in the Netherlands," where it has some 8,500 staff, the firm said.

The Netherlands would however suffer a major blow from the loss of its biggest company.

Royal Dutch Shell was formed in 1907 from a merger of Koninklijke Nederlandsche Petroleum Maatschappij and British firm Shell Transport and trading.

The "Shell" name and logo came from seashells imported in the 19th century by the father of Marcus and Samuel Samuel, the brothers who founded the British firm.

But pressure for change has been building, particularly from the activist investor Third Point, which has demanded Shell be broken up, bolster low-carbon investment and return more cash to shareholders.

Shell also suffered a blow earlier this year when a Dutch court ruled that it must slash greenhouse gas emissions, a landmark victory for climate activists.

When it announced the plan to move on November 15, Shell said it would accelerate its "delivery of its strategy to become a net-zero emissions business".

It would also eliminate a dual-nation share structure that held up dividends for shareholders, and simplify its tax arrangements.

However Shell Chair Andrew Mackenzie later admitted the company was also "driven to go to the UK" by Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte's decision in 2018 to abandon plans to scrap a tax on big companies' dividends.

The tax hit to the country from Shell's departure could amount to billions of euros, local media said.A

In return, the Dutch parliament is likely to insist on a "departure tax" that Shell puts at around EUR400 million.

The government even considered going back to parliament to try to scrap the dividends tax to convince Shell to stay, but could not muster support.

By Danny Kemp

source: AFP

Copyright 2021 Alliance News Limited. All Rights Reserved.
(Alliance News) - The following is a round-up of updates by London-listed companies, issued on Friday and not separately reported by Alliance News:







Omega Diagnostics Group PLC - Alva, Scotland-based medical diagnostics company - Disagrees with request from the Department of Health & Social Care to repay pre-production payment of GBP2.5 million. The amount was originally paid as part of a contract inked in February this year, to provide the DHSC with manufacturing capacity for Covid-19 lateral flow antigen tests. However the DHSC was unable to move into phase 2 of the contract, which would have seen Omega progress to manufacturing tests using government-furnished equipment. Omega says it will continue to take further legal advice on the matter and hopes to reach a resolution swiftly.

Colin King, chief executive of Omega says: "It is clearly disappointing to receive this request for repayment given the efforts we have gone to ensure manufacturing capacity for Covid-19 lateral flow test was available for the DHSC and that we did not progress to Phase 2 of the contract due to the lack of confirmation from the DHSC regarding which test they require us to manufacture."







Standard Life Investments Property Income Trust PLC - property investor - Completes purchase of two properties for GBP22.8 million total. The first is a property in St Helens, where Standard will fund the development of an industrial unit with a total commitment of GBP15.1 million. The second is an existing industrial unit in Washington let to Griffith Textile Machines until September 2035. The purchase price of GBP7.7 million reflects a net initial yield of 5.75%, company says. Both acquisitions are financed out of existing cash reserves.







BWA Group PLC - London-based minerals exploration investment company focussed on Cameroon and Canada - Applies for two rutile sands exploration licences at Song-Loulou in Cameroon. The two areas, comprising a total of 992 square kilometres, are next to the firm's existing licence area at Nkoteng and are part of the same prospective river system. The application has been acknowledged by the Cameroon Ministry of Mines, Investment and Technological Development. BWA now has two exploration licences in Cameroon on which it is already working and is awaiting the issue of a total of five more rutile sands licences.







Kenmare Resources PLC - lithium and zircon producer in Mozambique - Launches tender offer to raise GBP61.8 million. A total of 18.2 million shares are tendered by shareholders under the offer, with 14.8 million shares purchased at a price of GBP4.17 each.







Starcrest Education Ltd - Cayman Islands-based developer and operator of education services - Cancels planned purchase of educational training and apprenticeships specialist National Training Company. Starcrest blamed market conditions for the deal falling through. In August, Starcrest outlined plans to buy the group through a reverse takeover, meaning its shares have remained suspended since then. Following the company's decision, trading in Starcrest's shares will begin again from Friday.







DeepVerge PLC - York, England-based environmental & life science AI company - Completes development of the Microtox PD Covid detection system. Deepverge claims the product is able to detects SARS-CoV-2 and a range of pathogens at local, regional and national levels. The pandemic surveillance units will be launched in the first quarter of 2022.

Chief Executive Gerry Brandon comments: "Size, cost, reach and route to market have been heavily thought through with our new third generation designs. The units are now smaller - allowing them to be installed for smaller populations; mobile - allowing them to be taken to where populations gather; mass producible - allowing more affordability for customers; and just as importantly, available for new partner opportunities."







LSL Property Services PLC - Newcastle-based estate agency - On Thursday, joint venture company Pivotal Growth completes purchase of Glasgow-based mortgage broker Lifetime Finance, marking its first acquisition. Pivotal Growth was established in April 2021 as a joint venture with Pollen Street Capital, with the aim to "buy and build" a leading national mortgage broker. It is planned that at least GBP200 million will be made available through equity and debt to fund acquisitions for Pivotal Growth.

"The Pivotal Growth management team is in active discussion with a number of other brokers that it believes would benefit considerably by being part of Pivotal Growth and we expect to confirm further deals in the early part of 2022," says LSL Chief Executive David Stewart.







Cordel Group PLC - London-based artificial intelligence platform for transport corridor analytics, formerly called Maestrano - On Thursday notes expansion of contract with railroad customer in the US. Original contract saw Cordel's specialist rail analytics subsidiary, Cordel Technology, engineer the data capture process and artificial intelligence analysis of digital point clouds. Customer has now expanded the scope for data capture and analysis to up to 4,500 miles of track.

"We are excited to be moving forward with this expanded Pilot. The USA represents our largest growth opportunity and will provide a meaningful contribution to the group's performance in 2022," comments Chief Executive Nick Smith.







Cambridge Cognition Holdings PLC - Cambridge, England-based digital neuroscience company - On Thursday wins GBP1.0 million schizophrenia clinical trial contract. Revenue from the contract is expected over the next three years. Cambridge Cognition will provide proprietary cognitive assessments and specialist, study management services as part of the agreement. The contract is a repeat purchase from an existing client that has contracted for several other clinical trials for schizophrenia. Chief Executive Matthew Stork states: "We are delighted to have formed an enduring partnership with this pharmaceutical company that recognises the potential for our sensitive cognitive assessments to be used in pivotal clinical trials. This continues to be an exciting area for potential further growth for the company in the future."







Miton Global Opportunities PLC - investor in closed-end investment funds on London Stock Exchange - Changes name to MIGO Opportunities Trust in order to make it easier for potential investors to find and identify the company and to "promote its success in the interests of all shareholders".







Tectonic Gold PLC - Sydney-based exploration company - Announces recent drilling campaign completed 75% of planned program but was cut short due to weather. Able to extract enough data with confirmed gold intersections to advance geological modelling. Now in discussions with potential partners and preparing drilling plans for 2022 and 2023. States the company is fully funded to return to the field and complete final drilling.







By Will Paige; willpaige@alliancenews.com

Copyright 2021 Alliance News Limited. All Rights Reserved.
(Adds detail, background)

By Mike Stone and Essi Lehto

WASHINGTON/HELSINKI, Dec 10 (Reuters) - Finland has chosen

U.S. defence giant Lockheed Martin's F-35 fighters in a

tender to replace ageing F/A-18 combat jets and plans to order

64 planes with weapons systems, the government said on Friday.

Lockheed Martin competed for the deal with Sweden's Saab

, U.S. rival Boeing, France's Dassault

and Britain's BAE Systems.

The procurement is worth an estimated 8.378 billion euros

($9.44 billion), the government said.

"When comparing military performance, the F-35 best met our

needs," Defence Minister Antti Kaikkonen told a news conference.

Military planemakers have been vying for the deal since late

2015, when the Finnish defence ministry began the search for a

new jet to replace Finland's old Hornet fighter bought in 1992

from McDonnell Douglas, now part of Boeing.

Finland is the 14th nation to opt for the F-35.

The choice strengthens the small Nordic nation's defence

cooperation with its allies, most significantly the United

States and Norway, said researcher Charly Salonius-Pasternak at

the Finnish Institute of International Affairs.

"Finland and Norway already train together in the north so

it will be a political decision to determine what intelligence

is shared and when," he told Reuters, referring to the potential

for the jets to share data in real time.

Unlike Norway, Finland is not a member of the North Atlantic

Treaty Organisation (NATO) but it has forged stronger ties with

the organisation in recent years and chosen military equipment

compatible with NATO members.

In 2014 Finland and Sweden signed an agreement to train

together and allow NATO assistance in crisis situations.

Reuters reported earlier on Friday that Lockheed Martin was

set to win the contract.

($1 = 0.8871 euros)

(Reporting by Mike Stone in Washington and Essi Lehto in

Helsinki

Editing by David Goodman, Tim Hepher and Terje Solsvik)
Everyone has always enjoyed the odd earwig but how about netwigging - what are people searching for on line?

Well, Google, has just published the most common searches in Spain for this year and what is interesting, Covid is not up there.

The results provide a very enlightening insight into what people in Spain are most interested in.

Google has broken it down into six categories but in neither does Cove come any where near the top, if it features at all.

For example, the top general searches are: Time tomorrow, Eurocup, La Liga, Real Madrid, Roland Garros, La Palma Volcano, Bonoloto, Mbappe, Atletico de Madrid and NBA.

In fact Covid related searches only came up three times in the How, When and Why categories.

How: How to get a Covid passport came in in seventh position.

Why: Why does the arm hurt with the vaccine came in fourth, why Messi left Barcelona was third.

When: When is my time to get vaccinated came third but when is Black Friday came in second.

So, while the population of Spain is obviously concerned about Covid and how best to combat it, they dont appear to be obsessed with it and have managed to get used to living with it, well on line any way.

Why does the cost of electricity go up? was a popular one and understandably.
Manchester Center, VT (05254)

Today

Mostly cloudy skies early, then partly cloudy this afternoon. A few flurries or snow showers possible. High around 40F. Winds SSW at 10 to 20 mph..

Tonight

Mostly cloudy skies with late-night snow showers. Low 24F. Winds SW at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of snow 50%.
MANISTEE COUNTY  So far this year Manistee Countys 911 Central Dispatch center has seen 150% of the calls it had last year at this time. It isn't alone in seeing an increase in calls to service.

Most leaders in law enforcement and other first response departments are reporting large increases in the number of calls they need to respond to this year and last month just brought even more.

At the monthly Manistee County Public Safety Committee meeting for December several key administrators in the county reported a growing trend of more calls and often fewer staff on hand to respond to those calls.

In early September, much of the leadership also had reported record call numbers. And those increases seem to be continuing.

File photo

Michael Machen, 911 deputy director and emergency management coordinator, said much like everyone else 911 complaint calls are up.

He said last year at this time the 911 center had handled 9,000 calls for service complaints and as of Dec. 3, the center was at 22,500.

So, weve more than doubled. We have been busy at the center. Summer was very taxing for the center. It seemed like everybody from the state of Michigan decided to summer up in Manistee, he said.

Machen said the dispatch center is hiring for an open position with 11 dispatchers currently on staff.

He said a few years ago, there were only eight dispatchers and that the center "really had come a long way in the past two years."

LAW ENFORCEMENT

Courtesy photo

Jason Torrey, Manistee County undersheriff, said at the meeting that as of the Dec. 3 meeting the sheriffs office had recorded 3,678 calls.

That is about 22% more than compared to the whole of 2019, which represented stable numbers to compare with outside of a pandemic.

Just to give you a little bit of an idea, I went back to the last two years. Last year was low with COVID numbers so we were only at 2,846. But in (20)19, we were at 3,018 and those are year-end stats, Torrey said. Were a good 600-plus, almost 700 over our highest numbers. So its been busy for all of our agencies in the area.

However, even though the complaint numbers are up, Torrey said he was happy to report that road patrol deputies had more time spent patrolling than on report writing and responding to complaints.

That hasnt always been the case, he said.

According to the agenda packet materials for the meeting, deputies spent a total of 504 hours on patrol, 416.5 hours responding to complaints and 368.5 hours in November writing reports.

Courtesy photo

Manistee County Sheriff Brian Gutowski said at the meeting that there are still two road patrol positions open.

I think you can ask any of the administrators that are in here, finding law enforcement officers is very difficult at this point, Gutowski said.

The animal control officer position is also unfilled and Gutowski said the sheriffs office would be going through applications and interviews soon.

Breaking the stats down further, the report shows the department spent most of its time last month on investigating people, conducting property inspections, assisting people with their vehicles and giving verbal warnings.

Last month, the sheriffs office arrested 19 people and the Little River Band of Ottawa Indians Department of Public Safety, Manistee City Police Department and Michigan State Police each arrested three people respectively.

Courtesy photo

Robert Medacco, director of public safety for the Little River Band of Ottawa Indians, said at the meeting that arrest cases are up 60% and that complaints are up by 15% compared with last year.

Weve been hit hard in the drug aspect pulling some (instances that are) more than just user-weight off of the streets in the past month and its continuing throughout the year, Medacco said. I think were doing good at combating it but we can be better and we hope to.

He noted that the new K-9 named Freki that joined the department in August has been off to a good start.

Hes been an asset and I hope to continue that next year and hopefully those numbers go down because we made a huge impact, Medacco said.

The report also shows that of the 29 people booked in the jail last month, 14 of those were charged with felonies, 13 were charged with misdemeanors and seven had alcohol-related offenses.

Most in the jail last month were considered repeat offenders who had been booked at the jail before, with two who had been there 10 or more times, per the report.

Torrey also reported that the bailiffs at the Manistee County Government Center interacted with more than 2,000 people who were coming and leaving the building.

The bailiffs have a number of responsibilities ranging from court security, conducting checks for weapons and fingerprinting.

At the meeting, Chair Pauline Jaquish noted that she had always had great experiences with the Manistee County bailiffs.

According to the meeting agenda packet materials, bailiffs fingerprinted 34 people while also intercepting 25 knives last month.

While the bailiff crew is at full staffing levels, Gutowski said the jail staffing is down by three positions.

MMR

There have also been increases in crashes recently due in part to changes in weather.

Jason Sopha, supervisor with Mobile Medical Responses northwest region, urged drivers to go slower.

I hope everybody  slows down. Weve obviously had a significant increase in accidents. Some of them have been pretty severe, (in) others people have just walked away with just scratches that probably shouldnt have, Sopha said.

He also noted that in October MMR changed the new configuration of advanced life support and basic life support vehicles in the county.

If we only have one ALS truck in the county  so one ALS truck (and) one BLS truck  that ALS truck does not go out of county unless it is a verified emergent transfer, he explained. What that does is that keeps that ALS truck available in the county.

Earlier this year, several people who are leaders in first response such as 911 and others noted that there were problems when the county was left without access to an advanced life support ambulance while MMR transferred patients outside of Manistee County.

Sopha said this new system has helped with that issue.

He said there have been times that MMR has needed to use the ALS truck for transfers.

However, working with the hospital, our sister organization with NorthFlight Aeromed, theyve answered the call, he said. They actually had a huge increase in the number of air transports out of Manistee hospital. That allows us to keep our ground units in county available for other 911 calls or even returning people home locally.

He said starting on Jan. 1, MMR will be covering the county a minimum of five out of seven days with two trucks staffed with advanced life support employees. The other two days of the week would mean one advanced life support and one basic life support staffed ambulances.

Thats a huge turnaround from a few months ago where we were having problems staffing two trucks just in general. Were definitely making progress, Sopha reported.

At the Aug. 6 public safety meeting, Sopha had noted that his staffing was limited and was decimated during the pandemic.

At that time, Sopha said MMR has been very busy and that they had been able to provide a third ambulance two to three days a week in the Manistee County area.

This month, he said another recent challenge was that five staff members contracted COVID-19 all at once but they had assistance from other employees serving MMR in other counties.

With COVID-19 cases MMR responds to, Sopha said the most common needs are general support like oxygen.

Lately, I would say over the last three to four weeks what were are seeing on our transfer level is just supplemental oxygen and those patients being transferred regionally to other facilities, he said.

Those patients are transferred to places in the region like Traverse City, Cadillac and Charlevoix.

Sopha commended the Manistee County Central Dispatch team.

Those guys and gals in that center, they are still doing a great job. Theyre trying to gather as much information as they can, he said.
KENT COUNTY  Omicron, the latest variant of concern during the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, made its way to Michigan.

In a news release from the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services and Kent County Health Department, the entities noted they were notified of a case of the omicron variant in a Kent County resident

"We are concerned, although not surprised, about the discovery of the Omicron variant in Michigan," said Elizabeth Hertel, MDHHS director. "We continue to urge Michiganders ages 5 and up to get vaccinated and continue participating in measures we know to slow the spread of the virus by wearing well-fitting masks properly, socially distancing, avoiding crowds, washing their hands often, and testing for COVID-19. Vaccines are our best defense against the virus and how we can manage the spread of COVID-19."

The omicron variant, also known as B.1.1.529, was classified as a variant of concern by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Nov. 30. Variants are classified as variants of concern if they show evidence of being more contagious, causing more severe illness or resistance to diagnostics, treatments or vaccines.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, chief medical advisor to President Joe Biden has said that while the omicron variant may be more transmissible, it is likely less severe than the current dominant strain, which is the delta variant, the Associated Press reported.

The AP article noted that Fauci said," Thus far, it does not look like theres a great degree of severity to it. But we have really got to be careful before we make any determinations that it is less severe or it really doesnt cause any severe illness, comparable to delta.

Meanwhile, public health officials in Michigan urge residents to get vaccinated.

We have tools that prevent the spread of COVID-19, including omicron. However, we continue to see that those not utilizing these tools, including vaccines, are disproportionately affected by this virus, said Dr. Natasha Bagdasarian, MDHHS chief medical executive. The data is clear that these vaccines are extremely safe and effective, and the side effects of COVID-19 are much worse than receiving a vaccine. I emphasize the importance of not waiting to get vaccinated. Now is the time.

The news release, on the discovery of the omicron variant said "the initial detection of the COVID-19 case was reported to the Michigan Disease Surveillance System on Dec. 3. MDHHS was notified by CDC that it was the omicron variant on Dec. 9 following genetic sequencing. The sequencing was conducted and reported by a commercial laboratory as part of the CDC surveillance program."

MDHHS said it is coordinating with the Kent County Health Department on the investigation of the case which is ongoing. A public health follow-up will include an assessment of the potential for out-of-state exposure, compliance with isolation guidance and outreach to close contacts. Vaccine records indicate the Kent County adult was fully vaccinated but had not received a booster dose.

The identification of the Omicron variant is not unexpected, said Dr. Adam London, Kent County Health Department director. We are fortunate that we have effective, safe, and available vaccines that can protect us from this illness. We continue to urge people to get their vaccine and to get their boosters as soon as they are eligible.

The omicron variant was first detected on Nov. 11 in South Africa and the first case was confirmed in the United States on Dec. 1. Michigan joins the list of more than 20 other states with confirmed Ooicron detections.

The news release from MDHHS said, "according to CDC, the omicron variant will likely spread more easily than the original SARS-CoV-2 virus. How easily omicron spreads compared to the delta variant remains unknown. CDC expects that anyone with the omicron infection can spread the virus to others, even if they are vaccinated or dont have symptoms. With other variants, like delta, vaccines have remained effective at preventing severe illness, hospitalizations, and death and are expected to do the same against omicron. The recent emergence of omicron further emphasizes the importance of primary vaccinations and boosters."

There are several factors contributing to current case rates, the release said. However, according to state data, unvaccinated people have 4.4 times the risk of testing positive for COVID-19 and 9.3 times the risk of dying from COVID-19 than people who are fully vaccinated.
Its the next part of our Drinks by the Dram Whisky Advent Calendar blogs for 2021, taking a closer look at what is behind doors eight, nine, and ten. What could possibly be lurking behind those doors?

The big question is, have you put your decorations up yet? Where we live, the council only took the town decorations down in May. It was strange seeing Santa and a great big Merry Christmas sign on the roof of a town hall on a warm spring morning. Perhaps a glimpse at what Christmas in Australia or Hawaii would feel like.

Incidentally, weve had that Hawaiian Christmas song by Bing Crosby in our heads all week: Mele Kalikimaka is Hawaiis way to say Merry Christmas to you. Now you will have it in yours.

Right, thats the music sorted. Lets take a look at what was behind the last four doors of your Drinks by the Dram Whisky Advent Calendar. Theres a delicious recipe at the bottom in case youre still pondering what to do with your drams.

Day 8 Teeling Small Batch

Behind the window sits a dram of brilliant Irish whiskey. Its a blend of single malts and grains which is initially aged in ex-bourbon barrels, before being moved over to Central American rum casks for a finishing period of up to 12 months, and then bottled at a nice punchy 46% ABV.

What does it taste like?

Cut grass, orange blossom, allspice, apple pie, and vanilla on the nose, with creamy vanilla, caramel, dried herbs, and baking spices on the palate.

Day 9 West Cork Black Cask

Another excellent Irish blend. Black Cask from West Cork Distillers is made up of 66% grain and 34% malt whiskey. It spent its first aging in first-fill bourbon casks before it was moved to heavily charred bourbon casks for a year. Lots of oak char and creamy vanilla in this one!

What does it taste like?

Sweet malt and wafts of subtle smoke, with orchard fruit, cinnamon and honeycomb with a finish thats all about creamy and chocolate. Super smooth.

Day 10 Brenne Cuvee Speciale

Brenne French Single Malt Whisky was launched in 2012 by Allison Parc, collaborating with a distiller in Cognac. Its made with malted barley grown in the Cognac region, double distilled, then initially matured in Limousin oak casks before enjoying a finishing period in Cognac casks. Each bottle is drawn from a single cask.

What does it taste like?

Brandied cherry, dried mango, red rope liquorice, vanilla, a hint of cinnamon spiciness, and Nutella.

How to make a Whisky Sour

A deliciously refreshing cocktail that balances the sweetness of Teeling Small Batch with the freshness of lemon juice.

30ml Teeling Small Batch

15ml lemon juice

7ml sugar syrup

 an egg white (optional)

Add all the ingredients to the shaker and dry shake vigorously for 15 seconds. Fill with ice and shake hard again, then double strain into a chilled tumbler and garnish with a twist of orange.
Nargis Fakhri is one Bollywood actor who made her superb debut in the industry, with what was a truly pathbreaking film, in Imitiaz Ali's Rockstar opposite Ranbir Kapoor.

The movie really was a film that continues to be known to break boundaries in terms of storytelling, and amazing music, with the film, truly connecting with fans across all ages.

 Netflix

However, it's been 10 years since the release of the movie, and if we are, to be honest, Nargis has gone through her share of ups and downs in the industry.



Now, while Bollywood is obviously a tough nut to crack because of the intense competition, Nargis reveals that her career had a lot of roadblocks because she chose to stray differently.

It is not news to people that the casting couch exists in Bollywood, with many actresses and people in the industry claiming that they've had experiences with it.

Now, Nargis, despite her status as being a prominent actress, too revealed that she also had her fair share of experiences.

In fact, as per a Koimoi report, she says that she ended up missing out on a lot of films because she always said no to it.

I always knew what I was hungry for. I am not hungry for fame. Therefore, nothing can be agreed to do. Can not be nude. Or cant sleep with the director. I have lost many jobs because I have not done some things. And it was heartbreaking. I had a standard. I had a boundary. But it felt bad when I was thrown out for taking these things more than once. But then I came to know that good people win. Of course, do not win by holding their way, but own win by holding a path." she said while speaking in an interview earlier.

The American-born actress also revealed how she actually got a call for a naked shoot from Playboy magazine at the time when she was doing modelling.

When I was modelling, there was this college edition Playboy magazine thing. My agent said they are asking for girls, they have chosen to see you if you would want to do something like that. I was like Playboy is so huge and the money was so much! But I said no, said Nargis.

 Netflix

We last saw Nargis appear in the 2020 Netflix film Torbaaz, and we hope to see her star in more promising movies and web series in the future.


After the success of Aarya, fans of Sushmita Sen were eagerly waiting for the second season of the hit series. The wait has finally ended as Aarya 2 is now streaming on Disney+Hostar. The makers released the trailer of Aarya season 2 last month which received an amazing response from fans. In the first season, Sushmita's character was seen protecting her kids from her own family after the murder of her husband. While in the second season, she is seen fighting for her own rights.

Those who have watched Aarya must be aware that the first season ended on a cliffhanger. Well, Aarya 2 has all the answers. So, what are you waiting for? Go and watch the much-acclaimed series right now. Before that, you can watch the trailer of Aarya 2 here:

Besides Sushmita, Aarya 2 also features Sikander Kher, Vikas Kumar, Ankur Bhatia, Jayant Kripalani, Pratyaksh Panwar, Viren Vazirani, and Vishwajeeth Pradhan in pivotal roles. As indicated by the trailer, the series is filled with action, drama, and unexpected twists. The first reactions are out as fans have already binge-watched it. Social media users are hailing Sushmita for her strong performance in the series helmed by Neerja fame Ram Madhvani.

A social media user wrote, "Finished Aarya Season 2. And it's really mind-blowing. Performance by Sushmita Sen was jaw-dropping. Aarya 2 is not a story about the glorification of sacrificing mother but it's a story of a strong and independent woman which is most rare in Indian Cinema". Another user tweeted, "Sherani is back, Something new and better".

Take a look at the reactions below:

Finished #AaryaSeason2 lately. And it's really mind blowing. Performance by @thesushmitasen was jaw dropping sometimes. #Aarya2 is not a story about Glorification of sacrificing mother but it's a strory of a strong and independent woman which is the most rare in Indian Cinema.            (@AnAbodeOfDemons) December 10, 2021

Breathtaking, intense, soulful!

Now I have a yearning desire to watch aarya3.@thesushmitasen poised yet perilous. Just loved the last scene#Aarya2 @sikandarkher pic.twitter.com/DavrnpjQlE  Priya Choudhary (@ChoudharyP31) December 10, 2021





Watched #Aarya2 This is BRAVE...

A woman who can do anything to save her family.. @thesushmitasen as #Aarya killing itt once again..Everything is here FAMILY DRAMA,LOVE,SUSPENCE,REVANGE

bt story is not over yet..

I totally enjoyed n loving itt... pic.twitter.com/wrfVc2Ia83  Arun Singh (@MrArunSiingh) December 10, 2021

Done with #AaryaSeason2 , I'm overhelmed by the mass performance of @thesushmitasen . I just love the swag she carries throughout the show and also emotionally good. It's just another interesting layer of the story more to come .can't wait to get more of this .  Prakash (@Prakash06715318) December 10, 2021

With such positive reactions, Aarya 2 should be on your binge list this weekend. The show is streaming in Hindi, Telugu, Tamil, Malayalam, Kannada, Bengali, and Marathi.



The first season of Aarya was released last year and received rave reviews for its storyline as well as performances. Sushmita Sen, who made her acting comeback with the series after a long gap, received enormous praise for her strong character. Her performance earned her a Filmfare award for Best Actor - Female. The series also received a nomination in the Best Drama Series category at the International Emmys 2021. However, the team lost the award to Tehran.
December 10, 2021

On December 10, 2021, Mr. Hagiuda Koichi, Minister of Economy, Trade and Industry, held a video conference with H.E. Mr. Rafael Mariano Grossi, Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). They agreed to continue to work together closely and to strongly promote future cooperation, including the IAEA reviews on the safety of ALPS treated water.

On December 10, 2021, Minister Hagiuda held a video conference with H.E. Mr. Rafael Mariano Grossi, IAEA Director General. The minister expressed his gratitude for the IAEAs great support over many years, especially in ensuring transparency with the international community regarding the handling of ALPS treated water. He also expressed a willingness to enhance the cooperation between Japan and the IAEA.

Furthermore, Minister Hagiuda said that despite the rescheduling of the first IAEA review mission on the safety of ALPS treated water in December due to the government of Japans new measures to address the new variant of COVID-19, he believes that we can continue to foster the exchange of scientific and technical information via online basis, and after the mission has been conducted, the IAEA will prepare an Interim Report in 2022, based on this review.

Moreover, as the discharge of the ALPS treated water represents a long-term operation, he requested the continual review of the implementation in Japan, and, that information be provided to the international community in a transparent manner regarding the continuously ensuring safety status of the operation.

In addition, Minister Hagiuda emphasized the importance of activities in human resource development and dissemination of information toward the continuous use of nuclear energy, which were proposed at the meeting of former Minister Kajiyama and IAEA Director General Grossi in August, 2021. Both sides agreed to continue discussions on making the cooperation between the IAEA and the government of Japan more concrete.









Division in Charge

Nuclear Accident Response Office, Agency for Natural Resources and Energy
Purple Heart, Lifesaving Awards presented to conservation officers and courageous civilians

Purple Heart, Lifesaving Awards presented to conservation officers and courageous civilians

Those interested in this rewarding career are encouraged to contact a recruiter to learn more about the 2022 conservation officer academy

Dec. 10, 2021

Two Michigan Department of Natural Resources conservation officers and two civilians were presented with awards at Thursday's meeting of the Michigan Natural Resources Commission, which took place at the Michigan Library and Historical Center in Lansing.

Conservation Officer Josiah Killingbeck, Purple Heart; Corey Miller and Richard Olds, Lifesaving Awards

The DNR Law Enforcement Division honored Conservation Officer Josiah Killingbeck with a Purple Heart, in recognition of what Killingbeck endured during an assault by a suspect whom he was transporting to the Lake County Jail in Baldwin on March 20.

While being attacked, Killingbeck stopped his DNR patrol truck on the side of the road. Two men from Reed City, Corey Miller, 49, and Richard Olds, 48, were traveling together in a vehicle when they observed the DNR patrol truck and the commotion occurring inside.

"Officer Killingbeck, Corey Miller and Richard Olds represent the best of us," said Gov. Gretchen Whitmer. "All three of these men are worthy of recognition for their actions. Officer Killingbeck is a dedicated public servant who serves our state and stewards our natural resources admirably, and Mr. Miller and Mr. Olds stepped up and selflessly put themselves in harm's way to help a fellow Michigander. I am grateful to all three of them, and I encourage Michiganders who are interested in protecting our state's fish and wildlife, and pristine parks, forests, lakes and trails to pursue a career in the Department of Natural Resources."

Miller and Olds approached the patrol truck and were able to get the suspect off Killingbeck and onto the side of the road, where they waited for additional law enforcement to arrive.

"It's my honor to award Conservation Officer Killingbeck with a Purple Heart, and Lifesaving Awards to the two men who were in the right place at the right time, and selflessly put themselves in harm's way to help an officer," said Dave Shaw, acting assistant chief, DNR Law Enforcement Division. "The department expresses deep and sincere gratitude to Mr. Miller and Mr. Olds in what could have been a worse situation."

Shaw added that Killingbeck is a strong officer who continues to make the DNR proud by protecting Michigan's natural resources and serving his community with a high level of professionalism.

The assailant, Devinci Osiris Dumas, 22, of Grand Rapids, is currently imprisoned at the Michigan Department of Corrections Kinross Correctional Facility, for the following two felony charges:

Assault with intent to do great bodily harm less than murder or by strangulation; serving five to 15 years.

Assaulting, resisting, obstructing, causing injury to a police officer; serving four to six years.

Conservation Officer Tyler Sabuda, Lifesaving Award

Conservation Officer Tyler Sabuda, Iosco County, was presented with a lifesaving award after aiding a 61-year-old Chesterfield man, suspected of having a stroke, who was stranded alone in a remote hunting cabin for nearly 48 hours.

Monday, Oct. 4, Conservation Officer Stephen Butzin, Delta County, was contacted by his grandfather, Timothy Butzin, who has a hunting cabin in Iosco County. Timothy reported that his neighbor's wife was concerned because her husband went duck hunting at their own cabin two days earlier and hadn't returned home or responded to communication.

Timothy Butzin told CO Butzin that his neighbor's cabin was locked, a vehicle was in the driveway and nobody answered the door, and he was concerned that his neighbor may be stranded in the woods.

CO Butzin communicated the information to off-duty Sabuda, who contacted Iosco County Central Dispatch to request they dispatch an active law enforcement officer to check the cabin. After learning nobody could check the cabin within a reasonable time frame, Sabuda activated into service and went to the cabin himself. While en route, Sabuda alerted Michigan State Police, who were arranging for a police dog's presence at the cabin.

Sabuda went to Timothy's cabin, and Timothy took Sabuda via off-road vehicle through the narrow trail to his neighbor's cabin. Sabuda checked the parked vehicle and property and could not find evidence of wrongdoing.

Announcing himself as a Michigan DNR conservation officer, Sabuda knocked on the door several times, heard a quiet noise, but nobody answered the door. Due to the elevated cabin, Sabuda stood on the ORV to see inside through the windows but still couldn't see well enough inside. He knocked on the door, asked if anyone was injured or needed help, and again heard the quiet, rhythmic noise.

Sabuda contacted dispatch via radio to request medical assistance and forced entry into the cabin, locating an unresponsive man, not breathing, lying on the floor - the noise Sabuda heard through the door was the man attempting to breathe.

Sabuda rolled the man to his side and cleared his airway using a towel, then started performing sternum rubs to the man's chest, which activated the man's breathing. Sabuda retrieved his automated external defibrillator from his patrol vehicle in case the sternum rubs stopped working, while instructing Timothy to meet and guide EMS from the road.

Sabuda performed sternum rubs until EMS arrived and transported the man to a hospital in Saginaw, where doctors suspect he may have suffered a stroke.

"Conservation Officer Tyler Sabuda dropped everything he was doing during his personal time and went above and beyond to ensure this individual's well-being," said Dave Shaw, acting assistant chief, DNR Law Enforcement Division.

Hiring for 2022 conservation officer academy

Earlier this month the DNR announced that it will soon begin the hiring process for a 2022 conservation officer academy. Interested candidates should start the application process now by signing up for an upcoming Michigan Commission on Law Enforcement Standards physical fitness test and contacting a recruiter. Local recruiters are available to help prepare serious candidates for the process.

Michigan conservation officers are fully commissioned law enforcement officers who protect natural resources, ensure recreational safety and protect residents by providing general law enforcement duties and lifesaving operations in the communities they serve. Due to the nature of their job, these officers often work with federal, state and local law enforcement officers to ensure public safety. Learn more at Michigan.gov/ConservationOfficers.

Accompanying photos are available below for download. Caption information follows.

Killingbeck: Left to right: Asst. Chief Dave Shaw, DNR Law Enforcement Division, Conservation Officer Josiah Killingbeck, Richard Olds, Corey Miller, Capt. Jen Wolf, DNR Law Enforcement Division.

Sabuda: Left to right: Asst. Chief Dave Shaw, DNR Law Enforcement Division, Conservation Officer Tyler Sabuda, Capt. Jen Wolf, DNR Law Enforcement Division.
Secretary Benson joins local election clerks in meetings with White House, congressional leaders to seek federal funding for elections

Secretary Benson joins local election clerks in meetings with White House, congressional leaders to seek federal funding for elections

DECEMBER 9, 2021

In a series of meetings this week Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson joined with local election officials from across the country to ask the White House and congressional leaders to allocate a sustained source of federal funding for election infrastructure. In the request Secretary Benson and others asked for an investment of $5 billion for election infrastructure for Fiscal Year 2023, and a total of $20 billion in federal funding over 10 years, to be allocated to states and also directly to local election jurisdictions.

"Our local election clerks need support now more than ever as they face threats to their lives, attacks on their integrity, and insufficient funds to carry out fair and equal elections," said Benson. "Our state and federal leaders must do more to ensure clerks in Michigan and across the country have the protection and funding they need to ensure our democracy persists."

Benson joined with local election clerks to discuss the urgent need for the funding, in meetings with White House personnel as well as Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, House Administration Committee Chair Zoe Lofgren, and Congressman Sean Patrick Maloney.

In emphasizing the importance of including local election clerks in conversations about election funding, Benson noted, "it is critical that lawmakers hear directly from those election officials serving on the front lines of administering our elections. I am working to with Michigan's local clerks in planning meetings with state lawmakers here in Michigan as well, including House Speaker Jason Wentworth and Senate Majority Leader Mike Shirkey, to similarly advocate for the critical importance of state funding for election infrastructure."

While Benson serves as Michigan's Chief Elections Officer, the state's elections are administered by 1,520 city and township clerks in coordination with 83 county clerks. As misinformation about the November 2020 election proliferated, threats against clerks in Michigan and across the country increased, as did attempts by state legislatures to cut their resources.

In Michigan, where the state legislature has not funded local elections for many years, legislation has been proposed that would bar clerks from accepting support from third parties, including in-kind donations such as the use of schools and churches as polling places, which many clerks rely on every election.

"I speak regularly with Republican, Democrat and nonpartisan election clerks about the challenges they are facing and the support they need," said Benson. "It is critical that state and federal lawmakers hear directly from them about their experiences, and I look forward to continuing to join with local election clerks to urge our state legislators and federal lawmakers to fund our democracy."

# # #

For media questions, contact

Tracy Wimmer at 517-281-1876.

We welcome questions and comments at the Contact the Secretary of State page.

Customers may call the Department of State Information Center to

speak to a customer-service representative at 888-SOS-MICH (767-6424).
The Tribune will publish Self-Help, information in the Upper Thumb area on a space-available basis. Each notice should be limited to 30 words. Please mail or bring information, clearly marked, to the Huron Daily Tribune, 211 N. Heisterman St., Bad Axe, 48413, call 989-269-6461 or email hdt_news@hearstnp.com.

Womens support

 Huron County SafePlace offers free support groups to women on the fourth Tuesday of each month from 6:30 to 8 p.m. Transportation via Thumb Area Transit and child care for these support groups will be available by calling SafePlace.

These meetings take place in Bad Axe, please call for additional information or to make your reservations 989-269-5300.

 For information on meetings of the Womans Christian Temperance (self-control) Union, call Marie at 989-975-2465. It is a support group for people with addictions.

Substance abuse

 To find Narcotics Anonymous meetings in the area call 800-230-4085.

 The Families Against Narcotics Huron & Tuscola Chapter will have monthly meetings at 6 p.m. the fourth Monday of the month at Hills and Dales Corporate Services and Regional Education Center in Cass City. For more information, visit their website www.familiesagainstnarcotics.org.

 Family member or friend addicted? Call Families Anonymous. Familes Anonymous is a 12 step program to aid families with substance abuse or behavioral problems. Meetings are every Tuesday at 7 p.m. at 206 Scheurmann St. in Essexville. For inquiries, call 989-895-5938.

 Thumb Area Narcotics Anonymous meets Mondays from 7 to 8:15 p.m. at the Caseville United Methodist Church. For inquiries call 800-230-4085.

 Thumb Area Narcotics Anonymous meets from 7 to 8:15 at the Port Austin Bible Campus on Thursdays.

 The Families Against Narcotics Huron County chapter meets at 6:30 p.m. the fourth Tuesday of every month at the Huron Fairgrounds Expo Center.

Family forum events are designed to promote recovery community and provide individuals to share their story, reducing shame and stigma associated with the disease of addiction.

Support is available online at familiesagainstnarcotics.org, via phone 989-551-4326 (HFAN), and Facebook @huronfan.

Grief

 GriefShare features nationally recognized experts on grief recovery topics. Seminar sessions include The Journey of Grief, The Effects of Grief, Your Family and Grief, Why? and Stuck in Grief.

For more information, call Chaplain Londa at 989-545-8357.

 Grief Support meets second Thursday of each month at 4 p.m. at Caro Community Library. Please call Sue or Pam at 800-275-4517 for more details.

 Grief Support meets last Thursday of each month at 6 p.m. for dinner at Franklin Inn in Bad Axe. Call 1-800-635-7490 ext. 4134.

 Grief Support meets at noon on the first Tuesday of the month at Eddie Gs in Marlette. Call United Hospice Service for more information at 800-635-7490.

 Thumb Compassionate Friends is a chapter of a national self-help group offering support to families who have suffered the loss of a child at any age. Meetings are on the second Monday of each month at the Community of Christ Church, 2081 E. Deckerville Road, Caro.

For information, call Sharon at 989-683-3305 or Dave at 810-376-2801 or visit www. TCFcaro.org.
Decked out in his trademark creepy-eye glasses, author Christopher Wright got up to speak to an enthusiastic crowd of kids at Bad Axe Middle School on Wednesday, Dec. 8.

Wright has made a career with his hit series of childrens horror books, Michigan and American Chillers, writing under the alias Johnathan Rand. Each book tells a story either in a different Michigan city or an American state. Michigan Chillers began in 2000 and is still going today, while American Chillers still hasnt gotten to all 50 states since starting in 2002.

Watching Wright talk to the students, its clear how hes made a huge career out of writing childrens books. He seems to instinctively know how to hold their attention.

As he told the story of his writing career, from his veterinary aspirations as a kid, to his time writing silly radio ads in college, to how he wrote his first novel, he kept it entertaining for his young audience.

He uses sound effects, funny voices, and digressions related to the story, all without losing focus or going too far off topic.

Most importantly, though, he knows how to get his audience involved. A few times, he would say something like, No, I wont tell you that, its too scary, or I dont do scary laughs at schools anymore.

This all but guarantees that the kids will demand he do the thing he said he wouldnt.

And then he does it.

However, Wright isnt just there to tell his own stories; hes there to encourage the kids to tell theirs.

In the back half of his talk, Wright began telling the kids about the power books could have.

Reading isnt a thing you do, he said. Reading is a place that you go.

According to Wright, all the places the kids could visit are sitting on the shelves of their library. And the power to take others to those places lies with the kids as well, in their own pens and pencils.

I really want them to have a different opinion of what writers are about and what reading can be about, he said. Im hoping thats the message I leave: if you can read and write well, you can do anything.
WASHINGTON (AP)  President Joe Biden on Friday wrapped up his two-day democracy summit, an event that was more about starting a global conversation about how best to halt backsliding than producing immediate results or expanding democracys reach.

Biden and fellow leaders announced initiatives to stem autocracies from misusing big tech to stifle dissent, enhance election integrity, bolster independent media and other modest efforts that the president said would "seed fertile ground for democracies to bloom around the world.

But the U.S. president also acknowledged the path ahead was difficult for democracies amid a rise of authoritarianism around the globe.

We know how hard the work is thats going to be ahead of us. but we also know that we are up to the challenge, Biden said in remarks to close the virtual meeting.

All told, Biden pledged the U.S. would spend up to $424 million in the next year around the world to support independent media, anti-corruption work and more.

The administration sought to frame the virtual summit  a gathering Biden had made a priority during his first year in office  as a launching point for the more than 100 nations invited to collaborate at a difficult moment for democracies. Biden said he wants to reconvene a follow-up gathering in person next year.

Former NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said the summit was a good starting point" for a year of action.

"I hope the 110 leaders will rally around some basic principles for democratic societies, and the aim should be to strengthen our voice and our efforts to counter the advancing autocracies like China, Russia and other autocrats, Rasmussen said.

The president has repeatedly made a case that the U.S. and like-minded allies need to show the world that democracies are a far better vehicle for societies than autocracies. It is a central tenet of Bidens foreign policy outlook  one he vowed would be more outward looking than his predecessor Donald Trumps America First approach.

But his first year in office has been a period that he says has been marked by a backward slide for democracy around the globe.

In recent months, Sudan's prime minister was ousted in a military coup, Cuba tightened control of the internet after some of the biggest protests on the island in years, and Myanmar's military toppled the civilian government and imprisoned leader Aung San Suu Kyi.

Biden has repeatedly taken China and Russia to task for squelching the voices of democratic activists and committing human rights abuses. He avoided direct mention of both nations in interactions with leaders during the summit, but their presences loomed large.

The summit was held as the Biden administration has been pressing Russias Vladimir Putin to step back after a massive buildup of troops on the Ukraine border that has created growing concern in Washington and European capitals.

Biden earlier this week said he warned Putin of severe consequences if Russia invaded.

Both China and Russia fiercely criticized the summit, with their ambassadors writing a joint essay ahead of the gathering. They wrote the Biden administration's decision to hold the summit reflected a Cold-War mentality that would stoke up ideological confrontation and a rift in the world."

The United States, along with Australia, Denmark and Norway, on Friday announced the launch of a joint effort that aims to stem the misuse of technology by authoritarian powers to stifle dissent and seeks to help develop new tech innovations that support human rights.

The initiative, in part, calls for establishing a voluntary written code of conduct that's meant to guide government and tech companies on human rights criteria for export and licensing policy. Under the global charter for digital public goods, governments, civil society groups, software engineers and tech companies would declare principles for open source tech products.

The United States will take greater responsibility for the digital tools we export, U.S. Agency for International Development administrator Samantha Power said. All too often, technology originates in a hub of innovation like the United States and is exported to countries that use that technology to enable human rights abuses."

The White House also faced scrutiny for whom it invited to the summit. Only 5% of the population of the 111 countries represented live in countries where the right to free speech, right to protest and other core civic rights are fully respected, according to CIVICUS Monitor, a group that monitors civic freedoms.

Several countries  including India, Iraq, Pakistan, Poland and the Philippines  were given invitations despite concerns raised by civil society groups and the U.S. State Department about serious anti-democratic trends or human rights concerns in those nations.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki said the invitations were not mean to be intended as a stamp of approval and the administration was seeking a diverse range of voices and faces and representatives at the discussion.

Biden said it was also a moment for the United States to look inward about shoring up its own democratic institutions, and called on U.S. lawmakers to pass voting rights legislation, including the John Lewis Voting Rights Act. The legislation is largely backed by Democrats in Congress but stalled by Republicans in the Senate.

Whats true around the world is also true in the United States, Biden said. The sacred right to vote, to vote freely, the right to have your vote counted is the threshold liberty for democracy.

 Associated Press journalist Tracy Brown contributed reporting.
As people make holiday plans and prepare to gather with families this winter, the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic continue to be felt across the state and in the Upper Thumb.

Friday's state report showed an additional six COVID-related deaths and 148 more confirmed COVID cases in the Upper Thumb since Wednesday.

This comes on the same day that the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services announced the first identified case of the omicron variant in Kent County.

All three counties in the Upper Thumb reported new deaths Friday. Sanilac County led that count with three new deaths, but had the fewest number of new confirmed cases with 29 since Wednesday. Sanilac County has had 5,460 confirmed cases and 147 deaths since the pandemic began. The county had a positivity rate Friday of 23.33% based on 21 positive tests out of 90 conducted.

Huron County added two additional deaths Friday and 31 new confirmed cases. Since the pandemic began, there have been 5,563 confirmed COVID cases in Huron County and 105 COVID-related deaths. Huron County had a positivity rate of 17.89% Friday, based on 17 positive tests out of 95 conducted.

Tuscola County added one new death, but also had the highest number of new confirmed cases Friday with 88. The county has had 7,774 confirmed COVID cases and 208 deaths since the pandemic began. Friday, it had the highest positivity rate in the Upper Thumb of 35.88% based on 61 positive tests out of 170 conducted.

All three counties had a higher positivity rate than the entire state, which sat at 15.61% Friday.

According to the state's hospital data, facilities in Preparedness Region 3 reported 2,271 of their 2,606 inpatient beds were occupied including 390 of their 421 ICU beds. Those facilities reported they were treating 612 adult confirmed COVID patients as well as two pediatric patients, 97 were on a ventilator and there were 166 adult confirmed COVID patients in the ICU. According to the data, the previous day hospitals in Region 3 saw 232 COVID-related emergency department visits.

MDHHS Director Elizabeth Hertel said the department is concerned but not surprised over the identification of the omicron variant in Michigan.

"We continue to urge Michiganders ages 5 and up to get vaccinated and continue participating in measures we know slow the spread of the virus by wearing well-fitting masks properly, socially distancing, avoiding crowds, washing their hands often and testing for COVID-19," Hertel said in a press release. "Vaccines are our best defense against the virus and how we can manage the spread of COVID-19."

"The identification of the Omicron variant is not unexpected," says Dr. Adam London, Kent County Health Department Director. "We are fortunate that we have effective, safe and available vaccines that can protect us from this illness. We continue to urge people to get their vaccine and to get their boosters as soon as they are eligible."

The Omicron variant was first detected on Nov. 11 in South Africa and the first case was confirmed in the United States on Dec. 1. Michigan joins the list of more than 20 other states with confirmed Omicron detections, according to the release.
Vuity, the first and only eye drop approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to treat presbyopia, or age-related blurry near vision, went on the market on Thursday. It is available by prescription in pharmacies nationwide, Allergan, an AbbVie company, announced Thursday.

Presbyopia can be diagnosed through a basic eye exam by an eye doctor (optometrist or ophthalmologist) and is a common and progressive eye condition that affects 128 million Americans, nearly half the U.S. adult population.

The new medicine takes effect in about 15 minutes, with one drop on each eye providing sharper vision for six to 10 hours, according to the company. The drug could replace reading glasses for millions of Americans.

"We are pleased to be able to bring this first-of-its-kind treatment to market sooner than expected for the millions of Americans with presbyopia who may benefit from it," Jag Dosanjh, senior vice president medical therapeutics at Allergan said in a statement. "This significant innovation in age-related eye health reflects our commitment to advance vision care and expands our leading portfolio of treatments for eye care providers and their patients."

Vuity is an optimized formulation of pilocarpine, an established eye care therapeutic, specifically designed to treat age-related blurry near vision. It is delivered with proprietary pHast technology, which allows Vuity to rapidly adjust to the physiologic pH of the tear film. This was studied in simulated tear film, and the clinical significance is unknown. Vuity uses the eye's own ability to reduce pupil size, improving near and intermediate vision while maintaining distance vision.

The FDA approval of Vuity in October was based on data from two pivotal phase 3 clinical studies, Gemini 1 and Gemini 2, which evaluated the efficacy, safety and tolerability of Vuity for the treatment of presbyopia, Allergen said in a press release.

"Many Americans deal with presbyopia, which typically begins around age 40, by relying on reading glasses or resorting to work-arounds like zooming in on their digital devices to see up close. As an optometrist who also has presbyopia, I'm personally and professionally excited to try Vuity for myself, as well as offer it to my patients with age-related blurry near vision," optometrist Dr. Selina McGee, fellow of the American Academy of Optometry, said in a statement. "With Vuity now available, it is a good time for those who experience age-related blurry near vision to visit their eye doctor for an exam and to discuss their options to manage this common condition."

A total of 750 participants aged 40 to 55 years old with presbyopia were randomized in the two studies in a one-to-one ration to either Vuity or placebo. Participants were instructed to administer one drop of Vuity or placebo once daily in each eye. A "statistically significant proportion" treated with Vuity gained the ability to read three additional lines on a reading chart or more in low light, high contrast binocular Distance Corrected Near Visual Acuity versus placebo.

There were no serious adverse events observed in any participants treated with Vuity in either study. The most common adverse events that occurred in less than 5% of participants were headaches and eye redness.

"As I've gotten older, my vision has changed, and it has become almost impossible to see clearly up close unless I wear my readers. Realizing that I needed to start using readers showed me how important it was to address this condition," Toni Wright a participant in the clinical trial, said in a statement. "It was great to have the opportunity to participate in the clinical study investigating a new potential treatment option. I'm so excited the investigational treatment, which has been identified as Vuity, is now approved and available as a treatment to manage age-related blurry near vision."

A 30-day supply of the drug will cost about $80 and works best in people 40 to 55 years old, according to reporting by CBS News.

Vuity cautions against using the drops when driving at night or performing activities in low-light conditions. The drops are for mild and intermediate cases and are less effective after age 65, as eyes age. Additionally, users may also have temporary difficulty in adjusting focus between objects near and far.

As of now, the drug is not covered by insurance. CBS reported it's unlikely that insurance will ever cover it because the drug is not "medically necessary," as glasses are still a less expensive alternative.
Nearly two years into the COVID-19 pandemic, the origin of the virus tormenting the world remains shrouded in mystery.

Most scientists believe it emerged in the wild and jumped from bats to humans, either directly or through another animal. Others theorize it escaped from a Chinese lab.

Now, with the global COVID-19 death toll surpassing 5.2 million on the second anniversary of the earliest human cases, a growing chorus of scientists is trying to keep the focus on what they regard as the more plausible zoonotic, or animal-to-human, theory, in the hope that what's learned will help humankind fend off new viruses and variants.

The lab-leak scenario gets a lot of attention, you know, on places like Twitter, but theres no evidence that this virus was in a lab, said University of Utah scientist Stephen Goldstein, who with 20 others wrote an article in the journal Cell in August laying out evidence for animal origin.

Michael Worobey, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Arizona who contributed to the article, said he always thought zoonotic transmission was more likely than a lab leak but had signed a letter with other scientists last spring saying both theories were viable. Since then, he said, his own and others research has made him even more confident about the animal hypothesis, which is just way more supported by the data.

Last month, Worobey published a COVID-19 timeline linking the first known human case to the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market in Wuhan, China, where live animals were sold.

The lab leak idea is almost certainly a huge distraction thats taking focus away from what actually happened, he said.

Others arent so sure. Over the summer, a review ordered by President Joe Biden showed that four U.S. intelligence agencies believed with low confidence that the virus was initially transmitted from an animal to a human, and one agency believed with moderate confidence that the first infection was linked to a lab.

Some supporters of the lab-leak hypothesis have theorized that researchers were accidentally exposed because of inadequate safety practices while working with samples from the wild, or perhaps after creating the virus in the laboratory. U.S. intelligence officials have rejected suspicions China developed the virus as a bioweapon.

The continuing search for answers has inflamed tensions between the U.S. and China, which has accused the U.S. of making it the scapegoat for the disaster. Some experts fear the pandemics origins may never be known.

FROM BATS TO PEOPLE

Scientists said in the Cell paper that SARS-CoV-2, which causes COVID-19, is the ninth documented coronavirus to infect humans. All previous ones originated in animals.

That includes the virus that caused the 2003 SARS epidemic, which also has been associated with markets selling live animals in China.

Many researchers believe wild animals were intermediate hosts for SARS-CoV-2, meaning they were infected with a bat coronavirus that then evolved. Scientists have been looking for the exact bat coronavirus involved, and in September identified three viruses in bats in Laos more similar to SARS-CoV-2 than any known viruses.

Worobey suspects raccoon dogs were the intermediate host. The fox-like mammals are susceptible to coronaviruses and were being sold live at the Huanan market, he said.

The gold-standard piece of evidence for an animal origin would be an infected animal from there, Goldstein said. But as far as we know, the market was cleared out.

Earlier this year, a joint report by the World Health Organization and China called the transmission of the virus from bats to humans through another animal the most likely scenario and a lab leak extremely unlikely.

But that report also sowed doubt by pegging the first known COVID-19 case as an accountant who had no connection to the Huanan market and first showed symptoms on Dec. 8, 2019. Worobey said proponents of the lab-leak theory point to that case in claiming the virus escaped from a Wuhan Institute of Virology facility near where the man lived.

According to Worobeys research, however, the man said in an interview that his Dec. 8 illness was actually a dental problem, and his COVID-19 symptoms began on Dec. 16, a date confirmed in hospital records.

Worobeys analysis identifies an earlier case: a vendor in the Huanan market who came down with COVID-19 on Dec. 11.

ANIMAL THREATS

Experts worry the same sort of animal-to-human transmission of viruses could spark new pandemics  and worsen this one.

Since COVID-19 emerged, many types of animals have gotten infected, including pet cats, dogs and ferrets; zoo animals such as big cats, otters and non-human primates; farm-raised mink; and white-tailed deer.

Most got the virus from people, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which says that humans can spread it to animals during close contact but that the risk of animals transmitting it to people is low.

Another fear, however, is that animals could unleash new viral variants. Some wonder if the omicron variant began this way.

Around the world, we might have animals potentially incubating these variants even if we get (COVID-19) under control in humans, said David OConnor, a virology expert at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Were probably not going to do a big giraffe immunization program any time soon.

Worobey said he has been looking for genetic fingerprints that might indicate whether omicron was created when the virus jumped from humans to an animal, mutated, and then leaped back to people.

Experts say preventing zoonotic disease will require not only cracking down on illegal wildlife sales but making progress on big global problems that increase risky human-animal contact, such as habitat destruction and climate change.

Failing to fully investigate the animal origin of the virus, scientists said in the Cell paper, would leave the world vulnerable to future pandemics arising from the same human activities that have repeatedly put us on a collision course with novel viruses.

TOXIC POLITICS

But further investigation is stymied by superpower politics. Lawrence Gostin of Georgetown University said there has been a bare-knuckles fight between China and the United States.

The politics around the origins investigation has literally poisoned the well of global cooperation, said Gostin, director of the WHO Collaborating Center on National and Global Health Law. The politics have literally been toxic.

An AP investigation last year found that the Chinese government was strictly controlling all research into COVID-19's origins and promoting fringe theories that the virus could have come from outside the country.

This is a country thats by instinct very closed, and it was never going to allow unfettered access by foreigners into its territory, Gostin said.

Still, Gostin said there's one positive development that has come out of the investigation.

WHO has formed an advisory group to look into the pandemic's origins. And Gostin said that while he doubts the panel will solve the mystery, they will have a group of highly qualified scientists ready to be deployed in an instant in the next pandemic.

___

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.
stevecoleimages/Getty Images

On Thursday, a group of 20 retail leaders, including the CEOs of CVS, Nordstrom, Meijer, Kroger and Target, sent a letter to Congressional leaders expressing concern over a recent wave of "smash-and-grab" store robberies in major U.S. cities including Chicago, Los Angeles and San Francisco, urging lawmakers to take legislative action.

"Leading retailers are concerned about the growing impact organized retail crime is having on the communities we proudly serve, which is why we strongly support the bipartisan and bicameral Integrity, Notification and Fairness in Online Retail Marketplaces (INFORM) for Consumers Act," the retail CEOs wrote. "This important legislation will modernize our consumer protection laws to safeguard families and communities from the sale of illicit products and we urge its quick passage."
PHNOM PENH, Cambodia (AP)  A U.S. State Department envoy conveyed concerns to top Cambodian officials on Friday about bilateral and regional issues, including the crisis in Myanmar and the construction of Chinese military facilities at a Cambodian naval base.

The visit by Counselor Derek Chollet to Phnom Penh came days after the United States ordered an arms embargo on Cambodia, citing deepening Chinese military influence, corruption and human rights abuses in the Southeast Asian country.

Chollet told journalists his discussions with Cambodian Foreign Minister Prak Sokhonn involved issues related to Myanmar and China, as well as the role Cambodia intends to play as the new chair of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, whose efforts to mediate peace in Myanmar have fallen short.

Myanmar has become increasingly unstable since its army seized power in February, ousting the elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi. The military has sought to forcefully crush popular opposition to its takeover, which could end up plunging the country into civil war, U.N. experts have said.

Washington takes a hard line against Myanmars military-installed government, and has applied targeted diplomatic and economic sanctions against the ruling generals. ASEAN prefers soft measures when dealing with one of its members, and Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen said this week he plans to travel to Myanmar next month for talks with its leaders.

Chollet said his talks with Prak Sokhonn and other officials were open, workmanlike and constructive.

He said he reiterated Washingtons concerns about Cambodias relationship with China that led to it applying the arms embargo.

Unfortunately we have not seen the type of progress we hoped for since we have been registering these concerns, and I should say these concerns go back several years, he said. He described the links with China as not just a threat to the interests of the United States and the region, but also to Cambodia.

Beijing in the last decade has pushed hard to extend its influence in Southeast Asia, China is Cambodias biggest investor and closest political partner.

Chinas support allows Cambodia to disregard Western concerns about its poor record in human and political rights, and in turn Cambodia generally supports Beijings geopolitical positions on issues such as its territorial claims in the South China Sea.

Chollet said he also discussed the construction of new Chinese military facilities at Cambodias Ream Naval Base, a matter of strong U.S. concern.

Ream faces the Gulf of Thailand, adjacent to the South China Sea, where China has aggressively asserted its claim to virtually the entire strategic waterway. The U.S. has refused to recognize Chinas sweeping claim.

We are concerned by the possibility of a PRC military facility, he said, referring to China by its official name, the Peoples Republic of China.

Cambodia has repeatedly denied it will host a naval base exclusively for Chinese use.

We believe it's very important to be fully transparent about the intent and about the nature of that relationship, the scope of it as well, whats going on," Chollet said.
MIDDLETOWN A city woman arrested in October on vandalism charges after police say she was responsible for recurring messages spray-painted around the city, bit a police officer during her arrest, police say.

The case against Chanice Reyes has been sealed, so details of the case were not immediately available. She appeared in court this week, and another appearance is scheduled for Jan. 24.

Reyes, of Glynn Avenue, was arrested Oct. 12 and charged with first-degree criminal mischief, interfering with an officer and second-degree breach of peace, among other charges, according to police.

Just after 8:30 p.m. on Oct. 12, Middletown police were called to the area of Park Place and Washington Street on a report of vandalism. Officers arrived on scene and found #Keep Klover Free spray-painted on the sidewalk using a stencil. This same spray-painted message had been seen in other areas of the city, according to police.

Less than an hour later, police spotted an individual, later identified as Reyes, on the corner of Washington and Main Streets. She had several cans of spray paint in a large canvas bag, along with multiple stencils including one that read #Keep Klover Free, police said

Reyes allegedly was verbally combative and non-compliant as officers attempted to arrest her, police said. One officer sustained an injury to his finger and was also bitten on the leg during the arrest, police said.

During an internet search of the term #Keep Klover Free, police said they found multiple links to Reyes.

Reyes originally appeared in court Oct. 13.

Her attorney, Jerome Paun, could not be reached for comment.
MIDDLETOWN  A holiday-themed improv performance will take place on Sunday night at the Buttonwood Tree Performing Arts Center at 605 Main St.

Jen OLooney, Topher Polack and others will take p:art in the Holidaze Improv Show from 7 to 8:30 p.m. The show will be inspired by your craziest holiday stories, according to buttonwood.org.

TBT offers an improv workshop weekly from 6:30 to 9 p.m. on Sundays. Polack and others conduct this all-level workshop. All are welcome. The fee is $5 per class or via a $10 monthly pass. For information, visit buttonwood.org, or contact TheButtonwoodTree@gmail.com or 860-347-4957.

Better Breathers Club to meet

MIDDLETOWN The Middletown Better Breathers Club support group meeting will be held on Dec. 17 at 1 p.m. at the Middletown Senior Center, 61 Durant Terrace.

The group, sponsored by Waters Edge Center for Health & Rehabilitation, is open to anyone with chronic lung disease such as COPD, asthma, lung cancer, pulmonary hypertension, and pulmonary fibrosis.

Caregivers are welcome. To RSVP, call Laura Falt at 860-335-7526 or email lfalt@nathealthcare.com. All COVID-19 safety precautions will be followed.

Biblical Bethlehem tours

CLINTON  Free, guided Biblical Bethlehem tours are being offered by Clinton Bible Fellowship at 70 East Main St, on Saturday from 5 to 8 p.m.

Clinton Bible Fellowship invites visitors to experience Biblical-era Bethlehem over 2,000 years ago, an announcement said. Featuring live skits and costumes, the presentation will guide visitors along as townsfolk learn about the birth of Jesus, according to the announcement.

Visitors can view the manger where shepherds rejoice over the Saviors birth; Mary and Joseph ride a donkey through town seeking a place to stay, fierce Roman soldiers guard the city gates, and shepherds watch their flock while angels appear with the Good News. the announcement said.

Each tour is about 15 minutes. Registration is required. To register, go to ClintonBibleFellowshipCt.org.

There will be free donkey rides, cookies and hot chocolate. All social distancing protocols will be followed.

Creative writing group to meet

CLINTON  A creative writing group for adults meets on the second Monday of the month at Henry Carter Hull Library at 10 Killingworth Turnpike in Clinton at 6 p.m. The next session is Dec. 13.

Participants share what theyve been writing (10 pages or fewer) and gain feedback from other local writers, an announcement said. All skill levels and writing genres are welcome.

There is no registration. Masks are required. If questions, call the library at 860-669-2342 or email sarah@hchlibrary.org.

Empire of Pain book talk topic

CLINTON  The Get Real Nonfiction Book Group will meet on Dec. 14 at 1 p.m. at Henry Carter Hull Library at 10 Killingworth Turnpike for a discussion of Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty by Patrick Radden Keefe.

The book examines the history of the Sackler family, including the founding of Purdue Pharma, their role in the marketing of pharmaceuticals, and the familys central role in the opioid epidemic, an announcement said.

No registration is necessary. To request a copy of the book, visit the reference desk or email: cathleen@hchlibrary.org. Masks are encouraged. All unvaccinated guests are required to wear a mask in the library.

Common ground topic of talk

CLINTON  Connecting Over Common Ground will be the topic of discussion on Dec. 15 at 10:30 a.m. at Henry Carter Hull Library at 10 Killingworth Turnpike.

This TED Talks series is offered in-person (masks required) or virtual. Registration is required. In-person and virtual participation available. To sign up, visit hchlibrary.org, call 860-669-2342, or email sarah@hchlibrary.org for assistance.

Gift giving for those in need

DURHAM  The Holiday Giving Tree in the Recreation Office on the first floor of Durham Town Hall has tags that list gift ideas for individuals and families in need. No names are given, just a number, age and gender, an announcement said.

Residents and organizations are welcome to participate in this program by taking a tag and purchasing the items on the tag. the announcement said. Wrapping using gift bags and tissue paper is encouraged.

Gifts must be returned no later than Dec. 14. Items can be dropped off at the Durham Activity Center, 350 Main St., Mondays and Wednesdays between 10 a.m. and 1 p.m. or to the Town Hall.

If questions, contact Morgan Perry, social services coordinator, at 860-349-3153 or mperry@townofdurhamct.org.

Town meeting Monday

DURHAM  Voters will face decisions on whether to make changes to six town ordinances and other proposals at a special town meeting on Dec. 13 at 7 p.m. in the Julian B. Thayer Auditorium of Coginchaug Regional High School at 135 Pickett Lane.

This meeting will be streamed via Zoom for questions and comments only and all voting will take place in-person only, according to an announcement from First Selectman. Laura Francis. Audio and visual quality may be limited, the announcement said. To obtain the link, go to townofdurhamct.org/mobile

The 10-item agenda includes proposed amendments to sections of ordinances pertaining to justices of the peace; the Senior Citizen Board; the alcoholic beverages ordinance; the peddlers and solicitors ordinance; the Inland Wetlands and Watercourses Agency ordinance; and whether to repeal the towns regional planning agency ordinance.

Other decisions include filling a vacancy on the Board of Education; amending the towns open space regulations; accepting the conveyance of a portion of the property known as 120 Main Street from The United Churches of Durham and granting an access easement and parking rights for the benefit of the remainder of this property, according to the announcement.

The last agenda item asks voters if the town should join the Estuary Transit District.

To view the proposed ordinances/regulations, go to townofdurhamct.org or call 860-349-3625 to request a copy.

Face masks are required at the in-person meeting.

Preschool screening set

PORTLAND  Valley View Elementary School at 81 High St. will be conducting a preschool screening on Dec. 17 for children ages 3 to 4.

Connecticut public schools are responsible for identifying children who are eligible to receive special education services, an announcement said. To attend the preschool program, children must participate in the screening.

For information and to schedule an appointment, call the school at 860-342-3131.
SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP)  Forget speeding tickets  California truck drivers will soon have to watch out for pollution tickets.

State regulators on Thursday voted to crack down on heavy duty trucks weighing more than 14,000 pounds (6,350 kilograms)  those big semi-trailers that make up just 3% of all vehicles in California but spend so much time on the road they account for more than half of all pollution from cars and trucks each year.

New rules will require these big trucks, including ones from other states passing through Califonria  to be tested at least four times per year to make sure they meet the state's standards for particulate matter and ozone pollution.

To enforce the rules, state officials say they will install roadside monitoring devices to catch trucks that pollute too much. Automated license plate readers would help authorities identify offenders, who could be cited if they refuse to make repairs.

The state has two of these unattended monitoring devices in place and plans to install more. The devices resemble toll booths and capture a sample of the trucks exhaust as it passes through without stopping.

Environmental advocates said the rule  mandated by a 2019 law authored by state Sen. Connie Leyva  is the most significant action in a dozen years to clean up California's air, which consistently ranks among the dirtiest in the country. State officials estimate the rules will prevent more than 7,000 premature deaths because of respiratory illnesses by 2050, avoiding more than $75 billion in health care costs.

(The rules) have some significance for climate, but what were really talking about here is the smog and the particulate matter that is making people sick and killing people, said Bill Magavern, policy director for the Coalition for Clean Air, a statewide advocacy group.

The proposal is one of a flurry of forthcoming changes that could dramatically reshape consumer and industry behavior in the nation's most populous state that, were it an independent country, would have the world's fifth-largest economy.

Also on Thursday, the California Air Resources Board agreed to ban the sale of new products run by small gas-powered engines, including leaf blowers, lawn mowers and portable generators  a rule recently mandated by the state's Democratic-dominated state Legislature. Next year, regulators are poised to tighten emission standards for barges, ferries, fishing boats and tugboats that line California's coastal cities.

And, further down the road, regulators plan to ban the sale of all new gas-powered cars by 2035.

These are the decisions we have to make if we're serious about reducing our reliance on fossil fuels and leaving future generations with healthier communities, said Assemblyman Marc Berman, a Democrat from Palo Alto who authored the law requiring the ban on new gas-powered lawn equipment.

While the new smog check rules for big trucks will have the largest impact on air quality  preventing more than 680,000 tons of smog by 2050  banning the sale of new gas-powered lawn equipment will be the rule consumers notice the most.

Car engines have advanced over the years to pollute less. But the small engines that power most lawn equipment haven't made as much progress. State regulators say the amount of pollution that comes from running a gas-powered leaf blower for one hour is comparable to driving a gas-powered car about 1,100 miles (1,770 kilometers)  or roughly the distance between Los Angeles and Denver.

Nobody will have to give up or stop using equipment they already own. The force of this regulation falls on manufacturers," Berman said.

The rules will have the biggest impact on professional landscapers, who rely on gas-powered equipment to do multiple jobs per day. California lawmakers included $30 million in the most recent state budget to assist these companies converting to battery-powered equipment. But on Thursday, some landscapers testified that equipment would not be as reliable.

Trucking companies and small engine manufacturers have mostly complained about how fast these new standards would imposed. Both the smog check rules for trucks and the ban on the sale of new gas-powered lawn equipment would be fully implemented by 2024, while a similar ban sales of new gas-powered generators would take effect in 2028.

Some trucking industry representatives on Thursday urged regulators to first test the rule with a pilot program before implementing it statewide. Parts truckers need to comply with these rules are becoming harder and more expensive to find, raising fears it could force some trucks off the road while waiting for repairs and could worsen supply chain problems that have hobbled businesses and frustrated consumers.

Chris Shimoda, senior vice president for government affairs with the California Trucking Association, said one sensor truckers often need normally costs around $300 now can cost $7,000 or more. But the new rules do allow for extensions for people who have trouble getting parts.

We just want to make sure that, again, anybody experiencing those sort of issues is not left high and dry, Shimoda said.

Jeff Coad, vice president for marketing and product management for the small engine manufacturer Briggs & Stratton, said the company is ambivalent about how their products are powered but said it won't have enough time to fully comply.

Converting a product such as a large zero turn mower from gas to lithium battery power is not just a matter of replacing the engine with the battery, he said, adding the development time can take up to two years.

Liane Randolph, chair of the California Air Resources Board, said the state is sensitive to those concerns, adding that regulators do a careful analysis of both the costs and the health benefits of any proposed rule.

These regulations result in less trips to the emergency room, less long term health impacts, and, frankly, less medical costs for the community, she said.
WASHINGTON (AP)  The Supreme Court on Friday left in place Texas ban on most abortions, offering only a glimmer of daylight for clinics in the state to challenge the nations most restrictive abortion law.

The decision, little more than a week after the court signaled it would roll back abortion rights and possibly overturn its landmark Roe v. Wade decision, was greeted with dismay by abortion rights supporters but praise by opponents.

Five conservative justices, including three appointed by former President Donald Trump, formed a majority to limit who can be sued by the clinics, a result that both sides said probably will prevent federal courts from effectively blocking the law.

Texas licensing officials may be sued, but not state court judges, court clerks or state Attorney General Ken Paxton, the court ruled. That seems to leave people free, under the unusual structure of the Texas law, to sue abortion clinics and anyone else who aids or abets an abortion performed after cardiac activity is detected in an embryo, around six weeks and before some women know they're pregnant.

The Supreme Court has essentially greenlit Texass cynical scheme and prevented federal courts from blocking an unconstitutional law," the Center for Reproductive Rights, which represents the Texas clinics, said on Twitter.

The court acted more than a month after hearing arguments over the law, which makes no exceptions for rape or incest.

The law has been in place for about three months, since Sept. 1. The Supreme Court's Roe v. Wade ruling that legalized abortion nationwide has stood since 1973.

President Joe Biden voiced concern over the high court decision to keep the Texas law in effect and restated his support for legislation that has cleared the House of Representatives and would codify in federal law the abortion right now at risk.

We have more work to do, but I will always stand with women to protect and defend their long-recognized, constitutional right under Roe v. Wade, Biden said in a statement.

Justice Neil Gorsuch, who has consistently voted against abortion rights, did not mention Roe in his main opinion for the court Friday. Gorsuch is one of the Trump appointees, along with Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett.

Abortion providers will now attempt to run the same legal gantlet that has previously frustrated them. The federal judge who already has once blocked the law, known as S.B. 8, almost certainly will be asked to do so again. Then his decision would be reviewed by the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which has twice voted to allow enforcement of the abortion ban.

In any case, it all could return to the justices, and so far there have not been five votes on the nine-member court to put the law on hold while the legal fight plays out.

The Court should have put an end to this madness months ago, before S. B. 8 first went into effect. It failed to do so then, and it fails again today, Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote in a separate opinion Friday.

The court's conservative majority also seems likely to roll back abortion rights in a Mississippi case that was argued last week, although that decision is not expected until spring.

If Roe is overruled, the fight over the Texas law would be largely beside the point because Texas is one of 12 states with a trigger law that would ban abortion in a post-Roe world.

Friday's high court ruling came a day after a state court judge in Texas r uled that the laws enforcement, which rewards lawsuits against violators by awarding judgments of $10,000, is unconstitutional yet left the law in place.

Critics of the decision also said it would encourage other states to adopt copycat laws on abortion and allow for attacks on other constitutional rights.

The legal fight over the Texas law is focused on its unusual structure and whether it improperly limits how the law can be challenged in court. Texas lawmakers handed responsibility for enforcing the law to private citizens, rather than state officials.

The law authorizes lawsuits against clinics, doctors and others who perform or facilitate a banned abortion. The case raised a complex set of issues about who, if anyone, can sue over the law in federal court, the typical route for challenges to abortion restrictions. Indeed, federal courts routinely put a hold on similar laws, which rely on traditional enforcement by state and local authorities.

The Supreme Court voted Friday 8 to 1 in favor of allowing the clinics lawsuit against the ban to proceed, with only Justice Clarence Thomas voting the other way. But the court was sharply divided, 5-4, on the knotty issue of whom to target with a court order that ostensibly tries to block the law. The justices ruled that Texas licensing officials may be sued, but dismissed claims against state court judges, court clerks and the state attorney general.

Gorsuch wrote that abortion providers have to follow the same rules that apply to people asserting other constitutional rights. The Court has consistently applied these requirements whether the challenged law in question is said to chill the free exercise of religion, the freedom of speech, the right to bear arms or any other right. The petitioners are not entitled to a special exemption, Gorsuch wrote.

Chief Justice John Roberts and the three liberal justices dissented from that part of the decision in an opinion that said the purpose of the Texas law was to nullify this court's rulings on abortion.

The same four justices were in dissent in September when the court declined to block the law once before.

The nature of the federal right infringed does not matter; it is the role of the Supreme Court in our constitutional system that is at stake, Roberts wrote.

Roberts called on U.S. District Judge Robert Pitman, whose earlier order blocking the law was overturned by the appeals court, to enter appropriate relief without delay.

Sotomayor also chastised her colleagues for their part in the catastrophic consequences for women seeking to exercise their constitutional right to an abortion in Texas. She said the courts decision closed off the most direct route to challenging the law and would clear the way for other states to reprise and perfect Texas scheme in the future to target the exercise of any right recognized by this court with which they disagree.

Since it took effect in September, the law has imposed t he most restrictive abortion curbs in the nation since the Supreme Court first declared a womans right to an abortion in its 1973 Roe v. Wade decision.

In the Texas law's first month, a study published by researchers at the University of Texas found, the number of abortions statewide fell by 50% compared with September 2020. The study was based on data from 19 of the states 24 abortion clinics, according to the Texas Policy Evaluation Project.

Some residents who left the state seeking abortions have had to travel well beyond neighboring states, where clinics cannot keep up with the increase in patients from Texas, according to a separate study by the Guttmacher Institute.

Following the court's September vote, the Justice Department filed its own lawsuit over the Texas law. The justices on Friday dismissed that suit, which raised a separate set of thorny legal issues.
TAMPA, Fla. (AP)  A once-standout U.S. narcotics agent who used his badge to build a lavish lifestyle of expensive cars, parties on yachts and Tiffany jewels was sentenced to more than 12 years in federal prison Thursday for conspiring to launder money with a Colombian cartel.

But even as Jose Irizarry admitted to his crimes, he blamed former colleagues at the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration for fostering a culture of corruption that desensitized him to the implications of violating the law.

When my client joined the DEA he was schooled in how to be corrupt, he was schooled in how to break the law," his attorney, Maria Dominguez, said in court. In this alternate universe it became easier and less suspect to accept money and gifts" from criminal informants who worked with the U.S. premier narcotics agency.

U.S. District Court Judge Charlene Honeywell in handing down her sentence expressed disgust with the DEA for its failings and said other agents corrupted by the allure of easy money also needed to be investigated.

"This has to stop, the judge said. You were the one who got caught but it is apparent to this court that there are others.

The DEA did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Prosecutors have described Irizarrys crimes as a shocking breach of the publics trust.

Irizarrys allegations underscore the porous oversight he received during his career, in which he was entrusted with the governments use of front companies, shell bank accounts and couriers to combat international drug trafficking.

They also raise new questions about whether his colleagues in the Miami field office, where Irizarrys criminal activity began, similarly abused the badge in their handling of confidential informants who every year move tens of millions of dollars in dirty money under the DEA's supervision.

Dominguez in court filings revealed that since Irizarry's arrest last year he has met with prosecutors for endless hours to provide information on the criminal activities of fellow law-enforcement agents who initiated him in a life of crime.

Honeywell recently sealed sensitive documents filed in the criminal case, saying their disclosure could potentially impede an ongoing criminal investigation, cause targets to flee and hinder cooperation from other witnesses. So far, other than Irizarry's wife, Nathalia Gomez-Irizarry, and a Colombian customs worker, nobody else has been charged in the conspiracy.

The U.S. Justice Department's Inspector General slammed the DEA in a report over the summer for failing to properly oversee what are supposed to be tightly monitored stings of the sort Irizarry worked on. As a result of the rebuke, which came on the heels of a string of scandals involving agents overseas, Anne Milgram, the DEA's new administrator, ordered an outside review of the agency's foreign operations, which is ongoing.

The DEA has been shaken by repeated cases of misconduct in recent years, including agents charged with wire fraud, bribery and selling firearms to drug traffickers. Thursdays hearing came just four months after another longtime DEA agent, Chad Scott, was sentenced to more than 13 years behind bars for stealing money from suspects, falsifying government records and committing perjury.

The DEA hired Irizarry, 47, and allowed him to handle sensitive financial transactions even after he failed a polygraph exam, declared bankruptcy and kept close ties to a suspected money launderer who would go on to become the godfather of the agent's twin daughters with his Colombian wife.

He pleaded guilty last year to 19 federal counts, including bank fraud, admitting he parlayed his expertise in money laundering into a life of luxury that prosecutors said was bankrolled by $9 million he and his co-conspirators diverted from undercover money laundering investigations.

The spoils included a $30,000 Tiffany diamond ring for his wife, luxury sports cars and a $767,000 home in the Caribbean resort city of Cartagena  on top of residences in south Florida and Puerto Rico. Before he resigned in 2018, Irizarrys ostentatious habits and tales of raucous yacht parties had become well known among DEA agents and prosecutors with whom they worked.

To further the scheme, prosecutors said, Irizarry filed false reports and ordered DEA staff to wire money slated for undercover stings to international accounts he and associates controlled. The money shouldve been carefully tracked by the DEA as part of undercover money laundering investigations, prosecutors said.

Irizarry has claimed the bank accounts in question amounted to a profit-producing slush fund for official and personal travel of federal law enforcement, U.S. prosecutors and confidential sources.

Dominguez said Irizarry accepted full responsibility for his actions but that his take of the conspiracy never surpassed $600,000.

At Thursday's sentencing, Irizarry broke down in tears as he addressed the court, saying the biggest punishment was not being able to explain two his two young daughters why he would be going away for so long. He said when he became a federal law enforcement agent two decades ago he did so with a sense of great pride.

Unfortunately, there came a time when I made a decision that went against the person who I was, that damaged my wife and embarrassed my country," he said. I shouldve known better and I didnt. I failed.

__

Mustian reported from New Orleans.
PARIS (AP)  German Chancellor Olaf Scholz met with French President Emmanuel Macron in Paris on Friday as their governments worked to de-escalate tensions between Russia and Ukraine.

The leaders held a joint news conference during Scholz's first trip abroad following his coalition government's swearing-in on Wednesday. They said they would meet with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy next week on the sidelines of a European Union summit in Brussels.

We all view the situation on the Ukrainian border with concern, Scholz said. Were clear that the inviolability of borders in Europe is one of the principles that all in Europe must accept for our common security  This rule goes for everyone.

Scholz plans to go from France to Brussels to meet with EU and NATO officials. Macron said he and Russian President Vladimir Putin are scheduled to talk next week.

Our first goal is to avoid any useless tension, Macron said. Our will ... Europeans and Americans, is to show that we are very vigilant about the situation, but that there must be no escalation, in any way.

U.S. President Joe Biden this week moved to take a more direct role in diplomacy between Ukraine and Russia. In recent years, France and Germany have played mediator roles in the conflict.

Biden has pressed Putin to pull back a massive Russian troop buildup near Ukraine's border that has created growing concern in Washington and European capitals, as well as in Ukraine itself.

Macron spoke with Zelenskyy over the phone on Friday, and said France and Germany are determined to preserve Ukraines sovereignty and territorial integrity, according to a statement from the French presidency.

Macron and Scholz discussed other bilateral and European issues Friday, including the economic recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic. Macron has made boosting growth and jobs a priority of France's upcoming six-month EU presidency, which starts in January.

Scholz, who was previously Germanys finance minister, noted that he and Macron both have tried to show what is possible in Europe when we work together." Europes 750 billion-euro ($846 billion) pandemic recovery fund is an emphatic symbol of the possibilities connected with this, he said.

And so I am very confident that we can solve the tasks that lie ahead of us  this is about continuing to make possible and maintain the growth that we set on track with the recovery fund, and at the same time providing for solid finances, Scholz said.

Scholz, a 63-year-old center-left politician, became Germanys ninth post-World War II chancellor this week, opening a new era for the EUs most populous nation and largest economy after Angela Merkels 16-year tenure.

His government is composed of a coalition of his center-left Social Democrats, the environmentalist Greens and the pro-business Free Democrats.

_____

Moulson contributed from Berlin, Germany
SANTA FE, N.M. (AP)  The New Mexico House on Friday passed a bill for funneling federal pandemic relief funding to improve broadband internet improvement projects and the state's road infrastructure after a committee added more spending items to the bill.

An amendment put in the bill by the House Appropriations and Finance Committee calls for using $50 million to build a rural hospital. While a location for the hospital has not been determined, some legislators were leaning toward building it in Valencia County, south of Albuquerque.

Another amendment consolidated $123 million in internet funding to allow state officials flexibility in deciding which technology to improve broadband access in underserved areas, especially rural regions. New Mexico has considered methods ranging from traditional fiber optic cable to internet beamed to the ground by satellites and blimps.

Republican committee members complained that $25 million in existing internet projects have stalled because they have not been funded.

Theyve been vetted. Theyve been approved, and theyre sitting on a shelf lacking funding, said Rep. Randal Crowder of Clovis.

Broadband also was also discussed earlier Friday in the Senate, with one lawmaker announcing that state officials are considering buying a new form of satellite internet for rural students  most of whom have lacked internet access through the pandemic.

The state Public Education Department is working on a deal to connect rural students to the internet through StarLink, a SpaceX satellite network that will offer service to the public in New Mexico starting next year. Agency spokeswoman Judy Robinson said the cost would be $1.6 million for the first year of service and for the installation of receivers.

The legislation passed by the House also includes $142 million for roads and $2 million for a teacher training fund.

Boosting the training fund is aimed at pulling the state out of a growing teacher shortage that has swelled to about 1,000 unfilled vacancies. Supporters have said the bill could support as many as 1,500 educators and aspiring educators, mostly by subsidizing university tuition for college students who want to become teachers.

Our teacher shortage is acute, Democratic Rep. Nathan Small of Las Cruces said, adding that he wanted aspiring teachers to know the Legislature is taking action.

___

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.
BRIDGEPORT  Eight years after 24-year-old Aryndel Castro disappeared from his city home, police arrested a local landlord and a convicted killer living in South Carolina in connection with his murder.

Police said the landlord, 45-year-old Shawn Gibson, led detectives to the basement of a relatives home on Noble Avenue late Thursday afternoon where they said they found Castros remains buried.

We did all in our power to find Aris body so his family can have peace and closure, Bridgeport States Attorney Joseph Corradino said as the victims body was brought out of the house on a stretcher.

Earlier Thursday, Castros family stood in the lobby of the Golden Hill Street courthouse waiting for Gibson to be arraigned for murder. At that point they were unaware police were busily digging in the Noble Avenue basement for the victims remains.

Its been a long eight years since my brother disappeared but we never gave up and thankfully the police never gave up, said Castros brother, Aneudi Rosa. Lt. (Chris) LaMaine told me eight years ago he was going to keep searching for my brother and never give up and he kept his promise and found my brothers killers.

LaMaine, who later emerged from the Noble Avenue house shovel in hand, said he made every effort to solve this case for the family. They deserved closure, he said.

However, Castros mother later collapsed, sobbing in the courtroom as Gibson was brought before Superior Court Judge Tracy Lee Dayton. Other family members began shouting at Gibson, Wheres Ari, wheres the body?

But Gibson did not respond and showed no emotion as he stood before the judge.

Corradino asked the judge to set a bond of $250,000, a low figure for a murder case. But he explained that they needed Gibson available to help them find Castros remains.

He is aware of the continuing investigation, Gibsons lawyer, Frederick Paoletti, told the judge.

The judge imposed the $250,000 bond and ordered Gibson to wear a GPS monitoring anklet. She continued the case to Dec. 21.

On Wednesday, police said they arrested Terrance Boyd, 55, in Columbia, S. C. and charged him with murder in the case.

Boyd was convicted in the 1980s of beating a 63-year-old New Canaan woman in the head and drowning her in her swimming pool.

Police said Boyd recently admitted he had helped Gibson kill Castro. He is awaiting extradition back to Connecticut.

Ill put it in a nutshell for you, Boyd told police, according to the arrest warrant affidavit. This guy (Castro) stole some tools from Shawn (Gibson). He didnt like it. He told me to go get the guy. Brought him to the house, beat him to death and then buried him.

Castros family reported him missing in September 2013.

LaMaine continued to work the case with the members of the Bridgeport States Attorneys Cold Case Unit, senior assistant states attorneys David Applegate and Susan Campbell.

We are committed to seeking answers and justice for victims of violent crime and their families. This is an example of how important persistence and teamwork are in these investigations, said Applegate.

According to the affidavit, Boyd told detectives that he and Gibson had brought Castro to a rooming house on Noble Avenue that Gibson owned and Gibson began beating Castro with his fists. Boyd told detectives the beating became so bad that he had vomited. Boyd said he had left to get some beers but as he left, he said he could still hear Gibson beating Castro, the affidavit states.

The affidavit continues that both men later put Castros remains in a large plastic bag. They initially took it to a house Gibson owned on Moffitt Street and then tried to bury it in Beardsley Park but couldnt dig a deep enough hole, the affidavit states.
Article 138 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) is one of the most powerful rights for a service member wronged by their command. Despite its power, many service members seldom utilize Article 138 and are unaware of its usefulness. Under Article 138 of the UCMJ, every service member of the armed forces who believes they were wronged by the discretion of their commanding officer has the right to request a redress. While there are certain cases that can and cannot be filed under Article 138, any service member looking to file a complaint should know the stages for requesting a redress and what will be expected of them throughout this process.

What Matters Can Be Addressed Under Article 138

There are a wide variety of issues that can be resolved through the Article 138 process. The key points to remember for an actionable complaint are whether the issue was (1) discretionary and (2) not subject to its own appeal process, such as an non-commissioned officer evaluation report (NCOER) or General Officer Memorandum of Reprimand (GOMOR).

The classic example is a service member denied ordinary leave. This is generally within a commander's discretion and not subject to a separate appeal process. That means a service member would be well within their right to file an informal request for redress as a precursor to a formal Article 138 complaint.

Such a claim, however, should not be filed until a commander formally denies the leave request. If a service member is merely told that their leave will be denied and doesn't actually file a leave request, then an Article 138 would not be proper.

Although many different issues may be appropriate for an Article 138, certain grievances are excluded or do not constitute an Article 138 complaint. That most commonly applies to situations that have other means of appeal for a redress, like performance evaluations, non-judicial punishments and administrative discharge issues. Again, similar to which matter can be addressed, it would be wise to review which issues may be subject to an Article 138 complaint and those that have other avenues of appeal.

How to File an Article 138 Complaint

When requesting a redress, the first step any service member should take is to issue an informal request for corrective action to be taken. This is generally done in writing via a letter or memorandum to their commanding officer and must reference Article 138. Should their command not provide full relief to the service member, the service member may then submit a complaint to the officer exercising general court-martial convening authority (GCMCA) over the commanding officer. A formal complaint requires specific information that must be included. The complaint also should contain enough supporting relevant evidence for the officer to take action.

For example, let's say that a service member was denied permissible temporary duty orders (TDY) to find a house near their new duty station. In this situation, a service member submitting their informal letter may want to include a witness statement from their realtor, discussing the housing situation and the active steps the member has taken to find a place to live. Along with this evidence, they also would have to annotate the specific redress that they are requesting, which must be within the authority of the commander.

Even if the GCMCA rejects the service member's complaint, they are required to explain what aspects of their complaint are lacking and any other avenues that can be used to appeal the wrongdoing.

Knowing Your Rights

The Article 138 process is well-grounded in the law so service members should not be concerned about retaliation from their command for exercising their rights under this provision. If a service member feels they have been retaliated against, they should report the retaliation immediately to their servicing inspector general or legal representative.

As mentioned, Article 138 complaints are one of a service member's best tools for combating their command's wrongdoings. While useful, service members should consider seeking legal advice when submitting their complaint to ensure that their complaint is valid, supported by evidence, and that the requested redress is within the authority of the commander.

-- Stephen Jewell, a senior associate, practices military law in Tully Rinckey PLLC's Austin office. He can be reached at info@tullylegal.com or at (512) 225-2800.

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HELSINKI  Finland has agreed to buy 64 Lockheed Martin fighter jets to replace its aging fleet of combat planes in a 10 billion-euro ($11.3 billion) deal that represents the Finnish military's largest ever purchase, the government said Friday.

The Nordic country picked the U.S. company's F-35A fighters from among five contenders, which also included the Boeing F-18 Super Hornet, France's Dassault Rafale, Britain's Eurofighter Typhoon and Sweden's Saab Gripen.

The Finnish air force has a fleet of more than 60 F-18 Hornets, acquired in the early 1990s. It started looking for a successor aircraft in 2014.

Finnish Prime Minister Sanna Marin said her governments decision, based on a recommendation by the Finnish Defense Forces, to purchase F-35A was unanimous.

New fighters are a key part of Finlands defense, Marin told a press conference. Fighters protect the integrity of Finnish airspace, protect society from airstrikes and support (Finnish) army and navy operations.

The Defense Ministry said Friday that the price tag for the deal with Lockheed Martin includes training and other equipment.

The U.S. aerospace, arms and defense company said in a statement it was honored" the Finnish government picked the F-35 through its thorough, open competition.

Lockheed Martin said the deal would include a robust weapons package, a sustainment solution tailored to Finlands unique security of supply requirements, as well as a comprehensive training program.

European Union member Finland is a militarily non-aligned nation but closely cooperates with NATO in a way similar to neighboring Sweden.

Switzerland, another militarily non-aligned European country, and NATO members Denmark and Norway previously decided to buy the F-35.

Finland, which shares a 1,340-kilometer (832-mile) border with Russia, has increased its bilateral defense and military cooperation with Sweden, Norway and the United States in the past few years.

Bethesda, Maryland-based Lockheed Martin said Friday that there are currently more than 730 F-35s in service worldwide.



Jan M. Olsen in Copenhagen, Denmark contributed to this report.
After a long effort by his family, a sergeant first class who died after pulling fellow troops out of a burning vehicle in Iraq in 2005 will receive the Medal of Honor, along with two other heroic soldiers who served in Afghanistan, the White House announced Friday.

Alwyn Cashe will be awarded the highest military honor on Thursday in a White House ceremony that includes Sgt. 1st Class Christopher Celiz, who died after protecting an evacuation helicopter, and Master Sgt. Earl Plumlee, who risked his life fighting off a horde of suicide bombers overrunning his base.

Cashe is the first Black service member to receive the medal from either conflict. The Army initially denied Plumlee's nomination in 2015, according to The Washington Post. President Joe Biden will make the official presentation during the ceremony next week.

Read Next: Oklahoma Guard Leader Tells Vaccine Refusers to Prepare for 'Career Ending Federal Action'

"These awards are long awaited and undoubtedly well deserved for such displays of heroism and courage," Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said Friday.

The medal for Cashe especially has been a long time coming after his surviving sister and supporters spent years lobbying. The award was finally supported last year by former Defense Secretary Mark Esper and had been teed up for a possible announcement at the end of the Trump administration, only to be delayed months longer.

Cashe, 35, was a platoon sergeant, originally from Florida, who had enlisted in 1989 when the Bradley Fighting Vehicle he was commanding came under fire during a nighttime patrol in Salah Ad Din Province, Iraq, in 2005.

An improvised explosive device, or IED, hit the Bradley, rupturing its fuel tank and setting it aflame. Cashe's own uniform was soaked in fuel as he and another soldier pulled the driver, who was on fire, out of the vehicle.

They managed to smother the flames on the driver, but Cashe's uniform caught fire, causing "severe second- and third-degree burns covering the majority of his body," according to the White House account.

Despite the terrible burns and enemy fire on his position, Cashe went back into the burning Bradley twice, first for four soldiers who were trapped, and again to find two other troops who were still missing. Then he made sure his fellow soldiers received medical care.

"When medical evacuation helicopters began to arrive, he selflessly refused evacuation until all of the other wounded soldiers were first evacuated," the White House said in the announcement of the medals.

He died of his injuries several weeks later.

Celiz, 32, was the leader of a special operations unit composed of partner forces and the 1st Battalion, 75th Ranger Regiment, when he was on a 2018 mission to clear an area in Paktiya Province where enemy attacks had been staged.

A large enemy force attacked the unit, and Celiz exposed himself to machine gun and small arms fire to man a "heavy weapons system," the White House said.

The move shifted momentum in the firefight, giving his unit the upper hand, and allowed the Rangers to move to cover and treat a wounded member of the partner forces.

When a medical evacuation helicopter arrived, it was hit with sustained enemy fire. "Celiz made a conscious effort to ensure his body acted as a physical shield to his team carrying the casualty and the crew of the aircraft," according to the announcement.

Celiz continued guarding the helicopter and its pilot from the gunfire with his body, repeatedly repositioning himself in the open, even after the rest of his team took cover. He was mortally wounded as the helicopter took off.

"Fully aware of his own injury, but understanding the peril to the aircraft from the intense enemy machine gun fire, Sgt. 1st Class Celiz motioned to the aircraft to depart rather than remain to load him," the White House said.

Plumlee, a Green Beret, was serving as a weapons sergeant at Forward Operating Base Ghazni, Afghanistan, when a vehicle IED blew a 60-foot hole in the base's perimeter wall.

"Ten insurgents wearing Afghan National Army uniforms and suicide vests poured through the breach," according to the account. Plumlee and a group of special operators raced toward the scene.

Their vehicles immediately came under fire. Plumlee used his body to shield the driver while jumping from the vehicle, drawing his pistol and charging into what was described as a superior enemy force.

He killed an insurgent attacker with a grenade and detonated another's suicide vest by shooting it. Plumlee charged into the fray, breaking cover and fighting in close combat. Another suicide vest detonated about 22 feet away.

Plumlee joined a group of U.S. and Polish soldiers who mounted a counterattack. He attacked another insurgent who threw a grenade and then detonated his suicide vest, and then engaged another attacker coming from the rear, who detonated his vest and mortally wounded a U.S. soldier.

"Plumlee, with complete disregard for his own safety, ran to the wounded soldier, carried him to safety, and rendered first aid," the White House said. "He then organized three Polish soldiers for defense, methodically cleared the area, remained in a security posture, and continued to scan for any remaining threats."

-- Travis Tritten can be reached at travis.tritten@military.com. Follow him on Twitter @Travis_Tritten.

Related: Earl Plumlee, Alwyn Cashe Among 4 Soldiers Highlighted for Medal of Honor in Defense Bill
The leadership of the Oklahoma National Guard has acknowledged that its fight with the federal government over the COVID-19 vaccine mandate ultimately may lead to "career ending federal action" for troops.

Brig. Gen. Thomas Mancino, the top officer for Oklahoma's Guard, released a statement Thursday that opened with a forceful defense of service members under his charge exercising their "personal responsibility" and "the right to not take the vaccine."

However, the message quickly pivoted as Mancino began to note that his and Republican Gov. Kevin Stitt's authority is limited.

Read Next: Oklahoma National Guard Pilot Honored for Staving Off Taliban Fighters in Little-Known 2018 Battle

"Anyone exercising their personal responsibility and deciding not to take the vaccine must realize that the potential for career ending federal action, baring [sic] a favorable court ruling, legislative intervention, or a change in policy is present," Mancino wrote in the statement.

State National Guard formations are unique in the military in that they have dual obligations: to both the state and federal government. When under their governor's authority, the Guard is said to be operating under Title 32. However, when deployed by the federal government, they operate under so-called Title 10 orders and are commanded by the president.

"The Governor has used his authority under Title 32 to grant you a limited safe harbor within his authority to not be subject to Title 10 negative actions for not taking the vaccine," Mancino explained.

This distinction -- whom an individual Guard member ultimately takes orders from and when -- has been the crux of the fight between Oklahoma and the Pentagon. That fight now includes a lawsuit launched by Stitt and threats from the Pentagon to withhold pay.

In one of the last paragraphs of his message, Mancino noted that he is "fully vaccinated, plus the booster."

"I believe the vaccine to be safe and effective against COVID-19 based on the millions of doses administered," he wrote.

In his message, Mancino admitted that, ultimately, "continued service in the national guard will require connections with Title 10 authority."

"Such connections including training events, schools, and mobilizations are going to eventually force you out of that safe harbor, and subject you to title 10 authorities. This is reality," his statement said.

Increasing politicization of the National Guard means that Oklahoma Guardsmen aren't the only troops stuck between state and federal posturing. A spokesperson for Stitt told Military.com last week that at least five other Republican governors are considering similar moves.

While Stitt and other governors may be eager to test the limits of their authority against the Pentagon and the rest of the federal government, Mancino's message makes it clear the struggle could have consequences for Guard members.

"It is important you do not mistake my vigorous defense of the Governor's rights under Title 32 as a guarantee you will not face consequences from Title 10 authority," Mancino wrote. "I have no such power."

-- Konstantin Toropin can be reached at konstantin.toropin@military.com. Follow him on Twitter @ktoropin.

Related: The National Guard Is Stuck in the Middle of Political Infighting, and It's Getting Worse
New details of a harrowing 12-hour battle in Afghanistan emerged this week as an F-16 pilot was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross for helping to repel an elite Taliban unit during the deadly firefight.

Dozens gathered Sunday in the main hangar of the Oklahoma Air National Guard's 138th Fighter Wing to honor Lt. Col. Michael "Fist" Coloney, more than three years after the actions that earned him the nation's fourth-highest medal given for valor.

In an awards ceremony speech, Coloney called April 30, 2018, "a very stressful day."

"I could have used some Gold Bond powder," he added.

On that day, Coloney provided five hours of "dynamic and concentrated-danger close attacks" to support embattled special operations troops fighting alongside Afghan counterparts, Col. Ryan "Coma" Jones said.

Commanders on the ground later attested that Coloney's actions that day saved American lives.

But there was no ignoring the fact that the awards ceremony came just three months after the U.S. withdrew from Afghanistan as it fell back into Taliban hands.

"It certainly wasn't the outcome that any of us had hoped for, that we worked for all those years," Brig. Gen. Derek O'Malley said in recorded remarks played at the ceremony. "But honoring Fist today, it's good for us. It reminds us that what we did there mattered."

At Jones's urging, the general had helped push through Coloney's award package, which had fallen through the cracks when unit commanders swapped out sometime earlier.

It was one of many awards packages O'Malley saw in the final days of the airwing, but Jones "knew that this wasn't a typical combat sortie," the general said. Both he and Jones are fighter pilots themselves.

Coloney was serving with the 125th Expeditionary Fighter Squadron on its 12th F-16 combat deployment to Bagram in the spring of 2018, a time of fierce fighting.

But when Coloney awoke before dawn on that April day, he was merely expecting to take his wingman on an orientation flight, Coloney said in his speech. It was the wingman's first combat mission.

Within 30 minutes, they'd be called to support ground troops in a firefight, and within two hours his wingman would drop ordnance in combat for the first time, a 560-pound GBU-38 guided munition.

The coalition forces on the ground had cleared the Pashakari village in Kapisa province the day before and set up in three compounds, Jones said.

But then some 80 members of the Taliban's elite Red Unit and Haqqani network surrounded them in a retaliatory attack, first with fire from heavy machine guns, AK-47s, snipers and rockets.

A second wave maneuvered to within 3 feet of the main compound and began throwing grenades over the walls.

A senior airman attached to the Special Forces team called for "lethal air support," Jones said. Coloney and his wingman were the closest to the fight.

But because the F-16 pilots hadn't previously been tasked with supporting them or received mission materials, they first had to get situational awareness, and quickly.

Complicating that were "ineffective" communications streams to the ground forces, Jones said, so Coloney made several low passes to break up the Taliban attack and get a better idea of friendly positions.

Coloney then made a high-angle strafing run, giving him time to dial in on the Taliban positions, two of which he and his wingman then destroyed with bombs.

The strikes gave coalition forces the chance to regroup. Meanwhile, "a new onslaught of enemy fire" was preventing medical evacuation helicopters from retrieving at least eight wounded troops.

Coloney set up for more strafing runs and coordinated with attack helicopters to provide cover for the pinned-down friendly forces.

Justin Prack, the combat controller, who is now a staff sergeant, then told the pilot they'd lose radio contact when some of the troops moved through 100 meters of enemy fields of fire to consolidate their positions.

Prack designated anybody moving toward them as hostile and gave Coloney clearance to engage them so long as he did so outside danger-close range for his weapons.

For the next two hours, Coloney worked with the reconnaissance aircraft to identify enemy positions and repeatedly strafe within the populated village.

During the firefight, Army Spc. Gabriel D. Conde of Colorado was killed and one other American soldier was wounded.

But Coloney's overwatch and coordination when they all moved into one compound prevented more casualties and allowed for resupply and evacuation, giving them "a pathway home that distressing day," Jones said.

Several Afghans were also killed or injured, officials with the U.S.-led NATO coalition said in the days after the battle, though military officials declined to provide details about the operation at that time.

A father of two, Coloney enlisted in the Oklahoma Air National Guard in 2005 and was commissioned the following year.

He's clocked over 2,200 hours in the F-16 and is a third-generation fighter pilot. His grandfather flew P-51 Mustangs over Europe during World War II.

Coloney thanked his father, who was in the audience at the awards ceremony, for instilling in him the fighter pilot ethos. The elder Coloney flew F-4s out of Hahn Air Base in Germany and F-5s as an aggressor pilot out of RAF Alconbury in England.

He also thanked Prack, the combat controller, noting that they knew each other only by callsigns the first time they met.

While Prack was dodging bullets and grenades, Coloney was over a mile high above him, he said, but "we had instant and absolute trust in each other."

"Unlike most friendships, we didn't have the time to get to know each other," he said. "At the time, we only cared about making a bad situation better."

This story originally appeared on Stars and Stripes.
The hectic last days of the U.S. presence in Afghanistan spelled an end of an era for the U.S. special-operations community.

For the past two decades, U.S. special operators have been at the forefront of the fight against global terrorism. In addition to Afghanistan, American commandos deployed -- and, in some cases, are still deploying -- to Iraq and Syria and parts of Africa and Southeast Asia to combat terrorist groups.

U.S. Special Operations Command is following the Pentagon's shift to great-power competition against near-peer competitors, such as China and Russia, but elusive and persistent jihadists still threaten security and stability around the world.

That means U.S. special operators face two completely different opponents. Although those challenges have common elements, SOCOM will have to use two different playbooks to counter them.

The Fight Against Terrorism Continues

Even before the fall of the Afghan government and the chaos of the Taliban takeover -- which could lead to a resurgence of al-Qaida or other terrorist organizations -- SOCOM's leader emphasized that counterterrorism remains the U.S. special-operations community's priority.

In testimony to Congress in April, Gen. Richard Clarke, the commander of SOCOM, highlighted that his force has the capabilities and tools to address both violent extremist organizations and Russia and China.

Clarke also said that there has been a drawdown in the deployment of special-operations forces abroad, with 2020 being the year with the fewest commandos abroad since 2001.

The SOCOM commander told lawmakers that about 40% of U.S. special operators focus on near-peer adversaries, with the rest fighting terrorists. Clarke said the command is looking to balance that division of labor equally, showing that while the Pentagon pivots to near-peer warfare, the U.S. special-operations community still has to deal with terrorism.

Despite being battered by the U.S. military and intelligence community for more than 20 years, al-Qaida and its many offshoots are still present and seeking to strike American and Western targets.

Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula is particularly dangerous. Other VEOs, such as ISIS and Al-Shabaab, also pose a considerable threat.

In comments at the Military Reporters and Editors Association conference in November, Clarke acknowledged that the threat of terrorism remains active.

Clarke said SOCOM has started a review from its operations in Afghanistan to inform the special-operations community's future approach to violent extremist organizations. He suggested the review's focus will be on how U.S. commandos supported larger conventional forces.

"We got to take those lessons learned, and where applicable to conditions somewhere else, we have to be able to apply those," Clarke said at the conference.

One Mission, Two Lessons

Perhaps one of the most important nuggets of information from Clarke in November was about how SOCOM conducts foreign internal defense -- the training and advising of local forces -- and how it may approach that mission in the future.

Foreign internal defense is arguably one of the most important missions done by U.S. special-operations units, as it allows them to "outsource" all or part of the burden of warfare by building the capability and capacity of foreign conventional and special-operations units.

After nearly two decades conducting that mission on behalf of Iraqi and Afghan counterparts -- at the cost of billions of dollars and thousands of American lives -- forces in both countries have faltered or failed against determined adversaries.

The approach U.S. forces took to that mission in those countries shouldn't be the default going forward, Clark said last month.

"We don't necessarily need to train with partner forces for what we want them to do. We need to train for partner forces of what they need to do for their country and their environment. I think that's the biggest lesson that we have to take from this, writ large," Clarke told military reporters at the conference.

What that means in practical terms is that U.S. special operators may have different curricula for foreign internal defense, depending on the "customer."

For example, Army Green Berets in Taiwan may teach their Taiwanese counterparts guerrilla tactics to use against a larger Chinese force after an invasion of the island nation, while Marine Raiders deployed to Kenya train their local counterparts to conduct counterterrorism and direct-action operations against a non-state group like Al-Shabaab.

The inherent flexibility of U.S. special-operations units would allow them to teach different aspects of the same mission set to two audiences in ways suited for each audience.

The future will be packed with challenges for the US special-operations community, but it has shown over the past 40 years that it has a versatile toolkit to address current and emerging threats.

Stavros Atlamazoglou is a defense journalist specializing in special operations, a Hellenic Army veteran (national service with the 575th Marine Battalion and Army HQ), and a Johns Hopkins University graduate.

Read the original article on Business Insider.
Jorge L. Rivero is a U.S. Marine currently assigned to the Marine Corps Information Operations Center in Quantico, Va. and holds a Master of Arts Degree from the Bundeswerh University in Munich and a Master of Professional Studies from the George Washington University.

The opinions expressed in this op-ed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Military.com. If you would like to submit your own commentary, please send your article to opinions@military.com for consideration.

In a dramatic speech in 2018, President Vladimir Putin revealed what the Russian Federation has been working on for years. According to the Russian president, the departure of the United States from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, along with various missile defense projects in Europe, forced the Russian Federation to invest in expensive missile projects that would guarantee Russian ability to penetrate any existing systems, as well as any systems that the U.S. might muster in the future.

During the speech, Putin highlighted six weapons; a heavy Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM) called the RS-28 Sarmat, a nuclear-powered cruise missile named Burevestnik (Skyfall), a laser system named Peresvet, a nuclear-armed underwater vehicle, and Avangard and Kinzhal hypersonic missiles. Along with presenting this remarkable assortment of weapons, Putin described the systems as new developments in weapons technology.

During the presentation, Putin showcased what he regards as the shifting character of the international system and said You did not listen to us before undoubtedly referring to Western attitude towards Russia since the end of the Cold War; proceeding with You will listen to us now with pictures of Russian nuclear reentry vehicles hailing down on Florida in the background.

Since that time, Russian hypersonic weapons have captured growing importance in strategic analysis, as the Russian military has quickly demonstrated their effectiveness through numerous tests of the Kinzhal, Avangard, and the Navys version, Tsirkon. An important test, conducted on Oct 4, 2021, launched from the Severodvinsk nuclear submarine, was the first time a hypersonic missile has been fired underwater and provided Russia another triumph in hypersonic development and closed in on a hypersonic triad, all while the U.S. continues to struggle to attain the slightest success in hypersonic testing.

While strategic weapons systems like Avangard have received the majority of attention, this article will argue that the true military advantage of hypersonic weapons lies in operational and tactical weapon systems.

As with everything thats new, there is a substantial measure of ambiguity regarding hypersonic weapons. The term hypersonic does not only correlate to weapon systems, but to the speed of an object, typically moving above Mach-5. For example, ICBMs are hypersonic systems that can travel at speeds exceeding Mach-20 and the space shuttle is a hypersonic glide vehicle (HGV) travelling at speeds of 17,580 MPH or Mach 22.

Most estimates of the role strategic hypersonic weapons might play in the future of warfare have been greatly exaggerated. If Putins remarks are to be taken seriously, and if its true that the Russians built Avangard to penetrate U.S. ballistic missile defense (BMD), then Avangard is superfluous since existing Russian strategic missiles can penetrate U.S. BMD with ease.

Those who see Avangard as a grandiose, game-changing weapon seem to fall into one of two categories. The first is that U.S. BMD is directed at intercepting Russian ICBMs. The second, which flows from the first, is if U.S. BMD were truly directed at Russian ICBMs, U.S. BMD systems would be capable of successfully intercepting an incoming Russian attack. No matter how eagerly our politicians assure the American people of missile defense capabilities, we know that neither of these circumstances are true.

Indeed, the 2019 Missile Defense Review by the Department of Defense clearly states, U.S missile defense capabilities will be sized to provide continuing effective protection of the U.S. against rogue states offensive missile threats, clearly pointing to North Korean and Iranian missile systems. However, when addressing other actors, the document states The United States relies on nuclear deterrence to address the large and more sophisticated Russian and Chinese intercontinental ballistic missile capabilities.

In May 2010, former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates testified to Congress that the systems that we have, the system that originated and have been funded in the Bush administration, are not focused on trying to render useless Russias nuclear capabilities. That, in our view, as in theirs, would be enormously destabilizing, and not to mention unbelievably expensive.

To highlight that point, and even under the most scripted conditions, the Boeing Ground-Based Interceptor (GBI), which accounts for the mid-course phase of U.S. BMD, possesses a 55 percent chance of intercepting an incoming ICBM, despite carrying a $74 million price tag. Considering that the U.S. BMD is designed to intercept unsophisticated North Korean missiles, which, presumably will not carry capable countermeasures, the 55 percent figure will no doubt drop when facing Russian weapons.

While the U.S. deploys 44 GBIs, Russia currently deploys roughly 486 deployed strategic missiles, silo and mobile based, submarine-launched missiles capable of carrying 1,600 nuclear warheads and advanced countermeasures. In comparison, Russia is expected to deploy 12 SS-19 missiles equipped with Avangard HGV by 2027. When studying those quantities, an unmistakable advantage in Russian strategic ICBMs compared to American interceptors is obvious, essentially nullifying the need for Avangard altogether since ICBMs can easily overwhelm U.S. BMD. For example, Sarmat, Russias newest ICBM, can carry a 10,000 Kg payload in a three-stage, liquid fueled system, load 10 large warheads traveling at hypersonic speed and deploys advance counter measures which makes them difficult to destroy by advance missile defense systems.

The genuine threats of Russian hypersonic missile technologies are in two areas. First, since the Avangard system is a dual-threat weapon  meaning it can be equipped with conventional and nuclear warheads- the target is not aware of the payload until detonation and could react with a worst-case scenario response, increasing the prospect of miscalculation. Second, Russian hypersonic advantages lie in both operational level systems and, as we move forward in the future, tactical missile systems.

To put it more bluntly, the Russian Federation has opened the pandoras box of hypersonic missile technologies. As the next step, Russian Mig-31s and other air platforms will deploy with Kinzhal missiles and Russia will arm submarines and surface vessels with Tzirkon missiles, both of which the U.S., or anyone else, have no valid defenses for.

The Russian hypersonic systems (Avangard, Tsirkon, and Kinhzal) are mature and full deployment can be expected. However, the clear value of hypersonic technology for defense capability is not yet fully understood, and while the Russians foresaw clear advantages at the operational level, tactical level weapons are speedily on the horizon.

For example, in an article published in November 2020 in Izvestiya, a Russian military magazine, tactical hypersonic missiles were highlighted as a future capability. The article suggests that the Russian military will deploy tactical-level missiles at the brigade and division level with a range of 100 kilometers. These systems, which will most likely be mounted on tactical vehicles, will close the gap between lower echelon commanders who commonly use artillery and MLRS as fire support, and army groups who use Iskanders. Such missiles would allow Russian commanders to attack command-and-control posts, artillery batteries and other critical infrastructure with ease, as theater missile defense systems would face challenges related to speed, measurability and size. Even more troubling, U.S. commanders will likely have no similar retaliatory capabilities as the U.S. struggles to test hypersonic technologies.

Hypersonic Weapons are Here to Stay

Hypersonic technologies are here to stay, and we are witnessing just the beginning stages of proliferation and deployment. Russia will continue to incorporate these missiles into every platform in its inventory in order to stay ahead of U.S. BMD and theater missile defenses. Russian strategic hypersonic weapons will continue to provide limited capabilities to the Russian regime; however, new technologies and operational and tactical systems will continue to deteriorate the military balance along NATOs Eastern flank.

How the U.S and NATO choose to react to these developments will have serious ramifications and force heavy costs for taxpayers.

This article originally appeared on 19fortyfive.com.
2021 has almost ended and this portal presents to you five Ghanaian gospel artists who released the songs with the most stunning productions within the year.

The list below is also our selection of solely Ghanaian gospel songs released in 2021 with great videos and great acceptance.

1. DIANA HAMILTON:

After making history as the first female gospel artist to win the coveted artiste of the Year award at the 2021 Vodafone Ghana Music Awards, many music enthusiasts and her fans were expecting her to drop another hit song.

With Adom and Mo Ne Yo being smash-hit songs, they perceived it was going to be very difficult for her to replicate such a feat.

But the celebrated gospel diva maintained her composure by producing another hit song.

Titled Awurade Ye (Do It Lord). A Powerful Song with Production credit going to Kaywa, Awurade Ye is undeniably one of the most popular and well-produced gospel songs in 2021.

2. CELESTINE DONKOR:

Another gospel diva who has really maintained her status as a monster hit maker is Celestine Donkor.

The award-winning songstress wowed gospel music lovers with her single ONLY YOU . 'Only You' is a well produced song that narrates a real testimony, acknowledging God alone as the source, force, and reason behind the miracles and transformations we experience in our everyday lives.

The slow tempo song which is agglutinated with beautiful rhythms and drum beats to match offers substantial inspiration to all Christians.

The video of the song meandered its way into the top ten gospel music videos Chart on Trace TV Africa.

3. JOSEPH MATTHEW

Afro gospel in Ghana has finally gained prominence in the music scene. This type of Christian music expresses everything about the gospel of Christ like any other gospel song, but it has got rap and pop culture added to it.

One artist who has taken Ghana by storm with his afro style of singing is Joseph Matthew. In 2021, Joseph Matthew dropped two world-class songs; Not Alone and The Name.

Both songs were produced live by award-winning sound engineer, Francis Osei, The Name which is currently enjoying massive airplay reminds Christians, no matter the challenges we may go through, our victory is assured and also there is power in the name of God.

When it comes to producing well-directed gospel music videos, JM has also really carved a niche for that. The songs were accompanied by well-directed visuals that can win awards at any music videos awards.

The Not Alone video topped Charts on Trace TV Africa for weeks. His exploits in producing good songs and visuals have preempted showbiz personalities like Arnold Asamoah-Baidoo, Fred Kyei Mensah aka Fredima, Adom FMs Kwamena Idan into endorsing him as the gospel artist to take over the Ghanaian music scene.

4. JOE METTLE.

Breaking the jinx to become the first gospel artist to win the coveted Artiste of the Year award in 2017 with his hit song nwanwani, Joseph Oscar Nii Armah Mettle, better known by his stage name Joe Mettle, has never relent feeding his fans with well-produced and spirit-filled songs.

In 2021, the Multiple award-winning artists served fans with an amazing Ga contemporary gospel song titled Ye Obua Mi (My Help)Ye Obua Mi (My Help), is the first single from Joe Mettles album released in 2021.

Ye Obua Mi, a song declaring the Lord as our help is derived from Psalm 121, "I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help. My help comes from the LORD, the Maker of heaven and earth. indeed

5. PREACHERS

Preachers is a Ghanaian gospel group. The group is made up of three members, Obed Psych, Emani Beats and Edmund Baidoo.

Since 2009, as one of the pacesetters of the urban gospel movement in Ghana, they have toured locally and internationally to preach the word of God through their music.

In 2021, they produced great Songs such as Unholy War and Pray. They have really proven to be a force to reckon with in the Ghanaian music industry.
10.12.2021 LISTEN

Health workers at the Ghana Consolidated Diamond Limited (GCDL) Hospital are crying to the ruling government for help over unpaid salaries.

The mother company of the hospital formerly known as Great Consolidated Diamond Limited was taken over by the government in 2019 for breach of the concession agreement with the state.

Jospong Group bought the Ghana Consolidated Diamonds Limited and renamed it Great Consolidated Diamonds. After it took over the company and all of its assets, it automatically assumed responsibility for all workers' salaries.

Before the government takeover, workers of the health facility of Great Consolidated Diamond Limited owned by Jospong Group then were owed salaries of up to 10 and a half months.

According to a worker at the health facility who spoke to Modernghana News but pleaded to stay anonymous, although the State Interest and Governance Authority led by its recently resigned Director-General Stephen Asamoah Boateng aka Asabee introduced some interventions when the takeover was completed, not all challenges of the workers were addressed.

From there a number of policies were introduced and we were given the assurance that our money will be paid to us. For the first three months we were paid continuously even though it was delayed.

From there it will take three to five months before one month salary will be paid. It went on for a long time and we didnt understand. Now we are owed an additional eight months salary by the new administration, he said.

According to him, due to continuous failure of those in charge to settle the salary arrears of workers, their lives have become miserable.

He said most of the health workers have resorted to borrowing to survive making them indebted to a lot of people. Inspite of the difficulties, he added that, they still carry on with their work professionally.

We have borrowed through this crisis and now we dont know what to do. We are now in November but it is now that our February salary has been paid. Even for that one some of our people have not received theirs.

What we are looking for now is that we want the government to compel JOSPONG [former owners] to come and pay us. Else the government should look for money and pay us all our salary arrears so that we can also pay the people we have been borrowing from, the worker at the Ghana Consolidated Diamond Limited appealed.

The health workers want President Akufo-Addo, the Vice President Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia, and Speaker of Parliament, Rt. Hon. Alban Bagbin to intervene on their behalf.

All attention to reach Jospong group for its side of the story has proven futile.
10.12.2021 LISTEN

The first Farmers Day celebration in Ghana was in 1985 following a sectorial growth of 30 percent in 1984. In 1982 and 1983, the country had suffered from severe drought, political and economic turbulence thus having this celebration for the first time in Yawwusukrom as a testimony to the residents there.

The District Chief Executive for Dormaa West, Nkrankwanta as the capital, Hon. Francis Kwadwo Oppong attended the 37th Farmers Day celebration held at Yawowusukrom in the Asuopiri West Electoral Area of the Dormaa West District as he begins his first term of office.

This year's 37th annual celebration on the theme "Planting For Food and Jobs: Consolidating Food Systems in Ghana" reflects the important role the agriculture sector plays in the economic development of the country.

The DCE, Hon. Francis Kwadwo Oppong, addressing the people at the occasion urged the farmers to refrain from setting up fires in the bush as the harmattan season approaches.

He said fire is a servant but caution must be taken in homes, schools, workplaces and farm areas specifically.

"I have committed myself to ensure a safer community throughout Dormaa West District by containment of fire and reduction of related accident and death which will enable us to celebrate the Christmas ahead of us peacefully," he said.

He thanked the Agric Officers for the good work done especially, how they educate farmers in the District on new ways of going about with the farming activities.

The DCE took the opportunity to explain to the gathering the numerous interventions by government in the Agric sector such as the Planting For Food and Jobs, Rearing For Food and Jobs among others.

The DCE entreated farmers to continue to adopt modern ways of farming and stop sending their cocoa beans to different districts to be sealed.

During the presentation, Mr Joseph Sokitey Bronya, a 43-year-old Police Officer and farmer from Nkrankwanta was crowned as the overall District best farmer for 2021. He received items such as 750cc tricycle, GTP wax print full piece, 2 pairs of wellington boots, 10 cutlasses, Knapsack sprayer, 10 pics bags, 5 bars of key soap, 20 sachets of foliar fertilizer, Certificate of honour and Tin of milo & milk.

Mr Sotitey Joseph has 25 acres of plantain, 10 acres of cocoyam, maize five acres, two acres of rice, 6000 yam mounds and cassava of two acres.

A certificate eulogizing the accomplished farmer by the DCE, Hon. Francis Kwadwo Oppong, was received with a spontaneous standing ovation.

The District overall best farmer expressed his profound gratitude to the government and the District Chief Executive for recognizing his efforts.

"I was overwhelmed and perplexed when I heard my name mentioned and I really appreciated and I promise to continue working hard for the country as UN motive is to be zero hunger by 2023 as SDGs (3) defined," he stated.

The Chief of Nkrankwanta, Nana Achiaw Kobi also added that "Ghana is the only country we have and we must stop involving political party in everything we do. I will entreat each and everyone to be united and focus on the welfare of the country."

He further encouraged the farmers to produce more for the "market because we cannot survive without farmers. They brought foodstuffs to us."

Important personalities such as Barimah Dei Kusi (Dormaa Ankobeahene), Nana Agyei Ekyea Ekumbi ll (Chief of Nkrankwanta), Security Agencies, political parties leaders, Agric Officers and the Media were present.
09.12.2021 LISTEN

Constituency Chairman of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), in the Awutu Senya East Mr. Stephen Ofosu Agyare has reiterated that the 2024 general elections will be a 'do or die' affair.

At a constituency retreat, he said the party is poised for victory in the next elections and that will resist any political intimidation.

His comment follows former President John Dramani Mahama who in a radio interview with Akina Fm, in Techiman during his 'Thank You Tour' stated that the 2024 general elections will be a 'do or die' affair.

In an interview with the constituency chairman, he said, "we in this constituency recall the transportation of mecenaries from different parts of the country to Kasoa, who fired gunshots amidst cutlasses and burning of motorcycles causing chaos."

He added, "We are not saying we will retaliate, but all we are saying is, 2024, we must work harder, be vigilant and protect the ballots."

He urged party faithfuls not to relent in their efforts and work hard to attain power come 2024.

"We know what caused our defeat in the 2020 elections and must work hard to rectify it. Elections are won on the branches, so lets all work towards strengthening our branches and win in our various polling stations to culminate into victory for the NDC come 2024," he stated.

The retreat was attended by party branch members and executives, constituency, regional and national executives.

John Dramani Mahama after his 'do or die' affair comment, sections of the Ghanaian public including Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) and the governing New Patriotic Party (NPP) condemned the statement, saying it's undemocratic and that could stoke violence in 2024 general elections.

However, the flagbearer and members of the NDC said, the phrase is an idiomatic expression.

There were pockets of violence recorded in the 2020 general elections at some constituencies including Techiman and Kasoa leading to the death of five people.

Prior to the election at the Awutu Senya East Constituency during the registration of voters there was firing of gunshots amidst burning of motorcycles at the Steps to Christ Centre. An incident the MP for the area claimed she fired the gunshot.

Again on the day of elections, some unknown assailants in a Toyota Land Cruiser opened fire on a Kia Salon car that was driving out of the same polling station.

As a result, two people including a journalist and a member of the NDC sustained gunshot injuries.

The police is yet to make public findings of its investigations on these incidents and killings.
09.12.2021 LISTEN

The Director of Communications for the New Patriotic Party (NPP), Mr. Yaw Buaben Asamoah has said majority of the road users were not paying road tolls.

According to him, the cessation of public road tolls was as a result of the majority of the population not paying for the good roads they are enjoying for years.

Mr. Yaw Buaben Asamoah explained in an exclusive interview with this reporter on Wednesday, December 8, 2021. He believes the road toll did not create a fair system for all Ghanaians since only few were paying.

What we have canceled is public road tolls and not private road tolls because, in some areas in the world, private people can build road and toll it to recover their money. We are not there yet. So, we have public road tolls. We have abolished public road tolls.

So, if you lived in Kasoa and there is a toll there and you use trotro it means when you go in the morning you pay Ghc1.00 and coming in the evening you pay another Ghc1.00 and that is Ghc2.00 a day. Calculate six days a week that is Ghc12.00. So, a trotro driver who works at Kasoa will pay road tolls but a trotro driver who is working at Nima to Roman ridge or from Circle to Madina will never pay some. It is not fair. So because the road tolls points are not many and not many public roads are been tolled, what is happening is that those who lived in the area where the tolls are, are paying an indirect tax to government and the rest of us are enjoying that tax-free and we are all getting good roads in spite of that.

It is also very inconvenience because that creates a lot of traffic and when that traffic is created, two things happen, we waste fuel and we waste production time. We waste fuel because you are sitting in the traffic burning fuel, you cannot switch off your engine and when your engine is running you are creating pollution. Aside from that, the time the person in the car who is going to work has wasted is also another thing. Aside that, when they keep stopping at the toll, they also spoil the roads very fast because of the heavy movement there and the money government is getting from there is not also enough, Mr. Yaw Buaben Asamoah explains.
09.12.2021 LISTEN

The Member of Parliament for Navrongo Central Mr. Sampson Tangombu Chiragia has described the proposed e-levy in the 2022 budget as a killer tax targeted at the poor.

According to the MP, the National Democratic Congress (NDC) is not against the tax since no country can develop without tax.

"But they are concerned about the innocent common person on the street struggling to get three square meals a day who are forced to pay a lot of levy and taxes."

The Navrongo legislator said this in an exclusive interview with the reporter on Wednesday, December 8, 2021.

He explained, ...the issues we think the budget is not going to help a common person and as a social democratic party. You can understand that the budget is targeted at the common person and our aim is normally looking at the gap between the poor and the rich, but this particular budget is poorly centered. Thats why we are saying that there are certain issues that should be resolved so that, we can have the budget approved.

The MP added, "Actually, there are a lot of taxes are centered on the common person, if you remember the 2022 budget, they were a lot of tax including borla tax and that is why today, the borla taxes are very high because of a number of taxes involved. The actual fuel price is not like we see it today but mostly about 42 to 48 percent are taxes, Ghanaians have already been taxed a lot.

"Nobody is against tax, because without tax we cannot develop, but the taxes are a lot. The current Budget as we are talking about, if you look it very well, the benchmark values which we are all enjoying the discount of 50% at the port, they are withdrawing it. If they withdraw the benchmark it now means that all the cost of goods and services brought into this country will go back by a certain percentage. Because, if you are paying Ghc 50.00 for goods brought into this country, with the withdrawal of the benchmark you are now going to pay Ghc 100.00 and that will be passed to the common person and there are some other hidden taxes that people are not aware of.

"Before they came to power, the wholesalers and retailers are paid VAT flat. When you are a flat-rate taxpayer, it means that you pay only a cooperate levy of 1%, a flat rate taxpayer doesnt pay GETFund levy and Health Insurance Levy totaling 5%. So, if they are moving you from a flat rate to a standard rate, it means you are now coming to pay the levy as high as 6%. So, those wholesalers and retailers whose annual income is more than 500,000 will have to pay the levies of 6% before VAT is put on top and NPP people think they are very wise. They dont talk about tax, they talk about levies.

"E-Levy is a killer levy, Imagine you are a teacher or a civil servant and they have transferred you from Bolgatanga to Accra and your wife and children are all in Bolga. Then, at the end of the day, your salary is not even enough, the government increases your salary by 4% annually and that 4% of Ghc3000.00 which is about Ghc120.00 and you are sending chop money of Ghc 1000.00 to your wife in Bolga for upkeep, which means you have to pay 1.75 percent. So, you can see, you are paying the tax again on income and that is now even the final tax is a levy."
09.12.2021 LISTEN

The Member of Parliament for Navrongo Central Mr. Sampson Tangombu Chiragia laments that the 2022 budget has nothing good for the people of Upper East Region.

Speaking in an exclusive interview with this reporter on Wednesday, December 8, 2021, the Navrongo Central legislator said the region has been neglected.

According to him, not even the controversial airport issue was mentioned in the 2022 Budget, which to him, was very worrying especially with the difficult long journey the people of Upper East go through from Tamale before getting into the region.

He appealed to the government to make provision for the quick start of the construction of the airport in the region.

"As for this NPP budget, not even only constituency alone benefitted anything. I will say the whole region was neglected. If you look at the budget, there is nothing there for Upper East Region. We will continue to talk even our airport, is not easy driving from Tamale to Bolga at all.

"We are saying that in fact, they should be able to do something in such that, we can also go home every Friday and come back on Monday. We dont mind whichever part of the region they are putting the airport for us, even if they go and put it in Garu, it will still be better than going to Tamale and traveling all the way to Navrongo.

"The multi-purpose dam they said they are doing for us, in the budget there is nothing there about it. We are not seeing anything that is helping the region. These are the things we are looking at. If in the whole region there is no good project, how do you then talk of a constituency? The budget is not friendly to Upper East Region at all."
Poultry farmers in the Central Dormaa Municipality of the Bono Region have expressed worry that the rising cost of poultry feed is collapsing their economic activities.

They said the high cost of poultry feed had consequently led to the high demand of maize, thereby, increasing maize prices as well.

In an interview with the Ghana News Agency (GNA) at Dormaa-Ahenkro, the poultry farmers said increment in the poultry feed was as a result of taxes, and appealed to the government for price subsidy.

Mr Dei Kusi, the Chairman of the Dormaa Poultry Farmers Association said the poultry industry in the area was on the verge of collapse.

The GNA gathered one ton of poultry feed, which cost GH1,650.00 some few months ago, is now selling over GH3000, while 50 kilogramme of maize which used to sell between GH60.00 and GH80.00 is selling at GH120.00.

Mr Kusi appealed to the government to also encourage poultry and maize farmers to engage in commercial production of maize.

Many of us have decided to sell our birds and venture into different businesses because we are operating at a loss, Mr Samuel Sarfo, another poultry farmer at Dormaa-Ahenkro told the GNA, adding, the cost of production is extremely high.

Meanwhile, Mr Drissa Quattara, the Dormaa Central Municipal Chief Executive has advised the poultry farmers in the municipality to be patient, as the government worked out modalities to address their concerns.

Mr Quattara said the COVID-19 pandemic had had a huge impact on the global economy, saying, the government was doing everything possible to stabilize the local economy.

He said the Assembly had nursed and distributed 270, 000 cashew seedlings to farmers under the Planting for Export and Rural Development (PERD) programme adding quantities of cocoa seed had also been supplied to cocoa farmers as well.

Under the One-District-One Factory (1D1F), Mr Ouattara said the government has supported private developers to establish a crate factory at Korang for storage of eggs as well as a broiler factory at Nanasuano in the Dormaa East District.

He stressed the government's commitment to improve road networks, electricity extension to deprived communities as well as water supply to enhance agriculture.

Mr Quattara advised farmers to form groups to enable them to easily access financial assistance and also liaise with Agriculture Extension Agents to be introduced to new technologies to enhance and expand their farm work.

He assured the assembly would ensure equitable distribution of development projects in the municipality, and asked the people to pay their taxes and rates for the assembly to generate the required resources needed for development.

GNA
Minister of Food and Agriculture (MoFA), has called on farmers and Ghanaians as a whole to embrace the government's proposed electronic levy (e-levy) which was announced in the 2022 budget statement by the Finance Minister, Ken Ofori-Atta, last month.

According to Dr. Owusu Afriyie Akoto, the Akufo-Addo administration was working assiduously to raise money to support farmers in the country, and that the e-levy would help in that regard.

The Finance Minister who introduced the levy in the 2022 budget told Parliament a huge chunk of the proceeds will support entrepreneurship.

The Agric Minister said the National Democratic Congress' entrenched position on the levy is very worrying.

Dr. Afriyie Akoto made the assertion when he visited one of the government's built warehouses at Gambaga in the North East Region on his first-day visit to the region as part of his 13-day tour of the northern sector.

There are two markets in Ghana; the subsidized fertilizer market, which is the planting for foods and jobs, and the commercial or open market for anyone who wants to buy. These two markets have existed side by side, but because the subsidized fertilizer market was so big, there was very little for the open market. Now with the price increases on the open market, we are also facing problems with revenue collection in Ghana and everywhere else because international trades have also shrunk.

We get most of our government revenue from international trade  imports and exports. That is why its become necessary for this government to look for alternative sources of revenue to close the gap, hence the introduction of the electronic levy. The opposition (NDC) is making the electronic levy a big issue. What they dont realize is that its affecting other areas. So if we are to remove the levy, where are we going to find the money to give subsidies to farmers? There would be nothing, he said.

The warehouse contained thousands of tons of harvested rice for safekeeping.

Prior to the visit to the warehouse, Dr. Afriyie Akoto held a durbar with stakeholders and farmers in the agriculture sector in the region, where he encouraged them to support the government's policies in the sector.

These, he said, included Fertilizer Subsidy, Planting For Food and Jobs (PFJ) among others aimed at improving farming activities in the region.

On the shortage of fertilizer, he indicated that the government was seriously working to address it.

We are making arrangements to ensure that farmers in the country have fertilizers to apply to their crops, he assured.

He explained that the problem has come about because of the global shortage of fertilizer, adding that this has caused increases in the price of fertilizer.

He said, regrettably Ghana does not produce fertiliser, and added that the government has subsidised fertilizer for farmers by 50%.

This facility, he said, started when the government began its PFJ programme.

While admitting that there were demands for warehouses, he averred that the uncompleted ones would be worked on as quickly as possible.

The Minister also paid a courtesy call on the Overlord of Mamprugu Kingdom, Naa Bohagu Mahami Abdulai Sherigu, at his Nayiri Palace.

Naa Bohagu Mahami Abdulai Sherigu thanked the minister and his directors for making time to visit his community.

He recounted how his senior brother, who was an agriculture extension officer, helped him in his farming activities.

He, therefore, challenged the agriculture minister to ensure that extension officers disseminate the needed knowledge to farmers to improve their yields, adding that the region was one of the leading food baskets in the country.

Speaking to journalists, the Municipal Chief Executive (MCE) for Mamprusi West, Aremeyaw Somo Lucky Basiutaly, who spoke on behalf of the farmers, mainly rice farmers, mentioned some challenges bedeviling the farmers.

These, he mentioned, included no power at the processing centre and a lack of warehouses in the district for rice farmers.

He, therefore, appealed to the Minister to help resolve these challenges.

From the palace of the Overlord of Mamprusi, the Minister's team visited the Presbyterian Agriculture Services at Lanbinsi Tenguri where he interacted with the women farmers and promised to support their activities.

He then took his visit to Tamanaa Rice Factory located along the Tamale Highway where rice in its raw state was processed, packaged, and sold to the final consumer or exported.

Source: Agric Ministry
The owner of a Moroccan textiles workshop where 29 workers drowned, most of them women, in a flood in February was sentenced to 18 months in prison, a lawyer said Thursday.

The workers were trapped as heavy rains flooded the basement factory in the northern city of Tangiers, in a country where many scrape a living from informal jobs in unsafe workplaces.

Relatives voiced anger over the sentence.

"The families of the victims are not satisfied with this verdict. They insist that local authorities who authorised the workshop were responsible," said Zineb Issayeh, a member of a support group for the families.

They plan to appeal, she said.

Main defendant Adil El Balili was sentenced to 18 months in prison and a fine of $107 for "involuntary homicide" after a months-long trial, the plaintiffs' lawyer Abdelmounaim Rifai told AFP.

The city's water and electricity firm Amendis, a subsidiary of French giant Veolia, was ordered to pay $21,000 in damages.

The authorities had initially said the Tangiers workshop was illegal, but later recognised that it had been licensed.

Numerous official reports have criticised the informal sector.

Over half of Morocco's textile and leather production comes from unregulated operations, according to the country's employers' association, which says many fail to meet safety standards.

Thousands of families in the North African city of Tangiers depend on such factories which supply major international labels.
An alleged leader of a rebel group in the Central African Republic will go on trial to face charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity, the International Criminal Court (ICC) said on Thursday.

The Hague-based court, which has been considering a slew of accusations against alleged Seleka leader Mahamat Said Abdel Kani, 51, said in a statement it "partially confirms the charges and commits the suspect to trial".

One of the poorest countries in the world, the CAR spiralled into conflict in 2013 when president Francois Bozize was ousted by a rebel coalition called the Seleka, drawn largely from the Muslim minority.

The coup triggered a sectarian bloodbath between the Seleka and "anti-Balaka" forces, who were mainly Christian or animist.

The ICC said the court retained charges against Said that were committed in the capital Bangui between April and August 2013 against detained people suspected to be Bozize supporters.

The crimes included torture, imprisonment and cruel treatment.

"The chamber found that there is sufficient evidence to establish substantial grounds to believe that Mr Said was a senior member of the Seleka coalition and is criminally responsible" for those acts, the statement said.

The court rejected similar accusations against him over alleged crimes committed in a different location in Bangui between September and November 2013.

The CAR authorities handed Said to the ICC in January in response to an international arrest warrant.

Two former anti-Balaka leaders, Patrice-Edouard Ngaissona and Alfred Yekatom, are on trial at the ICC.

France, the former colonial power in the CAR, intervened militarily to stem the 2013 conflict, deploying some 2,000 troops under a UN mandate who were eventually withdrawn in 2016.

The United Nations deployed its own peacekeeping mission the following year, which remains.

Central African Republic. By (AFP)

After a transition period, Faustin-Archange Touadera was elected president in February 2016, and was returned to office in a ballot in 2020.

But the country remains chronically unstable and swathes of it remain in the hands of rebel groups.

The 2020 presidential ballot was overshadowed by an attempt by a rebel alliance to advance on Bangui and by very low turnout as voters in rebel-held areas were unable to cast their ballot.

Thousands have lost their lives in the conflict.

Nearly 650,000 have fled their homes and another 575,000 have left the country, mainly heading to Cameroon, Democratic Republic of Congo and Chad, according to UN figures as of December 2018.

A long-planned CAR special court, tasked with trying crimes committed in the country since 2003, held its inaugural session in October 2018.
09.12.2021 LISTEN

The Overlord of the Dagbon Kingdom N'dan Ya- Naa Abubakari II has sent a goodwill message to the Dagbon Union (DUUK) on their maiden Damba festival.

The event which was held in London on the 4th of December 2021 witnessed the sons and daughters of the Dagbon State living in the United Kingdom displaying the rich Dagbon culture.

In a goodwill message sent, the King said, it is his prayers that the maiden Damba festival will not be a one-off event.

He urges the Dagbon Union (DUUK) to use the annual festival as a vehicle to work in partnership with other stakeholders to bring about the needed development in Dagbon and Ghana at large.

Alhaji Alhassan Mbalba, Chairman of the Dagbon Union UK (DUUK) in his address gave a brief history, aim and objectives of the Union and how it started in 2012 as a welfare Group to address the needs of its members.

The maiden edition was graced by Ghana's Deputy High Commissioner to the United Kingdom, Her Excellency Ms Rita Tani Iddi who is a native and royal of the Dagbon State, award-winning songstress Sherifa Gunu among other musicians.

Read the Press Statement:

YA- NAA ABUBAKAR II, THE KING OF DAGBON SENDS A GOODWILL MESSAGE TO DAGBON UNION UK(DUUK) ON THE OCCASION OF DUUKS MAIDEN DAMBA FESTIVAL HELD ON 4TH DECEMBER 2021 IN LONDON

The sons and daughters of the Dagbon State of northern Ghana living in the UK held its maiden Damba festival under the auspices of Dagbon Union UK(DUUK).

The Overlord of the Dagbon Kingdom Ndan Ya- Naa Abubakari II sent a Goodwill message to DUUK wishing his sons and daughters a joyous, reflective, and successful Damba festival and expressed his appreciation to DUUK for the Unions efforts in showcasing the rich Dagbon culture in the diaspora.

The King said it is his prayers the maiden Damba festival will not be a one-off event and urged DUUK to use the annual festival as a vehicle to work in partnership with other stakeholders to bring about a badly needed development in Dagbon and Ghana at large.

The Guest of Honour, Ghanas Deputy High Commissioner to the UK, Her Excellency Ms Rita Tani Iddi who is a native and royal of Dagbon State speaking to the theme of the occasion: The Damba Festival: A Tool for the Promotion of Socio-Cultural Cohesion of Dagbon State commended the leadership of DUUK for this noble idea and she said  Nai Tuma which in Dagbani dialect means Well done. She gave a brief history of the Damba festival; to commemorate the Birth of Holy Prophet of Islam Mohammed(PUBH), and the significance of Damba- to glorify the chieftaincy institution and for reunion of family members and friends.

Her Excellency Ms Rita Tani Iddi reiterated the importance of PEACE, UNITY and RECONCILIATION in Dagbon State, and said, with the enskinment of Ya Naa Abubakari on 25th January 2019 as the new overlord the Dagbon, we need to forge ahead in unity which is essential for development of Dagbon. She said Dagbon is a great state which has survived many wars and defended itself against external aggression, but it can only be defeated by its own internal conflicts and we ought to be wary of that.

She admonished members of DUUK to play a significant role in these peace and reconciliation efforts by advising our brothers and sisters in Ghana to embrace peace and reconcile with each other, so that together we can have one united Dagbon State.

She quoted African proverbs to buttress her advice  When two brothers fight to death, a stranger inherits their property and also  When two grasshoppers fight to death, it is the crow who gets to feast.

Chairman of DUUK Alhaji Alhassan Mbalba in his welcome address gave a brief history, aims and objectives of DUUK: DUUK started in 2012 as a Welfare Group to address the welfare needs of its members. However, DUUK registered as a charity in the UK in January 2018 and seeking to work in partnership with traditional rulers and other stakeholders to bring about accelerated development in Dagbon and Ghana at large.

Alhaji Mbalba stated that DUUK is currently using its own internally generated funds to sponsor two children with disabilities in Savulegu. And DUUK is looking for funding from other donors to expand and extend its Child Sponsorship Programme to other children in need in Ghana.

Ghanaian Artists; Sherifa Gunu, Nana Ama Royal- UK based Gospel artist, Tino Kamal- British rapper, Rahma alias Thug Omega made the Damba colourful, joyous, and entertaining with their live performances.

Source: Dagbon Union UK(DUUK)
Sins of the flesh are not the most serious, the 84-year-old pontiff said during a press conference aboard the papal plane Monday.

Pride and hatred are the most serious, His Holiness added.

Francis made the comment in answer to a question about the Archbishop of Paris Michel Aupetit who resigned last week over an ambiguous relationship with a woman.

Although Aupetit, age 70, denied the relationship was sexual  Catholic priests take vows of celibacy  he resigned to prevent rumours from damaging the Church.

A diocese spokeswoman said at the time that he had an ambiguous behaviour with a person he was very close to, adding that it was not a loving relationship, nor sexual.

When the gossip grows, grows, grows and takes away the reputation of a person, that man will not be able to govern and that is an injustice, Francis said.

This is why I accepted Aupetits resignation, not on the altar of truth, but on the altar of hypocrisy, the pope said on the plane back from a trip to Greece.

I ask myself, what did Aupetit do that was so serious he had to resign? If we dont know the accusation, we cannot condemn, the pope added, urging journalists to investigate.

He said Aupetit had been condemned by public opinion, rumours. But what did he do? We know nothing.

However, the pope referenced a breach of the sixth commandment  a ban on adultery  saying it was not total, but little caresses and massages he gave to his secretary.

That is a sin. But it is not the most serious because sins of the flesh are not the most serious, he said.

He added: Aupetit is a sinner. As I am, as was Peter, the bishop on whom Christ founded his Church.

In a statement last week, when the pope accepted his offer, Aupetit said he wanted to protect the diocese from the division that always provokes suspicion and the loss of confidence.

In answer to a separate question, the Pope urged urged caution in the interpretation of a damning report into child sexual abuse by French Catholic clergy, saying a historical situation must be viewed in context.

A landmark inquiry overseen by an independent commission confirmed in October extensive sexual abuse of minors by priests in France dating from the 1950s to 2020.

When we do this kind of study, we must be attentive to the interpretation we make of it, the pontiff said.

Abuse 100 years ago, 70 years ago, was brutality. But the way it was experienced is not the same as today, he said.

For example, in the case of abuse in the church, the attitude was to cover it up  an attitude that unfortunately still exists today in a large number of families.

He added that the historical situation must be interpreted by the standards of the time.

The pope, who after the publication of the report expressed his shame, revealed he had not read it himself but would discuss it with French bishops when they visited him later this month.

Dealing with the avalanche of revelations about sexual abuse by priests was one of the biggest challenges that Francis faced when he was elected pope in 2013.

Francois Devaux, head of a victims association in France, expressed incredulity at the popes distressing lack of interest in the French inquiry.

This will show everyone that the pope is at the heart of the problem, Devaux told AFP, labelling his comments as ignorance, stupidity and denial.

Source: Dailymail.co.uk
The number of journalists jailed around the world hit a new record in 2021, the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists said Thursday, with China and Myanmar having put a quarter of the 293 detained media workers behind bars.

In its annual report, the CPJ listed 50 journalists imprisoned in China, 26 in Myanmar, 25 in Egypt, 23 in Vietnam and 19 in Belarus.

Adding those jailed in Saudi Arabia, Iran, Turkey, Russia, Ethiopia and Eritrea, the CPJ said a total of 293 journalists were in prison worldwide as of December 1 -- up from 280 the year before.

"This is the sixth year in a row that CPJ has documented record numbers of journalists imprisoned around the world," said Joel Simon, executive director of the group.

"Imprisoning journalists for reporting the news is the hallmark of an authoritarian regime," he said in a statement.

For 40 years, the CPJ has denounced journalists being murdered, imprisoned, censored, physically hurt and threatened.

"It's distressing to see many countries on the list year after year, but it is especially horrifying that Myanmar and Ethiopia have so brutally slammed the door on press freedom."

"This has been part of a trend of creeping authoritarianism around the world," said Robert Mahoney, the committee's deputy head. "Governments are becoming increasingly intolerant of criticism."

"The trend has been increasing. And I think it's part of realization on the parts of certain governments that there is very little political price to pay for doing that," he said.

"It could be, you know, before one could name and shame governments, governments wanted diplomatic or commercial ties with liberal democracies that upheld these values. That seems to be less and less the case."

The association also counted 24 journalists killed around the world this year.

Mexico "remained the Western hemisphere's deadliest country for journalists, with three murdered for their reporting and the motives for six other killings under investigation," the CPJ said.

India was also high on the list, with four journalists killed this year.

The CPJ said the number of journalists behind bars reflects "increasing intolerance for independent reporting around the world."

The report noted restrictive environments for journalists around the world, including laws used to target reporters in Hong Kong and Xinjiang, the coup in Myanmar, the war in northern Ethiopia and the crackdown on the opposition in Belarus.

As well as intimidation and imprisonment, repressive governments find other ways to silence critics "which are less likely to attract international condemnation," Mahoney said.

"Jailing, but also tying journalists up in legislation, bankrupting them with lawsuits," he said.

"It could be, for example, limiting them the means of communication, when there's a big story. So we've seen throttling of the internet, that's to say, slowing down the speeds of internet so it becomes virtually impossible to upload video or pictures of a protest."
10.12.2021 LISTEN

The Chamber of Petroleum Consumers (COPEC), is appealing to oil marketing giant, GOIL, to reconsider its decision to withdraw its membership from the Association of Oil Marketing Companies (AOMCs).

COPECs Executive Director, Duncan Amoah in an interview on Eyewitness News said the exit of GOIL from the AOMCs could weaken the association since GOIL is the biggest player in the industry.

We would beg that GOIL should reconsider their position because once they leave, it weakens the association and as a business association, if the larger player is no longer part of it, you could as well imagine what becomes of the association as far as their decision and pressures they want to exert on government is concerned, he said.

GOIL on Wednesday announced its withdrawal from the Association of Oil Marketing Companies (AOMCs) following allegations by the leadership of the association that the government influenced the company to reduce the price of its petroleum products.

In a statement, the company sharply criticized the AOMCs for peddling such a claim against it and described it as gross disrespect.

We at GOIL believe that the Association has shown gross disrespect to the company and treated it with contempt and public ridicule and has therefore decided to suspend its membership of the Association immediately, GOIL said in its statement.

But Duncan Amoah said while the position of GOIL is understandable, it should not severe ties with the association in order to ensure that the association maintains its strong collective bargaining power and influence.

Some initial talks has gone on and GOIL is really not too enthused about the position that the association took although they also did not take that position in a vacuum except to say that as a member of their association, the onus would have been bigger on them to consult or to ask and possibly also make an informed position on that issue but this is one of the things that we never really expected, he said.

Duncan Amoah cautioned that should GOlL completely fall out with the association, the oil marketers may not have the required muscle to press home certain demands especially from the government.

GOIL is the largest currently [in the market]. [Their exit] would have a lot of influence. What GOILs suspension will do to the association is to weaken it, not peripherally but from the centre because for every 1 in five Ghanaians that buy fuel, they buy from GOIL. The association would need the full force of its membership in order that if there are things that they do not agree especially with government, they will be able to have the collective bargaining power and pressure to get certain things done for their members, he said.

citinewsroom
The Majority Caucus in Parliament has refuted claims it leaked the purported medical records of the Speaker of Parliament, Alban Sumani Bagbin.

The Majority Caucus, to avoid doubt, has no interest in such an irresponsible deed, it said in a statement.

The Majority also said it was shocked by such spurious allegations.

Indeed, to protect the Speakers integrity, the Chair and the Parliament of the Republic of Ghana, we find the said publications unfortunate and unwarranted, and we condemn them accordingly, it added.

However, if the persons behind the publications intend to set the Speaker and the Majority Caucus in the Parliament of the Republic of Ghana on a collision course, we would not hesitate to offer the appropriate response, it noted.

By this statement, the Majority Caucus also wishes to clarify that the Majority Leader, Osei Kyei-Mensah-Bonsu, has not taken a dime from Parliament to seek and or receive medical attention in Dubai.

There is no scintilla of truth in the allegation, and it should, thus, be disregarded entirely for its spuriousness and hopelessness, the statement said.

Mr. Bagbin left the country on November 27, 2021, for a medical review in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

He is expected back in Accra on December 14.

citinewsroom
The Special Prosecutor, Kissi Agyebeng

10.12.2021 LISTEN

Combating corruption is a priority task in the field of public policy, one of the most important reasons Mr. Agyebeng, you were appointed by the president to work at the prosecutor's office.

Before the Appointments Committee of Parliament, during your vetting on July 22, 2021, you made it clear to Ghanaians that There is no way I can stop corruption, God himself will not acclaim to that.

This statement should have disqualified you immediately from getting that post in any good country but since in my country, Ghana, the law doesn't work and everything is taken for granted, you were still appointed.

As a Special Prosecutor, so far, you have never proved yourself efficiently in the formation of an intolerant attitude towards corrupt behavior in the public environment, improving the mechanisms of public and parliamentary control over the implementation of the laws of Ghana, let alone to prosecute anyone for corruption.

I believe that many will not support your claim to be unhappy over the low allocation of resources for your office in the 2022 budget?

We have witnessed the waste of Ghana's resources since the NPP came to power without any significant results. Corruption has increased and Ghana at the moment is under a heavy debt that will become the burden of our children.

In the first place, what made you think you can do the job if an experienced man like Martin Amidu has to resign?

Efforts have been made in cases relating to tax evasion but if you see the magnitude of corruption in Ghana today, it is very clear that Mr. Agyebeng, you are not doing enough.

I told Mahama in one of my articles on August 20, 2021, that you can't do the job even if Akufo Addo gives you freedom or not. That was when Mahama asked Nana Akufo Addo to give you the freedom to do your job.

In my opinion, you cant do the job because fighting corruption continues to be a daunting task even in advanced countries, let alone Ghana that hasn't any modern devices to control the monetary affairs of the state.

Mr. Agyebeng, you cant convince any intelligent Ghanaian that having billions in your office can enhance your performance to do a better job. You can't prosecute anyone because in Ghana corrupt politicians don't go to prison, they are still kept in the government.

Therefore, please, save Ghana or the taxpayers money to create jobs for the people, instead of pumping the hard-earned resources into the office of a prosecutor who is so scared of the president to prosecute a corrupt NPP politician.
Member of Parliament (MP) for Nhyiaeso, Dr. Stephen Amoah has noted that the bench warrant issued for his arrest was only based on misconceptions.

The Police on Wednesday secured a warrant from court for the arrest of the lawmaker after he had missed a date in court to face charges in relation to flouting road traffic regulations.

Speaking to TV3 in an interview, Dr. Stephen Amoah explained that he wasnt in court on Wednesday because he was unaware of proceedings against him.

I was never told, I respect the court, it is really a court of competent jurisdiction, it is an August court and so there was no way I could disrespect the court and disrespect the state.

So it tells you that if somebody had not been invited to court, somebody had not been informed to go the court and a bench warrant could be issued and made known to the whole country and now my name and my car number is all over, the Nhyiaeso explained.

According to the former CEO of the Micro Finance and Small Loans Centre (MASLOC), the subsequent bench warrant issued for his arrest was based on misconception because he didnt intentionally miss court.

Dr. Stephen Amoah shared, I think although what is in the public domain there are also many pieces of incorrect statements and speculations. My major concern was the bench warrant, which played a central role, very critical role.

All over the world, it is there that I dont go to court and they have issued bench warrant but I had no idea, I really didnt know there was court proceedings because I had not been notified. I had not been given any charge sheet, my charge sheet was given to me today. How could you issue bench warrant based on misconception that I decide not to go to court?

Then the next day you give me charge sheet, so based on what? Thank God that the prosecutor, the Police themselves came to court today to tell the court that there was miscommunication. Because of that, they had actually prayed for the warrant to be quashed. Surprisingly, that one nobody will say anything about it.

The case against the Nhyiaeso MP has been adjourned to January 20, 2022.
President Akufo-Addo has said on Thursday, 9 December 2021, I received, officially, the Forbes "African of the Year Award" from Forbes Magazine.

Also, he said the President of the US National Bar Association, Judge Carlos E. Moore, presented a Lifetime Achievement Award in recognition of my initiative to provide free quality education to students, which will help with the broader development of Ghana, as highlighted in Goal 4 of the UN Sustainable Development Goals.

A few days ago, the President of South Africa, Mr Cyril Ramaphosa, paid glowing tribute to President Akufo-Addo, for his recognition by Forbes Magazine as the African of the Year.

At a state dinner held in honour of the visiting South African President at Jubilee House on Saturday, 4 December, the South African President was full of praise for his Ghanaian counterpart for being adjudged the African of the Year by the worlds renowned media entity, Forbes.

President Ramaphosa extolled the virtues of President Akufo-Addo, which, in his view, led to Forbes awarding him the prestigious African of the Year crown.

We are proud of this recognition, Your Excellency, because it speaks of your commitment, it speaks of your creativity, your innovation, and your clear strategic vision of what should happen in your own country, as well as on our beloved African continent, he said.

President Ramaphosa also stressed that the recognition of President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo by Forbes is about his vision for Ghana, in particular, and the African continent as a whole.

The recognition by the magazine is about your vision, not only for Ghana but for the people of our continent as well, the South African President stated.

Not only was President Ramaphosa pleased with President Akufo-Addos recognition as the African of the Year, but also impressed by the cultural heritage of the Ghanaian people.

This morning, Your Excellency, you took me to Kumasi to show me the wonders of Ghanaian culture and spectacular traditions during the 50th celebration of Nana Otuo Sriboe II of Juaben. I was deeply moved and impressed to see how Ghana has continued to keep true to the traditions of old, traditions that span generations and generations, the South African President said.

Continuing, President indicated: I will go back to South Africa with vivid memories of a people who are together in the very peaceful spirit celebrating, and I was truly honoured and humbled that you did take me to see the wonders of Ghanaian culture and tradition, he said.

For his part, President Akufo-Addo thanked President Ramaphosa and his delegation for their visit to Ghana and reiterated his confidence that the visit will deepen the ties of friendship and cooperation between the two countries and their peoples.

For me, one of the essential pillars of our relations must be the mutual nurturing of our young people. They are the ones to inherit the legacy of our current co-operative endeavours, who should work towards preserving and further enriching it, he said.

The President continued: With your visit, I am confident that a solid foundation for this new and mutually-beneficial cooperation has been laid, just as we have renewed our determination to work towards strengthening our common commitment to our continental organisation, the African Union.

classfmonline.com
Some irate residents of Sunyani Municipality and its environs in the Bono Region hit the streets of the Municipality in protest of what they term as an unfair treatment and neglect by successive governments over the years.

The Friday morning demonstration, themed Sunyani deserves better was well attended by residents of the region who complained of neglect by successive government.

The demonstrators who were holding placards with various inscriptions want the government to come to their aid as soon as possible.

3news.com|Ghana
The news of suspension of flight from Nigeria by Saudi Arabia General authority of civil aviation came as a shock and an unexpected development at this particular period of time. There are many factors being ascribed to the reason for the suspension of flight by the Saudi Aviation authority. The announcement that the new Omicron variants have been found in Nigeria may have created serious panic in Saudi aviation cycles. This may be justified owing to the fact that Nigerians are among the largest Umrah pilgrims currently in the Kingdom. As at the time of writing this piece, there are over 200 Nigerian Umrah pilgrims in the Kingdom awaiting departure.

For example, announcement of suspension of countries from entering the Kingdom based on health related issues usually emanates from the Saudi Ministry of Health and Saudi Ministry of interior while Saudi Arabia Ministry of Hajj and Umrah is saddled with the announcement of countries that can participate in Hajj or Umrah.

However, the suspension of flight from Nigeria was announced via a memo dated 8th December 2021 by the Saudi Arabia General Authority of Civil Aviation  an unusual protocol in the Kingdom. It is also instructive to note that neither the Saudi Press Agency nor any other media reported the flight suspension hours after the memo was dispatched to all the airlines in the Kingdom. This is a strange move that requires more analysis because news or information on previous suspension of flight or lifting of suspension by the Kingdom is usually made available to Saudi Press Agency SPA before any other media.

For example it was the Ministry of Interior that announced the suspension of flights from and to South Africa, Namibia, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Lesotho and Eswatini recently .

Arab News reported that The Ministry of Interior said it had been decided to suspend flights from and to South Africa, Namibia, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Lesotho and Eswatini, based on the continuous follow-up of the epidemiological situation and concerns health authorities in the Kingdom have raised about the emergence of the mutated strain of the virus in a number of countries, Saudi Press Agency reported.

That reason was based on the continuous follow-up of the epidemiological situation and concerns health authorities in the Kingdom have raised about the emergence of the mutated strain of the virus in a number of countries as reported by Saudi Press Agency.

So, did the Saudi Arabia General Authority of Civil Aviation give any reason for the suspension? The response is somewhat sketchy because the three paragraph memo signed by the Assistant President for Economic Policies and Air Transport does not anchor any reasons for the action. Our diplomats in the Kingdom should dialogue with the Kingdom to know the underlying cause of this sudden slamming of door on Nigeria because the Kingdom has never singled Nigeria for suspension even when the Covid 19 reaches an alarming stage.

Yes, because aside from the closing of its airspace that affects all countries, this is the first time Saudi Arabia is specifically suspending flights from Nigeria since Covid 19 pandemic. In March 2020, the Kingdom suspended all international flights for two weeks having previously banned travel from the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Bahrain, Iraq, Iran, and Egypt. Indonesia, Pakistan, Brazil, Vietnam, Egypt and India were also suspended in March 2020 due to increases in cases of Coronavirus in those countries.

The ban on Indonesia, Pakistan, Brazil, Vietnam, Egypt and India was lifted last week and flights have started arriving in Saudi Arabia from those countries.

Nigeria was not suspended when 20 countries were barred from entering the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia during Covid 19. Argentina, Brazil, Egypt, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Lebanon, Pakistan, Portugal, South Africa, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey and United Arab Emirates were once suspended. This is where we need to apply cautious and approach the suspension and apply diplomacy to unravel the cause of the suspension so as to immediately figure out a way out before Hajj operations come calling.

It is noteworthy that the Kingdom has not announced a ban of flight on a single country since the pandemic arrives.

To flip the coin, there are also strong indications that the suspension may be a way to draws the attention of relevant agencies from Nigeria to compel its travelers to abide by certain health related guidelines in the Kingdom. Yours sincerely has come across such scenarios where some travelers prefer to twist and turn the Covid 19 entry protocol in Saudi Arabia.

By Ibrahim Muhammed

08037024356

National Coordinator,

Publisher, Hajj Reporters, ,

National Coordinator, Independent Hajj Reporters
More than 30,000 people in northern Cameroon have fled to Chad after ethnic clashes at the weekend, claiming at least 22 lives, the UN's refugee agency said on Friday.

Violence broke out in the border village of Ouloumsa on Sunday in a dispute between herders, fishermen and farmers over dwindling water resources, the UNHCR said in a statement issued from Geneva.

It then spread to neighbouring villages, 10 of which have been burned to the ground.

The clashes have displaced thousands inside the country, "forcing more than 30,000 people to flee to neighbouring Chad," the UNHCR said.

"At least 22 people have been killed and 30 others seriously injured during several days of ongoing fighting."

The violence is unfolding in Logone-Chari in Cameroon's Far North region -- the tongue of land that lies between Nigeria to the west and Chad to the east.

The UN figures for those seeking refuge, and the death toll, are far higher than numbers given on Wednesday by other sources.

Cameroon's Far North region. By (AFP)

The Chadian Red Cross had said there were at least 3,000 refugees, although the number was likely to grow, while the Cameroonian authorities said at least four had died.

Eighty percent of the new arrivals are women, including many who are pregnant, and children, the UNHCR said.

They have found refuge in the Chadian capital N'Djamena and villages along Chad's bank of the Logone River.

The UNHCR said at least 10,000 have fled to N'Djamena from Kousseri, a town of 200,000 people whose cattle market was destroyed in the fighting.

Chadian junta leader Mahamat Idriss Deby Itno on Wednesday issued a statement to say the situation was "worrying" and appealed to international donors to help the arrivals.

A bout of fighting between herders and fishermen in August led to 45 deaths and an influx of at least 10,000 people into Chad.

As in the latest incident, the fighting began over management and access to water, the Cameroonian authorities say.

Violent conflict between ethnic groups is relatively rare in Cameroon compared to Chad and Nigeria, where fighting over resources between semi-nomadic herders and sedentary farmers is frequent.

Cameroonian officials say two of the parties in the conflict are fishermen of the Musgum community and ethnic Arab Choa cattlemen.
Posting on Facebook from Benins Central Office for Repression of Cybercrime on November 18, journalist Patrice Gbaguidi wrote that authorities had summoned him for a second time in two weeks over a defamation complaint about one of his articles. That day, he and Herve Allade, the owner of Le Soleil Benin Infos newspaper where Gbaguidi is the editor, were charged under Benins digital code and sent to jail.

On December 7, Gbaguidi and Allade were convicted and sentenced to a six-month suspended prison sentence and fined 500,000 West African francs (US$861), then released, their lawyer, Narcisse Atoun, told CPJ via messaging app. Since the two journalists were both in detention on December 1, they are featured on CPJs 2021 prison census, which documents journalists jailed in connection to their work around the world on that day.

At least three other reporters behind bars at that time in BeninGilbert Dagan, Anatole Adahou, and Argos Adihoundado not appear on this census as CPJ continues to investigate whether their imprisonment is directly related to their journalism. But their arrests and convictions under the same digital code emphasize how the West African nations 2018 law criminalizing expression online threatens press freedom.

There is something wrong in the [digital] code, Bashola Moustapha, the publisher of the local Afrique Media newspaper, told CPJ over the phone. Whenever you publish anything, it could be a news item, whenever it is published on any social network you could be punished, he said.

Broadly worded, Article 550 of the digital code pertains to harassment through electronic communications and provides for up to two years in prison and/or fines of up to ten million West African francs (US$17,196) for various crimes. Anyone who, for example, initiates an electronic communication that coerces, intimidates, harasses or causes distress or initiates or relays false information against a person through social networks may be charged.

Dagan, Adahou, and Adihounda were arrested under Article 550 on September 6 and convicted on September 22 for posts shared through their personal social media accounts, according to the arrest warrants for the journalists, which CPJ reviewed, local media reports, and Moustapha. The three were sentenced to six months in prisonthree of them suspendedand released on December 6 having served that time, according to Moustapha, who said he attended their trial.

Moustapha told CPJ and wrote on his outlets Facebook page that Dagan, Adahou and Adihoundas posts responded to an audio recording shared on social media by a Beninese businesswoman, which called on the mayor of Benins Savalou city not to permit a local folk music artist to perform there. In early March, Dagan wrote on Facebook that his post was false and claimed mea-culpa.

RELATED COVERAGE: More regional analysis on CPJs 2021 data

Similarly, Gbaguidi and Allades prosecution under Article 550 was triggered when a report published in their newspaper was shared on social media, Brice Ogoubiyi, a friend of Allade and director of the local Nouvelle Expression newspaper, told CPJ.

CPJs questions sent via messaging app to Jules Ahoga, the prosecutor in each of the cases, went unanswered.

Gbaguidi and Allades arrest reminds us of the need to step up efforts to review the Digital Code as soon as possible, which has the sword of Damocles hanging over the heads of media players, Zakiatou Latoundji, the Union of Media Professionals of Benin (UPMB) president, said in a statement on November 19.

In December 2019, investigative journalist Ignace Sossou was arrested, convicted, and jailed for six months under the digital code for social media posts that quoted Benin prosecutor Mario Metonou, CPJ reported at the time. Ironically, Sossou was imprisoned for quoting Metonous description of the digital code as a weapon that may be used against the press, according to an article by Benin Web TV, the news site for which Sossou reported. Sossou was also convicted under Article 550 in a separate case in August 2019 following a complaint by a local businessman, CPJ reported; he was fined and received a suspended prison sentence of one month.

In April 2019, CPJ reported how Benin editor Casimir Kpedjo was detained for five days and accused of spreading false information under Article 550 of the digital code. Kpedjo told CPJ in early December 2021 that the same case remained open against him and that his next court date was scheduled for January 22, 2021.

Cyber laws are increasingly being used to target reporting in countries ranging from Pakistan to Nicaragua. Gbaguidi, Allade, Dagan, Adahou, and Adihounda may no longer be behind bars, but as journalism moves increasingly online, the threat from laws like Benins digital code is expected to loom even larger.

We cannot be talking about [digitalization of the press] and punish journalists that are using the newest tools of communication, Moustapha explained. Our fight now as journalists is to reverse this code, asking parliamentarians to go back to parliament to revise [it].

Jonathan Rozen is CPJs senior Africa researcher. Previously, he worked in South Africa, Mozambique, and Canada with the Institute for Security Studies, assessing Mozambican peace-building processes. Rozen was a U.N. correspondent for IPS News and has written for Al-Jazeera English and the International Peace Institute. He speaks English and French.
In a Facebook post at the end of October, Awlo Media Center, an Ethiopian online news outlet critical of Prime Minister Abiy Ahmeds administration, announced that the governments pressure and obstruction had forced it to shut down and lay off all of its employees.

The closure came after a number of Awlo Media Center journalists and media workers were arrested in late June, and detained incommunicado for weeks at a military camp in eastern Ethiopia, according to media reports and CPJs documentation. Following their release, said Awlo, the outlets operations were effectively paralyzed when security personnel refused to comply with court orders to reopen the companys offices in the capital of Addis Ababa or to return confiscated equipment.

The silencing of Awlo Media Center reflects just how hostile the media environment has grown as Ethiopia descends deeper into civil war. The year-long conflict, which pits the federal government against forces led by the Tigray Peoples Liberation Front (TPLF)  a political group that dominated a repressive Ethiopian government for nearly three decades  has left thousands dead and more than two million displaced. Parts of the country are facing famine.

Since the start of the war, CPJ has documented multiple press freedom violations, including the arrests of numerous journalists. At least nine of them were still in custody on December 1, 2021, according to CPJs annual prison census, and CPJ is investigating reports of others still being held following a spate of November arrests.

CPJ has also confirmed the murder of one journalist in connection to their work, the first such case documented since 1998, and continues to investigate the motive behind the shooting of a second reporter. Other setbacks for the media include the expulsion of at least one foreign journalist for war coverage; the week-long suspension of Addis Standard, an independent news site; assaults and intimidation on members of the press; and an internet disruption in large chunks of northern Ethiopia.

I remain hopeless about the media in Ethiopia. I know that is dark but thats my feeling, said one of 10 journalists who spoke to CPJ in November. Like almost all the others interviewed, this reporter requested anonymity, terrified of reprisal for sharing opinions with an international organization.

CPJ research demonstrates that most of the journalists arrested since the start of the war faced vague accusations of supporting the TPLF that never materialized into formal charges. Many of these journalists were ethnic Tigrayans. Police also entrenched a pattern of claiming to need time to hold journalists in custody amid seemingly indefinite investigations; and defied or delayed compliance with court orders to release journalists on bail, according to this research. For example, Kibrom Worku, a radio journalist, and Tesfa-Alem Tekle, a correspondent for the Kenya-based Nation Media Group, remained detained in early December weeks after they were granted bail.

I am not even asking not to be arrested now. But what I am asking is to be arrested by a government that will allow me to defend myself, not throw me in a camp and forget about me, said another journalist in an interview with CPJ.

RELATED COVERAGE: More regional analysis on CPJs 2021 data

On November 2, the federal government declared a state of emergency and passed a sweeping law that allows warrantless searches; potentially indefinite detentions; and suspends due process. The law also gave regulators power to suspend or ban media suspected of providing direct or indirect, moral or material support to terrorist organizations.

What counts as indirect moral support nobody knows. Is it a prayer or a wish? Or an article?, an editor noted via messaging app. The editor said they had started avoiding critical coverage of the war after the state of emergency.

In a mid-November statement, the Ethiopian Human Rights Commission, a local watchdog, estimated that thousands of people, most of them ethnic Tigrayans, had been arrested since the state of emergency was declared. Journalists and the media were targeted for arrest and restrictions during pre-Abiy states of emergency in Ethiopia, as CPJ has documented. The political changes of early 2018, when Abiy became prime minister, and the freeing of journalists previously detained for years had raised hopes of a new media era in what was once one of the worlds most-censored countries.

Now, Ethiopia has again become one of the worst jailers of journalists in sub-Saharan Africa.

Authorities tightened their legal restrictions in a November 25 statement, by forbidding unofficial disseminat[ion] of information on military maneuvers, war front updates and results via any medium and warning against using freedom of information as a pretext to support the terrorist group directly or indirectly. In an emailed statement, Kennedy Wandera, the chairperson of the Foreign Press Association Africa, a regional press rights body, told CPJ that the latest order was a bad sign of things to come for the media in the country.

Journalists in the country have had to amend how they report, write and edit throughout the war. This [ban on unofficial information] is just a continuation of the year-long assault on the media; a media that had already been decimated, said Zecharias Zelalem, a Canada-based freelance journalist, who spoke to CPJ via messaging app.

In a press conference on November 30, Billene Seyoum, the prime ministers spokesperson, said that reports that the media had been clamped down by the state of emergency were purposeful disinformation. CPJ did not receive responses to November 30 emails requesting comment on the arrests of journalists, the closure of Awlo Media Center, and the state emergency regulations from Billene or Justice Minister Gedion Timothewos Hassebon. In a telephone conversation on December 8, federal police spokesperson Jeylan Abdi said that there were no journalists detained in Ethiopia for their professional work but rather for violation of the existing law of the country. He did not address specific cases or respond to an email requesting comment on the closure of Awlo Media Centre.

As Awlos shutdown shows, this assault on the press has had a chilling effect. Four Ethiopian journalists arrested over the past year told CPJ that they had quit the profession or were no longer able to work because they had gone into hiding.

Even though I am released, said one journalist, I am not free.

Muthoki Mumo is CPJs sub-Saharan Africa representative. She is based in Nairobi, Kenya, and has a masters in journalism and globalization from the University of Hamburg.
10.12.2021 LISTEN

Stopping antimicrobial resistance by promoting infection prevention, responsible and appropriate use of antimicrobial medicines in human health, livestock and food systems, is the bedrock for promoting universal health coverage. Failing this, the absence of efficacious antimicrobials will effectively return the world to the pre-antibiotic era before the 1920s when lives were lost at a far greater rate due to infection.

World leaders have committed to achieve #HealthForAll and deliver on the promise of universal health coverage (UHC) by 2030 - one of the key targets under Sustainable Development Goal-3. This implies significant increases in access to quality healthcare. Ensuring equitable access to affordable and effective medicines to treat diseases is a fundamental part of this vision. However, antimicrobial resistance (AMR) makes common infections no longer treatable by drugs and poses a serious challenge to achieving this goal.

Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director General of the World Health Organization (WHO) has rightly said recently that, left unchecked, antimicrobial resistance (AMR) will rollback a century of medical progress, damage the environment, interrupt food production, cause more people to fall into extreme poverty and imperil global health security. Tackling AMR must therefore be seen in the broader context of efforts to strengthen health systems and achieve UHC.

What is Antimicrobial resistance (AMR)?

Simply put, antimicrobial resistance occurs when bacteria, viruses, fungi, and parasites (microbes) change over time and no longer respond to medicines making infections harder to treat and increasing the risk of disease spread, severe illness and death.

While AMR occurs naturally over time, usually through genetic changes, many humanmade factors have accelerated its spread through misuse or overuse of antimicrobials in humans, livestock and agriculture, poor infection control in healthcare facilities and communities, and poor access to quality, affordable medicines.

Responsible and appropriate use of antimicrobials is the lynchpin to controlling AMR

Dr Haileyesus Getahun, WHO Director of the AMR Global Coordination Department, calls AMR a humanmade problem because antimicrobials are shared between humans, animals and plants. And we are overusing and misusing them in all these three spheres. While agreeing that we cannot stop the development of drug resistance as it is a natural phenomenon, Dr Getahun reaffirms that we can definitely prevent, mitigate or reduce the damage caused by drug-resistant infections.

In an exclusive interview given to CNS (Citizen News Service), Dr Getahun, who is also the Director of the Tripartite Joint Secretariat on AMR, emphasised that We must be prudent and responsible in using antimicrobials, particularly antibiotics. While all antimicrobials are important, special attention must be given to antibiotics, because they are the backbone of our health system in tackling a wide range of bacterial infections. There is also evidence that overuse and misuse of antibiotics in agriculture and animal husbandry can result in drug-resistant bacteria being transferred to human beings. We have to work together with all the sectors to preserve antibiotics for the sake of human and animal health.

Dr Getahun emphasises the need to go back to the basics while addressing antimicrobial resistance. Infection prevention is the gateway to mitigate antimicrobial resistance. We have to build and improve basic infection control and prevention, water, sanitation and hygiene methods. Practices that intensified during the Covid-19 pandemic- like, hand hygiene and sanitising surfaces - have to be continued in the future to address the AMR challenge. Moreover, when we are sick, we should not self-prescribe antibiotics, but do so under a clinicians advice only, he said.

But he also cautions that restricting irresponsible and inappropriate use of drugs should not restrict access to quality and affordable antimicrobials, including antibiotics, particularly for resource-limited settings. There has to be a balance. No child should die because of lack of quality antibiotics. The same is true for the agriculture and livestock sector, as it could also be about food security, food safety and food production.

Currently there are very few new drugs in the research and development pipeline, due to a variety of reasons, including funding shortfall. According to Dr Getahun, antibiotics should be treated as mass consumable public goods and so governments should invest more in research and development of antibiotics. There should be enhanced R&D in the animal sector to finding alternatives to antimicrobials- like vaccination. All this can go a long way to help preserve antibiotics and also reduce the risk of drug resistance.

Keeping this in mind, an AWaRe tool has been developed by the WHO Essential Medicines department to help contain the rising drug resistance and to protect and preserve antibiotics that are medically important for human health. It classifies antibiotics into three groups Access (narrow spectrum drugs that can be used widely as they target a specific microorganism rather than several and lower the risk of bacteria becoming resistant to them); Watch and Reserve (that must be used sparingly or preserved and used only as a last resort as they are most at risk of resistance).

We have to ensure treatment as well as prevention of infectious diseases through responsible use of effective and quality assured safe medicines. We cannot achieve UHC without proper management of AMR, because without sustainable and effective treatment of infections, good quality healthcare for all cannot be reached. For a universal health coverage strategy to be successful, it has to address antimicrobial resistance. For example, access to essential medicines and diagnostics, access to clean water and sanitation, and prevention of infections, are important elements of controlling AMR and these are also essential to improve quality of healthcare. So tackling AMR and achieving UHC go hand-in-hand. We cannot achieve universal health coverage without paying attention to controlling the spread of drug-resistant infections.

Shobha Shukla - CNS (Citizen News Service)

(Shobha Shukla is the award-winning founding Managing Editor and Executive Director of CNS (Citizen News Service) and is a feminist, health and development justice advocate. She is a former senior Physics faculty of prestigious Loreto Convent College and current Coordinator of Asia Pacific Regional Media Alliance for Health and Development (APCAT Media). Follow her on Twitter @shobha1shukla or visit www.bit.ly/ShobhaShukla)
10.12.2021 LISTEN

New York, 9 December  In a special online event featuring voices from the Sahel, from top level officials to artists and activists in the region, the United Nations Development Programme presented today its new programmatic Offer for the Sahel region: A Regeneration. Covering ten countries  Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Chad, Guinea, Mauritania, Mali, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal and The Gambia  the programme is a call for new partners to join local actors and the United Nations in a unique contribution to the United Nations Integrated Strategy for the Sahel (UNISS) to regenerate this great land of opportunity.

Today should be a moment to reflect on whether the world can move beyond only viewing the Sahel region through the lens of crisis. UNDPs new programmatic offer for the Sahel region, A Regeneration, aims to address the underlying causes of instability and help unlock the regions incredible socio-economic promise, underlined Achim Steiner, UN Under-Secretary-General and UNDP Administrator. Such a large-scale investment in governance, renewable energy and in young people in the Sahel will pay incredible dividends, improving the lives and wellbeing of millions of people while helping to protect our planet.

COVID-19 pandemic setback development but also provides a unique opportunity to re-imagine the future. The Sahel is now at a tipping point that requires bold steps to scale up and accelerate investment in developing solutions that ensure the region builds forward better.

Niger, like all the countries of the Sahel, recognizes the UNDP's capital of experience in promoting development policies, stated H.E. Mohamed Bazoum, President of the Republic of Niger. The Stabilization Facility of the Lake Chad Basin has allowed the return of many displaced people in conflict-hit areas. I launch a vibrant appeal to all other bilateral and multilateral partners for sustained mobilization in order to meet the total funding requirement."

UNDPs Sahel Offer  A Regeneration  is a $3.6 billion programme, which focuses on three main areas Governance, Energy and Youth, which are the collective of what will transform and sustain prosperity in the Sahel. The Offer will leverage UNDPs new capacities in partnership with UN sister agencies  and roll out transformative interventions to break cycles of need.

There is indeed a future promise of the Sahel. A promise based on energy, talent, and resilience of the people of the Sahel; a land endowed with wealth of natural resources and a dynamic and ingenious youth, creating innovations and home-grown solutions to development challenges, said Abdoulaye Mar Dieye, UN Special Coordinator for Development in the Sahel. Our research shows that $1 invested through a specific programme may yield a return worth $2 in peace, security, development and reduction of humanitarian needs. However, if this $1 is instead invested through integration and collaboration, it can yield a return of $10 on joint humanitarian-peace-development efforts.

The event was graced by high representatives from pan-African institutions, including the African Unions Commissioner for Peace and Security H.E. Bankole Adeoye  who, on behalf of the AU Chairperson, welcomed the initiative pledging AU support for its roll out. In drawing similarities to the aspiration of the African Charter on Democracy and Governance, he advocated for the prioritization of women and youth in implementing A Regeneration.

In terms of Governance, UNDP will expand its stabilisation portfolio to allow communities affected by violent conflict to rebuild their lives by investing in infrastructure like schools, health centres, homes, hospitals, and markets. It also involves facilitating the rule of law and enabling civil servants and local authorities -- including police, courts, and county clerks -- to resume work.

A Regeneration will also invest in young people as the key to transformative development in the Sahel by increasing digitization and through UNDPs Accelerator Labs and YouthConnekt Sahel initiative and partnerships with the Tony Elumelu Foundation, implementing the Sahel Youth Entrepreneurship Programme which aims to train, mentor, and financially support 100,000 young entrepreneurs over Decade of Action.

UNDPs new Energy Compact pledges to work with partners to provide access to clean and affordable energy to 500 million additional people -- including 150 million in the Sahel region. This is critical in a region where less than 50 per cent of the population have access to electricity. Such investments will provide needed catalytic action to spur industrialization and take advantage of new opportunities in the African Continental Free Trade Area.

Today is about the Sahel. It is about the Sahel we believe in. The Sahel we want to see. At the UN, we know that it is possible to witness a regeneration, emphasized Ahunna Eziakonwa, Assistant-Secretary General and UNDPs Assistant Administrator and Regional Bureau for Africa Director. This is our commitment to cut the code of ties with poverty, inequality, environmental degradation, and violent conflict. We invite new partners to co-invest in the pioneering efforts of Sahelians, the United Nations and our partners, as we work together towards a regeneration of the Sahel.

The Sahel region is endowed with abundant human, cultural and natural resources, offering immense potential for growth. It sits atop some of the largest aquifers in the world and holds enormous potential for renewable energy. With over two-thirds of the population under 25 years of age - and with young women and girls constituting over 50 per cent - the Sahel is one of the worlds most youthful regions.
10.12.2021 LISTEN

Never have we had a democracy of powerful men in the realm of politics beyond the imagination of judges in upholding the independence of the Judicial System. The proteges of political-powerful men wield so much power that cases brought before the courts will suffer a snail-walk; and probably be a pipe dream to justice.

Basically the courts must be a home of trust for people who require to be treated honestly and just. Because trust is the basis for human collaboration. When that is badly severed by our courts, then there will be an increase in crime rate as those without political power and money will not send their cases before the courts.

If you (the accused) are rich enough you can drag a trial along for years, and have a much better chance of getting away with crimes that you are guilty of. Justice in this modern times has colour and knows who is rich as well as politically connected.

No doubt, a lot of Ghanaians have expressed distrust in our Judicial System. Because our courts are now places of comedy-drama. Our Justices cannot stop cases brought before them. So, those with authority at their best will allow you to put your case, they listen because the authority is only required to listen to you or receive the grievance, allot it a number and dispose it.

There are certain cases which cannot be determined or brought to finality because of the power of one of the parties involved. Some parties in a suit are so powerful that the only decision the judge could do is to snail-pace the case by unnecessary adjournments to the frustration of the weaker party. That is the state of our democracy and our so-called independence of the judiciary. Therefore the independence of the judiciary is now a mockery to the very Justices presiding on cases. The independence of the judiciary must be the exercise of the functions by the judges in an unbiased manner i.e. free from any external factor.

The courts are required by law to remain impartial and outside the control of government. When the judiciary is so close to politics, they tend to be partial in their judgements. That is why a judge could easily be transferred for passing a judgement in a case involving powerful political head in this political society.

It is reported that former IGP Asante-Apeatu in July sued Net 2 Tv's Justice Kweku Annan for defamation (Suit No. GJ/1106/2021; David Asante- Apeatu (suing per his lawful attorney Nkum Asmah) v. justice Kweku Annan).

Justice Annan in a tv broadcast on Net2 television accused the former IGP of being a fence for criminals in Nigeria and Ghana. The embattled presenter also accused the IGP of working in cahoots with criminals and on the payroll of top criminals in Ghana.

I am saddened that Justice Ekow Baiden had to sound very timid for a ruling he should have passed after all guidance within his leadership failed. His (Justice) words "You don't know the people you are dealing with, you are a young lawyer...". Why should administering justice be based on the calibre of personality one is? Why are others made a lesser humans than others under the law of the land? Is this justice? If a former IGP could me treated like that, what about you and me?

One interesting but sad aspect of our judiciary is that people can delay judgment by their counsel not appearing on account of sickness and plan it so that they can get to work their way to shady deals.

It is now very clear that courts adjudicate certain cases faster depending on the party pushing it. For instance, if it is a case of land litigation of a powerful politician who has evidence to that respect and wants judgement faster, courts can open up on nights and judges will sit and put out their verdicts on it. Is it same for the ordinary man? Hell no! In case of a man fighting on for years for the most basic of rights, court will have holidays or not appropriate time for hearing

Our system has gotten to a stage where political-powerful men preach a more just world and positive political changes while they do their best to NOT change their position of power. They openly preach peace and incite supporters to do otherwise to sustain their hold onto power.

As Lord Acton, a British political scientist said power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely. A monarch turns tyrant, aristocracy turns into oligarchy and a good polity becomes a democracy.

 Abdul-Razak Lukman

[email protected]
10.12.2021 LISTEN

No living creature has the authority to change the creations of the Lord. Naturally, some people are born with disabilities whilst others are also acquired disabilities through accident, stealing among others.

The upbringing of people living with disabilities becomes a shared responsibility. Therefore, the Tano South Municipal Assembly through the Department of Social Welfare and Community Development has sensitized the general public on the need to care for people living with disabilities.

Some of the participants at the programme

Addressing the gathering, the Ahafo Regional Director of Children George Yaw Ankamah said, the purpose of the gathering is to educate the public on the causes of childhood blindness and its associated diseases.

He emphasized that visual impairment is known to have a significant impact on people's health, social and economic issues. He urged parents and guardians to take care of their children with visually impaired and send them to school for them to also contribute to the socio-economic development of Ghana.

Mr. Ankamah stressed that government has developed child's policy that seeks to provide free education to children in Ghana especially those in kindergarten, JHS and SHS.

The Regional Director of Child, Mr. George Yaw Ankamah speaking to the participant

In a short but impressive speech, the Municipal Chief Executive, Hon. Collins Offiam Takyi said Ghana has developed academic courses on visually impaired and urged those in fatality to take their learning seriously.

According to him, the University of Education admits students to pursue sign language programmes and however, informed those with disabilities to have believed that they could become philanthropists in their societies.

He therefore entreats the Department of Social Welfare and Community Development to collaborate with Health Service to sensitize the community members on prudent ways to care for children who are visually impaired. He charged health directorate to organize diagnosis programme for the children with disabilities in the municipality.

The Municipal Chief Executive, Hon. Collins Offiam Takyi, Educating the gathering

The Municipal Director of the Department of Social Welfare, Mrs. Gladys Zuuri explained that the department seeks to strengthen the family as a unit, ensure parents develop caring skills for the children.

She called on Nananom, Unit Committee Members and other leaders in the community to support the visually impaired people.

The Municipal Director of the Department of Social Welfare, Mrs. Gladys Zuuri welcoming participants

National Coordinator for Holistic Development of Children with Visual impairments, Mr. Jeremiah Badu Shyer, said, Government would resource LEAP Secretariat to ensure people with disabilities are supported financially.

He reiterated that people with disabilities are registered free for National Insurance and urged parents to send their children to the hospital regularly so as to prevent them from developing severe complications.

Nana Awuah Boadi, Nifahene of Bechem Traditional Councils, who chaired the programme, show gratitude to the Department of Social Welfare and Community Development and the Health Service for organizing such educative programme.
Five months after foreign soldiers arrived to help Mozambique battle an insurgency in northern Cabo Delgado province, militants have widened their battleground in an evolving conflict, witnesses and analysts say.

Having been pushed from some of their traditional turf, insurgent attacks have spilled over into neighbouring Niassa province, as well as across the border into Tanzania, they say.

And their tactics remain brutal.

Over the last week, insurgents set fire to dozens of homes, beheading one person and shooting two others dead in Cabo Delgado's Macomia district, according to residents.

After gunning down one elderly woman, they threw her corpse into a burning building, leaving only charred remains for her grieving family, resident Abudo Sitaupe told AFP.

"The people are seeking refuge," he said.

Islamic State-linked militants have been wreaking havoc in gas-rich Cabo Delgado since 2017, raiding towns and villages.

A major coordinated attack on the port city of Palma in March that killed dozens and displaced thousands prompted foreign intervention.

Mozambique's neighbours in the Southern African Development Community (SADC) and Rwanda have deployed troops, while US and European forces are training up Maputo's military.

But almost as alarming as the latest attacks, witnesses said, was the total absence of security forces.

"The army was stationed in a nearby village," said another witness, who added that he belonged to a community vigilante group.

"The people living in the surrounding villages are going to the city," Judite Paulino, a trader who lives in Macomia town, told AFP.

"They are scared."

Spreading out

Macomia is a coastal district in Cabo Delgado, the mostly Muslim province that is home to Africa's largest-ever single foreign investment: a $20-billion gas development by France's Total.

That project, along with other multi-billion-dollar deals, have been on hold since the attack on Palma, the town nearest the offshore gas fields.

"There are rumours of instability in Niassa province in Mecula, clear that up quickly," Mozambican President Filipe Nyusi said, during a police officers' graduation ceremony in the central province of Sofala on Friday.

While claiming to want to form a caliphate, the insurgents have found supporters among residents, angry that they have yet to benefit from the enormous investments in their region.

With 3,100 foreign fighters at its side, Mozambique has reclaimed Palma and promised that the situation is improving.

Cabo Delgado is a mostly Muslim province that is home to Africa's largest-ever single foreign investment: a $20-billion gas development by France's Total. By Simon WOHLFAHRT (AFP/File)

"The priority of the Rwandans is to protect the Total installation and things around Palma," said Johan Viljoen, a researcher with the Denis Hurley Peace Institute, part of the South African Catholic Bishops' Conference.

He returned last week from a visit to the region and said he had also been "getting reports of attacks across the border in Tanzania, and into neighbouring provinces."

Borges Nhamire, a Mozambique analyst for the Institute for Security Studies, said that the insurgents appear dispersed into smaller groups that are now staging attacks across a broader area.

"This is something that was expected, that the conflict would evolve, and that it would imply that the insurgents spill into small groups and to find a way to survive," he told AFP.

"Tanzania and the northern bank of the Ruvuma River was also the new target of a small group," he added.

'To be expected'

In neighbouring Niassa province, insurgents attacked a hospital and looted shops, witnesses told AFP this week.

"People are scared and want to leave," said Mecula town resident Carlitos Mucuna.

Map of Mozambique locating the province of Cabo Delgado and the city of Palma. By Kun TIAN (AFP)

At least 3,578 people, including 1,575 civilians, have been killed since the insurgency emerged, according to US-based conflict tracking organisation, ACLED.

More than 800,000 others have been displaced, according to government and UN agencies.

While the foreign forces have helped Mozambique reclaim key towns, little work has been done to either engage politically with the insurgents or to rein in the leaders.

"In a sense, this is to be expected with an insurgency like this," said Darren Olivier, director at African Defence newsletter.

"Neither Rwanda nor SADC have really harmed the group's leadership or strength, and they have been able to melt away into deeper rural territories and conduct opportunistic strikes."
At the Paris terror trial, the Belgian police on Thursday finally came to the end of this phase of their evidence, leaving the bar to families members of the dead terrorists, and other accused who are prepared to testify. The court first heard from Yassine Abaaoud, younger brother of the operational leader of the Paris attacks, Abdelhamid Abaaoud.

The limits were quickly established. "I am sorry for the victims, the innocent who die all over the world," said Abaaoud as soon as his identity had been confirmed, "but I'm not sure I can be much use to this trial".

That was all the 26-year-old witness was prepared to offer spontaneously.

The court president, Jean-Louis Peries, launched into a series of questions. The process was laborious, to say the best of it.

"You are the brother of Abdelhamid Abaaoud," asserted Peries. "Who among the accused do you recognise?"

"No one."

"You have been called as a witness because of your brother's implication in the events of November 2015. Other sources confirm that some of the accused were close to your brother. You must know some of them?"

"I do not. 'Know' is a big word. They are my brother's generation, not mine."

"What can you tell us about your brother's radicalisation?"

"Nothing. I can answer questions about myself, but not about other people. He left home when he was 16. We never lived under the same roof. He didn't tell me what he had in his head."

"What do you think your brother was doing in Syria?"

"I don't know."

"You have never seen the video of Abdelhamid Abaaoud dragging the bodies of victims behind a pick-up?"

"No."

And so it continued. The witness was neither inarticulate nor obstructive. He said he didn't know the answers to most of the questions posed.

Another family destroyed

It became clear that Abdelhamid Abaaoud had "kidnapped" his 13-year-old brother, Younes, and taken him back to Syria in 2014. This came as a terrible shock to this young man and to the rest of the family.

There has been no news of the brother, since presumed dead.

Yassine Abaaoud proved his articulacy by interrupting a condescending explanation from one of the tribunal members.

"I understand completely, Madame," he said. "You have to appreciate that this has not been easy for my family. We still hope that my little brother will return. We are still paying. My parents broke up. Everything changed. Our family is destroyed.

"I was a teenager. I was astonished to be accused of terrorism. I was afraid. I was alone. I was used by Belgium, by France, by Morocco."

The witness was, in fact, sentenced to two years in jail by a Moroccan court in 2016 for failing to denounce his brother.

He claims that he was unjustly accused, and that the vast majority of the material statements attributed to him by Moroccan investigators were made up.

Abaaoud also denies a claim by the accused Mohamed Abrini that Abaaoud had been involved in a money transfer involving his brother in July 2015.

"That is categorically untrue," he assured the tribunal.

"Why would Mr Abrini want to implicate you?"

"I ask myself that very question."

'Armed jihad is for the ignorant'

The day's session ended with the reading of a sworn statement signed by Omar Abaaoud, father of the family, now resident in Agadir.

The father denied any serious interest in Islam, beyond a broad respect for the Five Pillars of the faith.

He said that jihad was for the innocent or the ignorant.

"I do not understand radical Islam. I think the problem is with Muslims themselves."

He said he believed the Paris killers were either sick or mad. "They must have taken something."

He had tried to prevent Abdelhamid from leaving for Syria. "I asked the police to confiscate his passport.

"When he left, I lost two sons."

The trial continues.
A resurgence of violence between herders and fishers in Cameroon's Far North region  in which at least four people have died  has forced several thousand people to seek refuge over the border in Chad.

Cameroonian authorities say conflict between fishermen of the Musgum community and ethnic Arab Choa herders around the town of Kousseri has claimed at least four lives.

The clashes were sparked by disputes over access to water, RFI's correspondent Madjiasra Nako reported.

The market was burned down and the town cut in two.

Jean-Lazare Ndongo Ndongo, prefect in Cameroon's northern Logone-Chari region bordering Chad, told CRTV state television that "despite the security provisions that had been made, a mob managed to enter the town ... with around 20 shops looted and four people losing their lives".

The local official said the Musgum fishermen attacked areas mostly inhabited by Choa Arab herders "from all sides".

By Thursday evening at least 5,000 people had fled the violence, crossing the Chari river into Chad, near the capital N'Djamena.

"People are continuing to leave their homes to find refuge here in Ndjamena," said Khalat Ahmat Senoussi, president of the Red Cross in Chad. "They panicked and fled. We are worried because people spent the night outside, with nothing to drink or eat."

A Chadian police source said that "refugees are still arriving, some of them by boat".

Appeal for aid

The leader of Chad's military junta Mahamat Idriss Deby Itno said the situation was "worrying" in a statement Wednesday, calling for "solidarity and hospitality" for the refugees but also asking the international community for aid.

The Red Cross in Chad said some 14 centres for IDPs have been set up along with the UNHCR and Chadian government.

During a week in August in Cameroon's Far North, 32 people were killed and dozens wounded in clashes between Musgum fishermen and Choa Arab herders.

The authorities said the clashes were sparked by disputes over access to water.

The volatile Far North region of Cameroon is in an area where the Cameroonian army has been battling Boko Haram and fighters linked to Islamic State armed group.
President Akufo-Addo has said he is not a court to clear or convict persons accused of corruption in his government.

That job, he noted, is solely for the courts.

Speaking at a high-level national conference on the theme: Building a culture of integrity for generations to commemorate International Anti-Corruption Day and Human Rights Day in Accra on Friday, 10 December 2021, the president said no corruption allegation against any of his appointees has gone uninvestigated under him.

The government has undertaken, arguably, the boldest initiative since our nation attained independence nearly 65 years ago, to reform and strengthen the capacity of our institutions to tackle corruption in the public sector, the president said.

Charity, they say, begins at home; and, that is why, so far, every single alleged act of corruption levelled against any of my appointees has been investigated by independent bodies such as the Commission for Human Rights and Administrative Justice (CHRAJ), Criminal Investigations Department (CID) and, in some cases, by Parliament itself, he asserted.

It is not my job to clear or convict any person accused of wrongdoing or of engaging in acts of corruption; that is the job of the courts, he emphasised.

The president clarified: My job is to act on allegations of corruption by referring the issue or issues to the proper investigative agencies for the relevant inquiry and necessary action, including  if required  the suspension of the affected official pending the conclusion of the investigations.

That is exactly what has been done since I assumed the mantle of national leadership on 7 January 2017, said the president.

He recalled: As it was in 2019, I suspended the then-acting head of the Public Procurement Authority from office after conflict of interest and corruption allegations had been levelled against him.

Following recommendations from CHRAJ based on their investigation, I removed him from office in October 2020 and the Office of the Special Prosecutor, is seized with the matter for prosecution, he noted.
Food production in the Upper East Region has declined in 2021 compared to 2020 following the shortage of fertilizer during the farming season, Mr Francis Ennor, the Regional Director of the Department of Agriculture, has said.

He said the region produced 518,105 metric tonnes of food in 2021, compared to 542,176 metric tonnes in 2020, representing 13 per cent decline and blamed the fertilizer shortage and the late start of rains recorded this year.

Mr Ennor made this known in Bolgatanga when Dr Owusu Afriyie Akoto, the Minister of Food and Agriculture, paid a working a visit to the region.

He said the fertilizer problem further affected the implementation of government's flagship programme the 'Planting for Food and Jobs,' as the number of people who benefitted reduced.

For Planting for Food and Jobs, over the years, we have been increasing the number of seeds given to our farmers but in 2021, our farmers did not patronize much of the seeds because of the fertilizer issue that came up with the poor rainfall pattern, he said.

He said the PFJ programme in the region received and distributed 693,799 of 25kilogrammes of NPK fertilizer and 46,400 of 25kilogrammes of Urea this year, compared to 1,390,402 of 25kilogrammes of NPK and 495,429 25kilogrammes of Urea last year.

This led to the reduction in the number of people benefitting from the programme from 185,012 in 2020 to 84,822 in 2021, Mr Ennor said.

What happened was that when farmers realized that fertilizer was becoming difficult to access, most of them shifted from cultivation of maize and other crops to soyabeans, hence a lot of soyabean was actually cultivated since that does not need a lot of fertilizer, he added.

Dr Akoto, in response, explained that due to the COVID-19 pandemic, fertilizer producing countries including China and Russia were not able to produce enough, resulting in the astronomical rise in price on the international market.

The whole world fertilizer market has changed overnight and it is not something that the government can afford to be giving subsidy. For instance, last year, the price of Urea was 321 dollars per metric ton but now it is 1,200 dollars, which government could not cope and so we will give small quantity under subsidy and farmers will have to go to the open market to buy, he said.

Government would have to reduce the amount of fertilizer under the subsidy programme going forward, he said, and advised farmers and other traders to patronise the open market for fertilizer.

For the quantity under the subsidy, it will shrink because we do not have the money, so farmers and traders need to understand and patronise the open market for fertilizer in Ghana because that is the only way your business can survive, he added.

Mr Stephen Yakubu, the Upper East Regional Minister, said fertilizer smuggling continued to be a bane in the implementation of the PFJ and charged the various municipal and district chief executives to work hard to address the canker.

GNA
The Ministry of Gender, Children and Social Protection (MoGCSP) through the Department of Gender with support from UNDP Ghana held a National Consultative meeting on the preparation of Ghana's combined 8th and 9th report for the implementation of the Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) on Thursday 9th December 2021 in Accra.

The objectives of the workshop were to:

1. Fulfill international reporting obligation.

2. Identify and take stock of measures being adopted to implement the provision.

3. Canvas for more support to accelerate the process towards the attainment of gender equality.

The Ministry successfully coordinated, submitted and defended Ghanas 6th and 7th periodic report in September 2014. The report and the responses to the list of issues from the CEDAW Committee highlighted significant efforts made by the State in addressing important needs and concerns of women in Ghana.

MoGCSP is obliged to again submit Ghanas 8th and 9th CEDAW report to the UN Committee indicating further measures adopted by the State to implement the provisions of the convention.

The meeting was in collaboration between the Ministry and UNDP.

In a statement read by Kakari Bediako on her behalf, the Chief Director for MoGCSP, Dr. Afisah Zakariah urged participants to work towards a significant increase in societal investments to close the gender gap and strengthen support for institutions in relation to gender equity and the empowerment of women and girls.

Participants of the meeting include MDAs, gender equality stakeholders, CSOs/NGOs, Development partners amongst others.

In his remarks, Mr Jonard Tetteh a representative from UNDP noted that empowering women through education skills training and legal literacy is vital for addressing what is perhaps the most widespread violation of women's rights: gender-based violence against women during this period.

Emphasizing that, States have to deal with poverty and empower women by addressing power imbalances across societies and the underlying structural barriers to gender equality such as unequal access to control over resources and gendered division of labour in order to combat violence against women.

Reviewing progress made in implementing the CEDAW will demonstrate ghana's commitment and accountability, not only to the frameworks including the SDGs but most importantly to ensuring gender equality and the empowerment of women and girls for sustainable development.

Stressing that, UNDP remains committed to supporting the gender ministry to achieve gender equality and end discrimination against women and girls.

In conclusion, he called on women in all societies to enrich humanity and contribute to building a more just and peaceful global society, thereby striving towards true integral humanism.

Edmund Amarkwei Foley, a lawyer and private Consultant presenting the report said, the report provides general factual and statistical Information to assist treaty bodies in understanding the political, legal, social. the economic and cultural context for the implementation of human rights.

Adding in the area of education, the report has achieved gender parity, meaning an equal number of boys and girls at the basic level of education hence better results can be achieved in the secondary and tertiary levels to reduce women discrimination.
Scientists are working around the clock to get a better understanding of the Omicron variant. Around the world countries have imposed travel bans to mitigate the spread. South African scientists first announced that they had identified a new variant on November 25 2021 . Since then, cases of COVID have increased exponentially and South Africa has entered a fourth wave. Scientists from the South African DSI-NRF Centre of Excellence in Epidemiological Modelling and Analysis and the National Institute for Communicable Diseases ) spoke to The Conversation Africa about their findings , which are set out in a pre-print paper.

How is Omicron different to previous variants?

Our key findings are around the risk of reinfection.

A reinfection is defined as a positive SARS-COV-2 test more than three months after a previous positive test. We found that the relative risk of reinfection was much higher (at least 3-fold) with the Omicron variant than it was with the Beta and Delta variants.

Our evidence suggests that the Omicron variant is associated with increased ability to evade immunity from prior infection. In contrast, there is no population-wide epidemiological evidence of increased immune escape associated with the Beta or Delta variants, compared with the original, or wild, type.

This finding has important implications for public health planning, particularly in countries like South Africa with high rates of immunity from prior infection. A study to measure previous infection found that just before the third wave (in May 2021) almost half of blood donors in South Africa had already been infected.

Another study, called PHIRST-C , that followed households through time found that more than 60% of individuals had been infected by the end of August 2021. As a result of this high level of prior infection, combined with around 40% coverage of vaccination among adults, a smaller fourth wave was expected .

But, if the virus mutates to increase its ability to evade natural immunity  like it seems to have done with Omicron  governments cannot rely on prior natural immunity to estimate the size of future outbreaks.

At this stage, we cannot say anything about the severity of cases with Omicron  either in primary or reinfections. We also do not have information on the vaccination status of reinfections.

Another big issue yet to be answered is whether protection against severe disease and death will be affected by reduced immunity to reinfection.

Several preprints have now come out suggesting Omicron could escape neutralisation in vaccinated people who had not also had a prior infection. These findings could help explain the large risk of reinfection. Early laboratory results looking at assays to measure T-cell-based immunity, on the other hand , predict that substantial protection against severe disease and death may remain.

Our findings were based on analysing surveillance data collected in South Africa between 04 March 2020 and 27 November 2021.

What do your findings say about vaccine efficacy?

Based on the data used in this study, we cannot say anything about the implications for this. We are hopeful that the vaccines will have similar efficacy against severe disease with Omicron than they have against other variants.

What can individuals do to minimise the impact of the 4th wave?

Even with the new variant, the key preventative measures that individuals can take remain wearing a mask, social distancing, improving ventilation, and vaccination. During the holiday season, it is particularly important to avoid large crowds, especially indoors. Until we have a better understanding of this variant, it is best not to gather with groups of friends, but if you do, please do it outside.

Cari van Schalkwyk receives funding from the South African Department of Science and Technology-National Research Foundation Centres of Excellence Programme.

Juliet Pulliam receives funding from the South African Department of Science and Technology-National Research Foundation Centres of Excellence Programme and the Wellcome Trust. She serves on the South African National Department of Health's Ministerial Advisory Committee on COVID-19 and is a core team member of the South African COVID-19 Modelling Consortium. She also serves on the Scientific Advisory Committee for the PHIRST-C study, which is referenced in this article.

Harry Moultrie does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

By Cari van Schalkwyk, Researcher in Statistics, South African Centre for Epidemiological Modelling & Analysis (SACEMA) And

Harry Moultrie, Senior medical epidemiologist, Centre for Tuberculosis, National Institute for Communicable Diseases And

Juliet Pulliam, Director: SACEMA, South African Centre for Epidemiological Modelling & Analysis (SACEMA)
The South Korean government as part of its efforts to fight the Omicron variant of the Coronavirus (Covid-19) has added Ghana to the list of countries travelers are not allowed to come into the country from.

The Asian country on November 28, banned foreign entries from South Africa, Botswana, Lesotho, Namibia, Mozambique, Malawi, Zimbabwe, Eswatini, and Nigeria after several cases of the Omicron variant were recorded.

With the cases subsequently rising to 38 and counting, South Korea has taken the next step to include more countries in the list.

Health officials in the country as reported by Yonhap news agency have announced that effective today, Friday, December 10, to Thursday, December 16, 2021, short-term foreign arrivals from Ghana and Zambia will be banned.

Meanwhile, South Korean nationals and long-term foreign arrivals from Ghana and the other countries will have to quarantine from 10 days on arrival regardless of their Covid-19 vaccination status.

In Ghana, the Ghana Health Service has also tightened its efforts to halt the importation of the Omicron variant of the Covid-19 into the country.

From December 12, 2021, everyone travelling to Ghana must have proof of full vaccination before arrival.

All persons 18 years and above arriving in Ghana will be required to provide evidence of full vaccination for a COVID-19 vaccine.

All unvaccinated Ghanaians and residents of Ghana who are currently outside the country and intend to return within 14 days from the midnight of 12 December 2021, are exempted.

All Ghanaians travelling out of the country are to be fully vaccinated effective midnight 12 December 2021, a statement from the Ghana Health Service said on Thursday.
French President Emmanuel Macron emerged from a lunchtime meeting with the new German Chancellor Olaf Scholz on Friday to hail their convergence of views.

Addressing Scholz as "dear Olaf" and using the informal "tu" pronoun in French, Macron said he welcomed the show of unity between the men.

"There is a desire to have our countries work together," added Macron. "And a firm and determined belief in Europe, which I knew already, and which we will need in the months and years ahead."

Macron said the visit was a very important moment to build solid foundations for cooperation between the countries.

The two men discussed their vision for the future of the European Union as well as tensions between Ukraine and Russia, EU-bound migrants in Belarus, and ties with China and the African continent.

Scholz, who will also stop in Brussels at the headquarters of the EU and Nato on Friday, took over from Angela Merkel on Wednesday at the end of her 16 years in power.

Coalition

The 63-year-old Social Democrat heads a new coalition of ecologist Greens and business-friendly Free Democrats.

Though poles apart on the political spectrum, the Greens and the FDP have stated their commitment to strengthening Europe's strategic sovereignty.

Despite Macron's upbeat tone, old fault lines linger. Scholz was reluctant to endorse Macron's call for a revamp of rules covering the debts run up by EU countries.

Last year, the EU backed rescue fund payments to countries to help avert a recession in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic.

Germany has traditionally favoured EU states trying to balance their books.

"We are talking about maintaining this growth which has been spurred by the recovery fund," Scholz said. "We need at the same time to work on the solidity of our finances. There is not a contradiction."

In January, France starts its six months as rotating president of the 27-member Council of the European Union.

Macron said he wants the period to develop a Europe that is powerful in the world.
President Nana Akufo-Addo on Friday said his government has tackled the fight against corruption with holistic approach to protecting the public purse.

He said his Administration had committed more financial resources towards the fight against corruption than any other government under the Fourth Republic, and had undertaken institutional reforms and enacted additional legislations to make corruption unattractive.

"What I have done is to show you that my government has fought corruption not in words, but in concrete deeds, he said.

"It has been a holistic approach, we have protected the public purse, made institutional reforms, enacted additional anti-corruption laws and adequately resourced accountability organs of state."

President Akufo-Addo said this in Accra when he delivered the keynote address at the 2021 High Level National Conference to mark the International Anti-Corruption and Human Rights Day.

The conference, organised by the Commission on Human Rights and Administrative Justice (CHRAJ), under the auspices of the Office of the President, was to create awareness on the need to curb corruption in all forms and uphold the fundamental human rights of everyone.

The President also launched the National Cultural Review and Schools Integrity Programme.

The event was on the theme: "Building a Culture of Integrity for Generations," chaired by Justice Emmanuel Yonny Kulendi, a Supreme Court Judge.

It attracted heads of institutions, ministers of state, members of Parliament and the Council of State, the National Anti-Corruption Coalition, diplomatic community, and students.

President Akufo-Addo disregarded attempts by some political elements to tag his government as corrupt, and said he had allowed state institutions to investigate allegations of corruption against his appointees and were cleared of any wrongdoing.

He insisted that he would always use laid down procedures to investigate any act of corruption.

The President expressed the belief that the fight against corruption had been grounded on requisite financial and institutional actions and not rhetoric, and said the Executive's responsibility was to enforce the law no matter who was affected.

Failure to curb corruption would have negative repercussions on the state including loss of revenue, impede economic progress, stifle initiatives and creativity and encourage mediocrity and incompetence, he said, and vowed to do his utmost best to minimise corrupt practices, if not to eradicate it.

Mr Richard Quayson, the Deputy Commissioner of CHRAJ, presented the outcome of a survey the Commission conducted between March and December 2020, on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on formal and informal sectors of the economy.

A total of 12,500 respondents were interviewed in 165 districts across the 16 regions using the mixed approach method.

The survey showed that there was 96 per cent reduction of intake of patients in health institutions, adversely affecting their right to access healthcare.

Persons who were self-employed and those in the informal economy such as traders, barbers and hairdressers were worst affected as they lost their jobs while others had their salaries and wages slashed.

Mr Quayson said statistics from the Ghana Hoteliers Association revealed that 71 hotels and five guesthouses collapsed due to the pandemic.

However, some of the respondents indicated that government's social interventions such as the free water, hot meals, personal protective equipment and stimulus package helped them to recover from the pandemic.

GNA
Government has received 756,000 more doses of the Johnson & Johnson single-shot Covid-19 vaccine under the African Vaccine Acquisition Trust (AVAT).

The delivery brings the total doses received by Ghana so far to 4,060,080 under the AVAT initiative.

The vaccine deliveries are part of the historic COVID-19 vaccine advance procurement agreement signed on 28 March 2021 by AVAT for the purchase of 220 million doses of the Johnson & Johnson single-shot COVID-19 vaccine, with the potential to order an additional 180 million doses.

In total, the 400 million vaccines acquired by AVAT are sufficient to immunise a third of the African population.

Ama Amoah, Senior Specialist Digital & Internal Communications, Communications and Events Afreximbank, said the last batch of the consignment for the year is slated for Monday, December 13, 2021.

She emphasized that the vaccines were acquired by the Ghana government and not a donation.

AVAT was established by the African COVID-19 Vaccine Acquisition Task Team, set up in November 2020 under the African Union chairmanship of President Cyril Ramaphosa, President of the Republic of South Africa.

It is part of the African Union's COVID-19 Vaccine Development and Access Strategy, and its goal of vaccinating at least 60 per cent of the African population with safe and efficacious vaccines against COVID-19.

The agreement with Johnson & Johnson was made possible through a US$2 billion facility provided by the African Export-Import Bank (Afreximbank), who are also the Financial and Transaction Advisers, Guarantors, Instalment Payment Advisers and Payment Agents, and the support of the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) who coordinated the alignment of the AU Ministers of Finance on the financing arrangements.

GNA
The Best and second best farmers receiving their certificate

10.12.2021 LISTEN

The Tano North version of the 37th Farmers Day Celebration has been held in Yamfo.

The programme saw dignitaries like Hon. Ernest Kwarteng, the MCE for Tano North, Mr. Eric Anarfie the Municipal coordinating director, Mr. Godfred Ezena Municipal Director of Agriculture, DOIII Ishaaq Amin Mohammed Divisional Officer for Ghana Fire Service Tano North, Mr. Edward Kuffuor Barnes, a representative from Newmont Ghana, Hon. Assembly Members, Heads of Department and Nananom in attendance.

In an opening address, Mr. Godfred Ezena, the Tano North Municipal Director of Agriculture welcomed all farmers and other dignitaries to the programme.

He said the celebration of the farmers day helps farmers to access their strengths and weaknesses.

According to him, Tano North Municipal Assembly has rewards for hardworking farmers for their contribution to food security in the country.

He informed farmers to use modern method of farming to ensure they acquire higher yields. He emphasized that government has introduced a number of policies in the agricultural sector to ensure agriculture becomes attractive for all to invest their resources.

Mr. Godfred Ezena urged all cocoa framers to enroll on government new pension scheme for cocoa farmers.

Mr. Godfred Ezena, Tano North Municipal Director of Agriculture addressing the gathering

According to him, since His Excellency Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo and his government assumed office, they have been able to distribute many improved seedlings to the offices of MOFA for higher yields. He added that government policy such as planting for food and jobs has helped farmers improve yields.,

He added that government through Tano North Municipal Assembly will continue to play a leading role to support farmers to undertake other cash crops in the Municipality.

DOIII Ishaaq Amin Mohammed, Fire Officer of the Tano North Fire Station said they have formed fire volunteers squad in five zones namely Bomaa, Yamfo, Adrobaa, Tanoso, and Duayaw Nkwanta and entreated farmers to safeguard or protect their investment against bushfire by cooperating with the fire volunteers to avoid bushfire as they approached dry season. He noted that the station has put in place strategies to reduce the outbreaks of bushfires in the Municipality.

DOIII Ishaaq Amin Mohammed Fire Officer of the Tano North educating the gathering

Engineer Douglas Twum who represented the MP Hon. Dr. Freda Premper congratulated awardees and the gallant farmers.

He emphasized that Ghanaians need to work hard to ensure they produce more food to feed the country and export surpluses to other countries for sale.

Mr. Edward Kuffuor Barnes who represented Newmont Ghana congratulated the farmers and cautioned the farmers to be aware of climate change and adopt the best practice of modern farming.

In a keynote address to mark the 37th farmers day, the MCE for Tano North Hon. Ernest Kwarteng thanked all farmers for honouring his invitation to attend the Municipalitys version of the 37th Farmers Day celebration.

He described the farmers day as an important day set aside by government to honour gallant farmers and appreciates their importance to Ghana's economy.

The MCE noted that the construction of the rail line from Accra to Paga will pass through Asubonpan and other adjoining towns of Tano North.

MCE for Tano North Hon. Ernest Kwarteng giving his keynote address

He emphasised that the covid-19 pandemic has killed many people including farmers thereby affecting crop production. He said the pragmatic measures put in place to curb the spread of the coronavirus by government have also yielded positive results "thereby helping us to come together as one people with one common destiny to observe this remarkable farmers' day."

The MCE congratulated all award-winning farmers and encouraged others to work harder to ensure they are also awarded in the subsequent programmes.

In the end, a 61-year-old Mr. Stephen Ansu Kyeremeh who hails from Terchire was adjudged the overall best farmer in the Tano North Municipal. He received Tricycle Motor, five pairs of wellington boots, five cutlasses, five key soaps, one knapsack sprayer, a piece of wax print, agrochemical herbicide and three insecticides as well as a certificate.

Mr. Stephen Ansu Kyeremeh expressed his gratitude to the Department of Agriculture for adjudging him the best farmer in the 37th edition of the farmers day. He asked government to support farmers with loan facilities to improve production.

The first and the second runner up Ms. Faustina Agyeiwaa and Mr. Isaac Nkrumah received Mini Tricycle, four Key soaps, one knapsack sprayer, Wax print organic fertilizer, insecticide certificate, Motorbike, Key soap, cutlasses, wax print, two pairs of wellington booth, knapsack sprayer and certificate respectively.

There were consolation prizes for other awardees of 15 categories who received bicycles, knapsack sprayers, wax print, cutlasses, wellington booth and certificates.

Nana Ansah Adu- Baah who doubles as the Ahafo Regional House of Chiefs and chaired the programme congratulated all award-winning farmers and encouraged others to work harder
10.12.2021 LISTEN

President Nana Akufo-Addo has said his government has undertaken, arguably, the boldest initiatives since independence to reform and strengthen the capacity of the nations institutions to tackle corruption in the public sector.

According to President Akufo-Addo, government has fought corruption not in words, but in concrete deeds. We have shunned mere exhortations and showy denunciations of unproved corruption. It has been a holistic approach.

Delivering the keynote address at the National Anti-Corruption Conference, organised by the Commission for Human Rights and Administrative Justice (CHRAJ), on Friday, 10 December 2021, the President stated emphatically that we have protected the public purse, we have made institutional reforms, we have enacted additional, requisite laws, and we have resourced more adequately the accountability organs of state. Our fight against corruption has been grounded on legislative, financial and institutional action, and not on lip-service.

Outlining the initiatives put forth by his government, since coming into office in 2017, he stated that he has, first, had to make sure that every single alleged act of corruption levelled against any of his appointees have been investigated by independent bodies, such as CHRAJ, the CID, and, in some cases, by Parliament itself.

Citing the example of the suspension of the then head of the Public Procurement Agency, the President indicated that following recommendations from CHRAJ, based on their investigation, I removed him from office in October 2020, and the Office of Special Prosecutor is seized with the matter of prosecution. If an appointee is cleared of any wrongdoing, the evidence adduced and recommendations made by these agencies, after the investigations are concluded, are what clear the accused persons, not myself.

Continuing, President Akufo-Addo indicated that there are some who refuse to accept my method of proceeding, and have characterised me as a clearing agent, because, for them, the mere allegation without more is enough to merit condemnation of the public official, even though they did not apply this principle when they were in office. For my part, I will not set aside due process in the fight against corruption, no matter how much opprobrium this incurs for me.

With a clear understanding that corruption thrives in an atmosphere conducive to its concealment, he told the gathering that his government has ensured the passage of the Right to Information Act, 2019 (Act 989), which will foster a culture of transparency and accountability in public affairs.

In addition to this, President Akufo-Addo revealed that Parliament has passed the Witness Protection Act, 2018, (Act 975), to which he gave his assent on 24th August the same year. The Act, he explained, established a Witness Protection Agency to establish a witness protection scheme as a vehicle for offering protection to persons, who are required to co-operate with law enforcement agencies as witnesses in the investigation and prosecution of cases, particularly corruption cases affecting public officers.

Last year, he stated that the Criminal Offences (Amendment) Act, 2020, (Act1034), was passed to amend section 239 of the Criminal Offences Act, to categorise the offence of corruption, previously a misdemeanour, as a felony, and to guarantee stiffer punishments of terms of imprisonment of not less than twelve (12) years and not more than twenty-five (25) years in prison.

The President indicated that other laws passed by his administration, and which have enhanced significantly the capacity of the State in the fight against corruption are the Revenue Administration (Amendment) Act, 2020 (Act 1029), Fiscal Responsibility Act, 2018 (Act 982), State Interests and Governance Authority Act, 2019 (Act 990), Anti-Money Laundering Act, 2020 (Act 1044), Corporate Restructuring and Insolvency Act, 2020 (Act 1015), Companies Act, 2019(Act992), Narcotics Control Commission Act, 2020 (Act 1019) and Real Estate Agency Act, 2020 (Act 1047).

Underlying the digitalisation agenda of his government, which comprises a robust national identification system, digital property address system, paperless port system, e-justice system, pensions and insurance data, a digitised land registry, and mobile money interoperability system, he stressed, is the overarching objective to improve transparency, accountability and efficiency in the public sector.

A digitised environment, ultimately, helps to eliminate and prevent corruption in various institutions and agencies. The passport office, ports and harbours, Registrar-Generals Department, National Health Insurance Service, Driver Vehicle and Licensing Authority, which, hitherto, were fertile grounds for corrupt activity, are being transformed beyond recognition, he said.

He continued, The introduction of the Ghana.Gov platform has significantly reduced the risk of public sector corruption through embezzlement, making it possible for services to be accessed and payments made online by card or mobile money, with a considerable reduction in the conduit of middlemen or goro boys.

Budgetary Allocation

Touching on the allocation of resources to the accountability institutions of State, President Akufo-Addo stressed that it is also an undeniable fact that budgetary allocations for institutions actively engaged in public sector accountability, i.e., the Office of the Auditor-General, the Judiciary, Parliament and the Ghana Police Service, have witnessed unprecedented increases since I assumed office in 2017.

At the end of 2021, he indicated that the budgetary allocation to Parliament had witnessed a one hundred and ninety-four per cent (194%) increase, compared to what was inherited in 2016; the Police had seen its budget increase by one hundred and sixty-two per cent (162%) at the end of 2021, in comparison to 2016; the Audit Service had recorded an eighty-three per cent (83%) rise in its budgetary allocation at the end of 2021, as compared to 2016; the budget of the Judiciary had risen by fifty-one per cent (51%) at the end of 2021, compared to 2016; the budget of the Office of the Attorney General had increased by fifty per cent (50%) at the end of 2021, compared to 2016; while the budget of CHRAJ had increased by twenty-one per cent (21%) at the end of 2021, compared to 2016.

These figures, according to President Akufo-Addo, reflect my resolve to ensure that institutions of state of relevance in the anti-corruption agendum are properly equipped to discharge satisfactorily the mandate of their offices.

On ensuring value for money through the review of single source and restricted tender applications, he stated that the Public Procurement Authority, between January 2019 and August 2021, recorded savings to the tune of GH2.3 billion.

In 2017, my first year in office, the savings, made over the year as a result of such reviews, amounted to some eight hundred million cedis (GH800 million). Contrast this to the situation in 2016 where a grand total of zero savings was made, he added.

In the area of investigations and prosecution of corruption and corruption-related offences, the President noted that a distinct innovation was undertaken by his administration in 2017, with the decision to set up an Office of Special Prosecutor, through the passage of the Office of Special Prosecutor Act, 2017 (Act 959).

The establishment of the Office of Special Prosecutor represents the most courageous measure by any government, since independence, to prosecute corruption in the executive arm of government. The monopoly of prosecutorial authority by an Attorney General, hired or fired by a President, had been identified by many as a key factor standing in the way of law enforcement and prosecution as a credible tool in the fight against corruption before 2017, he added.

---classfmonline.com
10.12.2021 LISTEN

A former Pro-Vice Chancellor of the University of Cape Coast Professor George K-T Oduro has commended the government for introducing the Standard Based Examination (SBE) but faulted it for poor implementation planning.

He said this in an exclusive telephone interview with our Upper East Regional Correspondent Emmanuel Akayeti in Bolgatanga, the capital of the Upper East Region.

Prof Oduro indicated that though its a laudable policy, there is no stakeholders collaboration in fashioning out the implementation plan.

According to him, this has often been the problem of most good policy introduced into the countrys educational system which are not yielding the desired results.

Prof Oduro stated that the Standard Based Test (SBT) is a good evaluative intervention for purposes of getting a broader view of childrens performance in a particular subject.

He noted that the Ghana Education Service (GES) knew that the SBT was an intervention to be implemented "so the Service should have integrated its implementation in the planned academic calendar of schools in order to eliminate pupils struggling through their normal examination stress only to be asked to extend their stay to write another examination. It exposes pupils to mental fatigue which could have been avoided through proper planning."

He observed that planning is one of the biggest challenges facing the GES and for that matter, the country as a whole, adding that, planning has often been less engaging and done by a certain group of people pushed on others to implement.

Prof Oduro stressed that "it is one thing to invite individuals who you think will tell you what you want to hear to plan things and another thing creating a forum which will provide the opportunities for negatives and positives in terms of contribution towards a plan to be effected."
Many across the globe troop into the residence of the former President of the Republic of Ghana His Excellency John Agyekum Kufour to celebrate him on his 83rd birthday.

The Chief of Oblieman Nii Ayitey Anumle Oyanka I was among the dignitaries who joined the Former President at his Peduase residence.

Nii Anumle Oyanka I speaking to the media after the colourful ceremony said everything about the former President shows that he is a true statesman and unifier.

"We can all attest to the works of President Kuffour and his government which yield positive contribution to the development of Ghana. The Public-Private Partnership started under his watch and it was deepened," he stated.

The Founder and Chairman of the Oyanka Foundation noted that the Foundation which consists of two kingdoms namely Oblieman and Anamase are working vigorously to contribute to the development of the country.

"The mission of the foundation is to help in developing communities in terms of housing, infrastructure, childrens program, stem etc and the country as a whole. He also stated that their vision is to become a world-class African foundation who will be known in developments," he emphasised.

According to Nii Anumle Oyanka, to achieve this goal, they are working hand-in-hand with the Anamase and have also formed alliances with African-American, India nations etc who will be working closely both physically and spiritually which will contribute to development in communities and the country as a whole.

He also disclosed that the foundation and project involves a lot of resources since all their raw materials will be exported.

He said they need legal approval from the government. Not all traditionalist and royal leaders are interested in politics and partisans but rather have the country at heart hence in their small ways, will want to assist the government in developing the country. We cannot rely on government or politicians, government is for all and not a person, therefore it is the duty of every individual to come together and support the government when the need arise.

Nii Ayitey Anumle Oyanka I added that politicians and government should be more open and do away with selfishness "so that together we can help in the development of the country."
President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo has bragged that his government has protected the public purse as promised since he assumed office.

He added that his government has also fought corruption with concrete deeds and not by just mere rhetoric.

Ghanas development is still on a low pace due to the canker of the corruption at public institutions.

Delivering a keynote address at the National Anti-Corruption Conference, organized by the Commission for Human Rights and Administrative Justice (CHRAJ), on Friday, December 10, 2021, President Akufo-Addo stressed that his government has been up and doing in the quest to fight corruption in the country.

We have protected the public purse, we have made institutional reforms, we have enacted additional, requisite laws, and we have resourced more adequately the accountability organs of state. Our fight against corruption has been grounded on legislative, financial, and institutional action, and not on lip-service, the 2021 Forbes Africa African of the Year winner said.

According to the ECOWAS chair, his government has fought corruption in Ghana with concrete deeds and remains committed to doing everything possible to deal with the age-old problem through an all-hands-on-deck approach.

Government has fought corruption not in words, but in concrete deeds. We have shunned mere exhortations and showy denunciations of unproved corruption. It has been a holistic approach, the President shared.

Reacting to the tag of a clearing agent, H.E Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo indicated that he is not bothered and will not put aside laid down procedures in fighting corruption no matter the false allegations made against him.

..there are some who refuse to accept my method of proceeding and have characterised me as a clearing agent, because, for them, the mere allegation without more is enough to merit condemnation of the public official, even though they did not apply this principle when they were in office. For my part, I will not set aside due process in the fight against corruption, no matter how much opprobrium this incurs for me, President Nana Addo added.
Ghana has, as of December 10, recorded 46 Yellow Fever deaths, with 102 confirmed cases out of about 600 suspected cases recorded.

The latest death was recorded on Thursday, December 9, aside from three more new cases.

The outbreak, first recorded in October 2021, is now in four regions: Savannah, Upper West, Bono, and Oti regions.

Dr. Dennis Laryea, Acting Head of Disease Surveillance at the Ghana Health Service (GHS), told the Ghana News Agency, in Accra, on Friday that although the YF infections were gradually reducing, the Service was still recording some suspected cases.

The outbreak started in West and North Gonja, but we have not recorded any case from these two districts over a period. We are, however, recording a few cases from Central Gonja, Bole, and Sawla-Tuna-Kaba districts, he said.

Dr. Laryea said the GHS had done an elaborate vaccination campaign in the areas at risk and would by next week receive a donation of about 400,000 doses of YF vaccines from the World Health Organisation (WHO) to expand the YF vaccination drive.

He said the drive would target about 600,000 unvaccinated persons in districts of concern.

Dr. Franklin Aseidu-Bekoe, Director for Public Health at the GHS, urged all persons from the Region who had a fever, general weakness, headache, nausea, and vomiting, to immediately report to the nearest health facility.

He encouraged individuals who had never been vaccinated against Yellow Fever to do so.

Avoid mosquito bites by wearing clothing that covers all parts of the body and report to the nearest health facility if you have a fever and, especially when you have yellowish discolouration of your eyes, he advised.

Yellow Fever is a tropical virus disease affecting the liver and kidneys, causing fever and jaundice and often fatal. It is transmitted by mosquitoes.

A person with Yellow Fever may have fever and jaundice in the early stages and later bleed from any of the body openings like the nose and mouth.

One may contract Yellow Fever through the bite of the Aedes mosquito, and prevention is mainly by taking the Yellow Fever vaccine or preventing the bite of a mosquito.

A Yellow fever vaccine provides lifelong immunity to an individual.

Source: GNA
South Korea has announced a ban on short-term foreign arrivals from Ghana effective Friday.

This comes on the heels of the covid-19 Omicron variant being detected in passengers arriving in Ghana.

The entry ban to South Korea which was also extended to Zambia is expected to last till Thursday, 16 December 2021.

However, long-term foreign arrivals and South Korean nationals will be expected to undergo a 10-day mandatory quarantine despite the travellers immunisation status.

The country had earlier banned foreign travels from Eswatini, Nigeria, Namibia, Mozambique, Malawi, Zimbabwe, South Africa, Botswana and Lesotho.

South Korea has recorded 38 cases of the Omicron variant.

In a related development, Tanzania and Ghana have been added to Indias at-risk countries.

This means passengers from these countries are expected to go through additional COVID-19 testing and quarantine.

Ghana has so far recorded 34 cases of the Omicron variant.

---classfmonline.com
10.12.2021 LISTEN

General Constable Chris Quarshie has sadly met his untimely death after being hit by a speeding vehicle while on duty.

The unfortunate incident happened on Thursday, December 9, 2021, at the Akwadum barrier along the Koforidua-Suhum highway in the Eastern Region.

The driver of the vehicle that crashed the Constable, John Adu Agyei according to information gathered was driving an unregistered Toyota Tundra with DV number 3518c-21 from Koforidua towards Suhum on top speed.

Reports gathered indicate that he appeared to have lost control of the vehicle and ended up crashing into the barricade where General Constable Chris Quarshie was stationed.

The deceased sustained serious injuries from the accident and was subsequently rushed to the St. Joseph Hospital in Koforidua where he was admitted for treatment.

Due to the severity of his injuries, he was transferred later to the 37 Military Hospital, Accra for further treatment but died on Friday, December 10, 2021.

While the body of the deceased has been deposited at the Police hospital, the suspect driver is in police custody assisting with investigations.
A Police Constable, Christ Quarshie who was performing his duty at the Akwadum Police Checkpoint on the Suhum-Koforidua road in the Eastern Region has been knocked down dead by an over speeding vehicle in the early hours of Friday.

The accident reportedly occurred around about 12.10 am when a driver, John Adu Agyei, 53 years who was driving a Toyota Tundra with trade No. DV 3518C-21 from Koforidua heading towards Suhum, on reaching a section of the road at Akwadum Police Check Point crashed into the barricade and knocked down the police officer.

The Eastern Regional Police spokesman, DSP Ebenezer Tetteh, who confirmed the incident to DGN Online said the junior officer, now deceased sustained injuries and was rushed to St. Joseph Hospital, Koforidua where he was admitted for treatment.

DSP Tetteh said his conditions got deteriorated hence rushing him to the 37 Military Hospital, Accra for further treatment, but was pronounced dead on arrival.

The body of the deceased has since been deposited at the Police Hospital mortuary pending autopsy while the suspect is in Police custody assisting in investigation.

---DGN online
MTN Ghana on Friday, December 10, 2021, commissioned a 24-unit classroom block for the Ghana Police Education System at the Police Depot at Tesano in the Greater Accra Region.

The facility has been constructed and handed over to the Police Education system after MTN Ghana Foundation learned of the challenges facing the Police Depot cluster of schools.

The school dates back to colonial-era but its blocks had not seen any major developments, leaving students to study in an unsafe environment and in overcrowded classrooms.

MTN Ghana Foundation in 2019 cut sod for the construction of the 24-unit classroom block to address the challenges of the school.

After 18 months, the project has been executed and officially handed over to the Police Education System for use by the Police Depot Cluster of Schools.

Speaking at the commissioning ceremony, MTN Ghana Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Mr. Selorm Adadevoh said his outfit is proud to give the beautiful edifice to the Police and hope the investment will yield results.

He said through the MTN Ghana Foundation, the telecom giants will continue with additional interventions in the education sector knowing that education is an enabler of opportunities.

We hope our support in this sector will complement governments efforts in ensuring education is accessible to every Ghanaian of school-going age.

Going forward, we will continue to support our communities in the best way we can through the MTN Ghana Foundation, Mr. Selorm Adadevoh assured.

Delivering a keynote address, the Minister in charge of Communications and Digitalisation, Hon. Ursula Owusu-Ekuful described the latest intervention by the MTN Ghana Foundation as an investment into the future of the country.

She said the goal of the investment by the MTN Foundation ties in beautifully with the educational objectives of the President Akufo-Addo government and will go a long way to help pupils that will have the privilege to study in the facility.

In commending MTN for solving the pressing challenges of the Police depot cluster of schools, Hon. Ursula Owusu-Ekuful added, Im confident that this 24-unit facility which also has a headteachers office, staff common room, modern toilet facilities and an ICT lab will provide the conducive environment and promote effective learning and teaching for our cherished students.

Joining in on the praise for MTN Ghana, COP George Alex Mensah, Director General, Technical who represented IGP George Akuffo Dampare extended appreciation to the telecommunications outfit for putting up an edifice that will relocate school children to a safe environment.

According to him, due to the intensity of the work of the Formed Police Unit (FPU), it was crucial the school pupils were relocated from the same compound.

COP George Alex Mensah added, I have had an earlier opportunity to inspect the facility and I can say on certainty that it has been properly constructed to serve the intended purpose.

Im extremely happy to represent my boss on this occasion because it has always been my wish to see these kids relocated to a much safer place and I thank you MTN for that.

COP George Alex Mensah further urged all staff and management who will be working in the school to keep the facility well maintained at all times.

This was a message stressed by the MTN CEO, the MTN Ghana Foundation chairman, the Minister of Communications, as well as the Director of the Police Education Directorate.

The newly commissioned 24-unit classroom block presented to the Police Education System cost the MTN Ghana Foundation GHS3.4 million.

The 24-unit classroom block contains a Nursery and Kindergarten, a Primary School Department, and a Junior High School Department with a student population of approximately 2,500.

The new facility is expected to ease the current pressure in the school and catchment area and will provide a more comfortable environment for teaching and learning.

The commissioning of the facility was graced by several dignitaries including the MP for Okaikwei South Constituency, Honorable Darkoa Newman, Deputy Education Minister, Honorable John Ntim Fordjour, HE Grace Janet Mason, South African High Commissioner, National Communications Authority Board Chair Isaac Emil Bonsu, and Director-General, National Communications Authority Joe Anokye.

Others include officials of MTN Ghana, Municipal Director for Education, Cynthia Obuni, officials of the Ghana Police Service and the Police Training School, School Authorities, PTA Members, as well as Pupils/Students.
This story was originally published by ProPublica.

Phyllis Taylors company is responsible for the longest-running oil spill in U.S. history. Thats been a disaster for the Gulf of Mexico  but a tax bonanza for Taylor.

After the Deepwater Horizon offshore drilling rig exploded in 2010, environmentalists surveying the damage in the Gulf of Mexico came upon a mystery. The water had oil slicks that, because of the currents, couldnt have originated from the site of the notorious accident.

With the help of satellite imagery, they figured out that oil was leaking from a different spill, a six-year-old disaster the public knew almost nothing about. In September 2004, Hurricane Ivan had swept the legs out from under a 40-story oil-drilling platform operated by a company called Taylor Energy, causing a leak that continues to this day. It is the longest-running  and by one estimate, the largest  U.S. oil spill ever recorded, a contentious saga that prompted a recent 60 Minutes segment.

Its been an environmental nightmare for the region  but a massive tax bonanza for Phyllis Taylor, the owner of Taylor Energy and the fallen rig.

According to ProPublicas analysis of a secret trove of tax data, from 2005 to 2018, Taylor took in some $444 million in income, most of it from wages, interest, dividends and capital gains, and didnt pay a cent in federal income tax.

Thats in significant measure because she was able to transform money her company was compelled to spend cleaning up the oil spill into a perfectly legal nine-figure tax write-off for herself.

Representatives for Taylor, now 80, did not respond to repeated requests for comment.

Taylor is part of a set of ultrawealthy Americans who manage to avoid federal income taxes for years on end by using their businesses or leisure interests to throw off enough deductions to offset the millions or even billions of dollars they make. Weve nicknamed the group the biggest losers. Taylors story shows just how lucrative it can be to be a member of that particular club.

Patrick Taylor, Phyllis Taylors husband, founded Taylor Energy in 1979. He would eventually become the richest man in Louisiana and enjoyed the sort of lifestyle that went with the title. He raced speedboats on the Mississippi, rode bulls in rodeos and skydived more than 500 times. But he often said he preferred to be known for his role in advocating for the creation of a beloved state program that provided scholarships to Louisiana colleges and universities.

Taylor Energy operated out of an ornate four-story mansion in New Orleans, off Lee Circle, where a statue of Robert E. Lee stood until 2017. Female employees were not allowed to wear pants, and employees addressed their superiors as sir or maam. Patricks office had hand-painted blue-and-white silk wallpaper from a Russian palace, while a nearby dining room featured marble fountains from an 18th-century French chateau. Rooms were named after Ronald Reagan and the British naval hero Admiral Horatio Nelson
The Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) has finally released a draft framework to regulate retail algo trading after pressure from the public, key whistleblowers and organisations such as Moneylife.

The consultation paper on algorithmic (algo) trading by retail investors, released for discussion yesterday, recognises that retail investors are increasingly using third-party algorithms from algo writers and vendors, without these being approved by the regulator or stock exchanges.

The framework proposed by SEBI seeks to label all orders from an application programme interface (API) as algo order and mandates pre-approval from stock exchanges for algo-trading that would be tagged with the unique algo ID. Further, stock exchanges can give recognition only to brokers and not to any third party algo provider or vendor who creates the algo.

Read: Why Is SEBI Reluctant To Regulate Retail Algos? ). In July this year, we had highlighted how retail investors were using off-the-shelf algos that are being offered by dozen-odd algo-writing platforms, which are entirely outside the purview of regulation. As many as 40 top brokerage firms offer algo-based trading to clients, and there was no clarity on the number of firms writing such algos. ().

At that time a SEBI insider said that the regulator had decided there was no need to regulate retail algos. However in the next few months SEBI officials held meetings with algo writers, including those like Dharmik Thakkar, a whistleblower quoted by us to understand the issues involved and how retail algos could be regulated.

The SEBI paper says, ...unregulated or unapproved algos pose a risk to the market and can be misused for systematic market manipulation as well as to lure the retail investors by guaranteeing them higher returns. The potential loss in case of failed algo strategy is huge for the retail investor. Since these third-party algo providers and vendors are unregulated, there is also no investor grievance redressal mechanism in place. Hence, to make the algo trading safe for retail investors and also to prevent market manipulations, it is felt that there is a need to create a regulatory framework for such algo trading.

At present, exchanges are providing approval for the algo submitted by the broker. However, SEBI says, for the algos deployed by retail investors using APIs, neither exchanges nor brokers are able to identify if the particular trade emanating from API link is an algo or a non-algo trade.

SEBI defines algorithmic trading as any order generated using automated execution logic. And API allows an individual to access brokers trading platforms without logging in manually. The algo writers usually show a back-tested report on trading strategies to sell the idea that you can make a lot of money on rapid intra-day trading.

SEBI had constituted an internal working group that deliberated on unregulated algos being used by investors, especially retail investors, and ways to prevent the same. The working group held meetings with various market participants and based on deliberations, the working group submitted their recommendations.

As per the proposed framework, the stock broker needs to take approval from the stock exchange for all algos. Each algo strategy, whether used by broker or client, has to be approved by exchange, and as is the current practice, each algo strategy has to be certified by a certified information systems auditor (CISA) or auditors holding a diploma in information system audit (DISA).

Further, stock exchanges have to develop a system to ensure that only algos that are approved by the exchange with a unique algo ID is used. The market regulator says that brokers should also deploy suitable technological tools to ensure that appropriate checks are in place to prevent unauthorised altering or tweaking of algos.

Here are other recommendations made by the SEBI working group...

 All algos developed by any entity has to run on the servers of broker, wherein the broker has control of client orders, order confirmations, and margin information.

 Stockbrokers need to have adequate checks in place so that the algo performs in a controlled manner.

 Stockbrokers can either provide in-house algo strategies developed by an approved vendor or outsource the services of a third-party algo provider or vendor by entering into a formal agreement with each third party algo provider or vendor whose services are being availed by the broker.

 The stockbroker is responsible for all algos emanating from its APIs and redressal of any investor disputes.

 Obligations of a stockbroker, investor and third party algo provider or vendor need to be separately defined. The stockbroker is responsible for assessing the suitability of the investor prior to offering an algo facility. No recognition shall be given by the exchange to the third party algo provider or vendor creating the algo.

 Stockbrokers shall ensure that only those third-party algo providers or vendors, with whom the broker had entered into an agreement with shall use the name of the broker as part of their testimonial, provided exchange prescribed advertisement guidelines are met.

 Two-factor authentication should be built in every such system, which provides access to an investor for any API or algo trade. The software to be used to create the strategies should be approved by the exchange.

 Stockbrokers shall include a specific report on algorithm checks implemented by them as a part of the annual system audit report submitted to the exchanges and the format for the same shall be prescribed by the exchanges.

Further, SEBI says there is a need for clarity on whether the services offered by the third party algo providers and vendors are like investment advisory services.

It asked brokers to obtain from their clients details of the nature and type of services taken from algo providers along with a confirmation as to whether the said services are in the nature of investment advisory services. Such details obtained by the broker would help in the formulation of policy framework, if felt necessary, regarding third-party algo providers in future, SEBI says.

SEBI says comments on the consultation paper on algo trading by retail investors can be sent by e-mail or through the post before 15 January 2022. While sending comments through e-mail, kindly mention the subject as Algorithmic Trading by Retail Investors.

Dharmik Thakker, the founder of Algomaker, an algorithmic trading firm that writes code and creates trading strategies for retail clients, has been blowing the whistle on the absence of regulation by writing and attempting to engage with the regulator. According to him, API-based algos can run on any scrip, including penny stocks, and to manipulate a stock using algos, all one needs is multiple user accounts on which any algorithmic strategy can be deployed.

Mr Thakker believes that even innocent investors can become pawns of such algos because end-users may be clueless about the exact trading strategies that they end up deploying. He had prepared a case study by placing an order in stock X with 40 user accounts that subscribed to his service, which shows how bulk orders through the algo could be easily used for market manipulation.

Some algo makers have been advertising their products and charge about Rs500 a month to subscribe to an algo. They have also partnered with dozens of top brokerage firms to ensure direct integration with their platforms through a bridge. The retail client, thus, has a turbocharged system to earn a living by day-trading. But nothing is sure-shot in the markets; many incur large losses, as evident from the anger that spills into social media platforms every time a new break or a tech glitch upsets the programmed logic.
The apartment assigned to me in Calcutta was No 12A, 10 Judges Court Road, located in the posh area of Calcutta  Alipore. Why 12A, you may ask. Actually, it should have been flat 13, but 13 was an unlucky number, you see.

The building had come up in the 1930s to house high-ranking Brits. It comprised two double towers separated by a large lawn. Each of the four blocks had only one flat on each floor. The lift opened directly into a foyer in your flat, not into a mundane lift lobby. The building was known simply as Number 10  the rest of the address was superfluous. My bank had seven flats in the building, of which one was mine.

The flat had been designed for the gora bada-saab (big boss). It had an enormous living room with seating for 25 people (the boss entertained at home often), a very large master bedroom (the mem-saab needed space), a mid-sized bedroom for the children on vacation (from boarding schools back home, you know), and a small room for the baby and the nanny.

There was a large kitchen, a pantry and servants quarters, of course  the nether regions where the Boss was never supposed to venture.

To a casual visitor the building was indeed very grand. When I brought my elderly father home soon after I arrived, I could see that he was quite impressed. Later I heard that my father had remarked to a friend of his: My younger son has not studied much, but he seems to be doing quite well.

To explain, my father was a historian and educationist. B Tech or MBA was, in his eyes, not much of an education  a Ph D was his benchmark.

But the fact remained  my father had been impressed by Number 10.

For all its grandeur and hauteur, Number 10 had two problems, as we soon discovered.

The first was cockroaches. My bosss wife had warned my wife not to switch on the lights if she ever entered the kitchen at night, to get a bottle of water, perhaps.

She had explained that if you walked around the kitchen at night you would hear a crunch, crunch sound  cockroaches being trampled under your slippers. It was better not to see them, she had recommended, hence no lights in the kitchen at night.

Pest control? Yes, of course, pest control was done, perfunctorily perhaps, but the cockroaches just took casual leave and went to another floor, only to return to their native place when the smell abated.

The other problem was a battery, or perhaps I should say the lack thereof.

It was the mid-1980s, and the Communist government had not yet fully succeeded in driving out all the industries from West Bengal, though it was trying hard using gheraos, and bandhs. A few factories still ran, and consumed electricity, due to which power cuts were a daily affair.

Number 10 had two gen-sets, one for each tower. Unfortunately, between them they shared only one battery. It was a toss-up whether the battery was attached to the gen-set in your tower when the power went off, or to the other tower.

If the latter, you would have to wait until they started the other gen-set, disconnected the battery, trundled it across on a trolley, connected it to the gen-set in your tower, and only then would lights come on in your flat.

Why a second battery could not be purchased was a question that remained unanswered all through my two years in Number 10.

For all its minor blemishes Number 10 remained a premier address, and its occupants were expected to follow certain unwritten norms, as I found out in the early days.

The building had an ancient central AC arrangement running on a chilled brine system. Every room had a floor mounted blower, which received cold salt water through a pipe and blew air past it to cool the room.

One evening, after a heavy shower, I felt that the flat was very muggy and opened the windows of the living room to let in some fresh air. A little later I shut the windows and started the AC. Very soon a large pool of water collected on the floor at the base of the blower unit.

Alarmed, I called for help from the buildings maintenance chaps. A grizzled veteran in a faded uniform turned up. He looked at the water, nodded and turned to me to ask Apni janala khule chilen? (Bengali, meaning  did you open the windows?)

I nodded in assent.

He looked at me as if he was talking to some village yokel. Dos nombor Judges Court Road-e janala khola hoi na. (At No 10, Judges Court Road, windows are not opened.)

I realised that by opening the windows I had let in the moisture-laden air from outside. When the AC started the moisture had condensed, resulting in the pool of water.

More importantly, I had been made aware of my failure to live up to the norms of the grand residence of the bosses.

The Diary Boss

My Boss was a diary man.

He prided himself on procuring a leather-bound Economist diary, one page for each day, well before the New Year arrived. This diary would sit on his desk at all times.

Whenever he gave any instruction for something to be done, or received an assurance that a certain task would be completed by a stated date, he would enter it in his diary.

Woe befell any officer who failed to deliver on the due date. Even if you did deliver as promised, the boss was not happy. The safest path was to report completion the day before the due date.

As you might have guessed, the key was to know for which date he had made a diary entry in your name. You had to be on very good terms with the bosss secretary because she alone had access to the diary, and could therefore give you this crucial information.

This boss had another method of keeping control.

If he called you up early one morning and asked Whats happening in Lipton? it meant that he had met someone from Lipton the previous day, maybe on the golf course or at a party, and found out something that was happening in Lipton.

He expected you to be able to tell him what he had already heard. If you didnt know, it was a big black mark.

Both systems were very effective. They kept everyone on their toes.
TUXTLA GUTIERREZ, Mexico (AP)  A cargo truck jammed with people who appeared to be Central American migrants rolled over and crashed into a pedestrian bridge over a highway in southern Mexico on Thursday, killing at least 53 people and injuring dozens more, authorities reported.

The federal Attorney Generals Office said the preliminary estimate lists 53 dead, with three of the injured in critical condition.

Luis Manuel Moreno, the head of the Chiapas state civil defense office, said about 21 of the injured had serious wounds and were taken to local hospitals.

The crash occurred on a highway leading toward the Chiapas state capital. Photos from the scene showed victims strewn across the pavement and inside the trucks freight compartment.

Video footage showed the dead and injured migrants jumbled into a pile inside the collapsed freight container, with some struggling to extract themselves from the weight of bodies piled atop them.

Later, rescue workers arranged the dead in rows of white sheets, side by side, on the asphalt.

The victims appeared to be immigrants from Central America, though their nationalities had not yet been confirmed. Moreno reported that some of the survivors said they were from the neighboring country of Guatemala.

Sitting on the pavement beside the overturned trailer, survivor Celso Pacheco of Guatemala said the truck felt like it was speeding and then seemed to lose control under the weight of the migrants inside.

Pacheco said there were migrants from Guatemala and Honduras aboard and estimated there were eight to 10 young children. He said he was trying to reach the United States, but now he expected to be deported to Guatemala.

Rescue workers tried to excavate survivors from a pile of humanity in the flipped trailer, separating the injured from the dead. Dazed wounded stumbled among the wreckage.

Marco Antonio Sanchez, director of the Chiapas Firefighter Institute, said ambulances raced victims to three hospitals, carrying three to four injured each. When there werent enough ambulances they loaded them into pickup trucks, he said.

Guatemalan President Alejandro Giammattei wrote on Twitter: I deeply regret the tragedy in Chiapas state, and I express my solidarity for the victims' families, to whom we will offer all the necessary consular assistance, including repatriation.

Moreno said that it appeared that speed and the weight of the trucks human cargo may have caused it to tip over, and that as the vehicle toppled over it hit the base of a steel pedestrian bridge. There was a curve in the road near the accident scene that may have contributed to the crash.

That meant at least 107 people were crowed into the vehicle. It is not unusual for freight trucks in Mexico to be carrying so many people in migrant-smuggling operations in southern Mexico.

But rescue workers who first arrived at the scene and who were not authorized to be quoted by name said that even more migrants had been aboard the truck when it crashed and had fled for fear of being detained by immigration agents.

One paramedic said some of those who fled into surrounding neighborhoods were bloodied or bruised, but still limped away in their desperation to escape.

The truck had originally been a closed freight module of the kind used to transport perishable goods. The container was smashed open by the force of the impact. It was unclear if the driver survived.

Those who spoke to survivors said the migrants told of boarding the truck in Mexico, near the border with Guatemala, and of paying between $2,500 and $3,500 to be transported to Mexico's central state of Puebla. Once there, they would presumably have contracted with another set of migrant smugglers to take them to the U.S. border.

In recent months, Mexican authorities have tried to block migrants from walking in large groups toward the U.S. border, but the clandestine and illicit flow of migrant smuggling has continued.

In October, in one of the largest busts in recent memory, authorities in the northern border state of Tamaulipas found an 652 mainly Central American migrants jammed into a convoy of six freight trucks heading toward the U.S. border.

Irineo Mujica, an activist who is leading a march of a couple of hundred migrants who have been walking for more almost 1 1/2 months across southern Mexico, blamed Mexico's policies of cracking down on migrant caravans for the disaster.

Mujica and his group had almost reached the outskirts of Mexico City on Thursday, after weeks of dealing with National Guard officers who tried to block the march. Mujica said the group would stop Thursday and offer prayers for the dead migrants.

These policies that kill us, that murder us, is what leads to this type of tragedy, Mujica said.

In fact, they are two very different groups. Caravans generally attract migrants who don't have the thousands of dollars needed to pay migrant smugglers.

Migrants involved in serious accidents are often allowed to stay in Mexico at least temporarily because they are considered witnesses to and victims of a crime, and later Thursday Mexico's National Immigration Institute said it would offer the humanitarian visas to the survivors.

The agency also said the Mexican government would help identify the dead and cover funeral costs or repatriation of their remains.

Mass deaths of migrants are something that President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has been desperate to avoid, even as his administration has accepted requests from the U.S. government to stem the flow of migrants moving north. It is very painful, he wrote on his Twitter account.

It was one of the worst single-day death tolls for migrants in Mexico since the 2010 massacre of 72 migrants by the Zetas drug cartel in the northern state of Tamaulipas.
Victor May doesn't have cable television in his house just outside Collinsville. It's an extra cost he can't afford  everything goes toward his more than $300 monthly phone and internet bill.

"All the money has to go to internet use," May said, "or phones, I should say."

His service amounts to three wireless hotspots, one each for him, his wife and 16-year-old daughter, on top of three cell phone lines.

It's still frustratingly slow when May tries to work from home for his trucking business or when his daughter does homework.

"It's usually easier to hop in my truck and go to Starbucks."

They tried satellite, but at $250 a month for even more dismal speeds, it wasn't worth it. Neither was the cost of relocating a utility pole closer to his property off Lockmann Road, as was proposed by another provider he called for six years before it contacted him with yet another untenable solution.

"I'm just trying to get something, anything," May said.

May is just one of countless Illinoisans who don't lack total access to the internet. They just have bad, expensive internet.

Illinois will soon get at least $100 million from the federal government to provide internet to 600,000 residents who have no home access. But it's not clear if the money will address the other massive connection problem people like May face.

Internet access issues, whether they're about speed, reliability or affordability, cut across all classes. Low-income, middle-class and the wealthy are at the mercy of internet providers and what they want to charge and provide. For those in poverty or living in rural areas, it's usually worse.

Yet they have no choice, said Crystal Calvin, a Belleville mother of three whose neighbors less than a half-mile away have reliable internet.

Calvin pays $180 a month for two cell phone hotspots with limited data. When they run out of data, often within a few weeks of the billing period, that's it. No more internet connection at home.

"The price that you have to pay for unreliable service and also the limitation to options is ridiculous," said Calvin, who has considered adding a third hotspot to their monthly bill. "You're forced to pay whatever price is set."

Students and their families in Brooklyn, the historic Black community also known as Lovejoy, also used hotspots during the pandemic to connect to school, said Ronald Ferrell, the district's former superintendent. The Lovejoy area still doesn't have reliable broadband.

"It was hell. No wireless internet, the pandemic had hit, the internet was acting up out there. Man, it was rough," Ferrell said. "It's a shame the Lovejoys, the Venices, the Madisons still don't have those services."

Reliability and affordability aren't reflected in the state's numbers on connectivity. More than 99% of Illinoisans have access to minimum speeds set by the federal government, according to Kevin Poe, managing director of the metro-east branch of the nonprofit PCs for People. Only 10% of people lack access to speeds just above the federal minimum.

"The percentages look great, but how affordable is the internet and what kind of internet is it?" said Poe, whose statistics come from the Illinois Office of Broadband.

The office mostly gets its data from the internet providers, and the numbers don't reflect cost or reliability, Poe said. Data based on resident responses tells a different story: 19% of households report not having any internet access at all, according to the U.S. Census Bureau's 2019 American Community Survey. The Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity says 600,000 people don't have home internet access.

Whether Illinois will spend its infrastructure money to help free people from slow, pricey internet will depend on how it defines "access." Does it mean a community is completely offline? Will the state count a wireless internet provider that offers snail's pace speeds for $65 a month in an impoverished community? Do residents have access to hotspots?

"Hopefully they're not using hotspots as an example of connectivity," Poe said. "You can flood a community with hotspots and yeah, it helps them, but it's more of a bandaid."

Illinois Department of Broadband Director Matt Schmit said the state is focused on helping Illinoisans gain access to speeds much faster than the federal minimum by investing in fiber.

"We've looked beyond that threshold in Illinois," Schmit said. "We want to be investing in infrastructure that can meet all needs and realize it is a moving goal post because bandwidth needs change over time. Just think of how many devices you have connected in your home at any given time. It's far greater than it was a few years ago, and so we have to anticipate what that bandwidth need of today and tomorrow."

Illinois has already invested hundreds of millions in broadband under Gov. J.B. Pritzker's Rebuild Illinois plan. The governor said that work paved the way for the state to use federal dollars effectively.

"We are, let's say, shovel-ready here in Illinois for making sure that we carry out the mandate that we have broadband for everybody," Pritzker said at an event in Chicago Thursday night.

Much has yet to be determined about how the state will spend federal money to boost its existing broadband strategy. As the discussion of infrastructure spending ramps up, Illinoisans like Calvin continue to suffer slow speeds, few options and expensive service.

"They know these people have no choice," she said.

What is broadband?

Broadband is an umbrella term for multiple types of high-speed internet. Some are faster and more reliable than others, according to the Federal Communications Commission.

The most common types include DSL and cable, which use existing phone and cable television lines to deliver internet. Fiber-optic lines are much faster than DSL and cable, and provide service through transparent glass fibers. Only 13.4% of Illinoisans have access to "future proof" fiber technology.

Wireless broadband travels by radio signal from the provider's equipment to a customer's home. There's also satellite broadband, which delivers internet by connecting to a satellite orbiting the earth. Wireless and satellite can be as fast as DSL and cable, but can also be affected by the weather and "line-of-sight" interference such as trees.

The federal government's minimal acceptable speed is enough for one student doing remote learning, or one person on a telehealth call, or one person working from home, Schmit said.

"That is absolutely the bare minimum," he said.

While that situation may have been more common prior to 2021, the COVID-19 pandemic drastically changed how families use the internet. It's no longer a discretionary item, and is closer in necessity to water or heat, said U.S. Sen. Tammy Duckworth, a Democrat from Illinois.

"It's a utility. Stop thinking of it like people used to think of cable TV 50 years ago. I'm sorry, no, it's a utility. It is just as important as water or sewer or anything else and we saw that during COVID," Duckworth said.

Michael Needles, a father of eight and home-builder living outside of Collinsville, doesn't have reliable access at his home.

Throughout most of 2020 and early 2021, he and his wife Karolyn had to get all their kids online for school. Suddenly the federal standard wasn't enough for a large family who all needed to video chat at the same time.

With no access to fiber-optic or wired internet service, they were paying roughly $400 a month during the height of the pandemic for a 3G hotspot and two satellites.

"That definitely did not work," Needles said. "We went through several options and all of them throttle you down after so much data usage."

Now they pay $250 for cell phone plans plus more than $100 for "unlimited" satellite internet that slows down after a week or so of use. On rainy days it hardly works at all. While the kids are back at school in-person, they almost always need reliable internet for homework.

"It's amazing how crucial internet access is to a modern American family. It just really is," Needles said. "Twenty years ago it wasn't imperative to have it, and now it is."

Illinoisans face frustrating and at times ridiculous dilemmas in trying to access the internet.

Needles said he built his family's home on a three-acre plot off Lebanon Road with a promise from an internet company to provide wired broadband service.

After completing construction nearly three years ago, they made an appointment to connect internet to the house, but no one ever showed up, Needles said. When he inquired again, they told him they book appointments through a third-party service, and their new home was not eligible for service.

Kristi Nichols faced a similar situation when she and her husband moved to a semi-rural area outside New Baden. Frontier Communications, a Connecticut-based broadband provider, told Nichols they would have access. After they moved, Frontier changed their minds.

"When they came out here to install everything, they said you don't get a good enough signal out here for the internet," Nichols said.

A Frontier spokeswoman said the company has since addressed a "simple system issue" that indicated service was available at Nichols' home when in fact it was not. She said the company regrets the inconvenience.

Yet another metro-east resident, Cort Hacker, lives near Lebanon with his three children and pays $300 for satellite television and an AT&T hotspot so he can work from home.

There's a fiber-optic line that runs directly in front of his house, but he's not allowed to access it. It's for commercial use only, he said.

"I live three minutes from the high school. It's crazy thinking we have those kind of problems," Hacker said. "It's 2021. How are we not there yet? It's ridiculous."

Others go to extreme lengths for reliable service. Nathan Stooke, CEO of Mascoutah-based internet provider Wisper, said one of his customers took out almost all the trees on his property just so he could access Wisper's line-of-sight wireless broadband from a nearby tower.

They install a transmitter on a tall structure such as a grain silo or water tower. A dish on a customer's home picks up the signal and transmits it to their home router, connecting them to the internet. Trees could block the signal.

"His brother had borrowed a (bull)dozer for building his house, and he just took the dozer and knocked them all over," Stooke said, "and there was the beautiful tower there."

Internet companies don't have a great track record with keeping promises, but some Illinoisans are hopeful about another promise.

Needles paid $100 to get on a waiting list for Elon Musk's promised Starlink, a network of low-orbit satellites that are expected to provide high-speed internet to those with few options. If Needles is ever able to sign up, it'll be an additional $400 for them to send a satellite dish. He's not sure how much it will cost per month.

"I'm hoping that improves things, but I haven't heard any updates," Needles said.

That technology might help someone like Tom Kirkley, a design engineer who lives in rural St. Clair County. His only option for connecting to work from what he calls "no man's land" in a valley is sluggish satellite broadband for $100 a month.

"It's better than nothing."

Should the internet be a utility?

Nichols, whose husband works from home as an insurance broker, now pays about $300 per month for satellite television and an AT&T cell phone plan plus a hotspot with unlimited data.

It's her only affordable option.

Despite the cost, the internet is hardly useful. It freezes up during video calls, and Nichols and her husband can't use it simultaneously. They thought about signing up for a satellite broadband service, but those plans come with data caps they would run through in no time.

They continue to pay because they have no choice.

"They just gouge you," Nichols said. "We're lucky enough to be able to afford this. There are a lot of people who can't."

There's no incentive for companies to provide better service, said Calvin, the Belleville mother.

"They really need to treat it like a utility rather than all these tight-knit companies owning those lines, owing those services," Calvin said.

While utilities like water, sewer and electric often only have one provider in a community, they're heavily regulated by the government. Many said they'd like to see the internet similarly regulated. Duckworth said she agrees.

"Water companies are not allowed to slow down your water pressure unless you pay more. If you pay for your water bill, everyone gets the same water pressure in the town. So, the utility companies can't slow down your electricity or your water but that's what cable companies want to do."

Legislation to prevent internet providers from slowing down speeds faced Republican opposition in Congress and failed. But some communities took it upon themselves to provide their own services.

Highland, in the metro-east, owns and operates its own fiber-optic internet service for the city's roughly 10,000 residents.

For internet speeds more than twice as fast as the federal minimum standard and a basic cable television bundle, they charge $54 a month. They used $13 million in government bonds to build the network, and service fees go toward paying off debt and expanding service.

For speeds that would easily accommodate Needles' eight children all doing homework online and streaming video at the same time,

Highland charges $95 a month. A plan that would work for a retired couple who mainly do some online shopping or web browsing costs $25 a month.

It's not a utility because residents opt-in to the service and it's not considered required infrastructure, said Highland Communication Services Director Angela Imming. But is is an alternative.

"People associate lack of internet access with rural areas, and that's just not the case. The big box companies have a grip on urban areas as well," Imming said.

The internet would be a utility when "the federal government says it doesn't matter where you live, we're still going to make sure you can have drinking water, 9-1-1 or internet connectivity," Imming added.

"That would be a utility."

Highland is only able to offer its internet service to people within city limits. Once it finishes extending service to all residents  Imming hopes that will happen next year  it can begin expanding to people in unincorporated areas.

The city's costs are relatively low compared to legacy internet companies, which is why they can provide cheap service to residents.

They're not paying off the cost of installing copper phone wires decades ago.

"To get fiber only two mile linear radius is financially impossible," Imming said. "To have a corporation decide they're going to do this is just not feasible."

Stooke, the Wisper CEO, said Illinoisans should be skeptical of turning internet into a utility."I would love to bill you for usage. You pay for usage of water. You pay for usage of electricity. By all means, let me bill you for what you use on the internet, "Stooke said.

"But nobody understands what they use on the internet."

With more federal dollars coming in for broadband infrastructure, Stooke believes the country might be moving toward regulating the internet like a utility. The need for competition among internet providers would still exist, he said.

"We don't have water competition. We don't have power competition," Stooke said. "If the phone companies and the cable companies had done what they were supposed to do, there'd be no reason for Wisper. They would've provided service everywhere. There's a business reason why they didn't and that business reason will still be there even if we're treated like a utility."

Yet more municipalities are becoming interested in developing their own high-speed internet service. Imming says she has heard from leaders in Jacksonville, Greenville and other Illinois towns for guidance.

"I expect its going to start coming even more furiously now," she said.

How will Illinois use broadband infrastructure money?

Illinois is expected to get at least $100 million from the infrastructure deal President Joe Biden signed in November. The money will be used to encourage private companies to expand their networks and will also support the state's existing efforts.

There are two parts to the broadband money, Duckworth said. The first will help people who don't have any access and those who can't afford it. The two will overlap.

"Sometimes you have communities that don't have any access at any price. We've got to get those communities hooked up,"

Duckworth said. "Then there's the affordability piece. It's not affordable if it's $400 a month."

The infrastructure money would support programs like PCs for People. Using pandemic relief and state money, the organization provides low-cost computers and internet hotspots for $15 a month. They also help people access the federal government's $50 per month stipend for connection.

"That's where we need it, to keep doing what the original pandemic money started," Poe said. "That's what I hope to keep doing, bridging the gap."

Connecting communities to reliable internet will also be key. Needles said he would like to see the infrastructure money pay for more wired, reliable access from fiber-optic lines.

But that's costly, about $80,000 per mile. Wireless internet is cheaper and quicker to install, said Stooke, the Wisper CEO. They use fixed wireless broadband technology to provide internet  it costs 20% of fiber-optic installation, according to Stooke.

Using $220 million from the federal Connect America Fund, Wisper has grown its network to include 68 new towers in four states, including Illinois. They plan to use money from the infrastructure deal to continue their expansion, Stooke said, including the rollout of new technology that will allow Wisper's internet signal to pierce through tree cover.

Yet a relatively small number of Illinoisans have nothing. The infrastructure money is expected to help them get online with something and help those who can't afford it pay for service, but there's no guarantee of reliability.

The Office of Broadband called the infrastructure money "a historic level of funding to improve the infrastructure that keeps our communities connected." The state has already laid out its plans for developing broadband under Gov. J.B. Pritzker and has started implementing it through the Connect Illinois program.

The office partnered with other groups, including the University of Illinois Extension, to help communities prepare to use federal infrastructure money for internet improvements. The Leadership Council Southwestern Illinois took part in the Illinois Connected Communities program.

The state set aside $420 million for broadband in Pritzker's Rebuild Illinois infrastructure spending package. In southernmost Illinois, grant money was awarded to build out wireless and fiber internet in Saline, Williamson, Johnson, Union and other counties. In the metro-east, a project will provide broadband service to an unserved area south of Troy on Equus Lane.

A third round of Connect Illinois will make $350 million available to Illinois communities soon for achieving "universal access," Pritzker said.

Imming says the state will have to make avenues to help underserved communities apply for and win money from the federal pot.

"There are some communities that are really have a hard time getting their trash picked up, getting good clean drinking water, fixing roads," Imming said. "They have so many other things they're worried about that this doesn't even enter their minds. When you get to the point of, 'Hey, we need better options and access,' it's too late."

Imming said she also hopes the state will consult with local leaders and give them power over spending.

"When you give money to the government to decide, it goes right back to the lobbyists," Imming said. "Local government is actually at the end of making sure people have high-speed internet."

Schmit, the director of Illinois' broadband office, said they want to work with communities.

"We really want the community to drive what their broadband vision is, be part of the conversation," Schmit said.

As state leaders begin deciding how to use the millions coming to Illinois, Victor May will continue paying his more than $300 monthly bill. He has considered moving just to get affordable, fast internet, and realizes now he shouldn't have assumed proximity to nearby internet lines means access.

"I thought it was everywhere," he said.
A longer-than-anticipated wait is almost over, with the historic Ayers Mansion at 876 W. State St. nearly ready for its first guests as the upscale and newly renamed Villa DeWolf Bed and Breakfast.

The house is done, owner Scotty DeWolf said. The necessary things are done that will get me my certificate of occupancy from the city.

Being so close to the finish line  or the starting line, depending on your point of view  after a nearly four-year renovation effort has left DeWolf in the mood for a celebration, so hes hosting a holiday open house at the mansion from 1 to 4 p.m. Saturday and Sunday. Admission is $10.

Just like the old days of the 19th century, when people used to visit each others homes, DeWolf said.

Along with being able to wander the home  which was built in 1857 and renovated by the design team of Jacksonville native Jerry Lee Ingram and Davide Rocchi, both of Florence, Italy  on their own, guests will be able to join one of DeWolfs guided tours at 1:30, 2:30 and 3:30 p.m. each day. Live music and snacks will round out each days activities.

The idea is that a lot of people have already toured the house and largely are coming for some camaraderie and some holiday fun with their friends, DeWolf said. For the people who have already seen the house and dont need the tour, Ill be serving Martinellis cider and cookies.

Tim Chipman will play the piano on Saturday and, on Sunday, the musical group Wild Columbine will play music that would have been played in the house from the 1850s to 1880s.

DeWolf credits interior designer Carol Kinzer for making the tour possible, not only by loaning him some of the holiday decorations for the house but also overseeing their set-up.

She has been a godsend, DeWolf said. If it wasnt for her, there wouldnt be a tour.

Each of the public rooms in the house has been graced with holiday touches, from a trio of moose on a chair in the parlor to wrapped presents scattered around the second-floor landing. The house also boasts several Christmas trees, though the main one graces the ballroom.

My favorite spot, of course, is the ballroom, because it has the Steinway grand piano and I like to go in there and play, DeWold said. Its going to be a favorite of guests, because it just is. I notice that every time people come, they want their picture taken in there, sitting on the sofa in front of the wallpaper.

A few minor details remain to be finished on the house, including a railing on a side porch and a paved parking area, DeWolf said. The railing will be installed as soon as it arrives and the parking area will make do with gravel until concrete can be poured in the spring.

DeWolf and his dog, T. Bone, intend to be moved in by Christmas, he said.

Were not going to move in between now and the open house, DeWolf said. We will be moved in by Christmas Eve, so T. Bone and I can have a stocking in the west parlor and get something from the man in red coming down the chimney.

The first guests will take just a bit longer to arrive. DeWolf intends to take January to settle in and ensure everything is perfect, from testing the bed and breakfasts breakfast menu to rehearsing service strategies and housekeeping  rather than open and make mistakes in front of the public, he said  before hopefully being ready for the first guests in February.

While DeWolf has an Airbnb 4.98-star rating as a superhost for his nearby Ayers Mansion II extended-stay suites, Villa DeWolf will involve a different type of hosting, he said.

This one, people will be coming to stay in my house, he said. Ill be hosting them. Its a lot more personal service.

Which is why he plans to rehearse. He wants the Villa DeWolf  proceeds of which will benefit his non-profit Esprit de Corps Academy  to have as solid of a reputation among his guests as his Ayers Mansion II has.

Its what keeps me putting my boots on at 4:30 every morning, he said.
WARSAW, Poland (AP)  A Polish junior minister and valuable ally of the governing right-wing coalition said Friday he was temporarily stepping aside from his cabinet duties to defend himself against allegations over his past business dealings.

Deputy Sports and Tourism Minister Lukasz Mejza, who is an independent lawmaker in Poland's parliament, said on Twitter that he needed time to defend his good name.

He also said he would request temporary leave from his parliamentary duties, but vowed to still support the governing coalition.

Mejza, 30, joined the government in October. The move was seen as intended to secure his backing for the government, which is three votes short of a parliamentary majority and is seeking  and finding  allies to back its legislative work.

But soon after his appointment, media reports claimed Mejza was involved in a failed venture that marketed alleged medication for cancer or Parkinson's disease that had not been approved by Poland's health authorities. Another public relations and training business he was associated with allegedly could not account for all of the European Union regional development subsidies it had received, according to media reports.

The opposition called for his dismissal, without success.

Opposition agrarian party official Piotr Zgorzelski, a deputy speaker of parliament, claimed Friday that Mejza was sending a warning to the government that it couldn't count on his support in the near future.

The office of President Andrzej Duda said it was awaiting explanations regarding Mejza.
LONDON (AP)  A British appellate court opened the door Friday for Julian Assange to be extradited to the United States on spying charges by overturning a lower court decision that the WikiLeaks founders mental health was too fragile to withstand incarceration in America.

The High Court in London ruled that U.S. assurances about Assanges detention, received after the lower court decision, were enough to guarantee he would be treated humanely. Assange's lawyers say they will ask to appeal.

In the ruling, the High Court directed the lower court judge to send the extradition request to Home Secretary Priti Patel, who would make the final decision on whether to send Assange to the U.S. for trial.

There is no reason why this court should not accept the assurances as meaning what they say, a two-judge panel of the High Court said in its ruling.

Since WikiLeaks began publishing classified documents more than a decade ago, Assange has become a lightning rod for both criticism and veneration.

Some see him as a dangerous secret-spiller who endangered the lives of informers and others who helped the U.S. in war zones. Others say WikiLeaks has publicized official malfeasance that governments wanted to keep secret.

Both views have been debated as Assange has sought his freedom  and to evade the Americans.

The U.S. has asked British authorities to extradite Assange so he can stand trial on 17 charges of espionage and one charge of computer misuse linked to WikiLeaks publication of thousands of leaked military and diplomatic documents.

Assanges fiancee, Stella Moris, called Friday's decision a grave miscarriage of justice that threatens the rights of journalists everywhere to do their jobs without fear of retaliation by governments that dont like what they publish. She said Assanges lawyers would seek to appeal.

We will fight, Moris said outside the court, where supporters chanted and waved banners demanding Assanges release. Every generation has an epic fight to fight and this is ours, because Julian represents the fundamentals of what it means to live in a free society.

Assange, 50, is currently being held at the high-security Belmarsh Prison in London. The High Court ordered that he remain in custody pending the outcome of the extradition case.

Assange has been in detention since he was arrested in April 2019 for skipping bail during a separate legal battle. Before that, he spent seven years holed up inside Ecuadors Embassy in London. Assange sought protection in the embassy in 2012 to avoid extradition to Sweden to face allegations of rape and sexual assault.

Sweden dropped the sex crimes investigations in November 2019 because so much time had elapsed.

In January, District Judge Vanessa Baraitser rejected the U.S. request to extradite Assange, saying the Australian citizen was likely to kill himself if held under harsh U.S. prison conditions.

U.S. authorities later provided assurances that Assange would not face the severely restrictive conditions that his lawyers said would put his physical and mental health at risk.

If convicted, Assange wont be imprisoned at the supermax penitentiary in Florence, Colorado, the highest-security prison in the United States, American authorities promised the court. They also pledged that he wouldnt be held under special administrative measures, which can include segregation from other prisoners and the loss of privileges such as visits, correspondence and use of the telephone.

They also said he would be eligible to serve any prison sentence in his native Australia.

American prosecutors say Assange unlawfully helped U.S. Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning steal classified diplomatic cables and military files that WikiLeaks later published, putting lives at risk.

The charges Assange faces carry a maximum sentence of 175 years in prison, though lawyers for the U.S. have told British courts that the longest sentence ever imposed for such an offense was five years and three months.

Lawyers for Assange argue that their client shouldnt have been charged because he was acting as a journalist and is protected by the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution that guarantees freedom of the press. The documents he published exposed U.S. military wrongdoing in Iraq and Afghanistan, they say.

Barry J. Pollack, a lawyer for Assange in the U.S., called Friday's decision highly disturbing, citing unfounded allegations that the U.S. plotted to kidnap or kill his client.

The U.K. court reached this decision without considering whether extradition is appropriate when the United States is pursuing charges against him that could result in decades in prison, based on his having reported truthful information about newsworthy issues such as the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, he said.

Human rights advocates argue that the U.S. government wants to stifle its critics. While the British High Court was not ruling on the merits of the charges, the extradition proceedings have opened a broader discussion about Assange's case.

Amnesty Internationals Europe director, Nils Muiznieks, said the indictment poses a grave threat to press freedom both in the United States and abroad.

If upheld, it would undermine the key role of journalists and publishers in scrutinizing governments and exposing their misdeeds  and would leave journalists everywhere looking over their shoulders, Muiznieks said Friday.

But so far, the court has opted to ignore these issues all together, said Nick Vamos, the former head of extradition at the U.K.s Crown Prosecution Service. Now that the American assurances, have been accepted, Assange would have to base his appeal on other matters he raised in the district court  all of which had been rejected in the past.

All of the political heat is interesting for the media, but for the extradition court, they dont seem to be concerned about it, Vamos told the BBC.

Vamos said that if Assange is given permission to appeal, the case could go on for another six months. If the courts decide he has no grounds for appeal, it could be over as soon as January.

We had a phrase when I was working on the extradition team at the CPS ... that extradition isnt over until the wheels are up on the plane, he said. "Anything can happen, even at the last second."
Walking for Wellness: 7 a.m.-1 p.m., Jacksonville High School Bowl, 215 S. Church St. Free | Indoor walking program open each day that Jacksonville schools are in session.

Produce and Bakery Giveaway: 9 a.m.-noon, Jacksonville Food Center, 316 E. State St. Free | For Morgan County residents.

Illinois Freedom Project: 10 a.m.-4 p.m., Old School Museum, 110 E. Cherry St., Winchester. | Traveling exhibit through Dec. 18. For group/student visits, call 217-742-8090.

Free Noon Meal: 11:45 a.m.-12:30 p.m., Salvation Army, 331 W. Douglas Ave. | Meals in to-go containers and can be picked up at side door.

Produce and Bakery Giveaway: 12:30-1 p.m., Salvation Army, 331 W. Douglas Ave. Free.

Christkindlmarket: 4-8 p.m., Central Park, downtown Jacksonville. | Vendors, food trucks, local shopping, Santa, face painting, music, and more. Event continues Saturday 10 a.m.-4 p.m. For more information, including schedule of events, go to jacksonvillemainstreet.com.

Morgan County Audubon Society: 7 p.m., First Presbyterian Church, 870 W. College Ave. | Colin Dobson will present 2021 Birding Adventures and Projects. Masks required and social distancing followed.

John Morgan: 8 p.m., Casey's Pub & Hall, 2200 Meadowbrook Road, Springfield. | Presented by Donnie B's Comedy Club.

Saturday

Santa Claus Visit: 8-11 a.m., Chapin American Legion, 534 Superior St. Donations accepted. | Meet, take pictures, and have breakfast with Santa. Dine in or carryout. Proceeds benefit Chapin Volunteer Fire Department.

Christmas on the River: 9 a.m.-3 p.m., Naples Boat Club, 103 Montgomery St., Meredosia. Prices vary. | Bake sale, chili and vegetable soup, sale items include Carriger Woodworking, hand-made crochet items, jewelry and more.

Breakfast with Santa: 9:30 a.m.-12:30 p.m., Elks Lodge, 231 W. Morgan St. | Doughnuts, coffee, milk and orange juice with Santa.

Voices and Votes: Democracy in America: 10 a.m.-4 p.m., Jacksonville Area Museum, 301 E. State St. | The Smithsonian Museum on Main Streets exhibit runs through Dec. 22. For more information, go to jacksonvilleareamuseum.org or Facebook page.

Illinois Freedom Project: 10 a.m.-4 p.m., Old School Museum, 110 E. Cherry St., Winchester. | Traveling exhibit continues through Dec. 18. For group/student visits, call 217-742-8090.

Christkindlmarket: 10 a.m.-4 p.m., Central Park, downtown Jacksonville. | Vendors, food trucks, local shopping, Santa, face painting, music, and more. For more information, including schedule of events, go to jacksonvillemainstreet.com.

Holly Jolly Christmas: 10 a.m.-4 p.m., Amvets Post 100, 210 E. Court St. | Holiday craft show.

Holiday Open House: 11 a.m.-2 p.m., Spa 314 and Juniper by Hannah Pate, 314 E. State St. | Free treats, mimosa bar, hot chocolate and more.

Brown Bag Lunches: Noon, Congregational Church UCC, 520 W. College Ave. Free | For those who are hungry.

Local Author Event: 1 p.m., Jacksonville Public Library, 201 W. College Ave. Free | Eli Goodman, author of "The Adventures of Abe: The $5 Bill," "The White Horse" and more, will discuss his books at this in-person event. For more information, call 217-243-5435 or go to jaxpl.org.

Christmas Open House: 1-4 p.m., Villa DeWolf, 876 W. State St. Donation of $10 a person | Scotty DeWolf will be conducting tours, and sharing history and stories from the 1800s. Musical performance by Tim Chipman, South Elementary School Principal. Light refreshments.

Springfield Ballet Company-The Nutcracker: 2 p.m. and 7 p.m., UIS Performing Arts Center, 1 University Plaza, Springfield. | For more information, go to uispac.com.

Live Nativity Drive-Through: 4-6 p.m., Island Grove United Methodist Church, 16128 Old Jacksonville Road, New Berlin.

Visit with Santa: 5:30 p.m., Home of Keith and Jennifer McNeece, 636 S. Church St. Free | Visit Santa and enjoy the Christmas light display. Santa will have stuffed animals for younger children and everyone gets a candy cane. Santa will also visit on Dec. 18.

John Morgan: 7:30 p.m. and 9:30 p.m., Casey's Pub & Hall, 2200 Meadowbrook Road, Springfield. | Presented by Donnie B's Comedy Club.
These days, it is hard to find much thats stable in contemporary "strategic stability," the polite phrase describing the balance of nuclear terror. Thirty years after the end of the Cold War, global efforts must resume to prevent the proliferation of weapons that can never be "uninvented."

Just a one-time "tactical" use of a nuclear weapon would completely transform the world. Yet new technologies and deteriorating relations with China and Russia are now raising the risks. Technical upgrading of nuclear weapons continues to ensure the weapons reliability; while this cannot be avoided, hugely de-stabilizing changes to the weapons delivery systems can and must be slowed.

Recent reports describe Chinese orbital vehicles circling the globe, while Russia has just tested an anti-satellite weapon putting dangerous space trash into low earth orbit. The U.S. now strives to regain the hypersonic advantage.

Thirty years ago, in 1991, a newly -independent Kazakhstan shuttered a 18,500 square kilometer Soviet test site at Semipalatinsk which, since 1949, had conducted 1,100 nuclear tests  the equivalent of 2,400 Hiroshima-sized bombs.

Since then, and with U.S. help, Kazakhstan has remained focused on non-proliferation. Former president Nursultan Nazarbayev had defied Moscows wishes in 1991; five years later his country completely relinquished what had been the worlds 4th largest nuclear arsenal. Accession to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty has kept it on this path ever since, managing its two contiguous nuclear-armed neighbors, China and Russia, while staying on good terms with the U.S.

Consistent with this thrust, Kazakhstan recently launched the Global Alliance of Leaders for Nuclear-Free World, to rekindle the non-proliferation dialogue. A low-enriched uranium bank has been set up in Kazakhstan under the aegis of the International Atomic Energy Agency. This "LEU bank" has stockpiled 90 metric tons of low-enriched uranium hexafluoride, a fuel for the most common light water reactor in use today.

Unlike the Trump era, the Biden administration wants strategic dialogue with China and Russia, especially as todays competitive great power environment poses an inherent risk of conflict. The new delivery systems pose the most immediate risks; hypersonic vehicles can now glide to targets undetected by a free-fall trajectory. This opens the specter of a first-strike capability, the stuff of nuclear nightmares.

Prioritizing arms control should not be a hard sell, but todays security agenda includes many threats  global pandemics, global warming, global migratory pressures, cyber security sabotage, and, not least, a rise in authoritarian leadership.

Severally or collectively, none of these challenges equates to nuclear catastrophe. Avoiding nuclear war still comes first. The Kazakhs focus on "old-fashioned arms control," curbing production and dispersal of nuclear weapons materiel, and slowing the build-up of nuclear arsenals now under way in North Korea, South Asia, and China.

Three decades have passed since Kazakhstans bold move. Memories fade. The Trump administrations flippant attitude to arms control elicited matching disdain from Russia and indifference from China. Yet new trends in weapons miniaturization and in weapons delivery systems, worry the national security establishments of nuclear powers.

When the Cold War ended, bipartisan congressional leadership helped fund denuclearization programs in Kazakhstan and other former Soviet republics. This year, Kazakhstans National Nuclear Center signaled continuing support for strong foreign partnerships (meaning primarily the U.S.). In August, President Joe Biden sent a letter to Kazakhstan President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, applauding the 30th anniversary of Kazakh independence and the closing of Semipalatinsk.

Working with the U.S. Defense Threat Reduction Agency, the Kazakhs interact with China and Russia in ways we cannot. Kazakhstans outreach includes interaction with European nuclear agencies, with Japan, and with the IAEA.

Naturally, monitoring civil liberties and governance will also figure in any U.S. relationship with Kazakhstan, or the other countries now adjusting to the Taliban victory in Afghanistan. Weakening a key non-proliferation partner makes little sense, especially with declining strategic stability. Theres lots of room to discuss secondary issues with Kazakhstan, but preventing nuclear war still tops the list.
Some 500 years ago, migrants from England, Italy, France and Germany left for the new world. It was practically an alien planet to them, inhabited with people that didnt look like anything they had ever seen, and wild creatures theyd never come up against. Many people either died on ships or in their first few years in a strange world. But leave they did. More followed. Thats how bad things were living under the aristocratic serfdom of the old world, with its lid on personal freedoms.

The COVID-19 policies of their ancestral home should stand as a reminder to all of us that they left Europe for a reason. The major powers of Europe have gone insane with COVID-19. Lets not be like Europe.

The Austrian government has decided that if you are not vaccinated, you cannot be part of civil society. They are now checking peoples vaccine cards, usually stored on unhackable, unforgeable QR codes. Tens of thousands of Austrians have protested in recent weeks.

Germany is heading toward the same, with Christmas celebrations segregated between the vaccinated and the unvaccinated.

Protests that have erupted from Rome to Trieste over the last week make the Black Lives Matter protests in New York City in the summer of 2020 look small. So far, Italys leader, Mario Draghi, ex head of the European Central Bank, has not budged on requiring the so-called Green Pass to live and work in Italy.

Rotterdam locals are clashing with police over a new mini-lockdown imposed by The Netherlands government after lifting lockdowns earlier this year. All four of those countries have a vaccination rate of at least 62%.

You will have to be on social media to see any of these protests. The corporate press here in the U.S. will not touch it. They are all for European-style restrictions. Europe is the sophisticated, vaccinated crowd  as Barack Obamas maskless Marthas Vineyard birthday party crowd was once described.

There is a method to all this madness.

Where Germany goes, France and Italy usually follow. If France and Italy ignore protesters against vaccine requirements and QR coded tracking of vaccine status, then all of the main powers of Western Europe are in lockstep. That will signal to Englands Eurocrats that QR-coded vaccine passes are the right way to go. The Germans know what they are doing. Lets copy them.

That will signal to U.S. and Canadian cities to do the same. Its a dominoes game.

Assuming the Germans and Austrians know the COVID-19 vaccines are not immunizing and therefore do not stop transmission, they would then know that segregation and vaccine requirements are useless. That means what they really want is for everyone to comply to a more centralized control system being built in Europe. The QR-coded vaccine passport is a gateway to a digital control system, a system in which a China-style social credit score will eventually be added. European leaders support this. This is the direction they are heading.

In the biggest powers of Europe, the pandemic has sold them on centralized control. They have become more adamant about this since two courts in the U.S. nixed OSHA rules on vaccine requirements for businesses. Once again, its those ugly Americans that stand in the way. The U.S. symbolizes decentralization. China is centralization. Europe is making its own version, wrapped in the pretty bows of social and environmental sustainability touted by the World Economic Forum of QR-coded vaxpass Switzerland.

Italians and French, Austrians and Dutch, are protesting against centralization, even if they dont quite have the words to describe what they are up against. Meanwhile, the managerial elite in newsrooms, the C-suite and parliaments, in the science departments, simply see these people like Brexiteers. Its the same attitude towards the people, only now it is more repressive  it is criminalized in Europe.

And censored.

We are witnessing the formation of a new feudalism, one that wishes to mitigate all risks associated with democracy. Give people no choice. Its less chaotic that way. Where is the champion in Europe for political expression today?

We learned in Western Civ class that Greece is the birthplace of democracy. But we also learned that Europe is the birthplace of the aristocracy; a medieval world of serfs and lords and a Holy Roman Empire that persecuted people who didnt play by the Black Plagues rules. Europe later brought us the Renaissance, which got ruined by fascism.

We left that. Lets all agree to never go back.
Review: Leo, JLaw are trying to warn us in Dont Look Up

Review: Leo, JLaw are trying to warn us in Dont Look Up View Photo

You know youre in deep doodoo when that planet-destroying comet on a collision course with Earth isnt your biggest problem.

Your biggest problem: Youre the scientist who discovered the darned thing but nobody has the patience or the bandwidth or the political will to believe it. And its coming. In six months. Thats a fact.

That the comet is a stand-in for climate change is hardly a secret going into Dont Look Up, Adam McKays exceedingly watchable, funny and star-studded yet somewhat chaotic satire. For one thing, its star is Leonardo DiCaprio, for whom climate change awareness is a passion.

What becomes clear soon enough is that the film is also about the pandemic, and vaccine resistance, and the tendency in American society for issues that have nothing to do with politics to become hopelessly political.

Dont Look Up sees McKay (Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy and Talladega Nights) returning to comedy after turning to darker, political themes in The Big Short, about the 2008 financial crisis, and Vice, his Dick Cheney biopic.

As those last two films showed, McKays filmmaking can be dazzling, brainy and so fast-moving that one had better not sneeze for even a moment. The material is less dense here  the utter simplicity of a comet headed toward Earth is the whole point, really  and nobody suddenly launches into iambic pentameter, as Christian Bale and Amy Adams memorably did in Vice (although come to think of it, there are actors here whod be perfect  we have Meryl Streep and Mark Rylance, for heavens sake).

But while I enjoyed the mix of humor and emotion (and outright terror)  there are laugh-out-loud moments and also deeply poignant ones  some might find the tonal shifts a bit jarring. Perhaps a more valid nit to pick is that the the jampacked script doesnt quite do all these movie stars justice. And what a group McKay has assembled: DiCaprio, Jennifer Lawrence, Streep, Cate Blanchett, Rylance, Jonah Hill, Timothee Chalamet, Tyler Perry, among others. Not to mention Ariana Grande, who nails her performance of a hilarious theme song.

We begin at Michigan State University, where, in a terrific pre-credits sequence, astronomy grad student Kate Dibiasky (Lawrence, feisty and funny and perfect), doing some telescope work one day, is stunned to realize shes discovered a comet.

But when her mentor, Prof. Randall Mindy (DiCaprio, toning down his charisma to portray a nerdy academic prone to panic attacks), does some calculations, he cant believe his eyes: The planet killer comet will hit Earth in six months.

Soon the pair are in touch with the Planetary Defense Coordination Office (a real thing), and flying to Washington to meet with the self-involved, inept and somewhat corrupt President Orlean (Streep, with 20-something hair and pointy red glasses). In the Oval Office, nobody is too worried, least of all Orleans insufferable son and chief of staff, Jason (an obnoxiously funny Hill, clearly improvising much of the time). Jason is particularly doubtful because Randall and Kate are not Ivy Leaguers: Watch JLaw offer to show her SAT scores.

As for POTUS, whos in the middle of a scandal with her Supreme Court nominee, she has one, impatient question: OK, whats the ASK here?

The only choice is to go to the media. That doesnt go too well either. On a popular morning show, The Daily Rip, the hosts (Tyler Perry and Cate Blanchett, having lots of fun) dont get the point either, and the message gets lost amid memes about Randalls nerdy attractiveness and Kates on-air explosion (Were all gonna die! she screams.)

Meanwhile, an attempted lifesaving mission onto the comet  a la Armageddon  encounters its own problems. And then tech billionaire Peter Isherwall gets involved. Rylance, masterful at playing strange types, has perhaps never looked or sounded quite this weird, with his perfect hair and too-white teeth. Through this not-quite-developed character, McKay conveys his obvious disdain for the billionaires currently cavorting in space.

Then there are the conspiracy theorists. Their slogan? You guessed it: DONT LOOK UP.

Finally comes the Network moment  the moment well see in DiCaprios awards clip, when he breaks down on television to tell the world his own, updated version of the famous Im mad as hell and Im not going to take this anymore! speech.

If much of the movie is played for laughs, this part clearly isnt. Nor is the moment when Randall looks at the sky and finally sees the comet  terrifying but also beautiful. At these moments, and the quiet ones where McKay cuts away for lovely shots of wildlife, the film arguably works best: cutting through the clutter and showing whats really at stake.

Dont Look Up, a Netflix release, has been rated R by the Motion Picture Association of America for language throughout, some sexual content, graphic nudity and drug content. Running time: 138 minutes. Two and a half stars out of four.

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MPAA definition of R: Restricted. Under 17 not admitted without parent or adult guardian.

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This story corrects the running time to 138 minutes, not 145 minutes.

By JOCELYN NOVECK

AP National Writer
Taiwan loses diplomatic ally Nicaragua to China View Photo

TAIPEI, Taiwan (AP)  Taiwan lost Nicaragua as a diplomatic ally after the Central American country said it would officially recognize only China, which claims self-ruled Taiwan as part of its territory.

There is only one China, the Nicaraguan government said in a statement Thursday announcing the change. The Peoples Republic of China is the only legitimate government that represents all China, and Taiwan is an inalienable part of the Chinese territory.

As of today, Nicaragua breaks its diplomatic relations with Taiwan and ceases to have any official contact or relationship, it added.

The move increases Taiwans diplomatic isolation on the international stage, even as the self-governed island steps up official exchanges with countries such as Lithuania and Slovakia, which do not formally recognize Taiwan as a country. Now, Taiwan has 14 diplomatic allies remaining.

What is most important to Taiwan is the number of countries with which it maintains diplomatic relations, Jason Marczak, director of the Atlantic Councils Adrienne Arsht Latin America Center, said in an email. In Central America, Nicaragua is now the third country that has switched recognition from Taiwan to China in the last four years. I wouldnt be surprised if more are to come.

Taiwans Ministry of Foreign Affairs expressed sadness and regret and said it would immediately recall its diplomatic staff.

The more successful Taiwans democracy, and the greater the international support, then the greater the pressure from the authoritarian camp, Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen said Friday in response. Whether its diplomatic pressure or military intimidation, we will not change our determination to adhere to democracy and freedom, to go on the international stage and participate.

China has been poaching Taiwans diplomatic allies over the past few years, cutting down the number of countries that recognize the democratic island as a sovereign nation. China is against Taiwan representing itself in global forums or in diplomacy. The Solomon Islands chose to recognize China in 2019, cutting diplomatic ties with Taiwan.

The Nicaraguan government signed an official communique to reestablish diplomatic ties with China in Tianjin on Friday, according to Chinese state broadcaster CCTV. Under the agreement, Nicaragua promises not to have any official contact with Taiwan going forward.

The resumption of diplomatic ties between China and Nicaragua is a policy decision, and definitely not a trading of bargaining chips, Chinas Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson Wang Wenbin said at a daily briefing Friday. He denied that there were any economic preconditions to establishing ties.

Some experts say the switch is not necessarily a significant loss for Taiwan and may only have been a matter of time. Taiwan has been increasing its exchanges with Western countries and has emphasized the sharing of democratic values and working with like-minded nations.

Everyone could see early on that this diplomatic relationship couldnt be kept, said Antonio C. Hsiang, a professor at La Academia Nacional de Estudios Y Estrategicos in Chile and an expert on Taiwans relations in Latin America.

Taiwans emphasis on democratic values stands in contrast to many of its diplomatic allies, such as Nicaragua or Honduras.

Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega was reelected in November in what the White House called a pantomime election.

The arbitrary imprisonment of nearly 40 opposition figures since May, including seven potential presidential candidates, and the blocking of political parties from participation rigged the outcome well before election day, U.S. President Joe Biden said in a statement in November in response to Ortegas election.

The U.S. State Department also weighed in on the diplomatic switch on Friday, saying in a statement that Ortegas actions cannot reflect the will of the Nicaraguan people, who continue to struggle for democracy and the ability to exercise their human rights and fundamental freedoms.

Honduras, meanwhile, faces rampant corruption in its government. President Juan Orlando Hernandez faces allegations of ties to drug traffickers, according to U.S. federal prosecutors in New York. His brother was arrested in Miami in 2018 by U.S. authorities on suspicion of drug trafficking.

Hsiang, the professor, said he viewed the diplomatic break as a response to the growing Taiwan-Lithuania relationship, as well as Taiwans invitation to Bidens Summit for Democracy, which is being held this week.

Chinese officials viewed it as a victory in a larger playing field. We won yet another beautiful battle, another Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson, Zhao Lijian, wrote on his personal Weibo account, while sharing a video of Nicaraguan Foreign Minister Denis Moncada Colindres reading the statement saying that Taiwan is an inalienable part of China.

Zhao called the change part of an irresistible trend.

Nicaragua established diplomatic relations with Taiwan in the 1990s, when President Violeta Chamorro assumed power after defeating Ortegas Sandinista regime at the polls. Ortega, who returned to power in 2007, had maintained close ties with Taipei until now.

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Associated Press senior video producer Johnson Lai contributed to this report.

By HUIZHONG WU

Associated Press
Nobel Peace Prize winners call for journalist protections View Photo

COPENHAGEN, Denmark (AP)  The two journalists who shared this years Nobel Peace Prize received their awards Friday during a pomp-filled ceremony in Norway, with both warning that the world needs independent reporting to counter the power of authoritarian governments.

Maria Ressa of the Philippines and fellow laureate Dmitry Muratov of Russia gave their Nobel lectures at Oslo City Hall. The Norwegian Nobel Committee awarded them the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize for their separate fights for freedom of expression in countries where reporters have faced persistent attacks, harassment and killings.

Yes, we growl and bite. Yes, we have sharp teeth and strong grip, Muratov said of journalists. But we are the prerequisite for progress. We are the antidote against tyranny.

Muratov also used his speech to give a dire warning about the potential for a war between Russia and Ukraine. A massive Russian troop buildup near Ukraines border has led to Western diplomatic efforts to prevent an invasion, which the Kremlin has denied it is planning.

In (the) heads of some crazy geopoliticians, a war between Russia and Ukraine is not something impossible any longer. But I know that wars end with identifying soldiers and exchanging prisoners, Muratov said.

Ressa, 58, co-founded Rappler, a news website critical of the Philippine government, in 2012. Muratov, 59, was one of the founders in 1993 of the independent Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta.

Ressa, the first person from the Philippines to win the Nobel Peace Prize, offered a bleak assessment of the journalism industry, saying the era of competition for news is dead.

We need to help independent journalism survive, first by giving greater protection to journalists and standing up against states which target journalists, she told the audience of 200 people, including Norwegian royals and officials who sat with a meter (3 feet) separating them for the pandemic-curtailed ceremony. Normally the Oslo event is attended by 1,000 people.

Ressa, who was visibly moved, couldnt resist taking a selfie with Muratov inside the Oslo City Hall before the arrival of the Norwegian royals.

Together with the medals featuring the effigy of the prizes founder Alfred Nobel and diploma, came 10 million kronor ($1.1 million) to be shared between them.

Norwegian Nobel Committee chairwoman Berit Reiss-Andersen said free speech and information are a basic prerequisite for democracy itself. The laureates are participants in a war where the written word is their weapon, where truth is their goal and every exposure of misuse of power is a victory.

Muratov said that in Russia, journalism is going through a dark valley with many reporters and human rights activists being branded as foreign agents.

Many of our colleagues have lost their jobs. Some have to leave the country. Some are deprived of the opportunity to live a normal life for an unknown period of time. Maybe forever

Muratov ended his lecture by asking the assembly to honor reporters who have given their lives for this profession, with a minute of silence. I want journalists to die old.

On Thursday, the Brussels-based International Federation of Journalists said that imprisonments of media workers are on the rise, with 365 journalists behind bars compared with 235 last year. Nine journalists have been killed in the line of duty in Afghanistan alone and 102 imprisoned in China.

Russia still has 12 journalists behind bars, and three reporters were killed in the Philippines, it said.

David Beasley, head of the World Food Program that won the 2020 Nobel Peace Prize, also gave a lecture in Oslo and called on world leaders to assert your power and stop all of these horrible wars. Beasley was given the award last year at a ceremony in Rome, due to the pandemic.

He said that the combination of conflict, climate and COVID has created an unprecedented perfect storm, adding 45 million in 43 countries are knocking on famines door and it is within our power to save them.

He also urged billionaires to give us the $6.6 billion we need to prevent famine now and save 45 million lives now, and said they know how to revolutionize phones, cars, rockets, and retail. Help us revolutionize how the planet eats.

Ceremonies honoring all of the newest Nobel laureates are usually held in Oslo and Swedens capital, Stockholm, on Dec. 10, the anniversary of prize founder Alfred Nobels death. However, due to the pandemic, the awards in physics, chemistry, medicine, literature and economics were presented during ceremonies in the laureates hometowns.

The ongoing coronavirus pandemic still affects our lives in a profound manner. Like last year, the Nobel award diploma and medals have been handed over to you, Carl-Henrik Heldin, chairman of the Nobel Foundation, said later Friday at a ceremony to pay tribute to the laureates at Stockholm City Hall.

The 250-strong audience included Swedens King Carl XVI Gustav, senior members of Swedens royal family, scholars and officials. Normally, approximately 1,250 people attend.

Wrapping up the nearly 90-minute event, actress Lena Olin who hosted the ceremony said the 2021 laureates are dedicated to truth in various forms  scientific knowledge, the human experience and the fundamental right of journalists to report facts.

In Oslo, the day is to end with a torchlit procession from the citys Central Station to the Grand Hotel, where the Peace Prize laureates are to greet the parade from a balcony.

By JAN M. OLSEN

Associated Press
Tuolumne County Public Health reports the death of a woman in her 40s. There are 14 new Covid cases since yesterday with 13 who are unvaccinated, the woman who passed away was unvaccinated. Active cases are down 5 to 75 including seven people who are hospitalized, one person who is hospitalized is vaccinated. Todays newly reported cases had three cases age 17 or younger and two cases age 60 or older. New Covid cases by gender and age: one boy age 0 to 11, one girl and one boy age 12 to 17, four women age 18 to 29, two women in their 30s, three women in their 40s, one woman her 60s, and one woman in her 70s.

The total current case rate, a 14-day average for Tuolumne County increased to 19.8 from 19.4 per 100,000 population. A total of two individuals were released from isolation, in all 6,121 have been released from isolation. There have been 6,358 community cases and 146 deaths. A total of 58% of the population eligible to get vaccinated has been vaccinated. There have been 1,621 inmate cases, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) reports no active Covid case at the Sierra Conservation Center. The SCC manages 3,271 inmates including all the southern fire conservation camps.

Tuolumne Public Health also shares this week is National Influenza Vaccination Week noting, If you havent received a flu shot yet, theres still time. People with certain chronic conditions are more likely to develop serious flu complications. To protect yourself and your loved ones, flu shot appointments are available every Tuesday morning from 8:30-11:30 at the Tuolumne County Public Health Department, call to schedule at 209-533-7401.

Calaveras County Public Health reports eight new cases, active cases remains at 35 with four hospitalized. The total number of confirmed cases is 4,448. One of the new cases is age 17 or younger and none are age 65 and older, in total 819 under age 17 and 756 over 65 have been identified with covid. There are eight more recovered cases for a total of 4,322 cases recovered and 54.73% of the eligible population is fully vaccinated in the county.

Mariposa County states in an effort to be proactive they are hosting a Webinar for local businesses in regard to the Omicron Variant. Mariposa County Public Health Officer, Dr. Eric Sergienko who is also Tuolumne Countys intrim health officer, will provide a briefing regarding Omicron Variant related to the variant being identified in San Francisco. Dr. Sergienko will answer any questions or concerns. Join the webinar, Friday, December 10 at 9am go at:

https://www.gotomeet.me/MariposaCountyVR03

Or Dial In from the United States: +1(872)240-3212 Access Code: 612-485-181

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, get tested right away. The Tuolumne County State testing site is open 7 days a week 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.

Mariposa LHI/OptumServe testing site will move from the Senior Center to the YARTS Park and Ride beside Rite Aid on December 14. This week testing is open Tuesday to Thursday at the Senior Center site from 7:00  11:30 am, 1:00  4:00 pm, and 5:00  7:00 pm. Friday, December 10 the Senior Center site will be open from 7:00  11:30 am only. Saturday, December 11 the Senior Center site will be closed and Tuesday, December 14 the testing site will open at the YARTS Park and Ride beside Rite Aid at 7:00 am and have the following hours: Tuesdays  Saturdays, 7:00 am  12:00 pm, 1:00  4:00 pm, 5:00  7:00 pm.

COVID-19 Vaccine appointments and booster vaccine shots available to adults over 18 as detailed here or for children ages 5 to 11 can be made through myturn.ca.gov, by calling 833-422-4255, or the pediatric vaccine may also be available through some pharmacies and healthcare providers more details are here.

Tuolumne Public Health says, There are positive actions we can take to protect ourselves and those around us from illness, hospitalization, and death from COVID-19. Vaccination is the most important step we can take to reduce the spread of disease, and reduce the impact to our healthcare system. Also, the continued practice of other preventive actions like wearing a mask in public, keeping your distance, avoiding crowds, washing hands, cleaning surfaces, and staying home when sick will help slow the spread of the virus. These actions remain the same in light of the Omicron variant.

County/Date

Active

New

Total Deaths Amador 12/9 44 2 3,854 60 Calaveras 12/9 35 8 4,448 91 Mariposa 12/9 31 0 1,640 18 Mono 12/9 64 11 1,727 5 Stanislaus 12/9 1,237 104 82,279 1,449 Tuolumne 12/9 75 14 7,979 146
Winter Storm Will Bring Heavy Snow To The Mountains

Snow On Road View Photo

A Frost Advisory remains in effect for the Mother Lode and the Northern San Joaquin Valley until 10 AM this morning.

This morning temperatures range from the upper twenties to lower thirties.

Frost can kill sensitive outdoor vegetation if left uncovered.

Make sure outdoor pets have shelter from the cold.

A strong winter storm will bring heavy snow to the mountains of California. The snow will first arrive in northwestern Shasta County on Saturday afternoon, spreading southeast into the southern Cascades and the northern Sierra Nevada from Saturday night into Sunday morning.

The National Weather Service has issued a Winter Storm Watch for the Sierra Nevada from Saturday evening through late Tuesday night.

The snow levels will gradually lower over time through late Monday and Tuesday.

Expect major snowfall above 4,000 feet.

Total snow accumulations above the 5,000 foot elevation, will range from one to six feet. The higher you go, the more the snow.

Anticipate significant travel delays with extremely difficult to impossible travel over the mountains. Significant reductions in visibility are likely.

Strong winds with gusts around sixty-five mph, will further reduce visibilities during this event with white-out conditions.

Damage to trees and power lines is possible.

A Winter Storm Watch means there is potential for significant snow, sleet or ice accumulations that may impact travel.
Sacramento, CA  The California Air Resources Board formally voted Thursday to ban the sale of new gas-powered mowers, blowers and other yard equipment in the coming years.

Sales of equipment like gas-powered mowers and blowers will be prohibited in 2024, and the sale of new gas-powered generators will end in 2028. Generators are of extra interest in the more rural areas like the Mother Lode which deal with semi-regular power outages during storm events.

Environmental advocates praised the new rules, while many landscaping businesses were adamantly opposed. The state has promised to make at least $30-million available for programs to help landscaping companies purchase equipment to make the transition.

Californians will still be able to use gas-powered equipment, but new products will not be available for sale. California is trying to transition to 100-percent renewable energy sources by 2045. Sales of new gas-powered cars will end in 2035.
Companies rethink return-to-office plans amid omicron cases View Photo

NEW YORK (AP)  Companies of all sizes are rethinking their plans to send workers back to the office as the new omicron variant adds another layer of uncertainty.

Alphabets Google and the nations second largest automaker Ford Motor Co. are among those once again delaying their return-to-office plans, while other businesses whose employees have already returned are considering adding extra precautions like requiring masks. Officials in the United Kingdom, Denmark, Norway and Sweden also have asked people in recent days to work from home if they can because of concerns about the variant.

Meta, formerly known as Facebook, and ridesharing company Lyft separately announced Tuesday that theyre letting workers delay their return when offices fully reopen early next year. Meta still plans to open its headquarters at the end of January but will allow workers to delay their return as late as June. Lyft says it wont require workers to come back to its offices for all of next year, though they will fully reopen as planned in February.

Janelle Gale, vice president of human resources for Meta, said the latest decision recognizes some arent quite ready to come back.

The moves are the latest indication of how difficult it is for companies to set firm plans for their employees mandatory return as worries about a spike in new cases or new variants keep shifting deadlines. This fall, the delta variant spurred many big companies to postpone a mandatory return to early next year.

A year and a half ago, we thought this would be for a very short time, said Jeff Levin-Scherz, population health leader at Willis Towers Watson, a global advisory firm. But the pandemic has thrown us many curves, and employers need to continue to be nimble.

The firms survey of 543 employers with 5.2 million workers showed on average 34% of remote-capable employees remain remote, but that would decline to 27% by the first quarter of 2022. However, the survey was conducted before news of omicron surfaced.

The delayed plans are yet another blow to already struggling restaurants, bars, dry cleaners and other businesses that rely on office workers as patrons. Particularly hard-hit are those in downtown or midtown areas of cities like New York dominated by office buildings that remain largely empty.

The delays come even as U.S. health officials say early indications suggest omicron may be less dangerous than delta, which continues to fuel hospitalizations.

Lawrence Gostin, a public health expert at Georgetown University, doesnt believe theres enough scientific information on omicron to warrant companies delaying their return-to-office plans.

There will be a constant stream of new variants as well as surges and waning of cases, Gostin said. We shouldnt disrupt normal business activity at every possible trigger.

He noted that layered protection like masks, vaccinations and ventilation are highly effective at preventing virus spread in a workplace.

Still, the stream of new variants is having a psychological impact on business owners.

Omicron has made me realize work life will never return to the way it was pre-COVID, said Gisela Girard, president of advertising agency Creative Civilization, whose 12 employees have been working remotely since March 2020. It made me realize how working from home is likely to keep employees, their families and also our clients safe.

This summer, Girards company aimed for a mandatory hybrid work plan to start in fall, but delta pushed back those plans to early next year. Now, omicron has her reconsidering not only those plans but whether employees should return at all. She renewed the office lease last year but said shes rethinking the physical office space.

For companies that have already brought workers back to the office, its harder to retreat and allow them to be remote again. Still, some are considering new safety measures.

Kent Swig, president of Swig Equities LLC, a privately owned real estate investment and development company in Manhattan, said its 65 employees returned to the office in fall 2020 on a hybrid basis and went to five days a week in the office in May, after all were vaccinated.

However, Swig says hes now closely monitoring the new variant and will consider mandating masks and even requiring COVID-19 testing a few times a week if the threat increases. He said he will reverse course and start hybrid or remote work if the situation gets worse.

My first and foremost job is to protect all my staff, Swig said. I am going to err on the side of caution.

Levin-Scherz noted many employers have set multiple dates for return to the workplace over the past year, and at this point are looking to resolve more uncertainty before they set new dates.

Target CEO Brian Cornell recently told The Associated Press that its avoiding putting dates on the calendar for a mandated return to its Minneapolis headquarters. Target started gradually opening collaboration areas and workspaces in the fall for employees who wanted an option to work on-site.

Were going to learn along the way and make sure we make the right steps for our team, Cornell said.

Lyft said the decision to let workers choose to work remotely for all of 2022 wasnt tied exclusively to omicron but said new variants are a factor contributing to uncertainty.

Weve heard from our team members that they value continued flexibility in determining where they work and would benefit from additional time to plan, said Ashley Adams, a Lyft spokeswoman.

Meanwhile, Google is indefinitely delaying the mandatory return to its offices. A company spokesperson said in an email that the update was in line with its earlier guidance that a return would start no sooner than Jan. 10 and depend on local conditions. The company said it safely opened more than 90% of its U.S. offices and nearly 40% of U.S. workers came into the office in recent weeks.

Ford said Monday that it will delay plans for hybrid work at its Dearborn, Michigan, headquarters until March and plans to start a pilot phase for select employees in February. It had previously said it wouldnt start the hybrid work model before January.

Ford said that the hybrid work model affects approximately 18,000 employees in North America. Hourly manufacturing employees returned to work in May 2020.

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Follow Anne DInnocenzio: http://twitter.com/ADInnocenzio

By ANNE DINNOCENZIO

Associated Press
Biden says hard work ahead to bolster democracies View Photo

WASHINGTON (AP)  President Joe Biden on Friday wrapped up his two-day democracy summit, an event that was more about starting a global conversation about how best to halt backsliding than producing immediate results or expanding democracys reach.

Biden and fellow leaders announced initiatives to stem autocracies from misusing big tech to stifle dissent, enhance election integrity, bolster independent media and other modest efforts that the president said would seed fertile ground for democracies to bloom around the world.

But the U.S. president also acknowledged the path ahead was difficult for democracies amid a rise of authoritarianism around the globe.

We know how hard the work is thats going to be ahead of us. but we also know that we are up to the challenge, Biden said in remarks to close the virtual meeting.

All told, Biden pledged the U.S. would spend up to $424 million in the next year around the world to support independent media, anti-corruption work and more.

The administration sought to frame the virtual summit  a gathering Biden had made a priority during his first year in office  as a launching point for the more than 100 nations invited to collaborate at a difficult moment for democracies. Biden said he wants to reconvene a follow-up gathering in person next year.

Former NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said the summit was a good starting point for a year of action.

I hope the 110 leaders will rally around some basic principles for democratic societies, and the aim should be to strengthen our voice and our efforts to counter the advancing autocracies like China, Russia and other autocrats, Rasmussen said.

The president has repeatedly made a case that the U.S. and like-minded allies need to show the world that democracies are a far better vehicle for societies than autocracies. It is a central tenet of Bidens foreign policy outlook  one he vowed would be more outward looking than his predecessor Donald Trumps America First approach.

But his first year in office has been a period that he says has been marked by a backward slide for democracy around the globe.

In recent months, Sudans prime minister was ousted in a military coup, Cuba tightened control of the internet after some of the biggest protests on the island in years, and Myanmars military toppled the civilian government and imprisoned leader Aung San Suu Kyi.

Biden has repeatedly taken China and Russia to task for squelching the voices of democratic activists and committing human rights abuses. He avoided direct mention of both nations in interactions with leaders during the summit, but their presences loomed large.

The summit was held as the Biden administration has been pressing Russias Vladimir Putin to step back after a massive buildup of troops on the Ukraine border that has created growing concern in Washington and European capitals.

Biden earlier this week said he warned Putin of severe consequences if Russia invaded.

Both China and Russia fiercely criticized the summit, with their ambassadors writing a joint essay ahead of the gathering. They wrote the Biden administrations decision to hold the summit reflected a Cold-War mentality that would stoke up ideological confrontation and a rift in the world.

The United States, along with Australia, Denmark and Norway, on Friday announced the launch of a joint effort that aims to stem the misuse of technology by authoritarian powers to stifle dissent and seeks to help develop new tech innovations that support human rights.

The initiative, in part, calls for establishing a voluntary written code of conduct thats meant to guide government and tech companies on human rights criteria for export and licensing policy. Under the global charter for digital public goods, governments, civil society groups, software engineers and tech companies would declare principles for open source tech products.

The United States will take greater responsibility for the digital tools we export, U.S. Agency for International Development administrator Samantha Power said. All too often, technology originates in a hub of innovation like the United States and is exported to countries that use that technology to enable human rights abuses.

The White House also faced scrutiny for whom it invited to the summit. Only 5% of the population of the 111 countries represented live in countries where the right to free speech, right to protest and other core civic rights are fully respected, according to CIVICUS Monitor, a group that monitors civic freedoms.

Several countries  including India, Iraq, Pakistan, Poland and the Philippines  were given invitations despite concerns raised by civil society groups and the U.S. State Department about serious anti-democratic trends or human rights concerns in those nations.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki said the invitations were not mean to be intended as a stamp of approval and the administration was seeking a diverse range of voices and faces and representatives at the discussion.

Biden said it was also a moment for the United States to look inward about shoring up its own democratic institutions, and called on U.S. lawmakers to pass voting rights legislation, including the John Lewis Voting Rights Act. The legislation is largely backed by Democrats in Congress but stalled by Republicans in the Senate.

Whats true around the world is also true in the United States, Biden said. The sacred right to vote, to vote freely, the right to have your vote counted is the threshold liberty for democracy.

 Associated Press journalist Tracy Brown contributed reporting.

By AAMER MADHANI

Associated Press
California cops arrest 180 in takedown of violent gang View Photo

SAN BERNARDINO, Calif. (AP)  Authorities on Thursday announced the takedown of a Southern California street gang that included 180 arrests and the seizure of illegal gambling machines, drugs and guns.

The investigation into the violent Westside Verdugo gang, which has been based in the San Bernardino area for decades, also helped detectives solve two homicides, authorities said.

David Green, police chief in the city of San Bernardino, announced the arrests in a news conference with California Attorney General Rob Bonta and Jason Anderson, the countys district attorney.

Members and associates of this gang have committed violent crimes in San Bernardino with no regard for the people in the community who are directly or indirectly harmed, Bonta said in a statement.

The 180 people arrested include 129 convicted felons, 40 people who are on probation and 12 on parole, Green said in an email.

Investigators on Wednesday executed 34 search warrants in San Bernardino County, officials said. They arrested 31 people and seized 11 firearms.

The probe also targeted the gangs illegal gambling parlors, which allegedly brought in tens of thousands of dollars weekly, authorities said in a statement.

Detectives shut down 30 gambling sites  including some linked to five homicides and other violent crimes this year and seized more than 100 gambling machines and devices, officials said in the statement.

Authorities also said they seized 92 handguns and 19 assault weapons, nearly $300,000 in cash and hundreds of pounds of narcotics.
WARSAW, Poland (AP)  Germany's new foreign minister voiced solidarity Friday with Poland while also calling for humanitarian treatment of migrants and refugees stuck near the country's border with Belarus as temperatures plummet.

German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock also raised the delicate matter of rule of law under Poland's right-wing government, which has been at odds with the European Union over its attempts to exert control over Polish judges.

Baerbock was sworn in Wednesday as part of German Chancellor Olaf Scholz's coalition government. Speaking in Warsaw alongside her Polish counterpart, Zbigniew Rau, she vowed not to take decisions over the heads of our neighbors or at the expense of others.

Thats why we stand here in full responsibility and solidarity by the side of Poland and the Baltic states, she said. Poland's government and EU officials have accused Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko of retaliating against the EU by directing migrants to the 27-nation bloc's eastern borders.

Polish leaders had expressed irritation when the former German Chancellor Angela Merkel spoke about the matter in talks with the Belarusian and Russian presidents.

Baerbock said it was important to Germany that asylum-seekers on both sides of the border receive humanitarian aid as temperatures plummet.

This is our common European border, where humanity and order apply, she said.

Baerbock said she raised the matter of rule of law with Rau, even if its uncomfortable. But thats what marks strong friendships, facing uncomfortable questions.

Poland is involved in a bitter dispute with the European Commission, the EU's executive arm. The commission is withholding pandemic recovery funds from Poland over the erosion of judicial independence.

The ongoing dispute was deeply exacerbated after the Polish constitutional tribunal, under the political influence of the governing Law and Justice party, ruled this fall that Polish law has primacy over EU law in key areas.

The government in Warsaw argues that the European Commission's holding back of funds itself a violation of EU law.

Some Poles are afraid that the dispute could put the country on the path to an eventual departure from the EU, so-called Polexit.

Citing opinion polls that show strong support in Poland for EU membership, Baerbock said it would be wrong for Germans to consider themselves as the better Europeans.

I will therefore not issue any public advice, she said. But I hope for all our sake, for German-Polish friendship, for our shared Europe, that we find solutions that strengthen Europe. And Poland is an indispensable part of that.

Baerbock 40, who belongs to Germany's Greens party, and Rau, 66, a member of the right-wing Law and Justice, were cordial, addressing each other by their first names, while Baerbock mentioned that her grandparents came to Germany from Poland more than 60 years ago.

She expressed gratitude for the ties between Germany and Poland in light of the uncountable Polish victims due to German actions" during World War II. Germany's Nazis occupied Poland during the war and carried out mass atrocities against the population.

The war remains a heavily symbolic issue still shaping the relationship, and one that the ruling nationalists in Poland often seize on.

A deputy minister in the government recently accused Germany of seeking to build a Fourth Reich." Meanwhile there is currently a series of posters in Warsaw and other Polish cities funded by a state institute demanding that Germany pay reparations for Nazi crimes.

In Polish and addressed to German Ambassador Arndt Freytag von Loringhoven, one says: Will the German authorities, who are so interested in the rule of law of other countries, finally address German outrageous lawlessness and pay Polish reparations for German crimes of World War II?

Rau expressed a similar idea in more diplomatic terms.

An area in which we continue to expect good concrete cooperation from the German government is the issue of Germanys responsibility for causing World War II and the contemporary aspects of that event. We must go back to the return of cultural property seized by Germany, Rau said.

Agnieszka Lada-Konefal, the deputy director of the German Institute for Polish Affairs in Darmstadt, Germany, said the recent anti-German rhetoric from Poland's ruling circle is for domestic political purposes and is aimed at voters, but has a very negative impact on Polish-German relations.

It sends a terrible signal to Germany. It is something that the Germans do not understand, she told The Associated Press from Warsaw Friday. "They do not know why there is such an escalation of rhetoric and they are also already annoyed that it keeps escalating.

Before traveling to Warsaw, Baerbock held meetings in Paris and Brussels during her first foreign trip since taking office.
BANJA LUKA, Bosnia-Herzegovina (AP)  The Bosnian Serb parliament voted Friday to launch a series of steps that could weaken war-ravaged Bosnias central authority. The ballot came as the Bosnian Serb leader stepped up his campaign to secede from the Balkan country, despite a threat of new U.S. and other sanctions.

Lawmakers voted in favor of starting a procedure for Bosnian Serbs to withdraw from the Bosnian army, security services, tax system and judiciary. That follows repeated threats by Bosnian Serb leader Milorad Dodik to secede, and incorporate about half of Bosnia with neighboring Serbia.

The vote in the 83-seat assembly was 49 for and three against. Most opposition lawmakers walked out or boycotted the vote, saying Dodiks drive could not be carried out without more bloodshed in a country wrecked by past ethnic strife.

Dodik, the Bosnian Serb member of the tripartite Bosnian presidency, said Fridays was a historic parliament session that would strengthen the Bosnian Serb mini state  formed as part of a U.S.-sponsored peace agreement that ended the Bosnian war in 1995.

Dodik called Bosnia a paper state and told parliament that a referendum should be held in the Serb entity in Bosnia on the formation of its own army, security service, high judiciary and tax authority and that a new state constitution should be drafted.

Opposition leaders in the parliament criticized Dodiks policies, saying they are hasty, bring back uncertainty and even possible clashes to the still-volatile Balkan region.

Dodik has for years been advocating the separation of the Bosnian Serb semi-autonomous mini-state from Bosnia and having it become part of neighboring Serbia.

With tacit support from Russia and Serbia, Dodik recently intensified his campaign.

Bosniak officials have warned that Dodik's policies could lead to clashes, and called on the U.S. and the EU to crack down against him and his associates.

The United States has already imposed a travel ban and assets freeze on Dodik and both American and German officials have recently threatened more sanctions in case Bosnian Serbs further weaken Bosnias central institutions.

Dodik has repeatedly said he doesnt care about new sanctions, adding that this would bring Serbs even closer to their true friends  Russia and China. He has also denied that withdrawal from the central institutions would lead to a quick secession or a new war.

There is likely to be a six-month delay before the assemblys decisions take effect while Dodik tries to renegotiate Bosnias fragile makeup with the countrys Bosniaks and Croats from a stronger position.

The Bosnian War started in 1992 when Bosnian Serbs, with the help of the Serb-led Yugoslav army, tried to create ethnically pure territories with an aim of joining Serbia. More than 100,000 people were killed and millions were left homeless during the worst bloodshed in Europe since World War II.

The war pitted Bosniaks, Serbs and Croats against each other and ended with the U.S.-sponsored peace agreement that created two regions, the Republika Srpska and the Bosniak-Croat Federation.

The two regions were given wide autonomy, but kept some joint institutions, including the army, the top judiciary and tax administration. Bosnias three-member rotating presidency, which is made up of Bosniak, Serb and Croat members, has been largely dysfunctional because Dodik has for months been boycotting its sessions.

In a sign seen in Bosnia as support for Bosnias joint armed forces, the U.S. on Friday delivered four new Bell Huey 2 multi-role helicopters to its air force.
SEOUL, South Korea (AP)  New coronavirus infections in South Korea exceeded 7,000 for the third consecutive day on Friday, as the worst surge since the start of the pandemic overwhelmed hospitals and depleted health care workforce.

Critics have blamed the spread on complacency by the government, which dramatically lowered social distancing rules at the start of November in what officials described as the first step toward restoring pre-pandemic normalcy.

Even as cases began to soar in recent weeks, officials were initially hesitant to tighten social distancing, citing exhaustion and frustration by the public with restrictions and their impact on livelihoods. But as the contagious delta variant reduced the effectiveness of vaccines and most people in their 60s or older are still waiting for their booster shoots, and the first cases of omicron were discovered, the sense of urgency became apparent.

Prime Minister Kim Boo-kyum, the No. 2 behind President Moon Jae-in, said during a virus meeting that the country could be forced to take further extraordinary measures if it fails to slow the spread of the virus soon.

Officials issued administrative orders requiring hospitals around the country to designate 2,000 more beds combined for COVID-19 treatment.

The increased capacity will be used to ease the crush on hospitals in Seoul and the nearby metropolitan region, where around 90% of intensive care units are already occupied. Officials said more than 1,200 virus patients in the greater capital area who required hospitalization were being forced to wait at home as of Friday morning because of bed shortages.

Officials have revamped their medical response policy so that most mild cases can be treated at home. While around 20,500 are receiving home care, some doctors groups say the new approach puts lives at risk.

Kim said the government will also speed up the administration of booster shots by shortening the interval between the second and third vaccine injections from the current four or five months to three months starting next week.

If it becomes clear that we arent succeeding in reversing this crisis situation within the next few days, the government will have no other choice but to employ extraordinary anti-virus measures, including strong social distancing, he said.

South Korea has reported a daily average of more than 5,800 infections while adding more than 41,000 cases in the past seven days alone, pushing the national caseload to 503,000. The countrys death toll stood at 4,130 after 53 virus patients died in the past 24 hours.

In allowing larger social gatherings, longer indoor dining hours at restaurants and fully reopening schools in November, officials predicted that the countrys improving vaccination rates will help suppress hospitalizations and fatalities even if the virus continues to spread.

However, serious cases and deaths have soared among people in their 60s or older, including those whose immunities have waned after being inoculated early in the vaccine rollout that began in February.

Around 41.5 million people, or 81% of the population of over 51 million, have been fully vaccinated, but only 10% have received booster shots.

The new rules enforced this week ban private gatherings of seven or more people in the greater capital area and require adults to verify their vaccination status at restaurants and other indoor venues. But Kim said such measures havent yet showed an effect in slowing transmissions.

Deputy Health Minister Lee Ki-il said officials may further reduce the limit on social gatherings and restore business-hour restrictions at restaurants and bars that were lifted in November if things continue to look bad next week.

We will try our best to avoid a lockdown, Lee said.

Some experts have called for stronger measures, such as forcing employers to use remote work and increasing government spending to support small business owners in the devastated service industry to ensure compliance with social distancing rules.

South Korea has also tightened its borders to fend off the new omicron variant since identifying its first cases last week that were linked to arrivals from Nigeria. The KDCA said health workers confirmed three more omicron infections on Friday, bringing the tally to 63.

Scientists say its not yet clear whether omicron is more contagious or dangerous than previous strains of the virus.
TAIPEI, Taiwan (AP)  Taiwan lost Nicaragua as a diplomatic ally after the Central American country said it would officially recognize only China, which claims self-ruled Taiwan as part of its territory.

There is only one China," the Nicaraguan government said in a statement Thursday announcing the change. "The Peoples Republic of China is the only legitimate government that represents all China, and Taiwan is an inalienable part of the Chinese territory."

As of today, Nicaragua breaks its diplomatic relations with Taiwan and ceases to have any official contact or relationship, it added.

The move increases Taiwan's diplomatic isolation on the international stage, even as the self-governed island steps up official exchanges with countries such as Lithuania and Slovakia, which do not formally recognize Taiwan as a country. Now, Taiwan has 14 diplomatic allies remaining.

What is most important to Taiwan is the number of countries with which it maintains diplomatic relations, Jason Marczak, director of the Atlantic Councils Adrienne Arsht Latin America Center, said in an email. In Central America, Nicaragua is now the third country that has switched recognition from Taiwan to China in the last four years. I wouldnt be surprised if more are to come.

Taiwan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs expressed sadness and regret and said it would immediately recall its diplomatic staff.

The more successful Taiwans democracy, and the greater the international support, then the greater the pressure from the authoritarian camp, Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen said Friday in response. Whether its diplomatic pressure or military intimidation, we will not change our determination to adhere to democracy and freedom, to go on the international stage and participate.

China has been poaching Taiwans diplomatic allies over the past few years, cutting down the number of countries that recognize the democratic island as a sovereign nation. China is against Taiwan representing itself in global forums or in diplomacy. The Solomon Islands chose to recognize China in 2019, cutting diplomatic ties with Taiwan.

The Nicaraguan government signed an official communique to reestablish diplomatic ties with China in Tianjin on Friday, according to Chinese state broadcaster CCTV. Under the agreement, Nicaragua promises not to have any official contact with Taiwan going forward.

The resumption of diplomatic ties between China and Nicaragua is a policy decision, and definitely not a trading of bargaining chips, Chinas Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson Wang Wenbin said at a daily briefing Friday. He denied that there were any economic preconditions to establishing ties.

Some experts say the switch is not necessarily a significant loss for Taiwan and may only have been a matter of time. Taiwan has been increasing its exchanges with Western countries and has emphasized the sharing of democratic values and working with like-minded nations.

Everyone could see early on that this diplomatic relationship couldnt be kept, said Antonio C. Hsiang, a professor at La Academia Nacional de Estudios Y Estrategicos in Chile and an expert on Taiwan's relations in Latin America.

Taiwan's emphasis on democratic values stands in contrast to many of its diplomatic allies, such as Nicaragua or Honduras.

Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega was reelected in November in what the White House called a pantomime election.

The arbitrary imprisonment of nearly 40 opposition figures since May, including seven potential presidential candidates, and the blocking of political parties from participation rigged the outcome well before election day, U.S. President Joe Biden said in a statement in November in response to Ortegas election.

The U.S. State Department also weighed in on the diplomatic switch on Friday, saying in a statement that Ortegas actions cannot reflect the will of the Nicaraguan people, who continue to struggle for democracy and the ability to exercise their human rights and fundamental freedoms.

Honduras, meanwhile, faces rampant corruption in its government. President Juan Orlando Hernandez faces allegations of ties to drug traffickers, according to U.S. federal prosecutors in New York. His brother was arrested in Miami in 2018 by U.S. authorities on suspicion of drug trafficking.

Hsiang, the professor, said he viewed the diplomatic break as a response to the growing Taiwan-Lithuania relationship, as well as Taiwan's invitation to Biden's Summit for Democracy, which is being held this week.

Chinese officials viewed it as a victory in a larger playing field. We won yet another beautiful battle, another Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson, Zhao Lijian, wrote on his personal Weibo account, while sharing a video of Nicaraguan Foreign Minister Denis Moncada Colindres reading the statement saying that Taiwan is an inalienable part of China.

Zhao called the change part of an irresistible trend.

Nicaragua established diplomatic relations with Taiwan in the 1990s, when President Violeta Chamorro assumed power after defeating Ortegas Sandinista regime at the polls. Ortega, who returned to power in 2007, had maintained close ties with Taipei until now.

___

Associated Press senior video producer Johnson Lai contributed to this report.
SA Auto Dealers

During SA Auto Dealers' annual Dealers Aligned community giving campaign in October, more than 30 participating area auto dealerships helped raise $50,000 for Haven for Hope, by donating $10 for every alignment provided to customers during the month. The funds raised far exceeded the organizations goals. A generous matching grant from the Texas Cavalier Charitable Foundation added an extra $50,000, for a total gift of $100k to Haven for Hope.



The donation was presented to Haven for Hope's Vice-Chair Barbara Gentry and VP & Chief Development Officer Celeste Eggert during a check presentation celebration at SADA Headquarters on November 23, 2021. The funds will help support important services provided to individuals and families in our community experiencing or facing homelessness.



Due to the impact of the pandemic, there has never been a more important time to support Haven for Hopes ongoing efforts to coordinate and deliver an efficient and compassionate system of care for people experiencing homelessness in our community, said Pamela Crail, President of SA Auto Dealers. Our members not only conduct business in San Antonio  this is their home. We believe it is our responsibility as a business organization to help care for our neighbors in need.



Participating dealerships in Dealers Aligned for 2021 included: Ancira Buick GMC. Ancira Chrysler Dodge Ram, Ancira Kia, Ancira Nissan, Ancira Volkswagen, Ancira Winton Chevrolet, Ancira Ford Floresville, Audi Dominion, Cavender Buick GMC - North, Cavender Buick GMC -West, Cavender Cadillac, Cavender Chevrolet, Cavender Grande Ford, Cavender Toyota, Gunn Auto, IPAC Chrysler Jeep Ram Dodge, Jaguar Land Rover of San Antonio, Jordan Ford, Nissan of Boerne, North Park Lexus at Dominion, North Park Lexus of San Antonio, North Park Toyota of San Antonio, Nyle Maxwell of Castroville Chrysler, Dodge, Jeep, Ram, Red McCombs Ford, Red McCombs Hyundai - NW, Red McCombs Superior Hyundai, Vara Chevrolet, World Car Hyundai Kia, World Car Mazda Kia, World Car Mazda Kia North, and World Car Nissan Hyundai.



SA Auto Dealers is comprised of franchised new car and truck dealers from San Antonio and the surrounding area who are committed to educating and advocating for those in the automotive industry as well as those who are served by it. SA Auto Dealers serves consumers looking for vehicle-related information, promotes continued education for employees in the automotive industry, advocates for dealers and their employees, and promotes public awareness on issues related to motor vehicles. To learn more, visit www.saautodealers.com.



To learn about the mission of Haven for Hope, visit www.havenforhope.org.


PARIS (AP)  French President Macron vowed to work to make Europe more powerful in the world as France is about to take up the rotating presidency of the European Union, a tenure that overlaps with the country's presidential election and could put him in a tricky position if he campaigns for a second term.

Macron is expected to run in Aprils two-round election, and France's turn in the European Council's rotating six-month presidency starts Jan. 1.

Many would like to rely only on one nation. Nations are our strength, our pride, but European unity is their indispensable complement, the proudly pro-EU president said.

"We want to get ... a powerful Europe in the world, fully sovereign, free to make its choices and master of its own destiny, he said during a news conference in Paris.

Macron said France's EU presidency would work to promote a European model of growth that would allow the 27-nation bloc to generate wealth and jobs while at the same time preserving high social and climate-related standards.

He announced a series of summits for the first half of next year about EU defense policies and the bloc's relationship with Africa and the Western Balkans.

Europe faces major challenges, he said, from climate change to migration issues involving manipulation from some states and attempts at destabilization, tensions including in our closer neighborhood. The European Union in recent months accused Belarus of encouraging asylum-seekers to cross from the country into neighboring EU members Poland, Lithuania and Latvia.

Macron said he would have talks with other EU leaders to make the bloc more capable of controlling its borders.

Macron, who was elected in 2017, has yet to formally declare whether he will seek a second term.

He noted that the schedule for France's presidency of the EU is notably the consequence of Brexit and insisted he will fully be committed to the European task at least until the French election.

"Maybe Frances politics will change. For sure, France will remain France, Macron said.

I say it again: the term (in office) I was given by the French, I will serve it until the last quarter of hour, he said.

Frances presidency of the EU could provide a platform for Macron's campaign but also complicate it if the race is focused primarily on domestic issues such as the French economy, security and immigration.

Macron leader would be able to use the presidency to influence the EU-wide decisions, yet the bloc's complex and consensual decision-making process might play against him and produce few concrete actions before Aprils election.

Macron promotes a vision for the EU's strategic autonomy that would allow the bloc to better weather competition from China and put it on a more equal footing with the United States.

Notably, he is pushing for a stronger and more capable European defense" that contributes to trans-Atlantic and global security and is complementary to NATO.

Frances motto for the EU presidency is Recovery, power, belonging - the last word meant to convey the idea of enhancing Europeans' sense of shared belonging to the bloc.

The French leaders news conference about the EU presidency was only the time Macron appeared before reporters at the Elysee presidential palace to answer a broad range of questions. His general news conference took place in April 2019 following the antigovernment yellow vest protests against social and economic injustice.

Polls on the voting intentions suggest for months Macron is the frontrunner in the race. A priority for him will be to suck support away from conservative and far-right candidates, who are polling more strongly than contenders on the left and appear in a better position to reach the run-off.

Last week, Frances main conservative party, The Republicans, chose the head of the Paris region, Valerie Pecresse, to be its candidate in the presidential race.

Known as a convinced pro-European, Pecresse in recent months hardened her positions on immigration and security. Macron has only one obsession: to please (people). Me, its to do things, she said, vowing to break with the presidents centrist policies.

Two far-right contenders, Marine Le Pen, the head of the National Rally who faced Macron in the 2017 runoff, and former TV pundit Eric Zemmour, are campaigning on anti-Islam, anti-migrant themes.

In a clear response to the far-right, almost adopting the tone of a presidential candidate, Macron concluded the news conference by saying: when the bad winds are blowing, it's legitimate that democratic choices are being made."

French institutions must not make any concession to racism nor antisemitism he said, praising "discussions and controversies" and denouncing hatred.

On the left, Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo is the presidential candidate for the Socialist party and the Greens chose European lawmaker Yannick Jadot, a former Greenpeace activist.

The far-left leader of the Rebel France party, Jean-Luc Melenchon, who is seeking the presidency for the third time, called on Macron to come into the arena to debate.

Macron "is not above democracy, he said.
Courtesy Bexar County Sheriffs Office

The Bexar County Sheriff's Office identified the human remains found on Saturday, December 4 as the 18-year-old student who has been missing since August 27. Deputies believe foul play was involved, Sheriff Javier Salazar said in a virtual press conference on Thursday, December 9.

Deputies learned about the human remains after a man smelled a foul odor on his property while preparing an area for his cattle in the 11400 block of Kearney Road, not far from Southwest High School. The teenager  identified as 18-year-old Anthony Xavier Luna  attended Southwest High School and was last seen leaving the campus in a black car on August 27.
A drunken passenger on a Delta Air Lines flight Thursday night assaulted a flight attendant and hurt a federal air marshal who intervened, according to police and the Transportation Security Administration.

The flight was heading from Reagan National Airport in Arlington, Va., to Los Angeles International Airport, but was diverted to Oklahoma City's Will Rogers World Airport.

The passenger, a 35-year-old man from the District of Columbia, had been drinking and became disruptive, according to the TSA. The air marshal suffered minor injuries and did not need medical attention, the TSA said.

Gary Knight, a spokesman for the Oklahoma City Police Department, said the man was arrested when the plane landed and was charged with disorderly conduct and public drunkenness, both misdemeanors. He was released from jail, Knight said.

"Rising rates of unruly passengers is a disturbing trend that TSA and its industry and federal partners will not tolerate," the TSA said in a statement. "These incidents needlessly interrupt travel, delaying flights and other transportation operations across the country. TSA, in coordination with our air carrier and airport management partners, as well as the FAA, will pursue criminal charges, and civil penalties up to the maximum allowable by law."

Aviation authorities have been battling a wave of disruptive passengers, with alcohol and disputes over mask-wearing leading to confrontations. The FAA says it has received 5,553 reports of such incidents this year. Last month, Attorney General Merrick Garland issued a memo directing federal authorities to prioritize the prosecution of crimes on planes.

Knight said it would be up to the FBI to pursue felony charges against the man on Thursday's flight. Efforts to reach the man and his lawyer Friday weren't successful. The FBI office in Oklahoma City did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the incident.

The flight continued to Los Angeles after the disruption.

The Biden administration recently extended a federal mask mandate for air travel and other forms of public transportation to March 18.
Yves here. I am mildly kicking myself. I had noticed this articles point of departure, the CDCs claim that 99.9% of the over 65 age group was vaccinated, and it was obvious it was bogus. Even in my miniscule circle of people I know personally, as in people I see or have not all that long ago seen in the flesh (and forgive me, but I am excluding NC readers at meetups), I know of three people over 65 who have not been vaccinated, and they are all upper income, highly educated, and only one is a Trump fan. And Ive also wondered about what Lambert has called the stately rise of 0.1% a day nearly every day in the vaccination rate. As I said in comments, that much regularity is reminiscent of Madoff.

The question is whether these exaggerated levels are fabrications to help the Administration or the result of the rank incompetence that pervades US Covid data gathering.

By Phil Galewitz, Senior Correspondent at Kaiser Health News, covers Medicaid, Medicare, long-term care, hospitals and various state health issues. Previously, he was at The Palm Beach Post and was a national health industry writer for the Associated Press and The Patriot-News in Harrisburg, Pa. Originally published at Kaiser Health News

For nearly a month, the Centers for Disease Control and Preventions online vaccine tracker has shown that virtually everyone 65 and older in the United States  99.9%  has received at least one covid vaccine dose.

That would be remarkable  if true.

But health experts and state officials say its certainly not.

They note that the CDC as of Dec. 5 has recorded more seniors at least partly vaccinated  55.4 million  than there are people in that age group  54.1 million, according to the latest census data from 2019. The CDCs vaccination rate for residents 65 and older is also significantly higher than the 89% vaccination rate found in a poll conducted in November by KFF.

Similarly, a YouGov poll, conducted last month for The Economist, found 83% of people 65 and up said they had received at least an initial dose of vaccine.

And the CDC counts 21 states as having almost all their senior residents at least partly vaccinated (99.9%). But several of those states show much lower figures in their vaccine databases, including California, with 86% inoculated, and West Virginia, with nearly 90% as of Dec. 6.

The questionable CDC data on seniors vaccination rates illustrates one of the potential problems health experts have flagged about CDCs covid vaccination data.

Knowing with accuracy what proportion of the population has rolled up sleeves for a covid shot is vital to public health efforts, said Dr. Howard Forman, a professor of public health at Yale University School of Medicine.

These numbers matter, he said, particularly amid efforts to increase the rates of booster doses administered. As of Dec. 5, about 47% of people 65 and older had received a booster shot since the federal government made them available in September.

Im not sure how reliable the CDC numbers are, he said, pointing to the discrepancy between state data and the agencys 99.9% figure for seniors, which he said cant be correct.

You want to know the best data to plan and prepare and know where to put resources in place  particularly in places that are grossly undervaccinated, Forman said.

Getting an accurate figure on the proportion of residents vaccinated is difficult for several reasons. The CDC and states may be using different population estimates. State data may not account for residents who get vaccinated in a state other than where they live or in clinics located in federal facilities, such as prisons, or those managed by the Veterans Health Administration or Indian Health Service.

CDC officials said the agency may not be able to determine whether a person is receiving a first, second or booster dose if their shots were received in different states or even from providers within the same city or state. This can cause the CDC to overestimate first doses and underestimate booster doses, CDC spokesperson Scott Pauley said.

There are challenges in linking doses when someone is vaccinated in different jurisdictions or at different providers because of the need to remove personally identifiable information (de-identify) data to protect peoples privacy, according to a footnote on the CDCs covid vaccine data tracker webpage. This means that, even with the high-quality data CDC receives from jurisdictions and federal entities, there are limits to how CDC can analyze those data.

On its dashboard, the CDC has capped the percentage of the population that has received vaccine at 99.9%. But Pauley said its figures could be off for multiple reasons, such as the census denominator not including everyone who currently resides in a particular county, like part-time residents, or potential data-reporting errors.

Liz Hamel, vice president and director of public opinion and survey research at KFF, agrees its highly unlikely 99.9% of seniors have been vaccinated. She said the differences between CDC vaccination rates and those found in KFF and other polls are significant. The truth may be somewhere in between, she said.

Hamel noted the KFF vaccination rates tracked closely with CDCs figures in the spring and summer but began diverging in fall, just as booster shots became available.

KFF surveys show the percentage of adults at least partly vaccinated changed little from September to November, moving from 72% to 73%. But CDC data shows an increase from 75% in September to 81% in mid-November.

As of Dec. 5, the CDC says, 83.4% of adults were at least partly vaccinated.

William Hanage, an associate professor of epidemiology at Harvard University, said such discrepancies call into question that CDC figure. He said getting an accurate figure on the percentage of seniors vaccinated is important because that age group is most vulnerable to severe consequences of covid, including death.

It is important to get them right because of the much-talked-about shift from worrying about cases to worrying about severe outcomes like hospitalizations, Hanage said. The consequences of cases will increasingly be determined by the proportion of unvaccinated and unboosted, so having a good handle on this is vital for understanding the pandemic.

For example, CDC data shows New Hampshire leads the country in vaccination rates with about 88% of its total population at least partly vaccinated.

The New Hampshire vaccine dashboard shows 61.1% of residents are at least partly vaccinated, but the state is not counting all people who get their shots in pharmacies due to data collection issues, said Jake Leon, spokesperson for the state Department of Health and Human Services.

In addition, Pennsylvania health officials say they have been working with the CDC to correct vaccination rate figures on the federal website. The state is trying to remove duplicate vaccination records to make sure the dose classification is correct  from initial doses through boosters, said Mark ONeil, spokesperson for the state health department.

As part of the effort, in late November the CDC reduced the percentage of adults in the state who had at least one dose from 98.9% to 94.6%. It also lowered the percentage of seniors who are fully vaccinated from 92.5% to 84%.

However, the CDC has not changed its figure on the proportion of seniors who are partly vaccinated. It remains 99.9%. The CDC dashboard says that 3.1 million seniors in Pennsylvania were at least partly vaccinated as of Dec. 5. The latest census datashows Pennsylvania has 2.4 million people 65 and older.
(Natural News) It flew under most peoples radar at the time, but 15 years ago there was an alleged whooping cough epidemic that the medical industry warned was a major threat. The only problem is that it did not actually exist, having been the product of false PCR testing.

The same fraudulent tests being used today to identify the Wuhan coronavirus (Covid-19) were also used in 2006 to pinpoint a fake whooping cough epidemic that scared a whole lot of health care workers into panicking, taking pharmaceutical drugs and getting injected with vaccines (sound familiar?).

The New York Times reported that nearly 1,000 health care workers at a hospital in Lebanon, N.H., tested positive using the PCR tests, resulting in them being furloughed from work. They were administered antibiotics and injected with chemicals, only to have the whole thing be blown open as a hoax eight months later.

 health care workers were dumbfounded to receive an e-mail message from the hospital administration informing them that the whole thing was a false alarm, the Times reported in 2007 about the embarrassing incident.

Not a single case of whooping cough was confirmed with the definitive test, growing the bacterium, Bordetella pertussis, in the laboratory. Instead, it appears the health care workers probably were afflicted with ordinary respiratory diseases like the common cold.

PCR test inventor said it should never be used to try to identify disease

How could it be that people were mistakenly diagnosed with whooping cough when all they really had was the common cold? The answer is simple: PCR tests are not accurate and their results can easily be manipulated to push a narrative.

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The only thing PCR tests do is magnify DNA particles in a sample until they become visible. Depending on how they are calibrated, they can pick up almost anything  even things that do not exist.

The magnification in PCR is measured by the number of cycles needed to make the DNA visible. Known as the Cycle Threshold (Ct) or Quantification Cycle (Cq) number, the higher the number of cycles the lower the amount of DNA in the sample, explains the Brownstone Institute.

To convert Cq numbers into doses they have to be calibrated against the Cq numbers of standard doses. If they arent, they can easily be blown out of proportion and appear more significant than they actually are.

An analogy for this might be a car advertisement in which the company used a scale model for the vehicle photo. After applying the right lenses, lighting and other touchups, that model is made to look like a full-size vehicle and consumers are none the wiser.

The only way to truly know whether the vehicle in the photo is a small model or the real thing would be to put something else alongside it for a comparison of scale.

Just like a coin standing next to a toy car proves its not a real one, and a shoe next to a molehill shows its not a mountain, the Cq of a standard dose next to the Cq of a sample shows how big the dose really is, is how Brownstone puts it.

Another thing to consider is the fact that Kary Mullis, the man who created the PCR test and won a Nobel Prize in Chemistry back in 1993, warned against using it to look for disease.

PCR is a process thats used to make a whole lot of something out of something, he said. It allows you to take a very miniscule amount of anything and make it measurable and then talk about it like its important.

More of the latest news about the Fauci Flu can be found at Pandemic.news.

Sources for this article include:

Bleadon.org.uk

Brownstone.org

NaturalNews.com
(Natural News) It is being reported that Apple CEO Tim Cook signed a secret agreement with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) promising to prop up Chinas economy and technological capabilities.

The $275 billion contract, which was confirmed through interviews and purported internal Apple documents, was signed in 2016 with a timeline of five years. That five years is just about complete.

Concerned about bad publicity in China, Apple executives reportedly pushed for a closer alliance with the CCP. China, by the way, is where all Apple products are manufactured.

The alleged internal documents show that Cook personally lobbied officials in China over threats made against key company products such as iCloud, the App Store and Apple Pay, a cashless payment system.

A 1,250-word agreement was then forged by Apples government affairs team in China, establishing a memorandum of understanding between the tech giant and the communist regime.

This memorandum called on the National Development and Reform Commission to establish and agree upon various concessions in exchange for certain regulatory exemptions.

In May 2016, Cook announced that Apple would be investing $1 billion in the Chinese ride-hailing startup Didi Chuxing in a pointed attempt to mollify authorities, reports explain.

Shortly after, Cook, Apple Chief Operating Officer Jeff Williams, and government affairs head Lisa Jackson met with senior government officials in Zhongnanhai, the central headquarters of the Communist Party of China.

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Apple censors Bible apps in China because CCP hates Christianity

With Cook at the helm, Apple was able to get the CCP to sign the multibillion-dollar agreement, eliminating all sorts of regulatory actions against the company with special exemptions.

In exchange, China received significant investments, business deals, and worker training in the country, among other perks.

Apple specifically pledged in the agreement to help Chinese manufacturers develop the most advanced manufacturing technology, as well as support the training of high-quality Chinese talents.

Apple further promised to use more Chinese suppliers components in its various products, as well as invest capital into Chinese tech companies. There was also a clause about assisting more than a dozen Chinese government causes, which sounds like treason.

If no objections were made to the agreement, then it was also baked into the deal that it would be extended for a sixth year with an expiration date of May 2022, which is on the way.

Apple zealously promised many billions of dollars more to China for new retail stores, renewable energy projects, and research and development facilities as well.

Another key component of the deal was Apples agreement to censor certain apps that the CCP does not want Chinese people accessing, including popular Bible apps such as Olive Tree.

The Quran Majeed, developed by PDMS, is also banned in Apples Chinese App Store, as are a number of other religious apps.

Helping the enemy in any endeavor is a crime, is it not? wrote one commenter at Neon Nettle, which covered the revelation. This puke (Cook) is unamerican at the least and treasonous at the most. Boycott Apple and their Chinese products!

It is obvious that Apple CEO Tim Cook hasnt an inkling of allegiance to the U.S. nor to the idea of preserving unalienable individual rights, let alone any form of a limited government republic, wrote another.

Another joked that Cook must be related to Hunter Biden because both need to be tried for treason.

Yet another asked, Doesnt America have a statute criminalizing trading with the enemy?

This is a valid question indeed, and one that everyone should be asking themselves right about now as increasingly more of these tech gods get exposed for collusion and conspiracy with enemy powers.

More related news about Apples activities in China can be found at Treason.news.

Sources for this article include:

NeonNettle.com

NaturalNews.com
(Natural News) A California school district was recently exposed for using WITCHCRAFT to indoctrinate students and force them to comply with critical race theory (CRT) and the Black Lives Matter movement (BLM). The Campbell Union High School District in California has been using CRT for many years to disparage whiteness and shame students who have less melanin in their skin.

This indoctrination process also seeks unified acceptance of the BLM movement and all its hateful ideologies and political agendas. Simply put, critical race theory is anti-white racism, and it is being driven into students as doctrine. The high school has promoted more than 100 equity resources that teach students that white people are inherently racist and owe reparations to people of color. These documents even teach students how to put a curse on other students when they say phrases that go against the BLM movement. The curriculum teaches students to use witchcraft against anyone who uses dissenting phrases such as: all lives matter.

Students inundated with left-wing Marxist propaganda

The District Board of Trustees for Branham High School gave unanimous support for a resolution that seeks to dismantle institutionalized racism in our society and our school district. This includes instating mandatory Ethnic studies and implementing implicit bias training to eradicate white privilege. The Board also seeks to provide resources that teach the guiding principles of the BLM movement. Superintendent Robert Bravo even said during a board meeting that he believes that equity is about equity of outcomes.

These equity resources include 45 different documents stored on a Google Drive and another 60 links that promote CRT. These documents are linked to flagship CRT resources, including the 1619 Project, Raising Race Conscious Children, Anti-Racism for Beginners, and Social Identities and Systems of Oppression. Each and every one of these resources teach students that white people are inherently racist and should denounce their whiteness. If a white person disagrees with these accusations of prejudice, then they are said to have either white supremacy or white fragility. Students are taught that all of Americas institutions, from schools to jails, operate with white supremacy and inherently oppress people of color. The documents attempt to redefine racism by claiming that racism is only perpetrated by white people with the sole intent to oppress people of color based on a socially constructed racial hierarchy that privileges white people.

Students taught to hex those who dont comply with CRT and BLM

White students are supposed to accept that they have white privilege and should refer to a Racial Equity Resource Guide to rid themselves of their disease. The curriculum teaches white children to dismantle how you see yourself and how you see the world in order to dismantle white supremacy. Children are being taught to hate themselves, to hate their heritage and culture. The curriculum is linked to the Black Lives Matter resource guide, which contains an entire section devoted towards indoctrinating high school students. Among the forty-five different texts inside this guide, there are writing prompts that encourage students to hex other people in order to release their frustration with white cops and other white authority figures. One writing prompt encourages students to target anyone who commits microaggressions or says all lives matter. The prompt instructs students to write your own hex poem, cursing that person.

The resources also encourage rioting and violence toward police. The curriculum contains a section called A World with No Police. The prompt suggests that police and military contribute to system or institutions that contribute to oppression. The students are also introduced to The Black Radical Tradition which focuses on Marxists teachings authored by Noel Ignatiev and the Communist League. These Marxists talk about abolishing the white race and quashing their opposition by labeling them white supremacists.

Sources include:

TheFederalist.com

NaturalNews.com

CUHSD.org

Docs.Google.com

Drive.Google.com
(Natural News) Television celebrity Dr. Mehmet Oz announced his candidacy for the US Senate in Pennsylvania last week, with some Republicans raising questions about the conservative bona fides of the TV doctor. Footage has emerged revealing Ozs progressive views on abortion rights, with the doctor arguing against pro-life heartbeat laws enacted in states such as Alabama in recent years.

(Article by Richard Moorhead republished from BigLeaguePolitics.com)

Dr. Oz went on to defend the legal theory of Roe v. Wade, referring to anecdotes of so-called coat hanger abortions that occurred before the legality of abortion in America. The doctor was speaking on a New York City radio show known for promoting progressive politics.

WATCH: Dr Oz argues for upholding Roe v Wade abortion standards, 2019 pic.twitter.com/G4xwg0tjRf  MAGA Country Poso (@JackPosobiec) December 7, 2021

Oz struck a tone similar to Democrats such as President Joe Biden, stating merely that he wouldnt want anyone in his family to have an abortion but supported the legality of abortion procedures. Oz seemed to suggest he only supports pro-life laws that ban the procedures for children who would be viable outside of the womb.

WATCH: Dr Oz argues for upholding Roe v Wade abortion standards, 2019 pic.twitter.com/G4xwg0tjRf  MAGA Country Poso (@JackPosobiec) December 7, 2021

Oz appears to spend the majority of his time in New Jersey, with some Pennsylvanians questioning why the Jersey resident is suddenly a candidate to represent the Keystone State in Washington.

Oz has described himself as a moderate Republican and compared his politics to that of Arnold Schwarzenegger, a former governor of California who fell out with the Republican Party amid the states decline and his administrations capitulation to the policy vision of the Democratic Party and progressive elites.

Ozs entry into the contentious Pennsylvania Senate race follows the campaign exit of Sean Parnell, an Army veteran endorsed by Donald Trump. Some Pennsylvania Republicans have sought to draft Colonel Douglas MacGregor, a former Trump administration Pentagon official known for speaking and writing in favor of an America First policy vision.

Read more at: BigLeaguePolitics.com
(Natural News) Author Michelle Malkin slammed profit-driven corporations that crave for digital health data. In an op-ed, she noted that those corporations are hiding behind non-profit umbrella groups that pose as public servants.

Malkin wrote that vaccine passports are exploiting millions of people and turning them into walking QR codes in the name of fighting the Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19) to bring normalcy back.

This unprecedented worldwide racket rewards compliance and punishes autonomy.

Shady, profiteering entities involved in creating vaccine passports

In Colorado, the state government is promoting the use of the Smart Health Card, which allows users to verify and share their vaccination status. This same technology is being used in 12 U.S. states, including California, Washington State, Virginia, Rhode Island, Massachusetts and Oregon. It can also be used at CVS and Rite Aid pharmacies, Kaiser Permanente, UC Health, Walgreens, Walmart, Express Scripts and United Healthcare Services.

The Commons Project Foundation is the massive nonprofit entity responsible for this vaccine passport market. It claims that it builds and operates digital platforms and services for the common good.

It also oversees the Common Trust Network, which in turn operates the global registry of organizations that issue the said passports. Paul Meyer, CEO of TCP, said that this allows people to safely return to travel, work, school and life while protecting their data privacy.

The same organization also created and collaborated with the Vaccination Credential Initiative, which is a voluntary coalition of public and private organizations that is committed to empowering individuals to gain access to their verifiable clinical information. The VCI also includes a trustworthy and verifiable copy of their vaccination records in digital or paper form using open, interoperable standards.

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Upon closer look, the steering group for this initiative is the whos who of Big Tech and Big Health corporations that are looking for new ways to profit off personal data  including Apple, Microsoft, Cerner, Amazon Web Services, Google, Epic, the Mayo Clinic, Oracle, Salesforce and others. (Related: Big Tech companies looking to normalize vaccine passports.)

It also includes something called the Mitre Corporation, which is a non-profit, Cold War-era conglomerate headquartered near the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and near the Deep State in McLean, Virginia, which then oversees billions of dollars worth of federally funded military research, homeland security, cybersecurity and the lucrative health data market.

Mitre was said to have raked in $1.8 billion in revenue in 2019, and boasts another $2 billion budget funded by the American taxpayers. It signed a $16.3 million contract with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to help build an enduring national capability to contain COVID-19.

Moreover, it has a $20 million joint partnership with the CDC on disease surveillance technology and services. This military-industrial alliance also brags ominously in its promotional materials, saying: You may not know it, but Mitre touches your life most every day.

This isnt about COVID-19 control. Its about mind control, Malkin wrote.

Vaccine passports in existence since the 19th century

Travelers already carry vaccine passports in the late 19th century. Back then, they often required passengers to provide evidence that they have been vaccinated from smallpox.

These are common at ports of entry such as New Yorks Ellis Island and San Franciscos Angel Island. People are also asked the same documents along the U.S. border with Canada or Mexico.

In 1910, an El Paso newspaper said that travelers needed to show one of three things to show that they have survived smallpox: A vaccination certificate, a properly scarred arm or a pitted face.

Today, Americans are either looking ahead to life after COVID embracing electronic vaccination passports or questioning the necessity of this increasing invasion of ones privacy.

Read more news related to the coronavirus pandemic at Pandemic.news.

Sources include:

WND.com

Time.com
(Natural News) Many Americans have taken on the risks of COVID-19 vaccines, despite reservations, in hopes of gaining protection against the more severe form of the disease. Unfortunately, data from Oregon shows that more than 500 residents have now died of the virus despite being fully vaccinated against it.

Since the pandemic began, Oregon has recorded 552 so-called breakthrough COVID-19 deaths. Of these, 273 people were fully vaccinated with the Pfizer jab, while 144 had the Moderna shot and 78 had been given the Johnson and Johnson vaccine.

A report from the Oregon Health Authority also showed that of the 4,134 new cases of COVID-19 that were recorded from November 21 through November 27, at least 1,186 were breakthrough infections, which means that the individual was fully vaccinated against the disease at least 14 days prior to testing positive for the virus.

Oregon Health Authority Deputy Health Officer Dr. Tom Jeanne said that its important to know that some people who are fully vaccinated will still get sick because no vaccine is 100% effective and those are the breakthrough cases.

As of December 2, the state has reported more than 45,000 coronavirus infections among people who are fully vaccinated. Most of these cases, 10.9 percent, were in people aged 30 to 39, 6.6 percent were in people 80 and older, while those aged 12 to 19 accounted for 4.8 percent of the cases.

Of course, we dont know exactly how many people are actually coming down with the virus after getting the jab as many of these cases go unreported.

The Oregon Health Authoritys COVID-19 Breakthrough Report notes: This report includes only those vaccine breakthrough cases which are reported to public health following a positive test result. Many vaccine breakthrough cases are believed to experience no symptoms or minimal symptoms. These cases are unlikely to undergo testing for COVID-19 and be reported to public health. Therefore, the true number of vaccine breakthrough cases is unknown.

Rather than admitting the vaccines are not working as well as they should, the OHA continues to push Oregonians into getting the jab. They recently opened a new high-volume vaccination site in Wood Village, where adults and children alike can show up for walk-in and drive-in jabs without an appointment. Nearly a dozen more of these sites will open this month throughout the state.

False sense of security among vaccinated fueling surge in breakthrough cases

The World Health Organization has said that it is concerned that people who have been vaccinated against COVID-19 are developing a false sense of security. With the pandemic surging in Europe, WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told the media that while vaccines work, they do not stop the viruss transmission.

He said: In many countries and communities, we are concerned about a false sense of security that vaccines have ended the pandemic, and that people who are vaccinated do not need to take any other precautions.

If you are vaccinated, you have a much lower risk of severe disease and death, but you are still at risk of being infected, and of infecting others.

Tedros urged Europeans to continue to take precautions against getting infected with the virus and infecting others, including meeting people outdoors or in well-ventilated spaces, practicing social distancing, wearing masks and avoiding crowds.

Unfortunately, many people think their vaccine gives them a free pass to throw caution to the wind  an idea that governments are reinforcing by restricting the freedoms of those who are unvaccinated and giving those who did get the jab passes to continue life as normal. Everyone, regardless of their vaccination status, needs to understand the risks and act responsibly, and governments need to be more honest with people about what type of protection their vaccines are really providing.

Sources for this article include:

IBTimes.com

KLCC.org

UPI.com
(Natural News) Remember when the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) asked a federal court to give the agency 55 years to fully release data on Pfizer-BioNTechs Wuhan coronavirus (Covid-19) vaccine? Well, now the FDA wants 75 years.

The FDA had previously agreed to release 500 pages per month of the more than 59,000 pages of data that exist. However, the agency now says another 20 years are needed to fully pore through the data, which it had no problem rushing through in a matter of months to grant Pfizer-BioNTech emergency use authorization (EUA) for the experimental drug.

That discovery, and a desire to make sure it can work on other Freedom of Information Act requests at the same time, prompted the fresh request to the judge to allow production of roughly 12,000 pages by Jan. 31, 2022, and 500 pages per month thereafter, reported The Epoch Times, citing attorney Aaron Siri who is working on the case.

If you find what you are reading difficult to believe  that is because it is dystopian for the government to give Pfizer billions, mandate Americans to take its product, prohibit Americans from suing for harms, but yet refuse to let Americans see the data underlying its licensure, Siri wrote on his Substack blog.

FDA says its 10 staff members who work on FOIA cannot review, release Pfizer data until 2096

The case Siri is working on against the FDA was brought on behalf of Public Health and Medical Professionals for Transparency (PHMPT), a group that says the FDA has not been complying in a timely manner with its requests for data.

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Dr. Carole Browner, a research professor at the University of California  Los Angeless David Geffen School of Medicine, is part of the group, as are Peter Doshi, an associate professor at the University of Maryland School of Pharmacy, and Dr. Harvey Risch, a professor of epidemiology at the Yale School of Public Health.

Since the FDA spent just 108 days supposedly reviewing the 59,000 pages in order to grant the Pfizer-BioNTech injection an EUA, there is no reason why it should take 75 years to release that very same data to the public so they, too, can review it.

This is especially true as millions of Americans are being told they must take these experimental injections in order to keep their jobs or to continue sending their children off to public school.

Even worse is the fact that the FDA has now granted full authorization to Pfizers Comirnaty injection, which is supposedly the same as the EUA version though there is much controversy over whether or not the two are materially and legally the same.

The entire purpose of FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) is government transparency, Siri says.

In multiple recent cases, in upholding the FOIAs requirement to make the records promptly available, courts have required agencies, including the FDA, to produce 10,000 or more pages per month, and those cases did not involve a request nearly this important  i.e., the data underlying licensure of a liability-free product that the federal government requires nearly all Americans to receive.

Siri went on to explain that time is of the essence and the FDA needs to respond immediately, not in 75 years when most of the people alive today will already be dead.

In its defense, the FDA says that its Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research only has 10 staff members, two of whom are new. This is apparently not enough for the agency to process the 59,000-page document before the year 2096.

To move any faster, the FDA further claims, would divert significant resources away from the processing of other FOIA requests that are also in litigation.

The latest news about FDA corruption can be found at FDA.news.

Sources for this article include:

NaturalNews.com

TheEpochTimes.com
(Natural News) New Zealands left-wing Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern recently admitted in an interview with journalist Mihingarangi Forbes on The Hui that the countrys Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19) mass vaccination program has no end point.

The Hui is a Maori-oriented news and current affairs program.

Forbes and Ardern discussed how the government can best reach out to the countrys indigenous Maori population, whose vaccination rate is way behind the national average and the vaccination rate of New Zealanders of non-Maori descent.

Theres been a huge focus on making sure were reaching everyone, wherever they are in the country and ensuring that were overcoming those barriers, said Ardern. But in my mind, so long as there are people that are eligible that havent been vaccinated, weve got work to do.

You know, I dont think Ill ever be satisfied so long as theres someone who is eligible and hasnt been [vaccinated], she continued. Thats why Ive said theres not going to be an end point to this vaccination program. (Related: New Zealand Prime Minister proudly admits she helped create two classes of people, while holding human rights hostage.)

Ardern begins distribution of endless booster vaccines

New Zealand has a full vaccination rate of around 75 percent and a partial vaccination rate of 80 percent. While Arderns government is focusing on raising the vaccination rate of the Maori community, it has also begun distributing booster vaccines.

COVID-19 booster doses became available to all New Zealanders aged 18 and above at the end of November. As of press time, these booster shots have reached just 2.9 percent of the eligible population.

According to Minister for COVID-19 Response Chris Hipkins, more than 450,000 New Zealanders out of a total population of around 5.1 million will be eligible to receive booster doses by the end of the year.

And while the booster program is an important next step in our pandemic response, increasing the vaccination coverage of first and second doses, particularly for Maori, [Pacific Islander] and disabled communities, remains our number one priority in our nationwide vaccination rollout.

Hipkins and other health officials also used the threat of the new post-vaccine omicron variant to fearmonger about getting vaccinated. Please encourage your [extended family] and friends to get vaccinated, said Hipkins.

Ardern reiterated this point during her interview with Forbes.

Once weve obviously were rolling out boosters now, so weve got another wave of people that we need to make sure were protecting again, said Ardern. So, those who were vaccinated six months ago, we really need them to come back or we need to go to them, she said.

People who fail to continually get vaccinated will face the same fate as those who have continued to resist compulsory shots. Theyll be out of work, face social ostracization and God only knows what else in the future, wrote journalist and political commentator Paul Joseph Watson for Summit News.

Enjoy your lifetime booster shots and enjoy not being able to travel, visit a restaurant or eventually go in a shop if you miss out on just one, Watson continued. Remember, if you dont take the Pfizer jab for life, youll never be fully vaccinated. It truly never ends.

New Zealand has yet to formulate policies regarding succeeding booster vaccine doses. It is likely that the government will wait until enough of its population has received the booster doses before announcing that a fourth dose is necessary.

Learn more about how the mass vaccination programs of countries around the world by reading the latest articles at Vaccines.news.

Sources include:

RAIRFoundation.com

Brighteon.com

TeAoMaori.news

Summit.news

NYTimes.com

BeeHive.govt.nz

RNZ.co.nz
(Natural News) On Thursday afternoon, September 30th, at 3:45 PM Eastern the FBI raided Jeremy Browns home and arrested Jeremy. They charged Jeremy, a Green Beret, with trespassing on the US Capitol Grounds. Jeremy broke the invisible boundary around the US Capitol on January 6th along with tens of thousands of fellow Trump supporters. The boundary was not marked and the protesters were not warned that they were inside the invisible no-go zone.

(Article by Jim Hoft republished from TheGatewayPundit.com)

The Gateway Pundit was notified by his family and an attorney of his arrest in September. Jeremy is still sitting behind bars for standing outside the US Capitol on January 6th. Democrats and Liz Cheney call this justice.

The FBI searched his house, RV, and trailer in September. Then they arrested Jeremy and took him away.

Jeremys family contacted The Gateway Pundit the following morning.

** You can support Jeremy Browns fundraising effort here.

Jeremy Brown is a Green Beret and former Republican candidate for Congress in Floridas 14th Congressional District. Brown served in the United States Army from 1992 to 2012 and reached the rank of Special Forces Master Sergeant.

The Gateway Pundit spoke with Jeremys girlfriend after his arrest. She told us Jeremy would later appear in Pinellas County Court. Jeremy was charged with trespassing, a misdemeanor. The judge has refused to release Jeremy Brown from jail for standing outside the US Capitol on Jan. 6.

Advertisement  story continues below

Jeremy Browns actual crime was refusing to be an FBI informant on January 6th. So the Feds arrested him months later.

The FBI sent 20 vehicles for his arrest. DHS and Pinellas County law enforcement were also present. The FBI was in Jeremys home for 5-and-a-half hours looking for evidence. We were told the FBI did not read Jeremy his rights.

As we reported months ago, Jeremy Brown refused to be an informant for the dirty FBI  They wanted him to be one of their operatives at the Jan. 6 Trump rallies. He refused.

In October the judge overseeing Jeremys case refused to grant him bail. The judge refused him bail for a joke he posted on the front of his house.

Jeremy Brown did nothing wrong.

His only crime was refusing to work as an informant for the FBI!

* * * * * * * * * *

But there is video of Jeremy Brown from January 6th.

Jeremy rescued a woman who was being trampled and beaten by US Capitol Police.

The police were killing her  like they killed two other women that day.

Jeremy Brown saved her life.

Jeremy Brown is currently sitting in jail for attending the Jan. 6 protests in Washington DC.

In this video, Jeremy Brown is seen rescuing a woman who was nearly beaten to death by US Capitol Police and was down on the cement.

Jeremy saved her life.

Watch til the end!

Jeremy Brown is a hero.

Jeremy Brown has always been a hero.

Now he is rotting in jail due to the lies of the Biden DOJ.

FREE JEREMY BROWN!

Read more at: TheGatewayPundit.com
(Natural News) The plandemic purveyors have a new problem on their hands that they are trying to eliminate because it is causing many people to skip the vaccines, and it is known as the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS).

Bloomberg Wire put out a propaganda piece about how the Wuhan coronavirus (Covid-19) communications strategy needs a makeover because the data, which shows that the jabs are causing people immense harm, is driving many away from the injections.

Reports to VAERS, though minimal and highly manipulated, are skyrocketing so high that there is no longer any room for denial about the fact that covid jabs are the deadliest vaccine to ever be created.

The piece cites a University of Alabama epidemiologist by the name of Bertha Hidalgo who apparently has been giving people too much information about Fauci Flu shots, which is scaring them away from getting it.

My method was, These are the facts and this is what you need to do,' Hidalgo told reporters.

The facts, however, do not paint Chinese Virus shots in a positive light. Because of this, Hidalgo and other Branch Covidians are having to walk a tightrope to try to get just enough of the positive information out there with minimal negative information so as to fool as many people as possible into thinking that these jabs are helpful rather than harmful.

Bloomberg calls government-run VAERS a favored talking point among anti-vaccine groups

The biggest issue currently, according to Bloomberg, is VAERS, which it describes as a government-run clearinghouse for potential issues with vaccines that has become a favored talking point among anti-vaccine groups.

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VAERS is filled to the brim with injuries and deaths caused by Wuhan Flu shots, and this is just not good for marketing purposes. Thus, the corporate media and its corporate medicine allies are trying to get it removed, or at least censored, from public view.

Bloomberg sneers at the existence of VAERS, lamenting that too few public-health figureheads are discussing the problems it is causing for the continued rollout of the jab program.

If you already know about the database, you may have learned about it via anti-vaccine propaganda, which falsely promotes it as evidence that vaccines have harmful effects, Bloomberg further snarls about VAERS.

The piece goes on to blame VAERS data for creating fear towards vaccines that is similar to how a person might feel about the prospect of a shark attack.

We could do a lot better in transparency when it comes to vaccines, said Christopher Martin, a professor at the West Virginia University School of Public Health. That is something we struggle with.

The patronizing gets even worse as Martin suggested that public fears about getting injected are inexplicable, in his opinion.

That is never going to change, he added. And our approach to hesitant people is to walk up to them on the beach and show them the data and say Look, you have nothing to worry about.'

The way forward, according to these people, is to custom-tailor the information that is released to the public in such a way as to maximize the number of potential recipients who will receive it in a positive light.

We have to get information in the right format for people, says Angus Thomson, a social scientist at the United Nations Children Fund.

Whatever lies need to be told to people, or whatever data from VAERS needs to be withheld, that is the strategy. And they are telling us this right to our faces now through corporate media outlets like Bloomberg.

Chinese Virus deception is the real pandemic. To learn more, visit Pandemic.news.

Sources for this article include:

DallasNews.com

NaturalNews.com
(Natural News) Republican senatorial candidate for Illinois Bobby Piton and Sam Bushman of the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers of America (CSPOA) emphasized the importance of constitutionality amid the Biden administrations unconstitutional moves during the Dec. 6 episode of Steel Truth with Ann Vandersteel on Brighteon.TV.

Bushman, the CSPOAs operations director, gave examples of other sheriffs following the example of Constitutional Sheriff Richard Mack. He cited Elko County in Nevada as the nations first constitutional county.

They literally had their sheriff, their district attorney (DA) and their county commissioners all unanimously agree to become a constitutional county. They used our CSPOA resolution we created in one of the conventions in Las Vegas for this purpose to act as a template. They took that, they made it stronger [and] they became one of the first constitutional counties.

However, Bushman said he does not name constitutional sheriffs as an example because they often have different views. He added: There are a few sheriffs standing up, but they dont all agree on everything. They all have their own minds and we have to look at them individually.

The occasional co-host of The Sheriff Mack Show on Brighteon.TV elaborated on what constitutional sheriffs are. He said each constitutional sheriff differs in how bold they are in kicking the federal government out of county matters with the support and backing of the people.

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There are dual sovereignties in America, and the federal government has [a] very limited scope [of] power by the consent of the governed  defined in the federal or the general governments constitution. The states have their own constitutions, and they have a lot broader discretion and power within a given state. When you get down to the county level, they even have broader power  [with] the sheriff being the executive of that county or that jurisdiction, Bushman said.

We must not forget that the peoples consent and vertical and the horizontal divisions weve intentionally created must be understood and carried out. Those who represent [the people] get their authority from We the People who gave our consent. They dont have power if we didnt give consent. (Related: Small town declares itself a constitutional republic, wont follow blue states tyrannical mandates.)

Constitutional sheriffs have duty to protect citizens rights

Vandersteel brought up the matter of Bidens vaccine mandates implemented by what she dubbed as non-constitutionally chartered administrative state organizations. These entities include the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Food and Drug Administration and the National Institutes of Health.

She also mentioned an instance where employees from the Houston Health Department (HHD) were knocking on peoples doors asking about their vaccination status.

Back in November 2021, 100 Percent Fed Up reported that four HHD employees were going door-to-door at an apartment complex asking whether or not residents have been injected with the Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19) vaccine. Footage from a home security camera showed the four mask-wearing individuals holding clipboards and taking down notes.

Bushman said it is the duty of constitutional sheriffs to ensure that the rights of citizens in his jurisdiction are respected.

The sheriff not only can do that, its his duty to do that very thing and say Youre gonna come into my jurisdiction, you better have your act together, whoever you are. The fact is, theyve got to obey the law, he said.

The sheriff needs to say First, do you have your paperwork in order? Theres due process in my county; people are innocent until proven guilty. Im going to insist that these peoples rights are respected, that due process happens and that all is in order. Thats the American way, and that is the sheriffs duty  in my opinion. If he doesnt do it, hes got a dereliction of duty. (Related: Sheriff Mack wants law enforcement officers to lead the way in helping America wake up and resist government overreach  Brighteon.TV.)

Piton: Constitutional sheriffs can take back the republic

Piton believes constitutional sheriffs will play a key role in restoring election integrity and taking back the republic in the process.

The GOP senatorial candidate for Illinois said: I am 100 percent in agreement that this is the route we need to take as a nation to restore our rights. We have to take it back through the sheriffs. We have to have sheriffs who are brave and courageous enough to follow the law and arrest existing politicians and judges that violate the law. Ive been calling on sheriffs that would do that  to actually hold everybody to one set of laws.

Will you arrest a judge who is proven to be violating the U.S. Constitution? Will you arrest a politician that openly violates the U.S. Constitution? Why are we not arresting politicians that are openly calling for Americans to be raped with these vaccines? We would never tolerate a public official saying you have a right to rape a woman or a man against their will, because you think its in their best interest.

Until we have sheriffs that that actually stand up and use their power to arrest these scumbags, weve got bigger problems. I think its a wonderful route to take; We The People should use that as a litmus test, and I do think this is the path for us to restore the will of We The People.

Watch the full Dec. 6 episode of Steel Truth at the video below. Catch Steel Truth with Ann Vandersteel from Monday to Friday at 8-10 p.m. on Brighteon.TV.

Liberty.news has more about constitutional sheriffs and their role in taking back the republic.

Sources include:

Brighteon.com

100PercentFedUp.com
(Natural News) South African health workers are saying that symptoms associated with the omicron variant of the Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19) are very mild.

First identified in Botswana and South Africa, this new variant initially prompted concern among scientists and public health officials because of the unnaturally high number of mutations it possesses, which many fear could make the virus highly transmissible and immune to existing vaccines.

The World Health Organization (WHO) technical advisory group on SARS-CoV-2 Virus Evolution (TAG-VE), which is an integrated group of hand-picked expert appointees, initially said that omicron is a variant of concern and warned people of its very high global risks.

While its discovery prompted considerable panic across the globe, with a number of countries barring entry of foreign travelers, there is no firm evidence that omicron is more dangerous than other variants, such as delta.

Delta not only proved to be more transmissible than other earlier variants, but it also caused more severe illness. However, vaccines seemingly provided protection against delta infection with a reduction of effectiveness than other variants.

Information about omicron is scarce at best. Its still not known whether or not it is more transmissible or capable of causing more serious illness  although there had been evidence that it can re-infect people more readily. This lack of information could be outright political fraud. The new variant is not as dangerous as they are making it out to be.

While there had been increasing rates of hospitalization in South Africa, this may also be due to the increasing overall number of infections rather than a specific infection with omicron. The WHO update specifically stated: There is currently no information to suggest that symptoms associated with omicron are different from those from other variants.

Reports by medical practitioners in South Africa also confirmed that the advisory is false. Dr. Angelique Coetzee, a private practitioner and Chair of the South African Medical Association, said: What we are seeing clinically in South Africa  and remember Im at the epicenter of this where Im practicing  is extremely mild. For us, these are mild cases. We havent admitted anyone, Ive spoken to other colleagues of mine and they give the same picture.

Omicron fear-mongering campaign

TAG-VE advisory was used by governments and the media to justify partial lockdowns and travel restrictions yet again, as they put the fear campaign into high gear. Their explanation: its to save lives. (Related: Omicron variant of COVID threatens post-lockdown economic recovery.)

Dr. Anthony Fauci himself gave a contradictory statement regarding the variant in November, saying that omicron is already in the United States but has yet to be detected.

When you have a virus that is showing this degree of transmissibility and youre having travel-related cases, it almost invariably is going to go all over, he said.

The TAG-VE advisory also contributed to the ongoing problems with the airline industry worldwide, as it undermined business transactions, international commodity trade and production.

The official WHO updates on omicron passed virtually unnoticed, and it invalidated the TAG-VEs advisory as well as the warnings of Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. The update also refutes the decision of the TAG-VE groups to categorize the omicron as a variant of concern.

The WHO and coronavirus experts are becoming increasingly convinced that the omicron variant is super mild and has not led to the jump in COVID death rates in South Africa. The WHO is calling for countries to drop travel restrictions and drop mass hysteria, and be more cautiously optimistic instead as reports suggest that it is not more lethal than the previous delta variant.

Most patients affected with the omicron variant experience severe headache, nausea, dizziness and a high pulse rate. Looking at the mildness of the symptoms we are seeing, currently there is no reason for panicking as we dont see any severely ill patients, Coetzee said, adding that the response from many European countries was just a hype.

Read more at Pandemic.news.

Sources include:

GlobalResearch.ca

NYTimes.com

CityAM.com
(Natural News) Two of Chinas largest housing developers are facing a financial disaster after missing their payment deadlines for the millions of dollars that they owe to global shareholders.

The Evergrande Group and Kaisa Group Holdings are both on the brink of default with only one looking to have a better chance of making a possible reversal from their current dilemma.

On Monday, Dec. 6, Evergrande came to the end of a 30-day moratorium for $82.5 million in interest it failed to disburse to overseas investors last month. The company is now the most indebted property developer in China with bills amounting to more than $300 billion.

Evergrande, in a statement issued on Dec. 3, confirmed that it might not be able to offset its interest payments  including its overdue debts amounting to $260 million. Evergrandes bondholders said on Tuesday, Dec. 7, that their interest payments have yet to arrive.

Kaisa is facing a similar problem, with the company unlikely to meet its offshore debt deadline to pay $400 million.

Evergrande set to become Chinas biggest defaulter

Evergrandes failure to deliver $82.5 million in interest payments last month is expected to cause a cross-default on its international bonds worth $19 billion. This put the real estate developer at risk of becoming Chinas biggest defaulter. (Related: Chinas Evergrande shares plummet as full-blown DEFAULT becomes inevitable.)

Kaisas non-payment, meanwhile, will push its bond at 6.5 percent and bring it into technical default, which would then trigger cross-defaults on its offshore bonds amounting to nearly $12 billion. Kaisa is the largest holder of offshore debt among developers in China after Evergrande. It also became the first Chinese developer to default on an offshore bond way back in 2015.

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With more than 1,300 real estate project to its name, Evergrande is one of the top property developers in China. The Chinese government has stated repeatedly that the dilemma of Evergrande can be controlled, and boosting its liquidity in the banking sector along with the property developers plans to restructure its overseas debt will help reassure global shareholders.

According to a source, Evergrande has not given a statement to its investors about the missed payment.

The real-estate developer on Monday said that it has created a risk-management committee that will help in mitigating and eliminating the future risks. This came about after creditors demanded $260 million payment, which it could not guarantee due to the lack of funds to repay its debt.

Chinese authorities immediately summoned Evergrandes chairman and reassured markets that any extensive risk will be controlled.

On Tuesday, rating agency S&P noted that the $260 million repayment demand showed that the liquidity of Evergrande is extremely weak with a default looming in March and April 2022.

Bondholders offload shares as Chinese property developers near financial collapse

Meanwhile, panicked bondholders offloaded shares amid fears that some of Chinas biggest property developers are close to a financial collapse. Speculations circulated that Evergrande will not be able to avail of new loans to pay its debt, sending the companys shares into a record low.

In recent months, Evergrande has been selling its assets to raise the money to pay its shareholders after borrowing 300 billion ($396.12 billion) to finance its 1,300 real estate developments in more than 280 cities in China.

A property industry crisis emerged in China after the government under President Xi Jinping launched an initiative last year to contain the excessive debt of real estate developers and the uncontrolled speculation of consumers.

Companies who acquired a large debt to expand found their money taps closed and struggled to complete projects, pay contractors and meet domestic and foreign repayments.

Kaisa became the latest real estate firm to scare investors when it declared last week that it failed to secure a debt swap that would have given the company more time to give its creditors shares in the company.

Follow Collapse.news for more news related to financial collapse of giant corporations.

Sources include:

Fortune.com

Reuters.com

TheGuardian.com
(Natural News) Immunologists and virologists are warning that the arrival of the COVID-19 omicron variant should serve as a wake-up call to the world that it is time to develop vaccines that are not as vulnerable to the viruss rapid mutation.

While many of the first generation of COVID-19 vaccines may have been quick to make their way onto the market and pass regulatory hurdles, the fact that they target the spike protein that rests on the outer surface of the virus that infects human cells means that it can be significantly less effective  and possibly completely ineffective  as the virus continues to mutate. The omicron variant that is currently circulating has many more mutations than previous variants, with more than 30 mutations on its spike alone.

While researchers are still working to determine the extent to which the variant can evade immunity from the current vaccines, the fact that so many vaccinated individuals are coming down with it seems to indicate that they are not terribly effective. Early data on the Pfizer vaccine is already showing reduced protection against the variant, and it stands to reason that as the virus continues to evolve, the vaccines that address the first variant of the disease will continue to be less effective, underscoring the need to develop vaccines that target a part of the virus that is less susceptible to mutations.

Variant-proof vaccines in development

The chief scientist of the World Health Organization, Soumya Swaminathan, said that next-generation vaccines are needed while speaking at the Reuters Next conference.

At the heart of the problem is the fact that most of the COVID-19 vaccines being used right now focus solely on the parts of the spike protein that spur a strong immune response but are most vulnerable to mutations. The mRNA vaccines that are overwhelmingly popular around the world right now had a 95% efficacy against symptomatic COVID-19 at first, something that brought developers billions of dollars in revenue.

There were just a few exceptions to this approach in early vaccines, and most did not perform well. For example, Sinovac Biotechs vaccine produced in China, which uses an inactivated version of the SARS-CoV-2 virus rather than singling out particular genes, loses its antibody protection quickly and has limited protection in older people.

Many vaccine makers are currently working on creating new versions of their current vaccines to target the omicron variant, but it is extremely difficult to keep up with the latest mutations and create an effective vaccine that offers people real protection before each new variant spreads.

Some research groups are already working on vaccines that offer broader protection against the virus, targeting the parts of the virus that are considered too essential to its survival to mutate. However, experts have warned that it could take a long time and significant funding for these efforts to succeed.

The Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) is funding Israel MigVax Corp, which is currently working on developing a variant-proof oral vaccine, as well as a potentially variant-proof vaccine under development by Saskatchewans Vaccine And Infectious Disease Organization. They are also offering financial support to Gritstone Bio, which is working on a self-amplifying mRNA vaccine aimed at fighting variants.

Gritstone CEO Andrew Allen said: Its just a little naive to think that the vaccines that we made in the first few hot minutes of the pandemic are the best vaccines that we can make.

It is important to continue drawing attention to the limitations of the current crop of vaccines, and while one can only hope that this could lead to the development of truly safe and effective options that offer long-term protection, this should also serve as a wake-up call that vaccines may not be the best option after all and that natural ways of boosting immunity and better treatment protocols are worthy of similar investments.

Sources for this article include:

Reuters.com

Israel21c.org
(Natural News) Hospitals short on medical staff due to mass firings of the unvaccinated are now receiving National Guard troops as replacements.

Maine Gov. Janet Mills announced on Wednesday that short-staffed health care facilities in her state will be given military troops to help stop the spread of the new Omicron (Moronic) variant of the Wuhan coronavirus (Covid-19).

Moronic seems to only be affecting the fully vaccinated, by the way. And since most of Maine is now fully vaccinated, cases are soaring.

According to the Bangor Daily News, the number of available hospital beds throughout the state is now the lowest it has ever been throughout the plandemic. Most of these new cases appear to be people who took the jabs and are now sick and / or dying from the disease.

To supposedly combat this, Mills signed a directive allowing up to 75 Guard troops to be used in non-clinical settings at two specific hospitals. Guard troops will also reportedly be sent to nursing homes, with tasks that include daily chores.

Several nursing homes in Maine have actually had to close due to workforce shortages presumably caused by government jab mandates. Hospitals in New England are also shutting down due to a lack of personnel.

Only one of Trumps three appointed Supreme Court justices voted to support medical freedom from mandatory covid vaccination

Just as a reminder, Mills had previously announced back in August that health care workers in Maine would need to be fully vaccinated by October 29 or else lose their jobs.

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Liberty Counsel filed a lawsuit on behalf of roughly 2,000 of them who did not want to comply. However, the U.S. Supreme Court, which is now stacked with Donald Trump appointees, rejected the request in a 6-3 vote.

Only one of Trumps appointees, Justice Neil Gorsuch, voted in favor of the petition. Justices Amy Coney Barrett and Brett Kavanaugh both voted against medical freedom.

So now, all of Maines unvaccinated health care workers have been fired, and hospitals and senior care facilities everywhere are short-staffed as a result. And this is the excuse that Democrats apparently needed to start sending in the troops to fill that void.

As soon as next week, Guard troops will be arriving at Maine hospitals and elder care facilities. However, where they will go specifically and in what number allotments has not yet been determined.

Mills is further begging for more federal aid for Maine Medical Center in Portland and Central Maine Medical Center in Lewiston, both of which are severely lacking in workers, thanks to Mills mandate.

I did not take this action lightly, but we must take steps to alleviate the strain on our health care system and ensure care for all those who need it, Mills is quoted as saying.

Maine Medical Center is the states largest hospital with 637 total beds. Lewiston is smaller but is said to be the heaviest hit by the pandemic in recent months.

Both facilities have two respective sister hospitals, one in Rumford and the other in Bridgton. Both of them were completely full last month, presumably with fully vaccinated patients who obeyed the governments orders to get injected.

The corporate media is, of course, lying and saying the exact opposite. But the data clearly shows that most new Chinese Virus patients are fully jabbed, even using the governments skewed metrics.

Department of Health and Human Services Commissioner Jeanne Lambrew hinted that perhaps care at many hospitals will need to be rationed in order to have enough staff on hand to care for the very ill.

More related news stories about the collapse of society due to Wuhan coronavirus (Covid-19) tyranny can be found at Fascism.news.

Sources for this article include:

BangorDailyNews.com

NaturalNews.com

TheGatewayPundit.com

NaturalNews.com
(Natural News) A Canadian woman and her children were subjected to draconian Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19) protocols upon returning home from an overseas trip. They were sent to a quarantine facility upon arrival at the Calgary International Airport.

Tiffany Gaura and her family returned home after a trip to Egypt. She and her children had taken COVID-19 polymerase chain reaction (PCR) tests at Cairo International Airport and at Frankfurt International Airport. Moreover, Gaura herself was fully vaccinated.

The family planned to quarantine themselves at their empty home in Calgary. However, things did not go exactly as planned.

Agents of the Canadian Border Services Agency (CBSA) interrogated Gaura for 15 minutes about her non-existent COVID history, her vaccination status and her plans in the country.

They read me my rights, told me I was entitled to a lawyer [and that] the fine for breaking quarantine is up to $750,000. We had a dedicated escort throughout, ensuring we werent escaping, Gaura wrote in a Facebook post.

Secondary unexplained screening at customs, and a PCR [test] on arrival. We werent allowed to make any stops or get anything to eat or drink. The whole process took about two hours.

The Gauras were transported to the Westin Airport Hotel in Calgary, which Ottawa has contracted out as a secure quarantine site. Gaura said entry to the hotel was blocked, and Canadian Red Cross (CRC) employees in hazmat suits greeted them and processed their paperwork.

Gaura family taken to quarantine prison

The family was then taken to an isolation floor. We cannot go outside, leave our room, get deliveries or packages [or] consume anything from offsite, she said.

The kids are going stir crazy [with] no fresh air [and] no physical activity. We are doing yoga and schoolwork. I brought a few card games, but that can only fill so many hours of the day with no space or freedom to roam.

The room assigned to the Gauras only had one bed, so the entire family must sleep together. She added that the view from their room is of a window to nothing. She elaborated: [We] cant see the parking lot or any comings and goings from the site. I wonder if they give rooms that have a view of the outside. (Related: Canada spends millions on voluntary isolation sites, tightens travel restrictions.)

Gaura described the meals provided to them as horrible, saying that the meals arrive cold and have limited nutrition value. She continued: No fruits or vegetables, aside from potatoes. No beverages are offered, so its tap water for the win. Its gross.

Once Gaura and her children receive negative COVID-19 PCR test results, they must contact the CRC to coordinate with quarantine officers for their discharge. However, the coordination can take up to two days, and they are still waiting for the test results.

Apparently in Canada, it takes 72 hours to get results in 2021. Or maybe, they just want us to stay here longer, she lamented.

Their ordeal does not end with being discharged from the facility. They must complete the compulsory 14-day quarantine at home and take another test on the eighth day.

Gaura said: This is happening right now in Canada, two years into a pandemic, to vaccinated individuals. I dont have the words to express this well. I waver back and forth between rage, embarrassment and disbelief. This will change my life, I have no doubt.

Draconian measures driven by omicron variant

The draconian measures Gaura and her children were subjected to was driven by the B11529 omicron strain. In response to the purportedly more infectious variant, the Canadian government imposed new quarantine measures and travel bans to countries in Africa.

In a Nov. 30 press release, Ottawa announced additional border measures to reduce the risk of the importation and transmission of COVID-19 and its variants in Canada. Travelers from 10 African countries  including Egypt  were prohibited from entering the country.

Canadian citizens regardless of their vaccination status  who have been in any of these 10 countries in the previous 14 days will be subject to enhanced pre-entry and arrival testing, screening and quarantine measures, the press release stated. True enough, Gaura and her children were subjected to some of the protocols outlined.

Those arriving by air will be required to stay in a designated quarantine facility while they await their arrival test result. They will be permitted onward travel once they have received a negative arrival test result. They will also be required to complete a test on day eight after arrival and quarantine for 14 days. (Related: People traveling to Canada need negative COVID test or theyll be quarantined in government camp.)

Pandemic.news has more about COVID-19 draconian health protocols.

Sources include:

LifeSiteNews.com

Facebook.com

Canada.ca
(Natural News) In the summer of 2020, Bitcoin.com published a report about Jeffrey Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwells social media habits and alleged affinity for Bitcoin.

Maxwells last post, that report suggested, may have been about the cryptocurrency, which Epstein apparently also liked and talked about before his downfall, which is among the most widely publicized cases in history.

The last time Maxwell used the social media platform Reddit, she supposedly put up a post about someone mysteriously sending almost $1 billion in Bitcoin on Wednesday, June 30, 2020.

Ghislaine Maxwell was a well known associate of the now-deceased Jeffrey Epstein. The financier Epstein is a convicted sex offender who allegedly had a ring of sex slaves that were used to satisfy celebrities, politicians, and known British royalty figures, the report explains.

Maxwell is accused of being the main ringleader behind Epsteins sex trafficking and blackmailing empire, and was recently taken into custody by the FBI. Interestingly, Maxwell is tied to well known people in both the Democrat and Republican parties including people like former U.S. President Bill Clinton, and the current incumbent Donald Trump.

The alleged final post from Maxwell on Reddit is said to have included an article from VICE about the $1 billion Bitcoin transfer. For 14 years prior, Maxwell had been posting articles about various things to the platform.

Ghislaine Maxwell was the first person on Reddit to hit 1 million karma LMAO, tweeted someone named Joe Leonard.

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Shes the #8 karma to this day. Her posts to /r/worldnews constituted roughly 30% of the posts there. This connection was made after she was arrested and that account stopped posting there after 14 years.

Maxwell now faces numerous sex trafficking charges

Maxwell is now widely recognized as the financier to Epsteins sex slave ring. She would help find underage children to satisfy the sexual deviancy of politicians, celebrities and British royalty figures, among others.

Epstein apparently also talked about Bitcoin at one point, comparing its functionality to gold as a digital store of value.

In 2017, enough people agree on the value of bitcoin that it can serve the same purpose, Epstein is quoted as saying.

There will only ever be 21 million bitcoins, but this limit comes from computer code, not by how many bitcoins are left to remove from the earth. If we learn tomorrow that half of Montana contained a secret cache of gold, the value of gold would decrease instantly. Bitcoin doesnt have this problem.

Epstein certainly like Federal Reserve Notes as well, which were part of his sexual escapades and the purchasing and developing of his famous Epstein Island, the place where various sex rituals involving children allegedly occurred.

Federal prosecutors say that between the years of 1994 and 1997, Maxwell assisted, facilitated and contributed to Jeffrey Epsteins abuse of minor girls by, among other things, helping Epstein to recruit, groom and ultimately abuse victims known to Maxwell and Epstein to be under the age of 18.

Maxwell now faces a litany of sex trafficking charges that are still being prosecuted through the courts.

As we reported in the fall of 2019, other co-conspirators in the Epstein-Maxwell sex trafficking ring include the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), The New York Times and Bill Gates.

Gates and other billionaire philanthropists appear to have funneled cash to Epstein through the MIT Media Lab. These cash gifts were made without any specific mention of Epstein, even though he was the intended recipient.

Gates, by the way, flew on Epsteins private Lolita Express airplane, as did many other bigwigs and government officials, both Democrat and Republican.

More related news about Maxwell, Epstein, and other from their ilk can be found at Evil.news.

Sources for this article include:

Bitcoin.com

NaturalNews.com
(Natural News) The panel advising Israels Ministry of Health about the Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic will be discussing the possibility of giving yet another booster vaccine shot for immunocompromised patients.

Several studies have shown that certain categories of patients with weakened immune systems were much less likely to develop antibodies after two doses compared to the general population.

A study by the Rabin Medical Center-Beilinson Campus in Petah Tikva and the Clalit Health Services showed that among lung transplant patients, 33 percent developed antibodies after the booster compared to 18 percent after the first two shots.

For heart transplant patients, the rates were 58 percent after the third shot compared to 31 percent after the second. For liver transplant recipients, 71 percent developed antibodies after the third shot compared to 47 percent after the second.

The advisory panel will discuss the option of a fourth shot later this week.

Real-world COVID vaccine experiment continues

Cyrille Cohen, head of the immunology lab at Bar-Ilan University, said that this move makes sense.

We know that three shots are needed by people with a functional immune system. Immunosuppressed patients got their third vaccine already almost six months ago, so it is not a bad idea to offer them another booster, since they are at high risk, he said.

He also said that it is hard to know if it is going to help unless the procedure is carried out. It is very complex to answer the question without actually carrying out the procedure. We saw how with the third vaccine many were skeptical as Israel started to administer it, and now most of the world agrees that it is needed.

Cohen is essentially saying that the real-world COVID vaccine experiment should continue.

Is the fourth shot safe?

One thing that should be considered is whether or not a fourth shot would be safe. (Related: Think youre fully vaccinated? Not anymore: Fauci aggressively pushing THIRD covid vaccine shot.)

According to Cohen, most of the side effects associated with the Pfizer vaccine are connected to an overreaction of the immune system, so he believes that additional shots should not be an issue for patients whose immune systems do not react strongly enough.

But Cohen cautioned that not all immunosuppressed patients can be considered the same way. For instance, he noted the difference between transplant recipients whose immune systems were weakened on purpose, and cancer patients whose immune systems can be weakened as a side effect of treatment.

In July, Israels Health Ministry started to administer booster shots to specific categories of patients; cancer patients suffering from solid tumors did not qualify. Those that did qualify were people with rheumatological or autoimmune diseases being treated with specific drugs, those with hematologic malignancies, and recipients of heart, lung, kidney or liver transplants.

However, despite the government-sanctioned rollout of COVID vaccine boosters and Cohens positive outlook, there are not enough credible studies to vouch for the safety of boosters in healthy individuals, much less the immunocompromised.

Israel making preparations

The country has been making preparations since September to ensure that it has a sufficient supply of the COVID-19 vaccines in case a fourth round is necessary. Health Ministry Director-General Nachman Ash said: We dont know when it will happen. I hope very much that it wont be within six months, like this time, and that the third dose will last for longer.

Israel has already inoculated most of its population, with the third dose already being administered since August. Health officials also said that the effects of the initial COVID-19 shots begin to weaken five months after inoculation, making the boosters necessary.

As the U.S., the U.K. and the rest of Europe began administering their booster shots, the World Health Organization pleaded for a moratorium on third shots, asking governments to wait until the end of the year so that poorer countries get better access to the vaccines.

Read more at Pandemic.news.

Sources include:

JPost.com

Bloomberg.com
(Natural News) Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19) patients in Singapore who are not recognized as fully vaccinated  meaning those who are only partially vaccinated and those who completely refuse vaccination  are no longer eligible for health coverage and have to pay for their medical bills in full.

The new policy forcing unvaccinated Singaporeans to needlessly suffer was first announced on Nov. 8. Minister of Health Ong Ye Kung described this move as an important signal to those who are still choosing not to get vaccinated. (Related: Singapores COVID tracking turns it into a veritable surveillance state.)

We have to send this important signal, to urge everyone to get vaccinated if you are eligible, said Ong last month.

The government of Singapore passed a policy last year that made it pay for the full treatment costs of nearly every single COVID-19 patient in the city-state, be they Singaporeans, permanent residents or long-term visitors. This was done to ensure that financial considerations do not deter people from going to the hospital.

This financial support for coronavirus treatment-related bills was withdrawn on Dec. 8. According to a median estimate released by the health ministry, Singaporeans who receive medical assistance and stay in intensive care units might have to pay at least SG$25,000 ($18,301).

The new policy applies to all unvaccinated COVID-19 patients in Singapore admitted on or after Dec. 8 to hospitals or COVID-19 treatment facilities. The medical bills of people who are not eligible for vaccination will still be paid in full by the government.

Singaporeans who have gotten vaccinated but are not considered fully vaccinated have until Dec. 31 to get another dose of the vaccine. Starting Jan. 1, they will also be paying for their own COVID-19 treatment bills.

Those who were fully vaccinated using the Chinese-made Sinovac and Sinopharm vaccines will only be considered fully vaccinated until Dec. 31. They can keep their status as fully vaccinated individuals only if they get a booster vaccine. Otherwise, they will also be forced to pay for their own COVID-19 treatment if they get infected.

Policy designed to coerce unvaccinated holdouts to get the jab

Ong claimed that many hospital administrators have spoken to him about preferring not to foot the COVID-19 treatment bill of any unvaccinated patients, as this forces hospitals to divert important resources unnecessarily.

This policy is just the latest in the Singaporean governments attempts to coerce the unvaccinated holdouts in the country to get the vaccine. According to government estimates, around 44,000 older Singaporeans remain unvaccinated by choice.

Previous policies segregating the unvaccinated from the rest of society include restricting activities that they may take part in. Without proof of vaccination, unvaccinated Singaporeans who are eligible for the vaccine are not able to dine in at restaurants or enter shopping malls.

When this policy did not work, the government tried multiple other tactics, such as broadcasting claims that unvaccinated Singaporeans make up a vast majority of COVID-19 patients and deaths. This claim was never substantiated with data.

They tried everything. They provided information, they provided facts, theyve had people telling their personal stories, theyve seen the ministers go and get their jabs, what else can we do? said Dr. Hsien-Hsien Lei, CEO of the American Chamber of Commerce in Singapore, professor and a recognized expert on public health.

We cannot afford to not use every tool in our toolbox, even if there is some level of stick involved.

Unvaccinated Singaporeans feel discriminated against

Sabrina Chiu, a 47-year-old unvaccinated Singaporean, feels that the new policy is very unfair. She has not gotten vaccinated because she has a long list of allergies to medications. Its kind of like you are indirectly forcing the people to get vaccinated, she said.

Chiu added that the new policy will not convince her to get vaccinated.

One doctor in Singapore who asked not to be named said the policy sends a wrong message to the countrys unvaccinated population. The healthcare system needs to be there for everyone, not just for those whose choices we endorse, he said.

Even political figures have expressed concerns about the new policy. The Singapore Democratic Party (SDP), a small opposition party with no representation in the countrys parliament, is worried that it could discourage unvaccinated people from seeking any kind of medical care.

The basic public health principle is to provide free treatment for highly communicable diseases, said Paul Tambyah, chairman of the SDP, doctor and expert on infectious diseases. This encourages people to come forward to be diagnosed and treated rather than remain in the community, where they may end up spreading the disease to even more people.

A spokesman for the health ministry said getting vaccinated is a civic and moral duty each of us have to ourselves and people around us.

Follow Vaccines.news for more news related to coronavirus vaccines.

Sources include:

WSJ.com

StraitsTimes.com 1

Bloomberg.com

StraitsTimes.com 2
(Natural News) A prominent molecular biologist and toxicologist called on the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) of the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to immediately halt Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19) vaccine production and distribution.

During the time set aside for public comment in an ACIP meeting earlier this year, Dr. Janci Chun Lindsay explained scientific evidence that coronavirus vaccines cause fertility issues, heart inflammation, blood clots and immune evasions.

Lindsay noted that not a single study has disproven her hypothesis that COVID-19 mRNA and DNA vaccines will cross-react with a retroviral envelop protein called syncytin and reproductive proteins in sperm, ova and placenta in ways that may impair fertility and reproductive outcomes.

She warned: We could potentially be sterilizing an entire generation.

Lindsay also cited a CDC Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report where myocarditis has been observed during the post-authorization monitoring of adolescents aged 12-17 years after vaccination with Pfizers COVID-19 vaccine.

Public plays important role in medicine safety

Monitoring adverse drug reactions (ADRs) is key in the development of medicines. In 1968, the international drug monitoring system started with 10 countries pooling ADR data from their respective national systems.

In April 2015, VigiAccess was launched by the World Health Organization (WHO) in recognition of the increasingly important role played by the public in pharmacovigilance and medicine safety.

VigiAccess provides public access to VigiBase, the WHO global database of reported potential side effects of medicinal products. This initiative enabled the public to be more informed about the unfavorable effects of medicines and play a more active role in their own cure.

The China Hospital Pharmacovigilance System (CHPS), developed by the China National Center for Adverse Drug Reaction Monitoring (CNCAM), collected and analyzed information automatically extracted from sentinel hospitals to evaluate the incidence, type and risk factors associated with ADRs among patients with COVID-19.

Risk factors for the ADRs were classified using the WHO-Uppsala Monitoring Center (WHO-UMC) system.

In May, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) of the National Institute of Health (NIH) supported the research led by Dr. Ian Wilson at the Scripps Research Institute to examine how and why certain mutations protect SARS-CoV2, the virus that causes COVID-19.

Mass vaccination leads to emergence of more dangerous variants

Adverse effects are not the only issues associated with COVID-19 vaccines. Earlier this year, a vaccine research expert published an open letter calling on the WHO to immediately halt all COVID-19 mass vaccinations.

Dr. Geert Vanden Bossche, a seasoned vaccine developer who coordinated the Ebola vaccine program at the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization (GAVI), said that mass vaccinations could lead to the emergence of more dangerous forms of the virus.

I am not against vaccination. On the contrary, I can assure you that each of the current vaccines has been designed, developed and manufactured by brilliant and competent scientists, wrote Dr. Vanden Bossche.

However, this type of prophylactic vaccines is completely inappropriate, and even highly dangerous, when used in mass vaccination campaigns during a viral pandemic,

A prophylactic or preventative vaccine introduces an antigen (usually a weakened virus) into a persons body. The goal is to stimulate an individuals immune system to create antibodies for that specific antigen in order to develop immunity against the associated illness.

The more we use these vaccines for immunizing people in the midst of a pandemic, the more infectious the virus will become, Vanden Bossche wrote. With increasing infectiousness comes an increased likelihood of viral resistance to the vaccines.

Under this scenario, manufacturers will be forced to refine or improve the vaccines, which will then increase the selection pressure. (Related: IMPOSSIBLE SCIENCE: Novavax says it will have a new vaccine ready in just two weeks for the Omicron variant, which appeared just last week.)

Selection pressure is a term used to describe the process that helps an organism or pathogen to evolve in ways that make it better adapted to its changing environment. An antibiotic resistance, which is caused by overuse of antibiotic drugs, is a good example of selection pressure.

The virus will effectively outsmart the highly specific antigen-based vaccines that are being used and tweaked.

Follow Immunization.news for more news related to COVID-19 vaccines.

Sources include:

TheExpose.uk

CDC.gov

NCBI.NLM.NIH.gov 1

NCBI.NLM.NIH.gov 2

NIH.gov

Dryburgh.com
(Natural News) The United Kingdoms Secretary of State for Health and Social Care Sajid Javid has admitted that making Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19) vaccinations mandatory is unethical and would not work.

Javid made this admission during an interview with the BBC. My view is that its unethical and also at a practical level it wouldnt work, he said.

If youre asking me about universal mandatory vaccination, as some countries in Europe have said they will do, at a practical level I just dont think it would work. Getting vaccinated has to be a positive choice.

In a separate interview, Javid said he has no interest in mandatory vaccinations. But he added that he is willing to mandate COVID-19 vaccines for people who are regularly exposed to high-risk settings, including employees of the National Health Service, social care workers and residents of long-term care facilities. Javid said the government is already prepared to legislate this requirement. (Related: IT NEVER ENDS: U.K. says citizens will need booster shots every three months FOREVER in order to manage covid.)

British prime minister says vaccines necessary to get rid of COVID-19 restrictions

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson called for a national conversation on how to deal with the U.K.s unvaccinated population.

Johnson said he does not want to turn the U.K. into a society that forces people to get vaccinated. I didnt want us to have a society and a culture where we force people to get vaccinated, he said. I dont think thats ever been the way we do things in this country.

But he also admitted that he believes mandatory vaccinations are the only way to make sure that COVID-19 restrictions can be permanently repealed.

I think there is going to come a point, if we can show that the vaccines are capable of holding [the post-vaccine variant] omicron  and that is the key thing we need to test  I do think we need to have a national conversation about ways in which we deal with this pandemic, said Johnson.

I dont believe we can keep going indefinitely with non-pharmaceutical interventions, restrictions on peoples way of life, just because a substantial portion of the population still sadly has not got vaccinated.

A spokesperson later clarified Johnsons statement, saying that government ministers are focusing on developing therapeutic interventions against COVID-19 and its subsequent variants  including vaccinations and non-vaccine therapeutics like antiviral medication.

We recognize how challenging this is, and disheartening for the public to see us having to introduce further restrictions, albeit at a relatively limited level, said the spokesman. And so we will do everything possible to continue to be at the cutting edge of this work. I think he was clear that he didnt want us to have a society and culture where we forced people to get vaccinated.

Strong opposition to vaccine mandate within UK government

This hint that the government may enact mandatory vaccinations caused many members of parliament (MP) in the Conservative Party to revolt openly.

MP Peter Bone from Englands East Midlands region called the idea completely outrageous during an interview with BBC. Id be the first to say the PM should go if it were implemented, he said.

MP Alexander Stafford from the northern English region of Yorkshire said he cannot and will not support mandatory vaccinations.

Multiple members of Johnsons cabinet have also quietly expressed opposition to the proposal.

Everyone agrees its not the way forward, said one member of the government who spoke with British mainstream media outlet The Telegraph.

You would think it was only people like [Nazi doctor] Josef Mengele who would champion injecting people against their will, said another government insider. This is fascist nonsense and should be shunned by any freedom-loving man or woman in this country.

Learn more about the push to mandate COVID-19 vaccinations in the U.K. and other parts of the world at VaccineWars.com.

Sources include:

InfoWars.com

Independent.co.uk

Telegraph.co.uk

Standard.co.uk
A solar storm warning has been issued due to the possibility of "swirling sun debris" hitting Earth in the coming days.

A coronal mass ejection (CME) that has fled the Sun and is anticipated to threaten Earth later this week has prompted NASA to issue a warning.

While this is happening, a large eruption from a nearby star as big as the Sun might also affect Earth.

Related Article: Space Watch: Solar and Geomagnetic Storms, What Are They?

EK Draconis Explosion

A star in the constellation Draco, located over 100 light-years distant, tells us some unpleasant facts about our own Sun.

Researchers were recently shocked when the star, EK Draconis, burst into an intense light show that was more energetic than anything seen from our star. It would be disastrous for our electrical systems and satellites if our Sun erupted in the same way.

EK Draconis is nearly the same mass as the Sun, although it is considerably younger, having been discovered only 100 million years ago (as opposed to the Sun's 4.6 billion years). Both stars are formed of superheated gas.

Plasma can sometimes fall back to the solar surface and light up, causing a solar flare. Flares can be minor, as the minuscule 'campfires' on our Sun discovered by NASA's Solar Orbiter last year, but they can also be considerably larger.

Recent Solar Storm

Dr. Tamitha Skov, a space weather scientist, has warned that the Sun's outburst will strike the planet's south.

"NASA forecasts reveal a recent filament eruption by late December 11 appears to deliver a glancing hit to the south of Earth," she added.

"On Earth's nightside, expect a little disturbance, although the aurora is probable at high latitudes with periodic amateur radio and GPS troubles."

Comparing EK Draconis and the Sun

A team of astronomers investigating EK Draconis recently witnessed the star spew plasma in an outburst ten times greater than any other Sun-like star ever recorded.

Their findings were published in Nature Astronomy. They said it closely resembles CMEs (Coronal Mass Ejections) like Solar Storms.

Research co-author Yuta Notsu, an astronomer at UC Boulder and the National Solar Observatory, said, "The results enable us to enhance knowledge on how coronal massive mass ejections have happened during the 4.6-billion-year history of Sun-sized stars and our Sun itself."

"Although such large super CMEs happened far more frequently when our Sun was younger, this event can be used as a proxy for the hypothetical super CMEs linked with possible superflares that occur once per hundred or thousand years on our present Sun."

So maybe our Sun may produce a coronal mass ejection of equal size one day.

Even the weaker solar flares we encounter are enough of a nuisance; when directed at Earth, the phenomenon may disrupt electronics and satellite orbits. A significantly large coronal mass ejection would destroy those satellites and take out the entire electric system.

Also Read: Expert Warns 'Situation Worse than Covid' if Government Ignores Solar Flare Defense

For more cosmic news, don't forget to follow Nature World News!
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Use this website to help find the best person to fill your role. This is a paid-for service aiming at advertising jobs which are of interest to the Norwich and Norfolk Christian community and its many churches, groups and organisations.

To advertise a vacancy, simply e-mail the details such as job and person specifications, approx salary, contact details and a closing date to us here .

For full details of the service, and our cost-effective fee, please click here.

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Stewart Barber, Eckling Grange Care

We had a great advert on Network Norwich for many weeks with great layout, unlimited words, colour logo and a direct link from the weekly newsletter! We also found our new manager through the website.

Tom Howell, Halls of Residence

Thank you for all your help with our recruiting process during 2019. We have some great new staff at the Matthew Project as a result. God bless."We had a good response to our advert on Network Norwich for a Project Worker. We were able to short-list some very possible applicants and have now made an appointment of a lady whom we expect to fit well into our existing team and who brings to us some useful past experience.Thank you for your help, what a useful medium this is.""We see the Network Norfolk website as a good place to advertise the organisation and Im very pleased to say that the recent advert for an account assistant led to an appointment."
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Mary Schenk is a reporter covering police, courts and breaking news at The News-Gazette. Her email is mschenk@news-gazette.com, and you can follow her on Twitter (@schenk).
Champaign, IL (61820)

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A mix of clouds and sun with gusty winds. High 22F. Winds W at 25 to 35 mph. Winds could occasionally gust over 50 mph..

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The B.1.1.529 Omicron is the latest severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2) variant first detected in South Africa and has spread to more than 50 countries. Since the Omicron variant is associated with increased transmissibility, the World Health Organization (WHO) has classified it as a variant of concern (VOC).

Recently, a multinational team of researchers studied the risk of importation of the Omicron variant by travelers from South Africa. In this study, they analyzed the mobility of travelers from South Africa to 30 non-African countries using travel data collected from Open Sky Network and Facebook Data for Good. They estimated the probability of the introduction of the Omicron variant into each country and the extent of local transmission before November 28, 2021. The study is posted to the medRxiv* pre-print server while awaiting peer review.

Study: International risk of SARS-CoV-2 Omicron variant importations originating in South Africa. Image Credit: Adao/Shutterstock

Findings

The study estimated that 26 out of the 30 non-African countries had a more than 50% chance of having received at least one travel-based importation of the Omicron variant. The remaining four countries Switzerland, United Kingdom (UK), France, and Sweden  exceeded the 50% risk threshold on November 27. This importation risk estimate would exceed if the Omicron variant were also prevalent in other southern African nations. Hungary had the highest calculated probability of Omicron importation between November 1 and November 28, 2021.

The UK has reported the highest number of Omicron cases outside African countries despite the lower risk of importation than other countries in the study. This is due to the UKs robust genome surveillance program that has contributed almost 25% of global SARS-CoV-2 sequences. This shows that the new VOC may be spreading undetected in several countries with similar importation risks due to their poor genome sequencing capacity.

Estimated risks of SARS-CoV-2 Omicron variant introductions from South Africa to 30 non-African regions on or before November 28, 2021. (A) The probability that at least one person infected with the Omicron variant arrived in a given country from South Africa by the date indicated on the x-axis, based on Facebook mobility and OpenSky data. The black dashed vertical line indicates November 26, 2021, when the WHO classified Omicron as a VOC (1); the red dashed horizontal line indicates an importation probability of 50%; line colors correspond to the relative risk of importations as of November 26. Regions that confirmed Omicron cases by December 3, 2021, are listed in black (2). (B) Probability of at least one Omicron variant importation from SA by November 28, 2021. Regions in grey were not analyzed because mobility data were not available.

Limitations

The estimates in the study are based on many assumptions. The Facebook mobility data is a reflection of its user base demographics and excluded date-destination combinations. The authors filled in the missing data assuming the ratio between the number of available flight seats and the number of travelers always remains constant.

The study also assumed that all early viral introductions occurred through asymptomatic or pre-symptomatic travelers from South Africa and ignored potential importations by symptomatic cases or from other countries, thus underestimating the risks.

Moreover, the authors assumed a 10-day gap between infection and hospitalization based on estimates from Europe and the US, as they believed that the Omicron variant is similar to the wild-type virus in terms of infection and symptom onset. Thus, their estimates will need to be updated if future studies show significant epidemiological differences between the wild-type virus and the Omicron variant.

Conclusion

Countries with a significant number of direct travelers from South Africa were likely to have Omicron cases by late November 2021. The variant could have been already present in other southern African countries by the time it was classified as a VOC which increases the risk of Omicron cases in countries with travelers from these African nations.

In conclusion, the risk of importation of Omicron cases from South Africa and other southern African nations is high and, by November 27, all countries included in this study had a probability of around 0.5 to have received an Omicron-infected traveler with more than 18 of the studied countries having confirmed Omicron cases by December 3, 2021.

*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.
Adapted with permission from the American Heart Association.

Most young people under the age of 21 who developed suspected COVID-19 vaccine-related heart muscle inflammation known as myocarditis had mild symptoms that improved quickly, according to new research published today in the American Heart Associations flagship journal Circulation.

Myocarditis is a rare but serious condition that causes inflammation of the heart muscle. It can weaken the heart and affect the hearts electrical system, which keeps the heart pumping regularly. It is most often the result of an infection and/or inflammation caused by a virus.

Using data from 26 pediatric medical centers across the United States and Canada, researchers reviewed the medical records of patients younger than 21 who showed symptoms, lab results or imaging findings indicating myocarditis within one month of receiving a COVID-19 vaccination, prior to July 4, 2021. Cases of suspected vaccine-associated myocarditis were categorized as probable or confirmed using CDC definitions.

Of the 139 teens and young adults, ranging from 12 to 20 years of age, researchers identified and evaluated:

Most patients were white (66.2%), nine out of 10 (90.6%) were male and median age was 15.8 years.

Nearly every case (97.8%) followed an mRNA vaccine, and 91.4% occurred after the second vaccine dose.

Onset of symptoms occurred at a median of 2 days following vaccine administration.

Chest pain was the most common symptom (99,3%); fever and shortness of breath each occurred in 30.9% and 27.3% of patients, respectively.

About one in five patients (18.7%) was admitted to intensive care, but there were no deaths. Most patients were hospitalized for two or three days.

More than three-fourths (77.3%) of patients who received a cardiac MRI showed evidence of inflammation of or injury to the heart muscle.

Nearly 18.7% had at least mildly decreased left ventricular function (squeeze of the heart) at presentation, but heart function had returned to normal in all who returned for follow-up.

These data suggest that most cases of suspected COVID-19 vaccine-related myocarditis in people younger than 21 are mild and resolve quickly. We were very happy to see that type of recovery. However, we are awaiting further studies to better understand the long-term outcomes of patients who have had COVID-19 vaccination-related myocarditis. We also need to study the risk factors and mechanisms for this rare complication. Dongngan T. Truong, M.D., studys first author, associate professor of pediatrics, division of cardiology, University of Utah Health and pediatric cardiologist, Intermountain Primary Childrens Hospital in Salt Lake City

Researchers say future studies should follow patients who have suffered vaccine-associated myocarditis over a longer term, since this study examined only the immediate course of patients and lacks follow-up data. Additionally, there are several important limitations to consider. The study design did not allow scientists to estimate the percentage of those who received the vaccine and who developed this rare complication, nor did it allow for a risk/benefit ratio examination. The patients included in this study were also evaluated at academic medical centers and may have been more seriously ill than other cases found in a community.

It is important for health care professionals and the public to have information about early signs, symptoms and the time course of recovery of myocarditis, particularly as these vaccines become more widely available to children, Truong said. Studies to determine long-term outcomes in those who have had myocarditis after COVID-19 vaccination are also planned.
Johns Hopkins astrophysicist, Alexander Szalay, Ph.D., and Kimmel Cancer Center pathologist Janis Taube, M.D., M.Sc., received a Life Sciences 2021 award for AstroPath at this year's Falling Walls Science Summit, an international event honoring research breakthroughs from across the globe.

The Johns Hopkins submission titled "Breaking the Wall to Mapping Cancer Using Multispectral Microscopy" was selected from hundreds of entries for the AstroPath platform design. AstroPath is a new, comprehensive platform for imaging and mapping microscopic sections of tumors to identify and validate predictive biomarkers to guide precision immunotherapies for cancer.

It's a convergence of scientific technology, big data and astronomy  aimed at curing cancer." Alexander Szalay, Bloomberg Distinguished Professor of Physics and Astronomy and Computer Science, and Director of the Institute for Data Intensive Engineering and Science at The Johns Hopkins University

"Biomarkers are essential to understanding individual cancer signatures. Using this spatial mapping approach, we can better determine which patients will or will not respond to a cancer therapy. Our long-term goal is to match individual patients with personalized therapies," says Taube, professor of Dermatology and director of the Division of Dermatopathology at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.

The foundation of the AstroPath platform is the database for the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, a 3D digital map of the universe architected by Szalay. "In astronomy we often ask, What is the probability that galaxies are near each other? We apply the same approach to cancer  looking at spatial relations in the tumor microenvironment. It is the same problem on a vastly different scale," he says.

Just as the Sloan Survey maps the cosmos on an astronomical scale, AstroPath maps tumor cells on a microscopic scale.

"Who would have thought techniques from astronomy would end up saving lives?" Szalay concluded.

AstroPath was developed with support from the Mark Foundation for Cancer Research; the Melanoma Research Alliance; the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg~Kimmel Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy; the Harry J. Lloyd Charitable Trust; the Emerson Collective; Moving for Melanoma of Delaware; the Barney Family Foundation; the Laverna Hahn Charitable Trust; Bristol Myers Squibb; Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center Core Grant P30 CA006973; National Cancer Institute R01 CA142779; and technology from Akoya Biosciences.

The Falling Walls conference is held each year in Berlin, Germany, and is named in recognition of the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.
Even as scientists around the world have made efforts to develop and produce safe and effective vaccines to counter the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), the agent that caused the ongoing pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), this virus continues to mutate. Soon after the rollout of the first vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna, both of which are built on the messenger ribonucleic acid (mRNA) platform, the emergence of the Delta variant took the world by storm, driving up cases, deaths, and hospitalizations to horrifying levels worldwide.

Study: The Omicron Variant Increases the Interactions of SARS-CoV-2 Spike Glycoprotein with ACE2. Image Credit: Cryptographer / Shutterstock.com

The most recently identified SARS-CoV-2 variant is the Omicron variant (B.1.1.529). This variant, which was rapidly named a variant of concern (VOC) by the World Health Organization (WHO), has the highest number of mutations of all known variants; however, their biological impact is still to be revealed.

A new study published on the bioRxiv* preprint server discusses the effect of the Omicron variants mutations on its binding efficiency to the angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2) receptor, which mediates viral attachment and entry into host cells.

Background

The rapid rate at which infections due to the Omicron VOC of SARS-CoV-2 are rising after its recent emergence has caused alarm to public health authorities and governments around the world. Almost by reflex, many countries immediately blacklisted flights and other routes of entry from numerous countries in a futile attempt to reduce the transmission of this new variant.

The Omicron VOC has 30 mutations on the spike glycoprotein, of which 14 are on the receptor-binding domain (RBD) of the spike protein. The RBD is crucial to virus-receptor binding via its interactions with the peptidase domain (PD) of the ACE2 receptor.

The multiple new and shared mutations on the spike glycoprotein, especially the RBD, of the Omicron variant causes differences in the way it interacts with the ACE2 PD and thus affects the rate and ease of viral entry. The RBD of the spike protein is the target of neutralizing antibodies elicited by natural infection or vaccination with all currently available vaccines.

The mutations seen on the RBD of this new variant are exposed on the surface and are targeted by antibodies and nanobodies such as H11-H4, H11-D4, and Ty1 that are currently being developed as potential therapeutic agents against COVID-19. Of the 15 RBD mutations, 11 are at the ACE2-PD interface. Five of these mutations were previously shown by molecular dynamics (MD) simulations to interact with corresponding residues on the PD in the wild-type virus.

These interactions include salt bridges formed between the K417-D30 and E484-K31, as well as hydrogen bonding between Q493-E35, Q498-Q42, Q498-K353, and Y505-E37. At present, there is not enough data to specify the effect of the Omicron mutations on the binding strength between the Omicron RBD and ACE2. It is also currently unclear whether antibodies elicited by earlier variants of SARS-CoV-2 will be able to neutralize the ACE2-RBD interactions and thus prevent virus entry.

In order to help answer this question, the researchers carried out all-atom simulations of the PD under appropriate conditions.

Study findings

The simulations were carried out in the presence of a total of 200,000 explicit water and ions, as well as the full-length sugar molecules on both the RBD and ACE2 molecules. A total of 900 nanoseconds (ns) of simulation length was obtained using the same methods used earlier to derive MD simulations of the wildtype strain and both the Alpha, and Beta VOCs.

The researchers found that the interactions between the Omicron RBD and the ACE2 PD were much more extensive compared to the wild-type RBD. This is due to an increase in the total number of salt bridges by 250%, with seven new salt bridges being formed with the loss of two from the wildtype RBD-ACE2 interaction network.

Meanwhile, the ten hydrophobic interactions formed by the wildtype variant were conserved, while one more was added between Y501-Y41 for an increase of 10%. The hydrogen bonding at the receptor-spike interface was decreased from the wildtype, which showed eight bonds, six of which were with the Omicron variant, for a total reduction of 10%. Interestingly, all but one of these six bonds were newly formed hydrogen bonds that were not observed in the wildtype RBD-ACE2 interactions.

The conformation-based binding energies at the receptor-binding interface for the two variants were estimated by the Molecular Mechanics Poisson-Boltzmann Surface Area (MMPBSA) method. When coupled with the four sets of simulations of the RBD-PD of the Omicron variant, this method showed an increase in binding energy by 44% for the Omicron variant as compared to the wild-type strain of SARS-CoV-2.

With the wildtype variant, the salt bridges occurred mostly at the interface of the contact regions (CR) CR1 and CR2, with most of the hydrogen bonds at CR3 and hydrophobic bonds at CR1. The Omicron RBD mutations have led to a more extensive and widely distributed network of bonds that extend to both sides of the interaction surface.

Location of RBD mutations for the Omicron variant.

Implications

The results of the simulations and calculations presented in the current study demonstrate that the Omicron RBD may bind the ACE2 receptor with greater efficiency and thus infect the host cells more readily. More specifically, the network of lateral interactions around the interface of the RBD-PD is spread out over a larger area for the Omicron variant as compared to the wild-type strain.

Secondly, the mutations in the Omicron variant appear to lead to an altered distribution of the network of interactions between the virus RBD and its binding receptor, the ACE2 molecule, at the PD.

The changes in the area of interaction and the types and positions of bonds could potentially change the way the virus binds to the receptor. It could also affect neutralization by therapeutic or vaccine-induced neutralizing antibodies and nanobodies.

For instance, the E484K mutation could disrupt the formation of the salt bridge between E484-R52 and the hydrogen bond between E484-S57 by therapeutic agents such as H11-H4 or H11-D4. The same mutation may also eliminate the E484-N56 and E484-Y335 hydrogen bonds in Ty1.

This would prevent efficient binding and neutralization of the virus by these antibodies and nanobodies. In addition, the presence of the Q493R mutation could lead to the absence of the hydrogen bonds Q493-Y104 and Q493-S104 in H11-H4, and H11-D4, respectively.

It is clear that the impact of these and other mutations on the susceptibility of the Omicron VOC to antibody-mediated neutralization must be clarified in future research.

*Important notice

bioRxiv publishes preliminary scientific reports that are not peer-reviewed and, therefore, should not be regarded as conclusive, guide clinical practice/health-related behavior, or treated as established information.
In a small study, researchers funded by the National Institutes of Health captured more than 1,000 hours of brain recordings from patients with OCD in the clinic and at home. These data are a key first step towards designing improved deep brain stimulation (DBS) treatments for neuropsychiatric disorders. DBS has shown great promise for improving the lives of people living with neurological disorders such as Parkinson's disease, and is now gaining traction for treating psychiatric conditions such as obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). The study is published in Nature Medicine and funded through the NIH Brain Research Through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies (BRAIN) Initiative.

By combining at-home and in-clinic brain recordings, this study could aid in the development of adaptive DBS treatments, which could be transformative for people living with OCD. This kind of far-reaching, high-impact work is precisely what the BRAIN Initiative was established to support." John J. Ngai, Ph.D., Director, NIH BRAIN Initiative

Researchers, led by David Borton, Ph.D., associate professor of biomedical engineering at Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island, and Wayne K. Goodman, M.D., the D.C. and Irene Ellwood Chair in Psychiatry at Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, collected brain recordings from three patients who were already receiving DBS treatment for OCD. These recordings occurred in the clinic, during teletherapy sessions, and during normal life activities at home. These data will be used to correlate specific brain patterns with OCD symptoms, with the goal being the identification of neural signatures and related behaviors that predict the onset of symptoms and that can be used to further refine DBS treatment. The at-home component to the recordings is a particularly important advancement, since that is the environment where patients are being exposed to the triggers that affect their daily lives.

OCD and other neuropsychiatric disorders are challenging to treat with DBS because the symptoms fluctuate over time. Unlike motor disorders, such as Parkinson's disease that are commonly improved with DBS, the symptoms of OCD come and go over time and can be triggered by the person's environment.

"Currently, DBS therapy for OCD involves implanting the electrodes, turning on the stimulation, and then fine-tuning that stimulation as best as possible in the clinic," said Dr. Borton. "But because symptoms can be triggered by many factors, the clinician is tuning the DBS system for the patient at that moment in the clinic, but their needs could change significantly once they leave the clinic."

Another enormous challenge is the current lack of biomarkersdistinct and measurable changes in brain activityfor OCD symptoms. In addition, changes in symptoms in response to DBS for neuropsychiatric disorders can take weeks or even months to occur once treatment begins. This means that clinicians programming the DBS system must rely on secondary behavioral changes such as a positive affect responsepatients feel happier or more talkative when stimulation is turned on.

"Changes in affect can tell us that we are stimulating the right area of the brain, but not necessarily that the stimulation itself is ideally tuned," said Dr. Goodman.

The researchers in this study aimed to tackle these challenges by using a technology similar to what had been previously used by BRAIN Initiative investigators in patients with Parkinson's disease.

In the current study, brain recordings were taken from the same electrodes responsible for delivering the DBS therapy and time-synched to EEG, other physiological recordings, and facial changes when recorded in the clinic; to efforts to evoke symptom responses during teletherapy sessions; and to self-reported symptoms during everyday life and during prescribed tasks at home.

By combining these diverse data sets, the researchers were able to begin identifying candidate neurological signatures for OCD, such as brain activity changes that occurred over time in correlation with clinical scores for OCD symptoms. Going forward, the researchers plan to tweak the stimulation in response to the candidate biomarkers to confirm whether they can be used to impact the onset of symptoms. In addition, recordings from the cortical surface of patients, similar to what was done in the study of Parkinson's disease, will be added to provide an additional layer of information.
In the second-most anticipated abortion case of the year, eight justices on the U.S. Supreme Court ruled Friday that abortion providers can challenge a Texas law that has effectively banned most abortions in the state since it was allowed to take effect in September. But the court also ruled that the federal Justice Department could not intervene in the dispute, and it refused to block the law for now.

Nonetheless, the justices were sharply divided in their opinions on the case. The majority opinion in the Texas decision, Whole Woman's Health et al. v. Jackson et al., did not directly address the fate of abortion rights in the United States. Rather, the conservative, anti-abortion majority on the court is expected to take on that larger question in a separate case out of Mississippi that was argued Dec. 1.

In fact, the majority opinion, written by Justice Neil Gorsuch, directly acknowledged as much. Whether the Texas law is constitutional "is not before the court," he wrote. "Nor is the wisdom [of the Texas law] as a matter of public policy."

A hint as to the coming showdown over abortion rights is included in a plurality opinion written by Chief Justice John Roberts  and joined by the three liberal justices. The Texas law, wrote Roberts, "has had the effect of denying the exercise of what we have held is a right protected under the Federal Constitution."

The Texas law, known as SB 8, is similar to laws passed by several other states over the past few years in that it bans abortion after fetal cardiac activity can be detected, which is usually about six weeks into pregnancy. That is in direct contravention of Supreme Court precedents in 1973's Roe v. Wade and 1992's Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey, which say states cannot ban abortion until "viability," about 22 to 24 weeks. The Texas law also makes no exception for pregnancies caused by rape or incest.

SB 8, however, varies from other state "heartbeat" laws because it has a unique enforcement mechanism that gives state officials no role. Rather, it leaves enforcement to the general public, by authorizing civil suits against not just anyone who performs an abortion, but also anyone who "aids and abets" an abortion, which could include those who drive patients to an abortion clinic or counsel them. Those who sue and win would be guaranteed damages of at least $10,000. Opponents of the law call that a "bounty" to encourage people to sue their neighbors.

Related Stories Study reports on safety of COVID-19 mRNA vaccines in pregnancy

Supporters of the law have said it was specifically designed to prevent federal courts from blocking the law, since no state officials are involved in enforcement and therefore are not responsible for it.

It was specifically that enforcement mechanism that the Supreme Court considered during three hours of oral arguments that were speedily scheduled on Nov. 1. The question before the justices was not directly whether the Texas ban is unconstitutional, but whether either the abortion providers or the federal government could challenge it in court.

In the end the court ruled that while the abortion providers could sue some, but not all, of the Texas officials included in their lawsuit, the Justice Department could not intervene. In a separate, two paragraph ruling, the court said the case brought by the federal government seeking to intervene, United States v. Texas, was "improvidently granted."

The justices also noted that Thursday a state court in Texas held the law unconstitutional, but that case affects only roughly a dozen individual suits.

As she has been since the court first addressed the case last summer, Justice Sonia Sotomayor was scathing in her criticism. By allowing the Texas law to continue in effect, she wrote in a dissent, "The Court thus betrays not only the citizens of Texas but also our constitutional system of government."

The case returns to the federal district court in Texas.
The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic caused by the severe acute respiratory syndrome-associated coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) and past SARS-CoV outbreaks were a result of zoonotic spillover of sarbecoviruses from animals to humans. Although most of the animal sarbecoviruses do not infect eukaryotic cells, clade 4 sarbecoviruses recently found in China have been found to have a deletion similar to clade 3 sarbecoviruses and are capable of binding to human ACE2.

Study: A sarbecovirus found in Russian bats uses human ACE2. Image Credit: Corona Borealis Studio/Shutterstock

About the study

A recent preprint study published in the bioRxiv* server tested the receptor-binding domain (RBD) of 2 sarbecoviruses found in Russian horseshoe bats - Khosta-1 found in Rhinolophus ferrumequinum and Khosta-2 in R. hipposideros - and other clades 3 viruses for their ability to invade the human cell. A phylogenetic analysis was performed with each sarbecovirus spike sequence used in this study having a Genbank accession number. The amino acid sequences of the spike RBD were aligned using ClustaIW multiple sequence alignment.

Chimeric spike expression plasmids were generated by replacing the RBD of SAR-CoV-1 with the Khosta virus RBD, and they were compared with chimeric RBDs of clade 3 viruses. The researchers used single-cycle vesicular stomatitis virus (VSV) pseudotype assay and SuperSignal western blot substrates for analysis.

Results

The three main findings of the study are: 1) Khosta virus RBDs are different from that of human viruses, 2) the RBDs from Khosta viruses facilitate entry into human cells, and 3) Khosta-2 virus RBD infects human cells using the ACE2 receptor.

During March-October, 2020, the Khosta-1 and -2 viruses discovered from bat samples near Sochi National Park were phylogenetically analyzed and it was concluded that they are closely related to clade 3 sarbecoviruses found in 2008 in Bulgaria. These viruses had a distinct viral lineage compared to human zoonotic viruses. Notably, the Khosta-1 and -2 viruses differ from clade 1 sarbecoviruses and have structural components that allow them to interact with the ACE2 enzymes.

Biosafety level-2 (BSL-2) compatible viral reporter pseudotypes with VSV were produced using the chimeric spike plasmids. The chimeric spike with RBD of clade 3 viruses showed reduced incorporation and had no correlation with viral entry phenotypes found in the later experiments. Investigations by the authors also showed that the presence of the exogenous protease trypsin enhanced the entry of Khosta viruses into human cells, indicating that the Khosta virus RBDs need a human cell receptor to mediate infection.

A receptor tropism test was also performed to characterize the receptors potentially used by the Khosta viruses, by transfecting Baby Hamster Kidney (BHK) cells with known human coronavirus receptors and then infecting the cells with the pseudotype panel. The results showed that Khosta-1 RBD failed to infect cells with any of the receptors, while Khosta 2 RBD infected cells with human ACE2 receptors. The cell entry potential of Khosta-2 RBD was similar to the RBD of RatG13 - a bat sarbecovirus  that closely resembles SARS-CoV-2 RBD.

Conclusions

This study demonstrated that animal-derived sarbecoviruses circulating outside Asian wildlife have the ability to infect human cells using ACE2. However, despite the clear compatibility of Khosta-2 RBD with human ACE2, pseudotype entry was nearly 10-fold lesser than that of SARS-CoV-1 and -2. Although both Khosta-1 and -2 RBDs infected human cells in the presence of the protease trypsin, Khosta-1 was notably stronger than Khosta-2. However, in the receptor-specific assay, only Khosta-2 infected human cells with ACE2 in the absence of trypsin.

The majority of previously identified animal sarbecoviruses are only distantly related to human pathogens and did not possess a risk to humans. The Khosta 1 and 2 viruses from Russian bats used in this study are from a distinct viral lineage of SARS-CoV-1 and 2 and have been found in a wider geographical range, proving that the sarbecovirus host-receptor compatibility is not limited to certain geographical locations. There is a variation in host-receptor compatibility in closely related sarbecoviruses and it suggests an evolutionary mechanism for viral persistence.

The present study identifies a new group of sarbecoviruses with zoonotic potential like clade 3 sarbecoviruses. Unfortunately, sarbecovirus vaccines currently in the pipeline only cover clade 1 and 2 viruses and do not include clade 3 viruses. The findings show that the sarbecoviruses pose a broader geographical threat than previously determined and highlight the need for advanced sarbecovirus vaccine measures.

*Important notice



bioRxiv publishes preliminary scientific reports that are not peer-reviewed and, therefore, should not be regarded as conclusive, guide clinical practice/health-related behavior, or treated as established information.
Sharon Marchio misses having teeth for eating, speaking and smiling.

For the past few years, after the last of her teeth were extracted, she's used dentures. "My dentist calls them my floating teeth because no matter how much adhesive you use, if you eat something hot or warm, they loosen up and it is a pain," said Marchio, 73, of Clarksburg, West Virginia.

Marchio believes that losing her teeth was merely part of getting older. It's quite common in West Virginia, where a quarter of people 65 and older have no natural teeth, the highest rate of any state in the country, according to federal data.

Like half of Medicare enrollees nationally, Marchio has no dental insurance. Worries about the costs led her to skip regular cleanings and exams, crucial steps for preventing infections and tooth loss.

Medicare doesn't cover most dental care, but consumer advocates had hoped that would change this year after Democrats took control of the White House and Congress. President Joe Biden and progressives, led by Sen. Bernie Sanders, sought to add the benefit to a major domestic spending package, the Build Back Better Act, that Democrats are seeking to pass.

But those chances are looking slim because at least one Democratic senator  Joe Manchin of, yes, West Virginia  opposes adding dental and other benefits for Medicare beneficiaries. He says it will cost the federal government too much.

In a Senate split evenly between Republicans and Democrats, losing Manchin's vote would likely sink the proposal, which is unlikely to get any Republican votes.

Last month, the House passed the roughly $2 trillion package of Democrats' domestic priorities that include health measures, free preschool, affordable housing programs and initiatives to fight climate change. It added hearing services coverage to Medicare but no dental benefit. The package is expected to undergo revisions in the Senate, and Democratic leaders hope a vote will happen in the chamber before the end of the year.

In West Virginia, one of the most heavily Republican states in the country, oral health advocates and progressives say it's disappointing that Manchin would stand in the way of adding dental coverage for Medicare recipients  particularly given the state's poor oral health record.

"It is unfortunate that our senator  who I respect and agree with on a lot of things  is going to draw the line on this issue," said Fotinos Panagakos, associate dean for research at the West Virginia University School of Dentistry and a member of the Santa Fe Group, a think tank made up of scholars, industry executives and former government officials pushing for a Medicare dental benefit. "It would be a huge benefit."

West Virginia has the third-highest share of people 65 and older, behind only Florida and Maine. Panagakos said that nearly 300,000 West Virginia Medicare recipients would gain dental benefits under the bill. Yet, Manchin's efforts aren't likely to cost him politically. He is not up for reelection until 2024.

"What political price do you pay when four other Republicans vote 'no' against everything?" Ryan Frankenberry, state director of the progressive Working Families Party in West Virginia, said, referring to the state's three House members and Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, who all oppose the bill. "It's a difficult argument to blame one person for not passing the benefit when every other Republican vote went against it."

Manchin's opposition, Frankenberry said, stems from the need to respond to the political pressures of representing an increasingly conservative state  and arguments from conservative commentators that Medicare is becoming insolvent and increasing the federal deficit.

Manchin, who did not respond to requests for an interview, has raised concerns about adding new Medicare spending when the Medicare Part A hospital trust fund is slated to become insolvent in 2026 if Congress takes no action. But that fund would not cover the proposed dental benefit; it would become part of Medicare Part B, which covers outpatient services such as doctor visits.

Manchin has also suggested that new social programs being advanced by the Democrats in the Build Back Better Act should be means-tested  in essence, offering the coverage only to people with lower incomes.

Dentists are concerned that Medicare  like Medicaid  would pay less than what they normally charge, said Richard Stevens, executive director of the West Virginia Dental Association.

The American Dental Association has also called for limiting any new Medicare dental benefit through means testing. ADA officials say a means test would ensure the benefit is helping those who really need it and save money for the Medicare program.

But critics say the ADA's position is an effort by the powerful dental lobby to kill the benefit  because it knows Congress has little appetite to turn to means testing in Medicare. The program remains popular largely because everyone 65 and older is entitled to all its benefits.

"On the surface, their position sounds altruistic," said Michael Alfano, who is a former dean of the New York University College of Dentistry and helped found the Santa Fe Group. "But there is no interest in Congress to make it a means-tested benefit."

While adding a Medicare benefit would increase demand for dental services, it would also reduce what are considered dentists' most lucrative patients, those who pay out-of-pocket and don't benefit from insurer-discounted fees, Alfano said. "In my mind, the ADA did not have public interest at heart  they put the financial returns of dentists at the top of the ledger when developing this approach," he said.

Alfano said there is still hope for an eleventh-hour change in the bill. "It's not dead, but I would be lying if I said I was not disappointed," he said.

West Virginia seniors have other options for getting dental coverage.

Many get some benefits when they enroll in private Medicare Advantage plans. And in January, West Virginia added an adult dental benefit to Medicaid, the federal-state health insurance program for people with low incomes, giving enrollees an annual maximum benefit of $1,000. Previously, West Virginia was one of about a dozen states that either provided no adult dental benefit to Medicaid recipients or only covered emergencies.

Through September, about 53,000 of the nearly 390,000 adult enrollees in West Virginia's Medicaid program had used the benefit.

Stevens of the West Virginia Dental Association said he could not explain why so few Medicaid enrollees had used the benefit, though he noted that the $1,000 maximum might not be enough to persuade some to seek care. "For people with more serious oral health conditions, $1,000 does not go very far," Stevens said. "It's hardly worth the time for the patient and not worth the time for the dentist."

Craig Glover, CEO of FamilyCare Health Centers in Charleston, West Virginia, said a Medicare benefit would help the many older patients who come to his dental clinic. He said some patients don't return for needed follow-up care because of concerns about costs.

Without dental coverage, older adults in West Virginia rely on community health centers  which offer a sliding fee scale based on income  and free health clinics for care. But they can still face higher costs than they can afford or long waits for care.

The dental appointments at the Susan Dew Hoff Memorial Clinic in West Milford, where Marchio has been treated, are booked several months in advance, said office manager Gail Marsh.
(Newser)  American Airlines is dropping some international flights for next summer because Boeing has failed to deliver planes that the airline ordered, according to an internal memo Thursday. Boeing has been unable to deliver its 787 jetliner, which it calls the Dreamliner, for about a year because of a series of manufacturing problems, the AP reports. The twin-aisle jet is popular with airlines for long flights because of its improved fuel efficiency over older planes of similar size. American had expected 13 more Dreamliners by this winter.

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Without those planes, "we simply wont be able to fly as much internationally as we had planned next summer, or as we did in summer 2019," Chief Revenue Officer Vasu Raja said in the memo to American's employees. Boeing plans to compensate American, he added. In an emailed statement, Boeing did not address compensation but said it regrets the impact of delayed deliveries on its airline customers. Airline schedules have been upended by the pandemic, and that is particularly true of international flights because of changing rules around the world.

The carriers, however, have been encouraged by the increase in traffic since the rollout of vaccines against COVID-19. American hoped to operate 89% of its 2019 schedule in summer 2022 but is scaling back to about 80%, a spokeswoman said. According to the internal memo, American wont fly to Edinburgh, Scotland; Shannon, Ireland; or Hong Kong next summer and won't bring back some destinations it served in 2019, including Prague. It will also cut the number of flights planned to destinations in Asia, including Shanghai, Beijing, and Sydney and will postpone new service, including flights between Seattle and Bangalore, India. American expects to resume a full schedule to Mexico, the Caribbean, Latin America, London, Dublin, and Madrid, according to the memo.

(Read more American Airlines stories.)
(Newser)  Newspaper publisher Lee Enterprises has rejected a takeover attempt by the Alden Global Capital hedge fund that is one of the largest newspaper owners in the country, with a reputation for intense cost cuts and layoffs. But the fight over the company's future is likely far from over, the AP reports. Lee said Thursday that its board unanimously rejected Alden's offer to buy the company for $24 per share, or about $141 million, because it isn't in the best interests of shareholders. Also Thursday, Lee reported a $5.3 million fiscal fourth-quarter profit this year, rebounding from a $1.3 million loss a year ago, as the number of its digital-only subscribers grew 65% to 402,000.

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"The Alden proposal grossly undervalues Lee and fails to recognize the strength of our business today, as the fastest-growing digital subscription platform in local media, and our compelling future prospects," Lee Chairman Mary Junck said. But Ken Doctor, a longtime media analyst who now runs a local online journalism startup called Lookout Santa Cruz in California, said Alden isn't likely to abandon its bid to acquire Lee because it believes it can extract profits from the company with the model it has used elsewhere, which calls for selling off the real estate the chain owns and drastically cutting costs.

"What Alden has doneand it's now pretty proven community to communityit's harvesting the last profits out of the newspaper business, and it is doing that unapologetically," Doctor said. Alden said last month when it made its offer that it already owned more than 6% of Lee's stock. The New York-based hedge fund didn't immediately respond to Lee on Thursday. Even if Lee succeeds at turning away Alden, it will likely face pressure to sell itself to someone else in the next couple of years or find a suitor willing to take the company private. Lee owns the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, the Buffalo News and dozens of other newspapers including nearly every daily newspaper in Nebraska.

(Read more Alden Global Capital stories.)
(Newser)  Update: Donald Trump has turned to the Supreme Court for help. Attorneys for the former president filed an emergency petition Thursday to keep his records out of the hands of the House panel investigating the Capitol riot, reports the Hill. House investigators want the National Archives to hand over the documents, but Trump's team argues that doing so would set a bad precedent in regard to presidential privilege. A lower court previously sided against Trump in the battle. Our original story from Dec. 9 follows:

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The Supreme Court is now former President Donald Trump's only hope for keeping documents from the congressional committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. A federal appeals court panel unanimously rejected his attempt to block the release of hundreds of pages on Thursday, the Washington Post reports. President Biden earlier had declined to claim executive privilege over Trump's files. "Former President Trump has given this court no legal reason to cast aside President Bidens assessment of the Executive Branch interests at stake, or to create a separation of powers conflict that the Political Branches have avoided," the panel's opinion said.

The three-judge panel for the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit let a lower-court ruling stand. The judges allowed 14 days before their ruling takes effect, giving Trump time to file an emergency appeal to the Supreme Court, per NBC. Their opinion cited a 1977 case in which the Supreme Court decided an executive privilege battle between former President Richard Nixon and the National Archives. "While former presidents retain some ability to assert the privilege, the current president is in the best position to evaluate when such claims should be honored," that decision said.

Trump's legal team could first ask the entire DC Court of Appeals for a ruling but has indicated the next move will be to the Supreme Court. The House committee is investigating events leading up to the Capitol riot, including Trump's communications. "The President of the United States and Congress have each made the judgment that access to this subset of presidential communication records is necessary to address a matter of great constitutional moment for the Republic," Judge Patricia Millett wrote for the court. The opinion also said, "The events of January 6th exposed the fragility of those democratic institutions and traditions that we had perhaps come to take for granted." (Read more Donald Trump stories.)
(Newser)  A Chicago jury convicted Jussie Smollett on Thursday of falsely reporting that he was the victim of a hate crime in 2019. The former Empire actor was convicted of five charges and acquitted of one, NBC reports. Smollett showed no reaction as he stood facing the jury and heard the disorderly conduct verdicts, per the AP. Prosecutors said he staged an anti-gay, racist attack, then lied to police. Smollett was the recipient of widespread sympathy before his account unraveled. He was acquitted Thursday on one count of lying to a detective shortly after he said the beating took place. After deliberating for nine hours, the jury found Smollett guilty on:

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Count 1 : Making a false police report, claiming to be the victim of a hate crime, to officer Muhammad Baig.

: Making a false police report, claiming to be the victim of a hate crime, to officer Muhammad Baig. Count 2 : Making a false police report, saying he was the victim of a battery, to Baig.

: Making a false police report, saying he was the victim of a battery, to Baig. Count 3 : Making a false police report that he was the victim of a hate crime to Detective Kimberly Murray.

: Making a false police report that he was the victim of a hate crime to Detective Kimberly Murray. Count 4 : Making a false police report, saying he was the victim of a battery, to Murray.

: Making a false police report, saying he was the victim of a battery, to Murray. Count 5: Making a false police report, saying he was the victim of a battery, to Murray.

The crimes are all class 4 felonies. Each could bring Smollett as long as three years in prison and a $25,000 fine, but it would be unusual for someone without a criminal record to receive a prison sentence, per NBC. The judge could give him probation or order the sentences to be served concurrently, per CNN. The next court hearing in the case is scheduled for Jan. 27, per the Wall Street Journal. Smollett was not taken into custody until sentencing. His lawyer said he'll appeal the verdicts. (Read more Jussie Smollett stories.)
(Newser)  Rescue workers rushing to a highway accident found a horrific scene of death and injury after a freight truck jammed with as many as 200 migrants tipped over and crashed into the base of a steel pedestrian bridge in southern Mexico. The migrants inside the cargo trailer were flipped, tossed and crushed into a pile that mingled the living and the dead. By late Thursday, the death toll stood at 53, and authorities said at least 54 people had been injured, the AP reports. It was one of the worst single-day death tolls for migrants in Mexico since the 2010 massacre of 72 migrants by the Zetas drug cartel in the northern state of Tamaulipas.

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Rescue workers who first arrived said that even more migrants had been aboard the truck when it crashed and had fled for fear of being detained by immigration agents. One paramedic said some of those who hurried into surrounding neighborhoods were bloodied or bruised, but still limped away in their desperation to escape. About 200 migrants may have been packed into the truck, said Guatemalas top human rights official, Jordan Rodas. While shocking, that number is not unusual for migrant smuggling operations in Mexico, and the sheer weight of the loadcombined with speed and a nearby curvemay have been enough to throw the truck off balance, authorities said.

Luis Manuel Moreno, head of the Chiapas state civil defense office, said about 21 of the injured had serious wounds and were taken to local hospitals. The federal Attorney Generals Office said three were critically injured in the crash on a highway leading from the Guatemalan border toward the Chiapas state capital. One survivor said there were migrants mostly from Guatemala and Honduras aboard and estimated there were eight to 10 young children. He said he was trying to reach the United States, but now expected to be deported to Guatemala. (Read more Mexico stories.)
(Newser)  Have you ever seen a baby pigeon? No? It's probably because birds aren't real but rather government drones used to spy on you and steal your information. That's according to the Birds Aren't Real movement, and a movement it is: hundreds of thousands of young people are now on board. Some will even tell you that woodpeckers are fluent in Morse code. Thankfully, it's all a joke, as the 23-year-old founder of Birds Aren't Real finally admits in a New York Times interview. "Yes, we have been intentionally spreading misinformation for the past four years, but it's with a purpose," says Peter McIndoe of Memphis, Tenn. "It's about holding up a mirror to America in the internet age."

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It was a spur-of-the-moment decision. McIndoe was in downtown Memphis in January 2017 when he spotted a women's march and counterprotesters in support of then-President Donald Trump. He grabbed a poster, flipped it over and wrote "Birds Aren't Real," then began spouting stuff about a government cover-up. "It was a spontaneous joke, but it was a reflection of the absurdity everyone was feeling," he tells the Times. The episode went viral, drawing in Generation Z, which grew up in "a world overrun with misinformation," per the Times. McIndoe knew a thing or two about that himself, having been homeschooled in rural Arkansas, where he was taught that "evolution was a massive brainwashing plan by the Democrats and Obama was the Antichrist."

He began embodying the character he'd created, not faltering once in a 30-minute interview with Audubon in 2018; paid actors to pose as bird truthers; and built a fake history of the movement with friend Connor Gaydos. It fooled the public and local media, but members knew the reality. One describes the movement as "fighting lunacy with lunacy," per the Times. Another says it's "more about media literacy." Or as Audubon described it: "a chimera of conspiracies that wraps satire, modern insecurities, and internet culture into a successful marketing scheme." Merchandise sales not only cover McIndoe and Gaydos' living expenses but support the movement overall. As McIndoe tells the New Statesman, it's "a safe space of sorts, for people to come together and laugh at the absurdity of the world that we're in right now." (Read more conspiracy theories stories.)
(Newser)  "The court allows the appeal," wrote a UK judge in granting the United States' request to extradite Julian Assange. The US was appealing a Jan. 4 ruling that denied the extradition request on the basis of Assange's mental health concerns, with the judge in that case saying it would be "oppressive" and that Assange was likely to commit suicide if sent to the US. The appellate court on Friday overturned that lower court ruling, finding that US assurances were sufficient to guarantee Assange would be treated humanely, reports the AP. Assange faces 17 espionage charges and one charge of computer misuse in connection with WikiLeaks' publication of leaked documents.

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The extradition request now passes to the home secretary, who oversees law enforcement in the UK and will make the final call on whether to extradite him. Assanges fiance, Stella Moris, labeled the decision a "grave miscarriage of justice" and said an appeal would be filed hastily. The Washington Post reports that would be Assange's final chance for appeal in the UK; the British Supreme Court could accept the case or opt to decline to hear it. Should they refuse the case, the Post says Assange could then ask the European Court of Human Rights to grant him a stay of extradition. NBC News reports Assange was not in court for the hearing. (Read more Julian Assange stories.)
(Newser)  Two students at a private university in Florida may have thwarted a mass shooting Thursday by saying something. That's according to police, who responded to their alert and arrested a student carrying a collapsible semi-automatic rifle, six loaded magazines, and plenty more ammunition in his backpack. John Hagins, a 19-year-old student at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach, had been leaving his off-campus apartment as police apprehended him around 9:30am, per WFTV and WESH. Hours earlier, two students had alerted campus security (who called police) to threatening messages in a Snapchat group chat. Hagins allegedly posted a photo of the rifle, saying he'd "finished my school shopping," per the Daytona Beach News-Journal.

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Hagins allegedly also wrote that he planned to visit a firing range and "once he was done at that firing range, he was going to campus to enact a Columbine," meaning a mass shooting like the one at Columbine High School in Colorado in 1999, Daytona Beach Police Chief Jakari Young said at a press conference, per NBC News. Hagins told police that he was on his way to the firing range. He also confessed to making the statements, Young said. "He may want to claim that it was all a joke and he wasn't serious about it. But we don't find anything funny about discussing a mass shooting on a campus," the police chief said, per NBC. "We could have had a tragedy unfold today," he added, per WFTV.

He said Hagins, an aeronautical science major on academic probation, had received a traffic citation on campus the previous day. It appeared he then sold his vehicle to purchase the firearm, Young said. Young also noted the campus was to be packed with students completing final exams on Thursday, "the last day before winter break," which "was all in his plan." But "by the Grace of God those two students came forward and thwarted that plan," Young said. They "allowed us to get to work right away and bring Hagins into custody." Haginscharged with terrorism, attempted first-degree homicide, and written threats to injure or killis to be held without bond at least until an initial court appearance. (Read more terrorism stories.)
(Newser)  The family of an Oxford High School senior who was wounded in the mass shooting at the Michigan school last week is suing school officials for failing to stop the shooting despite warnings. And the suit isn't just talking about the social media messages Ethan Crumbley posted the night before the rampage. The suit filed by the family of Riley Franz, a 17-year-old who was shot in the neck, names as defendants the Oxford Community School District, Superintendent Timothy Throne, Principal Steven Wolf, Dean of Students Ryan Moore, and some unnamed counselors and teachers. It alleges that on Nov. 16, weeks prior to the shooting, "multiple concerned parents" shared concerns about social media threats with Wolf.

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One parent stated their kid didn't feel safe and "didn't even want to go back to school." Per the suit obtained by NPR, Wolf replied via email that same day, "I know I'm being redundant here, but there is absolutely no threat at the HS ... large assumptions were made from a few social media posts, then the assumptions evolved into exaggerated rumors." The suits adds that Throne subsequently made an announcement on the school's loudspeaker advising students to stop "relying on information on social media" and saying "there were no threats that posed any danger to students."

On Nov. 30, Riley and 14-year-old sister Bella were in a school bathroom together and were shot at as they exited it. The suit, which is seeking $100 million, says the girls are suffering from "severe trauma, PTSD, fright, shock, terror, and anxiety" in addition to their physical and emotional injuries. It argues that under the 14th amendment, the teens had the right to be free from danger created or heightened by the defendants, reports the Detroit Free Press. "Defendants' conduct was outrageous and shocks the conscience," the suit adds. (Read more mass shootings stories.)
(Newser)  Three former US intelligence and military officers have admitted in a separate case that they helped the United Arab Emirates with hacking operations. Now they're being sued by a Saudi women's rights activist who says the assistance of the three men led to her iPhone being hacked by the UAE, the Guardian reports. The arrest of Loujain al-Hathloul followed, as did her imprisonment and torture in Saudi Arabia, the suit says. The hacking "was part of the UAE's campaign of persecution against perceived dissidents of itself and Saudi Arabia," says the filing entered in US District Court in Oregon.

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Hathloul was released from prison in February but isn't allowed to leave Saudi Arabia. The suit was filed on her behalf by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a nonprofit that announced the filing Thursday. She became known for her campaign pressuring the government to allow women to drive. When it succeeded, she was tried in a terrorism court after spending 1001 days in pre-trial detention and solitary confinement, charged with crimes including agitating for change, per the AP. The case sparked an international outcry, and President Biden has praised her as a "powerful activist for women's rights."

The three Americans, whom the Justice Department has said are former US military or intelligence personnel, worked for DarkMatter, which also is named in the suit. The cybersecurity company contracted with the UAE, which turned Hathloul over to Saudi Arabia, an ally. "Companies that peddle their surveillance software and services to oppressive governments must be held accountable for the resulting human rights abuses," said the foundation's David Greene. Marc Baier, Ryan Adams, and Daniel Gericke agreed in September with the Justice Department to pay almost $1.7 million to settle criminal charges over their involvement with the UAE. (Read more hacking stories.)
(Newser)  Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu had strong ties when both were leading their respective nations. Today, not so much. In an interview with Israeli journalist Barak Ravid for Ravid's new book, Trump seethes at the former prime minister for congratulating Joe Biden after the 2020 election he continues to dispute. The former president even drops an f-bomb:

The slam: "He was very early," Trump says of Netanyahu's congratulatory message in Trump's Peace. "Like earlier than most. I havent spoken to him since. F---him." Ravid details this in a post at Axios. The Times of Israel adds that Netanyahu was "actually quite late" in congratulating Biden, compared to other world leaders.

"He was very early," Trump says of Netanyahu's congratulatory message in Trump's Peace. "Like earlier than most. I havent spoken to him since. F---him." Ravid details this in a post at Axios. The Times of Israel adds that Netanyahu was "actually quite late" in congratulating Biden, compared to other world leaders. His beef: Trump tells Ravid that his actions as US president saved Netanyahu's political career as well as Israel itself. Those actions included recognizing Jerusalem as Israel's capital, recognizing the Golan Heights as part of Israel, and withdrawing from the Iran nuclear accord.

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Helping 'Bibi': "Nobody did more for Bibi," says Trump of Netanyahu, per excerpts in YNet News. "And I liked Bibi. I still like Bibi." He added that Netanyahu "would have lost the (2019) election if it wasn't for me."

"Nobody did more for Bibi," says Trump of Netanyahu, per excerpts in YNet News. "And I liked Bibi. I still like Bibi." He added that Netanyahu "would have lost the (2019) election if it wasn't for me." Saving Israel: "I'll tell you what: Had I not come along, I think Israel was going to be destroyed," said Trump, per the BBC. "OK. You want to know the truth? I think Israel would have been destroyed maybe by now."

"I'll tell you what: Had I not come along, I think Israel was going to be destroyed," said Trump, per the BBC. "OK. You want to know the truth? I think Israel would have been destroyed maybe by now." Netanyahu responds: While no longer prime minister, Netanyahu is the current opposition leader and hopes to get his old job back. He issued a diplomatic response to Trump's comments and defended his congratulation of Biden. "Former prime minister Netanyahu really appreciates the great contribution that president Trump made to the State of Israel and its security," says a statement from his office. "He also really appreciates the importance of the strong alliance between Israel and it was therefore important for him to congratulate the incoming president."

(Read more Donald Trump stories.)
(Newser)  Another report of a dust-up in the air, this time on a Delta flight that departed from Washington, DC, Thursday night. It was bound for Los Angeles but ended up landing in Oklahoma City, where Police Capt. Arthur Gregory told CNN a passenger assaulted a flight attendant and then assaulted the air marshal on board who tried to wrangle the male passenger. However, "the air marshal was basically able to get them in custody," Gregory said, per NBC News, who identifies the passenger as Ariel Pennington.

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The 35-year-old was taken off the flight and arrested for disorderly conduct and public drunkenness. The Sacramento Bee reports police did not provide details about the origins of the incident, other than to describe Pennington as "unruly." CBS Los Angeles reports he could face federal charges. The flight resumed its journey after roughly an hour's delay. Delta commented to say it "applauds the quick action and professionalism of the crew and Federal Air Marshals on Delta flight 342. ... We apologize to our customers for the inconvenience." The Bee reports that as of Friday, the FAA has been on the receiving end of more than 5,550 reports of unruly conduct. (In November the FAA announced it was seeking some serious fines from eight passengers.)
Walkers get a closer look at the tree decorated by the American Society of Landscape Architects Alaska Chapter during the 2019 Winter Lights Walk through Griffin Park behind the Morris Thompson Cultural and Visitors Center. This year's walk is Saturday.
Expanding buffalo herds on U.S. tribal lands, including in Alaska, is the goal of legislation sponsored by Rep. Don Young. The bill overwhelmingly passed in the House. Wood bison, like these from the Laird River Wood Bison Herd near Watson Lake, Yukon, Canada, could soon inhabit the lower Tanana.
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The Daily Tribune  www.newsofbahrain.com

Her Highness Sheikha Hessa Bint Khalifa Al Khalifa, INJAZ Bahrain Chairperson, congratulated His Majesty King Hamad bin Isa Al-Khalifa, Her Royal Highness Princess Sabeeka Bint Ibrahim Al Khalifa, His Royal Highness Prince Salman bin Hamad Al Khalifa, the Crown Prince and Prime Minister, HH Shaikh Nasser Bin Hamad Al Khalifa, Representative of His Majesty the King for Charity Works and Youth Affairs on the success of INJAZ Bahrain in the 15th edition of the regional Young Entrepreneurship Competition 2021.

INJAZ Al-Arab, a member of Junior Achievement (JA) Worldwide and the worlds largest non-profit business education organization, organised the competition.

The annual competition witnessed two student teams representing Bahrain winning three coveted awards, including the prestigious Company of the Year 2021 award in the High School track.

HH Sheikha Hessa praised the efforts exerted by students from Naseem International School and the Royal University for Women. This new success adds to the series of achievements made by Bahrain, cementing its position as a leading hub for young entrepreneurs to showcase their pioneering ideas and strategic initiatives, contributing to the economic growth of the Kingdom in line with vision 2030.

Her Highness also extended congratulations on this achievement towards the people of Bahrain, its Government and Leadership, wishing the Kingdom more successes.
DANBURY  Mayor Dean Esposito has hired his campaign spokesman to serve as the citys government affairs and communications advisor.

John Kleinhans will take on the new position, which blends the roles of two mayors office staff members who are leaving for other jobs, Esposito said. The position is budget-neutral, the mayor said.

Esposito praised Kleinhans impressive resume, which includes serving as executive director of the Connecticut Republican Party and, most recently, as vice president of public affairs and strategy for ImageWorks, which provides marketing and consulting services for businesses, advocacy groups and non-profits in the state.

He offers a really good background in communication, Esposito said. He is going to be a true asset here in City Hall and the mayors office in leading us forward in a positive way.

Contributed Photo / contributed

Marc Dillon, the community relations and project manager in the mayors office, and Taylor OBrien, public relations specialist, have resigned for other jobs outside of City Hall, Esposito said.

We wish them the best, he said. Theyre really good people. They both were assets to us. Theyre moving on in their careers, and were very proud of them, and we support them all the way.

Dillon, the campaign manager for former Mayor Mark Boughtons 2018 gubernatorial campaign, was hired shortly before the 2019 mayoral race, raising Democrats eyebrows at the time.

OBrien has been with the city since 2016, according to her LinkedIn, and became better known in the city for her involvement with Boughtons Live@5 broadcasts during the coronavirus pandemic.

Esposito said he thinks their official last days are Jan. 3, but Dillon is using up his vacation time until then and had his last day in the office on Thursday.

The mayor declined to comment on Kleinhans salary, saying it hasnt been finalized with human resources. City data showed Dillon earned about $77,000 in 2020, while OBrien made about $56,000. Kleinhans salary wont be a full combination of those figures, and the budget will not be raised for the position, the mayor said.

Its actually a blessing for us, Esposito said. Were getting some real quality people and we didnt have to increase the budget.

Kleinhans has had more than a decade of experience in state, municipal and communications roles, according to a press release. Hes developed strong relationships with legislators and officials at the state level, Esposito said.

Thats going to give us a leg up, he said.

He serves as advocacy chairman of the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation and is a member of the Board of Directors for the Brian Dagle Foundation, a nonprofit dedicated to suicide prevention and mental health services. Kleinhans served on the East Lyme Board of Education from 2015 until 2021. He also served as a member of the Vernon Planning and Zoning Commission from 2015 to 2017.

Kleinhans said in a statement hes honored and excited to take on his new position.

I will be focused on carrying out his priorities to continue Danburys reputation as Connecticuts top city to live, work, and raise a family, said Kleinhans, who is completing a graduate certificate in public financial management from the University of Connecticut.

He has a bachelors degree from Lyndon State College and masters of public administration concentrated in organizational leadership from Norwich University. Hes served on the Board of Trustees for the Vermont States Colleges and as student body president of Lyndon State College.

His duties will involve working with the press, Esposito said.

But most of all, hes going to be dealing directly with the state delegation, he said. Hes going to be oversight of all state issues that we deal with here in the city of Danbury.
NEWTOWN  In years when the Sandy Hook shooting anniversary has fallen on a school day, the belief has prevailed that kids were better served being engaged in purposeful school work, and staff were better off teaching with each other than taking a day off.

But the threats in Connecticut and across the country that have multiplied since a fatal shooting left four Michigan teenagers dead has changed the best practice in Newtown about getting through the worst day on the school calendar.

All Superintendent Lorrie Rodrigue can think about is the Dec. 14 anniversary three years ago, when a bomb threat forced her to evacuate Sandy Hook Elementary School.

It was really horrific that day, I can tell you, Rodrigue told the school board at a meeting on Tuesday. It retraumatizes staff, students and families when we have to evacuate a building due to a threat.

Determined not to let that happen again this year, Rodrigue asked the school board for permission to conduct remote learning on Dec. 14  the day in 2012 when 20 first-graders and six educators were slain at Sandy Hook Elementary School.

Regardless of whether we get a threat or not, it is very difficult on that day, especially with what you are hearing in the news, Rodrigue said. I have talked with many parents who I have gotten positive feedback from in the last 24 hours about the possibility of doing something different this year.

The seven-member Board of Education agreed unanimously.

The thought always has been that having students engaged and staff together was in the best interest of the brain health of all involved, said school board member Rebekah Harriman-Stites. I recognize that we are under a tremendous amount of stress as a community right now after Michigan and out of an abundance of caution I agree that it is the best idea to keep our students out of school. Frankly as a parent, I dont know if I could sustain an evacuation of the high school on 12/14 or any school in our district.

The students wont be out of school in the sense that theyll have the day off. Instead they will attend remotely  a practice that became commonplace during the height of the coronavirus crisis.

It would be completely synchronous  staff would be on screen with students, Rodrigue said. The schools would be open, and teachers would have the ability to teach from their classrooms.

The decision in Newtown to break with tradition and conduct class off campus follows a wave of school-based threats across Connecticut and several incidents of violence, including a stabbing at Hamden High School and reports of gunfire at Danbury High School.

Police have responded with increased presence in schools including at Newtown High School, where Principal Kimberly Longobucco said a discarded piece of paper was found with a concerning reference to the Sandy Hook shooting. In a message to families on Monday, Longobucco said, no credible threat to staff or students existed.

Even so, Rodrigue said on Tuesday, it seems more likely this year than previous years that a school-based threat would disrupt in-person classes in Newtown on the anniversary.

Given whats going on and the climate of not just Connecticut but everywhere, I think the likelihood of something happening on that day is far greater, Rodrigue said. This has shaken many schools during an already difficult time of year, and of course in Newtown here it is very different I think than in other communities.

The schools remote day is part of a larger picture of remembrance on Dec. 14 in Newtown involving church services and a moment of silence in the morning at municipal buildings.

Masses to remember the victims of the shooting are planned for 6:45 a.m., 9 a.m. and 7 p.m. at St. Rose of Lima Church. An annual interfaith service of remembrance is planned from 6:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. at Trinity Episcopal Church, with an option to watch a live stream at www.trinitynewtownct.org.

Rodrigue said the remote learning day was the right thing to do.

Everyone will breathe, I hope, a sign of relief, Rodrigue said. I have been in consult with the local police and it is difficult for them, toothis is the best decision for the district and the community at this time or I would not be asking for it.

rryser@newstimes.com 203-731-3342
H John Voorhees III / Hearst Connecticut Media

DANBURY  A New York man faces up to 70 years in prison after a jury convicted him this week on assault and attempted robbery offenses, stemming from a 2018 incident, officials said.

Stephen J. Sedensky III, Danbury States Attorney, announced Friday that a jury found 29-year-old Rodney D. Harvey, of Bronx, N.Y., guilty of attempted first-degree robbery, accessory to first-degree assault, accessory to second-degree assault, second-degree assault, conspiracy to commit first-degree robbery and first-degree assault.
SOUTHBURY  It may be some time before the skeletal remains discovered this week in a wooded area near Berkshire Road are identified.

It can be quite the process, Trooper Sarah Salerno, spokeswoman for Connecticut State Police, said Wednesday.

Two days earlier, state polices Western District Major Crime Squad announced that human skeletal remains had been found in a wooded area near Berkshire Road during a search for Mark Gasso, a Southbury man who has been missing since April.

A Silver Alert was issued for the 63-year-old on April 19, after a co-worker went to Gassos Berkshire Road residence to check on him after he failed to show up to work that day.

The co-worker told police Gasso was nowhere to be found, but his truck was in the driveway, the shower was on and his cell phone and wallet were also there, according to an investigation report.

At the residence, police said they found a small, dried red-colored stain on a mattress but no apparent signs of a struggle inside the dwelling.

A state police K-9 was brought in to search Gassos residence and the surrounding wooded area, but the track yielded no results. Police said another search was conducted the following day, but that also yielded no results.

Mondays search was scheduled to take place because the lack of foliage provided enhanced visibility this time of year, according to Connecticut State Polices Western District Major Crime Squad, who conducted the search with members of the State Police Emergency Services Search & Rescue K9 Unit and Dive Team, FBI Task Force officers, Southbury police and Naugatuck police detectives.

The unspecified human skeletal remains were found about 20 minutes into the search, which began at 9:30 a.m.

State police did not provide any information on where exactly the remains were located, but said the scene was processed by the Western District Major Crime Squad and the remains were transported to the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner for examination and identification.

Not only could it take a significant amount of time to come up with an identification, Salerno said, but it depends on what authorities have to work with in terms of the condition of the remains.

If they have DNA to work with, they would have to get elimination DNA from relatives, family members, she said. Worst case, if theres no DNA to work with, theyll generally go to dental records from there.

Connecticut State Polices public information office did not have any details pertaining to the type or condition of the skeletal remains.

Salerno said the first step in the process is to have the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner conduct a thorough review to make sure the remains are in fact human.

We have certainly seen cases where it was not human, although it did look like it  but when OCME did the analysis, they (determined that it was not), she said. We always send it to be reviewed to be absolutely sure that its human.

State police said the investigation into Gassos disappearance is ongoing.
Union Home Minister Amit Shah on Friday paid his last respects to Chief of Defence Staff General Bipin Rawat and his wife Madhulika Rawat, who were among the 13 people who died in the military helicopter crash in Tamil Nadus Coonnor on Wednesday. The Union Home Minister visited the residence of the CDS and laid a wreath on their mortal remains here. Uttarakhand Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami also paid floral tributes to the CDS and his wife.

5/11 Gorkha Rifles are looking after all the arrangements of the last rites of General Rawat who was commissioned in the unit and also went ahead to command it. The last rites of General Rawat will be performed later in the day with full military honours. The funeral procession will start from Kamraj Marg and reach Brar Square crematorium in Delhi Cantonment. An IAF chopper crash near Tamil Nadus Coonoor on Wednesday claimed the lives of 13 people including CDS Rawat and his wife Madhulika Rawat. Apart from General Rawat and his wife, his defence adviser Brig LS Lidder and Staff Officer Lieutenant Colonel Harjinder Singh also died in the crash.

Meanwhile, Brig LS Lidder was laid to rest earlier today. Other nine defence forces personnel who died in the chopper crash are Wing Commander Prithvi Singh Chauhan, Squadron Leader Kuldeep Singh, Junior Warrant Officer Rana Pratap Das, Junior Warrant Officer Arakkal Pradeep, Havildar Satpal Rai, Naik Gursewak Singh, Naik Jitendra Kumar, Lance Naik Vivek Kumar and Lance Naik B Sai Teja. The bodies of the victims were flown from Sulur near Coimbatore to the Palam air base Thursday evening in caskets wrapped in the Tricolour. Group Captain Varun Singh, the lone survivor in the crash, has been shifted to Air Force Command hospital at Bengaluru for further treatment.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh, National Security Advisor Ajit Doval and Union Minister Smriti Irani visited Palam airbase and paid their last respects to the deceased. The Centre has ordered a tri service inquiry into the accident. The inquiry will be headed by Air Marshal Manvendra Singh, Air Officer Commanding-in-Chief Training Command. According to the sources, the black box of the chopper has been recovered from the crash site. A team of Tamil Nadus Forensic Science Department also visited the crash site.
Geetika Lidder, the wife of Brigadier Lidder, said that he should be given a smiling send-off. "We must give him a good farewell, a smiling send-off, I am a soldier's wife.

The daughter of Brigadier Lakhwinder Singh Lidder, Defence Adviser to the Chief of Defence Staff (CDS) General Bipin Rawat, bid a tearful goodbye to him at the Brar Square crematorium in Delhi Cantonment on Friday. Brigadier Lidder was one of the 13 people who died in the military helicopter crash in Tamil Nadus Coonoor on Wednesday. The tragic chopper crash also claimed the life of CDS General Rawat and his wife. Brigadier Lidders daughter Aashna remembered her father as a hero, a great motivator and her best friend.

I am going to be 17. So, he was with me for 17 years, we will go ahead with happy memories. It is a national loss. My father was a hero, my best friend. Maybe it was destined and better things will come our way. He was my biggest motivator, Aashna told ANI. Geetika Lidder, the wife of Brigadier Lidder, said that he should be given a smiling send-off. We must give him a good farewell, a smiling send-off, I am a soldiers wife. Its a big loss, she added.

The last rites of Brigadier Lidder were performed with full military honours at Brar Square crematorium in Delhi Cantonment. During the last rites, Geetika Lidder was seen in tears kneeling by the head of her husbands coffin, which was draped with the national flag and decked with flowers. Brigadiers daughter was by her mothers side, fighting back tears of her own while paying last respects to her father.

Defence Minister Rajnath Singh, National Security Advisor Ajit Doval and Haryana Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar had laid wreaths on the mortal remains of Lidder before his last rites here in the national capital. Meanwhile, CDS General Rawat will be cremated later in the day today with full military honours. The Army said the mortal remains of only three persons  General Rawat, his wife Madhulika Rawat and Brigadier Lidder  had been positively identified so far.

Other 10 defence forces personnel who died in the chopper crash are Staff Officer Lieutenant Colonel Harjinder Singh, Wing Commander Prithvi Singh Chauhan, Squadron Leader Kuldeep Singh, Junior Warrant Officer Rana Pratap Das, Junior Warrant Officer Arakkal Pradeep, Havildar Satpal Rai, Naik Gursewak Singh, Naik Jitendra Kumar, Lance Naik Vivek Kumar and Lance Naik B Sai Teja. The bodies of the victims were flown from Sulur near Coimbatore to the Palam airbase Thursday evening in caskets wrapped in the Tricolour.

Group Captain Varun Singh, the lone survivor in the crash, has been shifted to Air Force Command hospital at Bengaluru for further treatment. The Centre has ordered a tri service inquiry into the accident. The inquiry will be headed by Air Marshal Manvendra Singh, Air Officer Commanding-in-Chief Training Command. According to the sources, the black box of the chopper has been recovered from the crash site. A team of Tamil Nadus Forensic Science Department also visited the crash site.
The office of the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) on Thursday announced that the restrictions on scheduled international commercial passenger services from and to India shall not apply to international all-cargo operations and flights specifically approved by DGCA.

Circular issued by the DGCA stated that the suspension of scheduled international commercial passenger services has been extended till January 31 next year. The competent authority has decided to extend the suspension of Scheduled International commercial passenger services to/from India till 2359 hrs 1ST of 31st January, 2022. This restriction shall not apply to international all-cargo operations and flight specifically approved by DGCA, the circular read.

However, the international scheduled flights are likely to be allowed on selected routes by the competent authority on case to case basis.

International Scheduled flights may be allowed on selected routes by the competent authority on case to case basis, the circular added. The announcement comes amid the rise of the new COVID-19 variant identified as Omicron.

In November, the Aviation Ministry had announced that it was in line to resume regular international flights from December 15.

At that time, the Ministry of Civil Aviation had stated, The matter of resumption of scheduled commercial international passenger services to and from India has been examined in consultation with the Ministry of Home Affairs, the Ministry of External Affairs and the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, and it has been decided that scheduled commercial international passenger services to and from India may be resumed from December 15, 2021.

Flights to and from the countries which have been identified by the Ministry of Health as not at-risk will have full capacity entitlements as per bilateral air service agreements.

Flights from countries identified to be at-risk and with whom air bubbles have been formalised, will have 75 per cent of pre-Covid operations of Indian and foreign carriers. However, countries identified to be at-risk and with whom air bubbles have not been formalised, will have 50 per cent of bilateral capacity entitlements or 50 per cent of pre-COVID-19 operation of Indian or foreign carrier whichever is higher. India has removed Singapore from its list of at-risk nations. The current list of at-risk countries for the COVID-19 Omicron variant includes the United Kingdom, other countries in Europe, South Africa, Brazil, Botswana, China, Ghana, Mauritius, New Zealand, Zimbabwe, Tanzania, Hong Kong and Israel.
An IAF chopper crash near Tamil Nadu's Coonoor on Wednesday claimed the lives of 13 people including CDS Rawat and his wife Madhulika Rawat.

The last rites of Defence Adviser to Chief of Defence Staff General Bipin Rawat, Brigadier Lakhbinder Singh Lidder, who was among 13 people who lost their lives in the military chopper crash on Wednesday, will be held at 9:30 am at Brar Square crematorium in Delhi Cantonment.

An IAF chopper crash near Tamil Nadus Coonoor on Wednesday claimed the lives of 13 people including CDS Rawat and his wife Madhulika Rawat. Meanwhile, the last rites of CDS Rawat and his wife will be held later in the day today at Brar Square crematorium. Apart from General Rawat, his wife and his defence adviser, Staff Officer Lieutenant Colonel Harjinder Singh also died in the crash.

Other nine defence forces personnel who died in the chopper crash are Wing Commander Prithvi Singh Chauhan, Squadron Leader Kuldeep Singh, Junior Warrant Officer Rana Pratap Das, Junior Warrant Officer Arakkal Pradeep, Havildar Satpal Rai, Naik Gursewak Singh, Naik Jitendra Kumar, Lance Naik Vivek Kumar and Lance Naik B Sai Teja.

Group Captain Varun Singh, the lone survivor in the crash, has been shifted to Air Force Command hospital at Bengaluru for further treatment.

The mortal remains of Gen Rawat and others who lost their lives in the Tamil Nadu chopper crash were brought on Thursday evening to Palam Airbase in Delhi from Sulur in caskets wrapped in the Tricolour. Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh, National Security Advisor Ajit Doval and Union Minister Smriti Irani visited Palam airbase and paid their last respects to the deceased. The three service chiefs  Army Chief Gen MM Naravane, Navy Chief Admiral R Hari Kumar and IAF chief Air Chief Marshal VR Chaudhari also paid their respects.

The Centre has ordered a tri service inquiry into the accident.

The inquiry will be headed by Air Marshal Manvendra Singh, Air Officer Commanding-in-Chief Training Command. According to the sources, the black box of the chopper has been recovered from the crash site. A team of Tamil Nadus Forensic Science Department also visited the crash site.
The last rites of Chief of Defence Staff (CDS) General Bipin Rawat and his wife Madhulika Rawat will be held on Friday around 5 pm at Brar Square crematorium in Delhi Cantonment.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday paid his last respects to Chief of Defence Staff (CDS) General Bipin Rawat, his wife Madhulika Rawat and other 11 armed force personnel who lost their lives in a chopper crash in Tamil Nadu on Wednesday and said that the country will never forget their rich contribution.

The Prime Minister visited Palam airbase to pay his last respects. Paid my last respects to Gen Bipin Rawat, his wife and other personnel of the Armed Forces. India will never forget their rich contribution, tweeted PM Modi. Defence Minister Rajnath Singh, National Security Advisor Ajit Doval and Union Minister Smriti Irani also visited Palam airbase and paid their respects to Gen Rawat, his wife Madhulika Rawat and other 11 armed force personnel who lost their lives in the helicopter crash. The three service chiefs  Army Chief Gen MM Naravane, Navy Chief Admiral R Hari Kumar and IAF chief Air Chief Marshal VR Chaudhari also paid their respects.

The last rites of Chief of Defence Staff (CDS) General Bipin Rawat and his wife Madhulika Rawat, who died in a chopper crash in Tamil Nadu, will be held on Friday around 5 pm at Brar Square crematorium in Delhi Cantonment.

The last rites of Gen Rawat will be performed with full military honours. The funeral procession will start from Kamraj Marg after 2 PM and reach Brar Square crematorium.

The Army said that civilians can pay tributes to CDS General Bipin Rawat from 1100-1230 hours at his Kamraj Marg residence tomorrow while the military personnel can pay respects between 1230-1330 hours. The mortal remains of Gen Rawat and others who lost their lives in the Tamil Nadu chopper crash were brought on Thursday evening to Palam Airbase in Delhi from Sulur in caskets wrapped in the Tricolour. The mortal remains were earlier in the day brought to Madras Regimental Centre from Military Hospital, Wellington in Nilgiris district and then taken to Sulur airbase.

Apart from General Rawat and his wife, his Defence Adviser Brigadier Lakhbinder Singh Lidder and Staff Officer Lieutenant Colonel Harjinder Singh also died in the crash. Other nine defence forces personnel who died in the chopper crash are Wing Commander Prithvi Singh Chauhan, Squadron Leader Kuldeep Singh, Junior Warrant Officer Rana Pratap Das, Junior Warrant Officer Arakkal Pradeep, Havildar Satpal Rai, Naik Gursewak Singh, Naik Jitendra Kumar, Lance Naik Vivek Kumar and Lance Naik B Sai Teja. Group Captain Varun Singh, who is the lone survivor from the crash, has been shifted to Air Force Command hospital at Bengaluru for further treatment.



The mortal remains of Gen Rawat will be taken in a gun carriage for the funeral in Delhi Cantt Brar Square.

The Defence Minister, Minister of State for Defence Ajay Bhatt, three service chiefs and other senior military officials will be among those present at the cremation of Gen Rawat.

Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath and Uttarakhand Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami are also likely to be present.

Tamil Nadu Chief Minister MK Stalin, Governor of Telangana and Lieutenant Governor of Puducherry Dr Tamilisai Soundararajan visited Madras Regimental Centre in Wellington on Thursday and paid floral tributes to General Rawat and others who had died in the chopper crash.The Centre has ordered a tri service inquiry into the accident. The i inquiry will be headed by Air Marshal Manvendra Singh, Air Officer Commanding-in-Chief Training Command.

The Defence Minister, who briefed Parliament about the chopper crash, said the IAF helicopter lost contact with the Sulur airbase control room at around 12.08 pm after taking off from there at 11.48 am.
NEW HAVEN  The chief investment officer for Peoples United Bank said Thursday that despite some possible turbulence, the trajectory of the Connecticut economy, particularly the New Haven area, is still headed upward.

The eds and meds economy are going to continue to draw people to the area, particularly since the pandemic has shown they dont need to work in New York or Boston five days a week, John Traynor, who is also an executive vice president with the Bridgeport-based bank, said Thursday after delivering his 2022 economic outlook for the Greater New Haven Chamber of Commerce at the New Haven Lawn Club.

But for the education component of the economy to really thrive, he said, every effort needs to be made to draw men back to work. Fewer men between the ages of 25 and 54 are working now than at any time since 1960, according to Traynor.

Its going to require a lot of new skills training, he said.

Jonathan Wharton, an associate dean in the graduate political science program at Southern Connecticut State University, said enrollment at the New Haven school has declined by about 27 percent over the past eight years. School officials have been told that enrollment is expected to continue declining through the end of the decade, according to Wharton.

Its a big issue, not just for us, but for every other school in Connecticut. he said.

Traynor said worker productivity in Connecticuts economy continues to grow. But he said for the state to return to its robust pre-pandemic levels, private-sector employers will need to be willing to share more of their profits with workers in the form of higher wages.

Its a delicate balance, Traynor said of allowing wages to grow without having them increase at such a rapid rate that it becomes a drag on the economy. But I think in the coming year, youre going to see more sharing by those who control capital investment and those who work for them.

Shirley Wayne Washington, business/community liaison and work base learning coordinator for the New Haven Job Corps, said the integrity of work being done by those she has helped suffers if they need to work multiple jobs.

Washington said some candidates are not being selected because they dont meet all of the expectations set by employers.

They (employers) are missing out on a lot of talented people just because the applicants dont fulfill every single qualification, she said.

luther.turmelle@hearstmediact.com
NEW HAVEN  Pastor Brenda Adkins, the oldest of 10 children, remembers as a youth waking up on Christmas morning with no gifts under the tree, as her mother had reached the spending limit on Adkins nine siblings.

Adkins would act like it didnt bother her, as she didnt want her mother to feel badly, but she went to her room and cried.

As a teen, It made me feel like I was undeserving, she said.

In response to that  so that fewer children in poverty have to experience what she did  Adkins and her husband, John, have established, A Christmas to Remember, an effort to provide gift cards for youths 13 to 19 years old.

This is the fifth year of the program.

The couple is looking for donations of gift cards in $25-$35 denominations and will pass them out Dec. 20 to families of teens that have already been selected. The families also will receive brand-new coats for adults and children, and baby formula and diapers, if needed.

Adkins said families these days are making those tough choices like her mother used to have to make, between paying bills and buying gifts.

We just dont want any child to wake up and not have a gift for Christmas, Adkins said. Were trying to put a little smile on their faces and relieve the stress (for parents).

COVID has made the situation worse than usual, as many who lost jobs or work time because of child care issues may not be back on their feet yet, she said.

She said gift cards for stores that offer an array of choices, such as Walmart and Target, are ideal. Some teens may want to purchase food or even essential clothing such as socks, she said.

While there are many programs to put gifts for younger children under the tree, there are fewer that provide for teens.

Donations of cash or gift cards can be mailed to Adkins at 330 Munson St., New Haven, CT 06511. If anyone has questions or wants to make another arrangement, Adkins can be reached at 203-836-6832.

The Adkinses have the coats left over from their recent annual Day of Joy dinner and giveaway, as there were fewer served this year because of the pandemic. The Knights of Columbus donated hundreds of brand-new coats and with those left over, Adkins wants to bless families, as well as the teens through their parents, she said.

The disposable diapers and formula are available as a result of the Adkinses partnership with the Diaper Bank of Connecticut.

The giveaway will not be open to the public, as recipients already have been identified, she said.
WASHINGTON (AP)  A federal appeals court ruled Thursday against an effort by former President Donald Trump to shield documents from the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol.

In a 68-page ruling, the three-judge panel tossed aside Trump's various arguments for blocking through executive privilege records that the committee regards as vital to its investigation into the run-up to the deadly riot that was aimed at overturning the results of the 2020 presidential election.

Judge Patricia Millett, writing for the court, said Congress had a uniquely vital interest in studying the events of Jan. 6 and that President Joe Biden had made a carefully reasoned" determination that the documents were in the public interest and that executive privilege should therefore not be invoked. Trump also failed to show any harm that would occur from the release of the sought-after records, Millett wrote.

On the record before us, former President Trump has provided no basis for this court to override President Bidens judgment and the agreement and accommodations worked out between the Political Branches over these documents, the opinion states.

It adds, "Both Branches agree that there is a unique legislative need for these documents and that they are directly relevant to the Committees inquiry into an attack on the Legislative Branch and its constitutional role in the peaceful transfer of power.

The appeals court ruled that the injunction that has prevented the National Archives from turning over the documents will expire in two weeks, or when the Supreme Court rules on an expected appeal from Trump, whichever is later. Lawyers for Trump can also ask the entire appeals court to review the case. Seven of the 11 appellate judges on the court were appointed by Democratic presidents, four by Republican presidents.

The panel's leaders, Reps. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., and Liz Cheney, R.-Wyo., hailed the ruling, saying it respects the Select Committees interest in obtaining White House records and the Presidents judgment in allowing those records to be produced. Our work moves ahead swiftly. We will get to the truth.

But Trump's spokeswoman said the matter was far from settled.

Regardless of todays decision by the the appeals court, this case was always destined for the Supreme Court," Liz Harrington said. "President Trumps duty to defend the Constitution and the Office of the Presidency continues, and he will keep fighting for every American and every future Administration.

In its ruling, the court said the executive privilege being asserted by Trump is not a personal privilege but instead one that he stewards for the benefit of the Republic.

The interests the privilege protects are those of the Presidency itself, not former President Trump individually. And the President has determined that immediate disclosure will promote, not injure, the national interest, and that delay here is itself injurious, the opinion states.

Biden had the committee defer its requests for some of the early documents that might have posed privilege claims, and officials expect more documents in subsequent tranches will be subject to the same outcome.

The court praised Bidens calibrated judgement in working with Congress and the Archives to weigh privilege concerns, saying it bears no resemblance to the broad and limitless waiver of executive privilege former President Trump decries.

White House spokesman Mike Gwin said, As President Biden determined, the constitutional protections of executive privilege should not be used to shield information that reflects a clear and apparent effort to subvert the Constitution itself.

Trump sued the House Jan. 6 committee and the National Archives to stop the White House from allowing the release of documents related to the insurrection. Biden had waived Trumps executive privilege claims as the current officeholder.

At issue, the court said, is not that Trump has no say in the matter but rather his failure to show that withholding the documents should supersede Biden's considered and weighty judgment that Congress is entitled to the records.

The National Archives has said that the records Trump wants to block include presidential diaries, visitor logs, speech drafts, handwritten notes concerning the events of January 6 from the files of former chief of staff Mark Meadows, and a draft Executive Order on the topic of election integrity.

Arguing for the committee, U.S. House lawyer Douglas Letter argued that the determination of a current president should outweigh predecessors in almost all circumstances and noted that both Biden and Congress were in agreement that the Jan. 6 records should be turned over.

All three of the appeals court judges who heard the arguments were nominated by Democrats. Millett and Judge Robert Wilkins were nominated by former President Barack Obama. Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson is a Biden appointee seen as a contender for a Supreme Court seat should one open during the current administration.

Republican presidents nominated six of the nine Supreme Court justices, including three chosen by Trump.

__

Associated Press writers Jill Colvin and Mary Clare Jalonick contributed to this report.
Ben Lambert / Hearst Connecticut Media

CANTON  A Canton woman pleaded not guilty Thursday after she was accused of defrauding the federal Section 8 housing program, prosecutors said.

Donna Carney, 66, of Canton was seen in federal court in New Haven Thursday where she entered the plea. She was later released on a $50,000 bond, according to the U.S. Attorneys office.
HELENA, Mont. (AP)  A Montana man accused of threatening a restaurant manager with a handgun when he was asked to wear a face covering during the height of the pandemic was fined $100 on a misdemeanor charge, after state Attorney General Austin Knudsen intervened in the case to block more serious charges sought by local prosecutors

A state judge accepted Rodney Robert Smith's guilty plea for disorderly conduct during a Thursday hearing in Helena, according to the court. He was also ordered to pay $75 in court fees.
GROTON, Conn. (AP)  First lady Jill Biden visited Connecticut on Thursday and met with families of the crew of USS Delaware, an attack submarine based in Groton.

Biden, accompanied by Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro, shook hands and posed for photos with families at a holiday gathering inside the Submarine Veterans Club.
NEW HAVEN  Interim Chief Renee Dominguez has withdrawn her candidacy for the full-time police chief role, and will retire once a replacement is hired, saying Friday that after her initial appointment had been rejected by the Board of Alders, withdrawing from the process at this time was the right move for her and her family.

Dominguez expressed her sadness and disappointment at the turn of events Friday, saying she was unsure whether going before the alders for a second vote, even with the backing of Mayor Justin Elicker, would have been a lost cause.

After much soul-searching and deliberation, I have decided not to re-submit a second time, said Dominguez. I am disappointed. I am disappointed that I dont get to lead this department as the permanent chief. ... Im disappointed that the alders felt that I didnt answer questions, or I didnt have what was needed to lead this department in this city.

Dominguez has led the department since March, succeeding former Chief Otoniel Reyes.

Alders rejected Elickers nomination of Dominguez for the full-time post on Monday via a voice vote that did not require them to go on record as either for or against her.

Some residents, including members of Unidad Latina en Accion and a group of New Haven clergy led by the Rev. Boise Kimber, have expressed their opposition to her candidacy in recent weeks, noting concerns about the diversity of the department and the rate of violent crime in the city, among other factors.

Elicker expressed his dismay at the decision in an interview Friday, saying he believed Dominguez was the right candidate for the job and her withdrawal was unfortunate for the city. A national search now will be conducted, he said.

He said he respected Dominguez for putting her name forward to be considered, noting he believed the process had become complicated by city politics.

Im incredibly thankful for Chief Dominguez interest in the position of permanent Police Chief and participation in the confirmation process, Elicker said in a statement later Friday morning. The Chief approached the confirmation process with dignity, positivity and integrity  engaging the alders and responding to questions asked. Chief Dominguez has been a strong leader over these recent months while she has served as Acting Chief and shown her commitment to the City of New Haven over her nearly twenty years of service to our city. She has been a champion of important initiatives, such as rebuilding the Police Department and doing so in a way that recognizes our citys diversity as well as working to launch the community crisis response team. The City of New Haven is truly richer for her service.

Dominguez Friday afternoon expressed her gratitude for her nearly 20-year career in New Haven, describing it as blessed, and reiterated her commitment to it, noting she would continue to lead the department until a permanent replacement is found.

I will not not do my job. I owe the men and women here that, as well, to give them some stability, to be able to make that transition smooth, she said. I will do that over the next however many months it takes.

Elicker said he had requested that Dominguez stay on as the acting chief of the department for the coming months while the search is conducted, with the goal of having a permanent chief in place by the early spring.

He noted he had asked the citys new Chief Administrative Officer Regina Rush-Kittle head the recruitment process.

Elicker said Friday that the next police chief also would need to embrace the idea that public safety is not about policing alone, he said.

We need to approach public safety through a collaborative and multi-pronged approach, said Elicker.

Dominguez had presented a plan to diversify the department and aid the progression of officers of color through the ranks to the Board of Police Commissioners in August, after she and Elicker presented a general antiviolence plan in May.

She said she didnt believe there was more she could have done to garner the alders support, and noted she was unclear what more information they needed to support her candidacy, saying she was surprised and disappointed by the boards decision. She noted the politics involved in the process.

Im here to lead a police department, right? Im here to protect the community. Im here to be a law enforcement official. Im not in it for the politics, so I think that thats part of it, said Dominguez.

Dominguez, who would have become the first permanent female police chief in a major Connecticut city, said it was a setback for women in the profession. She advised young women in the field to continue to do the hard work necessary to advance in the field; someone would rise to that position in the future.

To be able to be the first female police chief would have been amazing, would have been historic, said Dominguez. And I wish the city was able to have it with me.

She thanked the men and women of the department for their support over the years, noting she had come up with many of them.

I cannot say enough about the hard work that they do, and how much it means to me to have that support. I do feel that its something that is rare, and something that is special, she said. Im very grateful and thankful to have it. Im obviously here for them in any way possible. ... If anyone needs anything from me in the future, I will absolutely be there.

Dominguez said she would like to continue to work in law enforcement in the future, whether in New Haven or elsewhere. Its been half her life; she said she cares about the city, but has more to give in the field at large.

Dominguez joined the Police Department in 2002, rising through the ranks to hold a number of roles, including a long stint as a district manager in Westville and, prior to being named an assistant chief in July 2019, as head of the Family Services Division.

As Elicker nominated her for the full-time role on Nov. 10, Dominguez expressed her excitement at the opportunity, noting her nearly two decades in New Haven. She said she was 21 when she became a police officer; her adult life had been dedicated to serving the community.

The relationships she built along the way had strengthened her resolve in her work, she said. When she was a district manager, a resident had bought her presents for her unborn child; she had the chance to read to children in preschool and kindergarten.

Those type of connections are connections that get me through the tough days, said Dominguez. Those are what get you through. Those experiences are what truly molded me and made me able to stand before you, accepting this exciting opportunity to be the first permanent female chief.

It was jarring, Dominguez said Friday, to suddenly be faced with an uncertain future.

Its extremely upsetting. Theres been a lot of emotions with this. I dont take this easily, because this is not how I envisioned the end of my career, the last few years of my career, said Dominguez. Its extremely upsetting. I hoped there would be a different outcome. This is the one we are at, so its now my job to continue to move forward and make sure Im able to hand over the Police Department as well as I possibly can, because thats my responsibility  and I dont take that lightly, even as plans change.

william.lambert@hearstmediact.com
HAMDEN - The town has received notification of a positive test for the COVID-19 variant, omicron, and subsequently reinstated the mask mandate, according to the mayors office.

In consultation with Quinnipiack Valley Health District, Mayor Lauren Garrett signed an executive order to reinstate the mask mandate, effective at 12:01 a.m. Dec. 11, according to an email from the town.

Masks will be required in any indoor public spaces, regardless of vaccination status, the email said.

Vaccination is the primary preventative method to control the spread of COVID-19, the release said. Preventing the spread of COVID-19 is a multi-pronged approach which includes frequent hand washing, maintaining social distancing indoors, avoiding large social gatherings, vaccination, and wearing masks indoors.

The release from Garrett said doing our part in preventing the spread of COVID-19 will protect us and keep us all safe.

We want our town to thrive, and with this mask mandate, we can stay open by taking these healthy and safe measures, she said.

Experts say that as new coronavirus cases have increased in Connecticut, so have breakthrough infections, though a decreasing percentage of them are resulting in hospitalizations.

Even with the recent surge, Gov. Ned Lamont was confident Wednesday that hospital capacity was still in good shape  for now

For more information about testing or vaccinations, contact the CT Virtual Assistant at (833) 250-7633 or visit https://portal.ct.gov/coronavirus.
The Los Angeles Board of Education has chosen the longtime superintendent of Miami-Dade County Public Schools to be the next superintendent of Los Angeles Unified School District, the second largest in the nation, officials said Thursday.

The board announced the appointment of Alberto Carvalho after a unanimous vote Thursday, as Carvalho held a live news conference in Florida, describing his career path as a story that could only be told in America.

An admired and experienced educator, Carvalho, 57, is credited with improving graduation rates and academic performance at Miami-Dade, the countrys fourth-largest K-12 public school district, during a long, stable tenure that started in 2008. Like many students in Los Angeles and Miami-Dade, both large, urban districts, Carvalho grew up in poverty. He came to the United States as an undocumented immigrant, he said. He moved first to New York City and then to Miami.

I am the poor kid from Portugal whose first job in this country was as a dishwasher, second job was as a day laborer, Carvalho said. On his way to Thursdays news conference, Carvalho said he drove through a Miami neighborhood where he had been homeless 30 years ago.

My world changed when I became a teacher, Carvalho said. I still feel this journey is a fairytale."

Carvalho attended Broward Community College and graduated in 1990 from Barry University, a small Catholic school near Miami, with a biology degree. He became a high school science and math teacher before quickly moving up the administrative ranks, becoming a principal before moving to the district office where he was the districts spokesman and an assistant superintendent before becoming superintendent.

His 2008 hiring in Miami revealed that Carvalho had been exchanging explicit emails with a former Miami Herald reporter. He denied an affair, but conceded that the exchanges were inappropriate.

He earned numerous accolades during his tenure, including being named Superintendent of the Year in 2014 by the national superintendents association. In 2018, New York Mayor Bill de Blasio named him as education chancellor of the nation's largest school district, but Carvalho backed out of the deal the next day. He said Thursday that New Yorks lure was that it was where he arrived in the United States, but it became apparent quickly that it did not have all the elements necessary for him to succeed. He did not elaborate.

Carvalho said Thursday he is proud of his time in Miami. He said when he took over as superintendent, the graduation rate was 58% and dozens of schools received D and F grades from the state. Nine inner-city schools were threatened by the state with closure. The district says its current graduation rate is 93% and has no D or F schools.

Alberto Carvalho brings the deep experience we need as an educator and leader of a large urban district to manage L.A. Unifieds ongoing response to and recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic, Board President Kelly Gonez said in a statement. As the longtime Miami-Dade Superintendent, he established a clear record of positive student outcomes and has relentlessly worked towards greater equity for historically underserved communities. I know he will continue that focus in Los Angeles, and he is ready for the challenges and opportunities ahead of us.

The school board said it had unanimously voted to select Carvalho as the next superintendent but still needed to finalize his contract, which would be voted on Dec. 14.

In Los Angeles, Carvalho succeeds Austin Beutner, who stepped down as superintendent in June at the end of his three-year contract, after steering the school system through the early stages of the pandemic and a full year of distance learning, while all schools were closed to in-person classes.

Since Beutners departure the district has been managed by Interim Superintendent Megan Reilly.

Carvalho arrives in Los Angeles at a critical moment, as the district that serves about 600,000 students finds itself flush with funding from state and federal COVID-19 relief money but still struggling with the impacts of the pandemic, including learning losses and declining enrollment.

Carvalho and several other Florida superintendents sparred this year with Gov. Ron DeSantis over their imposition of mask mandates to combat the states then-rapid spread of COVID-19. DeSantis, through his education commissioner, banned mandates, saying that should be left to parents. He cut funding to some districts that defied him.

But Carvalho and others refused to yield, saying masks protected students, teachers and staff. Carvalho dropped Miami-Dades mandate last month as the states infection rate dropped and a judge upheld DeSantis power to allow parents to decide for their students.

Mask mandates remain in effect in all California public schools, and Carvalho will be arriving in Los Angeles as the school district becomes one of the first in California to put a student vaccine mandate into effect in mid-January for all children 12 and older.

Carvalho said that when he arrives in Los Angeles, he plans to spend some time learning the district and its culture.

Certainly, I will bring my personal philosophy but at the same time I will listen carefully to the culture, to the tradition, to the practices of Los Angeles," he said.

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Gecker reported from San Francisco and Spencer contributed from Fort Lauderdale, Florida.
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP)  NASAs newest X-ray observatory rocketed into orbit Thursday to shed light on exploded stars, black holes and other violent high-energy events unfolding in the universe.

SpaceX launched the spacecraft on its $214 million mission from Kennedy Space Center. Its called IXPE, short for Imaging X-ray Polarization Explorer.
3 1 of 3 Christian Abraham / Hearst Connecticut Media Show More Show Less 2 of 3 New Haven Police Department Show More Show Less 3 of 3





NEW HAVEN  A jury found Tyhitt Bember, who was charged with the 2013 fatal shooting of Javier Martinez, guilty Thursday, according to New Haven States Attorney Patrick Griffin.

Bember, now 25, was found guilty of felony murder, criminal attempt to commit robbery in the first degree and carrying a pistol without a permit, Griffins office said in a statement.
NEW HAVEN  A city man suffered serious injuries in a shooting Thursday night, according to police.

Officers responded around 6:20 p.m. to a ShotSpotter gunfire activation on Davenport Avenue between Orchard and Baldwin streets, Officer Scott Shumway said.

Responding units found a 22-year-old New Haven man who had been shot, Shumway said. Medics transported the victim to Yale New Haven Hospital, where Shumway said he is listed in stable condition.

Police ask any witnesses who have not yet spoken to investigating officers to come forward.

Anyone with information is asked to call 866-888-TIPS or text NHPD and the information to 274637.
BRIDGEPORT  A person was freed from underneath a car after a rollover crash Thursday afternooon, a city official said.

The Bridgeport Emergency Communications Center received several calls about a rollover incident on Mill Hill Avenue around 3 p.m. Thursday, according to Scott Appleby, the director of Bridgeports Office of Emergency Management.

Upon their arrival, first reponders found a person underneath a vehicle. The Bridgeport Fire Department quickly worked to free the person, Appleby said.

Medical personnel were on scene treating the person and will transport them to the hospital. Appleby said the severity of the persons injuries is unknown at this time.

Bridgeport Police have set up traffic control in the area and are investigating the incident, Appleby said.

This is a developing story. Please check back later for updates.

liz.hardaway@hearst.com
MOSCOW (AP)  Russia's top military officer on Thursday sternly warned neighboring Ukraine against trying to reclaim control over separatist areas by force, saying that Moscow will suppress any such attempt.

The statement by Gen. Valery Gerasimov, chief of the Russian military's General Staff, comes amid soaring tensions over a Russian troop buildup near the border with Ukraine that stoked Ukrainian and Western fears of a possible invasion.

A senior Russian diplomat doubled down on Gerasimov's warning by saying that the failure to stem the mounting tensions could push Russia and the West to a redux of the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis that put the world on the verge of a nuclear war.

Tension briefly rose later Thursday when Russias Federal Security Service said a Ukrainian navy ship was heading toward the Kerch Strait between the Sea of Azov and the Black Sea, ignoring Russian coast guard vessels signals. The FSB charged that maneuvering by the Ukrainian ship Donbas jeopardized navigation safety. The agency reported later that the ship changed course and sailed away from the Kerch Strait.

The Ukrainian military dismissed the Russian claims, saying the Donbas didn't come anywhere close to any sensitive areas and was now heading back to its base. Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov denounced the Russian report as manipulations, expressing surprise that Moscow saw the unarmed vessel as a threat.

Moscow demands that all ships passing through the narrow strait that separates the Russia-annexed Crimea from Russias Taman Peninsula notify Russian authorities, citing the need to ensure the safety of navigation.

In November 2018, Russian coast guard ships opened fire on three Ukrainian ships near the strait and then seized them. Ukraine insisted the vessels were in international waters when Russia intercepted them.

U.S. President Joe Biden warned his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin in a video call Tuesday that the West would respond with bruising economic sanctions that would inflict acute pain on Moscow if it invades Ukraine. At the same time, Biden made it clear Wednesday that U.S. troops wouldn't be sent to Ukraine to confront the Russians, and announced future talks between the U.S., its top NATO allies and Russia to address some of Moscow's security concerns.

Russia has rejected Ukrainian and Western claims of plotting an attack and described them as a cover-up for a possible attempt by Ukraine to retake the rebel-held areas. Ukraine has denied such plans.

On Thursday, Gerasimov reinforced Moscow's warning to Ukraine not to try to use force to reclaim control of the east, saying that any provocations by Ukrainian authorities to settle the Donbas problems by force will be suppressed.

U.S. intelligence officials say Russia has stationed about 70,000 troops near its border with Ukraine and has begun planning for a possible invasion as soon as early next year.

British Defense Secretary Ben Wallace told a press briefing in Stockholm that President Putin would face a severe economic response, a severe diplomatic response from the international community if he launches an attack on Ukraine. I dont think Russia wants those consequences, I dont think it will help everyone, especially at this time with COVID, for these things to play out, he added.

Speaking to foreign military attaches, Gerasimov dismissed Western concerns about the Russian military buildup, arguing that Moscow is free to deploy its troops wherever it likes on its territory and calling the claim of a possible Russian invasion a lie.

He charged that Ukraine is to blame for escalating tensions in its war-torn eastern industrial heartland, known as Donbas, by deploying new weapons there, including U.S.-supplied Javelin anti-tank missiles and Turkish drones.

Russia and Ukraine have been locked in a bitter tug-of-war since 2014, when Moscow annexed the Ukrainian Crimean Peninsula and threw its support behind a separatist insurgency in eastern Ukraine that has killed more than 14,000 people. Ukraine and the West accused Russia of sending troops and weapons to back the separatists, which Moscow has repeatedly denied.

Gerasimov complained about NATO's growing presence near Russian borders and the increasing number and scope of drills by alliance troops. He particularly noted an increase in patrol flights by U.S. strategic bombers near Russian territory, saying they practiced launching cruise missiles at targets in Russia.

In remarks that followed up on Putin's push for Western security guarantees to preclude NATO's expansion to Ukraine and other ex-Soviet neighbors, Gerasimov said Moscow is open to discussions on European and global security to de-escalate tensions and increase the level of mutual trust.

Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov also voiced hope that the U.S. and its NATO allies would listen to Moscow's security concerns and engage in meaningful discussions.

It primarily refers to refraining from military activities near our borders and the development of military and military-technical presence in those territories, Ryabkov said during a panel discussion on international affairs.

He emphasized that Russia wants legally-binding guarantees of its security, noting that Western powers broke verbal promises  given to Moscow in the early 1990s  that NATO wouldn't expand eastward.

There is a deep crisis in the Euro-Atlantic region that is fraught with a potential conflict, Ryabkov said, adding that a controversy similar in scope to the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis between the U.S. and the Soviet Union couldn't be excluded.

The Cuban Missile Crisis erupted when the Soviet Union deployed its missiles to Cuba and the U.S. imposed a naval blockade of the island. U.S. President John F. Kennedy and Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev agreed to defuse tensions by making a deal for Moscow to withdraw its missiles in exchange for Washingtons pledge not to invade Cuba and the removal of U.S. missiles from Turkey.

If the other side doesn't get it and it continues like it goes now, the logic of developments could lead us to suddenly waking up to something like that, Ryabkov. It may easily come to that. It would represent the failure of diplomacy, but there is still time to try to reach agreements based on common sense."

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Pan Pylas in London contributed to this report.
STAMFORD  Turn of River Middle School students sheltered in place Wednesday during a medical emergency that involved two students who reported they were having trouble breathing, police said.

The students were transported to Stamford Hospital, Stamford Police Capt. Diedrich Hohn said Thursday.

Justin Martin, spokesperson for the school district, said a child ate or drank something that resulted in a medical emergency, and did not provide any more information.

Hohn said a shelter-in-place procedure was put into place at the school, but did not comment on what led to the medical emergency.

We do it out of an abundance of caution. You know with whats going on in Norwalk and just the other day with the incident at Rogers (International School), these kids dont understand the magnitude of making comments, and we have to vet them and make sure they are not real, Hohn said. We always have to act out of an abundance of caution.

It was the second time in as many days that a school in Stamford went into shelter-in-place mode.

On Tuesday, a student brought a suspicious object into Rogers International School. Stamford police spokesperson Sgt. William Brevard said the package was ultimately deemed safe after an investigation that lasted about 90 minutes. There were no arrests made.

In Norwalk, a juvenile has been charged with three counts of conspiracy and multiple charges of threatening, falsely reporting an incident and breach of peace. According to police, the teen allegedly made multiple false threats at Norwalk High School over the last week by conspiring with a foreign actor.

Brevard said he does not expect any criminal charges to result from the incident at Turn of River. As part of school protocol, Brevard said a shelter-in-place order is put in place so police and emergency services can do what they need to do without interference.

Hohn said officers utilized the shelter-in-place order to ensure no other students were sick or experiencing medical emergencies. He said the procedure was implemented more as a welfare check than an active shooter or other similar type of situation.

We went to each of the classrooms and asked if everyone was OK, and thats really all we did, Hohn said.

Hohn said the incident is still under investigation.

ignacio.laguarda@stamfordadvocate.com
The massive 804 megawatt Vineyard Wind turbine farm proposed for waters off Marthas Vineyard is triggering concern about the impact on the states fishing industry.

During a meeting Thursday of the Connecticut Commission on Environmental Standards, a collection of regulators, fisherman and politicians, some members suggested that pledged research funding be directed toward protecting fishermen.

State Sen. Heather Somers, R-Groton and a commission member, said she was particularly concerned about fisherman based in New London and Stonington.

One of my biggest concerns is the impact on local fishing fleets, Somers said.

We dont need a university studying something that does not help our local fishing communities, Somers noted, referencing the University of Connecticuts role in the project. I ask that you consider that going forward.

The Connecticut side of the massive electric project, dubbed Park City Wind, a joint venture between a subsidiary of Orange-based Avangrid and Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners, plans to use Bridgeports port to stage and transport construction material to ocean leases off Marthas Vineyard.

Eventually, the Bridgeport facility will be used for ongoing maintenance of the wind farm.

Park City Wind has allocated $2.5 million to UConns Department of Marine Sciences to study the impact of the wind farm on surrounding fisheries and $2.5 million to the Mystic Aquarium to better understand the impact on marine mammals and their habitat. Part of that work will focus on underwater noise generated by wind farms.

Atma Khalsa, environmental manager for Avangrid Renewables, said he will bring Somers suggestion to UConn researchers.

I will try to get in contact with fisherman, Khalsa promised. The topics chosen did involve fisheries input. We can never engage enough with fishing communities.

State Sen. Paul Formica, R-East Lyme and a commission member, noted that 70 percent of insurance claims being paid in Europe because of damage attributed to offshore wind is related to underwater transmission cables.

I understand we have issues when you have an emerging industry, Formica said. I just have not heard a conversation about what those solutions are.

Christina Hoffman, a senior project manager for Avangrid Renewables, said the technology for underwater cable systems is evolving.

There have been a lot of lessons learned in Europe and they are keying into aspects of the design, including cable burying, Hoffman said. There is a lot of effort going into cable design that will run north to Massachusetts and Cape Cod.

The equipment necessary to build the wind farm will be staged and transported from a 15-acre port facility off Seaview Avenue in Bridgeport. A lease for an office is in place and Park City officials said progress is being made converting the site for its new use.

Bridgeport is a big piece of the project, Hoffman said. We are committed to a strong Connecticut presence. The office opened this summer and we signed a lease for using Barnum Landing for construction staging for turbines that will be in the ocean. Discussions are underway to use the port for maintenance operations for the life of the project.

Park City Wind officials explained a change in ownership structure in which one of the offshore leases will now be owned by Avangrid Renewables, Park City Wind and Commonwealth Wind. A second underwater lease will be owned by Copenhagan Infrastructure Partners.

An environmental impact statement for the project, a key component of upcoming permits needed to begin construction, are well underway, Park City Wind officials said.

Hoffman said the statement is expected to be published in August 2022 and a decision by a variety of federal regulators is due by July 2023.

The project is projected to generate $890 million in direct economic benefits and thousands of jobs. The developers have proposed investing hundreds of millions of dollars in Connecticut representing a range of infrastructure improvements and community programs.

bcummings@ctpost.com
Gov. Ned Lamont on Friday said he has no plans to follow New York in requiring masks indoors or proof of vaccination even as Connecticuts COVID infections and hospitalizations continue to climb.

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul on Friday announced the mandate, which goes into effect on Monday and is expected to last at least through mid-January.

But Lamont said he has no intention of prescribing a similar mandate here, instead leaving restrictions on mask wearing and proof of vaccination up to local leaders and businesses.

Im finding the overwhelming majority of folks are doing the right thing, Lamont said Friday, speaking to reporters after an unrelated event. Where I go around people  like here Ive said at this school, I want you to wear the mask, people are wearing the mask. I think youll find stores and restaurants more and more, the proprietors want to err on the side of safety so their customers and employees feel safe.

Early on in the pandemic, the Lamont administration had coordinated restrictions alongside other states in the region, and even more recently, lifting most of the mandates in unison in May.

However, Lamont has not followed other governors in the region in recent months to reinstate restrictions. Hes instead extended authority to municipal leaders to set local mandates and encouraged private business owners to enact their own rules.

Lamont said he is still coordinating on a regional basis in developing a digital vaccine passport.

We hope to get that rolled out in the next two weeks or so, a lot of businesses are asking for that, Lamont said Friday.

On Friday, the state state reported a daily positivity rate of 6.08 percent, with 3,280 new infections found among 53,948 tests. There were nine more COVID hospitalizations, increasing the statewide total to 585.

State officials also reported nine new cases of the omicron have been confirmed in Connecticut, bringing the total reported so far to 11. Of the newly confirmed cases, seven had been fully vaccinated, the governors office said Friday.

While Lamont said he was concerned about the new variant, he said he is more worried about the delta variant. Right now, thats where 99 percent of our issues are, he said.

Pfizer and BioNTech said earlier this week that laboratory tests showed three doses of its vaccine boosted protection against the omicron variant a month after the third shot as two initial doses did against the original or wild type of the virus.

The good news is the boosters seem to work against it, the bad news is its very infectious, Lamont said Friday. I dont think its going to be quite as severe perhaps as delta  well find out over the next few weeks.

While Connecticuts COVID infections and hospitalizations have been on a sharp rise since Thanksgiving, new deaths from the virus remain flat.

The latest weekly figures show there were 37 COVID-related deaths in the past seven days, a number that has not changed significantly in several weeks.

However, overall COVID-19 infections and hospitalizations have been climbing somewhat steadily since Thanksgiving. In the past seven days, Connecticut saw 25,670 new cases  double the week prior  and a net total of 162 new hospitalizations, a sizable jump from the previous week.

Deaths have been described by state officials and health experts as a lagging indicator in the COVID-19 pandemic, meaning cases first go up, followed by hospitalizations, and lastly, deaths.

But the 37 deaths recorded during the past week was seven fewer than the previous week and six more than right before Thanksgiving.

According to state data, deaths continue to skew more toward unvaccinated residents. According to a report Thursday, an unvaccinated individual is 16 times more likely to be infected than those who are fully vaccinated.

Officials have said the worst of a winter wave of COVID may be avoided because the vaccines are effective at preventing serious illness and death.

And now they are focused on getting residents to quickly get their booster shot, amid concerns over waning immunity in the initial course of vaccine and the new omicron variant, which has spread quickly, but remains mysterious to scientists and public health officials.

Whether this new variant is potentially more dangerous than others circulating is yet to be known. It has a number of mutations that researchers are closely examining.

Variant surveillance like this requires time-consuming genomic sequencing, meaning it could be some time before theres a clear picture of omicrons presence in Connecticut.
NEW HAVEN  Its a temporary building and a $1 million job.

Yale New Haven Hospital will expand its emergency room to accommodate an expected surge in COVID-19 cases this winter and will add a temporary building in the turnaround outside the hospitals West Pavilion to add 35 patient beds for up to six months, a top hospital official said.

While no other Yale New Haven Health System hospitals are adding external space as a result of the pandemic, all are looking for ways to expand internally by repurposing space currently used for other purposes, said Michael Holmes, Yale New Haven Hospitals executive vice president and chief operating officer.

Yale New Haven Healths hospital network stretches from Greenwich Hospital in the west to Westerly Hospital in the east  and also includes Bridgeport Hospital, Bridgeport Hospitals Milford campus, Northeast Medical Group in Stratford and Lawrence + Memorial Hospital in New London.

Arnold Gold / Hearst Connecticut Media

Were preparing for whatever, Holmes said.

Our hope is that because we have such a high vaccination rate in Connecticut that if people continue to get their second dose, as well as ... their booster shots and also their flu vaccines, the extra space wont be needed, he said.

But just in case, we want to be diligent and make the necessary preparations.

The temporary expansion should be ready in mid-January and the plan is to use it for about six months.

Holmes said he expects the cost to put up the temporary building  with all the necessary plumbing, electrical and electronic connections to the rest of the hospital, and all the necessary medical equipment  to be about $1 million,

Arnold Gold / Hearst Connecticut Media

As of Thursday, Yale New Haven Hospital was treating about 70 COVID patients, which is about 41/2 percent of the hospitals total population, Holmes said.

At the height of the pandemic in April 2020, we had 450 COVID patients, he said.

We definitely dont expect to go back to that number, Holmes said.

While Yale New Haven handled the last surge when it happened, Holmes said it probably is prepared to handle a number in the low hundreds right now without the expansion.

We just want to make sure we have capacity, he said.

The City Plan Commission, the city Health Department and the Board of Alders all approved the plan, with alders unanimously approving it this week.

The alders did so after receiving a letter from lawyers for the hospital stating that the temporary expansion does not require an amendment to the Medical Area Overall Parking Plan because no parking spaces will be added or lost in connection with the proposed expansion and the expansion will only operate for six months.

Due to the constraint of space within the current facility, the expansion is intended to provide much-needed space to accommodate the patient surge YNHH has been experiencing and (which is) anticipated to peak in late winter, the hospital said in a description accompanying the letter.

The expansion, designed to be occupied for approximately six (6) months, will be created by the enclosure of the existing vehicle turnaround area in the West Pavilion, located at the corner of Park Street and Howard Avenue, as well as a modest portion of the West Pavilion driveway, it says.

As depicted in the accompanying plans, the expansion includes 35 patient spaces, as well as nurses stations, storage areas, and restrooms.

A framed and cladded structure of noncombustible materials will be temporarily erected enabling the expansion to be weatherized, conditioned, and fire protected, with full utilities provided, it states.

A small area at the Park/Howard corner will be used for temporary mechanical equipment; this area will be fully screened by opaque fencing.

Holmes said the temporary building is going to be a closed-in patient care area.

Its going to be a built-out area, just like a patient care unit. Its external from our hospital, but its attached, with plywood and then hardwood floors over the concrete and its own bathrooms, he said.

mark.zaretsky@hearstmediact.com
With the nations current labor shortage, companies now are looking into various incentives to attract workers. Employers are trying to sweeten the deal for potential employees with seemingly everything on the table, from increasingly high sign-on bonuses to attractive maternal and paternal leave options.

However, Connecticut employers should take notice of a potential fly in the ointment.

Some hiring incentives require an employee to pay back the employer if the relationship were to go sour within a specified period of time.

Connecticut law (General Statute  31-51r) prohibits the execution of so-called promissory notes in the employment context by employers with 26 or more employees. What is a promissory note?

Connecticut defined the term. Simply put, it is an agreement requiring an employee to repay the employer a sum of money if the employee leaves before the passage of a stated period of time  including reimbursement for training.

So, if an employee signed such an agreement at the start of a new job, accepting a variety of monetary incentives, that person could be liable to paying back a the cost of those incentives if he or she quits within the time frame designated in the agreement.

Meanwhile, the states aversion to such agreements is so intense that the statute decrees such agreements as a condition of employment is against public policy and such note shall be voided.

But, with just about everything in life, it depends.

The state statute does not void four specific types of agreements between an employer and employees.

Quit your job too soon and the employer could demand repayment of:

1. Money the employer advanced, including draws on commissions for salespersons.

2. An employee paying for property the employer has sold or leased to the employee.

3. Funds for educational sabbatical leave.

4. Funds paid the employees collective bargaining representative.

What, then is the ultimate consequence of Section 31-51r?

It is simple. Connecticut bars employers from using some of the more common incentives to attract employees. One of the more popular offers is to pay a potential hires moving costs with the caveat that the employee has to work for a specific period of time or the money has to be reimbursed. This particular incentive, while commonplace throughout the country, could violate Connecticut law. The sticking point in this scenario is the requirement to reimburse the employer for the moving costs if, for some reason, the employee cannot work through the agreements window and, as a practical issue, would not be able to come work for the employer without their moving costs paid for. This requirement to pay back for failing to perform during a finite period might be a fatal blow to this kind of deal under Connecticut law.

Some may indeed make the argument that such offers are not conditions of employment because an employee can decide to take a job without these incentives. However, depending on the circumstances, such offers may be for practical reasons. For instance, the prohibitive costs of moving could inhibit or even prohibit a potential employee from accepting the offered job unless the employer reimbursed the moving costs.

The bottom line: employers need to be wary of their promises to potential employees when recruiting workers to come to Connecticut.

Attorney Reese Mitchell is an associate at Stratford-based Mitchell & Sheahan, P.C. He is involved in handling all types of employment matters, including through all stages of the litigation process. He can be reached at ReeseMitchell@mitchellandsheahan.com or at 203-873-0240.
A mob has burnt a suspected robber to death in Ozoro community, headquarters of the Isoko North Local Government Area of Delta State. The su...





A mob has burnt a suspected robber to death in Ozoro community, headquarters of the Isoko North Local Government Area of Delta State.





The suspect was given a hot chase after he allegedly stole a handbag containing an unspecified amount of money from a lady who came out from a bank after withdrawal at the ATM.





It was learnt that the lady raised the alarm after she was robbed.





He was beaten to a stupor before he was set ablaze.




Gunmen have murdered the traditional ruler of Atta ancient kingdom in the Njaba Local Government Area of Imo State, Edwin Azike. His corpse ...





Gunmen have murdered the traditional ruler of Atta ancient kingdom in the Njaba Local Government Area of Imo State, Edwin Azike.





His corpse was found at the market square in the community on Friday morning after he was abducted on Thursday.





A community source, who pleaded not to be mentioned, said that four persons were shot dead on Thursday in the community after the monarch was kidnapped.





The source said, The traditional ruler of Atta ancient kingdom in the Njaba LGA, Eze Edwin Azike, has been murdered. His lifeless body was dumped at the market square and the villagers discovered it this morning. He was kidnapped on Thursday and thereafter, the community was invaded which led to the killing of four persons.





The chairman of Traditional Rulers Council/ Community Policing in the state, Eze Emma Okeke, said that the monarchs in the state were saddened by the killing of their colleague.





Describing the killing of Azike as an abomination, Okeke said that the council was on Friday morning informed of the killing of the traditional ruler.





He said, We have got the sad news about the killing of Eze Edwin Azike. This is abominable in Igbo culture. I dont know why traditional rulers are being hunted like this. We are not politicians, we are only custodians of the culture of our people. We were informed on Thursday when he was kidnapped, only for him to be found dead, this morning.

When contacted, a spokesperson for the police in the state, Micheal Abattam, promised to make an inquiry and get back to our correspondent but he had yet to do so as of the time of filing this report.





It was earlier reported that the traditional ruler of Mbutu ancient kingdom in the Aboh Mbaise LGA, Damian Nwaigwe, was on Thursday morning abducted from his palace.





Also, the traditional ruler of Achi Mbieri in the Mbaitoli LGA, Henry Madumere, was on November 20, 2021, kidnapped at Iho in Ikeduru LGA, while on the way to a public function.





The octogenarian monarch, who is the father of a former deputy governor of the state, Eze Madumere, was released six days after his abduction.
A 29-year-old man, Chiadikobi Nnadi, who was suspected to have killed a human rights activist and supporter of President Muhammadu Buhari, M...





A 29-year-old man, Chiadikobi Nnadi, who was suspected to have killed a human rights activist and supporter of President Muhammadu Buhari, Mr Kenechukwu Okeke has been arraigned in court and also remanded in prison custody.





The killing of Kenechukwu Okeke, an activist who dragged several celebrities and news organisations to court during the End SARS protest for defaming President Buhari was reported in November.





Okeke was killed in Nkpor, Near Onitsha by his former tenant, Nnadi over a disagreement on rent.





Nnadi, leading a gang of six young men, accosted Okeke in his house, macheted him and poured fuel on him, before setting him ablaze, leading to his death.





The state police commands spokesperson, DSP Toochukwu Ikenga, who revealed that Chiadikobi has been remanded in prison after being arraigned today said: The suspect, one Chiadikobi Nnaji, M Aged 29 years implicated in the brutal murder of Kenechukwu Okeke has today, 9th December, 2021 been charged to court and subsequently remanded in a correctional facility in Anambra State.





Recall, following the murder incident that took place in Nkpor on 28th October 2021, which also trended on the social media, the Commissioner of Police, Anambra Command, CP Echeng Echeng had then ordered the immediate arrest of persons linked to the murder. The order resulted in the investigation and arrest of Chiadikobi Nnaji.





The CP thanked members of the public, especially family members of the deceased as well as their well wishers for their various support which led to the arrest of the suspect. The CP also assures that the Command will always live up to expectation in the discharge of its statutory responsibilities.
A popular broadcaster, also a well-known pastor in the Celestial Church of Christ, CCC, has been arrested for allegedly raping a five-month ...





A popular broadcaster, also a well-known pastor in the Celestial Church of Christ, CCC, has been arrested for allegedly raping a five-month pregnant lady.





The pastor, Gbenga Filani, allegedly forcefully had carnal knowledge of the 19-year-old pregnant lady inside his church where the victim had come for prayers and deliverance.





Filani, a presenter of a popular programme OWUYE in the state, was accused by the victim of using his manhood to apply anointed oil inside her private part.





The pastor, who is currently being held at the Criminal Investigation Department of the Police Headquarters, Igbatoro Road in Akure was arrested after the lady complained of a strange situation with her pregnancy following the act.





Narrating her ordeal at the police headquarters, the victim said the popular pastor used anointing oil to rub her private part before he dipped his manhood.





He dipped his middle finger with oil into my private part. He said my baby is vertical instead of being horizontal. He said he would put oil in my private part and would help me insert it with his private part so that the oil would get into the baby.





He rubbed oil on his private part and asked me to open my legs. He then had sex with me. He said he was not supposed to do it but helped me because my husband was not around.





It was after he had sex with me that I came into my right senses. He said I should swear that I should not tell anyone including my mother. He said I will die if I told anybody, she said.





The Police Public Relations Officer, PPRO, in the state, DSP Funmilayo Odunlami, confirmed the arrest of the broadcaster.
Watertown, NY (13601)

Today

Partly cloudy skies this morning will give way to occasional showers during the afternoon. A few flurries or snow showers possible. Temps nearly steady in the mid to upper 30s. Winds S at 10 to 20 mph. Chance of rain 60%..

Tonight

Rain and snow this evening transitioning to snow showers overnight. Low 26F. Winds WSW at 15 to 25 mph. Chance of precip 80%. About one inch of snow expected.
Actor Brad Pitt will remain as a defendant in a lawsuit that alleges shoddy construction of some of the homes his foundation helped build in the Lower 9th Ward after Hurricane Katrina, an Orleans Parish judge has ruled.

In November 2018, Pitt and the other directors of the Make It Right Foundation asked the court to remove them from a suit filed by two homeowners, claiming they had no personal responsibility for the construction.

But last week, Civil District Court Judge Rachael Johnson denied the request, according to Ron Austin, an attorney for the plaintiffs. One Make it Right employee was dropped from the suit, however.

The lawsuit represents a turnabout for the renowned actor, who became a leading man in New Orleans' post-Katrina recovery when he established an ecologically avant-garde neighborhood in an area that was destroyed by the 2005 flood.

Pitt's Make It Right Foundation eventually built 109 architecturally experimental but affordable homes. The solar-powered, highly insulated and purportedly storm-safe structures were meant to demonstrate how more thoughtful design could mitigate some of the threat from storms as well as other issues. The homes were sold to former neighborhood residents at prices tailored to their incomes.

By 2015, as most construction concluded, the project had cost almost $27 million. But complaints about the construction and materials used in the homes had already emerged.

In September 2018, homeowners Jennifer Decuir and Lloyd Francis sued Make It Right for what they alleged was deficient construction that caused mold, poor air quality, structural failures, electrical malfunctions, plumbing mishaps, rotting wood and faulty heating, ventilation and cooling.

The class action lawsuit could affect the entire Make It Right development.

Later that month, Make It Right seemed to acknowledge the poor construction when the organization sued its principal architect, John C. Williams, in Civil District Court, accusing him of defective design work that led to problems in the homes. According to the lawsuit, repairing the damage caused by rain and humidity could cost Make It Right $20 million.

On Nov. 20, 2018, lawyers representing Pitt asked a judge to dismiss the claims against the actor, arguing that even though Pitt lent his celebrity to the experimental project, he couldnt be held personally responsible for the construction of the buildings.

In an interview Wednesday, Austin said that Pitts presence in the lawsuit certainly raised the profile of the case, but were not necessarily worried about the publicity as much as justice. Our priority is to find the responsible parties.

Make it Right officials declined to comment, according to their attorneys. An attempt to reach Pitt was not successful.
Hollywood leading man Brad Pitt's Make It Right organization has sued New Orleans architect John C. Williams in Civil District Court for defective design work that led to leaks and other flaws in the experimental homes, dating back to 2009. Make It Right claims it paid Williams $4 million as the avant-garde project's architect of record, who oversaw the construction of the 106 ecologically conscious, eye-catching designs.

According to the lawsuit, filed by attorney Victor J. Franckiewicz, Jr., repairing the damage caused by rain and humidity could run Make It Right $20 million.

Starting in 2006, Pitt used his celebrity clout to establish a charity that replaced houses destroyed by the catastrophic flooding that accompanied Hurricane Katrina at affordable prices tailored to displaced residents. The endeavor, which used house plans by architectural superstars such as Shigeru Ban, Thom Mayne and Frank Gehry, was certainly one of the most audacious post-K recovery projects.

Ground was broken on the Make It Right in 2008. By 2015, the development had cost over $26 million. Construction discontinued by early 2016.

In recent years Make It Right adopted a policy of not responding to questions from the press and conducting scant communication with home owners. Pitt had not spoken publicly about Make it Right since the anniversary of Hurricane Katrina in 2015. So the state of the nonprofit company was mostly a mystery.

At the 10th anniversary in the summer of 2018, Make It Right seemed to be a bygone success story tainted by some premature deterioration. The worst case was a derelict 7-year-old home at 5012 North Derbigny St. that was so rotted it was demolished on June 30 at the insistence of neighbors.

Back in 2015, Williams had been granted a permit to replace the flat roof on the leaking North Derbigny St. home, at a cost of $81,000. In an interview in June, he said he wasn't sure why the job was never completed.

During the same interview, Williams acknowledged that one or two of the Make It Right buildings "may be falling apart" but he said he hoped that didn't overshadow the vast majority of homes that were successes.

He pointed out that "there are people who come to New Orleans for the sole reason of seeing the houses" and that contractors across the city became skilled in futuristic building techniques during the project.

In June, Williams said that he was hopeful Make It Right would "finish strong" by completing its original goal of 150 houses. He did not immediately return a request for comment.

In early September, New Orleans attorney Ron Austin brought a class action lawsuit against Make It Right that accused the charity of building substandard homes that are deteriorating at a rapid pace.

On Tuesday, Make It Right blamed the rapid deterioration on the architect they hired.

The lawsuit against Williams states that Make It Right holds their overseeing architect responsible for myriad failures to adequately waterproof the structures, including insufficiently sloped roofs. The suit claims that Williams' attempts at repairs were also largely a failure and that he kept the Make It Right management in the dark about the defects.

The suit does not hold Williams liable for the damages to 39 homes caused by the use of an experimental weatherproof wood product called TimberSIL that was rapidly ruined by the South Louisiana environment. In 2014 Make It Right sued the manufacturer of TimberSIL for $500,000, though it's unclear if the company was made to pay.

In a prepared statement, Make It Right pledged to "continue to work proactively with homeowners in the Lower 9th Ward." The non-profit organization declined further comment.

Doug MacCash covers art, music and culture in New Orleans. Contact him via email at dmaccash@nola.com. Follow him on Twitter at Doug MacCash and on Facebook at Douglas James MacCash. As always, please add your point of view to the comment stream.
Its the time of year to visit your local bookstore and swoon over the big beautiful books for holiday giving.

And this seasons crop is cause for celebration  gorgeous photography, exhibition catalogs, a charming new childrens book, something for everyone! Let the reading and looking begin.

Above New Orleans: Roofscapes of the Crescent City, photographs by Marco Rasi, text by Richard Campanella (LSU Press, $59.95), is my favorite gift book this year.

Italian engineer turned drone photographer Marco Rasi moved to the Crescent City after reading Tulane geographer Richard Campanellas books, so it seems inevitable the two would team up.

These gorgeous, crisply elegant photographs invite hours of looking, a fascinating new perspective from which to see our city  its neighborhoods, its relationship to nature, its watery environs, its glories and problems.

Campanellas writing, as always, adds graceful and informed context. Its simply irresistible, a surprise on every page.

Rex: 150 Years of the School of Design, by Stephen Hales, with a preface by Walter Isaacson (Arthur Hardy Enterprises, $65), is THE gift for the Carnival lover on your list.

This beautifully illustrated, decade by decade history of the Rex Organization chronicles the ways in which this Carnival krewe is intertwined with the history of the city  its economy, its rise as a tourist destination, its civil rights struggle, its complicated social structure.

Isaacsons insightful introduction celebrates the ways in which Rex has risen to the challenge of its motto, Pro bono public, for the public good. Especially charming is the way Hales includes the many contributions of women to the krewe  in such roles as queens of carnival, float and costume designersas well as breaking the anonymity of those who have served as captains.

Made in Louisiana: The Story of the Acadian Accordion," by Marc Savoy (University of Louisiana at Lafayette Press, $45), is a treasure for any music lover, a story of one mans obsession with a musical instrument.

As Savoy writes, The Cajun world I was born into GPSed me on a road I have since always traveled and that has made all the difference. Savoy, proprietor of the Savoy Music Center in Eunice, has been building his accordions for more than six decades, keeping music and traditions alive.

The French Leave: From Paris to Orleans Parish, by Debra Shriver (Crescent City Publishing, $75), is a dreamy reverie centered on a soul-restoring journey. Media exec turned author Debra Shriver takes gorgeous photos, and here are revealing comparisons between Paris and New Orleans, along with meditations on such cultural icons as Catherine Deneuve (and several actual meetings!), Coco Chanel, and Henry Miller and a gorgeous tour of the Hotel de Pontalba in Paris. Just the thing for the Francophile on your list, and who doesnt have one of those?

Some of the best books of the year continued well-established series or accompanied great art exhibits. Make sure to keep these on your list:

A Century on Harmony Street: The Kohlmaier Cabinetmakers of New Orleans, by Cybele Gontar (Louisiana Museum Foundation, $60), is just the gift for the furniture lover or antiques aficionado. Gallerist and art historian Cybele Gontar tells the compelling story of this German father and son who worked together to make beautiful objects that are treasured in many New Orleans homes. (They even made a tackle box for Andrew Higgins!) This book is exquisitely designed, a pleasure to look at as well as to read.

John Clemmer: A Legacy in Art (Historic New Orleans Collection, $54.95), is a lovely volume about the beloved teacher, who worked at the Arts and Crafts Club as well as Newcomb. It includes fascinating essays by David Clemmer, the artists son, curator Judith Bonner, who paints her own vivid portrait of Clemmers circle of New Orleans artists, and a loving tribute by novelist John Ed Bradley, who came to know Clemmer as a friend and as a collector.

Dancing in the Streets: Social Aid and Pleasure Clubs of New Orleans, by Judy Cooper (Historic New Orleans Collection, $49.95), makes a joyful noise all its own. Cooper has been photographing second lines for decades and her long investment in the culture shines through on every page, with glorious images and illuminating text with contributions by Freddi Evans, Rachel Carrico, Michael G. White, Matt Sakakeeny and Charles Action Jackson.

New Orleans Music Observed: The Art of Noel Rockmore and Emilie Rhys, by David Kunian and Emilie Rhys ($39.95), is a celebration of both music and art, and the ways in which this unusual father and daughter pair of artists drew on the music of our city for their inspiration. Those horns on the cover say it all! There are revealing essays about the artistic process, as well as essays by John Ed Bradley and Myles Robichaux, and interviews with musicians by Gwen Thompkins.

New Orleans Architecture, Vol. IX: Carrollton, text by Robert G. Cangelosi Jr., photographs by Neil Alexander (LSU Press, $39.95), continues the grand work of the New Orleans Architecture series. Cangelosi, president and partner of Koch and Wilson Architects, makes the history of one of the citys most beloved neighborhoods come alive. The book also includes the indispensable Building Index, which documents 420 homes.

Santa Like Me, by Dawn Robinson Weldon, illustrations by Nick Weldon (XYZ Books, $20, ages 3-8), is a perfect stocking stuffer for the youngster on your list. Its a charming and empowering rhyming tale that invites kids to imagine Santa in a new way  big, small, short, tall, superhero or green-foot, and yes, theres even a Mardi Gras Santa  any size or color. Exuberant and bright, this story reminds us to Remember its our magic that fills Christmas with cheer, and brings the Santa we imagine each and every year. Perfect for Christmas Eve story time.

Susan Larson hosts WWNOs The Reading Life.
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WASHINGTON  The Supreme Court has ruled that Texas abortion providers can sue over the states ban on most abortions, but the justices are allowing the law to remain in effect.

The court acted Friday, more than a month after hearing arguments over the law that makes abortion illegal after cardiac activity is detected in an embryo. Thats around six weeks, before some women even know they are pregnant. There are no exceptions for rape or incest.

The law has been in place since Sept. 1.

The outcome is at best only a partial victory for abortion providers. The same federal judge who already has once blocked the law almost certainly will be asked to do so again. But then his decision will be reviewed by the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which has twice voted to allow enforcement of the abortion ban.

Texas women drive hours to Louisiana, other states for abortions after new law SHREVEPORT, La.  The 33-year-old Texas woman drove alone four hours through the night to get to the Louisiana abortion clinic for a consultat

The case could return to the justices and so far there have not been five votes on the nine-member court to put the law on hold while the legal fight plays out.

The court's conservative majority also seems likely to roll back abortion rights in a Mississippi case that was argued last week, although that decision is not expected until the spring.

The high court ruling came a day after a state court judge in Texas ruled that the laws enforcement, which rewards lawsuits against violators by awarding judgments of $10,000, is unconstitutional yet left the law in place.

The court fight over the Texas law is focused on its unusual structure and whether it improperly limits how the law can be challenged in court. Texas lawmakers handed responsibility for enforcing the law to private citizens, rather than state officials.

The law authorizes lawsuits against clinics, doctors and anyone who aids or abets an abortion performed after cardiac activity is detected in the fetus. Thats usually around six weeks of pregnancy before some women even know they are pregnant.

The case raised a complex set of issues about who, if anyone, can sue over the law in federal court, the typical route for challenges to abortion restrictions. Indeed, federal courts routinely put a hold on similar laws, which rely on traditional enforcement by state and local authorities.

Another issue is whom to target with a court order that ostensibly tries to block the law. Under Supreme Court precedents, its not clear whether a federal court can restrain the actions of state court judges who would hear lawsuits filed against abortion providers, court clerks who would be charged with accepting the filings or anyone who might some day want to file a lawsuit.

The Texas law was specifically designed to put obstacles in the way of legal challenges, and so far it has worked.

Since it took effect in September, the law has imposed the most restrictive abortion curbs in the nation since the Supreme Court first declared a womans right to an abortion in its 1973 Roe v. Wade decision.

In its first month of operation, a study published by researchers at the University of Texas found that the number of abortions statewide fell by 50% compared with September 2020. The study was based on data from 19 of the states 24 abortion clinics, according to the Texas Policy Evaluation Project.

Texas residents who left the state seeking an abortion also have had to travel well beyond neighboring states, where clinics cannot keep up with the increase in patients from Texas, according to a separate study by the Guttmacher Institute.

The justices declined to block the law once before, voting 5-4 in September to let it take effect. At the time, the three appointees of former President Donald Trump and two other conservative colleagues formed the majority.
It was supposed to be a utopia in the Lower 9th Ward, a shining example of philanthropists making up for the myriad failures of government. Instead, Brad Pitts Make It Right avant-garde housing development has become ground zero for a cluster bomb of lawsuits that pit the organization against residents and its own former leaders.

On Friday, the Make It Right Foundation sued its former executive director, Tom Darden III, along with the former treasurer and other officials, accusing them of mismanaging the $65 million project between 2007 and 2016. The suit, filed in in Civil District Court, also alleges that Darden and the others misled fellow Make It Right officials, including Pitt.

Make It Rights lawyer claims that Darden and the other executives are solely liable for any damages the court might impose on the nonprofit foundation for faulty design or shoddy construction of the 109 homes it built.

Make It Right was the most striking post-Katrina residential building project. As the hurricane roared through New Orleans in August 2005, a breach in the Industrial Canal floodwall led to sudden, catastrophic flooding in the neighborhood north of the Claiborne Bridge. In the aftermath, Pitt, a Hollywood leading man and part-time New Orleanian, became a real-life hero, employing his considerable magnetism to raise millions to replace the lost homes in the area.

And they werent just any homes. Pitt invited some of the world's greatest architects -- Shigeru Ban, Thom Mayne and Frank Gehry, to name a few -- to draw up dwellings that would be highly energy efficient, ecologically conscious and decidedly untraditional.

Make It Right began building the homes in 2008 and offering them at affordable prices to former residents and others. The non-profit organization didnt just rebuild a neighborhood, it produced a post-Katrina tourist attraction.

But the foundations glory was dimmed as reports of construction flaws began leaking from the neighborhood. Part of the problem was a purportedly weatherproof lumber called TimberSIL that was meant to hold up for decades but swiftly began rotting. Make It Right sued the lumber company for $500,000, though it's unclear if TimberSIL was made to pay. Though many of the homes were sound, by the 10th anniversary of the project, in 2018, one house had so deteriorated that it had to be demolished. Since then, another was bulldozed.

+14 Watch: Brad Pitt Make It Right house gets demolished in New Orleans' Lower 9th Ward The teeth of a backhoe bit into the blighted house at 1826 Reynes St. in the Lower 9th Ward on Tuesday afternoon. The avant-garde dwelling, de

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Later that year, two residents sued Make It Right, claiming they were sold defective homes. They were harbingers of a class-action lawsuit that could eventually include other Make It Right home owners and cost the foundation millions.

Shifting the spotlight, Make It Right then sued its overseeing architect, John C. Williams, blaming him for some of the defects in the homes. Now, Make It Right has also singled out Darden and three others as the parties responsible for the troubled architecture.

Brad Pitt wants Make It Right homeowners lawsuit against him dismissed What was once an avant-garde architecture development meant to restore a flood-ruined 9th Ward neighborhood has become a legal battleground. B

Specifically, Fridays lawsuit claims that in 2009 and 2010, Darden and the other former officers had not immediately used donations to construct houses. Instead, the lawsuit alleges, they had tied up money in the highly regulated federal New Markets Tax Credit Program, which is meant to foster investment in low-income communities.

Doing so temporarily stalled construction, then required Make It Right to embark on a hasty Blitz Build program to finish homes, the suit alleges. The stopping and starting resulted in the flawed design decisions and added costs that plagued the project, according to the lawsuit.

Make It Right attorney Sharonda Williams declined to answer questions about the suit. Darden could not immediately be reached for comment.
Tulane University officials confirmed a probable case of the omicron variant in a graduate student and reinstated a campus-wide indoor mask mandate Friday to prevent infections as students prepare to head home for the holidays.

"Now is the time to recommit ourselves to the protocols that we know are effective in limiting the spread of this virus so that everyone can enjoy their holiday plans, and have a happy, healthy winter break," school officials said in a prepared statement.

Officials said everyone must wear masks inside campus buildings through the end of the year, regardless of their vaccination status. They encouraged the Tulane community to move non-essential gatherings with food and drink outside and follow CDC recommendations.

COVID cases spike even as US hits 200M vaccine milestone PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP)  The number of Americans fully vaccinated against COVID-19 reached 200 million Wednesday amid a dispiriting holiday-sea

The Tulane University community is 97% vaccinated. The school's positivity rate is 1.4%, and its health department is monitoring 88 active cases, according to the Molecular Pathology Lab's COVID-19 testing dashboard. Jeff Asher of Crimealytics said this is the university's second-highest case total since Hurricane Ida.

There are now at least 37 omicron cases in Louisiana, according to the Louisiana Department of Health.

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Omicron may spread more easily than previous strains and carry an increased risk of reinfection, but cases appear to be milder than those caused by the delta variant, World Health Organization officials said Wednesday.

The U.S. recorded its first confirmed case of the omicron variant Dec. 1 in a person in California who had been to South Africa. Omicron is now present in at least 22 U.S. states and 50 countries.

The first case in Louisiana was confirmed by a Tulane lab Dec. 3 in a 23-year-old woman with a history of domestic travel. The Louisiana Department of Health also confirmed a "probable" case of the omicron variant among the seven COVID-infected passengers and crew of a Norwegian Cruse Lines ship that returned to New Orleans on Sunday.

Health officer Dr. Joe Kanter said getting vaccinated or boosted if eligible is the "smartest, best decision" for keeping yourself and your community safe. See where to go to get the shot at NOLA Ready. Tulane students can register via this link.

Emily Woodruff and the Associated Press contributed to this report.
A 39-year-old Mississippi woman was sentenced to six years in prison after pleading guilty in federal court to embezzling hundreds of thousands from two different employers, one in Slidell the other in Kenner.

Christy Bartholomew pleaded guilty Wendesday to two counts of wire fraud before U.S. District Judge Lance Africk, according to a news release from U.S. Attorney Duane Evans' office.

Bartholomew was working as a financial controller for a Slidell business when she used various schemes and unauthorized use of a company credit card to take about $357,000 from 2016 to October of 2019, the news release said.

She later went to work for a Kenner company where she embezzled about $300,000 from November of 2019 to February of 2020.

Bartholomew, who lives in Hattiesburg, has also been ordered to make full restitution to her victims. She will begin serving her sentence in February.
The fatal, botched robbery of New Orleans Police Detective Everett Briscoe and another Zulu member during a vacation in August was instigated by a jailed gang member who wanted money for bail, authorities said at a court hearing in Houston this week.

Anthony Jenkins recorded phone calls from the Harris County jail captured him directing his brother and two other men to commit one robbery, then another, to secure enough stolen jewelry for his release on $50,000 bail in a different hold-up, according to court records and a report from KTRK-TV about a Thursday court hearing.

Both robberies were on Aug. 21. The second, outside the Grotto restaurant in Houstons Galleria area, ended with the shooting of Briscoe and fellow Zulu Social Aid and Pleasure Club member Dyrin DJ Riculfy, prosecutors say.

+8 Gang members on prowl for jewelry killed off-duty NOPD cop in 'robbery gone bad': Houston PD When Houston Police Chief Troy Finner arrived at the scene of a daytime shooting last weekend that left an off-duty New Orleans cop dead, he h

The men were in Houston as part of a weekend trip for Zulu members. They'd hopped off a bus from New Orleans hours before they were shot.

The shooting led to anguish and outcry in both cities. Police in Houston tied it to a larger trend of deadly robberies. New Orleanians mourned the loss of a veteran cop and his friend, both members of a cornerstone social organization.

Jenkins, 22, hasnt been charged in the killing of Briscoe and Riculfy. But his younger brother with a nearly identical name, Anthony Rayshard Jenkins Jr., is charged with capital murder, along with two other defendants.

Thursdays court hearing centered on whether the elder Jenkins should be released from jail on earlier charges of engaging in criminal activity, being a felon in possession of a weapon and aggravated robbery, according to court records.

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In the end, Judge Colleen Gaido denied Jenkins release on bail of any amount. Prosecutors cited his violation of several release conditions during a previous stint out on bail, including failure to obtain an electronic ankle monitor.

+5 Last remaining suspect jailed in Houston killings of off-duty NOPD officer, fellow Zulu member Houston authorities have charged a third man in connection with the botched gunpoint robbery outside a restaurant last month that left an off-

In testimony before Gaido, detectives laid out a disturbing sequence of events, based partially on jail call records.

Shortly before the bloodshed at the Grotto, Anthony Rayshard Jenkins Jr. and associates were stalking another man they thought was wearing an expensive watch.

In a phone call, the jailed Jenkins told his younger brother to be aggressive, according to KTRK television. The victim of that robbery has said hed just parked his vehicle when he was cornered by armed robbers who ordered him to hand over his watch and wallet.

The watch was a fake, or at least not as expensive a piece as the robbers hoped to score. So the older Jenkins urged his brother during another phone call to try again, according to KTRKs account.

In a phone interview, Anthony Jenkins defense attorney, Sally Ring, called the prosecutions theory about the jail calls extremely tenuous, and very, I would say, it's going to be difficult for them to go forward on that. It's a stretch.

Ring said the judges ruling hinged on the ankle monitor issue, and the judge denied prosecutors efforts to introduce the jail calls into the evidence.

Authorities allege that the shooting of Briscoe and Riculfy happened within an hour of a call between the Jenkins brothers. Investigators say the New Orleanians were enjoying cigars in the restaurants patio area when armed men rushed their group and demanded their belongings.

Briscoe died on the scene. Riculfy, who owned his own limousine company, was taken to a hospital and died days later.
A New Orleans prosecutor this week used a tactic long employed by District Attorney Jason Williams predecessors - and criticized by Louisiana Supreme Court justices - to keep in jail a man accused of killing a woman and her unborn child.

The trial of Jermaine Brisco was set to begin Monday, four years and four months after his arrest in the killing of Raven Veal, who was 9 months pregnant when she was shot and run over with her own car in Algiers. Veal, a 22-year-old Algiers native with hopes of entering the medical field after community college, had been casually dating Brisco, her high school acquaintance, according to her sister.

The trial would have finally resolved a case that started with the killing on Nov. 9, 2016. But Assistant District Attorney Matthew Derbes on Monday requested a delay, saying prosecutors needed to test evidence, including DNA swabs, from inside the car. That drew a sharp rebuke from defense attorney Gregg Carter.

Theyve literally had this evidence for the past five years and theyve chosen not to test it, Carter said. When you indict somebody, youre supposed to be ready to proceed to trial, at that moment the indictment goes through.

Carter added that as recently as a pretrial hearing a week earlier, a different prosecutor made no mention of needing a continuance.

Criminal Court Judge Tracey Flemings-Davillier denied the delay. She said she recognized the seriousness of the case but that the request had come far too late in the runup to trial.

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Instead of proceeding to trial, or dropping the charges and letting Brisco go free, Derbes used a time-tested legal maneuver. He immediately filed a manslaughter bill against Brisco, which had the effect of keeping the defendant locked up until Thursday, when a grand jury handed up second-degree murder and first-degree feticide charges identical to the ones on which trial had been scheduled Monday. Brisco would face life in prison if convicted of second-degree murder, which requires an indictment - not a bill of information like Derbes filed - to institute prosecution.

Its a practice thats sometimes referred to as the prosecution granting itself a continuance, and some Supreme Court justices dont like it. In a 2015 dissent about a murder case, Justice Bernette Johnson ruefully said the practice was unfortunately customary in Orleans Parish. Nevertheless, the high court has often upheld the maneuver as legal, given the broad authority that Louisiana prosecutors wield on charging decisions.

+3 'Why?': Sister of slain pregnant woman from Algiers wants answers after arrests When Shakari Veal learned last week who had been charged in last year's violent deaths of her pregnant sister and her sister's unborn child, s

Brisco must now be rearraigned on the new indictment, which also includes fresh charges of cruelty to juveniles and obstruction of justice.

In a court motion, prosecutors said they also are seeking a forensic examination of Veals mobile phone, using new technology that wasnt available at the time of her killing, and that a former codefendant of Brisco wasnt available to testify this week.

Due to court closures last week and other failed attempts to get the issues addressed in the record that are outlined in the motion, this was the only mechanism left to our office to ensure we were positioned to vigorously work to prosecute this case, a spokesperson for the district attorney's office said.
When Houston Police Chief Troy Finner arrived at the scene of a daytime shooting last weekend that left an off-duty New Orleans cop dead, he hugged the slain officers distraught fellow members of the Zulu Social Aid & Pleasure Club. He also told his city's mayor that he had a working theory about who committed the crime.

Finners detectives quickly zeroed in on robbers targeting people with pricey jewelry. On Friday, officials said that Finner's suspicions had proved correct and announced they were charging two men with capital murder and seeking a third for questioning in the Aug. 21 shooting that killed Det. Everett Briscoe and critically wounded his Zulu compatriot Dyrin DJ Riculfy.

Accused gang members Anthony Jenkins, 21, and Frederick Jackson, 19, had been stalking people they wanted to rob for high-end jewelry when Briscoe and Riculfy  the latter known to wear expensive watches and chains  were shot while outside a restaurant near the Space Citys famed Galleria mall, said Lt. John McGalin, of the Houston Police Department homicide squad.

Surveillance video and tips from community members implicate Jenkins and Jackson in the deadly double shooting that apparently resulted from a random robbery gone bad, McGalin said.

Both face charges of capital murder and attempted capital murder, Harris County, Texas, District Attorney Kim Ogg said at a news conference. Prosecutors could pursue the death penalty against Jenkins and Jackson, who had each been out on bond in connection with prior charges of assault and robbery with a deadly weapon, Ogg added.

A third person of interest to the investigation into Briscoes slaying may face charges as well, McGalin said. But that person wasnt under arrest by Friday.

Houston police announced the arrests hours before a viewing honoring Briscoe at the Mahalia Jackson Theater in New Orleans.

On Friday afternoon, visitors filed in and stood silently as they paused over Briscoe's coffin, which was flanked by police officers in full dress uniform. In the backdrop were floral arrangements and other regalia nodding at his ties to the NOPD and Zulu, and the sound of jazz music filtering in from outside the auditorium.

According to initial accounts from police and friends, Briscoe, Riculfy and other members of New Orleans legendary Zulu club who were on a guys trip to Houston were gathered on the patio of the Grotto Ristorante to smoke cigars when two hooded men with guns demanded that they put their hands up. The victims were complying when at least one of the robbers began firing, police said.

Briscoe was struck and died at the scene, leaving behind his wife and two sons. Riculfy, a husband and father himself, was hit as well and taken to a hospital where he has been in a medically-induced coma fighting for his life since, according to relatives.

Almost immediately, investigators suspected Briscoe and Riculfy had fallen prey to robbers targeting people with expensive jewelry outside upscale retailers, especially near the Galleria.

At least one such robbery attempt culminated in a killing earlier this year, and Finner has been urging residents to be vigilant against this trend dubbed jugging.

The Grotto shares a strip mall with a boutique jeweler, and a friend of Riculfy said he was wearing an expensive watch when he and Briscoe were attacked.

The pair of suspects Houston police linked to the double shooting both have prior arrest records for violent crimes.

And the high-profile slaying of Briscoe seems destined to play a role in an ongoing debate over releases on bail in Houston.

Jackson and Jenkins were each free despite earlier felony arrests, Ogg said.

Police arrested Jackson on allegations that he followed a person home from the Galleria in September 2020 and robbed the victim at gunpoint, criminal court records in Houston show.

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He had also allegedly broken into a closed building with the intention of stealing things a couple of weeks earlier, the documents add.

Jackson posted bail of $180,000. He was supposed to wear an ankle monitor and be under house arrest 24 hours a day. But records allege he came and went as he pleased, and Ogg accused him of removing the ankle monitor.

Jackson, described as a member of an unspecified gang, was detained without incident Thursday after being pulled over in a car by SWAT officers who had tailed him.

Jenkins is a known and documented member of the Young Scott Block gang in Houstons southeast area, Ogg said. That crew was a major player in a gang war that claimed dozens of lives in recent years, police have said.

Police said they arrested Jenkins on Wednesday at an apartment complex where they found a Nissan Altima that fits the description of the vehicle used to escape the scene of the Grotto shooting.

The day after his arrest, Jenkins was charged with aggravated robbery with a deadly weapon in a separate stickup that happened the same day as Briscoe's death. In that case, court records say, he confessed to acting as the driver when he and two others robbed a man of a watch and a bag.

The victim of that robbery described a chilling sequence of events in a telephone interview. He said he and a companion had just parked their vehicle when the robbers appeared out of nowhere. He ran, but stumbled and fell. One of the robbers ordered him to take off his watch and wallet and he complied.

"Man, youre lucky I didnt shoot your ass," were the robber's parting words to the victim, he said. "If I didnt fall, I probably would have run longer and he probably would have shot me."

The robbers made off in a Nissan Altima with paper plates  the same description as the getaway vehicle in the Grotto shooting.

Court records indicating whether Jenkins and Jackson have lawyers weren't immediately available.

+8 Zulu members were on a guys' trip to Houston when NOPD officer was killed, member was shot Detective Everett Briscoe had been in Houston just a couple of hours Saturday when he and his buddy Dyrin DJ Riculfy decided to walk to a ne

Police didnt say whether anyone would collect the $100,000 reward being offered for information leading to criminal charges in Briscoes death.

Finner said hed spoken to Briscoe and Riculfys wives, including an in-person meeting with Riculfys wife at a Houston hotel Thursday.

Shes hurting and her familys hurting. Pray for her husband. Hes still fighting. But more importantly, pray for everybody, everybody involved, Finner said.

New Orleans City Council member Jay H. Banks, a member of Zulu and close friend of Briscoe, said he greeted word of the arrests with mixed emotions.

There is some relief that these people have been apprehended, Banks said. But it will not bring Everett back. The nightmare these families are going through is unbelievable.
Just before New Orleans police detective Everett Briscoe left for the fateful trip to Houston where he was killed last weekend, he had finished up his class schedule for the fall semester at Southern University at New Orleans. Briscoe had hoped his pursuit of a degree in criminal justice would inspire his two sons to strive for academic excellence, according to NOPD Superintendent Shaun Ferguson.

Now, friends and supporters of Briscoe have started a scholarship fund to benefit the late detectives sons, ages 10 and 16.

The Zulu Social Aid & Pleasure Club, of which Briscoe was a member, have created the Briscoe Sons Scholarship Fund at Metairie Bank, in conjunction with the clubs Province Prince Krewe and Briscoes family and friends.

Donations can be made to the Briscoe Childrens Scholarship Fund and sent to Metairie Bank 3344 Metairie Road, Metairie, La., 70001. For online donations, a GoFundMe account also has been created in the name of the Briscoe Sons Scholarship Fund.

+8 Zulu members were on a guys' trip to Houston when NOPD officer was killed, member was shot Detective Everett Briscoe had been in Houston just a couple of hours Saturday when he and his buddy Dyrin DJ Riculfy decided to walk to a ne

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Briscoe, 41, was shot and killed in an apparent botched robbery attempt outside an upscale restaurant in Houston, where he and a group of fellow Zulu members were on a weekend getaway. Another Zulu member, 43-year-old Dyrin Riculfy, was also shot and seriously wounded.

Houston police have arrested two suspects in the case.

Briscoe joined the NOPD in 2008. During his 13-year career, he investigated crimes reported in the NOPDs 1st District, which includes Mid-City and Treme.

+8 Gang members on prowl for jewelry killed off-duty NOPD cop in 'robbery gone bad': Houston PD When Houston Police Chief Troy Finner arrived at the scene of a daytime shooting last weekend that left an off-duty New Orleans cop dead, he h
Motorola has announced the Moto Edge X30, the first smartphone with a Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 SoC. The flagship also has an optional under-display camera, a 5,000 mAh battery and three high-megapixel cameras. The Moto Edge X30 starts at CNY 3,199 (~US$504), too.

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Motorola has unveiled the Moto Edge X30, the world's first smartphone with a Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 SoC. According to Motorola, Qualcomm's latest chipset offers 20% better CPU performance than the Snapdragon 888, with 30% super GPU performance to boot. Realme is expected to announce a Snapdragon 8 Gen 1-powered smartphone too, as is Xiaomi.

The Moto Edge X30 has LPDDR5 RAM and UFS 3.1 flash storage, along with a 6.7-inch display that resolves at 1080p. The AMOLED panel can also run at 144 Hz, matching the Moto G200. Incidentally, the Moto Edge X30 is available with and without an under-display camera. Both rely on identical 60 MP front-facing cameras, but Motorola will sell the latter as the Moto Edge X30 Special Edition.

Additionally, the Moto Edge X30 has a 50 MP and optically-stabilised primary camera. Motorola complements this camera with a 50 MP ultra-wide-angle camera and a 2 MP sensor for capturing depth of field information. The smartphone can record videos in up to 8K, for reference.

Moreover, the Moto Edge X30 has a 5,000 mAh battery that it can recharge at 68 W. The device will ship with Android 12, too.
If you're looking to give back this holiday season, Franciscan Health plans to host blood drives in Crown Point, Chesterton and Michigan City this December.

"As the national blood shortage continues during the COVID-19 pandemic, the public is asked to donate at Versiti blood drives in December at Franciscan Health hospitals in Crown Point and Michigan City and an American Red Cross Blood Drive at Franciscan Physician Network Chesterton Health and Emergency Center," Franciscan Health said in a press release.

A daylong blood drive will take place from 7:30 a.m. to 7 p.m. Dec. 14 in suites C and D of the Marion Education Center at the Franciscan Health Crown Point hospital at 1201 S. Main St.

Franciscan Health will host two blood drives in December at the Franciscan Health Michigan City at 3500 Franciscan Way, just off the S. Franklin Street exit on Interstate 94. The first will take place between 8 a.m. and 1 p.m. on Tuesday, Dec. 21, while the second will be held between 2 p.m. and 7 p.m. on Thursday, Dec. 23.
In my phone, I have her titled as A Blessing, because thats what she is to us  a blessing, Louis Torrez said.

Franciscan Health physical therapist Tyrone Guarin also recently intervened to prolong a patient's life.

He called Nancy Crulcich at her Lowell home to let her know he was on his way for her therapy session. She didn't answer.

So he went early to check on her. Her dogs were barking. He got no answer at the door.

Guarin suspected something was amiss and he called her son Jake Crulcich to get permission to go in. He searched the house until he found her in a closet, slumped on the floor.

She had a pulse, and he detected shallow breathing. So he called 911 and performed CPR.

Paramedics arrived and took Crulcich to the hospital. She spent three weeks in intensive care before dying at the age of 67. Jake Crulcich said he was grateful Guarin intervened.

He was worried, and I told him to go in and he went in, and he did the right thing, he called 911, he said. Im glad he was there.
Methodist Hospitals has opened a new immediate care facility in Valparaiso.

The health care system, which operates hospitals in Gary and Merrillville, is locating its fourth CareFirst location at 1781 W. Morthland Drive in Valpo.

Methodist Hospitals is proud to launch this new facility, which brings a one-stop source for convenient and cost-effective care to the Valparaiso community, said Matt Doyle, Methodist Hospitals president and CEO.

Methodist Hospitals now has four CareFirst clinics, including the ones in Crown Point, Merrillville and Schererville. The immediate care clinics treat common illnesses like colds, flu, fevers, urinary tract infections, earaches, food poisoning and diarrhea. They also deal with minor injuries like fractures, sprains and strains.

The CareFirst Clinics are open on evenings and weekends as an alternative to emergency rooms at a time when patients cannot go to see their primary care doctor. They have been springing up across Northwest Indiana in recent years as part of an ongoing national trend to move care away from centralized hospitals and closer to where patients live.
Kasey's Restaurant, a Lansing institution since the 1950s, will soon reopen after shutting down at the start of the coronavirus pandemic in March 2020.

The former Columbian Room at the Knights of Columbus hall at 17800 Lorenz Avenue, Kasey's recently reopened its bar and banquet hall for catered events. Its family-style restaurant is expected to reopen in January, said Matthew Martinez, president of the Columbian Club of Lansing.

"COVID shut us down and then there were labor difficulties," he said. "We're looking to reopen in middle or late January."

The Columbian Club works in conjunction with the caterer The Cookout on Wheels, which is owned by Steve and Latosha Garcia. They do the cooking, operate the catering business and run a food truck that's stationed in the parking lot.

"We're excited to get reopen," Martinez said. "After the shutdown, we did some renovations to the facility and are getting back on our feet."

Kasey's has been delivering catering and has gotten back to hosting banquets in its 100-person and 200-person halls, which can be merged into a banquet hall big enough to accommodate 300 people. It's again hosting Christmas parties.
CROWN POINT  A 31-year-old man made his first appearance Wednesday in Lake Criminal Court on charges he sold a Highland man fentanyl, causing the man's death.

Bryan K. Smith, of Chicago Heights and formerly of Griffith, told a magistrate he planned to hire a private attorney.

The magistrate entered a not guilty plea on his behalf to one count of dealing in a controlled substance causing death, court records show.

Smith was recently extradited from the Emanuel County Sheriff's Department in Swainsboro, Georgia, to face charges in Lake County.

According to court records, Highland police were called Nov. 21, 2020, to a home in the 9800 block of Delaware Place, where a 41-year-old man had been found dead.

Police searched the room for drugs and paraphernalia, including syringes, so no illegal drugs would be left behind in the home, court records state.

Detectives learned the man had stolen $20 from a relative the night of Nov. 20, 2020, and went with a woman to Griffith to purchase heroin from a man known as "B," according to court documents.
GARY  Friends said they were shocked to learn that 74-year-old Mary Felton  a former official in Gary and Calumet Township, and former Gary Library Board member  was found shot to death late Wednesday afternoon behind the wheel of a car near Eighth Avenue and Lincoln Street.

The Felton family issued a statement Thursday, mourning the loss of their family matriarch.

We cannot begin to express how profoundly we are grieving, they said. Mary Felton was a loving and doting mother, grandmother, sister, and aunt to many. She cared so deeply about her community, serving at various levels in local government, on the Gary School Board, and other public boards.

The family said that as the investigation continues, they encourage everyone with information on Feltons homicide to work with authorities to resolve the case.

It is truly shocking how someone so caring and giving could fall victim to such a depraved and horrendous crime, the family said. As details continue to develop, we encourage everyone with knowledge about this senseless killing to work with the authorities so they can bring all involved to justice.

Felton was a well-known figure in the area.
The suit also claims Stabosz posted on social media Jan. 10 that "there are forces in our county that seek to use the county for their own personal gain, undermining its financial integrity and moral dignity. The most notorious example of these forces is Attorney Shaw Friedman."

In emails sent to county employees in early February, Stabosz accused Friedman of "corruptly" influencing county commissioners "through manipulation and intimidation, persuading much of the major media to do his bidding," the suit alleges.

Stabosz said he has at least a half dozen witnesses that he believes will testify "as to coercion, intimidation, and abuse of power imposed upon them by Mr. Friedman, they remain silent, until we go to trial, because they dont want to be singled out by Friedman (as I have been), retaliated against, sued for defamation or suffer the loss of their jobs."

"This is a sham lawsuit, intended to quell public debate, discussion, criticism, and the legitimate exposing of the way a long time political power broker, and influence peddler, operates in LaPorte county," Stabosz said. "Shaw Friedman is an incredibly powerful figure, for all the wrong reasons. And a trial will uncover that, in spades."
CROWN POINT  A Hammond man was arrested Wednesday on charges he shot his girlfriend in the shoulder earlier this month, court records show.

Ricardo Andrade, 23, appeared to be "high on drugs" and became paranoid that someone was in a home in the 700 block of Kane Street before the shooting about 11:25 p.m. Dec. 5, Lake Criminal Court records state.

Andrade had not yet made an initial appearance on felony charges of battery by means of a deadly weapon, battery resulting in serious bodily injury, criminal recklessness and pointing a firearm.

Andrade's girlfriend told police he grabbed a gun and fired it toward the bathroom door several times, so she gathered her children and ran to his relatives' home on the same block.

Andrade's relative told police he heard the gunshots and ran to Andrade's home, where he tried to wrestle the gun away from Andrade but was unsuccessful.

Andrade walked to his relatives' house and shot his girlfriend after she opened the front door, records state.
A Chicago man arrested Wednesday on charges linked to a Dyer shooting had key fobs to two stolen vehicles, which were located in a nearby alley, the U.S. Marshals Service said.

Arick Woods, 18, was wanted in Lake County in connection with a shooting that wounded a 16-year-old boy Dec. 16, 2020, in Dyer's Northgate subdivision.

Officers with the U.S. Marshals Service Great Lakes Regional Fugitive Task Force took Woods into custody Wednesday morning in the 4200 block of Langley Avenue in Chicago, an agency spokesman said.

During the arrest, two key fobs were located in Woods' jacket pocket, he said.

One key fob belonged to a 2020 Ford EcoSport reported stolen in Gary, and the second key fob belonged to a 2018 Toyota Camry stolen in Chicago, the spokesman said. Both vehicles were located in an alley behind the arrest location.

The Lake County Sheriff's Department is seeking Woods' extradition from Cook County, Lake Criminal Court records show.
A man charged with beating a Hammond woman twice in one day last spring in front of her 10-year-old child was arrested Wednesday in Chicago, authorities said.

Deshawn Davis, 30, of Chicago, had been wanted since April on felony charges of robbery resulting in serious bodily injury, aggravated battery, criminal confinement and two counts of domestic battery, Lake Criminal Court records showed.

Davis must face an extradition process in Cook County before making an initial appearance before a Lake Criminal Court magistrate.

Davis was on parole in Illinois when the alleged attacks occurred in Hammond and subsequently was accused of violating parole, officials said.

The woman told police Davis, her boyfriend, was visiting her Hammond home April 9 when they began to argue and he kicked her in the stomach as she attempted to exit a bathroom, causing her to fall on her back on the floor.

Davis is accused of stomping on the woman's head, face and chest multiple times as he child looked on.

The woman sought treatment at Franciscan Health hospital in Hammond for a swollen face and blood nose, court records state.
CROWN POINT  An Illinois man faces kidnapping charges after allegedly holding a woman against her will and leading police on a high-speed chase through Lake County.

David J. Stewart, 24, of Dolton, Illinois, faces charges of kidnapping, resisting law enforcement, criminal recklessness and reckless driving, according to Indiana State Police.

Police were called at 7:52 p.m. Thursday for a kidnapping in progress, said Indiana State Police Cpl. Eric Rot. A mother called 911 stating her daughter was being held and transported against her will, he said.

ISP Sgt. Glen Fifield said the man was known by the woman.

"Quick work by dispatch resulted in information being relayed to troopers who were able to locate the suspect vehicle in seven minutes," Fifield said.

Officers located the vehicle and attempted to pull it over on Interstate 65 at the southbound 246 mile marker. However, as an officer approached the vehicle, it sped away.

The vehicle then led chase south, eventually exiting at the 240 mile marker Lowell exit.
GARY  A gas station employee told police he confronted two people Wednesday because he suspected them of shoplifting, suffered cuts to his hands after one of them pulled a knife and punctured their tire before they fled.

Gary police were dispatched about 10 a.m. to the gas station in the 2600 block of West Fifth Avenue, where they spoke with a man who was bleeding from his hands, Cmdr. Jack Hamady said.

The man alleged two people  a man and a woman  attempted to leave the store without paying for several items and the male suspect brandished a knife when confronted, police said.

The gas station employee told police he struggled with the man for the knife, and the pair got into a dark-colored Chevrolet Tahoe driven by a third person and fled.

About 20 minutes later, Gary police found the Tahoe parked in the Westbrook Apartments complex in the 2300 block of Waverly Drive, Hamady said.

A knife was recovered from inside the Tahoe, which was towed for further investigation, he said.

The Tahoe's owner, a 55-year-old Gary man, was arrested on suspicion of assisting a criminal, police said. His name was not disclosed, pending formal charges.

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VALPARAISO  A Valparaiso student faces an intimidation charge after police launched an investigation into a school threat.

On Thursday afternoon during the school day, Valparaiso police were alerted of a school threat at Benjamin Franklin Middle School, located at 605 North Campbell St.

A middle school student had communicated the threat to a group of students, who then told school staff and a school resource officer, Valparaiso Police Department Capt. E.J. Hall said.

An investigation by Valparaiso Community Schools and Valparaiso police have identified the student who made the alleged threat but no other information has been determined at this time, police said Thursday evening.

The student was taken to the Porter County Juvenile Detention Center and faces a charge of intimidation. Authorities said the student will not be attending school while the investigation is ongoing among officers and school officials.

Hall stated the the schools are safe and the Valparaiso Police Department and Valparaiso Community Schools takes such matters very seriously.
"I believe that protecting Lake Michigan and its tributaries is crucial to the future of Indiana," he said. "If the voters choose to give me the opportunity, I will continue to strive for a standard of excellence for all Indiana Hoosiers."

Meer lost his bid for a third term as mayor by 76 votes after he was arrested six days before the 2019 election and charged with six felonies and two misdemeanors for intimidation and misconduct tied to his alleged behavior following the arrest of a family member.

The felony charges were dismissed Aug. 27, 2020, according to court records, and Meer initially entered a diversion program to address the two misdemeanor counts of false informing.

But court records show his participation in the diversion program was terminated after Meer was charged in December 2020 with two new misdemeanor offenses  leaving the scene of an accident and resisting law enforcement  after Meer allegedly stuck a vehicle Nov. 21, 2020, at Ohio and Henry streets on Michigan City's west side.

Proceedings on each set of the misdemeanor charges still are pending before separate, special judges selected by the LaPorte Superior Court, records show.
The car in LaPorte, for example, appeared to be the spitting image of a similar sized gas-powered vehicle inside and out.

Its going to change the way Americans are going to start thinking about electric vehicles, he said.

LaPorte Police Chief Paul Brettin said the car definitely has the horse power required for police work.

He said a slightly larger model with room to accommodate people arrested would probably be needed for patrols, but he can see the not-too-distant future. That's his observation from just his brief time behind the wheel.

The waves coming. Its going to happen, Brettin said.

He said the car was parked outside in the cold for hours and didn't have to warm up before generating heat through the vents in the dashboard.

Sarah Nimetz, the citys Sustainability Program Manager, said the car travels up to 200 miles on a full battery charge.

The battery can be plugged into an electrical outlet at home just like a television set or some other appliance.
Were viewing this as an extremely serious situation inside the walls of hospitals, but its not just a COVID issue, Tabor said. What COVID is doing is kind of taking up the slack thats built into the system.

The average Indiana hospital patient count has been about 10,000 over the past five years, with the previous peak of about 11,500 in early 2018 when Indiana faced a widespread flu outbreak. Indianas total patient count is some 500 more than a year ago when the state was in the midst of its worst COVID-19 surge and about 3,400 people were hospitalized with the disease, the hospital association said.

The Indiana National Guard began offering the six-person teams that include two medics and four support staffers to hospitals earlier this year, with teams being dispatched in September to hospitals in Indianapolis, Evansville, Jeffersonville, Gary and Merrillville.
She said the people identified themselves as representing Americas Frontline Doctors and had not contacted the state medical board or her workplace to request to speak with her.

Led by Simone Gold, a Beverly Hills doctor who was arrested during the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, Americas Frontline Doctors criticizes the COVID-19 vaccine and has been widely discredited for spreading disinformation about the coronavirus and unproven treatments.

I was concerned when I saw someone flying a drone over my house and saw a mysterious white truck parked outside my home. Later that day, my concern turned to terror, she said in a statement.

Lawson added: I arrived in the dark parking garage behind my office and experienced four men unexpectedly rush towards me, jumping out of the same white truck that had been parked outside my house. I then realized that these four men had been surreptitiously stalking me.

Lawson said she decided to go public with what happened to her to shed light on these reprehensible, unacceptable tactics of intimidation

But like other Californians who believe in both science and fair play, I will not be intimidated, she added.
It was noted by U.S. Census officials last week as an example of a city that experienced significant growth in its perch just outside metropolitan hubs  New Braunfels is between San Antonio and Austin, which also grew at blistering paces over the past decade. There were two others in Texas, a fast-growing state: McKinney, outside of Dallas, and Conroe, which had been enveloped by the sprawling Houston metropolitan area.

In many ways, the story of New Braunfelss expansion is the story of a changing America.

As its population has boomed, with many new arrivals coming from big cities across Texas and states like California, Colorado and New York, the town also become more diverse. The Anglo population has dipped below 60 percent for the first time in recent decades, with Latinos accounting for about 35 percent of residents.

The sheer growth shows no signs of abating.

City officials have set aside at least $30 million for infrastructure initiatives, in addition to more than $600 million for water and wastewater projects undertaken by the local utility company. And more money will be needed in the near future, Mr. Brockman said.

In a visible sign of the boom, permits to build new homes exceeded 1,400 last year, a record for the city, said Jeff Jewell, the citys director of economic and community development. More than 10,000 single-family homes were added over the past 11 years and property values have also skyrocketed, with the median home value jumping 73 percent over the past decade, to $272,000 from $157,000.
We looked at this request not as foreign policy between Mexico and the U.S., he continued. Instead, its a common position between someone who was a New York Times reporter in Kabul several years ago and myself, who was in the position to make some decisions.

Mr. Ebrard wrote back to Mr. Ahmed around 6:30 p.m. to say Mexico was ready to help by providing assurances  to a charter airline, or another government  that it would accept a list of Afghans.

As the Taliban closed in on Kabul, however, the situation changed. The commercial airport shut down, and for a time only American military flights would depart. Qatar, where the U.S. jets landed, would usually accept Afghans only if officials there could be assured that they would move on to a third country.

Many of the details of the Afghans passage are being kept confidential by news organizations, in part for fear of flooding the narrow channels of escape. The Times did not promote its arrangement with Mexico. After it was reached, Mexico extended its invitation to The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post. The editor in chief of The Journal, Matt Murray, said the paper planned to send its team, now in Qatar and Ukraine, on to Mexico. A spokeswoman for The Post declined to comment on its plans.

While the United States has ramped up its evacuation flights, the politicized and bureaucratic American immigration system has struggled to meet the crisis. Processing the special visas that are available to journalists often requires them to spend at least a year in a third country, presumably to satisfy the forces warning that Muslim immigrants may be terrorists working under extremely deep cover.

So governments around the world are stepping in, as they did when Syrian journalists fled that countrys war  most of them to find homes in Europe. Many others went to Turkey, which has also scrambled to provide lifelines to Afghan journalists. Uzbekistan, too, has accepted refugees and offered itself as a short-term destination for Times journalists, a senior Times editor said.
A jury in Chicago has reached a verdict in the trial over charges that the actor Jussie Smollett lied to the police about being the victim of a racist and homophobic hate crime in 2019.

The New York Times has a reporter in the courtroom and will be filing updates on Thursday as soon as the jury returns to the courtroom to report its decision.

The jurys deliberations followed six days of testimony, which included Mr. Smollett taking the witness stand for more than seven hours on Monday and Tuesday. He decided to testify to counter a narrative put forward by two brothers who testified that Mr. Smollett directed them to mildly assault him as a publicity stunt.

Mr. Smollett is charged with six counts of disorderly conduct related to what investigators said was his filing of a false police report.
An Omicron wave heads for the U.K.

As Britain braces for a new coronavirus surge, with cases of the Omicron variant doubling every three days, the countrys experience with the new variant may be a harbinger of what other wealthy nations can expect. It is unclear if the surge will be a relatively minor event or a return to the dark days of earlier pandemic waves.

Omicron appears to be the most contagious form of the virus yet, and more able to evade immunity from previous infections or from vaccines. Though it also seems to cause less severe illness than earlier variants, experts warn that a huge surge in cases could nonetheless overwhelm hospitals and cause a spike in deaths.

On Wednesday, Britain introduced new restrictions, including mask mandates and requiring vaccine passports, and urged people to work from home where possible. It was a striking reversal for Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who had previously opposed the stricter controls that have been adopted around Europe.

Quotable: I think we are looking at a horrible winter, said Peter English, a retired consultant in communicable disease control, noting the exponential spread of Omicron.
BuzzFeeds first week on the stock market went from bad to worse Thursday, when its stock lost nearly a quarter of its value.

Its shares dropped 23.6 percent, to close at $5.87, and at that price they are now down 31 percent from where they closed Monday, when it made its debut as a public company.

BuzzFeed, which is known for both its catchy lists and its traditional journalism, went public by merging with a shell corporation known as a special purpose acquisition company, or SPAC, a route onto the stock market that was popular earlier this year but has since lost favor among investors.

BuzzFeed raised far less money from the merger than it had expected to after many investors in the SPAC asked for their money back. BuzzFeeds leadership had hoped that going public would make it easier for it to acquire other digital media companies. But doing so will be much harder after its fund-raising came up short and if its stock remains depressed.
We felt we needed to get involved because this is a growing movement across the country, said the organizations president, Christopher Arps. We are not against immigrants  we believe immigrants have built this country. We just feel people should become citizens before theyre allowed to vote.

Mr. de Blasio has said he would not veto the bill. The bill automatically becomes law if it is not signed in 30 days.

The mayor contended that noncitizen voting is a right that the state would have to grant, a position that many experts disagree with.

Towns in Vermont and Maryland already allow noncitizens to vote in municipal elections. Noncitizens in San Francisco can vote in school board elections and several municipalities in Illinois, Maine and Massachusetts are also considering allowing noncitizen voting.

In New York, the mayor-elect, Eric Adams, has said he supports the rights of green card holders to vote in local elections and has urged passage of the legislation. But he, too, has questioned whether the City Council has the ability to grant voting rights to noncitizens. A spokesman for Mr. Adams said he would review the legislation when he takes office.

Experts say that the New York State Constitution grants voting rights to citizens but does not explicitly prevent noncitizen voting. Noncitizens were allowed to vote in New York City school board elections until the boards were abolished in the early 2000s.

There was an effort to stop the legislation from being approved Thursday when Mark Gjonaj, a councilman from the Bronx, introduced a motion to send the bill back to committee. Mr. Gjonaj said he believed there should be a residency requirement of a year, instead of the bills 30-day requirement.
The city of Columbus, Ohio, announced on Thursday that it had reached an agreement to pay $5.75 million to 32 plaintiffs who said that they were injured and that their constitutional rights were violated by members of the citys police division during social justice protests in the summer of 2020.

After the killing of George Floyd last year, the plaintiffs were among many in Columbus who participated in protests that swept the country. The plaintiffs alleged in a lawsuit filed last year in U.S. District Court in the Southern District of Ohio that officers with the Columbus Police Division had used excessive force against them and had violated their constitutional rights.

In announcing the settlement agreement, which is subject to City Council approval, the Columbus City Attorneys Office said that during the protests the police had made arrests and used force including, but not limited to, pepper spray, tear gas, wooden baton rounds, and sponge rounds.

Some plaintiffs were significantly injured during the protests, Zach Klein, the city attorney, said in the statement, adding that it was incumbent upon the city to accept responsibility and pay restitution.
Before meeting his Covid-19 response team at the White House, President Biden called the development even more great news from the F.D.A. and C.D.C. He added, I say it to all of you: If you got vaccinated six months ago, get your booster right away.

The F.D.A. and the C.D.C., which sets vaccine policy for the federal government, acted without input from their independent expert advisory panels. The committees have typically discussed whether to authorize or expand eligibility for shots in public meetings before the agencies act.

Dr. Jesse L. Goodman, a former chief scientist at the F.D.A., said that given the spirited debate about boosters this fall among the agencys regulators and outside advisers, more public discussion would have been helpful.

Transparency lets people make more informed decisions, Dr. Goodman said. For instance, he said, recent data from Israel and elsewhere that suggests minimal serious side effects in younger, boosted people might help allay some parents concerns about a third dose for older male teenagers.

Support for boosters has been growing among public health experts in the face of the Omicron variant; some who previously opposed them now support a broad campaign. The F.D.A.s expert committee recommended rejecting Pfizer-BioNTechs request in September to clear a booster shot for 16- and 17-year-olds, partly because of concerns over what the panel saw as insufficient data about a rare heart condition tied to the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna shots, especially in younger men.

That condition, myocarditis, or inflammation of the heart muscle, can also be caused by the virus. Federal scientists have said that cases tend to be mild and resolve quickly.

Regulators said on Thursday that they had determined in reviewing Pfizer-BioNTechs application that the benefits of a booster dose in warding off the virus and its health consequences outweighed the risks of myocarditis.
The abortion industrys lawsuit abuses the judicial system and turns this court into a mere platform for airing criticisms against the boldest pro-life law to take effect since Roe v. Wade, Kimberlyn Schwartz, a Texas Right to Life spokeswoman, said in a statement.

The abortion law, known in Texas as Senate Bill 8 or the heartbeat law, prohibits abortions after cardiac activity has been detected, usually around six weeks of pregnancy. By expressly prohibiting state officials from enforcement, and relying instead on individuals, the law avoided the usual process of legal scrutiny and went into effect in September after the U.S. Supreme Court declined to step in.

The Supreme Court heard arguments about the law last month as part of an expedited process and is expected to rule soon.

The court has also been weighing arguments over a Mississippi law in a case seen as a direct challenge to Roe v. Wade, the 1973 decision that prevented states from banning abortions before fetal viability. The Mississippi law bans the procedure after 15 weeks, or about two months before viability.

In Texas, abortion providers have said they were abiding by the new law because of the threat of legal action from any individual against someone who performs or aids and abets the procedure, including clinic staff or even the person who provided transportation to the clinic.
The Nobel committee cited the pairs courageous fight for freedom of expression. They were the first journalists to win the Nobel Peace Prize since 1935, when it was awarded to Carl von Ossietzky, a German who was then detained in a concentration camp by the Nazis. Ms. Ressa has said she believes the Nobel committees focus on journalists this year signaled that, once again, we are on the brink of the rise of fascism.

Mr. Muratov lamented on Sunday that Propaganda has convinced the majority of the Russian people that democracy is harmful and that it leads to collapse.

He accepted the award as some 100,000 Russian troops were massing on the countrys border with Ukraine, raising anxieties about a potential invasion. At a news conference on Thursday in Oslo, Mr. Muratov warned that authoritarianism is inextricably linked to war.

Disbelief in democracy means that the countries that have abandoned it will get a dictator, he said. And where there is a dictatorship, there is a war. If we refuse democracy, we agree to war.

It was a message similar to the one contained in Mr. Sakharovs Nobel address in 1975. It was delivered by his wife, the activist Yelena Bonner, because he was barred from leaving the Soviet Union to deliver it in person.

Mr. Sakharov is considered the father of the Soviet hydrogen bomb. Realizing the destructive power of nuclear weapons and concerned about the ethical implications of his work, he later became an advocate for nuclear disarmament and human rights.
MOSCOW  With tensions building between Russia and the West over Ukraine, the migration crisis in Belarus and rising natural gas prices, it might be a surprise that President Vladimir V. Putin is a patron of an art exhibition celebrating European unity.

But there his name is, displayed on the wall at the entrance to Diversity United, an exhibition that arrived in the New Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow on Nov. 23, after a four-month stint at the Tempelhof Airport in Berlin, where it attracted more than 50,000 visitors. The show runs in Moscow through March 13, and then its next scheduled stop is Paris.

President Emmanuel Macron of France and President Frank-Walter Steinmeier of Germany are also patrons of the exhibition, which explores notions of what Europe is. Bringing together works by 90 artists from 34 countries, the show deals with concepts like the transience of borders, migration, historical trauma and much more. Taken together, the art on show adds up to an idealistic picture of a continent united around liberal values, such as political freedom and human rights.
WINER One by one.

REIRING Early on, Richard Prince was living with Cindy and there were no cellphones. So wed have to call, because we had all these demands for Cindy, and Richard would answer the phone. He knew exactly what was coming.

WINER But thats quite different from later. In the 90s, big artists began having much higher expectations about what the gallery should provide and guarantee.

REIRING The biggest change started after 9/11, which more or less prevented a lot of art people and collectors from coming here that fall, and then the following December [2002] the first Miami Basel fair opened and everyone went to that. New York was no longer the center of the art world. We barely took on any New York-based artists after that. But the pandemic really gave us time to think. Being responsible for 40 people, for their well-being, plus your employees  you think, Do I really want to keep doing this? No.

WINER You are basically consumed by what the artists want from you. Theyve all been wonderful about our closing, but in fact they want and need us to perform for them and if that cant happen were blamed just like you blame your parents for all your failures. You preferred the other kid.
PARIS  The latest in a series of controversies that have surrounded the renovation of Notre-Dame unfolded on Thursday, when a commission of heritage experts gave the green light to a revamp of the interior of the fire-stricken cathedral.

Frances National Heritage and Architecture Commission approved proposals by the diocese of Paris to bring a more modern look to Notre-Dame before its planned reopening in 2024, including the installation of contemporary artworks and new lighting effects. Opponents say the changes will debase the 850-year-old cathedral and disturb the harmony of its Gothic design.

The heritage commission also authorized cathedral administrators to rearrange the tabernacle and other items to create more room for visitors. Msgr. Patrick Chauvet, Notre-Dames rector, said the proposals would allow for an easier and more pleasant visit to the religious monument and create a dialogue between Notre-Dames medieval architecture and new, more modern features.

Artworks from the 20th and 21st centuries could be placed next to old master paintings from the cathedrals collection, such as Mathieu Le Nains Nativity of the Virgin Mary, Chauvet said.
At first pass, this seems like a grave overreaction on Samanthas part. She crossed an ocean and wont answer texts just because her pride was bruised? Maybe. Or maybe she was just sick of third-wheeling with her boring married friends and needed to move on, and the overseas job thing is just a pretext. Well never know.

What we do know, however, is that in some respect, the story mirrors reality. Much of what has been reported about the relationships among the seriess core four actors is hearsay and speculation. But we know that there was friction between Cattrall and her castmates and that Cattrall, like Samantha, removed herself.

Regardless of the reasons for Samanthas departure, it is relatable. As decades pass, some friendships wither, and this plot point is a reminder that, like romantic relationships, sometimes friendships arent happily ever after.

With that out of the way, the episode moves at a rapid pace, making little room for subtlety or nuance when it comes to situating the characters in this new stage of life. Everyone is older. (In case the passing of time wasnt obvious, youll be made aware of it by the many self-deprecating old jokes woven into the dialogue.) The women have gray hair, in various degrees and shades of dye. Theyre not entirely comfortable with podcasts. They struggle with pronouns. They werent who they once were, and theyre not trying to be. Sort of. (As Charlotte, still a full brunette, argues: Ruth Bader Ginsburg dyed her hair.)

Carrie is still in the media game, but she has parlayed her success from print columns and books into a steady podcast gig and healthy Instagram following. Its all a bit uncomfy to her, though, especially when her younger, queer, nonbinary, Mexican-Irish diva boss, Che Diaz (Sara Ramirez), tells her she needs to be more explicit on the show.

Charlotte is mostly still Charlotte, living a lovely life in a Park Avenue palace with her adoring husband and girls. While her oldest, Lily (Cathy Ang), who stuns the crowd at her piano recital with a virtuosic performance, seems to take after her mother in the pursuit of perfection, her youngest daughter, Rose (Alexa Swinton), is a punky skateboarder who wont wear the floral Oscar de la Renta number her mom bought for her without an ironic T-shirt over top.
The Apple TV+ series Dickinson has won raves for its absurdist, existential take on the life of Emily Dickinson, which turns the poet into a passionate proto-feminist navigating a time as tumultuous as our own. But even its most over-the-top flights of fancy have been grounded in historical scholarship and cutting-edge literary theory, garnering it an ardent fan base among scholars.

Now, a show that emerged from the archives is returning whence it came, for  as Dickinson might have put it  all Eternity.

The series, whose three-season run will come to an end on Dec. 24, is donating dozens of costumes, period furnishings and props to the Emily Dickinson Museum in Amherst, Mass., where they will be used to flesh out the sense of her daily life at the Dickinson homestead.
So is Samantha just a handbag now?

Early Thursday morning, the first two episodes of And Just Like That arrived on HBO Max, heralding the click-clack return of the Sex and the City universe, the first new installment since the misbegotten 2010 film Sex and the City 2. Kim Cattrall had already departed the franchise, declining to return for a planned third film. Trailers for this new series had failed to explain the absence of her character, Samantha. Fans noted a ladies-who-lunch scene, in which the chair normally reserved for Samantha is instead occupied by a blond bucket purse and an Oscar de la Renta garment bag. Cold.

The first moments of the first episode, which checks in on Sarah Jessica Parkers Carrie, Cynthia Nixons Miranda and Kristin Daviss Charlotte in their mid-50s, quickly explain Samanthas disappearance. So if you can tolerate a small spoiler, read on. And if you can stomach a much, much bigger one, read even further.

While waiting for their table, the women run into Bitsy von Muffling (a beloved character played by the equally beloved Julie Halston). When Bitsy asks after Samantha, they reveal that Samantha has moved to London for work. (Is this a sneaky nod to reality? Cattrall herself spends a lot of time on the London stage.)

Sexy sirens in their 60s are still viable over there, Bitsy says approvingly.

In a post-lunch scene, Carrie and Miranda discuss the estrangement. The state of the book business meant that Carrie no longer needed a personal publicist. And when she let Samantha go professionally, Samantha fired her as a friend. All of the women have called and texted, but Samantha has never responded.
THE PEOPLE REMEMBER

By Ibi Zoboi

Illustrated by Loveis Wise

Like storytelling, memory can carve a path to freedom. As Joan Didion wrote in The White Album, We tell ourselves stories in order to live. In an often illogical, chaotic world, narratives can be a salve or a method of survival. They can help us grasp what Didion called the shifting phantasmagoria of the human experience. But what if a communitys identity is intertwined with the incomprehensible cruelties of human bondage?

In The People Remember, a picture book written by Ibi Zoboi, a 2017 National Book Award finalist for her young adult novel American Street, and illustrated by Loveis Wise, African American history begins with the trans-Atlantic slave trade. But Zoboi and Wise dont sensationalize violence or wallow in sorrow. Their collaboration focuses on Black resilience, a cultural inheritance powerful enough to break the curse of generational trauma. Guided by the seven principles of Kwanzaa (unity; self-determination; collective work and responsibility; cooperative economics; purpose; creativity; and faith), Zobois narrative explores both the burden and the strength of collective consciousness.

The book begins during a time of war, with the capture and enslavement of Africans across the continent. Zoboi chants the names of the various nation-states of the diaspora (the Ashanti and the Fulani, the Empire of Mali, the Hausa and Ibo, as well as the Kongo, the Yoruba and Akan, the Empire of Songhai, the Kingdom of Dahomey, the Mende and the Fon) and recounts how chiefs and kings sold the people to white men who forced them into ropes that bound them. She alludes to the horrors of the journey across the ocean by noting that some jumped into the embrace of the water spirit Mami Wata, who maybe, just maybe  was their mother.

Wises illustrations imbue Zobois lyrical text with mythological import. A particularly effective spread depicts a Black woman leading another Black woman and a girl with braids through the dead of a blue-velvet night. She points out the constellations above, as a waxing crescent moon glows with soft yellow light. Zobois accompanying text discusses how, when slavery ripped families apart, the North Star was freedom and Harriet Tubman and Nat Turner led the way. The image and the words work in harmony to emphasize the limitless potential of the human spirit. Later spreads spotlight the innovation and creativity of Black trailblazers in the arts.
An oil project off the coast of Scotland that had become a test of Britains environmental credentials was shelved by its main owner on Friday.

The decision to halt Cambo, as the oil field is known, is a huge win for environmental groups like Greenpeace, and a blow to the North Sea oil industry. It comes just over a week after Shell, which owns 30 percent of the project, pulled out of the investment.

We are pausing the development while we evaluate next steps, said Siccar Point Energy, a London-based company that is backed by private equity firms, including Blackstone, the financial management giant.

Siccar Point said it had planned to invest $2.6 billion in Cambo, and had already spent $190 million on the field since acquiring it in 2017. The firm said that developing Cambo, a potentially valuable source of oil and natural gas, would have created 1,000 jobs.
Daimlers car and truck divisions concluded an amicable divorce on Friday when shares in Daimler Truck began trading separately on the Frankfurt stock exchange.

The separation of Mercedes-Benz, the luxury carmaker, from Daimler Truck, which owns Freightliner in the United States, signaled the end of an era not only for Daimler but also the German economy.

The spinoff, announced in February, was the final chapter in a transition that began in the 1990s, when Daimler was a sprawling conglomerate that also made trains and passenger aircraft. Along with other industrial empires like Siemens, Daimler has been forced to jettison excess baggage to remain competitive.

For car and truck makers, the need to ditch unwieldy corporate structures has become even more urgent as they try to survive the shift to emission-free propulsion. One justification for the spinoff is that it will allow Daimler Trucks managers to make decisions more quickly.
President Biden on Friday waded into a strike involving 1,400 employees at four Kellogg plants, whom the company said it planned to permanently replace after workers voted down a proposed contract this week.

I am deeply troubled by reports of Kelloggs plans to permanently replace striking workers, Mr. Biden said in a statement, adding that permanently replacing striking workers is an existential attack on the union and its members jobs and livelihoods.

The strike began on Oct. 5 and has largely focused on the companys two-tier compensation system, in which employees hired after 2015 typically receive lower wages and less generous benefits than veteran workers. Many veteran Kellogg workers, who the company says earn about $35 per hour on average, believe that adding lower-paid workers puts downward pressure on their wages.

Kellogg raised the possibility of hiring permanent replacements in November. The company and the union last week reached a tentative agreement in which the company would lift a cap on the number of workers in the lower tier, which was 30 percent under the previous contract. In exchange, the company agreed to move all workers with four or more years experience into the veteran tier, as well as an amount equivalent to 3 percent of workers at its plants in each of the five years of the contract.
WASHINGTON  The Biden administration announced a partnership on Friday with Australia, Denmark, Norway, Canada, France, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom to try to stem the flow of sensitive technologies to authoritarian governments.

The partnership, named the Export Controls and Human Rights Initiative, calls for the countries to align their policies on exports of key technologies and develop a voluntary written code of conduct to apply human rights criteria to export licenses, according to a White House statement.

The effort is aimed at combating the rise of digital authoritarianism in countries like China and Russia, where software and advanced surveillance technologies have been used to track dissidents and journalists, shape public opinion and censor information deemed dangerous by the government.

The announcement was part of the last day of the Summit for Democracy, the White Houses virtual gathering of officials from over 100 countries aimed at bolstering democracies.
Mr. Musk did not respond to an email asking him to discuss his philanthropic giving.

The notion that rich people have a moral obligation to give is an ancient one. Mr. Soskis, a historian of philanthropy, notes that wealthy citizens in ancient Rome tried to outdo one another paying for public baths and theaters. The inscriptions on those edifices could count as a form of early donor lists.

The idea that the richest might need charity to improve their public relations is also longstanding, driven home in the Gilded Age by the 1882 outburst by railway magnate William Henry Vanderbilt, The public be damned! that shadowed him to the end of his days.

Efforts to track the charitable giving of the very wealthy in the United States date to the late 19th century, when the ranks of millionaires exploded. Before long, newspapers were running front-page lists of who had made the biggest gifts. The original duo to capture public attention were John D. Rockefeller and Andrew Carnegie, whose feelings on publicizing philanthropy were diametrically opposed.

Cartoons from the era showed Mr. Carnegie, often dressed in a kilt to reference his Scottish origin, showering coins from enormous bags of money. The man who dies thus rich dies disgraced, Mr. Carnegie wrote in The Gospel of Wealth, his treatise on giving. Mr. Rockefeller preferred to keep his giving more private and had to be convinced to announce his gifts.

To those who think the trolling started on Twitter, philanthropy was never quite as polite as we imagine today. George Eastman, one of the founders of Eastman Kodak, called those who did not give their money away during their lifetimes pie-faced mutts. Julius Rosenwald, the chairman of Sears, Roebuck and Company and a major philanthropist in his day, insisted that the accumulation of wealth had nothing to do with smarts, adding, Some very rich men who made their own fortunes have been among the stupidest men I have ever met in my life.

But the idea that giving helps the reputation is at best only partially true. Givers are celebrated at times but just as often the higher profile means their motives and choices are picked apart. The Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison and the Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin are each worth over $120 billion, per Forbes, but none of them receives the level of scrutiny that Mr. Gates does, for instance.

If you put your head above the philanthropic parapet and say, Im interested in the environment, or whatever cause area, people can start to question it, said Beth Breeze, author of the recent book In Defence of Philanthropy. Ms. Breeze has pushed back against the recent trend of criticizing philanthropists, who, she says, are regularly described as tax dodging, egotistical, irritating  criticism they may earn, but not comments that she views as useful to the greater good.
Mr. Edelman and other company leaders did not address more than 50 questions about Edelmans oil and gas work submitted by employees in a chat room accompanying the video meeting. Many of those questions expressed skepticism about Edelmans work for fossil fuel companies while championing environmental initiatives.

As global warming takes a worsening toll on the planet, the energy industry is working to reduce climate-damaging emissions by investing in a technology known as carbon capture and storage, among other ventures. At the same time, 45 banks, insurers and asset managers have pledged to use the $130 trillion they control to hit net-zero emissions targets in their investments by 2050, a goal that critics have said doesnt go far enough because the financial institutions continue to invest in fossil fuel companies.

A number of public relations companies and advertising agencies have cut ties with the oil and gas industry in recent years, wary of burnishing the images of companies that have played a role in damaging the environment. Edelmans strategy is less clear-cut. It says on its website that it thinks very carefully about which businesses we work for.

The 69-year-old company has a longstanding relationship with fossil fuels. It began working with Shell, Europes largest oil company, more than 15 years ago. This fall, as Edelman prepared to move its headquarters out of the Aon Center in Chicago, Mr. Edelman wrote a blog post that described how his father had loved the location: He was so proud that his company was in the same building as giant Standard Oil of Indiana.

In a statement to The New York Times, Edelman said that it was unable to comment on specific client engagements due to confidentiality commitments with all of our clients, adding that it would not work with climate change deniers, a policy the company established in 2015.

Companies in the business of shaping public opinion are likely to side with oil and gas companies for as long as they can keep taking their money, which can be significant, said Christine Arena, who resigned as an executive vice president of Edelmans corporate responsibility division in 2015 along with five colleagues who had expressed concerns about the companys work for fossil fuel clients.

The agency was more weighted toward fossil fuel clients and, therefore, the interests of those clients, and that will probably continue as long as fossil fuel marketers dont face the types of restrictions that tobacco or pharmaceutical companies face, said Ms. Arena, who now runs a production company, Generous Films.
Good morning. I once spent an afternoon reducing a couple of quarts of Cheerwine, the wildly sweet North Carolina cherry cola, to make a kind of demi-glace I thought I could whip with heavy cream, to anoint pecan tartlets after a Southern-style dinner of grilled lamb, grits and braised root vegetables.

This did not work, and I was put off cooking with soda pop for a number of years. (I rebounded with this awesome galbijjim that the chef Peter Cho taught me to make, which requires a can of Coke.) Cooking with liquids that contain high-fructose corn syrup is a difficult business.

But Eric Kim is a remarkable businessman, and his new recipe for root beer ham (above) delivers an incredible result, with the sarsaparilla in the soda imparting a kind of sylvan mintiness to the cured meat. When reduced after cooking the ham, the root beer braising liquid serves as a base for a mustard-rich, syrupy glaze that picks up a high note with a touch of rice vinegar. I suspect he will not be alone in preparing that ham for the holiday season, especially among those who take the time to read his moving essay about developing the recipe in The New York Times Magazine this week.

Indeed, I might try it this weekend, just as practice, if only so I can follow his suggestion to burble up some stock from the hambone and use it for congee, with a few egg yolks stirred in at the end.
At Chicago, the incidents led to a student protest a few weeks ago in the name of greater safety measures; approximately 300 faculty members also signed a letter to the administration pointing to an existential crisis that they believed would affect the universitys ability to attract new students. What was the value of the schools commitment to intellectual risk if it could not protect its charges from the most devastating kinds of physical harm?

Visually, there are few clearer illustrations of our inequality than the adjacency of regally designed universities with multibillion-dollar endowments and single-digit acceptance rates to neighborhoods haunted by generations of intractable poverty. Rising crime rates in cities around the country, where campuses typically have porous boundaries, resurrect questions about safety and institutional responsibility, about the tensions between elite universities and the surrounding areas they all too often view merely through the lens of potential real-estate acquisition.

In the case of Mr. Giri, the police quickly arrested someone  a 25-year-old, Vincent Pinkney, with a criminal record, who is accused of wounding a second person that same night, a Columbia graduate student who had just arrived from Italy to be a visiting scholar, and threatening a third. The police announced that more officers would be placed in the park. Columbia added its own safety patrols on sections of Broadway and Amsterdam Avenue and around Morningside Park, actions similar to those taken after Ms. Majorss death. But to Mr. Taylor, the painful irony around this recent incidence of deadly violence is that it took place a block or so away from Columbia Universitys School of Social Work, which, in various iterations, has been instrumental in the evolution of a discipline dedicated to alleviating urban suffering for more than a century.

Critics of the entitlements enjoyed by universities often point to the need for them do more out of moral, if not legal, necessity. Last year, after mounting pressure, the University of Pennsylvania announced that it would donate $100 million to the struggling school system of Philadelphia over 10 years. In light of last weeks tragedy, I spoke about these issues with Councilman Mark Levine, whose district includes Morningside Heights and Manhattanville, where Columbia is in the midst of a $6.3 billion expansion. He said that although the data did not show a rise in assaults in Morningside Park, the city was seeing an increase in reports of people feeling threatened by those dealing with obvious mental health challenges.

In the instance of Mr. Giris alleged assailant, Mr. Levine said, police officers described him as a longtime gang associate, who, in this case, seemed to be having a psychic unraveling or an episode provoked by substance abuse. Mr. Levine maintained that Columbia should be investing more in mental health services in Upper Manhattan, and that it had an obligation to address the citys failings.
Consider what happened in the global financial crisis of 2008-9. Asset-backed securities such as mortgage bonds had become a form of money, Wall Streets equivalent of cash. Big players posted them as collateral for short-term loans in whats known as the repo market, short for repurchase agreement. When foreclosures spiked, people lost faith in the value of those mortgage bonds, and the borrowers who had used them as collateral were suddenly cut off from credit. In 2010 the economist Gary Gorton compared it with an E. coli outbreak: It took only a few bad bonds to scare people away from the whole class. Something that had functioned as money abruptly ceased to do so.

Governments worldwide have an obvious interest in maintaining the publics confidence that their money is not, in Mr. Buchanans words, entirely ephemeral. That goes for both government-issued money, which consists of paper bills, coins and reserves at the central bank, and privately issued money, which includes bank accounts, repo and new products like cryptocurrencies. In the United States, there is not an urgent crisis of trust when it comes to government-issued money. The country is in no real danger of runaway budget deficits or hyperinflation or a modern-day equivalent of Depression bank runs.

But cash is different. It is becoming technologically obsolete before replacements have gained the trust of the public and the backing, or at least acceptance, of governments.

The two new kinds of money that are rising as cash falls are stablecoins and central bank digital currencies. Stablecoins, which like Bitcoin exist in virtual ledgers, are issued by private entities that promise to convert them on demand into government money or some other asset at a fixed exchange rate. The irony here is that cryptocurrencies were supposed to get us away from official money, whereas the ones that seem to work as a medium of exchange are backed by official money, said Dr. Prasad, the Cornell economist, who is the author of a new book, The Future of Money: How the Digital Revolution Is Transforming Currencies and Finance.

The problem for stablecoin issuers is that to make their promise of convertibility rock solid, they would need to hold $1 in cash in reserve for every dollar stablecoin they put into circulation. Thats a lot of money for them to have tied up earning no return. The temptation is to invest the reserves to earn some kind of return. But that makes the reserves less than perfectly safe.

The potential instability of stablecoins is one reason theres growing demand for digital currencies issued by central banks. Central bank digital currencies are obligations of the government, like cash, but theyre virtual, like a check or an entry in PayPal or a banks reserve account at the Fed. China, South Africa, South Korea and Sweden are among the nations that have piloted central bank digital currencies, and the Bahamas and Nigeria have started ones, according to the Atlantic Councils Central Bank Digital Currency Tracker. The Federal Reserve has been more skeptical. Randal Quarles, who was vice chair for supervision until October, hinted in a June speech that they were a fad akin to parachute pants of the 1980s.

Central bank digital currency is less anonymous than cash, which makes it less useful to criminals but likewise more of a threat to the privacy of law-abiding citizens. It could also be programmed to be used for only certain purposes, which many people would regard as an infringement on their liberty. To combat a slump in spending, the central bank could even program it to gradually lose buying power, which would induce people to spend it quickly if grudgingly.
Virtually all viruses cause some sort of disease as a part of their natural progression. The reasons for why they cause disease are varied. Disease may be a consequence of killing a cell that has served its purpose from the viruss perspective, after having used it to make hundreds or thousands of copies of itself. For viruses that spread through respiratory droplets, that disease often manifests as sneezing, coughing and a runny nose. All these symptoms help the virus get out of its host and on to the next one.

Some respiratory viruses can spread before they cause symptoms, but they often spread more effectively when symptoms develop. Inducing some disease may be critical for respiratory virus transmission.

As someone who studies viruses, I often hear the phrase, A dead host is not a good host, or some version of that. This is probably true for most viruses, and certainly if a virus killed every person it infected it would eventually run out of hosts, which is not a good thing for the virus.

But what is really important is how efficiently the virus spreads. Does making a person very ill provide the virus with some advantage that makes transmission more effective? If the answer to that question is yes, then the virus may continue to make people severely ill because that strategy works.

But theres no high-level thinking involved. All viruses mutate, and those mutations occur randomly. A good portion of those mutations dont affect the viruss ability to replicate or spread at all. It is these mutations that give the variant a unique fingerprint that can be used to trace chains of transmission and understand how it is spreading locally and globally. Mutations that limit the viruss ability to replicate are rarely detected because those variants cant compete with the original virus and quickly go extinct.
Although the share of progressives within the Democratic Party is much larger than the share of progressives writ large (12 percent of the party versus 6 percent nationally, according to the most recent political typology survey from the Pew Research Center), a large majority of Democrats are moderate to moderately liberal on most issues. Thats why  and how  Joe Biden won the nomination for president in the first place, easily beating his more left-wing opponents in the South Carolina primary and rallying much of the rest of the party behind him on Super Tuesday and beyond.

In office, Biden has led from the center of the Democratic Party. His main legislative achievement so far, Covid relief notwithstanding, is a bipartisan infrastructure bill. The next phase of his agenda, the Build Back Better plan, now rests in the hands of the most conservative Democrats in Congress. He does not celebrate violent protests; he denounces them. He supports law enforcement and the criminal justice system  see his comments on the Kyle Rittenhouse verdict  and avoids most cultural battles. This is true, as well, of most elected Democrats in Washington.

There was a battle for control of the Democratic Party, and the moderates won. They hold the power and they direct the message. But despite this victory, moderate Democrats and their allies cant seem to take responsibility for the partys fortunes. When faced with defeats  as they were last month when Terry McAuliffe fell to Glenn Youngkin in the race to succeed Ralph Northam as governor of Virginia  they blame the left. Its the same song, each time. If progressives would just stop alienating the public, then they could make gains and put power back in Democratic hands. Somehow, the people in the passengers seat of the Democratic Party are always and forever responsible for the drivers failure to reach their shared destination.

Writing for his newsletter, the journalist Osita Nwanevu made a version of this point earlier in the year. Progressive politicians and activists may be occasionally off-message but in the main, The simple truth is that most of the things moderate liberals tend to argue Democrats should be doing and saying are, in fact, being done and said by the Biden administration, Democratic leaders in Congress, and the vast majority of Democratic elected officials.

If, despite their influence, moderate Democrats are not satisfied with the state of their party, then they might want to turn their critical eye on themselves. What theyll find are a few fundamental problems that may help explain the partys current predicament.

After all, 2020 was not the first year that Democrats fell short of their expectations. They did so in 2010, when moderates had an even stronger grip on the party, as well as in 2014 and 2016. Here, again, Ill echo Nwanevu. Despite pitching his administration to the moderate middle  despite his vocal critiques of identity politics, his enthusiastic patriotism and his embrace of the most popular Democratic policies on offer  Barack Obama could not arrest the Democratic Partys slide with blue-collar voters. For the past decade, in other words, the Democratic Partys electoral prospects have been in decline for reasons unattributable to progressive figures and ideas that arrived on the political scene practically yesterday.

Perhaps the problem, then, lies less with the rhetoric (or existence) of progressive Democrats and more with any number of transformations in the material circumstances of American life and the response  or lack thereof  from the Democrats with the power to do something. What was the Democratic Partys response to a generation of neoliberal economic restructuring? What was its response to the near-total collapse of private-sector unions? What was its response to the declining fortunes of American workers and the upward redistribution of American wealth?
The growing intolerance of governments and elites toward a free press across the globe is one major cause of the crisis. Global surveys of censorship, arrests and journalist deaths suggest that the picture has been darkening for years. But Zaffar Abbas, the editor in chief of the independent newspaper Dawn in Pakistan, views Donald Trumps campaign against fake news as a further fateful turn for the worse. Abbas believes that authoritarian regimes and populists see it as a green light to step up their own attacks on journalists. If the leader of the free world could show such open contempt for a free press, why shouldnt they?

But the worlds independent news companies face a second, more insidious but potentially no less lethal threat: bankruptcy. Digital disruption has made the news business tough everywhere, but media entrepreneurs in developing countries face particularly brutal economics. For them, digital subscriptions are a distant dream at best. Local advertising is often dominated by governments and other powerful interests that wield it like a weapon to punish anyone who dares publish inconvenient truths. Local sponsors and philanthropists can easily conclude that the political risks of supporting independent journalism are just too great. Covid and the resulting collapse in advertising revenue are for many publishers the last straw. Some have closed for good. Many more are on the brink.

International grants to support journalism are a lifeline for some. But current grant-giving can be sporadic, uncoordinated and susceptible both to duplication and yawning gaps. Sometimes it reflects the narrow diplomatic and cultural agendas of the givers. And many of todays donors would freely volunteer that, given the growing need, the present level of funding is woefully inadequate.

That is why the two of us have agreed to become joint chairs of a new multilateral fund to support independent journalism across the world. We both know from our different vantage points  Maria on the frontline of the battle for free media in Manila, Mark as a past leader of two of the worlds global news providers, The New York Times and the BBC  what a difference great journalism can make both to the individual lives of readers and viewers and to the civic health of a society. We both know how important secure and sustainable income is if you want to preserve that journalism for today and tomorrow. We both know that the great political and cultural battles that free media faces everywhere can only be won if we first stabilize and future-proof its economics.
Over the past 30 years, Ukraine has made major strides in its experiment with democracy. Despite worrying instances of government-backed corruption  undeniably, there is still more work to be done  Ukraine has made hard-fought progress on reform in the midst of war. Six presidents, two revolutions and many violent protests later, the people of Ukraine have sent a clear message that reflects the most fundamental of American values: They will fight for basic rights, and against authoritarian repression.

A prosperous Ukraine buttressed by American support makes an authoritarian Russia unviable in the long term. Ukraines success would upend Russias irredentist aspirations for empire and highlight the Kremlins failures, just as West Germanys achievements once did in comparison to the totalitarian East German state during the Cold War. It may even convince the Russian people  who share a culture, history and religion with Ukrainians  to eventually demand their own framework for democratic transition.

To be sure, this doesnt happen overnight. A generational investment is necessary to realize such a vision. Nevertheless, the outlines of the stark contrast between a prosperous democratic Ukraine and a repressive and economically stagnant Russia are already evident. This is, in large part, why Mr. Putin needs Ukraine to be a failed state.

U.S. support for Ukraine could also help drive a wedge between China and Russia. Preventing Mr. Putin from invading Ukraine demonstrates the strength of the Wests commitment to opposing autocracy and makes Russia a less potent partner to China in their mutual efforts to undermine the Western rules-based international order.

To that end, the United States should consider an out-of-cycle, division-level military deployment to Eastern Europe to reassure allies and bolster the defenses of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. This kind of deployment would signal that Russias aggression will result in the sort of NATO security posture Russia most wishes to avoid.

And the United States cannot adequately support Ukraine without significant European involvement. The Kremlin wishes to make NATO membership for Ukraine a central issue of any discussions. Thats a distraction right now because an assurance that Ukraine wont be a part of NATO is unlikely on its own to stop Russia from still trying to bring Ukraine to heel.

The more important issue to consider is that negotiations with Russia should be dealt with at the level of European security. These talks should devise off ramps that alleviate both European and Russian security concerns: for Russia, NATO encroachment and ballistic missile defense, and for NATO, Russias over-militarized western border.
Awash, as we are, in discussion of the Omicron variant of the coronavirus, I am, like everyone else, struck by the menacing uncertainty about its potential impact, including scattered economic worries and new speculation about (good grief!) a fourth vaccine dose. But as a linguist, I of course find the word itself serendipitous. AH-mih-kron, most of us say, or maybe OH-mih-kron, with many of us at least initially unaware of how its spelled and hearing only the sound of it.

Having spent so much of this year wringing our hands about the Delta variant, and because the word delta is relatively common, the advent of Omicron may be the first time many of us have taken time to notice that as we name Covid-19 variants, were running through the Greek alphabet, with some skips  there seems to be no shortage of new variants but there was no Nu variant. And even those who know that omicron is a Greek letter may never have unpacked the original meaning, which is small O, as in a micro O.

Contrast it with omega, the last letter of the Greek alphabet. At one time, at least, the two letters distinguished between the long and short O sounds. Omegas name means big O as in mega O, although the way we pronounce it, we dont hear the mega part as related to the prefix we use in words like megawatt or megabyte. In the same way, when we say Omicron, the last thing were thinking about is the prefix micro we use in microscope or microphone.

Over time, words pronunciations get battered around in millions of mouths and change. Words get shorter, they get longer, they smush up, their sounds change places. Meanwhile, their meanings extend to other things. Audition used to refer only to hearing. Then it came to refer to hearing someone try out for a play by reciting lines. After a while it referred to assessing applicants for a performance in general  now, you can audition to be a mime.
These liabilities will breed conflict. Any violence, since it would involve a pregnant victim, becomes child abuse. As we know from the work of National Advocates of Pregnant Women, any abortion-related prosecutions will overwhelmingly target the Black and brown people who already live under disproportionate state scrutiny.

Criminalizing abortion also implicates health care providers, who will struggle to balance ethical and legal obligations to their patients with new ones to the state. Despite their obligations to patients, they may feel compelled to report those they suspect of having abortions or taking risks with fetal well-being.

Enforcement neednt be common for fear of it to take root. In El Salvador, where abortion is banned, no doctor has been prosecuted for ending an ectopic pregnancy. Yet obstetricians routinely make the patient wait until the fallopian tube explodes and the embryo dies before intervening to save the mother.

Indeed, this is how our abortion laws will primarily work: by distorting the moral compasses of all those implicated, incentivizing them to join in the states wholesale abandonment of pregnant people.

The Post-Roe Politics of Abortion

David Brooks, a columnist for The New York Times.

Abortion is such a fraught issue, its hard to think about it strictly in political terms. But if we limit ourselves to political prognostication, then my suspicion is that the national Democratic Party would thrive in a post-Roe world. I do not say that because I believe there will be a surge of pro-choice voters to the polls. I say it because the central arena of conflict will have shifted. The crucial decisions would be made mostly on the state level, not on the national level or in the courts.

If abortion were even partly removed from national politics, then its possible that national politics would be transformed. There are just a lot of single-issue voters who back Republican presidential candidates because they are pro-life. I dont believe Ronald Reagan or Donald Trump would have been elected without single-issue pro-life voters. Some of those voters would stay Republican anyway, but some might drift over to the Democrats.

I also think our politics would be slightly depolarized. The punishing Supreme Court nomination battles  from Robert Bork to Clarence Thomas to Brett Kavanaugh  have really been about Roe to a significant degree. Perhaps if Roe were out of the picture these battles, and the culture war that feeds off them, would be less heated.
A much smaller survey conducted by Axios and Ipsos was off by only 4 percentage points, the Nature article says. That survey is based on an online panel with only about 1,000 responses per week, but it uses best practices for obtaining a representative cross-section.

By one measure the Delphi-Facebook survey produced results that are no better than a simple random sample of just 10 people, the authors of the Nature article write. Our central message, they conclude, is that data quality matters more than data quantity, and that compensating the former with the latter is a mathematically provable losing proposition.

A team of six scholars from Harvard University and the University of Oxford did the research. They are a mix of statisticians, political scientists and computer scientists. The lead authors are Valerie Bradley of Oxford and Shiro Kuriwaki, formerly of Harvard, now an incoming assistant professor at Yale. The senior team members are Seth Flaxman of Oxford and Meng of Harvard. The other two authors are Michael Isakov of Harvard and Dino Sejdinovic of Oxford.

Meng has been calling attention to the big data paradox for years. I wrote about his work earlier this year when I was working for Bloomberg Businessweek. The intuition is that if you solicit opinions about Taylor Swift while youre at one of her concerts, you wont be getting a good read on overall opinion. As I wrote:

In a perfectly random sample theres no correlation between someones opinion and their chance of being included in the data. If theres even a 0.5 percent correlation  i.e., a small amount of selection bias  the non-random sample of 2.3 million will be no better than the random sample of 400, Meng says. Thats a reduction in effective sample size of 99.98 percent. Thats not just theory: Statisticians estimate that there was a 0.5 percent correlation contaminating the 2016 presidential polls, presumably because supporters of Donald Trump were slightly less likely to express their preference to pollsters. Thats why so many pollsters were caught by surprise when Trump won. The 2020 polls suffered similar problems.

Both the Delphi-Facebook survey and the Census Bureaus Household Pulse Survey have been widely quoted in the news and cited in academic research. The Delphi Research Group, a research team at Carnegie Mellon University that collaborates with Facebook, has a web page with links to 15 publications, including ones in journals such as Science and Lancet Digital Health. (There are ways for scholars to make valid use of imperfect data, such as re-weighting it to better approximate the makeup of the population, but they need to tread carefully, the authors say.)

I reached out to the Delphi-Facebook and Census Bureau teams for their responses to the Nature article. A Census Bureau spokeswoman directed me to the bureaus description of the Household Pulse Survey, which says that it is designed to deploy quickly and efficiently but is experimental. The page adds, Census Bureau experimental data may not meet all of our quality standards.
Early in The Beatles: Get Back, Peter Jacksons nearly eight-hour documentary about the making of the album Let It Be, the band forms a tight circle in the corner of a movie soundstage. Inexplicably, Yoko Ono is there.

When Paul McCartney starts to play Ive Got a Feeling, Ono is there, stitching a furry object in her lap.

When the band starts into Dont Let Me Down, Ono is there, reading a newspaper.

When George Harrison walks off, briefly quitting the band, there is Ono, wailing inchoately into his microphone.

I was seeing intimate, long-lost footage of the worlds most famous band preparing for its final performance, Amanda Hess writes, and I couldnt stop watching Yoko Ono sitting around, doing nothing.
Whats in the Works

In Maplewood, N.J., officials found that residents were receptive to the idea of A.D.U.s when an ordinance was proposed last year. The first version allowed only seniors to create or live in an A.D.U., said Dean Dafis, the deputy mayor. But after social justice advocates objected, saying the opportunity should be open to all, the ordinance was amended.

We were surprised  we thought this was going to be controversial, Mr. Dafis said. And then we were sort of blindsided by the interest.

Connecticuts new law permits A.D.U.s in all single-family zones as of right  meaning no public hearing or special permit is required to build them. While many Connecticut towns already allowed accessory apartments, Desegregate Connecticut, the housing coalition that proposed the legislation, found that the restrictions varied widely and were often onerous. The new law removes some of the barriers, but also includes an opt-out provision: Municipalities may choose not to comply if their zoning commissions and municipal legislative bodies vote accordingly before January 2023.

The legislation proposed in New York would legalize A.D.U.s statewide. It calls for the creation of a lending program to help low- and moderate-income homeowners secure financing to add an A.D.U. or bring an existing unit up to code. The legislation is still being tweaked, to address concerns around the size of units, parking and other issues, said State Senator Peter Harckham, a lead sponsor.

In Princeton, Council members are already talking about revisiting the terms of their ordinance. Ms. Sacks said that the A.D.U. on Linden Lane designed by Ms. Rubina, while legal under the ordinance, is larger and more expensive than is ideal for what we would like to accomplish.

But R.B. Homes took a risk in being the first to try out a mama bear and baby bear scheme, Ms. Rubina argued, noting that builders could have chosen instead to put up another McMansion. If they had built a single house of more than 5,000 square feet, she pointed out, they could have easily sold it for upward of $1.5 million.
If youve seen one ammonite, you may think youve seen them all. Most of the 10,000 species of the extinct cephalopods sported tightly coiled shells with polite mouthfuls of tentacles.

Enter Nipponites mirabilis, a species of ammonite straight out of an M.C. Escher painting. In place of the classic, coiled-snake shell design, it substituted something far more ludicrous: a convoluted shell twisting into itself with no obvious beginning or end.

It looks like a chunk of rope that someone threw out a window, said Kathleen Ritterbush, a paleoecologist at the University of Utah.

The first time you look at it, its just this tangled mess, said Derek Moulton, a mathematician at the University of Oxford. And then you start to look closely and say, oh, actually there is a regularity there.
A completed locator form

Some destinations, including the United Kingdom and certain European Union countries, require travelers to complete a digital passenger locator form before entering the country (you must submit the U.K. form in the 48 hours before you arrive in the country), to help with contact tracing. In addition to your travel information, vaccination status and contact information, the form may ask for your address in the country, and, in the U.K, confirmation of scheduled coronavirus tests that you need to take after arrival. With its locator form, Croatia asks for proof of paid accommodation, and if youre traveling to Canada, you will need to download and submit information using the ArriveCan mobile app within 72 hours before your arrival.

Coronavirus test results

More countries now require proof of a negative test, often in addition to proof of vaccination. Depending on where you are going, some countries require P.C.R. tests, while others allow rapid antigen tests. The timing requirement of your test might ask for results between 24 or 72 hours before your arrival, or one to three days. Take Croatia again: The country requires a negative P.C.R. test taken within 72 hours or a rapid antigen test within 48; if you have neither, youll be required to test upon arrival at your own cost and quarantine until you receive negative results. Rules for unvaccinated children vary widely by country and age, too  when entering Denmark, fully vaccinated adults or children under 16 do not need proof of a negative test, while 16- and 17-year-olds must have proof of a negative test to enter. Again, have the results in both digital and physical form.

Masks

Mask mandates too vary by country and maybe localities, but you will most certainly need masks in airports, on your flight  and if you are going to most places in Europe and the U.K., for indoor activities like dining. And rather than hoping your cloth mask will have you covered, come prepared with surgical masks and N95s as well. For example, you need N95s,KN95s or FFP2 to ride public transport in Germany.

Proof of insurance

Not only is it a good idea to check your health-insurance policies if you get sick abroad, you should research whether proof of health or travel insurance is needed at your destination. While Egypt, Jordan and many Caribbean nations require proof of health insurance, travelers to Chile, in addition to proof of vaccination and a negative test, must also show proof of travel medical insurance that covers at least $30,000. For unvaccinated travelers, Costa Rica requires insurance that covers any Covid-related costs, including but not exclusive to illness.

With minors, proof of relationship

If you are traveling with children, particularly as a single parent or if your child will be traveling with other relatives, Erika Richter, director of communications of the American Society of Travel Advisors, strongly recommends having a child consent form and a proof of relationship, like a birth certificate or court document, in addition to the childs passport.
Take this example: When California was slammed with an atmospheric storm in late October, many of us skipped watering our lawns. After months of water savings of no more than 5 percent compared with last year, Californians water usage in October dropped to 13.2 percent below the rate in October 2020, according to new state data. While still short of Gov. Gavin Newsoms 15 percent target, its the closest weve come.

This jump in water savings we saw across the state can illustrate just how much water can be conserved when were not irrigating outdoors, even for just part of the month, said Charlotte Ely, who presented the savings data to the State Water Resources Control Board this week.

Half of Californias annual water usage is considered environmental water, meaning it flows through protected rivers or supports wetlands in wildland preserves, according to the Public Policy Institute of California. The other 50 percent is for human use  40 percent for agriculture and 10 percent for urban use, split between indoor (drinking water, showers) and outdoor (lawns, washing our cars).

But the relatively warm, dry weather in California tips the scales toward outdoor consumption. Plants quickly evaporate water, so keeping them green is more water-intensive than in other parts of the nation, said Jay Lund, co-director of the Center for Watershed Sciences at the University of California, Davis.

Our per capita water use rates are much, much, much higher than they are back east, where they have rainfall in the summertime, Lund told me.
The indictment described a sprawling scheme in which Mr. Irizarry filed false reports on investigations, prompting a ripple effect that caused his colleagues at the Drug Enforcement Administration to falsely document the details of wire transfers, unwittingly concealing the source of drug profits that he controlled.

Ms. Gomez-Irizarry was accused of running a shell company out of the couples home in Miramar, Fla., that had no employees and sold no goods but was used to take in and distribute the money her husband collected, the indictment said.

Former Special Agent Irizarry abused the trust of the American people when he repeatedly violated his oath as a federal law enforcement officer, Anne Milgram, the D.E.A. administrator, said in a statement on Thursday. Bringing him to justice reflects the principles of those who faithfully serve and uphold the values of D.E.A.

At his sentencing in federal court in Tampa, Mr. Irizarry wept and said that his biggest punishment was not being able to explain to his two young daughters why he would be gone for so long, The Associated Press reported. He said he had been proud when he became a federal agent two decades ago.

Unfortunately, there came a time when I made a decision that went against the person who I was, that damaged my wife and embarrassed my country, Mr. Irizarry said, according to The A.P. I shouldve known better and I didnt. I failed.

Mr. Irizarrys sentencing came after another former special agent with the D.E.A., Chad Allan Scott, was sentenced in August to more than 13 years in prison after he perjured himself and directed others to commit perjury to obtain a conviction against an accused drug dealer, prosecutors said. Mr. Scott also falsified forms so that he could take possession of a truck that a drug dealer bought for him, prosecutors said.

Mr. Irizarrys lawyer, Maria A. Dominguez, blamed the culture at the D.E.A. for encouraging such crimes.
PONTIAC, Mich.  It was a gut judgment, one made quickly, the prosecutor Karen D. McDonald said of her decision to charge Ethan Crumbleys parents with involuntary manslaughter in the shooting deaths of four students at Oxford High School in suburban Detroit.

I just instinctually knew there was just absolutely no way I was not going to prosecute them when I heard all the evidence, Ms. McDonald said in an interview.

Ms. McDonald pointed to what she said is the chilling lead-up to the Nov. 30 massacre: how James and Jennifer Crumbley bought their son a 9-millimeter handgun as an early Christmas present, then failed to tell school officials about it, even after they called the parents to a meeting because a teacher saw their sons drawing of a gun, a victim and the plea, The thoughts wont stop. Please help me.

Her decision came despite pushback from some members of her staff at the Oakland County Prosecutors Office, she said. They cited significant legal hurdles and suggested that she hold off, fearing a defeat in court.
Former Senator David Perdue of Georgia, a Republican who is running for governor with the backing of former President Donald J. Trump, filed a lawsuit on Friday seeking the inspection of absentee ballots in the 2020 election, reviving long-debunked claims in the latest sign that Mr. Trumps election grievances will be central to his candidacy.

The lawsuit draws on Mr. Trumps false claims of election fraud in Georgia and across the country, which culminated in the Capitol riot on Jan. 6. In the months since, many Republican elected officials have pivoted from rebuking election conspiracy theories to embracing them vocally in an effort to win the affections of Mr. Trump and his supporters.

Mr. Perdue, who was endorsed by Mr. Trump soon after announcing his candidacy on Monday, is running against Gov. Brian Kemp, a fellow Republican who is a staunch conservative but has come under withering attacks from the former president and his allies over Mr. Kemps unwillingness to help them overturn President Bidens victory in Georgia. Mr. Perdue told news outlets this week that he would not have certified the results if he had been governor instead of Mr. Kemp.

Republicans in states across the country have continued to cast doubt on the 2020 elections legitimacy by trying to carry out partisan reviews of the results, which they often misleadingly label audits to lend them a greater sense of authority. G.O.P. lawmakers in at least five states are pursuing reviews, and Republicans in states including Oklahoma, Tennessee and Florida have introduced bills to begin new ones next year.
WASHINGTON  The House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol issued six new subpoenas on Friday, digging deeper into the rallies that preceded the mob violence and organizers meetings with President Donald J. Trump.

Those issued subpoenas Friday included Robert Bobby Peede Jr., a former director of the White House advance team and Max Miller, a former Trump White House aide, who both met with Mr. Trump in his private dining room by the Oval Office on Jan. 4 to discuss the rally planned for two days later at the Ellipse, a park just south of the White House; and Brian Jack, Mr. Trumps former political affairs director who reached out to several members of Congress to ask them to speak at the Jan. 6 rally. (Mr. Jack is currently the political director for Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, the Republican leader.)

Representative Mo Brooks, Republican of Alabama, accepted Mr. Jacks invitation, the committee said. At the rally, Mr. Brooks wore body armor onstage as he told the crowd to start taking down names and kicking ass.

Some of the witnesses we subpoenaed today apparently worked to stage the rallies on Jan. 5 and 6, and some appeared to have had direct communication with the former president regarding the rally at the Ellipse directly preceding the attack on the U.S. Capitol, Representative Bennie Thompson, Democrat of Mississippi and the chairman of the committee, said in a statement. The select committee expects these witnesses to join the hundreds of individuals who have already cooperated with our investigation as we work to provide the American people with answers about what happened on Jan. 6 and ensure nothing like that day ever happens again.
WASHINGTON  ADW Capital Partners would appear to be the kind of hedge fund that Democrats on the Senate Finance Committee would like to tax more heavily: small but growing fast, with $330 million in assets, an incorporation in Delaware but doing business in Florida, and an offshore feeder corporation shielding some of its clients from U.S. taxation.

No wonder, then, that its owner, Adam Wyden, has come out as a vocal and vociferous critic of the tax increases being pushed by the committees chairman, Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon  his father.

The public dispute between son and father over the elder Mr. Wydens dogged efforts to tax the wealth of the superrich and close loopholes that have particularly benefited the richest financiers has accentuated a particular phenomenon that has helped to shield Americas billionaires. Each time Congress weighs taxing them, the merely rich rush to run interference for the fabulously rich.

Adam Wyden, 37, made it clear he does not want to push his familial dispute too far.

The issue is bigger than my father. Im not interested in discussing anything personal, he said in a brief phone call before declining to go further. He said he was not a Trumper and not an Ocasio  referring to Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, an icon of the Democratic left. He is a libertarian, he said, raised in Washington, D.C., who moved to Florida to get away from the food fight.
Only Justice Clarence Thomas dissented on that point.

But Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and the courts three liberal members  Justices Stephen G. Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan  wrote that the limited victory for the laws challengers may well prove to be inadequate.

In partial dissents, they wrote that they would have allowed more comprehensive challenges, authorizing suits against the states attorney general and court clerks. Justice Sotomayor wrote that the courts ruling could be evaded by a tweak to the Texas law, which generally bars state officials from enforcing it and instead deputizes private individuals to sue anyone who performs the procedure or aids and abets it.

Justice Sotomayor suggested that the court had given Texas lawmakers a road map to avoid review in federal court.

The dispute is over whether states may nullify federal constitutional rights by employing schemes like the one at hand, she wrote. The court indicates that they can, so long as they write their laws to more thoroughly disclaim all enforcement by state officials, including licensing officials.

Marc A. Hearron, a lawyer who argued on behalf of the abortion providers in the Supreme Court, said that even a successful suit against state licensing officials would give the providers only limited relief from the effects of the law.

A court could forbid licensing officials from taking disciplinary action against doctors, nurses and pharmacists who violated the law, Mr. Hearron said. But such an injunction, he said, would not bar lawsuits from private parties seeking monetary damages from clinics, doctors and others who provide abortions or help women obtain them.

Make no mistake, he said. While the court allowed our legal challenge to proceed against some state licensing officials, an injunction against those officials will not block Texas bounty-hunting scheme.
Mr. Sidess investigations begin on the Charley Project, an online database of missing persons cases. He reads through postings on the site and looks for cases in which a missing person was last seen in a car in an area with large bodies of water. He also looks up online memorials for more clues and potential contacts.

Mr. Sides said he was a mixture of all the emotions you can think of when he found Erins car.

I was sad, then overwhelmed, Mr. Sides said. At the end of the day I was joyful that I could bring closure to so many.

Michelle Jeanis, an assistant professor of criminal justice at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette whose research focuses on missing persons, said that grass-roots search efforts had always played an integral role in resolving such cases. This is in part because police agencies often lack the resources or are unwilling to dedicate resources to older cold cases, she added.

Generally, people are frustrated with the lack of progress police make, and so we get these organizations as a result of that, Dr. Jeanis said.

She said the risk is that armchair detectives get caught up in the case and sensationalize it, which could harm the investigation by, for instance, overwhelming the police with tips that they start to ignore. She also said that inexperienced divers exploring rivers and lakes to investigate a case could be putting themselves in danger.

Michael Alcazar, a retired detective with the New York Police Department, said he was concerned that amateur sleuths could tamper with important evidence, but in a cold case such as the Tennessee disappearances, it could be helpful to have outsiders assist.
On the question of slavery, for instance, the Texas law prohibits teachers from portraying slavery and racism as anything other than deviations from, betrayals of, or failures to live up to the authentic founding principles of the United States. This conflicts with the views of many scholars who note that from Americas founding, slavery was woven into the structure of the nation and the Constitution.

The law singles out one text as forbidden: The New York Timess 1619 Project. Now a book, the special magazine issue attempted to place Black Americans and the consequences of slavery at the center of Americas narrative. The project  for which Nikole Hannah-Jones, its creator, won a Pulitzer Prize  is hotly debated among historians and became an ideological pinata for conservative critics.

State Representative Steve Toth, who sponsored the bill against critical race theory, declined an interview. But several critics of the 1619 Project strongly opposed banning it.

Its just enormously problematic to rule out particular works, said Frederick Hess of the American Enterprise Institute, who has written favorably of the battles against critical race theory. I happen to think 1619 is a shoddy work, but so what? Let kids read critiques and wrestle with it.

Stanley Kurtz, a senior fellow with the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, crafted the model that led to the Texas statute. He declined an interview, but in The National Review, he opposed blocking teaching of the 1619 Project. We should not be barring the discussion or understanding of concepts, only the teaching of them as truths to be embraced, he wrote.

Into the Classroom

What are schools and teachers to make of these crosscurrents?

Southlake, a wealthy suburb near Dallas, offers a petri dish. Racist incidents led previous trustees to embrace racial diversity teachings. The killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis in 2020 gave birth to a more insistent movement of young alumni who demanded students address white privilege and have every teacher and school trustee examined for implicit bias.
NAIROBI, Kenya  The Tigrayan rebels fighting Ethiopias government carried out dozens of executions against civilians in two towns they controlled in August and September, Human Rights Watch said in a report on Friday, adding to the list of alleged violations committed by the forces since the civil war in Ethiopia began 14 months ago.

The fighters summarily executed 49 people in the village of Chenna and the town of Kobo in the northern Amhara region between Aug. 31 and Sept. 9, the rights group said.

In Chenna, over the span of five days, Tigrayan rebels killed 26 civilians on 15 separate occasions before leaving the village on Sept. 4, the report found. Those killed included farmers, grandparents and residents who had declined to slaughter livestock for the fighters, it said.

Residents also told Human Rights Watch they were forced to stay in their homes alongside the Tigrayan forces, even as the rebels shot at and received return fire from Ethiopian troops posted in nearby hills. The human rights group said such actions could amount to human shielding, which is considered a war crime under the Geneva Conventions.
Now, only 13 nations and the Vatican still recognize Taiwan, down from 21 in all at the beginning of 2017. Since then, Panama, the Dominican Republic, Burkina Faso, El Salvador, Kiribati, the Solomon Islands and now Nicaragua have switched their recognition to the Peoples Republic of China. China has sought to keep Taiwan isolated, even barring it from participating in international forums like the World Health Assembly, in hopes of forcing it to accept unification with the mainland as an inevitability.

While this will be disappointing for Taiwan, its important to keep it in perspective, said Natasha Kassam, a former Australian diplomat in Beijing who is now with the Lowy Institute, an independent research organization in Sydney. In recent years, Taiwan has been growing its ties with unofficial large partners like Japan and the United States, and those are much more important for Taiwans place in the world than its smaller diplomatic partners.

Within minutes of Nicaraguas announcement, Chinese state media reported that a delegation of Nicaraguan officials were in Tianjin, the port city where China has been holding diplomatic meetings during the coronavirus pandemic. Their presence indicated coordination between the two nations over the timing of the decision.

Nicaragua ended diplomatic relations once before, in 1985, after Mr. Ortega first came to power, but reversed that decision five years later, under President Violeta Chamorro.

The latest switch came a month after Mr. Ortega was re-elected for a fourth consecutive term as president after a vote that was widely criticized for consolidating his increasingly authoritarian rule.

The United States criticized the diplomatic switch.

Without the mandate that comes with a free and fair election, Ortegas actions cannot reflect the will of the Nicaraguan people, who continue to struggle for democracy and the ability to exercise their human rights and fundamental freedoms, the State Departments spokesman, Ned Price, said in a statement that reflected American criticism of the recent election.
The city of Vancouver and the province of British Columbia have asked the federal government for permission to decriminalize possession of up to 4.5 grams of illegal substances within the province. This week, Torontos board of health authorized Dr. Eileen de Villa, the citys chief medical officer, to also seek the same exemption from Health Canada.

Its a proposal that many police forces support.

Over the years, we realized that we cannot arrest and charge our way out of this crisis  the opioid crisis, Chief Gary Conn, of the Chatham-Kent police service and president of the Ontario Association of Chiefs of Police, told the CBC, adding: What weve got to do is examine the underlying issues surrounding drug addictions.

So far, the federal government said that it would carefully consider all decriminalization requests. This week, it also introduced a bill ending minimum mandatory sentences for some drug offenses.

But this week 21 organizations  a mix of public health, drug policy and drug users groups  published a joint plan that urged the government to go much further. It calls for full decriminalization of drugs for personal use, as well as the sharing and selling of drugs for subsistence, to support personal drug use costs, or to provide a safe supply. The groups are also asking that funds allocated to the police for enforcing drug laws be redirected to non-coercive, voluntary policies, programs, and services for drug users, including housing, social services, education and health services.
PARIS  On the face of it, President Emmanuel Macron, a showman, and Chancellor Olaf Scholz, a study in reserve, would not be natural companions. But the world has changed, and for France and Germany the imperative of building what they call a sovereign Europe has become overwhelming.

So Mr. Scholz, who took over from Angela Merkel on Wednesday, chose France as his first foreign destination, not only because that tends to be what newly installed German chancellors do, but also because, as he said standing beside Mr. Macron in Paris on Friday, We want to reinforce Europe, work together for European sovereignty.

The two men, who first met in Hamburg, Germany, in 2014, held a working lunch at the presidential palace that reflected the essential need to meet quickly, as Mr. Scholz put it afterward at a 20-minute news conference. Our first exchanges demonstrated a solid convergence of views, Mr. Macron said.

Their tone was serious but convivial, with Mr. Macron referring repeatedly to dear Olaf and using the less formal tu, rather than vous, when addressing the chancellor. At the end of the news conference they fist-bumped  a far cry from the image of President Francois Mitterrand and Chancellor Helmut Kohl holding hands on the battlefield of Verdun in 1984, but a Covid-era indication of friendship.
The powerful actively promote the idea of war, he said. Aggressive marketing of war affects people and they start thinking that war is acceptable.

At the same time, he said, the ideas of liberal democracy are under threat.

The world has fallen out of love with democracy, Mr. Muratov lamented in his speech. The world has become disappointed with the elites in power. The world has begun to turn to dictatorship.

Ms. Ressa has long been an outspoken critic of the authoritarian leader in her homeland, Mr. Duterte, whose government has filed seven criminal charges against her, including for cyber libel and tax evasion. She has been an outspoken critic of social networks for spreading disinformation and hatred.

Our greatest need today is to transform that hate and violence, the toxic sludge thats coursing through our information ecosystem, prioritized by American internet companies that make more money by spreading that hate and triggering the worst in us, Ms. Ressa said in her speech.

Since it started in January 2012, Rappler has become one of the Philippines most popular and influential media platforms, mixing reporting with calls for social activism. Rapplers reporters, most of whom are in their 20s, have investigated Mr. Dutertes extrajudicial campaign to kill people suspected of dealing or using drugs, documented the spread of government disinformation on Facebook, and reported on malfeasance among his top advisers.

Mr. Muratov has dedicated the prize to his slain colleagues at Novaya Gazeta. Six of the papers journalists or contributors died under his watch, including Anna Politkovskaya, whose 2006 murder in the elevator of her apartment block has never been solved. When the award was announced, he also said that opposition politician Aleksei A. Navalny, who was poisoned last year and has been in jail since January, deserved to have received it.

Mr. Muratov is the third Russian to win the Nobel Peace Prize, after the Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and the physicist and dissident Andrei D. Sakharov, who won in 1975 for his human rights advocacy.
KYIV, Ukraine  It is a sign of the heightened tensions between Russia and Ukraine that for a few hours this week,  meandering, half-century-old Ukrainian naval ship seemed as if it could spark a worrisome military escalation.

The ship, according to Ukrainian officials, was unarmed and involved in a simple training exercise on Thursday in a small but strategic waterway bordered by Ukraine to the west and Russia to the east. It seemed to be primarily an example of the Ukrainian navys decrepitude, though its possible that Ukraine, too, could have been trying to push the boundaries and provoke Russia.

Either way, the Russian security services and state news media quickly seized on the encounter, portraying it as an imminent threat.

Russias domestic spy service, the F.S.B., announced late in the evening that it had intercepted the ship for failing to obey orders. That set off the Kremlins propagandists, who played up the move as a prelude to war. RT, a Russian government television station, began livestreaming coverage on YouTube under the headline UKRAINIAN PROVOCATION, with a military analyst suggesting the ship should be blown out of the water.
In an attempt to keep artificially-enhanced camels out of official beauty pageants, Saudi authorities recently disqualified 43 camels over the use of Botox and other cosmetic procedures.

Saudi Arabias King Abdulaziz Camel Festival is one of the several annual events that features a camel beauty pageant. As funny as that might seem to us westerners, its no laughing matter in the Middle East. In fact, these sort of competitions is such a big deal that some breeders reportedly resort to Botox injections and other cosmetic touchups to make their animals prettier. The Saudi Press Agency recently reported that over 40 camels were disqualified from this years King Abdulaziz Camel Festival pageant because of Botox injections and other cosmetic procedures.

Photo: Saj Shafique/Unsplash

Apparently, Botox is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the illegal use of cosmetic intervention for camel beauty pageants. Using collagen lip fillers, artificially increasing the animals muscles with hormones, and inflating body parts with rubber bands have all been documented in the past. Some breeders go as far as pulling the camels upper lip to stretch it and achieve the coveted droopy look.

They pull it by hand like this every day to make it longer, Pageant guide Ali Obaid told The National.

The use of cosmetics by camel breeders has become such a big problem in recent years that competition organizers have had to adapt and adopt specialized and advanced technology to detect any unauthorized tampering with the animals.

To ensure that the natural beauty of the camel is preserved, the animals are checked both physically and clinically before the pageant, using X-ray machines and sonar devices. Offenders risk fines as high as 100,000 riyals ($27,000) per camel for procedures like Botox or hormone injections, while braiding or dying the camel is punished with a fine of 30,000 riyals ($8,000).

Some might think that the prestige of winning a camel beauty pageant isnt worth the risk, but its not all about bragging rights. Camel breeding is big business in the Middle East, and good placing at beauty pageants can have seriously beneficial implications for the owners. And then there is the prize money. This year breeders at the King Abdulaziz Camel Festival are competing for about $66 million.
A 45-year-old woman who stole her estranged daughters identity managed to fool everyone that she was 22 for two years, enrolling in university and dating boyfriends who were convinced she was in her early 20s.

Laura A. Oglesby risks spending five years behind bars without parole, as part of a plead deal, after admitting to stealing her 22-year-old daughters identity and comitting Social Security fraud. The 45-year-old woman had lived with her daughter in Jonesboro, Arkansas, before moving in Missouri, after they lost contact. In 2016, after reportedly fraudulent Social Security card in her daughters name, she used that card to obtain a drivers license. A year later, the woman also enrolled at Southwest Baptist University in Missouri, as her daughter, and even applied for student loans and grants in her name. The charade went on for two years, and no one once questioned Oglesbys age, apparently convinced that she was 22.

PHOTO: MOUNTAIN VIEW POLICE DEPARTMENT

Everyone believed it, Chief Jamie Perkins of the Mountain View Police Department said. She even had boyfriends that believed that she was that age: 22 years old.

Even Avery and Wendy Parker, the Mountain View couple who took her in from a nearby womens shelter, were convinced that she was 22, if not younger.

She was a giddy, silly girl. She was 22 but she acted 17, Avery Parker said. I try real hard to see the 45-year-old Laura, so I can hate her. But all I can see is a 22-year-old Lauren, who I just wanted to help.

Photo: Facebook

Authorities described the case as one of the most complex and surprising cases of identity theft they had worked on, noting that the 45-year-old woman had completely assumed becoming a younger person in her early twenties, from her clothes, make up and personality.

Laura A. Oglesby, now 48-years-old, was caught in 2018, when authorities in Arkansas contacted Mountain View Police Department searching for a Ms Oglesby who had stolen her own daughters identity in 2017 to commit financial fraud and embezzle over $25,000.

After getting the name of Oglesbys daughter, police learned that she was working at the city library, which they thought was kind of odd. When they stopped her in traffic, the 45-year-old tried to deny that she was Laura Oglesby, but once they showed her proof of her real identity, she had no choice but to admit it.

Photo: Facebook

She was just running because she was in a domestic violence relationship, and shed been running for years, Chief Perkins said Oglesby told the police. We dont know her life story outside of what she told us, but we know what happened here. She had lived that life for a couple of years and basically just ruined her daughters credit.

Oglesby is now facing prison time, and has also been ordered to pay $17,521 to the university as well as restitution to her daughter Lauren for identity theft.
2021 is shaping up as a terrible year for journalists but a great year for autocrats as they tossed reporters into gulags at a record-shattering clip. And it ain't over yet.

The Committee to Protect Journalists reports that 293 reporters were tossed in jail for their work, which is up from 280 in 2020. Twenty four were killed because of their coverage. Another 18 died under mysterious circumstances.

China topped the list as the No. 1 jailer of reporters for the third year in a row. Myanmar, Egypt, Vietnam and Belarus round out the Top 5.

The Committee credits the rise of autocrats, who flout international norms to keep themselves in power, as a key reason for the crackdown of independent reporting. (The Atlantic has a terrific December cover story about Autocracy Inc. and its network of political, financial, propaganda and military support).

Turkey, which was once the worst jailer of journalists, fell to No. 6 because president Recep Tayyip Erdogan effectively eradicated the mainstream media following a failed 2016 coup attempt.

Saudi Arabia, following the murder and dismemberment of Jamal Khashoggi in 2018, silenced many journalists. The Kingdom also has stepped up the surveillance of reporters.

Autocrats also benefited as the global preoccupation with COVID-19 took the worlds focus off the crackdown of journalists in repressive nations.

The Committee noted that Hong Kong made its list due to the implementation of Chinas draconian 2020 National Security Law that was put into place following the pro-democracy demonstrations.

Eight Hong Kong media figures including Jimmy Lai, founder of Apple Daily and Next Digital were thrown into prison.

The Committee for Freedom in Hong Kong ran a full-page ad in the New York Times on Dec. 10 calling for the release of Lai.

It praised Lai for giving voice to the powerless; talking about ideas with leaders, media and students; advocating for the rule of law, free markets and democracy; and for risking his life to protect the human rights of millions of others in a great global city.

The 74-year-old Lai has been sentenced to 13 months in prison for attending a 2020 vigil to mark the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre in Beijing.

On the homefront, the US Press Freedom Tracker counted 56 reporters arrested here. Eighty-six percent of them were put into custody during the wave of social justice protests.

Joel Simon, executive director of the CPJ, is unsettled about the number of arrests during demonstrations because protests are a critical form of political expression in the US and around the world.

How can the US preach the need for freedom of speech to other countries while its police forces are rounding up journalists covering their rights of expression?

Employees say their top demand of CEOs is pay attention to the health concerns of staffers as companies emerge from COVID-19.

That's a key finding of a survey conducted by FTI Consultings strategic communications unit showing that 34 percent of employees want CEOs to put the physical and mental health of staffers on top of their priority list as back-to-the-office plans get rolled out in the coming year.

That stands in sharp contrast to the opinion of investors. Only 14 percent of the institutional investors surveyed by FTI believe the health status of employees should be a CEO priority.

Investors rank financial performance (22 percent) as their No. 1 priority for CEOs. Only 13 percent of employees put financials on top.

Investors are more bullish than employees on CEOs engaging in politics by a 65 percent to 38 percent margin.

Younger staffers are more inclined to support an activist chief executive.

Fifty-two percent of Millennials (aged 25-40) and 51 percent of Gen Zers (18-24) want CEOs to take a stand on political issues.

That compares to a third of Gen Xers (41-56) and a mere 16 percent of Baby Boomers.
10/12/2021 - Portugals economy is recovering from the COVID-19 crisis, thanks to swift and effective policy action and a successful vaccine rollout. As the recovery progresses, it is important to pursue investment and structural reforms that will raise living standards, strengthen public finances and put growth on a strong, sustainable and resilient path, according to a new OECD report.





The latest OECD Economic Survey of Portugal notes that with an ageing and shrinking working age population, future growth will hinge on productivity gains. Portugal should use its EU-funded Recovery and Resilience Plan to accelerate the digital and green transitions, focusing on projects that will have the strongest economic and social impact.





Portugal is recovering fast from a profound economic shock, and we see this recovery continuing, OECD Secretary-General Mathias Cormann said. It will be crucial to optimise the strength and the quality of the recovery, through higher productivity and by accelerating the digital and green transitions. The Recovery and Resilience Plan offers a way to help achieve this and it should be implemented swiftly and effectively.





The pandemic dealt a severe blow to the Portuguese economy. After an 8.4% drop in 2020, Portugals GDP is projected to rebound by 4.8% in 2021 and 5.8% in 2022, helped by the fact that close to 90% of the population is now fully vaccinated, the highest rate in the OECD.





Nevertheless, economic activity in key sectors like tourism, transport and hospitality is still below pre-crisis levels. Targeted support to households and firms should be continued, and adapted to the evolution of the pandemic, the Survey says. Support to young and low-skilled jobseekers should be strengthened to help them adapt to a changing labour market. More should be done to help viable firms to raise capital.





Portugal should also reduce macroeconomic imbalances to put the recovery on a stronger footing. The public debt-to-GDP ratio has risen to among the highest in Europe, and as the recovery takes hold, it will be important to put in place a clear and credible medium-term fiscal adjustment plan. Reforms are needed to prepare for a shrinking working-age population, as well as to improve public sector administration. The long-term sustainability of the pension system could be further improved. The pandemic has also increased financial risks in the corporate sector, and Portuguese banks are shouldering a high-level of non-performing loans. The Survey recommends strengthening incentives for banks to reduce the level of high-risk assets.





Going forward, accelerating the digital transition will be vital to adapt Portugals economy to a post-pandemic world and boost productivity growth, which has lagged behind the OECD average for most of the past two decades, according to the Survey. This will require helping firms to adopt new technologies, equipping the population with digital skills and improving access to high-quality broadband services.





See a Survey Overview with key findings and charts (this link can be used in media articles).

For further information, journalists are invited to contact Catherine Bremer in the OECD Media Office (+33 1 45 24 80 97).

Working with over 100 countries, the OECD is a global policy forum that promotes policies to preserve individual liberty and improve the economic and social well-being of people around the world

Related Documents
A town outside the town ''ludicrous'' a joke, these were some of the comments by councllors at this weeks Tullamore Municipal District meeting, describing a proposal for a massive residential scheme on the outskirts of Tullamore.

Steinfort Investments Fund are seeking to construct 349 dwellings ranging in height from one to four storeys consisting of: 153 apartments, 5 detached houses, 143 terraced houses, and 48 semi-detached houses.

In addition, the proposal includes a three storey neighbourhood building of 1274 sq metres which would provide three local shops at ground level with the first and second floor proposed as a business hub.

A three-storey neighbourhood building of 1733sq metres would allow for four shops and a medical centre at ground level. The medical centre extends to the first floor and the second floor would be a gym.

A creche with a capacity for 100 children is also proposed as a three storey independent building. 695 car parking spaces are planned.

Vehicular access will be solely from the Clonminch Road via a new traffic controlled junction. A cycle lane will be installed along Clonminch Road.

Steinfort Investments Fund has been able to apply directly to An Bord Pleanala bypassing the council using the strategic housing development legislation for large developments.

This is the second attempt by the company to get permission, an earlier application in 2020 was refused by An Bord Pleanala.

Councillors were scathing in their assessment of both the developers and the development.

They said it goes against the current county development plan and that particular area of Clonminch is zoned strategic reserve.

Cathaoirleach of Tullamore Municipal District, Councillor Tony McCormack said: "I cant see how An Bord Pleanala would be able to give this permission considering all of the obstacles that are there with regard to our development plan, but also the submissions that were made in the past by the local residents and they will be made again. They dont want it out there. They feel its too big. It's like building a small town on the edge of the town, and its something that we don't want.

Cllr Sean OBrien: "I think this is a joke of an application, I think the developers are just chancing their arm, they decided to lodge this application on October 21, knowing our new county development plan came into force on October 22.They're really turning up their nose at us. They want to get it through, then sell it off. They don't give a damn what will happen on the site when they have their money.

"There is no logic to it, its not consistent and its not good development. It takes no account of the infrastructure particularly sewerage and water, they want to redesign Clonminch Road, which is absolutely crazy, who do they they they area? Are they a council within the council? I think they really have a neck. I hope that word goes to An Bord Pleanala that we totally reject this application. It's a pure joke."

Councillor Ken Smollen: "I cant understand why we are even discussing this. The new county development plan has been adopted, this area is zoned as strategic reserve, its not zoned for housing. I would have concerns that if this goes ahead, cuckoo funds will come in and buy up a lot of these houses to rent them out for major profit. This is a profiteering developer. This new town will be of no benefit to the economy of the Tullamore.

Councillor Neil Feighery: "It looks like a metropolis. Its hard to imagine that development on the location proposed, at the edge of a very mature residential estate in Clonminch Wood. Its stark to see it. It doesnt stand up to any sort of common sense. To see apartments in a suburban location; its just not suitable. Crucially it doesn't take account of the new county development plan that we spent months and months working on. I certainly think its not appropriate in scale or design its layout is quite crude looking and I wouldn't like to see it getting approval by An Bord Pleanala.

Councillor Frank Moran: "We spent months and months in preparation to adopt the new county development plan. We have very few reserved functions as councillors and this is like a kick in the face for us again. I see Irish Water made a comment with regards to the application. Irish Water would want to start doing what they are supposed to be doing and upgrading the network in different respective areas. Typical Irish Water. This is zoned strategic reserve, it's not zoned new residential. I think its ludicrous."

Councillor Declan Harvey: "As Cathaoirleach of Offaly County Council, we spent months trying to get the county development plan through and we fought long and hard to get the core retail extended. If this goes through, are we opening up the floodgates for everyone else to have a go at it? We are always talking about people shopping outside of town, now we are going to build a town outside our town. 349 houses. Its madness.

Councillor Danny Owens: "I want to say that I totally reject this and I support all my colleagues who have spoken already. What is being planned is no longer consistent with the current development plan in terms of zoning. The applicant will say they applied under the old plans. I hope that An Bord Pleanala will take cognisance that the current zoning has changed compared with what it was in the old plan. Scale, access to the site, distance from Tullamore centre, there are a whole lot of reasons why this is a bad plan, I want to support everyone who has already said that we reject that firmly."
Published this month, Merchants, Medics, and the Military Commerce and Architecture provides an exciting insight on the social history of Ireland from 1875 to 1925, as seen through the lives of influential Tullamore families.

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Published by Offaly Historical and Archaeological Societys Esker Press and authored by Maurice Egan this volume is available in hardback including never seen before exhibits, many of them in colour. It is a must for those with a local, national, and international interest in social history and social justice. This is an excellent read and retails at 24.99.

Between 1875 and 1925, a tumultuous period in Irish history, many provincial families made significant sacrifices in the areas of social justice, infrastructure development and community upliftment. Who were they? What ever became of them? What did they manage to achieve? Where did these family members move to? How did they help change the face of Irish social history?

Researching this fifty-year period and uncovering how certain Tullamore families helped change the course of local and in some cases international history, Maurice Egan has discovered the significant roles families played in social reform. The fascinating stories that have emerged shine a bright light on the enduring impact they made..

Growing up in 1960s Tullamore, one was quite aware of those who lived down the town and indeed lasting friendships were made with many of those families with time spent in some of their magnificent homes. All the houses from Cormac Street down to OConnor Square had residents, many living there for generations. Picture that to todays precarious situation and the decay beset some of these former residential town homes, many of them architectural gems.

These family contributions to the upliftment of local communities, the provision of piped potable water and gas, the arrival of electricity and first building of social housing, was pioneering. Their deliberations left an enduring positive impact wherever they conducted interactions throughout the Midlands of Ireland.

Published in 2020, Maurice Egans first book titled: The Egans of Moate and Tullamore: Business and Politics, co-authored with family member David Egan, provided many wonderful and interesting researched stories of how one influential family helped change the course of Irish history. But of course, they were not alone as many mercantile families, many medical families, many families whose members joined different military regiments also made a significant impact during these difficult, and fast changing years in Irish history.

About the author

Maurice Egan was born in Tullamore and attended the Christian Brothers School.

He is a retired beverage industry executive and is chairman of P & H Egan (Tullamore) Limited, the brand owner of Egans Irish Whiskey. He resides in Johannesburg and has a keen interest in social history from 1850 to 1925.
The Supreme Court is the final court of appeal in the United Kingdom for all civil cases, as well as for criminal cases originating in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. It also hears cases of the greatest public or constitutional importance affecting the whole population.
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She was the archetypal Sydney socialite, then a trip to Africa left Stephenie Rodriguez fighting for her life  and, eventually, losing her feet.
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"Senator Bob showed me that even well into your 90s, it is never too late to make a new friend," Savannah Guthrie said.


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Former United States President Donald Trump's bid to prevent the House Select Committee from accessing crucial White House records was rejected by an Appeals Court. The decision was made in relation to the importance of understanding the events of the Jan. 6 Capitol Hill riot, said the judges.
Despite the White House's denial that Joe Biden was pressuring Kyiv to make concessions to Russia, the US President spoke with Ukraine's leader, Volodymyr Zelensky.
The Ukrainian military said that it did not have sufficient resources to defend itself against a potential full-scale attack by Russian forces wiithout support from the United States. The situation comes after President Joe Biden's talk with Russian President Vladimir Putin to try deescalating the tension.
US and Japan military forces conduct a live-fire exercise with fighter planes and tanks as part of the largest joint military drills.
If 2020 was the year of activism, then 2021 surely followed in its footsteps.



While many of 2020's protests took place..

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As the world grapples with the challenge posed by the Omicron variant, scientists and residents in South Africa are coming to grips with the real-world impact of this worrying strain.
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Advent International has held a final close for Advent Global Technology Fund II (Advent Tech II) on its hard-cap of $4bn, surpassing its target of $3bn by 33%.

The Boston-headquartered private equity firm said in a press release that the new fund is double the size of its predecessor, Advent Tech, which has invested in 20 software, data, and cybersecurity companies since its launch in 2019.

"Following the same strategy as the prior fund, Advent Tech II will back innovative companies led by visionary management teams, focusing on high-growth acceleration and complex transformation opportunities," the release said.

Advent Tech II will invest mainly in North America and Europe and selectively in other global markets where Advent has an established presence. A dedicated team of 27 tech specialists based in Palo Alto, New York, Boston, and London will deploy the new fund, it said.

Bryan Taylor, Managing Partner and head of Advent's technology team said: "The strong support from existing and new investors in our second fund is a validation of our strategy and approach. With our global reach, deep cross-sector network, and vast ecosystem of company-building resources, we believe we're ideally positioned to help businesses innovate and grow at scale."

Advent has already closed or signed four investments for Advent Tech II. It co-led an investor group that agreed to acquire McAfee Corp., a global leader in online protection, for......................

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Exactly as the name says there is no insurance agency or copayer in the middle of the doctors and the patients. Like your Netflix subscription, you can subscribe to the healthcare plan once a month to avail unlimited visits or online consultations. December 8, 2021 - Tomball, TX: QLMD Direct Primary Care (DPC), with a mission to provide quality and affordable healthcare, has been treating all insured or 
Christmas period is when families come together to celebrate oneness, love and bond more. Christians also use this period to celebrate the birth of Christ. To make it a fun filled event, Christmas period is usually very colorful mostly with red and strains of bright lights. We decorate the trees with beautiful ornaments and also share gifts with loved ones As much as the gifts is a show of love but 
The US government's online "democracy summit" will be held on December 9th. In December 7th, six experts from France, Malaysia and Singapore including Pierre, Compte-rendu held an academic communication about the "democracy summit" on line. The scholars thought that billions of people in China, Russia, Egypt, Turkey and other countries are defined by the US government as living in "undemocratic" areas. The summit held in the name of "democracy" is 
Because she knows she receives everything from God, Mary is free from herself, completely oriented toward God and others, Pope Francis said at the Angelus on Wednesday morning, 8 December, Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception. The following is a translation of his reflection which he shared in Italian with the faithful gathered in Saint Peters Square.

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

Buongiorno!

The Gospel for todays Liturgy, the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary, brings us into the house of Nazareth, where she receives the angels annunciation (cf. Lk 1:26-38). Within the domestic walls, a person reveals him or herself better than elsewhere. And it is precisely within that domestic intimacy that the Gospel gives us a detail that reveals the beauty of Marys heart.

The angel calls her full of grace. If she is full of grace, it means Our Lady is void of evil: she is without sin, Immaculate. Now, at the angels greeting, Mary  the text says  is greatly troubled (Lk 1:29). She is not only surprised, but troubled. To receive grand greetings, honours and compliments sometimes brings the risk of provoking pride and presumption. Let us recall that Jesus is not gentle with those who go in search of greetings in the squares, adulation, visibility (cf. Lk 20:46). Mary, instead, does not exalt herself, but is troubled; rather than feeling pleased, she feels amazement. The angels greeting seemed too grand for her. Why? Because she feels little within, and this littleness, this humility attracts Gods eyes.

Within the walls of the house of Nazareth, we thus see a marvellous trait. How is Marys heart? Having received the highest of compliments, she is troubled because she hears addressed to her what she does not attribute to herself. In fact, Mary does not credit prerogatives to herself, she does not hold claim to anything, she accounts nothing to her own merit. She is not self-satisfied, she does not exalt herself. For in her humility, she knows she receives everything from God. She is therefore, free from herself, completely oriented toward God and others. Mary Immaculate does not look on herself. This is true humility: not looking on oneself, but looking toward God and others.

Let us remember that this perfection of Mary, the [one who is] full of grace, is declared by the angel within the walls of her house  not in Nazareths main square, but there, in hiding, in the greatest humility. In that little house of Nazareth beats the greatest heart that any creature has ever had. Dear brothers and sisters, this is extraordinary news for us! Because it tells us that, in order to work marvellous deeds, the Lord has no need of grand means and our lofty abilities, but rather of our humility, of our eyes open to him, and also open to others. With this annunciation, within the poor walls of a small house, God changed history. Today too, he wants to do great things with us in our daily lives: that is, in our families, at work, in everyday environments. Gods grace loves to operate there more than in great historical events. But, I ask myself, do we believe this? Or do we think that holiness is a utopia, something for insiders, a pious illusion incompatible with ordinary life?

Let us ask Our Lady for a grace: that she may free us from the misleading idea that the Gospel is one thing and life is another; that she kindle our enthusiasm for the ideal of holiness which is not a matter of holy cards and images, but is about living what happens each day, humbly and joyfully, like Our Lady, free from ourselves, with our eyes fixed on God and the neighbour we meet. Let us not lose heart: The Lord has given everyone what it takes to weave holiness within our everyday life! And when we are assailed by the doubt that we cannot succeed, or the sadness of not being adequate, let us allow ourselves to be looked upon by the merciful eyes of Our Lady, for no one who has asked for her help has ever been abandoned!

After the Angelus, the Holy Father continued:

Dear brothers and sisters, I returned from my journey to Cyprus and Greece two days ago. I thank the Lord for this pilgrimage; I thank all of you for the prayers that accompanied me, and the populations of those two dear countries, along with their civil and religious leaders, for the affection and kindness with which they welcomed me. To all of you, I say again: thank you!

Cyprus is a pearl in the Mediterranean, a pearl of rare beauty, which, however, bears the wound of barbed wire, the suffering due to a wall that divides her. In Cyprus I felt at home; I found brothers and sisters in everyone. I carry in my heart every encounter, in particular the Mass in the stadium of Nicosia. I was moved by the dear Orthodox Brother Chrysostomos, when he spoke to me about the Mother Church: as Christians we follow different paths, but we are children of Jesus Church, who is a Mother, and accompanies and protects us and keeps us going, all as brothers and sisters. My hope for Cyprus is that it may always be a workshop of fraternity, where encounter prevails over confrontation, where we welcome our brother and sister, especially when they are poor, discarded, migrants. I repeat that, faced with history, before the faces of those who emigrate, we cannot remain silent, we cannot turn away.

In Cyprus, as in Lesvos, I was able to look into the eyes of this suffering: please, let us look into the eyes of the discarded people we meet, let us be provoked by the faces of children, the children of desperate migrants. Let us allow ourselves to be moved by their suffering in order to react to our indifference; let us look at their faces, to awaken us from the slumber of habit!

Then I think with gratitude of Greece. There too I received a fraternal welcome. In Athens I felt immersed in the greatness of history, in the memory of Europe: humanism, democracy, wisdom, faith. There too I experienced the mystique of wholeness: in the meeting with my brother Bishops and the Catholic community, in the festive Mass celebrated on the Lords Day, and then with the young people who had come from so many places, some from very far away, to live and share the joy of the Gospel. And again, I experienced the gift of embracing the dear Orthodox Archbishop Ieronymos: first he welcomed me into his home and the next day he came to visit me. I cherish this fraternity in my heart. I entrust to the Holy Mother of God the many seeds of encounter and hope that the Lord scattered on this pilgrimage. I ask you to continue to pray so that they may sprout in patience and blossom in trust.

Today marks the end of the Year dedicated to Saint Joseph, Patron of the Universal Church. And the day after tomorrow, 10 December, the Lauretan Jubilee will come to a close in Loreto. May the grace of these events continue to work in our lives and in the lives of our communities. May the Virgin Mary and Saint Joseph guide us on the path to holiness!

And I greet all of you, people of Rome and pilgrims! A special wish for Italian Catholic Action: may it be a gymnasium of synodality in dioceses and parishes. I greet the children of the Milleunavoce Choir, the faithful of Zaragoza and the young people from Valdemoro, Diocese of Getafe, Spain  the Spanish are making themselves heard, all right!  As well as the delegation from the Municipality of Rocca di Papa, with the torch that will light the Christmas Star on the towns fortress. I greet the group of Mexicans from the State of Puebla.

And I wish you all a happy feast day, especially you children of the Immacolata. It is your feast! Please do not forget to pray for me, and I will for you. Enjoy your lunch and Arrivederci.
On Friday morning, 3 December, after leaving the Apostolic Nunciature in Nicosia, the Holy Father travelled by car to the Orthodox Archbishopric of Cyprus for a courtesy visit to His Beatitude Chrysostomos II. Upon arrival, the Pope was received at the main entrance of the Archbishopric by a representative of the Holy Synod. At the entrance, His Beatitude Chrysostomos II welcomed the Holy Father. After the presentation of the respective Delegations and a meeting in private, the Holy Father wrote and signed a message in the Book of Honour. The following is a translation of the message.

Pilgrim in Cyprus, pearl of history and faith, I invoke from God the humility and courage to walk together towards full unity and to give to the world, a fraternal message of consolation and a living witness of hope, following the example of the Apostles,

Your Beatitude, thank you for speaking of the Mother Church in the midst of the people. This is the path that anoints us as pastors. Let us go forth together along this path. And thank you so much for speaking about dialogue. We must always move forward on the path of dialogue, a path that is arduous, patient and sure, a path of courage. Parrhesia and patience (in Greek).
A winner is a dreamer who never gives up. Almost a decade since his death on 5 December 2013, Nelson Mandela continues to inspire millions of people throughout the world in their non-violent commitment against every form of racism. Still today, the Nobel Peace Prize laureate is a reference point well beyond the borders of South Africa. After all, as demonstrated by the return of the phenomenons of xenophobia and racism in many parts of the planet, the fight for equality continues to be as urgent as ever. Among those who walk in the footsteps of the South African leader, is his daughter, Makaziwe Mandela, who is involved with various charitable works and is the founder and president of House of Mandela, a company that through clothing  especially for young people  carries on the anti-racist message of her father. In this interview with Vatican Media, Makaziwe reflects on Nelson Mandelas personality, the topical nature of his social commitment and the importance of education to overcome the prejudices that still poison relationships between individuals and between peoples.

Almost ten years after his death, your father is still an extraordinarily popular figure worldwide. Why do you think his legacy is still so relevant today?

My father was a man of courage and vision. He really believed in the power of unity and that if people all over the world came together, they would strike a blow to any form of injustice. He was truly authentic to what he believed in and there were core values that formed his life: humility, perseverance, honesty and forgiveness. My father grew up in an environment where all people were allowed to voice their views freely without any fear of retribution, where leaders were the shepherds and stewards of their people, their rights and their freedoms. He took the responsibility of being a leader very seriously and actively encouraged different forms of thought. One of the many things he taught, which is relevant in our world is that we have a choice in how we want to live our lives, good and bad things happen to all of us, but we are also imbued with the responsibility to fight against all forms of injustice, prejudice, cruelty and violence in our society. He did not just fight for the freedom of black people but he also fought for the freedom of all South Africans.

Unfortunately, every day we are confronted with racism and discrimination in many areas of the world. What, in your opinion, would Nelson Mandela do today in the face of this evil that seems to be so rooted in human history?

During the Rivonia trial, my father said, that he fought against white domination, but he also fought against black domination. He believed that no race was superior to the other, that effectively there were no races genetically speaking, that there was only one race, the human race. My father only judged people by their character and their values. He would be disappointed by what is happening today, the rise of the ultra-right in politics and how racism, cultural wars and arrogance, ethnicity, fear, tribalism, gender violence, religious intolerance are being weaponized and used to destabilize the entire democratic world. He would remind us all that our hard-won freedoms did not come easily, that people sacrificed their lives so that we could all have access to equal rights. My father believed that all of these things were man-made and since that was the case, we could equally get rid of them. My fathers ancestor King Ngubengcuka is said to have formed the Thembu nation by bringing different groups together; people who sought refuge, people who were displaced, and who sought a home. The Thembu nation is essentially comprised of people from different walks of life who believed in one vision. So, this nation of diversity is strongly imbued in our family and passed from one generation to the other, embracing different people and different ideas. My father believed that maintaining the status quo was an enemy to progress and we should grow and evolve as people. He would see what is happening today as a disappointing regression taking us back to the dark ages.

Your father used to say that education is the most powerful weapon you can use to change the world. What is your opinion on this issue, based also on your personal experience?

My father was not just talking about mainstream formal education. He believed that people could educate themselves through books, that they could travel far and wide with books, could learn about other cultures, could really understand how other people lived. That the purpose of going to school was not just to learn what is in a book, but to learn how to negotiate and get along with others, the exposure to other races, other cultures  education could free you from ignorance. He believed education was the basis of human relations  you learn something about me and I learn something about you and find that we have things in common. He believed that once these commonalities were established, the issue of race should not matter. Covid-19 has really brought to the fore that racial superiority doesnt really have any place in our society because Covid has been the great equalizer  it pays no attention to whether you are rich or poor, black or white, educated or not. That we really need to wake up to the fact that besides skin colour, there is very little that separates us and that we are all endowed with inalienable rights to exist in this world, to have the same privileges as our next-door neighbours, black or white.

When your father died, Pope Francis expressed the hope that his example may inspire generations of South Africans to put justice and the common good at the forefront of their political aspirations. To what extent are new African generations  not only those in South Africa  still inspired by Nelson Mandela?

A lot of people had previously believed that the young generation of millennials here in South Africa and all over the world were lost, but the Black Lives Matter movement and other social justice movements have proven that they are very much present and in tune with what is going on around them and are prepared to fight against the rise of racism, inequality, poverty and gender-based violence. These are young people from all races and all walks of life who are holding politicians to account and reminding them that they are accountable to the people first and not to their own vanity; which really encourages me and gives me hope that all is not lost in this world. If you look at Africa, young people are not waiting for handouts from their governments, they are coming up with innovative solutions around water and sanitation, food security, education, energy and electricity as well as ways to combat climate change. These young people are really conscientious about improving not just their own lives, but the lives of their communities and countrymen. My father always believed that charity begins at home, with people close to you or in your own community if you will.

Pope Francis, just like Nelson Mandela, has always emphasized the value of non-violence as a force for change. How can this value be promoted today, especially among the younger generation?

We need to emphasize that our journey in this world is to heal the wounds that we are surrounded by and carry. My father realized that if he did not leave anger and bitterness when he left prison  he would still be in jail as a free man. We have to learn to love those who are ethnically, culturally, different from us and work to bring together people from across racial, political and economic lines. We need to build bridges, especially those that unite us in the battle against disease, poverty and hunger. We have all of the solutions right in front of us, but for some reason or the other, those in power refuse to implement them, which I find confounding ad frustrating at times. Today we really need to remember the indivisibility of human freedom and that our own freedom cannot be complete without the freedom of others.

Personally, what is the greatest, most important teaching that your father taught you and that has been most meaningful in your life?

That nobody is born hating another because of the colour of their skin, culture or religious belief  we are taught to hate and if we are taught to hate, we can also be taught to love because love comes naturally to the human spirit. For me personally, I make a conscious effort every day to treat people with respect, dignity and compassion. My father always treated everyone the same, whether that was the queen or the street sweeper and he really believed that all human beings were equal. I apply that same value to everything that I do in my life.

Alessandro Gisotti
On Thursday afternoon, 2 December, Francis arrived in Cyprus for the first leg of his eastern Mediterranean pastoral visit that is also scheduled to take him to Athens and Lesvos. In this edition you will find all the discourses given in Cyprus.

Pages 2-7
On Friday afternoon, 3 December, Pope Francis concluded his Apostolic Visit to Cyprus by leading an ecumenical celebration with migrants at Holy Cross Parish Church, where he was greeted by Latin Patriarch Pierbattista Pizzaballa. The following is the English text of the Holy Fathers address, which he delivered after listening to testimonials from a volunteer of Caritas Cyprus and four young migrants.

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

I

t is a great joy to be here with you and to conclude my visit to Cyprus with this prayer meeting. I thank Patriarchs Pizzaballa and Bechara Rai, and Ms. Elisabeth of Caritas. I greet with affection and gratitude the representatives of the different Christian confessions present in Cyprus.

I want to say, from my heart, a big thanks to you, the young migrants who offered your testimonies. I received copies of them in advance, about a month ago. They made a great impression on me then, and again hearing them today. More than just moved, I had the powerful sensation that comes from encountering the beauty of truth. Jesus was moved in that way when he cried out: I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and the intelligent and have revealed them to infants (Mt 11:25). I too give praise to the heavenly Father because this is happening today, here and throughout the world. God is revealing his Kingdom, his Kingdom of love, justice and peace, to the little ones.

After listening to you, we better understand all the prophetic power of the word of God, who, through the apostle Paul, tells us: You are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and also members of the household of God (Eph 2:19). Those words were addressed to the Christians of Ephesus, not far from here, centuries ago, yet those words remain as timely as ever, as if they were written for us today: You are no longer strangers, but fellow citizens. This is the prophecy of the Church: a community that, for all its human limitations, incarnates Gods dream. For God too dreams, like you, Mariamie, from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, who described yourself as full of dreams. Like yourself, God dreams of a world of peace, in which all his children live as brothers and sisters. God wants this, God dreams of this. We are the ones who dont want it.

Your presence, migrant brothers and sisters, is very significant for this celebration. Your testimonies are like a mirror held up to us, to our Christian communities. When you, Thamara, who come from Sri Lanka, told us that people often ask, Who are you?: the brutal experience of migration calls our very identity into question. Is this what I am? I dont know Where are my roots? Who am I? When you ask these questions, you remind us that we too are sometimes asked the same question: Who are you? And sadly, all too often, what is really being asked is: Whose side are you on?, What group do you belong to? Yet as you said, we are not numbers, names on a list; we are brothers and sisters, friends, believers, neighbours to one another. Yet when group or political interests, including those of nations, start to push, many of us end up being set aside and without wanting it, become slaves. For interest always enslaves, it always creates slaves. Love, which is expansive and the opposite of hatred, makes us free.

When you, Maccolins, who come from Cameroon, tell us that in the course of your life you have been wounded by hate, you spoke about this, about these wounds inflicted by interests: and you reminded us that hate has also poisoned relationships between us Christians. And this as you said, changes us; it leaves a deep and long-lasting mark. It is a poison. Yes, you made us feel this by the passion with which you spoke. Hate is a poison hard to remove, a twisted mind-set that, instead of letting us see ourselves as brothers and sisters, makes us see one another as enemies, as rivals, or even as objects to be sold or exploited.

When you, Rozh, who come from Iraq, say that you are someone on a journey, you remind us that we ourselves are a community on a journey; we are journeying from conflict to communion. On this road, which is long and has its ups and downs, we should not be afraid of our differences, but afraid of the close-mindedness and prejudice that can prevent us from truly encountering one another and journeying together. Close-mindedness and prejudice re-erect the wall of division, the hostility between us, that Christ tore down (cf. Eph 2:14). Our journey towards full unity can only advance to the extent that, together, we keep our eyes fixed on Jesus, on him who is our peace (ibid.), the cornerstone (v. 20). It is he, the Lord Jesus, whom we encounter in the faces of our marginalized and discarded brothers and sisters. In the face of the migrant who is despised, rejected, put in a cage, exploited But at the same time  as you said  the face of the migrant journeying to a goal, to a hope, to greater human companionship

In all these ways, God speaks to us through your dreams. The danger is that many times we do not let our dreams in, we would rather sleep and not dream. It is easy to look the other way. And in this world we have grown accustomed to a culture of indifference, a culture of looking the other way and thus sleeping peacefully. Yet that way it is impossible to dream. God speaks through your dreams. God does not speak through people who are dreamless, because they have everything or because their hearts are hardened. God calls us not to be content with a divided world, content with divided Christian communities, but to journey through history drawn by his own dream: the dream of a humanity freed of walls of division, freed of hostility, where there are no longer strangers, but only fellow citizens, as we heard Paul say in the passage I just mentioned. Fellow citizens who are diverse, yet proud of that diversity and individuality, which are Gods gifts. Diverse, proud to be diverse, but always reconciled, always brothers and sisters.

May this island, marked by a painful division  from here I can see that wall  become by Gods grace a workshop of fraternity. I thank all those who are working to make that happen. We must realize that this island is generous, but it cannot do everything, since the number of people arriving is greater than their possibilities of insertion, integrating, accompanying and promoting. Its geographical closeness may make it easier but it is not easy. We must understand the limits to which the islands leaders are bound. But on this island, and I have seen this in the leaders I have met, there is a commitment to become, by Gods grace, a workshop of freedom. And it will, if two things can happen. First, an effective recognition of the dignity of every human person (cf. Fratelli Tutti, 8). Our dignity is not up for sale; it cannot be rented out; it must not be squandered. Hold your head high and say: I am a child of God; I have my dignity. The effective recognition of this dignity is the ethical foundation, a universal foundation, which is also at the core of Christian social doctrine. Second, a trusting openness to God the Father of all; this is the leaven that we, as believers, are called to offer (cf. ibid., 272).

If these two things can happen, the dream can translate into a daily journey, made up of concrete steps from conflict to communion, from hate to love, from escape to encounter. A patient journey, which day by day leads us to the land God has prepared for us. The land where, when people ask Who are you?, you can readily respond, Look, I am your brother, your sister. Dont you recognize me? And then, go your way in peace.

As I listen to you and see your faces, I am reminded of another thing: your suffering. You arrived here, but how many of your brothers and sisters are still making the journey? How many desperate people have set out in difficult and precarious conditions, but did not arrive? We can think about this sea, which has become a great cemetery. Looking at you, I see the suffering caused by your journey; I see all those people who were kidnapped, sold, exploited and who are still on the journey, we know not where. We are speaking of slavery, of universal enslavement. We see what is happening, and the worst thing is that we are becoming used to it. Oh yes, today another boat capsized so many lives were lost. This becoming used to things is a grave illness, a very grave illness, and there is no antibiotic for it! We have to resist this vice of getting used to reading about these tragedies in the newspapers or hearing about them on other media.

Looking at you, I think too of all those people who had to return because they were turned away and ended up in concentration camps, real concentration camps, where the women have been sold, and men tortured and enslaved We are appalled when we read stories of the concentration camps of the last century, those of the Nazis or those of Stalin, and we say: How could this possibly have happened? Brothers and sisters, it is happening today, on nearby coasts! Places of enslavement. I have seen some filmed testimonies about this: places of torture and human trafficking. I say all this because it is my responsibility to help open peoples eyes to this reality. Forced migration is not a kind of tourism! And our sinfulness leads us to think: Those poor people, those poor people!, and with those words, poor people, we blot everything out. This is todays war: the suffering of our brothers and sisters, which we cannot pass over in silence. Brothers and sisters who left everything behind to get on a boat, in the dark of night, and then without knowing if they would ever arrive. And all those who were turned away and ended up in the concentration camps, true places of torture and enslavement.

Such is the story of this developed civilization that we call the West. And then  forgive me, but here I would like to say what is in my heart, at least so that we can pray for one another and do something  and then, there is the barbed wire. We see it here: it is part of a war of hatred dividing a country. Yet in other places, barbed wire is set up to prevent the entrance of refugees, those who come in search of freedom, food, assistance, fraternity, joy, those fleeing from hatred but then find themselves facing a form of hatred called barbed wire. May the Lord awaken the conscience of us all before these realities.

Excuse me if I have spoken of things as they really are, but we cannot remain silent and look the other way amid this culture of indifference.

May the Lord bless all of you! Thank you.
MANISTEE TWP.  Here are five key takeaways from the Manistee Township Board meeting that took place on Thursday evening.

1. M-55 BRIDGE UPDATE

Dennis Bjorkquist, Manistee Township supervisor, gave an update on the M-55 bridge project during the township update portion of the meeting.

I know everybodys anxious to see the bridge open. I was on the bridge the day before yesterday, talked with those people, they were working in the bitter cold, Bjorkquist said. Theyre doing the uprights on the guardrail  The assembly crew will be here the first of next week and the engineer suggested that that should go pretty rapidly.

Bjorkquist said the road stripes are painted and there is one more concrete pour to complete.

So, its getting close, but not yet, he said. They anticipate (reopening) before the end of the year. Thats the best he could do at this point.

Last month, Michigan Department of Transportation Northern Region communications representative James Lake said the reopening of the M-55 corridor bridge project will come down to the weather conditions.

This is because different parts of the bridgework are impacted by either temperature and/or precipitation changes and require various conditions.

The project near the U.S. 31/M-55 intersection in Manistee Township started in mid-December 2020 and involves a complete closure of the bridge, replacement of the bridge and detour around the construction work that often means motorists follow a detour around Manistee Lake depending on their destination.

The bridge that had been in place was nearly 90 years old.

2. CULVERS MOVES ALONG

Karen Clouse gave the zoning administrator report at the meeting and it featured an update on a proposed Culvers project.

I am happy to report after months of communication with Chris Hardy, an engineer working for Culvers  they have decided to push forward with the Culvers project after receiving positive feedback from the township, Clouse said. A special land use permit application and site plans have been received.

According to previous News Advocate reporting, Coldwell Banker professional Michael Cnudde said a purchase agreement for the property at 492 Parkdale Ave., just northeast of Meijer, was signed in July.

3. FIRE CHIEF RESIGNS

After about eight years, Manistee Townships fire chief has submitted his resignation letter.

At the township meeting Thursday evening, Manistee Township Fire Captain Sam Koscinski updated the board on happenings at the department and personnel changes.

Were pretty fortunate to have the personnel we have and the sacrifice they make to provide service to the residents and visitors of Manistee Township. On a sad note, Chief Chuck Barron and firefighter Ben Blakeslee Have resigned from the department. We are currently searching for a new chief. This position has a lot of accordance set by the state, Koscinski said.

Koscinski said there is currently one person interested in the position who meets all the states requirements for the position.

Former Chief Barron will assist in the transition once the new chief is selected, Koscinski said.

Bjorkquist commented on the years of work Barron has invested in the area through his role since August 2013.

He did note that theres no better trained, better equipped department in the county. We thank him very much. Hes not here, (but) I think we should send him a letter of appreciation from the township board for his years of leadership over there, Bjorkquist said after saying he had received Barron's letter.

4. FEMA GRANT APPLICATION

Thursday, the township board members voted unanimously to pass a resolution to approve a Federal Emergency Management Agency grant submission. The grant submission is for vehicle extrication equipment for the fire department.

Frank Post, Manistee Township Fire Department medical captain, told the board that the current extrication tools are hydraulic powered.

The problem we have with the current extrication tools is they are attached to a hydraulic line through pumps. The problem becomes, for us, is we can use one tool at a time, Post said. The battery-powered tools connect independently of each other so that each tool can be used independent of that. They all run on batteries.

The grant request would cover battery-powered extrication tools, tele crib strut jacks that stabilize vehicles during extrication and a cribbing kit that provides both extra stabilization and prying points for extrication.

Both the jacks and the cribbing kit are for the safety of the people trapped in a vehicle and the first responders at the scene. The cribbing kit would also make it so that only one firefighter or responder needs to set up the cribbing as opposed to three or four, Post explained.

The equipment is estimated to cost $65,513 and the township would be required to contribute 5% of the cost. Manistee Township clerk Dianne Taylor noted that the township share would come out of the fire departments existing maintenance fund and that fund currently has the money available.

5. ROUNDABOUT

Bjorkquist also noted that the roundabout construction north of Manistee is expected to begin in April.

A roundabout was proposed for the intersection of U.S. 31 and M-22 near the Little River Casino Resort in Manistee Township.

The project is being done as a partnership between the Michigan Department of Transportation and Little River Band of Ottawa Indians, which owns the casino.



A road safety review was made at the request of the tribal government to assess conditions at the intersection and to help recommend options for traffic safety improvements.

It was determined that a roundabout would reduce the potential for severe crashes, while improving traffic flow at the site, Gary Niemi, MDOT operations engineer, previously said.

Cost for the project is estimated at $1.8 million. Work on the roundabout is anticipated to require around two months to complete.
Editor's note: The Midland Daily News is providing this article for free to all readers as a public service. For more stories like this and others, sign up for our newsletters at www.ourmidland.com/newsletters.

Scott Schaffer remembers getting hooked after taking paramedic training about 25 years ago. He hopes others will have the same experience and will help to fill a growing need in the profession.

"Ive been doing this about 25 years now and I enjoy this roller-coaster ride every day," said Schaffer, Emergency Medical Services education coordinator at MyMichigan Health.

"Your office has wheels and every day throws out new challenges for you," Schaffer added. "(You deal with) medical emergencies, car crashes, a lady whos fallen and can't get up. It's a chance to help the people in your community. It's intrinsically rewarding."

For those interested in becoming an emergency medical technician (EMT) or paramedic, MyMichigan Emergency Medical Services will offer certification programs beginning in January. Classes will be held weeknights from 6 to 10 p.m. at the Midland EMS Station 8 at 4601 Wellness Drive in Midland.

The amount of training involved is just over a year, Schaffer said. And there's a sense of urgency when it comes to recruiting more EMTs and paramedics.

According to the Michigan Association of Ambulance Services, he said, Michigan is at least 1,000 paramedics short of the number needed to meet current demand.

Were ready and excited to get our training programs back on track. Employment of EMTs and paramedics is projected to grow 11% from 2020 to 2030, faster than the average for all occupations," Schaffer said.

It's a rewarding profession, he said.

"One of the things I really love about this job is my co-workers," Schaffer said. "Sometimes you spend more time with your co-workers than you actually do with your family. You get to work with other great professionals, like dispatchers, firefighters, and law enforcement."

Schaffer originally planned to become a nurse before learning how fulfilling it was to work as a paramedic.

"I was waiting to take some nursing classes, and I just fell in love with (being a paramedic). I couldn't imagine doing anything different," he said.

According to a news release, MyMichigan Emergency Medical Services EMT and paramedic certificate programs are designed to help students perform interventions with the basic and advanced equipment typically found on an ambulance. The EMS program prepares students for employment in EMT or paramedic positions.

In Basic EMT classes, held Tuesday, Thursday and every other Friday, students learn basic life-saving skills and health care knowledge needed to provide pre-hospital care. These skills include assessing the patient's condition, performing CPR, dealing with blood loss, administering bandages, managing respiratory problems, first response treatment for common injuries, and emergency childbirth.

The course also includes disaster and hazardous materials training. Basic EMT certification requires at least 154 hours of classroom and practical education.

The paramedic course, held Monday, Wednesday and every other Friday, builds on the training learned in Basic EMT. This requires an additional 1,200 to 1,600 hours of classroom and clinical training. Attendees will learn about pharmacology; cardiology; interpreting EKG rhythms; respiratory emergencies, including endotracheal intubation and emergency surgical airway procedures; trauma care, I.V. therapy, childbirth and hazardous materials training.

Those interested in registration or information, including course fees and requirements, should visit www.midlandgladwinmca.org or contact Schaffer by email at scott.schaffer@midmichigan.org or by phone at 989-633-1318.
The Sundance Film Festival is returning to the Utah mountains in January armed with documentaries about Bill Cosby, Princess Diana, Kanye West and Lucille Ball and the directorial debuts of Eva Longoria, Tig Notaro and Jesse Eisenberg.

Festival organizers unveiled the lineup for the 2022 edition on Thursday, which includes 82 feature-length films culled from over 3,700 submissions.

This years program reflects the unsettling and uncertain times weve been living in for the past year and a half, said Kim Yutani, Sundances director of programming.

As in years past, the festival boasts a robust documentary lineup, including We Need to Talk About Cosby, in which director W. Kamau Bell attempts to examine the art and artist question as it applies to the actor/comedian, who spent time in prison before his sexual assault conviction was overturned.

Festival director Tabitha Jackson says the Cosby doc is, A real cultural analysis of what happened.

Lucy and Desi, which marks Amy Poehlers documentary debut, and The Princess from director Ed Perkins are also in the lineup.

Directors Clarence Coodie Simmons and Chike Ozah also have jeen-yuhs: A Kanye Trilogy, chronicling 21 years of Kanye West with never-before-seen footage, and Kathryn Ferguson charts the career of Sinead OConnor in Nothing Compares.

The documentaries also go beyond the big names and biopics. Director Ramin Bahrani will debut his film 2nd Chance, about the bankrupt pizzeria owner who invented the modern bulletproof vest, and Rory Kennedy has Downfall: The Case Against Boeing, which looks at the two Boeing 737 MAX crashes and the aftermath. Others look at the last ship carrying enslaved Africans to the U.S. (Descendant), the U.S. maternal health crisis (Aftershock), TikTok (TikTok, Boom) and midwives in Myanmar (Midwives).

Lena Dunham goes behind the camera once more with Sharp Stick, about a 26-year-old who begins an affair with her older boss, Michel Hazanavicius will premiere his zombie comedy, Final Cut, and Riley Stearns will debut Dual, starring Karen Gillan as a woman who attempts to clone herself after a terminal diagnosis.

There are some notable debuts, like AM I OK? a film about female friends directed by Tig Notaro and Stephanie Allynne and starring Dakota Johnson and Sonoya Mizuno. Eva Longoria directs a documentary about the rivalry between boxers Oscar De La Hoya and Julio Cesar Chavez, and Jesse Eisenberg has When You Finish Saving the World, starring Julianne Moore and Finn Wolfhard as mother and son. Carol screenwriter Phyllis Nagy has also written and directed Call Jane, about abortions in the late 1960s. It stars Elizabeth Banks and Sigourney Weaver.

The U.S. dramatic competition slate, which has launched films like CODA, Passing and Minari, includes one of Michael Kenneth Williams final projects, 892, starring John Boyega as a desperate veteran who is on the brink of homelessness.

We saw a lot of films that have psychological thriller or horror elements throughout the program. We do have a dedicated midnight section, but we were able to find places for so many of these films that were just doing really interesting things, Yutani said. And in our U.S. Dramatic section, there are several films written by women exploring racial injustice and the status of women of color in Academia through this horror film lens.

After going largely virtual in 2021, organizers are planning to return to an in-person festival in Park City, Utah, with some satellite screenings at regional theaters across the U.S. during the second weekend and virtual options as well. Earlier this year, the festival announced that all attendees, from filmmakers to ticket buyers and volunteers, would be required to have received the COVID-19 vaccine.

Were excited to return to our home in Utah, but also to come together in new ways, Jackson said. Building on our experience last year, weve discovered new possibilities of convergence, and we embrace the fact that we are now an expanded community in which active participation matters, and audience presence  however it manifests  is essential to our mission.

In that spirit, the festival will kick off on Jan. 20 with the immersive live-cinema documentary 32 Sounds, which will debut online and in Park Citys Egyptian Theater. Other day one premieres include Longorias La Guerra Civil and The Princess.

This year, we look forward to celebrating this generations most innovative storytellers as they share their work across a wide range of genres and forms, said Robert Redford, the founder and president of the Sundance Institute. These artists have provided a light through the darkest of times, and we look forward to welcoming their unique visions out into the world and experiencing them together.

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Follow AP Film Writer Lindsey Bahr on Twitter: www.twitter.com/ldbahr

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This story corrects the title of the documentary jeen-yuhs: A Kanye Trilogy.

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The festival will run from Jan 20 through Jan 30. Ticket packages go on sale starting Dec. 17 and individual tickets will be available on Jan. 6.
KYIV, Ukraine (AP)  When Russia annexed Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula and threw its support behind separatists in the country's east more than seven years ago, Kyiv's underfunded and disorganized armed forces struggled to mount a credible response.

Now, amid fears that a Russian troop buildup near Ukraine's border could signal a possible attack, military experts say Moscow would face stronger resistance this time. But they emphasize that Ukraine would be well short of what it needs to counter Russia's overwhelming land, sea and air superiority.

Still, years of fighting the separatists have given Ukrainian veterans like Col. Viacheslav Vlasenko the battlefield experience for such a fight.

In case of Russian aggression. I will have no choice  every Ukrainian is ready to die with arms in hands, said the highly decorated 53-year-old Vlasenko. Ukraine will never become a part of Russia. If we have to prove it to the Kremlin that Ukraine has the right for freedom and independence, we are ready for it.

While Western military assistance has remained limited, Ukraine still received state-of-the-art foreign weaponry, including sophisticated U.S. anti-tank missiles and Turkish drones to provide a heavier punch than they had in years past.

Vlasenko, who spent 4 1/2 years battling the rebels in the east in a conflict that has killed more than 14,000 people, said the country now has thousands of highly motivated and battle-hardened troops.

We Ukrainians are defending our land, and there is no place for us to retreat, said Vlasenko, adding that he takes his 13-year-old son to target practice so that he knows who our enemy is and learns to defend himself and fight back.

Earlier this week, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy praised Ukraines soldiers on a visit to an area near the conflict zone to mark a military holiday.

Ukrainian servicemen are continuing to perform their most important mission  to protect the freedom and sovereignty of the state from the Russian aggressor, Zelenskyy said.

U.S. intelligence officials have determined that Russia has moved 70,000 troops near Ukraine's border and has made preparations for a possible invasion early next year. Moscow has denied any plans to attack Ukraine, rejecting Western concerns as part of a smear campaign.

On Tuesday, U.S. President Joe Biden warned Russian President Vladimir Putin in a video conference that Moscow would face economic consequences like youve never seen if it invades Ukraine, although he noted that Washington would not deploy its military forces there.

Putin reaffirmed his denial of planning to attack Ukraine but emphasized that NATOs possible expansion to Ukraine was a red line for Moscow.

If Russia attacks its neighbor, the 1 million-member Russian military would inevitably overwhelm Ukraine's armed forces, which number about 255,000. But in addition to a promised heavy economic blow from Western sanctions, Russia would also stand to suffer significant military losses that would dent Putin's image at home.

Ukrainian veterans and military analysts say the country won't surrender territory without a fight this time, unlike in 2014 in Crimea, where Russian troops in unmarked uniforms faced virtually no resistance in overtaking the Black Sea peninsula.

Ukraine will not become easy prey for the Russians. There will be a bloodbath, Vlasenko said. Putin will get hundreds and thousands of coffins floating from Ukraine to Russia.

Weeks after annexing Crimea, Russia began supporting the separatist uprising in Ukraine's eastern industrial heartland, known as the Donbas. Ukraine and the West have accused Russia of supplying the rebels with troops and weapons  accusations that Moscow has denied, saying that any Russians fighting there were volunteers.

A series of bruising military defeats forced Ukraine to sign a 2015 peace agreement brokered by France and Germany that envisaged broad autonomy for the separatist regions and a sweeping amnesty for the rebels. The deal that was seen by many in Ukraine as a betrayal of its national interests. While it has helped end large-scale fighting, frequent skirmishes have continued amid a political deadlock as Ukraine and Russia have traded accusations.

Mykola Sunhurovskyi, a top military analyst for the Kyiv-based Razumkov Center independent think-tank, said the Ukrainian military has made much progress in recent years, thanks to Western-equipment and training.

The army today is much stronger than it was in early 2014, and Russia will face serious resistance, he said.

The Western aid included Javelin anti-tank missiles and patrol boats supplied by the United States. The U.S. and other NATO forces have conducted joint drills with the Ukrainian military in exercises that have vexed Russia. Last month, Ukraine signed an agreement with the U.K. for building naval bases on the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov.

Still, Sunhurovskyi argued that the Western assistance is not enough.

The military aid given by the West is far from what Ukraine needs, Sunhurovskyi said, adding that its slow pace was also a key problem. The assistance is needed within two months, not two or three years. There are huge gaps in the Ukrainian military potential that need to be taken care of."

He pointed in particular to Ukraine's air defenses.

The air defense system isn't ready for repelling massive airstrikes by Russia, Sunhurovskyi said, adding that Ukraine also lacks advanced electronic warfare systems and has a shortage of artillery and missiles.

Morale is not a problem, he said.

From the point of view of combat spirit, Ukraine is ready for war, but there are issues with the technological level of the Ukrainian military, which is below what is needed to deter Russia from launching an attack, he said.

Zelenskyy said Ukraine's military "has come a difficult way to the creation of a highly capable and highly organized combat structure that is confident of its potential and capable of derailing any aggressive plans by the enemy. On Thursday, he spoke with Biden, who briefed him on the discussion with Putin.

The analysts also said Russia would have to be prepared for a nationwide resistance campaign from Ukrainian veterans after any invasion.

If it launches an aggression, Russia will face a large-scale guerrilla war in Ukraine, and the infrastructure for it has already been set, said Volodymyr Fesenko, head of the Kyiv-based Penta think tank. "Thousands of Ukrainian soldiers served in the east, and there is a local hero in every courtyard who fought the separatists and the Russians.

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Vladimir Isachenkov in Moscow contributed.
The We Hear You (WHY) Task Force of Midland County invites the community to view the results of the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Assessment completed earlier this year.

These results reflect the views of 2,182 Midland County residents on issues of diversity, equity, and inclusion in our community.

To view the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Report, visit the Midland County Dashboard website at https://midlandcountydashboard.org/report.html

The WHY Task Force convened following the killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis Police in May of 2020, which prompted City of Midland Mayor Maureen Donker, City Council Member Diane Brown Wilhelm, and Chief of Police Nicole Ford to issue a public statement condemning Floyds killing.

WHY's goal was to formulate a plan and consider actions to advance and work toward greater equity, inclusion, and justice in our own community. This initiative received the full support of both the Midland City Council and the Midland County Board of Commissioners.

To better understand the needs of the community, the task force worked with Saginaw Valley State University to develop a study identifying six key areas: demographics; housing; socioeconomics; healthcare; policing and criminal justice; and government structure/representation.

The survey contained 89 questions collecting data in these six areas from the community. The coalition received 2,182 responses, for a 62% completion rate.

The WHY Community Survey was developed and digitally distributed to Midland County residents, 18 years or older, during February and March 2021, with funding support from the Midland Area Community Foundation, a member of the WHY Task Force.

"It's a priority of the Midland Area Community Foundation to support our community's vision of becoming a place where everyone thrives," said Sharon Mortensen of the Midland Area Community Foundation. "This study will lay the groundwork for our local leaders to take steps to ensure greater equity and inclusion."

WHY shared the survey results with the community on Nov. 18 at the Hach Student Center of Northwood University. The data-driven presentation outlines the DEI assessment, findings, and actions in all six key areas, with a look forward to the next steps. Midland Community Television (MCTV) recorded the event, which can be viewed at https://youtu.be/VdIuMWrgQK8

"One of the things that we're going to do after tonight will be to have community discussions to make sure we understood the data," said Wilhelm during the Nov. 18 event. "We said, 'We hear you.' We want to make sure we not only hear what's being said but also understand what's being said."

Highlights from report

During the Nov. 18 event, researchers said they urge caution in drawing conclusions from the survey because the respondent size was not representative of the local community.

Wilhelm asked people in the audience and the community to have an open mind with the survey. Minority populations in Midland County were overrepresented, with 6.7% of respondents being Black, despite only making up just over 1% of the population.

One question asked whether respondents believe "Midland is a place where I am respected, supported, valued and can enjoy my fullest without barriers. In the responses, a majority of non-Hispanic white, Middle Eastern or North African people were more likely to strongly agree or agree with that statement.

However, Black and Hispanic residents were more evenly split on that statement, with Native Americans, multiracial, and Asian residents leaning on agreement with that statement. When asked if everyone in the city could live without those barriers, the total responses were more evenly split.

One slide mapped housing values, with many groups of Black, Hispanic, and Native American residents residing in the southern part of the city. On average, housing values are lower here, indicating high rates of renters and more likely to have a lower median household income.

When looking at homeowner data, it suggests that some racial minorities recovered from the Great Recession and own homes at the same rate or higher, which included non-Hispanic white, Asian, Native American and Hispanic residents owning homes at the same rate or higher in 2018 compared to 2010. However, Black residents of Midland County had not recovered from the crisis, with homeowner rates falling from 62.9% in 2010, to 26.2% in 2018.

Poverty was also discussed at the event, with the researchers using ALICE (asset limited, income constrained, and employed) data to determine the percentages. The Asian and white populations in the county averaged around 10% and 5% respectively as of 2018. However, Hispanic, Black and Native American residents range from 20% to 45% under poverty in 2018, with the latter two increasing in poverty rates from 2010.

When looking at median household incomes by race in Midland County, non-Hispanic white and Asian residents saw increases in their household incomes from 2010 to 2018. However, Hispanic and Black residents saw decreases in their median household income during that time.

When asked if the city of Midland has offered enough economic opportunities to reach their full earning potential, non-Hispanic white and Native American residents were the most likely to strongly agree or agree. Hispanic, Black and multiracial residents were more likely to disagree with this statement.

When it came to policing and crime, of the 301 violent crimes committed in 2019, non-Hispanic white people were underrepresented in violent crimes and Black residents were almost six times more represented in this data, as well as traffic stops.

Overall, racial minorities in Midland County were more likely to say that police are prejudiced or biased, with almost half of Black respondents saying they agree with this statement.
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Tripoli, Libya (PANA) - The co-chairs of the Berlin Process Working Group on International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights - The Netherlands, Switzerland and the United Nations Mission in Libya (UNSMIL) - have called on the Libyan authorities on International Human Rights Day to ensure that all Libyans can participate meaningfully in building the country's future
Photo: (Photo : Gerhard H Wrodnigg, CC BY-SA 2.5 , via Wikimedia Commons)

Texas mom Trista Hamsmith, 39, has been advocating for safer button batteries and warning parents to be aware of this risk when buying toys for their kids this Christmas season. For the second year, the grieving mother will be spending Christmas without the laughter and embrace of her daughter, who died at 17-months-old after she accidentally swallowed a tiny button battery.

In an interview with Today, Hamsmith said that button batteries ingestion is "so much more common than people realize." The mother said that her daughter's story has to be told because this incident is largely preventable.

Read Also: Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern Pacifies Her Toddler Who Interrupted Her Live Address to New Zealand

Losing Reese

In October 2020, Reese, Hamsmiths' daughter, manifested symptoms like lethargy, wheezing, and congestion, so they saw her pediatrician, who believed she suffered from croup, an infection in her upper airway. Aside from wheezing and congestion, other symptoms of battery ingestion also include vomiting, low-grade fever, persistent drooling, gagging, rashes due to nickel allergy, and blood in the stool.

While Reese received her medications, the mother later noticed a missing button battery from one of their remote controls and realized that her toddler might have swallowed it. A button battery, which has an electric current, could easily be lodged between the esophagus and burn the tissues. An X-ray confirmed Hamsmith's fears, and Reese was immediately taken into surgery.

Unfortunately, Reese experienced more health issues as the doctors discovered that the battery burned a hole in her trachea and esophagus, allowing air, food, and liquids to go inside the body "where it didn't need to be." The baby's condition deteriorated following a couple more surgeries to repair her fistula. She never recovered and died in December 2020.

Safety Legislation to Protect Other Families

In the U.K., a two-year-old girl also lost her life in June 2021 after swallowing button batteries. Like Reese, Harper-Lee Fanthorpe had a button battery burning through her esophagus and into a major heart artery. During the surgery, Harper-Lee suffered cardiac arrhythmia and died on the table.

Meanwhile, since losing Reese, Hamsmith founded a non-profit, Reese's Purpose, to raise awareness of the dangers of button batteries. The mother has also been advocating for safety legislation for its manufacture and use.

A Reese's Law is also under deliberation at the House and Senate floors (H.R. 5313 and S.3278). If approved, the Law will require manufacturers to have more secure battery compartments and clear warning labels about ingestion in many consumer products. Hamsmith is also working harder to educate parents and medical professions about the signs of accidental button battery ingestion. Records show that 3,500 people a year experience this harrowing accident, which Hamsmith believes has been underreported.

During her testimony at the Senate, Hamsmith said that she would not be the last parent to lose a child in this kind of accident unless the laws are changed. Aside from addressing the issues at the manufacturer level, Hamsmith is also calling for better laws for online retailers who sell toys that do not ascribe to the U.S. regulations.

Meanwhile, parents also need to be aware that there is a National Button Battery Ingestion Hotline at (800) 498-8666 in case of emergencies.

Related Article: New Jersey Mom Sounds Off on Identity Theft After Her 3-Year-Old Gets a Jury Duty Letter
Photo: (Photo : Emily Elconin/Getty Images)

A firefighter from Phoenix, Arizona, has devised lightweight, bulletproof vests meant for children whose lives could be at risk in light of the rampant school shooting incidents across the U.S.

Fire Captain Kevin Goodman shared on ABC News that he created bulletproof vests for kids because of his fears for his four children. With over 300 school shootings in the last two decades, Goodman said that he's agonizing over the thought of not seeing his kids alive one day.

Goodman established Escape Armour, which markets the easy-to-use vests for smaller body builts. He specifically designed the protective gear with solid plates and without zippers or buckles, so it's compact yet durable. It's meant to be stored inside a school bag or kept in the children's desk in school.

Read Also: Gun Violence: Missouri 2nd Grader Brings Gun to School, South Carolina Teen Arrested for School Shooting Threats

Making a Difference

Goodman said that while schools conduct drills and other emergency exercises, he felt the need to "prepare for other things." He believes that his idea will positively affect a tragic incident like a school shooting.

"School shootings are happening, and they are occurring more often than we think," the father said. "I just wanted to give people something that could actually make a difference."

The captain noted the Texas school shooting in October 2021 after an 18-year-old perpetrator open-fired at Timberview High School during a fight with other kids. Reports cited that the teenager was fighting back against the bullies who allegedly robbed him twice. There were no deaths in this incident, but four people required hospital treatment.

A 15-year-old also open-fired at the Oxford High School in Michigan in late November, killing four people. Police have charged the perpetrator for terrorism and murder, while his parents have also been charged for involuntary manslaughter.

According to The Washington Post, protective gear and bulletproof products for school kids have increased sales since 2016. The news outlet also reported that the school security industry has evolved into a billion-dollar industry with hundreds of products sold for crisis response training, preventing active shooters, and protecting students and school workers.

Michigan School Shooting Latest

Meanwhile, Oxford High School officials have been slapped with a lawsuit from the family of one of the student victims. Parents Jeffrey Franz and Brandi Franz are seeking damages for their children's physical and emotional trauma, Riley and Bella Franz.

Bella, 14, was shot in the neck and is recovering from her wounds. Her parents said that the school did not do enough to prevent the school shooter and protect the kids. They want the school to pay $100 million as compensation for each of their children's agony.

This is the first known lawsuit filed tied to the Michigan school shooting. Legal experts believe that it will not be easy to sue a school district, but the Franz family's attorney said something needs to be done to stop the school shootings.

Related Article: Fathers of School Shooting Victims Blast Rep. Thomas Massie for 'Nasty' Christmas Family Photo
Photo: (Photo : free-stockphotos/Pixabay)

Mom Laura Oglesby, 48, is set for a five-year prison term after she pled guilty to stealing her daughter's identity, Lauren Ashleigh Hays, so she could enroll in college and date younger men.

In those two years of impersonating her daughter, Oglesby also committed Social Security fraud by applying as Hays to secure student loans for $25,000. She also used the fake identity to obtain a driver's license.

According to the Department of Justice, aside from the prison time without parole, Oglesby will also need to pay the university that granted the financial aid. She has also been ordered to pay restitution to her daughter, who became a victim of "aggravated identity theft."

Read Also: Meharry Medical College in Nashville Gives Students $10,000 Each for Thanksgiving

Pretending to Be 22 Years Old

Reports cited that Oglesby and her daughter both lived in Arkansas before the mother left for Missouri in 2016. There, Oglesby became known to the community as a 22-year-old who worked at the city library and dated young men.

According to Mountain View Police Department Chief Jamie Perkins, the mother made everyone believe that she was a young woman settling and adjusting into her adult life. Detective Stetson Schwien said that Oglesby made efforts to change her clothes, appearance, and personality.

A year after she moved to Missouri, Oglesby enrolled at the Southwest Baptist University and took out student loans and grants. In total, the mother received $9,400 for the student loans, $5,920 for the Pell Grants, and $337 from the university's bookstore. While the school cooperated with the police investigations, it was unclear whether the mom attended her classes or simply enrolled for the student loans.

On the other hand, witnesses Avery and Wendy Parker told the court that they accepted Oglesby at their women's shelter since she claimed that she was in an abusive relationship and wanted to start fresh in Missouri. The Parkers treated Oglesby like a daughter and described her as a giddy girl who had a bubbly personality of a teenager.

Red Flags Popped Up

But then the red flags started popping up soon after that, especially after the Parkers mentioned to Oglesby that they have relatives near her Arkansas town. Meanwhile, investigators from Arkansas were closing in on Oglesby's track following reports that someone has been using Hays' identity in Missouri.

In 2018, Oglesby was arrested and charged for her crimes. She initially denied her crimes to the police but broke down and confessed when the investigators showed proof of her fraudulent activities.

While she was shocked and angry, Wendy said that all she could see was a 22-year-old girl and not a woman in her 40s. Wendy said that the only message she wanted to impart to Oglesby was that of all the people she has fooled, it's her daughter who is hurting the most.

Meanwhile, Hays has not yet spoken up about her mother's scam or how their relationship fell apart. According to the police, Hays personal credit record has also been significantly damaged because of her mother's crime.

Related Article: Father Owes $550,000 in Student Loans So His 5 Kids Could Finish College
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Forty- seven graduands made up of 26 females and 21males on Thursday graduated as the second batch of Medical students of Family Health Medical school after passing through all the courses and examinations.



They will later be posted to various medical facilities throughout the country.



Speaking during the graduation ceremony, Naa Dr Alhassan Andani, Board Chairman of the Family Health Medical school Endowment fund appealed to the government to provide 30 per cent tuition fees of students in private Medical institutions



Naa Andani also appealed to traditional authorities to partner government and the training institutions by pooling resources together to sponsor brilliant but needy students in their communities who will return to serve those communities.



He also entreated the graduands to accept postings to rural communities, where they could easily impact positively on the people than going to congest the already"satisfied" health facilities in the cities.



He announced that the Family Health Medical school Endowment fund was already operational and called on individuals and organisations to support the fund to train more medical doctors into the system.



Professor E.Y Kwawukume, Founder and President of Family Health University College announced that management was working towards acquiring a Presidential Charter to make them a fully-fledged autonomous University and appealed to all stakeholders to support in that direction.



He said they were also poised to launch their second strategic plan in the first half of 2022 to provide the blueprint for the university to move towards greater achievements.



He said the school had also bolstered her faculty with highly qualified and seasoned professionals to make it the centre of excellence.



On infrastructure, he said the college had undertaken more projects to improve facilities and structures that would provide students best training environment to promote discovery, teaching and learning.



Mr Simon Sackitey was adjudged the Family Health University College Founder's overall best MBChB graduating student after winning: Professor Jonathan Hubert Addy's prize for a best graduating student in medicine and Therapeutics, best graduating student in surgery and best graduating student in clinical studies.

Source: Peacefmonline.com/ghana









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Apostle Francis Amoako Atta of the Parliament Chapel International in Accra has given a spiritual angle to the Commemorative Gold Coins to be issued on Sunday, December 12, 2021, in Kumasi in honour of His Majesty Otumfuo Osei II for his peace initiatives.



Speaking on Angel TV, he said the Commemorative Gold Coins have spiritual connotations.



Making references to the Bible, he drew similarities between the Commemorative Gold Coins and the gold wealth of the biblical King Solomon.



"On 12th December, something wonderful will happen in Asanteman when Otumfuo is going to be honoured.

The same 12th December is Gods Day. Heaven will meet to discuss the next generation. It shows that Otumfuo has opinion leaders who are spiritually enlightened and intellectuals," Apostle Francis Amoako Atta said.



He opined that it is not for nothing that Otumfuo has earned the accolade of King Solomon.



Buttressing the spiritual connections to the Commemorative Gold Coins, Apostle Francis Amoako Atta said December 12, which is the date set for the launch of the Gold Coins was the same date the biblical King Solomon brought out all his gold possessions for the world to see.Still dwelling on the spiritual angle, the Apostle indicated that from the biblical King Solomon's time to the 12th of December 2021, there is an Asante King, who also goes by the accolade King Solomon, and in whose honour rightly so, gold coins have been minted on the approval of the Bank of Ghana.



Again, he drew connections between the Commemorative Gold Coins to be issued in honour of His Majesty Asantehene and the Commemorative Coins issued for Queen Elizabeth of Britain this year, saying both have the same weight.



"In the spiritual realm, it means the mystery of 999 Gold Coins. It means the completion of a cycle and the beginning of a new age. It means in the year 2022, Asante Kingdom is going to step into another high level. It means the dawn of a new era, so anybody who will get the opportunity to purchase or hold the coins will be blessed because the coins represent another Kingdom."



He prayed to God to grant Otumfuo long life in good health.



Listen to audio





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The Ghana Health Service has reviewed COVID-19 protocols at the Kotoka International Airport (KIA) for international travellers.



A statement by the GHS said: Globally, several countries are experiencing their fourth wave. A number of travellers from these countries come to Ghana, and this is expected to increase during the festive season. This current surge in COVID-19 cases is being reflected at the Kotoka International Airport (KIA).



In view of that, the GHS has modified its protocols effective December 12, 2021, which includes: "all persons 18 years and above arriving in Ghana will be required to provide evidence of full vaccination for a COVID-19 vaccine"



Apart from that all unvaccinated Ghanaians and residents who are currently outside the country and intend to return within 14 days from the midnight of 12th December 2021 are exempted.



Read full statement below:









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The US has imposed visa restrictions on Isabel dos Santos, often described as Africa's richest woman, "for her involvement in significant corruption by misappropriating public funds for her personal benefit", a statement from US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken says.



Her name appears among a list of other people from across the globe accused of corruption who are facing US sanctions. It was released as part of the US government's anti-corruption drive.



Ms Dos Santos is the daughter of Angola's former president, Jose Eduardo dos Santos, who left office in 2017. While he was president, she was chair of the state oil company.



Mr Blinken's statement does not go into details about what Ms Dos Santos is accused of having done.



Last year, the BBC reported that leaked documents revealed how she had made her fortune through alleged corruption.



She got access to lucrative deals involving land, oil, diamonds and telecoms when her father was president of Angola.



The documents showed how she and her husband were allowed to buy valuable state assets in a series of suspicious deals.



At the time, Ms Dos Santos said the allegations against her were entirely false and that there was a politically motivated witch-hunt by the Angolan government.



Two other Angolans - Leopoldino Fragoso do Nascimento and Manuel Helder Vieira Dias Juniorare - who were both former government officials have also been targeted.



They have been given so-called Magnitsky sanctions which means that US companies cannot have financial dealings with them.



The US Treasury has said that the two men "stole billions of dollars from the Angolan government through embezzlement".



Other Africans named by the US Treasury for other alleged corruption were:



Liberian senator Prince Yormie Johnson



South Sudanese businessman Benjamin Bol Mel

Source: BBC









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The Ashanti Strategic Business Unit (SBU) of the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) has raked in over GH1.4 million from illegal connection and power theft in the region.



This followed the launch of Operation Collect or Correct, in October, this year, to check illegal connections and non-payment of electricity bills by customers.



In all, the SBU recovered an amount of GH1,470,116.59 from power theft alone in the region.



Theft



The Communications Manager for Ashanti SBU, Mr. Erasmus Kyere Baidoo, told the Daily Graphic that power theft was rampant in the region as some residents tampered with their meters to illegally consume power.



In all, he said the Revenue Protection Unit visited 1,487 accounts and screened 1,040 of which 261 were found to have been involved in illegal connection.



He said the total amount of power to have been stolen by the 261 residents was around 1,946,795 kilowatts which amounted to about GH2, 045,682.46.



According to Mr. Baidoo, an amount of GH575, 000.00 was yet to be recovered from the affected residents.



Illegality



Some of the illegal acts recorded, according to him, were meter by-pass, meter tampering, unauthorized service connection and damaging of meter.



Campaign



In the meantime, he said the SBU had intensified the campaign to arrest recalcitrant customers who have the penchant to steal electricity and deny the company its needed revenue.

Source: graphic.com.gh









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The Akufo-Addo government has nothing to show for the GHS220 billion it has borrowed since coming into office in 2017, the National Communications Officer of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), Mr Sammy Gyamfi has said, and, thus, wondered what the same administration could do with the GHS7 billion expected to be realised per annum from the implementation of the 1.75 per cent e-levy proposed in the 2022 budget.



The Akufo-Addo government alone has borrowed GHS220 billion since coming into office, Mr Gyamfi told Awudu Iddrisu on Accra100.5FMs morning show Ghana Yensom in an interview on Thursday, 9 December 2021.



It is more than the cumulative debt incurred by the country since independence to the era of the Mahama administration because Ghanas debt within that period was GHS120, he pointed out.



He stressed: In four-and-a-half years, the NPP, alone, has added GHS220 billion to the debt stock taking the total to GHS341 billion as of September 2021.



If you couldnt use GHS221 billion to build any good roads, hospitals and secondary schools, what then can you use the GHS7 billion per annum that would be accrued from the implementation of the 1.75% e-levy, for? he asked.



Mr Gyamfi argued that the Akufo-Addo government has had a lot of revenue at its disposal for the development of the country than his predecessor John Mahama but has not used it for anything beneficial.



The IMF alone gave you GHS12 billion. John Mahama got GHS6 billion of oil money in four years. This government, alone, has accrued GHS20.6 billion.



John Mahama got GHS86 billion in taxes. This administration government got GHS167 billion.



Theyve got more than double the taxes John Mahama got, he contrasted.



What have they used the money for, for which they are now targeting 1.75% of our MoMo, bank transfer and remittance transactions? he asked.



He noted that in 2020, alone, corruption swallowed GHS12.8 billion of Ghanas revenue, according to the Auditor-Generals report, and now you want us to pay e-levy, a Bawumia tax for GHS7 billion every year?



Even if you had reduced that by half, would there have been the need for an e-levy?.



So, the problem is not revenue; it is wasting the countrys resources on renting private jets for the president. If they cut down expenditure, corruption and waste, there wouldnt be any need to impose more suffering on the already-suffering Ghanaians, he noted.





Source: classfmonline.com









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The National Democratic Congress (NDC) has called on Ghanaians to join the party in rejecting the 2022 budget, as a detailed analysis of the policy document shows that its approval will impoverish rather than improve the lives of the people.



Some NDC stalwarts, led by the General Secretary, Mr Johnson Asiedu-Nketiah, said at a public forum yesterday that the budget in its current state would increase the tax burden of the people, raise the cost of living and collapse businesses.



They mentioned that the planned introduction of the electronic transactions levy, the reversal of a discount policy on benchmark values of imports and the 15 per cent increase in the cost of all government services as some of the policies that would make the people worse off.



They described as misleading, the position of the government that proceeds of the new taxes would be used to tackle employment and entrepreneurship.



Consequently, the party said it behooved Ghanaians to rally behind it to ensure that the budget was not approved and implemented in its current state.



Additionally, the party said it would marshal all its 137 Members of Parliament (MPs) to reject the budget.



Awudie budget



With the hashtag, #DroptheAwudiebudget, the event was headlined by the MP for Asunafo South, Mr Eric Opoku, and the MP for Bolgatanga Central, Mr Isaac Adongo, who made presentations on the need to reject the 2022 Budget in its current stage, despite the few concessions made by the government.



Mr Opoku implored Ghanaians, especially the youth, to examine the hardship and the likely repercussions that would result from the imposition of taxes introduced in the budget and reject it.



"We can't accept the rise in fees and charges of 15 per cent, he stated.



He said the government had turned to deceptions as a means of accounting to the people on the governments expenditure.



Unemployment



Mr Adongo said the Minority was resolved to reject the budget because it would bring hardship on the people and worsen their plight.



For instance, he explained that although the government estimated to rake in billions through taxes, it only planned to spend GH385 million on job creation.



It is because they are using unemployment to collect money and they are not using that money well to address the unemployment situation so if they were taking GH6.9 billion and we are seeing that they are programming to spend Gh4 billion to create jobs for the youth, we will support it, he said.



NDC not anti taxes



For his part, Mr Nketiah noted that the NDC was not against taxation as it was one of the means to rake in money for developmental projects, among other things, but it was opposed to the introduction of retrogressive taxes.



Since we started attacking this budget, theres been a misconception that NDC is against taxation and the propaganda has gone to even indicate that we are nation wreckers but, I want to let everybody know that NDC is not against taxation.



 Indeed, our philosophy is based on taxation; we believe in redistributive justice and taxation is a means of achieving redistribution of wealth in the country, he said.



Deadly taxes



Later in an interview with the Daily Graphic, the Communications Officer of the party said proceeds from taxes the government intended to impose on the people through the 2022 Budget would not be used for the development of the country or create jobs as the Minister of Finance, Mr Ken Ofori-Atta, had suggested.



We are saying that budget statements are supposed to improve the state of the economy but if you look at the 2022 budget it is not responsive and does not address the challenges the people of Ghana are going through, he said.

Source: graphic.com.gh









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The Chairman of the Trade and Industry Committee of Parliament, Carlos Ahenkorah says his comments about the E-Levy made in an interview Wednesday were misreported.



According to the Tema West MP, the reportage of the lengthy interview he granted the media on the E-Levy was unfairly skewed.



Mr Ahenkorah said his response to a hypothetical question about what would happen if Ghanaians decide not to use Mobile Money because of the E-Levy was not reported accurately.



He said his response that persons who do not use Mobile Money in that instance would not pay the tax were not captured accurately in viral videos and reports which made the rounds.



I said if you don't use Momo, you won't pay (the E-Levy) because it is only those who use the service that pay. If I say this, does this mean that you should twist my words to say that I said if you don't want to pay then don't use Momo? You twisted my words in a way that would court hatred for me, Mr Ahenkorah said in a radio interview with Oman FM on Thursday morning.

Source: graphiconline.com









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The One Hundred Years of Lenni and Margot by Marianne Cronin

One of the debuts weve published this year that has exceptionally touched me and altered me is The One Hundred Years of Lenni and Margot.

This story of the unique friendship between two women, one aged 17 and the other 83, who meet at art class in hospital and tell each other their lives, has a lightness of touch and a depth of meaning that really strikes you in the heart. Its the sort of book that youll find you cant stop thinking about. You will need to give yourself a lot of time before you pick up another book.

Both these characters are rebels in their own way, and they ask nothing of others while giving wholly of themselves, without realising it. To read of such people is incredibly humbling. Margot is an ordinary woman from Glasgow, whose search for love and meaning is utterly universal but also totally unique. The younger woman Lenni learns from her, and ultimately, it is Margot who gives Lennis life meaning and vice versa.

This book is storytelling at its most elevated  it is full of emotion but also everyday things that root us in the everyday. The unpretentious way in which this book delivers the most meaningful message about the importance of life and friendship, its very humility before such profound themes, is what will move you to laughter and tears. I urge everyone to read it.

Jane Lawson, Editorial Director, Doubleday
The mayor says council will not reconsider a measure imposed earlier this year that eliminated free one-hour parking in the downtown core to the chagrin of local businesses.
2021 EPT Online Day 2: Andrey "Anjeyyy" Novak Wins Series Opener

December 10, 2021 Calum Grant

Day 2 of 2021 EPT Online Series has come to it's conclusion on PokerStars five champions crowned on the second day of proceedings.

The EPT Online Series Opener saw 47 players return to the virtual felt which was eventually won by Andrey "Anjeyyy" Novak while EPT Online 03: $530 NLHE, 200K Gtd and EPT Online 04: $2,100 NLHE [8-Max, Progressive Knockout, Trophy Event #2, High Roller], 300K Gtd completed their Day 1's.

The $530 NLHE, 200K Gtd tournament has 59 of its 576 entries returning for Day 2 with Greece's Georgios "Geokarak" Karakousis in pole position to get their hands on the $50,868 first-place prize. PokerStars Ambassador Parker "tonkaaaa" Talbot also successfully navigated the first hurdle with a chip stack good enough for 13th place. Play gets underway at 5.05 p.m. GMT on December 10.

Paulo "paulinhoo00" Brombin, Niklas "Lena900" Astedt and Samuel "uropan" Vousden have all made the final seven of the $2,100 NLHE Trophy Event but currently trail "lamp4kalove" who returns to the final day as chip leader. The remaining players have all locked up $8,578 along with their bounty prizes as they each eye top prize of $38,519 and the trophy.

The event had a total of 224 entries beefing the prize pool to $448,000. The Day 1 survivors will play out to a winner on December 10, at 6:05 p.m. GMT

Read on to find out the latest winners of the 2021 EPT Online.

Follow all the latest from the EPT Online - LIVE! The PokerNews live reporting team is on top of all things EPT Online. Don't miss a beat! FOLLOW HERE

Andrey "Anjeyyy" Novak Triumphs in EPT Online Series Opener

Andrey "Anjeyyy" Novak picked up his first 2021 EPT Online Series title after being the last player standing in EPT Online 01: $1,050 NLHE [8-Max, Series Opener], $250K Gtd.

Novak topped the 334 player field and boosted their bankroll with a further $62,517 after they defeated Russia's "Mukhin1" at heads-up play. The final table also included Lucio "WizardOffAz" Lima and PokerStars ambassador Fintan "easywithaces" Hand.

EPT Online 01: $1,050 NLHE [8-Max, Series Opener], $250K Gtd - Trophy Event #1 Final Table Results

PLACE PLAYER COUNTRY PRIZE 1 Andrey "Anjeyyy" Novak Ukraine $62,517 2 Mukhin1 Russia $45,709 3 Lucio "WizardOffAz" Lima Brazil $33,419 4 Gogac sniper Austria $24,434 5 wluczkij8 Poland $17,865 6 Fintan "easywithaces" Hand Ireland $13,062 7 drew.derzh Ukraine $9,550 8 monzemann Austria $6,983

Romania Takes Gold and Silver in EPT Online Mini 03

The Romanian duo of "OnL|Ne93" and "Borbo84" battled it out to become the winner of EPT Online Mini 03: $55 NLHE, $100K Gtd with the former walking away as the champion. The pair made a deal at heads-up play with "OnL|Ne93" netting themselves a $23,478 payday while "Borbo84" cashed for $20,743.

The online event came with a $100,000 guarantee and that was smashing with the final prize pool being $180,350. There was a total of 3,607 entries with just 521 making the money.

EPT Online Mini 03: $55 NLHE, $100K Gtd Final Table Results

PLACE PLAYER COUNTRY PRIZE 1 OnLNe93 Romania $23,478* 2 Borbo84 Romania $20,743* 3 Dimitar "Bashov" Bashov Bulgaria $13,118 4 Stiffler8818 Austria $9,351 5 kingmmm Canada $6,666 6 Agentul05 Romania $4,752 7 alfieri.DR Chile $3,387 8 macaulay7 United Kingdom $2,415 9 karamba1111 Russia $1,721

*indicates heads-up deal

PokerStars Reveals New Dates for EPT Prague; Add EPT Online December 8-20

Alysson "Brunopoker94" Bruno Misses Out On EPT Online Mini 04 Title

Alysson "Brunopoker94" Bruno had to settle with the second-place spoils after they fell short to Canada's "BigSlickDRE" in EPT Online Mini 04: $22 NLHE [8-Max, Progressive KO, Mini High Roller], $125K Gtd. Bruno's combined earnings for the event totaled $14,806 while the victor claimed a final prize of $19,580.

Similar to EPT Online Mini 03, the guarantee for the event was obliterated with the 11,519-strong field generating a final prizepool of $230,380.

EPT Online Mini 04: $22 NLHE [8-Max, Progressive KO, Mini High Roller], $125K Gtd

PLACE PLAYER COUNTRY BOUNTIES PRIZE TOTAL PRIZE 1 BigslickDRE Canada $6,709 $12,871 $19,580 2 Alysson "Brunopoker94" Bruno Brazil $1,947 $12,859 $14,806 3 Celula1010 Brazil $574 $7,629 $8,203 4 Mr.LuckyFull Russia $726 $5,438 $6,164 5 zoztenez23 Mexico $1,027 $3,877 $4,904 6 BlaiseZabini1 Czech Republic $1,252 $2,763 $4,015 7 the*god88 Romania $661 $1,970 $2,631 8 orlandopig Brazil $1,587 $1,404 $2,991

"SharkOmaha" Secures Five-Figure Payday in EPT Online Mini 05

"SharkOmaha bested 954 other entries to walk away as the only five-figure winner in EPT Online Mini 05: $109 PLO [6-Max, Progressive KO], $50K Gtd. They achieved the feat by collecting $6,037 in bounties as well as the $6,658 that was up top.

"SharkOmaha" was one of three Russian players to make the final table, with "Fal1st" and "isixyy finishing in third and fourth respectively. Canada's "poker168888" was the runner-up and locked up $9,133 of the $95,500 prizepool.

EPT Online Mini 05: $109 PLO [6-Max, Progressive KO], $50K Gtd

PLACE PLAYER COUNTRY BOUNTIES PRIZE TOTAL PRIZE 1 Sharkomaha Russia $6,037 $6,658 $12,695 2 poker168888 Canada $2,476 $6,657 $9,133 3 FAL1st Russia $548 $3,809 $4,357 4 isixyy Russia $1,889 $2,654 $4,543 5 pausinho83 Germany $1,459 $1,849 $3,308 6 mnammnam Czech Republic $630 $1,289 $1,919

Romanias "andreeadeea" Wins PokerStars Big 20 Finale for $438K

Marcin "clardarth" Pszenniak Completes $31,378 Pot-Limit Omaha Haul

Poland secured their first 2021 EPT Online Series winner after Marcin "clardarth" Pszenniak got the job done in EPT Online 05: $1,050 PLO [6-Max, Progressive KO], $100K Gtd. Pszenniak scooped a whopping $18,570 in bounties to go along with the winner's spoils of $12,808 for a final prize of $31,378. "ShipitFTW911" ($15,260) was the vanquished opponent when it came down to the last two players.

"sharkomaha" would also make their second EPT Online final table of the day, the Russian player took third place for an extra $10,146 to go along with their $12,695 prize in the Mini version of this event.

Day 2 of the 2021 EPT Online Series saw two of their PLO events play out, with a further four taking place later on in the festival's schedule. The $2,100 PLO [6-Max, High Roller], $250k Gtd - Trophy Event #8 kicks off on Sunday, December 12 with the $10,300 PLO [6-Max, Sunday Super High Roller], $300k Gtd - Trophy Event #19 commencing a week later. Both tournaments will have mini events running alongside it which comes with more affordable buy-ins for those with modest bankrolls.

EPT Online 05: $1,050 PLO [6-Max, Progressive KO], $100K Gtd

PLACE PLAYER COUNTRY BOUNTIES PRIZE TOTAL PRIZE 1 Marcin "clardarth" Pszenniak Poland $18,570 $12,808 $31,378 2 ShipitFTW911 Sweden $2,453 $12,807 $15,260 3 Sharkomaha Russia $2,250 $7,896 $10,146 4 Kraskata85 Bulgaria $4,438 $5,767 $10,205 5 Mr Juhlen Sweden $875 $4,212 $5,087 6 Dimadu Austria $1,250 $3,076 $4,326

2021 EPT Online Events Scheduled For December 10

Four more events will play out later today on December 10 with the third trophy event, EPT Online 07: $5,200 6+ Hold'em [6-Max, Short Deck High Roller], $150 Gtd, kicking off at 6:05 p.m. GMT. An hour before, EPT Online 06: $1,050 NLHE [8-Max], $225K Gtd gets underway, the two-day event comes with a massive $225,000 guarantee.

Be sure to come back to PokerNews to get the scoop on all the latest action from the 2021 EPT Online Series.

TIME (GMT) TOURNAMENT BUY-IN 5:05 p.m. EPT Online Mini 06: $109 NLHE [8-Max], $175K Gtd $109 5:05 p.m. EPT Online 06: $1,050 NLHE [8-Max], $225K Gtd - 2-Day Event $1,050 6:05 p.m. EPT Online Mini 07: $55 6+ Hold'em [6-Max, Short Deck Mini HR], $25K Gtd $55 6:05 p.m. EPT Online 07: $5,200 6+ Hold'em [6-Max, Short Deck High Roller], $150 Gtd - Trophy Event #3, 2-Day Event $5,200
American Airlines is cutting back on overseas flights for next summer as it waits on 787 Dreamliners Boeing Co. has been unable to deliver this year.

Without the 787s it had expected to have in its fleet by now, the Dallas-based carrier won't be able to fly internationally as much as it had planned over the upcoming summer season, according to an internal memo from Chief Revenue Officer Vasu Raja first reported by the Wall Street Journal on Dec. 9.

Dreamliner deliveries have been on pause for the better part of the last year as the program grapples with production issues.

American Airlines had expected to receive 13 of the jets in 2021. Thus far, it has received one  a 787-8 delivered in April.

Boeing builds the 787 in North Charleston. Production of the aircraft at Boeing's facility off International Boulevard has significantly slowed due to inspections and rework on 787 quality flaws. Most recently, the planemaker said the production rate, which has slowed to fewer than two jets per month, was "dynamic" as that process continues.

About 100 Dreamliners are awaiting delivery.

American Airlines is "very happy" with the Dreamliners it has in his fleet, Brian Znotins, vice president of network planning for American Airlines, told The Post and Courier Thursday.

"We think Boeing has built a great airplane," Znotins said. "We just wish they could deliver it."

Znotins said American Airlines is in touch with Boeing almost daily, and the planemaker has provided frequent updates.

The issue, he said, is that it's been very difficult to forecast when the 787's issues will be resolved and when those planes will be ready to be delivered.

"What we've done is  certainly through the course of this winter and into next summer  we've just stopped planning on those airplanes being delivered," Znotins said. "And, so, it'll be nice when they show up. But we really can't put any credence into delivery forecasts that we see today, just because so many have proven to be wrong over the last 18 months."

For the upcoming summer, American is not resuming service to Edinburgh, Scotland or Shannon, Ireland, and it's discontinuing service to Hong Kong.

Some markets the carrier served in 2019, like Prague, won't return, and the frequency of flights to some destinations, including Shanghai and Sydney, have been "temporarily, but significantly" reduced, according to the memo.

The memo also says that Boeing has promised to compensate American for the delayed deliveries.

To mitigate impacts from the delayed 787s, the airline will be deploying all of its widebodies on long-haul routes.

That's a shift from this past summer, when almost 32 percent of widebody block hours were spent in the domestic or short-haul international market, Znotins said.

Initially, the slower recovery for international air travel compared to domestic demand took some of the pressure off delayed 787 deliveries, since the twin-aisle jet is favored for long-haul routes.

"Customers are not knocking down our door to get their airplanes in light of the COVID impact on international traffic," Boeing CEO Dave Calhoun said during the company's July earnings call, adding that there was hope that the issues would be resolved before that market recovered.

But now, with a comeback for overseas air travel expected in 2022, carriers like American are running into big snags.

"We have two years of pent-up demand to Rome and Paris and Athens since people have been deferring their trips," Znotins said. "So, that's one of the reasons we are so disappointed to not have these airplanes."

Dreamliner delays already forced American to cut back its winter long-haul flight schedule.

A "number of widebody routes" were cut for the winter because American "simply didn't have the aircraft to fly the schedule" it would have liked, according to a November statement from the airline to The Post and Courier.

"We deeply regret the impact to our customers as we work through the process to resume deliveries of new 787s," Boeing said in a statement.

Inspections, rework and "transparent discussions" with federal regulators continue, the Chicago-based planemaker said.
COLUMBIA  Police offered more details into a chaotic afternoon at A.C. Flora High School, where several unrelated incidents led to one arrest and a more visible on-campus presence by law enforcement.

Authorities said a 14-year-old student at the Richland One school was charged with threatening after authorities found a threatening message scrawled in a school bathroom Dec 8.

It was one of three separate incidents at the Forest Acres school on Dec. 8.

Officers from the Richland County Sheriffs Department and Forest Acres Police Department initially responded to the possibility that a student had a weapon on the grounds after an image appeared online, but determined the picture was a month old.

While police were at the Forest Acres school, a large fight erupted separate from the possible weapon on campus. Videos of the fight were quickly shared through social media.

One teacher is shown trying to navigate the crowd attempting to break up the scuffle.

Man, get off, one student shouts repeatedly.

It was unknown Dec. 9 whether any students or teachers were injured in the melee.

Threats like these disrupt the learning environment that kids need to succeed in school, Richland County Sheriff Leon Lott said in a statement.

He urged parents to speak with their children about the serious nature of making false threats, and said every report is vigorously investigated.

Forest Acres Mayor Frank Brunson said local resources will be provided as the investigation unfolds.

The foundation of Forest Acres begins with our children, he said in a Dec. 9 statement. The safety of our schools is paramount to city council, the chief of police, and all of our law enforcement officers.

In a memo to parents Dec. 8, A.C. Flora Principal Susan Childs said school leaders have a zero tolerance policy when it comes to acts of disruption or violence.

Students who choose to engage in fighting will face the most severe school consequences possible and law enforcement will be involved, Childs said. The safety of our students and staff continues to be our priority.
COLUMBIA  The fugitive who sent police on a nine-hour manhunt after escaping from an ambulance while handcuffed now faces eight additional charges, the Lexington County Sheriff's Department said Dec. 9.

The charges include assaulting an officer, taking an officer's gun, larceny and two counts of escaping from officers.

Hill was already facing multiple charges, including drug-related and traffic offenses, when he injured two deputies during a Dec. 8 arrest on Weaver Drive in Red Bank. The injuries were minor, Lexington County Sheriff Jay Koon said.

From that initial arrest, Hill is charged with assaulting a police officer, taking an officer's weapon and pointing and presenting a firearm, said Lexington County Sheriff's Department spokesman Capt. Adam Myrick. Hill attempted to escape while handcuffed during that arrest, resulting in his first escape charge.

Hill was struck with a stun gun during the initial arrest and was being transported to a hospital when he escaped from the back of an ambulance near the intersection of Sunset Boulevard and Leaphart Road around 1 p.m. His received a second escape charge after bolting from the ambulance.

With K-9s, drones and officers searching for him within a police perimeter, he managed to escape into a wooded area. He stole a truck that had a gun in it, resulting in unlawful possession of a handgun and grand larceny charges.

Hill was later seen at a Bojangles on Augusta Highway outside the town of Lexington. Deputies recovered the vehicle that afternoon in Red Bank, but the weapon reported to have been inside the vehicle was not found.

Hill was then picked up by the driver of a silver SUV in Red Bank. Deputies tracked Hill to a home off Lawrence Road in Red Bank, where he was holed up.

SWAT deputies eventually convinced him to leave the house, and Hill was in custody around 10 p.m. on Dec. 8. He was still handcuffed at the time.

Hill also faces a new charge of possession of methamphetamines with an intent to distribute from initial arrest Dec. 8 on Weaver Drive.

Several schools, including River Bluff High School, were placed on lockdown during the manhunt out of an abundance of caution. Students and staff were safe, Lexington School District One said in a Facebook post.

No EMS workers were injured during Hill's escape from the ambulance.
Just before lighting a cluster of new Christmas trees towering in the middle of Marion Square, Charleston Mayor John Tecklenburg briefly introduced the crowd of onlookers to a concept which could soon bring some changes to the core of the city's downtown.

Called a business improvement district, the initiative would generate additional property tax revenue to add and enhance services for King Street, downtown's main commercial corridor. A nonprofit, the Charleston Downtown Alliance, is behind the effort.

The district could get King Street to an even better place than it is already, Tecklenburg told the crowd at the citys Dec. 2 tree lighting.

The new trees that were lit moments later  the tallest standing at 59 feet  plus new holiday lights and baskets lining King Street, are owed, in part, to the Alliance, which first started convening in mid-2020, and are a glimpse at what the group has planned for downtown.

Earlier this year, the Alliance came to the regions tourism marketing group, Explore Charleston, with the idea of finding funding to decorate downtown with elevated holiday lights, Doug Warner of Explore Charleston said, which Explore Charleston did, through a partnership with Southern Living Magazine.

Beautification projects and holiday programs are a couple of the types of services a business improvement district, or BID, for King Street could offer.

Others include enhanced street maintenance and cleaning, marketing, economic development and security.

The idea isnt new. Attempts to form a business improvement district in downtown Charleston go back to the 1970s. But this is the closest the plans have gotten.

Last month, City Council discussed the proposal for the first time. A public hearing on the initiative was held Dec. 7, and council is expected to vote on an ordinance to establish a BID later this month.

Councilman Mike Seekings saw the proposal as a much-needed boost for the district after forging through the worst of the pandemic.

They have rebuilt from the ground up again, Seekings said after the hearing. And to get business owners to tax themselves is really saying something.

While the city must approve the creation of the business improvement district and any future renewals, it doesnt manage the BID or the funds it generates.

For the King Street district, that will fall to the Charleston Downtown Alliance.

The Alliance initially came together last year at a critical time for King Street. Businesses were trying to recover from the first months of the COVID-19 pandemic, and King Street storefronts had just suffered damage after a protest of police violence and the murder of George Floyd spun off into a riot.

Talks about setting a clear path for King Streets future had a different urgency.

King Street holds a lot of value for the city, the region and the state, said Chis Price, president and owner of PrimeSouth Group, which has its offices on King. The commercial corridor is a nearly $2 billion asset. The district is the Alliance's effort "to put polish on the economic engine of Charleston," said Price, who's leading the Alliance's board.

And while King Street is a key draw for the several million tourists who visit the Charleston region each year, the creation of a business improvement district would not be a visitor-driven initiative, Price said. It's "about us, the community and our city," he said.

The Alliance's stated mission is to reestablish King Street as one of the most vibrant, dynamic and prosperous streets in America.

How it works

A proposed budget from the Charleston Downtown Alliance shows an annual income of about $1 million to spend on services for the district. Roughly 60 percent of that, or $600,000, would come from a new tax on commercial property owners. The rest would come from contributions from the public sector, fundraising, grants and income from programs.

Charleston Downtown Alliance Board President: Chris Price, PrimeSouth Group Vice President: Lou Hammond, Lou Hammond Group Secretary: Rhett Outten, Croghan's Jewel Box Treasurer: Helen Hill, Explore Charleston Additional board members: Tom Stockdale , The Beach Company

, The Beach Company Mike Shuler , 32 North

, 32 North Marty Wall , Bennett Hospitality

, Bennett Hospitality Mariana Hay , Croghan's Jewel Box

, Croghan's Jewel Box Kendra Stewart , Riley Institute

, Riley Institute John Keener , Charleston Crab House

, Charleston Crab House Michael Tall , Explore Charleston

, Explore Charleston Brian Turner , Preservation Society

, Preservation Society Tommy Hall , Hall Management Group

, Hall Management Group Roy Neal , El Hefe

, El Hefe Meg Thompson, City of Charleston

Under the proposed rate, a $1 million property on King Street would have a $60,000 assessment value and contribute about $678 to the BID each year.

King Street property owners would see their tax bill increase by 4 percent or less, with the current terms.

The district is proposed to last 10 years before requiring a renewal. Over that time, the rate will likely not change and can be lowered, Summerfield said. To increase the rate, the BID organizers would have to survey property owners and go through the same approval process again.

"(The Charleston Downtown Alliance) cant submit a budget that is over this calculation," he said of the proposed rate.

The district would start at the intersection of Line and King streets and end at Broad Street. Eventually, the district could be expanded. Possible additions could be Market and East Bay streets, two other busy commercial corridors downtown.

Councilman Jason Sakran, whose district includes the upper peninsula, said he'd like to see the district extend farther north of Line Street.

That would be a more proactive approach, he said. In five years, the area with Recovery Room and Leons Oyster Bar is going to be even more activated than it is now.

To make any additions to the district after it's already established, the Alliance and the city will have to go through this process again, Summerfield said, and gather the needed support.

Gathering support

Establishing a business improvement district requires support from a majority of the district. For the BID, that majority is assessed based on property value.

According to the Alliance, that threshold of support has been reached and surpassed.

Support for the business improvement district was over 60 percent as of Dec. 7, through a combination of written and verbal commitments. There's written support from about 55 percent.

During the public hearing, a mix of property owners and business operators spoke in support of forming the BID.

Casey Lavin, president of Beemok Hospitality, the firm that recently took over management of Charleston Place, said the group "could not be more proud to support" the King Street initiative. At 434 rooms, Charleston Place is the city's largest hotel, and it takes up roughly 3 acres in the heart of downtown, including a long stretch on King Street. It was bought by local businessman and philanthropist Ben Navarro via Beemok for $350 million this fall.

Lavin said the initiative is "well-timed" and cited the "significant investment" that's being made by Beemok on renovations for Charleston Place.

The BID also has support from the century-old nonprofit Preservation Society, which has a shop at Queen and King streets.

King Street is "more than just a collection of individual buildings," Brian Turner, Director of Advocacy at the Preservation Society, told council. It's "a cultural landscape." The street has more than 180 contributing historic buildings.

"The citys success is tied to King Streets success, which is now at a crossroads," Turner said.

Similarly, Rhett Outen of Croghan's Jewel Box said the street is at a "tipping point."

With support in hand from a majority of the property ownership, the Alliance has recently been speaking to more business operators.

Roy Neal, who runs taco restaurant El Jefe on King, serves on the Alliance board and spoke in support of the BID this week. Neal said that while he owns the restaurant, not the building, he saw the value in having a BID, even if it comes with a cost for him as an operator.

"Were going to pay whatever fees we need to pay to help this," said Neal, who told council he sees it as "additional support" for his business.

Word has been spreading among business owners on the street.

"We pay a lot of rent to be on King Street," Kristen James, owner of Ensemble Consignment Boutique, told The Post and Courier. "We want to be proud of our city and have pretty sidewalks and not be dodging trash."

James relocated her business from Ann Street and felt that her Upper King Street location serves her better. She welcomed the idea of more funding for beautification efforts. Sometimes, she said, she puts gloves on and takes street cleaning into her own hands.

Keith Benjamin, Uptown Social owner and senior operating partner, said he appreciates the push for more street cleaning but worries about the costs he may end up seeing on top of his business licensing fees and hospitality taxes. He said he wishes the city could keep up with increased needs on the street with the taxes and fees it already collects.

"I'm conflicted, to be honest," he said. "But perhaps there are more dollars needed to keep King Street where it needs to be."

Councilman Robert Mitchell, who represents much of King Street and the East Side, said he was supportive of the concept but wary of unintended consequences. He said he wanted to make sure the surrounding neighborhoods were on board with the idea and that if the district were ever extended north of Line Street, that it would not push out low-income renters.

We have to still be very careful that when we talk about diversity that we dont push people out to the point that they cant afford to live anywhere in the city of Charleston, he said at the Dec. 7 hearing.

City Council will have its first vote on the BID on Dec. 21. If approved after a final vote, the Charleston Downtown Alliance will see its first revenue from the tax in 2023.
SUMMERVILLE  Summerville High School students with the Career and Technical Education Center were recently reassured that if they want a manufacturing career, there's a growing future for it.

"We're building the workforce of tomorrow," said Lt. Governor Pamela Evette.

Evette paid a visit to Summerville on Dec. 9 to tour Dorchester School District 2's growing CTE Center at SHS.

The program offers courses for all grade levels and gives students the opportunity to get training and education in subjects like manufacturing, culinary arts and media technology. The goal is to develop a workforce that meets the business and industry needs in the state.

At the end of the course in high school, students could potentially become certified in areas including veterinary assistant, electronics technician or database design specialist.

It's a type of education program growing in popularity, with different school districts adapting their own programs.

The Berkeley County School District and the Charleston County School District also have a CTE program.

On Dec. 9, Evette was guided by Summerville High students, alumni and faculty to showcase what is offered.

Zachary Tyson, a Clemson University freshman and Summerville High alumnus, guided Evette through the manufacturing and engineering spaces at the center. She got to see students working with wood, building computers and industrial equipment.

"The amount of opportunity just in this area is unlimited," Evette said during the tour.

Tyson said he was excited to see so much enthusiasm at the CTE center. When he was a Summerville student, he said, he took introduction to manufacturing and every engineering program that was offered.

"Not every student is going to be an English major," he said.

Tyson is currently a mechanical engineering and physics major at Clemson. His plan is to one day work on building rockets.

In addition to seeing the manufacturing space, Evette ate food prepared by the culinary arts students and toured the biomedical science space.

Students were learning how to apply a combat application tourniquet at the time of her visit. It was during that session that she took a few minutes to speak to students about the value of programs like the CTE center.

She encouraged them to speak to other students about what they were learning. That way, they are exposed to career paths beyond just going to a four-year college.

She told them that in the next couple of years manufacturing careers are expected to grow in South Carolina.

"This is the career path that all kids need to be excited about," she said.

Some DD2 officials were also present. Superintendent Joseph Pye praised the program and its staff for giving children more options for their future.

"We want them to be successful," he said.

DD2 School Board Chairwoman Gail Hughes agreed and said the center is important because all students don't have the resources or ability to go to a four-year college.

"And there's nothing wrong with that," she said.

Greg Harrison, DD2's executive director of special programs, expects the center to grow in the coming years. He said he is thankful for the attention from Evette and the financial support from business partners like Volvo, Bosch and many others in the region.

In the future, he said, they are looking to push for apprenticeships and more job training programs so that when students leave the center, they walk out with a job.
Editorials represent the institutional view of the newspaper. They are written and edited by the editorial staff, which operates separately from the news department. Editorial writers are not involved in newsroom operations.
COLUMBIA  S.C. House lawmakers significantly pared down legislation that would have barred private employers from issuing or enforcing COVID-19 vaccine mandates amid immense opposition from South Carolinas business community, which condemned the bill as government overreach.

Republican leadership introduced a last-minute amendment Dec. 9 after more than five hours of debate completely rewriting the anti-mandate push that had been pressed by the party's social conservatives.

The new effort cut private employers out of the bill after significant outcry arose from groups including the state Chamber of Commerce and the S.C. Trucking Association.

Instead, the legislation exempts first-responders from complying with vaccine mandates while allowing terminated, unvaccinated employees to receive unemployment benefits.

It also creates a medical exemption for pregnant individuals, those with a prior positive COVID-19 result or a high antibody count, and declares federal vaccine mandates are unconstitutional and will not be enforced in South Carolina.

The bill additionally sets aside a $20 million appropriation to allow private employers to subject unvaccinated employees to regular testing for COVID-19.

The compromise was accepted on second reading by a 67-31 vote, largely on partisan lines.

The House plans to hold a third and final reading Friday. However, it is unlikely to be adopted this year: The South Carolina Senate has already voted to adjourn until the start of the official legislative session in January.

How did we get here?

The bill, introduced in a hastily announced meeting of a House Ways and Means subcommittee Dec. 7, would originally have prevented political subdivisions from accepting any federal funds intended to implement or enforce federal mandates designed to slow the spread of COVID-19.

However, a late amendment by House Majority Leader Gary Simrill, R-Rock Hill, earlier in the week substantially rewrote the measure with a number of provisions designed to bar private employers from enforcing COVID-19 vaccination mandates in their workplaces.

While South Carolina is an at-will state, meaning workers can be fired without cause, the legislation as written would have protected workers who refuse to comply with vaccine mandates similarly to those who apply for workers' compensation, or attend jury duty, from termination by their employers.

Were not altering at-will status, Ways and Means Committee Chairman Rep. Murrell Smith, R-Sumter, said during the Dec. 9 discussion.

The business community disagreed, however. In a Dec. 8 statement more than two dozen business organizations from around the state strongly condemned the legislation, calling it an unprecedented step against the internal operations of our states job creators.

South Carolina has a long-held tradition of being a pro-business state that allows businesses to operate with minimal government intervention, the letter read. Employment decisions have been left to individual businesses in our state, subject to what each business believes is right for their operations. The ability for businesses to operate without government overreach has, and will continue to be, a key building block of our states booming economy.

Approximately 50.7 percent of eligible South Carolinians are fully vaccinated, according to the S.C. Department of Health and Environmental Control.

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A lengthy debate

During Thursdays debate, some on the House floor questioned whether the bill was germane to the narrowly focused redistricting process the Legislature had originally been called into session this month to discuss.

Some pointed out the legislation represented a stark reversal from previous legislation in the state designed to protect private businesses from liability from COVID-19 related lawsuits. Others decried the legislation as creating fake freedoms that prioritize the unvaccinated while putting undue legal and financial liability on businesses that choose to terminate unvaccinated employees.

Others argued the bill had been unnecessarily rushed through the legislative process, a product of vocal protests the previous week by activists who opposed the mandates.

We are doing this for political reasons, Assistant Minority Leader Rep. Russell Ott, D-Calhoun, said on the House floor. These are for folks gearing up for their primaries who want to be as strong as they needed to be.

Democrats sought to delay the process with a number of amendments trolling Republicans, including language changes to prioritize vaccinated patients in hospitals over unvaccinated ones, requiring unvaccinated COVID-19 patients to pay for their own treatment, and creating criminal penalties for those with falsified vaccination records.

Thursdays debate marked the first time an opposing opinion had been expressed against the bill all week. No representatives from the states business community testified against the effort before it went to the floor, and House Democrats  outnumbered on the Ways and Means Committee  offered little resistance as the bill was reported out.

Smith said committee staff had reached out to members of the business community prior to the meeting. It was unclear whether they had been notified the bill was planned to be substantially rewritten.

We had a public hearing and we allowed people the opportunity to offer testimony, Smith said. Thats why we have subcommittees. Thats why we have public hearings.

I know this is a rushed process, he added. But by the same token, we try to get as much input from the public as we can. Were not responsible for getting the interests here. Thats their job.

McMasters stance

It was unclear whether the original bill would have been acceptable to Gov. Henry McMaster, an opponent of government mandates.

In the past he has stated businesses should be free to set their own rules to mitigate COVID-19, and that government should not interfere with that right, telling reporters on a visit to the Piedmont earlier this year that government should not interfere with free enterprise.

He has a very difficult time with the idea of government telling private businesses what they can and cannot do with their relationship with their employees, McMaster spokesman Brian Symmes said.

We are a right-to-work state for a reason, and that has served our state extremely well," Symmes added.

Multiple national polls since this summer have found a majority of Americans support a universal vaccine mandate. However, opinion is divided cleanly along party lines. According to polling by the Kaiser Family Foundation in November, almost eight in 10 Republicans oppose federal vaccine mandates, compared to just 14 percent of Democrats.
SPARTANBURG  Beginning in early 2022, the redistricting process will begin in Spartanburg to redraw some of the city's six City Council districts to reflect population changes based on the latest U.S. Census results.

The city grew by 4.6 percent over the past decade, from 37,013 residents to 38,732 residents, according to the 2020 U.S. Census. According to a redistricting report created for Spartanburg by the South Carolina Revenue and Fiscal Affairs Office, the ideal size of a district increased from 6,169 to 6,455. District 4 grew to 7,057 residents while District 5 decreased to 6,099 residents, according to the report.

City Communications and Marketing Manager Christopher George said City Council will make adjustments in District 4, District 5 and District 6 before the 2023 municipal election in the city. The lines might be reshaped in other districts as well, he said.

"We don't want to split precincts and try as much as we can not to split neighborhoods and communities where there is shared interest," George told The Post and Courier. "There will be public input sessions and we will get help from the state agency that issued the benchmark report on how to rebalance our map."

The report showed that District 1 was 35 residents over the recommended 6,455 while District 2 was 98 residents over the recommendation. District 3 was 187 residents short of the recommended 6,455. District 4 was 602 residents over the recommendation while District 5 was 356 under the new benchmark set. District 6 was also under the newly established recommendation by 190 residents, according to the report.

"We will have four districts at minimum get some kind of adjustment," George said. "The deviation range recommended is no more than 5 percent."

George said the census results showed the city had experienced growth for the first time in decades. He expects the trend to continue as new housing construction continues and companies create new jobs.

"I think it is definitely going to keep going," George said. "That is the kind of momentum we have got right now."

Spartanburg City Councilman Jerome Rice, who has served District 5 over the past decade, said the reshaping of the district boundaries will be transparent and include public input throughout the process. He was a member of City Council when the districts were reshaped based on the U.S. Census in 2010.

"It is very important for the city to make sure the districts are balanced out," Rice said. "We want to go ahead and get the lines redrawn and give the public the opportunity to see the process as well."

Rice said the process will likely begin in late January or early February.

District 4 City Councilman Jamie Fulmer said there will be several opportunities for resident to express their opinions and preferences on how the lines should be reshaped to represent population shifts in the city.

"I look forward to getting into the process and working through it, " Fulmer said.
The largest university in the state of South Carolina is searching for its next leader.

Back in May, the University of South Carolina opened a search after its last president, Bob Caslen, stepped down amid controversy. (To get caught up, listen to this Understand SC episode from June.)

About a week ago, it looked like the universitys presidential search process could have been coming to a close. The search committee had narrowed the field to a preferred candidate who was expected to visit the school this week.

But, shortly after The Post and Courier reported who that candidate was, he withdrew.

More Ways to Listen Understand SC is available in all major podcasting apps. Search for us or use one of these links: Apple Podcasts

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Today, were going to be talking with Andy Shain, who heads up The Post and Couriers Columbia bureau, about this search process, what has happened so far and what could happen next, now that the university's first choice candidate has taken himself out of the running.

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:
Writings on the Wall

Unsatisfied with the Articles of Confederation, James Madison pushed for a constitutional convention. He wrote most of the constitution but so Read more
Paul has commented below on the unsurprising Smollett verdict. Here I merely want to contrast two perspectives among blacks about the whole Smollett Affair.

First, Black Lives Matter, which issued a statement a couple days ago, while the trial was still under way, that includes this passage:

In our commitment to abolition, we can never believe police, especially the Chicago Police Department (CPD) over Jussie Smollett, a Black man who has been courageously present, visible, and vocal in the struggle for Black freedom. While policing at-large is an irredeemable institution, CPD is notorious for its long and deep history of corruption, racism, and brutality. From the murders of Fred Hampton and Mark Clark, to the Burge tortures, to the murder of Laquan McDonald and subsequent cover-up, to the hundreds of others killed by Chicago police over the years and the thousands who survived abuse, Chicago police consistently demonstrate that they are among the worst of the worst. Police lie and Chicago police lie especially. Black Lives Matter will continue to work towards the abolition of police and every unjust system.

Oh-kay.

Thens theres Dave Chappelle. Ive been saying lately that the Woke McCarthyism of our time can be summarized with the question, Are you now or have you ever been amused by Dave Chappelle? Anyway, heres his take on the Jussie Smollett Affair from two years ago. (Yes, very STRONG language warning, but spare me your complaints about supposed Power Line comment standards hypocrisy: the point isthe news value here is who is likely to be closer to real black opinion: BLM, or Chappelle?)

Chaser:
Julie Fancelli, the subject of a Washington Post drive-by attack, has contributed millions of dollars to charity through a family foundation. She also contributes generously to conservative political candidates.

In late December of last year, she made substantial contributions to groups sponsoring and promoting the January 6 protest rally in Washington, D.C. The money apparently was used to pay travel and hotel expenses for some of the pro-Trump protesters.

Fancelli had said she did not want Trump to step down from the presidency and wanted Congress to overturn Joe Bidens election victory. However, she also says she didnt expect the January 6 protest to turn violent and does not support the violence that occurred.

The Washington Posts lengthy hit piece on Fancelli provides no reason for disbelieving her. Nor am I aware of any.

Yet, Fancelli is under attack by House Democrats for her financial contributions in furtherance of the protest. Rep. Bennie Thompson, chairman of the committee investigating the events of January 6, says he believes that Fancelli played a strong role in helping to finance the rally. The Mississippi partisan adds, were trying to follow the money.

But why? Fancelli had every right to contribute money to protesters.

The protests were misguided and, in my view, sought the wrong result given the vote counts and the disposition of challenges thereto. So what? Americans have a constitutional right to protest on behalf of misguided causes that seek wrong results. Left-wingers do it all the time.

Similarly, Americans have the right to support misguided protests financially, without having to worry about being investigated by Congress. If not, we no longer live in a free country.

Kamala Harris promoted a fund that bailed out BLM protesters after they had engaged in unlawful conduct. One of them was charged with attempted murder for shooting at police officers. Another was charged with looting three different stores.

If Democrats are going to investigate Fancelli for supporting protesters before they did anything unlawful, maybe Republicans should investigate Harris if (as seems likely) they regain control of the House in January 2023.

It isnt just Bennie Thompson and his partisan crew thats trying to make trouble for Fancelli. The Washington Post is, as well.

And its doing so disingenuously. The headline of its story about Fancelli is Low-profile heiress who played a strong role in financing Jan. 6 rally is thrust into spotlight.

But its the Washington Post thats doing the thrusting. Until the Post published its report, virtually no one knew that Fancelli is being investigated by Thompsons committee. Few had any idea who she is. Now readers of the Posts article know not only who Fancelli is, but which candidates she contributes money to and, indeed, a potted history of her adult life.

Moreover, the title of the print edition of the story says that Fancelli funded Jan. 6, not the Jan. 6 rally. The Post thus invited readers to believe she funded the violence that occurred that day. This is what people, especially readers of the Post, think of when they see Jan. 6.

Its good that the Post provided a less misleading title in the internet version of the story. But it still misled those who read the paper edition.

More insidious is the premise of the Posts story  that theres something troubling, and maybe worthy of investigating, when someone contributes money to a protest rally. Any American who believes in freedom surely agrees with GOP fundraiser Caroline Wren. She told the Post:

The funding behind the First Amendment rally at the White House Ellipse was entirely lawful and consistent with the rights Ms. Fancelli has as an American citizen.

Unfortunately, this quotation does not appear until well into the Posts article. But its all that needed to be said about the matter and, in fact, should really go without saying.
Increasingly, school districts are asking candidates for teaching positions questions about cultural competency, race, and equity during the application and interview process. Education Week has the details. They arent pretty.

Lauren Dachille, CEO of a company that peddles teacher screening software to around 500 districts across the country, says:

Now that weve become a little more aware of the concept of anti-racism and maybe a little more woke as a culture, I do think that districts have started to emphasize these questions a little bit more. They might be more common, they might be more explicit.

What are some of the more explicit questions asked of applicants for teaching positions?

Some schools and districts may ask teachers scenario-based questions about how theyd respond to inequities or systemic biases. For example, an applicant might be asked what they would do if they noticed a colleague in their grade level was disproportionately sending Black students out of the classroom for discipline.

Mind my own damn business is a good answer, but not an acceptable one, I assume.

One principal says she will ask applicants what theyve done personally or professionally to be more anti-racist or how they ensure that the values of diversity and cultural awareness are reflected in their practice. Just giving a woke answer isnt enough. The principal claims we can tellare you just talking language or are you able to connect your language with what you actually do?

The principal would have been at home in Stalins Russia or in Inquisition Spain.

Here are some of the questions that Karen Rice-Harris, chairwoman of the diversity, equity, and inclusion committee of the American Association of School Personnel Administrators, recommends districts ask:

Sometimes, there is a belief that a commitment to diversity conflicts with a commitment to excellence. How would you describe the relationship between diversity and excellence? What elements would you find in a curriculum that honors inclusion of different cultures, abilities, and perspectives? An overrepresentation of students from historically marginalized populations receiving special education services continues to exist. Why do you think this occurs and how would you address this issue within your role?

Montgomery County, Maryland, where I live (but, thankfully, where my kids are years removed from school) asks these questions:

How do you incorporate gender diversity and the different racial and cultural backgrounds of your students and families into your daily instruction and classroom environment? How do you connect with the backgrounds of your students? How do you ensure that student outcomes are not predictable by race, ethnicity, culture, gender, or sexual orientation?

No rational, competent teacher of, say, chemistry would incorporate gender diversity and different racial backgrounds of students into daily instruction. And the only reasonable answer to the third question is, in effect, by not taking race, ethnicity, culture, gender, or sexual orientation into account. I suspect, though, that answers along these lines are unsatisfactory and probably disqualifying.

A friend writes:

Obviously, an intelligent and truthful candidate would never be hired. But the situation seems such that even a candidate who is committed to giving the right answers because he or she really needs the job confronts a minefield of figuring out what the right answer is supposed to be. Couldnt have been much worse in Stalinist Russia, Maoist China, or Pol Pot Cambodia, save the school districts will not kill you for wrong answers. [It might] be a little bit worse here in that the correct answer is a bunch of gobbledygook in the minds of the interviewers, and no doubt varies from interviewer to interviewer.

The gobbledygook varies, but Im pretty sure it almost always trends in the same ideological direction.

Parents really must do everything the law permits to rein in school boards throughout America.
Jussie Smollett was found guilty today on five of the six felony counts of disorderly conduct for lying to police that the prosecution brought against him in connection with the fictitious racist and homophobic attack on him. It took the jury nine hours to reach the verdicts. That doesnt seem like a very long time given what the jury had to sort through, but it seems long enough to have rendered a carefully considered verdict.

Smollett was convicted on the five counts that alleged he lied to police on January 29, 2019  the day of the purported attack. The sixth count, on which Smollett was acquitted, alleged that he lied to a Chicago police detective on February 14.

One of the Nigerian men Smollett hired to carry out the fake attack, which the actor falsely attributed to a Trump supporter, reacted to the verdict with a grin, a fist pump, and the statement Nigerian-American lives matter.

Special prosecutor Dan Webb made this statement:

For him to fake a hate crime, fake it and then cause the police department to spend enormous efforts  I thought it was serious criminal misconduct that needed to be approached and have a public trial about it.

Webb also said that Smollett compounded his wrongdoing by lying to jurors during his time on the stand, and indeed by insulting the jurors intelligence with his story and testimony.

Webb plans to bring up Smolletts lying with the judge at the sentencing phase as an aggravating factor. But Smolletts offense was already aggravated in my opinion. If hate crimes are specially egregious, then so is lying about them.

Ordinarily, one lies to the police to protect oneself or to protect a person one cares about. Smollett lied to the police to promote his brand.

In doing so, he added to racial tension and resentment in America. Theres more than enough of that resentment without Hollywood actors gratuitously generating more by telling tales of racism.

Smollett should receive the maximum sentence allowable for the crimes he committed. According to this report, a disorderly conduct charge for a false crime report is a Class 4 felony punishable by up to three years in prison and a $25,000 fine.

Ill conclude this post with a reminder of what Joe Biden tweeted after Smollett made his false crime report:

What happened today to @JussieSmollett must never be tolerated in this country. We must stand up and demand that we no longer give this hate safe harbor; that homophobia and racism have no place on our streets or in our hearts. We are with you, Jussie.

Wrong again, Clueless Joe.
The Nigerian government on Tuesday announced the suspension of the management of Abuja Electricity Distribution Company (AEDC) after workers shut down electricity facilities during a strike.

The privately-run company supplies electricity to Abuja, Kogi, Nasarawa, and Niger States.

As one of Nigerias 11 electricity distribution companies, AEDC emerged from the 2013 privatisation of the sector. KANN is a major investor which holds 60 per cent of its shares. The federal government holds the remaining 40 per cent.

The governments announcement of the managements suspension sparked criticisms, forcing authorities to walk back its message.

The former chairman of the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission, Sam Amadi, in this interview with PREMIUM TIMES Oge Udegbunam, explained why the government lacks the capacity to sack the board management of AEDC.

PT: The government sacked the board members of AEDC, a private firm, after the workers went on strike. Why did the government take such action?

Mr Amadi: Often times, people advise the government that it ( the government) always has the right to step in and to interfere or to get into the markets and intervene in market transactions for the greater good of the public, but they fail to advise the government on how best they can do that.

So the government has the impression that it can always take any action it wants to promote public interest. Of course, first, the government thinks it has interest as a stakeholder in the DISCOs, but it is minority stakeholder. And so what that means is that the government does not have overriding power to change board policy or composition, but government can use its presence on the board to try to influence the board over policies or to remove any or all the directors, which is usually part of corporate politics. This is government acting as a shareholder engaged in corporate politics.

Two ways board and management can be sacked in the manner government did are: through corporate politics or through regulatory action by the regulator after due process. Corporate politics may result in the shareholders sacking a delinquent director or the entire board and management.

The second way it can cause this kind of change in the electricity company is through regulatory action. Because AEDC is a regulated asset, the government cannot change it leadership through presidential action. This is the meaning of being a private company that is regulated. This is irrespective of the fact that government is a shareholder in the company. So when we say a company is regulated, it means that the company is now not just, you know, playing according to corporate code of conduct, including, you know, agreements with shareholders, including regulations and other laws or standards set by corporate regulators like the Corporate Affairs Commission as well as laws like the Company and Align matters Act. But beyond that, that company faces a regulator who issues conditions, terms of licence or rules of engagement.

So if as it looks like in this case, the board has become, you know, dysfunctional and in disarray, has become this disorderly, totally confused and almost, you know, unworkable, it is the work of the regulator to step in. Because the regulator has corporate and other regulations that stipulate what should be done in such circumstances and these rules are peer-reviewed, it is lawful and orderly to take such action as sacking a member of the board, or dissolving the entire board or sacking both the board and the management. The president has no such power.

So even if the federal government has a 40 per cent minority share in the assets, those shares are held for it by the Bureau Public Enterprises that has a position on the board. So the best we can do is to use the board membership to push policies to change behaviour, to remove those who should be removed. The president can no longer exercise the power because its part of a member of the corporation, to sack the board to preserve order.

This is a problem of misconceiving what the electricity market is, this is not like NEPA where the board can be sacked by the minister with the presidents approval. PHCN has become private companies and the fact that Nigeria owns shares in them doesnt change the fact that they are private companies.

And the fact that the federal government has the power of a sovereign doesnt change the fact that the only way you can protect public interest in the sector is through the regulator. Any other action will appear like nationalising back those assets. So it will lead to loss of credibility as this can be seen as an effort by the government to take political action in a corporate setting. Maybe they act as if these are companies that are public corporations are not private companies.

PT: Whats your assessment of the crisis at AEDC?

Mr Amadi: There is crisis in a board, clearly in the middle of it are workers who went on strike because they have issues that theyre fighting, issues like non-payment of salaries at the moment. But these are not issues that trigger federal government action at the level of presidential order. These are actions that can either go to the normal court, go to industrial arbitration, to the industrial court or even to ministerial arbitration.

So if theres a problem between a company in Nigeria and its workers, its usually the regulator that intervenes. Lets say a banks workers are fighting with the management over employment or the welfare of the staff. The usual thing is for this to be settled amicably or they go on strike or either petition the court or the regulator. The central bank in this case may be forced to step in.

If those actions of the management become criminal or even violative of basic rules of performance in the sector, that entitles the regulator to go through the process and fire the delinquent management or dissolve the board just like the central bank did recently. I think the First Bank also had a board of directors removed and a replacement appointed by the apex bank.

So thats the work of the regulator, not the government. So, basically, I think the federal government has not internalised the fact that this is now a private market largely except a section of the market, TCN, where it has a public company. They do not have step-on rights in any other company except through the regulator and for clearly defined violations, after due process based on clear violation of operating codes.
In late November, after Airpeace cancelled a 3.00pm Ibadan-Abuja flight he had booked, Fadugba Ekundayo who was already at the airport when he learnt of the cancellation, decided to try Ibom Air.

He had an appointment to keep, so he booked Lagos to Abuja for 8.00pm, and opted to travel by road for three hours to catch the flight in Lagos. He was greeted by yet another disappointment.

Ibom air without any form of apology except for the usual operational reasons delayed the flight till about 10: 30 pm, Mr Ekundayo narrated on Facebook.

In Lagos, he saw passengers of Max Air heading to Kano, whose flight had been slated for 6:00 pm, still stranded at the airport.

When he eventually arrived in Abuja shortly before midnight, Mr Ekundayo ran into robbers who snatched his phones and other valuables just as he was leaving the airport.

Traveling in Nigeria has lately become a nightmare with many of the countrys roads taken over by kidnappers, forcing many to seek alternatives. As more people adopt air travel, they have also faced a different kind of challenge: rising spate of delayed flights.

Mr Ekundayo is one of several passengers that have experienced disappointments as result of flight cancellations or delays by airline companies in the country without concrete reasons.

Aniekan Essienette, Ibom Airs group manager, marketing and communication, acknowledged that indeed the airline had repeated flight disruptions in November. He said the disruptions were caused by weather fluctuations and flight maintenance.

Yes we had a week of flight disruptions owing to weather and a couple of unscheduled maintenance carried out on our aircraft, she told PREMIUM TIMES, adding that while that was on, they had sent messages rescheduling some of the flights.

Unfortunately some of them ran into the night and we deeply apologise to our passengers for that, she said. It is not in our character to keep passengers beyond flight times as our brand ethos is schedule reliability, on-time departures and excellent service. We certainly fell short this time, we deeply apologise and promise to do better. We want to assure our passengers we appreciate their patronage, and would never take it for granted. We have taken the learnings and we are positioned to handle much better next time.

The airlines November scorecard seen by this newspaper showed that Ibom Air operated a total of 1023 flights that month, of which 283 were delayed, 119 rescheduled, and 19 cancelled.

Sadly, we stumbled and delivered below our standards and your expectations in November. The reasons are not important. Its the results that matter! We have gotten up, dusted ourselves and refocused to deliver again on our established standards and your expectations, the company wrote.

Stanley Olisa, Air Peace spokesman, also told this newspaper that the airline apologised for the cancellations and delays their passengers must have encountered.

He said: It hurts us that passengers have to experience such. But no airline intentionally delays or cancels flights.

Mr Olisa explained that delays and cancellations are always caused by unexpected operational realities, saying that; we clearly communicate to the passengers, with apologies for the inconveniences.

We are assuring the flying public that from December 10 these disruptions will be a thing of the past as were introducing 2 Airbus 320s, one more Embraer 195-E2 aircraft (totalling five on ground), and most of our aircraft on overseas maintenance will be returning very soon, the official said.

More Nigerians lament

Azeezat Armah, a nursing mother who also shared her recent encounter with PREMIUM TIMES, said she booked a 2:30 pm flight from Abuja to Lagos with Air Peace, but the trip was delayed for over five hours without apologies or explanation.

Before leaving for the airport, the company had sent a mail that her flight had been shifted from 2:30 pm to 4:45 pm, and apologised, but on getting to the airport, Mrs Armah said she met other passengers who had booked 12:00 pm flight still waiting to board.

This time around, they did not announce the flight postponement, people were just there seated, nothing was happening, no apologies or explanations were given for their actions, she told PREMIUM TIMES.

Mrs Armah said they were called to board at almost 10:00 pm, and that the company had to combine five batches of travellers on an international flight that later arrived.

You can imagine what I passed through that day with my baby, the displeased passenger recalled, saying they arrived Lagos at some minutes after 11:00 pm. They waited another two hours before being conveyed from the international wing to pick up their luggage.

My baby arrived home at 1:00 am the next day, she said.

Another nursing mother, Maryam Mojeed, who shared her November 21 experience with Max Air, said she booked a 3:50 pm Max Air flight from Abuja to Benin, but arrived at her destination at almost 7:00 pm.

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Earlier that day, I was notified that the flight was now moved backward to 3:10 pm which made me hurriedly leave my house in order not to miss the flight, Mrs Mojeed recalled.

The text message she received from the company reads; Dear Esteemed passenger, this is a follow up reminder that your Max Air flight VM1626 From Abuja-Benin for 21st/11/2021 is rescheduled to depart at 03:10pm., Max Air sincerely apologise for any inconveniences caused by this change. For more Inquiries please Call: 0909 0092 221, 09090092207, 09090092202, 09090092201.

Mrs Mojeed said she arrived at the airport on that day at 2:00 pm, but was surprised that no boarding announcement was made for the 3:10 pm.

While wondering if she had missed the flight announcement, she said she observed that other passengers bearing similar tickets as hers were still seated.

I began to wonder what was happening since no apologies or whatsoever from them for delaying the flight again, she said. By 4:30 pm, the airline made an announcement that the flight had been delayed by another 30 minutes. They were finally called to board at 5:16 pm.

Often, during the long wait at the boarding terminals of airports, most passengers are forced to spend more on food they never budgeted for, especially as foods and even snacks sold at Nigerian airports are usually more expensive.

Repeated calls to the above help lines designated by Max Air for enquiries were to no avail, as they are all switched off.

Some Nigerians who also experienced similar ordeals recently took to social media to vent their anger.

Wole Olaoye, a victim of delayed flight, posted on his Facebook page recently saying; Frustrated passengers waiting for another delayed Air Peace flight in Abuja this morning.

When will Air Peace be called to order by the authorities? TV adverts are utter rubbish when you cant run a simple schedule! Bleeding shame! FAAN, Mr Olaoye wrote.

Koonlay Perse, another user said Im not surprised! Our local airlines are not better than Molue buses plying Lagos roads!! Im yet to remember a local flight I had in Nigeria that performed punctiliously on time.

In another post, Segun Basorun, said: Quite unfortunate and very frustrating. Landed Abuja yesterday on Aero at 11.45 pm, a supposedly 5pm flight. No apologies no nothing. I think its time we have a systematic response to this madness by Nigerian airlines. Imagine, the first flight? I pity all those on Airpeace flights today.

So disheartening to the say the least Sir. Especially, when you realise that even with the massive outcries and cascades of complaints by passengers, nothing have been done by the authorities involved. With the kind of government support and public good will air peace has been enjoying, it is just unbelievable the way they treat passengers,Lucious Kelechi wrote.

Poor Regulation

The Minister of Aviation, Hadi Sirika, in July had announced that airlines shall reimburse passengers after a two-hour delay. It is not clear how that directive has been enforced.

Sam Adurogboye, the general manager of the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority, urged passengers to take advantage of available consumer protection laws, including compensations for denied boarding, delays and cancellations of flights.

He, however, explained that it is not all delays or cancellations that are not excusable. Some he said are caused by adverse weather conditions or technical issues or safety related issues.

Flight would be delayed till it is safe to operate. But the aairline is duty-bound to notify their passengers on time, he said.

Calls and WhatsApp messages sent to Henrietta Yakubu, the spokesperson of the Federal Airport Authority of Nigeria, FAAN, were unanswered.
BUA Group looks to list a consolidated entity to be known as BUA Foods  a combination of its five food businesses comprising pasta, edible oil, sugar, rice and flour  on the Nigerian Exchange Limited in Lagos.

The move will help resolve food crisis in Africas most populous nation, Abdul Samad Rabiu, chair of the BUA Group told CNBC Africa on Thursday.

A lot of people do not know the size of this business. That is why we decided to actually merge all the food businesses. Now that we have done that, people will understand and appreciate the business, Nigerias third-richest man said.

Its a huge business and it has a lot of impact, especially the plantation that we have in Kwara State. Because that is a 20,000-hectare project.

The group expects to begin production of around 200,000 tons of white fortified premium quality sugar in the year ahead.

BUAs Lagos and Port Harcourt sugar refineries have a combined production capacity of over 1.5 million tons per annum, with the Port-Harcourt plant being an export-based refinery, the West African region being its target market.

Mr Rabiu said an expansion project in flour milling and pasta will be delivered in Port Harcourt by mid-2022.

Currently at 576,000 tons of flour milling and 250,000 tons of pasta, the groups combined capacity for both products is anticipated to be upped to 1.4 million tons come next June.

Last January, the groups cement subsidiary debuted on the stock exchange in Lagos after an amalgamation of Cement Company of Northern Nigeria and Obu Cement, making the surviving entity BUA Cement Nigerias fourth-biggest company by market value.

Mr Rabiu, Africas sixth-richest person according to Forbes estimate, holds a 98.5 per cent stake in the cement-maker and could rise further on Africas billionaires ranking once the proposed listing is completed.
Emirates has announced the suspension of flights operations to Nigeria indefinitely.

The Dubai-based airline said it took the action in response to a restriction by the Nigerian government limiting its flights to the country to just a once a week.

The government on Thursday limited the carriers daily flights to Abuja to a single run a week and denied approval for the airlines winter schedule.

The director general of the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA), Musa Nuhu, said the government took that step after authorities in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) denied Nigerias only carrier to Dubai, Airpeace, the three frequencies it requested.

With the recently imposed directive limiting Emirates to operate one flight per week to Nigeria via Abuja, Emirates will be suspending its flights between Nigeria and Dubai from 13 December 2021, until the UAE and Nigerian authorities work on a solution to the ongoing issue, Emirate announced Friday night on its website.

It added: The last flights to operate on 12 December 2021are EK 783/784 to/from Lagos and EK 785/786 to/from Abuja.

Customers holding tickets with the final destinations Lagos and Abuja will not be accepted at the point of origin.

Affected customers do not need to call us immediately for rebooking. Customers can simply hold on to their Emirates ticket and when flights resume, get in touch with their travel agent or booking office to make new travel plans.

Emirates regrets any inconvenience caused.

In order to receive the latest updates on their flights, customers are also advised to ensure that their contact details are correct by visiting Manage Your Booking

Emirates is committed to its operations in Nigeria, and we stand ready to reinstate services once restrictions are lifted by the Nigerian authorities, ensuring travellers have more choice and access to trade and tourism opportunities in Dubai, and beyond to our network of over 120 destinations.
A popular sex therapist and aphrodisiac seller, Hauwa Saidu, popularly called Jaruma has hit back at an ex-lawmaker, Ned Nwoko, for making reference to her in an official statement he put out on Thursday announcing the end of his marriage to his Moroccan wife, Laila Charani.

In the statement which has since gone viral, Mr Nwoko, denied rumours that their separation was as a result of the use of a local aphrodisiac called Kayamata sold by Jaruma

The international lawyer and husband of popular Nollywood actress, Regina Daniels, said his marriage to his Moroccan wife, which produced three children, ended due to irreconcilable differences rooted in indecent conduct on the latters part which started whilst she was on holiday in London.

Alleged bullying

Jaruma, who prides herself as Nigerias most trusted, most successful, and highest-paid sex therapist, claimed that she is the most bullied person in Nigeria for the past 10 years.

According to Jaruma, the billionaires ex-wife, Charani, never said any nasty thing about her husband.

She felt disappointed that Mr Nwoko could stoop so low to publicly insult his ex-wife.

Mr Nwoko accused his ex-wife of meeting with a man at a hotel while she was vacating in London with their kids.

He also accused her of abandoning their kids during her stay in London and undergoing plastic surgery without his knowledge.

Jaruma chided the businessman for ridiculing his wife on social media and asked him to sack his media team for misleading him.

She said: Ned had said that my husband left me after two years but my husband had never written any bad thing about me neither have I written bad about him.

Your children are going to grow up to see what daddy said about mummy.

Efficacy of Kayamata

Reacting to Nwokos assertion that he isnt under the influence of her Kayamata products, Jaruma blasted the billionaire and claimed he was controlled by his 21-year-old wife actress wife.

She said: If Kayamata is not working on you, why would a girl of 21 control you and your media team to type five pages report about Laila?

In November, Jaruma was on the news for her fallout with the controversial actress, Regina Daniels, who had denied having anything to do with her (Jaruma) despite allegations of being paid to promote her (Jarumas) products.

In the Instagram video, posted by Jaramuna on her page, on Friday, she displayed stacks of papers that she claimed were her bank statements from November 2 to 9, after Mrs Daniels issued her disclaimer.

The 28-year-old sex therapist also added that Mrs Daniels disclaimer worked in her favour, because she garnered 1.3 million Instagram followers after the post.

Jaruma, who hails from Gombe State is touted as Nigerias most successful sex therapist.

She started her business in 2010 but became famous in 2016 after a video of her educating Nigerians about the therapeutic advantages of Azanza Garckeana plant (Silky Kola), went viral.
A popular Yoruba actress, Eniola Badmus, on Thursday, celebrated her 20 years on stage and debuted a trim figure to the amazement of guests and fans.

The star-studded event which was held at the Monarch Event Centre Lekki, Lagos, had the likes of Fuji maestro Kwam 1, Davido, Toyin Abraham, Ijabo ojo and other celebrities in attendance.

Badmus began her acting career in 2000 and became famous eight years after she featured in Funke Akindeles blockbuster Omo Ghetto.

Taking to her Instagram page, Ms Badmus shared a video of some career high points and scenes from the movies she featured in over the last two decades.

She wrote: Today is the day that the Lord has made I am so happy and excited, I cant wait to have you all

The plus-size actress, who was the cynosure of all eyes, made a grand entrance at the events red carpet in a beautiful bejewelled nude-coloured dress which fit like a glove.

The boisterous actress arrived at the venue in a black Rolls Royce executive ride and escorts leaving cameramen and fans scrambling to take photographs of her.

The 38-year-old actress also received a massive show of love and congratulatory messages from her colleagues and fans at the event.

Comedian Ali baba and Ushbebe were the anchors and they also supervised the cutting of the massive five-tier cake and as expected, they had the guests reeling with laughter.

The actress also launched a book at the occasion.

The highpoint was Lagos socialite, Pretty Mikes appearance.

Pretty Mike stormed with 24 men and women painted white and clad in only underwear.

The actress, who has been working out in recent months, has been flaunting her new figure on Instagram.

Check out photos from the event below
Leaders from 17 African nations will this week join a Summit for Democracy organized by an American administration clearly aware that the United States is itself under scrutiny over its own commitment to the democratic process.

The two-day summit, with a participant list the includes 110 countries, will be hosted by President Joe Biden, who emphasized soon after taking office last January, that democracy doesnt happen by accident. We have to defend it, fight for it, strengthen it, renew it.

The summit is the first in a year-long campaign during which participating nations will take initiatives, in the words of the Biden administration, to make democracies more responsive and resilient, and to build a broader community of partners committed to global democratic renewal.

Who is not invited

Notable are some of the African nations whose leaders will not be taking part in the virtual gathering.

The administration offers no country-by-country explanation, but among those excluded are countries where presidential term limits have been overturned (Cote dIvoire), where elections have been marred by repression (Tanzania and Uganda) or whose governments have been installed by military coups (Egypt, Mali, Guinea Bissau and Sudan).

Also uninvited are the governments of Mozambique, where allegations of corruption have strained ties with the U.S., and Ethiopia, where President Biden has revoked the countrys trade privileges and signed an executive order enabling the U.S. to impose sanctions on those most responsible for the conflict of the last year.

(Those African countries invited are listed at the end of this report.)

Also notable is the administrations tacit recognition that the United States cannot afford to take a holier-than-thou stance on democracy in its dealings with the world.

Support for democracy strong across the continent

Demand for democracy is strong and resilient, the pan-African, independent, non-partisan research network, Afrobarometer found in a recent survey across 34 African countries. The same cant be said for Africans confidence that they actually live in well-functioning democracies, leaving a democratic disappointment gap, the Accra-based organization reported earlier this month.

The decline in confidence is happening in Africas up-to-now leading democracies  Botswana, Cabo Verde, Ghana, Mauritius, Namibia, South Africa, and Tunisia. The trends are most striking in the three countries that have anchored democracy in southern Africa for three decades  Botswana, Namibia and South Africa.

All three have encountered democratic challenges, Afrobarometer reports. Most notably, despite regular and free elections, each has been ruled by a single dominant political party throughout the democratic period. The lack of a viable opposition is a fundamental weakness in their political systems, although South Africas recent election  in which the ruling African National Congress (ANC) won only 46% of the vote nationwide  suggests that ANC dominance may be waning.

The 2020 Ibrahim Index of African Governance (IIAG) reports growing dissatisfaction with governance among citizens on the continent and the first year-on-year governance performance decline since 2010. While progress has been made in overall governance performance on the continent over the last decade  as of 2019, over 6 in 10 of Africas citizens live in a country where governance is better than in 2010  this progress has slowed down in the latter half of the decade, the Foundations executive director, Nathalie Delapalme, wrote in the 2021 Foresight Africa Report published by Brookings.

Backsliding not just an African problem

During a visit to Nigeria in November, Bidens Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, stressed that democratic backsliding is not just an African problem. Its a global problem. My own country is struggling with threats to our democracy.

The State Departments background documentation sends a similar signal: All democracies, including the United States, face challenges, it says. The U.S. government views the summit as an opportunity to listen, learn, and speak about the challenges facing democracy within the United States and abroad. Participating governments  including the United States  will pledge to support domestic and international commitments in our shared push to bolster democracy from local to global levels.

The Biden administrations acknowledgement of the countrys backsliding is highlighted by an April 2021 report of Freedom House, a non-partisan but partly government-funded American NGO which aims to promote democracy.

Under the headline, United States in Decline, the report says the U.S. is among the 25 countries in the world which have seen the worst erosions in freedoms in the past decade.

Freedom House researchers Sarah Repucci and Amy Slipowitz wrote that the final weeks of the [Donald] Trump presidency featured unprecedented attacks on one of the worlds most visible and influential democracies.

After four years of condoning and indeed pardoning official malfeasance, ducking accountability for his own transgressions, and encouraging racist and right-wing extremists, the outgoing president openly strove to illegally overturn his loss at the polls, culminating in his incitement of an armed mob to disrupt Congresss certification of the results

They added: Rulers and propagandists in authoritarian states have always pointed to Americas domestic flaws to deflect attention from their own abuses, but the events of the past year will give them ample new fodder for this tactic, and the evidence they cite will remain in the worlds collective memory for a long time to come.

Defending against authoritarianism

The Biden administration says this weeks Summit for Democracy will focus on three objectives: strengthening democracy and defending against authoritarianism; addressing and fighting corruption; and promoting respect for human rights.

In a commentary on the summit, Zainab Usman, director of the Africa Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, D.C., said these objectives must address the pressing socio-economic needs of [the] 17 African participants.

She highlighted the Sahel region, where existential governance challenges confronting countries like Burkina Faso, Niger, and Mali are compounded by violent extremism, the flow of weapons from an unstable Libya, and the absence of public services in remote villages.

Or, she added, take South Africa, one of Africas most-industrialized countries, which is undergoing persistent political and economic decline and risks becoming a lower-middle-income economy by 2028, according to forecasts.

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Will the summit be contextualized to these everyday realities of African countries?

Focus on economic implications

Underlining her emphasis on economic issues, she said that at a domestic level democracy is sustained by the material prosperity of citizens in terms of good jobs, rising incomes, and overall well-being.

Well-paid bureaucrats are less likely to siphon public funds. Young people with good job prospects living in secure communities with decent roads, hospitals, and health services are less likely to heed the siren songs of violent insurgencies and criminal gangs. A prosperous and informed citizenry is better placed to hold local and national governments accountable.

She concluded her commentary with an appeal for President Biden:

to mobilize his countrys financial and technological muscle to vaccinate the world against the coronavirus, and

to rally global action to combat illicit financial flows, which she noted drain close to $90 billion from Africa annuallymoney that could otherwise be used to invest in needed public services on the continent.

Several Africans are featured participants taking part in a day-long series of pre-Summit discussions. Mwila Chriseddy Bwanga, founder of the Zambian youth organization BeRelevant Africa is on the Young Democratic Leaders panel moderated by Blinken. Lola Adekanye from the Center for International Private Enterprise Ethics is taking part in the Private Sector Forum. Peter Biar Ajak, a South Sudanese peace activist, scholar, and former detainee is one of the Voices of Political Prisoners. Speaking on the Democracy-Affirming Technology panel is Gbenga Sesan, executive director of Paradigm Initiative, a pan-African social enterprise working on digital inclusion and digital rights with offices in Cameroon, Kenya, Nigeria, Senegal, Zambia and Zimbabwe. And former Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf is delivering closing remarks for the panel on Advancing the Status of Women to Advance the State of Democracy.

The 17 African nations invited to the summit are:

1. Angola

2. Botswana

3. Cabo Verde

4. Democratic Republic of Congo

5. Ghana

6. Kenya

7. Liberia

8. Malawi

9. Mauritius

10. Namibia

11. Niger

12. Nigeria

13. Sao Tome and Principe

14. Senegal

15. Seychelles

16. South Africa

17. Zambia
Amidst criticisms of his handling of the security situation in North-west Nigeria, President Muhammadu Buhari said Friday that he had dispatched a high-level delegation to two states in the region that have suffered from recent attacks.

Scores of people are killed monthly in states in the region by terror groups.

Two of the most recent attacks in the region occurred in Sokoto and Mr Buharis own Katsina State this week leading to dozens of deaths.

PREMIUM TIMES had reported how many passengers were on Monday morning burnt to death in Sabon Birni Local Government Area of the state.

Although there are conflicting reports regarding the actual number of people killed, the Sokoto State Government put the figure at 23.

The president has been criticised by many Nigerians for his handling of the security situation in the region. One of the most scathing criticisms came Thursday from the Jamaatul Nasrul Islam (JNI), a leading Islamic group in Northern Nigeria led by the Sultan of Sokoto, Saad Abubakar.

On Friday, the presidents spokesperson, Garba Shehu, said Mr Buhari has dispatched a high-level delegation, made up of the heads of the nations intelligence and security services to Sokoto and Katsina States in response to the recent spike in bandit activities.

The president is expecting an immediate situation report and recommendations on actions to follow to effectively deal with the worrying situation.

The delegation led by the National Security Adviser, Major General Babagana Monguno (Rtd) is made up of the Inspector General of Police, Usman Alkali Baba, the Director-General of the DSS, Yusuf Magaji Bichi, the Director-General, National Intelligence Agency, Ambassador Ahmed Rufai Abubakar and the Chief of Defence Intelligence, Major General Samuel Adebayo, Mr Shehu said.

Nigeria has been described as a county under siege. Aside insurgency, virtually all parts of the country currently battle with one form of insecurity or the other with various crimes going on, largely unabated.

Parts of the North-west have been overrun by rampaging bandits who kidnap for ransom and kill victims who cannot pay for their freedom.

While the North-central is also plagued by bandits and criminal herders who operate in parts of Kogi, Benue and Nasarawa, the North-east is still fighting an age-long battle war with Boko Haram and other insurgency groups such as ISWAP.

Even though authorities claim the insurgents have largely been degraded and are now focusing more on soft targets and solitary military formations, Boko Haram are still able to carry out attacks in many parts of the North-east including on military posts and formations.

While criminals under the guise of herders are also causing problems in the South-west and South-south regions, the South-east region is now increasingly volatile due to the secessionist crisis.

With no seeming solution in sight, foreign companies and foreigners are increasingly avoiding Nigeria with many more Nigerians losing hope on their safety in the country. More than seven in 10 Nigerians (73 per cent) have said they would relocate abroad with family members if they had an opportunity, the 2021 Nigeria Social Cohesion Survey, a publication of Africa Polling Institute (API) revealed.
After spending about one year and two months illegally in prison, Seyi Awobola, arrested and accused by the police of burning down buildings in the violence that ensued days after the protest against police brutality in 2020 has become a free man.

Mr Awobola at a press conference in Lagos on Friday said he was labeled an #EndSARS protester and treated with disdain following his arrest.

Lagos was ravaged by hoodlums in the days after the #EndSARS protest, leaving many parts of the state with burnt buildings, looted shops and destroyed properties.

Many believe the largely peaceful protests were infiltrated by hoodlums sent to tar the process with violence.

Following the unrest, the state Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu, announced a 24-hour curfew.

Arrested illegally

The resident of Ajegunle, Lagos, regained his freedom on Wednesday, 14 months after he was arrested illegally at CMS while coming from the Lekki tollgate on October 21, 2020, in the company of a friend.

He said he was arrested and ended up at the Ikoyi Maximum Prison while his friend escaped.

According to a lawyer and former chair of the Nigerian Bar Association, Ikeja branch Adeshina Ogunlana, Mr Awobola was charged with arson, riot and disobedience to lawful order  curfew according to the Director of Public Prosecution (DPP), Mr Ogunlana said.

Mr Ogunlana said the first two charges were withdrawn by the DPP after his client had spent 11 months incarcerated.

He said they retained one count against Mr Awobola  disobedience to a lawful order.

The offence attracts three-month jail term but the 28-year-old had already spent 11-months in the prison, Mr Ogunlana said.

He said that his clients case was adjourned till January 26, 2022, but he applied for another day in the 2021 calendar.

He said on the adjourned day, the prison officials said they had no van to bring him to court.

There was nothing we could do, we had to wait for an additional two weeks, eventually our application was accepted and the magistrate granted bail, Mr Ogunlana said.

We were happy, we thought it was over. We dont know (that) we had started. To perfect the bail, it was not easywhen it was perfected the warrant of release was signed. We told the parents, everybody was happy.

We went to prisonprison said no, we cant release him, he had a matter in the high court. I said he was never arraigned before the high court, they said no.

He said he told them that the matter had been withdrawn but his client wasnt released.

He explained further that the DPP filed a notice of discontinuance of case but he (client) was still not released.

Mr Ogunlana said the government would be sued for gross breach of his clients fundamental human rights.

He lamented the Nigerian government had no regard for equity.

My story

Mr Awobola said he was just a passerby at CMS in the company of his friend on October 21 when he was picked up.

Recounting his journey to prison, he said after his arrest he was taken to Lions Building where he spent a week and was later transferred to Panti in Yaba.

He said Nigerias correctional centre ought to be renamed corruptional centre adding that it is a place that hardens the innocent and criminals.

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No food, no water, no means of communication until the day they took us to the police command to see the commissioner of police, Mr Awobola said.

He said they should release every #EndSARS protester but on getting to the station, they never did what the commissioner said.

They were even making jest of us in the station calling us soro soke were.

The food that served us in the prison would never be accepted by animals. My family was feeding me.

He said he had spent about a week before his family knew his whereabouts.

I chatted with a celebrity secretly with my phone. And it went viral on the internet, he said.
Nigeria may never overcome its challenges until its leaders at different levels start taking governance with all seriousness, a former Speaker of the House of Representatives, Ghali NaAbba, has said.

Disturbed by the countrys socio-economic reality, a former speaker of the House of Representatives, Ghali Naabba, on Thursday, fingered the political class, including himself, as the cause of Nigerias dire state of insecurity.

He classified these prevalent issues as by-products of the egocentric interests of its political leaders.

There is a lack of seriousness. Those in power are still not ready to accept that they must mend their ways. We have lost it democratically because those responsible for the preservation of democracy have been running around it instead of operating according to democratic tenets to the extent that the immunity of the political system has broken down.

We must not shy away from the fact that the country is drifting because we want to satisfy the ego of certain people. We must tell the truth, and that measures must be taken to arrest this drift. And that must begin by the political authorities from top to bottom, the former speaker said on the Channel Television programme, Politics Today.

Without sparing his political party, PDP, Mr NaAbba, who served as speaker between 1999 and 2003, faulted the internal democracy of political parties in the country.

He lamented the alleged growing trend of governors hijacking party structures and impacts on the autonomy of lawmakers at the state houses of assembly and National Assembly.

The ex-speaker recounted his failed attempt to impeach President Olusegun Obasanjo at the beginning of the fourth republic over the challenges facing the country.

He said their efforts against Mr Obasanjo were blocked by the combined forces of governors and party officers.

But what happened then was that those in the executive and the leaders of our political party conspired together to ensure that they subdued the legislature and therefore nobody can check them.

They have taken over the powers given to the people by our constitution, in the sense that today, those who are in control of our political parties are governors and successive presidents have been beneficiaries of political parties mis-governance by governors.

Today, the legislature is populated mainly both at the state and national level by people who were nominated, and not only elected by the governors. Unfortunately, in this case, members of the state and National Assembly cannot bring the governors and president to account, he argued on the programme.

His argument coincided with the ongoing wrangle between members of the National Assembly and governors across party lines over the recently transmitted Electoral Bill.

Against the existing bill which granted political parties the powers to decide mode of primaries, Clause 87 in the bill awaiting President Muhammadu Buhari assent, proposed direct primary as compulsory for all political parties in nominating their candidates for elections.

Mr Buhari has been consulting with concerned agencies and institutions for recommendations regarding the proposed clauses in the bill.

The bill was transmitted to the president two weeks ago.
A coalition of civil society organisations has called on President Muhammadu Buhari to sign the Electoral Amendment Bill before it is hijacked by politicians benefiting from the existing imbalance in the Electoral Act.

It also faulted reports of Mr Buharis purported rejection of the bill over the removal of indirect primaries from the document.

The coalition stated this in a statement on Thursday in Abuja.

Ariyo-Dare Atoye of Adopt A Goal for Development Initiative; Jude Feranmi of Raising New Voices Initiative and Kenneth Eze of Speak Out Africa Initiative jointly signed the statement.

Quoting an unnamed senator, the Sun newspaper on Thursday reported that Mr Buhari had returned the bill to the National Assembly through a letter addressed to the two principal officers of both chambers.

According to the newspaper, the bill was largely rejected on the grounds of the high cost of conducting direct primaries by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).

About N500 billion was quoted as the alleged cost implications of direct primaries on the INEC ahead of the 2023 General Elections.

Following the report, PREMIUM TIMES, on Thursday evening, reported the commissions chairman, Mahmood Yakubu, taking a neutral stance on the cost of such internal political activity.

On the primaries, when we discussed with him, he specifically told us the role of INEC in direct or indirect primaries which he said is just minimal. He said the responsibility lies with all the political parties. He said conducting primaries is the role of political parties and not INEC.

For direct primaries, what the INEC Chairman told us is that only the political parties have the responsibility on primaries and the funding of the primaries, the chairman of the House of Representatives Committee on Appropriations, Muktar Batera, told journalists after a meeting with Mr Yakubu, on Thursday in Abuja.

On the backdrop of this reality, the CSOs, in a statement, dismissed the report by the newspaper as fake news sponsored to discourage Mr Buhari from signing the bill.

We can authoritatively confirm that Mr President has not forwarded any letter rejecting the Electoral Amendment Bill to the National Assembly. The interview granted by one of the APC governors published as news and stating that Mr President has rejected the bill based on the phantom N500 billion costs of logistics for monitoring the direct primaries of political parties is a barefaced lie.

While it is known to the people that some politicians are habitual liars to the public, have no integrity whatsoever and do not care about the public trust for the office which they occupy even when they attain such positions crookedly, an issue as dear to the heart of the Nigerian people as the Electoral Amendment Bill will not be allowed to be derailed by these kinds of politicians, the group said on Thursday.

The coalition called for an investigation into the report that published the rejection of the bill.
The clock is ticking for nine-year-old Success Achala, who has undergone many procedures to replace his broken skull at the National Hospital, Abuja, without succeeding.

According to his father, Elijah Achala, the boys head has been swelling since doctors conducted the last surgery on his head in November. Apparently, there is a problem because there is leak from the suttured wound on his head, which causes the swelling.

His parents claimed to have piled up medical bills amounting to over N3 million, and could not continue his treatment without help. They are, therefore, pleading for financial support from the public for another round of surgery to fix the leak.

After the last surgery, Success was to do physiotherapy at the hospital for some months. His father stopped after weeks of doing it because he did not have the money to run it.

The poor boy had lived the past 16 months with just about a half of his skull after he was knocked down by a speeding motorcyclist, and his education has been completely kept on hold.

He spends most of each day indoors, peeping through the window to watch his peers head for school or play.

He leaves the house only when he goes with his parents to the hospital. The hospital is over 50 kilometres from Gidandaya Orozo, where his parents rent a room and live with his two other siblings.

His family has lived in the house for five years, although his parents said they could not pay their rent in the past two years because of his condition.

The house is among the shanties that dot the communitys landscape. It looks decrepit, lacks potable water and a good toilet.

Trudging through the grubby and dusty roads of the community with his father to pick a taxi to the National Hospital, his father said doctors had failed to fix Success head after visiting the hospital over a dozen times.

His parents, Elijah and Alice Achala, hoped he would be fine enough to return to school after his latest surgery, but his condition now appears worse.

The couple hails from the Oju Local Government Area of Benue State.

They prevent their son from doing many things that could hurt his head, including playing with his peers outside the house.

His mother said the boy avoided his peers because he was unhappy with his condition. She added that he was even more unhappy because his mates had gone farther than him in school by two years.

The distraught mother also said Success siblings had been withdrawn from school because of their inability to pay tuition fees.

He was a brilliant boy and one of the best in his class before the accident. Success feels sad each time he thinks about his condition because he could not do what he used to do.

He was in primary two when the biker hit him. His mates are now in primary four. He knows this, and we do our best to encourage him not to brood over it.

How biker broke Success Achalas head

The boy left his parents to attend a lesson on August 7, 2020, at Gidandaya, around Orozo, a suburb of Abuja.

That was shortly after the COVID-19 lockdown when schools operations were staggered by government.

He was hit by a fast-moving commercial motorcycle on his way home, leaving him in a pool of blood after the biker had smashed his skull.

Because he was still breathing, sympathizers rushed him to Karshi Hospital. He was moved from there to the Federal Medical Centre, Keffi, then to Garki General Hospital, Abuja, and finally to the National Hospital.

His father said doctors at the National Hospital kept his broken skull for over six months to carry out other procedures before fixing it back.

Before the latest surgery, he had lived with only his scalp, which covered the remaining skull.

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A deep cut pierced through the boys forehead to the back, and the head shudders as he breaths.

One of his limbs affected by accident was paralyzed for weeks. It has been treated, and the limb is now fine.

Father sacked from work, worsening familys travails

The 41-year-old father was sacked where he worked as a private security guard shortly after the incident because he was missing work while taking care of his son.

To eat at home has become a problem, Mr Achala said. To take the boy to the hospital is a challenge. My children are at home. None of them goes to school. I have not paid house rent for two years, and we have to do the surgery again. The boys head is swelling more and more.

I beg well-meaning people to help my family to save the boy. It is not good to lose him at this point, the father pleaded.

His wife said life had been difficult for the family because they had incurred so much debt, including house rent.

She said her family had lived with the shame of being beggars in the neighbourhood because they owed almost everyone living around them, and they fed mainly on supports from neighbours.

The Achalas can be supported through this bank details: Elijah Achala, Fidelity Bank, 6234899273.
Vaccines against the virus that causes Covid-19 may provide less immunity to the Omicron variant than to other major versions of Covid-19, according to laboratory experiments in South Africa.

Researchers at the Africa Health Research Institute in Durban, South Africa (AHRI), found Omicron resulted in about a 40-fold reduction in levels of neutralising antibodies produced by people who had received the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, compared with resistance to the original strain identified in China nearly two years ago.

The study is a pre-print  meaning a study that is not yet peer reviewed but is released due to its importance.

While vaccinated people might be more vulnerable to breakthrough infections with Omicron, vaccines stimulate a wide-ranging immune response that involves more than just antibodies. So these experiments may not reflect completely how well the vaccine protects against hospitalization or death from Omicron outside the lab.

AHRI virologist Alex Sigal told the The New York Times that he and his colleagues had worked at breakneck speed over the past two weeks to grow the virus and then test antibodies against it. If I dont die from the virus, Ill die of exhaustion, he quipped.

A number of infectious disease specialists, when learning of the Durban results, said there is a need for increased vigilance and for more study, but the good news is that the South African lab found that the vaccine does reduce the risks. It is likely, as well, that boosters will further increase immunity.

That prospect once more raises the urgent issue of the damage that travel bans against African countries have done to their economies  and to their abilities to continue their ground-breaking Covid research. President Mokgweetsi Masisi of Botswana, where researchers were among the first to detect Omicron, told the BBC that the travel ban has throttled the countrys diamond and tourism-based economy.

Global health specialists largely agree that the bans are unscientific, ineffective and punitive in the current circumstances and may deter other nations from sharing vital research in the future. It was Zimbabwe-born Dr. Sikhulile Moyo who was one of the first to genetically sequence the Omicron variant in his Botswana lab. Dr. Tulio de Oliveira, Director of South Africas Centre for Epidemic Response & innovation warned that the ban had reduced the supply of reagents and other supplies necessary for continued research.

The Omicron virus is spreading rapidly in South Africa and has appeared in dozens of countries around the world, in many cases before it was first identified in southern Africa.
The Kwara State governor, AbdulRahman AbdulRazaq, has said state governors are not at loggerheads with senators over mode of party primaries.

He said the perception is wrong and a twist of the narrative.

He stated this at The Convergence 3.0 while addressing over 200 young aspirants vying for different political offices.

The Convergence 3.0 is an initiative of Yiaga Africa and the Not Too Young to Run movement. It is aimed at empowering young candidates with necessary tools for running effective political campaigns ahead of the 2023 general elections.

The governors statement comes on the heels of controversies surrounding the Section that addresses direct and indirect primaries in the Electoral Amendment bill passed by the National Assembly. The clause has reportedly generated a rift between governors and federal lawmakers  which the Kwara State governor denies.

The bill is currently before President Muhammadu Buhari awaiting his assent.

Direct primary election allows registered members of a party to vote for who they want to be the candidate of their party in the main elections while the indirect primary election allows delegates to decide who will be the partys candidate.

In the bill, the National Assembly opted for direct primaries. But many governors, majorly of the All Progressives Congress, have opposed the clause on direct primaries in the bill.

In his remarks, Mr AbdulRazaq said he is open to any mode of primary election signed in the electoral law.

It really doesnt matter, direct or indirect. It was wrong for the media to twist the narrative and say governors are fighting senators over direct or indirect primaries. I came in through indirect primaries. So it really doesnt matter. Indirect primaries cost a lot of money but direct primaries are just about delegates.

For the youth who are coming into politics, it may be better to have an indirect system because your chances are better. But dont forget that the voters who are registered members of the party are canvassing too for people who have been placed in the party register by others.

At the end of the day, it is easier to manipulate delegates in indirect primaries which is to say you can take delegates to a hotel, keep them there until the day of the election, then you bring them out and ask them to vote for you and everybody disperses but in direct election, Ill be here in Lagos and people will be voting in Badagry, Epe, and Im not there to influence anyone. It is my agents that will try to influence them.

The governor said while it might be better to opt for direct primaries for youth who are seeking political offices for the first time, the major players will most likely have their way.

For the youth, I believe it might be better to have the direct primaries but at the same time, if you have a Governor like Sanwo-Olu (Lagos State Governor) and his party insists on having a candidate in Epe, then you have your work cut out for you, thus, you are better off having indirect.

I really dont mind the system the Electoral Amendment bill throws at us, he said.

As Nigerians await assent to the bill by Mr Buhari, many have urged him not to sign it unless the clause is reviewed.

Already, the electoral umpire has offered a general endorsement of the Electoral Bill but made an apparent suggestion to the president to consult with political parties and security agencies over the controversial clause in the bill.
The UK High Commissioner to Nigeria, Catriona Laing, has said Africa and the whole world are eager to see the outcome of Nigerias 2023 general elections.

She said the conduct and outcomes of the polls are important and relevant to democracies in Africa.

Ms Laing stated this at The Convergence 3.0 while addressing over 200 young aspirants vying for different political offices.

The Convergence 3.0 is an initiative of Yiaga Africa and the Not Too Young to Run movement. It is aimed at empowering young candidates with necessary tools for running effective political campaigns ahead of the 2023 general elections.

The two-day event which began on Thursday in Lagos, brought together over 200 young aspirants from the South west region.

In her address, Ms Laing called on political parties in the country to take the registration of youth and women seriously. This, she said, will encourage greater participation of these groups in politics and governance and hoped that such a feat is achieved in the 2023 elections.

She noted that the outcome of the polls is just as important for the world as it is for Nigeria.

You all know in your region where actually democracy is backsliding, this includes West Africa basically One real positive thing about Nigeria is the state of its democracy since 1999, though it has been a little bit of a murky road, you are stuck with it.

The world will be looking at the 2023 elections. Will it be relatively secure, will it be conducted relatively well and will the outcome be the one that the people believe in? she said.

For the National Youth Leader of the All Progressives Congress, Ismaeel Ahmed, The Convergence has provided an opportunity for young people to go into politics and make changes from bottom to the top.

He also assured that the APC is a party for young people.

A former member of the House of Representatives and sponsor of the Not Too Young to Run bill, Tony Nwulu, described the event as an opportunity to create chances for Nigerian youth.

Speaker of the Oyo State House of Assembly, 34 year-old Debo Ogundoyin, informed participants that the journey to political offices is personal.

While he emphasised the need for unity, he admonished aspirants to be determined and driven by passion.

Why the Convergence?

In his remarks, the Executive Director of Yiaga Africa, Samson Itodo, said the event was a call to Nigerian youth to take up leadership positions.

This, he said, will change the narrative with regards to youth participation and inclusion in governance.

We have seen young people alike who have emerged and demonstrated leadership at different levels. Anyone who thinks it is impossible is definitely not ready. We are providing a bold statement with evidence that they are ready.

Young people are saying we are ready and they are demonstrating it and the best that we can do as a civil society is to provide the necessary support, inspiration and solidarity. And we want young people out there to note that you are not alone and as a movement, we will be with you all through the struggle.

Mr Itodo explained that the organisers decided to decentralise the event at regional levels hence the gathering for aspirants in the South-west alone.

He said in February, the Convergence 4.0 will take place in Sokoto State for aspirants in the North-west.
A coalition of 26 civil society organisations (CSOs), and human rights lawyer, Femi Falana, have urged President Muhammadu Buhari to bring to an end the intimidation and harassment of Socio-Economic Rights and Accountability Project (SERAP).

We are seriously concerned that this intimidatory tactic by the government against SERAP solely for peacefully carrying out its mandates illustrates the growing repression of civil society, attacks on journalists, and restriction of civic space in Nigeria, the lawyer and the groups said in a joint statement on Thursday.

They issued the statement to solidarise with SERAP against the backdrop of a recent attack on the organisation by a presidential spokesperson, Garba Shehu.

Mr Shehu had unloaded on SERAP in a piece, accusing it of engaging in divisive, irresponsible, and bare-faced publicity stunts.

Over the years, across different administrations, SERAP, an independent anti-corruption watchdog, has launched various public interest legal battles against the federal government, its agencies and officials, in demand for accountability, and over issues of breaches of the law and rights violations.

Reacting to the latest suits SERAP filed against the Mr Buhari-led administration, Mr Shehu, on December 1, accused the group of making spurious legal claims in court to challenge the government publicly.

It also challenged the group to reveal who funds it.

Falana, 26 groups speak

Mr Falana and the CSOs comprising Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Premium Times Centre For Investigative Journalism (PTCIJ) and 23 other human rights groups, in a joint statement, to end escalating intimidation and aggression towards human rights defenders and journalists.

The group reminded the federal government that its Continuous and increasing attacks and intimidation against civil society organizations, human rights and journalists in the country is antithetical to Nigerias international human rights obligations.

We are concerned that the attack on SERAP is clearly aimed at creating a climate of intimidation against civil society organizations, human rights defenders, and journalists in the country. The targeting of civil society organizations and human rights defenders will have a chilling effect on the promotion and protection of human rights and respect for the rule of law in the country.

The government must strongly condemn the threats, harassment, and intimidation of SERAP and other groups, human rights defenders and journalists and ensure a conducive environment for them to carry out their work and operate freely without any fear of reprisals, statement said.

Some of the signatories to the statement are: Amnesty International Nigeria, Human Rights Watch, Adopt A Goal Initiative, Centre for Democracy and Development (CDD), Women Advocates Research and Documentation Centre (WARDC), Rule of Law and Accountability Advocacy Centre, and Enough is Enough Nigeria (EiE Nigeria).

They also include: Mr Falana, Access to Justice, Sterling Centre for Law & Development, Justice Support Network, Paradigm Initiative, Connected Development (CODE), Prisoners Rehabilitation and Welfare Action (PRAWA), Justice for Peace and Development Initiative, M.H.O.G Foundation, TechHerNG and Sesor.

The rest are Centre for Environment, Human Rights and Development (CEHRD), Baobab for Womens Human Rights, Civil Society Legislative Advocacy Centre (CISLAC), Global Rights, NOPRIN, Alliances for Africa (AfA), Nigerian Feminist Forum (NFF), Centre for Impact Advocacy, Rights Enforcement and Public Law Centre (REPLACE), and Premium Times Centre For Investigative Journalism (PTCIJ).
An Islamic group, Jamaatul Nasrul Islam (JNI), has asked President Muhammadu Buhari to take urgent and decisive steps to end the killings across the country.

The organisation stated this on Thursday in a statement by its secretary, Khalid Aliyu. The statement was in response to the burning of innocent travellers recently by bandits in Sokoto State.

PREMIUM TIMES had reported how many passengers were on Monday morning burnt to death in Sabon Birni Local Government Area of the state.

Although there are conflicting reports regarding the actual number of people killed, the Sokoto State Government put the fugure at 23.

The statement by the JNI comes as many groups amd individuals across the country have called on governmet to put an end to the gruesome killing.

Every part of the country is battling one form of insecurity or the other as dozens are being killed on a daily basis.

In its appeal to the president, the JNI quoted verses of the holy Quran and the constitution, which upholds the sanctity of human life.

The group also said with the manner at which the killings are going on unabated, Nigeria is gradually sliding into a lawless society.

What really is the matter that government has not been able to halt the operations of bandits against innocent citizens particularly in North Western Nigeria?

We are compelled to assume that government seems oblivious to the sufferings and agonies of her citizens as a result of the relentless activities of these bandits.

Nevertheless, JNI condemns in the strongest terms this senseless and barbaric act, along with other equally disheartened bloodletting and carnage. Likewise, all other acts of arson attacks, attempted prison jail breaks, bomb blasts in Oyo, Kogi, Plateau, Yobe and Borno states and many of such irrepressible acts stand condemned by the JNI. But for how long, shall we continue to condemn acts of extreme violence without any concerted efforts in ending them?

Read the full statement:

PRESS RELEASE ON INSECURITY AND THE BURNING OF OVER 40 PEOPLE ALONG SABON BIRNI  SOKOTO ROAD, SOKOTO STATE

The Glorious Quran states unequivocally that whoever kills a soul unless for a soul or for corruption [done] in the land  it is as if he had slain mankind entirely. And whoever saves one  it is as if he had saved mankind entirely. And our messengers had certainly come to them with clear proofs. Then indeed many of them, [even] after that, throughout the land, were transgressors. Q5:32.

Similarly, Allah, the Most High says And do not kill the soul which Allah has forbidden [to be killed] except by [legal] right. This has He instructed you that you may use reason. Q6:151. From these Quranic verses it is forbidden for human life to be killed unjustly, talk-less of burning it. And in all climes, government is essentially in place to protect and safe-guard human life from being killed.

Besides, Chapter 2 of the Nigerian Constitution unambiguously affirms that human life is sacrosanct. It is therefore utterly disgusting, heartrending and unprecedented the waylaying of unarmed innocent and defenseless passengers and their subsequent burning beyond recognition by the heartless and rampaging bandits at Gidan Bawa village in Sabon Birni Local Government Area of Sokoto State.

Yet the government isnt perturbed and no concrete action is seemed to have been taken. Even the media outcry is trifled, compared to similar incidences in other parts of Nigeria.

From all indications, despite the establishment of combined security forces along known routes where bandits operate, they still carry out their dastardly acts freely. Isnt it treacherous and heartless that plying major roads within North West  Nigeria, defenseless citizens are allowed to be flocked into kidnappers den and thereafter, negotiations for ransom payment are initiated?

What is Nigeria turning into? A lawless entity? Amidst the Sabon Birni episode, just this morning (today Thursday, 9th December, 2021), 16 people were reportedly killed in a mosque at Mashegu local government area of Niger state.

What really is the matter that government has not been able to halt the operations of bandits against innocent citizens particularly in North Western Nigeria? We are compelled to assume that government seems oblivious to sufferings and agonies of her citizens as a result of the relentless activities of these bandits.

Nevertheless, JNI condemns in the strongest terms this senseless and barbaric act, along with other equally disheartened bloodletting and carnage. Likewise, all other acts of arson attacks, attempted prison jail breaks, bomb blasts in Oyo, Kogi, Plateau, Yobe and Borno states and many of such irrepressible acts stand condemned by the JNI. But for how long, shall we continue to condemn acts of extreme violence without any concerted efforts in ending them?

For how long, would we continue to remain indifferent? And for how long would we continue to remain hopeless in this precarious situation? The most disturbing dimension of this situation is the apparent governments inability to confront this monstrous trend head-on.

Our position is reinforced by governments inaction to hold erring security officials responsible. In other words, there is a clear essence of lack of accountability, security chiefs and their subordinates appear not to be made to pay for their inaction or irresponsibility.

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We, however, send our heartfelt condolences to the families of the commuters, all officers and men that died in active service, as well as the people and government of Borno, Sokoto, Zamfara, Katsina, Kogi, Oyo, Niger, Kaduna-Abuja Road, Kebbi, Plateau and Yobe States that have suffered in recent times various degrees of violence and Nigeria in general.

We reiterate our calls to the federal government to rise up to its primary cum constitutional responsibility of protecting and securing citizens, and do well beyond condemnation on security related matters. Nigerians are desperately yearning for concrete actions against all forms of criminalities. Silence is not golden given the most unfortunate spate of horrendous butchery of human lives in the Nigerian state.

To further reiterate our principled positions, JNI condemns killings of innocent souls wherever they happen to be and whoever is involved. JNI also condemns the generalization of criminals as representatives of the whole, thus leading to unjust stereotyping and scapegoating. We condemn all criminals, whoever they are and wherever they come from.

A criminal should be treated as a criminal regardless of his/her ethnic or religious affinity.

The Northern Governors Forum should rise above board and collectively end the new normal eroding the heritage of the north. They should learn from their colleagues of the southern extraction. Cases in point are the ongoing debate of the death of a student from Dowen College and the 8 children that were reportedly dead in a Honda Pilot Jeep marked AAA 157 BD, at Adelayo Street, Jah-Machael Area of Olorunda, all in Lagos state. Similarly, the Ondo state Governor stood for its citizens that were murdered in Plateau state some months ago.

OUR PRAYERS

Governments silence over the 1000 Housing Estate bomb blast in Maiduguri, the Jos Prison Break and the burnt commuters along Sabon Birni Sokoto road, not to mention the multitude of carnages in Sokoto  Zamfara axis, calls for serious sober reflection.

Therefore, the federal government should be seen to be proactive on security matters, as well as assure and assuage citizens fears at critical moments of grief. The recurrent security challenges such as kidnappings, armed robberies, rising bomb blasts and attack of Boko Haram cum ISWAP insurgents, in addition to ethnic violence here and there within Nigeria is alarming.

Government needs to wake up as citizens are becoming more and more agitated.

Government should take the bull by the horn by prosecuting promoters of hate speech and tame the rising cases of banditry in Nigeria, otherwise, it will become a norm that cannot be challenged. Government should act fast before we are consumed by these self-inflicted maladies.

Finally, while we continue to express our sincere condolences to all the victims of these unfortunate killings, we are calling on both the politicians and non-governmental organisations to strengthen their cooperation and/or synergy aimed at finding a lasting solution to these spates of killings and destructions.

Dr. Khalid Abubakar Aliyu

Secretary-General, JNI
President Muhammadu Buhari has assured Nigerians and the international community of free and fair elections in 2023 general elections, and peaceful transfer of power.

In his remark at a Virtual Summit for Democracy organised by President Joe Biden of the United States, President Buhari said necessary mechanisms will be strengthened to ensure that Nigeria witnesses another peaceful transfer of power.

As we countdown to our next general elections in 2023, we remain committed to putting in place and strengthening all necessary mechanisms to ensure that Nigeria will not only record another peaceful transfer of power to an elected democratic government, but will also ensure that the elections are conducted in a free, fair and transparent manner.

Your Excellencies, Nigeria will continue to actively support the democratization processes in our region West Africa and the African continent at large. But regrettably, our democratic gains of the past decades are under threats of unconstitutional takeover of power.

This unwholesome trend, sometimes in reaction to unilateral amendments of constitutions by some leaders, must not be tolerated by the international community. Nigeria fully supports the efforts by ECOWAS to address this growing challenge and appreciates the support of both the African Union and the United Nations, he added.

The president said Nigeria continues to face security challenges which pose a threat to democracy, calling on global partners to support our efforts in tackling insurgency and terrorism.

I am proud to state that Nigeria has had over two decades of uninterrupted democratic governance and has unequivocally remained committed to upholding the core values and principles of democracy.

Since assuming office in 2015, we have been able to introduce mechanisms to ensure free, fair and credible elections. We have strengthened our key anti-corruption agencies in collaboration with international partners and have undertaken several anti-corruption measures and initiatives.

President Buhari thanked President Joe Biden, government and people of the United States for hosting the Summit.

As you are aware, democracy has remained the most popular and universally recognised way of governance thus far. It is one governance system that guarantees freedom of speech, rule of law, respect for human rights and inclusiveness in governance. It also promotes social justice, economic and social development and national and global peace.

However, in spite of these laudable qualities, more is required from us as members of democratic societies, particularly in ensuring that democratic institutions and processes are strengthened, particularly during this period of a global pandemic which has threatened social cohesion in most democracies.

We, therefore, must remain resolute and enhance cooperation, so that together, we build back better democratic institutions and sustainable democratic values, the president added.

President Buhari noted that the summit was taking place at a time when democratic institutions around the world were facing several challenges.

This event will help promote a positive agenda for democratic renewal by focusing on some of the major challenges faced by democracies today. It is hoped that through our collective action, we can safeguard democratic values and principles, he said.

The president said the devastating impact of the Covid-19 pandemic, which had made it impossible to convene the meeting face to face, had taken a heavy toll on economies, health and democratic processes around the world.

Nevertheless, we have witnessed the resilience of democratic institutions in many countries that have held free, fair and transparent democratic elections under very challenging conditions.

Femi Adesina

Special Adviser to the President

(Media & Publicity)

December 10, 2021
Two sacked directors of the Nigerian Financial Intelligence Unit (NFIU) have sued the agency at the National Industrial Court in Abuja, praying for an order setting their dismissal from service.

PREMIUM TIMES had reported that the NFIU dismissed the two top officials about 10 months after they were suspended for initiating investigations against a former Vice President, Atiku Abubakar and a former governor of Lagos State, Bola Tinubu.

Mohammed Mustapha, the associate director, Intelligence and Investigation, and Fehintola Salisu, associate director, Compliance and Analysis, were earlier suspended by the NFIU in August 2020, with the agencys Director, Modibbo Hamman-Tukur, accusing them of various forms of misconduct.

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the sacked officials, in their suit marked NICN/ABJ/253/2021, prayed the court in their suit filed on Tuesday to set aside their dismissal from public service on the grounds that it was done in contravention of the law.

In an affidavit in support of their suit, the plaintiffs claimed that their ordeal began in 2020 when they wrote memos to local and foreign authorities after initiating a probe against the former Vice President, Atiku Abubakar.

As the most senior person in the organisation, in the absence of the Director of NFIU, Mr Modibbo Hamman-Tukur, Salisu initiated action to respond to the request for information as expected by the partner organisation in Malta.

Abdulrahman also wrote to investigative authorities in Nigeria requesting for details about the subject, the court document reads in part.

They however, alleged that in separate queries served on them, they were accused of bypassing the appropriate authority before initiating the probe.

They were suspended indefinitely after they were queried in August 2020.

They also said six months after their suspension, they were invited to appear before the Appointments, Promotions and Disciplinary Committee in February 2021 following which they were dismissed from service.

They contended that in its report, the committee indicted them of negligence, dereliction of duty and gross misconduct which they were never confronted with when they were issued queries or appeared before the committee.

The grounds or allegations which the committee found us liable and recommended our dismissal, under Public Service Rules, 2008, can only give rise to a retirement or termination and not dismissal.

Prayers

In the suit filed by their counsel, P.T. Akan, the plaintiffs urged the court determine whether in the light of Rules 030102 of Chapter 3 of the Federal Government Public Service Rules, 2008, the defendants were vested with the power to dismiss the claimants from its services without such power expressly delegated to them by the Federal Civil Service Commission.

They also sought Whether within the meaning and definition of Section 1 of Chapter 16, Rules 160101 and 060102 of the Federal Government Public Service Rules, 2008, NFIU does not qualify as parastatal.

And if it is, whether the defendants are not bound to comply strictly with the provisions of the Public Service Rules, 2008 before dismissing the claimants from its service.

They also prayed the court to make a declaration that their purported dismissal from the Service of the NFIU by the defendants was arbitrary and unlawful and consequently null and void and of no effect whatsoever.

They sought an order directing the defendants to issue a letter recalling and re-instating them into the service of NFIU and restoring all the privileges, entitlements and positions held by the claimants before their purported dismissal by the defendants.

They also sought an order directing the defendants to pay to the claimants salaries, allowances and all their entitlements from the period of their purported dismissal to the period of re-instatement.

(NAN)
An Ikeja High Court has reserved judgment for February 25, 2022, in the case of alleged kidnap kingpin, Chukwudumeme Onwuamadike (alias Evans) and five others charged with conspiracy and kidnapping.

Evans co-defendants are Uche Amadi, Okwuchukwu Nwachukwu, Ogechi Uchechukwu, Chilaka Ifeanyi and Victor Aduba.

The defendants are accused of kidnapping Donatus Dunu, the Managing Director of Maydon Pharmaceuticals Ltd. on February 14, 2017.

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that contrary to false viral online reports, this is the first judgment to be fixed in any of the five kidnapping cases currently involving Evans in the high courts of Lagos State.

Evans is facing trial alongside diverse co-defendants before Justices Hakeem Oshodi of an Ikeja High Court, Oluwatoyin Taiwo of an Ikeja Special Offences Court and Adedayo Akintoye of an Igbosere High Court.

On Friday, Mr Oshodi gave the judgment date after oral submissions of final written addresses by prosecution and defence counsel.

Evanss counsel, Victor Opara (SAN), while making his oral submission, asked the court to discharge and acquit Evans of the two-count charge before it.

In a final written address dated November 1, Mr Opara had said there was no direct evidence linking Evans to the alleged crimes.

He told the court that Mr Dunu, the alleged kidnap victim, said to be blindfolded throughout his 88-day ordeal, did not state to the court in his testimony, that he could physically identify Evans.

There is also the fatality of the prosecutions case that there was no identification parade to identify the first defendant (Evans).

There was no evidence before your lordship to show that PW2 (Dunu) had a clear opportunity of identifying the first defendant  the SAN said.

Lead prosecution counsel, Adebayo Haroun, via a final written address dated November 30, had asked the court to convict the defendants as charged.

On Evans, he said: When a man has confessed to the crime, you do not need an identification parade.

There is direct evidence of PW2 (Dunu) testifying of how he was kidnapped, how he escaped and the roles the defendants, each, played.

We have circumstantial evidence linking the first defendant (Evans) to the crime, and we also have confessional statements and video recordings of him.

We urge your lordship to convict the defendants as charged, Haroun prayed.

NAN reports that the defendants were arraigned before Oshodi on August 31, 2017 on a two-count charge of conspiracy and kidnapping.

According the prosecution, Mr Dunu was kidnapped on Ilupeju Road, Lagos State, and the defendants collected 223,000 Euros as ransom from his family.

Prosecution closed its case against the defendants on January 10, 2020 after presenting four witnesses, including Mr Dunu.

Defence closed its case on August 3, 2020 after the six defendants testified.

During their respective testimonies, all the defendants said that they were innocent.

(NAN)
The Federal High Court in Abuja ruled Friday that the prosecutions evidence presented in the terrorism case involving alleged Taraba State kidnap kingpin, Hamisu Bala, was cogent enough to warrant the defendants to give their answers.

The federal government had, in June 2020, arraigned Hamisu Bala, also known as Wadume, and other six defendants, on amended 13-counts of terrorism, kidnapping and other related offences.

Wadume and the five other defendants had, when the prosecution presented its sixth and last witness in March, opted to open their defence.

But one of the seven defendants in the case, Auwalu Bala, had filed a no-case submission, urging the court to discharge him on the grounds that the prosecutions evidence did not link him to the alleged offences.

Ruling on Mr Auwalus no-case-submission on Friday, the trial judge, Binta Nyako, held that the prosecution had made a prima facie case against the defendant warranting his defence.

Apart from Wadume and Mr Auwalu, other defendants are: Aliyu Dadje (a police Inspector), Uba Bala (aka Uba Delu) Bashir Waziri (aka Baba Runs), Zubairu Abdullahi (aka Basho) and Rayyanu Abdul.

Background

Wadume was first arrested in Ibi, Taraba State, by members of the Intelligence Response Team of the Inspector-General of Police on August 6, 2019 before soldiers led by Tijjani Balarabe, a captain, aided his escape from the custody of the policemen ferrying him to Abuja.

The Mr Balarabe-led troops attached to the 93 Battalion in Takum, Taraba State, had allegedly shot at the policemen who were conveying Wadume to Abuja shortly after arresting the prime suspect in Taraba State on August 6, 2019.

The soldiers were said to have killed three policemen and two civilians while five others were wounded in the attack aimed at freeing Wadume from police custody.

The Attorney-General of the Federation, Abubakar Malami, removed the names of the soldiers as defendants from the case after taking over the suit from the police in July 2020.

The prosecution, led by Shuiabu Labaran, called its sixth and final witness, Ben Anthony, a police investigator in March this year.

Mr Anthony, who was led in evidence by Yetunde Cole, a lawyer in the prosecution team, told the court that he was part of a team that recovered four AK-47 rifles from Wadumes brother Uba Bala at Ibi in Taraba.

At a previous sitting, the fourth prosecution witness in the case, a member of the IRT of the IGP office, Samuel Habila, said Wadume escaped with gunshot wounds to Kano after soldiers aided his escape from the police on August 6, 2019.

He said the kidnap suspect was rearrested during an operation at his uncle, Rayyanu Abduls place in Kano on August 20, 2019.

Charges

The office of the Inspector-General of Police had originally filed 16 counts of terrorism, murder, kidnapping and illegal arms running against Wadume and the others.

They were accused of conspiring to commit felony, to wit: acts of terrorism, by attacking and kidnapping one Usman Garba, aka Mayo, at his filling station in Takum, thereby committing an offence contrary to Section 17 of the Terrorism (Prevention) Amendment Act 2013.

They were also accused of possessing six AK-47 rifles and dealing in prohibited firearms contrary to Section 27 (1)(a)(I) and (1)(b)(iii) of the Firearms Act 2004.

Some soldiers led by Tijjani Balarabe, a captain, were also named in the charges filed by the police.

But Mr Malami, on taking over the case from the police on June 3, removed the soldiers names from the charges.

The action of the AGF was widely condemned as taken against public interest.

Although he promised that the soldiers would be charged after an internal procedure, the promise has yet to be fulfilled.
Femi Otedola, Nigerias one-time third richest man, has upped his stake in FBN Holdings to 7.57 per cent, following a recent acquisition of an additional 2.5 per cent holding in the group, PREMIUM TIMES exclusively gathered.

Shares in FBN Holdings gained 2.59 per cent in Lagos on Friday following the news.

The magnate, whose interests span power generation, oil and gas, real estate and now banking, notified the group managing director of FBN Holdings of his shareholding status in a letter dated Thursday December 9, seen by PREMIUM TIMES.

Now totalling 2.717 billion units, Mr Otedola holds 210 million directly, 1.989 billion through Calvados Global Services Limited, 170 million through Primrose Global Concept, 175 million through Shetland Global, 120 million through Wells Properties and 53 million through Impetus Synergy.

I have recently acquired additional shares in FBN Holdings Plc (the Company) which has brought my total stake to 7.57 per cent of the issued shares capital of the Company, Mr Otedola said in the letter.

Section 120 of the Companies and Allied Matters Act requires that I give notice in writing o the Company stating amongst other things, the particulars of the shares held by me or my nominees by virtue of which I am a substantial shareholder.

The billionaire mogul has been in contention with Tunde-Hassan Odukale, the chair of Nigerias oldest lender FirstBank of Nigeria Limited (a subsidiary of FBN Holdings) for weeks on end over who owns the most shares in the group.

Otedolas smart rise to the top spot of FBN Holdings ownership

The news of Mr Otedolas (until then a rank outsider among the principal owners of the bank) gradual and surreptitious accumulation of the lenders shares broke into the open towards the last week of October in a rude awakening to the investing community.

At that time, he had been purchasing shares in portions then summing up to 1.819 billion, using an indirect holding vehicle named Calvados Global Services Limited.

The deftly orchestrated acquisition was conducted on the secondary market and did not draw the attention of the media and the investment community because it was done in bits until the accumulated shares hit the 5 per cent threshold, at which point he officially informed the NGX authority as regulation demands.

That an external force could cause a big disruption in the top ownership of a corporation as large as FBN Holdings by suddenly becoming the biggest shareholder is a puzzle for the public and an occurrence that has irked other major shareholders.

Never has the chairman of Geregu Power Plc and previously that of the defunct Forte Oil (now Ardova) been known to be among the top shareholders of FBN Holdings until the recent development.

If it were a company that had bought out a majority stake in FBN Holdings in the same fashion Mr Otedola went about his acquisitions, the transaction could have been dubbed a hostile takeover by top shareholders.

Not until the news of Mr Otedolas open declaration came to the fore did it begin to emerge that Mr Hassan-Odukale and related parties now own 5.36 per cent stake, part of that figure from previously undeclared shares.

Mr Hassan-Odukales claim to 1.05 per cent holding belonging to Leadway Pensure PFA (a company majority-owned by the Hassan-Odukales family) as part of the 5.36 per cent has been disputed by authorities like the Nigerian Exchange and National Pension Commission, considering that such an investment, funded from a pool of employees pension contribution, cannot be said to belong to a single individual.

The two largest shareholders are fighting for supremacy. But what we will see is there will be different alignments in terms of faction, a source with market knowledge told PREMIUM TIMES on condition of anonymity.

There will be a lot of internal politics in terms of appointing someone as the chairman because we already have a chairman which is the guy that has 5.35 per cent, thats the Leadway guy (Odukale). So he wont want this guy (Otedola) to displace him.

Before the upset happened, the scramble for the dominant shareholder title had polarised interests across divides on the groups board, which a leadership upheaval in May brought to light.

The race by Mr Otedola to scale up his shareholding had pushed demand for FBN Holdings shares to a record level on the stock exchange, where the volume traded by the stock in the last ten trading days surged to 2.4 billion units, causing an astronomical rise of 65.3 per cent in the share price in the four weeks to October 27.

PREMIUM TIMES learnt Otedola also has an investment worth $30 million (N12.45 billion at Thursdays official exchange rate) in a long-term debt security in First Bank.

Data on the daily transactions in FBN Holdings shares in the last 10 trading days show 1.444 billion units of the groups shares were traded, making it the most active of the 156 stocks listed on the NGX.

Mr Otedola stated in his latest letter to FBN Holdings that he is in the process of getting approvals from regulators including the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) and informing the Corporate Affairs Commission.

The manner of Mr Otedolas latest share purchase followed the former pattern in that he acquired the bulk of the new shares using five different companies and buying only few directly in his own name apparently in order not to draw the attention of rivals.

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That FBN Holdings, whose flagship subsidiary First Bank came close to bankruptcy in 2016 as its bad loan charges surged 90 per cent to N226 billion before the CBN came to its rescue, could beguile a deep-pocketed and astute investor like Mr Otedola into investing several billions of naira in it remains a mystery.

Yet, it could be that Mr Otedola is seeing in the lender what others cannot see.
It is painful that the rulers of the rich countries have once again failed to address the magnitude of the crises we are going through. But a better world is possible, thanks to a growing global movement of people who are challenging governments to make multinationals and the super-rich pay their fair share of taxes. Each country canadopt a much more ambitious tax rate for multinationals Tax justice is not a technical battle, it is a crucial tool for advancing human rights.

Much has been said about the post-pandemic world, the one that would rise from the ashes, in the aftermath of the pandemic, which would be hopefully less materialistic, more sustainable, more supportive, and feminist. But a new wave of infections and the emergence of variants seem to be pushing back this post-COVID-19 dawn once again, and we are entering the third year of the health crisis. As the world commemorates International Human Rights Day on December 10, hypocrisy and cynicism remain the order of the day, particularly on the part of rich countries, which pay lip service to the issue, while at the same time contributing to the denial of basic human rights to the majority of the world population.

COVID-19 is the best example of this. Despite their promises, most Northern states have monopolised and hoarded vaccines. These days, they are turning a deaf ear, while a hundred or so emerging countries, led by South Africa and India, are demanding the lifting of patents on vaccines and treatments against the virus. While intellectual property rights are not the only reason why barely 7 per cent of Africans are fully vaccinated, they certainly are a major obstacle. This selfishness regarding access to vaccines is not only morally outrageous, but also already coming back like a boomerang to hit rich countries, as new variants emerge.

The other lamentable image of this end of 2021 is the increasing number of migrant tragedies at the gates of Poland, in the Mediterranean, in the English Channel, or at the border between Mexico and the United States. Here again, the leaders of the rich countries pretend to forget that while economic recovery is evident in their own countries, it is still to come in the developing world, which has suffered an explosion of poverty since the start of the pandemic, forcing hundreds of thousands of people into exile. An estimated 97 million more people are living on less than US$1.90 a day as a result of the pandemic, and another 163 million are living on less than US$5.50 a day. Three to four years of progress towards eradicating extreme poverty have been utterly lost.

Negotiations led by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, the OECD, without really listening to developing countries, have only resulted in the introduction of a 15 per cent tax on multinationals. This will only generate US$150 billion in additional tax revenue, which will, moreover, go primarily to rich countries. An additional US$250 billion could have been raised with a 21 per cent rate

Far from the headlines, a recent news item highlights the double talk of the major powers: the reform of the taxation of multinationals. After two years of negotiations, an agreement was adopted at the beginning of October, with the introduction of a global tax on corporate profits as its key measure. The aim? To put an end to the devastating competition between states in terms of corporate taxation, which is causing a hemorrhage of resources at the expense of funding for rights such as access to water, health, education, or vaccines. At least US$483 billion in tax revenue is lost each year to tax abuse by multinationals and wealthy individuals. This would be enough to cover more than three times the cost of a full COVID-19 vaccine regimen for the entire world population.

The world will continue to be deprived of these funds. Negotiations led by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, the OECD, without really listening to developing countries, have only resulted in the introduction of a 15 per cent tax on multinationals. This will only generate US$150 billion in additional tax revenue, which will, moreover, go primarily to rich countries. An additional US$250 billion could have been raised with a 21 per cent rate, for example, or even US$500 billion, with a 25 per cent rate, as advocated by ICRICT, the Independent Commission for the Reform of International Corporate Taxation, of which I am a member, along with such figures as Joseph Stiglitz, Thomas Piketty, Jayati Ghosh, and Jose Antonio Ocampo.

Here again, the leaders of rich countries are concerned about the extent of tax evasion but remain convinced that the best way to serve their national interest is to submit to the injunctions of multinationals and the demands of tax havens. Most of these tax havens are not small islands lined with coconut palms: OECD countries are responsible for 78 per cent of the annual tax losses worldwide to multinationals and the richest. The most hypocritical country is the U.K., which, with its network of overseas territories and Crown Dependencies, is responsible for 39 per cent of global losses.

Continuing to tolerate tax avoidance and tax evasion by most multinationals and the richest, and consequently depriving states of additional resources, is a direct attack on human rights. Without these funds, it is impossible to restore the health systems that have fought heroically against the virus

Continuing to tolerate tax avoidance and tax evasion by most multinationals and the richest, and consequently depriving states of additional resources, is a direct attack on human rights. Without these funds, it is impossible to restore the health systems that have fought heroically against the virus  thousands of doctors and nurses have lost their lives  despite their meagre resources, which are constantly under attack by austerity programmes. It is also impossible to give a future to all the children out of school during and due to the pandemic  99 per cent of children in Latin America, for example, were out of school for a whole year, and an estimated 3.1 million of them are out of school forever.

Without additional funds, it is also impossible to finance infrastructure, provide access to water or sanitation, or to daycares and nursing homes, all of which continues to increase the workload of women, who are the first victims of the pandemic. Finally, it is impossible to deal with the climate emergency, as the increase in natural disasters is depriving entire populations of shelter and food.

It is painful that the rulers of the rich countries have once again failed to address the magnitude of the crises we are going through. But a better world is possible, thanks to a growing global movement of people who are challenging governments to make multinationals and the super-rich pay their fair share of taxes. Each country can, if it wishes, unilaterally adopt a much more ambitious tax rate for multinationals, starting with the Europeans. The ripple effect on the others will be inescapable. Tax justice is not a technical battle, it is a crucial tool for advancing human rights.

Magdalena Sepulveda is Executive Director of the Global Initiative for Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and a member of the Independent Commission on International Corporate Tax Reform (ICRICT). From 2008-2014 she was the UN Rapporteur on Extreme Poverty and Human Rights.@Magda_Sepul
There is no gainsaying that Nigeria-South Africa relations have experienced a roller coaster ride from the antagonistic relations during South Africas apartheid era and Nigerias military epoch in the post-apartheid era to more friendly relations, particularly in the time of the Obasanjo-Mbeki administrations. Given the fact that their relations are critical to continental peace, democracy, Pan-Africanism and regional integration, it is crucial for these regional powers to shelve competition and cooperate on many levels.

South African President Cyril Ramaphosas state visit to Nigeria as part of his four-state tour of West Africa  running through Nigeria, Ghana, Cote dIvoire and Senegal  amidst the upsurge in the COVID-19 variant, Omicron, in South Africa represented a bid to rejuvenate bilateral relations with these countries (especially Nigeria, the largest economy in Africa). The visit coincided with the 10th session and 20th anniversary of the Nigeria-South Africa Bi-National Commission (established in 1999 to strengthen bilateral relations), highlighting the successes, challenges and prospects of trade and investment between the two states. This is critical in light of the fact that aside from their significance as two of the largest economies and arguably the most powerful countries on the continent, the volume of trade between them is remarkable. In 2020, Nigeria accounted for 64 per cent of South Africas trade in West Africa and Nigeria was South Africas top import market in Africa and sixth globally, only behind China, Germany, the United States, India and Saudi Arabia. Furthermore, more than 120 South African companies are operating in Nigeria.

In his address, Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari highlighted the need for stronger people-people relations between the states in a bid to shelve the unhealthy competition that has characterised Nigeria-South Africa relations. He noted that the Early Warning Mechanism agreed upon would enhance such relations and that the Nigeria-South Africa Youth dialogue would soon be inaugurated. Buhari added that relations between the two countries are critical for Africas socio-economic, technological and cultural development, as well as peace and security on the continent.

Expressing his gratitude for his warm reception, Ramaphosa noted that Nigeria and South Africa had reviewed existing and signed new agreements, including a Memorandum of Understanding on youth development, women and child empowerment and political consultations, and agreements on audiovisual, arts and culture cooperation towards enhancing people-people relations. A Joint Ministerial Advisory Council on Trade, Investment and Industry was also launched in a bid to enhance economic relations and mitigate challenges to doing business in both countries.

Indeed, closer attention to people-to-people relations is critical. While the emphasis has been on the free movement of goods and capital, the free movement of people and cultural integration has been undermined. The focus on goods and capital versus people has engendered increasing investment on the one hand and xenophobia on the other.

There is no gainsaying that Nigeria-South Africa relations have experienced a roller coaster ride from the antagonistic relations during South Africas apartheid era and Nigerias military epoch in the post-apartheid era to more friendly relations, particularly in the time of the Obasanjo-Mbeki administrations. Given the fact that their relations are critical to continental peace, democracy, Pan-Africanism and regional integration, it is crucial for these regional powers to shelve competition and cooperate on many levels. Aside from the people-people relations emphasised by both presidents, three key areas require immediate attention to strengthen the Abuja-Pretoria axis, namely, state-state relations, academic collaboration and celebrity collaboration.

Indeed, closer attention to people-to-people relations is critical. While the emphasis has been on the free movement of goods and capital, the free movement of people and cultural integration has been undermined. The focus on goods and capital versus people has engendered increasing investment on the one hand and xenophobia on the other. It is therefore important for Nigeria and South Africa to curtail xenophobia and encourage people-to-people relations.

In terms of state-state relations, South Africa should work towards inviting Nigeria to join the BRICS as a Nigeria-South Africa partnership in this grouping will be a stronger force to promote African interests. Beyond rhetoric, the countries should strive to provide a more enabling environment for their companies in their respective states. While more than 120 South African companies operate in Nigeria, including multinationals like MTN and Standard Bank, Nigeria only has a few multinational companies in South Africa. Both sides have often complained about debilitating state policies that undermine investments. It is therefore important that the governments of these states coordinate their policies to increase the influx of multinational companies in both directions. They should also explore the potential of city-city relationships, especially the Lagos-Johannesburg axis. Given that these cities are the economic hubs of their respective states, extensive relations between them could reinforce Nigeria-South Africa relations.

Given the popularity of Nigerian and South African music and movies, there is an opportunity for the celebrities of both countries to collaborate to enhance Nigeria-South Africa relations Nigeria and South Africa can take advantage of this opportunity by deploying celebrity diplomacy to promote their respective national interests and enhance their relations.

It is also important for academics  especially those in the fields of international relations and economics  from both countries to engage in collaborative research that provides evidence-based results on the potential, successes and challenges of Nigeria-South Africa relations. This would enhance mutual understanding and relations and their implications for Africa. Research collaboration between the two countries would inform policy choices in their bilateral relations and, by extension, relations with other countries on the continent. It would also assist in highlighting the comparative advantage of each country and corresponding policy imperatives and showcase the cultures of both, highlighting areas of similarity and difference. All these factors could improve relations between arguably the most critical states in Africa.

Given the popularity of Nigerian and South African music and movies, there is an opportunity for the celebrities of both countries to collaborate to enhance Nigeria-South Africa relations. While there have been a few collaborations such as Nigerian Burna Boy and South African AKA, Nigerian Niniola and South African Busiswa, Nigerian Davido and South African Nasty C and Nigerian Wizkid and South African DJ Maphorisa, there is room for more collaboration. Nigeria and South Africa can take advantage of this opportunity by deploying celebrity diplomacy to promote their respective national interests and enhance their relations.

Oluwaseun Tella is Director, The Future of Diplomacy at the University of Johannesburgs Institute for the Future of Knowledge, South Africa.
In the name of Allah, the Beneficent, the Merciful

All Praise is due to Allah, We praise Him and we seek help from Him. We ask forgiveness from Him. We repent to Him; and we seek refuge in Him from our own evils and our own bad deeds. Anyone who is guided by Allah is indeed guided; and anyone who has been left astray, will find no one to guide him. I bear witness that there is no god but Allah, the Only One without any partner; and I bear witness that Muhammad (Peace be upon him), is His servant, and His Messenger.

O You who believe,  Be aware of Allah, with correct awareness, an awe-inspired awareness, and die not except as Muslims.

O You who believe,  Be aware of Allah, and speak a straightforward word. He will forgive your sins and repair your deeds. And whoever takes Allah and His Prophet as a guide, has already achieved a mighty victory.

O mankind! Show reverence towards your Guardian-Lord Who created you from a single person, created, of like nature, his mate and from the two of them scattered (like seeds) countless men and women. Be conscious of Allah, through Whom you demand your mutual (rights) and (show reverence towards) the wombs (that bore you): for surely, Allah always watches over you.

To proceeds:

Dear brothers and sisters! Know that in hardships and calamities, it is natural to get swept away by the affliction of the moment. During such trials of faith, unless we are careful, Shaitan (Satan) can inject fear and plant doubts in our hearts and minds.

Our beliefs in such vulnerable states may become overpowered by feelings of the moment resulting in the dwindling of our faith. Some of us start questioning the fairness and wisdom underlying such divine decisions while others get mired in a blame game. All in all, we may find ourselves lost, helpless, and stalled finding it difficult to gather ourselves and move forward.

For such situations specifically and others in general, Islam teaches us to stay in control by hanging on to the Mercy and Grace of Allah. We pray that Allah keeps us safe from the challenges and trials of life, but as Muslims we should know and understand Qurans message and the Prophets guidance for handling tough and hard moments in life. The following summarises some of the key guidance related to this matter:

(1) Do not feel helpless: Even when all doors appear to have been closed, as true believers we should never let feelings of helplessness succumb us. Consider the following Hadith of the Prophet (Peace be upon him) and Imam Ibn Al-Qayyims commentary on that Hadith:

It was narrated from Abu Hurairah (may Allah be pleased with him) that the Prophet (Peace be upon him) said: The strong believer is better and more beloved to Allah than the weak believer, although both are good. Strive to do that which will benefit you and seek the help of Allah, and do not feel helpless. If anything befalls you, do not say If only I had done (such and such), the such and such would have happened, rather say: Allah has decreed and what He wills He does, for if only opens the door to the work of the Shaitan. [Muslim]

Imam Ibn al-Qayyim (may Allah have mercy on him) said:

This Hadith includes several important principles of faith, including the following: Do not feel helpless: Feeling helpless is contrary to striving for that which will benefit him, and it is contrary to seeking the help of Allah. The one who strives for that which will benefit him and seeks the help of Allah is the opposite of the one who feels helpless, so this is telling him, before what has been decreed happens, of that which is one of the greatest means of attaining it, which is striving for it whilst seeking the help of the One in Whose hand is control of all things, from Whom they come and to Whom they will return. If he does not attain what was not decreed for him, then he may feel either of two things: Helplessness, which opens the door to the work of the Shaitan (Satan), so his sense of helplessness leads him to say if only, but there is nothing good in saying if only in this case, rather that opens the door to blame, panic, discontentment, regret and grief, all of which are the work of the Shaitan (Satan). The Prophet (Peace be upon him) forbade us to open the door to his works in this manner, and told us to adopt the second option, which is looking at the divine decree and bearing it in mind, for if it was decreed for him it would never have missed him and no one could have prevented him from attaining it. Hence he said: If anything befalls you, do not say If only I had done (such and such), the such and such would have happened, rather say: Allah has decreed and what He wills He does, and he taught him that which will benefit him in either case, whether he gets what he wanted or not. Hence this Hadith is one which a person can never do without. [Shifa Al-Alil, page 37-38]

(2) Revive your faith: As mentioned in the Hadith above, a strong faith can help us to hold our heads high. When faith seems to be dwindling, we should get back to Quran and remind ourselves that only Allah can let us out of our ordeal and problems. You must, therefore, keep that faith and not let Shaitan (Satan) instill thoughts that could weaken your faith. Allah says in the Quran:

If Allah helps you, none can overcome you; and if He forsakes you, who is there after Him that can help you? And in Allah (Alone) let believers put their trust. [Quran, 3:160]

A strong faith can keep you focused on the fact that Allah alone ultimately controls all destinies and has power over all things. Remembering that fact alone at the moment of affliction can help you in conquering the pain and provide you hope and the energy to keep moving forward.

(3) Believe in the divine decree: When facing difficulties, our weak faith can sometimes drive us to question the fairness of it all. In this context, we should remind ourselves that believing in Al-Qadr (Allahs divine will and decree) is one of the pillars of Islamic faith. As the Prophet (Peace be upon him) said: It means belief in:

1. Allah

2. His Angels

3. His revealed Noble Books (Quran, Bible, Torah and Zabur)

4. His Messengers

5. Day of Judgment and

6. To believe in Al-Qadar (the divine decree) both good and bad.

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As part of that belief, we should, therefore, recognise that Allah does what He wills for reasons that are only known to Him. Any attempt to comprehend the wisdom of it all using our limited faculties, or to understand how our current situation fits in His overall plan can only lead us to erroneous conclusions resulting in increased frustrations.

We, as Muslims, should accept Allahs Decree both as it manifests itself around us and in our lives. It should be a relief to us that only Allah is the master of our destiny and we are only going to be tested about whether we reacted to what befalls as true believers and Mumins, i.e. being patient in adversity and grateful in prosperity.

(4) Ask for Allahs Mercy and Grace for an overcoming of tough and hard situations: As believers we should recognise that only Allahs Grace and Mercy can deliver us from challenging situations. Allah tells us in the Quran:

Then after that you turned away. Had it not been for the Grace and Mercy of Allah upon you, indeed you would have been among the losers. [Quran, 2:64]

Another way to ask for Allahs Grace and Mercy is by asking for His forgiveness and seeking repentance. Allah tells us in the Quran:

And Seek the forgiveness of your Lord, and turn to Him in repentance, that He may grant you good enjoyment, for a term appointed, and bestow His abounding Grace to every owner of grace (i.e. the one who helps and serves needy and deserving, physically and with his wealth, and even with good words). But if you turn away, then I fear for you the torment of a Great Day (i.e. the Day of Resurrection). [Quran, Surah Al-Hud: 3]

(5) Stay patient in hard times: One of the best remedies for tough and hard times is to be patient. It requires that we do not resort to complaining, but remember Allah often.

(6) Remember Allah in ease: We know from the Quran that when we remember Allah in good times, Allah will help and remember us in tough and hard times. We learn that lesson from the story of Prophet Yunus (Peace be upon him) when he was swallowed by a whale. Out of His mercy, Allah finally relieved him out of that calamity. He tells us in the Quran:

Had he not been of them who glorify Allah, he would have indeed remained inside its belly (the fish) till the Day of Resurrection. [Quran, Surah As-Saffat: 143-144]

(7) Taking action and following the right, proper and sincere ways to bring an end to our problems: Every individual in this world wants comfortable life, they want smooth relationships, they want enough money so that they can live comfortably, they can have their own house, car and enough money to enjoy their yearly or monthly vacations. But to have all this just a dream or plan or vision towards your work isnt enough. To have this kind of life the most important thing which is required is Action. Action will give you what you always desire about, in order to get your desire outcome you need to take action. Taking action isnt difficult, only the first step towards your success journey can be little difficult, because that first step will move you out from your comfort zone.

No matter how small baby step you take towards your success journey, the thing which is really important is that step, because that step will going to be your action towards your dream and vision. No matter how knowledgeable and intelligent person you are, but if you do not take action towards that knowledge you will never see the success and accomplishments. For example, no matter how intelligent student you are, but during exams without studying you will never able to top or score good, hence similarly if you want desire outcome you need to work hard and you need to take action. Always remember hard work and actions will always pay you back that too with debt.

As it says In order to get success You need to take action because of knowledge + action = result. If you apply continuous actions to your knowledge you will get a result more faster and this will make your life beautiful and satisfied. Even the smallest action in your life can bring a huge difference. To improve every aspect of your life action is must. To improve your action quality you need to improve your belief system and when belief system changes believe changes and when to believe changes you get a positive outcome. Let me share some points which will show how important taking action is in your life:

1. Action gives Satisfaction: Suppose you go to a restaurant and you get confused whether to have same old thing which you always have or should try something new, and you also get confused like if I try that something new then of it tastes awful then my money will be wasted, but your confusion will not go until and unless you dont try it. I know this isnt the best example but hope you got my point, ones you try that something new only then you will know the answer, like whether its good or bad, and this knowledge will give you satisfaction and from next time you will make more wise decisions and choices.

Hence I am here trying to say that until and unless you dont take action towards your confusions you will not get your answer, another example, suppose your class teacher asks a question and you know its answer, but just because you are shy and feel if you go wrong what will other say, and because of such thinking you ignore taking action, you ignore to stand in front of the class, and that same answer is given by someone else and after that you regret like I should have given, and this thing will make you feel sad and upset, hence instead of thinking so much if you would have taken action towards your confusion then you must have felt satisfied, no matter if that answer would come up as right or wrong, you would have felt satisfied.

Hence take action towards your confusion, no matter whether you go right or wrong, at least you will get satisfaction.

2. Actions make your information real: If you read any book or any motivational article tips and get lot of information from it, so what do you think will that information change your life. No, it wont until you dont use that information and knowledge in real life by taking action, your action along with information and knowledge can change your life. Reading books can give you way but you need to take action in order to walk on that way, hence Actions make your information real, means your information and knowledge works in wonders only when you take action towards it.

For example, if you have knowledge related to business or real estate, but instead of using that knowledge towards your success, you feel like hiding it from the world and like to stay at home, then this kind of thinking will not work in your favour, instead if you take action and use that knowledge and information is some good particular direction then you will get success.

3. Action clear your confusion: You will never know what technique and tips do work and dont work for you if you never try in real, in order to change your life you need to take numerous actions, this massive actions will help you to understand life and techniques more properly and nicely, this numerous actions will clear your confusion will make you understand what tips techniques work and doesnt work for you, and while understanding each thing clearly you will get time to focus on things which really works for you and through this you will also get your clear vision and passion.

4. Continuous Action = Habit: Just by doing something for one day or for few days will not bring any serious change in your life. You must know that success and changes are a continuous process, and just one day action will not bring any major difference in your life, hence if you want to replace your bad habits with good ones, you need to take action regularly daily, only then your mind will make place for that particular change, for example, if you want to stay fit then one day action of doing meditation of exercise will not help you to stay fit, you need to take action regularly, you need to exercise daily only then major difference will able to become evident.

5. Actions give accomplishment and success: Reading books will help to learn new things, will give you way vision and also can make you knowledgeable person, but in order to use that knowledge and information so that can accomplish what you always desire of you need to take action, every accomplishment comes with an Action, Your actions towards the right direction will give you massive success, Success without Action is a Myth. Every accomplishment needs action, and every action gives success.

Respected servants of Allah! Muslims will endure many trials and tribulations throughout their lives. Allah tests us with hardship and also prosperity in order to validate the sincerity of our faith. Allah Almighty said:

It is he who created death and life to test which of you are best in deed, for he is the Almighty, the Forgiving. [Quran, 67:2]

In all cases, trials and tribulations can be good for the true believer. If he is tested with prosperity, he should remain grateful and he will receive a reward. If he is tested with hardship, he should remain patient and he will receive a reward. Suhaib reported that: The Messenger of Allah (Peace be upon him) said:

Wondrous is the affair of the believer for there is good for him in every matter and this is not the case with anyone except the believer. If he is happy, then he thanks Allah and thus there is good for him. If he is harmed, then he shows patience and thus there is good for him. [Muslim]

Trials and tribulations can be a sign that Allah intends good for us, because through trials our sins are expiated and we have the opportunity to perform good deeds. Abu Hurairah reported that: The Messenger of Allah (Peace be upon him) said:

If Allah intends good for someone, then he afflicts him with trials. [Al-Bukhari]

Mahmud Ibn Labid reported that: The Messenger of Allah (Peace be upon him) said:

If Allah loves a people, then he afflicts them with trials. Whoever is patient has the reward of patience, and whoever is impatient has the fault of impatience. [Musnad of Imam Ahmad]

All praises and thanks are due to Allah alone, Lord of the worlds. May the peace, blessings and salutations of Allah be upon our noble Messenger, Muhammad, and upon his family, his Companions and his true and sincere followers.

Murtadha Muhammad Gusau is the Chief Imam of Nagazi-Uvete Jumuah and the late Alhaji Abdur-Rahman Okenes Mosques, Okene, Kogi State, Nigeria. He can be reached via: gusauimam@gmail.com or +2348038289761.

This Jumuah Khutbah (Friday sermon) was prepared for delivery today, Friday, Jimadah Ula 5th, 1443 A.H. (December 10, 2021).
One critical component, which the Sokoto of old and the Zamfara of today share is the unclear nature of both policy setting and policy reversal. Back then, promises were made, dispensed with and lives were altered in the process In the present day, Zamfaras governors office justified the reversal of the communications blackout by citing encouraging reports of peace returning to the state after military operations against the bandits.

In 1962, Nigeria decided to dam the River Niger. The area chosen was the part around the cataracts where Mungo Park died. After the architects, Balfour Beatty, finished the plans, it became clear that the ancient town of Bussa, the capital of the Bariba people, would be flooded. Plans were made, and it was decided that the entire town of Bussa would be rebuilt elsewhere before the dam was filled. Thus, New Bussa came about, and the people of Bussa were relocated before the Kainji Dam became operational in 1968.

But there was a problem.

The construction of the dam destroyed valuable farmland, and New Bussa was not as fertile as Bussa. The locals thus essentially became peasants. Money that was voted for compensation did not make it to those it was meant for. Essentially, a very Nigeria story in 1968!

Thus, it was that without any irony, the very next year (1969), the government decided to build another dam, about 500 kilometres away in Bakolori, in what is now Zamfara State. Resettlement of the natives started in 1973, and construction started in 74. Then problems arose. The same issues with New Bussa crept up, but the people couldnt really protest, because it was a military government in power. But construction, meant to end in 1978, was delayed.

Then the government changed in 1979, and so in November 1979, convinced of their democratic rights, the people of Bakolori went to demonstrate at Government House, Sokoto, in front of Governor Shehu Kangiwa, who promised to address their grievances promptly. So they waited, and waited, and waited

In democratic societies that are liable to changes in leadership, certainty and continuity in policymaking is critical to building trust with the electorate. When people are acculturated to expect arbitrariness from their leaders, arbitrariness becomes entrenched as a fundamental norm of society.

Days turned to weeks, and weeks turned to months, and it became clear that Governor Kangiwa had forgotten about them, so they decided to block the construction site, and all hell broke loose. A detachment of the police moved in and removed the protestors by force. Many died. The people of Bakolori said that 380 of their people were killed that day, but the government said that only 25 were killed. It promptly proceeded to build the dam.

New Bussa and Bakolori are emblematic of a repetitive dynamic that almost every Nigerian government at every level  central, state and local  has reprised over and again. Respect for continuum in governance is near absent. In democratic societies that are liable to changes in leadership, certainty and continuity in policymaking is critical to building trust with the electorate. When people are acculturated to expect arbitrariness from their leaders, arbitrariness becomes entrenched as a fundamental norm of society.

Nigerian history is replete with instances where a new government from a different (or even the same) political party replaces an incumbent and shutters, alters or altogether obliterates ongoing programmes and policies, regardless of present needs, real or potential merits and perceived value. A lot of those efforts have been accompanied by the brutal and violent suppression of opposing and critical voices advocating for the contrary. Social disruption and economic suffering are the attendant consequences.

Before that and earlier this year, the Zamfara government unexpectedly banned all trade in livestock across the State, although it partially reversed itself by approving the reopening of seven weekly markets. Two separate policy decisions on the same issue. Two full or partial reversals. The cost in human lives and well-being: Probably incalculable but costly.

This is by no means a relic of history. Kaduna and Zamfara just reversed an ill-advised and poorly designed shutdown of telecommunications services in parts of their States in order to check the activities of well resourced and deadly armed gangs in the region. Despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, the two States, as well as Katsina and Sokoto (which from all indications still maintains their blackouts) cut off large portions of their residents from the rest of the country and the world in September to address a problem of which a communications blackout is but a tangential part of the solution.

Before that and earlier this year, the Zamfara government unexpectedly banned all trade in livestock across the State, although it partially reversed itself by approving the reopening of seven weekly markets. Two separate policy decisions on the same issue. Two full or partial reversals. The cost in human lives and well-being: Probably incalculable but costly. An SBM Intelligence survey, for example, showed at least 18 per cent of wage earners in the region have seen their earnings drop or obliterated as a result of the telephony shutdown.

One critical component, which the Sokoto of old and the Zamfara of today share is the unclear nature of both policy setting and policy reversal. Back then, promises were made, dispensed with and lives were altered in the process. And the dam never delivered the desired boost to agricultural production in the region. In the present day, Zamfaras governors office justified the reversal of the communications blackout by citing encouraging reports of peace returning to the state after military operations against the bandits. Two days after the triumphalist press conference, a group of bandits threatened the Christian community in the State with attacks if churches do not stop worship services. In response, the Christian Association Nigeria (CAN) in the State directed all churches not to hold church activities beyond 5 p.m. for the next three months.

So much for not repeating history.

Cheta Nwanze is a partner at SBM Intelligence.
Digital technology is gradually making an incursion into the judiciary to enhance greater efficiency and convenience in the administration of the justice system by helping to remove some of the limitations in the old way it functioned.

In all societies, the judiciary is an important pillar of the governmental system. It is the organ of government that settles disputes that arise between individuals and groups, or individuals/groups and government.

Comprising courts, the judiciary safeguards the rights of individuals, arbitrates over issues, or interprets and protects a countrys body of laws, while upholding equality and fairness among citizens.

The judiciary has the responsibility to sustain efficiency, effectiveness, and the timely delivery of justice to all members of society, regardless of their statuses.

Digital technology is gradually making an incursion into the judiciary to enhance greater efficiency and convenience in the administration of the justice system by helping to remove some of the limitations in the old way it functioned.

Several manual procedures in courts have been phased out and replaced by digital/electronic processes in North America, Europe, and a few Middle East countries like Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, while China is expected to digitalise its courtrooms by 2025.

The maintenance of court records, filing of pleadings and orders, and the emergence of state-of-the-art courtrooms for the presentation of evidence are important aspects of the judicial system that have been impacted by digital technology.

Nigerians are full of anticipation as they look forward to the eventual commencement of virtual court proceedings in all correctional centres across the federation.

Their expectations are based on the announcement by the Attorney General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, Abubakar Malami, to the effect that a pilot of the virtual court proceedings will hold in the Kuje Correctional Centre, Abuja this week.

It is a creditable effort aimed at improving the efficiency and speed of the delivery of justice by leveraging the transformative powers of digital technology to facilitate the ongoing reforms in the administration of justice.

Malami revealed that this strategic initiative by his office, in collaboration with the Presidential Committee on Correctional Reforms and Decongestion, to enable the taking of the evidence of suspects without their physical presence in court is in order to avoid delays in the justice system.

Also, this forms part of steps to the implementation of the Post-COVID-19 Justice Sector Plan of the Federal Government, which is geared towards building lasting reforms in the criminal justice sector in Nigeria.

It is a creditable effort aimed at improving the efficiency and speed of the delivery of justice by leveraging the transformative powers of digital technology to facilitate the ongoing reforms in the administration of justice.

But the reluctance of the justice sector to adopt innovations had contributed to the perception by the masses that access to justice is reserved only for the well-to-do, and influential members of the public.

In recognition of this negative image, the Minister of Communications and Digital Economy, Mr Isa Pantami had advised the judiciary to deploy artificial intelligence (AI) and other emerging technologies to achieve the speedy dispensation of justice in our courts.

Speaking at a recent seminar on Banking and Related matters for Judges, Pantami emphasised the need for judges to acquire digital skills and leverage technology to provide efficient and the expeditious delivery of justice to decongest courts, Police stations, and correctional facilities.

We live in a world that is increasingly integrated with technology, and it is very difficult to separate our online life and offline life, and everything we do is being captured, processed, and stored by these big tech companies. We need to utilise our time to develop new ideas that will improve our court proceedings.

Before, humans can think and make decisions but today we have systems that can make decisions like the way we do by using available data. Artificial Intelligence has powers, and these powers can be used against or for social justice, criminal justice and many more, so we need to design a system with legal minds that can solve courts challenges, Pantami advised.

Nigerians are anxiously awaiting the virtual court proceedings to commence because digital justice would offer courts archiving and retrieval systems for searching, analysing, and storing legal documents that would boost efficiency, transparency, save cost and make it easy to access and use information conveniently.

Speaking at a different forum in September, the Director-General of the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA), Inuwa Kashifu Abdullahi, had drawn the attention of lawyers to the imperative of adopting AI in their practices

Abdullahi told young lawyers at The Young Wigs Conference in Kano to fashion out ways of using technology to augment and facilitate th seamless analysis of documents, better resource management, and up-to-date levels of customer/client experiences.

He, therefore, challenged the young wigs to explore available opportunities as sources of inspiration to consider innovative ways on how AI could be deployed to boost legal services and help clients accordingly.

The successful implementation of the virtual court proceedings project would require the collective efforts of NITDA, the Ministry of Justice, Ministry of Interior, and other relevant agencies/institutions, as well as civil society organisations.

Adequate digital infrastructure must be developed to ensure the availability of good internet connectivity and wifi, otherwise, the virtual court proceedings will not achieve the desired goal.

Additionally, of greater importance is the need to expose judges and other staff to training on the use of digital technologies to enable them to utilise these tools effectively.

If properly implemented, this innovative deployment of technology, would, to a large extent, reduce the high volume of pending cases, cut trial length, enhance accessibility to judicial services, and significantly improve the pace and quality of justice in Nigeria.

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Nigerians are anxiously awaiting the virtual court proceedings to commence because digital justice would offer courts archiving and retrieval systems for searching, analysing, and storing legal documents that would boost efficiency, transparency, save cost and make it easy to access and use information conveniently.

Inyene Ibanga writes from Wuye District, Abuja.
The victory of Castro is the triumph of principles, commitment and an unconquerable spirit, which in the face of seeming hopelessness, refused to accept defeat. Despite the years of struggle, blood and toil, the electoral victory may be the easiest, as an expectant populace looks up to an economically-challenged country.

The Madam Xiomara Castro Zelaya tsunami that swept away the narcotic-centred political structures in Honduras on November 28, was a dozen years in the making. The ex-protest leader and former First Lady is not only set to become her countrys first female President, but the Liberty and Refoundation (Libre) Party she leads, which emerged out of the protest movement, is set to be the first party to win election in a century, outside the two dominant parties, the conservative National Party of Honduras and the Liberal Party of Honduras.

The stakes in the election were quite high, as a victory for the new party was bound to not only sweep away the old structures, but have after effects that are likely to be far-reaching. First, the Honduras military, which twelve years ago had abducted Castros husband, President Manuel Zelaya, and thrown him out, is likely to undergo reforms. Secondly, the outgoing leadership and the old ruling partys leaders are likely to face drug trafficking and corruption charges after leaving office. The hope of outgoing President Juan Orlando Hernandez not to be stripped of his immunity and extradited to the United States, had laid in his party retaining power, which is no longer the case. The Southern District of New York, SDNY, had indicted Hernandez of sponsoring a drug trafficking cartel, while his younger brother, Juan Antonio Hernandez, is presently serving a life sentence in a U.S. federal jail for smuggling cocaine. Certainly, a new party that wants a new beginning for the country would not want to shield President Hernandez.

Although Castro and her husband are quite wealthy, yet they side with the working people. So, the small group of elites who have benefited immensely since Honduras was a Spanish colony, centuries ago, would not want a power shift, which is what Castro promises. She also wants to introduce Hugo Chavez-like subsidies in the country.

Although the U.S. has recognised her victory, it is like someone being forced to choose between the devil and the deep blue sea; America would want more resources expended on Hondurans, hoping this will stem their tide of mass migration towards its territory, but it will be uncomfortable with the President-elects socialist policies. Also, if Castro is to continue the foreign policy of her husbands administration, Honduras is likely to join the radical coalition of Venezuela, Cuba and Nicaragua. Already, Madam Castro has indicated a change of foreign policy, in which Honduras would abandon diplomatic relations with Taiwan in favour of China.

Castro was thrown into the cesspool of politics in 2009 when the Supreme Court teamed up with the army and conservative elites to overthrow her husband, President Manual Zelaya, who was in the third year of his four-year presidency. The elites, uncomfortable with the radical politics of one of their own, sought ways of ousting him.

On the morning of the plebiscite, masked soldiers abducted President Zelaya, put him on an aircraft and dumped him in Costa Rica. The masses rose in support of the ousted president and he boarded an aircraft back to Honduras but armed soldiers refused to allow the aircraft to land.

They used the excuse of Zelaya proposing a non-binding plebiscite to change the single one-term to two-term presidency. While it was known that even if the referendum were to become a constitutional amendment, it would not benefit President Zelaya, as it was not retroactive, still the conspirators went for his jugular.

Although the Supreme Court ruled that it was illegal, Zelaya insisted on the plebiscite, fixed for Sunday, June 28, 2009. The Army Chief of Staff, Romero Vasquez Velasquez refused the presidents directives that in line with tradition, the military should assist the electoral commission to distribute electoral materials. The president then fired the Army Chief, but in a show of force, the Supreme Court, within 24 hours, ruled General Velasquezs sack as illegal, reinstated him, and then asked the Army to unseat President Zelaya. On the morning of the plebiscite, masked soldiers abducted President Zelaya, put him on an aircraft and dumped him in Costa Rica. The masses rose in support of the ousted president and he boarded an aircraft back to Honduras but armed soldiers refused to allow the aircraft to land.

It was these events that propelled Mrs Castro Zelaya to mobilise mass protests to force the usurpers to allow her husbands return. The protest movement then transformed into the Libre Party. In 2013, she contested and lost in the presidential elections. She again contested the 2017 elections, which she and her supporters believed they won. Mass protests followed and about two dozen people were killed.

In the November elections, she squared up against the ruling party candidate, Nasry Asfura, former mayor of the capital, Tegucigalpa. She campaigned to end violent crimes, corruption, drug trafficking, mass migration, liberalise abortion, bring back expelled international corruption investigators, provide jobs and introduce universal basic income for the poorest Honduran families.

Castro has promised a government of national unity, which is good, but this is where the likely fault lines in the coalition that snatched victory from the conservatives may begin to manifest. Besides, the old order is unlikely to give way without a fight and a lot may depend on the politics in the congress. Whatever the case, Honduras has a good chance at a new beginning.

In one of her campaigns, she declared: Honduras has been described as a narco-state because of the mafia that governs us, and we have also been described as the most corrupt country in Latin America People of Honduras, now is the time to say enough of the misery, poverty and exclusion that our country suffers.

As the election results rolled in, she took an early lead, which widened as the tally increased. But even as her lead became seemingly unassailable, the ruling party refused to concede defeat, declaring that it would win the election by the time the full results were in. This led to tension, with her supporters fearing that the polls would once again be rigged, as they claimed it was four years ago. But this time around, prominent figures opposed to Castro began to acknowledge her victory. The turning point was when her main rival, Asfura, announced that he had visited Castro and her family and: Now I want to say publicly that I congratulate her on her triumph and as President-elect. I wish that God will enlighten and guide her so that her administration will do the best for all of us Hondurans.

The victory of Castro is the triumph of principles, commitment and an unconquerable spirit, which in the face of seeming hopelessness, refused to accept defeat. Despite the years of struggle, blood and toil, the electoral victory may be the easiest, as an expectant populace looks up to an economically-challenged country. Yes, it is rich in minerals, coffee, tropical fruit, and sugar cane, with a large textile industry, but its main trade is with the U.S., which may seek to squeeze it, just as it has tried to strangulate Venezuela. Besides, the U.S. has 1,200 to 1,500 troops at the Soto Cano Air Base.

Castro has promised a government of national unity, which is good, but this is where the likely fault lines in the coalition that snatched victory from the conservatives may begin to manifest. Besides, the old order is unlikely to give way without a fight and a lot may depend on the politics in the congress. Whatever the case, Honduras has a good chance at a new beginning.

Owei Lakemfa, a former secretary general of African workers, is a human rights activist, journalist and author.
The Ondo State Governor, Rotimi Akeredolu, on Tuesday, commended Johnvents Industries Limited for its massive cocoa investment in the state.

The governor lauded the company during the official commissioning of its 15,000 metric tonnes, multi-billion naira Johnvents Cocoa Processing Factory located in Akure, the Ondo State capital.

Commissioning the factory, Mr Akeredolu commended the company for choosing Ondo as the investment destination for such a magnificent agribusiness project.

According to him, I am delighted to be here for the commissioning of the Johnvents Cocoa processing Factory. Todays commission of this incredible project is an important milestone in the cocoa agribusiness, not only to Ondo state but to Nigeria as a whole. I commend and congratulate you for coming to Ondo state, and I assure you that we will continue to provide an enabling environment for you to thrive.

The governor noted that, Nigeria is not taking advantage of the cocoa value chain as only about 10 percent of Nigeria cocoa beans is processed into cocoa butter and powder, while the rest is exported. What this means is that we are losing about 90 percent of our probable revenue from cocoa. I believe that the addition of Johnvents Cocoa will increase the percentage of cocoa beans processed in Nigeria.

The Group Managing Director of CapitalSage, the holding company of Johnvents Industries Limited, John Alamu, appreciated the state government for its commitment, while also reaffirming Johnvents mission to continue at the forefront of driving sustainable growth and end-to-end transformation across the entire agricultural value chain from production processing, manufacturing and distribution.

The decision to embark on the Johnvents Cocoa Processing Factory project was very strategic. As a country, we are doing far below our cocoa export potential as the sixth-largest exporter of cocoa, with a cumulative volume of only about 245,000 tonnes, 90 percent of which is cocoa beans. In other to further tap into the current $5 billion potential value of Nigerias cocoa export, we cannot afford to remain at the level of cocoa beans alone, we must increase our cocoa processing capacity to improve our earnings. This is what the factory will help achieve, Mr. Alamu said.

The Johnvents Cocoa Processing Factory is a 15,000 metric tonnes semi-automated processing plant, with the capacity to crush cocoa into cocoa liquor, butter, cake and powder.

It is an automated and efficient plant with a solid-fired boiler to generate steam and 33KVA electricity supply to significantly reduce overhead cost by over 40 percent, and operates at 98 percent operational efficiency at full blast. The factory is projected to create 300 direct jobs and over 17,000 indirect jobs.
The Chairman/Founder, Unubiko Foundation, James Ume, has revealed that the organization has launched a N250m intervention fund to rebuild the Ovukwu-Abam Secondary School, Atan Abam in Abia State.

Mr Ume said this on Thursday in Lagos at the launch of a book titled: Technology and Development  An African Perspective, written by the Business Editor of THE PUNCH, Everest Amaefule.

Mr Ume, who was the chief presenter of the book, said the launch of the N250m intervention fund is based on his commitment to the development of his people both infrastructural-wise and in capacity building.

The Foundation had before now implemented many intervention programmes in Nigeria in areas of skills acquisition in digital technology and other areas, youths and women empowerment, job creation and poverty reduction among others.

Mr Ume called on all eminent Nigerians to join him in building the future of the school in particular and the community in general.

He said, It is worthwhile to state that in my commitment to the development of our people both infrastructural-wise and in capacity, the Unubiko Foundation has just launched a N250m intervention fund to rebuild the Ovukwu-Abam Secondary School, Atan Abam in Abia State and I invite all of us to be part of the future we are building.

As a measure of his support for the book, and to galvanise the Nigeria Union of Journalists (NUJ), Mr Ume, who is also the Publisher of THE WHISTLER, bought 10 copies of the book at N2m for the library of the NUJ National Secretariat.

Also, he bought additional 10 copies each for the FCT and Abia Councils of the NUJ for N2m each, and additional 10 copies for Unubiko Foundation for N2m.

Similarly, Mr Ume, who was represented at the event by the Deputy Editor, THISDAY, Obinna Chima, purchased another 10 copies of the book for Ovukwu-Abam Secondary School for the same N2 million, bringing his total support for the scholarly publication to N10m.

He applauded the commitment of the author towards offering insights through his writings on issues that affect Nigeria and the global economy.

He said, In other parts of the world, it is a given for journalists to write books and offer their deep insights into issues that shape and can potentially impact the course of events in their societies. It is not that common in Nigeria and Africa as a whole.

It is in this wise that when we find journalists such as Mr Amaefule bringing their wealth of experience garnered over many years in a book form, we should applaud their industry and commitment to better and grow society.

The book comes at a time that Nigeria albeit Africa needs to examine the nexus between technology and development and how it can leverage on the former to achieve the latter especially in the face of global shutdowns owing to the Covid-19 pandemic.

I remain persuaded that this book will add to the existing body of knowledge and be useful not just to academics, but also to journalists and students of development.

Mr Ume said what he finds ennobling is that the author from a humbling beginning rose through the ranks first as a correspondent to now being a Business Editor and a sought-after voice in business and financial circles as a result of his profound thoughts and unbiased analysis of issues.

I should say that as a journalist myself and an industry consultant, Everest is one of the few minds I trust to take on issues knowing how painstaking he is when dissecting issues of national interest.

This book is a challenge to other journalists not to rest on their oars but to continue to strive to develop themselves and be part of living history by documenting their perspectives on issues of growth, development, politics, economy and security, he added.
Leicester City were without seven of their regular players when they crashed out to Napoli 3-2 in the Europa League on Thursday; to drop to the UEFA Conference League.

According to the City Manager, Brendan Rodgers in the build-up to the Napoli tie, the club is beginning to record new cases of infection.

He said: We will have seven unavailable, something youll see in time. Youll see in the training tonight the ones who havent travelled. Its been the last few days really. In general, youre starting to see a few more cases and, for us, its always about the health of our players.

Travelling to a foreign country, we have to respect travelling into Italy. We still have a strong squad here, but unfortunately, its not a fully fit squad.

One of those who has reportedly tested positive for COVID-19 is Nigerian and Super Eagles forward, Kelechi Iheanacho who was out of action for the Foxes last night.

In a similar or even more serious manner, Antoine Contes side, Tottenham Hotspur couldnt play their match against Rennes on Thursday due to the COVID-19 situation that rocked the English club.

The match was postponed by UEFA after eight players and five staff tested positive for Coronavirus.

Tottenhams next Premier League tie against Brighton has also been postponed.

Brighton & Hove Albion's home fixture against Tottenham Hotspur, due to be played on Sunday 12 December at 2pm GMT, has been postponed following a Premier League Board meeting this afternoon #BHATOT More: https://t.co/HBtc9Z2YBv pic.twitter.com/7lZLjrTLL6  Premier League (@premierleague) December 9, 2021

Earlier, the Premier League on Monday reported 12 new positive coronavirus tests out of 3,154 tests among players and club staff. 

That was the highest figure of positive cases since late August.
Located in Minsk, capital of the Republic of Belarus and a major hub of the Silk Road Economic Belt, CBIP is helping boost cooperation between China and Belarus. In recent years, China and Belarus have carried out fruitful exchanges and cooperation in the field of traditional medicine, and CBIP lately saw new achievements in facilitating cooperation between the two countries in fighting Covid-19 and developing Chinese pure herbal medicine. With the support from the governments of the two countries, CBIP has played an increasing role in promoting regional cooperation and economic and trade exchanges between the two countries, and also serves as a platform for international production capacity cooperation and science and technology innovation along the Belt and Road. Currently, it is home to 80 enterprises.

In March 2021, the Jintai Institute of Culture and Economics of China, led by Dr. Cai Chuanqing, founded the New Era Biotechnology Co., Ltd. in CBIP. It is the 69th company in CBIP, and the first engaged in Chinese pure herbal medicine in it. Belarus' unique folk medicine tradition and rich medicinal plant resources provide broad prospects for the two countries to cooperate in traditional medicine.

In June 2021, Belarus issued a presidential decree on improving the business environment of CBIP. The presidential decree allows enterprises in CIBP to provide medical services using traditional Chinese herbal therapies without mandatory registration with and license from Belarusian authorities.

Video - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=48bS1JH9b9E

Logo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1707423/NovaEra_Logo.jpg

Contact:

Ms. Xing Nizhen

Tel: 0037533-6249999

E-mail: novaerabiotech@mail.ru

YouTube Linkhttps://youtu.be/48bS1JH9b9E

SOURCE The New Era Biotechnology Co., Ltd.
TEL AVIV, Israel, Nov. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Colombia's President Ivan Duque concluded a three-day diplomatic visit to Israel on Tuesday with a meeting with Israeli innovation leaders at Start-Up Nation Central Headquarters in Tel Aviv. Duque met with Start-Up Nation Central's CEO Avi Hasson and other senior executives to hear from them about what it takes to develop an advanced ecosystem like Israel's.

Colombian President Ivan Duque (right) and Start-Up Nation Central CEO Avi Hasson shake hands during the presidents visit to Start-Up Nation Central headquarters in Tel Aviv. (Credit: Vered Farkash). (PRNewsfoto/Start-Up Nation Central (SNC))

Duque was in Israel with a delegation of senior cabinet members, government officials and business executives to study its innovation ecosystem with an emphasis on technology for solving sustainability, agriculture, and healthcare challenges. During his visit he also oversaw the launch the Jerusalem office of Colombia's national entrepreneurship and innovation agency - INNpulsa.

Hasson led a panel discussion with experts in the fields of healthcare, biotechnology, and agrifood-tech. They discussed the roles of the private and public sectors and that of the academia and how they interact with each other to create technological solutions that are revolutionizing the world.

The panel included Prof. Ran Balicer, the founding director of the Clalit Research Institute and director of health policy planning at Clalit, Israel's largest healthcare organization; Nitza Kardish, CEO of Trendlines Incubators, which specializes in innovation-based agricultural and medical technology companies; and Prof. Oded Shoseyov, an expert in plant molecular biology and nanobiotechnology from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Each of the panelists discussed the ways their respective organizations collaborated with other local and international market players to take solutions from the ideation stage to commercialization, making the case for the necessity of an aligned ecosystem.

Colombia's President Ivan Duque: "This country has taught the world that you may be limited in terms of land, that you may not have a lot of water resources to produce food, but that you are able to solve these challenges through innovation. I'm very passionate about the goals that Israel is setting, and I appreciate your passion for collaboration. I want to invite you to join us in connecting two words: sustainability and technology and help us merge them into one word 'sus-tech-nability.' That's what we want to do with Israel and with Start-Up Nation Central."

Start-Up Nation Central CEO Avi Hasson: "I would like to thank President Duque and the senior Colombian delegation for meeting with us. We are happy to be working alongside the Colombian government in an effort to tackle some of the most substantial challenges of our times by connecting them to the Israeli innovation ecosystem and its problem-solving capabilities. Collaboration is a vital ingredient for successful innovation and as we approach today's biggest challenges, such as food security and climate change, it is essential that we all pool our strengths to help ensure a sustainable future and improve the lives of the people of Colombia and all over the world."

The Colombian government and Start-Up Nation Central will collaborate on two key initiatives: agriculture and climate. The first program is LatAm Agripad , an agrifood-tech initiative of Start-Up Nation Central and Start-Up Mexico (SUM) International, headed by Ron Oliver, in which iNNpulsa will participate. The program is meant to solve key challenges in Colombia's coffee industry and Mexican agricultural business by employing Israeli-made innovative solutions. In an effort to foster collaborations between the two countries, SUM Bogota, led by Acanof Startups, will highlight the pain points of the Colombian coffee corporations, while Start-Up Nation Central will identify the most relevant tech solutions in the Israeli ecosystem to help them overcome them. Meanwhile, senior officials in Colombia will lend governmental support and their network of innovation mentors and facilitators. Together, the partners will help Israeli technologies successfully adapt to the Colombian agricultural needs and scale in the market, through a tailor-made 10-week program.

The Colombian officials also expressed interest in the Climate Solutions Prize , an initiative of JNF-Canada, Start-Up Nation Central, KKL-JNF, and the Peres Center for Peace and Innovation, to leverage Israeli Impact-Tech innovation to reduce carbon emissions. Both countries recently committed at COP26 in Glasgow to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050, with innovation being a key factor towards reaching those sustainability goals.

About Start-Up Nation Central

Start-Up Nation Central is the address for corporations, governments, and investors to connect with the Israeli tech ecosystem. Start-Up Nation Central catalyzes growth opportunities by bringing Israeli tech innovation to global business and societal challenges. Established in 2013 and headquartered in Tel-Aviv, Israel, Start-Up Nation Central is a not-for-profit organization funded by philanthropy.

Start-Up Nation Finder is a free online platform for identifying and engaging Israeli tech organizations based on customers' specific interests. This innovation business platform is a comprehensive knowledge hub on Israeli start-ups, investors, acceleration hubs, multinational corporations, and technology-based innovation associated with academic research. The open-source platform provides up-to-date information and insights on thousands of active Israeli tech companies.

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SOURCE Start-Up Nation Central (SNC)
- New agri-tech vertical farm system is reshaping agriculture to sustain the growing population with high-yield crops

THE HAGUE, Netherlands and TEL AVIV, Israel, Dec. 8, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The challenges posed by urbanization and the gradual dwindling of arable land is driving more farming indoors. The agri-tech start-up Future Crops, Ltd. has developed the first indoor vertical farming system that grows its crops in a unique soil substrate composition, bringing this nascent farming concept closer to home and to the earth.

Future Crops Brings Vertical Farming Closer to the Land

The Israeli-Dutch venture has established a fully automated 8,000m2 indoor vertical farm in Westland, Netherlands, the "greenhouse hub" of Europe. The facility, towering nine stories, is powered primarily by solar energy, and combined with high precision agricultural technology. It can provide optimal growing conditions for a broad spectrum of leafy greens and herbs.

Future Crops CEO and co-founder Gary Grinspan attests that this method of cultivation not only delivers quality fresh produce, it enables the produce to reclaim its original characteristic taste and aromas that have been degraded following decades of pesticide use and industry pressures to place the focus on boosting output. Future Crops' advanced technology maximizes yield per area unit in comparison to traditional agriculture, with no compromise on quality.

Plant Whisperer

The company utilizes innovative data-driven technology to tailor the ideal environmental conditions for crops to thrive within a highly controlled, automated structure. The system controls dozens of parameters of growth conditions, including humidity, temperature, and lighting to create optimal climatic conditions to suit each crop.

Grinspan likens its technology to a "plant whisperer." "Plants will draw what they need from nature," he explains. "Our team of agronomists are able to 'listen' to each plant to determine its individual needs in real timehow much 'sleep' versus light, the type of light, air quality, how much water, specific nutrient needs, etc. The plants 'respond' in their own unique language as expressed via small nuances such as changes in morphology, shape, size, and color. Via these signals, our algorithm can be primed to provide the plants precisely what they need at each stage of their life cycle."

The crops are grown in a soil-based substrate. "We composed a unique nutrient enriched soil-like recipe as the bed for growing all our produce to keep it as close to what nature intended" continues Grinspan. "We learned from nature and did not want to change its rules. Our system can consistently grow a comprehensive range of herbs and leafy microgreens throughout the year, completely free of any pesticides or biological substances, and with zero dependence on climate conditions."

Rethinking the agricultural value chain

Experts globally warn of food shortages due to a growing population forecast to exceed 10 billion over the next decade. Lack of availability of fertile land dedicated to growing crops will soon strain the planet. This is further compounded by climatic instability which threatens many cultivars. These trends have challenged the agricultural industry to rethink the -farming paradigm in a way that allows greater productivity in a more sustainable manner, and with less use of resources. Moreover, the combination of environmental, logistical, and geopolitical bottlenecks is spurring initiatives to bring food sources closer to home.

High-tech vertical farming offers a means of achieving voluminous crop outputs in limited space. Crops grown in the Future Crops vertical farm have demonstrated a longer shelf-life and reach full growth in significantly less time, enabling multiple growth cycles. This significantly shortens the farm-to-table supply chain by weeks, including reducing food mileage.

Start-Up secures US$30M in first funding round

Following a family tragedy, Gary Grinspan left a long corporate career within major CPG food companies, including PepsiCo and Unilever. Wanting to devote his energies toward bettering the world, he established Future Crops.

The company was founded in 2016, in conjunction with the Israeli Agricultural Research Organisation (ARO) and A&F Ventures, a private equity arm run by the Lerman Family, leaders in the American steel industry. The company secured US$30M in it first round of funding, providing a major portion to advance its efforts to transform the agricultural value chain.

The company sealed a joint R&D venture with Nativ Dudai, PhD, and David Haimovitch, PhD, both of the Israeli Agricultural Research Organisation Institute (ARO), where Dudai heads the medical and aromatic plant unit.

"Food system resilience is at the core of Future Crops' vision and the key to building a better future for generations to follow," says Dudai, PhD. "It's time to reevaluate the way we use our natural resources, to deliver clean, sustainable crops and ensure food security."

Future Crops currently runs supply contracts with a leading grocery retailer in the Netherlands and with additional world class retailers in Europe.

Company Contact:

Future Crops

Susanne Mosmans

Business Unit Director

[email protected]

www.future-crops.com



Press Contact

NutriPR

Ms. Liat Simha

[email protected]

www.nutripr.com

Twitter: @LiatSimha

Tel +972-9-9742893

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SOURCE Future Crops
Du Zhanyuan, President of CICG, Wu Jing, Vice Chairman of the Zhejiang Provincial CPPCC, Yukio Hatoyama, former Prime Minister of Japan and Chairman of the East Asian Community Institute, Han Nathan, Consul General of the Republic of Malta in Shanghai, and Li Yueqi, Secretary of the CPC Taizhou Municipal Committee, delivered opening speeches, and Lu Cairong, Vice President of CICG, presided over the opening ceremony. About 150 people including politicians, representatives of international organizations, foreign envoys in China, international sinologists, and experts and scholars from relevant think tanks, universities, and research institutions from more than a dozen countries including China, Japan, South Korea, and France participated in the seminar.

Du Zhanyuan pointed out that the Hehe culture, which originated in Tiantai Mountain, is an incredible treasure of the Chinese culture of Harmony. It advocates a culture of peace, harmony, and amicability, which will be inspiring in terms of improving global governance and solving common challenges for mankind. Facing the future, first, we must advocate harmony within differences and true multilateralism; second, we must adhere to win-win cooperation and build an open world economy; third, we must uphold humanism and promote the common values of all mankind.

As the main birthplace of the Hehe culture, Wu Jing said, Zhejiang has the responsibility to advocate the values of harmony within differences and of generating grand beauty by combining different merits, to take the initiative to think and take actions, and to actively explore and search for solutions for the common problems faced by the whole human society.

Yukio Hatoyama believes, Hehe diplomacy means that the two sides cannot completely negate one another because of different views, but they must make efforts to reconcile with each other to establish a win-win situation.

During the forum, CICG and the Publicity Department of Zhejiang Provincial Committee signed the "Strategic Cooperation Agreement". CICG, the Publicity Department of Zhejiang Provincial Committee and the Taizhou Government signed the "Framework Agreement For Institutionalize the Hehe Culture Global Forum(2022-2024)" .Meanwhile, the awarding ceremony for "the International Communication and Cooperation Base of Chinese Culture" and "the Hehe Culture International Station", the unveiling ceremony of "the Tiantaishan Hehe Culture Fund", and the release of the multilingual book series of "Key Words to Understand China" and the research book series of "Tiantaishan Hehe Culture" were all successfully held.

"Hehe Culture Global Forum" is an institutionalized international conference held in the form of forums, and as of 2022, the Forum will hold international conferences along with other relevant events every year.

Photo: https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1707458/hehe_cultural_forum_pic1.jpg

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Logo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1707468/Hehe_Culture_Global_Forum_Logo.jpg

ContactZhou Biye, 008657688510329, [email protected]

SOURCE Hehe Cultural Global Forum
ORANGE COUNTY, Calif., Dec. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- African Dream Foods (ADF) announces that they have won the coveted Southern African Regional Exporter Award as Buyer Of The Year. The ceremony was held this week in South Africa and celebrates the best exporters of fine foods from the region, and has recognized African Dream Foods as a quality partner that upholds their core values and mission. ADF and all nominees actively engaged with partners in the region to create sustainability, growth, best practices in exporting and trade within Southern Africa.

African Dream Foods - Buyer Of The Year Award African Dream Foods

Touted by SAREA as "Celebrating the Export Excellence of Southern African Brands", the event was held in partnership with the Eastern Cape Development Corporation and supported by the USAID Southern Africa Trade and Investment Hub. Categories included Exporter, Buyer, Trade promotion service and Capital Provider of the Year. All ADF sauces, salts and seasonings are sourced and manufactured in South Africa and exported to their corporate warehouse in Southern California.

David Schmunk, Founder and Managing Director of African Dream Foods, commented: "It has been a blast getting to share these flavors with American consumers and to hear their reactions. We are grateful for this recognition and we hope it will bring more attention and create even more demand for African products in the US and the world. A big thank you to our South African manufacturing partner Fynbos Fine Foods and all of the incredible collaborators, Kickstarter backers, wildlife photographers and team members who have made this dream into a reality. In these challenging times, it is impossible to do it alone, it takes collaboration to take us forward and we are so lucky to have the support that we have."

Rozelle Abramson, owner of Fynbos Fine Foods, commented: "We are so incredibly grateful to African Dream Foods for their continuous support of our company and are proud to supply them with quality natural products. This cooperation allows us to continue upholding our fair trade principles, ensuring that our staff all receive skill development training, support of their children's education, and overall community upliftment. It is also an honor to be a part of the African Dream Foods mission to bring these flavors to the US while supporting African wildlife conservation."

African Dream Foods offers an exciting new brand of sauces, salts and spices inspired by the culture and flavors of Africa. All products use all-natural ingredients sourced from small farms with partial proceeds from all sales contributing to conservation efforts that protect Africa's wildlife. ADF conservation partners include Wild Shots Outreach and Paws Trails. ADF offers 8 popular sauces, 3 spicy salts and a smoky seasoning which are available in a variety of sizes and travel/gift packs. Purchase products from African Dream Foods today on Amazon , Walmart.com their official web store or in select retail locations .

OFFICIAL AFRICAN DREAM FOODS WEBSITE AND STORE

SOUTHERN AFRICAN REGIONAL EXPORTERS AWARDS 2021 WEBSITE

INSTAGRAM

DOWNLOAD/VIEW MEDIA KIT (PDF)

About African Dream Foods:

African Dream Foods is a purpose-driven food brand of sauces and spices that bring the amazing tastes of natural, wholesome foods from Africa to the world. The brand works with the farmers, business owners and producers to create not only a delicious product line but a brand whose partial proceeds directly help top wildlife conservation groups that make a difference. Purchase online at African Dream Foods or via Amazon and Walmart .

Media Contact:

Bradley Public Relations & Marketing

949-274-9651

[email protected]

SOURCE African Dream Foods
[https://imgpublic.artprice.com/img/wp/sites/11/2021/12/Invader-Joconde.jpg]

thierry Ehrmann, CEO and Founder of Artmarket.com and its Artprice department: "Blockchain and NFTs have at last made it possible to design properly effective forms of securitization on the art market. Non-fungible tokens open up endless possibilities for the acquisition of shares in a work, as Pak has demonstrated with this extraordinary sale. This represents a veritable paradigm shift for the art market".

28,000 collectors

From now on, the unknown factor is no longer the sale price (fixed in advance) but rather the number of units purchased. Moreover, Pak and Nifty Gateway developed a whole strategy to boost demand during the 48 hours that the sale lasted:

initial price of $299 for loyal collectors of Pak and $400 for new entrants

for loyal collectors of Pak and for new entrants increasing price by $25 every six hours

every six hours for 10 units purchased an eleventh is free; for 1,000 units purchased 300 more are free

a continuous real-time ranking of the best buyers (under pseudonyms)

the work Alpha Mass offered to the largest buyer

In total, 266,445 "mass units" were purchased for $91.8 million by 29,000 different buyers. This makes an average price of $316 per unit and an average of 9 units acquired per buyer. According to Artprice by Artmarket, the result is a genuine 'community' that the artist has brought together to create a gigantic and dematerialized work, in which everyone is free to resell their shares at any time.

Typically, works of art are auctioned off as one-offs rather than as a series. Jeff Koons' Rabbit sculpture (1986) made Koons the most expensive living artist in 2019 when it sold for $91.12 million.

One or more works?

In April 2021, Pak organized a sale with Sotheby's called The Fungible Collection. For three days, for only 15 minutes each day, anyone could acquire "cubes" at a fixed price:

1st day: 19,737 cubes sold at $500 = $9,868,500

= 2nd day: 3,268 cubes sold at $1,000 = $3,268,000

= 3rd day: 593 cubes sold at $1,500 = $718,500

While the cubes in each buyer's wallet were linked, the 23,598 cubes did not make a total work per se: each purchaser acquired his own set of cubes with an average purchase price of $587. Similarly, Beeple's The first 5,000 days (sold at Christie's in March 2021 for $ 69.4 million), is theoretically made up of 5,000 full works, the average price of which is therefore around $14,000.

By way of comparison, the sale of the Macklowe Collection on 15 November 2021 at Sotheby's New York raised $676 million from 35 works; that's an average value of $19.3 million per lot. The comparison doesn't make a lot of sense except from the point of view of the homogeneity of the works and their securitization. Imagine you'd been given the opportunity of acquiring a share in Mark Rothko's No. 7 (which entered the Macklowe Collection in 1987) for $500. After its sale for $82.5 million, you would own a 165,000th part of the painting.

However, Pak's approach is the opposite since the work, The Merge, did not yet exist at the time of the sale. No-one knew what it was going to look like. By buying a part of this unknown work, each collector contributes to it. Encouraged by a low starting price but also encouraged to acquire the largest number of units in order to receive a reward, The Merge is a game that brings together technology buffs, cryptocurrency and NFT devotees and art enthusiasts increasingly fascinated by this universe.

Artists have now moved into the primary position around which the art market revolves.

According to Artmarket.com, NFTs represent a genuine grassroots movement that has created its own ecosystem, with a virtuous economy and exponential growth potential.

Indeed, the turnover generated by NFTs so far this year (to 9 December 2021)  as measured by ERC 721 and ERC 1155 Ethereum smart contracts relating to the art market and collections  is 26.9 billion dollars (source Chainalysis).

Image: [https://imgpublic.artprice.com/img/wp/sites/11/2021/12/Invader-Joconde.jpg]

Copyright 1987-2021 thierry Ehrmann www.artprice.com - www.artmarket.com

Don't hesitate to c ontact our E conometrics Department for your requirements regarding statistics and personalized studies: [email protected]

for your requirements regarding statistics and personalized studies: Try our services (free demo): https://www.artprice.com/demo

Subscribe to our services: https://www.artprice.com/subscription

About Artmarket:

Artmarket.com is listed on Eurolist by Euronext Paris, SRD long only and Euroclear: 7478 - Bloomberg: PRC - Reuters: ARTF.

Discover Artmarket and its Artprice department on video: www.artprice.com/video

Artmarket and its Artprice department was founded in 1997 by its CEO, thierry Ehrmann. Artmarket and its Artprice department is controlled by Groupe Serveur, created in 1987.

See certified biography in Who's who :

Biographie_thierry_Ehrmann_2022_WhosWhoInFrance.pdf

Artmarket is a global player in the Art Market with, among other structures, its Artprice department, world leader in the accumulation, management and exploitation of historical and current art market information in databanks containing over 30 million indices and auction results, covering more than 770,000 artists.

Artprice by Artmarket, the world leader in information on the art market, has set itself the ambition through its Global Standardized Marketplace to be the world's leading Fine Art NFT platform.

Artprice Images allows unlimited access to the largest Art Market image bank in the world: no less than 180 million digital images of photographs or engraved reproductions of artworks from 1700 to the present day, commented by our art historians.

Artmarket with its Artprice department accumulates data on a permanent basis from 6300 Auction Houses and produces key Art Market information for the main press and media agencies (7,200 publications). Its 5.4 million ('members log in'+social media) users have access to ads posted by other members, a network that today represents the leading Global Standardized Marketplace to buy and sell artworks at a fixed or bid price (auctions regulated by paragraphs 2 and 3 of Article L 321.3 of France's Commercial Code).

Artmarket with its Artprice department, has been awarded the State label "Innovative Company" by the Public Investment Bank (BPI) (for the second time in November 2018 for a new period of 3 years) which is supporting the company in its project to consolidate its position as a global player in the market art.

Artprice's 2020/21 Contemporary Art Market Report by Artmarket.com:

https://www.artprice.com/artprice-reports/the-contemporary-art-market-report-2021

Artprice by Artmarket's 2020 Global Art Market Report published in March 2021:

https://www.artprice.com/artprice-reports/the-art-market-in-2020

Index of press releases posted by Artmarket with its Artprice department:

serveur.serveur.com/Press_Release/pressreleaseEN.htm

Follow all the Art Market news in real time with Artmarket and its Artprice department on Facebook and Twitter:

www.facebook.com/artpricedotcom/ (over 5,4 million followers)

twitter.com/artmarketdotcom

twitter.com/artpricedotcom

Discover the alchemy and universe of Artmarket and its artprice department https://www.artprice.com/video headquartered at the famous Organe Contemporary Art Museum "The Abode of Chaos" (dixit The New York Times): https://issuu.com/demeureduchaos/docs/demeureduchaos-abodeofchaos-opus-ix-1999-2013

L'Obs - The Museum of the Future: https://youtu.be/29LXBPJrs-o

www.facebook.com/la.demeure.du.chaos.theabodeofchaos999

(4.4 million followers)

https://vimeo.com/124643720

Photo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1707373/Artmarket_Invader_Joconde.jpg

Logo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1009603/Art_Market_logo.jpg

Contact Artmarket.com and its Artprice department - Contact: [email protected]

SOURCE Artmarket.com
DUBLIN, Dec. 9, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The "ASEAN Automotive Outlook, 2021" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering.

This study assesses the automotive market in key ASEAN countries, with a focus on Thailand, Indonesia, and Malaysia. It provides the automotive market snapshot in these 3 ASEAN countries.

Each country snapshot covers the Total Industry Volume (TIV), in the historical period (2016-2020) and the forecast period (2021-2025). This research includes segmentation breakdown in 2020, such as vehicle segment, key Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) and market share. In addition, it highlights 5 key trends and overall impact levels that will influence the automotive market in Thailand, Indonesia, and Malaysia in 2021, respectively.

In 2020, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) automotive market experienced a significant sales decline of 28.5%, from a total sales of 3.5 million units in 2019 to 2.5 million units in 2020. Passenger Vehicles (PVs) constituted 63.9% of the market and Commercial Vehicles (CV) accounted for 36.1%. Of these, Thailand, Indonesia, and Malaysia contributed a joint market share of 74.9%. Thailand surpassed Indonesia and led the market in 2020.

Especially in 2020, the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic influenced the automotive market's activities due to the implementation of social distancing, reduction of retail operations, and production closures. The impact is expected to be significant in terms of a weaker Gross Domestic Product (GDP), lower utilization of vehicles, and lesser automotive purchase attractiveness in the short term.

An increase in government spending (including fiscal injections, infrastructure development, individual financial aid, and tax exemption) in Thailand, Indonesia, and Malaysia in 2021 is likely to accelerate the economic activity in these countries. In addition, the progress of vaccination is one of the critical factors that have a significant relationship with GDP recovery and outbreak control. However, political uncertainties, such as the suspension of the Malaysian Parliament and the extension of the state of emergency in Thailand are affecting the country's development.

Japanese automotive brands lead the ASEAN market. Toyota, Honda, Mitsubishi, Nissan, and Isuzu are the key contributors in Thailand, Indonesia, and Malaysia. In particular, Isuzu D-Max and Toyota Hilux are the key contributors in the Commercial Vehicle (CV) segment in Thailand and Malaysia. In Malaysia, Proton grew significantly in 2020, an increase of 4.4% year-over-year (YoY).

The trend of Low-cost Green Car (LCGC) and Electric Vehicle (EV) development will penetrate further in ASEAN. For example, Thailand aims to become an EV hub by 2025. Thailand's National EV Roadmap targets for xEV production to reach 30% of total production in 2030. Similarly, the Indonesian Government promotes LCGCs and offers income tax incentives (up to 20 years of full corporate tax exemption) that are likely to bring production attractiveness to the automotive market.

Key Topics Covered:

1. Key Findings

Key Findings

Total Industry Volume (TIV) in Key ASEAN Markets

Top Trends for 2021

2. Research Background

Automotive Outlook in ASEAN - Overview

Market Segmentation

3. Strategic Imperatives

Why is it Increasingly Difficult to Grow?

The Strategic Imperative

The Impact of Top 3 Strategic Imperatives on ASEAN's Automotive Market

Growth Opportunities Fuel the Growth Pipeline Engine

4. Global Economic Environment

COVID-19 Impact on World GDP Growth

Global Growth Scenario Analysis - Assumptions

World GDP Growth Under Differing Scenarios

COVID-19 Impact on Key Regions

5. Growth Environment - ASEAN Automotive Market in 2021

ASEAN - An Overview

TIV in Key ASEAN Markets

ASEAN TIV - Market Snapshot

Position of ASEAN Countries on the Growth Potential Curve

Motorization in ASEAN

Emission Regulations in ASEAN

6. Thai Automotive Outlook

Key Growth Metrics

Total Industry Volume by Vehicle Segment

Percent of TIV by Vehicle Segment in 2020

Market Share Analysis

Key Market Trends Anticipated in Thailand in 2021

in 2021 Trend 1 - COVID-19 Pandemic and Lockdown in Certain Areas

Trend 2 - GDP Recovery and Tourism Industry

Trend 3 - National Electric Vehicle Industry Development Roadmap

Trend 4 - Political Uncertainty and State of Emergency Extension

Trend 5 - Increase in Government Spending and Financial Aid

TIV Forecast Scenario Analysis

Key Conclusions

7. Indonesian Automotive Outlook

Key Growth Metrics

Total Industry Volume by Vehicle Segment

Percent of TIV by Vehicle Segment

Market Share Analysis

Key Market Trends Anticipated in Indonesia in 2021

in 2021 Trend 1 - COVID-19 Pandemic and Vaccination Progress

Trend 2 - GDP Recovery

Trend 3 - National Automotive Industry Development Roadmap

Trend 4 - Development and Promotion of Low-cost Green Cars

Trend 5 - Increase in Government Spending and Infrastructure Development

TIV Forecast Scenario Analysis

Key Conclusions

8. Malaysian Automotive Outlook

Key Growth Metrics

Total Industry Volume by Vehicle Segment

Percent of TIV by Vehicle Segment

Market Share Analysis

Key Market Trends Anticipated in Malaysia in 2021

in 2021 Trend 1 - COVID-19 Pandemic and National Lockdown

Trend 2 - GDP Recovery and Vaccination Progress

Trend 3 - Political Uncertainty and Suspended Parliament

Trend 4 - Increase in Government Spending and Tax Exemption

Trend 5 - New Model Launches

TIV Forecast Scenario Analysis

Key Conclusions

9. Growth Opportunity Universe

Growth Opportunity 1: Continued Market Development for Improving Thailand's Automotive Sales, 2020

Growth Opportunity 2: Continued Market Development for Improving Indonesia's Automotive Sales, 2020

Growth Opportunity 3: Continued Market Development for Improving Malaysia's Automotive Sales, 2020

10. Next Steps

Companies Mentioned

Honda

Isuzu

Mitsubishi

Nissan

Proton

Toyota

For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/4dfrr0

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: 646-607-1907

Fax (outside U.S.): +353-1-481-1716



SOURCE Research and Markets

Related Links

http://www.researchandmarkets.com


MUMBAI, India, Dec. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Cactus Communications (CACTUS), a technology company accelerating scientific advancement, has announced its transition to a remote-first company for all its 1,200 employees across nine locations globally. It is one of the first companies in India to join a small but growing list of firms across the globe that are embracing remote-first companies that have office locations but do not require their employees to work from them.

CACTUS pursues global growth by going remote-first

"Three hundred and twenty people joined CACTUS in the seven months leading up to October 2021, and 50% of our new hires are from locations where we don't have physical offices, such as Jaipur, Hyderabad, Ahmedabad, Chennai, Kolkata, Pune, and many others," said Yashmi Pujara, Chief Human Resources Officer at CACTUS. "Remote-first does not mean that we will not have offices or that our people can't work from an office. It means that in everything we do at work, we will adopt a remote-first mindset, making sure everyone, regardless of where they are working from, has an equal voice and visibility in the organization."

"We believe that talent is everywhere, opportunity is not," continued Pujara. "We are now no longer restricted to specific geographic locations, and we can provide opportunities wherever we find the right talent. In fact, our people are currently spread across 14 countries and 165 different cities. In India, our employees are currently working out of more than 130 cities."

The move will see CACTUS expand its recruitment across the globe and pioneer new, post-pandemic working practices, including work from anywhere, asynchronous communication, and more. Through this move, CACTUS also aims to create employment opportunities in smaller towns where such opportunities might be scarce, thereby mitigating the multiple challenges posed by workforce migration to overpopulated big cities and contributing to a more fulfilling and sustainable future for the employee, organization, and planet at large.

"While the world was forced into an 18-month experiment with remote work, we've been thinking about embracing remote-first for a long time," said Abhishek Goel, CEO and Co-founder, CACTUS. "The primary reason behind our adoption of a remote-first culture is our evolution as a global company. When too many people are concentrated in a specific office location, the loudest voices are the ones closest to you. With customers in over 160 countries, we want to be close to them and responsive to their needs. We also want employees across the globe to contribute equally to the direction of the company."

To develop a remote-first model, the company surveyed employees to better understand their work preferences and challenges. Leaders found that 86% of employees wanted flexibility in how and where they worked, with 38% preferring full-time remote work. A core team then benchmarked other remote-first companies and spoke with industry thought-leaders to learn best practices. Several pilots on various work practices were introduced to gain insight on what would work best for the company. This included everything from introducing virtual water cooler events and virtual whiteboards to creating a communications charter, designating remote champions, developing guidelines on asynchronous communication, and launching a remote-first handbook. The company also created a new role, Head of Remote-First, hiring Jason Morwick to lead the company's transition.

"For many people, working remotely during the pandemic has highlighted just how much of a rethink working practices need going forward," said Jason Morwick, Head of Remote-First at CACTUS. "Businesses cannot replicate what they used to do face-to-face over a video call. Before the pandemic, people would gather in a room in front of a whiteboard to discuss an idea or problem, but that rarely works over a video call. Now, we are revising the process  how we are developing solutions. If done correctly, we believe that we can accelerate our business decision-making while engaging a larger number of employees."

To find out more, visit www.cactusglobal.com

About Cactus Communications

Founded in 2002, Cactus Communications (cactusglobal.com) is a technology company accelerating scientific advancement. CACTUS solves problems for researchers, universities, publishers, academic societies, and life science organisations through innovative products and services developed under the brands Editage, Cactus Life Sciences, Researcher.Life, Impact Science, UNSILO, Paperpal and Cactus Labs. CACTUS has offices in Princeton, London, Aarhus, Singapore, Beijing, Shanghai, Seoul, Tokyo, and Mumbai; a global workforce of over 3,000 experts; and customers from over 190 countries. CACTUS is considered a pioneer in its workplace best practices and has been consistently ranked a great place to work over the last several years.

Media Contact:

Titas Dutta

[email protected]

988-644-0972

SOURCE Cactus Communications
To celebrate Zadd's accomplishments and commitment to giving back, Ally is donating $10,000 to two nonprofits with personal significance to Zadd: Korean American Professionals in the Automotive Industry and the May Dugan Community Center in Cleveland.

Ally established the "Ally Sees Her" award with NAMAD four years ago to recognize the next generation of influential minority women leaders who also are highly involved in their communities. The award was inspired by the Association of National Advertisers #SeeHer campaign to increase accurate representations of women and girls in marketing and help eliminate gender bias.

"It's so important for kids to see someone they can identify with as they dream of a successful future and careers that spark their interest," Zadd said. "While Crestmont Automotive has many female sales professionals and service advisors, I'm hopeful initiatives like this will inspire more young women to seek automotive retail careers. It's a dynamic industry and I'm proud of the work we're doing to create a more inclusive and flexible work environment."

Natalie Brown, director of corporate citizenship at Ally, added: "This award celebrates the drive and passion that women automotive leaders bring to the table. The future of our industry is stronger when everyone sees the contributions of innovative leaders like Andrea who excel in business and give back to their communities. We're proud to be an ally in NAMAD's quest to expand opportunities for minority auto dealers."

Nationwide, more than 16,000 franchise automobile dealerships play an important role in their communities as key economic contributors, employers, taxpayers, and business and civic leaders. According to NAMAD research, only 5% of American automobile dealerships are owned by minorities and 95% of those are first-generation business owners.

While Zadd started her career outside the automotive industry, she eventually joined the business founded by her father. She is the daughter of a Korean immigrant and first-generation dealer who established his own automotive business after working several years as an engineer for Ford Motor Company.

Strong Commitment to Community

Ally's donation to Korean American Professionals in the Automotive Industry has special meaning for Zadd; her father was a founding member of the organization which seeks to unite and advance automotive professionals in their related technical and business fields. Zadd also chose a second nonprofit to benefit from her award: May Dugan Community Center, which works to alleviate poverty in Cleveland by helping break down barriers faced by clients. The center offers adult education, behavioral health counseling, trauma recovery services, food and clothing distribution, and assistance to seniors and teen mothers.

Currently, Zadd is serving her second term on the Ohio Auto Dealers Association Board of Trustees as well as the board for Caring Cubs. Other organizations she has dedicated her time to include the University of Michigan Club of Cleveland, Children's Hunger Alliance, Big Sister  Little Sister, and MLK365 volunteer ventures.

Dedicated Business Leadership

In her eight years working with Crestmont Automotive alongside her father and brother, Zadd has been part of a successful and growing business. Her time is dedicated to accounting, improving procedures and processes for the company, and helping the organization deliver on its goals. Crestmont Automotive includes Crestmont Cadillac, Crestmont Buick GMC, Crestmont Hyundai and Genesis of Brunswick. Prior to joining the family business, Zadd established her career with large corporations in the consumer packaged goods industry, including Johnson & Johnson and General Mills. This early experience in setting and achieving sales goals, aligning the business with consumer needs, and implementing data-driven decision-making continue to serve her well in a dealership setting.

Zadd attended Cornell University where she graduated with a degree in Applied Economics and Management. She then earned her Master of Business Administration degree with distinction from the Ross School of Business, University of Michigan in 2015.

About Ally Financial Inc.

Ally Financial Inc. (NYSE: ALLY) is a digital financial services company committed to its promise to "Do It Right" for its consumer, commercial and corporate customers. Ally is composed of an industry-leading independent auto finance and insurance operation, an award-winning digital direct bank (Ally Bank, Member FDIC and Equal Housing Lender, which offers mortgage lending, point-of-sale personal lending, and a variety of deposit and other banking products), a corporate finance business for equity sponsors and middle-market companies, and securities brokerage and investment advisory services. A relentless ally for all things money, Ally helps people save well and earn well, so they can spend for what matters. For more information, please visit www.ally.com and follow @allyfinancial.

For more information and disclosures about Ally, visit https://www.ally.com/#disclosures.

For further images and news on Ally, please visit http://media.ally.com.

Contacts:

Ann Smith

[email protected]

SOURCE Ally Financial

Related Links

http://www.ally.com


WASHINGTON, Dec. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The following is a statement from Teamsters General President Jim Hoffa on the 20th anniversary of China becoming a member of the World Trade Organization (WTO) and the nation's continued mistreatment of workers.

"Twenty-two years ago, here in our nation's capital, I led a column of Teamsters who joined tens of thousands of other labor union members to rally against Permanent Normal Trade Relations with communist China. A convoy of Teamster trucks circled the Capitol, horns honking  while inside our members lobbied Congress  to protest giving America's best trade benefits to that growing non-market economic regime. We lost that legislative fight, which paved the way for China to join the World Trade Organization, which it did 20 years ago this week.

"We predicted then that Chinese accession to the WTO would undermine America's manufacturing base as transnational corporate and investment elites moved production to China, and history has proved us right. America's massive trade deficit with China has cost nearly 4 million American jobs.

"The free traders in both parties hoped that by letting China into the WTO, that regime would change, become more democratic and respect human rights. But history has proved them wrong and China continues to oppress workers and ethnic minorities and activists and advocates for freedom. If anything, China is heading in the wrong direction. Today, December 10th, is Human Rights Day and, on behalf of the 1.4 million members of North America's 'supply chain union', the Teamsters, who have been on the front lines of every fight for fair trade since I was first elected their General President, I call on policymakers and opinion leaders on every continent to join me in condemnation of the anti-worker Chinese regime and the pro-corporate 'free trade' economic model that has enabled its oppression and genocide for too long."

Founded in 1903, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters represents 1.4 million hardworking men and women throughout the United States, Canada and Puerto Rico. Visit www.teamster.org for more information. Follow us on Twitter @Teamsters and "like" us on Facebook at www.facebook.com/teamsters.

Contact:

Ted Gotsch, (703) 899-0869

[email protected]

SOURCE International Brotherhood of Teamsters

Related Links

http://www.teamster.org


DETROIT, Dec. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Leading lower-middle-market private equity firm Huron Capital Partners ("Huron Capital") announced today that Aquamar Holdings ("Aquamar") has acquired Shining Ocean, Inc. ("Shining Ocean"). The transaction significantly increases the platform's scale and further diversifies its seafood market offerings.

"We are excited to add Shining Ocean's business to our portfolio," said Aquamar CEO, Daryl Gormley. "With this strategic partnership, we significantly expand branded seafood products for our current customers and leverage our investments in innovation and diversification of the raw material supply across a broader footprint."

Shining Ocean was previously a subsidiary of True World Group, a global conglomerate of seafood manufacturing and distribution. Founded in 1985, Shining Ocean is a top-five surimi manufacturer in the country.

"We couldn't have found a better partner to shepherd our business than the team at Aquamar," said Robert Bleu, President of True World Group. "The combination of Aquamar and Shining Ocean will greatly benefit our customers, and we wish them nothing but success going forward."

"Shining Ocean has been a dependable performer for us for 36 years, and we will miss the team members from our group," Bleu added. "However, this sale allows us to focus on our core food distribution business and our very successful retail concepts, including plans to launch the biggest Asian Food Hall in America in the coming year."

The addition of Shining Ocean strengthens Aquamar's existing surimi lineup, adds additional branded products, and provides new opportunities for innovation in the seafood market. Aquamar has strengthened its position at a time where consumer interest in, and consumption of, seafood remains robust.

"We continue to see growing demand in the seafood manufacturing and branded product spaces," said Huron Capital Vice President, James Dickinson. "We look forward to offering Shining Ocean's innovative products as we continue to grow the Aquamar platform."

About Huron Capital

Founded in Detroit in 1999, Huron Capital is an operationally focused private equity platform with a long history of growing lower middle-market companies through our proprietary ExecFactor buy-and-build investment model. We prefer complex situations where we can help companies reach their full potential by combining our operational approach, substantial capital base, and transaction experience with seasoned operating executives. An early pioneer of the buy-and-build approach, Huron Capital has successfully raised six private equity funds aggregating nearly $2.0 billion in committed capital and invested in over 240 companies, and our portfolio companies have employed over 11,000 people throughout North America. The Huron Capital buy-and-build investment model includes equity recapitalizations, family succession transactions, market-entry strategies, corporate carve-outs, and management buyouts of companies having revenues up to $200 million. Huron Capital targets both control and non-control equity stakes in fundamentally-sound companies that can benefit from the Firm's operational approach to creating value. Huron Capital focuses on niche segments within commercial & industrial services, professional services and the consumer services sectors. For more information, please visit: www.huroncapital.com.

About Aquamar Holdings

Aquamar Holdings is a manufacturer of surimi seafood, producing and selling crab flavored seafood to food service, food manufacturing, and retail channels primarily in North America. Aquamar Holdings produces both frozen and refrigerated products, most of which are sold under the Aquamar brand name. The Company is one of the leading manufacturers of shred style surimi in North America, selling to restaurants/foodservice customers and major retailers. Huron Capital acquired the business in 2017. For more information, please visit: www.aquamarseafood.com/.

About True World Group

True World Group (TWG) is an investment company that owns seafood and Asian food culture businesses. True World Foods, the group's biggest business, is the largest distributor of fresh fish in North America and offers a complete array of sushi items to restaurants, with 22 distribution centers in the U.S., five in Canada, one in London and one in Madrid. TWG also owns retail businesses selling sushi, Japanese hot foods, Japanese groceries, and Japanese pastries.

Certain information herein may contain forward-looking statements which are provided to assist the reader in understanding the beliefs and opinions with respect to future opportunities as perceived by Huron Capital and others quoted herein. These statements are not guarantees of future performance and undue reliance should not be placed on them. Such forward-looking statements necessarily involve known and unknown risks and uncertainties, which may cause actual performance in future periods to differ materially from any projections or results expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. There can be no assurance that forward-looking statements will prove to be accurate, as actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements. The issuer of these statements undertakes no obligation to update forward-looking statements if circumstances or estimates or opinions should change except as may be required by applicable securities laws.

True World Group Contact: Jill Schmidt, President Jill Schmidt Public Relations O: 847-904-2806 | C: 847-921-1295 [email protected] Huron Capital Contact: Brent Snavely, Senior Director Lambert & Co. (313) 309-9516 [email protected]

SOURCE Huron Capital Partners
NORFOLK, Va., Dec. 9, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- James VanAllen Bickford III is being recognized by Continental Who's Who as a Distinguished Executive for his work in the Land Development field and in acknowledgment of his work at Midlantic Builders LLC.

With over 50 years of working in Land Development, James VanAllen Bickford III has vast experience in the business. Mr. Bickford enjoys his work in Residential and Commercial Real Estate, and has been providing these services since 2003. He currently works at Midlantic Builders LLC, located at 7220 Shirland Ave. in his hometown of Norfolk, VA.

James VanAllen Bickford III

To obtain his college education, Mr. Bickford attended the University of North Carolina, where he earned his Master's Degree in Regional Planning. He also graduated from the Virginia Military Institute with a degree in Civil Engineering, and subsequently became a member of the VMI Kappa Alpha Honor Fraternity. Mr. Bickford also studied at the Shalem Institute in Washington DC, graduating with a certificate in Spiritual Direction.



Earlier in his life, he worked with his uncle to construct land and develop real estate, giving him insight into this industry. In other aspects of his career, Mr. Bickford is very proud of his work on the Mercury Program at NASA in Langley, VA, which was the first space program that put a person into space. In his work as an engineer for the US Army, Mr. Bickford served as a Second Lieutenant in the 82nd Airborne Division at Fort Bragg, NC.

Today, Mr. Bickford is the Founder and Owner of Midlantic Builders LLC. His most recent development projects have been located throughout North Carolina and Virginia.

He is a member of the Board of Directors of the American Society of Marine Artists and the former President of the OBX Builders Association.

With five decades of successful business practice, Mr. Bickford has recently been recognized with an article feature by 24-7 Press Release, Daily Advent, and Marquis Who's Who.

As a devout Christian, Mr. Bickford has served on the Vestry of Christ in St. Luke's Church in Norfolk, VA, and is on the Standing Committee of the Diocese of Southern Virginia. He regularly hires about 50 homeless persons to pick up trash around the church.

Mr. Bickford enjoys spending time with his wife Blair and his four children, and likes to cook them delicious meals when they visit. He has always loved art, and often paints in his spare time.

Contact: Katherine Green , 516-825-5634 [email protected]

SOURCE Continental Who's Who
NEW BRUNSWICK, N.J., Dec. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Johnson & Johnson (NYSE: JNJ) will host a conference call for investors at 8:30 a.m. (Eastern Time) on Tuesday, January 25th to review fourth-quarter results. Joaquin Duato, incoming Chief Executive Officer, Joseph J. Wolk, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer and Jessica Moore, Vice President, Investor Relations will host the call.

Investors and other interested parties can access the webcast/conference call in the following ways:

The webcast and presentation material are accessible at Johnson & Johnson's website www.investor.jnj.com. A replay of the webcast will be available approximately three hours after the conference call concludes.

By telephone: for both "listen-only" participants and those financial analysts who wish to take part in the question-and-answer portion of the call, the telephone dial-in number in the U.S. is 877-869-3847. For participants outside the U.S., the dial-in number is 201-689-8261.

A replay of the conference call will be available until approximately 12:00 a.m. on February 8 th . The replay dial-in number for U.S. participants is 877-660-6853. For participants outside the U.S., the replay dial-in number is 201-612-7415. The replay conference ID number for all callers is 13725514.

on . The replay dial-in number for U.S. participants is 877-660-6853. For participants outside the U.S., the replay dial-in number is 201-612-7415. The replay conference ID number for all callers is 13725514. The press release will be available at approximately 6:45 a.m. (Eastern Time) the morning of the conference call.

the morning of the conference call. Please refer to www.investor.jnj.com for a complete list of currently planned earnings webcast/conference calls. Please note the first-quarter date of Tuesday, April 19 th, 2022.

About Johnson & Johnson

At Johnson & Johnson, we believe good health is the foundation of vibrant lives, thriving communities and forward progress. That's why for more than 130 years, we have aimed to keep people well at every age and every stage of life. Today, as the world's largest and most broadly-based health care company, we are committed to using our reach and size for good. We strive to improve access and affordability, create healthier communities, and put a healthy mind, body and environment within reach of everyone, everywhere. We are blending our heart, science and ingenuity to profoundly change the trajectory of health for humanity.

SOURCE Johnson & Johnson

Related Links

www.jnj.com


At the ceremony, the Hungarian Ambassador to China Mate Pesti made a speech by video. Other speakers included Liu Zhenhua, Chief of Political Section of the Chinese Embassy in Hungary, Li Yongsen, Deputy Director of Shandong Provincial Foreign Affairs Office, Szabo Peter, Mayor of Paks City, Laszlo Krisar, Honorary Foreign Economic Counsellor of Hungary and Honorary Citizen of Liaocheng City, Adam Daniel, Cultural and Educational Officer of the Hungarian Embassy in China and Deputy Director of Liszt Institute - Hungarian Cultural Center Beijing, and Huang Chenfeng, Chairman of the Hungarian Wink Group. In their speeches, they all expressed congratulations on the establishment of a Friendly and Cooperative Relationship between Liaocheng and Paks, hoping that the two cities seize this opportunity to tap the potential of cooperation, carry out deeper pragmatic cooperation on a larger scale, and make efforts to achieve mutual benefit and win-win results, according to the Information Office of Liaocheng Municipal Government.

On behalf of Liaocheng Municipal Party Committee and Municipal Government, Li Changping expressed her gratitude to the guests and friends for their long-term care and support to Liaocheng and made a brief introduction of Liaocheng City. She said that the establishment of a Friendly and Cooperative Relationship between the two cities opened a new chapter of mutual benefit, win-win cooperation and common development. She hoped the two cities can take this opportunity to achieve better results by broadening cooperation, strengthening mutual communication, and promoting people-to-people exchanges.

At the ceremony, Li Changping and Szabo Peter signed the Agreement on Establishing a Friendly and Cooperative Relationship on behalf of their respective cities. Liaocheng Techgong Health Science and Technology Co. Ltd. donated 30,000 European standard (FFP2) masks to Paks City. Mingshang Trading Company signed a series of agreements with Hungarian Wink Group and Hungarian Cathedral Winery.

Image Attachments Links:

Link: http://asianetnews.net/view-attachment?attach-id=410543

Caption: Scene of the signing ceremony

Link: http://asianetnews.net/view-attachment?attach-id=410550

Caption: The Hungarian Ambassador to China Mate Pesti made a speech.

Link: http://asianetnews.net/view-attachment?attach-id=410551

Caption: Laszlo Krisar, Honorary Citizen of Liaocheng City, delivered a speech.

Link: http://asianetnews.net/view-attachment?attach-id=410552

Caption: Liaocheng Techgong Health Science and Technology Co. Ltd. donated 30,000 European standard (FFP2) masks to Paks City.

SOURCE Information Office of Liaocheng Municipal Government
"We are proud to support the mission of Banco de Alimentos and will continue to serve the communities where we live and work," said PenFed's Executive Vice President of Operations Jamie Gayton.

The Mochila Alegre (Happy Backpack) Program through the Food Bank of Puerto Rico provides backpacks filled with nutritious food to children between 3 and 12 years old who depend on the school canteen for their daily meals. This program provides these children with a backpack filled with food for the weekend.

"We are thankful to PedFed Credit Union for their volunteers and their generous donation that will provide 20 children, for the next 52 weeks, with the nourishment they need and allows them to go back to school ready to learn on Mondays," said President of Banco de Alimentos Denise Santos.

PenFed currently serves members in Puerto Rico with financial centers in San Juan, Hatillo, Ponce and on the United States Army Garrison Fort Buchanan. PenFed has had a presence on the island for 15 years. Since the devastation of Hurricane Maria in 2017, PenFed has invested more than $8 million to open new facilities and provide career opportunities in Puerto Rico in support of our promise to help rebuild the local economy.

About PenFed Credit Union

Established in 1935, Pentagon Federal Credit Union (PenFed) is America's second-largest federal credit union, serving 2.5 million members worldwide with $31 billion in assets. PenFed Credit Union offers market-leading certificates, checking, credit cards, personal loans, mortgages, auto loans, student loans, and a wide range of other financial services with members' interests always in mind. PenFed Credit Union is federally insured by the NCUA and is an Equal Housing Lender. To learn more about PenFed Credit Union, visit PenFed.org , like us on Facebook and follow us @PenFed on Twitter . Interested in working for PenFed? Check us out on LinkedIn . We are proud to be an Equal Employment Opportunity Employer.

SOURCE PenFed Credit Union
PHILADELPHIA, Dec. 9, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- PhillyTech, a leader in hiring, talent acquisition, sales and lead generation for software and high-tech companies announced its 4th Annual Community Holiday Party For Charity, Launch 2022, on Thursday, December 16th at 6PM.

Launch 2022 will bring together 100-150 passionate entrepreneurs for networking and discussions in celebration of a successful year to come. PhillyTech Founder-CEO, Michael C. Bertoni will be the Master of Ceremonies and unveiling a PhillyTech brand relaunch. The event will feature eight local business leaders as speakers. The keynote address will be delivered by Wil Reynolds, Founder-Director of Strategy at Seer Interactive. The lineup also includes Brian Glick, Founder-CEO of Chain, Matt Kowalczyk, Founder-CEO of EXIT83 and published author James Strong, Cloud Director at Contino. There will be three comedians to warm up the crowd, great networking opportunities, open bar, and food. All proceeds from the event will go to Covenant House.

Covenant House builds a bridge to hope for young people facing homelessness and survivors of trafficking through unconditional love, absolute respect, and relentless support. They are open 24/7 in 31 cities across six countries and their high-quality programs are designed to empower young people to rise and overcome adversity, today and in the future. Founded in 1999, Covenant House Pennsylvania (CHPA) is open 24 hours a day, 365 days a year--ready at a moment's notice to offer safety and wellness to Philadelphia's most vulnerable youth. CHPA's doors are open to all young people who need help, regardless of their race, religion, sexual orientation gender identity or expression.

"It's our vision to help Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) and Hi-Tech companies succeed and Launch in 2022. Most of our clients are in business not just to grow profits, but also to bring products and services that benefit the local community and the world at large. This event allows our network of entrepreneurs and business leaders the opportunity to give back to a great charity Covenant House. All profits go directly to Covenant House." - Michael C. Bertoni, Founder-CEO, PhillyTech

The event also serves as an opportunity for passionate entrepreneurs involved in the tech ecosystem to expand their network and hear from other successful business leaders. Local media outlets are welcome to cover the event to bring awareness to the work Covenant House is doing for the community.

PhillyTech events connect like-minded business owners and tech professionals, creating a catalyst for networking that facilitates strategic partnerships, mentorship, revenue generation and much more. The events are designed to help members of the tech community meet peers in innovation and grow together.

Register for Launch 2022 and Prepare for Liftoff. 

About PhillyTech

PhillyTech's vision is to be the #1 resource to help Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) and Hi-Tech companies succeed. For 24+ years, PhillyTech has helped hire 1000+ professionals in the US, and outside the US, generated 10,000+ leads and $100M+ in revenue for SaaS and Hi-Tech companies. PhillyTech is the only firm in the industry dedicated to helping SaaS and Hi-Tech and offers unique and differentiated HIRE and SELL services for these markets. For more information, visit https://phillytech.co/.

HIRE full-time talent in the US and staff augmentation & project resources in Colombia, SA.

SELL technology solutions, drive growth and generate leads with UPROSPECT.

Photo(s):

https://www.prlog.org/12897061



Press release distributed by PRLog

SOURCE PhillyTech
FALLS CHURCH, Va., Dec. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Pinkston, a strategy and communications consultancy based in the D.C.-metro area, today announced its acquisition of Pliris Strategies, a messaging and communications firm based in Oklahoma City. The acquisition enables Pinkston to serve its rapidly growing client base with the immediate integration of experienced communications professionals and expands Pinkston's presence into the southern United States with an office in downtown Oklahoma City.

"We're excited to welcome the Pliris team into the Pinkston family," said Christian Pinkston, founder and partner of Pinkston. "Donelle has built an incredible practice during some of the hardest years to build a business in recent history. Her success is a testament to her reputation, expertise and passion for effective messaging and storytelling. She and her team bring breadth and depth of perspective that will fuel our continued growth and help us make a bigger impact for and through our clients."

Harder will join Pinkston as a senior vice president. Prior to joining Pinkston, Harder served in senior roles in the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate, for members of Congress and for U.S. Senate committees. She moved to Oklahoma City in 2017 for the role of vice president at the Oklahoma Oil & Gas Association, representing one of the state's largest industries, and soon after joined the Stitt for Governor 2018 campaign where she has spent the past several years in various advisory roles to Governor Kevin Stitt and the State of Oklahoma.

At Pliris Strategies, Harder counsels CEOs and executives in the private and public sectors to communicate complex issues and ideas that generate maximum buy-in among critical audiences. From honing word choices to redesigning brands and restructuring internal marketing and communications teams, Harder leverages deep expertise to solve big challenges for her clients.

"In today's environment, communicators can't hide behind brands, whether those brands are companies, nonprofit groups or government agencies," said Harder. "The challenge all entities face is identifying the message their most critical audience needs to hear and how to communicate it effectively.

"I've watched from afar as Pinkston has grown tremendously in recent years, adapting to the ever-changing communications landscape and expanding its client base to serve some of the biggest and most impactful brands in the world. I'm thrilled to be rejoining them now to help accelerate that growth."

Harder will be joined at Pinkston by her existing Pliris team, including Account Managers Kelly Hughes, Baylee Lakey and Hannah Davis, and Content Creator Jessica Cockroft. They will remain based in downtown Oklahoma City, where Pliris has offices.

About Pinkston

Pinkston is an international strategic communications consultancy that offers an integrated collection of earned- and owned-media capabilities, including strategy, messaging and writing, media relations, social media, video production, web development, digital marketing and graphic design. Founded in 2001 and based in the Washington, D.C. area, Pinkston serves a wide range of clients including Fortune 100 companies, innovative technology startups, national non-profit organizations, international industry associations and numerous New York Times best-selling authors. Learn more at www.pinkston.co .

SOURCE Pinkston
GENEVA, Dec. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- RELIEF THERAPEUTICS Holding SA (SIX: RLF,OTCQB: RLFTF, RLFTY) ("Relief"), a biopharmaceutical company seeking to provide patients therapeutic relief from serious diseases with high unmet need, today announced that Jack Weinstein, Chief Financial Officer and Treasurer of Relief, will present a company overview live at VirtualInvestorConferences.com, at 10:30 am ET on December 16th.

DATE: Thursday, December 16th

TIME: 10:30 am EST

LINK: https://bit.ly/3cIf2X6

This will be a live, interactive online event where investors are invited to ask the company questions in real-time. If attendees are not able to join the event live on the day of the conference, an archived webcast will also be made available after the event.

It is recommended that investors pre-register and run the online system check to expedite participation and receive event updates.

Learn more about the event at www.virtualinvestorconferences.com.

About Relief

Relief focuses primarily on clinical-stage programs based on molecules with a history of clinical testing and use in human patients or a strong scientific rationale. Relief's drug candidate, RLF-100 (aviptadil), a synthetic form of Vasoactive Intestinal Peptide (VIP), is in late-stage clinical testing in the U.S. for the treatment of respiratory deficiency due to COVID-19. As part of its pipeline diversification strategy, in March 2021, Relief entered into a Collaboration and License Agreement with Acer Therapeutics for the worldwide development and commercialization of ACER-001. ACER-001 is a taste-masked and immediate release proprietary powder formulation of sodium phenylbutyrate (NaPB) for the treatment of Urea Cycle Disorders and Maple Syrup Urine Disease. In addition, Relief's recently completed acquisitions of APR Applied Pharma Research SA and AdVita Lifescience GmbH bring to Relief a diverse pipeline of marketed and development-stage programs.

RELIEF THERAPEUTICS Holding SA is listed on the SIX Swiss Exchange under the symbol RLF and quoted in the U.S. on OTCQB under the symbols RLFTF and RLFTY. For more information, visit www.relieftherapeutics.com. Follow us on LinkedIn.

About Life Sciences Investor Forum

Life Sciences Investor Forum is the leading proprietary investor conference series that provides an interactive forum for Life Sciences companies to meet with and present directly to investors.

A real-time solution for investor engagement, Life Sciences Investor Forum is part of the OTC Market Group's suite of investor relations services specifically designed for more efficient investor access. Replicating the look and feel of on-site investor conferences, Life Sciences Investor Forum combines leading-edge conferencing and investor communications capabilities with a comprehensive global investor audience network.

SOURCE VirtualInvestorConferences.com
SANDVIKEN, Sweden, Dec. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Sandvik has committed to set targets in line with the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi), consistent with the Paris Agreement. This is a natural step in Sandvik's sustainable business strategy, where we can make a big difference through our customer offerings, such as battery-electric mining equipment, productivity-enhancing manufacturing and machining solutions, and energy-efficient rock processing solutions.

Sandvik already has ambitious sustainability targets for 2030 where we have committed to reach a 50 percent reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. By joining the SBTi, Sandvik will seek to get its sustainability targets validated against science-based criteria.

"Sustainability is an integrated part of Sandvik's strategy and of crucial importance for the society around us as well as for business. We constantly work with customers and suppliers to develop more productive, safer and more sustainable solutions, and setting Science Based Targets underlines our firm determination to reduce greenhouse gas emissions through our products and our operations", says Stefan Widing, President and CEO of Sandvik.

The SBTi is a partnership between the Carbon Disclosure Project, the UN Global Compact, the World Resources Institute and the World Wide Fund for Nature. The requirements of SBTi include that greenhouse gas emissions must be halved by 2030  and drop to net zero by 2050 at the latest.

Stockholm, December 10, 2021

Sandvik AB

For further information, contact

Louise Tjeder, VP Investor relations, phone: +46 (0) 70782 6374 or Johannes Hellstrom, Press and Media Relations Manager, phone: +46 (0) 70721 1008.

This information was brought to you by Cision http://news.cision.com

https://news.cision.com/sandvik/r/sandvik-commits-to-the-science-based-targets-initiative,c3469652

The following files are available for download:

https://mb.cision.com/Main/208/3469652/1508216.pdf Sandvik commits to the Science Based Targets initiative

SOURCE Sandvik
Zhao Jianjun, Acting Mayor of Wuxi Municipal People's Government, said that Wuxi sincerely hopes to deepen exchanges and cooperation with the people of sister cities in broader fields and at a higher starting point. "We will strengthen the alignment of policies, industries, and projects, promote the upgrading of two-way economic, trade and investment cooperation, and will tap into complementary advantages and achieve win-win cooperation." Focusing on industrial development, scientific and technological innovation, green low-carbon, urban construction, and other areas, the event intends to explore new models of capital, technology, and talent cooperation.

At the conference, the "Closer Cooperation, Forever Friendship" international industrial cooperation platform and the "Sino-Dutch Big Data Industrial Platform" were officially launched, helping Wuxi to further deepen its global industrial cooperation. The international cooperation projects of various cities (counties) and districts were unveiled at the conference one by one, covering 14 countries and regions around the world, including people-to-people exchanges, personnel training, artificial intelligence, green environmental protection, and other fields. It shows the sufficient strength and fruitful results of Wuxi's implementation of the cooperation plan for international exchanges.

The conference played a series of videos showing achievements of the international sister city industrial cooperation projects, which demonstrates the great charm of "Humanistic Wuxi", "Intelligent Wuxi", "Open Wuxi" and "Innovative Wuxi" from four aspects: people-to-people connection, industrial cooperation, platform interconnection and resource sharing.

The project "See Sister Cities in the Cloud" was also launched at the conference, and promo videos from 24 countries and 29 international sister cities will be displayed on outdoor screens such as airport and Nanchang Street, as well as subway, bus and other mobile terminals, so that citizens can have an "international trip" without leaving home at any time.

Image Attachments Links:

Link: http://asianetnews.net/view-attachment?attach-id=410519

Caption: The 10th Wuxi International Sister Cities Forum

SOURCE Foreign Affairs Office of Wuxi
JACKSONVILLE, Fla., Dec. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The Law Offices of Anidjar & Levine, a leading personal injury Florida law firm, announced the grand opening of their newest location in Jacksonville with a celebratory launch party and ribbon-cutting ceremony on Friday, October 29, 2021. The event recognized their Jacksonville employees that will be joining over 150 Anidjar & Levine attorneys and support staff across the state of Florida. Together with Co-Founders Marc Anidjar and Glen Levine and attorneys Evan Gusky, Shire Patel, Arlen Weintraub, and Elie Anidjar, doctors in the local area along with VIPs and community leaders gathered to commemorate. The festivities were from 5-9 p.m. and guests enjoyed food and drinks from BBQ Monroe's BBQ.

Pictured: Elie Anidjar, Evan Gusky, Glen Levine, Shire Patel, Marc Anidjar, and Arlen Weintraub The Law Offices of Anidjar & Levine, Jacksonville Office, located at 2245 Saint Johns Ave, Jacksonville, FL 32204.

Founded by Co-Founders Marc Anidjar and Glen Levine in 2005, the law firm brings years of extensive personal injury experience to clients across Florida. Since the inception, the firm has expanded locations throughout Florida, with offices in Fort Lauderdale, Naples, Jacksonville, West Palm Beach, Orlando, Fort Myers and Tampa. With a team of qualified attorneys that offer both pre-litigation and litigation services based on a comprehensive approach, The Law Offices of Anidjar and Levine have won more than $450 million in damages for their clients. The firm was featured on the INC 5000 Fastest Growing Companies list for three consecutive years. Dedicated to giving clients the highest quality representation with no hidden fees or costs, the personal injury law firm offers services 24 hours a day, seven days a week, with free visits to a client's home, workplace, or hospital room to discuss their case.

Sold to The Law Offices of Anidjar & Levine on August 3, 2020, for $910,000, the law firm's new office stands at 2245 Saint Johns Ave, Jacksonville, FL 32204. The property is a two-story building with 3,830 square feet in the Riverside neighborhood and a 27-minute drive from Jacksonville International Airport.

"Acquiring this building is a reflection of all the hard work we have put into building our firm from the ground up," shared Marc Anidjar, Co-founder & Senior Partner at The Law Offices of Anidjar & Levine. "With another location in Florida, it further expands our footprint, allowing for our clients to easily meet with us when they need."

"As a company that values customer experience, it is important for us to be as accessible as possible to our clients," added Glen Levine, Co-founder & Senior Partner at The Law Offices of Anidjar & Levine. "Whether it is providing our cell phone numbers so they can call us any time or having an office they can easily visit, we want to make the process of working with our firm seamless and easy."

For more information about the Jacksonville location, visit www.anidjarlevine.com or call 1-888-494-0430.

ABOUT THE LAW OFFICES OF ANIDJAR & LEVINE:

The Law Offices of Anidjar & Levine bring years of experience successfully representing Florida clients in personal injury and criminal defense law. With offices in Fort Lauderdale, Naples, Jacksonville, West Palm Beach, Orlando, Fort Myers and Tampa, their team consists of experienced lawyers, investigators, and medical/legal support experts to achieve the optimal results for their clients. Founded by Marc Anidjar and Glen B. Levine, the company stands by its mission to help those in their community and defend their rights. For more information, please visit www.anidjarlevine.com.

Contact:

Lais Pontes Greene

(954) 960-6083

[email protected]

SOURCE The Law Offices of Anidjar & Levine
DUBLIN, Dec. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The "Dropshipping Market Research Report by Product Type, Organization Size, and State - United States Forecast to 2026 - Cumulative Impact of COVID-19" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering.

The United States Dropshipping Market size was estimated at USD 13.92 billion in 2020, is expected to reach USD 15.64 billion in 2021, and projected to grow at a CAGR of 9.65% reaching USD 24.20 billion by 2026.



Market Statistics

The report provides market sizing and forecast across five major currencies - USD, EUR GBP, JPY, and AUD. It helps organization leaders make better decisions when currency exchange data is readily available. In this report, the years 2018 and 2019 are considered historical years, 2020 as the base year, 2021 as the estimated year, and years from 2022 to 2026 are considered the forecast period.



This research report categorizes Dropshipping to forecast the revenues and analyze the trends in each of the following sub-markets:

Based on Product Type, the market was studied across Electronics & Media, Fashion, Food & Personal Care, Furniture & Appliances, and Toys, Hobby, and DIY.

Based on Organization Size, the market was studied across Large Enterprise and Small & Medium Enterprise.

Based on State, the market was studied across California , Florida , Illinois , New York , Ohio , Pennsylvania , and Texas .

Competitive Scenario

The Competitive Scenario provides an outlook analysis of the various business growth strategies adopted by the vendors. The news covered in this section deliver valuable thoughts at different stages while keeping up-to-date with the business and engaging stakeholders in the economic debate.

The competitive scenario represents press releases or news of the companies categorized into Merger & Acquisition, Agreement, Collaboration, & Partnership, New Product Launch & Enhancement, Investment & Funding, and Award, Recognition, & Expansion. All the news collected help vendor to understand the gaps in the marketplace and competitors' strength and weakness thereby, providing insights to enhance product and service.



Company Usability Profiles

The report profoundly explores the recent significant developments by the leading vendors and innovation profiles in the United States Dropshipping Market, including:

AliDropship.com

Big Drop Ship

CJdropshipping

Doba Inc.

Dropified

DropWow

MODALYST, INC.

Printify, Inc.

Salehoo

Spocket Inc.

Sunrise Wholesale, Inc.

Uptail Private Limited

Wholesale Central

Wix.com, Inc

Worldwide Brands, Inc.

Yakkyo

The report provides insights on the following pointers:

1. Market Penetration: Provides comprehensive information on the market offered by the key players

2. Market Development: Provides in-depth information about lucrative emerging markets and analyze penetration across mature segments of the markets

3. Market Diversification: Provides detailed information about new product launches, untapped geographies, recent developments, and investments

4. Competitive Assessment & Intelligence: Provides an exhaustive assessment of market shares, strategies, products, certification, regulatory approvals, patent landscape, and manufacturing capabilities of the leading players

5. Product Development & Innovation: Provides intelligent insights on future technologies, R&D activities, and breakthrough product developments



The report answers questions such as:

1. What is the market size and forecast of the United States Dropshipping Market?

2. What are the inhibiting factors and impact of COVID-19 shaping the United States Dropshipping Market during the forecast period?

3. Which are the products/segments/applications/areas to invest in over the forecast period in the United States Dropshipping Market?

4. What is the competitive strategic window for opportunities in the United States Dropshipping Market?

5. What are the technology trends and regulatory frameworks in the United States Dropshipping Market?

6. What is the market share of the leading vendors in the United States Dropshipping Market?

7. What modes and strategic moves are considered suitable for entering the United States Dropshipping Market?



For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/p93cwd

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: 646-607-1907

Fax (outside U.S.): +353-1-481-1716

SOURCE Research and Markets

Related Links

http://www.researchandmarkets.com


Elly Perets, CEO of ASTERRA, will speak at the Summit on Earth Observation Business Wednesday, December 15 at 11:20 a.m. on Stage 01. Perets, along with three other professionals, will discuss the topic of "Utilities: Using Satellites for Maintenance and Risk Prevention."

"Communicating with our colleagues in the satellite industry is critical to serving the needs of the people around the world," said Perets. "Through collaboration, we can better understand environmental risk and find positive, sustainable solutions to problems faced across the globe."

ASTERRA products use patented L-band Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) technology to locate and analyze moisture accumulating underground. Data from two satellites, SAOCOM and ALOS-2, are used. This soil moisture sensing is beneficial for pipeline assessment, leak detection and infrastructure assessment. At the summit, ASTERRA will share how their products, MasterPlan, Recover, and EarthWorks, provide hard intelligence and analysis to managers and engineers to support data-based decisions on large and massive-scale infrastructure.

World Satellite Business Week will take place at the Westin Hotel in the heart of Paris December 13 - 16, 2021. Leaders in the satellite industry value this conference format because they can gain market insights, network, conduct business, and conclude major deals. In attendance will be 95% of the global commercial satellite business, and industry decision-makers will come together from over 50 countries. For more information about the summit and its various programs, click here.

ABOUT ASTERRA

ASTERRA (formerly Utilis) provides data-driven solutions for water utilities, government agencies, and the greater infrastructure industry. ASTERRA products use synthetic aperture radar (SAR) data from satellites and turns it into large-scale decision support tools. The company's proprietary algorithms and highly educated scientists and engineers are the key to their mission, to deliver actionable intelligence to advance Earth's resource resilience. Since 2016, Utilis technology has resulted in saving more than 9000 million gallons of potable water and 22,000 MWH of energy per year, in support of United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. The Utilis ASTERRA division is headquartered in Israel with offices in the United States and United Kingdom. Their innovative data solutions are used in multiple verticals around the globe. They are investing in artificial intelligence (AI) to bring their products to the next level. For more information about ASTERRA and to learn more about their technology, visit https://asterra.io.

Media Contact

Karen Dubey

Corporate Marketing Director

[email protected]

(858) 798-6709

SOURCE ASTERRA
The virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) market to reach US$ 12,971.3 million by 2027 from US$ 4,490.0 million in 2019 to grow at a CAGR of 14.4% during 2019 to 2027 driven by the rising trend of digitalization among enterprises to improve operational workflow and reduce costs.

NEW YORK, Dec. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- According to the new market research report " Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) Market Forecast to 2027 - COVID-19 Impact and Global Analysis by Offering (Solution and Services), Deployment (Cloud and On-Premise), Enterprise Size (SMEs and Large Enterprises), End User (IT & Telecom, Government, Healthcare, BFSI, Education, Retail, Manufacturing, and Other End Users); and Geography", published by The Insight Partners, Get the Latest COVID-19 Analysis on global VDI market at https://www.theinsightpartners.com/covid-analysis-sample/TIPRE00011555

Report Coverage Details Market Size Value in US$ 4,490.0 Million in 2019 Market Size Value by US$ 12,971.3 Million by 2027 Growth Rate CAGR of 14.4% from 2020-2027 Forecast Period 2020-2027 Base Year 2020 No. of Pages 207 No. Tables 110 No. of Charts & Figures 94 Historical Data Available Yes Segments Covered Offering , Deployment , Enterprise Size , End User ; and Geography Regional Scope North America; Europe; Asia Pacific; Latin America; MEA Country Scope US, UK, Canada, Germany, France, Italy, Australia, Russia, China, Japan, South Korea, Saudi Arabia, Brazil, Argentina Report Coverage Revenue Forecast, Company Ranking, Competitive Landscape, Growth Factors, and Trends

Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) Market: Competitive Landscape and Key Developments

VMware, Inc.; Citrix Systems, Inc.; Microsoft Corporation; Amazon.com, Inc.; Cisco Systems, Inc.; IBM Corporation; Fujitsu Limited; Dell Technologies Inc.; Hewlett Packard Enterprise Development LP (HPE); and Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd are among the key players in the global virtual desktop infrastructure market. The leading companies are focusing on expanding and diversifying their market presence by acquiring new customer base, thereby tapping prevailing business opportunities.

In 2020, HPE introduced a beefier VDI solution along with separate pre-configured solutions for organizations of all sizes built on its servers. The company is also offering new, pre-configured VDI solutions to support small, medium and enterprise customers.

Get Exclusive Sample Pages of Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) Market Size - COVID-19 Impact and Global Analysis with Strategic Insights at https://www.theinsightpartners.com/sample/TIPRE00011555/

Virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) is a form of desktop virtualization that allows hosting desktop environments on a central server. In virtual desktop infrastructure, desktop operations run on virtual machines located at a central server and delivered to end users over a network. End users can access these remote machines with the help of endpoints such as PCs, laptops, smartphones, thin client terminals, and tablets. VDI solutions and services are becoming quite popular among various industries such as IT & telecom, government, healthcare, BFSI, education, and retail. Mobile employees, field technicians, contractors, part-time workers, healthcare professionals, and teachers are among the users who commonly use virtual desktop infrastructure while working remotely. Virtual desktop infrastructure enhances user mobility and remote access by allowing users to access a wide range of virtual apps and data on the move. With the growing trend of digitalization, automation, and smart workplaces, the demand for virtual desktop infrastructure solutions is anticipated to rise at an impressive pace in the coming years. The ongoing COVID-19 outbreak is further accelerating the market growth with work-from-home guidelines being implemented across the world. Major IT and other companies are expected to invest heavily in desktop virtualization solutions such as virtual desktop infrastructure to reduce physical infrastructure and other related operational costs.

The virtual desktop infrastructure market is segmented into offering, deployment, enterprise size, end-user, and geography. Based on offering, the market is segmented into solution and services. In 2019, the solution segment held a larger share of the global virtual desktop infrastructure market. Based on deployment type, the virtual desktop infrastructure market is categorized into cloud and on-premise. Cloud is expected to be the fastest-growing segment during the forecast period. On the basis of enterprise size, the market is segmented into SMEs and large enterprises. The large enterprises segment contributed a substantial share in 2019; however, the SMEs segment is projected to grow faster due to the availability of low-cost cloud-based solutions. Further, in 2019, IT and telecom industry led the virtual desktop infrastructure market globally.

Download Sample PDF Brochure of Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) Market Size and Growth Research Report at https://www.theinsightpartners.com/sample/TIPRE00011555/

Globally, there is a demand for various technology solutions and services due to developed countries such as the US and Canada and a huge presence of companies from various industry sectors. Presently, the US is the world's worst-affected country due to the COVID-19 outbreak with more than 3.16 million confirmed cases and more than 133,000 deaths, as per the recent WHO Situation Report-174. Hence, the region's economy has seen a significant decline in the past few months, negatively impacting the growth of various industries. The restriction imposed in various countries on travel and business activities is impacting the growth of key industries such as IT & telecom, BFSI, and healthcare in the region. In addition, the overall manufacturing processes, research, and development activities are getting impacted negatively. To continue daily operations and business activities, remote working and availability of advanced communication/working infrastructure are the key factors driving the demand for desktop virtualization solutions during the pandemic in North America. Thus, the COVID-19 crisis is expected to positively impact market growth in the coming years.

Growing Trend of Digital Transformation to Provide Growth Opportunities for the Market:

Digitalization presents a massive opportunity for businesses to utilize digital technologies and automation to transform their business models and existing processes in order to enhance operational efficiency and increase revenue. In the last few years, proliferation of smart devices, adoption of Internet of Things (IoT), cloud computing, and artificial intelligence (AI) have led to the advent of smart workplaces. In general, digital transformation refers to integrating digital technologies in business processes and organizational activities/models. Rising demand for end-to-end business process optimization, high operational efficiency, and reduced human errors are the key drivers for the growth of digital transformation in various industries. For the past few years, desktop virtualization has been gaining popularity among enterprises allowing them to virtualize entire workgroups for higher efficiency and lower costs. With solutions such as virtual desktop infrastructure and Desktop-as-a-Service (DaaS), industry verticals such as IT & telecom, government & defense, education, BFSI, healthcare, research, and manufacturing are able to reduce their endpoint footprint, offer feature-rich apps, and provide better user experiences. This solution helps enterprises increase business agility, responsiveness, and flexibility and thus cater to the ever-changing IT demands. Hence, all the benefits offered by virtual desktop infrastructure and other desktop virtualization tools enable the digital transformation in various industries and thus drive the demand for these solutions among enterprises.

Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) Market: Offering

The offering segment of VDI is classified into solution and services. The software required for providing virtual desktops is based on the virtualization method selected by the user. With VDI, the desktop OS runs and is managed in the data center. Further, Hypervisor software runs on the host server, providing access to a virtual machine to each end-user across the network. Also, connection broker software is needed to validate users, connect them to a virtual machine, observe activity levels, as well as reallocate the virtual machine when the connection is terminated. These connection brokers may be purchased separately or bundled with the hypervisor. Moreover, remote desktop services can be installed leveraging utilities that are bundled with the Microsoft Windows Server OS. Additionally, in case a user chooses Desktop-as-a-Service (DaaS) solution, then all software installation, configuration, as well as maintenance will be managed by the DaaS cloud-hosted service provider. This comprises OS, applications, files, as well as user preferences.

Buy Premium Copy of Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) Market Size, Share, Revenue, Strategic Insights and Forecasts 2019-2027 Research Report at https://www.theinsightpartners.com/buy/TIPRE00011555/

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SOURCE The Insight Partners
BEIJING, Dec. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Themed on full-scale organic agriculture and countywide rural vitalization, the eighth International Forum of Organic Agriculture was convened in Datong City*, Shanxi Province in north China during December 6-7.

The forum, jointly organized by Datong People's Government, China Agricultural University, Taiyuan University of Technology and Shanxi Agricultural University, attracted over 80 experts and scholars at home and abroad to exchange views on topics such as the status quo and trend of organic industry, Lingqiu County's practices on full-scale organic agriculture, organic dry-farming, organic community and organic village construction.

Recent years, Datong City has poured great efforts into developing organic dry-farming and through farmland quality improvement, research on seeds of improved variety for dry-farming and green development, a batch of demonstration counties, areas and promotion zones came into being in the city.

Zhang Qiang, the city mayor, said on the opening ceremony of the forum that Datong will further leverage the role of organic dry-farming in growing the city's advantages as the place of origin for related organic farm produces and gradually popularize the "Chehe Mode" to build more organic agriculture demonstration zones.

Chehe Mode here refers to such an economic development path as combines organic agriculture, ecotourism and beautiful village construction altogether, represented by the practices of Chehe Village at Hongshileng Town, Lingqiu County of Datong City. Since 2013, Lingqiu County started its organic agricultural demonstration park and zone construction from Chehe Village.

Regardless of other counties in Datong, Lingqiu County developed an economic growth path characterized by full-scale organic agriculture and managed to gradually shed reliance on land selling-based fiscal revenue and energy economy.

By far, Lingqiu County has 60 organically certified agricultural products, more than 30 organic agricultural producers and 6,666.67 hectares of farmland for organic agriculture.

As Zhang introduced, the city will also expand cooperation with renowned universities and research institutions at home and abroad to press ahead with cooperation in production, supply and sales projects related to the entire organic agriculture industry.

*Datong City, located in the region with a temperate monsoon climate, boasts unique advantages in developing organic agriculture given its obvious day and night temperature difference and long sunshine time.

See the original link: https://en.imsilkroad.com/p/325264.html

SOURCE Xinhua Silk Road
ABBOTT PARK, Ill., Dec. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Abbott (NYSE: ABT) announced that its Board of Directors has elected Chief Executive Officer Robert B. Ford as Chairman of the Board, effective today. Miles D. White, executive chairman and former CEO, will step down from the Abbott Board effective today and will retire after a remarkable 38-year career with the Company.

"We're grateful for Miles' leadership and his exceptional work to transform Abbott into the leading health technology company that it is today," said William A. Osborn, lead director and chair of the Nominations and Governance committee. "Robert has continued to strengthen Abbott's position by advancing our industry-leading pipeline while managing the Company's significant contributions during the pandemic."

"It's been my privilege to serve Abbott and its many stakeholders, reshaping the Company to keep it relevant and strong while medicine, technology and society have evolved," said Mr. White. "Abbott will be in good hands with Robert's leadership, and I want to thank the Board and my colleagues  current and past  for their support during my tenure."

"I want to thank Miles for all he's done for Abbott and the people we serve, as well as his mentorship and friendship throughout my career," said Mr. Ford. "It's my honor to work alongside the Board and my global team to deliver on the unprecedented opportunities in front of us, so Abbott continues to lead in the reshaping of the future of healthcare."

About Abbott:

Abbott is a global healthcare leader that helps people live more fully at all stages of life. Our portfolio of life-changing technologies spans the spectrum of healthcare, with leading businesses and products in diagnostics, medical devices, nutritionals and branded generic medicines. Our 109,000 colleagues serve people in more than 160 countries.

Connect with us at www.abbott.com, on LinkedIn at www.linkedin.com/company/abbott-/, on Facebook at www.facebook.com/Abbott and on Twitter @AbbottNews.

SOURCE Abbott
MEXICO CITY, Dec. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Grupo Aeromexico, S.A.B. de C.V. ("Aeromexico" or the "Company") (BMV: AEROMEX) informs that today the Bankruptcy Court has entered an order approving the Disclosure Statement with respect to the Joint Plan of Reorganization for Aeromexico and its subsidiaries that are debtors in the Company's Chapter 11 restructuring process. The Debtors now have Court approval to launch solicitation of votes on the Plan.

The foregoing represents another key milestone in the Company's restructuring process. Aeromexico will continue working with all of its key stakeholders to obtain Court approval of the Plan and emerge from Chapter 11 as expeditiously as possible.

This press release contains certain forward-looking statements that reflect the current views and/or expectations of the Company and its management with respect to its performance, business and future events. We use words such as "believe," "anticipate," "plan," "expect,", "intend," "target," "estimate," "project," "predict," "forecast," "guideline," "should" and other similar expressions to identify forward-looking statements, but they are not the only way we identify such statements. Such statements are subject to a number of risks, uncertainties and assumptions. We caution you that a number of important factors could cause actual results to differ materially from the plans, objectives, expectations, estimates and intentions expressed in this release. The Company is under no obligation and expressly disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.

About Grupo Aeromexico: Grupo Aeromexico, S.A.B. de C.V. is a holding company whose subsidiaries are engaged in commercial aviation in Mexico and the promotion of passenger loyalty programs. Aeromexico, Mexico's global airline, has its main operations center in Terminal 2 of the Mexico City International Airport. Its destination network has reach in Mexico, the United States, Canada, Central America, South America, Asia and Europe. The Group's current operating fleet includes Boeing 787 and 737 aircraft, as well as the latest generation Embraer 190. Aeromexico is a founding partner of SkyTeam, an alliance that celebrates 20 years and offers connectivity in more than 170 countries, through the 19 partner airlines. Aeromexico created and implemented a Health and Hygiene Management System (SGSH) to protect its clients and collaborators at all stages of its operation.

www.aeromexico.com www.skyteam.com

SOURCE Grupo Aeromexico S.A.B. de C.V.
SAO PAULO, Dec. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Brazil is opening its gas market to competition, taking steps to reduce the dominance of state-controlled Petrobras and provide opportunities to new entrants, both domestic and international. The freer market will mean that prices are driven by supply and demand. To provide price transparency for this rapidly changing environment, Argus has launched a new report  Argus Brazil Gas and Power.

Requests to open Brazil's natural gas market have been in train since 2016. Private-sector companies and local gas distributors were able to take part in tenders for supply contracts for the first time this year. From next year, gas producers will no longer sell all their supply to Petrobras, but directly to customers. Private-sector companies will also have direct access to essential infrastructure, including processing units and pipelines.

The Argus Brazil Gas and Power report includes calculated gas prices, news, analysis, regulatory updates and comparisons with international gas (Henry Hub day-ahead), Brent crude (North Sea Dated) and LNG delivered to Brazil (LNG des Brazil) benchmarks.

Argus Media chairman and chief executive Adrian Binks said: "Argus is known for identifying and reporting on new markets, as soon as they are viable. We understand that as markets liberalise, there is a great need for information, as companies are preparing significant investment in an uncertain environment. Accurate, comprehensive and objective insight, as well as good quality data are vital to successful market liberalisation. We have worked closely with contacts inside and outside Brazil to put together a unique and high-value report that will help Brazil's gas and power sector develop successfully."

Argus contact information

London: Seana Lanigan

+44 20 7780 4200

Email Seana

Singapore: Tomoko Hashimoto

+65 6496 9960

Email Tomoko

Moscow: Alexey Komarov

+7 495 933 75 71

Email Alexey

Houston: Matt Oatway

+1 713 968 0000

Email Matt

About Argus Media

Argus is an independent media organisation with almost 1,100 staff. It is headquartered in London and has 26 offices in the world's principal commodity trading and production centres. Argus produces price assessments and analysis of international energy and other commodity markets and offers bespoke consulting services and industry-leading conferences.

Companies in 140 countries around the world use Argus data to index physical trade and as benchmarks in financial derivative markets as well as for analysis and planning purposes.

Argus was founded in 1970 and is a privately held UK-registered company. It is owned by employee shareholders, global growth equity firm General Atlantic and Hg, the specialist software and technology services investor.

ARGUS, the ARGUS logo, ARGUS MEDIA, ARGUS DIRECT, ARGUS OPEN MARKETS, AOM, FMB, DEWITT, JIM JORDAN & ASSOCIATES, JJ&A, FUNDALYTICS, METAL-PAGES, METALPRICES.COM, INTEGER, Argus publication titles and Argus index names are trademarks of Argus Media Limited.

SOURCE Argus Media

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ROLLING MEADOWS, Ill., Dec. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Arthur J. Gallagher & Co. today announced the acquisition of Little Rock, Ark.-based The Robbi Davis Agency, Inc. (RDA). Terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

Founded in 1996, RDA is a full-service insurance agency specializing in employee benefits, Medicare supplement/drug plans and individual health insurance, with a focus on small group businesses. Robbi Davis and her team will remain in their current location under the direction of Jerry Roberts, head of Gallagher's Heartland region employee benefits consulting operations.

"The Robbi Davis Agency is a traditional health & welfare agency with an outstanding reputation in the marketplace for its focused commitment to clients," said J. Patrick Gallagher, Jr., Chairman, President and CEO. "I am very pleased to welcome Robbi and her associates to our growing Gallagher team."

Arthur J. Gallagher & Co. (NYSE:AJG), a global insurance brokerage, risk management and consulting services firm, is headquartered in Rolling Meadows, Illinois. The company has operations in 68 countries and offers client service capabilities in more than 150 countries around the world through a network of correspondent brokers and consultants.

Investors: Ray Iardella Media: Linda J. Collins VP - Investor Relations VP - Corporate Communications 630-285-3661/ [email protected] 630-285-4009/ [email protected]

SOURCE Arthur J. Gallagher & Co.
SPRINGVILLE, Ala., Dec. 9, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Big Oak Ranch is excited to announce the release of Planting Oaks  an initiative that resources and equips like-minded ministries as they establish Christian homes for abused, neglected and abandoned children. With over 3.5 million children in the United States needing intervention on their behalf, Big Oak Ranch is extending nearly 5 decades worth of experience, insight and resources to assist other ministries who share their same passion and mission for providing loving, traditional, long-term homes to children who've experienced the worst of life.

"As much as we would love for every abused, neglected and abandoned child to call Big Oak home, we realize the unrealistic nature of that. But, we also realize a path to strategic, sustainable, increased impact. There are so many people across the country wanting to help these children, but don't know where to begin, or they are facing what is often an overwhelming endeavor," said Erin Woods, Planting Oaks Director, Big Oak Ranch. "Through our experience, we want to help our Planting Oaks partners avoid mistakes, we want to guide them through the process of structuring and encourage them along the way."

Over the past three years, more than 70 pioneering individuals or established ministries have reached out to Big Oak Ranch, bringing Planting Oaks to life. Already, more than 1,000 children are served through 70 Planting Oaks partners across 27 states. Planting Oaks is offered at no cost and typically partners with individuals or groups working with young people in four major organizational categories:

Long-term residential care

Long-term placement for children out of human trafficking

Long-term foster care communities

Transitional living for those aging out of foster care

Some of the resources offered through Planting Oaks are monthly mentoring sessions, two-day onsite trainings, collaborative networking opportunities, documentation and resources that reflect Big Oak's policies and best practices, and much more.

For inquiries, you can visit BigOak.org/plantingoaks or email Erin Woods at [email protected].

About Big Oak Ranch

Founded in 1974, Big Oak Ranch exists to meet the needs of abused, neglected and abandoned children by giving them a solid, Christian home and a chance to realize and fulfill God's plan for their lives.

Big Oak Boys' Ranch sits on 474 acres of farmland just outside of Gadsden, Alabama. Big Oak Girls' Ranch sits on 325 acres in Springville, Alabama.

Through the mission of Big Oak, our children find a loving family, with a Christian couple who serve as mom & dad and six to eight siblings of different ages. Our children, who have suffered some of the worst that life has to offer, find a chance, a true home where they can experience love, safety and belonging. At Big Oak Ranch, our children get an exceptional K-12 education, along with spiritual, professional, and personal life preparation that sits alongside college or trade school. They find the guidance and examples they need to grow into godly men and women. And, we help them stay connected to each other and to the Big Oak family. The impact spans generations as our children learn how to create healthy, loving families of their own one day.

Learn more about our impact at BigOak.org/impact

CONTACT: Jessica Phillips, [email protected],

205.467.6226

SOURCE Big Oak Ranch
BRIDGETOWN, Barbados, Dec. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- NBB Pay, the stablecoin and digital payment infrastructure developed by global fintech company, Bitt, has been publicly launched by the government-owned National Bank of Belize (NBB) in that Central American country.

NBB Pay users can now download and sign up to use the Bitt-developed digital wallet and stablecoins to make financial customer-to-customer, customer-to-business and business-to-business transactions, pay bills and offer secure e-commerce transactions for merchants and customers.

Bitt NBB Pay logo

CEO of Bitt, Brian Popelka said, "As global leaders in the national digital currency industry, the Bitt team is very pleased to witness another public launch of one of our fintech solutions; this time for the benefit of the people of Belize. NBB Pay was proudly built by Bitt to be fully interoperable with current and future financial ecosystems including digital currencies, stablecoins, digital currencies and blockchains used by other licensed financial institutions and e-government."

Through its modular Digital Currency Management System (DCMS), Bitt offers complete fintech solutions for financial institutions, monetary authorities, and governments to integrate their existing core banking and back-office software, accounting systems, other payments applications and wallets with digital monetary instruments, namely stablecoins and CBDCs. NBB selected the solutions which would best equip the institution and its customers for the future of digital financial transactions.

NBB Pay is Bitt's first deployment of its DCMS in Central America. Two central banks and over 50 financial institutions across eight other countries currently employ Bitt's DCMS. The digital currency leader's innovative technology will be deployed in five additional countries within the next six months.

About Bitt

Bitt is a global financial technology company that provides digital currency and stablecoin solutions to central banks, financial institutions, governments, and ecosystem participants worldwide. With a staff of over 60 highly skilled professionals from around the world, Bitt is at the forefront of financial innovation, with a specialization in central bank digital currencies (CBDC) and stablecoins. The company's Digital Currency Management System (DCMS) leverages blockchain-based distributed ledger technology to introduce the benefits of the most efficient financial ecosystem to date. For more information about Bitt, please visit www.bitt.com and follow us on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/company/bittglobal/

SOURCE Bitt
SAN FRANCISCO, Dec. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The Business Architecture Guild, an international community of business architecture practitioners, today announced the release of the Telecom Industry Reference Model v1.0, the first principle-based, best-practice driven business architecture for strategy execution in the telecom industry.

As digital expectations, regulatory pressure and competition intensify, there is an increased urgency for telcos to quickly adapt with agility and cost efficiency. To better serve customers with a strengthened core and new sources of value, business architecture enables leaders to accelerate strategic transformation with a clear end-state goal, dynamic roadmap, the right capabilities and structured approach.

"As 5G demands, cybercrime exposure, and consumer expectations grow, the application of business architecture in telecom is a game changer for the industry," said Giovanni Traverso, a Chief Business Architect for global telecoms and member of the Business Architecture Guild Council of Executive Advisors. "The Guild's first reference model for the industry will change the way business and IT leaders work together to address the paradigm of digital transformation, focus investments, streamline costs and pursue sustainability."

The Guild's telecom model, which is free to members and available to non-members for a small fee, serves as a baseline for telecommunication companies to establish and mature a robust, in-house business architecture and implement new strategies with a formally defined reference model. Crafted by representatives from telecom companies around the world, the team will continue to focus on adding telecom-specific refinements and publishing a Companion Guide to streamline adoption and use as it moves into 2022.

"The Guild's telecom industry reference model differs from other telecom models that tend to focus largely on highly detailed operational perspectives and not the value delivered to customer," said Michael White, reference model team lead. "Enabling end-to-end strategy execution traceability, the telecom reference model provides the basis for companies to do things in new ways, execute essential transformations more quickly and ensure that backend investments deliver the infrastructure and services needed to make global communications faster and more effective than ever."

About the Business Architecture Guild

The Business Architecture Guild is an international, not-for-profit, member-based association that provides valuable resources to business architecture practitioners and others interested in the field. The Business Architecture Guild is the source for A Guide to the Business Architecture Body of Knowledge (BIZBOK Guide) and exclusive provider of the Certified Business Architect certification program.

SOURCE The Business Architecture Guild
VANCOUVER, BC, Dec. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ - Capella Minerals Ltd. (TSXV: CMIL) (FRA: N7D2) (the "Company" or "Capella") is pleased to report that Austral Gold Limited (ASX: AGD) (TSXV: AGLD) ("Austral") has successfully completed the "Tranche 1" exploration investment required to earn-in to an initial 51% interest in the Company's former Argentine subsidiary, Sierra Blanca SA ("SBSA"). SBSA's sole asset is the Sierra Blanca gold-silver project in Santa Cruz Province.

Austral may now invest a further USD 600,000 in exploration at the Sierra Blanca project over the next two years in order to earn-in to a further 29% interest (80% total) in SBSA (the "Tranche 2" investment). Afterwards, Austral retains the option to acquire the remaining 20% interest in SBSA in return for cash payments and further work commitments over an additional two-year period (see Company News Release dated April 1, 2020, and MD&A dated August 31, 2021).

Austral's work program as part of the "Tranche 1" investment included detailed geological mapping and ASTER interpretation (specifically calibrating alteration anomalies at Sierra Blanca with those known from the nearby Cerro Vanguardia gold-silver deposit), which resulted in the definition of a potential new Dome-Diatreme complex hosted in favourable Chon Aike Formation in the Vetarron sector. Work currently being undertaken includes further core re-logging (Vetarron, Lucia, and Chala sectors) and reinterpretation of historical data.

Qualified Persons and Disclosure Statement

The technical information in this news release relating to the Sierra Blanca project has been prepared in accordance with Canadian regulatory requirements set out in NI 43-101, and approved by Eric Roth, the Company's President & CEO, a Director, and a Qualified Person under NI 43-101. Mr. Roth holds a Ph.D. in Economic Geology from the University of Western Australia, is a Fellow of the Australian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy (AusIMM) and is a Fellow of the Society of Economic Geologists (SEG). Mr. Roth has 30 years of experience in international minerals exploration and mining project evaluation.

On Behalf of the Board of Capella Minerals Ltd.

"Eric Roth"

__________________________

Eric Roth, Ph.D., FAusIMM

President & CEO

About Capella Minerals Ltd

Capella is engaged in the acquisition, exploration, and development of quality mineral resource properties in favourable jurisdictions with a focus on high-grade gold and copper deposits. The Company's copper focus is currently on the discovery of high-grade VMS-type deposits within 100%-owned, district-scale land positions around the past-producing Lkken and Kjli copper mines in central Norway. The Company's precious metals focus is on the discovery of high-grade gold deposits on its newly-acquired Finnish properties (Katajavaara, Aakenus), the 100%-owned Southern Gold Line Project in Sweden, and its active Canadian Joint Ventures with Ethos Gold Corp. (TSXV-ECC) at Savant Lake (Ontario) and Yamana Gold Inc. at Domain (Manitoba). The Company also retains a residual interest (subject to an option to purchase agreement with Austral Gold Ltd) in the Sierra Blanca gold-silver divestiture in Santa Cruz, Argentina.

The Company also holds 3,000,000 common shares in Ethos Gold Corp. providing Capella shareholders with indirect exposure to exploration success at both the Savant Lake Project and elsewhere within Ethos' extensive Canadian project portfolio.

Cautionary Notes and Forward-looking Statements

This news release contains forward-looking information within the meaning of applicable securities legislation. Forward-looking information is typically identified by words such as: believe, expect, anticipate, intend, estimate, postulate and similar expressions, or are those, which, by their nature, refer to future events. Such statements include, without limitation, statements regarding the future results of operations, performance and achievements of Capella, including the timing, completion of and results from the exploration and drill programs described in this release. Although the Company believes that such statements are reasonable, it can give no assurances that such expectations will prove to be correct. All such forward-looking information is based on certain assumptions and analyses made by Capella in light of their experience and perception of historical trends, current conditions and expected future developments, as well as other factors management believes are appropriate in the circumstances. This information, however, is subject to a variety of risks and uncertainties and other factors that could cause actual events or results to differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking information. Important factors that could cause actual results to differ from this forward-looking information include those described under the heading "Risks and Uncertainties" in Capella's most recently filed MD&A. Capella does not intend, and expressly disclaims any obligation to, update or revise the forward-looking information contained in this news release, except as required by law. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on forward-looking information.

Neither the TSXV nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSXV) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

SOURCE Capella Minerals Limited

Related Links

www.newdimensionresources.com


A talented leader in both operations and sales, Ms. Pitts built her career with various disciplines in key markets. In addition to Derby City Hospitality, she has served in various leadership roles with the Montgomery Board of Education, the Kentucky Orthopedic Associates, and Integrity Orthopedics. Ms. Pitts holds a certificate in nursing from Rowan County and resides in Mt. Sterling, Kentucky.
SKANES FAGERHULT, Sweden, Dec. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Concentric ABs Board of Directors has decided to change the publication date of the Interim Report for the full year 2021 to Wednesday 16 February 2022, at 08.00 (CET), instead of Wednesday 9 February 2022, as previously announced. The publication of the Interim Report on 16 February 2022, will be followed by a conference call at 10.00 (CET) hosted by President and CEO David Woolley and CFO Marcus Whitehouse.

We invite fund managers, analysts and the media to participate in the conference call. Please see below details to join the conference.

Click here to join the conference

Use the link above for the easiest way to join the conference or use one of the access numbers below:

Denmark: +45 787 232 50

Finland: +358 981 710 520

Sweden: +46 8 505 583 52

United Kingdom: +44 333 300 9272

Agenda

09.50 Conference number is opened

10.00 Presentation of the Interim Report for the full year 2021

10.30 Q&A

11.00 End of the conference

During the conference call a presentation will be held. To access the presentation, please use this link:

Click here to access the presentation

For additional information, please contact

David Woolley (President and CEO) or Marcus Whitehouse (CFO) at Tel: +44 121 445 6545 or e-mail: [email protected]

This information was brought to you by Cision http://news.cision.com

https://news.cision.com/concentric-ab/r/concentric-ab-changes-the-date-for-interim-report-for-the-full-year-2021-and-invites-to-a-conference,c3469199

The following files are available for download:

SOURCE Concentric AB
BEIJING, Dec. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Concord Medical Services Holdings Limited ("Concord Medical" or the "Company") (NYSE: CCM), a healthcare provider specializing in cancer care, research, and prevention by operating a network of medically advanced comprehensive cancer hospitals and standalone radiotherapy and diagnostic imaging centers in China, today announced its unaudited consolidated financial results for the six months ended June 30, 2021[1].

2021 First Half Highlights

Total net revenues were RMB192.9 million ( $29.9 million ) in the first half of 2021, representing a 132.4% increase from total net revenues of RMB83.0 million in the same period last year. Total net revenues included the net revenues from the network business of RMB128.7 million ( $20.0 million ) and the net revenues from the hospital business of RMB64.2 million ( $9.9 million ).

( ) in the first half of 2021, representing a 132.4% increase from total net revenues of in the same period last year. Total net revenues included the net revenues from the network business of ( ) and the net revenues from the hospital business of ( ). Gross profit was RMB2.4 million ( $0.4 million ) in the first half of 2021, compared to the gross loss of RMB3.5 million in the first half of 2020. The gross profit margin was 1.23% for the first half of 2021, compared to the gross loss margin of 4.2% for the same period last year.

( ) in the first half of 2021, compared to the gross loss of in the first half of 2020. The gross profit margin was 1.23% for the first half of 2021, compared to the gross loss margin of 4.2% for the same period last year. Net loss attributable to ordinary shareholders in the first half of 2021 was RMB90.3 million ( $14.0 million ), compared to RMB128.8 million in the same period last year.

( ), compared to in the same period last year. Basic and diluted loss per share for Class A and Class B ordinary shares [2] in the first half of 2021 were both RMB2.53 ($0.39) , compared to RMB2.23 , respectively, in the same period last year.

in the first half of 2021 were both , compared to , respectively, in the same period last year. Non-GAAP net loss in the first half of 2021 was RMB163.0 million ( $25.3 million ), compared to non-GAAP net loss of RMB155.0 million in the same period last year. Non-GAAP basic and diluted loss per share for Class A and Class B ordinary shares in the first half of 2021 were both RMB2.46 ($0.38) , compared to RMB2.15 in the same period last year.

( ), compared to non-GAAP net loss of in the same period last year. Non-GAAP basic and diluted loss per share for Class A and Class B ordinary shares in the first half of 2021 were both , compared to in the same period last year. Adjusted EBITDA[3] (non-GAAP) was negative RMB127.7 million ( $19.8 million ) in the first half of 2021, compared to negative RMB113.1 million in the same period last year.

Dr. Jianyu Yang, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Concord Medical, commented, "Our performance in the first half of 2021 is highlighted by very strong revenue growth across regions and business sections. These results represent a remarkable recovery from the impact of the pandemic on our business, demonstrating the resilience of our people, as well as their commitment to each other and our clients. We believe that the opening of our new hospital will continuously shift our income structure from network business to hospital business with higher income potential."

"The Company's Guangzhou Concord Cancer Center (the "Guangzhou Hospital") was officially opened in June 2021. We believe that this will expand the Company's income from hospital business."

"The Company also officially opened an internet hospital in May 2021. The internet hospital aims to provide a series of cancer care services, ranging from cancer prevention to post-treatment recovery, on the Company's online platforms. We believe that the internet hospital will expand the influence of the Company's brand among the prime target groups of patients."

"We have cultivated our Cloud System Solutions business for our network business and recently-established internet hospital. Besides, the preparation of the proton therapy system at the Guangzhou Hospital is nearly competed, which is expected to be the only proton therapy system in the Southern China in the next few years. With the gradual operation of the proton center to the mature stage, we believe that the Company's revenue can be improved in the next few years."

2021 First Half Financial Results

Network Business

Net revenues from the network business were RMB128.7 million ($20.0 million), representing a 241.4% increase from net revenues of RMB37.7 million in the first half of 2020, primarily attributable to the Company's development of Cloud System Solutions of medical devices for its existing medical equipment and consumable sales services. With three centers closed in the first half of 2021, the Company operated a network of 24 centers in 18 cities in China as of June 30, 2021.

Cost of revenues of the network business was RMB95.7 million ($14.8 million), representing a 555.5% increase from RMB14.6 million in the first half of 2020, primarily attributable to the Company's business expansion on consumable sales services.

Gross profit from the network business was RMB33.0 million ($5.1 million), representing a 42.9% increase from RMB23.1 million in the first half of 2020. The gross profit margin of the network business for the first half of 2021 was 25.6%, compared to the gross profit margin of 61.3% for the same period last year.

Selling expenses of the network business were RMB8.3 million ($1.3 million), representing a 57.2% decrease from RMB19.4 million in the first half of 2020. Selling expenses as a percentage of net revenues from the network business was 6.5% in the first half of 2021, compared to 51.5% in the first half of 2020. The decrease in selling expenses of the network business was mainly due to the decrease in staff cost and advertisement and promotion expenses.

General and administrative expenses of the network business were RMB72.3 million ($11.2 million), representing a 27.1% increase from RMB56.9 million in the first half of 2020. General and administrative expenses as a percentage of net revenues from the network business were 56.2% in the first half of 2021, compared to 150.9% in the same period last year.

Comparing to RMB3.9 million in the same period last year, capital expenditures decreased to RMB103.8 million ($16.1 million) in the first half of 2021, primarily for procuring equipment for network centers.

Accounts receivable were RMB73.7 million ($11.4 million) as of June 30, 2021, compared to RMB61.9 million as of December 31, 2020. The average period of sales outstanding for accounts receivable (also known as "Days Sales Outstanding") was 219 days in the first half of 2021.

During the first half of 2021, the Company handled 4,230 patient treatment cases and 31,204 patient diagnostic cases, representing a 10.2% increase and a 22.9% decrease from the same period last year, respectively. The decreases in diagnostic and overall cases were mainly due to the influence of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Hospital Business

Net revenues from the hospital business were RMB64.2 million ($9.9 million) in the first half of 2021, representing a 41.7% increase from net revenues of RMB45.3 million in the first half of 2020, mainly because the Company's operation of self-owned hospitals has gradually recovered from the adverse impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Cost of revenues of the hospital business in the first half of 2021 was RMB94.9 million ($14.7 million), representing a 32.2% increase from cost of revenues of RMB71.8 million in the first half of 2020, mainly because the labor cost increased for the preparation of the opening of Guangzhou Hospital, which has been in operation since June 2021.

Gross loss from the hospital business was RMB30.7 million ($4.8 million) in the first half of 2021, compared to RMB26.5 million in the same period last year. The gross loss margin of the hospital business for the first half of 2021 was 47.8%, compared to the gross loss margin of 58.5% for the same period last year.

Selling expenses of the hospital business were RMB5.4 million ($0.8 million) in the first half of 2021, representing an 100.0% increase from selling expenses of RMB2.7 million in the first half of 2020. Selling expenses as a percentage of net revenues from the hospital business was 8.3% in the first half of 2021, compared to 6.0% in the first half of 2020.

General and administrative expenses of the hospital business were RMB101.7 million ($15.7 million) in the first half of 2021, of which employee benefit expenses were RMB73.2 million ($11.3 million). In the same period of last year, general and administrative expenses of the hospital business were RMB77.5 million. The increase was mainly due to the increase in salary and rental fees for hospitals. General and administrative expenses as a percentage of net revenues from the hospital business was 158.5% in the first half of 2021, compared to 171.1% in the first half of 2020.

Comparing to RMB364.9 million in the first half of 2020, capital expenditures of the hospital were RMB310.6 million ($48.1 million) in the first half of 2021. The decrease was mainly related to the decrease in construction fees and medical equipment payment.

As of June 30, 2021, accounts receivable from hospital business were RMB12.5 million ($1.9 million), representing an 19.4% decrease] from accounts receivable of RMB15.5 million as of December 31, 2020. The number of Days Sales Outstanding was 76 days in the first half of 2021.

As of June 30, 2021, the Company had bank loans and other borrowings totaling RMB2.2 billion ($338.8 million).

Recent Developments

The Guangzhou Hospital commenced operation in June 2021. The Guangzhou Hospital is situated in Sino-Singapore Guangzhou Knowledge City (the "Knowledge City"), Guangzhou's newest modern development district. The Guangzhou Hospital provides high-quality diagnostic imaging and treatment services, such as radiology, ultrasound and nuclear medicine, diagnosis and remote consultation, education and training, to all the medical institutions, premium clinics and medical institutions around the Knowledge City. Advanced imaging diagnostic equipment, such as CT, magnetic resonance, and PET-CT, have been installed in the Guangzhou Hospital. The Guangzhou Hospital will equip with the leading-edge image-guided ProBeam proton therapy system by Varian.

The Company's internet hospital obtained the licence in April 2021 and commenced operation in May 2021. The internet hospital aims to provide a series of cancer care services, ranging from cancer prevention to post-treatment recovery, on the Company's online platforms. Integrating the Company's newly established internet hospital with its conventional network business, the Company has developed Cloud System Solutions business that aims to provide comprehensive services for its patients and hospital clients.

Notes: [1] This announcement contains translations of certain RMB amounts into U.S. dollars at specified rates solely for the convenience of the reader. Unless otherwise noted, all translations of RMB into U.S. dollars are made at a rate of RMB6.4566 to $1.00, the noon buying rate in New York City for cable transfers payable in RMB, as certified for customs purposes by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York on June 30, 2021. [2] The Company adjusts for the accretion of mezzanine equity in the calculation of loss attributable to ordinary shareholders of the Company used in the loss per share for Class A and Class B ordinary shares calculation. [3] Adjusted EBITDA is defined as net income plus interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization, share-based compensation expenses, and other adjustments. Other adjustments include foreign exchange gain (loss), net, loss on disposal of long-lived equipment, income from disposal of associate companies, and other income.

About Concord Medical

Concord Medical Services Holdings Limited is a healthcare provider specializing in cancer care, research and prevention. The Company operates a network of medically advanced comprehensive cancer hospitals and standalone radiotherapy and diagnostic imaging centres in China. The Company focuses on providing multidisciplinary cancer care approach in all areas of oncology services in its cancer hospitals. The Company also equips its hospitals with technologically advanced equipment such as the state-of-the-art proton therapy system in its cancer hospitals in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou. As of June 30, 2021, the Company operated a network of 24 centers based in 18 hospitals, spanning over 18 cities across 12 provinces and administrative regions in China. To ensure the commitment to the highest level of clinical care for patients, the Company offers ongoing education and training for doctors and other medical professionals in its network hospitals and centres in both local and overseas medical institutions. For more information, please see http://ir.ccm.cn.

Safe Harbor Statement

This announcement contains forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements can be identified by words or phrases such as "will," "expects," "anticipates," "future," "intends," "plans," "believes," "estimates" and similar expressions. Forward-looking statements are inherently subject to uncertainties and contingencies beyond the Company's control and based upon premises with respect to future business decisions, which are subject to change. 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, except as required under applicable law.

About Non-GAAP Financial Measures

To supplement the consolidated financial statements presented in accordance with United States Generally Accepted Accounting Principles ("GAAP"), Concord Medical uses certain non-GAAP measures. The Company presents certain of its financial information that is adjusted from results based on GAAP to exclude the impact of share-based compensation expense. The Company believes excluding share-based compensation expense from its GAAP financial measures is useful for its management and investors to assess and analyze the Company's core operating results, as such expense is not directly attributable to the underlying performance of the Company's business operations and do not impact its current cash earnings. Concord Medical also believes these non-GAAP measures excluding share-based compensation expense are important in helping investors to understand the Company's current financial performance and future prospects and to compare business trends among different reporting periods on a consistent basis. In addition, Concord Medical also presents the non-GAAP measure of Adjusted EBITDA, which is defined in this announcement as net income plus interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization, and share-based compensation expenses and other adjustments. Other adjustments include foreign exchange gain (loss), net, loss on disposal of long-lived equipment, income from disposal of associate companies and other income. Furthermore, Adjusted EBITDA eliminates the impact of items that the Company does not consider to be indicative of the performance of the network business and hospital business. The Company believes investors will similarly use Adjusted EBITDA as one of the key metrics to evaluate its financial performance and to compare its current operating results with corresponding historical periods and with other companies in the healthcare services industry. The presentation of these additional measures should not be considered a substitute for or superior to GAAP results or as being comparable to results reported or forecasted by other companies. The non-GAAP measures have been reconciled to GAAP measures in the attached financial information.

Concord Medical Services Holdings Co., Ltd. Consolidated Balance Sheets

(in thousands)



December 31,







2020

June 30, 2021



RMB

RMB

US$



(Audited)

(Unaudited)

(Unaudited)

ASSETS











Current assets











Cash and cash equivalents 334,264

246,650

38,201

Restricted cash, current portion 4,661

2,228

345

Accounts receivable 77,375

86,183

13,348

Prepayments and other current assets 213,043

223,455

34,609

Inventories 21,610

40,773

6,315

Net investments in direct financing leases, current portion 25,045

3,551

550

Total current assets 675,998

602,840

93,368

Non-current assets











Restricted cash, non-current portion 107,470

27,554

4,268

Property, plant and equipment, net 2,559,191

2,977,352

461,135

Right-of-use assets, net 639,967

632,171

97,911

Net investment in direct financing leases, non-current portion 13,720

6,207

961

Goodwill 213,656

498,312

77,179

Intangible assets, net 522,821

666,311

103,198

Deposits for non-current assets 247,837

233,149

36,110

Long-term investments 313,020

301,388

46,679

Other non-current assets 7,138

7,342

1,137

Prepayment for long term investment 33,720

91,259

14,134

Total non-current assets 4,658,540

5,441,045

842,712















Total assets 5,334,538

6,043,885

936,080

LIABILITIES AND EQUITY











Current liabilities











Accounts payable 18,632

7,954

1,232

Accrued expenses and other liabilities 330,090

418,585

64,831

Income tax payable 858

834

129

Operating lease liabilities, current 13,661

19,181

2,971

Short-term bank and other borrowings 24,481

-

-

Long-term bank and other borrowings, current portion 124,395

106,998

16,572

Total current liabilities 512,117

553,552

85,735

Non-current liabilities











Long-term bank and other borrowings, non-current portion 1,968,048

2,080,586

322,242

Deferred tax liabilities 153,339

169,719

26,286

Operating lease liabilities, non-current 223,478

220,155

34,098

Other long-term liabilities 76,726

76,726

11,884

Total non-current liabilities 2,421,591

2,547,186

394,510

Total liabilities 2,933,708

3,100,738

480,245

Contingently redeemable noncontrolling interests 2,913,675

3,412,889

528,589

EQUITY











Class A ordinary shares 68

68

10

Class B ordinary shares 37

37

6

Treasury stock (8)

(7)

(1)

Additional paid-in capital 1,840,026

1,872,953

290,083

Accumulated other comprehensive loss (46,429)

(40,194)

(6,225)

Accumulated deficit (2,456,649)

(2,788,050)

(431,814)

Total Concord Medical Services Holdings Limited shareholders' deficit (662,955)

(955,193)

(147,941)

Noncontrolling interests 150,110

485,451

75,187















Total deficit (512,845)

(469,742)

(72,754)















Total liabilities, mezzanine equity and deficit 5,334,538

6,043,885

936,080



Concord Medical Services Holdings Co., Ltd. Consolidated Profit & Loss (in thousands, except for number of shares and per share data)



June 30, 2020

June 30, 2021



RMB

RMB

US$



(Unaudited)

(Unaudited)

(Unaudited)

Revenues, net of business tax, value-added tax and related surcharges











Network 37,674

128,737

19,939

Hospital 45,337

64,150

9,936

Total net revenues 83,011

192,887

29,875

Cost of revenues:











Network (14,644)

(95,652)

(14,815)

Hospital (71,839)

(94,855)

(14,691)

Total cost of revenues (86,483)

(190,507)

(29,506)















Gross (loss) / profit (3,472)

2,380

369















Operating expenses:











Selling expenses (22,095)

(13,665)

(2,116)

General and administrative expenses (134,397)

(172,623)

(26,736)















Operating loss (159,964)

(183,908)

(28,483)

Interest expense (20,835)

(25,906)

(4,012)

Foreign exchange (loss) gain, net (1,736)

18,489

2,864

(Loss) Income on disposal of long-lived equipment (5)

-

-

Interest income (expense) 4,050

2551

395

Income from equity method investments 1,252

9,088

1,408

Other income (expense), net 4,958

2,662

412

Gain on disposal of an equity method investment 8,151

-

-















Loss before income tax (164,129)

(177,024)

(27,416)

Income tax (expenses) benefit (1,833)

5,331

826

Net loss (165,962)

(171,693)

(26,590)















Net loss attributable to noncontrolling interests (37,167)

(81,363)

(12,602)

Net loss attributable to Concord Medical Services Holdings Limited (128,795)

(90,330)

(13,988)















Loss per share for Class A and Class B ordinary shares











Basic (2.23)

(2.53)

(0.39)

Diluted (2.23)

(2.53)

(0.39)















Weighted average number of class A and class B ordinary shares

outstanding:











Basic 130,241,995

131,053,858

131,053,858

Diluted 130,241,995

131,053,858

131,053,858

Other comprehensive loss, net of tax of nil











Foreign currency translation, net tax of nil (6,867)

6,234

966

Total other comprehensive loss, net of tax (6,867)

6,234

966

Comprehensive loss (172,829)

(165,459)

(25,624)

Comprehensive loss attributable to noncontrolling interests (37,167)

(81,363)

(12,602)

Comprehensive loss attributable to Concord Medical Services Holdings

Limited's shareholders (135,662)

(84,096)

(13,022)



Reconciliations of non-GAAP results of operations measures to the

nearest comparable GAAP measures (*) (in RMB thousands, except per share data unaudited)





For the six months ended

For the six months ended



June 30, 2020

June 30, 2021











Non-









Non-



GAAP





GAAP

GAAP





GAAP



Measure

Adjustment

Measure

Measure

Adjustment

Measure Operating loss

(159,964)

10,916

(149,048)

(183,908)

8,647

(175,261) Net loss

(165,962)

10,916

(155,046)

(171,693)

8,647

(163,046) Basic loss per share for Class A and Class B ordinary shares

(2.23)

0.08

(2.15)

(2.53)

0.07

(2.46) Diluted loss per share for Class A and Class B ordinary shares

(2.23)

0.08

(2.15)

(2.53)

0.07

(2.46)

























(*) The only adjustment is share-based compensation.

























Reconciliation from net income to adjusted EBITDA(*) (in RMB

thousands, unaudited)



For the six months ended

For the six months ended

June 30, 2020

June 30, 2021 Net loss (165,962)

(171,693) Interest expenses, net 16,785

23,355 Income tax expenses / benefit 1,833

(5,331) Depreciation and amortization 34,715

38,476 Share-based compensation 10,916

8,647 Other adjustments (11,368)

(21,151) Adjusted EBITDA (113,081)

(127,697) EBITDA margin -136%

-66%

(*) Definition of adjusted EBITDA: Adjusted EBITDA is defined as net loss plus interest expenses, net, income tax expenses

(benefit), depreciation and amortization, share-based compensation expenses and other adjustments. Other adjustments include

foreign exchange gain(loss), net, loss on disposal of long-lived equipment, gain on disposal of an equity method investment and

other income, net.

SOURCE Concord Medical Services Holdings Limited

Related Links

www.concordmedical.com/cn


BANGALORE, India, Dec. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The Cosmetics Market is Segmented by Category (Skin and Sun Care Products, Hair Care Products, Deodorants & Fragrances, and Makeup & Color Cosmetics), Gender (Men, Women, and Unisex), and Distribution Channel (Hypermarkets/Supermarkets, Specialty Stores, Pharmacies, Online Sales Channels, and Others). The report covers global opportunity analysis and industry forecasts from 2020 to 2027.

The global cosmetics market size was valued at USD 380.2 Billion in 2019 and is projected to reach USD 463.5 Billion by 2027, registering a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 5.3% from 2021 to 2027.

Major Factors Driving The Growth Of The Cosmetics Market Are:

The cosmetics market is predicted to rise significantly, owing to increased consumer awareness of the need of maintaining long-term beauty and changes in lifestyle, both of which have aided market expansion.

Manufacturers have expanded social media advertising for using herbal skincare products in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, in order to reach a large consumer base. This shift in trend is expected to create a lucrative growth opportunity for the cosmetics market player.

Furthermore, manufacturing businesses have used innovative techniques to promote sales of their cosmetics items, such as new product launches with natural components and appealing packaging.

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Trends Influencing The Growth Of Cosmetics Market

The increased consumer demand for various skin care goods such as creams, lotions, peels, and other similar items has aided the cosmetics market expansion. Increased consumer awareness and an increase in customer disposable income are also expected to propel the cosmetics market forward.

The demand for cosmetics and skincare products has risen considerably in recent years. It is used by both men and women to improve their overall appearance. Haircare, face care, lip care, and other cosmetics are among the products available in the sector. Consumers are also being drawn in by the rising demand for anti-aging creams and serums, as well as the development of enhanced instruments and novel packaging. This in turn is expected to further increase the growth of the cosmetics market.

Aside from that, the emerging trend of tailored cosmetics for a specific person based on hair type, skin tone and texture, and eye color is gaining appeal. Manufacturers are also attempting to capture the attention of consumers by developing sustainable packaging and chemical-free products to meet the needs of each individual.

People will strive to go towards organic and plant-based skincare items during the forecast period, which is another significant trend that drives the cosmetics market. For a variety of reasons, people are attempting to transition to plant-based skincare products. One of the motivations is to have as little impact on the environment as possible. Another key factor is that many wish to avoid harsh chemicals in their skincare routine and instead use naturally occurring components. Many people are researching the advantages of utilizing hemp-based or CBD products. There will be a significant increase in the number of people who try to switch to plant-based skincare products.

The E-commerce Industry's Growth is expected to create lucrative growth opportunities for the cosmetics industry. Consumers are increasingly turning to e-commerce to purchase personal care products as social media's influence grows and internet penetration rises.

Excessive use of color cosmetics for the eyes and lips can lead to a variety of skin disorders and health risks. As a result, increasing customer awareness of potential cosmetic side effects and skin issues is a key factor limiting the cosmetic market's overall growth.

Browse the Table of Contents and List of figures at: https://reports.valuates.com/market-reports/ALLI-Auto-1B69/cosmetics

Cosmetics Market Share Analysis:

The hypermarkets/supermarkets category dominated the market in terms of distribution channel in 2019 and is expected to continue to do so throughout the forecast period. Due to the availability of a wide selection of consumer items under one roof, abundant parking space, and convenient operating hours, hypermarkets/supermarkets are becoming increasingly popular.

Based on gender, the women segment held the largest market share during the forecast period. The industry is growing because of the convergence of technology, beauty, and lifestyle. Furthermore, the global cosmetics market has grown steadily over the years, owing to an increase in the number of beauty-conscious women.

Based on category, In 2019, the skin and sun care products sector accounted for the largest proportion of the cosmetics market; however, the deodorants and fragrances segment is expected to grow at the fastest CAGR over the forecast period.

Based on region, the market is dominated by Asia-Pacific, which is predicted to rise at a CAGR of 6.5 percent over the forecast period. The desire for an attractive personal appeal, increased concern about health and hygiene, demand for natural and organic beauty products, and many other reasons are driving the growth of the cosmetics market in the Asia Pacific area.

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The key players profiled in the report Avon Products Inc., Kao Corporation, L'Oreal S.A., Oriflame Cosmetics S.A., Revlon, Inc., Shiseido Company Limited, Skin Food Co., Ltd., The Estee Lauder Companies Inc., The Procter & Gamble Company and Unilever Plc, Others.

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SIMILAR REPORTS

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MIAMI, Dec. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- On December 9th, 2021 it was announced at the virtual Brightside Empirical Review (BER) Awards, the winner for 2021 is Craig Biorn.

Craig Biorn accepting his Brightside Empirical Review Award via Zoom Craig Biorn displaying his art piece "Lit"

This prestigious Award is based on a 5 Star Rating on these principals  E-experience, M-motivation, P-presentation, I-ideas, R-relevancy, I-innovation, C-creativity, A-accolades, L-leadership. The BER Award places relevant special missions globally and harnesses their need for special attention. The Brightside panel presented the red carpet virtual event on ZOOM. The e-awards had other honorees, special host guests and attendees.

The December Brightside Holiday Broadcast also launched Craig Biorn's new catalog, showing the viewing audience some of Biorn's artwork that is available for sale in commercial and consumer markets. Some of the designs of artwork are also available for licensing agreements. Craig shared insight to what inspired him to paint each piece.

"Biorn a self-made artist is persistent and resilient honing his mother's skills, talent and calibrations. We see the vision in his work that's why we chose to select him for this award and his eye-catching colors of depth," Elton R Brewington, Producer, Managing Editor of Brightside Global Trade and Elizabeth Brewington Editor, Reviewer for the Brightside Empirical Review Award.

Craig Biorn, born in 1961, has an interesting fact that he is a relative to the Norwegian born, Emil Biorn (18641935) who achieved national recognition as an American Painter. Emil's work was featured at the Minnesota State Fair in 1925 and at the Art Institute of Chicago between 1900 and 1912. There is a collection of Emil Biorn's work at Luther College in Decorah Iowa. Emil's works often depicted significant events in the history of Norway.

Craig's style of artwork is a colorful expression in landscape, still life and some abstract paintings. While his road of accomplishments looks auspicious, Craig is thankful to God for his gifted talents and achievements. His 2021 Art Collection was recently featured to the Furniture, Furnishing and Decor Industry at the High Point Market Tradeshow this past October. One can view his collection at www.craigbiorn.com.

Media Contact:

Craig Biorn

612-868-8489

[email protected]

SOURCE Craig Biorn
NEW YORK, Dec. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Credit Suisse AG ("Credit Suisse") announced today that it has exercised its right to call its Credit Suisse X-Links Monthly Pay 2xLeveraged Mortgage REIT ETNs ("REML") and its right to accelerate, at its option, its Credit Suisse FI Large Cap Growth Enhanced ETNs ("FLGE") and Credit Suisse FI Enhanced Europe 50 ETNs ("FEUL"). The call settlement date for REML is expected to be December 27, 2021, and the acceleration dates for FLGE and FEUL are expected to be December 23, 2021 and December 22, 2021, respectively. As of today, Credit Suisse will no longer issue new units of these ETNs.

As described in the related pricing supplements for REML (the "REML Pricing Supplement"), FLGE (the "FLGE Pricing Supplement") and FEUL (the "FEUL Pricing Supplement"), Credit Suisse, as the issuer of REML, FLGE and FEUL (together, the "ETNs"), may, at its option, call or accelerate, as applicable, all issued and outstanding units of the ETNs. Credit Suisse has exercised this right by delivering a notice of issuer optional call and optional acceleration via the Depository Trust Company on December 10, 2021.

The call settlement date for REML is expected to be December 27, 2021. On the call settlement date, REML investors will receive a cash payment per ETN in an amount equal to the call settlement amount. The call settlement amount will be determined on the call valuation date of December 22, 2021 in accordance with the terms set forth in the REML Pricing Supplement, and will be calculated using an average of the index closing levels during the call valuation period and will include REML's stub reference distribution amount, if any, as of the call valuation date minus applicable fees. The five consecutive trading days beginning December 16, 2021 through December 22, 2021 will constitute the call valuation period. For more information about the call settlement amount, see "Key TermsCall Settlement Amount" in the REML Pricing Supplement. Credit Suisse expects that NYSE Arca will allow REML to continue to trade until December 23, 2021. The REML coupon payment declared on December 2, 2021 is not affected by this announcement.

The acceleration date for FLGE is expected to be December 23, 2021. On the acceleration date, FLGE investors will receive a cash payment per ETN in an amount equal to the accelerated redemption amount for FLGE. The accelerated redemption amount will be determined on the last trading day in the accelerated valuation period for FLGE in accordance with the terms set forth in the FLGE Pricing Supplement and will be calculated using the arithmetic average of the closing indicative values of FLGE during the accelerated valuation period. The five consecutive trading days beginning December 14, 2021 through December 20, 2021 will constitute the accelerated valuation period for FLGE. For more information about the accelerated redemption amount for FLGE, see "Key TermsAccelerated Redemption Amount" in the FLGE Pricing Supplement. Credit Suisse expects that NYSE Arca will allow FLGE to continue to trade until December 22, 2021.

The acceleration date for FEUL is expected to be December 22, 2021. On the acceleration date, FEUL investors will receive a cash payment per ETN in an amount equal to the accelerated redemption amount for FEUL. The accelerated redemption amount will be determined on the last trading day in the accelerated valuation period for FEUL in accordance with the terms set forth in the FEUL Pricing Supplement and will be calculated using the arithmetic average of the closing indicative values of FEUL during the accelerated valuation period. The five consecutive trading days beginning December 13, 2021 through December 17, 2021 will constitute the accelerated valuation period for FEUL. For more information about the accelerated redemption amount for FEUL, see "Key TermsAccelerated Redemption Amount" in the FEUL Pricing Supplement. Credit Suisse expects that NYSE Arca will allow FEUL to continue to trade until December 21, 2021.

ETN/Ticker

Symbol Call Valuation Period/Accelerated

Valuation Period* Call Settlement

Date/Acceleration Date ETN CUSIP REML FLGE FEUL December 16, 2021 to December 22, 2021 December 14, 2021 to December 20, 2021 December 13, 2021 to December 17, 2021 December 27, 2021 December 23, 2021 December 22, 2021 22539T282 22542D423 22539U107

*Five consecutive trading days (inclusive)

You may access the relevant ETN pricing supplement on the SEC website at www.sec.gov or by clicking on the hyperlink below.

REML:

https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/0001053092/000110465920123238/tm2035551-1_424b2.htm

FLGE:

https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/0001053092/000089109220012079/e11688-424b2.htm

FEUL:

https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1053092/000089109220012082/e11692-424b2.htm#a_Toc513545023

Investors who buy the ETNs at any time for an amount that is greater than the cash amount due upon call or acceleration of the relevant ETNs (including paying any premium to such cash amount) will suffer a loss on their investment. Furthermore, investors who sell the ETNs at any time for an amount that is less than the cash amount due upon call or acceleration of the relevant ETNs (including selling at any discount to such cash amount) will suffer a loss. Any loss could be significant. Investors will not receive any compensation for the loss of the investment opportunity of holding the ETNs, and investors may be unable to invest in other securities with a similar level of risk and/or that provide a similar investment opportunity as the ETNs. For more information, see "Risk Factors" in the applicable pricing supplement.

None of the other ETNs offered by Credit Suisse are affected by this announcement. All dates referenced above are subject to change, including postponement due to certain events.

Press Contacts

Karina Byrne, Credit Suisse AG, telephone +1 212 538 8361, [email protected]

Credit Suisse ETNs

Telephone +1 800 320 1225, [email protected]

Credit Suisse AG

Credit Suisse AG is one of the world's leading financial services providers and is part of the Credit Suisse group of companies (referred to here as 'Credit Suisse'). Our strategy builds on Credit Suisse's core strengths: its position as a leading wealth manager, its specialist investment banking capabilities and its strong presence in our home market of Switzerland. We seek to follow a balanced approach to wealth management, aiming to capitalize on both the large pool of wealth within mature markets as well as the significant growth in wealth in Asia Pacific and other emerging markets, while also serving key developed markets with an emphasis on Switzerland. Credit Suisse employs approximately 48,500 people. The registered shares (CSGN) of Credit Suisse AG's parent company, Credit Suisse Group AG, are listed in Switzerland and, in the form of American Depositary Shares (CS), in New York. Further information about Credit Suisse can be found at www.credit-suisse.com.

SOURCE Credit Suisse AG
Located in the Union Cross submarket, this area provides a distinct advantage with accessibility, and a high-quality tenant base with institutional ownership. The building is 100% occupied by one tenant who is currently paying below market rent, providing a significant upside during renewal as well as during exit. Other tenants in the area include Fedex , Amazon , Caterpillar , Proctor & Gamble , and PepsiCo .

"Sourced off-market and below replacement cost, Union Crossing Distribution Center is a great addition to our North Carolina portfolio," said Kevin Caille, Market Officer at Dalfen Industrial. "The vacancy rate in this market is a tight 2.3% due to continued and strong tenant demand which is expected to continue."

"The demand for industrial properties in North Carolina continues to outpace supply," said Sean Dalfen, President and Chief Investment Officer at Dalfen Industrial. "We have had tremendous success in the Carolinas and are always looking for the next opportunity to expand our footprint in this market."

Dalfen Industrial currently owns close to 3 million square feet of industrial properties in North Carolina.

About Us

Dalfen Industrial is one of the nation's largest buyers and developers of industrial real estate and is a leader in the last-mile property sector. Their investment focus is on strategically located urban infill warehouses and distribution buildings. Dalfen currently owns and operates millions of square feet of premier industrial properties throughout the United States.

Media Contact :

[email protected]

SOURCE Dalfen Industrial
HOLON, Israel, Dec. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- This month an 11-year-old boy from Gaza, Mazen, became the 6000th child saved by Save a Child's Heart (SACH), Israel's internationally renown humanitarian organization.

During the first few weeks of his life, doctors in Gaza diagnosed the child with a complicated congenital heart condition that would require multiple medical procedures to save his life. As he grew older it became more difficult for him to breathe and he needed emergency surgery to survive.

11-year-old Mazen from Gaza and Dr. Sagi Assa who performed his life-saving catheterization Mazen at the new Save a Child's Heart International Pediatric Cardiac Center and Sylvan Adam's Children's Hospital

Two doctors in Gaza, Dr Abdalraheem Said and Dr. Hany Al Faleet, are responsible for screening all Gazan pediatric cardiac patients from the southern area of Gaza at the European Gaza Hospital. There are no centers for interventional cardiac treatment in Gaza, and the caseload of critical cases has been made worse by border closures due to the Covid pandemic.

"A major challenge for us is that we are not only responsible for 'doing the medicine', but for helping patients cross borders for care," said Dr. Al Faleet, who referred Mazen to his Israeli partners at Save a Child's Heart in Holon, Israel.

In Israel, Mazen was treated at the SACH International Pediatric Cardiac Care Center at the new Sylvan Adams Children's Hospital. There, he was first screened by Dr. Alona Raucher Sternfeld, Director of Pediatric Cardiology, and then treated in the catheterization lab by Dr. Sagi Assa, Head of the Interventional Pediatric Cardiac Care Unit. Dr. Assa and his team ae pioneering the use of closure devices that enable complex cardiac catheterization procedures to close holes in hearts without the need for open heart surgery. The SACH center and hospital are the only institutions in the region performing this procedure on cases such as Mazen's. Mazen's life was saved through the support of the German foundation, Ein Herz fur Kinder.

Save a Child's Heart is dedicated to improving pediatric cardiac care in developing countries around the world through surgery, medical missions, and medical training. It has saved the lives of six thousand children from sixty-three countries. Fifty percent of the children are Palestinian children from Gaza and the West Bank, and SACH holds a weekly cardiology clinic for Palestinian children at its facilities in Holon. In 2018 SACH received the UN Population Award in recognition of its role in helping transform pediatric cardiac care in Africa.

https://25.saveachildsheart.org/mazen

https://saveachildsheart.org/

Media contact:

David Litwack

[email protected]

301-785-0720

SOURCE Save a Child's Heart
Prospectus Approved by the Australian Securities and Investments Commission

LONDON, Dec. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- British Company, Dragonfly Biosciences UK , the makers of Dragonfly CBD, Europe's largest and leading, award winning seed to shelf range of CBD oils and skincare products, is excited to announce that its prospectus has been approved by the Australian Securities and Investments Commission. As a result, Dragonfly CBD stock is set to be listed on the ASX January 2022.

The company intends to raise $10 million AUS dollars at $0.20 cents per share, the financing is being led by Finexia Securities Limited, for more information on investment visit https://www.finexia.com.au/dragonfly. According to Fortune Business Insights the global CBD market is estimated to be USD $3.6 billion growing to USD $55 Billion by 2028.

The Dragonfly CBD brand is sold in thousands of pharmacies, health food stores and grocery retailers across the globe - in the UK, Europe, Asia, Australia, New Zealand, and soon the United States, as well as China, Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore.

Dragonfly CBD dominates the UK market, with a significant number of retail distribution partners and, thanks to the brand's integrity, Dragonfly CBD was the first CBD oil to be stocked by Boots. As a result, retail listings across community pharmacy, Tesco, Sainsbury's, health food stores, specialist retailers and other grocery retailers to name but a few retailers, followed fast after Boots. Earlier this year, the brand became the first international and UK CBD brand available in pharmacies across Australia. This business expansion came off the back of the Australian Therapeutic Goods Administration in February 2021 changing the regulations to allow registered CBD products to be sold in Australian Pharmacies.

Regan Saveall, Chief Executive at Dragonfly Biosciences UK commented, "The approval of our prospectus and our imminent listing on the ASX is an incredible milestone for the company. These two events will raise awareness of our products and our brand, not only throughout South East Asia but the entire world.

"We keep innovation and quality at the heart of Dragonfly CBD and our extensive research and development and stringent quality controls will always guarantee the highest and most consistent product quality. As we move into 2022, we will continue to implement our business strategies on expansion into new global markets including China, Europe, India the United States and more. The global acceptance of our trusted, scientifically backed brand is exceeding our own expectations and as a business we could not be happier. As a company we are all about creating the very next generation health and wellness innovation and as a result, we look forward to creating more market firsts globally."

Source of story: Dragonfly Biosciences UK

Notes to editors: Dragonfly Biosciences Ltd is a UK based company with international reach. Dragonfly has been awarded "Best CBD Product" by one of the world's most respected health and beauty retailer and pharmacy chain in 2020 and voted the number one recommended CBD brand by Boots' customers in 2021. Supported by experts in farming, cultivation, extraction, formulation, compliance and training, consumers can be assured of the highest quality, consistent standards that comply with regulations. These values translate in all of their markets.

Dragonfly CBD can be found at a variety of reputable stockists on the UK high street including Boots, Tesco, Sainsbury's and in pharmacies where professional advice may be sought on appropriate use of the product. Dragonfly is available in two ranges  narrow spectrum and broad spectrum  and in a range of strengths to take by mouth. Vitamin D is included in some oral preparation to facilitate consumers obtaining the UK government recommended daily dose of this essential vitamin. Dragonfly also produces a CBD skin care range. www.dragonflycbd.com

SOURCE Dragonfly Biosciences
NEW YORK, Dec. 9, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Energy companies from 11 countries spanning four continents tonight received honors for leadership, innovation and exemplary performance at the 23rd annual S&P Global Platts Global Energy Awards, often described as the "Oscars" of energy. The Awards program was held virtually and in-person at the Cipriani Wall Street in downtown Manhattan. CNBC correspondent Kristina Partsinevelos, whose reporting appears on television and CNBC's digital platforms, emceed this year's event.

Saugata Saha, President of S&P Global Platts, said: "S&P Global Platts is committed to advancing data and analytical technology solutions to help digitalize the energy industry as it transitions to a more sustainable energy future. It was inspirational to celebrate the meaningful achievements of this year's Global Energy Awards winners and finalists, which ranged from technology innovation, to efficiency gains, to green-hydrogen development, to embracement of carbon-free targets, to empowerment of women in energy, and so much more."

In naming Naturgy Energy Group this year's Energy Company of the Year, the Global Energy Awards' independent panel of judges highlighted the integrated power and gas company's razor focus on energy transformation, its "impressively balanced portfolio of energy sources" and its bold aims of tripling its renewable capacity internationally by 2025. In recognizing its Chairman and CEO Francisco Reynes as Chief Executive of the Year, judges lauded him as a prudent "risk-taker" with "maturity and vision" and noted his re-structuring of the company, while leading geographic expansion and commitment to boosting core earnings 30% by 2025.

France's ENGIE, also a dual winner, won accolades for Deal of the Year-Financial Award, with judges particularly impressed by its energy portfolio of wind and solar power aimed at paving the way for Google's operations in Germany to be carbon-free by 2030, a deal judges described as "the start of something new." Judges applauded ENGIE's utilization of partnerships "to build a cleaner world." The multinational utility company also snagged the Climate Leader Award  Power (formerly the Energy Transition Award) was developed to recognize the leadership of power companies in the transition to a low-carbon, sustainable economy. In awarding honors to ENGIE, S&P Global Sustainable1 particularly noted the company's carbon emissions reductions by more than two-thirds in six years to 2020, including a reduction of more than 50% in the past three years, both outstanding within its industry. ENGIE also stood out from its peers with its aggressive commitment to net-zero emissions by 2045, five years earlier than many other utilities.

ADDITIONAL INDIVIDUAL HONORS

The 2021 Lifetime Achievement Award was bestowed upon Ben Fowke from Xcel Energy of the United States. Recognized by his peers as a visionary leader and one of the pioneers in renewable energy generation, Mr. Fowke also impressed the judges by his commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion, all of which point to a lasting influence on the utility sector.

Honoring the CEO of a company with assets under $10 billion, the Platts Global Energy Awards identified Sumant Sinha, CEO of ReNew Power of India as Chief Trailblazer of the Year. Founding the company in 2011, Mr. Sinha is a first-generation entrepreneur who champions growth through acquisition and impressed judges with his business acumen and advocacy for climate change solutions through the intersection of business and public policy.

The 2021 Rising Star-Individual Award went to Wael Hamed Abdel Latif Abdel Moati, from OAPEC in Kuwait, who drew unanimous attention of the judges as a visionary young leader who is proactively engaging in global discussions and shining a spotlight on the role natural gas and hydrogen can play in the energy future of the Middle East and North Africa.

COMPANIES TO WATCH

Taking Rising Star-Company honors was LevelTen Energy of the United States. This energy technology start-up stood apart from peers with its platform that judges said makes it "easier to invest in clean strategies." Particularly impressive to judges was the fact that the physical marketplace for renewable energy power purchase agreements is already serving a host of countries in North America and Europe is "reaching critical size".

The Cenovus Energy and Husky Energy merger, which the judges panel said created a new global competitor through combined strengths, better optimizations and profitability in a challenging year, won Cenovus Energy of Canada, Deal of the Year-Strategic.

Jenny Salinas, Vice President of Marketing for S&P Global Platts, said: "S&P Global Platts is proud to host the Global Energy Awards for over two decades and to continue to spotlight creativity, community investment, and technological advancements for a cleaner world. As part of our ongoing commitment to sustainability and to offset the carbon footprint of tonight's event, Platts is investing in a methane capture project in Bulgaria and a solar-powered clean water project in Senegal."

For full details of these and other 2021 Global Energy Awards winners, access the December S&P Global Platts Insight article "2021 S&P Global Platts Global Energy Awards" on page 74.

Access this link for awards criteria and independent judges panel information.

2021 S&P Global Platts Global Energy Awards Winners:

Energy Company of the Year

Naturgy Energy Group, Spain



Chief Executive of the Year

Francisco Reynes, Naturgy Energy Group, Spain



Chief Trailblazer of the Year

Sumant Sinha, ReNew Power, India

Lifetime Achievement Award

Ben Fowke, Xcel Energy, United States

Rising Star Award: Individual

Wael Hamed Abdel Latif Abdel Moati, Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries, Kuwait

Rising Star Award: Company

LevelTen Energy, United States

Deal of the Year - Financial

ENGIE, France

Deal of the Year  Strategic

Cenovus Energy, Canada

Award of Excellence: Downstream

Valero Energy Corporation, United States

Award of Excellence: Midstream

Williams, United States

Award of Excellence: LNG

Sempra Infrastructure, United States

Award of Excellence: Upstream Transformation

RWE AG, Germany

Award of Excellence: Power

Masdar, United Arab Emirates

Grid Edge Award

Limejump, United Kingdom

Corporate Social Responsibility Campaign of the Year Award: Diversified

K-Electric Limited, Pakistan

Corporate Social Responsibility Campaign of the Year Award: Targeted

Nayara Energy Limited, India

Climate Leader Award: Power

ENGIE, France

Commercial Technology of the Year

Micatu, Inc., United States

Construction Project of the Year

Bechtel Energy, United States

Emerging Technology of the Year

Bloom Energy, United States

Energy Consumer Sustainability Award

IBM, United States

Engineering Solution of the Year

Samsung Engineering Company, South Korea

Media Contacts:

Americas: Kathleen Tanzy, + 1 917-331-4607, [email protected]

About S&P Global Platts

At S&P Global Platts, we provide the insights; you make better informed trading and business decisions with confidence. We're the leading independent provider of information and benchmark prices for the commodities and energy markets. Customers in over 150 countries look to our expertise in news, pricing and analytics to deliver greater transparency and efficiency to markets. S&P Global Platts coverage includes oil and gas, power, petrochemicals, metals, agriculture and shipping.

S&P Global Platts is a division of S&P Global (NYSE: SPGI), which provides essential intelligence for companies, governments and individuals to make decisions with confidence.

SOURCE S&P Global Platts

Related Links

http://www.platts.com


STOCKHOLM, Dec. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Hygiene and health company Essity has secured a EUR 300m loan at favorable terms with the European Investment Bank (EIB) as part of financing Essity's research, development, and innovation process.

The EUR 300m will support Essity's product innovation and sustainability investments across all business areas and product segments until 2024. The loan has a tenor of 7 years.

"We are pleased with the support from EIB for our comprehensive innovation process. Essity's focus is to increase wellbeing for people everywhere as we continue our journey to reach net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050," says Magnus Groth, President & CEO of Essity.

At the Capital Markets Day in November 2021, Essity presented its roadmap to Net Zero where breakthrough technologies and innovation play a key role. Essity has set a target that more than 50 percent of the innovations shall yield social and/or environmental improvements.

For further information, please contact:

Per Lorentz, Vice President Corporate Communications, +46 733 13 30 55, [email protected]

Johan Karlsson, Vice President Investor Relations, +46 705 11 15 81, [email protected]

This information was brought to you by Cision http://news.cision.com

https://news.cision.com/essity/r/essity-signs-eur-300m-loan-agreement-with-the-european-investment-bank,c3468092

The following files are available for download:

https://mb.cision.com/Main/15798/3468092/1507146.pdf Essity signs EUR 300m loan agreement with the European Investment Bank https://news.cision.com/essity/i/essity-products,c2989631 Essity products

SOURCE Essity
WASHINGTON, Dec. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The following statement was issued by Dan Stein, president of the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), in response to the Maryland General Assembly's override of Gov. Larry Hogan's veto of H.B. 16, a bill that bars state law enforcement from cooperating with federal immigration enforcement agencies:

"Rising crime is a top concern for Americans all across the country, but not for the majority of lawmakers serving the Maryland General Assembly. This week, both the House of Delegates and the Senate overrode a veto by Gov. Larry Hogan of a bill that intentionally puts deportable foreign criminals back onto the streets. Both chambers have veto-proof Democratic majorities, and the governor's decision was overridden without a single Republican vote.

"Gov. Hogan commendably vetoed a bill that forbids public officials from detaining or extending the detention of individuals suspected of being illegal aliens to investigate their immigration status, or transferring them to federal immigration authorities, unless required by federal law. Additionally, the bill bars state and local law enforcement from even asking about the citizenship status of criminals they arrest.

"Maryland has experienced numerous high-profile crimes committed by deportable criminal aliens  including murders and sexual assaults against minors  yet legislators in Annapolis affirmatively decided to make it easier for such criminals to remain in Maryland, and then reaffirmed that position by overriding the governor's commonsense veto.

"Undoubtedly, as a result of the Maryland General Assembly's reckless actions, more foreign criminals will be released back into communities across the state rather than removed from the country, and more Marylanders will be victimized by reoffenders. Along with the criminals themselves, the Maryland legislators who voted for this bill and overrode the veto, will be culpable for needless pain and suffering."

Contact: Matthew Tragesser, 202-328-7004 or [email protected]

ABOUT FAIR

Founded in 1979, FAIR is the country's largest immigration reform group. With over 3 million members and supporters nationwide, FAIR fights for immigration policies that serve national interests, not special interests. FAIR believes that immigration reform must enhance national security, improve the economy, protect jobs, preserve our environment, and establish a rule of law that is recognized and enforced.

SOURCE Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR)
MIAMI, FL, Dec. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Brand Institute is proud to announce its successful partnership with AstraZeneca in developing the brand name EVUSHELD and assisting with the development of the nonproprietary names tixagevimab and cilgavimab, together denoting the first long-acting antibody combination authorized for emergency use by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for pre-exposure prevention of COVID-19. EVUSHELD works specifically to protect adults and adolescents (aged 12 and older) with immune systems that have been compromised by a medical condition or immunosuppressive medications.

"The entire Brand Institute and Drug Safety Institute Team congratulates AstraZeneca on the emergency use authorization of EVUSHELD by the FDA," said Brand Institute's Chairman and CEO, James L. Dettore. "EVUSHELD will surely be an important treatment option in the global fight against COVID-19, especially for at-risk individuals whose immune systems are unable to generate a sufficient response to the disease on their own, even once vaccinatedas well as individuals for whom vaccination isn't recommended in the first place. The FDA's tentative authorization now allows the protection that EVUSHELD has been shown to provide to be put to work."

Full FDA approval of EVUSHELD may be granted once it undergoes complete review according to the FDA's guidelines, policies, and procedures.

About Brand Institute and our wholly owned subsidiary, Drug Safety Institute

Brand Institute is the global leader in pharmaceutical and healthcare-related name development, with a portfolio of over 3,500 marketed healthcare names for nearly 1,000 clients. The company partners on over 75% of pharmaceutical brand and nonproprietary name approvals globally every year. Drug Safety Institute is comprised of former naming regulatory officials from global government health agencies, including FDA, EMA, Health Canada, American Medical Association (AMA), and the World Health Organization (WHO). These regulatory experts co-authored the name review guidelines while with their respective agencies, with many responsible for ultimately approving (or rejecting) brand name applications. Now working for a private company, these professionals provide Brand Institute's clients with industry-leading guidance pertaining to drug name safety (i.e., preventing medication errors), packaging, and labeling.

Contact: Scott Piergrossi

President, Creative

[email protected]

SOURCE Brand Institute, Inc.
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M., Dec. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Bridge to Health, a New Mexico community health and wellness program, is hosting a free community health event in Albuquerque featuring health care services and community resources.

WHAT: Free Community Health and Wellness Fair hosted by Bridge to Health offering free wellness testing and health screenings (including dental and vision), COVID-19 vaccinations, free healthy food giveaways, health insurance enrollment, fun activities for kids, and more. Visit bridgetohealth.com for more information.

WHEN: 10 AM to 4 PM on Saturday, December 11, 2021

WHERE: Alamosa Community Center

6900 Gonzales Road, SW

Albuquerque, NM 87121

Free bus fares for seniors and students provided by City of Albuquerque ABQ Ride

SOURCE Bridge to Health
CLEVELAND, Dec. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Saint-Gobain, a leading industrial conglomerate with significant operations in the building construction industry, recently announced that it would be acquiring GCP Applied Technologies, a key supplier of roofing underlayment, waterproofing and air barrier products, and cement and concrete admixtures. The transaction, which is expected to be completed by the end of 2022, will bolster Saint-Gobain's presence in a number of markets.

According to Freedonia Group industry analyst Matt Zielenski, "This transaction will enhance Saint-Gobain's position in ta number of segments of the building products market. By integrating GCP's roofing underlayment, waterproofing, and air barrier product lines with those of their CertainTeed subsidiary, Saint-Gobain will be able to complement CertainTeed's already extensive offerings of roofing, siding, and other exterior building products."

Additionally, noted Zielenski, the purchase allows Saint-Gobain to again its construction chemicals business, as GCP Applied Technologies is an important supplier of cement and concrete admixtures that enhance product performance while improving the efficiency of manufacturing processes. Following on the heels of Saint-Gobain's September 2021 acquisition of Chryso, a leading France-based supplier of cement and concrete admixtures, the GCP Applied Technologies acquisition will broaden Saint-Gobain's product offerings.

For more information on the outlook for roofing underlayment, waterproofing, and cement and concrete products industries, as well as the outlooks for other building materials, see the Construction & Building Products page on the Freedonia Group website:

About the Freedonia Group - The Freedonia Group, a division of MarketResearch.com, is the premier international industrial research company, providing our clients with product analyses, market forecasts, industry trends, and market share information. From one-person consulting firms to global conglomerates, our analysts provide companies with unbiased, reliable industry market research and analysis to help them make important business decisions. With over 100 studies published annually, we support over 90% of the industrial Fortune 500 companies. Find off-the-shelf studies at https://www.freedoniagroup.com/ or contact us for custom research: +1 440.842.2400.

Press Contact:

Corinne Gangloff

+1 440.842.2400

[email protected]

SOURCE The Freedonia Group
Key Points Covered in the Content Editing Services Market Report:

Am I engaging with the right suppliers?

Which KPIs should I use to evaluate my incumbent suppliers?

Which supplier selection criteria are relevant for ERP Software?

What are the ERP Software category essentials in terms of SLAs and RFx?

Key Global Suppliers in the Content Editing Services Market:

Melen LLC

Crowd Content Media Inc

Cambridge Proofreading & Editing LLC

Get Quick Access to the Key Global Suppliers Profiled Extensively in This Report

The Content Editing Services Market report evaluates suppliers based on provision for applicable insurance policy, real-time analysis, pipeline software solutions, and conduct pipeline surveys. In addition, suppliers are also shortlisted based on business needs, technical specifications, operational requirements, security compliance, regulatory mandates, legal requirements, quality control, change management procedures, pricing models, penalty clauses, SLA nuances, acceptance criteria, and evaluation criteria.

Request a Report Sample to Gain Comprehensive Insights at Content Editing Services Market:

https://www.procurement.spendedge.com/report/content-editing-services-sourcing-and-procurement-intelligence-report

Related Trending Topics:

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About SpendEdge:

SpendEdge shares your passion for driving sourcing and procurement excellence. We are the preferred procurement market intelligence partner for 120+ Fortune 500 firms and other leading companies across numerous industries. Our strength lies in delivering robust, real-time procurement market intelligence reports and solutions.

Contact

SpendEdge

Anirban Choudhury

Marketing Manager

Ph No: +1 (872) 206-9340

https://www.spendedge.com/contact-us

SOURCE SpendEdge
DUBLIN, Dec. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The "Hepatitis Therapeutics Market, By Disease Type (Hepatitis A, Hepatitis B, Hepatitis C, Hepatitis D, Other Types), Drug Class (Interferon, Monoclonal Antibody, Non-structural protein 5A (NS5A) inhibitors, Others) and Region: Global Forecast to 2027" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering.

The Hepatitis Therapeutics market size is estimated to grow at a CAGR of 3.5% during the forecast year from 2021 to 2027.



The latest report on Hepatitis Therapeutics Market understands market size estimates, forecasts, market shares, competition analysis, along with industry trends of Hepatitis Therapeutics with emphasis on market timelines and technology roadmaps analysis.



The Hepatitis Therapeutics market is segmented by disease type, drug class and region. The research covers the current and historic Hepatitis Therapeutics market size and its growth trend with company outline of Key players/manufacturers Gilead Science; Johnson & Johnson; Bristol-Myers Squibb Company; Merck & Co., Inc., AbbVie Inc, F. Hoffmann-La Roche Ltd among others.



Analysis of the global market with special focus on high growth application in each vertical and fast-growing market segments. It includes detailed competitive landscape with identification of the key players with respect to each type of market, in-depth market share analysis with individual revenue, market shares, and top players rankings.

Impact analysis of the market dynamics with factors currently driving and restraining the growth of the market, along with their impact in the short, medium, and long-term landscapes. Competitive intelligence from the company profiles, key player strategies, game-changing developments such as product launches and acquisitions.



The objective of this study is to identify the market opportunities and estimate market size by segments and countries for last few years and to forecast the values to the next five years. The report incorporates both the qualitative and quantitative aspects of the industry with respect to each of the regions and countries involved in the study.

The report also covers qualitative analysis on the market, by incorporating complete pricing and cost analysis of components & products, Porter's analysis and PEST (Political, Economic, Social & Technological factor) analysis of the market. The report also profiles all major companies active in this field.



Market Analysis and Insights: Hepatitis Therapeutics Market Analysis & Insights

Hepatitis Therapeutics Market Scope and Market Size

Hepatitis Therapeutics markets are segmented by disease type, drug class and region. Players, stakeholders, and other participants in the global Hepatitis Therapeutics market will be able to gain a strong position as this report will surely benefit their marketing strategies. The market analysis focuses on revenue and forecast by region/countries and by application in terms of revenue and forecast for the period 2016-2027.



Report further studies the market development status and future and Hepatitis Therapeutics Market trend across the world. Also, it splits Hepatitis Therapeutics market by disease type, drug class and region to deep dive research and reveals market profile and prospects.



Major Classifications are as follows:

Company Profiles

Gilead Science

Johnson & Johnson

Bristol-Myers Squibb Company

Merck & Co. Inc.

AbbVie Inc

F. Hoffmann-La Roche Ltd

By Disease Type

Hepatitis A

Hepatitis B

Hepatitis C

Others

By Drug Class

Interferon

Monoclonal Antibody

Non-structural protein 5A (NS5A) inhibitors

Nucleotide Analog Reverse Transcriptase Inhibitors

Nucleotide Analog NS5B Polymerase Inhibitors

By Region

North America

US

Canada

Europe

UK

Germany

Franc

Rest of Europe

Asia-Pacific (APAC)

(APAC) China

Japan

India

Rest of APAC

Rest of the World (RoW)

Middle East

Africa

South America

For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/pbgcw2

Media Contact:

Research and Markets

Laura Wood, Senior Manager

[email protected]



For E.S.T Office Hours Call +1-917-300-0470

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U.S. Fax: 646-607-1907

Fax (outside U.S.): +353-1-481-1716

SOURCE Research and Markets

Related Links

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VANCOUVER, BC, Dec. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ - GoldMining Inc. (TSX: GOLD) (NYSE American: GLDG) ("GoldMining" or the "Company") is pleased to announce that it has entered into an equity distribution agreement (the "Distribution Agreement") with a syndicate of agents led by BMO Nesbitt Burns Inc., and including BMO Capital Markets Corp., H.C. Wainwright & Co. LLC, Haywood Securities, Laurentian Bank Securities Inc. and Roth Capital Partners, LLC (collectively, the "Agents"), for an at-the-market equity program (the "ATM Program").

The Distribution Agreement will allow the Company to distribute up to US$50 million (or the equivalent in Canadian dollars) of common shares of the Company (the "Offered Shares") under the ATM Program. The Offered Shares will be issued by the Company to the public from time to time, through the Agents, at the Company's discretion. The Offered Shares sold under the ATM Program, if any, will be sold at the prevailing market price at the time of sale.

The Company intends to use the net proceeds of any such sales under the ATM Program to fund the exploration and development of its mineral properties, to fund future acquisitions as may be determined by the Company, and for working capital.

Under the Distribution Agreement, sales of Offered Shares will be made by the Agents through "at-the-market distributions" as defined in National Instrument 44-102  Shelf Distributions on the Toronto Stock Exchange, NYSE American LLC or any other trading market for the Offered Shares in Canada or the United States. The Company is not obligated to make any sales of Offered Shares under the Distribution Agreement. Unless earlier terminated by the Company or the Agents as permitted therein, the Distribution Agreement will terminate upon the earlier of: (a) the date that the aggregate gross sales proceeds of the Offered Shares sold under the ATM Program reaches the aggregate amount of US$50 million (or the equivalent in Canadian dollars); or (b) January 1, 2023.

The ATM Program will become effective upon the filing of a prospectus supplement to the Company's short form base shelf prospectus dated October 27, 2021 and U.S. registration statement on Form F-10 filed May 3, 2021, as amended on October 27, 2021. The prospectus supplement relating to the ATM Program will be filed shortly with the securities commissions in each of the provinces and territories of Canada and with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission. Copies of the prospectus supplement, the Distribution Agreement and other relevant documents will be available on SEDAR at www.sedar.com and EDGAR at www.sec.gov. Alternatively, the lead agent will send copies of such documents to investors upon request by contacting BMO Nesbitt Burns Inc. by mail at Brampton Distribution Centre, 9195 Torbram Road, Brampton, Ontario, L6S 6H2, attn: The Data Group of Companies, by email at [email protected] or by telephone at 905-791-3151 ext. 4312.

This press release does not constitute an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to buy securities, nor will there be any sale of, the securities in any jurisdiction in which such offer, solicitation or sale would be unlawful.

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. The Company also owns 20 million shares of Gold Royalty Corp. (NYSE American: GROY).

Forward-looking Information

This news release contains certain forward-looking statements that reflect the current views and/or expectations, including those regarding the intended use of proceeds raised from the ATM Program and the future issuance of Offered Shares thereunder. 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. Forward-looking information includes statements that address or discuss activities, events or developments that the Company expects or anticipates may occur in the future. When used in this news release, words such as "estimates", "expects", "plans", "anticipates", "will", "believes", "intends" "should", "could", "may" and other similar terminology are intended to identify such forward-looking information. These statements involve significant uncertainties, known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors and, therefore, actual results, performance or achievements of the Company and its industry may be materially different from those implied by such forward-looking statements. Investors are cautioned that all forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties, including: risks that the Company may not sell any of the Offered Shares or may raise less than the maximum offering amount under the ATM Program; management has broad discretion in the use of proceeds from the ATM Program; delays to project 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 project studies and 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, including the availability of future borrowings under existing credit facilities. 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


CLEVELAND, Dec. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- US polyethylene resin demand is forecast to increase 1.3% annually in volume terms through 2025, according to Polyethylene: United States, a report recently released by Freedonia Focus Reports. Despite market turbulence from COVID-19, improving macroeconomic conditions will increase production of manufactured goods, boosting demand for polyethylene packaging. This trend will be enhanced by end users increasingly seeking out monomaterial packaging  made entirely of one resin  for easier recyclability. Rising consumer spending will boost sales of polyethylene-containing consumer products, such as trash bags and plastic toys. In addition, increasing building construction activity is expected to boost demand for polyethylene in building products such as pipe.

Limited opportunities to penetrate new domestic markets and ongoing source reduction efforts in the packaging industry are forecast to restrain further sales growth. Demand for plastic bags is expected to flounder as more municipalities ban their use. In addition, polyethylene producers will continue to face strong competition from manufacturers of alternative resins (such as polypropylene) and alternative materials (e.g., paper).

These and other key insights are featured in Polyethylene: United States. This report forecasts to 2021 and 2025 US polyethylene resin demand and production in pounds. In addition, demand, production, and price in nominal US dollars at the manufacturer level are forecast to 2025. Total demand, production, and prices are segmented by product in terms of:

high-density polyethylene (HDPE)

linear low-density polyethylene (LLDPE)

low-density polyethylene (LDPE)

Total demand is also segmented by market as follows:

packaging

consumer and institutional products

building products

other markets such as electrical and electronic products, industrial goods, and transport equipment

To illustrate historical trends, total demand, total production, the various segments, resin prices, and trade are provided in annual series from 2010 to 2020.

Polyethylene copolymers excluded from this report include:

ethylene vinyl acetate

polyolefin elastomers/plastomers

ultra-high-molecular-weight polyethylene

Recycled polyethylene is excluded from the scope of this report. Re-exports of polyethylene are excluded from demand and trade figures.

More information about the report is available at:

https://www.freedoniafocusreports.com/Polyethylene-United-States-FF55017/?progid=91541

About Freedonia Focus Reports

Each month, The Freedonia Group  a division of MarketResearch.com  publishes over 20 new or updated Freedonia Focus Reports, providing fresh, unbiased analysis on a wide variety of markets and industries. Published in 20-30 pages, Focus Report coverage ranges from raw materials to finished manufactured goods and related services such as freight and construction. Additional Materials & Chemicals reports can be purchased at Freedonia Focus Reports or MarketResearch.com.

Analysis is intended to guide the busy reader through pertinent topics in rapid succession, including:

total historical market size and industry output

segmentation by products and markets

identification of market drivers, constraints, and key indicators

segment-by-segment outlook in five-year forecasts

a survey of the supply base

suggested resources for further study

Press Contact:

Corinne Gangloff

+1 440.842.2400

[email protected]

SOURCE The Freedonia Group
WASHINGTON, Dec. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ --

Used An ATM Card And Were Assessed A Surcharge?

You Could Get Money From $67 Million Class Action Settlements

This class action alleges Defendants violated federal antitrust laws by adopting restraints that allegedly inflated the ATM surcharges paid by the Class. Defendants deny these allegations. The Court has not decided who is right.

JP Morgan, Wells Fargo, and Bank of America ("Settling Defendants") have agreed to Settlements resolving the claims.

Am I included?

You are a Settlement Class Member if, at any time between October 1, 2007 and November 12, 2021, you paid a surcharge to withdraw cash from a bank ATM in the United States. You are excluded from the Settlement Class if all of your surcharged ATM transactions were (a) reimbursed, or (b) conducted on cards issued by financial institutions located outside of the United States. A more detailed notice, including the exact Settlement Class definition and exceptions to Settlement Class membership, is available at www.ATMClassAction.com.

What does the Settlement provide?

The Settlements provide for the payment of $66,740,000 in cash to resolve the claims.

How can I get a payment?

To receive money from this Settlement, you must complete a Claim Form that asks you to state under oath that you were assessed ATM surcharges. You are not required to provide documentation with the Claim Form, but the Settlement Administrator reserves the right to request your bank statements or other documentation supporting your claim. Visit www.ATMClassAction.com/claims to fill out a Claim Form online or download one that can be mailed. To be eligible for payment, Claim Forms must be submitted electronically or postmarked no later than May 11, 2022.

What are my rights?

If you are a Settlement Class Member, even if you do nothing, you will be bound by the Court's decisions and judgments concerning the Settlements. If you want to keep your right to sue the Settling Defendants regarding ATM surcharges, you must exclude yourself from the Settlement Class in writing by March 11, 2022. If you stay in the Settlement Class, you may object to the Settlements in writing by March 11, 2022. The Settlement Agreements, along with details on how to exclude yourself or object, are available at www.ATMClassAction.com. The U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia is scheduled to hold a hearing on May 17, 2022, at 3:00 p.m., at 333 Constitution Avenue N.W., Courtroom 18, Washington D.C. 20001, to consider whether to approve the Settlements. Class Lead Counsel will also request at the hearing, or at a later date, attorneys' fees of up to 33% of the Settlement Fund, plus reimbursement of costs and expenses, for investigating the facts, litigating the case, and negotiating the Settlements. You or your own lawyer may appear and speak at the hearing at your own expense, but you don't have to. The hearing may be conducted electronically or moved to a different date or time without additional notice, so it is a good idea to check www.ATMClassAction.com for additional information. Please do not contact the Court about this case.

If the case against the other Defendants is not dismissed, settled, or resolved by legal motion, plaintiffs will have to prove their claims against the other Defendants at trial. Trial dates have not yet been set. The Court has appointed the law firms of Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro LLP; Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan, LLP; and Mehri & Skalet, PLLC as Class Lead Counsel to represent Settlement Class Members.

Source: Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro LLP, Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan, LLP, and Mehri & Skalet, PLLC

SOURCE Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro LLP, Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan, LLP, and Mehri & Skalet, PLLC
PORTLAND, Ore., Dec. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Leading premium children's wear brand Hanna Andersson has launched an exclusive Sesame Street pajama capsule collection, available starting today. Inspired by the beloved childhood favorite that has brought joy to generations of children, the Sesame Street collection celebrates Elmo, Cookie Monster, Big Bird, and Oscar the Grouch, in the iconic Hanna Andersson silhouettes and patterns that children and parents alike will adore.

Grounded in Hanna Andersson's classic striped print and super-soft long john silhouettes, the kids-only capsule collection features a modern character aesthetic. Five styles highlight the faces of beloved Sesame Street characters and a multi-character grid print for those who can't choose just one character to love. A standard across all of Hanna Andersson's pajamas, the Sesame Street capsule collection is Global Organic Textile Standard (GOTS) certified and made with organic cotton, making them gentle on children's skin and the environment. The timeless designs and durable construction offer non-stop comfort that can be passed down from child to child for years to come.

"Sesame Street is a childhood classic, and we are so excited to introduce this new collaboration to our customers. Sesame Workshop's mission of helping kids grow smarter, stronger, and kinder aligns perfectly with our Brand Values at Hanna Andersson and the iconic characters are beloved by so many. This capsule collection aims to celebrate each character in new and unexpected ways, with bold designs that kids will love to wear," said Kelly Olmstead, Chief Marketing Officer at Hanna Andersson. "The collection will expand with additional product offerings this spring -- we're excited for kids to wear their favorite characters year-round!"

"Hanna Andersson's unique, Scandinavian-inspired approach to high quality design truly brought our Sesame Street characters to life with the timeless styles featured in this capsule collection," said Gabriela Arenas, Vice President, Global Licensing, Sesame Workshop. "Combining Sesame Street's playful, beloved characters with the collection's made-for-play styles make for memorable family moments for years to come."

The Hanna Andersson x Sesame Street capsule collection is available for purchase online exclusively at HannaAndersson.com starting today, December 10th.

STYLES & PRICING:

'Elmo' Long John Pajamas in Organic Cotton, $50

'Big Bird' Long John Pajamas in Organic Cotton, $50

'Oscar the Grouch' Long John Pajamas in Organic Cotton, $50

'Cookie Monster' Long John Pajamas in Organic Cotton, $50

'Sesame Street' Long John Pajamas in Organic Cotton, $50

LINK TO PURCHASE:

hannaandersson.com/characters-sesame-street

HI-RES PRODUCT IMAGERY:

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1wWRGm6mMfEiO6Aof6OgK0h1v1ZImvrdb?usp=sharing

ABOUT HANNA ANDERSSON:

Hanna Andersson was founded in 1983 and is a leading premium children's apparel and lifestyle brand committed to outfitting the adventure of childhood. Hanna Andersson is known for its iconic, globally recognized products with happy designs, Hanna-me-down quality, and construction details that eliminate the rub. The company's products are designed for children ages newborn to 12 years, with a complementary assortment of family apparel. Known as the original maker of Family Matching Pajamas, Hanna Andersson has built a cult following and is a favorite amongst celebrities including Gabrielle Union, Kate Hudson, Kristen Bell, Taylor Swift, and Thomas Rhett. ( www.hannaandersson.com )

ABOUT SESAME WORKSHOP

Sesame Workshop is the nonprofit educational organization behind Sesame Street, the pioneering television show that has been reaching and teaching children since 1969. Today, Sesame Workshop is an innovative force for change, with a mission to help kids everywhere grow smarter, stronger, and kinder. We're present in more than 150 countries, serving vulnerable children through a wide range of media, formal education, and philanthropically funded social impact programs, each grounded in rigorous research and tailored to the needs and cultures of the communities we serve. For more information, please visit www.sesameworkshop.org .

CONTACT:

Mateja Heinrich

Full Picture

Account Executive

[email protected]

SOURCE Hanna Andersson
SAN DIEGO, Dec. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- It takes a village to create change. We don't create half of the results we want in this world if we do it alone. That's why for the third straight year, Heartcore Business is joining forces with Toys for Tots to create Christmas magic for the San Diego community.

Toys for Tots

After filling two moving trucks with toys in 2020, Heartcore Business and their Founder and Queen Visionary, Shanda Sumpter , wanted to raise the stakes for 2021. Sumpter never wants a child to wake up on Christmas morning and find nothing under their tree. So with an original goal of raising $45,000, now over $85,000, to fill three moving trucks with toys, Heartcore set out to save Christmas.

"I know that every single one of us has hard moments in our lives. I remember being so broke it hurt. My aunt and uncle even took me in for a whole year because my mom couldn't afford me," recalls Sumpter of her childhood. "Now to be in a place where we can give like this is super powerful. It's one thing to write a check, it's another thing to get your hands dirty. It changes the whole experience."

And changing the whole experience they are. Sumpter and her team have already surpassed their goal of filling three trucks and have now upped their goal to filling four!

Join the Heartcore Business team and their families on Friday, December 10th from 8:00am to 11:00am as they shop till they drop at the Walmart Supercenter located on 1550 Leucadia Blvd in Encinitas. The gifts purchased will then be wrapped with Christmas cheer before being donated to Toys for Tots.

Media Contact:

Angela Bonnici

[email protected]

508-523-4345

SOURCE Heartcore Business
The iced tea market in India is expected to grow by USD 6.00 bn from 2021 to 2026, as per Technavio. The growth momentum of the market will accelerate at a CAGR of 17.43%. The year-over-year growth rate of the market in 2022 is 21.51%.

Read the 120-page report with TOC on "Iced Tea Market in India Analysis Report by Product (black iced tea, green iced tea, and others) and Distribution Channel (offline and online), and the Segment Forecasts,2022-2026".

The market is driven by factors such as rising urbanization and changing consumer lifestyles. Urbanization also indicates a rise in the per capita annual household disposable income of consumers. The working population seeks healthy products that are convenient to be consumed on the go, such as iced tea.

Major Five Iced Tea in India Companies:

Goodwyn Tea - The company offers peppermint tea that soothes stomach problems, helps fight sinus, and improves concentration.

The company offers peppermint tea that soothes stomach problems, helps fight sinus, and improves concentration. Gujarat Tea Processors and Packers Ltd. - The company offers a wide range of iced tea such as lemon ice tea, orange ice tea, peach ice tea, aloe vera and litchi ice tea, and many more.

The company offers a wide range of iced tea such as lemon ice tea, orange ice tea, peach ice tea, aloe vera and litchi ice tea, and many more. Karma Kettle Teas - The company offers a wide range of iced teas such as green tea with mango and cumin, rooibos tea with spiced apple, jasmine green tea with peach, and many more.

The company offers a wide range of iced teas such as green tea with mango and cumin, rooibos tea with spiced apple, jasmine green tea with peach, and many more. Nestle SA - The company offers Nestea Iced Tea that has a refreshing, balanced taste and is available in sweetened and unsweetened varieties.

The company offers Nestea Iced Tea that has a refreshing, balanced taste and is available in sweetened and unsweetened varieties. ORGANIC INDIA Pvt. Ltd. - The company offers a wide range of iced tea such as tulsi sweet lemon ice tea, tulsi sweet rose ice tea, tulsi green ice tea classic, and many more.

Are you looking for valuable insights regarding the vendors operating in the market? View Our Free Sample

Iced Tea Market In India Product Outlook (Revenue, USD bn, 2021-2026)

Black iced tea - size and forecast 2021-2026

Green iced tea - size and forecast 2021-2026

Others - size and forecast 2021-2026

Iced Tea Market In India Distribution Channel Outlook (Revenue, USD bn, 2021-2026)

Offline - size and forecast 2021-2026

Online - size and forecast 2021-2026

Subscribe to our "Lite Plan" billed annually at USD 3000 that enables you to download 3 reports a year and view 3 reports every month.

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Iced Tea Market Scope in India Report Coverage Details Page number 120 Base year 2021 Forecast period 2022-2026 Growth momentum & CAGR Accelerate at a CAGR of 17.43% Market growth 2022-2026 USD 6.00 billion Market structure Fragmented YoY growth (%) 21.51 Regional analysis India Competitive landscape Leading companies, Competitive strategies, Consumer engagement scope Key companies profiled Goodwyn Tea, Gujarat Tea Processors and Packers Ltd., Karma Kettle Teas, Nestle SA, ORGANIC INDIA Pvt. Ltd., Tata Consumer Products Ltd., TE-A-ME, TGL Co., The Coca-Cola Co., and Unilever Group Market dynamics Parent market analysis, Market growth inducers and obstacles, Fast-growing and slow-growing segment analysis, COVID-19 impact and recovery analysis and future consumer dynamics, Market condition analysis for the forecast period Customization purview If our report has not included the data that you are looking for, you can reach out to our analysts and get segments customized.

About Technavio

Technavio is a leading global technology research and advisory company. Their research and analysis focus on emerging market trends and provide 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.

Contacts

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
SUNRISE, Fla., Dec. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Interim HealthCare Inc., the nation's leading franchise network of home care, senior care, home health, hospice and healthcare staffing services, today announces its third acquisition of 2021 with the purchase of Interim HealthCare of Sacramento Hospice in California.

First opened 46 years ago, Interim HealthCare of Sacramento Hospice provides a holistic approach to hospice care centered around comfort, compassion, and support for loved ones and their families. David Klaeser, owner of the franchise since 2007, will continue leading the company in the role of CEO and building upon a history of clinical excellence, outstanding quality, care delivery and sales performance.

This marks the third franchise acquisition for Interim HealthCare Inc. in 2021, following Interim HealthCare of the Treasure Coast in November and Interim HealthCare of San Diego in January. The movement toward a hybrid model of both franchises and company-owned branches represents the company's overarching goal to expand its reach to be able to serve more individuals in need around the country.

"2021 was a big year for Interim HealthCare. We are glad to have had the opportunity to purchase not only Interim HealthCare of Sacramento Hospice, but two other highly successful franchises in San Diego, California and West Palm Beach, Florida," said Jennifer Sheets, president and CEO of Interim HealthCare Inc. "These three acquisitions further Interim HealthCare's unwavering commitment to meeting individuals in their most preferred care setting  the home. Our goal is for every person that is appropriate for care in the home, to have the highest quality option possible."

The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has prompted many consumers to take more control over their healthcare decisions. According to a recent Interim HealthCare survey, 67 percent of Americans have thought differently about their own healthcare options or those of a loved one because of the pandemic. As a result, in-home care services are seeing an uptick in interest due in part to the growing aging population and the number of individuals living with comorbid conditions. Interim HealthCare is continuing to meet this growing demand through its strategic acquisitions, recruiting efforts and industry advocacy work to ensure all individuals have access to the superior services that home healthcare provides.

To learn more about buying and operating an Interim HealthCare franchise business, please visit: www.interimfranchising.com. Those who currently own another home healthcare business and may be interested in exploring potential transition options may email: [email protected].

About Interim HealthCare Inc.

Founded in 1966 and First in Home Care, Interim HealthCare Inc. is unique in combining the commitment of local ownership with the support of a national organization that develops innovative programs and quality standards. The only major franchise brand in its category to offer the full continuum of care, the company strives to improve the delivery of home healthcare and staffing services through 330 plus locations servicing the U.S. and Saudi Arabia. Ranked number one for the third year in a row by Entrepreneur magazine, franchisees employ nurses, therapists, aides, companions and other healthcare professionals who provide 25 million hours of home care service to 200,000 people each year, meeting a variety of home health, senior care, hospice, palliative care, pediatric care and healthcare staffing needs. For more information or to locate an Interim HealthCare office, visit www.interimhealthcare.com.

SOURCE Interim HealthCare Inc.
ALBANY, N.Y., Dec. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The most prevalent cause of anemia across the world is deficiency of iron. Rise in the occurrence of chronic renal disorders, individual iron deficiency, and spike in the likelihood of hemodilution in pregnant women are expected to drive the global iron deficiency anemia treatment market during the forecast period, from 2020 to 2030.

As per the WHO, anemia affects between 1.5 and 1.74 billion individuals worldwide, with iron deficiency accounting for half of the total anemia cases. Such high prevalence of iron deficiency anemia is anticipated to work in the favor of the global iron deficiency anemia treatment market.

Anemia and iron metabolism may play a significant role in multiple organ dysfunction syndrome during the ongoing COVID-19 infection. Coronavirus is more likely to infect patients who are iron deficient. As a result, companies in the global iron deficiency anemia treatment market have expanded their manufacturing capabilities to bridge the gap between demand and supply at hospitals and pharmacies.

Request Brochure of Iron Deficiency Anemia Treatment Market Research Report - https://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag=B&rep_id=81221

The global iron deficiency anemia treatment market is expected to grow at a CAGR of 8.7% during the forecast period. Pharmaceutical firms in this market are focusing on India, where substantial share of the female population is anemic.

Key Findings of Market Report

Developments in Iron Supplements Supported by Divalent Iron Salts and Ferrous Sulfate

Besides offering iron supplements, players in the global iron deficiency anemia treatment market are making advancements in intravenous (IV) infusion solutions for patients suffering from chronic conditions. New iron supplementation options are expected to boostthe growth of the market. The use of antiplatelet medicines, anti-inflammatory medications, and anticoagulants are supporting these programs.

As iron fumarate, gluconate, and ferrous sulfate have higher bioavailability than other compounds, companies have been working to develop better formulations. They are focusing on new medicines that include divalent iron salts. They are offering inexpensive drugsat pharmacies and pharmacy shops to benefit to the patients suffering from iron deficiency anemia.

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Introduction of Supplementation Programs in Developing Countries to Boost Market Growth

Iron deficiency anemia is connected with huge monetary losses in productivity among working women in developing nations every year. As a result, pharmaceutical firms, along with government bodies are introducing iron supplementation programsto combat this medical condition among women workers involved in physical labor.

Concealed symptoms, low supplementation adherence, and lack of program monitoring, on the other hand, are restricting market expansion. Moreover, firms are raising awareness about proper supplement doses, recommending regular visits to clinics, and program monitoring as a priority in order to boost market growth.

TMR offers custom market research services that help clients to get information on their business scenario required where syndicated solutions are not enough, Request for Custom Research - https://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag=CR&rep_id=81221

Iron Deficiency Anemia Treatment Market: Growth Drivers

Due to cost-effectiveness, abundant supply, and reliability, the tablet form is gaining in popularity in the management and treatment of iron deficiency. This factor is expected to drive the market in the near future.High adoption of tablet dosages in both inpatient as well as outpatient settings is expected to augment the demand for this dosage form in the market.

As there is a possible link between COVID-19 and anemia, major pharmaceutical firms have increased output capacities of drugs as well as other medications. This factor is likely to benefit the growth of the iron deficiency anemia treatment market during the forecast period.

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Iron Deficiency Anemia Treatment Market: Key Players

Some of the key market players are

Vifor Pharma Management Ltd

Sun Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd.

Pharmacosmos A/S

Akebia Therapeutics, Inc.

Rockwell Medical, Inc.

Shield Therapeutics plc.

Iron Deficiency Anemia Treatment Market: Segmentation

Drug Type

Ferrous Sulfate

Ferrous Gluconate

Ferrous Fumerate

Ferric Hydroxide

Sodium Ferric Gluconate

Iron Carbohydrates

Dosage Form

Tablets

Capsules

Liquid

Distribution Channel

Hospital Pharmacies

Retail Pharmacies

Online Pharmacies

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Acupuncture Needles Market: The global acupuncture needles market was valued at US$ 114.8 Mn in 2020 and is projected to expand at a CAGR of 5% from 2021 to 2031. Acupuncture promotes balance and harmony on all levels by stimulating the energy flow, the CHI, with tiny needles placed on energy spots.

Pressure Ulcer Diagnostics Market: The pressure ulcer diagnostics market is projected to cross US$ 1.49 Bn by 2031. Bullous pemphigoid (BP) is a severe skin disorder with high morbidity and mortality rates. However, as the condition progresses, rendering an accurate diagnosis may be a challenge for clinicians.

Blood Pressure Monitoring Devices Market: The global blood pressure monitoring devices market was valued at US$ 1.5 Bn in 2020 and is projected to expand at a CAGR of 9.2% from 2021 to 2031. Blood circulating against the walls of blood vessels generates blood pressure (BP) and is measured in millimeters of mercury (mmHg).

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WASHINGTON, Dec. 9, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The U.S. Senate passed legislation today to protect Medicare patients' access to surgical care by mitigating the cuts surgeons were set to face in less than four weeks, according to the Surgical Care Coalition. The bill now heads to the President's desk for signature.

"Today's action will protect our nation's seniors and avoid adding further stress to our health care system amid the ongoing pandemic," said American College of Surgeons Incoming Executive Director Patricia L. Turner, MD, MBA, FACS. "However, this bill is a band aid. The surgical community urges Congress to use this brief delay to immediately consider longer-term solutions to the broken Medicare payment system to prevent future crises. The Surgical Care Coalition stands ready to work with Congress to fix the system to protect America's seniors."

The bill, S.610, Protecting Medicare and American Farmers from Sequester Cuts Act, will delay some of the nearly 9% cuts to surgeons. Had Congress failed to act, these cuts would have jeopardized patient access to care amid the ongoing pandemic.

"By delaying significant cuts to surgical care, this bill will help protect patient access to care across the country," said John K. Ratliff, American Association of Neurological Surgeons/Congress of Neurological Surgeons Washington Committee Chair. "Still, physicians continue to face these same payment cuts year after year. We look forward to working with Congress to reform the Medicare payment system so that it invests in health care providers and ensures that they can be there for patients when and where patients need them."

"We thank Congress for taking action on this bill today. It will delay devastating cuts from harming our nation's most vulnerable patients," said George A. Williams, MD, American Academy of Ophthalmology Senior Secretary for Advocacy. "Unfortunately, there is more work to be done to ensure patients can continue to receive the timely care they need. We ask each member of Congress to continue standing up for our health care heroes by reforming the Medicare payment system so that it stops pitting doctor against doctor and invests in our nation's physicians."

"With another successful mitigation of the cuts surgeons were facing, Congress again shows that it protects Medicare patients access to surgical care," said American College of Osteopathic Surgeons' President Christopher A. Reeder, D.O. FACOS, FACS. "However, these 11th hour mitigation efforts should not be looked at as a long-term tenable solution. We are calling on Congress to work with the surgical community to fix the Medicare payment system so that the Medicare system can provide high quality care to Medicare patients."

"While imperfect, this legislation is a step in the right direction for surgeons and patients. Congress reduced anticipated cuts to Medicare reimbursement by nearly 80% yet still decided that some cuts during a global pandemic are acceptable," said The Society of Thoracic Surgeons First Vice President John H. Calhoon, MD. "This reality highlights ongoing and real challenges within our Medicare payment system. We urge Congress to work with STS and other surgical associations on a long-term solution."

About the Surgical Care Coalition

The Surgical Care Coalition advocates for access to quality surgical care for all Americans. The Surgical Care Coalition is comprised of 13 surgical professional associations that proudly represent the more than 150,000 surgeons working across the country with a common goal of improving the quality of care, and quality of life, for all patients.



Contact: [email protected]

SOURCE Surgical Care Coalition
NEW YORK, Dec. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- LG SIGNATURE, the ultra-premium brand from LG Electronics known for world-class design and cutting-edge innovations, is supporting DIFFA's (Design Industries Foundation Fighting AIDS) Specify with Care program this holiday season.

DIFFA serves a wide network of communities and grants funds to organizations providing treatment, education, and assistance for people impacted by HIV, AIDS, homelessness, hunger and mental health issues. LG SIGNATURE's support helps assure that DIFFA has the resources to assist HIV and AIDS organizations year-round.

Courtesy of LG SIGNATURE Courtesy of LG SIGNATURE.

The contribution was announced at a holiday soiree for the interior design community with DIFFA on Dec. 9 at Molteni&C|Dada|UniFor's New York Flagship Store, which currently showcases LG SIGNATURE innovations led by the world's first rollable TV, OLED R, as part of a three-year collaboration with the Italian premium lifestyle and furniture brand.

The event sparked a larger dialogue around DIFFA's pressing needs among the 150-plus guests including designers, architects and clients. The American Ballet Theatre's Principal Dancer Misty Copeland made a special appearance as an LG SIGNATURE brand ambassador who is equally passionate about humanitarian efforts.

"We value the opportunity to promote DIFFA's mission in partnership with Molteni&C to help bring awareness to this noble cause as champions of change," said Peggy Ang, marketing senior vice president at LG Electronics USA, which markets the LG SIGNATURE brand in the United States. "It's been a trying year, and at LG we believe life's good when we care for the well-being of others. There's no better time than the holiday season to pay it forward and hopefully inspire others to join us."

DIFFA Executive Director Dawn Roberson, said, "We're honored to have the support of innovative industry leaders like LG SIGNATURE who recognize the importance of advocacy within our local community. This holiday event proved to be a wonderful reminder that together, and with our shared network, we have the power to make a difference in the lives of the organizations and individuals we serve."

LG SIGNATURE's newest offerings were on display for holiday event attendees, highlighting its expansive collection just in time for the gift-giving season. Featured products included:

LG SIGNATURE OLED R Rollable TV (model 65RX) , an engineering and user-centric triumph that reimagines the television experience by disappearing at the touch of a button to liberate users from the limitations of a wall for a more thoughtfully curated living space. Built using an ultra-thin, flexible 4K OLED screen made from one sheet of glass, LG SIGNATURE OLED R features luminous display technology composed of over 8 million self-lit pixels that deliver superior, detailed, and vivid picture quality, powered by LG's fourth-generation  (Alpha) 9 intelligent processor for best-in-class visuals. Most notably, the TV transforms into three different viewing windows to expand the user experience from watching content to exploring mood lighting, listening to music, smart home control and much more.

, an engineering and user-centric triumph that reimagines the television experience by disappearing at the touch of a button to liberate users from the limitations of a wall for a more thoughtfully curated living space. Built using an ultra-thin, flexible OLED screen made from one sheet of glass, LG SIGNATURE OLED R features luminous display technology composed of over 8 million self-lit pixels that deliver superior, detailed, and vivid picture quality, powered by LG's fourth-generation  (Alpha) 9 intelligent processor for best-in-class visuals. Most notably, the TV transforms into three different viewing windows to expand the user experience from watching content to exploring mood lighting, listening to music, smart home control and much more. LG SIGNATURE Wine Cellar , a sleek and seamlessly designed appliance with Wi-Fi connectivity that mimics the environment of traditional wine caves. Using LG's Optimal Preservation Technology, the wine cellar minimizes temperature fluctuations, reduces vibration, limits light exposure and locks in humidity to create the ideal storage environment for any variety or vintage. The unit can hold up to 65 bottles and features noteworthy conveniences like InstaView, a glass touch display that illuminates for easy exterior viewing to reduce cold air loss, and Voice Activation powered by LG's ThinQ technology, which allows you to open the door with the sound of your voice. An Auto Open Door feature opens the door automatically with the wave of a foot for an added touch. Convertible drawers offer customizable temperatures from fridge to freezer mode, exemplifying the wine cellar as an all-in-one preservation system for food and wine.

, a sleek and seamlessly designed appliance with Wi-Fi connectivity that mimics the environment of traditional wine caves. Using LG's Optimal Preservation Technology, the wine cellar minimizes temperature fluctuations, reduces vibration, limits light exposure and locks in humidity to create the ideal storage environment for any variety or vintage. The unit can hold up to 65 bottles and features noteworthy conveniences like InstaView, a glass touch display that illuminates for easy exterior viewing to reduce cold air loss, and Voice Activation powered by LG's ThinQ technology, which allows you to open the door with the sound of your voice. An Auto Open Door feature opens the door automatically with the wave of a foot for an added touch. Convertible drawers offer customizable temperatures from fridge to freezer mode, exemplifying the wine cellar as an all-in-one preservation system for food and wine. LG SIGNATURE OLED 8K TVs (models 77Z9 and 88Z9) , an award-winning OLED 8K TV that redefines the premium viewing experience thanks to more than 33 million self-lit pixels, 1 billion colors, perfect blacks and limitless contrast. With a picture that's four times sharper than 4K UHD and with 16 times the detail of HDTV, the 88- and 77-inch class LG SIGNATURE OLED 8K TVs exceed the industry's official 8K Ultra HD definition set by the Consumer Technology Association.

, an award-winning OLED TV that redefines the premium viewing experience thanks to more than 33 million self-lit pixels, 1 billion colors, perfect blacks and limitless contrast. With a picture that's four times sharper than UHD and with 16 times the detail of HDTV, the 88- and 77-inch class LG SIGNATURE OLED TVs exceed the industry's official Ultra HD definition set by the Consumer Technology Association. LG SIGNATURE Air Purifier, an all-in-one, Allergy Foundation of America (AAFA)-certified air purifier and humidifier that helps eliminate particles within a 318 sq. ft. radius. The Watering Engine disperses atomized water to create a comfortable humidity level, using UV light and smart drying technology to prevent mold and bacteria accumulation. The Smart LED Indicator allows users to see the air being cleaned through a transparent cover, with the display changing from red to blue as the indoor air quality improves.

Today, visitors to the Molteni&C|Dada|UniFor New York Flagship Store can enjoy a more integrated luxury lifestyle shopping experience, browsing both brands in-store. The LG SIGNATURE OLED 8K TV (model 77Z9) will remain on display in-store, along with the LG OLED 4K TV (model 65GX), which is featured in the 2021 Molteni&C collection catalog.

For more information about DIFFA's mission and how to get involved, please visit www.DIFFA.org. To learn more about LG SIGNATURE, its growing product lineup and ongoing partnerships, please visit www.LGSIGNATURE.com.

About LG SIGNATURE

LG SIGNATURE is the first ultra-premium brand across multiple product categories from global innovator LG Electronics. Catering to the most discerning consumers, LG SIGNATURE is designed to provide a state-of-the-art living experience that feels pure, sophisticated and luxurious. Combining the very best of everything LG has to offer, the distinctive LG SIGNATURE products were designed with their true essence in mind  streamlined to focus on each product's essential function while maintaining LG SIGNATURE's modern, signature design. For more information, visit www.LGSIGNATURE.com.

About DIFFA

Design Industries Foundation Fighting AIDS (DIFFA) raises awareness and grants funds to organizations that provide treatment, direct care services, preventive education programs, and advocacy for individuals impacted by HIV/AIDS, as well as related challenges, including drug abuse and homelessness, which directly impact new HIV/AIDS infections. DIFFA is one of the largest funders of HIV/AIDS service and education programs in the United States, mobilizing the immense resources and creativity of the design community. Since its founding in 1984, DIFFA has emerged from a grassroots organization into a national foundation based in New York City with chapters and community partners across the country that, working together, have provided more than $45 million to hundreds of HIV/AIDS organizations nationwide. Recent recipients of DIFFA grants include: Alpha Workshops, Gay Men's Heath Crisis, Housing Works, God's Love We Deliver, Bailey House, Correctional Association of NY, SAGE, BOOM! Health, Hetrick-Martin Institute, Callen-Lorde Community Health Center, among many others. www.diffa.org.

SOURCE LG SIGNATURE
NEW YORK, Dec. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- According to the new market research report " Liquid Biopsy Market Forecast to 2027 - COVID-19 Impact and Global Analysis by Product and Services (Equipment, Reagents & Kits, and Services); Sample (Blood Based, Urine Based, and Other samples); Circulating Biomarker (Circulating Tumor Cells (CTC), Exosomes, and Free Nucleic Acid); Application (Noninvasive Prenatal Testing (NIPT), Oncology, Transplant Diagnostics, and Other Applications); End User (Academic & Research Institutes, Hospitals, Reference Laboratories, and Other End Users), and Geography", published by The Insight Partners, the global liquid biopsy market is projected to reach US$ 8,123.85 million by 2027 from US$ 3,861.49 million in 2019 to grow at a CAGR of 9.9% during 20202027. Get the Latest COVID-19 Analysis on global liquid biopsy market at https://www.theinsightpartners.com/covid-analysis-sample/TIPRE00003996

Report Coverage Details Market Size Value in US$ 3,861.49 Million in 2019 Market Size Value by US$ 8,123.85 Million by 2027 Growth Rate CAGR of 9.9% from 2020-2027 Forecast Period 2020-2027 Base Year 2020 No. of Pages 195 No. Tables 125 No. of Charts & Figures 76 Historical Data Available Yes Segments Covered Product and Services ; Sample ; Circulating Biomarker ; Application ; End User , and Geography Regional Scope North America; Europe; Asia Pacific; Latin America; MEA Country Scope US, UK, Canada, Germany, France, Italy, Australia, Russia, China, Japan, South Korea, Saudi Arabia, Brazil, Argentina Report Coverage Revenue Forecast, Company Ranking, Competitive Landscape, Growth Factors, and Trends

Liquid Biopsy Market: Competition Landscape and Key Developments

Biocept, inc., Bio-rad laboratories, inc., Lunglife ai, inc, exosome diagnostics, F. Hoffmann-la roche ltd, Inivata ltd,Exact sciences corporation, Mdxhealth, qiagen,Thermo fisher scientific inc are among the key companies operating in the liquid biopsy market. These players are focusing on the expansion and diversification of their market presence and the acquisition of a new customer base, thereby tapping prevailing business opportunities.

In March 2020 , NuProbe completed Collaboration with Qiagen to develop next-generation sequencing (NGS)-based cancer diagnostic tests for non-invasive liquid biopsy.

, NuProbe completed Collaboration with Qiagen to develop next-generation sequencing (NGS)-based cancer diagnostic tests for non-invasive liquid biopsy. In January 2018 , Thermo Fisher Scientific has Expanded Oncomine Portfolio for Liquid Biopsy and Immuno-oncology Clinical Research. The product is adding cell-free DNA panels, this is likely to delivers Fastest Liquid Biopsy Solution to the patients.

, Thermo Fisher Scientific has Expanded Oncomine Portfolio for Liquid Biopsy and Immuno-oncology Clinical Research. The product is adding cell-free DNA panels, this is likely to delivers Fastest Liquid Biopsy Solution to the patients. In August 2018 , Exact Sciences Corp. announced signing of partnership with Pfizer to promote Colorguard in the United States . Pfizer has helped with sales representative to promote the test to physicians and health systems during marketing campaign.

Get Exclusive Sample Pages of Liquid Biopsy Market Size - COVID-19 Impact and Global Analysis with Strategic Insights at https://www.theinsightpartners.com/sample/TIPRE00003996/

The North America region is the held the largest market for the liquid biopsy market during the forecast period. The United States held the largest market for liquid biopsy, and the market is expected to grow due to significant healthcare spending and infrastructure, availability of advanced technologies, and greater emphasis on early cancer screening.In Canada and Mexico, the market is expected to grow due to increasing investments for early cancer diagnostics and rising government initiatives for the cancer prevention and control. The market is expected to grow at a faster pace in Mexico, owing to higher prevalence of chronic renal conditions. In North America, the US is the largest market for liquid biopsy. The growth of this market is primarily driven by growing prevalence of cancer, high R&D spending for new diagnostics and presence of major market players in the US are going to accelerate the growth of this market in this country. The American Cancer Society, estimated that in 2020, an approximately 1.8 million new cancer cases will be diagnosed and 606,520 deaths will be due to cancer in the United States. The most common type of cancer incident in the US is breast cancer, with around276,480 new cases expected in the United States in 2020. The other most common cancer types are lung cancer, colorectal cancer and prostate cancer.

In 2019, Asia Pacific registered as the fastest-growing region in the global Liquid Biopsy market. The market is this region is expected to grow significantly in countries such as China, Japan, and India. The growth of the market is attributed due to rising support from the government, increasing prevalence of cancer, rising number of start-ups operating in liquid biopsy market, and increasing penetration of international market players in Asia Pacific region. The growth of the market is attributed to the iincreasing incidence of neurological disorders and growing developments in neuromodulation technology are factors driving the growth of the neuromodulation market; however, the high cost of neuromodulation devices hinders its market growth.

Increasing Prevalence of Cancer in Liquid Biopsy Market:

Liquid biopsy is a noninvasive diagnostic test that identifies various types of cancer. The increasing prevalence of cancer among population is leading to the growth of liquid biopsy market across the world. For instance, in Canada, cancer is the leading cause of death among population and it is witnessed to be a second-leading cause after heart diseases in the US. As per the American Cancer Society, Inc, approximately, 1.9 million new cancer cases and 693,000 cancer deaths were recorded in 2018, in Northern America. Prostate cancers are the most commonly diagnosed cancers among males in North America; however, breast cancers remains leading in females. Additionally, lung cancer remains the most common cause of death in both sexes. It is estimated that the number of new cases of cancer incidence is 439.2 per 100,000 men and women per year.

Download Sample PDF Brochure of Liquid Biopsy Market Size and Growth Research Report at https://www.theinsightpartners.com/sample/TIPRE00003996/

According to the National Health Profile, the cases of common cancers, including cervical, oral, and breast cancers have increased by 324%in India between 2017 and 2018. Additionally, the total number of patients visiting Non Communicable Diseases (NCD) clinics have doubled from 2017 to 2018, which is recorded as 3.5 crore to 6.6 crore respectively. Rapid change in lifestyle and consumption of alcohol and tobacco products are the factors increasing the incidences of cancer among the population. The largest potential market for liquid biopsy isa screening tool and testing the general asymptomatic population for different types of cancer.

Qiagen, Exosome Diagnostics Inc., and SysmexInostics GMBHareamong the major companies manufacturing liquid biopsy testing productsto detect cancer. Therefore, increasing prevalence of cancer across the world is expected to drive the growth of the global liquid biopsy market during the forecast period.

Liquid Biopsy Market: Segmental Overview

Based on product and services type, the liquid biopsy market is segmented into equipment, reagents & kits and services. The reagents & kits segment accounted for more than 49.12% of the market share in 2019. In terms of sample, the liquid biopsy market is segmented into blood based, urine based and other samples. The blood-based segment held the largest share of the market in 2019. In terms of circulating biomarker, the liquid biopsy market is segmented into intocirculating tumor cells (CTC), exosomes and free nucleic acid.The circulating tumor cells (CTC) segment held the largest share of the market in 2019. In terms of application,, the liquid biopsy market is segmented into non-invasive prenatal testing (NIPT), oncology, transplant diagnostics and other applications.The oncology segment held the largest share of the market in 2019. In terms of end-user, the liquid biopsy market is segmented into academic & research institutes, hospitals, reference laboratories and other end users.The hospitals segment held the largest share of the market in 2019.

Buy Premium Copy of Liquid Biopsy Market Size, Share, Revenue, Strategic Insights and Forecasts 2020-2027 Research Report at https://www.theinsightpartners.com/buy/TIPRE00003996/

The COVID-19 outbreak has disturbed various trades and businesses across the world. Due to an increasing number of infected patients, healthcare professionals and leading organizations are distracting the flow of healthcare resources from research & development to primary care, which is slowing down the process of innovation. Furthermore, the pandemic spread is also preventing the clinical trials, drug development, and diagnostic industry in the US. For instance, California-based Lucence Diagnostics Pte Ltd., who develops liquid biopsy and has a known player in this industry, has been diverted now to manufacture kits for COVID-19. For instance, in March 2020, Lucence Diagnostics announced that they have a new product in their product portfolio by developing the SAFER-Sample (Stabilization of nucleic Acid Formulation for Evaluation of RNA) kit, a sample collecting medical device to promote more accessible testing of viral infections like COVID-19.

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Technavio estimates the luxury car market size in Australia to grow by 27,350 units between 2021 and 2026, expanding at a CAGR of 5.12%. The report segments the market by propulsion type (IC engine-based vehicles and electric vehicles) and vehicle type (SUV and others).

By propulsion type, the market witnessed high adoption of IC engine-based luxury cars in 2021. The growth of the segment can be attributed to factors such as increased disposable incomes of consumers and improvements in IC engines in terms of emission, performance, and fuel efficiency. The market growth in this segment will be significant over the forecast period. Similarly, by vehicle type, SUVs accounted for the maximum number of sales in 2021. The growing interest in adventurous activities, especially among millennials in the country is increasing the adoption of SUVs.

Get additional highlights on the top revenue-generating segments, regions, and key countries in the luxury car market in Australia.

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Luxury Car Market in Australia: Growth Drivers

The market is driven by the integration of advanced safety technologies in luxury cars to gain higher safety ratings. Rising fatality rates caused by road accidents are forcing automotive OEMs to incorporate advanced technologies to make vehicles safer to drive. Some of the recent technological developments such as emergency brake assist, lane departure warning systems, collision mitigation warning, blind-spot detection, and automatic emergency braking systems are being incorporated to increase the safety levels in vehicles. Moreover, growing consumer awareness regarding crash tests conducted by Australasian New Car Assessment Program (ANCAP) has pushed automakers to increase the safety levels in their vehicles. Such developments are expected to have a positive impact on the growth of the luxury car market in Australia during the forecast period. In addition, new product launches by OEMs will further accelerate the market growth.

However, the growing shortage of semiconductor chips in the automotive industry will have a negative impact on the growth of the luxury car market in Australia to some extent. The shortage of semiconductor chips slowed down the production activities as several car manufacturers temporarily halted their production activities in 2021. It forced new car buyers to wait for long periods to take the delivery of their vehicles. The global semiconductor shortage is expected to continue in 2022 as well. This could result in reduced sales and revenue loss for luxury car manufacturers.

Our full report provides in-depth insights on the factors that influence the growth of luxury car market in Australia.

Download a Free Sample to understand the scope of the report

Some of the key topics covered in the report include:

Market Drivers

Market Challenges

Market Trends

Vendor Landscape

Vendors covered

Vendor classification

Market positioning of vendors

Competitive scenario

Related Reports:

Luxury SUV Market by Type and Geography Forecast and Analysis 2021-2025

Luxury Car Coachbuilding Market by Geography Forecast and Analysis 2021-2025

Luxury Car Market in Australia Scope Report Coverage Details Page number 120 Base year 2021 Forecast period 2022-2026 Growth momentum & CAGR Accelerate at a CAGR of 5.12% Market growth 2022-2026 27,350 units Market structure Fragmented YoY growth (%) 3.78 Regional analysis Australia Performing market contribution Australia at 100% Key consumer countries Australia Competitive landscape Leading companies, competitive strategies, consumer engagement scope Companies profiled Aston Martin Lagonda Ltd., BMW AG, Daimler AG, Ferrari NV, JAGUAR LAND ROVER AUTOMOTIVE PLC, Stellantis NV, Tesla Inc., Toyota Motor Corp., Volkswagen AG, and Volvo Car Corp. Market Dynamics Parent market analysis, Market growth inducers and obstacles, Fast-growing and slow-growing segment analysis, COVID-19 impact and future consumer dynamics, market condition analysis for the forecast period Customization purview If our report has not included the data that you are looking for, you can reach out to our analysts and get segments customized.

About Technavio

Technavio is a leading global technology research and advisory company. Their research and analysis focuses on emerging market trends and provides actionable insights to help businesses identify market opportunities and develop effective strategies to optimize their market positions.

With over 500 specialized analysts, Technavio's report library consists of more than 17,000 reports and counting, covering 800 technologies, spanning across 50 countries. Their client base consists of enterprises of all sizes, including more than 100 Fortune 500 companies. This growing client base relies on Technavio's comprehensive coverage, extensive research, and actionable market insights to identify opportunities in existing and potential markets and assess their competitive positions within changing market scenarios.

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UK: +44 203 893 3200

Email: [email protected]

Website: www.technavio.com/

SOURCE Technavio
LONDON, Dec. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- MRI Software, a global leader in property software, announced the formal opening of its office at the Hub in Sleaford, Lincolnshire on December 8, when a ceremony marking the event was held. The office is one of a number of MRI locations across the UK, including those in London and Newcastle, where the company develops and supports its innovative technology solutions.

The official opening of the office was attended by MRI Vice President and Executive Managing Director Europe Dermot Briody, Leader of North Kesteven District Council (NKDC), Cllr Richard Wright and Sleaford Town Council Mayor Robert Oates.

"We are thrilled to be formally opening the new facility, underlining our ongoing commitment to the town, the region and its people," said Briody. "While UK workers are being encouraged to work from home from 13 December, we will, of course, ensure that the eventual full return of the local workforce will be managed carefully and safely in light of ongoing developments with the pandemic. We are offering a hybrid working environment in which, in the long term, employees will have the flexibility to come to the Sleaford office part of the time and work at home other times."

MRI's Sleaford team is a key part of the company's UK operations, playing a crucial role in delivering property management software to businesses in the region. The team at the office support some of the largest commercial and residential property owners and operators in the UK. MRI is a rapidly growing company that operates in the fast-moving PropTech sector, and it will continue to recruit in the area  with roles open now  while creating more opportunities for talent from local educational institutions such as the University of Lincoln.

The Hub is notably the home of the National Centre for Craft and Design and has recently undergone a 1.2 million pound refurbishment project, creating an enhanced, modernised space for both visitors and creatives across a range of arts and craft. The building features a ground floor gallery, an artist workshop, a children's zone, a performing arts studio, conference facilities, a large indoor bistro and an outdoor seating area taking in views of the River Slea. It is owned and funded by North Kesteven District Council and operated on behalf of the Council by Lincolnshire-based charity Lincs Inspire Limited, and is also a National Portfolio Organisation of Arts Council England.

Council Leader Cllr Wright said: "When an internationally recognised company such as MRI solidifies its roots in Sleaford, it reinforces the town and District's position as a hub for creativity and business. It will be exciting to see MRI Software's Sleaford team continue to settle into their new space and grow for the future, including through new employment opportunities.

"It's especially fitting as MRI Software, in creating and innovating in the digital sector from this new space, joins the many varied streams of activities which continue to expand across the arts, craft and design also from within the Hub."

The new Sleaford office is an environment designed to be COVID-safe, with MRI using its WhosOnLocation workplace safety and security platform to ensure it has full visibility of all employees, contractors, visitors and anyone else who might have a physical presence on its premises at all times. The company will also employ the MRI Workplace Central solution set to manage its workforce's return to shared workspaces, scheduling the use of desks, meeting rooms and other facilities, while evaluating the use of space for future planning.

MRI has been one of the largest local employers for many years. The company acquired Qube Global Software in 2017, which had been in the town since 1982. The company originally occupied premises in Westgate and earlier in its history in Carre Street.

"MRI is proud to be building on the deep roots we have in the area," said James Lavery, Marketing Director, MRI Software. "The refurbished development will provide a great new home for the team members working in the office on any given day and will also act as a great collaboration space for the organisation. As we move through and out of the pandemic, we will observe the highest safety standards in strict accordance with government guidelines."

About MRI Software

MRI Software is a leading provider of real estate software solutions that transform the way communities live, work and play. MRI's comprehensive, flexible, open and connected platform empowers owners, operators and occupiers in commercial and residential property organisations to innovate in rapidly changing markets. MRI has been a trailblazer in the PropTech industry for over five decades, serving more than two million users worldwide. Through leading solutions and a rich partner ecosystem, MRI gives real estate companies the freedom to elevate their business and gain a competitive edge. For more information, please visit mrisoftware.com.

MEDIA CONTACTS:

UK for MRI

Platform Communications

Hugh Filman (+44 7905 044850)

or Zoe Mumba (+44 7725 832393)

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SOURCE MRI Software
SUPERIOR, Ariz., Dec. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Native American communities in eastern Arizona will benefit from a new source of clean drinking water through a project sponsored by Resolution Copper and Stantec to deploy innovative renewable "hydropanel" technology.

Resolution Copper and Stantec are partnering with White Mountain Apache community members to provide 64 hydropanels on the Fort Apache Reservation and supporting hydropanel installation programs in other Native American communities.

White Mountain Apache Tribe District II Councilman Jerold Altaha said: "Water is valuable; it's the life force of humanity. Thanks to this wonderful opportunity with Resolution Copper, our community of Carrizo will have access to safe, clean drinking water. Due to high levels of manganese in the main water wells, our community has had to depend on portable water tanks as a means to obtain drinking/cooking water for years. The hydropanels will now enable us to draw water from the air which will provide up to 10 liters of water or about 20 16-ounce bottles a day, at no cost to the family. We are grateful for these opportunities which continue to make a difference in everyday life for our people and community."

Stantec Water Business Operating Unit Leader John Take said: "We are proud to be a part of this effort to provide safe, reliable drinking water to the Native American communities in eastern Arizona. Innovative and renewable methods such as the hydropanel technology are playing an increased role in helping solve these complex problems in a sustainable manner."

Hydropanels are a one-of-a-kind renewable water technology that uses the solar energy to provide a safe and consistent supply of drinking water by drawing pure, constantly replenished water vapor out of the sky. The self-contained system converts water molecules in the air into liquid water, which is collected and mineralized in a reservoir inside the panel, creating high-quality drinking water that can be delivered directly to homes, businesses, and community distribution centers.

Resolution Copper Project Director Andrew Lye said: "Water is a fundamental resource, and many members of our neighboring Tribes do not have reliable access to safe drinking water. Projects like the hydropanel deployment will help alleviate some of the burden, and make a difference where it matters most. Resolution Copper continues to look for ways in which we can work in partnership to be part of the solution and support the communities around us."

So far, Resolution Copper has invested nearly $2.8 million through partnerships and donations to projects with Native American Tribes and other communities in the Copper Corridor in 2021. This includes, for instance, partnering with the Northern Arizona University Foundation to support the Indigenous Studies Program and provide 14 scholarships to local students. Resolution Copper also partnered with first responders, community groups and other agencies to aid communities and Native American Tribes affected by the Telegraph and Mescal wildfires.

SOURCE Resolution Copper
With the award, the Orange County Register recognizes companies and organizations that are best places to work in the area. The award is based entirely on surveys completed by the company's employees. Employees are asked for their views of their company's culture, including the strength of the company's values, the company's effectiveness in achieving its mission, and employees' ability to reach their potential.

This is hardly the first time that New American Funding has been honored for as a top workplace. The company prioritizes and emphasizes its culture in its Orange County headquarters and throughout each of its 174 nationwide locations.

New American Funding prides itself on fostering a culture that respects and appreciates differences among employees. That culture, known as "NAF360," ensures that all employees feel valued and balanced in their work and their lives.

This culture has won the company repeated recognition as one of the nation's best workplaces by Great Place to Work, including Best Workplaces for Parents, Best Workplace in Financial Services and Insurance, Best Workplace for Women, and Best Workplace for Millennials.

"Being one of Orange County's workplaces for a decade is an amazing achievement that we are incredibly proud of," New American Funding Co-Founder and CEO Rick Arvielo said. "Receiving this award again honors the outstanding culture we have strived to build and maintain for our most valuable resource, our people."

About New American Funding

New American Funding is an independent mortgage lender with a servicing portfolio of over 216,000 loans for approximately $56 billion, 171 nationwide locations, and about 4,500 employees. The company is a 2021 Mortgage Professional America 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
NEW ORLEANS, Dec. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Staffing shortage? Not here.

New Orleans based d'Livery has found it easy to grow its team throughout the Pandemic, and now looks to double in size over the next six months as it pursues more opportunities both in New Orleans and throughout South Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas.

At the beginning of March 2020, the local logistics firm had an administrative staff of 2, with a team of about 10 independent drivers and only operated in the Greater New Orleans area. Today, d'Livery is run by an in-house staff of 11 who support a team of more than 100 professional drivers operating daily in New Orleans, Baton Rouge, Houma, Slidell, Mandeville/Covington, Bay St. Louis, Lafayette and Lake Charles.

Founded on the notion that massive delivery service providers like Uber Eats, Door Dash, FedEx, the USPS and Amazon are too big to provide customized solutions for locals, d'Livery instead focused on tailoring its services to each customer's needs. Local retailers require a low priced same-day delivery service to compete against Amazon. To answer this need, d'Livery introduced its Concierge line of services.

When the City of New Orleans needed to get more than 10,000 meals delivered each day to food insecure families, d'Livery was there 6 days a week for over a year getting the job done. Whether its setting up delivery programs for thousands of home schooled students across 4 cities with only 2 weeks notice, or helping a large Hospital Group get critical medicines to its patients faster than FedEx, d'Livery's team steps up to the challenge every time.

The outlook for 2022 is continued growth. They see an expansion of their geographic footprint plus the addition of more professional drivers, partner and board managers, marketing, accounting and IT support staff. When asked about the staffing shortage others seem to be experiencing and d'Livery's secret for overcoming it, Stephen Bandi, d'Livery's CEO, responded "It's a secret, but one we're willing to share, eventually".

d'Livery has found that staying true to its original mission of charging reasonable fees, for fair pay to great drivers, for local merchants who know their customers by name is still the best way to develop and grow relationships.

D'Livery is hosting a driver appreciation event on Thursday, December 16, 2021, at Central City BBQ (1201 S Rampart St).

https://teams.dliverynola.com/

[email protected]

SOURCE Dlivery Nola
WASHINGTON, Dec. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Dan Stein, president of the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), issued the following statement after the New York City Council approved a bill to let noncitizens vote in citywide elections:

"Two and a half centuries ago, our nation was founded on the principle that sovereign people should determine their own destinies. In December 2021, the city council of our nation's largest city unilaterally rejected that founding principle and empowered noncitizens to determine the outcome of local elections.

"The right to vote is at the very core of the principle of self-determination and what it means to be a citizen. The actions of the council and lame duck mayor who has no intention of vetoing are the next, and most damaging, step in New York City's ongoing effort to erase any distinction between American citizens and noncitizens. About 1.2 million votes were cast in last month's mayoral election. With the addition of some 900,000 noncitizens to the voter rolls, foreign nationals will almost certainly decide the outcome of future elections.

"Last month, New Yorkers overwhelmingly rejected the failed, woke policies that were the hallmark of the de Blasio era. While Mayor-elect Eric Adams provides a stark contrast to the outgoing mayor in many areas, he too supports efforts to devalue the votes of American citizens in all five boroughs. Adams should ponder his stance and consider what the council's majority leader, Laurie Cumbo, has noted, 'This particular legislation is going to shift the power dynamics in New York City in a major way and we do notknow how that is going to impact African American communities who have been the most vulnerable in their existence in New York.'

"The actions of the city council and outgoing mayor will harm all Americans in New York City, as citizens of other countries will decide how New Yorkers are governed  which is the very antithesis of self-determination."

Contact: Matthew Tragesser, 202-328-7004 or [email protected]

ABOUT FAIR

Founded in 1979, FAIR is the country's largest immigration reform group. With over 3 million members and supporters nationwide, FAIR fights for immigration policies that serve national interests, not special interests. FAIR believes that immigration reform must enhance national security, improve the economy, protect jobs, preserve our environment, and establish a rule of law that is recognized and enforced.

SOURCE Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR)

Related Links

http://www.fairus.org


EAST HANOVER, N.J., Dec. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Novartis today announced new Piqray (alpelisib) data indicating benefit across a broad range of patient and disease characteristics as seen in analyses from all three cohorts of BYLieve. BYLieve is an ongoing Phase II, open-label, 3-cohort non-comparative study evaluating Piqray with endocrine therapy including men and pre- and postmenopausal women with hormone-receptor positive, human epidermal growth factor receptor-2 negative (HR+/HER2-) advanced or metastatic breast cancer (mBC) who have progressed on or after prior therapies, including CDK4/6 inhibitor plus endocrine therapy1-5. These data will be presented at the 2021 San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium (SABCS) from December 7-10.

"The data from all three cohorts of the BYLieve study have value for the medical community and for the patients we care for with mBC, because these cohorts show a benefit from alpelisib in the post-CDK4/6i setting for patients with HR+/HER2- PIK3CA-mutated cancer," said Dr. Hope S. Rugo, Director, Breast Oncology and Clinical Trials Education, University of California San Francisco (UCSF) Helen Diller Family Comprehensive Cancer Center. "Beyond illustrating the efficacy and safety of alpelisib, regardless of the duration of prior CDK4/6i treatment, the data provide meaningful insights into how alpelisib may benefit different subgroups of patients."

Highlights from the BYLieve data presented at SABCS

BYLieve Cohort A (P1-18-03) : Updated safety and efficacy data after 18 months of follow-up showed median overall survival improvement of 26.4 months (95% CI: 21.0-30.5) for patients treated with Piqray plus fulvestrant immediately following CDK4/6i plus an AI 1 . The most common all-grade adverse events (AEs) (n=127) were diarrhea (63.8%), hyperglycemia (59.8%), nausea (46.5%) and rash (31.5%) 1 .





(P1-18-03) Updated safety and efficacy data after 18 months of follow-up showed median overall survival improvement of 26.4 months (95% CI: 21.0-30.5) for patients treated with Piqray plus fulvestrant immediately following CDK4/6i plus an AI . The most common all-grade adverse events (AEs) (n=127) were diarrhea (63.8%), hyperglycemia (59.8%), nausea (46.5%) and rash (31.5%) . BYLieve Cohort C (PD13-05) : The third and final BYLieve cohort included patients who received chemotherapy or endocrine therapy as immediate prior treatment, who could have received prior CDK4/6i as well 2 .

(PD13-05) The third and final BYLieve cohort included patients who received chemotherapy or endocrine therapy as immediate prior treatment, who could have received prior CDK4/6i as well . The primary endpoint was met with 48.7% (95% CI: 39.3%-58.2%) of patients alive and without disease progression at six months 2 .

.

Data confirm clinically relevant activity of Piqray as a targeted therapy for PIK3CA as a driver oncogene 2 .

.

No new safety signals were observed, with the most common all-grade AEs (n=126) being hyperglycemia (65.1%), diarrhea (52.4%), nausea (40.5%) and rash (38.9%) 2 .





. BYLieve Cohorts A & B (P1-18-08; P5-13-03; PD15-01): Exploratory biomarker and post-hoc analyses demonstrated efficacy with Piqray plus fulvestrant/letrozole in CDK4/6i-resistant mBC, as seen in patients with early discontinuation of the prior CDK4/6i (Cohort A: 6 months median PFS of 12.0 months and >6 months median PFS of 6.2 months; HR=0.51; 95% CI: 0.29-0.89; Cohort B: 6 months median PFS of 5.9 months and >6 months median PFS of 5.6 months; HR=0.72; 95% CI: 0.45-1.18), supporting the use of Piqray plus endocrine therapy as an immediate next-line option in these patients3. Grade 3 AEs were experienced by 84.6% (n=22) and 66.0% (n=66) of patients in the 6 months and >6 months subgroups, respectively, in Cohort A and by 62.5% (n=20) and 72.5% (n=66) of patients in the 6 months and >6 months subgroups, respectively, in Cohort B3.

Additionally, the exploratory ctDNA analysis from Cohorts A and B (median PFS of 7.3 months and 5.7 months in Cohorts A and Cohort B, respectively) found that Piqray was effective in the post-CDK4/6i setting regardless of endocrine therapy partner and tumor genomic profile and other mutations associated with CDK4/6i resistance4. Across the three cohorts no new safety signals were observed, even with longer exposure, as seen in Cohort A, confirming no cumulative toxicities with Piqray1-3.

An estimated 361,826 people are diagnosed with mBC worldwide each year, and approximately 40% of those with HR+/HER2- subtype have a PIK3CA mutation, which is associated with a poor prognosis8-9.

Visit https://www.hcp.novartis.com/virtual-congress/sabcs-2021/ for the latest information from Novartis, including our commitment to the Oncology community, and access to our SABCS Virtual Scientific Program data presentations (for registered participants).

About Piqray (alpelisib)

Piqray is a kinase inhibitor developed for use in combination with fulvestrant for the treatment of postmenopausal women, and men, with HR+/HER2-, PIK3CA-mutated, advanced or metastatic breast cancer following progression on or after endocrine-based regimen7. Piqray is approved in 64 countries, including the US and European member states12.

Novartis is continuing to reimagine cancer with additional trials of Piqray. EPIK-B5 will be a large Phase III clinical trial of Piqray in combination with fulvestrant to complement the SOLAR-1 study13. Novartis is also studying the potential of Piqray in triple negative breast cancer (TNBC) in the EPIK-B3 Phase III clinical trial, in advanced HER2+ breast cancer in the EPIK-B2 Phase III clinical trial and in ovarian cancer in the EPIK-O Phase III clinical trial14-16.

Indication

PIQRAY (alpelisib) tablets is a prescription medicine used in combination with the medicine fulvestrant to treat women who have gone through menopause and men who have hormone receptor (HR)-positive, human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (HER2)-negative advanced breast cancer or breast cancer that has spread to other parts of the body (metastatic), with an abnormal phosphatidylinositol-3-kinase catalytic subunit alpha (PIK3CA) gene, and whose disease has progressed on or after endocrine therapy. Your health care provider will test your cancer for an abnormal "PIK3CA" gene to make sure that PIQRAY is right for you. It is not known if PIQRAY is safe and effective in children.

Important Safety Information

Patients should not take PIQRAY if they have had a severe allergic reaction to PIQRAY or are allergic to any of the ingredients in PIQRAY.

PIQRAY may cause serious side effects. PIQRAY can cause severe allergic reactions. Patients should tell their health care provider or get medical help right away if they have trouble breathing, flushing, rash, fever, or fast heart rate during treatment with PIQRAY. PIQRAY can cause severe skin reactions. Patients should tell their health care provider or get medical help right away if they get severe rash or rash that keeps getting worse, reddened skin, flu-like symptoms, blistering of the lips, eyes or mouth, blisters on the skin or skin peeling, with or without fever. PIQRAY can cause high blood sugar levels (hyperglycemia). Hyperglycemia is common with PIQRAY and its complications can be severe. Health care providers will monitor patients' blood sugar levels before they start and during treatment with PIQRAY. Health care providers may monitor patients' blood sugar levels more often if they have a history of type 2 diabetes. Patients should tell their health care provider right away if they develop symptoms of hyperglycemia or its complications, including excessive thirst, dry mouth, urinating more often than usual or having a higher amount of urine than normal, increased appetite with weight loss, confusion, nausea, vomiting, fruity odor on breath, difficulty breathing, or dry or flushed skin. PIQRAY can cause lung problems (pneumonitis). Patients should tell their health care provider right away if they develop new or worsening symptoms of lung problems, including shortness of breath or trouble breathing, cough, or chest pain. Diarrhea is common with PIQRAY and can be severe. Severe diarrhea can lead to the loss of too much body water (dehydration) and kidney problems. Patients who develop diarrhea during treatment with PIQRAY should tell their health care provider right away.

Before taking PIQRAY, patients should tell their health care provider if they have a history of diabetes, skin rash, redness of skin, blistering of the lips, eyes or mouth, or skin peeling, are pregnant, or plan to become pregnant as PIQRAY can harm their unborn baby. Females who are able to become pregnant should use effective birth control during treatment with PIQRAY and for 1 week after the last dose. Do not breastfeed during treatment with PIQRAY and for 1 week after the last dose. Males with female partners who are able to become pregnant should use condoms and effective birth control during treatment with PIQRAY and for 1 week after the last dose. Patients should also read the full Prescribing Information of fulvestrant for important pregnancy, contraception, infertility, and lactation information.

Patients should tell their health care provider all of the medicines they take, including prescription and over-the-counter medicines, vitamins, and herbal supplements. PIQRAY and other medicines may affect each other causing side effects. Know the medicines you take. Keep a list of them to show your health care provider or pharmacist when you get a new medicine.

The most common side effects of PIQRAY when used with fulvestrant are rash, nausea, tiredness and weakness, decreased appetite, mouth sores, vomiting, weight loss, hair loss, and changes in certain blood tests.

Please see full Prescribing Information for PIQRAY, available at www.piqray.com.

About Novartis in Advanced Breast Cancer

Novartis tackles breast cancer with superior science, collaboration and a passion for transforming patient care. We've taken a bold approach to our research by including patient populations often neglected in clinical trials, identifying new pathways or mutations that may play a role in disease progression and developing therapies that not only maintain, but also improve, quality of life for patients. Our priority over the past 30 years and today is to deliver treatments proven to improve and extend lives for those diagnosed with advanced breast cancer.

Disclaimer

This press release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of the United States Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements can generally be identified by words such as "potential," "can," "will," "plan," "may," "could," "would," "expect," "anticipate," "look forward," "believe," "committed," "investigational," "pipeline," "launch," or similar terms, or by express or implied discussions regarding potential marketing approvals, new indications or labeling for the investigational or approved products described in this press release, or regarding potential future revenues from such products. You should not place undue reliance on these statements. Such forward-looking statements are based on our current beliefs and expectations regarding future events, and are subject to significant known and unknown risks and uncertainties. Should one or more of these risks or uncertainties materialize, or should underlying assumptions prove incorrect, actual results may vary materially from those set forth in the forward-looking statements. There can be no guarantee that the investigational or approved products described in this press release will be submitted or approved for sale or for any additional indications or labeling in any market, or at any particular time. Nor can there be any guarantee that such products will be commercially successful in the future. In particular, our expectations regarding such products could be affected by, among other things, the uncertainties inherent in research and development, including clinical trial results and additional analysis of existing clinical data; regulatory actions or delays or government regulation generally; global trends toward health care cost containment, including government, payor and general public pricing and reimbursement pressures and requirements for increased pricing transparency; our ability to obtain or maintain proprietary intellectual property protection; the particular prescribing preferences of physicians and patients; general political, economic and business conditions, including the effects of and efforts to mitigate pandemic diseases such as COVID-19; safety, quality, data integrity or manufacturing issues; potential or actual data security and data privacy breaches, or disruptions of our information technology systems, and other risks and factors referred to in Novartis AG's current Form 20-F on file with the US Securities and Exchange Commission. Novartis is providing the information in this press release as of this date and does not undertake any obligation to update any forward-looking statements contained in this press release as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.

About Novartis

Located in East Hanover, NJ Novartis Pharmaceuticals Corporation  an affiliate of Novartis  is reimagining medicine to improve and extend people's lives. As a leading global medicines company, we use innovative science and digital technologies to create transformative treatments in areas of great medical need. In our quest to find new medicines, we consistently rank among the world's top companies investing in research and development. Novartis employs nearly 15,000 people in the United States. For more information, please visit https://www.novartis.us.

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References

Ciruelos EM et al. Alpelisib + fulvestrant in patients with hormone receptor-positive (HR+), human epidermal growth factor receptor 2-negative (HER2-), PIK3CA-mutated advanced breast cancer (ABC) previously treated with cyclin-dependent kinase 4/6 inhibitor (CDK4/6i) + aromatase inhibitor (AI): 18-month follow-up of BYLieve Cohort A. Presented at the San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium, December 8, 2021 . Abstract #P1-18-03. Rugo HS et al. Alpelisib + fulvestrant in patients with PIK3CA-mutated, HR+, HER2- advanced breast cancer (ABC) who received chemotherapy or endocrine therapy (ET) as immediate prior treatment: BYLieve Cohort C primary results and exploratory biomarker analyses. Presented at the San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium, December 10, 2021 . Abstract #PD13-05. Chia S et al. Effect of duration of prior cyclin-dependent kinase 4/6 inhibitor (CDK4/6i) therapy (6 mo or >6 mo) on alpelisib benefit in patients with hormone receptor-positive (HR+), human epidermal growth factor receptor 2-negative (HER2-), PIK3CA-mutated advanced breast cancer (ABC) from BYLieve. Presented at the San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium, December 8, 2021 . Abstract # P1-18-08. Juric D et al. Alpelisib + endocrine therapy (ET) in patients with hormone receptor-positive (HR+), human epidermal growth factor receptor 2-negative (HER2-), PIK3CA-mutated advanced breast cancer (ABC) previously treated with cyclin-dependent kinase 4/6 inhibitor (CDK4/6i): Biomarker analyses from the Phase II BYLieve study. Presented at the San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium, December 8, 2021 . Abstract #P5-13-03. Turner N et al. Impact of ESR1 mutations on endocrine therapy (ET) plus alpelisib benefit in patients with hormone receptor-positive (HR+), human epidermal growth factor receptor 2-negative (HER2-), PIK3CA-mutated, advanced breast cancer (ABC) who progressed on or after prior cyclin-dependent kinase inhibitor (CDK4/6i) therapy in the BYLieve trial. Presented at the San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium, December 10, 2021 . Abstract #PD15-01. Burstein HJ, Somerfield MR, Barton DL , et al: Endocrine treatment and targeted therapy for HR-positive, HER2-negative metastatic breast Cancer: ASCO Guideline update. J Clin Oncol. July 29, 2021 . Piqray (alpelisib) Prescribing Information. East Hanover, New Jersey , USA: Novartis Pharmaceuticals Corporation; July 2021 . The Cancer Genome Atlas Network. Comprehensive molecular portraits of human breast tumours. Nature. 2012;490(7418):61-70. Mosele F, Stefanovska B, Lusque A, et al. Outcome and molecular landscape of patients with PIK3CA-mutated metastatic breast cancer. Ann Oncol. 2020;31(3):377-386. Fribbens, C., et al. Tracking Evolution of Aromatase Inhibitor Resistance with Circulating Tumour DNA Analysis in Metastatic Breast Cancer. Ann Oncol. 2018;29(1):145-153. https://doi.org/10.1093/annonc/mdx483. Dustin D, et al. ESR1 Mutations in Breast Cancer. Cancer. 2019;125(21):3714-3728, https://doi.org/10.1002/cncr.32345. Novartis Data on File. Novartis Pharmaceuticals Corp: 2021. Novartis Pharmaceuticals. Study to Assess the Efficacy and Safety of Alpelisib Plus Fulvestrant in Participants With HR-postitive (HR+), HER2-negative, Advanced Breast Cancer After Treatment With a CDK4/6 Inhibitor and an Aromatase Inhibitor: EPIK-B5 ( October 27, 2021 - November 27, 2026 ). Identifier: NCT05038735. https://www.clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT05038735. Novartis Pharmaceuticals. Study Assessing the Efficacy and Safety of Alpelisib + Nab-paclitaxel in Subjects With Advanced TNBC Who Carry Either a PIK3CA Mutation or Have PTEN Loss: EPIK-B3 ( June 8 , 2020- January 9, 2026 ). Identifier: NCT04251533. https://www.clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT04251533. Novartis Pharmaceuticals. EPIK-B2: A Two Part, Phase III, Multicenter, Randomized (1:1), Double-blind, Placebo-controlled Study to Assess the Efficacy and Safety of Alpelisib (BYL719) in Combination With Trastuzumab and Pertuzumab as Maintenance Therapy in Patients With HER2-positive Advanced Breast Cancer With a PIK3CA Mutation. Identifier: NCT04208178. https://www.clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/ NCT04208178. Novartis Pharmaceuticals. Alpelisib Plus Olaparib in Platinum-resistant/Refractory, High-grade Serous Ovarian Cancer, With no Germline BRCA Mutation Detected: EPIK-O ( July 2 , 2021- January 31, 2025 ). Identifier: NCT04729387. https://www.clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT04729387.

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Novartis Media Relations

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Julie Masow Jamie Bennett Head, US External Engagement Director, US External Engagement +1 862 579 8456 +1 862 217 3976 [email protected] [email protected]







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North America

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SOURCE Novartis Pharmaceuticals Corporation
The age of in-person sales is booming, and Smart Circle is ecstatic to be recognized as the leading broker of outsourced sales. We know that our continued success and growth is not possible without the support and dedication of our team at Smart Circle. "We are honored and proud to be named one of the Top Workplaces for the fifth year in a row," said Jigna Patel, Smart Circle's COO. "Especially meaningful is that this award is based solely on employee feedback."

"We are honored to be named a Top Workplace for the fifth year in a row," said Jigna Patel, Smart Circle's COO.

Since its inception, Smart Circle leadership has created a company culture with a people-first mentality. Over the past decades, the company's growth, coupled with vision and core values, has allowed Smart Circle to enhance its employee experience. Our goal is to help clients and independent sales companies grow by designing and brokering mutually beneficial in-person sales campaigns. We could not maintain this promise to our clients or the network of independent sales companies we work with without our dedicated team of innovative employees.

ABOUT

Smart Circle is a broker of outsourced sales; we help clients and independent sales companies grow by designing versatile face-to-face marketing and customer acquisition campaigns executed inside retailers, businesses and through door-to-door canvassing. With our expertise, entrepreneurial spirit, and versatility, we help the world's largest brands and fortune 500 companies drive sales and build new customer bases. To learn more about Smart circle, visit us at https://www.smartcircle.com.

SOURCE Smart Circle

Related Links

www.smartcircle.com


BOSTON, Dec. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The Patrick J. McGovern Foundation has awarded more than $5.8 million in new grants for innovative data- and AI-driven approaches that support digital transformation of health systems and healthcare across the globe.

Digital technologies  from remote sensors and digital medical records to virtual care and data-based treatment decisions  are transforming the ways people access and utilize health services. Digital solutions created to expand coverage of services, support frontline practitioners, and empower individuals to have more agency in their health journeys are fundamental to achieving ambitious targets to ensure billions more are protected from health emergencies and enjoy better health and well-being.

However, the uptake of digital health solutions has been uneven in practice and historically underfunded, with many countries directing only 0-1% of public health budgets toward digital health. Across all geographies, fragmented approaches to data governance and system design risk contributing to existing inequities in healthcare.

"While the COVID-19 pandemic accelerated the adoption of digital technologies in the delivery of healthcare, there is critical work ahead to ensure those innovations help improve, not undermine, health equity," said Vilas Dhar, President of the Patrick J. McGovern Foundation. "With these grants, we are focused on building essential capacity to use data, digital tools, and artificial intelligence to design people-centered, accessible models of care."

"To fully realize the benefits of digital innovation in health, including artificial intelligence, greater investments are needed in enabling building blocks  from supporting government and practitioner decision-making to ensuring data systems are responsive and inclusive," noted Rebecca Distler, the Foundation's Strategist for AI, Data, and Digital Health. "Our new grants reflect ongoing exploration of how to ensure digitally enabled approaches continue to put people and communities at the center of health interventions."

The portfolio includes a wide range of organizations  from new and small nonprofits to established research institutions  working in countries across four continents. It collectively represents an ecosystem approach, from standards and exchange architectures to research and project implementation to governance and practitioner support.

"We're thrilled to partner with the Patrick J. McGovern Foundation, which shares our commitment to advancing health equity through data-driven and country-led solutions," Nithya Ramanathan, CEO & Co-Founder of Nexleaf Analytics, said. "Our organizations believe that by supporting practitioners and investing in local leadership, countries can be equipped to drive their own decisions and build lasting, scalable digital solutions."

The 2021 grants include:

Asia eHealth Information Network (AeHIN) to support core network activities, updates to the Mind the GAPS framework, and regional FHIR trainings. ($175,000)

Community Health Impact Coalition (CHIC) to strengthen and expand a multi-country community health data harmonization collaborative, including support for a working group on community health information system interoperability. This grant complements a matching campaign led by Focusing Philanthropy to scale research driven by the collaborative. ($200,933)

D-tree International to support the government of Zanzibar in maximizing the value of their community health data by co-developing a governance framework for data as a global good. ($427,324)

Duke Institute for Health Innovation to work with the Aga Khan University to develop analytical frameworks to help clinical and operational decision-makers audit, evaluate, and monitor AI systems in healthcare settings. ($555,056)

GDI Solutions to partner with HealthEnabled to support a participatory redesign process of the Global Digital Health Index (GDHI) to align with the WHO Digital Strategy and reflect developments in digital health, pandemic preparedness, and artificial intelligence. ($300,000)

Global Digital Health Network to advance the field of global digital health through knowledge management; networking; and promotion of best practices, lessons learned, and dissemination of global resources. ($200,000)

Jembi Health Systems to advance interoperability in low-resource healthcare settings by upgrading, modernizing, and extending OpenHIM. ($200,000)

Khushi Baby to support implementation of the Community Health Integrated Platform in Rajasthan, inclusive of integrating AI/ML models for primary care risk-stratification. ($243,000)

Medtronic Global Health Foundation for a collaboration with Health Builders and the Government of Rwanda to pilot a digitally enabled, community-based platform for managing diabetes and hypertension. ($500,000)

Meridian Institute to support the Lacuna Fund's health equity track, supporting the creation, augmentation, and aggregation of machine learning datasets that are representative of affected populations, and more likely to lead to equitable health outcomes. ($250,000)

Native BioData Consortium (NBDC) to support creation of an Indigenous-centered data governance framework for health data and build a network of Indigenous AI/ML practitioners for tribal nations in the United States. ($400,000)

Nexleaf Analytics to support country-led, data-driven decision-making on vaccine cold chain management through partnerships with the Government of Malawi and the East African Community Regional Centre of Excellence (RCE) for Vaccines, Immunization, and Health Supply Chain Management. ($580,000)

Ona Systems to create an open-source digital health toolkit for development and implementation of FHIR native data collection and case management apps. ($369,444)

Population Services International to introduce a combined AI-powered symptom checker and provider location services tool to low-income consumers in Vietnam to help connect them to high quality healthcare services. ($545,623)

Central American Health Informatics Network (RECAINSA) to support core network activities and provide additional support for AI maturity assessments. ($145,597)

University of California, San Francisco Foundation: Neuroscape to advance the Multimodal Biosensing Program to leverage AI and data science to gain a deeper understanding of an individual's state in real-time, to eventually make improvements in global mental healthcare. ($225,000)

University of California, San Francisco Foundation: Unidos en Salud to support provision of COVID-19 testing and vaccination in high-risk communities as well as related data collection and dissemination. ($250,000)

University of Chicago, Center for Applied Artificial Intelligence to support Nightingale Open Science to drive research innovation at the intersection of medicine and data science by creating and open-sourcing high-dimensional, cutting-edge medical datasets. ($250,000)

The Patrick J. McGovern Foundation is a global 21st century philanthropy bridging the frontiers of artificial intelligence, data science, and social impact to create a thriving, equitable and sustainable future for all. The Foundation's work focuses on bringing together academia, practitioners, and civil society to pursue the potential of AI and data science to address some of the world's most urgent challenges.

Contact:

George Mastoras

[email protected]



SOURCE Patrick J. McGovern Foundation
AURORA, Colo., Dec. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Every day, more than 1,000 children (aged 019 years) are diagnosed globally with cancer. Cancer is the second leading cause of death worldwide, according to the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation. For children living in high-income countries with access to excellent health care, the likelihood of surviving exceeds 80%. Unfortunately, the survival rate is only 15 to 45% for most children battling cancer who live in low-and middle-income countries. To help address this, in 2018 the Global Initiative for Childhood Cancer was created during the World Health Assembly at the World Health Organization (WHO), dictating the creation of a way to repair this disparity and injustice.

Leading this effort is Sandra Luna-Fineman, MD, a pediatric oncologist at Children's Hospital Colorado (Children's Colorado), who partnered with the WHO and St. Jude Children's Research Hospital to create the CureAll framework, a shared operational approach to improve the health and well-being of children fighting cancer around the world, by the implementation of pediatric cancer services with appropriate infrastructure and access to life-saving medical strategies. The goal of the initiative is to achieve at least a 60% survival rate for children with cancer globally while ensuring that suffering is reduced for every child by 2030. CureAll is the acronym for the framework: Centers of excellence, Universal insurance coverage, Regimens of treatment and supportive care, and Evaluation and monitoring of outcomes; supported by Advocacy, Leveraged financing and Linked governance.

"The CureAll framework and technical package are designed to support and strengthen low-income countries' approach to treating childhood cancer," said Dr. Luna-Fineman, who is also an associate professor of pediatrics at the University of Colorado School of Medicine on the Anschutz Medical Campus. "I'm honored to be a part of this amazing group of people who care deeply about sharing our knowledge and advancements in childhood cancer care with institutions around the world, so they too have access to the latest and greatest cancer-fighting tools."

"The CureAll framework and partnership with the best-known health institutions in the world offers hope to children everywhere fighting cancer  no matter what their socioeconomic situation may be," said Lia Gore, MD, section head of Pediatric Hematology/Oncology/Bone Marrow Transplant-Cellular Therapeutics at Children's Colorado and professor of pediatrics, Medical Oncology, and Hematology at the University of Colorado School of Medicine. "The fact that Children's Colorado's Dr. Luna-Fineman has played a lead and integral role in helping to create this program makes us immensely proud and grateful. We are surrounded by people at Children's Colorado like Dr. Luna-Fineman who work tirelessly to cure childhood cancer across the globe."

Dr. Luna-Fineman and the WHO first aimed to design a framework for an organized approach for the step-by-step enactment of the major needs of this unique pediatric population. A team of epidemiologists, pediatric oncologists and public health specialists with expertise in health networks, statistics and indicator design, have joined to build a guide for policymakers within the WHO regions and countries. The CureAll framework is supported with tools to:

Assess the present state of the country's capabilities to diagnose, treat and support children with cancer and their families. Price the infrastructure and interventions needed for appropriate care; considering that not all countries will be able to start with a full slate of care services, but guide the way toward improving outcomes as the financial capacity of the country allows. Foster close coordination with other United Nations agencies to help monitor the improvements and outcomes and the unique expertise in radiation diagnostics and therapies.

The framework builds capacity with the aim of measuring progress through: public health indicators (such as mortality, incidence, nurse to patient ratio, percentage of beds occupied), direct care (early diagnosis through education of primary care medical and paramedical personnel, education of oncology personnel and quality improvement), quantifying specific clinical outcomes (survival, toxic death, nutritional monitoring, relapses by disease), and psychosocial determinants (abandonment of therapy, toxicity to family social and financial wellbeing).

Six index childhood and adolescent cancers were chosen. Each is curable, brings aspects of biology and multidisciplinary care, and has well-developed therapeutics readily available. The six cancers are: Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia, Burkitt Lymphoma, Hodgkin Lymphoma, Retinoblastoma, Wilms Tumor and Low-Grade Glioma.

There are multiple layers to the CureAll framework focusing on the broader needs of children with cancer including their growth, learning, development, nutrition, psychosocial well-being, reproductive health and long- term outcomes. The framework uses an integrated child-centered care approach with particular attention to the socioeconomic impact of a childhood cancer diagnosis on families.

According to the WHO, the likelihood of a child with cancer surviving is directly dependent on where the child lives, the socioeconomic status of the child's family and their underlying health system. The majority of deaths from childhood cancer can be avoided through a public health approach to cancer control focused on access to high-quality pediatric cancer treatments. Twenty-three governments have committed to strengthening childhood cancer programs, using the CureAll framework. More than 110 partner organizations are involved in the initiative, resulting in rapid expansion to more than 50 countries. This has translated into substantial improvements in the lives of children with cancer around the world.

ABOUT CHILDREN'S HOSPITAL COLORADO

Children's Hospital Colorado is one of the nation's leading and most expansive nonprofit pediatric healthcare systems with a mission to improve the health of children through patient care, education, research and advocacy. Founded in 1908 and recognized as a top 10 children's hospital by U.S. News & World Report, Children's Colorado has established itself as a pioneer in the discovery of innovative and groundbreaking treatments that are shaping the future of pediatric healthcare worldwide. Children's Colorado offers a full spectrum of family-centered care at its urgent, emergency and specialty care locations throughout Colorado, including an academic medical center on the Anschutz Medical Campus in Aurora, hospitals in Colorado Springs, Highlands Ranch and Broomfield, and outreach clinics across the region. For more information, visit www.childrenscolorado.org or connect with us on Facebook , Twitter , Instagram and YouTube .

Children's Hospital Colorado complies with applicable Federal civil rights laws and does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, national origin, age, disability, or sex.

ATENCION: si habla espanol, tiene a su disposicion servicios gratuitos de asistencia linguistica. Llame al 1-720-777-9800.

CHU Y: Neu ban noi Tieng Viet, co cac dich vu ho tro ngon ngu mien phi danh cho ban. Goi so 1-720-777-9800.

http://www.hhs.gov/civil-rights/for-individuals/section-1557

Media Contacts:

Rachael Fowler, Children's Hospital Colorado

Pager: 303-890-8314

SOURCE Children's Hospital Colorado
GUANGZHOU, China, Dec. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Themed "Whence and Whither -- Unprecedented Changes in the World and China and the CPC", 2021 Understanding China Conference (Guangzhou), scheduled from Dec. 1 to 4 in the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou, has attracted nearly 80 celebrated figures from the global political, academic and economic communities.

A total of 12 successive parallel forums were held as a way of encouraging a vigorous exchange of global minds, with a focus on how to offer a more permanent solution to the pressing challenges and grave risks the world is facing.

"Because we are confronting huge global challenges that require global solutions from the cooperation we need on climate change and addressing global financial instability to the cooperation now required to eradicate global poverty, protectionism, nuclear proliferation and pandemics," said former British prime minister James Gordon Brown.

Martin Jacques, a visiting professor at Tsinghua University, said the success of the CPC lies in its ability to demonstrate and elucidate the Chinese civilization. He added that the Party's development has undergone a prolonged process, rather than an overnight sensation, and it has improved itself through constant reforms.

Alex Wang, a professor and co-director at the Emmett Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at the University of California, Los Angeles, said China has a lot of experience in areas such as solar power, electric vehicles and batteries, and cooperation can help both China and the world in improving sharing and the acceleration of action on the climate.

"Cooperation" is the most urgent and strongest call in the conference. This can be seen in topics like cooperation on COVID-19, the layout of global industrial chains, the realization of the goal of carbon neutrality and emission peak, worldwide infrastructure development and connectivity, and the alignment of the international business environment.

Addressing the international conference via video link, Pascal Lamy, former director-general of the World Trade Organization, pointed out that the vaccine gap, digital divide, carbon emissions gap and wealth disparity still pose severe challenges and risks to global peace and development.

He said that, if the assessment of these various risks and challenges is correct, then there is no choice but to address them by working together even harder.

Attendees of the event widely echoed the view and called for more international cooperation.

This is the third time Guangzhou has played host to the grand event. And not long ago, the dynamic southern Chinese city saw the opening of an unprecedented international trade fair (Canton Fair) held online and offline that drew hundreds of thousands of overseas buyers and an impressive award ceremony of the Guangzhou International Award for Urban Innovation. All these elements that a host of exciting events brought to the historic city have just made it all the more diverse and dynamic.

SOURCE 2021 Understanding China Conference (Guangzhou)
HONG KONG and SHANGHAI, Dec. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Ping An Insurance (Group) Company of China, Ltd. (hereafter "Ping An" or the "Group", HKEx:2318; SSE:601318) has published its 2020 Climate Risk Management Report (hereafter "Report"). The report covers Ping An's green finance strategy elaborating it through governance, strategies, risk management, benchmarks and targets based on the recommendation framework of the Financial Stability Board's Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures ("TCFD"). This is the second climate risk management report from Ping An since the first one and also the first report issued by a Mainland institution in 2019.

CDP's China Office said that Ping An has begun disclosing climate change information to CDP since 2019 and ranked it A- in 2020 ahead of other financial institutions in China that make similar disclosures. Ping An has taken a step further in its disclosure to CDP this year by calculating and disclosing the total carbon emissions of its investment portfolio and the emissions of key industries, paving the way towards setting a more comprehensive carbon neutrality target for the future. The report has also served as an important reference point for investors and other stakeholders in their decision-making process on climate-related risks.

Integrating Climate Governance in the Company's Strategy

The report highlighted that Ping An has innovated and standardized its climate risk governance model and integrated it into the group's sustainable development strategy. Ping An established a professional, scientific, and practical ESG governance structure, ensured the fulfillment of board of directors and senior management in supervisory and management roles, clarified division of responsibilities such as goal setting, planning implementation and assessment as well as implemented and established strict adherence to a working mechanism that involves regular reporting, quarterly inspections, semi-annual meetings and annual evaluations. In addition, Ping An Group also requires subsidiaries to upload green finance data onto its AI-ESG platform on a monthly basis summarizing the relevant work at every stage to further strengthening its ESG monitoring internally.

Climate change brings risks in various ways along with uncertainties. Ping An has continuously adjusted its development strategies and resource allocation including the formulation of strategies in areas such as sustainable insurance, responsible investment, green financial development strategies and near-zero development to deal with various risks that are possibly brought on by climate change.

Risk identification and management are core and necessary elements for tackling the risks brought on by climate change. Ping An has established its risk identification matrix leveraging its own business operation features considering the dimensions of physical and transformational risks. This matrix has been deeply integrated into Ping An's original "251" risk management system and has been further improved and helped refine the company's risk governance capabilities.

In the report, Ping An also announced the goals and benchmarks for operation and investment under the TCFD framework, which aims to achieve operational carbon neutrality by 2030. This covers all office energy consumption, data center power consumption and travel-related carbon emissions. For investing and financing, Ping An was the first financial institution in China to disclose the carbon emissions of overall assets. Ping An has built an algorithm and prediction model and will soon announce the ultimate net-zero target when relevant factors in the market reach maturity.

Upgrading the Implementation of Green Finance

In order to achieve the goal of carbon neutrality, Ping An has announced an enhanced operation plan for Green Finance+ in 2021 leveraging the Group's strengths in green insurance, green credit and green insurance to deepen its green finance layout. As of the end of September in 2021, Ping An's green investments have exceeded RMB208.89 billion while it has disbursed green credit totaling RMB53.28 billion. Meanwhile, total green insurance premiums recorded RMB25.11 billion in the first three quarters.

As an integrated financial group, investing in green industry development is a key entry point for Ping An to achieve carbon neutrality. Ping An's green equity investment targets technologically advanced enterprises with new technologies and new business models. With a focus on achieving carbon neutrality and promoting technological innovations, Ping An Capital has come up with four carbon neutral investment areas, namely "clean energy + power grid upgrading + energy storage", "automation + digitalization + precision agriculture", "industry + cleaner medical production + new materials" and "new energy vehicles, green construction and medical insurance technology", which has led to many successful green investment cases such as its investments in Shenzhen Energy, Sanchuan Energy, CATL, Innovent Biologics and WuXi AppTec.

As a pioneer in the field of responsible investment in China, Ping An has partnered with China Economic Information Service to develop the "Xinhua CN-ESG Evaluation System" in December 2020. The system provides integrated applications for ESG risk control, modeling and portfolio management with China-specific and intelligent real-time tools and data support helping companies, institutions and customers tackle risks brought on by climate change.

Ping An said that tackling climate change is the long-term challenge for humanity while enterprises are responsible for winning the battle of low carbon transformation. The Group will continue to deepen the "Finance +Technology" and "Finance + Ecosystem" strategies, promote high-quality development of various businesses and actively implement the concept of sustainable development. The group will also contribute the power of green finance to build a community with a shared future of mankind.

Read full report here.

About Ping An Group

Ping An Insurance (Group) Company of China, Ltd. ("Ping An") is a world-leading technology-powered retail financial services group. With over 225 million retail customers and nearly 634 million internet users, Ping An is one of the largest financial services companies in the world. Ping An focuses on two over-arching domains of activity, "pan financial assets" and "pan health care", covering the provision of financial and health care services through our integrated financial services platform and our ecosystems in financial services, health care, auto services and smart city services. Our "finance + technology" and "finance + ecosystem" transformation strategies aim to provide customers and internet users with innovative and simple products and services using technology. As China's first joint stock insurance company, Ping An is committed to upholding the highest standards of corporate reporting and corporate governance. The Group is listed on the stock exchanges in Hong Kong and Shanghai. Ping An ranked 6th in the Forbes Global 2000 list in 2021 and ranked 16th in the Fortune Global 500 list in 2021. Ping An also ranked 49th in the 2021 WPP Kantar Millward Brown BrandZTM Top 100 Most Valuable Global Brands list.

For more information, please visit www.group.pingan.com and follow us on LinkedIn - PING AN.

SOURCE Ping An Insurance (Group) Company of China, Ltd.

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NEW YORK, Dec. 9, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights on Thursday presented its Ripple of Hope Awards to Stacey Abrams, political leader, entrepreneur, and author; Amanda Gorman, poet; Jose E. Feliciano, co-founder and managing partner of Clearlake Capital Group; Deven Parekh, managing director of Insight Partners; and Hans Vestberg, chairman and CEO of Verizon.

The laureates were welcomed by a virtual keynote address by Vice President Kamala Harris. "Congratulations to the 2021 Ripple of Hope laureates Amanda Gorman, Stacey Abrams, Jose Feliciano, Deven Perekh, and Hans Vestberg. Whether your talents are in the spoken word, or in social responsibility - in building coalitions, or in leading corporations, you have inspired our nation with your vision of who we are, and what we can be, much like Robert F. Kennedy himself," Harris said. "Robert Kennedy has been a source of inspiration for me throughout my career. He understood that to work for justice means to stand for equal justice."

"For as long as Americans have had the right to vote, we've had enemies of democracy working to restrict, suppress, and violate the will of the people, particularly those from poor and underrepresented communities," said Kerry Kennedy, president of Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights. "These underlying problems within our political system do not happen in a vacuum. We need the decisive, moral leadership of people like our 2021 Ripple of Hope Award laureates to uplift the voices of the marginalized and dismantle the oppressive structural causes of injustice and inequality across all arenas."

"Robert F. Kennedy dedicated his life to the protection of our freedoms," said Stacey Abrams. "He fought for equality for all people, regardless of color or background, and he lifted up their causes. I am honored to receive this award that reflects his vision for social change. Access to the right to vote is essential to achieving racial and social justice, and pursuit of fairness, equity, and opportunity must be a constant mission."

"It is a great honor to be recognized by Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights, an organization that has been working tirelessly for decades to overcome inequality and promote human rights," said Jose E. Feliciano, co-founder and managing partner of Clearlake Capital Group. "Today, more than ever, there is a new urgency to continue RFK's legacy and address the numerous challenges our society is facing, including persistent economic and social inequities. As Bobby Kennedy himself said, 'A world of constantly accelerating economic progress  would, in short, be a world that we would be proud to have built.' It is my strong belief that through investment in education and entrepreneurship, as well as improving access to capital, we can level the playing field."

"Robert F. Kennedy's legacy of courage and his spirit of humanitarianism have inspired generations of Americans, including myself," said Deven Parekh, managing director of Insight Partners. "His commitment to economic equality and social progress has endured the test of time. I am truly humbled and honored to accept the Ripple of Hope Award alongside such accomplished leaders."

"It's truly humbling to be included alongside this remarkable group of human rights champions," said Hans Vestberg, chairman and CEO of Verizon. "There has never been a more critical moment to demonstrate the power of purpose. It is our responsibility as one of the largest companies in the world to address the economic, environmental, and societal issues that are most pressing and to move the world forward through the power of action, inclusion, and technology."

The Ripple of Hope Award is inspired by Robert F. Kennedy's most famous speech, the 1966 Day of Affirmation address he gave in South Africa at the height of apartheid: "Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance."

Previous winners of the Ripple of Hope Award include Barack Obama, Tim Cook, Colin Kaepernick, Dolores Huerta, Desmond Tutu, Hillary Clinton, John Lewis, Bono, Dr. Anthony Fauci, Nancy Pelosi, Robert F. Smith, George Clooney, Bill Clinton, and Joe Biden.

Learn more about RFK Human Rights and its annual Ripple of Hope Award at RFKHumanRights.org/Awards.

Media Contact:

Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights

[email protected]

SOURCE Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights
SANTA CLARITA, Calif., Dec. 9, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Eric Edson, screenwriter, professor and author of THE STORY SOLUTION: 23 Actions All Great Heroes Must Take , has just released an audiobook version of his inspiring book on screenplay writing. The unabridged audiobook is now available on Audible.com (an Amazon company), narrated by the author. The audio version takes listeners through a step-by-step journey to bringing depth and passion to any screenplay or novel.

Craft Gripping Screenplays with Eric Edson Screenwriting Book Author Eric Edson Releases Audiobook Version of The Story Solution. Based on Edson's revolutionary new screenwriting structure paradigm, writers and filmmakers learn the interconnecting, powerful storytelling elements they need for screenwriting success. Eric Edson, screenwriter, professor and author of THE STORY SOLUTION: 23 Actions All Great Heroes Must Take, has just released an audiobook version of his inspiring book on screenplay writing. The unabridged audiobook is now available on Audible.com (an Amazon company), narrated by the author. The audio version takes listeners through a step-by-step journey to bringing depth and passion to any screenplay or novel.

Based on Edson's revolutionary new screenwriting structure paradigm, writers and filmmakers learn the interconnecting, powerful storytelling elements they need for screenwriting success. With true insight, this accomplished screenwriter and university professor pinpoints the story structure reasons most new spec scripts don't sell.

Edson's book offers scores of examples from popular hit movies to reveal his groundbreaking blueprint for creating dynamic three-dimensional heroes and captivating emotion-filled plots that lead to blockbuster movies.

The Story Solution has garnered a strong following on social media sites like Facebook, YouTube and Twitter. Edson offers a steady stream of educational content for writers. He is excited to introduce on this new audio platform all the tools to build confidence and skill in those who want to join the screenwriting community.

" Writing a screenplay is hard work, but I enjoy sharing what I've learned," commented Edson. "This audio format allows me to provide more insights on what it is really like to be a working screenwriter in Hollywood, talk about some common mistakes new screenwriters make, and provide tools to help writers craft better screenplays."

The Story Solution has gained a strong international reputation. Regarded as one of the best books on screenwriting , Edson presents chapters on story structure, creating dynamic characters, improving rewriting skills, the dos and don'ts for powerful dialogue, how to find and fix hidden story problems before they can sink your script, and how to give your hero or heroine emotional depth that movie stars will be dying to play.

Those who have read the book say it "Makes writing a screenplay so interesting and organized!" and "This is the most practical and immediately useful book I have ever found on the subject of screenwriting." The author hopes releasing an audio version enables the next generation of media consumers to benefit as well.

As a professor, Eric Edson is a renowned expert on communicating the art and craft of writing a movie script . He has written seventeen feature screenplays on assignment for such companies as Sony/Columbia, Warner Brothers, Disney, 20th Fox, Lifetime, Showtime, and TNT. He has also written for episodic television. Eric is Professor of Screenwriting and Emeritus Director of the Graduate MFA Program in Screenwriting at California State University, Northridge., and lectures through the UCLA Extension Writers' Program, the largest screenwriter training center in the world.

About The Story Solution: Eric Edson's The Story Solution provides concrete insights for those interested in writing screenplays . Visit the website at https://TheStorySolution.com to download a complimentary book chapter and view Masterclass clips about screenplay structure and creating characters. "Like" the Facebook page to receive scriptwriting tips and obtain more information about screenplay writing.

Media contact:

Story Solution

[email protected]

800-605-4988

SOURCE The Story Solution
ATLANTA, Dec. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The Southeast Energy Exchange Market (SEEM) member board today approved a contract with Hartigen to build and deploy the SEEM Market Platform. SEEM members issued a request for proposal (RFP) earlier in 2021 to provide the electronic platform on which SEEM will function.

Hartigen is a technology solutions company that develops and configures power market software and has been instrumental in creating a tightly-integrated Market Platform that delivers flexibility, automation, transparency, and performance.

"With the selection of Hartigen, SEEM can continue moving forward building an advanced technology platform to deliver on its goals and mission by the third quarter of 2022," said Corey Sellers, general manager of Transmission Policy and Services for Southern Company, a SEEM member. "Hartigen is a highly qualified vendor and SEEM members are excited to work with them to develop and implement the software platform on which SEEM will function. Hartigen is well positioned to provide continued maintenance and support for the platform into the future."

SEEM is a unique and thoroughly new approach to enhancing the existing bilateral market. The new SEEM platform will facilitate sub-hourly, bilateral trading, allowing participants to buy and sell power close to the time the energy is consumed, utilizing available unreserved transmission. Participation in SEEM is open to other entities that meet the appropriate requirements.

SEEM is a 21st century solution designed for the incredible pace of change resulting from the electricity sector growing toward an ever-greener future. Southeastern electricity customers will see cost and environmental benefits as a result of the new platform.

"Hartigen is excited about our mission to partner with SEEM to build and operate a state-of-the-art SEEM Platform that will deliver on SEEM's value proposition," according to David Potts, President of Hartigen. "Hartigen's modern technology stack, agility and configurability are in close alignment with SEEM's core values and aspirations for the market."

Founding members of SEEM are expected to include Associated Electric Cooperative, Dalton Utilities, Dominion Energy South Carolina, Duke Energy Carolinas, Duke Energy Progress, Georgia System Operations Corporation, Georgia Transmission Corporation, LG&E and KU Energy, MEAG Power, N.C. Municipal Power Agency No. 1, NCEMC, Oglethorpe Power Corp., PowerSouth, Santee Cooper, Southern Company and TVA.

The founding members represent nearly 20 entities in parts of 11 states with more than 160,000 MWs (summer capacity; winter capacity is nearly 180,000 MWs) across two time zones. These companies serve the energy needs of more than 32 million retail customers (roughly more than 50 million people).

About Hartigen

Hartigen Solutions, LLC (Hartigen) is the leading provider of tightly integrated software used to enable seamless execution of trading, scheduling, bidding, operations, and settlements across both bilateral and deregulated North American power markets. Hartigen's flagship product, PowerOptix, was built upon Hartigen's patented architecture (US Patent # 9817657B2) and delivers unprecedented level of flexibility, performance and business process workflow automation that results in measurable value. Hartigen's PowerOptix customers include utilities, IPPs, public power, federal power, service providers, commodity traders & retailers. Hartigen is a privately held company based in Houston, Texas, with a reputation built upon customer service and agility. To learn more, please visit Hartigen's website for more details: www.hartigen.com

SOURCE Southeast Energy Exchange Market
The Sex Toys Market Size is driven by the changing perception of customers toward utilization of sex toys, increasing number of online sex toys retailers and increasing investment by sex toys manufacturers. The material (metal, silicone, plastic, glass) segment to contribute largest share of the global market during 20212028.

NEW YORK, Dec. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- According to the new market research report "Sex Toys Market Forecast to 2028 - COVID-19 Impact and Global Analysis By Material (Metal, Silicone, Plastic, Glass, and Others); Gender (Male, and Female); Distribution Channel (E-Commerce, Specialty Stores, and Others), and Geography", published by The Insight Partners, the global sex toys market is projected to reach US$ 55,648.88 million by 2028 from US$ 30,974.79 million in 2021 to grow at a CAGR of 7.6%.

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Report Coverage Details Market Size Value in US$ 30,974.79 million in 2021 Market Size Value by US$ 55,648.88 million by 2028 Growth Rate CAGR of 7.6% from 2021 to 2028 Forecast Period 2021-2028 Base Year 2021 No. of Pages 160 No. Tables 83 No. of Charts & Figures 75 Historical Data Available Yes Segments Covered Material, Gender, Distribution Channel, and Geography Regional Scope North America; Europe; Asia Pacific; Latin America; MEA Country Scope US, UK, Canada, Germany, France, Italy, Australia, Russia, China, Japan, South Korea, Saudi Arabia, Brazil, Argentina Report Coverage Revenue Forecast, Company Ranking, Competitive Landscape, Growth Factors, and Trends

Sex Toys Market: Competition Landscape and Key Developments

Crave, Lovehoney Group Ltd., BMS Factory, TENGA Co., Ltd., FUN FACTORY GmbH, WOW Tech International GmbH, LELO, LIFESTYLES HEALTHCARE PTE LTD, and UNBOUND are among the key companies operating in the sex toys market. These players are focusing on the expansion and diversification of their market presence and the acquisition of a new customer base, thereby tapping prevailing business opportunities.

In febraury 2021, TENGA Co., Ltd. Introduced the NEW TENGA Advisor help to choose best choice in All-New TENGA CUP Series.

In December 2020, BMS Factory has expanded its playing field with PalmPocket Extended  a set of 3 silicone attachment heads designed for use with none other than the PalmPower Pocket.

In July 2016, Lovehoney Launched Official Motley Crue Collection comprises a set of eight powerful mini and midi-sized vibrators, emblazoned with the band's iconic typography and distinctive artwork, as featured on classic albums 'Girls Girls', 'Shout at The Devil', 'Too Fast For Love' and more.

North America held the largest market share for sex toy in 2020. The United States held the largest market in North America for sex toy, and the market is expected to grow due to increasing awareness and increasing adoption sex toys in the wake of COVID-19.

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Moreover, the extent of innovation introduced by start-ups is potentially changing the entire dynamic of the market. Start-up projects in the market such as Ora and The Ultimate G have created vibrators that are markedly different from the existing products in the market in terms of design and components. The increasing number of vendors in this product segment has led to more competition and product variety. In the past, sourcing investments for a start-up project on sex toys was a difficult task. However, the recent boom in the sexual wellness market has convinced many investors to fund in innovative sex toys. For instance, Robin Elenga, the creator of the Revel Body vibrator, received quick funding from investors to fund his project. Elenga took only four hours to raise USD 800,000 for his sonic vibrator project. Investors are aware of the massive market potential of sex toys, especially vibrators, and are willing to invest in innovations in this market. With sexual wellness products getting mainstream exposure through the internet, media, and literature, sex toys have gained more popularity over the past year. With the adult vibrator market in the US attracting a lot of attention due to media and promotional activities, the public awareness of the product has increased. Hollywood movies such as Fifty Shades of Grey, based on a trilogy of the same name by E. L. James, has also influenced the market, thus increasing the demand for sex toys. After the launch of the trilogy in 2012, sex toys and various restraints used in the movie witnessed a 400% growth in sales in the following months in the US market. This single franchise not only changed the public perception about sex toys, but also helped in promoting sex toys as a mainstream product in North America.

In 2020, Asia Pacific registered as the fastest-growing region in the global sex toys market. The market is this region is expected to grow significantly in countries such as China, Japan, and India. The growth of the market is attributed to rising use of sex toys, and presence of a larger target population. Similarly, in countries such as South Korea and Australia, the market is estimated to grow due increasing adoption of sex toys in the wake of COVID-19.

Changing Perception of Customers Toward Utilization of Sex Toys in Sex Toys Market:

Sex toys are especially designed for sexual stimulations. The toys help improve sexual performance, extend shorten foreplay, and satisfy a partner who needs more time to climax. Moreover, some of the customers utilize sex toys to have orgasm, fantasize, relax, fall asleep, and to simply feel connected to their own bodies. The perception of people about the use and adoption of sex toys is changing in the region. For instance, according to a survey conducted by Lovehoney in 2020, two third of population in the US has normalized the utilization of sex toys. Also, according to the survey population, sexual wellness is equally important along with physical and mental health.

The change in perception for sex toys among customers has encouraged the market players to develop advanced pleasure giving products. Moreover, the change is perception is also leading to the massive adoption of sex toys, especially by women. For instance, according to a research paper published by a group of researchers at University of Kassel, Kassel, Germany in 2016, an estimated two third women population in the US prefers to use sex toys for partnered sexual activities and masturbation. Further, surging number of adult shops in the region represents a shift in attitude toward sexual products, which, in turn is likely to drive the market growth.

Sex Toys Market: Segmental Overview

Based on material, the sex toys market is segmented into metal, silicone, plastic, glass, and others. The silicone segment accounted for more than 40.02% of the market share in 2020. In terms of gender, the sex toys market is segmented into male and female. The female segment held the largest share of the market in 2020. In terms of distribution channel, the sex toys market is segmented into e-commerce, specialty stores, and others. The e-commerce segment held the largest share of the market in 2020.

Buy Premium Copy of Sex Toys Market Size, Share, Revenue, Strategic Insights and Forecasts 2021-2028 Research Report at https://www.theinsightpartners.com/buy/TIPRE00015794/

The effects of COVID-19 on human sexualities have been intensively discussed on both mass media (press, radio, and television) and social media (Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, and Twitter; Doring & Walter, 2020). For example, the New York Times ran "Coronavirus and Sex: Questions and Answers" (Gunter, 2020), VICE Magazine reported "How Sex Workers are Dealing with Coronavirus" (Pringels, 2020), and the new Facebook group "LGBTI COVID-19 Response" was founded. This is gratifying because issues of sexual and reproductive health and rights and sexual well-being should be taken seriously in times of crisis, as they are closely related to overall health and quality of life. An example is the "Kissenger machine," an interactive device used with a mobile phone that allows remote kissing in real time over distance. While high-tech sex toys for remote sex play have been discussed as "teledildonics" for decades, the 2019/2020 COVID pandemic, with its long-term lockdowns and contact bans, has increased demand for and interest in remote sex toys for both casual sex play among isolated singles and sexual intimacy between halves of separated couples. Sex toy sales have risen in the UK by 13%, whilst globally Canada has seen an 135% increase, and Italy, a 71% increase. In statistics provided by adult sex toy brand, Womaniser, it's perhaps unsurprising then that sales of sex toys have spiked as people look to keep themselves entertained at home.

Adam and Eve, a company with franchised locations across North America and an online store, reported a 30 percent increase in online sales in March and April 2020 based on the same time period last year. Other big companies that do most of their sales online also saw an uptick.

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SOURCE The Insight Partners
NEW YORK, Dec. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Summus Global, the leading virtual specialist platform, will be hosting a webinar on how leading employers and physicians are driving better health outcomes, overall quality, and exceptional patient experience. Join Summus Global executives for a discussion on best practices in virtual care and expert insights for success in 2022.

Who: Julian Flannery, Founder and CEO, Summus Global





Mary Mulcare, MD, Clinical Assistant Professor of Emergency Medicine, Weill Cornell; Chief Medical Officer, Summus Global





Liz Horgan, Chief Marketing Officer, Summus Global



When: Thursday, December 16, 2021

12:00-1:00 p.m. ET



Where: Register here:

https://bit.ly/3dvEzmx



Details: Webinar attendees will learn:

Best practices from leading employers about the value of virtual specialty care

Trends in virtual specialty care needs and the impact on health systems

Predictions and recommendations for 2022 including how to measure quality and outcomes

About Summus Global

Summus Global, the leading virtual specialist platform, empowers families by providing access to a network of 4,000+ top specialists across 48 leading hospitals -- within days, from anywhere in the world. The Summus model sets a new standard for speed of access to high-quality medical expertise and drives industry-leading engagement with employers. Pioneering the future of corporate health benefits, Summus Global partners with companies across the country to create an elevated healthcare experience for their employees and to support better, cost-efficient outcomes across all health questions and stages of care.

SOURCE Summus Global
SINGAPORE, Dec. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Campaign Asia's highly anticipated and well-respected Agency of the Year announcements, celebrating the success of the creative, media and digital agencies across six regions; Australia/New Zealand, Greater China, Japan and Korea, South Asia and Southeast Asia, concluded in Hong Kong on December 8, 2021.

In an extraordinary time, underpinned by two years of crisis and chaos, TBWA closes 2021 with 32 Agency of the Year titles including recognition for the strength of its client/agency partnerships. The Collective's leadership was also celebrated with Akihiko Imai, president and CEO of TBWA\Hakuhodo, being named Japan\Korea Agency Head of the Year. The strong performance comes off the back of TBWA being named Global Agency of the Year by Adweek earlier this week.

Said Sean Donovan, president TBWA\Asia: "In what can only be described as a turbulent few years for all industries, I'm incredibly proud of our leadership's agility, resilience and ability to lead their people, clients and agencies through chaos to find opportunity.

"I believe deeply that 'None of Us Is as Strong as all of Us,' and the recent recognition is a testament to the collaboration, innovation, perseverance and passion of our people to find the white space to create possibility in spite of the difficulties."

In addition to the Southeast Asia Creative of the Year title and Integrated Agency of the Year, Australia and New Zealand, TBWA's impressive, combined performance saw the Collective pick up Southeast Asia Best Place to Work  GOLD; Southeast Asia Talent Development programme  GOLD; Hong Kong Creative Agency of the Year  GOLD; Singapore Creative Agency of the Year  GOLD; Hong Kong Digital Agency of the Year  GOLD; Singapore Digital Agency of the Year  GOLD; Japan\ Korea Best Culture  GOLD; Southeast Asia Integrated Agency of the Year  SILVER.

In addition to Greater China's recognition for their impressive client partnerships, the agency was awarded China Creative Agency  SILVER; Greater China Integrated Agency of the Year  SILVER; Greater China Best Culture  SILVER; Greater China Best Production  SILVER.

Our Collective in Japan and Korea also achieved success being named Integrated Agency of the Year  SILVER; Consultancy of the Year  SILVER; Japan's Creative Agency of the Year  SILVER; Korea Creative Agency of the Year  SILVER; Korea Media Agency of the Year  SILVER; Japan Digital Agency of the Year  BRONZE; Korea Digital Agency of the Year  DIGITAL.

In addition to our client partnership accolade in the Philippines with T3, a public-private task force established to reboot the economy, the agency also won Philippines Creative Agency of the Year  BRONZE; Digital Agency of the Year  BRONZE.

While TBWA\Thailand was also named Creative Agency of the Year  SILVER; TBWA\ Indonesia  SILVER; Indonesia Creative Agency of the Year  BRONZE; TBWA\India Creative Agency of the Year  BRONZE.

While our talent was also recognised with TBWA\Hakuhodo's president and CEO Akihiko Imai named Japan\Korea Agency Head of the Year; Yuhei Ito, Japan\Korea Creative Person of the Year and Ayumi Dejima Japan\Korea Young Achiever of the Year.

Looking to Disrupt? Find us at www.tbwa.com and on LinkedIn, Twitter or on Instagram.

About TBWA\Worldwide

TBWA is The Disruption Company. We use creativity to help businesses challenge the status quo and capture an unfair share of the future. Named one of the World's Most Innovative Companies by Fast Company in 2021, 2020 and 2019, and Adweek's 2021 Global Agency of the Year, we are a creative company that uses trademarked Disruption methodologies to help businesses address their challenges and achieve transformative growth. Our collective has 10,000+ creative minds in 41 countries, and also includes brands such as Auditoire, Digital Arts Network (DAN), eg+ worldwide, GMR, The Integer Group, TBWA\Media Arts Lab, TBWA\WorldHealth and TRO. Global clients include adidas, Apple, Gatorade, Henkel, Hilton Hotels, McDonald's, Nissan and Singapore Airlines. Follow us on LinkedIn , Twitter and Instagram . TBWA is part of Omnicom Group (NYSE: OMC).

About Omnicom Group Inc.

Omnicom Group Inc. (NYSE: OMC) (www.omnicomgroup.com) is a leading global marketing and corporate communications company. Omnicom's branded networks and numerous specialty firms provide advertising, strategic media planning and buying, digital and interactive marketing, direct and promotional marketing, public relations and other specialty communications services to over 5,000 clients in more than 70 countries.

SOURCE TBWA\Worldwide
SHENZHEN, China, Dec. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- TCL CSOT, a leading semiconductor display company, recently concluded its 2021 Global Display Tech-ecosystem Conference (DTC 2021). At the event, TCL CSOT proposed the concept of 'Displayverse' for the first time and unveiled five cutting-edge display products.

'Displayverse' relates to the company's strategic plan covering panel products of various sizes, categories and forms. Despite an ever-changing industrial and technological landscape, TCL CSOT is committed to providing comprehensive solutions ranging from small-scale wearable devices, smartphones, medium-sized MNT and TV panels to large commercial display devices.

Zhao Jun, COO of TCL CSOT, stated, "Mini LED, Micro LED and OLED leverage the same underlying technology and have a lot of similarities with one another. Therefore, the 'Displayverse' will revolve around the dual-technology strategy of MLED and OLED to achieve synergistic development. In terms of application, Mini LED and Micro LED will be mainly applied in the field of large-sized and super-sized displays; OLED will be centered around developing medium-sized and large-sized displays. TCL CSOT aims to achieve a panel product layout of various sizes, categories and forms."

Based on the two core technology lines of MLED and OLED, the five new display products that TCL CSOT released at the conference represent a leap towards the 'Displayverse' vision. The five products included the world's largest 65-inch inkjet-printed 8K OLED panel, a rollable 14-inch inkjet-printed OLED display, the world's first 8-inch minimum radius 360-degree foldable AMOLED display, a 49-inch R800 curved 5000+ zones MLED and the world's first 125-inch glass-based MLED display.

For example, the 65-inch inkjet-printed 8K OLED panel has a 99% DCI-P3 color gamut and offers unparallel image quality developed jointly by TCL and JOLED, a display technology firm. The panel represents TCL's latest achievement in OLED display marking TCL as one of three companies in the world that produced in-depth research on inkjet printing OLED technology.

In terms of MLED, TCL revealed a 49-inch R800 curved MLED with the world's highest local dimming zones at more than 5,000. A high-resolution, high-contrast and a high refresh rate of up to 240Hz and ultra-wide viewing angle bring users an immersive visual experience.

Doctor Yan Xiaolin, CTO and Senior Vice President of TCL Technology Group said, "In the IoT era, display scenarios will keep developing and extending. The applications of displays are moving towards a more intelligent, personalized, scenario-based trend. Companies need to take technology innovation as a core drive and constantly increase their technological strength."

By following current trends and collaborating with global partners, TCL CSOT will continue to devote itself to developing more diversified display technologies and build platforms integrating products, technologies and solutions constantly satisfying the diverse needs of customers and markets.

About TCL

TCL empowers customers to enjoy more. With a lineup of award-winning televisions, audio products, mobile devices, and appliances, TCL takes pride in delivering meaningful experiences by combining thoughtful design and the latest technology. As one of the world's largest consumer electronics brands, our extensive manufacturing expertise, a vertically integrated supply chain, and state-of-the-art panel factory, helps TCL deliver innovation for all. For additional product information, please visit www.tcl.com for the full portfolio.

About TCL CSOT

TCL CSOT (TCL China Star Optoelectronics Technology Co., Ltd), is a company committed to developing new technologies and innovations in semiconductor display industry. TCL CSOT actively invests in future technologies such as Mini-LED, Micro-LED, OLED, and Ink-Jet Printing OLED. The company business includes large area display, small medium display and touch modules, interactive white boards, video walls, automotive displays, and gaming monitors, which contributes to the core competence in the global panel industry.

About Tianjin Zhonghuan Semiconductor

Zhonghuan Semiconductor takes new energy materials and semi-conductor materials as its dual main business to drive development, including the R&D, production and sales of semi-conductor wafers, semi-conductor devices, solar wafers and solar cell modules, as well as the construction and operation of photovoltaic power stations. On July 15, 2020, TCL acquired Zhonghuan Semi-conductor, achieving the significant presence and strategic reserve in the field of semi-conductors and new energy.

SOURCE TCL Group
CHICAGO, Dec. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Technomic released three whitepapers uncovering 2022 foodservice predictions for the U.S., Canada and global markets. Navigating labor constraints, supply chain challenges and shifting consumer behaviors, operators will focus on adapting strategies and finding new innovative solutions.

Overall, Technomic predicts that industry recovery will continue in 2022, forecasting that the U.S. will surpass its 2019 sales level and Canada will be just 3% shy of pre-pandemic sales levels. From menu restructuring to rethinking the guest experience, operators across regions will reconsider priorities aligned with new consumer and market dynamics.

U.S. highlights:

Expanding menus without adding new SKUs

Leveraging salt as the trend of comfort-plus expands

Canadian highlights:

Attention to butter grows as comfort food continues to trend

Investments into more compact models that support delivery and takeout

Global highlights:

Eggs appearing more on all-day sandwiches and handheld offerings

Expansion of functional concepts across food and beverages

Read each whitepaper on Technomic's website:

Contact: Patrick Noone, (312) 506-3852, [email protected]

About Technomic

Technomic Inc., a Winsight company, was founded as a management consulting firm in 1966. Since then, Technomic's services have grown to encompass cloud-based B2B research tools, consumer and menu trend tracking and other leading strategic research and analytic capabilities, to prioritize and size business opportunities. Our clients include food manufacturers and distributors, restaurants, retailers and multiple other business verticals aligned with the food industry that are looking to make informed decisions to support their business growth. Visit Technomic at www.technomic.com

SOURCE Technomic
PLANO, Texas, Dec. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Toyota North America (TNA) today announced executive changes to Toyota Motor North America (TMNA) and Toyota Financial Services (TFS), with the aim to drive critical business needs in support of TNA's mobility strategy.

The following changes are effective January 2022, unless otherwise noted:

Toyota Motor North America Executive Changes

Srini Matam is promoted to group vice president, Powertrain and Shared Services, Production Engineering. He will report to Norm Bafunno , senior vice president, Unit Manufacturing & Production Engineering, TMNA. Matam currently serves as president, Toyota Motor Manufacturing, West Virginia (TMMWV).

is promoted to group vice president, Powertrain and Shared Services, Production Engineering. He will report to , senior vice president, Unit Manufacturing & Production Engineering, TMNA. Matam currently serves as president, Toyota Motor Manufacturing, (TMMWV). David Rosier is promoted to president, Toyota Motor Manufacturing, West Virginia (TMMWV). He will report to Norm Bafunno , senior vice president, Unit Manufacturing & Production Engineering, TMNA. Rosier currently serves as head of Toyota Motor Manufacturing, Kentucky (TMMK) Powertrain.

is promoted to president, Toyota Motor Manufacturing, (TMMWV). He will report to , senior vice president, Unit Manufacturing & Production Engineering, TMNA. Rosier currently serves as head of Toyota Motor Manufacturing, (TMMK) Powertrain. David Wilson is promoted to group vice president and president of Toyota Racing Development (TRD). He will report to Jack Hollis , senior vice president, Automotive Operations, TMNA. Wilson currently serves as president, TRD.

is promoted to group vice president and president of Toyota Racing Development (TRD). He will report to , senior vice president, Automotive Operations, TMNA. Wilson currently serves as president, TRD. John Tinney , currently group vice president, Powertrain and Shared Services, Production Engineering, will retire after more than 17 years of service to Toyota, effective February 4, 2022 .

Toyota Financial Services Executive Changes

Scott Cooke is promoted to senior vice president and chief financial officer, TFS. He will report to Mark Templin , president and chief executive officer, TFS. Cooke currently serves as group vice president and chief financial officer, TFS.

is promoted to senior vice president and chief financial officer, TFS. He will report to , president and chief executive officer, TFS. Cooke currently serves as group vice president and chief financial officer, TFS. Alec Hagey is promoted to senior vice president and chief operating officer, TFS. He will report to Mark Templin , president and chief executive officer, TFS. Hagey currently serves as group vice president of Sales, Product and Marketing, TFS.

is promoted to senior vice president and chief operating officer, TFS. He will report to , president and chief executive officer, TFS. Hagey currently serves as group vice president of Sales, Product and Marketing, TFS. Joanna Dean is promoted to group vice president, Sales, TFS. She will report to Alec Hagey , senior vice president and chief operating officer. Dean currently serves as vice president, Sales, TFS.

is promoted to group vice president, Sales, TFS. She will report to , senior vice president and chief operating officer. Dean currently serves as vice president, Sales, TFS. Ellen Farrell is promoted to group vice president and chief legal and compliance officer, TFS. She will report to Mark Templin , president and chief executive officer, TFS. Farrell currently serves as vice president, general counsel & secretary, TFS.

is promoted to group vice president and chief legal and compliance officer, TFS. She will report to , president and chief executive officer, TFS. Farrell currently serves as vice president, general counsel & secretary, TFS. Vipin Gupta takes on an expanded role as group vice president and chief innovation and digital officer, TFS. He will report to Mark Templin , president and chief executive officer, TFS. Gupta currently serves as group vice president and chief information officer, TFS.

With more electrified powertrain vehicles on U.S. roads than any other automaker, Toyota is committed to the future of mobility. Earlier this year, Toyota announced plans to debut three new electrified models in the U.S. in 2021including the Toyota bZ4X and Lexus NX 450h+ and took a major step forward with a $1.29 billion investment in an automotive battery manufacturing plant in North Carolina, called Toyota Battery Manufacturing, North Carolina (TBMNC).

About Toyota

Toyota (NYSE:TM) has been a part of the cultural fabric in North America for more than 60 years, and is committed to advancing sustainable, next-generation mobility through our Toyota and Lexus brands plus our 1,800 dealerships.

Toyota has created a tremendous value chain and directly employs more than 47,000 in North America. The company has contributed world-class design, engineering, and assembly of more than 40 million cars and trucks at our 14 manufacturing plants, 15 including our joint venture in Alabama which began production in 2021.

Through its Start Your Impossible campaign, Toyota highlights the way it partners with community, civic, academic and governmental organizations to address our society's most pressing mobility challenges. We believe that when people are free to move, anything is possible. For more information about Toyota, visit www.toyotanewsroom.com.

Media Contact:

Carley Cesaretti

[email protected]

469-292-8754

SOURCE Toyota Motor North America

Related Links

www.toyota.com


LONDON, Dec. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The Prime Minister of St Kitts and Nevis, Dr Hon. Timothy Harris, will present the national budget for the fiscal year of 2022 next Tuesday, December 14th. The much-anticipated report will forecast a strong vision to bounce back from setbacks caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, the Prime Minister noted.

The annual budget assembly will provide the details for the financing of the nations' activities that will bring benefits to the people of St Kitts and Nevis. These initiatives include improving healthcare services, providing quality education, enhancing safety and security, and upgrading public infrastructure.

"We continue to experience continued progress in our economy. More people have found employment. The tourism sector hitherto the most severely hit of all sectors is regaining its strength and buoyancy," said Prime Minister Harris. "While we are not yet at pre-COVID-19 levels, we can now see that light at the end of the tunnel. This last quarter is the best since we closed our borders in March 2020."

The Prime Minister also cited the International Monetary Fund (IMF)'s prediction of 2022 to be a year of very high economic growth for the Federation. He added that the 2022 budget would be one crucial instrument that will propel the growth and keep St Kitts and Nevis moving in the right direction with visible enhancements in citizens and residents' standard of living, which includes higher incomes, more jobs, more opportunities and better homes.

As a dual island nation with a population of only 53,000, St Kitts and Nevis has one of the strongest and fastest recovering economies in the region due to its prudent management of the pandemic. According to the IMF, St Kitts and Nevis entered the pandemic from a position of "fiscal strength" and saved a "significant part" of Citizenship by Investment (CBI) revenue, "reducing public debt below the regional debt."

CBI is a programme that allows foreign investors and their families second citizenship in return for a contribution to St Kitts and Nevis' economy. The revenue generated is used to develop social initiatives like healthcare and education and saved for a crisis like environmental disasters.

Applicants who pass the CBI Unit's criminal and financial checks are granted citizenship for life and are awarded the right to live and work in St Kitts and Nevis. They are also eligible to apply for the country's coveted passport, allowing holders visa-free or visa-on-arrival travel to nearly 160 destinations.

Contact: 07824029952, [email protected], www.csglobalpartners.com

SOURCE CS Global Partners

Related Links

http://www.csglobalpartners.com


Purchase our full report for detailed insights on the growth variance future growth opportunities in the market.

Download a Free Sample before purchasing

Technavio analyzes the Industrial Automation and Instrumentation Market in India by Product and End-user .

By product, the market will generate maximum revenue in the industrial automation segment. The growing importance of predictive maintenance to ensure uninterrupted operations will be crucial in driving the growth of the segment.

Similarly, in terms of end-users, the market will witness maximum demand for industrial automation and instrumentation solutions from the process industries during the forecast period. The growth of the oil and gas, chemical and petrochemical, textile and apparel, mining and metals, water and wastewater, food and beverages, power, and pharmaceutical industries will foster the growth of the segment.

Market Dynamics

The market is mainly driven by the simplification of manufacturing through automation and the shift toward lean manufacturing. Advances in robotics, AI, and machine learning have simplified complex operations in the manufacturing sector. They have also resulted in increased labor productivity, improved quality, reduced labor cost, decreased lead times, and high work safety. Moreover, automation solutions such as SCADA, PLCs, DCS, and MES help industrial operators streamline their operations and ensure controlled production activities. Many such benefits are encouraging industrial operators to actively invest in automation solutions, which is driving the market growth.

In addition, the rising need for efficient use of resources and reduction of emissions will create new growth opportunities for market players. On the other hand, cyber security threats and high upfront and upgradation costs of automation solutions will reduce the growth potential of market players.

Get additional highlights on other factors influencing the market growth by Requesting a Free Sample Report

Company Profiles

The market is fragmented with the presence of a large number of regional and international players. The growing competition in the market is driving vendors to adopt both organic and inorganic growth strategies to remain competitive and gain an edge in the market. The report provides detailed insights about the products launched by some of the major players in the market including ABB Ltd., Eaton Corp. Plc, Emerson Electric Co., General Electric Co., Honeywell International Inc., Robert Bosch GmbH, Rockwell Automation Inc., Schlumberger Ltd., Schneider Electric SE, and Siemens AG.

Competitive Analysis

The competitive scenario provided in the industrial automation and instrumentation market in India report analyzes, evaluates, and positions companies based on various performance indicators. The report considers factors such as the financial performance of companies over the past few years, growth strategies, product innovations, new product launches, investments, and growth in market share among others for the analysis.

Related Reports:

Industrial Automation Control Market by Product, End-user, and Geography - Forecast and Analysis 2021-2025

Industrial Automation Services Market by Service, End-user, and Geography - Forecast and Analysis 2021-2025

Industrial Automation and Instrumentation Market in India Scope Report Coverage Details Page number 120 Base year 2020 Forecast period 2021-2025 Growth momentum & CAGR Accelerate at a CAGR of 8.62% Market growth 2021-2025 USD 1.92 billion Market structure Fragmented YoY growth (%) 8.04 Regional analysis North America, Romania, Algeria, Andorra, and Aruba Performing market contribution India at 100% Key consumer countries India Competitive landscape Leading companies, competitive strategies, consumer engagement scope Companies profiled ABB Ltd., Eaton Corp. Plc, Emerson Electric Co., General Electric Co., Honeywell International Inc., Robert Bosch GmbH, Rockwell Automation Inc., Schlumberger Ltd., Schneider Electric SE, and Siemens AG Market Dynamics Parent market analysis, Market growth inducers and obstacles, Fast-growing and slow-growing segment analysis, COVID-19 impact and future consumer dynamics, market condition analysis for the forecast period Customization purview If our report has not included the data that you are looking for, you can reach out to our analysts and get segments customized.

About Us

Technavio is a leading global technology research and advisory company. Their research and analysis focus 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
To get the exact yearly growth variance and the Y-O-Y growth rate, Talk to our analyst .

Key Market Dynamics:

Market Drivers

The flourishing fragrance industry is notably driving the home fragrance market growth. Increased demand from customers for enriched perfumes coupled with an increased reliance on aromachology for stress reduction has played a pivotal role in driving the demand for fragrances. The growth of this market is further attributed to the growing disposable income in emerging economies such as India and China leading to a shift in the consumption patterns toward premium products. Furthermore, the high demand for customized home fragrances enriched with natural ingredients plays a vital role in driving the revenue inflow of the global home fragrances market. In addition, other factors such as adoption of advanced technologies and increase in disposable incomes are also expected to drive the market's growth during the forecast period.

Market Challenges

The harmful impact of home fragrance ingredients is one of the factors that will limit the market's growth during the forecast period. Exposure to harmful ingredients including phthalates present in home fragrances can increase the risk of endocrinal, reproductive, and developmental problems. In addition, essential oils and scented candles often release toxins and parrafin, which, can further, lead to damage to the liver, kidneys, and nervous system, which can lead to serious health issues, including hormonal disruptions, behavioral problems, and learning disabilities. Furthermore, other factors such as criticality of inventory management and product sourcing and threat of counterfeit products will also limit the market's growth during the forecast period.

To learn about additional key drivers, trends, and challenges available with Technavio. Read our FREE Sample Report!

The home fragrances market report is segmented by distribution channel (offline and online) and geography (Europe, North America, APAC, MEA, and South America). The offline distribution channel held the largest home fragrances market share in 2020 and will continue to retain its dominance in the market during the forecast period. Home fragrances manufacturers sell their products through specialty stores and other retailing formats, which intensifies market competition. Vendors are also resorting to the online-to-offline (O2O) business strategy to enhance sales from offline distribution channels and simultaneously promote a digital experience. The adoption of these strategies will help vendors to increase their market shares and expand their consumer base.

In terms of Geography, Europe was the largest revenue-generating segment APAC was the largest revenue-generating regional segment of the home fragrances market. The region will be the leading region with 34% of the market's growth during the forecast period. The growth of the regional segment can be attributed to factors such as the presence of a huge consumer base and the penetration of key vendors. China is the key market for home fragrances in APAC. Market growth in APAC will be faster than the growth of the market in other regions.

View our sample report for additional insights into the contribution of all the segments and regional opportunities in the report.

Some Companies Mentioned

AirEsscentials Inc.



Archipelago Inc.



Aroma360 LLC



Beaumont Products Inc.



Bolsius International BV



Henkel AG and Co. KGaA



Newell Brands Inc.



Reckitt Benckiser Group Plc



S. C. Johnson and Son Inc.



The Procter and Gamble Co.

To gain access to more vendor profiles with their key offerings available with Technavio, Click Here

Related Reports:

Air Freshener Market by End-user, Product, Application, and Geography - Forecast and Analysis 2021-2025

Air Freshener Market in India by Type and Application - Forecast and Analysis 2022-2026

Scented Candles Market by Distribution Channel and Geography - Forecast and Analysis 2020-2024

Home Fragrances Market Scope Report Coverage Details Page number 120 Base year 2020 Forecast period 2021-2025 Growth momentum & CAGR Accelerate at a CAGR of 4.88% Market growth 2021-2025 USD 2.22 billion Market structure Fragmented YoY growth (%) 8.67 Regional analysis Europe, North America, APAC, MEA, and South America Performing market contribution APAC at 34% Key consumer countries US, China, France, UK, and Brazil Competitive landscape Leading companies, competitive strategies, consumer engagement scope Companies profiled AirEsscentials Inc., Archipelago Inc., Aroma360 LLC, Beaumont Products Inc., Bolsius International BV, Henkel AG and Co. KGaA, Newell Brands Inc., Reckitt Benckiser Group Plc, S. C. Johnson and Son Inc., and The Procter and Gamble Co. Market Dynamics Parent market analysis, Market growth inducers and obstacles, Fast-growing and slow-growing segment analysis, COVID-19 impact and future consumer dynamics, market condition analysis for the forecast period. Customization purview If our report has not included the data that you are looking for, you can reach out to our analysts and get segments customized.

Key Topics Covered:

Executive Summary

Market Landscape

Market Sizing

Five Forces Analysis

Market Segmentation by Distribution Channel

Customer landscape

Geographic Landscape

Vendor Landscape

Vendor Analysis

Appendix

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 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
MURRAY, Utah, Dec. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Zarifa USA urges customers with FSA accounts to utilize their funds before the end of the year by purchasing an essential massage tool for their recovery efforts. Zarifa USA CEO Yama Mustafawi made the announcement.

According to Business Insider and financial experts, for 2021, the contribution limit for an FSA is $2,750. These accounts are "pre-funded," which means that the full contribution amount elected for the year is available to spend at the beginning of the year. They go on to add, that one of the biggest drawbacks to an FSA is the "use it or lose it" rule, requiring that money in the FSA account be spent by the end of the year or risk losing it.

Massage guns may be known as a workout recovery device however, originally it was developed specifically as a pain management tool by chiropractor. Dr. Jason Wersland. Since then, massage guns and other massage tools have been updated and improved upon by companies such as Zarifa. As a pain-relief tool, it can be helpful for a variety of complaints including tension, knots, aches, pains and of course, sore muscles.

"We are thrilled that our customers have the ability to pay for their recovery massage tools through their FSA or HAS accounts and are urging them to use their FSA funds before they are gone," says Yama Mustafawi CEO at Zarifa USA. "If you work out frequently or have chronic pain and want to improve recovery or performance, any one of our massage tools can be a drug-free option for you and, are considered a valid medical expense."

Headquartered in Murray, Utah, Zarifa USA aims to assist and provide relief to the increasing number of over 100 million Americans suffering from chronic pain each year without using addictive substances such as opioids. Zarifa USA is committed to helping customers find pain relief through easily accessible products that deliver positive medical results. The company supports pain sufferers through their difficult times and provides a positive drug-free massage therapy experience. Product consultations can be done by phone, by private in-store appointments, or by shopping online. For more information, go to www.zarifausa.com, call direct 385-645-0255, or email at [email protected].

Contact: Rosh Sillars

[email protected]

248 672 4901

SOURCE Zarifa USA
ST. PETERSBURG, Fla., Dec. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Valpak, the company that delivers the Blue Envelope of Savings to millions of mailboxes each month, continues to innovate in the direct mail space. Building on the success of their neighborhood-targeted postcards, Valpak recently unveiled a new automated monthly mailer that transforms life events into opportunities for connection: Event Postcards.

Valpak's newest product is designed to create memorable moments between consumers and local businesses around specific life events: moving, buying a home, celebrating a birthday or aging into Medicare. It leverages data and demographics to narrow the audience by location, age, income level and more. Advertisers simply choose their audience focus, ZIP code(s), quantity, life event and ad template and Valpak returns a 6"x9" postcard with customized messaging to a new audience each month. Because Event Postcards are automated and turnkey, mailing lists, design, postage and personalization (where available) are all included at one low rate.

Drives Consumer Engagement

Beyond convenience, the effectiveness of life event-specific postcard advertising is supported by consumer behavior. In a March 2021 survey, 64% of respondents indicated they change all or some service providers after relocating or purchasing a home. Valpak's "New Mover" Event Postcards enable businesses to cost-effectively mail "Welcome, new neighbor" offers targeted to new homeowners or new movers.

Similarly, Valpak's "Birthday Mailer" Event Postcards utilize household-level age and income demographics to profile a business's best prospects. Consumers want to receive birthday offers in the mail, with 83% agreeing that mail addressed to them for their birthday is appealing and 87% indicating they would likely redeem a personalized birthday postcard offer.

With roughly 10,000 Americans aging into Medicare each day, Valpak also saw a need to develop an audience focus to reach eligible seniors in search of benefits and plan comparisons. Health care agents and insurance providers can now leverage "Medicare" Event Postcards to establish themselves as trusted advisors available to help consumers navigate everything from aging in and open enrollment to supplemental and life insurance.

Valpak CEO Chris Cate shares, "If your business is looking to connect with consumers in a meaningful way, these mailings are an exceptional choice. They let your audience know you're thinking of them during important life events, and we can design a program to fit any budget or marketing plan. Plus, they're automated, which takes the guesswork out of it. With a personalized approach and high rate of engagement, Event Postcards are a win-win for consumers and businesses alike."

Whether consumers in your neighborhood are making moves, ready to celebrate or entering a new stage of life, bringing direct mail outreach to them during specific life events is a proven and personalized way for your business to get its name out there. For more information on advertising with Valpak Event Postcards, visit valpak.com/advertise/postcards-event.

About Valpak

Valpak is the nation's premier direct mailer, trusted by 34,000 businesses to drive sales and brand awareness through easy-to-measure, results-oriented advertising solutions that work. For more than 50 years, Valpak has introduced millions of consumers to exciting local business offers and opportunities. Our network of nearly 140 local offices provides unparalleled customer service and market knowledge to business owners in thousands of neighborhoods across the U.S. Each month, our Blue Envelope of savings mails to more than 41 million demographically targeted households in 42 states. Contact us today at valpak.com/advertise to see what Valpak Direct Marketing can do for your business.

Valpak Media Contact

Tanya Creel

Director, Marketing & Communications

Valpak

727-399-3068

[email protected]

SOURCE Valpak
The virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) market to reach US$ 12,971.3 million by 2027 from US$ 4,490.0 million in 2019 to grow at a CAGR of 14.4% during 2019 to 2027 driven by the rising trend of digitalization among enterprises to improve operational workflow and reduce costs.

NEW YORK, Dec. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- According to the new market research report " Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) Market Forecast to 2027 - COVID-19 Impact and Global Analysis by Offering (Solution and Services), Deployment (Cloud and On-Premise), Enterprise Size (SMEs and Large Enterprises), End User (IT & Telecom, Government, Healthcare, BFSI, Education, Retail, Manufacturing, and Other End Users); and Geography", published by The Insight Partners, Get the Latest COVID-19 Analysis on global VDI market at https://www.theinsightpartners.com/covid-analysis-sample/TIPRE00011555

Report Coverage Details Market Size Value in US$ 4,490.0 Million in 2019 Market Size Value by US$ 12,971.3 Million by 2027 Growth Rate CAGR of 14.4% from 2020-2027 Forecast Period 2020-2027 Base Year 2020 No. of Pages 207 No. Tables 110 No. of Charts & Figures 94 Historical Data Available Yes Segments Covered Offering , Deployment , Enterprise Size , End User ; and Geography Regional Scope North America; Europe; Asia Pacific; Latin America; MEA Country Scope US, UK, Canada, Germany, France, Italy, Australia, Russia, China, Japan, South Korea, Saudi Arabia, Brazil, Argentina Report Coverage Revenue Forecast, Company Ranking, Competitive Landscape, Growth Factors, and Trends

Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) Market: Competitive Landscape and Key Developments

VMware, Inc.; Citrix Systems, Inc.; Microsoft Corporation; Amazon.com, Inc.; Cisco Systems, Inc.; IBM Corporation; Fujitsu Limited; Dell Technologies Inc.; Hewlett Packard Enterprise Development LP (HPE); and Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd are among the key players in the global virtual desktop infrastructure market. The leading companies are focusing on expanding and diversifying their market presence by acquiring new customer base, thereby tapping prevailing business opportunities.

In 2020, HPE introduced a beefier VDI solution along with separate pre-configured solutions for organizations of all sizes built on its servers. The company is also offering new, pre-configured VDI solutions to support small, medium and enterprise customers.

Get Exclusive Sample Pages of Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) Market Size - COVID-19 Impact and Global Analysis with Strategic Insights at https://www.theinsightpartners.com/sample/TIPRE00011555/

Virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) is a form of desktop virtualization that allows hosting desktop environments on a central server. In virtual desktop infrastructure, desktop operations run on virtual machines located at a central server and delivered to end users over a network. End users can access these remote machines with the help of endpoints such as PCs, laptops, smartphones, thin client terminals, and tablets. VDI solutions and services are becoming quite popular among various industries such as IT & telecom, government, healthcare, BFSI, education, and retail. Mobile employees, field technicians, contractors, part-time workers, healthcare professionals, and teachers are among the users who commonly use virtual desktop infrastructure while working remotely. Virtual desktop infrastructure enhances user mobility and remote access by allowing users to access a wide range of virtual apps and data on the move. With the growing trend of digitalization, automation, and smart workplaces, the demand for virtual desktop infrastructure solutions is anticipated to rise at an impressive pace in the coming years. The ongoing COVID-19 outbreak is further accelerating the market growth with work-from-home guidelines being implemented across the world. Major IT and other companies are expected to invest heavily in desktop virtualization solutions such as virtual desktop infrastructure to reduce physical infrastructure and other related operational costs.

The virtual desktop infrastructure market is segmented into offering, deployment, enterprise size, end-user, and geography. Based on offering, the market is segmented into solution and services. In 2019, the solution segment held a larger share of the global virtual desktop infrastructure market. Based on deployment type, the virtual desktop infrastructure market is categorized into cloud and on-premise. Cloud is expected to be the fastest-growing segment during the forecast period. On the basis of enterprise size, the market is segmented into SMEs and large enterprises. The large enterprises segment contributed a substantial share in 2019; however, the SMEs segment is projected to grow faster due to the availability of low-cost cloud-based solutions. Further, in 2019, IT and telecom industry led the virtual desktop infrastructure market globally.

Download Sample PDF Brochure of Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) Market Size and Growth Research Report at https://www.theinsightpartners.com/sample/TIPRE00011555/

Globally, there is a demand for various technology solutions and services due to developed countries such as the US and Canada and a huge presence of companies from various industry sectors. Presently, the US is the world's worst-affected country due to the COVID-19 outbreak with more than 3.16 million confirmed cases and more than 133,000 deaths, as per the recent WHO Situation Report-174. Hence, the region's economy has seen a significant decline in the past few months, negatively impacting the growth of various industries. The restriction imposed in various countries on travel and business activities is impacting the growth of key industries such as IT & telecom, BFSI, and healthcare in the region. In addition, the overall manufacturing processes, research, and development activities are getting impacted negatively. To continue daily operations and business activities, remote working and availability of advanced communication/working infrastructure are the key factors driving the demand for desktop virtualization solutions during the pandemic in North America. Thus, the COVID-19 crisis is expected to positively impact market growth in the coming years.

Growing Trend of Digital Transformation to Provide Growth Opportunities for the Market:

Digitalization presents a massive opportunity for businesses to utilize digital technologies and automation to transform their business models and existing processes in order to enhance operational efficiency and increase revenue. In the last few years, proliferation of smart devices, adoption of Internet of Things (IoT), cloud computing, and artificial intelligence (AI) have led to the advent of smart workplaces. In general, digital transformation refers to integrating digital technologies in business processes and organizational activities/models. Rising demand for end-to-end business process optimization, high operational efficiency, and reduced human errors are the key drivers for the growth of digital transformation in various industries. For the past few years, desktop virtualization has been gaining popularity among enterprises allowing them to virtualize entire workgroups for higher efficiency and lower costs. With solutions such as virtual desktop infrastructure and Desktop-as-a-Service (DaaS), industry verticals such as IT & telecom, government & defense, education, BFSI, healthcare, research, and manufacturing are able to reduce their endpoint footprint, offer feature-rich apps, and provide better user experiences. This solution helps enterprises increase business agility, responsiveness, and flexibility and thus cater to the ever-changing IT demands. Hence, all the benefits offered by virtual desktop infrastructure and other desktop virtualization tools enable the digital transformation in various industries and thus drive the demand for these solutions among enterprises.

Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) Market: Offering

The offering segment of VDI is classified into solution and services. The software required for providing virtual desktops is based on the virtualization method selected by the user. With VDI, the desktop OS runs and is managed in the data center. Further, Hypervisor software runs on the host server, providing access to a virtual machine to each end-user across the network. Also, connection broker software is needed to validate users, connect them to a virtual machine, observe activity levels, as well as reallocate the virtual machine when the connection is terminated. These connection brokers may be purchased separately or bundled with the hypervisor. Moreover, remote desktop services can be installed leveraging utilities that are bundled with the Microsoft Windows Server OS. Additionally, in case a user chooses Desktop-as-a-Service (DaaS) solution, then all software installation, configuration, as well as maintenance will be managed by the DaaS cloud-hosted service provider. This comprises OS, applications, files, as well as user preferences.

Buy Premium Copy of Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) Market Size, Share, Revenue, Strategic Insights and Forecasts 2019-2027 Research Report at https://www.theinsightpartners.com/buy/TIPRE00011555/

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.

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If you have any queries about this report or if you would like further information, please contact us:

Contact Person: Sameer Joshi

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Press Release: https://www.theinsightpartners.com/pr/virtual-desktop-infrastructure-market

More Research: https://www.openpr.com/news/archive/139407/The-Insight-Partners.html

SOURCE The Insight Partners
The 2021 Digital Health 150 cohort has raised roughly $14.9B in aggregate funding across 522 deals since 2016, and includes startups at various investment stages of development, from early-stage to well-funded unicorns . Companies this year include startups working on data integration & analytics, hybrid virtual / in-person care, digital therapeutics, clinical intelligence, and more.

"This year's Digital Health 150 is one of our most expansive yet, spotlighting 16 categories including virtual care, clinical trials tech, and workflow automation, as well as adding new categories such as home health tech and computer-aided imaging," said Brian Lee, SVP of CB Insights' Intelligence Unit. "Last year's class has seen more than 20 exits, raised an additional $18.6B in aggregate funding, and announced over 250 partnerships since being recognized, and we're excited to see the future success of this year's winners."

"We are honored to be recognized for our efforts and to be included with the other amazing companies who are working to create a better way to deliver health care," said Ryan Grant, MD, Vori Health co-founder and CEO. "At Vori Health, our mission is to empower people to lead their healthiest life. We want to ensure our patients are getting outstanding, evidence-based care, in the most efficient and effective way that fulfills their life goals  to be able to participate in the parts of life most important to them."

Through an evidence-based approach, the CB Insights research team selected the Digital Health 150 from a pool of over 11,000 companies, including applicants and nominees. They were chosen based on several factors, including data submitted by the companies, company business models and momentum in the market, and Mosaic scores , CB Insights' proprietary algorithm that measures the overall health and growth potential of private companies.

Vori Health improves access to evidence-based care by providing clinical excellence, integrated care teams, behavioral health, and technology. The company currently has an emphasis on musculoskeletal (MSK) care to address back, neck, spine, knee, hip and other joint and muscle conditions. Vori Health creates a community of care to navigate best practices and improve outcomes. The company will roll-out all of its services nationwide by mid-2022. People can access Vori Health's services directly, as a benefit provided by their employer, or referred by their primary care provider and other specialty care providers.

CB Insights 2021 Digital Health 150 Investment Highlights:

Unicorns : 17 of the 150 companies (11%) are valued at or above $1B as of their latest funding rounds.

: 17 of the 150 companies (11%) are valued at or above as of their latest funding rounds. Funding trends : In 2021 year-to-date (YTD), these 150 private companies have raised $9.2B in equity funding across 153 deals (as of 11/19/21).

: In 2021 year-to-date (YTD), these 150 private companies have raised in equity funding across 153 deals (as of 11/19/21). Mega-rounds : Since 2020, there have been 39 mega-round ($100M+) equity investments to this year's Digital Health 150, with 31 (79%) of them taking place in 2021 YTD.

: Since 2020, there have been 39 mega-round ($100M+) equity investments to this year's Digital Health 150, with 31 (79%) of them taking place in 2021 YTD. Global representation : 23% of the 2021 Digital Health 150 are based outside the US. After the US, the UK is home to the most Digital Health 150 companies (9), followed by India (4). This year's winners are based in 18 countries, including China , Israel , Nigeria , Germany , Argentina , and New Zealand .

: 23% of the 2021 Digital Health 150 are based outside the US. After the US, the UK is home to the most Digital Health 150 companies (9), followed by (4). This year's winners are based in 18 countries, including , , , , , and . Top VC investor: General Catalyst is the most active investor in this year's Digital Health 150 companies, having invested in 39 deals since 2016.

About CB Insights

CB Insights builds software that enables the world's best companies to discover, understand, and make technology decisions with confidence. By marrying data, expert insights, and work management tools, clients manage their end-to-end technology decision-making process on CB Insights. To learn more, please visit www.cbinsights.com.

About Vori Health

Vori Health is an all-inclusive medical and health provider practicing a holistic, integrated approach starting with musculoskeletal care. The organization offers full service physical medicine and rehabilitation care, physical therapy, prescriptions, imaging and lab ordering, health coaching, nutritional guidance, community support and premium instructional content. The team consists of carefully selected, board-certified physicians and licensed healthcare providers, and provides health services that are accessible at the click of a button from the comfort, convenience, and privacy of a patient's home. Learn more at www.vorihealth.com .

SOURCE Vori Health
HUTTO, Texas, Dec. 9, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Wayne R. Engelke is being recognized by Continental Who's Who as a Trusted Professional in the Cybersecurity field and in acknowledgment of his work at Sonic Wall.

Wayne R. Englke has 34 years in the Cybersecurity field, and has lead teams through groundbreaking projects in his work with Dell and the Department of Defense.

Wayne R. Engelke

To receive his education, Mr. Engelke first graduated with a Bachelor's degree in General Business Management from Texas State University-San Marcos. He also attended the University of Arizona, where he studied Psychology, Accounting, and Business Management. He is additionally a Certified SonicWall Security Administrator.

Mr. Engelke got his start at Dell, starting as an Enterprise Architect and CSE IV for United States Marine Corps in 1989. He re-established relations with the USMC, gained experience with architecting enterprise infrastructures, and developed new customer-focused products and services. He guided the USMC through enterprise infrastructure changes, including working with the servers, storage, and networking capacity. Mr. Engelke loves working with people, and he excelled in a role where he enabled customers to understand and overcome security challenges. He always listens to his customers, and is very hardworking. Mr. Engelke is SNSA certified.

Mr. Engelke worked with the Department of Defense throughout his career. He has implemented crucial security services, such as firewalls and email protection. Mr. Engelke repeatedly exceeds expectations, and at Dell, he exceeded his quota 11 out of 13 quarters due to his effective sales team management and his devised daily tactical approaches to projects.



After 27 years at Dell, Mr. Engelke started a position as the Global Account Director at SonicWall in 2016, and has since become the Vice President Federal. SonicWall offers a wide selection of security options for companies both big and small, including network security, access security, cloud security, and advanced threat protection. SonicWall provides security services to a diverse array of industries, from healthcare to financial services to K-12 education to state, local, and federal government.

Mr. Engelke has been awarded by the Presidents Club, Circle of Excellence, Community Impact Honors, 2019 CEO Award at SonicWall, and as a Who's Who Pinnacle Professional Member. Among his greatest achievements, Mr. Engleke is proud of his work on the federal level at Dell and Sonic Wall.

Looking to the future, he hopes to build SonicWall in a federal global leader, and continue networking with other professionals. His motto is, "We are what we repeatedly do, excellence then is not an act but a habit  Arisotle."

In his spare time, Mr. Engelke enjoys hunting, fishing, restoring hot rods, and spending time with his daughters and grandchildren.

For more information, visit https://www.sonicwall.com/federal.

Contact: Katherine Green , 516-825-5634 [email protected]



SOURCE Continental Who's Who
After Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, the U.S. government forcibly relocated more than 125,000 people of Japanese ancestry and imprisoned them in detention camps on U.S. soil. Two-thirds were practicing Buddhists.

Some were sent to live in former fairgrounds where stables were hastily converted into living quarters. Others were crowded into dwellings of tarpaper-roofed, Army-style bunkers. Many lost their homes, farms and businesses along with their possessions.

As Williams reviewed diaries and other records of their stay in the camps, he learned Buddhists continued to worship despite their confinement. One family celebrated Buddha's birthday by pouring coffee over a carrot carved in his likeness when they could not perform the traditional ritual of pouring tea over a Buddha statue.

"Their imprisonment became a way to discover freedom, a liberation that the Buddha himself attained only after embarking on a spiritual journey filled with obstacles and hardships," he said.

The Buddhists' steadfast devotion to their faith while living in such conditions showed it was possible to be both Buddhist and American and helped launch a less sectarian form of the religion in the United States, Williams found.

"Williams' work opens the way for a discussion that values religious inclusion over exclusion," said Tyler Mayfield, who directs the Grawemeyer religion award. "He shows how Japanese Americans living in a time of great adversity broadened our nation's vision of religious freedom."

The University of Louisville and Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary jointly give the religion prize.

Recipients of next year's Grawemeyer Awards were named this week pending formal approval by university and seminary trustees. The $100,000 prizes also honor seminal ideas in music, world order, psychology and education. Winners will visit Louisville in April to accept their awards and give free talks on the winning ideas.

SOURCE University of Louisville

Related Links

http://www.louisville.edu


DUBLIN, Dec. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ --

The "Hard Seltzer Market: Global Industry Trends, Share, Size, Growth, Opportunity and Forecast 2021-2026" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering.

The global hard seltzer market exhibited robust growth during 2015-2020. Looking forward, the publisher expects the market to grow at a CAGR of 14.4% during 2021-2026. Keeping in mind the uncertainties of COVID-19, we are continuously tracking and evaluating the direct as well as the indirect influence of the pandemic. These insights are included in the report as a major market contributor.



Hard seltzer is a carbonated or sparkling beverage similar to beer, with almost 5% alcohol by volume. It is made from brewed cane sugar or malted rice, along with soda water and flavorings. Nowadays, hard seltzer is available in various flavors such as lemon, watermelon, lime, strawberry, passionfruit, pomegranate, and tangerine. It is considered a healthy alternative to regular alcoholic drinks as it is gluten-free with a low calorie, carbohydrate and sugar content. As a result, it is gaining popularity among health-conscious consumers and people suffering from allergies, and celiac, inflammatory and auto-immune diseases. The global hard seltzer market is primarily driven by the shifting consumer preferences toward beverages with a low alcohol by volume (ABV) content.

The growing popularity of flavored alcoholic beverages and healthier alternatives has resulted in high demand for ready-to-drink sparkling beverages, such as hard seltzer, across the globe. Besides this, several manufacturers are introducing innovative product variants to expand their existing portfolio.

For instance, Sudwerk Brewing Co., a California-based company, launched Life Is Hard Seltzer in May 2020 in black cherry, grapefruit and passionfruit flavors. It is fermented using sugar and yeast and then flavored with natural fruit concentrates. The leading alcohol companies are also developing 100% natural hard seltzer free from artificial preservatives, flavorings, or sweeteners. Furthermore, with the rising environmental concerns, manufacturers are launching new packaging designs that are portable and recyclable.



Competitive Landscape:

The competitive landscape of the industry has also been examined along with the profiles of the key players being Anheuser-Busch InBev, Barefoot Cellars (E. & J. Gallo Winery), Blue Marble Cocktails Inc., Ficks & Co, Future Proof Brands LLC, Hard Seltzer Beverage Company LLC (The Boston Beer Company Inc), Lift Bridge Brewing Co., Oskar Blues Brewery and White Claw Hard Seltzer.



Key Questions Answered in This Report:

How has the global hard seltzer market performed so far and how will it perform in the coming years?

What has been the impact of COVID-19 on the global hard seltzer market?

What are the key regional markets?

What is the breakup of the market based on the ABV content?

What is the breakup of the market based on the packaging material?

What is the breakup of the market based on the distribution channel?

What is the breakup of the market based on the flavour?

What are the various stages in the value chain of the industry?

What are the key driving factors and challenges in the industry?

What is the structure of the global hard seltzer market and who are the key players?

What is the degree of competition in the industry?

Key Topics Covered:



1 Preface



2 Scope and Methodology



3 Executive Summary



4 Introduction

4.1 Overview

4.2 Key Industry Trends



5 Global Hard Seltzer Market

5.1 Market Overview

5.2 Market Performance

5.3 Impact of COVID-19

5.4 Market Forecast



6 Market Breakup by ABV Content

6.1 1% to 4.9%

6.1.1 Market Trends

6.1.2 Market Forecast

6.2 5% to 6.9%

6.2.1 Market Trends

6.2.2 Market Forecast

6.3 7% and Above

6.3.1 Market Trends

6.3.2 Market Forecast



7 Market Breakup by Packaging Material

7.1 Cans

7.1.1 Market Trends

7.1.2 Market Forecast

7.2 Glass

7.2.1 Market Trends

7.2.2 Market Forecast

7.3 Others

7.3.1 Market Trends

7.3.2 Market Forecast



8 Market Breakup by Distribution Channel

8.1 Supermarkets and Hypermarkets

8.1.1 Market Trends

8.1.2 Market Forecast

8.2 Online Stores

8.2.1 Market Trends

8.2.2 Market Forecast

8.3 Others

8.3.1 Market Trends

8.3.2 Market Forecast



9 Market Breakup by Flavour

9.1 Cherry

9.1.1 Market Trends

9.1.2 Market Forecast

9.2 Grapefruit

9.2.1 Market Trends

9.2.2 Market Forecast

9.3 Mango

9.3.1 Market Trends

9.3.2 Market Forecast

9.4 Lime

9.4.1 Market Trends

9.4.2 Market Forecast

9.5 Others

9.5.1 Market Trends

9.5.2 Market Forecast



10 Market Breakup by Region



11 SWOT Analysis



12 Value Chain Analysis



13 Porters Five Forces Analysis



14 Price Analysis



15 Competitive Landscape

15.1 Market Structure

15.2 Key Players

15.3 Profiles of Key Players

15.3.1 Anheuser-Busch InBev

15.3.1.1 Company Overview

15.3.1.2 Product Portfolio

15.3.1.3 Financials

15.3.1.4 SWOT Analysis

15.3.2 Barefoot Cellars (E. & J. Gallo Winery)

15.3.2.1 Company Overview

15.3.2.2 Product Portfolio

15.3.3 Blue Marble Cocktails Inc.

15.3.3.1 Company Overview

15.3.3.2 Product Portfolio

15.3.4 Ficks & Co

15.3.4.1 Company Overview

15.3.4.2 Product Portfolio

15.3.5 Future Proof Brands LLC

15.3.5.1 Company Overview

15.3.5.2 Product Portfolio

15.3.6 Hard Seltzer Beverage Company LLC (The Boston Beer Company Inc)

15.3.6.1 Company Overview

15.3.6.2 Product Portfolio

15.3.7 Lift Bridge Brewing Co.

15.3.7.1 Company Overview

15.3.7.2 Product Portfolio

15.3.8 Oskar Blues Brewery

15.3.8.1 Company Overview

15.3.8.2 Product Portfolio

15.3.9 White Claw Hard Seltzer

15.3.9.1 Company Overview

15.3.9.2 Product Portfolio



For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/hgyetg

Media Contact:

Research and Markets

Laura Wood, Senior Manager

[email protected]



For E.S.T Office Hours Call +1-917-300-0470

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SOURCE Research and Markets

Related Links

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DUBLIN, Dec. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ --

The "Self-Healing Concrete Market: Global Industry Trends, Share, Size, Growth, Opportunity and Forecast 2021-2026" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering.

The global self-healing concrete market exhibited strong growth during 2015-2020. Looking forward, the publisher expects the market to grow at a CAGR of around 33% during 2021-2026. Keeping in mind the uncertainties of COVID-19, we are continuously tracking and evaluating the direct as well as the indirect influence of the pandemic on different end-use sectors. These insights are included in the report as a major market contributor.



Self-healing concrete refers to a synthetic building material capable of automatically healing the cracks and damages. It consists of a bacterium that produces limestone, which expands into a gel to fill the gaps upon coming in contact with water and air. The concrete seals the cracks to protect the steel framework from external impacts and minimizes the risks of corrosion. It is commonly available in autogenic and autonomic self-healing variants. The autogenous variants use moisture for the healing process, whereas the autonomous variants use capsules containing additional healing agents or bacteria spores. As a result, they find extensive applications in the construction of residential, commercial, industrial and civil infrastructure.



Significant growth in the construction industry across the globe is one of the key factors creating a positive outlook for the market. Furthermore, the increasing demand for environment-friendly, reliable and durable constructions, is providing a thrust to the market growth. In line with this, the widespread adoption of vascular-based healing technologies for the construction of modern buildings is also contributing to the market growth. They involve a series or network of tubes containing self-healing concrete, which are passed through the walls to reinforce the building.

Additionally, various product innovations, such as the development of capsule-based self-healing concrete, are acting as other growth-inducing factors. These capsules are highly convenient, permeable and cost-effective for large-scale applications. Other factors, including the implementation of favorable government policies, along with extensive infrastructural developments, especially in the developing economies, are anticipated to drive the market further.

Competitive Landscape:

The competitive landscape of the industry has also been examined along with the profiles of the key players being BASF SE, Basilisk, CEMEX S.A.B. de C.V., GCP Applied Technologies Inc., Hycrete Inc. (Broadview Technologies Inc.), Kryton International Inc., Oscrete (Christeyns UK Ltd.), Penetron, RPM International Inc., Sika AG and Xypex Chemical Corporation.



Key Questions Answered in This Report:

How has the global self-healing concrete market performed so far and how will it perform in the coming years?

What has been the impact of COVID-19 on the global self-healing concrete market?

What are the key regional markets?

What is the breakup of the market based on the form?

What is the breakup of the market based on the application?

What are the various stages in the value chain of the industry?

What are the key driving factors and challenges in the industry?

What is the structure of the global self-healing concrete market and who are the key players?

What is the degree of competition in the industry?

Key Topics Covered:



1 Preface



2 Scope and Methodology

3 Executive Summary



4 Introduction

4.1 Overview

4.2 Key Industry Trends



5 Global Self-Healing Concrete Market

5.1 Market Overview

5.2 Market Performance

5.3 Impact of COVID-19

5.4 Market Forecast



6 Market Breakup by Form

6.1 Intrinsic

6.1.1 Market Trends

6.1.2 Market Forecast

6.2 Capsule-Based

6.2.1 Market Trends

6.2.2 Market Forecast

6.3 Vascular

6.3.1 Market Trends

6.3.2 Market Forecast



7 Market Breakup by Application

7.1 Residential

7.1.1 Market Trends

7.1.2 Market Forecast

7.2 Industrial

7.2.1 Market Trends

7.2.2 Market Forecast

7.3 Commercial

7.3.1 Market Trends

7.3.2 Market Forecast



8 Market Breakup by Region

9 SWOT Analysis

9.1 Overview

9.2 Strengths

9.3 Weaknesses

9.4 Opportunities

9.5 Threats



10 Value Chain Analysis



11 Porters Five Forces Analysis

11.1 Overview

11.2 Bargaining Power of Buyers

11.3 Bargaining Power of Suppliers

11.4 Degree of Competition

11.5 Threat of New Entrants

11.6 Threat of Substitutes



12 Price Analysis



13 Competitive Landscape

13.1 Market Structure

13.2 Key Players

13.3 Profiles of Key Players

13.3.1 BASF SE

13.3.1.1 Company Overview

13.3.1.2 Product Portfolio

13.3.1.3 Financials

13.3.1.4 SWOT Analysis

13.3.2 Basilisk

13.3.2.1 Company Overview

13.3.2.2 Product Portfolio

13.3.3 CEMEX S.A.B. de C.V.

13.3.3.1 Company Overview

13.3.3.2 Product Portfolio

13.3.3.3 Financials

13.3.3.4 SWOT Analysis

13.3.4 GCP Applied Technologies Inc.

13.3.4.1 Company Overview

13.3.4.2 Product Portfolio

13.3.4.3 Financials

13.3.5 Hycrete Inc. (Broadview Technologies Inc.)

13.3.5.1 Company Overview

13.3.5.2 Product Portfolio

13.3.5.3 SWOT Analysis

13.3.6 Kryton International Inc.

13.3.6.1 Company Overview

13.3.6.2 Product Portfolio

13.3.7 Oscrete (Christeyns UK Ltd.)

13.3.7.1 Company Overview

13.3.7.2 Product Portfolio

13.3.8 Penetron

13.3.8.1 Company Overview

13.3.8.2 Product Portfolio

13.3.9 RPM International Inc.

13.3.9.1 Company Overview

13.3.9.2 Product Portfolio

13.3.9.3 Financials

13.3.9.4 SWOT Analysis

13.3.10 Sika AG

13.3.10.1 Company Overview

13.3.10.2 Product Portfolio

13.3.10.3 Financials

13.3.11 Xypex Chemical Corporation

13.3.11.1 Company Overview

13.3.11.2 Product Portfolio

For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/4q7bnw

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: 646-607-1907

Fax (outside U.S.): +353-1-481-1716

SOURCE Research and Markets

Related Links

http://www.researchandmarkets.com


DUBLIN, Dec. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The "Workflow Management System Market: Global Industry Trends, Share, Size, Growth, Opportunity and Forecast 2021-2026" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering.

The global workflow management system market grew at a CAGR of around 21% during 2015 & 2020. Workforce management (WFM) refers to a collection of tools and processes that enables an organization to monitor and centralize the data for their human resource utilization. It includes various performance-based software and tools to enhance the efficiencies of front-line supervisors, corporate management, managers and workers across the organization.

It can perform multiple functions, such as workforce forecast and scheduling, HR management and workforce analysis. It can also create customized workflows that enhance overall productivity and make decision-making more efficient. Owing to this, it finds extensive applications across various industries, including banking, financial services, and insurance (BFSI), healthcare, transportation and logistics, energy, retail and information technology (IT) and telecom.



The growing need for automation across industries, along with the increasing adoption of cloud-based solutions, represents one of the key factors driving the growth of the market. With an increasing focus on workforce optimization, organizations are extensively employing WFM solutions to manage time and avoid duplication of tasks. Furthermore, cloud-based solutions minimize the requirements for physical hardware, which is also boosting the adoption of these solutions in organizations. The platform also reduces the overall operational costs and enhances the scalability of the infrastructure by providing access to various endpoints.

Additionally, increasing penetration of smartphones, along with the prevailing trend of Bring-Your-Own-Devices (BYOD), is also creating a positive impact on the market growth. With the deployment of WFM solutions, the employer can track the progress on tasks at any point of time while providing the employees with secure access to official files. Other factors, including rapid urbanization, especially in developing economies, rising awareness about the benefits of WFM, and extensive research and development (R&D) activities in the field of IT, are expected to drive the market further. Looking forward, the publisher expects the global workflow management system market to exhibit strong growth during the next five years.

Competitive Landscape:

The competitive landscape of the industry has also been examined along with the profiles of the key players being Appian Corporation, Bizagi (Vision Software S.A.), IBM Corporation, Newgen Software Technologies Limited, Nintex Global Limited, Oracle Corporation, Pegasystems Inc., Software AG and Xerox Corporation.



Key Questions Answered in This Report:

How has the global workflow management system market performed so far and how will it perform in the coming years?

What has been the impact of COVID-19 on the global workflow management system market?

What are the key regional markets?

What is the breakup of the market based on the component?

What is the breakup of the market based on the deployment type?

What is the breakup of the market based on the vertical?

What are the various stages in the value chain of the industry?

What are the key driving factors and challenges in the industry?

What is the structure of the global workflow management system market and who are the key players?

What is the degree of competition in the industry?

Key Topics Covered:



1 Preface



2 Scope and Methodology



3 Executive Summary



4 Introduction

4.1 Overview

4.2 Key Industry Trends



5 Global Workflow Management System Market

5.1 Market Overview

5.2 Market Performance

5.3 Impact of COVID-19

5.4 Market Forecast



6 Market Breakup by Component

6.1 Software

6.1.1 Market Trends

6.1.2 Market Forecast

6.2 Services

6.2.1 Market Trends

6.2.2 Market Forecast



7 Market Breakup by Deployment Type

7.1 Cloud-Based

7.1.1 Market Trends

7.1.2 Market Forecast

7.2 On-Premises

7.2.1 Market Trends

7.2.2 Market Forecast



8 Market Breakup by Vertical

8.1 BFSI

8.1.1 Market Trends

8.1.2 Market Forecast

8.2 Healthcare

8.2.1 Market Trends

8.2.2 Market Forecast

8.3 Energy

8.3.1 Market Trends

8.3.2 Market Forecast

8.4 Retail

8.4.1 Market Trends

8.4.2 Market Forecast

8.5 IT and Telecom

8.5.1 Market Trends

8.5.2 Market Forecast

8.6 Transportation and Logistics

8.6.1 Market Trends

8.6.2 Market Forecast

8.7 Education

8.7.1 Market Trends

8.7.2 Market Forecast

8.8 Others

8.8.1 Market Trends

8.8.2 Market Forecast



9 Market Breakup by Region

10 SWOT Analysis



11 Value Chain Analysis



12 Porters Five Forces Analysis

13 Price Analysis



14 Competitive Landscape

14.1 Market Structure

14.2 Key Players

14.3 Profiles of Key Players

14.3.1 Appian Corporation

14.3.1.1 Company Overview

14.3.1.2 Product Portfolio

14.3.1.3 Financials

14.3.2 Bizagi (Vision Software S.A.)

14.3.2.1 Company Overview

14.3.2.2 Product Portfolio

14.3.2.3 Financials

14.3.3 IBM Corporation

14.3.3.1 Company Overview

14.3.3.2 Product Portfolio

14.3.3.3 Financials

14.3.3.4 SWOT Analysis

14.3.4 Newgen Software Technologies Limited

14.3.4.1 Company Overview

14.3.4.2 Product Portfolio

14.3.4.3 Financials

14.3.5 Nintex Global Limited

14.3.5.1 Company Overview

14.3.5.2 Product Portfolio

14.3.5.3 Financials

14.3.6 Oracle Corporation

14.3.6.1 Company Overview

14.3.6.2 Product Portfolio

14.3.6.3 Financials

14.3.6.4 SWOT Analysis

14.3.7 Pegasystems Inc.

14.3.7.1 Company Overview

14.3.7.2 Product Portfolio

14.3.7.3 Financials

14.3.7.4 SWOT Analysis

14.3.8 Software AG

14.3.8.1 Company Overview

14.3.8.2 Product Portfolio

14.3.8.3 Financials

14.3.9 Xerox Corporation

14.3.9.1 Company Overview

14.3.9.2 Product Portfolio

14.3.9.3 Financials

14.3.9.4 SWOT Analysis

For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/cox94v

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: 646-607-1907

Fax (outside U.S.): +353-1-481-1716



SOURCE Research and Markets

Related Links

http://www.researchandmarkets.com


HOUSTON, Dec. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Zeta Energy LLC is pleased to announce that it will be moving into a new 12,000+ square foot facility in West Houston, Texas. This facility will be used for the advancement of Zeta Energy's material chemistry and process development for its proprietary lithium-sulfur battery technology. The facility is expected to be fully operational by Q2 2022, and will employ 40 employees including 25 dedicated researchers, battery engineers and development personnel.

As noted by Chief Executive Officer Charles Maslin, "Houston's petrochemical industry and the availability of experienced technical talent will accelerate our growth towards commercialization of our exciting lithium sulfur battery technology." Chief Operating Officer Tom Pilette, adds, "Houston is the ideal location for us to advance our core battery and materials technology. With this new facility we will be able to demonstrate the performance and cost characteristics of our proprietary technology and help accelerate electrification and the transition to green energy and beyond."

Zeta Energy develops and produces high density, long lasting, cobalt-free and nickel-free lithium-sulfur batteries. Zeta Energy anticipates that its batteries will cost less than $70 kWh at commercial scale.

About Zeta Energy

Zeta Energy is a US-based privately-held company focused on developing and commercializing high performance, safe, rechargeable batteries that are lower cost and sustainably manufactured. Zeta has filed more than thirty patents on its proprietary carbon nanotube anode and sulfur cathode technology. The Company may from time to time disclose public material events via its website at http://www.ZetaEnergy.com or its social media accounts at the following locations:

https://www.linkedin.com/company/zeta-energy-llc/about/

https://twitter.com/ZetaEnergy

SOURCE Zeta Energy
Nellore, Dec 10 : At least five persons are missing and feared dead after an autorickshaw fell into the Beeraperu stream near Sangam in Nellore district on Thursday evening.

The mishap took place at around 9.30 p.m. when the autorickshaw, which was crossing the bridge over the stream, collided with a truck coming from the opposite direction.

According to eyewitnesses, twelve persons were travelling from Atmakuru, in the 'ill-fated' autorickshaw, to spend the night at the temple in Sangam. Police and passersby rushed to the spot and managed to rescue seven of the travellers from the stream. However, a child, who was among those rescued is reported to be in a critical condition.

Efforts are on to trace the remaining five persons who were in the autorickshaw when it fell into the stream. But darkness is proving to be a hindrance to search and rescue efforts. Streams and rivers in the district have been in spate since the cyclone in November, when the district experienced heavy rains.

The district police authorities said that seven persons have been rescued with the help of local people. Arrangements are being made to organise boats for search and rescue operations.
Gurugram, Dec 10 : In a bid to deal with the cybercrime cases swiftly, all the police stations in Gurugram will soon have a cyber help desk.

Currently, the city has only one cybercrime help desk.

The announcement was made by the Commissioner of Gurugram Police K.K. Rao while presiding a crime meeting along with all the senior police officers at his camp office on Thursday.

The commissioner said that cybercrime is increasing day by day and due to having only one cyber police station, it is not easy for all victims to reach the cyber police station, so as per the orders of the higher officers, instructions have been given to make a cyber help desk in all the police stations.

Further, interacting with the officers, the Commissioner discussed several other aspects such as controlling crimes and criminals, disposal of pending complaints, crimes against women and children and taking swift action against proclaimed criminals, patrolling, setting up checkpoints on strategic roads and smuggling of arms, illicit liquor and narcotics.

Rao ordered officials to keep an eye on those who violate traffic rules, steal vehicles and those involved in a hit and run incidents through cameras and ensure action against them.

"Gurugram Police is issuing 1,000 challans daily through CCTV cameras. It is taking immediate action against those involved in vehicle thefts, road accidents and violating traffic rules," he said.

He ordered prompt action on the complaints received through various channels include complaints received in the offices of Commissioner of Police, Deputy Commissioner of Police, Assistant Commissioner of Police, complaints received in the police stations and through online medium, so that the common man do not face any inconvenience.

The commissioner also directed officials to dispose of the complaints within a week period.
Gandhinagar, Dec 10 : The Dutch and the Gujarat governments are in talks over improving farming in salinity ingressed waters of the state's shoreline. The Netherlands Business Support Office (NBSO) in Ahmedabad has even indicated that a 'Centre of Excellence' (CoE) is coming up for the purpose in Gujarat.

"There were discussions which were already happening in Gujarat (before the Covid-19 situation), to create a Centre of Excellence in saline farming. A huge percentage of land has a lot of salinity, not just near the coastal areas but also inside the hinterland in Gujarat. The salinity is more than what is cultivable for traditional farming," the Trade and Investment Commissioner, Netherlands Business Support Office (NBSO) Amlan Bora told reporters.

Bora said that the Netherlands faced a similar problem with a significant part of the country below sea level. Almost 27 per cent of the Netherlands is below sea level.

"Together with the Wageningen University, the most premier university in the world for agriculture and working with seed companies, water companies, forming a consortium, the Dutch has developed over the last fifteen years, ways of cultivating in saline waters," added Bora.

"Interestingly, the process of cultivating in saline waters require less fresh waters than traditional farming. We had a couple of discussion going on with the Gujarat government but unfortunately, the Covid-19 situation picked up," he asserted.

"This can reduce the salinity ingressed areas of the state.. This is definitely one area, where such a Centre of Excellence can come up, but it all depends on the interests and willingness of both the partners," Bora said.

Soil salinity is affecting large areas in the world and millions of farmers affected with it and many are even forced to migrate. Salt tolerant crops can help these farmers to increase their yields and provide a good livelihood in salt affected areas.

The Dutch government have set up seven Centres of Excellence in different parts of India, in many states, Marten van den Berg, the Ambassador of the Netherlands to India, Nepal and Bhutan told the reporters. These centres cover variety of sectors such as potatoes, vegetables, dairy and such.

"These CoE will be not having a very high end technologies, but low and medium technologies. But it is very important to teach the farmers to adapt these technologies," said the Dutch Ambassador.

Berg also hinted that there might be a CoE in Gujarat also if the talks with the government were fruitful.

Berg was leading a delegation of Dutch companies which are participating in 'Agri Asia 2021', an international exhibition and conference on agricultural technologies being held between December 9 and 11 at helipad ground in Gandhinagar.
United Nations, Dec 10 : UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has called for an end to identity-based discrimination, among other measures, to prevent genocide.

Today, genocide remains a very real threat. The international community has repeatedly failed to respond collaboratively, swiftly and decisively to prevent genocide and related atrocity crimes, he said in a message on the International Day of Commemoration and Dignity of the Victims of the Crime of Genocide, Xinhua news agency reported.

Today, the world faces the highest number of violent conflicts since 1945. They are lasting longer and are increasingly complex. Impunity is rife and human rights and the rule of law are regularly ignored. Identity-based hate speech, incitement and discrimination continue to spread and are increasingly being used for political manipulation and gain. These are all alarming warning signs that should prompt action, he said.

"We know what is needed. We must eliminate identity-based discrimination and recognize diversity as a strength. We must respect human rights and the rule of law. We must ensure accountability and reparations for past atrocity crimes. And we must reconcile and restore broken communities," Guterres said.

States have the primary responsibility for preventing genocide. But this cannot be achieved without the participation of society as a whole. Young people, religious and community leaders, the private sector and the media, especially social media platforms, all have a responsibility to become champions of prevention, he said. "By working together, we can avoid the egregious mistakes of the past."
Paris, Dec 10 : French President Emmanuel Macron has presented France's presidency of the Council of the European Union (EU), under the motto "Recovery, Power, Belonging".

The first axis of France's presidency is Europe's sovereignty, Xinhua news agency quoted Macron as saying.

France plans to move towards" a Europe that is powerful in the world, fully sovereign, free in its choices and in charge of its own destiny," Macron said.

The Schengen area will be politically monitored under EU public institutions to control the circulation of EU population and migrants.

France also plans to use its presidency to define strategic European sovereignty with NATO and neighboring countries over the African continent and the Balkans.

The second axis is a new European model of production, solidarity and regulation. "Europe must be able to follow technological advancement and take into consideration the environmental crisis," Macron said.

Content regulation and digital responsibility will allow the EU to be a digitalized continental power, Macron said.

"We will also move forwards negotiations on the creation of a European instrument to fight against imported deforestation, which is to ban imports to the European Union of soya, beef, palm oil, cocoa and coffee when they contribute to deforestation," Macron said.

France also wants the EU to promote international rights, values and bring a positive image and example to the international community, according to Macron.

"Europeans must know its history and accomplishments to fight against racism, antisemitism, fake news and hate speech," the French president said.

During the press conference, Macron also announced different dates of meetings with officials regarding the different axis of France's presidency of the Council of the EU.
Seoul, Dec 10 : Top military officials of South Korea and the US have met to discuss the possibility of conducting an assessment required for the envisioned transfer of wartime operational control (OPCON) earlier than the current plan of next fall, sources said Friday.

Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Won In-choul and Gen. Paul LaCamera, the head of the South Korea-US Combined Forces Command (CFC), held closed-door talks Thursday to discuss the timing of the full operational capability (FOC) assessment, the second part of a three-phase program to verify if South Korea is ready to lead the allies' combined forces, Yonhap news agency quoted the sources as saying.

The meeting came a week after US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin reportedly agreed to consider advancing the timing for the FOC assessment during a courtesy call on President Moon Jae-in in Seoul.

During their annual security talks here last Thursday, Defence Minister Suh Wook and Austin agreed to conduct the assessment next fall, though Seoul has apparently sought more progress in the OPCON transition process before the term of the Moon administration ends in May.

During the meeting with LaCamera, Won was expected to reiterate Seoul's hope to conduct the FOC assessment in the first half of next year.

"I understand Commander LaCamera listened to Won's view, and there may be more meetings between them going forward," a source said on condition of anonymity.

The allies completed the initial operational capability assessment, the first part of the verification program, in 2019.

The FOC assessment has been delayed due in part to the Covid-19 pandemic. But last week's bilateral agreement to fix the year for the FOC assessment raised hopes that the overall OPCON transfer process will pick up pace.
Bengaluru, Dec 10 : Polling began on Friday for 25 seats of the Karnataka Legislative Council. As many as 90 candidates are in the fray.

Voting is scheduled between 8 a.m. to 4 p.m.

Of the 90 candidates trying their luck, 89 are male and the lone female contender is Congress' Gayathri Shanthe Gowda.

About 99,062 voters will exercise their franchise. Among these, 47,205 are male and 51,854 are female voters.

The state's ruling BJP and the Congress have fielded candidates in 20 constituencies, while the JD (S) is contesting in six and the AAP in three constituencies.

While, there is a direct fight between the BJP and the Congress in 13 constituencies, the stage is set for a triangle battle in eight seats.

Strong independent candidates are in the fray in Belagavi and Dharwad constituencies.

The results will be announced on December 14 and it is regarded as a precursor for the 2023 state Assembly elections.

Friday's elections are crucial for the ruling BJP to attain a majority in the 75-member Upper House. The party won seven seats in the last polls.

While, Chief Minister B.S. Yediyurappa has announced that the BJP would win at least 15 seats, Leader of the Opposition in the state Assembly Siddaramaiah has claimed that the saffron party is in for a defeat as the people are fed up of its policies.

The JD(S) has rejected the offer of alliance by the BJP and expressed confidence of winning all six seats it is contesting.
Dakshina Kannada : , Dec 10 (IANS) The Karnataka Police have arrested the wife and another person on charges of helping accused senior advocate K.S.N. Rajesh Bhat, who is still elusive even after the police department launched a hunt for him in October, police sources said on Friday.

The victim filed a case of sexual harassment against the accused senior advocate Bhat on October 18. According to police sources, the accused's wife and another person named Achyuth Bhat were found to be allegedly cooperating with the advocate and helping him to escape from the police. Both the accused have been produced before the court and they were released on bail, police sources said.

Earlier, the Karnataka High Court had rejected the bail petition of the accused K.S.N. Rajesh accused of sexually harassing a law graduate at his office in Mangaluru. Police Commissioner Mangaluru, N. Shashikumar stated the police had convinced the court why the accused advocate shouldn't get bail. The court also issued arrest orders against him.

The police have not been able to arrest him so far and have issued a Lookout notice to prevent him from escaping to another country. All his bank accounts have been freezed.

The police department has suspended two police officers including a female sub-inspector for dereliction of duty in connection with the case and arrested three persons.

The victim had questioned the police as to why they have not been able to arrest the accused for so long. The accused advocate K.S.N. Rajesh Bhat had been suspended from the membership of the Karnataka State Bar Council until further orders and instructions were given not to practice at the courts following the FIR on him.

The Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) authorities had directed the accused advocate not to continue as the Special Public Prosecutor (SPP) of ACB at Third Additional District and Sessions court.
New Delhi, Dec 10 : The Lok Sabha on Friday is likely to discuss and pass the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (Amendment) Bill, 2021. The government had introduced the Bill in the Lok Sabha on December 6.

Union Minister Nirmala Sitharaman will move the Bill to further amend the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act, 1985. She will also move the Bill for passing by the House.

The opposition members will move a statutory resolution that this House (Lok Sabha) disapproves of the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (Amendment) Ordinance, 2021 promulgated by the President on September 30, 2021.

Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya to move a motion for election of one member of Lok Sabha as a member of the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), Bilaspur (Himachal Pradesh).

Lok Sabha secretary general will report two messages from the Rajya Sabha that the Assisted Reproductive Technology (Regulation) Bill, 2021 and the National Institute of Pharmaceutical Education and Research (Amendment) Bill, 2021 has passed by the Upper House.

Under rule 193, further discussion in the Lok Sabha will take place on climate change which was started by Kanimozhi Karunanidhi on Wednesday.

On Friday, several private members Bills will also be taken up in the Lok Sabha. Lok Sabha member from Bihar Janardhan Singh Sigriwal is to move a private member Bill for inclusion of 'Bhojpuri' language in the Eighth Schedule of the Constitution. Congress member Shashi Tharoor to move a private member bill for 'Steps to mitigate the impact of climate change'.

Dr Gaddam Ranjith Reddy to move a private member Bill for formulation of a comprehensive national policy for procurement of foodgrains.

The Lok Sabha is likely to hold further discussion on member Ritesh Pandey's resolution which was moved in March last year for taking welfare measures for anganwadi workers and helpers.

-- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text
Washington, Dec 10 : A US federal appeals court has ruled to reject former President Donald Trump's bid to block the National Archives from turning over his administration's records to a House panel investigating the January 6 Capitol riot.

On Thursday, the three-judge panel of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously rejected the arguments by the former President's lawyers that their client could assert executive privilege to prevent the current administration from sharing the Trump White House's documents with the House Select Committee to Investigate the attack, reports Xinhua news agency.

"The central question in this case is whether, despite the exceptional and imperative circumstances underlying the Committee's request and President (Joe) Biden's decision, a federal court can, at the former President's behest, override President Biden's decision not to invoke privilege and prevent his release to Congress of documents in his possession that he deems to be needed for a critical legislative inquiry," Judge Patricia Millett wrote in a 68-page opinion for the panel.

"On the record before us, former President Trump has provided no basis for this court to override President Biden's judgment and the agreement and accommodations worked out between the Political Branches over these documents.

"Both Branches agree that there is a unique legislative need for these documents and that they are directly relevant to the Committee's inquiry into an attack on the Legislative Branch and its constitutional role in the peaceful transfer of power," the opinion added.

The court said the transfer of the records could begin in 14 days, before which Trump is allowed to ask the Supreme Court to intervene in the case.

Immediately following the ruling, the Trump team vowed to appeal it.

"Regardless of today's decision by the appeals court, this case was always destined for the Supreme Court. President Trump's duty to defend the Constitution and the Office of the Presidency continues, and he will keep fighting for every American and every future Administration," said Liz Harrington, the former President's spokesperson.

Trump in October sued the House committee and the National Archives to stop the Biden administration from allowing the release of his White House's documents related to the insurrection on Capitol Hill.

Biden, in his capacity as the incumbent president, had denied Trump of his executive privilege covering the information requested, saying his predecessor's effort to stonewall the congressional investigation was neither in the best interest of the US nor justified.

Trump's suit, however, was quickly tossed out by Judge Tanya Chutkan of the US District Court for the District of Columbia (DDC). He then appealed the judge's decision in the D.C. Circuit, which fast tracked the case.

The National Archives, which is the custodian of the records at issue, said in an October filing in the DDC that the records Trump wanted to keep from lawmakers totalled over 770 pages, including files related to Mark Meadows, the former White House chief of staff; Stephen Miller, Trump's former senior adviser; and Patrick Philbin, his former deputy counsel.

Trump is also objecting to the release of the White House Daily Diary -- which details a President's movements, phone calls, trips, briefings, meetings and activities -- as well as logs showing phone calls to Trump and to Vice President Mike Pence concerning events on January 6, according to the filing.

Trump has also asserted executive privilege over records containing proposed talking points for Kayleigh McEnany, his former press secretary; a handwritten note concerning January 6; a draft text of a presidential speech for the "Save America" rally that preceded the mob attack; and a draft executive order on the topic of election integrity, the filing said.

Resolute throughout the legal fight, Trump has instructed other key investigatees targeted by the select committee to cite the executive privilege and not cooperate with the probe.

The former President's one-time chief strategist, Steve Bannon, did accordingly and, as a result, is now being criminally prosecuted for contempt of Congress.

Meadows also did what he was told by his former boss and is now facing the same criminal contempt referral from Congress to the Justice Department.
Panaji, Dec 10 : On the eve of Congress General Secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra's visit to Goa on Friday, state BJP president Sadanand Shet Tanavade hinted that a senior Goa Congress leader could be switching over to the ruling party.

To a question from a mediaperson about the likelihood of a Congress heavyweight joining the BJP on Friday, Tanavade late on Thursday said: "I am not denying, but someone could be joining".

In all, 14 Congress MLAs have joined the BJP since 2017, leaving the Congress party with just three MLAs in the 40-member state legislative Assembly.

Tanavade's comment comes not only days after former Chief Minister and Congress MLA Ravi Naik quit his legislatorship and joined the BJP on December 7, but ahead of Priyanka's day-long visit to the coastal state on Friday.

Priyanka is scheduled to visit a tribal village, Morpirla in South Goa where she will interact with local residents, state Congress president Girish Chodankar said. Priyanka will also interact with students, who were at the forefront of a campaign to protest deforestation at the Mollem wildlife sanctuary to make way for road, rail expansion and a power project.

"She will also be addressing a women's convention and preside over a function, where a large number of activists are joining the Congress party," Chodankar said.
Washington, Dec 10 : The US Senate has cleared a key procedural hurdle to raise the debt ceiling, paving the way for it to approve the legislation by a simple majority vote.

On Thursday, all Democrats and 14 Republicans in the 50-50 split chamber voted in favour of the measure, which would allow Congress to increase the statutory borrowing limit by a set amount, reports Xinhua news agency.

Republicans previously refused to support Democrats' efforts to raise the debt ceiling, arguing that the latter should deal with the crisis on their own, since they control both chambers of Congress and the White House, while complaining about Democrats' lack of bipartisanship in crafting major spending bills.

After weeks of exchanging blames, lawmakers in October agreed to extend the debt ceiling through early December, temporarily staving off economic disaster.

The latest vote, which came after Republican leader Mitch McConnell reached a deal with Democrat leaders on the issue, broke months of impasse and would help avert a looming debt default.

"I cannot overstate how critical it is that Congress address this issue. America must pay its bills on time and in full. If we do not, we will eviscerate our current recovery," Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen told lawmakers last week.

"There is uncertainty about where we will be on December 15, and there are scenarios in which we can see it would not be possible to finance the government," she said.

Failure to pay the nation's bills on time could send immediate ripple effects throughout the global economy, particularly during a time of economic recovery and heightened uncertainty over a new Covid-19 variant, according to the Bipartisan Policy Center, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank.

The debt limit, commonly called the debt ceiling, is the total amount of money that the US government is authorized to borrow to meet its existing legal obligations, including social security and medicare benefits, interest on the national debt, and other payments.
Los Angeles, Dec 10 : Former 'Empire' star was convicted of five counts of lying to the police about the incident, where he claimed to have been the victim of a racist, homophobic assault. He was however, acquitted on a sixth charge.

At trial this week, Smollett, 39, stood by denials that he staged the hoax attack against himself, reports the BBC.

Prosecutors countered that he "lied for hours" on the stand as he repeated what he told to Chicago police.

He was found guilty on Thursday of five counts of disorderly conduct.

Each count carries a penalty of up to three years in prison. Given Smollett's lack of previous convictions, experts have said a lighter sentence or probation is likely.

A sentencing date has yet to be scheduled.

The jury of six men and six women reached its decision a day after deliberations began.

The trial stemmed from the January 2019 incident when the actor told police he was the victim of an attack.

Smollett, who is black and gay, told police he was set upon by two assailants who shouted slurs, yelled a Trump slogan, dumped a "chemical substance" on him, and tied a noose around his neck while he was walking late at night in Chicago.

Authorities opened an investigation into the attack, but in February of that year, police charged Smollett with filing a false police report, alleging he had staged the assault.

He faced a total of six charges, each referring to different instances in which he was accused of lying to police. He was found guilty of five of the six charges, meaning that the last one had not been proven in court.

At trial, jurors heard from brothers Abimbola and Olabinjo Osundairo, who said Smollett had orchestrated the attack himself and paid them $3,500 to carry it out.

Smollett said the cheque was for a meal and workout plan from Abimbola, a friend and an extra on 'Empire', a TV drama about a hip-hop dynasty.

Asked by his defence lawyer if he gave the man payment for the alleged scheme, Smollett replied: "Never." He also testified that he and Abimbola were involved in a sexual relationship before the alleged attack.

Special prosecutor Dan Webb asked the actor repeatedly about a "hoax" attack. Each time, Smollett denied that was the case.

"There was no hoax on my part. Any question you're going to ask about that is going to be denied," he said.

In his closing arguments, Webb said Smollett caused Chicago police to spend enormous resources investigating the alleged crime.

"Besides being against the law, it is just plain wrong to outright denigrate something as serious as a real hate crime and then make sure it involved words and symbols that have such historical significance in our country." Outside the court after the verdict was read, Webb added that "for Mr Smollett to get up in front of (the jury) and lie for hours and hours, that really compounded his misconduct".

He called it "unexpected" that Smollett would lie repeatedly during trial, and said that it will be something that he raises with the judge during sentencing.

Nenye Uche, a lawyer for Smollett, said that the team "obviously respectfully disagree with the jury's verdict", and that they are "100 per cent confident" that the case will be overturned on appeal.

Authorities have said Smollett wanted to boost his profile because he was "dissatisfied with his salary" on 'Empire'. By the fifth season of the show, he said he was being paid $100,000 per episode.

He was eventually written out amid the controversy around the alleged attack.
Seoul, Dec 10 : Young South Koreans suffered more severe employment shock than older people since the Covid-19 pandemic broke out in March 2020 and fresh college and high school graduates faced greater difficulty in finding jobs, a report revealed on Friday.

The employment rate for Koreans aged 15-34 reached 50.5 per cent in January, down from 52.8 per cent a year earlier, according to the report by the Statistics Korea Institute.

The corresponding rate for people aged 35-64 came to 71.2 per cent in January, down from 73.6 per cent the previous year, Yonhap News Agency quoted the report as saying.

In particular, those who graduated from college or high schools less than a year ago had more difficulty in finding jobs.

Among them, the employment rate for men who graduated from college or university reported a 12.1 percentage point on-year fall in August and September last year when the country was gripped by the second wave of the pandemic.

For women who graduated from high schools less than a year earlier, the employment rate fell 14.4 percentage points on-year in March and April 2020 and 14.9 percentage points in October and November 2020 from the previous year.
San Francisco, Dec 10 : Apple has shut one of its retail stores in Texas in the US after at least four of its staff members were found Covid-19 positive, the media reported.

According to NBC News, the Apple store in Southlake, Texas, was closed Wednesday through Sunday following an outbreak of positive Covid cases among staff members.

"The store, which has 151 employees, reported four positive cases immediately after Black Friday on November 26," according to an internal email obtained by NBC.

Now, 22 employees "have shared that they're positive for Covid-19," a store manager told staff during a meeting, the report said late on Thursday.

All employees will be required to take a rapid antigen test on Sunday before the store's scheduled reopening on Monday.

NBC spoke with four current and former employees at the Southlake store who said "they've received calls from their manager encouraging them to come to work, even when they called out sick. In two of these cases, the employee had taken the Covid-19 survey and the results said not to come in." An Apple spokesperson was quoted as saying that the company has prioritised the health and well-being of customers and employees since the early days of the pandemic.

"As we continue to face these ongoing challenges, we remain committed to a comprehensive approach for our teams that combines regular testing with daily health checks, employee masking, deep cleaning and paid sick leave," the spokesperson added.

Apple reopened all of its 270 retail stores in the US last year. It was on March 13, 2020 when Apple closed all of its retail stores outside of Greater China.

The tech giant has set February 1, 2022, as the return date to office for its employees worldwide, as the tech giant prepares for a hybrid workplace in 2022.

Apple had earlier delayed return to office until at least January 2022, as the US witnessed a surge in cases of the Delta variant of Covid-19.
Vienna, Dec 10 : Talks aimed at reaching common ground on the Iranian nuclear situation held in Vienna are underway and this is the seventh round of negotiations on the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) currently being negotiated by EU officials and China, France, Germany, Russia, the US and Iran.

The goal of the JCPOA is to restore the 2015 nuclear agreement, which the US withdrew from in 2018 under the administration of former President Donald Trump, unilaterally re-imposing sanctions on Iran, reports Xinhua news agency.

Tehran has retaliated by gradually stopping implementing elements of the deal since May 2019.

Deputy Secretary-General of the European External Action Service Enrique Mora, who chaired Thursday's talks, told reporters later that all parties are "very committed" to "bringing the JCPOA back to life".

A working group on nuclear issues will continue on Friday.

Discussions were difficult due to the parties' different positions, Mora said, but: "We are not starting from scratch. We are starting from very solid work, done over a number of weeks by all the delegations." He emphasized the need to be "extremely realistic about what we can get." Mikhail Ulyanov, Russia's permanent representative to international organisations in Vienna, said on Twitter that Thursday's meeting was "rather short and constructive".

Parties were in agreement over the need to finalize the talks swiftly, he added.

The seventh round of talks started on November 29, lasting for five days, during which Iran submitted draft proposals for a restored 2015 nuclear agreement.

However, senior diplomats from the UK, France and Germany on December 3 voiced "disappointment and concern after thoroughly and carefully analysing Iranian proposed changes to the text negotiated during the previous six rounds".
Chennai, Dec 10 : The Tamil BJP has urged the state Election Commissioner to conduct Urban local body elections in a single phase.

In a letter to the commissioner, state president of BJP's advocate wing R.C. Paul Kanagaraj, on Thursday said that conducting the polls in a single phase would lead to less influence for the ruling party.

The Urban Local body elections scheduled for early January 2022 have been postponed to February on the ruling DMK's request in view of heavy rains and Covid-19 pandemic.

Kanagaraj alleged that the state Election Commission played second fiddle to the ruling DMK in the recent rural local body elections and the BJP is expecting the same for the Urban local body elections and hence the letter.

He has also demanded action against the contractors who had installed CCTV cameras during the rural local body elections that failed to capture the poll process. He also sought appointment of an election officer and an observer from either the Government of India or from a Central Public sector undertaking.

The letter also asked 100 per cent webcasting of the election process in problematic booths. It also called upon the deployment of the Central Industrial Security Force (CISF) and Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) for election duty.

Kanagaraj demanded that the Election Commission ensures free and fair polls without any loopholes and prevents any undue influence of the ruling DMK in the poll process.
New Delhi, Dec 10 : Union Home Minister Amit Shah Home paid tributes to Chief of Defence Staff (CDS) General Bipin Rawat and his wife, who lost their lives along with 11 others in the military chopper crash in Tamil Nadu.

Around 10 a.m., the mortal remains of Rawat and his wife Madhulika Rawat arrived at his official residence at Kamraj Road from the Base Hospital here.

A large number of people also gathered at the residence to pay their last respects. Last rites of General Rawat and his wife will take place later in the day at Brar Square at Delhi Cantt.

Defence Minister Rajnath Singh paid tribute to Brig L.S. Lidder at Brar Square at Delhi Cantt, before cremation. Haryana Chief Minister M.L. Khattar also paid tribute to Brig Lidder at Brar Square.

On Thursday evening, the mortal remains of General Bipin Rawat, his wife Madhulika Rawat and 11 other armed forces personnel were brought to the Palam airport. Indian Air Force chief Air Chief Marshal V.R. Chaudhari brought the mortal remains of all the deceased. Earlier in the day, the mortal remains were moved in a convoy from Wellington to Sulur. From Sulur, the mortal remains were flown to Delhi in an Indian Air Force aircraft.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi paid his homage to General Rawat, his wife and 11 other armed forces personnel at the Palam airport. He also met the bereaved families.

Before the Prime Minister, Defence Minister Singh also reached the airport and met the family members of all the deceased and expressed his condolences to them.

-- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text
New Delhi, Dec 10 : Logistics technology platform Shiprocket on Friday said it has signed a definitive agreement for a $185 million (Rs 1,380 crore) Series E funding round, co-led by Zomato, Temasek and Lightrock India.

This marks Shiprocket's third round of funding in 2021, bringing the total funds raised to $280 million.

Shiprocket focuses on providing Amazon Prime-like shipping experiences for sellers and consumers across India in direct-to-consumer e-commerce.

"We are excited about the vast, untapped opportunity that lies in post-purchase technology enablement in the D2C e-commerce space. This fundraise is a validation of the hard work put in by the entire Shiprocket team over the last 4 years," said Saahil Goel, CEO and Co-founder, Shiprocket.

New investors, Moore Strategic Ventures and 9unicorns, are also participating in this round, along with existing investors, InfoEdge Ventures and March Capital.

Launched in 2017, Shiprocket is the fastest company to become profitable in 24 months while also doubling its ARR (annual run rate) over the last 6 months.

Shiprocket said it will deploy fresh funds towards aggressive core product expansion, research and development, talent acquisition, and development of a comprehensive suite of products for retailers.

"With the launch of our services in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in November 2021, we have also taken the first step towards expanding our footprint in new geographies," said Goel.

Shiprocket also provides a technology stack to help retailers integrate their shopping websites on Shopify, Magento, WooCommerce, Zoho and others for workflow, inventory and order management.

"Shiprocket plugs a big hole in the e-commerce space by offering customers of direct-to-consumer brands a seamless post checkout experience, including delivery," said Deepinder Goyal, CEO and Co-founder, Zomato.
New Delhi, Dec 10 : The Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) militant outfit has declined to extend the month-long ceasefire with the Pakistan government, accusing it of failing to honour the decisions reached earlier. The announcement has put the nascent peace efforts into the doldrums, Dawn news reported.

According to the TTP statement issued on Thursday, the Imran Khan-led government not only failed to implement the decisions reached between the two sides but to the contrary, the security forces conducted raids in Dera Ismail Khan, Lakki Marwat, Swat, Bajaur, Swabi and North Waziristan and killed and detained militants.

"Under these circumstances, it is not possible to extend the ceasefire," the TTP said.

Earlier in an audio message, Mufti Noor Wali Mahsud announced an end to the ceasefire and asked his fighters to resume attacks past 12 a.m..

The ceasefire had come into effect on November 9.

In the audio, Mufti Noor says that since the TTP has not heard back from the mediators or the government, therefore, past midnight, his fighters reserve the right to resume attacks wherever they were.

A statement issued by the TTP late in the evening gave out details of the six-point agreement that it said it had reached with the government under the aegis of the Taliban-led "Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan" (IEA) on October 25, 2021.

The two sides, according to the agreement, had accepted that the IEA would play the role of a mediator and that both sides would form five-member committees each which, under the supervision of the mediator, would discuss the next course of action and demands of each sides.

Ceasefire or cessation of hostilities has remained enforced with no major violations.

The TTP-led militant attacks inside Pakistan which had seen a dramatic spike in the immediate aftermath of Afghan Taliban's takeover in mid-August have seen a steady decline, according to data available with Dawn news.

Both sides, it said, had also agreed to observe a month-long ceasefire from November 1 to 30 and that the government would release 102 "imprisoned mujahideen" and hand them over to the TTP through the "IEA and that both sides would issue a joint statement regarding the ceasefire on November", the report said.

The TTP's decision to end the ceasefire is a big setback to the Pakistan government efforts to secure a peace agreement with the militants waging war against the state for decades.
Brisbane, Dec 10 : Dawid Malan and Joe Root joined forces for a rebuilding act as England reached 107/2 in 36 overs at tea on day three of first Ashes Test at The Gabba here on Friday. The tourists are still trailing by 171 runs after bowling out Australia for 425 in the morning session and losing their opening pair of Rory Burns and Haseeb Hameed.

Resuming from 23/0 at lunch, Australia skipper Pat Cummins struck in the first over as Rory Burns tried to cut but the short ball took the glove edge behind to keeper Alex Carey. Malan was tentative in the beginning but Haseeb Hameed looked set for a big score before getting strangled down leg off Mitchell Starc in the 21st over.

From there onwards, Malan and Root led the fightback in the second hour of the session, adding 46 runs off 90 balls. Root took 20 balls to hit his first boundary of the innings, a clip through mid-wicket off Josh Hazlewood. Though the duo had their own shares of luck and survival, especially for Malan against off-spinner Nathan Lyon, England will be hoping that the left and right hand duo can bat on till stumps come.

Earlier, Travis Head, resuming from his overnight score of 112, started off in his aggressive fashion on day three with a pull through square leg off Chris Woakes. Starc gave him good company by smashing boundaries against Woakes, Ollie Robinson and Mark Wood.

Though Starc fell to Woakes, Head was unperturbed as he slammed a six each off Stokes and Wood over mid-off and fine leg respectively, before slog-sweeping Jack Leach through wide of mid-wicket to bring up his 150.

Head was eventually bowled for 152 off 148 balls by a cracking yorker from Wood, becoming the last wicket to fall as Australia were 425 all out in 104.3 overs. Head's stands with Starc (85 runs) and Nathan Lyon (29 runs) were crucial for the hosts in stretching their lead to 278 runs.

Brief scores: England 147 & 107/2 in 36 overs (Dawid Malan 35 not out, Joe Root 26 not out, Pat Cummins 1/29, Mitchell Starc 1/34) trail Australia 425 in 104.3 overs (Travis Head 152, David Warner 94, Ollie Robinson 3/58, Mark Wood 3/85) by 171 runs.
Seoul, Dec 10 : South Korea has issued a navigational warning for ships off the east coast next week over its routine naval firing drills, officials said on Friday.

The Korea Hydrographic and Oceanographic Agency issued the warning earlier this week as the Joint Chiefs of Staff has a plan for "regular maritime firing drills" in waters south of Ulleung Island in the East Sea from Monday through Friday, according to the agency officials.

The agency said it informed Japan of the updated navigational warning on Thursday, reports Yonhap News Agency.

Ulleung Island is located northwest of South Korea's easternmost islets of Dokdo.

South Korea has been in effective control of the islets of Dokdo, with a small police detachment, since its liberation from Japanese colonial rule in 1945. Still, Japan repeatedly claims sovereignty to the rocky outcroppings.

Dokdo has long been a thorn in relations between the two countries, as demonstrated in the Japanese Vice Foreign Minister's abrupt boycott of a joint press conference in Washington D.C. last month with his South Korean and American counterparts in protest over a rare visit to Dokdo by South Korea's police chief.

Formally, South Korea's military authorities have not announced any schedule for next week's exercise near Dokdo.

A Navy official neither confirmed nor denied the report of the navigational warning, dismissing a view linking it with any drill to "defend" Dokdo.

In June, the Navy staged a regular Dokdo defence exercise along with the Coast Guard.

Keen attention is being paid to whether the top South Korean and Japanese diplomats will hold separate bilateral talks or a trilateral meeting involving their US counterpart during their visit to the British city of Liverpool this weekend for the G7 foreign ministerial talks.
New Delhi, Dec 10 : The Samajwadi Party (SP), under its new strategy for the early next year Assembly polls, has stitched alliances with small parties besides eyeing the Muslim-Yadav (MY) equation.

The 2022 Assembly polls are important for the SP as it has faced defeat thrice in the elections in the state.

In the 2017 polls, the BJP had worked even on booth levels, formed alliances with smaller parties, managed the caste equations and reaped its dividends.

Taking cue from the BJP, the SP has so far formed alliances with small parties Suheldev Bhartiya Samaj Party, Rashtriya Lok Dal, Mahan Dal, Janwadi Party and the Apna Dal (kameravadi).

Recently, Aam Aadmi Party Rajya Sabha MP Sanjay Singh met SP chief Akhilesh Yadav.

Akhilesh told IANS that the situation was entirely different in 2014, 2017 and 2019, but in 2022, it has changed a lot.

He claimed that the people of the state will root out the BJP in the polls.

In the 2017 polls, the BJP and its allies bagged 3.59 crore votes and emerged victorious on 325 seats, the SP got 1.89 crore votes and won on 47 seats while the Congress got 54 lakh votes and won on seven seats only.

Political situation is, however, different this time. Om Prakash Rajbhar's Suheldev Bhartiya Samaj Party, which was a coalition partner of the BJP, has allied with the SP this time. The Congress has also not allied with the SP this time.

The biggest challenge the SP is facing is to bridge the gap of almost 1.7 crore votes.

SP's former MP and an important family member of the Yadav family claimed that "vote difference is not a big issue as we had made the government in 2012".

Dharmendra accused the BJP of fooling the people in the 2017 polls, saying the saffron party projected members of all castes as the chief minister's candidate, but after winning the polls, it made someone else the Chief Minister. This time, these parties will not get influenced by the BJP, he opined.

Akhilesh said that the farmers, youths, traders and the entire public is with the SP this time.

Dharmendra said that the SP was getting support from all quarters.

Counting the achievements of the Akhilesh Yadav's government during 2012 to 2017, Dharmendra said famers, women, Dalit, OBC, all sections of the society will vote for the SP.

Despite AIMIM chief Asaduddin Owaisi entering the fray, Akhilesh is confident of his Muslim votebank.

Dharmendra said, every political party want to contest the polls, but this time Akhilesh magic is sweeping the state.

The SP is constantly trying to stung the BJP by holding election rallies and mobilising huge crowds.

Akhilesh is trying to tell his supporters that he is ready to fight heavyweights like Prime Minister Narenda Modi and Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath.
Aerial photo taken on Dec. 9, 2021 shows the construction site of a new Phnom Penh international airport in Kandal province, Cambodia, Dec. 9, 2021 (Photo by Ly Lay/Xinhua/IANS) Image Source: IANS News

Aerial photo taken on Dec. 9, 2021 shows the construction site of a new Phnom Penh international airport in Kandal province, Cambodia, Dec. 9, 2021 (Photo by Ly Lay/Xinhua/IANS) Image Source: IANS News

Phnom Penh, Dec 10 : More than 27 per cent of the construction work on the new $1.5 billion Phnom Penh international Airport has been completed despite the Covid-19 crisis, Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen said.

Construction work on the project began in 2018 in southern Kandal province, generating more than 3,700 jobs, he said during a visit to the project site on Thursday.

"We are currently constructing two new international airports. One is here and the other is in Siem Reap province," he said.

"The construction of the new airports clearly reflects the country's economic progress and the airports, when completed, will increase our capacity to accommodate more flights from other countries." Hun Sen said the kingdom is expected to attract more international tourists in the post-pandemic era.

According to the master plan, the new airport will be capable of handling 13 million passengers a year in the first phase, 30 million passengers in the second phase in 2030, and up to 50 million passengers in 2050 in the third phase.
New Delhi, Dec 10 : Three cattle were charred to death in a fire at a farmer's house in Uttar Pradesh's Gautam Budh Nagar district early on Friday.

The farmer is safe, however, he lost three cattle to the fire in the incident in Muthiyana village, a police official said, adding that of the three dead cattle, two were buffaloes and one was a calf. The cattle were tied to a pole during the night.

As soon as the blaze was reported, police rushed to the spot and doused the flames with the help of villagers.

The cause of the fire is yet to be ascertained. Initially, reports claimed it to be a handiwork of some unidentified miscreants which was later ruled out by the police.

"Currently we are investigating all the angles," the official added.
Sanaa, Dec 10 : The Houthi militia launched missile strikes that landed on an internally displaced persons (IDP) camp in Yemen's northeastern province of Marib and injured 12 people, a military official said.

"The Houthis randomly fired missiles that landed on Al-Hamah IDP camp, which is located in the southern part of the government-controlled city of Marib," the official told Xinhua news agency.

The source confirmed the Houthi shelling resulted in seriously injuring 12 displaced people, mostly women and children.

He added that a number of families left the IDP camp in a state of panic after the strikes.

Meanwhile, the Executive Unit for the Management of IDP camps in Marib said in a press statement that two ballistic missiles fired by the Houthi militia against the camp.

The Houthis have recently resumed their intense military operations against Marib.

The Houthi military escalation against the southern areas of Marib left nearly 96,328 displaced people since the beginning of last September, according to official government reports.
Mumbai, Dec 10 : Mukesh Chhabra has changed the dynamics of the casting in Hindi cinema. The casting director, known for films like 'Chillar Party', 'Gangs of Wasseypur' and 'Bajrangi Bhaijaan', among many others, has pulled off casting for the Ranveer Singh starrer '83', a film which is making noise for its illustrious starcast.

Mukesh recently spoke to IANS about what defines a casting director, his process, database, channels of talent sourcing and his vision for the casting vertical.

Having been in the industry for over a decade has naturally strengthened his database, talking about what the Mukesh Chhabra Casting company's database looks like, he says: "I have some 20 to 30 lakh talents in my database. I have sourced these talents from across the country, I have literally gone on a hunt to cast talents for some of the projects." Does this data really help while casting for a new project?

He is quick to respond: "When you move on to another project the old casting data is of no use because the script changes, the requirement with regards to the actors changes. 'Delhi Crime' needs New Delhi people, I can't deploy talents from other territories that I had cast in some other film.

"Actually data never helps, if it did then the country would have seen more casting directors than actors. You may very well take away all my data, I'll happily give it to you. Having an eye for talent, and to gauge their potential is something that defines you as a casting director." The job of a casting director demands one to be highly proactive and have a good understanding of demographics.

Talking about the channels of talent sourcing, he says: "We have a wide channel of talent sourcing. We go to acting schools, state castings, we go between real people, public schools. A lot of it is also defined by what a film demands. When I did 'Super 30' I went to NGOs. Every corner of this country is filled with talent." His casting has changed the fortunes of many talents in the industry, a lot of aspiring actors look up to him as a 'Kingmaker' but, the casting director chooses to stay modest as he says, "I feel a 'Kingmaker' is a very big term, something that I'm not.

"I'm here to do my job and I love this. My only intention is to give work to as many actors as I can. I have directed a film ('Dil Bechara') as well but I still love casting people in films or shows." Sharing his vision for the casting vertical, he says: "We need to respect more talent and open the gates for new talent to come in the industry. It will strengthen our work culture and cinema in its entirety. Now that the system of casting is getting streamlined, I would like it to become absolutely about the talent with more transparency than ever." Having achieved so much in India, one would wonder if he has plans to go international.

As a parting shot he makes his ground clear.

"I genuinely want to do it but before I do that, I want to give work to all the deserving talents in Bollywood. In future, I would like to go international but right now, I want to focus on great talent in India. I'm thankful to all the filmmakers and the talents, it's because of them that I'm here."
Bhopal, Dec 10 : With the state government issuing notification to implement the Police Commissionerate system in two prominent cities, the state capital Bhopal and the economic and IT city Indore, these two cities have joined the list of 71 cities in the country that currently have the commissionerate system.

The order was issued on Thursday.

The much debated Commissionerate system, which with increasing population and fast increasing crimes has become a need of the hour, has been brought into effect with the home department of the state issuing the notification. However, the process of appointing officials, including the Commissioner of Police (CPs) for both cities are underway.

As per the notification, a total of 38 police stations in Bhopal and 36 police stations in Indore, all falling under the municipal areas of the cities, have been included under the police Commissionerate system. In both the cities the system will be headed by a Commissioner of Police (CP), who will be assisted by the Additional Commissioner of Police (ACPs) -- one for law and order and the second one will be looking after crime and the police headquarters.

As per the provision under the Police Commissionerate system, along with the CP, there would be two Additional Commissioners of Police (ACPs) and eight Deputy Commissioner of Police (DCPs). Bhopal will have 10 ADCPs of the rank of additional SP, while Indore will have 12 such additional deputy commissioners. Bhopal will have 33 assistant commissioners of police of the rank of deputy SP while Indore will have 30 such officers. The two cities will each have an SP (rural) post too, as per the notification of the state home minister.

Separate orders will be issued by the state home department to post the officers under the new system in both the cities within a day or two, the home minister said.

Police commissionerate system gives magisterial powers of various kinds to the senior police officers (IPS officers) and they can thus function independently of the district collectors/magistrates, who have the magisterial power in the normal policing system.

"Relevant Acts and sections of the Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC), Police Act, Motor Vehicles Act, National Security Act, State Security Act (pertaining to externment from districts), Prisoners Act, Immoral Traffic Prevention Act, Government Secrets Act and others have been amended to give the additional powers to the police officials under the commissionerate system," said Madhya Pradesh Home Minister Narottam Mishra.

The development came around three weeks after Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan made an announcement in this regard on November 21. The chief minister had then stated that the Police Commissionerate system in Bhopal and Indore is being implemented considering the tremendous increase in urban population and cities are expanding geographically and population-wise.

People privy with the development told IANS that there have been multiple attempts in the past three decades for implementation of the Police Commissionerate system in Bhopal, Indore and another big city in the state -- Jabalpur also, however, it could not be implemented due to various conflicts within the political and bureaucrat galleries. Now, with the system being implemented in Bhopal and Indore, Jabalpur may also see the same development sooner or later.

The attempts to introduce the Police Commissionerate system started during the tenure of former Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister (late) Arjun Singh in June 1981. There were two attempts by Digvijaya Singh during his tenure as the chief minister.

Chouhan himself had announced the decision to implement the Police Commissionerate system in the state Assembly in December 2012, but within a few days the government reverted to the deputy inspector general (DIG) system of policing replacing the Senior Superintendent of Police (SSP) that was in vogue in Bhopal and Indore earlier.
Seoul, Dec 10 : A South Korean high-school student and others filed a constitutional petition on Friday against the government's plan to expand the Covid-19 vaccine pass program to teenagers next year.

Starting February 2022, the government plans to require not only adults but also children aged 12 to 18 to present Covid-19 vaccination or negative test certificates at multiuse facilities, including public study rooms and cram schools, reports Yonhap News Agency.

The plan was announced last week along with toughened gathering restrictions amid the latest virus resurgence and a pile-up of student infections.

But it sparked strong backlash from students and parents arguing the measure amounts to forcing vaccination upon minors.

On Friday, Yang Dae-rim, the 18-year-old high school student, filed a petition signed by 453 people with the Constitutional Court, claiming that the measure runs counter to the Constitution.

"Although I should be studying hard in school as a high school senior, I came to this place over frustrations by the unfairness of the government's vaccine pass scheme," Yang said during a press conference in front of the court.

Yang and the fellow petitioners plan to file a separate injunction request against the vaccine pass system with the court as early as next week.

They also plan to submit a legal complaint against top government officials, including President Moon Jae-in, with the prosecution over alleged power abuse charges next month.

A separate petition against the youth vaccine pass by a parents group was also submitted to the court earlier in the day.

Amid growing voices opposing the student vaccine pass scheme, a civic group focused on youth policy, however, argued that the plan was an "unavoidable measure" aimed at protecting students' lives.

"The learning rights of students cannot take priority over measures to protect the youth," the People's Solidarity for Korea Youth Policy said in a statement.
Dar Es Salaam, Dec 10 : The World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) in Tanzania announced that it has signed a contract with two civil society organisations aimed at tackling rampant deforestation and degradation of the east African nation's Usambara Mountains.

The conservation agency said in a statement that WWF Tanzania's National Forest Program has through its Trillion Trees Project signed the contract with 4H Tanzania and Friends of Usambara in a new step to tackle rampant deforestation and degradation of the mountains, reports Xinhua news agency.

WWF Tanzania's Forest Program will be implemented north of the Usambara Mountains where the landscape's ecosystem is being impacted by deforestation and degradation, said the statement.

It said deforestation adversely affects communities as the Usambara Mountains covering 3,500 square km is a fundamental source of food and water, underlining its significance for human wellbeing and the national economy.

The Usambara's are a part of the ancient Eastern Arc chain which mountains stretch in a broken crescent from the Taita hills in southern Kenya down to Morogoro and the southern highlands.

They are estimated to be at least 100 million years old and the rocks forming them may be as much as 600 million years old.

The mountains are home to an exceptional assortment of plants and animals and represent one of the highest degrees of biodiversity on the continent.
Patna, Dec 10 : A trainee Sub-Inspector of Bihar's Darbhanga district allegedly committed suicide on Friday, an official said.

Laxmi Kumari, residing in the police quarters, shot herself on the head using her service pistol at about 2 a.m., said the official.

She was found lying on the bed with the weapon in her right hand.

She was deployed at the Lalit Narayan Mithila University police station.

Darbhanga SP Ashok Kumar Prasad and SDPO Sadar Krishna Nandan Kumar visited the spot.

"Prima facie, it appears to be a case of suicide. The victim was holding the gun in her right hand. We have taken the photographs of the incident. The FSL team also taken the samples from the spot especially from her to found gun powder," Prasad said.

"Apart from suicide, we are also investigating other angles. The actual reason of her death would be ascertained after getting the post-mortem and forensic reports," Prasad added.

Laxmi Kumari was a native of Supaul district and she was recruited in 2018.
Addis Ababa, Dec 10 : The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said that the world body and its partners have continued to deliver aid in northern Ethiopia despite challenges as tens of thousands of people remain displaced and relief supplies are restricted.

The OCHA reported large-scale violence-triggered displacements in the Tigray region spilling into Amhara to the south and Afar to the east, in some cases even between the two areas, reports Xinhua news agency.

The Office said that tens of thousands of people were forced from Shewa Robit Town in Amhara to the neighbouring Afar region.

Several thousands left Woldiya and Lalibela towns in Amhara and an estimated tens of thousands of people fled the West Tigray zone into the northwest.

In the first seven days of December, 44 truckloads of food, nutrition, water and sanitation supplies reached Mekelle, Tigray's regional capital, through the Afar corridor, OCHA said.

The number of relief trucks compared to the 157 trucks a week earlier remains far short of the 100 trucks a day required to meet the needs in Tigray.

The Office said fuel has not been allowed into Tigray via the Afar route since August 2. Medicine and medical equipment also were blocked, with few exceptions. Some essential medicines were allowed on an October 6 European Commission humanitarian flight.

Between July and September, limited emergency kits went through the Afar corridor.

Despite reduced capacity, humanitarian partners continue to deliver life-saving assistance and critical services across Tigray, OCHA said.

Between November 25 and December 1, about 43,000 people received food aid in Tigray under the current food distribution round, including more than 10,000 newly displaced people.

The OCHA said insecurity and other challenges constrained operations in Amhara.

A recent assessment mission to Dessie and Kombolcha witnessed the looting of public services, including health facilities. Across Kombolcha town on Wednesday, significant food-supply looting was reported.

Since November 1 under the current round of food distribution in Amhara, more than 947,000 people were assisted, including more than 370,000 in the past week, OCHA said.

Partners resumed support to three hospitals and 19 health centres in Amhara, in addition to 26 mobile health and nutrition teams operating in the region.

In Afar in the last week, about 16,000 people received food assistance and more than 26,000 displaced people received water and sanitation support, the humanitarian office said.
Mumbai, Dec 10 : When NTR Jr was quizzed at the launch of the 'RRR' trailer here on Thursday about the movie offers he had to decline because of this pan-Indian period film, he had a ready answer, which was like a tribute to the director S.S. Rajamouli.

"Do You think someone could come up to me and offer me a film when I was doing a Rajamouli movie?" NTR Jr countered. "This does not happen in the industry when you're working with Jakkanna. 'Aisa nahi hota hain'." Rajamouli is lovingly addressed as 'Jakkanna' by NTR Jr and others in Tollywood.

Addressing the journalist who asked this question, NTR Jr added: "You know, you've been there for a long time. The sooner you accept it the better it is." He surprised the media with his flawless Hindi and quick wit.

The 'Aravind Sametha Veera Raghava' actor will be seen essaying the role of Komaram Bheem, the Gond leader who fought the Nizam's administration in the 1930s, in 'RRR'. In the trailer, the actor is introduced as a protector of the Gond tribe. He's seen taking on a tiger in the trailer.

Commenting on his character, NTR Jr said: "There are some historical heroes whose stories remain in your memory since your childhood. Robin Hood, for example. Playing Bheem took me down memory lane." He added: "When you think about the freedom fighters, you feel the adrenaline rush just thinking about what they did for us and how much a part of their lives they are. So, for me, it wasn't that difficult. I just did what my director had asked me to do."
Geneva, Dec 10 : The Unicef has expressed worries over the reimplementation of the Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP) at the US southern border with Mexico, as required by a court order, could put the safety and wellbeing of asylum-seeking children and their families at risk.

The MPP is a US government program, initiated in January 2019, under which the country returns to Mexico certain citizens and nationals of countries other than Mexico while their American removal proceedings are pending.

MPP applies to those who arrive from Mexico by land.

"Following the initial implementation of MPP in January 2019, more than 70,000 asylum seekers were forced to return to Mexico until US immigration courts could resolve their cases. Those subject to MPP, including many children and adolescents, waited for months in shelters and makeshift camps in Mexico without access to appropriate housing, hygiene, nutrition and essential services," the UN agency said in a statement.

Although the Unicef welcomes "commitments from the US government to assist Central American countries in tackling the root causes of migration and provide humanitarian assistance to those in need", it contended that the MPP could have "profound consequences for children, many of whom have been left with no safe options to escape dire conditions and threats in their home countries".

"All migrant children have the right to protection, essential services, to live in adequate conditions with dignity and to be with their families.

"Children - no matter where they come from or what their migration status - are children first and foremost. It is imperative that all governments prioritize the protection and wellbeing of children in line with their best interests and guarantee their access to asylum procedures in a timely manner," the Unicef statement added.

On June 1, the Secretary of Homeland Security determined that the MPP should be terminated and issued a memorandum to that effect.

On August 13 however, the US District Court for the Northern District of Texas determined that the June 1 memo was not issued in compliance with the Administrative Procedure Act and ordered the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to "enforce and implement MPP in good faith".

On October 29, after an extensive and comprehensive review, the Secretary of Homeland Security issued a new memorandum terminating MPP, which DHS will implement as soon as practicable after issuance of a final judicial decision to vacate the Texas injunction.
Haveri : , Dec 10 (IANS) Karnataka Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai on Friday came down heavily on people indulging in spreading hate and celebratory messages on social media in connection with the tragic death of the Chief of Defence Staff (CDS) General Bipin Rawat and 12 others in an army helicopter crash.

Reacting to developments of miscreants posting messages on social media platforms celebrating the death of CDS General Rawat, Bommai stated that he had directed the police to book FIR against those who posted hate messages in this regard in Karnataka.

He further stated he condemned such an insane mindset of celebrating the tragedy. These acts should be condemned by every citizen of India. There will be action against those persons who are celebrating the tragedy, he underlined.

"I have asked the police to book cases immediately and initiate action," he said.

Meanwhile, BJP MP Pratap Simha also stated that it is painful to see celebratory messages at this juncture. All BJP-ruled states are initiating strict action against those indulging in such acts. "I demand the state government to initiate action in this regard," he urged.
New Delhi, Dec 10 : Police in Gwadar have arrested Yousuf Mastikhan, a 77-year-old Awami Workers Party (AWP) worker who is a cancer patient, on charges of sedition for delivering a speech "against state institutions" at the ongoing protest in the city located in Pakistan's Balochistan province, Friday Times reported.

An FIR was registered against Mastikhan in which the complainant alleged that he heard the AWP worker deliver an inciting speech against the state, armed forces, and intelligence agencies.

The complaint quoted Mastikhan as saying that Balochistan was forcibly made part of Pakistan in 1947 and that the state considered the people of province to be "slaves", the report said.

According to the FIR, Mastikhan alleged that Pakistan has been stealing gas from the province since 1953, it added.

Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) also condemned the arrest of AWP worker saying: that he "has done nothing more than demand that the state give Gwadar's residents the civil, political and economic rights to which they are entitled".

Rights activists also expressed concern over the arrest of the politician.

One social media user said: "Really concerned about his health as he is aged and an advance staged cancer patient".

Another user wrote that there was anger in all of Balochistan over the arrest of the leader, adding that protests will be held against civil society and progressive political movements, the report added.

Protests have been ongoing in Gwadar for over a month, with protesters asking for basic rights including access to potable water; elimination of unnecessary check posts on the coastal highway from Jiwani to Karachi; immediate lifting of restrictions on border trade; and transportation of food items from Iran among others things.

(Sanjeev Sharma can be reached at Sanjeev.s@ians.in)
Bhopal, Dec 10 : The National Commission for Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR) on Friday issued a notice to the Superintendent Police (SP) of Sagar district in Madhya Pradesh, seeking its report on a complaint of feeding cow meat to children at sewadham ashram.

The move came after the Commission received a complaint against St. Francis Sevadham located in the Shyampura area under Sagar district in Madhya Pradesh. The complaint alleged that minor children were being forced to eat beef and read the Bible.

Recently, two siblings residing in St. Francis Sevadham with the help of their parents lodged a complaint in the Cantt police station in the district. As per the report, children have alleged that "they were forced to eat cow meat and read the Bible. On refusing to do so, the children alleged that they would be harassed by the ashram authorities." Acting on the complaint, the NCPCR has directed Sagar District SP to investigate the matter and submit its report within next 48 hours.

Father of the children, Deshraj Raikvar had written a letter to the Child Welfare Committee, Sagar, mentioning that a woman, who introduced herself as a social worker, took his children to the sevadham ashram.

"I went to meet my children many times, but they did not allow me to meet them. Somehow, once I got a chance to meet children. My children said they did not want to stay at the ashram because they are being forced to eat cow meat. They were beaten up for refusing to eat the meat and reading the Bible," Deshraj wrote in his letter to the Child Welfare Committee, Sagar.
New Delhi, Dec 10 : Chinese state media has slammed a conspiracy theory over the helicopter crash that killed India's Chief of Defence Staff General Bipin Rawat and 12 others.

"The crash of a helicopter with General Bipin Rawat, India's highest-ranking military officer, on board was unfortunate. But Brahma Chellaney, a so-called scholar in India, took advantage of this misfortune, despicably, by attempting to cause new tensions in China-India ties," the Global Times said in a reported.

Following the crash on Wednesday, Chellaney, a Delhi-based author and commentator, had tweeted: "At a time when China's 20-month-long border aggression has resulted in a warlike situation along the Himalayan front, the tragic death of India's chief of defense staff, Gen. Rawat, his wife and 11 other military personnel in a helicopter crash couldn't have come at a worse time.

"Gen. Rawat's death has an eerie parallel with the helicopter crash in early 2020 that killed Taiwan's chief of general staff, Gen. Shen Yi-ming, and seven others, including two major generals. Each helicopter crash eliminated a key figure in the defense against PRC's aggression." "The strange parallel doesn't mean there was any connection between the two helicopter crashes or an outside hand. If anything, each crash has raised important internal questions, especially about maintenance of military helicopters transporting top generals." The Global Times report went on to say that "Chellaney's thread cannot be more ridiculous. Rawat was not on a Chinese aircraft. The helicopter did not crash anywhere near the China-India border, but in southern India. Chellaney, however, wasted no time in spinning his conspiracy theory".

The crash immediately caused shockwaves not only in India but also in the world, as it is rare to witness such a grave accident which claimed the life of a top military officer, it said.

Observers are analysing what went wrong. Some say it could be a mechanical failure; others say it was a human error or it was weather-related, the report added.

However, the China state media did not lose an opportunity to comment on India's military even during this unfortunate time of General Rawat's death.

Attacking Indian military prowess, the Global Times said" "The capability of India's military equipment is not as impressive as the country has been boasting.

"India' defence manufacturing sector has very limited capability. It can make components of arms and some weapons at home, but most of its military equipment is imported and assembled in India. Its locally produced weapons are mostly modelled on arms from other countries. That being said, there are often hidden dangers when the arms come into actual use", it added.

"Chellaney and other radical Indians should be reminded that it was India's own military helicopter that failed to protect their defense chief. The probability of such an accident is extremely low, yet it did occur in India. This means the biggest enemy of India is not China, but its own backwardness." "Some military equipment is quite old and outdated but still in service. These show that India's overall military capacity is worrisome," Song Zhongping, a Chinese military expert, told the Global Times.

(Sanjeev Sharma can be reached at Sanjeev.s@ians.in)
Chennai, Dec 10 : A conductor of Tamil Nadu State Transport Corporation (TNSTC) bus was arrested on Friday for sexually assaulting a woman passenger.

The 21-year-old victim, along with her husband, had lodged a complaint at the Kaanai police station of Villupuram district that she was sexually assaulted by the conductor on Thursday night. In her complaint, the woman said that she had boarded the bus at Villupuram and was heading towards Kothamangalam. After other passengers alighted from the vehicle, the conductor sat next to her and assaulted her after Perumbakkam.

Villupuram district collector D. Mohan immediately suspended the arrested conductor, Silambarasan, and driver of the bus Anbu Selvan.

Kaanai police SHO told IANS said that further investigation is being carried out and the involvement of the driver is also being probed. He also said that the conductor will be further questioned on whether he had assaulted other women who had travelled in the bus during its previous trips at night.

M. Raghuvaran, a human rights activist working for the destitute women at Madurai, told IANS: "The conductor must be given maximum punishment. Both the conductor and the driver must be dismissed from service. The Chief Minister must order a detailed probe as to whether such things are happening in late-night buses of the TNSTC. This must not be the first case and needs proper investigation. CCTV cameras should be installed in all the buses so that the women can travel safely."
Washington, Dec 10 : Amazon founder Jeff Bezos' space firm Blue Origin's Crew-3 flight that will carry daughter of the first American in space has been delayed till Saturday due to bad weather.

The flight -- a first to carry six astronauts to space -- was initially set for December 9. The last two missions carried only four.

"Due to forecasted winds on December 9 and 10, the New Shepard launch team has made the call to delay the launch of NS-19 to December 11," the company said in a statement on Thursday.

The new liftoff is targeted for 8.45 a.m. CST (8.15 p.m. IST) from Launch Site One in West Texas.

The company said that the team has completed Flight Readiness Review and the vehicle has "met all mission requirements for launch".

But, "weather remains as the only gating factor for launch", it added.

The crew will include two honorary guests -- 'Good Morning America' co-anchor Michael Strahan and Laura Shepard Churchley, the eldest daughter of Alan Shepard, who was the first American to fly to space.

The other are four paying customers -- space industry executive and philanthropist Dylan Taylor, investor Evan Dick, Bess Ventures founder Lane Bess, and Cameron Bess. Lane and Cameron Bess will become the first parent-child pair to fly in space, the company said.

The Crew-3 mission furthers the company's vision of millions of people living and working in space for the benefit of Earth.

It will be New Shepard's third human flight this year, the sixth for the programme in 2021, and the 19th in its history.

Blue Origin's blasted off its second human flight to space on October 13, with the original Star Trek's Captain James T. Kirk (actor William Shatner) who became the oldest man ever to travel to space, along with NASA engineer Chris Boshuizen, Glen de Vries, a co-founder of software company Medidata, and Audrey Powers, Vice President of missions and flight operations.

On July 20, Blue Origin carried its first human flight which included Jeff Bezos, his brother Mark Bezos, aviation pioneer Wally Funk, and Blue Origin's first customer, Oliver Daemen.

In October, Bezos' space firm has also announced plans to build a commercial space station called Orbital Reef by second half of this decade.

For the project Blue Origin has partnered with spaceflight company Sierra Space, a subsidiary of the Sierra Nevada Corporation, Boeing, Redwire Space, Genesis Engineering Solutions, and Arizona State University.

"The station will open the next chapter of human space exploration and development by facilitating the growth of a vibrant ecosystem and business model for the future," the company had announced.
Chennai, Dec 10 : Tamil Nadu BJP state president K. Annamalai on Friday alleged that YouTuber Maridhas's arrest was the result of a political vendetta by the DMK government.

The YouTuber was arrested on Thursday night for posing questions on social media as to whether Tamil Nadu has turned into Kashmir. BJP state president said that the DMK government was suppressing the freedom of expression and said that the state leader of the BJP, Kalyam Raman, and other nationalists were arrested by the DMK government to satisfy their egos.

Annamalai in a tweet on Friday said that the Tamil Nadu BJP was doing everything possible to get the nationalists released. He tweeted, "@BJP4TamilNadu would fight tooth&nail to get all of them out of their judicial confinement. Our party would take care of them and their families in all respect." Kalyam Raman and 10 other BJP cadres were arrested in October and according to the police, he was arrested for offensive tweets that allegedly promoted enmity and hatred.
Chennai, Dec 10 : Tamil Nadu police on Friday felicitated the villagers and estate workers who were the first to reach the spot when the helicopter M1-17V5 carrying Chief of Defence Service (CDS) General Bipin Rawat, his wife Madhulika Rawat and 12 others crashed at Kateri near Coonoor.

Tamil Nadu police DGP, C. Sylendra Babu was personally present while felicitating the local and estate workers who had helped to recover the mortal remains and provided blankets and other clothes to carry the injured to the Wellington Army hospital.

While handing over blankets, clothes, and eatables to the local estate workers in Conoor, ther DIG told media: "The local people who are workers in tea estates has done a yeoman service by rushing to the place on hearing about the accident. The service of these people have to be recorded and hence we are felicitating them." Meanwhile, he said that the state police, under the leadership of ADSP Muthumanickam, who is heading the special team investigating the case, have recorded eyewitnesses' statements.

"We have already taken the account of 25 people and will be handing over these statements to the Army special team led by Air Marshall Manavendra Singh," he told the media.
Washington, Dec 10 : The family of Riley Franz, a student who was shot in the neck at Oxford High School in the US state of Michigan on November 30, has filed a $100 million lawsuit, local media reported.

The federal lawsuit, filed on Thursday, accuses school officials of dismissing violent threats, not only in the hours and days before Ethan Crumbley's shooting, but also two weeks earlier when students and parents raised concerns, local media quoted attorney Geoffrey Fieger as saying.

In addition to the federal lawsuit, a similar suit will be filed in state court, which will also seek $100 million, Xinhua news agency quoted Fieger as further saying.

Riley Franz, 17, and her sister Bella, 14, were together when Riley and other students were shot. The girls had been in a bathroom and were shot at as they emerged.

In the days since, both girls have suffered from anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder, along with physical and emotional injuries, according to the lawsuit.

Days before the attack, Crumbley "acted in such a way that would lead a reasonable observer to know and/or believe that he was planning to cause great bodily harm", the lawsuit states.

It accuses school officials of increasing the danger to students by allowing Crumbley to stay at the school and repeatedly failing to inform the school safety liaison officer about his behaviour and excluding him from a meeting with his parents.

In the days leading up to the shooting, Crumbley "posted countdowns and threats of bodily harm, including death, on his social media accounts, warning of violent tendencies and murderous ideology prior to actually coming to school with the handgun and ammunition to perpetuate the slaughter", the suit says.

The night before the shooting, Crumbley said on Twitter: "Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds. See you tomorrow Oxford." The goal of claiming a high price in the suit is "to compel people to do something" to prevent school shootings, said Fieger.

Defendants in the federal suit include school district superintendent Timothy Throne, Oxford High School Principal Steven Wolf, two teachers, two counsellors and a staff member.
Gandhinagar, Dec 10 : Gujarat has now three Omicron cases after the reports of two relatives of the state's first Omicron patient came as positive, officials said on Friday.

The health authorities had detected two of the Zimbabwe-returned man's relatives as Covid positive on Sunday. Their swab samples were sent for Omicron testing, which have turned out to be positive for the new strain.

The Nodal officer for Corona, GG Hospital Jamnagar, Dr. S Chatterjee told IANS, "After the 72-year-old Zimbabwe resident's results turned out to be omicron positive, the results of his wife (47) and his brother-in-law (35) have also tested positive. Both of them are in isolation since they were detected Covid-19 infected." All the three Omicron positive persons' samples were sent for genome sequencing to the Gujarat Biotechnology Research (GBR) Laboratory in Gandhinagar.

"Since both the wife of the Zimbabwe patient and her brother were detected in the early stages and quickly isolated, there are no chances that they could have infected others," added Chatterjee.

A 72-year-old man in the Morakda village near Jamnagar city of Gujarat was found to be Omicron positive last Saturday. Following his return from Zimbabwe where he resides, one of the at-risk countries identified by the authorities, the Gujarat health authorities had carried out contact tracing. He arrived on November 28 to meet his father-in-law. After he got a fever, his doctors advised him to get an RT-PCR test done. As mandated, the private laboratory informed the health authorities that his report was Covid-19 positive.
New Delhi, Dec 10 : The Delhi High Court has directed the Commissioner of Delhi Police to constitute a team of experts to undertake the exercise of security audit of the High Court Complex as well as all the District Court Complexes in the national capital.

Hearing a suo motu case registered following the gun firing incident at Rohini District Court in its September order which released on Friday, a Division Bench of Chief Justice D.N. Patel and Justice Jyoti Singh said: "Keeping in mind and in the background, the features and factors, peculiar to each Court Complex, including but not limited to location, number of exit and entry points, number of courtrooms as well as their respective topography, the team so constituted would take considered decision on the various security-related aspects such as number of police personnel required to be deployed, number of CCTV cameras to be installed, etc." Status report of Delhi Police does bring forth certain measures having been put in place. However, a one-time measure or exercise would not suffice. Commissioner of Police shall, based on the audit, undertake periodical review of the security arrangements and depending on the given situation, the required number of security personnel shall be deployed and requisite gadgets shall be installed, it read.

Since Delhi Police has the necessary expertise in the field of security, the security-related devices shall be procured directly by them, under intimation to the Court Administration and Government of NCT of Delhi. As and when the devices are procured, the necessary funds shall be made available by the Government of NCT of Delhi, without any delay, it said.

Respective Bar Associations shall devise a mechanism to issue ID Cards with QR codes or smart chips to all advocates who are members of these associations. For those advocates who are enrolled with the Bar Council of Delhi but are not members of any Bar Association, similar ID Cards shall be issued by the Bar Council of Delhi, the court said seeking suggestions from the Delhi Police in this regard.

The bench asked the police to ensure that the latest technology in metal detection and baggage scanning, etc. is employed. No baggage shall be permitted inside the court premises without scanning.

It stressed that there should be round-the-clock monitoring of the court buildings through CCTV cameras and it shall be ensured that the cameras are in working condition, without fail.

As regards, high-risk Under Trial Prisoners (UTPs), as far as possible, their appearance may be secured through virtual mode, the court said before listing the matter for further hearing on April 18, 2022.
Johannesburg, Dec 10 : While Covid cases in South Africa driven by the super mutant Omicron variant have surged 255 per cent in the last week, the infections are showing milder symptoms than seen in the last three waves, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).

According to the WHO, Africa currently accounted for 46 per cent of reported Omicron cases globally, while the variant has spread to nearly 60 countries so far.

South Africa's biggest private healthcare provider Netcare revealed that the recent rise in infections, which includes the Omicron and Delta variants, has been accompanied by a much smaller increase in admissions to intensive care beds, Dailymaverick reported.

"Having personally seen many of our patients across our Gauteng hospitals, their symptoms are far milder than anything we experienced during the first three waves," Netcare's Richard Friedland was quoted as saying to the South African daily.

"Approximately 90 per cent of Covid-19 patients currently in our hospitals require no form of oxygen therapy and are considered incidental cases. If this trend continues, it would appear that, with a few exceptions of those requiring tertiary care, the fourth wave can be adequately treated at a primary care level," he added.

According to Friedland, "all patients had presented with mild to moderate flu-like symptoms, including a blocked or runny nose, headache and a scratchy or sore throat".

During the first three waves, the overall community positivity rate breached 26 per cent across South Africa.

Friedland said that in the first three waves of the pandemic, Netcare treated 126,000 Covid-19 patients, of which 44 per cent required admission and 26 per cent were treated in high care and intensive care units.

"Significantly, all Covid-19 patients admitted were sick and required some form of oxygen therapy. The high admission rate, as well as the high percentage of patients requiring ICU or high care is indicative of the severity of cases during the first three waves," he added.

But, now the hospital has 337 Covid-19 positive patients admitted. Of these, approximately 10 per cent (33 patients) are on some form of oxygenation versus 100 per cent in the first three waves.

Further, eight patients (2 per cent) are being ventilated and of these, two are primary trauma cases that are also Covid-19-positive, Friedland said.

"At present the 337 patients represent a fraction compared to previous waves," Friedland said.

"The very rapid rise in community transmission as compared to previous waves may partially explain this relatively low hospital admission ratea there does appear to be a decoupling in terms of the rate of hospital admissions at this early stage in the evolution of the fourth wave," he said.

Friedland's comments echo earlier analysis from Dr Fareed Abdullah, of the South African Medical Research Council, who said many of the patients diagnosed with Covid in hospitals in badly hit Gauteng province and elsewhere were often "incidental" identifications in patients presenting with other conditions.

"The main observation that we have made over the last two weeks is that the majority of patients in the Covid wards have not been oxygen dependent. Sars-CoV-2 has been an incidental finding in patients that were admitted to the hospital for another medical, surgical or obstetric reason," Abdullah said.

"A snapshot of 42 patients in the ward on December 2 reveals that 29 (70 per cent) are not oxygen dependent. These patients are saturating well on room air and do not present with any respiratory symptoms. A significant early finding in this analysis is the much shorter average length of stay of 2.8 days for patients admitted to the Covid wards over the last two weeks, compared to an average length of stay of 8.5 days for the past 18 months." However, experts have said it is still too early in the Omicron outbreak to determine the longer-term course of the illness. Moreover, the country has reported an increase in infections in the younger population.

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New Delhi, Dec 10 : Minister of State for Health and Family Welfare Bharti Pravin Pawar on Friday said in the Lok Sabha that the government has taken several initiatives to provide psychological support to the elderly people in wake of Covid-19 pandemic.

Responding to TMC MP Mahua Moitra on the psychological impact of Covid-19 on elderly parents, grandparents and children due to lockdown, she said that the government has taken measures for online counselling during Covid-19 and post pandemic situations. "Online helpline, social media platforms and Diksha platform were started to help the concerned people which is still in service. Besides, the government hospitals have also started online medical help to these sections," Dr Pawar said further.

On a question by Congress MP Thirunavukkarasar Su on the mental health status in the country, the Minister stated that at least 4 lakh districts are getting funds for it. "We have three institutes at tertiary level in Bengaluru, Assam and Ranchi, and the amount allotted for them is about Rs 600 crore", she said, adding that once a proposal comes from the district level, the government allots funds too.

The Congress MP had stated that only Rs 84.13 crore was approved under the Mental health programme which is meagre compared to the rising number of cases under mental health and government's budgetary plans for Mental Healthcare.

Replying to a question on the status of the completion of Madurai AIIMS, the Minister said that for the Madurai project, the loan has been taken through a Japan International Cooperation agency, for which certain procedures and time is required. "An executive agency has also been appointed. For students, a suitable temporary infrastructure has been requested. We provide Madurai the same level of importance and priority," Dr Pawar responded.
Wellington, Dec 10 : The New Zealand government is stepping up its work to address long-standing problems in conservation law to lay the foundation for future reform, Conservation Minister Kiri Allan said on Friday.

"More than 4,000 native species are threatened or at risk of extinction. We are at a defining moment for nature, yet much of our legislation is decades old and not fit for purpose," Xinhua news agency quoted Allan as saying in a statement.

"It is a complex web of 24 acts, developed largely on an ad-hoc basis over a span of nearly 70 years," the Minister said.

Allan added that the scientific understanding of species and ecosystems has grown considerably over this time, but this is not reflected in the legislation.

A roadmap will be released that sets out the work ahead in the next four years to modernize New Zealand's conservation law, Allan said, adding that better legislation will provide the tools to deal with some of the biggest emerging threats to biodiversity -- invasive species, climate change, habitat loss, pollution, and fragmentation of landscapes and ecosystems.
Islamabad, Dec 10 : Pakistan is bracing for a new wave of increased terror outburst from the dreaded Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), the Pakistani faction of the Afghan Taliban, which had agreed for a month-long ceasefire with the Imran Khan-led government, as the militant outfit has now refused to give any extension to the agreement.

In a statement, the TTP has accused the Pakistan government of failing to honour the decisions mutually agreed in the ceasefire agreement.

"The Pakistan government has not only failed to implement the decisions reached between the two sides but to the contrary, the security forces conducted raids in Dera Ismail Khan, Lakki Marwat, Swat, Bajaur, Swabi and North Waziristan and killed detained militants," the statement says.

"Under the circumstances, it is not possible to extend the ceasefire," it added.

Previously, the Pakistan government and the TTP had been in negotiations and had come down to a month-long ceasefire agreement, in which, both sides agreed on a six-point agreement.

Both sides had accepted that the Taliban-led Islamic Emirates of Afghanistan (IEA) would play the role of a mediator and that both sides would form a five-member committee each, which would be the talking points of negotiations for the next course of action and demands of both sides.

An agreement was reached to enforce a month-long ceasefire from November 1 to 30. The Pakistan government agreed that it would release at least 102 improvised mujahideen and hand them over to the TTP, under the supervision of the IEA.

It was expected that the month long ceasefire would be extended further after successful talks with the TTP. But that has not happened.

In an audio message, Taliban commander Mufti Noor Wali Mahsud announced an end to the ceasefire and asked all TTP fighters to resume attacks.

"Since the TTP has not heard back form the mediators or the government, therefore, past midnight, our fighters reserve the right to resume attacks wherever they were," Noor Wali Mahsud was heard as saying in the audio message.

The end to the ceasefire has come as a major blow to the Pakistan government as it brushes aside efforts to secure a peace agreement and closes doors for positive engagement between the TTP militants and the government going forward.

While the ceasefire had a visible impact, as TTP-led militant attacks inside Pakistan, which saw a major surge in the recent past, declined considerably.

It was also made clear from both sides that there would be some red lines, that would not be crossed. This included grouping, re-grouping, safe- havens, movements of militants from the Pakistani side.

On the other hand, the TTP had set its condition to enforce Shariah Islamic law and re-enforcement of the tribal areas as Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), which was merged into the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province in 2017.

But with the current end to the ceasefire, Pakistani security forces and the locals brace for increased targeted attacks by the TTP militants, a problem that the country has been fighting for decades.
Chandigarh, Dec 10 : Chandigarh witnessed another milestone in organ donation as for the first time a harvested heart from a deceased organ donor in PGIMERA here travelled around 2,500 km for a matching recipient in Chennai.

The harvested heart was sent from the Postgraduate Institute of Medical Education and Research (PGIMER) to the international airport in Mohali in 22 minutes by creating a 'green corridor' for the flight scheduled for departure at 3.25 p.m. on Wednesday.

After landing at 8.30 p.m. in Chennai, the retrieved heart was taken to MGM Healthcare Hospital in Chennai where it was transplanted to a terminally ill 52-year-old male patient.

The harvested liver, kidneys and corneas were transplanted to five patients here in the PGIMER.

Surjeet Singh, Director PGIMER, while expressing his gratitude to the donor family, said, "Timing is the key in transplantation. It is commendable that the heart was retrieved and transported within such a short span of time despite the matching recipient being 2,500 km away.

"We remain indebted to the donor family for consenting to save and enrich others' lives in their hour of indescribable grief, impacting six lives tangibly." Commending the contribution by the PGIMER team, the director said, "The entire team right from neurosurgeons, intensivists, nephrologists, hepatologists, testing labs, transplant surgeons, transplant coordinators and nursing officers worked in tandem to translate the noble wish of the donor family into actually saving precious lives." In an extremely unfortunate turn of events, a 45-year-old man met with an accident, sustaining grievous head injury on December 4. He was rushed to the PGIMER. However, as his condition deteriorated and became irretrievable, he was declared brain dead here on December 7.

The family, amid the grim tragedy, displayed courage and magnanimity and consented for organ donation of their relative, when counseled by the transplant coordinator at the PGIMER.

Following the family's consent, heart, liver, kidneys and corneas were retrieved from the donor for transplantation to save other lives.

Since, there was no matching recipient for heart here; it was allocated for a matching recipient in the MGM Healthcare Hospital in Chennai with the intervention of NOTTO.

Rest of the retrieved organs, including liver and kidneys, were transplanted to the terminally ill organ failure patients in the PGIMER, thereby giving them a second lease of life.

The harvested corneas, on transplantation, restored the sight of two corneal blind patients, thereby influencing six lives in all, one in Chennai and other five in the PGIMER.
New Delhi, Dec 10 : "Religious violence spawned by allegations of blasphemy has taken on a life of its own, destroying the fabric of society slowly but surely," Pakistans Dawn newspaper said in an editorial.

A commentary in the same newspaper tersely declares that this is "just a trailer" of things to come in future with the state - both military and civilian (politicians and bureaucracy) caving in to pressures from religious zealots, some of which they have themselves nurtured and/or condoned as "state assets".

While successive governments have been responsible, the efforts of the Imran Khan government to buy peace with two Tehreeks -- the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) and Tehreek-e-Labaik Pakistan (TLP) -- both of whom justify violence in the name of faith, coupled with the rise of the Taliban in neighbouring Pakistan with Islamabad's tacit support, has heightened the concerns as never before.

TLP slogans were raised by its activists among the scores of factory who last week lynched a Sri Lankan manager, Priyantha Kumar, at a Sialkot factory. His body was burnt as thousands watched and some even filmed, causing nationwide anger reactions abroad and diplomatic issues with Colombo.

This comes as part of a trend of mobs punishing those who they suspect have insulted the Prophet or Islamic scriptures and symbols, violating the blasphemy law that prescribes death penalty. The British-era blasphemy laws, tightened during military dictator Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq's era in 1980s, have set an alarming trend that has accelerated in the last decade, analysts say.

Among those killed was Punjab Governor Salman Taseer. His bodyguard, the killer, when hanged, has a memorial dedicated to him that is visited by many. Student Mashaal Khan was among he many lynched. Numerous others, especially those from religious minorities, have been targeted by mobs.

Kuamara, who ordered labels with Arabic writings removed from consignments meant for export, possibly without knowing what the writings said, was accused of blasphemy by the workers.

"While he (Imran Khan) tweeted his condemnation of the incident the prime minister has not said much about the threat of religious extremism," Columnist Zahid Hussein says, lamenting "weaponisation of faith", (Dawn, December 9).

To Khan who considers himself a global Muslim leader campaigning against Islamophobia in the West, Hussein has advised to look within Pakistan and "not look for reasons outside". Even among other Prime Ministers, he ought to take the liberal cue from his Sri Lankan and New Zealand counterparts.

Pakistani media reports note that Khan has failed to restrain his Defence Minister Pervez Khattak, politically close to him, who said of Kumara's killing: "murders happen. There were people who were impacted by the Islamic faith, both youngsters and adults. They become upset and act in a passionate manner. This isn't to say that it was a reaction to something. Everyone has their own way of thinking".

Commentators have said that Khattak may have been 'crude', but this is precisely the thinking of many in and outside the government who justify faith-based violence.

Faith-based violence blamed on teachings at mosques and madrassas in Pakistan. But the Dawn editorial (A watershed moment?) noted that the clerics were among those who condemned it in strong words. However, "several of the clerics vociferous in their condemnation of the murder as 'inhumane and un-Islamic' have been the driving force behind the blasphemy campaign across the country that has been the cause of untold misery to thousands".

"Whether this 'watershed moment' proves a catalyst for real change is as yet unknown. Sadly, history tells us that this nation has a very limited capacity for self-reflection, let alone taking the difficult steps that would be needed to root out what is no less than a cancer of the soul." In a hard-hitting commentary on the blame-game that takes place after each incident, from the Prime Minister to the priests to the policemen, Ahad Hussein says that all the anger and outrage will soon be forgotten as has been the case in the past.

"Then, just like that, it's over. And done. And dustAed. Because, you see, no one is really responsible. Or everyone is. And when everyone is, no one really is." Hussein writes: "A weak state, unable to stop the spread of a retrogressive mindset has turned the country into a breeding ground for violent extremism. What happened in Sialkot was just a trailer of the horror that awaits us."
Dharamsala, Dec 10 : The Himachal Pradesh Assembly, on the first day of its Winter session on Friday, rejected the no-confidence motion brought by the main opposition Congress by a voice vote amidst uproarious scenes.

Twenty-two Congress members and the lone CPI-M member contended that the BJP government has lost the moral right to rule after losing all four seats in recent bypolls, including the Mandi parliamentary constituency.

"The government has lost the faith of the people and hence it should resign," said Leader of the Opposition Mukesh Agnihotri, who moved the motion But in the House, the Congress only had the presence of 19 members.

As the chaos prevailed for half an hour, Speaker Vipin Singh Parmar asked the Opposition members to maintain harmony and adjourned the house for lunch break.

Later, the Opposition joined the House proceedings.

Agnihotri told the media that the Congress wanted to debate on the issues of unemployment, price rise and those related to the employees but the Speaker didn't give them the opportunity.

He said the government has lost the moral right to rule after facing defeat in the by-elections at the hands of the Congress.
New Delhi, Dec 10 : A special court on Friday sent Pinky Irani, an alleged aide of multimillionaire conman Sukesh Chandrashekhar who was held in connection with the over Rs 200 crore money laundering case, to Enforcement Directorate custody till Tuesday.

The ED had arrested Irani, said to be a resident of Mumbai, on Thursday evening.

It had moved a plea seeking her 14 days' remand. During the argument, Public Prosecutor Atul Tripathi representing the ED argued that she was needed to be confronted with evidence. He said that her statement is also to be recorded.

Advocate R K Shah appeared for the ED and assisted Mr Tripathi.

An ED official said that they have to recover a few documents from her. "She was the one who introduced Bollywood actress Jacqueline Fernandez to Sukesh Chandrasekhar and summoned by the ED. After questioning, she was arrested on Thursday." Now the ED will confront her with Jacqueline Fernandez, record her statement and compare it with the actor's statement. Few more persons are under the scanner of the ED.

Irani will be questioned regarding the case and hawala transactions of the money.

As of now, nine people, including Pinky, have been arrested in this connection.

Those arrested earlier are -- Pradeep Ramdanee, B. Mohan Raj, Deepak Ramnani, Arun Muthu, Kamlesh Kothari, Avatar Singh Kochhar, Sukesh Chandrashekhar and his wife Leena Maria Paul.

All the eight have been charge-sheeted.

The ED will file a supplementary chargesheet mentioning Pinky as an accused. The chargesheet would be based on documentary evidence.
Hyderabad, Dec 10 : The new Covid-tracking website launched by the Indian Institute of Technology, Hyderabad, is equipped with several capabilities, including predicting the future course of the pandemic.

The IIT-Hyderabad on Friday formally launched covid19tracker.in that has been built as an alternative to the covid19india.org website which had been set up early 2020, when the Covid pandemic struck India, and was the most popular website for such information, in addition to the Ministry website.

IIT-Hyderabad decided to develop the new site after the creators of covid19india.org had announced in August 2021 that they would no longer maintain up-to-date statistics after October 31, 2021.

Understanding the criticality of the information to Indians, including researchers, students, and the public, the Director of IIT-Hyderabad authorised a team of developers to carry on the work beyond November 1, 2021.

Prof M. Vidyasagar FRS, Distinguished Professor at IIT-Hyderabad, said: "Currently, we have gone beyond the original website by including predictions for the future course of the pandemic, generated by the SUTRA Consortium of which IIT-Hyderabad is a member. Most recently, we have included the projections for the post-Omicron scenario as well. In the future, we plan to enhance the website by including a search feature to highlight trends and raise alerts as and when required. If resources permit, we will monitor not just India but other countries as well. The emergence of the Omicron variant of concern shows that India cannot collect and monitor its data in isolation." The website covid19tracker.in, has been built using the public code base of covid19india.org website.

Prof Bheemarjuna Reddy Tamma, Chair, Computer Centre, IITH, said, "While the front-end of our website has the same user interface as that of the original website (covid19india.org), the back-end was developed in-house by a group of enthusiastic students of IIT-Hyderabad and maintained by the staff members of Computer Center. The website has been hosted on a public cloud platform to make it highly scalable and responsive even when web traffic shoots up." Expressing his delight on the launch, Prof B.S. Murty, Director, IIT-Hyderabad said, "This website, which will be an important resource for everyone interested in data related to the Covid-19 pandemic in India. Our site has attracted considerable traffic despite having been created so recently. In fact, we have noted that the Worldometers website for India uses just two sources -- our site, and that of MoHFW."
Chennai, Dec 10 : The Tamil Nadu Health Department has made Covid vaccination mandatory for students above 18 years of age to attend college classes, Health Minister Ma Subramanian said on Friday.

Addressing media persons after attending a high-level meeting of educationists here, he said that the Secretary, Higher Education will write letters to all the educational institutions directing them to make it mandatory for students above 18 years of age to get at least one dose of the vaccine administered to them.

He said that only 46 per cent of engineering students above 18 years have taken the first dose of vaccine and only 12 per cent of the students have taken both the doses of vaccine.

Subramanian said that college administrators should verify the student list and ensure that 100 per cent double doses have been administered.

There have been reports of a higher possibility and risk of spread of infection in college canteens and dining area of the educational institutions.

The Minister also said that student get-togethers and functions must not be held without prior permission from the Health Department. He also said that students must bring in food in disposable containers and be sent to canteens in batches.

With the Omicron variant creating problems in several countries, the Centre has directed all the state governments to be focus on vaccination drives.
Kochi, Dec 10 : The Central Marine Fisheries Research Institute's (CMFRI) effort to rejuvenate the black clam (Villorita cyprinoides) resource in the Vembanad lake has yielded results with fishermen harvesting good catch from the region.

CMFRI's initiative of relaying baby clams in various sites in the Vembanad lake facilitated increasing the clam production which in turn helped fishermen to harvest around 10 tonnes of clam per day from two areas of the lake.

As part of this initiative under a project on 'Rejuvenation of Clam' taken up by the Fisheries Department of Kerala using the District Panchayat Scheme, approximately 200 tonnes of baby black clams were re-laid in Keecheri and Chakkathukadu areas of the Vembanad lake under the technical guidance of CMFRI.

According to the CMFRI scientists, the initiative is expected to bring out a production of nearly 1500 tonnes from these sites.

The long undisturbed period of nearly two years has facilitated at least two spawnings followed by spat settlement in a new habitat, leading to the establishment of a new black clam bed in the Lake and thus enhancing the clam resource, said A.P. Laxmilatha, Head of Molluscan Fisheries Division (MFD) of CMFRI.

Relaying of baby clams led to the establishment of the resource in these areas spreading around 20 hectares and helped fishers harvest adult clams with good growth rate, she added.

"The production of black clams declined from a peak of 75,592 tonnes in 2006 to 42,036 tonnes in 2019 in Vembanad lake. Low production owing to multiple reasons and the pandemic have had cascading effect on clam fishers along the lake", said Laxmilatha.

Reaping the benefits, fishermen under the Keecheri Ulnadan Matsya Thozhilali Sahakarana Sangham collect the clams using canoes from re-laid locations and sell clam meat for 150 per kg in the nearest market. Each canoe collects 450 kg of clams per day.

R.Vidya, scientist of the MFD, CMFRI who led the project said that apart from increasing the production of clams in the area, the relaying helped clam fishers to sustain their livelihood during the tough pandemic period.

"Nearly 5,000 fishermen are involved in black clam fishery in the Vembanad lake", she said, adding that the clam rejuvenation programme greatly helped increasing the production in the backwaters that provided a lifeline to the fishers depending on clam resources in the area.
Kochi, Dec 10 : A local court here on Friday refused bail to the five CPI-M workers who were arrested on December 1 by the CBI in connection with the murder of two youth Congress workers on February 17, 2019 at Periya in Kasargode district.

The five, who were refused bail, were -- local CPI-M leaders at Periya Raju, Vishnu Sura, S. Madhu, Reji Varghese and Hari Prasad.

Strongly opposing the bail was the CBI who told the Ernakulam Additional chief judicial magistrate court that giving bail to these accused will impact further investigation.

Incidentally, the ongoing CBI probe into the brutal twin murder case has sent shockwaves to the ruling CPI-M.

In the remand report, filed before the CBI court here on December 2, it states that former CPI-M Udma legislator -- K.V. Kunhiraman is the 21st accused in the case.

It was on December 1, 2020, the Pinarayi Vijayan government suffered a huge setback when the apex court upheld the verdict of the Kerala High Court's division bench to handover the murder case probe to the CBI and exactly after a year, the CBI arrested the five CPI-M leaders in connection with it.

The gruesome murder took place on February 17, 2019 at Periya in Kasargode district.

Youth Congress workers, Krupesh, 19, and Sharath Lal Joshy, 24, were attacked by three motorcycle-borne men while returning from an event. While Krupesh died at the Kasargode district hospital, Joshy succumbed to his injuries on his way to a medical facility in Mangaluru, Karnataka.

The families of the victims and the Congress have been demanding a CBI probe from the outset, saying that the police had failed to arrest the real accused, who, according to them, are senior CPI-M leaders in Kasargode who had conspired to eliminate the two young Congress workers.

The family then approached the High Court and the Single Bench approved of it, but the Pinarayi Vijayan government appealed in the division bench, which upheld the single bench verdict. The Vijayan government then approached the Supreme Court and on December 1, 2020, the apex court upheld the division bench's verdict.
Beijing, Dec 10 : Tech giant Huawei is expected to launch a new smartwatch -- Huawei Watch D -- that will feature a blood pressure monitor, on December 23.

According to Android Community, the upcoming Huawei Watch D with blood pressure monitor will come with a Huawei Health app, where users can access information including history of their BP results.

On the app, users can monitor their results for improvements, the report said.

The feature seems to be similar to the one available in the Samsung Galaxy Watch 4.

The report mentiopned that the BP feature is being tested and is said to offer a good accuracy rate.

As per the website, "of course, such a smartwatch will never replace a real BP monitor but it works and can give you an idea about your health and condition. It can be for quick or everyday use".

The smartwatch is also said to come with a medical-grade electrocardiogram (ECG). This can check the heart rhythm of a person that may possibly detect Atrial fibrillation (Afib).

The company is also believed to introduce several other products with helpful features.
Gurugram, Dec 10 : Members of Hindu organisations and local villagers did not allow Friday Namaz in Sector-37 industrial area.

In a bid to stop the prayers, condolence meetings were organised for Chief of Defence Staff Bipin Rawat, his wife and other army personnel who lost their lives in a chopper crash on December 8.

Trucks and other vehicles were also found parked hap hazardously at Hero Honda Namaz location.

Apart from this, members of the Sanyukt Hindu Sangharsh Samiti and the Muslim organisation jointly paid tributes to General Rawat in Sector-29.

Meanwhile, the Friday Namaz was disrupted in a park located in Sector-44 by members of the Hindu right-wing. However, due to the deployment of a heavy police force at the suspected sites, no untoward incident was reported.

"We organised condolence meet in Sector-37 industrial area for our beloved CDS Bipin Rawat Ji and other army personnel who lost their lives during an unfortunate incident recently. Next Friday, we will also organise a family kitchen (Bhandara) at the same location. This is our village land and we used to park trucks and vehicles here. We will not allow anyone to offer Namaz here," Rinku a local villager told IANS.

Meanwhile, a Muslim man who was prevented from reaching the site said: This was a wrong way to stop us from offering Namaz. In Sector-37 a number of people are offering Namaz since several years but nobody stopped us but now few organisations are deliberately disrupting the prayers to gain political milage. We also have faith in Hindu religion and a real Hindu can not prevent anybody from offering prayers," Rashid Malik told media.

Another Muslim community man who was turned away from the site also expressed his anger saying: "Shall we die if we are not allowed to offer Jumma Namaz. We used to visit temples and take part in Hindu religious activities without hampering any religious activity and we expect the same respect from our Hindu brothers," he said.

Earlier, in a meeting with the district administration, the Muslim organisation had decided to go ahead with Friday prayers at 18 places including six temporary spots in Gurugram.
Panaji, Dec 10 : Congress General Secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra on Friday lashed out at the Aam Aadmi Party for not being able to tackle the air pollution issue in the national capital, while accusing the BJP government in Goa of working only for the interests of a few rich businessmen and ignoring the people of the coastal state.

"There are a lot of parties which have come here from elsewhere. There are new parties today. What have they done in their respective states. Have they ushered in progress? I am from Delhi. AAP is from Delhi. There is so much pollution in Delhi that you cannot breathe," she said during an interaction with members of the tribal community in Morpirla village in South Goa.

Priyanka Gandhi is on a one-day visit to the state, which goes to polls in February next year.

"You have to opt for development by preserving your environment, because you have to preserve the environment, the forests here, the farms, the water, the sea. You have to think which party will do this for you and who will listen to you. It is only the Congress party which will strike this balance. I hope you will think and cast your vote and ensure that the Congress wins. Elect a government which works for you," she said in her poll pitch.

The Congress leader also lambasted the BJP-led coalition government in Goa, which she said, ignored the basic issues concerning the local population.

"The government in Goa today is not the kind which works for the people. The government is working for itself. It wants to hold on to power in any condition, therefore they bestow favours on their industrialist friends. They started coal mining here too," she said.

"We are working hard to give a kind of government in Goa which works for the people of Goa and delivers the state to its people," she said, accusing the BJP government of having "exploited local resources, and harmed environment to give benefit to a few of its friends while depriving the local people".
H0yderabad, Dec 10 : The United States Consulate in Hyderabad and Alliance for Commercialisation and Innovation Research (ACIR) jointly hosted the Defence and Aerospace Workshop, a three-day event for select startups in the defence and aerospace industry.

The workshop is designed to support ambitious and innovative entrepreneurs from Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, and Odisha by empowering them to transform their business venture into a sustainable enterprise and connect with leading American and Indian corporations in the defence and aerospace industries.

The programme will enhance the entrepreneurial and managerial skills of these individuals leading early-stage ventures. The programme consists of a three-day workshop organised in Hyderabad for 25 entrepreneurs, with a focus on startups led by women and/or people under 35 years of age. Participants were chosen through a competitive application process.

U.S. Consul General in Hyderabad Joel Reifman addressed the group of entrepreneurs along with Principal Secretary to the Telangana government for Industries & Commerce and IT Jayesh Ranjan, William Blair of Lockheed Martin, S.G.K. Kishore of GMR, and Erik Azulay of ACIR.

"The strength of the U.S.-India relationship is on full display at this Defence and Aerospace Workshop," said Consul General Reifman. "These entrepreneurs are not only contributing to the deepening defence relationship between the United States and India, they are also honing business skills that will foster economic growth and vitality in both of our countries. What's more, nearly half of the startups here today are led by women and the vast majority are either based in or founded by someone from Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, or Odisha. That's an outstanding accomplishment," he added.

"The Defence and Aerospace Workshop is a three-day series of trainings bringing together innovative Indian startups and the main players in the aerospace and defence industries," said ACIR Founder Erik Azulay. "We are thrilled to be partnering with top U.S. leaders in India such as Pratt & Whitney, Lockheed Martin, and Belcan to integrate innovative startups into their supply chains. This level of collaboration is a testimony to the strong U.S.-Indian relationship and our shared culture of entrepreneurship." ACIR is an American non-profit organisation providing consulting, training, and programme management services in the fields of innovation, incubation, and entrepreneurship. It has successfully run entrepreneurship programmes around the world, including in South Korea, Kazakhstan, Russia, Georgia, and the United States, including the 2019 Defence Startups Workshop in Hyderabad.
Mumbai, Dec 10 : Maharashtra Minister Nawab Malik on Friday tendered an unconditional apology in the Bombay High Court for "wilfully breaching" his undertaking to the court to refrain from making any statements against Narcotics Control Bureau Zonal Director Sameer Wankhede and his family.

In his affidavit in response to an explanation sought by the court why action should not be taken against him as prima facie, Malik had "wilfully breached" its order, he tendered an "unconditional apology" to Justice S. J. Kathawalla and Justice Milind Jadhav.

"At the outset, I tender my unconditional apology to this Honourable Court in respect of the breaches of my undertaking given to this Honourable Court as recorded in the orders dated November 25 and 29, 2021. I had no intention to disrespect, dishonour, overreach or breach the said order," said Malik.

He also said that his utterances were not any press releases or statements but were part of interviews with the media outlets when he was merely replying to questions asked by journalists.

"These responses were made by me in the belief that such responses made in the course of interviews were not within the ambit of his undertaking before the court," said Malik, in reference to the defamation case filed by the NCB officer's father, Dnyandev Wankhede.

The NCP leader assured that he would not make any more personal comments on the Wankhedes until the pendency of the defamation suit, and the apology was accepted by the court.

"I however believe my statement will not prevent me from commenting on the political misuse of central agencies, and the conduct of their officers in the course of performance of their official duties hereafter," Malik said in the affidavit.

Following the undertaking by Malik's lawyer Aspi Chinoy, Wankhede's counsel Birendra Saraf urged that the Minister must not misuse the (above) statement to continue making defamatory utterances against the NCB officer.
Thiruvananthapuram, Dec 10 : Kerala BJP president K. Surendran on Friday asked the Pinarayi Vijayan government to take strong action against those making defaming and derogatory remarks in the social media against country's first Chief of Defence Staff, Gen Bipin Rawat, who along with 12 others died in a helicopter crash at Coonoor on December 8.

Surendran said when the country is mourning the demise of Rawat and others, Kerala government pleader Rashmitha Ramachandran has come out with a derogatory remark which is "anti-national." "What's strange is that even without a complaint, the state government can take suo-motu case against this person who is a government pleader. The fact of the matter is several complaints have also been made, but no action has been taken by the Pinarayi Vijayan government," he added.

The BJP leader asked Vijayan to immediately remove her from the list of government pleaders.

"We want to know if the Vijayan government also has the same view of that of this lady advocate. It now seems with no action coming against those who have aired anti-national statements, the fact of the matter is under Vijayan anyone can air anti-national statements," added Surendran.
New Delhi, Dec 10 : Following the Commission for Air Quality Management's (CAQM) order, the Delhi government will shut down about 40 malls that are using diesel generator sets for power backup to curb national capital's air pollution.

The V3S mall in east Delhi's Nirman Vihar is one of the very first names revealed, a source told IANS.

"Only malls using diesel generator sets (DGS) for power have been closed," a CAQM official said.

This move came after the Supreme Court on Friday allowed the Commission for Air Quality Management in NCR & Adjoining Areas to take a decision on relaxing ban on construction activities and restrictions on industrial activities, after examining representation of various bodies.

Since 2015 onwards, with the onset of winter, Delhi's air quality starts deteriorating and goes on to settle in the "very poor" and "hazardous" category. An AQI between zero and 50 is considered "good", 51 to 100 "satisfactory", 101 to 200 "moderate", 201 to 300 "poor", 301 to 400 "very poor", and 401 to 500 is considered "severe".

According to the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE), vehicular pollution comprises more than half of all sources, followed by household pollution between 12.5 and 13.5 per cent. Industry contributes 9.9-13.7 per cent of the pollutants, construction 6.7-7.9 per cent, waste burning 4.6-4.9 per cent, and road dust 3.6-4.1 per cent.

According to a compiled Action Taken Report (ATR) prepared by the Department of Environment & Forest, from November 17 to December 6, a total of 4,245 sites using diesel generator sets were inspected, of which 48 were found using the sets, 18 were shut down, and a fine of 5.4 lakh was imposed on them for not adhering to the anti-dust pollution guidelines.

The Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB), in October, banned the use of diesel generator sets and ordered enhancing parking fees by up to four times in Delhi-NCR. This measure was listed under the Graded Response Action Plan (Grap) when the air quality settled in the "very poor" category.
New Delhi, Dec 10 : Despite being aware of the average medical expenditure, the Centre does not keep a tab on the high cost of healthcare as the subject falls under the ambit of state government, Union Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya said in the Lok Sabha on Friday.

"As per the report of National Sample Survey 71st Round conducted by National Sample Survey Organisation (NSSO) from January to June 2014, the average medical expenditure per hospitalisation in private hospitals was more as compared to Government Hospitals. It is, however, the responsibility of the state government to take cognisance of instances of unreasonable charges by the private hospitals and take action to prevent and control such practises. Details of such cases are not maintained centrally," he said in a written reply to a question.

To another question on the measures taken by the Centre for making healthcare facilities affordable for patients, he said, "To provide affordable and quality tertiary health care facilities, Government is setting up new All India Institute of Medical Science (AIIMS) and upgrading Government Medical Colleges under the Pradhan Mantri Swasthya Suraksha Yojana. State Governments are also supported for setting up of new medical colleges as well as for increasing undergraduate and postgraduate medical seats." "Further, under the National Health Mission (NHM), technical and financial support is provided to states and union territories for strengthening their healthcare systems upto district hospital level, based on the proposals submitted by them in their Program Implementation Plans (PIPs), subject to availability of resources. NHM adopts a health system approach and targets to build a network for public health facilities with health and wellness centres at the grassroot level and district hospitals, with robust referral linkage, to offer comprehensive primary and secondary care services to citizens," the minister added.
New Delhi, Dec 10 : A Delhi court has expressed concern over the absence of Special Public Prosecutors (SPPs) appearing for the state in Delhi riots cases.

Additional Sessions Judge Virender Bhat on Thursday noted that two prosecution witnesses - Prempal and Shivam - are present in the case, but cannot be examined in the absence of Special Public Prosecutor Amit Prasad.

No SPPs were present before the court, though all accused were produced from judicial custody.

The court said SPP Prasad had informed that he is busy with some matter in the high court. Thereafter, another SPP D.K. Bhatia, was called but also expressed his inability to appear in the case. After that, another SPP Madhukar Pandey was called but also did not respond positively.

This is the state of affairs with regards to these riot cases which are very sensitive in nature and for which this special court was set up, the court observed.

These cases were assigned to a panel of SPPs formed by the police so as to ensure proper and effective prosecution of these cases. But this court has found in several cases, the SPPs are not appearing in the court due to which cases have to be adjourned without conducting any proceeding and resulting in delays, it said.

Defence counsel have also vehemently objected to the conduct of the Special PPs saying that the matters are being adjourned unnecessarily and the accused's jail time gets prolonged for no fault of theirs.

Earlier also, the judge had communicated this to the DCP North East Delhi. Further, he sent a copy of the order to him to appoint SPPs to represent the state and sought a report within a week. The witnesses were let go unexamined.
New Delhi, Dec 10 : The Supreme Court has said the state force should not be used to either browbeat political opinion or journalists suffer from what is already in public domain.

A bench of Justices Sanjay Kishan Kaul and M.M. Sundresh said: "We are however, not inclined to let go off the opportunity of saying something which is troubling the society and the Court.

"State force should never be used to either browbeat a political opinion or the journalists suffer the consequences of what is already in public domain. We hasten to add that this does not take away the responsibility of the journalists in how they report the matters, more so in a Twitter age." The bench further added that it is undoubtedly the debasement in the dialogue which is taking place which needs introspection from the political class across the country.

"In a country which prides itself on its diversity, there are bound to be different perceptions and opinions which would include political opinions. That is very essence of a democracy. The present proceedings in a way emanate from the same," it added.

The top court made these observations on Thursday, quashing three FIRs against journalists from OpIndia, after the West Bengal government informed that it has decided to withdraw FIRs registered against its editor Nupur Sharma and another journalist for articles published on the website.

"We must appreciate the stand taken by the state government and allay any apprehension of the learned senior counsel for the respondent(s) that it may be perceived in a negative sense in public domain. If at all, the stand is to be appreciated of better late than never and should be a model for others to follow," noted the bench, in its order.

Senior advocate Mahesh Jethmalani represented the petitioners, who had moved the top court in June 2020, after the police registered cases against them for offences under the Indian Penal Code's Section 153A (promoting enmity between religious groups), 504 (intentional insult with intent to provoke breach of peace) and 505 (statements conducing to public mischief).

The apex court had stayed the FIRs in June 2020. The police had registered another FIR, which was also stayed by the top court in September 2021.

The petitioners had argued that FIRs were registered in connection with different stories carried by the OpIndia platform. They further contended that various other mainstream news outlets had also carried articles and news pieces on the concerned subjects. However, the police registered FIRs only against the petitioners.
New Delhi, Dec 10 : Prime Minister Narendra Modi is expected to address a public rally in Uttarakhand's Kumaon region on December 24, before the Model Code of Conduct for the upcoming assembly elections in the hill state comes into force, a BJP leader said on Friday.

Assembly polls in Uttarakhand will be held in February-March next year along with four other states -- Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, Manipur and Goa.

Uttarakhand BJP president Madan Kaushik told IANS that the Prime Minister will address the public rally in Kumaon region "most likely" on December 24.

"Final date and venue will be finalised in the next couple of days. The Prime Minister rally will be held in the Kumaon region and it will most probably be the last public rally before the Model Code of Conduct comes into force for assembly polls," Kaushik said.

Modi's rally will be either held in Rudrapur or Haldwani in Kumaon region.

"Place and other details of Prime Minister Modi's rally will be finalised soon. The state (party) unit will also hold a meeting to discuss and finalise the plans for the rally in a day or two. It will be a grand event like PM Modi's previous rally on December 4 in Dehradun," Kaushik said.

The BJP leader further stated the Prime Minister will announce several new projects, and also dedicate many projects to the people during the rally.

On December 4, Prime Minister Modi had inaugurated and laid the foundation stone of multiple projects worth around Rs 18,000 crore in Dehradun in Uttarakhand's Garhwal region.

The saffron party has claimed that around 1.5 lakh people had attended Modi's Dehradun rally.

It is also learnt that several union ministers including Home Minister Amit Shah will also visit the hill state before the Model Code of Conduct comes into force.
Dakshina Kannada, : Dec 10 (IANS) A youth in Bajpe town of Karnataka's Dakshina Kannada district was arrested for allegedly raping a woman for rejecting his love proposal, police said on Friday.

According to police, Abubakar Siddique, 21, and the victim studied in the same college and were classmates. She had posed with him for a photograph during the farewell party in 2019.

Taking advantage of this, he started pestering her to enter a relationship. When she rejected his offer, he threatened her to make the photograph of them together viral on social media.

The woman didn't pay heed to his threats and ignored him. But, the accused had followed her when she was returning from work to her residence. After confirming that no one was at home, he barged inside and raped her.

The victim had lodged a complaint with Bajpe police station and the police have arrested the accused. Further investigation is on.
December 10 : Dia Mirza celebrated her 40th birthday on Thursday, and the actress was wished on social media by several of her film fraternity friends and colleagues. From Priyanka Chopra to Kareena Kapoor and Anushka Sharma all wished the 40-year-old. Dia was on cloud nine as her husband Vaibhav Rekhi ensured that her 40th birthday turn to be an extra special day. He also shared a heartfelt wish for Dia on social media.

Vaibhav Rekhi made her day special by throwing a bash, which was attended by their daughter Samaira Rekhi and Dias close friends including Aditi Rao Hydari, Lara Bhupati, and others. Dia shared several pictures from the celebration last night and expressed her gratitude for making her 40th so special. In a picture, Dia can be seen sitting at a table with a chocolate cake on it. There was another cake with four diyas on it, indicating her 40th birthday. Sharing the picture, Dia wrote, Only gratitude Thank you all so much for making my 40th birthday so special. Couldnt ask for a better beginning to this new year around the sun, with a daughter, a son and a partner who makes every moment infinitely special. So grateful to my Mother, our family, our friends and all of you My world!

Image Source: instagram

The former beauty queen had tied the knot with Vaibhav Rekhi early this year, and welcomed their son Avyaan Azaad Rekhi on May 14. Vaibhav Rekhi also took to his Instagram stories and sent her an adorable birthday wish. Vaibhav shared a beautiful picture of Dia from their honeymoon in Maldives, wherein the actress can be seen running on the docks in a red floral dress. He captioned

the pic as, May the wind always be at your back and the sun upon your face... #Happy40 @diamirzaofficial. Dia shared the post and captioned it as, Husband along with a heart emoticon.

Image Source: instagram

Priyanka Chopra's birthday wish for Dia left her in splits. To wish her friend on her 40th birthday, Priyanka dug out a never-seen-before throwback picture of Dia with chocolate cake smeared all over her face. In her post, Priyanka revealed that the picture was taken 22 years ago, on Dias 18th birthday, just before the Miss India pageant.

Sharing the picture on her Instagram stories, Priyanka wrote, When you turned 18 right before Miss India... Happy 40th Dee! Here's celebrating you every day. Dia loved the post and reposted it on her Instagram and replied, I can't believe you posted this picture (laughing and face hiding emoji) Thank you Peecee.

Image Source: Instagram

Kareena Kapoor shared a black-and-white picture of the birthday girl on her Instagram stories and wrote, Happy Birthday gorgeous Dia. Have a wonderful day.

Image Source: instagram

Malaika Arora also took to her Instagram stories and wrote, Happy birthday my beautiful dee @diamirzaofficial.

Image Source: Instagram

Anushka Sharma, Masaba Gupta, Athiya Shetty and several others also wished Dia on her special day.

Image Source: instagram
Patna Dec 10 : RJD leader Tejashwi Yadav's maternal uncle Sadhu Yadav on Friday went all out at his nephew over his inter-community marriage to former schoolmate Rachel Godinho.

Sadhu Yadav, the former Gopalganj MP, did not pull his punches in his attack on Tejashwi.

"He has demeaned the image of Lalu Prasad's family after did the marriage with a girl belonging to another community. He doesn't deserve to be called Leader of Opposition in Bihar Assembly.

"He is doing arbitrariness in the family and party. He wants to rule us. We cannot allow him to do so. We will boycott him. We will teach him a lesson," said Sadhu Yadav, whose rage also owed to the fact that he was not invited to the ceremony.

He said that Lalu Prasad's old aide Prem Gupta, who attended the marriage, was a "corrupt person". "In fact all the invited persons who were participated in the marriage are corrupt," he said.

Tejashwi Yadav got married to Rachel Godinho in a south Delhi's Sainik farm locality on Thursday in presence of all family members. He has invited limited people for the marriage. Even RJD's Bihar President Jagadanand Singh and other top leaders were not invited for the event. Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar was not invited as well.
Mumbai: Nationalist Congress Party, President, Sharad Pawar during press conference issue on OBC and other cast reservation, State Governor waiting 12 MLC membership, Afghan country in Talibani issue in Indian peoples rescue etc at Party Head Office Image Source: IANS News

Mumbai, Dec 10 : To mark the 81st birthday of senior leader Sharad Pawar on Sunday (December 12), the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) will organise a weeklong 'Swabhiman Saptah' from December 14-20, state party chief and Minister Jayant Patil announced here on Friday.

He said NCP president Pawar will accept peoples' wishes and address a virtual rally from Mumbai's Nehru Centre on Sunday morning, and urged his admirers and followers to refrain from coming to greet him personally.

"Pawar Saheb will also address the virtual rally which will be telecast live on the party's official Facebook page and YouTube channel. A few senior leaders shall also be present on the occasion," said Patil.

He said that like every year, even this year the NCP will have a few unique initiatives to mark the occasion, including the launch of a party App by Pawar, which will help enhance coordination between the organisation and its workers all over.

The NCP Student Wing will organise a Maharashtra Youth Carnival for encouraging college students with competitions and other activities with prizes.

During the Swabhiman Week, the party activists across the state will create awareness about Covid-19 vaccinations and exhort people to go for inoculation at the nearest venue, the importance of following Covid protocols, testing, etc.

The party and all its frontal organisations will also conduct a series of social activities like health camps, blood donation drives, distributing medicines to the needy, tree plantation and environment-related initiatives.

Present with Patil were NCP state general secretary Shivajirao Garje, spokesperson Mahesh Chavan and Student Wing President Sunil Gavhane.

Hailing from Pune's Baramati, Pawar, the senior-most leader in the country respected across the political spectrum, with over 55 years of active political career serving at the state and Centre.

He is the architect of the 2-year-old Maha Vikas Aghadi alliance government of Shiv Sena-NCP-Congress led by Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray.
December 10 : Ayan Mukerjis directorial Brahmastra has been under production for a long time now. The director, of late, has been posting pictures of the main characters of the film on his social media, while trying to build up momentum. While frustrated fans asked Ayan to stop posting just pictures and release the film soon, the filmmaker promised them that he would soon announce the final release date of the film.

While fans are eagerly awaiting to witness the superhero film on the big screen, the makers of Brahmastra are reportedly planning for a grand launch of the first poster of the film. Directed by Ayan Mukerji, Brahmastra stars Alia Bhatt, Ranbir Kapoor, Amitabh Bachchan, Nagarjuna Akkineni, Dimple Kapadia and Mouni Roy.

It is reported by Bollywood Hungama that the two lead actors of the film, Alia Bhatt and Ranbir Kapoor, are likely to launch the first poster of Brahmastra at an event in Delhi on December 15. It is also reported that the makers are planning to announce the theatrical release date of the much-awaited film at the event.

Brahmastra is a superhero film, written and directed by Ayan Mukerji, and produced by Karan Johar. It is a three-part epic fantasy film series. The film went on floors in Bulgaria in February 2018, and will be released in Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada and Malayalam.

Karan Johar and Disney India have reportedly decided on the release date for the superhero film, which will be announced at the Delhi event on December 15. Reportedly, the makers are aiming September 9, 2022 for the release date.

Earlier this year, Karan Johars Dharma Productions had submitted 10 short teaser cuts of Brahmastra and and 13 motion posters for certification to the Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC). These were all passed in April this year with a U certificate and no cuts. All these teasers and motion posters have been dubbed in other languages like Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, and Bengali.

Last week, Ayan shared an emotional note on the film on his Instagram handle. He revealed that he has been working on the film each day as it grew with it. He also talked about how the film got delayed. The filmmaker wrote, TheTimeFeelsRight Two and a half years ago, I started this Instagram journey with Brahmastras Release a few months away. Then, we needed more time to perfect the movie. Then, I fell off Instagram. Then, the world stopped for a while.

He added, Through all of this, every single day, Brahmastra has been ON! Growing with all the love and dedication it has needed! Waiting patiently for its Time. That Time is Here.

Ayan said that this time he will announce the release date of the film. The Time to start sharing Brahmastra. The Time to launch something from Brahmastra. The Time for another, but this time - Final Release Date! And to do it all, in a way, thats as exciting and as special as the movie experience, we have given our lives to create! Really really soon. #somefunaroundthecorner #faith #brahmastra
Mumbai, Dec 10 : Actor Ayushmann Khurrana, whose rom-com 'Chandigarh Kare Aashiqui' hit the theaters on Friday, took a moment to thank his parents, P. Khurrana and Poonam Khurrana, for the values they have instilled in him.

He feels that it's their parenting which enabled him to make some brave choices in his career.

The actor took to Instagram and shared a throwback picture of himself with his parents, with the caption: "Thank you Maa and Papa for all the values and all the life lessons that you have patiently taught me. They have been and will always be with me as my guiding light. I'm blessed to have you as my parents. Love you." Directed by Abhishek Kapoor, 'Chandigarh Kare Aashiqui' aims to start a conversation on love as Ayushmann's character of a body-builder from Chandigarh falls in love with a trans-woman, played by Vaani Kapoor.

With this film, the actor continues his streak of doing content-driven cinema that brings different subjects into national consciousness, besides presenting new perspectives.
December 10 : Parineeti Chopra clocked 10 years in Bollywood as her debut film Ladies vs Ricky Bahl was made a decade back. The actress, who is currently shooting for her upcoming film Uunchai in Mumbai, celebrated her special day at the Mehboob Studio in Mumbai.

The Sandeep Aur Pinky Faraar actress took to her Instagram handle and shared a video from the sets of Uunchai, where the cast and crew of the film gave her a beautiful surprise. In the video, Parineeti can be seen entering the studio and gets shocked as the studio is decorated with silver-coloured balloons that read, '10 years of Parineeti Chopra'. The actress id heard saying, Oh my god.

Parineeti then cuts a cake while co-stars Amitabh Bachchan, Boman Irani, Anupam Kher and others cheer for her. The actress further says, It is very difficult to surprise me but Rajshri team and team Parineeti have been extremely successful."

Sharing the video, Parineeti wrote on her Instagram handle, The best surprise ever! Thank you to the entire team of Uunchai and Team Parineeti for making yesterday incredible. To celebrate with and learn from such massive legends, I must have done something right. 10 years and Im just about starting." The actress further added, Special love for my A-team/family without whom I am nothing! It truly takes a village! Neha, Ajayji, Micheal, Manju, Govind, Sanjay and the massive team at YRF - You make this crazy, hectic life better! Needless to say, I am nothing without my FANS. Thank you for making me a part of your lives."

While fans congratulated Parineeti on her special day, her industry friend and Sandeep Aur Pinky Faraar co-star Arjun Kapoor commented on the video and wrote, Umar ho gayi veteran now. Parineeti's brother Shivang Chopra wrote, So cute! Parineeti made her debut in Bollywood with the Ranveer Singh starrer Ladies vs Ricky Bahl in 2011. She later followed it up with brilliant acting performances in films like Ishaqzaade, Shuddh Desi Romance, Hasee Toh Phasee, The Girl On The Train and Sandeep Aur Pinky Faraar.

About completing 10 years in Bollywood, Parineeti said in a statement, I have been fortunate to work in some of the landmark films in the history of Indian cinema and collaborate with some of the best directors, actors, technicians of our illustrious film industry. When you love your work, time flies and its happened to me. She further added, As I complete 10 years in cinema, I feel I have just started my journey. Im raring to go actually for my next decade in cinema. Im loving the kind of offers that are coming my way because Im getting the freedom to express myself freely. Im not going to play safe anymore. With The Girl On The Train and Sandeep Aur Pinky Faraar, directors are seeing me in a new light and offering me the kind of work I always wanted to do."

Parineeti is currently shooting for Uunchai. In October, the actress had announced that she had joined Sooraj Barjatyas directorial Unnchai team in Nepal. The director will make a comeback after six years with Unnchai that also stars Neena Gupta and Sarika. Unnchai will celebrate the friendship between a bunch of senior citizens. It is a story about four friends who are aged 60 plus. While the makers are targeting a 2022 release, they plan to complete shoot by March 2022, it is reported.
Srinagar, Dec 10 : Former Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Omar Abdullah on Friday condemned the terrorist attack in north Kashmir's Bandipora district on Friday in which two policemen were killed.

"I condemn the militant attack on the police in Bandipora area earlier today (Friday) that resulted in the death in the line of duty of J&K police personnel, Muhammad Sultan and Fayaz Ahmad. May Allah grant them Jannat and may their families find strength at this time," Abdullah said in a tweet.

Two policemen were killed after terrorists attacked a police party at Gulshan Chowk in Bandipora district on Friday.

"In this terror incident, two police personnel namely Mohd Sultan and Fayaz Ahmad got injured and attained martyrdom," the police said.

The BJP's Jammu and Kashmir spokesman Altaf Thakur has also condemned the attack on two policemen and termed it as a frustration on the part of militants.

In a statement, he said that the killing of two policemen who were on duty is barbaric and highly condemnable.

He expressed condolences to the families of the two slain policemen, and urged the police to identity and punish the killers of the two cops.
Mumbai, Dec 10 : After a gap of four days, seven new cases of the Covid-19 variant Omicron have been detected in Maharashtra - three in Mumbai and four in Pune, taking the state's total to 17, health officials said on Friday.

The cases confirmed in Mumbai are three males aged 25, 37 and 48 years, all with a recent travel history to the UK, South Africa and Tanzania.

In Pune, the four new patients, including a three-and-half-year-old child, are the close contacts of the Indian-origin Nigerian woman who was detected Omicron positive last Sunday.

Of the new cases, 4 are fully vaccinated while one has taken a single jab, one has not been inoculated, and the child is not eligible for the vaccine.

Three of them are having mild symptoms and the others are found asymptomatic, but all have been isolated and undergoing treatment at various hospitals in Mumbai and Pune.

Surveillance at the international airports in Mumbai, Pune, and Nagpur has been further intensified with 9,678 passengers landing here from the "high risk" countries from the total 61,439 travellers.

From these, the samples of 25 found positive have been sent from genomic sequencing, including 20 from the "at risk" nations and five from other countries, said health officials.

A total of 89 samples have been sent for genomic sequencing of which results of 47 are awaited, and so far 17 have been found infected with Omicron.

Last week on Saturday, Sunday and Monday, a total of 10 Omicron cases were detected among passengers arriving in the state.
Bhubaneswar, Dec 10 : The Winter Session of the Odisha Assembly was adjourned sine die by the Speaker on Friday, 20 days before it was scheduled to end on December 31.

Speaker SN Patro announced sine die adjournment of the House, in the absence of opposition BJP and Congress members, after passing the Appropriation Bill for the Supplementary Statement of Expenditure, 2021-22 of Rs 19,833 crore.

Amid uproar by opposition, the Appropriation Bill was passed in the House. Soon after that, government chief whip Pramilla Mallick moved a motion proposing sine die adjournment on the session considering the Covid-19 situation and no legislative business left to discuss.

Protesting the move, opposition BJP and Congress members staged a walk out and sat on dharna before the Mahatma Gandhi statue in the Assembly premises.

Out of 26 business days of the winter session that started on December 1, the House was assembled for only nine working days. However, the session was completely washed away over Kalahandi lady teacher Mamita Meher murder case.

The Assembly was unable to conduct business smoothly even for a single day.

From the very beginning, both opposition parties, BJP and Congress, were demanding removal of Minister of State for Home Dibya Shankar Mishra for his alleged link with the prime accused in the Mamita Meher murder case.

As the government was not in a mood to accept their demand, the opposition continued to create ruckus in the House till today.

On the other side, the treasury bench members also created uproar in the House targeting Centre over several issues including price rise.

Odisha Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik had made a statement in the Assembly over this issue assuring the House that his government is committed to give justice to the victim. The Speaker has also conveyed all party meetings several times. However, all such attempts of the government failed to bring normalcy in the House.

The Assembly witnessed innovative kinds of protests like beating gongs and sprinkling of 'Ganga Jal' during the session.

Except the Appropriation Bill, not a single Bill either introduced or passed in the Assembly during the nine days. The House had passed a resolution authorising the State government to move the Centre for declaring the 1817 'Paika Bidroha' as the first war of Independence.

BJP legislator JN Mishra slammed the government for closing the session much before the scheduled date. "This has become a habit of this government to close the Assembly sessions much before the time. Sometimes, they close it before 20 days and some other time 25 or 30 days," Mishra alleged.

The Chief Minister, who is the leader of the House, is visiting various districts for election campaigning and going to attend a programme in Kalinga Stadium. Why is he insulting the Assembly by not attending it? he asked. The BJP leader said they will take up the Mamita Meher case along with other issues to the village-level.

Meanwhile, the National Students' Union of India, the student wing of Congress, on Friday took out its Halla Bol protest rally to 'gherao' the state Assembly here, demanding justice in the Mamita Meher murder case. However, the protest turned violent when the activists clashed with the police personnel.

Congress leader Taraprasad Bahinipati alleged that police, under the direction of Dibya Shankar Mishra, have beaten their party activists entering into the Congress Bhawan.

Bhubaneswar DCP Umashankar Dash said the Congress activists pelted stones, hurled eggs and tomatoes at the police and attempted to set fire to a police vehicle.
Chennai, Dec 10 : The residents of Auroville Foundation, commonly referred to as Aurovillians, resorted to a silent protest on Friday over the felling of trees and construction of the Crown Road project without due consultation with the residents.

The Foundation and the residents have been on a collision course for the past few days after the former brought in earth movers to fell trees and demolish the youth centre to fecilitate the Crown Road project.

Auroville Foundation is an experimental township in Villupuram district in Tamil Nadu that was founded in 1968 by Mirra Alfassa (popularly known as 'Mother').

After the passing away of Mirra Alfassa in 1973, fissures erupted between the society and the residents of the Auroville city, leading to the intervention of the government of India. Later, the Auroville Foundation Act was enacted by the Parliament in 1988. It comprised three authorities -- the Governing Board, Resident Assembly and the Auroville International Advisory Council.

The Governing Board has the overall responsibility for the development of Auroville and comprises eminent individuals appointed by the government of India. The Residents Assembly comprises all Auroville residents above the age of 18, while the advisory council advises the Governing Board, and normally comprises five individuals of high international repute, usually from different nations.

The Auroville Foundation and the residents have been locking horns over the past few days after the Foundation along with the Town Development Council (TDC) decided to remove trees and some buildings for the Crown Road project.

However, the Auroville Foundation said in a statement that this has been approved and gazetted.

There was a standoff on Thursday between the Auroville residents and the Foundation over the demolition of the Youth Centre for the project.

The residents alleged that outsiders were brought in by the Foundation, including local goons, and the residents, including women, were manhandled.

A member of the Resident Assembly, who does not wish to be named, told IANS, "Earth movers were brought in in large numbers on Thursday and buildings and trees were removed and the Youth Centre was demolished." The members also said that the long-standing collective decision-making process of the community has been undermined.

The Foundation, however, said that the protests of the residents turned into physical opposition, following which they were moved out of the way by some of the workers.

Foundation spokesperson Sindhuja Jagadeesh told mediapersons that the security personnel helped secure the site and prevented people from coming too close to the earth movers, and the structures were demolished without harming anyone.

She also said that unauthorised buildings were removed and some trees were felled for the Crown Road project.

The spokesperson also said that the residents themselves had agreed to dismantle the buildings at a meeting held on December 6, which was chaired by the Secretary of the Foundation.

She said, "The youth had themselves agreed that they would dismantle the centre, but a few senior residents prevented the youth from doing so."
New Delhi, Dec 10 : The Confederation of All India Traders on Friday wrote to the Securities and Exchange Board of India urging the marking regulator not to allow e-pharmacy firm PharmEasy's initial public offering.

"The business model of 'PharmEasy' which is controlled by 'API Holdings' is entirely based on gross illegality," the traders' body said in a statement.

Citing a Delhi High Court order passed in 2018, the traders' body said that sale of medicines over the internet is not allowed.

API Holdings, the parent company of the e-pharmacy firm PharmEasy has reportedly filed the 'Draft Red Herring Prospectus' to the market regulator recently.

"We believe that investor wealth worth billions is at stake if this IPO is approved by SEBI. We are sure that it will receive your kind and immediate attention," the statement added.

In addition, the traders' body alleged that the Pharmeasy has mentioned Thyrocare as its subsidiary in the DRHP submitted to the SEBI, without any order from the Competition Commission of India, whcih prevents activities that potentially may have an adverse effect on business.

The South Chemists and Distributors Association had also submitted a letter to the SEBI with requests on the same line.
New Delhi, Dec 10 : Union Environment, Forest and Climate Change Minister Bhupendra Yadav on Friday said that stubble burning has been decriminalised under the Air Quality Commission Act and lands have been allotted land for decomposition in Punjab, Haryana, and Uttar Pradesh.

Participating in a debate in the Lok Sabha on Climate Change, he also said that there has been a proposal to use stubble for bio-fuel in future and this has been sent to thermal power companies like National Thermal Power Corporation.

Earlier, resuming debate on the matter under Rule 193, BJP's Ramesh Bidhuri said that many countries have brought legislation to deal with air pollution, and the previous government did not do anything for 30 years. He also highlighted the different projects undertaken by Prime Minister Narendra Modi when he was Chief Minister of Gujarat.

Noting that the concept of development needs to be changed, RSP member N.K. Premachandran said that it has having a direct effect of developmental process of the country.

About the Glasgow summit on climate change, he further said there has been a dilution of the basic principle and for the last 30 years, the principle of equity is diluted and lost.

"Carbon emission from a person living in 27 storey building and an adivasi living in Attappadi colony in Kerala cannot be equated," he said, adding that the "rich is hiding behind the poor".

Giving suggestions including binding commitments from historical polluters to deal with environmental problems in developing countries and reviewing of the country's coal policy, he also said, "We need action today, not tomorrow." National Conference's Hasnain Masoodi said that "on international front, we have not been able to negotiate a fair deal, what is being demanded by the developed nations is that we should now preserve our resources for them".

Congress member Benny Behanan warned: "Climate change is not an issue of the future, but climate has already changed and is changing." Citing the extreme climate changes in recent times such as increasing frequency of cyclones in the Bay of Bengal region, he also said that rainfall is expected to increase in the coming years along the Western Ghats.

"Attitude of both Central and state governments is totally negative and risking the lives of present generation and the future generations as well," he added.

BJP's Tapir Gao said that the discussion in the House should focus on the decisions taken during Glasgow Summit, and on how the states plan to contribute towards the different goals envisaged by Prime Minister Modi during the COP26 in Glasgow.

Hanuman Beniwal of the RLP said that climate change has affected Rajasthan. Blaming industries for pollution in the state, he specifically mentioned a cement plant in his constituency that has flouted environmental norms and also asked the Environment Minister to conduct an inquiry.

Quoting a report, Independent member Navneet Rana said that around 80 percent of potable water is already polluted. "Look at Yamuna in Delhi and Meethi in Mumbai, it is not touched even by animals! Delhi is one of the most polluted cities in the world," she commented.

She also suggested that the government to give heavy subsidy to electric, solar and CNG vehicles so that they can replace petrol or diesel vehicles.

About the bio-diversity of Meghalaya, NPP's Agatha Sangma said that it must be protected and also questioned the Centre's palm oil mission which will be disaster for whole northeastern region. "Please reconsider this Palm Oil Mission, she asked the Minister.

SAD's Harsimrat Kaur Badal said that climate change is an important issue in a country which depends on agriculture. "Effect of climate change is most on an agriculture state like ours," she said.

Raising the issue of pollution being blamed on stubble burning by farmers, she said: "Do not burden the farmers and the government should come up with a solution to stubble burning." BJD member Bhartruhari Mahtab said that the recent order by National Green Tribunal (NGT) to ban vehicles more than 10 years old aas a 'blanket order' passed without taking into consideration other factors including kilometers travelled.

He also urged formulation of a plan to realise the 'zero emission' promise made by the Prime Minister at Glasgow.

Others who participated in the debate were the BJP's Sanjay Jaiswal, the DMK's Kanimozhi, trinamool Congress' Kakoli Ghosh Dastidar and Leader of Congress in the House Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury.
New Delhi, Dec 10 : Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday said that the basic strength of democracy is the spirit and ethos "that lie within our citizens and societies".

The Prime Minister made the remarks while speaking at a programme, 'Summit for Democracy', hosted by US President Joe Biden.

"The structural features like multi-party elections, independent judiciary, and free media - are important instruments of democracy. However, the basic strength of democracy is the spirit and ethos that lie within our citizens and our societies. Democracy is not only of the people, by the people, for the people but also with the people, within the people," the Prime Minister said.

Modi also pointed out that "different parts of the world have followed different paths of democratic development and there is much we can learn from each other".

"We all need to constantly improve our democratic practices and systems. And, we all need to continuously enhance inclusion, transparency, human dignity, responsive grievance redressal and decentralisation of power," he said.

Modi also mentioned that "in this context, today's assembly provides a timely platform for furthering cooperation among democracies".

"India would be happy to share its expertise in holding free and fair elections, and in enhancing transparency in all areas of governance through innovative digital solutions. We must also jointly shape global norms for emerging technologies like social media and crypto-currencies, so that they are used to empower democracy, not to undermine it," he said.

He emphasised that by working together, democracies can meet the aspirations of our citizens and celebrate the democratic spirit of humanity and India stands ready to join fellow democracies in this noble endeavour.

"It is a story of unprecedented socio-economic inclusion in all spheres. It is a story of constant improvements in health, education, and human well-being at an un-imaginable scale. The India story has one clear message to the world. That democracy can deliver, that democracy has delivered, and that democracy will continue to deliver," he said.
New Delhi, Dec 10 : After 378 days, farmers protesting against the (now scrapped) farm laws and other issues on the borders of the national capital are set to return to their homes from Saturday.

The majority of the farmers will start returning to their villages in Punjab from the Singhu and Tikri borders, leaving the tents they made their homes since November last year.

While the farmers have started dismantling the tents, some have already left for their villages after the government on Thursday sent a letter promising to meet the farmers' demands.

Some of the protesting farmers from Punjab will visit the Golden Temple in Amritsar on December 13 to offer prayers after the completion of their successful agitation, which forced the Union government to repeal the three farm laws.

To celebrate the success of their agitation, some farmer leaders will leave for their villages on decorated tractors from the different protest sites on the borders of Delhi. For this, the farmers have arranged a 51-foot-long trolley on the Singhu border for all the top SKM leaders.

Despite some farmers already heading home, the 'langar' (community kitchen) started a year ago continues to function, giving food parcels to those who are going back.

While many farmers were staying in tents, some of them who had constructed temporary concrete structures have started demolishing them.

Some women, who were taking care of household chores back in the villages and didn't meet their protesting family members for the past one year, have reached the borders to join their families on the return journey.

Almost 15 months after the farmers' agitation began against the (now scrapped) farm laws and other issues, the Samyukt Kisan Morcha (SKM), an umbrella body of farmer unions that led the protest, said on Thursday that it has suspended the agaitation after receiving positive assurances from the government on their demands. The SKM also said that it would hold a review meeting on January 15.
Guwahati, Dec 10 : Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) Director General Satya Narayan Pradhan on Friday said that the NCB would work closely with the agencies of the northeastern states and Central Para-military forces to curb the menace of drug trade and drug trafficking in the region.

The NCB chief said this while addressing a two-day workshop-cum-training for the central and state agencies in Guwahati.

Pradhan said that with better coordination between the state and central law enforcing agencies, the drug smuggling and its misuse would be curbed to a large extent.

Director General of Assam police Bhaskar Jyoti Mahanta said that the state police, since May, have seized various drugs worth Rs 325 crore and registered 1,700 cases under Narcotics Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (NDPS) Act.

The police officer said that around 2,900 accused have been arrested which resulted in the seizure of psychotropic substances including 50 kg of Heroin, 37 kg of Opium and 133 vehicles of drug peddlers.

Mahanta said the drug trafficking from Myanmar and Golden triangle through the northeast corridor is still a potential threat, and the Assam Police are working on a strategy for reducing the supply and demand of drugs and its harmful effects.

During the inaugural session of the training, an app titled 'Drugs Free Assam' was launched by the DGP.

The app, developed by the CID along with the National Informatics Centre, would help the citizens of Assam to inform the Police about the selling, storage, shipment, usage of psychotropic substances instantly on a real time basis.

"Police can then act on such information immediately without any loss of time," the DGP said.

'Handbook for investigating officers of NDPS Act Cases', compiled by CID, Assam, was released by Pradhan.

Additional Director General of Assam Police, CID, A.Y.V. Krishna, said with the advent of Dark Net and use of Crypto Currencies, there is an emerging threat due to online drug trade which is now posing a challenge to the drug law enforcement agencies.

"The proceeds of drug trade are being laundered in the form of Crypto currencies. Hence, this particular training programme on 'Digital Forensics, Dark Net and Crypto Currencies' for the drug law enforcement agencies would provide a good opportunity to understand the latest trends in the narco trade and would act as a platform for knowledge sharing," Krishna said.

The CID Assam in collaboration with NCB has organised the two-day workshop-cum-training for drug law enforcement agencies of the northeastern states, central para-military forces posted in the region and Central agencies like Directorate of Revenue Intelligence and Customs.

In the two-day event, subjects like Dark web, TOR browser, Crypto-currencies, use of block chain technologies by law enforcement agencies, OSINT gathering tools, intelligence gathering and profiling of suspects on social media, digital forensics, CDR and IPDR analysis are being discussed.
Hyderabad, Dec 10 : Two of the passengers who arrived in Hyderabad from 'at risk' countries on Friday have tested positive for Covid-19 and their samples have been sent for genome sequencing, a health official said.

Both the passengers were isolated at the Telangana Institute of Medical Sciences (TIMS), where doctors were closely monitoring them.

A total of 668 passengers arrived at Hyderabad Airport on Friday from 'at risk' countries. The RT-PCR tests of two of them turned out to be positive. They were immediately shifted to the government-run TIMS in special ambulances.

With this, the number of passengers from 'at risk' countries who have tested positive for Covid has gone up to 15. All 13 passengers had tested negative for the new variant Omicron on December 6.

The samples for genome sequencing were sent to the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CCMB) or the Centre for DNA Fingerprinting and Diagnostics (CDFD).

So far, 3,235 passengers have arrived in Hyderabad from 'at risk' countries since December 1.

All passengers are being screened at Rajiv Gandhi International Airport. Those tested negative will be home quarantined for seven days. They will be re-tested on the eighth day and if found negative, they will have to further self-monitor themselves for the next seven days.

Meanwhile, the state reported 207 new cases during the last 24 hours that ended at 5.30 p.m. on Friday. The cumulative tally rose to 6,77,954.

One person succumbed to the virus during the period, taking the death toll so far to 4,004.

The state has a total of 3,897 cases under treatment or isolation.
Chennai, Dec 10 : Tamil Nadu Hindu Religious and Charitable Endowments Minister P.K. Sekar Babu on Friday said that no divisive force will be allowed to function in the soil of the state.

His reference was to the arrest of YouTuber Maridhas at Madurai on Thursday night, following tweets comparing Tamil Nadu under the DMK to Jammu and Kashmir, in wake of the crash that led to the death of Chief of Defence Staff, Gen Bipin Rawat.

In his remarks at the 141st birth anniversary celebrations of C. Rajagopalachari, popularly known as Rajaji, at the Madras High Court premises, the minister also said that Tamil Nadu was the best state as far as law and order was concerned.

In another reference to Maridhas, he said that some elements were trying to create divide in the society by spreading false campaigns on social media and that the government would deal harshly with such people.

Maridhas had, after the tragic helicopter crash at Coonoor leading to the loss of life of the CDS, his wife, and 11 other armed personnel, said in a tweet that Tamil Nadu is turning into another Kashmir under the DMK regime.

Sekar Babu said that the Madras High Court judges have been appreciating the performance of Chief Minister M.K. Stalin on several occasions.

BJP state chief, K. Annamalai has come out against the arrest of Maridhas and said that the YouTuber was arrested due to "political vendetta" of the DMK. He said that the DMK was curtailing freedom of expression of individuals and said that another BJP leader, Kalyam Raman, and others were arrested by the DMK to "satisfy their ego".
New Delhi, Dec 10 : Automaker MG Motor India said that it will commence exports from its manufacturing facility in Gujarat's Halol.

The company will begin with exporting MG Hector to Nepal as the first step towards its expansion plan for other South Asian countries.

"MG Motor India is constantly progressing its operations, expanding the market reach, stakeholder base, and adding new customers and partners to the MG family. Taking this spirit forward, MG is geared up to expand its footprint across the other South Asian countries starting with Nepal," MG Motor India President and Managing Director Rajeev Chaba said.

"Hector has played a vital role in establishing our prowess in the auto industry as dynamic and aggressive as the Indian auto space, and we are looking forward to driving interest in Nepal with the launch of MG Hector." MG Motor India began commercial production in India on May 6, 2019, and launched its first car, MG Hector, in June 2019. Its manufacturing facility in Halol has an annual production capacity of 80,000 vehicles and employs nearly 2,500 workers.

Currently, the company offers Hector, ZS EV, and Gloster.
New Dec 10 : With an eye on the upcoming Uttrakhand and Punjab Assembly polls, the Congress is planning to felicitate the war veterans of the 1971 India-Pakistan War during the end of the year-long celebration of 50th Anniversary of Bangladesh Liberation War The celebrations will formally conclude with a ceremony in the national capital on December 15. Besides, programmes in all the districts would also be held on December 16.

Congress president Sonia Gandhi will be the Chief Guest at the ceremonial function here. Former Congress president Rahul Gandhi will be addressing a rally in Dehradun (Uttarakhand) on December 16 that will include a large number of 1971 War Veterans and other military veterans.

Congress General Secretary KC Venugopal said: "Programmes like honouring War Veterans and War Widows, and commemorating the Bangladesh Liberation War-1971 shall be conducted in a befitting manner at the district level across the country on December 16." The Bangladesh Liberation War, 1971 (BLW-71) celebrations (which were delayed due to Covid-19) started in mid July with a District level meeting at Panchkula (Haryana) on July 10, 2021.

To date, the Indian National Congress has organised over 100 district level meetings throughout the country. The state level functions commenced on November 16 with a meeting in Kohima (Nagaland) followed by other States and are continuing. Maximum District meetings have been held in Madhya Pradesh, Bihar and Tamil Nadu.

Through the formal concluding ceremony of Bangladesh Liberation War, 1971 (BLW-71) will be held on December 15, several states, which have not concluded their state level functions, have been asked to continue up to December 31 and conclude the celebration programmes with honouring of martyr families as also war veterans.

The programmes shall also continue at the District/Block levels in some of the "Soldier States" like Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh, Punjab, Haryana and Rajasthan beyond the end of this year.

Venugopal said that all the meetings held so far, a large number of military veterans have enthusiastically participated and have been honoured. The programmes have also left an everlasting impression on the youth of the country making them aware of the saga of the Bangladesh Liberation War under the visionary and courageous leadership of Indira Gandhi, and the decisive military victory planned and executed under an outstanding military leadership of the day led by Field Marshal (then General) Sam Manekshaw.
New Delhi, Dec 10 : The Union Health Ministry on Friday expressed serious concern over the declining trends of mask usage in the country even amid Omicron threat, citing a recently conducted survey which outlined that this has significantly dropped from September ownwards.

"Mask usage is declining in India. We have to remember that both vaccines and masks are important. As far as protection capability is concerned, we are now operating at a risky and unacceptable level. We should learn from the global situation," NITI Aayog's Member, Health, Dr V.K. Paul said, Member-Health, NITI Aayog.

He said that the World Health Organisation has warned many times against the decline in mask usage.

The global scene of Omicron is disturbing, said Paul, adding that the protocol against Omicron is same as the other variants, of following the Covid Appropriate Behavior.

On the question of paediatric vaccine, he said that no recommendation has been made yet by the NTAGI.

Indian Council of Medical Research Director General, Dr Balram Bhargava, said that new Covid variant Omicron is not posing any burdeon clinically now on the healthcare system but there is a need to maintain vigil.

"Regular meetings are being organised to keep a watch on global scenario with a focus on Omicron. We need help to not spread panic," he said.

Meanwhile, India has vaccinated more than half of the adult population in the country with both doses.
Guwahati, Dec 10 : The Assam government from Friday hiked the rates of excise duty on liquor by 15 per cent to compensate the tax losses due to reduction of Value Added Tax on petrol and diesel, officials said.

An Excise Department official said that the tax would be higher for costly liquor in Assam while no tax has been proposed for wine, beer and cheap brands in view of the high existing levy and to protect the local industries.

Assam has 1,234 liquor and wine retail outlets with 318 in Guwahati alone. The number of bars in the state is 996.

The Assam government collected Rs 2,033 crore revenue on excise in 2020-21 fiscal and the department targeted to collect excise revenue of Rs 2,400 crore during the current financial year (2021-22), the official said.

Meanwhile, during the first wave of Covid-19, alcohol prices in the state had gone up after the government decided to include a 25 per cent cess on liquor, in order to meet huge healthcare expenses caused by the pandemic. However, the cess was lifted subsequently.
Thiruvananthapuram, Dec 10 : A displeased Kerala Governor Arif Mohammed Khan told Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan that if things in the state's higher education sector are going like this, he will quit from the post of Chancellor of the state varsities.

According to a top source in the know of things, Khan's letter to Vijayan was written on Monday and he has even gone to the extent of asking the Chief Minister to amend the rules and take over as Chancellor.

The Governor has cited the statements of eminent personalities like Bharat Ratna awardee CNR Rao and historian K.N.Panikkar on why Kerala is lagging behind in the education sector.

"Khan is deeply upset in the manner in which appointments of Vice-Chancellors are being made, especially when the retiring Vice Chancellor of the Kannur University, Gopinath Raveendran was given a four year extension, last month. Likewise when a panel of candidates to be appointed to another University was asked, the Kerala government sent him a list with just one name," said a source.

Incidentally it was the first time that a Vice Chancellor in the state was given an extension after attaining superannuation and it came at a time when a controversy broke out that rules were violated in appointing the wife of Vijayan's Secretary to a teaching post at Kannur University.

Khan, ever since he took over as the Governor, has won the hearts of many in the state and is now often referred to as the 'People's Governor'.

He undertook a fast against giving and taking dowry and as Chancellor, directed all students to take a pledge at the time of convocation that they should give a declaration which says they will not take or give dowry.
Patna, Dec 10 : The Bihar government on Friday handed over a memorandum to the NITI Aayog, raising "strong objections" on its report on the state's development.

Bihar Energy, Planning and Development Minister Bijendra Kumar Yadav said that the way NITI Aayog evaluated the development of Bihar was "unacceptable".

In a nine-page memorandum handed over to NITI Aayog vice chief Rajiv Kumar, he said that report is based on the data of 2015 and it is a completely unacceptable method that a premier institution opted for to evaluate Bihar.

"The state has been gradually developing in every sector every year but the NITI Aayog has used old parameters to evaluate Bihar. The evaluation process of NITI Aayog was wrong. Hence, we have strong objection on it.

"This is the second time when we have written a letter to the NITI Aayog for wrong evaluation of Bihar in the last three months," he said.

"Bihar is a backward state. It needs special status to achieve national average of development. Bihar is completing all parameters, and a special status is required. Justice with Bihar would be done only after it will get special status," he added.

As per the latest NITI Aayog report, 52 per cent of the people of Bihar are living below the poverty line. Beside, the state is also on the bottom in health, education and road infrastructure considerations.
Bengaluru, Dec 11 : The concept of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) fund is very helpful in development of the society, Karnataka Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai said on Friday.

"Giving is in our culture. But how? where? and what? becomes important. There is a couplet by saint poet Sarvajna which says ' What we give is ours and what we hide is others'," he said in his inaugural address at the Bengaluru CSR Leadership Summit.

As a person grows he should discharge his responsibilities in right earnest and give back what he has received from the society, Bommai said.

Referring to comments of some economists about welfare schemes like free mid-day meal, distribution of bicycles as "wasteful expenditure", he expressed his disapproval of such views. "Children are the future of the country. A sick child is like a speed breaker for the development of the country," he said.

"A healthy child is like an elevator for development. The human development programmes would be my passion even if I am not in power," he added.

Bommai said that his government is formulating novel programme for economic empowerment of women by offering financial and market assistance to involve them in economic activity and contribute to state GDP.

He assured the entrepreneurs that his government would walk hand in hand and lend shoulder to shoulder to encourage CSR activities and create a conducive environment for their good work.
Kabul, Dec 11 : Two civilians were killed and three others injured as a blast targeted a mini-bus in Dasht-i-Barch area of Afghanistan's capital Kabul on Friday, Interior Ministry spokesman Qari Sayed Khosti confirmed.

"Two civilians were martyred and three others sustained injury as a blast ripped through a mini-bus in Dasht-i-Barchi area this afternoon," Xinhua news agency quoted Khosti as saying.

However, eyewitnesses believed that the number of casualties could be higher than reported.

The official also confirmed that another blast almost in the same area injured a woman on Friday afternoon, but he didn't provide more details.

No group or individual has claimed responsibility for the explosions.

The blast took place at 3:25 p.m. local time and targeted a mini-bus in Dasht-i-Barchi area, a suburb of Police District 13 in Kabul, eyewitnesses said.

Daesh, or the hardliner Islamic State (IS) outfit, has in the past claimed responsibility for subversive activities including bomb attacks on two mini-buses in Dasht-i-Barchi district over the past couple of months.
The Water Tree Way by Ruth Mandelson "The Water Tree Way is a story full of magic and adventure. It's a book of wise messages to be enjoyed by old and young alike, and it comes at a very pertinent time."  Primatologist, Anthropologist, Author, UN Messenger of Peace Dr. Jane Goodall.

The Water Tree Way is a bold and deep story full of wonder and action on the surface, with some of the most profound lessons of the ages beautifully nestled within. In it, we follow Jai (pronounced Jay), a brave, energetic, free-spirited ten-year-old girl, on a fantastical and often humorous adventure in a land of anthropomorphic trees, insects, birds, and celestial bodies. Jai discovers that life's most profound lessons come from outlandish dreams and dazzling blunders. She learns about risk-taking, love, loss, forgiveness, acceptance, the perils of revenge, failure, helping others, and finding strength after a fall.

"The Water Tree Way is a story full of magic and adventure. It's a book of wise messages to be enjoyed by old and young alike, and it comes at a very pertinent time."  Primatologist, Anthropologist, Author, UN Messenger of Peace Dr. Jane Goodall.

With hints of John Bunyan, Lewis Carroll, L. Frank Baum, and Joseph Campbell throughout, Mendelson describes her work as "a gift from the Universe that I was asked to steward."

Mendelson doesn't shy away from heavy topics, brilliantly reshaping them with positive, child-friendly imagery. Her intent in writing the book is to offer a source of hope, inspiration, and empowerment for readers of all ages.

About Ruth Mendelson: A New York Times Critics' Pick and Emmy nominee, composer/producer/arranger Ruth Mendelson has been writing award-winning scores for documentaries, HBO, National Geographic, Discovery Channel, Disney, Animal Planet, The Learning Channel, A&E, PBS, CBS, and NBC (among others), as well as creating innovative multi-media "surround-scapes" for over 25 years. Ruth is a keynote speaker, music director, and author. Her novel, The Water Tree Way, is quickly becoming a favorite for children of all ages worldwide. An active humanitarian dedicated to education, Ruth was the first woman at Berklee College of Music (Boston, MA) to teach in the Film Scoring Department. She designs and teaches master classes in documentary and dramatic scoring. An accomplished multi-instrumentalist, Ruth has performed at the United Nations, in Geneva, Switzerland, as bassist for the One Human Family Gospel Choir and is founder and president of Eagle Vision Initiatives, a non-profit organization dedicated to serving society through communications and the arts. Eagle Vision's premier initiative, the WELL WISHES Project, is now successfully establishing unprecedented lines of communication and resources between the world's youth. Her deepest commitment is to be of service and assist in bringing love, compassion, and positive change to society via a wide range of creative projects and programs. You can learn more about Ruth Mendelson by visiting: https://www.ruthmendelson.com/.

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Canceling Appointment with Death: COVID-19 Pandemic: Using Divine Missile Defense System against Invisible Global Weapon of Mass Destruction: a potent discussion of the knowledge available within the Bible and how it relates to the pandemic. Canceling Appointment with Death: COVID-19 Pandemic: Using Divine Missile Defense System against Invisible Global Weapon of Mass Destruction is the creation of published author Akintayo Emmanuel.

Emmanuel shares, On March 11, 2020, the World Health Organization declared COVID-19a disease caused by a virus known as SARS-CoV-2a global pandemic. The year 2020 was the year that brought global change that requires a global shift, and we cant be tone-deaf to it. This shift demands we respond swiftly to the problems.

Novel coronavirus claimed its first victim in Wuhan Province of China. In the blink of an eye, the invisible enemy had soared and has taken the lives of thousands with no regard for social class, race, or status. Those identified as the most powerful in the world were equally affected as money, power, and fame did nothing to stop the virus from spreading.

As of April 30, 2021, about 3.17 million people died of COVID-19 worldwide. Many wonder why God, who is Love, would allow humanity to go through these horrendous times. The COVID-19 pandemic storm has revealed the debility of human beings and the perfection of our God. God might not hurriedly change the situation, but He uses the situation to change us. God uses this time to test the faith of those genuinely serving and fully committed to Him.

In Canceling Appointment with Death, COVID-19 Pandemic, 'Tayo Emmanuel invites readers around the globe to learn how to dwell in the secret place of the Most High and how to build a personal Noahs Ark for the individual and the family at such a time as this. This secret place of the Most High and Noahs Ark is never a place or a structure. It is Jesus Christ who has established us inside a kingdom that cannot be shaken and who has all things under His perfect control, working all things after the counsel of His own will. How can every appointment with death, including COVID-19 and other future pandemics, be annulled?

'Tayo Emmanuel offers us answers from the revelation of Gods Word that all enemies have been placed under Jesuss feet, including death, the last enemy. And the last days church of Jesus Christ, the many membered body of Christ, are the feet of Jesus Christ that will take Jesus, the head of the body of Christ to every nation of the world to usher in the end of the old and the beginning of the new. But now we seeyet not all thingsput under him clearly shows that the Lord Jesus Christ, through the power of His Holy Spirit, is at work at this moment in history.

Published by Christian Faith Publishing, Akintayo Emmanuels new book will inspire and encourage reflection within believers of Gods teachings.

Emmanuel shares in hopes of helping others to guard themselves and their loved ones against the dangers of ignoring Gods warnings.

Consumers can purchase Canceling Appointment with Death: COVID-19 Pandemic: Using Divine Missile Defense System against Invisible Global Weapon of Mass Destruction at traditional brick & mortar bookstores, or online at Amazon.com, Apple iTunes store, or Barnes and Noble.

For additional information or inquiries about Canceling Appointment with Death: COVID-19 Pandemic: Using Divine Missile Defense System against Invisible Global Weapon of Mass Destruction, contact the Christian Faith Publishing media department at 866-554-0919.
A Scientific Proof: Souls Existence Plausible: a powerful dissertation that explores faith and the soul. A Scientific Proof: Souls Existence Plausible is the creation of published author Cain Manzira, a native of Zimbabwe and current resident of South Carolina who has transitioned from being a computer engineer to a nuclear scientist in the last five years. He is currently finalizing a PhD in nuclear engineering.

Manzira shares, Proving that an invisible microsphere can carry intelligible data equivalent to that of the average human brain gives plausibility to the idea that human beings have souls.

This proof was achieved through a scientific experiment that quantified the number of electromagnetic particles in a 1.73nm diameter sphere.

With that premise, the book traces the authors life going from childhood to current with a bearing of the influence and participation of religious activities. It takes the reader into the mind-set of a doubter who questioned belief in Christianity and used scientific reasoning to accept Christianity.

It then takes the reader through the explanations inferred from the existence of souls on the actions they take in life phenomenon where such actions are normally attributed to spiritual effect or miraculous occurrences. Arguments are forwarded to dispel other researchers opinions about the so-called evidence against the existence of a human soul.

Published by Christian Faith Publishing, Cain Manziras new book argues in defense of the existence of the human soul.

Manzira shares a personal look at faith and a scientific exploration of the spiritual spark that makes one who they are.

Consumers can purchase A Scientific Proof: Souls Existence Plausible at traditional brick & mortar bookstores, or online at Amazon.com, Apple iTunes store, or Barnes and Noble.

For additional information or inquiries about A Scientific Proof: Souls Existence Plausible, contact the Christian Faith Publishing media department at 866-554-0919.
Out of the Fire: Restoration and Renewal After Divorce: a potent look at the trauma caused by divorce and the healing power of faith available to those who seek it. Out of the Fire: Restoration and Renewal After Divorce is the creation of published author Christopher Urrutic, a devoted husband and father who is an associate minister at the POP Church in Phoenix, Arizona.

Urrutic shares, What do you do when a life-shaking event comes at you from left field? When your faith is shaken like never before. Will you be able to withstand the wave of emotions that seem to pound on you one after another? What do you do with the anger, the depression, the fear and anxiety? When GOD seems to go silent. Friends dont have the advice youre looking for. You will face your darkest hour; there is no doubt, but what will your response be when you are facing this trial?

There was no rule book for me to turn to. There seemed to be no way out of the circumstance I was in. This book is the journey I took while going through my divorce from my wife of eighteen years. I hope to help you find the answers to the questions that will almost plague your mind. It will allow you to reunite with the friend that sticks closer than a brother. That friend that is as close as the very mention of his name. Your relationship with the Savior Jesus Christ.

When youre faced with the impossible, GOD shows up and makes all things possible. Dealing with kids during this tragic time will prove to be a big challenge. Facing all of the stages of grief one by one will be exhausting, but remember He is with you always, even unto the end of the earth. With GODs help, you will rise out of the fire of trial. You will find the strength of renewal. The breach that was created through lifes mess will be repaired. New love can be found. A newfound faith can be established. Even after a divorce, your life can be restored.

Published by Christian Faith Publishing, Christopher Urrutics new book encourages readers to lean on their faith in order to overcome the pains of losing a partner.

Urrutic draws from personal experience in hopes of empowering others that have been faced with similar emotional and spiritual tribulations.

Consumers can purchase Out of the Fire: Restoration and Renewal After Divorce at traditional brick & mortar bookstores, or online at Amazon.com, Apple iTunes store, or Barnes and Noble.

For additional information or inquiries about Out of the Fire: Restoration and Renewal After Divorce, contact the Christian Faith Publishing media department at 866-554-0919.
The Journey from Hell: an action-packed journey across a dangerous landscape. The Journey from Hell is the creation of published author Coy Roper, a devoted father, grandfather, and great-grandfather who carries a bachelors degree, three masters degrees, and a PhD. Now retired from teaching at the college level, he spends time crafting a variety of written works. Roper became a widower in 2020 after the loss of his beloved wife, Sharlotte.

Roper shares, In 1877, two old friends, former members of Quantrells Raiders, meet again at a bank in Hell, a town in far west Texas. One is there to rob the bank, the otherthe towns sherifffoils the robbery. In the pursuit that follows, the robber saves the sheriff after his horse falls, and the two of them become friends again.

They decide to head west and find a place where they can live in peace. On their way, they pick up others who need to find a sanctuarya six-foot-six widowed preacher and his twelve-year-old daughter from Indiana, a twenty-one-year-old black musician/physicians assistant from Boston who has come west to seek his fortune, a twenty-year-old Mexican girl who grew up as a cowhand on a ranch in Colorado, a six-month-old baby named Peter, and a Jersey cow named Pansy!

On their journey they experience adventures (and misadventures) with Indians and outlaws and others. Finally, they arrive at the town where they will settleNew Canaan, in New Mexico territory. Problems remain, but a final gunfight with the Hank Dandy gang gives them restand romanceat the end of their journey from Hell.

Published by Christian Faith Publishing, Coy Ropers new book calls back to classic Western novels with a faith-based spin.

Roper presents a fun and imaginative tale of adventure that sees an unlikely troupe caught up in unexpected situations.

Consumers can purchase The Journey from Hell at traditional brick & mortar bookstores, or online at Amazon.com, Apple iTunes store, or Barnes and Noble.

For additional information or inquiries about The Journey from Hell, contact the Christian Faith Publishing media department at 866-554-0919.
Cybereason, the leader in operation-centric attack protection, today announced CK Chim has joined the company as Field Chief Security Officer for the Asia Pacific region. Chim was most recently Dysons Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) and he joins Cybereason with more than 20 years of industry experience.

Having Chim join our team underscores our commitment to defenders in the Asia Pacific region and marks the next phase of development for Cybereason. Chim will play an integral role in Asia Pacific expansion as we support all defenders giving them the ability to detect threats faster, monitor activities across both networks and endpoints with actionable intelligence, and leverage guided remediation tailored specifically to their organizations unique digital environment and cybersecurity requirements, said Eric Nagel, General Manager, Asia Pacific, Cybereason.

While at Dyson, Chim had global responsibility for securing Dysons information technology (IT), operational technology (OT) and Internet of Things operations to enable Dysons future ambitions in connected and intelligent products. Prior to Dyson, Chim was CISO at DHL Express and was responsible for defending the resilience of DHLs logistics operations across 220 countries internationally.

Having spent decades securing and defending multiple global organizations against sophisticated and motivated threat actors, I understand what it takes to fight back. I am incredibly impressed with not only Cybereasons rapid expansion across the Asia Pacific region, but their operation-centric security approach to helping defenders by providing future-ready attack protection that unifies security from the endpoint, to the enterprise, to everywhere the battle moves, said Chim.

About Cybereason Cybereason is the champion for todays cyber defenders, providing operation-centric attack protection that unifies security from the endpoint, to the enterprise, to everywhere the battle moves. The Cybereason Defense Platform combines the industrys top-rated AI-powered detection and response (EDR and XDR), next-gen antivirus (NGAV), Anti-Ransomware Protection and Proactive Threat Hunting to deliver context-rich analysis of every stage of a MalOp (malicious operation). Cybereason is a privately held, international company headquartered in Boston with customers in more than 40 countries.

Learn more: https://www.cybereason.com/

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Media Contact:

Bill Keeler

Senior Director, Global Public Relations

Cybereason

bill.keeler@cybereason.com

(929) 259-3261
Waterdream California 52 XT [The 52 XT] is a super classy edition to our California 52 range. The special two-tone paint from the exclusive BMW M8, with color codes that I received from Adrian van Hooydonk, makes it even more special... -Prince Bernhard van Oranje

Waterdream, the stylish new line of bespoke weekenders and dayboats founded by Hollands Prince Bernhard van Oranje, and YachtCreators, its Americas brand ambassadors, jointly announce the official debut of Waterdream to the Americas. A limited XT edition of the California 52 series, reigning World Yacht Trophies winner for Best Innovation, has splashed at the port of Miami and will be showcased in the months to come at VIP events from Miami to Palm Beach and the Bahamas.

The California 52 fulfills a long held dream of Prince Bernhards, a royal dream if you will, of elevating yachting to the next level. In fact, Dutch powerhouses Vripack design and Van der Valk shipyard were hand selected by the Prince to create nothing short of a masterpiece, one which handles & performs so incredibly as to elicit a visceral response when at the signature helm. Further, the Princes design scope for Waterdream detailed a luxury product not only seaworthy & fast, but environmentally sustainable as well. Again, Vripack and Van der Valk shipyard rose to his challenge, making 80% of all Waterdream build materials recyclable, including both the hull and superstructure, which are constructed from 100% green aluminum.

There is more than sustainability that sets the California 52 apart from similar sized boats in its class. Cruising the 52 whilst standing at its striking W-shaped carbon fiber console evokes powerful emotions of aliveness and exhilaration. With the galley and dining thoughtfully housed below, the layout on the main deck is refreshingly open and spacious, creating an on-deck vibe of uncomplicated, undeniable connection to the sea. On the subject of the lower deck, the 52s versatility is underpinned by its optional configuration as either a weekender with two-cabin layout, or dayboat with a veritable great room. The overall experience of vitality and connectedness onboard mentioned previously is heightened further by a top-of-the-line, powerful sound system and casually opulent, minimalistic decor.

The limited XT edition of the California 52 boasts an impressive complement of upgrades and signature touches, beginning with its BMW M-8 series color palette, exclusive to Waterdream. The swim platform on the XT is extended relative to a standard California 52, and versatile in that owners and guests can utilize the area as a platform for launching water toys from the garage, a first for yachts in this class. And last but not least, the XT edition features leather finished cupboards and soft, durable Alcantara interior and exterior upholstery, including cushions and sunpads.

Next up for Waterdream is the public release of the new California 52 Hardtop (convertible soft top or fixed hardtop) edition. 3D renderings are now available upon request.

For further information on the USA arrival of the Waterdream California 52 XT, including but not limited to the tentative schedule of upcoming events and/or high resolution images for public distribution, kindly direct all inquiries to YachtCreators Director of Marketing, Mr. Whitten Hall, at press@yachtcreators.com.

About YachtCreators:

YachtCreators, the new build experts. With 70+ new builds to date, YachtCreators has garnered critical acclaim & success with notable award-winning builds as the 55-meter Laurentia by Heesen, the 38-meter Nono by Admiral, and 2020s Best New Series, the 27.45-meter LeVen by Van der Valk. In the process, we have forged solid, lasting relationships with elite builders, designers and visionary architects across the globe. Discover what it means to DREAM BUILD PLAY with YachtCreators today.

About Waterdream:

Waterdream is a Dutch Maritime lifestyle brand that builds beautifully minimal & entirely handcrafted high-end dayboats, luxury tenders and a modern version of the sloep. Blending function with form, practicality with design and the promise of a day excursion with a dream encounter on the water, our boats have an all-round appeal. The California line are compact yachts with James Bond swagger. The yachts are combining exceptional open-air living and seaworthy hull design to enjoy life on the water.
Law Office of Blumenthal Nordrehaug Bhowmik De Blouw LLP For more information about the class action lawsuit against TForce Freight, Inc., 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 TForce Freight, Inc. alleging the company violated the California Labor Code. The lawsuit against TForce Freight, Inc. is currently pending in the Riverside County Superior Court, Case No. CVRI2105223. To read a copy of the Complaint, please click here.

According to the lawsuit filed, TForce Freight, Inc. 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, and (e) failed to reimburse employees for required expenses, all in violation of the applicable Labor Code sections listed in California Labor Code Sections  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.

TForce Freight, Inc. allegedly failed to reimburse employees for required business expenses. California Labor Code  2802 expressly states that "an employer shall indemnify his or her employee for all necessary expenditures or losses incurred by the employee in direct consequence of the discharge of his or her duties..." During employment, Plaintiff and other California Class Members were allegedly required to use their personal cellular phones in order to complete their job duties.

For more information about the class action lawsuit against TForce Freight, Inc., 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***
Big cities get a lot of attention, but innovation and inspiration come from everywhere, if given the chance." - Kathie Callahan Brady, FITCI CEO

The Frederick Innovative Technology Center, Inc. (FITCI) was recently honored for Outstanding Rural Economic Development by the Rural Maryland Council (RMC). The award was presented as part of the 2021 Rural Summit held in Annapolis on December 1 and 2. The events theme was Redefining Resilience and Recovery and featured the Honorable Larry Hogan, Governor, State of Maryland; the Honorable Peter Franchot, Comptroller; United States Department of Agriculture Under Secretary for Rural Development, Xochiti Torres Small; Maryland Department of Planning, Secretary Robert McCord and Keynote Speaker, Whitney Kimball Coe, the Director for Rural Strategies and leader of the Rural Assembly. Presenters and speakers from Maryland State and Local Government, and industry leaders in Agriculture, Forestry, Housing, Workforce and Economic Development, Technology and Healthcare led dynamic Summit discussions and breakout sessions.

Edmund Gregory, FITCIs Board Chair, says Our FITCI team, leaders and volunteers were honored by this recognition. It validates our ongoing efforts to help businesses launch and succeed in agribusiness and allied technologies.

FITCI CEO Kathie Callahan Brady continues the thought, Big cities get a lot of attention, but innovation and inspiration come from everywhere, if given the chance. FITCI shepherds emerging entrepreneurs and nourishes startups while they are in that most fragile stage of development. Thats how we, as a community, ultimately benefit from the potential that is all around us.

The Rural Maryland Council is an independent state agency that is located within the Maryland Department of Agriculture and identifies and addresses concerns and challenges facing rural Maryland. RMC facilitates and spurs collaborative activities and problem solving and provides much needed, and greatly appreciated, financial support to organizations and agencies throughout the state. The support provided to FITCI by RMC is one example of how the organization helps communities thrive.

In her acceptance speech, Callahan Brady thanked the RMC for its enduring support, noting, The RMC Prosperity Investment Fund was our first big grant. It enabled our nonprofit incubator/accelerator to double its capacity by creating a shared lab space and replaced outdated and broken equipment.

RMCs support, in tandem with our partners in the Governors office, Frederick County, the City of Frederick, especially Frederick Countys Office of Economic Development and Frederick Citys Economic Development Department, helped revitalize FITCI, Callahan Brady emphasized.

Rural Maryland Council is such a tremendous resource for Economic Development in Rural Communities, adds FITCI Treasurer Theresa Bethune. Were so grateful for their support, and how it enables FITCI to do what we do  drive innovation, economic growth, and most importantly, job growth, in Frederick.

Since receiving that first RMC grant in 2016, FITCI has grown from 14 member companies to more than 70, a 500% increase. FITCI has assisted more than 200 companies, primarily in science and technology sectors, in their launch and/or growth. Collectively, FITCI graduates and current members have brought in about $160 million in investments during the pandemic.

Due to its continued growth, the organization has launched the FITCI 2.0 initiative. Planning is in the works for building a new life science Innovation Center in Frederick to meet growing demand. The space will feature flexible, fully equipped laboratories, including a lab devoted to agricultural technology (Agtech), a comprehensive collaborative community center and is sponsored in part by grants provided by the RMC, State, County and City.

The Frederick Innovative Technology Center Inc. (FITCI) was founded in 2004 to foster entrepreneurial activity in the information technology and life sciences industries within Frederick County. FITCIs mission is to encourage innovation and accelerate the development of commercially viable technology-based businesses by providing a nurturing and supportive environment. FITCI supports early-stage biotechnology, information technology, and renewable energy start-up companies by offering office and wet lab space, business services, and strategic support to local entrepreneurs.

To find out more about FITCI, its new Innovation Center or its many founder-focused programs, visit http://www.fitci.org.
With the help of his friends and flying skills, FBI drone pilot Reginald (Rex) Remington III battles a terrorist who has kidnapped his sister and now threatens all of San Francisco in Alan Kopilecs new mystery novel The Panga Attack (published by Archway Publishing).

The Panga Attack begins with a historical fiction Cold war prologue illustrated in the 1970s following Rex Remingtons grandfather Reginald Remington I on a CIA mission in Crimea. Due to the suspicious nature of Reginald Remington Is death, Rexs father dedicated his life to telling conspiracy theories from his hotel bar. When his father is found dead in his suite, Rex suspects his little sister has a relationship with her kidnappera weapons dealer named Ashaar. With avenging his fathers killers, saving his sister and the city of San Francisco all on the line, Rex battles Ashaar by hacking databases and controlling his drones with his digital bionic eye.

This book provides a geo-political theme while entertaining readers with the POVs of main characters, who are sometimes using camera feed from drones as their POV. They use technology in battling each other in a world where the truth is suppressed by the government and distorted by the media. Kopilec says. Two conspiracy theories of the past come together in this exciting novel while the main characters run a high-stakes game of high-tech cat-and-mouse.

The Panga Attack is available for purchase online at the Archway link above, from Barnes & Noble and on Amazon at: https://www.amazon.com/Panga-Attack-Alan-Kopilec/dp/1665704020.

The Panga Attack

By Alan Kopilec

Hardcover | 5.5 x 8.5 in | 194 pages | ISBN 9781665704021

Softcover | | 5.5 x 8.5 in | 194 pages | ISBN 9781665704038

E-Book | 194 pages | ISBN 9781665704045

Available at Amazon and Barnes & Noble

About the Author

Alan Kopilec was born in Ohio and grew up in California. He worked in customer service, accounting, and academic counseling while earning higher degrees. He earned an Associate in Arts in business administration, a Bachelor of Science in e-business commerce, and a Master of Science in public administration. He currently resides on the Oregon coast and enjoys photography and writing.

Simon & Schuster, a company with nearly ninety years of publishing experience, has teamed up with Author Solutions, LLC, the worldwide leader in self-publishing, to create Archway Publishing. With unique resources to support books of all kind, Archway Publishing offers a specialized approach to help every author reach his or her desired audience. For more information, visit archwaypublishing.com or call 844-669-3957.
1784 is a collaboration of all Franklin County breweries and named for the year Franklin County formed. The new release was planned, brewed, and packaged as a collaborative effort. Gearhouse Brewing Co., TBC Brewing Co., Rough Edges Brewing, and 633 Brewing Co. all joined Roy-Pitz Brewing Co, who hosted the collaborative brew at their Chambersburg brewery.

Franklin County Visitors Bureau is pleased to announce a collaboration of all Franklin County breweries to create a new Imperial Red Ale called 1784, named for the year Franklin County was formed. The new release was planned, brewed, and packaged as a collaborative effort. Gearhouse Brewing Co., TBC Brewing Co., Rough Edges Brewing, and 633 Brewing Co. all joined Roy-Pitz Brewing Co, who hosted the collaborative brew at their Chambersburg brewery.

With winter on the way, this Imperial Red Ale is a well-balanced beer to help everyone make it through the long, cold months. 1784 (8% ABV) uses all local East Coast malts from Proximity Malting and 100% PA hops from GEMS Hop Farm in Carlisle, PA. The brew is malt forward, with a hint of spiciness from the rye malt with herbal, tea, woodsy and pine hop aromas, emerging because of the dry hop process.

1784 is available in 16 oz. cans and on draft at each of the 5 collaborating breweries:



With Franklin Countys rich history of agriculture and manufacturing, the brewers wished to showcase what is possible when everyone joins together to produce a product that spotlights our history. We hope that the contributions act as a springboard to start a pour trail that brings tourists to the area and heightens the awareness of farmers and manufacturers, explained Van Gray, president and co-founder of Gearhouse Brewing Co.

The beer was created with the intention of each brewery committing to donate a portion of the proceeds to the establishment of a Franklin County Beer Trail and promote educational and entertaining beer experiences for locals and tourists.

The Franklin County Visitors Bureau invites all to explore history, arts and architecture, recreation, natural beauty, fresh foods, and the warm hospitality of communities like Chambersburg, Greencastle, Mercersburg, Shippensburg, and Waynesboro. Franklin County PA is located just north of the Mason Dixon Line and is an easy drive from Washington DC, Philadelphia, and Pittsburgh. For more information, visit ExploreFranklinCountyPA.com or contact the Franklin County Visitors Bureau at 866.646.8060.
You Can Help Making education accessible to all is a core mission of our company, and nutrition is a prerequisite. Food insecurity should not be a barrier to success, Lorie M. Gleim, CEO of Gleim Exam Prep.

Gleim Exam Prep, a professional education company focused on accounting and aviation, is entering their third year of collaboration with the Bread of the Mighty Food Bank, a subsidiary of the Feeding America organization, and will donate 48,000+ meals to 14,000+ families this holiday season.

Soaring food prices and sustained economic hardships have impacted many food banks and pantries, preventing them from providing the same level of aid to their communities as they have in the past.

While many of us are excited about the holidays and the chance to spend time with family and friends to enjoy a wonderful meal, many of the families in our community not only do not know how they are going to provide for a holiday meal, but they struggle to provide regular meals at all, said Leza Mueller, Communication/Development Director at Bread of the Mighty Food Bank.

In response, Gleim created the Giving Back program, a multi-week campaign spanning the November holidays that provided a portion of the proceeds from every sale to Bread of the Migthy so they can provide meals for families in need.

Gleim and its employees have a longstanding tradition of raising funds for community charities. This year, to coincide with Giving Back, Gleim ran an employee food drive that generated hundreds of pounds of food donations for Bread of the Mighty.

Gleim's generous donation of 261 pounds of food from their employee food drive plus the donation generated by the Gleim Giving Back campaign adds up to over 48,200 meals that can be distributed to hungry families, said Leza. Their donation not only provides food for families in our community, but hope and encouragement as well.

Bread of the Mighty has a five-county service area. These meals will be distributed to Alachua, Dixie, Gilchrist, Lafayette, and Levy counties in the days and weeks to come.

Making education accessible to all is a core mission of our company, and nutrition is a prerequisite. Food insecurity should not be a barrier to success, said Lorie M. Gleim, CEO of Gleim Exam Prep. Weve been active members of our community for the last 47 years and giving back through our sustainability initiatives, scholarships, and charitable fundraising. Were privileged to work with Bread of the Mighty to make a direct impact in the fight to end hunger.

About Bread of the Mighty

Bread of the Mighty Food Bank is a private, non-profit organization and a Partner Distribution Organization under Feeding America that provides food to the hungry. For 35 years, Bread of the Mighty has collected, sorted, and distributed over 6 million pounds of food and other essentials annually to over 170 partner food pantries, shelters, and feeding programs.

Make your own contribution today! (https://breadofthemighty.org/donations)

About Gleim Exam Prep

Founded in 1974, Gleim Exam Prep is a family-owned business and an industry leader in accounting and aviation exam prep. Based in Gainesville, FL, Gleim has helped candidates worldwide pass millions of certification exams.

Start earning your own certification at http://www.gleim.com.
Samara: Embodiment of the Will of God and the Power of Prayer is a heartfelt story of a journey of faith and the unexpected twists of fate that one meets along the way. This story is the creation of published author Godwin Djietror, a loving husband and father of four daughters. Djietror obtained a doctorate degree in geography from McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, in 2003. Prior to that, he obtained a masters degree in geography and planning from The University of Toledo, Toledo, Ohio, in 1997. His undergraduate major was in geography and resource development at the University of Ghana, Legon, where he graduated summa cum laude in 1991.

Djietror shares, This is the story of a Christian family whose life circumstances and experiences illustrate the will of God and the power of prayer. Walter Robertson (affectionately called Walt) and his wife, Rebecca, lived in Joshland, a prairie community. Walt strove to live his life as a devout Christian but on occasion, he doubted the existence of God, backslid, and questioned Gods attributes. Rebecca, on the other hand, demonstrated unwavering faith in God.

In 1945, a tornado tore down their riverfront home and carried off their baby girl, Samara. A woman found the infant and decided to keep it for herself. Growing up as Margaret and fatherless, Samara was told that her daddy had fallen off his sailboat in the Gulf of Mexico and drowned.

In a miraculous twist of events, Rebecca and Walt ended up as the first clients in Margarets retired couples housing facility. Eight months after moving in, Rebecca was seen in the ER for a voiding problem. A few days later, she went with Walt to see her primary care physician to discuss the results of an investigative lab work. The doctor broke bad news. She had failing kidneys and required immediate transplant. She would be placed on the waiting list for a donor. The couple shared the unpleasant news with Margaret and asked for her support in prayers.

Rebecca knew what she faced: too little time to wait for her turn on the deceased donor waiting list. Amid the seeming hopelessness, Margaret stunned the couple with her offer to donate a kidney. She said a prayer of gratitude in her heart for the privilege to help, little knowing that she was, in fact, thanking God for using her to save the life of her biological mother!

Published by Christian Faith Publishing, Godwin Djietrors new book will draw at the heartstrings of readers everywhere as they become invested in the fate of sweet Samara.

Djietror crafts a compelling and emotional narrative within the pages of this engaging work that explores true ties that bind.

Consumers can purchase Samara: Embodiment of the Will of God and the Power of Prayer at traditional brick & mortar bookstores, or online at Amazon.com, Apple iTunes store, or Barnes and Noble.

For additional information or inquiries about Samara: Embodiment of the Will of God and the Power of Prayer, contact the Christian Faith Publishing media department at 866-554-0919.
Inc. and Hello Alice Partner to Host Hispanic Small Business Town Hall Series "The Inc. Young Entrepreneurs by Summer Discovery summer program for high school students is a first step in building tomorrow's business leaders," said Patrick Hainault, Vice President, Corporate Business Development.

Inc. Magazine, the world's most trusted business-media brand, announced a new partnership today with Summer Discovery to provide entrepreneurial education for high school students through a new summer program named "Inc. Young Entrepreneurs by Summer Discovery."

Entrepreneurship and business are not commonly taught at the high school level, leaving an opportunity gap in academics and business. Today, most teens interested in learning about and experiencing business and entrepreneurship are not exposed to these disciplines until college. Inc. and Summer Discovery believe it is critical to introduce high school students to the core principles of business through hands-on activities and direct interaction with successful professionals.

"The Inc. Young Entrepreneurs by Summer Discovery summer program for high school students is a first step in building tomorrow's business leaders," said Patrick Hainault, Vice President, Corporate Business Development. "Inc. wants to help the next generation cultivate innovation and creative problem-solving. In addition, we're excited to expand our current educational initiatives that target working adults by leveraging Summer Discovery's decades of success in delivering pre-college development programs for students."

The "Inc. Young Entrepreneurs by Summer Discovery" program launches in July 2022 on four prestigious college campuses across the United States:



University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, MI

University of California at Berkley in Berkley, CA

New York University in New York, NY

Haverford College in Haverford, PA

"An entrepreneurial skillset and mindset are valuable assets regardless of a young student's eventual college major and full-time career," said Adriane Thorpe, CEO of Summer Discovery. "We're partnering with Inc. to help nurture teens as communicators, strategic thinkers, risk-takers, and collaborators. We're honored to combine our expertise in pre-college summer programming with Inc.'s world-class business acumen to offer an exceptional immersion for high school students from the US and around the world."

"Inc. Young Entrepreneurs" will be offered in both 2-and 3-week durations, depending on the campus location. The customized curriculum, developed by learning professionals at the Network for Teaching Entrepreneurship (NFTE), will guide future business leaders to create an original business idea, write a business plan, and pitch their business to veteran entrepreneurs. Augmenting the academic content will be real-world case studies and expert speakers sharing practical insights and success stories.

Featured entrepreneurs will include Dan Bauer, a marketing consultant and founder of global education and career planning company The MBA Exchange. Having advised thousands of high school and college students over 20 years, Bauer's firm was named one of America's fastest-growing private companies on the Inc. 5000 list. With a vision for this new program for teens, he piloted a successful online version in summer 2019 and then introduced Inc. to Summer Discovery and NFTE in early 2021.

Summer Discovery is currently accepting applications from high school students for "Inc. Young Entrepreneurs" at http://www.summerdiscovery.com.

ABOUT INC. MEDIA

The world's most trusted business-media brand, Inc., offers entrepreneurs the knowledge, tools, connections, and community to build great companies. Its award-winning multiplatform content reaches more than 50 million people each month across various channels, including websites, newsletters, social media, podcasts, and print. Its prestigious Inc. 5000 list, produced every year since 1982, analyzes company data to recognize the fastest-growing privately held businesses in the United States. The global recognition that comes with inclusion in the Inc. 5000 allows these founders a chance to engage with their peers in an exclusive community with the credibility to help drive sales and recruit talent. The associated Inc. 5000 Conference is part of a highly acclaimed portfolio of bespoke events produced by Inc.

For more information, visit http://www.inc.com.

About Summer Discovery

Summer Discovery has more than 55 years in the summer experience industry and has provided superior pre-college programs for 40+ years. Today, they are the leading pre-college experience provider for middle and high school students. In partnership with prestigious universities across the US and abroad, Summer Discovery delivers on-campus experiences and online learning opportunities. They offer 300+ pre-college courses, including college credit and non-credit enrichment courses.

Learn more at http://www.summerdiscovery.com.

About Network for Teaching Entrepreneurship (NFTE)

The Network for Teaching Entrepreneurship (NFTE) is a global educational nonprofit focused on bringing the power of entrepreneurship to youth in low-income communities. A highly trained Teacher Corps teach NFTE's rigorous programs. In addition, NFTE students are supported by a diverse Volunteer Corps drawn from the local community, including business leaders and entrepreneurs. Since its founding more than 30 years ago, NFTE has trained thousands of teachers and educated more than a million young people worldwide.

Learn more at http://www.nfte.com.

Contacts:

INC. MAGAZINE:

Rose Levy

Senior Vice President, Pace Public Relations

(202) 262-1635

rose@pacepublicrelations.com

SUMMER DISCOVERY:

Liz Ringel

Chief Growth Officer

Summer Discovery

(516) 621-3939

lringel@summerdiscovery.com
Senator McConnells support of a provision to add NIOSH-approved respirators to the PREP Act, as part of the CARES Act helped ensure access to these essential products during the pandemic. We are very grateful for his assistance. -Wells Bullard, President and CEO of Bullard

The International Safety Equipment Association (ISEA) visited Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) today to present him with its Robert B. Hurley Distinguished Service Award for the pivotal role he played in protecting Americas supply of respirators. The award was presented in person to McConnell by fellow Kentuckian and ISEA board member Wells Bullard, president and CEO of Bullard.

Senator McConnells support of a provision to add NIOSH-approved respirators to the PREP Act, as part of the CARES Act helped ensure access to these essential products during the pandemic. We are very grateful for his assistance, said Bullard, whose 122-year-old, fifth-generation, family-owned, Kentucky-based company designs, develops, manufactures, and markets high-quality personal protective equipment and systems sold around the world.

Bullard thanked Senator McConnell for supporting ISEAs effort to add respirators to the PREP Act, as well as for his recent vote for the infrastructure bill.

Bullard was accompanied to the award presentation by Tom Geier, head of federal government affairs for 3M, an ISEA member; and Dan Glucksman, ISEA Senior Director, Policy.

In the future, we look forward to working with Senator McConnell on pandemic response and emergency planning and preparedness, especially as it relates to the sustainability of respiratory protection production, allowing for respirator manufacturers to quickly respond when the need again arises, added Glucksman.

Respirator Supply Was at Risk

Demand for NIOSH-approved respirators exploded almost overnight when the dangerous SARS-CoV-2 virus spread into a pandemic in 2020. Respirator manufacturers and distributors were being called on to provide their products rapidly to protect healthcare workers and first responders against this potentially lethal virus.

Safety equipment companies at the time were faced with a terrible dilemma. They were being called upon to ramp up respirator production to meet the huge demand, but doing so posed legal risks for companies.

Scaling back production was not an option. ISEA-member companies were not going to leave Americas healthcare workers and first responders unprotected. So, ISEA members proposed a solution to Congress: Add NIOSH-approved respirators to the Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness (PREP) Act. This law shifts the liability of items needed for a public health emergency response to the federal government.

When Senator McConnell was crafting the CARES Act, he saw the importance of including this provision and making sure it became law. Thanks to his bipartisan efforts in collaboration with a handful of senators and representatives from both sides of the aisle, Sections 3012 and 3013 of the CARES Act added respirators to the PREP Act. The bill became law on March 27, 2020, and changed the course of ISEA-member companies  and the nations  ability to respond to the pandemic.

ISEAs Robert B. Hurley Distinguished Award honors an individual who, by a single action or the work of a lifetime, has made a significant and lasting contribution to the health and safety of workers. Presented each year at ISEAs Annual Business Meeting, the award was renamed in 2007 in memory of Robert B. Hurley, president of Fendall Inc., a life-long advocate for worker safety and health, who died in May 2002. Mr. Hurley was a passionate supporter of workplace safety practices to ensure workers return home safely each day, and was widely regarded as an innovative authority in the safety industry.

About ISEA

Headquartered in Arlington, Virginia, the International Safety Equipment Association (ISEA) is the trade association in the U.S. for personal protective equipment and technologies. Its member companies are world leaders in the design, manufacture, testing and distribution of protective clothing and equipment used in factories, construction sites, hospitals and clinics, farms, schools, laboratories, emergency response and in the home. Since 1933, ISEA has set the standard for the personal protective equipment industry, supporting member companies united in the goal of protecting the health and safety of people worldwide.
We are proud that member firms of this quality have joined the alliance to share their expertise and resources to help one another continue to grow and achieve such prestigious recognitions.

CPAConnect member firm, M. Jeffrey Martin, CPA, LLC is a 2021 Best of Georgia winner in Georgia Business Journals annual readers poll and has been named to the University of Georgia (UGA) Alumni Associations 2022 Bulldog 100.

Georgia Business Journal readers and editors have weighed in on the best of everything in Georgia, honoring thousands of businesses and organizations in more than 25 broad business and community sectors. Best of Georgia winners and nominees are chosen by a combination of readers votes and editors input, and are vetted through several ranking sites, Better Business Bureau complaint reports, and voting pattern analysis reports.

The 2022 Bulldog 100, a list of the 100 fastest-growing businesses owned or operated by UGA alumni, celebrates organizations from over two dozen industries, including agriculture, real estate, health care, nonprofits and software. Of the 100 businesses, 88 are located within the state of Georgia. In total, three countries and nine U.S. states are represented in this years Bulldog 100. UGA received 367 nominations for the 2022 list.

We are honored to be associated with such a dynamic group of businesses, said M. Jeffrey Martin. We owe this distinction to our clients and our employees, because we would not be here without them.

M. Jeffrey Martin, CPA, LLC is a proud member of CPAConnect, an accounting alliance of CPAmerica, Inc. one of the largest associations of independent CPA firms in the world.

Congratulations to CPAConnect member firm, M. Jeffrey Martin, CPA, LLC, said DYan Davis, director of CPAConnect & member services. We are proud that member firms of this quality have joined the alliance to share their expertise and resources to help one another continue to grow and achieve such prestigious recognitions.

You can view the full list of Best of Georgia winners at bestofgeorgia.com/winners and the full list of 2022 Bulldog 100 at alumni.uga.edu/b100.

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About M. Jeffrey Martin, CPA, LLC:

M. Jeffrey Martin, CPA, LLC is located in Saint Simons Island, Georgia and specializes in accounting services for small businesses and tax services for both individuals and business owners. We have helped many local businesses with a variety of accounting services. Our firm offers the essential tools you need to track expenses, monitor cash flow, and identify financial trends so you can plan for the future of your business. No matter what accounting services your operation needs to thrive, we present a common sense approach with an uncommon level of personal attention and reliable financial advice. Learn more at http://www.ssicpa.com.

About CPAConnect:

CPAConnect is an alliance of CPAmerica, Inc., one of the largest associations of independent CPA firms in the world. Our vision is "Improving through Sharing", and our mission is "To help members -- and through them their clients -- achieve their goals." With more than 150 firms in CPAConnect and 87 larger, independent firms in CPAmerica, we have America covered! Plus, through our membership in Crowe Global, our association expands to more than 200 independent accounting and advisory services firms in 130 countries. Our service goal is to exceed members' expectations in everything we do. Learn more at http://www.cpaconnect.com.
MedMaster MGT24 luminaire Whatever our new normal looks like, hospitals and clinics will continue to search for ways to increase safety for staff and patients.

Kenall Manufacturing recently announced the addition of a new MedMaster luminaire series offering Indigo-Clean visible light disinfection options. Designed from the ground-up, the MGT series provides maximum performance and design flexibility for healthcare spaces  including critical care, gathering spaces and support areas. This allows facilities to install Indigo-Clean whole room disinfection throughout a facility, helping to control the spread of pathogens at all entry points and from room to room.

When these new high-efficacy troffers are specified with Indigo-Clean, the 405nm visible wavelength of light is virtually undetectable when people are in the room  yet they safely and continually eliminate pathogens, including staph such as MRSA, C. Diff, SARS-CoV-2 and Influenza-A. And when the rooms are empty, they automatically switch to Indigo mode to maximize disinfection power. Unlike UV disinfection devices, they are certified safe per IEC62471, which means they pose no risk to the health of staff or patients. Indigo-Clean contains the only clinically-validated visible light disinfection technology on the market, and has been installed in hundreds of healthcare facilities throughout North America, Australia and New Zealand. The result has been a proven reduction in healthcare-acquired infections, surgical site infections and reduced bioburden between terminal cleanings.

Lynn Walldorf, Product Manager, stated Whatever our new normal looks like, hospitals and clinics will continue to search for ways to increase safety for staff and patients. Installing light fixtures containing Indigo-Clean is a very simple way to achieve this, and this new MGT series puts safe, continuous whole room and whole facility disinfection within reach.

About Kenall

Kenall Manufacturing, a Legrand company, was founded in Chicago, Illinois in 1963 and has built a reputation for durable lighting solutions of superior quality and exceptional value. Today, the company creates unique solutions for the healthcare, cleanroom/containment, food processing, transportation, high abuse, and correctional lighting markets. Kenall luminaires are designed and assembled in Kenosha, Wisconsin, and comply with the Buy American Act (manufactured in the United States with more than 50% of the component cost of US origin).


Andres Hernando, CEO, Hiperbaric, and Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez discuss Hiperbaric's high pressure technologies. According to Andres Hernando, CEO of Hiperbaric, Hiperbaric is determined to be a relevant international player in high pressure technologies in different sectors. Our market is not only national but beyond our borders.

Prime Minister of Spain Pedro Sanchez recently visited Hiperbaric headquarters in Burgos, Spain, to recognize Hiperbarics leadership in high pressure technology.

Hiperbarics three lines of business include high pressure processing (HPP) for food and beverages, hot isostatic pressing technology (HIP) for the aerospace, energy, oil & gas, automotive and medical implant sectors, and hydrogen compression technology (H2 compression) for the automotive industry. H2 technology can also be used for industrial and energy storage applications.

According to Andres Hernando, CEO of Hiperbaric, Hiperbaric is determined to be a relevant international player in high pressure technologies in different sectors. Our market is not only national but beyond our borders.

During his visit, Sanchez noted that the development of green hydrogen uses, thanks to new technologies, can help achieve climate change objectives and be beneficial to the economy. He said the objective is to make Spain a "benchmark" for green hydrogen energy, which, he said, will represent a third of the fuel used in land transport and 60% in maritime transport by 2050.

Hiperbarics three lines of business

Hiperbaric is a leader in three lines of business, including high pressure processing (HPP), hot isostatic pressure (HIP) and hydrogen compression technology (H2 compression).

HPP is a non-thermal technology for the preservation of food and beverages, with a long shelf life and guaranteed food safety. HPP applications range from meat, beverage, seafood, and dairy products to guacamole and avocado-based products, salsas and plant-based products, and baby food and fruit purees. Recently trending, application also include ready-to-eat (RTE) meals and pet food products. HPP equipment, including in-pack and in-bulk, meets the needs of large multinationals and small companies in the food sector.

HIP has a wide variety of uses, including improvement of material properties, sintering of powder metallurgy parts, diffusion bonding between metal parts, densification of castings and post-processing and defect removal of parts made by additive manufacturing. HIP technology is regarded as the most effective (and, in some cases, the only one) to give parts and components the quality required by the most stringent sectors such as aerospace, oil and gas, nuclear, automotive, medical implants, defense, or industrial.

Pressurized hydrogen is used as combustible in fuel cell electric vehicles (FCEV) for sustainable and carbon-free mobility. Hydrogen (H2) at low pressure has been used extensively as fuel and raw material in the chemical industry for the past decade. Until now, it was mainly sourced from fossil fuels in petrochemical factories. However, it can also be produced using natural and renewable sources from solar or wind farms. When produced using renewable sources, its called green or renewable hydrogen. For shipment, storage and distribution, hydrogen is required to be pressurized. Hiperbaric is developing high-pressure hydrogen compression technologies for those new applications.

About Hiperbaric

Hiperbaric is the world's leading company specialized in industrial equipment for High Pressure Technologies.

Formed in 1999, Hiperbaric designs, develops, produces and markets its high pressure processing equipment internationally. The company is recognized for its trust, customer support, teamwork and continuous R&D efforts.

Hiperbaric has installed almost 350 HPP machines in about 50 countries across five continents, making the company the global leader in HPP technology with the most reliable and economic machines on the market. Hundreds of companies worldwide use Hiperbaric equipment to process juices and other beverages, meat, seafood, fruits and vegetables, dairy, dips and sauces, ready-to-eat meals and pet food.

With headquarters in Burgos, Spain, a U.S. office in Miami, and commercial and technical offices in Mexico, Asia and Oceania, Hiperbaric continues to explore HPP technology with new applications in different industrial sectors.

In our desire to conquer new markets, since 2018, Hiperbaric developed a new line of industrial machinery for Hot Isostatic Pressing (HIP) used for critical industrial components focused on the aerospace, energy, oil & gas, automotive or medical implant sectors. In 2021, Hiperbaric launched another innovative line of business: high pressure hydrogen compression to participate in the challenge of sustainable mobility and green hydrogen new industrial applications development.

For more information, visit http://www.hiperbaric.com.
Broward House UAs donation will help us maintain a level of necessary care to save lives

Uniform Advantage (UA), a multi-channel retailer of uniforms for the medical and hospitality industries, recently announced a $10,000 donation to Broward House of Fort Lauderdale.

The award will support Broward Houses work to bring dignity and care to the vulnerable in our community with dignity while removing the stigma related to HIV, Mental Health and homelessness.

UA is committed to serving the communities we call home, said Uniform Advantage CEO Susan Masimore. Broward House improves the quality of life for thousands of individuals and families in the Fort Lauderdale area. We are happy to help in any way we can.

Broward House CEO Stacy Hyde said UAs donation will help the organization in a number of ways.

Charitable organizations like Broward House experiences challenges in providing comprehensive care which was exacerbated during the COVID-19 pandemic, Hyde said. UAs donation will help us maintain a level of necessary care to save lives, while funding is challenged and need of our community rise. We are grateful UA believes in those we serve and honors them with philanthropy in action.

Uniform Advantage is grateful for the services Broward House provides  and proud to support their efforts, said Masimore.

About Uniform Advantage

Uniform Advantage has represented style, quality, and customer satisfaction for more than 30 years. As the first division of UA Brands, the chain was launched with a single South Florida store in 1985. Today, the company operates 29 retail locations in key markets across the U.S.; e-commerce and print catalog divisions; plus, designs and manufactures its own proprietary healthcare apparel lines. The companys corporate office is based in Fort Lauderdale, Florida with a distribution center near Atlanta, Georgia. Learn more at http://www.UniformAdvantage.com or by calling 800-283-8708.
Vince Sheehan and Stacy Lynch, Founders of Marins Finest At Marins Finest, we work with calm diligence and a drive to deliver what our clients desire, offering them a combination of precise management and authentic customer service

Vince Sheehan and Stacy Lynch today announced Marins Finest and its partnership with Side, the only real estate technology company that exclusively partners with high-performing agents, teams, and independent brokerages to transform them into market-leading boutique brands and businesses. The partnership will ensure that Marins Finest, a company backed by experience and powered by positivity, is supported by the industrys most advanced platform.

Marins Finest was founded by top agents Vince Sheehan and Stacy Lynch. Sheehan is one of Marins most experienced Realtors, with a record of competitive sales and professional service going back to his San Francisco sales in 1976. He maintains multiple advanced industry certifications, and, as a trust and probate specialist, he has sold more than 250 estate properties for families and trustees. In 2020, he crossed the $500 million mark for total sales volume. In addition to winning top-producer awards from her former brokerage, Lynch has amassed over $270 million in sales since 2009. She specializes in Marin County homes and estate properties and holds several advanced real estate designations. Both licensed brokers, Sheehan and Lynch love helping their clients with everything real estate.

Sheehan and Lynch formed Marins Finest to provide clients with exceptional service and expert guidance. Its agents are longtime Marin residents who understand the draw of the countys lifestyle, as well as its diverse communities and markets. The team is recognized among the top 10% of agents in Marin County and has more than 55 years of Bay Area real estate sales experience combined.

At Marins Finest, we work with calm diligence and a drive to deliver what our clients desire, offering them a combination of precise management and authentic customer service, said Sheehan. As San Francisco natives and longtime Marin residents, we know this region intimately, and we always go the extra mile to ensure our clients can enjoy it as much as we do.

Partnering with Side will ensure Marins Finest remains on the cutting edge of the evolving real estate market while continuing to deliver premium services to its clients. Side works behind the scenes, supporting Marins Finest with a one-of-a-kind brokerage platform that includes proprietary technology, transaction management, branding and marketing services, public relations, legal support, lead generation, vendor management, infrastructure solutions, and more. Additionally, Marins Finest will join an exclusive group of Side partners, tapping into an expansive network from coast to coast.

Our firm represents the values that have always guided us: integrity, honesty, professionalism, said Lynch. Side provides the technology and support that ensures our transactions are streamlined and efficient, so we can focus on giving our clients the personalized attention they deserve and marketing that drives results.

About Marins Finest

Marins Finest offers clients a combination of precise management and authentic customer service. Recognized among the top 10% in Marin County, its agents have more than 55 years of Bay Area real estate sales experience between them. They work with calm diligence and a drive to deliver what clients desire, fusing expertise with the latest tech to get the edge in the competitive Marin County market. To learn more, please visit http://www.marinsfinest.com.

About Side

Side transforms high-performing agents, teams, and independent brokerages into successful businesses and boutique brands that are 100% agent-owned. Side exclusively partners with the best agents, empowering them with proprietary technology and a premier support team so they can be more productive, grow their business, and focus on serving their clients. Side is headquartered in San Francisco. For more information, visit http://www.sideinc.com.
No stranger to the spotlight, Marc Browns Arthur is having a particularly luminous moment in the sun. The affable aardvarks eponymous book series from Little, Brown is celebrating 45 years in print this year, and PBS and WGBH-TV in Boston will air the 25th and final season of its animated Arthur series in spring 2022. In celebration of these milestones, and to share some nuggets of wisdom and wit that Arthur and his pals have dispensed over the decades, Brown has compiled Believe in Yourself: What We Learned from Arthur, due out from LBYR on January 25.

Arthur was born one evening in 1975 when Browns then young son, Tolon (who has been a producer for the Arthur TV series for 22 years), asked his father for a bedtime story. Brown wasnt feeling very upbeat, since the Boston college where he was teaching had that day announced it was closing its doors. But he complied with the request, and together he and Tolon conjured up an aardvark (which in the pantheon of childrens literature is not very well represented, the author observed).

For the sake of alliteration, Brown named the animal Arthur. And then Tolon asked his father what Arthur looked like. I realized there was some fun to be hadso Arthur became an aardvark whose nose always got in the way, Brown said. When I look back on the night, I remember that Arthur and I were both worried about something, he recalled. Arthur was concerned about his nose, and I had just lost my job. That bedtime story eventually became Arthurs Nose, the very first book in the Arthur Adventure series. And that is how Arthur sprang out of a very difficult moment in my life. I was literally rescued by Arthur.

Yet Brown had no idea that the protagonist of Arthurs Nose, released in 1976 by Atlantic Monthly Press (later acquired by Little, Brown), would go on to headline a series of more than 100 picture books, which have sold 65 million copies in the U.S. alone, as well as the longest-running animated childrens series in television history. When I wrote Arthurs Nose, I could never have imagined how many Arthur books would follow, he recalled. Though when I was working on Believe in Yourself, I went back and read that first book, and the last line gave me goosebumps: There is a lot more to Arthur than his nose. Little did I know when I wrote that line just how true it would really be.

The Phenomenon That Is Arthur

Brown credited several book professionals in his life for seeing his aardvarks potential as an enduring protagonist. In Arthurs early years, Brown remembers making promotional visits to schools and librariansreluctantly. I was terrified of talking to groups of people in public, though it was something that my publisher encouraged me to do, to let teachers and librarians know what I was working on, he said.

On one such visit, to a Dallas library, Brown was discussing an early Arthur book with a wonderful librarian, Mary Lankford. We had a conversation that truly was a life-changing moment, he explained. She asked me, Marc, do you want to make a living with this? If so, you need to make a series out of Arthur. Mary suggested I do some Arthur holiday stories. With that, she gave me a road map, and that got the series started.

Another early proponent of Arthur was Emilie McLeod, Browns first editor at Little, Brown. Id been working on a book idea about a character who needed glasses, because Tolon had just gotten his first pair of glasses, Brown recalled. The character was a rabbit, and Emily casually mentioned, Why dont you use that Arthur character in this book?  And thus Arthurs Eyes, the aardvarks second adventure, came to be, and has been a linchpin of the series since 1979.

Arthurs career took a dramatic turn at the bidding of WGBH executive producer Carol Greenwald, who recognized his promise as a small-screen star when she saw Brown at an author event at her local library in Medford, Mass. Her toddler son had taken a fancy to Arthurs Toothas had she. After he received a copy of the book for his third birthday, my son asked me to read it to him over and over, Greenwald said. But unlike other books that were on constant repeat, I never had the inclination to hide it, because I really enjoyed reading it. It was funny, the characters were so compelling, and it did not talk down to kids, which I really appreciated.

When she arrived at the library event, Greenwald said, It was a mob scene. Clearly there was something very special about these Arthur books. At the time I had been actively looking for a book series to adapt to television, so I picked up the phone the following week and called Marc and asked if hed be interested in collaborating with us to create a TV series.

Brown received Greenwalds call, he remembered, on a sunny April day in 1993, as he was finishing the art for his 23rd book in the series, Arthurs New Puppy, and was thrilled when the producer proposed an animated series starring Arthur, aimed at inspiring children to read. My first thought, Brown said, was, What a great idea!  The show went on to win numerous awards, including four Daytime Emmys, catapulted book sales from five million copies sold to 50 million within a year of Arthurs TV debut in October 1996, and has taught generations of young viewers the value of kindness, empathy, inclusionand humor.

Although WGBH is not currently producing any new episodes in the series, Brown emphasized that Arthur is not retiring from the screen. More than 600 Arthur stories exist that will air on PBS for many years to comestories that are not going to go out of fashion, he said. And we have a whole new playground at our disposal with new and emerging technology, so were exploring new ways to extend and expand Arthurs scope to reach children and families, he said. We are not closing any doors.

Paying Tribute to Arthur

As the dual anniversaries of Arthurs life in books and on-screen approached, brainstorming among Brown and the Arthur team at Little, Brown led to the idea of creating Believe in Yourself, compiled with obvious affection by the author, v-p and editorial director Andrea Spooner (who has worked with Brown for almost two decades), and the editorial and art and design teams. Marc instinctively knew all the greatest hitswhat the fans most often write or ask about, Spooner said. Multiple generations have engaged with Arthur via books or television or bothas children, and as parentsso theres a great level of comfort and nostalgia associated with Arthur-and-friends words and experiences. The quotes span close to half a century and still resonate today, which I think is a clear indicator of the evergreen appeal of Arthur.

Spooner added that the book includes more than 60 pieces of all-new art, which Marc drew and painted traditionally, beautifully and expertly unifying decades of work from different media. This is a carefully curated and lovingly rendered package true to the essence of Arthur in every way.

Brown, who talks about Believe in Yourself in a video created by Little, Brown, said the book is the closest I will get to writing a memoir. He noted that the project enabled him to ponder and celebrate what he has learned from his eight-year-old aardvark character over the decades and to bring the moments from the books or the television show that are important to me back to the pagereclaim them, in a sense. I had no agenda for what this book would be, but it did occur to me that I was writing for two generationsyoung readers and those who first heard these stories as children and are now parents. It is really fun to walk the tightrope between this dual audience.

Looking back on close to 50 years with Arthur and his menagerie of friends, Brown points to the paramount role that genuineness plays in the Arthur chronicles. Because all the characters in Arthurs world were inspired by my classmates, family, and teachers, kids feel theyre authentic and sometimes completely real, he said. I once got a letter from a young reader asking for Francines phone numberthats a moment when you feel that youre doing a good job!

Yet offering life advice comes with a big helping of responsibility, Brown continued. I hear so many families talk about how the Arthur books or television episodes have impacted their lives, and it is so important to make sure you get it right. I am always looking for ways to reflect real life in Arthurs stories and to honor the dignity of childhood. I like to think that one of the best things that Arthur has accomplished all these many years is telling children the truthand weve had a lot of fun along the way.

Believe in Yourself: What We Learned from Arthur by Marc Brown. Little, Brown, $15.99 Jan. 11 ISBN 978-0-7595-5456-6
The Association of American Publishers filed suit December 9 to stop a new library e-book law in Maryland from taking effect on January 1, claiming that the law, which would require publishers who offer to license e-books to consumers in the state to also offer to license the works to libraries on "reasonable" terms, is unconstitutional and runs afoul of federal copyright law.

In its filing, the AAP alleges that the Maryland law effectively commandeers the rights" of publishers and authors.

"In short, the Maryland Act will bring to bear the considerable coercive powers of the State of Maryland to unilaterally force publishers to disseminate their digital literary works to Maryland libraries on an unlimited basis and on terms dictated by the State of Maryland, whenever publishers disseminate those works to anyone else, anywhere else," reads the AAP's December complaint. "The Maryland Acts requirements are in flagrant violation of the authority granted to publishers by federal law to decide whether and on what terms to make their works available in order to achieve the full benefit and promise of the Copyright Act."

In a statement, Maria A. Pallante, president and CEO of the AAP, said state legislators lacked the authority "to create a shadow copyright act" or to "manipulate the value" of intellectual property.

It is unambiguous that the U.S. Copyright Act governs the disposition of literary works in commerceand for that matter, all creative works of authorship," Pallante said. "We take this encroachment very seriously as the threat that it is to a viable, independent publishing industry in the United States and to a borderless copyright economy.

The suit seeks an order declaring the Maryland law void and unenforceable because it is preempted by federal law and unconstitutional, as well a preliminary and permanent injunction against enforcement of the act.

In addition, the AAP made public a letter (signed by a number of other copyright industry groups) to New York governor Kathy Hochul, urging her to veto New York's version of the bill, which passed in June.

While the New York bill, like Maryland, pertains to e-books and similar works, it is of "grave concern," the letter states, "to other creative industries that do significant business and employ tens of thousands of people in New York, including motion pictures, news publishers, music, and software.

The Authors Guild was one of more than 20 organizations to sign the letter and it also issued a statement in support of AAP's action against Maryland. Guild CEO Mary Rasenberger said she finds it "alarming" that several similar laws are pending in other states. The Guild said it believes if the AAPs lawsuit, is successful, it will have consequences beyond the state of Maryland by alerting other states of the law's unconstitutionality. The guild added that it will "continue to voice its objections to these laws, and we will mobilize its members to oppose them in their states."

As of Thursday evening, the New York bill has not yet been delivered to Hochul for signature or veto. Under state law, however, the bill must be presented to the governor by the end of the calendar year. Hochul will then have 10 days to sign or veto the bill. However, because the New York legislature is technically still in session, the bill will become law if Hochul fails to act within 10 days of being presented with the bill.

First introduced in January 2021, the Maryland law (SB432/HB518) passed the Maryland General Assembly unanimously on March 10, taking root as a response to Macmillan's (since abandoned) 2019 embargo on frontlist e-book titles, which prompted numerous appeals to both federal and state legislators.

The suit is the second major copyright lawsuit from the AAP now underway. It is currently coordinating a lawsuit by four major publishers against the Internet Archive over its program to scan and lend library books under an untested legal theory known as controlled digital lending.
After years of discussion and planning, the American Library Association is finally ready to unveil its new event. LibLearnX: The Library Learning Experience is set to run January 2124, 2022. The show takes the place of the ALAs long-running Midwinter Meeting (retired after 107 shows dating back to 1908), which took its final bow with the 2021 virtual event.

Designed by ALA membership, LibLearnX will carry forward a number of popular features from ALA Midwinter, including an exhibits hall, awards ceremonies, and big-name speakers. But the shows primary focus is a strong and interactive slate of programmingan active learning experience featuring an array of sessions ranging from hands-on, in-depth workshops to shorter, more informal offerings. The inaugural program will have more than 120 education sessions on issues vital to the profession, including diversity, equity, and inclusion; career development and leadership; community outreach and partnerships; digital equity; mental health; technology; innovation; and, of course, books and authors. The LLX Marketplace, meanwhile, will host exhibitors offering the newest titles, technologies, and services.

LibLearnX was designed as an in-person event with a strong virtual component. But in a sign of the times, the in-person event will have to wait. This years live event was originally set to take place in San Antonio, Texas, but in September, amid a spike in Covid-19 cases and a troubling public health approach in the state of Texas, ALA made the call to shift to a virtual-only show for this yeara decision that looks prescient given concerns around the emergent omicron variant.

The good news: ALA has amassed some great experience with online events having now pulled off three excellent virtual shows since the onset of the pandemic. And while many librarians no doubt remain eager to see their colleagues face-to-face again, the quality and accessibility of ALAs online events has been a welcome development.

With any luckand a lot more vaccinationslibrarians will gather in person in 2022, perhaps at ALA Annual, set for June 2328, 2022, in Washington D.C. And librarians can look forward to gathering in person for the second LibLearnX, currently set to take place Feb. 710, 2023, in New Orleans.

You can register for this years LibLearnX here. And to keep up with the event, follow #LibLearnX on ALAs social media accounts.

Featured speakers

A number of main stage speakers have been announced, with more expected to be unveiled in the coming days, though exact times are not yet available in many cases. Visit the LibLearnX website for last-minute additions or changes. Among the speakers announced so far, comedian and author Molly Shannon, who spent six seasons as a Saturday Night Live cast member, will discuss her forthcoming book, Hello, Molly! A Memoir (Ecco), which is set for publication in April 2022. The book details Shannons early years, her rise to fame, and behind-the-scenes stories from her time at SNL.

Kelly Yang, the bestselling author of the middle grade series starter Front Desk, which received the 2019 Asian/Pacific American Award for Childrens Literature, will discuss her latest middle grade novel, New from Here (Simon & Schuster), which follows an Asian American boy as he fights to keep his family together and stands up to racism.

Jacqueline Woodson, author of more than 30 books for young adults, middle graders, and adults, will discuss two of her forthcoming childrens books from Penguin Young Readers imprint Nancy Paulsen Books: The Year We Learned to Fly (Jan. 2022), the highly anticipated companion to The Day You Begin, illustrated by Rafael Lopez; and The World Belonged to Us (May 2022), illustrated by Leo Espinosa, an homage to her own childhood and a celebration of the joy and freedom of summer in the city. Woodson is a four-time Newbery Honor author and a three-time Coretta Scott King Award winner.

Angeline Boulley, who writes about her Ojibwe community in Michigans Upper Peninsula, will discuss her debut novel, the bestselling YA thriller Firekeepers Daughter (Holt), about a Native teen who must root out corruption in her community. The book is currently being adapted as a Netflix series by Higher Ground Productions, the production company founded by Barack and Michelle Obama.

Cicely Lewis will discuss her August release Mass Incarceration, Black Men, and the Fight for Justice (Lerner), which deals with the history and causes of mass incarceration and how activists are reforming and rethinking the justice system, as well as her forthcoming book, Resistance to Slavery: From Escape to Everyday Rebellion (Lerner, Jan. 2022). In addition to being an author, Lewis is a school librarian and the founder of Read Woke Books, in partnership with Lerner Publishing.

Mariko Tamaki will discuss her forthcoming book for young adults, Cold: A Novel (Roaring Brook), which is set to release in February 2022. Tamaki is the cocreator, with illustrator Jillian Tamaki, of the Caldecott Honor-winning This One Summer, and she received an Eisner Award, a Governor General Literary Award, and a Michael L. Printz Honor. Tamaki also writes comic books for Boom! Studios, Marvel, and DC Comics.

Awards and more

The ALA Presidents Evening of Recognition Celebration is set for Friday, January 21. Check the LibLearnX website for the time, which has not yet been announced.

The popular I Love My Librarian Awards, the annual contest that allows library users to recognize the accomplishments of exceptional public, school, college, community college, or university librarians, will take place on Saturday, January 22 (3:305 p.m. CT).

The Books & Media Awards, celebrating the years best in fiction, nonfiction, poetry, audiobook narration, and reference materialsincluding the announcement of the Andrew Carnegie Medals for Excellence in Fiction and Nonfiction, which recognize the best books in those categories for adult readers published in the U.S. in the previous yearis set for Sunday, June 23 (57 p.m. CT).

And perhaps the most anticipated awards of all, the ALA Youth Media Awards, which includes the prestigious Newbery, Caldecott, Printz, and Coretta Scott King awards, are set for Monday, January 24 at 8 a.m. CT. A live video stream will be available to the public here.
On Thursday, Italys anti-trust authority fined Amazon 1.13 billion for abusing its dominant position online and harming third-party competitors. The same day, a report said that Amazons David Naggar, head of its books division, met with French Culture Minister Roselyne Bachelot on Aug. 25 in Paris to convince the government to not pass a proposed law that would require a minimum shipping price for books ordered online. Earlier legislation disallowed the free shipping of books, something that was enacted as an effort to curtail Amazons market advantages, so Amazon decided to offer shipping for one euro cent.

During the meeting, several people reported that Naggar offered to raise Amazons standard shipping price to as much as two euros, provided the government stopped passage of further legislation. Independent bookstores typically charge five to seven euros to ship books.

The 1981 Lang Law in France prohibits the discounting of new books, effectively fixing book prices, which means Amazons low shipping can make purchasing from the store more appealing to some buyers. (It must be noted that some booksellers in France will dog-ear a page in a new book to render it used, thus technically qualifying it to be sold at a discount).

The new legislation  which is expected to pass on December 19  was proposed earlier this year in an effort to support independent stores. Last year, the French government reimbursed delivery fees charged by independent bookstores for books ordered online during the pandemic, a measure that helped a majority of stores stay in business at a time when they were locked down.

Reuters reports that more than 20% of the 435 million books sold in France in 2019 were bought online and the market share of France's 3,300 independent bookstores has been dropping, as more customers turn to Amazon.

In lobbying against the new legislation requiring a new minimum delivery charge, Amazon has claimed that the fee would hurt customers in rural parts of France, a number that accounts for 40% of orders, and would cost French consumers an additional 250 million euros annually. Amazon has said the law requiring a minimum shipping fee will add additional revenue to the company since it now currently ships at a near-zero price rate.

Despite these arguments, the French government appears ready to enact the new legislation later this month.
Three Purdue faculty members  Mingji Dai, Haley Oliver and Yuan Yao  have been appointed as Showalter Faculty Scholars. As of July, they joined 11 additional Showalter Scholars appointed in prior years at Purdue West Lafayette.

The Showalter Trust programs at Purdue also have named 11 early career faculty members for 2021 grants to support their research projects.

The Ralph W. and Grace M. Showalter Research Trust Fund annually provides funding to Purdue in support of scientific and medical research. In addition to selecting midcareer professionals as Showalter Faculty Scholars and providing one-year funding for early career professionals, the trust also supports two Showalter Distinguished Professors at Purdue, Charles Bouman and Kinam Park.

2021 Showalter Faculty Scholars

Mingji Dai is a professor of chemistry, Organic Division chair in the Department of Chemistry and co-leader of the Targets, Structures, and Drugs Program of the Purdue Center for Cancer Research. His lab focuses on developing new strategies and methodologies for the synthesis and biological study of complex natural products and medicinally important molecules. His work includes a focus on both natural and unnatural molecules with particular potential for the treatment of cancer, central nervous system disorders, and infectious diseases.

Haley Oliver, professor of food science in the College of Agriculture and director of the USAID Feed the Future Food Safety Innovation Lab, studies the prevalence, persistence, and transmission of L. monocytogenes and salmonella in retail food systems as well as development of practical and feasible control strategies aimed to reduce cross-contamination. As director of the Food Safety Innovation Lab, she develops and oversees USAIDs food safety research portfolio, which is currently implemented in Senegal, Kenya, Bangladesh, Cambodia, Tanzania and Nepal.

Yuan Yao, professor of food science in the College of Agriculture, studies carbohydrates and functional nano-biomaterials, as well as the study of interactions among food ingredients and the development of value-added materials for the food and non-food industries. His focus on technology development and commercialization of his research has led to the formation of two startup companies.

Purdue faculty members were nominated in partnership with the provosts University Faculty Scholars program and approved by an external selection committee of distinguished scientists representing the Showalter Research Trust. Funding from the trust, $5,000 annually, complements equivalent funding from the Office of the Provost.

2021 Showalter Early Career Awards

The Ralph W. and Grace M. Showalter Research Trust has supported Purdue researchers for more than 40 years in priority research areas of environmental science; biochemistry and molecular biology; disease prevention, diagnosis, progression, treatment and control; new technologies for food production, preservation, distribution and safety; and medical and biophysical instrumentation.

As the centerpiece of Showalter Trust support at Purdue, the program provides early career faculty members with one-year grants. This year, 11 faculty members received up to $75,000 each in funding for the projects named:

Kajal Gulati, assistant professor in the Department of Agricultural Economics: Strategies for Increasing Food Safety Practices Among Smallholder Farmers: The Case of Aflatoxins Reduction in Senegal.

Jason Hanna, assistant professor in the Department of Biological Sciences: CRISPR-Cas9 Genome Engineering to Identify Drivers of Angiosarcoma.

Brock Harpur, assistant professor in the Department of Entomology: How Does a Honey Bee Reverse Cognitive Decline: Characterizing the Roles of Taxonomically Novel Proteins in Regulating Senescence.

Greg Henderson, assistant professor in the Department of Nutrition Science: Altering Lipid Metabolism to Improve Insulin Sensitivity: Impaired Exercise Capacity as a Potential Side Effect.

Krishna Jayant, assistant professor in the Weldon School of Biomedical Engineering: Role of Fibrillar AlphaSynuclein Strains in Motor Learning Deficits in Parkinsons Disease.

Robert Nawrocki, assistant professor in the School of Engineering Technology: Stretchable and Breathable Nanomesh Electrode Array for Transdermal Stimulation of Deep Nerves in Human Subjects.

Jonathan Pasternak, assistant professor in the Department of Animal Sciences: Understanding Hormonal Regulation of Systemic and Reproductive Immunity.

Carlos Perez-Torres, assistant professor in the School of Health Sciences: Protective Effect of Genetic Inhibition of Neuroinflammation in Radiation-induced Brain Injury.

Scott Pluta, assistant professor in the Department of Biological Sciences: Neural Mechanisms Underlying Selective Attention.

Allison Schaser, assistant professor in the Department of Speech, Language, and Hearing Sciences: A New Approach Toward the Development of Cranial Sensorimotor Assays to Diagnose and Treat Synuclein-specific Neurodegeneration.

Luis Solorio, assistant professor in the Weldon School of Biomedical Engineering: Determining the Role of Mechanotransduction in Metastatic Breast Cancer.

Selected projects were chosen by the external Showalter Selection Committee after review by an internal Purdue committee.

More information about the current competition for the Showalter Trust early career grants program is available online.
By Elizabeth Kwiatkowski, 12/09/2021



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Elizabeth Kwiatkowski is Associate Editor of Reality TV World and has been covering the reality TV genre for more than a decade.

star Tarik Myers has made it clear he doesn't want his marriage to Hazel Cagalitan to end and that he still loves her.Even after Hazel accused Tarik of mental and emotional abuse on her Instagram account, Tarik has made a public plea hoping to get his estranged wife back amid their serious relationship troubles."If I could talk to her right now, I would tell her, 'I love you more than anybody alive. No. 2, I absolutely do not want a divorce,'" Tarik, 47, told Us Weekly on Wednesday, one day after suggesting he and Hazel had split and she's going to move back to her native Philippines."I absolutely do not want her to leave," Tarik insisted of Hazel, who has a son Harrey living in the Philippines. "I absolutely want to build our family like we've planned since the very beginning."Tarik, who has a nine-year-old daughter Ari from a previous relationship, revealed he does not "have any open lines of communication" with Hazel at this point -- but "not by choice."Tarik said he "never wanted any of this" and had no idea that Hazel "was going to leave" him."I still don't know if her leaving was meant to be permanent [or] if it was meant to be temporary," Tarik explained."[I wonder] if this was her way of trying to get my attention, saying, 'You're not hearing me, you're not listening to me. You're going to listen to me now because I'm going to disappear.'"As for what went wrong in their seemingly-healthy marriage, Tarik claimed it was a combination of small things."There wasn't a big blow-up fight," Tarik said."Hazel and I talked about some issues that we have talked about many, many, many times. She felt one way about these issues, and I felt another way about these issues. We disagreed on what we should do."Tarik reportedly declined to provide specifics on the demise of his relationship other than revealing it involved "the betterment of the whole entire family."Tarik first took to his Instagram Stories on Tuesday to reveal that his relationship with his wife appeared to be over "Hazel does not live with me anymore. She said she is [in] another state with people I don't know," Tarik wrote."She is going back to the Philippines. I do know that bc she has no choice. No matter what happened, I ask that you viewers and bloggers leave her alone."Tarik added, "Please do not attack her or harass her like you've been doing for the last 3 years. #90dayfiance."And finally, Tarik concluded in a message to his estranged wife, "Hazel. Use your head."Hazel then changed her Instagram bio into a strongly-worded message presumably directed at Tarik."A real man won't abuse his women mentally & emotionally. [A] real man won't run his mouth [on] social media," Hazel wrote at the top of her profile on Wednesday.Hazel added the truth will "prevail" and she's telling the "facts," before posting a series of inspirational and spiritual quotes and advice on her Instagram Stories about women empowerment and how it's okay to be alone.Tarik posted a screenshot of Hazel's Instagram profile on Wednesday and argued in a since-deleted post, " Not true and you know it . I still will not bash you or air out your personal life," according to Us.He subsequently told the magazine that Hazel "never, ever, ever said that she felt abused in any way.""We had arguments and disagreements like everybody else, but everything I have ever done or ever said to Hazel was 100 percent out of love. She would agree with that," Tarik insisted."Now, you know, if she felt like I was abusive in tone or in nature, I mean, I definitely would apologize for that to her, and I don't want to minimize what somebody else feels."Tarik concluded that if Hazel truly felt "mentally or emotionally abused" by him then "it absolutely was not intentional by me."Tarik and Hazel found fame when they initially starred on Season 2 of : Before the 90 Days, followed by Season 8 of .Before the 90 Days showed Tarik attempting to court a seemingly shy and reserved single mom from a poor area in Manila as well as win over her family's approval.At the time 's eighth season filmed in 2020, Tarik and Hazel had been together for two years and Hazel finally got approved for a K-1 visa.Once Hazel moved to America to be with her man, she and Tarik experienced their fair share of ups and downs.Hazel, who admittedly wanted a girlfriend on the side of her relationship with Tarik, got very jealous of a woman named Minty from Thailand once the couple invited her into their bed.Hazel called off the love triangle and asked Tarik never to communicate with Minty again, but Tarik apparently slipped up on more than one occasion and so Hazel lost trust in him.However, Tarik and Hazel had love at the core of their relationship and so they decided to get married amid the coronavirus pandemic in June 2020.Tarik and Hazel's small wedding ceremony aired the following year on 's eighth season in March 2021.Hazel and Tarik continued to post sweet Instagram messages and photos of each other for months after tying the knot, and so it appears the pair split some time after September 2021.On September 6, for instance, Tarik had posted about "Tarzel" and written, "Your haters are really your friends." Based on some of the post's comments, Tarik had led his followers to believe he and Hazel were still together at the time.And back in late July, Tarik had posted a video of Hazel and himself dancing and having fun at a concert.Tarik had also gushed about Hazel on June 6, which marked the couple's one-year wedding anniversary."[Four] years ago, I did the unthinkable. A year ago today, I made the best decision of my life. It seems like yesterday. Hazel arrived 2 weeks before the governor shut Virginia down bc of Covid. She has rolled with every punch the pandemic has thrown us," Tarik wrote at the time.Tarik had called Hazel "an incredible, thoughtful, real, beautiful soul," and continued, "Hazel has never clambered for TV cameras or the spotlight. Stays out of the '90' social media sewer blogs no matter how much a response is warranted."Tarik also noted how Hazel had made Ari's life "exponentially" better."No one has to know why we chose each other but us," Tarik had shared. "Happy 1st Anniversary Mrs. Myers. #Tarzel."Meanwhile, Hazel's last post with Tarik dates back to June 25, when the pair had posed for a photo with a friend and flashed peace signs at the camera.Want more spoilers or couples updates? Click here to visit our homepage!
Michael B. Jordan says he's "super excited" to make his directorial debut with Creed III.

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The 34-year-old actor discussed the project during Thursday's episode of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert

Jordan played aspiring boxer Adonis "Donnie" Johnson Creed, the son of Apollo Creed, in Creed (2015) and Creed II (2018), which take place in the Rocky universe. He will reprise the role in Creed III and also direct the film.

On The Late Show, Jordan said directing the third film felt like a natural transition.

"I think it was one of those things where I just felt comfortable," he said. "I knew it was going to be a risk. I'm super excited to get behind the camera."

Creed was written by Ryan Coogler and Aaron Covington and directed by Coogler, while Creed II was written by Juel Taylor and Sylvester Stallone and directed by Steven Caple Jr.

Jordan said he has a story he wants to tell in Creed III and that directing allows him to "execute the vision I saw in my head."

"So from the second one to the third one, I called Ryan up and he's like, 'You're ready for it. Just do it,'" he said.

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Creed III will open in theaters in November 2022.

Jordan will next star in A Journal for Jordan, a film adaptation of the Dana Canedy memoir. The actor attended the movie's New York premiere Thursday with director Denzel Washington and his co-star Chante Adams.
Sandra Bullock re-enters society after a prison stint in The Unforgivable, Billie Eilish hosts Saturday Night Live and Succession Season 3 comes to an end this weekend.

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In addition, Riz Ahmed takes his two sons on a perilous journey in Encounter, Crossing Swords returns for a second season and the Peanuts gang is back for a new holiday special.

Here's a rundown on some of the films and television shows that will be released this weekend.

Film

'The Unforgivable' -- Netflix

Sandra Bullock is released from prison after 20 years for committing a violent crime in The Unforgivable, which premieres Friday on Netflix. Bullock's Ruth Slater then searches for her long-lost older sister that she was forced to leave behind. Vincent D'Onofrio Jon Bernthal and Viola Davis also star in the film, from director Nora Fingscheidt.

'Encounter' -- Amazon Prime Video

Riz Ahmed is decorated Marine Malik Khan who goes on a rescue mission to save his two young songs from an alien threat in Encounter, which arrives Friday on Amazon Prime Video. Octavia Spencer, Rory Cochrane, Lucian-River Chauhan and Aditya Geddada also star in thriller, from director Michael Pearce.

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TV

'Snoopy Presents: For Auld Lang Syne' -- Apple TV+

The Peanuts gang arrive on Apple TV+ for a new holiday special titled Snoopy Presents: For Auld Lang Syne, which comes to the streaming service on Friday. Lucy wants to throw the best New Year's Eve party ever following a disappointing Christmas while Charlie Brown struggles to accomplish one of his New Year's resolutions.

'Tiger King: The Doc Antle Story' -- Netflix

Tiger King's Doc Antle takes center stage in this mini-series, which premieres Friday on Netflix. The Doc Antle Story will dive into the private zoo owner's history and his various controversies as Netflix expands the Tiger King saga. The mini-series features interviews with witnesses who say Antle abused them.

'The Expanse' Season 6 -- Amazon Prime Video

Steven Strait 's Jim Holden and the crew of the Rocinante join forces with the Combined Fleet of Earth and Mars to stop Marco Inaros and his campaign of death in The Expanse Season 6, which arrives Friday on Amazon Prime video. The new season will also hint at a new power awakening on a distant planet beyond the Rings.

'Twentysomethings: Austin' -- Netflix

Eight twentysomething strangers move to Austin from across the U.S. to live with each other in this new reality series, which comes Friday to Netflix. The strangers will be taking their first steps into adult life in Austin, Texas, where they find love, friendship, heartbreak and drama.

'Crossing Swords' Season 2 -- Hulu

Squire Patrick, voiced by Nicholas Hoult, continues on his mission to become a knight while serving King Merriman (Luke Evans) in Crossing Swords Season 2, which premieres Friday on Hulu. Patrick will be dealing with bloodthirsty leprechauns and an island of killer monkeys in the new season of the adult animated comedy. Tara Strong, Tony Hale, Seth Green, Jameela Jamil and more also provide voices.

'Saturday Morning All Star Hits!' -- Netflix

Kyle Mooney stars as twin hosts Skip and Treybor in this adult animated and live-action hybrid series, which arrives Friday on Netflix. Saturday Morning All Star Hits! offers a collection comedic segments made in the style of television shows from the '80s and '90s to replicate a Saturday morning cartoon experience.

'Saturday Night Live' with Billie Eilish -- NBC

Billie Eilish is hosting the newest installment of Saturday Night Live, which airs Saturday at 11:30 p.m. EST on NBC. Eilish is also serving as the musical guest. She made her SNL debut in 2019.

'Succession' Season 3 finale -- HBO

Succession Season 3 comes to an end with a finale episode, which airs Sunday at 9 p.m. EST on HBO. The finale can also be accessed on HBO Max. The finale comes after Kieran Culkin's Roman Roy accidentally sent his father, Brian Cox's Logan Roy, a lewd image. Jeremy Strong, Sarah Snook, Alan Ruck, Nicholas Braun, Matthew Macfadyen and J. Smith-Cameron also star.
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On Dec. 12, people will gather inside five historic homes in Winterville, Georgia, as part of the annual holiday gala hosted by Historic Athens. From 4-8 p.m., the history of the city that began as a railroad town will be brought to life.
Brattleboro, VT (05301)

Today

Rain early...then remaining cloudy with showers in the afternoon. Some sleet or freezing rain possible. High near 40F. Winds S at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 70%..

Tonight

Considerable clouds this evening. Some decrease in clouds late. Low 29F. Winds SSW at 5 to 10 mph.
The Northwest CT Chamber of Commerce has scheduled the following meetings.

Dec. 15: Health Council Meeting, 8 a.m. The Health Council, a peer group comprised primarily of individuals and companies involved in healthcare in Northwest Connecticut, meets the 3rd Wednesday of every month. Meetings focus on specific areas of interest, including: employee recruitment and retention, workforce development, on-the-job training programs and grants, legislative updates that affect the health care industry, facility tours and more.

To be added to the Health Council, email Lauren@nwctchamberofcommerce.org.

Dec. 21: Board of Directors Meeting, 8 a.m.

Reach out to JoAnn Ryan if you wish to receive information on how to join the Board of Directors for next year.

JoAnn Ryan is President & CEO of the NW CT Chamber of Commerce. You can reach her by email: joann@nwctchamberofcommerce.org or phone: 860-482-6586.
HARWINTON  Wednesdays light snow transformed Barry Farms into a Christmas card scene, with little Frasier firs, blue spruces and concolor firs sparkling with fresh, white powder.

Owners Tamara and Robert Barry bought the Mansfield Road property in 2013 and spent the next eight years restoring the old farmhouse and planting tress on four of its 15 acres. The couple sold their first crop in 2020, and since then, a growing family of customers have found their way back to Barrys for their holiday tree.

Cut-your-own trees are a family tradition for many, but the number of tree farms has dwindled, the Barrys said, as new generations of owners choose to sell the land rather than continue selling trees. Suppliers from big farms in Pennsylvania, New York state and Canada also have faced difficulties in recent years, with weather and pests damaging their crops, the Barrys said.

Firefighters usually sell trees this time of year, but a lot of them havent been able to get them, Robert Barry said.

The decreasing number of tree farms drove their plans to open their own.

It took us eight years to get the fields ready, Robert Barry said. We sold pre-cut trees in 2019, and a small amount of live trees, and more last year. And we got great feedback from people.

This year the Barrys renovated a small barn at the edge of the tree farm, transforming it into a gift shop where customers can warm up while browsing local merchandise, as well as Roberts handmade wreaths, swags and holiday arrangements.

Tamara Barry has assembled a collection of goods from makers in Harwinton, Litchfield, Southbury and other local towns, and shoppers will find juniper- and pine-scented soaps, candles, maple syrup, coffee and candy, giclee art prints, hand-dyed yarns and local pottery. Shes particularly proud to sell a line of coffees from Cafe Real in Bristol, which imports Colombian coffee and roasts the beans at its own facility.

Shes added a variety of Christmas ornaments and decorations to the collection this year, as well as Robert Barrys own raspberry jam and chili seasoning, using her familys special recipe, which also has been a hit with buyers. A display of handmade wooden ornaments, created by his brother in Northfield, also are a popular item, with snowmen, sledding penguins, Santas and manger scenes among the collection.

The store is a success, Tamara Barry said. When people walk in, theyre happy and surprised and start looking around, she said. This store was my vision, and a friend of mine helped me bring it to life.

The farm was quiet on a recent day, but every 15 minutes or so, a car or truck would arrive with more customers seeking a tree. Trees eight feet and taller are gone, but the couple still has plenty of trees to choose from. One man asked for a blue spruce, and within a few minutes his chosen tree was free of snow, wrapped in red netting and secured on the roof of his station wagon.

Lots of people dont like the blue spruces because theyre prickly, the customer said, as he thanked Barry and shook his hand. I like them because they last longer. And they smell good.

Christmas tree farms are about the experience, Robert Barry said. You want people to enjoy the holiday and buying a tree is part of that, for a lot of people.

His daughter, Toby Barry, and granddaughter McKenzie Gauthier are part of the tree farms weekend staff, along with a young neighbor, Patrick, who loves helping out. They deserve a shout-out, Tamara Barry said. Theyre working here with us every weekend, when were very, very busy.

Future plans for Barry Farms include produce for local farmers markets, such as garlic and flowers. The couple also grows winterberries and sells them to home decorators and flower shops.

Robert Barry said having his own tree farm is something hes always wanted.

When I was 5, we went to Angevine Farm in Warren, and before that I always thought Christmas trees came from Santa Claus, he said. Angevines was a chicken farm, but John Angevine had some Christmas trees growing in the back, and we went and got one. I remember standing there and looking at this beautiful hill full of trees, and saying, Is this really where the trees come from? I never forgot that.

Barry Farms is located at 195 Mansfield Road, off Wildcat Hill Road, found by following Route 118 from Litchfield. Signs lead drivers to the farm, which is open daily from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. To learn more, visit www.barryfarmsllc.com or call 860-567-0649.
BARGERSVILLE, Ind. (AP)  Officers shot a man in an Indianapolis suburb Friday morning after he pointed a gun at them when they found him hours after he fled from a traffic stop, police said.

Bargersville police spokesman Jeremy Roll said officers spotted the man about 7:45 a.m. Friday walking through backyards in the Johnson County town, a few miles south of Indianapolis.
LANSING, Mich. (AP)  Michigan's COVID-19 surge is trending in a deeply concerning direction ahead of the winter holidays and, unlike a year ago, is not subsiding following Thanksgiving, state health officials said Friday while urging vaccines and booster shots.

Infection rates and hospitalizations are near or at all-time highs in the state 21 months into the pandemic. Vaccination rates lag the national average, especially among children and people in their 20s and 30s. Three in four patients hospitalized with the coronavirus are unvaccinated.

Michigan continues to trend in a deeply concerning direction heading into the Christmas holiday and the new year, state health director Elizabeth Hertel said. She warned that the omicron variant  the first case of which was announced Thursday in Kent County  may be be more transmissible than the delta variant that is pounding the state.

The state is deploying ventilators to hospitals and asking for 200 more from the national stockpile.

For individuals who have not yet been vaccinated, I want to be absolutely clear: You are risking serious illness, hospitalization and even death, Hertel said. If you have yet to receive the vaccine or you are not yet fully vaccinated, it is not a matter of if you will get sick but when  particularly with a more transmissible variant spreading across the state."

The state is coordinating with U.S. officials to identify federal staffing to help treat infected people with antibody drugs.

More than 4,700 patients were hospitalized with the virus, including 4,500 adults with confirmed cases  a new record. More than 21% of beds had COVID-19 patients, a figure that never exceeded 20% in past waves, said Dr. Natasha Bagdasarian, the state's chief medical executive.

Where we are today is really just keeping our heads above water, said Dr. Paolo Marciano, chief medical officer for Beaumont Hospital in Dearborn, one of three Michigan hospitals where U.S. Army doctors and nurses are helping. He called the deployment a tremendous lifeline," one that state officials do not anticipate the U.S. government being able to expand further in Michigan due to limited federal resources.

The number of health care workers is finite, Hertel said. "It will take the efforts and the actions of our citizens and our communities to help to slow the increased number of patients into the hospitals to really ease the burden.

Gov. Gretchen Whitmer's administration has resisted reinstating capacity restrictions and mask requirements that were in place for more than a year. New York on Friday reinstituted a face covering mandate unless businesses and venues implement a vaccine requirement.

Michigan's COVID-19 death rate is higher than in the third surge last spring, when fewer residents were vaccinated, but lower than in the first and second waves in 2020. The 235 additional deaths reported Friday brought the total number of confirmed and probable deaths to nearly 27,000.

About 55.5% of the population is fully vaccinated, below the national rate of 60.5%. Vaccines and boosters, Bagdasarian said, are the best way to prepare for the omicron variant and flatten the curve. Many critical questions about omicron remain unanswered, including whether the virus causes milder or more severe illness and how much it might evade immunity from past illness or vaccines.

We're really at a critical place in this pandemic, she said, also urging indoor masking in public and testing. It's really time for everyone to do their part.

___

Follow David Eggert at https://twitter.com/DavidEggert00
WASHINGTON (AP)  The al-Qaida extremist group has grown slightly inside Afghanistan since U.S. forces left in late August, and the country's new Taliban leaders are divided over whether to fulfill their 2020 pledge to break ties with the group, the top U.S. commander in the region said Thursday.

Marine Gen. Frank McKenzie, head of U.S. Central Command, said in an interview with The Associated Press that the departure of U.S. military and intelligence assets from Afghanistan has made it much harder to track al-Qaida and other extremist groups inside Afghanistan.

Were probably at about 1 or 2% of the capabilities we once had to look into Afghanistan, he said, adding that this makes it very hard, not impossible to ensure that neither al-Qaida nor the Islamic State group's Afghanistan affiliate can pose a threat to the United States.

Speaking at the Pentagon, McKenzie said it's clear that al-Qaida is attempting to rebuild its presence inside Afghanistan, which was the base from which it planned the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks against the United States. He said some militants are coming into the country through its porous borders, but it is hard for the U.S. to track numbers.

The U.S. invasion that followed the Sept. 11 attacks led to a 20-year war that succeeded initially by removing the Taliban from power but ultimately failed. After President Joe Biden announced in April that he was withdrawing completely from Afghanistan, the Taliban systematically overpowered Afghan government defenses and seized Kabul, the capital, in August.

McKenzie and other senior U.S. military and national security officials had said before the U.S. withdrawal that it would complicate efforts to keep a lid on the al-Qaida threat, in part because of the loss of on-the-ground intelligence information and the absence of a U.S.-friendly government in Kabul. The U.S. says it will rely on airstrikes from drones and other aircraft based beyond Afghanistan's borders to respond to any extremist threats against the U.S. homeland.

McKenzie said no such strikes have been conducted since the U.S. completed its withdrawal from Afghanistan on Aug. 30. He added that America's ability to conduct such strikes is based on the availability of intelligence, overhead imagery and other information and communications, and that architecture is still being developed right now.

Al-Qaida is among numerous extremist groups inside Afghanistan. After 2001, it lost most of its numbers and its ability to directly threaten U.S. territory, but McKenzie said it retains an aspirational desire to attack the United States. During their first period of rule in Kabul, from 1996 to 2001, the Taliban gave haven to al-Qaida and refused Washington's demand after 9/11 to expel the group and turn over its leader, Osama bin Laden. The Taliban and al-Qaida have maintained ties ever since.

So we're still trying to sort out exactly how the Taliban is going to proceed against them, and I think over the month or two it'll become a little more apparent to us, he said.

Similarly, McKenzie said it's not yet clear how strongly Taliban will go after the Islamic State group, also known as ISIS, which has violently attacked the Taliban across the country. The United States blamed ISIS for an Aug. 26 suicide bombing at Kabul airport that killed 13 American service members and at least 169 Afghan civilians in the final days of the U.S. evacuation.

ISIS was reinvigorated," McKenzie said, by the release of numerous ISIS fighters from Afghan prisons in mid-August. He said both ISIS and al-Qaida are recruiting from inside and outside Afghanistan.

So certainly we should expect a resurgent ISIS. It would be very surprising if that weren't the case, he said, adding, It remains to be seen that the Taliban are going to be able to take effective action against them.

He called al-Qaida a more difficult problem for the Taliban because of their longstanding ties.

So I think there are internal arguments inside the Taliban about the way forward, he said. What we would like to see from the Taliban would be a strong position against al-Qaida, which they promised as part of the February 2020 Doha agreement that committed the United States to fully withdrawing from Afghanistan. But I dont believe thats yet been fully realized.

McKenzie declined to provide an estimate of the number of al-Qaida operatives inside Afghanistan.

I think it's probably slightly increased, he said. Theres a presence. We thought it was down pretty small, you know, toward the end of the conflict. I think some people have probably come back in. But its one of the things we look at, but I wouldnt be confident giving you a number right now.
Actor Urvashi Rautela has been a beauty pageant winner in the past, and she is now set to judge the upcoming Miss Universe event. Ahead of the event scheduled to be held on December 12, the Sanam Re actor has already landed at the venue. However, rather than contestants or models, the actor was spotted in the company of former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the venue.

The Hate Story 4 star was over the moon for being invited to the event. She bonded with the leader over an exchange of their respective local languages, Hindi and Hebrew. Rautela also presented a copy of the Bhagavad Gita to the leader.

Urvashi Rautela bonds with former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu

Urvashi Rautela was invited for a meet and greet session with Benjamin Netanyahu and extended her gratitude for his gesture. She then dropped a video on Instagram where Netanyahu tells her, 'I'll teach you a word in Hebrew, you teach me a word in Hindi."

He then goes to say that in Hebrew, when they have to say 'everything is okay', they say 'sababa.' He then asks her how the statement was said in Hindi.

The former Miss Diva replied to Netanyahu's question saying, 'Sab shaandaar, sab badhiya' and the leader repeated after her perfectly. He then says, "We should combine the two."

Urvashi then gifted the Bhagavad Gita to the former PM and captioned it, "A gift is pure when it is given from the heart to the right person at the right time and at the right place, and when we expect nothing in return."

Urvashi Rautela on the work front

Meanwhile, on the professional front, Urvashi last starred in the romantic comedy Virgin Bhanupriya. The film had an OTT release last year.

The actor's upcoming film is Inspector Avinash where she is paired opposite Randeep Hooda in the venture. She is playing the role of Randeep Hooda's wife in the film which is slated for an online release.

Rautela will also make her debut in South Indian industry soon. Currently, she is working on a Telugu film Black Rose. She will also feature in a big-budget Tamil film alongside Saravana and will soon kick off the shooting for the next schedule.
Hitting out at the Trinamool Congress government, West Bengal Governor Jagdeep Dhankhar criticised Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee's stand on the expansion of BSF jurisdiction in the state and further called it "alarming for federal polity and national security". Dhankhar's statement came shortly after CM Banerjee in separate administrative meetings directed the police administration to not allow the BSF to breach its jurisdiction limits and interfere in the law and order of the state.

In a letter addressed to the TMC supremo, Dhankhar expressed his concerns over the CM's directives and further urged her to take appropriate steps urgently and address the issue concerning public and national interest. He also appealed to revise the directives for generating an environment of harmony and cooperation.

Further speaking on the role of the Border Security Force in the jurisdiction areas, he said that West Bengal shares borders with Bangladesh, Nepal and Bhutan needs special attention for containing criminal illegal activities and the BSF and Central Armed Police Force play a crucial role from that perspective.

Urged @MamataOfficial to urgently revisit directives concerning @BSF_India , including BSF is allowed for 15 km, that too with permission of the police being not in sync with law.



The stance is potentially alarming for federal polity and national security. pic.twitter.com/naHWUahFBg  Governor West Bengal Jagdeep Dhankhar (@jdhankhar1) December 9, 2021

On the other hand, calling out upon the Governor for his remarks on the Chief Minister's decision, TMC state general secretary said that the Governor should maintain the dignity of his office and stop behaving like a BJP spokesperson. Similarly, senior Trinamool Congress leader Sukhendu Sekhar Roy also while supporting the Chief Minister's decision said that alerting the police and flagging the BSF issue is well within her rights.

Mamta Banerjee is trying to drive a wedge between BSF and the state police: BJP

Meanwhile, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) while opposing Banerjee's stance on the extension of BSF jurisdiction criticised Trinamool Congress and said that the CM is driving a wedge between the BSF and the state police by opposing the Centre's decision despite having an allegiance towards the Constitution of India.

Senior BJP leader Suvendu Adhikari through his Twitter handle also drew the attention of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Union Home Minister Amit Shah, Governor Jagdeep Dhankhar saying that she is a repeated offender willfully trying to drive a wedge between BSF and West Bengal police.

Earlier on December 7, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee addressed an administrative review meeting in Uttar Dinajpur district and further directed the police administration to restrict BSF jurisdiction outside their limits. In another meeting at Krishnanagar, she gave similar directions and asked the inspectors-in-charge to increase their mobility and step up Naka checking. Over a couple of days now, CM Banerjee has been directing the state police to not allow BSF in the state since the Centre amended the BSF Act and further authorised it to undertake necessary actions within a 50 km stretch instead of 15 km.

(With PTI inputs, Image: PTI)
Marking milestones since decades, the seven fantasy novels from the Harry Potter series penned by British author J. K. Rowling has been entertaining readers of all age groups for a long time now. Ever since the release of the first novel, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, on 26 June 1997, the franchise has met with immense acclaim and commercial success globally. The series has garnered an immense fandom among adult audiences as well as young readers and the books of the acclaimed franchise are often regarded as cornerstones of modern young adult literature.

Heritage Auctions on Tuesday announced that a rare hardcover edition of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone fetched a world record price that a 20th-century work of fiction could claim.

First edition of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone gets sold for a whopping price

As per Daily Mail, a rare first edition of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone was sold for a world record of 356,000, the highest price ever achieved for a 20th-century work of fiction. The auction was held by Heritage Auctions of Dallas, Texas and the bidding commenced at 50,000 and huge competition drove up the price and the final price was set as 287,000. Addendum the extra fees added by the auction house, the book was sold to an anonymous buyer for 356,000.

In a statement shared by Heritage Auctions on Instagram, they wrote, "The hardcover edition remains notably scarce, as only 500 copies in this binding were produced, chiefly for distribution to public libraries. That same year, a copy made its way into the hands of David Heyman of Heyday Films, who had been searching for a suitable children's book to adapt into a film."

Harry Potter 20th Anniversary: Return to Hogwarts

Potterheads can rejoice as the reunion episode featuring the lead cast of Harry Potter movies, Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson, Rupert Grint & more are set to grace the OTT space through Harry Potter 20th Anniversary: Return to Hogwarts, which is all set to premiere on HBO Max on January 1, 2022. The special episode will mark the 20th anniversary of the release of the franchise's first film, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. Apart from Radcliffe, Watson and Grint, other members of the cast including Tom Felton, Evanna Lynch, Mark Williams, James and Oliver Phelps, Bonnie Wright, Helena Bonham Carter, Ralph Fiennes, Gary Oldman, Imelda Staunton, and Matthew Lewis, will be attending the reunion special, which was shot at the Warner Bros Studio Tour.

Image: Instagram/@heritageauctions/@harrypotterfilm
Bhubaneswar, Dec 10 (PTI) The eighth edition of the Kalinga Literary Festival (KLF), which was cancelled last year due to the coronavirus pandemic, began in Bhubaneswar on Friday.

Odia Language, Literature and Culture Minister Jyoti Prakash Panigrahi inaugurated the three-day extravaganza, which has Nepal as this year's country partner.

Nepal Embassy Charge d'affaires Ram Prasad Subedi, and poets Sitakanta Mohapatra and Ramakanta Rath graced the inaugural ceremony.

Poet Srinivas Udgata was given the Kalinga Literary Award, while poet Arun Kamal was conferred on with the Kalinga Literary International Award.

Scholar Gopalkrishna Gandhi said Gopabandhu Das had shown the way a fearless writer should behave as he had the courage to pen his thoughts while staying inside a British prison.

The former West Bengal governor said all the writers should follow Das' life story as a guide to become fearless with their pens -- the hallmark of a matured society.

Gandhi, Infosys Foundation chairperson Sudha Murty and Bollywood actor Divya Dutta were among the 30 authors who received awards for their books.

Minister Panigrahi said the KLF set a 'national benchmark' in literary festivals over its eight editions.

The festival will bring nationally and internationally-acclaimed names on one platform to discuss, debate and explore commonalities in the diverse voices in literature, KLF founder Rashmi Parida said.

Over 300 speakers from the world of literature, cinema, press, and politics will assemble at the three-day literary meet. It will feature poetry sessions, panel discussions and talk shows.

'India at 75: Commemorating the Republic of Letters' is the theme of the festival to mark the country's 75th year of Independence.

More than 30 new books and monographs will be released during the event. The festival can be watched live on social media platforms. PTI CORR HMB SOM SOM

(Disclaimer: This story is auto-generated from a syndicated feed; only the image & headline may have been reworked by www.republicworld.com)
Islamabad, Dec 10 (PTI) The banned Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) will not extend the month-long ceasefire deal negotiated with the Pakistan government, the militant group has announced, accusing the authorities of failing to honour the decisions, including the release of their fighters.

The Pakistani Taliban has been behind many major attacks on Pakistani security forces and civilians over the last 14 years.

A statement issued by the TTP on Thursday gave out details of the six-point agreement that it said it had reached with the government under the aegis of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (IEA) on October 25, 2021, the Dawn newspaper reported.

The two sides, according to the agreement, had accepted that the IEA would play the role of a mediator and that both sides would form five-member committees each which, under the supervision of the mediator, would discuss the next course of action and demands of each side.

Both sides, it said, had also agreed to observe a month-long ceasefire from November 1 to November 30, 2021, and that the government would release 102 imprisoned mujahideen and hand them over to the TTP through the IEA and that both sides would issue a joint statement regarding the ceasefire on November 1, 2021, the report said.

According to the statement, the government not only failed to implement the decisions reached between the two sides but on the contrary, the security forces conducted raids in Dera Ismail Khan, Lakki Marwat, Swat, Bajaur, Swabi and North Waziristan and killed and detained militants.

Under these circumstances, it is not possible to extend the ceasefire, the TTP said.

Earlier in an audio message, TTP chief Mufti Noor Wali Mahsud announced an end to the ceasefire and asked his fighters to resume attacks past 12 am. The ceasefire had come into effect on November 9, the report added.

In the message, Mufti Noor can be heard as saying that since the TTP has not heard back from the mediators or the government, therefore, past midnight, his fighters reserve the right to resume attacks wherever they were.

The TTP decision to end the ceasefire is a big setback to the government's efforts to secure a peace agreement with the militants waging war against the state for decades.

A lot of informal discussions had taken place between the two sides before and during the ceasefire and certain confidence-building steps had been agreed upon to reassure each other, the sources were quoted as saying by the Dawn.

Afghan Taliban are playing the role of principal mediator between Pakistan and the outlawed militant conglomerate comprising several factions.

The ceasefire has remained enforced with no major violations. TTP-led militant attacks inside Pakistan which had seen a dramatic spike in the immediate aftermath of the Afghan Talibans takeover in mid-August have seen a steady decline, according to data available with the Dawn newspaper.

These attacks saw a further decrease of 28 per cent since October, when the ceasefire came into effect, according to official statistics of the government of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

TTP was also behind a 2014 attack on an army-run school in the northwestern city of Peshawar that killed 154 people, mostly schoolchildren. PTI AMS AKJ AMS

(Disclaimer: This story is auto-generated from a syndicated feed; only the image & headline may have been reworked by www.republicworld.com)
Calling climate change an aggravating factor for instability, war, as well as terrorism, United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Thursday urged the members of the UN Security Council to address and tackle the issue in an integrated manner in order to build a positive circle of peace, resilience, and sustainable development. The UN chief, while speaking at a Security Council meeting, highlighted that deterioration in the environment allows armed forces to expand their influence and use resources for their benefit. He further emphasised the need of incorporating climate concerns in conflict prevention efforts.

Climate change is not the source of all ills, but it has a multiplier effect and is an aggravating factor for instability, conflict and terrorism, Guterres said. During a discussion on Security in the Context of Terrorism and Climate Change, the UN chief clarified how terror organisation Daesh, which is also called ISIL, has abused water shortages issues and taken control of water facilities to impose its will upon populations in Iraq and Syria. Guterres emphasised that the places most susceptible to climate change are also burdened by instability, poverty, poor governance, and the threat of terrorism.

The regions most vulnerable to the climate crisis often also suffer from insecurity, poverty & the scourge of terrorism.



Today I urged the Security Council to address these challenges in an integrated manner to create the conditions for peace, resilience & development. pic.twitter.com/B9jgMhILl4  Antonio Guterres (@antonioguterres) December 9, 2021

Furthermore, Guterres emphasised on the importance of his newly proposed "New Agenda of Peace," which was included in the seminal report 'Our Common Agenda', outlining a comprehensive perspective of global security. Furthermore, the UN Secretary-General highlighted the perspective and identified five points in which the council should act.

The five points pitched by UN chief for global security

According to the UN chief, firstly, the council must prioritise prevention and acknowledge the underlying sources of insecurity. "Conflicts and terrorism do not take place in a vacuum," Guterres said, adding that it is rather the result of poverty, violations of human rights, and inadequate governance, addressing inequality requires long-term peace. He called council members to safeguard the most vulnerable individuals and communities, invest more in human development, promote inclusive administration and elevate the opinions of women and youth.

In his second point, Guterres said that there must be an immediate increase in the investment in adaptation and resilience. He called on the affluent countries to uphold their pledge to pay at least $100 billion annually to the developing nations for climate action while referring to the latest UN COP26 Climate Conference. While talking about the third point, the UN chief stated that improved analysis and early warning systems are required. Understanding and predicting the downstream consequences of climate change, all measures to encourage peace and security are needed to be strengthened, he added.

Stressing on the fourth point, he appealed to the governments to make the most of on-the-ground experience while leveraging regional and international partners' political, technological, and financial resources. Lastly, he asserted that combating terrorism and violence in the face of climate change necessitates long-term commitment. He requested the council to offer "predictable funding guaranteed by assessed contributions".

(Image: AP)
The 8th Foreign Office Consultations between India and Slovenia held virtually on Friday saw "fruitful discussions on bilateral relations, regional and multilateral developments," the Indian Embassy at Ljubljana informed.

State secretary, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Slovenia, Dr Stanislav Rascan joined Indian Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) Secretary (West) Reenat Sandhu virtually to review bilateral relations and discuss regional and global problems.

MEA spokesperson Arindam Bagchi shared images of the virtual meet on Twitter and wrote that "regional and global issues of mutual interest were discussed."

8th Foreign Office Consultations between India and Slovenia held virtually today.



Secretary (West) @reenat_sandhu and Dr. Stanislav Rascan, State Secretary @MZZRS reviewed  bilateral relations.



Regional and global issues of mutual interest were also discussed. pic.twitter.com/qcGDTKRgBn  Arindam Bagchi (@MEAIndia) December 10, 2021

'Fruitful discussions on bilateral relations': Reenat Sandhu

MEA Secretary (West) Reenat Sandhu retweeted images from the Indian Embassy at Ljubljana, stating that the two countries engaged in excellent discussions about bilateral relations, regional and international issues.

 8th session of Foreign Office Consultations co-chaired by Amb Stanilas Rascan, State Secy, @MZZRS (host) & Amb @reenat_sandhu, Secy (West) @MEAIndia was held 2day in a virtual format. The 2 had fruitful discussions on bilateral relations, regional & multilateral developments pic.twitter.com/ih4wvvMxPl  IndiainSlovenia (@IndiainSlovenia) December 10, 2021

A few months ago, Slovenian Foreign Minister Anze Logar had stated that his country is determined to improve relations with India. Logar said that Slovenia is determined to increase exchanges with India for a Rules-Based Order in the Indo-Pacific.

In September, External Affairs Minister (EAM) Dr S Jaishankar met Slovenian Foreign Minister Logar at the Bled Strategic Forum meeting and discussed ties between the two nations.

India-Slovenia ties

Slovenia and India share a long history of amicable relations since Ljubljana gained independence three decades ago. The two countries share a commitment to upholding international law, democracy, freedom, and human rights. These shared ideals enhance bilateral and multilateral cooperation, as well as cooperation between the European Union - of which Slovenia is a part - and India.

Bilateral relations have risen in importance over the years, and have been heightened by the establishment of embassies in the respective countries. Slovenia established its embassy in New Delhi in 2002 and India in Ljubljana in 2007.

The Prime Minister of Slovenia paid a state visit to India in June 2011. Slovenia and India will commemorate 30 years of diplomatic relations in May 2022.

(Image: @IndiainSlovenia/Twitter)
In a key development, more than 2,000 people from 60 villages in northern Papua New Guinea have filed a human rights complaint with the Australian administration against developer PanAust, which plans to build the country's largest gold, copper, and silver mine. According to the landowners of the proposed Frieda River mine, on a tributary of the Sepik in New Guinea's northwestern region, PanAust did not take their consent for the said project, The Guardian reported on Friday. PanAust is an Australian-registered miner that is ultimately owned by the Chinese government and is part of state-owned Guangdong Rising Assets Management. The developer is reportedly an 80% shareholder in the project.

Emmanuel Peni, the coordinator of Project Sepik, stated that the failure of PanAust and its subsidiary Frieda River Limited to get consent from the concerned locals violates their rights as Indigenous people. It oversteps their rights to give their prior consent to developments that impact them, according to the British daily. The proposed mine is also said to pose a major risk to populations living along the Sepik River. The complaint was also filed with the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). Local organisation Project Sepik Inc and Australian NGO 'Jubilee Australia Research Centre' filed it on behalf of the aggrieved community members.

Dr Luke Fletcher, executive director of Jubilee Australia, said he hoped the National Contact Point take note of the complaint's legitimacy, possibly by looking at PanAust's environmental impact statement. The complainants claim that the developer has failed to fully examine the project's impact on water catchments. "Those communities have every right to have their voices heard. The Sepik River communities have expressed their opposition to the project, but their worries have thus far gone unheeded," Dr Fletcher was quoted by The Guardian as saying.

The proposed 16,000-hectare mine to produce gold, silver, and copper

It is pertinent to mention here that the proposed 16,000-hectare mine, together with a 1,500-megatonne waste storage dam, would be built in one of the world's most seismically active zones. According to the government authorities, environmental advocacy groups, and people living along the river, the proposed dam is a possible environmental disaster that might wipe out entire towns in the case of a natural calamity. The proposed mine is expected to produce gold, silver, and copper worth an estimated US$1.5 billion each year for the next 30 years or so, the outlet reported.

Image: AP
India has expressed dissatisfaction over Sri Lanka's failure to honour several recent bilateral agreements signed between both nations. Speaking to Sri Lankan Finance Minister Basil Rajapaksa, who concluded his two-day visit to India on 2 December, Indian External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar and Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman raised concerns over the failure to meet three of the agreements signed in the wake of President Gotabaya Rajapaksa's assuming office two years ago, ANI reported, citing Ceylon Today.

Meanwhile, the diplomats engaged in two rounds of separate talks where they discussed the Colombo Port's Eastern Container Terminal (ECT) trilateral deal between India, Japan and Sri Lanka, which was scrapped in February after the Indian company refused to comply with the proposed project terms. Apart from this, both sides talked about the handing over of 40% shares of the Yugadanavi LNG Plant to a US firm.

The report comes a week after Rajapaksa and Sitharaman met last week intending to enhance collaboration over bilateral economic cooperation.

"The pleasure of meeting with India Finance and Corporate Affairs Minister, Nirmala Sitharaman yesterday. We discussed a range of aspects pertaining to bilateral cooperation with the pure of enhancing collaboration. Partnerships such as these are vital for the future of Sri Lanka," Rajapaksa had tweeted after he concluded his tour on Thursday.

India finalises four-point package for bilateral economic cooperation

India and Sri Lanka on December 3 chalked a four-point package to help the latter develop the slugging economy. The said deal includes a line of credit to cover the import of food, medicines and currency swap arrangement.

The package was finalised last week during Sri Lankan FM Rajapaksa's two days visit, which was the first since he ascended the chair in July. They also discussed the early modernisation of Trincomalee Tank Farm. The currency swap package is expected to solve current balance of payment issues, ensuring the facilitation of Indian investment in different sectors in Sri Lanka.

(With inputs from ANI, Image: PTI/AP)
Recent in-depth research of India's future power system investments published by the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) reveals that renewable resources may cover India's energy requirements affordably by 2030. The United States Department of State's Bureau of Energy Resources has financed the LNBL research, which lays out a national pathway for India to reach its objective of 500 GW of non-fossil energy capacity by the above-mentioned year.

According to a press release from the US State Department, the research, Least Cost Pathway for India's Power System Investments through 2030, indicates that India could fulfill its rising electricity demand using renewables and supplementary adaptable resources such as energy storage, agricultural load shifting, as well as hydropower and optimally utilising the nation's existing thermal power holdings. This would be beneficial for the nation as it is anticipated that electricity demand would be double by 2030.

PM Modi's ambition of adding 500 GW of non-fossil power generation by 2030

Furthermore, Prime Minister Narendra Modi's ambition of adding 500 GW of non-fossil power generation by 2030 is cost-effective, according to the LBNL research. Since India is the world's third-largest energy consumer, these objectives are crucial to fulfilling global climate goals, the research stated. It is worth noting that the Flexible Resources Initiative (FRI) of the US-India Clean Energy Finance Task Force, which is overseen by the State Department's Bureau of Energy Resources, was used to perform this research. In support of India's clean energy transformation, FRI promotes cost-effective ways to improve the flexibility, adaptability and robustness of the country's power grid.

The research even observed that there have been significant cost reductions over the last decade in energy sources like solar as well as flexible resources including battery storage, which is making it affordable for India to fulfill its increasing power requirements reliably over the next decade. The research further stated that electricity costs would be reduced by 8-10% and emission level of electricity supply by 43-50% from 2020 levels.

The research also estimates that if battery storage expenses continue to fall, supply chain difficulties are handled, and appropriate funding is acquired, just 23 gigawatts of net coal capacity will be required. Furthermore, the research is accompanied by a report outlining key policy and regulatory suggestions that, if enacted, will help India meet its 2030 targets at the lowest possible cost. Among the recommendations, it includes a sophisticated long-term resource sufficiency framework for planning process and procurement, as well as changes of India's gas pipeline management to permit cost-effective, flexible operations of India's current gas power stations for seasonal balancing.

(Image: Unsplash/ PTI)
Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida on Thursday urged all nuclear weapons states to boost transparency in their capabilities. He also promised to do everything possible to ensure the adoption of a final document at a United Nations summit on nuclear nonproliferation. Speaking at a virtual nuclear disarmament meeting, Kishida stated that Japan will take the initiative in bringing countries with opposing views on nuclear weapons together to promote coordination in efforts towards a world free of such weapons, reported KYODO News.

Notably, the Japanese Prime Minister was born into a family from Hiroshima, a western Japanese prefecture whose capital was destroyed by an atomic bombing by the United States in 1945.

Kishida stated that it is very unfortunate that not much efforts have been made by nations in reducing the number of nuclear weapons, let alone abolishing them. "Instead, there is concern that the number of nuclear weapons might increase in future. The forthcoming review conference is an opportunity to strengthen the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons' (NPT) foundation and reestablish confidence between nuclear and non-nuclear weapons states," he said as reported by the Japanese news agency. He further added that the meeting's outcome should result in an exit, or a world free of nuclear weapons.

Meanwhile, Minoru Terada, Kishida's special adviser on nuclear disarmament and nonproliferation, is expected to visit relevant nations in January to build the framework for the United Nations conference on the NPT. Every five years, the United Nations conducts a review conference to assess the organization's performance. It was originally scheduled for 2020, but was postponed owing to the COVID-19 pandemic. Kishida attended the previous one in 2015 as Japan's foreign minister, which ended without a final document due to disagreements.

Japan concerned over North Korea's nuclear & missile development

It is significant to mention here that North Korea's nuclear and missile development has been a matter of security concern for Japan, which also remains on high alert amid the growing influence of China. In his remarks at the meeting, Kishida also the United States' decision to restart disclosure of nuclear weapons stockpiles in order to improve transparency. The virtual meeting was also attended by Gustavo Zlauvinen, Gustavo Zlauvinen, KYODO News reported.

(Image: AP)
On Thursday, Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida voiced his support for Taiwan's attendance as an observer at the World Health Organisation's decision-making body's annual conference, as per Kyodo News. Taiwan is barred from membership in most international organisations due to China's resistance, which claims the complete sovereignty of the democratic country and sees it as one of its provinces rather than a country.

PM Kishida said in Parliament that Japan has consistently supported Taiwan's attendance as an observer as it believes there should not be a geographical void when dealing with world health concerns, according to Kyodo News. He also stated that they will continue to work with other countries to invite Taiwan to attend. Taiwan has taken effective steps in containing the spread of the novel coronavirus in a timely and transparent manner.

Taiwan unable to attend the World Health Assembly in May

Despite requests from the G7 countries including Japan, who wanted it to attend the annual round of the World Health Assembly in May, Taiwan was unable to attend. In June, Japan's House of Councillors passed a motion demanding that the government urge other countries to recognise Taiwan's attendance.

As Japan continues to deepen its relations with Taiwan, China's relation with the country, on the other hand, is deteriorating. Japan has become more vociferous in its opposition to China's expanding power in the area, particularly on topics of Taiwan and Hong Kong.

Following the election win of Fumio Kishida in October, there were hopes that bilateral relations between the two Asian countries would improve marginally. According to the Star, a person with expertise in China-Japan relations stated that there were hints of progress after Kishida took office, with the assumption of working-level communications but apparently, that did not happen.

Ex-Japan Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's statement on China

Last week, former Prime Minister of Japan Shinzo Abe stated that neither Japan nor the United States would stand by if mainland China attacked Taiwan, and that an emergency for the island would also be an emergency for Japan, according to the Star. Shinzo also cautioned that people in Beijing, particularly President Xi Jinping, should not misjudge his statement. After his statement, Beijing is vowing to reconsider bilateral relations with Tokyo.

Image: AP
Mosiyah Tafari banged on drums and chanted psalms with other Rastafari in a ballroom where the smoke of frankincense mixed with the fragrant smell of marijuana  the drug that in his faith is deemed sacred.

"When we look at Exodus chapter thirty and you read about the holy anointing oil that was used by MosesKaneh Bosm, which is an early version of the word cannabiswas a key ingredient in that oil," Tafari explained.

"Revelation says, 'The leaves of the trees shall be for the healing of the nations.' We as Rastafarians know that to be the herb."

Tafari helped organize, lead the spiritual service and played traditional Nyabinghi music at a ceremony in Columbus, Ohio marking the 91st anniversary of the coronation of the late Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie I, whom Rastafari worship as their savior.

For the Rastafari, the ritualistic smoking of marijuana brings them closer to the divine. But for decades, many have been incarcerated because of their use of cannabis.

As public opinion and policy continues to shift in the U.S. and across the world towards the recreational and medical use of cannabis, some Rastafari are clamoring for more legalization of the drug for the purposes of freedom of worship and ending persecution.

The Rastafari faith is rooted in Jamaica of the 1930s, where it grew as a response by Black people to white colonial oppression by melding Old Testament teaching with a desire to return to Africa.

Marijuana arrived to the island through indentured servants from India in the 19th century and spread through Rastafari and reggae culture in the 1970s.

"Decriminalization of Ganga is one of the steps that Rastafari as a community has been advocating for globally," said Professor Jahlani Niah, director of Rastafari Studies Center at the University of the West Indies in Kingston, Jamaica. "Decriminalization is not legalization, which is the ultimate conversation that we would want to hold."

A shift in public opinion and policy, especially on cannabis, has led countries, including Canada, Malawi and South Africa to ease laws in recent years.

While still federally illegal, lawmakers in states from Oregon to New York, have passed a raft of legislation legalizing cannabis in a third of the U.S.

Reggae artist Milton Blakes, who performed at the coronation event, questions what's being doing about those who have served time for selling or possessing marijuana.

"What about those people who've been incarcerated, who've been locked up for this over the years, for doing so many years for selling this herb?"

(Disclaimer: This story is auto-generated from a syndicated feed; only the image & headline may have been reworked by www.republicworld.com)
United Nations (UN) on Thursday raised alarm about rapidly deteriorating conditions of women in Afghanistan, something which is in contrast to the Talibans initial promise. Since Augusts overhaul of power, conditions of women in the Central Asian country has been rapidly degrading with many of them witnessing restrictions on education, employment, clothing inter alia. Recently, UN Women issued a Gender Alert expressing concerns about the situation of females under the Taliban regime.

"Since 15 August 2021, there have been immediate and dramatic reversals on women's rights and fundamental freedom, particularly impacting their right to work, access to education, basic health and protection services, and participation of women and girls in the public sphere and decision-making mechanism," the gender report stated.

UN said that there was a rapid reversal of their (females) rights across all areas of life." It went on to elaborate on the consequences of the restrictions and said that Afghanistan was currently facing a loss of US$ 1 billion solely due to restricting women from working. Additionally, it also talked about education stating that almost 60% of school dropouts were girls.

In a tweet earlier this month, UN Chief said, 9 in 10 women in Afghanistan experience at least one form of intimate partner violence in their lifetime. "This Gender Alert also explores how the rights of women and girls are interconnected, meaning that rapid improvement across the full spectrum of women's rights is urgently needed," the report said.

Are the atrocities being repeated?

The Talibans previous regime marked the darkest time for Afghan women. During their rule, the Islamist group forbade women from getting any kind of education and blatantly denied their right to work. They also stopped women from travelling outside their homes without a male relative to accompany them. More gruesome acts included public executions. The Taliban chopped off the hands of thieves and stoned women accused of adultery. More recently, reports of Taliban killing women for donning inappropriate clothes, or violating several Sharia laws have surfaced.

(With inputs from agencies)

(Image: AP)
Peru's Health Minister, Hernando Cevallos, on Wednesday said authorities have not confirmed any cases with the omicron variant of the coronavirus in the country but are tracking the steps of a Peruvian traveller that was confirmed to be positive after he arrived in Japan.

Cevallos said health authorities are still tracing contacts of the person in question in Peru, as well as his flight layovers.

Japan authorities confirmed the omicron variant after the traveller arrived on November 17.

In an earlier briefing by the Pan American Health Organization, officials said two cases of omicron had been detected in the Americas.

Despite Canada and Brazil being the only confirmed countries to have cases with the new variant, PAHO authorities said it is likely to spread in the region.

(Disclaimer: This story is auto-generated from a syndicated feed; only the image & headline may have been reworked by www.republicworld.com)
As the Omicron tally keeps surging by day in the United Kingdom, a top scientific consultant stated that the new variant of COVID might spread much quicker in England compared to South Africa. Professor John Edmunds, an epidemiologist at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine as well as a member of the British government's Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage) has warned by adding that the new variant poses a "very severe setback" to the efforts in preventing the outbreak, as per The Guardian.

Edmunds further added that even though Omicron is considered to be milder than the existing dominant variant Delta, UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson's plan B initiatives were "absolutely not an overreaction." On Thursday, Edmunds asserted during a Royal Society of Medicine webinar that there is a possibility to have more instances of Omicron in the nation than had been reported after testing and that the figures were expected to spike in the coming weeks.

'Hit about a million infections in the community throughout the UK': Health Secy on Omicron

In addition to this, on Thursday, the UK Health Security Agency detected an additional 249 Omicron instances, nearly doubling the number revealed the day before, taking the tally in UK to 817. Looking at the figures, Edmunds explained that if the nation reports 1,000 cases a day, then during the doubling period of two to three days, the number would surge to 8,000 in a week and 64,000 in two weeks. These would be on top of the ongoing Delta illness outbreak, as per the professor.

Furthermore, UK Health Secretary Sajid Javid made an alarming prediction on Thursday after pointing the fast transmission of the new variant that the UK might witness 1 million new cases by the end of this month. As per Sputnik, "Its doubling time  that's the number of days it takes the number of infections to double in the community  we estimate is between two and a half to three days, which would mean that at this rate by the end of this month, we could hit about a million infections in the community throughout the UK," Javid was quoted as saying by Sky News.

South Africa has younger population than UK making it less vulnerable: Edmunds

These warning remarks came after the nation has recorded an increase of 50,867 daily COVID-19 cases, 813 hospitalisations, and 148 fatalities on Thursday, indicating a week-over-week increase in all categories. Additionally, Edmunds refuted ideas suggesting that the Omicron strain may be "good news" if hospitalisation is done at half of the rate than Delta variant. The idea has stemmed primarily from hospitalisations in South Africa, where the population consists of much younger people than in the UK, making serious COVID infections less likely to occur in the first spot. While the average age in the United Kingdom is slightly over 40, in South Africa it is less than 28, he added while addressing the webinar.

Meanwhile, on Wednesday, PM Boris Johnson indicated that England will implement Plan B in which citizens are being asked to work from home and wear face masks in most public places, carry NHS COVID Pass as part of new efforts to reduce Omicron transmission.

(Image: AP/ Shutterstock)
Kyle Rittenhouse, who was acquitted of murder in Kenosha shootings during unrest in Wisconsin, wants to hash things out with US President Joe Biden. Biden, when he was Democratic presidential candidate, had called Rittenhouse white supremacist on a national stage. In an interview posted on Wednesday, the host of Matter-of-factly, Glenn Beck had asked the 18-year-old if Biden ever called Rittenhouse to apologise.

In response, Rittenhouse said, He hasn't, and I would like to sit down with the president and have a conversation with him and tell him the facts of what happened,' Rittenhouse told Beck, adding Um, I don't expect that to happen, but it would be right for him to do it.

Rittenhouse shot two men and wounded another during confrontations amid anti-police demonstrations that took place in Kenosha in August 2020. He was acquitted after he testified in court that he acted in self-defence. On 20 November, this year, Rittenhouse was declared not guilty of first-degree intentional homicide among other charges and is now considered a free man.

When did Biden criticise Rittenhouse?

However, just two months before Biden was elected as the US President in the November elections, he criticised the former US President Donald Trump for refusing to condemn people who were opposing the Black Lives Matter (BLM) riots as white supremacists. The presidential candidate had included an image of Rittenhouse, who was 17-year-old at the time of the shooting. Biden had written, There's no other way to put it: the President of the United States refused to disavow white supremacists on the debate stage last night.

Theres no other way to put it: the President of the United States refused to disavow white supremacists on the debate stage last night. pic.twitter.com/Q3VZTW1vUV  Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) September 30, 2020

It is worth mentioning that Biden delicately weighed in on the verdict that declared the 18-year-old innocent. The jury determined that Rittenhouse did not act with utter disregard for human life when he killed two protesters. Even though US President noted that the verdict will leave many Americans feeling angry, he did not choose to walk back on his white supremacists tweet.

Following Rittenhouses acquittal, Biden said, While the verdict in Kenosha will leave many Americans feeling angry and concerned, myself included, we must acknowledge that the jury has spokenI urge everyone to express their views peacefully, consistent with the rule of law. Violence and destruction of property have no place in our democracy.

Additionally, Rittenhouse has also categorically denied the claims that race played any role in his actions on 25 August. He said at Fox News in a televised interview, I'm not a racist person, I support the BLM movement and peacefully demonstrating.

(IMAGE: Twitter/AP)
The United States Treasury Department on Thursday, 10 December, has issued sanctions on foreign officials accused of corruption on the occasion of International Anti-corruption Day. The government officials who have been sanctioned by the US Treasury Department included senior officials from El Salvador, Guatemala and Ukraine, the department informed in the press release. The sanctions have also been imposed against two companies from South Sudan.

"Today, on International Anti-Corruption Day, the U.S. Department of the Treasurys Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) is targeting fifteen individuals and entities across several countries in Central America, Africa, and Europe," the Treasury Department said in the press release.

Those targeted by the Treasury Department include El Salvador's Martha Carolina Recinos De Bernal, who was the head of multiple ministries. The Treasury has alleged that Carolina headed a scheme involving "suspicious procurements" of medical supplies. The Treasury Department alleged Guatemala's Manuel Victor Martinez Olivet of being involved in various acts of "misappropriation, fraud, and abuse of authority" during his tenure as the Director of the Santa Rosa Health Area.

US Treasury department issues sanctions

The Treasury Department also imposed sanctions on two South Sudanese construction companies for allegedly receiving preferential treatment by officials. The companies of South Sudan included "ARC Resources Corporation Ltd and Winners Construction Company Limited. Sanctions have been laid down against Prince Yormie Johnson (Johnson), a former warlord and current member of the Liberian Senate. The Treasury Department alleged that Johnson was responsible for the murder of former Liberian President Samuel Doe and his name is part of Liberias Truth and Reconciliation report which has claimed that he has committed atrocities during the countrys first civil war.

The Treasury Department has sanctioned Leopoldino Fragoso do Nascimento (Nascimento) and Manuel Helder Vieira Dias Junior (Dias Junior) who are former government officials. It is claimed that they stole billions of dollars from the Angolan government through embezzlement. In addition, sanctions were levied on Ukrainian Andriy Portnov, the former deputy head of the Ukrainian presidential administration under former President Viktor Yanukovych. Portnov is accused of using his influence to buy decisions in Ukraines court system.

Image: AP
The US has threatened additional measures against Iran if diplomacy fails to resuscitate the 2015 Nuclear Deal. Following a hiatus of more than five months, negotiations on the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) deal resumed in Vienna last week. However, the US diplomats walked out of the deal claiming that the Islamic Republic wasnt serious and had not stood firm with the concessions made by its former president Hassan Rouhani. The deal, signed in 2015 between Iran and other major world powers, including the United States, France, Britain, China, Russia, and Germany (P5+1), saw Washington lifting economic sanctions against Tehran and in return, the Islamic Republic agreed to bring down its uranium enrichment programme.

Later, speaking at a press briefing on Thursday, spokesperson for US State Department Ned Price said that Washington was contemplating an alternate option if democracy fails. "I wouldnt want to speak to contingency planning, I wouldnt want to speak to what we might be contemplating if the path for diplomacy towards a mutual return to compliance isnt viable in the near term but we are discussing those alternatives, we are discussing those options with our close partners, with our close allies and that includes with the Israelis," Price said. It is imperative to note here that the US and Israel have together formed a Strategic Group to counter Iran.

EU optimistic about nuclear deal

As the talks resumed last week, European Union diplomat Enrique Mora expressed optimism and said, "I feel positive that we can be doing important things for the next weeks." However, Tehran blames Washington for not complying with the provisions of the deal. It is imperative to note that even before the negotiations resumed in the Austrian capital, Biden ad lifted several sanctions in a show of his willingness to salvage the deal which his predecessor had broken.

"The 7th round JCPOA talks continue on Thursday (December 9) in Vienna after consultations in and among capitals. A Joint Commission and several bilateral and multilateral contacts will take place," Mora said in an online statement.

The delegations of #China, #Iran and #Russia meet in Palais Coburg in preparation of an official meeting of the Joint Commission on #JCPOA to be held later today. pic.twitter.com/t01qZplTkD  Mikhail Ulyanov (@Amb_Ulyanov) December 9, 2021

(Image: Amb_Ulyanov/Twitter)

(With inputs from agencies)
Commerce Department cites rights abuses, corruption in the country in warning to American businesses.

Cambodian prime minister Hun Sen on Thursday denied concern over foreign sanctions imposed against senior Cambodian officials, including in the countrys military, saying none of those sanctioned officials hold assets in foreign banks.

Speaking at the groundbreaking ceremony for a new airport, the long-serving prime minister said that foreign sanctions will only lead Cambodians to invest more in their own country, especially in real estate.

These sanctions are only political gestures, Hun Sen said. Do I even have any assets overseas?

I have nothing there, so they can sanction me and can freeze my assets and confiscate them if they like, he said.

Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman Kuy Koung criticized a U.S. arms embargo announced Wednesday against Cambodia due to concerns over Chinese military influence in the country.

Cambodia adheres to a principle of permanent neutrality and enjoys full sovereignty and independence according to its constitution, Kuy Koung said in a statement to RFA. The new U.S. embargo interferes with Cambodias internal affairs, he said.

Cambodias constitution does not permit any foreign troops to be stationed on its soil, and we have already reiterated that there is no foreign military presence in Cambodia, he said.

U.S. officials have voiced alarm for more than two years now over the China-backed refurbishment of Ream Naval Base, located outside Cambodias main port city of Sihanoukville.

The Wall Street Journal in 2019 reported that a secret treaty had been signed granting the Chinese Navy use of the base for 30 years. The claim was quickly denounced by the Cambodian government as fake news, but suspicions remain.

During a June visit to Cambodia, Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman warned her hosts that a Chinese base in Cambodia would negatively impact relations with the United States.

And in November, the Treasury and State Departments levied sanctions against two senior Cambodian military officials, saying the pair had conspired to illicitly profit from the project at Ream.

The sanctions were announced in conjunction with a Commerce Department advisory warning U.S. businesses of the potential exposure to entities in Cambodia, such as the Cambodian military, that engage in human rights abuses, corruption, and other destabilizing conduct.

The arms embargo covers not just conventional weaponry, but also so-called dual-use equipment, which are items that could have both commercial and military or national security applications.

U.S. arms manufacturers have not traditionally exported to Cambodia, but the regulations under which the embargo was announced apply also to non-U.S. companies and individuals, providing the items being exported are either U.S. in origin or incorporate U.S. technology, commodities or components.

Reported by RFAs Khmer Service. Translated by Samean Yun. Written in English by Richard Finney.
The move comes as a US-hosted democracy summit suggests democracies could unite to resist authoritarian rule.

US president Joe Biden speaks to representatives of more than 100 countries during a virtual democracy summit at the White House in Washington, Dec. 9, 2021.

Authorities in China targeted dissidents, rights lawyers and activists and their families with house arrest, round-the-clock surveillance and restrictions on their children's school attendance on Human Rights Day, RFA has learned.

Rights activist Li Wenzu and rights lawyer husband Wang Quanzhang said they were placed under house arrest on Dec. 9, with unidentified security guards refusing to let them leave to take their child to school.

"I'm leaving for the school run," Wang tells them in a video clip posted to Li's Twitter account. "It's OK. We'll take the kid to school for you," comes the reply.

Li said she had asked the people stopping them from leaving to identify themselves, but met with no clear answer.

"Would you please show your ID? In what capacity are you here right now?" Li is heard asking one guard in another clip. "Is this really necessary?" comes the reply. "It's not as if we've only just met."

Fellow activist Xu Yan and her rights lawyer husband Yu Wensheng said around nine people were outside the door of their apartment at 6.00 a.m. on Thursday, and they were unable to get out at all.

"They're not letting me open the door," Xu told RFA. "I can't get it open no matter how hard I push."

"They pushed back pretty hard a couple of times, and my ribs are still hurting," she said.

Xu said she suspects the restrictions will end after Human Rights Day on Friday, but that the people outside her home had declined to confirm this.

She said police had come out after she dialed the emergency number, taken one look at the guards outside her home, and left again.

"It feels pretty helpless to have your freedom restricted like this, as well as being a violation of human rights and the law," Xu told RFA. "It's also very harmful to kids to let them see things like this; I feel horrible about that."

Rights lawyer Xie Yanyi said he and his wife Yuan Shanshan are under surveillance, adding that he was followed by unidentified personnel on Dec. 9 when he took his daughter to the supermarket.

'It's like this every year'

"It's like this every year," independent journalist Gao Yu said in a tweet on Dec. 9. "I wonder if the people doing this are deliberately trying to destroy the image of the [ruling] Chinese Communist Party (CCP)."

"Tomorrow is Human Rights Day, so today the police will come in their police cars and tell me that they'll be there until Dec. 11," Gao wrote.

Gao tried to answer a call from RFA on Friday, but apparently was unable to hear the caller, repeating "Hello? Hello?"

Rights activist Wang Qiaoling said she and her rights lawyer husband Li Heping were also being told to stay home.

"When my husband tried to take the dog out this morning, a state security police officer guarding our home told him to stay home today," Wang said, expressing surprise that she'd been able to receive a call from overseas at all.

"It's a particularly sensitive day," she said, adding that the same thing happens every year at this time.

The restrictions on activists come as U.S. President Joe Biden holds a Summit for Democracy online running Dec. 9-10, in a move that has been slammed by Beijing.

Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin accused the U.S. of trying to weaponize democracy, by openly convening this so-called Summit for Democracy to incite division and confrontation for geopolitical gains."

Veteran democracy activist Wei Jingsheng said the summit makes Beijing uneasy, because it will likely form the basis for an alliance to resist authoritarian rule.

"This democracy summit being held by the administration is actually a bid to form an alliance against authoritarian countries ... who naturally haven't been invited," Wei told RFA. "It will be a democratic alliance, so it's a very important thing."

"Naturally the Chinese government is very upset."

Authoritarian resurgence

Wei warned of a "resurgence" of authoritarian styles of governance around the world.

"Global authoritarianism and coercive governance are seeing a resurgence," Wei said. "After trending higher and higher since World War II, democracy seems to have been on the wane lately, which is harmful to humanity everywhere."

"This summit at this juncture should be helpful to help it bounce back," he said.

New York-based political commentator Wang Juntao agreed, saying the summit wasn't just about sending messages.

"It's not just a propaganda war; there will also be some practical measures taken to combat authoritarian regimes," Wang told RFA.

"They will promote Magnitsky-type legislation, asking democratic countries to collaborate, so as to sanction and block corrupt and rights-abusing officials everywhere."

"They will freeze their accounts and not let them into democratic countries," he said.



Translated and edited by Luisetta Mudie.
U.S. troops have not been based on Taiwan since Washington established diplomatic ties with Beijing in 1979.

Taiwanese navy sailors taking part in the commissioning ceremony of a two guided missile frigates, at Kaohsiung's Zuoying naval base, Taiwan Nov. 8, 2018.

Taiwanese naval ships could join next years Rim of the Pacific Exercise (RIMPAC) for the first time under a defense policy bill for fiscal year 2022 passed by the U.S. House of Representatives.

Earlier this week the lower chamber of the U.S. Congress voted overwhelmingly in support of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) which defines the countrys defense policy and budget.

The bill suggests conducting practical training and military exercises with Taiwan, including, as appropriate, inviting Taiwan to participate in the Rim of the Pacific exercise conducted in 2022 in order to support the development of Taiwans defense forces.

The NDAA bill still needs to be passed by the Senate before getting to President Joe Bidens desk and it will depend on Biden to decide whether inviting Taiwan to joint exercise is worth his political capital, said Richard Bitzinger, senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS) in Singapore.

At the moment, I think the chance is 50/50 that an invitation would be granted, Bitzinger said.

RIMPAC is the worlds largest multi-national maritime warfare exercise held every two years since 1974. Before that it was held annually. The exercise is hosted by the U.S. Navys Indo-Pacific Command and joined by navies from dozens of countries. China took part in 2014 and 2016.

Taiwan attending RIMPAC would be very important politically as a sign of support by the U.S. and other attending nations, said Grant Newsham, a retired U.S. Marine colonel who spent 2019 in Taiwan to research the islands defense.

If the Americans do not help Taiwans armed forces break out of over 40 years of isolation and give them the opportunity to train with somebody, Taiwans defense capabilities will not improve as they need to improve, said Newsham.

Until now, the U.S. military hasnt conducted any bilateral and joint exercise with Taiwan but it was reported in October that a number of U.S. military trainers have been deployed in the island for at least a year.

The Wall Street Journal said that a small contingent of U.S. special forces soldiers and Marines are training Taiwans local ground and maritime forces.

The Pentagon did not comment on the report at that time but said that the U.S. support for and defense relationship with Taiwan remains aligned against the current threat from China.

U.S. troops have not been permanently based on the island since Washington established diplomatic relations with Beijing in 1979.

Asymmetric defensive capabilities

"China will react strongly, as usual, if Taiwan gets invited to RIMPAC, said Bitzinger from Singapores RSIS.

It would stoke further tensions with Beijing but I dont think this alone would lead to an eventual clash, he added.

China considers Taiwan a breakaway province and vows to reunite it with the mainland, by force if necessary. Chinese military activity in the Taiwan Strait has intensified in recent months, with hundreds of military aircraft sorties into Taiwans air defense identification zone (ADIZ) in what observers see as an intimidation campaign.

Taiwanese Defense Minister Chiu Kuo-cheng said in October that the cross-strait tension was "the most serious" in more than 40 years.

When asked about the NDAA earlier this month, Chiu said he had not seen the details of the U.S. legislation. He indicated that Taiwan needed to have an internal discussion on the applicability of the bill to Taiwan. He said Taiwan would utilize and evaluate what it could benefit from.

On Wednesday, the Pentagon's top official for the Indo-Pacific said bolstering Taiwan's self-defenses is an urgent task and an essential feature of deterrence.

Ely Ratner, U.S. assistant secretary of defense for Indo-Pacific Security Affairs, told a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing that Chinas air and sea campaigns around Taiwan increased the likelihood of miscalculation between armed forces in the Indo-Pacific.

Responding to Ratners statement at the hearing, a Chinese Foreign Ministrys spokesman said the U.S. has repeatedly cited the so-called China threat rhetoric as an excuse to justify its expansion of military strength.

The U.S. is Taiwans largest arms supplier with agreed deals worth more than $23 billion since 2010.

However the $768.2-billion defense policy bill also calls to assist Taiwan in the domestic production of defensive asymmetric capabilities including through the transfer of intellectual property, co-development, or co-production arrangements.

Experts say Taiwans defense concept is based on a strategy of asymmetric warfare as there is a widening gap between China and the islands capabilities.

Taiwan launched the construction of its Indigenous Defensive Submarine program in November 2020 and aims to acquire as many as eight diesel-electric submarines at an estimated cost of $16 billion.

In March, the U.S. approved the export of sensitive technology including three major types of equipment  digital sonar systems, integrated combat systems and an auxiliary equipment system (periscopes)  for the fleet.

With additional reporting by RFA's Mandarin Service.
Commentators say the move is deliberately timed to coincide with US President Joe Biden's democracy summit.

A policeman stands guard at Taiwan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Taipei after Nicaragua switched diplomatic ties from Taiwan to China, Dec. 10, 2021.

The government of Taiwan hit out at Beijing on Friday after former diplomatic partner Nicaragua announced it would sever ties in favor of Beijing.

While President Tsai Ing-wen said Nicaragua's decision was made against a "complex" geopolitical background, the country's foreign ministry "strongly condemned" Beijing's role in the decision, which it saw as part of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)'s ongoing efforts to isolate Taiwan diplomatically.

"The government strongly condemns the Chinese government for once again forcing friendly nations to sever diplomatic relations with Taiwan and suppressing our diplomacy," foreign affairs spokeswoman Joanne Ou told reporters on Friday.

The foreign ministry also denied providing 100 million U.S. dollars in loans to Nicaragua ahead of its general election.

Earlier, Tsai said the decision involved "complex international politics."

"The more successful Taiwan's democracy and the more it gains international support, the more the authoritarians will step up the pressure," she said.

Nicaragua announced its decision early on Friday, saying it would cease to have any official relationship with Tsai's Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) government in Taipei.

Beijing has been stepping up its campaign to isolate Taiwan diplomatically since Tsai was elected in 2016. Taiwan now has formal relations with only 14 countries, including Belize, Nauru and the Vatican, after Kiribati and the Solomon Islands broke off diplomatic ties with Taipei last year.

Beijing insists that its diplomatic partners accept its claim on Taiwan, which it calls the "one China" policy, effectively forcing them to cut ties with the Republic of China on Taiwan.

Nicaragua's Ministry of Foreign Affairs declared its severance of diplomatic ties with Taiwan in a statement issued in the early hours of Friday morning, saying it would "cease to have any contact or official relationship" with Taipei.

This isn't the first time Taiwan has lost Nicaragua.

During President Jose Daniel Ortega Saavedra's first term in office in 1985, the country ended a 55-year relationship, switching ties to China in a move that was later reversed by his successor Violeta Barrios Torres de Chamorro in the 1990s.

Call to expand engagement

U.S. State Department spokesman Ned Price called on allies to "expand" their engagement with the island, saying Nicaragua had lost a "steadfast partner."

"Taiwans relationships with diplomatic partners in the Western Hemisphere provide significant economic and security benefits to the citizens of those countries," Price said in a statement. "We encourage all countries that value democratic institutions, transparency, the rule of law, and promoting economic prosperity for their citizens to expand engagement with Taiwan."

He said the Nov. 7 "sham election" in Nicaragua didn't reflect the will of the Nicaraguan people, "who continue to struggle for democracy and the ability to exercise their human rights and fundamental freedoms."

International relations expert Yao-Yuan Yeh of the University of St. Thomas, Houston, said the U.S. is now actively supporting Taiwan's growing international participation, but has stopped short of moving towards official recognition of the island.

"The U.S. still observes the one-China policy, so hasn't yet recognized Taiwan's sovereignty," Yeh told RFA. "However, it is taking steps to boost Taiwan's visibility on the world stage, and its participation in the democracy summit [run by U.S. President Joe Biden] was a part of that."

Former Taiwanese diplomat Liu Shih-chieh said the announcement was deliberately timed by Beijing to undermine the democracy summit.

"This is a CCP wolf-warrior diplomacy counterattack against pro-democracy nations worldwide," Liu said. "The strength of the U.S. response is worth observing."

He said Price's strongly worded statement could be a bid to head off a similar move by Honduras. "I think the State Department's statement is aimed at Honduras," Liu said. "I don't think there will be a domino effect."

The Republic of China regime led by then dictator Chiang Kai-shek fled to Taiwan in 1949 after losing a civil war to Mao Zedong's communists, and the island has operated as a self-governing state bearing the Republic of China name ever since.

It has never been ruled by the CCP, nor formed part of the People's Republic of China, yet Beijing has repeatedly called for "unification" and threatened to annex the island, whose 23 million residents regard themselves as Taiwanese, and, having democratized in the 1990s, have no wish to live under China's authoritarian rule.

The U.S., which is obliged by its own laws to sell arms to Taiwan, had for decades appeared keen not to offend Beijing on the international stage.

But the Biden administration has continued to deepen the diplomatic engagement with Taipei that was begun under President Trump, with official contacts now allowed and increasingly supportive statements coming out of Washington.



Translated and edited by Luisetta Mudie.
Foreign minister Wang Yi accuses the US of arrogance and bias in excluding China from the democracy summit.

U.S. President Joe Biden speaks to representatives of more than 100 countries during a virtual democracy summit at the White House in Washington, Dec. 9, 2021.

Democratic countries worldwide are under growing pressure from autocratic competitors and challenges at home, and must now come together to show democracy can work, U.S. President Joe Biden told world leaders at a virtual summit meeting on Thursday.

This is an urgent matter, Biden said in opening remarks at a first session of the U.S.-sponsored Summit for Democracy. The data were seeing is largely pointing in the other direction.

Attended by representatives from over 100 countries in Europe, North and South America, Europe, and Asia, the virtual summit will feature addresses by the leaders of invited governments on the strengthening of democracy in their own countries.

The response by democratic countries to pressure from autocratic leaders around the world forms the defining challenge of our times, Biden said.

They seek to advance their own power, export and expand their influence around the world and justify their repressive policies and practices as a more efficient way to address todays challenges, the U.S. president added.

Thats how its sold  by voices that seek to fan the flames of social division and political polarization.

Here in the United States, we know as well as anyone that renewing our democracy and strengthening our democratic institutions requires constant effort, Biden said.

Democratic recession

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken in remarks following the president pointed to what he called a democratic recession in recent years, including a growing loss of trust by citizens in their own governments, and called on summit participants to consider together how democracies can deliver better for our people.

While each one of our countries faces real challenges, we also know that democracy remains the most effective way to tackle those challenges and to advance human dignity, Blinken said, pointing to the need for governments around the world to further engage with civil society and enact political reforms.

We have a lot of work to do, he said.

Absent from the list of countries invited to the summit were Russia and China, whose ambassadors to the United States issued a joint statement ahead of the meeting accusing the Biden administration of promoting ideological divisions and a Cold War mentality within the world community.

Speaking ahead of Thursdays summit, Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi at a meeting in Indonesia accused the West of arrogance and bias in declaring China and other developing nations not to be democratic countries.

This in fact tramples on the spirit of democracy, and is turning back the wheel of human history, Wang said in remarks at the annual Bali Democracy Forum, hosted by Indonesia and coinciding with the virtual Democracy Summit held in Washington.

Exclusion miffs China

China itself is a fully democratic nation, asserted Wang.

Since its founding, the Communist Party of China has been upholding the banner of democracy, setting as its goals to found a New China where the people are the masters of their own fate, and taking as its obligation to realize true and effective democracy in China.

In the run-up to this weeks summit, Wang was joined by other Chinese diplomats around the world in condemning the U.S. for excluding it from the event and extolling Chinas political system as a democracy.

The Communist Party issued a white paper touting leader Xi Jinping's claim that Beijings "whole process democracy" is just as democratic as any other political system, and another document criticizing problems with the U.S. democracy.

Beijing also China hit out at Biden's inclusion of democratic Taiwan in the online democracy summit, with no invitation extended to Beijing. China claims sovereignty over the self-ruled, democratic island of 25 million people.

Most Westerners and many Chinese do not agree with Chinese diplomats declaration that Chinas political system is fully democratic. Nor do they believe that it is one of the best political systems, that it is embraced by its own people, and that it is appreciated by other countries, wrote scholar Yawei Liu in the U.S.-China Perception Monitor.

Liu, chief editor of the monitor and senior advisor on China at the Carter Center in Atlanta, said Chinese diplomats might not win many converts, but they could reveal Beijings thinking on the sensitive issue.

While many are bewildered by Beijings position on the Summit for Democracy, it is actually a good thing to see Chinese government bristle when other countries label it authoritarian. It signifies, perhaps, that the CCP still cares about democracy and the transition to democracy, he wrote.

With additional reporting by BenarNews, an RFA-affiliated online news agency.
A severe firewood shortage and rising fuel costs in North Korea have left citizens scrounging harvested cornfields for anything burnable to keep warm this winter, sources in the country told RFA.

North Korea is typically able to import charcoal or heating fuel to make up for a lack of wood, but with the border closed this year as a protection against the coronavirus pandemic, poorer citizens are scrambling to dig up the roots of harvested crops.

Every year in late autumn, the people are busy buying things to burn like firewood and coal to get through the winter, a resident of the northwestern province of North Pyongan told RFAs Korean Service Dec. 3.

This year the price of charcoal and firewood has risen astronomically, so people without money are unable to afford it. So, they are flocking to the corn fields to dig up the roots, dry them, and use them as firewood.

Beijing and Pyongyang closed the Sino-Korean border and suspended all trade in January 2020 at the beginning of the pandemic. As domestic supplies dwindled, prices shot up.

Until a month ago, people who have a personal connection with the farm were competing with each other to get the corn cobs left over from threshing. Now the cobs have run out, so people are out in the fields digging up the roots, the source said.

When the public learned that corn roots can be used as a substitute for firewood, the farm began stopping ordinary people from coming to the fields to dig for roots. If you want to get into the fields now you must bribe the head of the farms working group or the leader of the work team, the source said.

In years past, the government often had to force citizens to clear the fields of roots and then burn them as waste in preparation for next years crop, the source said.

Now those roots are a precious commodity, the source said.

Even though there are widespread food shortages in North Korea, people in the eastern province of South Hamgyong are more interested in corn for its burnable roots, a resident there told RFA.

A few days ago, I got mobilized to work on road restoration about 5 miles away from my house, and I almost couldnt have my lunch that day. I asked a local resident to cook some rice with the food I brought for lunch, but I was rejected because there was no firewood, said the second source, who requested anonymity for security reasons.

So now, when the neighborhood watch unit puts you on road restoration, you have to bring firewood with you to have lunch. The lack of food is a problem, but the lack of firewood to cook it is also a serious problem, the second source said.

Two sacks of corn roots will provide enough heat to cook rice for 10 mobilized workers, according to the second source.

The person in charge of the mobilized workers was only able to get two sacks of corn roots after promising to deliver two kilograms of corn later on, the source said. But at least the residents who toil all morning digging up the mountains and carrying soil were finally able to eat their lunches.

RFA reported in October that coal prices have doubled from last year, while the price of firewood has increased between two and threefold.

Plastic shortage

Another strategy for keeping out winter cold is to seal drafty doors and windows with plastic film, normally used in agriculture, but plastic is also in short supply this year.

Residents without adequate heating insulate their homes with plastic film but the price has risen sharply over the last few days, a resident from North Hamgyong province in the northeast told RFA.

The source said the price of plastic film almost doubled between November and December, and that the plastic film available this year is of poor quality.

Most of the plastic film on the market these days is not really transparent and has an uneven thickness. The price is soaring even though its not farming season, the source said.

In fact, if you want to add plastic film to the door, window, or balcony of a house for wind protection and heat insulation, you need at least 5 to 10 square meters, depending on the size of the house. Ordinary residents who have difficulty finding food every day cannot afford that, the source added.

Electricity shortages have made even the relatively privileged residents of the capital Pyongyang scramble to get their hands on plastic film.

In the apartments in Sosong district, they only get electricity for one or two hours a day during the mealtimes, so the residents maintain temperature with plastic film, a resident of Pyongyang told RFA.

Except for the apartments where the elite live in the central district of the city, most houses here in Pyongyang do not have heating this winter, so they need to use plastic film, said the Pyongyang resident.

Translated by Leejin Jun. Written in English by Eugene Whong.
Two members of an unidentified armed group pose for a photo after a clash with Lao government soldiers in Xaysomboun province, March 9, 2021.

Lao government troops have launched a new campaign of attacks against groups of ethnic Hmong living in forests near Phou Bia Mountain in an effort to remove them from areas targeted for development and foreign investment schemes, rights group and Hmong sources say.

The new push against the Hmongwho fought under U.S. advisors against communist forces during the Vietnam Warfollows the March 14 publication of an order by authorities in Xaysomboun province barring access by civilians to the forests near Phou Bia, the highest mountain in Laos, an international NGO said at the weekend.

Hmong civilians living in the area are now reporting an increase in violence at the hands of government troops, an official of the Brussels-based Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organization (UNPO) told RFA in an email on March 28.

As you know, this escalation of violence coincides with a push towards the development of Phou Bia Mountain as both a tourist site and an area of interest to foreign investment, the UNPO official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

The government continues to deny any wrongdoing and refuses access by international observers, even on humanitarian or medical grounds, RFAs source said, adding, Were deeply concerned that a recent escalation may result in a serious humanitarian and human rights crisis endangering the life of civilians, including women and children.

Estimates of development funding planned for Phou Bia Mountain run as high as hundreds of millions of dollars, with foreign investment also now growing tied to industrial expansion in the area, UNPO sources say.

The Lao military has long pushed a campaign targeting Hmong in the region in a program of military attacks and forced relocations into government-controlled camps and villages, with repression and the use of force entering a new phase of severity in 2016, the UNPO said in a March 25 statement urging an international response to the crisis.

UNPO further urges the government of the Lao PDR [Peoples Democratic Republic] to immediately cease any acts of violence against the Hmong people in the area, to grant immediate and unfettered access to the area to impartial international observers, to make measures to protect civilians living in the region and work towards a peaceful resolution of historical disputes, the group said.

Authorities in multi-ethnic Laos have long been wary of opposition among the countrys Hmong ethnic minority, many of whom say they face persecution from the government because of their U.S. ties during the Vietnam War, when thousands of Hmong fought under CIA advisors during the so-called Secret War against communists in Laos.

Call for UN help

Speaking to RFA on March 26, a leader of ChaoFaa Hmong group living in a remote area of Xaysomboun and deemed an anti-government force by Lao authoritiesappealed for United Nations help in protecting his people from attack.

We have been attacked by the Red Lao government since 1975, and on Aug. 21, 2020 a group of about 100 Lao government soldiers launched an assault against us in the Phou Bia area, aiming to kill us all by the end of the year.

I would like to ask the U.N. to help us as soon as they possibly can, he said.

The Lao government claims that the Hmong in the Phou Bia area of Xaysomboun province are members of an anti-Lao government group so that the government military can crack down on them, added a prominent Hmong living in exile in the United States, asking that his name not be used.

Actually they are just ordinary people, he said.

One killed in recent clash

A member of an unidentified group of gunmen was killed last month in a clash with Lao government troops in the latest of a series of sporadic attacks in Xaysomboun by what authorities described as anti-government forces, sources close to the Lao military and police told RFA in an earlier report.

The March 9 clash was only the latest in a series of shootings and other attacks in the province, most recently on June 20, 2020 when a government soldier was shot and killed while on patrol inspecting for illegal poppy cultivation.

In January 2016, a car carrying Chinese miners was ambushed in the province, leaving two dead and one injured, and in November 2015 an exchange of gunfire between an armed group and local troops left three soldiers and four civilians dead, source said in earlier reports.

In most cases, Laos secretive government stops short of identifying individuals or groups who might have perpetrated the attacks, and no political statements or claims of responsibility are usually issued in connection with the incidents.

Reported by Ounkeo Souksavanh for RFAs Lao Service. Translated by Max Avary. Written in English by Richard Finney.
Lao cement-plant workers demand back pay in a protest outside the home of their former Chinese employer, Feb. 22, 2021.

Lao authorities in Luang Prabang province have detained the Chinese owner of a cement plant, accusing him of failing to pay a months wages to his Lao workers last year, Lao sources say.

Prosecutors are now filing charges against the man, the owner of the Guestown-Lao company, whose plant in the provinces Nam Bak district was closed in late November, a labor official in Luang Prabang told RFA on Thursday.

The owner of the plant is a Chinese, who has now been detained, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity. The authorities are filing charges against him, and he will be brought to court soon, he said.

The workers will now have to wait for a court decision to see if they will be paid, he added.

The shuttered Guestown-Lao company plant, which has now reopened under new owners, owes about 400 million kip (U.S. $42,500) in back pay to more than 200 employees, only some of whom have been rehired by the plants new managers.

The same plant with a new Chinese owner and a new company called Jiang Qe Co. called me and several others back to work, and we have been working here again since late February, one worker said.

The new owner told us that this is a different company that has nothing to do with the previous one, so we are still going to have to wait for our unpaid wages, he said.

Not the first time

Another worker said he remains unemployed, but cant travel far from his home to find a new job.

My family is poor, and I cant go to another town or province to work because Im still waiting for my back pay, he said, adding, We havent heard anything from the authorities up till now.

This was not the first time that the company didnt pay us, a third worker said, also speaking to RFA. The plant paid us late several times before, and they only paid then because we protested.

Around 100 of the cement plants more than 200 unpaid workers gathered on Feb. 22 outside the home of the plants Chinese owner to demand their wages, sources told RFA in an earlier report, with one worker saying the owner had fled his home before they arrived.

We came here several times in December and January to ask for our back pay, but nothing happened. Then, in early February, we filed a written complaint with the district and provincial labor departments and with the Ministry of Labor and Social Welfare, the worker said.

We waited for almost a month, and nothing happened, so we came here to protest on Feb. 22, he said.

Abuse, resentment

Reports have increased in recent years of the high-handed treatment of Lao workers by their Chinese bosses, and of increasing resentment over a rapidly growing Chinese business presence in the country.

A Lao teenager working at a motorcycle shop in Bokeo province killed his Chinese employer in early March following a heated argument over working hours and the mans abuse of his local employees, while in June 2020 a young Lao worker was beaten, shocked, and tied up by his supervisors at a Chinese banana plantation in Vientiane province.

Concern has also been growing in Laos over Chinas growing influence as a result of its massive investment in hydropower dams, a major railway, and other infrastructure projects under Beijings $1.3 trillion Belt and Road Initiative.

China is Laos largest foreign investor and aid provider, and its second-largest trade partner after Thailand.

Lao authorities announced on Thursday that China had donated 800,000 doses of the Sinopharm coronavirus vaccine to its communist neighbor.

Reported by RFAs Lao Service. Translated by Max Avary. Written in English by Richard Finney.
Protesters called the action one of the loudest expressions by the people against the military.

In some areas, authorities threatened to punish vendors if they didnt show up to market. Despite the threats, no major clashes were reported.

The junta threatened to act against those who closed their shops, but it did not deter them.

San San Win Maw, a clothing store owner in Yangon, said she joined the strike because there are increasingly few protections for human rights in Myanmar. We now hate the military, which has shown no kindness to the people, she said.

Nan Lin, a spokesman for the University Alumnus Association, said the Silent Strike was one of the most effective expressions of opposition against the coup since February.

Most public areas - including marketplaces - were cleared of people beginning early in the morning, sources said.

Nearly all businesses were closed Friday, particularly those in the regions of Yangon, Mandalay, Sagaing, Magway and Irrawaddy, as well as Kachin and Chin states. (RFA photos)

Citizens across Myanmar marked International Human Rights Day by joining a Silent Strike on Friday as a public boycott of junta rule, leaving towns and cities throughout the country eerily quiet.

Nearly all businesses  particularly those in the regions of Yangon, Mandalay, Sagaing, Magway and Irrawaddy, as well as Kachin and Chin states  were shuttered, and residents avoided any form of public interaction, emptying the streets.

Protest leaders told RFAs Myanmar Service that the action was meant to mourn the loss of human rights under military rule and the peoples opposition to the Feb. 1 coup that saw the junta seize power from the countrys democratically elected National League for Democracy government.

Originally scheduled to take place from 10:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. on Friday, most public areas  including marketplaces  were cleared of people beginning early in the morning, sources said.

Nan Lin, a spokesman for the University Alumnus Association, said Fridays Silent Strike was one of the most effective expressions of opposition against the coup since February.

Wed staged a Silent Strike on March 24 that was noted by the international media when millions of people participated in the program  and now, nine months later, we are having another, but the situation is different, he said.

Living conditions have become much more difficult. People have returned to their daily lives not because they have accepted military rule but for the sake of survival  Todays Silent Strike will show that we, the people, will dictate how we live our lives and that we will not let them rule us.

In the weeks and months since the coup, security personnel have committed blatant human rights abuses, including arbitrary arrests, rape and killings. At least 7,916 civilians have been arrested and 1,325 killed by junta authorities since February, according to the Bangkok-based Assistance Association for Political Prisoners, mostly during non-violent protests of the coup.

A participant in Fridays strike named Yin Yin, who lives in Yangons Hmawbi township, told RFA that she was doing her part to protest the juntas rights violations.

I feel bad now that I couldnt do anything for the young people who are risking their lives fighting back against the junta and, therefore, I am taking part in todays protest, she said.

Young people think we have lost interest in their cause. Im here to show that my blood hasnt run cold yet.

Other protesters in Yangons Kyeemyindine township said recent violence by the military, including the burning massacre earlier this week of 11 teenagers and adults in Dontaw village, in Sagaings Salingyi township, go beyond simple human rights abuses.

San San Win Maw, a clothing store owner in Yangon, said she joined Fridays strike because there are increasingly few protections for human rights in Myanmar.

We now hate the military, which has shown no kindness to the people, she said.

Some people have been arrested and ended up dead the next day. I feel broken as a parent. We have empathy for the people. We dont want to hear any more of these incidents. Do we have anything called human rights here?

Residents of the city said the junta urged people to carry on with their lives as usual without taking part in Fridays strike and have threatened to act against those who close their shops, but it did not deter them.

Residents avoided public interaction, emptying the streets. (RFA)

Heinous attacks

Rupert Colville, a spokesperson for the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, highlighted rights abuses in Myanmar in a statement issued to mark Human Rights Day, saying the U.N. is appalled by their recent escalation and congratulating the public for standing up against the junta.

The countrys human rights situation is deepening on an unprecedented scale, with serious violations reported daily of the rights to life, liberty and security of person, the prohibition against torture, the right to a fair trial, and freedom of expression, he said.

Today the courageous and resilient people of Myanmar have marked Human Rights Day and their opposition to the coup with a universal silent protest.

The rights agency called recent attacks on civilians heinous and urged a swift and firm international response to pursue accountability for the junta.

Dr. Tay Za San, one of the leaders of the strike movement in Mandalay, suggested that human rights had gone completely extinct in Myanmar and urged the public to unify to get them back.

We have already fallen into complete darkness. Our lives that were previously bad have now turned to worse, he said.

You cannot even speak freely under an authoritarian rule. Dictatorships will not give us human rights willingly. So, we must fight for it.

He called the nationwide Silent Strike one of the loudest expressions by the people against the juntas violence and human rights abuses.

Residents of the city said the junta urged people to carry on with their lives as usual without taking part in Fridays strike. (RFA)

Government response

Attempts by RFA to contact junta spokesman Zaw Min Tun about the protest went unanswered Friday.

In some towns, residents reported that military and police tried to thwart the protest by urging them via loudspeakers to conduct business as usual and vowed to protect the people from threats and attacks. In other areas, authorities threatened to punish vendors if they didnt show up to market. Despite the threats, no major clashes were reported.

Aung Myo Min, human rights minister for Myanmars shadow National Unity Government (NUG), said the rights situation in the country had completely collapsed under the junta.

The 73rd anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights sets out 30 articles on human rights. Myanmar has violated all 30 articles. From the coup to the murders, the arrests of innocent people and destruction of homes  these were all violations, he said.

We can say the situation in Myanmar is such that all human rights are in jeopardy. There had been weaknesses during the previous governments. But since the latest coup, the few human rights we had were all taken away.

Reported by RFAs Myanmar Service. Translated by Khin Maung Nyane. Written in English by Joshua Lipes.
A widowed mother of three in Kayah state says the military takeover of Myanmar has dashed her hopes for a better life after she spent her a childhood spent fleeing civil war.

Dah Moe, 38, was once again forced to pack up her family and leave her home for a camp of Internally Displaced Refugees (IDPs) as troops cracked down on anti-junta protests near her home village of Loilen in Kayahs Loikaw township in May.

We ran out of food while running from the fighting  we fled because the village we lived in was close to the army in the Loilen area, she told RFAs Myanmar Service.

At first, I was determined not to run. In the end, people couldnt tend to the paddies they had outside the village and had to leave. Plus, my parents are getting old. The soldiers would fire heavy weapons at our village whenever they wanted to.

Dah Moe said she and her family relocated from village to village before finally settling in a refugee camp in an area of Kayah controlled by the Karenni National Progressive Party (KNPP) that is near Myanmars border with Thailand.

It has been around five months since she and her children arrived in the camp, which is now home to more than 1,000 people who have relocated amid the military offensive in Kayah and other remote border regions of the country that it launched after seizing power.

As a child, Dah Moe said she was regularly on the run with her parents because of an ongoing civil war between the countrys former junta and ethnic Karen fighters. She was born as a refugee in Loikaws Htaythama village.

As an adult, she said she had hoped that her children would not have to endure the same hardships she and her parents had. But, after losing her husband 10 years ago and being forced to leave behind everything she and her family had built, she no longer believes that their lives will be any better.

I lost all hope when this coup took place. I got tired of living in Myanmar and came here. I thought I might be able to send my children to school here and would be able to live peacefully in an IDP camp, she said, referring to the area being under KNPP control.

I thought itd be a place where others give you protection, unlike in the war zone. I came out here to a liberated area hoping that I would be happy.

Prior to fleeing the most recent fighting, Dah Moe, who had attended a midwife basic training course, provided medical care for people in remote villages to feed her family. She lost her income when she arrived at the refugee camp.

I lost everything. We have no house. Our hopes for the childrens future, their education, are all ruined, she said.

I had expectations that my life would become comfortable. My hopes for my children are all gone now. They cannot study in a school because I do not want us to live under military rule.

The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said in September that more than 120,000 people have been displaced by fighting since May 21 in Kayah and southeastern Shan states, while tens of thousands have fled clashes in Chin, Kachin, and Karen states, as well as Magway and Sagaing regions.

In late August, OCHA announced that the number of people who need humanitarian aid in Myanmar had increased to nearly two million since the military coup. Those displaced by the recent fighting join more than 500,000 refugees from decades of conflict between the military and ethnic armies, according to the Internal Displacement Monitoring Center, a Norwegian NGO.

Reported by RFAs Myanmar Service. Translated by Khin Maung Nyane. Written in English by Joshua Lipes.
Go Sherab Gyatso had written books and articles describing restrictions on Tibetans living under Chinese rule.

A Chinese court in Tibet has given a 10-year prison term to a Tibetan writer and educator known for expressing loyalty to exiled spiritual leader the Dalai Lama, with the sentence handed down in a secret trial, RFA has learned.

Go Sherab Gyatso, a 46-year-old monk at Kirti monastery in Sichuans Ngaba (in Chinese, Aba) Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, was taken into custody on unknown charges by State Security agents on Oct. 26, 2020 in Sichuans capital Chengdu.

Gyatso will be moved soon to a prison near Tibets regional capital Lhasa, sources close to Gyatso said. No details are available regarding the charges on which he was convicted.

Speaking to RFA, a Tibetan scholar living in exile described Gyatso  who had written books and articles describing restrictions on freedom of expression under Chinese rule  as an open-minded individual who advocates the preservation of Tibetan language, religion and culture.

He also believes in the equality of humanity, RFAs source said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Its sad news to hear about his 10-year sentence on Human Rights Day, and I want to call on the United Nations, governments around the world, and the international community to look into this matter immediately, he said.

Human Rights Day is observed on the anniversary of the United Nations adoption on Dec. 10, 1948 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

The Chinese government in October responded to a July 16 letter from U.N. human rights experts asking about Gyatsos case, telling them that Gyatso had been placed in criminal detention in accordance with the law on suspicion of inciting secession.

No such things as secret detention, arbitrary detention, or enforced disappearance ever took place, China said.

Gyatso had earlier endured a four-year period of detention, beginning in 1998 during a Patriotic Reeducation campaign in Ngaba, for possessing a portrait of the Dalai Lama.

He was also reportedly detained for a year in 2008 during a period of widespread unrest in Tibet, although the specific reasons for that detention were not immediately clear.

Tibets exiled spiritual leader the Dalai Lama is widely reviled by Chinese leaders as a separatist intent on splitting Tibet, a formerly independent Himalayan country which was invaded and incorporated into China by force in 1950, from Beijings control.

The Dalai Lama himself says only that he seeks a greater autonomy for Tibet as a part of China, with guaranteed protections for Tibets language, culture and religion.

Chinese authorities maintain a tight grip on Tibet and Tibetan regions of western China, restricting Tibetans political activities and peaceful expression of ethnic and religious identity, and subjecting Tibetans to persecution, torture, imprisonment and extrajudicial killings.

Translated by Tenzin Dickyi for RFAs Tibetan Service. Written in English by Richard Finney.
Prominent U.K. attorney Geoffrey Nice, chair of the Uyghur Tribunal, delivered the panels judgment on Thursday that China is committing genocide and crimes against humanity against the Uyghurs and other Turkic minorities in its far-western Xinjiang region. The decision came after the independent tribunal assessed evidence of Chinas alleged rights abuses against the predominantly Muslim minority. Nice and the panel conducted two daylong hearings in London in June and September, during which members heard testimony from experts and internment camp survivors describing a range of serious abuses, including sexual assaults, torture, forced sterilizations, coerced labor and killings. Nice, who previously led the prosecution at The Hague of Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic on accusations of atrocities in the former Yugoslavia, spoke with Alim Seytoff, director of RFAs Uyghur Service, about the tribunals judgment and what it means for the Uyghurs and for China. The interview has been edited for length and clarity.

RFA: Today the Uyghur Tribunal with your leadership has declared that China is committing both genocide and crimes against humanity. What are the implications of the judgment?

Nice: Obviously, if a finding like that can be of use to governments in forming their decisions about what to do in relation to China, if it can be of value in the decision making of universities, businesses, and travel companies, all the other people who have to interact with China, well, that would be a good thing, too. If it would have the effect of getting China to change things, well, that would be terrific. But it would never be acknowledged as the result of our tribunals work, so we would certainly never know if its better.

Those are the possible outcomes, but I go back to the beginning. The motivation to do this was the fact that something had not been made clear in public and on the basis of evidence, so we dealt with that gap in knowledge. Thats all.

RFA: The Uyghur Tribunal has invited the Chinese government to defend its position and to provide its part of this story and evidence, but so far the Chinese government has declined. The Chinese government has never recognized the Uyghur Tribunal. Instead, it has sanctioned you and the tribunal and has attacked you personally, calling you a spy. Whats your response?

Nice: Its a pity that they should take that line. Ive got nothing else to say about that. Im not concerned about that. Its irrelevant. But it is a pity that they shouldnt consider the alternative of being open with individuals, organizations and countries that criticize them for what they do. If they were open, especially if they were open in a way that other big countries are not open, as we explained in the judgment, they could lead the world by example to a better place. So, Im not concerned what they may say about us or me.

RFA: China also has accused the tribunal of being a fake court, saying that it is backed by Western, U.S.-led, anti-China forces that are behind the whole charade of the court, and that the witnesses and the experts are all actors who have presented false evidence to accuse China. Has this been the case?

Nice: They can say it, but unless they support what they say with some evidence about that sort of thing, theres nothing much I need to say response, and they havent supported any of those allegations by any evidence. Ill just repeat what I said before: Its a pity that they should do that rather than engage constructively and openly. The world would like to know whats really happening and weve told them, and more openness by China will only do some good in the long run.

RFA: The U.K. government hasnt declared that China is committing either genocide or crimes against humanity, while the U.K. parliament did declare that China is committing genocide against the Uyghur people. It appears as if the U.K. governments position is to leave it to the courts to decide whether its genocide or crimes against humanity. Do you think todays judgment by the Uyghur Tribunal will convince the U.K. government to recognize Chinas atrocities against Uyghurs for what they are?

Nice: It may help them recognize it for what it is. A lot of parliamentarians here in the hall today had a press conference and were very keen to apply the judgment to force the governments hand. But going back to your question, the government says it will only allow genocide to be found in a significant way if a judge makes that determination. But they say that knowing that theres no judge who could ever do it. There isnt a judge in any system that they can turn to to make that determination unless they were to try and take the PRC to the International Court of Justice under the Genocide Convention to allege a breach of the Genocide Convention. I don't think theyll ever have the courage to do that.

So, they actually use this rule that only a judge can make the determination to avoid ever having to make a determination.

RFA: More than 150 countries are state parties to the Genocide Convention, and they are under legal obligation to prevent and stop the genocide. In light of the tribunals judgment, what should the international community do to stop Chinas ongoing genocide of the Uyghur people?

Nice: Interestingly enough, though the American government itself, not just the legislature, has pronounced genocide and has done certain things such as imposing sanctions along with the EU, the U.K., and other countries, it hasnt ever said its acting under its Genocide Convention duty.

Now, what is the Genocide Convention duty in a circumstance like this? Thats for a government to decide, and when it makes that decision, it has to announce to its public why its doing it, why its not doing more, or why its not doing less. It has to say this is the appropriate response to genocide given our duty to stop genocide from happening. The actions a government would be likely to take would include sanctions of the kind they have imposed.

But almost certainly you might think, if you were sitting in Secretary of State [Antony] Blinkens chair and were asking yourself sincerely  what is the minimum that the United States must do to respond to this duty? It would be more than the sort of sanctions they have imposed. It would have to be something to have real effect on those committing the genocide, those responsible for it. How a government would shape those actions, I cant really advise. It would be going too far. Its not my job. But just to impose the sanctions they have and not to say its under the Genocide Convention, its not enough.

RFA: China is also a state party to the Genocide Convention, so what is your message to the Chinese government to stop the ongoing genocide?

Nice: My suggestion to the Chinese government  is do they really need to be doing these terrible things to achieve that which they can achieve through the immense power they already have? I can understand and even respect without any trouble their ambition to be a successful leading country and their desire to be influential around the world. All sorts of powerful countries have had that ambition, not least our little island when it was a powerful central empire and certainly the American governments. Theres nothing wrong with that ambition.

But theyre not going to achieve that ambition by disgracing themselves in the eyes of the public. And therefore, was it really necessary for them to do these things to ensure a peaceful intentive regime in Xinjiang? I suspect perhaps no. One thing they might think about is changing their approach to their own people  not least if they want to influence other people.

RFA: In the future, if the International Criminal Court or the International Court of Justice ever tries the Chinese government or Chinese officials who are responsible for the ongoing genocide, will the Uyghur Tribunal provide all the evidence it has gathered, and are you willing to testify as part of that process?

Nice: Certainly, we are willing to provide our evidence. Were already aware of the United Nations Human Rights Councils intention to take a step by preparing its kind of report, and weve said they can have access to our material. Well help them in any way we can. Indeed, all the evidence weve got is being called public, and it may be that we will be able to make the whole archive public.

Its not a small task, and it needs a certain amount of funding. Of course, we dont have any funding, so weve got to work out a way of creating an archive with the material weve got, which is many hundreds of thousands of pages of stuff. But we have every intention of making it available to everyone else.

Edited by Roseanne Gerin.
The United States on December 10 imposed financial sanctions and visa bans on former and current government officials and entities in nine countries, including China and Russia, to coincide with International Human Rights Day.

The sanctions targeted Chinese authorities involved in the repression of Uyghurs and other ethnic minorities and a Russian university that helps North Korea raise hard currency.

The State Department action makes 12 current and former officials from six countries -- Uganda, China, Belarus, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Mexico -- ineligible along with their immediate family to enter the U.S. under a law that authorizes banning people involved with a gross violation of human rights or significant corruption.

A separate coordinated set of actions by the Treasury Department imposed financial sanctions and other restrictions on 15 people and 10 entities in China, Burma, Russia, North Korea, and Bangladesh.

In addition, Canada and the U.K. joined with the United States in imposing the latest in a series of measures aimed at preventing military authorities in Burma, also known as Myanmar, from using the global finance system in response to the overthrow of the democratically elected government.

We are determined to put human rights at the center of our foreign policy and we reaffirm this commitment by using appropriate tools and authorities to draw attention to and promote accountability for human rights violations and abuses, no matter where they occur, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in announcing the measures.

The Russian university that was sanctioned is the European Institute Justo. The university and its provost, Dmitry Yurevich Soin, were sanctioned for sponsoring hundreds of work visas for construction workers from North Korea as part of what the U.S. says is a coercive and abusive overseas labor program that helps the repressive North Korean government get hard currency.

Some of these workers were affiliated with a North Korean weapons of mass destruction (WMD) entity, and the revenue their labor generated could have been used to support North Korean WMD programs, the Treasury Department said.

Two Chinese government officials who have been involved with the repression of Uyghurs and other minorities in Xinjiang were among those banned from entering the U.S.

Treasury also imposed investment restrictions on the artificial intelligence company SenseTime Group, saying its facial-recognition software has been used by the authorities to identify and control Uyghurs and members of Xinjiangs other indigenous, mostly Muslim ethnic groups.

China's embassy in Washington denounced the U.S. move as "serious interference in China's internal affairs" and a "severe violation of basic norms governing international relations."

Embassy spokesman Liu Pengyu said it would do "grave harm to China-U.S. relations" and urged Washington to rescind the decision.

The measures are the latest in a raft of sanctions timed to coincide with Biden's two-day virtual Summit for Democracy at which he announced initiatives to bolster democracy around the world and support for pro-democracy legislation in the United States.

Biden said on December 10 that commitments made by some of the more than 100 world leaders at the summit would push back against rising autocracy around the world, fight corruption, and promote human rights.

"This is going to help seed fertile ground for democracy to bloom around the world," he said in a speech closing the summit.

A Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson on December 11 reacted angrily to the summit, saying "democracy has long become a weapon of mass destruction used by the U.S. to interfere in other countries."

The ministry also claimed the summit was organized by the U.S. to "draw lines of ideological prejudice, instrumentalize and weaponize democracy...(and) incite division and confrontation."

With reporting by Reuters and AP
Armenian and Azerbaijani have exchanged fire across their shared border for a third consecutive day, with both sides accusing each other of violating a cease-fire deal that ended their six-week war last year over the breakaway region of Nagorno-Karabakh.



Amid growing concern that lingering tensions between the two South Caucasus neighbors could potentially spiral out of control, the Armenian Defense Ministry said in a statement on December 10 that one of its servicemen was killed and several others were wounded "as a result of offensive operations carried out by the Azeri forces."



The exchange of fire stopped as of 2:30 p.m. local time, it added.



Earlier, the ministry said its neighbor had attacked Armenian positions in the eastern part of the Armenian-Azerbaijani border.



Meanwhile, Azerbaijan's Defense Ministry said that Armenian units fired on Azerbaijani positions in the Kalbacar district in what it called "a provocation."



The reported fighting followed two days of similar clashes in which the sides said one soldier had been killed and two others wounded.

Tensions have simmered for years over Nagorno-Karabakh, an ethnic Armenian region internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan that broke away from Baku's control in the early 1990s.



The 44-day war that erupted in autumn 2020 claimed more than 6,500 lives. It ended with a Russian-brokered cease-fire under which Armenians ceded territories they had controlled for decades to Azerbaijan.



Border tensions have since remained high, with the worst renewed deadly fighting taking place last month.



The renewed fighting came as Moscow on December 10 hosted the inaugural session of a five-way South Caucasus peace platform, an idea proposed by Turkey and its ally Azerbaijan following last year's conflict.



Besides Russia, Turkey, and Azerbaijan, Armenia and Iran were represented at the level of deputy foreign ministers.



Georgia refused to participate in the platform amid persistent tensions with Russia.
SARAJEVO -- The Bosnian Serb parliament has adopted a set of steps that would strengthen a secessionist bid to withdraw from state-level institutions despite warnings from the West.



Lawmakers on December 10 voted 49-3 on starting a procedure for Bosnia-Herzegovina's Serb-dominated entity to withdraw from the Bosnian Army, security services, tax system, and judiciary.



They also voted on a declaration that calls for the drafting of a new constitution for the entity, Republika Srpska, and states that "all laws imposed" by the international high representative for Bosnia are "unconstitutional."



Deputies of the opposition left the session before the vote.



Bosnia has been in a protracted political crisis over secessionist moves by Republika Srpska, reviving fears that the peace deal which ended a 1992-95 war could unravel and threaten regional stability.

The U.S.-brokered Dayton peace accords created two highly autonomous entities that share some joint institutions: the Republika Srpska and the Bosniak-Croat Federation. The country is governed and administered along ethnic lines established by the agreement, with a weak and often dysfunctional central government.



Bosnian Serb leader Milorad Dodik, the Serbian representative in the tripartite presidency, has repeatedly threatened to withdraw from state-level institutions, describing Bosnia as "an experiment by the international community" and an "impossible, imposed country."



Bosnia "is moving in a direction we did not agree to when signing the Dayton accords. The verdicts of the Constitutional Court...and the Court of [Bosnia-Herzegovina] make us angry. We have a feeling that [Bosnia] is going in the wrong direction. One by one, the competencies of the Republika Srpska are changing," Dodik said ahead of the vote.

But the leader of the opposition Serbian Democratic Party, Mirko Sarovic, accused Dodik of leading the entity down a "disastrous" path that could end in war.



For years, Dodik has advocated for the separation of the Republika Srpska and having it become part of neighboring Serbia.



His push gained momentum over the summer when the Western-appointed high representative imposed a series of laws prohibiting the denial of genocide, war crimes, and the glorification of those convicted of such crimes before international or local courts.

The Bosnian War started in 1992 when Bosnian Serbs, with the help of the Serb-led Yugoslav army, tried to create ethnically pure territories with the aim of joining neighboring Serbia. More than 100,000 people were killed and millions were left homeless.



Dodik has reiterated his claim that the 1995 Srebrenica massacre in which some 8,000 Muslim men and boys were slaughtered by Bosnian Serb forces "did not take place."



The massacre has been declared a genocide by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) and the International Court of Justice (ICJ).



The Office of the High Representative's (OHR) duties include overseeing and coordinating the implementation of the Dayton agreement, but its sweeping powers has made it the target of criticism.



The OHR was not allowed to attend the parliamentary proceedings, despite requesting it be granted access.



"All parties have an obligation to fully respect the General Framework Agreement for Peace. The Office of the High Representative requires the Republika Srpska National Assembly to respect the OHR's mandate," the OHR said.

Following the imposition of the genocide law, Republika Srpska politicians began blocking the work of state-level institutions, including the tripartite presidency, Council of Ministers, and Parliamentary Assembly.



The Serb entity's moves toward secession have spurred a flurry of diplomacy, with Western envoys trying to find a political solution and persuading Dodik to reverse course.

The Kremlin and Serbia tacitly support Dodik's actions, and the Bosnian Serb leader met Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow last week.



The United States has already imposed a travel ban and assets freeze on Dodik and both U.S. and EU officials have recently threatened more sanctions in case the Bosnian Serbs try to secede.



"As a signing witness of the Dayton peace accords, the United States reiterates that moves to unilaterally withdraw from state-level institutions or otherwise destabilize the [accords] will be met with appropriate action, including the consideration of sanctions," U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a letter to members of Bosnia's tripartite presidency last month.



The United States has previously said there was "no constitutional way" for the Republika Srpska to unilaterally withdraw from national institutions. Dodik says the institutions he wants to leave were not enshrined in the Dayton constitution but were created through amendments.

With reporting by AP and AFP
Bulgaria's new anti-corruption We Continue the Change party (PP) has reached a coalition deal with three smaller parties, giving the country a new government after eight months of political deadlock.



Kiril Petkov, the co-leader of PP, said on December 10 that an agreement was reached with the Socialists, the populist There is Such a People party, and the center-right faction Democratic Bulgaria.



"The agreement has just been signed by all our coalition partners," said Petkov, who was nominated as Bulgaria's next prime minister.



"The document is 140 pages and will really enable this coalition to be strong and work for a long time," he added.



Petkov is now expected to present his nominations for ministers to President Rumen Radev on December 11 and get approval from parliament as early as December 13.



Former Prime Minister Boyko Borisov stepped down in April after he lost his majority in parliament following months of anti-corruption protests against him and his GERB party..



Two elections in April and July failed to produce governments because of unclear majorities and disagreements between political parties on a new cabinet, leaving the European Union's poorest member state in the hands of an interim administration.



The new government is expected to overhaul the country's anti-corruption agency, boost COVID-19 vaccinations, and take steps to shield citizens from rising energy costs.



Less than 30 percent of adults are fully vaccinated against COVID-19 in the country, the lowest rate in the European Union.
A new investigation by RFE/RL and its Persian-language service, Radio Farda, sheds new light on the unsolved murder of Iranian dissident artist Fereydoun Farrokhzad, who was brutally stabbed to death in Germany in 1992.

Together with the investigation, RFE/RL is also publishing snapshot profiles of key players in the story, including several Iranian officials and intelligence officers who reportedly threatened Farrokhzad prior to his killing and were alleged to have been directly involved in the murder plot.

A review of decades-old French and German legal and intelligence records by RFE/RL has linked several of these individuals to Iranians implicated in attacks on other dissidents in Europe.

But because German authorities have declined to reveal any details about the investigation into Farrokhzads murder, citing the ongoing nature of the probe, it remains unclear to what extent they have explored the possible involvement of these figures in the dissidents killing.
Amnesty International has launched a Persian-language website, saying it aims to increase access to information on abuse in Iran amid "an all-out assault on human rights" by the authorities, including arbitrary detention, enforced disappearance, torture, and extrajudicial executions.



The new website, launched on Human Rights Day on December 10, includes, among other things, research and legal analysis of "shocking" human rights violations, as well as recommendations to the international community to tackle "this crisis of impunity," the London-based human rights watchdog said in a statement.



The launch came as the BBC urged the international community to take "robust" action to force the Iranian authorities to put an end to their "escalating campaign" of harassment and intimidation against its journalists and their families at home and abroad.



Diana Eltahawy, deputy regional director for the Middle East and North Africa at Amnesty International, said that Iran "suffers from a deepening human rights crisis, with hundreds of individuals on death row following unfair trials -- including those arrested as children -- and thousands persecuted or arbitrarily detained for peacefully exercising their human rights.



"The families of thousands of people killed or forcibly disappeared by the authorities are left waiting for truth and justice," she also said, while rights defenders and dissidents who "speak out against repression and injustice endure grave human rights violations."

Meanwhile, the BBC said in a statement that staff from its Persian-language service have endured more than a decade of harassment and attacks, including asset freezes and arbitrary arrest of relatives.



"In the past year, threats against BBC News Persian staff and Persian-speaking journalists outside Iran have escalated. Death threats and threats of extra-territorial harm have been made towards BBC News Persian staff in London, leading to police involvement and protection," the British broadcaster said.



BBC World Service lawyers Caoilfhionn Gallagher and Jennifer Robinson called on the international community "to take immediate, robust action to ensure Iran is held accountable, and BBC News Persian journalists can report without fear."



The broadcaster said its Persian-language service had a weekly global audience of nearly 22 million people, including some 13 million in Iran.

With reporting by AFP and RFE/RL's Radio Farda
Almost three decades after his grisly killing in Germany, the murder of the exiled Iranian entertainer Fereydoun Farrokhzad remains officially unsolved. But an investigation by RFE/RL's Persian-language service, Radio Farda, has uncovered documents that point to Iran's intelligence services. And a former Iranian spy has revealed a possible suspect in the 1992 slaying of the outspoken critic of Iran's hard-line Islamic regime.
A suspect in a deadly terrorist attack on an Istanbul nightclub nearly five years ago has been detained in Kyrgyzstan, the security service in the Central Asian country said.



Kyrgyzstan's State Committee for National Security said in a statement on December 10 that a foreign suspect was detained for involvement in the attack that claimed the lives of 39 citizens from 18 countries and wounded dozens more.



The identity of the detained suspect was not revealed.



The Islamic State group claimed responsibility the 2017 New Year's Eve attack on the posh Reina nightclub in Istanbul.



Abdulkadir Masharipov, an Uzbek national, was in 2020 imprisoned for life by a Turkish court as the perpetrator of a gun attack.



Dozens of others, mostly ethnic Uyghurs and citizens of Central Asian states, were also been detained in sweeps by Turkish security forces.

Based on reporting by AFP and Haber
Two men have been arrested in Kyrgyzstan on bride-kidnapping charges, local media report.



According to the police, the suspects are accused of kidnapping a 17-year-old girl in Bazar-Kogon, a district of the Jalal-Abad region in western Kyrgyzstan. A witness notified the police on December 8 that a group of men had forced her into a car and driven off.



The young woman, who studies at a local university, was later freed and returned to her parents, although few other details are known.



Police also said they had registered 40 bride-kidnapping cases in the Jalal-Abad region this year. Of this total, three were referred to court, one case is still pending, and the rest have been dropped.



Thousands of bride kidnappings occur each year in Kyrgyzstan despite the criminalization of the practice in 2013.



In September, five men were handed prison terms for their role in a deadly bride-kidnapping case that sparked protests in Kyrgyzstan in April.

Aizada Kanatbekova was kidnapped by a group of men on April 5 and found dead two days later in a car along with the body of one of her abductors, Zamirbek Tengizbaev, who killed himself after strangling her with a T-shirt.



A district court in Bishkek on September 14 sentenced Syimyk Moldosariev, Ajikabyl Rysbai-uulu, and Oruzbek Nurumbetov to seven years in prison each, while Zamirbek Ramankulov and Kubanych Tokon-uulu were handed 6 1/2 years in prison for taking part in the kidnapping.



The court also ruled that the five must pay 100,000 soms ($1,200) altogether to the victim's family to compensate moral and material damage caused by the death of the 26-year-old woman.



The case put a spotlight on law enforcement's reluctance to pursue such crimes.



Police were sharply criticized for their slow response in the kidnapping, even though the vehicle's make, model, and license plate were clearly visible in security-camera videos.



More than 40 police officers, including the Bishkek city police chief, were fired following the tragedy.



Authorities said at the time that Tengizbaev had been convicted in Russia three times for various crimes.



The UN Development Program and rights groups have highlighted the ongoing prevalence in Kyrgyz society of the practice of bride snatching, which they say often leads to marital rape, domestic violence, and other ills.



One of the most notorious cases involved the stabbing death in 2018 of 20-year-old university student Burulai Turdaaly-kyzy by a man who was trying to force her into marriage.
Nobel Peace Prize winners Dmitry Muratov and Maria Ressa have warned that a rise in authoritarian governments requires a continued commitment to independent reporting.



The two journalists received the award for 2021 at Oslo City Hall on December 10, an honor they won for their separate battles to uncover the truth in countries -- Muratov in Russia, Ressa in the Philippines -- where freedom of expression and the media have faced growing attacks, and even killings, from hostile regimes.



"Yes, we growl and bite. Yes, we have sharp teeth and strong grip," the 59-year-old Muratov said of journalists in his acceptance speech.



"But we are the prerequisite for progress. We are the antidote against tyranny," he added.



Muratov, editor-in-chief of the independent Russian newspaper Novaya gazeta, also warned that some officials in Russia appeared to be agitating for war with Ukraine.



"The powerful actively promote the idea of war," said Muratov, 59, one of the founders in 1993 of Novaya gazeta. "Moreover, in [the] heads of some crazy geopoliticians, a war between Russia and Ukraine is not something impossible any longer."



U.S. officials have said Russia could soon invade Ukraine following a buildup of troops near the Ukrainian border. Moscow has denied it is planning an invasion.

In her speech, Ressa, who co-founded Rappler, a news website critical of the Philippine government, noted that for independent journalism to survive, greater protection must be given to journalists and countries must stand up against states that target journalists.



Muratov said journalism in Russia was going "through a dark valley," with more than 100 journalists, media outlets, human rights defenders and nongovernmental organizations having been branded as "foreign agents."



"In Russia, this means 'enemies of the people,'" Muratov said, dedicating his prize to "the entire community of investigative journalists" and his colleagues at Novaya gazeta who lost their lives, including Anna Politkovskaya, who was gunned down in her apartment building in Moscow 15 years ago after angering the Kremlin with dispatches from the war in Chechnya.



"I want journalists to die old."

The International Federation of Journalists in Brussels said on December 9 that imprisonments of media workers were on the rise, with 365 journalists behind bars compared with 235 last year. Nine journalists have been killed in the line of duty in Afghanistan alone and 102 imprisoned in China.



Together with the medals with the effigy of the prize founder Alfred Nobel and a diploma, came 10 million kronor ($1.1 million) to be shared between them.

With reporting by Reuters, AFP, and AP
U.S. President Joe Biden and several leading NATO members have pledged support to Kyiv and the alliance's Central European members amid growing fears over Russia's troop buildup near its border with Ukraine.



Biden "reaffirmed the United States' unwavering commitment to Ukraine's sovereignty and territorial integrity," the White House said in a statement after he spoke with President Volodymyr Zelenskiy for about 90 minutes on December 9.

He also reiterated that the United States and its allies would impose economic sanctions on Russia and intensify defensive aid to Ukraine and NATO allies nearest to Russia in the event of an invasion by Russia into Ukraine, the White House said.

Biden also called the leaders of nine NATO members in Eastern Europe and discussed the Russian military buildup "and the need for a united, ready, and resolute NATO stance for the collective defense of allies."



Biden promised the so-called Bucharest Nine -- Romania, Poland, Hungary, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania -- "additional military capabilities" and pledged to involve them in decisions about the region, Lithuanian presidential adviser Asta Skaisgiryte said.



But a White House statement did not mention specific military aid. It said Biden stressed a U.S. commitment to continued close consultation and coordination with transatlantic allies "as we work towards de-escalation of the current crisis through deterrence, defense, and dialogue."

Backing up Biden, French President Emmanuel Macron said he had spoken to Zelenskiy on December 10 and that the two leaders would talk again next week about initiatives to further peace talks on the conflict in eastern Ukraine, where Russian-supported separatists have been battling government forces since 2014.



"What we all want, Europeans and Americans, is to show that we are paying close attention to the situation," he told a joint news conference with Germany's new chancellor, Olaf Scholz.



Scholz noted Germany's concern over the situation at the Ukraine-Russia border,



"We will launch further activities to make sure that Ukraine has a good perspective," he said.



The diplomacy followed Biden's promise of meetings between envoys of Russia and major NATO allies to discuss Moscow's concerns about Ukraine joining the alliance and the possibility of "bringing down the temperature along the eastern front."

Biden said on December 8 that he hoped to announce a meeting of envoys soon to discuss "the future of Russia's concern relative to NATO writ large and whether or not we could work out any accommodations as it relates to bringing down the temperature along the eastern front [in Ukraine]."



The series of calls came two days after Biden held a videoconference with Russian President Vladimir Putin amid Western concerns about the presence of tens of thousands of Russian troops near Ukraines border.



Biden said he told Putin during their call that Moscow will face "severe economic sanctions" should Russian troops launch an attack.



Russia denies it is planning to attack, claiming Ukraine and NATO are provoking tensions. Moscow is demanding security guarantees against NATOs expansion to Ukraine.

Tensions remained high on December 9, with Moscow accusing Ukraine of "provocation" over an incident involving one of its warships sailing near the Kerch Strait.



Russia's Federal Security Service said a Ukrainian vessel had headed toward the Kerch Strait that separates Russia and the Crimean Peninsula, which Russia illegally annexed in 2014, and failed to acknowledge a Russian request to change course.



Kyiv rejected the Russian complaints saying it was part of an "information attack" by Moscow.

The United States and NATO reject Putin's demands that they guarantee Ukraine won't be admitted to the Western military alliance.

White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki made it clear that Biden is hoping to resolve tensions through diplomacy and that does not include pressuring Ukraine to cede land to Russia as a means of deterring an invasion.

She called reports that administration officials suggested the United States will press Ukraine to formally cede some autonomy of its eastern territory to Moscow-backed separatists who are in the region "absolutely false."

Earlier, General Valery Gerasimov, chief of the Russian military's General Staff, warned Ukraine against trying to launch an offensive against the separatists in eastern Ukraine, saying any such action will be "suppressed."



Speaking to foreign military attaches, Gerasimov complained about what he called NATO's growing presence near Russia's borders and the increasing number of drills by alliance troops.



He also dismissed Western concerns about the Russian military buildup, arguing that Moscow is free to deploy its troops wherever it likes on its territory and calling the claim of a possible Russian invasion "a lie."



U.S. intelligence assesses that Russia has at least 70,000 troops near Ukraine and could be planning a multifront offensive as early as next year involving up to 175,000 troops.

With reporting by AFP, Reuters, and AP
As White House phone calls go, the one that Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelenskiy had this week may end up being among the most consequential of his presidency.

And it's certainly not the first time U.S. President Joe Biden has held a tough conversation with his Ukrainian counterpart on the subject of Russia.

Zelenskiy spent 90 minutes on the phone with Biden on December 9 -- a call aimed at discussing Biden's conversation two days earlier with the man who has deployed tens of thousands of troops near Ukraine's borders: Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Biden, who earlier ruled out sending U.S. troops to Ukraine in the event of a new invasion, reaffirmed the United States' "unwavering commitment to Ukraine's sovereignty and territorial integrity," according to the White House.

Publicly, Putin's implicit threat of war focuses primarily on the prospect of Ukraine someday joining NATO. But Putin's warnings also concern the running seven-year war in eastern Ukraine, whose resolution has been stymied by fundamental disagreement over implementing the only proposed peace deal, broadly known as the Minsk accords.

So what exactly did Biden tell Zelenskiy? Is he seeking concessions from Kyiv, as at least one report suggested? And has he promised concessions to Putin at Ukraine's expense, as at least one other report suggested?

"That's the big question," said Orysia Lutsevych, head of the Ukraine Forum in the Russia and Eurasia Program at Chatham House, a London think tank. "To be honest, it only makes sense from a negotiating perspective to ask, to probe what legitimate concessions are the Ukrainians ready to make? That's a question that the Ukrainians need to be asking," she told RFE/RL. "What kind of compromise can you make to avoid war?"

Publicly and privately, the White House says most certainly not: Biden did not ask Zelenskiy for concessions, and he pledged that Washington and European allies would hit Russia with heavy economic sanctions if it launched a new offensive.

"I know there's been lots of churn in the press about whether or not there were concessions. There very clearly were not," spokeswoman Jen Psaki said on December 9. "I think President Biden has made very clear that he stood by our principles."

Biden "made very clear that one nation can't force another nation to change its border, one nation cannot tell another to change its politics, and nations can't tell others who they can work with," a senior administration official told reporters later.

In Kyiv, Zelenskiy administration officials were largely upbeat in their portrayals, asserting that Biden was supportive of Ukraine's eventual membership in NATO, something that the Kremlin has viscerally, and publicly, opposed.

"President Biden has made it very clear that Ukraine's decision to join NATO is only a decision of the Ukrainian people, a sovereign and independent Ukrainian state. And he was not even ready to discuss this issue. And it depends on Ukraine and NATO members," Andriy Yermak, Zelenskiy's chief of staff, told a Ukrainian talk show.

One of the risky signals to come out of the call, says Maria Zolkina, a political analyst at the Kyiv-based Democratic Initiatives Foundation, is that the United States was ready to get more deeply engaged in the process to resolve the war in eastern Ukraine's Donbas region. That means negotiating directly with Russia, she said, which puts Ukraine at risk of being left on the outside.

"If we are not at the table, we are out of the process," she told RFE/RL.

The senior U.S. administration official sought to alleviate such concerns: Biden "made crystal-clear to Zelenskiy in his call today...that if Ukraine is on the agenda, then Ukraine is at the table."

The Evolution Of Zelenskiy

Today, the only existing path for resolving the war in the Donbas is laid out in the Minsk accords -- truces signed in September 2014 and February 2015 that provide a framework, albeit a disputed one, for a peace deal.

The devil is in the details: How and when to pull back on both sides; how and to whom Kyiv would grant amnesty; how and when Ukraine would hold local elections in separatist-controlled regions and grant them special status; how and when Kyiv would regain full control over its border with Russia in those areas.

One big problem is that neither Kyiv nor Moscow believes the other is negotiating in good faith. Russia's continued denial of involvement in the fighting in eastern Ukraine, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, doesn't help either.

Zelenskiy himself won a landslide election in 2019 on a platform that included ending the war. He had some small early victories that initially boded well for a resolution: Five months after his election, Zelenskiy secured a prisoner swap with Russia, with 35 Ukrainians who had been held by Russia, some for years, being returned home.

Since then, however, Zelenskiy's position toward Russia more broadly has hardened, apparently causing ire in the Kremlin. His government has gone after a powerful oligarch whose media holdings frequently showcase a pro-Russian bias and who has long been seen as a back-channel conduit for Moscow.

Zelenskiy, who has the right to seek a second term in 2024, has also more frequently started calling for Ukraine to join NATO, fueling Moscow's fury.

A day after his video conference with Biden, Putin again hammered home Russia's position on the issue -- even though NATO has given no sign that Ukraine will be invited to join for years.

"We are concerned over the prospects of Ukraine's possible accession to NATO, as it will definitely result in the deployment of military contingents, bases and weapons posing a threat to us," Putin said.

Noting that U.S. missile-defense systems are being deployed in Poland and Romania, Putin said that Russia had "every reason to believe that the same will happen if Ukraine joins NATO, but on Ukrainian soil. How can we not think about it? To impotently watch what happens would be a criminal omission from our side."

It was not only Ukrainians who were made nervous by Biden's call with Putin. During the call, according to White House and Kremlin readouts, the two leaders agreed to arrange future talks on issues including Russian complaints about NATO. Biden later said he hoped the White House would soon announce high-level meetings between Russia and the United States, along with four major NATO allies.

That ruffled feathers among NATO members in Eastern and Central Europe that are acutely sensitive to menacing moves by Moscow, prompting Biden to make another call with a group known as the "Bucharest Nine," which includes the Baltic states and Poland.

One Polish diplomat who spoke on condition of anonymity said Warsaw was afraid that the U.S. approach regarding Ukraine was being made over the heads of Ukraine and other Central and Eastern European countries. And it came just a few months after the White House decision to not impose sanctions on the nearly completed Russian pipeline Nord Stream 2 -- which also irked some NATO members.

'No To Capitulation'

Biden and Zelenskiy have spoken at least twice previously, once in person, for talks that have all featured Russia.

In June, the Biden White House opted not to impose sanctions on Nord Stream 2, the Baltic Sea pipeline allowing Russia to send more gas to Europe while circumventing Ukraine's pipeline network. Zelenskiy was publicly angered, resulting in a phone call with Biden just prior to Biden's summit meeting in Geneva with Putin.

In September, Zelenskiy was hosted at the White House, where Biden and other U.S. officials assured him of strong U.S. support. The meeting later resulted in a new "strategic partnership" that included specific cooperation on defense issues.

But since then, Moscow has menaced Ukraine, dispatching tens of thousands of troops -- possibly more than 100,000 -- to regions near Ukraine's borders and to Crimea, the Black Sea peninsula that Russia seized in 2014.

For some harder-line segments of Ukrainian society, even the perception of concessions is a trigger. In late 2019, tens of thousands of Ukrainians jammed Kyiv's streets in opposition to Zelenskiy's support of a diplomatic plan known as the Steinmeier Formula. Some carried banners reading "No to capitulation."

And attitudes within Ukrainian society have hardened further since 2019, Zolkina says. Strong majorities oppose amending the constitution to give special status to the eastern regions controlled by Kremlin-backed separatists, or conducting elections there without specific preconditions, she notes.

Strong majorities also oppose giving up Ukraine's right to seek NATO membership, or allowing local law enforcement or security agencies in the separatist-held areas to be comprised solely of local inhabitants.

In a report released earlier this year -- well before the current Russian troop buildup -- the Razumkov Center, an independent Kyiv think tank, found that 70 percent of Ukrainians supported a public referendum on NATO membership.

And another poll released this week showed that 54 percent of respondents believed the Minsk accords needed to be revised or renegotiated. The poll also found that 56 percent of respondents favor direct negotiations with Russia; 41 percent opposed. The Kremlin says Kyiv must talk with the separatists, not with Moscow.

The poll by the Kyiv survey group Reiting surveyed 2,500 Ukrainians between December 6-8 and had a margin of error of 2 percentage points.

"If you ask Ukrainian society, this is a war of aggression against Ukraine," Lutsevych said. "They understand that it's about independence, it's not about security or neutrality."

With reporting by Rikard Jozwiak
The U.S. Treasury Department has imposed sanctions on former Ukrainian government official Andriy Portnov, accusing him of buying influence in Ukraine's judiciary.



The Treasury Department named Portnov on a list of 15 individuals and entities in several countries in Central America, Africa, and Europe designated for alleged corruption and serious human rights abuse.



Portnov, a former lawmaker and deputy head of ex-President Viktor Yanukovychs administration, has cultivated extensive connections to Ukraines judicial and law enforcement apparatus through bribery, the Treasury Department said.



Widely known as a court fixer, Portnov was credibly accused of using his influence to buy access and decisions in Ukraines courts and undermining reform efforts, the department said in a statement. As of 2019, Portnov took steps to control the Ukrainian judiciary, influence associated legislation, sought to place loyal officials in senior judiciary positions, and purchase court decisions.



Portnov colluded in 2019 with a high-ranking Ukrainian government official to shape the countrys higher legal institutions to their advantage and influence Ukraines Constitutional Court, the Treasury Department said. Portnov also has been involved in an attempt to influence the Ukrainian Prosecutor-General, it said.



The sanctions block any assets that Portnov may have in the United States, bar Americans from conducting business transactions with them, and subject people and firms that do business with them to potential penalties.



There was no immediate reaction from Portnov on Telegram or Twitter.

Based on reporting by Reuters
Russian national Oleg Koshkin has been sentenced to four years in prison for operating a crypting service that helped hackers infect computers around the world with malware, the U.S. Justice Department announced on December 9.

Koshkin, 41 and formerly of Estonia, reportedly operated websites that offered to make intrusive software like botnets, remote-access trojans, keyloggers, credential stealers, and cryptocurrency miners virtually undetectable.

The defendant provided a critical service used by cybercriminals to evade one of the first lines of cybersecurity defense, antivirus software, said Assistant Attorney General Kenneth A. Polite Jr. of the Justice Departments Criminal Division. Cybercriminals depend on services like these to infect computers around the world with malware, including ransomware. The Criminal Division and our law enforcement partners are committed to investigating and prosecuting anyone who criminally operates these services to the fullest extent of the law."

Koshkin was convicted by a federal jury on June 15 of one count of conspiracy to commit computer fraud and abuse and one count of computer fraud and abuse.

Koshkin provided services to Russian national Pyotr Levashov, the operator of the Kelihos botnet that compromised more than 50,000 computers before it was dismantled by the FBI.

Levashov is one of the world's most notorious spammers, and also used Kelihos to harvest account credentials, conduct denial-of-service attacks, and distribute ransomware and other malicious software.

A botnet is a network of devices infected with malicious software that allows a third party to control an entire computer network without the knowledge or consent of the computer owners.

Levashov pleaded guilty to multiple counts in a U.S. court in 2018 after his extradition from Spain.

Koshkin was arrested in California in 2019.

A co-defendant, Pavel Tsurkan, pleaded guilty on June 16 to one count of causing damage to a protected computer, an offense that carries a maximum term of 10 years in prison. He is awaiting sentencing.
As tensions persisted over Russias military buildup on its western flank and its designs on Ukraine, U.S. President Joe Biden held talks with Vladimir Putin, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, and the leaders of nine NATO nations as he sought de-escalation of the current crisis through deterrence, defense, and dialogue."

Here are some of the key developments in Russia over the past week and some of the takeaways going forward.

Deployments And Diplomacy

For weeks, a big Russian military buildup that Western intelligence agencies warn could presage a major offensive targeting Ukraine has added to already high tensions between Moscow on the one hand and Kyiv, NATO, Washington, and the West on the other.

The fears of a new invasion and a grim guessing game about the Kremlins intentions have been fueled additionally by a series of written and spoken remarks by President Vladimir Putin and other Russian officials that seem designed to sow doubts about Ukraines right to choose its friends and its foreign policy -- and even, in some cases, its right to exist as a sovereign state.

And without actually admitting it, Putin and his government have made perfectly clear that the military moves north and east of Ukraines borders and in Crimea, which Russia seized in 2014, are aimed at least in part to put pressure on Kyiv and the West over the ongoing conflict in the Donbas and, much more broadly, the issues of NATO expansion and security in Europe as a whole.

Russia, analysts say, appears to be trying to leverage the Donbas war into strong Kremlin influence over Ukraine, the end of NATO expansion into the former Soviet Union, restrictions on Western weapons deployments in eastern Europe, and even a new security architecture on the continent -- one in which it would play a powerful role.

Now, after a video call between Putin and U.S. President Joe Biden on December 7, the focus of the tense standoff may be shifting, to some degree, to diplomacy, at least for the time being. There is no sign of a Russian pullback, but where talk of war has long been in the air, talk of talks has now joined it.

Judging by the White House and Kremlin readouts, the two-hour videoconference between the presidents seems to have left them deeply at odds on the array questions at hand, including who is to blame for the increased tensions that have added more poison to badly strained ties.

But on the question of what is to be done about it, they seem to agree on at least one answer: Talk.

The statements from both administrations said that Biden and Putin had tasked officials with holding follow-up contacts.

A tentative agreement to hold further talks may seem like an unimportant afterthought, particularly given the momentousness of the situation -- worries that Russia could launch a new offensive against its neighbor within six weeks or so -- and the readouts gave very different impressions about the potential content of those talks, with each side suggesting its concerns about the others actions would be the focus. On the U.S. side, that meant the deep concerns of the United States and our European allies about Russias escalation of forces surrounding Ukraine.

Quest For Quiet On The 'Eastern Front'

But Biden mentioned the matter again a day later, saying he hoped to soon announce meetings involving the United States, at least four other major NATO allies, and Russia. Participants, he said, would discuss the future of Russia's concerns relative to NATO writ large and whether or not we can work out any accommodations as it relates to bringing down the temperature along the eastern front.

Sounds underwhelming, perhaps, but its potentially a big deal: For years, and especially in recent years, months, and even days, Putin has been accusing Washington and the West of ignoring what Russia says are its concerns about NATO enlargement and the alliances activities in Eastern Europe and elsewhere.

From a 2007 Munich Security Conference speech in which he railed against the United States, to an address to parliament in 2018 in which he talked up several weapons systems Russian was developing and demanded, Listen to us now, he has used prominent platforms to make dramatic remarks aimed at audiences both abroad and at home.

So Bidens clear statement that the proposed talks would touch on Russias stated concerns could potentially mark the start of a new phase in the severely strained relationship between Moscow and the West, even if it does not change the fact that the United States considers some of those stated concerns groundless or disingenuous and some of the Kremlins demands -- such as a binding agreement that NATO will not take in Ukraine, Georgia, or other countries close to Russia as members -- unacceptable nonstarters.

There is, very clearly, a great deal of room for further tension -- or worse.

For one thing, theres the fundamental question of whether Putin really wants to ease the confrontation with the West, given that he uses it to shore up power at home, analysts say, attempting to promote unity and patriotism by accusing the United States and the European Union of seeking to restrain Russia. And since some of Russias demands are unacceptable to the United States, NATO, or both, another crucial question is whether they are really red lines or are, in fact, starting positions for negotiations.

Potential Pitfalls

Either way, though, if talks persist but Moscow maintains military forces in place for a possible new offensive, theres a danger that, at any moment, Putin could throw up his hands in frustration -- whether real or fake wouldnt matter much -- and claim that the West was still not listening.

For Biden, talks with Russia are a potential tightrope -- presenting minefields for the U.S. president, as an Associated Press article put it.

Against the backdrop of Russias seizure of Crimea, its support for separatists whose war against Kyivs forces in the eastern Donbas region has killed more than 13,000 people, and the new military buildup, he risks being accused of rewarding aggression.

And for many in Ukraine, talks between NATO nations and Russia are bound to be fraught with fears that the United States or the Western alliance may sacrifice Kyivs sovereignty, or force an unfavorable settlement of the Donbas conflict upon it, in a bid to mend relations with Moscow and keep it at bay.

In a 90-minute phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy on December 9, Biden reaffirmed the United States' unwavering commitment to Ukraine's sovereignty and territorial integrity" and "made clear that the United States and its allies and partners are committed to the principle of 'no decisions or discussions about Ukraine without Ukraine,'" the White House said.

Biden also called the leaders of nine NATO nations in Central and Eastern Europe, underscoring Washingtons sacred commitment to the alliances collective security principle and pledging close consultation and coordinationas we work towards de-escalation of the current crisis through deterrence, defense, and dialogue."

A comment that Putin made at around the same time Biden and Zelenskiy were speaking will only add to the concerns about Moscows intentions toward Ukraine. Seemingly seeking to keep the pressure on Kyiv and the West for resolution to the conflict that would serve Moscows purposes, he made the baseless claim that what is happening now in the Donbasis very reminiscent of genocide.

U.S. officials have stressed that Biden made no concessions to Putin -- on Ukraine, NATO, or anything else -- at their meeting. And the talks he said are being arranged would clearly be meant to address Western concerns about Moscows actions, not just Russian grievances.

Talking About Talking

At a press briefing after the Biden-Putin call, U.S. national-security adviser Jake Sullivan suggested that any talks with Russia aimed at easing tensions and addressing one anothers concerns could end quickly if Russia escalates further. But he said the Biden administration believes that there is no substitute for direct dialogue between leaders, and that is true in spades when it comes to the U.S.-Russia relationship.

Many political analysts also advocate for dialogue.

To some hawks in the West, President Bidens willingness even to talk to his Russian counterpart was a concession, Mark Galeotti, an analyst of Russian politics and honorary professor at the UCL School of Slavonic and East European Studies in London, wrote in a December 8 opinion article in The Moscow Times.

This is a deeply dangerous contention, as dialogue and diplomacy are precisely at their most valuable with those with whom one disagrees and in times of the greatest tension, he wrote.

Olga Oliker, program director for Europe and Central Asia at the International Crisis Group, wrote on Twitter that her organization believes the U.S. approach in evidence on the Biden-Putin call is on the right track -- make clear to Russia that the repercussions of escalated aggression will be met with a lot of things they don't want, including sanctions and a continued military buildup.

But a sustainable solution is going to require a lot more talking, she wrote.


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Good morning, Bay Area. Its Friday, Dec. 10, and the Bay Area is on storm watch in anticipation of an atmospheric river this weekend. Heres what you need to know to start your day.

More than a dozen attendees of a wedding in Wisconsin came back to the Bay Area infected with COVID-19, including 11 people who work for Kaiser Permanente in the East Bay.

What happened? Did attendees let down their guard on safety precautions? Is it a warning sign of omicrons infectiousness?

Debra Furr-Holden, an epidemiologist and associate dean of public health at Michigan State University, was in attendance and believes she contracted the coronavirus there. She says that even this group of risk-averse and super responsible people could became unwitting virus vectors shows just how vulnerable even vaccinated people remain to the virus, especially when indoors and in groups.

We need to shift the narrative and stop calling this a pandemic of the unvaccinated, Furr-Holden said. It doesnt honor the fact that were seeing more and more breakthrough cases in the vaccinated.

Read more from Julie Johnson.

 These charts show our current COVID trajectories vs. past surges in California and the Bay Area.

 Over the past week, cases have risen 37% in the Bay Area and 29% statewide, according to data analysis by The Chronicle. See latest case rates in our Coronavirus Map.

 How the geography of Californias booster shots differs from early vaccinations.

 AC Transit is the latest public agency to require its staff be vaccinated as a condition of employment.

Parklet recap

Yalonda M. James/The Chronicle

All week, small restaurants have ridden a roller coaster of emotions with San Francisco city officials over the legality of their parklets.

The outdoor dining hubs were legalized over the summer, but restaurant owners say theyre frustrated by an ever-growing list of rules and regulations to follow. Parklets located too close to intersections, for instance, must be torn down or moved. Many restaurants said they would simply tear down their structures rather than keep up with cost-prohibitive fixes.

To make matters more confusing, businesses reported receiving violation notices even after Mayor London Breed promised to delay code enforcement. Now, the mayors office says diners can continue to brunch and sip wine as she prepares legislation to buy businesses time to bring parklets up to code.

Read more from Janelle Bitker.

What to eat

Elena Kadvany/The Chronicle

Epicurean Trader is known for selling specialty groceries in San Franciscos Cow Hollow neighborhood, but its now branching out by opening an all-day cafe. Coming soon to the menu are baguette sandwiches, sourdough bagels and an assortment of tapas.

If you want to know which bars to hit to look trendy, wine critic Esther Mobley suggests keeping an eye out for neon colors, where Instagrammable walls and vibrant cocktails draw in crowds. The other options are ... bars that dont serve alcohol? Thats right, breweries and clubs are adding low-alcohol and nonalcoholic options to their menus, for when you want to wet your whistle while staying sober.

Dont let cold weather keep you from going out for a feast this weekend. Pick comfort food from our Top Italian or Top Korean lists to keep you warm.

Around the Bay

Jessica Christian/The Chronicle

 Storm watch: An atmospheric river is forecast to drench the Bay Area and Central Coast this weekend, with the possibility of bringing snow to the Sierra.

 Denial: A father and son arrested on suspicion of starting the Caldor Fire near Tahoe were just enjoying the forest, their attorney said.

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.

 Grisly scene: Rescue swimmers pulled a body from the water near San Franciscos China Beach on Thursday afternoon.

 Cold case: A Contra Costa County woman was drowned in a restaurant bathroom in 1996. DNA helped detectives link to a potential killer.

 Housing news: Despite neighborhood activists pleas to delay a seven-story affordable housing complex in the Sunset, a judge has ruled the Irving Street project can continue.

 City Hall corruption: A program to allow contractors to pledge community benefits for bonus points in winning city contracts was vulnerable to abuse, according to an audit.

 Star studded: The Geminid meteor shower peaks Monday. Heres how to get the best view in the Bay Area.

 A tale of two Dickens fairs: Cast members of the Cow Palace Christmas tradition sit down with Fifth and Mission host Cecilia Lei to talk about what they say is a lack of inclusivity at the fair.

Berkeley Brutalism

Jessica Christian/The Chronicle

Breathe new life into the old Berkeley Art Museum, and it births a biotech startup incubator.

One of the Bay Areas most notable Brutalist structures, the building once home to art exhibitions is now bedazzled with concrete balconies and brilliant skylights bringing outside light to businesses trying to get off the ground.

Browse through photographer Jessica Christian and urban design critic John Kings take on Bakar BioEnginuity Hubs new digs.

Bay Briefing is written by Gwendolyn Wu and sent to readers email inboxes on weekday mornings. Sign up for the newsletter here, and contact the writer at gwendolyn.wu@sfchronicle.com.
Staff at California College of the Arts in Oakland and San Francisco voted this week to authorize a strike at both campuses  the latest in a string of labor disputes at colleges and universities, in the Bay Area and nationally.

Folks are very fired up about it, Jennie Smith-Camejo, a spokesperson for the union representing CCA staff, told The Chronicle.

Anger over low wages, lack of job security and allegations of unfair labor practices prompted 97% of voting union members to approve the strike, which had no set date but could be early next year, Smith-Camejo said. Roughly 110 staff members would walk out from the two campuses, ranging from librarians to admissions officers to studio managers.

A majority of adjunct professors, who have a separate bargaining unit in the union, would likely honor the picket line, Smith-Camejo said.

She pointed to shifting working conditions as the main trigger for the strike vote.

Over the past two years, college administrators made sudden, sweeping changes to the job duties and pay of bargaining employees, according to Service Employees International Union Local 1021, the union that represents them. Among the people affected was the CCA staff union president, Matt Kennedy, who was furloughed for a year during the pandemic, then offered a new position with a lower salary.

Ive been at the college for 10 years, and Ive had nothing but stellar performance reviews, Kennedy said, noting that he was blindsided by the change, which he said feels like a demotion.

David Owens-Hill, a spokesperson for the college, said that the CCA and union bargaining teams have met 25 times since negotiations began in late 2019, and that these talks are still active.

Progress has continued despite the disruptions of the pandemic, Owens-Hill said. It is the colleges position that bargaining is best done at the negotiating table, and we are confident that the agreement we have reached on many proposals, as well as the progress on other items, will lead to a fair, mutually beneficial first collective bargaining agreement between CCA and its represented staff.

Some of the tension between unionized workers and management centered on the configuration of classes during the COVID-19 lockdown. While the school closed laboratories and other campus facilities, held classes virtually and furloughed staff, administrators did not offer breaks in tuition and required students to live for two years in campus housing even as they attended class via videoconference, union representatives said.

The employees voted to form their union with SEIU 1021 in 2019 and started the bargaining process in October of that year. More than two years later, they do not have a contract.

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.

Were asking for them to start taking this process seriously, Kennedy said.

Their standoff with the administration comes roughly a month after the University of California narrowly averted a strike by lecturers that would have emptied thousands of classrooms across the state.

Instead, the two sides agreed to a new five-year contract that saved the lecturers and other nontenured employees from having to apply for their jobs each year for the first five years.

If CCA employees carry out their strike, it will be the first such action at a private arts college since 2012, Smith-Camejo said.

Rachel Swan is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: rswan@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @rachelswan
A Catholic church in San Francisco pushed back a visit from Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone scheduled for a Dec. 19 Mass after he recently revealed that hes unvaccinated.

Pastor and Jesuit father George Williams informed the parish of St. Agnes Catholic Church in the Haight of the decision in a church bulletin last weekend. He wrote that he had called the archbishop and asked him to reschedule his visit for a later time because many people in the parish had expressed concern about this. Williams did not specify a later date for a visit.

I feel it is important that everyone feel safe, and we all do our part to prevent the spread of COVID19, especially now with the new Omicron Variant. These are stressful times enough and I felt his pastoral visit to us would be overshadowed by concerns about the pandemic, Williams wrote in the bulletin. I urge anyone in our parish who has not yet been vaccinated to do so. Pope Francis said, Getting vaccinated is a simple yet profound way to care for one another, especially the most vulnerable.

Williams didnt immediately return a request for comment.

The recent turn of events is just the latest pandemic dust-up to hit the diocese. Last year, Cordileone protested public health orders that restricted indoor church gatherings and considered taking legal action to open churches. At least one parish closed for a time during the pandemic because of an outbreak. A North Beach church hosted a wedding in early July that appeared to violate health orders, after which at least 10 attendees tested positive for the coronavirus, including the newlywed couple.

Health care decisions are a very personal matter, the Archdiocese of San Francisco said. Archbishop Cordileone has every confidence in Father Williams ability to know his people well, and respond to their sensitivities with compassion.

Cordileone told The Chronicle last week that he hasnt been vaccinated yet, but Im not an anti-vaxxer. He said that his immune system is strong and that his personal physician told him its probably not necessary for me to be vaccinated.

UC Berkeley infectious disease expert John Swartzberg said that he was shocked and very disappointed to hear the archibshop is unvaccinated, but he was relieved to hear that St. Agnes had postponed the Mass.

I think that (the church) did the loving thing that any religious organization should do and that is to protect their parishioners, said Swartzberg, adding that he does not let anyone who is unvaccinated into his home. Why would you invite somebody (unvaccinated)  just because hes the archbishop  to come into your church?

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.

Medical experts recommend the vaccine for everyone whos eligible for the shots, saying it not only protects the individual from severe illness and hospitalization, but also helps the medically vulnerable, including the immunocompromised, for whom vaccines tend to be less effective, and very young children who are not yet approved for inoculation. For a 65-year-old like Cordileone, the risk of severe COVID and death is elevated.

Cordileone previously said the vaccines were morally acceptable and encouraged vaccination.

Staff writers Joe Garofoli and Annie Vainshtein contributed to this report.

Mallory Moench is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: mallory.moench@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @mallorymoench
More than 200 people gathered at San Jose Civic Center Thursday to honor the life and legacy of Kevin Nishita,a former Bay Area police officer who died in late November after being shot while working as a security guard protecting a TV news crew in Oakland.

By 11 a.m., dozens of uniformed police officers from departments across the Bay Area region gathered beneath the waving American, California and San Jose city flags draped from the center in downtown San Jose. The centers iconic marquee read, In Honor of Kevin Nishita 1965-2021.

Nishita, a veteran police officer who served in multiple police agencies around the Bay Area and was working as a private guard with Star Protection Agency, had been assigned on Nov. 24 to protect a KRON-TV journalist reporting on the recent burglary of a clothing store on 14th Street. Nishita and the reporter were standing outside the store when a group of men tried to steal the television camera. Nishita was shot in the abdomen and died from his injuries days later.

Police officers and loved ones embraced, some flanking each another as they walked into the auditorium, where wreaths dotted the stage with a traditional Buddhist altar at center stage. People in the audience bowed their heads, closing their eyes while the Rev. Yushi Mukojima chanted as part of a traditional Buddhist ceremony, with only Mukojimas voice filling the auditorium. Half a dozen of Nishitas family members joined Mukojima onstage during an incense-burning ceremony, each bowing before the altar.

Jim Gensheimer/Special to The Chronicle

During speeches and eulogies, former colleagues and relatives described Nishita as a compassionate, patient person who moved with bouncy, positive energy at work and at home. San Jose Police Chief Anthony Mata said Nishita was so full of energy that he was nicknamed by friends the Energizer Bunny. He was a dedicated member of the Mountain View Buddhist Temple and will be remembered for having a huge heart and always seeing the good in others, Mata said.

Mata said Nishitas decades-long career in law enforcement included positions with the Oakland Housing Authority Police Department, Hayward Police Department, San Jose Police Department and Colma Police Department, before he took a job as a security guard after retirement, continuing to protect others the only way he knew.

Mata said he first met Nishita while they were both in the San Jose Police Investigations Bureau. Mata recalled how Nishita handed him reports, adding to chuckles from the crowd, I have to say that was some of the best handwriting I have ever seen.

Enrique Serrano, Nishitas stepson, told the crowd that Nishita never lectured me about working hard, having goals or sacrificing for family, but I still learned that from him.

I hope he knows that I was paying attention when he finished that double shift, and as soon as he gets home, he offers to cook my favorite meal, Serrano added. I hope he knows that I admired his dedication watching him work full time and still make the time to study and advance his career. I hope he knows that Im a better man because of him.

Commander Sherwin Lum, who worked with Nishita at the Colma Police Department from 2012 to 2018, described Nishita as his friend and confidant. Nicknamed Turbo, Nishita was a fast-paced officer who took time to volunteer in the community in an effort to connect with local residents. His sense of humor helped his colleagues get through long shifts, Lum said.

You always knew when he was coming or going because you could hear his feet briskly moving about the station  as if he were on his way to a never-ending Code 3 emergency call, Lum said to laughs from the audience.

Nishita always had a good gauge of the morale of the Colma Police Department, Lum said, frequently coming up with ideas to resolve issues and serving as a mentor to other officers. Lum jokingly described himself and Nishita as being vertically challenged, with Nishita being 5 feet 3 inches tall and Lum being 5 feet 5 inches.

But make no mistake, Kevin didnt let his size or stature hinder him from carrying out his duties as a police officer or security guard, Lum said. He was a warrior and he had the heart of a lion.

Lum described one incident when the two men responded to a local disturbance that led to an all-out physical brawl involving about 20 to 30intoxicated men. It wasnt until later, Lum said, that he reviewed video footage that showed Nishita jumping right into the angry mob and get pushed around by the group of much larger men.

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.

Jim Gensheimer/Special to The Chronicle

When I watched the video, it showed him getting bounced around by what looked like a pack of wild dogs pawing and swiping at him. Kevin held his ground  and managed to break the fight up, Lum said.

He proved to all of us one last time how brave he truly was when he protected that news crew on that fateful 24th day of November, Lum said.

Television teams and other journalists, particularly photojournalists carrying cameras and other photo equipment, have been the target of violent robberies in the Bay Area in recent years.

Jeffrey Sato, 64, was one of many members of the regional Buddhist community lining the lobby walls who invited attendees to write notes of condolences and sympathy and offer money to Nishitas family. Sato  a retired police officer with Mountain View Police Department and member of Mountain View Buddhist Temple  said the offerings are part of the Japanese Koden tradition, which involves assisting families with funeral costs and other expenses.

We want to be there to support the family and friends in this time of their shock, Sato said. From my background, its doubly to show respect to a fellow retiree of law enforcement because we all kind of think, Gee, that could be me. The idea that now youre retired, everythings fine and youre safe and you made it through retirement, and sometimes it doesnt end.

Nishita is survived by his wife, two children and grandchildren.

Lauren Hernandez is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: lauren.hernandez@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @ByLHernandez
The parents of a man who hanged himself in a San Francisco jail in January are suing the city and jail medical officers, saying they ignored clear signs that he was mentally ill and suicidal and kept him in solitary confinement for most of his final months, with virtually no monitoring or treatment.

Jail staff, including its chief medical officer, knew or had reason to know (Markwhan Kitcher-Tucker) was suffering from serious psychiatric illnesses and consistently at a high risk of suicide, and were deliberately indifferent, the familys lawyers said in a suit filed Wednesday in federal court.

Kitcher-Tucker, who had been a graphic art designer, was 28 at the time of his death, the suit said. He was arrested in April 2020 on suspicion of multiple thefts and was held at San Franciscos jail in San Bruno. After he was seen behaving oddly a month later, the suit said, the medical staff learned he had been diagnosed with schizophrenia and hospitalized twice by court order in the previous year, but they did not prepare a treatment plan.

After Kitcher-Tucker was heard making suicidal statements and seen yelling and banging on his cell, with food and garbage strewn on the floor, a psychiatrist found him incompetent to stand trial in August 2020, the suit said, adding that the jails response was to transfer him to a solitary cell, with no treatment plan. Apart from brief placements in a monitored safety cell, the suit said, he remained in solitary confinement for the rest of his time in jail.

After Kitcher-Tucker was found naked and shouting in his cell a month later, the lawyers said, he was sent to San Francisco General Hospital for four days of treatment, then returned to the jail cell. He refused to take the medication he had been given, and officers and staff did not intervene, the suit said.

His mother, Latoya Brooks, posted a $2,500 bond to free him on bail in November 2020. But Superior Court Judge Charles Crompton, who had previously agreed that Kitcher-Tucker was mentally incompetent, said two days later that he should be returned to the hospital and medicated, the suit said. But Kitcher-Tucker was not hospitalized, for reasons not stated in the suit, and Crompton ordered him returned to jail.

He remained in the solitary cell, with no medication, until Jan. 10, when he was found hanging from a sheet tied to the top bunk of his bed, the suit said.

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.

Defendants in the suit include the jails medical director, Dr. Loren Roth. The parents lawyers said Roth refused to continue Kitcher-Tuckers prescription for anti-psychotic medication, or order heightened monitoring or suicide-prevention measures for the inmate.

The suit accuses the city and its officers of violating Kitcher-Tuckers rights to be free from an unreasonable ongoing seizure and to medical treatment. In addition to damages, the suit seeks court orders requiring improved staff training and treatment of mentally ill inmates.

Asked to comment, Jen Kwart, spokesperson for City Attorney David Chiu, said, The city is committed to providing a safe environment in our jails. The plaintiffs filed this matter in court, and that is where we will address it.

Bob Egelko is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: begelko@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @BobEgelko
After Tani Cantil-Sakauye became the 28th chief justice of the California Supreme Court, she learned that a computer research engine the court used for online judicial education was named Serranus, after its first chief justice.

Thats Serranus Hastings, the 19th century land baron who went on to become state attorney general, founder of the University of Californias first law school, and, most notoriously, the financier and mastermind of a three-year campaign to displace, enslave and slaughter Native Americans in Mendocino County.

His name had been attached to the computer devices for decades, with little attention, until it was reported to Cantil-Sakauye and the state Judicial Council in 2015 by a group of tribal court and state court leaders that had been established to look into issues of mutual concern, said Peter Allen, a spokesperson for the court.

At that point, I said, We have to change that name, the chief justice said Thursday when asked about the incident at her annual meeting with legal reporters. The research engine was soon renamed the Judicial Resource Network.

Were the judiciary. This is a place where we need to be neutral, said Cantil-Sakauye, who was appointed to the court by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in 2011. Names of things can sometimes end up tainting the work we do here.

Since then, she said, the Judicial Council has removed others names from awards it gives to members of the legal community, to direct the focus to the award and the person receiving it.

Hastings, a former congressman and Iowa chief justice, was chosen as Californias initial chief justice by the new state Legislature in December 1849 and served for two years until he was elected state attorney general. After leaving office in 1854, he became a real estate investor and used part of his resulting wealth in 1878 to establish a law school in San Francisco that, by state law, was to forever be known and designated as the Hastings College of the Law.

Hastings was also the first dean of the law school, whose alumni include Vice President Kamala Harris and former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown.

But forever entered its final days last month when the UC Hastings board of directors voted unanimously to work with state lawmakers to change the schools name because of its namesakes role in the persecution and mass killing of American Indians.

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.

Hastings asked Californias governor in 1859 to remove Native Americans from areas of Mendocino County to make room for white settlers. When Gov. John Weller failed to satisfy him, Hastings financed a three-year campaign that became known as the Round Valley Settler Massacres, in which more than 1,000 members of the Yuki Tribe and other tribes were killed. Some survivors were enslaved.

Sen. Scott Wiener, D-San Francisco, is planning legislation to rename the law school.

Bob Egelko is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: begelko@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @BobEgelko

Correction: An earlier version of this story misidentified the governing board that voted to work with state lawmakers to change the name of UC Hastings College of Law. It was the UC Hastings board of directors.
PLACERVILLE, El Dorado County  The father and son accused of starting the massive Caldor Fire that left the tiny town of Grizzly Flats in ashes and threatened South Lake Tahoe pleaded not guilty to arson charges in El Dorado County Superior Court on Friday.

David Smith, 66, of Somerset and Travis Shane Smith, 32, of Folsom were arrested Wednesday on suspicion of reckless arson, meaning the men are not accused of intentionally sparking the fire but engaging in some form of careless behavior that caused the ignition.

Both men entered their pleas remotely from the El Dorado County Jail in Placerville, as a video of them sitting side by side in orange jail jumpsuits was displayed on a courtroom screen. They did not speak other than to verify the pleas entered by their attorneys.

Their Sacramento attorneys have said that the two men are innocent and had called 911 to report the start of the fire in a canyon near the Omo Ranch area in a rural corner of southwestern El Dorado County on Aug. 14. Investigators began focusing their attention on the Smiths shortly after the blaze began.

My client and his son, the family, they all live in this community, said Linda Parisi, a Sacramento attorney representing David Smith. They are completely innocent. They had no intention or involvement of any starting of a fire. This is their home.

Mark Reichel, an attorney representing Travis Smith, told The Chronicle on Thursday that the two men were simply enjoying the forest like everyone else does and had nothing to do with starting the fire. The men merely saw the flames and called 911, he said. Like the Smiths, Reichel appeared in the basement courtroom in Placerville on Friday via video.

The men also face felony weapons charges, according to court records: Travis Smith was charged with illegally converting a firearm into a machine gun and both men were charged with unlawfully possessing a firearm. It is not clear whether there is a relationship between the firearms and arson charges.

Parisi said she still knows nothing about the evidence or any motive the district attorney has in the case but has been promised information, possibly as soon as Friday

I have no idea what the prosecutions theory is as to how the fire was started, she said.

The District Attorneys Office said it has evidence the men started the fire but hasnt disclosed it publicly. The men continue to be held on $1 million bail each, which will be reconsidered in a Monday court hearing in Placerville.

The Caldor Fire, which grew into the third-largest in California in 2021, destroyed about two-thirds of the more than 600 homes in Grizzly Flats and leveled a church, the post office, the school and even the fire station.

Fire Tracker Follow wildfires across the state Latest updates on wildfires burning across Northern and Southern California

The fast-moving fire continued to move northeast, following Highway 50, burning through Sierra at Tahoe ski resort and the nearby Phillips housing tract and then spreading over Echo Summit and into the Tahoe Basin. South Lake Tahoe was evacuated, but firefighters contained the flames before they reached the lake and prevented them from destroying any houses in the basin.

A statement from the District Attorneys Office said that the reckless arson caused inhabited properties to burn and resulted in great bodily injury to multiple victims.

The conflagration consumed 221,835 acres in El Dorado, Amador and Alpine counties; destroyed 1,003 buildings; and injured five people before it was fully contained 67 days later.

Michael Cabanatuan is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: mcabanatuan@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @ctuan
Investigators probing the cause of this past summers massive Caldor Fire near Lake Tahoe began focusing their attention on father and son David and Travis Shane Smith as soon as a few days after the blaze began.

The two men, arrested this week and charged with arson, were spending a warm August afternoon on a remote edge of the Eldorado National Forest north of Highway 88 above the Cosumnes River when the fast-spreading fire broke out in the area.

Their attorney told The Chronicle on Thursday that the two were simply enjoying the forest like everyone else does and had nothing to do with the ignition. The men saw the flames and called 911, their attorney said. David Smith, 66, whose 32-year-old son was visiting from Folsom, lives about 10 miles away in Somerset, a rural part of El Dorado County.

The county district attorneys office, however, says it has evidence to show the men are responsible for the fire. Authorities have so far declined to provide details on how or why the two started it, but on Thursday afternoon they charged each with three counts of reckless arson, with enhancements for causing harm to property, people and law enforcement.

Shane Smith is also charged with a felony crime for allegedly converting a firearm into a machine gun. Authorities did not say whether the gun had anything to do with the fire.

Their arraignment is scheduled for 1 p.m. Friday.

The Caldor Fire became one of this years most devastating infernos. After sparking on Aug. 14, it gutted the mountain community of Grizzly Flats before forcing thousands of people to flee the South Lake Tahoe area as it neared the vacation hot spot. Firefighters halted the burn before it reached the lake, but not before it charred 222,000 acres and destroyed more than 1,000 homes and buildings.

Sacramento-based attorney Mark Reichel says he was contacted by the Smiths not much more than a week after the fire began when the two began getting phone calls from investigators.

At some point they got a little nervous, Reichel said. The phone calls were a little suspicious to them.

Authorities followed up with searches of both David Smiths home and his sons in Folsom, seizing property for the investigation, he said.

They wouldnt tell us what their theory was, Reichel said, noting that even Thursday he didnt know how the district attorney believed they started the forest fire. They were just out there like many other people.

The charges of reckless arson brought against the Smiths suggest that the men did something reckless to ignite the blaze, not that they necessarily meant to start the blaze.

The spot where it was reported was the heavily wooded Omo Ranch area near Sopiago Creek Road, a stretch that isnt much visited, except by off-road vehicles and campers, residents say. Reichel didnt say exactly what his clients were doing there beyond enjoying themselves.

Fire Tracker Follow wildfires across the state Latest updates on wildfires burning across Northern and Southern California

Many who live there have long speculated that the fire was human-caused: perhaps by a campfire, a spark from a car, gunfire or illegal mining.

Even though we never got much information, we anticipated someone being charged, said Thurman Tac Conway, who owns the nearby Conways General Store with his wife, Michele.

Conway, who says he knows most of the people in the sparsely populated community, said he had seen the Smiths vehicles before but didnt know them.

Nearby resident Joaquin Fioresi says he was relieved to hear authorities had made an arrest in the case. While the ignition might not have been intentional, he said, people know not to do something foolish during the heat of summer.

We live in an area where burn piles are a way of life. We burn all the time, Fioresi said. But in August you dont burn. In July you dont burn. In June you dont burn. You just dont mess with fire.

Kurtis Alexander and Rachel Swan are San Francisco Chronicle staff writers. Email: kalexander@sfchronicle.com, rswan@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @kurtisalexander, @rachelswan
On Nov. 30, Fox News reported on the rising rate of killings in Oakland. The outlet reported that the city had lost 127 people to murder this year. Other media outlets reported the same number of deaths, including the Associated Press.

But some other news organizations, including The Chronicle and KCBS, wrote that the city had experienced nine fewer homicides  118 in total  by the end of November.

As any criminologist can tell you, most crime data has substantial flaws. Many crimes, especially most thefts and sexual assaults, are significantly underreported by victims, while others, like shootings, may be underreported by law enforcement. However, crime researchers agree that homicides are the most reliably reported crime: Its hard to miss a body or a missing person.

Because homicide counts tend to be reliable, the discrepancy between news organizations figures may seem perplexing. But the cause turns out to be simple. Homicides and murders are technically two different terms, but news organizations and law enforcement officials have been using them interchangeably to refer to killings in Oakland, spurring confusion and at times contradictory stories.

The term homicide refers to the act of one person killing another. Homicides can include killings that happen accidentally, through negligence or via self-defense. Homicides are not always deemed criminal acts.

A murder, on the other hand, is defined by the FBI as the willful (non-negligent) killing of one human being by another. In its count of criminal homicides, the bureau includes murder and non-negligent manslaughter; that term refers to killings that happen when the killer exhibits gross negligence, such as during the commission of a robbery or other serious criminal act. However, FBI criminal homicide counts (which the agency often refers to simply as murder counts) exclude what the bureau calls justifiable homicides, which include the killing of a person in the act of committing a felony by a private citizen or peace officer in the line of duty.

When The Chronicle reports on killings in Bay Area cities, whether it uses the term murder or homicide, its referring to the narrower definition  what the FBI calls a criminal homicide. Thats because we rely on the FBIs Uniform Crime Reporting System, which collects data on crimes from nearly 18,000 local law enforcement agencies nationwide. Using the FBI criminal homicide definition allows us to consistently track changes to cities homicide rates over time, and compare rates between different cities.

However, the Oakland Police Department counts homicides in two ways in its crime reports. The first is homicides according to Californias Penal Code 187(a). Thats the definition of murder in California law, and it essentially aligns with the FBIs definition of murder, defining it as the unlawful killing of a human being, or a fetus, with malice aforethought. So far this year, Oakland has had 120 murders classified under this definition, according to OPDs latest weekly crime report.

The second type of homicide the OPD counts encompasses all other homicides in the city that arent classified as murders under the 187(a) Penal Code. They include killings that have been deemed justified or accidental, but exclude most traffic fatalities. The city has had nine of those types of homicides so far this year, according to the Police Department.

Nine additional deaths raise the citys death count by 7.5%. That is a significant difference, but some media outlets use these figures interchangeably, potentially providing the public with information that can be misleading, if not directly inaccurate.

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 one example from October, San Franciscos CBS station used the total homicide figure to refer to Oaklands death count for 2021 so far. But it then compared that figure to the citys total murder count for all of 2020. Not only did the station use different definitions for homicides, it also compared two different time periods.

The Chronicle has also been inconsistent, occasionally using the all-homicide figure instead of the murder figure. At least three Chronicle stories from mid-October say the city had experienced 115 homicides by Oct. 21, when that figure refers to all homicides, and the citys murder count by that date was 109.

The Chronicle has since sought to avoid confusion, using the stricter FBI definition in Oaklands homicide and murder counts, just as the newspaper does in San Francisco, Berkeley and San Jose. Last week The Chronicle wrote that Oakland had experienced 120 homicides in 2021  not including nine killings deemed to be in self-defense, accidental or otherwise non-criminal.

Susie Neilson is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: susie.neilson@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @susieneilson
The death of Mario Gonzalez Arenales, a 26-year-old man whose fatal encounter with Alameda police in April became a flash point in a national debate, resulted from the toxic effects of methamphetamine, combined with the physiological stress of restraint by officers and other underlying conditions, according to the Alameda County coroner.

In an autopsy report released Friday, chief forensic pathologist Vivian Snyder categorized Gonzalezs death as a homicide, while citing other factors, including methamphetamine abuse, alcoholism and morbid obesity.

The emphasis on Gonzalezs drug history incensed an attorney representing the deceased mans son, who accused the coroner of trying to shield the police from scrutiny.

Police Chief Nishant Joshi extended condolences to Gonzalezs family in a statement. I know they are already suffering the severe trauma of losing a loved one, Joshi said. The new information being released adds to that pain.

Officers confronted Gonzalez  whose legal name, in the report, is Mario Gonzalez Arenales  at a small park on the morning of April 19, after receiving two calls, the first from a nearby resident who said a man was muttering to himself outside the front gate of his house. The second caller said Gonzalez was lingering in Scout Park at the corner of Oak and Powell streets, with what the caller suspected were stolen bottles of alcohol.

Alameda Officer Eric McKinley spoke to Gonzalez for nine minutes before he and two other officers tried to arrest him, with help from a civilian parking employee. Body camera footage shows the police restraining Gonzalez for five minutes, at which point he went limp.

Paramedics rushed him to Alameda Hospital, where he arrived in cardiac arrest, not breathing, with no pulse, according to the report. Doctors pronounced Gonzalez dead at 11:45 a.m., the autopsy report said.

In their initial public statements, Alameda police described Gonzalezs death as a medical emergency. Grieving family members invoked George Floyd, the Minneapolis man whose murder by a former police officer set off a national reckoning over police violence against people of color. Four days after the incident, city officials hired Louise Renne of the Renne Public Law Group in San Francisco to launch an independent investigation.

Separately, the Police Department is conducting an internal affairs probe into the altercation, and the district attorney is reviewing the case to determine whether to file criminal charges.

Family members said Gonzalez had no known health conditions and have previously contended that he did not die from medical complications.

Michael Haddad, an attorney representing Gonzalez and his young son, who is also named Mario, said he didnt need an autopsy to deduce that Gonzalezs death was a homicide, or that the police restraint was a factor. But he questioned the coroners finding that methamphetamine was the main cause of Gonzalezs death.

Toxicology exams found methamphetamine and amphetamine in Gonzalezs body, the effects of which were aggravated by the stress of his altercation with the officers, the autopsy report said. During the encounter, Gonzalez remained in a prone position with pressure applied to his posterior torso and legs, the report said.

Examiners also detected ethanol in Gonzalezs system and found signs of alcoholism and obesity, including an enlarged and dilated heart and an enlarged liver with severe fatty change. He also had multiple rib fractures and a liver laceration, consistent with injuries people sometimes suffer when doctors attempt to resuscitate them through CPR. His face had minor abrasions.

Im concerned that the sheriff-coroner is trying to protect the Alameda police, Haddad said, arguing that methamphetamine was a false cause of death because the amount in Gonzalezs system  907 nanograms per milliliter of blood  was far too low to cause someone to suddenly drop dead.

Haddad said his firm has hired a doctor to conduct a second autopsy, the results of which have not yet been finalized.

A spokesperson for the sheriff, Lt. Ray Kelly, said the office stands by the corners report.

A tremendous amount work went into this investigation by our pathologist and coroners investigative team, Kelly said. Its peer-reviewed. We believe it is an accurate and very comprehensive conclusion in the death of Mario Gonzalez.

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.

To Alison Berry Wilkinson, the lawyer representing the three officers and civilian parking employee, the report seemed to confirm that her clients were justified in detaining and arresting Gonzalez.

He was highly intoxicated in a public place, in a manner where he was unable to care for himself, Berry Wilkinson said. He fought the officers, and they used reasonable techniques. This, in our view, is an unintended, unexpected death from the use of ... proper training and accepted techniques in the law enforcement industry.

The three police officers and the civilian employee are on administrative leave.

Based on the totality of available information, including investigative, autopsy, and laboratory findings, it is apparent that Mr. Gonzalez Arenales experienced cardiopulmonary arrest because of multiple factors, the report said.

The methamphetamine detected in his blood combined with his enlarged and dilated heart could have together resulted in fatal cardiac arrhythmia, the report continued.

During the interaction with law enforcement agents, he was face-down on the ground (prone) with his hands handcuffed behind his back, and at times the officers were applying pressure to his torso and legs with at least some of the weight of their bodies. The stress of the altercation and restraint combined with prone positioning in the setting of morbid obesity and recent use of methamphetamine placed further strain on Mr. Gonzalez Arenales heart.

Therefore, the report concludes, the cause of death is the toxic effects of methamphetamine, with the physiologic stress of altercation and restraint, morbid obesity, and alcoholism contributing to the process of dying.

Rachel Swan is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: rswan@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @rachelswan
This time last year, the worst COVID-19 surge of the pandemic was in full force in the Bay Area and California, with cases rising sharply each day. This summer, Californians saw another wave of cases as the delta variant tore through the country.

Now, coronavirus case rates have risen 37% in the Bay Area and 30% statewide just in the past week, according to data analysis by The Chronicle. Though they are still less than one-third of their levels one year ago, the highly mutated omicron variant is raising concerns worldwide  and while only a handful of omicron cases have surfaced in the state, experts say more are sure to follow soon.

So what can the two previous coronavirus curves tell us about whether we will see another surge? And if we do, what will it look like?

Experts say that the larger pandemic picture has been different for each surge, resulting in different trajectories  much steeper and higher last winter before vaccinations were widespread, and less severe during the summer when the highly transmissible delta variant struck but vaccination rates were much higher.

And a new possible surge, even with omicron injecting uncertainty into the mix, would likely be tempered still further by progress in COVID-19 vaccinations and treatment, experts say  giving them hope that this curve will be flatter, resulting in fewer hospitalizations and deaths.

The recent increase in cases isnt surprising, UCSF infectious disease expert Dr. Peter Chin-Hong said, following increased travel and holiday gatherings, with the delta variant still circulating as the dominant coronavirus strain.

Weve seen it before, but the curve will hopefully be flatter this year, Chin-Hong said.

While cases may rise, he said, hospitalizations are unlikely to follow suit, kept in check by high-vaccination and increasing booster rates, compared to last year.

COVID-19 vaccinations are now widely available, with 69% of the eligible state population fully vaccinated. In late October, the Pfizer vaccine was approved for children 5 to 11. Boosters are available for all adults, and the Food and Drug Administration just authorized them for 16- to 17-year-olds.

Additionally, monoclonal antibodies are now available, with two new COVID treatment pills on the verge of approval.

What this means is that we are in better shape ... to keep people from going to the hospital and from dying even if they get infected, Chin-Hong said.

The winter 2020 surge in the Bay Area and statewide was marked by a homegrown California variant, which was about 20% more transmissible than the original strain, spreading during the infancy of the vaccine rollout. Hospitalizations reached nearly 22,000, overwhelming the states health facilities.

Clearly there was a big spike fueled by a non-immune population, said Dr. George Rutherford, an infectious disease expert at UCSF.

Fast-forward to the early summer, after cases plummeted and continued a descent to early pandemic levels, many people had been fully vaccinated, and the country was relishing the hot vax summer. At that time, the highly infectious delta variant began its takeover of unvaccinated pockets and increased the prevalence of breakthrough cases among vaccinated people.

Still, case rates for both California and the Bay Area were far lower than the winter surge levels, with much flatter and wider curves.

Vaccines, vaccines and vaccines helped us weather the delta surge, Chin-Hong said. Not only vaccines in general, but generally high uptake in the most populous areas in the state, and the availability of vaccines for adolescents eventually.

Chin-Hong said the curves were much steeper in many less-vaccinated countries.

Rutherford said the Bay Areas numbers, while they fluctuated and experienced small spikes, were reliably small. The amplitude was shorter and slower, taking less time to return to baseline.

But could the omicron variant throw a wrench in everything? Or could we see a less intense curve, especially in the Bay Area, with its higher vaccination rates and general compliance with COVID measures, including an indoor mask mandate still intact in most counties?

Chin-Hong said cases and hospitalizations will likely increase, but nothing remotely close to what happened last year.

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.

This will mainly be due to delta first, he said. Omicron will become dominant eventually, and we will see lots of breakthrough infections, potentially, but not a lot of people going to the hospital, particularly if (theyre) vaccinated and boosted.

More than 200,000 vaccine doses a day are being administered in California, which Rutherford suspects are mostly boosters and vaccinations of children. That, plus continued mask mandates, should blunt the amount of transmission, he said.

He said while the current case trajectory is increasing, its not wildly out of control, and the news that a third dose of Pfizer offers strong protection against the omicron variant is promising.

Hospitalizations and deaths are key metrics to watch closely, experts said. They have declined overall and continue to remain very low for the vaccinated population, Chin-Hong said.

An increase in case rates lead to mayhem and anxiety, missed days at work and school and rounds of testing and quarantining which cannot be underestimated, he said. However, as long as people are not getting very ill and our hospitals can keep up with the folks who do, I will be very happy.

Though early data so far indicates omicron may cause milder disease, much is still to be learned about the variant. Though he called it unlikely, Chin-Hong said what could really make the situation go south is if fully vaccinated and boosted individuals start being hospitalized in large numbers.

This will be a rallying call for a tweak on the vaccine and a whole round of additional shots, he said. I dont think that will happen, however.

Rutherford said leading up to the spring, many variables will influence the virus trajectory. They include the rate of pediatric vaccinations, whether vaccine immunity will wane again, and how susceptible other variants are to the vaccine.

The best-case scenario, he said, is that COVID-19 becomes endemic, and we will just need a reformulated booster each year.

Im thinking omicron really might replace delta with a milder form, he said. Thats totally speculative, wishful thinking. ... But if that is indeed the case, by spring we may be able to walk away from this.

Kellie Hwang is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: kellie.hwang@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @KellieHwang
Most if not all of the guests wore masks when the Nov. 27 wedding ceremony started at a Wisconsin celebration that is now the suspected origin of an outbreak of COVID-19 and the omicron variant among Kaiser Permanentes Oakland Medical Center staff, according to an attendee.

But as the celebration wore on, the cocktails came out and people took to the dance floor, many leaving their masks behind, said Debra Furr-Holden, an epidemiologist and associate dean of public health at Michigan State University, who was in attendance and believes she contracted the coronavirus there.

Furr-Holden said the revelation that even this group of risk-averse and super responsible people could have let their guard down enough to become unwitting vectors of COVID-19 shows just how vulnerable even vaccinated people remain to the virus when indoors and in groups.

We need to shift the narrative and stop calling this a pandemic of the unvaccinated, Furr-Holden said. It doesnt honor the fact that were seeing more and more breakthrough cases in the vaccinated.

More than a dozen wedding attendees went home infected with COVID-19, including 11 people who work for Kaiser Permanente in the East Bay. Some went to work before finding out they were infected, causing potential exposure of the virus to a total of 38 other employees and patients at two Oakland hospitals, health officials said.

Six of 12 known cases among East Bay residents who attended the Wisconsin wedding are due to the omicron variant, according to the Alameda County Public Health Department.

Wisconsin public health officials on Dec. 3 announced they were investigating the outbreak but had not yet found any local positive cases among wedding guests. Officials had no updated information about their investigation this week. They said one wedding guest had recently returned from an international trip.

Masks are not required to be worn in public places indoors in Milwaukee, though the citys public health department encourages it.

Kaiser Permanente said 11 of its employees at Oakland Medical Center were infected, and they were all fully vaccinated and had received booster shots. The staffers potentially exposed eight patients plus another eight employees, leading to quarantines and shuffling staff assignments to cover shifts. As of Dec. 8, 13 of those exposed had tested negative.

Kaiser wouldnt provide any further details about the outbreak, such as the department involved or if any additional patients or employees tested positive. Kaiser officials said in a statement that the possible window of exposure was brief and isolated.

The few affected staff members, who are in patient-facing roles, worked briefly prior to being symptomatic or tested and all adhered to COVID-19 infection prevention guidance while in the facility, according to the statement.

At least one of the positive cases also worked at Highland Hospital, where officials have notified staff and begun contact-tracing efforts to ensure no others are infected. Victoria Balladares, director of communications for Highlands parent organization, Alameda Health System, said that 11 other staff members and 11 patients were potentially exposed and none has so far tested positive for COVID-19.

Furr-Holden, who lives in Flint, Mich., serves on the Michigan Coronavirus Task Force on Racial Disparities, the Greater Flint Coronavirus Task Force on Racial Inequity, and a task force convened to promote trust in and access to COVID-19 vaccines among Black residents of New York City. She said she felt confident she could travel safely and was told most of the wedding attendees were vaccinated.

Public health officials in Michigan on Thursday said a first case of omicron had been detected in Kent County. Furr-Holden said she had suspected the variant was already circulating in her state. She provided a sample to a public health laboratory for variant analysis and is waiting for the results.

Omicron has been detected in 25 states so far.

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.

After she got home from the wedding, Furr-Holden said she was already concerned about a scratchy throat when she received a Dec. 1 text message from the bride, a beloved former student of hers, that someone from the wedding had tested positive for COVID-19. Furr-Holden tested positive for the virus the next day.

Furr-Holden said she must have infected her daughter, who has a 3-month-old baby and also tested positive for COVID-19. They spent a week in isolation away from the baby, a heartbreaking but essential measure of protection. The child was cared for by another family member and never developed symptoms.

Furr-Holden said she and her daughter had mild symptoms including a sore throat, headache and fatigue when active.

Thinking back on the wedding, Furr-Holden said she believes the presence of responsible, vaccinated guests provided a false sense of security at a time when the pandemic is exhausting yet not over. She said she kept her mask on apart from eating and drinking and left the reception early, but that clearly wasnt enough.

Furr-Holden commended the bride for quickly notifying guests and said she hoped it would provide caution for others making choices about how to safely socialize.

If I had to do it all over again, I would have sent a nice gift and a loving handwritten card, Furr-Holden said. We just shouldnt be having these large events now. If physicians and public health professionals cant do it, theres just no safe way to do it.

Julie Johnson is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: julie.johnson@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @juliejohnson
Coronavirus case rates in the Bay Area have risen 60% in a week, and are up 49% statewide over that time period, as the winter surge experts have warned about appears to be materializing. Cases of the highly contagious omicron variant of the coronavirus have ticked up to 13 in California more than a week after it was first discovered in San Francisco. Nearly one in five Californians has received a vaccine booster so far, but the initial shots have gone to a different group than the earliest vaccine doses. All AC Transit employees will be required to be vaccinated by a still to-be-determined deadline under a proposal approved by the agencys board of directors Wednesday night.

Latest updates:

Case numbers for new variant rise to 18 in latest tally: A day after reporting 13 cases of the omicron strain in California, state health officials released new figures showing five more. The variant isnt yet a big factor in California, but officials say that could change as they scramble to learn more about it. Most of the cases have been reported among international travelers, but there are signs of it spreading in the community in pockets around the state. So far, the mostly vaccinated patients are suffering only mild illness. Nationwide, at least 75 omicron cases have been reported across 25 states. For up-to-date information on the spread of the coronavirus, see our tracker.

Los Angeles County reports more omicron cases: The Los Angeles County Department of Public Health has confirmed two additional cases of COVID-19 with the omicron variant. One individual is a fully vaccinated but not boosted student with mild symptoms who recently traveled to several countries in Africa. The other unrelated case is a local transmission to a fully vaccinated but unboosted person who has not traveled and is likewise experiencing mild symptoms. Contract tracing for both individuals has identified multiple close contacts, all but one of whom have tested negative. County health official Barbara Ferrer said all indications are that among those fully vaccinated, illness severity if infected with omicron is mild, and urged all eligible residents to be vaccinated and boosted.

Catholic church in S.F. delays visit by unvaccinated Archbishop: The parish of St. Agnes in San Franciscos Haight neighborhood has asked the head of the local Archdiocese, Salvatore Cordileone, to postpone a planned Dec. 19 visit to the church after he revealed recently that he remains unvaccinated against COVID-19. The 65-year-old prelate, who has staked out controversial positions in the past on abortion and same-sex marriage, says he is not an anti-vaxxer. But some members of the congretation were concerned about his visit and asked their pastor to delay it. Read the full story here.

L.A. school district weighs delaying transfer of unvaccinated students online: With close to 87% of the student population vaccinated against COVID-19, the Los Angeles Unified Board of Education said Friday that it plans to meet next week to discuss delaying the transfer of non-compliant students 12 and older to the online independent study program until the beginning of the Fall 2022 semester. That will offer officials more time to promote vaccine education among families that have held out or have difficulty accessing vaccination sites. The science is clear  vaccinations are an essential part of protection against COVID-19, Interim Superintendent Megan K. Reilly said in a statement. Los Angeles Unified applauds the 86.52 percent of students aged 12 and older and their families who are in compliance with the vaccine mandate, and the many other families who are still in the process of adding their vaccine records to the system. This is a major milestone, and theres still more time to get vaccinated!

Im not convinced next Christmas will be different from this Christmas, Wachter says: Speaking in a Twitter Spaces conversation hosted by The Chronicle on Friday, Dr. Robert Wachter said he planned to go ahead with his holiday plans despite the looming threat of the omicron variant. His reasoning? Were going to be living with some version of COVID for years, maybe forever, the chair of the department of medicine at UCSF said. He said people will need to adapt to living with the disease. For Wachter, this year that means flying with an N95 mask, gathering in small groups with people who are vaccinated and boosted and avoiding large crowds. He recommends administering rapid tests to guests as an extra layer of protection before gathering. That may change as omicron becomes more of a player, Wachter said.

Omicron will become dominant in the US by late January, says UCSF expert: Dr. Robert Wachter, chair of the department of medicine at UCSF, said the omicron coronavirus variant will become a major player in the United States by the end of January. Speaking in a Twitter Spaces conversation hosted by The Chronicle, he said his concern about the new variant is moderate to moderately high. He added that new data from the U.K. suggests two doses of vaccine do not provide enough protection, and a third dose will push prevention against severe illness up to about 75%. He said that individuals will have to modify their behavior going into the holidays and winter, especially with delta posing a threat. It means theres going to be a new kid on the block we need to pay attention to. But the old kid is still here, he said.

Omicron displacing delta in the UK, where new cases are doubling daily: British health officials said on Friday that they are holding an emergency meeting after the U.K. government was presented with some very challenging new information about the omicron coronavirus variant. The mutation is rapidly overtaking the delta variant in the country and driving up case numbers. We know that we have the highest number of COVID infections across the United Kingdom recorded today, since 9 January, Michael Gove, the communities secretary, told Sky News. We know that the omicron variant is doubling every two to three days in England, and possibly even faster in Scotland. We knew that 30% of reported cases in London are that variant. And of course, we only identified the omicron variant in this country a fortnight ago. The government is considering imposing new restrictions in an effort to curb the spread of the virus.

First omicron cases in the U.S. mostly in young, vaccinated people, CDC says: In the first week of December, COVID cases attributed to the omicron variant were found in 22 states, mostly in young people who were fully vaccinated, according to a report released Friday by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The CDC released details of 43 cases found in that first week. All but four were under age 65. Twenty of the patients were fully vaccinated and another 14 had also received a booster shot. One person, who was vaccinated, was hospitalized for two days, but all other cases were mild. The CDC cautioned against drawing conclusions about vaccine effectiveness with omicron from one report. Many of the first cases were in young international travelers, who may simply be more likely to be vaccinated.

Booster shot lifts omicron protection to 75% in British study: Researchers with the U.K. Health Security Agency have found a significant drop in the effectiveness of the two-dose Pfizer vaccine against the omicron variant of the coronavirus and a dramatic drop for the Oxford-Astrazeneca vaccine, which is available in Britain but not the U.S. But in an analysis of 581 omicron cases and thousands of delta cases, they found that a third vaccine dose raised the level of protection against the new variant to between 70% and 75%, the BBC reports. Despite the drop in effectiveness, researchers said vaccines still provided good protection against the risk of severe illness requiring hospitalization.

No signs yet that omicron causing more severe illnesses in South Africa: The omicron variant does not appear to be causing more severe cases of COVID-19 in South Africa, where the mutation is believed to have emerged, Reuters reported. Still, COVID-19 hospital admissions are rising in more than half of South Africas nine provinces. Its an early positive sign, but scientists stressed that more time and data were necessary to come to a conclusion about the severity and transmissability of the omicron variant.

New York issues a new indoor mask mandate: Starting next week, face coverings must be worn inside all businesses and venues in New York unless they require proof of full vaccination, Gov. Kathy Hochul said on Friday. We shouldnt have reached the point where we are confronted with a winter surge, especially with the vaccine at our disposal, and I share many New Yorkers frustration that we are not past this pandemic yet, she said.

Santa Clara County reports first case of omicron variant: Santa Clara County health officials said the first omicron variant infection was reported in the county Thursday. The infected person was fully vaccinated, but had not received a booster and had recently returned from domestic travel out of state, health officials said Friday morning. The arrival of an omicron variant case was not unexpected, but county health officials said it was a reminder of the importance of getting booster shots.

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.

WHO wont endorse boosters for general public as poor countries struggle to access vaccines: A World Health Organization advisory group opted again to withhold a broad endorsement for COVID-19 booster shots, citing the enduring difficulties poorer countries have in accessing primary vaccine doses, the Washington Post reported.

Omicron in Oakland: How a Wisconsin wedding with super responsible vaccinated people led to outbreak: Most if not all of the guests wore masks when the Nov. 27 wedding ceremony started at a Wisconsin celebration that is now the suspected origin of an outbreak of COVID-19 and the omicron variant among Kaiser Permanentes Oakland Medical Center staff, according to an attendee. Read the full story here.

Charts show current COVID trajectories vs. past surges in California and the Bay Area: Coronavirus case rates have risen 37% in the Bay Area and 30% statewide just in the past week, according to data analysis by The Chronicle. Though they are still less than one-third of their levels one year ago, the highly mutated omicron variant is raising concerns worldwide  and while only a handful of omicron cases have surfaced in the state, experts say more are sure to follow soon. Read the full story here.

Signs of a surge as case rates in Bay Area, California rise: Coronavirus case rates in the Bay Area have risen 60% in a week, and are up 49% statewide over that time period, as the winter surge experts have warned about appears to be materializing. Hospitalizations are up about 9% in the Bay Area since Thanksgiving, while statewide hospitalizations are up about 11%, according to data analysis by The Chronicle. Read the full story here.

No additional cases linked to S.F. individual with omicron: San Franciscos health department said on Thursday that all close contacts of the city resident with the first confirmed omicron case detected in the U.S. have since tested negative. But officials said they expect more cases to surface soon. Based on evidence of community spread across the nation and recent reports of cases in other Bay Area counties, we know that omicron is here, and many more cases will continue to be detected, the San Francisco Department of Public Health said in a statement to The Chronicle.

All AC Transit employees required to be vaccinated under new mandate: All AC Transit employees will be required to be vaccinated by a still to-be-determined deadline under a proposal approved by the agencys board of directors. Read the full story here.

Yolo County reports first case of omicron variant: The person who contracted the variant is an adult in Sacramento who was fully vaccinated and recently traveled within the U.S. The detection of the potentially highly transmissible Omicron variant is concerning, especially with more people traveling and visiting with friends and family for the holidays, said Dr. Aimee Sisson, Yolo County Public Health Officer. The case was sequenced through UC Davis.

Half Moon Bay becomes latest town to impose vaccine mandate on workers: The coastal community says it will require city staff and contractors to be fully vaccinated  with two Pfizer or Moderna shots, or a single Johnson & Johnson dose  to protect public health and the community, reports the San Mateo Daily Journal. No date has been set for the imposition of the new requirement, which will also apply to the Sheriffs Office and could affect policing in the community if officers or their union push back against the rules. Half Moon Bays requirement would be stricter than that of surrounding San Mateo County, which also offers the option of weekly testing for unvaccinated employees.

FDA authorizes boosters for 16- and 17-year-olds:The U.S. Food and Drug Administration on Thursday expanded booster eligibility to 16- and 17-year-olds for the Pfizer vaccine against COVID-19. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention must now sign off on the recommendation, which Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla called a critical milestone. While new variants, including Omicron, emerge across the globe, we believe that the best way to minimize the spread of COVID-19 and any future variants is getting all eligible people fully vaccinated with the first two-dose series and a booster dose as recommended, he said in a statement.
The Port of San Francisco is releasing its first set of proposals to protect the Embarcadero from earthquakes and sea level rise  and one of them could lead to raising the Ferry Building by several feet.

Much sooner than that  within a decade  parts of the Embarcadero would see deployable barriers to repel the waters that already spill across the roadway during especially high tides. Wharves underneath several existing piers would be retrofitted or replaced. Sand would be stabilized beneath the dike that holds back the bay next to Oracle Park.

These are among 23 early projects being presented Tuesday to the citys Port Commission. Theyre barely a start on what needs to be done long-term, but port officials say theyre essential to begin preparing the 3.5-mile seawall between downtown and the bay for perils that werent known when the barrier was completed a century ago.

Were building a framework of where we need to head, said Elaine Forbes, the ports executive director. This is an effort to start buying down risks.

The commission is being asked to spend $26 million on initial designs of the projects, which together are estimated to cost anywhere from $650 million to $3 billion. This would allow the port to pursue the state and federal funding that could finance changes between Mission Creek and Fishermans Wharf.

The first batch of recommendations focuses more on earthquakes than sea level rise, and for an obvious reason: The threat of a major temblor on the San Andreas Fault is ever-present. Not only could this damage the seawall, which consists of a concrete-topped dike made from rocks dumped onto bay mud, but the sandy landfill behind it could liquefy because of the shaking.

The proposed initiatives take aim at particular vulnerable stretches of shoreline, including:

 The seawall and wharves along Piers 24, 26 and 28, an atmospheric trio nestled below the Bay Bridge, would be retrofitted to reduce the risk of collapse.

 Pier 1, which was restored in 1999 and houses the port and other tenants, could be bolstered with a super frame that would sway during earthquakes in tandem with the mud below.

 The curve of the Embarcadero that extends from the cruise terminal at Pier 27 to Pier 39 would get several seismic upgrades. Some would strengthen piers, while others would ensure that critical infrastructure withstands disruption, such as large pipes that head south from a sewage treatment plant near Pier 35.

 The stretch of the Embarcadero that now is most vulnerable to flooding during king tides and extreme storms, from Pier 5 south past the Ferry Building to Rincon Park, would receive new protection  perhaps with new railings or raised bulkheads or deployable barriers.

The seismic projects are intended to complement longer-term responses to sea level rise. The Pier 1 super frame, for instance, would be designed to allow elevation of the deck and building ... to protect against high water levels in future decades.

Noah Berger/Special to The Chronicle

The most startling early project involves the Ferry Building itself.

The 1898 landmark, an architectural icon marked by a 245-foot clock tower, is a popular destination for its restaurants and shops. Along the waters edge, recently built ferry slips will be vital connections into and out of San Francisco if an earthquake shuts down bridges or major roadways.

Its a building that people love, and a building thats a workhorse in disaster response, Forbes said.

But the classical icon also sits on 5,000 wooden piles that were driven into soft mud thats more than 100 feet deep. The concrete retaining wall along the water has endured two major earthquakes and the construction of the BART tube directly below.

Port consultants say the substructure needs to be improved  no easy task given the location and the buildings heft. Because of this, the port wants to spend two years crafting engineering models to test both strengthening concepts and longer-range adaptation strategies which may include raising the building and installing a new seawall.

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.

How this might be done, if it can be done at all, isnt yet known. Thats the aim of the modeling.

Noah Berger/Special to The Chronicle

Other proposed projects are relatively straightforward, such as strengthening a weak link in the seawall next to the Giants ballpark on China Basin. The dike is stable. The sand that it rests on is not.

Its a unique spot, Steven Reel, deputy director of engineering for the ports Waterfront Resilience Program, said of the stretch between Oracle Park and the South Beach Marina. Drilling thin deep holes into the sand and then injecting them with grout would stiffen the sandy fill.

If the task of preparing for an unknown future is challenging, so is finding the money.

Design work would be financed from $425 million in bonds that San Francisco voters approved in 2018 to prepare the Embarcadero shoreline for earthquakes plus rising tides that are projected by the state to likely climb 3.5 feet between now and 2100. Some portions of the seawall might need to be raised as much as 7 feet, the port said last month  an aspect of adaptation not touched on in the first batch of proposed projects.

Using the proposed $26 million for design development, the port hopes to prepare shovel-ready projects that can then be used to lure additional funding.

Assuming the Port Commission gives its OK, the first projects to be pushed forward could be decided on by next fall.

With any program, theres a rolling decision process in determining what to push forward for possible funding, Reel said. All the grant opportunities that come up, you need to know what youre going to do.

John King is The San Francisco Chronicles urban design critic. Email: jking@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @johnkingsfchron
San Francisco Fire Department

A man died after being rescued from the cold waters near San Francisco's Lands End on Thursday, fire officials said.

The San Francisco Fire Department said a bystander swam to rescue a man struggling in the water near Eagle's Point just before 3 p.m. and yelled for help. Bystanders called 911 and the fire department and marine units responded with rescue boats and located the victim.
DETROIT (AP)  The CEO of General Motors said Thursday that the automaker learned valuable lessons last year when it stepped in to boost emergency production of ventilators to treat severely ill COVID-19 patients.

The company was able to help a small West Coast ventilator maker start large-scale production in about a month. That gave GM the confidence that it could speed up other tasks, such as bringing electric and other vehicles to market faster, CEO Mary Barra said.

Doing the ventilator project was kind of a game changer from a General Motors perspective, from a culture-change perspective," Barra said in a wide-ranging conversation with members of the Automotive Press Association of Detroit.

Barra said that in the past, the GM management team would have resisted when told they needed to help a company that builds 250 ventilators per month accelerate production to 30,000 in 150 days.

They would have looked at me like I was crazy, she said.

Instead, employees approached the problem as if their loved ones might need the breathing machines and accomplished the goal, Barra said. Still the company was accused by former President Donald Trump of moving too slowly.

In March of last year, GM put hundreds of workers on the project to help Ventec Life Systems of the Seattle area ramp up its production at a time when there were fears that the country would run short of the breathing machines.

GM put up capital and converted an electronics factory in Indiana to help make the ventilators with a speed that one supply chain expert said was lightning fast.

Barra said the company now uses the same approach for its own electric vehicles, software, and partially automated driver-assist systems.

Also at the event, Barra gave a strong hint that Michigan may get an electric vehicle battery factory. When asked if the state has a chance to get a plant, she said discussions are ongoing.

In the not-too-distant future, well be able to answer that question, Barra said, adding that it an announcement would likely come in weeks, not months.

GM has announced plans to build four North American battery factories. Locations of two have been announced, Lordstown, Ohio, and Spring Hill, Tennessee.

Barra also took a mild shot at Tesla and its CEO, Elon Musk. When asked about Musk's criticism of a Biden administration plan to give bigger tax credits to buyers of union-made electric vehicles, she said it's much more difficult to build cars for the broader mass market versus selling luxury vehicles to a slice of buyers.

She said GM's stock is undervalued when compared with Tesla, Rivian, Lucid Motors, all relatively new companies with big market valuations that focus solely on EVs.

Sometimes the iconic, traditional company, even though they're innovating quickly, gets looked at with a different lens, she said.

Barra also said she doesn't think GM will return to having huge stocks of vehicles on dealer lots, now that it has managed through a global computer chip shortage with lower stocks. While there are some customers who want to buy a vehicle immediately, others want to order online and avoid going to a dealership, and GM will serve them both, she said.

Her comments came after the company announced two more steps to make sure it has raw materials for the transition from petroleum to battery power. The company announced a deal with MP Materials to supply rare earth metals and finished magnets for the electric vehicle motors from a new factory to be built in Fort Worth, Texas, starting in 2023.

Its also negotiating what is likely to be a joint venture with Vacuumschmelze (VAC) of Germany to build a U.S. factory to make electric vehicle motor magnets. Production is to start in 2024 and will create hundreds of new jobs the companies said.

The companies didnt announce financial terms of the deals. Shilpan Amin, GMs head of purchasing and supply chain, said it has a parts supply agreement with MP Materials with no GM capital investment. The capital structure of the venture with VAC is still being worked out, but the companies said they would build a plant together.

At present there are no factories in the U.S. equipped for large-scale production of electric vehicle motor magnets, Amin said. MP said 90% of the supply now comes from China.

The moves come as automakers scramble to line up parts supplies for what is expected to be a dramatic shift from internal combustion engines to zero emission electric power during the coming decade. GM, for instance, has a goal of selling only electric passenger vehicles by 2035.
San Francisco County had an outside shot of lifting its indoor mask mandate sometime over the course of the next week.

Under the shared criteria adopted by eight Bay Area counties, a county must remain in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's "moderate tier" for three weeks, have "low and stable" hospitalizations and have 80% of its total population fully vaccinated against COVID-19.

San Francisco entered the "moderate tier" on Nov. 19, and the three-week clock would have ended on Friday. It has a vaccination rate at 79%, and given the number of 5-to-11-year-olds receiving their second doses of the Pfizer vaccine, seems on pace to hit the 80% threshold in the coming days.

But the county was returned to the CDC's "substantial" tier over the weekend and resides there as of Thursday afternoon, once again resetting the three-week clock. San Mateo County and Alameda County were also close to hitting the end of their respective three-week periods this week, but now join SF back in the substantial tier. (Neither San Mateo nor Alameda county is as close to the 80% vaccination threshold, and likely won't hit it for a while. Under the shared criteria, the vaccination requirement will go away on Dec. 29, which is eight weeks after the Food and Drug administration authorized the Pfizer vaccine for children ages 5-11).

With the omicron variant expected to cause an uptick in cases across the Bay Area, it remains unclear when any Bay Area county currently enforcing an indoor mask mandate will be able to lift it.

Marin County had previously used the shared criteria for when to lift mask mandates, but announced earlier this week it would no longer use case rates to set COVID-19 policy.

"We think it's important at this stage to reorient what we're most concerned about, which is severe illness and death," said county health officer Dr. Matt Willis. "Cases are increasingly mild, so we have shifted towards a more benign form of COVID-19 infection and disease based on vaccination rates."

The county has an 85% vaccination rate, but one of the highest case rates in the state because vaccines are not perfectly effective at blocking transmission. The vaccines are highly protective against severe illness and death, and the county has just one patient currently hospitalized with COVID-19, helping spur the policy change.
Two suspects were arrested Wednesday morning in connection with the theft of over $15,000 in power tools and other merchandise from five Bay Area Home Depot stores in the last week, a public information officer with the San Ramon Police Department said.

Police received the call from managers of the Home Depot on Crow Canyon Road in San Ramon just after 7 a.m. on Wednesday morning. According to the police spokesperson, employees were already familiar with the pair of suspects.

They had stolen from enough Home Depots in the Bay Area that they were circulating flyers in the stores, the officer said. One of the employees recognized them as repeat offenders.

Employees monitored the suspects inside while police set up a perimeter in the parking lot. Upon taking the suspects into custody and searching their vehicle, police discovered the pair had stolen an additional $3,000 worth of merchandise from a Brentwood Home Depot the day before.

A 29-year-old suspect from Concord is on parole for weapons and stolen property-related charges, while another 30-year-old suspect from Pittsburg is on felony probation for possession of stolen property, according to a statement from the San Ramon Police Department.

A search of the suspects vehicle revealed narcotics, USPS mailbox keys, stolen mail, fraudulent credit cards and other tools police believe to be stolen, according to the statement. Police also found recent receipts from Home Depot stores in Martinez, Antioch and Pittsburg with transactions placed from the fraudulent credit cards, the spokesperson said.

The news comes in the wake of a recent string of brazen retail thefts in the region, including the robbery of a Louis Vuitton in San Francisco and a Nordstrom in Walnut Creek in the same weekend, while the Safeway on Market Street reportedly opted to cut its hours last month due to off the charts theft. Target made a similar move over the summer, reducing the hours of all of its San Francisco stores, and Walgreens shuttered five additional locations in October citing retail theft, though critics like Sup. Dean Preston questioned the legitimacy of the chains explanation, considering other factors such as a pre-existing business plan to cut costs and increase profits by consolidating stores and shifting customers to online purchases.

The spokesperson for the San Ramon Police Department said they had not seen a huge uptick in shoplifting this year. However, they did note that Home Depot, as well as stores like Sephora, Ulta and Target, are frequently targeted by shoplifters around this time of year.

Certainly around the holidays, its on the rise, the spokesperson said. But weve been pretty fortunate. Just like any city, were dealing with shoplifting, but we havent had smash-and-grabs or larger groups coming in and swiping up merchandise. Were trying to be really visible in our shopping centers.

Police are currently going through stolen mail and other merchandise and are in talks with victims experiencing financial losses, the spokesperson added.
BERLIN (AP)  A Swiss museum to which the late collector Cornelius Gurlitt bequeathed an art trove he amassed at his home said Friday it will relinquish ownership of works where no specific evidence has been found they were looted under Nazi rule, but where research points to conspicuous circumstances.

The reclusive Gurlitt, who died in 2014, had squirreled away more than 1,200 works in his Munich apartment and a further 250 or so at a property in Salzburg, Austria. He inherited much of the collection from his father, an art dealer who traded in works confiscated by the Nazis.
In our modern, fast-paced digital world, companies and brands have been forced to move with the ever-changing business environment. It's become equally important for businesses to create and establish a solid online presence. Being present and visible in the digital space has proved to have an enormous positive impact on business success.

Of the many dos and don'ts of online business, personal branding has singled itself out as one of the most important aspects that you need to be extra careful of. How you portray your brand goes a long way to determining the perception your target market draws from your brand. Many digital marketing or branding experts will agree that consumers want to transact or engage with a well-branded business, as they are not only appealing but also promising from a glance.

Justin Ali is a successful entrepreneur and a digital marketing and branding expert. He is the founder and director of CherryRed, a digital branding, media, and marketing agency. Founding CherryRed was Justin's ambition and desire to service Australian small businesses in finding and executing unique, low-cost strategies to improve their online marketing. CherryRed is an internationally accredited company heavily involved in PR work for corporations, creators, celebrities, personalities, and any other brand that seeks to expand in the digital space. Their main deliverable services include media and press coverage, public image, brand and identity protection, social management, content creation, and technical solutions.

Justin firmly believes that every business deserves an opportunity to showcase its products and services in the digital world. He holds that building a personal brand comes with tons of other benefits that largely contribute to increasing sales. A personal brand can also be significant, opening an array of opportunities either professionally or personally.

According to him, working on a personal brand will significantly help you formulate practical strategies on how best to engage and relate with others. Justin also warns about getting caught up in being a people pleaser. His advice is to remember that you can't be good for everyone constantly, so it is next to impossible to establish a brand that aligns with everyone's interests.

Justin adds that personal branding is essential in promoting an unparalleled work ethic. No one wants to spoil that positive image that wins you clients and partners.

"Being 100% honest and transparent is paramount  cutting through barriers and showing people who I really am allows me to speak to some of the most influential people in the world while staying grounded, whether it's a Fortune 500 company or a local business, treating everyone as equals has been a huge attribute to my success," shares Justin.

A highly ambitious individual, Justin shares goals to scale and grow both as a person and his business. His dream is to push further into the media space, leaning more towards video production for larger businesses. He is attracted to it, and he sees it as something he would want for CherryRed and has been a personal passion for him for many years.
BURLINGTON, Vt. (AP)  Three people were arrested Friday as Burlington police and city officials cleared a homeless encampment in the Vermont city that was ordered closed at the end up October, the mayor's office said.

The office of Mayor Miro Weinberger said social workers and others were on hand Friday morning to offer housing, food and transportation assistance to the six people who were camping at the site off Pine Street.

One person who refused to leave was arrested, as was another who had outstanding warrants. A protestor who chained themselves to a city vehicle was also taken into custody, the city said.

In October, the city began clearing the site on Sears Lane, but until Friday a number of people continued to camp at the site. The city said the campers were continuing the dangerous use of propane appliances, generators and improperly vented stoves.

On Friday officials with the city's Department of Public Works were removing illegal structures, generators and fuel from the site.

Homeless advocates and state officials worked to find alternative living arrangements in October for most of the people who had been living in the area off Pine Street in the south end of the city.

While this action was necessary to protect public health and safety, all that has happened over the course of 2021 at Sears Lane is a reflection of a systemic failure of our housing system and the efforts to end chronic homelessness," Weinberger said in a statement. As a community and as a region, we must and we can find a better way."

Weinberger said that next week his administration will be announcing a series of new housing initiatives to long-term progress towards solving the housing challenge.
SEATTLE (AP)  Two artists are facing federal charges that they faked Native American heritage to sell works at downtown Seattle galleries.

Lewis Anthony Rath, 52, of Maple Falls, and Jerry Chris Van Dyke, 67, also known as Jerry Witten, of Seattle, have been charged separately with violating the Indian Arts and Crafts Act, which prohibits misrepresentation in marketing American Indian or Alaska Native arts and crafts.

The U.S. Attorneys Office said Rath falsely claimed to be a member of the San Carlos Apache Tribe, and Van Dyke falsely claimed membership in the Nez Perce Tribe. The goods included masks, totem poles and pendants sold in 2019 at Ravens Nest Treasure in Pike Place Market and at Ye Olde Curiosity Shop on the waterfront.

By flooding the market with counterfeit Native American art and craftwork, these crimes cheat the consumer, undermine the economic livelihood of Native American artists, and impair Indian culture," Edward Grace, assistant director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Office of Law Enforcement, said in a news release.

Rath and Van Dyke were due to appear in U.S. District Court on Friday afternoon. Their attorneys, federal public defenders Gregory Geist and Vanessa Pai-Thompson, said in an email Friday they did not have any immediate comment on the charges.

Authorities said the investigation began when the Indian Arts and Crafts Board, an Interior Department agency that promotes Native art, received complaints that the two were fraudulently holding themselves out as enrolled tribal members.

Rath is charged with four counts of misrepresentation of Indian-produced goods, which is punishable by up to five years in prison. Van Dyke faces two counts of the same crime.

Rath also faces one misdemeanor count of unlawfully possessing golden eagle parts, and one of unlawfully possessing migratory bird parts.

According to charging documents, an employee of Ye Olde Curiosity Shop, which has been in business for more than a century, told investigators that she wrote an artist biography of Rath based on information he provided about his tribal affiliation.

Matthew Steinbrueck, the owner of Raven's Nest Treasure, told investigators that the artists told him they were tribal members and that he believed them, according to the documents. He said he did not knowingly sell counterfeit Indian products.

I've been doing this on good faith for many years  for more than 30 years, Steinbrueck told The Associated Press on Friday. Our whole mission is to represent authentic Native art. We've had more than 100 authentic Native artists. I've always just taken their word for it.

He said his family had a long appreciation for American Indian culture, dating to when his great-grandfather adopted a tribal member. Steinbrueck's father, Victor Steinbrueck, an architect credited with helping preserve Pike Place Market and Seattle's historic Pioneer Square neighborhood, brought him up to revere Native culture, he said.

Van Dyke told investigators that it was Steinbrueck's idea to represent his work as Native American.

Steinbrueck denied that, saying Van Dyke appeared to be trying to lessen his own culpability. He called Van Dyke a fabulous carver who made art in the style of his wife's Alaska Native tribe, including pendants carved from fossilized mammoth or walrus ivory.

Neither Ye Olde Curiosity Shop nor Raven's Nest has been charged in the case.

Gabriel Galanda, an Indigenous rights attorney in Seattle who belongs to the Round Valley Tribes of Northern California, said that if shops offer products as Native-produced, they should be verifying the heritage of the creators, such as by examining tribal enrollment cards or federal certificates of Indian blood.

There has to be some diligence done by these galleries, Galanda said.
HOUSTON (AP)  Authorities on Friday continued investigating what caused a small plane to crash shortly after taking off from a Houston-area airport, killing the two people on board.

The single-engine aircraft had taken off around 7:30 p.m. Wednesday from West Houston Airport but its wreckage was not found until Thursday afternoon, said Texas Department of Public Safety Sgt. Richard Standifer.
SOFIA, Bulgaria (AP)  The leaders of four Bulgarian parties on Friday said they've agreed to form a centrist-led coalition that would end a months-long political crisis, giving a country beset by economic and health problems its first regular government since April.

The agreement followed lengthy talks between the winner of last months general election, the centrist We Continue the Change (PP) party, two right-leaning parties and a Socialist party.

Combined, the four parties will control 134 seats in Bulgaria's 240-seat parliament, which is set to vote on approving the new government on Monday.

Under the agreement, PP leader Kiril Petkov, 41, will be the coalition's nominee for prime minister, tasked with steering European Union member Bulgaria out of a twin health and economic crisis.

We are moving towards proposing a stable government, which we hope will continue for the next four years, Petkov said.

The Balkan country of 7 million has one of the world's fastest-shrinking populations, the highest income inequality in the EU, and the lowest COVID-19 vaccination rate in the 27-nation bloc.

Petkov and PP co-chair Asen Vasilev, 44, who served as ministers of economics and of finance in the previous caretaker cabinet, have highlighted addressing misuse of state funds in a series of proposed anti-graft actions, which earned them wide public approval.

The two Harvard-educated politicians hope to make transparency, zero tolerance for corruption and reforms to key sectors the keystones of their future government program. During the coalition talks, which were held for the first time in public, it was confirmed that the NATO members foreign policy will remain unchanged.

Bulgaria hasn't had a regular government since April, when the GERB party of three-time prime minister Boyko Borissov was edged out of power.
MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP)  The nations defense secretary and a pioneering social justice activist are among new members inducted Thursday into the Alabama Academy of Honor.

The Academy honors 100 living Alabamians for their accomplishments and service to the state and nation. The ceremony included honorees for 2020 because that years ceremony was postponed because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
CHICAGO (AP)  A jurys guilty verdict that Jussie Smollett faked a racist and homophobic attack isnt the end of legal proceedings for the former Empire actor or others.

Smollett, 39, was convicted Thursday of five counts of disorderly conduct for lying to Chicago police about being the victim of a racist, anti-gay attack near his home in downtown Chicago. He maintains his innocence, and his attorney has said he will appeal the verdict.

While the charges carry a possible sentence of three years in prison, legal experts have said Smollett is unlikely to get prison time for the low-level felonies, and is more likely to be sentenced to probation and ordered to perform community service. Judge James Linn didnt set a sentencing date, but scheduled a Jan. 27 hearing for post-trial motions and said he would schedule sentencing after that.

Meanwhile, lawsuits that were on hold pending the outcome of the criminal case may now move forward. They include a lawsuit the city of Chicago filed against Smollett to recoup over $130,000 it spent investigating what police initially believed was a terrible hate crime.

Here's a look at some remaining cases:

CITY OF CHICAGO VS. SMOLLETT

Chicago sued Smollett in April 2019, after he refused to pay $130,106.15 to reimburse the city for police overtime and other costs spent on the investigation.

The city demanded the payment shortly after the Cook County State's Attorney's office dropped the original charges against Smollett for lying to police about the attack. The move by State's Attorney Kim Foxx infuriated then-Mayor Rahm Emanuel, who lashed out at Smollett for dragging the citys reputation through the mud" and wasting police resources on a hoax.

The lawsuit says the city incurred significant costs investigating the high-profile alleged hate crime, and seeks reimbursement from Smollett for 1,836 hours of police overtime.

A federal judge stayed proceedings pending the outcome of the criminal case after a special prosecutor investigated and new charges were filed against Smollett in February 2020.

In April 2020, U.S. District Court Judge Virginia Kendall also dismissed a countersuit filed by Smollett against the city, former Chicago Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson, detectives on the case and two brothers who told police he recruited them for the fake attack.

His attorneys said Chicago couldnt go after Smollett for the cost of the investigation because the city accepted his $10,000 bail as payment in full in connection with the dismissal of the charges against him when the original charges were dropped in 2019.

Smolletts countersuit also said he was the victim of a malicious prosecution that caused him humiliation and extreme distress. They said Chicago police didnt have probable cause to arrest him for lying based off of unreliable accounts from Abimbola and Olabingo Osundairo, the brothers who testified last week that Smollett paid them $3,500 to help him with the hoax, and because police didnt pursue other evidence.

Kendall said in her ruling that Smollett could refile his suit if he was found not guilty in the criminal case.

In a statement after Thursdays guilty verdict, the citys law department said the decision confirms that the City was correct in suing Smollett.

The City intends to continue to pursue its lawsuit to hold Smollett accountable for his unlawful actions and to demand that he compensate the City for costs incurred by the Chicago Police Department which took his false claims of harm seriously, the statement read.

A status hearing is scheduled for Dec. 16 in U.S. District Court in Chicago.

OSUNDAIRO BROTHERS' LAWSUIT

The Osundairo brothers, who were star witnesses for the prosecution at Smollett's trial, filed their own lawsuit in April 2019 accusing Smollett's attorneys of defamation and seeking unspecified financial damages.

They claimed that the attorneys accused the brothers of leading a criminally homophobic, racist and violent attack against Smollett, destroying their personal and professional reputations. The lawsuit named as defendants celebrity attorney Mark Geragos, lawyer Tina Glandian and Geragos Los Angeles-based law firm.

The lawsuit also stated that Glandian made public statements that Abimbola Osundairo is gay and participated in sex acts with Smollett. Osundairo said that was untrue, and noted that he has family in Nigeria and travels often to the country, where homosexuality is illegal and punishable by years in prison or even death. Osundairo said the lawyer's statements put his life and the lives of his family in danger.

In a statement issued after the lawsuit was filed, Geragos and Glandian called it ridiculous and a desperate attempt by the brothers to stay relevant and further profit from an attack they admit they perpetrated.

A federal judge in Chicago put the case on hold until the completion of the Smollett trial and asked the parties to file a status report with the court by Feb. 1, 2022.

___

Check out the APs complete coverage of the Jussie Smollett case.
DEC. 2DEC. 9 2021

From the first new Chancellor in Germany in over 16 years, after Angela Merkel stood down, to the Popes visit to Greece and the COVID-19 vaccination program in South Africa, this photo gallery highlights some of the most compelling images made or published in the past week by The Associated Press from Europe and Africa.
DEC. 3 - 9, 2021

This photo gallery highlights some of the most compelling images from North America made or published by The Associated Press in the past week.
MURPHY, N.C. (AP)  Two men from Tennessee are facing charges in North Carolina after a report of domestic assault at a casino led to a $3 million marijuana bust, according to police.

Officers from the Cherokee Indian Police Department responded to Harrah's Cherokee Valley River Casino in Murphy on Thursday morning. Officers arrested a man from Ten Mile, Tennessee, and charged him with assault and possession of methamphetamine and paraphernalia, according to WLOS-TV.
CANBERRA, Australia (AP)  Australia's military said Friday it plans to ditch its fleet of European-designed Taipan helicopters and instead buy U.S. Black Hawks and Seahawks because the American machines are more reliable.

The move comes less than three months after Australia canceled a deal to buy French submarines in favor of building nuclear-powered submarines that use U.S. and British technology in a switch that deeply angered France.

Australia has 47 Taipan helicopters that were designed by Airbus and were supposed to last until 2037 but have been plagued with groundings. Australia will stop using them and buy 40 Lockheed Martin-designed helicopters in a switch that will cost 7 billion Australian dollars ($4.8 billion).

Prime Minister Scott Morrison said Australia was improving its defense capabilities and had built good partnerships, particularly with the U.S.

The Taipans werent meeting their marks. Simple as that, Morrison said. And we want to make sure that our defense forces have the best possible equipment to defend this country, and the Black Hawks will provide that.

Defense Minister Peter Dutton said the Black Hawks are much cheaper to fly and that officials have had concerns about the Taipan program for the past decade.

Its had nine instances where its been unsuitable to fly, and Im just not going to put our people in that position, Dutton said.

He said the new helicopters would bring Australias fleet more in line with that of the U.S., an important consideration given the instability in the region.

China has previously expressed anger over Australia's submarine switch and said it was irresponsible of the U.S. and Britain to export their nuclear technology.

Opposition politicians said the Australian government had wasted billions of dollars on poor decisions around many of its defense contracts.
OUAGADOUGOU, Burkina Faso (AP)  Burkina Faso's military says that its joint operation with Niger's army has killed at least 100 extremist rebels.

The Burkina Faso armed forces said on Friday that its joint force with neighboring Niger also arrested 20 suspects and seized significant equipment from the rebels in the past two weeks.
SHREVEPORT (AP)  Residents of a northwest Louisiana parish will have to spay or neuter their pet dogs and cats, starting next summer.

The Caddo Parish Commission voted 10-1 for the two-year ordinance Thursday night, and it will take effect July 1, news outlets reported.
RIO RANCHO, N.M. (AP)  Authorities say a 2-year-old child is dead following a shooting at the Rio Rancho home of the family of a Santa Fe police officer.

Police said responding Rancho Rio Police Department officers on Wednesday found the child with a gunshot wound and that live-saving efforts by officers and paramedics were unsuccessful, local news outlets reported.
BUTTE, Mont. (AP)  A company that turned mining waste into roofing materials at a Montana plant was fined and ordered to conduct medical monitoring of workers on Friday, after pleading guilty to a criminal charge that it exposed employees to arsenic.

Tinley Park, Illinois-based U.S. Minerals was sentenced by U.S. District Judge Dana Christensen to pay a $393,200 fine and will be on probation for five years, according to court records. The company pleaded guilty in August to negligent endangerment, a misdemeanor violation of the federal Clean Air Act.

Prosecutors said U.S. Minerals continued to poison its workers by exposing them to arsenic despite repeated warnings from regulators. Long-term exposure to inorganic arsenic can lead to skin cancer and cancer in the bladder and lungs, according to the World Health Organization.

In its guilty plea, the company acknowledged it negligently placed another person in the imminent danger of death or serious bodily injury.

From 2013 to when it closed in June 2021 the company's Anaconda plant converted mining waste known as black slag  a byproduct of a century of copper smelting in the town  into roofing materials called Black Diamond Abrasive Products.

Under a plea agreement, U.S. Minerals plants in Illinois, Wisconsin, Kansas, Texas and Louisiana will be under increased oversight by the Environmental Protection Agency and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration during a five-year probationary period.

The company would also have to monitor the health of former employees of the Anaconda plant during that time.

Employees who take advantage of the medical monitoring program would not give up the right to pursue civil litigation against U.S. Minerals, under the agreement.

Five of six employees tested at the Anaconda plant in July 2015 had elevated levels of arsenic, according to a 2016 report by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health. At the time, respiratory protection was provided but not required, and there was no running water or handwashing stations at the plant

The company was earlier fined nearly $107,000 by OSHA for violations in 2016.

Montanas health department ordered the plant to temporarily close in February 2019 after at least two workers had elevated arsenic levels in their urine in 2018.
MISSION VIEJO, Calif. (AP)  Brian Patnoe never saw the faces of the masked health care workers who nursed him back to health from the coronavirus that nearly killed him. But he knew each by their eyes, which peered out through layers of protective gear as he lay in their hospitals COVID-19 unit.

He was reunited Thursday with some of those who treated him for weeks after he arrived at Providence Mission Hospital in March 2020, just as the virus was descending on California. They still wore masks and he still recognized them.

Its amazing how I saw all the eyes and I was like, I know you, I know you, I know you, the 62-year-old Patnoe said, his own eyes welling with tears while embracing each of a half-dozen nurses who lined up to greet him outside the hospital in Southern Californias Mission Viejo. Oh, my God, thank you guys for keeping me alive.

Patnoe and other coronavirus survivors held an emotional reunion with the nurses, respiratory therapists and doctors who saved their lives at a time when little was known about the virus. They shared hugs, memories and photos at an event marking the hospitals 50th anniversary and added items to a time capsule created so future generations will remember the pandemic. Its to be opened in 2071.

It also was a reunion for the staff that volunteered to work in the hospitals first coronavirus unit. Many have moved on to other jobs.

The unit members dubbed themselves the Tip of the Spear for taking on the virus in the early days of the pandemic when they didnt know if they had adequate protective gear or exactly what would save their patients. Many later tattooed spears onto their wrists, with a heart.

We all felt like we had all bonded. We had all volunteered, nurse Christina Anderson said.

When the pandemic arrived, protective gear was in frightfully short supply, and so was toilet paper. Dr. Robert Goldberg, a pulmonary and critical care specialist, recalled how doctors had to wait weeks to get COVID-19 test results confirmed for their patients.

We really didn't know what we were facing, he said.

California was the first state in the nation to issue a shutdown order in 2020 and faired relatively well in the early months. But by the end of the year, the state was the U.S. epicenter for the virus and many hospitals were overwhelmed.

While the outlook has improved vastly with vaccinations, the virus remains a threat. Deaths in the state are lower on a per-capita basis than most others but hundreds still die weekly and the average daily number of cases has climbed nearly 70% in the past two weeks, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University.

The time capsule created at the hospital about 45 miles (72 kilometers) southeast of Los Angeles aims to create a memory for future generations of what happened there during the pandemic. Items collected include a cloth face mask, a fire department patch, a copy of a sign telling people to mask up to open up and we can do this, and letters and photos from patients.

Patricia Gomez, 32, submitted photos taken of her and the nurse who delivered her baby in July 2020, when she was ravaged by COVID-19. Her newborn son was able to leave the hospital quickly and tested negative for the virus, but she had to stay another week because she was so ill.

I was scared that I wasn't going to make it, she said. But I was so grateful. The nurses were always caring. I never felt alone.

Patnoe, who was out of work for six months, recalled vivid dreams during his two stints on a ventilator. In one, his late mother, who was a nurse, came over to him and said he wasnt ready to come here yet.

In the time capsule, he included a copy of a photo snapped when he was finally released from the hospital. That day, he said, nurses and doctors lined up and clapped as he was wheeled down the hall and outside to finally see his family. It was a far cry from how the halls emptied out when he was brought in as one of the hospital's first COVID-19 patients.

I'm so lucky to be alive, he said. I think we've become a little desensitized to it just right now, because it's become such a common thing.

Since Patnoe left, the hospital has seen hundreds of coronavirus patients. In the COVID-19 intensive care unit, staff kept a tally of survivors and logged the initials of those who didnt make it, Goldberg said.

After last years winter spike, hospitalizations plummeted and the hospital shut down the unit, he said.

Its now back up and running, Goldberg said, with the community heading into winter and coronavirus cases rising again.
OKLAHOMA CITY (AP)  The average number of people hospitalized in Oklahoma Friday with COVID-19 topped 600 the for the first time in more than two months as the number of cases rise in the state, the Oklahoma State Department of Health said.

The three-day average of virus hospitalizations was 616, the most since Oct. 25, according to health department records.
ZAGREB, Croatia (AP)  A migrant child is missing and a woman had to be rescued after trying to cross a swollen river on the border between Croatia and Slovenia, Croatian police said Friday.

Police in the northern Istria peninsula late on Thursday received an emergency call and found the woman in bad physical condition holding on to a tree trunk by the bank of the Dragonja river.
NICOSIA, Cyprus (AP)  ExxonMobil and partner Qatar Energy expanded their stake in potential oil and gas deposits off Cyprus by signing a deal with the east Mediterranean island nation Friday for a second exploration license in waters that Turkey partly claims.

Drilling off Cyprus has been a source of tension with neighboring Turkey since 2011, when Texas-based Noble Energy discovered the first natural gas off the ethnically divided islands southern coast.

Cyprus Energy Minister Natasa Pilides said with the new license, ExxonMobil is expected to start exploration in the first half of next year to get a better estimate of potential amounts of oil and gas.

She added there are sufficiently hopeful indications that the geological makeup of the underwater area mirrors that of a nearby spot where ExxonMobil discovered in 2019 a sizable deposit estimated to contain 5-8 trillion cubic feet of gas. The two energy companies are drilling an appraisal well at that deposit to confirm how much gas it holds.

Varnavas Theodossiou, ExxonMobil Cyprus managing director, said the new license enables us to further expand our presence in Cyprus in what we believe to be a promising region for offshore exploration.

The development comes amid Turkeys warnings that it would never allow anyone to carry out an unauthorized gas search in waters it claims partly fall under its control.

Cyprus' ethnic split occurred in 1974 when Turkey invaded following a coup aimed at a union with Greece. Turkey doesn't recognize Cypriot statehood but instead recognizes a Turkish Cypriot declaration of independence in the island's northern third  the only country to do so.

Ankara insists Cyprus' internationally recognized government seated in the south is acting unilaterally in exploiting offshore gas reserves and ignores the rights of Turkey and the breakaway Turkish Cypriots to the region's hydrocarbon potential.

To drive the point home, Turkey has dispatched numerous warship-escorted drill and survey ships to carry out exploratory drilling inside Cyprus' exclusive economic zone. It also claims some 40% of that zone either lies inside its continental shelf or belongs to Turkish Cypriots.

The Cypriot government says Turkey's claims aren't recognized by international law.

Cyprus also has licensed seven of its 13 offshore drilling areas to a consortium made up of France's TotalEnergies and Italy's Eni, which is expected to resume its own drilling in the first half of next year after a nearly two-year delay brought on by the coronavirus pandemic.

Pilides, Cyprus' energy minister, said ExxonMobil and Qatar Petroleum aren't troubled" by Turkey's threats and the deal is proof of that. She said the Cypriot government would carry on with its drilling program in line with international law.
WILMINGTON, Del. (AP)  A highway sign that recently went up in Delaware was noticeably missing a letter in the states name.

The new Wilmington exit sign on Interstate 95 should have said Delaware Ave but was misspelled as Delware, The News Journal reports.

Delawares transportation department and its contractor, Kiewit Infrastructure Company, say the sign was always meant to be temporary and has been replaced.

Exit 7 was previously closed for construction. A subcontractor hurriedly made a placeholder sign after learning the permanent one might not arrive in time for when the northbound exit was scheduled to reopen.

Donnie Arant, a Kiewit area manager, told the newspaper that the blunder was discovered after the sign was installed. It was not clear how long the error was up before it was covered Wednesday. The permanent marker was delivered earlier this week, so the one with the missing a was switched out.

The issue has been completely resolved, Arant wrote in an email.

Some people joked on social media that Delware is how locals pronounce the states name anyway.

The transportation department poked fun at the misspelling Tuesday saying on Facebook that it was a test for drivers, and those who noticed it passed.

We were making sure commuters were *aware* of our signage, the post said. Now stop texting and taking photos while driving, and pay attention to the road!
LINCOLN, Neb. (AP)  Those used to taking a quick commuter flight from Lincoln to Minneapolis and back will soon be out of luck.

Delta Air Lines has informed Lincoln Airport officials that it will end the twice-daily fights between the two cities next month, the Lincoln Journal Star reported.
MARTINEZ, Calif. (AP)  A DNA match has helped cold case investigators solve the killing of a San Francisco Bay Area waitress whose body was found in a restaurant's basement bathroom 25 years ago, authorities said Thursday.

A murder charge was filed by prosecutors against prison inmate Danny Lamont Hamilton, alleging he drowned Priscilla Lewis during an attempted rape and burglary at a restaurant in the city of Crockett on September 24, 1996, said a statement from the Contra Costa County Sheriff's Office.

The case went unsolved for decades after investigators interviewed dozens of people, submitted numerous pieces of evidence for analysis and executed several search warrants, the statement said.

Detectives last year submitted additional evidence to a DNA crime lab and a match came back that linked Hamilton to the crime, the statement said.

He is serving a life sentence at a state prison near San Diego after being convicted of sexual assault charges unrelated to Lewis death, authorities said. It was not known whether he has a lawyer who could speak on his behalf.

Troy Kinslow, a cousin of Lewis who grew up with her in the nearby town of Port Costa, said her slaying haunted him for years.

I was across the street, at the bar drinking and had seen her on her break, Kinslow said. And the next morning I went to the store to get something to drink and a friend said, you heard about her?

He said he urged detectives three years ago to reexamine the case.

They told me, you have been on us. My thousands of texts and calls got them fired up, he said.

Kinslow added: It's been a long process and it's been very tiring emotionally and physically but I never gave up.
THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP)  The Dutch government cleared the way Friday for children aged 5-11 to get vaccinated against COVID-19, extending its inoculation program to an age group that had the highest rate of infections in a recent surge.

The program is set to begin in mid-January, the health ministry said. The children will get shots of the Pfizer vaccine with a lower dose than adults and it is up to their parents whether they are vaccinated.
JUNEAU, Alaska (AP)  Alaska Lt. Gov. Kevin Meyer last year said the issue his office seemed to be getting the most email on after the 2020 election was the narrow success of a ballot measure that would overhaul Alaskas election process. His chief of staff said they were getting up to 20 emails a day.

But a records request by The Associated Press yielded fewer than 20 total unique emails that were received by the office with complaints or concerns about the election, and only three mentioned the ballot measure that would end party primaries and institute ranked choice voting in general elections. The emails were recently released, more than a year after the AP first requested them.

Meyer, a Republican who oversees elections in Alaska, in November 2020 announced plans for a hand-count review of votes on the initiative, casting it as a way to calm questions that had been raised about the validity of election results tied to vote tabulation equipment the state uses. The review occurred after the general election results were certified and election officials said it affirmed the measures passage.

The hand count cost around $55,750, said Tiffany Montemayor, a Division of Elections spokesperson.

Meyer, in an interview with the AP on Thursday, said his interest in a hand count went back to his race for lieutenant governor in 2018, when he said he was hearing questions about trust in the elections process. Months before the 2020 election, he said he met with a conservative group that had concerns with the tabulation equipment.

He said he didnt know at the time which race would be involved but that the ballot measure ultimately made sense, given how close the results were and that some questioned how the measure had passed when early, partial votes on election night showed it failing.

Certified results showed the ballot measure won with about 50.6% of the vote  174,032 yes votes and 170,251 no votes.

My whole intent here is to try to get as much confidence and trust in elections as possible, he said. And if that means doing a ... statewide hand count, then we did it. And again, I think some people feel better now but theres definitely a small group out there that still dont.

Meyers chief of staff, Josh Applebee, said the emails given to AP provide an accurate representation of those received and said at some point, it was hard to separate the ways in which Meyers office was being contacted. Asked if they misspoke in November 2020 when they referenced emails specifically and if they had lumped together emails and other forms of contact, he said: I think thats probably a better way to look at it.

He said calls to Meyers office and the division were more aggressive in tone than the emails and almost reached a point where we didnt want to pick up the phone. He described the month after the November election as rough.

Election officials, ahead of the 2020 general election, sought to tamp down expectations about vote tallies released on Election Day, which did not include the large number of absentee and other ballots; officials did not begin counting those until later. Some campaigns and others had encouraged early or absentee voting amid pandemic concerns.

The AP, on Nov. 19, 2020, spoke with Meyer and Applebee about the planned hand-count review and requested emails to and from Meyer between Nov. 10  when the state began counting absentee ballots  and Nov. 18 concerning the election and ballot measure.

The records provided last week total 138 pages, including emails sent among members of Meyer's office. The documents include a number of duplicate emails and threads and some pages or sections are redacted.

The writer of one email to Meyer said they call fraud on the ballot measure passing, without offering any evidence or explanation. Alaskans do not want a leftist scheme to ensure leftist wins from here out, the unsigned email says.

Another person wrote to demand a hand count of the initiative results, claiming zero confidence in the election results and tabulation machines. Others raised questions about absentee ballots, whether the pen they used to mark their ballot was legal and the machines.

Some supporters of former President Donald Trump nationally have sought to sow doubt about the results of the race for president, won by Joe Biden, by attacking Dominion Voting Systems, a widely used voting technology provider in the U.S., whose machines Alaska uses. The company has filed defamation lawsuits over some of the claims that have been made.

Trump carried Alaska in the 2020 general election, and Republicans won the other top-ticket races for U.S. House and Senate. Republicans also won majorities in each the state House and Senate, though the House organized in a way that gave a bipartisan coalition control.

Meyer said Alaska's election was conducted fairly. If anyone doubts that, he said he encourages them to work an election or be an election observer to see the process in action.

Scott Kendall, a drafter of the ballot initiative and an attorney who has defended the ballot measure, said he wasn't offended that the state hand-counted ballots for that race.

I do think they were reacting to something, he said, adding later that he also doubts that many minds were changed by the review.
FARGO, N.D. (AP)  Prosecutors have accused Mapletons fire chief of drunken driving after she was involved in a crash.

KFGO-AM reported Friday that Kayla Cross has been charged with misdemeanor DUI refusal.
CHARLOTTE, N.C. (AP)  Health officials reported North Carolina's first case of the omicron variant of the coronavirus on Friday.

A student at University of North Carolina Charlotte tested positive for the variant, according to Mecklenburg County health officials. The case was identified though the universitys sequencing program, officials said in a news release. The student was isolated and has recovered, officials said. Exposure was limited with only one known contact.
ATLANTA (AP)  Days after announcing his candidacy for governor, Republican David Perdue further embraced debunked claims of electoral fraud in Georgia's 2020 presidential race by joining a lawsuit seeking to prove he and former President Donald Trump were cheated out of election victories.

The suit claims that fraudulent or counterfeit ballots were counted in Fulton County, the state's most populous jurisdiction, although investigators rebutted the same claims previously.

Perdue's lawsuit amplifies claims that the former senator has made this week since announcing a challenge to incumbent Gov. Brian Kemp on Monday. Perdue told Axios and The Atlanta Journal-Constitution that he wouldn't have certified Georgia's 2020 results if he had been governor then, unlike Kemp. Georgia law says the governor must certify results.

Trump has repeatedly savaged Kemp for not doing enough to overturn the loss. After inviting Perdue to run, Trump endorsed Perdue on Monday, saying Kemp has been very weak on election integrity."

The suit could further Perdue's effort to sew up the votes of Trump backers who believe the election was stolen as he tries to come back from his Senate election loss, saying that's how he'll unify the Republican Party and beat Kemp in the primary and then Democrat Stacey Abrams.

His position that Georgia's 2020 election was wrongly decided isn't new. He called on Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to resign while votes were still being counted in 2020, saying he failed to deliver honest and transparent elections, said if he had been in the U.S. Senate on Jan. 6, he would have voted against accepting Georgias electoral votes. But until now he hadn't sued.

David Perdue is so concerned about election fraud that he waited a year to file a lawsuit that conveniently coincided with his disastrous campaign launch, said Kemp spokesperson Cody Hall. Keep in mind that lawsuit after lawsuit regarding the 2020 election was dismissed in part because Perdue declined to be listed as a plaintiff.

Fulton County voter Elizabeth Grace Lennon and Perdue are seeking to examine paper ballots and other ballot materials in Fulton County in the state court lawsuit, saying that will prove the fraud. The suit, however, does not seek to overturn the results of the election, in which Georgia gave its 16 electoral votes to Democratic President Joe Biden.

I want to use my position and legal standing to shine light on what I know were serious violations of Georgia law in the Fulton absentee ballot tabulation, Perdue said in a statement released by lawyers. We are asking a judge to consider the evidence after our forensic examination of the absentee ballots is completed and hold those persons responsible who engaged in this wrongful conduct.

Raffensperger said Perdue is trying to curry favor with the Trump base by pushing election conspiracy theories that Perdue doesn't actually believe.

This lawsuit recycles old claims that have already been refuted and is a waste of everyones time, Raffensperger said in a statement.

Fulton County Commission Chairman Robb Pitts, a Democrat, said it's disheartening to see Perdue engage in this desperate attempt to appeal to believers of the big lie.

The lawsuit is largely a repeat of one Henry County Superior Court Judge Brian Amero dismissed in October after he ruled the plaintiffs, including longtime Georgia election systems critic Garland Favorito, hadn't alleged a particularized injury and thus didn't have standing to sue. Favorito and other plaintiffs are appealing that dismissal, even though they won the release of electronic ballot images.

The new plaintiffs, who asked that the suit be assigned to Amero, say they have the standing to pursue claims that their state constitutional rights to equal protection and due process have been violated. Perdue claims his particularized injury was that he was a candidate for reelection in November but failed to achieve a majority, forcing him into a runoff with Democrat Jon Ossoff that Perdue lost. Lennon says she sought to cast an in-person early vote in October 2020 but was told someone had already submitted a mail ballot in her name.

Raffensperger's office submitted a legal brief to Amero just before he dismissed the case, saying investigators found no evidence of fraudulent ballots.

Based upon the witness statements and examination of approximately 1,000 absentee ballots and ballot images, the secretarys investigators have not uncovered any absentee ballots that match the descriptions given ... or otherwise appear to be fraudulent or counterfeit, the legal brief said.

The new lawsuit recounts claims that the investigators debunked, including claims by Susan Voyles and three other auditors that during a hand recount they saw pristine absentee ballots that appeared to have been marked by a computer and werent creased as if they had been put in envelopes. The investigators said they couldn't find any such ballots.

The suit also renews debunked claims that election officials purposefully lied about stopping counting on election night, claiming that once observers left that election workers pulled out suitcases of ballots and counted the votes multiple times, effectively running up the score for Democrats.

Secretary of State investigators said they found no evidence this had happened, either, saying video showed the suitcases were normal ballot bins brought out when election workers were told to keep counting. Investigators said workers told them ballot scanners jammed frequently, requiring workers to make multiple attempts to scan ballots. Investigators said scanner activity logs confirmed paper jams reported by workers and seen on video.

The brief noted that former U.S. Attorney BJay Pak also concluded there was no evidence that workers counted hidden fradulent ballots based on statements made to the FBI and an independent review of the evidence.

Seth Bringman, a spokesperson for Abrams said that "while David Perdue conducts the conspiracy choir, Stacey will be focused on Georgians.

___

Follow Jeff Amy at http://twitter.com/jeffamy.
BERLIN (AP)  German lawmakers overwhelmingly backed a bill Friday that requires staff at hospitals and nursing homes to get immunized against the coronavirus  the first of two vaccine mandates being considered in the country.

Health Minister Karl Lauterbach had earlier told parliament it was unconscionable that some who work with particularly vulnerable people were still not vaccinated.

This vaccine mandate is necessary because it's completely unacceptable that, after two years of pandemic, people who have entrusted their care to us are dying unnecessarily in institutions because unvaccinated people work there, he said. We cannot accept this."

Of the 689 votes cast in the lower house on the measure, 571 were in favor and 80 were against. Abstentions were recorded for 38 lawmakers.

Parliament's upper house, or Bundesrat, approved the bill hours later, after lawmakers agreed to fast-track the legislative process.

A second, more contentious bill that would make COVID-19 shots compulsory for all is being prepared and could be debated by parliament next month.

The far-right Alternative for Germany, or AfD, party is opposed to the universal vaccine mandate. Some members of other parties, including the former health minister in Angela Merkel's departed government, have also said they will vote against that measure.

AfD's co-leader Tino Chrupalla accused the new German government, which took office Wednesday, of undermining the public's trust by reversing assurances over the summer that there would be no vaccine mandates. He also warned that care workers who refuse to get vaccinated could quit their jobs if the shot becomes compulsory.

The new measure means workers in health care facilities will need to show they are fully vaccinated or have recovered from COVID-19 by mid-March next year.

Official figures show that about 69.4 % of Germany's population of 83 million are fully vaccinated.

Neighboring Austria, which has a slightly lower vaccination rate, announced plans Thursday to impose fines of up to 3,600 euro s (around $4,000) on people who flout a coronavirus vaccine mandate it aims to introduce in February for all residents age 14 and over.

Austrian Health Minister Wolfgang Mueckstein said people who are eligible for exemptions will have to have those registered in a central vaccination register, which will be checked at regular three-month intervals. The first cutoff date will be March 15.

Lauterbach, the new German health minister, had urged lawmakers to put aside party politics and support the bill, which also includes measures such as allowing pharmacists, vets and dentists to perform vaccinations, and the option to restrict sports and leisure events and close restaurants in regions with high case numbers.

We have no time to lose, he said.

Germany recorded 61,288 newly confirmed cases of COVID-19 over the past 24 hours, and 484 deaths. Doctors have warned that while the number of new infections are going down, the peak of hospitalizations is likely to be reached during the festive period.

Meanwhile, organizers of the annual New Year's Eve celebrations in front of Berlin's iconic Brandenburg Gate say they plan to stage the event without a live audience again.

The party normally draws hundreds of thousands of revelers, but no spectators were permitted last year for the first time due to the pandemic.

___

Follow all AP stories on the pandemic at https://apnews.com/hub/coronavirus-pandemic.
THESSALONIKI, Greece (AP)  Police in northern Greece arrested 11 people Friday after a high school principal was handcuffed by alleged members of a self-styled vigilante group that opposes pandemic restrictions.

The incident occurred near the city of Katerini, 430 kilometers (270 miles) north of Athens. The suspects allegedly grabbed and handcuffed the 61-year-old principal ahead of a daily COVID-19 entry check of students at the school, forced him into a vehicle and drove him to a nearby precinct where they asked police to charge him.

Instead, police promptly detained the suspected vigilantes.

Education Minister Niki Kerameus in a social media post called the attack inconceivable, adding: We will protect our educational community by all means necessary.

The suspects  nine men and two women  were accused of assault, abduction, using insulting language and disturbing the peace, police said.

The (suspects), acting together, forcibly immobilized the school principal as he approached the school complex, handcuffed him and forced him to enter a vehicle in order to take him to a police station, on the pretext that he was violating constitutional provisions, a police statement said.

Greece is battling a spike in infections and a near-record level of deaths as roughly one quarter of the adult population remains unvaccinated. The government has vowed to keep schools and businesses open but has intensified pressure on the unvaccinated and recently announced a vaccination mandate for people aged over 60.

Vigilante groups have recently appeared in the northern city of Thessaloniki and nearby towns, one calling themselves The Custodians and wearing black uniforms, arguing that the restrictions are illegal and should be opposed by those defending the constitution.

One group recently damaged a private Covid-19 test clinic in Thessaloniki, claiming that testing was illegal. Four people were arrested and charged with impersonating authority.

The government renewed a vow Friday to crack down on the groups, along with gangs that sell counterfeit vaccination certificates.

Takis Theodorikakos, a minister for public order, described the school incident as utterly condemnable.

Such behavior is provocative and unacceptable and the police must not allow this to be repeated, he wrote in a tweet.

___ Full coverage of the pandemic: https://apnews.com/hub/coronavirus-pandemic ___

Follow Kantouris at https://twitter.com/CostasKantouris
LAGOS, Nigeria (AP)  Gunmen attacked a rural village in northern Nigeria, killing 16 worshippers at a mosque and kidnapping others, said a local official.

The assault on Baare village in the Mashegu area of Niger state lasted for hours on Thursday, local government chairman Alhassan Isah Mazakuka said.

Dozens of the assailants arrived on motorcycles and rampaged through the village, killing people praying at the mosque and looting, he said.

Those people (the gunmen) are dangerous, he told The Associated Press in a phone interview on Friday. They killed 16 and kidnapped many of our people. We dont even know the number they kidnapped because they are uncountable.

Nigerian police confirmed the incident but said only nine residents were killed. The police have in the past been accused of downplaying casualty figures in such attacks.

The attack is the latest in the escalating violence in northwestern and northcentral Nigeria where armed groups have been targeting remote communities, killing and abducting residents for ransoms.

Earlier this week it was confirmed that 23 travelers were slain in a different part of the West African countrys troubled northern region.

The large bands of attackers mostly consist of young men from the Fulani ethnic group, who had traditionally worked as nomadic cattle herders and are caught up in a decades-long conflict with Hausa farming communities over access to water and grazing land.

The gunmen appear to be increasingly organized and well-armed, but they have not publicly declared any political aims or motives. So far the lawless groups  which a Nigerian governor recently said numbered more than 150  do not have names or known leaders, but they were recently declared terrorist organizations by a court.

Nigerias security forces are already overstretched as they have been fighting Islamic extremists in the northeast for more than a decade. In many remote communities in northern Nigeria, the armed groups outnumber and outgun the security forces.

When troops arrive to quell their attacks, the bandits retreat into surrounding forest areas. But after the soldiers depart, the violent attacks resume. Vulnerable rural communities say they need more protection.

We are suffering with the bandits (here), local government chairman Mazakuka said. All we need is prayers now (as) we have been crying for government support. The government has been trying their best but we still need support.
For Californians still clinging to the myth that were not in the midst of a severe drought, a brutal reality awaits.

With a dry winter projected for much of the state, California officials are considering fines of up to $500 a day for overwatering yards, hosing down driveways and other water-wasting actions. The states water board could impose the penalties as soon as next month, when they come up for a vote.

You may be wondering: What about mandating shorter showers? Fewer toilet flushes? Using the dishwasher only when its full?

Theres actually good reason those measures arent atop the water-saving list. While in-home conservation doesnt hurt, a majority of Californias residential water  as much as 80% of it  is used outdoors.

Take this example: When California was slammed with an atmospheric storm in late October, many of us skipped watering our lawns. After months of water savings of no more than 5% compared with last year, Californians water usage in October dropped to 13.2% below the rate in October 2020, according to new state data. While still short of Gov. Gavin Newsoms 15% target, its the closest weve come.

This jump in water savings we saw across the state can illustrate just how much water can be conserved when were not irrigating outdoors, even for just part of the month, said Charlotte Ely, who presented the savings data to the State Water Resources Control Board this week.

Half of Californias annual water usage is considered environmental water, meaning it flows through protected rivers or supports wetlands in wildland preserves, according to the Public Policy Institute of California. The other 50% is for human use  40% for agriculture and 10% for urban use, split between indoor (drinking water, showers) and outdoor (lawns, washing our cars).

But the relatively warm, dry weather in California tips the scales toward outdoor consumption. Plants quickly evaporate water, so keeping them green is more water-intensive than in other parts of the nation, said Jay Lund, co-director of the Center for Watershed Sciences at the University of California, Davis.

Our per capita water use rates are much, much, much higher than they are back east, where they have rainfall in the summertime, Lund told me.

While the average Californian uses roughly 110 gallons of water a day, a person in Massachusetts, for example, consumes on average around 65.

And its not because heat makes us drink more water. Every day, the average human consumes one gallon, maybe two, Lund said. So at most, thats 2% of our total water usage.

Lund pointed to the water-saving success of Healdsburg, a town in Sonoma County that was facing a severe shortage this year. In June, officials banned residents from watering their lawns and yards.

Since then, the citys water usage has fallen by 50%.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
TRIPOLI, Lebanon (AP)  Ziad Hilweh knew his family might die on the way. But the risk was worth it, he said, to reach the shores of Europe for a new start with his wife and three kids, away from the daily humiliation of life in Lebanon.

The countrys economic meltdown had destroyed him. The currency crash meant that the value of his salary from working at a private security company fell from $650 a month to about $50 after the Lebanese pound lost more than 90% of its value in less than two years. It reached the point the 22-year-old could no longer afford milk and diapers for his children.

But the young fathers hopes of a better future were shattered last month, when the boat they were on board headed to Italy broke down in the Mediterranean Sea, hours after they set off from the outskirts of Lebanons port city of Tripoli. Along with dozens of other would-be migrants on the boat, they were towed back to shore by the navy after a terrifying attempt at escaping.

For years, Lebanon has been a host for refugees, mainly from Syria, but now it is a departure point. Hundreds of Lebanese have tried to reach Europe this year on boats from their countrys shores, spurred by a devastating economic crisis that has thrown two thirds of the population into poverty since October 2019.

It is not a route on the scale of the main sea path from Turkey to Greece used by many refugees and migrants. But it is a startling shift as Lebanese join Iraqis, Afghans, Sudanese and other Middle Eastern nationalities in leaving their homelands.

Sea departures from Lebanon have increased starting in 2020, compared to previous years, said Lisa Abou Khaled, spokeswoman for the U.N. refugee agency. According to UNHCR figures, more than 1,570 people embarked or attempted to embark from Lebanon between January and November, most heading for Cyprus. The majority have been Syrians, but Abou Khaled said a notable number of Lebanese have joined them.

It is evident that these are desperate journeys undertaken by people who see no way of survival in Lebanon, said Abou Khaled.

The country is witnessing a frightening convergence of multiple crises, including political instability, the coronavirus pandemic and a massive explosion at the capitals main port in August last year that have all added to the financial unravelling of the country.

I AM DEAD HERE

Hilweh had been growing more desperate with each day. For months, he asked relatives and friends to help him financially. Chatting with friends one night, he heard that smugglers were taking people to Europe, and that some have already made it there.

He and a close friend, Bilal Moussa, decided to give it a try. Hilweh decided to take his wife and children, while Moussa planned to go alone and apply for family reunification once he settles in Europe.

They were told it would cost $4,000 for each adult and $2,000 for a child. Hilweh sold his apartment and his car and borrowed some from relatives. He was still short, but the smuggler gave him a discount and took the $10,000 Hilweh had, instead of $14,000.

I am dead here and might die on the way. But if I reach the destination, I can live a decent life, Moussa said.

The smuggler told them to meet at a location near Tripolis Abu Ali river shortly before midnight on Friday, Nov. 19, and that 70 people would be on the boat. At the location, they were put into a covered produce truck and driven to Qalamoun, just south of Tripoli.

There, at an abandoned resort, they boarded the wooden boat with their belongings. Around midnight, as they left shore, the smuggler began reading the names of people on board.

There were 92, instead of 70, including about two dozen Syrian and Palestinian refugees.

A TERRIFYING RIDE

They quickly ran into trouble. A Lebanese navy ship approached the boat, ordering them through loudspeakers to turn back. The captain ignored their calls and kept moving west.

The navy ship circled them, causing waves that shook the boat and threw water inside. The shaking grew more violent as the ship drew closer, filling it with more water that pushed it down. The screaming passengers spread out around the boat to balance it and threw bags into the sea to keep it afloat.

Hilwehs wife and children were sitting near the engine, and when the boat flooded with water, thick smoke poured out. His 3-month-old son Karim stopped breathing and almost suffocated, he said.

He lived and died in front of me, he said, recalling the panic before Karim was breathing again.

I started reciting the shahada, said Hilwehs wife, Alaa Khodor, 22, referring to the profession of faith in Islam that Muslims recite when close to death.

Eventually, the boat stabilized, and they kept moving west while the navy chased them. Looking at a screen, the boats captain shouted that they had left Lebanons territorial waters. Immediately, the navy ship turned back.

I felt very happy. I am out of Lebanon. I have crossed the line of humiliation, Hilweh recounted. He celebrated by hugging his wife and two daughters, Rana, 3, and Jana, 2.

BACK AND BROKEN

Their relief was short-lived. Shortly before sunrise, the water-logged engine gave out completely. Stalled in the darkness and silence, the frightened passengers frantically called relatives in Lebanon to tell the military they needed help.

Hours later, the Lebanese navy finally arrived and towed the boat back.

Once the boat stopped, I felt everything go dark, I felt devastated, Hilweh said. When we arrived back I had tears in my eyes.

Back in Tripoli, the men were separated from the women and children and questioned for hours. The smuggler is still in detention, Hilweh said.

Tripoli is Lebanons most impoverished city. Its mayor, Riad Yamak, said that last year, several people drowned off the coast of Tripoli while trying to reach Europe.

Last year, a boat taking migrants to Cyprus ran out of diesel and was stranded for eight days, during which at least six persons died. The U.N. peacekeeping forces in Lebanon, known as UNIFIL, rescued the rest and handed them over to Lebanese authorities after giving them first aid.

This is suicide when someone takes his family by sea, Yamak said.

Hilweh and his wife disagree. They have already lost their apartment, their car and Hilwehs job. They said they will keep trying until they make it to Europe even if this means putting their lives and those of their kids in danger again.

I will take any danger to get out of here. There is nothing here, Khodor said.
MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP)  The Alabama Department of Corrections said Thursday that it is investigating the death of an inmate as a possible suicide.

The Jefferson County Coroners Office said prison staff reported finding 47-year-old Leon Demel Latham unresponsive Tuesday morning in his private cell at the William Donaldson Correctional Facility.
BOSTON (AP)  A group of Christian, Hindu, Buddhist and Jewish leaders is urging luxury fashion house Louis Vuitton to stop using animal fur in its clothing and other products.

In a joint statement, Orthodox Christian priest Stephen Karcher, Hindu activist Rajan Zed, Jewish rabbi ElizaBeth Webb Beyer and Buddhist priest Matthew Fisher said selling items trimmed with fur is inconsistent with the ethics and values of parent company Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton.

Louis Vuitton should explore new boundaries of fur-free creative design and discontinue selling all products made from animal fur, the clerics said Thursday, calling the trend cruel, outdated and unnecessary.

Animals should not be made to suffer and killed to make fashion and glamorize bodies when there are other valid fashion alternatives at our disposition. Cruelty should never become fashionable, they said.

Paris-based Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment.

Zed, who is president of the Nevada-based Universal Society of Hinduism, urged LVMH CEO Bernard Arnault and other executives  as well as the fashion industry as a whole  to review the practice.

It's not the first time Zed's group has targeted Louis Vuitton. Last year, it called on the luxury goods maker to pull a yoga mat made partly of cowhide leather, calling it insensitive to practicing Hindus, who regard cows as sacred symbols of life.

San Francisco and Los Angeles are among U.S. cities with vibrant fashion sectors that have banned the sale of fur products.

Sao Paulo, Brazil, has banned the import and sale of fur since 2015, and fur farming has been outlawed in the United Kingdom for more than two decades.
WASHINGTON (AP)  The House committee investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection is subpoenaing six people who the panel says were involved in the organization and planning of rallies that aimed to overturn Donald Trump's defeat in the 2020 presidential election.

The committee chairman, Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., said some worked to stage the events and some appeared to have had direct communication" with then-President Trump as they were planning the rallies.

The subpoenas were issued to Robert Bobby Peede Jr. and Max Miller, who the committee says met with Trump in his private dining room on Jan. 4; Brian Jack, Trump's political director at the time; and rally organizers Bryan Lewis, Ed Martin and Kimberly Fletcher.

The subpoenas come as the rallies before and during the Jan. 6 riot have become a major focus of the committee's investigation. Lawmakers on the panel have said they want to know who financed the events and whether organizers were in close touch with the White House and members of Congress as they planned the events.

At the largest Jan. 6 rally, on the Ellipse near the White House, Trump riled up the crowd and told them to fight like hell." He said he would march to the Capitol with them, but he eventually returned to the White House.

Hundreds of his supporters who did proceed to the Capitol violently pushed past police, broke through windows and doors and interrupted the certification of Democrat Joe Biden's White House victory.

Miller, a former Trump aide who is running for Congress in Ohio, said on Twitter Thursday that he had received notice he would be subpoenaed and would accept it but that he would also defend my rights.

Upon taking office, I will make sure one of my first votes is to disband this partisan committee that has weaponized its powers against innocent Americans, Miller tweeted.

The committee has already subpoenaed more than a dozen other rally organizers, including several who have complied with the panels demands for documents and sat for depositions. But the panel is linking the witnesses subpoenaed on Friday more directly to Trump and the White House.

In letters accompanying the subpoenas to Miller and Peede, Thompson says that documents obtained by the committee show that the two men had lunch on Jan. 4 with Trump and Katrina Pierson, a former Trump campaign official who has already been subpoenaed by the panel, in the president's private dining room.

The discussion centered on who the president wanted to speak at the rally, Thompson wrote.

In the letter to Jack, who is now a political aide to House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy, Thompson writes that Jack reached out on behalf of Trump to several members of Congress to ask them to speak at the rally. One of those members, Alabama Rep. Mo Brooks, accepted and spoke.

The committee has now announced almost 50 subpoenas, and has issued an unknown number more subpoenas privately. Most of those witnesses have complied, so far, and the panel has interviewed almost 300 people who are somehow connected to the violent siege.

A handful of Trump's closest allies have refused to comply, however, or have said they will plead their Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination. The committee will vote Monday to recommend contempt charges against former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows after he reversed an initial effort to comply and said he would defy his subpoena.

___

Associated Press writers Farnoush Amiri, Lisa Mascaro and Jill Colvin contributed to this report.
MADISON, Wis. (AP)  First Lady Jill Biden and Second Gentleman Douglas Emhoff are set to visit Wisconsin next week.

The White House announced Friday that Biden and Emhoff will travel to New York City on Wednesday morning followed by stops in Milwaukee and Waukesha in the afternoon.
AMMAN, Jordan (AP)  The Jordanian health ministry announced on Thursday evening it had identified its first two cases of the omicron variant of coronavirus.

The health ministry's statement, announced by state-run Petra news agency, said the first case is a Jordanian national who recently returned from South Africa and is currently quarantining in a hotel in Jordan's capital, Amman.

According to Petra, the second case is a Jordanian national who has not recently left the country, raising fears that the omicron variant may be spreading within the kingdom's communities. The second individual is also quarantining in a hotel in Amman.

In response to the two cases, the kingdom's National Centre for Security and Crisis Management announced Friday that all arrivals will be required to take a PCR test 72 hours before arriving in Jordan and another PCR test upon entering the country. The law will come into effect on Sunday and does not apply to children under the age of five.

In late November, Jordan imposed new restrictions on passengers travelling from southern Africa, where the highly mutated strain of the virus was first detected. The measures effectively bar the entry of non-Jordanian nationals arriving from South Africa, Lesotho, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Namibia, Eswatini, and Botswana. Jordanian citizens arriving from these seven African countries are required to quarantine for 14 days in a state-run hotel at Amman's airport.

Jordan, a country of 10.2 million people, has reported 11,879 from the coronavirus since the start of the pandemic. Under half of its population  around 4.2 million people  have received one dose of either Pfizer/BioNTech, AstraZeneca, Sputnik V, or Sinopharm vaccine, while just over 3.7 million Jordanians have received a second dose.
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP)  A federal judge on Friday temporarily blocked a Tennessee law that sharply restricts public schools from requiring masks to prevent the spread of COVID-19 and forbids local officials from making decisions about quarantines.

U.S. District Judge Waverly Crenshaw, noting that the law "offers no protection to students, let alone those that are disabled, ruled that it cannot be enforced until a lawsuit challenging it is resolved in court.

The lawsuit against the state was filed on behalf of eight students between the ages of seven and 14 who have disabilities and who are deemed by federal health officials as being more vulnerable to serious illness or death if they get COVID-19. The ruling also blocks the laws provision that says local health and school officials cant make their own coronavirus quarantining decisions.

It is also in the publics interest to slow the spread of COVID-19 in Tennessees schools, Crenshaw wrote in his ruling. Defendants have proffered absolutely nothing to suggest that any harm would come from allowing individual school districts to determine what is best for their schools, just as they did prior to the enactment of (the law.)

A spokesperson for the attorney generals office did not immediately return an email request for comment.

After the wide-ranging rules against COVID-19 requirements became law last month, the Nashville-based judge quickly blocked the school mask limits for the plaintiffs from three counties in each federal court district in Tennessee.

Crenshaw had previously blocked Gov. Bill Lees now-terminated executive order that required school districts to let parents opt their children out of mask requirements when the new law was enacted. Lee, a Republican, let the opt-out order expire when he signed the new law.

Under one part of the law, public schools and other government entities would only be allowed to require masks if they are in a county with a rolling average 14-day COVID-19 infection rate of at least 1,000 per 100,000 residents while the state is under a state of emergency. Currently, no county meets that strict requirement.

Meanwhile, the law also allows families to request accommodations for children with disabilities for in-person schooling in which others who are within 6 feet of those students for more than 15 minutes wear face masks provided by the school.

Furthermore, the law assigned sole authority over COVID-19 quarantining to the state health commissioner, stripping decision-making ability from schools and other entities.

Lee has come under scrutiny for signing the legislation after a report by The Associated Press f ound his administration warned lawmakers t hat the bill would violate federal law that protects people with disability and could put the state at risk of losing federal funds.

The Republican-controlled Legislature ignored the advice and passed the bill anyway. Less than two weeks later, Lee signed it into law.

The plaintiffs wanted the emailed legal guidance included as evidence, while the state objected. Ultimately, Crenshaw decided it was unnecessary to resolve this dispute, saying it seems quite clear that the legislators knew, or at least reasonably should have known, that passage of the new law would jeopardize federal funds, and that the governor knew as well.

Nashville school officials praised Crenshaws order, which they said they are still reviewing. Though the ruling now allows the district to reinstate their own quarantine rules, a spokesperson for Metro Nashville Public Schools said there no changes to our current protocols or policies at this time.

Our goal all along has been to sustain the ability to make decisions in the best interest of the health and safety of all our students, free from politics, said Sean Braisted in an email on Friday.

Republican House Speaker Cameron Sexton criticized the order.

His decision was merely judicial activism based on politics with a complete disregard for personal liberties or scientific facts, Sexton said in a statement.

His ruling also allows every school district to set quarantine guidelines, Sexton added. This means hundreds of different guidelines made by local school boards instead of uniform, evidence-based standards established by experts at the Department of Health.

Masks are a key virus-prevention tool that are most effective when worn by a large number of people, public health experts say. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has again recommended them for enclosed public spaces including schools, saying they dont pose health risks for children older than toddlers.
ST. LOUIS (AP)  A judge on Friday set a March trial date for William Tisaby, the private investigator who led the invasion of privacy investigation of former Gov. Eric Greitens in 2018.

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported that St. Louis Circuit Judge Bryan Hettenbach set the trial date for March 28.
AUSTIN, Texas (AP)  A Texas judge said Thursday the enforcement mechanism behind the nation's strictest abortion law which rewards lawsuits against violators by awarding judgments of $10,000  is unconstitutional in a narrow ruling that still leaves a near-total ban on abortions in place.

State District Judge David Peeples of Austin side-stepped the broader legality of the Texas law known as Senate Bill 8, which since September has banned abortions once cardiac activity is detected, usually around six weeks and before some women know they are even pregnant. Abortion providers have asked the U.S. Supreme Court to block the law but it has so far declined to do so.

The ruling in state court has no bearing on the broader and higher-stakes case before the Supreme Court, which has shown no urgency in making a ruling.

Planned Parenthood celebrated the state ruling but said abortion services still remain virtually inaccessible" in Texas, and supporters of the law that was signed by Republican Gov. Greg Abbott said it was unlikely to have any practical impact or even dissuade lawsuits against abortion clinics.

"This doesnt change anything on the ground, said John Seago, legislative director of Texas Right to Life, the state's largest anti-abortion group.

The Texas law uses a novel enforcement mechanism that has essentially allowed it to outmaneuver Supreme Court precedent over a womens constitutional right to abortion. The law prohibits enforcement by prosecutors and instead leaves it up to private citizens, who are entitled to collect what critics call a bounty of $10,000 if they bring a successful lawsuit against a provider or anyone who helps a patient obtain an abortion.

Patients seeking abortions cannot be sued under the law, which allows for anyone to file a lawsuit.

It is one thing to authorize taxpayers or citizens to file suits against government officials to make them obey a law," Peeples wrote. It is quite another thing to incentivize citizens or persons to file suits against other private citizens to extract money from them, with no pretense of compensating the claimant for anything.

An appeal was expected.

Its impossible to say where things stand inside the Supreme Court, where the justices typically exchange and revise opinions privately on both sides before handing down a decision. With no action so far, it seems clear that the court lacks five votes, a majority of the nine-member body, to put the Texas law on hold.

When abortion providers asked the court to keep the law from taking effect, the justices refused by a 5-4 vote, with Chief Justice John Roberts joining his three liberal colleagues in dissent.

Texans have the right to access abortion free from vigilante lawsuits that are meant to harass providers and abortion fund allies, Planned Parenthood providers said in a statement. This ruling is a much-needed step, but abortion rights are still not secure.
FRANKFORT, Ky. (AP)  Kentucky is getting $5.3 million in federal dollars to boost its tourism industry.

The money will go to destination marketing organizations and tourism regions, according to a release from Gov. Andy Beshear's office.

Beshear said tourism is important to the state's economic growth. The funding will go to the state's Tourism, Arts and Heritage Cabinet.

The money comes from the American Rescue Plan Act's program for tourism and recreation.

The governor's office said tourism is an $8.9 billion industry in Kentucky.

Earlier this year, the governor's office announced $5 million in tourism funding from the federal CARES Act. The state also received an additional $2.8 million from the CARES Act to support economic growth of the tourism industry, the governor's office said.
BOISE, Idaho (AP)  Idaho's child protection services are struggling, with some kids being left in unsafe homes despite dozens of complaints and others forced to stay in hotels because there aren't enough foster parents to take them them in, members of a legislative panel were told Friday.

The Child Protection Legislative Oversight Committee heard from members of citizen review panels around the state in preparation for the 2022 legislation session that starts Jan. 10. The review panels  made up of volunteers who are tasked with evaluating the child protection systems in their regions  reported that social workers are woefully overworked, causing some to quit and leaving others with impossibly high caseloads. Meanwhile, kids are falling through the cracks.

In the four-county region that includes the city of Boise, one child was referred for protective services 44 times before being brought in to foster care, said Brian McCauley with that region's citizen review panel.

In other cases, family court judges are sometimes ordering children and estranged parents to participate in reunification therapy together, despite criminal investigations or even protection orders being pursued against the parent.

Imagine an adult being forced to sit down and reunify with a perpetrator of a violent crime against them  we would never do that to an adult, but oftentimes that is what we are doing to little kids, McCauley told the committee.

Cindy Floyd, who sits on the review panel that includes the southwestern cities of Nampa and Caldwell, said social workers in her region are dealing with as many as 25 cases at a time. Floyd said that was a massive overload, but rather than hire enough social workers, the state has tried to fill the gaps by bringing in underqualified staffers.

Those staffers sometimes miss red flags, such as a parent who naps during a supervised hourlong visit with a baby  behavior Floyd said can indicate potential substance abuse problems.

Idaho's Office of Performance Evaluations told lawmakers in 2017 that child protection workers were dealing with a massive overload of cases, each handling around 14 or 15 a month. Today, social workers in her region handle between 22 and 25 cases at a time, Floyd said.

Citizen review panel members also said they sometimes have trouble getting the documents they need to review cases from the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare, and feel their recommendations and reports sometimes are ignored by those in charge.

Foster parents are also in short supply, with some leaving because they don't feel like enough is being done to fix the problems in the child protection system, lawmakers were told.

Cameron Gilliland, administrator of the health department's Family and Community Services, acknowledged that in the past several months, dozens of children have been temporarily placed in short-term rentals like AirBnB residences and hotel rooms while the state tries to find suitable homes.

That is simply because we have lacked foster parents, Gilliland said.

That's partly because the pandemic has made it harder to recruit new foster parents and the state's population has increased dramatically, Gilliland said, but also because the department is seeing harder kids, frankly.

Teenagers with significant behavior or other issues can be difficult to place in foster homes, he said. The state is now offering $500 recruitment bonuses for some foster parents who take teens.

Gilliland also said the state has made progress in some areas, including giving bonuses to social workers in hopes of keeping them on staff, bringing in help from social workers in parts of the state that have lower caseloads, and hiring a recruiter to find more staffers.

I think we are managing to cover things. Children are being seen, and the work is being done, he said.

Lawmakers will need to put political philosophies aside and work together to advocate for kids, said Sen. Melissa Wintrow, a Democrat from Boise.

This is the toughest, biggest, most wicked problem in our state, she said. What I want to see is all of us  not just you, but the Legislature, the courts, every single person on this planet be an advocate for kids.
SEATTLE (AP)  A government transparency group has sued Washingtons redistricting commission, saying its final vote on the states new political maps violated the states Open Public Meetings Act.

The Seattle Times reports the Washington Coalition for Open Government filed the lawsuit Thursday in Thurston County Superior Court, saying commissioners flouted the public meetings law by negotiating secretly for hours on Nov. 15 before taking a rushed pre-midnight vote on maps that were not publicly displayed or debated.
LAS VEGAS (AP)  A court appearance is set for next week for a man accused of driving a limousine onto aircraft ramps at Las Vegas international airport, donning a clown mask and declaring he had a bomb before surrendering to authorities.

Matthew Ray Hancock, 36, was arrested Wednesday near private air carrier operations off Las Vegas Boulevard on felony charges including making a terrorist threat, causing dispersal with a hoax substance and misdemeanor trespassing, according to court records. No injuries were reported.

According to police, Hancock told investigators he was Tik Tok famous after having been stopped by officers Nov. 11 and ticketed for reckless driving with a limousine spinning its tires through traffic on the Las Vegas Strip, the Las Vegas Review-Journal reported.

On Wednesday, authorities allege Hancock drove a limousine through gates of a private air carrier, breached inner and outer airport security barriers, spun vehicle wheels across an aircraft ramp and stopped near parked aircraft.

Witnesses told police that Hancock got out of the limousine, put on a clown mask and shouted that he had a bomb and was going to detonate it, the Las Vegas Sun reported.

Nearby employees fled, and Hancock drove away before being stopped by police.

Hancock told officers there was a shotgun and a gasoline device in the car, and that he intended to take a jet to fly to Area 51 to look for aliens, authorities said. Area 51 is a former top-secret U.S. Air Force base about a two-hour drive north of Las Vegas famous for theories about space visitors and extraterrestrial lore.

Police said McCarran air traffic was altered during the incident.

Investigators said they found an apparent oxygen tank in the limousine with a pressure gauge, Christmas lights and metal objects attached that made it look like a bomb.

Hancock also allegedly told police he had high-security clearance, that he was in the mob and that someone owed him millions of dollars, according to his arrest report.

Hancock remained jailed Friday. He was characterized as disruptive and refused to appear in court Thursday, according to records that show he is due again in court on Tuesday.

A judge set bail at $150,000 and ordered house arrest with electronic monitoring if Hancock is released. A deputy public defender represented him temporarily. It was not clear Friday if Hancock had hired a lawyer.
TAMPA, Fla. (AP)  A Florida grand jury indicted a man on first-degree murder charges Thursday after police say he killed a Pennsylvania woman and dumped her dismembered body into a bay.

The Hillsborough County State Attorney's Office said it had obtained an indictment against 69-year-old Robert Kessler. He had been charged with second-degree murder for last month's death of earlier of Stephanie Crone-Overholts, 47, of Erie, Pennsylvania.
PORTLAND, Ore. (AP)  A far-right extremist has been sentenced to 10 years in prison for his violent actions during August 2020 protests against racial injustice in Oregons largest city.

Alan Swinney was convicted of unlawful use of a weapon, attempted assault, pointing a firearm at another, and second degree unlawful use of mace, among other charges, Oregon Public Broadcasting reported. Portland residents saw almost nightly protests after a white officer murdered George Floyd, a Black man, in Minneapolis last year, with some rallies erupting in chaos and counterprotests.

As evidenced by the defendants escalating violence, letters, social media statements and testimony, the defendant has no remorse for his actions, no desire to change and every intention of engaging in future acts of violence, Deputy District Attorney Nathan Vasquez wrote in a sentencing memo.

Swinney, 51, was among dozens of far-right demonstrators Aug. 22, 2020, who fired paintball guns and sprayed mace at anti-fascist demonstrators during a violent brawl in downtown Portland.

Many in the crowd were carrying firearms, but authorities said at one point Swinney pulled a revolver and pointed it at the crowd of counterprotesters.

To support their sentencing recommendation, prosecutors included a handwritten letter Swinney tried to send to Derek Chauvin, the former Minneapolis police officer who was convicting of killing Floyd, sparking months of nationwide protests.

In the letter, Swinney expressed sympathy for Chauvin after his conviction, telling him to keep his head up because he could win on appeal or be freed through other means.

Another thing that may end up working in your favor is that this country is headed toward civil war, Swinney wrote. I see it ramping up. Civil war will get you out of jail. Itll get me out too.

Swinney is a member of the far-right group the Proud Boys.

He earlier admitted, as part of a civil settlement, to assaulting a woman during an August 2020 protest in Portland.
BALTIMORE (AP)  A Baltimore County judge sentenced a man to 50 years in prison Friday for killing a popular bartender four years ago in Baltimore city.

Judge Nancy Purpura handed down a life sentence to Malik Mungo, 21, suspending all but 50 years, The Baltimore Sun reported.

Mungo was convicted of murder, robbery and gang charges in October. Sebastian Dvorak, a popular bartender, was robbed and fatally shot as he walked home after celebrating his 27th birthday in June 2017.

Dvorak's slaying led to an investigation of a gang and 13 people were indicted on gang conspiracy charges. Prosecutors said the gang leader gave Mungo the murder weapon.

Marylands gang statute allows prosecutors to charge all crimes committed by a gang in the jurisdiction of any one crime. The attorney generals office chose to prosecute Mungo in the county since some gang members lived in the county and kept drugs there.
COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP)  South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster wants to invest most of a $525 million settlement from the federal government over plutonium storage at a former nuclear weapons plant into the counties surrounding the plant.

The governor on Friday released his recommendations for the money from the 2020 settlement. Federal authorities had promised a plant at the Savannah River Site near Aiken that would turn plutonium from unneeded nuclear weapons into nuclear reactor fuel but instead left about 21,000 pounds (9,500 kilograms) of the highly radioactive material in storage in South Carolina.

McMaster's plan would direct $317.5 million to projects in Aiken County and $121 million and $13 million to nearby Barnwell and Allendale counties, respectively. Those communities surrounding the nuclear plant should be the beneficiaries of the funds, McMaster wrote in a letter to state lawmakers.

These settlement funds present us with a once in a lifetime opportunity, McMaster wrote. By making big, bold, and transformative investments in the areas of education, infrastructure, workforce, and economic development, we can quite literally change the future of the region and the State.

The money is currently in the hands of the state legislature, which will ultimately decide how to spend the cash.

The governor's proposal would create several industrial parks, upgrade water and sewer systems and help develop and expand workforce training programs in the three counties, among other suggestions. McMaster has recommended several other infrastructure projects in Aiken, including a project to ease congestion on a busy road and a broadband expansion effort.

McMaster also wants $73.5 million to go into a reserve fund for future use.

South Carolina has long fought with the federal government over the plutonium, which was sent to the state for a facility intended to create nuclear fuel until federal officials shut the program down.

The feds promised in 2002 to get rid of all the plutonium by 2017 and the settlement was brokered after the promise was broken. The 2020 settlement also requires the U.S. to get all the plutonium out by the end of 2036 or face more penalties that could total more than $1 billion.

The Savannah River Site once had nearly 26,000 workers in the early 1990s as it shifted from making nuclear weapons to finding ways to clean and store the radioactive byproducts of weapons and nuclear plants. Now, about 11,000 people work at the site.
Debra Geske, a Navy technician, was enjoying cranberry juice at a bar in Guam when a male sailor spiked it with a drug when she wasnt looking. He and two other sailors drove her home and raped her, she said. I woke up the next morning full of blood, she said.

When Geske reported the rape to her petty officer in 2000, he said he couldnt respond until higher-ups arrived on a Navy ship four weeks later. Then, officials told her it was a he said, she said scenario, and they did nothing, she said. I felt at the time like I didnt matter, said the Glastonbury resident.

Maureen Gard Friedly said she was sexually assaulted by her Marine Corps platoon leader  whom she considered a friend  in 2006. Her commanders told the two to work out their problems and kept them in the same classes and living area. She was told that the notes from an interview about her complaint were lost, and she wasnt given another interview. My chain of command really let me down, she said.

Sexual assaults, rape and sexual harassment in the military continue to occur in large numbers. In 2020, 6,290 people reported being sexually assaulted in the military, according to the Department of Defense, but victim advocates say that number falls short of actual cases. Advocates cite fear of repercussion and the requirement of reporting to a commander  who may be the assailant  as reasons for the lack of reporting.

The last time the DOD conducted a survey was in 2018, when 20,500 respondents said they were sexually assaulted in the military, up from 14,900 in 2016. The DOD, which conducts surveys every two years, did not do one in 2020.

Now, after a decade of efforts to remove the prosecution of military sexual trauma from the jurisdiction of commanders, Congress is poised to take action that would put the responsibility for prosecuting sexual assault cases on independent military lawyers.

The move has been hailed as historic. But critics say it doesnt go far enough because commanders would retain a role in the judicial process, potentially diminishing the effect of the independent prosecutors.

National attention was riveted on the issue when at least 83 women and seven men were sexually assaulted by Navy and Marine aviators attending a 1991 conference called the Tailhook Symposium. Since then, other high-profile cases have occurred. In 2017, Marines solicited and shared nude photos of female colleagues on a Facebook page called Marines United. Last year, Vanessa Guillen, a 20-year-old soldier, was murdered at the Fort Hood Army base in Texas after reporting that she had been sexually harassed.

I cant tell you how upset it makes me that military officials convinced Congress for years to allow commanders to have authority over military sexual trauma cases, Friedly said.

Chelsea M. Donaldson, an attorney with the Connecticut Veterans Legal Center, said she has represented 39 MST survivors  27 men and 12 women  in the past three years. None reported their experiences to their commanders, she said.

Pretty much every awful story you can think of, Ive probably heard a version of, unfortunately, Donaldson said. She cited gang rapes, drug-facilitated rapes, and sexual hazing in boot camp, where soldiers are forced to strip and stand naked in front of each other. Im so surprised by how awful human beings can be to one another, she said.

This year, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin supported requiring independent military prosecutors in sexual assault cases. The provision is included in the $768.2 billion National Defense Authorization Act, which was approved this week by the U.S. House of Representatives. It requires that survivors of sexual assault be informed of the disposition of cases against their perpetrators, requires tracking of retaliation against survivors of military sexual trauma, and creates an Office of Special Trial Counsel in each service, answerable to a civilian official. It criminalizes sexual harassment but doesnt take the crimes jurisdiction away from commanders.

A bipartisan majority of Congress, including Connecticut U.S. Sens. Richard Blumenthal and Chris Murphy and U.S. Rep. Jahana Hayes, D-5, signed onto a stronger proposal. It would completely eliminate commanders roles in handling the prosecution of non-military felonies. Sponsors plan to pursue this in separate legislation.

A statement by Protect Our Defenders, an advocacy group devoted to reducing military sexual trauma, called the use of independent prosecutors the most significant military justice reform in our nations history and a momentous step forward.

However, its praise was qualified because the commanders would retain some judicial authority, including over court-martial proceedings and who would serve on them. Col. Don M. Christensen, Protect Our Defenders president, said this erodes the independence of the prosecutors and ignores concerns of MST survivors that commanders will still have too much influence.

Friedly agreed. A former Meriden resident, she was an activist for MST survivors while attending Quinnipiac University and continues to advocate for them in Texas, where she now lives.

Shes aid commanders retaining some judicial authority insults survivors. Like we wont see through the wool and think this is some sort of improvement, Friedly said. As long as the chain of command has involvement in prosecution and decision-making, we will continue to see a rise in sexual crime, little to no punishment for those found to have been guilty, and a decrease in reporting, she said.

Friedly, a married mother of two, said if there had been independent prosecutors when she was assaulted at the age of 18, she wouldnt be living with post-traumatic stress disorder, wouldnt have lost trust in people, and wouldnt be so fearful and suspicious of others.

She attends an equine-assisted psychotherapy program to help deal with her MST and runs occasional support groups for other female MST survivors.

Geske expressed hope that having independent prosecutors would increase MST reporting because it might reduce fear of repercussion. They told me I shouldnt be in the military if I was going to complain about somebody sexually harassing me, said Geske, who said she was gang-raped when she was 20.

Several advocates said new laws need to be accompanied by cultural changes in the military. That plays a lot into this whole issue, Friedly said. She recalled a Marine nickname, WM, which she said meant both woman Marine and walking mattress.

Christensen, of Protect Our Defenders, said, Theres definitely a misogynistic subculture. He referred to military men who dont want women to serve or be in combat even though women have been excelling. He called for people who are wearing the stars to get on board, adding, if they dont, its time for them to go.

Donaldson, of the CVLC, called for a major cultural shift so MST survivors will feel safe. She said her clients didnt report sexual abuse because they were afraid of being punished, of being blamed for the assault, of being labeled as a problem for reporting the assault, she said.

Donaldson pointed out that its important to acknowledge that men also get sexually harassed, raped and assaulted. A July Rand Corp. report for the Pentagon estimated that 1 in 16 women and 1 in 143 men had been sexually assaulted in the military.

U.S. Rep. Jackie Speier, a Democrat from California, first introduced legislation in 2011, and U.S. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, a Democrat from New York, introduced legislation in 2013 to take military sexual trauma prosecution out of the chain of command.

This type of reform was needed decades ago, Donaldson said.

This story was reported under a partnership with the Connecticut Health I-Team (c-hit.org), a nonprofit news organization dedicated to health reporting.
MINNEAPOLIS (AP)  The owner of a bar in Albert Lea was found guilty Thursday of six criminal misdemeanor charges and sentenced to 90 days in jail for defying Gov. Tim Walzs executive orders to close her business last winter.

The jury found Lisa Hanson, 57, guilty after deliberating for an hour, the Minneapolis Star-Tribune reported. Prosecutors had asked that Hanson be fined $500 and jailed for several days, but Judge Joseph Bueltel gave her a 90-day jail sentence and a $1,000 fine, saying he wanted to send a message to people who violate executive orders.
JACKSON, Miss. (AP)  Mississippi public universities are withdrawing policies requiring employees to be vaccinated against COVID-19 after an injunction from a federal judge prohibiting the Biden administration from enforcing its vaccination mandate for federal contractors.

Spokespersons for the University of Mississippi, Mississippi State University, University of Southern Mississippi and Jackson State University told The Associated Press on Friday the schools have halted efforts to require employee vaccinations.

The state's other four universities  Mississippi University for Women, Alcorn State University, Delta State University and Mississippi Valley State University  never mandated vaccinations for employees because they are not considered covered federal contractors under President Joe Biden's order, Mississippi Valley State University spokesperson Donell Maxie said.

In a letter to employees announcing the suspension of the University of Mississippi's employee vaccine mandate Wednesday, Chancellor Glenn Boyce thanked the thousands of workers who mobilized quickly to submit their vaccination cards or exemption requests for review before the Jan. 4 deadline. He said the university still encourages all employees be vaccinated.

While this action stays the mandate, the benefits of getting vaccinated are clear, he wrote.

He said the university will monitor any additional developments in the law, including any appeal of the Georgia decision and other court cases related to the vaccination mandate.

As courts make their rulings, this situation could change, Boyce wrote. If the mandate is reinstated by a court, we will adjust our efforts accordingly.

In their messages to staff this week, Mississippi State University and the University of Southern Mississippi officials said they planned to keep their vaccination portals open so employees could submit proof of vaccination if they wish.

The University of Mississippi Medical Center's vaccination mandate will remain in effect.

Biden's Sept. 9 executive order required employees who do work connected to federal contracts be vaccinated unless they qualify for a medical, disability or religious exemption. The order stated contractors must be vaccinated by Dec. 8. That deadline was later extended to Jan. 4 to give workers more time to comply.

The Mississippi Institutions of Higher Learning board of trustees reluctantly voted to enforce the order Oct. 25 as long as the order was not stayed, delayed or revoked.

Mississippi universities have approximately 120 federal contracts totaling at least $271 million.

The vote was a reversal from a previous decision in September by the board to prohibit public universities from requiring COVID-19 vaccinations unless students or employees work in a clinical setting, like at the University of Mississippi Medical Center.

On Tuesday. U.S. District Court Judge R. Stan Baker, in Augusta, Georgia, issued a stay to bar enforcement of the mandate nationwide.

The order came in response to a lawsuit from several contractors and seven states -- Alabama, Georgia, Idaho, Kansas, South Carolina, Utah and West Virginia. It applies across the U.S. because one of those challenging the order is the trade group Associated Builders and Contractors Inc., whose members do business nationwide.

Judge Baker found that the states are likely to succeed in their claim that Biden exceeded authorization from Congress when he issued the requirement in September. ___

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.

___

Follow APs coverage of the pandemic at https://apnews.com/hub/coronavirus-pandemic.
Gov. Mike Parsons office appointed four new members to a state board that oversees funeral homes amid complaints that the previous members had beefed up inspections too much after one crematory was found in such disrepair that body fluids were leaking onto the floor.

In their first meeting in October, Parson's new appointees fired two top officials, according to an audio recording of the meeting obtained by The Associated Press. An attorney for the board had been terminated months earlier and an inspector was fired in the days that followed, leaving the board with very few experienced employees.

The firings came as board members openly discussed suing the state to settle a dispute over whether they could hire and retain their own staff to conduct inspections.

The six-member Board of Embalmers & Funeral Directors had strengthened inspections last fall after they found that the previous system, which relied partially on nonspecialist inspectors, had failed to cite homes for problems that included record-keeping snags and fire hazards. But a state official with authority over the board ordered the members to halt some of their efforts.

During the meeting on Oct. 14, the new appointees followed a script as they fired Lori Hayes, the executive director of the board, and Randall Jennings, who oversaw financial examinations of sellers of prearranged funeral services.

I thought it was bizarre, to put it mildly," said Republican State Sen. Cindy OLaughlin, who was listening, and had her staff reach out to the governor's office to express concerns.

Parson spokeswoman Kelli Jones said in an email that the governors office had received complaints from funeral home owners about the board and investigators but didn't seek more lenient inspections because of them. She also said the office wasn't behind the script.

Jones said the appointments, which were announced in September, were made because three members had been serving on expired terms; the fourth seat was open.

The controversy centered around the Central Investigative Unit, which helps conduct inspections for dozens of state oversight boards that regulate everything from real estate agents to social workers. The funeral board relied on the unit because it only had one in-house inspector with funeral home experience, Kelly Sedgwick.

Hayes said the unit investigators had inspected Sweeney-Phillips & Holdren Funeral Home in Warrensburg for years and years. But she said that when Sedgwick went there last year, she discovered a disaster.

One court document said that the crematory has human fat drippings/liquid on the floor and was an immediate fire hazard. Other court filings accused it of licensing issues. A judge in January ordered the funeral home to temporarily cease operations after the board took it to court.

James Anderson, an attorney for the funeral home, wrote in a court filing the next month that it had fully repaired the cremation chamber and passed an inspection. The case was dismissed late last month. Anderson declined to comment when reached by the AP.

Jones said the governor wasn't aware of the situation at Sweeney-Phillips & Holdren.

Hayes said investigators with the Central Investigative Unit also were missing other things, from records to disgusting prep rooms. That led the board in September 2020 to start requiring investigators with the unit to take pictures during their inspections to ensure they werent missing things.

Six months later in March, Sheila Solon, the newly appointed acting director of the Division of Professional Registration, which oversees the board, told the members that the photographic inspections must stop, said Bill Stalter, an attorney who writes a blog on funeral homes and follows the industry, in an interview. He added that Solon was very clear that her instructions are coming directly from the governor.

Jones, Parson's spokeswoman, said the orders weren't from the governor.

Lori Croy, a spokeswoman for the Missouri Department of Commerce & Insurance, said Solon and the division she leads have no comment. An attorney for the division said it couldn't immediately provide a recording of the March meeting because of technical issues.

The board pushed to hire a second in-house inspector with funeral home experience but were told they couldn't. Then Solon transferred Sedgwick to the Central Investigative Unit, where she would conduct investigations for other boards, not just funeral homes, despite objections from the board. Sedgwick alleged it was a way to keep her from writing violations.

In a July meeting, board members debated whether to seek an attorney generals opinion so they could get clarity on their authority and budget powers. The board also decided to put the brakes on all routine inspections while they sorted everything out, Stalter said.

Andrew Moore, one of just two people not swept off the board in the wave of appointments, said some of the members also began discussing pooling their money together to sue the governor and other officials because they believed state statutes allowed them to keep Sedgwick and hire another inspector. But they never filed anything, and the discussions fizzled when Parson appointed new board members.

Don Otto, executive director of the Missouri Funeral Directors and Embalmers Association, a trade group, who complained to the board about the pictures, said that if you discuss hiring outside legal counsel to sue the state and cant figure out whats going to happen, you havent been around Jefferson City very long."

As the October meeting began, Moore read aloud the script, which he said had been leaked to him by one of the newly appointed board members.

In a recording of the meeting obtained by the AP through an open records request, Moore grills new members Greg Russell, Kasey Griffin, Courtney McGhee and Victoria Anne Schwinke about where the script came from, but none of them answered his questions. They said they hadnt met in advance to discuss the script, which he provided to the AP.

Moore, who was ousted as chairman during the meeting, said it was absolutely amazing" that the new members then followed the script after he had read it.

Complaints have since been filed with the board against Moore and Hayes  one bearing the signature of Russell, the boards new chairman  alleging they maneuvered together during the meeting to allow Moore to take pictures of Russell's personal notes." The complaints, which they provided to the AP, seek discipline against their funeral directors licenses and Moore's removal from the board.

None of the new board members immediately returned a phone message from the AP seeking comment.

Pretty much what it comes down to is the funeral home industry in the state of Missouri can do whatever it wants to, said Sedgwick, who was fired after the meeting and plans to sue.

Moore and his wife also were charged criminally in November with receiving stolen property. Moore says the case has nothing to do with his role on the board and instead stems from a long-simmering dispute with his former funeral home business partners.
HONOLULU (AP)  The Monsanto agrochemical company said Thursday in court documents that it has agreed to plead guilty to illegally using and storing pesticides in Hawaii and will pay $12 million in fines.

The court filing said Monsanto agreed to plead guilty to 30 environmental crimes after workers were allowed to go into corn fields last year on Oahu after glufosinate ammonium-based product named Forfeit 280 was sprayed on the fields.

Federal law prohibits people from entering areas where the chemical is sprayed within six days of application.

The company will also plead guilty to two felony crimes related to the storage of a banned chemical on Maui, according to the Department of Justice.

Monsanto is a serial violator of federal environmental laws, U.S. Attorney Tracy Wilkison said in a statement. The company repeatedly violated laws related to highly regulated chemicals, exposing people to pesticides that can cause serious health problems."

Monsanto faces three years of probation in addition to the fines and continue a comprehensive environmental compliance program overseen by a third-party auditor, said the statement from the U.S Attorney's Office in Los Angeles, which is handling the prosecution.

The defendant in this case failed to follow regulations governing the storage of hazardous wastes and the application of pesticides, putting people and the environment at risk, said Scot Adair, Special Agent in Charge of the Environmental Protection Agencys criminal enforcement program in Hawaii, which conducted the investigation.

Monsanto apologized in a statement but said no adverse health effects had been reported to company officials in association with the violations.

The conduct at issue in the agreement is unacceptable and contrary to the values and policies of the company, and we sincerely regret it, said Darren Wallis, Monsanto's vice president of communications for North America crop science.

The company said it will change procedures and training.

The Department of Justice statement said Monsanto has agreed that company representatives will appear in court to enter guilty pleas for the offenses in the near future.
KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP)  More than a half-dozen local health departments in Missouri have stopped offering COVID-19 services, such as contact tracing and tracking case numbers, in response to threats of legal action from Attorney General Eric Schmitt.

Schmitt, a Republican who is running for the U.S. Senate, this week sent letters to local health officials and school districts saying he would pursue legal action if they did not comply with a ruling last month that struck down regulations giving local health departments the power to issue quarantine and other public health orders.

At least six departments issued statements as of Thursday night saying they would stop COVID-19-related work such as case investigations, contact tracing, quarantine orders, and public announcements of current cases/deaths. They included agencies in Stoddard, Pemiscot, New Madrid, Scott, Dunklin and Laclede counties, The Kansas City Star reported.

The announcements contain similar wording, calling the decision a huge concern but that they were required to follow Schmitts orders until they receive direction from state health officials.

McDonald County Health Department officials said in a statement they will continue to report case numbers and call people who test positive for the virus to discuss recommendations from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Two departments covering four counties north of Kansas City  Daviess, Gentry, DeKalb and Worth  said they would no longer issue quarantine orders for schoolchildren, while Carroll County in north central Missouri said it would comply with the court decision. Several others said they were unsure how to proceed.

Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services officials haven't publicly commented on Green's ruling. Director Donald Kauerauf suggested in a letter to local health departments last week that they seek advice from attorneys.

On Tuesday, state health officials told local departments they were collecting questions about the court ruling to develop a consistent and uniform response.

Schmitt's threat has sparked more opposition to COVID-19 orders in some school districts as well. The attorney general on Wednesday also urged parents to report districts with mask and quarantine rules to his office.

There has been pushback throughout the year but this has definitely escalated it, said Christine McDonald, spokeswoman for EducationPlus, a nonprofit representing 60 St. Louis area school districts.

School officials argue they have the authority under state law to implement health rules on campuses despite the ruling, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported.

McDonald citied a letter sent Thursday by the Missouri School Boards Association that says school districts authority and obligation to prevent the spread of contagious diseases in schools has not been impacted. The letter cites five state laws that the association says gives local school boards authority to make health and safety rules.
WINDOW ROCK, Ariz. (AP)  The Navajo Nation on Thursday reported 78 more COVID-19 cases, but no additional deaths for the fourth time in the past five days.

The latest numbers pushed the tribes total cases since the pandemic began to 40,334.
FARGO, N.D. (AP)  Federal prosecutors have recommended no jail time for a Wisconsin man who smuggled a bear carcass from Canada into North Dakota.

The Wisconsin hunter brought the bear from Canada after exceeding a limit in Manitoba by killing two bears in the same year, KFGO-AM reported.
NEW YORK (AP)  New York City voters would be asked to decide if there should be a citywide racial equity plan as part of a proposal put forward Thursday by a charter review commission convened in the wake of last year's racial justice protests.

The Racial Justice Commission at its next-to-last meeting voted on measures that would be on the ballot in November pending approval of their final language, which also include having a Racial Equity Office and the creation of a tool to measure the real cost of living in New York City.

The measures set a foundation for racial equity that would propel the city" forward, providing access and opportunity for everyone, said Jennifer Jones Austin, CEO of the Federation of Protestant Welfare Agencies and chair of the commission.

The charter is the citys constitution, spelling out how its organized and how it functions. A review commissions role is to come up with any relevant amendments, which are put on the general election ballot for voters to deny or accept.

Mayor Bill de Blasio announced the commission in March, with the directive that it examine the city's charter from a racial equity perspective and come up with recommendations.

At the time, de Blasio said, Our mission is to root out systemic racism across New York City. The Racial Justice Commission has the power to put forth permanent, transformative ideas for our government and our city. This moment demands nothing less."

The measures in the resolution voted on in Thursday's meeting will be put in final ballot language form and submitted to the commission for approval next week, after which they will be given to the city clerk to be voted on in November.

The city equity plan would come out every two years, in coordination with the city budget, and outline the priorities and goals for getting to racial equity.

Over the past months, the commission held public hearings and heard from a range of figures in trying to determine what would be part of its recommendations.

At the start of Thursday's meeting, Jones Austin alluded to ideas and issues that were not included as ballot measures, either because they were outside of the city's powers or their scope was larger than the current commission's purview, like the call for a larger truth and reconciliation commission process or the push for reparations.

Those and other ideas are instead being included in a racial justice roadmap that would be presented as something for future mayoral administrations or charter review commissions to consider.
COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP)  Three people injured during last year's racial injustice and police brutality protests in Ohio's capital city described unprovoked harassment and assaults by police that led in some cases to lasting injuries.

Their comments on Friday came a day after the city of Columbus and lawyers for 32 people injured during the protests announced a $5.75 million settlement.

Community activist Tammy Fournier Alsaada said she'd been allowed to walk past a line of police to investigate reports of people being arrested when she heard a series of bangs and pops.

The only thing I can describe it as, is the sounds of war that I witness on TV, Alsaada said in an online news conference. As I looked in the air, all I could see was arches of smoke and cannisters raining down on me and the people that were with me.

Alsaada was temporarily blinded, knocked to the ground, hit by a police horse, then later chased and corralled by police officers, she said.

Rev. Clarressa Thompson said she was pepper sprayed and pushed down despite wearing her clergy robes and carrying a sign that said, No Violence  God lives.

Bernadette Calvey said she hadn't intended to protest, but was walking with her roommate when she approached a scene of protesters, thinking she might join. Out of the blue she was struck in the face by a wooden bullet, leaving a scar still on her chin. An inch or two higher and she could have lost teeth or an eye, she said.

Calvey said the injury was all the more shocking after being raised to respect the police. It was a very eye-opening experience to see the police violence first hand, she said.

People suffered permanent scarring, fractured ankles, other broken bones, a severe eye injury, an injury requiring a total knee replacement, and ongoing post-traumatic stress disorder, said attorney Chanda Brown.

They came to nonviolently protest police violence and were met with police violence, Brown said Friday.

Payouts will vary based on the extent of protesters individual injuries, and will be determined during a series of private meetings with a special master hired to review each case, said John Marshall, the lead attorney in the federal lawsuit brought by the injured protesters.

The settlement also finalizes details of a federal judge's ruling earlier this year that ordered Columbus police to stop using nonlethal force such as tear gas, pepper spray and rubber bullets on nonviolent protesters who aren't harming people or destroying property.

Columbus City Council is expected to approve the financial settlement next week.

At issue in the federal lawsuit was the citys response to protests that began in late May after the killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin, who this year was convicted of second-degree unintentional murder, third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter.

Police testified about facing chaotic and threatening situations.

People were walking up to us with bottles and opening them and throwing, like, unknown liquids on us, yelling in our face, Officer Anthony Johnson said, according to court documents.

Columbus protests lasted multiple days downtown, near Ohio State University, and across other parts of the city. The first night, protesters smashed windows at the Ohio Statehouse and businesses throughout downtown.

In a separate episode, U.S. Rep. Joyce Beatty was hit by pepper spray as scuffles broke out near the end of a May demonstration.

A report released last spring said Columbus was unprepared for the size and energy of the protests and that most police officers felt abandoned by city leadership during that time. The report, commissioned by the city council, also found the city had no advance plan for handling such protests, and suffered from a lack of coordination and even regular communication among city leaders once the protests began.
WEIRTON, W.Va. (AP)  The parents of a West Virginia child who died in a fire earlier this year have been charged with child neglect, officials said.

Heather Renee Johnston, 38, and Michael Scott Johnston, 36, were each charged with neglect creating substantial risk of injury or death and neglect resulting in death, Hancock County Prosecuting Attorney Steven Dragisich told The Intelligencer.
GAINESVILLE, Fla. (AP)  A Florida man angry over his neighbors parking habits sprayed fire from a commercial flamethrower toward a car with three teenagers inside, police said. No one was hurt.

Andre Abrams, 57, of Gainesville is facing three counts of felony aggravated assault with a deadly weapon without intending to kill, according to court records. He posted a $15,000 bond last week and is awaiting a decision whether prosecutors will formally file criminal charges.

The mother of one of the teens, Ashley Gainey, said Abrams frequently sprayed the flamethrower to scare off guests at her home. Gaineys daughter, Natetalya Baker, 16, fled the car with her friends as Abrams continued to spray flames toward them, police said.

When he shoots it, it lights the whole road up, Gainey said. Its like its daylight outside. Hell do it in the middle of the night.

In his arrest report, police identified the weapon in the Nov. 30 incident as an XM42 Lite Flamethrower, which shoots flames up to 20 feet and is manufactured by X Products LLC of Vancouver, Washington. It sells for about $900 online.

Youve probably wondered if you can own a flamethrower, and guess what? You can! the company said in a promotional video last year. No permits or licenses needed. It said the devices are legal to buy and own in every state except Maryland or California.

The company  which also sells T-shirts identifying the wearer as a little terrorist  requires buyers to accept a liability waiver and affirm they were never convicted of a felony, domestic abuse or arson. Abrams was twice convicted of misdemeanor domestic battery after arrests in 2002 and 2004.

It wasnt clear whether police had seized the flamethrower.

Abrams said in a brief phone interview that he could not discuss the case without consulting an attorney over fear of being evicted from his home by the local housing authority. Alachua County Circuit Judge Meshon T. Rawls formally approved his request for a public defender, according to court records filed Tuesday.

In the U.S., there are no federal laws regulating the sale of flamethrowers, which are not considered firearms. A congressman in New York introduced a restrictive bill he called Flamethrowers? Really? in 2019 but the measure didnt pass. Florida outlaws the manufacture or sale of shotgun shells called dragons breath that mimic flamethrowers by shooting a flame or fireball.

Abrams acknowledged that the incident stemmed from a long-running dispute over parking with a neighboring family. Police said he admitted shooting the flamethrower toward the vehicle but denied targeting the teens.

This family, how could I say this  the worst thing that could ever happen to a neighborhood, Abrams said. Theyve had issues with other residents, and it needs to be brought to light.

The driver of the parked car, Amari Singleton, told police she and her two passengers saw Abrams approach them with the flamethrower and begin spraying fire. Police said flames came within five feet of the vehicle as they escaped using the passengers side door.

You better not burn up my car, Singleton said, according to police.

Gainey, the mother of one of the teens, said she confronted him during the incident.

He shot it toward them, she said. When I got to the door, he was still shooting it. I asked him, What is your effin problem?

___

This story was produced by Fresh Take Florida, a news service of the University of Florida College of Journalism and Communications. The reporter can be reached at corbinbolies@freshtakeflorida.com.
IOWA FALLS, Iowa (AP)  The Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation has identified a man fatally shot by officers in Iowa Falls earlier this week.

The agency said Jared Risius, 35, of Eldora, died after being shot during a confrontation with police Wednesday morning. Investigators said the confrontation happened after a woman called police to say a man she had once dated was stalking her by following her in his car.
SAN DIEGO (AP)  A man charged with pepper spraying San Diego police officers during a heated protest last year has been acquitted of all charges.

A jury on Thursday found Denzel Draughn, 29, not guilty of eight felonies: two counts of using tear gas on officers and six counts of resisting officers, the Union-Tribune reported.
HARTFORD, Conn. (AP)  The bipartisan commission charged with redrawing the boundaries for Connecticuts congressional districts has been given more time to finish its work.

The State Supreme Court agreed this week to give the Reapportionment Commission until Dec. 21 at noon to finish its work redrawing the lines. The justices also ordered the commission to file an interim report no later than 5 p.m. on Dec. 15 to update the court on the panel's efforts.
BERLIN (AP)  German security officials said Friday that they have a foiled a planned Islamist attack, after arresting a man in the northern city of Hamburg over the summer who had been trying to buy weapons and make explosives.

Hamburg's top security official, Andy Grote, described the incident as very, very serious, German news agency dpa reported.
THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP)  A human rights group has called on the International Criminal Court to open an investigation into the crackdown on dissent by Myanmar's military rulers, alleging that the leader of the February coup in the Southeast Asian nation is responsible for widespread and systematic torture.

The Myanmar Accountability Project said in a statement on Friday that there was sufficient evidence to open an investigation into the head of the country's military-installed government, Senior Gen. Min Aung Hlaing.

The leader of the illegal coup is criminally responsible for the security forces under his command committing mass atrocity crimes, project director Chris Gunness said.

The documents filed with prosecutors at the court in The Hague were not made public, but Gunness said they contain testimony from a defector that shows responsibility for the torture goes all the way up to Min Aung Hlaing himself.

Gunness said the testimony corroborates findings by the Independent Investigative Mechanism for Myanmar, which was established by the U.N. Human Rights Council.

The head of the mechanism, Nicholas Koumjian, said in November that preliminary evidence collected since the military seized power on Feb. 1 shows a widespread and systematic attack on civilians amounting to crimes against humanity.

Koumjian said his organization had received over 200,000 communications since the army takeover and has collected over 1.5 million items of evidence that were being analyzed so that one day those most responsible for the serious international crimes in Myanmar will be brought to account.

Earlier this week, witnesses and other sources said that Myanmar government troops rounded up villagers, some believed to be children, tied them up and slaughtered them. A video of the aftermath of Tuesdays assault  apparently carried out in retaliation for an attack on a military convoy  showed the charred bodies of 11 people lying in a circle amid what appeared to be the remains of a hut.

Myanmars military-installed government described the reports as fake news.

Myanmar is not one of the International Criminal Court's 123 member states, meaning the Netherlands-based court does not automatically have jurisdiction over crimes committed there. However, Myanmar's self-styled National Unity Government sent a declaration to the court in July saying it accepted the ICC's jurisdiction dating back to 2002, when the global court started work.

So the question is, will (ICC prosecutor) Karim Khan accept the declaration of the NUG? Gunness told The Associated Press. We believe there is strong diplomatic, legal justification for the ICC moving ahead with an investigation.

The ICC prosecution office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The National Unity Government bills itself as the countrys legitimate administrative body, as opposed to the the State Administration Council, the military-installed junta that came to power by force. The National Unity Government stakes its claim to legitimacy to its appointment by the Committee Representing Pyidaungsu Hluttaw, a body formed in the days following the coup by elected lawmakers who were prevented by the army from taking their seats.

The United Nations General Assembly approved a resolution on Monday delaying action on requests by Myanmars military junta  and Afghanistans Taliban rulers  to take their countries seats at the United Nations, a decision that leaves the ambassadors from the two countries' ousted governments in their jobs.

The International Criminal Court already is investigating mass expulsions of members of the Rohingya ethnic minority by the Myanmar military as a possible crime against humanity. However, the court based its jurisdiction in that case on the fact that hundreds of thousands of Rohingya were forced over the border into neighboring Bangladesh, which is an ICC member.
The Salzburg Festival is projecting for a return to normal next summer, announcing a schedule of 228 performances over 45 days that include a new production of Bela Bartoks Bluebeards Castle paired with Carl Orffs A Play on the End of Time.

Salzburg, Europes premier festival, cut to 110 performances in 2020 because of the coronavirus pandemic and was back up to 163 last summer. Revenue dropped from 31.2 million Euros ($34.9 million) in 2019 to 8.7 million Euros ($10.4 million) before rebounding to 27.7 million Euros ($31.5 million) in 2021, when 227,000 attended.

We are doing a full program. We cannot predict how it will be in the summer, festival artistic director Markus Hinterhauser said during a telephone interview. We had two summers when we had the pandemic situation and we had to react.

Hinterhauser hopes the festivals regular audience, usually drawn to Austria from more than 80 nations, will return for the first time since 2019 after skipping last summer due to travel restrictions.

There were many, many countries from which people didnt come. he said. They didnt come from England. They didnt come from America  very few. The Asian countries were kind of excluded. Russia was very modest. So it was more an Austrian-German-Swiss-Central European audience, which was very interesting for us. We had a kind of new audience, which promising in a way.

The Bartok/Orff will be conducted by Teodor Currentzis and directed by Romeo Castellucci. The schedule announced Friday, which runs from July 18 to Aug. 31, includes new stagings of Puccinis Il Trittico directed by Christof Loy and conducted by Franz Welser-Most; and Janaceks Kata Kabanova directed by Barrie Kosky.

There is a very common relation between these three pieces, even though the musical drama is totally different, Hinterhauser said. Everything can be seen in a kind of larger perspective, referring to The Divine Comedy of Dante.

Returning revised versions include Verdis Aida in a Shirin Neshat production from 2017 starring Anna Netrebko, and Mozarts Die Zauberflote (The Magic Flute) in a Lydia Steier staging from 2018.

Rossinis Il Barbiere di Siviglia (The Barber of Seville), directed by Rolando Villazon and starring mezzo-soprano Cecilia Bartoli, will be transferred from the Salzburg Whitsun Festival.
HANOVER, Va. (AP)  The ACLU of Virginia is suing a Virginia school board over its refusal to comply with a 2020 law that requires districts to adopt protections for transgender students.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Virginia filed the lawsuit in Hanover County on Thursday on behalf of five families, all of whom have transgender children enrolled in county public schools, The Washington Post reported.

The law required state education officials to set rules for the treatment of transgender students, then mandated that all school districts adopt guidelines mirroring those rules by the start of this school year.

Last month, the Hanover County School Board voted 4-to-3 against revising its rules that would have permitted transgender students to use bathrooms and attend sex-specific classes that match their gender identities. Its the first such lawsuit against a district, although other systems have also denied or delayed granting transgender students access to sex-specific facilities. No district has faced punishment from state government officials so far.

The lawsuit alleges the board threatens transgender students entire identity, ostracizes them and deprives them of the basic humanity and belongingness where they have the same opportunities as cisgender students to thrive.

It is not the School Boards practice to comment on pending litigation, Ola Hawkins, the boards chair, said by email Thursday.

The plaintiffs are asking a judge to force the school system to allow transgender children access to bathrooms that match their gender identities.

My 13-year-old son only wants to use the boys bathroom like the other boys, Kerry Merrill, one of the parent plaintiffs, said in a statement. He deserves to feel safe at school.

Research suggests there are about 4,000 transgender children in Virginia and studies show that transgender youth attempt suicide at a much higher rate than cisgender youth.

Backlash has swelled, most notably in Loudoun County, where a teacher is suing over the requirement that he address transgender children with their preferred pronouns.
SEATTLE (AP)  Seattles Catholic archdiocese has agreed to pay a Washington woman $725,000 as part of an early dispute resolution to her lawsuit alleging an unidentified employee sexually abused her at the Catholic school she attended more than 40 years ago.

The woman, identified by her initials, T.R., was an 8-year-old third grade student at the archdioceses private St. Louise Parish School in 1977 when an unidentified playground attendant started giving her candy and began sexually grooming her, the lawsuit said.
CAIRO (AP)  Renewed tribal clashes this week between Arabs and non-Arabs in Darfur have killed at least 33 more people, a Sudanese medical group said, warning of still escalating violence in the war-wracked region.

Thousands have been displaced by the recent fighting in Darfur, with some crossing into neighboring Chad, the United Nations has said. The violence poses a significant challenge to Sudan's transitional government, which is seeking to end decades-long rebellions in Darfur in elsewhere in this African country.
WASHINGTON  The Supreme Court on Friday allowed a challenge to a Texas abortion law that banned most abortions in the state after about six weeks to proceed, ruling that abortion providers in the state may sue some state officials in federal court despite the procedural hurdles imposed by the unusual structure of the law.

But the Supreme Court refused to block the law in the meantime, saying that lower courts should consider the matter.

The development was both a victory for and a disappointment to supporters of abortion rights, who had hoped that the justices would reverse course from a Sept. 1 ruling that had allowed the law to go into effect, causing clinics in the state to curtail performing the procedure and forcing many women seeking abortions to travel out of state.

The decision in the Texas case came less than two weeks after the court heard a direct challenge to the right to abortion established in 1973 in Roe v. Wade, in a case about a Mississippi law that bans most abortions after 15 weeks. Roe prohibits states from banning abortion before fetal viability, the point at which fetuses can sustain life outside the womb, or about 23 to 24 weeks into a pregnancy.

The courts six-member conservative majority seemed prepared to uphold the Mississippi law, and several justices indicated that they would vote to overrule Roe outright. A decision in the case is not expected until late June.

The Texas law flouts Roes viability line by barring abortions once fetal cardiac activity can be detected, usually around 6 weeks.

The challenges to the Texas law focused not on the laws constitutionality but on whether the law could be challenged in court by either abortion providers in the state or the federal government. The cases provided the court with an opportunity to revisit its earlier decision allowing the law to go into effect before the justices had grappled with its constitutionality or settled the question of how it could be challenged.

The Texas law, known as Senate Bill 8, has unusual features.

Usually, a lawsuit seeking to block a law because it is unconstitutional would name state officials as defendants. However, the Texas 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.

The patient may not be sued, but doctors, staff members at clinics, counselors, people who help pay for the procedure or drive them to it are all potential defendants. 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.

The courts earlier encounter with the law left the justices bitterly divided, with Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. joining the courts three more liberal members in dissent.

The majority opinion, issued just before midnight Sept. 1, was unsigned and consisted of a single long paragraph. It said the abortion providers who had challenged the law in an emergency application had not made their case in the face of complex and novel procedural questions. The majority stressed that it was not ruling on the constitutionality of the Texas law and did not mean to limit procedurally proper challenges to it.

Each of the dissenting justices issued an opinion in that earlier ruling.

The courts order is stunning, Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote, for instance. Presented with an application to enjoin a flagrantly unconstitutional law engineered to prohibit women from exercising their constitutional rights and evade judicial scrutiny, a majority of justices have opted to bury their heads in the sand.

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, Sotomayor wrote. The court should not be so content to ignore its constitutional obligations to protect not only the rights of women, but also the sanctity of its precedents and of the rule of law.

The case returned to the Supreme Court on two separate tracks. After the court rejected the providers request for emergency relief, the Justice Department filed its own challenge to the law, one that it said was not subject to the procedural barriers the providers had faced. The case soon reached the Supreme Court on an emergency application.

The abortion providers also returned to the court, asking the justices to use an unusual procedure  certiorari before judgment  to leapfrog the appeals court and decide whether they were entitled to sue.

The Supreme Court agreed to decide both cases Oct. 22, putting them on an extraordinarily fast track. It heard arguments just 10 days later, on Nov. 1, focusing on the question of whether the providers and the government were entitled to sue in light of the laws unusual structure.

At those arguments, two members of the original majority, Justices Brett M. Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett, asked questions suggesting that they might have had a change of heart about the law.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
KAMPALA, Uganda (AP)  The capital of Uganda coughs itself awake on weekdays under a soft blanket of smog. Kampala's hills come into sharper focus as the morning rush of minibuses and motorbikes fades. It is this East African city that one of the worlds most well-known climate activists, Vanessa Nakate, calls home.

The 25-year-old's rise in profile has been quick. Not even three years have passed since she set out with relatives in Kampala to stage her first, modest protest over how the world is treating its only planet.

In an interview this week with The Associated Press  which last year drew international attention and Nakate's dismay by cropping her from a photo  she reflected on the whirlwind. She spoke of her disappointment in the outcome of the U.N. climate talks in Scotland and what she and other young activists plan for the year to come.

We expected the leaders to rise up for the people, to rise up for the planet at the talks known as COP26, she said. Instead, the world could be on a pathway to warm 2.4 degrees Celsius (4.3 degrees Fahrenheit) over pre-industrial times.

That's well above the goal of limiting warming to 1.5C  and would be a death sentence for so many communities on the front lines of the climate crisis, Nakate said.

Globally, the signs are dire. The Arctic is warming three times faster than the rest of the planet. The dramatic drop in carbon dioxide emissions from COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns has almost disappeared. This year, forests burned in Siberias weakening permafrost, while record-shattering heatwaves in Canada and the U.S. Pacific Northwest and deadly flooding in Europe brought the climate threat home to some who once thought they could outspend it.

But many of the most-affected communities are in Africa, whose 1.3 billion people contribute the least to global emissions, less than 4%, but stand to suffer from it most.

That suffering, in some cases, has already begun: Deadly drought fells wildlife and livestock in parts of East Africa, water scarcity hits areas in West and Southern Africa, and hunger affects many millions of people, from Madagascar to Somalia, as a result.

And yet the $100 billion in financing per year promised by richer nations to help developing countries deal with the coming catastrophe has not appeared.

We cannot adapt to starvation, Nakate said, her voice soft but firm as the introvert in her gives way to the convictions that have brought her this far. We cannot adapt to extinction, we cannot adapt to lost cultures, lost traditions, to lost histories, and the climate crisis is taking all of these things away.

The next big climate conference will be in Africa, in Egypt, a chance for the spotlight to fall squarely on the continent.

It will be a test for activists and negotiators from Africas 54 countries who have long jostled for space at global climate events.

Many times, activists in Africa have been called missing voices. But we are not missing, Nakate said. We are present, we are available, we are just unheard.

She watched as some activists from African countries faced the challenges of securing funding, accreditation or access to COVID-19 vaccinations as they sought to attend COP26. She has spoken of feeling erased herself when she was cropped out of an AP photo of climate activists last year at the World Economic Forum. The AP apologized for its error in judgment and the pain it caused her.

But it is not enough to simply listen to Africas climate activists, Nakate said this week. People with power must act on those demands.

We dont want to just hear sweet phrases from them, sweet commitments," she said. Commitments will not change the planet, pledges will not stop the suffering of people.

Specifically, Nakate said, drastic action is needed by the leaders in government and business that continue to fund the extraction of fossil fuels, like coal and oil.

She chose not to call out anyone by name, but when asked whether Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni, in power since 1986, had replied to a letter she wrote about a controversial oil pipeline project to ship crude from Uganda to neighboring Tanzania, she said no.

In fact, the 77-year-old leader has never been in contact with Nakate, who became one of the worlds most well-known Ugandans not long after graduating from university with a business degree and becoming inspired by climate activism.

In her recent book A Bigger Picture, Nakate reflects on how leaders decisions on climate have real-life consequences far beyond the data that often dominate the conversation.

She worries about how farmers who lose their crops to climate shocks will feed their families, and how lost income can force children out of school and young women into early marriage.

This isnt just about us wanting a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, Nakate said. We want justice that centers the protection of the planet and the protection of the people because the climate crisis exacerbates poverty first of all. We cannot eradicate poverty if climate change is pushing millions of people into extreme poverty and keeping them in poverty traps.

Asked how young climate activists can make sure that they are central to decision-making worldwide, Nakate expressed confidence that they are making themselves heard, creating their own platforms on social media and elsewhere.

If the table is not given to you, you make one for yourself, she said  a message she could well tweet to her 230,000-plus followers.

In 2022, Nakates work will be closer to home as she pursues a project to provide schools in Uganda with solar panels and eco-friendly cookstoves to reduce the amount of firewood consumed.

I cant believe how fast this journey has been, she said as she realized that within weeks it will be the third anniversary of her first climate protest in Kampala. Activism can be very hard, a lot of work, but it takes love and grace to continue to speak.

It also takes a certain hope, she said, and as a born-again Christian she finds that hope in God. It helps her believe that the future youre fighting for is actually possible and you can achieve it.
Lea en espanol

The holidays are a time to share home-cooked meals, reconnect with far-away loved ones and contemplate what the next year has in store.

But for nearly two years, the coronavirus pandemic has affected our ability to safely get together in person. With vaccines now widely available in the U.S. for everyone ages 5 and up  and with federal health officials encouraging everyone 16 and older to get a booster  more and more families and friends are beginning to reach out.

It may seem challenging after so many months of distancing to reestablish relationships with family and friends  and even co-workers as offices reopen. But experts say it's important for your mental and physical health.

"It's been a while since people have been together, and they may have forgotten about the necessary give-and-take that's a part of navigating social relationships," said Laura Kubzansky, the Lee Kum Kee professor of social and behavioral sciences at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health in Boston.

Kubzansky co-authored an American Heart Association scientific statement about the links between psychological well-being and cardiovascular health. Published in January in Circulation, it reported on a substantial body of research that found feelings of optimism, happiness and purpose were associated with better heart health and fewer adverse cardiovascular events. Conversely, social isolation and loneliness may contribute to the development of cardiovascular disease.

The COVID-19 pandemic has been labeled the "pandemic of loneliness." Even before the lockdowns, research showed lonely people tend to be more physically sedentary and are more likely to smoke and have high blood pressure, all risk factors for cardiovascular disease.

Being socially connected might make those things less likely, Kubzansky said. "There are a lot of different pathways that tie better social relationships to better health," from changes in a person's behavior to mitigating biological responses to stress, she said. "No single mechanism will explain all of the effect. There's just something about feeling cared for that matters in all kinds of ways."

People with better social support also tend to have better psychological health, according to the AHA report. And that social support can come in many forms, said Anne Moyer, professor of social and health psychology at Stony Brook University in New York. Friends and family can provide emotional support when you're going through a hard time, advice and information for handling a problem, and tangible assistance with whatever the situation might be.

"I always say that if you have someone that will help you move, you know that you have tangible support," Moyer said. "Simply knowing that you have people that care about you can lead to an increased sense of connection, self-esteem and control."

Social connections can also encourage and reinforce healthy behaviors and attitudes. Friends and family can remind you to get a health screening or invite you on a walk.

So as you reconnect this holiday season, here are some tips.

Go easy on yourself  and others

Social skills are like any other skills, and we can fall out of practice. You may be rusty after living through the pandemic, Moyer said, and your acquaintances might feel the same.

If your friends or family seem reluctant or awkward when it comes to socializing, try not to judge them  and don't take their hesitation personally. "It's not necessarily about you or the relationship," Moyer said. Perhaps they experienced a loss or illness themselves or found that lockdowns actually reduced their pandemic-related anxiety and they don't want to lose the sense of security, she said.

One way to gauge others' comfort levels might be to propose a lower-risk scenario, such as a brief gathering with masks. "Allow them to take the lead in suggesting potentially more risky scenarios, such as inviting others," Moyer said.

Reconnect safely

The best way to minimize COVID-19 risk for yourself and your friends and family is to get vaccinated. Other protective practices recommended by the CDC include wearing masks indoors in public, avoiding crowded spaces with poor ventilation, and not attending a gathering if you have symptoms.

Fight the inertia

"Relationships take time and effort," Kubzansky said. During the height of the pandemic, many of the little opportunities we usually have to foster connections, such as grabbing coffee with a co-worker, weren't possible. Maintaining relationships took a lot more energy, she said.

She suggests fighting inertia by setting aside one time a week to check in with someone you haven't talked to in a while. "In these times, it really requires commitment," she said.

Start small

Before the holiday party, plan a small get-together to ease back into things, such as a casual lunch with a few friends. A lower-stakes event will take the pressure off everyone, Moyer said. The quick meetup might even turn into a longer conversation.

Help others

Lending a hand can be as beneficial for your own health as receiving support, Kubzansky said. For example, a 2017 study in the journal BMC Public Health found that helping others through volunteer work was correlated with better mental and physical health, life satisfaction and social well-being. A 2007 study in the Journal of Health and Social Behavior looked at psychological well-being and found participants who were the least socially connected benefited the most from volunteering in their community.

Even a small gesture, such as holding the door open for someone or bringing a neighbor's trash can back from the curb, can help you feel like a part of a community and make it easier to forge relationships.

Kubzansky's last bit of advice is to stick with it. Reconnecting might not be easy at first, she said, but she knows from firsthand experience with her colleagues that those who made the effort "have so appreciated doing it."

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Adrian Escobedo signed up to drive for Uber Eats to help support his family after his fiancee lost her job. The couple and their 4-year-old son had just moved to Bakersfield, California. Money was tight.

But after a lunch break on his first day, Escobedo found himself locked out of the app; his documentation had not been approved. Escobedo tried at least 20 times to resubmit the records, which included a photo of his face, copies of his ID and proof of car insurance, he said. Each time, they were denied.

"I was very confused as to what was wrong," Escobedo said. "I thought I was being messed with."

Then, looking over his documents, Escobedo figured it out: He is a transgender man, and his appearance in his older driver's license photo does not match the current photos he submitted, showing his wispy mustache and goatee.

Uber at times has blocked transgender and nonbinary people from driver and delivery jobs by treating their documents as fraudulent, suspending their accounts and failing to rectify the situation, according to interviews with half a dozen drivers and documentation provided by the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California, which petitioned the company to restore Escobedo's account.

Drivers have had their accounts permanently banned, according to documentation of written communications with the company shared by five workers. None managed to get their accounts reactivated through Uber's appeals process  one did with the aid of lawyers.

One driver had been working for Uber Eats for more than a year without issue. Prompted by the company's marketing of a new option allowing transgender drivers to update their names and profile pictures, she resubmitted her documents in late August. Her profile photo was rejected as fraudulent, her account was shut down and she was permanently removed from the platform.

Blocked applicants said they spent hours messaging and calling the support desk, often to no end. Some haggled with Uber for days to get their true name displayed instead of their "deadname" from before they transitioned.

At a time when a worker shortage has emerged as a key problem for Uber, the company's approach pushed all of these drivers to other app-based services, including Lyft and DoorDash, which for years have had policies accommodating name changes for transgender drivers.

The missteps have also undermined Uber's stated commitment to more inclusive and equitable practices, and highlight the paucity of protections for independent contractors who face discrimination.

Uber spokesman Zahid Arab said that matching profile photos to government IDs is a fraud prevention measure the company undertakes as part of its safety protocols. Arab said in an email that "on occasion, requests can be misrouted and result in a regrettable customer experience which we are working to address."

"Uber and our partners make every effort to remedy situations like this in a timely manner," Arab said. "We continue to work on improving internal processes and working with our third party background check providers to help ensure the background check process runs as expected for transgender and nonbinary users."

Uber is working to reactivate accounts The Times inquired about, Arab said Thursday afternoon. "We've worked to train Uber staff to handle all requests with compassion, empathy, and respect. We regret the confusion and pain that is caused when we don't meet that standard," he said in an emailed statement.

Pride month

On June 1, as part of its Pride month campaign, Uber announced plans "to create a safer, more inclusive company" for transgender, nonbinary and other LGBTQ+ identifying customers and drivers. The company said it would allow trans and nonbinary drivers to display their self-identified first name, and establish a $60,000 fund to help its drivers cover the costs of updating their legal IDs and records.

Days later, Escobedo's account was suspended. He asked Uber's support desk why it had rejected his documents. Escobedo explained that the profile picture he submitted was taken after he transitioned, whereas his driver's license photo was from before. An Uber Eats representative said the issue was being escalated to a specialized team for review, which would take up to five business days.

More than a week passed. Escobedo contacted the support desk for an update; he got the same response, to wait five business days. Escobedo said the Uber representative told him the company had already contacted him about his case, but Escobedo told The Times he hadn't received any communication.

In mid-June, he received an in-app message saying he had submitted fraudulent documentation and was banned from driving for Uber Eats. The deactivation decision was permanent, and he would not be allowed to appeal, the message read.

When Escobedo asked which documents were determined to be fraudulent, he received no response.

"They weren't listening to me. They didn't believe me," Escobedo said.

The ACLU of Southern California sent Uber a letter July 1 demanding the company restore Escobedo's profile and allow him to display his chosen name.

"As a result of having simply sought work using a current image that reflects his true, male identity, he was accused of fraud and permanently terminated from the platform, and suffered attendant economic and emotional harms," the letter said. "Mr. Escobedo's termination was an affront to his dignity as well as a likely violation of applicable law."

The letter also urged Uber to review its records to identify any other prospective drivers or delivery workers "who may have been unfairly excluded from working for the company due to gender-mismatched documentation, and affirmatively communicate with those individuals about restoring them to good standing" by the end of 2021.

Adam Blinick, Uber's senior director of public policy and communications, responded to the letter July 2, saying that the company would apologize to Escobedo and that it was "undertaking a review" of the issue and would "proactively address" any instances of similar problems the review uncovered.

That same day, the company reactivated Escobedo's account.

Uber did not respond to emailed questions from The Times about whether it had conducted the review, what it concluded and any corrective actions taken.

A Kansas chapter of the ACLU had sent a similar letter to Uber Eats on behalf of a 41-year-old transgender man in Topeka contending the company's app effectively outed him as transgender to customers by requiring him to display his legal name, which he said subjected him to harassment and ridicule, made him fearful for his safety and resulted in lower tips and fewer rides.

Hours later, Uber issued an apology and reaffirmed its commitment to making improvements to transgender drivers' user experience.

'Express your authentic self'

As part of its Pride initiative, Uber created a page on its website labeled "I am transgender and need account help." On the page, the company advertised a form allowing drivers to update names or profile photos, to "express your authentic self," and offered assurance that "a dedicated set of agents" would be ready to handle the request.

So far, Uber has handled some 1,800 requests to change names or profile photos, Arab said, and about a thousand support staff workers have received training in partnership with the National Center for Transgender Equality.

Monty Robinson, 22, based in Philadelphia, saw the new feature in August. Robinson transitioned after starting with Uber more than a year ago, and her photo was outdated. About a week after she submitted the form, the company deactivated her account and said in an Aug. 19 message that her new profile picture was altered or fraudulent.

Robinson works for DoorDash now. Her picture is still outdated. She said she is afraid to ask DoorDash to change it and risk termination from another delivery app.

Calvin Stephano, whose account was also deactivated when he tried to update his profile photo, said Uber's appeals process doesn't allow drivers to better understand or further dispute the company's determination.

Uber initially flagged his photo as fraudulent, but in an Aug. 13 message, the company explained his termination by saying it "noticed a number of irregular trips associated with fraudulent activities."

The charge made no sense to Stephano. He asked for an explanation in a phone call with a support representative, who told him he had already used up his one chance to appeal and she did not have the authority to override the system and recover his account, Stephano said.

"There was no way to get help. That's when I thought, 'This is really messed up,'" Stephano said.

The Uber support representative suggested he make a new account. Stephano didn't bother trying.

Customer support limbo

Drivers described Uber's support interface as a brick wall. Messages to the support desk would be elevated to a "specialized team" or were met with scripted responses that didn't address specific questions or were entirely irrelevant. Review of appeals were said to take three to five business days, but drivers wouldn't hear back for weeks. On phone calls, support desk staff were ill-equipped to answer questions or said they had resolved a problem, but the fix didn't stick.

When drivers sought updates, they were assigned new service representatives who would start the process from scratch. After numerous exchanges, four drivers gave up, saying the process seemed futile.

Ajana Orozco, 54, a recent UCLA graduate, received contradictory instructions and explanations from the support desk.

Several service representatives told her to re-upload documents. Each time they were deemed fraudulent and denied.

Another said the account was on hold because it conflicted with Orozco's existing passenger account.

Yet another representative told Orozco she was having problems because she kept uploading new photos.

"We went around in the same circle.... Here we go again: 'Wait three to five business days,'" Orozco said. "It seemed like the more I kept calling them, the more they just put me to the back of the line."

As part of Uber's response to The Times, the company provided a statement from a woman who said she used to drive for Uber and lauded the company's accommodations when she started her gender transition. When she explained why she needed a different name displayed, help desk staff were "so kind and changed it for me," the former driver, Aimee Meredith, said.

But others say Uber's support desk has made it harder for drivers to take appropriate safety measures.

Sam Moore, 27, of Santa Ana, California, worried that having his legal name visible would out him as trans to customers and potentially put him in danger.

"Orange County is not the most progressive area," Moore said. "Just being out and trans is enough, I don't need to deliver that information along with the food when I go to people's houses."

But the company refused to display his chosen name. Instead, it kept Moore's legal name and added "Sam" after it, in parentheses.

Moore furiously tweeted at the company, threatened to delete the app and mentioned he had a lawyer (his mother). Uber then fixed the issue and sent a link to information about its partnership with the National Center for Transgender Equality to help drivers fund name changes on legal records.

"They said, 'Look how progressive we are' after I had to fight with them for three days," Moore said.

One of the drivers who got suspended from the platform because of a failed background check was advised by Uber support desk workers to contact Checkr, the third party service Uber uses to screen new drivers and conduct annual background checks. The Uber spokesman confirmed that drivers who temporarily lose access are asked to work with Checkr.

Uber's website says that although the company relies on Checkr to screen drivers, Uber is ultimately responsible for the decision on a driver's eligibility. "Checkr does not determine the standards used to evaluate eligibility to partner with Uber and is not involved in the partnership decision," the website reads.

Lyft and DoorDash also contract with Checkr. It's unclear whether similar breakdowns occur for transgender drivers working on other platforms.

Checkr did not respond to requests for comment.

Uber directed representatives from organizations advocating for LGBTQ+ civil rights that the company partners with or sponsors to reach out to The Times.

"There are some employers who take reactive measures, but we've seen Uber take a proactive approach to ensuring their platform is welcoming and inclusive that we think distinguishes them from other companies," Samuel Garrett-Pate of California Equality, an organization sponsored by Uber, said in a phone interview.

Locked out

Transgender people face significant hurdles in the workplace. Deadnaming, misgendering and other discrimination trigger gender dysphoria and spur mental health crises. Some opt for self-employment or work in the gig economy, hoping a less formal setup will reduce their chances of experiencing discrimination.

Sometimes, it's not a choice: Because they are visibly queer, trans people get locked out of employment opportunities at every stage, from resume screenings to interviews. In positions of serious vulnerability, trans people are more likely to take low-wage jobs and put up with harassment and discrimination, said Shannon Minter, legal director of the National Center for Lesbian Rights.

Independent contractors are often at an inherent disadvantage. Without traditional employee arrangements, they have less structural support, and they generally lack robust, if any, protection under discrimination laws, said Amanda Goad, director of the LGBTQ, Gender & Reproductive Justice Project at the ACLU of Southern California, who petitioned Uber to restore Escobedo's account.

"If you're doing gig work, you don't get to have sustained relationships with colleagues and supervisors. You don't have the normal ability to call HR with a question, and people trying to get support through an app get very mixed results," Goad said.

In California, app-based drivers are governed by a different set of rules under Proposition 22, the 2020 voter-approved law bankrolled by Uber, Lyft and other gig companies that allowed them a carve-out from state law requiring the classification of some contractors as employees.

Goad said the measure's passage took away strong protections gig workers might have had as employees under California law. For example, California law requires that employers comply with an employee's request to be identified by a preferred name or gender pronoun, or else they could be held liable for discrimination.

Legal experts said Proposition 22 fails to delineate how discrimination claims by gig drivers would be processed and investigated, raising concerns that courts may not allow the cases to go forth.

Delivery driver Autumn Jean, a Tampa, Florida, resident, originally signed up to work as a delivery driver for Postmates. When the app was dismantled in June as part of Uber's acquisition of the company the previous year, she tried to transfer to Uber Eats but was permanently deactivated in the process.

"The thing that was so frustrating was seeing (Uber) gallivant on Twitter about all the great things they're doing for trans people," Jean said. "Here I am, a trans person trying to make a living, telling you it's actually impossible to sign up."

The result, Jean said, whether the company's actions are intentional or not, "has the effect of being transphobic."
TAMPA, Fla. (AP)  Detectives in Tampa are asking Uber to help solve a grandparent scam that conned $10,000 from a 75-year-old man who was told his granddaughter needed the money to get out of jail.

Uber also is helping the Hillsborough Sheriffs Office find suspects in a long-running con that scammed an 82-year-old woman out of $700,000, nearly her entire life savings.

In both cases, someone told the elderly victims to withdraw money and then used the ride-sharing service to pick it up. Detectives want names of Uber account holders and credit card information along with their ride histories, and Uber says its cooperating.

In this latest case, the North Tampa man was contacted by someone claiming to be his granddaughter's lawyer, asking him to withdraw $10,000 on May 11, the Tampa Bay Times reported.

At first he was instructed to go to a bail bonds business, but then was told that someone would come for the money in a silver Toyota with an Uber plate on the front dashboard. Uber confirmed the trip, and now a search warrant seeks more information to follow the money.

Uber strictly prohibits the use of the Uber app to commit crimes and regularly works with law enforcement to assist with investigations, Uber told the Tampa Bay Times.

Uber's guidelines say the service maintains user data as described in its privacy notice and terms of use, disclosing information to law enforcement in accordance with the Electronic Communications Privacy Act.

In the other case, a woman pretending to be the 82-year-old's granddaughter and a man who said he was her lawyer convinced her to make 13 withdrawals from BB&T branches in the Tampa area. She handed stacks of cash to couriers using Uber.

The womans lawyer is suing Truist Bank, created when BB&T merged with SunTrust, alleging negligence for allowing her to make large and unusual withdrawals even after red flags were raised.
LONDON (AP)  The families of four young gay men slain by a sex predator demanded that the Metropolitan Police be held to account after an inquest concluded Friday that bungled investigations probably cost lives.

Relatives of the victims called for the police watchdog to reopen its case as they renewed their accusations that prejudice played a part in police inquiries concerning Stephen Port, 46, a bus depot chef sentenced to life in connection with the London slayings and a string of sex assaults.

Every one of these boys was not treated like individual humans and we have said that they were discriminated (against) from the beginning, said Donna Taylor, the sister of a victim, Anthony Taylor. They were seen as a druggie, homeless, gay. Its not acceptable.

During the inquest, police admitted they failed to carry out basic checks, send evidence to be forensically examined, and exercise professional curiosity during the killings between June 2014 and September 2015.

We believe there were fundamental failures in these investigations, which were at a basic level, the jury said of the police in written conclusions.

Officers in Barking, east London, missed repeated opportunities to catch Port after he plied his first victim, Anthony Walgate, with a fatal dose of date-rape drug GHB and then dumped his body. Port struck three more times before he was caught  and each of the victims died in nearly identical circumstances.

Officers rejected accusations of homophobia and blamed mistakes on understaffing and lack of resources.

Assistant Commissioner Helen Ball apologized for failings in police response but rejected that the force was prejudiced against gay men or that institutional homophobia was present.

We don't see homophobia on the part of our officers, she said. We do see all sorts of errors in the investigation, which came together in a truly dreadful way.

Shadow Home Secretary Yvette Cooper described the investigation as poorly handled and has called for an independent inquiry into what happened to ensure that this can never happen again.
The U.S. Supreme Court this week rejected a lawsuit from Wisconsin Republicans seeking to kill a redistricting case brought by Democrats, keeping hope alive for liberals that they can seek to block GOP-drawn maps through the federal courts.

The nation's highest court on Monday denied hearing the lawsuit filed by Republican state lawmakers. They wanted the Supreme Court to dismiss the Democrats' case, which attempts to have federal courts draw the state's political boundary lines.

The decision means that liberals will still have a chance to fight for the maps they want in federal court after the conservative-controlled Wisconsin Supreme Court issues its ruling, likely early next year.

The Wisconsin Supreme Court has given both sides to submit potential maps by Dec. 15, with arguments planned in January. The court last month ruled 4-3 in favor of Republicans by saying it will only consider maps that make as few changes as possible to the current district lines that were drawn by Republicans a decade ago and solidified their control of the state Legislature.

Because of that ruling, Gov. Tony Evers will not be submitting a map to the court that was drawn by a commission he created to come up with a nonpartisan plan, his spokeswoman Britt Cudaback said Friday. Instead, the governor will follow the court's order to submit a map that adheres as closely as possible to the current lines, she said.

Evers last month vetoed the maps passed by the Republican-controlled Legislature.

Redistricting is the once-a-decade process of redrawing the states 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.
VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. (AP)  Virginia Beach City Public Schools administrators are expected to announce later this month whether six books that have been at the center of intense school board meeting debates will remain in the systems curriculum and libraries.

School board member Victoria Manning prompted the books to be reviewed when she contacted the superintendent with concerns related to sexual content and the educational equity policy, WAVY-TV reported.

Manning flagged four books for graphic passages, some of which the school board wouldnt allow to be read aloud at a meeting.

Toni Morrisons The Bluest Eye and A Lesson Before Dying by Ernest J. Gaines center around race and racism. Gender Queer by Maia Kobabe and Jonathan Evisons Lawn Boy feature people struggling with gender identity and sexuality.

But student Ure Emejuru pointed out there are many other books with graphic content that Manning didnt ask to be pulled.

1984 or Shakespeare or parts of the Bible have examples of sexual actions, Emejuru said. I think the fact that its mainly LGBTQ+ books and books by POC authors is very deliberate.

Manning told the station that two other books  Good Trouble: Lessons from the Civil Rights Playbook by Christopher Noxon and Susan Kuklins Beyond Magenta: Transgender Teens Speak Out  may violate the boards equity protocol. It states that curriculum materials shall be examined for bias.

School system spokesperson Natalie Allen said those books are on library shelves, not in the curriculum. She also said WAVYs inquiry was the first time the administration heard that the concerns over the two texts were connected with the policy.

Committees of six or seven people  including a parent, student, library media specialist and administrators  are assessing each book, according to Chief Academic Officer Dr. Kipp Rogers.

Rogers said he could only remember three other times during his 11 years in school administration when its gotten to the central office where we have to do a formal review. Curriculum issues are usually resolved during conversations between a parent and principal, he said, and a book was never pulled from the system.

Rogers said he hopes the current reviews are an educational opportunity for parents, students and the community.
NEW ORLEANS (AP)  A Mississippi woman has drawn a six-year prison sentence after pleading guilty in an embezzlement case involving two employers in Louisiana, federal prosecutors said Friday.

U.S. Attorney Duane Evans news release says 39-year-old Christy Bartholomew of Hattiesburg embezzled about $357,000 while working as a financial controller for a business in Slidell from 2016 to 2019. She later stole another $300,000 while working as an office manager for a Kenner company from November 2019 to February of 2020.
SAN FRANCISCO (BCN)

A man died after being pulled from the water near San Francisco's Lands End on Thursday, fire officials said.

Around 3:10 p.m., officials with the San Francisco Fire Department reported via Twitter an active rescue was underway at Eagle's Point, located within Lands End.

A bystander swimmer was able to save the victim until rescue units with the fire department and the U.S. Coast Guard arrived.

Once at the scene, a rescue boat was ultimately able to bring the victim to shore. Paramedics tried to resuscitate the victim, but he died from his injuries, fire officials said.

Investigators are trying to determine what the victim was doing in the water, as they were fully clothed, according to fire officials.

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When I was a reporter for a local newspaper in North Lake Tahoe, I did a little personal experiment. For seven days, I attempted to walk past my car parked in my driveway and rely entirely on public transportation.

I totally failed. In my defense, public transportation in Lake Tahoe has always been extremely limited  though local officials are focused on making it better.

For one, the bus typically doesnt run in the evenings. It also comes around once an hour. To get to my bus stop at the time, I walked 20 minutes from my house, which was in a neighborhood atop a huge, steep hill.

Public transit in Tahoe has improved a lot since my experiment  during the busiest times of year, at the height of summer and the winter holidays, it sometimes runs later and more frequently. But when I needed to catch a ride home after a meeting ran late, and let out just a few minutes past 6 p.m., I had already missed the last bus and was stranded miles from my house.

Another morning, when I was running late to get out the door, I had two choices: Take the next bus and show up an hour late to work, or forgo public transportation and just drive my own car. I picked the second option and got into my car that was parked in my driveway.

If I were to repeat my experiment today, however, Id probably be a lot more successful. Theres a new buzzword for public transportation thats getting a lot of traction in Tahoe: microtransit. Its app-based, on-demand, rideshare public transportation thats entirely free to use.

To use the service, download the TART Connect app, hosted by Tahoe Truckee Area Regional Transit (TART). Its similar to Uber or Lyft, except it's public transportation and entirely free to use.

A microtransit service like TART Connect would have easily filled the gaps in service that I needed to succeed all those years ago. Instead of driving my own car, now I can just pull up the app on my phone and order a ride to come pick me up.

Local officials hope that microtransit will play a key role in making public transportation in Tahoe what it hasnt been before: both convenient and easy.

It keeps cars parked in driveways, said Andy Chapman, president and CEO of the Incline Village Crystal Bay Visitors Bureau, which helped fund the TART Connect pilot project so it would operate on the Nevada side of Lake Tahoe and serve Incline and Crystal Bay.

It keeps congestion off the roads, Chapman continued. Its easier for people to get from their home to a doctors appointment, if a resident is using it. Its easier for visitors to go from the Hyatt to Crystal Bay for a show, and things like that.

TART Connect is a pilot program hosted by Placer County and a variety of partners and government agencies who are investing in public transportation as a means to reduce greenhouse gases in the basin and alleviate the horrendous traffic that piles up on Tahoes two-lane highways. It started last summer, in June. Over the summer, microtransit shuttles picked up passengers in three hubs along North Lake Tahoe  between Tahoe City and the West Shore, in the Kings Beach area, and between Incline Village and Crystal Bay. The service operated from 8 a.m. until midnight.

Come fall, the pilot project continued, but at reduced hours. The winter season begins this weekend and will resume operations from 8 a.m. until midnight, through April.

When we love something, we invest in it, said Cindy Gustafson, who represents North Tahoe as the District 5 Supervisor of Placer County, in a statement. Placer County has allocated Transient Occupancy Tax (TOT) dollars to fund the microtransit pilots. Balancing the costs and benefits of tourism is essential to the preservation of our communities and our quality of life. TART is an important part of that balance and allows visitors to help fund the services being used during their stay.

Chapman said the microtransit pilot program has so far seen more success than anyone expected, counting more than 68,000 passenger rides so far. More than half of those rides are from local residents. It takes time for people to learn about microtransit and adapt to using it, Chapman said. But the high numbers of residents using TART Connect was encouraging.

It takes the best of all worlds, said Jesse Patterson, chief strategy officer of the League to Save Lake Tahoe, which helped fund the pilot program this fall.

TART Connect uses high occupancy vehicles that are smaller than a bus, but bigger than a car.

You use your phone to book a seat, tell people where you want to go and they come, get you and drop you off, Patterson said. Its free and frequent.

Over the summer, wait times for a rideshare were 15 minutes, on average.

Microtransit has a short history in Tahoe. Palisades Ski Resort has its own microtransit service, called Mountaineer, that picks up passengers and delivers them to destinations in Alpine Meadows and Olympic Valley. In 2018, South Tahoe hosted a microtransit pilot program called Chariot.

The more success these pilot programs have, the more microtransit will expand. This winter, TART Connect will be serving more zones, connecting North Tahoe to Northstar and Olympic Valley, said Sara Monson, interim executive director of the Truckee North Tahoe Transportation Management Association.

Patterson said microtransit is coming to South Lake Tahoe soon, too. The Tahoe Regional Planning Agency approved a 6,000-person events center in South Tahoe, and part of the approval hinged on operating a microtransit service. South Tahoe may see microtransit come back as soon as this summer, Patterson said.

Its not the silver bullet, Patterson said. But its a really integral part of getting people around without their car, which is the end goal.

In North Tahoe, over half of the riders on TART Connect were local residents, but the microtransit service was also used by visitors and second homeowners.

Its still beyond difficult to travel to Tahoe without a personal vehicle, but officials hope microtransit might help visitors once they get here to move around Tahoe without having to use their cars. The hope is that it will help with those first mile, last mile trips, Monson said. We want people to use this in conjunction with the TART mainline [public transit] services.

And also just getting less people to ride alone in their car, she added.

The most recent iteration of the Regional Transportation Plan, a hefty basinwide document that outlines the future of transportation in Tahoe for the next 25 years, states that, by 2045, microtransit will exist in hubs across the Tahoe basin and it will be permanent, year-round and free.

Were interested, said Carl Hasty, manager of the Tahoe Transportation District, which oversees public transit in the Tahoe Basin. We think that microtransit has a role to play.
Comet Leonard, one of this year's most anticipated celestial sights, will be making its nearest approach to the Earth on Dec. 12. However, those hoping to catch a sight of Leonard over Bay Area skies this weekend might have to deal with cloudy conditions and the comet possibly falling apart, which will hamper its visibility in the early morning sky.

After a 35,000-year journey towards the sun, comet C/2021 was discovered last January by astronomer Gregory J. Leonard. As is tradition, the comet was dubbed Leonard after the person who found it.

According to NASA, comets are snowballs of frozen gases, rock, and dust that orbit the sun. As they approach the sun, the comet heats up trapped gas and dust form a miles-long tail that helps make it visible in the night sky.

"This is a bright-ish comet that we see in the skies on average once per year. As it gets a little closer, it could become visible to the naked eye, making for some attractive pictures," noted Marco Micheli, a European Space Agency Near-Earth Object Coordination Centre Astronomer.

Although it might be visible to the naked eye, NASA recommends using binoculars or a telescope to see the comet.

Leonard can be viewed in the early morning, about two hours before sunrise, until its closest approach to Earth on December 12. It will viewable in the eastern sky between the star Arcturus and the last star in the Big Dipper handle.

NASA/JPL-Caltech

To help with your search, you can use a star chart app on your smartphone or use the Sky Live website to plot out where to view Leonard is in the sky.

Each night Leonard will appear closer to the ground before sinking under the horizon on the 13th. From Dec 14, the comet will appear in the western sky just after sunset near Venus but will quickly fade in brightness as it moves away from Earth.

Although comets are a common occurrence in the night sky, it is rare for a comet with a dust trail to be visible with the naked eye. Comet Neowise, which delighted celestial observers in 2020, is the most recent example.

Local observers will have two other obstacles to overcome to see Comet Leonard. One is storm clouds for an expected atmospheric river forecast to arrive Saturday night and continue through Monday that will obscure the night sky. A second is the comet might be falling apart.

"The comet should be brighter and brighter," University of Maryland astronomer Quanzhi Ye told Space.com, hypothesizing Leonard might be splitting up or simply running out of ice to vaporize as it approaches the sun. "If it's not getting brighter, then something's wrong, but we don't know exactly what at this stage."

Even if you head out early and can't spot the comet, there is another reason to stargaze. The annual Gemini Meteor shower will be peaking in the night sky for the next several days and will provide a spectacular celestial show on its own.
Speeding up Highway 1 past rolling green hills and boats bobbing in the deep blue of Tomales Bay, you could almost miss the seafood shack on the side of the road. But when you see the blissed-out crowds slurping oysters on picnic tables, youll know youve found the right place.

The Marshall Store, a restaurant in Marshall (population 400), just north of Point Reyes National Seashore, is the platonic ideal of coastal Northern California dining. That windswept, rugged seafood spot on the water you dream of? Yep, its real. Its unfussy, the views are straight out of Big Little Lies, and the food is way, way better than it needs to be.

On a recent trip to the Marshall Store, my partner and I parked, took a left at the little weathered sea captain statue, walked past the yellow and green surfboard and through a gate to the sunny patio by the dock. Its tempting to order the entire menu. But when youre just two people, you have to make some tough decisions, so we went with two plates of oysters and a bowl of clam chowder and called it a day.

Minutes after settling into our table overlooking Tomales Bay, two silver platters arrived: the Rockefeller, a decadent combination of grilled oysters with garlic butter, parmesan and Toma cheese, spinach, and breadcrumbs served with grilled bread; and the smoked oysters, balanced atop crostini with Cowgirl Creamery Fromage Blanc cheese, chipotle aioli, chives and lemon. We slurped in reverent silence, chasing the briny bivalves with swigs of Anchor Steam beer.

Madeline Wells/SFGATE

The Marshall Store was already locally famous as a weekend trip from the Bay Area, but a few months ago, the whole world learned its name. In October, the little oyster oasis made it on the New York Times best 50 restaurants in America.

It was awesome, said Marshall Store owner Shannon Gregory. The photographer turned up, he said, Do you guys know what this is for? I said I had no idea. He said, It's for the best 50 places to eat in America for the New York Times. I was like, Youre kidding!

The national press brought in a lot of new faces, but after 15 years in business, the Marshall Store had already attracted a worldwide audience.

I've been in the Frankfurt Airport and seen people with Marshall Store hats on, said Gregory. ... We have some Europeans that come in, and as soon as they get off the plane they dont even go to their hotel. They just go straight to the Marshall Store.

Madeline Wells/SFGATE

Gregory, along with his father Tod Friend (who also owned the Tomales Bay Oyster Co.) and sister Heidi Gregory, first took over the Marshall Store from the previous owner in 2006, back when it was a general store that sold charcoal and jars of pasta sauce. Tragically, Friend, a beloved figure in the Marshall community, passed away in 2017 after a boat accident.

The two siblings took over their oyster farmer fathers legacy: Heidi now runs Tomales Bay Oyster Co., and Gregory the Marshall Store, which serves oysters exclusively from their familys oyster farm, just a few miles down the road.

Gregory was born in Marshall, but moved to Australia, where his mother is from, to attend boarding school. He worked in prestigious Sydney restaurants for many years, but eventually, his home state called him back.

My sister was living in California and I went to visit her, said Gregory. And then my dad was working for Hog Island [Oyster Co]  and I was like oh, this is kind of cool. So I didn't continue my flight back to Sydney.

Julie W./Yelp

He ended up working at the now defunct Cafe Rouge in Berkeley and the San Francisco Ferry Building location of Hog Island Oyster Co. Then, the previous owner of the Marshall Store, a historic building erected by a Croatian family of boat builders and fishermen, asked his family if they wanted to take over the lease. So they did.

It took a lot of time for it to get going, he recalled. In the beginning, we were doing in the wintertime $50 or $100 days. Wed sell a couple of packs of cigarettes and some chowder and thatd be it for the day.

But having worked at restaurants in Berkeley and San Francisco, he had a good idea of what customers wanted. What Gregory wanted: someplace welcoming and casual.

I've worked in fine dining. It's not really my thing, said Gregory. ... I mean, it's expensive to go and eat oysters  why do you want to go sit at some rustic restaurant on the bay and have dine-in service and have it be more expensive? I think people like the fact that it's casual. Anybody can come here. We're not just for the blue collar workers, were not just for the wealthier people. Were for everybody.

Madeline Wells/SFGATE

A plate of six oysters here will still set you back upwards of $20, but the vibe is approachable, with friendly counter service and picnic tables. Its a community here, and many of Gregorys staff are his friends kids. The Marshall Store loves its locals  theyre the ones who kept the restaurant alive during the pandemic.

But unlike some Bay Area institutions, its also out-of-towner-friendly. Our menu is always static, explained Gregory. Because we do have a lot of travelers, it's always the same. So when you come back three or four years later, you're still going to get the same thing, the same recipes, and most likely the same person cooking it.

If you make the trip to West Marin with a large enough group, Gregory recommends ordering one of everything, from the ceviche tostadas to the crab sandwiches they serve during crab season. And soon, customers will be able to bring Tomales Bay home with them, too: the Marshall Store is currently building its own fish market downstairs, which will sell local oysters, rock cod, salmon, crab and smoked fish.

Lisa S./Yelp

There actually used to be a fish market back there in the 40s, said Gregory. So we're just sort of rejuvenating some of what it used to be.

Its a clever way to meet all the demand, particularly on weekends, which are always nuts, says Gregory. Even after 15 years, he still seems taken aback explaining his seafood shacks popularity.

Every year, it's slowly grown and grown and grown. And now, the New York Times. Can you believe it?

Madeline Wells/SFGATE
A mass of cold, dry air has settled into the San Francisco Bay Area and the coldest temperatures of the week are expected to grip the region Friday night into Saturday, the National Weather Service said.

The chilly conditions come ahead of a big storm, a so-called atmospheric river, forecast to push across the area Saturday night, across Sunday and into Monday. Rainfall totals are expected to range from 1 inch to 3.5 inches across urban areas and up to 6 inches in the coastal mountains, the weather service said.

Temperatures dipped down into the 30s in inland valleys and into the 40s near the coast on Friday morning.

"Most of the North Bay was freezing or near freezing last night," said weather service meteorologist Drew Peterson. "There are a few pockets of freezing temperatures in the East Bay, including by Walnut Creek and Mount Diablo, and in the hills of San Jose."

Even colder temperatures are expected Saturday morning, and the weather service issued a freeze watch for late tonight into Saturday morning in the North Bay. To the south of the Bay Area, the Salinas Valley could see temperatures drop into the high 20s.

"Sensitive vegetation should be covered or brought indoors," the weather service said. "Pets should be protected."

The weather will shift Saturday afternoon as the atmospheric river approaches the region, bringing a significant chance of widespread heavy rain.

"Rain chances should spread from north to south across the area, with chances perhaps starting as early as Saturday night for the North Bay," the weather service said in its report. "However, in general the best window for meaningful rainfall appears to be from midday Sunday into Monday afternoon. Shower chances may then persist for southern portions of the area into Tuesday."

Atmospheric rivers are long, narrow bands of water vapor  about 300 to 400 miles wide and 500 to 1,000 miles long  that form over an ocean and flow through the sky. They occur globally but are especially significant on the West Coast of the United States, where they create 30% to 50% of annual precipitation and are linked to water supply and problems such as flooding and mudslides, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Climate models suggest in the future California will have more severe atmospheric rivers and longer dry periods between them.

Atmospheric rivers most often cause flooding when they stall, dumping copious amounts of rain over one area.

Peterson said weather models are suggesting the system could stall over the San Mateo Coast and Santa Cruz Mountains Sunday evening, but this forecast could change in coming days.

"We probably need another 12 to 24 hours to know for sure," Peterson said. "Right now, it's in the realm of possibility. With the atmospheric rivers, we see them stall pretty frequently in our area. They get caught in our mountains, either in the Marin Headlands or the Santa Cruz Mountains."

The weather service categorizes atmospheric rivers as either weak, strong or moderate. Peterson said he's categorizing the projected rainfall totals for this storm as moderate but the storm impacts as weak since no major flooding is expected at this time.

"Six inches of rain...that's a lot of rain," Peterson said. "There are going to be some localized impacts but it's going to be almost entirely beneficial rain. They should should be able to capture all that moisture as it has been dry for so long. If we had just had several systems then we could have more problems."


Despite being organized during the fourth Covid-19 outbreak, the contest witnessed a rise in submitted papers to 300 from organizations, enterprises, and individuals nationwide thanks to the use of online registration.

After both preliminary and final rounds, the judge board was able to select 53 excellent papers in four categories to deliver awards: state units, businesses, products and solutions, products and solutions to bridge the digital gap.

All chosen papers have displayed creativity and socio-economic efficiency, such as rice ATM and face mask ATM by Blue Universe Corp.; Microsoft Teams solution to support online learning for schools free of charge; the basic medical information management platform by Viettel Solutions.

Vietnam Digital Awards 2021 aims at recognizing prominent digital technology products, solutions, and services from Vietnam; encouraging all sectors ranging from state units to private businesses to invest in and apply digital technologies in their own digital transformation process.

By Tuong Vy  Translated by Thanh Tam
Page Content

Facing a new coronavirus surge, Germany recently implemented significant pandemic-related restrictions affecting workplaces nationwide.

Notably, as of Nov. 24, employees may enter their workplaces only if they show so-called 3G certification that they're vaccinated against COVID-19, have tested negative or have recovered from the coronavirus.

German lawmakers also established a new work-from-home obligation requiring employers to offer employees that option if the nature of the work allows. The employee must accept the work-from-home option unless there's a clear reason not to work remotely.

Both requirements expire March 19, 2022, with an extension beyond that date possible.

Unvaccinated employees without proof of recovery must take an approved test every workday in their free time and show the employer the negative certificate obtained in the testing center, according to Christian Maron and Johannes Hoft, attorneys with Taylor Wessing in Munich and Hamburg, respectively.

This increases the pressure on unvaccinated employees, as work (with the exception of working from home) is now permitted only if the 3G requirements are met, and unvaccinated employees may have to pay for the daily required tests themselves, Maron and Hoft said via e-mail.

Vaccinated, Recovered or Tested

Employers don't have to provide unvaccinated employees with testing in the workplace but can refer them to official testing centers under the new rules, Maron and Hoft said.

Employees who don't provide proof of vaccination or recovery must show evidence of a negative rapid test taken within the previous 24 hours or a polymerase chain reaction test within the past 48 hours, according to legal experts.

Employers must monitor compliance with the 3G requirements or face up to EUR 25,000 (approximately 28,112 USD) in fines under the new regulations.

Despite the new rules, employers cannot mandate employee vaccination, as there's no such requirement yet in Germany, according to Maron and Hoft.

Sixty-eight percent of Germany's population has undergone at least two COVID-19 vaccinations, Deutsche Welle reported last month.

Legal experts suggest that workers who refuse to comply with the new rules and can't work from home could face dismissal or have their pay withheld.

Under the 3G requirements, employers must request relevant personal health data to ensure compliance and protect the information from unauthorized individuals, according to experts, who noted that employers may keep the data for six months.

As for the work-from-home provision, employers that want employees to remain in the office should document reasons why this is necessary, such as the need to process incoming mail, according to Maron and Hoft.

Vaccine Incentives Possible

The 3G workplace requirements may diminish any impetus for employers to offer COVID-19 vaccination incentives to workers, but such rewards remain an optionthough they could face legal challenges from employees who are unvaccinated.

Section 612a of the German Civil Code includes the principle of equal treatment under labor law. Unvaccinated employees might make claims that vaccine bonuses violate the principle, although legal experts suggested employers can justify COVID-19 vaccine incentive programs.

Gerlind Wisskirchen, an attorney with CMS Germany in Cologne, said it's not illegal to offer a vaccination incentive.

Employers wishing to do so while observing the equal treatment principle might consider setting a target vaccination rate for the workforce by a certain date. Once that level is reached, they might award an incentiveadditional vacation days, shopping vouchers or a special paymentto all employees who prove their vaccination status by the deadline, including those inoculated before the company announced the reward, Wisskirchen said.

The reward shouldn't be too high, as it might therefore be considered compulsory to get vaccinated, she added.

It's essential that employers respect the principle of equal treatment, including offering the reward to part-time and temporary employees, Wisskirchen said, as well as respect the ban on discrimination by not attempting to implement compulsory vaccination.

Maron and Hoft suggested a company vaccination quota, such as a 90 percent rate, that would, if reached, result in a reward for all employees. "There is no disadvantage, because if the quota is met, every employee receives the premium, even if they themselves have not been vaccinated. At the same time, this can create a certain 'peer pressure' in the workforce," they said.

In principle, Maron and Hoft added, any incentive, including a cash reward, is possible.

"In no case does different treatment between vaccinated and unvaccinated employees constitute discrimination," they said. "Unvaccinated is not a prohibited characteristic for different treatment."

Works councils have a right of co-determination in designing any bonus program the employer implements, Maron and Hoft noted, but it's up to the company to decide whether to establish one.

Dinah Wisenberg Brin is a freelance reporter and writer based in Philadelphia.
Katrina Kaif and Vicky Kaushal have been pronounced man and wife after one of the most celebrated marriage ceremonies of the year.

The celebrity couple tied the knot at a private ceremony in the Six Senses Fort Barwara Hotel, Sawai Madhopur, Rajasthan, with friends and family in attendance. The initial photographs show Vicky following Katrina and then the two waving at the paparazzi gathered at a distance from the venue.

Katrina wore a bridal lehenga crafted by ace designer Sabyasachi Mukherjee for her special day, Vicky is said to have worn a beige sherwani after his 'sehrabandi'.

The couple also made it official that they would soon host a reception in Mumbai for those who were not invited to the very private marriage ceremony at Sawai Madhopur.

Vicky headed to the mandap in a vintage car with his baraatis, including brother Sunny Kaushal, good friend Angad Bedi and members of his family. The couple took the pheras in the traditional way, thus bringing to an end the celebrations that took off on December 7.

The pre-wedding festivities started officially on December 7 when Bollywood celebrities and close friends of the couple, such as Kabir Khan, his wife Mini Mathur and their daughter Sairah left Mumbai for Jaipur. Angad Bedi, Neha Dhupia, Sharvari Wagh, Radhika Madan and Malavika Mohanan followed suit and pumped up the tempo of the celebrations.

The guests were extended a grand welcome, served Rajasthani and Punjabi delicacies, even as the venue lit up the Sawai Madhopur skyline and fireworks added to the dreama.

The 'mehendi' celebrations saw 20 kilos of GI-tagged henna sourced from Sojat by the river Sukri in Rajasthan.

The 'haldi' ceremony followed, with the guests faithfully following the yellow dress code. This was when the media first got a glimpse of the guests in the corridors of the luxury hotel. After the pictures surfaced on the Internet, the organisers put up curtains on the arches of the fort-hotel to protect the privacy of the guests from prying cameras.

The 'sangeet' night was held on December 8 with Gurdas Maan, Hardy Sandhu, Shankar Mahadevan, Ehsaan Noorani and Manj Musik belting out their music to entertain the select company.

Text: IANS

Images: Instagram
Along with the album release there is a new group-based documentary, 'Monsta X: The Dreaming', which was made available in cinemas worldwide on Thursday, and will have additional screenings available on Saturday.

In addition, they have presented a new single 'You Problem' and their official video.

Mumbai, Dec 10 (IANS) K-pop supergroup Monsta X have released their new English album titled 'The Dreaming'.

Rolling Stone wrote: "The film will chronicle (Monsta X's) journey over the past few years, with never-before-seen footage, new interviews with each of the members, and special presentations of their biggest hits."

The group attended the world premiere at CGV Cinemas in Koreatown in Los Angeles on December 8.

Monsta X shared 'One Day', the first preview of the album last October.

The song is the group's third single to rise to the Top 40 and, as Forbes reports, makes Monsta X the second K-pop group in history to appear on the chart more than once.

Named by Grammy.com as aone of K-pop's most prolific groups', Monsta X's new album 'The Dreaming' is a continuation of their first all-English-language debut album, 'All About Luv'.

Released in February 2020, that album ranked at No. 5 on the Billboard 200 Chart, making Monsta X only the third K-Pop group to chart within the top 10, and was one of the first-ever full English-language pop albums from South Korea.

Monsta X will perform at iHeartRadio Jingle Ball concerts in Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., Atlanta and Miami.

This will warm up North American audiences for the group's upcoming headline tour, which kicks off January 29, 2022 at Radio City Music Hall in New York City and concludes at the Forum in Los Angeles on February 27, 2022.

--IANS

dc/ksk/
With an aim to increase the penetration of digital payments, the Reserve Bank of India has decided to develop the UPI platform for feature phones.

India has one of the largest mobile phone users base, with around 118 crore users. A large part of them use feature phones.

"In the first cohort of 'RBI Regulatory Sandbox', some innovators had successfully demonstrated their solutions for feature phone payments, under the theme of 'Retail Payments', the central bank said.

"These products, coupled with other complimentary solutions, will facilitate UPI-based digital payment solutions on feature phones to promote wider digitisation. It is proposed to launch a UPI-based payment product for feature phone users."

The details about the UPI platform for feature phones will be announced "shortly".

Furthermore, in a second announcement, the central bank has proposed to come up with a simpler process through an "On-device" wallet in the UPI apps for small ticket transactions.

The mechanism will conserve banks' resources without any change in the experience for the users.
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Elizabeth Gaines will step down as chief executive of iron ore miner Fortescue Metals, as the Andrew Forrest controlled giant seeks to transform itself into a vertically integrated green energy and resources group.

Ms Gaines will become an ambassador for the companys global green hydrogen brand and remain as a non-executive director on the Fortescue board. She will be involved in the global search for her replacement.

Andrew Forrest and Elizabeth Gaines announce Fortescue Metals Group will begin a global search for a new chief executive. Credit:Edwina Pickles

Dr Forrest said the company was immensely lucky to have had one of Australias truly inspiring leaders helming the iron ore giant for the past three years.

Fortescues share price has quadrupled since Ms Gaines began leading the company in February 2018. On Friday, shares were down 1.21 per cent to $18.02 in early trading. Since 2019 Fortescues shareholders have grown from 35,000 to 170,000 and more than doubled since December.
Looking back on 2021 (if anyone feels game enough) you might recall the year kicked off on January 1 with a change to the words of the national anthem from we are young and free to we are one and free. This was only asking for trouble.

For many 2021 is pretty old by now, and we are over it. Mainly because we were one in not being free, but locked down for large portions of it. You might also be excused for questioning the we are one bit given the divisions over how to combat/live with/treat/ignore COVID-19. Working from home became firmly entrenched and largely happily and productively embraced.

Credit:Illustration: Matt Davidson

In February, Facebook went to war with Australian news outlets blocking them on its site. This over-reaction ultimately may have been good news for those wanting to pursue careers in journalism, as a cash-money deal was done to recompense local news outlets for their work at long last.

In March, the JobKeeper wage subsidy ended, and the debate started in earnest about some recipient employers whose earnings rose during the period, but felt no obligation to repay the subsidies. There also was and is a debate about whether the ending of this subsidy cost a significant number of jobs.
Jeffrey Smart often felt betrayed or let down by Australian art museums. A promised survey at the Art Gallery of South Australia in 1982 failed to materialise but was rescued by the Art Gallery of NSW. When the Australian National Gallery opened in the same year, he attended the ceremonies but was disappointed by his paltry representation.

To Smart, it was clear that Adelaide, his hometown, would never give his work a chance. And equally clear the curators in Canberra, and elsewhere in Australia, had it in for him. Was it just paranoia? Sour grapes? Smart felt he was paying the penalty for swimming against the tide. He had no interest in the Australiana associated with artists such as Nolan, Boyd, Tucker and Olsen. He had no sympathy for the tides of abstract and conceptual art that dominated the 1960s and 70s.

NGA director Nick Mitzevich with two works in the Jeffrey Smart exhibition on December 10. Credit:Alex Ellinghausen

Resolutely figurative, he was a painter of the modern, urban world, not the bush or the mythical past. A typical Smart painting could have been set in Italy (where he lived for more than 40 years) or Australia. His images were cool and oblique, devoid of obvious emotion. The art institutions may have found him old-fashioned and reactionary, but the public has always adored his work.

Jeffrey Smart, which starts this weekend at the National Gallery of Australia, as it is now known, is a show that might have won the artists approval. Hung thematically rather than chronologically (which seems to be the case with the entire NGA at present), its not a comprehensive retrospective. It is, however, a better, more thoughtful display than the highly successful Smart survey held at the Art Gallery of NSW in 1999. Even allowing for COVID-19 travel restrictions, the NGA should have a hit on its hands.
The chief executive of Sydney Symphony Orchestra, Emma Dunch, has departed the premier arts company, claiming she was subject to a politically architected hit job of the highest order.

Her abrupt departure, announced by the SSOs chairman Geoff Wilson, comes four years after she was first appointed, and two years before her contract was due to end.

Emma Dunch, chief executive of the Sydney Symphony Orchestra. Credit:James Brickwood

In an explosive personal exit statement issued on Friday, Dunch said she would be taking a case of harassment to government anti-corruption channels.

Tensions have been simmering around the SSOs removal from the Sydney Opera House Concert Hall while the venue was being refurbished, and around negotiations for a new lease upon its return to the Opera House.
JAGGED LITTLE PILL 

Theatre Royal, December 9

Its a mighty song and when it comes, Maggie McKenna, playing Jo, spits it out with a heartfelt facsimile of the venom with which Alanis Morissette sang it  earning a spontaneous standing ovation. That song is You Oughta Know, surely one of the bitterest works about being dumped by a duplicitous lover ever penned  and the highlight of Morissettes staggering popular 1995 Jagged Little Pill album, on which this eponymous musical is based.

The cast of Jagged Little Pill in Sydney. Credit:Daniel Boud

You Oughta Know comes near the end of the story, when Jo has been dumped by 16-year-old girlfriend Frankie in favour of a boy, Phoenix. McKennas voice is as potent as any in the cast, and at a stroke highlights all thats right and wrong with this powerful and confronting, yet intrinsically flawed, show.

Morissettes high-calibre songs for Jagged Little Pill were the spiritual heirs of Marianne Faithfulls Broken English opus 15 years earlier. Lyrically they were real, raw, feisty and combative, and musically they were cast in aggressive, grungy rock. The problem for musical theatre is that when you place shouted melodies over a crunching band, the lyrics intelligibility is inevitable collateral damage. Even with many of the songs tamed in an effort to increase the intelligibility (which doesnt suit them) the words are still too often lost, which doesnt suit the needs of Diablo Codys book. The upshot is varying versions of a compromise between these conflicting needs.
The news was also met with dismay by circus artists. Mitch Jones, who has been involved with the company for two decades since he was a teenager, and is now an artistic fellow at Circus Oz, said the relationship between company members and its daily business was becoming dysfunctional. Circus Oz Incubator fellowship artists: Jess Love and Captain Ruin. Credit:Joe Armao The decision to close the company instead of agree to the Australia Councils terms represents the selfishness of an older generation taking their bat and ball home with them when they were told they needed to change their relationship with the company, he said. The members are around 100 people who have worked for the company for more than three years full-time over its lifespan. Jones said he has some sympathy for the point of view that artists should have control of an arts organisation, but a lot of the members were not performers and never had been.

While I absolutely agree that the government has been quite heavy-handed by giving them this black and white option, to change the company structure or lose the funding with no middle ground, what is missing from the conversation is the effect on younger artists, he said. I dont want to be on a board, I want to make art. The idea of the company as a social experiment is a lovely bit of nostalgia, but is also from a different political era. Theres this sense amongst my generation of artists that once again its Boomers, Baby Boomers, who are trying to define the narrative around the terms that are familiar to them... theyre not willing to see it from a fresh new perspective. Loading The news comes barely a fortnight after the company announced its first post-pandemic show, which was to have put performers in the alleys and secret spaces of inner-city Melbourne. The company is now unsure if that show can be put on while the organisation is being wound up. The announcement came the same day the federal government announced another $6 million from a $50 million fund would be used to prop up companies, including $500,000 for Brisbane-based circus company Circa.

However, the issues at Circus Oz, which received $420,000 from the same fund in August, are not directly related to the pandemic. It has been under a warning from its main funding body, the Australia Council, since 2018 that it needed to reform or lose its funding status. The Council had concerns about the companys artistic vibrancy and its financial business model, Miles said  it had posted big losses over the previous decade. In January, the Australia Council suspended Circus Ozs application for funding in 2022-24, subject to an independent review of the companys strategic vision and business model. The review, which is confidential, was given to the company last month. The company has undergone a radical restructure in anticipation of the reviews findings, cutting half its administrative jobs, making more diverse hires, and shifting to a program of smaller productions and a big artist development program  all done in the hope of retaining federal support. However, the Australia Council made it clear to the company that the recommendations around governance, reform and membership, where the board would be skills-based rather than artist-led, and membership would be open to the wider circus community, were non-negotiable and funding was contingent on our ability to deliver, Miles said.

Company treasurer Mike McCreadie said with 70 per cent of their funding coming from government, take that out of the equation and were just not a viable business going forward. Its really disappointing, I feel for our staff, I feel for the performers, McCreadie said. And I feel for Victoria not having Circus Oz in the future. Its a terrible shame and a pity. Loading Federal arts minister Paul Fletcher said funding for the major arts organisations was done on an arms length basis by the Australia Council, but funding cant be a club where once youre in it you can just sit back and know that the funding will keep rolling on forever. He wanted to acknowledge and celebrate the track record of Circus Oz, he said, but it was up to the Australia Council to work through its funding processes.
Mercy says World Vision is seeing similar trends as during long school closures in the 2014-16 Ebola outbreak, when teen pregnancies increased by 65% in Sierra Leone in West Africa.

World Vision estimates that, compared to a pre-pandemic year, up to 85 million more children are likely to experience physical, sexual and emotional violence as a result of the COVID-19 quarantine periods. Teen pregnancies and girls being forced into early marriage are part of that tragic finding.There has been progress: over the past 15 years, the number of girls marrying before age 18 has reduced from one in four globally to one in five, but the COVID-19 outbreak seriously threatens to reverse this trend.

One distressing fallout from COVID-19 has been a sharp rise in teen pregnancies, particularly in sub-Saharan countries. Credit:World Vision Australia

Weve gone backwards, says Mercy. Before the pandemic, World Vision was focusing on working in communities with programs to improve their livelihoods. We support them to connect and sell into markets, to put food on the table and grow to be self-sufficient.

Since COVID hit, World Vision has needed to put more effort into direct relief. Weve been supporting communities with relief packages because these countries dont have the social support that we have in Australia, says Mercy. Weve been giving out food packs to provide that buffer, just so people can eat.

A concerning spike in pregnancies

With families at home because of the pandemic, a perfect storm of dangerous circumstances has hit young girls, including the struggle to put food on the table, the absence of school support and a lack of basic education for girls around their own sexual and reproductive rights.

Girls as young as 12 are becoming pregnant, says Mercy. A girl who gives birth at the age of 15 is five times more likely to die in childbirth than a woman in her 20s. World Vision is working with faith leaders to educate communities and raise awareness about these harmful practices.

Each year, 12 million girls are married before the age of 18  that is 22 girls every minute whose childhood, dreams, and education are cut short. Nearly 40 per cent of girls in the worlds poorest countries are married as children, which is twice the global average.

World Vision works with organisations and communities to ensure these young girls can return to school even after they fall pregnant. Credit:World Vision Australia

Some communities turn their backs on pregnant teenagers or outright expel them. World Vision is on the ground to help. We have programs to support these young mothers, says Mercy. We offer them information, so they understand their reproductive system and how to look after themselves and support the girls and their infants.

On top of vital support on the ground, World Vision works in advocacy and policy. We look at the laws and policies of different countries, and a lot of them have signed up to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, says Mercy.

At face value, the policies seem protective, but in reality, some countries allow the marriage of girls as young as 15. Often the young girl is being married off for the exchange of a dowry. We are advocating for all countries to make the legal age of marriage 18 or above, the age of an adult.

World Vision also works with other organisations and communities to ensure these young girls can return to school even after they fall pregnant. We want them to continue with their education, and to really make that possible for them  there are often many obstacles for these young girls who are already in a difficult situation.

When Australians sponsor a child through World Vision, there is a ripple effect, and its a whole community thats being supported, says Mercy. That support from Australia ensures the continued learning of young people, particularly girls who are already disadvantaged by gender inequality in their communities.

Sponsoring a child this Christmas means life-changing healthcare for children who need it most. Sponsor a child today.
Where can children get vaccinated? Loading The vaccination will be available through family doctors, pharmacies and state and Commonwealth vaccination clinics. Will they be able to get a vaccination at school? There has been some discussion around how schools might be involved in the vaccination rollout, possibly with pop-up clinics on a weekend, however this has not been finalised.

Doctor Anthea Rhodes, a paediatrician at Melbournes Royal Childrens Hospital, said the advantages of school clinics were familiarity with the environment and that it was usually close to home. Its easy to access and somewhere where children will feel confident and comfortable to go, she said. Those factors are actually going to be really important for families in actioning their decisions. Will vaccinations for COVID-19 be kid-friendly? Infectious diseases physician Professor Allen Cheng said everyone who gave vaccines to children understood it was a slightly anxiety-provoking experience. They are trying to create a child-friendly environment, he said. I understand that they are creating an enchanted forest at some of these mass vaccination centres.

Dr Rhodes said she expected vaccine hubs would have virtual reality goggles to help anxious children through the process and a Buzzy Bee which provides a cool and buzzing sensation, which helps to distract the nervous system from noticing the pain of the needle. Dr Anthea Rhodes, paediatrician at the Royal Childrens Hospital. Credit:Luis Enrique Ascui How do I explain vaccination to my kids? Dr Rhodes recommendation is to think about your childs level of understanding. I would always start by asking them what they think it is because you might be really surprised to learn that they understand already really well what vaccination is about, she said. One of the most useful things to explain is that vaccines are a type of medicine that stops you from getting sick in the first place. The medicine gives your immune system a recipe or instructions to help it to know how to fight off the COVID virus if you catch it.

Dr Rhodes said it was good to talk about being injected with a needle but important not to use words like pain or jab which might make them feel frightened. Be realistic about what it feels like, she said. It might feel like a bit of a pinch, or poke, when they actually have the vaccination. Talk to them about where it will be, who can be with them. What if my child is scared of vaccinations? Around a third of children in this age group has a fear of needles. Dr Rhodes said most children who feared needles didnt have a phobia at the level that it would prevent them from being able to go through with the vaccine.

The things that are really important are distractions and giving them some control over the situation, she said. Its not unreasonable to talk about a reward for afterwards, remembering that you will have to do this again in eight weeks, so you have to keep that realistic and reasonable. In more severe situations, extra help might be needed with a play therapist or a psychologist. What are the side effects of vaccination for children? The common side effects for children are fever, fatigue or chills, which normally last less than 24 hours Professor Cheng said the very rare side effect that people worry about is myocarditis (inflammation of the heart) and the signs of this are things like chest pain and loss of balance.

Early indications from the US program suggest that this is less common in younger children, he said. Side effects are more often seen after the second dose. What should I do if my child has a bad reaction? Dr Rhodes said paracetamol should be enough for most reactions. If youre more concerned that your child is unwell in some way or is having a serious reaction that you are concerned about, then you should absolutely seek medical attention for that, she said.

Professor Allen Cheng said side effects to look out for were a fever or chills. Credit:Justin McManus Should some children not get vaccinated? Professor Cheng said there were very occasionally children who would have an allergy to one of the components in the vaccine. They are incredibly rare, but they do exist, he said. That is something to talk to their doctor about. Professor Cheng said peanut allergy, which is the most common allergy in children, is not regarded as a contraindication to allergy to vaccines.

Dr Rhodes said there may be unique situations where perhaps children are having some particular type of treatments for rare conditions that might affect their immune system where they cant be vaccinated but it would be very uncommon. If a child has a fever or is unwell then they may need to delay the vaccine until they have recovered and she said parents and children should discuss this with their GP. If a child has had COVID infection within the last six months, the vaccine is not necessary at that time but it could still be given in some situations, for example if the child has an underlying condition affecting their immune system. Will vaccination affect my childs future fertility? Dr Rhodes said there is no evidence that COVID-19 vaccine has any effect on fertility.

Based on what we know about the technology used in the Pfizer vaccine, there is no reason to expect it would have any effect on the future fertility of children, she said. Research has shown no effect from the COVID-19 vaccine on sperm count in men or rates of women falling pregnant. Will vaccinations for this age group be mandatory? A decision has not been made on this yet. That is a matter for states, but I understand not in the first instance, Professor Cheng said. How dangerous is COVID-19 for kids?

COVID-19 is still a very mild illness in the vast majority of children. In Australia, fewer than 1 per cent of children throughout the pandemic have required treatment in hospital for coronavirus, however a growing number of children are getting the virus. Professor Cheng said a very large portion of the cases were in children with around 20 per cent of COVID-19 cases in Victoria in children under 10. That is really because everyone else has been vaccinated essentially, he said. So why are we vaccinating kids?

Some children are still getting sick and Dr Rhodes said ideally we would not see any children getting unwell with COVID which is why vaccination is important. Loading The other impact of COVID on the health and wellbeing of kids is the indirect impact, she said. Thats due to school closures due to children having to isolate if theyre exposed or quarantine if they actually get COVID, so they might not be physically unwell, but theyre still actually missing out a lot on a lot of important experiences. So COVID is having a big impact on the health and wellbeing of children and families and thats why vaccination for individual children as well as the broader community is really important. Still have questions? Dr Rhodes and the Royal Childrens Hospital will host a Facebook Live on Thursday, December 16, from 11am to answer questions about children and COVID-19 vaccinations.
Exiled former Hong Kong legislator Ted Hui has accused the McGowan government of picking trade over human rights in its relationship with China while urging it to reconsider an invitation to discuss its ties with the Asian superpower.

Mr Huis comments follow the publication of an open letter by Chinese pro-democracy groups last month criticising Mr McGowan and other cabinet ministers attendance at dinners on September 30 and October 5 celebrating the 72nd anniversary of the Peoples Republic of China and founding of the CCP.

Premier Mark McGowan at the China Consul event on October 5.

He requested a meeting with Mr McGowan in October to discuss how troubled he was at their attendance and share stories of Hong Kongers, including his family, who fled the country after it passed democracy-suppressing national security laws in 2020.

The request was rejected a month later with the response that the Premier was unavailable and international affairs was a Commonwealth responsibility.
Two police officers who had sex with a 17-year-old schoolgirl after meeting her while on duty have told a court they regret their actions, which tarnished the reputation of their employer, and now realise what they did was wrong.

James Delinicolis, 30, and Angelo Dellosa, 31, pleaded guilty this year to one count each of misconduct in public office after they had consensual sex with the girl, who said she was 18, in March 2020.

The senior constables in the Police Transport Command, who were both married, regularly spoke to women while on-duty and tried to pick them up for sex, using the fake names Jamie, Dimitri and Allan and mobile phones they referred to as bat phones.

Delinicolis initially spoke to the girl through the front window of a police car on March 11 and gave her a post-it note with his number and a fake name on it, after spotting her at a bus stop wearing her school uniform. His notebook contained a pile of these post-its.
In 1992, Anthony William Caruana faced two separate trials after students of Chevalier College in the Southern Highlands complained to police of his sexual abuse in 1989.

The Catholic priest, who was also a boarding master, rugby coach and band master at the school, had initially been charged with 11 offences against seven boys, but only two charges made it to trial.

With prosecutors at that time legally unable to link the two charges or show evidence to the juries of Caruanas tendency to sexually abuse the boys under his care, he was acquitted.

Anthony William Peter Caruana outside the NSW District Court in May. Credit:Kate Geraghty

Nearly 30 years later, his victims  now totalling 12, many of whom carry psychological scars not only from the abuse, but from being disbelieved  have finally seen justice.
Its a huge problem in Western Sydney developments  we have less space to plant anything around homes, Pfautsch says. In 20 to 30 years the value of a house [in these areas] will potentially be diminished because they will be living in a hotbox in an environment where there could easily be five to six days a year at 50-degree temperatures. But he says Stokes has been pushing a lot of buttons in the right direction, particularly with a draft new Design and Place State Environmental Planning Policy, or SEPP, released on Friday after months of development. The policy includes a new goal of 20-minute walkability to shops and parks for new neighbourhoods, better thermal performance for homes, revamped design rules that will make new apartments more appealing, and preservation of green spaces in greenfield developments. Stokes says his challenge has been to try and turn growth into progress at a time when growth in Sydney has been seen as almost malignant and progress became a dirty word because it was seen as growth for its own sake.

He says hes sought to use his formidable ministerial powers under the planning act to put greater emphasis on bushland and parkland renewal alongside urban and community renewal and is seeking to put a metropolitan rural zone - an agricultural periphery - around Sydney to underpin organic food and those sorts of things. He may, however, have only days left in the portfolio, with a reshuffle expected before Christmas. Gladys Berejiklians bombshell resignation led not only to Dominic Perrottets ascension to premier but to the departure of long-time transport minister Andrew Constance, leaving Stokes with possibly temporary custodianship of the problem-plagued transport and roads portfolio on top of planning. Perrottet has also announced hell appoint a new minister for Cities, presiding over a Six Cities conurbation that will link the north-south axis of Newcastle, the central coast and Wollongong with the east-west axis of the CBD, Parramatta and the nascent western Sydney city of Bradfield. Which, if any, of these portfolio hats Stokes will wear after the reshuffle is not yet clear. Stokes ruffled feathers within his own moderate faction by insisting on a ballot for the leadership in early October. He ran against Perrottet, garnering five votes to the now premiers 39. But he says it was a matter of principle for him that there be a contest, and insists it has not had an impact on his friendship with Perrottet.

But if he has to let planning go, it will be reluctantly. While saying its in good shape, hes keen to hang on to it because of unfinished business. Stokes outside his home on hisway to do some volunteer lifesaving work with a then broken foot in October. He had announced he would be putting his hand up to be premier. Credit:Nick Moir That includes the bedding down of nine new ministers Planning Principles he unveiled a week ago. God gave Moses the 10 commandments and I give the planning system Nine Commandments, he declared at the launch, only half in jest. They are startlingly ambitious in scope, encompassing everything from the design of public places, conservation of natural environment and heritage, and promotion of resilience in the face of hazard, to principles for transport, infrastructure and resilient local economies, and a commitment to the supply of well located homes and housing that is diverse, affordable and well-designed. They run the risk of being seen as motherhood statements, I suggest. Stokes disagrees. He says under the powers he has as minister, the nine principles will be required under law to filter down to all levels of planning activity in the state  not as prescriptive rules, but as part of a quiet revolution.

He cites as an example of their practical effect the emphasis on designing more walkable communities when a new subdivision is being undertaken. Or the requirement for new housing to have light-coloured roofs to mitigate the heat island effects of climate change. Another example he points to is the development control plan for the town of Wilton, on Sydneys south-west fringe, where we said to home builders that you need to ensure there is sufficient space, deep soil, to plant a tree in the backyard of a detached house. Developers were outraged, he says, complaining it would impact affordability. We were able to say, listen to yourselves, this is a detached house  you are telling us its unreasonable to have space for a tree in the backyard? You are not going to win that argument in the court of public opinion. Against the backdrop of a rising housing crisis, Stokes is also keen to pursue housing reform, driven again by new planning policies designed to widen the variety of residential dwellings on offer, with design better attuned to place, and a broader range of tenure options. The latter, he says, should include construction of housing stock specifically for long-term rental, as happens overseas. Hes impatient with federal coalition MPs pinning most of the blame for housing shortages on state planning policies, saying national tax policy  particularly negative gearing  is a significant contributor to the problem.

What would he want to change? At a very simple level lets have a tax policy that encourages everyone to get one house before we start encouraging people to acquire more houses, he says. With negative gearing perhaps we could look at, if you are going to get a tax advantage, asking whats the public benefit in that? Are you investing in social or affordable housing with a community housing provider for example? ... But if youre using that to buy yourself a $10 million beach house maybe thats something you dont need a tax break that everyone else [pays] for. He also wants to see the federal government use its tax policy levers to encourage listed property companies to construct more build-to-rent housing. It is a generally accepted housing tenure in other [overseas] jurisdictions but it just hasnt developed here because we have this fundamental focus on purchase at all costs, he says. Premier Dominic Perrottet and Stokes inspect the progress on the Barangaroo Metro Station and the completed railway track under the Sydney Harbour in October. Credit:Rhett Wyman His other beef with Canberra is the absence of a population policy. He says he is pro a growing population but not for its own sake; and that pump-priming migration as an economic tool is lazy economics for starters. There should be a national conversation about it, he says, linked into a national settlement strategy.

Stokes time in planning has not been without controversy. Hes clashed with local councils over changes to developer levies, used to fund local infrastructure, though a truce has recently been hammered out. More controversially, Stokes has alienated community groups across Sydney, with his grand scheme for a Greater Sydney Parklands agency, now to be the peak decision-making authority for new major parks as well as existing parklands from Centennial Park in the east, to Callan Park in the inner west and out to the Western Sydney Parklands and Fernhill. Opponents (uniting under the banner of the Alliance for Public Parklands) say the new body will be a monolith that diminishes the role of local communities in shaping much-loved parklands, and will open the door to their commercialisation in a drive to make them self-funding. Stokes rejects this. He argues that the smaller individual park trusts lacked real authority and were easy to ignore - they can get pushed around by government, particularly when you have things like Venues NSW organised and centralised  The whole point was to try and get the strength of a single voice for parklands. Critics are unconvinced. An upper house inquiry will examine the legislation underpinning the new authority early next year though by then, it may no longer be Stokes problem.
The Queensland Ombudsman is assessing complaints about border travel, but will not confirm whether an investigation similar to other states is under way due to confidentiality.

The office said it had received complaints about border closures, which covered a range of issues related to border travel, and they were being assessed under the Ombudsman Act.

People have made a range of complaints to the Queensland Ombudsman related to border travel. Credit:Getty Images

But a spokeswoman said, due to specific confidentiality requirements about the conduct of investigations, Ombudsman Anthony Reilly would not confirm whether an investigation was under way or provide any other comment.

The complaints came as the Victorian Ombudsman this week handed down the findings of an investigation into decision-making of the border crossing permit directions.
In late 1983 he arrived at the Police Academy that had become a second home to the OLoughlins. Soon he was working in the melting pot of St Kilda, learning to develop a rapport with victims and criminals. During a stint working with the National Crime Authority he was seconded to work on the 1988 Walsh Street murders of police constables Steven Tynan and Damian Eyre. Less than six weeks later OLoughlin identified one of the suspects, Jedd Houghton, inside a Bendigo pub. A few days later the heavily-armed Houghton was shot dead in a Bendigo caravan park by the Special Operations Group. The head of the SOG at the time was one of Darrens uncles. Darren transferred to his home patch of Frankston as a detective and had a lucky escape when he managed to roll a police car on the Nepean Highway.

Darren OLoughlin, former detective turned cyber-cop. In hospital, he stood up to head to the toilet when a nurse ordered him to stop moving, informing him he had a broken neck. For seven weeks he lay in a bed with his head tilted back so far they mounted a television upside- down for him to watch. Eventually, a piece of his hip was used to realign his spine. Working as a detective in Frankston was both good and bad, he says. The good was that as a local boy, he knew where to find the crooks. The bad was that as a local boy, he knew some of the crooks.

One was a mechanic he charged with handling stolen car parts. Despite being guilty, the mechanic felt it was a breach of some unwritten code to be arrested by a fellow local lad and vowed revenge. He wanted to take me out, Darren recalls. One night Darren saw he was being followed and - thinking they were traffic cops looking to pinch a local detective - he gunned the car to lose them. Turned out it was the manic mechanic, who was later charged with firearm-related offences. One shift Darren was hoping for a quiet one, so he could leave the office on time and head home for his sons second birthday. That is until he got the call that a protective services officer had stolen a gun from the office and was threatening to kill his girlfriend. Darren and fellow detective Peter Sterling strapped on their bulletproof vests and drove off to Beach Street, Frankston. We heard this guy was jumping neighbourhood fences and trying to escape. We got out of the car and I went up the driveway of the house. When he spotted the offender OLoughlin pulled his gun and told the man to put his hands in the air and not to move. For a moment it looked like he was thinking of complying, before slipping his hands behind his back and producing the stolen gun.

The offender put the gun to his own head. Darren kept his pointed at the clearly disturbed mans chest. When another policeman opened the side gate, the offender trained his revolver on the second cop. Although he would have been justified in taking a shot, OLoughlin yelled at the man to regain his attention. For five hours the two sat facing each other, both with guns cocked and fingers on the trigger. After hours of talk they agreed to remove their trigger fingers. It was a tiny but important victory. Darren told the man it was his sons birthday, and it wouldnt be very pleasant if [the offender] blew his head off or hurt me. Finally, the police managed to get him a phone connected to a negotiator. The advice was more practical than psychological.

Whatever you do, dont lean right. An SOG sniper was in position with a clear shot, unless OLoughlin moved. He didnt. The thought of a bullet in the back of the head does wonders for ones posture. The SOG: Dont lean right. Credit:Pat Scala Finally, a police dog distracted the man, allowing an SOG officer to jump the fence and crack him over the head with a shotgun. Back in the mid-1990s, Darren started to show an interest in home computers just as police were taking their first baby steps into the then tiny world of e-crime. He was recruited to the Computer Crime Squad, set up in a tiny area inside the Crime Departments St Kilda Road building.

Long before the Dark Web there were chat rooms and soon OLoughlin and the team identified a paedophile ring who thought they were communicating in secret. One was a self-declared Wizard who bragged he could provide children. The squad established a false identity to infiltrate the group. We were able to place an order for minors to be delivered, says Darren. The drop-off point was nominated as the Shrine of Remembrance, for two reasons: it was an open area where the Wizard would be unable to hide and we were pretty lazy, and it was across the road from the office. Then there was a sliding-door moment. OLoughlin sat the sergeants exam, receiving an impressive 85 per cent pass - but as there was a glut of candidates that year the promotion bar was set at 86.

Miffed by the arbitrary one per cent decision he resigned, moving into the world of cyber-security, first for accounting firm Ernst and Young. Soon he was studying Ethical Hacking in New York, returning as a qualified trainer in the dark arts. He was ahead of his time. This year the Crime Department boosted the Cyber Crime Division, seen as the largest growth area in organised crime. Loading The police An0m app sting saw a collective of law enforcement agencies harvest an astonishing 27 million encrypted messages from gangsters - graphic proof of the size and complexity of international organised crime syndicates around the world and a signal that police must embrace cutting-edge technology if they are to be effective. We are thinking of running Hackathons, says Commander Mick Frewen. The aim is to hire the best hackers to defend systems against local and international cyber-extortionists.

Police have asked for nearly 50 legislative amendments to help them deal with a new class of crime being used by an old style of criminal. When Darren was employed by one of the big four banks, one of the general managers challenged the security team to try and crack his password. Within hours, they sent a message with it. As the general manager was writing a note of congratulations, OLoughlin took over his computer to write that his team was inside the system watching what he did. We were perched on his shoulder while he worked. Loading It was a graphic example of cyber-espionage.
On Monday, Australians in designated hotspots around the country will be allowed to travel to Queensland following months of onerous border restrictions and quarantine requirements.

On July 21, this year, the sunshine state shuttered its borders to greater Sydney before expanding it to include all of NSW and then Melbourne as the two southern states battled the Delta strain of coronavirus.

The move crippled Queenslands tourism industry, locking out millions of people who would normally escape to the warmer climate in winter, and caused chaos at the border as nearby towns struggled to obtain necessities as border rules changed.

Queenslands Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk increased her popularity in last years state election, largely due to her handling of the first half of the pandemic which saw the state left relatively unscathed by the virus.
Largely this is thanks to two factors: the traps Albanese has avoided  he has not allowed the opposition to be wedged  and the governments habit of falling into nearly every possible hole, many of which it has dug itself. As well, keeping policies back (partly tactical, partly forced by COVID-19) has preserved a relatively blank canvas for Labor to write on in the election run-up. Elections, at their core, are two-horse contests dominated by the leaders. Albanese will never sparkle, but he has recently improved his performance and spruced up the way he presents. At Sundays Sydney rally, with new glasses and a sharp suit, he looked more race-fit than at any time in the past year. Yes, all that is superficial and personal, but in these image-conscious days, such things matter at the margin. They are small signs of effort. Prime Minister Scott Morrison at a school visit this week. Credit:Dylan Coker

Morrison might wish he could improve his image by attending to the superficial. He has some fundamental problems that will be very difficult for him and his strategists to overcome in the next few months. Loading By his own actions and words, Morrison has trashed much of his credibility, allowing Labor to portray him as a liar, which it now does, day in and day out. Beyond that, the Coalition has been mired in scandal, controversy and sheer untidiness. This currently ranges from minister Alan Tudge being investigated over an alleged violent incident to the much-publicised, clumsy but unsuccessful courting of former NSW premier Gladys Berejiklian to run for Warringah. Next weeks budget update might provide the government with a dash of Christmas cheer, but it wont eclipse its shocking end to the parliamentary year.

While Morrison and his team have handed the opposition plenty of opportunities in recent months, Albaneses challenges in the months ahead are formidable. The Labor leader remains relatively unknown to many people. Imprinting him (favourably) on voters consciousness between now and the poll wont be easy. Hes not a big, distinctive, compelling personality. Nor is he a fresh face  he was deputy prime minister a long time ago, not that many voters would remember. People dont dislike him [Albanese], and ... have become dubious about Morrison (to say nothing of Barnaby Joyce).

He tells his log cabin story  being brought up by a single mum in straitened circumstances  but in a self-centred age, how many people listen or care? The best two things going for him at a personal level are that people dont dislike him, and that they have become dubious about Morrison (to say nothing of Barnaby Joyce). Albanese needs to stymie the governments attempts to portray him as weak, or a potential patsy of the Greens  and to do this while avoiding sounding shrill or desperate. Loading As well as projecting himself, Albanese will need to stay firmly on message and keep that message tight (rather than waffly, as is his wont). Hes been disciplined to date, but campaigning for months is exhausting, and mistakes can be magnified 100-fold. Labor will also be vulnerable to scares and other negative tactics against it. These can be potent, even devastating. Think Labors Mediscare in 2016. Think Clive Palmers advertising in 2019 (and hes still around, with money to burn).

In the age of social media, scares are particularly dangerous and insidious, and hard to counter. For example, Labor might successfully neutralise attacks on its climate policy in the national campaign, but in certain areas (in the Hunter, central Queensland) it could be undermined by scares delivered via social media and by impossible-to-track-down players. We saw this with the scare run in 2019 that Labor would bring in a death tax. If Morrison holds out for a May election preceded by a budget, Albanese will have to deal with the campaign field being rearranged weeks out from the finish line. Although bringing down a budget just before the start of the formal campaign might carry some risk for the government (it didnt work well in 2016, but did in 2019), it would position the battle squarely on the Coalitions strong ground of the economy and force the opposition into quick reactions.

Albanese would deliver the traditional budget reply, which would have to contain at least one big-ticket item and be pitched just right. One hurdle confronting Albanese in his quest to persuade voters to swing could be their inertia, a lack of impetus for change, especially if the economic outlook is encouraging. Then there is the unpredictability of COVIDs course in early 2022. Loading With 2021 drawing to its end, the government is worried about how damaged Morrison is, while Labor is nervous that he remains a ruthless, relentless opponent. No one is putting great store in the polls that show Labor ahead on a two-party basis, although not massively so. The fashionable speculation among the commentariat is about the possibility of a hung parliament. As for the electorate, people are exhausted after two years of COVID. For many, the last thing they want to do is engage with the fractious, accusatory discourse of politicians.
The United Nations committee on the elimination of racial discrimination has sent a letter to Australias representative at the global organisation seeking answers to allegations by West Australian Traditional Owners that a new state Aboriginal heritage law will not protect significant sites.

But the WA government remains on track to pass the new law on Tuesday in the final sitting week of Parliament for the year, despite the concerns.

Professor Hannah McGlade was one of the signatories who called on the UN to intervene in new Aboriginal heritage legislation in WA.

Five prominent WA Traditional Owners and the Environmental Defenders office made a request of the UN committee in September to review the Aboriginal Heritage Bill, which they said would mean the continued legal destruction of significant sites like the blasting by Rio Tinto of caves at Juukan Gorge in the Pilbara, which was home to 46,000 years of human history.

Key concerns included the lack of a veto clause over Aboriginal heritage for Traditional Owners  which exists to an extent in the Northern Territory  and changes to drafts of the Bill, which took appeals of any decision to allow the destruction of a site out of the hands of an independent tribunal and into those of a state government minister.
Singapore: Top Chinese executives will meet with their Australian counterparts for the first time in years as business leaders attempt to find a way through a hostile diplomatic environment that has hit Australia with $20 billion in trade strikes.

The high-level private meeting between half-a-dozen Chinese representatives from state-owned energy and resources firms including Sinosteel, the China National Petroleum Corporation, Chinalco and their Australian counterparts in BHP, Fortescue and Rio Tinto on Monday is the first sign that Beijing has authorised its representatives to re-engage with major Australian firms.

A coal-fired power plant in operation in Hanchuan, Hubei province. Chinese state-owned firms will negotiate with Australian firms over climate mitigation strategies on Monday. Credit:Getty Images

The virtual meeting has been negotiated for months by the Australia China Business Council and the China Council for the Promotion of International Trade but was hit by fears that Australias diplomatic boycott of the Beijing Winter Olympics this week could derail its progress.

Weve been on tenterhooks ourselves, said Australia China Business Council president David Olsson. Its been through multiple layers and approval processes really trying to tick all the boxes.
The global competition between the US and its allies versus China and Russia is economic and military but this week US President Joe Biden tried to turn it into a contest of ideas by holding a two-day Summit for Democracy.

Mr Biden told the virtual meeting of more than 100 world leaders that he believed the challenge of our age is whether we allow the backward slide of rights and democracy or whether democracies once more lead the march of human progress and human freedom forward.

The summit was widely seen as an attempt to use democratic countries soft power as a weapon in the battle against what Mr Biden sees as a growing global trend to authoritarianism.

While he did not name either China or Russia as the villains, they were not invited to the gathering  while representatives from the Hong Kong pro-democracy movement and Taiwan along with Ukraine, Russias least favourite country, were there.

China quickly responded in high Wolf Warrior dudgeon. A Chinese foreign ministry spokesman said Mr Biden wanted to weaponise democracy, by openly convening this so-called Summit for Democracy, to incite division and confrontation for geopolitical gains.
PHILIPSBURG:--- On Thursday, December 9, 2021, the 31st Congress and Trade Mission regarding  Ten Years after the dissolution of the Netherlands Antilles, continued at the Nieuwspoort in The Hague in which a delegation of the Parliament of Sint Maarten is currently participating. Today the Congress started with a presentation by Ms. Gerlien Croes, Member of the Parliament of Aruba, who discussed the strengthening of our Kingdom relations based on European values and standards. She mentioned that we are small islands with big challenges and brought forward that change requires support and that the EU offers an alternative. During this presentation, it was questioned why we do not make use of the possibilities that are already offered based on our OCT status and looking at a new status that does not have to be a UPG status.



Ms. Croes was followed by Mr. Koos Sneek, Island Council Member of Sint Eustatius who zoomed in on the small-scale reality of Sint Eustatius and current day situation and experiences of Sint Eustatius. He also looked at the intervention that started in February 2018 and different events that have taken place since.



The debt problem was the focus of a presentation by Mr. Amerigo Thode, Member of the Parliament of Curacao. He looked at the conditioning of financial support from the Kingdom, the exploration of refinancing options, and the recent advice of the IMF.



Mr. Aubrich Bakhuis spoke about the challenges for good corporate governance in public entities and foundations in the Caribbean parts of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. Mr. Bakhuis also looked at how we can go from good governance to excellent governance and the challenges that come with such an endeavor. He also presented a Road Map to excellent corporate governance in the semi-public sector.



Mr. Raymond Gradus, the Chairman of the Cft, discussed Ten Years of financial supervision. Mr. Gradus indicated some points that can help in improving effectiveness, such as introducing financial management as a norm and an enforceable information obligation for government entities. He concluded that financial management and budget management were not in order before the Corona crisis, that the crisis has further accentuated the underlying issues, that stringent fiscal policies must go hand in hand with economic reforms, and that for effective supervision the current toolbox could be expanded.



Prof. Mr. G. Oostindie gave a presentation titled: Kingdom Relations; what does history teach us about limitations, challenges, and opportunities. Prof. Oostindie mentioned opportunities based on realism, integrity, involvement, and permanent learning ability. Mr. Ewout Irrgang, Member of the General Audit Chamber of the Netherlands, questioned in his presentation if The Netherlands, as the largest country within the Kingdom, takes sufficient account of the small scale of the Caribbean parts of the Kingdom.



The last presentation was a duo-presentation by Ms. Jorien Wuite, Member of the Second Chamber of the Netherlands, and Ms. Daphina Misiedjan which zoomed in on the climate treaties and the Caribbean part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. This presentation looked at the need for having the climate treaties also count for the Caribbean parts of the Kingdom and how best to deal with this.



The Congress ended with a panel discussion on the topic of climate change within the Kingdom in which Member of Parliament Claudius A. Buncamper, along with Members of Parliament of Aruba, Curacao, and the Netherlands, and academics participated. During this debate, the main question was if climate change should become a Kingdom affair.
Operation Turquesa III

LYON, France:--- An operation led by INTERPOL targeting migrant smuggling and human trafficking across the Americas has sparked 216 arrests and the identification of more than 10,000 irregular migrants from 61 different countries.

Operation Turquesa III (29 November  3 December) saw authorities in 34 countries carry out targeted, coordinated enforcement actions against criminal networks believed to be moving vulnerable men, women, and children across borders for profit.

While many of the migrants reported paying exorbitant fees to take often-dangerous journeys, other victims faced continued exploitation. In total, authorities rescued 127 human trafficking victims from forced labour and sexual exploitation during the operation.

A dedicated operational coordination unit in Mexico City and a support unit at the Caribbean Community Implementation Agency for Crime and Securitys (CARICOM IMPACS) Joint Regional Communications Centre (JRCC) supported participating countries throughout the weeklong operation. Some 65,000 checks were carried out against INTERPOLs databases at air, land, and sea borders as well as 98 strategic checkpoints across four continents.

Turquesa III operational highlights

- Authorities in El Salvador arrested 14 suspected migrant smugglers believed to have charged their victims between USD 8,000 and 12,000 to reach the United States.

- In Ecuador, authorities arrested 16 Ecuadorian and Venezuelan nationals suspected of belonging to the Tren de Aragua gang and working with an armed group in Colombia to smuggle Haitian migrants.

- In Chile, authorities discovered the body of a Venezuelan national near the border with Bolivia, leading them to identify a smuggling corridor for Venezuelan migrants, facilitated by a Bolivian citizen.

- Brazils Federal Police arrested five members of an organized crime group suspected of facilitating the irregular migration of Haitian nationals from Brazil to Bolivia.

- The CARICOM IMPACS JRCC unit received crucial information linking a known smuggler in Brazil to a Pakistani national, enabling them to warn authorities in Guyana about the pending arrival of six other Pakistani nationals looking to make their way to the US.

- Mexican authorities seized 19,370 blank passports which were then added to INTERPOLs travel and identity documents database. One of those passports was subsequently detected at Mexico Citys International Airport, when a Cuban citizen from Panama was caught trying to enter the country.

- Migrants continued to undertake difficult journeys by sea, with authorities in Turks and Caicos, Curacao and the United States detecting dangerously full vessels.

- Several countries in the Caribbean detected the use of fraudulent Spanish and Portuguese identity and travel documents.

The reinforced border controls also led to some notable arrests outside the operations target crime areas:

- El Salvador officials arrested a Costa Rican attempting to smuggle USD 83,000 worth of illicit medicines into the country.

- Portuguese officers arrested two individuals subject to INTERPOL Red Notices, wanted for fraud and manslaughter respectively.

- Panamanian authorities detected the subject of a Red Notice requested by Venezuela for fraud and money laundering.

Trafficking in children

A notable difference between this years results and previous iterations of Operation Turquesa was the number of children taken across borders for the purpose of exploitation, often sexual. All of the identified victims were taken into protective care and received assistance.

- Colombian authorities dismantled a criminal organization known as the Casa Inglesa involved in human trafficking for sexual exploitation of children in Bogota. An INTERPOL Purple Notice was also published at Colombias request, detailing a modus operandi whereby children were being recruited in Venezuela and smuggled via Colombia to Ecuador for sexual exploitation.

- 27 people in El Salvador were arrested on child sexual abuse and child labour offences.

- In Belize, authorities identified 11 possible victims of trafficking, including a Honduran mother and her three children.

- Paraguayan and Argentinian authorities worked together to rescue a child being trafficked for sexual exploitation.

- Mexico requested the publication of four INTERPOL Red Notices against individuals suspected of human trafficking for sexual exploitation and storing and publishing child sexual abuse images.

International, cross-sector cooperation key

Jurgen Stock, INTERPOLs Secretary-General, recognized the strong mobilization and coordination behind Turquesa III: INTERPOL and our partners remain relentless in our collective mission to protect the vulnerable from criminal groups. Each operation reinforces our network, casting a wider net against organized crime. By working together, we dismantle criminal structures, we cut off major sources of profit and most importantly, we rescue innocent victims.

Beyond the backing of INTERPOLs global membership and infrastructure, Operation Turquesa III received key operational support from:

- CARICOM IMPACS, which engaged with Caribbean countries and hosted the support unit in the JRCC headquarters in Barbados;

- The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, which provided judicial support through the specialized REDTRAM network and will continue to do so in the follow-up to the operation;

- The International Organization Migration, which provided assistance to migrants and trafficking victims;

- Europol, which cross-checked information against their databases.

Participating countries

Argentina, Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Bermuda, Bolivia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Curacao, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Grenada, Guatemala, Guyana, Honduras, Jamaica, Mexico, Morocco, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Portugal, Spain, Suriname, Turks & Caicos, United Kingdom, United States, Uruguay, Venezuela.

Operation Turquesa III was supported by Project Proteger with funding from Global Affairs Canada. Project Proteger aims to both curb migrant smuggling in the Americas and builds regional law enforcement capacity in planning, implementing, and evaluating police actions with a gender-sensitive approach.
Identity and access management in 2022 - what will the future look like?

As we enter into 2022, there is still a level of uncertainty in place. Its unclear what the future holds, as companies around the world still contend with the COVID-19 pandemic. Remote working has been encouraged by most organisations and the move to a hybrid working system has become business as usual, for the majority of businesses. Some have reduced their office space or done away with their locations altogether. Following best security practices With all this change in place, there are problems to deal with. According to research, 32.7% of IT admins say they are concerned about employees using unsecured networks to carry out that work. Alongside this, 74% of IT admins thought that remote work makes it harder for employees to follow best security practices. This need to manage security around remote work is no longer temporary. Instead, companies have to build permanent strategies around remote work and security. The coming year will also create a different landscape for small and mid-sized businesses (SMBs). Here are some key predictions for next year and what to start preparing for in 2022: The reality of SMB spending around security will hit home SMBs had to undertake significant investments to adapt to remote working SMBs had to undertake significant investments to adapt to remote working, especially in comparison to their size. They had to undertake significant digital transformation projects that made it possible to deliver services remotely, during the COVID-19 pandemic. Weve seen a shift in mindset for these companies, which are now more tech-focused in their approach to problem solving. According to our research, 45% of SMBs plan to increase their spending towards IT services in 2022. Around half of all organisations think their IT budgets are adequate for their needs, while 14.5% of those surveyed believe they will need more, to cover all that needs to be done. Identity management spending to support remote work For others, the COVID-19 pandemic led to over-spending, just to get ahead of things and they will spend in 2022, looking at what they should keep and what they can reduce their spending on. Areas like identity management will stay in place, as companies struggle to support remote work and security, without this in place. However, on-premise IT spending will be reduced or cut, as those solutions are not relevant for the new work model. Services that rely on on-premise IT will be cut or replaced. The device will lead the way for security We rely on our phones to work and to communicate. In 2022, they will become central to how we manage access, to all our assets and locations, IT and physical. When employees can use company devices and their own phones for work, security is more difficult. IT teams have to ensure that theyre prepared for this, by making sure that these devices can be trusted. Wide use of digital certificates and strong MFA factors Rather than requiring a separate smart card or fingerprint reader, devices can be used for access using push authentication There are multiple ways that companies can achieve this, for example - By using digital certificates to identify company devices as trusted, an agent, or strong MFA factors, like a FIDO security key or mobile push authentication. Whichever approach you choose, this can prevent unauthorised access to IT assets and applications, and these same devices can be used for authentication into physical locations too. Rather than requiring a separate smart card or fingerprint reader, devices can be used for access using push authentication. Understanding human behaviour Alongside this, it is important to understand human behaviour. Anything that introduces an extra step for authentication can lead to employees taking workarounds. To stop this, it is important to put an employee education process in place, in order to emphasize on the importance of security. The next step is to think about adopting passwordless security, to further reduce friction and increase adoption. Lastly, as devices become the starting point for security and trust, remote device management will be needed too. More companies will need to manage devices remotely, from wiping an asset remotely if it gets lost or stolen, through to de-provisioning users easily and removing their access rights, when they leave the company. Identity will be a layer cake Zero Trust approaches to security Identity management relies on being able to trust that someone is who they say they are. Zero Trust approaches to security can support this effectively, particularly when aligned with least privilege access models. In order to turn theory into practical easy-to-deploy steps, companies need to use contextual access, as part of their identity management strategy. This involves looking at the context that employees will work in and putting together the right management approach for those circumstances. For typical employee behaviour, using two factor authentication might be enough to help them work, without security getting in the way. How enterprises manage, access and store identity data There will also be a shift in how enterprises manage, access, and store that identity data over time For areas where security is more important, additional security policies can be put over the top, to ensure that only the right people have access. A step-up in authentication can be added, based on the sensitivity of resources or risk-based adaptive authentication policies might be needed. There will also be a shift in how enterprises manage, access, and store that identity data over time, so that it aligns more closely with those use cases. Identity management critical to secure assets in 2022 There are bigger conversations taking place around digital identity for citizenship, as more services move online as well. Any moves that take place in this arena will affect how businesses think about their identity management processes too, encouraging them to look at their requirements in more detail. Overall, 2022 will be the year when identity will be critical to how companies keep their assets secure and their employees productive. With employees working remotely and businesses becoming decentralised, identity strategies will have to take the same approach. This will put the emphasis on strong identity management as the starting point for all security planning.
Sports Mole takes an in-depth look at how Manchester City could line up for Saturday's Premier League clash with Wolverhampton Wanderers.

Manchester City have been handed two additional fitness concerns ahead of Saturday's Premier League clash with Wolverhampton Wanderers at the Etihad Stadium.

Phil Foden and Nathan Ake both had to be withdrawn in the midweek Champions League defeat to RB Leipzig with ankle and back issues respectively, but neither player is expected to face a significant spell on the sidelines.

Pep Guardiola is also sweating over the fitness of Gabriel Jesus and Aymeric Laporte - both nursing knocks - while Ferran Torres is still sidelined with his foot fracture.

Kyle Walker's red card in midweek means nothing for this game, with the England international set to occupy his usual right-back role as Joao Cancelo returns to displace Oleksandr Zinchenko on the left.

Ruben Dias and John Stones ought to form the defensive pairing in front of Ederson after Zack Steffen enjoyed a rare run-out in goal at the Red Bull Arena.

Ilkay Gundogan and Kevin De Bruyne should both hold their places in midfield, where Fernandinho is set to drop out for Rodri, meaning that the in-form Bernardo Silva could feature further forward amid City's attacking woes.

Riyad Mahrez could therefore drop out despite his consolation goal in midweek, with Raheem Sterling potentially coming in to lead the line as Jack Grealish moves to the left-hand side.

Man City possible starting lineup: Ederson; Walker, Dias, Stones, Cancelo; Gundogan, Rodri, De Bruyne; Silva, Sterling, Grealish
Introduction

The Federal Insurance and Self-Employment Contribution Acts ( FICA and SECA ) require the withholding of taxes from wages of employed persons and the net earnings of most self-employed persons for the Social Security and Medicare programs. In 2019, earnings up to $132,900 in covered employment were subject to Social Security (Old-Age, Survivors, and Disability Insurance, OASDI ) taxes. There was no limit on annual earnings subject to Medicare Part A (Hospital Insurance, HI ) taxes.

Under Social Security, the tax rate was the same (6.2 percent) for both employees and employers. The rate for self-employed workers equaled the combined employee and employer rate of 12.4 percent. Under Medicare, the rate was also the same (1.45 percent) for both employees and employers. For self-employed workers, it was 2.9 percent.

Beginning in 2013, an additional Medicare tax of 0.9 percent is assessed on earned income exceeding $200,000 for individuals and $250,000 for married couples filing jointly. This additional Medicare tax is not included in the contribution amounts shown in the tables.

The amount of Social Security taxable earnings is determined first by counting wage and salary earnings (as reported by employers) and then any self-employment income up to the taxable maximum (as reported by self-employed individuals). The amount of taxes includes both the employee and employer shares for Social Security.

Data in this report are not adjusted for multiemployer tax refunds. Employees pay taxes on their earnings up to the annual maximum taxable amount for each employer that they work for during the year. Employees who work for two or more employers and earn more than the annual maximum taxable amount over the course of the year pay excess contributions that are later refunded. Corresponding employer contributions are not refunded.

Two deduction provisions reduce the SECA and income tax liability of self-employed persons, with the intent of treating them the same as employees and employers for purposes of Social Security and income taxes. Taxable net earnings from self-employment are determined by reducing net profit from self-employment by an amount equal to net profit times one-half of the combined SECA tax rate. The resulting amount is not taxable for Social Security if less than $400. In addition, self-employed persons may deduct one-half of their SECA taxes as an adjustment to income on Internal Revenue Service ( IRS ) Form 1040.

This report presents 2019 earnings and employment data for persons covered under Social Security and Medicare in the 50 states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico. It shows members of the armed forces and reserves according to the residence listed on their W-2 form. Workers in American Samoa, Guam, Northern Mariana Islands, and U.S. Virgin Islands; U.S. citizens employed abroad by U.S. employers; persons employed on U.S. oceanborne vessels; and workers with unknown residence are grouped together as Other. The data are presented by sex and age.

The report uses a residence-based geographic coding system. State and county designations are based on employee residence shown on the W-2 wage reports that employers send to the Social Security Administration ( SSA ) and on addresses matched to self-employment earnings reports. Where a county code is not available, the residence is shown as Unknown within the state.

Maryland, Missouri, Nevada, and Virginia contain at least one independent city that is not part of a county. For these states, the counties are listed in alphabetical order, followed by the independent cities in alphabetical order.

The tables show workers with earnings reported in more than one state or county during the year in one location, mainly their end-of-year residence. The logic sequence for coding a worker's residence begins with the address associated with self-employment. If the worker files no Schedule SE , the address from the report showing the highest taxable wages paid under Medicare is used. Workers with earnings reported in both wage and salary jobs and self-employment are counted in each type of employment, but only once in the total.

Data in this report were obtained from the 1 percent Continuous Work History Sample ( CWHS ), derived from W-2 wage reports and from IRS Schedule SE of Form 1040. The sample data were inflated to correspond to SSA estimates for U.S. totals. For some counties, different weighting factors result in small discrepancies between the estimated number of workers in Social Security employment and the number in Medicare employment. All employment covered by Social Security is also covered by Medicare.

Because this report is based on a 1 percent sample, the data are subject to sampling variability. Each number is actually an estimate of the true value in the overall population. A result of sampling is that the numbers have a level of uncertainty, and this uncertainty increases as the numbers get smaller. Therefore, the user should view numbers shown here, particularly the relatively smaller ones, with that result in mind. Sampling variability is described in the appendix. To protect the privacy of workers, table cells with fewer than 3 sample cases at the state level and 10 sample cases at the county level are not shown.

Medicare money amounts for a given state or county can be distorted by high earners in our sample whose earnings are not statistically representative of that state or county.

All tables show the number of persons with taxable earnings under the Social Security and Medicare programs, the amount taxable, and the amount paid ( FICA and SECA taxes).

The data for the OASDI program (Tables 13) exclude the earnings of persons in jobs covered by Medicare only, such as government employees hired after March 1986 under state and local retirement plans and federal employees hired before 1983 under the Civil Service Retirement System. However, their earnings from any part-time employment or self-employment under Social Security are counted.
U.S. drug regulators on Thursday authorized booster doses of Pfizers COVID-19 vaccine for 16- and 17-year-olds.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) cited in its announcement data showing the vaccine becomes significantly less effective over time.

Since we first authorized the vaccine, new evidence indicates that vaccine effectiveness against COVID-19 is waning after the second dose of the vaccine for all adults, Dr. Peter Marks, a top FDA official, said in a statement.

A single booster dose of the vaccine for those vaccinated at least six months prior will help provide continued protection against COVID-19 in this and older age groups, he added.

The decision drew immediate pushback, with experts noting that young, healthy people are at low risk of severe COVID-19 and at elevated risk of heart inflammation following vaccination.

I understand that the third dose will boost their level of neutralizing antibiotics. But if the goal of this vaccine is protection against serious illnesswhich is a reasonable goal and its the goal for every other vaccinetwo doses already do that. So why do we need a third dose? Wheres the evidence that a third dose will protect children to a greater extent against serious illness? Dr. Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center, professor of pediatrics at Childrens Hospital of Philadelphia, and a member of the FDAs vaccine advisory panel, told The Epoch Times.

And that evidence has to be there because the 16- and 17-year-old is at highest risk of myocarditis, Offit added.

Dr. Mike Saag said he hasnt seen specific data for the age group but that the move makes sense given the waning effectiveness of vaccines.

I think that all individuals, regardless of age, will ultimately receive booster shots 6 months after completion of the initial 2-dose vaccination. The biology and epidemiologic data support this. What remains unknown is how long protective immunity will last after receiving the third shot, Saag, a professor at the University of Alabama at Birminghams Department of Medicine, told The Epoch Times in an email.

Data from approximately 200 people who got a Pfizer booster was used as evidence for the authorization, the FDA said.

Real-world data that has become available on the post-vaccination conditions enabled the FDA to reassess the benefits and risks of the use of the vaccine in a wider population and the agency determined the benefits of a booster outweigh the risks.

The FDA did not immediately provide the data and Offit said he was not aware of such data.

Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla cheered the news. While new variants, including Omicron, emerge across the globe, we believe that the best way to minimize the spread of COVID-19 and any future variants is getting all eligible people fully vaccinated with the first two dose series and a booster dose as recommended, he said in a statement.

The FDA authorized the boosters without input from its vaccine advisory panel. It also avoided convening the panel before authorizing boosters for everybody 18 and older.

There would have been no benefit from soliciting advice from the committee, the FDA said.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) now must decide whether the 16- and 17-year-olds may or should get a third Pfizer dose.

The CDC did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

By Zachary Stieber

Zachary Stieber covers U.S. news and stories relating to the COVID-19 pandemic. He is based in Maryland.

Copyright 2021 Entrepreneur.com Inc., All rights reserved
Connecticut's congressional leaders and survivors of the 2012 shooting at Newtowns Sandy Hook Elementary School called for federal action to stem the national epidemic of gun violence on Thursday, days before the ninth anniversary of the massacre.

Two former students at Sandy Hook at the time of the shooting, Maggie LaBanca and Camille Paradis, said the trauma of that event spurred them to advocate for tougher gun laws, but it has been to little avail.

I left that day with unimaginable trauma and people I would never see again, Paradis said. For months and years after, every year, I am told never again. I am told we will never forget you, and yet it seems as if the government has, because I have watched it happen again and again and again.

The rally of advocates and survivors in Washington, D.C. also comes after days of congressional haranguing over the latest American mass shooting, this time at a high school in Michigan.

Those debates have seen U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy, D- Conn, angrily cast blame on Republicans for holding fealty to the gun lobby on the Senate floor, while conceding that their opposition left Democrats with little chance at success for passing new reforms, such as an expansion of background checks for firearm purchases.

On Thursday, Murphy and three other members of the states congressional delegation appeared to have little optimism, even as they renewed their calls to hold a vote on background checks, a ban on military-style assault weapons and a law mandating the safe storage of firearms.

I am angry and I am impatient, said U.S. Rep. Jahanna Hayes, D-5th District. I am at an incredibly difficult place that is very foreign to me. There are 535 people in Congress and one person in the White House who has the ability to do everything that were talking about here.

Both lawmakers and advocates placed the blame squarely on Republicans and the Senate filibuster rule, which requires a 60-vote majority to pass nearly any piece of legislation, for Congress inability to take up gun control measures.

The filibuster rule was most recently used this month to block Murphys enhanced background check legislation which he and other lawmakers said Thursday enjoyed popular support among most Americans.

If the peoples will cannot be executed through a vote in the United States Senate, then we cannot move legislation forward, we can't enact the will of the people, said U.S. Rep. John Larson, D-1st District.

Republicans in Congress have proposed alternate legislation that would aim to increase federal prosecution of gun crimes and bolster the background check system while not expanding it, which Democrats have said does not go far enough to stop mass shootings and surging gun violence.

Advocates and gun violence survivors were blunt in their criticism of Congress response to gun violence in the nearly decade since Sandy Hook.

The federal government has completely failed and were frustrated, said Po Murray, the chair of Newtown Action Alliance. We come here every year being more frustrated, its been nine years and no substantive action on gun laws.

The perpetrator of the Sandy Hook shooting, Adam Lanza, used semi-automatic and bolt action rifles in the shooting that had been legally obtained by his mother. Lanza killed his mother and used her weapons to murder 26 others.

A year after the massacre, Connecticut lawmakers passed expanded background checks and a ban on the military-style semi-automatic rifles like the kind used in the shooting. LaBanca and lawmakers said similar action is still needed at the federal level.

Nine years later, at 17 years old, Im starting to understand that we have yet to make substantial progress at a national level, LaBanca said. Nine years later, at 17 years old, all I want is to feel safe.
WASHINGTON (AP)  Jill Biden says being first lady is a little harder than I imagined."

She tells CBS Sunday Morning in an interview set to air next week that her new role is a 24-hour undertaking and not the kind of job that ends at a certain hour.

I think its a little harder than I imagined, the first lady said after being asked if she was prepared for what her new life would be like. "Its not like a job that you do, its a lifestyle that you live, and its not something you leave at 5:00 or at 3:00. And its 24 hours a day.

In the interview, Jill Biden also scoffed at speculation about President Joe Biden's mental fitness and said she understood why he cut a proposal for free community college from a major social welfare bill he's trying to get Congress to pass.

Her observation about being first lady all the time comes from someone who has lived most of her adult life in the public eye and has watched  and worked with  some of her predecessors.

Joe Biden was already a public figure, a U.S. senator from Delaware, when they married in 1977. Jill Biden campaigned for and with him during his many Senate reelection bids and his three campaigns for president. When Joe Biden was vice president to President Barack Obama, Jill Biden and first lady Michelle Obama worked closely together on military family issues.

Asked about dropping the community college proposal, Jill Biden sounded like her husband when she said: I understand compromise. And I knew this was not the right moment for it.

She is a veteran community college professor who still teaches as first lady. She held out hope that her longtime advocacy for free tuition at these schools will pay off in the future.

President Biden dropped free community college and other proposals from the bill in an attempt to make the it more palatable to Democratic senators who had said they were uncomfortable with its original size.

The president, the oldest officeholder at age 79, has been the subject of unrelenting social media memes and comments from political opponents suggesting he is mentally unfit for office.

His wife, who is 70, said polls questioning his mental fitness are ridiculous.

President Biden joined a portion of the interview at the White House and was asked about sharing the experience with his wife of 44 years.

Im a lucky man," he said. "Jill is the life of my love and the love of my life.
OMAHA, Neb. (AP)  A snow storm is expected sweep parts of northern Nebraska and Iowa and could drop more than half-a-foot of snow in some places heading into the weekend.

The National Weather Service issued a winter storm warning for Friday into early Saturday for much of northern Nebraska and northern parts of Iowa. The warning area includes the cities of Valentine, Ainsworth and ONeill in Nebraska and the cities of Storm Lake, Mason City and Estherville in Iowa.
The Connecticut Supreme Court agreed Thursday to give the legislatures Reapportionment Commission until noon on Dec. 21 to produce a congressional district map before assigning the task to a court-appointed special master.

The bipartisan commission can only act under court supervision since missing a constitutional deadline of Nov. 30, a delay that a lawyer for the commission attributed to the pandemic, not a deadlock.

Your honor, Im pleased to report to this court that the commission is not at an impasse, Assistant Attorney General Maura Murphy Osborne told Chief Justice Richard Robinson in a status conference conducted by video conferencing.

Democrats and Republicans are to exchange proposed congressional maps for the first time Friday, but legislative leaders on the commission said in interviews that they already had agreed on a foundational principle of political neutrality.

The map would be drawn to make the minimal changes necessary to equalize the population of the five districts without tilting any district to the advantage or disadvantage of the incumbents, all Democrats.

I would not be surprised if we were in a very, very good spot by early next week to finalize this thing, said House Speaker Matt Ritter, D-Hartford. I suspect that when we exchange maps, it will further cement the idea were very, very close.

The court made clear it expects to see progress. In addition to the extension to Dec. 21, the court essentially set an earlier deadline, requiring the commission to produce a progress report and offer names of three potential special masters by 5 p.m. on Dec. 15.

Redistricting is a legislative function in Connecticut under the state constitution, but the states highest court becomes responsible for the function after the Nov. 30 deadline.

Robinson acknowledged Thursday that the current justices share a wariness in taking over the task.

Our case law reflects that this court is an institution particularly ill-suited to undertake this role. We are hopeful that the commission will complete its work, Robinson said. You may, however, rest assured that we will do our job if the commission cannot come to an agreement.

He also warned that any political considerations shared by the commission members would not necessarily interest the court.

I also want to make it crystal clear: In the event that we are required to take on this task, the court is completely uninterested in the political results of the reapportionment, Robinson said.

Six of the seven justices participated in the status conference with Murphy Osborne, each asking questions. One of the seven, Justice Christine E. Keller, has recused herself. Her son is Matt Ritter.

The justices said they were encouraged by Murphy Osbornes assurance there was no impasse, but they were inclined to make an initial move, at least, towards lining up a special master.

I understand youre hopeful, said Justice Andrew McDonald, a former lawmaker. I think were all hopeful. But, you know, its better to plan for the worst and then be surprised.

The chief justice shared McDonalds concern, saying the COVID-19 pandemic has taught him to temper hopes for easy resolutions of challenges to the court.

I think were in sort of an unusual position that weve had a pandemic, weve had a lot of issues come up in the last couple of years, and now we have this, Robinson said. And hope is just not a plan of action.

The Reapportionment Commission unanimously approved maps for the 36 state Senate and 151 state House districts last month but made no effort to produce a congressional map by the deadline.

The delivery of the granular, block-by-block census data necessary to draw the district maps was delayed by the pandemic, though some other states have completed their maps.

We have no impasse, because we didnt start negotiations, said House Minority Leader Vincent J. Candelora, R-North Branford, a commission member.

Ten years ago, Democrats and Republicans agreed on General Assembly districts, then deadlocked over the congressional map. The GOPs members pushed for dramatic changes that would have advantaged Republicans in two districts.

A special master was appointed on Dec. 30, 2011 and recommended a new map that was adopted by the court on Feb. 12, 2012, three days before the constitutional deadline for the justices.

The Republican map proposed in 2011 would have moved Bridgeport, the states largest and overwhelmingly Democratic city, from the 4th District into the 3rd District with New Haven, another Democratic stronghold. It also would have moved New Britain from the 5th into the 1st.

The moves would have made the 4th and the 5th more competitive for Republicans.

Candelora said Republicans have no ambitions about significantly tilting one district their way by drawing new lines.

That does not mean he has given up on smoothing out the awkward shape of the 5th District, which was drawn after Connecticut lost one of its six congressional seats in 2001 and two incumbents had to face off.

We should have those conversations  and we probably will, Candelora said, but he acknowledged, I think it will be taken off the table pretty quickly.

The map drawn 20 years ago to set up a fair fight between two incumbents, a Democrat from Danbury and a Republican from New Britain, underwent only modest revisions in 2011 at the direction of the court.

In developing the plan, the court said in its order then, the Special Master shall modify the existing congressional districts only to the extent reasonably required to comply with the following applicable legal requirements.

Those requirements were that the districts be equal in population, consist of contiguous territory and meet other applicable provisions of the Voting Rights Act and federal law.

The underlying political rationale was that the 2001 map was deemed fair and should serve as the basis for the 2011 version.

The map yielded Republican wins in three of the five congressional districts in 2002 and 2004, but Democrats have won all five seats in every election since 2008.

The informal agreement, of course, does not ensure the current balance of power will persist.

Political and population trends that are making the 2nd District of eastern Connecticut more Republican and already have transformed the 4th District of lower Fairfield County from a Republican-leaning swing district to a Democratic stronghold.
UNITED NATIONS (AP)  The U.N. humanitarian chief warned that Afghanistans economic collapse is happening before our eyes and urged the international community to take action to stop "the freefall before it leads to more deaths.

Martin Griffiths said in an interview with The Associated Press on Thursday that donor nations need to agree that in addition to emergency humanitarian aid they need to support basic services for the Afghan people including education, hospitals, electricity and paying civil servants  and they must inject liquidity into the economy which has seen the banking system pretty well shut down.

Were seeing the economic collapse being exponential, he said. Its getting more and more dire by the week.

Griffiths said the liquidity issue must be settled by the end of the year and money must be funneled to front-line service workers during the winter, adding that he had to revise his earlier view that Afghanistan could get through the winter on pure humanitarian assistance because of the worsening economic situation.

As one example, he said, 4 million children are out of school and 9 million more will be soon and the reason is simple -- 70% of teachers havent been paid since August. And if we dont make that happen, all that discussion about the right of women and girls going to school becomes academic, he said.

So, my message today is a wake-up call about the humanitarian consequences of an economic collapse and the need to take urgent action, Griffiths said.

The Taliban overran most of Afghanistan as U.S. and NATO forces were in the final stages of their chaotic withdrawal from the country after 20 years. Taliban forces entered Kabul on Aug. 15 without any resistance from the Afghan army or the countrys president, Ashraf Ghani, who fled. The Taliban initially promised tolerance and inclusiveness toward women and ethnic minorities but their actions so far, including renewed restrictions on women and the appointment of an all-male government, have been met with dismay by the international community.

Afghanistans aid-reliant economy was also thrown into deep turmoil following the Taliban takeover. The Afghanistan central banks $9 billion in reserves, most of which is held in the United States, were frozen and the International Monetary Fund blocked about $450 million because of a lack of clarity about a new government.

The Taliban leadership has banned all foreign currency transactions and urged the U.S. to ease sanctions and release Afghanistans overseas assets in order for the government to be able to pay teachers, doctors and other public sector employees.

Griffiths said the U.N. is asking the U.S. and other donors for money, which he insisted will not go to the Taliban but through U.N. channels to get directly to the people who need it -- teachers, doctors, electricity providers and other civil servants.

Griffiths said the consequences of Afghanistans collapsing economy are becoming more apparent -- reports of hospitals without electricity, severe malnutrition and three or four children in one hospital bed, and tens of thousands of unpaid doctors, teachers and civil servants struggling to survive.

He recalled that the United States always supported the provision of electricity in Afghanistan, but 80% of electricity sources are now at the brink of stoppage, and without electricity you have automatic consequences.

Griffiths said the World Bank, the United Nations and the U.S. government are making an enormous effort to address the liquidity crisis. He said he will head to Washington on Dec. 21 to meet with U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken to discuss Afghanistans collapsing economy.

By the end of the year, Id like to see the beginnings of liquidity receding as a problem, he said.

Griffiths said the U.N. would like to see $700 million come through by Jan. 31 which would be earmarked for services to help the Afghan people.

He said the World Bank reprogrammed $280 million for Afghanistan into humanitarian assistance which was really good.

Griffiths said the U.S. Treasury also needs to provide letters for traders in Afghanistan saying they are not breaking sanctions. The U.S. has carved out humanitarian exemptions from sanctions, and he said the U.N. Security Council has to do the same.

Griffiths warned that if critical services arent provided to the Afghan people we know whats going to happen.

They didnt leave in August, did they? he asked. They didnt leave the country because they dont want to. They wont leave the country unless they have to. If that happens, where have we seen this movie before?
Director of the National Centre for Communicable Disease Surveillance and Control (CNSCBT) Adriana Pistol announced on Friday that there are 6 probable cases and 5 cases suspected of infection with the Omicron variant of SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus, agerpres reports.

"Recently, we have received more information. I can tell you that, at this moment, in addition to the confirmed cases, we have 6 probable cases and 5 suspicious cases, which are being processed, in testing. The novelty comes from the fact that the three contacts of the first case coming from South Africa also proved very likely to be the Omicron strain, and the chances of the sequencing telling us otherwise are very small. We also have a citizen coming from Nigeria, who had been tested by PCR and it's very suggestive of the Omicron strain," Adriana Pistol told a news conference.She said there were several cases of Omicron strain infection."As far as suspicions are concerned, so far we have had some denied cases: two cases from Egypt, one from Morocco, one case from the Netherlands but which had come into contact with colleagues in South Africa. We are currently waiting the results of another suspicion, from Bucharest, which has a history of travel to England, a place where he also met many people from Africa," Adriana Pistol explained.
The Alliance for the Union of Romanians (AUR) asks senators not to vote on the bill to amend and supplement normative acts in the field of electronic communications in order to allow the interception of conversations on WhatsApp, Telegram and Signal.

"The Alliance for the Union of Romanians, the only party that voted against intercepting Whatsapp, Telegram and Signal conversations, is asking senators not to vote on the bill promoted by Florin Citu," the party's press release read on Friday to AGERPRES.On Tuesday, the bill to amend and supplement regulations in the field of electronic communications and to establish measures to facilitate the development of electronic communications networks was adopted by 256 votes in favor, 34 against, and seven abstentions by the Chamber of Deputies, as the first notified Legislative Chamber. The bill will go to the Senate, which is the decision-making body.According to the report of the specialized parliamentary committees, the draft law aims to ensure the transposition into national law of Directive (EU) 2018/1972 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 11 December 2018 establishing the European Code of Electronic Communications, legislative act by all directives in the field of electronic communications have been set out in a single document.
Romania is firmly committed to supporting joint efforts meant to strengthen the resilience of Eastern partners, with the common strategic interest being to facilitate a climate of security and democratic stability in the immediate vicinity and in the Black Sea region, said Foreign Minister Bogdan Aurescu at the Bucharest Forum on Friday, agerpres reports.

According to a press release of the Foreign Affairs Ministry (MAE), Aurescu pointed out that the Eastern Partnership - through its bilateral and multilateral dimension - is the most effective tool to support resilience and sustainable development in the Eastern Neighbourhood and pointed out that the next period is crucial for this format, which needs to become more ambitious, as the strategy and goals for the post-2020 era, on which the Eastern Partnership Summit will be agreed, need to be implemented.The head of the Romanian diplomacy emphasized the importance of the continuation of the reforms by the partner states, as well as their coherent action based on the common values, as a foundation for achieving long-term stability and sustainable development. He encouraged "deeper sectoral cooperation with the most advanced and ambitious partners.""We must make every effort to end the cycle of conflict, instability and competing interests that are harming the region. That is why Romania is firmly committed to supporting joint efforts to strengthen the resilience of our eastern partners. This key support is based on our common strategic interest to plan and and facilitate a climate of security, democratic stability and socio-economic progress in our immediate neighbourhood and in the Black Sea region, which is to the benefit of the Euro-Atlantic community, the EU and its partners," Minister Bogdan Aurescu is quoted as saying in the press release.The Bucharest Forum is an initiative of the Aspen Romania Institute, supported by the German Marshall Fund of the US - the Bucharest Office and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, along with other Romanian government institutions.The Minister of Foreign Affairs, Bogdan Aurescu, gave a speech at the opening of the session dedicated to resilience in the Eastern Neighbourhood, at the 10th edition of the Bucharest Forum, held on Thursday and Friday, under the high patronage of the President of Romania.
The Government is holding a meeting on Friday, during which it will approve the budget revision for 2021 of the State Treasury, by a decision, agerpres reports.

The draft normative act stipulates that: "The budget of the State Treasury for 2021, approved by Government Decision No. 970/2020, published in the Official Journal of Romania No. 1,107 of November 19, 2020, decreases in revenues by the amount of 72,032 thousand lei and in expenses by the amount of 52,014 thousand lei, with the surplus to decrease thus by 20,018 thousand lei."The Government will also adopt a draft emergency ordinance regarding the modification of Law no. 176/2010 on integrity in the exercise of public offices and dignities, regarding the extension of certain deadlines regarding the submission of the assets and interests declarations.At the same time, starting with January 1, 2023, the persons provided in Law 176/2010 have the obligation to fill in and submit the assets and interests declarations in electronic format, certificates with qualified electronic signature, through e-DAI.Through another draft emergency ordinance, the Executive will establish the institutional and financial framework for the management of European funds within the Recovery and Resilience Mechanism and will modify GEO no. 155/2020 on some measures for the elaboration of the National Recovery and Resilience Plan necessary for Romania to access reimbursable and non-reimbursable external funds within the Recovery and Resilience Mechanism.The agenda of the meeting also includes a draft decision on the allocation of an amount from the Budget Reserve Fund at the disposal of the Government, provided in the state budget for 2021 for some administrative-territorial units.Another draft decision aims at approving the ceilings earmarked to coupled aid schemes in the livestock sector, as well as for establishing their amount for the application year 2021.Last but not least, the Executive would also approve the draft law on some protection measures for people with intellectual and psychosocial disabilities, which will be debated at the meeting as it has its first reading.
President Klaus Iohannis participated on Thursday in consultations with the President of the United States of America, Joseph Biden, and with the other leaders of the allied states that are part of the Bucharest Format (B9), context in which he underlined the need for NATO to be fully equipped to meet Russia's challenges, agerpres reports.

According to the Presidential Administration, the main topic of the consultations, conducted by telephone, focused on the worrying security situation in NATO's Eastern Flank and in the Black Sea region, in which President Joseph Biden presented the results of his recent discussion with the President of the Russian Federation, Vladimir Putin, as well as his evaluation.Discussions occasioned an exchange of views on the impact of Russia's actions on the security of allies and partners in the region and coordination between allied states, the Presidency said in a press release.In his speech, Klaus Iohannis welcomed the dialogue in the Bucharest Format (B9), which confirms the value of this format of consultation and coordination between allies, especially in the current context of security challenges in the North Atlantic Alliance's Eastern Neighborhood.President Iohannis emphasized the importance of informing, coordinating and consulting with allies in the face of these security challenges, emphasizing that maintaining the unity of allied states is essential at this time.The head of state reiterated the need to strengthen NATO's advanced presence on the Eastern Flank, including and especially at the Black Sea, which is of strategic importance for Euro-Atlantic security as a whole."We need to make sure that NATO is fully equipped to meet Russia's challenges," the president said, according to the Presidential Administration.Klaus Iohannis also expressed support for increasing the military presence of NATO and the United States, respectively, in Romania and in the Black Sea area, as an expression of the allied solidarity and the solid Strategic Partnership between Romania and the USA.
European Commission Vice President for Interinstitutional and Foresight Maros Sefcovic told the Bucharest Forum 2021 on Friday that "in light of current threats to democracy," close cooperation between the EU and NATO is "more necessary" than ever, agerpres reports.

Ensuring the resilience of our democracies must be a joint effort. With strategic forecasts, the EU will strengthen its capacity to counter autocratic tendencies by acting as a credible global player, a security provider and a reliable partner. In this context, NATO has always been a vital partner for the EU, in order to ensure peace and stability in Europe. In light of current threats to democracy, close cooperation between us is more necessary than ever, Sefcovic told the event organized by the Aspen Romania Institute together with the Bucharest Office of the German Marshall Fund of the US and held under the Romanian President's High Patronage.Maros Sefcovic pointed out that the pressure on democracy and values is a real "mega-trend", given that a third of people live in countries where democracy is declining.In September 2020, the second strategic forecast report we drafted focused on the geo-political dimension of resilience. (...) We have analyzed four major global trends that will shape the world of tomorrow. These include pressure on democracy and values. The V-Dem report for 2021 describes a worrying situation: 68% of the world's population lives in autocracies. Moreover, a third of people live in states where democracy is declining. Only 4% live in countries that are becoming more democratic. In addition, widespread misinformation, intensified by new online tools and platforms, poses an increasing risk to democratic systems, leading to a new type of information warfare, he said.According to Sefcovic, this could also have an impact on economies, affecting the reputation and profitability of companies or even financial markets.In light of these challenges and the growing relevance of hybrid threats, we need to take action. For this reason, our report identified ten specific areas for action, the European Commission official said.He called for increased trust in institutions, encouraging participatory democracy and civic involvement; ensuring freedom of expression and partnerships with public and private actors around the world that promote democracy and the rule of law; drawing up strategic forecasts.
NATO Deputy Secretary General Mircea Geoana said on Friday that there was intense geopolitical competition in the Black Sea region and added that the alliance, along with its partners, was taking deterrence, defence and resilience measures.

The statements were made on the second day of the Bucharest Forum 2021, an event organized by the Aspen Romania Institute together with the Bucharest office of the German Marshall Fund of the US, held under the High Patronage of the President of Romania."We are all concerned about Russia's situation and aggressive stance in and around Ukraine. We are taking steps to mitigate and deter this. We are also looking at NATO's partnership with countries like Ukraine, Georgia, Moldova. These are important partnerships for us. We are also looking closely at the Western Balkans, and our foreign ministers in Riga a few days ago have looked at these issues, and we are also looking at the Black Sea region, which has become a place of intense geopolitical competition and we are taking active steps to ensure deterrence, defence and resilience in the region, in the three NATO allies - Romania, Bulgaria and Turkey - but also with our close partners - Ukraine and Georgia - we are working hard together to maintain the Black Sea region safe, open to freedom of navigation, a place where ideas and business flourish without being blocked by geopolitical tensions," he said.Geoana congratulated Romania on being selected to host the European Cybersecurity Competence Centre. According to him, the hosting of the Euro-Atlantic Centre for Resilience and the European Centre, in the innovative context of NATO and the EU, will contribute to Romania's assertion as a "competitive, innovative" economy and society. He also sent a message to the new prime minister, Nicolae Ciuca."I wish you success, for you took charge as PM at a very complex time. We know that your experience in defence and security will help you and, alongside the other leaders, regardless of their political colour, we have an obligation to invest in our Western anchors, in NATO and the EU, and to make sure that our interests and aspirations are successfully fulfilled," said Mircea Geoana.The NATO Deputy Secretary General added that a "strong, democratic and resilient society" is "the first line of defence" in the context of the current challenges."Jens Stoltenberg said yesterday that authoritarian powers openly undermine global rules in order to increase their power and influence. I am glad that Bucharest Forum 2021 focuses on resilience, green and digital revolution (...) The pandemic, that concerns us so much and that is putting so much pressure on our societies, people and institutions - the pandemic is just one element of this transformative cocktail, an expression of the twists and turns of human history and evolution. A strong and resilient society is the first line of defence. Army, security, NATO and the EU are very important, but the first line of defence is represented by a strong, democratic, resilient society, and we need to keep that in mind," he said.Geoana underscored the importance of adjusting to a "complex and important period" in human history, noting that since its inception, NATO has been constantly adjusting to a constantly changing strategic environment."Regarding resilience, we started working in 2016 and I am glad to see that Romania and Bucharest will host the Euro-Atlantic Centre for Resilience and I encourage their involvement in this endeavor. I am also glad that NATO has gotten very seriously involved in recent years, stepping up efforts in recent times in terms of the security implications of climate change," he said.He drew attention to the scale and speed of the technological revolution, discussing artificial intelligence, big data, biotechnology, new materials."NATO is at the forefront of innovation and I am pleased to work with the European Union in complementarity. I am pleased that Bucharest Forum addresses both the NATO strategy concept and the EU Strategic Compass. They must be convergent and complementary in everything we do," the NATO Deputy Secretary General said.
Passengers unhappy with the new restrictions that manifested a unruly behaviors towards the personnel of the authorities with attributions to control entry documents, fact that generated crowding, on Friday, between 14:00 - 15.30, according to a release remitted by the Bucharest Airports National Company (CNAB).

"Punctual crowding was recorded, between 14:00-15.30 today, generated, on one hand, by the fact that, at this rush hour two additional flights landed, and, on the other hand, by passengers unhappy with the new restrictions who manifested unruly behaviors towards the personnel of the authorities with attributions to control entry documents," the release mentions.

Gendarmes and the Border Police intervened to maintain the situation under control, according to CNAB.

'The situation was held under control with the aid of staff of CNAB, gendarmes and the Border Police. It's possible that such punctual crowding will continue to appear, CNAB personnel will still offer all support to representatives of the authorities with attributions for controlling and maintaining public order," the CNAB release mentions.

According to the quoted source, in order to reduce crowding by increasing the processing speed for the health checks done by the Bucharest Directorate for Public Health (DSP), the number of DSP doctors was doubled on the entry flow. Furthermore, for the better information of staff and to maintain public order, staff was supplemented, up to doubling the number of employees, in other institutions as well, including the CNAB, Agerpres informs.
The Executive will approve, on Friday, the allocation of funds to over 100 administrative-territorial units for the payment of current and capital expenditures and will grant a support of over 100 million euros for animal breeders for the requests submitted over the year, Prime Minister Nicolae Ciuca announced at the beginning of the government meeting, agerpres reports.

"We will approve payments to farmers, for which we will announce the caps allocated to support schemes for 2021. Thus, animal breeders will benefit from government support of over 100 million euros for applications submitted to the Agency for Payments and Interventions in Agriculture in 2021. Also, following the evaluations carried out at the level of the local communities that need support in this period, we will approve the allocation of funds from the Budget Reserve Fund at the Government's disposal for the payment of current and capital expenditures, which will benefit over 100 administrative-territorial units from all counties," Ciuca said.He said that the draft law on protection measures for people with intellectual and psycho-social disabilities will also be adopted at the government meeting, noting that "the new measures introduce concrete solutions for the protection of individuals with intellectual and psycho-social disabilities.""Today we will make a very important decision on making the PNRR [National Recovery and Resilience Plan] operational. Thus, the draft emergency ordinance on the establishment of the institutional and financial framework for the management of European funds under the Recovery and Resilience Mechanism will be subject to analysis and approval. Furthermore, we'll amend Government Emergency Ordinance No. 155 of 2020 on some measures for the drawing up of the National Recovery and Resilience Plan. We'll begin with the regular agenda, take a pause for completing the technical procedures, and we'll get back. At the end of the government meeting, part of the ministers will provide more details," he said.
Prime Minister Nicolae Ciuca and governor of the National Bank of Romania (BNR) Mugur Isarescu discussed today the main economic and financial developments, against the backdrop of the economic recovery, the energy crisis and endeavors for a solid and credible budget for 2022, said the government's spokesman Dan Carbunaru.

This is the first meeting of the Prime Minister with the BNR governor, and presidential advisor on economic affairs Cosmin Marinescu was also invited to attend.

"The meeting took place during the break of today's government meeting and was aimed at strengthening the institutional dialogue, while tackling the main developments and concerns in the Romanian economy and the financial environment in the current context of economic recovery, energy crisis and the need to work out a solid and credible budget for 2022, capable of giving confidence to the investment milieu and support the financial stability Romania needs in the next period," Carbunaru explained.

The talks also focused on the need to increase the administrative capacity to absorb European funds, he added.

"The meeting highlighted the need for an effective institutional dialogue through the convergent involvement of state authorities, and also reviewed the main challenges we currently face, such as the need to increase the administrative capacity to absorb European funds, as regards both the resources available under the National Recovery and Resilience Plan, and those under the operational programs," Carbunaru said, Agerpres informs.
Muratov said that in Russia, journalism is going through a dark valley with many reporters and human rights activists being branded as foreign agents.

"Many of our colleagues have lost their jobs. Some have to leave the country. Some are deprived of the opportunity to live a normal life for an unknown period of time. Maybe forever

Muratov ended his lecture by asking the assembly to honor reporters "who have given their lives for this profession, with a minute of silence. I want journalists to die old.

On Thursday, the Brussels-based International Federation of Journalists said that imprisonments of media workers are on the rise, with 365 journalists behind bars compared with 235 last year. Nine journalists have been killed in the line of duty in Afghanistan alone and 102 imprisoned in China.

Russia still has 12 journalists behind bars, and three reporters were killed in the Philippines, it said.

David Beasley, head of the World Food Program that won the 2020 Nobel Peace Prize, also gave a lecture in Oslo and called on world leaders to assert your power and stop all of these horrible wars. Beasley was given the award last year at a ceremony in Rome, due to the pandemic.
BUFFALO, N.Y.  Starbucks workers at a store in Buffalo, New York, voted to unionize on Thursday, a first for the 50-year-old coffee retailer in the U.S. and the latest sign that the labor movement is stirring after decades of decline.

The National Labor Relations Board said Thursday that workers voted 19-8 in favor of a union at the Elmwood Avenue location, one of three stores in Buffalo where elections were being held. A second store rejected the union in a vote of 12-8, but the union said it might challenge that result because it wasnt confident all of the eligible votes had been counted. The results of a third store could not be determined because both sides challenged seven separate votes.

Starbucks and Workers United, the union vying to represent the workers, have five business days to submit their objections to the election results, the labor board said. If objections are filed, there could be a series of hearings and appeals that delay certification of the votes. If no objections are filed, the results could be certified as early as Dec. 16.
HELSINKI  Finland has chosen U.S. defense giant Lockheed Martins F-35 fighters in a tender to replace aging F/A-18 combat jets and plans to order 64 planes with weapons systems, the government said on Friday.

Lockheed Martin competed for the deal with Boeing, Swedens Saab, Frances Dassault and Britains BAE Systems.

The procurement is worth an estimated 8.378 billion euros ($9.44 billion), the government said.

When comparing military performance, the F-35 best met our needs, Defense Minister Antti Kaikkonen told a news conference.

Military planemakers have been vying for the deal since late 2015, when the Finnish defense ministry began the search for a new jet to replace Finlands old Hornet fighter bought in 1992 from McDonnell Douglas, now part of Boeing.

Finland is the 14th nation to opt for the F-35.

The choice strengthens the small Nordic nations defense cooperation with its allies, most significantly the United States and Norway, said researcher Charly Salonius-Pasternak at the Finnish Institute of International Affairs.
But Moore left the company Aug. 31. The board appointed Albert Fouerti, who founded Appliances Connection, in his place.

Changes, then cuts

Within a few weeks, some workers started seeing changes. Mariela Banda, a logistics analyst who worked remotely from California before she was laid off in October, said she went from processing 100 orders per day to 10 or 12. Communication and weekly meetings with managers stopped, too. They would put it on the calendar and then cancel it the day before, she said.

In the warehouse, new executives said Appliances Connection orders should be the priority, even at the expense of those coming through Goedekers.com, a former supervisor said.

Then came the cuts. Some employees were blindsided by the move. Banda, a single mother, said she broke down when she got the news. I had never had any complaints about my performance, she said. Geri Ried, a logistics worker who worked remotely from Dittmer, said she was getting trained on Appliances Connection software the day she was let go. Both said they were told they were being let go because there wasnt enough work for them  at a time when sales remained above pre-pandemic levels and the company was looking to expand distribution.
That bid, though, always seemed like merely an opening gambit. Lees shares were above $24 as recently as September, so the price wasnt all that lucrative.

The stock market is betting that Alden, or someone else, will bid higher. Lee shares have consistently traded above $24 since Aldens offer was made public, and they closed Thursday at $27.70.

Alden, a New York hedge fund that owns newspapers including the Chicago Tribune and the Denver Post, may now slink away and pursue someone else, as it did after being rejected by Gannett in 2019. But Alden also is capable of maintaining a long siege: It began pursuing Tribune Publishing in late 2019 and finally closed the deal in May of 2021.

I dont really know, but it looks like were more at the start of this than the end of this, said Rick Edmonds, media business analyst at the Poynter Institute.

My colleagues, naturally, are worried about job cuts if Alden becomes our owner. When it bought Tribune, Alden reduced newsroom staffing at least 10%, and that was after deep cuts by the previous management.
14. Keep an Eye on Your Belongings

Purses and wallets arent the only items that can be lost or stolen while traveling. Keep an eye on other valuables like jewelry and electronic devices.

Dont allow luggage out of your sight. If you must, ask a uniformed employee to watch it for you. Bring it with you until you can secure it in a safe place at your destination.

Safety Tips at Your Destination

15. Keep Regular Contact with Family and Friends

Let trusted friends and family know where you are traveling and how long. Keep regular contact with these people to ensure your safety throughout your trip.

You might consider leaving your itinerary plans with a trusted person at home in case an emergency does arise.

16. Secure Valuables in Your Hotel Safe

Many hotels provide secure safes to keep important items or documents while traveling. Most hostels also feature lockers to store personal items, but you may need to bring your own lock.
BEIJING (AP)  Already roiled by the pandemic and a partial diplomatic boycott, the Beijing Winter Olympics face another challenge in finding airplane seats for all of the athletes and officials.

Ensuring the smooth arrival of participants has become everyones concern because of a reduction in regular passenger flights because of COVID-19, Zhang Liang, director of the organizing committees Arrival and Departure Center, said Friday.

The committee and civilian aviation authorities have established the principle that chartered and temporary flights will be the main means, supplemented by commercial flights, Zhang said at a media briefing.

He said 17 domestic and foreign carriers have signed on to provide temporary flights, adding 15 inbound flights departing from more than a dozen worldwide hubs every day, along with 13 outbound flights .

The flight plans have been confirmed and the flight schedules have been released," Zhang said.

While China has largely controlled widespread virus infections since the pandemic began in the central city of Wuhan in late 2019, it has maintained a strict zero-tolerance" approach on pandemic restrictions.
The time capsule created at the hospital about 45 miles (72 kilometers) southeast of Los Angeles aims to create a memory for future generations of what happened there during the pandemic. Items collected include a cloth face mask, a fire department patch, a copy of a sign telling people to mask up to open up and we can do this, and letters and photos from patients.

Patricia Gomez, 32, submitted photos taken of her and the nurse who delivered her baby in July 2020, when she was ravaged by COVID-19. Her newborn son was able to leave the hospital quickly and tested negative for the virus, but she had to stay another week because she was so ill.

I was scared that I wasn't going to make it, she said. But I was so grateful. The nurses were always caring. I never felt alone.

Patnoe, who was out of work for six months, recalled vivid dreams during his two stints on a ventilator. In one, his late mother, who was a nurse, came over to him and said he wasnt ready to come here yet.
I asked why we cant just fend for ourselves now.

We are only as strong as our weakest link, the pulmonologist said. If the virus continues to spread unchecked, the more chances there are for variants to develop that break through vaccine protections. Also, masks are a way to protect those who are medically vulnerable and cannot be vaccinated or have less protection from it.

Out of my small but trusted sample, more than half refused to even offer a guess as to when we might reach the benchmarks of safely ditching the masks.

Show me the numbers, the hospital chief medical officer said. The number of COVID patients has increased significantly in their hospitals in the past week.

I wish I had better news for you, she said. Trust me, I want it gone more than anyone because we are running out of capacity to manage the sick.

The infectious disease specialist and emergency medicine doctor both said masking is still a must in indoor crowded spaces. They refused to hazard a guess when we might reach herd immunity.
Don Otto, executive director of the Missouri Funeral Directors and Embalmers Association, who had complained to the board about the pictures, said that if you discuss hiring outside legal counsel to sue the state and cant figure out whats going to happen, you havent been around Jefferson City very long.

As the October meeting began, Moore read aloud the script, which he said had been leaked to him by one of the newly appointed board members.

In a recording of the meeting obtained by the AP through an open records request, Moore grills new members Greg Russell, Kasey Griffin, Courtney McGhee and Victoria Anne Schwinke about where the script came from, but none of them answered his questions. They said they hadnt met in advance to discuss the script, which he provided to the AP.

Moore, who was ousted as chairman during the meeting, said it was absolutely amazing that the new members then followed the script after he had read it.
Under a plea agreement, U.S. Minerals plants in Illinois, Wisconsin, Kansas, Texas and Louisiana will be under increased oversight by the Environmental Protection Agency and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration during a five-year probationary period.

The company would also have to monitor the health of former employees of the Anaconda plant during that time.

Employees who take advantage of the medical monitoring program would not give up the right to pursue civil litigation against U.S. Minerals, under the agreement.

Five of six employees tested at the Anaconda plant in July 2015 had elevated levels of arsenic, according to a 2016 report by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health. At the time, respiratory protection was provided but not required, and there was no running water or handwashing stations at the plant

The company was earlier fined nearly $107,000 by OSHA for violations in 2016.

Montanas health department ordered the plant to temporarily close in February 2019 after at least two workers had elevated arsenic levels in their urine in 2018.

Copyright 2021 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
COLUMBIA, Mo. (AP)  A woman shot and killed her husband at his snake-breeding business in Missouri, a jury decided Thursday.

Lynlee Renick was convicted in Boone County of second-degree murder and armed criminal action in the June 2017 death of her husband, Ben Renick, who bred rare and exotic snakes at his business in New Florence.

The jury recommended she serve no more than 13 years for second-degree murder and three years for armed criminal action. A hearing was scheduled for Jan. 24 to finalize the sentences and determine if they will be served concurrently or consecutively.

Renick, who was charged with first-degree murder, testified that an ex-boyfriend, Michael Humphrey, shot her husband after they went to the business so she could ask her husband for a divorce.

Renick acknowledged that she later lied about what happened but said she loved her husband and did not want him to die.
Recently Tex, a German shorthaired pointer in the southeast region, was able to find contraband wood ducks that had been killed and hidden by hunters. The discovery led to the hunters, who admitted to the killings, being charged  which would not have been possible without evidence. Certainly dog food, treats and toys (when they are off-duty) make a good investment for the state.

Next time, call the experts

There are certain things that should be left to the experts. Trying to rid your home of snakes falls into this category. According to CNN, a homeowner in Dickerson, Maryland, was trying to smoke out what he called an infestation of snakes from the home. The owner started a coal fire in the basement, but the unthinkable happened: The house was destroyed by fire. Hed set the fire too close to combustibles.

The chief spokesperson for the Montgomery County Fire and Rescue Service, Pete Piringer, said the snakes had been a continuing problem for this new homeowner as well as for the previous owner. The current homeowner had recently paid $1.8 million for the home, which now has estimated damages of $1 million.
Regarding World faces unprecedented humanitarian needs as war, hunger, climate change and the pandemic take toll (Dec. 2): Many people do not know that the late Sen. Bob Dole was so deeply affected by the hunger and starvation in war-torn Europe, that he became a tireless advocate in Congress for Americas leadership role in the fight against global hunger.

In 2002, he and then-Sen. George McGovern, a Democrat, worked across party lines to create the McGovern-Dole Food for Education and Child Nutrition Program. It has reached 40 million children and is currently active in 24 countries. The program provides food to school children, often complemented with safe drinking water, improvements in sanitation and hygiene, medications, books, school supplies and even teacher training. It incentivizes families to keep children in school, which is key to improving nutrition and health care outcomes, especially in the next generation.
Shares is the leading weekly publication for retail investors. It is packed with investment ideas, news and educational material to help build and run portfolios and get more from your money.

Shares puts on free Investor Events throughout the year across the country. They provide an opportunity for investors to learn more about companies on the stock market and hear from a range of investment experts including fund managers and Shares journalists.
FILE PHOTO: Oil storage containers are seen, amid the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic, in Los Angeles, California, U.S., April 7, 2021. REUTERS/Lucy Nicholson/File Photo

By Laura Sanicola

(Reuters) -Oil prices settled lower on Thursday on fears about the economic outlook in the world's biggest oil importer following ratings downgrades to two Chinese property developers, and after some governments took measures to fight the Omicron variant of the coronavirus.

Brent crude futures settled down $1.40, or 1.9%, to $74.42 a barrel, backing off a session high of $76.70. U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude futures were down $1.42, or 2%, at $70.94 after hitting a peak of $73.34.

On Thursday, ratings agency Fitch downgraded property developers China Evergrande Group and Kaisa Group to "restricted default" status, saying they had defaulted on offshore bonds, while a source said that Kaisa had started work on restructuring its $12 billion offshore debt.

The news "exacerbates the Chinese GDP growth fears and ultimately could impact the oil-buying appetite of the world's biggest crude customer," said Rystad Energy analyst Louise Dickson.

On Wednesday, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson imposed tougher COVID-19 restrictions in England, saying people should work from home where possible, wear masks in public places and show COVID-19 vaccine passes for entry to certain events and venues.

"Although laboratory tests showed that the Pfizer vaccine has a neutralising effect on Omicron ... new measures are being introduced to try to stop the spread of the virus," said Tamas Varga of oil brokerage PVM.

Denmark also plans new restrictions, including closure of restaurants, bars and schools, while China has halted group tourist trips from Guangdong.

South Korea has registered record infections while cases remain elevated in Singapore and Australia.

The number of Americans filing new claims for unemployment benefits dropped last week to the lowest level in more than 52 years amid an acute shortage of workers, according to new data published by the U.S. Labor Department.

"The oil market doesn't always respond well to good economic news either, because it could prompt the Federal Reserve to tighten monetary policy," said John Kilduff, partner at Again Capital LLC in New York.

Markets were buoyed by comments from BioNTech and Pfizer that a three-shot course of their COVID-19 vaccine could protect against infection from the Omicron variant.

The Omicron outbreak sparked a 16% slump in Brent prices from Nov. 25 to Dec. 1. More than half of the drop has been recouped this week, but analysts say a further recovery could be limited until Omicron's impact is clearer.

U.S. inventory data released on Wednesday also weighed on prices.

Energy Information Administration (EIA) data showed that crude inventories were down by 240,000 barrels last week, much less than analysts in a Reuters poll had expected, with stocks at the Cushing delivery hub in Oklahoma rising by 2.4 million barrels. [EIA/S]

Fuel stocks also rose by a combined 6.6 million barrels, the data showed.

(Additional reporting by Adhmad Ghaddar in London, Sonali Paul in Melbourne and Muyu Xu in BeijingEditing by David Goodman, Kirsten Donovan and David Gregorio)
Amsterdam, The Netherlands--(Newsfile Corp. - December 9, 2021) - D-Drops team is pleased to announce its launch, the FIRST-ever Crypto SpaceDrop project. People have heard about AirDrops, but this is the FIRST Crypto SpaceDrop.D-Drops aims to be a rare project, that is organizing Treasure Hunt event.

Figure 1: D-Drops, the first-ever Crypto SpaceDrop launches, aims to revolutionize the industry.

To view an enhanced version of Figure 1, please visit:

https://orders.newsfilecorp.com/files/8378/107220_c9b75deef43d9ad6_002full.jpg





D-Drops Functions

D-Drops uses a tax on transactions to create valuable items such as boxes with cryptocurrencies, tokens, and NFT's, or any combination thereof, and digitally drops it in the physical world.

Holders can then use the DApp to locate these items and claim them. Users will also be able to create their own treasures by filling boxes and dropping them on the spot or another location of their choosing for others to collect.





Figure 2: D-Drops, the first-ever Crypto SpaceDrop launches, aims to revolutionize the industry.

To view an enhanced version of Figure 2, please visit:

https://orders.newsfilecorp.com/files/8378/107220_capture.jpg

Treasure Hunt Event

D-Drops is organizing a Treasure Hunt event for all its holders to participate in.The Treasure Hunt will have a unique NFT created in collaboration with a famous NFT artist as a prize along with other rewards.

The SpaceDrop will be live-streamed and be accompanied by a digital airdrop event which will enable people from other locations to turn into the fun as well.

Physical Treasure Drop

D-Drops will launch a physical treasure towards space. The payload of the launch will be dropped from a height of 150.000 feet. Where the payload will land is unknown, but it will be in a 300KM radius from the launch site.

After the Treasure has landed safely on the surface of the earth, a GPS signal will be transmitted and an area of 1KM will be displayed on the Treasure Seeker DApp. The DApp also enables people to submit a claim request and claim the treasure found.

Link to the Treasure Seeker DApp: https://app.ddrops.world

Voting For The Location

Holders of the $DOP token will be able to vote on the location of the SpaceDrop. The vote will be held prior to the actual event. A blockchain-based voting system will be used to verify the legitimacy of the votes.

SpaceDrop Schedule

The D-Drops team aims for the Q1 of 2022 for launching the SpaceDrop as per the rough schedule.

Team Behind

D-Drops is founded by 3 Dutch brothers with previous experience in the Tech Space. The brothers have degrees in the following subjects: Aerospace engineering, Physics, Math, Computer Science, Marketing, and A.I.

Vision

The main focus of D-Drops is not to replace the physical experiences of people with the Metaverse/VR but to enhance physical experiences with AR.

Official Contract Address: 0x1316F8e84c03e236355639f4d18018c55D3E23f9

PancakeSwap: https://pancakeswap.finance/swap?outputCurrency=0x1316f8e84c03e236355639f4d18018c55d3e23f9%20%20

DexTools: https://www.dextools.io/app/bsc/pair-explorer/0x4208e1f3588d6a6da6f3842a2d9898a9c96aeee1

Social Media Handles:

Twitter: https://twitter.com/ddropsworld

Telegram Group: https://t.me/ddropsworld

Telegram Channel: https://t.me/ddropsannouncements

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ddrops.world/

Media Details

Company Name: D-DROPS

Contact Name: Shair - CEO & Co-Founder

Email: shair@ddrops.world

Website: https://ddrops.world/

To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/107220
NORWALK, Conn., Dec. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Today, the Multiple Myeloma Research Foundation (MMRF) announced that new insights related to novel targets, risk assessment, and precision medicine approaches generated through the use of the MMRF landmark CoMMpass Study will be presented at the 63rd American Society of Hematology (ASH) Annual Meeting and Exposition. In total, ASH will feature 33 presentations developed through the work of more than 200 researchers from 180 institutions all using the CoMMpass data.

The MMRF initiated the CoMMpass Study more than ten years ago to address the need for a large, comprehensive, genomic and clinical data set that was publicly available to researchers to realize the potential of precision medicine. It has now become one of the largest longitudinal genomic datasets of any cancer and the source of more than 150 myeloma scientific publications and abstracts. The insights generated by CoMMpass have led to groundbreaking discoveries that have transformed the research community's understanding of myeloma at a genomic level. The MMRF is now working with five institutions (Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Emory University, Mt. Sinai School of Medicine, Mayo Clinic, and Washington University, St. Louis) on a companion project called Immune Atlas that will complement the genomic and clinical data in CoMMpass with high dimensional immune profiling of the same patients, creating standards and generating robust immune data to further advance precision medicine. The initial findings from this effort are among the 33 abstracts.

"CoMMpass has exceeded our expectations as a wellspring for insightful research and to generate new hypotheses that we can test in the laboratory and at the bedside," said Hearn Jay Cho MD, PhD, Chief Medical Officer, the MMRF. "CoMMpass continues to shape our research agenda, particularly in precision medicine clinical trials such as MyDRUG and MyCheckpoint, and this will only expand with the addition of Immune Atlas. We are also looking beyond CoMMpass by building our next major data set with the MMRF CureCloud."

The MMRF CureCloud was launched in 2019 as a next generation data source capturing genomic sequencing data through blood samples of newly diagnosed myeloma patients and longitudinal clinical data shared by patients through their electronic medical records. The first abstracts derived from CureCloud are being presented at ASH representing the next game-changing longitudinal study in myeloma research. Unique to CureCloud is that it was specifically designed to not only power research, but also as an immediate and ongoing resource to clinicians and patients. Each CureCloud patient receives their personal genomic data report, learns about possible clinical trials, and will have ongoing access to new and evolving insights related to their disease. The database is designed to continuously identify insights from patients that will help other patients gain deeper understanding of possible treatment paths as more patients join the program.

"Our mission is to deliver a cure for each and every myeloma patient. We know that getting there will require access to data to progress the development of precision medicines. This is our ultimate focus as we share data with our research collaborators and patients every day," said Michael Andreini, President and CEO, the MMRF. "The data and insights we share are generating a deeper understanding of the biology of myeloma and helping to identify new targets and markers for risk and disease progression. They are also driving the discovery and delivery of more precise treatments for all patients as we pursue a world without myeloma."

For complete data on MMRF abstracts being presented at the 63rd ASH Annual Meeting please contact C.J. Volpe at volpec@themmrf.org

About the MMRF CoMMpass StudySM The MMRF CoMMpass Study is a longitudinal study of patients with newly diagnosed active multiple myeloma. The goal is to map the genomic profile of each patient to clinical outcomes to develop a more complete understanding of patient responses to treatments. A cornerstone of the MMRF's Personalized Medicine Initiative, the study is collecting and analyzing tissue samples, clinical data and genetic information from 1,000 newly diagnosed multiple myeloma patients for at least eight years. The CoMMpass Study was made possible by a $40M investment by the MMRF.

The MMRF CoMMpass Study opened in July of 2011 and now includes 1,150 patients from 76 sites in the United States, Canada and European Union. Data from the MMRF CoMMpass Study is made available to researchers via the MMRF's Researcher Gateway (http://research.themmrf.org), an online, open-access portal designed to make key genomic and clinical data available for additional study. The MMRF CoMMpass Study is being supported through a public-private partnership of patient donors and industry partners, including Takeda Oncology, Amgen, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Janssen Pharmaceuticals, Inc. and Janssen Diagnostics. Additional collaborating research partners include the Translational Genomics Research Institute, Van Andel Research Institute and GNS Healthcare. Please visit www.themmrf.org/research-partners/the-commpass-study to learn more about the study.

About the Multiple Myeloma Research Foundation (MMRF)A pioneer in precision medicine, the Multiple Myeloma Research Foundation (MMRF) seeks to find a cure for all multiple myeloma patients by relentlessly pursuing innovations that accelerate the development of precision treatments for cancer. Founded in 1998 by Kathy Giusti, a multiple myeloma patient, and her twin sister Karen Andrews as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, the MMRF has created the business model around cancerfrom data to analytics to the clinic. The MMRF identifies barriers and then finds the solutions to overcome them, bringing in the best partners and aligning incentives in the industry to drive better outcomes for patients. Since its inception, the organization has collected thousands of samples and tissues, opened nearly 100 trials, helped bring 13 FDA-approved therapies to market, and built CoMMpass, the single largest genomic dataset for any cancer. Today, the MMRF is building on its legacy in genomics and is expanding into immunotherapy, as the combination of these two fields will be critical to making precision medicine possible for all patients. The MMRF has raised nearly $500 million and directs nearly 90% of the total funds to research and related programs. To learn more, visit www.themmrf.org.

Media Contact:C.J. VolpeDirector, PR and CommunicationsMultiple Myeloma Research Foundation (MMRF)203.652.0453volpec@themmrf.org

View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/data-from-mmrf-landmark-commpass-study-validated-as-unparalleled-in-cancer-research-at-63rd-american-society-of-hematology-ash-annual-meeting-301442437.html

SOURCE MMRF
FILE PHOTO: A Lockheed Martin F-35 aircraft is seen at the ILA Air Show in Berlin, Germany, April 25, 2018. REUTERS/Axel Schmidt/File Photo/File Photo/File Photo

By Essi Lehto and Mike Stone

HELSINKI/WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Finland has chosen U.S. defence giant Lockheed Martin's F-35 fighters to replace ageing F/A-18 combat jets and plans to order 64 planes with weapons systems in a $9.4 billion deal, the government said on Friday.

Lockheed Martin competed in a tender for the deal with Sweden's Saab, U.S. rival Boeing, France's Dassault and Britain's BAE Systems.

The procurement from Lockheed, including weapons as well as service and maintenance until 2030, is estimated to cost 8.378 billion euros ($9.44 billion), the government said.

The construction of hangars and other equipment will add a further 777 million euros, and 824 million euros will be reserved for the final optimised weapons package and to control future contract amendments, it added.

"When comparing military performance, the F-35 best met our needs," Defence Minister Antti Kaikkonen told a news conference.

Military planemakers have been vying for the deal since late 2015, when the Finnish defence ministry began the search for a new jet to replace Finland's old Hornet fighter bought in 1992 from McDonnell Douglas, now part of Boeing.

Finland is the 14th nation to opt for the F-35. It will begin phasing in the F-35 from 2027 onwards, said Airforce Commander Pasi Jokinen.

The choice strengthens the small Nordic nation's defence cooperation with its allies, most significantly the United States and Norway, said researcher Charly Salonius-Pasternak at the Finnish Institute of International Affairs.

"Finland and Norway already train together in the north so it will be a political decision to determine what intelligence is shared and when," he told Reuters, referring to the potential for the jets to share data in real time.

Unlike Norway, Finland is not a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) but it has forged stronger ties with the organisation in recent years and chosen military equipment compatible with NATO members.

In 2014 Finland and Sweden, which is also not a NATO member, signed an agreement to train together and allow NATO assistance in crisis situations.

"The F-35 will provide Finnish industries unique digital capabilities that leverage 5th generation engineering and manufacturing," said Bridget Lauderdale, Lockheed Martin's vice president and general manager of the F-35 programme.

"The production work will continue for more than 20 years, and the F-35 sustainment work will continue into the 2070s," Lauderdale said in a statement.

Rival jetmakers expressed their disappointment with Finland's decision with Saab Chief Executive Micael Johansson saying he was somewhat surprised the F-35 had fallen within budget.

France's Dassault said said the choice of a U.S. aircraft was regrettable.

"Once again, we notice and regret an American preference prevailing in Europe," Dassault said in a statement.

Boeing said it still sees significant international interest in its F/A-18 Block III Super Hornet and EA-18G Growler.

Sweden, a neighbour to Finland and home to Gripen maker Saab, said it regretted the outcome while also respecting the decision.

"Our excellent defence cooperation will of course continue. Finland will continue to be our closest security and defence policy partner," Sweden's Ministry of Defence said in a statement.

Reuters reported earlier on Friday that Lockheed Martin was set to win the contract.

($1 = 0.8871 euros)

(This story corrects the spelling of Micael Johansson's name)

(Reporting by Essi Lehto in Helsinki, Mike Stone in Washington, additional reporting by Johan Ahlander and Helena Soderpalm in Stockholm; Editing by Tim Hepher, Terje Solsvik, David Goodman, Susan Fenton and Raissa Kasolowsky)
FILE PHOTO: The Iranian flag waves in front of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) headquarters, before the beginning of a board of governors meeting, amid the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak in Vienna, Austria, March 1, 2021. REUTERS/Li

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -U.S. Special Envoy for Iran Rob Malley plans to travel to Vienna over the weekend for fresh talks on reviving Iran's 2015 nuclear deal with major powers, U.S. State Department spokesperson Ned Price said on Wednesday.

The talks seek to find a way for the United States and Iran to resume compliance with the agreement, under which Iran restricted its nuclear program in return for relief from U.S., European Union and U.N. sanctions.

Then-President Donald Trump pulled the United States out of the deal in 2018 and reimposed U.S. sanctions, prompting Iran to start violating the nuclear restrictions about a year later. Iran struck the original deal with six major powers: Britain, China, France, Germany, Russia and the United States.

Enrique Mora, the senior European Union official chairing the talks, said on Twitter that they would resume on Thursday.

The talks have effectively been indirect negotiations between Iran and the United States, with diplomats from other nations shuttling between them because Tehran has refused face-to-face meetings with U.S. officials.

Noting the EU statement that talks resume on Thursday, the State Department spokesman told reporters: "We understand that there will be a day of meetings before the heads of delegations need to attend ... so Special Envoy Malley and his inter-agency delegation will plan to join the talks over the weekend."

After a round of talks that ended on Dec. 3, senior U.S. and European officials voiced disappointment and said Iran sought sweeping changes to draft agreements reached earlier this year.

The spokesman said Washington should be able to make a quick judgment about whether Iran was willing to negotiate seriously.

"We should know in pretty short order if the Iranians are ... returning to negotiate in good faith," Price told reporters at a regular briefing.

(Reporting by Daphne Psaledakis, Simon Lewis and Arshad Mohammed; Writing by Arshad Mohammed; editing by Jonathan Oatis, Marguerita Choy and David Gregorio)
First lady Jill Biden shakes hands with two sailors, second and third from right, who are crew members of the USS Delaware, while visiting with families of the submarine crew Thursday, Dec. 9, 2021, at the U.S. Submarine Veterans Club in Groton. Secretary of the Navy Carlos Del Toro, left, looks on in the background. Biden is the sponsor of the submarine. (Dana Jensen, The Day/TNS)

GROTON, Conn. (Tribune News Service)  Family members of submariners on the USS Delaware got a visit Thursday from first lady Jill Biden and Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro, at a festive holiday gathering that United Through Reading hosted at the U.S. Submarine Veterans Club.

Biden is the sponsor of the USS Delaware, a Virginia-class submarine built at Newport News, Va., and christened in 2018.

I understand what it feels like for all the military families here who have someone who is deployed, especially at the holiday, she said. Talking about Beau Biden, she added, My son was Army National Guard; he did go to Iraq for a year. I saw that empty chair at the table, whether it was Thanksgiving or Christmas or birthdays, so I know how much it sort of tugs at your heartstrings, especially during these tough times.

Jill Bidens father served in the Navy, and she recalled seeing the Blue Angels flight demonstration squadron many times and being so proud to wear her dads sailor hat.

Introducing Biden was East Lyme Middle School student Brooklyn Fineran, daughter of Navy Chief Dan Fineran and Chief Ombudsman Amber Fineran.

Being a military kid can be hard at times, especially when it comes to my dad and being away from family in Arkansas and North Carolina, she said. But it also has its advantages: seeing new states almost every three years and learning new things, too.

Fineran said she has lived in four states: California, Maine, Virginia and Connecticut. Since moving here, she has gotten a German shepherd and is learning to play the flute and speak French.

Also present were U.S. Rep. Joe Courtney, D- 2nd District; Gov. Ned Lamont; and Groton City Mayor Keith Hedrick.

Family members sat at tables with poinsettias and holiday-themed picture frame crafts and cups of crayons with coloring pages. Santa wandered through the tables, handing out candy canes from his bag.

Among the family members were Elise Alvarado and her kids, 6-year-old Orion and 1-year-old Sarai. Her husband, Mark Alvarado, has served in the Navy for 13 years, and the family moved from Hawaii to Groton in May.

Were both from the area, so to come back has been really nice for us, Alvarado said. Their parents are veterans, and Elise Alvarados parents retired here. But she said the USS Delaware is in and out all the time and its tough, so she tries to stay busy.

Acacia Lazos  who was there with her three kids, all under age 2  said the USS Delaware got underway at the end of November. She hopes her husband, Brandon Lazos, is back in time for Christmas.

At the event Thursday, Biden made her way around the tables, stopping to talk to family members and take pictures  and hold a baby.

The host of the event was United Through Reading, a nonprofit that connects separated military families through the experience of storytime. With the help of the organizations volunteers, service members record themselves reading books and then send the recordings  along with the books  to their children.

Josie Beets, the agencys senior vice president of advancement, said United Through Reading often hosts events where its giving books to military families. At this event, she said volunteers networked with attendees so we can continue to support these families beyond tonight.

She said one of Jill Bidens priorities is military child education.

Biden told the kids Thursday, I teach English, I teach writing, so I know how important it is that you read, so you become good readers and good writers.

e.moser@theday.com

___

(c)2021 The Day (New London, Conn.)

Visit The Day (New London, Conn.) at www.theday.com

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
Those economic consequences would probably include excluding Russia from the Swift system for international electronic payments, and possibly a reimposition of U.S. sanctions on companies working on the construction of the Nordstream 2 pipeline between Russia and Germany. Biden has also threatened to increase weapons shipments to Ukraine and bolster the defenses of vulnerable NATO allies on Ukraines border. (Christian Conrad/DoD)

President Joe Bidens administration has gone out of its way to signal toughness toward Russias military buildup on Ukraines border. Biden himself said on Wednesday that he told Russian President Vladimir Putin that if he ordered an invasion, the U.S. was prepared to unleash economic consequences on Russia like none hes ever seen or ever have been seen.

Those economic consequences would probably include excluding Russia from the Swift system for international electronic payments, and possibly a reimposition of U.S. sanctions on companies working on the construction of the Nordstream 2 pipeline between Russia and Germany. Biden has also threatened to increase weapons shipments to Ukraine and bolster the defenses of vulnerable NATO allies on Ukraines border.

It remains to be seen whether any of this will dissuade Putin from invading Ukraine. But even if it does, Putins troop buildup has already earned him some initial concessions: Along with his warnings, Biden has offered Putin what the White House is calling diplomatic off-ramps. Jake Sullivan, Bidens national security adviser, on Tuesday described these off-ramps as support for the largely moribund peace process based on the Minsk agreements in 2014 and 2015, and an invitation for Putin to engage in consultations with NATO over his concerns about the alliance.

These off-ramps risk letting Putin believe that he can erase Ukrainian sovereignty through diplomacy. The Russian president has already pressed Biden, according to the Kremlins readout of their Tuesday conference call, to give him assurances that the U.S. would oppose allowing Ukraine into NATO. Putins diplomats have also favored an interpretation of the Minsk agreements that would grant Russian-backed separatists in Luhansk and Donetsk nearly full autonomy from the central government in Kyiv, while denying that any of its forces are in those regions.

Kurt Volker, who served as former President Donald Trumps envoy to the Ukraine peace negotiations, told me that he made it clear that the U.S. interpreted the Minsk agreements to mean that Russia would have to withdraw its forces and dismantle the illegal militias it supported before Ukraine would give Luhansk and Donetsk any special political status. Russias view of its obligations under the agreement would actually undercut Ukraines sovereignty and reward Putin for the attack on Ukraine that he started in 2014, Volker said.

The Biden administration has not publicly offered a detailed view of how it interprets the Minsk agreements, other than to say it supports the negotiations and, more generally, Ukrainian territorial integrity. The administration has also said it hopes to use those negotiations to de-escalate tensions within Ukraine and pursue a possible cease-fire or other confidence-building measures.

Nonetheless, offering NATO consultations and renewed U.S. attention on the Minsk process is itself a concession to Putin. To start, it pretends that Russia has been a good-faith actor in peace talks for the last seven years. But Ben Hodges, the former commander of the U.S. Army in Europe and the Pershing fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis, said Russia has undermined the agreement in recent years by thwarting European attempts to monitor flashpoints in the Ukrainian war. To this day, Russia denies its forces are in Luhansk and Donetsk and says it cannot withdraw troops that are not there.

As for NATO consultations, Russias position is well known: It wants assurance that Ukraine and other former Soviet republics will never be allowed to join the alliance. Hosting a high-level meeting with Russia about Ukraines possible future in NATO will only sow further doubts about how much the West is willing to risk to protect what is left of Ukrainian sovereignty. It would also give legitimacy to the demands of Putin, whose goal is to break up the alliance, not accommodate it.

Biden should be careful: The U.S. and Europe have to deter Putin from starting another war against his neighbor. But the price of that deterrence cannot be Ukrainian independence.

Eli Lake is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering national security and foreign policy. He was the senior national security correspondent for the Daily Beast and covered national security and intelligence for The Washington Times, the New York Sun and UPI. This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.
Moroccan armed forces train on fast rope insertion in Tifnit, Morocco, on June 14, 2021. Morocco is one of four countries co-chairing the Africa Focus Group within the Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS. ( Rhianna Ballenger/U.S. Army)

The U.S. and its allies are stepping up efforts to counter the Islamic State group in Africa as U.S. forces wind down their combat role against ISIS in Iraq.

Last week in Brussels, the U.S. and Italy announced the formation of the Africa Focus Group within the Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS, the State Department said. Morocco and Niger will co-chair with the U.S. and Italy, said an agency statement issued Dec. 3.

U.S. and allied officials have warned of a proliferating terrorist threat in Africa, prompting Secretary of State Antony Blinken to say this summer that Washington supports greater coalition efforts there.

U.S. Cpl. Daniel Annis tests a Nigerien soldiers skills in Tondibiah, Niger, on May 25, 2021. The U.S., Italy, Morocco and Niger will co-chair the Africa Focus Group within the global coalition battling ISIS. (Brandon Julson/U.S. Army)

More than 2,100 people were killed in ISIS-initiated attacks in Africa between October 2020 and October 2021, Blinken said in a video Dec. 2 following the first meeting of the Africa Focus Group.

The Global @Coalition and the U.S. are working to ensure the enduring defeat of ISIS. The Coalition must continue to counter the ISIS threat around the world  including Africa. Launching the Africa Focus Group will help prevent and defeat all terrorist groups. pic.twitter.com/JPBOhmW8kn  Secretary Antony Blinken (@SecBlinken) December 2, 2021

Italian Foreign Minister Luigi Di Maio said in June that he had urged the creation of an Africa-focused working group after witnessing an alarming phenomenon of proliferating terrorist cells in east Africa and the Sahel region, the swath below the Sahara spanning the north and west of the continent.

The anti-ISIS coalition was created a little over seven years ago, as the terrorist group swept across large swaths of Iraq and Syria.

It ousted the terrorist group from the last of its territorial holdings in early 2019, but the U.S. and its partners say the militants remain a threat in both countries.

While supporting increased focus on Africa, the U.S. will still be keep a close eye on Syria and Iraq, Blinken said in June.

This month, the coalition welcomed the African country of Burkina Faso as its 84th member.

The Africa Focus Group is expected to help the coalition build up civilian institutions and synchronize those efforts with existing initiatives, the State Department said.

News of the groups creation came just days before the announcement Thursday of the formal end of the Pentagons combat mission in Iraq.

Thursday also marked the fourth anniversary of Baghdads declaration that ISIS had been defeated in Iraq.

The number of U.S. troops deployed there, some 2,500, is not currently expected to change. Those who remain will serve in advisory roles to help the Iraqi military transition to a peacetime force, officials have said.
Soldiers with the 25th Infantry Division distribute water door-to-door at Aliamanu Military Reservation, Hawaii, Dec. 2, 2021. It is one of 10 military communities near Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam affected by petroleum contamination of their drinking water. (Darbi Colson/U.S. Army)

FORT SHAFTER, Hawaii  The Navy discovered elevated petroleum levels in water samples taken Dec. 5 from pipes connected to a second well outside Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam.

The Navy and Hawaii Department of Health took additional samples near the Navys Aiea Halawa well, one of three the service uses to supply water to military housing communities on and around the joint base, the service said in a news release Thursday. The well had previously shown no signs of contamination.

The Navy received test results on the sample Wednesday.

The sample came from an off-service section of the water distribution system near the Aiea Halawa well, and the Navy does not believe it indicates contamination of that well, the news release said. The well has not been used since Friday, the Navy said.

Late last month, residents began complaining of a foul odor and oily sheen in their tap water.

Subsequent testing confirmed that water from the Red Hill well was contaminated with petroleum. The well is near a vast underground collection of fuel tanks used by the Navy. That well has not been used since Nov. 27, and the Navy is developing a plan to mitigate the contamination.

The Red Hill fuel tanks have experienced multiple leaks during the past decade, and despite growing calls by many Honolulu residents for the facilitys closure, the Navy maintains that its operation is essential to national security.

On Monday, the Hawaii Department of Health issued an emergency order requiring the Navy to empty the tanks, which hold about 150 million gallons of fuel, and to cease using the facility.

The health department said in a news release Thursday that the Dec. 5 test sample indicated levels of diesel fuel more than twice the safe limits set by the department.

The level of this contaminant poses a public health threat and is considered unsafe to drink, Kathleen Ho, deputy director for environmental health, said in the news release.

This news is concerning  especially as the cause of the petroleum release into the Navys water system remains unknown, she said.
Buy Photo Chris and Yuko Nesbitt run Help Oki, a food bank and thrift shop in Okinawa City. They say they have passed out five times as much food, clothing and other assistance during the coronavirus pandemic as they did before. (Frank Andrews/Stars and Stripes)

OKINAWA CITY, Okinawa  Ask Chris and Yuko Nesbitt how deeply the coronavirus pandemic has struck Okinawa and theyll answer with one telling statistic.

The couple, who run Help Oki, a food bank and thrift shop in Okinawa City, has passed out five times as much food, clothing and other assistance during the pandemic as they did before.

Before COVID wed have maybe two families a week come in, Chris Nesbitt, a former Marine, told Stars and Stripes on Nov. 23. Now its 10 to 15 cases a week that are asking for help.

During August and September, the island prefecture with a population of about 144,000 reported the highest per capita rate of COVID-19, the coronavirus respiratory disease, of Japans 47 prefectures.

More than 50,340 people there have contracted the disease and nearly 400 have died since March 2020, according to the prefectural Department of Health and Medical Care. In August, the daily number of new cases exceeded 800.

To curb the diseases spread, the prefectural government declared four separate states of emergency, the last from May 23 to Sept. 30. It urged tourists and young people to stay home, and bars and restaurants to close early and refrain from selling alcoholic beverages  hard measures for an economy that derives 15% of its revenues from tourism.

Nesbitt described how the owner of a Japanese pub came to him for help in 2020. The father of five had lost the business he inherited from his father due to the coronavirus measures.

Buy Photo Chris and Yuko Nesbitt run Help Oki, a food bank and thrift shop in Okinawa City. They say they have passed out five times as much food, clothing and other assistance during the coronavirus pandemic as they did before. (Frank Andrews/Stars and Stripes)

When he came to get clothing and food from us, he said to me, I never needed help before, but the COVID crisis brought me to this point, Nesbitt said of the former pub owner, who declined an interview request.

In 2020, 461 businesses on Okinawa closed, an 8.2% increase from the previous year, according to a February report by the credit research company Teikoku Databank Ltd. Nearly a quarter of those businesses, 103, were in the service sector, which employs about 13% of Okinawas labor force.

Families suffered as wage earners lost their jobs. More than 35% of Okinawa households with small children experienced a loss of income, according to a survey by the prefectural Department of Child Care and Social Welfare in September and October 2020.

Single-parent households fared particularly poorly. Of those, 13.4% said their income was halved because of the pandemic.

Okinawan social welfare agencies that relied on local businesses for food donations suddenly found themselves in need, Nesbitt said. They, too, turned to Help Oki for food support.

The amount of food that we are getting out to the community, over a thousand kilograms of food every month, he said. Our numbers have just tripled in terms of people coming for support.

Most of the food and clothing donations that Help Oki distributes come from U.S. service members and their families stationed on the island.

We are always in need of food. We stock the shelves then next month there is almost nothing in there, Nesbitt said.

We do a lot of food drives, he said. We ask the American military and Boy Scouts of America in Okinawa  if anybody would like to drop off food during our normal working hours of operation that would be greatly appreciated.

In November, as the number of new COVID-19 cases fell, Okinawas government lifted its requests for shorter business hours and its prohibitions on alcohol sales.

The prefecture reported 17 new cases during the first week in December, and 67% of its population was fully vaccinated as of Nov. 28, according to the Public Health Department.

Economic recovery is underway, but many people on Okinawa still need assistance as winter descends on Japan, Nesbitt said.

The number of families that are in need  we have seen so many cases, he said. I think a lot of families were already on that border of poverty, where they are just kind of maintaining.
Two U.S. Navy EA-18G Growlers fly in formation with an Indian Air Force Jaguar, right, and two SU-30MKIs over the aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt during an exercise on the Indian Ocean, March 28, 2021. (Class Brandie Nuzzi/U.S. Navy)

India is moving ahead with a $5.4 billion deal to buy a missile defense system from Russia, despite earlier warnings from U.S. officials of possible sanctions against the South Asian nation.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Russian President Vladimir Putin met Dec. 6 in New Delhi for the 21st India-Russia Summit, during which the leaders agreed to expand defense ties.

Harsh Vardhan Shringla, Indias foreign secretary, told reporters Dec. 6 that the transfer of components for the S-400 Triumf air-defense system was already taking place.

Supplies have begun this month and will continue to happen, he said, according to a New York Times report Dec. 6.

India is also slated to buy $600 million worth of Russian AK-203 rifles, the Times reported.

The deal could potentially trigger U.S. sanctions against India under the Countering Americas Adversaries Through Sanctions Act, which was passed to hold Russia accountable for pernicious behavior.

Since inking the missile defense deal in 2018, Indias quest for a more robust defense sector has only grown.

Its relations with China, its neighbor to the north, have badly deteriorated since the summer of 2020, when Indian and Chinese troops clashed in hand-to-hand combat on the disputed border between the two countries, leaving at least 20 Indian soldiers dead in the Galwan Valley.

That summers hostilities marked the first time that shots were fired since the two sides entered into a no-fire agreement in 1996.

Indias perceived threat from China is one reason military cooperation has grown between it and the United States.

India and the U.S., along with Australia and Japan, have increased cooperation through participation in the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, or Quad. Its stated purpose is to promote a free-and-open Indo-Pacific, but it is essentially a means of countering Chinas growing economic, political and military influence in the region.

India has long been leery of aligning too closely with any single superpower, a reluctance that stretches back to the Cold War between the U.S. and Soviet Union.

Given that history, it is not surprising that India would seek parallel cooperation with Russia.

In October, U.S. senators John Cornyn of Texas and Mark Warner of Virginia, who cochair the India Caucus, encouraged President Joe Biden to waive any potential sanctions against India for buying arms from Russia.

While India has taken significant steps to reduce its purchases of Russian military equipment, it has a long history of purchasing arms from the Soviet Union, and later Russia, they wrote in a letter.

In cases where granting a waiver would advance the national security interests of the U.S., this waiver authority, as written into the law by Congress, allows the President additional discretion in applying sanctions, they wrote.

As of Thursday, neither the White House nor the State Department had issued a statement about the culmination of the missile defense deal.
Col. Andrew Campbell, 374th Airlift Wing commander, smiles from the cockpit of a C-130J Super Hercules during Operation Christmas Drop, now in its 70th year, on Guam, Dec. 5, 2021. (Joshua Edwards/U.S. Air Force)

YOKOTA AIR BASE, Japan  Clad in a familiar Santa hat, Col. Andrew Campbell relishes the fact that few airlift pilots have flown as many missions for Operation Christmas Drop as he has over the years.

As commander of Yokotas 374th Airlift Wing, Campbell added two flights this year in C-130J Super Hercules airlifters to drop bundles of aid onto remote Pacific islands. Hes made about 20 flights for Operation Christmas Drop over several years.

For the children on these little islands, the only aircraft most of them have seen is a C-130, he told Stars and Stripes by phone Thursday.

Campbell said he gets a kick out of wearing a Santa hat and seeing airmen with Americas allies getting into the Christmas spirit. He was back at Yokota on Tuesday after his fifth trip to Guam for the operation.

Airlifters from Japan, South Korea and the U.S. work as one team to deliver the aid, he said.

During the operation  now in its 70th year  cargo planes parachute large bundles of donated food, clothing, tools, toiletries, toys and other supplies to thousands of people living on more than 55 tiny South Pacific islands. Most of the beneficiaries live in the Federated States of Micronesia  Yap, Chuuk, Pohnpei and Kosrae  and in the Republic of Palau.

The primary participants are the 36th Wing at Andersen Air Force Base, Guam; the 374th Airlift Wing out of Yokota; and the 515th Air Mobility Operations Wing from Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam, Hawaii, according to Pacific Air Forces.

During Operation Christmas Drop, airmen parachute large bundles of donated food, clothing, tools, toiletries, toys and other supplies to thousands of people living on more than 55 tiny Pacific islands. (Jake Bailey/U.S. Air Force)

From 2012-2015, Campbell, originally from Pennsylvania, flew Christmas Drop missions as commander of Yokotas 36th Airlift Squadron. As base commander in 2020, he missed the event, which was scaled back with fewer drops and limited personnel to mitigate further spread of the coronavirus, he said.

The final sorties of this years Christmas Drop, which began Dec. 6, were scheduled for Friday, he said.

This year was the first time South Koreas air force participated. Japan has been part of the operation since 2015. Both countries operate C-130H Hercules aircraft, the predecessor to the C-130J Super Hercules flown by the 374th.

Airmen from the three countries stayed at the same hotel, drove the same vehicles and planned operations from the same headquarters during the drill, Campbell said.

Its a real team effort, he said.

Operation Christmas Drop began unofficially during yuletide season in 1951 when the crew of a WB-29 Superfortress bomber noticed people waving at them from Kapingamarangi in Micronesia. They parachuted a bundle of supplies to the denizens of the isolated island, and a tradition was born.

The 374th has been involved in Christmas Drop for 35 years, exactly half of the time its been running, Campbell said.

The experience sets up the airlifters to work together in an emergency, such as responding to a typhoon, earthquake or tsunami where they must get aid to people in dire straits in a region that spans vast distances across a vast ocean, Campbell said.

Most of the air drop training we do is on ranges with carefully surveyed drop zones, he said. For Christmas Drop we are flying to remote islands and analyzing winds and water currents. Our crews are making real-time decisions about how and where they want to put the bundles based on a whole host of conditions.

Seth Robson
Chinas national flag flies as the Oriental Pearl Tower stands in Shanghai on Jan. 28, 2013. (Tomohiro Ohsumi/Bloomberg )

China stressed that it will aim to keep the economy growing in a stable manner next year as it looks to counteract the effects of a housing market slump and slower growth.

Ensuring stability is the top priority for next years economic work, the Communist Partys top decision makers said at the end of a three-day annual Central Economic Work Conference. The government will support commercial housing markets to meet residents reasonable needs, according to a report of the meeting on the official wire service Xinhua Friday.

Led by the Politburo Standing Committee, the economic conference is a precursor to next years parliamentary meeting, where detailed targets are disclosed. Analysts are watching closely for clues of further monetary and fiscal stimulus and whether regulations on debt and the property market will be relaxed to help support a slowing economy.

The meeting signals that stabilizing growth is the bottom line, and for the next 12 months growth will be on top of the Communist Partys agenda, said Bruce Pang, head of macro-economy and strategy research at China Renaissance Securities Hong Kong Ltd.

The statement mentioned the words stability or stabilize 25 times compared with 13 last year.

Officials reiterated the phrase that housing is for living in and not speculation, which Pang said clarifies market sentiment and overly optimistic views about outright easing of property policies. I dont think China will completely relax property policies, he said.

Other highlights:

- Monetary policy will be kept flexible and appropriate and fiscal policy will be effective, targeted and sustainable.

- Officials pledged to properly advance infrastructure investment.

- China will enhance effective regulation of capital.

- It will support development of private sector.

- The government will introduce different policies for different cities and promote the healthy development of the industry.

- Common prosperity to be achieved in a stable manner, is a long term process.

- Will make policies to resolve financial risks.

After focusing policy most of this year on curbing financial risks and reducing debt in the economy, Beijing is starting to shift its focus to supporting growth. The elite Politburo leaders earlier this month signaled a dovish tilt in property policies, while the central bank has also raised expectations of further monetary easing with its decision to cut the reserve requirement ratio for banks.

We must acknowledge that our countrys economy faces the triple forces of contracting demand, a supply shock, and weakening expectations, according to the statement on Xinhua.

Policymakers must control risk, stabilize the broad environment and defuse bombs in a targeted manner, the statement said. They should also prevent any local governments taking on new off-balance sheet, or hidden debt, but also ensure the strength of fiscal spending and accelerate the speed of expenditure.

Chen Long, an economist at Beijing-based consultancy Plenum, said there was less mention of the crackdown on technology companies, which is positive for those businesses.

Last year was a whole paragraph about the disorderly expansion of capital and tech companies, he said. This year its briefer and theres very little about large tech companies. Thats good news for them.

The economy has slowed in recent months because of a worsening property market slump, weak consumption growth, and repeated outbreaks of Covid-19, which have damaged businesses and consumers confidence. Economists forecast growth to slow to 3.1% in the current quarter, a sharp deceleration from 7.9% in the April-June period and 4.9% in the last quarter.

An official target for gross domestic product growth next year will only be revealed at the annual parliament meeting in March 2022. Economists expect authorities to do more to ensure growth will reach around 5%, which would help China achieve its goal of doubling the size of the economy by 2035.
Chinese President Xi Jinping attends an event commemorating the 110th anniversary of Xinhai Revolution at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on Oct. 9, 2021. (Andy Wong/AP)

Does U.S.-style democracy realize dreams or create nightmares? It appears to have turned evil like Voldemort, the dark wizard of the Harry Potter franchise. Young President Joe Biden must have eaten too much KFC and McDonalds, leading to a belief that democracy is like a fast-food chain with the United States supplying the ingredients.

These are among the odd arguments and analogies deployed in recent days during a Chinese Communist Party propaganda blitz to claim that China is as much a democracy as the United States. After China was excluded - along with Russia and other nations deemed autocratic - from Bidens Summit for Democracy this week, Chinese state media, think tanks and officials have lined up to take potshots at the event.

But aside from mudslinging and off-color humor, the campaign also betrays Beijings desire to redefine international norms and present its controlling, one-party political system as not just legitimate but ideologically superior to liberal multiparty democracies.

A decade ago, Chinas ambition to change the worlds political structures was less clear, but now I think they genuinely do want to change the world on an ideological level, said Charles Parton, an associate fellow at the Council on Geostrategy, a British think tank.

The former British diplomat added that the propaganda messages may appear ineffective to Western observers, but they will strike a chord with Beijings intended domestic audience and help Chinese leader Xi Jinping legitimize his monopoly on power.

Its saying to the Chinese people that We are the best,  Parton said. The summit is the trigger but more generally China is keen to diminish the ideological power of the U.S. because doing so increases its own.

The partys claim to embody a form of democracy is not new. Being a peoples democratic dictatorship is written into the constitution of the Peoples Republic. But Chinas recent defense of its democratic credentials has been unusually direct.

Its presented more confidently and much more definitively as a different kind of system and as a rejection of Western-style democracy, said Mary Gallagher, director of the International Institute at the University of Michigan.

In recent years, the party has preferred to highlight its Marxist roots and talk about the unique nature of socialism with Chinese characteristics and its scientific approach to governance. Xi has repeatedly declared that liberal multiparty democracy will never work in China.

Even before Xi reasserted party control over Chinese society, calls for liberal democracy were never tolerated. The party has repeatedly crushed demands for free and fair elections, whether during the military crackdown on the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests, jailing dissident Liu Xiaobo in 2009 or silencing critics in Hong Kong.

Global rankings of national democratic institutions regularly label China as an autocracy. The V-Dem Institute, based at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden, ranked China 174th out of 179 countries on its liberal democracy index in 2020. (In the same year, the United States fell to 31st place from 20th in 2016 and 3rd in 2012.)

A white paper released over the weekend by the State Council Information Office, titled China: Democracy That Works, suggested that Xis recently coined whole-process peoples democracy was a legitimate inheritor of the ancient Greek ideal of citizen rule.

The document argues that what matters isnt any particular process, such as direct leadership elections, but rather the outcome - meeting the peoples needs. Among examples it listed as proof that Chinas version of democracy works is promoting political stability, unity and vitality and halting the spread of the coronavirus.

One-party rule, rather than being a hindrance to democratization, is its guarantor. It is no easy job for a country as big as China to fully represent and address the concerns of its 1.4 billion people. It must have a robust and centralized leadership, the paper stated.

The drier descriptions in official documents have been mixed with colorful commentaries from state media. One by Xinhua News Agency likened the United States to Voldemort - and, by implication, the Chinese Communist Party to Harry Potter - to cast shade on U.S.-style democracy.

Just like young Voldemort was a star of the wizarding world in his youth, American-style democracys early development was an innovation, the article said. But just as Voldemort went down an evil path, so has American-style democracy over time gradually changed and decayed.

The weakening of democratic norms in the United States has emboldened Beijings propagandists to be more determined to present the party as building a coherent and superior system of governance.

The U.S. has long been an example - bad or good - that China pays close attention to, said Gallagher of the University of Michigan. If the U.S. struggles in the next few national elections, that will be important in deciding how China moves forward with this re-articulation of its own political system.

To deflect criticism in multilateral forums, Beijing has increasingly reappropriated contested ideas such as human rights and justified its actions by supplying alternative models.

China has defended the mass internment of Uyghurs, Kazakhs and other mostly Muslim people in Xinjiang as a novel approach to counterterrorism. It justifies roundups of human rights lawyers as strengthening Chinas rule of law and invokes national security to crush pro-democratic protests in Hong Kong.

This tactic, which may appear like Orwellian doublespeak to critics, has allowed Beijing to make progress in weaponizing such rhetoric at the United Nations, where it often rebuffs liberal democracies concerns by collecting signatures, votes and statements from partner nations.

What started as a limited, defensive argument has now morphed into a more assertive - you could say aggressive - position that makes sweeping claims about why the Chinese mode of governance is superior, said Eva Pils, a scholar at Kings College London who studies Chinese law.

After China and Russias ambassadors to the United States jointly opposed the democracy summit as the product of a Cold War mentality, Pakistan, one of Chinas closest diplomatic and military partners, announced on Wednesday that it would not take up an invitation to join.

The extent to which China wants to revise the existing international order is a live debate, but I would read more recent moves as an indication that the goal is to build a countervailing sphere of influence, rather than merely weaken liberal principles, Pils said.

- - -

The Wahsington Posts Lyric Li in Seoul and Pei Lin Wu in Taipei contributed to this report.
Human right groups gather on the United Nations international Human Rights Day, Friday, Dec. 10, 2021, to boycott the Beijing Winter Olympics 2022 in front of the Bank of China building in Taipei, Taiwan. The groups are calling for the theme of this year's human rights day to be "Equality-Reducing inequalities, advancing human rights". (AP Photo/Chiang Ying-ying) (Chiang Ying-ying)

The Biden administration on Friday banned U.S. investment in a Chinese company that it said supports Chinas use of repressive surveillance technology, calling the move part of a broad effort to unite democracies against authoritarian states.

The sanction adds the facial recognition company SenseTime to a list of firms in which U.S. citizens and entities are prohibited from investing. The Biden administration widened that list this summer to include firms that it said support Chinas military and state surveillance, building on a Trump administration effort.

The administration announced the move alongside new sanctions on individuals it said were responsible for repression and human rights abuses in Bangladesh, Myanmar and North Korea, and alongside a partnership with other democracies to tighten export controls on technology than can be used for repression.

The moves send a message that democracies around the world will act against those who abuse the power of the state to inflict suffering and repression, Deputy Secretary of the Treasury Wally Adeyemo said in a statement.

The sanction against SenseTime will complicate the Beijing-based companys preparations to list its shares on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange through an initial public offering.

The Treasury Department, which oversees the investment prohibition list, said SenseTime has developed facial recognition programs that can determine a targets ethnicity, with a particular focus on identifying ethnic Uyghurs. It added that China has used digital surveillance technology to track Uyghurs movements and activities and to create a police state in the Xinjiang region, where many Uyghurs live.
As of Friday, Dec. 10, 2021, dozens of GoFundMe donors had contributed more than $3,000 toward a $4,000 goal, according to the Help Ms. Jocelyn for her Medical Expenses page. (GoFundMe)

YOKOTA AIR BASE, Japan  Coworkers of an early childhood teacher at this base in western Tokyo are raising money this holiday season to offset the costs of her cancer treatment.

Jocelyn Ercilla, who has worked as a teacher at the on-base Yume Child Development Center for 13 years, starts chemotherapy on Dec. 13 for stage 4 cancer, two of her coworkers told Stars and Stripes. Ercilla, who wishes to keep the details of her diagnosis private, worked her final day at the center on Nov. 30, they said Dec. 6 when we spoke in person.

Many families at the air base have known Ercilla as the woman who watched over their children daily and also helped them develop critical social skills and to grow emotionally, cognitively and physically, said coworkers Charmaine St. Louis and Amy Yamaki.

She is highly passionate about her job, St. Louis said. It doesn't matter what has been thrown at her; she always keeps her composure and keeps doing what she does because she loves what she does.

Ercilla was unavailable for comment due to her health.

Yamaki and St. Louis said they both jumped in to get Ercilla whatever help they can provide through GoFundMe, the popular online fundraising platform. As of Friday, dozens of donors had contributed more than $3,000 toward a $4,000 goal, according to the Help Ms. Jocelyn for her Medical Expenses page.

A lot of people that she affected with her passion for the job aren't here anymore," Yamaki said. "So, this was the best way to reach out to people."

Donor Andrea Ally commented on GoFundMe: We are praying for you Ms. Jocelyn. Thank you for taking such good care of our boys.

Japans health care system covers up to 70% of her treatment as a Japanese citizen; shes liable for the remaining 30%, which translates to about $1,000 a week for chemotherapy and medications, according to her coworkers.

Transportation is another expense. Ercilla must commute from Mizuho city to Kyorin University School of Medicine in Mitaka, which takes her about 1  hours.

Six weeks of treatment lie ahead, her coworkers said. Shell check in each Monday for treatment through Thursday, travel home that night and return Friday for a checkup before starting again the following week.

Along with collecting money for Ercilla, the two are also putting together gift baskets that include fruits, soups, water and clothing such as socks and pajamas.

"I was overwhelmed with happiness from all the donations that went through just on the first night, Yamaki said. "I felt so grateful and so thankful that it brought tears to my eyes."

Getting together as a community to help people in need is important and highly effective, she said.

"It is important as a community, we need to be involved in helping our neighbors, and those who are struggling," Yamaki said. "A lot of people won't ask for help. Also, if we gather together as a community and 100 people donate $5, that is like a Starbucks drink. This is why gathering funds as a community makes it easier for individuals to donate."

Ercilla was still working even after she found out she had cancer.

"She worked all the way up to last Wednesday, in pain because that is what type of person that she is," St. Louis said. "She is still thinking about the kids. She said to me before she left, 'Please let the parents know that I am thankful for everything and that I am thinking about the kids."
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg and German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock speak to the media at NATO Headquarters in Brussels on Dec. 9, 2021. Baerbock, a member of the Green party, became foreign minister on Dec. 8. (NATO)

NATOs membership door remains open to Ukraine, the alliances top official said Friday, adding that Moscow will have no say over which countries have a right to join the Western military alliance.

It is for Ukraine to decide its own path, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said following talks with top French military and diplomatic officials in Paris.

Ukraines quest to eventually join NATO has been a major point of contention with Russia, which has used Kyivs increasingly closer ties with the West as a justification for its military buildup on Ukraines borders.

Russian President Vladimir Putin is seeking guarantees from Washington that it will preclude future Ukrainian membership in NATO. Putin has also complained about allied military assistance to the country.

Meanwhile Ukraine has called on allies to fast-track its path to membership.

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg greets the new German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock at NATO Headquarters in Brussels, Belgium, Dec. 9, 2021. The visit was part of the first official trip abroad for the new minister, who is visiting officials in Paris, Brussels and Warsaw after taking office Wednesday. (NATO)

In a Foreign Affairs article published in August, Dmytro Kuleba, the Ukrainian foreign affairs minister, wrote that for the United States and its allies, recognizing the new reality means institutionalizing the countrys place within the West.

It is time for the United States and Europe to set out a clear road map for Ukraine to finally join NATO and the European Union, Kuleba wrote.

NATO has given no indication it is willing to do that. Still, Stoltenberg said the decision on whether to admit Ukraine into NATO rests with the 30 countries that make up the alliance.

He also said NATO rejects Russias notion that it has a right to a sphere of influence in Ukraine.

In 2008, NATO countries heads of state decided that Ukraine and Georgia would eventually become members once they met a range of standards on military capabilities and democratic reforms.

But in the years since, NATO hasnt taken the next step of offering a Membership Action Plan, which is a precursor to full-fledged membership.

Shortly after the 2008 decision, Russia fought a brief war with Georgia, and it exerts control over two Georgian breakaway regions.

Ongoing territorial disputes, first in Georgia and later in Ukraine, where Russia annexed land in 2014, have complicated both countries NATO ambitions.

Within NATO, there also is a lack of consensus on whether Ukraine and Georgia should be welcomed in. Germany and France have long been skeptical about the idea.

Meanwhile, U.S. President Joe Bidens administration appears to have reservations of its own.

Senior State Department officials have told Ukraine that NATO membership is unlikely to be approved in the next decade, The Associated Press reported Thursday.

John Vandiver John covers U.S. military activities across Europe and Africa. Based in Stuttgart, Germany, he previously worked for newspapers in New Jersey, North Carolina and Maryland. He is a graduate of the University of Delaware.
FILE - Russian President Vladimir Putin sits during his talk with U.S. President Joe Biden via video conference in the Bocharov Ruchei residence in the Black Sea resort of Sochi, Russia, Dec. 7, 2021. Biden warned Putin that Moscow would face economic consequences like youve never seen if it invades Ukraine, although he noted that Washington would not deploy its military forces there. (Mikhail Metzel/AP)

MOSCOW  A senior Russian diplomat warned the United States and its NATO allies Friday that their own security would suffer if they "torpedo" providing Russia with certain military guarantees.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has urged the West to provide guarantees that would preclude NATO from expanding to Ukraine or deploying troops and weapons there. Putin brought it up during a video call with U.S. President Joe Biden this week.

Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said during a news conference Friday that while it would be "naive" to expect to get those security guarantees soon, Moscow remains committed to seeing them made.

"If our opponents on the other side  first and foremost the U.S., but also other countries, allies, the so-called allies of the U.S.  refuse, try to torpedo the whole thing, they will inevitably encounter a further worsening of their own security situation," Ryabkov said.

Tensions between Moscow and the West have worsened in recent weeks over a Russian troop buildup near the border with Ukraine that stoked fears about a possible invasion. Russian officials have repeatedly denied plans to attack Ukraine and in turn blamed Kyiv for its own allegedly aggressive designs.

Ukraine is not a NATO member but has strong backing from the military alliance. Ryabkov said Friday that NATO's military infrastructure is getting "as close as possible" to Russia "despite warnings."

Ryabkov urged NATO to "seriously consider" Russia's proposal of a moratorium on deploying short- and intermediate-rage missiles in Europe, saying Moscow considers such deployments "a direct path to accelerating confrontation."

"Before it's too late, we need to avoid a new missile crisis in Europe," the deputy foreign minister said.

After his call with Putin, Biden announced future talks between the U.S., its top NATO allies and Russia to address some of Moscow's security concerns.
Gina Raimondo, U.S. commerce secretary, speaks during a Bloomberg Television interview in Singapore on Nov. 17, 2021. (Wei Leng Tay/Bloomberg)

The Biden administration aims to sign what could prove a very powerful economic framework agreement with Asian nations -- focusing on areas including coordination on supply chains, export controls and standards for artificial intelligence -- next year, Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo said.

Its a priority for the president, Raimondo, speaking in a roundtable discussion Thursday at Bloomberg headquarters in New York, said of deepening U.S. engagement with Asia. America didnt show up in that region for four years, she said, alluding to the Trump administrations record.

Raimondo said that her trip to Asia last month was designed to assess appetite for economic dialogue, under the condition that President Joe Bidens team isnt planning to take up traditional trade talks. She underscored that rejoining the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership as presented is off the table.

The demand for U.S. presence and the demand for U.S. reengagement was off the charts, said Raimondo, who stopped in Singapore, Malaysia and Japan last month. What the administration envisions is a new kind of economic framework for a new economy, and the hope is to, early in the new year, first quarter of next year, officially launch a process, she said.

The framework will be flexible, with some countries perhaps not signing up to all of the elements, Raimondo said. She said the aim is to engage not just developed nations such as Japan, Singapore, Australia and New Zealand but also emerging economies such as Malaysia, Vietnam and Thailand.

I would love 12 months from now to be coming back here with something signed saying weve made progress, the Commerce chief said. She said the agreement may not culminate in something that would require approval by the U.S. Congress -- which is needed for traditional trade agreements. It wont be a trade deal, but it could be very powerful.

Supply chains for critical goods including semiconductors are a particular focus, Raimondo said. The goal is robust, long-term collaborations around supply chains that addresses what has been a lack of coordination among producers and users, she said. On the domestic U.S. front, Raimondo cited the benefit of the government convening stakeholders at the same table to increase transparency and trust around supply chains.

The Democratic former governor of Rhode Island also said that she could see some non-American companies benefiting from the $54 billion of emergency appropriations to help bring semiconductor manufacturing back to the U.S. that Congress is now debating. The key is that the production is done in the U.S., she said.

It is a problem for America that we are so reliant on Taiwan for semiconductors today, Raimondo said.

Another element of the Asia economic framework is working to harmonize export controls to limit sensitive products that head to China and other autocratic regimes, Raimondo said. The devil is deeply in the details on export controls, she also said, because measures shouldnt be overly broad, such that they deny revenue that companies need to plow into their research and development.

If America puts export controls vis-a-vis China on a certain part of our semiconductor equipment, but our allies dont do the same thing, and China can therefore get that equipment from our ally, thats not effective, Raimondo said.

A third area for the new framework is writing technical standards and rules for artificial intelligence and cybersecurity, Raimondo said. Working with our allies to together define the standards of what is responsible, ethical artificial intelligence -- thats massively valuable.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said Friday at a regular press briefing in Beijing that the U.S. has been abusing its power to politicize issues involving trade and technology.

He also accused Washington of trying to set up barriers to undermine international rules and sever the global market.

Its unclear whether what the Biden administration envisions meets the level of economic engagement that some Asian economies have called for. Japan and others have urged Washington to reconsider former President Donald Trumps decision to pull out of the CPTPP deal, which had been the key economic pillar of a strategy to bolster U.S.-led opposition to China.

Singapore Deputy Prime Minister Heng Swee Keat said last week that while over the past decades, the U.S. security presence has brought stability and peace in the region, for that to stretch into the next decades, the U.S. cannot afford to be absent from the regions evolving economic architecture.
The Central Texas State Veterans Cemetery in Killeen, Texas, as seen here in 2019, is one of four veterans cemeteries run by the state. Officials began discussions in October of adding new cemeteries to the system, which has sparked a debate on the best way to fund the growth. (Texas General Land Office)

Texas officials are looking to expand the states veteran cemetery system to meet its large veteran population, but some officials questioned whether doing so will come at the expense of services for living veterans.

The issue prompted the first public meeting of the Texas State Veterans Cemeteries Committee in more than 15 years and has led to the resignation of the cemetery programs top official, the reassignment of a state agencys chief investment officer, and triggered numerous letters between state officials about comments that described the cemeteries as money-losing programs.

Its an emotional, complicated issue that state officials will need to spend some time on, said state Sen. Charles Perry, a Lubbock-based Republican, who would like to see one of the next veterans cemeteries built in his city.

The Central Texas State Veterans Cemetery in Killeen, Texas, as seen here in 2019, is one of four veterans cemeteries run by the state. Texas buries about 2,000 people each year in the cemeteries and is discussing whether to add new locations to meet population growth. (Texas General Land Office)

Overall, the population in Texas grew by nearly 4 million people during the last decade. About 1.5 million veterans live in the state  a number that has held steady as younger veterans make Texas their home. The post 9/11 veteran population in the state has grown by more than 118,000 in 10 years, while the number of World War II and Korean War veterans declined by about 140,000.

Officials participating in the meeting agreed the state could benefit from increased veterans cemetery space, but they have to decide how to manage the growth.

Building two new cemeteries, one in Lubbock and another possibly in the town of Tyler, was the plan under discussion at the recent meeting of the cemeteries committee. Lubbock, which is in the northernmost portion of the state  known as the Texas Panhandle  lacks a nearby option to offer veterans. Tyler, which is in the eastern region of the state, has seen its veteran population grow in recent the years.

We've got to prepare and look ahead 20 years, and make sure there's capacity to meet those needs, Perry said. We just need to have an honest conversation about [whether] that is a state responsibility or is that a continuation of robbing Peter to pay Paul out of veteran programs that exists today? Or do we have enough [burial space]?

The Department of Veterans Affairs runs 155 national cemeteries across the country, according to the department. States can set up their own cemeteries based on federal guidelines as a way to augment the system, and can apply for funding from the Veterans Cemetery Grant Program.

George P. Bush, commissioner of the Texas General Land Office, left, and retired Air Force Mater Sgt. Eric Brown, former deputy director of Texas State Veterans Cemeteries, attend the burial of an unaccompanied veteran in 2019 at the Central Texas State Veterans Cemetery in Killeen, Texas. (Texas General Land Office)

There are 119 state, territorial and tribal veterans cemeteries that have received those VA grants in the past 40 years, according to the VA.

In locations where 80,000 or more veterans are without reasonable access to a national cemetery or VA grant-funded cemetery, the VAs National Cemetery Administration will establish a new national cemetery. Reasonable access is defined as living within 75 miles of an already established cemetery, either federal or state.

As of this month, the VA calculated nearly 94% of veterans living in the U.S. have reasonable access to a burial option. The strategic goal of the administration is to offer reasonable access to 95% of veterans.

The Texas legislature first authorized state-run cemeteries for veterans in 2001, allocating $7 million yearly from the Veterans Land Board for up to seven cemeteries. Since then, four have opened. There are also five federal cemeteries in the state, one of which is only open for cremated remains. A sixth federal cemetery is closed.

During the Oct. 29 meeting of the cemeteries committee, Rusty Martin, the chief investment officer for the General Land Office, said the four existing cemeteries each cost about $2.2 million annually to operate. Even with outside funding that comes primarily from VA grants and reimbursements, each one loses about $1.34 million per year.

If all things remain the same, he expects the program to reach the $7 million threshold for state funds by 2028. Additional money for the cemeteries would have to come from other veterans programs such as nursing homes and a home-loan program, both of which generate their own funds, he said.

Im a money guy. Im not comfortable putting any kind of money into money-losing programs, Martin said during the meeting. It doesnt make sense to me. But there are political considerations here and other considerations.

Retired Air Force Master Sgt. Eric Brown, then the deputy director of Texas State Veterans Cemeteries, said the comments were a public expression of the disrespect hes seen toward cemeteries within the Veterans Land Board since he became the top official in 2013. The comments led him to resign from the position, effective Nov. 30.

[The cemeteries] should be there first to honor our veterans and say thank you, Brown said. Thats the way I perceive it. I wish the agency would perceive it that way.

Martins comments also prompted some state lawmakers to write letters of concern to George P. Bush, the chairman of the Veterans Land Board and commissioner of its higher agency, the General Land Office.

These disrespectful remarks have resulted in a severe loss of confidence among many Texas veterans in the [General Land Offices] future management of the Texas State Veterans Cemeteries, wrote state Sen. Kelly Hancock, a Republican from North Richland Hills and chairman of the Senate Veterans Affairs and Border Security Committee.

Bush responded with a letter to Hancock that Martin was relieved of duties related to the Veterans Land Board, but he remains on staff with the General Land Office.

As a former naval intelligence officer who deployed to Afghanistan during Operation Enduring Freedom, I firmly believe that his remarks were disrespectful and insulting to anyone who has put on the uniform to serve our great nation, Bush wrote.

The General Land Office declined requests for interviews.

State Sen. Juan Chuy Hinojosa, a Democrat from Corpus Christi, wrote a letter to Bush that called for Hancocks committee and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick to study funding of the cemeteries and consider moving the program to a different state agency, the Texas Veterans Commission.

Outside of state funding and VA grant money, state-run cemeteries also get federal reimbursement for burials, which rose in October from $807 to $828 per burial. The reimbursement doesnt fully cover the $3,400 each burial costs the state, Martin said during the October meeting.

The VA does not reimburse for spouse burials and Texas does not charge for them. Some states, such as California, do charge for them.

Californias legislature also allocates money each year, most recently about $1.68 million, for its three state-run cemeteries, one of which is a small cemetery that serves a veterans nursing home. The state also accepts contributions from private donors and local communities that support the cemeteries, said Michael Magee, assistant deputy secretary of the Veterans Services Division at the California Department of Veterans Affairs. The plan in California is to provide the cemeteries as a benefit to veterans and their families, he said.

Its a great place for veterans to gather to commemorate Memorial Day, to celebrate Veterans Day, and to honor the people who are no longer with them, Magee said. The state of California has contributed and supported the funds that weve needed to keep it operational, in part for those reasons.

Texas and California have similar veteran populations, 1.5 million and 1.8 million, respectively, according to officials from each state. Texas, however, buries about 2,000 people a year at its state cemeteries whereas California does slightly more than 1,000.

Perry, the Texas senator who is advocating to have a new cemetery in Lubbock, said his district is now served by a state cemetery in Abilene, which has plenty of room to grow. But many Lubbock-area veterans dont like idea of their loved ones having to travel more than 320 miles round trip to their gravesite.

He said he also understands the need for fiscal responsibility when it comes to other veterans programs, and he is working with the VA to determine whether the city can qualify for federal designation, particularly because it could draw in veterans living in eastern New Mexico, southern Colorado and western Oklahoma.

I can understand the veterans appeal for it, but I'll be truthful, I've got just as many veterans that would say, Well, you know, we're about living, Perry said. Is it more important for me to be living on these things than it is to be worried about my final resting place?
This portrait of Sgt. William F. Maus, a POW during the Korean War, was included in a scrapbook left at a Modesto, Calif. school. (Karla McCleskey)

MODESTO, Calif. (Tribune News Service)  The red-bound scrapbook is tattered and nearly 70 years old. Its brown paper pages are falling out, but intact photos and letters chronicle a San Francisco mans experience fighting in the Korean War.

His family doesnt have it.

Stanislaus County resident Karla McCleskey believes the scrapbook was left on her desk at Ustach Middle School in Sylvan Unified School District about 12 to 15 years ago. Shes working with a veterans advocate and Rep. Josh Harders office to reunite the relic with the family of William F. Maus.

I was absolutely devastated that it was forgotten about, McCleskey said. This has to mean so much to somebodys family.

Genealogy research done online indicates Maus was born in San Francisco in 1929. He served in the Korean War as a sergeant in the 2nd Engineer Combat Battalion, 2nd Infantry Division, according to the website Military Hall of Honor. He was awarded the Purple Heart, Prisoner of War Medal and Korean Service Medal, among other honors.

Maus was missing in action for several months beginning Nov. 30, 1950, according to letters in the scrapbook from U.S. Army major generals. McCleskey said the last page of the scrapbook confirms Maus died in 1951 while in captivity in North Korea.

He was buried in 1955 at Golden Gate National Cemetery in San Bruno, California.

Scrapbook left at middle school

McCleskey worked as secretary to the vice principals at Ustach Middle School in Modesto. Lost items like sweaters and homework would pile up in her office near the front door.

She said a student likely forgot the scrapbook at school, and a teacher dropped it on her desk. It had no note to indicate the students and teachers names.

The scrapbook became out of sight, out of mind, stuffed in a desk drawer and boxed up as McCleskey moved office spaces.

A page from a scrapbook shows photos of Sgt. William F. Maus, a POW during the Korean War. (Karla McCleskey)

We should have done something a long time ago, she said.

When she resigned in 2012, her belongings were boxed up and taken to her.

She went through the boxes in early October and found the collection of photographs, articles and letters to Maus parents from him and the Army.

Im just really surprised nobody ever asked about it, McCleskey said.

Nonprofit, congressman join effort

For help finding the family, she turned to Lana Casey, an Oakdale resident whos on the board of the nonprofit Pacific Project Heroes, which supports veterans and first responders.

Casey contacted Harders office to amplify the search. Casey and McCleskey appeared on Fox 40 News earlier this month.

Harder said the quest to reunite the scrapbook with Maus family is personal. Both of his grandfathers and an uncle served in uniform, he said.

I know how important it is to hear those stories and really be able to understand our history, Harder said.

He hopes to identify Maus family during the holiday season.

If this was my grandfather or my uncle, Harder said, and we lost this for decades, I would be heartbroken.

Anyone with information on Maus family should contact Harders office via email, andrew.mamo@mail.house.gov or CA10JHima@mail.house.gov; phone, 209-579-5458; or website. People also can help by sharing the story via social media.

___

(c)2021 The Modesto Bee (Modesto, Calif.)

Visit The Modesto Bee (Modesto, Calif.) at www.modbee.com
The Bay of Plenty District Health Board is acknowledging any stress caused to residents who have experienced a delay in receiving their Covid-19 test results.

SunLive understands that people are waiting days for tests to come back, resulting in sick leave running out and symptoms completely disappearing.

Bay of Plenty District Health Board Covid-19 Incident Controller Trevor Richardson says generally, test results are available within 48 hours from receipt of the sample at the laboratory, however, this depends on testing volumes.

It should be noted that samples of close contacts of cases and high-risk individual are prioritised by laboratories.

Negative results will be sent via text and Public Health Unit will contact individuals for positive results.

Trevor says information on financial support while awaiting test results are available on the Unite against Covid-19 website.

Employers need to apply for this for their employees when required. You can also contact Whanau Ora on 0800 838 282 or MSD COVID Helpline 0800 559 009.

Work is continuous and ongoing to manage demands for testing and minimise processing times for the turnaround of tests. Laboratories have processed a significant volume of daily tests since the start of this current outbreak and the demand for testing continues to be high.

Work is also underway by the Ministry of Health to review the testing strategy to take a risk-based approach utilising the right test to achieve the right outcome may include rapid antigen testing in multiple settings and scenarios.

This will contribute to managing the demand on laboratories and provide greater capacity for them to undertake priority testing as part of the management of outbreaks and protection of vulnerable and at-risk communities, says Trevor.

From mid-December, 15-minute Covid-19 rapid antigen testing will be available at no cost from community pharmacies throughout New Zealand until the end of January 2022.

When the Auckland boundary lifts at 11.59pm on Tuesday, December 14, anyone travelling from Auckland who is not fully vaccinated will need to carry with them evidence of a negative test result within 72 hours of travel.

In addition, those who are travelling in other parts of the country with a transport company that requires unvaccinated individuals to be tested will also be required to carry evidence of a negative test result.

Aucklanders have borne the brunt of the Delta outbreak, facing restrictions for an extended period to keep the rest of New Zealand safe. But the time has come to allow all New Zealanders to reconnect with one another over summer as safely as possible, says Director-General of Health Dr Ashley Bloomfield.

Testing for asymptomatic unvaccinated individuals over 12 years wishing to depart from Auckland, and asymptomatic unvaccinated domestic travellers from elsewhere in New Zealand, can be a supervised rapid antigen test at selected community pharmacies.

For rapid antigen tests, the Ministry of Health strongly recommends this is administered as close as possible to the time of travel, preferably within 24 hours before departure.

Travellers are still able to use a negative PCR test to meet any travel requirements, but that is not recommended. Using the alternative rapid antigen test will allow our laboratories to focus on processing PCR tests.

This will reduce the turnaround time for returning results to symptomatic people and close contacts of confirmed cases as we continue to respond to the current outbreak, says Dr Bloomfield.

Asymptomatic unvaccinated travellers over 12 years from other parts of New Zealand will need a proof of negative test taken within 72 hours if they travel with a transport company that decides to implement this testing requirement for travel on their service.

Unvaccinated workers who are already part of a testing regime for crossing the Auckland boundary can continue with their current regime  other unvaccinated workers can use the negative test within 72 hours.

Testing to meet domestic travel requirements will be free of charge for the core summer period and available from December 15, 2021, to January 31, 2022.

Rapid antigen testing is not to be used for symptomatic individuals. Advice for people who are unwell and have Covid-19 symptoms continues to be, stay home and get a PCR test, says Dr Bloomfield.

Police will have operational discretion on the enforcement of these rules, with people breaking the rules facing an infringement fine of $1000.

A significant amount of movement happens across the country during this period, so we have added this safety net to reduce the risk of Covid-19 spreading but we have also been pragmatic.

Air New Zealand have made a vaccine certificate or proof of a negative test a requirement before you fly, and these requirements also begin on December 15. There will be spot checks for travellers out of Auckland airport.

These testing requirements are another layer in our protection with Covid-19 in the community.

As we enter the next phase, there will be challenges ahead. We will continue to see cases, and in places we havent so far.

Its crucial that all of us, right around the country, continue to play our part, so we can enjoy the summer we all deserve. Most importantly, if you are unwell, stay home and dont go out or travel until youve had a negative PCR test, says Dr Bloomfield.
Taurangas iconic Humpty Dumpty will stay on the wall, with news the Incubator Creative Hub is offering to take on the restoration project.

A plea was issued by Tauranga City Council for someone to repair the statue at Memorial Park after it was vandalised earlier this week.

Councils community services general manager Gareth Wallis says it looks like someone took a sledgehammer to it.

Most of Humptys arm has been reduced to dust, and his head is badly chipped in places as well.

The statue has been at the Tauranga park since 1959.

As soon as they saw they saw poor Humptys rotten dilemma, Incubator Creative Hub director Simone Anderson they knew they could hatch a plan to put him back together again.

The Incubator Creative Hub has never had a challenge like this before, says Simone.

Given theres a good connection between eggs and incubators, we immediately knew we were up for the important responsibility to fix Humpty.

Councils spaces and places director Paul Dunphy is thrilled to see the support that the community sent Humptys way over the course of yesterday.

Were so happy that our Incubator whanau will be helping return Humpty to the community.

Restoration will take place in the New Year.

Until then, the statue will remain on site, with safety netting in place, as its too tricky to move it without risking further damage.
The forecast in Papamoa this Christmas is golden sunshine with a chance of reindeer.

But already there is drama  the breaking news in Papamoa is that all nine of Santas reindeer have gone missing.

We have received information that they were last seen in Papamoa between PakNSave, Fashion Island and Papamoa Plaza, says Papamoa Unlimiteds Julia Manktelow.

Santa needs you to help save Christmas.

The golden brown Christmas reindeer go by the names Dasher, Dancer, Prancer, Vixen, Comet, Cupid, Donner, Blitzen and Rudolph. For those who want to know where Olive the other reindeer is, she still seems to be in winter hibernation.

Has Christmas left you feeling extra Santa-mental this year?

Julia is calling on Tauranga, Western Bay and Te Puke sleuths to come to Papamoa and locate all nine reindeer in the locations last seen.

By checking in via the QR code at South Pole Central Intelligence outside PakNSave and registering to play on Eventbrite, all wannabe Sherlocks and private reindeer investigators are then requested to take an elfie with each reindeer.

Upload to our Papamoa Unlimited Facebook page or send through to us via Facebook Messenger, says Julia.

Plunge and parade postponed

Those who love living happily ever antler in Papamoa have had to forgo their annual Papamoa Polar Plunge event this winter. Thanks to Covid alert level restrictions and the traffic light system, its been a challenging year of cleverly reshaping some much-loved events.

In October, the very successful Halloween Powerco Pedal and Pump Papamoa event was held along the waterways, with hundreds coming out on the scavenger hunt trail.

Unfortunately, the Papamoa Christmas Parade has had to be cancelled for 2021, but Santas jolly good fellows are replacing it with the hunt for Santas reindeer.

Sleuths who plan on sleigh-in it have from December 12 to 9am on December 24 to enter the fun competition.

But wait  theres myrrh. Yule not be sorry.

Prizes include winning one of 12 $300 PakNSave vouchers, an Advanti kids bike from My Ride Mt Maunganui, a Titanium Weber BayQ from Mitre 10 Papamoa, a $100 voucher from Rain Bar & Restaurant, a deluxe Christmas ham from Dough Jarvis Butcher & Deli, and two beautiful bathmats from George St Linen.

I also am going to be doing a challenge for the best Christmas team photo to win a $1000 PakNsave Papamoa voucher, says Julia.

Julia is also on a drive to pay it forward with the Ulyssess Club Tauranga to collect toys for Tauranga Hospital Children's Ward for their club's annual toy run.

"We'll be collecting presents at the Papamoa Plaza customer service desk until December 24," says Julia.

Prizegiving for the reindeer hunt will be live at 11am on Christmas Eve on Papamoa Unlimiteds Facebook page.
Police are appealing for witnesses to a fatal Tauranga crash to come forward.

A woman, reported to be a 65-year-old Tauranga local, died after a vehicle went off the road on Chapel Street and crashed into the Tauranga Harbour on Wednesday.

Emergency services were called to the incident just at 5pm.

Police say the investigating is in its early stages and initial indications are that three vehicles were involved in the crash.

It was understood the vehicle in the water had two occupants, a second vehicle had another two occupants, and a third vehicle had one occupant, reports Stuff.

One person was in a serious condition and another in a moderate condition.

One other person was assessed at treated at the scene.

Police serious crash analysts were still in the early stages of the investigation and the exact cause was yet to be determined, says a police spokesperson.

Officers are working with CCTV operators and members of the public to establish the events leading up to the crash.

The womans name would be released once formal identification had taken place.

Police would like to acknowledge the members of the public who assisted at the scene.

Officers would like to hear from anyone who witnessed the crash, or who had information that could assist with enquiries.

Anyone with information can call the polices 105 non-emergency line, quoting the file number 211208/1665.

Alternatively, information can also be provided anonymously via Crimestoppers on 0800 555 111.
Oranga Tamarikis new Papamoa-based site has been unveiled, with a new partnership between the agency and Maori in the region at the heart of its formation.

The Domain Road site has been named Nga Parirau and will look to be a trailblazer in sweeping changes to Oranga Tamariki processes across New Zealand.

Mana whenua led the appointment of Joel Ngatuere as the locations site manager earlier this year  one of the first steps in devolving decision making to local Maori.

Joel is clear that the new directive is about hearing the needs of those in impacted communities.

It is about engaging with our iwi and our Maori NGOs to say this is what we can do, you tell us what you want, says Joel, who also sees the new Papamoa location as a positive step toward centralising access for the entire region.

It is my role to come back and speak with those around and above me to see how we can make these things happen.

We want them to tell us what they do well, what they want, because they know their community better than us. They know their communities better than Oranga Tamariki.

We can then work with them to figure out how we can make this happen and create better outcomes for our kids.

The site was set to be unveiled by the Minister for Children Kelvin Davis, who declared the current system broken in a parliamentary select committee in June.

The Minister, who was unable to attend the event after last-minute unforeseen circumstances, also made it clear that devolving power in the organisation to regional and Maori communities was of paramount importance.

Joel and Tasi outside the new building - Te Akau - on Domain Road.

A Ministerial Advisory Board report released in September advised much the same, with shifting decision making and resources to communities one of three key recommendations.

Oranga Tamariki Bay of Plenty regional manager Tasi Malu says he is grateful to be at the official unveiling, which was postponed from October due to Covid-19 but held on Thursday under new traffic light system guidance.

He calls it a celebration for mana whenua and the refreshed relationship Oranga Tamariki will have with them going forward.

It has been a long time coming, says Tasi.

If you think of the whakatauki it takes a village to raise a child I think for too long Oranga Tamariki has seen itself as the village. But we all know the village is out there in the communities.

If the problem lies in the village then the solution lies in the village. This brings Oranga Tamariki into the village, where it should be and working for solutions with those in the village.

Its a new way of working with our communities, particularly with iwi in which there is a greater chance of transformational change.

For Tasi, utilising the boots already on the ground in communities is an important step in the right direction for improving prevention rather than intervention.

These people live amongst them, they know them and they are their neighbours, explains Tasi.

That fact alone means they are far more prepared and ready to help whanau out there.

Ultimately, it is about preventing tamariki from coming into our system and for those who have come into our care returning them as soon as possible to whanau.

Those boots on the ground form Te Whakaruruhau, a kaitiaki group including an army of aunties supported by iwi and hapu  including Nga Potiki, Ngati Pukenga, Waitaha and Ngai Te Rangi  who will operate from the building on site, which they have named Te Akau.

Te Whakaruruhau spokesperson Rahera Ohia says discussions over a new working relationship began in June and Oranga Tamariki mentioned the new site being formed on Nga Potiki land. She felt it was an opportunity that could not be missed.

Labour List MP for the Bay of Plenty, Angie Warren-Clark, stepped in to open the building in Kelvin Davis' absence.

We saw it as a sign, says Rahera.

This is our chance to provide a protective umbrella and some guidance and support so that Oranga Tamariki does the right thing by our kids and whanau.

She says she is pleased to be forming a Treaty-based relationship which will hopefully ensure the needs of both groups are met.

We hope to be a template that might be used by others in this region and over the country.

For Joel, the new relationship is about rebuilding trust between communities and the agency.

It means fronting up and apologising for any mistakes that have been made by Oranga Tamariki and initiating and building relationships and moving forward, admits Joel.

I want this place to be an environment they dont dread. It is an environment that is warm and welcoming and people are going to be worked with fairly.

We understand it is not something that is going to be built overnight, but over time that is something I want.
There are five new cases of Covid-19 in the Bay of Plenty, with four in Tauranga and the other in the Western Bay of Plenty region.

Across New Zealand there are 95 new community cases whilst two people with Covid-19 have died overnight.

The Ministry of Health is saddened to report the deaths in hospital of two people overnight who had Covid-19, says a Ministry spokesperson.

One person died at Middlemore Hospital. Their family has requested that no information be publicly provided about this person and out of respect, the Ministry will not be providing any further details.

The second patient was admitted to Auckland City Hospital due to their Covid-19 infection. The case has been referred to the coroner.

The Ministry would like to express its heartfelt condolences and sends its sympathies to the families of both of these people at this sad time.

Four of todays Bay of Plenty cases are linked to previously reported cases and one is still being investigated.

Contacts are being identified and will be contacted for testing and isolation advice.

There is also one new case to report in the Lakes DHB region today.

This case is in Rotorua and is a household contact of a previously reported case.

They are isolating at home.

Whanganui and Tairawhiti DHBs are close to reaching 90 per cent partially vaccinated. As of this morning, Tairawhiti has just 266 more people to get their first vaccination before reaching this important milestone and Whanganui has 325.

There were 21,744 total vaccine doses administered yesterday, including 3,374 first doses and 9,225 second doses. To date, 94% of eligible people in New Zealand have had their first dose and 89% are fully vaccinated.

Additional regional updates

We are continuing to ask anyone in New Zealand with symptoms  no matter how mild  to get tested, even if youre vaccinated. Please remain isolated until you return a negative test result.



If you are not vaccinated, now is the time, as vaccination is your number one defence against COVID-19. Your DHB or local health provider will have plenty of opportunities to make this happen.



Testing and vaccination centre locations nationwide can be found on the Healthpoint website.



Auckland

Today, there are 75 new cases being reported in Auckland.

Health and welfare providers are now supporting 3,014 people to isolate at home, including 802 cases.

Waikato

There are 11 new cases being reported in Waikato today.

Three new locations of interest were confirmed in Te Kuiti and Hamilton yesterday.

In the Waikato, health and welfare providers are supporting 101 people to isolate at home.

Taranaki

There is one new case to report in Waitara today. The case was reported last night and is linked to two active cases in New Plymouth.

Taranakis Public Health Unit has started case investigation work, however, early indications are that it is unlikely that there will be any locations of interest.

We urge anyone in Waitara or the wider Taranaki region with symptoms  no matter how mild  to get tested, even if youre vaccinated.

Pop-up testing will be available at the Waitara War Memorial Hall on Memorial Place today. Hours will be extended at Taranaki Base Hospitals testing centre from 8am-4pm.

Unvaccinated whanau are also encouraged to get vaccinated promptly. For locations and times in Taranaki please visit TDHB - COVID-19 vaccine

Nelson-Tasman update

There is one case to report today in Nelson-Tasman. They are linked to the larger Nelson cluster.

Anyone in the region with any symptoms that could be COVID-19 is urged to get a test, even if they are vaccinated.

Locations of interest are regularly added to the Ministrys website, so we ask people living in Nelson-Tasman to check these daily.

Testing and vaccination centres open today and this weekend are available from the Nelson Marlborough DHB website.

Canterbury

There is one new case to report in Christchurch today, bringing the total to six active cases in the region. They are directly linked to a case reported at the weekend.

The case investigation is ongoing and this person is being transferred to an MIQ facility.

Testing locations and opening hours are available on the Healthpoint website.

COVID-19 vaccine update Vaccines administered to date (percentage of eligible people) 3,943,167 first doses (94%); 3,729,419 second doses (89%); 19,808 third primary doses; 141,271 booster doses Vaccines administered yesterday 3,374 first doses; 9,225 second doses; 714 third primary does and 8,431 booster doses. Maori (percentage of eligible people) 488,348 first doses (86%); 421,738 second doses (74%) Pacific Peoples (percentage of eligible people) 265,795 first doses (93%); second doses 245,125 (86%) Vaccination rates by DHB with active cases (percentage of eligible people) Northland DHB First doses (87%); second doses (80%) Auckland Metro DHBs First doses (95%); second doses (91%) Waikato DHB First doses (93%); second doses (87%) Bay of Plenty DHB First doses (92%); second doses (85%) Lakes DHB First doses (91%); second doses (83%) Taranaki DHB First doses (92%); second doses (85%) MidCentral DHB First doses (94%); second doses (88%) Whanganui DHB First doses (89%); second doses (82%) Hawkes Bay DHB First doses (93%); second doses (86%) Nelson-Marlborough DHB First doses (94%); second doses (88%) Canterbury DHB First doses (97%); second doses (92%) Hospitalisations Cases in hospital 56 North Shore: 13; Auckland: 16; Middlemore: 24; Waikato: 1; Tauranga:1; Nelson-Marlborough: 1 Vaccination status of current hospitalisations (Northern Region wards only) Unvaccinated or not eligible (30 cases / 57%); partially immunised <7 days from second dose or have only received one dose (12 cases / 23%); fully vaccinated at least 7 days before being reported as a case (9 cases/ 17%); unknown (2 cases / 4%) Average age of current hospitalisations 51 Cases in ICU or HDU 4 (1 in Auckland; 2 in Middlemore, 1 in North Shore) Cases Seven day rolling average of community cases 103 Number of new community cases 95 Number of new cases identified at the border 1 Location of new community cases* Auckland (75), Waikato (11), Bay of Plenty (5), Lakes (1), Nelson-Tasman (1), Canterbury (2)* Number of community cases (total) 9,552 (in current community outbreak) Number of active cases (total) 6,630 Confirmed cases (total) 12,347 Cases epidemiologically linked (total) 7045 Contacts Number of active contacts being managed (total): Todays figures unavailable Percentage who have received an outbound call from contact tracers (to confirm testing and isolation requirements) Todays figures unavailable Percentage who have returned at least one result Todays figures unavailable Tests Number of tests total (last 24 hours) 27,577 Tests rolling average (last 7 days) 27,645 Auckland tests total (last 24 hours) 12,521 Wastewater Wastewater detections No unexpected results to report NZ COVID Tracer Poster scans in 24 hours to midday yesterday 3,156,394 Manual diary entries in 24 hours to midday 41,806 My Vaccine Pass My vaccine pass downloads total 4,061,416 My vaccine pass downloads (last 24 hours) 60,514

*A case reported yesterday in Canterbury is officially added to todays case numbers.

New cases identified at the border
El Borge is preparing to welcome home El Bizco, its infamous bandit The town hall has started work to adapt the space where the 1,300 pieces acquired in September 2020 from Jesus Almazan, who had them in a museum in Ronda for 25 years, will be exhibited

In September 2020 the news broke that El Borge town hall had acquired the collection of the Museum of Banditry in Ronda owned by Jesus Almazan, who was in charge of a museum space that had exhibited up to 1,300 pieces for over 25 years. Now, the town hall has started work on preparing a 300-square-metre warehouse-cum-gallery, which will house this important collection, considered the best of its kind.

It will be in the village of El Borge, home to El Bizco; one of Spain's most infamous 19th century bandits. Following a 100,000 euro investment, the village aims to become, "an international reference centre for interpreting and learning about banditry, according to the mayor Raul Vallejo.

"The collection is unique, for the value of its historical documentation, maps and everyday objects, both of the bandits and of the Guardia Civil, the force created by the Duke of Ahumada to combat them. A total of 35 weapons are preserved in perfect condition," explained the mayor. Vallejo added that work is due to start imminently and should be finished by next spring.

The mayor of El Borge said he was "very proud" to be able to host this exhibition in the land of bandits, and is sure that it will attract visitors to the village. El Borge has already been home to the Posada del Bandolero for several decades, a municipal space managed under a concession by a local business, which offers restaurants and accommodation along with a small exhibition area with pieces on banditry.

However, the collection acquired from the Ronda museum is made up of hundreds of documents and objects from the life and times of the bandits and the new space in El Borge will be known as the Bandolero Gallery.

Over one million visitors in 25 years

During the confinement, Almazan warned of the possibility of the Ronda museum closing due to economic problems and the drop in tourists due to the pandemic, pointing to the cost of renting the premises as well as other issues. The museum in Ronda closed after 25 years and four months, having received one million visitors who were able to see around 1,300 pieces.

"It has been enough to cover expenses and expand the collection over the years," Almazan commented at the time. A three-dimensional tour has been made available on social networks, as a souvenir. The latest addition to the collection was the donation of costume and clothing used in the series 'Libertad' by Enrique Urbizu, which premiered this year on Movistar.
Manuel Gutierrez de la Concha, first Marquis del Duero, died in the battle of Monte Muru on 27 June, 1874. This event was captured by painter Joaquin Agrassot in his painting The Death of the Marquis del Duero, completed in 1884. Now, a municipal building in San Pedro Alcantara displays an interpretation of this piece of the town's history by graffiti artist Guillermo Paz, also known as Nesui.

San Pedro's head of the Culture, Jose Antonio Moreno, said that the aim of the mural is to become an icon of the town centre and to serve as a tourist attraction, as well as remembering the founder of the once agricultural settlement.

San Pedro cannot be understood without its origin linked to the land and its cultivation, to the sugar cane harvests and the sugar mills. The marquis, mainly a soldier and a politician, organised the agriculture of the area.

In 1857, he began purchasing plots of land between the meadows of the Guadaiza, Guadalmansa and Guadalmina rivers, which he then set aside for sugar plantations.

San Pedro was then built around these plantations, with homes for the labourers and foremen, a company warehouse, buildings to process the sugar canes and a church. Then the colony was blessed with the name San Pedro Alcantara, in honour of the marquis' only daughter, Pedra de Alcantara.

The town left its mark on 19th-century urban planning, with an urban grid that followed a clear hierarchy. When the marquis planned the town centre, he built a house for the administrator on the north side of the church square as well as a home for himself and his family: the Villa de San Luis. Now it serves as the district town hall.

In 1861, there were over 500 settlers living in Calle Lagasca, Pizarro and Duero. Multiple families all lived in simple, gable-roof houses. After the marquis' death and despite his debts, the settlement continued to flourish and by 1900 San Pedro had 2,000 inhabitants.

The Marquis del Duero was also interested in training his workers and the innovative development of the land. He kept a close eye on what other countries were doing and made his colony one of the best in Spain, both in its size and in innovations, which in turn helped transform the traditional Andalusian agriculture.

In order to achieve this, the marquis searched for specialised farmers, attracting workers from Valencia and Alicante and from the sugar cane growing areas of Granada and Almeria.

He also brought steam engines such as the locomotive and the threshing machine and created the Agricultural Training School or the Model Farm in order to produce specialists and foremen to promote development.
Hendrix of the bagpipes adds local touch to his show in Malaga For his concert at the Cervantes Theatre, multi-instrumentalist Carlos Nunez will be joined by the Benalmadena-based Sur Pipe Band

Leslie Thomson (2nd right) and The Sur Pipe Band on stage with Carlos Nunez in Cordoba last weekend. / SUR

World-renowned Spanish multi-instrumentalist Carlos Nunez will stop off in Malaga on Saturday (11 December) during his current tour to celebrate 25 years in the music business.

The folk musician, who has collaborated with numerous well-established bands, has toured the world and sold more than one million records during his career, which is something unusual for an instrumentalist, especially one who plays the gaita, the traditional bagpipe of Galicia and northern Portugal.

Born in 1971 in Vigo, Galicia, Nunez began playing the bagpipes when he was eight years old. He studied the recorder at the Royal Conservatory in Madrid and quickly gained stature as a young virtuoso. In his early teens, he was invited to play with the Festival Orchestra in Brittany.

He also met the Irish musician and founder of The Chieftains, Paddy Moloney, and he began performing with them regularly, becoming referred to as the "seventh member" of the celebrated Celtic band. He appeared on their Grammy-winning Santiago recording, which focused on Galician music and included other artists such as Los Lobos and Linda Ronstadt.

Nunez, hailed as the Hendrix of the bagpipes, has already played to sell out audiences all over Spain during his Gira de Navidad tour, although his performance at the Cervantes Theatre tomorrow will see him joined by The Sur Pipes Band, a band founded by Scottish expat Leslie Thomson.

Double anniversary celebration

The coast's first Spanish pipe band was formed in 2019 and their collaboration with the Spanish musician was organised to celebrate Thomson's 50 anniversary playing the Great Highland Bagpipe, an instrument he began playing in Buenos Aires.

An Argentine citizen of Scottish descent, Leslie has lived in Benalmadena since 1990 and he has dedicated his time to teaching locals how to play the bagpipes.

It was during a trip to visit his former pipe band in Argentina in 2013 that Thomson first met Nunez, and the Galician musician invited him to perform at his concerts in Malaga and Cordoba later the same year.

Once the pipe band was formed, Nunez extended the invitation to them, and this will be the third time that Thomson's ensemble will have supported the virtuoso.

The Sur Pipe Band also performed at Nunez's concert in Cordoba last weekend. For the Malaga show, they will be joined by the Gibraltar Sea Scouts Pipe Band and a collection of Thomson's friends.

The concert will focus on modern and traditional Gaelic music, a style that generally refers to the respective traditions of Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Cornwall, the Isle of Man, Galicia, Asturias and Brittany.

"This concert is especially significant to me, as it's my 50th anniversary as a piper. I even have a fellow piper from my days in Argentina joining me from Canada. The Sur Pipe Band, my friends from Gibraltar and Carlos on the same stage will be a truly fitting celebration," Thomson told SUR in English.

Tickets for the concert at the Cervantes Theatre, which starts at 8pm, cost between 15 and 27 euros and are available from www.teatrocervantes.es
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Join Date: Jul 2015 Location: Surat Posts: 31 Thanked: 171 Times

Meghalaya - Self Drive



Last proper road trip was a long time ago, back in 2015 - blogged here:

With Shillong as base, broad plan, Surat to Surat, was as follows:



Day 1: Surat to Mumbai (Drop the cats at foster home)

Day 2: Fly to Guwahati, drive and to Shillong (Zoom-Car)

Day 3: Mawphlang - Sacred Forest | Wei Sawdong | Janailar Falls | Garden of Caves | NohKaLikai Falls

Day 4: Mawryngkhang Trek (Bamboo Trail)

Day 5: Boating @ Darrang | Shnongpdeng | Dawki (Bangladesh Border)

Day 6: Drive to Tyrna| Trek to Rainbow Falls | Blue Lagoon | Home Stay at Nongriat for the night

Day 7: Double Decker Living Root Bridge | Trek up to Tyrna | NohKaLikai Falls | Drive back to Guwahati

Day 8: Fly to Mumbai | Drive to Surat



This was in no way an exhaustive tour of Meghalaya. Goal was to go easy and cover places at our own pace. Early November offers a pleasant weather, greenery and plenty of waterfalls that are yet to go dry post monsoon. Come December, Meghalaya gets drier.

Temperatures in Nov in and around Shillong are between 10-25 deg C.



Distance clocked (by road): ~1100 Kms in Meghalaya, ~560Kms - Surat to Mumbai (To & Fro)



Folks: Me, Wife and my SIL



Pets: My 2 cats, Foxy and Tora, despite persistent requests, choose to relax at a Foster Home in Mumbai and did not join us further.





Cars:

Surat to Mumbai : 2016 Ford Figo Tdci

Guwahati Onwards : Creta Diesel (Zoom-car)



Zoomcar experience:

Going by the latest reviews in the forum, I was prepared for the worse. Few alternatives to Zoom car were available at Guwahati. Decided to take my chances and booked a Swift to keep my risk at a minimum. One day before the booking start, got a call from Zoomcar informing that Swift was down for maintainance and I would be provided a free upgrade to either an Ecosport or Creta. Chose Creta as i was familiar with the Ecosport diesel and wanted to try something different.



Pickup coordinates were provided few hrs before the trip start (thru app & sms) which was a multilevel parking in the heart of Guwahati City. A Zoomcar representative was available and helped me with the formalities. The KA registered Creta with about 1,17,000 Kms on the odo was waiting. Exteriors had many minor dents & scratches while the interiors were clean and mechanicals, tires, spares etc. were in good shape. Zoomcar App preloaded the cars condition sparing me the trouble of bringing it to their notice. Fuel was at 30%. Post pickup, received a message about speed governor in the car limiting its speed to 80 Kmph. In this part of the country thats good enough as I rarely exceed the limit. Out of curiosity I tested the limit a few times and did not feel any restriction. . Drop was equally seamless with no questions asked. I had returned the car with about 25% Fuel but wasnt charged for the difference either.



Overall, a pleasant experience. I would not mind returning to Zoomcar again.



Day 1: Surat to Mumbai

Mumbai is a smooth 5 hr drive from Surat. My Cats are accustomed to car travel as this was their third time. While in car, they go into the cat basket placed on the rear seat and secured with mid seat belts. I do not let them out while in the car as cats could end up anywhere with their elusive nature and curiosity. After about 20 minutes of complaints, they slept well during the rest of the journey. 4 hrs. later we were on Ghodbunder road, luckily, not having to wait at the Fountain hotel Jn 30-45 min delay is the usual norm. Dropped the cats to the Foster home at Thane, and proceeded to my Aunts place for overnight stay. Next day's flight was early and we had to start at 4 am for Airport.



Day 2: Fly Mumbai to Guwahati, drive to Shillong

Cab showed up early and we were on time at the Airport. Had to endure some waiting as Indigo flew from T2 and international flyers were in good numbers that morning. Baggage drops, security checks, and a good breakfast later, we were on our flight to Guwahati. Some reading and napping later, landed and drove to Zoomcar pickup location, completed the formalities, loaded the luggage, and drove to have lunch at Missing Kitchen in Ghuwati. The place has good reviews and is a modest setup where local food is served in traditional thalis. Tried a (tiny) sample of Bhoot Jolokia which is a part of the standard sides served. Bhoot Jolokia or Ghost pepper is a chilly grown in the region, which In 2007 the Guinness World Records, certified as the world's hottest chili pepper, 170 times hotter than Tabasco sauce. On a Scoville scale that measures the hotness of a chilly, this scores between 850,000 to 1,000,000 while a typical chilly would score around 10,000 tops!. It crawls down the throat like a fireball.





Food in this part of the country is served in large portions. Typically, 1 plate is good for 2. After a sumptuous lunch, were on our way to Shillong.



Ghuwati to Shillong a 100 km drive on NH6. Roads are in good shape with sparse traffic and offer gradients, slopes, & curves - a pleasantly engaging drive. Had to stop at Meghalaya border to register entry on the Mehgalaya Tourism App, post which, a permit was issued. (Vaccination or an RTPCR -ve report was a must, process took about 45 min due to poor network). From here, first stop at the Umiam Lake close to Shillong which offers a good view and photography spots. It is popular among locals as a evening hangout. Elevated walkways and tree houses at the place offer scenic view of the landscape.







After spending about an hour, drove to our AirBnB at Shillong. On a Sunday evening, Shillong is peaceful with most places closing early including restaurants that close by 8 pm. Google maps led us through narrow serpentine roads, and we were at the destination by 5:30 pm. In the East, sun sets early and 5pm feels like 8 pm in the West. It is important to start early and end early as post 4:30 pm, most places in Meghalaya close due to requirement of daylight. Temperature during the night range between 12-14 deg C.



We had booked The Garden at Langkyrding, Golf Links (AirBnB) and our Superhost was very helpful and provided valuable insights that helped fine-tune our itinerary over the coming days. Place was lavish with refrigerator stocked with fresh fruits, chopped veggies and an attached kitchen to self-cook meals / breakfast. As we were mostly traveling, we did not get to spend time at this beautiful place.

https://youtu.be/0JIPiUnVBB8



As restaurants were due to close soon, we ordered dinner online through Netfoodish, the local equivalent of Zomato. (Swiggy does work).

After a day long travel, we were deprived of sleep and hit the bed early.



Day 3: Mawphlang - Sacred Forest | Wei Sawdong | Janailar Falls | Garden of Caves | NohKaLikai Falls

Day started with a self made breakfast of omelets, toast, muffins and coffee.



Were ready to hit the roads by 8 am. By then morning traffic was buzzing, majority of it in the opposite direction towards the city. Our first stop was Mawphlang Sacred Grove, 27 kms from Shillong. Could make it out of the city comfortably. Most state roads here are two lane with traffic following each other and little opportunity to overtake. Villagers around Shillong commute daily to the Shillong market and return in the evening. 80% of the cars are A segment cars, largely 800s in immaculate condition. Generous upsizing of wheels and mods - some tasteful, some whacky, is a common sight.



A related post on the forum on Shillong car culture is already on the forum here:



About one hour's drive and a wrong turn and a u-turn later, we arrived at the sacred forest. We did not opt for the forest hike as we wanted to spend more time at other places planned during the day. Some quick clicks later we were on our way to Wei Sawdong Waterfall.





Wei Sawdong situated on the outskirts of Cherrapunjee, is a three-tier waterfall. A 15-20 min descent takes you down to its base.

Along the way there is a viewpoint where the waterfall can be seen in its entirety, a mesmerizing play of blue water with the greenery around.





Descend further and the base of the falls is equally beautiful.



We spent quite some time here and met a solo traveler from Bangalore who recommended Janailar Falls which we decided to proceed next. Idea was to avoid the routine places and the rush and enjoy the calm instead. Janailar falls is about 5 kms from Wei Sawdong and is less frequented by tourists.



Jalinar Falls (below): We had the place all to ourself and spent a good 30 min relaxing amidst the natural bliss.







It was 3:30pm already and we were running short of time with two more places to cover. Drove to Garden of Caves which is a trail along a collection of caves. We were not too keen to spend time here as the place lacked natural touch and was more like a regular tourist hangout. We covered the trail quickly but could not make it to NohKaLikai Falls by sundown though it was just 16 kms. Decided to head back and have dinner at a good place in Shillong. On our way, browsed through few restaurant reviews and zeroed in on few options.



While we expected to reach Shillong by 7, we actually ended-up circling around thanks to Google-maps which does not get Shillong traffic and its roads right, constantly leading us through narrow by-lanes and sometimes dead-ends. A lot of traffic and reversing and U-turns later we decided to skip the restaurant plan and headed to our AirBnB. Dinner was ordered online.



In Shillong, I would happily trade a Creta for an 800 If I had to endure the roads on a daily basis. Narrow Serpentine roads, Massive gradients, Stop and Go traffic and Nonexistent Parking - all of these are a daily affair during peak hours. People drive sensibly but the infrastructure just doesnt exist and crawling traffic is the way. If you plan to explore Shillong market or its popular restaurants, leave your car behind and take a taxi or better walk in the central market areas.



Day 4: Mawryngkhang Trek (Bamboo Trail)

While original plan was to visit Dawki on Day-4, we swapped it with Day-5 and do the Bamboo Trail instead. This meant less driving and an easy schedule. Bamboo Trail (Mawryngkhang Trek) is 53 kms from Shillong. It's is a 3 kms trek (one-way) through numerous bamboo bridges that cross over blue water lagoons, greenery and places that offer beautiful view of the valley.



Start of the bamboo trail:





One of the many bamboo bridges along the trail:





Along the trail, there are few local shops sell water, cold drinks, biscuits, chocolates etc.





A little friend along the way:





This waterfall, a slight de-tour from the trail is not to be missed. The place with it's roaring falls and the view of valley is a splendid experience.

Typical to the region, water was turquoise and with the greenery around, it's a treat to the eyes.





Some sections of the trail are literally on the edge of the cliff and walking over them is a thrilling experience. Those with acrophobia might find it challenging.





Notice my foot at the edge of the bridge. Though made of bamboo, this section of the trail is re-enforced with concrete pillars under the structure.



Literally walk on the edge at a few places:





More views of the valley:







About 75% into the trail, a viewpoint gives a good 180 deg view. From here, end of the trail, which is a rock at a lower elevation can be spotted.





Stairs leading to the rock which marks the end of the trail - quite a steep climb.

Stairway to heaven!





About 3 hours and plenty of clicks later, headed back to Shillong. Plan was to be in Shillong by 5pm to beat the peak traffic and make it to Police bazar, the heart of Shillong where most of the restaurants are. While we reached the city outskirts early, same cycle of getting stuck in the traffic and finding a place to park went on, finally ending up with dinner being order food online.



Day 5: Boating @ Darrang | Shnongpdeng | Dawki (Bangladesh Border)

With long drive ahead, started the day early at 7 am. With instructions from our host, took a detour via the state highway which is broader and sees less traffic. The drive was blissful barring initial few kms of Shillong city roads that were very steep and narrow. Arrived at our first stop - Krang Suri Falls  A short waterfall with a rich blue lagoon.





We could get close and take some under water shots before heading to next stop - Shnowpedong.

This is at the Bangladesh border. Last 10-15kms is a single lane due to long line of truckers blocking a lane while they wait to cross border. Mostly loaded with stones, they wait for clearance - a long wait indeed. Last proper road trip was a long time ago, back in 2015 - blogged here: https://www.team-bhp.com/forum/trave...eh-ladakh.html (XUV500: Road Trip from Delhi to Leh-Ladakh) . A long gap and a pandemic later, it was Meghalaya this time as it suited well on a one-week timeline.With Shillong as base, broad plan, Surat to Surat, was as follows:Day 1: Surat to Mumbai (Drop the cats at foster home)Day 2: Fly to Guwahati, drive and to Shillong (Zoom-Car)Day 3: Mawphlang - Sacred Forest | Wei Sawdong | Janailar Falls | Garden of Caves | NohKaLikai FallsDay 4: Mawryngkhang Trek (Bamboo Trail)Day 5: Boating @ Darrang | Shnongpdeng | Dawki (Bangladesh Border)Day 6: Drive to Tyrna| Trek to Rainbow Falls | Blue Lagoon | Home Stay at Nongriat for the nightDay 7: Double Decker Living Root Bridge | Trek up to Tyrna | NohKaLikai Falls | Drive back to GuwahatiDay 8: Fly to Mumbai | Drive to SuratThis was in no way an exhaustive tour of Meghalaya. Goal was to go easy and cover places at our own pace. Early November offers a pleasant weather, greenery and plenty of waterfalls that are yet to go dry post monsoon. Come December, Meghalaya gets drier.Temperatures in Nov in and around Shillong are between 10-25 deg C.: ~1100 Kms in Meghalaya, ~560Kms - Surat to Mumbai (To & Fro)Me, Wife and my SILMy 2 cats, Foxy and Tora, despite persistent requests, choose to relax at a Foster Home in Mumbai and did not join us further.Surat to Mumbai : 2016 Ford Figo TdciGuwahati Onwards : Creta Diesel (Zoom-car)Going by the latest reviews in the forum, I was prepared for the worse. Few alternatives to Zoom car were available at Guwahati. Decided to take my chances and booked a Swift to keep my risk at a minimum. One day before the booking start, got a call from Zoomcar informing that Swift was down for maintainance and I would be provided a free upgrade to either an Ecosport or Creta. Chose Creta as i was familiar with the Ecosport diesel and wanted to try something different.Pickup coordinates were provided few hrs before the trip start (thru app & sms) which was a multilevel parking in the heart of Guwahati City. A Zoomcar representative was available and helped me with the formalities. The KA registered Creta with about 1,17,000 Kms on the odo was waiting. Exteriors had many minor dents & scratches while the interiors were clean and mechanicals, tires, spares etc. were in good shape. Zoomcar App preloaded the cars condition sparing me the trouble of bringing it to their notice. Fuel was at 30%. Post pickup, received a message about speed governor in the car limiting its speed to 80 Kmph. In this part of the country thats good enough as I rarely exceed the limit. Out of curiosity I tested the limit a few times and did not feel any restriction.. Drop was equally seamless with no questions asked. I had returned the car with about 25% Fuel but wasnt charged for the difference either.Overall, a pleasant experience. I would not mind returning to Zoomcar again.Mumbai is a smooth 5 hr drive from Surat. My Cats are accustomed to car travel as this was their third time. While in car, they go into the cat basket placed on the rear seat and secured with mid seat belts. I do not let them out while in the car as cats could end up anywhere with their elusive nature and curiosity. After about 20 minutes of complaints, they slept well during the rest of the journey. 4 hrs. later we were on Ghodbunder road, luckily, not having to wait at the Fountain hotel Jn 30-45 min delay is the usual norm. Dropped the cats to the Foster home at Thane, and proceeded to my Aunts place for overnight stay. Next day's flight was early and we had to start at 4 am for Airport.Cab showed up early and we were on time at the Airport. Had to endure some waiting as Indigo flew from T2 and international flyers were in good numbers that morning. Baggage drops, security checks, and a good breakfast later, we were on our flight to Guwahati. Some reading and napping later, landed and drove to Zoomcar pickup location, completed the formalities, loaded the luggage, and drove to have lunch at Missing Kitchen in Ghuwati. The place has good reviews and is a modest setup where local food is served in traditional thalis. Tried a (tiny) sample of Bhoot Jolokia which is a part of the standard sides served. Bhoot Jolokia or Ghost pepper is a chilly grown in the region, which In 2007 the Guinness World Records, certified as the world's hottest chili pepper, 170 times hotter than Tabasco sauce. On a Scoville scale that measures the hotness of a chilly, this scores between 850,000 to 1,000,000 while a typical chilly would score around 10,000 tops!. It crawls down the throat like a fireball.Food in this part of the country is served in large portions. Typically, 1 plate is good for 2. After a sumptuous lunch, were on our way to Shillong.Ghuwati to Shillong a 100 km drive on NH6. Roads are in good shape with sparse traffic and offer gradients, slopes, & curves - a pleasantly engaging drive. Had to stop at Meghalaya border to register entry on the Mehgalaya Tourism App, post which, a permit was issued. (Vaccination or an RTPCR -ve report was a must, process took about 45 min due to poor network). From here, first stop at the Umiam Lake close to Shillong which offers a good view and photography spots. It is popular among locals as a evening hangout. Elevated walkways and tree houses at the place offer scenic view of the landscape.After spending about an hour, drove to our AirBnB at Shillong. On a Sunday evening, Shillong is peaceful with most places closing early including restaurants that close by 8 pm. Google maps led us through narrow serpentine roads, and we were at the destination by 5:30 pm. In the East, sun sets early and 5pm feels like 8 pm in the West. It is important to start early and end early as post 4:30 pm, most places in Meghalaya close due to requirement of daylight. Temperature during the night range between 12-14 deg C.We had booked The Garden at Langkyrding, Golf Links (AirBnB) and our Superhost was very helpful and provided valuable insights that helped fine-tune our itinerary over the coming days. Place was lavish with refrigerator stocked with fresh fruits, chopped veggies and an attached kitchen to self-cook meals / breakfast. As we were mostly traveling, we did not get to spend time at this beautiful place.As restaurants were due to close soon, we ordered dinner online through Netfoodish, the local equivalent of Zomato. (Swiggy does work).After a day long travel, we were deprived of sleep and hit the bed early.Day started with a self made breakfast of omelets, toast, muffins and coffee.Were ready to hit the roads by 8 am. By then morning traffic was buzzing, majority of it in the opposite direction towards the city. Our first stop was Mawphlang Sacred Grove, 27 kms from Shillong. Could make it out of the city comfortably. Most state roads here are two lane with traffic following each other and little opportunity to overtake. Villagers around Shillong commute daily to the Shillong market and return in the evening. 80% of the cars are A segment cars, largely 800s in immaculate condition. Generous upsizing of wheels and mods - some tasteful, some whacky, is a common sight.A related post on the forum on Shillong car culture is already on the forum here: https://www.team-bhp.com/forum/india...-shillong.html (Pics: The Car Culture in Shillong) About one hour's drive and a wrong turn and a u-turn later, we arrived at the sacred forest. We did not opt for the forest hike as we wanted to spend more time at other places planned during the day. Some quick clicks later we were on our way to Wei Sawdong Waterfall.Wei Sawdong situated on the outskirts of Cherrapunjee, is a three-tier waterfall. A 15-20 min descent takes you down to its base.Along the way there is a viewpoint where the waterfall can be seen in its entirety, a mesmerizing play of blue water with the greenery around.Descend further and the base of the falls is equally beautiful.We spent quite some time here and met a solo traveler from Bangalore who recommended Janailar Falls which we decided to proceed next. Idea was to avoid the routine places and the rush and enjoy the calm instead. Janailar falls is about 5 kms from Wei Sawdong and is less frequented by tourists.Jalinar Falls (below): We had the place all to ourself and spent a good 30 min relaxing amidst the natural bliss.It was 3:30pm already and we were running short of time with two more places to cover. Drove to Garden of Caves which is a trail along a collection of caves. We were not too keen to spend time here as the place lacked natural touch and was more like a regular tourist hangout. We covered the trail quickly but could not make it to NohKaLikai Falls by sundown though it was just 16 kms. Decided to head back and have dinner at a good place in Shillong. On our way, browsed through few restaurant reviews and zeroed in on few options.While we expected to reach Shillong by 7, we actually ended-up circling around thanks to Google-maps which does not get Shillong traffic and its roads right, constantly leading us through narrow by-lanes and sometimes dead-ends. A lot of traffic and reversing and U-turns later we decided to skip the restaurant plan and headed to our AirBnB. Dinner was ordered online.In Shillong, I would happily trade a Creta for an 800 If I had to endure the roads on a daily basis. Narrow Serpentine roads, Massive gradients, Stop and Go traffic and Nonexistent Parking - all of these are a daily affair during peak hours. People drive sensibly but the infrastructure just doesnt exist and crawling traffic is the way. If you plan to explore Shillong market or its popular restaurants, leave your car behind and take a taxi or better walk in the central market areas.While original plan was to visit Dawki on Day-4, we swapped it with Day-5 and do the Bamboo Trail instead. This meant less driving and an easy schedule. Bamboo Trail (Mawryngkhang Trek) is 53 kms from Shillong. It's is a 3 kms trek (one-way) through numerous bamboo bridges that cross over blue water lagoons, greenery and places that offer beautiful view of the valley.Start of the bamboo trail:One of the many bamboo bridges along the trail:Along the trail, there are few local shops sell water, cold drinks, biscuits, chocolates etc.A little friend along the way:This waterfall, a slight de-tour from the trail is not to be missed. The place with it's roaring falls and the view of valley is a splendid experience.Typical to the region, water was turquoise and with the greenery around, it's a treat to the eyes.Some sections of the trail are literally on the edge of the cliff and walking over them is a thrilling experience. Those with acrophobia might find it challenging.Notice my foot at the edge of the bridge. Though made of bamboo, this section of the trail is re-enforced with concrete pillars under the structure.Literally walk on the edge at a few places:More views of the valley:About 75% into the trail, a viewpoint gives a good 180 deg view. From here, end of the trail, which is a rock at a lower elevation can be spotted.Stairs leading to the rock which marks the end of the trail - quite a steep climb.Stairway to heaven!About 3 hours and plenty of clicks later, headed back to Shillong. Plan was to be in Shillong by 5pm to beat the peak traffic and make it to Police bazar, the heart of Shillong where most of the restaurants are. While we reached the city outskirts early, same cycle of getting stuck in the traffic and finding a place to park went on, finally ending up with dinner being order food online.With long drive ahead, started the day early at 7 am. With instructions from our host, took a detour via the state highway which is broader and sees less traffic. The drive was blissful barring initial few kms of Shillong city roads that were very steep and narrow. Arrived at our first stop - Krang Suri Falls  A short waterfall with a rich blue lagoon.We could get close and take some under water shots before heading to next stop - Shnowpedong.This is at the Bangladesh border. Last 10-15kms is a single lane due to long line of truckers blocking a lane while they wait to cross border. Mostly loaded with stones, they wait for clearance - a long wait indeed. Last edited by nikhil.neon : 8th December 2021 at 12:50 .
Recessed lighting in the form of can lights, downlights, and pot lights has been around since the 1940s. Its a great way to light a room because the source is directly overhead, largely hidden in your ceiling. Cheap recessed lighting, however, can be industrial ugly. Look up and youll see not just a bare bulb in a hole, but the springs securing the trim ring to the can. The Cree Connected Max Retrofit Downlight not only fixes that look, it delivers dimmable smart lighting in both full color and tunable white. And if youve been using incandescent bulbs in those fixtures, youll save some money on your electric bill because Cree downlights use energy-efficient LEDs.

Crees downlight is a 75-watt equivalent floodlight that produce up to 850 lumens of brightness while consuming just 11 watts of electricity at full power. Its part of a family that includes a dimmable white (but not tunable white) A19 bulb, a color and tunable white A19 bulb (which we reviewed in late 2020), and color bulbs in A21, BR30, and PAR38 form factors. These all connect to your Wi-Fi network, so they dont require a hub, and you set up and control them from Crees app. They can also be controlled with voice commands (using Alexa, Google Assistant, or Siri Shortcuts) or with a Samsung SmartThings hub. The family is not, however, compatible with the Apple HomeKit ecosystem.

Michael Brown / IDG The typical ceiling can is ugly even before you remove its trim ring.

This review is part of TechHives coverage of the best smart bulbs , where youll find reviews of the competitions offerings, plus a buyers guide to the features you should consider when shopping for this type of product.

Full color and tunable white

The cans white light can be tuned from a warm 2200 Kelvin to a very cool 6500K, or you can choose between 16 million colors. The downlights fit either 5- or 6-inch cans, but before you run out and buy one, check your existing cans to make sure they have E26 medium screw-in bases, versus fluorescent fixtures with ballasts. Crees product is not compatible with the latter (compact fluorescents with E26 bases are fine).

The California home where I tested them had a mixture of both, due to a well-intentioned state building code that requires 50 percent of a homes permanently installed lighting to be high-efficacy fixtures. When we built the home in 2007, fluorescent cans were the only affordable game in town, so they were in both bathrooms and my kitchen.

Michael Brown / IDG Spring-steel ears hold the Cree Connected Max Retrofit Downlight in your existing ceiling can.

The room where I had my pool table, however, had five cans suitable for retrofit and I replaced all five with Crees fixtures. This gave me an opportunity to see how multiple smart downlights would behave (more on that later).

The Cree downlights are incredibly easy to install. The first step is to remove the bulbs and the spring-mounted trim rings from the existing cans, a step that took longer than installing the retrofits. If your cans are mounted in a drywall ceiling, expect a bit of dust and debris to fall while youre doing this.

The next step is to screw a pigtail wire that has an E26 base at one end into the cans socket. This pigtail has a bayonet connector at the other end that youll plug into the Cree downlight. Once youve done that, you push the downlight up into the can, compressing three spring-steel ears in the process. The resulting tension keeps the retrofit cans in place, and a built-in trim ring covers any rough edges around the hole in the ceiling. Now when you look up at the can, youll see just the trim ring and the glass lens covering the LED.

Cree Lighting Your existing ceiling can will need to have an E26 screw-in base; these retrofit cans arent compatible with fluorescent fixtures.

You can install and configure the downlights in Crees mobile app one at a time, or you can install all of them at once and then configure each light individually. The downlights have both Bluetooth and Wi-Fi radios onboard, and the first step after physical installation is to pair the cans to the app via Bluetooth. The app will display all the cans it finds.

Michael Brown / IDG This follow-the-sun mode is just one of many ways you can automate the Cree Connected Max Retrofit Downlights.

Tapping on one of the icons in the app will select that can for further configuration, and this will cause the relevant can to slowly flash on and off, so you know which one youre working with. The Cree app will display the Wi-Fi network your phone is connected to and then connect the can to that network. You can give the can a unique name at this point.

Note, however, that Cree Connected Max products can connect only to 2.4GHz networks. If you have a dual-band router that uses the same SSID for both networks, you might need to either turn its 5GHz network off temporarily or give the two networks different SSIDs. I used the former technique with a Linksys Velop mesh network installed at the home and the installation proceed without a hitch from there.

Once the cans are installed and added to your Wi-Fi network, you can control them individually or arrange them into groups and control all the lights in the group simultaneously. You can also define a home, rooms within the home, and assign lights or light groups to those rooms.

Programmability options

Crees app has a robust collection of programming options, including a follow-the-sun setting that will adjust the LEDs white color temperature in accordance with the position of the sun. The LEDs will slowly brighten with an energizingly cool light in the morning, slowly shift to a warmer relaxing hue as the sun moves across the sky, and then dim and turn off when its time for bed. This feature can be fine tuned for each day of the week, and the cans can be programmed to behave differently on the days you work and the days youre off. While controlling multiple cans at once, I noticed very little lagthey all changed in close sync to each other.

You can also create other types of schedules as well as create custom lighting scenes or use predefined ones (Relax, Night Light, and Fireplace are the among available presets). You can sync the lights to music, too, but this last feature is the weakest since it depends on your smartphones microphone to listen to the beat.

Cree Connected Max Retrofit Downlight: A great value

You could install smart LED bulbs in your ceiling cans and call it a day, but they wont make the cans themselves look any more attractive. Cree Connected Max Retrofit Downlights dont cost much more than smart bulbs, and they'll look prettier in your ceiling to boot. Apart from not supporting HomeKit, these cans are broadly compatible with other smart home ecosystems, and the Cree Connected app is reliable and easy to use. Even more importantly, these LEDs produce high-quality color and tunable white light that can be dimmed over a very wide range.
Google Earth Pro on desktop is now free and available to download for Windows, macOS and Linux. Explore worldwide satellite imagery and 3D buildings and terrain for hundreds of cities. Zoom to your house or anywhere else, then dive in for a 360 perspective with Street View.

For users with advanced feature needs, Google Earth Pro lets you Import and export GIS data, and go back in time with historical imagery. Some of the most compelling features of Google Earth include:

Advanced Measurements: Measure parking lots and land developments with polygon area measure, or determine affected radius with circle measure.

High-resolution printing: Print Images up to 4800x3200 px resolution.

Exclusive Pro data layers: Demographics, parcels, and traffic count.

Spreadsheet Import: Ingest up to 2500 addresses at a time, assigning placemarks and style templates in bulk.

GIS import: Visualize ESRI shapefiles (.shp) and MapInfo (.tab) files.

Movie-Maker: Export Windows Media and Quicktime HD movies, up to 1920x1080 resolution.

Create maps with advanced tools:

Compute distances and areas using measurement tools

Use Movie Maker to produce media collateral

Print high-resolution images for presentations and reports

Import large vector image files to quickly map GIS data

Map addresses with the Spreadsheet Importer

Google Earth Pro

Businesses, governments and professional users from around the world use Google Earth Pro data visualization, site planning and information sharing tools.

Get Productive

With the advanced measuring and drawing tools in Google Earth Pro, you can plan, measure and visualize a site without even leaving your desk.

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Create videos in Google Earth Pro that can be shared with stakeholders and customers, providing a unique perspective for any location-based project.

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View exotic locales like Maui and Paris as well as points of interest such as local restaurants, hospitals, schools, and more.

Want to know more about a specific location? Dive right in -- Google Earth combines satellite imagery, maps and the power of Google Search to put the world's geographic information at your fingertips.

Here are some key features of "Google Earth":

Fly from sace to your neighborhood. Type in an address and zoom right in.

Search for schools, parks, restaurants, and hotels. Get driving directions.

Tilt and rotate the view to see 3D terrain and buildings.

Save and share your searches and favorites. Even add your own annotations.

View satellite imagery, maps, terrain, 3D buildings, galaxies far in space, and the deepest depths of the ocean -- right from the desktop. Google Earth Pro includes the same easy-to-use features and imagery of Google Earth, but with additional professional tools designed specifically for business users.

Features:

Print images In Google Earth screen resolution only. In Google Earth Pro premium high resolution images.

Import GIS Images In Google Earth manually geo-located. In Google Earth Pro automatically geo-located.

Import large image files In Google Earth up to max texture size. In Google Earth Pro more than max texture size.



Regionate large datasets

Batch geocode addresses

Import GIS data

Access demographic, parcel & traffic data layers

Create premium movies

Measure area of a polygon or circle

Map multiple points at once

Viewshed tool

Map making tool

What's New:
Prime Minister Boris Johnson's Plan B is set to impose new restrictions for people in England beginning Dec. 10 amid the threat of the Omicron variant of COVID-19.

The prime minister, however, is receiving backlash especially in light of allegations that the staff of 10 Downing Street held a Christmas party last year amid lockdown restrictions.

PM Boris Johnson's Plan B

PM Boris Johnson's Plan B is set to implement new rules beginning Friday in an effort to limit the spread of the Omicron variant in England.

According to a report by the BBC, face masks will be required in more public places starting on Friday. Beginning Monday, Dec. 13, citizens will be asked to work from home where possible.

On Wednesday, Dec. 15, the NHS Covid Pass will be required in the following locations:

Nightclubs

Indoor unseated venues that can accommodate more than 500 people

Outdoor unseated venues that can accommodate more than 4,000 people

Events that have more 10,000 attendees

PM Johnson said that Christmas parties and nativity plays may go on as planned provided that the government's COVID-19 guidance is followed.

Per the BBC report, other nations that are part of the United Kingdom have their own COVID-19 regulations. For example, those in Wales and Scotland have already been told to work from home while Covid passes are required for different places in both Scotland and Wales, as well as Northern Ireland.

Related Article: COVID-19 Omicron Variant: How To Protect Yourself from Being Infected? Here are Ways

PM Johnson is Receiving Backlash

The prime minister is receiving backlash for his Plan B, specifically due to the timing of it. According to the BBC report, one MP, William Wragg, has "questioned Mr. Johnson over the timing of the Plan B announcement, suggesting it was a diversion from allegations over Downing Street parties during restrictions last year."

Per a separate report by the BBC, staff at 10 Downing Street, the official residence of the prime minister, has been caught on video joking about holding a Christmas party amid lockdown restrictions.

PM Johnson has since apologized for the video and his former spokesperson has already stepped down.

Police, however, will not be investigating the incident due to lack of evidence, according to the report.

Omicron Variant of COVID-19

Not much is known about the new Omicron variant of COVID-19, which was first detected in South Africa. Per the BBC, there are 568 confirmed Omicron cases in the U.K. as of press time.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), it is not yet clear whether Omicron is more transmissible. It is also still clear whether the new variant can cause more severe disease.

"Preliminary data suggests that there are increasing rates of hospitalization in South Africa, but this may be due to increasing overall numbers of people becoming infected, rather than a result of specific infection with Omicron," said the WHO.

Last month, it was reported here on Tech Times that Moderna is working on a vaccine for the Omicron variant.

Read Also: Singapore MOH Claims Existing COVID-19 Vaccines Work Against Omicron! But Recovered Patients Could Still Be Infected

This article is owned by Tech Times

Written by Isabella James

 2021 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
(Photo : Pierre Crom/Getty Images) AMSTERDAM, NETHERLANDS - DECEMBER 02: The passenger of a flight from South Africa is tested for the Coronavirus at Amsterdam Schiphol airport on December 2, 2021 in Amsterdam, Netherlands. The Netherlands and other nations worldwide temporarily banned most travellers from South Africa after a new variant of Covid-19 named Omicron was discovered. Omicron has sparked worries around the world that it could resist vaccinations and prolong the nearly two-year Covid-19 pandemic.

The new Omicron variant is the latest variant of concern that experts first found in South Africa. While this dangerous strain sparked fear among the public, another stealth virus of its kind emerged.

The newly-discovered sibling appears to have the ability to surpass PCR tests which makes it harder for the experts to track the COVID-19 in a patient.

Stealth Omicron Variant

It has not taken long before the omicron variant's sibling comes out as another headache to think for the experts. The two lineages of the new Omicron lineages BA.1 and BA.2 differ on their genetic make up that's why they "may behave differently," per University College London Genetics Institute director Francois Balloux.

According to a report by IFLScience on Thursday, Dec. 9, the omicron offshoot was discovered when the researchers took note of the missing gene markers. The experts refer to the one used by commercial COVID-19 test kits, the S gene.

Per South Africa's Center for epidemic Response and Innovation director, Tulio de Oliveria, his team could quickly detect the new variant at that time to carry out studies about its rate of spread.

When the experts spotted that the BA.2 no longer lacked the missing S gene, they concluded that this stealth omicron sibling could now be more difficult to identify using a PCR test.

Related Article: PM Boris Johnson's Plan B to Add Restrictions in England Beginning Dec. 10 Due to Omicron

No Need to Panic For New Omicron Sibling

In an interview with The Daily Beast earlier this week, the head of a gene lab based in the University of California, Rob Knight, said that there's no need to panic regarding this. He added that they could still detect the virus through PCR.

While the researcher believes that this omicron lineage can be harder to recognize, Knight clarified that identifying it from the Delta strain is the challenge.

The capability to know the new lineage could be hampered by the detailed genetic sequencing, which is a much more complicated test than a typical COVID-19 test. So far, the stealth omicron sibling was only seen in seven patients at the time.

Emma Hodcroft, an evolutionary geneticist, told the Financial Times that there may be many omicron strains that we could ever think of. Still, she felt that there's no big burden yet for the BA.2.

In connection to this, Keith Jerome, a virologist from the University of Washington, said that he was not worried about this baby variant. While it is capable of hiding for a few days, they could immediately detect it through random sequencing.

How to Stay Protected From Omicron

Although COVID-19 antibody treatments such as Glaxo's sotrovimab are seen to be effective against the new variant, experts said that people should continue their usual ways of preventing the viral spread.

Last month, Tech Times reported that you should consider four things to protect yourself from further omicron infection. Follow these simple reminders.

Wear face masks when going outside.

Get vaccinated at the nearest health center.

Practice social distancing.

Observe proper and regular hygiene.

Read Also: COVID-19 Omicron: Pfizer Antibodies Partial Protection on Variant, Early Study Reports

This article is owned by Tech Times

Written by Joseph Henry

 2021 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
(Photo : by CHRISTOF STACHE/AFP via Getty Images) The logo of US tech giant Apple can be seen on an Apple store in Munich, southern Germany. - Apple said it planned to invest more than one billion euros ($1.2 billion) in Germany and open Europe's biggest research facility on mobile wireless semiconductors and software. The company said it would make Munich its "European Silicon Design Centre", creating hundreds of new jobs at a facility for 5G and wireless technologies.



Apple Store in Texas was closed on Dec. 8 after an outbreak of COVID-19 positive cases have been reported among its employees in the said location after its massive Black Friday sale last Nov. 26.

Apple Store Texas Close Down and COVID-19 Outbreak

As per the report by NBC, the iPhone maker decided to close down the Apple Store in Southlake Town Square in Texas after its employees shared that they were positive from the novel coronavirus.

The news outlet further added that the store manager went on to announce the COVID-19 outbreak among the other employees of the store via a staff Webex meeting last Wednesday, Dec. 8.

It is worth noting that the Apple Store in Southlake Town Square has a total of 151 employees, according to the news story by 9to5Mac.

At least 22 of them reported that they contracted COVID-19. The tally of cases among their peers has gone up since the massive Black Friday sale last November.

The manager of the store said that employees who have received a positive test result from COVID-19 would have to return to work again after ten days of isolation have passed.

Not to mention that the return to work requires them to be free of any symptoms for the next 48 hours as well.

On top of that, the store manager also added that all employees of the Apple Store in Texas would be required to take their rapid anti-test before the store will reopen again on Monday, Dec. 13.

Apple Store Black Friday COVID-19 Outbreak

Although the Cupertino giant has laid out some stringent precautionary regulations among its workforce, some of the employees of the Texas Apple Store are claiming that they are not subscribing to these rules strictly.

NBC further spoke with the current and former employees of the Apple Store location.

The employees claimed that the manager of the store reached out to encourage them to report to work even after they had notified the manager that they were not feeling well.

Two of them have taken the COVID-19 survey from Apple, which ended up with a result saying that they should not report for work. However, the manager allegedly still encouraged them to do otherwise.

According to the news outlet, the manager of the said Apple Store location has yet to respond to any comments.

Read Also: Apple Self Service Repair to Arrive by 2022; iPhone, Mac Users To Receive Online Manuals, Gadget Components, and More

Apple Store and Face Masks

Meanwhile, last Nov. 5, Apple Stores in over 100 locations have already dropped the mask mandate, at least for their customers.

On the other hand, the employees of the retail stores are still required to wear their face masks during work hours.

Related Article: Mobile App Purchases Reach $133 Billion in 2021 | Apple Store Generates More Revenue than Google Marketplace

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Written by Teejay Boris

 2021 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
(Photo : by DARPA from Wiki Commons ) Chinas Hypersonic Aircraft Engine unveils its prototype that was based on the design of NASAs scrapped ambitious project way back in the 90s.

China's hypersonic aircraft engine based its design on the scrapped and rejected a proposal from a Chinese-born engineer of NASA way back in the 90s.

A group of researchers in China have already unveiled a prototype and tested its hypersonic flight engine, as per the report by Interesting Engineering.

It turns out that the radical redesign of the hypersonic flight engine is based on an abandoned project of NASA over 20 years ago already.

Hypersonic Aircraft Engine Design from NASA's Scrapped Project

The hypersonic engine design was first introduced by a former engineer of NASA or the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Ming Han Tang, back in the late 1990s.

It is worth noting that Tang used to be the chief engineer of the hypersonic program of the United States space agency, according to the news story of South China Morning Post.

While Tang was still leading the US hypersonic program, he proposed a radical design of super-fast aircraft, which was then known as the Two-Stage Vehicle or TSV X-plan design.

The proposal of the former NASA engineer has become the center of the Boeing Manta X-47C program back then.

However, the US government decided to scrap the ambitious project of the Chinese engineer even before testing of the design commenced.

The government attributed the sudden termination of the project due to its hefty costs to produce. Not to mention that there were some technical issues that the project also faced.

Hypersonic Aircraft Engine Design

The design of the TSV X-plane that Tang proposed to NASA back in the 90s is notable as it goes beyond how hypersonic aircraft are made.

Instead of having the engine of the aircraft on its underside, like any similar hypersonic plane, Tang's radical design included two separate engines on each side of the aircraft.

On top of that, the two engines work differently at lower speeds. Both of them would function as if they were any turbine jet engine.

On the other hand, it could shift to a hyper-speed mode that allows that aircraft to accelerate in an impressive performance, which is five times the speed of sound.

Read Also: NASA Introduces Next-Generation Asteroid Impact Monitoring System To Assess The Impact Risk Of Asteroids To Earth

China's Hypersonic Aircraft

This time around, Chinese researchers based their hypersonic engine design on the more than 20-year-old proposal.

The researchers were able to do so as the blueprint for the Boeing Manta X-47C program had already been declassified by NASA back in 2011.

The group that works on the prototype of the new hypersonic engine design is composed of Profession Tan Huijun of the Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics and his colleagues.

Elsewhere, back on Sept. 26, China proposed a hypersonic missile that could wipe out both electricity and communication lines in just ten seconds.

Meanwhile, the US is also working on its hypersonic missile projects.

Related Article: NASA to Unveil X-Ray Observing Mission to Make Black Hole Detection Easier | How to Watch Live Launch

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(Photo : Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images) WASHINGTON, DC - MARCH 09: Elon Musk, founder and chief engineer of SpaceX speaks at the 2020 Satellite Conference and Exhibition March 9, 2020 in Washington, DC. Musk answered a range of questions relating to SpaceX projects during his appearance at the conference.



Elon Musk graded school papers from the Wharton School of Business of the University of Pennsylvania, way back in 1995 before the now-billionaire founded his companies, Tesla and SpaceX, has been sold for a whopping price tag.

As per the report by Business Insider, a former student of UPenn's Wharton School of Business just made thousands of dollars from his college assignments. It turns out that Musk graded his papers while he was attending the university.

Elon Musk Graded School Papers

During that time, Musk was still a teaching assistant who helped grade some papers and exams at the Wharton School of Business.

Back then, the billionaire was still a student of UPenn, wherein he was studying economics and physics.

However, at the same time, the founder of Tesla and SpaceX was also spending some of his time as a teaching assistant for the class of the late professor Myles Bass.

The class that the Tesla boss used to be a teaching assistant was entitled "Entrepreneurship: Implementation and Operations."

Little did one of the students in the class know that Musk was one of the teaching assistants who graded his papers.

The former student of the class, Brian Thomas, went on to auction the coursework that had the initials and name of the billionaire.

Thomas then auctioned his school papers to the RR Auctions in Boston for it to be sold online, hoping that it had some potential value.

Elon Musk and RR Auctions

According to the news story by CNN, RR Auctions has once sold a photo of the CEO and founder SpaceX that has his autograph to the tune of $1,383.

On top of that, the auction firm also previously sold notable items with writings from iconic figures like Steve Jobs and Albert Einstein, which ended the auction with hefty price tags going over a million dollars.

Read Also: Neuralink Founder Elon Musk Says It Can 'Safely' Start Implanting Its Brain Chips In Humans By 2022

Elon Musk Graded School Papers Auction

This time around, a college school paper, which Musk himself has commented on and graded, has sold nearly $8,000.

The first document on the auction was an exam booklet that bears the initials of Musk from its front page. Not to mention that the billionaire also left some comments and markings on it.

In one of the answers of Thomas wherein he used profanity to argue about "exit strategy," Musk marked the phrase as "graphic," deducting two points for his word use.

The other document in the auction included checkmarks from the SpaceX and Tesla CEO, but there were no comments on it.

Related Article: SpaceX Starship Update Coming This Month Says Elon Musk, Twitter Fan Shows Progress of Starbase

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(Photo : Dan Kitwood/Getty Images)

In another compelling year for the trillion-dollar crypto industry, Singapore hits top spot to become the world's most crypto-ready country at the end of 2021.

In Coincub's latest ranking of the world's most dynamic crypto countries for 2021/Q4, Singapore goes to number one with Australia rising swiftly up the ranking to number two.

READ ALSO: Cryptocurrency Terms 2021 You Need to Know Before Venturing

Sergiu Hamsa, CEO of Coincub, the producer of the quarterly crypto rankings says:

"Events are moving at breakneck speed in the crypto economy. In the last few months alone, bitcoin hit new price highs, driving renewed demand worldwide, El Salvador declared bitcoin as legal currency and China banned it altogether. Keeping track of these rapid changes is what Coincub does on a country-by-country basis to rank the world's most progressive crypto economies - and provide investors with the knowledge to make sensible crypto decisions in their own countries."

Coincub's ranking criteria focuses on positive government legislation, but also the willingness of mainstream banks to offer custodial services. These two factors demonstrate that traditional institutions are buying into the crypto space within a country.

Unexpected events also shook the crypto world in 2021. In June, El Salvador (9th place) made the groundbreaking decision to declare bitcoin a form of legal tender. This is a giant step into the unknown which established economies are reluctant to take. No other country has declared crypto as legal currency, and most categorise it as a digital asset, commodity or property.

At #3 is the USA with a world-leading 1,821 bitcoin nodes and 25,956 crypto ATMs. The US lost its number one spot due to uncertain legislation. China passed its most comprehensive ban yet on crypto trading and transacting, formally ended its involvement in the crypto economy and relinquished its position as the world's leading bitcoin mining country. China is now ranked last, closely followed by Russia following its ban on the use of crypto for buying goods and services.

Europe's leading crypto country is Germany at #4, with Sweden, Portugal and Switzerland at #6, #7 and #8 respectively. All have a very open and positive institutional stance on crypto, and booming crypto trading figures.

Rising countries to watch next quarter

Sweden: World's most cashless society - trialing CBDC e-Krona

Japan: Possible reduction of tax on crypto gains

Denmark: Crypto hot spot for trading and spending - but held back by inadequate tax laws

India: New legislation being debated to transform the safety and security of crypto investing for its huge population of crypto advocates

Coincub's analysts present a holistic view for investors and interested spectators alike. Compiled on a country by country basis, the country ranking includes pure trading data and qualitative information - including the latest positive or negative legislation - to give a clearer picture of the crypto economy in a given country.

See the full coincub.com 2021/Q4 country ranking here.

RELATED ARTICLE: Top Crypto & Blockchain Projects to Follow in 2022

 2021 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
Japan announced that its advanced Type 12 missile, a truck-reliant weapon, would receive some major enhancements. These upgrades would allow this rocket to be used in the Asian country's current aircraft fleet.

On the other hand, the enhancements are also expected to allow the Type 12 missile to fly farther and higher than its current distance and altitude limits.

Right now, Japan is just one of the countries that are making drastic efforts to expand their defense technology sector. Recently, TechTimes reported that the U.S. Navy would release a ray gun laser weapon by 2023.

This innovation is expected to take down enemy drones more efficiently. On the other hand, China's new nuclear-capable missile was recently announced to be tested by the giant Asian nation.

Japan Enhances T 12 Truck-Reliant Missile

According to The National Interest's latest report, the Japan Self-Defence Forces explained that the new T 12 missile enhancement is one of its efforts to improve its defenses.

Also Read: US Hypersonic Missile Development Program Arrives! Defense Department Says 40 Tests To Be Conducted

JSDF added that the new version of the war rocket would not have any offensive role. This means that Japan is not planning to use it in other agendas aside from defending its soil.

As of the moment, T 12 missiles are less advanced compared to China's new anti-ship rockets. However, Japan explained that it would soon modify its rocket's range by extending the missile's wings.

This innovation would allow it to fly further and at higher altitudes as well. You can visit this link to know more details about the enhancements.

US Also Makes Efforts to Enhance Its Defense System

While Japan is focusing on improving its T 12 missiles, the United States launched a new project, which would allow it to understand how lasers can be used to destroy or counter hypersonic missiles targeting America.

The U.S. Department of Defense would work with the Missouri University of Science and Technology's students in the new defense program, as reported by Missouri S&T 150.

For more news updates about defense technologies and other similar innovations, always keep your tabs open here at TechTimes.

Related Article: China is Ramping Up Efforts to Produce 1000 Nukes in the Next Few Years: Report

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Written by: Griffin Davis

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Atomicos 2021 report shows a European tech ecosystem growing faster than ever

We are approaching the end of the year 2021 with great news for the European tech sector. According to the latest Atomico report on the State of European Tech 2021, Europe is solidly positioned as a global tech player in 2021, with a record $100 billion in capital invested, 98 new unicorns, and the greatest start-up pipeline in history, now on par with the US.

The report also showed that European tech ecosystem is expanding faster and producing more value than ever before, contributing $1 trillion of value in the first 8 months of 2021, achieving an accumulated worth of $3T, and triplicating its value in less than three years.

This year we can also see a shot of optimism from investors following a dull 2019 and a drop in 2020. When asked how they felt about the future of European tech compared to a year ago, 75% stated they feel more optimistic. A similar figure can be found in techUK's Digital Economy Monitor Q3 2021, with 77% of techUK members believing that the outlook for companies in the tech sector will improve over the following year.

Atomicos report also shows that there is a new generation of entrepreneurs that place social and environmental impact at the heart of their mission. Consequently, Planet Positive tech is on track to raise $10 billion in 2021, capturing 11% of total funding this year and at a rate six times faster than in 2017.

However, there is still work to be done for European tech. Difficulties in accessing the right talent for tech roles, obstacles for raising capital for some tech companies, and a substantial gender funding gap remain harsh realities for the European tech ecosystem.

How did the UKs tech ecosystem perform in 2021?

The findings of Atomico's report are consistent with the findings of both Tech Nation report 2021 and techUK's Digital Economy Monitor Q3 2021, showing that the UK tech sector had a strong year in 2021, and has positioned itself as Europe's leading tech ecosystem.

Capital invested in UK tech companies: Over the last five years, the total amount of capital invested in UK tech companies has nearly reached $75 billion. This is more than double the amount invested in Germany and France, the second and third largest countries. Projections show that the UK tech sector will raise nearly $27 billion in 2021, doubling what was raised in 2020.

The UK is the leading European nation in unicorn creation: European unicorn firms increased from 223 at the end of 2020 to 321 at the time of the release of the report. The United Kingdom remains Europe's greatest unicorn producer, with now having 100 unicorns in total (a third of total European unicorns).

UK mega rounds are generating a record amount of funding: In the first nine months of 2021, there were 68 rounds of $100 million or more in the UK, accounting for a third of all rounds in Europe. Moreover, London's status as the leading European tech hub in terms of total capital invested was further confirmed in 2021. In the first nine months of 2021, the city raised $18.4 billion, which is 2.6 times more than Berlin, which came in second position.

UK companies benefit from disproportionate access to VC investors: Despite generating only 14% of European GDP and having only 12% of Europe's population, the UK raised 30% of Europe's venture capital funds. This translates into more local funding available for companies in the UK compared with other European countries.

London is not the only UK tech Hub leading in Europe: According to the report, Cambridge has the greatest unicorn density of any small city in Europe (cities with less than 500,000 residents), due to a high concentration of talent.

Challenges for the future of European tech ecosystem

The report also highlighted some of the obstacles that tech businesses are facing, which may jeopardise the sector's ability to growth in the next years.

Despite the unprecedent increase of capital invested in the European digital sector, the hurdles of raising capital should not be overlooked, with almost one-fifth of founders saying it has become harder to raise capital in 2021; this figure is higher (26 percent) among women and non-white founders.

The large gender funding gap is still a stark reality in the European tech sector. Since 2017, female entrepreneurs have raised the smallest share of total funding, falling from 2.4 percent last year to 1.1 percent this year, and with 49 percent of female founders believing that being a woman hampered their ability to get funding.

The report also highlighted the challenges that businesses face when it comes to recruiting tech roles with the right talent. Companies reported that at least 37% of tech jobs in the UK are very difficult to fill, 37% of UK-based founders feel that the depth of the talent pool is lower than a year ago, and 61% of founders say that it has become more difficult to attract fresh talent in the UK in the last year.

Getting these challenges right, while maximising the opportunities will be vital to ensure the tech sector can play its fullest part in the recovery from COVID-19. Building on these successes will require smart policy making and regulation to foster further growth and the expansion of the benefits of the digital economy to other sectors in Europe and the UK.

Read Atomicos full report, the State of European tech 2021 here.




While use of the states simulated school performance scores will be limited because of pandemic impacts, the Lafayette Parish School System is claiming a victory from the numbers after Early College Academy made gains to become the states highest performing school.

The simulated scores, which were shared with school districts last week, are based on LEAP 2025 standardized testing from spring 2021. Standardized tests werent given in 2020 because of school closures tied to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Louisiana Department of Education leaders shared caveats that the results should be used primarily for information and planning purposes. The data isnt directly comparable to previous years, the state said, because of higher than average non-participation rates in state testing, modified student growth measurements and waivers on graduation requirements across the state, among other reasons.

School performance scores plunge in pandemic school year, especially for virtual learners Nearly three out of four public schools and districts showed drops in their school performance scores in the pandemic-plagued 2020-21 school y

Less emphasis is also being placed on the data because the calculations will not be used to assign performance letter grades on the traditional A-F scale for either schools or districts this year. Louisiana was one of 47 states to receive a waiver to shelve official school performance tallies for the year from the U.S. Department of Education.

While the data comes with conditions, the Lafayette Parish School System praised Early College Academy for its continued upward growth and strong performance.

Superintendent Irma Trosclair in a statement praised the ECA students for continuing to rise to the occasion of meeting serious intellectual challenges and school leadership for having a solid academic plan in place and staying focused on achieving the goals of that plan.

Early College Academy, which was tied with Patrick F. Taylor Science and Technology Academy in Jefferson Parish and Caddo Parish Magnet High School for the states second highest performance score in 2019, scored 132.7 points in the numerical rating category for 2021, netting the school an A rating in a normal year and outpacing other schools to take over the top performing spot from Benjamin Franklin High School in New Orleans.

ECAs performance increased by .8 points when compared to 2019s report, per state data.

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Early College Academy, where students attend classes at South Louisiana Community College and graduate with a high school diploma and associate's degree, has been a repeat strong performer for the district. In fall 2019, the school was recognized as a National Blue Ribbon School in the exemplary high performing schools category.

Louisiana's top school board could pick new leader amid investigation of emergency contracts Louisiana's top school board may pick a president this month against the backdrop of an investigation that has divided current president Sandy

Three years ago, we set a goal to be the best school in the state; today, our efforts have paid off. Our teachers and students take teaching and learning seriously, but we also maintain a healthy work hard, play hard mentalityWe know we have more room for improvement, but, today, we are going to savor the feeling of being number one! Principal Alex Melton said in a prepared statement.

LPSS overall was one of 17 school districts that saw their simulated scores grow compared to performance from the 2018-2019 school year, in a pool of 68 parish and municipality-based districts. Among those that saw increases, Lafayette had the fifth-highest point growth, the data showed.

The Lafayette Parish School System saw a 2.7 point increase in the combined district performance score, rising from a 78.9 in 2019 to an 81.6 in 2021, which would keep the district in the B scoring category in a normal year.

First LEAP scores are out. See how LPSS students fared during the year of COVID Initial LEAP testing data released this week showed widespread declines in students achieving mastery across subjects around the state, includ

The superintendent in a statement praised the hard work of teachers, staff, students and families for their steps to grow and prevent learning loss during the pandemic. She said the district recognizes that significant work remains and leaders are working diligently to create as many opportunities for remediation and enrichment as possible.

I am extremely proud of our school system, which despite many barriers to learning, pushed hard for students. While we celebrate the overall increase in student performance, we understand the importance of the critical work that lies ahead and urge our entire Lafayette community to continue to work collaboratively in the best interest of the students we serve. We must remain focused on making decisions that impact our students in the most positive way, Trosclair said.

School-level results were split roughly in half, with 21 schools and programs seeing their simulated scores increase over their 2018-2019 school year performance and 20 schools seeing a decline.

One school, Evangeline Elementary, maintained the same score. Two schools, Dr. Raphael A. Baranco Elementary and Martial F. Billeaud Elementary, did not have data to assess either growth or decline because both opened in the 2019-2020 school year.
Though it was posted more than two years ago, a story relaying Dave Morelands hunting advice continues to be one of the most-popular ever published on NOLA.com/outdoors. In it, Louisianas former deer study leader explains when deer move, when they dont, and why you shouldnt waste time in the woods when your chances for success are minuscule. It was NOLA.com/outdoors' fourth most-viewed story in 2015.
The competition watchdog has given the green light to four takeovers in the past week, ranging from the superannuation-fund-owned IFM Investors $24 billion bid for Sydney Airport to the sale of pork producer Riverlea to global meat giant JBS - a decision the regulator brought forward by a week.

Once the Foreign Investment Review Board (FIRB) gives JBS the rubber stamp, the countrys largest red meat producer will also be its largest pork producer.

Demonstrators hold signs while gathering during an Amazon in the Streets protest in Brazil. Credit:Bloomberg

JBS is also on the hunt for other opportunities after winning approval to buy Australias second biggest salmon producer Huon, despite billionaire Andrew Forrests efforts to block it.

Acquiring Huon represents our first step into the aquaculture industry for JBS globally. We believe that our contacts and our ability to open up and access new markets, combined with the expert team at Huon, create a fantastic opportunity to take this business forward, the companys Australian chief, Brent Eastwood, said in a statement in November.
Save Log in , register or subscribe to save articles for later. Normal text size Larger text size Very large text size Magellan founder Hamish Douglass declared in September he is not an emotional man. Speaking on an industry podcast, Douglass quoted investment legend Warren Buffett who has long argued stock picking needs to be free from feelings. Im lucky Im fairly emotionally detached from things ... Im not that emotional. Maybe thats why Im an oddball, he told Inside The Rope podcast. These comments took on new meaning this week, after a series of events forced Douglass to disclose his marriage had broken down. There is one professional lesson Hamish Douglass is yet to learn from Warren Buffett. Credit: The split raised questions about whether a divorce would impact the couples joint shareholding in Magellan, which would trigger a liquidity event for the ASX-listed firm. But, more concerning, whether Douglass personal turmoil had impacted his ability to do the job.

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Douglass has long taken inspiration from Buffett, studying Berkshire Hathaway reports and regularly quoting the 90-year-olds investment philosophy. While the two investors are worlds apart in terms of scale and influence, they share a common problem  key person risk. If an investment firms success and reputation becomes too closely tied to one individual, what happens when a cloud forms over that person? How soon should succession planning commence? And how public should a company be about its plans? Veteran businessman Don Argus says the days of command and control leadership are over. Today, boards must constantly cultivate the next generation of leaders and be transparent with investors and the public. When you have to hurry your succession, you dont get the best outcomes, Argus says. The earlier you start, the better. Personal reasons Magellans share price sunk to its lowest point in two years this week amid a chain of events starting with a short ASX-statement released at 6.01pm on Monday. Magellans board had been informed that chief executive Brett Cairns had resigned for personal reasons and would leave the company immediately.

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The statements lack of detail created an information vacuum, sending the industry rumour mill into overdrive and triggering a sell-off when trading opened the following morning. The abrupt resignation came after months of pressure as Magellans flagship global equities fund suffered chronic underperformance, causing some investors to take their money elsewhere. But Cairns was not your typical CEO. He had no control over Magellans investment strategy and his bonuses were not tied to the funds performance. Though he oversaw Magellans diversification strategy, Cairns role was largely administrative and he earned a fixed pay grade almost half that of Douglass. Former Magellan CEO Brett Cairns. Credit:Janie Barrett Cairns is regarded in the industry as a softly spoken but hard-nosed businessman. Having grown up in working-class western Sydney, Cairns did not find success the easy way. His relentless work ethic saw him excel through top investment firms Merril Lynch and Credit Suisse and complete a PhD at the University of Sydney. He wont say a lot, but hes really intense, says one of Cairns associates from the early 2000s. But despite working at Magellan for more than a decade, climbing his way to the very top role, Cairns name was not widely known outside of Australia. I hadnt heard that name until this week, says Ben Hodges, who worked for Magellans largest client, St James Place, until February this year. Hamish was the frontman.

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The market sell-off was not so much tied to Cairns departure, as to what it revealed about the dysfunction inside the 15-year-old company. As Magellan now scrambles to find a new chief executive, Boyden managing partner Allan Marks says the lack of succession planning for key personnel has been thrust into the spotlight. Publicly, they dont seem to have one at the moment, do they? Influential proxy adviser Vas Kolesnikoff says Douglass mortality was first acknowledged in 2016, when shareholders were asked to fund a $10 million life insurance payment to his family in the event he died. This was eventually knocked back as being an outrageous proposal, but Kolesnikoff says the saga reminded investors of Magellans key person risk, which remains today. Most companies are telling me about succession planning, he says. You dont hear that out of Magellan. If something happens to Hamish, Magellan stock will be materially affected. Much like Berkshire Hathaways credit rating was downgraded by US ratings agencies in 2009 over the key man risk with Buffett, Magellan now provides a local example of the dangers of tying a companys stability to one man. Jason Johnson, who runs executive search company Johnson Partners, says for Magellan, this risk is real. Magellan is a case study in key person risk playing out in a very public and very value destructive way, he says. If you think about a company with a multibillion dollar market capitalisation, having a perception of an organisation that is rudderless or without sufficient leadership is a genuine risk for investors.

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Johnson says founder-led organisations, like Magellan, present particular problems for succession planning. Sometimes the founder is less willing to give up leadership to others, Johnson says. The interesting thing in Hamish case, he is the chair, there is a full change of governance structure thats required which can throw up some opportunities, but it also has some inherent risks because change always drives a degree of execution risk. Loading This year, Berkshire Hathaway took the unusual step of releasing a multi-layered succession plan for Buffett. Not only was the immediate successor announced, Greg Abel, but the next in line was also made public, in the case of an unexpected event caused Abel to become incapacitated. The market responded incredibly favourably to that, Johnson says. It addressed the elephant in the room. Marks says funds management firms are particularly vulnerable to key person risk, as celebrity stock pickers gather dedicated followings. But there is one glaring difference between Berkshire Hathaway and Magellan. To go back to the Buffett example, they have got people in place that can step in. Thats the difference. They have a pool of very accomplished investment managers in this team. Whereas at Magellan, the pickings are not as rich. Argus says this need needs to change. I dont know whether Hamish has a successor in place ... But if you look at Warren Buffett, he openly talks about succession plans. Thats good.
Ellie, who has sought counsel from her friend and ally, former foreign affairs minister and fellow red-carpet performer Julie Bishop, claimed the high moral ground as the jilted wife, telling PS: In the best interests of our children, I currently do not propose making any public comment on what is a very difficult and private matter. But she managed to muster the strength to lunch at one of the most prominent restaurants in town: Woollahras Chiswick, as details of the affair and marital breakdown were being published, and then turned up at one of the biggest parties of the year when champagne house Moet & Chandon splashed bubbly last week overlooking the Opera House. However, her dignified silence came to an end in an ugly spat as emotions boiled over when Charlie started moving his belongings out of the family home in full view of photographers. Until recently Hollie was Ellies best friend, with the Nassers  who have two young children of their own  investing millions in the fledgling Aitken Investment Management firm the dynamic duo Charlie and Ellie launched together. Last week the Nasser family abruptly withdrew $7.5 million it had invested with AIM and Chris quit as a director as it emerged police had taken out an interim AVO against him on behalf of his estranged wife. Further fanning the flames, toxic text messages between Hollie and Ellie went viral after Ellie posted  then deleted them  on her Instagram feed.

The tawdry details have guaranteed another week of media attention, though on Tuesday Ellie posted she was pausing her exhausting social media posts, much to the relief of her ex-husband and former best friend. Gretel Packers floating palace doesnt come cheap No word on whether the ghost of Kerry Packer is included in the $554,000 weekly tariff, but one can certainly imagine being the late media mogul on board his former superyacht The Arctic P, which is being made available for charter. The Yacht Company is advertising the ship, but has dropped the P from its name, billing it simply as The Arctic, with glossy photos and videos showcasing the vessels plush interiors that have been refurbished somewhat since it was built in 1970 as a supply vessel for icy oil rigs. The late Packer converted the boat into a go-anywhere tinnie able to withstand ice and it has hosted everyone from Leonardo Di Caprio to Tom Cruise, Alan Jones, Mariah Carey, Karl Stefanovic and Miranda Kerr. The boat once owned by Kerry packer, The Arctic P, is available for charter. Credit:The Yacht Company

In 2017 ownership of the retro but eye-catching ship was transferred to Gretel Packer, who PS hears is not intending to travel overseas for the foreseeable future, no doubt weary of the ongoing pandemic and strict vaccination requirements for overseas travel. Meanwhile, PS has learnt that matriarch Ros Packer, who has spent the pandemic in Sydney and was among those paying their respects at media man Trevor Kennedys funeral on Wednesday, is planning to spend Christmas in the United States, where son James and three of her grandchildren  Emmanuelle, Jackson and Indigo  will be, while Gretel and her brood are expected to be in residence at the familys Palm Beach holiday house for the season. Ros and Gretel Packer in 2019. Credit:Louie Douvis Murdoch slips back into town For a man who controls one of the largest media behemoths in the world, global commuter Lachlan Murdoch has been able to slip back into Sydney almost undetected.

A tanned and fit-looking Murdoch has been making his presence felt once more around News Corps Surry Hills bunker, where PSs moles report he is in a good mood. And when hes not at work hes been busy rekindling the flames with his wife, former model Sarah Murdoch, with the pair spotted out on romantic lunch dates, most recently in Bondi where they looked relaxed and happy over rose and champers at Seans Panorama last Friday. Lachlan and Sarah Murdoch in Bondi last week. Credit:KHAPGG/Backgrid On Thursday night the Murdochs hosted their lavish annual Christmas knees-up at their Bellevue Hill compound Le Manoir, with a whos who of this years in-favour editors and friends on the guest list  from Scott Morrison, Anthony Albanese and Dominic Perrottet to radio stars Kate Ritchie, Fitzy and Wippa, and a hirsute looking Atlassian billionaire Scott Farquhar. As PS previously revealed, the Murdochs opted for the comparative security and anonymity of life in Sydney during the pandemic and following the divisive US elections, in which Murdoch-controlled media such as Fox News and the New York Post played a controversial and much-criticised role. The unexpected move shocked many Murdoch watchers, given they had just dropped $218 million on one of the most expensive, high-security estates in California, supposedly because in Bel Air it was closer to their childrens swish schools. Called Chartwell, the fortress-like abode was made famous as the home on televisions The Beverly Hillbillies.

The Murdochs Los Angeles home. Credit:Jim Bartsch But there was no price too high for the familys well-being. Sydney-based family friends say the Murdochs three children  Kalan, Aiden and Aerin  who have been mostly raised in Los Angeles, are enjoying school life here and have settled in easily to the more relaxed lifestyle that their parents have long admired about Sydney. No Scomo FOMO as snappers want more-a Ora While Prime Minister Scott Morrison was being wined and dined by billionaire Westfield heiress Monica Weinberg-Saunders, who handed over her kitchen to celebrity chef Guillaume Brahimi on Wednesday, not all the photographers camped outside were particularly interested. Thats because across the road, visiting pop star Rita Ora has taken up residence. Apparently, Oras photos fetch a far heftier price than Scomos. Pop star Rita Ora is back in Sydney. Credit:Instagram

A star is born Maggie McKenna brought the house down at Thursday nights premiere of Jagged Little Pill at the Theatre Royal. Credit:Stuart Miller It was Kerri-Anne Kennerley who summed it up best, declaring at Thursday nights star-studded premiere of the truly excellent Alanis Morissette production Jagged Little Pill at the newly refurbished Theatre Royal that a star is born. She was referring to 25-year-old Maggie McKenna, who stole the show and received a standing ovation after flooring the room with her moving rendition of You Oughta Know. Its a must-see. McKenna was also the original Muriel in the stage production of Muriels Wedding. But of course Kennerley was probably being a little motherly too, as McKenna, who wasnt even born when Alanis released her groundbreaking album, is the offspring of showbiz royalty Gina Riley and her producer husband Rick McKenna. Of course, it was Rileys parody of Kennerley  in the guise of the much-loved Kerri-Anne Kennel  that haunted Kennerley for years, though PS likes to think of it as a loving homage, and we all know Riley has a set of pipes. JLP is playing in Sydney until December 19 before touring nationally, and returning for a second run in July. Go see it.
Hes not the films star, however. That honour goes to Maddie, a taipan who doesnt take kindly to the way children and their parents cringe from her forked tongue and fangs. Like her fellow zoo inmates, Nigel the scorpion, Frank the funnel web and Zoe the thorny devil lizard, she desperately wants to be loved.

In Netflixs new animated feature Back to the Outback, Tim Minchin voices a koala called Pretty Boy who leads a pampered existence in Sydneys zoo, having settled comfortably into his role as Australian wildlifes poster child.

Jackie the crocodile (Jacki Weaver), the groups self-appointed den mother, takes a more philosophic approach to their unpopularity. Have some fun with it, she tells them, relishing the occasional opportunity to send a frisson through her audience.

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Its a view shared by the films American producers and its co-directors, Australian screenwriter Harry Cripps and Irelands Clare Knight, whos been working as an editor in the British film industry. Theyre out to exploit the fact kids often gravitate towards the most fearsome and least comely animals in the zoo.

Its a simple idea and Cripps and Knight have recruited a starry cast. Keith Urban gives voice to a singing cane toad, who serenades his mate (Gia Carides) with a velvety rendition of When a Man Loves a Woman, and Eric Bana speaks for Chaz, a zookeeper whose reputation rests on his success in capturing 10 Komoda dragons with a pair of budgie smugglers and some Vegemite.

Chaz and his boy Chazzie (Angus Imrie) are intent on retrieving Maddie (Isla Fisher) and friends after they escape from the zoo and start heading for the outback, which they know only from Jackies bedtime stories. Their sense of direction is hazy, to say the least, but with some help from an undercover agency dedicated to helping the sensitive and misunderstood and known as the Ugly Secret Society, they prevail.
The automated online border pass system behind the reopening of Queenslands borders next week will only be made live one hour beforehand, with all travellers, including those who have remained stuck interstate for months, required to apply.

Police are expecting lengthy delays at the southern road border for the first two days from 1am on Monday as it opens to vaccinated travellers from NSW  along with Victoria and the ACT  for the first time since July, and have warned those taking to the roads to be patient.

Delays are expected along the Queensland/NSW border as road travel reopens from Monday. Credit:Dan Peled

A new pass will also be created for NSW border zone residents and travellers, to allow police to shift from the current 100 per cent vehicle checks to a more risk-based approach as the region stares down a fresh outbreak risk. The Queensland entry pass will be required by all other travellers.

The quarantine-free domestic travel for those from hotspot states locked out of Queensland for months was set to return by December 17 at the latest, but has been brought forward due the state reaching its 80 per cent vaccination target more than a week early.
Save Log in , register or subscribe to save articles for later. Normal text size Larger text size Very large text size On Saturday morning in Melbourne, a charmingly dilapidated, century-old building in West Brunswick will go under the auctioneers hammer. It is what real estate agents call a blank canvas: double-storeyed, triple-bricked, ripe for renovation. The moment you walk through the front door, your eyes are drawn to another canvas  an evocative oil painting of sultry colours and brush strokes hanging on a living room wall. The artist who painted it, Elyss McCleary, says it is one of five works she has reported as missing and possibly stolen to Victoria Police. The West Brunswick building is the last known address of Tristian Koenig, a prominent Melbourne art dealer and gallerist who, for the past decade, has discovered, shown and promoted a generation of emerging artists. He has also ripped them off. Rogue gallerist: Tristian Koenig. Thats according to many artists with whom he has worked. Some say he owes them money. Others have spent years trying to get back paintings they gave him for a show or art fair and havent seen again. Alana Kushnir, a solicitor who specialises in art law, is representing six contemporary artists who are together trying to get back 39 paintings consigned to Koenig and $27,000 for paintings he sold. There is a lot more out there,  she says.

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Michael Schwarz, one of Melbournes leading art collectors and philanthropists, says Koenig has a sharp eye for emerging talent but cant be trusted with their money. After hearing many stories from artists, eventually if we bought an artwork from Tristian, we would endeavour to pay the artist separately, he says. The case of Tristian Koenig and the missing artworks opens a window into the ramshackle practices of a largely unregulated market where written contracts are rare and deception rife. As one artist put it: It is so common, it is almost part of the deal. The Age and Sydney Morning Herald interviewed a dozen artists about their dealings with Koenig. Some of their stories are infuriating, others hilarious and nearly all of them end in the same place: with an artist out of pocket and Koenig dodging questions about why he wont pay them or return art that belongs to them. Seth Birchall, a Sydney-based painter now with Sullivan and Strumpf, a respected commercial gallery, worked extensively with Koenig at the start of his career. Between 2016 and 2020, he consigned $80,000 worth of paintings to Koenig. He says three have certainly sold  he saw one hanging in a collectors house  three have probably sold and the other 15 are unaccounted for. He hasnt been paid for any of them. Birchall says he was warned about Koenig by other artists but when Koenig first approached him, no one else was interested in his work. I had no other offers on the table, I had to take what I could get, he says. Sydney-based artists Seth Birchall and Lara Merrett are together missing more than $100,000 worth of paintings provided to Melbourne gallerist Tristian Koenig. Credit:Kate Geraghty

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Every time I would complain about him, someone would say he is pushing your work, he is getting your name out there. I was working by myself as an artist for so long and wasnt recognised or given opportunities. Then along came Tristian. It is flattering. You let these things slide. Almost selling work is better than not selling work. I had no other offers on the table, I had to take what I could get. Seth Birchall, painter Lara Merrett, a Melbourne-born artist living in Sydney, says she first exhibited with Koenig in 2018. She wasnt a kid fresh out of art school and had heard similar stories about his unreliability, but she loved the way he spoke about painting and how he related to her art. After her first show went well, he asked for her to send other works to his Melbourne gallery. Thats when things got a little blurry, she says. She has spent the past 18 months chasing up Koenig for $5282 she says he owes her for a sold work and another five works worth $24,200 he hasnt returned. He didnt reply to her emails and blocked her number. Missing: this 2018 arylc and ink painting by Lara Merrett is one of five art works she is trying to get back. I am quite surprised that if you put his name into Google, there is nothing that comes up about any of this, Merrett says. How can you operate so unprofessionally and destructively and get away with it? He is definitely not the first gallerist to act like this. The art world has always been without contracts. We have been told not to do that but somehow, it still happens. The relationship between an artist and a gallery can be incredibly vague.

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How can you operate so unprofessionally and destructively and get away with it? Lara Merrett, artist There is no mystery about where two of Elyss McClearys missing paintings are. McCleary first exhibited with Koenig in 2017. Since the start of last year, she has repeatedly contacted him seeking $10,375 he owes her from the sale of five works and the return of a further five paintings. McCleary hadnt seen the paintings for the best part of two years. This week, she discovered that two of them were hanging inside Koenigs West Brunswick home after The Age and Sydney Morning Herald attended an open for inspection at the property and sent her images of the paintings. The property is owned by Koenigs wife and is being auctioned with a listed price of $1.3 million to $1.4 million. McCleary says the paintings are hers and Koenig is unlikely to dispute this. He described one of them in his gallery notes as uniquely a McCleary, although hed hung it upside down. These two missing oil paintings by Elyss McCleary were this week found hanging inside the West Brunswick living room of gallerist Tristian Koenig. Another work on display in Koenigs home was painted five years ago by Melbourne artist Benjamin Barretto. When shown a picture of it from the property, Barretto identified it as one of a series of 10 he produced for a show put on by Koenig in 2016. He was never paid for it and never agreed to Koenig keeping it. He doesnt know where the other works are. Barretto says it wouldnt have been unreasonable had Koenig asked to keep a painting from the show to cover his costs, but they never had the discussion. He was difficult to pin down, he says. He would always dodge questions and come up with an elaborate excuse.

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McCleary and another Melbourne-based artist, Jiaxin Nong, this week provided statements against Koenig to Victoria Police. McCleary is reluctant to speak badly of Koenig but wants changes in how the art market operates to prevent the same thing from happening to other artists at the start of their careers. It is a lot of money for me, she says. Especially if you are just starting to exhibit, that can sustain your year ahead. I was excited to have the opportunity for a broader audience and the artists who were exhibiting with Tristians gallery were all amazing, talented artists. There was a lot of positive things from it. I am just disappointed that this happened. When The Age and Sydney Morning Herald contacted Koenig, he declined to discuss the artists claims against him. Koenig operates in a segment of the art market where most artists have no leverage and little protection in their dealings with gallerists. When artists graduate from art school, they are desperate for their work to be shown. Oscar Perry, a 43-year-old Melbourne-based artist who worked closely with Koenig at the start of his career, says gallerists like Koenig offer a young artist the chance to make the leap between showing in artist-run spaces and larger commercial galleries. When Perry was starting out, Melbournes contemporary art scene revolved around drinking sessions in Hells Kitchen and Meyers Place, two CBD watering holes, and attending exhibitions in the city. Koenig was a permanent fixture. He is a good charmer for those first couple of days when you havent seen the cracks, Perry says. Harry McAlpine, one of the last artists to show at Koenigs now-defunct Kleinerfelt gallery in Fitzroy, has initiated VCAT proceedings to retrieve $1460 he says Koenig owes him from the balance of three drawings sold in March this year. The dispute is in mediation.

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Take a proactive approach to mental health While the public health restrictions needed to prevent the spread of coronavirus were warranted and helped to keep our community safe, the negative consequences on peoples mental health were clearly foreseeable. Young people were particularly hard hit, as evidenced by the level of serious concerns about students mental health and wellbeing held by their teachers (The Age 10/12), and the significant increases in depression, anxiety, eating disorders and self-harm presentations to emergency departments. The state government is to be commended for responding by increasing the mental health resources available to schools, and providing extra support for headspace centres. Nevertheless, it took a mostly reactive approach rather than also trying to proactively keep young people well through wellbeing and prevention strategies designed to offset the considerable stress created by prolonged lockdowns. Hopefully, future public health responses will consider the potential for mental health harm, and take a more proactive approach to promote and protect peoples mental health rather than waiting until they become unwell before action is taken.

Dr Stephen Carbone, Thornbury Dream of a time where there are no smokers

Congratulations to the New Zealand government for its decision to ban young people from being able to purchase tobacco in their lifetime under a plan to make the country smoke-free (The Age, 10/12). Would it not be wonderful if retail outlets of all types jointly agreed to cease selling tobacco products?

Rod Watson, East Brighton A good idea, but it may not work in practice Banning tobacco for the next generation sounds sensible on the surface, but seems to lack an understanding of history. Prohibition in the United States worked well, didnt it?

Warwick Slade, Mooroolbark THE FORUM The trap of contracts

My sympathy goes out to Rohan Wightman (Letters, 7/12). I am so glad I am retired from teaching. The crazy system whereby experienced teachers must constantly apply for positions should be assigned to the bin. How long will enthusiastic teachers stay with the Education Department if they can only get a 12-month contract each year? Teaching used to be a secure job but no longer. It is the result of schools making their own budget decisions. This can be fantastic for the school, but it can also be a disaster as Rohan Wightman has experienced. First-year teachers cost much less than experienced ones, so many schools have fallen into the trap of taking them on for only a year instead of fostering their careers. Good schools care for students and staff. What is the union doing to help?

Megan Peniston-Bird, Kew Towards the US system I am a pensioner and have relied on Medicare. I recall, when an active worker, that the unions and business agreed on certain industrial behaviour to aid the implementation of Medicare

by the Hawke/Keating government.

I recently went to have an MRI for an injury and was informed by a most embarrassed nurse that I had to pay for it because it was a pre-existing injury. Now, where have I heard that Americanism before?

Derek Costello, Belmont Under-appreciated gems The value of 1880s inner-city, terraces houses has never been fully appreciated in regional locations. They were always built within walking distance to the regional cities CBDs and train stations for ease of access to all goods and services. The double-brick facades are ideal for keeping houses cool in summer and maintaining warmth in winter. They are ideal for entertaining, and the land sizes are large enough for fruit and vegetable gardens. In Melbournes inner suburbs, it is not possible to purchase a three-bedroom brick terrace for less than $2million and yet in regional cities such as Bendigo, with public infrastructure projects and private commercial growth, it is possible to purchase one for $800,000. It is surprising more people do not recognise this value.

Allison Glanville, Bendigo Why we must call it out

Unlike Chinas citizens, Australians enjoy a democratic freedom to air their opinions about human rights abuses without fear of being incarcerated and re-educated to toe the government line.

Sure, call out our human rights abuses, including the treatment of asylum seekers. However, the scale of the human rights abuses on Chinese citizens who do not agree with their government, or are ethnically different, requires our government to call this out.

Paul Miller, Box Hill South Assanges human rights Tough guy Scott Morrison boycotts the Winter Olympics in China and talks about the importance of human rights. So, when will he call for the release of whistleblower

Julian Assange?

Ed Veber, Malvern East United on this issue A great piece from David Crowe  Theyve normalised the pork feast (Opinion, 10/12). Pork-barrelling is alive and well because politicians  from every side of the table  truly believe the money they spend is theirs, to do with as they will. It will always be this way, until someone comes out and says  unambiguously  that we pay their salaries, so we should be shown that the money is not being wasted. Not in my lifetime.

David Jeffery, East Geelong

Priorities, please As a Geelong resident, I found it embarrassing that the media raised this idea of a big ute on a pole with the Prime Minister (The Age, 10/12) when it actually was a great opportunity to question him regarding our regions critical social, economic and environmental needs.

Elaine Carbines, Belmont RIP, Aussie car company Geelongs big ute, a gravestone for Australias car industry with a stamp of approval from the people who shut down that industry.

Tim Durbridge, Brunswick Too easy to stereotype

Your correspondent (Letters, 9/12) wonders how many of the freedom protesters will read Thanush Selvarasas heartbreaking account of being held in detention by the Australian government (Opinion, 8/12). Perhaps they likely do think about others less privileged than themselves.

My dander was up on a V/Line train after the last protests in Melbourne. However, I found it refreshing to have my own assumptions checked when I overheard a protester discussing the plight of refugees. There is a complexity at play here that is erased when we assume they must be either privileged, low IQ, fascist or selfish. Having said that, one thing does seem clear. People do not like being ordered around, especially if it goes against their ideology. A point, you would think, our politicians would instinctively understand.

Geoffrey Binder, Black Hill Shock, horror, batsmen Early in Australias innings in the Ashes Test on Thursday, the television commentator used the term batsmen rather than batters. I was half expecting viewers to be given the telephone number for Lifeline, but then remembered I was not listening to ABC radio. Anyway, I hope no one was too traumatised.

Johnny Hackett, Wonthaggi Beware of angry voters

I hope Tim Wilson and Josh Frydenberg do not take the Liberal voter for granted ever again after they have trashed the Menzies legacy of a party that values decency and integrity. I anticipate them spending a lot of time in their electorates. They are in for a surprise and a backlash by some of their constituents who have had enough. Sir Robert Menzies is turning in his grave, along with frustrated voters, and I wholeheartedly welcome the independent candidates.

Melina Smith, Brighton Impossible to describe Our language fails us. What is the word to describe our predicament when our leaders speak of action on climate change yet proceed to open vast new basins of methane gas that will release catastrophic emissions? Hypocrisy, delusion, cognitive dissonance, double think?

Gillian Upton, Balaclava Clarifying omicron

Re the pronunciation of omicron (Letters 10/12). When I learnt Attic Greek (the Greek spoken and written by the ancient Athenians) in the late 1960s, we were taught to pronounce it as om-i-kron with the accent on the first syllable and a very short i. It should be noted that the Attic Greek alphabet had two os  omicron is the short o sound as in hot whereas omega is the long o sound as in hole. Omicron is the lesser-known of the two since omega is the final letter in the alphabet.

Peter Ryan, Balwyn Better service, more tax If the answer to delays in answering triple-zero calls turns out to be not enough staff, who is going to pay more tax to cover the cost of employing more call-takers? Or will people keep voting for whoever promises more tax cuts?

Margaret Callinan, Hawthorn Probably, it will be ...

Will the departure of ALP parliamentarians (The Age, 10/12) and the selection of replacements offer up forward thinking and innovative candidates or just the traditional party/union apparatchiks?

Jim McLeod, Sale ... just more of the same In Labor preselections, talent runs a distant second to factional membership.

Phil Lipshut, Elsternwick A great mans wisdom Responding to the report on border lockdowns by Victorian Ombudsman Deborah Glass  Mother demands a lockout apology (The Age, 8/12)  Science Officer Spock of the USS Enterprise may have replied: The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.

Sean Geary, Southbank

AND ANOTHER THING Credit:Illustration: Matt Golding Life matters The world should clean up the giant island of plastic in the Pacific before China builds a military base on it.

Greg Hardy, Upper Ferntree Gully Re men sharing the mental load (10/12). Do they need a medal for it, or a chest to pin it on?

Tris Raouf, Hadfield

A fine decision by Supreme Court judge Elizabeth Hollingworth (10/12). As Nietzsche observed, That which is done out of love always takes place beyond good and evil.

Michael Aughterson, Hawthorn East Anti-vaxxers beware. By the time the ambulance arrives, it could well be too late.

Paul Murchison, Kingsbury Politics Morrison figures his government can gift and graft at Christmas and be forgiven by Easter.

Suzanne Miles, Frankston South Is Christiansen setting himself up to run in the election as part of the Disunited Australia Party?Rod Eldridge, Derrinallum

Labor: A decent leader. A talented team.

Rosemary Faris, Torquay Labors casualties should stand as independents. Let voters decide rather than factional warlords.

Kevan Porter, Alphington Re our boycott of the Olympics. Fools rush in where angels fear to tread.

Glenise Michaelson, Montmorency Presumably the rabbits outside Parliament House escaped from inside.

Reg Murray, Glen Iris If Joyce resents 10 days in hotel quarantine, he might spare a thought for refugees held indefinitely by his government.

Annie Wilson, Inverloch

The Department of Bakers is busily concocting pork pies.

Jeff Werner, Echuca Sport Yellow card? Surely Sam Kerr (10/12) deserves a golden ticket.

Don Phillips, Fitzroy The cricket has made me hoarse. We are winning.

Graeme Lee, Fitzroy Is Phil Tufnell Englands fielding coach? It certainly looks like it.

Rob Willis, Wheelers Hill
A service meant to help people in crisis is finding itself at the centre of its own crisis. This week, The Age revealed the tragic story of Preston father of three Nick Panagiotopoulos, who died in October after it took an agonising 25 minutes to get an ambulance to him. While the particular circumstances that caused triple-zero delays for Mr Panagiotopoulos are not known, it is known that the states emergency call system has suffered from chronic staff shortages leading to major connection delays as recently as in the past fortnight.

Credit:Paul Rovere

High demand has made the problem worse. Just over two months ago it was reported that demand on hospitals and calls to triple zero reached levels not seen since the 2016 thunderstorm asthma event. Marty Smyth, then chief executive of the Emergency Services Telecommunications Authority, said 3250 Victorians made ambulance calls on a day in late September this year, compared with between 1600 to 2000 calls at the same time a year ago.

And in May, it was reported that Victorias triple-zero call system had been offline for hours at a time during a series of outages in the previous few months. Operators were forced to resort to pen and paper to log critical incidents. Several insiders revealed that the agency was understaffed and its dispatch system, which is used to log incidents and determine their seriousness, was hampered by defects.

The problems in calling triple zero have been exacerbated by similar staffing shortages within the ranks of paramedics. Capacity problems in Victorias emergency departments are also an issue. The scale of the extra resources needed was evident in this years state budget, where the government announced almost $500 million in spending over four years to increase Ambulance Victorias capacity, with 177 additional paramedics, new stations in regional areas and a telehealth pilot for some patients.
Victorian health authorities are investigating another seven suspected cases of the Omicron variant as contact tracers probe the case of a person who tested positive for the new strain after being in the community while infectious.

Authorities are also investigating what could be the states first cases of community transmission of the Omicron strain.

Victorias Chief Health Officer, Brett Sutton. Credit:Joe Armao

Seven people are suspected of carrying the Omicron coronavirus strain in Victoria, including the household contacts of a person who has tested positive for the variant.

The Department of Health has confirmed that there are three cases of the variant in Victoria. One is a returned traveller who was previously identified with the variant while in hotel quarantine, and two positive cases who sat together in the same row on a flight from Dubai which landed on November 30.
Victoria recorded two new cases of the Omicron variant of COVID-19 overnight, both of which are linked to an international flight.

It brings the total number of confirmed cases of the variant in Victoria to three.

The cases involve two passengers who landed in Melbourne on a flight from Dubai on November 30. One of the passengers had previously been identified as a suspected Omicron case by authorities.

Authorities are keeping a close eye on suspected Omicron cases in the community. Credit:Dean Sewell

Genomic testing is underway to determine if a third person on the flight is also carrying the Omicron variant.
It took four days for the federal government agency meant to keep aged care residents safe to take any action after it was told by St Basils nursing home that a staff member had tested positive for coronavirus last July.

The Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission, tasked with protecting residents in aged care, was told on July 10, 2020, about the first case at St Basils aged care home, but it took no action until July 14, when it was formally notified of the outbreak by the Victorian government.

Aged Care Quality and Safety Commissioner Janet Anderson fronts a Senate hearing in 2020. Credit:Alex Ellinghausen

Forty-five residents at the Fawkner aged care home died with COVID-19 after the virus tore through the facility from July 9. Many of the homes 117 residents were highly vulnerable and unable to care for themselves.

Had action been taken earlier to test residents for coronavirus and take many of the ill to hospital immediately, it is almost certain fewer would have died.
Across all of its sites, cohealth now tests 600-1200 people a day, up from 200-300 at the start of the year. The Alfred said testing numbers were stable at about 500 a day, but that demand was concentrated in a morning rush with fluctuating waiting times. Testing facilities over-capacity at some point on Thursday The Alfred hospital

St Vincents Hospital

Parkville, University of Melbourne

Collingwood cohealth

Burwood Testing Hub, Deakin University

Chadstone Golfers Drive

Maidstone, Victoria University student accommodation

Lilydale EACH

Yarra Junction EACH

Emerald EACH

Ringwood EACH There are 260 state government-run testing sites in Victoria, an increase from 212 in May. Twenty-eight federally funded respiratory clinics also provide testing but all but five will stop testing asymptomatic people who are close contacts at the end of December, Victorias Health Department confirmed.

Deakins chair of epidemiology Catherine Bennett said more testing sites were needed to accommodate those preparing for end-of-year holidays and during heightened concern about the new Omicron strain. I do worry that the build-up to Christmas is going to put a load on the testing, which might make it harder for someone whos actually got symptoms or has an exposure to get tested, Professor Bennett said. She encouraged people concerned about long waiting times to use rapid antigen tests at home for a first check if they had symptoms but had not been exposed to the virus. While demand for PCR tests has held firm in Victoria, the state is turning to rapid home-tests at almost twice the rate as those in NSW at bricks and mortar Woolworths supermarkets.

Almost half of all tests bought online from healthylife have also been shipped to Victoria, particularly in areas linked with outbreaks, and demand was still increasing in the lead up to Christmas. NSW recorded an extra 90,000 PCR tests on Friday. Paul Guerra, the chief executive of the Victorian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, has been advocating for testing requirements to be softened to help businesses maintain staffing levels. Rather than requiring people to test and isolate, the chamber wants people who have been to an exposure site but do not have symptoms to instead take a rapid antigen test. If negative, Mr Guerra says they should be able to remain at the workplace but take a PCR test within 24 hours.

Danni Hunter from the Property Council said she had not seen issues with the latest, watered-down test and isolation requirements. Dr Mukesh Haikerwal, who runs a private clinic at Altona North, in the citys west, has been testing about 80 people a day and said maintaining the service was sometimes tough to manage. Twelve of his staff were furloughed last week and another four this week, after being exposed to the virus. It meant he had to turn people away who had shown up to his clinic, due to it being over capacity. We were completely slammed anyway, and then we havent actually got the staff to do the work.

Dr John Hodgson, who runs a GP clinic-turned respiratory centre at Coolaroo in Melbournes north, said the federal governments strict eligibility criteria for asymptomatic people meant he couldnt test many close contacts, including school students. Still, the clinic is overstretched, facing peak demand during the last lockdown, when people waited in hour-long lines. Dr Hodgson had to employ family and friends to help keep up with demand. Test providers said demand was driven by school outbreaks, people becoming increasingly exposed to COVID-19 out of lockdown, pollen triggering hayfever symptoms, and those preparing to leave Melbourne for end-of-year holidays. Australian Medical Association Victoria president Dr Roderick McRae said it was vital that Victorias testing sites were as efficient as they could be. Its very good, of course, that people are presenting to be tested. Thats a very important stage of monitoring the spread of COVID-19, so its disappointing that it appears to be taking so long when people have to queue up.

A cohealth spokeswoman said most people were tested within 15 to 20 minutes while 23 per cent of people waited about 45 minutes. Just 1 to 2 per cent of people waited two or three hours in extremely unpredictable and rare mornings. Shadow health spokesperson Georgie Crozier, whose constituent waited in line for 4.5 hours on Thursday, said the government had had months to get its testing regime right. The government must assure Victorians that theyve got capacity to meet demand, Ms Crozier said. The Health Department recently changed the opening hours of testing sites to 7am to 7pm to cater for morning demand peaks. A spokesman said changes to the states testing operations in October created six mass testing centres, with new sites and additional lanes at drive-through sites which increased testing capacity by 55 per cent.
Victoria is trying to muscle in on what has for decades been an important federal revenue source: charging motorists to help pay for roads.

Releasing a budget update that included an $8 billion increase in the size of Victorias deficit this financial year, Treasurer Tim Pallas said he was unashamedly attempting to siphon the federal governments fuel excise revenue stream using Victorias controversial electric vehicle tax.

Uptake of electric cars is behind other developed nations where there is stronger policy support. Credit:AP

I absolutely am. You are dead right, youve called it in one, he said. Unashamedly. I am pushing the Commonwealth out of the tax.

Mr Pallas said that during a meeting of treasurers that his federal counterpart Josh Frydenberg had suggested a national approach was needed to create a new system to charge for road use, replacing fuel excise as growing numbers of motorists switched to electric vehicles.
Chicago: Actor Jussie Smollett, the one-time star of the TV drama Empire, has been found guilty of staging a hate crime against himself in what prosecutors said was a bid to gain sympathy and bolster his career.

Prosecutors said Smollett, who is black and openly gay, lied to police when he told them he had been accosted on a dark Chicago street by two masked strangers in January 2019.

Actor Jussie Smollett, centre, returns to courthouse after the jury notified Cook County Judge James Linn that they had reached a verdict. Credit:AP

Smollett said the men threw a noose around his neck and poured chemicals on him while yelling racist and homophobic slurs and expressions of support for former US president Donald Trump.

Police arrested Smollett a month after the alleged assault, saying that he had paid two brothers $US3500 ($4900) to stage the attack in an effort to raise his show-business profile. He eventually pleaded not guilty to six counts of felony disorderly conduct.
HOFFMAN ESTATES, Ill.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--With an increasing amount of data created by automotive dealerships, manufacturers and vehicles, approximately 68% of dealerships believe adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) has had a positive impact on their businesses, according to a study by CDK Global, Inc. , a leading automotive retail technology company.

Todays world is undoubtedly data driven, and every transaction that happens between the dealers, manufacturers and consumers is an essential data source that can be used to build more simple and convenient buying and ownership experiences, said Mahesh Shah, chief product and technology officer, CDK Global. For this to happen, we must come together as an industry to exchange data in a fast, reliable and secure way through platforms that are built on modern, cloud-based architectures. The results of our research are encouraging and tell us dealers are excited about the possibilities of AI and how it will help them meet their financial and customer satisfaction goals.

AI technologies provide significant and measurable benefits across other industries. In a survey by McKinsey & Company1, 63% of respondents reported revenue increases due to the use of AI applications with average gains of around 10%. Within automotive retail, AI can be used to solve some of todays biggest dealer challenges, which include addressing employee and skills shortages by replacing resource-intensive tasks and augmenting employee skills; attracting customers by looking at existing sales and service profiles and determining their propensity to buy; and retaining existing service customers through proactive and personalized service and by better predicting potential vehicle issues.

CDKs Artificial Intelligence in Automotive Retail Report highlights the use of AI tools in automotive retail today and the optimism for the benefits it will provide dealerships in the future:

Dealers are familiar with artificial intelligence (75%), with 40% feeling extremely or very familiar with the topic.

Dealerships are already using AI or plan to do so within the next three to five years (68%).

Dealers who dont use AI today, but plan to in the future, anticipate positive outcomes (56%).

Only 2% of the respondents said that they didnt see their dealership using AI-based applications in the future.

As in other industries, automotive retail is investing in AI and is already seeing the benefits. Whether a dealership is currently using AI or plan to, nearly all the respondents believe AI will be an integral part of dealership operations.

About the CDK Global Artificial Intelligence in Automotive Retail Report

The CDK Global Artificial Intelligence in Automotive Retail Report was conducted in October 2021 among a national sample of 243 dealership department heads and executives. The interviews were conducted online by CDK Research & Insights across a representative mix of roles, location, departments and sales volume. To view the full report, click here.

About CDK Global, Inc.

With approximately $2 billion in revenues, CDK Global is a leading provider of retail technology and software as a service (SaaS) solutions that help dealers and auto manufacturers run their businesses more efficiently, drive improved profitability and create frictionless purchasing and ownership experiences for consumers. Today, CDK serves nearly 15,000 retail locations in North America. For more information, visit cdkglobal.com.

1 McKinsey & Company, Global AI Survey: AI proves its worth, but few scale impact
Martin County Solar Project to Locate on Former Eastern Kentucky Coal Mine

Utility-scale solar energy generation facility will create 11 full-time positions, 250-plus construction jobs

FRANKFORT, Ky. (Dec. 9, 2021)  Kentucky is focused on a future that includes renewable energy, as today Gov. Andy Beshear announced Martin County Solar Project, currently under development by Savion, is moving forward with plans to locate on a former coal mine in unincorporated Martin County, a project that includes up to a $231 million investment and creation of 11 full-time Kentucky jobs.

We are building a future that works for all Kentuckians, and that future includes an increased reliance on renewable energy, Gov. Beshear said. To maintain the incredible economic momentum we have established this year, we must continue to compete for all forms of energy investment. I want to thank Savion for choosing Kentucky.

The solar energy generation facility will be located on approximately 1,200 acres on the old Martiki mine site in Martin County, interconnecting with Kentucky Powers 138-kilovolt Inez Substation. When built, the project will create capacity of up to 200 megawatts and will produce enough energy to power the equivalent of more than 33,000 Kentucky homes.

Construction of the facility is expected to begin in 2022 and be commercially operational by early 2024. During the 12- to 18-month construction period, company leaders report the project will create between 250 and 300 construction jobs, in addition to 11 full-time Kentucky jobs, including eight in Martin County. Upon completion, the project will be one of the largest solar energy generation facilities operating in Kentucky.

Its exciting to reach this milestone in the projects development, which moves us closer to the start of construction and commercial operation, said Erich Miarka, director of development for Savion. This opportunity would not be possible without the support of Martin County, Martin County School District, the Kentucky Cabinet for Economic Development and Edelen Renewables. Thank you for your continued efforts to advance this unprecedented project.

Established in 2019 and headquartered in Kansas City, Missouri, Savion is a company focused on utility-scale solar and energy storage projects in 27 states. Savion employs more than 120 people, providing comprehensive services at each phase of renewable energy project development, from conception to construction. The company currently oversees the development of nearly 90 solar projects and more than 40 energy storage projects in the U.S. totaling over 15 gigawatts.

Savions solar project includes a local partnership with Edelen Renewables, which has played a key role in the initial phase of development.

This country owes a tremendous debt to the people and communities that powered the industrial development of America for a century: our miners and coal communities, said Adam Edelen, founder and CEO of Edelen Renewables. The Martin County coal-to-solar project is an effort to bring the opportunities of a newer, greener economy to the coalfields. Doing so has required the strong support of the Beshear administration and local leadership. We are grateful to all for their support.

Martin County Judge/Executive Victor Slone said the project will benefit the community in the years ahead.

On behalf of the Martin County Fiscal Court, I am excited to see the Martin County Solar Project come to fruition, Judge/Executive Slone said. This investment will impact our community for years to come. I look forward to the new jobs that will be created in Martin County throughout the course of this project, and I am confident other companies will take notice of the opportunity to invest in Martin County as a result.

The Martin County Solar Project furthers recent economic momentum in the commonwealth, as the state builds back stronger following the effects of the pandemic.

This year, the commonwealth has shattered every economic development record in the books for yearly investment totals. Year-to-date, private-sector new-location and expansion announcements include $11 billion in total planned investment and commitments to create 17,000 full-time jobs across the coming years. Through September, Kentuckys average incentivized hourly wage is $24.15 before benefits, a 10% increase over the previous year.

In September, Gov. Beshear, Ford Motor Co. Executive Chair Bill Ford, CEO Jim Farley and Dong-Seob Jee, president of SK Innovations battery business, announced the single largest economic development project in the history of the commonwealth, celebrating a transformative $5.8 billion investment that will create 5,000 jobs and places Kentucky at the forefront of the automotive industrys future.

In July, thanks to strong fiscal management by the Beshear administration, the state budget office reported the commonwealth ended the 2021 fiscal year with a general fund surplus of over $1.1 billion  the highest ever in the commonwealth  and a 10.9% increase in general fund receipts to $12.8 billion.

In May, Moodys Analytics published a positive economic outlook for Kentucky, noting mass vaccination as the driving force behind a sustained recovery in consumer services. The states recovery, Moodys said, benefited from earlier reopening efforts and increased demand for manufactured goods over services. The report also found Kentuckys manufacturing industry outperformed the nations since the national downturn last year.

Fitch Ratings in May improved the states financial outlook to stable, reflecting the commonwealths solid economic recovery. The states April sales tax receipts set an all-time monthly record at $486.5 million, as did vehicle usage tax receipts at over $64 million.

In March, Site Selection magazines annual Governors Cup rankings for 2020 positioned Kentucky atop the South Central region, and third nationally, for qualifying projects per capita. The commonwealth also placed seventh overall in total projects, the highest of any state with a population under 5 million. Site Selection also recently placed Kentucky in a tie for fifth in its 2021 Prosperity Cup rankings, positioning the state among the national leaders for business climate.

To encourage investment and job growth in the community, the Kentucky Economic Development Finance Authority (KEDFA) today approved Martin County Solar Project for up to $600,000 in tax incentives through the Kentucky Enterprise Initiative Act (KEIA). KEIA allows approved companies to recoup Kentucky sales and use tax on construction costs, building fixtures, equipment used in research and development and electronic processing.

In addition, Martin County Solar can receive resources from Kentuckys workforce service providers. Those include no-cost recruitment and job placement services, reduced-cost customized training and job-training incentives.

For more information on Savion, visit SavionEnergy.com.

A detailed community profile for Martin County can be viewed here.
MC JV Launches PoC Autonomous-Driving Pilot Project in Jakarta's BSD City

TOKYO, Dec 10, 2021; Mitsubishi Corporation (MC) is pleased to announce that its joint venture with Macnica Inc. (Macnica) will be taking advantage of support from the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) to carry out a proof-of-concept (PoC) autonomous-driving pilot project in Bumi Serpong Damai(BSD) City located in Tangerang, Banten, Indonesia. JICA's support comes via its second plan to assist small and medium enterprises with their efforts to grow, validate and commercialize businesses aimed at helping to achieve the UN's sustainable development goals (SDGs). JICA announced this second round of support in fiscal year 2020.

JICA's plan has several aims. Not only does it seek to leverage the advanced technologies, products and ideas of Japan's private sector to help address challenges being faced in developing countries, but it is also designed to promote those enterprises' overseas businesses, and by extension, invigorate the Japanese economy. Having praised MC's ongoing city-management operations in Indonesia, JICA has adopted as part of its support plan our proposed driverless-vehicle mobility service, which aims to further improve BSD City as a smart city in Indonesia. The period of the MC-Macnica consignment contract with JICA will run from December, 10 2021 until September, 29 2023.

MC has been promoting its city-management (smart city) operations both in Japan and around the world. They are new businesses and an example of what we intend to build on as next-generation earnings drivers. We are also confident of their potential as a business model that can effectively marry digital data platforms born of digital transformation (DX) with energy transformation (EX) initiatives aimed at decarbonization.

One of these businesses is a collaboration with Sinar Mas Land(SML) that is being undertaken to raise the value of municipal infrastructure and services throughout BSD City. Having already entered into a basic agreement, MC and SML, which is one of Indonesia's largest and diversified real estate developers in Indonesia, have now begun working together in the aspect of town management by equipping it with smart / digital city services.

This new PoC project through our joint venture with Macnica represents the first offering on the MC-Sinar Mas Land city-services menu. It will endeavor to assess the needs of the region's residents, workers and visitors with respect to driverless mobility services, the aims of which are to make municipal transportation more convenient. It should also validate the region's commercial potential for large-scale mobility services. The pilot project, which will run for one year, will involve the operation of autonomously controlled electric vehicles (EVs) throughout office and commercial-facility areas in the bustling BSD City zone. Residents, workers and visitors alike will be encouraged to actually take rides in the EVs, which will be equipped with Japanese technologies.

MC shall continue to work with SML and its other partners, whether they be within or outside the MC family. Through our collaborations, we shall strive to introduce a variety of smart- or digital-city services that are driven primarily by data on basic city infrastructure, as well as renewable energies aimed at carbon neutrality. We hope that these and other efforts like them will help to complete a BSD City as smart city that can serve as a model for future autonomous distributed communities.

BSD City, located in Tangerang, Banten, is SML's flagship town development that encompasses a total land area of approximately 6,000 hectares. Developed since the mid-1980s, BSD City is a thriving development area with businesses, schools, shopping malls, hospitals, hotels, and convention centers. This undertaking will enlarge BSD City's existing development footprint and add to its current population of 200,000 residents. BSD City is home to the Apple Developer Academy, co-run by Apple and several local Indonesian universities, as well as international universities such as Monash University from Australia.
Growing a healthy community through stress and opportunity

Walking six blocks to work each morning gives Charles Marohn a unique insight into the vitality of his town, and into his own well-being. Aware of the benefits of exercise in his life, he quickly draws an analogy between personal discipline and the discipline that makes for a strong town. Wisdom literature often draws a comparison when it calls the human body ones temple or place of habitation, cautioning us to make good choices in the care thereof. Marohn sees the same discipline necessary for personal health as being necessary for our communitiesthe shared places of our habitation. In a recent conversation, we talked a bit about his faith. Hes a practicing Catholic who values the discipline of self-denial. Fasting is an intentional deprivation that actually makes your body work bettera lot like exercise, he said.

As the founder of Strong Towns, Marohn is on a mission to help communities of all sizes gain the discipline that will give them the strength and resiliency to not only survive challenges but also to use them as catalysts to grow and prosper. Surveying his town as he walks, Marohn sees the human struggle as well as the opportunities. Little thingsthe trees planted, the fresh paint, a hand-painted crosswalk, the cleaned-up empty lot; these are the signs of a healthy community. Thousands of individuals, each of them adding a small piece to the fabric of the whole, together cause a community to grow and prosper.

And Marohn has been forced to search for these components that make communities strong. He grew up on a small farm in Baxter, Minnesota, studied civil engineering at the University of Minnesota, and received a masters degree in planning. An engineer sees everything in equations, he says. Working for the small town of Remer, Minnesota, Marohn set out to obtain funding for a small sewer system repair. Government agencies couldnt be bothered with his small grant request, so Marohn got creative, turning a $300,000 repair into a $2.5-million sewer expansion project. He was a heroor was he? Even with grants and sweet loan deals, the project actually failed to generate enough revenue to cover repaying the loans. So Marohn began to see the bigger picture.

His latest book, Confessions of a Recovering Engineer, is scheduled for release in the fall of 2021. In it, he questions the planning and procurement mentality that favors building bigger instead of using a more organic and locally empowered process. His critics love to call him anti-growth or anti-suburbs, but in really dialoguing with him, one finds a man with a truly positive vision for the places of our habitationand hes a visionary with a keen sense of history.

History and Planning

Marohns hometown of Brainerd, Minnesota, began as a collection of hastily constructed wooden buildings along a simple main street. Following a pattern they had seen before, they used local lumber, milled and planed, to develop a streetFront Street. This is how every city in human history up to this point had begun: a series of pop-up shacks, some hopes, and some dreams. The great cities of North AmericaSan Francisco, Chicago, Houston, and Manhattanall began in this way. London, Paris, Milan, and the cities of Europe, likewise. Even ancient cities, where urban DNA was in a more infantile phaseplaces like Alexandria, Thebes, Beirut, and Damascuswere founded in this same manner. Was it a smooth process? Not exactly, as there was chaos and failure along the way, too. But as the town grew, the mistakes could give way to other uses.

A town would grow incrementally and organically, evolving slowly as its inhabitants continually sought to meet their needs and express their dreams. Its fine school, its Beaux-Arts courthouse, and the presence they both conveyednone of these came first; rather, they emerged gradually as the process unfolded. They were more often than not a second or third version of the same edificeoften on the very same spot. This process of gradual renewal served us well, and we tend to forget that it came to us, sometimes quite literally, through the fire. Some of our great cities burned to the ground, and lessons learned in disaster informed the rebuilding.

However, sometime during the early to mid-20th century, this natural evolution of towns changed. After the Great Depression and World War II, we felt that we could do a better job by controlling the process from the top down. The United States had emerged from that great conflict relatively unscathed, and we found new prosperity that would allow us to build our environment on a grand scale. Old neighborhoods that had evolved over the years, often home to ethnic communities nurturing their unique cultures, suddenly stood in the way of progress. Flattened to make way for highway interchanges or housing projects, mid-20th-century planners went large when building upon their ruinsand they built their projects all at once.

Whereas entropy and renewal were constant in the old community fabric, a projects new structures would initially be shiny and pristine, but in no way immune to decay. Also, because they were all constructed at the same time, they would later begin to break down togetherand there would be no gradual renewal, only the endless demands of maintenance as they aged. The battle then became an ever-increasing effort to counter the wholesale deterioration of the project. Additionally, novelty and public funding had led cities to underestimate the true cost of maintenance. With abundant sources for project funding, old buildings were left to decay while their occupants simply moved into newer versions across town.

This idea that there should be some kind of overarching plan that lays it all together gives us a certain degree of comfortthat is really false comfort, Marohn says. The postwar development pattern has really forced us into a Sisyphus kind of relationship with the world. Our only struggle now is to resist declinenot to improve, make better, evolve, reach higher states of being and greatness, but to just simply resist the rock falling back down the hill.

Instead, you need to respect the organic nature of it, the idea that cities do need to evolve and adapt and change and be reborncities and neighborhoods need to reinvent themselves regularly. You need to add the capacity to respond to stress and opportunity. If you dont embrace that, then wherever you are today is the high water mark for everything in the futureand the question is then, How long can you keep from decline? Can you put it off for one generation or two generations10 or 50 years?

A Change for the Better

If you look at the way we build places now, the vast majority of them are abandoned, not rejuvenated. Credentialism has led to a lack of experimentationthat stifles innovation, Marohn says. The innovator will not necessarily be the smartest person in the room; rather, it will be the result of 1,000 experiments going on simultaneously. Today, we see inventiveness as the realm of people like Elon Musk. And so it goes: The expert will lay out a solution, it will be built, and when it fails to deliver, well do a charrettewell bring in the people and listen to themand then the expert will pronounce the solution. Jane Jacobs, with no planning experience, saw the value of places like Greenwich Village, and ultimately inspired their renewal.  It is time for a new generation of her ilk to rise up and begin the renewal of their communities from the bottom up. In the end, it really isnt about new urbanism or suburbs versus city, but a vision for a healthy communityone that lives within its means and allows for its members to contribute to its vitalitymuch like any healthy family. This is about people more than projects.

An example of where this is happening today is the Broad Avenue neighborhood in Memphis, Tennessee. Broad Avenue was a wasteland of vacant stores and had become a place to simply drive through. Then an army of local citizens equipped with brooms, brushes, and cheap hardware-store paint started a revolution. The citizens painted in crosswalks and bicycle lanes, and earnestly worked to make the streets as clean and inviting as their limited resources would allow. They invited merchants into the vacant storesand the merchants came. When Memphis city officials realized what was happening (with no permits having been requested), did they step in and shut it down? Marohn points out that they did quite the opposite: In many cases, where it was appropriate, they came in and replaced the hardware store paint with permanent crosswalks and bicycle lanes. They followed the template laid down by the citizens in most cases. Then they looked at the fact that the area had almost 100 percent occupancy of the commercial spaces, and used it as a model for surrounding streets and communities.

In his work with Strong Towns, Marohn strives to empower many such communities. While the media shows us the decline of Detroit, he can point to neighborhoods where local initiatives are keeping people in their homeskeeping neighborhoods alive. After the difficulties of the pandemic, Marohn sees real lessons to be learned from citizens joining together to revitalize their communities. Psychologists have similarly documented that Americans were actually happier during the Great Depression of the 1930s; as they worked together to overcome all sorts of real obstacles, they experienced real and lasting personal satisfaction. Hopefully our communities have emerged from the isolation of the past year with renewed respect for our shared places of human habitation. Most importantly, we should move forward as shapersnot merely consumersof these places, gaining the deep satisfaction that comes from doing so.

Bob Kirchman is an architectural illustrator who lives in Augusta County, Virginia, with his wife, Pam. He teaches studio art (with a good deal of art history thrown in) to students in the Augusta Christian Educators Homeschool Coop. Kirchman is an avid hiker and loves exploring the hidden wonders of the Blue Ridge Mountains.

This article was originally published in American Essence magazine.
Boats at the Gwadar Port on the Arabian Sea. China Overseas Ports Holding Company is leasing the port until 2059 and has already started expanding it. China has been looking to secure sea trading lanes along the so-called Maritime Silk Road, and the Pakistani port is an important piece in the puzzle. (J. Patrick Fischer/CC BY-SA)

Alliances Shifting in South Asia: India-US Versus China-Pakistan

CPEC is destabilizing South Asia

News Analysis

India is preparing to fight a war on two fronts, while Pakistan is discovering that the cost of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) includes crippling debt, loss of U.S. alliance, and potential conflict with India.

In 2018, the World Bank warned countries participating in Chinas Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) that the project has been known to cause debt risks, social risks, corruption, and stalled or frozen infrastructure projects. Add in increased terrorism, political interference by the military, and Chinas tensions with India and the United Statesthis describes the impact of CPEC on Pakistan.

Former U.S. Ambassador Alice Wells, head of the South Asia and Central Asia Bureau, told the Wilson Center that the Chinese regime is exploiting Pakistan. At that time, Pakistans debt to China had already risen to $15 billion, not including an additional $6.7 billion of commercial debt. Projects were being quoted at inflated prices, and after the work was started, the price was raised even more.

The work to upgrade the railway from Karachi to Peshawar was originally supposed to cost $8.2 billion. Pakistans Ministry of Railways announced that the price had been negotiated down to $6.2 billion. But it was later reported that the price had risen to $9 billion. In spite of Pakistans high unemployment, CPEC employs mostly Chinese workers. Beijings no strings lending has fostered corruption, and the lack of transparency makes it difficult to find out exactly what Pakistan owes, what has been spent, and how many Chinese workers are in Pakistan.

In Balochistan, where Gwadar Portthe terminus of CPECis located, anti-corruption journalists have been threatened and even murdered. According to Pakistani journalists, there has been no independent reporting on CPEC, and the only reporters who have been granted access to Gwadar Port were from Chinese or Pakistani state-run media.

While scrutiny of CPEC is not permitted in Pakistan, Chinese authorities and investors are fully aware of the mounting disincentives to keep pouring money in. CPEC projects slowed after Pakistans 2018 elections due to perceived political fragility, increased terrorist attacks, corruption, lack of profitability, and economic recession. By 2019, CPEC investments and projects had ground to a near standstill.

In 2020, Asim Ayub, the project director of the CPEC Industrial Cooperation, reported that when the draft of the proposed industrial cooperation for the coming year was forwarded to the Chinese, it was received with little enthusiasm. Even worse, the next Joint Cooperation Committee (JCC) meeting was postponed. It seemed that Beijing was no longer as excited about continuing with CPEC.

CPEC was meant to restart with a bang in 2021. In reality, however, projects remain unfinished and many seem to not be moving forward. Gwadar Port is the most important component of CPEC and yet, in the city of Gwadar, locals have been unable to get drinking water. Fearing attacks on the project, the Chinese demanded increased security and a fence surrounding the port. Baloch nationalists protested, however, amid rumors that the area would be fenced off and then placed under direct, federal control.

Laborers walk through the Gwadar Port in Pakistan, a multi-billion dollar infrastructure project that China has invested in as part of its Belt and Road Initiative, in this undated photo. (Amelie Herenstein/AFP/Getty Images)

As a result of Beijings urging, a CPEC authority was created in Pakistan to coordinate CPEC projects. The CPEC authority was enshrined in law, and a retired general, Asim Saleem Bajwa, was appointed as the head. Now locals fear that discretionary control over the $70 billion worth of projects will shift from the civilian government to the military. Furthermore, Bajwaa has been accused of amassing a fortune in undisclosed wealth and offshore assets during his tenure as CPEC head.

In the beginning phases of CPEC, Beijing would first release funds and then construction would begin. However, Beijing has become more cautious about the risks in Pakistan and changed the model: construction must first begin before the funds will be released. The problem for many projects is that Islamabad lacks the money to begin construction and, thus, projects stagnate.

The benefits to Pakistan are difficult to see. CPEC loans are opaque and many of the projects, in addition to being unfinished, are of questionable value. Because of its inability to meet CPEC debt payments, Pakistan had to turn to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for a three-year $6.3 billion bailout. Even in trade, the Chinese regime is exploiting Pakistan. Pakistans 2020 exports to China were $1.87 billion, while imports from China were $12.49 billion.

A threat for the United States and regional stability is that a retired general oversees CPEC and most of the projects are being administered through the army. This has strengthened the militarys role in civil society, weakening Pakistans democracy. Meanwhile, an expanding Pakistani army and the Sino-Pak-Taliban trio has India on edge.

India rejected participation in Chinas BRI and sees Chinese involvement in Pakistan as a threat. A portion of CPEC passes through Gilgit-Baltistan, part of the greater Kashmir disputed territory. As a result, the area has seen an increase in terrorist/separatist activity. In addition to having to deal with rising violence, New Delhi claims that some CPEC projects are on Indian soil. The CCP rejects this claim.

Indian Army Chief General M.M. Naravane, at an annual press conference, called the increased cooperation between Pakistan and China, both in military and non-military fields, a two-front situation, which the army had to prepare for. The Indian Air Force (IAF) chief, Marshal R.K.S. Bhadauria, similarly said that the air force did not have adequate size to face a two-front menace.

Indias perceived threat from Pakistan and Chinaboth of which India has fought wars with in the pasthas driven India to increase the size of its military and to cooperate with the United States. The Indian military is even deploying U.S. Chinook helicopters to confront China in the border areas.

A U.S. military Chinook helicopter is seen landing at Forward Operating Base in Arghandab District in southern Afghanistan on July 29, 2011. (Romeo Gacad/AFP/Getty Images)

India and the United States, along with Japan and Australia, are members of the Quadrilateral Security Dialoguethe Quada defense pact designed to counter communist Chinas expansion in the Indo-Pacific region. The United States designated India as a Major Defense Partner in 2016. India was also elevated to Strategic Trade Authorization tier 1 status, which grants India license-free access to a variety of U.S. military and dual-use technologies.

U.S.-India defense trade cooperation includes the Logistics Exchange Memorandum of Agreement (LEMOA), Communications, Compatibility and Security Agreement (COMCASA), as well as the Industrial Security Agreement (ISA). U.S. defense trade with India was $20 billion in 2020.

CPEC was meant to be the flagship of Xi Jinpings BRI, but as of 2021, it is flailing. Projects are stalled, half finished, and in many instances, proving untenable. Pakistan is saddled with massive debt and unemployment. The country is still running a tremendous trade deficit with China. India is arming itself, preparing for a two-front war. And the United States is losing one ally, while courting another.

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
Amtrak Temporarily Stopping Some Services Due to Staff Shortages

Amtrak will be cutting some services because of staff shortages due to the COVID-19 federal vaccine mandate, according to testimony given to Congress on Thursday.

Amtrak President Stephen Gardner told the House Transportation subcommittee in a written testimony (pdf) that 94 percent of the companys staff members have been fully vaccinated while 96 percent have received at least one dose of the vaccine.

However, because many engineers, conductors and on-board service employees retired or left Amtrak during the pandemic, and we temporarily halted hiring due to funding uncertainty and covid-related distancing requirements that inhibited training, we anticipate that we will not initially have enough employees to operate all the trains we are currently operating when the federal mandate takes effect, said Gardner.

All federal contractors must get vaccinated by Jan. 4, 2022, according to a White House mandate set by the Biden administration. Amtrak employs more than 20,000 employees.

Amtraks long-distance services are particularly affected as crew bases across the country have a relatively high percentage of unvaccinated employees. As it is unlikely all employees will meet the deadline as set forth by the administration, Amtrak will not have sufficient trained staff to support current service frequency on affected routes.

The transportation company will reveal the affected routes next week, according to Gardner. We anticipate proactively needing to temporarily reduce some train frequencies across our network in January to avoid staffing-related cancellations, with our plan to fully restore all frequencies by March or as soon as we have qualified employees available, he said.

Regarding qualified personnel, an inspector general report (pdf) released on Tuesday said that the company faces hiring challenges as it does not have the sufficient leadership or staff to recruit and onboard new team members.

Amtrak has received a $22 billion grant as part of the administrations infrastructure bill, which allocated $66 billion for rail.

When asked about the Amtrak presidents testimony, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said that she does not expect disruptions to affect essential services.

We dont expect these requirements will cause disruptions to services that people depend on, Psaki said during a briefing. There is some time to implement it. We are of course working with all federal contractors and federal employees and parts of the federal government to implement this going forward.

The vaccine mandate has been temporarily put on hold due to a ruling federal judges ruling in Georgia on Tuesday.
Ancient tales of wisdom remind us of the traditions and moral values that have been treasured all over the world. We hope the stories and messages in our Tales of Wisdom series help uplift the hearts and minds of our readers.

This retold tale, Heaven Honors the Man Who is Truly Concerned for the People, is one of many audio stories from the discontinued Ancient Tales of Wisdom program by the Sound of Hope Radio Network, now transcribed and printed here for the enjoyment of our readers.

Listen to the audio story, or read it below, and be transported into another world!

Listen to Audio Story:

In May of the 10th year of the Qianlong Period under Emperor Gaozongs reign, two men from Wujin County named Qian Weicheng and Li Jianzhong began their journey by horse to the capital city to take the imperial examination, an ancient Chinese system for recruiting government officials. On entering Shandong Province, it suddenly began to rain heavily. By the time the two men checked into a tavern in the town, they were both soaking wet.

Feeling exhausted, they both hit the sack as soon as they finished dinner. Shortly after Qian Weicheng fell asleep on the bed, he entered a trance and saw himself walking in the capital city. He wandered into the Ministry of Examination and saw many examinees gathering in front of a wall where the results of the imperial examination were posted. Who is going to win first place this year? Will I pass the imperial examination? he wondered. Qian began to read the results. He immediately saw that Li Jianzhong won first place. After a while, he finally found his name in the 30th place. He exclaimed in ecstasy, I passed the imperial exam!

Li Jianzhong had not fallen asleep yet. He heard Qian Weichengs exclamation and asked him, What did you say? What did you pass? Qian rubbed his eyes and replied, I just had a dream about you winning first place and me winning 30th place in the imperial examination. After hearing about Qians dream, Li Jianzhong was so excited that he couldnt sleep. He stayed up all night anticipating the sunrise so that he could leave for the capital city.

However, it continued to pour the next day. Li Jianzhong anxiously paced back and forth in the room. Out of kindness, Qian advised him, My brother, be patient. The rain is merely trying to keep us longer here as guests in this town. We may as well take the opportunity to get more study in before the exam. Li Jianzhong did not pay any attention. All he could think about was leaving. Qian Weicheng, on the other hand, took out the books from the trunk and studied alone.

The rain lasted three days. When it finally stopped, Li Jianzhong hurried Qian Weicheng to get going as soon as they had breakfast. Because it was already very close to the day of the imperial examination, they sped up the horses. They crossed a dark pine forest, passed by Sandao Bay, and came to a riverbank. As they were about to cross the bridge, they suddenly heard a little girl crying for help from the forest on the other side of the river. Qian Weicheng halted his horse right away and said to Li Jianzhong, Brother, we must hurry and rescue her! Then he whipped his horse and crossed the bridge to rescue the little girl. But Li Jianzhong said coldly, You may stay if you want to rescue the child, but I must hurry on to the capital city for the exam. Then he rode off toward the capital city.

After Qian Weicheng entered the forest, he got off the horse and walked towards the direction where he thought he heard the cry for help. Soon, he discovered a woman and a little girl holding each other and both were in tears. On a tree next to them, there was a noose on a tree branch. Qian Weicheng immediately knew that the woman was trying to kill herself by hanging. He approached them and asked anxiously, Madam, why do you want to do something so foolish? The woman looked at him absent-mindedly for a moment. Then she shook her head and tears flooded down her face.

The little girl saw that her mother wouldnt say anything, so she made a reply on behalf of her mother. She said, The thugs gave my father no choice but to kill himself, so my mother wanted to kill herself too Before she could finish, they threw themselves into each others arms and began to wail again.

(Illustration  Wang Sing/Shutterstock)

Qian Wecheng felt very sad. Tears welled up in his eyes. He tried to hold back his tears and said, Madam, please dont cry. I have some money. He took out 10 taels of silver from his pouch and put them into the womans hands. Qian Weicheng was not from a rich family. It took him a lot of time and effort to come up with about 20 taels of silver for the trip. Actually, 20 taels of silver was barely enough for the round trip. Hence, he had been very frugal during the trip. By giving away the silver, he wouldnt have the money to return to his home if he failed to pass the test. But he didnt think of that because all he could think about was saving these two people.

The woman looked at the money in her hands in shock. It took her a while to remember to thank her rescuer, but Qian Weicheng had already left the forest and was on his way to the capital city.

Ten days later, Li Jianzhong and Qian Weicheng met during the examination. They didnt say anything to each other. Fifteen days later, the results of the examination were published. Qian Weicheng got first place on the examination, but Li Jianzhong only got 30th place. It was exactly opposite to the result that Qian Weicheng had seen in his dream. When Li Jianzhong met Qian Weicheng again, he said fiercely, You have robbed me of my first place! Qian Weicheng replied peacefully, You have to ask yourself for the reason.

(Illustration  Chintung Lee/Shutterstock)

The imperial examination was a way to recruit government officials. If a man turns a blind eye to the misery of the people, what would be the use of hiring such a man as a government official? Thus, Heaven withdrew the honor of first place and gave it to the man who was truly concerned for the people.

This retold tale is transcribed and printed with permission from the Sound of Hope Radio Network. It was originally published by Clearwisdom.net. Audio by Sound of Hope Radio Network. Copyright  2012. All rights reserved.

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
Emergency crew assist an injured person after a trailer crash in the southern Mexican state of Chiapas killed at least 49 people, most of them migrants from Central America, officials said on Thursday, in Tuxtla Gutierrez, Chiapas, Mexico, on Dec. 9, 2021. (El La Mira/via Reuters)

55 Dead After Truck Smuggling People Crashes in Mexico: Officials

A truck that was smuggling mostly Central American people flipped over in southern Mexico, killing dozens, officials said on Friday.

Rutilio Escandon, the governor of the state of Chiapas where the crash occurred, confirmed Friday that the death toll rose to 55. Previously, he confirmed that about 105 people were injured, and Mexicos attorney general said Thursday that three victims were seriously injured.

Escandon and other officials said that more than 100 people were inside the trailer when it flipped on Thursday evening.

Men, women, and children were among the dead and injured, the Chiapas state government confirmed to Reuters.

It took a bend, and because of the weight of us people inside, we all went with it, one man who witnessed the incident was quoted by Reuters as saying. A local newspaper reported that the truck hit a retaining wall before smashing into a pedestrian bridge.

President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador took to Twitter to mourn the very painful incident.

I deeply regret the tragedy caused by the overturning of a trailer in Chiapas carrying Central American migrants, he wrote, according to a translation. It is very painful. I hug the families of the victims.

A police officer raises his arm to block photographers to to avoid taking pictures at the site of a trailer accident that left at least 49 people dead, most of them migrants from Central America, in Tuxtla Gutierrez, in Chiapas state, Mexico, on Dec. 9, 2021. (Jacob Garcia/Reuters)

This shows us that irregular migration is not the best way, Kevin Lopez, a spokesman for Guatemalas presidency, told Milenio television after the accident.

El Salvadors foreign minister, Alexandra Hill, said her government was working to see if Salvadorans had died.

Since taking office in January, President Joe Biden has drawn significant criticism over his immigration policies and after he rescinded a number of Trump-era orders designed to curb illegal immigration. Early in his presidency, Biden signed an order to stop the construction of President Donald Trumps border wall, and he also attempted to end the remain in Mexico policy, though Biden was forced to restart it several weeks ago following a court order.

Officials in Mexico routinely come across migrants packed into trailers. Last month, 600 people were found hidden in the back of two trucks in eastern Mexico.

The journey north from Mexicos border with Guatemala is perilous and expensive, and many migrants fall prey to criminal gangs en route. In January, 19 people, mostly migrants, were massacred with suspected police involvement in northern Mexico.

In March 2021, 13 people in a packed SUV died in California in a crash near the U.S.-Mexico border. In August, 10 people were killed in a van crash in southern Texas.

Reuters contributed to this report.
Australia Retires European Taipan Helicopter Fleet in Favour of US Black Hawks

The Australian federal government will be retiring its entire fleet of European-made Taipan helicopters around 15 years earlier than planned in favour of U.S.-made Black Hawks and Seahawk helicopters.

The performance of the MRH90 Taipan has been an ongoing and well-documented concern for defence and there has been a significant effort at great expense to try to remediate those issues, Defence Minister Peter Dutton said in a statement.

Dutton said the UH60 Black Hawk is the most widely used helicopter model in the world and has been in service for the U.S. Army for over a decade.

The government will be looking to bring in up to 40 Black Hawks to replace the outgoing fleet of 41 Taipans.

There are about 1000 of those in operation around the world. Obviously, the Americans use it very heavily, Dutton told 9 News. For the interoperability with the U.S. and Australia, which is increasingly important for us given the instability in our region, the Black Hawk made perfect sense.

Australian Defence Minister Peter Dutton addresses the National Press Club in Canberra, Australia on Nov. 26, 2021. (AAP Image/Lukas Coch)

Prime Minister Scott Morrison said the government wanted to make sure the defence forces have the best possible equipment to defend the country.

And the Black Hawks will provide that, Morrison said. Australia has been lifting our effort when it comes to defending our nation  particularly under the AUKUS agreement and moving towards the nuclear fulfilled submarines, I think demonstrates our commitment.

Deputy Opposition Leader Richard Marles agreed that the Black Hawks were a fantastic platform, but criticised the government for the number of defence projects being scrapped.

We are seeing a whole lot of defence programs being scrapped, he said. And when we see defence programs being turned over like this, it is billions of dollars wasted.

It comes after the Royal Australian Navy announced in October that it would replace six Taipans with 12 U.S.-made Seahawk helicopters for around $1.3 billion (US$985 million).

In June, all 47 Taipans had been grounded following safety and maintenance concerns.

Another issue revealed last year during a Senate hearing was that the door was not wide enough to allow for the rappelling of troops and the firing of the helicopters side gun at the same timeforcing the fleet into the third round of adjustments.

The scrapping of the Taipan also comes on the heels of Australia cancelling the $90 billion diesel-powered submarine program with a French defence contractor in favour for at least eight nuclear-powered submarines from the U.S. as part of the AUKUS agreement.

Daniel Y. Teng contributed to this article.
The Northern Territory Supreme Court Building in Darwin, Australia is pictured on April 8, 2018. (Brook Mitchell/Getty Images)

Australian Anti-Mandate Group Takes Legal Action against Northern Territory Health Orders

A group of anti-mandate protesters in Darwin have launched legal action in the Supreme Court against the current government directive, which requires the vast majority of Territorians to be vaccinated against COVID-19 or lose their jobs.

The action comes on the back of a Territory-wide vaccine mandate that went into effect in November and requires that any worker who comes into contact with members of the public in the course of their work had to receive their first COVID-19 jab by Nov. 12, with the second dose required by Dec. 24.

Failure to comply with this health order means loss of employment and those who continue to work unvaccinated face a $5,000 fine.

According to an NT news report on Thursday, lead plaintiff, United NT Businesses president Mario Tsirvas, cited increasing mental health issues and stress among the impacts the mandate is having on local businesses and families.

He also said that suspending normal democratic processes has egged on a government that is high on their power trip and forcing draconian, unreasonable laws on everyday people,

We are reasonable, everyday people who have seen whats happening and have said this is too much and too far.

Tsirvas made it clear that his group was strongly opposed to the vaccine mandate, but they were not anti-vaxxers.

Im not opposed to any vaccine, Im not opposed to anyone who disagrees with vaccines, what we are here (to do) today is to fight against the mandatory vaccinations, he said.

This comes after Chief Minister Michael Gunner recently said publically that If you are anti-mandate, then you are absolutely anti-vax.

The NT government has continually stressed that the mandate is to reduce the likelihood of COVID-19 outbreaks and protect vulnerable people.

Tsirvas said that his group were not in court to name call or denigrate any members of society but rather stand up for the rights of everyone.

The groups lawyer, Danial Kelly, said the main argument they were putting forward is that Chief Health Officer, Hugh Heggie, went beyond his legislated emergency powers in the issue of this directive.

(The directions) purport to regulate work, workers, workplaces, and thats beyond the power that hes been given under the parent act, he said.

Kelly also said further grounds for the legal action is that the health directive is racist.

Make no mistake, the directions are racist, they deem all Aboriginal people to be vulnerable, and thats simply not the case, he said.

This comes in response to the directives Category 1 workers who must be vaccinated, which says:

A worker who is likely to come into contact with people who are at risk of severe illness from COVID, including Aboriginal people and people who cannot be vaccinated due to age or a contraindication to all vaccines.

When asked at a press conference on Thursday about the legal action being against the NT Government, Minister Gunner replied: We were expecting that.

Meanwhile, two alleged anti-vaccine mandate rioters appeared in Darwin Local Court on Thursday on charges of rioting and breaching of an emergency declaration, NT News reported.

Benjamin William Christie, 31, and Kayne Mitchell Cooper, 20, are among a group of 12 protesters who allegedly participated in an anti-vaccine mandate march on Dec.6, where rocks, chemicals, and punches were thrown at police officers.

Both men were charged with taking part in a riot and contravention of an emergency declaration, while Christie faced an additional charge of hindering a member of the police.

Both were granted bail, with Christie set to reappear on Jan. 20 and Cooper on Jan. 27.
Former radio and television broadcaster Alan Jones speaks to media during a press conference, in Sydney, Australia, on Dec. 10, 2021. (AAP Image/Dan Himbrechts)

Australian Broadcaster Alan Jones Announces His Return

Australian broadcaster Alan Jones has announced his return with his new online show, Alan Jones Direct to the People.

The show will be streamed live from Monday to Thursday on Facebook, YouTube, and Jones own new website.

This has never been done in Australia before. It is the tomorrow of media, he told the press on Friday.

In November, Jones left Sky News Australia after the network indicated they would not renew his contract.

He then took to live streaming directly to his listeners on Facebook before signing a contract with Australian Digital Holdings after seeing high engagement numbers.

Weve been encouraged by both the reach and the level of interest in what I am already posting on my Facebook page, he said.

Jones said the purpose of his show was to give a voice to people who feel they lack a voice.

The figures so far on Facebook and YouTube and so on demonstrate that there is a resonance and a reach, and these are the people who have to be given a voice and often dont have it, he said.

Australian commentator Alan Jones arrives for the state funeral of former NSW premier John Fahey, at St Marys Cathedral, in Sydney, Australia, on Sept. 25, 2020. (AAP Image/POOL/Mick Tsikas)

Jones said he believed the biggest issue that Australia was currently facing but was completely unaddressed by politics was the notion of self-censure.

In so many media outlets now, there are certain opinions which are quarantined, he said. So this will be a chance for people, via their content and feedback from me, to be able to say what they think, to have a view.

He said people deserved to have a product they could identify with and would be keen to hear and learn.

And the numbers are enormous, and theyre there, and they deserve to be serviced, he said.

The announcement came after rumours that Jones would run for the Senate.

Sit in the Senate and say nothing? I dont think thats me, he said. I think theres something wrong with the parliamentary system, and I dont want to be a part of that.

I think those people are well-intentioned, but there are so many disaffected parliamentarians that speak to me and say no one listens to what Ive [to say],' he added.

The first show will premier at 8 p.m. on Dec. 13 and discuss the issue of freedom in Australia.
A staff member prepares a Pfizer vaccine for clients at the St Vincent's COVID-19 Vaccination Clinic in Sydney, Australia, on July 01, 2021. (Lisa Maree Williams/Getty Images)

Australian Health Advisory Board Distances Itself From Vaccine Mandates

Australias technical advisory body to the federal health minister has distanced itself from the use of vaccine mandatesa measure which has been criticised by the World Health Organization (WHO), arguing that it should be an absolute last resort.

The head of the Australian Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation (ATAGI), Dr. Chris Blyth, was asked on Dec. 8 why the countrys state and territory governments were handing down vaccine mandates for businesses when 80 to 90 percent of the population was already vaccinated.

His response was, I dont think thats ATAGIs role to answer that question.

We provide technical advice, and we believe in the benefits and safety of vaccinations but how they are implemented and rolled out is absolutely up to the states public health orders, he told the Senate Committee on Education and Employment.

ATAGI has not provided a recommendation for mandates at any time point.

ATAGIs comments come after the WHOs Europe Director Hans Kluge said the measure should only be applied when all other feasible options to improve vaccination uptake have been exhausted.

He told reporters that while mandates could increase vaccination rates, governments should consider the effect it would have on public confidence and public trust.

The effectiveness of mandates is very context specific, Kluge said. What is acceptable in one society and community may not be effective and acceptable in another.

Ultimately, mandates should never contribute to increasing social inequalities in access to health and social services, he added.

His comments come after Austria became the first country in Europe to make COVID-19 vaccinations mandatory for all residents over the age of 14, with the measure going into effect Feb. 1 next year.

Hold outs will be fined 3,600 euros (US$4,066) every three months until they are vaccinated.

Meanwhile, in recent months, Australian state and territory governments have rolled out a series of vaccine mandates to speed up the inoculation rate of the population.

The mandates cover millions of Australian workers who risk losing their ability to practice their chosen profession if they do not comply.

The issue has been divisive and has been one cause for major protests across the country, lawsuits by employees against employers, and resignations from a range of industries.
Flooded road in the Brisbane suburb of Brookfield, Australia, obtained on Dec. 10, 2021. (Supplied by Queensland Fire and Emergency Services)

Australian Woman Dies in Flooded Creek After Car Swept From Fast Food Drive Thru

A 44-year-old Australian woman has been found dead in a submerged car after it was swept into a creek by floodwaters while exiting a fast-food drive-through on Thursday night.

Queensland Police Service said officers received reports at around 8 p.m. that night of a sedan that had been dragged by floodwaters into Little Cabbage Tree Creek near Lucan Avenue in the Brisbane suburb of Aspley.

The driver of the vehicle, a 52-year-old Geebung man, was located alive a short time later and assessed by Queensland Ambulance Service personnel, the QPS statement read.

Following an extensive response involving police and emergency services, the sedan was recovered about 11.15 p.m., QPS said in a statement.

The passenger of the vehicle, a 44-year-old Geebung woman, was located inside the vehicle and pronounced deceased at the scene.

QPS Sergeant Mark Jones told the Courier Mail the pair were exiting the Hungry Jacks drive through to merge onto Gympie Road.

Theyve driven into the floodwater, and the force of the floodwater has swept them into the creek, Jones said.

The male occupant was able to free himself and swim to an embankment.

A video obtained by the Courier Mail shows the scene sometime after the car was swept into the creek. A womans hand is seen pointing out a flooded creek in the dark that runs alongside the Hungry Jacks drive through.

She points towards water rushing under the bridge that runs over Little Cabbage Tree Creek on Gympie Road.

So all that is flooded, and the car went like down there, like, all the way back, she said, pointing into the bushes beside the creek.

The Epoch Times understands that in the 24 hours to 5 a.m. on Friday, State Emergency Service (SES) crews in Queensland received 88 requests for help as wet weather batters in the northern Australian state.

A further 39 calls for help came in from across the state later on Friday, with 25 of those in Brisbane. The majority of requests were for leaking roofs and sandbags in the Brisbane, Moreton Bay, and Gold Coast areas.

Large parts of Australias east coast, spanning thousands of kilometres from Queensland to New South Wales (NSW), its southern neighbour, are experiencing heavy rains due to the La Nina event in the Pacific Ocean and other climate driving factors such as common changes to the global ocean current circulation patterns that influence Australian weather.

Another woman died when the car she was in became trapped in floodwaters in Tuross, on the NSW south coast, on Friday. The 37-year-old woman exited the car and was swept away. A man travelling with her was found nearby and did not require medical treatment.

The NSW SES recovered the womans body at about 7.15 a.m. on Friday.

NSW SES crews have conducted 12 flood rescues around the state, two-thirds of them on the south coast amid heavy rain.

The heavy rains have come after Australia saw a particularly wet spring from September to Novembersaturating the soil and catchments across large parts of eastern Australia.

It was the wettest November since records began in 1900, according to the Bureau of Meteorologys (BOM) spring climate summary.

According to BOM forecasts, more floods are expected over the local summer months.
Biden Reassures Allies During Calls With Ukraines Zelensky and the Bucharest 9

President Joe Biden, on a call Thursday with President Volodymyr Zelensky, said no decisions or discussions would be made about Ukraine without Ukraine.

The two leaders took part in a 90-minute phone call Dec. 9 two days after Biden held a video call with Russian President Vladimir Putin in which Biden told Putin the United States and its allies would respond with strong economic and other measures in the event of a Russian military escalation against Ukraine.

Ukrainian officials have estimated more than 90,000 Russian troops are near its border and in Russian-occupied Crimea.

U.S. officials have said the military buildup, along with a spike in anti-Ukrainian activity on social media, harkens back to a similar playbook used by Putin in 2014 when Russia occupied Crimea.

According to a White House readout of Thursdays call with Zelensky, The leaders called on Russia to de-escalate tensions and agreed that diplomacy is the best way to make meaningful progress on conflict resolution.

President Biden underscored the readiness of the United States to engage in support of confidence-building measures to advance the implementation of the Minsk Agreements, in support of the Normandy Format.

Biden also voiced concerns about Russian aggression towards Ukraine and reiterated a pledge that the United States and its Allies would respond with strong economic and other measures in the event of a further [Russian] military intervention.

Biden also took part in a phone call with Bucharest 9 nations Thursdaya group of NATO countries on the military alliances eastern flank. Those countries are Poland, Romania, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, and Slovakia.

On that call, Biden made clear that these threats are bigger than Ukraine and reaffirmed his support to transatlantic security and reiterated the sacred commitment, as he describes it, of the United States to Article 5, to transatlantic security, to NATO, and especially to our eastern flank allies, a senior administration official told reporters Thursday after the call.

National security adviser Jake Sullivan said Tuesday that, along with imposing financial sanctions, the United States would provide additional defensive material to Ukraine and fortify our NATO allies on the eastern flank with additional capabilities if Russia invaded.

During both the call with Zelensky and the Bucharest 9 Biden offered a readout of his call with Putin.

Following the Putin call Tuesday, Biden debriefed European allies, including Frances President Emmanuel Macron, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson, and Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi.
Pro-democracy activists stand at the city hall of Boston in proest of the CCP's raising its national flag on Oct. 1, 2021. (Mai Lei/The Epoch Times)

Bostons Christian Flag Debate Heading to US Supreme Court

Over the past 12 years there have been 284 flagsfrom LGBTQ rainbow flags, a Turkish flag with the Islamic star, to Communist China flagsraised on a public flagpole owned by the city of Boston.

But when a local civic organization proposed a Christian flag, officials from the cityknown as the Cradle of Libertysaid no, making it the first time ever that a proposed flag was rejected for the pole.

The debate is now heading to the U.S. Supreme Court (SCOTUS) with some unlikely bedfellows in support of the Christian organization bringing the case to the nations highest court.

The ACLU is among more than 15 organizations includingThe Congressional Prayer Caucus Foundation and the Foundation for Moral Law that have filed briefs in support of Camp Constitution, a Massachusetts organization that promotes Judeo-Christianity and denounces abortion, critical race theory, homosexuality, and other ACLU-backed social issues.

Mathew Staver, attorney for the Liberties Counsel, which is representing Camp Constitution in the SCOTUS case, said the ACLUs support confirms the argument that the Massachusetts court was wrong when it agreed with the city of Bostons position that it had the right to censor the flag because the city-owned flagpole was considered a government speech forum and, therefore, exempt from First Amendment protection.

This is government speech masquerading as religious bigotry, Staver told the Epoch Times.

We have the United States, we have 11 states, and we have the ACLU of Massachusetts on our side  it really confirms our point  that its very clear what happened here is a violation of First Amendment.

The U.S. Department of Justice, along with 11 other states, also filed a brief in support of raising the Camp Constitution flag. The states are Kentucky, Arizona, Arkansas, Georgia, Louisiana, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, South Carolina, Tennessee, Utah, and West Virginia.

The matter started when Gregory Rooney, commissioner of Bostons property management division, rejected the groups proposal to raise the flag on the city-owned pole because they referred to it as a Christian flag on its application.

In an email to Hal Shurtleff, director of Camp Constitution explaining his rejection of the groups flag, Rooney wrote that the City of Boston maintains a policy, and practice, of respectfully refraining from flying non-secular flags on the City Hall flagpoles.

This policy, and practice, is consistent with well-established First Amendment jurisprudence prohibiting a local government from respecting an establishment of religion, Rooney added.

Neither Rooney, nor the attorneys handling the case for the city, returned requests by The Epoch Times for comments on the SCOTUS case.

Rooneys decision was supported by the First Circuit Court of Massachusetts, which ruled Rooney was in his right to deny the flag, because Bostons flag-raising program is government speech and exempt from free speech protection.

In its brief opposing the Supreme Court case, the city also argued that Rooney was in his right to deny a non-secular flag because he had sole and complete discretion over what flags would be approved for the city-owned pole.

Staver said he believes the city may have walked themselves into a giant legal quagmire by taking the position that the flag-pole is government speech.

In Massachusetts it is against the law for any government to display on government property the flag of another country. Boston, according to its own records, has displayed the flag of dozens of foreign countriesincluding China, Vietnam, Tibet, Cuba, Poland, and the Philippines.

Among the 284 flags the city approved in the past included The Turkish flag, which depict the star and crescent of the Islamic Ottoman Empire.

Bostons own flag, noted Staver, includes a Latin inscription that translates into God be with us as he was with our fathers.

It also has an uncanny resemblance, Staver pointed out, to Bostons long cherished Bunker Hill flag. Both feature a red cross with a white and blue background.

The only significant difference between the two is that the Bunker HIll flag includes a small pine tree next to the cross, which ironically was chosen to represent liberty to the colonists.

Both the ACLU, of Massachusetts, and the Justice Department, argued the citys flag-raising program is not a forum for government speech, but instead a forum for private speech.

The ACLU denounced the citys decision to, it said, designate a flagpole as a public forum for a wide range of private speakers and messages, and then deny access to an otherwise eligible private speaker based on the speakers viewpoint.

The Constitution squarely forbids that approach, it argued.

The DOJ stated, in its brief, that the case is a matter of national concern because federal agencies like the National Parks Services often provide government venues to private demonstrations and events.

It expressed concern that the Massachusetts court decision, if not overturned, could even have negative ramifications on such government programs as the competition run by the United States Postal Service that adopts postage stamps designed by private citizens.

Oral arguments in the cases are scheduled to be heard by the U.S. Supreme Court on Jan. 18.

Liberty Counsel plans to hold a vigil, and a rally, the day before in Boston.
People queue to enter terminal 2, as tighter rules for international travellers start, at Heathrow Airport, amid the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic, London, Britain, Jan. 18, 2021. (Henry Nicholls/Reuters)

Business Passengers Fearful as Omicron Disrupts Air Travel in Europes Biggest Airport

Londons Heathrow Airport said that renewed travel restrictions made on the discovery of the Omicron CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus variant has spooked passengers, especially business travelers, who worry they wont be able to get back home.

According to figures released Friday, the demand for air travel, which had started to inch back to normalcy in October, had lost its momentum, and numbers in November were 60 percent below what they were before the pandemic, despite the fact that the United States had restarted international air travel for vaccinated passengers last month.

The airport said in the report that business travelers were concerned about being trapped overseas, because of the strict regulations imposed by the UK government. Britain was one of the first countries to impose a travel ban on flights coming in from southern African countries, where the latest variant was discovered.

This has resulted in a high number of cancellations and decline in travel numbers. The airport requested ministers to lessen restrictions as soon as its safe, and allow UK nationals from red list countries to isolate at home.

By allowing Brits to isolate at home, Ministers can make sure they are reunited with their loved ones this Christmas, said Heathrow CEO John Holland-Kaye. It would send a strong signal that restrictions on travel will be removed as soon as safely possible to give passengers the confidence to book for 2022, opening up thousands of new jobs for local people at Heathrow. Lets reunite families for Christmas.

Although the airport estimates only around 60 percent of 2019 traffic for next year, Heathrow expects to start recruiting and training employees ahead of next summer.

We do not expect that international travel will recover to 2019 levels until at least all travel restrictions (including testing) are removed from all the markets that we serve, at both ends of the route, and there is no risk of new restrictions, such as quarantine, being imposed, the report states. This is likely to be several years away.

From the end of last year to November, 2021, there has been a decrease of more than 30 percent of terminal passengers in the EU market. For North America, it was down by almost 50 percent, and for the Asia/Pacific region, it was down by 58 percent.

UK ministers said that passengers coming into the region must take a PCR test before boarding their flights and after disembarking. For the 11 African countries on the red list, travelers are required to stay in quarantine before interacting with society.
CDC Reveals First Known Omicron Patient in US Had Symptoms Starting Much Earlier

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on Friday said the first known Omicron COVID-19 case in the United States was discovered in a person who traveled internationally and had symptoms starting Nov. 15.

The World Health Organization (WHO) named the variant on Nov. 26 as one of concern. Authorities in California reported what was thought to be the first U.S. case on Dec. 1 after an international traveler on Nov. 22 traveled from South Africa to San Francisco and developed symptoms.

The earliest date of symptom onset was November 15 in a person with a history of international travel, said the CDC in a revision of its timeline detailing Omicrons spread in the United States.

No deaths have been associated with the Omicron variant anywhere in the world.

The CDC update said 22 states confirmed at least one Omicron case, and some of the cases indicate that community spread is currently underway. About 33 percent of those cases reported international travel during the 14 days before symptoms onset.

Among these cases of COVID-19 attributed to the Omicron variant, 34 (79 percent) occurred in persons who completed the primary series of an FDA-authorized or approved COVID-19 vaccine, the agency said.

The agency further said that most of the first Omicron cases appear to be mild, which is consistent with previous statements made by CDC Director Rochelle Walensky and other health officials.

Aa lag exists between infection and more severe outcomes, the CDC added, and symptoms would be expected to be milder in vaccinated persons and those with previous SARS-CoV-2 infection than in unvaccinated person, referring to another name for the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus.

The World Health Organization said the Omicron variant appears to be more contagious than the Delta variant, although more data is needed before it can make a definitive conclusion.

Also Friday, South African scientists said they have seen no sign that the Omicron CCP virus variant is causing more severe illness. South Africa was one of the first countries in the world to report the variant.

Preliminary data does suggest that while there is increasing rate of hospitalization  it looks like it is purely because of the numbers rather than as a result of any severity of the variant itself, this Omicron, Health Minister Joe Phaahla said in a news conference.

South Africas health agency reported more than 22,000 new COVID-19 cases Thursday, which is below a peak of over 26,000 daily CCP virus cases that were reported during a peak fueled by the Delta variant.
Sean Walton (L), attorney representing Tamala Payne (R), the mother of Casey Goodson Jr., speaks during a news conference in Columbus, Ohio, on Dec. 2, 2021. (Jay LaPrete/AP Photo)

Charged With Murder, Ohio Deputy Seeking Federal Immunity

Attorneys for a former Ohio deputy sheriff who was arrested and charged with murder are trying to get his case moved to federal court, where he could have the case dismissed under an immunity clause that applies only to federal law enforcement officers.

On Dec. 8, Steve Nolderan attorney for former Franklin County officer Michael Jason Meadesaid Supremacy Clause Immunity is a constitutional doctrine that prevents federal officers from being prosecuted for state crimes committed while carrying out their duties.

It would stop in its tracks the state court prosecution, it could not go further. Period. Its over, Nolder told The Epoch Times.

According to the Notice of Removal to federal court, Meade was on assignment with the U.S. Marshals Southern Ohio Fugitive Apprehension Strike Team (SOFAST), a federal agency, at the time of the shooting and killing of Casey Goodson.

In it, Nolder argues that Meades actions were justified, because the shooting of Goodson was necessary and proper for him to do in performing his federal duties.

However, on Dec. 8 special prosecutors assigned to the case filed a motion opposing the transfer of the case to federal court.

They argued Meades work with the U.S. Marshalls office had ended before he shot Goodson, and that he was only authorized to locate and apprehend a known fugitive for the federal agency, which was not Goodson.

The facts do not, clearly, support a finding that he was even a federal officer at the time of the offense, given that his activities as a SOFAST member had concluded for the day and members of the task force were leaving the field, the prosecutors said d in their motion.

Meade was indicted last week on two counts of murder, and one count of reckless homicide, for the Dec. 4, 2020, shooting of 23-year-old Goodson.

An autopsy report showed that the former truck driver was shot five times in the back, and once in the buttocks, by Meade, as he was entering his home. He died shortly after being shot.

The shooting set off racially-charged protestswith Goodson, a black man, shot and killed by Meade, a white policeman.

Sean Collins, attorney for the Goodson family, did not return repeated requests for comments on the case.

However, his office did provide The Epoch Times with a copy of a wrongful death lawsuit the family filed against Meade and Franklin County.

The suit did not accuse Meade of targeting Goodson for being black.

It chronicled Meades documented history for insubordination, violent tendencies, reckless conduct as an officer, and deliberate excessive use of force.

He was disciplined after a 2018 shooting, and for improperly using a Taser on a suspect, according to the lawsuit.

Attorney Mark Collins, who represented Meade at his arraignment, told The Epoch Times the officer was acting in self defense when he shot Goodson.

According to Collins, Meade fired only after Goodson had pointed a gun at him and ignored repeated commands to put his gun down and show his hands.

It was a proper use of force based on his training, and experience, and circumstances, said Collins.

He said Meade was waiting at a stop light, in an unmarked cruiser, when he saw Goodson.

Collins said the officer said he could see Goodson waving around a black handgun, with an extended magazine, and was pointing it toward other cars passing byas well as Meade, who even ducked at one point.

Court records confirmed that a gun found at the scene was registered to Goodson.

The family gave a very different account of the shooting.

Goodsons mother, Tamala Payne, said her son was returning home, just after noon, following a dentists appointment.

He had stopped at Subway and was carrying a bag of subs for the family at the time he was shot by Meade.

Payne said she and eight other family members, including Goodsons two younger siblings, were home at the time.

She said they came out into the kitchen after hearing the shots and found Goodson laying face down in a pool of blood in the entryway with his keys still hanging from the door.

My son was killed in cold blood, Payne said at a press conference, shortly after Meades indictment last week.

There was no body cam footage, or video, of the shooting.

Just three weeks after Goodsons death, more protests rocked the Columbus, Ohio, community when Adam Coy, a white Columbus police officer, fatally shot 47-year-old Andre Maurice Hill, a black man who was inside the garage of a single family home where he was an invited guest.

The shooting was caught on 60 seconds of Coys body cam.
Chief Justice John Roberts Rejects Bid to Block Mask Mandate on Planes

Supreme Court Justice John Roberts rejected a lawsuit that sought to block the federal governments mask mandate on planes.

A Florida man, Michael Seklecki, made an emergency request on behalf of him and his 4-year-old autistic son, arguing they are not physically capable of wearing masks for extended periods of time, according to court papers.

Another plaintiff, Lucas Wall, joined their efforts. Wall said he is stranded at his mothers residence in Florida because the mask mandate prevents him from flying on a plane, according to court documents.

The pair filed their lawsuit against the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), which enforces the mask mandate.

The TSA has produced no evidence showing that face masks are effective in reducing COVID-19, especially now that most Americans are fully vaccinated, according to the complaint. In fact, masking has been totally ineffective in reducing coronavirus infections and deaths, it added, referring to the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus that causes COVID-19.

Whats more, they argued, it is in the public interest to prevent discrimination against travelers with medical conditions who cant wear [a] mask.

Also according to the emergency request, the 4-year-old boy cannot wear a mask and must fly regularly for specialized medical care out of state. It also stated that the boys father who also medically cant tolerate wearing a face covering and must accompany [the child] on flights to Massachusetts and back for his sons medical care.

Wall, meanwhile, said that he has general anxiety disorder, which causes him to experience panic attacks when he wears a face covering.

He has been stranded at his mothers house in The Villages, Florida, since early June because TSA wont let him fly maskless even though he cant medically cover his face, the lawsuit said.

Roberts, in his Thursday morning ruling, didnt comment on the lawsuit or his order. He also did not request a response to the emergency relief application or refer it to the full Supreme Court.

The TSA order for masking on planes, trains, buses, and other public transportation is due to expire on March 18.

Studies on mask-wearing have shown they produce mixed results. Several researchers last month, in an analysis published by the Cato Institute, found that studies that are often cited by federal officials were poorly designed and offered insufficient evidence to support masking. Meanwhile, a recent study published in the British Medical Journal found that mask-wearing cuts the number of new COVID-19 infections by about 53 percent.
Tajikistan Foreign Minister Sirojiddin Muhriddin attends the multilateral conference on Afghanistan, in the Iranian capital Tehran on Oct. 27, 2021. (Atta Kenare/AFP via Getty Images)

China Eyes Afghanistans Neighbor in Encirclement Strategy: Experts

News Analysis

As the Chinese regime sets its sights on the vacuum left by the United States in Afghanistan, neighboring Tajikistan is also finding itself in the crosshairs of Beijings long-term strategy. The small landlocked country is the latest subject of the regimes interests in Central Asia.

The Chinese regime will be putting up $8.5 million to build an outpost for a special forces unit of Tajikistans police near the border with Afghanistan. Plans for the security outpost were announced on Oct. 28. According to a Tajikistan parliamentary spokesman, All construction is funded by the Chinese side, [and] after construction, the base will be transferred to the Tajik [police].

According to experts, the Chinese regime is concerned about the Turkistan Islamic Party (TIP), formerly known as the East Turkistan Islamic Movement. Founded in the far western Xinjiang region of China, this ethnic Uyghur Islamic extremist organization fought side-by-side with the Taliban against the United States and NATO forces in Afghanistan. The organization hopes to establish an independent state in Xinjiang, where the Chinese regime has deployed an expansive campaign of repression against the Uyghurs and other ethnic Muslim groups

Bill Roggio, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) and the editor of FDDs Long War Journal, told The Epoch Times that TIP is a legitimate concern for the Chinese regime. Another group Jamaat Ansarullah, known as the Tajik Taliban, is closely aligned with TIP and is a threat to both Central Asia and China, he said.

Thus, according to Roggio, a security outpost in Tajikistan could be used as a forward operating base or a listening post to gain a better understanding of threats in the regiona great benefit to both Tajikistan and China.

Tajikistan is very concerned about security and is ripe for a security relationship with China, according to Roggio. He considers Tajikistan the only stan thats not fully receptive to the Talibans rule of Afghanistan. Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, for example, seem a little more amenable to the Taliban.

Weary about the Talibans ability to control or quash groups like TIP and Jamaat Ansarullah, Roggio believes the Chinese regime has an opportunity to increase its influence in Tajikistan, while also bolstering its influence in the years ahead.

Surround and Compete

Retired Major General Jeffrey Schloesser former commanding general of the U.S. Armys 101st Airborne Division and NATOs Regional Command-East in Afghanistanspoke to The Epoch Times about the Chinese regimes motives and long-term strategies. He said it is most important to recognize their ability to play the long game.

Ben Varlese, a former U.S. Army Mountain Infantry platoon sergeant and global security expert, agreed. He stated that the Chinese regime never does something for the immediacy, but their actions are always for the long game.

It is clear the Chinese regime is interested in competing in Central Asia on multiple fronts, including militarily, diplomatically, and economically, according to Roggio. In light of the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan, he said Beijings interests have piqued in the region.

Varlese said, the vacuum left by the withdrawal creates and avenue for the Chinese regime to ease themselves into the region. He said, in due time, theyll start asserting their own regional hegemony, pushing themselves further into Central Asia and Afghanistan.

To assert more influence on Afghanistan, Schloesser said the regime has every intention to posture itself around the South Asian country through what he calls an encirclement strategy.

The strategy includes a footprint in a variety of points around Afghanistan.

Establishing roots north of Afghanistan in Tajikistan is a really brilliant move by the Chinese regime strategically, he said. It provides a future entry point. A large seaport already exists south of Afghanistan in Pakistan. Its the Gwadar Port, jointly controlled by the Maritime Secretary of Pakistan and China Overseas Port Holding.

Since China is a strategic partner and top-trading partner to Iran, Schloesser doesnt consider the west to be a priority at this time. However, he expects to see a point of entry develop in Pakistan near Jalalabad, on Afghanistans eastern border.

As the regimes apparent strategy to surround Afghanistan falls into place, he would not be surprised to see a further degree of encroachment into the country over the next couple of years.

Influential Footprint

Economic reasons are not the top priority of Chinas multi-million dollar investment in Tajikistan, according to Schloesser. The number one reason is purely a strategic one that brings military and diplomatic influence to the top of the list.

China is no longer a regional power in Asia; its a world power, Schloesser said. Establishing a footprint in a large number of countries, now including Tajikistan, allows the Chinese regime the ability to wield more influence, he said.

Schloesser said the improvements to Tajikistans infrastructure may only be a means to an end. Ultimately, he said the Chinese regime is looking to position their diplomatic, intelligence, and military forces throughout the world and the area north of Afghanistan has their interest.

Roggio calls the Chinese regimes plan to build a security outpost more of subtle military play than an overt military play. He considers the Chinese Communist Party a bad actor in regard to Taiwan, for example, but he doesnt believe showing all their military might near Afghanistan is a primary play for the regime. Instead, he said, it may best be described as a subtle spread of influence.

In the short to medium term, Roggio does not foresee that China would have any real desire of overt occupation in Afghanistan. The Chinese regime is likely deterred after observing four decades of U.S. and Russian intervention in Afghanistan, he noted. Occupation is probably a game it doesnt want to play.

However, he said, having a presence or some influence in Afghanistan is not the same as going all in. While Roggio said he doesnt want to give the Chinese regime too much credit, he suspects they understand their limitations in the region.

Doing all it can to avoid strife in the region, Roggio said, the Chinese are looking to gain influence in the region and increase their footprint.

According to Varlese, Its a soft power move to provide infrastructure support under the guise of a security operation.

Each of the experts agreed, the Chinese regimes actions in Tajikistan are part of a long game. Strategy. Beijing will continue to encroach upon Central Asia, gaining the degree of influence that best suits their military, diplomatic, and economic needs.

Relationship to Ravage

Tajikistan is Central Asias most impoverished country, and as Schloesser pointed out,

Its not a secret that China has invested in countries that cannot finance their own infrastructure. The Chinese regimes strategic interests seem to outweigh the cost of its investments around the world, he added.

Schloesser said the end game is that the Chinese regime wants more access Afghanistanand he considers Tajikistan a great participant to their plan. Eventually, there will be a huge amount of pressure on Tajikistan to basically do things Chinas way.

By working with Tajiks, Varlese said the Chinese regime is creating an example for the Taliban to witness. By fostering a relationship with Tajikistan, he said, its going to show the Taliban that they can be a long-term partner going forward.

According to Varlese, the CCP will ravish Afghanistans estimated $1 trillion worth of mineral deposits as it continues to make great efforts to gain influence in the region. The Chinese regime may now appear as the benign benefactor, but sooner or later, he said, they will show their true colorsand Afghanistans will be taken from them.
U.S. Ambassador to Canada David Cohen talks to reporters after he presented his credentials to Gov. Gen. Mary Simon during a ceremony at Rideau Hall, the official residence of the governor general, in Ottawa on Dec. 7, 2021. (The Canadian Press/Fred Chartrand)

China the Greatest Threat to Democracy: New US Ambassador

It's important Canada and the United States align with each other on China policy, David Cohen says

Its crucial that Ottawa and Washington present a united front to challenge Beijings global push to expand its military, economic, and authoritarian influence, says David Cohen, the newly appointed U.S. ambassador to Canada.

I think for both Canada and the United States, and you could argue for every democracy in the world, China is our greatest threat, Cohen told The Globe and Mail on Dec. 9.

The fact is that China is very much aligned in an anti-democratic fashion and an authoritarian fashion.

In his first interview since becoming the ambassador to Canada, Cohen stressed the need for democracies to challenge authoritarianism in general and, in particular, Beijings cyber security threats and human rights abuses.

China is the poster child of what we are trying to combat together, he said.

Cohen is an attorney and lobbyist who served as a senior adviser at the U.S. telecommunications giant Comcast. He is pleased with Ottawas new direction in its China policy and commitment to deeper partnerships in the Indo-Pacific region.

It is important as Canada articulates its China policy, as the United States refines its China policy, that we do so in alignment with each other, he said. Canada is arguably our most important ally and being in alignment on a fundamentally critical relationship like China is really important to that long-term relationship.

Ottawas Indo-Pacific strategy emerged in the aftermath of its three-year diplomatic freeze with China once Michael Spavor and Michael Kovrig returned safely to Canada in September. The two were arbitrarily detained in Chinese prisons for over 1,000 days in what is widely viewed as retaliation for the arrest of Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou on a U.S. extradition warrant in 2018.

The Nov. 23 throne speech acknowledged this priority by stating that a changing world requires adapting and expanding diplomatic engagement. Canada will continue working with key allies and partners, while making deliberate efforts to deepen partnerships in the Indo-Pacific and across the Arctic.

Cohen also expressed concern over China strengthening its geopolitical power by acquiring critical rare-earth minerals or taking over key sectors in Canada.

In a March research paper titled The Geopolitics of Critical Minerals Supply Chains, author Jane Nakano noted that China is home to roughly one-third of global rare-earth reserves and, to compensate for any resources it lacks, has invested in mining projects abroad.

China realizes that its critical mineral resources grant it considerable geopolitical leverage, writes Nakano who is a senior fellow in the Energy Security and Climate Change Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a think tank based in Washington, D.C.

In response to the threat from Beijing, Canada and the United States signed a memorandum of understanding in August to accelerate research, development, and the procuring of critical minerals vital to national security, energy transition, and global competitiveness.

In July, the Trudeau government also released new guidelines to protect Canadian research and intellectual property from foreign interference, espionage, and theft, specifically from China, as the Canadian Security Intelligence Service has repeatedly warned.

Cohen emphasized that the threat of Chinese cyberattacks that could wreak havoc in Western financial markets is a particular concern of the Biden administration.

China is a state actor and has been known to hack and invade computer networks in critical industry areas, he said. This is a strong motive for the U.S. and Canada to be aligned and working together and being prepared to surveil and block those types of threats.

When asked why Canada remains the only member in the Five Eyes alliance consisting of Canada, New Zealand, United States, Australia, and the UK that is yet to ban Huawei from its 5G networks, the ambassador declined to comment saying only that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has promised a decision is forthcoming.

In late September, Trudeau said his cabinet will decide whether to ban Huawei in the coming weeks.

We continue to weigh and look at different options, but we will be no doubt making announcements in the coming weeks, he told reporters on Sept. 28 during his first news conference a week after his re-election.

With files from The Canadian Press
Chinas Resource Exploitation in South America Is Unstoppable

PUERTO SUAREZ, BoliviaAs China continues expanding its influence in South America through investments, some local communities in Bolivia, Peru, and Ecuador have pushed back and are speaking out against the emerging investment partner over issues of mistreatment and pollution.

Bolivia awarded the Chinese regime a 49 percent stake in its lithium reservesthe largest of its kind in the worldin 2019 in a $2.3 billion deal.

China invested $79.2 million in Ecuador between 2010 and 2019 to acquire mineral rights and also secured an $80 million project granting it oil rights in the Amazon.

In Peru, which is the worlds second-largest producer of copper, Chinas investment in the mining sector represents $15 billion.

Despite these large cash infusions, theres a noticeable lack of investment in local communities or infrastructure, leading to what ChinaLatin America relations analyst Fernando Menendez calls imperialism with Chinese characteristics.

A Complicated Working Relationship

Deep within the Bolivian Pantanal, China made another important investment: one of the worlds largest iron deposits in the mountain of El Mutun.

Former socialist President Evo Morales awarded Chinese company Sinosteel the $546 million project, which resumed in 2021 after a series of delays kept the enterprise from making significant progress since 2017.

In nearby Puerto Suarez, a collection of heavy machinery sits loaded on trucks, awaiting transport down a dirt road that leads to El Mutun. The trucks are a happy occasion for some local residents who see them as an opportunity for a brighter future with Sinosteel.

Equipment on trucks awaiting delivery to El Mutun on Dec. 8, 2021. (Cesar Calani/The Epoch Times)

Other companies tried before [to excavate] and they were either kicked out or failed to get the iron, local resident Desiderio Montano told The Epoch Times.

China isnt the first country to try tapping into Bolivias iron cache. Indian company Jindal bowed out of a contract struck with Moraless government in 2007, and Brazilian company EBX was ejected in 2006 by the same administration for attempting to access the mineral reserves illegally.

Sinosteels arrival is a blessing because of the jobs and infrastructure it will bring to Puerto Suarez, Bolivia, and nearby Puerto Quijarro, Bolivia, according to Montano.

However, Menendez pointed to a distinct pattern with Chinas investments in South America: Theyre strictly limited to the scope of their projects, investing nothing into local communities beyond the reach of their profits.

Its how you end up with things like paved roads in the middle of nowhere, with little to no civilian population. They invest little, but take a whole lot, he told The Epoch Times.

When it comes to working together, Bolivians have a love-hate relationship with China. In the nations vast salt flats, Chinese company Xinjiang TBEA Group employs local workers for the hardest tasks, which demand long hours at extremely high altitudes for little pay.

At more than 12,000 feet outside of the town of Uyuni, Bolivia, local resident Miguel Flores told The Epoch Times that he has one of the better jobs working for the Chinese lithium company.

Im a driver, and I work seven days [straight] before getting the next seven days off, Flores said.

He said being a driver is better than working in other parts of the extraction project, but he still puts in 12-hour days.

People at the mine work even longer hours and get paid less for harder [physical] jobs, Flores said.

While Flores admits that working for China isnt ideal, theres little option for stable employment in the remote towns crouched at the edge of Bolivias salt flats. Hes also not the first to describe unjust conditions and compensation for Bolivian workers employed by Chinese companies.

Bolivian salt flat near Chinas Xinjiang TBEA Groups mining operation on Oct. 26, 2021. (Cesar Calani/The Epoch Times)

In 2019, a video surfaced of an altercation between Bolivian road workers and a Chinese foreman. A fight broke out after the foreman attempted to run over the workers with a bulldozer for refusing to work. A union representative from the Central Obrera Departamental de Cochabamba said the workers had been on strike for three days at a job site in Bulo Bulo, Bolivia, because they hadnt received payment for their work.

The foreman attempted to crush the workers with heavy machinery, which prompted locals to swarm the bulldozer, pull the foreman outside, and beat him. A Bolivian can be heard shouting go back to your country [expletive] as members of the Chinese management team attempted to rescue the foreman.

In the same video, a worker screamed, He tried to kill us!

Bolivian economist Eduardo Hoffmann told The Epoch Times that China is, without a doubt, attempting to foster a totalitarian regime outside of its borders.

It Takes a Village

In Ecuador, a village of indigenous Waorani is suing PetroOriental, which is a subsidiary of the China National Petroleum Corp. (CNPC), over claims of atmospheric pollution that their community was suffering from as a result of oil extraction in Block 14.

Much like their neighbors in Bolivia and Ecuador, Peruvian communities have also fought back against Chinese businesses.

In 2019, protesters set fire to the offices of Confipetrol and the CNPC during a labor protest in the town of El Alto, Peru, in Talara province. The incident occurred after a request for better working conditions was denied by Chinese management during a negotiation with Peruvian workers. The rejected grievances triggered a violent response from the workers, prompting CNPC officials to flee the premises.

In 2012, Chinese mining company Chinalco evicted 5,000 people from the town of Morococha, Peru, in the department of Junin, which is part of the Peruvian central highlands, to build a mine. Though most residents were forcibly relocated, 65 families resisted eviction until December 2018, when Chinalco attempted to demolish what remained of the town, including the houses where people were still living.

An Unstoppable Force?

Hoffmann said the economics and politics of Chinas deals in Latin America can no longer be separated,

Their influence is too big, he said. Theyre unstoppable now.

Hoffmann also said Chinas large consumer base has pushed them to be more aggressive in their production efforts.

Menendez noted that Latin American governments haphazard and short-sighted deals with China are to blame for the poor treatment of local residents and the cavalier attitude toward the environment.

Theyve taken this approach with a large power player who thinks in terms of centuries, he said. The people cashing the checks arent thinking strategically.

Heavy machinery at the El Mutun project site on Dec. 8, 2021. (Cesar Calani/The Epoch Times)
This photo taken on Sept. 4, 2018, shows a logo of Didi Chuxing displayed on a building in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province, China. (STR/AFP via Getty Images)

DiDis US Departure Will Accelerate Decoupling

Chinese ride-hailing company DiDis announced delisting from the New York Stock Exchange effectively ends the Chinese technology industrys parade of public offerings in the United States.

DiDis run as a listed company has been tumultuous. Its stock has lost nearly 50 percent of its value since its initial public offering (IPO) six months ago.

While DiDi stated that it came to the conclusion of delisting on its own, that decision wasnt the companys to make. The firm reportedly went ahead with an IPO without obtaining approval from Chinese regulators, even after those regulators had voiced concerns around certain cybersecurity issues about its data storage.

How legitimate those concerns were is beside the point. After reports surfaced over the past few weeks that the Cybersecurity Administration of China (CAC) was pushing DiDi to delist, its fate as a U.S.-listed firm was sealed.

DiDi is planning to list its traded shares in Hong Kong after pulling out of New York.

This event will usher an end to the era of Chinese technology giants selling shares in U.S. markets. Since Sinas IPO in 2000, a parade of Chinese firms used whats called a variable interest entity (VIE) structure to circumvent Chinese laws to raise foreign capital. Some of the largest companies in China, including Alibaba, JD.com, and NetEase have followed this formula.

The SEC laid out rules in early December that Chinese companies listed in the United States must open their books for examination by U.S. investors or face delisting within three years. The investment community is holding out hope for an eventual agreement between the SEC and Chinese Communist Party (CCP) authorities to share audit work papers, but there has been very little progress on that front.

Instead, Beijing appears onboard with pulling its companies out of the United States. The CAC has introduced increasingly strict rules governing Chinese companies pursuing foreign IPOs on the basis of data and national security concerns.

While Chinese entrepreneurs want to cash out via foreign IPOs, CCP leader Xi Jinping wants to keep companiesand by extension, the wealth of their foundersin the country, where they can be monitored and controlled. Data security could just be an excuse. However, Xis underlying policy has been steadfast and clear. China wants foreign capital, but it must be by the CCPs rules.

Weve also seen Hong Kongs transformation from a mostly free, de facto beachhead of foreign capital to a Chinese city fully within the grip of the CCP. Beijing introduced separate rules for companies pursuing a listing in China and Hong Kong and for those doing so outside of mainland China earlier in 2021. The result? Only one Chinese company priced an IPO in the United States during the second half of 2021.

The future of existing U.S.-listed Chinese companies appears to be increasingly precarious. Many are already pursuing a dual listing in Hong Kong to make a future U.S. delisting less painful.

On the VIE structure, which has had its longevity questioned, Beijing recently suggested that it could remain as a viable structure for foreign capital to flow into Chinese companies. But its future could be restricted to non-technology companies, as tech companies may be forced to stay home.

One thing is clear: China is setting up Hong Kong as the preferred site of foreign stock listing. The city is within Chinas borders, and foreign investment firms enjoy more economic and capital freedom there than they do on the mainland. Any changes in Beijings attitude toward the VIE structure are unlikely to affect companies abilities to list in Hong Kong.

What does that mean for U.S. investors?

Beijing is taking the initiative to decouple from a stock market listing perspective. There will be tighter control over how Chinese companies can raise foreign capital. Few, if any, Chinese companies will IPO in the United States going forward.

U.S. investors will still be able to invest in China if they choose to do so. Investment firms should have specific China-focused funds to provide investors wanting exposure to China with a deliberate, ring-fenced allocation of exposure that can be analyzed separately from the rest of their portfolios.

And investors need to demand returns equal to the risk theyre taking. Investing in China will be more difficult, but given the risk, it should have always been this way.

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
Fiction

Recreating the Texas Revolution

Captain Putnam for the Republic of Texas

By James L. Haley

In this fourth installment of the historical fiction Putnam Series, readers sail along the Texas coast, engage in naval battles, follow the Texians during the Texas Revolution, and learn how to captain a ship (sort of). A fun, exciting, and historically accurate read.

G.P. Putnams Sons, March 2021, 368 pages

An Unexpected Visit

The Stranger in the Lifeboat

By Mitch Albom

A private yacht has sunk. Ten people find themselves adrift off the coast of West Africa. They are short on fresh water, food, and faith. Then they see a man floating in the waves and pull him aboard. He claims to be the Lord. Really? Each of the survivors has a story, chronicled by one of the passengers. His notebook is discovered a year later by inspector Jarty LeFleur who attempts to piece together what happened. The chapters jump from mystery to mystery as readers learn what happened out at sea.

Harper Collins, 2021, 267 pages

History

The Capstone Work of a Genius

From Dawn to Decadence: 500 Years of Western Cultural Life

By Jacques Barzun

Published when Barzun was 93 years old, this rumination on the past 500 years of Western civilization will be read for generations. Here are thousands of profound insights from a great 20th-century historian. He reminds us of the dangers of judging the past by present standards and offers us mini-portraits of scores of Western thinkers. Despite the gloomy title, Barzun offers hope for the future. If you want to know how our culture evolved, start with this.

Harper Perennial, 2001, 912 pages

Bargain With the Devil

The Collaboration: Hollywoods Pact With Hitler

By Ben Urwand

Urwand explores a dark chapter in American history, when Hollywood studios in the 1930s, instead of making films that might have exposed the persecution of Jews in Germany, decided to prioritize profit and retain access to the German market. Not only that, these studios sought to make movies that would please Hitler. One cant help but reflect on the costs of collaborating with totalitarian regimes today.

Belknap Press, 2013, 336 pages

Classics

Inside the Samurai Mind

Samurai Wisdom: Lessons from Japans Warrior Culture

By Thomas Cleary

A collection of five classic books on bushido, or Japanese warrior culture. Whereas stoicism influenced Western ideas about what it means to be a man, in Japan, Confucian elements shaped the ideal of a warrior. Were this guide rewritten as a modern book, it would be an excellent guide on what it means to be an upright man.

Tuttle Publishing, 2014, 256 pages

A Brutal Age of Courage and Virtue

Beowulf

Translation by Seamus Heaney

When the man-eating Grendel attacks Hrothgar and his Danes, Beowulf and his warriors come to their aid. Beowulf kills Grendel, and after the monsters mother returns seeking revenge, he kills her as well. In his later years, he and another comrade slay a dragon, though Beowulf dies in the struggle. This epic poem reminds readers of how distant we are from this primitive past, but also demonstrates the emotions we share in common with those ancestors. The many translations of Beowulf reveal the power it holds over scholars and poets.

W.W. Norton, 2001, 256 pages

For Kids

Love Makes Us Real

The Velveteen Rabbit

By Margery Williams

Here we meet a boy, his beloved toy rabbit, and the wise Skin Horse, who tells the rabbit love will leave him shabby and loose in the joints, but will make him real. Read this story to the little ones, but keep some tissues handy.

Applesauce Press, 2013, 48 pages

Kindness and Perseverance

The Little Engine That Could

By Watty Piper

I think I canI think I canI think I can. The Little Blue Engine hauls toys and food to children on the far side of a mountain, all the while chanting that mantra. A 1930 classic that belongs on every childs read-aloud list.

Grosset & Dunlap, July 2001 48 pages
EU Lays out Plan Giving Rights to Uber, Deliveroo Drivers

BRUSSELSThe European Commission announced draft rules on Thursday to give many workers such as couriers for online platform companies including Uber and Deliveroo employee benefits, a move which labour unions say is overdue but some companies argue will lead to job losses.

The proposal, a global first that needs to be thrashed out with EU countries and lawmakers before it can become law, marks the latest attempt by the European Union to regulate tech companies and ensure a level playing field between online and traditional firms.

No one is trying to kill, stop or hinder the development of the platform economy, Jobs and Social Rights Commissioner Nicholas Schmit said at a press conference introducing the proposals.

However, the rules are needed to ensure that new business models uphold labour laws and social standards, he said.

The EU executive said the draft rules could apply to up to 5.5 million workers out of the 28 million working at online platform companies across the 27-country bloc.

Internet firms that set pay and standards of conduct for their couriers will have to classify them as employees entitled to a minimum wage, paid holidays and pension rights, according to the draft rules.

Online food ordering and delivery companies, which are generally loss-making in an industry seen as ripe for consolidation, have fought court cases around Europe and the U.S. to have deliverers classified as self-employed contractors, rather than employeeswith mixed results.

Reactions varied, with CEO Jitse Groen of Europes largest food delivery company Just Eat Takeaway.com saying he welcomed the proposed EU rules.

However, Delivery Platforms Europe, a lobby group that includes Uber, Deliveroo, Glovo and Delivery Hero, said in a statement that what part-time drivers want most is flexibility on their working hours and the rules as proposed would lead to job losses.

Petra Bolster of Dutch labour union FNV, which won lawsuits against Deliveroo and Uber over employment, noted that proposal includes a list of five tests to help determine when couriers are self-employed.

Thats naive because platforms will use that as a toolkit to get around the criteria and get away with everything, she said. It is their entire profit model to avoid costs of employment.

Under the EU proposal, companies will be considered employers if they supervise the performance of workers through electronic means, restrict their ability to choose their working hours or tasks, and prevent them from working for third parties.

Crucially, the proposal shifts the burden of proof onto companies when a dispute arises as to whether a worker is a self-employed contractor or an employee.

Giles Thorne, an analyst for Jefferies, said that the EU proposal will not destroy online ordering and delivery models, which are here to stay.

He said the EU move is best seen as an intervention to give more power to couriers, who have the weakest position in the chain between restaurants, the software platforms and consumers.

Couriers are going to get a bit more of the economics and the platform, the restaurant and the consumer are going to get a bit less, he said.

A similar intervention in the U.S. during the COVID-19 pandemic capped the commission fees Uber, DoorDash and Grubhub could charge restaurants, already suffering from loss of business, for orders.

For consumers, the long term result of European protections for workers will likely be a small increase in either prices or delivery fees.

But I would bet my bottom dollar that people keep ordering bento boxes online, Thorne said.

By Foo Yun Chee and Toby Sterling
A general view of the Royal Women's Hospital in Melbourne, Australia, on July 16, 2020. (Robert Cianflone/Getty Images)

Experts Concerned By Decline in Victoria Cancer Diagnosis

Experts are concerned that the decline in cancer diagnosis in Victoria for the 2020 period is not indicative of a reduction in prevalence of disease, but rather of missed and delayed diagnosis due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Across the world, cancer diagnosis has decreased in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Cancer in Victoria 2020 report (pdf) released on Dec. 9 found that around 2,420 less diagnosis was made in 2020 compared to the previous year. The most common cancers that went undiagnosed were cancers of the oral cavity, prostate cancer, melanoma and bowel cancer.

The council originally anticipated a higher number of diagnoses in the latter part of 2020, but this did not occur.

This is a cause for concern because the current treatment protocols for cancer mean that once diagnosed, treatment for cancer should commence as soon as possible.

A delayed diagnosis often results in further disease progression which elevates the risks of mortality and therefore makes the disease more difficult to treat.

Associate Professor Zee Wan Wong, head of oncology at Peninsula Health is concerned there are still a number of Victorians who are currently walking around undiagnosed with cancer.

These undiagnosed cancer patients may present very late or with more complex clinical circumstances that could potentially make their care more complicated or have poorer outcomes.

Rebecca Bergin, a research fellow of Cancer Council Victoria said that the pandemic has been a large natural experiment in the potential significance of delayed diagnosis.

[The COVID-19 pandemic] really does demonstrate that what we may see in the future is potentially people with a later stage disease [when they are diagnosed]. And the potential impact of that is poorer survival. she said.

The report also found that larger cities had the greatest decline in cancer diagnosis, with a 7 percent decline in major cities and a 5 percent decline in regional areas of Victoria.

However, whilst cancer diagnosis decreased by 7 percent, death from cancer has also decreased by 3 percent.

The majority of the reduction in cancer diagnosis was among Victorians aged 50-74 years, with 31 percent of the decline in those aged over 75 years.

Cancer Council Victoria chief executive Todd Harper said it was vital that all Victorians prioritised their health.

Its understandable that with state and international borders now opening up, Victorians will be eager to get on with life as soon as possible, Harper said.

If you have been invited to take part in a cancer screening program, please dont delay, please make that your first priority. With 31 deaths from cancer every day in Victoria, we must act now to avoid a major health crisis.

Cancer screening saves lives. It is one of the most effective ways to detect the early signs of cancer.
Activists take part in a rally protesting at an escalation of President Rodrigo Duterte's war on drugs, in Quezon City, Metro Manila, Philippines, on Aug. 18, 2017. (Dondi Tawatao/Reuters)

Filipino Journalist Who Covered Dutertes Drug War Shot Dead by Gunman

A Filipino journalist, who contributed to the Reuters Pulitzer Prize-winning investigation on President Rodrigo Dutertes drug war in 2018, was shot dead by a gunman while watching television at his familys store in Calbayog City, Samar province, on Wednesday.

Jesus Jess Malabanan, 58, a correspondent for the Manila Standard who had also worked for Reuters as a stringer, was shot in the head by a gunman at around 6.30 p.m. He was rushed to a nearby hospital but was declared dead on arrival.

According to the Philippine National Police (PNP), witnesses were unable to identify the gunman but claimed to have seen the gunman fleeing on a motorcycle with a rider companion.

Police had immediately conducted checkpoint operations at some exit points to intercept the suspects and are currently gathering copies of CCTV footage that may aid in the ongoing probe.

In a statement, PNP Chief General Dionardo Carlos said that authorities have also received reports of Malabanan receiving threats, which could be related to his profession or other personal angles.

We understand the call of the family and different groups to expedite the investigation of the case. These requests will not fall on deaf ears. Establishing the motive of the case can help us in going to the bottom of this. We just need the cooperation of the witnesses, Carlos said.

The Presidential Task Force on Media Security said it condemned in the strongest terms the killing of Malabanan and is currently carrying a hot pursuit operation to apprehend the suspects who reportedly fled towards the direction of San Isidro, Northern Samar.

Jess is a personal friend of mine. This cowardly killing in the midst of a pandemic is truly unforgivable. We will get to the bottom of this and will stop at nothing in bringing to justice the perpetrators of this despicable crime, Executive Director Undersecretary Joel Sy Egco said in a statement.

Malabanans close friends and colleagues indicated the victim had no known enemies and was not a hard-hitting journalist, the task force said, adding that Malabanan had expressed plans to stay for good in Samar and focus on his farming business.

The task force also noted that Malabanan was given policy security in 2017 at his request, though it did not disclose why Malabanan requested security.

Shawn Crispin, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) senior Southeast Asia representative, said the killing of Malabanan would inevitably have a chilling effect on reporters covering the drug war in the Philippines.

Philippine authorities must leave no stone unturned in identifying the killers of journalist Jesus Malabanan, as well as anyone who planned the attack, and determine whether he was targeted over his reporting on President Rodrigo Dutertes anti-drug campaign, Crispin said.

The Philippines is one of the worlds most dangerous places for journalists, with about 151 journalists and media workers reportedly killed there since 1992, according to the CPJs stats.

CPJ also ranked the Philippines seventh on its Impunity Index, which spotlights countries worldwide where journalists are slain, and the perpetrators go free.
Ghislaine Maxwell is seen in New York City on Sept. 20, 2013. (Laura Cavanaugh/Getty Images)

Final Ghislaine Maxwell Accuser Takes Stand, Makes Distressing Allegations

The fourth and final victim took the stand Friday during Ghislaine Maxwells federal sex-trafficking trial, testifying that the British socialite made sexual advances toward her and touched her inappropriately.

Annie Farmer, the alleged victim, used her true identity. Three prior alleged victims used pseudonyms or their first names.

During her testimony, Farmer said she was 16 when she visited Maxwell and Jeffrey Epstein, the disgraced financier who was found dead in August 2019 in a Manhattan jail cell, at his New Mexico ranch in 1996. She said her older sister had worked for Epstein at the time.

At one point at the ranch, Maxwell inappropriately touched her.

Once she pulled down the sheet, I felt kind of frozen, Farmer testified on Friday, according to reporters in the court. Later on during the trip, she added, Epstein came into her bed where she was sleeping before she excused herself to go to the bathroom.

Epstein and Maxwell allegedly sexually assaulted her older sister, Mara, in Ohio, according to court filings in a separate case.

Maxwell is accused of recruiting and grooming girls to be abused by Epstein between 1994 and 2004. She has pleaded not guilty to six counts stemming from the alleged abuse of four victims, including sex trafficking of a minor and enticement of a minor.

On Tuesday, a woman who used her first name, Carolyn, claimed Maxwell also inappropriately touched her and said she would be great for Epstein and his friends, although she was 14 at the time. Other witnesses included some testimony about Epsteins and Maxwells connections to high-profile individuals including former President Bill Clinton, Prince Andrew, and others.

For years, Farmer has spoken against Epstein and Maxwell, including during a 2019 court hearing after Epsteins arrest. She referred to Maxwell as a sexual predator at her bail hearing months ago, adding that the danger Maxwell poses must be taken seriously.

Maxwell, 59, has denied charges she groomed underage girls for Epstein, who was convicted of sex trafficking in 2008. Her lawyers say the government is making her a scapegoat for alleged sex crimes committed by her onetime boyfriend.

She has remained in prison since she was arrested in New Hampshire in July 2020. A medical examiners office ruled several years ago that Epstein killed himself while in jail in 2019 on separate sex trafficking charges, although because of his connections to high-profile politicians, celebrities, and business leaders, there has been rampant speculation about his cause of death.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
A view of the historic Old Florida State Capitol building, which sits in front of the current New Capitol, in Tallahassee, Florida, on Nov. 10, 2018. (Mark Wallheiser/Getty Images)

Florida Ethics Commission Says Fried Failed to Accurately Disclose Income

The Florida Ethics Commission found, on Dec. 3, there was probable cause that Nicole Fried, a leading Democrat challenger to Gov. Ron DeSantis in 2022, inaccurately reported her income.

Fried is the Commissioner of Agriculture, the first woman to be elected to the position, and a Manatee County commissioner.

The commission, in its regular scheduled session, found probable cause that Fried failed to accurately disclose her income in 2017 and 2018, which violated Floridas financial laws.

The complaint was filed by Florida GOP Chair Evan Power.

In a closed session, complaints against Nicole Nikki Fried, and Vanessa Baugh, were discussed.

Manatee County Commissioner Baugh, a Republican, was found to have abused her office when she organized a pop-up vaccine clinic.

Both women have denied any wrongdoing.

Fried was elected to office in 2018 as the only Democrat to win a statewide race.

She narrowly defeated state representative Matt Caldwell by fewer than 7,000 votes out of more than eight million votes cast.

In Augustand two months past deadlineFried filed financial disclosures that estimated her worth at almost $1 million and owned a six-figure stake in a large cannabis company.

Fried, a former medical marijuana lobbyist, said in previous reports that she has gone above and beyond legal requirements to separate her personal interests in cannabis, from her work promoting and regulating the industry as agriculture commissioner.

She has said she intended to sell off her own marijuana holdings if elected governor.

Fried and former Florida governor and current U.S. Rep. Charlie Crist (D-Fla., 13th District) both want the Democratic nomination to challenge incumbent DeSantis in 2022.

Fried was not available for comment by press time.

Nikki Fried, Floridas 12th Commissioner of Agriculture and Consumer Services, in an official department photo. (Public Domain)

Eighteen separate complaints were filed against Baugh, which were condensed into one investigation.

The complaints came after Gov. DeSantis announced a vaccine site that reportedly served only residents of two wealthy zip codes, providing about 3,000 vaccines for COVID-19 to residents in the area age 65 and older.

DeSantis later said that the reason he chose the area was because it was underserved, and a low percentage of seniors had been vaccinated and the 3,000 shots were ordered in addition to the countys normal shipment of vaccines.

Baugh herself was involved in the negotiations for the site and had reportedly asked that her name be put on a VIP list to receive vaccine shots.

The list included two of Baughs neighbors and was emailed directly to the countys public safety director.

Baugh has publicly stated that she did not receive her vaccine at the clinic, despite the list.

Manatee County Democrats have called for the commissioners resignation over negotiations around the vaccine pop-up site and Baughs involvement.

Manatee Sheriff Investigates

On Dec. 6, the Manatee County Sheriffs Office announced it had concluded an investigation into criminal actions against Baugh and that there would be no charges.

Investigators at the sheriffs office said Baugh did not receive a tangible benefit from creating a VIP list for the vaccine clinic, and did not receive her vaccine through the pop-up clinic.

They also concluded that because she was on the list it did not give her anything of tangible value.

From the point we received this complaint our goal was to conduct a very thorough investigation, Sheriff Rick Wells said in a statement.

We spent countless hours on this, focusing not only on the statutes mentioned in the complaint, but also examining whether other laws were possibly broken. Nothing criminal was found.

The Sheriffs Office said it forwarded its report to the Florida Ethics Commission.

Baugh said, in a statement, the sheriffs investigation confirmed what I have maintained all alongno criminal act occurred in getting vaccines to our most vulnerable and reluctant area.

I look forward to putting this distraction behind me and refocusing this energy on reducing traffic, lowering taxes, and revising the alarming growth in the size and scope of our local government, Baugh continued.

Her attorney George Levesque said he believed the complaint was based on politics and maintained his clients innocence.

The commission reported that in each case, both state officials have the right to full evidentiary hearings, or reach a settlement agreement.

It added, Finding probable cause is not a determination that a violation has occurred.
Families protest any potential mask mandates before the Hillsborough County Schools Board meeting held at the district office on July 27, 2021 in Tampa, Florida. (Octavio Jones/Getty Images)

Florida School Boards to Lessen Time for Parents to Speak

After many raucous debates at Florida school board meetings, county bodies across the state have moved to make changes to their public comment policy.

Traditionally, school boards and local governments set rules and policies to aid in governing the publics participation at their meetings. They help keep the proceedings moving along, offer time for residents to voice complaints, or concerns, and maintain civility.

However, recent threats against teachers and education officials have many school systems changing policy in order to keep their staff and board members safe.

The proposed changes vary between boards but, in essence, they seek to limit the amount of time people can speak.

Boards want to cut minutes from each speaker, and even how long public comment sessions can be.

Jane Goodwin, the new chairwoman for Sarasota County School Board, revised its policy and the changes have been approved for advertisement during a workshop meeting on Dec. 7.

Sarasotas policy would reduce public comment time from three minutes to two minutes per speaker, allow one-hour for public comment, announce their name and any group affiliation, and move public comment on non-agenda items to the end of the meeting.

During the workshop Goodwin, along with past chairwoman Shirley Brown and Tom Edwards, supported the changes, citing that many members of the public were deterred from attending board meetings over the last year because of disruptive behavior.

Other members, Bridget Ziegler and Karen Rose, opposed the changes because they would limit public input and further divide the community.

This issue is not isolated to Florida.

School boards nationwide are beginning to eye ways to rein in public comments at local meetings in an effort to calm crowds over hot-button issues such as critical race theory and mask mandates.

In other media reports, one Kentucky school board changed its policy so that comments be directed via emailafter a meeting devolved into a shouting match.

In northern Virginia, school board officials restricted who they wanted to speak at their meetings because of similar issues.

In recent months, parents have let their voices and opinions be heard and expressed they want more control over what their children are learning in school.

Other Florida countiessuch as Brevard, Orange, and now Sarasotaare looking at ideas to limit public comment as a way to, what Sarasotas Ziegler phrased, lower the temperature at controversial meetings.

In Brevard County, the board is proposing changes to prevent speakers from raising signs, limit the number of speakers allowed to speak, and time limits,especially when a large number of people are scheduled to give their opinions.

In Alachua County, audience members at school board meetings are told not to clap, or cheer, in response to speakers comments, or hold signs.

The official policy on public participation limits individual comments to three minutes, calling up speakers in the order in which they were received on a speaker sign-up sheet at the door.

The rule says the time for public comment will be 30 minutes, unless the board votes to extend the time. The presiding officer may extend the time for speakers, the rule states. Theres no rule for shortening that time.

Alachua County School Board Meeting on Sept. 7, 2021. (Nanette Holt/The Epoch Times)

People who want to speakand dont get a chance during the 30 minutes set aside for public commentmay address the board at the end of the meeting, the rule says.

Regular attenders say that since September, the board often has restricted people to no more than two minutes of speaking.

And the time for public comment has been reduced recently to just 15 minutes, they say.

At a Sept. 7 meeting, the only person signed up to speak was Antoinette Chanel, the parent of two children in district schools.

After after making her way to the podium, Chanel told board members that two weeks earlier, she and her 8-year-old daughter were riding bicycles to her childs school.

As they approached an intersection and prepared to cross, I heard the diesel roar of a yellow school bus, she said.

I had to act quickly to keep my child from accelerating into the street to cross, because this would have placed her in the direct path of the school bus.

The bus was traveling the wrong way down a lane of traffic, apparently in an attempt to bypass a traffic jam, she said. And now her child now wants to know why its ok for the school bus driver to break traffic laws.

She said, See Mom, this is why Im scared to walk to school by myself in the morning!

Storytelling is my craft, Chanel said. But I refuse to use my precious craft to make up a story to explain away your negligence.

She added that she had made up stories to explain the why a police officer would kneel on a mans neck, and why people are angry about wearing masks, and why people fly Confederate flags when the Confederacy lost.

As the timer signaled that her two minutes to speak had expired, then-Chairwoman Leanetta McNealy tried to interrupt her.

Oh, Im not stopping! Chanel said.

McNealy signaled two deputies to remove Chanel from the meeting.

What are you going to do? Chanel demanded.

Escort you out, maam, one replied.

What are you going to do? Chanel shouted at McNealy, as deputies urged her to leave.

I came for answers! I had to hire a babysitter to watch my children so I could be at this meeting, and you printed the wrong address on the agenda! I need answers!

As deputies urged her to leave, Chanel turned, muttering, and stormed out, shouting behind her, Im not done! And you are not allowed to place my life, or my childrens lives, in danger by empowering reckless people!

But, since then, speakers have been limited to two minutes, regular attenders say.

Speakers typically have two to three minutes to speak, Jackie Johnson, public information officer for Alachua County Public Schools, wrote in an email.

The board discourages statements that are abusive, obscene, disorderly, disruptive, or include a personal attack on a staff member, or anyone else.

We ask that speakers follow our civility policy, which gives district personnel, including the board, the authority to ask someone who uses obscenitiesor speaks in a demanding, loud, insulting and/or demeaning mannerto leave, or be removed from, the premises. That is also true for anyone who is disruptive or threatening.

At the time of publication, Johnson had not responded to requests for more information about the incident and the apparent change of policy.

In early October, State Rep. Randy Fine, a Republican, filed a criminal complaint against Brevards board.

Fine claimed it violated Floridas Sunshine Laws (open government laws) when, in September, the board chair cleared a public meeting that had turned rowdy and then did not allow them back inside.

Fine said the board is made up of tinpot dictators, who are afraid to face the public over their decisions.

Brevard was one of 11 school boards that defied Gov. Ron DeSantiss administration rules on mandating students and staff to wear face masks.

In Orange County, the board had suggested time limits in Octoberthree minutes for topics with fewer than 20 speakers, two minutes for fewer than 30, and one minute when more than 40 people were to speak.

The board considered a priority system that would place students, parents of students, and employees of Orange County Public Schools first to speak, and local residents and visitors next.

Added to that would be to bar the use of video, or audio, clipsas well as banners, or flagsand prohibit people from gathering in the back of the school board chambers.

Michael Ollendorff, media relations manager for the countys public schools, said no revisions to the policy have been made since Dec. 16, 2016, but would not say if the measure would be addressed in upcoming meetings.

Sarasotas Zeigler said that criticism over decisions the board makes comes with public office, and added as a 7-year board member she took an oath to hear from the public.

She also said that the way that parents have been treated at board meetings have unforeseen consequences.

Some parents, when speaking at board meetings, have been met with a level of disdain, she told National Public Radio on Oct. 19, 2021.

People have a right to petition their government, and when you try to muzzle, or limit, the publics right to petition government it further fuels frustration.

The contentious school board meetings that have garnered national media attention caught the attention of the White House, where the FBI was called upon to monitor parents who voiced their concerns to the point they could potentially be labeled domestic terrorists.

This has not sat well with Florida Governor Ron DeSantis as he weighed in on the subject at a press conference in October.

To mobilize the FBI, theres no need for it, DeSantis told reporters. The reason to do that is to intimidate parents, to squelch dissent, to have them shut up and just take iteven when they strongly disagree with what may be happening to their kid.

The Sarasota School Board will continue the discussion in January and will vote on the new policy in February.
A mask is placed on a table at the White House on May 20, 2020. (Doug Mills/Pool/Getty Images)

Follow the Science a Potent Source of Authority for Politicians

News Analysis

To hear the way some politicians talk, when it comes to COVID-19, theyre all following the science, not to mention the data.

Look at the data. Follow the science. Listen to the experts. Be smart, now-former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo wrote on Twitter in May 2020, after Two Weeks to Flatten the Curve had fully transitioned to The New Normal.

Weve been operating on facts and data and science from the very beginning, said Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker in a campaign ad titled simply Follow The Science.

President Joe Biden has frequently appealed to the science. In an executive order announcing a vaccine mandate for federal workers, for instance, he said his administration used the best available data and science-based public health measures. In an article criticizing Bidens move to push vaccine boosters in September, StatNewss Lev Facher described Follow the Science as a mantra for the administration.

The science emerged long before 2020 as a potent source of authority for politicians. Yet while the scientific method is a powerful tool for advancing human potential, the belief that it alone can guide us is an example of scientism.

Scientism is, in the words of public intellectual Scott Masson, the belief that moral or evaluative judgments are merely subjective and that only the hard sciencesthink physics, chemistry, or biologyfurnish legitimate objective knowledge. While few American politicians would openly endorse this position, the actions many have taken during the COVID-19 pandemic reflect scientism in deed, if not in word.

Scientism lets politicians off the hook for their decisions. They didnt really make a decisionthey merely followed the science.

As a scientistic credo, Follow the science doesnt just abrogate leaders accountability as decision-makers. It also does violence to the nature of science, which seldom offers the clear-cut, politically useful conclusions that politicians want.

A popular meme contrasts the scientific method with the science worshipers method. While the former moves in a rigorous, self-correcting way toward results that may or may not align with a specific hypothesis, the latter constructs a model and then only accepts the data that will confirm that model.

At its most extreme, following the science is inflexibly dogmatic. When less inflexible, following the science can lead to sudden, sharp changes in public policy, often in the face of other evidence and goals separate from the COVID-19 responsefor example, avoiding other health problems or economic disruption traceable to such policies.

Masking

In the case of masking, following the science has led to a series of dramatic reversals.

In February 2020, U.S. Surgeon General Jerome Adams wrote on Twitter that Americans should STOP BUYING MASKS! as they were not effective.

In March 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) maintained that healthy individuals didnt need to wear masks.

Yet as mask production ramped up in the United States, U.S. public health authorities changed their tune. In early April, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommended that Americans consider wearing cloth masks.

By June 2020, WHO recommended that healthy members of the general public wear masks in situations where physical distancing wasnt possible, citing new scientific evidence on transmission.

In 2021, the CDC repeatedly shifted on masking. In July 2021, it reversed a May recommendation that vaccinated people need not wear masks, drawing rebukes from Republican governors.

Some experts believe that such shifts mark a significant departure from our understanding of masking before the pandemic.

When it comes to the point of certain interventions that are sort of weakly supported, and if you go back and look at everything that was published before 2020, and come to this completely different conclusion if you read the things that published later on in 2020, about masks or the ability of lockdowns to stop and end spread indefinitelylong-term lockdowns that have devastating collateral damageand that type of thing. And then you realize how politicized this really has become, immunologist Steven Templeton, a professor at Indiana University, formerly with the CDC, said in an interview with The Epoch Times EpochTV.

One of the most politicized issues is the masking of young children. While advocates have argued that children could be major transmitters of COVID-19, opponents have argued that children are neither major vectors of the disease nor vulnerable to serious illness or death. They have also pointed out the understudied developmental and physiological risks of masking young children.

One 2021 preprint found no correlation between mask mandates and COVID-19 case rates among students and faculty across schools in Florida, New York, and Massachusetts, though the authors included caveats about how well their findings could be generalized.

Still, for many schools, following the science has led to universal mask mandates. Portland Public Schools, for example, requires the masking of children at all times and places, indoor or outdoor, and irrespective of vaccination status, except when eating, drinking or playing a musical wind instrument.

You realize how politicized this really has become.  Steven Templeton, professor at Indiana University

In one instance, guerilla footage showed kindergartners eating while sitting outside on buckets in 40-degree weather while socially distanced from playmates.

In cases such as these, following the science has the look and feel of political theater.

Omicron and Beyond

The Omicron variant of COVID-19 hasnt yet caused a surge in serious COVID-19 cases. Yet as soon as the new strain made international headlines, governments across the world were ready to follow the science, or at least take some sort of action in its name.

The United States, the UK, and other countries have banned travel from many countries in southern Africa, where Omicron was first detected. Japan, meanwhile, barred entry of all foreign nationals.

WHO and other scientists and physicians argued that these bans werent warranted, in part because they would do little to slow the variants spread.

As the new strain made international headlines, governments across the world were ready to Follow the Science.

The CEO of Pfizer, too, has speculated that the variant could push up the debut of its latest booster, telling CNBC, I think we will need a fourth dose.

For now, however, the new variant appears to be mild. To date, Omicron doesnt seem to have caused a single verifiable death.

When asked by The Epoch Times if Omicron had led to a single confirmed fatality, a WHO spokesperson sent its weekly epidemiological update for Dec. 7.

According to that guide: All of the 212 confirmed cases identified in 18 European Union countries for which there was information available on severity were asymptomatic or mild. While South Africa saw an 82 percent increase in hospital admissions due to COVID-19 (from 502 to 912) during the week 28 November4 December 2021, it is not yet known the proportion of these with the Omicron variant.

In addition, the WHO spokesperson said, For Omicron, we have not had any deaths reported, but it is still early in the clinical course of disease and this may change.

The CDC didnt immediately respond to a request for comment from The Epoch Times on whether there were any confirmed Omicron deaths.

Other examples abound. For instance, while data show vaccinated individuals are significantly less likely to die of COVID-19 than the unvaccinated, following the science to preapproved conclusions may prematurely foreclose or minimize serious concerns about vaccine safety, particularly in relation to heart inflammation or other cardiovascular disease.

In September testimony before the FDA in its evaluation of the Pfizer booster, entrepreneur Steve Kirsch said that Pfizers vaccines kill more people than they save, citing Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) data, among other information.

Just days ago, physicians and scientists in the UK reportedly warned that post-pandemic stress disorder is driving a rise in heart attacks and other cardiovascular issues, including among younger patients.

Some commentators speculated that the rise could be related to vaccines.

Candace Owens wrote on Twitter in response to the story: Ive just learned that the sudden increase in heart-related illnesses is likely due to **checks Big Pharma notes** Post-Pandemic Stress Disorder. Nothing to see here!

Following Science, Not Following the Science

While New York and New York City have pursued hardline policies, including the citys vaccine pass system applicable to children as young as 5, the state of Florida has blocked mandates and prioritized individual choice.

Today, case rates in Florida are lower than in New York, likely in part because of the diseases seasonality. Moreover, while Floridians are on average older than New York residents, suggesting that they should be more vulnerable to COVID-19, the death rate per 100,000 is still lower in that state than in New York, according to NBC News. New York City itself has had more than 34,000 deaths, due partly to major early clusters in nursing homes in the city.

The Senates Dec. 8 vote to block Bidens OSHA vaccine mandate for large employers, which came soon after the 6th Circuit Court overruled the same mandate, could signal the resilience of checks and balances against compulsion in the name of the science.

Elsewhere in the world, following the science, often in spite of other scientific evidence, is leading to more draconian policies.

New Brunswick, Canada, has permitted grocery stores to exclude the unvaccinated, violating the basic human right to food articulated in Article 25 of The Universal Declaration of Human Rights as well as Article 11 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights.

Numerous studies have raised questions about whether vaccination stems transmission, with some suggesting that vaccinated people with suppressed symptoms of the disease may even be major drivers of new infection. Regardless, the science demands greater sacrifices by the day.

Good science can and should inform our judgments as well as those of politicians. But unthinking gestures toward the science dont shield any of us from responsibilitythough as Jeffrey A. Tucker of The Brownstone Institute points out, the bureaucrats whose banalities enforce our new scientistic consensuses shirk any blame for its self-evident failures.
This picture taken Feb. 10, 2021 in Saudi Arabia's capital Riyadh shows a woman viewing a tweet posted by the sister of Saudi activist Loujain al-Hathloul, Lina, showing a screenshot of them having a video call following Hathloul's release after nearly three years in detention. Saudi authorities on February 10 released the prominent women's rights activist, her family said. (Fayez Nureldine/AFP via Getty Images)

Former US Intelligence Officials Sued for Helping Saudi Government Spy on Activist

Saudi human rights activist Loujain al-Hathloul is suing spyware firm DarkMatter Group and three former U.S. intelligence officials for their role in a scandal that helped land her in a Saudi Arabian prison.

Former DarkMatter Group executives Marc Baier, Ryan Adams, and Daniel Gericke pleaded guilty in September for their role in Project Raven, in which the government of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) hired a group of former U.S. intelligence agents to develop surveillance technology that was often used against human rights activists and other dissidents.

Baier, Adams, and Gericke have been identified by the Department of Justice (DOJ) as former employees of the U.S. intelligence community or the U.S. military, and Reuters named Baier as a former National Security Agency employee in its expose on Project Raven.

According to al-Hathlouls Dec. 9 lawsuit against the former intelligence officials, their activity led to her 2018 arrest in the UAE, where she was transferred to Saudi Arabia and held without charges or a trial for 10 months.

Al-Hathloul, a leader in the Saudi womens rights movement, said her phone was initially hacked by DarkMatter in 2017, giving them access to her text messages, emails, and real-time location data.

Later, al-Hathloul was driving on the highway in Abu Dhabi when she was arrested by UAE security services, and forcibly taken by plane to the KSA [Kingdom of Saudi Arabia], where she was imprisoned twice, including at a secret prison where she was subject to electric shocks, flogging, and threats of rape and death, Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) said in a statement announcing that theyre representing al-Hathloul in the lawsuit.

When she was finally tried and convicted in Saudi Arabia in 2019, the charging documents referenced private communications that were stored on her iPhone. She was released from prison in February.

These included private communications between Ms. al-Hathloul and other human rights activists that had been transmitted via Telegram and WhatsApp, both end-to-end encrypted messaging services, the lawsuit reads.

Al-Hathlouls arrest and rendition by the UAE, as well as her detention and torture by Saudi Arabia, were facilitated by Project Ravens hack of her iPhone using an iOS exploit, the resulting surveillance, and the access to and sharing of information exfiltrated as a result of the hack between or among Project Raven, UAE, and Saudi Arabia.

Al-Hathloul is accusing DarkMatter and the executives of violating the federal Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, which outlaws unauthorized uses of computers. The lawsuit, filed in a federal court in Portland, Oregon, seeks damages and costs.

EFF said in its statement that DarkMatters conduct is more egregious than that of another controversial company, the Israeli-based NSO Group, because the former actively assisted in targeting government dissidents.

Project Raven went beyond even the behavior that we have seen from NSO Group, which has been caught repeatedly having sold software to authoritarian governments who use their tools to spy on journalists, activists, and dissidents, said EFF cybersecurity director Eva Galperin, referencing the Israeli spyware vendor that was recently sanctioned by the United States and whose software was found to be used against State Department officials. DarkMatter didnt merely provide the tools; they oversaw the surveillance program themselves.

The defendants couldnt be reached for comment; their attorneys in the DOJ proceedings didnt respond to an email inquiry from The Epoch Times. According to EFF, Baier resides in UAE, Adams is a resident of Oregon, and Gericke lives in Singapore.

Al-Hathloul said fighting spyware companies is key to the work of human rights activists.

No government or individual should tolerate the misuse of spy malware to deter human rights or endanger the voice of the human conscience. This is why I have chosen to stand up for our collective right to remain safe online and limit government-backed cyber abuses of power, she said.

I hope this case inspires others to confront all sorts of cybercrimes while creating a safer space for all of us to grow, share, and learn from one another without the threat of power abuses.
French Warplanes Tracked by Russian Fighters Over Black Sea: French Army

Two French warplanes and a refuelling aircraft were being tracked on Thursday by two Russian fighter jets in international air space over the Black Sea, the second such interaction this week, the French army said on Thursday.

A Russian jet had already escorted two French warplanes on Wednesday, which Moscow had said aimed to prevent the French aircraft from entering Russian air space.

These type of interactions are not uncommon with similar incidents previously happening, but they come amid tensions between the West and Russia in the region.

The French planes are carrying out a NATO observation mission in accordance with international regulations, Armed Forces Spokesman Colonel Pascal Ianni told Reuters.

The two [French] planes remotely detected two Russian fighter planes which have just come closer to them, but which are not disturbing or hindering the progress of the mission, Ianni said, adding that this was strategic communication by Moscow to show its planes were in the vicinity.
A Cadillac Lyriq electric vehicle (EV) under General Motors is seen during its world premiere on a media day for the Auto Shanghai show in Shanghai, China on April 19, 2021. (Aly Song/Reuters)

General Motors Building Electric Vehicle Supply Chain in America

General Motors has announced two separate deals on Thursday under which the company will develop a domestic supply chain based in the United States for sourcing rare earth magnets, alloys, and materials for its Ultium platform electric vehicles.

Indicating a move away from dependence on China, the worlds largest electric vehicle (EV) market, General Motors will be partnering with MP Materials and Vacuumschmelze (VAC) to supply the critical components that will enable the automaker to fulfill its milestone of selling more than 1 million EVs globally by 2025.

Despite the name, rare earth is a group of relatively abundant 17 elements that are usually found within other minerals. They are called rare because it is uncommon to find the elements in their pure form. This also makes them costly to mine.

After processing, rare earth metals are used to make magnets, which are considered to be the heart of an EV motor. The magnet transforms electricity into motion through generating torque, thereby, powering the electric motor.

Neodymium is one of the 17 elements, and the neodymium permanent magnet (NdFeB), made from an alloy of the element combined with iron and boron, is the most widely used rare earth magnet. Like other rare earth metals, neodymium mining and processing is almost entirely done in China.

As there are virtually no domestic-based sintered NdFeB magnets produced today, U.S. lawmakers are urging auto manufacturers to develop new supply chains that will operate independently from the whims of the communist-controlled nation. Through the recent partnerships, GM seeks to bring back rare earth processing and establish a localized supply chain that can function on a commercial level.

The more we can recover natural resources for batteries and EVs from North America, process them here and manufacture them  the more value we can create, Shilpan Amin, GM vice president of global purchasing and supply chain, said on a call with investors, reported Reuters. Our strategy is to control our own destiny.

MP Materials owns and operates the only active rare earth production site in America. Located in Mountain Pass, California, the site will provide the materials which will be manufactured into magnets at the companys soon-to-be-built facility in Fort Worth, Texas.

The California site will also build processing equipment, as MP currently depends on China for processing the metals. Once production begins in 2023, the Texas neodymium-iron-boron (NdFeB) magnet facility will supply enough magnets for GM to build half-a-million EV motors.

As part of the deal, MP Materials will build a so-called neodymium-iron-boron (NdFeB) magnet facility in Texas that will supply enough magnets for GM to build 500,000 EV motors. GM said it does not plan to take a stake in the Texas facility, which should open by 2023.

We are proud to welcome GM as the foundational automotive customer for our new magnetics facility and join forces with a company fully aligned with our vision to reinvigorate the American manufacturing spirit, said MP Materials Chairman and CEO James Litinsky.

However, a partially state-owned Chinese company, Shenghe Resources Holding Co. Ltd, has been found to be the holder of 8 percent of MP Materials shares. Based in Las Vegas, MP is majority-owned to 51.8 percent by hedge funds JHL Capital Group and QVT Financial LP. This has aroused suspicion in Washington.

VAC, based in Germany, is the biggest producer of permanent magnets in the western hemisphere and, under the new agreement, will build a plant in the United States for manufacturing magnets for GMs Ultium-powered EV fleet. Slated to begin production in 2024, the location of the plant has not been announced, as well as, from where the plant intends to source its rare earths. Terms of the deals are still being finalized.

We are thrilled to join forces with GM on this journey into an increasingly electrified world, leveraging sustainable clean energy solutions  VACs deep magnetic materials knowledge and extensive e-mobility technology expertise, in partnership with GM, will enable a cleaner global future for our communities, said Dr. Erik Eschen, CEO of VAC.

GM was once a world leader in the rare earth magnet industry but had sold its patents to a consortium that included Chinese partners back in 1995. As the company is currently working on building the supply chain for the American market, it is also building one for China. The Chinese project is bigger in scale in terms of vehicle sales.
A man runs next to a discarded face mask in the Belmont Veterans Memorial Pier in Long Beach, California on Aug. 22, 2020. (Apu Gomes/AFP via Getty Images)

Global Face Mask Pollution Increased Over 8,000 Percent Due to Mandates: Study

Government-mandated protective mask wearing policies have contributed to a more than 8,000 percent spike in global mask pollution with scientists calling on authorities to consider policies encouraging reusable PPE products in future.

On Dec. 9, science journal Nature Sustainability published the results of a study that examined the correlation between litter levels of personal protective equipment (PPE), and the timing of policies from the World Health Organization (WHO), as well as 11 national governmentsAustralia, Belgium, Canada, France, Germany, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Spain, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

The scientists examined two million records of data from Litterati, a site dedicated to tracking, photographing, and tagging the location of litter.

They found that the proportion of masks in litter increased exponentially from when the WHO first announced a health emergency in March 2020 to October 2020.

This resulted in an 84-fold (8,400 percent) in mask litter compared to the previous year, from less than 0.01 percent of global waste to greater than 0.8 percent.

Mask litter at Olympic Park in Sydney, Australia, on Dec. 12, 2021. (Daniel Teng/The Epoch Times)

The introduction of mask-wearing policies had a clear impact on PPE litter dynamics. Masks show the greatest response with ~0.01 percent on average before legislation but increasing thereafter, the studys authors stated.

As nations legislating mask use increased, masks also increased as a percentage of litter over time, it continued. Compulsory use of masks has a significant impact on wipe littering, whereas gloves show a decrease suggesting other factors are associated with glove littering.

The experts noted varying increases and decreases in glove and wet hand wipes littering over the course of the pandemic.

Occurrences of mask, glove and wipe litter has been influenced by the instigation of new legislation requiring the use of masks and the need to clean surfaces and hands, they said.

Of the nine countries examined, the United Kingdom contributed the highest proportion of mask, glove, and wipe litter, accounting for more than 5 percent from August to October 2020.

Other countries, like Sweden, had many months with no COVID-19-related litter recorded. Incidentally, the Nordic nation has avoided deploying major public health restrictions over much of the pandemic.

Keiron Roberts, research fellow at the University of Portsmouth in the United Kingdom, said Australia did not see a major increase in littering because it has largely relied on hard lockdowns and restrictions on movementlimiting the need for masks.

When you guys go into lockdown, you really go into lockdown, Roberts told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.
Construction continues on the Gold Coast 2018 Athletes Village on the campus of Griffith University in Gold Coast, Australia, on April 7, 2017. (Michael Heiman/Getty Images)

Griffith University in Australia Mandates COVID-19 Vaccine for Students, Staff

Griffith University is the first major Australian university in the state of Queensland to announce a mandatory vaccination or testing policy for all staff and students.

Our priority is to keep everyone at our university safe and we know that vaccination is the best way to do that, the spokesperson said in a statement to The Epoch Times.

We understand that some people may not feel that vaccination is right for them so we will ask them to undertake a regime of COVID testing that will ensure every one is as safe as possible.

According to the policy, announced on Dec. 8, all students and staff are required to be fully vaccinated by Feb. 18, 2022, while those who choose not to get jabbed can take regular rapid antigen tests at their own expense.

However, this may mean that students who fail to meet the requirements may not be able to finish their degrees.

The university has consulted with its staff and students, with the majority supporting the mandate, the spokesperson said.

We will continue to keep them informed as we work through the implementation of this policy and look forward to 2022 being as safe as it can possibly be on our campuses.

Prof. Sandra Harding, vice-chancellor of James Cook University and chair of Queensland Vice-Chancellors Committee, said the sector would support the health directive on vaccine requirements from the Queensland government, which has issued a mandate for public and private schools and early childhood centres, but not universities.

The Queensland University of Technology plans to ban unvaccinated students and staff from attending graduations and selected campus venues under the states vaccine rules.

The University of Southern Queensland is also currently consulting staff and students about the issue, while Bond University is monitoring the situation carefully, according to Courier-Mail.

In the state of Victoria, Melbourne University, Monash University, and La Trobe University have already decided to mandate COVID-19 vaccinations with a December deadline.

In New South Wales (NSW), the most populous Australian state, the University of Sydney, University of NSW, and the University of Technology have all decided to make COVID-19 vaccinations mandatory for students who want to return to campus, in line with the states public health order.
Alberto M. Carvalho, Superintendent of Miami-Dade County Public Schools, speaks at the ConnectED conference in the East Room of the White House, on Nov. 19, 2014. (Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images)

Head of Miami-Dade Schools Chosen as LAUSD Superintendent

The Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) announced Dec. 9 its new superintendent, Alberto Carvalho, who has previously served as superintendent of the Miami-Dade County Public Schools since 2008.

The LAUSD Board of Education unanimously voted in Carvalhos favor in a closed-door meeting on Thursday.

Carvalho will replace Megan K. Reilly, who has been serving as interim superintendent since June, when former Superintendent Austin Beutner stepped down. Reilly was believed to have been among those considered for the full-time superintendent position.

Alberto Carvalho will bring deep experience as an educator and leader of a large urban district to the role of superintendent of L.A. Unified, Board President Kelly Gonez said in a press release. His leadership will help our district navigate the short-term challenges of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and will help us reach the long-term goals for recovery laid out by the board in June.

In joining the LAUSD, the 57-year-old Carvalho will move from the fourth-largest school district of about 350,000 students to the second-largest districtwith more than 500,000 studentsin the country.

In 2018, Carvalho agreed to become superintendent of New York Citys school districtthe nations largest school districtbut backed out the next day on live television, saying he decided to stay in Miami until his contract was up in 2020.

On Dec. 9, Carvalho held a press conference in Miami and said he plans to do extensive outreach once he arrives in Los Angeles before determining his first steps as superintendent.

Do not expect me to go to Los Angeles and impose pronouncements without first understanding clearly by having boots on the ground and traveling the community and walking the classrooms and speaking with teachers and parents and every single board member and the stakeholders of the community, Carvalho said. Do not expect me to  take actions without that first-hand experience. So yes, I will go armed with my philosophy, with my skill set, but being fully cognizant of the fact that I dont know what I dont know.

The terms of Carvalhos employment will be discussed during the next LAUSD board meeting.

Carvalho, born in Portugal, came to the U.S. at 17. He attended Barry University and later taught physics, chemistry, and calculus at Miami Jackson Senior High School. Carvalho later became assistant principal of Miami Jackson High, and then worked as the districts chief communications officer before eventually leading Miami-Dades school district.

Carvalhos biography referred to him as a staunch believer in school choice who has expanded choice options in Miami-Dade to over 1000 offerings that include bilingual programs, fine and performing arts, biotechnology, engineering, robotics, aviation, forensic sciences, and many others.

Carvalho was named the 2014 National Superintendent of the Year by the American Association of School Administrators. Under his leadership, the school district also won the Broad Prize for Urban Education in 2012.
The Old World charm and historically French culture of Quebec City have long captivated visitors.

During the Christmas season, it feels even more special. Thats because the picturesque snow-covered streetscape creates a magical atmosphere reminiscent of something from a storybook.

Christmas Market

People watching at the German Christmas Market. (Dennis Lennox)

Passersby partake in the festivities of Quebec Citys German Christmas Market. (Dennis Lennox)

This years market has more than 90 wooden stalls with mulled wine, bratwurst sausages, and artisans and crafters selling their wares. (Dennis Lennox)

That was certainly my experience when I visited at the end of November as the German Christmas Market opened at three locations within the centuries-old fortified city walls and one just beyond the gates of Old Quebec, as the UNESCO World Heritage-listed old town is called. Just being there and seeing other people out and about made me think of happier times at Christmases past.

The 14th annual market has authentically replicated the traditional Christmas markets of Austria, Germany, and Alsace in France. Think over 90 wooden stalls with mulled wine, bratwurst sausages, and artisans and crafters selling their wares. Other programming includes a chalet with guest chefs, alphorn performances, strolling carolers, puppet shows, elves, and Santa Claus. As expected, everything to do and see is family friendly.

We started in the basement of a hall, organizer Britta Kroger told me as we drank mulled wine and walked between stalls. A German market in French Quebec may seem strange, but it works and this year, we are back after a more modest edition in 2020.

History

Shop, galleries, and other boutiques line the streets of the Petit Champlain Quarter in the Lower Town. (Dennis Lennox)

Place DYouville is one of four market locations. (Dennis Lennox)

Of course, there is more in Quebec City for visitors over the holidays than just the market.

Founded in 1608 by the French explorer Samuel de Champlain, this is one of North Americas oldest European settlements. It served as the capital of colonial New France until the British under Gen. James Wolfe captured the city in 1759 during a seminal battle that led to Frances eventual loss in the Seven Years War and the Anglo-American dominance of North America.

Some of the oldest sights are found in the Lower Town beneath a promontory where the Upper Town is located. Reachable by a steep walk or a ride on the funicular railway, the buildings in the Petit Champlain Quartersome dating to the earliest years of New Francetoday house shops, galleries, and other boutiques. Back in the Upper Town, parts of which overlook the St. Lawrence River, the most visible reminders of Quebec Citys complicated past are the Cathedral-Basilica of Notre Dame of Quebec (Roman Catholic) and the smaller Cathedral of the Holy Trinity (Anglican).

All this history explains the distinctively European feel even as occasional Ford pickup trucks blasting French Canadian country music drive down its narrow streets.

When You Go

The spire of the Anglican Cathedral of the Holy Trinity. (Dennis Lennox)

As of writing, Canada is fully open for vaccinated Americans, although the Omicron variant threatens to change entry restrictions. Foreign visitors must register with the Canadian government ahead of arrival by downloading a mobile phone application and providing proof of a negative coronavirus test. Additionally, Quebecs provincial government requires a vaccine passportCenters for Disease Control and Prevention cards are acceptedfor numerous indoor activities, including dining in restaurants.

Flying to Quebec City requires a connection at the larger airports in Montreal or Toronto on Air Canada or WestJet as there are no year-round nonstop flights to and from the United States. By car, the drive from New York City takes 8 hours.

The German Christmas Market (NoelAllemandQuebec.com) is open from 11 a.m. every Thursday through Sunday until Dec. 19, with additional weekday hours from Dec. 20 to Dec. 23. The four locations are the square between City Hall and the Roman Catholic cathedral, Rue Sainte-Anne, Place dArmes, and Place DYouville.

Beyond Christmas, the winter months are a great time to visit even if visitors need an extra layer or two because of snow and frigid weather. Quebec Citys annual Winter Carnival (Carnaval.qc.ca) is scheduled for Feb. 4 to Feb. 13, 2022.

I wouldnt stay again at the Quebec City Marriott Downtown (Marriott.com) as many of the amenities and services that make a four-star hotel a four-star hotel have been suspended. This resulted in an experience more like a no-frills Airbnb rental. Instead, book either the Fairmont Le Chateau Frontenac (Fairmont.com), a throwback to the grand hotels from the turn of the last century, or the 108-room Le Capitole Hotel (LeCapitole.com) just outside the ramparts of the city walls at Place DYouville.

Eat dinner at Chez Jules (ChezJules.ca). The restaurant, a mix of Quebecois cuisine with the best of a Parisian brasserie, is located on the cobblestone Rue Sainte-Anne. Also recommended are Ophelia (RestaurantOphelia.com) and Alphonse (Alphonse.ca). Reservations are suggested for dinners. For breakfast, try Cafe-Boulangerie Paillard (Paillard.ca).

Complete trip planning resources are available through the websites of Bonjour Quebec (BonjourQuebec.com) and Destination Quebec (Quebec-Cite.com).

The authors visit was partially hosted by the Quebec Tourism Industry Alliance and Destination Quebec City.
Julian Assange One Step Closer to Extradition as US Wins Court Appeal in UK

The U.S. government has won an appeal in a British court over the extradition of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, with the ruling representing a major setback in his fight to avoid being handed over to U.S. authorities to face espionage charges.

The High Court in London ruled on Dec. 10 that assurances given by U.S. authorities were sufficient to guarantee that Assange, who has been charged in the United States for his role in publishing classified military and diplomatic cables, would be treated humanely.

The British High Court directed a lower court judge to send the extradition request for review by Britains home secretary, who oversees law enforcement in the UK and will have the final say on whether to extradite Assange.

Fridays ruling overturns a January decision by a British court that considered the special administrative measures that Assange would likely face in the United States as oppressive due to having a negative impact on Assanges mental health. District Judge Vanessa Baraitser denied the extradition in January on grounds that Assange was likely to attempt suicide if held under harsh conditions.

Buildings are reflected in the window as WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is taken from court, where he appeared on charges of jumping British bail, in London on May 1, 2019. (Matt Dunham/AP)

Court documents cited by CNN indicate that the basis for the High Courts decision to grant the extradition request were four assurances provided by U.S. authorities regarding the conditions Assange would face in the United States. These are that Assange would not face special administrative measures, that he would not be held in a maximum security prison, that the United States would agree to an application by Assange to be transferred to Australia to serve his sentence if convicted, and that he would receive clinical and psychological treatment while in U.S. custody.

Stella Moris, Assanges fiancee, called the High Court ruling dangerous and misguided and a grave miscarriage of Justice, according to a statement published on the Defend Wikileaks website.

Julian Assanges partner, Stella Moris, addresses protestors outside the High Court in London, on Oct. 27, 2021. (Frank Augstein/AP Photo)

Editor-in-chief of WikiLeaks, Kristinn Hrafnsson said in a statement that, with the High Court ruling, Assanges life is once more under grave threat, and so is the right of journalists to publish material that governments and corporations find inconvenient.

This is about the right of a free press to publish without being threatened by a bullying superpower, Hrafnsson added.

Supporters of Assange gathered outside the High Court in London on Friday, holding banners demanding his release. Many of his supporters consider Assange a hero for exposing what they describe as abuse of state power and for championing free speech.

U.S. prosecutors have portrayed Assange as a dangerous enemy of the state whose decision to release the classified cables endangered the lives of sources named in the leaked material.

These human sources included local Afghans and Iraqis, journalists, religious leaders, human rights advocates, and political dissidents from repressive regimes, the Justice Department said in announcing an 18-count indictment against Assange in May 2019.

Assanges actions risked serious harm to United States national security to the benefit of our adversaries and put the unredacted named human sources at a grave and imminent risk of serious physical harm and/or arbitrary detention, the Justice Department said.

Assange has been held in a UK prison since 2019 after police carried him out of the Ecuadorian embassy in London before arresting him for breaching bail conditions.

In 2012, Assange entered the embassy of Ecuador to avoid extradition to Sweden to face sex offence allegations, which he has repeatedly denied and which were eventually dropped.
Former "Empire" actor Jussie Smollett arrives at court for his arraignment on renewed felony charges in Chicago, Ill., on Feb. 24, 2020. (Kamil Krzaczynski/Reuters)

Jussie Smollett Convicted of Staging Hate Crime Against Himself, Lying to Police

Actor Jussie Smollett was convicted Thursday of staging a racist, homophobic attack on himself and later lying to police about the matter.

A panel of jurors reached the verdict nearly three years after the former Empire actor told police that two white supporters of President Donald Trump beat him up, put a noose around his neck, and yelled slurs at him on a frigid night in Chicago in January 2019. Jurors had deliberated for about nine hours Wednesday and Thursday.

As the verdict was read in the courtroom, the 39-year-old actor stood and faced the jury, showing no visible reaction.

Smollett was found guilty on five of the six felony disorderly conduct counts he facedone count for each separate time he was accused of lying to police in the aftermath of the alleged attack.

The count he was acquitted on was related to when he was accused of lying to a detective in mid-February 2019.

Each felony count carries a maximum sentence of three years in prison.

Cook County Judge James Linn has yet to set a date for sentencing, but has scheduled a presentencing hearing for Jan. 27.

Smollett had pleaded not guilty to all the charges and had denied making up or orchestrating the attack, although two brothers who allegedly partook in the scheme said Smollett was the mastermind behind it.

The verdict came after a roughly one-week trial where the brothers, Abimbola and Olabinjo Osundairo, testified that Smollett recruited them to fake the attack near his home in downtown Chicago.

They said Smollett told them to put a noose around his neck and rough him up in view of a surveillance camera, and that he said he wanted video of the hoax made public via social media.

Prosecutors said that Smollett paid them $3,500 to stage the attack so he could gain publicity.

Abel Osundairo, left, and his brother Ola Osundairo, in a file photo. The Nigerian brothers were arrested in connection with the alleged attack on Empire actor Jussie Smollett but were released after reportedly telling detectives Smollett paid them to stage the attack. (Team Abel/Instagram)

Its clearly a violation of the law to go to the police and report to police a fake crime and tell police its a real crime, special prosecutor Dan Webb told the jury. To outright denigrate something as serious, as heinous, as a real hate crime, to denigrate it and then make sure it involved words and symbols that have such horrible historical significance in our country was just plain wrong to do it and he did.

But defense attorney Nenye Uche called the Osundairo brothers, who are black, sophisticated liars who may have been motivated to attack Smollett because of homophobia or because they wanted to be hired to work as his security.

These guys want to make money, he said.

Uche called it nonsense for Chicago police to ask Smollett for his DNA when he was still considered the victim of a crime. He noted Smollett later provided DNA to the FBI for a separate investigation into hate mail he had received at the Empire studio shortly before the alleged attack.

Smollett had testified that he was the victim of a real hate crime, telling jurors there was no hoax.

Smolletts professional life declined after the alleged incident. He lost his role in the final season of Empire after prosecutors alleged the attack was a hoax.

Ive lost my livelihood, he told jurors earlier this week.

Mimi Nguyen Ly and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
A police car is stationed at the entrance of the international arrivals terminal at Los Angeles International Airport on Sept. 7, 2010. (Robyn Beck/AFP via Getty Images)

LA Airport Police Division Get $216 Million Centralized Headquarters Near LAX

LOS ANGELESA $216 million centralized headquarters for the Los Angeles Airport Police Division opened near Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) Dec. 9, consolidating operations previously spread among eight standalone buildings across six miles of the airport.

Officials say consolidating operations into one state-of-the-art, 160,000-squre-foot building will improve the divisions communication and coordination.

LAX is where we greet travelers from around the world, and its our responsibility to ensure they feel safe, protected, and welcome, said Mayor Eric Garcetti, who attended the facilitys Thursday opening. This new state-of-the-art facility will ensure our airport is prepared to meet the needs of 21st-century travel and provide a seamless, world-class experience for millions of passengers.

The three-story building includes command staff offices, briefing rooms, classrooms, a gymnasium, locker rooms, fleet services and K-9 facilities. There is also a 960-stall parking structure, as well as indoor and outdoor spaces for the more than 1,100 airport officers, security personnel and

civilian employees.

Our new Airport Police Facility is far more than just a police stationits a game-changing facility that will improve how our police division collaborates and innovates to ensure the safety of our passengers and employees, said Justin Erbacci, CEO of Los Angeles World Airports (LAWA).

For the 1,100 sworn officers, security guards and civilian employees at LAWA, this new facility means having the right space, tools and next-generation technology all in one place to provide world-class service to our guests and employees.

The headquarters is located on 12 acres on the northwest corner of Westchester Parkway and Loyola Boulevard. Next year, artist Francisco Letelier will paint a mural titled Into the Blue on the wall facing Loyola.

In just the past six weeks, I have heard dozens of stories and had many great conversations about how this new facility will transform the Los Angeles Airport Police, said Los Angeles Airport Police Chief Cecil W. Rhambo Jr. Having all of APDs units co-located in one facility will enhance our ability to coordinate resources and further improve how we serve and protect the traveling public.

The buildings sustainability features includes dual-piping for future recycled water use, the maximum-size solar system that could be installed and 33 electric vehicle chargers.
Laos to Target Chinese Tourists Under Green Zone Travel

Laos Information, Culture, and Tourism Ministry have outlined plans to reopen the country to domestic and foreign tourists in 2022 under the Lao Travel Green Zone programme, reported Vientiane Times on Dec. 8.

Deputy Prime Minister Sonexay Siphandone said the government would focus its campaign to draw visitors from China and Korea, according to CCP mouthpiece Xinhua.

The news came at the heels of the opening of the Laos-China railway on Dec. 3, a $6 billion project under Beijings Belt and Road Initiative, aimed at flowing trade and travel into a country plagued by debt amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

Under the new travel scheme, Vientiane, the capital city of Laos, and tourist spots Vangvieng and Luang Prabang would be marked green zones, where at least 70 percent of the local population and 90 percent of service providers have been vaccinated.

The ministry said visitors must produce their vaccination certificates and negative PCR COVID-19 test results within 72 hours before the flight and upon arrival in Laos.

It added that visitors must be driven to hotels by approved vehicles while waiting for their PCR results, which will take 24 hours. Travellers who tested positive will be isolated and retested three days later; additional costs incurred from isolations exceeding three days would be reimbursed.

All travellers must use an app to track possible exposures during their stay in Laos, as required by LaoSafe, a national health and hygiene program.

People walking in front of the Patuxai war monument in the centre of Vientiane, Laos, on March 12, 2020. (Mladen Antonov/AFP via Getty Images)

Details of the quarantine process are yet to be finalised.

Lao Travel Green Zone programme forms part of the Lao Thiao Lao (Lao Visit Laos) campaign, aimed to attract 1.9 million domestic visitors and 1 million foreign visitors in 2022.

The figure is a far cry from the 4.79 million peak tourism arrival before the pandemic.

According to Laos Tourism Marketing Department, tourism, Laos third-largest source of foreign exchange income behind mining and electricity, contributed to 9.1 percent of the economy in 2019 and created more than 300,000 jobs for locals.

The pandemic has plunged international tourism arrival by 74 percent and folded local operations and hospitality businesses.

Crippled by a $400 million debt due this year, Laos is also facing another $1 billion due each year from 2022 to 2025, reported Radio Free Asia.

Everyone is in a tight corner now and living under tough conditions. We lack cash flow now because of the outbreak of COVID-19, said a Lao businessman.
Students walk to their classrooms at a public middle school in Los Angeles, Calif., on Sept. 10, 2021. (Robyn Beck/AFP via Getty Images)

34,000 Unvaccinated LA School Children at Risk of Being Banned From In-person Classes

School district fires 500 employees for refusing to comply with coronavirus vaccine mandate

LOS ANGELESThe Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) has fired nearly 500 employees for refusing to comply with the districts COVID-19 vaccine mandate, while more than 34,000 students in the district are currently unvaccinatedthus facing the risk of being banned from attending in-person classes come Jan. 10.

The LAUSD Board, which has one of the strictest COVID-19 policies in the nation, unanimously voted Dec. 7 to terminate 496 unvaccinated employees. Employees were required to receive their first shot by mid-October, and to be fully inoculated by Nov. 15. Most employees who were terminated had likely been put on leave since mid-October.

Parting ways with individuals who choose not to be vaccinated is an extremely difficult, but necessary decision to ensure the safety of all in our school communities, Megan Reilly, the districts interim superintendent, said in a statement. We wish everyone the best in their future endeavors and encourage everyone to get vaccinated.

Meanwhile, 34,000 students havent received their first vaccine shot, meaning they will not make the Jan. 10 deadline for full vaccination and will be banned from attending class in person.

Los Angeles Unified School District interim Superintendent Megan Reilly meets students in the library at Kim Elementary School on the first day of the school year, in Los Angeles on Aug. 16, 2021. (Robyn Beck/AFP via Getty Images)

Unlike Los Angeles County employees, LAUSD students 12 and older do not have the option to request vaccine exemption on grounds of personal beliefs, though they may receive medical exemptions.

The LAUSD said in a Nov. 22 statement that 79 percent of the approximately 600,000 students have a complete, pending, or partial vaccination record, or qualify for conditional admission or medical exemption.

The district also anticipated the number of vaccinated students to grow when they returned to campus on Nov. 29 and when the Dec. 19 second-dose deadline is around the corner, according to the statement.

Los Angeles Unifieds first and second dose deadlines for eligible students 12 and older are designed to ensure students receive the safe and effective COVID-19 vaccination before the holiday season. All eligible students are expected to be fully vaccinated and have their records uploaded into Daily Pass before the start of the Spring semester on January 10, the statement reads.

After Jan. 10, parents of those students will have to choose between putting their children in the independent study program or leaving the school district.

The LAUSD is one of several districts in the state to create their own COVID-19 vaccine policies for children before all vaccine options receive full federal approval.

As of Dec. 9, only Pfizer-BioNTechs vaccine is authorized for emergency use in children age 5 and older, while Moderna and Johnson & Johnson vaccines have not yet been authorized for minors under 18, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Preventions website.

Natalie, a mother of three, told NBC4 she is not against the vaccine, just the mandate.

LAUSD is not above the law, Natalie said. This is an illegal mandate, because it is illegal to mandate an EUA, emergency use authorization, pharmaceutical.

A nurse prepares a Pfizer BioNTech COVID-19 vaccination in Los Angeles on Aug. 23, 2021. (Lucy Nicholson/Reuters)

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) defined an emergency use authorization (EUA) as a permit issued by the FDA to facilitate the availability and use of medical treatmentssuch as the COVID-19 vaccines in the current pandemicduring public health emergencies.

With an EUA, FDA may allow the use of unapproved medical products, or unapproved uses of approved medical products in an emergency to diagnose, treat, or prevent serious or life-threatening diseases or conditions when certain statutory criteria have been met, including that there are no adequate, approved, and available alternatives, according to the FDAs website.

Two nonprofit groups, Childrens Health Defense and Protection of the Education Rights of Kids, are challenging the mandate in the Los Angeles Superior Court. The groups brought legal action against the LAUSD in October, calling the vaccination requirement illegal and unconstitutional.

This comes after the LAUSD Board authorized approximately $5 million on Nov. 17 for prizes and treats as incentives to get vaccinated. The districts website lists several prizes awarded each week; prizes range from access to food trucks on campus to $100 Amazon gift cards and tickets to theme parks such as Disneyland and Magic Mountain.

Earlier this week, Maribel Duarte, a mother in Los Angeles, said her son was vaccinated at Barack Obama Global Prep Academy without her consent and in exchange for pizza.

Though Duarte is vaccinated, she said she didnt want her son to get the shot because of health issues like asthma and allergies.

Duarte also said her son was told not to discuss what happened. A school administrator, however, told NBC that the allegations were untrue.

Gov. Gavin Newsom announced in October plans to require all California public-school students to be immunized against COVID-19 when the vaccine receives full approval from the [FDA] for middle and high school grades; however, that date is still unknown.

An LAUSD spokesperson didnt respond to a request for comment by the press deadline.
Delta Airlines aircraft lands in Los Angeles International Airport in Los Angeles on May 1, 2021. (John Fredricks/The Epoch Times)

LAX-Bound Flight Diverted When Passenger Attacks Flight Attendant, Air Marshal

LOS ANGELESAn airline passenger, arrested after his assaults on an air marshal and a flight attendant caused a Los Angeles-bound flight to be diverted to Oklahoma City, is facing possible federal charges.

Flight Delta 342 from Washington D.C. to Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) had to make an emergency landing around 7:40 p.m. at Will Rodgers Airport in Oklahoma City, where law enforcement took the man into custody, according to Fox 11.

According to news reports, at some point, the passenger became combative and allegedly assaulted a flight attendant. An air marshal intervened and the passenger then attacked the marshal, who was eventually able to subdue him.

It is unclear what provoked the assaults.

Delta Flight 342 landed at LAX just after 10:30 p.m.

CBS 2 is reporting the passenger, identified as Ariel Pennington, 35, of Washington, D.C., was booked into Oklahoma City Jail on complaints of disorderly conduct and public drunkenness.

The flight attendant and air marshal were not seriously injured, CBS 2 is reporting.

Delta applauds the quick action and professionalism of the crew and federal air marshals on Delta flight 324 from Washington, D.C. to Los Angeles, which diverted to Oklahoma City after a customer became unruly and was removed

from the flight by local law enforcement, the airline said in a statement that was reported by CBS 2. We apologize to our customers for the inconvenience.
Vials labelled "AstraZeneca COVID-19 Coronavirus Vaccine" and a syringe are seen in front of a displayed AstraZeneca logo in this illustration taken March 10, 2021. (Dado Ruvic/Illustration/Reuters)

Malaysia Donates 800,000 AstraZeneca Vaccines to Bangladesh and Laos

The Malaysian government announced that it would send nearly 1 million AstraZeneca vaccine doses to Bangladesh and Laos.

The vaccines would arrive in both countries on Dec. 6 and Dec. 8, respectively, reported Bernama.

Health Minister Khairy Jamaluddin said the contribution would ensure both countries have equal access to COVID-19 vaccines amid the growing spread of the Omicron variant.

Bangladeshs government has previously raised the alarm over the shortage of hospital beds as the number of infections has been climbing since July.

If the infection continues to increase like this, there will be no place left in hospitals, said Health Minister Zahid Maleque. The South Asian country has recorded 1,577,720 cases with 28,000 deaths.

Khairy said only 20 percent of Bangladeshs population and 42 percent of Laos were fully vaccinated, which pales in comparison to Malaysias at 78 percent.

Minister Khairy added that despite these contributions, Malaysia has sufficient vaccines for adults and adolescents, including booster doses for eligible individuals.

A teenage boy receives a dose of the Pfizer vaccine in Pos Simpor, a village and settlement of Orang Asli (indigenous Malaysians) in the district of Gua Musang, Kelantan, Malaysia, on Oct. 5, 2021. (Annice Lyn/Getty Images)

Earlier in June, Malaysia also joined Russia and Europe in donating vaccines to Bosnia-Herzegovina.

The Southeast Asian nation delivered 50,000 Chinese Sinovac vaccines to the Balkan country, which pleaded with the international community for help amid rising COVID-19 infections and deaths in Europe.

The Malaysian government, through MOH and Wisma Putra (Foreign Ministry), will continue to identify and assist countries that have recorded low vaccination rates through the provision of COVID-19 vaccine donations, Khairy added.

Malaysia has itself received over 2.9 million vaccine doses from Japan, the United States, and the United Kingdom. More recently, its Johorian state received 100,000 doses of Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines from neighbour Singapore.

The contribution had helped increase the rate of vaccination coverage in the country, and now, Malaysia hopes to do the same to other countries in need, said Khairy.

To date, some 90 percent of Malaysias teenagers aged between 12 and 17 have been vaccinated, according to the countrys CovidNow portal.

Malaysia also has one of the fastest adolescent COVID-19 vaccination rollouts globally, where 80 percent of adolescents were administered one dose of vaccine within two months, said Khairy.
CCTV image of Salman Abedi at Victoria Station making his way to the Manchester Arena, where he detonated his bomb, in Manchester, England, on May 22, 2017. (Greater Manchester Police/Handout via PA)

Manchester Bomber Had No Connection to Law-Abiding British Society, Inquiry Told

Salman Abedi had no active connection to law-abiding British society, the public inquiry into the Manchester Arena attack has heard.

The close family of the Manchester-born suicide bomber showed scant regard to the countrys laws and he had no role model to fit into life in Britain, according to an expert in Islamist extremism.

On Thursday, Matthew Wilkinson set out his report to the inquiry on Abedis path to radicalisation, which culminated in him committing the atrocity at the end of an Ariana Grande concert in May 2017, killing 22 people and injuring hundreds.

He concluded that three family members were the cause of Abedis Islamist extremist worldviewhis younger brother, Hashem, jailed for life last year for aiding the bomb plot; his father, Ramadan, a suspect who remains in his native Libya; and his older brother, Ismail, who fled the UK in August.

Among factors involved in his radicalisation were an absence of civic connection and engagement in British life, the report found.

Wilkinson told the inquiry: He [Salman] didnt have a mechanism or a role model to fit into life in Britain. I think almost all his close family at some point have been convicted of petty crimestheft, shoplifting, and that sort of stuff.

His close family clearly held the law in this country in pretty scant regard. It didnt really matter too much if they broke it. He had no active connection to law-abiding British society.

Instead, Abedi showed an excess of identification with the Islamist struggle for control of Libya as his father took Salman and Hashem out of education in 2011 and 2012 to fight in the uprising against the then leader, Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, the inquiry heard.

Wilkinson said: Salman was knocking around militias and people who had access to, and were using and training in the use of, heavy military equipment. It meant the use of violence in the name of Islam was becoming even more normalised in his worldview. It was just part of how his life was.

Ramadan introduced his sons to the world of Islamist violence in a very practical sense.

Between 2015 and 2017 Ramadan was mostly not in the UK and Ismail was left as the father figure back home in Manchester to supervise his younger brothers, he said, but in December 2015 Ismail was subject to a port stop at Heathrow Airport and was found to be in possession of a toolkit of Islamic State propaganda.

He said: At the very point when Ismail was expressing sympathies for showing a commitment to the worldview of Islamic State he was acting in a parental role over Salman Abedi.

Wilkinson said that from at least February 2014 social media posts showed that Hashem also had an Islamist extremist worldview.

Inquiry chairman Sir John Saunders asked: Is it possible to say that Hashem was the primary radicaliser of the two?

Wilkinson replied: Yes, because Salman was chosen to do the deed. The pattern of these things tends to show that the people who do the radicalising do not do the deed. I would suggest that the more influential of the two in terms of personality and ideas was probably Hashem.

He said there was a royal flush of factors involved in Abedis radicalisation, including prolonged disengagement with mainstream English education, prolonged parental absence and neglect, and an absence of effective school-based religious education or mosque-based education.

He said, in his opinion, Abdalraouf Abdallah, a convicted terrorist, groomed his lifelong friend Abedi into a violent Islamist extremist worldview.

Wilkinson added there was very likely to be more than one radicalisation influence in Libya where Salman and Hashem spent time in 2016 and 2017.

He said:  It is so difficult to know who the characters involved were. That operational phase of the worldview seems to have a strong connection with something or someone in Libya.

Wilkinson will return on Monday to continue his evidence.

By Kim Pilling
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg speaks at the Paley Center in New York, on Oct. 25, 2019. (Mark Lennihan/AP Photo)

Meta Attorneys: Facebook Fact Check Labels Are Opinion

Labels placed on posts on Facebook accompanying so-called fact-checks are opinion, lawyers for the social media platforms parent company said in a recent court filing.

Television host John Stossel sued Facebook and two of its fact-checking partners, Science Feedback and Climate Feedback, earlier this year, accusing the entities of defaming him.

Stossel posted two video reports on Facebook, one of which explored the forest fires devastating California in 2020, including an interview with Michael Shellenberger, a climate change expert.

Stossel said that climate change has made things worse in the state; Shellenberger said climate change played a role but that mismanaged forests were the primary reason for the large fires.

Facebook placed a label over the video, telling users that it was missing context.

If users clicked through, they were met with a page on Climate Feedbacks website that stated Claim  forest fires are caused by poor management. Not by climate change. and Verdict: misleading.

That claim, though, is contained nowhere in Stossels video, the suit says.

Stossel said he reached out to Climate Feedback and they didnt respond, but two of the scientists listed as the groups reviewers admitted they had not reviewed the video.

A similar situation played out with a different video, which explored environmental alarmists.

Stossel said the fact-checking process is nothing more than a pretext used by defendants to defame users with impunity, particularly when defendants disagree with the scientific opinions expressed in user content.

The case was filed in federal court in northern California.

Lawyers for Meta, Facebooks parent company, responded in a filing late last month, urging the court to dismiss the case.

Meta said its fact-checkers are independent from Facebook and that it is protected by Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act.

Beyond this threshold Section 230 problem, the complaint also fails to state a claim for defamation. For one, Stossel fails to plead facts establishing that Meta acted with actual malicewhich, as a public figure, he must, they wrote.

For another, Stossels claims focus on the fact-check articles written by Climate Feedback, not the labels affixed through the Facebook platform. The labels themselves are neither false nor defamatory; to the contrary, they constitute protected opinion. And even if Stossel could attribute Climate Feedbacks separate webpages to Meta, the challenged statements on those pages are likewise neither false nor defamatory. Any of these failures would doom Stossels complaint, but the combination makes any amendment futile, they added.

The claim regarding opinions is key because an opinion is more difficult to press a defamation claim against.

The case was reassigned this week to U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh, an Obama nominee.

Koh is set to hear oral arguments during a hearing on the motion to dismiss in March 2022.

Stossel is seeking damages of at least $2 million and wants the court to order the defendants to remove the content in question.
Jeffrey Franz and his wife Brandi listen as attorney Geoffrey Fieger holds a news conference at his offices in Southfield, Mich., on Dec. 9, 2021. (David Guralnick /Detroit News via AP)

Michigan District Hit With Two Lawsuits Over School Shooting

A Michigan school district has been sued over its alleged failure to stop a school shooting that left four students dead and seven others wounded.

Parents of a girl who was shot in the neck during the Nov. 30 shooting at Oxford High School filed the suits, one on behalf of the girl and the other on behalf of her sister, who was next to her when she was shot.

Jeffrey and Brandi Franz say district and school officials should have prevented Ethan Crumbley, the 15-year-old who is accused of carrying out the mass shooting, from returning to class after he was forced to meet with his parents and school staff following the discovery of a note he penned that suggested he was contemplating committing violence.

The suits name the Oxford Community School District as a defendant, along with district Superintendent Timothy Throne, Oxford High School principal Steve Wolf, and several other school officials.

The administrators, the counselors, the teachers, at Oxford High School bear responsibility, Geoffrey Fieger, an attorney representing the parents, told reporters at a press conference.

Wolf, alerted by multiple parents to concerning social media posts made by Ethan, told them that there is absolutely no threat, according to the suits.

Large assumptions were made from a few social media posts, then the assumptions evolved into exaggerated rumors, he added.

Throne is said to have sent similar messages.

An exterior view of Oxford High School, closed since a Nov. 30, 2021 shooting, is seen in Oxford, Mich., on Dec. 7, 2021. (Emily Elconin/Getty Images)

Teachers who witnessed Ethan searching for ammunition on his phone the day before the shooting and discovered the note also should have acted to remove Ethan from the classroom, the parents charge.

Defendants gave Ethan Crumbley the opportunity to go to the bathroom, with his backpack, to prepare for his planned rampage, thereby increasing the risk that Plaintiffs Minors would be exposed to Ethan Crumbleys acts of violence, one suit states.

Riley Franz, 17, was shot as a direct result of the actions, her parents say. Bella Franz, 14, witnessed the shootings. Both are suffering from the trauma and showing signs of post-traumatic stress disorder.

The district and school did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Prosecutors charged Ethans parents, alleging they should have alerted officials to their sons access to the firearm, should have removed him from school, and should have checked his backpack for the gun.

Oakland County Sheriff Michael Bouchard told reporters earlier this month that law enforcement would have removed the boy from the school and made sure he had no weapons if they were alerted to the situation.

But the school resource officer was not brought into the meeting that included Ethan, his parents, and school officials.

Oakland County Prosecutor Karen McDonald has left open the possibility of charging school staffers.

Throne told parents and students in a video message last week that Ethan had been called to the office just hours before the shooting.

Officials determined no discipline was warranted, he said.

Throne added on Wednesday that officials have been cooperating with the sheriffs office and prosecutors. After the probe is done, my recommendation to our School Board will be that we initiate a review of our entire system, he said.
A vehicle sits in two pieces after a stolen vehicle crashed in Minneapolis, Minn., on Dec. 9, 2021. (David Joles/Star Tribune via AP)

2 Dead, 3 Injured in Crash After Police Pursuit in Minnesota

MINNEAPOLISA crash in Minneapolis early Thursday that followed a police pursuit of an SUV that was reportedly stolen has left two juveniles dead and three others hospitalized, authorities said.

Officers in suburban Robbinsdale spotted a Mercedes SUV about 2 a.m. that was reported stolen in Minneapolis and attempted to stop the vehicle, police said.

The driver sped off and officers began a pursuit, police said. The chase moved from Robbinsdale into northeast Minneapolis, where the SUVs driver lost control and crashed, splitting the vehicle in half, authorities said.

All five people in the vehicle were under 18, officers said. One was declared dead at the scene of the crash, and the other four were taken to hospitals, where Robbinsdale police said a second person died.

Carjackings have been on the rise, I think everyone knows that, even in the western suburbs weve had an increase in carjackings, violent carjackings, said Robbinsdale Capt. John Kaczmarek. Obviously we attempt to stop those individuals from performing those.

A State Patrol reconstruction team was called to the scene.

In July, an innocent motorist was killed while a Minneapolis police officer was pursuing a stolen vehicle. In that case, a prosecutors said the officer was driving nearly 80 mph with his siren and lights activated when his squad car slammed into another vehicle. That officer was charged with manslaughter and vehicular homicide.
As of Thursday, the UK and Canada are the latest countries to join the diplomatic boycott of the Beijing Winter Olympics. This comes just days after the White Houses corresponding announcement. The United States cited the persecution of Uyghurs in Xinjiang as the primary reason for its action. But, are there other motives underlying its stand against the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) at this time? And why is there no mention of Peng Shuai accompanying this boycott being made in the name of human rights?

What is the relationship between the U.S. boycott of the Winter Olympics and Russias preparations to invade Ukraine?

The CCP has recently leveled heavy criticism against Western democracy. Alongside this, it has announced its own brand of democracy, i.e., Whole Process Democracy. How does the latter stand up to a basic democracy litmus test?

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A health care worker in Israel prepares a dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine in a file photo. (Ahmad Ghababli/AFP via Getty Images)

Natural Immunity More Protective Over Time Than COVID-19 Vaccination: Study

Immunity people enjoy after recovering from COVID-19 is better than the protection bestowed from vaccination, according to a new study from Israel.

Researchers analyzing data from the countys health database from August to September found both COVID-19 infections and severe disease were higher among the vaccinated than those who recovered from the illness, also known as people with natural immunity.

For instance, the naturally immune had a 10.5 per 100,000 infection rate four to six months following their recovery, versus a 69.2 per 100,000 rate among the vaccinated.

The number of severe cases was also higher among the vaccinated: 0.9 percent of all cases among that group were severe, compared with 0.5 percent of cases among the recovered.

Researchers found that protection against infection dropped over time among both the recovered and vaccinated, but the drop was more pronounced among the vaccinated.

They also studied two other cohorts: people with natural immunity who later got a vaccine, and people who got a vaccine and later recovered from an infection.

Case rates were low in both those groups. They were the lowest by a small number in the naturally immune who got a jab.

We found that protection against the Delta variant wanes over time for both vaccinated and previously infected individuals and that an additional dose restores protection, Yair Goldberg, an associate professor at the Israel Institute of Technology who led the pre-print study (pdf), told The Epoch Times in an email.

The study analyzed the effectiveness of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine, the one most used in Israel.

COVID-19 is the disease caused by the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus.

Limitations of the study included having longer-term data for the recovered versus the other groups; an undetermined number of vaccinated people not being diagnosed as naturally immune; and possible detection bias because the naturally immune are less likely to get tested than the vaccinated.

Protection Holds Up Over Time

Immunity can be measured through antibodies, which primarily protect against infection, or through T cells and B cells, which primarily protect against severe disease.

Those immune cells dont go away over time, Dr. Jeffrey Klausner, a professor at the University of Southern Californias Keck School of Medicine, told The Epoch Times in an email.

Though the levels of antibodies go down in both the naturally immune and vaccinated as time elapses since recovery or getting a shot, both groups enjoy long-lasting protection against severe disease or death.

People who are immune have a 90 percent lower risk of severe disease, according to recent research from Qatar.

The naturally immune, though, are better protected against both infection and severe disease, according to a large body of research that includes the latest study from Israel.

If you had COVID before and recovered, all the data that were looking at will suggest that you have bulletproof natural immunity, which is much more robust and comprehensive than vaccine immunity, Dr. Paul Alexander, an epidemiologist with the Early COVID Care Experts who has compiled 141 studies on natural immunityincluding a major study from Israel published in Augusttold The Epoch Times.

The Question

The question that divides the scientific community is whether people with natural immunity should get vaccinated.

Those who do are described as having hybrid immunity.

Top U.S. health officials, including Dr. Anthony Fauci, and some scientists have encouraged vaccination among the naturally immune.

They point to studies indicating people with hybrid immunity have the highest level of protection, at least against infection.

The hybrid immunity of people who have survived their initial infection and then get vaccinatedthey have stronger protection than anybody, Dr. David Boulware, an infectious disease physician and scientist with the University of Minnesota Medical School, told The Epoch Times.

The Israeli researchers also suggest a dose for the naturally immune, but not everybody is on board.

There is little benefit from getting vaccinated after recovery from COVID, Dr. Harvey Risch, an epidemiology professor at the Yale School of Public Health, told The Epoch Times in an email.

Alexander noted that some studies indicate giving recovered patients a vaccine can lead to a higher rate of adverse events and that such events reported to Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System is higher than other vaccines.

Boulware says a way to minimize potential events is for the recovered not to get a vaccine for at least six months after recovery.
A member of the Mudgeeraba light horse troop takes part in the Currumbin RSL dawn service on April 25, 2016 in Gold Coast, Australia. (Chris Hyde/Getty Images)

Negativity Towards Civilians Foils Veterans Attempt to Move on From Military Life

More than seven out of ten veterans held negative beliefs toward ordinary civilians, a core belief that can thwart their attempt to adjust to civilian life after the military, a former captain in the army told the Royal Commission into Defence and Veteran Suicide on Thursday.

Dr Kerri-Anne Woodbury, the lead researcher into transition and re-integration with the Gallipoli Medical Research Institute (GMRI), said those prevailing attitudes towards civilians had already emerged as a persistent theme at the royal commission hearing in Brisbane.

As weve heard from a lot of people over the last two weeks, people in the military are told that they are more than civilians and they are better than civilians, and you never want to be a civilian, said Woodbury.

She said a survey of 1,248 veterans conducted by the GMRF showed just over 77 percent held negative attitudes toward civilians, while just over 78 percent have reported experiencing a difficult transition.

When you transition and you are now one of them (civilians), that can be a real struggle for a lot of people, Woodbury added.

People who were able to adapt themselves to fit into a civilian world did better than the people who perhaps help more of a view that they felt the civilian world needed to adapt to them.

Other important factors that influence veterans well-being include purpose and connection outside of the military, the ability to seek help with health and mental health difficulties, and regimentation, which is a veterans adaptability to change and retention of problematic military habits.

When people spend a lot of time in the military, it becomes not only their workplace but their social touchpoint as well, and so the people that had friendships and connections outside of that were found to do better, Woodbury noted.

People who saw service as a chapter in their life and when that chapter closes that there will be other chapters, did well when they were able to bracket that service experience and being able to see that as something that has finished and that isnt the end of their life, its the end of that particular chapter.

While it is very important to make sure soldiers are able to function as part of the team, for a lot of people it becomes a problem when the indoctrination in the military life follow them to their normal lives, resulting in a loss of identity and a sense of purpose, with some cases to be life-ending, she said.

The military is brilliant at indoctrinating people but there is no process at this point to undo any of that; it is the deindoctrination that seems to be lacking in the military culture at the moment.

The term culture shock is a correct use of words for people who are moving from military, which has been their life 24 hours a day, seven days a week, for what can be decades and some times many decades.

On Wednesday, the commissioners heard from a Brisbane GP who runs Australias largest veterans health care practice that a lot of issues around veteran suicide is the transition period.

It is literally the coming out of a world which is completely different to the normal civilian life, said Kieran McCarthy, who did multiple deployments as a military doctor, you leave the military, but the military never leaves you, and thats a lot of the struggles.

So a lot of guys, when they get out, they get into substance abuse, and then they cant work, and employers dont want to employ them because 60 Minutes tells them they are broken and crazy, and its a real struggle moving forward.

I had a fantastic career, and life is boring. Its just boring, he said.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is interviewed by The Epoch Times at Florida International University in Miami on May 24, 2021. (Samira Bouaou/The Epoch Times)

New Florida Rule Bars Giving Licenses to Facilities Housing Illegal Immigrant Children

An emergency rule issued by Florida authorities on Friday bars issuing or renewing licenses for any entities that house illegal immigrant children.

Under the direction of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, the state Department of Children and Families (DCF) determined that the resettlement of such children does not meet the term evidence of need as defined by state law and amended the states administrative code to say as much while cracking down on licenses.

The move is required to protect the health, safety, and wellbeing of all children in the state being cared for by childcare entities, and in the absence of a cooperative agreement between the state and the federal government regarding the illegal aliens, the agency said.

Facilities that are already housing the children will be able to keep housing them but will face stricter regulations.

DeSantis has been on of President Joe Bidens top opponents, criticizing the Democrat primarily for his lax immigration enforcement policies.

Biden has presided over the most illegal immigrant apprehensions at the southern border in history in a single fiscal year and calendar year, after ending or altering key Trump era provisions like construction on the border wall and the Remain in Mexico program.

Florida officials noted that the Biden administration has released tens of thousands of illegal immigrants into the U.S. interior without a court date, flouting U.S. law. They have also accused the administration of secretly flying illegal immigrant children into Florida, including 78 flights with an average of 36 children on each flight between June and September.

These individuals were collectively transported on buses and dispersed to various locations in Florida, DCF said.

A White House spokesman did not return a request for comment.

DeSantis on Friday also announced new legislative proposals aimed at combating the surge in illegal immigration, including barring companies involved in transporting illegal immigrants to Florida from getting contracts from any state or local government agency inside Florida, and making any entity involved in the transportation pay the state restitution.

We have a responsibility to stand up for the rule of law, we have a responsibility to stand up for the Constitution, and we have a responsibility to stand up against an administration that has just decided they dont want to have a secure border, DeSantis told a briefing in Jacksonville.

Jacksonville Sheriff Mike Williams, a Republican, told reporters that illegal immigrants are being brought into the area without official paperwork. That leaves officials with no clue where theyre coming from.

Its our job in law enforcement to keep communities safe, and that jobs challenged when we have nothing more to work with than just the unknown, Williams said, applauding DeSantis proposals.

Republicans control both legislative chambers in Florida in addition to the governors mansion.
New York City voters cast their ballots at the early voting station in Madison Square Garden on Oct. 24, 2020. (Xiaotang Huang/The Epoch Times)

New York City Council Passes Bill to Allow Non-Citizens Vote in Elections

The Democrat-led New York City Council on Thursday voted to pass an ordinance that allows non-citizens to vote in City Council races and other municipal elections starting in 2023.

If the bill is signed by the mayor and if it survives lawsuits, New York City would become the largest city in the United States to grant access to polls for people who arent American citizens. About 800,000 non-citizens live in the city. Noncitizens cannot vote in statewide or federal elections.

I am proud to be voting on legislation that will give the right to vote to green card holders and people who are authorized to work in the United States of America, Council Speaker Corey Johnson said ahead of the vote earlier this week.

Immigrants pay taxes, he said. They use city services. Their kids go to our public schools. They are part of our community, and they deserve a say in local government.

The measure, which passed 33-to-14, is just short of a two-thirds majority, which is veto-proof.

Republicans and some Democrats opposed the measure. Some argued that the bills 30-day residency requirement to vote is too short.

We pledge action, legal or otherwise, any means necessary to stop this dangerous legislation from undermining our elections, New York GOP Chairman Nick Langworthy told news outlets last week, arguing that it will allow foreign powers to have the ability to influence U.S. elections.

Republican National Committee Chair Ronna McDaniel, in a statement, said that with the passage of the bill, American citizens should decide American electionsfull stop.

Todays decision in New York is the product of a radical, power-hungry Democrat Party that will stop at nothing to undermine election integrity, McDaniel said.

Democratic Majority City Council Leader Laurie Cumbo also opposed the bill, saying that the measure would dilute African-Americans votes.

This particular legislation is going to shift the power dynamics in NYC in a major way, and we do not have the numbers or the information to know how that is going to impact African-American communities, Cumbo said, reported FOX 5.

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, a Democrat, previously said he opposes the bill. Its not clear if he will veto it.

In the end, I want to make sure that citizenship, which people work so hard to achieve, is valued and is given its full weight, he said in an interview with NY1 in late November.

According to a Reuters analysis, at least 14 U.S. cities, including San Francisco, already allow non-citizens to vote in municipal elections.
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul speaks at a signing ceremony of the Less Is More act, in New York, on Sept. 17, 2021. (Kevin P. Coughlin/Office of the Governor)

New York Governor Issues Mask Mandate for Businesses Without Vaccine Requirements

Gov. Kathy Hochul announced Friday masks will be required in all indoor public places and venues unless those businesses mandate a COVID-19 vaccine requirement.

We are entering a time of uncertainty, Hochul, a Democrat, said Friday morning during a news conference in New York City. We can either plateau here or our cases can escalate beyond control. We are heading in an upward direction that I find is no longer sustainable.

Hochuls measure is effective starting Dec. 13, 2021, until Jan. 15, 2022, and the state will re-evaluate the order based on the number of COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations.

I have warned for weeks that additional steps could be necessary, and now we are at that point based upon three metrics: Increasing cases, reduced hospital capacity, and insufficient vaccination rates in certain areas, the governor said in a statement.

Noncompliant businesses could be subject to criminal and civil penalties with a maximum fine of $1,000 per violation, which will be enforced by local health departments.

According to the New York state data, the states weekly seven-day case rate and hospitalization numbers have spiked by 43 percent and 29 percent, respectively, since Thanksgiving. Hochul on Friday said that about 80 percent of New York residents are fully vaccinated for COVID-19.

Both Hochul and Dr. Mary Bassett, in the statement, said masking measures would be needed to deal with the Omicron variant, which has been confirmed in New York state since it was first named in late November.

No deaths have been associated with the Omicron variant anywhere in the world, including the U.S. Federal health officials and authorities in other countries have signaled that early data suggests Omicron is a milder variant than the Delta strain.

The disease is mild, Walensky told The Associated Press this week, referring to the Omicron variant symtpoms. Most symptoms include cough, congestion, and fatigue, she said.

What we generally know is the more mutations a variant has, the higher level you need your immunity to be  We want to make sure we bolster everybodys immunity. And thats really what motivated the decision to expand our guidance, Walensky said.

Despite Omicrons apparently mild nature, the United States, European Union, and other countries have imposed travel restrictions. Some heads of state, including UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson, said new lockdown measures might be needed.

Johnson announced a so-called plan B measures for England over the Omicron variant. That includes new work-from-home measures, the extension of a mask mandate, COVID-19 vaccine passports being required for certain businesses, and more regulations.

Despite the rising concern about Omicron, Bassett noted that the Delta variant accounts for the high numbers of hospitalizations and high case rates.

New Mexico, Nevada, and Hawaii also recently imposed statewide mask mandates for businesses.
Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega and his wife, Vice-President Rosario Murillo, raise their fists during the commemoration of the 51st anniversary of the Pancasan guerrilla campaign in Managua, on Aug. 29, 2018. (Inti Ocon/AFP/Getty Images)

Nicaragua Breaks Relations With Taiwan, Recognizes China

The government of Nicaragua announced Thursday that it has terminated diplomatic relations with Taiwan and ceased to have any contact or official relationship, declaring that it recognizes there is only one single China in the world.

The Peoples Republic of China is the only legitimate government that represents all of China and Taiwan is an inalienable part of the Chinese territory, Foreign Minister Denis Moncada Colindres said in a statement.

In response, Taiwans foreign ministry said it deeply regrets the Nicaraguan decision to disregard the long-standing and close friendship between the two nations, and that their diplomatic relations will be ended with immediate effect.

Taiwan would also halt all bilateral cooperation projects and aid programs, and recall staff of its embassy and technical mission in Nicaragua.

As a responsible member of the international community, Taiwan has the right to conduct exchanges and develop diplomatic relations with other nations, the ministry said in a statement.

It stated that Taiwan will continue to promote steadfast diplomacy to expand its international participation, and that it will spare no effort to ensure its rightful status in the international community.

Taiwan has been self-governing since 1949, although Beijing considers the democratically ruled island to be part of its territory, and has threatened to bring the island under its control by force if necessary. China has ramped up military flights near Taiwan, sending more than 200 aircraft into Taiwans air defense identification zone in October.

Nicaraguas break with Taiwan is a blow to the United States. It follows months of worsening ties between Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega and Washington and came on the day the U.S. State Department said it had slapped sanctions on Nestor Moncada Lau, a national security adviser to Ortega, alleging he operates an import and customs fraud scheme to enrich members of Ortegas government.

The U.S. State Department said Ortegas decision to break relations with Taiwan did not reflect the will of the Nicaraguan people due to the nations recent election being a sham, which was unfairly elected.

Without the mandate that comes with a free and fair election, Ortegas actions cannot reflect the will of the Nicaraguan people, who continue to struggle for democracy and the ability to exercise their human rights and fundamental freedoms, the department said in a statement.

We encourage all countries that value democratic institutions, transparency, the rule of law, and promoting economic prosperity for their citizens to expand engagement with Taiwan, the State Department added.

Last month, the United States imposed sanctions against the Nicaraguan Public Ministry and nine Nicaraguan government officials, after reports of potential opposition presidential candidates and dissidents being detained months ahead of the election in Nicaragua.

U.S. Rep. Lisa McClain (R-Mich.) in a Twitter post called for the United States to stand firm with Taiwan, describing Nicaraguas move to sever diplomatic relations with Taiwan as incredibly troubling.

Rep. Ken Buck (R-Colo.) also expressed his support for Taiwan and accused Beijing of aggressively campaigning to undermine Taiwan.

The Chinese government is aggressively campaigning to undermine Taiwanese peoples right to self-determination. I continue to support Taiwan and oppose the CCPs [Chinese Communist Party] influence campaigns, Buck said on Twitter.

Rep. Tom Tiffany (R-Wis.) said on Twitter that Ortegas decision to cut ties with Taiwan will only make life worse for the people of Nicaragua, calling for President Joe Biden to lead by example and recognize Taiwan.

Nicaraguas move leaves Taiwan with just 14 formal diplomatic allies, most of them in Latin America and the Caribbean, plus a handful of small states including the Vatican. Before Nicaragua, Taiwan lost two allies in quick succession in September of 2019, when the Solomon Islands and Kiribati went over to Beijing.

Reuters contributed to this report.
The flag of the World Health Organization (WHO) at its headquarters in Geneva on March 5, 2021. (Fabrice Coffrini/AFP via Getty Images)

WHO: No Deaths Reported as a Result of Omicron Variant to Date

The World Health Organization (WHO) says it hasnt documented any deaths yet from the Omicron variant of the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus, which causes COVID-19.

For Omicron, we have not had any deaths reported, but it is still early in the clinical course of the disease and this may change. the WHO told The Epoch Times.

When reached for comment by The Epoch Times, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) sent its report on the Omicron variant in the United States for Dec. 1 through Dec. 8. It shows that there were no documented deaths from Omicron during that period.

The WHOs latest weekly epidemiological update, on Dec. 7, showed that all 212 Omicron cases documented across 18 European Union (EU) countries were either mild or asymptomatic.

While South Africa saw an 82 percent increase in hospital admissions due to COVID-19 (from 502 to 912) during the week 28 November4 December 2021, it is not yet known the proportion of these with the Omicron variant, the report notes.

Omicron has also been detected in the United States, first in California and later in Colorado, New York, Maryland, Utah, and many other states.

The first U.S. patient with the variant was identified in San Francisco, testing positive for COVID-19 on Nov. 29 after returning from a trip to South Africa on Nov. 22. However, the California Department of Public Health has confirmed to the Los Angeles Times that the variant was present in wastewater as early as Nov. 25.

Originally known as B.1.1.529, the variant first made international headlines on Nov. 26, soon after it was initially detected in South Africa.

That day, the WHO named B.1.1.529 as Omicron and labeled it a variant of concern. Two days later, in a technical brief, it said the strain could present a very high risk, citing its large number of mutations.

Meanwhile, Dr. Angelique Coetzee, the chair of the South African Medical Association and one of the first doctors to treat patients with Omicron has consistently maintained that Omicron is a mild variant.

Let me be clear: nothing I have seen about this new variant warrants the extreme action the UK government has taken in response to it, she wrote in The Daily Mail.

Coetzee was referring to heavy travel restrictions on flights from across southern Africa, as well as imposing tighter rules at home on mask-wearing, fines, and extended quarantines.

No one here in South Africa is known to have been [hospitalized] with the Omicron variant, nor is anyone here believed to have fallen seriously ill with it, she wrote.

More recently, Coetzee told ThePrint that Omicron symptoms have been mild in both vaccinated and unvaccinated patients.

In the beginning of any wave, children and younger people are the first to be affected, she told ThePrint. As the wave progresses, more elderly, people with comorbidities, start getting affected. When that happens, we will know exactly how many severe cases there are.
Nokia Is Breaking Out: Wheres It Headed Next?

Nokia Corp. shares are trading higher Thursday and look to be breaking out of a technical pattern. Resistance in the pattern has been broken and Nokia is pushing higher. The stock was trending on social media sites throughout the day Thursday.

Nokia was up 2.30 percent at $6 Thursday afternoon at publication.

Nokia Daily Chart Analysis

Shares look to be breaking out of what traders call a pennant pattern after being able to break above resistance. If able to hold above resistance the stock could see a further bullish push.

The stock trades above both the 50-day moving average (green) and the 200-day moving average (blue). This indicates bullish sentiment and each of these moving averages may hold as an area of support in the future.

The Relative Strength Index (RSI) has been climbing the past few days and sits at 60 on the indicator. This shows that more buyers are moving into the stock and there is more overall buying pressure than selling pressure since the beginning of the month.

Whats Next For Nokia?

Nokia is breaking out of a pattern and could be due to see a strong bullish push if volume can continue to enter into the stock. Bulls are looking to see the stock continue to climb after breaking out.

By Tyler Bundy

 2021 The Epoch Times. The Epoch Times does not provide investment advice. All rights reserved.
New York City Mayor Bill DeBlasio presents a proclamation at the 46th Precincts National Night Out in the Bronx borough of New York City, on Aug. 3, 2021. (David Dee Delgado/Getty Images)

NYC Proposes New Rules to Silence Parents Critical of Education Policies, Parents Say

Outgoing New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio is trying to leave behind him a rule that could potentially silence parents who criticize school board policies, according to two parents and board leaders.

In an op-ed published in The New York Post, Maud Maron and Danyela Souza Egorov said that a proposed regulation would allow the Department of Education (DOE) to discipline and remove parents elected to Community Education Councils (CEC)New York Citys equivalent to a school boardif they criticize the school district they are meant to hold accountable. Maron is a former president of the CEC in District 2, and Danyela Souza Egorov is its vice president.

The proposed Chancellors Regulation D-210, which will be weighed by the DOEs Panel for Educational Policy on Dec. 21, prohibits council members from engaging in conduct that serves to harass, intimidate, or threaten. Such conduct includes but is not limited to frequent verbal abuse and unnecessary aggressive speech that serves to intimidate and causes others to have concern for their personal safety.

The criteria used to determine what counts as a violation is vague, Maron and Egorov argued. The rule doesnt explain how frequent is frequent or what kind of speech is unnecessary or aggressive. On top of that, an Equity Compliance Officer would be established to enforce the rule.

This (no doubt expensive) bureaucrat would be charged with deciding who to target for removal for violating the newly expanded code of conduct,' they wrote, calling it yet another administrative position to monitor parents.

In addition, the regulation allows the chancellor to request a CEC member be removed if the members conduct is deemed contrary to the best interest of the New York City school district. The op-ed authors also noted that conduct happening outside of CEC meetings or public appearances could also serve as a basis for a complaint and removal, as long as the conduct creates or would foreseeably create a risk of disruption within the district or school community.

Even worse, an Equity Council, a team of DOE-appointed apparatchiks, would be tasked with providing recommendations on the resolutions of complaintsin other words who to remove and silence, they wrote. In the event of a disagreement between the Equity Compliance Officer and the Equity Council, the recommendation of the Equity Compliance Officer shall govern, according to the proposed regulation.

Maron and Egorov also pointed out that this set of new rules is rolled out just after parents flipped some councils by voting individuals who are very vocal about holding their districts accountable. They believe it is clearly meant to shield the DOE from any and all criticism from duly elected council members.

Calling parents domestic terrorists did not work to silence parents at school-board meetings, they said, referencing a widely criticized letter characterizing concerned parents actions as domestic terrorism. Trying to do an end-run around democratically elected parent leaders should not be allowed either.

The Epoch Times has reached out to Egorov and the DOE for comments. Maron could not be immediately reached at press time.
A police officer raises his arm to block photographers to to avoid taking pictures at the site of a trailer accident that left at least 49 people dead, most of them migrants from Central America, in Tuxtla Gutierrez, in Chiapas state, Mexico, on Dec. 9, 2021. (Jacob Garcia/Reuters)

Over 50 Dead in Mexico After Truck Carrying Migrants Overturns

TUXTLA GUTIERREZ, MexicoAt least 54 mostly Central Americans were killed on Thursday when the truck they were in flipped over in southern Mexico, in one of the worst accidents to befall migrants risking their lives to reach the United States.

The trailer broke open and spilled out migrants when the truck crashed on a sharp curve outside the city of Tuxtla Gutierrez in the state of Chiapas, according to video footage of the aftermath and civil protection authorities.

It took a bend, and because of the weight of us people inside, we all went with it, said a shocked-looking Guatemalan man sitting at the scene in footage broadcast on social media.

The trailer couldnt handle the weight of people.

Several dozen people were injured and taken to hospitals in Chiapas, which borders Guatemala. More than 100 people were traveling inside the trailer, authorities said.

A Reuters witness heard cries and sobs among survivors as emergency personnel rushed to their aid.

Reuters images showed a white trailer on its side on a highway, with injured people splayed out on tarps on the ground. Images also showed rows of what appeared to be bodies of victims wrapped in white cloth.

A video of the scene streamed on social media showed a woman holding a child wailing in her lap, both covered in blood. Another video showed a man curled up in pain inside the destroyed trailer, hardly moving as helpers pulled out bodies.

Men, women and children were among the dead, the Chiapas state government said, and President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador on Twitter expressed his sorrow at the very painful incident.

Emergency crew assist an injured person after a trailer crash in the southern Mexican state of Chiapas killed at least 49 people, most of them migrants from Central America, officials said on Thursday, in Tuxtla Gutierrez, Chiapas, Mexico, on Dec. 9, 2021. (El La Mira/via Reuters)

Not the Best Way

Migrants fleeing poverty and violence in Central America typically trek through Mexico to reach the U.S. border, and sometimes cram into large trucks organized by smugglers in extremely dangerous conditions.

This shows us that irregular migration is not the best way, Kevin Lopez, a spokesman for Guatemalas presidency, told Milenio television after the accident.

He did not know how many Guatemalan victims there were.

El Salvadors foreign minister, Alexandra Hill, said her government was working to see if Salvadorans had died.

Mexico offered lodging and humanitarian visas to the survivors, and Chiapas Governor Rutilio Escandon said those responsible for the accident would be held to account.

Officials in Mexico routinely come across migrants packed into trailers, including 600 people found hidden in the back of two trucks in eastern Mexico last month.

The journey north from Mexicos border with Guatemala is perilous and expensive, and many migrants fall prey to criminal gangs en route. In January, 19 people, mostly migrants, were massacred with suspected police involvement in northern Mexico.

Record numbers of people have been arrested on the U.S.-Mexico border this year.

Mexican authorities in Chiapas have attempted to persuade migrants to not form caravans to walk thousands of miles to the U.S. border, and have begun transporting people from the southern city of Tapachula to other regions of the country.

The Biden administration this week, as a result of a court order, restarted a policy initiated under Trump to send asylum seekers back to Mexico to await their court hearings.

Some critics argue that tougher policies push migrants into the hands of the human smugglers, putting their lives at risk.

(Authorities) generate smuggled migration that generates billions of dollars in profits, said migrant activist Ruben Figueroa.

By Jacob Garcia
Pressure Mounts on UKs Johnson as Senior Aide Reportedly Attended Rule-Breaking Party

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has come under increased pressure as his chief press officer is reported to have attended a lockdown-breaking Christmas party last year.

Johnson has been attempting to move on from the crisis sparked by allegations that a Christmas party was held in Downing Street on Dec. 18, 2020, when indoor socialising was banned under COVID-19 restrictions.

On Wednesday, the prime minister ordered Cabinet Secretary Simon Case to conduct an internal investigation into the allegations, and senior aide Allegra Stratton resigned after a video emerged showing her joking about the alleged gathering.

But according to an ITV News report on Thursday, Johnsons director of communications Jack Doyle, who was deputy director at the time, attended the party, at which he made a speech to up to 50 people and handed out awards.

Downing Street told the PA news agency that they refused to comment further other than to say a fact-finding review was ongoing.

The main opposition Labour party said the new revelation exposed the governments internal investigation as a mere sham.

Deputy Labour leader Angela Rayner said: The investigation has only just published its terms of reference and we are already seeing more details from the media than the Cabinet Office about the parties.

Separately, Johnson is also facing fresh questions over the refurbishment of his Downing Street flat after the Electoral Commission fined the Conservative Party on Thursday for failing to report relevant donations properly.

Labour accused Johnson of having lied to his standards adviser Christopher Geidt by saying he did not know who was behind the payment.

On Thursday night, Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer wrote on Twitter: Boris Johnson is unfit to lead our country.

In an interview with The Telegraph, Starmer suggested that Conservative MPs should now oust Johnson from Downing Street.

He asked ministers and Tory MPs if they are prepared to endure the next two years of increased degradation of themselves and their party, being put out to defend the indefensible and bringing themselves and their party into further disrepute.

Conservative MPs are already openly expressing anger and demanding explanations from the prime minister.

Geoffrey Clifton-Brown, who is treasurer of the influential 1922 Committee of backbench Tory MPs, said on Thursday that Johnson needs to get a grip on all these issues.

What we need from all of this is a really straightforward version from the prime minister on all of these serious issues, he told BBCs Newsnight. All of these things need to be investigated and the truth must come out.

PA contributed to this report.
Publix Heiress Known for Philanthropy Dies in Florida at 65

LAKELAND, FLA.The billionaire daughter of the Publix Super Markets founder has died after having early-onset Alzheimers Disease, the company announced Wednesday. Carol Jenkins Barnett was 65.

Barnett died Tuesday night at her home in Lakeland, Florida, Publix said in a news release. She was diagnosed with Alzheimers in 2016.

Barnett was one of seven children of Publix founder George W. Jenkins, who died in 1996. Her net worth was estimated this year at $2.1 billion, according to Forbes magazine.

Barnett began working as a cashier at Publix in 1972, eventually serving on its board of directors for 33 years, the company said. She was known in Lakelandwhere Publix is basedfor her philanthropic work, including financial support for the United Way, the founding of Bonnet Springs Park in Lakeland, a pavilion for women and children at Lakeland Regional Health and many other organizations.

The Publix family is deeply saddened by the loss of a great humanitarian and community advocate, said Publix CEO Todd Jones. Carol had a generous heart and compassionate soul. Her efforts will continue to improve the lives of others for generations.

Barnett is survived by her husband, two sons and three grandchildren. A memorial service is planned for Saturday in Lakeland.

Publix operates 1,294 stores in seven Southern states as well as nine distribution centers. The company employs about 225,000 people and had $44.9 billion in retail sales in 2020, according to the Publix website.
Quebec Premier Francois Legault speaks at a news conference marking the end of the fall session, December 10, 2021 at his office in Quebec City. (The Canadian Press/Jacques Boissinot)

Quebec Board Wrong to Hire Teacher Who Wore Hijab Given Secularism Law: Legault

MONTREALPremier Francois Legault says a school board in western Quebec should not have hired a teacher who wore a hijab.

Legault told reporters today in Quebec City the provinces secularism law, known as Bill 21, has been in place since June 2019 and the Western Quebec School Board should have respected it when hiring.

It emerged this week that a Grade 3 teacher at Chelsea Elementary School, just north of Gatineau, Que., had recently been reassigned to duties outside the classroom because she wore a hijab.

Bill 21 prohibits the wearing of religious symbols such as hijabs, kippas and turbans by teachers and other government employees deemed to be in positions of authority.

The teacher was moved into a different job, a literacy project that will focus on inclusion and awareness of diversity.

Certain provisions in the secularism law are subject to legal challenges, but courts have ruled it must be applied in the interim.

For his part, Legault defended Quebecs secularism law as reasonable and balanced.
Rampant Online Child Abuse Spurs Calls for Big Tech to ID Users on Sign-Up

Growing cases of child sexual abuse material being distributed online are prompting calls to crack down on perpetrators by removing the veil of anonymity users have when signing up to social media accounts.

In an inquiry into the capability of law enforcement to tackle child exploitation, Uniting Church senior social justice advocate Mark Zirnsak said it was extremely difficult for police to track down those committing horrendous crimes against children.

In particular, of the 21,000 reports of online child exploitation received by the Australian Federal Police (AFP) in 2020, only 191 individuals were charged for a total of 1,847 offences.

Zirnsak argued in favour of requiring online platforms to mandate a personal identification requirement prior to account creation so that, if needed, police could quickly determine the identity of individuals reported to have distributed child abuse material.

If you misuse your account, then law enforcement is able to identify you and not waste a lot of time doing that.

Police patrol the quiet streets of Melbourne, Australia, on Oct. 4, 2021. (William West/AFP via Getty Images)

Currently, the idea of providing big tech with identification is divided into two primary scenarios: one where an individuals name is made public or one where the name may remain private but remains accessible to police in investigations.

Zirnsak accused staunch defenders of online anonymity of ignoring the health and wellbeing of the exploited innocent children at the root of the issue.

Unfortunately, the current debate in public about this is exceedingly disappointing If you read their submissions often in this space around online regulation, they will not acknowledge the abuse of children in the online space is a human rights abuse, he said.

Groups such as the Digital Rights Watch have previously spoken in favour of retaining online anonymity based on the fundamental principle of free speech.

Anonymity is absolutely essential for the free and open internet to function, DRW stated.

The DRW cited concerns of government overreach, with citizens potentially at risk of being silenced if police are given the power to identify those making posts online.

The DRW also said it was concerned about the potential of handing personal data to big tech, particularly as data breaches were not unheard of, with Facebook seeing its most significant breach in 2018.

In the same inquiry, Google and Facebook outlined they had prioritised the development of mechanisms that would guard against child abuse material.

Were really quite confident we will still be able to make numerous actionable reports to law enforcement, said Antigone Davis, Facebook global director of safety.

The logos of mobile apps Facebook and Google are displayed on a tablet in this file photo. (Denis Charlet/AFP via Getty Images)

Firstly, we build up teams of experts who work in this space, Facebook explained in a prior submission. The number of people working on safety and security has increased to more than 35,000 in recent years.

Secondly, the technology we have invested in to detect and remove child abuse material cutting edge  The Australian Federal Police have reviewed these algorithms and are now using them as part of their work to protect children within Australia. We use these technologies along with many other examples of artificial intelligence.

But the high tech approach to removing the content, as well as the reporting-based mechanism underpinning the idea of a verified I.D. sign-up, applies only to material posted in a public forum.

However, content sent through numerous end-to-end encrypted chat services currently being rolled out, including Facebooks existing Whatsapp, would remain hidden behind closed doors.

This a concern raised by Labor MP Anne Aly, who pointed out police and tech giants would remain unable to track down distributors of child abuse material when the material is filtered through private end-to-end encrypted channels.

(These) services  allow people to set up a closed group where they can share these images, like going into a room and closing the door and locking it behind you, then sharing those images with each other, she said.

Nobody in there is going to report it because they are part of that group.
Rebel News Reporter Has Hearing Expedited for Lawsuit Against Victorian Government Officials

Australian journalist Avi Yemini has secured an expedited hearing in his lawsuit against officials at the Victorian government for denying him a media pass to the Parliament of Victoria.

Avraham Shalom Yemini, the Australian Bureau Chief of Canadian media Rebel News, argued that the trial date, which was scheduled in September next year, should be brought forward since he cant do his job as a journalist.

A directions hearing has now been scheduled for March 9 in the Victorian Supreme Court.

Yemini was ejected from a public press conference by Victoria Police on Feb. 17 after a request by a personal staff member of Daniel Andrews, the Victorian premier.

He has recruited high profile media lawyers for his legal team, including Justin Quill and barrister Will Houghton QC, who recently successfully challenged Victoria Polices ban on aerial protest telecasts.

Will Houghton QC, representing his client, said in a hearing on Wednesday that an urgent judicial review of the matter is needed, considering the upcoming state election next year.

We cant stress highly enough that next year will be a big year for political news leading up to an election in November, he said.

Certainly, members of the public in Victoria are well served by the mainstream media, but there is always room for an alternative voice and that is not currently being heard because of the prohibition on the ability of my client to enter the [parliamentary] precinct.

The court was told that Yemini applied for a media pass in March and had followed up a number of times. In July, he received a response telling him that his application was not approved, saying we only move media passes to employees of accredited media organisations.

We are quite strict about to whom we provide media passes. We have only limited space in our press gallery, and we are obviously a building that requires stringent security protocols, reads the email to Yemini.

Glyn Ayres, representing three parliamentary officeholders sued by Yemini, rejected by saying that it didnt impact Yeminis ability to report.

Hes still entirely able to report on and comment on proceedings of parliamenthes able to approach members of parliament if he wishes to attempt to speak to them.

Yemini told The Epoch Times that his team is expecting the case to be heard in March as opposed to September.

When asked about the defendant solicitors comment, he replied: If what Glyn was arguing had any merit, then why do any media outlets need passes? It was just another poor attempt by the state to keep Rebel News out of the Parliament press gallery.

Judicial Registrar Martin Keith agreed that it was important that the matter be heard quickly and ordered documents to be filed by both parties before February.
A man walks past the Olympic rings on the exterior of a venue for the upcoming 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing on Feb. 2, 2021. (Mark Schiefelbein/AP Photo)

Rep. Steel Urges Olympic Sponsors to Highlight CCPs Human Rights Abuses

Rep. Michelle Steel (R-Calif.) is urging corporate sponsors of the 2022 Olympic Games in Beijing to use their advertisements to showcase the Chinese Communist Partys (CCP) massive human rights abuses.

Steel wrote a letter to 17 different U.S. companies on Dec. 6, urging them to use their multimillion-dollar advertising budgets that will reach billions of people to raise awareness on the atrocities being performed on religious groups inside China in an effort to pressure the CCP into ending its human rights violations.

The letter comes on the same day as the Biden administration announced a diplomatic boycott of the Olympics after citing ongoing genocide, which Steel hailed as the right decision.

You hear these awful stories [inside China,] and these corporate sponsors have been so quiet, Steel told The Epoch Times. This is a great chance where they can at least expose whats going on regarding human rights in China, because weve been hearing so much. This is just a great chance to let the world know that we really have to expose what China is doing.

Rep. Michelle Steel participates in a press conference in Santa Ana, Calif., on Nov. 5, 2020. (Paul Bersebach/The Orange County Register via AP)

The CCP has oppressed many spiritual groups including Buddhists, Christians, and Uyghur Muslims, in which an estimated 1.8 million Uyghurs have been detained in internment camps in Chinas Xinjiang region, where they are subjected to forced labor, torture, and political indoctrination.

Additionally, the CCP continues to persecute practitioners of Falun Gong, also known as Falun Dafa, an ancient Chinese spiritual practice consisting of slow-moving meditation exercises and teachings based on the principles of truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance.

By 1999, an estimated 70 million to 100 million people were practicing Falun Gong. The leadership of the CCP, feeling threatened by Falun Gongs popularity, launched a systematic elimination campaign in July 1999. Since then, millions have been detained inside prisons, labor camps, and other facilities, with hundreds of thousands tortured while incarcerated, according to the Falun Dafa Information Center.

In her letter, Steel also highlighted how many of the same companies spoke out last year regarding the political and social protestswith Coca-Cola speaking out loudly against voting laws passed in Georgiabut failing to stand against the CCPs human rights abuses.

Visa said, Change starts here and highlighted their focus on global acceptance. Airbnb condemned racism, bigotry and hate. But where are your statements against the human rights abuses happening right now in China? How can we support sending our athletesthe best of the best, who have worked so hard for these momentsto a country with a backdrop of abuse and violence? the letter reads in part.

So far, the congresswoman has not heard back from any of the 17 companies, which she said was very disappointing.

They dont have the guts to stand strong against human rights abuses. They just care about how much money they are making, Steel said.

The companies Steel sent the letter to include Coca-Cola, Airbnb, Bridgestone, Intel, Panasonic, Proctor and Gamble, Samsung, Visa, Comcast, Delta Airlines, Salesforce, Deloitte, Nike, Jetset Sports, Oakley, Ralph Lauren, and Toyota.

I urge you to use your global platform to stand up to Communist China and support the values of human rights, she wrote in the letter. I understand this is not easy, but you have a global platform to take a stand for the voiceless. We must all come together to hold the CCP accountable and protect the freedoms of religion and speech for all.

Steel, who is a member of the Congressional-Executive Commission on China, sent a letter in March with Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) to the International Olympic Committee insisting that the 2022 Olympics be moved out of Beijing due to the same human rights violations.
A member of the Baltimore Police Department removes crime scene tape on July 30, 2015, from a corner where a victim of a shooting was discovered. (Patrick Semansky/AP Photo)

Researcher Questions Success of Baltimores No-Prosecution Policy

The movement to stop prosecuting low-level crimes gained momentum during the COVID-19 pandemic, and Baltimores chief prosecutor Marilyn Mosby was among those leading the way.

Early in the pandemic, as courts drastically cut operations, Mosby stopped prosecuting nine low-level offensesincluding drug possession, prostitution, and trespassingso her prosecutors could focus on serious crimes.

Then in March, Mosby appeared to be the first state prosecutor in the country to make the no-prosecution policy permanent.

She said her policy had cut numbers of both arrests and incarceration without endangering public safety, often citing a Johns Hopkins University study to support her view.

Her model, along with the Johns Hopkins study, has been used by other state prosecutors to push similar changes in their jurisdictions.

For example, Georgias Dekalb County chief prosecutor, Sherry Boston, told The Epoch Times that she was considering following Mosbys footsteps to make a similar policy permanent.

But Mosbys cost-and-benefit analysis of the no-prosecution policy ignored a number of costs, which might have public safety consequences, according to public policy researcher Sean Kennedy, who focuses on data-informed research of crime policy.

Kennedy, a visiting fellow at Maryland Public Policy Institute, said the crime statistics cited by Mosby and Johns Hopkins arent as self-evident as they appear. He said that even before Mosbys no-prosecution policy, Baltimore police officers werent rounding up drug users and prostitutes anyway.

Baltimore is Marylands largestand most violentcity. Due to understaffing, Baltimore officers had been stretched to cover patrols and many were smart enough to focus their limited energy on the most violent offenders, Kennedy said.

Officers often only use on-the-book low-level crimes as a leverage to get people to stop what they are doing, or get them to seek help, he said.

A junkie is shooting up on someones lawn in front of children, so the cops come up and say, Get the hell out of here, or we are going to arrest you. And the junkie moves on.

Now, as Mosby doesnt prosecute these crimes at all, drug users are less likely to move on, Kennedy said.

Meanwhile, Baltimores drug overdose deaths rose to 485 in 2021 from 434 in first half of 2020, according to Maryland Department of Health data.

Even in cases in which officers arrested low-level offenders and got them into the criminal justice system, prosecutors seldom sought jail sentences, according to Kurt Nachtman, a former Baltimore prosecutor.

Like police officers, prosecutors often used the potential prosecution as a leverage to get people help through specialty treatment courts and outside therapeutic services.

For instance, at Baltimores drug treatment courts, participants get substance abuse and other support services for at least 18 months to recover from addiction and become productive citizens again.

When you dont get them into the criminal justice systemwhen there is no threat of any potential prosecutionthere is little incentive for them to seek treatment, Nachtman said.

It is very hard for people who are engaged in drug use to quit on their own, because it is a disease, right?

In his seven years as a Baltimore prosecutor, Nachtman observed some common traits of repeat violent offenders, one being that they usually started with small crimes.

If you get someone engaged in the system early on with a low-level offense, you could potentially save him from getting engaged later on for more serious charges, he said.

Sometimes, these low-level crimes were also used as a tool to get the worst offenders.

Nachtman said police officers and detectives often knew the big-time drug dealers, or trigger pullers, in a certain neighborhood, but many times couldnt arrest them for lack of evidence.

However, if police caught them doing small crimes, they could arrest them for prosecutors to launch a full-fledged prosecution.

For example, while its hard to catch a drug dealer in the act of distributing drugs, police might catch him in possession of drugs.

If you say, Im not prosecuting drug possession cases, you take the tool out of the arsenal for law enforcement to target those types of individuals, Nachtman said.

At other times, police could arrest underlings on low-level crimes, and later prosecutors could get them to testify against their bosses using potential prosecution as a leverage, according to Kennedy.

You need leverage to get addicts, and prostitutes, to testify against dangerous drug dealers, and sex traffickers, Kennedy said.

Crime Statistics

When Mosby announced in March that her pandemic no-prosecution policy was permanent, she said Baltimores violent crime was down 20 percent since the new policy took effect.

Kennedy questioned that assertion.

According to FBIs crime reporting standard, there are four violent crimes: murder and nonnegligent manslaughter, forcible rape, robbery, and aggravated assault (including shootings).

The last two crimes make up 80 percent to 90 percent of Baltimores violent felonies in an average year, which means even a modest shift in these two crimes could lead to a large swing in the overall rate, Kennedy said.

For example, the decrease in robberies alone contributed to 83 percent of the decline in Baltimores overall violent crimes since Mosbys policy took effect, according to Kennedys analysis.

And that decline wasnt due to Mosbys policy, Kennedy said.

During the pandemic lockdowns, far fewer people were out on the streets and thus, robbers had far fewer targets to hit, he said.

As for murders and rapes, both are up since 2020.

By Nov. 27, 2021, Baltimore had 310 homicides, up from 300 for the same period in 2020. The city had 284 rapes, up from 269 in 2020, according to Baltimore Police Department data.

In the Johns Hopkins University study, researchers found fewer than 1 percent of 741 people let go on drug and prostitution offenses later committed serious crimes. The study didnt examine if they reoffended with low-level crimes.

Also, researchers found a large drop in the number of 911 calls complaining about drug or prostitution offenses.

Based on the above two metrics, the report suggests Mosbys new policy reduces arrests without jeopardizing public safety.

The report also pointed out these were only preliminary findings and causality couldnt yet be established.

Kennedy said: If you knew that the police wouldnt respondor if they did respond, they did nothingwould you call 911? So less complaints do not mean less crimes.
People load merchandise into a car near a looted Best Buy store after parts of the city had widespread looting and vandalism in Chicago on Aug. 10, 2020. (Scott Olson/Getty Images)

Retailers Urging Congress to Take Action Against Shoplifters Selling Stolen Goods Online

A coalition of major retailers called on Congress Thursday to implement stricter legislation to increase transparency on e-commerce platforms in a bid to deter criminals from being able to easily resell stolen goods online.

The chief executives of Best Buy, Dicks Sporting Goods, Foot Locker, Kroger, Nordstrom, Target, CVS, Walgreens, Dollar General, and The Home Depot were among a group of 21 signatories to a letter (pdf) sent by the Retail Industry Leaders Association (RILA).

The letter, addressed to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), urged them to implement the bipartisan and bicameral Integrity, Notification, and Fairness in Online Retail Marketplaces (INFORM) for Consumers Act in light of the growing impact of organized retail crime.

The INFORM Consumers Act is a simple, bipartisan measure that will increase transparency online for all marketplaces, making it easier for consumers to identify exactly who they are buying from, and make it harder for criminal elements to hide behind fake screennames and false business information to fence illicit products while evading law enforcement, said the letter.

There has been a significant uptick in smash-and-grab type crimes and organized looting that have affected many retailers. Recent incidents in certain parts of California, Chicago and elsewhere have resulted in outlets shutting down due to increased criminal activities in the neighborhood.

While retailers face the financial impacts of brazen robberies, employees are threatened with violence as criminals often carry weapons like guns or crowbars. This is traumatizing for our associates and is unacceptable, Best Buy CEO Corie Barry said on an investor call last month. We are doing everything we can to try to create [an] as-safe-as-possible environment.

The letter said that there was no accountability when lawbreakers loot stores and then resell the merchandise online. Criminal networks have exploited a system that protects their anonymity to sell unsafe, stolen, or counterfeit products with little legal recourse.

Marketplaces that support these types of sellers without any obligations have allowed criminal activity to fester.

The executives ended the letter by asking Congress to implement the Act and ensure basic transparency and verification protocols and finally expose criminals selling stolen and fake products.

According to the National Retail Federation, 69 percent of retailers have reported a spike in organized retail crime this year. The main reasons given were softer sentencing guidelines, COVID-19 related issues, and the growth of unregulated online marketplaces.
San Francisco police officer William Ma helps an elderly woman cross the street while on a foot patrol in Chinatown on Mar. 18, 2021 in San Francisco, Calif. (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

San Francisco Restaurant Apologizes After Refusing Service to Police Officers

SAN FRANCISCOA restaurant in San Franciscos North Beach neighborhood is apologizing for refusing service to three uniformed police officers. The store owners said the officers weapons, which are part of their uniform, made the restaurant staff feel uncomfortable. The incident later ignited an online debate.

After a wave of negative comments on social media and in Yelp reviews, Rachel Sillcocks and Kristina Liedags Compton, co-owners of Hilda and Jesse, issued an apology on Dec. 5 on their Instagram account saying: We made a mistake and apologize for the unfortunate incident on Friday. We hope this will be a teachable moment for us as we repair and continue to build bridges with the SFPD. These are stressful times and we handled this badly.

Officer Robert Rueca, public information officer for the San Francisco Police Department (SFPD), told The Epoch Times in an email statement:

Community engagement is a core principle of SFPDs 21st-century police reforms, and we are intentional about asking our officers to support local businesses and get to know those theyre sworn to safeguard. The San Francisco Police Department stands for safety with respect, even when it means respecting wishes that our officers and I find discouraging and personally disappointing. I believe the vast majority of San Franciscans welcome their police officers, who deserve to know that they are appreciated for the difficult job we ask them to doin their uniformsto keep our neighborhoods and businesses safe.

The controversy began when three uniformed SFPD officers entered the restaurant on Dec. 3. In a now-deleted Instagram post from Dec. 4, the owners explained that restaurant staff seated the officers, but asked them to leave shortly after.

Instagram post explaining the incident that occurred at Hilda and Jesse involving three police officers. (Screenshot on Dec. 5, 2021, via Instagram)

The restaurant stated in the same post: At Hilda and Jesse, the restaurant is a safe space. The presence of the officers weapons in the restaurant made us feel uncomfortable. We respect the San Francisco Police Department and are grateful for the work they do. We welcome them into the restaurant when they are off duty, out of uniform, and without their weapons.

SFPD Police Chief William Scott responded to the incident on Twitter, saying he respects the wishes of the restaurant, but found it discouraging and personally disappointing.

(1/3) Community engagement is a core principle of SFPDs 21st century police reforms, and we are intentional about asking our officers to support local businesses and get to know those theyre sworn to safeguard. https://t.co/nJsk4hy0tB  SFPD Chief Scott (@SFPDChief) December 5, 2021

The restaurants latest comment was the Dec. 5 apology post on Instagram. Since the incident, Yelp has temporarily blocked the publics ability to post reviews on Hilda and Jesses Yelp page. The restaurant has 461 reviews and is now rated as 1-star. Most of the current reviews are negative comments related to the Dec. 3 incident.

One lady wrote: You are not welcome in my community. We local San Franciscans do not tolerate business owners who discriminate against peoples [sic] occupational background. With all the hate crime, car break-ins, looting in the city, I as an Asian woman feel safe when I see officers and their presence.

Another person wrote: As a nurse and person who serves alongside officers and other first responders, Im disappointed to see this so-called non-political decision from a business. First responders serve their community without judgement [sic] and these officers (unfortunately) will still be there in a heartbeat to help this unsavory business along with their firearms if it is ever a victim of a violent crime.

This wasnt the first time a restaurant refused service to law enforcement.

In March 2018, Hasta Muerte Coffee, a cafe in Oaklands Fruitvale neighborhood, also made national headlines after refusing service to Oakland police officers. Currently, its Yelp page is also receiving a handful of negative comments and has temporarily blocked the publics ability to leave reviews.

NTDs Jason Blair contributed to this story.
A missing person poster showing Laci Peterson, in Modesto, Calif., on Jan. 2, 2003. (AP/Screenchot via The Epoch Times)

Scott Petersons Sister: Justice Has Been Served

The sister of Scott Peterson said justice has been served, a day after Peterson was re-sentenced to life in prison for the 2002 killing of his wife.

Anne Bird said that Scott appeared vacant and emotionless as she watched a live stream of the court proceedings.

Peterson was resentenced to life without parole Wednesday during the hearing in which family members of his slain pregnant wife, Laci, called him out for the killing in 2002 and his apparent lack of remorse.

The California Supreme Court ruled a year ago that his jury was improperly screened for bias against the death penalty in a case that gripped the world then and since.

Prosecutors opted to settle this time for life without parole.
Senate Passes Bill Opening Path to Raise US Debt Limit; Sends to Bidens Desk

The U.S. Senate voted to pass legislation that would expedite the process for passing a bill to raise the federal governments $28.9 trillion debt limit, to avert a U.S. default.

The vote for the measure was 5935, with 10 Republicans joining Democrats in favor of the bill. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) was among those in favor. Prior to that, 14 Republicans sided with Democrats to end debate to advance the bill.

The legislation would enable the Senate to pass a second, separate bill to increase the debt ceiling by a specific amount with a simple majority, instead of needing 60 votes in the 100-member chamber to overcome a filibuster. Democrats would be able to use their majority to pass the debt ceiling increase without support from Republicans.

The provision to enable the simple majority vote was combined on Tuesday with an unrelated provision that would prevent Medicare payment cuts to health care providers.

The legislation now heads to President Joe Bidens desk for his signature.

Im pleased we were able to facilitate a process with the supportive members from both parties that avoids needless and catastrophic default, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said in a speech after the vote on the measure. This was a bipartisan process, and I hope there can be more and I want to thank Leader McConnell for working with us in good faith to get to this point.

Republicans complained privately and on the Senate floor about the deal. While they will not have to vote to support the debt limit increase, they opened the way for the Senate to advance to the final vote.

A deal has been made to give ussome of us see it this way anywaya choice between voting for a heart attack or cancer, said Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) who voted against advancing the plan.

Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) said supporting the measure was the right thing to do because the last thing in the world that this country needs is a default.

Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.) said he voted no because [Democrats] have been spending money on a partisan basis without input from Republicans, adding, So they have the obligation to increase the debt ceiling at this point.

It comes after the House passed the legislation in a 222212 vote, with only one Republican joining all Democrats in supporting the measure.

Congress in October voted to increase the debt limit by $480 billion, lifting it from $28.4 trillion to $28.9 trillion. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen told Congress that the current debt limit was enough for the Treasury Department to finance the governments operations through Dec. 15.

The specific amount by which the debt ceiling will be raised has not been disclosed. However, final votes on the second, debt-limit implementing bill are expected in the Senate and House by Dec. 14.

A failure to suspend or lift the debt ceiling would lead to an unprecedented default that would allow the government to pay its bills only with the cash that comes into the Treasury.

The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.
Singapore Airlines planes sit on the tarmac at Changi Airport in Singapore, on Dec. 8, 2020. (Edgar Su/Reuters)

Singapore Defers Vaccinated Travel Lanes Due to Omicron Variant

Singapores Ministry of Health (MOH) announced on Nov. 28 through a press release (pdf) that the launch of the Vaccinated Travel Lanes (VTL) to Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) would be deferred indefinitely.

This decision was made as a precautionary measure to reduce the risks of importation and spread of the Omicron variant, which has been classified as a variant of concern by the World Health Organization.

Vaccinated Travel Lanes

Singapores VTLs have been set up to allow for quarantine-free travel to Singapore via air or land.

Depending on agreements made between Singapore and other countries, there are certain requirements for travelers to be eligible for the VTL. Travelers must be fully vaccinated and have acceptable proof of vaccination.

The MOH previously announced that they would be launching VTLs with Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE from Dec. 6, but deferred the launch until further notice due to their proximity as transport nodes to the affected countries of Botswana, Eswatini, Lesotho, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, and Zimbabwe.

As the global situation evolves, we will continue to adjust our border measures in tandem with our roadmap to becoming a COVID resilient nation, MOH added.

MOH also advised travelers to visit the SafeTravel website for any changes to border measures, and be prepared to be subjected to the prevailing border measures upon entry.

Singapores Response to the Omicron Variant

Although Singapore has been going through a downward trend in case numbers, there were 2 imported cases of COVID-19 who were confirmed as positive for the Omicron variant on Dec. 6.

They arrived from Johannesburg on Dec. 1 and were isolated upon arrival.

In a press release (pdf) from Nov. 30, Singapores multi-ministerial taskforce (MTF) said they would monitor the situation. In particular, they are looking out for more information on the Omicron variantits transmissibility, incubation period, and infectious duration, severity of illness, and the effectiveness of existing vaccines.

They also said that more studies are needed to understand the actual impact of this variant on our existing countermeasures, including vaccines and treatments.

Other Enhanced Border Measures

Besides deferring VTLs to high-risk countries, new testing protocols have been introduced for travelers arriving in Singapore after Dec. 2, 2021.

All travelers entering or transiting through Singapore must undergo a pre-departure test within 2 days of their departure from Singapore and obtain a negative result.

Depending on the category of countries the traveler arrives from, the requirements differ. Travelers may take a Reverse-Transcriptase Polymerase Chain Reaction (RT-PCR) test or a professionally administered Antigen Rapid Test (ART) test if they are coming from Category I-III countries, and must only take an RT-PCR test if they come from a Category IV country.
Former "Empire" actor Jussie Smollett arrives at the Leighton Criminal Courts Building to hear the verdict in his trial in Chicago, Illinois on Dec. 9, 2021. (Scott Olson/Getty Images)

Smollett Should Do Serious Time; Press and Politicians Should Do Serious Thinking

Commentary

Somewhere in his deluded brain, Jussie Smollett, the actor just found guilty on five of six counts of staging a hate crime against himself, believes he was standing up for black people.

He was doing anything but. In a city where black children are being gunned down in the streets in record-breaking numbers, his bizarre, infantile, and narcissistic stunt took up umpteen hours of police time in an investigation that could have been spent saving livesblack lives.

Moreover, in the perpetration of his nonsensical hoax, he enlisted the help of two much poorer blacks with nowhere near his Hollywood moneyNigerian brothersplacing them in positions of possible incarceration for a few bucks. What a guy!

On top of all that, he took the stand and, despite all the incontrovertible evidence against him, including the testimony of those brothers, denied everything in court. This even though, as legal expert Andrew C. McCarthy noted on Fox News, lying in your own defense on the stand triggers a statute that dictates more severe sentencing.

Did his lawyers warn the defendant of this? If so, he didnt listen. He was probably hoping one juror would believe his lies enough for nullification. It didnt happen either.

Smollett is guilty of five counts, with potentially a three-year sentence for each. You do the math.

Whats far more interesting than the pathetic Smollett, obviously another actor far too desperate for attention, in all this is the reaction of the press and Democratic politicians at the time.

They, or a great many of them anyway, instantly believed this absurd plot, just as they believed the equally absurd TrumpRussia collusion and a host of other obvious calumnies. (In Hollywood, they say a possible hit movie is want-to-see. This is want-to-believe.)

In Smolletts case, he claimed his assailants (i.e., white supremacists, but really the Nigerian brothers) called him out for being gay and for trespassing in MAGA country, when he was in one of the most upscale Chicago neighborhoods at 2 a.m. Cognitive dissonance anyone?

Vice President Kamala Harrissorry for beating an already dead horseimmediately tweeted we had an attempted modern-day lynching on our hands and no one should have to fear for their life because of their sexuality or color of their skin.

She who must be obeyed (by all House Democrats) had this to say on Twitter: The racist, homophobic attack on @JussieSmollett is an affront to our humanity. No one should be attacked for who they are or whom they love. I pray that Jussie has a speedy recovery & that justice is served. May we all commit to ending this hate once & for all.

Not surprisingly, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi took down this politically motivated drivel sometime later, but thats how she thinks, her automatic response.

Worse yet was Smolletts interview with ABCs Robin Roberts. If you havent seen it, its worth watching as one of the purest cases of want-to-believe extant. Both parties, subject and interviewer, smiling smugly at just how awful those racists were, seem on the edge of insane, looking at it now.

And, of course, there are many more that are similar.

Want-to-believe is an illness that belongs in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5) of the American Psychiatric Association. Indeed, I gave something rather like it a more technical name in my 2016 book, just a few years before the Smollett affairmoral narcissismthough the APA will never adopt it. It would be too close to home. Too many of them are moral narcissists themselves.

I defined moral narcissism as a radical disconnect between what you pronounce to be true and good and the reality of the situation (cf. Harris and Pelosi). To the moral narcissist, the realitythe actual result of what you are sayingis completely irrelevant. The pronouncement itself is all. It is what makes you moral, and gets you included in the club of the important, our version of the Soviet nomenklatura, colloquially the in crowd.

We are infected with moral narcissism, more even than when I wrote the book. Woke is just an extreme version. This infection is particularly strong in our big cities like Smolletts Chicago, where mayors and district attorneys proclaim their great progressive values as blood runs in the streets.

To have questioned Smollett would have made you part of the out crowd. Who wants that?

Better to blame Trump supporters for non-existent crimes while real thugs and gangsters shoot each other and civilians in numbers not seen for years.

Smollett, because he was cosseted entirely in a morally narcissistic trendy show biz world, divorced from reality, probably thought he could get away with anything as long as it disparaged Trump and his supporters.

And he was right, for a while.

ADDENDUM: I admit the second part of my headlinePress & Politicians Should Do Serious Thinkingis extremely wishful thinking.

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
A London-based actor, whose mother moved to Australia just before the pandemic, got the surprise of his life when she walked into a West London pub. The pair shared their first hug in two years, and the emotional moment that was caught on camera has since tugged at netizens heartstrings.

I had no idea it was going to happen; I was in complete shock, Ciaran Joyce, 34, told The Epoch Times. When we hugged it felt like we were the only two people on Earth.

Sharing the heartwarming footage of the reunion on Instagram, Ciaran explained that his mother, Hayley Gibbs, 56, had moved to Australia in 2019.

Due to the pandemic, I hadnt seen her since. We also lost my Nan (her Mam) in April. She was unable to come home to say her goodbyes due to strict Australian border control, he added.

However, the mother-son duo kept in touch via FaceTime until Hayley could travel to London to see her son. Her surprise return was organized in mid-November with the help of Ciarans partner, fellow actor Lucy Dryzek, aged 30.

In the footage shot by Lucy, Ciaran spots his mother entering the pub and is struck by a look of intense disbelief, before getting to his feet and rushing towards her. The pair collide with open arms and hug fiercely as both are moved to tears.

Lucy also shared the tear-jerking footage on her Twitter page, explaining her joy at Hayleys return. When she told me she was moving home we got to plan the best surprise ever, she wrote.

(Courtesy of Ciaran Joyce)

Ciaran and Hayley, who hail from Cardiff in Wales, have always been close. Ciaran told The Epoch Times that his mother has always encouraged him to be himself and chase his dreams. Their two-year separation was the longest they had ever gone without seeing each other.

Ciaran was happy that the two people he really cares about made this happen.

Its been so lovely to see so many people react so positively and take so much comfort from the video, Ciaran said, referring to the overwhelming response to the video. It feels like it encapsulates what many all over the world have gone through, in regards to not seeing their loved ones.

I hope, if you are separated from your loved ones during the pandemic, you get to see and hug them soon, he continued. Its hard not seeing the people you care for most, but when you do finally get to hug them, it makes it all worth it.

As Hayley is currently in the UK, Ciaran knows exactly how theyll be celebrating this holiday season.

We will all get together over Christmas and catch up with loads of good food, he said.

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
South Carolina Bill to Offer Parents $1,000 Tax Credit for Each Child Homeschooled

A Republican-backed bill in South Carolina would offer tax credits as high as $1,000 per child to parents who homeschool their children.

Sponsored by a group of 21 Republican lawmakers, the Senate Bill 933 is currently being considered in the state Senate Finance Committee. The one-page legislation defines home school as a home, residence, or location where a parent or legal guardian teaches one or more children.

If the bill is passed as is, starting with the 2022-2023 school year, parents or legal guardians who teach one or more school-aged children at home will be able to claim an income tax credit equal to the total cost of any home school association and curriculum fees, or up to $1,000, for each child attending a home school.

The bill also sets a $30 million cap for the total amount of tax credits that can be claimed by homeschooling parents. If the total amount of credits claimed by all qualifying parents in South Carolina exceeds that limit, the credits will be offered on a first-come, first-served basis.

The measure continues the Republican-led effort focusing on parental control over education. In May, Governor Henry McMaster issued an executive order that ensures parents have the final say whether their children wear masks in public schools throughout the state. The order allows any parent or legal guardian to sign a form to opt their child out of mask requirements imposed by any public school official or public school district.

In November, a group of 36 Republican state representatives demanded that the South Carolina School Boards Association (SCSBA) cut ties with the National School Boards Association (NSBA), which asked the federal law enforcement to help quell concerned parents at local school board meetings. Although the NSBA apologized for the inflammatory language used in that letter associating concerned parents actions with domestic terrorism, the South Carolina Republicans found the apology insincere.

The reality is that parents and stakeholders are beyond frustrated being ignored and left out of decisions with their child. The NSBA is detached from reality and fails to recognize that Americans are angered by what is happening in our classrooms, the Republicans said in their message to SCSBA Executive Director Scott Price, adding that they kept receiving calls from parents tired of losing control over their childs education.

The message needs to be sent immediately that South Carolina will not support organizations that are threatening, antagonizing, or acting un-American towards concerned parents, the lawmakers wrote. The SCSBA ended up withdrawing from the national federation.

The homeschool tax credit bill also comes as South Carolina public schools experience a teacher shortage greater than at any point in the past two decades. According to an annual survey by the Center for Educator Recruitment, Retention, and Advancement (CERRA), there were 1,060 teaching positions vacant in the state as of this October, marking the largest number of vacancies reported by districts since the survey was first conducted in 2001. The survey also found that departures have risen by 15.5 percent, as about 6,900 teachers from the previous school year did not return to a teaching position in the same district this year.
A health care worker in Israel prepares a dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine in a file photo. (Ahmad Ghababli/AFP via Getty Images)

Supermarkets, Groceries Can Exclude Unvaccinated in Australian State: Official

Supermarkets in the Australian state of Queensland will have the option to exclude unvaccinated people from entering under new vaccine rules.

Starting on Dec. 17, anyone who enters a cafe, restaurant, bar, theater, museum, library, stadium, or similar venues will have to show proof they are fully vaccinated for COVID-19. The rules, however, are not mandatory for supermarkets and grocery stores, although Australian officials said every businessincluding supermarkets, groceries, and other essential businesseshas the option to impose a mandate.

Small Business Minister Di Farmer told news outlets this week that the mandate doesnt encompass essential services like grocery stores, post offices, and pharmacies. But they can opt-in, Farmer remarked.

The essential services are the things that really remained open during lockdown, Farmer was quoted by 4BC Radio as saying. There will also be a range of other businesses who may make the choice just to only have their vaccinated staff and patrons using their business.

In elaborating on whether groceries and supermarkets can mandate vaccines for entry, Farmer said it is available to every business.

Any business is able to make that decision, and a lot of them are actually thinking about that very seriously, she said, without elaborating on what businesses are considering it. When Queensland rescinds its lockdown orders, Farmer added, you will need to be protected and businesses all over Queensland will be making that decision.

If a person decides not to be vaccinated, then those are the things that they will take into consideration, she said.

The Epoch Times has contacted the Queensland government for additional comment.

A spokesperson for Woolworths, one of the largest supermarket chains in Australia, told News Ltd. that it will not require vaccine passports.

We have a critical role to play providing food and essentials to all Australians, and will not require customers to be vaccinated to shop in our stores, the spokesperson said. Our stores have remained open throughout the pandemic, with strong Covidsafe settings to uphold public health and ensure the continuity of essential supply to communities.

As vaccine passports become increasingly more commonplace, concerns have been raised that these systems would create a two-tiered society of the vaccinated and unvaccinated, and theyve also been flagged for their potential to discriminate against vaccine-hesitant groups within society. Some public health officials argued that such mandates are needed to drive up vaccination rates.

Some civil liberties groups have also expressed alarm over a bevy of COVID-19 rules and restrictions that have been imposed across Australia. For example, the Victorias Public Health and Wellbeing (Pandemic Management) Bill 2021 was passed earlier this week, which was branded by opposition lawmakers as the most dangerous in Victorias history.

The law would grant the ability to declare a pandemic to Victorias Premier and Health Ministers office, who will have the power to enforce orders including lockdowns, mask-wearing, vaccination mandates, and quarantines. Previously, the government had to seek permission through Parliament to extend a state of emergency.
Members of the Supreme Court pose for a group photo at the Supreme Court in Washington, DC on April 23, 2021. (Erin Schaff-Pool/Getty Images)

Supreme Court Has Mixed Record on Protecting Civil Rights During the Pandemic, Experts Say

News Analysis

The Supreme Court has had a mixed track record over the past year in terms of protecting Americans civil rights during the ongoing pandemic, according to legal experts consulted by The Epoch Times.

The nations highest court generally did a good job at safeguarding religious freedoms, as it struck down limits on church capacity. A year ago, the court blocked then-New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo from enforcing pandemic-related restrictions on attendance at places of worship in a 54 ruling in Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn v. Cuomo, which was a departure from the high courts previous hands-off rulings that gave states free rein to limit constitutional rights while combating COVID-19.

The shift in the courts stance coincided with its decreasing reliance on a 1905 precedent known as Jacobson v. Massachusetts, a compulsory vaccination case that held that individual liberty was subject to the police power of the states. It also came weeks after the swearing-in of conservative Justice Amy Coney Barrett, which nominally gave conservatives a 63 majority on the high court.

But experts say the Supreme Court typically fell short on mask and vaccination mandates.

Steven J. Allen is a distinguished senior fellow at Capital Research Center, a conservative watchdog group. Among Allens academic credentials are a law degree and a doctoral degree in biodefense.

Ive experienced some disappointment that the Supreme Court didnt move more quickly to strike down some of the efforts by the Biden administration and by state and local authorities to deprive people of their rights using the Wuhan coronavirus as a pretext, Allen told The Epoch Times.

The Supreme Court has been encouraging lawlessness by acting slowly or by failing to act.

The high court should always move quickly to slap down unconstitutional power grabs, Allen said. These things move through the courts, which take so long to work, and by then the damage is done.

The Supreme Court has failed to protect Americans by not doing what needed to be done, he said.

Allen was particularly incensed by the Biden administrations eviction moratorium announced in August, which President Joe Biden admitted was probably unconstitutional, but he went ahead with it anyway, and by the employer vaccination mandate which the administration implemented through the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), a regulatory agency within the Department of Labor.

Running that through OSHA is obviously preposterous, Allen said.

By not taking action against the mandate, the Supreme Court is not stepping up.

Curt Levey is president of the Committee for Justice, a nonprofit organization that, in its own words, advocates constitutionalist positions on legal and policy issues in Congress and the courts, while educating the public and policymakers about the rule of law and constitutionally limited government.

The Supreme Court has failed to protect Americans by not doing what needed to be done.  Steven J. Allen, distinguished senior fellow at Capital Research Center

Asked what letter grade he might assign to the court during the pandemic era, Levey assigned it a B.

But the B grade comes with the proviso that its still early in the process, he said.

I think of World War I as an example, Levey said. There were a lot of civil rights challenges to things the government did, certainly, that were by todays standards well-founded challenges and primarily First Amendment stuff.

But while the war was going on, the Supreme Court upheld virtually all of the restrictions on freedom, but then by 1919 and 1920, when this was still being litigated, the Supreme Court started declaring them unconstitutional.

I think youre going to see the same thing here.

In the early legal battles, the average American was willing to give the government a lot of deference because there was a crisis, he said. But how the Supreme Court ruled in the middle of the crisis doesnt tell us that much about how theyre going to rule a year from now.

Levey suggested that some critics have been too hard on the court. After vaccines against COVID-19 became available to the public in late 2020, they were followed by various vaccination mandates, which are only now being tested in the courts.

The challengers are doing a good job in the lower courts, Levey said, noting that several judges have blocked the implementation of vaccination mandates.

In August, in Klaassen v. Trustees of Indiana University, Justice Barrett refused to block a student-sought vaccination mandate at Indiana University, a move that didnt sit well with some conservatives who supported her nomination in 2020 by President Donald Trump.

I wouldnt draw a lot of conclusions from that, Levey said. The decision not to intervene could just be based on a feeling that this should be worked out at least for a while in the lower courts. Vaccine mandates, at least on the federal level, have not been holding up well.

Paul Jonna is a partner at LiMandri and Jonna LLP and special counsel for the Thomas More Society, a national public interest law firm focusing on religious freedoms.

Jonna told The Epoch Times that the Supreme Court got it wrong in May 2020, when it refused to intervene when the San Diego-based South Bay United Pentecostal Church challenged California Gov. Gavin Newsoms emergency public health orders that prohibited churches from holding indoor worship services, imposed limits on how many people could attend services, and prohibited singing during services.

At that time, Chief Justice John Roberts had unfortunately sided with the liberal wing and that decision was used to justify restrictions on not only churches, but in other contexts for a period of many, many months, he said.

It wasnt until Barrett replaced the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg in 2020 that the court revisited the worship restrictions in the Cuomo case and ruled in favor of religious freedoms, Jonna said.

Then his firm took the San Diego church case back to the Supreme Court in February of this year, and this time, Roberts sided with the other conservative justices, and the restrictions on worship in California were struck down.

The Supreme Court has so far not been providing much guidance or clarity as to the proper standard for evaluating religious objections to vaccine mandates, Jonna said.

This week, hes taking an emergency appeal of an unfavorable ruling to the Supreme Court. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit upheld the San Diego Unified School Districts COVID-19 vaccination mandate for students, local media reported on Dec. 6. The appeals court held that the district mandate, which allows for medical exemptions but not religious or personal belief exemptions, was doing what was best for students.

Jonna disagreed.

Theyre going to have to allow a personal belief exemption, he said. If youre a religious objector, youve got to stay home. You cant play sports. Youve got to do home study. This is very unconstitutional.

Governments across the country have been providing all these secular exemptions to mandates, but not recognizing religious exemptions. Its like when various governments decided that Walmart was safe enough to stay open, but churches werent, he said.

The Supreme Court has the opportunity now to get this right.

Correction: A previous version of this article incorrectly stated when COVID-19 vaccines first became available to the public. COVID-19 vaccines became available to the public in December 2020. The Epoch Times regrets the error.
The Supreme Court is seen in Washington, in a file photograph. (J. Scott Applewhite/AP Photo)

Supreme Court Lets Challenge to Texas Abortion Ban Move Forward

The Supreme Court on Friday ruled that a challenge to an abortion ban in Texas can move forward, though justices said the law can remain in place for now.

Texas in September imposed one of the strictest bans in the nation, prohibiting abortions in many cases after an unborn babys heartbeat is detected.

Abortion clinics in the state sued over the law, arguing it violates the U.S. Constitution.

The challenge will survive an attempt to dismiss it, Justice Neil Gorsuch, a Trump nominee, said in a majority opinion (pdf) on Friday, about a month after the court heard arguments from both sides.

However, Gorsuch also said the case would only proceed against certain defendants.

State court clerk Penny Clarkston and state Judge Austin Jackson should be dismissed because the legal avenue being used by the clinics does not typically include judges or clerks, the decision said.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, a Republican, should also be dismissed because he doesnt have the ability to enforce the law, Texas Senate Bill 8.

The law contains the unusual provision that state officials cannot enforce it, instead leaving it up to private citizens to sue people accused of violating it.

Mark Lee Dickson, the only private person named as a defendant, should also be dismissed because he has not filed a suit, Gorsuch said.

Clinics can try their case against the other defendants: Stephen Carlton, executive director of the Texas Medical Board; Katherine Thomas, executive director of the Texas Board of Nursing; Allison Benz, executive director of the Texas Board of Pharmacy; and Cecile Young, executive commissioner of the Texas Health and Human Services Commission.

The court split on certain matters.

Justice Clarence Thomas, a George H.W. Bush nominee, said in a partial dissent he wouldnt allow the suit to continue against any of the government respondents, asserting that there is no freestanding constitutional right to pre-enforcement review in federal court. Chief Justice John Roberts, a George W. Bush nominee, with whom the three Democrat-nominated justices joined, said in a partial dissent that Paxton should be kept as a defendant, as should the clerk and judge. Justice Sonia Sotomayoran Obama nominee with whom Justices Stephen Breyer, a Clinton nominee, and Elena Kagan, an Obama nominee, joinedsaid in a partial dissent that foreclosing action against the clerk, judge, and Paxton was a betrayal of Texans and our constitutional system of government.

The Supreme Court previously declined to block the law.

The case will now go back to a district court that ordered the law temporarily blocked but was later overruled by the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which has said the law can remain in place as challenges against it play out.

The same path could be followed, with an eventual return to the nations highest court.

The new order came after a state judge, David Peeples, ruled Thursday that the law violated the Texas Constitution.

Peeples noted the unprecedented nature of the laws enforcement provision but said he found it unconstitutionally delegated enforcement power to private persons.

The ruling does not block the law and was going to be appealed by the pro-life Texas Right to Life group.
A protester (right) is searched by police as Hong Kong began selecting a powerful committee under a new "patriots only" system imposed by Beijing, in Hong Kong, on Sept. 19, 2021. (Peter Parks/AFP via Getty Images)

The First Communist-Style Election in Hong Kong Is About to Take Place

Commentary

The upcoming legislative election in Hong Kong will be the first one held since the enactment of the national security law (NSL) and the reconstruction of the electoral system, which will effectively bar pro-democracy lawmakers from getting elected.

The new electoral system has several mechanisms that will ensure that the opposition will never be able to get close to any public offices, according to Xia Baolong, director of the Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office.

Foremost is the installation of a political vetting system. Anyone who wants to take part in the election must be first vetted by a committee, the Candidate Eligibility Review Committee (CERC), headed by the chief secretary who was formerly chief of police. Members of CERC include the incumbent police chief and the head of the national security branch of the police force.

The CERC will judge each potential candidate to decide whether he or she has enough love for China and Hong Kong. Since this is a highly subjective criteria, the authorities devised a system to categorize a candidates response by comparing it to a positive and a negative list, based on loyalty to Beijing.

There was no political vetting in previous elections. The Basic Law only requires demographic criteria, which are objective and could easily be verified.

After the first hurdle, one must secure enough nomination from an Election Committee (EC) to qualify for formal candidature. Since the EC is made up entirely of Beijing loyalists, it is next to impossible to get sufficient nomination from the committee.

For example, barrister Ronny Tong Ka-wah complained that members from his Path of Democracy party couldnt get enough EC nominations required for formal candidature. Consider that Tong himself renounced his Civic Party membership, switched allegiance to Beijing, and as a result was appointed by Chief Executive Carrie Lam to her Executive Council, his previous stint with the Civic Party, an advocate for democracy, is still a burden for his new party. So theres no way for someone like Tong to get any support from the EC.

In the past, candidates running for legislative seats need only to get sufficient nominations from the general public to qualify for candidature. Now the EC has become their second hurdle. Under the Basic Law, the EC was only responsible for the election of the chief executive, and its terms of reference do not include the Legislative Council (LegCo) election. Under the new system, the EC has turned into one of the gatekeepers.

The revamp of the electoral system also drastically reduced the proportion of direct election in favor of indirect ones. Under the Basic Law, the LegCo was comprised of an equal number of seats from direct election (the geographical constituencies) and indirect election (the functional constituencies). The original idea was to gradually fade out the functional seats in favor of geographic ones, until all seats would be returned by direct electionthe ultimate goal of universal suffrage.

Before the revamp of the system, the LegCo was comprised of 70 seats, with geographic and functional seats each occupying 35. Under the revamped system, the total number of seats has expanded to 90, with the creation of a new category of seats assigned to the EC. The newly constructed legislature will consist of 40 seats for the EC, 30 for the functional constituencies, and 20 for geographic seats.

Thus, the share of direct election is reduced from the previous 50 percent to 22 percent, whereas the indirect ones increased from 50 percent to 78 percent. Since the newly created EC constituency is mostly composed of Beijing loyalists, the Chinese regime is content that the legislature is firmly under its control.

A woman walks past a government advertisement promoting Hong Kong electoral reforms, following Chinese parliaments approval of a new electoral system reform plan, in Hong Kong on March 30, 2021. (Lam Yik/Reuters)

After all these manipulations, among the total of 154 candidates taking part in the Dec. 19 race, 113 are Beijing loyalists.

The new election system violates the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)s promise to Hong Kong in several ways.

First, under the Basic Law, Hong Kong will enjoy universal suffrage in due course. The new system does not advance toward that goal, but it is a major step back to nomination (the EC constituencies) and quasi-nomination (the functional constituencies), which is clearly at odds with the original intention of the Basic Law.

Second, the definition of universal suffrage is distorted under the new system. At the time when the Basic Law was drafted, the drafters from mainland China and Hong Kong have debated the meaning of universal suffrage on three occasionswhen the term was raised in relation to the election of the chief executive and of the LegCo (Articles 45 and 68, respectively), and when the Basic Law was about to be finalized. It was the consensus among them that the term refers to both the right to elect and to be elected. Now, under the new system with political screening, citizens are deprived of their rights to stand for election (or run for office).

Third, under the Basic Law, Hong Kong will not practice socialism. Yet the new election system created one that resembles Beijings, where every candidate who stands for election must be pre-approved by the CCP to ensure that there would be no surprises in the outcome. Hong Kongs new system represents the communist way of electing people.

Lastly, the new system is a complete distortion of the political vision of former Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping when he first crafted the one country, two systems model. Deng stipulated that those who run Hong Kong must be patriotsthose who respect their own nation, support the resumption of sovereignty of Hong Kong, and dont jeopardize the prosperity and stability of the city. Now the new definition includes support for the CCP and for socialism/communism. This is a much more restrictive definition that excludes those who support democracy.

Besides, the Hong Kong government that Deng envisaged would be one consisting of leftists (in the local context, this refers to Beijing-loyalists), rightists (this refers to the pan-democrats), and with the vast majority being centralists. Now, under the new election system, only Beijing loyalists could stand for election.

Thus, the upcoming election in Hong Kong will create the first Legislative Council that resembles the National Peoples Congress in China: a rubber-stamp legislature packed with yes-men.

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
The Gobbledygook Gender Word Salad Helps Destroy Young Lives

Commentary

Gender fluid artist Mx. Alok Vaid-Menon (infamously known for his assertion that little girls are kinky) has announced that hes moving into non-gender fashion design, blending traditionally feminine shapes, such as bras and skirts, with clothing that defies gender categories.

Here, we find ourselves again subjected to more meaningless absurdity, reported by the mainstream press, beginning with the fact he refers to himself as Mx., not Mr., Ms., or Mrs. I have no words for such nonsense.

But I digress.

What really is at stake here is nothing short of the destruction of the lives of our young children, with Hollywood and the media glamorizing transition. Its not the blurring of gender lines in fashion thats the problem; its the make-believe world that Alok and his kin are demanding we validate under duress.

Vaid-Menon may think hes harmless, but as a man who is literally paid to determine trends for the rest of society, he (sorry Alok, youre a man) is contributing to the collapse of an ordered civil society. A society that recognizes things like maleness and femaleness and that biology is immutable and no matter what we call ourselves or how we dress, we have either a male or female body, apart from a few exceptions of medical aberration.

As evolutionary biologist Colin Wright says in my latest film, Trans Mission: Whats the Rush to Reassign Gender?, It just means certain individuals [e.g. intersex], incredibly rare individuals, might not fall neatly into these categories, male and female.

And our children are watching as the adults in the room are ripping apart reality and espousing nonsense, and the media, for the most part, is happy to report this false and dangerous narrative.

But as we witnessed in the Loudoun County, Virginia, battle over what children are being taught in public schools, and in the sexual assault of young girls by a male student because school policy allowed a male student to identify as female in order to gain access to the girls bathroom, parents arent having it.

Similar problems are brewing in Ohio, where seven gender clinics have set up shop.

Parents organized, mobilized, and exercised their right to decide what their children are being taught and their right to protect their children from harm while in the care of the school. This parental organization is growing in steam across the United States as it relates to the transgender narrative of being born in the wrong body or that you can change sex.

Parents are not only organizing to protect their children, but they are also involved in advocacy at the state legislative level.

Another effort to curb the dangerous trend is to educate the public by running billboards near gender clinics. Ohio is the second state, after California, to fund their billboard signs. California billboards faced so much backlash, their billboards were taken down, and the transactivists are targeting these campaigns as transphobic.

Most recently, Ohio state legislators introduced a bill, HB 454, known as the SAFE Act, an acronym for Save Adolescents From Experimentation. What should be seen as common-sense legislation, safeguarding young children from irreversible harm and damage is largely being met with a media blackout from reporters allegedly presenting fair and balanced reporting.

Equality Ohio states that HB 454 bans affirming health care and that this bill is an extreme attack on affirming mental and medical care for LBGTQ+ youth.

I spoke with Maria Polaris, co-founder and child advocate for the Cardinal Support Network (CSN), which doesnt advocate for child or adolescent transition. It assists fellow Ohioan parents in finding a therapist who follows evidence-based medical care to help them and their minor children. CSN also partners with groups such as Partners for Ethical Care, in raising money to run billboards near gender clinics in Ohio.

Polaris tells me that one of the largest transgender clinics is in Cincinnati, and it boasts seeing over 2,000 patients, mostly young girls, as of 2019. Gender identity is trending in much the same way emo used to trend, catapulted onto the scenes by trendsetters such as Vaid-Menon, who make it cool for teen girls to hate their bodies.

And the consequences have been dire. It has been reported that parents who bring their children to these clinics for help are told the unfounded claim of likely suicide: Would you rather have a dead daughter or a live son? if they dont allow their child to transition.

Ive read the bill and encourage you to do so, too. Let me highlight just a few provisions in the SAFE Act that Equality Ohio deems to be an extreme attack:

No M.D., mental health provider, or medical professional can refer anyone under 18 years of age to a doctor for gender transition.

No nurse, counselor, teacher, or staff at a public or private school can encourage or coerce a minor to withhold from their parent or legal guardian that their perception of his or her gender is inconsistent with their biological sex.

No public funds can be given to organizations that provide gender transition procedures to minors.

Make no mistake, gender transition treatments and surgeries are irreversible, causing permanent harm to the child undergoing them.

Dr. Paul Hruz, a pediatric endocrinologist, says, the whole area of those who seek to detransition is underappreciated as far as the actual number of individuals that have this experience of going forward with the affirmative approach, including hormones and surgery, to later recognize that it didnt solve their problems.

There is no rush to do any of these procedures, as gender dysphoria isnt a terminal illness that needs immediate attention. And its not true that these youth are at higher risk of suicide if theyre not allowed to transitionif they are a suicide risk, they need counseling and perhaps the care of a psychiatrist. Finally, its a well-known fact that many of these youth with proper care will grow out of this confusion.

Polaris said, The Ohio Safe Act must pass. We must protect children who are being transitioned to a sex they are not born to without any safeguards. Parents and kids are being bullied into experimental treatments. There is no long-term data to show improved outcomes or decreased suicide rates. The once-trusted childrens hospitals are gaslighting patients and these young adults into unnecessary drugs and surgeries.

I couldnt agree more. Medicine has lost its way, but thankfully for these brave parents, they will not sit back and watch as their children are butchered in the name of treatment.

Vaid-Menon didnt respond to a request for comment.

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
For all its impact, the ubiquitous Ball Mason jar has a little-known history. Canning is making a comeback, but it's long been part of the DNA of the generations of women in my family

What is one of the most iconic American product designs of all time, that is simple in design, affordable, practical, indestructible, and pint-sized? Here are some clues: Its a kitchen item celebrated by florists for its versatility, beloved by brides for its nod to Southern charm, and used by both beachgoers on the Alabama Riviera and foodies in Brooklyn bars. It would be easy to overlook Patent No. 22,186, but we should respect and remember the profound impact the Ball Mason jar has had on our culture.

The history of the Ball Mason jar is a fascinating story of five brothers who saw a need in their country for a safe way to preserve foods and, by using their abilities, changed the family meal and lives forever. A pint-sized history lesson reveals that John Landis Mason first patented the glass jar in 1857, but the Ball Brothers Manufacturing Glass Company licensed the Mason jar and in the process made the Ball Mason Jar one of the most iconic product designs of all time. For three centuriesthrough challenges and opportunities, economic prosperity and financial trials, disappointments and successesthe company has endured. And, furthermore, there has been only one trademark etched on the bottom of each jar, Made in the U.S.A.

Ironically, the Ball Mason jar, which was once viewed only as a primary kitchen product, is now more at home at weddings, bars, and chic events than on a pantry shelf. Pretty flower bouquets, perfumed candles, organic salads, and iced tea are placed inside the jars much more often than the expected canned fruits and vegetables.

An increased emphasis on environmental and economic issues related to healthy food production has created a resurgence of interest in canning, which promotes the original intent of the jars. Google Popularity of home canning to find numerous statistical facts supporting this claim. Only in recent years have I started canning, so Im part of the data verifying the Ball Mason jars current in vogue status.

Canning may be making a huge comeback, but homemade jellies, jams, pickles, string beans, and tomatoes have always been part of the DNA of generations of women in my family who were like the industrious Little Red Hen of storybook fame: They grew their food, canned their food, and shared their food with others. Grandmother Jaye, who had nine children, probably canned out of necessity. My mom had four girls who loved nothing more than her hot biscuits filled with homemade preserves and jelliesfig, pear, plum, dewberry, scuppernong (a big white grape), strawberry, and peach. Many troublesbig and smallfound their relief in a piping hot biscuit filled with these goodies.

After every last spoonful was scraped from the jar, it was washed and stored in a box to be reused the next season. In fact, often jars were passed from one family member to another. A Ball Mason jar is practically indestructible. Think about it: Do they ever chip or break?

The process of canning involved everyone in my family. Whether it was shaking a pear tree to bring down the ripened fruit or picking figs, my sisters and I were in charge of gathering the fruit. During the days of late spring, my sisters and I scoured fence rows or ditches beside roads for dewberry patches. We heeded Mothers words concerning snakes that found the brambles of the bushes to be their cooling place, for Daddys leg bore the long scar of a rattlesnakes fangs when he was a young boy. We had heard the story many times of how he lay near deaths door for weeks fighting off the poison from this lowly serpent.

As we picked the berries, I repeated the Uncle Remus stories my teacher had read aloud to my class. I tried to retell the tale with the same excitement and cunningness in my voice that Miss Farish used as she read Brer Rabbits plea with Brer Fox: Please, dont fling me in dat brier-patch.

My sisters and I returned home victorious from our searches, but with fingers pricked by thorns and stained purple from eating more berries than we had placed in the syrup buckets and dishpans we carried. Mother placed the berries in a big pan and smothered them with Domino sugar. A dishtowel was placed on top of the pan for the berries to sit overnight on the table to macerate.

While cooking, Mother stirred and mashed the berries until the juice had thickened enough to coat a spoon. Then Daddy helped Mother strain the seeds and pulp through a large flour sack catching the berry juice in a pan before the Ball Mason jars were submerged for a water bath.

Years later, even my father had learned to can from start to finish. After Mothers death, Daddy tried to fill her void by being a mother to us. He immersed himself in doing the things she had always done. Daddy, who had never opened a can, was suddenly canning pear and fig preserves.

There are few sights as pretty as sunlight streaming through Ball Mason jars filled with fruits and vegetables floating in their juices. The radiating, translucent shades and hues of colors can never be captured in the many paint samples hanging on a Home Depot wall.

The Ball Brothers story should be included in childrens history books, for their story is one of American greatness. Surprisingly, few studentsor even adultsknow about their dedication to a dream that became a reality. The spectrum of colors in the filled Ball Mason jars sitting on my kitchen island is as pleasing to the eye as the memories of great Americans, school days, and family times are to the heart. The rainbow of colors in the jars also reminds me of the Bible story of Gods faithfulness to Noah and to future generations of people. Thats something pretty remarkable for a pint-sized jar!

Gwenyth McCorquodale has been teaching since the age of 7, when she taught her three younger sisters the letters of the alphabet. Gwenyth retired from Judson College in Marion, Alabama, where she served as professor of education and head of the department of education. She has written books, articles for national and international journals, and for her hometown newspaper, The Monroe Journal.
The Myth of Human Rights With Chinese Characteristics

Commentary

Dec. 10 marks Human Rights Day, commemorating the day in 1948 the U.N. General Assembly adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR).

Less than a year later, on Oct. 1, 1949, Chinese Communist leader Mao Zedong declared the creation of the Peoples Republic of China.

In 1947, as preparation for the drafting of the UDHR by the U.N. Human Rights Commission, the U.N. Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) conducted an international enquiry into the origins and philosophical foundations of human rights.

Chinas response to the inquiry was titled Human Rights in the Chinese Tradition and came from Lo Chung-Shu, a professor of philosophy at the West-China University, Chengdu, Sichuan, who was also a special consultant for UNESCO.

Lo explained that China did not have the Western concept of human rights declared by political constitutions, but the Chinese people did claim and enjoy the fundamental rights of man based on the Confucian concept of mutual obligation to prevent infringement of the rights of the individual.

Instead of claiming rights, Chinese ethical teaching emphasised the sympathetic attitude of regarding all ones fellow men as having the same desires, and therefore the same rights, as one would like to enjoy oneself.

Lo also referred to the Chinese classic, the Book of History, in explaining the moral code between the individual and state in traditional Chinese culture.

Heaven sees as our people see; Heaven hears as our people hear. Heaven is compassionate towards the people. What the people desire, Heaven will be found to bring about. Heaven loves the people, and the Sovereign must obey Heaven.

As the welfare of the people depended on the goodwill of rulers, if an Emperor no longer ruled for the welfare of the people, the people had the right to revolt, as seen in the changing dynasties over thousands of years in China.

Human Rights in China and Falun Gong

Although named the Peoples Republic of China, the people exist to serve the state. Communist ideology denies the existence of God or supernatural beings, dictates that religions are human creations, and individual human rights are a Western construct.

Since 1949, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has campaigned to destroy the traditional foundation of Chinese culture and social relations to implant its communist ideology. Following the devasting impact of the Cultural Revolution from 1966 to 1976, there was a brief period in the 1980s where China appeared to be opening. Traditional aspects of Chinese culture, such as qigong (energy exercises), were accepted and promoted by the CCP.

It was in this window that Falun Gong (also called Falun Dafa) was first taught publicly in China in 1992 by Mr Li Hongzhi, and it was registered with the governments China Qigong Research Association.

Falun Gong is a spiritual practice in the Buddhist tradition that consists of gentle, meditative exercises and moral teachings centred on the tenets of truthfulness, compassion, and forbearance. In keeping with traditional Chinese culture, it teaches personal responsibility for ones actions and ethical choices in life.

Falun Gong practitioners take part in an event marking the 22nd anniversary of the start of the Chinese regimes persecution of Falun Gong in Washington on July 16, 2021. (Samira Bouaou/The Epoch Times)

In 1998, the CCPs own survey found that Falun Gong was practised by over 70 million people in China, improving their health and saving the government millions of yuan each year.

However, hardliners in the CCP could not tolerate the Chinese peoples growing embrace of Falun Gong, as it taught a form of ethical thought that challenged the communist regimes ability to maintain control over the Chinese population via communist thought. In July, 1999, the CCP began its violent campaign to eradicate Falun Gong, which continues today.

Essentially, the CCP is afraid the Chinese people would wake up and kick them out, just like the fate of past corrupt rulers in China. That process of awakening began in late 2004 with the grassroots social movement known in Chinese as Tuidang (Quit the CCP).

Today over 387 million Chinese people in China and around the world have renounced their ties to the CCP and its affiliated organisations, and lodged statements on the Tuidang website.

Western and Asian Human Rights?

The idea of unique or Asian human rights is promoted by the CCP and other states that seek to prioritise state control over individual human rights.

The traditional Chinese understanding of peoples rights is linked to the relationship of Heaven overseeing human life on earth. Western concepts of human rights are also linked to Heaven under the various teachings of Judeo-Christian religions.

In essence, Western and traditional Chinese human rights have the same foundationrespect for and guidance from spiritual realms. Similarly, Falun Dafas principles of truthfulness, compassion, forbearance (Zhen Shan Ren in Chinese) is found at the heart of all orthodox religions.

People of all cultures, whether Western or otherwise, experience injustices that demand recognition and redress.

That is the commonality we all share. It doesnt matter if a person is from a Western country or an Asian country; they will all experience a yearning for freedom if they are locked up, feel pain if they are tortured, and will all die if they are shot in the head.

Human RightsDeclared by Man or Imbued by God?

A human rights doctrine devoid of a divine foundation of human life is at risk of manipulation by human beings preoccupation with worldly self-interest.

If human rights are declared by human beings, then we enter the realm of contesting what rights are paramount and which can be negotiated away because of other interests, like development and trade. Some say this already exists as countries make economic or national interest decisions to not confront serial human rights abuses, like the Chinese regime.

A Falun Gong practitioner sits behind the barricades during a demonstration in central Taiwan on Dec. 22, 2009. (Sam Yeh/AFP via Getty Images)

As the CCP declares open hostility to the concept of God, it is not surprising that it will contest human rights that are God-given. It is imperative that all people and nations who understand the foundation of universal human rights make a stand.

Falun Dafa practitioners cultivate themselves according to traditional principles given by Heaven. The atrocities committed by the CCP upon Falun Dafa practitioners is an opportunity for the people of the world to decide what they think is right or wrong and choose on which side they stand.

Dec. 10 is a day to reflect on what the world has become and what the world can be. You dont have to hold a particular religious or cultural belief to acknowledge that human beings have a sacred right to life.

Treating others as you would like to be treated yourself captures the universality principle of human rightsand the universal response required to uphold them.

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
Where hypocrites get their just desserts

NEW YORKRed Bull Theater puts the axiom that people get exactly what they deserve squarely in their sights with Jeffrey Hatchers biting adaptation of Ben Johnsons 17th-century comedy The Alchemist, now at New World Stages.

Its 1610 and London has been ravaged by a great plague, which has caused those with means to flee to the relative safety of the countryside. Among those who have done just that is one Master Lovewit, who has left his home and possessions in the care of his servant, Face (Manoel Felciano).

Left to his own devices, Face joins forces with con artists Subtle (Reg Rogers) and Dol (Jennifer Sanchez), who set up shop in Lovewits grand home. Subtle claims to be an alchemist who can turn baser metals, such as iron, copper, or brass, into pure gold. He stresses, however, that the process will only work if the one seeking this treasure is totally without sinin thought or in deed.

Subtle also claims to be a mystical soothsayer who can foretell the future. Hes willing to reveal his knowledge to all who seek itfor a price, of course. As Face spreads the word of Subtles talents, a horde of willing clients quickly appear. Among them, are the rich Sir Epicure Mammon (Jacob Ming-Trent), the religious Ananais (Stephen DeRosa), a law clerk named Dapper (Carson Elrod), and a slow-witted tobacconist called Drugger (Nathan Christopher).

Face, Subtle, and Dol plan to take their victims for as much as they can before absconding with their ill-gotten gains. However Lovewits sudden impending return, and a scheme to find a husband for the wealthy Dame Pliant (Teresa Avia Lim), force the trio to accelerate their timetable. Further complicating matters are Plaints perennially angry brother Kastril (Allen Tedder), and a skeptic named Surly (Louis Mustillo).

Sardonic at points and farcical in others, The Alchemist takes aim at those who loudly claim to be righteous, but in reality are only out for themselves. At the same time, the play clearly shows how there is no honor among thieves. Face, Subtle, and Dol store their booty in a massive chest, which can only be opened with three separate keys. Each of the group has one in their possession, thus ensuring the grudging compliance of the others.

Also made clear are the problems that arise when authorities try to prosecute such criminals. Any such victims are unwilling to press charges, as it would require them to publicly reveal how they have been fooled.

Its a great joy to watch the procession of willing dupes march in and out of Lovewits home, as well as the various jousting that goes on between the participants. Also quite fun is seeing Face and Subtle forced to often and rapidly change clothes, postures, and accents to accommodate the con of the moment. These rapid changes are accomplished thanks to a series of carefully positioned doors and other passageways in Alexis Distlers set. The entrances and exits of the characters help to add to the overall frenticism of the proceedings. Kudos also to Jesse Bergers whip-smart direction during these scenes, and Tilly Grimess costume design work throughout.

Rogers is the standout among the cast. His role allows him to masquerade as a number of over-the-top characters. Yet, crucially, he plays them all seriously enough so that the humor comes not so much from him, but rather from the total belief of all around him.

Felciano is good as a quiet supporting type who yearns for a leading roleor at least a more featured part (a running gag in the play)in the various cons. Also quite funny is Tedder as Kastril, who never met a quarrel he didnt like. Elsewhere, Christopher is funny as the seemingly empty-headed Drugger.

The only thing which prevents the show from being absolutely perfect are some of the choices made by Hatcher with his adaptation. He at times goes too far with jokes, stating the obvious when something subtler would do. When a delivery man sneezes and then proclaims hes been leeched, we get the obvious reference to the current pandemic. Yet the fact that the story is taking place during a plague, along with several other references dropped in, makes the aforementioned bit unnecessary.

Also, the shows denouement would have worked far better if hints of it had been mentioned earlier on. Then, the audience would have been able to ponder the possibility, instead of it coming seemingly out of thin air.

The Alchemist offers an enjoyable look at those who end up getting exactly whats coming to them, often in the most unexpected way. The entire experience an excellent fit for the time in which it was originally staged, as well as the one we are living in now.

The Alchemist

Red Bull Theater

New World Stages

340 W. 50th St.

Tickets: 212-239-6200 or Telecharge.com

Running Time: 2 hours, 5 minutes (one intermission)

Closes: Dec. 19, 2021

Judd Hollander is a reviewer for stagebuzz.com and a member of the Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle.
Former President Donald Trump is seen during an event in Hollywood, Fla., on Sept. 11, 2021. (Douglas P. DeFelice/Getty Images)

Trumps Bid to Shield Records Rejected by Appeals Court

A U.S. appeals court on Thursday turned down a bid by former President Donald Trump to shield records from his presidency sought by a House of Representatives panel probing the Jan. 6 breach of the U.S. Capitol.

President Joe Biden waived executive privilege over the records.

On the record before us, former President Trump has provided no basis for this court to override President Bidens judgment and the agreement and accommodations worked out between the political branches over these documents, Judge Patricia Millet, an Obama nominee, wrote on behalf of a three-judge panel.

More specifically, the former president has failed to establish a likelihood of success given (1) President Bidens carefully reasoned and cabined determination that a claim of executive privilege is not in the interests of the United States; (2) Congresss uniquely vital interest in studying the January 6th attack on itself to formulate remedial legislation and to safeguard its constitutional and legislative operations; (3) the demonstrated relevance of the documents at issue to the congressional inquiry; (4) the absence of any identified alternative source for the information; and (5) Mr. Trumps failure even to allege, let alone demonstrate, any particularized harm that would arise from disclosure, any distinct and superseding interest in confidentiality attached to these particular documents, lack of relevance, or any other reasoned justification for withholding the documents, Millet added.

Judges Ketanji Brown Jackson, a Biden nominee, and Robert Wilkins, an Obama nominee, were the other judges on the panel.

Trumps lawyers had sought a preliminary injunction barring the National Archives from releasing the records to the House committee.

Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), chairman of the House of Representatives panel investigating the Jan. 6 U.S. Capitol breach, sitting beside panel vice chair Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), speaks in Washington on Oct. 19, 2021. (Alex Wong/Getty Images)

We applaud the courts decisive ruling, which respects the select committees interest in obtaining White House records and the presidents judgment in allowing those records to be produced. Our work moves ahead swiftly. We will get to the truth, Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), chairman of the committee, and Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), the vice chair of the committee, said in a joint statement.

The panel gave Trump two weeks to appeal the ruling to the Supreme Court.

Liz Harrington, a spokeswoman for the former president, said he intends to appeal.

Regardless of todays decision by the appeals court, this case was always destined for the Supreme Court. President Trumps duty to defend the Constitution and the office of the presidency continues, and he will keep fighting for every American and every future administration, she said in a statement.
Tucker Carlson Says One of His Children Was in the Capitol During Jan. 6 Breach

Fox News host Tucker Carlson said Thursday that one of his children was in the Capitol building during the Jan. 6 Capitol breach.

Well, I hated what happened on Jan. 6, you know one of my kids was actually in the building when it had happenedI was on the phone in real-time, the Fox News host said in response to a question from Steve Krakauer, the host of The Fourth Watch Podcast on Thursday. Anyone who calls Jan. 6 an insurrection is a liar at this point, Carlson also said.

While Carlson, 52, did not name which one of his children was in the building at the time, its likely that it was his son, Buckley Carlson, who works for Rep. Jim Banks (R-Ind.).

Im from Washington. I hate disorder  People got all wound up, I get it. Some of them misbehaved, I am not gonna defend that, but it has been used, like so many events throughout history, as a pretext for something else, Carlson also said about the Jan. 6 incident during the podcast, which centered around Patriot Purge, a documentary of his that seeks to offer an alternative view of the events that occurred on Jan. 6.

Carlson then suggested that the mainstream narrative around the Capitol breach is hyperbolic.

So they lie about what actually happened, they repeat the lie with maximum aggression, and over time, that lie solidifies into the common understanding of what happened, he said.

As Patriot Purge aired last month, two longtime Fox News contributors, Stephen Hayes and Jonah Goldberg, announced they would quit the television network. Some members of Congress, including Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), also criticized the release of the documentary.

Carlsons remarks come as the House committeeof which Cheney is a key memberissued subpoenas to six more people who allegedly helped organize some of the rallies that preceded the Jan. 6 breach during its investigation of the incident.

The committees chairman, Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), said that some allegedly worked to stage the events, and some appeared to have had direct communication with then-President Donald Trump. None of these individuals have been charged with any crimes.

Subpoenas were issued to Robert Bobby Peede Jr. and Max Miller, who the committee claimed met with Trump in his private dining room on Jan. 4, as well as Brian Jack, Trumps political director at the time. Rally organizers Bryan Lewis, Ed Martin, and Kimberly Fletcher also received subpoenas, the committee said.

Miller, who is running for Congress in Ohio, responded to the subpoena by saying that when he takes office, I will make sure one of my first votes is to disband this partisan committee that has weaponized its powers against innocent Americans.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
This photo taken on June 4, 2019 shows schoolchildren walking below surveillance cameras in Akto, south of Kashgar, in China's western Xinjiang region. (Greg Baker/AFP via Getty Images)

US Bans American Investment in Chinese AI Company Over Human Rights Concerns

The United States on Dec. 10 put a ban on American investment in Chinese artificial intelligence (AI) firm SenseTime over concerns its aiding the Chinese regimes repression of Uyghurs in Xinjiang.

The 7-year-old firm, one of the worlds highest-valued AI startups and leading developer of facial-recognition technology, was placed in the U.S. list of Chinese military-industrial complex companies, overshadowing the companys plans to land Hong Kong initial public offering this month, where it aims to raise $767 million. The U.S. measure forces American investors to divest within 60 days of the announcement.

The Treasury Department found SenseTime responsible for developing facial recognition programs that can determine a targets ethnicity, with a particular focus on identifying ethnic Uyghurs.

Shenzhen Sensetime Technology Co. Ltd., SenseTimes wholly-owned subsidiary, has highlighted its ability to recognize Uyghurs with or without sunglasses, beards, or masks, the Department said.

The move on Friday was among a suite of sanctions announced by the Biden administration, which targeted 24 other individuals and entities tied to Beijing, Myanmar military entities, and North Korea marking International Human Rights Day.

More than a million Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities are estimated to be held in internment camps in Xinjiang, which the United States and human rights groups have deemed a genocide. The ongoing repression has prompted the United States and some allies to declare a diplomatic boycott of Beijings 2022 Winter Olympics.

SenseTimes Beijing subsidiary has already come under U.S. scrutiny in recent years over its role in supplying mass surveillance technology in Xinjiang. It was one of eight Chinese tech firms placed on a Commerce Department trade blacklist in 2019, barring the company from buying parts and components from American businesses without U.S. government approval.

The Treasury Department on Friday also applied sanctions on Erken Tuniyaz, chairman of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, and his predecessor Shohrat Zakir.

The two, along with Hu Lianhe, a senior Chinese Communist Party official that experts believe played a key role in drafting the regimes policies in Xinjiang, as well as Chen Mingguo, director of the Xinjiang Public Security Bureau, were also slapped with visa restrictions that would bar U.S. entry to them and their immediate relatives.

Dozens of Chinese officials and companies have been sanctioned by the United States over Xinjiang.
West Australian Christmas Event Banned Renowned Performance Over Fears of Beijing Backlash

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has again managed to influence organisations within Australia, with event organisers of a nationally-broadcast Christmas parade taking place in Western Australia (WA) banning a renowned Falun Dafa performance of traditional Chinese culture.

Falun Dafa, also known as Falun Gong, is a traditional Chinese self-improvement discipline that consists of five meditative exercises along with moral teachings centred on the principles of truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance. The practice was first introduced to the public on May 13, 1992, by founder Li Hongzhi in China. It attracted between 70 million and 100 million adherents within just a few years as a result of its benefits to peoples health and well-being.

But in July 1999, the Chinese regime launched a nationwide persecution campaign involving the arrests, detention, and torture of Falun Dafa adherents. An independent tribunal later found beyond reasonable doubt that practitioners had been subject to crimes against humanity with their organs forcefully harvested en masse.

Reenactment of one of the torture methods employed by Chinese officials to coerce Falun Gong practitioners to renounce their faith. (Minghui.org)

However, the CCP continues to make efforts to suppress Falun Dafa outside of China.

Falun Dafa had initially been invited to participate in the 2021 Perth Christmas Pageant by the events organiser, Seven West Media, which is owned by billionaire Kerry Stokes, and the parent to 7News and The West Australianwith Falun Dafa practitioners in Perth regularly displaying traditional Chinese culture through dancing dragons and a drum troupe in events around the city.

Emails seen by The Epoch Times reveals that a request to be introduced in the parade under the name Falun Dafa had prompted an event manager to outline the group could only perform on the condition that any reference to their name was completely removed.

But in a later email, the representative quickly changed the verdict, banning the group altogether.

Upon further discussion with my pageant stakeholders, unfortunately, we are no longer able to accommodate your group in the pageant due to operational reasons.

Falun Dafa drum troupe at the Perth Royal Show in Perth, Australia on Sep. 27, 2021. The citys biggest community event saw 350,000 attendees over the span of a week. (Falun Dafa Association)

The Seven West employee refused to accept a request for a meeting, instead claiming the group would be too political for the event.

The pageant is, in all respects, an apolitical event and we cannot allow participation by any group that may give rise, however remotely, to the airing of international political issues, or any matter of political controversy, the Seven West employee said.

The pageant is not a forum for those involved in such issues to be represented and it gives rise to potential conflict and security issues for the event.

Mark Hutchison, a Falun Dafa practitioner from Perth, expressed grave disappointment, saying that the performancewhich participated freely in the same event in 2011 and 2012had only served to show traditional Chinese culture and did not include any political elements.

Theres nothing political about it. We are trying to show a beautiful practice with a beautiful golden dragon dance, drum troupe, and heavenly celestial maidens, he said.

Concerns of Foreign Interference

However, Hutchison was also deeply concerned that this was not the first time the group face pressure to be silent.

In 2018, Hutchison alleged he was told by a Seven West employee that they would no longer be allowed to participate in that years Christmas pageant after it had received a call from the Chinese consulate in Perth.

He claimed this eventually led to a compromise where the group had to remove all references to Falun Dafa but were promised they would be introduced as Falun Dafa over the national television broadcast. But he said Seven West proceeded to remove all references to the group in the final edit without their knowledge.

Expert on CCP influence in Australia, Tshung Chang, alleged that Seven West had sufficient motivation to censor Falun Dafa due to the ties between the Chinese Communist Party leaders and the organisations owner, Kerry Stokes.

Executive chairman of Australias Seven Group Holdings, Kerry Stokes, in Sydney, Australia on Aug. 5, 2014. (William West/AFP via Getty Images)

As great an Australian Kerry Stokes is, he has deep business interests in Chinawhich he has himself talked about in various forumsand so he knows not to ruffle any feathers, Chang told The Epoch Times.

Stokes well-known list of dealings with China includes his close relationship with President Xi Jinping, who dined at Stokes residence in China prior to becoming president, as well as his position on Huaweis International Advisory Council since 2010, Chang said.

It also includes Stokes Australian Capital Equitya firm that had previously owned the WesTrac Caterpillar franchise in China, while also being the first foreign firm to partly own a daily newspaper in China, the English-language Shanghai Daily.

So when the Chinese consul tells Kerry Stokes organisation responsible for the event, I dont want these people or this group to take part, they automatically know what to do.

The Epoch Times reached out to Seven West Media for a comment but did not receive a reply.

A Display of Drums and Dragons

While the Christmas pageant had blocked Falun Dafas performance, the same group had been welcomed at numerous venues in 2021, including the largest community event in the citythe Perth Royal Showwhich saw 350,000 visitors over the course of a week.

Another event attended by the group was the Diwali Festival of Lights held at the port town of Fremantle.

The performance was beautiful, said Gina Blakemore, a coordinator of the Festival of Lights event.I thought it brought a lot of excitement, with the drumming, the movement of the dragon, the colour  the crowd really enjoyed it.

Falun Dafa drum troupe and dragon dance performing at the South Fremantle Festival of Lights in Perth, Australia on Nov. 7, 2021. (Falun Dafa Association)

Blakemore said she had received no complaints from any of the event organisers or attendees that raised concerns of political issues, despite introducing Falun Dafa to the event over speakers and with many performers brandishing shirts containing the groups name.

She did not agree with the ban of Falun Dafa from the Christmas pageant and said that it would have instead been beneficial for those wanting to look up and research the human rights abuses committed against Falun Dafa practitioners in China.

I think that there is no harm in making people aware of the situations around the world that are happening, she said.

Theres no harm in young people and children learning about these things happening because this is what is happening in our world, and it is something that we need to be aware of, and deal with, and have an opinion on.
White House press secretary Jen Psaki talks to reporters during the daily press conference in the Brady Press Briefing Room at the White House in Washington, on Dec. 6, 2021. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

White House Warns of Other Options if Diplomacy With Iran Fails

The White House says it is preparing in case diplomacy with Iran fails.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters Thursday that given ongoing advances in Irans nuclear program President Joe Biden has ordered his team to make preparations for the possibility that diplomacy fails and the United States must resort to other options.

If diplomacy cannot get on track soon and if Irans nuclear program continues to accelerate then we will have to no choice but to take additional measures to further restrict Irans revenue-producing sectors, said Psaki.

Psaki added that Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) director Andrea Gacki will lead a Treasury-State delegation to the United Arab Emirates (UAE) next week to talk about sanctions compliance. The trip will focus on engagements with the private sector and UAE government officials to discuss the companies and financial institutions that facilitate noncompliant Iranian commerce, Psaki said.

The Biden administration has kept in place all Iranian sanctions it inherited from former President Donald Trump, who put the sanctions in place after backing the United States out of the Iran nuclear deal in 2018.

A year after the United States left the 2015 deal that also included France, Britain, Germany, Russia, and China, Iran began violating nuclear restrictions outlined in the deal, moving the country closer to developing the capacity to acquire a nuclear weapon.

Biden has signaled that he wants to rejoin the deal.

But ongoing indirect U.S.-Iranian nuclear talks in Vienna faltered last week when Irans new, hardline government under anti-Western President Ebrahim Raisi abandoned many compromises it had made in the previous six rounds of talks.

This after Raisis election in June caused a five-month hiatus in the talks.

Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi addresses parliament in Tehran, Iran, on Nov. 16, 2021. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)

The seventh round of discussions resumed on Thursday with Irans top negotiator saying he was sticking to positions Tehran set out last week.

Iran underlined that it is seriously continuing the talks based on its previous position, chief negotiator Ali Bagheri Kani told reporters after an opening meeting with world powers on Thursday.

Iran is serious about reaching an agreement if the ground is paved (towards a deal)The fact all sides want the talks to continue shows that all parties want to narrow the gaps, said Kani.

The runway is very short there is not much time left State Department spokesman Ned Price said Thursday of Irans path to return to compliance under the nuclear agreement through diplomacy.

Biden administration officials have maintained that diplomacy is the best course to return Iran and the U.S. to compliance with the deal known as Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).

We are still committed to seeing if that is the case, said Price.

Reuters contributed to this report.
An oil worker removes a thread cap from a piece of drill pipe on a drilling lease owned by Elevation Resources near Midland, Texas, on Feb. 12, 2019. (Nick Oxford/Reuters)

World Economy Entering Period of Oil Scarcity, Halliburton CEO Says

Jeff Miller warns that global oil supply could soon be surpassed by demand for the indefinite future

News Analysis

Halliburton CEO and president Jeff Miller made waves on Monday predicting that the world is due for a period of oil scarcity in comments at the World Petroleum Congress in Houston, Texas.

I think that for the first time in a long time, we will see a buyer looking for a barrel of oil, as opposed to a barrel of oil looking for a buyer, Miller said.

Since 2014, the oil industry has generally deemphasized building new infrastructure in the face of low prices. However, that trend may now catch up with the industry, which now finds demand for oil exceeding the available supply given current infrastructure.

Some analysts have speculated that it is increasingly likely that oil prices will soon climb to $100 per barrel, a price unseen in the past seven years and which has serious potential to disrupt the economy.

An additional factor contributing to predicted oil scarcity is a labor shortage in the fossil fuel industry surpassing that in the general economy.

The widespread perception that fossil fuels will be marginalized in the future of energy and transportation makes long-term careers in petroleum unattractive to young workers, with many oil workers seeking to switch to renewables or leave the energy industry outright.

A recent survey revealed that 43 percent of oil industry employees sought to transition to other sectors in the next five years, as reported by Reuters.

As baby boomer employees retire, the industry struggles to replace them with young workers, who see the oil industry as unfavorable to long-term careers because of concerns about climate change models, and pressure by politicians, environmentalists, and investors to transition to renewable energy sources.

This combination of infrastructural underinvestment and labor shortages is likely to result in an oil supply stretched thin to meet demand, resulting in higher prices and possible shortages.

With oil extraction occurring at a significant time lag from industry investment and the skill shortage in the labor industry showing no signs of abating, there are major reasons to believe that any scarcity in oil supplies could last long into the future.
DAMARISCOTTA, Maine (AP)  Humans aren't the only species packing on extra pounds during the pandemic. Some squirrels are letting themselves go, too.

Many squirrels are eating well this fall in New England. But one portly squirrel is so big it earned the nickname, Fatty McFatterson.
Its not often a church reopens its doors, but St. Marys (Ukrainian) Catholic Church in Madison did just that.

This may not seem like a lot to some  a new church  but to the Ukrainian Catholics in the Madison and Granite City communities, it is a rebirth of their heritage.

The church closed its doors more than five years ago and the little chapel on Iowa Street fell into disrepair. A group of Ukrainian descendants decided it was time to resurrect the church and with help from the Ukrainian Diocese of Saint Nicholas of Chicago, they were able to accomplish it.

There is a rich history of Eastern European immigrants in the twin cities of Madison and Granite City. These people moved to the region for the promise of jobs in factories, mines and mills and its where they built places to practice their faith.

The church was originally built in 1912 and since its closing the building had been stripped of all its copper piping and other materials, however the art, most of it done by renowned church muralist Max Autenrieb, remained intact.

The congregation, with assistance from the Ukrainian Dioceses Bishop Benedict Aleksiychuk, was able to raise $30,000 to reopen the parish.

Ukrainian Greek Catholics are Eastern Rite Christians who follow the Byzantine-Slavonic traditions. In 1905, a small group of Ukrainian laborers conceived the St. Nicholas Parish in Chicago.

Ukrainian Greek Catholics are the largest church of the 23 Catholic Churches that observe an Eastern rite. There are approximately 16 million Eastern Catholics in the world, of which 7 million are Ukrainian Greek Catholics. Approximately 50,000 Ukrainian Greek Catholics live in the United States and are a community that is diverse geographically, linguistically and socioeconomically.

Since Bishop Aleksiychuks arrival at St. Nicholas in 2017, he has taken steps to strengthen the Ukrainian church and its parishes.

St. Marys re-opened in mid-November and will hold a Christmas liturgy, which to many means the gathering of community to celebrate a new life.

A sign of a church reopening its doors is a sign of renewal and rebirth. Its a sign there is a new vision for the future and I want to wish the parishioners at St. Marys (Ukrainian) Church a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.
EDWARDSVILLE  More than 3,500 people have received free legal services through the Third Judicial Circuit Pro Bono Committee in 2021.

The committee is made up judges, court staff, legal aid providers and lawyers from a variety of different practice areas who meet quarterly to organize opportunities for continuing education and free or reduced cost legal assistance to the public. The committee is co-chaired by Circuit Judge Sarah Smith and Associate Judge Maureen Schuette.

I am so proud of the large number of attorneys in the Third Judicial Circuit who are willing to provide a key benefit to the community that might otherwise not be available, Smith said. These attorneys willingly give of their time to provide legal and other skills that are in short supply and in great need during these challenging times.

Through the committees partnership with the local bar association and the Public Interest Law Initiative, the committee hosts a Legal Advice Clinic offering appointments to low-income members of the public who do not have attorneys. The committee is proud to have been able to continue to offer these appointments and volunteer opportunities via Zoom over the last year.

We truly appreciate each and every attorney and staff member who graciously donates their time and talent to our Legal Advice Clinic, to our Continuing Legal Education Seminars, and to our pro bono services, Schuette said. You are an amazing asset to the Third Judicial Circuit and we are very thankful for you.

In addition, the Madison County Law Library and Legal Self-Help Center provides general information and resources to the public Monday through Friday, serving just over 3,500 people in the third quarter of 2021. The library and self-help center are in the Madison County Courthouse bsement.

Im proud of the number of litigants we are able to serve each year through the Pro Bono Committee and the work of dedicated attorneys and staff, said Chief Judge William Mudge.
Winter, time of water, is the coldest season of the year. During this period, people envelop themselves with cold -proof wear such as earmuffs, mittens, coats, jackets, hats among others. To get people to take off their protective wear in such a time, is nothing but irrational, inconsiderate, and myopic.

Subsidy, in the language of the layman, is the direct or indirect money given to an institution or an individual to sell a product or render a service at an affordable price. It is an economic reality that a government may need to subsidize essential services in order to make them affordable for its citizens. This , in actuality, is a pragmatic demonstration of a government's commitment to the welfare of its citizenry. Multiple reports have indicated that the price of fuel in Nigeria, without subsidy, may be two or three times higher than the current price. Proponents of this view have quoted the prices of fuel in other oil - producing nations. By comparison, they argue , with the withdrawal of subsidy, the price of fuel in Nigeria remains relatively cheaper.

My personal pain and sadness is the selectivism in their argument. A writer , sometimes ago, satirized our country. " Only a dead man can not steal in Nigeria ". As demeaning and infuriating that might have sounded, frankly speaking, money is the principal reason for wrong doing in Nigeria. In my view, if people would have no financial benefit to discharging their heinous acts, unscrupulous activities will diminish to an appreciable extent. If subsidy - the money paid by the government to the fuel importers - is withdrawn and purportedly used in improving our infrastructure among others. The perturbing question is simple and straightforward: Why now? Or why not now?

According to the Federal Government, 11 million Nigerians would fall into poverty by 2022, just in a few weeks' time. I wonder why the government has just officially noticed this. For a while now, the majority of Nigerians have been living in chronic poverty. Survival has been the goal, and not progression. Many homes are cutting off essential buys to at least have a 5% saving. Demand for charcoal has suddenly grown as a result of the astronomical increase in the price of the cooking gas. While we are still grappling with the tragic reality of the gas hike, government is proposing subsidy removal. How many companies have fully recovered from the biggest Covid -19 blow? Omicron is already announcing its presence. The next " demon" is unknown. With hindsight, any hike in fuel price will significantly affect the prices of millions of items. For example, the cost of transporting farm produce and people will immediately jump. In consequence, the prices of essentials will triple. Savings will decline and purchasing power will become weak among others. Looking at it from the psychological vantage point, there will be more people patronising quacks due to hardship. Substandard products will take the lead. Self - medication will automatically become the rescue line than seeking a physician's help. The rate of depression and death may disturbingly rise, too. Most Nigerians would experience this, as a result of the poor timing and the envisaged loyalty breach on the part of the government. You may take the clothes, but not in the cold.

Samuel Ogunnaike writes from Lagos.
Nigerians could argue that the entire problem (both real and probable) currently confronting the nation are caused by the inability of the present administration to effectively secure the nation and manage the nations resources. From that point, the story is well known. Such an argument cannot be viewed as lacking in merit particularly as the Muhammadu Buhari led administration has no excuse for not engineering prosperity lavishly promised in 2015. The situation becomes a crisis of the sort when one remembers that across the world; well known leaders in the past had upon assumption of office faced a more precarious situation than what President Buhari met on ground.

Yet, such leaders were able to turn around the fortune of their nation.

Take as illustration, in 1932, Franklin D Roosevelt, the Democratic Party candidate, United States of America was elected president in the midst of the great depression. At the time of inauguration in 1933, one-quarter of the labor force was out of a job, with many thrown into poverty. Industrial production had fallen and investments had collapsed.

But within two years of his administration, he revived the economy and moved to the next stage of his agenda. He signed the social security act which introduced the modern welfare state into the United States pension at retirement, unemployment benefits and some public health care and disability benefits. When asked how? he responded thus;extraordinary conditions call for extraordinary remedies

Obviously an alluring account, and a lesson that any leader desirous to serve and save his people must internalize, however, beyond this understanding, one can make a stronger case that the problem, failure/failings of the present administration in Nigeria was more related to the failure of followership than leadership.

People often dismiss such a line of thinking even when it is the truth. It is argued that there is always the relationship between cause and effect, especially in efficient causality. The relationship is a relationship of participation; the cause being the whole; the effect being the part. The causal efficiency is directly proportional to the substantial perfection.

The truth is that the inefficiency of this administration did not just start. It all started just immediately after the 2015 general elections. Despite this awareness of challenges/underperformance, Nigerians, against all known logic, during 2019, voted the administration for the second time.

So in my view, Nigerians are to a greater extent the architect of the current challenge in the country. Tragically unique is that presently, they (Nigerians) are both the victims/causality of such political miscalculation. So, one can understand why the current regret and shout of good old days by Nigerians qualify more as misplaced.

Just before you argue with me, this piece will clarify the above claim by examining the issues, challenges and failures recorded between May 2015  May 2019 that ordinarily should have acted as an emblematic pointer to Nigerians that there exists deeply troubling development if the administration is voted back to power.

Fundamentally, apart from the fact that the nations economy within the period under review(first term), and under President Buharis watch went into recession and unemployment/underemployment got to a galloping stage, our mind eyes tell us that President Muhammadu Buharis first tenure was neither impressive nor exemplary. Rather, it was wantonly characterized by insecurity, poor strategy for development, lack of focus on sectors that will improve the conditions of living of the people, such as education, health and agriculture. Consequently, this led to the affirmation of Nigeria as the world poverty capital, a development that analysts believe has its root in the administrations constant blame of others for failed projects and inability to live up to expectation.

It was equally obvious that within his first term in office, Mr. President did not grow a democracy that guarantees social justice and promotes social mobility or take action in the following areas: strengthening the economy, tackling insecurity, job creation, and development of the power sector and massive infrastructural development.

Again, it should be clear from the summary given above that, the inability of Mr. President to pick the right people as Minister and give them their rightful position, which of course is the first responsibility of a good leader, not only set the stage for the socioeconomic challenges currently bedeviling the nation but has finally become an unusually costly burden for Nigeria and Nigerians.

Yet, there exists another costly mistake that has finally brought the nation to its socioeconomic knees.

It is the fact that after going through, and observing with dissatisfaction Mr. Presidents not too impressive or better still, below average performance, between May 2015 and 2019, Nigerians against all known logic went ahead to have him re-elected for the second time in office.

More specifically, another event within Mr. Presidents first term in office that probably did more than anything else to convince Nigerians with critical interest to look differently at the out of ordered direction the administration was taking the country was Mr. President appointments/constitution of his cabinet. Aside from enjoying long gestation period, President Buhari, in making those appointments appeared to be unmindful of the fact that the first opinion that is formed of a leaders intelligence, according to Niccolo Machiavelli, is based on the quality of men he has around him. For when they are competent and loyal, he can always be considered wise, because he has been able to recognize their competence and to keep them loyal. But when they are otherwise, the ruler is always open to adverse criticism because his first mistake has been in the choice of his ministers.

Still on the appointment, the nations 1999 Constitution underscored the need to base all appointments on the provisions of Paragraph 8(1)(b)of Part 1 of the third schedule of the 1999 constitution, which among other provisions, clearly stipulate that the Federal Character Commission must ensure the equitable distribution of all appointments and positions at the federal levels among the federating units.

Despite the clarity of this provision, Nigerians with critical minds have observed with dismay a high magnitude of visible infringement. While recalling that any leader who disobeys the law becomes a threat to the constitution he swore to protect, they concluded that there has never been such brazen abuse of the principle as witnessed in this administration.

To avoid repetition of similar challenges in the future, particularly as the nation races toward another general election come 2023, I hold the opinion that Nigerians must recognize that at the minimum, followers needs to have/gain thorough understanding of their prospective leaders and his or her context. At intervals, they need to demand, commend or contradict their leaders goals and pressures his or her strengths and weaknesses. Evaluate his/her organizational and personal objectives; discover his/her long suits and blind spots, his preferred style of working; does he or she thrive on conflict or try to minimize it?

Definitely, without this information, there is bound to be unnecessary conflicts, misunderstandings, and other problems will be inevitable.
Struggling, survival, adaptation and many other synonymous terms are such that are not to be found wanting in the Nigerian lexicon. This is more so, when the plethora socio- economic challenges which continually stare us in the face are considered and placed on a weighing scale.

From the regular absence of basic amenities or social necessities (food, shelter and clothing) to the fear of marauders who utilise a myriad of methods to reap where they haven't sown by dispossessing citizens of their hard-earned currencies both day and night.

Take for instance, the last few weeks has seen almost every Nigerian complaining of one hardship or the other. From the increase in the prices of food stuffs to the upsurge in the price of cooking items (gas most especially). What about the proposed hike in the price of fuel which has made the prices of transport to be a triple of what it was aforetime.

The environment which is nature's free gift to humanity and which could have been a rescue factor by providing serenity is also challenging and has proved unfriendly due to the emergence of climate change, environmental pollution and other hazards which make out earth unsafe and unhabitable.

Robert Schuller's classic "TOUGH TIMES NEVER LAST BUT TOUGH PEOPLE DO" may only be a waste if it were turned into a sermon and preached to Nigerian congregants. It wouldn't be an assumption to conclude that the struggles of being born or living in Nigeria seem to be ad infinitum.

Even with a whopping population of over 150 million inhabitants and choicest resources which can be harnessed effectively and efficiently to make life meaningful and comfortable, it is still a wonder as to how Nigerians are being subjected to the rigour of surviving. What this has birthed is nothing but poverty, unemployment and the emergence of crime and other bestial ways which to be against the legal framework enshrined in the constitution.

Several factors could be said to be the reasons why the process of scaling through tough times especially in Nigeria seems to be both mountainous and unending.

In the first instance, there is the ever-widening gap between the rich and the poor. Even in infinitesimal matters such as the distribution of vaccines and empowerment items, it is evident that many a Nigerian elite prefer to amass wealth even if it will lose value in the future than giving it out to the poor and needy who can make profitable use of it in the present. Little wonder an ace philosopher in his lifetime elucidated the theory that the history of all hitherto existing societies is the history of class struggles.

Furthermore, the absence of a value based system of governance void of all imperfection and impurities also accounts for another reason. In saner climes, governance is an avenue to serve the society and not a method of making life unbearable for others as we have it in Nigeria.

What more can we say about our weak legal framework which in the real sense gives kudos to law breakers and offenders while ensuring that innocent citizens are charged for daring to follow the due process. Is this not evident as many of the Nigerian elite who are occupying enviable positions are people who have at one time of the other being charged for various allegations. What happens in the end? They are pronounced clean and even rewarded with positions.

Can we really predict the end of the struggle of the Nigerian citizen?

The answer to the above question is multifaceted and requires a collective approach and a deployment of various strategies and measures.

Firstly, the system must be purged if all irregularities. That is, everyone must get what he or she deserves and the law must take it full course irrespective of who is guilty or Innocent.

In further terms, leaders should ensure fairness and equity and a balanced approach to governance. This will make citizens enjoy the dividends of democracy and also give an unalloyed support to the government.

Citizens too must engage in profitable ventures not minding what it takes. This entails been patient and perseverant until the gains are reaped. After all, the period of waiting is always a difficult one not compared the period when one succeeds eventually.

Finally, there should be a reward for creativity and innovation from both the government and week meaning personalities. How beautiful will it be when the various discoveries made by scientists and technologists are adopted towards making our lives better rather than the inventors channelling the inventions abroad where they can be absorbed without much hassle.

Putting all the above into place and more others such as providing will bridge various gaps and will not make the chances of survival slim and impossible like we have always had.
Nigeria's national security adviser, Babagana Monguno, and the Director-General of the Department of State Services (DSS), Yusuf Bichi, have been sent to Sokoto and Katsina by President Muhammadu Buhari following the recent killings in the states.

Included in the delegation are Usman Alkali Baba, inspector-general of police (IGP), Ahmed Rufai Abubakar, director-general of the National Intelligence Agency (NIA), and Samuel Adebayo, chief of defence intelligence.

A total of 23 travellers were said to have been burnt to death when gunmen opened fire on a bus in Sokoto early in the week.

On Wednesday, Rabe Nasir, commissioner for science and technology in Katsina state, was killed at his residence.

In a statement on Friday, Garba Shehu, presidential spokesman, said Buhari is expecting a situation report and recommendations from the team.

President Muhammadu Buhari Friday dispatched a high-level delegation, made up of the heads of the nations intelligence and security services to Sokoto and Katsina States in response to the recent spike in bandit activities, the statement reads.

The president is expecting an immediate situation report and recommendations on actions to follow to effectively deal with the worrying situation.

This is coming barely 24 after the president inaugurated sophisticated Navy Ships, Patrol Boats, and a helicopter at the Naval Dockyard, Victoria Island in Lagos to boost security at the maritime borders.
As the incidence of human right violation and abuses across genders continue to increase, the National Human Rights Commission has urged partners in the fight to emphasize equality and dignity of all humans above gender bias.

The charge was given by the Coordinator of the National Human Rights Commission, Ebonyi State, Christopher Okorie, gave during a Road walk/ sensitization rally to commemorate the 2021 International Human Rights Day in Abakaliki.

The event was part of activities marking the grand finale of the 2021 16 days of Activism.

Okorie acknowledged that culture, religion and the distorted domestic/psychological feeling of male superiority has made Women and girls most vulnerable to violence and abuses.

He however, argued that all abuses has its root from the human philosophy of inequality between persons, irrespective of gender.

He insisted that the growing rate of inter and intra gender violence in the society: men against women, women against men; men against men and women against women, has necessitated greater emphasis on respect for human equality in general, rather than particular gender.

Okorie instanced that most domestic abuses meted to house helps, maids, step children and other domestic servants were championed by women on account of their self-perceived superiority over the victims.

He called on Security agencies, politicians, the wealthy and all those in privileged positions to avoid employing their positions to dehumanize others, insisting that all men were born equal, with equal dignity as humans.

Okorie noted: At the root of all human rights violation is inequality.

"When we think that the difference confers inequality: you are a man, I am a woman; I have money, you don't have money; I am a politician and you are not; a law enforcement agent and you are not, these differences makes one feel superior to the other.

"The essence of this road walk and awareness creation is to emphasize the dignity of the human person, and by virtue of our dignity, all human are one and equal.

"Based on that, we should treat others the way we want to be treated; let not the man abuse the woman nor the woman abuse the man."

Okorie decried that apart from abuses by security agencies with State actors keeping mute, gender based violence, specifically against women was statistically prevalent in Ebonyi State in the forms of rape, spousal battery, wife abandonment, violation of girls, among others.

"These are getting out of hand, and we need to carry out this campaign to stem the tide", he emphasized.

He encouraged all victims of human right abuses to report at the Commission's office at the Federal Secretariat, Nnorom Street Abakaliki, for necessary action.

Speaking to Journalists, the Director of the Nongovernmental Organisation, Human Rights and Conflict Resolution Centre, Ebonyi State, George Etamesor, expressed worry over the growing rate of brutality, intimidation and rights violation by the personnel of the Ebonyi State governnent's civilian security outfit, Ebubeagu.

He said: "Against my rational data judgement, I will say that the human rights situation in Ebonyi State is very poor.

"The only thing I always say is that there is hope.

"But as it stands today, human rights abuses is very prevalent.

"First of all, as we know, it is not only security agencies that participate in this.

"It is even among us, each abusing the other.

"But the one that is now more prevalently disturbing is that of this State Security Outfit, Ebubeagu.

"Theirs is just something else, probably because they are not trained."

In a statement, the Executive Secretary, National Human Rights Commission, Tony Ojukwu, SAN, urged all Nigerians to promote and practice respect for human rights and equality beginning from every little corner one finds himself.

Speaking on this year's theme: Equality  Reducing inequalities, Advancing Human Rights, Ojukwu noted that it speaks to the very foundational principle of human rights which is non discrimination or equality of treatment of all human beings irrespective of circumstances of birth, age, colour, gender, religion, political opinion, among other differences.

He observed that the theme also resonates in the theme for this year's 16 days of activism which is "Orange the world: End Violence against Women and girls now."

He explained that the commission, pursuant to its mandate of ensuring respect for human rights, has established its offices in the 36 States of the federation.

The Commission has also been involved in the training of security agencies as well as providing platform for victims of human rights abuses to find redress.

Ojukwu added: "The 16 days of activism theme: Orange the world, End Violence against Women and girls now equally compliments the advocacy for the protection of women and girls in particular against the backdrop that most of the violence have their roots in several discriminatory traditional and cultural practices in our societies.

"The focus of the Commissions advocacy to several stakeholders across the 36 states of the federation and Abuja where the Commission have presence, centers on the need to put in place the enabling environment devoid of discrimination, inequalities and violence to make the society a better place for all."

The road walk/sensitization rally was organised by the National Human Rights Commission, with the participation of over 30 NGOs/CSOs operating in the State: Youthub- Africa CIRRDOC, VOFCA, NIWA, SUCDEV, CHAD; Nancy Oko Onya Foundation, Development and Integrity Intervention goals foundation, Gracefield Development Initiative of Nigeria, among others.

There were also representatives from concerned government Ministries, Departments and Agencies, as well as the media.

International Human Rights day is observed November 10, every year.
To commemorate the 25th anniversary of Delphi on Feb 14, 2002 here is a transcript of an interview with Anders Hejlsberg, Chief Architect of Delphi conducted by .EXE Magazine editor Will Watts from 1995. Anders discusses the design and development of Delphi and the then forthcoming 32 bit version for Windows 95. This was the most detailed technical interview published about Delphi at the time.

Q. How did the idea for Delphi evolve from Turbo/Borland Pascal? At what stage did you decide to add the environment, database support etc?

A. The key idea was to design a tool that combines visual development environment, Client/Server database support, and a native code compiler. Before Delphi, you always had to make a choice. Do I go for the performance of a native code compiler, or the ease of use of a visual development environment? Do I go for a powerful object-oriented language, or a proprietary 4GL Client/Server tool? What programmers really want is all of the above, in one package. That's what we set out to do with Delphi.

What it really boils down to is productivity--we wanted to design a tool that would make developers more productive, all the way from prototype to production code. Other products lure you with visual tools, but once you get halfway through your project, they let you down because of sluggish performance, lack of extensibility, or general stability problems. The competition talks about adding extensibility and improving performance. That's a fundamental difference between their products and ours. Extensibility and performance was on the white-board the first day we started designing Delphi, and it permeates the entire product. For example, if you want to design a new component in Visual Basic, you have to write it in another language, such as C or C++ (or Delphi, for that matter). None of your VB skills can be reused, you have to learn a different language, and you can't easily inherit from any of the built-in components. Delphi, on the other hand, allows you to write new components in Delphi, and you can inherit from any of the built-in ones. That's true extensibility, and it translates into a substantial productivity boost.

Another key aspect of Delphi is its versatility. Other tools tend to focus either on Windows application development or on Client/Server development, and one always trades off the other. Delphi is equally adept at both, as is evident from the kinds of applications our customers are building. They range from shrink-wrap Windows utilities and multi-media games, through desktop database applications, and all the way up to multi-user enterprise-wide Client/Server solutions. The point is that almost any Windows application needs some form of database access, and any database application needs some form of Windows specific programming--to be productive, you need a tool that does both.

Delphi really leverages a lot of very mature database technology from Borland including ReportSmith, the Borland Database Engine, SQL Link native drivers for remove servers and the Local InterBase Server. Just the InterBase server alone is a tremendous technology that gives developers the ability to use full ANSI-92 SQL in their applications so they can begin exploring SQL and client/server development all on their local PC.

Q. You emphasise Delphi's versatility as an advantage, but surely it is also a drawback? If one needs to build a client/server application, PowerBuilder offers better CASE/database management facilities than Delphi.

A. There's an inherent advantage to being versatile. Look at the computer on my desktop. Do I need a dedicated word processor, a PC for my spreadsheets and a terminal with access to my customer records? No, I've got one PC that's versatile enough to do all these things.

A very large American retail chain--one of the largest--just standardized on Delphi over PowerBuilder precisely because their engineers can do 85% of all their work using Delphi versus 60% of their work using PowerBuilder. That saves them enormous amounts of money and complexity, including in ways you may not have considered. As an example, skills and techniques learned writing a small utility are directly applicable to client/server projects. A lot of today's programmers started out by writing those little command-line utilities in the good old days. It's a great way to experiment with and master the use of data structures, object-oriented techniques or learning about the Windows API. Consider, also, how using the same tool for a broad range of applications provides a company with a neat training path: Someone can start writing non-database programs and then gradually move onto projects dealing with valuable corporate data.

There's no end to the components and views you can add to Delphi. The population of programmers who can build components in Delphi is much larger than with any other tool on the market. We're back to the days when one programmer in one room can build and test something that can be used by tens of thousands of other people. Can you imagine what the

availability of specialized component sets will be like in six months? In a year?

I think the entire point of combining a component-based visual development environment with an object-oriented compiler and database technology is to make sure you never run out of gas. That's not a bug--it's a feature.

Q. If you want a quick and dirty hack, surely it makes sense to use Visual Basic, because everybody can use it without having to master a scary, complex language like Pascal. If you are doing multi-media or real time work, why mess around with a system which delivers slightly slower performance, and requires you to hand-translate all the header files for any DLLs you may need, when you could just use C++?

A. As we like to say, "It's not your father's Turbo Pascal any more". We made sure that the Object Pascal code you have to write is as easy as BASIC but without limitations.

We've taken great pains to make sure that when you're interacting with components, the code you write is as simple as possible--but no simpler. Many reviewers have remarked that they thought they were coding in Basic when they first started using Delphi. It's that easy. When they want to do something more interesting and start using the richness of the language, they usually start remembering how much they like Pascal.

In fact, I think you miss an essential advantage of Delphi. Anybody who has used a compiler--especially one that supports good type-checking--knows that a compiler is really a programmer's best friend. When it tells you it's probably not a good idea to take the square root of your Window caption, it's showing you a logic error in your code and saving you time. Is it an advantage that BASIC will perform automatic type conversions in that circumstance instead of giving you an error? I wish my spell checker program could complain about the logic of a paragraph I've written in the same way as our compiler warns you about illogical programming statements. Our 32-bit compiler goes even further and offers you all sorts of hints about problems it detects in your program. This kind of help is invaluable and one of the things that makes programming in Delphi very productive.

Q. What is the secret of Delphi's fast compile/link cycle?

A. Borland has over ten years of experience in building the world's fastest compilers, and we've put that knowledge to good use in Delphi- -it compiles at about 350,000 lines per minute on a 90 Mhz Pentium. A number of factors comtribute to this throughput. Delphi units (code modules) compile to .DCU files, which you can think of as a combination of a C++ precompiled header file and an .OBJ file. (It's funny how the hot topic in the C++ community is pre-compiled header files and incremental linking--Borland's Object Pascal technology has had these features for more than eight years.) Delphi units specify what other units they depend on through USES clauses--sort of like C++ #include's of header files. By analyzing the USES clauses of each unit in a project, the compiler can automatically perform minimal builds with no need for a make file. The net result is that the compiler never compiles more than it has to, and it never compiles the same thing more than once. Finally, the clean syntax of Object Pascal allows for very fast parsing.

Q. Is the compiler engine itself written in Delphi? How much does it differ from the Borland Pascal 7 compiler?

A. The compiler is written in assembly language. It is fully backwards compatible with BP7, and we've added lots of object-oriented extensions such as class references, virtual constructors, and the IS and AS operators. We did a lot of work to enable declaring, registering and filing properties and we generate run-time type information that's used to communicate published property, event and method information to the development environment. You'll see some interesting applications of that capability in our 32-bit release. One very unique enhancement was our use of bound method instance pointers to implement event delegation. They're very efficient and fit nicely into the language. And of course we did a lot of work to add structured exception handling. In addition, there are lots of little niceties that people have requested, such as support for C calling conventions.

Q. Delphi implements objects in a manner similar to Apple's Object Pascal, with all objects allocated on the heap. Previous versions of Turbo/Borland Pascal used a more C++ like approach, with the ability to alocate objects on the stack and statically. Can you explain the reasoning behind this change in approach?

A. It really is a question of features vs. complexity. The philosophy of Delphi's Object Pascal language is to deliver the RIGHT set of language features, as opposed to any language feature ever known to mankind. It's the well known 80/20 rule: You can get 80% of the power for 20% of the complexity, but squeezing out that last 20% of power makes the whole thing five times as complex to program. Mixing static and dynamic allocation of objects is one of those features that fall into the latter group. By implementing a pure reference model we were able to simplify the entire Delphi component library, and do away with a lot of the pointer management that plagues other products. Even though Delphi objects are allocated on the heap, in a typical Delphi application you never have to deal with allocating and freeing them.

Q. I find this answer quite surprising and counter-intuitive. You had already implemented mixed static/dynamic allocation, and therefore presumably cracked the problems involved, so why go to the trouble to revert to the Apple Object Pascal approach which you had initially rejected? Is, say, a stack allocated object, with constructors and destructors automatically called as the thing moves in and out of scope, really more complex than a heap allocated object, where you must make special provision to kill the thing off at the end of its life? I would have thought that the fact that the component library *mostly* frees objects automatically but *sometimes* doesn't would tend to add to rather than reduce the application programmer's burden. Also, the change in model must confuse both existing BP programmers and also migrating C++ users.

A. Again, we didn't revert to anything because we really started with a clean slate. Our class reference model is sufficiently powerful and flexible, so having only one sort of class is actually an advantage. Once you give someone two ways to do the same thing, you have made your product less usable and you have to now help them understand when to use a statically allocated class versus a dynamically allocated one. We're quite happy with the choice we've made. It's simple to understand, efficient, and allows us to add garbage collection in some future release. And, of course, if you've got old code from BP7 that uses old style objects, you can still compile it from within Delphi.

Q. Exception-handling - what were the major influences on your design?

A. We looked at a number of languages and implementations, and were most influenced by C++ and Modula-3. Delphi is like C++ in that exceptions are classes, but more like Modula-3 in terms of the supporting language constructs.

Exceptions are a quiet revolution--they truly simplify the way you write code. For the most part you can write your code as if errors will never occur, instead of spending the bulk of your time trying to determine if an error occurred, and if so, how best to clean up and back out of what you were doing. Delphi's Visual Component Library was designed from the ground up with exception handling built in, and that is a large part of the reason why Delphi and applications written in Delphi are so fault tolerant. One of my favorite demos is a little two-liner that, on the click of a button, assigns NIL to a pointer, and then dereferences the pointer. Each time you click the button, Delphi reports that a General Protection Fault exception has occurred, but because of the built-in exception handling logic, the app keeps running instead of bringing itself down.

Q. I'd like to draw you out a bit to expand the answer above with a few specifics.

A. As in C++, an exception in Delphi is simply a class, which means you can take advantage of the inheritance mechanism to handle whole sets of exceptions easily. For example, Delphi declares the following classes which deal with floating-point exceptions:

type

EMathError = class(Exception);

EInvalidOp = class(EMathError);

EZeroDivide = class(EMathError);

EOverflow = class(EMathError);

EUnderflow = class(EMathError);

As you can see, EMathError is the ancestor of the other exceptions. Here's an example of a TRY..EXCEPT statement that handles floating-point exceptions

try

PerformCalculations;

except

on EZeroDivide do ...;

on EMathError do ...;

end;

If the PerformCalculations procedure raises an EZeroDivide exception, it is handled by the first handler. If it raises any other EMathError exception, the second handler takes care of it. Since there is no ELSE clause, no other exceptions are handled--they are instead propagated to an enclosing exception handler.

Q. Delphi's ability to handle GP faults is indeed one of it's neatest tricks. Was it difficult to implement?

A. It wasn't too bad, but it did take some nitfy use of TOOLHELP.DLL which implements the Windows low-level system tools interface. We basically register an interrupt callback function which maps processor faults into Delphi exceptions. The reason that it all works, though, is that VCL was engineered from the ground up to be exception aware. Because

of that, when a GP fault occurs and is mapped into an exception, the operation that was in progress will automatically know how to back out and clean itself up.

Q. Can we expect any other major syntax additions/changes, for example Eiffel style assertions?

A. We're always evaluating new language features, and surely there will be some in the upcoming 32-bit version. I'd rather not get into specifics, but as a rule, we don't really think about language extensions in the abstract. Instead we look at the language as part of a bigger picture (class library, component model, visual environment) that must evolve as a whole to support new technologies and improve ease of use.

Q. Can you give Delphi programmer's any guidance on how best to write applications that will be portable to the 32-bit version of Delphi? The new "Cardinal" data type has arrived almost completely unnoticed. Are there any other issues we should be aware of?

A. Delphi's Visual Component Library was designed with portability in mind. As long as you stay away from in-line assembler, 16-bit pointer atrithmetic, and Windows 3.1 API functions which aren't supported in the Win32 API, your apps should port with little or no modification.

The Cardinal and Smallint types were introduced to facilitate portable code. Of the built-in types, Shortint, Smallint, Longint, Byte, and Word have identical representations in 16- and 32-bit code. The Integer and Cardinal types, on the other hand, represent the most efficient signed and unsigned integer types of the particular platform. In the 16-bit version they are 16-bit entities, and in the 32-bit version they are 32-bit entities. In general, you should use Integer and Cardinal whenever possible, and Shortint, Smallint, Longint, Byte, and Word only when the exact storage representation matters.

Any 64K limitations found in the 16-bit version will disappear in the 32-bit version. For example, the 32-bit version allows you to declare arrays and allocate heap blocks of any size up to 4GB!

Q. What is the current state of the 32-bit version? Will it support 16-bit VBXs, like BC++? Delphi 16-bit code runs somewhat slower than C++ - are you doing anything about this for the 32-bit version?

A. Delphi was written to be portable--we've been working on the 16- and 32-bit versions in parallel since day one. The 32-bit version is in field test now, and it will ship shortly after the commercial release of Windows 95. Yes, there is a foundation of 32-bit VBX support technology available in-house, but our primary focus is OCX controls. That's what the competition is working on, and that's where we see the market going. With respect to better code generation, Delphi-32 generates the same high-quality code as Borland C++ 4.5--in fact, they use the same optimizing back-end code generator.

Q. Are there any plans for Borland produced or badged add-ons for Delphi, in addition to the Visual Solutions Pack?

A. We just released the RAD Pack for Delphi, which includes Turbo Debugger for Windows, Resource Workshop, the Resource Expert, Visual Component Library source code, the--much requested--Language Reference Manual, and Visual Solutions Pack 1.1. We did have some quality problems with the initial release of VSP, but those have been resolved, and we now have a Companion Products group to provide Borland-quality add-ons, such as Notes support for Delphi programmers and other often requested components.

Q. Delphi is a terrific tool for rapidly developing state of the art software, but a number of shareware authors have expressed a wish that executables could be made smaller. Is it technically feasible to create a DLL-based version of VCL? Surely this must be possible since COMPLIB is a DLL which is used by the Delphi design environment?

A. It's something we're looking at, and certainly some of the 16-bit complexities with respect to multiple DLL clients are gone in 32-bit land. At this point I can't really comment on specific solutions, other than to say that we're actively looking at ways to make our executables even smaller.

Q. A long-standing and major criticism of Borland Pascal is the proprietary nature of the object file format. It's appreciated that going to the OBJ file format would be a retrograde step, but why won't Borland at least document the file format? That way, developers can create their own tools such as disassemblers, C to Pascal linkers and so forth. Again, it's understood that the file format changes with each release of the compiler, but documenting the changes with each new version would enable other developers to create conversion tools even if Borland don't want to do this. At the moment, if you don't have the source code, all your units become useless each time the compiler is updated.

A. We're well aware of these issues, and the 32-bit version will address them in a number of ways. What I can tell you at this point is that the 32-bit compiler has an option to produce

.OBJ files, which can be linked with .OBJ files produced by other compilers.

Q. A related issue: the move to Windows has diluted the importance of the OBJ issue, because you can now call DLLs. But the Delphi user has still to translate the (typically) C/C++ headers into Delphi import units, an exercise which is at best tedious and time consuming and, if you happen not to have had C++ experience, quite hard. It's the sort of job best left to a machine. Given that Borland has a lot of C++ parsing expertise lying around on the ground, have there ever been any plans to create such a tool?

A. Well, I'm not sure which C/C++ headers you're talking about.

We've already translated all the Windows and OLE 2 API header files, and corresponding interface units are included with Delphi. But you're right, if you have a 3rd party DLL that was previously only interfaced to C/C++, somebody will have to do the translation. Usually, it's not that bad and I think you'll see an increasing number of vendors providing Delphi interface files for their DLLs. Also, I think you'll see more and more products take advantage of the OLE 2 ITypeLib and ITypeInfo interfaces, and we'll provide a tool that takes that information and produces a Delphi interface unit.

Q. The ability to create a single EXE for redistribution is very attractive, but somewhat spoilt by the need to include the BDE with database applications, even if they only want to access the odd DBF. Any plans to clean this up?

A. We're working with several third parties, including SAX Software, Eschelon Development, Sterling Software, Great Lakes Software, and Shoreline Software. They have, or will soon have, products to help you deploy your Delphi database applications. In addition, we're making a deployment kit available, via CompuServe and Internet.

Q. Also on data access: is it possible to modify/inherit from the data access controls to provide, for example, 'native' access to FoxPro/Clipper databases? If so, are any such products being developed by Borland or Third Parties?

A. I know of several Third Parties working on native access to FoxPro/Clipper as well as B-Trieve. Some of them are in beta at this point. You can contact them for additional information on the DELPHI CompuServe forum or find out about them in the Delphi "Power Tools" catalog.

Just to clarify: Sax, Eschalon, Sterling etc do install/setup tools that work with Delphi and the Borland Database Engine. There are other companies creating components that provide direct access to BTrieve, Fox, and other database formats.

Q. What is Delphi's main niche in the developer tools market? Compared with, say, Visual Basic, PowerBuilder and C++?

A. Delphi is a general purpose Windows RAD (Rapid Application Development) tool. The point is that Delphi is NOT a niche tool. From the onset, we've designed Delphi to be able to take you from prototype to production, be that whether you're targetting a Client/Server environment or just writing a Windows application. I hear our competitors say that you can use their tool for rapid prototyping, and then port your app to C++ for production. But you know, rapid application development isn't really rapid unless you can go from prototype to production, all using the same tool! I also hear how competing products will address performance issues by generating C or C++ source code. This idea of building the application with one tool, and then having it generate C or C++ source files that have to be run through another tool, is ludicrous. How are you expected to debug the final code? Requiring users to find bugs in machine generated C++ code, and understand how that maps to the original 4GL code, just doesn't make sense. We've been shipping development environments with integrated compilers for 12 years--I think the time is gone when programmers would accept anything else.

Q. How have Borland's recent troubles affected Delphi's development and its take-up? Was the absence of a Language Reference Manual in the initial product a consequence of these troubles? (You had to mention the Language Reference Manual? My mistake, I'm sorry! --Zack)

A. In the two years we were developing Delphi, the company did go through some difficult times. That was all resolved before we shipped. Now the entire company is focused on development tools, we've won the Lotus lawsuit, we've launched Delphi and Delphi Client/Server worldwide, and both products continue to sell well above expectations. In fact, I understand that Gray Matter reports that Delphi is the #1 selling development tool in the UK. The Delphi development team is 100% intact, and focused on Delphi for Windows 95.

We really underestimated the demand for the Language Reference Manual. (You're telling me! --Zack) It will be included in Delphi for Windows 95. Meanwhile, we've made good by uploading an Adobe Acrobat version to CompuServe and our WWW page, and a printed version is now also available from Borland.

Q. We are all pleased you resisted the opportunity to christen a product Power Visual Turbo Pascal Objects for Windows - but how did it come to be called `Delphi'?

A. We actually tried to call it "Power Visual Turbo Pascal Objects for Windows", but that name was already trademarked :-). One of the senior guys in QA (Danny Thorpe) dreamed up Delphi as a code name quite early on, and everytime we did a market survey of product name candidates, everyone said "well, those are ok, but we really like `Delphi'". So in the end, we kept it.

Q. Which part of Delphi are you most proud of? ... and which part least?

A. The thing I'm the least proud of is probably the initial lack of a Language Reference Manual. But that's taken care of now. (Dammit, I said I was sorry already! --Zack)

What I'm most proud of is the fact that the energy we invested in foundation technologies like extensibility and exception handling enabled us to build Delphi in itself. Can

you imagine VB or PowerBuilder written in themselves? By building Delphi in Delphi, we really got to feel on our own bodies what was right about the product, and what needed fixing. I sometimes hear frustrated users comment "The programmers that wrote this %&##$ thing should be forced to use it themselves!". Well, we did, and we're really proud of the result.

-------- CHRONOLOGY --------

1960 Anders born in Copenhagen, Denmark.

Anders born in Copenhagen, Denmark. 1979 Enrolls at the Danish Engineering Academy. Co-founds PolyData, one of the first Danish microcomputer companies.

Enrolls at the Danish Engineering Academy. Co-founds PolyData, one of the first Danish microcomputer companies. 1980 Releases his first Pascal compiler--a 12K Pascal subset in ROM for the British NASCOM Z-80 based kit computer. Eventually sells the rights to this product to Lucas Logic.

Releases his first Pascal compiler--a 12K Pascal subset in ROM for the British NASCOM Z-80 based kit computer. Eventually sells the rights to this product to Lucas Logic. 1982 PolyPascal for CP/M-80 released. Product is now a complete implementation of the Pascal language.

PolyPascal for CP/M-80 released. Product is now a complete implementation of the Pascal language. 1983 Sells the Borland founders (Niels Alex Jensen, Ole Henriksen, Mogens Glad, and Philippe Kahn) on the idea of a Pascal compiler with an integrated editor. In November releases Turbo Pascal 1.0 for CP/M-80, CP/M-86, and MS-DOS. The newly formed Borland company, essentially penniless, places an advert for Turbo Pascal in Byte, bluffing the Byte Ad executives into giving them credit. The compiler is priced at $49.95 and is an instant smash hit.

Sells the Borland founders (Niels Alex Jensen, Ole Henriksen, Mogens Glad, and Philippe Kahn) on the idea of a Pascal compiler with an integrated editor. In November releases Turbo Pascal 1.0 for CP/M-80, CP/M-86, and MS-DOS. The newly formed Borland company, essentially penniless, places an advert for Turbo Pascal in Byte, bluffing the Byte Ad executives into giving them credit. The compiler is priced at $49.95 and is an instant smash hit. 1986 Turbo Pascal 4.0 released, featuring an Integrated Devlopment Environment--the first of its kind for the PC environment--and introducing modular compilation (previously Turbo Pascal programs had to be compiled all in one go and could be no larger than 64K unless overlays were used). CP/M support is dropped.

Turbo Pascal 4.0 released, featuring an Integrated Devlopment Environment--the first of its kind for the PC environment--and introducing modular compilation (previously Turbo Pascal programs had to be compiled all in one go and could be no larger than 64K unless overlays were used). CP/M support is dropped. 1988 Turbo Pascal 5.0 released, featuring integrated debugging and VROOMM (Virtual Runtime Object Oriented Memory Manager) overlay management technology.

Turbo Pascal 5.0 released, featuring integrated debugging and VROOMM (Virtual Runtime Object Oriented Memory Manager) overlay management technology. 1989 In response to Microsoft's object oriented QuickPascal, Borland releases Turbo Pascal 5.5, which has its own OOP extensions. Microsoft later drops QuickPascal from its product line.

In response to Microsoft's object oriented QuickPascal, Borland releases Turbo Pascal 5.5, which has its own OOP extensions. Microsoft later drops QuickPascal from its product line. 1990 Turbo Pascal 6.0 features a new, much improved Integrated Development Environment, and includes the Turbo Vision object-oriented application framework.

Turbo Pascal 6.0 features a new, much improved Integrated Development Environment, and includes the Turbo Vision object-oriented application framework. 1991 First release of Turbo Pascal for Windows. Features a Windows hosted IDE and the ObjectWindows Library (also known as OWL).

First release of Turbo Pascal for Windows. Features a Windows hosted IDE and the ObjectWindows Library (also known as OWL). 1992 Borland Pascal 7.0 includes both a DOS and a Windows hosted IDE, and allows developers to target DOS, DOS Protected Mode, and Windows.

Borland Pascal 7.0 includes both a DOS and a Windows hosted IDE, and allows developers to target DOS, DOS Protected Mode, and Windows. 1995 Delphi and Delphi Client/Server released on schedule on February 14th.

--------

This interview originally appeared in EXE, the UK's leading programming magazine. If someone can send me a .EXE cover or logo, that is appreciated!

Thanks to Ben Riga for sending it to me. Thanks for also not mentioning the Language Reference Manual.
NACC rejects petition for ethics probe of Thamanat

BANGKOK: The National AntiCorruption Commission (NACC) on Thursday (Dec 9) rejected a petition by the Move Forward Party (MFP) calling for a probe into the ethical conduct of Thamanat Prompow over his narcotics conviction in Australia.

politicscorruptioncrime

By Bangkok Post

Friday 10 December 2021, 09:37AM

Thamanat Prompow. Photo: Bangkok Post

NACC secretary-general Niwatchai Kasemmongkol said the inquiry panel looking into the petition decided to reject it, reports the Bangkok Post.

Mr Niwatchai said the decision was made based on the Constitutional Courts ruling on May 5 that Capt Thamanat, a Palang Pracharath Party (PPRP) MP for Phayao and former deputy agriculture and cooperatives minister, was eligible to hold his MP and ministerial positions despite having served four years in an Australian prison.

Reservations were expressed by the public when the story of his incarceration in 1993 for a drug offence first broke. The ruling was in response to a petition submitted by 51 MFP lawmakers over his Cabinet appointment.

In its ruling, the court said that for a jail sentence to affect Capt Thamanats positions under the constitution, it must be handed down by a Thai court, not a foreign one.

Mr Niwatchai also said the case took place before Capt Thamanat held the positions and before the code of ethics took effect. A probe into ethical conduct can be launched only when an MP or Cabinet minister violates the code of ethics while in office, he said.

Any action committed by an MP or minister before they took office does not warrant an inquiry, Mr Nitwatchai said.
Phuket named least corrupt province in the country

PHUKET: Phuket has been named the least corrupt province in the country in a national annual assessment of government agencies by the National anti-Corruption Commission (NACC).

corruption

By The Phuket News

Friday 10 December 2021, 01:37PM

Suksan Prasara-ae, Director of the NACC office in Phuket, presented a plaque commemorating the accolade to Phuket Vice Governor Piyawong Choowong at a meeting held at Phuket Provincial Hall yesterday (Dec 9), marking International Anti-Corruption Day.

In total, Phukets provincial assessment score was 94.06 points. Which is the highest average score in the country, Mr Suksan said yesterday.

In this years assessment, Phuket pipped Nakhon Sawan to the top spot. Lopburi ranked third. Phang Nga ranked ninth. Krabi did not make the top 15.

Last year, Phuket ranked 25th in the national assessment, Mr Suksan noted.

The achievement marked Phuket being awarded AA (double A) status under International Transparency Assessment (ITA) guidelines, after assessment of integrity and transparency in the operation of government agencies, Mr Suksan explained.

He highlighted seven local government bodies for their contribution to Phuket receiving the award: Phuket City Municipality, Cherng Talay Municipality, Koh Kaew Municipality, Wichit Municipality, Pa Khlok Municipality, Thepkrasattri Tambon Administrative Organization (OrBortor) and Patong Municipality.

After receiving the award on behalf of the province, Vice Governor Piyapong presided over a declaration of intent to combat corruption and announced a no-gift policy, or a gift for performing duties, and reminded the officials present of the policy for government officials in the Phuket area to act with integrity .

As part of the proceedings the officials present were shown a video of Prime Minister and Minister of Defense Gen Prayut Chan-o-cha making the same declaration of intent to mark

International Anti-Corruption Day, this year observed in Thailand under the theme, Dont do it, dont tolerate it, dont ignore it, join Thais against cheating.

At the meeting yesterday Phuket was also announced as one of 11 provinces under a pilot project to encourage public participation in the fight against corruption.

Present to make the announcement were Pracha Terat, Chairperson of the Office of the Public Sector Anti-Corruption Commission (PACC) Subcommittee on Strengthening and Enhancing Civil Society Participation, and Tossaporn Ratanamasthip, of the Royal Thai Armed Forces National Defence Studies Institute.

The other provinces involved in the pilot project were Saraburi, Amnat Charoen, Chiang Mai, Chonburi, Samut Prakan, Buriram, Nakhon Sawan, Prachuap Khiri Khan, Chumphon and Trat, Mr Pracha explained.

The campaign is part of the national reform activities combined under the governments Big Rock platform, Mr Pracha said.

The meeting was then called a workshop to support and drive public participation in anti-corruption through which the PACC is working together with the Anti-Corruption Organization of Thailand (ACT) and the Phuket Provincial Anti-Corruption Action Center, Mr Pracha added.

This forum was organized to be a forum for exchanging information on the situation of Phuket in related matters, such as the results of the assessment of integrity and transparency in the operation of government agencies [the ITA Awards], and the implementation of related policies and measures on the prevention and suppression of corruption of government agencies, he said.

Public participation in surveillance and recommendations on the mission of government agencies according to the principles of good city management service helps network partners to promote good governance against corruption and support the work of the provincial community organizations, Mr Pracha noted.

It also showcases the origins and importance of Big Rock, promoting public participation in the fight against corruption under the revised national reform plan the prevention and suppression of corruption and misconduct, he said.
Root and Malan lead England fightback in first Ashes Test

CRICKET: Joe Root and Dawid Malan batted through the final session to give England some hope of salvaging a draw in the opening Ashes Test against Australia at the Gabba today (Dec 10).

Cricket

By AFP

Friday 10 December 2021, 03:30PM

Englands Dawid Malan (left) and Joe Root react at the end of play during day three of the first Ashes cricket Test match between England and Australia at the Gabba in Brisbane today (Dec 10). Photo: AFP

England were 220-2 at the close of play, with skipper Root on 86 and Malan 80, only 58 runs behind Australia after starting their second innings 278 runs in arrears.

After England lost both openers in the session before tea, Root and Malan looked increasingly comfortable on the third day Gabba pitch as they steadily wore down the Australian attack.

Roots 86 not out is one short of his highest score in Australia and took him past 1500 - 1541 - runs in a calendar year, the most ever by an Englishman, surpassing Michael Vaughans 1481 in 2002.

He barely offered a chance in his innings, stroking 10 boundaries, including a sublime reverse sweep off spinner Nathan Lyon.

Lyon, still searching for his 400th Test wicket, never looked like breaking through against the English batters.

The South African-born Malan scored his only Test century on the last tour of Australia and although not as comfortable as his captain, he also looked in control for most of his innings.

He did struggle with fatigue towards the close, however, and at one stage went down with cramp.

Earlier, Travis Head scored a superb 152 to put Australia in what seemed a commanding position after their first innings.

Australia were finally dismissed for 425 today, 30 minutes before lunch, a handsome lead of 278.

England then survived a tricky period and went to lunch 23 for no wicket.

Rory Burns, who was out first ball of the series on Wednesday when clean-bowled by Mitchell Starc, was lucky to survive the dreaded pair when he was adjudged leg-before wicket on Starcs sixth ball of the first over today.

But after reviewing the decision, replays showed the ball was just missing the top of middle stump, and a relieved Burns survived.

But he didnt last long after lunch and gloved a ball to wicketkeeper Alex Carey off Australian captain Pat Cummins.

Haseeb Hameed looked in great touch and eased to 27, but he tried to glance a wide ball from Starc, only to get a faint touch to Carey.

Superb Head

Head, who was controversially selected for the Test ahead of Usman Khawaja, played a magnificent hand.

Coming in with the score at 189-3, Head then saw David Warner and Cameron Green fall in consecutive balls as England tried to stage a fightback.

But Head refused to be tied down and launched a brilliant counterattack, being particularly harsh on Englands left-arm spinner Jack Leach.

After blasting the third-fastest century in Ashes history in the final session yesterday, Head carried on where he left off this morning, flashing at anything wide and attacking Leach anew.

Head played and missed a number of times, but was rewarded for his stroke play, his 152 coming from only 148 balls, including four massive sixes and 14 boundaries.

Head brought up his 150 with a pullshot through square leg off Leach, whose Test future must surely be in doubt after going for 102 runs in his 13 overs.

England, who scored only 147 runs in their first innings, didnt help their cause with three dropped catches in the session.

Chris Woakes put down a caught-and-bowled chance, wicketkeeper Jos Buttler couldnt handle a tough caught behind off Mark Wood and Hameed grassed a chance in the deep, also off Woods bowling.

Wood was rewarded for his consistent high pace, taking 3-85, including the wicket of Head, while Ollie Robinson was the most dangerous of the English bowlers with 3-58.

Woakes rounded out a decent effort from the three seamers with figures of 2-76.
Tests confirm three national Omicron cases

BANGKOK: The Department of Medical Sciences (DMS) yesterday (Dec 90 confirmed three cases of the Omicron COVID-19 variant and was monitoring another possible infection involving a Thai United Nations official recently returned from a mission to the Democratic Republic of Congo.

CoronavirusCOVID-19healthVaccine

By Bangkok Post

Friday 10 December 2021, 09:40AM

A quiet Suvarnabhumi Airport. Photo: Somchai Poomlard

DMS chief, Supakit Sirilak, said the cases were confirmed to be the Omicron variant after the department carried out full genome sequencing of the patients samples, reports the Bangkok Post.

They include a sample provided by Thailands first Omicron infection case, a 35-year-old American businessman who tested positive after arriving from Spain, as well as those from 46-year-old and 36-year-old Thai women who returned from Nigeria.

Their infections were suspected to be caused by the Omicron variant after initial tests, which was then confirmed by full genomic testing, Dr Supakit said.

He said authorities also will carry out genomic sequencing of the sample provided by the UN official who returned from DR Congo, explaining the sample had only arrived late on Monday evening.

The patient, Dr Supakit said, had completed his vaccination shots with the AstraZeneca vaccine. He is now being treated at a hospital, as he displayed mild COVID-19 symptoms.

There is a high possibility that he will be Thailands fourth confirmed case [of the Omicron variant], he said.

As more cases of the Omicron variant are expected, authorities are considering doing away with full genomic sequencing to confirm Omicron infections. Dr Supakit said the move will save precious time, which will be needed when the number of cases begins to rise.

He also played down public fears about the new variant, saying that there have been no local infections reported inside the country.

However, he said the main focus right now should be on the illegal movement of migrant workers across the borders, for which extreme caution should be taken to prevent people smuggling.

Responding to reports about another genetic mutation that enables the COVID-19 virus to evade existing tests, Dr Supakit said current testing regimes are still sufficient.

The DMS will look for five specific mutations to determine if the sample being tested is infected by the Omicron and/or other novel variants, namely HV69-70deletion, K417N, L452R, T478K and N501Y, Dr Supakit said.

Anyway, as with any strain, universal prevention is still important to prevent infections, he added.

Since Nov 1, the DMS has subjected 1,641 samples to a full genomic testing - 1,546 local samples and 95 from tourists - to screen for the Omicron variant, all but three have been confirmed to be the Delta variant.

The department is also planning to conduct mass immunity testing, which is expected to happen as soon as possible, the DMS chief said.
Southern Pines, NC (28387)

Today

Cloudy skies this morning will become partly cloudy this afternoon. High 56F. Winds WSW at 5 to 10 mph..

Tonight

A few passing clouds. Low 33F. Winds light and variable.
Crews remove standing water in Saint Laurent after last Mondays storm. Make sure your rain gutters and sewers are clear as another 25mm of precipitation is on the way for Montreal over the next 24 hours. Freezing rain overnight will change to rain on Saturday in Montreal as temperatures soar to over 10C (50F). (ValleyWeather Photo)
WAYCROSS, Ga. (AP)  For years, migrant workers who paid for help entering the U.S. ended up forced to perform farm labor for little to no pay, federal authorities say, cowing to threats of deportation and violence by armed overseers while they lived in dirty, cramped trailers with little food or clean water.

Some who had been promised up to $12 an hour to work on farms in rural South Georgia were instead ordered to dig up onions with their bare hands and got paid only 20 cents per filled bucket as men with guns kept them in check, according to court records. At least two of them died, and another was raped repeatedly.

In a case federal prosecutors bluntly likened to modern slavery, a grand jury indicted 24 people in U.S. District Court on dozens of criminal counts including forced labor, mail fraud, witness tampering and conspiracy to commit money laundering. Arraignments in the case have been scheduled for Dec. 21 and Jan. 6 at the federal courthouse in Waycross, near the Georgia-Florida state line.

Authorities said an investigation that began three years ago broke up a criminal enterprise that earned $200 million by exploiting the H-2A work visa program to bring workers from Mexico, Guatemala, and Honduras into the U.S.

The laborers were forced to pay illegal fees for transportation, food and housing, according to the indictment, while their travel and identification documents were withheld, preventing them from leaving and seeking help.

U.S. Attorney David Estes of the Southern District of Georgia said in a statement the case had freed "more than 100 individuals from the shackles of modern-day slavery and will hold accountable those who put them in chains.

A federal grand jury in Waycross indicted the two dozen defendants in October. It was made public only after a judge unsealed the document in late November.

Since at least 2015, the indictment says, the defendants used H-2A visa applications to bring dozens of migrant workers into the U.S. as agricultural workers. The federal program requires that workers be paid a fair wage  often $10 to $12 an hour  and reimbursed for expenses involving travel to and from the U.S., food and lodging.

Instead, prosecutors said, the defendants kept most of the money the workers were owed. They laundered their profits by using cash to buy land, homes and more than a dozen vehicles, as well as purchasing a restaurant and night club. Millions got laundered through casinos, according to the indictment.

Estes credited more than 200 law enforcement officers and federal agents with working on the case, which focused on rural Atkinson, Bacon, Coffee, Tattnall, Toombs and Ware counties.
MIAMI (AP)  A senior U.S. diplomat quietly traveled to Venezuela this week and met with imprisoned Americans as part of an ongoing effort to secure release of men the Biden administration believes are being held as bargaining chips by a top U.S. adversary, The Associated Press has learned.

Roger Carstens, the special presidential envoy for hostage affairs and the government's top hostage negotiator, arrived in Caracas on a chartered flight Tuesday evening and returned home Friday in a previously unreported visit.

It's not clear who in the heavily sanctioned socialist administration of President Nicolas Maduro he met.

But It was the first known face-to-face outreach by a top U.S. official since the Trump administration shuttered the American Embassy in Caracas in March 2019 after recognizing opposition leader Juan Guaido as Venezuelas legitimate leader. Ever since, relations between the two countries have grown steadily more hostile, with the U.S. government imposing strict oil sanctions on the country and targeting top officials with criminal indictments, something Maduro has likened to a soft coup.

It was a good thing to see the guys, to show them that their government cares. It was also positive to report back to their families that I had seen them, Carstens told the AP, adding that he was grateful to Maduro's aides for inviting him down for what he described as a wellness check.

The timing of the visit is likely to raise eyebrows, coming on the heels of gubernatorial elections considered deeply undemocratic by the Biden administration after numerous opposition candidates were barred from running.

Fearful of the voice and vote of Venezuelans, the regime grossly skewed the process to determine the result of this election long before any ballots had been cast, the State Department said after the Nov. 21 vote.

The Maduro government, which in the past hasn't hesitated to publicize peacemaking missions by prominent American interlocutors, has kept mum about the surprise visit. Carstens confirmed the visit late Friday afternoon.

During his visit, he was permitted to check on a group of six American oil executives held in Caracas infamous El Helicoide prison, a one-time modernist shopping mall converted into a facility housing the governments top opponents.

One person familiar with the visit described Carstens jailhouse meeting with the six executives from Houston-based Citgo, which lasted about 90 minutes, as highly emotional. Carstens told the prisoners he had discussed their case with Maduro government officials while in Caracas but declined to say whom.

The person and several others with knowledge of the meeting spoke on condition of anonymity to AP because they were not authorized to discuss Carstens' travels.

Tomeu Vadell, Jose Luis Zambrano, Alirio Zambrano, Jorge Toledo, Gustavo Cardenas and Jose Pereira were hauled away in 2017 by masked security agents who stormed into a Caracas conference room. The men had been lured to Venezuela just before Thanksgiving of that year to attend a meeting at the headquarters of the companys parent, state-run oil giant PDVSA.

The six were convicted of embezzlement last year in a trial marred by delays and irregularities. They were sentenced to between 8 and 13 years in prison for a never-executed proposal to refinance billions of dollars in the oil companys bonds. Maduro at the time accused them of treason. They all pleaded not guilty and the U.S. considers them to be wrongfully detained.

After having been granted house arrest, they were swiftly thrown back in jail Oct. 16, 2021, the same day that a close ally of Maduro was extradited by the African nation of Cape Verde to the U.S. to face money laundering charges.

While at El Helicoide prison, Carstens also met with Luke Denman and Airan Berry  two former Green Berets arrested in connection with a failed raid aimed at toppling Maduro that was staged from Colombia. He also conducted a wellness check with former U.S. Marine Matthew Heath, who is being held at a separate facility on unrelated allegations.

The visit came just weeks after family members of the Americans jailed in Venezuela, and other relatives of hostages and detainees, complained in a letter to the Biden administration that they felt the releases of their loved ones werent being sufficiently prioritized.

John Pereira, the son of Jose Pereira, who weeks ago was rushed to a private clinic for emergency treatment for a cardiac condition, told the AP at the time that our feeling is that they can do more.

President Joe Biden has so far been less public on the issue of hostage affairs than his predecessor, Donald Trump, who scored several high-profile releases around the world over four years, giving officials great leeway to pursue negotiations.

Trump also invited hostages and detainees who were freed under his watch to appear alongside him in a video aired during the Republican National Convention. That includes Joshua Holt, a Utah man who spent two years in a Caracas jail after traveling to Venezuela to marry a fellow Mormon he met online.

Though no Americans were freed during the current visit, any future releases would represent a significant win for Carstens, a retired U.S. Army Special Forces officer who was a rare holdover from the Trump administration. Last month, journalist Danny Fenster was freed after nearly six months in jail in military-ruled Myanmar.

His release was negotiated by former U.S. diplomat Bill Richardson, who has also traveled to Caracas in the past to push for the Americans' release.

Richardson called Carstens' visit to Caracas a significant" development.

"Speaking directly with those who are holding Americans is important," he said in a statement to The AP. It does not guarantee success, but I commend Roger Carstens for taking that first step, the families of our detainees for pushing for these efforts and the Maduro government for allowing this humanitarian gesture to take place.

At least 61 Americans are known to be wrongfully detained or held hostage abroad, according to the James W. Foley Legacy Foundation, named for James W. Foley, a freelance journalist killed at the hands of the Islamic State group in Syria.

____

AP Writer Regina Garcia Cano in Caracas, Venezuela and Matthew Lee in Liverpool, England contributed to this report. Tucker reported from Washington.
WOOD RIVER  In just 10 days, Madison County has posted 12 COVID-19 related deaths for December.

A total of 13 deaths were reported for the entire month of November.

The figures come as health officials track both the delta and omicrom variants of COVID-19.

Weve been watching the numbers in Madison County go up for the last five weeks and the increases look different when its a new variant versus non-compliance with precautionary measures, said Amy Yeager of the MCHD.

We cant go back and say those increased numbers are from omicron because they werent type testing for it at that time, she said. But the numbers for non-compliance are bumpier and fluctuating, and a new variant is a steady pattern like we have seen recently.

The delta variant, which arrived in the U.S. over the summer and quickly became the dominant coronavirus variant, remains the most common strain of the virus nationwide.

On Monday, the MCHD reported the COVID-19 related deaths of a woman in her 60s and a man in his 80s. That was followed on Thursday with the announcement of four more COVID-19 related deaths, including a woman in her 50s, a man in his 50s, a man in his 80s and a woman in her 90s.

As of Thursday, there were 44 COVID-19 patients in Madison County hospitals, nine on ventilators.

The county saw its highest ever one-day case count on Wednesday with 305 cases. That topped the prior high set just last week, on Dec. 2, of 247 cases. Mondays case count of 173 tied Sept. 3 as the third highest daily case count in Madison County ever.

Since Monday the MCHD has added 640 cases. More than a third of those cases  230  involved children under 20.

As of Friday, a total of 629 COVID-19 related deaths have been recorded by the Madison County Health Department. To date the MCHD has reported 43,562 cases and 586,509 tests.

To date, Macoupin County has reported 144 deaths and 8,163 cases; Jersey County had 55 deaths and 3,881 cases; Greene County had 63 deaths and 2,162 cases; and Calhoun County had five deaths and 819 cases.

Madison Countys three-day positivity rate on Wednesday was 8.57 percent; that compares to 1.73 percent on Nov. 13. The seven-day positivity rate Wednesday was 7.28 percent, and its 10-day rate was 7.37 percent.

As of Friday morning, 141,493 Madison County residents  53.5%  were fully vaccinated, according to the Illinois Department of Public Health. A total of 43,972 boosters also had been administered.

Full vaccination rates within Madison County vary from 70.66 percent in Hamel to just 27.94 percent in Fairmont City.

Other county fully vaccinated rates included Monroe County with 56.06%, St. Clair at 51.79%, 52.07% in Clinton, 50.03% in Jersey, 49.77% in Macoupin, 46.4% in Montgomery, 43.43% in Bond, 38.67% in Calhoun and 36.87% in Greene.

Of Illinois total population, about 70% has received at least one COVID-19 vaccine dose and more than 61% is fully vaccinated, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. About 41% of Illinois eligible adults have received a booster dose of vaccine.

On Friday, the IDPH reported 49,668 new confirmed and probable cases of COVID-19 in Illinois, including an increase of 266 deaths, since Dec. 3.

To date the IDPH has reported 1,884,744 cases and 26,801 deaths. On Thursday night there were 3,257 people in Illinois hospitals with COVID-19. Of those, 662 were intensive care unit patients and 299 were on ventilators.

Madison County has extended COVID-19 vaccinations to kids 5-11 years old at its office, 101 E. Edwardsville Road in Wood River.

Vaccinations for all ages are by appointment only; people can visit www.madisonchd.org and click the green Appointments for Vaccines are Open button, or call 618-692-8954 x 2.

The CDC also has a vaccine finder that lets people select which vaccine they are looking for and provides the locations that currently have it. For details visit www.vaccines.gov, call 800-232-0233 or text your ZIP code to 438829.
HELSINKI (AP)  Finland has agreed to buy 64 Lockheed Martin fighter jets to replace its aging fleet of combat planes in a 10 billion-euro ($11.3 billion) deal that represents the Finnish military's largest ever purchase, the government said Friday.

The Nordic country picked the U.S. company's F-35A fighters from among five contenders, which also included the Boeing F-18 Super Hornet, France's Dassault Rafale, Britain's Eurofighter Typhoon and Sweden's Saab Gripen.

The Finnish air force has a fleet of more than 60 F-18 Hornets, acquired in the early 1990s. It started looking for a successor aircraft in 2014.

Finnish Prime Minister Sanna Marin said her governments decision, based on a recommendation by the Finnish Defense Forces, to purchase F-35A was unanimous.

New fighters are a key part of Finlands defense, Marin told a press conference. Fighters protect the integrity of Finnish airspace, protect society from airstrikes and support (Finnish) army and navy operations.

The Defense Ministry said Friday that the price tag for the deal with Lockheed Martin includes training and other equipment.

The U.S. aerospace, arms and defense company said in a statement it was honored" the Finnish government picked the F-35 through its thorough, open competition.

Lockheed Martin said the deal would include a robust weapons package, a sustainment solution tailored to Finlands unique security of supply requirements, as well as a comprehensive training program.

Direct procurement from Lockheed, including weapons, is worth about 8.4 billion euros with the additional 1.6 billion earmarked for the weapons package optimization, equipment, construction of hangars and future amendments, the Finnish government said.

Maj. Gen. Pasi Jokinen, commander of the Finnish air force, said the F-35 was chosen for its performance in combat, reconnaissance and survival capability.

European Union member Finland is a militarily non-aligned nation but closely cooperates with NATO in a way similar to neighboring Sweden.

Switzerland, another militarily non-aligned European country, and NATO members Denmark and Norway previously decided to buy the F-35.

Finland, which shares a 1,340-kilometer (832-mile) border with Russia, has increased its bilateral defense and military cooperation with Sweden, Norway and the United States in the past few years.

Bethesda, Maryland-based Lockheed Martin said Friday that there are currently more than 730 F-35s in service worldwide.



Jan M. Olsen in Copenhagen, Denmark contributed to this report.
BUDAPEST, Hungary (AP)  Hungary's Constitutional Court on Friday declined to rule on a motion challenging the primacy of European Union law in a case involving the country's treatment of refugees and asylum-seekers.

The decision came after Justice Minister Judit Varga challenged a ruling last December from the EU's top court which found Hungary had failed to respect EU law by conducting pushbacks of people entering the country without authorization, denying them the right to apply for asylum and detaining them in transit zones along the southern border with Serbia.

Hungarys government, led by right-wing Prime Minister Viktor Orban, has engaged in frequent conflicts with the EU over immigration. In 2015, Hungary refused to participate in an EU scheme to settle hundreds of thousands of refugees across the blocs 27 member nations, and erected a razor wire fence across its southern border to keep migrants out.

In her motion, Varga asked the court to rule that the Court of Justice of the European Union's (CJEU) decision requiring that migrants be granted the opportunity to apply for asylum was incompatible with Hungary's constitution.

It was a challenge to the primacy of EU law that echoed an October ruling from a court in Poland. That caused a crisis in the EU when the court declared that the Polish constitution took precedence over some of the bloc's treaties.

In its Friday ruling, the Hungarian court stressed that the interpretation of Hungarys constitution cannot be aimed at reviewing the judgment of the CJEU, nor does the Constitutional Courts procedure in the present case, by its very nature, extend to the review of the primacy of EU law.

Reacting in a video on her Facebook page Friday, Varga portrayed the decision as a victory for her government, noting that the court held that in matters of the joint exercise of competences between the EU and a member state, Hungary would be entitled to reserve its sovereignty.

The Constitutional Court has made it clear in todays judgment that as long as EU rules on immigration are not fully enforced, Hungary has the right to exercise these powers. It has the right to adapt its national rules to reality through additional specific solutions to ensure the effective protection of its borders, Varga said.

But in a statement released on its website, human rights organization Hungarian Helsinki Committee wrote that the ruling meant that the government had no green light to continue ignoring the EU court's decision.

Continuing the sabre rattling miscarriage of justice will have serious human rights and financial consequences, it said.

In a briefing to journalists on Friday, Christian Wigand, spokesman of the EU's executive arm, said the European Commission would analyze the ruling in detail but noted that Hungarian authorities were obligated to implement the judgement of the EU court.

"We understand that the ruling does not as such challenge the principle of the primacy of EU law, Wigand said.
LAGRANGE, Ga. (AP)  An Auburn University student disappeared after leaving his job at a Georgia bar one night in January 1976, and authorities long believed he was murdered. But the only person ever convicted went to prison for years for making false statements about a killing that may never have happened.

Nearly a half-century after the disappearance, the open hatch of a 1974 Pinto became visible in the murky water of an Alabama creek. It was Kyle Clinkscales' car, and the Georgia Bureau of Investigation will now analyze about 50 bones found inside, including part of a skull, a Georgia sheriff said.

We may never know how the 22-year-old died, Sheriff James Woodruff of Troup County said at a news conference after the car was pulled from the creek on Tuesday near Cusseta, Alabama. He said Clinkscales could have accidentally run off the road, about three miles (five kilometers) off the interstate between his job and campus, but he's not ruling out foul play.

Neither is Donny Turner, whose office interviewed about 75 people in the case when he was sheriff from 1993 to 2012. He told The Associated Press on Thursday he remains confident Clinkscales was the victim of a homicide, that Jimmy Earl Jones was there and that Jones was correctly prosecuted for lying to investigators.

Clinkscales was from LaGrange, near the Georgia-Alabama state line and about 45 miles (72 kilometers) from Auburn. He disappeared after leaving the LaGrange Moose Club, where he worked as a bartender, at around 11 p.m. on Jan. 27, 1976, to return to school.

His parents prayed for information about their son until they died  his father in 2007 and his mother this year. They offered rewards, consulted psychics, provided DNA samples and had a brief, false glimmer of hope in 1981 when a man in Oregon claimed he had amnesia and might be their son, according to news reports.

The investigation has started and stalled several times over the years, and authorities say Jones' initial silence and later inconsistencies complicated things. The AP tried to reach Jones and the lawyer who represented him for comment but was unable to locate either of them.

One tipster, in 1996, pointed to a man who was a friend of Jones, saying that man knew where the body was. Investigators drained a 5-acre lake near the man's property, but they found nothing. Jones' friend denied any involvement, and Jones stayed mum. Investigators didn't have enough evidence to bring charges.

Then, in 2005, a man called Clinkscales' parents, saying that when he was 7, he witnessed the disposal of their sons body, covered with concrete in a barrel and dumped into a pond. He said his cousin was involved in trying to get rid of the body.

The cousin denied it but said he heard a gunshot and witnessed Jones and the friend dragging someone away, Turner said. The pond was drained, but a body was not recovered.

When questioned by investigators in 1996 and in 2005, Jones failed to disclose that he was a witness to Clinkscales' killing and later gave conflicting statements, authorities said.

Investigators talked to Jones many times, and his attorney was involved, Turner said.

He knew we were not trying to railroad him, Turner said.

Investigators charged Jones in April 2005 with concealing a death and hindering the apprehension of a criminal. He pleaded guilty a year later to two counts of false statements.

Jones said during his plea hearing that he was at his friend's property that night when Clinkscales showed up, expected to bring money owed to someone else. Jones said his back was turned when he heard the two men arguing, and then heard two shots.

When I turned around, I was in shock. And we carried him and put him in the shop, Jones said, according to a hearing transcript.

Judge Allen Keeble agreed to delay his sentencing because his plea agreement depended on his testimony against a woman who Jones claimed had been there at the killing.

When Jones reappeared for his sentencing in August 2007, authorities were exasperated.

District Attorney Pete Skandalakis told the judge he had called Jones to his office before presenting the case against the woman to a grand jury, and when asked again if the woman had been there when Clinkscales was killed, Jones said she was not. The planned indictment fell apart.

I questioned him further, and finally, he told me that he would say anything that I wanted him to say, which was of no use to me, Your Honor, because I wanted only the truth, Skandalakis said.

The prosecutor said Jones had told still another story right after his arrest in 2005: That he had gone to get beer that night in 1976, and returned to his friend's property to see Clinkscales wounded on the ground. Jones said his friend said he shot him accidentally, and that he helped him carry Clinkscales, still alive, into a shed, and never saw him again.

Based on all the inconsistent statements this defendant has given, the State is of a position that his testimony is absolutely useless to us, Skandalakis told the judge. Nevertheless, the prosecutor continued to support the plea deal for four years in prison, followed by four years on probation.

Clinkscales' mother wanted a stiffer punishment, blaming Jones for his silence and inconsistency that continues to hinder the recovery of my son's body so that I may give him a Christian burial, according to a statement she wrote that Skandalakis read aloud at the sentencing. She asked the judge for the maximum allowable sentence.

Jones' attorney, Julianne Lynn, told the judge her client didn't intend to mislead and tried to help. She acknowledged his false statements, but said his culpability in any crime beyond that "is in question by everybody.

The victim's family and community had been "torn by this for so many years, she said, but she urged the judge not to act on emotion. Jones was 65 years old by then, had no prior criminal record and just wanted to get back to his road work job. She asked for his release, crediting him for time served.

There was no real evidence that Jones was involved in killing Clinkscales, but his false and inconsistent statements added to Clinkscales' parents' anguish and misery, the judge said.

You can be punished for that, and you ought to be punished for that," he said. Jones was sentenced to serve nine years and ultimately spent seven years and eight months locked up.

After the car was recovered, Skandalakis said in a phone interview that the most plausible explanation is that Clinkscales accidentally ran off the road, but it's possible he was killed elsewhere and placed there. Either way, Jones deserved prison for the pain he caused by muddying the investigation, he said.

Turner, the former sheriff, said he can't "imagine anybody going to court and pleading guilty to something and telling his part of the story that didnt do it.

I dont have regrets," Turner said. "I dont have anything in my mind that makes me think weve done anything wrong.

____

Brumback reported from Atlanta.
UNITED NATIONS (AP)  Climate change is an aggravating factor for instability, conflict and terrorism, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said Thursday.

The U.N. chief said the regions that are most vulnerable to climate change also suffer from insecurity, poverty, weak governance and the scourge of terrorism.

Guterres told a U.N. Security Council meeting on the link between climate change, conflict and terrorism that when climate disruptions hinder the ability of government institutions to provide public services, it fuels grievances and mistrust towards authorities.

And when the impact of climate change leads to people losing livelihoods, the promises of protection, income and justice -- behind which terrorists sometimes hide their truce designs -- become more attractive, he said.

In Africas Lake Chad basin region, Guterres said, the extremist group Boko Haram has been able to gain new recruits, particularly from local communities disillusioned by a lack of economic opportunities and access to essential resources.

In central Mali, terrorist groups have exploited the growing tensions between herders and farmers to recruit new members from pastoralist communities, who often feel excluded and stigmatized, the secretary-general said.

In Iraq and Syria, Islamic State extremists have exploited water shortages and taken control of water infrastructure to impose its will on communities he said, while in Somalia charcoal production has been a source of income for the al-Shabab extremist group.

Guterres said that climate impacts compound conflicts and exacerbate fragility, adding that U.N. peacekeeping or political missions are in eight of the 15 countries most exposed to climate risks. He did not name the countries.

The U.N. chief urged collective action to address the root causes of insecurity, stressing that conflicts and terrorism do not take place in a vacuum.

He urged increased investment to help developing countries adapt to the impact of climate change, saying developed countries must keep their promise to provide at least $100 billion a year to developing countries for climate action. He said these costs are expected to reach up to $300 billion a year by 2030.

Nigers President Mohamed Bazoum, whose country holds the Security Council presidency this month and chaired the meeting, said in Africas Sahel region, where his country is located, a key challenge is fighting terrorists whose hateful acts on a daily basis are shaking the foundation of democratic states.

Among these challenges we also have climate change which by reducing access to resources is increasing poverty and all the scourges that go with that, he said.

Bazoum expressed hope the Security Council would adopt a resolution that Niger and Ireland are co-sponsoring. It would recognize a link between ensuring international peace and security, which is the council's mandate, and the fight against terrorism and the effects of climate change.

He said the Sahel and the Lake Chad Basin illustrate the interaction between the effects of climate change and peace and security.

The consequences of this phenomenon -- and we still dont know how widespread it is -- has led to the disintegration of the social fabric and the well-being of the populations forced into unbridled competition for access to resources which are becoming rarer, Bazoum said.

The result is often inter-community conflicts and increased migration, and even more worrying, this situation has contributed to feeding violent extremism and large-scale crime, leading some young people to join organized criminal and terrorist networks who previously enjoyed the riches and biodiversity of their regions.

Irish Ambassador Geraldine Byrne Nason said the Security Council has a responsibility to break this vicious and self-reinforcing cycle.

She urged support for what she called the critical resolution, saying: This council must recognize and accept its role in the fight against climate change.

We need to integrate climate-related security risks into our conflict resolution, prevention and mediation efforts, Byrne Nason said. Doing so will help maintain international peace and security. Failure to do so is unconscionable.

But Russias ambassador, Vassily Nebenzia, whose country has veto power in the council, said: For us, the connection between terrorism and climate change is not clear.

He said the potential for work on this issue should be carried out in other U.N. bodies like the General Assembly, the Economic and Social Council or the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change. He said the Security Council should focus on overcoming potential conflicts and future ones.
Hilton Food, the food packing business that supplies Tesco's lamb and beef, is tapping shareholders to fund the acquisition of a Dutch smoked salmon company that will see it enter the US market.

The FTSE 250 firm, which processes, packs and distributes meat, fish and other protein products to UK and international grocers, has agreed to buy Netherland-based Foppen for 90million, or around 77million.

It is raising cash from shareholders to pay for it, having announced an equity placing of 75million. The move seemed to be well received by investors, with Hilton Food shares rising 0.6 per cent to 12.03 in early trading.

Smoked salmon deal: Foppen has customers in its home market as well as the US

The announcement builds on a period of expansion for the Huntingdon-based company.

It recently acquired Dalco, a Netherlands-based vegan and vegetarian food manufacturer, and London catering butcher Fairfax Meadow.

It also opened its seafood division in Grimsby, from which it supplies chilled fish to food retailers around the UK.

Hilton's chief executive, Philip Heffer, said: 'The acquisition of Foppen is an exceptional opportunity for Hilton and another step towards our goal of becoming the global protein partner of choice.

'More and more consumers around the world are seeking affordable, high quality, and sustainable protein, and this acquisition will help Hilton take our offer into new markets and to new global customers for the first time.

'Foppen's premium product portfolio and strong customer relationships are a great fit for Hilton's model, while Hilton's strong ESG credentials in seafood will make sure our future growth plans are sustainable in every sense of the word.'

Hilton Food processes, packs and distributes meat, fish and other protein products to UK and international grocers and food retailers

Hilton Food, which started in the 1960s as a family slaughter and deboning business, was then established as a beef and lamb meat packing business in 1994.

It now has 17 food packaging facilities and employs over 5,000 people in 16 countries, including the UK, Sweden, Denmark, Poland as well as Australia and New Zealand.

Hilton Food's revenue soared over 50 per cent in 2020 and it increased its dividend for that year by 21.5 per cent to 26p per share.

Foppen has customers in its home market as well as the US, where it supplies branded and private label premium smoked salmon products.

It raked in revenues of 1.4billion in the year to the end of March, with adjusted profit of 10million.
Primark shoppers have not yet been deterred by the Omicron variant, with sales running ahead of expectations, the owner of the fast fashion company said.

The chain's parent company AB Foods also reassured shoppers that they had enough stock of the 'vast majority' of lines ahead of the key Christmas period, despite the ongoing chain supply disruption.

While Primark's UK stores are continuing to trade as usual - although shoppers will be required to wear masks to enter any store from Monday - recent worries over the new Covid variant have hit Primark stores in some other European countries.

Shop till you drop: Primark sales since mid-September are running ahead of expectations

The chain had to shut down all its five stores in Austria after the country went into lockdown last month.

Meanwhile, its shops in the Netherlands have been hit by a restriction in trading hours and German shoppers are required to show a Covid pass to enter the stores.

But despite these issues, Primark's like-for-like sales since mid-September have been running ahead of last year and of previous expectations, the company said.

Sales in the past couple of weeks are also showing no sign of abating despite the emergence of Omicron.

'In terms of the Omicron variant we haven't really seen much of an effect on footfall, AB Foods finance chief John Bason told Reuters. 'We're trading well over Christmas.'

The group also said they had managed to keep supply of stock to its stores flowing.

'We are managing disruption in our supply chain by prioritising products most in demand with the support of our logistics providers for whom we are a very important customer,' it said.

'We have stock cover on the vast majority of lines for the important Christmas trading period.'

In the months ahead things are unlikely to get worse than they were at the same time last year, when most of the chain's shops were closed.

Between December and April sales are expected to be 'significantly better' than in the same period a year earlier, AB Foods told shareholders ahead of the group's annual general meeting today.

Across the rest of the group - AB Foods also has grocery, sugar, ingredients and agriculture businesses - trading was in line with expectations, but it warned of rising costs due to supply chain disruption.

'We are experiencing the impact of widely reported port congestion and road freight limitations and our businesses have been working hard to overcome these difficulties,' it said.

'We have seen an escalation in the cost of energy, logistics and commodities and we have been implementing plans to offset these through operational cost savings and, where necessary, the implementation of price increases.'

AB Foods shares rose 0.7 per cent to 19.49 in morning trading on Friday.
Mining giant Anglo American has announced a series of leadership and developmental changes to the former Sirius Minerals project in North East England.

The firm said it has nearly completed a review into the Woodsmith polyhalite project, which is being overseen by its Crop Nutrients business and has identified specific measures that are needed to enhance the site's safety and economic value.

These include the sinking of two mine shafts, and the development of the underground mining area to make room for expanded production capacity and the use of continuous miner machines.

It plans to invest around $700million next year on the project, which was formerly run by Sirius until Anglo American bought the cash-strapped company in a 405million deal in March 2020.

The FTSE 100 multinational also revealed today that Tom Culley, the head of its Peruvian division, will oversee the project as he is to replace Chris Fraser (pictured above) as the chief executive of Crop Nutrients from the start of January.

Polyhalite is a mineral containing multiple nutrients such as potassium, calcium and sulphate that is not just highly valued for its ability to fertilise crops but for being a naturally-occurring product with a low-carbon footprint.

Yorkshire-based Woodsmith has the largest known deposit of polyhalite in the world and could potentially provide 100billion of economic benefit to the UK over a 50-year period.

Outgoing Anglo American chief executive Mark Cutifani said: 'This is a very long-life asset, and we are going to take the necessary time to get every aspect of the design right to match our long term vision and value aspirations.

'We have said from the outset that we expect to make improvements and that we will execute certain elements of the construction differently and with a more conservative schedule.

Gigantic project: The Woodsmith Mine has the largest known deposit of polyhalite in the world and could potentially provide 100billion of economic benefit to the UK over a 50-year period

'We expect to have completed our design engineering, capital budget and schedule at the end of 2022, with a fully optimised value case that recognises the upside potential we see in Woodsmith, and we will then submit the full project to the Board.'

Alongside the announcement about Woodsmith, Anglo American confirmed its guidance for 2021 following a solid performance by the group.

Production is to rise by 7 per cent and unit costs are to increase by 10 per cent this year, while capital expenditure will decline $5.2billion on the back of issues with its supply chain and delays caused by the coronavirus.

Next year, meanwhile, it estimates unit costs to grow by 4 per cent and capital spending of between $6.2billion and $6.7billion, partly as a result of spending related to deferrals and the Woodsmith project.

Beyond that, the FTSE 100 miner, which is the globe's largest platinum producer and owns the well-known De Beers diamonds company, said it expected to deliver 35 per cent growth over the next decade at margins of 50 per cent.

It forecast a stronger performance in 2022, while planning to harness early copper production from Quellaveco, a $5billion project in one of the world's largest untapped copper resources.

The project in world's second copper producer is due to start up amid change in Peru, where a new leftist administration led by President Pedro Castillo has pledged to overhaul the mining industry and redistribute mineral wealth.

Shares in Anglo American closed trading 1.9 per cent lower at 29.16 on Friday, but their value is still up by about 14 per cent since the beginning of the year.
Cloudcall was the weeks top riser after getting taken out by a group of funds managed and advised by Xplorer Capital Management.

The shares shot up by two-thirds to 79.5p after the board of the communications group recommended an 81.5p cash offer from Xplorer that values the company at 39.9m.

The next best riser was diagnostics company Genedrive, which revealed that its Covid testing kit was approved by European regulators.

Genedrive's rapid molecular Covid testing kit has been approved by European regulators

The kit is a rapid molecular test that delivers positive results as quickly as 7 minutes and thirty seconds and negative results at 17 minutes, Genedrive told investors.

The shares were up 65 per cent at 67p in the week that the government signalled its concerns about the spread of the Omicron variant in the UK.

One company that will be keeping a close eye on government policy  albeit in Germany  regarding lockdown restrictions is Live Company Group, which this week confirmed the K-Pop festival KPOP.Flex will take place in Frankfurt, Germany on 14 May 2022.

The event is a joint venture between Live Companys 50 per cent-owned K-Pop Europa subsidiary, Deutsche Bank Stadium, PK Events and Seoul Broadcasting Service.

If you do not know what K-pop is, you have my congratulations; it is short for Korean popular music.

Shares in Live Company were up 25 per cent to 4p.

It was a busy week for the resource sector, with oil companies Rockhopper Exploration and mining companies Pathfinder Minerals and Atlantic Lithium to the fore.

Rockhopper leapt 62 per cent to 8.415p after Navitas Petroleum effectively took over from Harbour Energy as Rockhoppers partner in the development of the Sea Lion prospect in the waters surrounding the Falkland Islands.

Rockhopper's share of Sea Lion costs from transaction completion up to the final investment decision will be funded through a loan from Navitas with interest charged at 8 per cent per annum.

As for Pathfinder, its shares rose 23 per cent to 0.675p after an update on its dispute concerning mining concession 4623C in Mozambique.

The company has significantly advanced its preparation to refer the dispute to the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID) under the Mozambique  United Kingdom Bilateral Investment Treaty of 2004.

This preparatory work includes the development of a detailed budget and timeline for claimant costs, the identification of the company's litigation team, and independent professional analysis of valuations for differing successful outcomes at an ICSID tribunal, Pathfinder said.

Atlantic Lithium shares saw some profit-taking at the end of the week reducing the shares gains to 16 per cent at 25.65p, as investors piled in after it showcased an updated scoping study for its Ewoyaa lithium project in Ghana.

The study makes the case for a two million tonnes per annum operation with the life of mine revenues exceeding $3.43billion.

Atlantic Revenue is currently valued at roughly 150million by the market.

Victorian Plumbing shares went down the plughole after its full-year results

The year-end trading update from Actual Experience was a painful experience for its shareholders.

The analytics-as-a-service company saw revenues in the year to the end of September dip to 1.7million from 1.9million the year before.

Overall, whilst we have made good progress during the year, our sales cycle remains lengthy and efforts to reduce this are being hampered by the pandemic and the resultant elongation of procurement processes, the company said, as it conspicuously made no mention of profits or losses.

The shares plunged 44 per cent to 31.5p.

The share price of Victorian Plumbing went down the plughole after its full-year results, prompting a couple of directors to pitch in and buy some shares.

The online specialist bathroom retailers shares plunged 40 per cent on the week, despite being one of Fridays big gainers, to 96.2p after the company said in the current financial year  i.e. October and November  demand and revenue have been roughly flat year-on-year.

After Thursdays big plunge, product director Neil Radcliff weighed in with a purchase of 529,267 shares at 94p a throw so is already in profit, as is Philip Bowcock, the companys chair, who bought 53,000 shares at 92p each.
In the mid-19th century, while a group of artists who came to be known as the Hudson River School  Thomas Cole, Frederic Edwin Church, George Inness, Asher B. Durand and others  were painting the American landscape, it would have been highly unusual to find a woman out in the woods with her paints, pencils and sketchpad.

Highly unusual, yes, but not impossible, and the Albany Institute of History and Art has just acquired two paintings and a decorative piece by Julie Hart Beers. Its part of a concerted effort to add more female Hudson River School artists to the museums extensive collection.

Were breaking down and expanding the traditional ideas of what constitutes the Hudson River School, says chief curator Douglas McCombs.

Beers was the younger sister of artists William Hart and James McDougal Hart, who have 10 and eight works currently on view at the Albany Institute, respectively. Beers wont be the first woman to hang on the wine-colored walls of the museums huge Hudson River School gallery, but she will be the first addition in some time. Currently on display are two paintings by Sarah Cole, sister of Thomas Coleone donated and one purchased, both in 1964.

The three newly acquired works by Beers are currently being analyzed and restored, but a visitor was allowed a sneak peek. McCombs unlocked several doors leading to a work area in the museums curatorial department, where the fluorescent lights contrasted sharply with the gentle illumination in the galleries. There on a worktable lay one of the two new paintings.

The large landscape depicts a gently rolling scene under a hazy blue sky. In the foreground, a small herd of cows graze in a fenced field. A creek bed separates the field from a group of white houses on a ridge. The lighting and vegetation suggest a morning in late summer, the trees in full leaf but the grass going brown in patches.

This is the largest work by Beers that Ive ever come across, McCombs says of the 18-by-30-inch canvas. They usually tend to be half this size.

An intricately decorated gold frame, original to the painting, was found to have several small beads missing. Tom Nelson, the museum's exhibition and graphic designer, made wax casts of a few remaining beads and created replacements using a mixture of sawdust and spackle, which he painted gold. The next stop for the painting would be an outside conservator, who will carefully remove a layer of yellowed varnish from the painting.

Beers work was purchased at a Sothebys auction in New York City in July where it was called Cows in Landscape. The auction catalogue listed its date as 1861, but McCombs is confident it was made much later, probably sometime in the 1880s, based on its level of sophistication.

Beers just started painting in 1860, he explains. This is not the work of someone who has been painting for a year.

The inclusion of cows, McCombs says, is typical of the whole family. In fact, brothers William and James were often referred to as The Cow Painters, and several of their paintings in the gallery affirm this accuracy of this moniker.

McCombs says theres a good reason people were attracted to pastoral scenes in the years after the Civil War. We had just gone through a cataclysmic era, he explains. These paintings allowed people to reminisce about a more peaceful past.

A few brightly lit rooms away from the work area, two more artworks by Beers  these donated by a private collector  hang on a metal mesh screen, waiting to be processed. One, a small oil on panel dated Sept. 16, 1872, shows a stream wending its way through a wooded area, a range of misty mountains in the distance. The third work is a painting of purple grapes on an oval-shaped metal plate, an item McCombs thinks may have been used in summer to cover the hole in a kitchen wall where a woodstove pipe would be fitted in winter.

Julie Hart Beers was born in 1835 to Scottish immigrants and raised in Albany. Growing up with her brothers, its not hard to imagine that she learned to paint by being around them, but didnt begin exhibiting her work until her first husband died in 1860. Left with two small children and a mother to care for, she moved from the Albany area to Brooklyn to be near her brothers. Her style is very similar to Williams, and McCombs says that if you didnt know who painted Cows in Landscape, you might think its a William Hart.

In the ensuing years, Beers organized sketching trips for women to the Hudson Valley, the White Mountains and Maine, with her brother William serving as chaperone. She exhibited at the National Academy of Design and the Boston Athenaeum in 1867 and the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in 1868. Beers remarried, eventually settling in New Jersey. She died in 1913.

Sarah Coles story is similar to that of Beers. Her older brother, Thomas, was most likely instrumental to her emergence as a painter as well and encouraged her to copy his canvases. One of Sarahs paintings at the Institute, A View of the Catskill Mountain House (1848), is an exact replica of a painting by Thomas. The other, Mount Etna (1846-1852), is probably a pastiche of different elements from her brothers paintings of Italy.

In a virtual lecture this past March sponsored by the Albany Institute titled Shattering Gender Barriers: Women Painters in the American Landscape Tradition, Katherine Manthorne, a professor of art history at The Graduate Center, CUNY, said that women of this era, if they were painting at all, were thought to be specialists in still life, flowers, fruit and domestic scenes.

Many of these women broke out of the should and were much more exploratory than we give them credit for, Manthorne said. Were finding a whole new world of landscape paintings done by women, including Fidelia Bridges, Louise David Minot and Eliza Greatorex.

McCombss wish list for future acquisitions includes Greatorex, who was not as prolific a painter as Beers but also worked as an engraver and etcher, as well as Robert Scott Duncanson, a self-taught African American artist in Cincinnati, Ohio, whose style, McCombs says, is remarkably like Thomas Coles.

McCombs anticipates that the two Beers paintings will be hanging in the Hudson River School gallery by the middle of 2022. The work on metal will be held in collection storage, where it can be studied by researchers.
ALBANY  Alain Kaloyeros dropped his lawsuits against his former employers at the SUNY system this week, a sign the founder of Albany Nanotech and SUNY Polytechnic Institute may have reached a settlement with the state.

The former leader of the two entities had sued the 64-campus system and its research funding affiliate, the SUNY Research Foundation, in February 2020, seeking compensation for his work two decades ago on a computer chip innovation.

The lawsuits, filed in state court, alleged that SUNY and the foundation failed to commercialize an innovation Kaloyeros and two colleagues came up with that uses cobalt to connect transistors in computer chips.

Kaloyeros had argued in court papers that the innovation, protected by a recently expired patent, had potentially been worth millions of dollars in royalty fees after the computer chip industry adopted the design in recent years.

The case appeared to be a strong one for Kaloyeros, who is facing three and a half years in prison for his unrelated 2018 conviction in a bid-rigging case tied to Albany Nanotech construction projects in Buffalo and Syracuse.

In May, a state Supreme Court judge in Albany ruled against a bid by the Research Foundation to dismiss the suit, essentially agreeing that Kaloyeros had a strong case.

We are looking forward to moving ahead with the next stage of this important litigation, including obtaining relevant documents from SUNY and the Research Foundation and obtaining testimony from the key decision makers at those organizations, Kaloyeros' New York City attorney Michael Miller said after the May decision by state Court of Claims Justice Richard Platkin.

In October, Kaloyeros and his attorneys began mediation with the Research Foundation. The talks were overseen by a former state Appellate Division judge.

Whether those talks resulted in any financial settlement between the two sides is unknown; neither is speaking. Kaloyeros has decided to withdraw his lawsuits against SUNY and the Research Foundation. The SUNY lawsuit was filed in the state Court of Claims in Albany. The Research Foundation also moved to drop its appeal of Platkin's decision.

Miller declined to comment when reached by the Times Union. So did Peter Taubkin, a spokesman for the Research Foundation.

A SUNY spokeswoman was looking into the matter Friday afternoon but did not immediately have a comment on any potential settlement.

Special Investigation 147 NY dams are 'unsound,' potentially dangerous Thousands of dams have not been inspected in over 20 years.

Kaloyeros has been free during his appeal of his criminal conviction in federal court. However, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals in New York City rejected his appeal in October. Last month, the same appeals court also denied a motion by Kaloyeros to have the appeal reconsidered by the entire bench.

Kaloyeros has been busy during his appeal process, filing several new patent applications for chip manufacturing technologies. As with many of the inventions that Kaloyeros has developed, he did so in partnership with Barry Arkles, CEO of a company called Gelest Inc. in Bucks County, Pa. that supplies speciality materials to the semiconductor and other industries.

Kaloyeros has received patents on more than a dozen inventions, although most date back to before 2005. The cobalt patent was secured in 2002 after being filed in January 2001. Most patents are enforceable for just 20 years after their filing, so the patent that was the subject of the Kaloyeros lawsuits has technically expired.

The next step Kaloyeros could take is to appeal his conviction to the U.S. Supreme Court. Miller declined to say what Kaloyeros planned to do. Kaloyeros could not immediately be reached for comment.

Kaloyeros has asked to be placed at the minimum security federal prison in Otisville in Orange County.
Bloomberg | Getty Images

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange can now be extradited to the United States, according to a British court ruling made on Friday. The High Court ruling overturns the January judgment that Assange's extradition would be too "oppressive" considering his mental health, as US assurances gave the court confidence that Assange would be treated humanely.

There is no reason why this court should not accept the assurances as meaning what they say, the Friday ruling stated. There is no basis for assuming that the USA has not given the assurances in good faith.
This article was first published on NerdWallet.com.

Monthly business applications averaged 430,000 nationwide in November, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. This marks the 11th consecutive month of numbers well above the 342,000 in December 2020. While starting a business is exciting, it can also be more challenging than expected. And because about a third of businesses with employees fail in the first two years, according to the Small Business Administration's Office of Advocacy, its important to gain every advantage possible.

Knowing the cost of operating your business is vital. Engaging business experts and practicing due diligence can stop you from being blindsided by industry-specific costs such as customs broker services, music streaming licenses and more.

Commonly overlooked expenses

Rent, utilities and equipment are well-known business startup costs, but there are less obvious expenses that can be overlooked.

Licenses and permits

You may have to register your business in the state and city where its located. The fees you pay can vary and may depend on whether you plan to operate as a partnership, corporation, nonprofit or limited liability company.

For example, in New Jersey, a for-profit LLC will pay a fee of $125 to register, Tennessee requires a filing fee of $300 and San Diego charges all businesses operating within the city limits $34 for a Business Tax Certificate.

Additional licenses and permits may also be required based on business activities. For example, a business selling alcoholic beverages must meet the requirements of the Treasury Department's Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau along with state and local regulations, and a business operating an oversized vehicle will often need a state permit.

Business insurance

Most businesses will need multiple types of business insurance, such as general liability, professional liability, commercial auto and commercial property. Some coverage can be bundled into a business owners policy to save money.

When you run a business from your residence, a home-based business insurance rider may be needed to supplement your homeowners insurance policy. If you have employees, dont overlook workers compensation insurance, which is required in most states.

Business software

You will typically pay a monthly fee for accounting, payroll and other business software. If you select a point-of-sale system to take customer payments, expect to pay a processing fee for each debit and credit card transaction. This expense can be significant if your business has a large volume of card transactions.

Social Security and Medicare taxes

When you work for yourself, you pay a self-employment tax rate of 15.3% on your net earnings. Thats 12.4% for Social Security and 2.9% for Medicare. If you have employees, that cost is split between the employee and employer. As the employer, you contribute 6.2% of employee wages for Social Security and 1.45% for Medicare. Federal and state unemployment taxes are other costs you may need to include in your budget.

Uncovering additional costs

Every business is unique and the expense of operating it can depend on the industry, location, size, sales channel and other factors. To learn about the specific costs associated with starting a business, you may have to rely on the experience of others and your own research.

Talk with an expert

The SBA is a great resource. You can get free business counseling through partner agencies  Small Business Development Centers, Womens Business Centers and Veterans Business Outreach Centers. The business advisors at these centers can help identify lesser-known costs of starting a business, such as grand opening expenses, training for employees and certifications for managers.

Special Investigation 147 NY dams are 'unsound,' potentially dangerous Thousands of dams have not been inspected in over 20 years.

"If youve never run a business before, you have a huge learning curve, says Richard Sifuentes, director of the University of Texas at San Antonio Small Business Development Center. If a person lacks industry knowledge, Sifuentes suggests hiring someone as a manager or staff member with experience in the area or taking a job in the field for a short period of time.

"One of the biggest mistakes people make is not budgeting three to six months of working capital," Sifuentes says. This reserve of funds can be used the first few months of operation before the revenue from sales is enough to cover costs. An additional amount could be added to this reserve to cover any unexpected expenses, Sifuentes says.

Due diligence

If youre purchasing a business, acquiring existing inventory or accepting the transfer of a liquor license, you dont want to be surprised by back taxes, liens or other liabilities. Thoroughly research a company before moving forward. Information can be found by a title company if real estate is involved or through online searches and public records.

"You dont want to get in a position where you are purchasing a business and now you are responsible for something the previous owner neglected," says Marlo Richardson, founder of Business Bullish, a free online resource for people interested in starting a business.

"Be patient. Dont rush through the process," she adds. "Its a very exciting experience, but it can also be a loss of a lot of money. Just take your time and make sure you go through everything."

Lisa Anthony writes for NerdWallet. Email: lanthony@nerdwallet.com.

The article How to Find the Hidden Costs of Starting a Small Business originally appeared on NerdWallet.
Its easy to pinpoint newcomers and visitors in the Hudson Valley by how terribly they mispronounce its towns.

Out-of-towners shouldnt necessarily be blamed for this, as the regions place-names are a series of English, Dutch, Lenape and Mohican terms mashed together over the centuries until they formed words pronounced far differently than they are spelled.

For instance, the first time this reporter entered the town of Copake in Columbia County, he attempted to pronounce it CO-pak-ee, thinking he was being smart by splitting the second syllable under the assumption the word looked Native American. Though I wasnt totally off  the name is derived from the Mohican word for snake  achkook  and paug  pond  what came out of my mouth sounded more like a brand of tempura flakes than a town in Columbia County.

Let this guide help you to not make similar mistakes. Weve talked to historians and other locals about the origins of different place-names in the Hudson Valley and Catskills, and how theyve evolved to be pronounced the way they are today.

Accord (ACK-ord ), Ulster County

Tucked behind the western slope of the Shawangunk Ridge along the Rondout Creek in central Ulster County, this hamlets name is pronounced with the first syllable heavily stressed, distinguishing it from the noun meaning treaty.

The location was originally known by early American residents as Port Jackson, according to D&H Canal Museum Deputy Director of Collections Bill Merchant.

In the 1820s, the Delaware & Hudson Canal Company constructed a water route from Honesdale, Pa., to Kingston to transport coal to the Hudson River. As one of the few privately owned canals of the era, the canals leadership got the bonus of being able to name communities along the route, according to Merchant.

This resulted in a lot of them being named Port-something, due to their function at the time, which is why there are still places named Port Jervis hours away from the sea.

Merchant speculates the location was specifically named Port Jackson after Andrew Jackson, the populist president at the time.

After the canal closed at the end of the 19th century, residents renamed some of the communities.

Marc Fried, a local historian and author of the book Shawangunk Place-Names said the new toponym sprang from a community meeting over what to name the place when the first post office was being constructed.

They couldnt agree on a name, and, finally, in dismay, someone suggested they name it Discord, Fried said. And someone said, How about Accord?  and everyone said OK.

Cairo (CARE-oh), Greene County

This town, located in the lowlands of Greene County, must deal with sharing its name with a slightly more notable municipality.

Heather Maurer, who has lived in the area her whole life, said there was a standard way of explaining the distinction when she was in school.

They always said, Ki-ro is in Egypt, CARE-oh is in NY, she said.

Maurer, who interacts with a range of people working as a store clerk in the town, said it was immediately obvious who wasnt from the area by the way they pronounced the towns name.

Maurer said she never corrected people, but she would end up naturally repeating the towns name during the conversation, and the out-of-towners would learn.

A lot of times, when they mispronounce it, you can tell theyre trying to judge how we react, because theyll say it a couple times differently and see if we correct them on it or not, she said. Because they can tell they probably said it wrong.

Coxsackie (cook-SOCK-ee), Greene County

Dont pronounce this towns name wrong.

Hugging the western bank of the Hudson River in Greene County, this towns name is derived from the Delaware Native American tongue, though there seems to be significant disagreement as to what it actually meant, according to William Beauchamps 1907 book, Aboriginal Place Names of New York. The town was spelled Kuxakee and Coxackie in the early 18th and early 19th centuries, according to Beauchamps, and the French pronounced it Cook-sock-y, nearly how it is enunciated today.

Jeremy, who was concocting strangely delicious coffee drinks at the Yellow Deli in Coxsackie recently, said he moved to the town 16 years ago and quickly learned the proper pronunciation.

You get on board really quick, cause you sound like a tourist, he said.

I ask him how tourists say it, and he mimics a nasal downstate whine: COCKS-SACK-ee.

You tell people, you might want to say Coxsackie, he continued, hitting the first syllable hard. You might not stand out so much. I cant do anything about your Georgia drawl, but I can tell you the right way to say the town.

Delhi (DEL-high), Delaware County

Situated along the west branch of the Delaware River in the eastern Catskills, the county seat of Delaware County is NOT pronounced like the Indian city.

The Catskills enunciation, which is actually far more phonetic than how the Indian locale is pronounced, is not a product of Catskills locals gradually altering DEL-ee until it sounded like DEL-high, according to Delaware County Historical Association Director Tim Duerden  the town has ALWAYS been DEL-high.

There are two possible explanations for this, Duerden said. One involves Ebenezer Foote, an early mover and shaker in the town during the 19th century, a man whose business often took him to Albany, where he belonged to a social club whose patrons had nicknamed him the great mogul.

Mogul today just means powerful person, but in the 19th century, the great mogul" referred to the emperor of the Mughal empire, a kingdom that once stretched across South Asia, but by Footes time had nearly been fully subsumed by the British. The capital of the Mughal empire? Delhi.

So yes, Delhi may be Delhi because of a giant 19th-century ego trip, but Duerden also suggested a second, simpler explanation he deemed more realistic. It goes like this:

-Why is Delhi called Delhi?

-Because its HIGH on the DELaware River.

Milan (MY-lin), Dutchess County

Milan Town Historian Victoria LoBrutto stated there had always been romantic conjecture about how the rural town in Dutchess County got its name.

Certain old-timers in the community refer to it as My Land, while others associate it with travel to the northern Italian city, according to LoBrutto, who stated by email that she thought there was a more pedestrian answer. But its also a good story.

Citing a book written by Dutchess County historian Bill Jeffway for the towns bicentennial, LoBrutto wrote that several towns in New York vied for the honor of being named Milan, including a Milan in Jefferson County, a Milan in Cayuga County, and a Milan in Jefferson County.

In March 1818, the New York state Legislature, after much competitive lobbying, voted to grant the community in Dutchess County the exclusive right to name their town Milan, according to LoBrutto.

Shawangunks (SHWAN-gunks or SHAWN-gums), Ulster County

This ones a bit complicated.

The colloquial version of the Ulster County ridge that features Mohonk Mountain House and Minnewaska State Park first appears as the singular Shawangunk in 1682 on a deed transferring a parcel of land from the Esopus Indians to a Dutch settler, according to local historian Marc Fried.

The best modern translation of the word, which also refers to the town that sits below the ridge, is where the smokey air is, Fried said, but this doesnt necessarily mean the Esopus tribe referred to the parcel that way. Tribes in the region had few standardized place-names, as they didnt use many proper nouns, instead referring to a place by what they associated with it, according to Fried.

Where the smokey air is could therefore have just been what the Native American signing the deed personally called the parcel at the time. Perhaps it had been foggy that week.

The Esopus word was transliterated into Dutch as Sawankonck, which would have been pronounced similarly to SHWAN-gunk, the more widely used pronunciation today, Fried said. It first only referred to the original parcel, but then was applied to a tributary of the Wallkill River, the Shawangunk Kill (Kill meaning river in Dutch), then finally to the Shawangunk Ridge.

The Dutch relinquished their territory in New York to the English in 1674, and over the years the pronunciation of the Shawangunks changed. Records from 1777 spelled the area Shongum, which approximated how it was pronounced at the time, according to Fried, as English spelling was still being standardized and therefore was generally phonetic.

So how it is pronounced today? The more widely used SHWAN-gunks is closer to the original Esopus pronunciation, but more born-and-bred Ulster County residents pronounce it SHAWN-gums.

So, in essence, either SHWAN-gunks or SHAWN-gums works. Just dont say Sha-wan-gunks. If thats too hard to remember, make it easy on yourself and just say the Gunks.

Valatie (va-LAY-sha), Columbia County

One of the most perplexing pronunciations on this list is that of Valatie, a village about a half hour south of Rensselaer in northern Columbia County. The Dutch coined the place-name when they controlled the area as part of their New Netherlands colony in the 17th century, using the now-archaic word for little falls.

Spelling was not standardized in Dutch at the time, so the villages name appeared as Vaaltje, Vallitatje, Voltje, and even Falluchie on various English-language documents in the 18th century, according to Village Historian Dominick C. Lizzis book Valatie: The Forgotten History.

How this evolved into todays pronunciation is harder to pin down, as no one was posting their enunciations on Tik-Tok at the time, but Lizzi cites accounts stating the word was pronounced closer to VOL-a-che in the early 19th century, similar to how it would be pronounced in Dutch, and va-LAY-shi-a or va-LAY-she towards the turn of the 20th century.
When Michelle Francese and her husband were first shown a unit at Pine Plains Active Adult Condominium Community, they were told it would be an ideal place to live out their golden years. Now, the 68- and 74-year-olds arent sure where they will be living two weeks from now.

Our kids were grown and married and there was no need for us to keep a big house, said Francese. We downsized and moved here figuring we wouldnt have to move for the rest of our lives.

Tenants said they received a letter in March 2021 from the condo communitys previous owner, Moshe Ziv, stating that they were to start paying rent to a new management company, but no other information was disclosed.

In August, Francese said she and other tenants received another letter informing them that they would either need to relocate by Nov. 23 or buy their unit. Units are being priced at more than $300,000, according to the developer, which averages to about $250 per square foot to start.

According to Zillow, a similarly sized home in Pine Plains sold for $145,000, or $115 per square foot, in November. Another similarly sized home there sold for $506,000 in October ($422 per square foot), but that property also included more than eight acres of land.

Original development vision put on hold, now put in motion

Town Centre at Pine Plains Active Adult Condominium Community has a total of 10 units, which were originally built in 2005 as units to buy, with plans to add 38 more.

According to Darrah Cloud, the Pine Plains Town Supervisor who lost a reelection bid this past November, when the condo development owner struggled to sell the units, he converted the development to rentals. By 2011, the 10 units operated as a month-to-month rental condominium development, and nothing else was built. Monthly rents at the condo development are reportedly as low as $1,000 a month.

We knew there was no affordable rental housing anywhere near, and people were having a hard time finding a place to live, said Cloud. My idea for Pine Plains was to build out the extra 38 units. Its the perfect place for affordable housing.

Cloud worked with Hudson River Housing to consider building out the property with the originally planned 38 additional units, with the idea that they would be sold, not rented, but at a more affordable price. They met with Ziv  who Cloud noted has done a lot for the community, including developing a veterans center there  at the beginning of 2020 to gauge his interest in selling the Town Centre property to Hudson River Housing.

He wanted a really high amount of money, and we couldnt make the numbers work, said Christa Hines, Executive Director of Hudson River Housing. In an email, Ziv directed press inquiries to Reynolds Asset Management.

After declining the proposal, Ziv in March decided to sell to New Jersey-based Reynolds Asset Management; the development is now called Stissing Farm Townhomes. Property ownership appears on public records as Stissing Farm Townhomes, LLC.

The new development plan is to complete the already designed and fully approved project, which would expand the existing 10 townhomes built 15 years ago to the originally envisioned 48 residences.

We enjoy being of service to the communities we invest and build in, said Louis J. Reynolds, managing partner of Stissing Farm Townhomes, LLC, in an emailed statement. As a Marist College graduate, I have deep connections to the Hudson Valley personally, so when our firm was approached by a local member of the real estate and construction community to help bring the original vision for Stissing Farms Townhomes to life, it seemed like a perfect match.

The new units for sale will be approximately 1,200 square feet, two-bedroom, two-bath condominiums. Each will include an unfinished basement and garage, and some will have walk-out basements and decks. Prices will start in the low $300,000 range, and the project is anticipated to be complete by the summer of 2023.

Lack of affordable housing limits options

Michelle Francese

With the unavoidable redevelopment, all current tenants were left in the same position as Francese: buy a unit or move out.

In August, the daughter of one of the tenants came into town hall, and she was just beside herself because her father, who was 85, had just gotten this letter saying he had 90 days to either purchase his unit at what is really a ridiculous price, or he had to leave, said Cloud.

Still, she said of the developer, Theyre not doing anything that theyre not allowed to do. And theyre actually talking to us, which usually doesnt happen.

When we got the letter to buy, the price was outrageous for this area, said Francese, who is also a real estate salesperson at Century 21 Alliance Realty Group. Even though things are inflated, it was still off the charts.

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For tenants who cant afford to buy their unit, they must find a new place, which is increasingly hard as the Hudson Valley continues to feel a housing inventory pinch, especially heading into the slower winter season for real estate listings and sales.

Finding affordable, alternative housing wont be easy, particularly for residents who are above the age of 55 and are likely approaching, or are currently living on a fixed income. Pine Plains saw historically low housing inventory levels in 2021, according to data from the National Association of Realtors and local real estate agent Sandi Park. The town ranked second in the county for fewest number of home sales compared to 2020 levels.

I moved five times in three years when I was younger, said Francese. I was like a gypsy. Thats not where Im at now.

While rentals are more plentiful in the City of Poughkeepsie, moving would require a 40-minute relocation, which would lengthen proximity to services and family members for some. Additionally, others do not want to deal with stairs or being in a city compared to a more rural setting. Francese said the former landlord also allowed pets, which adds another layer of difficulty when relocating.

Hines concurred: We didnt have any openings, and the openings we did have were in the City of Poughkeepsie, and the tenants are elderly and didnt want to leave the area, which is understandable.

She said she is working to see if there are any openings at a senior center in Red Hook that Hudson River Housing works with for potential placement for those still looking.

Francese said one neighbor purchased a small house and relocated, while others are still uncertain about where to go and are in contact with Legal Services of the Hudson Valley, who declined comment on the matter.

It is uncertain if the eviction moratorium applies to these tenants, considering they do not have a financial hardship to pay rent, Cloud explained.

Anne Saylor, Deputy Commissioner for Housing for Dutchess County, said the county, the Town of Pine Plains, Hudson River Housing, the New York State Attorney Generals Office, and Legal Services of the Hudson Valley are working together to assess the potential eligibility of the existing tenants for funding sources that could be used to preserve these units.

In addition, we are reviewing eligibility for alternative affordable housing within the county and any potential legal remedies, said Saylor in an emailed statement. Hudson River Housing has connected with the property owner and has begun a constructive conversation about the short and long-term options to preserve these units as moderately priced housing in Pine Plains.

For now, Francese has received an extension from the developers until Christmas Eve, Dec. 24. That date, though, is fast approaching.

We understand they can do whatever they want with their property, said Francese. All were asking for is more time. As the winter progresses and COVID passes again, the spring market may be much better.
Tschabalala Self has been hard at work. Since graduating in 2015, the 31-year-old artist and Bard graduate has had three solo shows and six group shows, including prominent exhibitions at the Hammer in Los Angeles, the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston, and Galerie Eva Presenhuber last November, her first major gallery exhibition in New York City.

Its little wonder she needs a break when the weekend rolls in. I prioritize my space and my rest, she says. If I didnt create those boundaries, I would just work everyday.

Her already celebrated work explores Black American identity, in particular the significance of the Black female body in contemporary culture. Her work is colorful and bold, combining painting, printing and collage, intertwining swatches of fabric with expressive stitching. Her mother also sewed, and Self always keeps her sewing machine close to hand in her studio.

Self was raised in Harlem with four siblings and took after-school art classes at the Harlem School of Arts. She first became familiar with the Hudson Valley when she went to Bard College. While there, she mentored local youth as part of the Hudson Valley Tutoring project.

She was reintroduced to the area in 2017, when she started dating Hudson-based curator and multidisciplinary performer Michael Mosby, professionally known as FULATHELA. After visiting him more and more often, she finally made the leap to move up full time in early 2020.

Theres a lot of people who are new to the community like myself, who have fallen in love with the city, she says.

Courtesy Tschabalala Self

When the pandemic hit, it accelerated getting to know her new home. I had never spent that much time in Hudson before consistently  or with Mike, she says. My life was always so chaotic. [The pandemic] was the only time Ive had a normal adult life: I made dinner every night, the house was spotless, Mike was still going to work and came back at the same time every day. She laughs, adding, It was very Mad Men!

These days, when shes not in her compact Hudson apartment near the river, shes either in her sunny New Haven studio in an old factory building in on the outskirts of Yale campus (where she went to graduate school), or shes traveling back to New York City for meetings or shows. Since the pandemic, shes prioritized making space for life outside of work, too.

As a painter, you spend a lot of time alone, she says. Theres so many creative people [in Hudson], theres a culture of having space for oneself and then on the other side a real sense of community. That way of socializing really suits my temperament. In New York [City] youre always around people, so its not as sacred a moment when you come together.

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Before even arriving in Hudson, Self brought people together through a performance series she launched with Mosby and another friend, the artist Shanekia McIntosh. Free Range was hosted at the Half Moon in 2018 and Art Omi in 2019.

We all really love Hudson and wanted to share it with other creatives who dont understand a place like this, she says. We wanted to expose more people to Hudson and people in Hudson to musicians whose energy and ideas and vibe felt like Hudson  free, experimental, really liberated, she says. And will the series be returning post-pandemic? Wed like to do it one more time  and do it really well!

Where Tschabalala Self spends time in Hudson and the surrounding area

Downtime Friday Night Self loves the backyard at husband-and-wife owned Lawrence Park; inside it's decked out for the holidays. Lawrence Park After a long week, Self has some downtime. On her way home, she likes to pick up a bottle of wine from Grapefruit Wines near Hudson station. It specializes in natural wine, from the team behind another new Hudson favorite, Kittys Market and Cafe. When she goes out, she hits up the husband-and-wife owned bar Lawrence Park (260 Warren St.) on Warren Street to meet friends. They have a really good wine selection, a beautiful atmosphere inside, and a great backyard, she says. Its always a great time there. She follows it with her favorite meal in the city: the duck breast at the Tavern at Rivertown Lodge (731 Warren St.).

Creative Pursuits Saturday Self loves the sunny atmosphere and uplifting design of Hudson's LikeMindedObjects. LikeMindedObjects On Saturday morning, she heads into Hudson. She stops at tiny gourmet food market Olde Hudson (449 Warren St.)  I mostly go there to get French cheese  before taking a stroll down Warren Street. Friends own a couple of my favorite shops, and if they happen to be in, Ill stop to say hi, she says, highlighting Nina Z (345 Warren St.), where she loves the designers shoes and jewelry pieces. Shes also a fan of BOLOR (beautifully crafted clothing) and LikeMindedObjects (344 Warren St.) for its uplifting atmosphere and design. When it comes to art, she says, I don't get to go to shows as often as I would like, but when I do, I enjoy Art Omi (1405 Co. Rte 22, Ghent). I like the outdoor element  that the landscape is centered as this organic artwork in itself. Especially during the pandemic, it was great to be able to experience art and not have all the complications that accompanied that. One of my favorite shows last year was Shake up the Room, curated by my partner at SEPTEMBER (449 Warren St. #3) gallery. Also, I recently found out about Magazzino (2700 U.S. 9) in Cold Spring. I like to experience art as a visitor in Hudson  its my home, rather than a place I conduct business. That has been the most therapeutic and beneficial aspect of being here. On Saturday evenings she sees friends. Ive met a lot of creatives, artists, writers, all around my age. Everyone is just out and about in town a lot, and theres also so many people in the arts community that live up here. She adds, joking. Everyone is Mikes friend  hes more popular than I am. And when it comes to nightlife: The last really good dance party I went to was at BackBar (347 Warren St.) for Halloween, but Half Moon (48 S Front St.) also has good dance parties.
SARATOGA  Jack Hathaway is shooting for the moon. Or the International Space Station. Maybe Mars?

Wherever he'll go, the U.S. Navy commander is thrilled to be selected by NASA as part of its 2021 class of astronaut recruits  one of just 10 chosen from a field of 12,000 applicants.

Im excited and honored to be here, said the 39-year-old, speaking from the Johnson Space Center in Houston on Tuesday. Its really a surprise, because you got through the application process in teams.  And when you get the final call to (hear them) say, 'We would like you to come to Houston to be in the 2021 astronaut candidate class,' you dont believe it because there are so many outstanding people, so many incredible talents from all walks of life who came through here and interviewed.

Hathaways selection, however, doesnt surprise his large Saratoga family. While Hathaway grew up in South Windsor, Conn., his father, Jeff Hathaway, is from the town of Saratoga and a graduate of Schuylerville Central School. And the astronaut recruit spent summers and holidays up here with his grandparents, Bob and Peggy Hathaway, and a slew of aunts, uncles and cousins.

My favorite memories are coming up to Schuylerville and running around with a lot of cousins, Hathaway said. My grandparents used to have these ginormous family reunions. There is a huge Hathaway clan up there."

Many of those same family members watched this week's televised ceremony in Houston officially welcoming the recruits.

He always knew he wanted to be an astronaut, said Terri Sullivan, Hathaway's aunt and a Saratoga resident. I think he got his civil air patrols pilot license at 14 or 15. He was always involved in the Boys Scouts. He was always a pretty focused kid. But when we saw him on television, it was surreal  it was unbelievable.

Hathaway has always dreamed of flight. I decided I wanted to be a pilot at two minutes old and I decided I wanted to go to space at three minutes old, he said.

He pursued that goal with single-mindedness. His first step after graduating from high school in suburban Connecticut was helped along by his grandfather, a former Saratoga supervisor, who asked former U.S. Rep. Gerald Solomon to recommend his grandson for the spot at the U.S. Naval Academy.

Hathaway earned a bachelors degree in physics and history at the Annapolis, Md., Campus. He then attended Cranfield University in England, where he completed graduate studies, and then went on to the U.S. Naval War College in Rhode Island.

As an aviator, Hathaway flew 39 combat missions, making 500 landings on aircraft carriers including the USS Nimitz and USS Truman.

He graduated from Empire Test Pilots School and has more than 2,500 flight hours in 30 different aircraft. Hes now looking forward to learning to fly the T-38 training jet, just one aspect of the two-year training to be an official NASA astronaut.

But before any of that, Hathaway called his grandfather with the news of his NASA recruitment.

His grandfather, by phone on Thursday, sounded pleased.

Hes a good little guy, Bob Hathaway said. He always calls me up.

And, his grandfather said, he always makes it a point to visit.

Special Investigation 147 NY dams are 'unsound,' potentially dangerous Thousands of dams have not been inspected in over 20 years.

Robert Markowitz /NASA

That may be harder now as Hathaway moves from Virginia Beach to Houston with his wife and two children to start his intensive training. It will include learning to operate and maintain the International Space Station's systems as well as spacewalk basics, robotics and Russian language studies.

Im not really nervous about any particular thing, Hathaway said. What gives me the confidence is the power of the team process. There are certainly risks, there are certainly challenges, but we spend a lot of time and effort to define and look at the challenges we might face. Its a robust process. ... That robust process of planning really makes us understand how a system works, how we can work together when things are not going as smoothly as you want them to. It really makes us resilient to the challenges we face.

Though he wants to walk on the surface of the moon, he will go wherever he's needed to advance space exploration.

If I could do that  as an actual astronaut in a capsule who goes back to the moon  sign me up, Hathaway said. If I can be the guy at the space station, I absolutely want to do that. If Im the guy to be in Mission Control in Houston, thats the guy I want to be. Wherever I can be to help the team to succeed.

"Because its not about one person doing one thing that is really cool," he said. "It takes hundreds of thousands of people to put that one human on the surface of the moon or on the space station. Whatever part I can play to make that happen, I want to be part of that.
JACKSON, Miss. (AP)  Mississippi public universities are withdrawing policies requiring employees to be vaccinated against COVID-19 after an injunction from a federal judge prohibiting the Biden administration from enforcing its vaccination mandate for federal contractors.

Spokespersons for the University of Mississippi, Mississippi State University, University of Southern Mississippi and Jackson State University told The Associated Press on Friday the schools have halted efforts to require employee vaccinations.

The state's other four universities  Mississippi University for Women, Alcorn State University, Delta State University and Mississippi Valley State University  never mandated vaccinations for employees because they are not considered covered federal contractors under President Joe Biden's order, Mississippi Valley State University spokesperson Donell Maxie said.

In a letter to employees announcing the suspension of the University of Mississippi's employee vaccine mandate Wednesday, Chancellor Glenn Boyce thanked the thousands of workers who mobilized quickly to submit their vaccination cards or exemption requests for review before the Jan. 4 deadline. He said the university still encourages all employees be vaccinated.

While this action stays the mandate, the benefits of getting vaccinated are clear, he wrote.

He said the university will monitor any additional developments in the law, including any appeal of the Georgia decision and other court cases related to the vaccination mandate.

As courts make their rulings, this situation could change, Boyce wrote. If the mandate is reinstated by a court, we will adjust our efforts accordingly.

In their messages to staff this week, Mississippi State University and the University of Southern Mississippi officials said they planned to keep their vaccination portals open so employees could submit proof of vaccination if they wish.

The University of Mississippi Medical Center's vaccination mandate will remain in effect.

Biden's Sept. 9 executive order required employees who do work connected to federal contracts be vaccinated unless they qualify for a medical, disability or religious exemption. The order stated contractors must be vaccinated by Dec. 8. That deadline was later extended to Jan. 4 to give workers more time to comply.

The Mississippi Institutions of Higher Learning board of trustees reluctantly voted to enforce the order Oct. 25 as long as the order was not stayed, delayed or revoked.

Mississippi universities have approximately 120 federal contracts totaling at least $271 million.

Special Investigation 147 NY dams are 'unsound,' potentially dangerous Thousands of dams have not been inspected in over 20 years.

The vote was a reversal from a previous decision in September by the board to prohibit public universities from requiring COVID-19 vaccinations unless students or employees work in a clinical setting, like at the University of Mississippi Medical Center.

On Tuesday. U.S. District Court Judge R. Stan Baker, in Augusta, Georgia, issued a stay to bar enforcement of the mandate nationwide.

The order came in response to a lawsuit from several contractors and seven states -- Alabama, Georgia, Idaho, Kansas, South Carolina, Utah and West Virginia. It applies across the U.S. because one of those challenging the order is the trade group Associated Builders and Contractors Inc., whose members do business nationwide.

Judge Baker found that the states are likely to succeed in their claim that Biden exceeded authorization from Congress when he issued the requirement in September. ___

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.

___

Follow APs coverage of the pandemic at https://apnews.com/hub/coronavirus-pandemic.
CAMBRIDGE  The Cambridge Board of Education said it's not ready to decide whether to legally challenge to state Education Commissioner Betty Rosa's order that the district stop using its Indian mascot and name, but residents are offering money and recommending attorneys to help the board keep the avatar and moniker.

Board members said they need at least a month to consider the cost of appealing a decision from the commissioner, who ordered Cambridge to stop using the logo and nickname. Such mascots and names have long been ridiculed as racist though some residents say it represents local heritage.

We are committed to standing up for our community, President Jessica Ziehm told a crowd gathered at Thursday's board meeting. But, she added, the board has to weigh the cost of litigation and whether there's any private funding options for the fight..

Residents heard that call and answered it at once.

Greg Woodcock told the board that people are evaluating education lawyers and will send over a list of three or four. Cost, he said, shouldnt be a deciding factor.

If we could spend $50,000 on the Indian mediation (a community-building effort last school year), we can spend $50,000 on Indian retention, he said.

Others said they could help raise funds. Some told the board to simply focus on the fight.

Stand your ground, said resident Sirell Fiel. Weve got your back, fight it. Lets do it.

But some residents said it was time to pick a new mascot.

Im concerned as a taxpayer that youll use funds that should be used for our childrens education, said resident Scott Carrino. Allow the students the opportunity to create an exciting mascot we can all be proud of.

Resident Mike Mugits offered an analysis of the success rate for appeals of education department decisions over the last 43 years. Only 12 appeals  5 percent of those filed  won. Some were settled and some were sent on to further proceedings, he said, adding that if all those were also counted as wins for the petitioners, only 9 percent of the appeals were successful.

I ask you to review this, take this into consideration, he said. Youre not playing with house money.

That did not discourage the residents who are organizing legal help.

Special Investigation 147 NY dams are 'unsound,' potentially dangerous Thousands of dams have not been inspected in over 20 years.

Cambridge could be among the 9 percent, Woodcock said. Even though the odds are against us, we could be part of the 9 percent.

For years, school district across the United States have been ending the practice of using Native American names. In 2001, state Education Commissioner Richard Mills told districts to get rid of those mascots "as soon as practical." He did not go so far as to issue an order, saying some districts needed more time to discuss and prepare for a change.

Fighting the education department is worth a try, said resident Christine Krosky, who added it would offer a good example to children.

Were showing our children were standing up for our heritage, she said. We have to show kids not to give up, to question authority in an appropriate way. If that means going to court, thats what we need to do.  Even if it doesnt come to fruition, we tried.

Ziehm said the board will likely make a decision about whether to appeal at the Jan. 13 meeting. She stressed that she was not trying to avoid the issue.

It does not mean a decision has been made to not take any action at all," she said. "We simply have not made a decision yet."
(The Conversation is an independent and nonprofit source of news, analysis and commentary from academic experts.)

David Pyrooz, University of Colorado Boulder; James Densley, Metropolitan State University , and Scott H. Decker, Arizona State University

(THE CONVERSATION) The songs are timeless, the casting contemporary and dance routines still daring.

But for socialscientistslike us, Steven Spielbergs remake of the 1961 hit musical West Side Story  a film about two rival street gangs  is more than a 21st-century face-lift of a Broadway classic. Released in theaters on Dec. 10, 2021, it is an opportunity to consider societal changes in the six decades since Maria and Tony stole the hearts of audiences across the world  particularly in the world of gangs.

As scholars who have studied gang culture, we find that the soul of the street gang hasnt changed much since the days of the Jets and the Sharks  but the world around them has. Demographics, economics, technology and public policy have reshaped and reshuffled gang life in America. So dramatic are the changes that the romanticized West Side Story characterization of gangs is now a relic of a bygone era.

Evolving demographics

Perhaps the biggest shift in gangs is skin-deep  urban white-ethnic neighborhood-based gangs like the Jets no longer really exist.

Ethnonational conflict among Italian, Irish, Jewish and Polish youth in cities like Boston, Chicago, New York and Philadelphia culminated with the end of mass migration from Europe in the early to mid-20th century. Many urban white people moved to the suburbs in the 1960s and, generally speaking, took their gangs with them. Today, when people think of the American street gang, they are more likely to think of Black gangs, like the Bloods and Crips, or Latino gangs, like the Nortenos and Surenos. White street gangs are located outside of urban areas and cast as domestic extremists such as the Proud Boys, Three Percenters and Skinheads.

The gang as an American enterprise

The gangs of the West Side Story era were often a normal yet fleeting aspect of adolescence, soon to be supplanted by work, marriage and children.

But in the 1970s and 1980s, globalization and industrial restructuring caused the well-paying, stable blue-collar jobs that young men in gangs were qualified for to largely disappear. Around this same time, gang involvement became more prolonged into adulthood and intergenerational within families.

This era also coincided with an increase in imported drugs such as heroin and crack cocaine. With the rise of the illicit drug economy, the gang itself became an institutionalized route to mythologized riches. Gang activity expanded throughout the country, emerging in the suburbs and even rural towns, leading to the most recent estimates from the National Gang Center of 31,000 gangs and 850,000 gang members.

The West Side goes digital

Gang life saw more changes with the emergence of the internet. The internet and social media were in the realms of far-fetched fantasy when West Side Story was made, but they now provide a repository for gang content, a blueprint for gang activity and a catalyst for gang conflict. A modern West Side Story would entail taunts on Twitter, fights over Facebook, and reliving the rumble on Reddit.

Word always traveled fast on the streets; West Side Story shows that well. But social media makes it faster, more public and more permanent. Gossip, taunts and threats are now broadcast to a much bigger social world  in some cases, with violent consequences.

Gang violence becomes deadlier

Contemporary gangs shoot it out rather than slug it out. In the 1960s, there were several hundred gang homicides annually; now there are several thousand.

When compared with other homicides, gang-related homicides disproportionately involve the use of firearms. Firearms are far more prevalent and accessible now than when West Side Story was conceived. But what original West Side Story director and choreographer Jerome Robbins understood back in the 1950s still holds true: When guns and knives are present, pushing and shoving can escalate quickly into stabbing and shooting. The movies fateful knife fight dramatically illustrates this.

Special Investigation 147 NY dams are 'unsound,' potentially dangerous Thousands of dams have not been inspected in over 20 years.

Gangs are a criminal justice priority

As gangs and violence proliferated in the decades after West Side Story first hit screens, the cure for the Jets self-diagnosis of sociological sickness has shifted from social work to suppression. Criminal justice is now the rule of the day. Beat police officers like Officer Krupke and Lt. Shrank have been replaced by gang unit officers and special investigators tasked with gathering intelligence and documenting and collating gang members in databases.

States also responded legislatively to gangs. California first passed its anti-gang laws in 1988, and 44 states have since followed suit. Gang membership and recruitment have been criminalized, while sentencing enhancements for crimes with a gang nexus have been controversially introduced.

In the days of West Side Story, gangs were not a significant issue in prisons. Since the onset of mass incarceration in the 1970s, prisons have become a vector for gang activity  around 15% of U.S. prisoners today are affiliated with gangs.

American street gangs in the 21st century

It is impossible to understand gangs in the 21st century without considering how the world around them has shifted. And while structural shifts in policy, population and technology clearly matter, what is perhaps the starkest change has little to do with the gangs themselves, but the way in which the general public and the legal system stigmatize the children within them. The average age of a gang member is 15  these are kids who are trying to survive in the worst of circumstances.

If the gang was a rite of passage when Riff and Bernardo roamed the streets of New York City in West Side Story, the reality of the contemporary gang has become much bleaker because of worsening violence, mass incarceration and other factors that have operated largely outside of their control.

West Side Story harks back to simpler times, with less polarization and violence. Perhaps it could also assist in revising what we know about gangs and reforming some of our more punitive impulses to respond to them.

[Like what youve read? Want more? Sign up for The Conversations daily newsletter.\

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article here: https://theconversation.com/west-side-story-may-be-timeless-but-life-in-gangs-today-differs-drastically-from-when-the-jets-and-sharks-ruled-the-streets-173543.
WINNIE  The sun poked out of the gray sky on Tuesday as a U.S. Navy captain presented the precisely-folded United States flag  with the thanks of a grateful nation  to Neica Franklin Bertrand, a niece representing the family of Seaman 2nd Class Charles L. Saunders, who died 80 years ago aboard the USS Oklahoma, a battleship sunk at Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941.

Saunders was 18 years old when he and 428 other Oklahoma crewmen were killed in the Japanese sneak attack that day, the "date which will live in infamy and launched America into World War II.

The Navy in the past few years has been working to identify remains of unknown soldiers from the Oklahoma and other vessels. They've been buried at the National Memorial of the Pacific, the cemetery known as the Punchbowl.

But on Tuesday, Saunders was laid to rest in his hometown.

To date, 48 sailors remain unidentified from the Oklahoma and 13 are missing.

Navy Chaplain Lt. Cmdr. Alexandria Geovanni, celebrant at the funeral, asked the hundreds in attendance at Fairview Cemetery in Winnie to remember them in their prayers along with the 2,204 other U.S. service members killed that day in Pearl Harbor and those since who gave their lives defending the United States.

Saunders was buried next to his parents, Mortimer and Melina, in the family plot where his father had placed a stone for his son, the sixth of nine children, in 1964.

The Saunders family, like millions of Americans, suffered through the Great Depression of the 1930s. Mortimer worked construction and in the rice fields to support his family, but needs outran the provisions.

That caused Charles, known as "Sonny Boy," to give his kid sister, Anna Belle, his shoes so she could walk to school.

"I heard that 'shoes' story growing up," said Bella Vierra, of Forest Lake, Minnesota, attending the funeral with her mother, Cynthia Vierra-Green and many other family members.

"My grandma was the daughter of Anna Belle," she said. "She would have loved to see this."

Anna Belle Von Feldt was three and a half years younger than her brother, Sonny Boy, Cynthia Vierra-Green said. She died in 2019.

The Navy had contacted Anna Belle's oldest daughter, Gloria Vierra, when it began the arduous process of making DNA matches to the remains of the unknowns buried at the Punchbowl.

Cynthia Vierra-Green said her mother, Gloria, another niece of Charles's, died on Sunday.

In 2015, the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency, had contacted Neica Franklin Bertrand, another niece of Sonny Boy's, to ask for exhumation permission.

Her aunt Anna Belle had worked "tirelessly" to provide the Navy with the DNA necessary to use in advanced forensic technology to make the identification, according to the booklet assembled by Broussard Mortuary-Winnie, which directed the funeral.

Many in the family donated DNA to help in identifying the remains.

"My grandma was so sure he'd be found," Cynthia Vierra-Green said.

Jeff Von Feldt, another descendant of Denver, knelt down at the gravesite to scoop up a bit of soil for a remembrance.

He said he was overwhelmed by the show of support from the Winnie-Stowell community as the cortege passed by East Chambers High School where the student body had turned out to observe its passage.

"You hear about being overwhelmed," he said. "This was the first time I experienced it. The flags. The kids. All the folks."

Other funerals for sailors haven't had a similar turnout, Cynthia Vierra-Green said the Navy told her.

"Some of the men didn't have families. Or there were only a few who came. This is very impressive," she said.

"Sonny Boy," at 17 years old, joined the Navy on Nov. 23, 1940, in Houston, in part to ease the burden on his family. He had wanted to join earlier, but 17 was the earliest he could. He'd been born on Oct. 16, 1923.

When he and his friend went to Houston to join, that was the last time his family saw him.

Special Investigation 147 NY dams are 'unsound,' potentially dangerous Thousands of dams have not been inspected in over 20 years.

He joined the Oklahoma crew on Jan. 26, 1941, as a seaman apprentice, advancing quickly to Seaman 2nd.

By October, Oklahoma had returned to Pearl Harbor and took part in maneuvers and on Dec. 5, 1941, moored in preparation for a high-level inspection with ammunition stowed deep in the ship's magazines and all bulkhead doors and hatches opened. The ship's captain denied the gunnery officer's request to keep some of the ship's anti-aircraft defenses manned.

At 7:55 a.m., Dec. 7, 1941, Japanese planes launched the surprise attack, five minutes before Oklahoma would have raised the Stars and Stripes that Sunday.

After a volley of torpedo hits launched by Japanese bombers, Oklahoma capsized at 8:08 a.m., trapping most of her crew within.

Rescue efforts began while the attack was under way. By Dec. 11, rescue efforts ceased. Just 32 crewmen were saved.

The Navy notified Mortimer and Melina Saunders on Dec. 21, 1941, their son was missing and presumed dead.

The remains of the crew went unrecovered until October 1942, 10 months after the attack.

Almost a year earlier, Sonny Boy wrote his final letter to his mother.

"Everything is fine," he said. "I received your letter and sure was glad to get it. I never get mail from anyone any more, but you.

"I guess we'll be back sometime in the spring and when I get time, I'll come and visit," Sonny Boy wrote.

"P.S., what do you want for Christmas?"

At the gravesite, seven sailors fired three volleys apiece for the 21-gun salute. A bugler sounded "Taps." A piper played "Amazing Grace."

And Charles L. Saunders finally came home to rest next to his mother and father for eternity.

Dan Wallach is a freelance writer.
The broadcaster Eamonn Holmes is joining GB News from ITV.

The TV presenter and journalist, 62, will host a new programme in the new year, GB News announced today.

His wife and on-screen presenting partner, Ruth Langsford, will continue to work with ITV as an anchor on Loose Women and a member of the This Morning team.

Holmes said: Ive spent my career on broadcasting firsts and start-ups and GB News is one of the most exciting yet. Its just the kind of shake-up the industry needs.

Ive admired GB News from the beginning for its clever mix of punchy debate but delivered with warmth and even some fun.

Broadcaster and journalist Eamonn Holmes joins GB News. pic.twitter.com/Mr7gO7qNF9  GB News (@GBNEWS) December 10, 2021

To me the greatest honour in journalism is to give a voice and respect to the unheard, and thats exactly what GB News is all about.

A spokeswoman for ITV said: We would like to wish Eamonn all of the very best in his new role.

As a duo, Eamonn and Ruth have been part of the This Morning presenting team for the last 15 years and we thank Eamonn for all of his hard work and contribution to the show.

Ruth remains an important part of ITV Daytime both as a continuing member of the This Morning family and as an anchor presenter on Loose Women.

Here is The News .. I'm joining @GBNEWS from The New Year . Hope you are coming with me and wish me well . In the meantime Compliments of The Season to you and thanks for your support folks. pic.twitter.com/hJc2qexZcV  Eamonn Holmes (@EamonnHolmes) December 10, 2021

Alongside his wife, Holmes has been a regular fixture on This Morning for 15 years.

However, in November 2020, ITV confirmed the duo would be leaving the Friday show, with Dermot OLeary and Alison Hammond taking their place.

They have continued to host the daytime programme during the holidays.

Before This Morning, Holmes presented GMTV and has also worked across radio, with slots on stations including Radio 5 Live, Magic, BBC Radio 2, and talkRadio.

Holmes, from Belfast, is the latest signing to fledgling channel GB News.

He joins on-air talent including former Sky anchor Colin Brazier, ITV News journalist Alastair Stewart, BBC journalist Simon McCoy and former Labour MP Gloria De Piero.

In November, the broadcaster Stephen Dixon also announced he was joining the channel after nearly 22 years with Sky.

The news comes two months after former BBC political broadcaster Andrew Neil stepped down as the chairman and host of a prime-time show on GB News.

The 72-year-old had been absent from the channel since announcing a break two weeks into its launch and later said he came close to a breakdown after suffering from stress due to the stations technical problems.
A suspended Georgia Court of Appeals judge has agreed to pay a $25,000 fine to settle ethics charges that he spent campaign funds for personal use
Crystal Palace vs Everton

Friday, 10 December, 2021



Match Preview



It appears as though Lucas Digne was not part of the group that travelled down to London this weekend It appears as though Lucas Digne was not part of the group that travelled down to London this weekend

Updated Everton head south this weekend to face Crystal Palace for what is the first of three games in the space of seven days, two of which are in the Capital, with Lucas Digne set to be excluded again.

The Blues should travel in good heart following their rousing victory over Arsenal on Monday, one that arrested a horrible run of one win in 11 and six defeats in seven and moved them up to 12 the Premier League table.

Having alleviated the immediate danger of getting sucked into the bottom three, Rafael Benitez's side now need to prove they can press home their quality on a regular basis and, hopefully, push themselves into the reckoning for Europe over the second half of the campaign.

If nothing else, the dramatic win over the Gunners leaves the players and manager with few excuses over what they're capable of and what works in terms of formation and personnel; they now need to show they can do it without the impetus of a raucous Goodison crowd.

That intensity and drive has been missing from too many performances in recent weeks but the travelling Blues will be in full voice as always and hopeful of spurring Everton on to what would be their first successive win since mid-September and only the second one away from home this season.

The biggest talking point coming into the match will be the situation regarding Lucas Digne who was left out of the squad that faced Arsenal and wasn't in the party that travelled to London this weekend amid reports that he and Benitez had had a falling out over his role in the team.

The player himself urged fans "not to believe everything you read" on social media earlier this week but, when pressed on the matter during his pre-match press conference, Benitez hinted that there might have been some truth to the reports and the Frenchman's contained absence only adds more fuel to the speculation.

[Digne] has been training. It's a normal situation. We will see tomorrow if he is available or not.

"We need all the players around because that increases competition in the team. At the same time, everybody needs to be focused and they have to realise that the priority is the team, that's it."

Ben Godfrey performed admirably in his stead and, while seeing Digne restored to the squad this weekend would have been a welcome sight, it wouldn't have been a surprise if Godfrey were to keep his place. Much might have depended on Benitez's faith in Mason Holgate at centre-half given that Yerry Mina won't be available for Sunday's clash but the Yorkshireman is set to keep his place.

The Colombian made a much-anticipated return to action from a hamstring issue of his own on Monday night against Arsenal but lasted just half-an-hour before picking up what Rafael Benitez reported afterwards to be a calf injury.

That put Mina back in the treatment room and it is unclear at the moment when he might be able to resume training.

Salomon Rondon, meanwhile, is expected to be fit again after recovering from a hamstring strain. He had to come off during the second half of the Merseyside derby 9 days ago but his manager indicated during his pre-match press conference at Finch Farm today that the Venezuelan is in contention for a place in the side.

Tom Davies is ruled out while Dominic Calvert-Lewin continues his patient rehabilitation work that the club's medical staff hope will see him back in the side before the end of the year. Allan is a slight doubt for Sunday after only doing a partial session following his exertions against Arsenal in the Blues' 2-1 win.

Between October and November, Palace went on a seven-match unbeaten run, including that 2-0 victory over Manchester City at the Etihad, that suggested Patrick Vieira had got his arms around his new job and was capable of leading the south London side to a possible tilt at Europe.

Their form has fallen away a bit since, however, and they have lost their last three, scoring just one goal. Palace are always a difficult proposition in front of their boisterous fans but Everton will be heartened by the fact that they haven't lost at Selhurst Park since the Eagles returned to the top flight eight years ago.

The key for the Toffees will be who lines up in central midfield and, possibly, whether Benitez opts for a midfield three over the two that was so ineffective at Brentford in their last away game.

Allan's fitness may be a concern but, with Andre Gomes and Fabian Delph available, the manager has options at his disposal.

Kick-off: 4:30pm, Sunday 12 December 2021 on Sky Sports

Referee:Andy Madley

VAR: Stuart Attwell

Predicted Line-up: Pickford, Coleman, Holgate, Keane, Godfrey, Allan, Doucoure, Townsend, Gordon, Gray, Richarlison

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Very smart readers told us this was coming and legal ramifications are now underway despite an uptick in COVID cases . . .



Here's the highlight . . .



"I hereby demand that you immediately cease and desist enforcement of any and all mandates, written or verbal, imposing student masking requirements, forced or coerced vaccinations, quarantines or other health orders that in any way inhibit or prohibit a student from exercising their right to a free and open education as guaranteed by the Missouri Constitution," the AG's office letter said.



The school district's receiving the letters include:



- Platte County R-III School District

- Odessa R-VII School District

- Liberty School District

- North Kansas City Schools

- Sedalia School District

- Lees Summit R-VII School District

- Smithville R-II School District

- Kansas City Public School District

- Harrisonville R-IX School District

- Lone Jack School District

Read more via www.TonysKansasCity.com news links . . .

KC-area school districts receive cease-and-desist letters from AG over mask policies Several Kansas City-area school districts have received cease-and-desist letters from the attorney general's office over COVID-19 masking policies.Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt asked parents to call out school districts that continue to enforce mask mandates.Schmitt said school districts are continuing to violate a recent Cole County Circuit Court order by

Missouri health departments left scrambling after AG letter KANSAS CITY, Mo. - County health departments across Missouri are scrambling to interpret a letter Tuesday from Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt regarding mask and vaccine mandates. A spokesperson for the Platte County Health Department said they are no longer able to provide any advice to the county's school districts on matters of quarantine.

COVID-19 LOCAL UPDATES: Missouri reports 2,475 new cases Here are the latest COVID-19 updates around the Kansas City metro area, and in Kansas and Missouri: THURSDAY, DECEMBER 9MISSOURI: TOTAL CONFIRMED CASES: 757,560 (+2,475) CONFIRMED DEATHS: 12,708 (+14) 7-DAY PERCENT POSITIVE: 12.8% TOTAL VACCINE DOSES ADMINISTERED: 7,442,433 PERCENT OF POPULATION WITH 1 DOSE: 59.1% PERCENT OF POPULATION WITH 2

Developing . . .


At the meetings of the working groups of the Trilateral Contact Group (TCG), the Ukrainian side put forward three key initiatives, but Russia rejected them under contrived pretexts.

This is reported by the Ukrainian delegation to the TCG, specifying that the meetings took place on December 7.

The Ukrainian delegation put forward the following initiatives:

Return to the lasting ceasefire by ensuring the implementation of measures to strengthen the ceasefire of July 22, 2020

Opening of entry-exit checkpoints in Shchastia, Zolote, which were opened from the Ukrainian side back in November 2020

Mutual exchange of detainees, which would release about 60 people in the near future

"These issues were discussed during the regular meeting of the TCG on December 8, 2021. Unfortunately, all initiatives of the Ukrainian delegation were rejected by the Russian Federation under contrived pretexts," the statement reads.

It is noted that on December 9, at an extraordinary meeting of the TCG, Ukraine proposed to expand the Joint Centre for Control and Coordination by involving representatives of not only the signatories of the Minsk Agreement but also authorized representatives of the Normandy format countries (with their consent) as an independent party. The purpose of such an initiative is to ensure a stable ceasefire, as well as to implement Paragraph 3 of the Package of Measures for the Implementation of the Minsk Agreements, which provides for effective monitoring and verification of the ceasefire.

This proposal was categorically rejected by the Russian Federation.

According to the Ukrainian delegation to the TCG, Russia also rejected Ukraine's proposal calling on the participants in the consultations to make statements on the restoration of the ceasefire from 00:01 on December 10 and commitment to measures to strengthen the ceasefire of July 22, 2020.

"Ukraine remains committed to the need for a stable ceasefire and is ready to continue working on it within the framework of the TCG and other formats," the Ukrainian delegation to the TCG said.

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As a result of shelling by Russian-occupation forces from January 1 to December 2, 2021, 65 service members were killed in eastern Ukraine, including 29 from sniper bullets.

"Russia continues to violate the ceasefire. From January 1 to December 2, 2021, Russian forces launched 2,346 attacks on Ukrainian positions, killing 65 Ukrainian service members and wounding another 261 fighters," Yevhenii Tsymbaliuk, Permanent Representative of Ukraine to the International Organizations in Vienna, said at the OSCE Permanent Council meeting on December 9, an Ukrinform correspondent reported.

He added that the occupiers actively resort to sniper fire, thus killing 29 members of the Armed Forces since the beginning of the year.

Ukraine's Permanent Representative also drew the attention of foreign delegations to Russia's build-up of troops near Ukraine. According to him, the total number of Russian forces along the border, in the temporarily occupied areas of eastern Ukraine and in Crimea reaches 115,000 service members.

"In parallel, Russia is stepping up its armed formations along the contact line with 122mm self-propelled artillery, tanks, and armored combat vehicles in violation of withdrawal lines. At the same time, it continues to supply ammunition, military equipment, including electronic warfare systems, UAVs, and fuel across the border," Tsymbaliuk stressed.

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The National Bank expects that the inflow of foreign direct investment in Ukraine in 2021 will amount to $6.5 billion.

"At year-end 2021, we expect that the inflow of foreign direct investment will total $6.5 billion, and the greater part of this amount arises as the companies with foreign capital reinvest their income, profits in their activities," Deputy Governor of the National Bank of Ukraine Serhiy Nikolaychuk said at a briefing, an Ukrinform correspondent reports.

According to him, next year the NBU expects lower reinvestment.

"At the same time, we expect that Ukraine will receive new funds from abroad from parent companies. At the end of next year, we expect that foreign direct investment will increase by $5.5 billion," said the NBU Deputy Governor.

According to Nikolaychuk, the dividend repatriation over 11 months of this year amounted to $7.5 billion.

"At year-end, we expect that this sum will exceed $8 billion," he concluded.

As reported, Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal said that in the first half of 2021, foreign direct investment in Ukraine totaled $2.83 billion, including $ 2.33 billion coming from the European Union. Investment growth in the first half of the year was at a record high over the past four years.

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Turkish regions of Kutahya, Eskisehir and Afyonkarahisar invite Ukrainian entrepreneurs and business representatives to cooperate.

This was discussed at a business forum in Afyonkarahisar on December 9, an Ukrinform correspondent reported.

"UkraineTurkey relationship continue developing. President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky and President of Turkey Recep Tayyip Erdogan have very good relations based on trust and friendship. Thanks to their friendship and this strong will, a solid strategic partnership between our countries develops," said Ambassador of Ukraine to Turkey Vasyl Bodnar.

According to him, the annual trade turnover between Ukraine and Turkey is about $5 billion and continues to grow. There is also an increase in tourist flow between the two countries.

Bodnar also stressed that one of the leading areas of cooperation is defense, which is important for the exchange of technologies. The most striking example of cooperation in the military-technical sphere, in his opinion, is the Aknc combat drone which has Ukrainian-made engines.

Honorary Consul of Ukraine in Kutahya Erkan Gural presented opportunities for cooperation between three provinces  Kutahya, Eskisehir and Afyonkarahisar  which are part of the consular district of the Honorary Consulate in Kutahya.

"Our region has ample opportunities for cooperation in various fields. And this forum envisages a plan not only for holding meetings, but for concrete sectoral events for business representatives of our countries," Gural said.

Head of the International Turkish Ukrainian Business Association Ayhan Akbaba reminded that the total investment of the Association members in Ukraine is $4 billion and its offices operate in seven cities of Ukraine.

"Thanks to the wide representation in different regions of Ukraine, we actually work in all areas and provide assistance to Turkish business. Members of the Association work in almost all areas, including construction, logistics, telecommunications. Sixty-one percent of our members are citizens of Turkey, thirty-nine percent are citizens of Ukraine," Akbaba said.

During the forum, First Secretary of the Embassy of Ukraine in Turkey Borys Uvarov made a presentation on the economic and investment potential of Ukraine.

The forum was attended by business representatives of the two countries, who expressed interest in strengthening cooperation in various fields.

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President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine on Thursday, December 9, spoke with U.S. President Joe Biden over the phone following the American leaders talks with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin.

Thats according to the presidents tweet, seen by Ukrinform.

Finished a 1.5-hour conversation with @POTUS. The President of the United States informed me of the content of his negotiations with Putin, Zelensky tweeted late on Thursday.

The two leaders also discussed possible formats for resolving the conflict in Donbas and touched upon the course of internal reforms in Ukraine, the tweet says.

The Ukrainian presidents press service wrote in a statement that Zelensky thanked Joseph Biden for his consistent, firm and resolute support for the sovereignty and territorial integrity of our state and reaffirmed his unwavering commitment to finding ways to peace in Donbas.

The parties coordinated their positions on further steps in this direction. Volodymyr Zelensky stressed that Ukraine offers clear proposals to unblock the peace process and is ready to discuss them in various formats.

The heads of state also discussed ways to provide security, financial and political support to Ukraine in repelling the ongoing hybrid aggression.

President Zelensky paid special attention to the issues of energy security. He underlined that Ukraine views the Nord Stream 2 project exclusively through the prism of energy and security guarantees, while its promotion deprives Ukraine of an important factor in deterring Russian aggression.

In this regard, concrete steps, the parties discussed concrete steps that can be taken to strengthen Ukraine's energy resilience.

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During a call with President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine on Thursday, December 9., U.S. President Joe Biden reaffirmed commitment to not take decisions regarding Ukraine without the latters involvement.

Thats according to an official statement published by the White House following the phone call of the two leaders, Ukrinform reports.

"President Biden made clear that the United States and its allies and partners are committed to the principle of no decisions or discussions about Ukraine without Ukraine, the document said.

The leaders called on Russia to de-escalate tensions and agreed that diplomacy is the best way to make meaningful progress on conflict resolution.

Read also: Biden calls Zelensky following virtual summit with Putin

"President Biden underscored the readiness of the United States to engage in support of confidence-building measures to advance the implementation of the Minsk Agreements, in support of the Normandy Format," the White House added.

According to Jen Psaki, Spokeswoman for the U.S. administration, Joe Biden briefed his Ukrainian counterpart on recent talks with the Russian president, as well as reaffirmed support for Ukraine's sovereignty and territorial integrity.

Psaki noted that the same position was expressed on December 6 during Volodymyr Zelenskys call with U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken.

Thus, following the latest talks between the leaders of the United States and Russia, Washingtons position remains unwavering.

The White House spokeswoman also said President Biden remained ready to respond seriously to Russia in the event of a military escalation and that the U.S. maintains close contact with the Ukrainian side at many levels.

As reported by Ukrinform, the presidents of the United States and Russia had a secure video call on Tuesday, December 7.

The issue of Russia's military escalation near Ukraine's border was one of the main ones discussed during the call.

Photo: The White House

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On December 9, the UN General Assembly adopted the resolution "Problem of the militarization of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea and the city of Sevastopol, Ukraine, as well as parts of the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov".

As an Ukrinform correspondent reported from New York, 63 countries voted in favor of the resolution, 22 voted against, and 55 abstained (Japan voted in favor, as its representative explained, but that was not reflected on the screen for technical reasons).

The document was supported by all democracies and traditionally opposed by Russia, Armenia, Belarus, China, Cuba, Iran, Myanmar, Syria, Venezuela, Zimbabwe.

The document, adopted annually since 2018, was supplemented, in particular, by a reference to the international Crimea Platform and its declaration.

The resolution urges the Russian Federation, as the occupying power, to immediately, completely and unconditionally withdraw its armed forces from Crimea and to suspend the temporary occupation of Ukraine without delay.

The General Assembly expresses serious concern over the gradual militarization of Crimea, in particular the prolonged destabilization of the peninsula through the supply of weapons from Russia to Ukraine, such as tanks, armored personnel carriers, nuclear capable aircraft, helicopters, missiles, small arms, small arms and light weapons. and servicemembers.

In addition, the resolution underscores the inadmissibility of the Russian Federation's call-up of Crimean residents to its armed forces, in particular in the territory of Russia, which is contrary to international humanitarian law.

The General Assembly calls on Russia to refrain from establishing educational institutions that provide combat training for Crimean children to prepare them for military service in the Russian armed forces, combat training courses in Crimean schools, and stop efforts to officially include Crimean educational institutions in the system of military-patriotic education of the Russian Federation.

Several provisions of the resolution condemn the actions of the occupying power to block certain areas of the Black and Azov Seas, the Kerch Strait, intentional obstruction of navigation in violation of international law, expansion of Russian naval bases in Crimea, military exercises in the region, construction of a bridge across the Kerch, etc.

The resolution calls on all states and international organizations and specialized agencies to refrain from any visits to Crimea that are not agreed with Ukraine.

Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine Dmytro Kuleba thanked the UN member states for supporting the enhanced resolution on the militarization of Crimea at the General Assembly.

"Grateful to all states who supported the resolution. It further consolidates international support for the Crimea Platform and its goals, addresses the progressing militarization of Crimea, sends a deterrence signal amid the ongoing Russian build-up near our border and in Crimea," he posted on Twitter.

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The United States has decided to actively engage in the process of a peaceful settlement of the situation in Ukraine, but the format has not yet been determined.

Head of the President's Office Andriy Yermak said this on the Right to Power talk show on Thursday, December 9, Ukrinform reports.

"We can clearly say today that the United States has decided to be an active participant in the peace process. How this is done will depend on many circumstances," he said.

According to him, it could be a "parallel track" together with the Normandy format.

At the same time, Yermak said that U.S. partners are very interested in bringing peace to Ukraine.

U.S. President Joe Biden and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky held a phone call on December 9, which lasted for one-and-a-half hours.

On December 7, Biden held a video conference with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

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U.S. President Joe Biden has spoken to representatives of the Bucharest Nine (B9) group of eastern flank NATO Allies to discuss Russia's destabilizing military build-up along Ukraine's border.

That's according to a press release published on the White House's website.

Joining the call with Biden were the presidents of Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Poland, Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria, as well as the prime ministers of the Czech Republic and Slovakia.

Speaking to the leaders, Biden underscored the United States' commitment to Transatlantic security and its sacred commitment to NATO's Article 5.

"The leaders discussed Russia's destabilizing military buildup along Ukraine's border and the need for a united, ready, and resolute NATO stance for the collective defense of Allies. President Biden stressed the U.S. commitment to continued close consultation and coordination with all our Transatlantic Allies and partners as we work towards de-escalation of the current crisis through deterrence, defense, and dialogue," the statement said.

Read also: Biden calls Zelensky following virtual summit with Putin

U.S. President Joe Biden called Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on December 9 to discuss the results of his December 7 video call with Russian President Vladimir Putin, formats for resolving the conflict in eastern Ukraine, and reform in Ukraine.

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Some of this year's events were seen as milestones and some took place for the first time in Ukraines history

Late last year, Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba named seven priorities for 2021 by which Ukraines diplomacy was set to be guided. These included countering Russian aggression, fighting COVID-19, launching the Crimea Platform initiative, developing a new state policy toward Ukrainians living abroad, boosting exports and attracting investment, developing renewables, and engaging with Africa.

However, since diplomacy is the art of the possible, not all priority areas automatically translated into achievements at the end of the reporting period.

First of all, this relates to the opening point, which is countering Russian aggression. Diplomatic efforts along this track can be described as taking a punch  not always direct ones  amid an unstable environment of geopolitical shifts.

This year, Russias armed escalation was coming in waves, splitting into streams in a threat to cross into Ukraine including from neighboring Belarus, and reaching the Asia-Pacific region, where the Russian and Chinese Navies organized joint patrolling of warships. And this is without taking into account Russias act within the Minsk-2 and Normandy Four formats, where its delegates, if they appeared at all, did it with the only aim, figuratively speaking, of flipping the negotiating table over or confusing their opponents.

In response, Ukraines diplomacy is raising strong waves of consolidation among international partners, which we have seen in the spring and also recently.

Therefore, this area will expectedly remain MFA Ukraines priority next year or even in the years to come.

Although the Russian threat has taken up the lion's share of Ukrainian diplomats' attention, the Foreign Ministry also focused on other strategic areas.

We offer you a review of this years events, which, in our opinion, comprise the TOP 7 highlights of Ukraines diplomatic efforts.

1. Crimea Platform Summit

On August 23, delegations of 46 countries and international organizations arrived in Kyiv for the inaugural summit of the Crimea Platform initiative to tell Russia that the Crimea issue is a closed one and that Moscow will eventually be held accountable for the crimes committed.

The declaration adopted by the Summit participants says the Crimea Platform aims at "peacefully ending the Russian Federations temporary occupation of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea and the city of Sevastopol and to restore control of Ukraine over this territory in full accordance with international law."

A special Office opened in Kyiv on August 23 will ensure continued work of the new consultation and coordination format. Similar offices are expected to be opened in other participating countries as well.

Russia's opposition to Ukraine's initiative and the efforts to draw the attention of the international community to the Crimea issue has taken various forms, from denial to compromising or blackmailing potential summit participants. However, the dogs bark but the caravan moves on so at the moment, international partners are waiting for the solid initiative to be filled with specific content.

Ukraine has already presented its vision of the functioning and development of the Crimea Platform for the deoccupation of the Crimean peninsula at the OSCE Ministerial in Stockholm.

2. Renewed Ukraine-U.S. Strategic Partnership Charter

At last year's final press conference, the foreign minister called Ukraine's relations with the United States one of the "great intrigues" of 2021.

"This will be very interesting, but Im convinced that, as a result of this cooperation, we will become even stronger, while our partnership with the United States will deepen," Kuleba predicted.

He might have known something as on November 10, together with U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, he signed the renewed Ukraine-U.S. Strategic Partnership Charter, which defined the format of relations between the two countries for the next decade.

Russian Ambassador to the United States Anatoly Antonov, commenting for the Russian media the strategic document signed by Ukraine and the U.S., said that the deal is geopolitically charged with countering Russia."

Well, it was the Russians who started the mess  and they dont seem to be willing to stop, so this countering bit is pretty much their own fault.

3. Foreign Policy Strategy

On July 30, the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine passed the Foreign Policy Strategy, for the first time in Ukraines history. On August 26, President Volodymyr Zelensky enforced the document by his decree.

The main goal of Ukraines foreign policy, as per the Strategy, is affirming Ukraines position in the world as a strong and authoritative European state.

In total, the strategy contains of 254 points, which can be divided into three main topics: maintaining a proactive stance in international politics, shaping a security architecture in the country, the region, and the world, as well as creating new economic opportunities.

The Strategy identifies five countries with which relations shall be of priority strategic nature: the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Germany, and France. At the same time, the range of strategic partners is not limited to this list. Among Ukraine's strategic partners are Poland, Turkey, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Lithuania, Romania, China, and Brazil. The Strategy also notes global partnership with Japan and the importance of cooperation with India. In addition, emphasis is placed on the priority of developing relations with neighboring countries, including bringing to a strategic level Ukraines contacts with Moldova.

According to international experts, for the first time ever, Ukraine has a comprehensive and comprehensive action plan on the world stage.

4. Association Trio

Launched by MFA Ukraine back in 2020, the initiative to create regional alliances, including the Lublin Triangle between Lithuania, Poland, and Ukraine, and the Quadriga between Ukraine and Turkey, this year developed as an Association Trio involving Ukraine, Georgia, and Moldova was set up on May 17. The three countries declare their willingness to cooperate with the EU more closely, striving to eventually join the bloc.

At a recent EU and Eastern Partnership foreign ministerial in Brussels, Ukraines diplomacy chief Dmytro Kuleba outlined his countrys vision of the strategic tracks the initiative would work along: developing trade, strengthening security, including energy, implementing the European Green Deal, and integrating into EUs digital and internal markets.

After the heads of Ukrainian, Moldovan, and Georgian governments met with the EU leadership in preparation for the Eastern Partnership summit in Brussels on November 30, Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal of Ukraine called on the EU to recognize the European prospects of the Association Trio.

Whether the officials heard the Trio out will be clear on December 15, when the sixth Eastern Partnership Summit will take place.

5. Intensification of relations with African countries

Access to the African continent was one of the Foreign Ministry's priorities for 2021. At least at the level of establishing political contacts, it can be considered a success.

The Foreign Ministry said that over the past few months, Ukraine's top diplomat had held a series of meetings and calls with African counterparts, most of which took place for the first time in history.

In particular, Dmytro Kuleba's Africa successes this year include the first-ever phone call with Senegalese Foreign Minister Aissata Tal Sal and Botswana's top diplomat Lemogang Kwape, as well as a meeting with his countepart from Niger, Hassoumi Massaoudou.

In addition, the Ukrainian Foreign Minister had phone calls with Nigerias Foreign Minister Geoffrey Onyeama, Cote dIvoires Foreign Minister Kandia Camara, and Libyan Government of National Unity chief Abdulhamid Dbeibah.

6. Ukraine appoints Ambassador to NATO

The Ukrainian Presidents decision, adopted at the request of the countrys Foreign Minister, took off the agenda the question, how come, while insisting at various platforms on its will to become a NATO Ally in the future, Ukraine has not appointed chief of its Mission to NATO for more than two years.

On July 30, former Ukrainian Ambassador to the United Kingdom, Natalia Galibarenko, was finally appointed to the said post. She also became the first woman to head Ukraine's Mission to the Alliance.

Interestingly, in July last year, she was replaced as ambassador to the UK by former Foreign Minister Vadym Prystaiko, who had headed Ukraines Mission to NATO from 2017 to 2019, being the last appointed head, followed by two acting chiefs.

So there is reason to hope that such a castling will have a synergistic effect for both diplomats and for the country, too.

7. New travel opportunities for Ukrainians amid COVID-19 restrictions

While last year, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs worked with international partners to provide Ukrainians with a sufficient number of coronavirus vaccines, this year the main emphasis was on creating foreign travel opportunities. In both areas, MFA Ukraine bore fruit  as of mid-summer, more than 120 countries were open to Ukrainian nationals.

In addition, thanks to the joint efforts of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Ministry of Finance, the Ministry of Health, the Ministry of Internal Affairs, and other agencies, on August 20, Ukraine became one of the first non-EU countries to have its COVID digital certificates officially recognized in the European Union.

Although the EU formally removed Ukraine from the "green list" on November 9, recommending that EU member states temporarily ban Ukrainian tourists from crossing in, a number of European countries later announced their intention to retain open borders to vaccinated Ukrainians.

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Throughout this year, Ukrainian diplomats also continued their fight against Russias Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline project, first trying to halt the completion of its construction and then to ensure it only launches if certified in line with European law; contributed to the evacuation of Ukrainians from turbulent Afghanistan and Syria; desperately tried to revive the Normandy Four platform for Donbas settlement; worked with Ukraine's lawsuits in international courts; helped domestic producers explore new markets; and sought to improve Ukraine's image in the eyes of the world.

Indeed, not all their efforts have seen success, but we hope that next year they will seize new opportunities and gain new wins on the peaceful diplomatic front.

Nadiia Yurchenko, Kyiv

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The United States is concerned about Russia's plans for escalation against Ukraine, including efforts to destabilize the country from within.

We remain deeply concerned by evidence Russia has made plans for significant escalation against Ukraine, including a large-scale military operation and efforts to destabilize Ukraine from within. We are, as always, monitoring the region very closely and we will continue to consult closely with Allies and partners on this issue, Charge dAffaires of the U.S. Mission to OSCE Courtney Austrian said at the OSCE Permanent Council meeting, an Ukrinform correspondent reported.

The diplomat noted that the United States will impose severe costs and consequences on Russia if it takes further aggressive action. We likewise call on Russia to cease its attempted integration of Ukrainian citizens and Ukrainian territory it controls through passportization, economic alignment, and changes to the education system, Austrian said.

She underscored that Russias ongoing aggression against Ukraine, with its military build-up on Ukraines border, is the greatest security threat facing Europe today.

By violating its neighbors sovereignty and undermining its territorial integrity, Russia aims to prevent Ukraine from its freely chosen path of full Euro-Atlantic integration, the Charge dAffaires of the U.S. Mission to OSCE said.

Earlier, Head of the Main Intelligence Directorate of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine Kyrylo Budanov stated that Moscow is conducting a large-scale special operation against Ukraine in the energy, economic, and military spheres.

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President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky and President of France Emmanuel Macron discussed the unlocking negotiations within the Normandy format and the Trilateral Contract Group.

Talked to Emmanuel Macron about unlocking the Normandy format and the TCG work. Agreed on joint next steps, Zelensky posted on Twitter.

The President also noted that he discussed threats to Ukraine's energy security and diversification of energy sources with the French leader.

Grateful to the President of France for a positive assessment of the ongoing reforms, the Head of State added.

Earlier, Head of the President's Office Andriy Yermak announced a possible meeting of the presidents of Ukraine and France and German chancellor in Brussels next week.

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From August 7, citizens of Ukraine are allowed to cross into Hungary with no restrictions earlier imposed due to the coronavirus spread.

This was reported by the State Border Guard Service of Ukraine, Ukrinform saw.

According to border guards, the requirements set by the Schengen Borders Code (biometric passport/visa, medical insurance valid in Europe, and sufficient finances) remain for citizens to enter Hungary.

Read also: Ukrainians can travel to Overseas France without visa

At the same time, when entering Hungary through airport checkpoints, citizens must hold a negative COVID-19 PCR returned no later than 72 hours prior to the entry date or a Ukrainian or Hungarian vaccination certificate (children under 18 are allowed to enter unhindered if accompanied by certificate holders).

For transit, Hungarian border police may additionally require documents confirming the right to enter the destination (depending on the requirements set by the specific country: residence permit, work visa, hotel reservation, virus test results, etc.).

Regarding the peculiarities of staying in Hungary, it should be kept in mind that the Hungarian competent authorities, in accordance with current legislation, impose administrative fines on foreigners, including Ukrainian citizens, who had exceeded the permitted period of stay in the Schengen area before these countries introduced quarantine measures (HUF 5,000-50,000, or US$15-150). If the period of stay in the Schengen zone has expired after the introduction of quarantine measures by these countries, to avoid a fine, citizens crossing the Hungarian border must prove to the Hungarian competent authorities that they were in quarantine or that the extension application was submitted to the relevant authority, etc. (citizens must hold a document issued by an official body). At the same time, each individual case is subject to thorough inspection and is considered individually, the State Border Guard Service reminded.

As Ukrinform reported earlier, Ukrainian citizens are currently allowed to travel to 124 countries around the world, including popular tourist destinations.

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The Supreme Court of Cassation of Italy upheld the acquittal of Ukraines National Guard member Vitaly Markiv.

The matter has been put to rest today! We won the Cassation decision!!!! All lawsuits were dismissed. Sincere thanks to all involved!!!! This is our common victory. The truth always wins, Markiv posted on Instagram on December 9, Ukrinform reports.

Ukrainian Parliament Commissioner for Human Rights Liudmyla Denisova also reacted to the court's decision.

Great news on the eve of international Human Rights Day! Despite pressure, the Supreme Court of Cassation of Italy upheld the acquittal of National Guard member Vitaliy Markiv! All lawsuits have been dismissed! All claims against the state of Ukraine have been dropped. I sincerely thank all those who have fought for justice, victory and the rule of law for several years," she wrote on Telegram yesterday.

As reported, earlier the Supreme Court of Cassation of Italy received appeal against the decision of the Milan Court of Appeal to acquit Ukraines National Guard member Vitaly Markiv. Complaints were filed by the Milan Prosecutor General's Office and the family of photojournalist Andrea Rocchelli.

Markiv was detained in Italy in the summer of 2017 on charges of his alleged involvement in the deaths of Italian photojournalist Andrea Rocchelli and his interpreter, Russian Andrei Mironov, near Sloviansk, Donetsk region, in May 2014.

On July 12, 2019, the Pavia court sentenced the Ukrainian to 24 years in prison.

In August 2020, the National Police of Ukraine conducted a series of investigative actions at the scene, in Sloviansk and on Karachun Mountain, as part of a criminal investigation into the death of the Italian photojournalist, and obtained evidence of Vitaly Markiv's innocence.

On November 3, 2020, the Milan Court of Appeal fully acquitted Markiv.

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Countering disinformation works best with clear functioning of strategic communications, based on a powerful network of tools applied by NATO Allies.

This was a statement made by Anka Feldhusen, Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of Germany in Ukraine, during her presentation at Kyiv Stratcom Forum, the first international forum on strategic communications in Ukraine.

"Germany, together with France, supported Ukraine as mediators in its relations with Russia, which started the war against Ukraine in 2014. And our priorities remain the same  the mediation process in the Normandy format and in the context of the Minsk agreements.

We see how fake news and Russian propaganda were disseminated in Germany, said Feldhusen. In particular, the diplomat recalled a story of the girl Lisa, who had allegedly been kidnapped by migrants during the 2015 migration crisis. In reality, the child turned out to have slept over at her friend's house.

According to the Ambassador, these examples show why Germans have finally turned their attention to Russia's hostile propaganda." Feldhusen stressed that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Federal Government of Germany believe that countering misinformation and propaganda work best with a clear functioning of the strategic communications system.

The diplomat believes that it is wrong to respond to hostile propaganda and disinformation with own propaganda and disinformation.

We need to define what we consider disinformation and fake news. To accomplish this, we need to raise awareness of how disinformation is spreading. This is about media literacy, she emphasized.

As Ukrinform has reported earlier, on December 7-8, 2021, Kyiv Stratcom Forum took place in the capital of Ukraine. It is the first international forum on strategic communications in Ukraine. Among its participants were NATO and EU diplomats, Ukrainian officials, representatives of Ukrainian civil society organizations specializing in strategic communications and countering disinformation. The Forum has been organized by the Center for Strategic Communication and Information Security.
| By Deborah Kotz

Researchers at the University of Maryland School of Medicine (UMSOM) and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) have received a nearly $2 million federal grant to conduct a clinical trial to help determine the pathway that leads to a common cause of blindness, primary open angle glaucoma. It will study how blood flow to the eyes retina affects the onset and progression of the disease, which could eventually lead to new tests and treatments for the condition.

The grant was awarded by the National Eye Institute to principal investigator Osamah Saeedi, MD, associate professor of Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences at UMSOM. Saeedi is also director of the Glaucoma Division and director of clinical research in the department.

Osamah Saeedi, MD

Open angle glaucoma is the most common type of glaucoma, which causes irreversible blindness and vision loss. The condition affects 4 million Americans, many of whom do not know they have the disease until it has advanced and caused severe vision impairment. Increased pressure in the eye damages the optic nerve leading to a permanent loss of nerve cells. Vision loss from glaucoma results from progressive damage to the optic nerve. While lowering eye pressure is the only available treatment, poor blood flow to the eye and nerve cells in the eye is also associated with the disease.

There is strong evidence that impaired blood flow is involved in the development and progression of primary open angle glaucoma, said Saeedi. We aim to see what role this may play in the loss of neurons in the optic nerve and retina that are vital for vision.

He is collaborating on the research with Daniel Hammer, PhD, deputy director of the Division of Biomedical Physics at the FDA, and FDA visiting scientist Zhuolin Liu, PhD.

Saeedi and his FDA collaborators will employ the use of innovative imaging modalities to measure retinal blood flow down to the level of the individual red blood cell. They will be using sophisticated laser imaging technologies called erythrocyte mediated angiography flowmetry (EMAf) and multimodal adaptive optics (mAO). Both techniques allow for the highly accurate and precise measurement of retinal blood flow, even in tiny capillaries.

The adaptive optics system in our FDA laboratory uses an imaging mode called optical coherence tomography, which is similar to what is used in some ophthalmic clinics, but unlike those systems, were able to achieve cellular-level resolution, said Hammer.

An example of cellular-level resolution  imaging retinal ganglion cells in the inner retina  was pioneered by Liu in her postdoctoral work at Indiana University. Building upon that previous work, the UMSOM-FDA team hopes to image both cells and capillaries important in the progression of the disease.

Our aim is to explore and quantify many characteristics of the neurovascular unit of ganglion cells and the capillaries that nourish them, said Liu. In developing new disease biomarkers based upon high resolution imaging, we hope to foster greater patient access to innovative medical device technology.

This study will compare blood flow in the eyes of 60 glaucoma patients with a control group of 30 volunteers who do not have glaucoma. The researchers hypothesize that those in the early stages of glaucoma will have a significant impairment in their retinal blood flow compared to those who do not have glaucoma.

Identifying precise biomarkers for early stage glaucoma is vital for detecting this disease at its earliest stage before it causes permanent vision loss, said E. Albert Reece, MD, PhD, MBA, executive vice president for medical affairs, University of Maryland, Baltimore, and the John Z. and Akiko K. Bowers Distinguished Professor and dean, UMSOM. "This translational research study will hopefully provide a robust new direction for developing new tests and treatments for this leading cause of blindness.
Thousands of people have fled fighting between herders, fishermen and farmers in Cameroon's Far North region by crossing the Chari and Logone Rivers which mark the border with Chad.  UNHCR/Aristophane Ngargoune

UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, is deeply concerned by renewed intercommunal clashes that erupted this week in Cameroons Far North region, displacing thousands inside the country and forcing more than 30,000 people to flee to neighbouring Chad.

Since Sunday 5 December, at least 22 people have been killed and 30 others seriously injured during several days of ongoing fighting.

Clashes broke out in the border village of Ouloumsa following a dispute between herders, fishermen and farmers over dwindling water resources. Violence then spread to neighbouring villages. Ten villages in total have been burned to the ground.

On 8 December, fighting broke out in the Cameroonian city of Kousseri  a commercial hub with some 200,000 inhabitants. Kousseris cattle market was destroyed in the fighting. At least 10,000 people have fled Kousseri to Chads capital Ndjamena, located a few kilometres across the Chari and Logone Rivers, which mark the border with Cameroon.

Eighty per cent of the new arrivals are women  including many who are pregnant  and children. They have found refuge in NDjamena and villages along Chads bank of the Logone River.

Chad has reaffirmed its hospitality towards the new arrivals, and the authorities there, together with UNHCR, other UN agencies and humanitarian partners, are rushing to support the Cameroonian refugees with emergency shelter and assistance. Injured people have been admitted to two hospitals in NDjamena.

Security forces have been dispatched to Far North Cameroon, but the situation remains volatile. UNHCR has been forced to suspend its operations in the affected areas.

The climate crisis is exacerbating tensions in Far North Cameroon. In recent decades, the surface of Lake Chad  of which the Logone River is a main tributary  has decreased by as much as 95 per cent. Fishermen and farmers have dug vast trenches to retain the remaining river water so they can fish and cultivate crops. But the muddy trenches are trapping and sometimes killing cattle belonging to the herders, sparking tension and fighting.

A first outbreak of intercommunal violence occurred in August. At the time, 45 people were killed and 23,000 forcibly displaced, 8,500 of whom have remained in Chad since then.

UNHCR and authorities had been leading reconciliation efforts in Kousseri since last week, during which representatives of the communities committed to put an end to the violence. But without urgent action to address the root causes of the crisis, the situation could escalate further.

UNHCR is calling for an immediate end to the violence and for the support of the international community to assist the victims and refugees.

Chad is home to close to a million refugees and internally displaced people (IDPs) and Cameroon to more than 1.5 million refugees and IDPs.

Financial resources to respond to the situation in both countries remain critically low. UNHCR's requirements for 2021 in Cameroon (US$99.6 million) and Chad (US$141 million) are only 52 per cent and 54 per cent funded respectively. More support is urgently needed for UNHCR to continue providing life-saving assistance during a crisis that is likely to continue.

For more information on this topic, please contact:
UNHCR Goodwill Ambassador Ben Stiller visits Syrian refugee twins Razan and Yazan (first and second on left) in the Bekaa Valley, Lebanon, in 2019.  UNHCR/Michael Muller

Around the world, Ben Stiller is recognized for starring roles in films like Zoolander, Dodgeball and Meet the Parents  but to refugees like Razan, he also represents a caring community seeking to bring attention to the global refugee crisis.

Ben met young Razan and her family at their home in an informal settlement in the Bekaa Valley, Lebanon, in 2019. Razans parents fled Syria at the beginning of the conflict and spent years struggling to make ends meet, moving around Lebanon. Her twin brother Yazan, 8 years old at the time, helped provide for the family by selling vegetables on the street.

Remarking on his meeting with the family, Ben said, When I look in Yazans eyes, I still see a kid, but I wonder how long that will be. The war has lasted his whole life. Its all he knows.

It was the hope of connecting with people who have been forced to flee and giving them a platform to share their stories that inspired Bens first trip with UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, five years ago this month, in December 2016. Since that trip to Jordan, Ben was named a UNHCR Goodwill Ambassador and continues his passionate advocacy for refugees today.

Recognizing five years of Bens commitment to the UN Refugee Agency and the people it serves, we are shouting out the top five ways he has stepped up in solidarity with refugees:
End violence against women now.

To conclude the campaign on 16 Days of Activism against Gender-Based violence, UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, invites you to join on 10 December, Human Rights Day, a series of vigils that will be held in Athens, Thessaloniki and other cities and towns across Greece.

The vigils will take place in memory of the women and girls who have been killed in Greece, as a result of gender-based violence. Participants will be wearing orange T-shirts, the color of the campaign which represents a brighter future, free from violence against women and girls.

In parallel, monuments and buildings, including Hadrians Arch, the premises of the General Secretariat for Demography, Family Policy and Gender Equality and the UNHCR in Athens, are being lit up in orange.

Please join us in sending a strong message against the crime of femicide and gender-based violence.

Locations of vigils on Friday 10 December:

Athens, Klafthmonos Square, 18:00

Thessaloniki, Agia Sofia pedestrian street, 18:00

Ioannina, in front of the Town Hall, Dimokratia Square, 18:00

Igoumenitsa, in front of the Town Hall, 19:00

Kos, in front of the Town Hall, 18:00

Leros, in front of the Town Hall, 18:00

[14 December] Chios, Plastira Square, 18:00

[13 December] Samos, in front of the Public Central Historical Library of Samos, 18:00

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Therese* draws a small crowd of curious onlookers as she kneels before the rusty, broken-down engine of a truck parked near her house in the outskirts of Kananga in the Democratic Republic of the Congos Kasai Central province.

Her neighbours listen in amazement as she carefully assesses the extent of the damage, explaining what repairs are needed.

While the 47-year-old may appear out of place in the traditionally male-dominated field of auto-mechanics, it was in a mechanics garage that she first found hope again after surviving a brutal sexual assault, and its aftermath.

In 2017, violent clashes between armed militia and Congolese armed forces engulfed her hometown of Luebo, some 300 kilometres from Kananga.

That day, there was a stampede. There were gunshots everywhere and we started running away in panic, she recalls.

A group of armed men killed her husband in front of her before setting her house ablaze. Therese managed to escape into the forest with her 10 children.

What [the armed men] did to me destroyed me completely.

But her nightmare was just beginning. In the forest, she encountered four soldiers who raped her and her 22-year-old daughter at gun point, in front of her other children. For more than three weeks afterwards, the family hid in the bush to evade further attacks. During that time her two youngest children died of starvation.

Therese* inspects the engine of a broken-down truck in Kananga, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.  UNHCR/Vittoria Moretti

Therese* sits outside her house in Kananga, the Democratic Republic of the Congo.  UNHCR/Vittoria Moretti

Therese* at her home in Kananga, the Democratic Republic of the Congo.  UNHCR/Vittoria Moretti

They finally made it to safety in Kananga, but Thereses struggles were far from over. The rape traumatised her and left her unable to have an income to support herself and her remaining children. She and her daughter were also confronted with the double stigma and discrimination that surrounds sexual violence in Kasai, isolating them from their host community.

What [the armed men] did to me destroyed me completely, she says. I am afraid for my daughter. I wonder if she will ever get married and have children, because in our customs and traditions, women who have been abused are often rejected.

Hope finally came in the form of a vocational training programme, sponsored by UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, that gives survivors like Therese the tools to be financially independent and self-reliant.

The women are trained through the National Institute of Professional Training (INPP), in traditionally male-dominated sectors such as auto-mechanics, electronics and IT (information technology) so they can have the necessary skills to support their families, while also challenging gender stereotypes and opening the way for other women to earn a living in these areas.

UNHCR partner, Femmes Mains dans la Main pour le Development du Kasai (FMMDK), a local, female-led NGO that is active in the protection and promotion of womens rights in Kasai, helps identify the women.

These are such important projects because they offer survivors a chance to rebuild their lives.

As well as receiving medical and psychosocial care, Therese learned auto-mechanics and how to drive, together with other survivors of sexual violence.

These are such important projects because they offer survivors of sexual violence a chance to rebuild their lives and become part of the community again. These communities, in turn, benefit immensely from their new skillsets and expertise, says Liz Ahua, UNHCRs Representative in the DRC.

After almost eight months of training, Therese is now able to drive a car, and knows how to dismantle and repair engines, tires and brakes. After her graduation, she received her driving license, and will soon start a car mechanics business with some of the other women.

Since 2020, almost 400 survivors and people at risk of GBV in the Kasai and Kasai Central provinces have received assistance from UNHCR and its partners through vocational trainings in different sectors.

However, much remains to be done to combat sexual violence in a region where it remains part of a cycle of recurring conflict and insecurity and where social norms demand that female victims of violence must pay dowry fees before they can be readmitted into society. The practice often results in women being expelled from families unwilling to bear the costs of these dowries.

Over 800 GBV survivors were identified by UNHCR and partners in the Kasai region between January and July 2021 and provided with legal, medical and psychosocial care.

The agency also supports local organizations such as FMMDK that are engaging with communities to address the root causes of GBV and to break the vicious cycle of discrimination and poverty which puts survivors at risk of exploitation and further abuse. More funding is needed to implement projects like the one that provided Therese with a lifeline.

Today, Therese has renewed self-confidence and can look to the future with hope again as she waits to start working at a new garage which will be open in the coming months with support from UNHCR.

I learned a profession which I really love. It will allow me to be independent and take care of my family, she says.

*name changed for protection reasons
ISLAMABAD, 10 December 2021: UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, paid tribute to men who actively support women and girls and played a positive role in fighting against gender-based violence and in advancing gender equality.

UNHCR called for combined efforts to advocate and increase awareness to prevent, mitigate and respond to gender-based violence.

To mark the 16 Days of Activism against Gender-Based Violence, UNHCR together with Inspire Pakistan organized an event that was attended by UNHCR Representative Noriko Yoshida, CEO Inspire Pakistan Qaiser M. Siddique, UNHCR and Inspire staff, representatives from civil society and, most importantly refugee women and men.

The event recognized the role of refugee men who raise their voices for girls and womens rights and support them in various fields of life, notably gaining an education.

This year marks the 30th anniversary of the 16 Days campaign running under the global theme Orange the world: End violence against women now! The colour orange symbolizes a brighter future, free of violence against women and girls.

The international campaign 16 Days of Activism against Gender-Based Violence runs from 25 November through 10 December. UNHCR arranged several activities across the country with the support of partners and other UN agencies.

Speaking on the occasion, Ms. Yoshida said that it is imperative that we all stand together against gender-based violence that affects everyone of us, not only in Pakistan, but across the globe, not only women, but also men.

She said that those refugee men who went the extra mile by supporting women deserved to be appreciated and acknowledged.

Ms. Yoshida added that the stories narrated by some of the refugee men reflect the daily actions they take in fostering gender equality and thus fighting against gender-based violence. You and the successes of women in your families set an example for other men in your communities, she said.

Earlier, speaking on the occasion, Abdul Rehman, whose daughter Dr. Saleema Rehman won this years regional UNCHR Nansen Award for Asia for her dedication to promote girls education in her community, said that education is a fundamental right of all girls and boys.

My daughters success is not only mine but of all Afghan community. I urge all parents and brothers to support the education of their daughters and sisters for a better future, he said.

Other Afghan male refugees including Fazal Nabi and Inayat Shams shed light on the importance of girls education. The world is colorless without women and their participation, Inayat Shams narrated one line from his poetry.

ENDS

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Refugees and asylum-seekers evacuated from Libya to Rwanda arrive at Kigali International Airport.  UNHCR/Eric Didier Karinganire

176 vulnerable asylum seekers were evacuated from Libya today on a humanitarian flight to Rwanda, organized by UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency. It was the second such flight to Rwanda this year, using the Emergency Transit Mechanism (ETM), the first having taken place in July.

Those evacuated include men, women and children, including several young babies from Eritrea, Ethiopia, Sudan and South Sudan. Many are victims of trafficking or survivors of gender-based violence and other forms of abuse, with several just released from detention centres.

We are very happy that we were able to evacuate such large numbers of people today, especially the very young, who now have a chance to grow up in safety and live full and dignified lives. We also appreciate the co-operation of the Libyan authorities in facilitating this flight, said Jean-Paul Cavalieri, UNHCRs Chief of Mission for Libya.

In Rwanda, the asylum seekers will stay at the Gashora-based Emergency Transit Centre, where UNHCR will provide them with accommodation, food, water, medical care, psychosocial support, and life skills training. UNHCR aims at helping them to find durable solutions such as resettlement to third countries, voluntary return where it is possible, or local integration in Rwanda.

Refugees and asylum-seekers evacuated from Libya Rwanda arrive at Kigali International Airport.  UNHCR/Eric Didier Karinganire Refugees and asylum-seekers evacuated from Libya to Rwanda arrive at Kigali International Airport.  UNHCR/Eric Didier Karinganire Evacuees include men, women and children, including several young babies.  UNHCR/Eric Didier Karinganire Refugees and asylum-seekers evacuated from Libya to Rwanda arrive at Kigali International Airport.  UNHCR/Eric Didier Karinganire

Its relieving to see more people evacuated to safety in Rwanda. We commend the leadership of this country and our supporters for their generous backing of efforts to revive the hope of the evacuees, said Ahmed Baba Fall, the UNHCR Representative to Rwanda.

A total of 824 refugees and asylum seekers have been so far evacuated from Libya to Rwanda under the Emergency Transit Mechanism since 2019. UNHCR is grateful for the resettlement pledges made available to the ETMs by third countries as well as the financial contributions from Austria, Denmark, the European Union, France, Malta, Norway and Switzerland.

UNHCR was able to resume humanitarian flights out of Libya, which had been blocked for most of the year, in November. Since 2017, 7,490 refugees and asylum seekers have departed Libya through humanitarian evacuations or resettlement to third countries.

Ends

FOR MORE INFORMATION PLEASE CONTACT:

Caroline Gluck

+216 29925506

[email protected]

Tarik Argaz

+216 299 61295

[email protected]

Elise Villechalane in Kigali

+250788315198

[email protected]

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The Philippines' Department of Health (DOH) reported 379 new COVID-19 infections on Friday, pushing the total number of confirmed cases in the Southeast Asian country to 2,836,200

MANILA, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 10th Dec, 2021 ) :The Philippines' Department of Health (DOH) reported 379 new COVID-19 infections on Friday, pushing the total number of confirmed cases in the Southeast Asian country to 2,836,200.

The DOH also reported that 25 more people died from COVID-19 complications, bringing the death toll to 49,961.

While with less than 1,000 cases reported since Nov. 24 in the country, the Philippine government decided to bar the entry of foreign travelers from Portugal from Wednesday to curb the Omicron variant.

Fully vaccinated travelers from Portugal will be required to undergo 14-day quarantine and strict testing before the set date, Cabinet Secretary Karlo Nograles said on Friday.

Nograles told a virtual news conference that the government will add Portugal to the "red list" of countries and regions considered as high-risk for COVID-19 since Sunday.

The country has banned international arrivals from 15 countries and territories, namely South Africa, Botswana, Namibia, Zimbabwe, Lesotho, Eswatini, Mozambique, Austria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Belgium, Italy, and France.

The Philippines, which has around 110 million population, has tested more than 23 million people since the pandemic.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on Thursday recommended individuals 16 and 17 years of age get a booster shot of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine at least six months after completing their first two doses

WASHINGTON, Dec. 10 (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 10th Dec, 2021 ) :-- The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on Thursday recommended individuals 16 and 17 years of age get a booster shot of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine at least six months after completing their first two doses.

The CDC recommendation came hours after the U.S. food and Drug Administration (FDA) expanded eligibility for the Pfizer-BioNTech third shot to this age group.

"Although we don't have all the answers on the Omicron variant, initial data suggests that COVID-19 boosters help broaden and strengthen the protection against Omicron and other variants," said CDC Director Rochelle Walensky in a statement.

"We know that COVID-19 vaccines are safe and effective, and I strongly encourage adolescents ages 16 and 17 to get their booster if they are at least 6 months post their initial Pfizer vaccination series," Walensky said.
Oslo, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 10th Dec, 2021 ) :She risks prison, he has buried several colleagues: Maria Ressa of the Philippines and Dmitry Muratov of Russia, two champions of the free press, will on Friday receive this year's Nobel Peace prize honouring a profession under attack.

Ressa, co-founder of the news website Rappler, and Muratov, chief editor of the independent newspaper Novaya Gazeta, won the Nobel Prize in early October for "their efforts to safeguard freedom of expression." "A healthy society and democracy is dependent on trustworthy information," the head of the Norwegian Nobel Committee Berit Reiss-Andersen said on Thursday, taking a swipe at propaganda, disinformation and fake news.

Free and independent journalism is however under threat around the world.

Asked whether the prestigious award had improved the situation in the Philippines -- currently ranked 138th in freedom of the press by Reporters Without Borders -- Ressa said on Thursday it had not.

"It's like having a Damocles sword hang over your head," the 58-year-old journalist said.

"Now in the Philippines, the laws are there but ... you tell the toughest stories at your own risk." She mentioned her compatriot and former colleague, Jess Malabanan, a reporter for the Manila Standard who was fatally shot in the head on Wednesday.

Malabanan, who also worked for the Reuters news agency, had reported on the sensitive subject of the war on drugs in the country.

If the murder is confirmed to be linked to his profession, he would be the 16th journalist killed in the Philippines since the start of Rodrigo Duterte's presidency in 2016, according to Reporters Without Borders.

Ressa, a vocal critic of Duterte and his deadly drug war, is herself facing seven criminal lawsuits in her country.

Currently on bail pending an appeal against a conviction last year in a cyber libel case, she had to apply to four courts for permission to travel to Norway for Friday's ceremony.

- Foreign agent? - Meanwhile, 60-year-old Muratov heads one of the rare independent newspapers in a Russian media landscape largely under state control.

Known for its investigations into corruption and human rights abuses in Chechnya, Novaya Gazeta has seen six of its journalists killed since the 1990s, including famed investigative reporter Anna Politkovskaya murdered in 2006.

"If we're going to be foreign agents because of the Nobel Peace Prize, we will not get upset, no," he told reporters when asked of the risk of being labelled as such by the Kremlin.

"But actually... I don't think we will get this label. We have some other risks though," Muratov added.

The "foreign agent" label is meant to apply to people or groups that receive funding from abroad and are involved in any kind of "political activity".

It has however been given to many Kremlin-critical journalists and media, rendering their work exceedingly difficult.

Russia is in 150th spot on the Reporters Without Borders country ranking of freedom of the press.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has warned that the Nobel Prize is not a "shield" protecting journalists from the status.

- 'Reporting shouldn't be deadly' - According to a report compiled by Reporters Without Borders up to December 1, at least 1,636 journalists have been killed around the world in the past 20 years, including 46 since the beginning of the year.

"Reporting the news should cease to be a deadly activity," the organisation's secretary general Christophe Deloire said as he presented the report this week.

The number of journalists imprisoned around the world has also never been higher, the Committee to Protect Journalists said on Thursday, with 293 currently behind bars.

The Nobel Peace Prize will be presented to Ressa and Muratov at a ceremony -- scaled back due to the pandemic -- at Oslo's City Hall on Friday at 1:00 pm (1200 GMT).

The award consists of a diploma, a gold medal and a cheque for 10 million Swedish kronor (975,000 Euros, $1.10 million) to be shared by the two laureates.

This year's other Nobel laureates in the fields of medicine, physics, chemistry, literature and economics would normally receive their prizes at a separate ceremony in Stockholm on Friday.

But due to the pandemic, they received their awards in their home towns earlier this week.

A ceremony will be held in their honour in the Swedish capital on Friday, attended by the royal family.
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Brussels, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 10th Dec, 2021 ) :The European Union still expects to conclude talks on a post-Brexit fishing rights row with Britain on Friday, a spokeswoman said, despite London saying it does not recognise the deadline.

"Where we are is that on both sides, on the European Commission and UK, we have agreed that we have this mutual commitment to end these discussions for the successful outcome today," Vivian Loonela said.

Talks are underway between the UK and the commission on the remaining fishing licences yet to be accorded to French boats operating in British and Channel Island waters after Brexit.

A furious France has threatened to make a legal complant if the matter is not resolved by midnight on Friday, although Britain has said it does not recognise the deadline.

Briefing journalists in Brussels, the commission spokeswoman said the European Commission does not use the term "ultimatum" but understands that UK negotiators plan to resolve the dispute in the coming hours.

French officials have said that they will demand the European Commission activate a complaint mechanism in the post Brexit "Partnership Council" and pursue binding arbitration if the deadline is missed.

British Environment Secretary George Eustice is holding talks EU Environment Commissioner Virginijus Sinkevicius, and some progress has been made.

The Channel Island of Jersey has accorded 10 licences to French boats, and Guernsey 43, she said.

But France says that 104 of its boats lack permission to fish in Jersey waters, while UK and EU officials scour logbooks dating from 2012 to 2016 to confirm that they have traditionally done so.
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Washington, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 10th Dec, 2021 ) :A US Federal appeals court on Thursday rejected former president Donald Trump's bid to prevent the release of White House records relating to the January 6 attack on the Capitol.

The appeals court agreed with a lower court ruling that President Joe Biden could waive executive privilege on the records, so that they could be handed over to a Congressional panel investigating the violence by Trump supporters.

Trump, who has been accused of fomenting the attack on the US Congress, sought to exercise his privilege as a former president to keep the documents and phone records that might relate to the attack a secret.

But the court said Biden's judgment carried more weight in the case.

"The right of a former president certainly enjoys no greater weight than that of the incumbent," the appeals court said in its ruling.

"In this case, President Biden, as the head of the Executive Branch, has specifically found that Congress has demonstrated a compelling need for these very documents and that disclosure is in the best interests of the nation," the court said.

The ruling did not trigger the immediate release of the records. The appeals court said that Trump's lawyers would have two weeks to appeal the case to the Supreme Court.

There, Trump's attorneys are expected to request a new freeze on the release while the high court reviews the unprecedented case.

"Regardless of today's decision by the appeals court, this case was always destined for the Supreme Court," said Trump spokeswoman Liz Harrington.

"President Trump's duty to defend the Constitution and the Office of the Presidency continues, and he will keep fighting for every American and every future administration." The appeals court said the public interest was greater than Trump's own in relation to the records, which are held by the National Archives.

"That public interest is heightened when, as here, the legislature is proceeding with urgency to prevent violent attacks on the federal government and disruptions to the peaceful transfer of power," it said.

The records are sought by the House Select Committee investigating the January 6 violence, in which hundreds of Trump supporters forced the shutdown of Congress and delayed a joint session to confirm that Joe Biden had won the November 2020 election over Trump and would become president.

"We applaud the Court's decisive ruling, which respects the Select Committee's interest in obtaining White House records and the President's judgment in allowing those records to be produced," the special committee's Democratic chairman Representative Bennie Thompson and Republican vice chair Liz Cheney said in a joint statement Thursday.

Documents that Trump hoped to block include records from his top aides and memos to his former press secretary.

The more than 770 pages include records of his former chief of staff Mark Meadows, his former senior advisor Stephen Miller and his former deputy counsel Patrick Philbin.

Trump had also hoped to block the release of the White House Daily Diary -- a record of his activities, trips, briefings and phone calls.

Another trove of documents Trump does not want Congress to see includes memos to his former press secretary Kayleigh McEnany, a handwritten note on the January 6 events and a draft text of his speech at the "Save America" rally, which preceded the attack.

"Today, the Courts have once again rejected the former President's campaign to obstruct Congress's investigation into the January 6th insurrection," Democratic Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi said in a statement after the ruling.

"No one can be allowed to stand in the way of the truth - particularly not the previous President, who incited the insurrection." The January 6 committee meanwhile continued to push ahead in its investigation.

Witness and document requests indicate it is seeking to determine whether the White House played a role in encouraging or even plotting the January 6 attack as part of Trump's effort to prevent Biden from taking office.

Cheney, the committee's vice-chair, said it had now heard from nearly 300 witnesses, including four on Thursday: former Trump aide and Pentagon official Kash Patel; Ali Alexander, who helped organize the pro-Trump rally at the White House before the Capitol attack; and two others.

When Trump political consultant Steve Bannon refused to testify on his role on January 6, he was held in contempt, and then arrested by the Justice Department.

Next week, the committee is expected to also rule Meadows in contempt for refusing to testify.

"The investigation is firing on all cylinders," Cheney said on Twitter.

"President Trump is trying to hide what happened on January 6th and to delay and obstruct. We will not let that happen."
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Prime Minister Imran Khan has lamented the successive governments for ignoring transport system for Karachi.

KARACHI: (UrduPoint/UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News-Dec 10th, 2021) Prime Minister Imran Khan says Karachi is the engine of growth of Pakistan as prosperity of the country is linked with the development of the city.

Addressing the inaugural ceremony of Greenline Rapid Bus service project in Karachi on Friday, he said first step to modernize any city is to improve its transport system but unfortunately no government paid heed to address the transport problem of the Karachi in past.

About local government elections, the Prime Minister said that Karachi is needed to be given financial autonomy through this system.

Imran Khan said that ground breaking of K-IV water project for Karachi will be performed next month and the project will be completed in next fourteen to fifteen months.

He said through K-IV project, water will be provided to Karachi from Keenjhar lake.

The Prime Minister urged Sindh government to take benefit of the health card scheme of federal government as Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa are taking benefit of the scheme.

Earlier, addressing the ceremony, Federal Minister for Planning and Development Asad Umar said Greenline is one of the five mega projects initiated by the federal government in the city that has been completed and its commercial operation will start from 25th of this month.

The project, completed at a huge cost of 35.5 billion rupees, is a valuable gift by the federal government for the people of Sindh, particularly the residents of Karachi.

Green Line Bus Rapid Transit System project will provide modern travel facilities to one hundred and thirty five thousand passengers daily in the western and central districts of Karachi, making their access to Central business District easy and safe.

The project has been implemented by the Ministry of Planning and Development through Sindh Infrastructure Development Company on the special interest of Minster for Planning and Development Asad Umar.

The bus service will comprise 80 hybrid buses that will ply a route of 22 kilometres from Surjani to the Municipal Park near Jama Cloth market with, 23 stations located on each km.

The Green Line Bus project was announced by the PML-N's federal government in July 2014. On February 26, 2016, the foundation stone of the 17.8 km long track from Surjani to Guru Mandir was laid.

Modern state-of-the-art lifts and automatic ticketing systems would facilitate passengers on every bus station. All details about the arrival and departure of buses would be available on digital screens installed on bus stations.

Each bus would have a capacity of 200 to 250 passengers while the fare is expected to be between Rs20 and Rs50. The buses would have a complete system from USB ports to wheelchairs.

In the second phase of the project, buses would run to the Tower. Under the Green Line Bus project, a two-storey underpass is being constructed at Guru Mandir and Numaish Chowrangi, where not only buses would run on international standards, but accommodation would also be provided.

A control room with at least 900 cameras has also been set up for monitoring of the Green Line bus project and security of passengers to meet the requirements of modern times.
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Amnesty International on Friday denounced the London court's decision to allow the extradition of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange to the United States as "travesty of justice."

MOSCOW (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 10th December, 2021) Amnesty International on Friday denounced the London court's decision to allow the extradition of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange to the United States as "travesty of justice."

"This is a travesty of justice.

By allowing this appeal, the High Court has chosen to accept the deeply flawed diplomatic assurances given by the US that Assange would not be held in solitary confinement in a maximum security prison. The fact that the US has reserved the right to change its mind at any time means that these assurances are not worth the paper they are written on," the organization said in a statement.
At least 53 migrants crammed into a truck traveling at high speed were killed Thursday in Mexico after the vehicle overturned in the southern state of Chiapas, a major transit point for those trying to reach the United States

Tuxtla Guti rrez, Mexico, (APP - UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 10th Dec, 2021 ) :At least 53 migrants crammed into a truck traveling at high speed were killed Thursday in Mexico after the vehicle overturned in the southern state of Chiapas, a major transit point for those trying to reach the United States.

Thousands of people attempt the long and hugely dangerous journey, often seeking a life free of violence and poverty in their home nations in South America.

It is unclear how many people were traveling in the truck but at least 58 were injured, three seriously, according to a preliminary report from the prosecutor's office in Chiapas, bordering Guatemala.

"It was horrible to hear the wailing. I just thought about helping," 18-year-old Sabina Lopez, who lives near the scene of the accident, told AFP.

Luis Manuel Garcia, from the Civil Protection director for Chiapas -- which will take over the investigation into the accident -- said most of the travelers were from Guatemala.

The driver, who fled the scene, appeared to have been speeding when he lost control of the vehicle on the highway connecting Chiapa de Corzo city with state capital Tuxtla Gutierrez, officials said.

Mexican leader Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador tweeted his condolences, calling the incident "very painful."Local state governor Rutilio Escandon said that "law enforcement will determine who is responsible," adding that those hurt would be treated promptly.
Turkish security services arrested four men suspected of setting an explosive device that was supposed to go off in the southeastern city of Siirt, where President Recep Tayyip Erdogan was participating in a rally, NTV broadcaster reported on Friday, citing a police source

ANKARA (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 10th December, 2021) Turkish security services arrested four men suspected of setting an explosive device that was supposed to go off in the southeastern city of Siirt, where President Recep Tayyip Erdogan was participating in a rally, NTV broadcaster reported on Friday, citing a police source.

The explosive device, attached to the car of a local police officer, was set to go off after his arrival to Siirt, where Erdogan was taking part in a rally last Saturday. It was discovered and neutralized by a bomb disposal team during a routine check of the vehicle, according to the ruling Justice and Development Party of Turkey.

The police said the bomb was attached to the car in Nusaybin, a city in the Mardin province, according to the NTV. Three of those arrested have already confessed, the broadcaster said.

The political rally was arranged by the opposition to call for snap elections due to Erdogan's controversial economic policies, resulting in the lira's unprecedented collapse.
NUR-SULTAN (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 10th December, 2021) SULTAN, December 10 (Sputnik) - The Kazakh Foreign Ministry has yet to confirm that Russian, Turkish and Iranian foreign ministers will meet in Nur-Sultan as part of the next round of talks on Syria, scheduled from December 21-22.

Kazakh Foreign Minister Mukhtar Tleuberdi previously said that the meeting of the top diplomats of the Astana format was under consideration.

"The meeting of the guarantor states' foreign ministers has not yet been confirmed. But the next round of Syrian talks will be held, as had been announced, from December 21 - 22 at the deputy foreign minister level," Kazakh Foreign Ministry spokesman Aibek Smadiyarov told Sputnik.

Negotiations to resolve the Syrian war, which broke out in 2011, have been ongoing in Nur-Sultan since 2017 with the mediation of guarantor-states of the Astana format (after the former name of the Kazakh capital). In January 2018, the Russian city of Sochi hosted a congress of the Syrian national dialogue, the first such attempt since the beginning of the conflict to bring together Syrian main political forces. The main result of the Congress was the decision to create a Constitutional Committee, which operates in Geneva and whose main task is to prepare constitutional reform in Syria.
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French President Emmanuel Macron said the situation in Ukraine was discussed at his meeting with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz on Friday, stressing the importance of the two countries collaborating within the Normandy format

PARIS (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 10th December, 2021) French President Emmanuel Macron said the situation in Ukraine was discussed at his meeting with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz on Friday, stressing the importance of the two countries collaborating within the Normandy format.

The talks between Macron and Scholz were held in Paris as part of the first foreign trip of the new German chancellor.

"We held intense talks, certainly, on the situation in Ukraine, in Belarus. We reaffirmed the importance of the work of France and Germany within the Normandy format, as well as the role of the European Union in supporting our eastern partners," Macron said at a press conference with Scholz.

Scholz stated that Germany and France have a shared commitment to strengthen European "strategic sovereignty" and collaborate in addressing major challenges confronting the EU.

"We have to cooperate," Scholz said about migration and border security, according to France 24 broadcaster.

Later on Friday, Scholz will meet NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, and European Council President Charles Michel in Brussels.
(@FahadShabbir)

French President Emmanuel Macron hailed Friday a "convergence of views" with the new German Chancellor Olaf Scholz during their first meeting as leaders in Paris

Paris, (APP - UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 10th Dec, 2021 ) :French President Emmanuel Macron hailed Friday a "convergence of views" with the new German Chancellor Olaf Scholz during their first meeting as leaders in Paris.

Addressing Scholz as "dear Olaf" and using the informal "tu" pronoun in French, Macron said he had seen "a convergence of views, a desire to have our countries work together, and a firm and determined belief in Europe, which I knew already, which we will need in the months and years ahead." Macron said the visit was "a very important moment to build solid foundations for cooperation between our countries." The two men discussed their vision for the future of the European Union, as well as tensions between Ukraine and Russia, EU-bound migrants in Belarus, and ties with China and the African continent, Macron said.

Scholz, who will also stop in Brussels at the headquarters of the EU and NATO on Friday, took over from Angela Merkel on Wednesday at the end of her 16 years in power.

The centrist Social Democrat heads a disparate new coalition of ecologist Greens and business-friendly Free Democrats, but their joint commitment to strengthening Europe's "strategic sovereignty" has raised hopes in Paris.

He gave a cautious answer when asked if he was prepared to rethink EU budget rules that restrict the deficits that governments are allowed to run in normal economic times, something that Macron has proposed.

Germany has historically been a fiscal conservative and in favour of EU members trying to balance their books.

"We are talking about maintaining this growth which has been spurred by the recovery fund," Scholz said, referring to a historic rescue fund agreed by the EU last year to help stave off a Covid-related recession.

"We need to at the same time work on the solidity of our finances. There is not a contradiction," he said.

Macron laid out an ambitious agenda Thursday for a "Europe that is powerful in the world" during France's time as the rotating president of the 27-member Council of the European Union in the first half of next year.
Russian fighter Su-30 escorted US reconnaissance aircraft P-8A over the Black Sea on Friday, the Russian Defense Ministry's National Defense Control Center (NDCC) told reporters

MOSCOW (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 10th December, 2021) Russian fighter Su-30 escorted US reconnaissance aircraft P-8A over the Black Sea on Friday, the Russian Defense Ministry's National Defense Control Center (NDCC) told reporters.

According to the center, Russian radars detected a target approaching the Russian state border over the neutral waters of the Black Sea earlier in the day.

"To identify the air target and prevent it from breaching the Russian state border, a Su-30 fighter from the air defense forces of the Southern Military District was scrambled. The crew of the Russian fighter identified the air target as a US Navy reconnaissance aircraft P-8A and escorted it over the waters of the Black Sea," the NDCC said.

After the foreign military aircraft turned away from the Russian state border, the Russian fighter safely returned to the airfield, its was carried out in strict accordance with the international rules for the use of airspace.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken met in Washington on Thursday with Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz to discuss regional and security issues, including Iran and Middle East, US Foreign Ministry spokesman Ned Price said on Thursday

WASHINGTON (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 10th December, 2021) US Secretary of State Antony Blinken met in Washington on Thursday with Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz to discuss regional and security issues, including Iran and middle East, US Foreign Ministry spokesman Ned price said on Thursday.

The meeting between Blinken and Gantz took place amid the resumption of the seventh round of the Vienna-hosted talks on the restoration of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, from which the United States withdrew during the presidency of Donald Trump.

"Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken met with Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz today.

They discussed a range of regional and security topics, including Iran and the U.S. commitment to Israel's security," Price said in a statement.

Both senior officials also discussed the unresolved Palestinian problem.

"Secretary Blinken reiterated the Administration's belief that Israelis and Palestinians deserve to live safely and securely and enjoy equal measures of freedom, prosperity, and democracy," Price added.

Earlier on Thursday, Gantz met with US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin at the Pentagon. The top defense chiefs discussed alleged "nuclear provocations" and other threatening activities by Iran.
The Vatican's Secretary of State, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, sends a video message to the Italian Catholic Jurists (UGCI), who are meeting in Rome for their 70th National Seminar focused on the legal protection of the weakest in society.

By Lisa Zengarini

The Union of Italian Catholic Jurists (UGCI) is meeting in Rome from 9 to 11 December for its 70th National Seminar, and focusing on the theme: "The least in society. The legal protection of weak subjects".

The session will study the legal relevance of fragility of the human person in light of the Italian constitutional framework, which is largely inspired by Catholic doctrine. Discussions will focus on how to promote a legislation that upholds and protects the basic human rights of the most vulnerable.

The seminar was introduced by Cardinal Pietro Parolin who, in a video message, welcomed the chosen theme, saying it is of particular relevance in today's context where new fundamental human rights are coming to the fore.

Catholic jurists and human rights

In his keynote address, the Vatican Secretary of State praised the fundamental contribution of Catholic jurists in reshaping the legal framework at a national and international level in the aftermath of the Second World War.

He said this took place due to the rediscovering the ancient Doctrine of Natural Law which germinated in the Jewish-Greek-Roman culture and was subsequently enhanced by the Christian thought, as opposed the Doctrine of Positive Law.

Doctrine of Natural Law

That doctrine, he noted, greatly inspired the Universal Declaration of Human Rights according to which all people have equal fundamental rights because they derive from the dignity inherent in every human being, and also the Italian Constitution.



Cardinal Parolin went on to remark that the Natural Law Doctrine also underlies the principle of the protection of the weaker subjects in society and the connected principle of solidarity.

Indeed, he said, protecting the weaker is the very reason of being of law as an instrument of justice  ius quia iustum - rather than one of force  ius quia iussum.



Social justice and solidarity

Noting that both the principles of social justice and solidarity are enshrined in the Italian Constitution, the Secretary of State therefore highlighted the need for positive law to protect the weaker subjects, removing all the discriminatory obstacles that make them even more weaker, so they can effectively enjoy their constitutional rights.

Protecting migrants and children

Bringing his reflection to an end, Cardinal Parolin pointed out that among the most vulnerable needing legal protection today are migrants, but also children who, for a number of reasons, including assisted reproductive techniques, find themselves orphaned of their biological parents.

Recalling Pope Francis words to the participants in the 5th Convention of the Italian Church, the Secretary of State finally encouraged the Italian jurists to be ever closer to the abandoned, the forgotten, the imperfect in carrying out their work.
As businesses learn to cope with the pandemic, investors can look to restructure their Vietnam operations to adapt and go beyond the health crisis.

Businesses can take a number of actions to such as modifying their debt exposure, liabilities, and operations to limit financial harm and improve business viability.

Vietnam Briefing explores some of these options in the Vietnam context and how businesses and implement some measures to remain competitive.

In the context of Vietnams continued growth story despite COVID-19, we look at how businesses invested in the region can strategize to survive and succeed.

The purpose of restructuring in Vietnam should go beyond survival from this health crisis. Enterprises in all sectors and industries in Vietnam must plan for the next phase when choosing to restructure their business  to adapt to a more competitive market, to be a stronger player in a niche sector, to enter a promising sector more speedily, to reshape the market strategy of the group company, to be in better control of the business, and to keep the corporate structure more nimble and flexible to be more resilient in case of any future setbacks.

The last year and a half have been challenging for businesses around the world. With the COVID-19 pandemic recorded early in 2020, and still ongoing as several countries including Vietnam confront new waves of the outbreak, companies around the world are having to make difficult decisions.

An unpredictable global business environment, supply chain disruptions, cash flow concerns, and matters relating to staff management  collectively put pressure on companies who are likely planning for their survival during what is now an extended crisis period.

While some businesses have given up and filed for bankruptcy, many others are exploring strategies to address their sustainability, such as through restructuring their company and operations.

What is meant by company restructuring?

Restructuring can be simply understood as a combination of corporate actions taken to modify the companys debt exposure and liabilities, operations, and/or the entity structure  to limit financial harm and improve the business viability. Restructuring can help companies in many aspects, such as reducing and consolidating their debt, ensuring talent retention, adoption of new technologies, focus on key products or accounts, and establishing strategies to cut costs, etc.

Following a restructuring, the company should be left with a more streamlined and economically sound business operation, which is risk resilient and competitive in the market. This is not only important for businesses to get through the immediate challenges posed by financial and operational pressures, but also so that they can take advantage of new opportunities that emerge during crises, particularly relevant in the context of Vietnam.

In the next sections, we will discuss how Vietnams economy has rebounded from the disruption caused by the initial outbreak of the disease and witnessed the resurgence of economic activity, and has presented one of the few centers of growth in a bleak world economy. That has made it even more important for businesses invested in the region to strategize to survive and succeed.

The Vietnam context

As Vietnam battles a resurgent fourth wave, it continues to implement COVID-19 control measures including resuming operations at industrial parks and pausing operations temporarily when required. All these measures have proved Vietnam to be a reliable investment destination.

As per official data, total inflows of foreign direct investment capital reached US$15.27 billion in the first six months of the year, though it was down 2.6 percent compared to the same period last year.

The data includes nearly US$9.55 billion in newly-registered capital poured into 804 licensed projects, down 43.3 percent in the number of projects and up 13.2 percent in capital volume, according to the Ministry of Planning and Investment (MPI). Meanwhile, the disbursed FDI volume rose by 6.8 percent to US$9.24 billion during the same period.

FDI capital went to 18 sectors, in which manufacturing and processing accounted for the highest proportion with US$6.98 billion, making up 45.7 percent of the total investment capital, followed by electricity production and distribution.

Singapore was the biggest foreign investor with registered capital of US$5.64 billion, accounting for nearly 36.9 percent of the total investment capital, followed by Japan at US$2.44 billion and South Korea at US$2.05 billion.

Despite the pandemic, Vietnams GDP grew 6.61 percent on the year in the April to June period, while the economy expanded 5.64 percent in the first half making a jump from 1.82 percent in the same period a year ago as per the General Statistics Office (GSO).

Exports to the US in the first half of 2021 increased 42.6 percent to US$44.9 billion. Overall exports expanded 28.4 percent to $157.63 billion. Exports were helped by smartphones, while exports of garments and shoes also increased to Europe thanks to Vietnams free trade agreements.

While production at industrial parks in Bac Giang and Bac Ninh, which are key to global supply chains, were hampered due to the fourth wave, Vietnam has managed production while implementing business continuity measures. While the outbreak has definitely put a spanner on Vietnams growth, it has managed to keep factories running, contributing to strong exports.

Last year, Vietnams COVID spread was overwhelmingly brought into control by the end of April, around three months after the virus was first detected in the country. Despite new clusters emerging across the country from time to time, Vietnam has shown its capability in the rapid containment and control of the infectious outbreak. Most remarkably, it has been able to implement massive test and contact tracing operations wherever the clusters happen, to expose any asymptomatic cases and expel chances of a wider spread of the virus. Such effectiveness in controlling the spread of the virus provides security and confidence to the people living in Vietnam, as well as businesses and foreign investors.

Cut to 2021  and the Asian Development Bank (ADB) projects that Vietnams economic growth will surge by 6.7 percent in 2021 from 2.9 percent in 2020, before stabilizing at around 7.0 percent in 2022. This growth will be powered by strong exports and gradual recovery in consumption; nevertheless, market watchers warn a slow vaccine rollout, supply chain disruptions, and declines in consumption activity could easily temper rebound trends.

With period waves of the pandemic hitting several countries, and new variants of COVID-19, like the latest Delta variant, introducing more severe threats, the proven capability of Vietnams central and provincial governments to manage repercussions from unforeseen events and adapt to fast-changing scenarios is appealing to foreign investors.

Understanding Vietnams appeal: Supply chain, market size, reforms

Beyond the swift measures taken to contain the economic fallout of COVID-19, Vietnam has other advantages to back up its outstanding position in the global market and maintain investor confidence.

Supply chain

The COVID-19 pandemic has had a significant impact on global supply chains and continues to affect businesses with worldwide operations. Vietnam itself has not been spared  and while it has done well to contain the pandemic  due to global interconnectedness  its economy has been affected resulting in losses for several businesses. To cope, several plants reduced their workforce and temporarily shut down production lines. Some factories took extended time off, while some ran staggered shifts with reduced hours.

Nevertheless, businesses have put up a resilient fight and diversified supply chains, renegotiated contracts, and streamlined their operations to ensure production. For example, the textile and garment industry switched to producing facemasks and protective suits for exports, while exports of computers and electronic equipment increased due to pandemic-induced lockdowns in the US and the EU.

From the production and supply of masks, protective suits, and medical equipment in the early stage of the epidemic, to consumer electronics and furniture during later months, Vietnams exports have made up for overseas shortages in all kinds of product segments.

With proactive participation in global value chains, Vietnam has steadily grown into a prominent manufacturer and exporter for electronics, ranking 12th in the world and third in ASEAN as an exporter for electronics in 2019.

Domestic market

Vietnams middle and upper class is expected to reach 44 million by the end of 2020 and makes up about 46 percent of the population. This segment of the population is expected to reach 95 million by 2030 with an average GDP per capita of US$7,000 by 2035. Vietnams middle class is also spreading to other areas apart from the traditional hubs like Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City. In addition, the female participation rate is one of the highest even trumping more developed countries like the US and Singapore.

Free trade agreements

Vietnam is a party to 13 free trade agreements (FTAs) making it one of the most open economies. The Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) and the recently ratified European Union Vietnam Free Trade Agreement (EVFTA) are additional push factors for businesses looking to relocate their supply chains.

Vietnams upgrade and further opening-up

Vietnam has endeavored to attract foreign investment by further relaxing market access restrictions and by continuously introducing improvements to the business and regulatory environment.

Vietnams National Assembly (NA) recently passed the amended Law on Investment and Law on Enterprises, both of which will take effect on January 1, 2021.

The amended Law on Investment helps resolve overlapping investment-related laws, clarifies the principles and conditions to select investors for projects involving land use, including the auction of land use rights, bidding to select investors, and the approval of investors and investment practices. The amended Law on Enterprises addresses unnecessary administrative procedures, extends the scope of SOE, and entitles minority shareholders with more rights. These changes underline the governments efforts to further improve Vietnams business environment as well as the countrys rankings in the Ease of Doing Business report by the World Bank.

For the first time, the law includes a prohibition list where foreign investors are not allowed to participate and a market entry list where investors must satisfy certain regulatory and market conditions to invest.

This also constitutes part of Vietnams efforts to transform into a more high-end manufacturing capacity to attract international businesses.

Restructuring your Vietnam company to take advantage of new opportunities

To summarize, Vietnams containment of the coronavirus outbreak within its borders enabled the quick recovery of its economy. This was helped by Vietnams stable political environment, free trade agreements, transport networks, competitive labor costs as well as a sizeable domestic market.

Given that COVID-19 is ongoing as the world battles new variants and waves of outbreaks as economies attempt to reopen, disease prevention is the new normal. Vietnams performance in navigating this new normal adds to its potential to attract continued FDI.

Despite the upsides, it must be noted that businesses on the ground still face a highly competitive market, with a much smaller window of survival due to global economic turbulence. This is evident when we scrutinize the data more closely  while Vietnam has managed to keep its COVID-19 numbers low, its growth rate is still vulnerable to global shocks and new outbreaks, such as the current one especially in Ho Chi Minh City.

External and internal restructuring

Correspondingly, businesses that want to optimize their operations and resources should consider both external restructuring, which involves more than one party, and internal restructuring.

External restructuring usually refers to the restructuring of the companys equity, control rights, and assets to achieve relevant business purposes, such as entering a niche market without directly setting up from scratch. Typical strategies under external restructuring include equity acquisition, asset transfer, merger, split-up, divestiture, etc.

Internal restructuring, in contrast, focuses on alterations in operations, procedures, departments, supply chains, human resources, legal frameworks, locations, computer systems, and networks, etc. to enable the business to become more integrated, streamlined, and profitable.

At the operational level, it could lead to reducing or eliminating production or service lines, closing facilities, relocating businesses and employees, adjustment of the company divisions, and adoption of new rules and advanced systems, such as supply chain management system (SCM), human capital management system (HCM), back-office automation, and so on. Professional advisory services are often engaged in this process to ensure the effectiveness of the company restructuring.

Restructuring can be a challenging and painful process as the internal and external structure of a company is adjusted and human capital is affected. But a successful restructuring plan will result in smoother, more economically viable business operations. This is vitally important for businesses to survive, and to outperform in the new normal.
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One of the most explicit ways of measuring the potential military capability of a nation is its expenditure on defense. With its growing desire to become a global superpower, Chinas expenditure on defense has increased year over year. Its military, the Peoples Liberation Army (PLA), has undergone massive reforms.

Data analysis by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (Sipri) Military Expenditure Database shows that there has been a six-fold increase in Chinas defense spending over the past two decades. It has soared from $41.2 billion in 2000 to $244.9 billion in 2020.

The money invested by the communist regime in its military is now 50 percent greater than all 10 members of the Association of South-East Asian Nations (ASEAN), the most recent Asia Power Index reported.

In 2021, the U.S. was the most powerful country in the Asia-Pacific region; its overall power increased this year. After gradually increasing influence on the Index in the past few years, China came in second place, the annual report by the Lowy Institute disclosed.

The pandemic has really affected most countries in terms of their ability to shape and respond to their external environment, but the United States has actually gained in its comprehensive power for the first time since 2018 China will never be as dominant as the United States once was, but we are really set for a sort of bi-polar century in the Indo-Pacific  more reliant on the whims of both the United States and China, Lowy Institutes director of research, Herve Lemahieu, told ABC.

The focus on Beijings rising military expenditure comes as confidential American intelligence reports indicate that Equatorial Guinea in central Africa might allow China to set up its military stronghold in the Atlantic Ocean. The Wall Street Journal reports that this would allow Chinese warships to rearm and refit opposite the East Coast of the U.S. and its busy shipping routes, leading to more friction between Washington and Beijing.

According to the Global Times, Communist China increased its defense budget by 6.8 percent in 2021, faster than the 6.6 percent growth last year. When it comes to overall power, China greatly stands above all other nations in the region. The authors of the Asia Power Index noted that Asia was becoming less multipolar as other countries couldnt catch up with the top two, U.S. and China. Countries like Japan and India lost significantly more ground in 2021 than China, making them unable to create a multipolar region.

Possessing a considerable economic, cultural, and diplomatic influence, Japan is a smart power with minimal resources, the Lowy report said. However, an aging population and declining economy have weakened its dominance in 2021. Associate Professor Shiro Armstrong, Director of the ANU Australia-Japan Research Centre, reported last month that Australia needs to bolster its already strong ties with Japan.

Japan is Australias benchmark relationship in Asia It is the worlds third-largest economy, Australias second-largest source of investment and until a fall in commodity trade in 2020, was Australias second-largest trading partner But the Japan relationship must be re-imagined if it is to cope with major challenges that both countries [face] both at home and abroad if it is to survive and thrive in the 21st century, he said.

Despite being adversely impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic, Indonesia meanwhile crept into the Indexs top 10 for the first time, outranking Singapore as the most diplomatically influential player in Southeast Asia.
The Italian government has tightened restrictions on citizens who have not yet been vaccinated against COVID-19. According to the new rules that came into effect on Dec. 6, unvaccinated individuals are not allowed inside establishments such as restaurants, bars, clubs, cinemas, and sporting events.

Only those who are vaccinated or who have recently recovered from the infection are allowed entry to such establishments. The restrictions against unvaccinated people are scheduled to last until Jan. 15.

The government has empowered the police to check whether diners in bars or restaurants have a valid super green health pass that certifies whether an individual is vaccinated or has recovered from the illness.

Some places are even denying entry for individuals who submit a recent negative COVID-19 test result. For checking into hotels or using local transport, a person still needs a basic health pass. People with a negative test result within the previous 48 hours can access these services.

The first individual to be fined under the new restrictions is a 50-year-old man. He was fined 400 euros ($450) for traveling on a bus without a basic health pass.

It is an absolutely necessary measure If we dont want to go back to the restrictions that we have had to endure for a year and a half then we must adapt, Marco Formichella, a resident of Rome, told Reuters.

Italy has a high vaccination rate yet has seen a surge of infections in the past weeks. Between Oct. 15 and Dec. 7, Italys new daily confirmed COVID-19 cases per million individuals jumped up 600 percent from 40.68 to 250.30. As of Dec. 7, over 73 percent of the Italian population has been fully vaccinated.

Three-and-a-half million people in their 30s to 50s are yet to take their first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine. Silvio Brusaferro, head of Italys National Health Institute, said this demographic has been hit the hardest by the virus.

The Delta variant remains the most prevalent strain. Only two cases of the recently emerged Omicron variant have been detected. The two individuals are businessmen who had traveled to southern Africa.

Earlier this year, Italy had imposed one of the strictest COVID-19 rules by requiring all workers to display green passes prior to entering their workplace. Those who do not show the pass are to be fined up to 1,500 euros ($1,730) or suspended without pay.

The rules are expected to be in effect until the end of this year. Numerous Italians had protested in the streets against the decision at the time, chanting slogans like Liberta (freedom).
A group of seven German young adults from different circles suffered a breakthrough infection of the new Omicron Variant of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19), despite all being fully vaccinated and having accepted a booster dose in the last two months or less.

The cases were revealed in a new study by a team of German and South African scientists published in SSRN on Dec. 9.

The findings come on the back of two recent studies examining the impact of Omicron on vaccinated individuals.

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The first, a study funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the NIH and published by the Africa Health Research Institute on Dec. 7, found that in an examination of plasma samples from 12 fully vaccinated subjects, six with no natural immunity and six with natural immunity from an infection between 12 and 16 months prior, that the group without natural immunity had a 41 fold reduction in antibody efficacy against Omicron.

The second was data released by Pfizer and BioNTech themselves the next day on Dec. 8, which read something like a material from the marketing department as it stated that a booster with the current COVID-19 vaccine from Pfizer and BioNTech increases the antibody titers by 25-fold against Omicron.

In the study on the seven fully triple jabbed German youth, the group was composed of 5 male and 2 female caucasians. Three are 25, two are 26, one is 27, and one is 39. All individuals were reported as healthy with no relevant medical history.

Demographic data and vaccination history of the seven fully vaccinated, fully boosted young Germans who suffered symptomatic breakthrough Omicron infection. (Image: Screenshot)

Regarding vaccination status, six of the individuals were takers of two doses of Pfizer-BioNTechs BNT162b messenger RNA injection, while the remaining individual originally took a dose of AstraZenecas adenovirus vector double-stranded DNA injection.

Five of the six Pfizer takers accepted a third dose of BNT162b to complete a full three doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech course, while the sixth took a booster of Modernas mRNA-1273 injection.

The AstraZeneca taker accepted a double dose of the Pfizer injection to complete their booster course.

Six of the seven individuals completed their acceptance of a booster shot between Oct. 26 and Nov. 10, and one as early as Oct. 3.

The paper said the cohort was of significant study value because, South Africa has yet to introduce booster vaccinations for individuals immunised with two doses of BNT162b2, so the presence of this group from Germany presented a unique opportunity to study Omicron breakthrough infections in individuals with mRNA vaccine boosters.

According to the scientists who analyzed the case data, the seven were not part of the same group, Four individuals were participating in clinical electives at different local hospitals while the others were in South Africa for vacation.

The individuals arrived in Cape Town during the first half of November, and all registered a negative PCR test.

However, During a marked increase in incidence of SARS-CoV-2 infections in the Western Cape province, the individuals observed onset of mild respiratory symptoms and subsequently registered a positive PCR test.

The researchers obtained direct clinical samples from the patients as early as logistically possible, between 2 to 4 days after onset of symptoms.

The infected were placed in domestic isolation, observed for seven days, and given a diary to self-report their symptoms.

All cases described their symptoms as mild or moderate and none required hospitalisation during the observation period, reported the researchers, who added that blood oxygenation levels remained in the normal range without exception.

Breakdown of symptoms self-reported by the seven Omicron vaccine breakthrough cases over the course of a seven-day domestic isolation period. All seven only reported mild or moderate symptoms, none were hospitalized, and blood oxygen levels remained healthy. (Image: Screenshot)

The study notes that of the seven individuals, only five were confirmed as Omicron variant infections. For the remaining two, the team said  sequencing failed but they are inferred to be Omicron, too, based on their very close epidemiological links to the others.

The study noted all seven of the symptomatic vaccine breakthroughs had high levels of viral spike protein binding antibodies generated by the gene therapy vaccines.

Because the individuals symptoms were self-reported as either mild or moderate, and nobody required hospitalization, the study asserted full vaccination followed by a booster dose still provides good protection against severe COVID -19.

But the caveat, However, the observation period is short and does not exclude subsequent deterioration or long-term sequelae of COVID-19, was added to the statement.

In their conclusions, the team stated, This case series proves that, as predicted, the Omicron variant is able to evade immunity induced by mRNA vaccines in vivo [in the body].

The team specifically referenced the two most recent studies in further comments, Hitherto unpublished in vitro [in the lab] data suggest lower titres of neutralising antibodies against the Omicron variant, compared to other SARS-CoV-2 lineages, following BNT162b2 vaccination but increased titres after a third dose (Cele et al., 2021; Wilhelm et al., 2021; Pfizer, 2021), supporting calls for booster doses while the Omicron variant may be spreading globally.

The researchers were decisive in noting the contradiction when they stated, Our report, however, shows that this is insufficient to prevent symptomatic infection and emphasises the need to maintain additional non-pharmaceutical interventions.

In comments to the media lauding his companys findings on BNT162b2 booster injections to fight Omicron on Dec. 8, BioNTech CEO Ugur Sahin clearly stated that to be fully vaccinated against the new variant should require accepting a booster now while waiting for a three dose Omicron-specific vaccine to be released in March of 2022, which would amount to a six-dose course.

Professor Wolfgang Preiser from the Division of Medical Virology at the University of Stellenbosch in Cape Town, said, according to a Google translate of a Dec.9 article by German-language news outlet Der Tagesspiegel, Of course you shouldnt misunderstand that vaccination doesnt help. On the contrary: It only shows that even the best possible vaccination is obviously not enough to prevent infection  which we already suspected.

Preiser re-emphasized, But you have to be aware that even this does not prevent an infection 100 percent. In other words: You have to continue to adhere to the precautionary measures.
Lithuania is facing a hard time doing business with China after Beijing reportedly instructed multinationals to cut off ties with the tiny European nation. Chinas trade censorship follows Lithuanias decision to allow Taiwan to open a representative office in its capital city of Vilnius.

In November last year, Lithuanian lawmakers had agreed to support those fighting for freedom in Taiwan, thereby inviting Beijings wrath. The opening of Taiwans Vilnius office was part of this resolution. The communist regime sees Taiwan as a part of a unified China and does not tolerate any mention of an independent Taiwan. Chinese leader Xi Jinping has even declared that he will not shy away from using military force to annex the island.

In November this year, Beijing downgraded its diplomatic ties with the European country. Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin blamed Lithuania for allowing Taiwan to set up an office in its country as it gave a false impression of the island being separate from the mainland. This harmed Chinas sovereignty and territorial integrity, Wenbin said. According to Wang, Lithuanias actions also established an egregious precedent in the international community. China will firmly safeguard its territorial and sovereign integrity as well as core interests, he added.

According to the Lithuanian Confederation of Industrialists, a European multinational company was forced to drop Lithuanian goods.

They (China) have been sending messages to multinationals that if they use parts and supplies from Lithuania, they will no longer be allowed to sell to the Chinese market or get supplies there We have seen some companies cancel contracts with Lithuanian suppliers, Mantas Adomenas, Lithuanias vice-minister for foreign affairs, told Reuters.

Lithuanian companies are complaining of being wiped out from Chinas customs portals, meaning that these firms are now unable to choose Lithuania as the origin for goods. As a result, the companies are unable to fulfill their orders.

Goods that are supposed to be shipped off to Lithuania are now tied up at Chinese ports. It is not just Lithuanian companies being affected by Chinas actions. Products from a French clothing company that used goods sourced from Lithuania were rejected by a Chinese customer.

Alarmed at the situation, Lithuania has appealed to the European Commission. The government recently sent a letter to the Commission, asking for strong action against China, deeming it essential to convey the message that politically motivated economic pressure is unacceptable and will not be tolerated.

The European Commission responded by stating that it is willing to protect its member states against all kinds of coercive tactics. The EU has raised the matter to the World Trade Organization.

Unity and solidarity within the EU remain key to upholding our interests and our values in our relations with all countries If the information received were to be confirmed, the EU would also assess the compatibility of Chinas action with its obligations under the World Trade Organisation, said a Dec. 8 joint statement by EU Vice President Josep Borrell and Executive Vice President Valdis Dombrovskis.

The EU requested that China meet and discuss the issue with its Lithuaian counterparts, but Beijing denied the request, claiming that it is busy dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic. In an interview with South China Morning Post (SCMP), Adomenas said that he was not surprised that Chinese officials had refused to meet up, describing the action as hypocritical.

They are not too busy to engage in sniping against Lithuanian companies. When dealing with China, one needs to be prepared for anything. We know from dealing with communist regimes of the past, they are not constrained by international rules, Adomenas said.
Nicaraguas government announced on Dec. 9 that it would move to officially cut diplomatic ties with Taiwan and recognize Communist China, which claims the self-governed island as part of its territory.

The Peoples Republic of China (PRC) has requested that all countries wishing to form diplomatic relations with it must first terminate all ties with Taiwan, as it claims the latter to be a rebel separatist force that must be reclaimed by any means necessary.

Taiwan is officially called the Republic of China (ROC)  which governed the mainland prior to 1949, when it was pushed back to the island by communist armies.

The PRC was handed Taiwans U.N. seat after a decision in 1971, becoming the internationally recognized China. This status was further boosted when the United States dropped official recognition for Taiwan in 1979, though Washington and Taipei continue to maintain informal relations and military cooperation.

There is only one China, the Nicaraguan government said in a statement on Dec. 9 referring to the countrys One-China policy and announced the formal cut from Taiwan. The Peoples Republic of China is the only legitimate government that represents all of China, and Taiwan is an inalienable part of the Chinese territory.

As of today, Nicaragua breaks its diplomatic relations with Taiwan and ceases to have any official contact or relationship, the statement added.

The move increases Taiwans diplomatic isolation in the global community, even as the island steps up official exchanges with countries such as Lithuania and Slovakia, which nevertheless do not formally recognize the ROC.

Now, Taiwan has official relations with only 14 countries, including Honduras and Guatemala in Central America.

The Chinese government has threatened retaliation towards Lithuania, ordering multinationals to stop doing business with the small European nation. Beijings order came as a response to the Lithuanians government allowing Taiwan to open a representative office in its capital city of Vilnius.

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Taiwan: Sadness and regret

The ROC Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) expressed sadness and regret over Nicaraguas decision to sever ties and said it would immediately halt bilateral cooperation and recall its diplomatic staff from the country.

Taiwan as a part of international society has the right to diplomatic relations with other countries. We will continue to promote Steadfast Diplomacy to expand our international surviving space, dedicating ourselves to maintaining regional peace and stability, fighting for the international status that we deserve, and protecting this nations interests and the benefit of our people, the MOFA added.

Taiwan President Tsai-wen also said in response to Nicaraguas newly elected leader Daniel Ortega that, The more successful Taiwans democracy, and the greater the international support, then the greater the pressure from the authoritarian camp.



Whether its diplomatic pressure or military intimidation, we will not change our determination to adhere to democracy and freedom, to go on the international stage and participate, she added.

PRC Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman Wang Wenbin praised the government of Nicaragua in shifting its allegiance towards Beijing, saying that the resumption of diplomatic ties between China and Nicaragua is a policy decision, and definitely not a trading of bargaining chips, the minister said at a daily press briefing.

Wang denied that there were any economic preconditions to establishing the new diplomatic framework between the two nations.

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Since the Taliban took over Afghanistan in August, attacks by the Islamic State affiliate have stepped up  especially in the countrys eastern Nangarhar province. Civilians in the region say they fear the threat of violence posed by the group known as the Islamic State-Khorasan, or IS-K. For VOA, Gaja Pellegrini-Bettoli reports from Nangarhar, Afghanistan.
Farmers in Afghanistan say that they will continue to grow poppy amid uncertainty over the Talibans poppy eradication policy.

"We have no choice but to cultivate opium poppy," said Noor, 52, a farmer living in a remote village in the western Farah province. For safety reasons, he did not want his full name revealed.

A father of 10 children, Noor said his family will go hungry without the opium poppy crop.

"I am not sure how I will be able to provide food to my children until the harvest. We do not have food for a month, even. The prices have skyrocketed, and people cannot afford buying food," he said.

A report released in October by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization warned that the number of people facing acute food insecurity in Afghanistan will increase to 22.8 million, 55% of the population by March 2022 when compared to 18.8 million from September to October 2021.

Afghanistan is turning into "the worlds largest humanitarian crisis," according to a World Food Program report stating, "continuing drought, escalating displacement, the collapse of public service, and a deepening economic crisis have driven the entire country to the precipice."

Noor, who has been growing opium poppy for several years now, said that wheat, the main crop grown in the province, is less profitable and not as easy to grow as poppy.

"Poppy takes only six months and it needs less water, as we are experiencing a drought. And there is not much money in growing wheat," he said.

An added incentive to growing poppy this year was the spike in opium prices in August after the Taliban took power in the country.

A report by the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crimes (UNODC) released last month said "prices doubled from May 2021 levels  as an immediate reaction to the changed political situation. This may have been an indication of uncertainty over the future of the market rather than a shortage of opium."

Afghanistan is the largest producer of opium in the world. In 2020, about 85% of opium production worldwide was grown in the country, UNODC reported last month.

Opiates in Afghanistan generated some $1.8 to $2.7 billion in income, which is 6% to 11% of the GDP, in 2021.

Taliban stance

In his first press conference in August, Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid vowed that the group will curb opium poppy cultivation and trafficking.

"We fully assure our compatriots and the world that Afghanistan will no longer be the center of opium and poppy (production)," he said, and asked for help globally to provide other sources of income for the farmers.





The U.N.s FAO is supporting wheat farming and is "distributing wheat cultivation packages for Afghanistans winter wheat season across 31 out of 34," and is calling on "greater and immediate support for agriculture production."

Sayed Ali, 64, a farmer in the Chaparhar district of the eastern Nangarhar province, said opium poppy fields yield five to six times more than wheat or corn.

"Even in the areas where opium poppy was not grown in the last 20 years, farmers have grown poppy this year. This is the source for our livelihood. There is no market for other products, Ali said.

In an interview last month, Mujahid said, however, that Afghans are facing "an economic crisis, and stopping people from their only means of income is not a good idea."

The Taliban banned poppy cultivation in the 2000-2001 growing season. They were then ousted by the U.S. and its allies in late 2001. But they benefited from poppy cultivation and the opium trade in the last 20 years, as it was one of the main sources of funding the insurgency.

According to a June 2021 U.N. report, opium poppy cultivation and trade was one of the most significant sources of income for the Taliban. In 2020, the Taliban earned an estimated $460 million from the opium poppy cultivation and trade.

Noor said the Taliban not only benefited from the opium cultivation but forced farmers to pay taxes.

"They come during nesh (time of collecting the opium gum) in early April and collect taxes. They take one seer (100 grams) of opium per laborer (who collects opium). And on the top of that, they take 3 kilograms per 4-inch well and 1.2 kilograms of opium per 2-inch well," said Noor. "They will beat us, throw us in the car, and take us to the jail if we do not pay them."

He added, "Right now, they do not tell us anything about eradication."

Possible backlash

Ali said some residents in the district have been cultivating poppy since the early 1970s.

He recalled the Talibans ban on poppy cultivation in 2000.

"I and other farmers stored opium and sold our opium gradually to buy food," he said. The Taliban might be able to impose a ban on poppy cultivation this time, but people will starve, and it is possible that there could be a backlash.

Khan, 35, a retail shopkeeper in Musa Kala in the southern Helmand province, who goes by his first name only, told VOA his livelihood depends on opium.

"It will definitely have an impact on my life. If there is no opium, the economy will weaken and my shopkeeping will halt," said Khan, a father of five children. "I will have to migrate to somewhere else if opium poppy is banned."

International response

"I think there has been too much attention to eradicating farmers poppy fields, which actually is the least criminal element of it," said William Byrd, senior Afghanistan expert at the U.S. Institute of Peace.

In a report in August, the U.S. Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) said that since 2002, the U.S. has spent about $9 billion in counternarcotics efforts in Afghanistan, however, the cultivation of opium poppy has increased in the country.

The trading side of the opium is where the money is generated, said Byrd, adding that regional level policy is needed to target drug traffickers. The regional countries "are very shy about going after them," Byrd said.

He said that tracking down and confiscating the drug money that goes into banks in the region should be another area of focus, and added that any solution to fight the war on drugs in Afghanistan needs to be "gradual and sustainable."
Algerian officials are blaming arsonists for setting many of the fires raging in a mountainous region east of the capital Algiers and in more than a dozen other provinces. Algerian state TV says that 65 people have been killed so far.

Fires raged Tuesday and into Wednesday in the mountainous region of Tizi Ouzou as fire crews, soldiers and ordinary residents tried to douse the flames before they spread further. Algerian media reported that at least 79 major fires were burning in at least 17 provinces of the country.

While the fires reportedly began Monday, many more appeared to ignite Tuesday, prompting the country's Interior Minister Kamel Beldjoud to insist that many had been set by arsonists.

He said that some experts are arguing these fires were deliberately set, what obviously would be criminal in nature because it's impossible for dozens of fires to ignite at almost the same time without some criminal hand being behind these acts.

At least three arsonists have been captured by Algerian security services during the past several months after several other fires were ignited. Many Western media outlets are downplaying the arson claims and blaming "wildfires," "excessive heat," or "global warming."

Ali Mahmoudy, head of the Algerian Forest Department, told state TV that many of the fires ignited suddenly and about the same time Tuesday, leading to speculation that many were deliberately set.

He said that initially there were five fires in the Tizi Ouzou region and then suddenly after 2 p.m. the number of fires started going up hour after hour and in some cases minute after minute, until there were 58 fires burning.

Canal Algerie, a French Algerian TV network, warned residents of the country "to be vigilant, vigilant, vigilant" and keep an eye out for anyone setting fires. It also thanked the military and fire crews for their "valiant efforts in extinguishing the fires and saving lives."

An Algerian military commander was shown on amateur video ordering his soldiers into a region engulfed with flames to try and save residents who were trapped in their houses. At least 28 soldiers have been killed in the ongoing fires.

Algerian Prime Minister Ayman Benabderrahmane told Algerians in a televised address Tuesday night that all efforts were being made by the government to compensate those who have lost family members, their homes or livestock.

He said that a government delegation is visiting the regions hit by fire to determine the size of the losses from the disaster.

Algerian media reports the government has contacted a number of regional countries to seek help with planes equipped to combat the blazes. Major fires also are raging in Greece, Turkey, Lebanon and Syria.
The Kremlin and Chinese Communist Party are learning from each other in shaping and conducting information warfare aimed at exacerbating political divisions in the West and undermining trust in democracy, according to a new study.

While theres only limited evidence of explicit cooperation, there are instances of narrative overlap, said the Center for European Policy Analysis, a Washington-based research organization.

According to the report, which focuses on disinformation campaigns since the late-2019 discovery of the coronavirus in Wuhan, China, Beijing's information warriors largely began by following the Russian "disinformation playbook, copying disinformation narratives, tools and techniques, but now some simultaneous learning is taking place.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) spread disinformation about the efficacy of vaccines and the viruss origins, a shift from Beijings previous disinformation campaigns, which had a narrower focus on China-specific issues such as Tibet, Hong Kong and Taiwan, said researchers Ben Dubow, Edward Lucas and Jake Morris.

Narrative overlap and circular amplification of disinformation show that China is following a Russian playbook with Chinese characteristics. Russia is simultaneously learning from the Chinese approach, the authors said.

The largest difference between China's and Russias information warfare tactics remains Chinas insistence on narrative consistency, compared with Russias firehose-of-falsehoods strategy, they added. Even with substantially greater resources, this largely prevents Chinese narratives from swaying public opinion or polarizing societies.

Thousands of websites

For the study, CEPAs researchers assembled thousands of website articles and social media messaging from Russian and Chinese government officials and state-backed media from March 2020 through March 2021. That was complemented by an overview of research conducted by other groups and academic institutions into Russian and Chinese disinformation, which is defined as narratives based only partially on truth and purposefully meant to mislead.

Russia largely followed its preexisting playbook of using crises to inflame tensions in foreign societies. China borrowed some tools from Russia but used them for different ends, sanitizing its own record and spreading conspiracy theories on a global scale, said the study, Jabbed in the Back: Mapping Russian and Chinese Information Operations During COVID-19, which was released last week.

The day before the report was published, Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, announced it had removed more than 600 social media accounts linked to a Chinese influence operation that claimed the United States was pressuring the World Health Organization to blame COVID-19 on the Chinese government.

CEPA authors said China and Russia have used the pandemic as an excuse to try to further erode faith in democracy and wage information warfare against the West, opening another propaganda front in the growing competition between democratic and authoritarian governments.

Speaking Thursday in Washington on the first day of a virtual Summit for Democracy, U.S. President Joe Biden said it was a critical moment and called for democratic leaders to lock arms to show the world that democracies are far better vehicles for societies than autocracies.

U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken warned Wednesday that the pandemic has heightened the challenges for democratic states, and he blamed unscrupulous leaders for spreading misinformation and disinformation.

The report said China continues to reject any Western blame for its handling of the outbreak. The Kremlin routinely denies accusations that it creates or perpetuates disinformation campaigns of any kind.

Designed to exploit divisions

Western officials say Russia and China have long aimed to weaken the United States, blunt the appeal of democratic institutions and exploit divisions, adding to polarization in the West. They say these governments have seized on the pandemic to enhance their international influence through disinformation operations.

Russian and Chinese information campaigns  using fake social media accounts and platforms such as Twitter to promote conspiracy theories amplified by state-run media outlets  are having a mutually reinforcing effect, they say.

According to the CEPA report, China and Russia have played a central role in spreading COVID-related disinformation. China has attempted to sanitize its record by promoting itself as the most effective global partner in combating the ailment, while Russian disinformation networks have focused on trying to undermine faith in Western efforts to curb the infection.

The report found that Chinese disinformation campaigns intensified in response to former President Donald Trumps accusations that the coronavirus may have escaped from a Chinese lab in Wuhan, and then again after the U.S. intelligence community reported that same possibility to President Joe Biden.

Russia has innovated in spreading vaccine disinformation throughout Europe, CEPA said. In May 2021, it said, social media influencers in France and Germany were approached by a London-based group controlled from Moscow that offered to pay them to spread disinformation about the Pfizer vaccine.

The CEPA researchers also noted there are likely limits on any Sino-Russian convergence in the information environment. China information warriors follow more consistent and rigid narratives, presumably directed to do so by their bosses. While that gives the CCP more control over messaging, it leaves Beijing less successful than the Kremlin at tailoring content for specifically targeted audiences.
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U.S. President Joe Biden acknowledged his own countrys vulnerabilities as he hosted a two-day virtual Summit for Democracy, bringing together world leaders, civil society and the private sector to counter authoritarianism, fight corruption and promote respect for human rights. White House Bureau Chief Patsy Widakuswara has more. Producer: Barry Unger.
The United States is seeking to reassure Kyiv that Washingtons strategy to prevent a Russian military invasion will work, despite Washingtons refusal to send ground troops to help defend Ukrainian soil.

U.S. President Joe Biden spent nearly an hour and a half on the phone Thursday with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, updating Ukraines leader on his discussion with Russian President Vladimir Putin earlier this week.

Biden also sought to underscore our support for Ukraine's sovereignty and territorial integrity  and his commitment to respond with strong measures in the event of a Russian military escalation," White House press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters.

Zelenskiy, posting on Twitter, said the conversation also covered possible formats for resolving the conflict in Donbas and touched upon the course of internal reforms in Ukraine.

Biden also spent 40 minutes Thursday on the phone briefing leaders of the Bucharest Nine group  Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania and Slovakia  U.S. allies on NATOs eastern flank.

Ukraine and Washingtons Eastern European allies have been asking the U.S. for defensive aid and other help in the event Russia decides to invade Ukraine after massing forces along the border.

Ukrainian intelligence officials have said there are at least 90,000 Russian troops along the border. The Washington Post reported last week that U.S. intelligence thought that number could swell to 175,000 ahead of a multifront offensive set to kick off, potentially, early next year.

U.S. defense officials on Thursday declined to comment directly on the numbers but said Russias troop presence appeared to be holding steady.

We're monitoring it closely, and there still is a very sizable military presence in western Russia, near Ukraine, near Ukraine's borders, Pentagon press secretary John Kirby told reporters. There's been no major changes to that posture.

Biden on Wednesday ruled out the possibility of sending additional U.S. troops to Ukraine to counter a possible Russian invasion, telling reporters, That is not on the table.

Pressed Thursday on whether anything less than a show of U.S. military force could get Russia to pull its forces back from the border with Ukraine, the White House expressed cautious optimism that its current strategy and the discussions with Putin were helping.

"Our objective is to make clear the significant and severe economic consequences if Russia were to invade Ukraine, not just from us but from the global community," Psaki said.

"You would know if they had made the decision to invade. They have not, she said. But, again, the ball is in his [Putins] court."

For its part, Russia on Thursday accused the West of exaggerating the importance of its troop movements and warned Ukraine of trying to take matters into its own hands.

"NATO countries pay excessive attention to troop movements on Russian territory, Valery Gerasimov, chief of the Russian General Staff, was quoted as saying by Russias Tass news service.

The media reports on Russias alleged preparation for an invasion into Ukraine is a lie, Gerasimov said. The deliveries of helicopters, unmanned aerial vehicles and aircraft to Ukraine are pushing the Ukrainian authorities towards abrupt and dangerous steps.

Despite such warnings, U.S. officials have committed to providing Ukraine and other allies with help, if needed.

There are options to expand security assistance to assist in Ukraine's self-defense, Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Colin Kahl told a virtual security summit Wednesday, pointing to the ongoing provision of ammunition, Javelin anti-tank systems, counter mortar radar and other capabilities.

Other officials said that the final elements of a $60 million security assistance package to Ukraine were being delivered this week.

"We are working with them across the board, and that does include the kinds of anti-armor, defensive weaponry that is central to their planning for how they would try to resist a substantial incursion, White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan said.

In the meantime, there is also a possibility for additional, higher-level talks between the U.S., Russia and other NATO countries, something the U.S. president said could happen by the end of the week.

Some analysts said they did not see a lessening of tensions along the Russian-Ukraine border anytime soon.

What Russia really wants is to have its security interests and its geostrategic interests respected, Andrew Lohsen, a fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, told VOA.

The current Russian government is quite sensitive to the NATO threat and is clearly demonstrating a willingness to take extreme measures to address that threat, Lohsen said. I think we're in for a process of very complicated and long negotiations to find where there might be some way to find a diplomatic off-ramp.

VOA's Patsy Widakuswara contributed to this report.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken is in Liverpool for a series of in-person meetings with foreign ministers from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations as part of a December 9-17 trip that also will take him to Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and Hawaii.

The top U.S. diplomat was greeted Friday evening by British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss ahead of two days of talks between Group of Seven foreign and development ministers. The Group of Seven includes the world's wealthiest democracies and is known informally as the G-7.

Blinken also met Friday with Germany's new foreign minister, Annalena Baerbock, a politician from the environmentalist Greens party.

Blinkens trip is part of a U.S. effort to further advance its strategic partnership with ASEAN as President Joe Bidens administration aims to begin a new Indo Pacific Economic Framework in early 2022.

The summit marks the first time ASEAN countries have been included in the G-7 foreign and development ministers meeting, being held in Liverpool.

The top diplomats are expected to discuss China's efforts to increase its influence in the Indo-Pacific region, as well as Russia's troop buildup in Ukraine and the global coronavirus pandemic.

Blinken is scheduled to meet with some of his counterparts from the Southeast Asian bloc during the gathering before heading to the Asia-Pacific rim next week.

In Jakarta, Indonesia, he will deliver remarks on the significance of the Indo-Pacific region and underscore the importance of the U.S.-Indonesia Strategic Partnership.

Regional economic framework

The secretary will have an opportunity to discuss the presidents newly announced Indo-Pacific economic framework, Daniel Kritenbrink, the State Department's assistant secretary for East Asian and Pacific affairs, told reporters in a call briefing. "President Biden is committed to elevating U.S.-ASEAN engagement to unprecedented levels."

Indonesia is the worlds most populous Muslim majority nation. Kritenbrink told VOA on Wednesday that Blinken would attend a vaccine clinic hosted by the largest faith-based NGO in Indonesia.

Blinken then will head to Malaysia and Thailand, where he will attempt to advance U.S. ties and address shared challenges, including battling COVID-19, building resilient supply chains, addressing the climate crisis, and ensuring a free and open Indo-Pacific region.

The State Department said Blinken would "address the worsening crisis" in Myanmar in each country during his lengthy trip. The military in Myanmar, formerly known as Burma, seized power in a February coup, overthrowing the civilian government.

U.S. officials had indicated the new Indo-Pacific economic framework would include broad partnerships with nations in the region in critical areas such as the digital economy and technology, supply chain resiliency and clean energy.

"The Indo-Pacific region is a critical part of our economy. It's not just that it accounts for over half of the world's population and 60% of global GDP [gross domestic product]," Jose Fernandez, undersecretary of state for economic growth, energy and the environment, said in a recent briefing.

"Seven of the top 15 U.S. export markets are in the Indo-Pacific. Two-way trade between the U.S. and the region was over $1.75 trillion," he added.

China's efforts

There are, however, concerns that the United States is lagging behind China in deepening economic and strategic ties with ASEAN.

"ASEAN countries want more from Washington on the economic side, but the Biden administration's proposed Indo-Pacific economic framework is likely to fall short of their expectations," said Susannah Patton, a research fellow in the foreign policy and defense program at the United States Studies Center in Sydney.

"After RCEP enters into force, there will be two megatrade pacts in Asia  RCEP and CPTPP  and the United States is in neither," said Patton, referring to the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership and the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership.

"China's application to join CPTPP, a vehicle that was designed to promote U.S. economic ties with Asia, highlights Washington's absence," Patton told VOA on Wednesday. Signed in 2018, the CPTPP is a free-trade agreement that includes Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, Peru, New Zealand, Singapore and Vietnam.

In November 2020, 10 ASEAN member states and five additional countries (Australia, China, Japan, South Korea and New Zealand) signed the RCEP, representing around 30% of the world's GDP and population. RCEP will come into force in January.

Others said the new Indo-Pacific economic framework appears to be not just about traditional trade, as Washington is signaling strategic interests in the region.

Some information for this report came from The Associated Press and Reuters.
President Roch Marc Christian Kabore faced demands Thursday for tougher action against Burkina Faso's jihadi insurgency, a day after the crisis cost the prime minister his job.

Seeking to defuse anger over a bloody 6-year-old campaign that has claimed about 2,000 lives and forced 1.4 million from their homes, Kabore on Wednesday accepted the resignation of Prime Minister Christophe Joseph Marie Dabire.

The move also triggered the departure of Dabire's government: Under Burkinabe law, the resignation of the prime minister also requires the entire Cabinet to step down.

"A new prime minister and a government who are fighters have to be found  and as quickly as possible," the state newspaper Sidwaya demanded.

"The country does not need a time of drift, with stop-gap ministers just dealing with day-to-day business," said Issouf Sawadogo, a senior member of a coalition of civil society groups.

"We are at war, and we need a fighting government to take the situation back in hand," he said, calling for the new prime minister to be named "within 24 hours."

Dabire's government was "overwhelmed by the wave of discontent by people outraged at having to mourn the daily killings of soldiers and civilians," said the online newspaper Wakat Sera.

Dabire, appointed in 2018, had been tasked with stemming the bloodshed, which began when groups linked to al-Qaida and the so-called Islamic State group started launching attacks from neighboring Mali three years earlier.

But the country's poorly equipped security forces have struggled against a ruthless and highly mobile foe.

Discontent rose after a string of massacres this year.

At least 13 Burkina Faso defense volunteers were killed Thursday in an attack in the north of the country, security sources told AFP.

The peak of the deadly violence came on November 14 when 57 people, 53 of them gendarmes, were killed in the country's north.

Two weeks before they were attacked, the gendarmes had warned headquarters that they were running short of supplies and were having to trap animals to eat.

They had been waiting in vain for several days for a relief force when they came under attack from hundreds of fighters on pickups and motorcycles, according to accounts of the battle.

Late Thursday, the armies of Burkina Faso and neighboring Niger said they had killed around 100 fighters in a joint military operation against the jihadis on the border between November 25 and December 9.

They had also dismantled two bases, one on either side of the frontier, they said in a joint statement.

On November 27, 10 people were hurt, including a child and two journalists, when police used tear gas to disperse a protest rally in the capital, Ouagadougou.

Signaling an impending reshuffle, Kabore said it was time for "a tighter, closer team" in government.

Other voices in Burkina have cautioned against taking a purely militaristic line for tackling the insurgency.

Jacques Nanema, a professor of philosophy at the University of Ouagadougou, called for a government that addresses "poverty, which poverty and violence feed on."

"The war against terrorism, the fight against hunger and poverty, the struggle for inclusive development that should not leave any region behind is everyone's concern, not just that of the ruling party," said the daily Wakat Sera.

Kabore was first elected in 2015, a year after his predecessor Blaise Compaore, who seized power in 1987, was forced out by mass protests for seeking to change the constitution in order to remain in office.


Cambodian political refugees in Thailand say they are living in fear after a spate of arrests and deportations of fellow refugees back to Cambodia by Thai authorities over the past month.

Thailand has arrested five Cambodians registered with the local office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees since early November and forced four of them back to Cambodia, where they were immediately detained on outstanding warrants. The fifth, Bor Bet, was released on bail in Thailand last week and is seeking another country to take him in.

The Center for Asylum Protection, a Thai rights and legal aid group, said that is the fastest pace of deportations of Cambodian refugees from Thailand since the neighbors struck a deal in 2018 to exchange foreign fugitives using their countries as a base for sowing chaos and incitement.

Right now we dont feel safe at all because of the recent events that happened to our colleagues who were arrested by Thai police and then deport[ed] to Cambodia, Narith, a member of the outlawed Cambodia National Rescue Party who asked that his full name not be used, told VOA by phone from an undisclosed location in Thailand.

The CNRP organizer escaped to Thailand last year while on bail in Cambodia on a charge of conspiring to overthrow the government, which he denies. Narith said he has changed locations three times since the latest arrests started.

Life on the lam

Cambodias Supreme Court dissolved the CNRP in 2017 for plotting to topple the government, a move widely seen at home and abroad as politically motivated. The ruling came amid a sweeping government crackdown on unions, rights groups and independent media, and did away with the only viable political challenge to Prime Minister Hun Sen, who has ruled the country for more than 35 years with an increasingly iron grip.

On paper, the court ruling also made criminals of Narith and others still campaigning to oust Hun Sen at the polls under the CNRP banner. Cambodias courts have issued dozens of warrants for the arrest of party members.

Narith told VOA that more than 60 CNRP members are still in Thailand since fleeing Cambodia over the past three years.

He said he and others have served time in Cambodias overflowing prisons for their politics before and that if forced back, they would put us in jail again, for sure.

Fearing arrest by Thai police, Narith said many of them have switched accommodations over the past month, varied their routines and cut back on phone calls and social media posts.

We have to be careful with the telephone, the internet using, things like that, he said.

Refugees told VOA they believed they were being watched, followed and photographed in Thailand even before the latest arrests began.

I changed my place already because I think my old place is not safe, said another CNRP member hiding in Thailand, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Still, he added, I feel unsafe every day; we dont know when the Thai police will arrest anybody and we will [be put] in jail.

Chhun Sithy, a former commune councilor for the CNRP, also hiding in Thailand, said he has multiple conspiracy convictions waiting for him in Cambodia for continuing to push the CNRPs cause and would face 10 years in jail if forced back.

He has switched apartments, quit his English language classes to keep indoors and suspended broadcasts of his online talk show about Cambodia.

I [am] afraid that if they can send my fellows to Cambodia they will send me also, he said.

Refugee rights

Narith said most Cambodian refugees in Thailand crossed over illegally to avoid capture at official border checkpoints. Since arriving, though, he added that nearly all of them have registered with the UNHCR and had their refugee claims recognized.

The Center for Asylum Protections says that recognition should spare them a forced return to Cambodia, where, it adds, they have little chance of a fair trial.

They [were] all recognized as a refugee, so, for refugees at least, Thailand has to protect them from deportation, said Rawitsara Piakhuntod, a protection officer for the center.

Although Thailand has not signed the U.N.s Refugee Convention, the UNHCR says the country is still bound to international law of nonrefoulment, which bars governments from sending people back to countries likely to persecute them, by the other treaties it has joined.

UNHCR has expressed its concerns and urged the Royal Thai Government to refrain from deporting recognized refugees and to abide by its international obligations, particularly the principle of non-refoulement, Catherine Stubberfield, a spokesperson for the U.N. agencys regional bureau for Asia and the Pacific, told VOA.

In a statement last month, Human Rights Watch said Thailands forced return of refugees showed a blatant disregard for those principles.

Thai Foreign Affairs Ministry spokesperson Tanee Sangrat would not answer questions about the recent arrests and deportations.

Spokespeople for the central government and national police did not answer multiple calls and repeated messages requesting comment.

Achayon Kraithong, a spokesperson for Thailands immigration bureau, told Reuters last month that the government would prioritize the countrys immigration laws but avoid sending people into danger.
The European Union will on Monday impose a package of sanctions on targets linked to the Russian private military contractor Wagner, accused of stirring trouble in various conflicts.

Foreign ministers from EU member states will meet in Brussels next week and endorse a list of individuals and firms to hit with asset freezes and visa bans, diplomats said.

Wagner personnel have been identified carrying out operations in several conflict zones, including Russia's neighbor Ukraine, war-torn Syria and several restive African countries.

France in particular has been pressing its EU partners to act, arguing that Wagner's inroads into Libya, Mali and the Central African Republic have had a destabilizing effect.

Russia's government denies any link to the group, which has been compared to similar US private military outfits, such as the notorious former Blackwater group.

But French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian has called them "a company of Russian mercenaries which makes war by proxy on Russia's account" and added: "Even if Russia denies it, nobody is fooled".

European diplomats said the bloc would make use of several existing sanctions regimes in order to add names of Wagner-linked personnel and firms to target lists.

They said the list would also be a warning to countries tempted to hire Wagner units, such as Mali, a former French colony where European troops are fighting Islamist insurgents.
France announced Friday that it would soon declassify some of the most secret sections of its national archives concerning the Algerian war of independence, opening the door for citizens to explore some of bloodiest parts of the countrys history.

The Algerian war of independence lasted from 1954 to 1962, as the National Liberation Front fought against France for independence in a violent conflict that resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Algerians. Over the course of the war, historians have found that French forces and their proxies used torture against their enemies.

French Culture Minister Roselyne Bachelot said that opening the records to the public was necessary to increase transparency surrounding the countrys history, according to Reuters.

"We need to have the courage to look the historical truth in the face, Bachelot said.

The war in Algeria had serious political repercussions in France, prompting a failed coup attempt against former President Charles de Gaulle to prevent him from terminating French rule in the colony.

Although the war ended almost 60 years ago, it is still a sensitive subject within French society.

Chain of 'repressive measures'

Reuters quoted Benjamin Stora, a top French historian on Algeria, who said the records will shed light on aspects of the war that have long been hidden, such as many unexplained deaths.

"You can know which people were under surveillance, followed, arrested," Stora said. It's the whole chain leading up to repressive measures that can be unveiled."

The Anadolu news agency reported that an Algerian presidential adviser, Abdelmadjid Cheiki, said the records declassification was positive and important.

A former representative in the Algerian Parliament, Kamal Belarbi, was hesitant to fully welcome Frances decision. Belarbi said it was difficult to accept that the country would completely expose the nature of its colonial rule, given that it has kept it secret for so many years.

"France will continue to tamper with the archives. The most important thing is that we remain committed to our demands to hold France accountable for crimes it committed in Algeria for 132 years," he said.

The records declassification will likely have major repercussions for both nations and their citizens.

Frances announcement came two days after French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drians trip to Algiers. While there, he conducted talks with Algerian President Abdelmadjid Tebboune to revive the two countries rocky relationship.
Germanys Bundestag  the lower house of parliament  approved a measure Friday requiring health care workers to be vaccinated, the first step by the countrys new government to fight the latest surge of COVID-19.

The measure passed 571 to 80 and was expected to be approved by parliaments upper house later Friday.

The legislation would also force state governments to implement other restrictions, such as closing bars and restaurants, or banning large events, if infection rates get too high. It also expands who can deliver vaccinations to include veterinarians, dentists and pharmacists.

The government of Germanys new chancellor, Olaf Scholz, has made fighting the pandemic a priority and Scholz has indicated his support for vaccine mandates. A broader vaccine mandate could be debated by parliament in coming weeks.

Prior to the lower house vote Friday, new German Health Minister Karl Lauterbach, an epidemiologist, told lawmakers there was no time to lose in protecting the population from the coronavirus pandemic.

He said a vaccine mandate for health workers was necessary because, as he sees it, it's completely unacceptable... that after two years of pandemic, people who have entrusted their care to us are dying unnecessarily in institutions because unvaccinated people work there.

The legislation would require healthcare workers at hospitals, doctor's offices and nursing homes to prove that they are vaccinated or have recovered from COVID-19 by mid-March.

Germanys Robert Koch Institute for Infectious Diseases ((RKI)) reports as of Friday, 69.4 percent of the countrys population has been fully vaccinated.

Some information for this report was provided by The Associated Press, Reuters, and Agence France-Presse
Gunmen attacked a rural village in northern Nigeria, killing 16 worshippers at a mosque and kidnapping others, said a local official.

The assault on Ba'are village in the Mashegu area of Niger state lasted for hours on Thursday, local government chairman Alhassan Isah Mazakuka said.

Dozens of the assailants arrived on motorcycles and rampaged through the village, killing people praying at the mosque and looting, he said.

"Those people (the gunmen) are dangerous," he told The Associated Press in a phone interview on Friday. "They killed 16 and kidnapped many of our people. We don't even know the number they kidnapped because they are uncountable."

Nigerian police confirmed the incident but said only nine residents were killed. The police have in the past been accused of downplaying casualty figures in such attacks.

The attack is the latest in the escalating violence in northwestern and northcentral Nigeria where armed groups have been targeting remote communities, killing and abducting residents for ransoms.

Earlier this week it was confirmed that 23 travelers were slain in a different part of the West African country's troubled northern region.

The large bands of attackers mostly consist of young men from the Fulani ethnic group, who had traditionally worked as nomadic cattle herders and are caught up in a decades-long conflict with Hausa farming communities over access to water and grazing land.

The gunmen appear to be increasingly organized and well-armed, but they have not publicly declared any political aims or motives. So far the lawless groups  which a Nigerian governor recently said numbered more than 150  do not have names or known leaders, but they were recently declared terrorist organizations by a court.

Nigeria's security forces are already overstretched as they have been fighting Islamic extremists in the northeast for more than a decade. In many remote communities in northern Nigeria, the armed groups outnumber and outgun the security forces.

When troops arrive to quell their attacks, the bandits retreat into surrounding forest areas. But after the soldiers depart, the violent attacks resume. Vulnerable rural communities say they need more protection.

"We are suffering with the bandits (here)," local government chairman Mazakuka said. "All we need is prayers now (as) we have been crying for government support. The government has been trying their best but we still need support."
China has the means to launch a disabling cyberattack against political rival Taiwan ahead of any military invasion, experts say, as the technology is already targeting the islands political leadership.

Beijing claims self-ruled Taiwan as its own and has threatened to use force if necessary to unify the two sides. The claim has held since the Chinese civil war of the 1940s, when Chiang Kai-sheks Nationalist government reestablished on the island after losing to Mao Zedongs Communists. Most Taiwanese prefer to maintain the status quo, according to a National Chengchi University poll.

A straight-up military invasion would cost lives and mobilize U.S. forces for Taiwans defense. Disruptive cyberattacks could sow chaos and soften Taiwans defenses, potentially making an invasion less costly for Beijing, according to Chen Yi-fan, assistant professor of diplomacy and international relations at Tamkang University in Taiwan.

Attacks happening already

Chinese operators are already using the internet to launch an estimated 200 million to 400 million attacks each month, mostly targeting websites run by the government and Taiwans all-important semiconductor companies, Chen said.

PLAs [Peoples Liberation Army] Strategic Support Force and its Network Systems Department may be those behind the scenes to conduct the maneuvers, Chen said. Successful cyberattacks can disable Taiwans critical infrastructure and make Taiwan vulnerable to follow-up PLA attacks.

Anonymous mainland Chinese nationals already poke at Taiwan by mobilizing thousands of social media accounts to condemn domestic policies of the islands ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), said Yun Sun, co-director of the East Asia program at the Stimson Center in Washington. The party takes a guarded view of any China-Taiwan unification.

In December 2019, DPP spokesperson Lee Yen-jong said the Chinese internet army had posted a malicious video on Facebook about a month ahead of party-backed President Tsai Ing-wens reelection. The video posed as a campaign commercial in support of the DPP and falsely claimed the party supports China-Taiwan unification under the one-country, two-systems type of rule that Beijing uses to govern Hong Kong.

Attacks today seek to steal intelligence and compile a list for cyberattacks in the precision strike phase of any future operations, said Taiwans Ministry of National Defense in a recent report.

During wartime, the report says, cyberattacks can be used to sabotage and destroy national critical infrastructures and C2 [command and control] systems to cause turbulence and chaos in its society and decimate the internal security kept by the military and law enforcement organs of the nation and its government functions.

The Chinese government does not acknowledge launching any attacks. The Chinese state-backed Global Times website, however, said this week that a Taiwan-based organization called GreenSpot had launched cyberattacks since 2007 against Chinese government agencies and aerospace and military-related research institutes to steal high-value data and classified information."

Disable first, strike later?

China could disable Taiwanese computer systems that run transport, utilities and defense operations to make a military strike easier, scholars suggest.

If there is a war, and the Chinese shut down the power grid through a cyberattack, that may not completely shut down Taiwans defense system, but its going to have an impact, Sun said.

Successful cyberattacks on financial institutions and other targets would shake peoples confidence, said Alexander Huang, chairman of a military strategy research foundation in Taipei. All of Taiwans critical infrastructure is connected by the internet, he added, a linkage that could cause great difficulties as well as widespread panic among people.

If we got a cyberwar, then all these systems are down, Huang said. If the communication node is broken, then it would be a form of decapitation.

Advanced conventional weapons such as new submarines and aircraft would be of little use during a debilitating cyberattack, he said, adding that its unclear whether Taiwans government has taken enough measures to guard against a major cyberattack.

Taiwanese officials first signaled awareness of the threat in 2000. The National Security Council came out with an information and communication infrastructure security mechanism plan that year and, in 2001, the government created a related task force, the academic website Taiwaninsight.org says. The government-run Central News Agency said Taiwanese officials began planning in 2018 to set up a cybersecurity academy that would help overcome a talent shortage among civil servants.

A media liaison with the defense ministry did not answer a request for comment on any preparations for wider cyberattacks from China.
Growing inequality and the proliferation of multiple crises around the world have dashed hopes raised for a better, more equitable world 73 years after the U.N. General Assembly adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres warns the world is at a crossroads.

"The COVID-19 pandemic, the climate crisis and the expansion of digital technology into all areas of our lives have created new threats to human rights, Guterres said. Exclusion and discrimination are rampant. Public space is shrinking. Poverty and hunger are rising for the first time in decades. Millions of children are missing out on their right to education. Inequality is deepening.

U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet says the cost of soaring inequalities is intolerable. But, since the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was adopted in 1948, she notes significant strides, if not progress, have been made. She says the world has grown richer, people are living longer, and more women have gained a greater measure of autonomy.

Over the past 20 years, however, she says a succession of global shocks has undermined that progress. She says it is particularly distressing to realize the extent to which inequalities are fueling the devastation caused by the coronavirus pandemic on peoples lives.

Bachelet recently returned from a mission to Burkina Faso and Niger, countries riven by violence and lawlessness. Her spokesman, Rupert Colville, says the high commissioner saw the ruinous impact on those societies from the pandemic, climate change, economic distress, and inequality.

Colville says Bachelet clearly understood how it is that young men who have no jobs, no future, no hope are tempted to join the armed struggle when offered a gun and $10.

There you see the knock-on effect, which then has results in people being killed, in villages being destroyed, in women being raped and in just general horror stories, which are rooted in the socio-economic problems and inequalities that we are talking about today, Colville said.

Human rights chief Bachelet says equality is at the heart of human rights. She says equality also is at the heart of the solutions that can carry humanity through this period of global crisis.
At least 53 mostly Central American migrants died when the truck transporting them turned over in southern Mexico on Thursday, in one of the worst accidents to befall people risking their lives to reach the United States border.

The accident occurred when the truck crashed on a sharp curve outside the city of Tuxtla Gutierrez in the state of Chiapas, said Luis Manuel Garcia, head of the Chiapas civil protection agency.

The Mexican Attorney General's office put the death toll at 53.

A Reuters witness heard desperate cries and sobs from the survivors as Mexican officials rushed to the scene.

Reuters images show a white trailer flipped onto its side on a highway, with some people splayed out on tarps on the ground for medical care. Images also show rows of what appear to be bodies of the accident victims wrapped in white cloth.

A video of the aftermath broadcast on social media showed a woman holding a child wailing in her lap, both bathed in blood.

Another video showed a man curled up in pain inside the destroyed trailer, hardly moving as helpers pulled out bodies.

The fatalities included men, women and children, Chiapas civil protection said.

President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador on Twitter expressed his sorrow at the "very painful" incident.

The accident also injured several dozen people, who were taken to hospitals in the area, authorities said.

Migrants fleeing poverty and violence in Central America typically trek through Mexico to reach the U.S. border, and sometimes cram into large trucks organized by smugglers in extremely dangerous conditions.

"This shows us that irregular migration is not the best way," Kevin Lopez, a spokesperson for Guatemala's presidency, told Milenio television.

He did not know how many Guatemalan victims there were.

El Salvador's foreign minister Alexandra Hill said her government was working to see if Salvadorans had died.

Mexico's national migration institute said it would offer lodging and humanitarian visas to the survivors, and Chiapas Governor Rutilio Escandon said those responsible for the accident would be held to account.

Officials in Mexico routinely come across migrants packed into trailers, including 600 people found hidden in the back of two trucks in eastern Mexico last month.

Mexican authorities in Chiapas have attempted to persuade migrants to not form caravans to walk the thousands of miles to the U.S. border, and have begun transporting people from the southern city of Tapachula to other regions of the country.

U.S. President Joe Biden's administration has also urged migrants not to leave their homelands for the United States.

Critics have said tougher policies lead migrants to seek out human smugglers, putting their lives at risk.

"(Authorities) generate smuggled migration that generates billions of dollars in profits," said migrant activist Ruben Figueroa.
Aid groups say drought and conflict in Mali have more than tripled the number of people going hungry in the past year. Rising prices of staple foods forced the government this week to halt exports of millet, corn, and rice and food shortages are expected to spread.

Twenty-two non-governmental organizations signed a press release this week highlighting the rapidly worsening food crisis that has left 1.2 million people facing hunger amid widespread insecurity and drought.

The Malian government halted all exports of millet, corn, and rice in an official letter published on Monday, signed by Malis minister of industry and commerce, Mahmoud Ould Mohamed.

Speaking to Reuters, he said, the suspension aims to anticipate the cereal crisis which is looming on the international market, to protect national production and the most disadvantaged segments of the population.

The effects are already being felt by citizens in Gao, one of Malis largest northern cities. Ousman Maiga, a Gao resident and the secretary general of the Gao regions civil society, told VOA that oil, sugar, millet, and rice prices have risen sharply in recent months.

He says the poor condition of roads between the capital and Gao has further complicated the situation.

Maiga says that a large family in Mali, where multiple generations often live under the same roof, can easily consume 100 kilos of rice in a month.

That, he says, can now consume most of the familys income.

He says, for example, if you have a monthly salary of 100,000 West African francs, and youre in a house  because, you have to also know, even rent is expensive here because of the crisis and all that  if youre in a house thats 50,000 per month, and a sack of rice is 45,000, you have only 5,000 left over. Its done, he says. Youve paid your rent, and youve bought a sack of rice, but you dont have any money left.

But 100,000 West African franc -- the equivalent of about $172 -- is more than many Malians will see in a month. According to USAID, nearly half of Malians live in extreme poverty, and most Malians work in agriculture.

The press release said 3 million people have been affected by recent drought.

Mali is also home to 400,000 internally displaced persons driven from their homes by ongoing violence, who are all vulnerable to food shortages.

Tom Peyre-Costa of the Norwegian Refugee Council, says his groups projections are even worse for next year, forecasting a 58% increase in the number of people facing hunger.

What is needed now for sure is of course also more support from the international community, he said. Basically, right now the food security response is only funded 25% and we are in December. And its for the whole year, so its not going to improve. It means that its lacking 75% of the money to make sure that people have enough food to eat. So thats something that needs to be addressed. Because you can escape from violence, you can escape from climate change, but you cannot really escape from international neglect.

Mali is currently under military rule, and elections were scheduled to be held in February. The prime minister said in September that elections may be delayed.

Malis current leaders now have to manage a food crisis in an addition to the ongoing security crisis in the countrys central regions.
South Africa's health minister has confirmed omicron is the most transmissible coronavirus variant yet but does not appear as severe. The minister, Dr. Joe Phaala, says previous concerns that omicron was hospitalizing more children appear to be unfounded.

More than 22,000 people tested positive with COVID-19 Thursday in South Africa, double the number of daily cases seen last week.

Phaala said Friday the omicron variant discovered last month is driving the countrys fourth wave.

He says omicron has become the dominant variant, spreading more rapidly and overtaking the delta variant.

The reproductive number of the virus, which shows how many people are likely to be infected by one person is currently 2.5, which is higher than it was at any prior point in the pandemic. So, whether we speak about the alpha, the beta, the delta, none of them had even reached anywhere close to the two, he expressed.

Omicron also appears to be infecting people who have been vaccinated or previously sick with COVID-19.

More than 450 people were hospitalized Thursday.

But Phaala says early data suggests omicron may not be as severe as previous variants.

A lower proportion of patients admitted in the fourth wave  currently this is the fourth wave  had severe disease as compared to pace admitted in a similar timeframe in the second and third waves.

Severe disease is defined as people needing hospitalization, oxygen or ventilators or dying from the virus.

Officials expressed concern last week over an increase in children being hospitalized.

Phaala says it now appears that, like previous variants, omicron is not causing severe respiratory symptoms in children.

Early data from hospital surveillance, also reports from public and private hospitals, indicate that admissions are largely in children admitted for other reasons, and then tested positive and for very short durations.

For average patients, the ministry says anecdotal reports from doctors describe symptoms of omicron as ranging from a scratchy throat, cough and fever to diarrhea and vomiting.

More severe cases are mainly among the unvaccinated, who make up at least 70% of hospitalizations.

That is reinforcing the governments message to the public to get inoculated.

Dr. Michelle Groome is with the National Institute for Communicable Diseases. She notes that the majority of admissions are in unvaccinated individuals. I think we really know which public health measures are working in terms of the vaccination, proper wearing of masks, social distancing and limits in particular large gatherings.

Still, more than half of South African adults have yet to receive their first dose. Phaala had a clear message Friday to those who refuse vaccinations.

We would want to urge them not to listen to what they read on social media, all the anti-vax stories, protect yourselves by coming forward and taking the vaccine now.

Amid the spread of omicron, South Africa is now approving booster shots.

Rollout could begin as early as next week for the Johnson & Johnson vaccines, while Pfizer boosters will be available starting December 28.
In a report released Friday, Human Rights Watch said forces of the Tigray Peoples Liberation Front killed more than 40 civilians in the towns of Chenna and Kobo in Ethiopias northern Amhara region earlier this year.

The rights group says TPLF forces carried out the killings after clashing with locals. It said more than 25 civilians were killed in Chenna at the end of August and over 20 residents were killed in Kobo in early September.

Human Rights Watch said it based its report on interviews with relatives of the victims and those displaced by clashes in the Amhara region.

There was no immediate comment from the TPLF or the Ethiopian government.

Tigrayan rebels, the Ethiopian army and pro-government forces have all been accused of killing civilians and committing widespread human rights violations, including rape, during the year-long Tigray conflict.

Last November, Human Rights Watch and others documented massacres, widespread sexual violence, forced displacement, and attacks on civilian infrastructure by Ethiopian federal government forces and their allies.

The United States later imposed financial and travel sanctions on those accused of orchestrating the violence.

Human Rights Watch has called on warring parties to protect civilians, and suggested the United Nations hold a special session on Ethiopia to impose an arms embargo, as well as additional targeted sanctions.
Russia's influence in the Central African Republic is growing as the country grapples with insurgents, according to the International Crisis Group. The CAR government hired the Wagner Group, a Russian mercenary contractor for security. But Wagner's alleged rights violations against killing civilians, aid workers, and journalists have caused tensions with CAR's western supporters and uproar at home.

In the CAR, the civilian population continues to suffer at the hands of armed groups in parts of the country. Last week a rebel attack in the northwest killed at least 30 people.

And from January to November, there were 387 violent incidents against humanitarian workers, according to the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

The central African nation is seeing an increase in violence as government forces supported by Russian fighters battle rebel groups who oppose President Faustin-Archange Touadera rule.

The CAR hired the Wagner Group, a Russian mercenary contractor for security.

Pauline Bax, a senior editor and policy advisor at the International Crisis Group, says the mercenaries and other fighters have helped keep the current government in power.

A lot of the fighters are not necessarily Russians. There is a Libyan contingent. There are Syrian fighters, people from Ukraine and Chechnya fighters as well. Its hard to get any clear idea what exactly they do in the countryside, but they have been very successful in repelling rebels from most of the major towns. And this Wagner force together with the national army has managed to secure a lot of mining zones as well as major towns in the country which was unprecedented; this hasnt happened in the Central African Republic in the last 20 years, she expressed.

In January, the government forces and Russian soldiers carried out a counteroffensive against armed groups known as the Coalition of Patriots for Change, pushing them out of the capital, Bangui.

But reports of civilian abuses by the Russian mercenary group and government forces have overshadowed successes.

In a June report, UN investigators highlighted human rights abuses and excessive force committed by the Russian mercenaries.

The human rights researchers report showed six civilians were killed inside a mosque in Bambari and three others were killed in Ippy town. Two of them were individuals with disabilities.

The Russians arrived in the Central African Republic in 2017 after the meeting between President Faustin-Archange Touadera and Russias foreign minister.

Russian donated weapons to CARs weak military and provided 175 military instructors. Since then, the number of Russian instructors has grown to 1,200.

Tobias Wellner is a sub-Saharan Africa senior intelligence analyst with Dragonfly Intelligence, a group that works on global security and political risks. He says that Wagner group records in other countries show they work with Russias security systems.

For some of Wagners actions, for example, in Ukraine and Syria, there has been certain support between Wagners mercenary forces and Russian troops. To a certain degree, we can say Russia is probably using Wagner as a foreign policy tool; it allows Russians to deepen connections and defense resource sectors where Wagner is operating, he pointed out.

The groups security service has attracted some African governments like Mali and Sudan.

Wellner says governments who lack proper governance structure will attract mercenary groups who are accountable to no one.

Mercenaries companies work for money and dont ask questions about democracy like military training and support missions paid by western governments would. Wagners advantage as the Russian company is probably also that within Russia there are less questions asked about the company, so there is less scrutiny for Wagner as a private company back at home in Russia, he said.

The group was deployed in Mozambique to combat the Islamic State terror group operating in the countrys north. The Wagner group evacuated its fighters in November 2019, after dozens of them were killed.

In the Central African Republic, rebel groups are gathering again to fight the government troops and Russians.

Bax of ICG says the existence of rebels in the country poses a threat to the government.

Now the rebels are gathering more in strength and launching ambushes on army forces and mercenaries' troops as well and increasingly using Improvised Explosive Devices. So, a lot of the fighting continues to this day in areas that are very remote and hard to access, and the general understanding is that if the mercenary force would no longer be there, there will be a clear threat to the government and President Touadera, he noted.

Some experts say Russias influence in Africa is limited, unlike the Chinese, who are involved in infrastructure projects and trade, and Western governments that help fund many governments projects.
The U.N. refugee agency says intercommunal fighting over scarce resources in Cameroon has triggered the mass exodus of more than 30,000 refugees to neighboring Chad.

Deadly clashes erupted December 5 in the Cameroonian border village of Ouloumsa following a dispute between herders, fishermen and farmers over dwindling water resources. Violence then spread to neighboring villages, where intercommunal rivals burned 10 villages to the ground.

The U.N. refugee agency says 22 people have been killed and 30 seriously injured over the past six days. In addition, women and children account for most of the 30,000 refugees who have fled into Chad.

UNHCR spokesman Boris Cheshirkov says the situation remains volatile, forcing his agency to temporarily suspend its operations in the affected areas. He says five staff members, as well as colleagues who have been on an assessment mission, have been moved to the Chadian capital, N'Djamena.

Cheshirkov blames the rising tensions between intercommunal farmers and fishermen on climate change, which he says is getting worse.

"They depend on the waters of the Logone River, which is one of the main tributaries of Lake Chad," he said. "Lake Chad has been shrinking. Over the course of six decades now, it has lost 95 percent of its surface water. These communities rely on that water to live, to fish, to grow crops and cultivate them, to take care of their livestock. They are not able to do this."

Cheshirkov says similar climate crises can be seen in many parts of the world  in the Sahel, in far north Cameroon and East Africa, as well as in the drought corridor of Latin America, and South Asia. He says 90 percent of refugees come from climate vulnerable hotspots.

UNHCR and Cameroonian authorities have been leading reconciliation efforts to end the intercommunal violence, he says, adding that the situation could escalate unless the root causes of the crisis are addressed.

Chad is home to nearly 1 million refugees and internally displaced people, and Cameroon has more than 1.5 million refugees and IDPs. The UNHCR says it has received slightly more than half the money it needs to run its lifesaving operations in both countries. It is appealing to the international community for more support.
South Korea, widely seen as a global model of coronavirus containment, faces its biggest pandemic challenge yet, as COVID-19 cases and deaths continue to rise after the country began removing pandemic related restrictions.

Daily caseloads surpassed 7,000 Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. That is quadruple the daily numbers reported at the beginning of November, when South Korea pivoted toward its living with COVID-19 plan.

In the Seoul metropolitan area, where more than half the countrys population resides, intensive care hospital beds are full. The country has also hit new daily highs for the number of severely ill COVID-19 patients, which stood at 857 Thursday.

Although South Korea has tallied only a fraction of the cases and deaths of other developed countries such as the United States and Britain, its fatality rate rose to 1.4% over the past week. That is the ninth highest among 38 Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development nations.

South Korea's deteriorating situation demonstrates the challenges of returning to life as normal, complicated by the delta variant that undermined government projections, even in a country that had until now been spared the worst of the pandemic.

Grim warnings

Government officials, who have been careful not to raise unnecessary alarms as they sought to keep businesses open, are now sounding a grimmer tone.

At a meeting of the Central Disaster and Safety Countermeasures Headquarters on Friday, Prime Minister Kim Boo-kyum, who oversees the pandemic response, judged that the country's medical response capability was quickly burning out, warning that stricter social distancing measures may need to be enforced if the "risky situation" does not soon turn around.

The prime minister again placed heavy emphasis on vaccination, including for minors. He announced the interval between the second vaccine shot and boosters would be shortened to three months.

The government paused its "living with COVID-19" transition Monday, replacing it with an expanded "vaccine pass" mandate. The new plan requires people who gather in limited groups at restaurants and cafes to show proof of vaccination or a very recent negative PCR test result upon entry. This usually takes the form of a smartphone application, called COOV. The mandate extends to other public facilities, including gyms, study rooms and bars.

Risk control

The figure that health officials are watching closely is the number of severe COVID-19 patients, especially as hospitals are taxed. A recent projection by the National Institute for Mathematical Sciences put that figure as likely to exceed 1,000 by next week, and the overall daily caseload could reach the 12,000 level by the end of the month.

That is an alarming prospect for hospital staff, who are already exhausted by the unrelenting stream of COVID-19 patients.

"Non-COVID patients are not able to access the ER." Dr. Chon Eun-mi, a pulmonologist at Ewha Womans University Mokdong Hospital, told VOA.

"The ER is clogged with COVID patients, leaving people with other symptoms no choice but to wait it out at home. Surgeries are also being delayed," she said.

It's a similar picture at other major hospitals across Seoul, nearby Incheon and the surrounding Gyeonggi province.

Kim issued an administrative order for 1,700 more hospital beds to be secured outside of the capital.

Those 60 years and older, with waning vaccine immunity, have made up most of the severe breakthrough cases as the delta variant spreads in the country.

"The government didn't expect this many severe COVID cases since we had made vaccination progress," Chon said, referring to South Korea's 92% vaccination rate among adults.

"It broadly adopted its 'living with COVID' transition, more people moved about, and those who were immunocompromised or elderly became reinfected. But, this time, they had to wait at home because there were no available hospital beds. Their conditions worsened and they died before they could get real help," she said.

Chon said COVID-19 patients should be centralized at a large facility such as a stadium, convention hall or borrowed hotel, where those with mild symptoms can receive antibody or remdesivir treatment before their conditions worsen. She said the current approach of remotely treating mild patients from home is not working.

The omicron factor

South Korea has detected at least 63 cases of the omicron variant, 48 of which were linked to community spread.

Omicron, which the World Health Organization last month designated a variant of concern, was first reported by South Africa. Health experts fear it may be more transmissible, but it is not yet clear if it causes more or less severe symptoms.

Seoul has limited arrivals from a growing list of African countries, most recently Ghana and Zambia. It also instituted a mandatory 10-day quarantine on all international arrivals, regardless of their vaccination status.

Dr. Chung Jae-hoon, adviser to the prime minister's office and the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency, recently offered this assessment to a local newspaper.

"Expect to stay in this COVID-19 reality for at least another three years. Delta has taught us that vaccination alone will not end the crisis. The first half of next year will be even harder for medical staff. Bigger challenges remain," he said.

Lee Juhyun contributed to this report.
Here is a fast take on what the international community has been up to this past week, as seen from the United Nations perch.

Food theft in Ethiopia

The United Nations said Wednesday that large amounts of food, including items for malnourished children, were looted from their warehouses in northern Ethiopia, leading to the suspension of food distribution in two towns.

UN Food Stocks Looted in N. Ethiopia; Some Aid Distribution Halted

Hunger in Sahel

The latest U.N. analysis of food security in the Sahel and Western African countries finds a record 38 million people in the region will face severe food shortages next year. It warns that many may not survive without swift and generous international humanitarian assistance.

UN Says Acute Hunger Grips Millions in West and Central Africa

Reflection on genocide

Commemorations were held Thursday to mark the International Day of the Commemoration and Dignity of the Victims of the Crime of Genocide and of the Prevention of this Crime. Following the Holocaust, in 1951, the United Nations declared genocide an international crime.

UN: Genocide Remains Threat, Must Be Prevented

In brief

 In Mali on Wednesday, seven Togolese peacekeepers were killed and three others seriously injured when their vehicle hit an improvised explosive device. The peacekeepers were part of a logistics convoy traveling through central Mali when the incident occurred. The mission, known by its acronym MINUSMA, is one of the U.N.s most dangerous. Since it began in 2013, more than 250 peacekeepers have been killed.

 Catherine Russell of the United States will be the new head of the U.N. Childrens Fund (UNICEF), the United Nations said Friday. She will succeed Henrietta Fore, who has served since January 2018. She resigned because of an illness in her family. The post has traditionally been held by an American. Russell comes to UNICEF from the White House Office of Presidential Personnel, where she is an assistant to President Joe Biden. She is a former ambassador-at-large for Global Womens Issues at the State Department and has taught at Harvard University. She is due to move into the executive directors office early next year.

 South Korea hosted a high-level meeting on U.N. peacekeeping this week. Multiple commitments were made for new military and police capabilities, including helicopters, which are always scarce. There were also offers to help U.N. peacekeeping improve its medical capabilities and the use of technology. Additionally, several states pledged to reduce their environmental footprint in missions.

 U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres briefly isolated during the week, after he came into contact with someone who had tested positive for COVID-19. Guterres, 72, exhibited no symptoms and tested negative at least twice during the week, his spokesperson said. Although he had moral hesitations about receiving a COVID-19 booster when so many others have yet to benefit from even a first jab, he did get his booster two weeks ago.

Quote of note

As I heard again during my visit, the women and girls of Afghanistan want to be able to go to school, work and take part in public life, free of discrimination. The progress that was made in this area must not be erased.  Rosemary DiCarlo, undersecretary-general for political and peacebuilding affairs, following her trip to Afghanistan Tuesday through Thursday.

Next week

On Monday, the U.N. Security Council is expected to vote on a draft resolution penned by Niger and Ireland on the effects of climate change on international peace and security, particularly how it can exacerbate the root causes of conflict. Veto holders China and Russia, as well nonpermanent member India, have expressed reservations about the council's stepping onto the turf of what some consider the domain of other U.N. organs and bodies, leaving the outcome open as of now.
The U.N.s top diplomat in Sudan said Friday that the countrys political crisis is not over, despite a November 21 power-sharing agreement between the military and the civilian prime minister that released him from detention and returned him to office.

The agreement faces significant opposition from a large segment of Sudanese stakeholders, including parties and associations within the Forces of Freedom and Change, Resistance Committees, civil society organizations and womens groups, said Volker Perthes, the head of the U.N. assistance mission in Sudan, referring to some of the pro-democracy groups. I have met with these and other stakeholders. Many feel betrayed by the coup, and now reject any negotiations or partnership with the military.

Sudan's military seized power on October 25, arresting dozens of officials in the country's transitional government, including Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok. The military said the coup was necessary to maintain Sudans stability amid infighting between the army and civilian parties in the ruling Sovereign Council.

Hamdok was later moved to house arrest, and under a November 21 agreement with top general Abdel Fattah Burhan has returned to work in a transitional power-sharing agreement.

The agreement is far from perfect but can help to avoid further bloodshed and provide a step towards comprehensive dialogue and a return to constitutional order, Perthes told the U.N. Security Council Friday.

Thousands of Sudanese have been protesting in the streets since the deal, demanding a completely civilian government.

Perthes said there is a large trust deficit on the part of the public, especially the youth, since the coup. He urged the political leadership to take several steps to start rebuilding public trust, including lifting the military-imposed state of emergency, naming civilian members to the Sovereign Council, and restoring freedom of press.

He said an important indicator of whether the country has returned to the path to democratic transition would be whether political space is restored.

This is particularly important in light of the professed goal by political and military leaders to hold free and fair elections possibly even earlier than originally planned, Perthes said. Authorities will need to ensure a conducive atmosphere for credible elections which the U.N. and other international actors can then support.

The U.N. envoy also expressed concern about the suspension of some international development assistance following the coup.

Sudanese authorities must demonstrate their commitment to return to a credible constitutional order in order to regain the trust of the international community to resume international financial assistance, he said.

Sudan is among the U.N.s top five countries experiencing a humanitarian crisis, with more than 14 million people in need of humanitarian assistance.
As part of the Biden administration's efforts to infuse human rights into its foreign policy, the U.S. State Department on Friday designated 12 government officials from Uganda, China, Belarus, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Mexico for "gross violations of human rights," according to Secretary of State Antony Blinken.

Seventy-three years after the United Nations adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights on December 10, 1948, the department's commemoration of Human Rights Day targeted people like Mario Plutarco Marin Torres, a former Mexican governor charged with jailing and torturing journalist Lydia Cacho in 2005. Another official, Ugandan military intelligence chief Abel Kandiho, is no longer welcome in the United States after allegedly allowing his deputies to arrest and abuse people at odds with the Ugandan government.

"We are determined to put human rights at the center of our foreign policy, and we reaffirm this commitment by using appropriate tools and authorities to draw attention to and promote accountability for human rights violations and abuses, no matter where they occur," Blinken said.

Under the congressionally approved foreign operations bill that funds the State Department, the secretary of state can bar foreign government officials and their close family members from entering the United States if they have been involved with corruption or human rights abuses.

Four current and former Chinese officials  Shohrat Zakir, Erken Tuniyaz, Hu Lianhe and Chen Mingguo  also made the list for their connection to Beijing's repression of Uyghurs in the Xinjiang region.

The U.S. practice constitutes serious interference in China's internal affairs, severe violation of basic norms governing international relations, and grave harm to China-U.S. relations, Chinese Embassy spokesperson Liu Pengyu said in response to a VOA request for comment about the sanctions. China firmly opposes and strongly condemns that.

Besides the State Department's designations, the Treasury Department has sanctioned 25 individuals and entities under the Global Magnitsky Human Rights Accountability Act. A statement published Friday outlined sweeping sanctions on people and organizations in China, Bangladesh, North Korea and Burma, as well as a Russian university and its provost for sponsoring visas for "hundreds" of construction workers tied to Pyongyang's nuclear program.

One batch of sanctions targets a company invested in surveillance technologies used in Xinjiang; another targets the Rapid Action Battalion, a Bangladeshi task force that "[undermines] the rule of law and respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms," according to the department's statement.

One Bangladeshi official and two Chinese officials designated by the State Department also appeared on the Treasury Department's sanctions list.

Xinjiang-related issues are never about human rights, ethnicity or religion, Liu said. Xinjiang affairs are entirely China's internal affairs. The U.S. has no right and is in no position to intervene.

"On International Human Rights Day, Treasury is using its tools to expose and hold accountable perpetrators of serious human rights abuse," said Wally Adeyemo, the department's deputy secretary. "Our actions today, particularly those in partnership with the United Kingdom and Canada, send a message that democracies around the world will act against those who abuse the power of the state to inflict suffering and repression."

Washington's interagency actions join other efforts by the United Kingdom and Canada on Friday to sanction Burmese military officials involved in the country's February coup, as well as a joint initiative by the European Union, Canada, the United States and the United Kingdom last week to sanction Belarusian strongman Alexander Lukashenko.

"The United States looks forward to continuing our partnerships with allies, partners and civil society alike in defending human rights and promoting accountability and good governance," Blinken said in Friday's statement.

Reporter Christy Lee of VOAs Korean Service contributed to this report.
The United States imposed extensive human rights-related sanctions Friday on dozens of people and entities tied to China, Myanmar, North Korea and Bangladesh, and added Chinese artificial intelligence company SenseTime Group to an investment blacklist.

Canada and Britain joined the United States in imposing sanctions related to human rights abuse in Myanmar, while Washington also imposed the first new sanctions on North Korea under President Joe Biden's administration and targeted Myanmar military entities, among others, in action marking Human Rights Day.

"Our actions today, particularly those in partnership with the United Kingdom and Canada, send a message that democracies around the world will act against those who abuse the power of the state to inflict suffering and repression," Deputy Treasury Secretary Wally Adeyemo said in the statement.

The North Korean mission at the United Nations and the Chinese, Myanmar and Bangladesh embassies in Washington did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The U.S. Treasury Department in a statement said it added Chinese artificial intelligence company SenseTime to a list of "Chinese military-industrial complex companies," accusing it of having developed facial recognition programs that can determine a targets ethnicity, with a particular focus on identifying ethnic Uyghurs.

As a result, it will fall under an investment ban for U.S. investors.

U.N. experts and rights groups estimate more than a million people, mainly Uyghurs and members of other Muslim minorities, have been detained in recent years in a vast system of camps in China's far-west region of Xinjiang.

China denies abuses in Xinjiang, but the U.S. government and many rights groups say Beijing is carrying out genocide there. The Treasury said North Koreas Central Public Prosecutors Office had been designated, along with the former minister of social security and recently assigned Minister of Peoples Armed Forces Ri Yong Gil.

U.S. President Joe Biden gathered more than 100 world leaders at a virtual summit this week and made a plea to bolster democracies around the world, calling safeguarding rights and freedoms in the face of rising authoritarianism the "defining challenge" of the current era.
World powers will assess over the next few days whether Iran is serious in nuclear negotiations after it indicated it was ready to continue talks based on texts that had been agreed at the last round in June, a European source said on Friday.

Talks on reviving the 2015 Iran nuclear deal resumed on Thursday with the United States and Israel ramping up the rhetorical pressure on Tehran about the possible economic or military consequences if diplomacy fails.

Iran's top negotiator said Tehran was sticking to the stance it laid out last week, when the talks broke off with European and U.S. officials accusing Iran of making new demands and of reneging on compromises worked out earlier this year.

"Iran said it accepted to work from the June texts. This will now be put to the test over the next couple of days," the source said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Working groups to discuss sanctions Washington might lift and the nuclear curbs Tehran needs to observe convene on Friday.

"Iran's seriousness is obvious. See who has canceled other meetings and is in Vienna and who is not," Iranian negotiator Ali Bagheri Kani told Reuters.

His comments suggested he was alluding to the United States' chief negotiator Rob Malley, who is not expected to arrive in the Austrian capital until the weekend.

"Negotiations on Irans (new) drafts are going on," Bagheri Kani added.

The indirect U.S.-Iranian talks in Vienna, in which other diplomats from the remaining parties to a now tattered 2015 deal -- France, Britain, Germany, Russia and China -- shuttle between them because Tehran refuses direct contact with Washington, aim to get both sides to resume full compliance with the accord.

Under that accord, Iran limited its nuclear program -- which the West feared would be used to develop weapons, something Tehran denies -- in return for relief from U.S., European Union and U.N. sanctions.

Last week's discussions were the first after a five-month hiatus caused by the election of Iran's new hardline government under anti-Western President Ebrahim Raisi.

Western officials have said Iran has abandoned any compromises it had made in the previous six rounds of talks, pocketed those made by others, and demanded more last week.

Iran wants all sanctions imposed by the United States after then-U.S. President Donald Trump ditched the deal in 2018, to be lifted in a verifiable process. Iran began violating the deal's nuclear restrictions about a year after the U.S. withdrawal.
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RF: My favorite all-time movie is also a New York movie, which is Do the Right Thing. That just captures that Brooklyn neighborhood so well, and its not about shooting big Brooklyn landmarks, its just about capturing a very specific pocket of the city and the way the people talk and the way the people walk. Do the Right Thing had a lot of swagger, and Half Nelson is very, very low-key. Youd think there arent really parallels. But we took those moments with all the kids talking to the camera throughout the movie  thats straight out of Spike Lees playbook.

AB: Another movie that also kind of has an interesting influence on Half Nelson: Pete Sollett made a short film called Five Feet High and Rising that turned into Raising Victor Vargas. We saw that before we made Half Nelson, and it was a little bit of an inspiration to turn Half Nelson into a short because Sollett had taken a short into a feature film. It also explores kids living in this New York community in a really observational, fun way. It takes the personalities of the actual kids who are living in those neighborhoods and weaves them into characters stories in a way that was meaningful to us. We showed that short to our young nonactor kids right before we shot our film, just to kind of show them what sort of artsy, weird movie we were all gonna be making together.

Do the Right Thing is available to stream on Netflix and Tubi and to rent on Amazon Prime Video, Apple TV, YouTube, and Google Play.

Raising Victor Vargas is available to stream on Netflix, Vudu, Pluto TV, Amazon Prime Video, and Tubi and to rent on Apple TV.
Reasons to Love New York New York celebrates the citys timeless, peerless connection to movies. Pickup on South Street. Photo: AF archive/Alamy

Samuel Fuller (19121997) became a newspaper copy boy when he was just 12. By the time he was 17, he was working the murder beat for the New York Evening Graphic, a tabloid so lurid it was known as the New York Pornographic. Fuller knew a good lede when he saw one.

It was a talent he carried over to a filmmaking career that saw him turn out 20 potboilers between 1949 and 1965, movies with testosterone-drizzled titles like The Steel Helmet (1951) and Forty Guns (1957). All of them had good ledes (just watch the beginning of The Naked Kiss). But for me, the first two minutes and 35 seconds of Pickup on South Street (1953) is the top, the best NYC-centric opening sequence in film history.

Its rush hour on the uptown IRT on a hot summer day. The camera settles on a dark-haired woman in a tight white dress. Looking a little cheap, this is Candy (most Fuller heroines are named Candy or Muffin), played by Jean Peters, who would soon marry Howard Hughes. Sweating through the layered rouge on her cheeks, Candy stares off into space, unaware of the two men, cops, likely, watching her.

Then here he comes: Richard Widmark, in his fedora, making his way through the crowd of straphangers, on the hunt. The then-39-year-old actor plays Skip McCoy, a pickpocket by trade, or, in the vernacular of Fullers tabloid cosmos, a cannon. Skip moves close to Candy, near enough to grope her. A moll lost in her own problems, Candy doesnt notice as Skip opens her pocketbook, his cats-paw fingertips casually rummaging through her intimate belongings. Landing on a billfold, he gently removes it from the bag using a folded newspaper to shield his mendacity. The train stops at 33rd Street, and before the two cops can react, Skip bounds out the subway door. Save the ever-present rumble of the train, Fullers lede plays out as a wordless dance of the Big City.

Soon enough, well find out what happened. Unbeknownst to him, Skip has pilfered a piece of microfilm that contains a scientific formula. Holding it up to the light, Skip, a grifter since birth, cant make heads or tails of it. One thing he does know is that hes just made a score. If the piece of film wasnt worth a lot, why would these strangers keep showing up unannounced at his East River hideout?

The pieces begin to fall together. Its 1953, and the Russians have just exploded a bomb of their own. With Joe McCarthy riding high, Americans are seeing commie agents behind every telephone pole. In such circumstances, the justifiably paranoid mind naturally believes this snippet of film, stolen at random by a lowlife pickpocket, could decide the fate of the planet.

This kind of perfect pulp made Fuller  who was known to shoot a pistol with blanks in the air when calling Action!  a hero to the generation of French New Wave critics and filmmakers like Jean-Luc Godard, Francois Truffaut, and Claude Chabrol. Fuller wasnt simply another American director to these fans of the New York netherland; he was cinema itself.

Back in the 1970s, I once trekked to Laurel Canyon to interview Fuller at the home he shared with his wife Christa Lang, a onetime Seductress Third Class in Godards trench-coat vision of deep space, Alphaville (Akim Tamiroff dies in her arms). Yes, Fuller allowed, when I asked, that he was proud of the wordless opening sequence in Pickup on South Street and of making sure the subway lights flickered just as they did when he rode the train as a boy. But he balked at the assumption, then standard among film-studies mavens, that Pickup was a right-wing movie, one more salvo in Hollywoods propaganda counterattack on godless Marxism-Leninism. The charge touched a nerve since six of the famous Hollywood Ten were, like Fuller himself, Jews. The careers of filmmakers like Abraham Polonsky, director of Force of Evil (1948), one of the finest New York noirs, had been devastated.

Jabbing his cigar through the air of his sitting room, Fuller said the idea of himself as some John Wayne Republican was sheer crap. Characters like Skip McCoy didnt care about ideology. Their concerns were more street level. When Candy begs Skip (whom shes now in love with) to take the $500 the spies are offering for the film, he makes a big show of it, screaming, Tell your old lady Im shaking down you Reds for 25 grand. Likewise, when the FBI appeals to his sense of duty as an American citizen, he bristles, with Youre trying awful hard with all this patriotic eyewash.

Then theres Thelma Ritter. Born in Brooklyn in 1902 with the accent to prove it, Ritter was nominated as Best Supporting Actress for Pickup on South Street, a rare Oscar nod for a Fuller picture. (Nominated six times, always in a supporting role, Ritter never won.) Here, she plays Moe, seller of dollar ties along the Dickensian Bowery who moonlights as a police informer. A repository of criminal ways and wiles, Moe doesnt need to see a picture to finger Skip as the one who pilfered the microfilm; she only needs to hear how he holds his newspaper. Every subway cannons got his own style. Hearing Moe has sold him out for 50 bucks, Skip shrugs. Shes got to eat too.

In a memorable death scene, Moe is confronted by Joey, Candys abusive ex, whos working as a Soviet flunky. Desperate to get the microfilm, Joey offers hundreds to find Skip, but Moe wont say. Joey knows Moe will sell anybody for buttons, so whats the big deal? What does she know about communists anyway? I know one thing, Moe replies. I know I just I dont like them.

When it comes out that Joey has killed Moe, shooting her dead in her Bowery rented room, Skips sense of New York underworld solidarity is enraged. He chases after Joey, catching up with him on the subway. As a bookend to the wordless opener, Fuller shoots a scene of Skip using his cannon skills to disarm the unsuspecting Joey by lifting the commie stooges pistol and then following him into the Third Avenue station of what is now the L train. His gun gone, Joey attempts to escape, charging through the turnstile and trying to make it to the street. Skip tackles him, pulling him back down the stairs. As he does, Fuller makes sure the moviegoer sees Joeys chin hit the edge of every step.

Thump. Thump. Thump: Now thats a New York rhapsody if there ever was one.
Reasons to Love New York New York celebrates the citys timeless, peerless connection to movies. The Namesake. Photo: Credit: Allstar Picture Library Ltd./Alamy Stock Photo

Its a small moment in The Namesake, directed by Mira Nair and adapted from the first novel by Jhumpa Lahiri. Gogol Ganguli has grudgingly brought his girlfriend, Maxine Ratliff, home to meet his mother, Ashima, en route to Maxines summer house for a long stay with her folks. His father, Ashoke, is away on a teaching gig. His parents settled and raised their kids in the bland suburbs north of the city, a short drive but psychologically far from Gogols posh 1990s Manhattan apartment  though he spends most of his time at either his fancy architecture job or the Ratliffs cavernous and lovely redbrick Greek Revival in Chelsea.

Gogol, proper name Nikhil, has dispensed with his pet name, which humiliates him. Hes Nikhil now, a Yale School of Architecture grad; with the Ratliffs, hes Nick or Nicky. He dragged his feet coming home, but his mother insisted, and now here Maxine is, in humble Nyack, with her elegant clothes and crown of blonde hair, offering his mother a sophisticated, thrown-together gift basket of delicacies Ashima will have no idea how to use. Maxine admires Ashimas sari. She correctly identifies it as a kantha. She explains that her own mother, Lydia, whom she calls by her first name, works at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in textiles. Ashima doesnt seem to register the existence of this temple to world culture. Youve been there, Ma, Gogol, a.k.a. Nikhil, a.k.a. Nick, says. With all the steps. I took you there to see the Egyptian temple, remember?

Perhaps no film shows the pain and the poetry of the assimilative process quite like The Namesake. And arguably, no place can hold the contours of this story as completely as New York can. In Nairs hands, the city is a transformative entity for anyone who enters. It is in New York that Ashima and Ashoke, married by arrangement, become partners. Years before, they started a new life in a drafty first apartment in the same city that seduces Gogol away, inviting him into settings his parents could never comfortably set foot in. Where else in America could this immigrant tale unfold but New York, where mother and son at once live so close and on different planets?
Italian bishop accused of wrecking Christmas magic for children.

A bishop in Sicily has stirred controversy in Italy after he told his stunned congregation, including many small children, that "Santa Claus does not exist."

His words "froze" the children present in the church in Noto, reports Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera, leading to complaints from parents and a major backlash on social media.

Bishop Antonio Stagliano then launched an attack on Coca Cola, saying that the red costume of Father Christmas "was chosen for advertising purposes."

The bishop's unexpected outburst from the pulpit of the Santissimo Salvatore church resulted in "speechless children, bewildered parents", reports the Corriere.

The clergyman later explained his intentions. "I said that Santa Claus is not a historical person like St Nicholas", as part of an attempt to "recover the true meaning of the Christian tradition of Christmas".

The bishop then waded deeper by stating: "For the rest, the children know that Santa Claus is their dad or their uncle. So no broken dreams."

Amid a storm of criticism and accusations that the bishop had "wrecked Christmas" for children, the diocese of Noto issued a statement trying to calm the situation.

Don Alessandro Paolino, diocesan head of social communications, stated: "First of all, in the name of the bishop, I express my regret for this declaration which has generated disappointment in the littlest ones".

The statement specified that the bishop's intentions "were quite different, that is to reflect with greater awareness on the meaning of Christmas and the beautiful traditions that accompany it."

For many however it was too late, with "Babbo Natale" trending on Twitter alongside unkind comparisons between the bishop and the Grinch, the fictional character who stole Christmas.
Garbage disposal at risk across Italy on Monday.

Workers employed in Italy's rubbish collection and environmental hygiene sectors are set to join a nationwide strike on Monday 13 December.

The 24-hour strike action will see employees of Rome's municipal garbage disposal company AMA join their colleagues in striking in cities across Italy.

A statement from AMA said the company would guarantee the "minimum essential services" on Monday, including the removal of trash from outside hospitals and some popular tourist areas in the historic centre.

News of the strike came the same day that Rome's new environment councillor urged Romans to wrap fewer presents this Christmas to avoid compounding the city's garbage crisis.

Separately, a national general strike against Italian premier Mario Draghi's budget has been confirmed for 16 December.
VCs obviously have experience with risky bets on firms that disrupt the rules. Its a tried-and-tested template: Move fast, break things and then ask for forgiveness. Regulation is always catching up. Europes gig-economy rules targeting the likes of Deliveroo and Uber have only come after years of the firms empire-building, for example. Still, it seems rather brave for VCs to be diving head-first into a crypto market with opaque actors and enough financial risk that the Bank of England compares it to the 2008 financial crisis (itself a product of innovation in mortgage finance).
Next is cyberwarfare. The National Security Agency and U.S. Cyber Command are surely probing the likely command-and-control systems of a Russian invasion force. But total secrecy isnt always the best approach: Ensuring the Russians can see American efforts moving through that domain, without revealing everything the U.S. can and will do, should help them understand that an invasion will not be a layup. The Russians used cyberattacks very effectively in the earlier assaults on Georgia and Ukraine; they need to know that their advantage there has been blunted.
The Brussels-based European Commission, the EUs executive arm, proposes new laws. Its members, one from each member state, are appointed and are supposed to represent the EU as a whole. Generally the European Parliament, which is directly elected, has to approve the proposals along with the Council of the European Union, made up of ministers or representatives from the 27 national governments. There are some legislative fields that countries have agreed to reserve for the EU level. These are the customs union, monetary policy for countries that share the euro, trade with countries outside the bloc, competition rules for the EU single market, and a common fisheries policy. But EU law also covers other areas, and has expanded over the years to include issues that affect daily life such as food safety or air pollution or data privacy. That sometimes forces changes in existing national laws.
Dear Heloise: You often write about scams, which has saved many people from making a mistake with their savings and other financial info. Now that the holidays are here, many people get especially lonely and can fall prey to con artists who take advantage of these people. It's a time of year when romance scams seem to increase, but there are some things to look out for and ways to avoid being taken advantage of by a scammer.
The New York trip was followed by an invitation from Epstein for Farmer to go to his sprawling ranch in New Mexico. That, she testified, is where she met Maxwell. Farmer said she believed Epstein would not be in a position to make her feel uncomfortable at the ranch. Maxwell was Epsteins girlfriend, and Farmer said she didnt think he would do anything like that when they were together.
Stouffer has maintained his innocence in the attack that left Linda Reaves dead and her boyfriend, Doug Ivens, seriously injured. He and his attorneys argued in court filings that the states three-drug execution method poses a risk of unconstitutional pain and suffering and that Stouffer should be included among other death row plaintiffs in a federal lawsuit challenging the protocols. But his request for a stay of execution was denied by a federal district judge and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit. A final appeal with the U.S. Supreme Court was denied Thursday morning, less than two hours before the scheduled execution.
3 Turkish soldiers killed in Iraq operations: Three Turkish troops were killed in an attack by Kurdish militants during cross-border operations in northern Iraq, the Turkish Defense Ministry said, adding that six of the militants were "neutralized." The operations in Iraq target the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), which has bases there and is designated a terrorist group by Turkey, the United States and the European Union. The group launched an insurgency in southeastern Turkey in 1984 in which more than 40,000 people have been killed.
Please note the inherent bias in the Dec. 6 news headline Travel nurses, in demand amid covid, can make a years pay in a few months. No. Try: Before covid, nurses were receiving only a few months pay over a whole year.
When the returns came in declaring the vice president the winner, I was interviewing Bush live on television. Dole showed up on a standby screen, glowering. I asked if there was anything he wanted to say to Bush. Dole snapped, Yeah, stop lying about my record! As the late, great Washington Post political reporter David Broder said later, It was as if a gunshot went off in the room. Dole told me later he wasnt happy that I asked the question but admitted that a short fuse got the best of him.
A snow plow in D.C. after several inches of snow fell in the region on Jan. 3. (D.C. DPW)

Two days after a major storm dumped several inches of snow on the D.C. region, some schools are still closed, and icy road conditions are reported.
These are among the odd arguments and analogies deployed in recent days during a Chinese Communist Party propaganda blitz to claim that China is as much a democracy as the United States. After China was excluded  along with Russia and other nations deemed autocratic  from Bidens Summit for Democracy this week, Chinese state media, think tanks and officials have lined up to take potshots at the event.
The dispute over Taiwans status dates back to the end of the Chinese civil war in 1949, when defeated Nationalist forces fled to the island and established an administration there, eventually transitioning to democracy decades later. Chinas ruling Communist Party has asserted sovereignty over Taiwan ever since, but it has never ruled the island, and there is limited support in Taiwan for a union with Beijing.
The sense is that Britain and Denmark arent standouts. Rather, they are tracking and modeling the spread especially carefully, and what theyre reporting may reflect whats emerging elsewhere in Europe. And since so often during the pandemic Europe has served as a preview of whats to come in the United States, U.S. officials are watching closely, as well.
Todays win by the United States in the U.K. appellate court brings one step closer to justice a man who allegedly posted the names of individuals helping this country in a war zone, thereby putting them at serious risk, said John Demers, who was assistant attorney general for national security in the Trump administration and whose prosecutors brought the case. The Justice Department should be commended for seeing this case through. Those who defended his actions as journalism do a great disservice to a noble profession.
For our free coronavirus pandemic coverage, learn more here.

Save Log in , register or subscribe to save articles for later. Normal text size Larger text size Very large text size Behind the airtight doors at a biosecurity lab in Darlinghurst, scientist Stuart Turville peers into a microscope to analyse samples taken from the first handful of people infected with Omicron in Australia. In the weeks since international flight passengers from Doha became Sydneys first cases of the new COVID-19 strain, the Kirby Institutes Associate Professor Turville has put in gruelling days as he and his team work at breakneck speed to get an understanding of the variant, its constellation of mutations and how well current vaccines shield the body from infection. We didnt expect Omicron to come out of the blue and be so drastically different to Delta, he said, emerging from the confines of his biohazard suit on the ninth floor at St Vincents Centre for Applied Medical Research. And we certainly didnt expect to catch it in the wild in Australia so quickly. Virologist Professor Stuart Turville carrying a COVID-19 Omicron variant sample at St Vincents Centre for Applied Medical Research in Sydney. Credit:Kate Geraghty On Monday, he became one of the first Australian virologists to isolate the variant, a vital first step in examining the extent to which Omicron evades antibodies from vaccinated people or those previously infected. We are really putting this thing through its paces, he said. By midweek, his team were testing the strain against human antibodies from a pool of thousands of double-vaccinated blood donors and ranking Omicron against previous variants including Alpha, Beta, Gamma and Delta to show how well they evade neutralising antibodies.

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At this stage, what we are seeing is promising. Antibodies do bind with the virus, but you need a lot of them. We can improve that in the short term with boosters ... In the long term, that could mean we will need variant-specific vaccines. This week, early lab studies from around the world produced findings that give an insight into Omicron and what the future holds. Top scientists in South Africa have found a 41-fold drop in the ability of antibodies to neutralise the Omicron variant in a small group, and Pfizer claimed on Thursday three doses of its coronavirus vaccine were likely to protect from infection following results in a small laboratory study. Associate Professor Stuart Turville says more real-world data will be essential before scientists have the full picture on severity and contagiousness in key populations, including the double-jabbed, unvaccinated, children and the elderly. Credit:Kate Geraghty But most early anecdotal evidence indicates that vaccines still protect against severe disease. Its really a glass-half-full situation with Omicron, Dr Turville said. Scientists around the world are all chipping in. So far, we are seeing a drop in the potency of the antibodies, so we will need more of them to do the same thing. But early signs are that vaccination is likely to stop serious illness. While global data is still limited, Omicron infections in NSW so far appear to be mild and none of the 42 reported cases to date have been admitted to hospital.

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Department of Health Secretary Brendan Murphy said it was still too soon to say definitively whether the variant was milder than previous strains, but it should not be a cause for alarm. The Omicron variant growing in cells at St Vincents Centre for Applied Medical Research. Credit:Kate Geraghty We dont know how it will spread in Australia, but we do know that it is here and certainly in Sydney, and it is likely to spread. But we dont need to panic, he said on Friday morning. Earlier this week, Chief Medical Officer Paul Kelly said the World Health Organisation was already looking at how it would name new variants of concern once it ran out of Greek letters. In a sign of things to come, the WHO has indicated that, once it has exhausted the Greek alphabet, and theyve got 11 left, it will look to stars and constellations for future names, he told a Senate committee hearing on Tuesday. It is clear that this will not be the last variant that we will be dealing with. Antibodies do bind with the virus, but you need a lot of them ... In the long term, that could mean we will need variant-specific vaccines Dr Stuart Turville Dr Turville said he had been on high alert since seeing a tweet by Imperial College London virologist Tom Peacock in late November describing a new strain with a horrific spike profile.

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Coincidentally when those first cases arrived in NSW I was giving a lecture on the evolution of variants at the University of Newcastle. My phone wouldnt stop ringing. Loading Within days, he had linked up with pathologists to secure samples of the first four cases of Omicron in Australia and started extensive analysis of the way it interacts with antibodies. The strain, later named B.1.1.529 and then Omicron, bore a striking similarity to a prediction by Israeli biomolecular scientist Gideon Schreiber in August that identified two changes to the spike protein of the Sars-CoV-2 virus that would accelerate the ability for the virus to attach to cells. His findings were very similar to what we are seeing with Omicron. Loading He emphasised how more real-world data would be essential before scientists had the full picture on severity and contagiousness in key population groups including the double-jabbed, unvaccinated, children and the elderly.

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Almost a third of young Gen Z Australians own cryptocurrency. One in five coffees in Starbucks in the United States is bought without cash or even a card transaction. Facebook is moving closer to releasing its private digital currency DIEM. Tesla is talking about selling cars for bitcoin.

What we currently call money will soon be augmented by new digital currencies that will change our lives in ways we are only starting to grapple with. That is why the government this week rushed to introduce a raft of new proposals to regulate digital money.

So what is digital money? How will it change our lives? And why are governments so scared of it?

Ever-increasing numbers of people are turning to their mobile phones to make retail purchases. Credit:Simon Bosch

When most people think of digital money, they think of bitcoin. But digital money is actually much broader than cryptocurrencies. While crypto is reaching cult status among a certain demographic of young people, and gets a huge amount of media attention, it wont be the main game in digital money. Thats because crypto is not very useful in transactions.
The International Monetary Fund is urging all countries to work together to deal with the fallout from the surge in cryptocurrencies and other new forms of financial assets as the Reserve Bank tempers expectations it will soon offer its own digital currency.

Amid warnings of the cryptoization of countries as their domestic currencies are replaced by technology-based assets, the IMF overnight said a global approach to regulating the emerging technology was necessary and needs to include regulations similar to the treatment of fiat money.

The IMF says all countries have to work together to regulate crypto-assets. Credit:AP

Treasurer Josh Frydenberg this week said he would seek more powers to regulate in the growing areas around digital wallets, cryptocurrencies and blockchain fintech companies, arguing a properly regulated payment system could set up Australia as a major player in the sector.

His new regulations, based on the findings of three separate inquiries into different aspects of the fintech and cryptocurrency sector, are not likely to be formalised until late next year.
BRASILIA, Brazil (AP)  Brazil will require international travelers who aren't vaccinated against the coronavirus to quarantine for five days in their city of destination after arriving by plane.

The decision issued by the ministries of health, justice, infrastructure and the government's chief of staff was published in the nations official gazette Thursday.

The administration of President Jair Bolsonaro, who is unvaccinated himself, will start enforcing the measure Saturday. It is unclear how effectively Brazil can or will track those required to quarantine.

The head of the countrys health regulator, Antonio Barra Torres, told The Associated Press that the policy will mean discouragement of anti-vaccine tourism to Brazil.

The quarantine requirement is a deterrent and educational measure, Torres said by phone.

Travelers coming to Brazil still need to submit a negative PCR test result before boarding in their country of origin and submit a declaration to the countrys health regulator.

Unvaccinated travelers will have to take a new virus test after the five-day quarantine period and must check in with a health agency center that will have their addresses.

Brazils government announced the quarantine requirement as worldwide concerns grow about omicron, a new and rapidly spreading variant of the coronavirus, though it is not yet clear if it is more dangerous than other variants.

More than 616,000 people have died of COVID-19 in Brazil, the country with second-most deaths from the disease. The pandemic has waned in recent months and the nations seven-day average is approaching 200 deaths a day.

Many of Brazils major cities, including Rio de Janeiro, have either cancelled or scaled back their New Years Eve festivities due to fears of a new spread of the virus.

Rios fireworks show on Copacabana beach is a major tourism draw, and Mayor Eduardo Paes said Thursday that it will take place as expected. The fireworks will be placed in 10 boats for a 16-minute-display.

Of course there will be a gathering (for the fireworks), Paes said at a news conference. Gatherings are not prohibited in Rio de Janeiro."
The rates of gun violence are soaring to record levels. School shootings are again on the rise. Just recently, four students were killed and seven injured when a teenager opened fire in a Michigan high school. More children are also dying by suicide than ever before.

Gun violence is a growing public health epidemic spreading across our country like wildfire.

And yet this issue has never been more polarized. It seems lawmakers on both sides of the aisle are more concerned with scoring political points than protecting the people. Students returned to school after more than a year of distance learning and already were seeing school shootings at pre-pandemic levels, with nearly 140 in recent months that have left dozens of children dead and more injured.

Its past time that politicians start doing something to protect our children, who are being murdered in our schools and streets every day. Its infuriating that the people we elect to prioritize our well-being are unwilling to do so.

Federal regulations already include a fair game law, where hunters for migratory birds are only allowed to use three cartridges in their shotguns  one in the chamber and no more than two in the magazine. But when it comes to gunning down students in a school, shoppers at a grocery store, or worshipers in a church, there are no limits.

Its unconscionable  and makes me sick to my stomach  that birds are more protected from gun violence in this country than our own children are.

Next year will mark a decade since my sweet little Daniel was shot to death in his first-grade classroom along with 19 other children and six educators. Ive spent almost every waking moment since doing everything I can to make sure more parents dont have to feel the relentless pain of never seeing their child grow up.

There is nothing more devastating than having to bury your child. Daniels light, his innocence, and his love for every living thing will forever live in my heart. His empathy for others at such a young age was a bottomless well.

I only wish our elected officials had even an ounce of that empathy; to do something about the children like Daniel who are being gunned down every day, and the shattered lives that are left behind.

Weve had some successes in improving gun safety over the years, but an expansion of the nations background check system continues to elude us. Closing loopholes that allow gun sales online and at gun shows without a background check should be the low-hanging fruit.

Its a common-sense improvement to an existing, decades-old law that has already passed constitutional muster. Its one of the few pieces of legislation supported by more than 93 percent of people from both parties, including gun owners.

What will it take to ensure that every purchase or transfer of a firearm is accompanied by a background check? How many more children, fathers, mothers, and loved ones must die before were willing to do whatever is necessary to put this simple yet incredibly powerful, life-saving solution into place?

Legislation created by U.S. Senators Joe Machin (D- W.Va.) and Pat Toomey (R-Pa.) designed to close the loopholes proved that Republicans and Democrats can work together for the greater good. Despite their support, the legislation never moved forward. Seemingly, bipartisanship is a dirty word in Washington these days.

Its time to hold our lawmakers accountable. Firearms have become the leading cause of death for kids under 19 since my sweet, 7-year-old son was gunned down. The shooter fired 154 bullets in just four minutes before our lives, and those of 25 other families, were changed forever.

Watching expanded background checks continue to fail year after year for nearly a decade is both infuriating and pathetic. An entire generation has grown up with gun violence as a normal part of their everyday lives  a public health epidemic that is entirely preventable.

If you want to help protect our children, reach out to your lawmakers and be part of the movement catalyzing action. Encourage them to support bipartisan measures to shore up background checks. Thank our elected officials who are prioritizing gun safety policies  and demand that the others do the same.

Mark Barden is co-founder and managing director of Sandy Hook Promise, and father of Daniel, who was killed in the Sandy Hook Elementary School tragedy on Dec. 14, 2012.
A podcast about movies and entertainment, hosted by Bruce Miller, editor of the Sioux City Journal, Jared McNett, a reporter at the Globe-Gazette in Mason City, Iowa, and Chris Lay, the Podcast Operations Manager for Lee Enterprises.
Over the past decade, doctors have used immunotherapy, treatments that rev up the immune system, to successfully treat melanoma patients, but immunotherapy doesn't work for everyone. Now, researchers are testing a new combination of therapies they said may be key to wiping out metastatic cancer.
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Russia's top military officer has sternly warned Ukraine against trying to reclaim control over separatist areas by force. He said Thursday that Moscow will suppress any such attempt. Thursday's statement comes amid soaring tensions over a Russian troop buildup near the border with Ukraine that stoked Ukrainian and Western fears of a possible invasion. U.S. President Joe Biden warned Russian President Vladimir Putin in a video call Tuesday that the West will impose unprecedented economic sanctions on Moscow if it invades Ukraine. Russia has rejected Ukrainian and Western claims of plotting an attack and described them as a cover-up for a possible attempt by Ukraine to retake the rebel-held areas. Ukraine has denied such plans.
Panto is back at the Palladium. Sort of. This, the second instalment of Pantoland (though last year's only ran for six performances before being forced to close), is in fact a variety show in a mask. As the imperious Julian Clary declares, "If you want plot stay at home and watch Casualty."

Clary is joined by the core Palladium troupe  Gary Wilmot, Nigel Havers, Paul Zerdin and Sophie Isaacs  alongside several new faces. Top billing goes to Donny Osmond, who happened to be celebrating his 64th birthday on press night. Although credited as "The Wizard" this only really stretches to the costume; what he's really there to do is croon, and croon he does, from odes to the importance of laughter and clowns to more familiar Osmonds classics and "Any Dream Will Do".

The rest of the line-up offer an impressive range of turns, including Zerdin's ventriloquism using masks over audience members' faces, Australian duo Spark Fire Dance, who hula with flaming hoops, and Wilmot's jaw-dropping tube song, which sees him list every station including the new Queen Elizabeth line. There's also a dance troupe in the form of The Tiller Girls, who look like they've can-can'd straight out of Ziegfeld.

But the real star is Clary, who is utterly peerless as the show's sort-of dame (though this role officially goes to Wilmot). He just has to say the words "winter surge" or "triple jabbed" and we're helpless. When Osmond asks him if he's ever been in Joseph, a mere pause is enough to make the house erupt. He makes it all seems effortless but of course the timing is as precise as a Swiss watch.

Jac Yarrow and Isaacs ostensibly act as the panto prince and princess but really they're just further fuel for Clary ("I think he might be a super spreader," he says of Yarrow), while providing a frisson of musical interest. Nigel Havers gets the most timely joke of the evening as he declares "I haven't had this much fun since Boris's Christmas party". He pops up in a variety of outlandish costumes, at one point appearing as a turkey and saying "gobble gobble" (to which Clary inevitably responds "that might be the best offer I get this evening").

There's an irony in the fact that Michael Harrison's production sets out to celebrate the history of panto at the Palladium, with the stage framed by posters from productions gone by, but doesn't actually constitute a pantomime. Having said that, when the cast are as high calibre as this, the lack of a recognisable story seems a minor quibble. I gobbled it up.
Strategy And Planning Officer, Santiago, Chile

Organization: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO)

Country: Chile

City: Santiago

Office: FAO Chile

Closing date: Friday, 17 December 2021

2103061

Strategy And Planning Officer

Job Posting: 12/Nov/2021

Closure Date: 17/Dec/2021, 10:59:00 PM

Organizational Unit : RLC

Job Type: Staff position

Type of Requisition : Professional

Grade Level : P-4

Primary Location: Chile-Santiago

Duration : Fixed term: 2 years with possibility of extension

Post Number : 2004090

CCOG Code : 1A02

FAO is committed to achieving workforce diversity in terms of gender, nationality, background and culture

Qualified female applicants, qualified nationals of non-and under-represented Members and persons with disabilities are encouraged to apply

Everyone who works for FAO is required to adhere to the highest standards of integrity and professional conduct, and to uphold FAOs values

FAO, as a Specialized Agency of the United Nations, has a zero-tolerance policy for conduct that is incompatible with its status, objectives and mandate, including sexual exploitation and abuse, sexual harassment, abuse of authority and discrimination

All selected candidates will undergo rigorous reference and background checks

All applications will be treated with the strictest confidentiality

FAO staff are subject to the authority of the Director-General, who may assign them to any of the activities or offices of the Organization.

Organizational Setting The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) contributes to the achievement of the 2030 Agenda through its Strategic Framework by supporting the transformation to More efficient, inclusive, resilient and sustainable agri-food systems, for Better production, Better nutrition, a Better environment and a Better life, leaving no one behind. The Regional Office for Latin America and the Caribbean (RLC) is responsible for leading FAOs response to regional priorities for food security, agriculture and rural development through the identification, planning and implementation of FAOs priority activities in the region. It ensures a multidisciplinary approach to programmes, identifies priority areas of action for the Organization in the region and, in collaboration with units at headquarters, develops, promotes and oversees FAOs strategic response to regional priorities. FAO RLC also advises on the incorporation of regional priorities into the Organizations Programme of Work and Budget and implements approved programmes and projects in the region, monitors the level of programme implementation and draws attention to problems and deficiencies. FAO RLC develops and maintains relations with region-wide institutions including the Regional Economic Integration Organizations (REIOs). The Regional Office supports regional policy dialogue on food security, agriculture and rural development issues, facilitates the emergence of regional partnerships, and supports capacity development and resource mobilization for food security, agriculture and rural development in the region. The post is located in the Regional Office for Latin America and the Caribbean (RLC) in Santiago, Chile.

Reporting Lines The Strategy and Planning Officer reports to the Regional Programme Leader (RPL) in RLC, with technical guidance from the Office of Strategy, Programme and Budget (OSP) at FAO headquarters.

Technical Focus Respond to regional priorities in the context of the FAO Strategic Framework 2022-31 through the identification, planning, monitoring and reporting of FAOs priority activities and results in the region.

Key Results Comprehensive technical and policy expertise to support the planning, implementation and monitoring of corporate programmes and projects in the region.

Key Functions

Contributes to the design and implementation of policies and procedures to achieve collaboration across units and regional priority groups in strategic planning, results-based programming and budgeting, implementation, monitoring and reporting;

Leads and delivers tasks associated with the preparation, review and analysis of the Organizations Strategic Framework, Medium Term Plan, Programme of Work and Budget, and Programme Implementation Report;

Leads and delivers analyses associated with the corporate programmatic resource mobilization strategy for the region;

Manages components of the procedures and systems for work planning;

Contributes to the development and operation of the corporate results-based monitoring and reporting system.

Specific Functions

Supports and monitors national programming processes: preparation and review of United Nations Common Country Analysis (CCA), United Nations Sustainable Development Cooperation Frameworks and Country Programming Frameworks.

Represents FAO in programmatic inter-agency mechanisms.

Leads the development, monitoring and reporting of biennial work plans, in line with corporate guidance and regional requirements, and monitors progress towards regional programmatic results.

Supports the adoption of results-based management approaches and performs quality assurance of all data and information.

Reports to the Regional Leadership Team, through the Regional Programme Leader, on the status of planning, monitoring and reporting processes and on evolving regional positions in corporate governing bodies and raises issues as required.

As part of the Regional Conference secretariat, supports the preparation, implementation, monitoring, reporting and follow-up of the Regional Conference, including drafting of reports on results and priorities, negotiated conference reports, content analysis of proceedings, and others.

CANDIDATES WILL BE ASSESSED AGAINST THE FOLLOWING

Minimum Requirements

Advanced university degree in social sciences, business administration, economics, agriculture, development economics, international development or related fields.

Seven years of relevant experience in planning, monitoring and evaluation, financial analysis, business administration.

Working knowledge (Level C) of Spanish and English

Competencies

Results Focus

Team Work

Communication

Building effective relationships

Knowledge Sharing and Continuous Improvement

Technical/Functional Skills

c0oMBbp Dh7qKS

Work experience in more than one location or area of work, particularly in field positions, is desirable

Extent and relevance of experience in collecting and analysing information from textual, database and human sources, including through the use of digital tools for analysis and communication

Demonstrated skills in conducting consultations and building consensus

Extent and relevance of experience in results-based management, including in the use of innovative decision support tools

Extent and relevance of experience with UN Governing Bodies and in drafting negotiated texts in English and Spanish

Experience in analysing programme and budget resources and resource mobilization trends

Working knowledge of French is considered an asset

FAO staff are expected to adhere to FAO Values of Commitment to FAO, Respect for All and Integrity and Transparency.

GENERAL INFORMATION

Extension of fixed term appointments is based on certification of performance and availability of funds

FAO reserves the right not to make an appointment.

CONDITIONS OF SERVICE

A competitive compensation and benefits package is offered. For information on UN salaries, allowances and benefits, click on the following link: http://www.un.org/Depts/OHRM/salaries allowances/salary.htm Other benefits, subject to eligibility, include:

Dependency allowances

Rental subsidy

Education grant for children

Home leave travel

30 working days of annual leave per year

Pension fund entitlements under the UN Joint Staff Pension Fund

International health insurance; optional life insurance

Disability protection

FAO encourages a positive workplace culture to increase inclusivity and diversity within its workforce. FAO applies measures in which all staff members contribute equally and in full to the work and development of the Organization. This includes:

elements of family-friendly policies

flexible working arrangements

standards of conduct.

HOW TO APPLY

To apply, visit the recruitment website at Jobs at FAO and complete your online profile. We strongly recommend that your profile is accurate, complete and includes your employment records, academic qualifications and language skills.

Candidates are requested to attach a letter of motivation to the online profile;

Once your profile is completed, please apply and submit your application;

Your application will be screened based on the information provided on your online profile;

Please note that FAO only considers higher educational qualifications obtained from an institution accredited/recognized in the World Higher Education Database (WHED), a list updated by the International Association of Universities (IAU) / United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). The list can be accessed at http://www.whed.net/

Candidates may be requested to provide performance assessments and authorization to conduct verification checks of past and present work, character, education, military and police records to ascertain any and all information which may be pertinent to the employment qualifications;

Incomplete applications will not be considered;

Only applications received through the FAO recruitment portal will be considered;

We encourage applicants to submit the application well before the deadline date.

If you need help, or have queries, please contact: Careers@fao.org

Link to the organizations job offer: https://unjobs.org/vacancies/1638639422551
CHICAGO (AP)  Jussie Smolletts conviction for lying to police about a racist, homophobic attack came nearly three years after his report of a horrifying hate crime quickly became part of a polarized political landscape, with people  including the president of the United States  weighing in from all over.

Actor Jussie Smollett, center, along with his mother Janet, second from left, returns to the Leighton Criminal Courthouse, Thursday, Dec. 9, 2021, in Chicago, after a jury reached a verdict in his trial. Smollett was convicted Thursday on five of six charges he staged an anti-gay, racist attack on himself nearly three years ago and then lied to Chicago police about it.(AP Photo/Nam Y. Huh)

CHICAGO (AP)  Jussie Smolletts conviction for lying to police about a racist, homophobic attack came nearly three years after his report of a horrifying hate crime quickly became part of a polarized political landscape, with people  including the president of the United States  weighing in from all over.

A prosecutor said Thursday's verdict was "a resounding message by the jury that Mr. Smollett did exactly what we said he did"  recruit two brothers to fake an attack so it could be recorded by a surveillance camera and posted on social media for publicity.

The brothers testified that the former "Empire" actor paid them $3,500 for the hoax and gave them lines to yell, including about "MAGA country," an apparent reference to then-President Donald Trumps "Make America Great Again" slogan.

The report made headlines around the world and prompted a massive manhunt in Chicago, with roughly two dozen police joining the investigation. It also drew criticism from Trump, who called the police departments handling of the case "an absolute embarrassment to our country."

"Not only did Mr. Smollett lie to the police and wreak havoc here in the city for weeks on end for no reason whatsoever, but then he compounded the problem by lying under oath to a jury," special prosecutor Dan Webb said after Thursday's verdict.

Smollett, who is Black and gay, maintained throughout the nearly three-year legal battle that he was attacked in downtown Chicago in January 2019 by people who yelled racist and anti-gay slurs and put a noose around his neck.

Actor Jussie Smollett, along with his mother Janet, returns to the Leighton Criminal Courthouse, Thursday, Dec. 9, 2021, in Chicago, after a jury reached a verdict in his trial. Smollett was convicted Thursday on five of six charges he staged an anti-gay, racist attack on himself nearly three years ago and then lied to Chicago police about it. (AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast)

His attorney declared Smollett's innocence again Thursday after the jury found him guilty on five of six counts of disorderly conduct for lying to police. Nenye Uche said Smollett would appeal the conviction, and is "100% confident" his name will be cleared by an appellate court.

"Unfortunately we were facing an uphill battle where Jussie was already tried and convicted in the media and then we had to somehow get the jury to forget or unsee all the news stories that they had been hearing that were negative for the last three years," Uche told reporters after the verdict.

The jury convicted the 39-year-old on five counts of disorderly conduct  for each separate time he was charged with lying to police in the days after the alleged attack. He was acquitted on a sixth count, of lying to a detective in mid-February, weeks after Smollett said he was attacked.

Smollett stood and faced the jury, showing no visible reaction as the verdict was read. He and his family later left the courthouse without comment.

Judge James Linn set a post-trial hearing for Jan. 27, and said he would schedule Smollett's sentencing at a later date. Disorderly conduct is a class 4 felony that carries a prison sentence of up to three years, but experts have said if convicted, Smollett would likely be placed on probation and ordered to perform community service.

The damage to his personal and professional life may be more severe. Smollett lost his role on the TV program "Empire," which was filmed in Chicago, after prosecutors said the alleged attack was a hoax, and he told jurors earlier this week, "Ive lost my livelihood."

The jury deliberated for just over nine hours Wednesday and Thursday after a roughly one-week trial.

Actor Jussie Smollett's defense attorney Nenye Uche, center, flanked by his legal team, talks to reporters in the Leighton Criminal Courthouse lobby Thursday, Dec. 9, 2021, in Chicago, after a jury found Smollett guilty on five of six charges he staged a racist, anti-gay attack on himself and lied to police about it. (AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast)

Smollett testified that he was the victim of a real hate crime, telling jurors "there was no hoax." He called the brothers who testified against him "liars" and said the $3,500 check he wrote them was for meal and workout plans.

His attorneys argued that the brothers attacked the actor because they are homophobic and didnt like "who he was." They also alleged the brothers made up the story about the attack being staged to get money from Smollett, and that they said they wouldnt testify against him if Smollett paid them each $1 million.

Asked Thursday if Smollett could be charged with perjury for lying on the witness stand, Webb said perjury charges "generally" dont happen after a defendant is convicted, but that it was unclear what would happen in Smollett's case.

He also said the Chicago Police Department was vindicated by the jury's verdict.

"A lot of times people say, Well, police officers sweep things under the rug. This police department responded by absolutely testifying in this trial that they took it seriously," Webb said. "They believed he was a victim of a crime and they worked so hard for the next three weeks."

But Uche said Chicago police should have investigated the case "much more," and that there were some witnesses who were never interviewed.

He called the jury's split verdict "inconsistent," saying it made no sense for Smollett to be convicted of five counts but not the sixth charge, since "everything stems from one incident."

David Erickson, a former state appellate judge who teaches at Chicago Kent College of Law, said he thinks the acquittal on the sixth charge may be as simple as the jurys decision not to "pile on."

"Theyve already convicted him of five counts so theyre thinking, 'Do we really want to convict him again because he said the same lie a sixth time?" Erickson said.

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An attorney for Abimbola and Olabingo Osundairo, the brothers who testified against Smollett, said her clients "could not be more thrilled and pleased with the results."

Chicago police "got this one right," Gloria Rodriguez said.

___

Associated Press reporter Sophia Tareen contributed to this report.

___

Check out the APs complete coverage of the Jussie Smollett case.
NEW YORK (AP)  Books and authors mattered in 2021, sometimes more than the industry wanted.

This combination of cover images shows some of 2021's most popular releases, from left, "The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story" by Nikole Hannah-Jones, "Cloud Cuckoo Land" by Anthony Doerr, "Crossroads," a novel by Jonathan Franzen. (One World/Scribner/Farrar, Straus and Giroux via AP)

NEW YORK (AP)  Books and authors mattered in 2021, sometimes more than the industry wanted.

A 22-year-old poet became a literary star. The enthusiasms of young people on TikTok helped revive Colleen Hoover's It Ends With Us, and other novels released years earlier. Conservatives pushed to restrict the books permitted in classrooms at a time when activists were working to expand them. And the government decided that the merger of two of the country's biggest publishers might damage an invaluable cultural resource: authors.

Everything feels very magnified, says the prize-winning novelist Jacqueline Woodson, whose books have been challenged by officials in Texas and elsewhere.

FILE - American poet Amanda Gorman reads her commissioned poem The Hill We Climb during the 59th Presidential Inauguration at the U.S. Capitol in Washington on Jan. 20, 2021. A bound edition of The Hill We Climb sold hundreds of thousand of copies even though readers could find the text for free online. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky, Pool, File)

One day I hear that Texas is trying to ban (the Woodson novels) Red at the Bone and Brown Girl Dreaming, and the next moment we see Amanda Gorman speaking truth to power. Maybe it's because of social media or the pandemic, but it all feels much more intense," she says.

Sales were strong in 2020, the first year of the pandemic, and climbed higher in 2021. The number of books sold through the end of November increased by 10% over 2020, and by 20% over the pre-pandemic year of 2019, according to NPD BookScan, which tracks around 85% of the print market. The Association of American Publishers reported revenues of $7.8 billion for trade books through the first 10 months of 2021, a 14% jump over last year.

You're not hearing much these days about how people don't read anymore, says Allison Hill, CEO of the American Booksellers Association, the trade group for the country's independent bookstores.

A year after the ABA worried that hundreds of stores could shut down because of the pandemic, Hill says membership is growing, with more than 150 new stores opening and around 30 going out of business.

FILE - Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., speaks during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on pending judicial nominations on Capitol Hill in Washington on April 28, 2021. Hawley's book The Tyranny of Big Tech was dropped by Simon & Schuster but was acquired by independent conservative publisher Regnery. (Tom Williams/Pool via AP, File)

Fiction was especially strong in 2021 as sales tallied by BookScan jumped more than 20% from the previous year, driven by everything from TikTok and Reese Witherspoon's book club to a surge in manga and a wave of literary bestsellers that included Jonathan Franzen's Crossroads and Anthony Doerr's Cloud Cuckoo Land.

The CEO of Penguin Random House U.S., Madeline McIntosh, called the popularity of fiction the greatest sign we have of long-term growth for the industry.

It's one thing when you're grabbing books when you want to learn how to do something or to keep with current events, but it's a different impulse when you're grabbing a book because you want to fill your hours with reading. And that's what we're seeing with fiction," she said.

With Donald Trump no longer in the White House, sales for political books dropped nearly 25%, according to BookScan. But the book world grew more politicized  starting with the question of who might, or should, release a memoir by the former president.

FILE - Author Jacqueline Woodson, laureate of the 2018 Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award (ALMA) poses for photographers after an award ceremony at the Stockholm Concert Hall, in Stockholm on May 28, 2018. In 2021 conservatives pushed to restrict the books permitted in classrooms, like Woodson's "Red at the Bone" and "Brown Girl Dreaming," at a time activists were working to expand them. (Jessica Gow/TT News Agency via AP)

Multimillion-dollar deals for presidents have been a tradition. But New York publishers were uneasy with Trump before the Jan. 6 siege of the U.S. Capitol by his supporters and have since openly distanced themselves from him and such allies as Sen. Josh Hawley, whose The Tyranny of Big Tech was dropped by Simon & Schuster.

In response, a network of independent conservative publishers has emerged, whether such established entities as Regnery, which acquired Hawleys book, or new companies like All Seasons Press or the Daily Wires DW Books. Trumps first post-White House book project, the photo compilation Our Journey Together, will be released by Winning Team Publishing, founded by son Donald Trump Jr. and campaign aide Sergio Gor.

Throughout 2021, books made news. The year was barely three weeks old when millions watched Gorman become the country's best-known poet and a cultural phenomenon. Her poised, forceful reading of her commissioned work The Hill We Climb was a highlight of President Joe Biden's inauguration. It brought her recognition more in line with stars of fashion or movies, including a contract with IMG Models and a cover story for Vogue. A bound edition of The Hill We Climb sold hundreds of thousand of copies even though readers could find the text for free online.

Gorman's appearance at the inaugural was made possible by first lady Jill Biden, who in 2017 had attended a reading Gorman gave at the Library of Congress as the country's Youth Poet Laureate.

Countless authors, famous and little-known, found an unexpected supporter in Attorney General Merrick Garland. In November, the Department of Justice announced that it would sue to block Penguin Random House's planned purchase of Simon & Schuster, the first time in years the government had tried to stop a major publishing consolidation. The DOJ's objection was rooted as much in art as in commerce  concern that authors would not make enough money to write.

Books have shaped American public life throughout our nations history, and authors are the lifeblood of book publishing in America," Garland announced. If the worlds largest book publisher is permitted to acquire one of its biggest rivals, it will have unprecedented control over this important industry. American authors and consumers will pay the price of this anti-competitive merger  lower advances for authors and ultimately fewer books and less variety for consumers.

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Woodson says she and other writers were stunned by the DOJ's announcement and remembers thinking, Wait, they're speaking for us!

The debates about literature were never more passionate than in the country's classrooms and libraries.

Grassroots activists such as #disrupttexts.org pushed for teachers to diversify curricula with such novels as Woodson's Another Brooklyn, Jesmyn Ward's Salvage the Bones and Louise Erdrich's The Round House. Independent bookstores worked to donate to schools free copies of the book-length edition of the Pulitzer-winning 1619 Project, which places slavery at the center of American history. The book sold more than 100,000 copies in its first two weeks on sale, according to BookScan.

Meanwhile, an ad for Virginia's Republican gubernatorial candidate Glenn Youngkin, who won the race, featured a white conservative activist alleging that her son had been traumatized by an assigned high school text, Beloved, Toni Morrison's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel about a Black woman who had fled enslavement and murdered her daughter rather than allow her to be captured.

Dozens of bills around the country have been proposed or enacted that call for restrictions on books seen as immoral or unpatriotic. A state legislator in Texas, Republican Matt Krause, sent a 16-page spreadsheet to the Texas Education Agency listing more than 800 books he thought worthy of possible banning, including works by Woodson, Ta-Nehisi Coates and Margaret Atwood. Nine novels by the award-winning young adult author Julie Anne Peters, whose narratives often feature LGBT characters, were cited.

I think one reason this happens is because books have staying power, Peters said. You always remember the great books you've read. They are so influential, especially the ones in school. Everything else is so fleeting, and changes. But once a book is there and it's available and it represents our history and our culture, it becomes a historical reference you go back to.
HELENA, Mont. (AP)  More U.S. drivers could find themselves stuck on snowy highways or have their travel delayed this winter due to a shortage of snowplow drivers  a reality that could hit home Friday as winter storms start dumping snow from the Intermountain West to the Upper Great Lakes.

This photo provided by Mammoth Lakes Tourism shows slow moving traffic in the Town of Mammoth Lake, Calif., during heavy snowfall on Thursday, Dec. 9, 2021. A second, much stronger winter storm is headed for the Sierra this weekend after a cold front dropped a half-foot (15 centimeters) of snow at Lake Tahoe ski resorts and a couple inches (5 cm) fell early Wednesday in the valleys around Reno. (Dakota Snider/Mammoth Lakes Tourism via AP)

HELENA, Mont. (AP)  More U.S. drivers could find themselves stuck on snowy highways or have their travel delayed this winter due to a shortage of snowplow drivers  a reality that could hit home Friday as winter storms start dumping snow from the Intermountain West to the Upper Great Lakes.

States from Washington to Pennsylvania, including Montana and Wyoming in the Rocky Mountains, are having trouble finding enough people willing to take the comparatively low-paying jobs that require a Commercial Drivers License and often entail working at odd hours in dangerous conditions.

We want the traveling public to understand why it could take longer this season to clear highways during winter storms, said Jon Swartz, the maintenance administrator for the Montana Department of Transportation, which is short about 90 drivers. Knowing this helps motorists to plan ahead and adjust or even delay travel plans.

The labor shortage and lingering concerns about the pandemic have left employers scrambling to find enough school bus drivers, waiters, cooks and even teachers. The shortage comes as the number of Americans applying for unemployment benefits dropped last week to the lowest level in 52 years and some are seeking a better work-life balance.

Several states are either already feeling the crunch or could be soon: A snowstorm hit northern Utah on Thursday night while heavy snow was forecast for higher elevations in Colorado on Friday. Over a half a foot (15 centimeters) could drop in parts of Nebraska and Iowa. Parts of Nevada and New Mexico also expect winter storms. A major storm is expected to hit Northern California starting Sunday, bringing in the first significant rainfall this month to the drought-parched area.

State transportation departments say there are several reasons for a lack of snowplow drivers: the record low unemployment rate, an aging workforce and an increased demand for diesel mechanics and CDL drivers in other industries. Private companies can also be more nimble  raising salaries and offering bonuses to drivers  than state agencies, which usually have to get legislative approval to change salaries.

"Everyones sort of competing for the same group of workers and private companies can often offer higher salaries than the state government." Barbara LaBoe

Everyones sort of competing for the same group of workers and private companies can often offer higher salaries than the state government, said Barbara LaBoe, spokesperson for Washington states Department of Transportation.

Along with the competitive market, LaBoe said Washington also lost 151 winter operations workers who did not want to comply with the states COVID-19 vaccine mandate.

A Washington Dept. of Transportation snow plow drives near a maintenance facility near Interstate Highway 90, Thursday, Dec. 9, 2021, as snow falls near Snoqualmie Pass in Washington state. More U.S. drivers could find themselves stuck on snowy highways or have their travel delayed this winter due to a shortage of snowplow drivers as some states are having trouble finding enough people willing to take the jobs. (AP Photo/Ted S. Warren)

One of the main competitors for states seeking workers with a Commercial Drivers License are private trucking companies that have been raising driver pay, in some cases several times this year, to fill their own shortages and meet the increasing demand to move freight and clear supply chain bottlenecks.

The American Trucking Associations estimates there will be a record shortage of just over 80,000 drivers this year, and that doesnt include the shortfall in drivers for school buses, public transportation or snowplows.

The ATA says the shortage has many roots, including many drivers nearing retirement age, the pandemic causing some to leave the industry and training schools churning out fewer new drivers in 2020. Others may leave the industry because they dont like being away from home while an increase in the number of states legalizing marijuana leads to more drivers being unable to pass a drug test, the ATA says.

Some states are willing to hire snowplow drivers and pay for their CDL training, but its not likely those hires will be ready to work this winter, officials said.

Some snowplow drivers work year-round in highway maintenance jobs, while seasonal workers are hired to fill the additional shifts in the winter.

"You try to recruit, get out there and beat the bushes and convince folks that jumping in a plow in the middle of the night at Christmastime is a good career choice." Rick Nelson

The shortage is leading states to make plans to shift mechanics and other full-time employees who have Commercial Drivers Licenses into plows, which can cause problems if a plow needs maintenance work and the mechanic is out driving.

Wyoming has priorities for which roads will be plowed first and for how many hours per day plows will operate on each roadway. Interstate 80, the major east-west corridor across the southern part of the state, can be plowed around the clock while plowing stops on other roads, such as Interstates 90 and 25, between midnight at 4 a.m. Those guidelines may come into play more this year, said Luke Reiner, director of Wyomings Department of Transportation.

In Washington, LaBoe said some roads and mountain passes will be closed longer than usual during and after significant storms and some roads may not receive the same level of service.

Brief or isolated storms wont cause problems in most states, in part because departments can move drivers and equipment around based on the weather forecast.

If we have a series of storms over several days or if it hits the whole state at once, (the shortage) is going to become more evident because we dont have as deep a bench, LaBoe said.

Washington is still short about 150 seasonal and full-time workers, but things have improved since October when it was short 300 workers.

Even if states are able to hire drivers with commercial licenses, they still have to train them to run a snowplow and load the truck with salt and sand before learning a route.

When youre plowing the road you need to know where the bridge abutment is and where the expansion joints are so you dont hook that with a plow, LaBoe said.

Pennsylvania is short 270 permanent positions and 560 temporary ones, but the Department of Transportation said that doesnt mean the roads will be treacherous this winter.

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Our goal is to keep roads safe and passable rather than completely free of ice and snow, said Alexis Campbell, spokesperson for the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation. The roads will be cleared once the snow stops, she said.

Ease of travel is important to businesses. Capitol Courier has contracts with deadlines to deliver electronic replacement parts from their warehouse in Helena, Montana, to about 30 businesses around the state as soon as they call.

The roads are critical to what we do, said Shawn White Wolf, co-manager of Capitol Courier.

Snowplow drivers are devoted to their jobs, understanding their work is critical to the safety of the traveling public and to emergency responders, said Rick Nelson director of the winter maintenance technical service program for the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials.

Still, he understands that convincing newcomers to be out there in the worst conditions can be difficult.

Nelson said the shortage means states will be shifting resources when they can and making sure roads are clear during times of peak demand while you try to recruit, get out there and beat the bushes and convince folks that jumping in a plow in the middle of the night at Christmastime is a good career choice.
BUTTE, Mont. (AP)  A company that turned mining waste into roofing materials at a Montana plant was fined and ordered to conduct medical monitoring of workers on Friday, after pleading guilty to a criminal charge that it exposed employees to arsenic.

BUTTE, Mont. (AP)  A company that turned mining waste into roofing materials at a Montana plant was fined and ordered to conduct medical monitoring of workers on Friday, after pleading guilty to a criminal charge that it exposed employees to arsenic.

Tinley Park, Illinois-based U.S. Minerals was sentenced by U.S. District Judge Dana Christensen to pay a $393,200 fine and will be on probation for five years, according to court records. The company pleaded guilty in August to negligent endangerment, a misdemeanor violation of the federal Clean Air Act.

Prosecutors said U.S. Minerals continued to poison its workers by exposing them to arsenic despite repeated warnings from regulators. Long-term exposure to inorganic arsenic can lead to skin cancer and cancer in the bladder and lungs, according to the World Health Organization.

In its guilty plea, the company acknowledged it negligently placed another person in the imminent danger of death or serious bodily injury.

From 2013 to when it closed in June 2021 the company's Anaconda plant converted mining waste known as black slag  a byproduct of a century of copper smelting in the town  into roofing materials called Black Diamond Abrasive Products.

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Under a plea agreement, U.S. Minerals plants in Illinois, Wisconsin, Kansas, Texas and Louisiana will be under increased oversight by the Environmental Protection Agency and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration during a five-year probationary period.

The company would also have to monitor the health of former employees of the Anaconda plant during that time.

Employees who take advantage of the medical monitoring program would not give up the right to pursue civil litigation against U.S. Minerals, under the agreement.

Five of six employees tested at the Anaconda plant in July 2015 had elevated levels of arsenic, according to a 2016 report by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health. At the time, respiratory protection was provided but not required, and there was no running water or handwashing stations at the plant

The company was earlier fined nearly $107,000 by OSHA for violations in 2016.

Montanas health department ordered the plant to temporarily close in February 2019 after at least two workers had elevated arsenic levels in their urine in 2018.
NICOSIA, Cyprus (AP)  ExxonMobil and partner Qatar Energy expanded their stake in potential oil and gas deposits off Cyprus by signing a deal with the east Mediterranean island nation Friday for a second exploration license in waters that Turkey partly claims.

Cyprus' Energy Minister Natasa Pilides adjusts her face mask before signing a deal for a second exploration license with Qatar Energy International Upstream and Exploration Manager Ali Al-Mana and ExxonMobil Managing Director Varnavas Theodossiou at the presidential palace in the capital Nicosia, Cyprus, Friday, Dec. 10, 2021. ExxonMobil and partner Qatar Petroleum augmented their stake in potential oil and gas deposits off Cyprus after signing a deal with the east Mediterranean island nation for a second exploration license in waters that Turkey claims partly as its own. (AP Photo/Petros Karadjias)

NICOSIA, Cyprus (AP)  ExxonMobil and partner Qatar Energy expanded their stake in potential oil and gas deposits off Cyprus by signing a deal with the east Mediterranean island nation Friday for a second exploration license in waters that Turkey partly claims.

Drilling off Cyprus has been a source of tension with neighboring Turkey since 2011, when Texas-based Noble Energy discovered the first natural gas off the ethnically divided islands southern coast.

Cyprus Energy Minister Natasa Pilides said with the new license, ExxonMobil is expected to start exploration in the first half of next year to get a better estimate of potential amounts of oil and gas.

She added there are sufficiently hopeful indications that the geological makeup of the underwater area mirrors that of a nearby spot where ExxonMobil discovered in 2019 a sizable deposit estimated to contain 5-8 trillion cubic feet of gas. The two energy companies are drilling an appraisal well at that deposit to confirm how much gas it holds.

Varnavas Theodossiou, ExxonMobil Cyprus managing director, said the new license enables us to further expand our presence in Cyprus in what we believe to be a promising region for offshore exploration.

The development comes amid Turkeys warnings that it would never allow anyone to carry out an unauthorized gas search in waters it claims partly fall under its control.

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Cyprus' ethnic split occurred in 1974 when Turkey invaded following a coup aimed at a union with Greece. Turkey doesn't recognize Cypriot statehood but instead recognizes a Turkish Cypriot declaration of independence in the island's northern third  the only country to do so.

Ankara insists Cyprus' internationally recognized government seated in the south is acting unilaterally in exploiting offshore gas reserves and ignores the rights of Turkey and the breakaway Turkish Cypriots to the region's hydrocarbon potential.

To drive the point home, Turkey has dispatched numerous warship-escorted drill and survey ships to carry out exploratory drilling inside Cyprus' exclusive economic zone. It also claims some 40% of that zone either lies inside its continental shelf or belongs to Turkish Cypriots.

The Cypriot government says Turkey's claims aren't recognized by international law.

Cyprus also has licensed seven of its 13 offshore drilling areas to a consortium made up of France's TotalEnergies and Italy's Eni, which is expected to resume its own drilling in the first half of next year after a nearly two-year delay brought on by the coronavirus pandemic.

Pilides, Cyprus' energy minister, said ExxonMobil and Qatar Petroleum aren't troubled" by Turkey's threats and the deal is proof of that. She said the Cypriot government would carry on with its drilling program in line with international law.
BOSTON (AP)  A group of Christian, Hindu, Buddhist and Jewish leaders is urging luxury fashion house Louis Vuitton to stop using animal fur in its clothing and other products.

BOSTON (AP)  A group of Christian, Hindu, Buddhist and Jewish leaders is urging luxury fashion house Louis Vuitton to stop using animal fur in its clothing and other products.

In a joint statement, Orthodox Christian priest Stephen Karcher, Hindu activist Rajan Zed, Jewish rabbi ElizaBeth Webb Beyer and Buddhist priest Matthew Fisher said selling items trimmed with fur is inconsistent with the ethics and values of parent company Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton.

Louis Vuitton should explore new boundaries of fur-free creative design and discontinue selling all products made from animal fur, the clerics said Thursday, calling the trend cruel, outdated and unnecessary.

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Animals should not be made to suffer and killed to make fashion and glamorize bodies when there are other valid fashion alternatives at our disposition. Cruelty should never become fashionable, they said.

Paris-based Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment.

Zed, who is president of the Nevada-based Universal Society of Hinduism, urged LVMH CEO Bernard Arnault and other executives  as well as the fashion industry as a whole  to review the practice.

It's not the first time Zed's group has targeted Louis Vuitton. Last year, it called on the luxury goods maker to pull a yoga mat made partly of cowhide leather, calling it insensitive to practicing Hindus, who regard cows as sacred symbols of life.

San Francisco and Los Angeles are among U.S. cities with vibrant fashion sectors that have banned the sale of fur products.

Sao Paulo, Brazil, has banned the import and sale of fur since 2015, and fur farming has been outlawed in the United Kingdom for more than two decades.
TAMPA, Fla. (AP)  Detectives in Tampa are asking Uber to help solve a grandparent scam that conned $10,000 from a 75-year-old man who was told his granddaughter needed the money to get out of jail.

TAMPA, Fla. (AP)  Detectives in Tampa are asking Uber to help solve a grandparent scam that conned $10,000 from a 75-year-old man who was told his granddaughter needed the money to get out of jail.

Uber also is helping the Hillsborough Sheriffs Office find suspects in a long-running con that scammed an 82-year-old woman out of $700,000, nearly her entire life savings.

In both cases, someone told the elderly victims to withdraw money and then used the ride-sharing service to pick it up. Detectives want names of Uber account holders and credit card information along with their ride histories, and Uber says its cooperating.

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In this latest case, the North Tampa man was contacted by someone claiming to be his granddaughter's lawyer, asking him to withdraw $10,000 on May 11, the Tampa Bay Times reported.

At first he was instructed to go to a bail bonds business, but then was told that someone would come for the money in a silver Toyota with an Uber plate on the front dashboard. Uber confirmed the trip, and now a search warrant seeks more information to follow the money.

Uber strictly prohibits the use of the Uber app to commit crimes and regularly works with law enforcement to assist with investigations, Uber told the Tampa Bay Times.

Uber's guidelines say the service maintains user data as described in its privacy notice and terms of use, disclosing information to law enforcement in accordance with the Electronic Communications Privacy Act.

In the other case, a woman pretending to be the 82-year-old's granddaughter and a man who said he was her lawyer convinced her to make 13 withdrawals from BB&T branches in the Tampa area. She handed stacks of cash to couriers using Uber.

The womans lawyer is suing Truist Bank, created when BB&T merged with SunTrust, alleging negligence for allowing her to make large and unusual withdrawals even after red flags were raised.
OTTAWA - The federal privacy watchdog is warning Canadians about the growing threat of surveillance capitalism  the use of personal information by large corporations.

Privacy Commissioner Daniel Therrien speaks during a news conference in Ottawa, Tuesday, December 10, 2019. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Adrian Wyld

OTTAWA - The federal privacy watchdog is warning Canadians about the growing threat of surveillance capitalism  the use of personal information by large corporations.

In his annual report tabled Thursday in Parliament, privacy commissioner Daniel Therrien said state surveillance  a major concern after the 9/11 terrorist attacks  has been reined in somewhat in recent years.

Meanwhile, personal data has emerged as a highly valuable asset and no one has leveraged it better than the tech giants behind web searches and social media accounts, he said.

"Today, the privacy conversation is dominated by the growing power of tech giants like Facebook and Google, which seem to know more about us than we know about ourselves," the report said. "Terms like surveillance capitalism and the surveillance economy have become part of the dialogue."

The risks of surveillance capitalism were on full display in the Cambridge Analytica scandal, now the subject of proceedings in Federal Court because his office did not have the power to order Facebook to comply with its recommendations, Therrien said.

In addition, the law did not allow the commissioner to levy financial penalties to dissuade this kind of corporate behaviour.

Therrien, in his last year as privacy commissioner, is encouraging the federal government to make several improvements to planned legislation on private-sector data-handling practices when it is reintroduced in coming weeks.

At a news conference, the commissioner said he agreed with the intention behind the previous legislation, which died at the federal election call, to give organizations greater flexibility to use personal information, even without consent, if done for legitimate business interests.

"But this should be done within a rights-based framework that recognizes the fundamental right to privacy. Greater flexibility for corporations should come with greater corporate accountability," he said.

What's needed is not more self-regulation but true regulation, meaning objective and knowable standards enforced by the privacy commissioner's office, Therrien said.

"When we look at the experience of other countries that are innovators that are ahead of Canada  places like South Korea and Germany but many others, they do that within laws that protect privacy as a human right."

Artificial intelligence, the newest frontier of surveillance capitalism, has immense promise in addressing some of today's most pressing issues, but must be implemented in ways that respect privacy, equality and other human rights, Therrien cautioned.

"Our offices investigation of Clearview AI's use of facial recognition technology was an example of where commercial AI deployment fell significantly short of privacy laws," the annual report said.

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The commissioner found Clearview AI violated the private-sector privacy law by creating a databank of billions of images scraped from the internet without consent to fuel its commercial facial recognition software.

Digital technologies like AI, which rely on the collection and analysis of personal data, are at the heart of the fourth industrial revolution and are key to socio-economic development, the report said. "However, they pose major risks to rights and values."

To draw value from data, the law should accommodate new, unforeseen, but responsible uses of information for the public good, the report added. But the additional flexibility should come within a rights-based framework, given frequent violations of human rights.

Therrien highlighted another trend  the increase in public-private partnerships and the use of corporate expertise to assist state organizations, for instance the RCMP's association with Clearview AI.

Privacy issues arising from public-private partnerships were also evident in a number of government-led pandemic initiatives involving digital technologies in the last year, the report added. "These issues underscored the need for more consistency across the public and private-sector laws."

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Dec. 9, 2021.
Manitobas highest court has struck down a 15-month jail sentence for a man who traded a 60-ounce bottle of rum for sex with a vulnerable Indigenous girl and replaced it with one of five years in prison.

Manitobas highest court has struck down a 15-month jail sentence for a man who traded a 60-ounce bottle of rum for sex with a vulnerable Indigenous girl and replaced it with one of five years in prison.

Scott Christopher Alcorn, 46, was convicted last year of one count of obtaining sexual services for consideration from a person under 18.

His victim, who was 16 at the time of the 2015 offence and identified in court documents as D.R., committed suicide in 2016, before Alcorn went to trial.

"In order to better legally protect children, it is necessary to turn a new page from the past and embark on a fresh sentencing approach which focuses on greater offender accountability through increased sentences," said Court of Appeal Justice Christopher Mainella in a written decision released Thursday.

Court records described D.R. as a high-risk youth with multiple mental health and addiction issues who traded sex to survive. Alcorn and the girl met over social media, and Alcorn agreed to give the girl a bottle of liquor in exchange for sex.

The two had sex at the home of Kevin Rose, a pimp and child pornographer who, two years later, was sentenced to 21 years in prison for sexually exploiting D.R. and five other girls. A secret recording Rose made of Alcorn having sex with D.R. was found by police.

The Court of Appeal ruled Alcorns original sentencing judge erred by not treating his offence with the same gravity as other sexual offences against children. Queens Bench Justice Colleen Suche also erred in ruling his moral culpability was reduced because his actions "appear(ed) opportunistic, rather than predatory."

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Alcorns actions were "exploitative, dehumanizing and rooted in a power imbalance," Mainella said.

The judge said it would undermine public confidence in the administration of justice if there was the perception sex crimes against children are less serious when it involves an offender who "bought" sex as opposed to one who "took" it.

"This ignores the inherent sexual exploitative reality of the child sex industry, its racialized and female nature, as well as respect for the personhood of the victim," Mainella said.

"Any reasonable adult would know that perpetuating D.R.s cycle of destruction was harmful to her best interests," he said. "While the accused played no role in bringing D.R. into the child sex industry, his deliberate, selfish actions helped keep her there."

Alcorn received credit for time served, reducing his remaining sentence to just over 3  years.

dean.pritchard@freepress.mb.ca
Canadian Foodgrains Bank, a Winnipeg-based international relief and development organization, has received a three-year grant worth $75 million from the federal government.

Canadian Foodgrains Bank, a Winnipeg-based international relief and development organization, has received a three-year grant worth $75 million from the federal government.

The grant, announced Monday, will enhance the organizations work to end global hunger. International Development Minister Harjit Sajjan said the Foodgrains Bank has been an important partner for the Canadian government since 1983.

Through the grant, the Canadian government will provide the Foodgrains Bank with "predictable and multi-year funding" that "help ensure that those who need it most will receive the food and nutrition support they urgently require," the minister said.

It is about more than "just about providing food," he added. Its also about creating a future for children who will, one day, be able to "provide the means and be able to help others as well."

For Foodgrains Bank executive director Andy Harrington, the grant means the organization can continue to provide emergency food assistance in the developing world.

"Its the renewal of a relationship weve had for many years," he said, adding, "It will ensure our continued humanitarian work in the most needy parts of the world."

Support from the Canadian government is more important than ever, Harrington said, since about 760 million people dont get enough to eat and 41 million are at risk of famine due to the COVID-19 pandemic, conflict or climate change.

"Things are very serious for many people," he said, adding, for donors, the grant also means their contributions will go further.

"Donations for our humanitarian work will be matched four-to-one by this grant," he said. "It enables Canadians to make an even greater difference around the world."

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Rick Cober Bauman, executive director of Mennonite Central Committee  one of the 15 member agencies that belong to the Foodgrains Bank  agreed.

The biggest impact of the grant is how it enables "incredible leveraging" for donors, he said. "There is extra heft," in how the funds are used by Foodgrains Bank members for food-related programs around the world.

"It amplifies the work of MCC and all the Foodgrains Bank members."

In its 2020-21 budget year, the Foodgrains Bank provided $49 million of food-related assistance for 989,045 people in 33 countries.

In addition to support from the Canadian government, it received donations of $16.2 million from across Canada. More than $6 million of that total came from Manitoba residents.

faith@freepress.mb.ca
Winnipeg's health-care system is straining to care for a growing number of COVID-19 patients, but it'll find the time to overhaul its organizational structure, a new letter confirms.

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Manitoba Liberal Leader Dougald Lamont is denouncing the move to push ahead with health-care reforms while the pandemic strains the medical system. (Thomas Asselin/Radio-Canada)

Winnipeg's health-care system is straining to care for a growing number of COVID-19 patients, but it'll find the time to overhaul its organizational structure, a new letter confirms.

The head of the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority acknowledged in a recent letter to staff this reform can be "challenging" and "comes at an already difficult time," but Mike Nader insisted it can handle the COVID-19 pandemic while forging ahead with the next phase of the province's health-care system transformation.

The Manitoba Liberals called attention to the letter at a news conference on Thursday.

To read more of this story first reported by CBC News, click here.

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The number of Manitobans in need of heart surgery has swelled to 216 people as of Thursday, with more than one-third of them waiting in excess of six months.

The number of Manitobans in need of heart surgery has swelled to 216 people as of Thursday, with more than one-third of them waiting in excess of six months.

Eighty-nine people who require cardiac surgery have been on provincial wait lists for 180 days or more, a spokesman for Shared Health said. Elective cardiac surgeries, for stable patients experiencing heart health problems, are typically scheduled to occur within 48 to 180 days.

According to provincial data, the longest median wait time for elective cardiac surgery in the past year was in September, at 123 days.

Manitobas health-care system has worked to maintain non-emergent cardiac services throughout the pandemic, but increased COVID activity through various waves that forced the redeployment and reassignment of surgical staff to critical care have caused this wait list to slowly grow over the past 21 months, the spokesman said in a statement to the Free Press.

We continue to make efforts to ensure sufficient staffing resources are available for non-emergent cardiac surgeries to proceed.

The spokesman said an average of three non-emergent cardiac surgeries have been performed each day this week.

New figures released Thursday by the Canadian Institute for Health Information showed the average number of cardiac surgeries performed each month in Manitoba during the pandemic dropped by about 10 per cent compared to 2019.

The independent, not-for-profit organization released statistics from across Canada measuring the impact of COVID-19 on the hospital system from March 2020 to June 2021.

According to the data, all types of surgery in Manitoba saw an average monthly decline in activity compared to 2019. Overall, surgeries dropped by an average of 1,900 cases a month through the pandemic.

Manitoba was able to average 403 cardiac surgeries a month from March 2020 and June 2021. However, that represented a decrease of about 45 cases a month, compared to the 2019 average of 448.

The most significant decline in cardiac surgical activity in 2021 occurred in January, when the number of surgeries dropped by 26 per cent. In 2020, the biggest drop came early in the pandemic when 36 per cent fewer procedures were performed in April.

Meanwhile, the number of hip and knee, cataract, hernia, and disc surgeries  plus a suite of other high-volume procedures  performed each month in the pandemic decreased by 31 per cent over 2019, with 881 fewer procedures completed on average.

The worst months for other general surgery correspond to the second and third pandemic waves, with 63 per cent fewer surgeries being performed in December 2020 and 67 per cent fewer performed in June 2021.

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Cancer surgeries performed through the pandemic also dropped by a monthly average of eight per cent, with 484 procedures performed on average compared to the 529 performed monthly in 2019.

Data also show Manitoba was able to make some small gains in the summer of 2020, with seven per cent more procedures performed in July that year compared to 2019; data for the summer of 2021 was not available.

Provincial health officials estimate the total surgical backlog to include between 25,000 and 30,000 patients; advocacy group Doctors Manitoba puts that number closer to 56,000.

On Wednesday, Health Minister Audrey Gordon announced a diagnostic and surgical recovery task force to expedite the thousands of procedures that have been delayed due to the pandemic.

The task force is expected to provide its first progress report early next year.

danielle.dasilva@freepress.mb.ca
Whether growing up as a high school student in Thompson, advocating for better child care, working as a constituency assistant for federal MP Niki Ashton or representing the area in her first term as an MLA, Danielle Adams was well-known in the North.



Whether growing up as a high school student in Thompson, advocating for better child care, working as a constituency assistant for federal MP Niki Ashton or representing the area in her first term as an MLA, Danielle Adams was well-known in the North.

And that community is now mourning her tragic loss.

Facebook photo Danielle Adams with Niki Ashton

Adams, 38, the married mother of two sons aged 13 and six, died when the SUV she was driving south on Highway 6 collided with a northbound semi-trailer Thursday at about 11:20 a.m.

She was pronounced dead at the scene, about 50 kilometres south of Thompson (roughly 550 kilometres north of Winnipeg). The 54-year-old driver of the truck, from the RM of Alexander, was not injured.

RCMP are still investigating, but said road conditions were poor and neither speed nor alcohol appeared to have been factors.

Adams, who was the NDPs critic for child care, housing, disability and poverty matters and the first woman to represent Thompson in the ridings five-decade history, was on her way to Winnipeg to attend the Leaders Levee Friday night.

The event, which was to be the first large-scale gathering of the party since the pandemic began, was cancelled in the wake of Adams death.

Like all people who call northern Manitoba home, Adams was a regular motorist on the two-lane highway.

Former Thompson NDP MLA Steve Ashton knew Adams and the road well.

Manitoba NDP photo Danielle Adams was the NDPs critic for child care, housing, disability and poverty matters and the first woman to represent Thompson.

"When youre MLA for Thompson, driving is a large part of the job," said Ashton.

"Everyone always emphasizes one thing: be sure to call somebody when you get in. It is mandatory, you have to call. I never questioned the need to not only go to Winnipeg to represent the North, but also to go back home as well. Danielle was like that, too."

Ashton said he met Adams years ago, when she volunteered for the party, and later, when she worked as his daughter Nikis constituency assistant in Thompson before running for the legislature seat in 2019.

"I encouraged her to run," he said. "I 100-per-cent supported her. I cant help think today of what could have been; she was a hard worker and somebody that was engaged.

"She was a true northerner and one of our own. She will be missed."

His daughter said Adams was a grade behind her in high school.

"Ive known her a long time," the New Democrat MP for ChurchillKeewatinook Aski said. "She even worked on my nomination back in 2005  we werent out of high school long at that time.

"She was part of my staff in Thompson and she did everything she really believed in sticking up for people and working to make the world a better place.

"To me, the loss is like losing a member of my family."

Niki Ashton said she was on a Zoom call with Adams and other local NDP supporters the evening before she died.

JESSICA LEE / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS FILES Thompson MLA Danielle Adams speaks during a sitting at the Legislative Building. Adams died in a car crash Thursday near the northern Manitoba city.

"She said she was getting on the road the next day and I wished her a safe travel. The next day the family got the call nobody wants to get."

Adams was a staunch supporter of the region and its residents.

"The PCs must make real investments in health care in the North," she wrote in her last Facebook post Tuesday.

"There needs to be a real plan to address the nurse shortage. I will continue to fight to stand up and fight for better access to health care."

Caitlyn McLeod, a supervisor at the Thompson Childrens World daycare where Adams served as a board member when her children were enrolled, said she was a great mother and child-care supporter.

"She was a great advocate for kids," McLeod said. "She helped them and she sometimes helped here. "She was very friendly. And she also let us know how much she appreciated our help. We appreciated that."

Thompson Mayor Colleen Smook said Adams "was so energetic that she was able to juggle politics and family life uniquely. "

"She proved to the skeptics that thought she was going to be way in above her head very wrong," Smook said. "Her positive attitude served her well. She perceived problems as challenges and was always up for the challenge."

Smook said Adams was a good listener and worked for all her constituents, regardless of their politics.

"She wasnt afraid to tackle any issue pertaining to the North. In two short years she earned the respect of colleagues. I can only imagine her effect on the North if we had her as a seasoned politician. She will be missed."

Thompson Coun. Les Ellsworth knew Adams well. Their families lived on the same street while she was in high school and, as the former president of the United Steelworkers local, he ran into her frequently when she was on the board of the daycare  then located in the unions building.

"She was always an advocate," said Ellsworth. "Im the kind of guy who would tell you what a person is like, living or deceased. To me, Danielle Adams was somebody who cared. She cared about community and she cared about her family."

Manitoba Liberal Leader Dougald Lamont sat beside Adams in the back row of the legislature.

"She was very down to earth," Lamont said. "It was what you see is what you get."

"She really cared about what she talked about. There was nothing false in her. Its just such a shock. Dec. 3 was the last day I saw her. We all stood up and said goodbye to each other.

"You just dont think this is the last time you will see a person."

News of Adams death made it to the floor of the House of Commons Friday when Manitoba NDP MP Leah Gazan shared a few words during her members statement.

"Danielle was a strong advocate for the North and for people, fighting for accessible, affordable child care. She was a kind, loving and respected colleague to many," said Gazan.

"Danielle, may you fly with the eagles. Rest in peace."

Former Alberta premier and NDP leader Rachel Notley said on social media: "I am so sorry to learn of the sudden passing of Manitoba NDP MLA Danielle Adams.

"Our hearts are with Wab Kinew and our brothers and sisters in the Manitoba NDP.... A truly heartbreaking loss."

kevin.rollason@freepress.mb.ca
Victoria General Hospitals fundraising body has teamed up with Winnipeg Blue Bombers slotback Nic Demski to boost local health-care workers.

The Vic Foundation has launched a clothing collection, with all proceeds to go to staff mental health initiatives. The T-shirts and hoodies (available at thevicfoundation.ca) read Support our health-care workers and are emblazoned with the Vic Foundation and Victoria hospitals logos.

SUPPLIED The Vic Foundation has launched a clothing collection, with all proceeds to go to staff mental health initiatives.

My mother is a nurse, which is the main reason I wanted to partner with the Vic Foundation to help show health-care workers how much we care, Demski said in a release Thursday.

The proceeds from sales will go to the Vic Foundation COVID-19 Critical Response Fund, which foundation executive director Nicole Chammartin says supports short-term wellness initiatives for staff at Victoria hospital and ACCESS Fort Garry amid the pandemic.

I think people are sometimes looking for a chance to show that gratitude, and so we really loved the idea of creating something people could wear, both health-care workers and the public, to talk about that commitment to demonstrating support for health-care workers, she said.

Some recent initiatives include Foundation Fridays, where staff are given free coffee once a week, and guest wellness speakers for staff.

We support different events where we hand out food or different activities for staff on the ward, Chammartin said. We support different initiatives that staff say that they want to have.

So if theyre planning some sort of wellness initiative, that might be some sort of training that theyre bringing in for staff, or an education session for staff, we can put (funding) towards that kind of wellness speaker

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The foundation works with a staff engagement committee at the hospital.

I do think this staff do and will need longer-term support, as all of us likely will. One of the focuses of our foundation is mental health, and so for us, its important to walk our walk, Chammartin said.

Manitoba Nurses Union president Darlene Jackson said she commended any programs that support nurses, a profession that demands compassion.

This constant giving of oneself though comes at a price. As such, they need programs in place to help to purge, unload and release what they absorb in their work life, she said in an email.

The mental health supports of our members is something we are continuously striving to improve upon. We commend efforts to not only engage but also think expansively about what we can do to better help those that nurture every health-care worker in our system.

malak.abas@freepress.mb.ca
A Winnipeg man's family wasn't able to say goodbye to him before immigration officials began the process of deporting him to Iran on Thursday.

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Members of Mizraali Vaezzadeh's family pleaded with immigration officials at the airport to allow the 85-year-old man to stay in Canada, but he was deported to Iran on Thursday. (Tyson Koschik / CBC)

A Winnipeg man's family wasn't able to say goodbye to him before immigration officials began the process of deporting him to Iran on Thursday.

Masoud Vaezzadeh and his family wanted to say goodbye to his 85-year-old father at the airport, but officials with the Canadian Border Services Agency wouldn't allow it.

"They would not allow me to speak to him over the phone. They said because he's detained. It's like he was a criminal, he totally was treated like a criminal, worse than a criminal," Masoud said.

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IT was refreshing to hear the government of Manitoba announce it will be conducting a Clean Environment Commission (CEC) hearing into CanWhite Sands projects extraction activities.

Opinion

IT was refreshing to hear the government of Manitoba announce it will be conducting a Clean Environment Commission (CEC) hearing into CanWhite Sands projects extraction activities.

This is the first CEC hearing to be called since the current Progressive Conservative government took office in 2016, and it is being done following much pressure from the public.

However, I suspect the underlying purpose is to demonstrate that the provincial government is now under new leadership.

Now we wait for the public notice to be posted on the CEC website to get a clearer idea of the rules for the hearing, and the makeup of the commission body that will preside over the hearings.

The government recently appointed a new chairperson of the CEC, who assumes this position on Jan. 1. He just happens to be Jonathan Scarth, the former principal secretary and de facto chief of staff to former premier Brian Pallister.

I have participated in a number of CEC hearings since the 1990s, and this is the first time, to my knowledge, that a former senior order-in-council political staff person has been appointed to chair the CEC.

Concerns about having a full-fledged CEC hearing are already being raised. In a Nov. 25 article in The Carillon newspaper, an unnamed government source said, "Rather than provide funds to a number of parties to examine the environmental effects, the Clean Environment Commission has been asked to provide an independent, technical assessment of the proposal as per the terms of reference. This will include engagement of a consultant to provide technical expertise, and the commission will ensure that relevant issues are evaluated by the consultant. That evaluation will be made public and be available to all parties."

This is not good enough. Many organizations that have been following the CanWhite Sands (CWS) silica sand mining development project in recent years are calling on the minister of conservation and climate to make funds available, through the established Participant Assistance Program, so groups with limited resources but considerable expertise can participate meaningfully and constructively in the hearings.

It is also unfortunate that the terms of reference given to the CEC by the minister require that the CEC review only the Environment Act Proposal (EAP) submitted by CWS for its silica sand extraction-related activities, as there are still many unresolved issues with CWSs EAP for its proposed processing facility.

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To date, these concerns have gone unanswered, so the proposed processing facility should also have been included as part of the of the terms of reference.

It must also be noted that the recommendations to the minister that will be issued by the CEC are just that  recommendations. The minister is under no legal obligation to accept or implement any of the CECs recommendations, and need only provide a written explanation as to why she accepts or ignores any of the recommendations advanced.

It now remains to be seen whether this CEC process will be a meaningful, fair and transparent, and not just an exercise that demonstrates that there is a new leader in town whos doing business as usual.

It is imperative that those who have presented scientific, evidence-based information about CWSs EAP be afforded the opportunity to question the companys experts publicly and under oath at the CEC hearings. We need to ascertain the veracity of the information CWS has included in its EAP. We need to get access to information that CWS has either purposely omitted or been vague about in its EAP. And it should be obvious that we need to be able to call independent experts to provide testimony and evidence.

After all, the fate of the aquifer that supplies drinking water to all of southeastern Manitoba hangs in the balance.

Don Sullivan is currently the director of What The Frack Manitoba, he served as a special advisor to the government of Manitoba for seven years, is a Queens Golden Jubilee Medal recipient and is a research associate for the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives  Manitoba.
When the pandemic sent many workers home, the line between the personal and professional became increasingly blurred. Its difficult, after all, to have a clear delineation between home and the office if home is the office and the office is home.

When the pandemic sent many workers home, the line between the personal and professional became increasingly blurred. Its difficult, after all, to have a clear delineation between home and the office if home is the office and the office is home.

But that uncertainty around work/life balance  something everyone seems to want and value, but few seem able to actually achieve  predates the pandemic. The exhausted executive who sleeps with their iPhone on their pillow is a trope for a reason; technology has enabled us to do our work from anywhere  but that also means we can do our work everywhere, at any hour, because theres always more work to do.

Many workers are always on, always connected. In a system that prioritizes productivity above all else, staying late is seen as evidence of commitment and dedication. So, too, is answering emails at 9:30 p.m.

And so, on its face, Ontarios new Working for Workers Act, which passed on Nov. 30, is an intriguing Canadian initiative. The legislation requires workplaces with 25 or more employees implement written policy regarding "disconnecting from work," which mostly means not engaging in workplace communications outside of work hours.

Employers will be required to be transparent about their right-to-disconnect policies, and prospective employees will be able to inquire about such policies during the interview process.

Employers will be required to be transparent about their righttodisconnect policies, and prospective employees will be able to inquire about such policies during the interview process.

"The best employers will ensure that there is work-life balance, because thats going to be a competitive advantage for them to retain and attract workers," said Ontario Labour Minister Monte McNaughton.

Ontario is the first Canadian province to implement such a law, but there is precedent for "right-to-disconnect" legislation. In 2016, France passed a law with wording similar to that in the Ontario legislation. This past summer, the Supreme Peoples Court of China ruled the so-called "996" policy  a practice of working from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., 6 days a week, widely normalized in tech  is illegal.

Several other countries, including Italy, Spain and Ireland, have also introduced right-to-disconnect legislation.

Laws such as these mark an important moment in the evolution of the employer/employee relationship. But is work/life balance something that can be legislated? Such laws risk becoming little more than occupational-agenda theatre; few will be inclined to exercise their right to disconnect if the work culture undergirding it is not supportive of such efforts.

Cathie Coward/ Hamilton Spectator FILE Ontario Minister of Labour Monte McNaughton

True work/life balance can only happen if companies make it a shared belief, value and priority. Laws  especially vague, mostly hands-off ones  are at very best suggestions or guidelines. What actually needs to happen has less to do with outlawing email after 6 p.m and more to do with changing the deeply entrenched cultural norms around work, which necessarily includes ideas about performance, productivity and corporate structures, as well as the role work plays in our lives.

What right-to-disconnect legislation can do, however, is prompt workplaces to evaluate their own operations and identify areas for opportunity and improvement. It might look like a "no emails after x" policy, but it also might look like a hybrid remote/in-office model to promote flexibility, or managers leading by example and encouraging disconnected weekends, vacations and paid time off.

Burnout and chronic stress are systemic issues that need to be addressed at the institutional level. Offering a free meditation app, or providing overburdened staff with a laminated card with instructions for a breathing exercise on it, isnt going to cut it, especially for an incoming generation of workers who have radically different expectations about what work/life balance should look like.
OTTAWA  Fly into Nova Scotia and you get a unique welcome gift: two COVID-19 rapid tests.

OTTAWA  Fly into Nova Scotia and you get a unique welcome gift: two COVID-19 rapid tests.

While most Manitobans have never seen an actual rapid test kit, certain provinces and U.S. states dish them out like stocking stuffers.

With the holidays around the corner, Winnipeggers have a twinkle in their eyes for an extra layer of protection before gathering around the fireplace. But Manitoba is not in a giving mood, so far restricting rapid tests to businesses, as well as workers who are exempt from vaccine mandates.

Provincial officials warn the tests give a false sense of security, so the public shouldnt expect them to be part of Christmas festivities.

This week, Ottawa announced it would send a huge shipment of rapid tests to provinces in the coming days.

Epidemiologist Dr. Souradet Shaw said its time for Manitoba to come up with a strategy for how to get these tests into public hands.

We shouldnt let perfect be the enemy of the good, the University of Manitoba professor said. We should deploy the tools we have available, the best we can.

An Abbott Laboratories Panbio COVID- 19 Rapid Test device is displayed at a pop-up COVID-19 testing site on the Dalhousie University campus in Halifax on Wednesday, Nov. 235 2020. THE CANADIAN PRESS FILES/Andrew Vaughan

While lab tests are much more accurate, these 15-minute tests can detect people who have high loads of novel coronavirus, similar to how a pregnancy test doesnt always detect someone whos only recently become pregnant.

Experts have characterized rapid tests as an extra layer of protection  a screening tool but not a surefire test, and one that must come alongside vaccination, mask use and proper ventilation.

Just because theyre not perfect, it shouldnt be a reason to just not use a tool, especially if its already been purchased, Shaw said.

Take Nova Scotia, where officials at the Halifax and Sydney airports are handing domestic arrivals a plastic bag with two rapid test kits, as part of a voluntary program to try cutting the risk of imported cases. The package suggests people test themselves 48 hours after arriving, and go for a full lab test if the preliminary result is positive.

In Saskatchewan, kits of five rapid tests are available free to the public at libraries and community centres, with that province encouraging people to test asymptomatic family members once or twice a week.

In some American states, rapid tests are easy to find in pharmacies.

The British government allows residents to order a pack of seven rapid tests online each day, saying they can be used to manage risks. Part of the deal is that citizens are asked to report the results online, to help authorities get early signs of regional outbreaks.

For a year now, pupils in countries such as Austria have used routine rapid tests inside school classrooms to control outbreaks.

An Abbott Laboratories Panbio COVID- 19 Rapid Test device is displayed at a pop-up COVID-19 testing site on the Dalhousie University campus in Halifax on Wednesday, Nov. 235 2020. THE CANADIAN PRESS FILES/Andrew Vaughan Dr. Jazz Atwal, Manitoba deputy chief provincial public health officer, speaks about COVID-19 updates, initiatives and answers media questions during a COVID-19 live-streamed press conference at the Manitoba legislature in Winnipeg Friday, March 5, 2020. THE CANADIAN PRESS FILES/John Woods

But Manitoba is doing none of that, instead tasking the Winnipeg Chamber of Commerce in September with helping businesses access the tests, and guide them on how best to use them. The province also sends tests to government departments and agencies with front-line staff who opted for routine testing instead of COVID-19 vaccination.

On Wednesday, Dr. Jazz Atwal, deputy chief provincial public health officer, urged Manitobans planning Christmas events to follow public health orders and stick with vaccinated relatives, instead of pining for something to shove up their nasal cavities.

He argued rapid tests arent that helpful for people who dont have symptoms of COVID-19.

Rapid antigen tests arent very useful in that situation; there is a lot of evidence supporting that. Were trying to utilize tests in the most effective manner, Atwal said.

In July, before Manitoba stopped collecting the data, the province had used just six per cent of the rapid tests sent from Ottawa.

The tests (must) be done a certain way for it to be accurate, otherwise people might fall into a false sense of reassurance with a negative test.

A Harvard University epidemiologist disputed Atwals assertions, calling it entirely bull that rapid tests dont catch people with COVID-19 who lack symptoms.

For public health, we care about identifying infectious people. The tests do not react to symptoms; they react to virus, Dr. Michael Mina wrote on Twitter.

Thats really unfortunate for Manitoba, that the (deputy) head of public health isnt understanding this.

Jhorman Henao processes a COVID-19 rapid test at Rimot.io Inc. in Dartmouth, N.S., Tuesday, June 22, 2021. As workers return to office buildings and job sites across the country, some are being offered rapid COVID-19 tests at work. THE CANADIAN PRESS FILES/Riley Smith

The province responded Thursday by citing data that suggests rapid tests have 30 per cent sensitivity for detecting asymptomatic cases of COVID-19, versus 70 per cent sensitivity for symptomatic ones.

It also said data from Manitobas own screening of hospital patients awaiting an operation suggest at least 500 people would have to be screened, to find one asymptomatic case.

Online, Manitobans are scrambling to find tests on their own, with some ordering from pharmacies in other provinces that mail tests or having relatives abroad send them along with Christmas gifts.

Ottawa may come to the rescue.

We are very soon going to deliver to provinces and territories a very large amount of rapid tests  much larger than what weve seen over the last few months, federal Health Minister Jean-Yves Duclos said Wednesday.

The demand from provinces and territories has been substantially increased over the last weeks.

A Manitoba spokesperson confirmed the province was among those seeking more rapid tests.

Manitoba has a number of higher-risk scenarios to which provincially managed rapid kits are deployed. These are significant enough in number and need that low-risk, low-impact deployment is not warranted nor likely useful, in the big picture.

DANIEL CRUMP / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS Rapid test - negative COVID-19

The spokesperson noted outbreak settings and high-risk exposures are particularly useful for rapid tests.

The province anticipates ongoing, and perhaps increased, use of them in the near future.

In September, Manitoba became the only province to stop tracking how many rapid test it actually uses, saying it didnt have to staffing to track this, and that requests for more tests indicate when employers and government agencies have used their stock.

In July, before Manitoba stopped collecting the data, the province had used just six per cent of the rapid tests sent from Ottawa.

With cases on the rise and the omicron variant making its Manitoba debut, Shaw said the province should consider changing course.

Theres always trade-offs to any intervention, and Im sure the provinces rationale to be hesitant is prudent, but I think this is exactly why it should be incumbent on the province to develop a strategy to guide its use, he said.

Ontario issued a 21-page guidance document Thursday on what situations voluntary rapid tests could be used as a screening tool.

Previously, that had warned rapid tests would generate too many false positives that would clog the lines at PCR testing centres.

dylan.robertson@freepress.mb.ca
A crash course in distance learning throughout the pandemic has opened up possibilities to shift to remote instruction during any school closures  but for now, storm days in Manitoba are here to stay.

A crash course in distance learning throughout the pandemic has opened up possibilities to shift to remote instruction during any school closures  but for now, storm days in Manitoba are here to stay.

Following 20 months of COVID-19 disruptions, teachers, students and parents have come to expect disruptions.

Superintendent Terry Osiowy has fielded questions from parents in Prairie Rose School Division about the prospect of continued instruction from afar when weather events prompt shutdowns.

Wintry conditions in the rural division  in which 2,300 students learn in and around the communities of Carman, Elie and St. Laurent  have already shuttered at least one school on three occasions in 2021-22.

When a COVID-19 cluster requires a school move to remote learning, classes are given about two days of notice to prepare, which isn't the case for a snow day. (Mike Deal / Winnipeg Free Press files)

During a typical academic year, area students lose four or five instructional days because of the weather. However, Osiowy said there were 12 storm-related closures during a particularly blustery year in recent memory.

"With the whole change in remote learning in the last couple of years, some people think that its an easy thing to do  but it really isnt," he said.

The division leader noted that when a COVID-19 cluster requires a school move to remote learning, classes are given about two days of notice to prepare. In contrast, snow days are called at about 6 a.m., before school buses are deployed to pick up students.

The Nov. 12 closure of Miami School sent cattle farmer Andre Steppler into a panic as he scrambled to figure out child-care accommodations. Steppler ended up taking his elementary school-age children to work for the day.

A single day of emergency distance learning may be positive for high schoolers who would be forced to learn independently, but he said it would not be feasible for his kids in Grades 2 and 4.

RUTH BONNEVILLE Limited internet access and storm outages in rural communities are some of the logistical challenges to offering remote learning on short notice. (Ruth Bonneville / Winnipeg Free Press files)

"The reality is that in rural Manitoba, we do not have good enough internet service for it," Steppler said. "If you put a bunch of kids on a Zoom call or something like that, theres nothing more frustrating than jumping in and out, freezing, kids not knowing how to use technology."

High school teacher Michael Zwaagstra said limited internet access and storm outages in rural communities are only some of the logistical challenges to offering remote learning on short notice. Not all subjects can easily translate into distance learning, he said.

"Technology is a useful tool and weve certainly developed skills in that area, we just need to make sure we use them properly and be very careful about any one-size-fits-all solutions," he said.

Whether or not they are in K-12 buildings, teachers are expected to do marking, preparation and other tasks during closures.

"Theres endless amounts of work to be done. If youre not directly teaching a child on a snow day, youre certainly putting in a lot of effort to teach that child when they return," said James Bedford, president of the Manitoba Teachers Society.

Kids can have fun on snow days, but there is still work for teachers to do inside. (Ruth Bonneville / Winnipeg Free Press files)

In the Red River Valley School Division, administrators have discussed the feasibility of turning snow days  called when there is sudden inclement weather, or it is either -35 C or feels like -45 C with the wind chill  into remote instruction days.

Brad Curtis, who oversees the Morris-based division, said the last thing he wants to do is cause more stress for parents, students or staff who have faced continuous COVID-19 challenges.

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"If there was a case where we go into a deep-freeze time and you could really predict it could be a cold for a week, thats something wed entertain," said the superintendent, noting Red River Valley had planning time to distribute MiFi devices  wireless routers that act as mobile Wi-Fi hot spots  to 45 families last year so everyone could participate in remote learning.

As far as the executive director of the Manitoba Association of Parent Councils is concerned, much learning continues during snow days  be it while baking cookies or tobogganing.

For that reason, Brenda Brazeau is in favour of the status quo. Children have missed out on instruction time since March 2020, she said, "but theyve also lost being able to just be a kid, and thats important."

Osiowy acknowledged, with a chuckle, that he has never received a complaint from a student about a storm day, though his preference would be to find a way to avoid them because instructional days are limited and closures mean numerous events are rescheduled or cancelled in Prairie Rose.

maggie.macintosh@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @macintoshmaggie
OTTAWA  After chiding the Liberals for phoning it in by not bothering to show up in the House of Commons, Conservative Leader Erin OToole says he has no qualms with a Manitoba MP who attends Parliament virtually.

OTTAWA  After chiding the Liberals for "phoning it in" by not bothering to show up in the House of Commons, Conservative Leader Erin OToole says he has no qualms with a Manitoba MP who attends Parliament virtually.

"We lost that debate," OToole said Thursday, in response to questions from the Free Press.

Tory Ted Falk, who represents Provencher in southeastern Manitoba, hasnt been in the House of Commons since MPs voted to tighten restrictions on medical exemptions for COVID-19 vaccines.

Falk is the only MP who will not say whether hes been immunized or has a medical exemption, as he insists its a privacy issue. His riding includes communities with some of the lowest vaccine uptake in Canada.

Falk was in Ottawa this fall, and entered the Commons on Nov. 22, after a policy came into force restricting the parliamentary precinct to those who presented the House of Commons administration with a proof of full vaccination against COVID-19, or a medical exemption.

On Nov. 25, MPs voted to restrict the medical exemption list to specific contraindications drawn up by Public Health Ontario and the National Advisory Committee on Immunization.

Since then, Falk and three Conservative MPs who say they have a medical exemption, have not been in the Commons.

All other parties say their MPs are vaccinated.

One of the absent Tories, Cathay Wagantall, told the Commons via video conference Monday that her original medical exemption was approved, but she said there was a delay in getting enhanced proof.

The beefed-up vaccination policy was part of a motion that enabled MPs to again attend the Commons via video conference, and vote on legislation via their smartphones.

Days later, OToole decried Prime Minister Justin Trudeau "going back to hybrid, going back to being in his pyjamas and phoning it in."

For months, the Tories and Bloc Quebecois have decried virtual Parliament for eroding accountability and transparency.

Conservative deputy leader Candice Bergen, from Manitoba, has been particularly adamant.

"Individuals put their names on a ballot. They got elected knowing that we were nearing the end of a pandemic and that their work would include coming to Ottawa and being here to do their job," the MP for Portage-Lisgar said last month.

Yet on Thursday, OToole said he has no issue with his MPs using the virtual option.

"All MPs now have the ability to use the hybrid Parliament we think it should return to normal, with all the proper health precautions in place."

He also wouldnt say whether his MPs are able to attend caucus meetings virtually.

Falk wasnt available for an interview Wednesday and Thursday, and his office wouldnt say why he hasnt been in the House of Commons since Nov. 22.

"While Conservatives believe hybrid is far from ideal, we recognize that it is the will of a majority in the House and have adapted to make the best of it. As such, like many of his colleagues (of all parties), Mr. Falk began this sitting in Ottawa and continues to represent his constituents from his constituency," reads a statement from his office.

Hes not the only Manitoba MP missing from the chamber.

NDP MP Niki Ashton, who represents northern Manitoba, said she has decided not to go to Ottawa to avoid any chance that she might infect Parliament Hill staff, noting that Manitoba MLAs, including leader Wab Kinew, had caught COVID-19 this fall.

"We have to be concerned not only for our colleagues, but for our loved ones and our constituents, and we cannot pretend that we are the only ones working here," the MP for Churchill-Keewatinook Aski said last month, during the debate over virtual sittings.

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"I am frankly shocked that in the year 2021, in the throes of a fourth wave of a global pandemic, after a year and a half of creating and making a hybrid Parliament work, that we are even having this debate," she said, adding that flights have been cut during the pandemic.

Winnipeg Liberal MP Jim Carr said he likes both options.

He said the virtual option allows him to attend important events in his riding. But he argued its still important for MPs to be able to reach everyone from cabinet ministers to opposition MPs without having to schedule a call.

"The advantage of being in Ottawa is that you have access to colleagues; you are at caucus meetings and you have, in the room, colleagues from across the country," Carr said.

"You can get an awful lot of work done in very short discussions with people who are right there and accessible."

dylan.robertson@freepress.mb.ca
But, if you consider there are about a million full-time law enforcement officers in this country, the bad actors are an extremely small percentage. Still, just like all professionals, they can always benefit from more training. They should also have ever-present support to deal with the excessive mental stress and trauma thats a daily part of their jobs. Those changes would result in more, not less, funding, but would be a lot cheaper than having to send a mental health counselor along on every call they take. However, because of the increasing number of people with mental health issues, that may soon be a necessity as well.

Anyone whos spent any time in our schools knows there are many more students suffering from mental illness than there were only a decade ago. Teachers, principals, counselors and other staff have to face that fact several times a day. If voters knew how challenging it is, theyd insist on increased funding to hire more mental health providers in every school. Anyone who questions that need would quickly change their minds and realize its a crisis if they spent only a few days volunteering in our schools. And, thats why I also firmly believe in the need for police liaison officers in every school, especially middle and high schools.
Eli Joseph Cossman, an American inventor, businessman, entrepreneur and author, as well as the co-creator of the ant farm and King of the Thingamajig, once said, The best bridge between hope and despair is a good nights sleep.

That idea is the motivation behind the local St. Vincent de Paul Councils Sleep Safe & Sound Ministry. Local councils include all of Dodge County and serve people of all faiths.

One of the things that St. Vincent de Paul has done over the last bunch of years is weve brought in new mattresses, said Beaver Dam Thrift Store Manager Ben Nelson. One reason is to give them away to people in need, and of course when we have an apartment fire  about one a year  its good to have something in stock so we can help people immediately.

Another reason is to sell them to the general public, with profits used to help the charitys mission. Either way can provide profound benefits.
Nordhaus is an employee at Arrowhead Conveyor in Oshkosh. He said when he learned about the pajama collection, he mentioned it to his daughter thinking it would be a perfect idea for Williams birthday party.

His birthday is so close to Christmas and kids get so much stuff then. His mom decided that for his birthdays they would donate gifts to different causes. Theyve given to the Humane Society, Toys for Tot, and last year because of COVID they asked people to donate money to a charity, he said.

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With a smile on his face (hidden under his Paw Patrol mask), William handed over the items saying they should go to the kids who dont have any jammies.

As a thank you for his kindness, Busse/SJI Manufacturing Manager Mike Trimberger provided the young boy with a name badge and declared him an honorary employee for the afternoon. He toured the plant with his family and was thrilled to climb up and sit in the seat of a forklift.

Trimberger commented, To see a young kid start that and keep it going each birthday is great.
Baking and pecans have long gone hand in hand for Alexandra Coppinger, who, along with her mother, owns Common Tart bakery in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

I was always with my mom in the kitchen, but one of my first memories of baking on my own was when I was about 8 years old, I made pecan pie bars, she says. Her mom was supposed to make them for an event but got sick, so Coppinger, who didnt want to miss the fun, tackled the dessert herself.

Pulling those off helped me realized I wanted to cook for a career. Coppinger admits that she wasnt a huge fan of pecans back then, but she sure is now. I adore cooking with them, said the chef. I love the texture they add to our creamy pie fillings, and obviously, they add a nutty flavor too.

Coppinger always recommends giving pecans a quick toast in the oven before using them in a recipe, which will boost their buttery taste. She also suggests storing the nuts in the freezer to lengthen their shelf life. The oils in them can spoil, she explains.

Another pro tip? Be mindful of the order in which you add pecans to baked goods. I like to add pecans  and any nuts, actually  in the middle of mixing your dry ingredients, so they get coated with flour, says Coppinger. That keeps them from falling to the bottom of the bowl and keeps you from overworking everything since you dont have to mix again as you would if you added the nuts at the end.

Here, the esteemed baker shares four of her favorite pecan-packed recipes, a few which are best sellers at Common Tart.

+2 Sun-dried Tomato and Zucchini Quiche with Herbed Roasted Pecans We always love quiche, but the addition of herbed pecans takes this morning (or anytime!) dish to the next level.

+3 Carrot Cake The more pecans the better is this cakes mantra.

+2 Balsamic Shellacked Pecans Upgrade your charcuterie board with these sweet and tart crunchy delights.

Classic Pecan Pie This traditional take offers a bit of surprise with a sprinkle of orange zest.
This is our common European border, where humanity and order apply, she said.

Baerbock said she raised the matter of rule of law with Rau, even if its uncomfortable. But thats what marks strong friendships, facing uncomfortable questions.

Poland is involved in a bitter dispute with the European Commission, the EU's executive arm. The commission is withholding pandemic recovery funds from Poland over the erosion of judicial independence.

The ongoing dispute was deeply exacerbated after the Polish constitutional tribunal, under the political influence of the governing Law and Justice party, ruled this fall that Polish law has primacy over EU law in key areas.

The government in Warsaw argues that the European Commission's holding back of funds itself a violation of EU law.

Some Poles are afraid that the dispute could put the country on the path to an eventual departure from the EU, so-called Polexit.

Citing opinion polls that show strong support in Poland for EU membership, Baerbock said it would be wrong for Germans to consider themselves as the better Europeans.
BUFFALO, N.Y. (AP)  Starbucks workers at a store in Buffalo, New York, voted to unionize on Thursday, a first for the 50-year-old coffee retailer in the U.S. and the latest sign that the labor movement is stirring after decades of decline.

The National Labor Relations Board said Thursday that workers voted 19-8 in favor of a union at the Elmwood Avenue location, one of three stores in Buffalo where elections were being held. A second store rejected the union in a vote of 12-8, but the union said it might challenge that result because it wasn't confident all of the eligible votes had been counted. The results of a third store could not be determined because both sides challenged seven separate votes.

Starbucks and Workers United, the union vying to represent the workers, have five business days to submit their objections to the election results, the labor board said. If objections are filed, there could be a series of hearings and appeals that delay certification of the votes. If no objections are filed, the results could be certified as early as Dec. 16.
More than 300 lawsuits have been filed so far in Houston and will be consolidated and handled by one judge. Scott, concert promoter Live Nation and other companies associated with the event are among those being sued. Additionally, Scott and the event organizers are the focus of a criminal investigation by Houston police. No one has been charged, and no timetable has been set for when the investigation would be completed.

Travis Scott, his entourage, handlers, promoters, managers, hangers on and everyone else who enable him are the problem, said Tony Buzbee, an attorney representing the family of 21-year-old Axel Acosta Avila who died, in a statement provided to the AP on Thursday. Everything that Travis Scott has done or said since ten people died and hundreds of others were injured at his concert has been lawyer driven and calculated to shift blame from him to someone else.

In the interview, Scott denied that his history of encouraging fans to rush the stage or push past security contributed to the chaos at Astroworld.
The DNR estimates the total cost to businesses and local governments would be about $5.6 million in the first year and about $3.9 million per year going forward. Nine municipal water systems are expected to exceed the limits, requiring treatment systems that could together cost about $3.7 million per year over two decades.

But the agency says cleaner water could save Wisconsin residents at least $100 million a year in medical bills.

The proposed drinking water standards are similar to those adopted by Illinois but less restrictive than those in Minnesota and Michigan.

More analysis

While the EPA has said its safe to drink water with PFOS and PFOA concentrations up to 70 ppt, the agency now says there may be health risks at levels below just 1 ppt. An analysis of hundreds of new studies must now be reviewed by outside scientists before the agency sets standards based on what it determines is economically feasible.
Mair has 20 years of experience in restaurant business and recently took over after her parents decided to retire. One thing Mair would like to explore in the future is specials for lunch and dinner.

It was always the plan for me to take over and I was part owner before this change, Mair said as her father walked past. But as you can see my parents are still a part of the business.

Mair said the community support of the restaurant has been very good over the last 11 years.

Last March as the COVID-19 pandemic began and government mandates shut down restaurants, Suzys like other restaurants needing to stay open began offering to-go orders.

We were offer take out dinners but not delivery options, Mair said. The kitchen staff stayed in the kitchen and it was very strange. We still get to-go orders but now they can come in and get their food.

Mair said she was excited when they could open the front of house back up to customers.

It was really great to see that customers stayed and supported us through those difficult months, Mair said.
Letter on refusal to extend Zimbabwean Exemption Permit

Dear Minister Motsoaledi,

RE: DECISION TO NO LONGER ISSUE EXTENSIONS TO ZIMBABWEAN EXEMPTION PERMIT (ZEP) HOLDERS

1. We refer to the above, the Ministry of the Presidencys statement on the Cabinet Meeting of 24 November 2021 made on 25 November 2021, and Immigration Directive 10 of 2021 dated 29 November 2021. A copy of the statement and directive is attached as A and B.

2. We write on behalf of Zimbabwean Exemption Permit (ZEP) holders currently residing in South Africa whose lives will be thrown into disarray as a result of cabinets decision to no longer issue extensions to Zimbabwean ZEP holders almost with immediate effect.

3. The organisations listed below write to you to firstly appeal to you to rescind this decision and directive on purely humanitarian grounds. Zimbabwe remains a country in turmoil and continues to experience serious economic and political challenges and violence. Further, given that this special dispensation covers a time span of over a decade, many Zimbabweans have built their families, lives, and homes in South Africa. Estimates indicate that up to half a million children will be affected by this decision resulting in severe trauma through uprooting their lives in South Africa and exposing them to trauma and suffering in Zimbabwe, undermining the best interests of the child principle enshrined in South Africas Constitution.

4. In amplification of the above, thousands of Zimbabwean ZEP holders have positively contributed to South Africas economy, communities, and society more broadly. The cabinets decision to no longer issue extensions to ZEP holders will not only impact the individual permit holder but South Africa as a whole, at all levels of society, will also experience a great loss should these permit holders be forced to return to Zimbabwe.

5. We further note that the ZEP was implemented by the Department of Home Affairs (DHA) with the aim of creating a record of Zimbabweans who had, until then, been living in South Africa undocumented, granting them amnesty, and regularizing undocumented Zimbabwean nationals living in South Africa. The implementation of the ZEP further alleviated the burden placed on the asylum system.

6. We are concerned that the above decision is counter to the DHAs initiatives and will likely create a category of undocumented persons in South Africa undermining any work that the Department of Home Affairs has undertaken in the past to regularize undocumented Zimbabwean nationals living in South Africa.

7. Additionally, those ZEP holders who changed over from the asylum system to the immigration system are now at risk of refoulment. We are deeply concerned that the cabinets decision will directly result in people facing persecution, harm, and loss of life.

Immigration Directive 10 of 2021 and Ministry of the Presidency: Statement on the Cabinet Meeting of 24 November 2021

8. In terms of the Immigration Directive 10 of 2021, holders of the ZEP should apply for mainstream visas that they qualify for and ensure that their applications comply with the provisions and requirements of the Immigration Act and Immigration Regulations and that [a]ll applicants with a ZEP must be allowed to travel freely in and out of South Africa until 31 December 2022.

9. Additionally, applicants are required to submit their passports together with their visa applications. As this process is likely to be lengthy, applicants will be without their passports for long periods of time resulting in them not being able to travel freely in and out of South Africa until 31 December 2022. As you may know, many ZEP holders are employed in South Africa and will not be able to return to Zimbabwe to lodge a visa application without compromising their employment given the challenges. Additionally, many children of ZEP holders are enrolled in either primary, secondary, or tertiary school for 2022 and will also need to return to Zimbabwe to apply for a visa in terms of the Immigration Act compromising their education for reasons mentioned above.

10. Further, although applicants who are aware of the option to apply for a waiver through VFS Global offices in South Africa will likely do so, we are concerned about the burden this will place on VFS Global and the Department of Home Affairs. Many of Lawyers for Human Rights clients who have applied for visas through VFS Global in South Africa have waited for the outcome of their applications from the Department of Home Affairs for longer than 12 months and in some cases, 2 years. This exceeds the grace period for ZEP holders.

11. Immigration Directive 10 of 2021 further states that [a]ll companies, employers, learning institutes and banks are too kindly note that applicants who are in possession of a ZEP expiring on 31 December 2021 must be allowed to continue with their services, provided that they submit proof of application for a main stream visa in terms of the Immigration Act and Immigration Regulations. Proof of application must be a VFS receipt.

12. We submit with concern that a VFS receipt is not a form of valid documentation. Through our organisations experiences, migrants are regularly denied services, including healthcare and education, and are arrested due to their irregular documentation status. This includes those who have received appointment slips for 2022 to apply for asylum at a respective Refugee Reception Office and those with VFS Global receipts for pending visa applications or appeals.

13. The Ministry of the Presidencys statement on the Cabinet Meeting of 24 November 2021 is also silent on this. Clause 6.3 of the Statement holds that [f]ollowing its deliberations, Cabinet decided to no longer issue extensions [sic] to the Zimbabwean special dispensations. However, it decided on a 12 months grace period at the expiry of the current ZEP.

14. Clause 6.4 states that [d]uring this period, the holders of this permit should apply for other permits appropriate to their particular status or situation. At the expiry of this 12-month period, those who are not successful will have to leave South Africa or be deported.

15. The above statement makes no provision for the legal status of people who will wake up on the 1 January 2022 and have expired permits in their hands. The implication of this is already being felt. Children are being denied the opportunity to register for grade 1 and grade 8, employers are refusing to renew contracts of employment for those working as domestic workers because their permits will be expired, and banks are denying services or closing and/or freezing accounts of individuals affected.

16. Cabinets statement and the Department of Home Affairs subsequent Immigration Directive, both of which contain sparse and unclear information, has sparked panic and uncertainty for many Zimbabweans living in South Africa.

17. Section 195 of the Constitution underscores the basic values and principles governing public administration. The section provides Public administration must be governed by the democratic values and principles enshrined in the Constitution, including the following principles: Public administration must be accountable. Transparency must be fostered by providing the public with timely, accessible and accurate information

18. Cabinet in the issuance of this directive fails to provide written reasons as required by section 33 of the Constitution which provides that Everyone has the right to administrative action that is lawful, reasonable and procedurally fair. Everyone whose rights have been adversely affected by administrative action has the right to be given written reasons

19. The Promotion of Administrative Justice Act of 2002 (PAJA) gives credence to Section 33 of the Constitution. Section 3(2)(b) in particular provides that, in order to ensure procedural fairness, all persons whose rights are materially and adversely affected by administrative action are entitled to;

adequate notice of the nature and purpose of the proposed administrative action;

a reasonable opportunity to make representations (the audi alteram partem principle);

a clear statement of the administrative action;

adequate notice of any right of review or internal appeal, where applicable; and

adequate notice of the right to request reasons in terms of section 5 of PAJA

20. Whilst the ZEPs were enacted through section 31(2)(b) of the Immigration Act also referred to as the ministerial discretion. This discretion is not absolute. The Minister is still accountable under both the Constitution and PAJA.

21. In the absence of the Presidency and/or the Department of Home Affairs rescinding its decision, subsequent statement, and immigration directive, we further seek clarity on the following 

What is the immigration status of ZEP holders whose permits expire on 31 December 2021;

Will the grace period be extended to those who submitted applications before 31 December 2022 but have not yet received the outcome of their applications before the end of the grace period;

Will former asylum seekers be permitted to submit an application for asylum again;

What steps has or will the Department of Home Affairs take to disseminate this information to affected persons; and

What steps has or will the Department of Home Affairs take to disseminate this information to Government service providers, banks, employers, police officials, and other service providers.

22. We kindly request your written response by no later than close of business on 17 December 2021. Should you have any queries regarding the above, you may contact sharone@lhr.org.za.

Yours faithfully,
Op-ed: Same, same but different: reflections on binding treaty negotiations

An attorney in the Business and Human Rights programme at CALS reflects on the treaty negotiation process at the United Nations in Geneva this year

A few months ago, I had the pleasure of attending (deep breath) the 7th session of the open-ended intergovernmental working group on transnational corporations and other business enterprises with respect to human rights. I was part of a delegation of non-governmental organisations there to discuss the 3rd draft of the proposed treaty on business and human rights at the United Nations in Geneva.

This working group was established by the Human Rights Council to formulate a treaty to regulate businesses and their impact on human rights, so you can imagine what a surreal moment it was for me (a young African) to be there. It was time for me to be the change I want to see in the world and stand up for humanity, but, of course, if history has taught me anything, it is that nothing is ever the way you imagine it. Although most of us can agree that there is a regulatory gap that allows corporations to escape liability for human rights violations, how exactly to fix this is going to take a lot of time and patience.

The session was held from the 25th to the 29th of October 2021 and, during these five days, I had the privilege of presenting the views of African civil society organisations on the treaty. I also experienced first-hand how the negotiations of the text of a treaty take place, and it has left me wondering how we have so many treaties in the world.

The same disagreements that featured in previous sessions and discussions on the treaty appeared. These include the use of and distinction between terms like responsibilities and obligations in relation to business activity. Whilst the duties of states are framed as obligations, previous drafts have framed the duties of corporations as responsibilities. This difference in language is a point of contestation as the former has a stronger connotation than the latter, yet the treaty is meant to regulate business activity. The argument is that corporations must have human rights obligations grounded in the provisions of the treaty as the term responsibility seems more like a social expectation that is merely recommendatory as opposed to mandatory.

Countries like China, Mexico, Brazil, Chile and Panama seem to support the weaker term, which is concerning because China and Brazil are part of the BRICS coalition whose focus is to reform and improve the global economic situation which human rights are arguably an integral part of. Further, the mere fact that this issue is still being debated is a great cause for concern because therein lies the whole point of the treaty: to create a strong regulatory system for the interactions between human rights and business activity. Whilst states like Palestine and Cameroon seem to understand this as they lobbied and emphasised the primacy of human rights, it is going to be a while before the final version of the treaty is drafted.

The lack of consensus also flowed to other provisions of the treaty, from the earliest provisions defining key terms, right through to the access to remedy provisions. Suggestions made by countries like Brazil such as introducing the doctrine of exhaustion under the access to remedies provision and the narrowing of the definitions of terms like "victim" and "human rights abuse" arguably impact the effectiveness of the treaty as they ultimately restrict the application of the treaty. The doctrine of exhaustion would hinder access to justice, especially in the African context where courts are already struggling.

A notable difference, however, is that the United States of America (home to some of the worlds biggest corporations responsible for human rights violations and abuse) was finally in attendance at negotiations. Unfortunately, its presence sought to unravel seven years of work that has been done as it proposed alternative ways to regulate the relationship between business and human rights. Such an attitude, after years of silence, undermines the work and achievements of the working group, states, civil society, and all the individuals who have contributed to the drafting of the treaty thus far. It may have far-reaching implications on the attitudes of others given its global position and influence.

Although the presence of the U.S. at the session is a welcome development in some ways, I had rather hoped to see more of a united front from the Global South and an amplified voice from the African continent especially, as these countries are largely the ones affected by business activities given the extractive nature of their economies. This was, however, not the case: not only did the African states not have a unified voice, but very few were even present to begin with.

Instead, Egypt seemed to downplay the power of corporations, choosing words like potential instead of capacity when referring to the ability of corporations to foster sustainable development while other African countries such as Cameroon called for states to acknowledge the growing economic might of transnational corporations and their impact on human rights. Out of 54 African countries, only 12 were present and this is rather disappointing because their input is a necessity. However, their absence may be justifiable given that the session was held in one of the most expensive cities in the world and most African states do not have the resources required to be present at such sessions. One could even argue that it is exclusionary and ironic that the session was held in Switzerland and not in a state in the Global South, which would be more representative of the victims of human rights violations and abuse.

Having said all this, it would be unfair to dismiss the progress that the 7th session represents. Whilst the event may not be how I imagined it would be, the fact that a third draft on a business and human rights treaty exists to discuss, and that countries showed up during a pandemic to discuss it, is a commendable step in the right direction.

Anesu Dera is an attorney in the Business & Human Rights programme at the Centre for Applied Legal Studies, Wits University
WASHINGTON (AP) - The Supreme Court is leaving in place for now Texas' ban on most abortions.

The justices ruled on Friday that Texas abortion providers can sue over the states ban on most abortions, but for now the law still stands.

The court acted three months after the law went into effect and more than a month after hearing arguments over the law that makes abortion illegal after cardiac activity is detected in an embryo. Thats around six weeks, before some women even know they are pregnant. There are no exceptions for rape or incest.

The same federal judge who already has once blocked the law almost certainly will be asked to do so again.
ALBANY, N.Y. (UPDATED)  Gov. Kathy Hochul announced a statewide indoor mask requirement Friday, just one day after Oneida County Executive Anthony Picente issued a temporary mask order locally.

Hochul says masks will be required in all indoor public places, unless the business or venue implements a vaccine requirement. The mask requirement applies to everyone 2 years old and up, including customers and staff.

AP Photo AP Photo

I share New Yorkers frustration that we are not past this pandemic, but the winter surge is here & we must take action. Starting Monday through January 15, businesses will have the option to implement either a vaccine or mask requirement. 1/  Kathy Hochul (@GovKathyHochul) December 10, 2021

"As Governor, my two top priorities are to protect the health of New Yorkers and to protect the health of our economy. The temporary measures I am taking today will help accomplish this through the holiday season. We shouldn't have reached the point where we are confronted with a winter surge, especially with the vaccine at our disposal, and I share many New Yorkers' frustration that we are not past this pandemic yet," said Hochul. "I want to thank the more than 80 percent of New Yorkers who have done the right thing to get fully vaccinated. If others will follow suit, these measures will no longer be necessary."

According to state data, the seven-day average case rate has increased by 43%, and hospitalizations by 29%, since Thanksgiving.

The mandate will go into effect Monday, Dec. 13, and be reassessed on Jan. 15, 2022, to determine if it will be extended.

Businesses who decide to require proof of vaccination for entry can accept a physical vaccine card, the Excelsior Pass for New York residents or SMART Health Cards issued outside of the state.
LITTLE FALLS, N.Y.  Little Falls is the second city in the Mohawk Valley chosen to receive $10 million in funding to improve its downtown area.

The Downtown Revitalization Initiative awards money to localities across the state to restore downtown areas in hopes of stimulating the local economy.

Little Falls has been preparing its application for DRI funding for the past two years, and was selected in the fifth round along with Gloversville in Fulton County.

The plan is to revitalize the Waterfront District with new apartments, a bourbon distilling site and a new train station.

We submitted a list of 20 projects that will be whittled down in working with the state...we are going to see what projects make sense, said Mayor Mark Blask. We will have a team from little falls to help determine that. It's not going to be Mark Blask, it's not going to be the common council...it's going to be the citizens, the people who live in little falls to make these decisions.

The next step is to use $300,000 of the money awarded to create a strategic investment plan.
NEW HARTFORD, N.Y.  Students in the Camden City School District stopped by Sangertown Square Thursday for the return of Shop with a Cop, a program that connects local police with the kids in the community.

The program has been around for 15 years, but last years event was canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Members of the Oneida County Sheriffs Office, New York State Police and the Camden Police Department were at the event Thursday to help the kids shop.

Donations from the community are used to support the program each year.

Coordinator Tracy Hooker says the kids can buy gifts for themselves or others.

A lot of the kids come to initially they have big things in mind that they want to shop for themselves, and once they get out and start seeing things in stores they end up buying things for family members instead of themselves, and its touching to see, said Hooker.

More than 50 students participated in this years Shop with a Cop event.
INDIANAPOLIS, Ind. (WLFI) - Governor Eric Holcomb said he is concerned about the recent spike in COVID-19 cases.

In a one-on-one interview, News 18 spoke with him about what the state is doing to provide assistance, along with how it plans to move forward in fighting the pandemic.

Governor Eric Holcomb recognized that the majority of hospitalizations are among unvaccinated Hoosiers.

"It truly is in large part a pandemic of the unvaccinated when you look at the number of hospitalizations that we are seeing at the highest level since we've seen them," he said.

Even though he is pro-vaccine, the Governor said he's not in favor of mandating it.

"It is up to the individual we are not going to mandate a vaccine obviously I stood against that with the federal government coming in mandating what we inject in to our body but look the evidence is clear. Get vaccinated."

With Indiana recently being declared a high transmission state by the CDC, several hospitals are seeing a surge of COVID hospitalizations. The governor is responding by giving local communities the resources they need.

"We've got 13 of these teams out right now assisting in this latest surge number 5 depending on how you count. And we have plans to add another 7 more strict teams," Governor Holcomb explained.

Those teams the Governor is referring to include mobile teams, recovery teams, and strike teams to assist health care facilities in need.

News 18 also asked Governor Holcomb if he was concerned about push back from his own party. Should he decide to put COVID-19 safety protocols back in place? This is what he had to say. "I don't mean to sound cavalier about this but that would be the last of my worries. My worries include on a daily basis making sure the state of Indiana is doing our part to provide the resources that locals needs."

However, the Governor admits he is a bit frustrated with those who are choosing not to get the vaccine. "We have hospitals right now turning away other care to care for people that wouldn't be there but for if they were vaccinated," Holcomb said.

Which is why he will continue to encourage Hoosiers to get vaccinated. "If you don't want to lose your own life or a loved one or unknowingly pass it on get vaccinated that is the easy answer."

In part two of our conversation, we will discuss the legislative priorities of the Democratic lawmakers, including their push to legalize Marijuana.

The governor will explain why he isn't in favor of that legislation.

Part two will air on Monday night.
WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. (WLFI)  Wonderland Education held an open house Dec. 9 to showcase their range of "experiential labs", or hands-on education programs. The non-profit had high profile visitors including West Lafayette mayor John Dennis, city police chief Troy Harris and fire chief Jeff Need.

Wonderland CEO and Purdue University professor Tong Jin Kim says the education center started as a research project in an individual school seven years ago. Since then, he has worked to expand the idea so young students across any school could have access to engagement based classrooms.

"We want to prepare for the future," Kim said. Wonderland has a number of technology based programs, including 3D printing, coding, and media creation. However, it also blends in art with k-pop dance, cooking and artwork among others.

"We are missing pieces in the future of our education, and Wonderalnd will have an integration of technology."

Wonderland currently has 6 labs with different experiences. Kim plans on expanding to the West Lafayette community center to offer more services.

On Tuesdays, "Wonder Tuesday" offers students free programs sponsored by the West Lafayette Police Department, West Lafayette Fire Department, Tippecanoe County, Cook Biotech, and IU Health Arnett.

"They can learn about what the hospital is doing, what the police department is doing, what the fire department is doing, a lot of these pieces are missing from the common education," Kim said.

West Lafayette Mayor John Dennis believes Wonderland Education will be able to follow up on its promises of binding technology and art through student engagement.

"We've heard pitches like that before but this is the fist time that we had a group that had the backing and the had the access to technology to make it really work," Dennis said.

Dennis was presented with the vision of an expanded Wonderland at the community center through virtual reality, which impressed him.

"I literally thought I was in a room with a massive tree fort, running water, miles of hallway, it was phenomenal... I've never seen anything like that."
Interests converge as data science program grows

It started with students approaching faculty members to create self-designed majors around the use of data.

Our first undergraduate approached me back in 2017 asking about a self-designed major, where she wanted to focus on the intersection between data analytics and  to my surprise and consternation at the time  dance. Dance! said Dan Runfola, an assistant professor of Applied Science at William & Mary. Here was a student truly taking the 'communication' aspect of data science to heart  pushing boundaries, simply because she had no idea these boundaries existed in the first place.

Data science is a scholarly area that builds upon the intersection of computer science, statistics, mathematics, information science and the application domains in which these datasets are used, Runfola explained.

While its foundation is within STEM, data science often grows by taking advantage of its footprint not only within the natural, computational, and physical sciences, but also humanities, social sciences, business, law  and even, in the case of Runfolas student, the performing arts.

Student enrollments in William & Marys data science courses (including summer courses) continue to rise. Currently there are 79 students pursuing the B.S. degree.

Students were asking for our help building pieces of data science into self-designed majors that integrated their academic interests, said Matthias Leu, associate professor of Biology current director of William & Marys Data Science program. A core group of faculty started talking about how we might design a formal academic program, and the excitement just keeps building.

To date, the faculty have designed and garnered formal approval from the Commonwealth of Virginia for a data science minor and a major leading to a B.S. degree. Next up: creating a discrete academic unit embedded with the Department of Computer Science. After that, focus will be on designing a second major leading to a B.A. degree.

Student enrollments continue to rise, and the Commonwealth of Virginia is committed to data science at W&M. This year Arts & Sciences plans to hire up to five new faculty members to meet demand and create a center of scholarly excellence.

Training undergraduate students is a commonwealth priority, and Virginia has provided funding for faculty in data science, including monies focused on recruitment of faculty from backgrounds underrepresented in the field. This support is in addition to Tech Talent funds for state universities to build cohorts of students graduating with sophisticated technical skills.

William & Marys Data Science program, initially led by Runfola, has benefited from the leadership of Leu and will now be led by world-renowned data scientist and incoming director Anthony Stefanidis, professor of computer science, and incoming associate director Jaime Settle, the universitys Wakefield Term Distinguished Associate Professor of Government. Stefanidis joined W&M in 2020 after having chaired a large and active department and creating a research center with more than $40 million of federal and private funding at George Mason University. Settle is a distinguished researcher, investigating social networks and codirecting a social science research methods center at William & Mary.

What an exciting time we find ourselves in regarding data science in Arts & Sciences, Stefanidis said. We have remarkably talented faculty across our disciplines and such strong student interest. It will be such a pleasure to collaborate with so many colleagues across A&S, to strengthen data science and build its future in W&M in a way true to our history and identity.

Similarly, Settle noted, There is such passion among the faculty for what data science can teach students about ways of thinking about problems and seeking answers.

William & Marys Data Science program takes a highly interdisciplinary approach. Program faculty have a range of knowledge and backgrounds, encompassing digital humanities, geology, health sciences, geospatial analysis, ethics, government, computer science, and Chinese (to name a few).

We are excited to build and innovate our Data Science program as a strong and integral presence in the A&S academic community, said Maria Donoghue Velleca, dean of Arts & Sciences. The focus on data literacy, critical thinking, problem-solving, and communication aligns so well with the philosophy of a liberal arts education. We are especially grateful for the incoming leadership of Professors Stefanidis and Settle.

A new structure places Data Science as an autonomous unit of the Department of Computer Science and will have related affiliate research labs located across the campus.

We make the program accessible to first-year students, getting them up to speed with the shared programming tools and analytical skills, said Settle. Along the way, students can pursue what they love across the liberal arts curriculum, and integrate data science as a smart decision career-wise and incredibly useful in informing their other academic courses.

Leu said that in his conversations with students they repeatedly mention three things that excite them about the Data Science program.

First, they can obtain a degree that prepares them for well-paid employment without attending graduate school, he said. Second, they like the focus on real-world applications in our courses. And third, our interdisciplinary approach in teaching and research allows them to specialize in areas of their choice.

Stefanidis points out that the goal of the universitys Data Science program is to assemble a strong group of faculty scholars who are doing original research in the field, and to support their collaborative activities with W&M faculty and students across disciplines.

Data Science will be taking advantage of the liberal arts approach that characterizes our university, to operate and grow at the intersection of diverse academic disciplines, supporting and supported by them, he said. The unique character of W&M will shape the kind of scholarship our faculty will undertake, to develop a program that will be nationally recognized and train future leaders in the field.

The collaboration and brainstorming among faculty has generated some additional benefits, according to Settle: My own starting point is computational social science work. In my research and teaching Im increasingly interested in ethical aspects: How is my course content nestled into the larger field and context? How can I help students begin to think this through?

The promise of interdisciplinarity is integral to the field of data science, noted Donoghue Velleca. Were looking forward to welcoming new faculty and adding their excitement to our talented mix.
Beaufort is a small city situated in the Beaufort County of the US State of South Carolina. It is the states second-oldest city after the city of Charleston. A major portion of the city is situated on Port Royal Island, one of the most populous Sea Islands located in the Lowcountry region of the State of South Carolina. The city of Beaufort is administered under a council-manager form of government and serves as a popular tourist destination that is well known for its scenic beauty.

Geography Of Beaufort, South Carolina

Aerial view of Beaufort, South Carolina.

The city of Beaufort is located in the midst of a marshy estuary and covers a total area of 87.0 sq. km, of which 15.5 sq. km is occupied by water, and 71.5 sq. km is occupied by land. The city shares the Port Royal Island with some unincorporated parts of Beaufort County and the adjacent town of Port Royal. Small portions of the residential Ladys Island are also included within the city of Beaufort.

Promenade of the Henry C. Chambers Waterfront Park, located south of Bay Street in the Historic District of downtown Beaufort, South Carolina.

The downtown or the historic district area features a spectacular collection of antebellum architecture. Several mansions, commercial buildings, religious places, etc., are located in the historic district that have been built using the antebellum architectural style. About 1.23 sq. km area of the downtown was designated as a National Historic Landmark in 1973. The downtown is further divided into five unique neighborhoods: the Bluff area, the downtown (commercial area), the Old Commons neighborhood, the Point neighborhood, and the Northwest Quadrant. With the city's expansion, more neighborhoods were established in the undeveloped areas situated in the northern and western parts of the historic district. The areas located along Ribaut Road, Boundary Street, and the Robert Smalls Parkway serve as the citys principal commercial corridors. Many shopping centers and eateries are located in these areas. The city of Beaufort is also well known for its military establishments. Several festivals such as Beaufort Shrimp Festival, Home Water Festival, Beaufort International Film Festival are held in the city and attract many tourists. Also located about 24km east of the city of Beaufort is the Hunting Island State Park, which is South Carolinas most visited state park.

Climate Of Beaufort, South Carolina

According to the Koppen climate classification, the city of Beaufort experiences a humid subtropical climate with hot summers and short, cold winters. The warm season lasts from May to September, and July is the hottest month, with the average temperature ranging between 32.2C to 24.4C. The cold season lasts from December to February, and January is the coldest month, with the average temperature ranging between 5.5C to 15.5C.

Population Of Beaufort, South Carolina

As per the 2010 census, about 12,361 people live in the city of Beaufort. The citys population had decreased from the 2000 census, which showed that the city was home to 12,789 people. The city has a population density of 212.35 inhabitants per sq. km. About 67.1% of the citys population is considered White, of whom most are non-Hispanic. The Hispanic group accounts for 6.7% of the citys population, African Americans at 25.7%, Native Americans at 0.3%, Asians at 1.4%, Pacific Islanders at 0.1%, Other races at 1.98%, and 2.6% from two or more races. The American Community Survey conducted in 2010 also revealed that the median income for a household in the city was $36,532, whereas the median income for a family was $42,894.

Brief History Of Beaufort, South Carolina

Historic Cuthbert House in Beaufort, South Carolina.

As per written historical sources, the Beaufort area was discovered in 1514 by the Spanish Captain Diego Guilarte de Salazar. Several Europeans also explored the Lowcountry region, and in 1711, the city was founded by the Anglo-American colonists. In the initial years, the city faced many attacks from the Native American tribes and threats from the Spanish Empire. The city initially flourished as a shipbuilding center but later became a slave society and a center for Lowcountry planters. After the Battle of Port Royal, the Union forces occupied the Beaufort area. Along with all the surrounding Sea Islands, the city of Beaufort played a vital role during the Reconstruction Era that followed the Civil War. From the late 20th century onwards, the city became a popular destination for tourists.
Weather Alert

...The National Weather Service in Paducah KY has issued a Flood Warning for the following river in Kentucky...Illinois... Ohio River at Paducah affecting McCracken, Livingston, Pope and Massac Counties. .Rainfall last weekend has caused rises in water levels along the Lower Ohio River Basin this week. This will cause minor flooding near Paducah early next week. For the Ohio River...including Paducah, Olmsted Lock and Dam, Cairo...Minor flooding is forecast. PRECAUTIONARY/PREPAREDNESS ACTIONS... Motorists should not attempt to drive around barricades or drive cars through flooded areas. Caution is urged when walking near riverbanks. Turn around, don't drown when encountering flooded roads. Most flood deaths occur in vehicles. Additional information is available at www.weather.gov. && ...FLOOD WARNING IN EFFECT FROM MONDAY EVENING THROUGH TUESDAY EVENING... * WHAT...Minor flooding is forecast. * WHERE...Ohio River at Paducah. * WHEN...From Monday evening to early Wednesday morning. * IMPACTS...At 39.0 feet, Minor flooding occurs affecting mainly bottomland and surrounding low lying areas. * ADDITIONAL DETAILS... - At 11:00 AM CST Wednesday the stage was 33.6 feet. - Forecast...The river is expected to rise above flood stage Monday evening to a crest of 39.0 feet Monday evening. It will then fall below flood stage Tuesday evening. - Flood stage is 39.0 feet. - http://www.weather.gov/safety/flood &&

...Accumulating Snow on Thursday... A system will spread light to moderate accumulating snow across the region Thursday. Temperatures are expected to range from the upper teens along the Interstate 64 corridor to mid 20s elsewhere, so the snow should quickly accumulate. This will likely impact travel across the region. Confidence in placement and strength of the snow band continues to increase. Highest amounts are expected across western Kentucky where amounts of 1 to 3 inches are possible. Amounts are expected to decrease north of the Ohio River and back into southeast Missouri. Snow quickly develops during the morning, with peak intensity occurring during the late morning and early afternoon. The snow should taper off during the mid to late afternoon. Behind this system, the coldest air of the season is set to arrive Thursday night. Wind chills into the single digits to just below zero are forecast by Friday morning. Stay tuned to later forecasts as this event nears.
21 Day Review: Wales to stay in Alert Level Zero amid strong advice & people asked to flow before they go

The First Minister will announce Wales will remain in Alert Level Zero following the latest 21 day review  however he is urging everyone to get the booster vaccine, to take regular lateral flow tests before going out and to wear face coverings.

The First Minister Mark Drakeford is urging everyone to have their Covid-19 booster vaccine as he warned Wales is facing a new wave of infections caused by the omicron variant. Wrexhams current 7 day benchmark case rate to the 4th of December is 602.4 per 100k population.

More than a million people have already received their booster vaccine in Wales but the programme is being speeded up following the emergence of the fast-moving variant.

In the usual Welsh Government trail they say the First Minister will say at his regular 21-day review press conference, to be held tomorrow lunchtime (Friday 10th), that even though only a handful of cases of omicron have so far been confirmed in Wales, we must be prepared for cases to rise quickly and sharply.

Omicron was first identified in South Africa just over two weeks ago. It has quickly spread around the world, including to the UK. There is now widespread community transmission in many parts of England and Scotland.

First Minister Mark Drakeford said: The emergence of the omicron variant is another worrying development in this long-running pandemic. We are concerned about the speed it is moving and its potential to infect large numbers of people.

We are speeding up the roll-out of boosters in response to the new variant. Were increasing the number of clinics and extending opening hours.

Every single vaccination is a small victory against the virus  so please make getting your vaccine or booster a priority.

This will be the best Christmas present you can give yourself and your family this year.

The trail explains there are a number of other measures people can take to help protect themselves from coronavirus, including the new omicron variant.

The First Minister will ask people to take regular lateral flow tests before going out and to wear face coverings in all public places help protect people in the lead up to Christmas.

Wales will remain at alert level zero after the latest review of the covid regulations. However, with the spread of the Omicron variant, the Welsh Government is strongly advising:

People flow before they go. This means taking a lateral flow test before going out  whether thats to a Christmas party; Christmas shopping; visiting friends or family; going to any crowded or busy place or before travelling.

If the test is positive, dont go out. Arrange for a PCR test and self-isolate.

People to wear face coverings in pubs and restaurants, when they arent eating or drinking. Everyone must wear face coverings in most other indoor public places, in accordance with the law, including in cinemas and theatres.

The First Minister added: None of us wanted to hear about the news of this new variant. After almost two years of the pandemic, we had all hoped that we could put coronavirus behind us this Christmas.

But, we have faced challenges many times during this pandemic. And we have learned from each one. We are not back at square one.

Please do everything you can to protect yourself and your loved ones. Please follow all the advice and all the measures which have kept us safe over the last couple of years. And lets stay safe and well this Christmas.
Chirk-based community organisation wins national social enterprise award

A Chirk-based community organisation has been crowned the winner at the UK Social Enterprise Awards.

Glyn Wylfa, which includes Caffi Wylfa, won the Transformative Community Business Award at this years ceremony, which was held at the Guildhall in Central London on December 8.

The social enterprise established itself eight years ago as a cafe, community and tourist hub and business centre as a social enterprise for the benefit to the local community.

In the last year alone it has increased sales income by 15 per cent and net profit/surplus by 30 per cent, which was used for energy saving and customer benefit investments while also doubling their charitable and local donations.

Each year the cafe welcomes 45,000 visitors, employs 13 and is open 7 days a week and the business centre houses a number of successful businesses, plus the local Police Station, that in total employ approximately 30 local people.

Brian Colley, finance and operations director said: On behalf of our directors, employees, tenants and customers, we are tremendously proud to win this award and it makes all the hard work so rewarding 

The national awards, organised by Social Enterprise UK (SEUK) recognises excellence and outstanding achievements by social enterprises, businesses set up to for a social or environmental purpose that reinvest or donate the majority of their profits to meet their mission.

From tackling the climate emergency to reducing homelessness, social enterprises are taking on some of the biggest challenges we face, using trade to change lives and protect the planet. They have also been at the heart of community responses to the pandemic, providing essential services from food deliveries to health care with many pivoting their models to keep on supporting the people they are set up to help.

There are 100,000 of these businesses in the UK contributing 60 billion to the economy and employing two million people.

The annual celebration of British social enterprises was hosted by comedian, writer, and actress Suzi Ruffell

Peter Holbrook, chief executive of Social Enterprise UK said: In what has been an incredibly challenging year social enterprises have given us a real sense of hope.

Theyve shown us what it means to put people and communities first, showing real resilience and strength without compromising on their values, integrity and impact.

From taking on the injustices in the food system and using technology to support people experiencing homelessness to being on the frontline of supporting communities through the pandemic  this years winners represent not just the best of business but the future of business.
First Minister urges caution as Wales waits to see impact of Omicron elsewhere

Coronavirus restrictions in Wales will now be reviewed every week, rather than every three weeks, First Minister Mark Drakeford has said.

During a press conference this lunchtime, he confirmed Wales will remain in Alert Level Zero following the latest 21 day review  however he is urging everyone to get the booster vaccine, to take regular lateral flow tests before going out to crowded or busy events or to see friends and family  with a reminder to wear face coverings.

Mr Drakeford said: Over the last week the cabinet here has been reviewing the Coronavirus regulations. Weve carefully considered what protections we need to keep well safe from the current delta wave that wave is still with us now.

And then to look as to how we can protect people from the Omicron wave which we know is coming our way.

This is a very challenging balance.

We may be about a week behind what is happening in other parts of England and Scotland and that may give us a little bit more time here in Wales to learn and to act. 

But because of the speed at which things may change, the Cabinet will move from a three weeks cycle of decision making to a one week cycle.

That means all the things that Im announcing today are here for the next week and then we will review the situation again.

Well be monitoring the public health circumstances very closely to consider if we need to put additional protections in place to keep us safe.

With FM pointing to Scotland (& England) worth noting Scotland's FM also doing a briefing now & she has said Omicron could overtake Delta in days with R likely 2 or closer to 3  no insight yet on seriousness of illness.  Wrexham.com (@wrexham) December 10, 2021

He said current arrangements will be in place for the next seven days then this time next week, we will be reviewing all the evidence, everything that is happening in Scotland in London, in particular the emerging evidence from South Africa. He said.

We will know more about the extent to which Omicron has come into Wales.

Omicron infections in Wales are very modest at the moment he said but we must expect that to rise, then well make another set of decisions when weve gathered all that learning and we know the situation we will face in a weeks time but for the week ahead.

We think we can continue to manage things in a way that is safe and keeping Wales open.

FM says generally North Wales tests go to a lab in Manchester where the S-gene indicator for Omicron can be spotted. So appears confidence intelligence on spread/uptick will be trackable locally as a result.  Wrexham.com (@wrexham) December 10, 2021

The First Minister spoke about the possible spectrum of Omicrons impact, Were not completely sure how severe an illness the Omicron variant will provide. So theres a lot of work going on to find out that.

I think we know it will spread very fast, but will it be more severe? We dont know enough about that.

The context in the United Kingdom is different to the South African context. The age structure of our population is different. The nature of our health service is different, and we have a much more highly vaccinated population with, as I said a million people in Wales already having had their boosters, and we dont know exactly how stronger protection that will provide.

If we are at a fortunate end of the spectrum, milder illness, that the booster program gives you a significant defence against it, then the models show that the impact will be very real because of the speed, but that is probably absorbable by our public services.

If it turns out that the variant is as severe, or more severe than Delta, if the vaccine escape is greater than we would have hoped for, then models will show that that impact will be much more difficult to manage.

Were not at a point where the modeling is sufficiently secure for us to know which of those paths, but thats thats the spectrum for you.

A spectrum between it being difficult but manageable, to being difficult and additional actions being needed in order to manage it.

You can view the full briefing on the below video:
Wrexham dental practice cleans up at the Dentistry Awards

The largest event of the year for the dental industry was held this month in the Athena in Leicester  with Ruabon Road Dental Practice winning awards.

Over five hundred dental employees gathered at the Dentistry Awards 2021 to celebrate their successes in what the industry has said has been an extremely challenging year and for the first time in its ten year history a practice from North Wales was shortlisted as a finalist.

We were proud to be flying the flag for North Wales says Dan Naylor Clinical Director at Ruabon Road Dental Practice.

As an independent NHS practice in it was an honour to be considered alongside large corporate practices and private city surgeries .

They added that the event was particularly poignant because it was an endorsement of the hard work and determination dental teams across the UK have displayed throughout the pandemic and the challenges it continues to bring.

Instagram influencer and celebrity The Singing Dentist Dr Milad Shadrooh co-hosted the ceremony, presenting Ruabon Road Dental Practice with Highly Commended awards for Best Patient Care and Best Practice.

Recognition by the dentistry industry is a real boost after such a tough year, said Dan.

It bears testimony to how our team went above and beyond to deliver outstanding patient care in the face of real adversity. Our newly acquired awards are proudly displayed in Reception for our patients to see.

We are always grateful for their support which has been even more prevalent since the nominations were announced as we have been flooded with positive messages of encouragement and appreciation making us proud to be part of such a wonderful community.
The UKs High Court has ruled that the United States government can extradite WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange to face life imprisonment in the US under the Espionage Act.

US authorities successfully brought a High Court challenge against a ruling in January by then-district judge Vanessa Baraitser that Assange should not be sent to the US because of his high risk of suicide.

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is taken from court, May 1, 2019. (AP Photo/Matt Dunham, File)

Lord Burnett, sitting with Lord Justice Holroyde, did his duty to US and British imperialism, declaring Friday that there was no risk of suicide as the US had given assurances that Assange would not be held under highly oppressive prison conditions.

Assange is being sent to the country whose government and security services have been plotting to murder him. At a two-day appeal hearing in October, the High Court heard evidence from Assanges defence team of CIA plots to poison, kidnap and shoot Assange in London.

US diplomatic reassurances cited by the Justices in their ruling today are a cynical fraud. Their very wording offered the caveat that if Assange does something, at some future point, warranting solitary confinement in a maximum security facility, then all bets will be off.

The US Department of Justice, Pentagon and CIA are determined that Assange rots in jail for revealing their crimes. Assange faces 18 criminal charges for publishing thousands of classified files and diplomatic cables in 2010 exposing war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan that were responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands of people. The charges against Assange carry a sentence of up to 175 years in prison.

During Octobers appeal hearing, James Lewis QC, speaking for the gangsters in the White House and Pentagon, stated that binding diplomatic assurances made by the US were a solemn matter and are not dished out like smarties.

Four assurances sent in a Diplomatic Note dated February 5, 2021, claimed that Assange would not be submitted to special administrative measures (SAMs) and detained at the ADX Florence Supermax jail, that while in custody in the US he would receive appropriate clinical and psychological treatment, and that the US would consent to Assange being transferred to Australia to serve any prison sentence he may be given.

Against all medical evidence, the US also insisted that Assanges mental illness does not even come close to being severe enough to rule out extradition.

To this pack of lies, Burnett just as solemnly intoned, That risk [of suicide] is in our judgment excluded by the assurances which are offered. It follows that we are satisfied that, if the assurances had been before the judge [Baraitser], she would have answered the relevant question differently.

Assanges lawyers accurately described the US assurances as meaningless and vague, explaining they did not remove the risk of conditions of administrative isolation. His lawyers insisted Baraitser had acted in accordance with expert medical evidence regarding Assanges mental state when she ruled that the special administrative measures in which Assange would most likely be held would have a severe negative impact on his mental health.

Assanges legal team presented evidence at the two-day appeal of the extreme measures of surveillance against their client while being forced to seek refuge in the Ecuadorean Embassy, emphasising recent disclosures about CIA plans from the same period in time to seriously harm Julian Assange. But this fell on deaf ears as a predetermined verdict, described by Assanges fiance Stella Moris as a grave miscarriage of justice was issued.

The two senior judges ordered the case should be returned to Westminster Magistrates Court, with a pro-forma direction that a district judge send the case to UK Home Secretary Priti Patel, a vicious right-winger who will deliver the coup de grace against Assanges head.

Given this record it is by no means certain that Assanges likely appeal to the Supreme Court will be allowed.

This was the intended outcome of Baraitsers earlier ruling, which upheld the US case for extradition in its entirety, while accepting a real risk of suicide and blocking extradition solely on medical grounds.

Holroyde even rapped Baraitser across the knuckles for not notifying the US authorities of her provisional decision, thereby hampering their ability to give the assurances now provided.

The WSWS on October 27 described the US appeal challenging Baraitsers ruling as a legal abomination in pursuit of a heinous crime:

Assange is being targeted for his and WikiLeakss exposure of war crimes, torture and other human rights abuses, mass surveillance, coup plots, and state corruption. The architects of these crimes, the US and other imperialist governments, are determined to extract a blood price, either through Assanges life imprisonment and the destruction of his physical and mental health, or his murder.

In September, Yahoo! News reported, based on conversations with more than 30 sources, that plans for Assanges kidnap or killing were discussed at the highest levels of the CIA. One former official acknowledged that former CIA director and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo led the discussions. He said later that he makes no apologies for doing so.

Yesterdays verdict is the culmination of a decade long effort to silence Assange, involving the US, British and Australian governments, assisted by Sweden and Ecuador.

Sweden helped organise a sting operation in August 2010, utilising false and entirely discredited allegations of sexual assault to seek Assanges extradition, from where he would have been sent on to the US. Ecuador withdrew Assanges diplomatic immunity in April 2019, allowing a British police snatch squad to seize and imprison him in Belmarsh maximum security prison where he remains.

Washington and London could rely throughout on the active collusion of the Guardian, New York Times and the rest of the worlds media, which waged a campaign of denigration and slander that worsened by the year. Despite their belated discovery of the grave implications for press freedom posed by his prosecution and extradition, they paved the way for it.

The same holds true for Labour and various social democratic parties worldwide, including lefts such as Jeremy Corbyn, who placed their loyalty to imperialism and the rightist forces in their own party above all principled considerations. A myriad of pseudo-left tendencies joined CIA efforts to demonise Assange utilising bogus sex allegations and gender politics as an excuse for supporting the imperialist campaign to get Assange.

Todays filthy court verdict will nevertheless be viewed by millions internationally as a legal travesty and a politically motivated crime. It will create the basis for mobilising the only social force that can genuinely free Julian Assange, the international working class, who regard Assange a hero for his fight to bring the imperialist warmongers to account.
In the latest sign of the stampede to the right by New Zealands Daily Blog, its editor Martyn Bradbury wrote an article on November 24 defending Kyle Rittenhouse, who was recently acquitted of murdering two people and attempting to murder a third at a protest against police racism and violence in Kenosha, Wisconsin.

The acquittal of the teenage gunman has outraged millions of workers and youth around the world. The WSWS warned that the verdict, following a trial that was a travesty of justice, will serve to embolden violent fascistic militias being cultivated around Trump and the Republican Party.

Donald Trump and Kyle Rittenhouse meet at Mar-A-Lago (@DonaldJTrumpJr/Twitter)

Rittenhouse has visited Donald Trump and been offered internships by at least three Republican politicians. He has been glorified by Fox News, Breitbart, the neo-Nazi Daily Stormer, and in New Zealand, by right-wing blogger Cameron Slater and the fascist group Action Zealandia.

Yet, in his thoroughly rancid article, Bradbury sided himself, and the Daily Blog, with Rittenhouses false claim of self-defence, presenting the shooter as an innocent victim of violent rioters.

The blog is a prominent publication of New Zealands ex-left or liberal milieu, orbiting the Labour Party-led government and trade unions. Its regular contributors include Unite union leader Mike Treen, former Alliance Party MP Liz Gordon, former NZ First member Curwen Rolinson, former Mana Party member John Minto, and liberal columnist Chris Trotter. None of these people have distanced themselves from Bradburys embrace of Rittenhouse.

Bradburys account omits the context of the entire case: the shootings occurred during a wave of the largest demonstrations in American history, which saw an estimated 15 to 26 million people take to the streets following the murder of George Floyd to protest the epidemic of police killings and official cover-ups. President Trump demanded a crackdown on the protests, and police and far-right vigilantes ran riot across the country.

On the night of August 25, 2020, the then 17-year-old Rittenhouse travelled to Kenosha and armed himself with an AR-15 semi-automatic rifle, responding to a social media post by the Kenosha Guard, a patriotic vigilante group that was welcomed by local police officers.

Rittenhouse first shot Joseph Rosenbaum, 36, three times, killing him. Anthony Huber, 26, was shot dead after he struck Rittenhouse with a skateboard in a heroic attempt to protect others from the shooter. Gaige Grosskzreutz, a medic, was shot in the arm and suffered a gruesome wound, after he unsuccessfully tried to disarm Rittenhouse.

Bradbury says Rittenhouse was always going to get off these charges because it was always self defense. This turns reality on its head. It was the protesters who had the right to defend themselves against an armed and unstable right-wing thug.

Bradbury takes his cue from Judge Schroeder, who blocked any discussion of Rittenhouses political ideology and motivation during his trial. Prosecutors were not allowed to refer to those he shot as victims or even alleged victims, but defence lawyers could demonise them as looters and rioters.

Bradbury makes no mention of Rittenhouses ardent support for Trump, or his association with the Proud Boys. While on bail, Rittenhouse was photographed celebrating in a bar with members of the fascist gang and making white power hand gestures.

The Daily Blog repeats the main talking points from the far-right. Bradbury demonizes Rosenbaum and Huber by raising their past criminal records, basically implying that they got what they deserved. He then presents their killer as an upstanding citizen unfairly targeted by woke character assassination.

He claims that on the night of the shootings Rittenhouse was offering medical help to protestors and protecting businesses after spending the day cleaning graffiti off the school. He was confronted by people with guns and weapons who attacked him.

In fact, Rosenbaum and Huber were both unarmed, and while Grosskreutz was armed with a handgun, he did not shoot, but had his arm blown apart by Rittenhouse. The shooters claim that he was a trained medic was false.

According to Bradbury, however, the main issue highlighted by the Rittenhouse case is that 17-year-olds think the only option is taking to the streets with machine guns because the police have walked away. This echoes Fox News host Tucker Carlsons notorious statement following the shootings: How shocked are we that 17-year-olds with rifles decided they had to maintain order when no one else would?

The Rittenhouse verdict will be used to normalize fascist gangsters, armed to the teeth, showing up at left-wing protests and gatherings to maintain order. They will terrorize and shoot people, confident of protection from reactionary judges and the political establishment.

As in the 1930s, the promotion of right-wing vigilantism is a conscious response by sections of the ruling class internationally to the growth of working class opposition to capitalist policies that are leading to mass deaths from COVID-19, soaring social inequality and police brutality.

The sympathy for Rittenhouse expressed by the Daily Blog, and ex-left commentators like Glenn Greenwald and Jimmy Dore, reflects the shifting moods among sections of the affluent middle class. Hostile to the emerging movement in the working class and to a fight for socialism, and determined to keep their own privileged position under capitalism, this layer is being swept up in the general lurch to the right.

In New Zealand, the Daily Blog is contributing to an increasingly toxic atmosphere. As in other countries, far-right protests have emerged, demanding freedom from public health restrictions and vaccine mandates. While these forces lack popular support, they are being encouraged by sections of the media and political establishment. Daily Blog contributor John Minto sought to legitimise one recent protest by the fundamentalist Destiny Church, saying it raised genuine, valid concerns.

The Labour Party-led government has already succumbed to pressure to abandon its elimination strategy for COVID-19. With the support of the trade unions, it has promised to end all lockdowns so that businesses can fully resume the extraction of profits from the working class, even as the deadly virus spreads across the country.

The Daily Blog supports this dangerous and criminal reopening drive. At the same time, Bradbury has also promoted the conspiracy theory started by Trump supporters that the coronavirus leaked from a laboratory in Wuhana lie aimed at scapegoating China for the pandemic and whipping up nationalist, pro-war sentiment.

More broadly, the publication supports a Labour government and trade union bureaucracy that is responsible for widening social inequality and poverty. The multi-million dollar handouts to corporations, and the Reserve Banks quantitative easing during the pandemic, combined with inadequate support for workers, have fuelled a housing crisis and a major increase in people relying on charities for food. While the trade unions suppress opposition from the working class, the fascist right seeks to exploit these conditions for its own gain.

The far-right has also been emboldened by the governments constant attacks on immigrants and its efforts to scapegoat foreigners for the social crisis. The Daily Blog, which has posted numerous anti-immigrant articles, enthusiastically promoted Labours 2017-2020 coalition government with the right-wing nationalist and anti-Asian NZ First Party.

As in the US, the entire political establishment is complicit in creating the conditions that carry the real danger of far-right violence. Far from being isolated from such threats, New Zealand experienced one of the worst fascist terror attacks in March 2019, when Brenton Tarrant, an admirer of Trump with links to extreme right groups internationally, massacred 51 people at two Christchurch mosques.

As was the case in the last century, workers and young people seeking to fight against fascism must take up a conscious political struggle against capitalism, which is the source of the social crisis, the disastrous response to the pandemic, nationalism and war. This means fighting for socialism and internationalism, in opposition to the Labour government and its backers, including those promoting nationalist and outright pro-fascist poison via the Daily Blog.
Chicago Public Schools (CPS) parents and educators are calling for schools to return to remote instruction after the death of Jonl Bush, a special education classroom assistant (SECA) at Carnegie Elementary School in the citys Woodlawn neighborhood. The 44-year-old educator died from COVID-19 on November 26, leaving behind a six-year-old daughter. Bush, who had been a CPS employee since 2002, was fully vaccinated, his mother Claudette Bush said.

Claudette Bush, JonLs mother (Source: Chicago Teachers Union)

The elementary school where Bush worked has been hit by a spike in infections, with 22 cases since mid-November and 113 students and school personnel in quarantine as of last Sunday. Despite this, CPS officials, who issued a perfunctory statement on Bushs death, insisted they found no evidence of widespread or unchecked in-school transmission. Therefore, they claimed, There is no public health recommendation or requirement to close this school.

In fact, infections are rising in the nations third largest school district, which has seen 1,119 cases among adults and 3,775 among students since the beginning of the school year. On December 6the last day for which data was availablethere were 193 positive cases among students in the district, nearly double the number reported on any other day this school year. These numbers almost certainly downplay the real number of cases in the schools. Only 9 percent of students are enrolled in the districts weekly testing program, while just 12.6 percent of students under 12 are fully vaccinated, as well as fewer than half of those 12 and older.

Total reported COVID-19 cases for the present school year among adults (school workers) and students at Chicago Public Schools as of 4 pm on December 8, 2021. (Credit: CPS.org)

Claudette Bush spoke at press conference Monday. Im not just hurt, Im angry she declared. Jonl, she said, had received his booster shot last month. Despite this he began to feel tired the week of November 22 but reported to school anyway. By the next day, she said, he was running a low fever and received a positive test result. After isolating from his family over Thanksgiving, he was found dead at home in his favorite chair the following day.

Bush said her son, who also has three siblings working at CPS, was set to become a special education teacher. We were so much looking forward to March when he should have been through with his student teaching, and he could go full time in the classroom. She called on CPS to strengthen its COVID-19 protocols, hoping her sons death would prevent others. Nothings gonna bring him back. But if his passing brings attention, shines a spotlight on a bigger problem, then his death will not have been in vain.

Also speaking was Carnegie parent Alicia Gill, who expressed her anger on Facebook over the attempt by CPS to keep Bushs death under wraps. Why in the hell [is] Andrew Carnegie Elementary School hiding the fact that [a] teacher died over Thanksgiving weekend from COVID? Stating that she had never received an email from the school or district, Gill said she had just attended the funeral of a teacher Saturday. She added, Im sick of it, close all these schools down, period. Gill called for teachers to protest for virtual learning and for parents to help me organize.

Jonl Bush is not the only Chicago educator to have died from COVID-19 recently. Darius Holmes, a 37-year-old adjunct mathematics professor at the City Colleges of Chicago, died on November 18. Their preventable deaths, like those of other CPS educators, students and parents, are entirely the result of the criminal policy of the Biden White House and the Democratic administration of Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot to keep the schools opens despite the surge of cases across the country and, in particular, in the Midwestern states of Illinois, Minnesota, Michigan, Wisconsin and Ohio.

As schools have remained open and restrictions on events and travel have been almost entirely lifted, Illinois has seen a spike in all COVID-19 metrics. According to the latest data, there have been an average of 6,545 new cases per day in the state, and 41 deaths, with over 150 deaths in the past two days alone, the highest daily death tolls in 10 months. Case numbers are now the highest they have been since last falls surge. Additionally, the city and state health departments reported on Monday the first positive case involving the Omicron variant in a Chicago resident.

One Chicago parent tweeted: My immune compromised child has been back to school for a total of 8 days. Hes now in the hospital w COVID. He was in 4 d & then his whole class quarantined. Back 4 d & now positive.

The deadly contagion has had a particularly brutal impact on teachers and support staff. According to the Twitter account @LostToCovid, at least 2,071 educators in the United States have died of COVID-19 in the US, with 1,632 of those deaths occurring since August 1.

Mondays news conference with Claudette Bush was called by the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) and Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Local 73, the union her son belonged to. But the truth is both organizations have blood on their hands for collaborating with city and school officials in forcing teachers and students back into schools.

Graph showing the potential exposure location of COVID-19 cases in Illinois based on state contact tracing (Credit: Illinois Department of Public Health)

Marching in lockstep with the national American Federation of Teachers union, the supposedly left CTU played the central role in the reopening of schools last spring and herding 330,000 students and 35,000 school employees back into dangerous buildings. In February 2021, Chicago teachers were in the forefront of the nationwide resistance to the return to in-person classes, pressing for strike action to protect themselves, their students and communities.

Union President Jesse Sharkey and other CTU officials held dozens of backroom negotiations with Lightfoot and CPS officials, which were all premised on the insistence that schools had to reopen. The CTU, falsely claiming that schools could reopen safely, worked out a series of largely cosmetic protocols and launched a campaign of intimidation to wear down resistance and push through the back-to-school agreement.

While educators are dying and pressing for the full conversion to virtual-only teaching, CTU President Sharkey is once again in negotiations with city and school officials to increase testing and vaccination opportunities for students and families, address cleaning and ventilation needs, hire more staff and agree to a metric that will indicate when a school or the district needs to shift to remote learning, according to the Tribune.

This is no less bogus than last winters back-to-school agreement. The current metrics already demand the closing of the schools, even before the full impact of the winter surge and the Omicron variant hit. The fact is the CTU is complicit with the city and district in concealing the real scope of the current dangers.

But opposition by rank-and-file teachers in Chicago and around the country continues to grow. In Detroit, public school educators at The School at Marygrove (TSM) have conducted a series of sickouts this week, demanding school safety in the aftermath of the Oxford High School shootings and the halting of in-person learning as the COVID-19 test positivity rate reached 19 percent Thursday, according to officials from the Detroit Federation of Teachers. The job action by TSM educators was taken independently of the DFT.

Addressing herself to Chicago educators, one of the leaders of the sickouts told the WSWS, I lend my full support to any teachers who are willing to stand, with or without the backing of their union. Stand strong! Politicians and union leaders say schools must remain open for the mental health of children. What will be the impact on their mental health if their classmate or their teacher dies? It is important that we do whats right by the children and ourselves. We deserve the right to be safe and healthy as a basic human right. I would love to work with any other teachers who have these goals in mind. Stand strong, Chicago teachers. We support you.

The WSWS urges educators, parents and students in Chicago, Detroit and around the country to join the Educators Rank-and-File Safety Committee to oppose the profit-driven back-to-school and back-to-work policy and to fight for a strategy to eliminate COVID-19 and save lives.
On Thursday morning, the state of Oklahoma executed Bigler Jobe Stouffer II, 79, the oldest inmate in the states history to be put to death. He was the second oldest US inmate to be executed since the US Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976. The way was cleared for Stouffers lethal injection after the nations high court denied his last request for a stay at about 8 a.m. Thursday.

This undated photo provided by the Oklahoma Department of Corrections shows Bigler Jobe Stouffer II. Bigler Stouffer II is set to receive a three-drug lethal injection at 10 a.m. Thursday, Dec. 9, 2021, at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAlester, for the 1985 slaying of an Oklahoma City-area teacher. (Oklahoma Department of Corrections via AP, File)

Stouffer was convicted in 1985 of killing of Putnam City elementary schoolteacher Linda Reaves, 34, that same year. He was granted a new trial in 2000 after a federal appeals court agreed that his defense attorneys had been inept. He was convicted again in 2003 but did not exhaust his appeals until 2017.

Stouffer was pronounced dead at 10:16 a.m. by Oklahoma State Prison officials. He maintained his innocence until the end, but said that he preferred to be put to death rather than spend the rest of his life behind the cement walls of prison.

In November, the Oklahoma Board of Pardons and Parole recommended clemency for Stouffer due to concern over the states execution protocol. On November 3, however, Governor Kevin Stitt, a Republican, denied clemency for Stouffer and on November 6 the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals denied his request for a delay of execution.

Stouffer was the second inmate executed by Oklahoma after a six-year hiatus following two lethal injection procedures that had gone horribly wrong. On April 29, 2014, Clayton Lockett writhed and groaned on the execution gurney as Oklahoma utilized midazolam for the first time in an execution. Locketts lawyer reported that his whole upper body was lifting off the table. It took 43 minutes for Lockett to die.

The execution of Charles Warner was originally scheduled for the same day as Locketts. Warners execution was postponed and eventually carried out on January 15, 2015. A witness to his execution said that once midazolam was injected, Warner called out, My body is on fire. No one should go through this.

The Supreme Court ruled 54 in June 2015 in Glossip v. Gross that midazolam could be used in executions. Oklahomas lethal injection protocol includes three drugs: midazolam, a sedative, vecuronium bromide, a paralytic, and potassium chloride, which stops the heart.

Death row prisoner John Marion Grant, the first person executed in Oklahoma since 2015, met his death under this lethal injection protocol on October 28. Dan Snyder, an anchor at the local Fox 25 TV channel, witnessed Grants execution and commented, Almost immediately after the drug was administered, Grant began convulsing, so much so that his entire upper back repeatedly lifted off the gurney. As the convulsions continued, Grant then began to vomit. Multiple times over the course of the next few minutes medical staff entered the death chamber to wipe away and remove vomit from the still-breathing Grant.

Corrections spokesman Justin Wolf claimed that Grants execution was carried out in accordance Department of Corrections protocols and without complication. There have been no reports so far that Stouffer suffered a similar fate as he was being injected with the toxic cocktail of drugs, with an anesthesiologist hired by the state describing the execution as fast and smooth.

After Locketts execution in 2014, Oklahoma reportedly spent $106,042 to revamp its death chamber. The media was given a tour of the execution chamber and was provided an itemized balance sheet listing all the expenses that had gone into supposedly making the state-of-the art killing machine as humane and civilized as possible.

The Guardian reported that the 144 entries on this balance sheet included almost $2,000 spent on four brown leather restraints. A surgical table, commonly referred to as a gurney, carried a price tag of $12,500. The new gurney replaced the last one, purchased in the 1950s, that was used in at least 111 state killings.

Scott Cross, a department of corrections administrator who conducted the tour in autumn 2014, enthused to the Guardian about the new death beds capabilities, This is an electric bed which has the ability to raise or lower to accommodate the needs not only of witnesses in the viewing areas but any needs as far as the offender is concerned. Cross failed to mention at the time that the number of media witnesses had been cut from 12 to five.

Stouffers execution Thursday followed by three weeks the decision by Governor Stitt to grant clemency to death row inmate Julius Jones only hours before he was scheduled to be executed. The case of Jones, who has already spent nearly 20 years in prison, has gained the support of anti-death-penalty activists and numerous celebrities. The governors decision, however, commuted Jones sentence to life in prison without the possibility of parole, meaning he will spend the rest of his life in jail barring unforeseen developments in his case.

Three more executions are scheduled in Oklahoma next year. As many as 26 more could be scheduled in 2022 if death row inmates lose a challenge to the states lethal injection process at a trial in Oklahoma City federal court set to begin February 28. There were 44 prisoners on death row in Oklahoma as of April 1, 2022, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. More than 2,500 condemned prisoners languish on death rows across the US.

Since the Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976, 1,540 men and women have been sent to their deaths nationwide. Oklahoma has carried out 115 during this time, second only to Texas, with 579. Those sent to their deaths have included those convicted for crimes committed as juveniles and foreign nationals denied their consular rights. The US is one of a handful of nations with advanced economies that continue to carry out executions, despite waning public support for the barbaric practice.
The National Guard is being deployed in New York, Maine and New Hampshire in response to the steep rise in COVID-19 hospitalizations and dramatic declines in bed capacity at health care facilities in the three states.

The mobilization of the National Guard is taking place as the seven-day average number of cases has remained above 120,000 and the number of deaths above 1,300 each day in the US. As the new, more transmissible Omicron variant has been confirmed in 21 states, the Delta variant of the virus continues to spread across the country with a pronounced winter surge concentrated in the US Northeast and Midwest.

This screenshot shows National Guard members arrive at Elliot Hospital in Manchester, NH to assist healthcare workers as hospitalizations surge. (Photo: WHDH Boston News)

On CNN on Wednesday evening, epidemiologist Michael Osterholm explained that the entire US will see coronavirus case numbers surge in the coming weeks. Presently, 23 states have experienced an increase of 20 percent or more in the last two weeks.

Dr. Osterholm, the director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, described the surges in the upper Midwest and Northeast as dire. He added, But we expect to see other areas of the country also light up in the next several weeks.

In New York state, the National Guard announced on Wednesday that 120 troopsArmy medics and Air Force medical technicianswere being sent to 12 nursing homes and long-term care facilities across the state. The announcement said that the soldiers being selected have been trained in medical services but were not working in the field professionally.

The nursing home and long-term care facilities where the military personnel are being sent are in the cities of Syracuse, Rochester, Albany, Buffalo, Utica, Plattsburgh, Uniondale, Liberty, Vestal, Olean, Lyons and Goshen. New York Governor Kathy Hochul, a Democrat, issued an order for 60 National Guard teams on December 1.

The deployment is being coordinated by the New York State Department of Health after 50 hospitals in northern New York reported less than 10 percent bed availability.

Maine Governor Janet Mills activated the National Guard on Wednesday in a directive that was accompanied by a press release that said the action was to help alleviate short-term capacity constraints at hospitals and maintain access to inpatient health care services for Maine people amid a sustained surge of COVID-19. The release went on to report that a record high 379 people were hospitalized with the virus in Maine, 117 of those in critical care and 60 on ventilators. There are now has just 42 intensive care unit beds available in the state.

The Democratic governors directive activated up to 75 National Guard soldiers to be used in non-clinical support roles to expand health care capacity by equipping nursing facilities and swing bed units to accept discharged patients and relieve a bottleneck that will allow more people with COVID-19 and other serious health problems to be admitted into the hospitals. The military personnel will also help to administer monoclonal antibodies to prevent serious illness from COVID-19 and keep Maine people out of critical care, preserving intensive care unit (ICU) capacity.

The Maine governor also requested federal COVID-19 Surge Response Teams for two Maine hospitals under the Biden administrations Winter Response Plan. If approved, teams of Federal clinicians, including physicians, nurses, and certified nursing assistants, will supplement existing staff and members of the Maine National Guard to provide care for those with COVID-19, the statement said.

The public health crisis in New Hampshire has reached critical proportions with both the number of active cases, 9,868, and the number of hospitalizations, 462, setting records since the beginning of the pandemic on Wednesday. The state now has the largest number of new cases per population in the country over the last 14 days, with 649.8 per 100,000 people.

At a press conference on Wednesday, Republican Governor Chris Sununu called on the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and the National Guard to assist with the surge. Sununu said, We reached out to FEMA to request some staffing assistance in our health care facilities. He added that FEMA is providing 30 paramedics to help at hospitals and the first 24-person team is arriving, as early as this weekend.

There will also be a group of 70 National Guard soldiers sent into hospitals to assist with everything from soup, food service or clerical tasks, to help flex their own internal staff for better coordination of effort and ultimately better health care services.

Dr. Benjamin Chan, state epidemiologist for the New Hampshire Department of Health and Human Services, also said in the press conference, Over the last week we have averaged between 1,200 to 1,300 new infections each day  Our test positivity rate continues to be high. Chan said that hospitalizations and deaths are increasing, unfortunately, we have 11 new deaths from COVID-19 to report today, bringing the total number of people that have died from COVID-19 to 1,768.

Doctors and epidemiologists continue to report that more than 90 percent of the new cases and hospitalizations are unvaccinated individuals. Forty percent of the US population has not been fully vaccinated, and the number of doses administered each day is only half that in April1.7 million compared to 3.3 million.

In the Midwest the surge continues to stress the health care system to the limits. In Michigan and Pennsylvania, the daily average of hospitalized patients remains at more than 4,500 people, an increase of 20 percent over the past two weeks. In Illinois and Indiana, hospitalizations are up 49 percent.

The eruption of COVID nearly two years after its first outbreak is not exclusively the result of low vaccination rates, or lack of mask mandates, but the direct product of the strategy pursued by the ruling class in the US and throughout the world: herd immunity that places profits above human life. The Democrats and Republicans, as well as the capitalist media, wish to blame the present surge on the unvaccinated, because in this way they can paint the continued disaster of the pandemic as the result of the decisions of individuals instead of their own policies.

The fact is that the present explosion of cases, hospitalizations and deaths arises from the lifting of any restrictions in May even though the Delta variant was already on the rise and public health experts such as Dr. Osterholm were warning that the US was in the eye of the hurricane with a Category 5 COVID-19 storm approaching.

Democratic and Republican governors are now mobilizing the National Guard, with virtually identical explanations, because the new wave of the pandemic is overwhelming the hospitals and health care systems, a wave that they themselves have helped to create.
Over 300 hospital workers struck McKenzie-Willamette Medical Center in Springfield, Oregon on Monday. The workerscertified nursing assistants, MRI technicians, respiratory therapists and pharmacy techniciansare demanding wage increases to match community pay levels, affordable health care, improved protections against the Sars-CoV-2 virus and safe staffing levels, and are opposing the hospitals plan to outsource 100 jobsa quarter of the bargaining unit.

Mckenzie Willamette Medical Center workers picket (SEIU Local 49 facebook)

Seriously undermining the striking workers, the union, Service Employees International Union Local 49, has limited the length of the strike to five daysuntil Friday. A two-day strike in early October and a 24-hour strike in mid-November had no impact on management, which is holding firm to its takeaway demands. The unions web site refers to a breakdown in negotiations as the trigger for the five-day strike.

According to the Register-Guard, McKenzie-Willamette spokesperson Jana Waterman said that no appointments will be delayed or canceled due to the strike, and operations will continue as normal. She stated that the hospital will implement our contingency plan, including additional staffing, and hospital operations will continue uninterrupted. Waterman made clear that the hospital is seeking to break the strike, saying that 30 strikebreakers had been brought in.

Springfield is a working-class town, based on a timber-resource economy until the 1990s, with a population of slightly over 63,000. The city has the distinction of having the most profitable hospital in the state of Oregon, McKenzie-Willamette, which is one of two for-profit hospitals in Oregon.

According to an October 2018 article in The Lund Report, in 2017 McKenzie-Willamette made a profit of just over $50 million, giving it a 25 percent profit margin, according to Oregon Health Authority data. The average profit margin at other Oregon hospitals didnt even reach 7 percent that year. Median household income in Springfield in 2019 was $47,695 while for the state of Oregon median household income was $67,058.

Understaffing is alleged to be a major contributor to the hospitals profitability. The Oregon Health Authority investigated McKenzie-Willamette in 2018, filing a 49-page complaint that it violated nurse staffing regulations, many of them multiple times.

The Lund Report stated, The state interviewed nurses, managers and executives. Nurses said that to save money the hospital has cut certified nursing assistants and pushed more work on to nurses, prompting nurses often to work through their required breaks in order to get their jobs done.

These exploitative conditions have only increased under conditions of nearly two years of the COVID-19 pandemic, where health care workers have been on the front lines of the disaster caused by the refusal of capitalist governments to effectively combat the virus. Nurses across the United States, as well as in the United Kingdom and internationally, report dire working conditions, with long hours and extremely high patient loads. The conditions make it more difficult to provide quality treatment to patients, and they increase workers chance of chronic stress, burnout and other mental health issues.

The striking nurses at McKenzie-Willamette experienced horrific scenes in 2020 and 2021, with Lane County being one of the areas in Oregon hardest hit by the virus. According to the New York Times data tracker, Since the beginning of the pandemic, at least 1 in 13 residents have been infected, a total of 30,531 reported cases. In August, as schools and businesses were fully reopened, the county saw a record surge in cases, with a seven-day average of over 200 cases per day.

An article in the Register-Guard in August of this year reported that amid a sharp escalation in hospitalizations due to COVID-19 infections, McKenzie-Willamette made a request for National Guard support. There is not much room at the hospital, full stop, said Dr. Harry Scholtz, an infectious disease doctor at McKenzie-Willamette. We have most of the ICU beds occupied with the critically ill patients. Most of the step down, intermediate units are full as well, sometimes with patients that would otherwise be in an ICU.

At the end of October, an 11-year-old COVID patient and local resident had to be transferred from McKenzie-Willamette to Portland's Randall Children's Hospital. The mother, Amy Cholewinski, told KEZI.com, As much as you trust doctors to tell you what to do, they didnt know what to do. And though Spencer Cholewinski is out of the hospital, he continues to suffer from the infection. Its all about building endurance; now he has a hard time breathing, even getting up to go to the bathroom can be a challenge, so he still has a way to go. said his mother.

The SEIU has said nothing about the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the major issues of staffing, wages and mental health. Throughout the past two years, every health care union has collaborated with hospital management to enforce the deadly and exhausting conditions that workers have had to endure. Whenever struggles do break out, the unions have done everything they can to keep them isolated and disconnected from nurses across the country.

The strike of McKenzie-Willamette nurses joins a broader movement of the working class rebelling against the corporations and the unions and fighting for fair compensation and a safe workplace environment. Over 50,000 Kaiser health care workers were set to strike last month across the West Coast over the same basic issues, and they are now voting on a sellout tentative agreement pushed by the Alliance of Health Care Unions (AHCU) at the last hour to avert the strike. The last year has seen strikes by autoworkers, construction workers, food processing workers and other sections of the working class.

These various struggles must be united in a common fight. Efforts have begun with the Kaiser Workers Rank and File Committee to develop independent organizations through which health care workers can unify their efforts, assert their own demands, and effectively fight for safe hospital conditions, significant wage increases, and an end to the pandemic that has placed strain on the health care system. McKenzie-Willamette nurses must join this movement in order to carry forward their fight and prevent the union from isolating and selling out their struggle. We urge all nurses and health care workers to contact us and get involved.
Stella Moris is the fiancee of Julian Assange. They have two children together. Speaking outside the High Court in London after two senior judges ruled in favour of the WikiLeaks publishers extradition to the United States, she made the following impassioned statement.

Stella Moris, fiancee of Julian Assange, speaks to journalists in front of the High Court in London, Friday, Dec. 10, 2021 (Credit: AP Photo/Frank Augstein)

I want to emphasise that the High Court accepted all the medical evidence and the conclusions of the magistrate that if Julian is extradited and placed under extreme conditions of isolation it will drive him to take his own life. That extradition is oppressive.

Yet the High Court decided against Julian on this occasion on the basis of political assurancesnon-assurancesthat the US has given to the UK government. I say non-assurances. Amnesty International says non-assurances. Amnesty International has analysed these assurances and has said that they are inherently unreliable. They incorporate the possibility of breaking those assurances in their very wording.

Today, its been almost a year since I stood outside court with our victory of the blocking of the extradition. For the past year, the past two years and a half, Julian has remained in Belmarsh Prison and in fact he has been detained since the seventh of December 2010 in one form or another. For how long can this go on?

Today is International Human Rights Day. What a shame, how cynical to have this decision on this day. To have one of the foremost, the foremost publisher, journalist of the past 50 years in a UK prison accused of publishing the truth about war crimes, about CIA kill teams. And in fact every time we have a hearing, we know more about the abusive nature, the criminal nature of this case.

Julian exposed the crimes of CIA torturers, of CIA killers and now we know that those CIA killers were planning to kill him too.

How can this court, how can these courts, approve an extradition request under these conditions? How can they accept an extradition to the country that plotted to kill Julian, that plotted to kill a publisher because of what he published? This goes to the fundamentals of press freedom and of democracy.

We will fight. Every generation has an epic fight to fight, and this is ours, because Julian represents the fundamentals of what it means to live in a free society. Of what it means to have press freedom. Of what it means for journalists to do their jobs without being afraid of spending the rest of their life in prison.

The UK imprisons journalists. They are imprisoning Julian on behalf of a foreign power which is taking an abusive, vindictive prosecution against a journalist. And this is what it is about. I urge everyone to come together and fight for Julian. Julian represents all our liberties and all our rights.
The death of former senator and Republican presidential candidate Bob Dole Sunday, at the age of 98, touched off a week of tributes from Democrats and the media, culminating in the ceremony of official mourning Thursday where Dole lay in state in the Rotunda of the US Capitolthe same location where fascist rioters summoned by President Donald Trump stormed through on January 6, 11 months ago.

Senate Minority Leader Bob Dole, of Kansas, left, and House Minority Whip Newt Gingrich, of Ga., meet reporters on Capitol Hill, Tuesday, March 15, 1994. (AP Photo/John Duricka)

Three of the four speakers at the ceremony were Democrats: Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and President Joe Biden. Only Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell represented the Republican Party, where Doles political views, once considered arch-conservative, would now be regarded as suspect.

Trump issued a statement praising Dole, but that is only because Dole, unlike many other members of the Republican establishment, endorsed him as the Republican presidential candidate in both 2016 and 2020. He was the only previous Republican presidential nominee to make an appearance at the 2016 convention which nominated Trump. In the view of the would-be dictator, personal support for him outweighs all other considerations.

In his congressional career, which extended from 1961 to 1996, Dole, a pro-corporate fiscal conservative, opposed nearly all social welfare spending. He was a fervent Cold War anti-communist, a warmonger in Vietnam, Central America and the Persian Gulf, and later, while out of office, a supporter of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

In his early years in the Senate, he was such a harsh defender of the Nixon administration that a fellow Republican senator criticized him as a hatchet man. Nixon named him chairman of the Republican National Committee in 1971, only replacing him after the Watergate scandal exploded, and he needed a party operative who could function as a full-time apologist.

Dole rose through the ranks of Senate Republicans, heading the Senate Finance Committee in 1981, where he spearheaded the Reagan tax cut, the model for subsequent efforts by Congress to enact fiscal policies that openly and deliberately set out to enrich the wealthy at the expense of working people. In 1985, he was elected to head the Senate Republican caucus, holding that position, either as Minority Leader or Majority Leader, until 1996.

He moved steadily to the right, if perhaps slightly more slowly than the center of gravity in the Republican Party. This process is demonstrated by his role in two presidential elections. In 1976, President Gerald Ford chose him as his running mate, dumping Vice President Nelson Rockefeller, who was anathema to the Republican right. The selection of Dole was seen as an olive branch to those who had supported Ronald Reagan in his unsuccessful challenge to Ford for the Republican nomination.

Twenty years later, Dole carried out the same maneuver, although this time he was the Republican nominee for president reaching out to his partys right wing. Seeking to appease the fanatically anti-tax supply-side faction in the partydubbed advocates of voodoo economics by George H. W. BushDole picked arch-tax-cutter Jack Kemp as his vice presidential running mate.

In neither case was the maneuver successful. Ford lost narrowly to Democrat Jimmy Carter in 1976, an election where Dole is remembered only for the occasion when his genuine personal bitterness over warhe nearly died in 1945 in a German attack in Italy that left his right arm useless and put him in the hospital for three yearserupted in his debate remark condemning Democrat wars for their colossal human cost.

In 1996, Dole lost by a landslide, with incumbent Democrat Bill Clinton capitalizing on the popular backlash against efforts by the Republican-controlled Congress to cut spending on Medicare and Medicaid. Clinton combined phony claims to defend social programs with a bipartisan agreement to eliminate Aid to Families with Dependent Children, long a target of Republican demagogy over supposed welfare cheats.

A quarter century after Dole ended his active political role, it is the Democrats rather than the Republicans who celebrate his career as a political model.

Schumer hailed Dole as a remarkable leader  whose essential goodness leaves us with hope. He praised the Republican for supporting food stamps, aid to disabled veterans and the 1983 bailout of Social Security (which reduced benefits in the long term).

Pelosi called Dole an extraordinary patriot whose legislative record was characterized by working in a bipartisan way and who taught us over time and all the time to respect people for what they can do and not judge them for what they cannot.

Biden, who spent 25 years in the Senate alongside Dole, was the most effusive in his praise, calling him a hero of  democracy and a giant of our history. He quoted at length from a last statement by Dole calling for unity, adding, We may follow his wisdom, I hope; and the truth of the matter is, divided as we are, the only way forward for democracy is unity, consensus. The only way.

This is not just the usual blather based on the principle of speak no evil in commemorating the dead. Biden and the Democrats have responded to the transformation of the Republican Party, its subordination to the fascistic tendency personified by ex-President Trump, by increasingly abject and desperate appeals for the Republicans to reconsider.

The two-party system has been a machine for the defense of corporate America for more than a century. The Democrats fear that the embrace of fascistic methods, expressed most clearly in the January 6 attack on the Capitol, means the breakup of that system and risks opening the door for an intervention from below. This raises the danger, from the standpoint of the capitalists, that the working class, not the fascists, will play the most powerful role.

Biden said, in his remarks Thursday, Bob and I, like many of us here, we disagreed on a number of things, but not on the fundamental things. This would be truth-telling and not mere boilerplate, if Biden had gone on to enumerate those fundamental things: the defense of the capitalist system, the assertion of the global interests of American imperialism, the suppression of the class struggle and the exclusion of the working class from any role in political life.

There has been a series of such funeral ceremonies in recent years in which aged Republican poobahs, long bypassed by their own partys shift to the right, have been saluted primarily by Democrats, still seeking to find bipartisan common ground with colleagues in the Republican Party. John McCain, Colin Powell and George H. W. Bush all come to mind. Dole follows that pattern.

In the arc of Doles very long life, he went from nearly being killed in a battle against German troops directed by Adolf Hitler, to seeing a fervent admirer of Hitler take the leadership of his own party and attempt a fascist coup against the very building where Dole spent his political career.
Former University of Sussex Professor Kathleen Stock has become the British figurehead of the newly founded University of Austin (Texas, US) which advances itself as an answer to campus illiberalism committed to the defence of free and challenging speech.

Introducing the institution in a Bloomberg article, founding member Niall Ferguson, a right-wing historian, denounced a sustained campaign to impose ideological conformity in the name of diversity, including the routine deployment of terms such as Trigger warnings, Safe spaces, Checked privileges and Microagressions, leading to career-ending cancelations and speaker disinvitations and a pervasive climate of anxiety and self-censorship.

Kathleen Stock (Kathleen Stock/Medium)

He placed the blame for campus Totalitarianism Lite on the leftward march of the professoriate, left-leaning administrators and wokeism.

How has the political right been able to make this increasingly common pitch, presenting itself as the last bastion of democratic thought and academic rigour against what it falsely designates as the left?

Stocks history provides a textbook example. Until recently a professor of philosophy at the University of Sussex in the UK, she resigned on October 28 citing a medieval experience of ostracism and intimidation on campus.

Her exit, to take up her new and lucrative post followed a vicious and ongoing conflict within feminist circles between a gender-critical faction, who broadly oppose the idea that a transgender persons self-identification as a woman overrides the social and legal implications of their biological sex, and their opponents, who denounce the holders of such views as Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminists, or Terfs. The feud is one expression of the toxic culture created on campus by the affluent middle class through its reframing of politics entirely in terms of the struggle of gender, racial and sexual identity groups. Its implications are profoundly anti-democratic and politically disorienting.

Stock was the target of protests by a small group of students at her university who denounced her for espousing a bastardised version of radical feminism that excludes and endangers trans people, being dangerous to trans people, making trans students unsafe, and showing a distaste for [their] existence.

A statement issued by the protestors demanded the university sack her since she was being allowed to profit from transphobia. They continued, The university is actively enabling and encouraging her transphobia by not firing her, concluding, Our demand is simple: fire Kathleen Stock. Until then, youll see us around.

Identity politics and democratic rights

One need not support any of Stocks views to identify her hounding and denunciation as a reactionary affair. She is not consciously practising pseudo-science or using her platform to call for and organise the oppression of others. Her arguments, moreover, have support among significant sections of the population in no way affiliated with the political right and who are opposed to any discrimination against transgender people.

The protest against her was not a popular, progressive struggle but one example of many on campus of a campaign to impose a particular ideological orthodoxy, by censure, waged by a small number of students and academics: falsely presenting intellectual criticism as a mortal threat, organising witch-hunts, and no platforming opponents.

Numerous other cases can be cited, including of Oxford academic Selina Todd, Open University Professor Jo Phoenix, prominent feminists Germaine Greer and Julie Bindel, and gay rights campaigner Peter Tatchell.

These episodes have a devastating anti-democratic effect, which extends far beyond the narrow confines of the transgender argumentsetting a precedent for the silencing of anyone on the say-so of largely self-appointed gatekeepers.

This danger was highlighted in 2012 when the National Union of Students (NUS) no platformed George Galloway over his defence of the heroic journalist and WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who was the subject of a sexual assault smear campaign. Galloway was accused of being a rape denier.

In 2016, Sheffield Students Union tried to no-platform Assange himself, due to appear virtually, citing its zero tolerance approach to sexual assault and commitment to creating a safe space on campus.

To the extent that these campaigns portray themselves as left-wing, they sow political confusion about what genuinely constitutes socialist politics and strengthen the right.

There is nothing remotely left about any of these incidents. No platforming policies, first adopted by student unions in the 1970s, were always based on a rejection of class politics, instead appealing to the authorities, and ultimately the state, to enforce proscriptions. The practice nevertheless won popular sympathy in the 1970s and 80s through its focus on opposing the far right, but always carried the risk of creating mechanisms that would be turned against the left.

Today such campaigns, with a few exceptions, have become weapons in the hands of a rarefied layer of the petty-bourgeoise for whom politics consists of staking the claim of their own personal identity for a place in the sun within the upper echelons of academia, the state apparatus, cultural institutions and corporate management, by levelling accusations of privilege and/or bigotry against their competitors.

This divisive politics, rooted in postmodern philosophy, rejects the central Enlightenment idea of universal truth and equality attainable through the upholding and extension of universal democratic and social rights. It is deeply hostile to the struggle for those rights which, as Karl Marx identified, is fundamentally a class struggleand in the imperialist epoch, as Leon Trotsky identified, the struggle of the working class for socialism.

Preparing the way for the right

After dominating life on campus for years, identity politics has produced two results: the machinery for anti-democratic crackdowns which can now be taken over by the government and the right, and a growing resentment against what calls itself progressive politics that greases the rights wheels.

Conservative universities minister Michelle Donelan commented after Stocks resignation, This incident demonstrates only too clearly why this Government is pressing ahead with legislation to promote and defend free speech on campuses. The campaign to force Stocks resignation has also created the pretext for the Office for Students (OfS) to launch an investigation into the University of Sussex.

As the World Socialist Web Site has explained, the OfS and the Free Speech bill have nothing to do with defending democratic rights. They are tools for government intervention on campus to boost right-wing and far-right voices and suppress left-wing opposition.

Both are connected with a longstanding campaign in right-wing circles to exploit widespread hostility to the suffocating climate on campus for their own ends. Criticisms of identity politics feuds are used to attack popular protests against pseudo-scientists like Noah Carl, and fascists like Steve Bannon and Marine Le Pen, and to insist that right-wing, nationalist, pro-imperialist, pro-war perspectives are underrepresented, suppressed, and deserve special support.

The student protests against Carl and Le Pen are the exceptions to the generally reactionary rule of campus politics, which prove its noxious effect. There are clear occasions when it is necessary to organise action, mobilising broad support, against the far-rights legitimisation through the universities and in defence of the democratic rights threatened by their filthy ideologies. But this fight is undermined by the regular association of student protests with a wholly anti-democratic politics.

Students at St Edmunds College protesting Noah Carl's appointment

The WSWS commented this February, in response to the governments plan to appoint a university free speech champion: The de facto drawing of a line between someone like Tatchell and members of the far-right is hysterical nonsense and has repulsed large sections of the population, opening the door to government intervention on the campuses, which will be used to invite in the real fascistic right.

Stocks resignation is fuel on the fire. She has now been granted martyr status, with sympathy extending beyond the political right, with which to promote the University of Austin venture. She has already lent her hand to the Conservative governments Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Bill, giving evidence in its support earlier this year.

At the same time, the government uses the language and methods pioneered by identity politics to suppress its opponents. This October, Professor David Miller was sacked by the University of Bristol after a sustained campaign alleging his anti-Zionist views were endangering the personal safety of Jewish students. The government supported this campaign. Conservative MP Robert Halfon, who leads the education select committee, berated the University of Bristol for failing to create a safe space for Jews.

The Conservatives, and all the main parties, are also pressuring universities to adopt the anti-democratic International Holocaust Remembrance Alliances definition of anti-Semitism, which equates criticism of Israel with hatred against Jews.

The role of the trade unions, the Labour Party and the pseudo-left

The right-wings rotten appeal can only gain ground in the absence of a genuine left-wing opposition to identity politics. The trade unions, the Labour Party and pseudo-left organisations like the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) have all embraced these ideas in opposition to class, that is, genuinely socialist, politics.

Stocks own union, the University and College Union (UCU), responded to the campaign against her by issuing a statement calling on management to take a clear and strong stance against transphobia at Sussex. While stating pro-forma its opposition to the call for any worker to be summarily sacked, it called for an urgent investigation into the ways institutional transphobia operates at our university, i.e., an investigation targeting Stock. This statement of the UCUs Sussex branch was then supported by the national organisation.

Labours Shadow Equalities Minister Taiwo Owatemi described the UCU statement as strong and principled and declared herself concerned by Stocks positions.

Screenshot of first page of letter by Labours shadow equalities minister, Taiwo Owatemi, describing the UCU's statement as strong and principled and also declared herself concerned by Stocks positions.

Cynically trying to sidestep the censorious consequences of its own politics, the SWP stated calls for sacking dont fit here and should be directed against fascists and organised racists but sent its solidarity to the student protests demanding Stocks sacking! It made no attempt to explain the political issues involved, simply branding any opponent of the campaign against Stock transphobic and aligned with the right.

The SWP also likely played a significant part in the actions of the UCU. Its six members on the unions national executive committee issued a statement, Stand with trans students and workers at Sussex university, along with SWP members in the leadership of the National Education Union, Unison and the Public and Commercial Services Union.

Socialism and democratic rights

Through the actions of the SWP and other pseudo-left organisations, advancing identity and other forms of petty-bourgeois politics, a toxic climate has been created on university campuses. The ultimate victims will not be those like Stock, whose CV for the University of Austin was effectively written by the campaign against her, but left-wing students and academics.

A cornerstone of socialist politics is a genuine defence of free speech and academic freedom, which are vital weapons in the struggle against the ruling class, ignorance and oppression. Identity politics threatens these rights directly with its anti-democratic practices, and indirectly by handing the mantle of defending democratic principles to the conservative right.

The issue for socialists is not to politically solidarise themselves with either Stock or her opponentsor whoever the parties are in tomorrows feudbut to take up a defence of democratic rights in the interests of the working class, the vast majority of the population and the sole revolutionary force on the planet.

There is no shortage of fiercely contested discussions to be had, from the murderous pandemic policy of herd immunity and worsening social inequality in all its forms, to the threat of war, dictatorship and fascismall of which will deeply upset somebody.

Addressing these questions means resolutely defending the right to free debate and research against both the identity politicians and the government and its right-wing allies, whose professed democratic ideals will evaporate the moment mass social questions begin to be seriously discussed. This requires the building of a genuine Marxist movement in the universities. It means the expansion of the International Youth and Students for Social Equality (IYSSE), which has exposed the left-wing pretensions of identity politics and democratic pretensions of the right, while consistently opposing government intervention on campus.
The Biden administration staged the first day of a two-day Summit for Democracy on Thursday. The plenaries of the virtual event, which assembled 80 world leaders, displayed the extraordinary hubris of Washington, while its panel discussions were full of imperialist plots. The function of Bidens summit is to escalate global pressure on Russia and China while dressing this up as a defense of democracy against autocracy.

President Joe Biden speaks from the South Court Auditorium on the White House complex in Washington, Thursday, Dec. 9, 2021, for the opening of the Democracy Summit, as Secretary of State Antony Blinken, right, looks on. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)

President Joe Biden opened the event, seated at a table alongside Secretary of State Antony Blinken before an oversized video panel featuring the face of each of the assembled leaders. He addressed what amounted to a conference call of world capitalism, declaring that he had called the summit because of sustained and alarming challenges to democracy, universal human rights  all around the world.

Bidens speech, and the entire affair that followed, had a deeply farcical character, marked by the spectacular hypocrisy that is the trademark of US empire.

He larded his sentences with the phrases of democracy, words whose historical meaning have been hollowed out over the course of more than a century of American empire and capitalist rule. He spoke of justice, free speech, free assembly, freedom of religion, free press and all the inherent human rights of every individual.

Among the faces on the screen before him were an array of anti-democratic and fascistic figures, each personally invited by the White House.

Rodrigo Duterte, butcher of the Filipino poor, directly responsible for the police and vigilante murder of over 30,000 people in the last five years, was in attendance. As Duterte sat listening to Biden speak of inherent human rights, the Philippine Supreme Court ruled that the majority of his Anti-Terror Law was constitutional. The Philippine military and police now have the power to conduct warrantless wiretaps and surveillance and to arrest anyone alleged to be a communist or terrorist for up to 24 days without filing any charges. Duterte has been charged with crimes against humanity in the International Criminal Court.

Alongside Duterte was Jair Bolsonaro. The fascistic president of Brazil has been charged by the Brazilian Senates Commission of Inquiry with crimes against humanity for the mass murder of the Brazilian population through the homicidal strategy of herd immunity which he conducted in response to the pandemic.

Duterte and Bolsonaro, like every other leader in attendance, received a letter bearing the signature of Biden that read, We recognize and appreciate your partnership in working to build democratic and human rights-respecting societies that allow all citizens to thrive. The letter went on, telling Duterte and Bolsonaro that Biden looked forward to hearing their ideas for how we can foster a more democratic, equitable, inclusive and sustainable world.

Biden repeatedly spoke of the need for a free press and independent media. A British High Court will hand down a verdict during the second day of Bidens Summit for Democracy on the US appeal to extradite Julian Assange. Assange is fighting for his life against Washington, which has persecuted and hounded him, trumped up charges against him, and seen him locked away in prison because he dared to publish evidence of the crimes of the US empire. The fate of freedom of the press hinges on the defense of Assange, and the Biden White House, continuing the policy of Trump and Obama, is the single greatest enemy of press freedom in the world.

The United States has no right to lecture anyone about democracy. No power has destabilized and overthrown as many democratically elected governments around the globe as Washington. Nowhere is the erosion of democracy more marked than in the United States, the center of world reaction. The Republican Party is being transformed into the party of American fascism, and the Democratic Party conciliates, while it hides statues of Thomas Jefferson.

Less than a year ago on January 6, Donald Trump attempted to remain in power through a carefully orchestrated fascist coup. The Biden administration has done everything possible to downplay the events of January 6. The conspirators responsible for the plot against American democracy not only remain at large, they include numerous legislators who remain in office and continue their daily attacks on basic democratic norms.

Biden, who has worked to cover up a fascist coup in the United States, is consulting with Jair Bolsonaro and Rodrigo Duterte. Whatever substance there is to this summit amounts in fact to a conspiracy against democracy.

The essence of the summit emerged later in Bidens remarks. Democracy was in decline, he claimed, because of outside pressure from autocrats. These autocrats, he claimed, were using the internet and other forms of subversion to increase the dissatisfaction of people all around the world with democratic governments that they feel are failing to deliver for their needs.

This line draws upon the lie of Russian meddling in the US elections, which was repeatedly and baselessly asserted by the Democratic Party and the New York Times. This claim is now being elaborated by the Biden White House into a global conspiracy. Unspecified autocrats, and here are insinuated Moscow and Beijing, are subverting democracy around the globe by cultivating popular dissatisfaction.

The idea that social discontent is the product of outside machinations is absurd. Approximately 800,000 Americans have died of COVID-19, while less than 6,000 have died in China, a nation with four times the population. Workers around the globe confront mass death, skyrocketing prices, stagnant wages, and the demand that they remain on the job.

Those in attendance at the summit do not represent democracies that would otherwise be thriving were they not being undermined by external subversion. They are representatives of the capitalist class confronting immense social explosions that they are seeking to suppress.

Biden continued, declaring that the unspecified autocrats seek to advance their own power, export and expand their influence around the world, and justify their repressive policies and practices. He might be reading off the White House mission statement when he gives this precise description of what are in fact the actions of Washington.

Behind the pretenses of defending democracy against meddling autocrats lies Washingtons drive to maintain its global economic hegemony.

The list of nations invited and snubbed had a clear geopolitical function. Most striking was the invitation extended to Taiwan. Under the One China policy, Washington does not recognize Taiwan as an independent nation. Inviting Taipei to participate in a discussion of democracy and excluding Beijing is a sharp provocation.

Juan Guaido, billed at the event as Interim President of Venezuela, was in attendance. Like every other part of the affair, his presence gives the lie to its use of the word democracy. Guaido is an unelected puppet figure, whom Washington has attempted to install as president of Venezuela by military coup through the ouster of Nicolas Maduro.

Biden concluded his remarks by calling on all those assembledDuterte, Bolsonaro, Guaido and companyto lock arms and push back against authoritarianism. Two closed door plenary sessions followed. The first was hosted by Biden and the second by Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, who as Defense Minister of Germany was instrumental in facilitating the growth of the far right and orchestrating the return of German militarism to the world stage.

Around the plenary sessions were panel discussions, hosted by partnerships between US intelligence and industry. Brad Smith, president of Microsoft, spoke of how to use technology for democracy. John Brothers, president of the billionaire investment giant T. Rowe Price, which holds a massive portion of Venezuelan debt, moderated a discussion on responsible investment. Kent Walker, president of Global Affairs for Google, which has publicly admitted to censoring the World Socialist Web Site, spoke of how private enterprises can aid democracy.

Samantha Power, head of the US Agency for International Development (USAID), an organization which is effectively a funding arm of the CIA, announced that her agency would be creating a Global Defamation Defense Fund, which would provide liability coverage for journalists who face prosecution for their coverage. This fund will without doubt function as a propaganda arm of US imperialism, providing support to journalists who write in opposition to Washingtons rivals, while Julian Assange languishes in prison.

It was also announced that on Monday the White House would release a Strategy on Countering Corruption, which would be focused on the transnational dimensions of this threat. USAID, it was reported, would monitor and target such transnational corruption. Coming out of the summit, with its denunciations of Russia and China, coded as meddling autocrats, this initiative is another concrete step by Washington to escalate pressure on Moscow and Beijing.

At the beginning of this week, Washington announced its official boycott of the Beijing Winter Olympics, accusing China of committing genocide, without presenting a shred of evidence to back this up. Three days later, Biden assembled an array of forces, including authoritarian scoundrels and mass murderers, to defend democracy.

Human rights and democracy have no meaning in the mouth of Joe Biden, the head of US imperialism. They are lies endlessly repeated to justify Washingtons preparations for war, which are now far advanced.
On December 2, the very last day of parliament for 2021, the Labor Party again teamed up with the Liberal-National Coalition government to pass another nakedly anti-democratic electoral bill.

At the same time, Labor struck a cynical backroom deal with the government to postponebut only until after the 2022 electionthe Coalitions widely-opposed bill to force voters to show identification at polling booths.

Labor Party leader Anthony Albanese [Credit: @AlboMP, Twitter]

As part of the deal, Labor helped the Coalition to quickly ram through a bill to force non-party political campaigners to retrospectively file financial records to the election authorities in order to disclose their donors.

This arrangement deliberately makes it more onerous for charities, environmental groups and other campaign groups to conduct political activities or back election candidates.

With virtually no publicity, let alone public debate, the bill was pushed through both houses of parliament in a matter of hours, just like the last anti-democratic electoral laws were in August.

This is under conditions where a plethora of candidates is emerging, many running as independents, to endeavour to exploit the intense political crisis caused by the disarray tearing apart Prime Minister Scott Morrisons right-wing government and the continued lack of popular support for the pro-business Labor Party.

Labor rescued the government from outright defeat on the voter ID bill, which was one of several key measures that the fractured Coalition could not get through parliament in the final session of the year because of internal revolts.

The voter ID bill has only been put on hold. It has caused popular outrage, because it is so obviously calculated to discourage or block the votes of potentially many thousands of working-class people. That is especially so for those likely to have difficulty producing the necessary documentsfirst-time young voters, the elderly, the jobless and homeless, itinerant workers, indigenous people and others without access to smartphones or the internet.

As the WSWS explained, it represents an historic attack on the right to vote. For the first time since the days of the Eureka Stockade rebellion by gold rush miners in the 1850s, voters would be forced to produce identification, such as a drivers licence, a Medicare card or a credit card, before being permitted to vote. Voters could also be subjected to intimidating questioning by election officials about their ID documents.

To justify this significant working-class disenfranchisement, the government adopted the language of ex-US President Donald Trump and his big lie about widespread mail-in vote fraud, with which he incited fascistic followers to try and overturn the results of last years US presidential election.

The bipartisan bill enacted on December 2 deepens the attack on basic democratic rights made when the two ruling parties similarly joined hands in August to rush through laws to deregister all parties without seats in parliament unless they submitted lists of 1,500 memberstriple the previous requirementby this month.

No less than the voter ID bill, these laws are a bid to stifle working class discontent and prevent it from destabilising the increasingly discredited two-party duopoly on which capitalist rule in Australia has depended since World War II.

While 36 parties are affected by the demand to hand over the details of so many members, in violation of their privacy and right to a secret ballot, this deregistration drive is particularly directed against the Socialist Equality Party (SEP), the only party advancing a genuine social alternative to the ruling establishment.

If the SEP is deregistered, it will be unable to have its party name alongside its federal election candidates, robbing voters of the right to identify, and support, the candidates fighting for a mass movement of the working class to overturn the capitalist profit system.

The latest Labor-Coalition Electoral Legislation Amendment (Political Campaigner) Bill compels political campaign groups to register as a significant third party and declare their donors if their electoral expenditure rises above a threshold of $250,000. That is a halving of the previous $500,000 threshold.

The requirements are being applied retrospectively, forcing these groups to disclose donations associated with past activities, adding to an onerous burden of filing financial returns and being subjected to government auditing.

The term electoral expenditure is also vague and broad, and could extend to advocacy or awareness-raising on all political issues, rather than activities related to elections.

Organisations like the Australian Conservation Foundation, trade unions, groups backing independent candidates, and climate groups, such as Australian Youth Climate Coalition and Farmers for Climate Action, will have to declare their donors dating back for years.

As they did on the electoral laws in August, the Greens put on a show of protest. In the House of Representatives, Greens leader Adam Bandt said: This is a dark day for democracy, not only because we here in this parliament are being denied the opportunity to debate a very bad bill, but also because this bill will restrict people's right to campaign.

Bandt stated: We expect it from this government, but what we dont expect is that Labor will sign up to a dirty deal to ram through an anti-democratic piece of legislation on the last day of parliament.

What a fraud! That is precisely what Labor did in August on the earlier electoral laws. At that time, the Greens made similar remarks about the dark day for democracy, but have kept their mouths shut on the laws ever since.

Continuing that silence, Bandt again did not mention the party deregistration laws, nor did the partys democracy spokesperson, Senator Larissa Waters.

While the Greens have claimed to oppose such dirty deals, they are seeking to form a post-election coalition government with Labor, or provide the numbers to keep a Labor government in office, as they did with the minority Gillard government from 2010 to 2013.

This is all under conditions of the continuing COVID-19 disasterthe worst global public health crisis for a centurythe burden of which is being borne by working people, accelerating social inequality to a staggering level. This is creating deepening social and political discontent, and triggering strikes and protests, including by teachers and healthcare workers.

The Labor-Coalition offensive against democratic rights, and the complicity of the Greens, underscores the necessity to fight for the defeat of all the new electoral laws. We urge people to join up as electoral members of the SEP to help us retain our party registration so that we can take forward the fight for socialism on the broadest possible basis, including in elections.

It is no accident that we are the only party fighting to defend, and extend, the basic democratic rights of the working class. This is an essential component of the struggle for genuine socialism, which is based on the fully informed and active participation of the working class through a workers government.
On Tuesday, a Facebook town hall event co-hosted by the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) and the parents group Parents for Responsive Equitable and Safe Schools (PRESS NYC) was abruptly canceled after AFT President Randi Weingarten attempted to invite Atlantic writer Lucy McBride onto the panel.

Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, talks during a news conference in front of the Richard R. Green High School of Teaching, Tuesday, Sept. 8, 2020, in New York. (AP Photo/Mark Lennihan)

The effort to include McBride was meant to accommodate right-wing and far-right parents with whom Weingarten and the AFT have formed a close relationship in recent months. It takes place after more than 800,000 Americans have needlessly died due to the reckless reopening of workplaces and schools enforced by Weingarten and other multimillionaire union officials.

The town hall, which had been planned for over a month, was billed as a discussion with leading public health experts from across the country on ways school communities can be kept safe this winter and beyond. It was going to be moderated by Weingarten and PRESS NYC Steering Committee member and neuroscientist Dr. Kaliris Y. Salas-Ramirez.

PRESS NYC is a parents advocacy group based in New York City formed near the start of the pandemic. It has sought to pressure local Democratic Party politicians to implement mitigation measures in schools and provide a remote learning option to city parents on an individual basis.

The town hall panelists included Drs. Jorge Caballero, Theresa Chapple-McGruder, Robert Darnell, Alex Huffman and Julia Raifman, all of whom have advocated for schools to implement the strongest possible mitigation measures to try to limit the spread of COVID-19.

According to a thread by PRESS NYC, the panelists were agreed upon weeks ago. On Sunday, however, Justin Spiro, a New York City school social worker who supports fully reopening schools and lifting mask mandates, tweeted a photo of the event with the comment, I thought school closures were safely off the table this winter. I was wrong. Dr. Salas-Ramirez is a fierce remote learning advocate, and she is moderating an AFT Town Hall. I will fight with every fiber of my being if they try to shut schools down again. Whos with me?

This prompted Lucy McBride to write, I spoke to @rweingarten today to ask if I could join the panel. She seemed quite enthusiastic and told me shed ask the organizers. She called me later this afternoon to say that the other organizers said no. My offer still stands.

McBride is widely loathed by educators, in particular for her October 2021 article, A COVID Serenity Prayer, in which she stated: The virus will be woven into our everyday existence much like RSV, influenza, and other common coronaviruses are. The question isnt whether well be exposed to the novel coronavirus; its when.

Her article continued: Many of us will inevitably get COVID-19. In line with the global ruling class, she insisted that the population accept living with COVID, cynically arguing that humans have always co-existed with threats, such as car accidents, violence and sexually transmitted diseasesas if these problems of an entirely different nature, which themselves could be eliminated from society given the proper resources, are grounds to accept the perpetual spread of a deadly virus with long-term consequences.

Immediately seeking to accommodate McBride and Spiro, Weingarten publicly endorsed the last-minute addition, writing, I think @drlucymcbride should be on the panel but I respect that we are doing this townhall with others and I respect the process we set up. We will do more and we will invite @drlucymcbride to join another townhall.

This prompted far-right forces around Weingarten to go on the offensive. Advancing the lies that pervade the swamp of the far-right, they falsely claimed that COVID-19 has no real impact on children, ignoring the fact that nearly 1,000 children in the US alone have died from the virus and potentially millions could be suffering from long-term debilitation.

Graphic for the canceled town hall co-hosted by the AFT and PRESS NYC

Speaking to the personal attacks against him, Dr. Caballero, in a thread explaining the events cancellation, said that he and other BIPOC participants had been subjected to concerted campaigns of harassment online following the announcement of the event last week. Both Caballero and PRESS NYC criticized Weingarten for emboldening these attacks by trying to accommodate rather than condemn them outright.

Following the cancellation, Weingarten issued a statement in which she evaded responsibility and said she regretted that PRESS NYC pulled out. Notably, she claimed that we are in the wake of the pandemic, just over a week after the World Health Organization declared Omicron, which is rapidly spreading across the globe, a variant of concern.

Emma Pelosi, a special education teacher in New York and member of the AFT, rightfully pointed out in an open letter to Weingarten and the AFT on Twitter that it was highly unusual and disruptive for Weingarten, at the last minute, to publicly disagree with the decision of the organizers and panelists not to add McBride.

Under conditions in which 1,500 Americans are dying every day and the Omicron variant is spreading widely, the Biden administrations vaccine-only approach stands thoroughly exposed. Since taking office, Biden and the Democratic Party have made the full reopening of schools their main domestic priority in order to force parents back into unsafe workplaces. At the same time, more Americans have died from COVID under his presidency than under Trumps.

Deliberately ignoring the advice of scientists and public health experts on the necessary public health measures to eliminate the virus, the Biden administration is criminally indifferent to the lives of millions across the planet who continue to face mass infection, death, and long-term illness.

It is possible, even likely, that Weingarten, extremely sensitive to widespread opposition to her role in forcing educators and students into deadly school buildings, deliberately sabotaged the event.

The panelists, who have drawn attention to the dangers that COVID poses to children and who have pointed to the inadequate mitigations in schools, would have, even unwittingly, exposed her. A number of panelists have also criticized the Biden administration for its ineffective response to the Omicron threat, while Weingarten has endorsed Bidens test to stay program, making clear her commitment to keep schools open no matter the danger.

While PRESS NYC has sought to frame the attacks largely in racial terms, the fundamental issue is the far-rights attempt to spread misinformation about the pandemic and force the population to accept mass infection and death. This is the latest in a long series of increasingly brazen attacks against scientists, public health officials and anti-COVID activists. These include attacks against Kristina Lawson, executive director of the Medical Board of California, who was stalked by a COVID disinformation group, and a protest against public health measures held outside the home of Dr. David Colby, medical officer of health in Chatham-Kent, Ontario.

The Democratic Party and its media mouthpieces like the New York Times and the Washington Post are themselves responsible for fostering such attacks, through the promotion of the Wuhan Lab conspiracy theory and the libelous attacks on zoologist Peter Daszak.

This episode continues Weingartens adaptation to the far-right. On September 30, the AFT co-hosted an event, which the WSWS termed a town hall of death, with far-right parents group Open Schools USA (OSUSA), which gave a platform to anti-mask pseudo-scientists such as Tracy Heg and Jay Bhattacharya. Bhattacharya is an author of the Great Barrington Declaration, which calls for the widest possible infection of young people to achieve a mythical herd immunity.

The earlier event sought to justify the scrapping of what limited mitigations remain in schools, which both Republican and Democratic districts across the US have systematically carried out since schools reopened this semester. At the same time, it showed educators and concerned parents the type of people the AFT is prepared to mobilize against them, with Weingarten admitting to having been in secret communication with OSUSA for six months. Members of OSUSA were among those who denounced PRESS NYC and the panelists before the event was canceled.

No stranger to fascistic layers, Weingarten travelled to the Ukraine in 2014 to prop up the ultra-nationalist coup, and in 2017 she secretly met with fascist Steve Bannon, who she said was a smart guy.

The urgent lesson to be drawn is that any orientation to the unions is a dead end for workers. Weingarten, a member of the Democratic National Committee and a multimillionaire, is irreconcilably hostile to the interests of AFT members. Contrary to the claims of the far right, Weingarten would have resolutely called for all schools to remain open had the town hall taken place.

Furthermore, her affiliation with fascistic forces is a grave warning that she sees in them a critical ally for intimidating and silencing all opposition from educators and parents, under conditions in which workers are carrying out a historic strike wave, ever more consciously in defiance of the trade unions.

The immediate, temporary suspension of in-person schooling and non-essential workplaces is absolutely necessary to stop the spread of COVID-19. This must be combined with full income protection for workers and small businesses, and a vast mobilization of all available public health tools including universal testing, contact tracing, safe isolation of infected patients, high quality respirators, and a retrofitting of school buildings with proper ventilation and filtration systems.

These measures must be utilized as part of a globally coordinated strategy to eliminate COVID-19, which the most far-sighted and honest scientists agree is not only possible but necessary.

What is required of educators, parents and other workers committed to the fight against COVID-19 is to build a mass movement internationally through the expansion of the network of rank-and-file committees that have already been formed, independent of the corrupt trade unions and capitalist parties. Contact us today to join or build a committee in your area.
Last month, the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA) announced it would continue service reductions until the end of the year as it tries to address critical flaws in its 7000-series rail cars.

On October 12, WMATA, popularly known as metro, was forced to remove all of its 7000-series cars after a defect in the wheel axles causing trains bases to widen led to several derailments in a single day. The 7000-series trains, introduced in 2015 as part of an effort to upgrade the system, represent over 60 percent of its entire fleet.

Washington Metro Rapid Transit Cars at Reagan National Airport: (Source: Wikipedia)

In one serious incident, which the National Transportation Safety Board director described as potentially catastrophic, WMATA officials reported there were 200 stranded passengers on a line outside of its Arlington Cemetery station.

The smell of burned rubber filled the cars and visibility seemed foggy onboard, one stranded passenger reported to the Washington Post. Theres a good amount of people in this carevery seat is taken and some people are standing, too, said another. Passengers had to be evacuated by emergency responders and walk a quarter-mile out to the nearest station exit.

The sudden loss of metros rail cars led to some of the most crowded rail cars and stations since the coronavirus pandemic was declared early last year, wrote the Post at the time.

Instead of determining the cause of the defect in the rail cars, metro has offered to simply ramp up inspections of the 7000-series cars from every 90 days to every eight days, in the hope this will be sufficient to address the safety issues. The defects themselves are unusual and of an undetermined cause, according to the Post. Parts of metal from the derailment are being sent to a NTSB lab for further inspection.

Despite this, metro officials adopted a cautious tone about the potential for ramping services back up. In a statement to the Post, WMATA general manager Paul J. Wiedefeld said, well get better and better at providing more service as we get more cars out there. But its not going to be something that, come January 1 or whatever date, that we can say, Okay, well, the 7000s are back. Wiedefeld went further, stating that instead there will be a gradual ramping up of service leading into January.

The order to remove the rail cars from the Metro Fleet was done by the Washington Metrorail Safety Commission, a body appointed by the federal government to monitor the DC metro. When asked about the choice, safety board executive David L. Meyer told the Post that it was absolutely a momentous decision to end services for the 7000-series.

There has been deep concern about public trust at metro following a series of accidents relating to poor safety and maintenance. Weidefeld himself became general manager in 2015, following the asphyxiation death of a commuter on the Yellow Line outside of LEnfant station in downtown Washington, DC that year, with a pledge that he would put safety first.

The head of the safety commission told the Post that metro was aware of the defects and had worked with car builder Kawasaki Rail Car to address the situation without notifying the safety agency. Certainly, a widening wheel gauge problem is something that could lead to a derailment I would have expected this to be escalated both within Metro and to Metros safety oversight body.

The defects and resulting derailments and delays have raised alarms within the business establishment about the potential economic impact amid efforts to return the economy to its pre-pandemic state. Speaking for business interests, the Post editorial board published a comment last week calling for a forensic accounting of what went wrong with the 7000-series trains as well as a culture change at metro. Without this, the newspaper proclaims, the citys booming pre-covid economy will continue to limp along.

In addition to the metro removal of the 7000-series, the DC regions public bus systems are dealing with a shortage of service due to a lack of workers. Chris Conklin, director of transportation for Marylands Montgomery County, told the Post, We are having challengesjust like every other organization that relies on people with commercial drivers licenses  to have the staff available to fully restore the service the way we hope to. To mitigate these deficiencies, metro announced late last month that it would reintroduce rear-door entry next year as a way of speeding up service.

Raymond Jackson, president of Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU) Local 689, which represents a majority of the DC areas transit workers, told the Post that the problem is solely due to low wages. I really dont think the problem is the driver shortage. I think that the problem is the wage shortage, the ATU official said.

If this is so, then the ATU itself is responsible for the unendurable working conditions within the DC transit system. Metrobus drivers start at $20 during training and $25.51 after graduating from its training program. This translates to average yearly earnings of roughly $50,000, nearly $30,000 less than the amount estimated to be needed to live comfortably in the DC area, according to a 2017 report by GoBankingRates.com. An October report by local publication WTOP found that a two-bedroom in the District for 30% of ones gross income is doable with a salary around $126,000, accounting for other living costs.

The ATU is perfectly content to let its members live in poverty laboring for the DC transit system and its various privatized and public operators. The ATU allowed a 2019-2020 strike over low pay at private bus operator Transdev to remain isolated for nearly four months while its public membership in WMATA was forced to work, keeping metro in service while it scabbed on its own members.

During the COVID-19 pandemic the ATU has forced its membership to serve on the front lines. This is of a piece with the Transport Workers Union (TWU) and other unions nationally that have allowed their members to become infected on the job and die.

WMATA published its latest COVID-19 information on its website Friday, December 3, noting that there have been a total of 1,950 confirmed positive cases among workers and 7 who died from COVID-19.

In general, the Washington, DC region has also been experiencing a rise of COVID-19 cases. The current 7-day average is at 175 cases as of Tuesday, an increase of nearly double since the mid-October low of 90 cases per day.
Kim Jong Un has been spotted wearing leather jackets on multiple occasions. He is pictured here giving a speech at the groundbreaking ceremony for a hospital in Pyongyang in March last year. Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images

North Korea is banning an unlikely fashion item  leather trench coats.

This is because North Korean leader Kim Jong Un doesn't want his fashion style to be imitated, per a report from Radio Free Asia.

Kim was seen sporting leather trench coats on several occasions, including appearances on state television.

North Korea is imposing a ban on leather trench coats to stop ordinary citizens from copying their Supreme Leader's style, according to Radio Free Asia.

According to the outlet, there has been a blanket ban on young men wearing leather trench coats, with police trawling the streets to seize the jackets from citizens and sellers alike. Citing an unnamed source from within the reclusive country, the news outlet reported that the clampdown started after people began emulating Kim Jong Un's style.

"During the military parade at the 8th Party Congress in January of this year, the Highest Dignity and all the high-ranking officials were shown wearing leather coats also," the source told Radio Free Asia, referring to Kim by an honorific.

The source added that the leather coats also gained popularity among North Korean women after Kim's sister, Kim Yo Jong, wore them.

"Leather coats began to be recognized as a symbol of power," the source told RFA, adding that this prompted clothing sellers to start importing synthetic leather to copy Kim's looks.

"Young men protest, saying they bought the coats with their own money and there is no reason to take them away," the source said.

"The police respond to the complaints, saying that wearing clothes designed to look like the Highest Dignity's is an 'impure trend to challenge the authority of the Highest Dignity'" the source added. "They instructed the public not to wear leather coats, because it is part of the party's directive to decide who can wear them."

According to Radio Free Asia, buying real leather in North Korea is extremely expensive, with cowhide coats costing around $34. Those made from synthetic leather are half the price and sold for around $16.

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That said, this is still an astronomical sum for regular North Koreans to fork out. South Korean publication JoongAng Daily reported in 2018 that the average North Korean earned around $4 in basic income. This is supplemented by bonuses, which bring the regular North Korean worker's annual salary to $201  making a real leather jacket a luxury item worth two months' salary.

Another unnamed source, speaking to Radio Free Asia under anonymity, said that the leather jackets have been popular in North Korea for a while, particularly after South Korean actor Jang Dong-gun wore them in the early 2000s.

"That was when South Korean films began to spread in provincial cities, and the leather jacket worn by the South Korean actor Jang Dong-gun became all the rage and is still in vogue," said the second source to Radio Free Asia.

"Rich entrepreneurs are able to import the fabric for the coats by placing an order with state-run trading companies who have partially resumed maritime smuggling," the source added.

Read the original article on Insider
ETTRICK  Chesterfield Police say the suspect arrested in connection with the death of a Virginia State University student is also a student at the college.

Isaac K. Amissah Jr., 21, originally from northern Virginia, turned himself in to authorities Friday, four days after police obtained warrants for his arrest. Amissah has been charged with murder and use of a weapon in the commission of a felony.

He is being held without bond at the Chesterfield County Jail.

Amissah is charged with killing Daniel Wharton, 19, of Alexandria, Sunday, Dec. 5, at the University Apartments at Ettrick, a complex just outside Ettrick that caters to VSU students. Officers responding to reports of shots fired arrived on scene to find Wharton lying in the middle of a complex roadway.

Wharton, who police said had suffered several gunshot wounds, later died at a local hospital.

Related: 'This is extremely sad': VSU community reacts to shooting death of student Sunday night

Police said Amissah lived at the complex, which is neither owned nor managed by VSU.

Police did not release a motive for the shooting, nor did they say if the suspect and victim knew each other.

Wharton was a sophomore majoring in computer engineering. It was not made immediately clear what Amissah's major or status in school is.

Out of prison: Governor pardons woman seven years after conviction for 2013 death of Colonial Heights man

A scare: Colonial Heights college student charged with making bomb threat at William & Mary site

Bill Atkinson (he/him/his) is daily news coach for USA TODAY's Southeast Region-Unified Central, which includes Virginia, West Virginia and central North Carolina. He is based in Petersburg, Virginia. Reach him at batkinson@progress-index.com.

This article originally appeared on The Progress-Index: Virginia State University student charged in death of fellow student
Kanye Wests publicist has been accused of pressuring a Georgia election worker to confess to election fraud to benefit former President Donald Trumps claims of vote rigging in the 2020 polls.

Trevian Kutti, a Chicago publicist for Trump supporter Mr West, travelled to meet Ruby Freeman, a Georgia election worker who had received death threats after falsely being accused of illegally counting phoney mail-in ballots, according to a new report.

Ms Kutti allegedly offered to help Ms Freeman, a 62-year-old temporary election worker, in exchange for confessing to election fraud.

Ms Kutti explained she worked for a high-profile individual, reported Reuters who interviewed Ms Freeman. According to Ms Freeman, the publicist urged her to admit to Mr Trumps false voter-fraud allegations, saying that if she didnt she would be in jail in 48 hours, and if she did confess she would get help.

Ms Freeman refused, then called 911. The intimidation towards her and her daughter and co-worker Wandrea Shaye Moss started around a month after the 2020 election, when the Trump campaign falsely claimed the two Black women were opening suitcases full of fake ballots.

Around a year after the ordeal, she and her daughter broke their silence, offering a detailed account to the news agency Reuters, which included threats of lynching and racial slurs towards them. The pair said they had shown hundreds of threatening emails and text messages to police.

When Ms Kutti arrived at Ms Freemans address she would not open the door, but agreed to meet at a local police station under the supervision of a police officer. Part of the conversation between the pair was recorded on bodycam footage. You are a loose end for a party that needs to tidy up, Ms Kutti is heard telling Ms Freeman.

I cannot say what specifically will take place, she is heard telling Ms Freeman in the recording. I just know that it will disrupt your freedom ... and the freedom of one or more of your family members.

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Ms Kutti then asks the officer to give them privacy, before trying to get Ms Freeman to confess to voter fraud. If you dont tell everything, Ms Freeman claims Ms Kutti said, youre going to jail.

There is no suggestion that Kanye West was involved in the allegations.

The Independent has contacted Ms Kutti for comment.

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When we include American History in public education curricula, we must question whether were serious about teaching this subject. Although our country has some flagrant discriminatory episodes in its past, the harm that they created is not purely historical  their impact continues to this day. By understanding our past, our students will better understand its current repercussions and thereby will be more prepared, mentally and ethically, to address and rectify the resultant harm. We must remove partisan voices from public educational curricula. And we should worry less about our youth learning the whole truth about their countrys history, and focus instead upon developing our students historical knowledge and innate moral agency: their critical thinking, their humanitarianism, and their courage.

Critical Race Theory, CRT, is simply the theory that the historical and pervasive influence of systemic racism in our countrys policies  NOT necessarily in our own personal actions  has created ongoing and devastating damage to the victims of such racism.

Leppert: CRT is not taught in K-12 so why are people mad about it?

Only a twisted conception of education assumes that our children can grow into responsible adult citizens while ignorant of their own countrys history. Yet Republican legislatures in over 15 states are attempting to ban much of our history in education. The Heritage Foundation, true to form, claims a connection between CRT and Marxism. Such uninformed perspectives, ultimately zero-sum, assume that recognition of our countrys wrongs is incompatible with appreciating our own and our countrys greatness. However, historical knowledge is a prerequisite to productive change.

In ancient Greek, the word for the past is the same as in front, and the word for the future is the same as behind. The idea is that we humans can view the past and learn from it. In ancient Journey literature (from Gilgamesh to Odyssey to Aeneid and beyond), the burdened and conflicted hero sojourns in the Underworld where, accompanied by a wise seer, he sees and assesses his past and, from this enlightenment, recognizes his mistakes and forges a reasonable and virtuous future.

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Contribute to the discussion: How to submit a letter to the editor or guest column to The Herald-Times

Should our students be ignorant of our countrys first settlers? Or the Trail of Tears? Or the gradual loss of many Native American languages and practices? Or our slave trade? Or the term 3/5 of a free individual? Or the KKK? Or 14-year-old Emmett Till? Or the discriminatory exclusion that informed our New Deal, the Federal Housing Authoritys policies, our GI Bill? Should we hide the ignorance and hatred that resulted in Tulsa or the lynchings? Should our students never learn of our inheritance from these injustices  Rodney King, Trayvon Martin, Breanna Taylor, George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery (cf. Say Their Name Memorial), ghettoization, the overwhelmingly disproportionate (over 1/3) mass incarceration of black males, the relative wealth disadvantage of African Americans? The inconvenient truth of systemic racism doesnt condemn us; it challenges us to do better.

President Bidens Tribal Summit and appointment of Deb Haaland to head the Interior Department, and the bill to create a Truth and Healing Commission on Indiana Boarding School Policies (HR5444) are productive attempts at rectification. We also must understand and rectify the severe medical, social, legal and economic disadvantages that our past continues to place on the backs of African Americans.

I trust our children. I believe they can become responsible moral agents, able to recognize brutality and privilege, and to develop the courage to put our country on a straighter path. And so, we must choose for our children: enlightened historical knowledge, or a darkness that we euphemistically call innocence.

Diane Legomsky, Ph.D., is the founder of the Bloomington Refugee Support Network and a community advocate for racial justice.

This article originally appeared on The Herald-Times: historical knowledge is a prerequisite for productive change
DAYTONA BEACH  Andy Clark credits the medical care he received at Daytona Beach's Halifax Health hospital after becoming seriously injured in a plane crash in 2009 with saving his life.

On Thursday morning, Clark and his wife Molly, owners of All Aboard Properties in Port Orange, found a way to show their appreciation to Halifax Health.

The couple presented the Daytona Beach hospital's foundation with a $400,000 donation to create a permanent fund called the "Arts in Medicine Endowment" to launch a new music and art therapy program.

Andy Clark, owner of All Aboard Properties, with wife Molly Clark, and Halifax Health CEO Jeff Feasel, speaks after the couple presented the hospital with a $400,000 donation to launch an Arts in Medicine program that will provide music and art therapy to patients as well as staff. The event took place in the lobby of the Bill France Tower on Thursday morning, Dec. 9, 2021.

The gift will be used to fund an arts therapy coordinator to plan and schedule therapeutic visual, and musical art encounters and activities for patients and Halifax Health staff.

"I found as a patient that having a positive attitude and the will to live is so paramount in the recovery process for anyone who's seriously injured," said Clark in an interview prior to the check presentation. "Yet, if you go to some hospital waiting rooms, they can be a somber place. Molly and I have always loved music and believe if we could somehow brighten people's experience (while in the hospital), it can go a long way, not just for the patients and their families, but also for the hospital staff."

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'Forever grateful' to the hospital

Clark said in addition to helping him "miraculously" recover from massive injuries both to his back, head, aorta, lungs and ribs, he was also grateful to Halifax Health to work out a plan to pay off his enormous medical bills.

Because of the Great Recession at the time, Clark said he made the mistake of canceling his health insurance prior to the plane crash. That accident also took the life of his father, the late Douglas Clark, founder of what today is the All Aboard Storage Center chain.

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"I didn't have enough money (at the time) to pay my medical bills, it was staggering," Andy Clark recalled.

All Aboard Storage today is not only a profitable business once again, it is also expanding. It currently has 24 locations throughout the region with plans to add another half dozen, according to Clark.

Clark also sold two mobile home parks in Port Orange last year and this fall sold the Sunshine Plaza shopping center on Ridgewood Avenue in South Daytona.

Now the couple is looking to give back to help others, in part through their donation to the Halifax Health Foundation.

Molly Clark said she is "forever grateful" to Halifax Health for the medical care her husband received as well as the willingness of the surgeons who operated on him to tell her "straight" about the severity of his injuries.

The goal, said Andy Clark, is to create a program where musicians and artists from the community, including students as well as "aging baby boomers," can volunteer time to perform music or teach art classes at the Halifax Health Medical Center in Daytona Beach.

The Halifax Health Foundation will begin a campaign to raise additional donations to grow the Arts in Medicine Endowment, said Clark. The goal, he said, is to grow the fund to $1 million.

Check presentation included live music

Seabreeze High School students Brandon Rodriquez and Jordon Smith perform, Thursday December 9, 2021 during the donation check presentation by Andy and Molly Clark to Halifax Health hospital in Daytona Beach. The donation will be used to launch a music and art therapy program at the hospital.

The check presentation on Thursday morning in the lobby of the hospital's Bill France Tower included music performances by a variety of local musicians as well as speeches by the Clarks, Daytona Beach Mayor Derrick Henry, Halifax Health CEO Jeff Feasel and Joe Petrock, executive director of the Halifax Health Foundation.

The music performances were an example of what the Clarks hope can be offered at the hospital on an ongoing basis.

"Andy and Molly, you two symbolize the best of Daytona Beach," said Henry. "I'm grateful as mayor for who you are, what you're doing here in this institution. I want this love to spread, not only now throughout the holiday season, but to continue."

Petrock worked with Julie Roth, Halifax Health's service line administrator for oncology, to source a program and coordinator who was trained at UF Health in Gainesville.

It is our hope to start this therapy for oncology patients with musical performance and visual art experiences and for the program to grow and touch all aspects of Halifax Health. This gift by the Clarks takes our care to a higher level not only providing exceptional medical care but also providing wrap around care through comfort for our patients, said Petrock in a news release.

Petrock stated that he will continue to raise funds to add to the Arts in Medicine Endowment and thanked the Clarks for improving experiences for so many among us who need medical treatments.

Left to right: Halifax Health CEO Jeff Feasel and Andy and Molly Clark, owners of All Aboard Properties, listen to one of the music performances, Thursday December 9, 2021 during a event where the Clarks donated $400,000 to start a music and art therapy program at the hospital.

"Molly and I didn't have a goal of having our name on a building," said Clark. "The main thing is, it's a unique program that I think is needed."

Clark said he hopes to get the word out for musicians and artists to volunteer their time to perform at the hospital throughout the year. "Hopefully, it will be a new trend for our community," he said.

This article originally appeared on The Daytona Beach News-Journal: Halifax Health gets donation for arts program at Daytona Beach hospital
Anne Hathaway, Stephen Curry, Blake Lively, Cardi B, Niall Horan and Kim Kardashian have at least one thing in common. Theyve all been flagged to the Federal Trade Commission for touting products and services on social media sites like Instagram, potentially swaying their combined hundreds of millions of online followers without clearly saying they were paid to do so.

Shopping this holiday season has plenty of challenges, from shipping delays to inflated prices for hard-to-find items. But another constant problem is the flood of fake, deceptive or secretly compensated reviews, whether from misleading influencers or the thousands of less-famous fraudsters posting online. Its time for government and companies to crack down on these problematic practices, because consumers shouldnt have to take on the burden of policing the internet to avoid heartbreak and lost money.

The economic value of a good review

Online reviews have become an everyday part of shopping, with more than 9 in 10 Americans saying they check them before making a purchase.

As for how many are bogus, estimates range from 4% to 39%. The lower figure may seem manageable, but according to the World Economic Forum, it still translates into $152 billion of global purchases every year.

As for influencers, a 2017 survey of the 50 most-followed celebrities on Instagram found that 93% were breaking FTC rules. Even so, 15% of consumers say theyve made a purchase because of an influencer.

Unfortunately, fraudsters rarely get slapped with civil penalties, let alone criminal prosecution, for engaging in any number of review-related scams, such as paying for positive reviews for their own products or for negative reviews to smear a competitors.

The absence of safeguards in such a robust market for manipulation speaks to a bigger issue: A broken marketplace so brazenly prizes profit over people.

It doesnt have to be this way. Government and business need to go further to make the online retail landscape a place where companies can earn profits without taking advantage of customers.

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The FTC has taken some baby steps. In the past three years, the commission has successfully sued about two dozen companies in part for violating endorsement rules.

Many of the cases, however, were part of larger enforcement actions, such as the 2020 Teami detox tea settlement for allegedly inflating product claims or the 2019 punishment handed down to diet-drug maker Cure Encapsulations.

The agency publicized that case as the first time it had cracked down on a company for buying fake reviews, but there was also the issue of an ingredient in the companys weight-loss product that had the potential to cause acute liver failure.

How to protect your heart without sacrificing taste: Eliminate trans fat from your food

Truth in advertising should be more than a side issue, and its possible the FTC is finally seeing that. In October, the commission sent reminders to more than 700 companies, cautioning them that each legally dubious review posted on their site could cost them nearly $44,000 in fines. Its a welcomed first step, but one way the FTC can truly dedicate itself to eliminating online sham reviews is by making penalties more meaningful. Companies have financial incentives to plant fake reviews. An extra star on a restaurants Yelp rating can increase revenue by as much as 9%, according to a Harvard Business School study.

The best credit cards for online shopping make the most of what you're already buying.

Legacy Learning Systems, a guitar-lesson company, paid a $250,000 fine to the FTC after phony testimonials helped bring in $5 million of sales.

Thats a pretty good return on investment. We need fines and enforcement that actually cost companies that dont play by the rules, not let them still come out on top.

Companies, act like you care

Companies, too, have to act more like they care. Amazon, the worlds biggest online seller, has said that it has spent hundreds of millions of dollars to stamp out review abuse and kicked millions of bad actors off its site.

Thats laudable, and necessary, but even so, the United Kingdoms Competition and Markets Authority opened an investigation in June into whether Amazon and Google were doing enough to protect shoppers from fake reviews.

Big online retailers should have to play by the same product liability and seller liability rules as physical stores, because the importance of consumers safety doesnt disappear when they log online. Amazon rules prohibit trading reviews for free goods, but scammers find loopholes.

In 2019, BuzzFeed profiled a woman who in one year was able to acquire 700 items worth more than $15,000. She paid for everything herself, then was reimbursed by the manufacturers in return for giving each of their products 5-star reviews, regardless of what she thought of them.

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When businesses monitor online reviews, they often rely on artificial intelligence, in part likely because its cheaper.

Who knew it was so easy to sucker robots? Companies need to invest in processes that involve more human moderators who, with the aid of advanced technology, can make the nuanced decisions that machines cant. Such meaningful investment could go a long way toward kicking scams to the curb and keeping consumers shopping safely.

During the holidays, consumers should be focused on our friends and family, not worrying whether were falling for a fraud. Its time we take fake reviews seriously, so everyone  wherever you are, whatever you celebrate and whomever you follow on Instagram  can shop with peace of mind safely this holiday season.

Marta L. Tellado is the president and CEO of the nonprofit Consumer Reports. Follow her on Twitter: @MLTellado

You can read diverse opinions from our Board of Contributors and other writers on the Opinion front page, on Twitter @usatodayopinion and in our daily Opinion newsletter. To respond to a column, submit a comment to letters@usatoday.com.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Fake reviews flood online commerce: Where is truth in advertising?
Dec. 10GROTON  Family members of submariners on the USS Delaware got a visit Thursday from first lady Jill Biden and Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro, at a festive holiday gathering that United Through Reading hosted at the U.S. Submarine Veterans Club.

Biden is the sponsor of the USS Delaware, a Virginia-class submarine built at Newport News, Va., and christened in 2018.

"I understand what it feels like for all the military families here who have someone who is deployed, especially at the holiday," she said. Talking about Beau Biden, she added, "My son was Army National Guard; he did go to Iraq for a year. I saw that empty chair at the table, whether it was Thanksgiving or Christmas or birthdays, so I know how much it sort of tugs at your heartstrings, especially during these tough times."

Jill Biden's father served in the Navy, and she recalled seeing the Blue Angels flight demonstration squadron many times and being so proud to wear her dad's sailor hat.

Introducing Biden was East Lyme Middle School student Brooklyn Fineran, daughter of Navy Chief Dan Fineran and Chief Ombudsman Amber Fineran.

"Being a military kid can be hard at times, especially when it comes to my dad and being away from family in Arkansas and North Carolina," she said. "But it also has its advantages: seeing new states almost every three years and learning new things, too."

Fineran said she has lived in four states: California, Maine, Virginia and Connecticut. Since moving here, she has gotten a German shepherd and is learning to play the flute and speak French.

Also present were U.S. Rep. Joe Courtney, D-2nd District; Gov. Ned Lamont; and Groton City Mayor Keith Hedrick.

Family members sat at tables with poinsettias and holiday-themed picture frame crafts and cups of crayons with coloring pages. Santa wandered through the tables, handing out candy canes from his bag.

Among the family members were Elise Alvarado and her kids, 6-year-old Orion and 1-year-old Sarai. Her husband, Mark Alvarado, has served in the Navy for 13 years, and the family moved from Hawaii to Groton in May.

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"We're both from the area, so to come back has been really nice for us," Alvarado said. Their parents are veterans, and Elise Alvarado's parents retired here. But she said the USS Delaware is in and out all the time and it's tough, so she tries to stay busy.

Acacia Lazos  who was there with her three kids, all under age 2  said the USS Delaware got underway at the end of November. She hopes her husband, Brandon Lazos, is back in time for Christmas.

At the event Thursday, Biden made her way around the tables, stopping to talk to family members and take pictures  and hold a baby.

The host of the event was United Through Reading, a nonprofit that connects separated military families through the experience of storytime. With the help of the organization's volunteers, service members record themselves reading books and then send the recordings  along with the books  to their children.

Josie Beets, the agency's senior vice president of advancement, said United Through Reading often hosts events where it's giving books to military families. At this event, she said volunteers networked with attendees "so we can continue to support these families beyond tonight."

She said one of Jill Biden's priorities is military child education.

Biden told the kids Thursday, "I teach English, I teach writing, so I know how important it is that you read, so you become good readers and good writers."

e.moser@theday.com
Family photos of Daniel Dal Canto at his familyOs home in Salt Lake City, Nov. 1, 2021. (Ashley Gilbertson/The New York Times)

As Matthew van Antwerpen, a 17-year-old in suburban Dallas, struggled with remote schooling during the pandemic last year, he grew increasingly despondent. Searching online, he found a website about suicide.

Any enjoyment or progress I make in my life simply comes across as forced, he wrote on the site after signing up. I know it is all just a distraction to blow time until the end.

Roberta Barbos, a 22-year-old student at the University of Glasgow, first posted after a breakup, writing that she was unbearably lonely. Shawn Shatto, 25, described feeling miserable at her warehouse job in Pennsylvania. And Daniel Dal Canto, a 16-year-old in Salt Lake City, shared his fears that an undiagnosed stomach ailment might never get better.

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Soon after joining, each of them was dead.

Most suicide websites are about prevention. This one  started in March 2018 by two shadowy figures calling themselves Marquis and Serge  provides explicit directions on how to die.

The four young members were among tens of thousands around the world who have been pulled in. On the sites public forums, in live chats and through private messaging, they discuss hanging, poison, guns and gas.

Though members are anonymous, The New York Times identified 45 who had killed themselves in the United States, the United Kingdom, Italy, Canada and Australia  and found that the trail of deaths is likely much longer.

More than 500 members wrote goodbye threads announcing how and when they planned to end their lives, and then never posted again.

Most of the narratives cited the same lethal method: a preservative used for curing meat, The Times found. By promoting the preservative as a poison, the site has helped give rise to a means of suicide that is alarming some coroners and doctors.

The site now draws 6 million page views a month, on average  quadruple that of the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline, according to data from Similarweb, a web analytics company.

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Most members reported that they had experienced mental illness and were 30 or younger, according to a survey last year by the site. That age group roughly aligns with the demographic in the United States  15 to 24  that had the sharpest rise in suicide rate from 2009-19, the most recent data available.

Among them was Matthew. Despite the strain of virtual high school, he had appeared to be looking to the future. He had applied to Texas A&M University and intended to become a public defender.

His other plans took shape quickly and secretly. In only 29 days, Matthew joined the site, learned of the lethal preservative and ended his life.

My son committed suicide at 17 two weeks ago, Sharon Luft tweeted in January, calling out the site. They told him how to, encouraged him after he took the mix.

Please help me, she wrote, joining the calls of other parents for Marquis and Serge to be held accountable and for the banning of the site, called Sanctioned Suicide.

Australia, Germany and Italy succeeded in restricting access to the site within their borders, but U.S. law enforcement officials, lawmakers and technology companies have been reluctant to act.

While most states have laws against assisting suicide, they are inconsistent, rarely enforced and dont explicitly address online activity. Federal law shields website operators from liability for most harmful content posted by users. Court decisions have left unsettled questions about protected speech.

And when asked to stop steering visitors to the suicide site, the worlds most powerful search engine deflected responsibility. Google Search holds a mirror up to what is on the internet, a senior manager for the company wrote to Australian officials in February 2019.

Marquis and Serge have vowed to fight any efforts to take down the site. They have experience running websites with dark content: They operate several online forums for incels, or involuntary celibates, men who believe that women will never have sex with them because of their looks or social status. Many on those sites openly discuss a fatalistic outlook, including thoughts of self-harm.

The two men have worked to shield the suicide site and to frustrate efforts to learn who is behind it. The servers have been moved from country to country. Marquis and Serge use multiple aliases and have removed nearly every trace of their real identities from the internet. Still, The Times found them, thousands of miles apart, in the capital of Uruguay and a city in Alabama.

Daniel Dal Canto, a high school junior, arrived on the suicide site with little idea of how to end his life.

Three years earlier, he had been depressed, prompting his parents to steer him into months of therapy and medication. Now he was drumming in a jazz band, playing video games with friends and getting straight As.

But in September 2019, Daniel, expressing anxiety over his stomach pain, was gathering information and advice from the website.

It came online after Reddit shut down a group where people had been sharing suicide methods and encouraging self-harm. Reddit prohibited such discussion, as did Facebook, Twitter and other platforms.

While some of those drawn to the website described suffering from physical pain, most mentioned depression, bipolar disorder or other mental illnesses. About half were 25 or younger, the survey showed; like Daniel, some were minors.

The suicide rate has risen over the past 20 years in the United States. About 45,000 people take their own lives each year  more than die from traffic accidents. (That figure does not count the hundreds of physician-assisted deaths in the nine states where they are legal and restricted to the terminally ill.)

Within several weeks, Daniel settled on the lethal preservative, sodium nitrite, one of the most discussed topics on the website. Members guided one another to online sellers. They advised on obtaining it without alerting family. And they shared directions for using it.

On Oct. 3, the teenager posted a photograph of a bottle of the lethal preservative and announced that he would take it that weekend. But hours later, he posted again. Things had changed: A disagreement with his parents had prompted him to move up his plans.

At 2:30 a.m. the next day, Daniel's mom found him dead in his bed.

In December 2019, two months after Daniels death, a coroner in England called for a government inquiry after discovering that members of the site had advised a troubled young woman on ending her life. German officials had already begun an investigation, worried about potential harm to children.

And Australias eSafety Commission, the nations regulator for online safety, had been looking into the site for months, after a father reported that his 22-year-old son had poisoned himself with the preservative.

Serge and Marquis were determined to protect the site  and themselves.

The two men had taken pains to scrub their personal identifying information from the internet and obscure the names of companies hosting the website, making it difficult for authorities and families of the deceased to take action against them.

As Australia began its investigation, the site was moved to a new server, according to a post by Marquis.

In March 2020, after the site was removed from online search results in Germany, the company hosting the site threatened to take it down over its violation of German law. Once again, the site was moved.

The sites rely on search engines to drive traffic. About half of all visits to the suicide site come that way, according to data from Similarweb.

But when Australian officials asked Google, the dominant business, and Microsofts Bing in 2019 to remove the site from their search results, they refused to do so absent a legal requirement.

It was not Googles role to pass judgment on any sites containing content that was legal, as objectionable as it might be, a senior manager told the Australians.

As for Bing, a Microsoft spokesperson said the company was continually working to help keep users safe.

While federal law protects the site operators from being held liable for most content posted by users, the members could be vulnerable to criminal charges.

But the definition of a crime depends on the jurisdiction. State suicide laws vary. Some specify that assistance must be physical. Only a handful criminalize encouragement.

Some law enforcement officials outside the United States have also declined to investigate the operators and members of the site, believing the online activity falls outside their jurisdiction.

Officials in several countries consider the forum an American website. Italian investigators said they concluded that because a site administrator  apparently Marquis, using another of his fake names  provided them with a business address in the United States.

The Times investigation led to an elegant three-story apartment building in Montevideo, Uruguay, and a modest two-bedroom town house in Huntsville, Alabama.

The man calling himself Serge is Diego Joaquin Galante; Marquis is Lamarcus Small.

Reporters pieced together their identities and roles with the site from domain registration and financial documents, their online activity, public documents including court records, and interviews with seven people who had interacted with either of them.

Records show that Galante, 29, resides in the Montevideo apartment with his family  several siblings, his mother and his father, who is a lawyer. Small, 28, lives with his mother and brother in the town house.

In two recent phone interviews, Small said that he did not know how his credit card number, name, address and phone number had appeared on an invoice for the suicide website domain name.

Galante, when reached by phone, initially said he knew nothing about the suicide website and hung up. Days later, after receiving a letter from The Times, he acknowledged in an email that he had posted on the site as Serge, but he denied that he was a founder or operator of it.

In his email to The Times, Galante defended the site as a positive influence that improved the lives of some members. But, he said, I am deeply sorry that there are people who decide to end their life.

 2021 The New York Times Company
GIBRALTAR, Dec. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- World Trade Center Gibraltar and a small team of partners have now completed a successful daring covert operation, code named 'Operation Magic Carpet' to evacuate 92 individuals, including 33 children and new-born babies from escalating and imminent danger in Kabul, Afghanistan.

Operation Magic Carpet Evacuee

Among the evacuees are 60 former staff members and their dependents of the international arm of the animal welfare charity "Mayhew London" (for which Megan Markle is a Patron) former NATO and MoD liaisons and a team of veterinarians, with their respective families.

The humanitarian operation, the largest privately funded humanitarian evacuation mission undertaken since the American led withdrawal at the end of August was conducted by an experienced extraction team in an increasingly hostile environment, with a rapidly closing window, amidst eye-witness reports of raids of properties and neighbourhoods in the immediate vicinity to these individuals.

Following the fall of Kabul to the Taliban, on 15th August, the entire world watched as the frenzied non-combatant evacuation operation ensued from Hamid Karzai International Airport. It was clear that despite the heroic efforts of Allied forces resulting in nearly 120,000 people being evacuated within this timescale, many vulnerable individuals were left behind at risk of acts of retribution by uncontrolled terror groups.

British based animal welfare campaigner Dominic Dyer, internationally recognised for his work in evacuating Pen Farthing and his Nowzad employees and animals from Kabul in August played a leading role in the rescue operation working alongside a British vet and a Jerusalem based translator.

Businessman and owner of World Trade Center Gibraltar, Gregory Butcher, also generously helped finance part of the operation along with several individuals from Britain and the United States.

The complex and dangerous evacuation took over 2 months to complete, during a period which has seen Afghanistan spiral into escalating violence and economic collapse. The growing threat of widespread famine, made all the more desperate by the approach of winter, puts the survival of millions of Afghan citizens at risk according to UN reports.

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As of 8th December, all 92 evacuees have safely arrived in accommodation in Islamabad, Pakistan. The sense of relief, sadness and uncertainty will no doubt be overwhelming for this group, as they now embark on a new life outside of their home country, having left everything but a few belongings behind.

Speaking about the successful completion of Operation Magic Carpet, Dominic Dyer said:

"It has been immensely tough for all concerned, but these are the lucky ones, people for whom there is, at least, the chance of a better future. The rout of US, UK, and other forces from Kabul, leaving almost the entire country in the hands of the Taliban, means the prospect for millions is bleak indeed. Operation Magic Carpet could not help everyone, but this extraordinary band of committed individuals have done what they can for the Kabul 92. Every life is precious, and I will now be asking Britain and other nations to open their doors to these talented individuals who are looking for a safe place to call home."

Whilst the initial phase is complete, the time to redouble efforts begins now, and a public fundraising campaign will soon be established to help to provide food and accommodation to the 92 adults and children in Pakistan for the necessary timeframe in which onward travel documentation to third countries, such as the UK, USA and other European destinations and also their respective accommodation in those countries, is secured.

Gregory Butcher, owner of the World Trade Center Gibraltar and part-funder of the rescue said:

"Operation Magic Carpet is a miraculous coming together of volunteers in a time of need. Almost everyone will have seen the harrowing photos of the humanitarian disaster that is increasing in its intensity, with uncontrolled terror groups conducting retribution killings more frequently by the day.

I learnt of an Afghan Colonel who had worked with Coalition Forces, including Canadian, British and US representatives, having attended a NATO conference in Brussels and an Afghan team leader of a major British sub-contractor security firm, based in Kabul. They were all at risk of retribution at the hands of the Taliban and needed to be rescued as well.

At World Trade Center Gibraltar, we believe that large corporations have a specific role to play in society, one of humanitarian action, sustainable development, and corporate social responsibility. These principles and values guide us in our daily lives and throughout all our business endeavours. We are partners and friends and seek to support marginalized communities, non-profits and charitable groups that align with our mission.

When we learned of the developing crisis in Afghanistan and heard that others were trying to find a way to get those individuals out, some of whom were female and therefore at considerable risk in Kabul, we could not turn away the chance of helping. They and their children were desperate to leave and were without any hope of doing so, so we teamed up with those other kind people to try and get a total of 92 people out of Afghanistan.

I am so glad we worked tirelessly to achieve this. It really is a life and death situation, with the international community now calling on the Taliban to enforce an amnesty for former Afghan security personnel. We have just read that human rights groups cite scores of ex-soldiers have been rounded up and then executed since mid-August. The retribution has started, and we owe it to those who supported the Coalition to save them.

On the arrival of the 92 in Pakistan, it's been hard thinking what might have happened to them had we all not intervened. Their new lives and future are filled with uncertainty, and now we need to urgently get these brave now-stateless English-speaking people into a refugee resettlement program. Can you help us?"

World Trade Center Gibraltar is working to raise funds and offer vital help to those whose lives have been shattered by conflict and disaster, as they commence a new chapter in their lives, please contact us for more information at eaw@worldtradecenter.gi

Ed Allison-Wright

eaw@worldtradecenter.gi

+350 200 400 48

World Trade Center Gibraltar Logo

SOURCE World Trade Center Gibraltar
Yili's First Self-built Plant in Southeast Asia Officially Launches Operation

New Plant Reflects Yili's Continued Success in Accelerating its Internationalization

BEKASI CITY, Indonesia, Dec. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Yili Group, Asia's largest dairy company, announced the inaugural phase of the Yili Indonesia Dairy Production Base (hereinafter referred to as "Yili Indonesia Dairy") was officially put into operation. This marks another important milestone in Yili's successful process of internationalization.

Yili Expands Global Presence with Launch of New Dairy Production Base in Indonesia

Located in the Greenland International Industrial Center, Bekasi, West Java in Indonesia, Yili Indonesia Dairy covers an area of 17 hectares. With an investment of RMB 867 million, the first phase of the project has a daily production capacity of 159 tons. Yili expects to expand capacity to 343 tons per day, once the second phase is complete. Yili Indonesia Dairy will not only focus on the local Indonesian market but the wider region as well. As one of Yili Group's "dual centers" in Southeast Asia (the other center is the company's Thailand-based ice cream production base), it will expand into the Southeast Asian market, providing regional consumers with a more diverse range of products.

Strengthening Local Economies in Southeast Asia

With the aim of making positive contributions to local industry development and economic prosperity, the state-of-the-art plant is an innovative, low-carbon and environmentally sustainable, and highly advanced production facility, adopting cutting-edge technology and equipment and integrating advanced digital technologies throughout its entire production chain.

Yili is also pursuing opportunities for local sourcing. To date, Yili has established cooperative relationships with more than 90 high-quality local suppliers in Indonesia. Moving forward, Yili Indonesia Dairy will cooperate with local distributors and establish cooperative relationships with more than 200,000 sales outlets in Indonesia and promote its products to a broader international market through Yili's global marketing channels.

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Global Mindsets and Local Operations

While deepening its presence in international markets, Yili is focused on building highly localized factories that bring value to local communities. Today, Yili Indonesia Dairy has a total of 383 employees, with local employees accounting for more than 95% of the workforce. After the first and second phases of the project are completed, this is expected to create more than 5,000 new jobs for local communities, directly and indirectly.

In its business operations, Yili Indonesia Dairy always strictly abides by Indonesian laws and regulations, respects local customs and culture, creates new jobs, and provides a positive and caring working environment for its employees. It also regularly organizes a diverse range of training and learning activities to help employees further improve their skillsets and broaden their career horizons.

In recent years, Yili has accelerated its expansion into the Southeast Asian market. In October 2018, the company officially launched the Joyday ice cream brand in Indonesia. In September 2019, Yili held a product launch in Singapore to roll out its high-end yogurt brand AMBPOMIAL Greek yogurt in Southeast Asia. In 2020 and 2021, Yili won the "FDA Quality Award" issued by the Thai FDA for two consecutive years. To help provide consumers throughout the region with even higher quality services, Yili made the strategic decision to establish a production facility in Indonesia.

Moving forward, guided by the philosophy of "mutual development", Yili is dedicated to continuing pursuing new opportunities for strategic cooperation, deepening its existing collaborations, and sharing its business success with all sectors of Southeast Asia, with the aim of further contributing to the region's socio-economic development and growing prosperity.

SOURCE Yili Group
An exhibition with over 300 artefacts demonstrating the history of Hungarian-Croatian cultural relations opened in the Hungarian National Museum (MNM) on Thursday.

Entitled Ars at virtus. Croatia  Hungary: 800 Years of Common Cultural Heritage, the exhibition has been organised by MNM and Zagrebs Galerija Klovicevi dvorival.



Addressing the opening ceremony, Human Resources Minister Miklos Kasler noted that the two nations history had become intertwined as early as after the death of Croatian King Zvonimir in 1089, when the Croatian crown had been offered to King Ladislaus I of Hungary.



MNM Chief Director Laszlo L. Simon said that the sister exhibition of this show had become the exhibition of the year in Croatia in 2020.



Nina Obuljen Korzinek, Croatias minister of culture and media, said the Zagreb exhibition had been the central cultural event of Croatias EU presidency.



The Budapest exhibition will remain open to the public until March 15, 2022.



Click here for more info and to see the virtual exhibition
Like the cloudiness caused by the sediment that rises up from the bottom of an unfiltered and unfined bottle, the natural wine phenomenon that is sweeping the wine world is also shaking up the Hungarian scene, bringing clamor and confusion in its wake.

Wine experts and lovers have been debating the topic furiously on social media, with many dismissing natural wines as terrible and nothing more than a fad fueled by ignorant hipsters, who claim that conventional winemakers are killing us.



However, I dont think that natural wine is a flash in the pan, and it is very much in demand by an enthusiastic younger generation, promising a certain X-factor for the curious members of Generation X and beyond.



The natural wine movement is really about returning to vinifying grapes the way they used to be handled, before the advent of technology and synthetic herbicides/pesticides came onto the scene and revolutionized winemaking.



You could, of course, argue that wine was made all the better, fresher, fruitier, and certainly much cleaner, by technological advances, that pesticides and herbicides are used for good reason and, furthermore, in amounts that have zero impact on health.



On the other hand, there surely exists plenty of room for different approaches, and a return to earlier ways also reflects whats going in other walks of life.



While larger wineries cannot really afford to take risks and have to focus on pumping out a faultless, uniform product to satisfy the demands of shareholders, owners, consumers, and distributors alike, smaller producers often have the freedom to experiment.



The Kristinus Borbirtok in the Balatonboglar wine region does buck this trend and is an example of a larger winery successfully pursuing a natural approach.



One trend Ive been witnessing in Hungary is smaller cellars moving towards organic and biodynamic growing, and in some cases going the whole natural hog, which essentially means doing very little to the wine.



Back to Basics

More wineries are going back to basics, adopting a minimum interventionist approach to winemaking, neither adding nor taking away from the wine.



Not adding to the wine implies spontaneous fermentation from the yeasts inherent on the grapes and in the cellar, and the use of no additives other than a bit of sulfur to prevent the wine from spoiling; hardcore natural vintners often eschew even the use of this naturally-occurring chemical.



At a blind tasting of natural wines that I recently attended, to which participants all brought a bottle, a non-natural wine somehow slipped into the line-up, and it really did stick out, despite the actual natural wines all being clean and without unpleasant, dirty notes.



For me a natural wine should be clean, yet also have a certain funkiness going on. It really is a whole New Old category and needs to be treated as such. When theyre bad, natural wines can be awful, but when theyre good, they certainly warrant serious attention.



I recently had the opportunity to visit two of Hungarys leading lights of natural wine, and was greatly impressed by what I saw and tasted.



One Hungarian winemaker who has gone entirely sulfur-free is Levente Major, owner and winemaker at Levente Pince, in the village of Abasar (88 km northeast by road) in the Matra wine region. His wines, from the Olaszrizling, Riesling and Kekfrankos varieties, are to my palate concentrated, full of character and very pleasant to drink.



He even makes a natural wine out of Irsai Oliver, which I always considered to be a technologically-made wine; his does capture the essence of this aromatic grape, but with plenty of richness and oily texture.



Most of his wines go abroad, as foreign distributors get and really appreciate what hes doing, while the local market is put off by what are somewhat premium prices of around HUF 6,000 a bottle. That seems justified, nevertheless, given the extra yards he puts in to grow grapes via only organic treatments.



Grapes are every day work, you cant just come up from Budapest occasionally, he says.



Problem Deer

Major has recently bought 10 hectares of vines in one block on Sar hegy, but deer have gobbled up seven hectares worth of the 2021 vintage, primarily down to his refusal to spray conventional chemicals. In broad daylight, we could see a brace of deer chillin and chewin among the vines.



He is planning to build a fence to keep the animals out. At first glance, with his big beard, you might mistake him for a hipster, but do that at your peril; also the headmaster of the local school, he tells me that he is into Norwegian black metal.



Heading south to the often overlooked Hajos-Baja wine region, the bijou Sziegl Pince is located in Hajos (157 km south of Budapest), in what is considered to be the worlds biggest cellar village, Hajosi Pincefalu, in itself a must-see for wine lovers.



Balazs Sziegl, a Hajos native, runs the winery together with his wife, Petra, who hails from the next village, but the pair actually met while studying viticulture and viniculture in Budapest.



We dont use any additives, neither do we take anything out of [the wines]. Wines created the natural way tell you about their land of production and the personality of the winemaker, their website says.



We arrived at the Sziegl winery after a visit to the 800,000-bottle-a-year Koch Boraszat. Sziegl is full of admiration of the work done by the larger local player, and the two winemaking families are on friendly terms.



I think its just a different approach, we can certainly live together, says Petra. She and Palma Koch went to the same school. Incidentally, Palmas father Csaba, the Hungarian Wine Academys Winemaker of the Year in 2019, also makes some exciting organic wines from obscure local varieties.



I quiz Sziegl about when the magic moment to go natural arrived. It wasnt a moment, but rather a process. We wanted to reduce the role of the winemaker [to allow the place of growth to express itself], and with every passing year weve moved towards this, he says.



We didnt want to compromise and if theres not a sense of joy in what youre doing, then the result wont be good.



I had heard a lot about the Sziegl Kadarka coming into this tasting, and it is indeed exceptional, or rather, they are, with two single-vineyard bottlings serving up different aspects of the grape variety.



Meanwhile, the Kekfrankos 2020, made from 80% whole-bunch pressing and aged for eight months in 500-liter barrels, has a beautiful deep purple color and oozes violets and blueberries, along with a leathery-balsamic note, plus a bit of a bite on the finish.
Besides honoring Marys conception without sin, Dec. 8 is a landmark day in Catholic Worker history. In her autobiography The Long Loneliness,  Day wrote that she prayed on Dec. 8, 1932, at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, D.C., that some way would open up for me to use what talents I possess for my fellow workers, for the poor. Returning to New York, she met Maurin, a French peasant and Catholic agitator. Their meeting is considered the founding moment of the movement.

Maurin gave Day what many Catholic Workers said Day gave them  a way to be a Catholic in a mad, violent world.

What does it feel like to see ones grandmother on her way to canonization?

Its surreal, said Hennessy.

Under a large tent in the chilly courtyard of the Vineapple Cafe on the first floor of Days former home at 71 Pineapple St., Hennessy read an excerpt from her grandmothers book On Pilgrimage before a crowd of 30:
Automaker MG Motor India said that it will "drive" an electric vehicle priced between Rs 10-15 lakh by the end of the next fiscal. At present, the company sells electric SUV 'ZS EV' which is available in two variants, priced at Rs 21 lakh and Rs 24.68 lakh (ex-showroom). It plans to launch an electric crossover vehicle based on a global platform, but customised for the Indian market as its next new product.

"Our next product after SUV Astor, we have been thinking about an EV and now we have been very encouraged with the absolute clarity from the government side that the EV is the way to go," MG Motor India President and Managing Director Rajeev Chaba said. "We have taken the decision that we are going to introduce an EV by the end of next financial year."

On the expected price, he said it will range from Rs 10 lakh to Rs 15 lakh and will target the mass segment of personal electric mobility. "It is actually a kind of a crossover and this is going to be based on a global platform, which we are going to develop and this will be an EV for mass market for all the emerging markets including India," said Chaba.

Also read: Uttar Pradesh has most electric vehicles in India

"We will customise this car for the range and the Indian regulations and customer taste. It will be specially tailored for India. We will start working on it right now",he added. Besides, he said in order to meet the government's guidelines for the production linked (PLI) scheme for the auto sector, MG Motor India will localise a lot of parts for its next EV.

These would include battery assembly, motors, and other parts. Currently, the company offers Hector, ZS EV, and Gloster.

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U.S. President Joe Biden will sign an executive order vowing to transition to the acquisition of only zero-emission vehicles by 2035 for the federal vehicle fleet, the White House said. The U.S. government owns more than 600,000 vehicles. Biden's executive order also pledges 100% zero-emission light duty vehicle acquisitions by 2027, according to a fact sheet seen by Reuters.

"The federal government will work with American vehicle, battery, and charging equipment manufacturers and installers to transform its fleet into the largest zero-emission vehicle fleet in the nation, reaching 100 percent zero-emission vehicle acquisitions by 2035," the fact sheet said.

Biden's executive order also targets net-zero emissions from overall federal operations by 2050, including a 65% emissions reduction by 2030. In January, Biden vowed to replace the U.S. governments fleet with electric models.

Also read: Uttar Pradesh has most electric vehicles in India

"The federal government also owns an enormous fleet of vehicles, which were going to replace with clean electric vehicles made right here in America made by American workers, Biden said.

Biden in August signed an executive order aimed at making half of all new vehicles sold in 2030 electric, which also includes plug-in hybrid electric models that also have a gasoline engine.

The 50% target, which is not legally binding, won the support of U.S. and foreign automakers, which said that achieving it would require billions of dollars in government funding.

Biden has resisted calls to follow California, which plans to phase out the sale of new light-duty gas-powered vehicles in 2035. As of 2019, the U.S. government owned 645,000 vehicles that were driven 4.5 billion miles consuming 375 million gallons of gasoline and diesel fuel, according to the General Services Administration (GSA).

The U.S. government spent $4.4 billion on federal vehicle costs in 2019, the GSA said. Of U.S.-government vehicles, just 3,215 were electric vehicles as of July 2020, GSA said.

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SpiceJet on Thursday said its 737 Max plane, which was heading from Mumbai to Kolkata, returned to Maharashtra's capital city due to a "technical issue". "SpiceJet flight SG- 467 operating Mumbai-Kolkata returned back to Mumbai after take off due to a technical issue. The aircraft landed safely in Mumbai," a SpiceJet spokesperson said. No further details such as the number of persons on board and how long the aircraft remained airborne before making a turn back to the city airport were provided by the spokesperson.

SpiceJet, the only operator of Max planes in the country, had signed a USD 22 billion deal with Boeing for 205 aircraft in 2017, and has 13 of these planes in its fleet at present. All Max planes were grounded in India by the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) on March 13, 2019, three days after the crash of an Ethiopian Airlines 737 MAX plane near Addis Ababa, which had left 157 people, including four Indians, dead.

After Boeing made necessary software rectifications, the DGCA had on August 26 this year lifted the ban on Max planes' commercial flight operations. SpiceJet resumed operating its Max planes for commercial flight operations last month.

The airline operates a fleet of Boeing 737s, Bombardier Q-400s & freighters and is the country's largest regional player operating 63 daily flights under UDAN or the Regional Connectivity Scheme. The airline also operates a dedicated air cargo service under the brand name SpiceXpress offering connectivity across India and on international routes.

With input from wires

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New Delhi: The Delhi Police's Economic Offences Wing (EOW) has arrested the former CEO of Religare Enterprises Limited, Krishnan Subramanian in connection with the theft of nearly Rs 2,300 crore from the government.

The EOW said in a statement that Religare Finvest Ltd (RFL) AR Manpreet Singh Suri had filed a complaint against Malvinder Mohan Singh, Shivinder Mohan Singh, Sunil Godhwani, and others who held key managerial positions. The complainant claimed that people in positions of full control over Religare Enterprises Limited (REL) and its subsidiaries harmed RFL by disbursing loans to entities with no financial footing.

RFL suffered a wrongful loss of Rs 2397 crores as a result of these entities' deliberate default on repayments. This was also pointed out and identified by RBI and SEBI during their independent audit, according to the statement.

During the 2017-18 fiscal year, Krishnan Subramanian served as the group's CEO. A secured loan of Rs 115 crores was sanctioned to three organisations  M/s Best Health Management Pvt Ltd, M/s Vitoba Realtors Pvt Ltd, and Devera Developers Pvt Ltd  via three different loan facility agreements, with property papers of Asola land held as collateral with RFL.

As title deeds for these lands were never filed to RFL, these loans were converted to unsecured debts under the corporate loan book portfolio, according to the statement.

Later, it was discovered that the land held as security with RFL under the facility agreements had been swapped without RFL's authorization or knowledge, despite the fact that the land had been mortgaged with RFL.

The property documents were also discovered to have been delivered to the borrower following the execution of a share pledging agreement with RHC and Elive on January 10, 2018. Elive shares were pledged, and trade mark certificates for the Religare brand were placed with RFL under the terms of the agreement. Krishnan Subramanian signed the SPA and then released the property paperwork, according to the statement.

A case was opened after a preliminary inquiry, and the EOW took over the investigation. Malvinder Mohan Singh and Shivinder Mohan Singh, as well as three others in senior management roles, were already arrested and charged due to substantial incriminating evidence.

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New Delhi: The Confederation of All India Traders (CAIT), on Friday (December 10), moved to the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) with the aim to stop the initial public offer (IPO) of PharmEasy.

API Holdings, the parent firm of the e-pharmacy firm PharmEasy, has filed the `Draft Red Herring Prospectus` (DRHP to the market regulator recently, according to media reports.

CAIT wrote a letter to SEBI to halt PharmEasys IPO. "The business model of `PharmEasy` which is controlled by API Holdings is entirely based on gross illegality," the traders body said in a statement.

The organisation cited a Delhi High Court order passed in 2018 to point out that the sale of medicines over the internet is not allowed in the country.

"We believe that investor wealth worth billions is at stake if this IPO is approved by SEBI. We are sure that it will receive your kind and immediate attention," CAIT said in its statement.

Moreover, the traders body has also alleged that Pharmeasy has mentioned Thyrocare as its subsidiary in the DRHP submitted to the SEBI, without any order from the Competition Commission of India, which prevents activities that potentially may have an adverse effect on business, IANS reported. Also Read: Motorola launches Moto g51 5G with Snapdragon 480+ in India: Price, feature, specs

Besides SEBI, the South Chemists and Distributors Association had also submitted a letter to the SEBI requesting to stop the IPO of PolicyBazaar. Also Read: RBI makes 'Legal Entity Identifier' must for Rs 50 crore plus cross-border deals

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New Delhi: Home Minister Amit Shah, National Security Advisor Ajit Doval and Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Friday laid wreaths on the mortal remains of Chief of Defence Staff General Bipin Rawat and his wife Madhulika Rawat, who were among the 13 killed in the military chopper crash in Tamil Nadu.

The mortal remains of Gen Rawat and his wife were kept at their official residence here before cremation.

Outside Gen Rawat's residence, people raised slogans of 'Bharat Mata Ki Jai', 'Gen Rawat amar rahe', and 'Uttarakhand ka heera amar rahe'.

Uttarakhand Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami, BJP leader Ravi Shankar Prasad and British Ambassador to India Alexander Ellis was among the other leaders who paid their last respects to Gen Rawat and his wife.

Former Defence Minister A K Antony, DMK leader Kanimozhi, Haryana Chief Minister M L Khattar, BJP leader Baijayant Jay Panda, Delhi LG Anil Baijal, Minister of State Jitendra Singh, Minister of State for Social Justice and Empowerment Ramdas Athawale, also paid their respects to Rawat and his wife. "It's a terrible and an irreparable loss to the country at a crucial time," Antony said.

Paying his respects to Gen Rawat, Leader of Opposition in the Rajya Sabha Mallikarjun Kharge described him as a "good man".

"It is a loss to the nation, he was a pride of the nation," Union Information and Broadcasting Minister Anurag Thakur said after paying tributes.

Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal and Delhi Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia also laid their wreaths on the mortal remains of Gen Rawat and his wife.

Gen Rawat, his wife, and 11 other defence personnel were killed when a Mi17V5 helicopter carrying them crashed near Coonoor in Tamil Nadu on Wednesday.

As India's first Chief of Defence Staff, Gen Rawat was tasked to bring in theatre command and jointness among the three services, and he was pushing it with a tough approach and specific timelines in the last two years.

Known to be forthright, fearless, and blunt at times, the 63-year-old strongly backed a policy of hot pursuit in dealing with cross-border terrorism and militancy in Jammu and Kashmir when he was the Army Chief between 2016 and 2019.

TN CM Stalin writes to kin of deceased persons expressing condolence

Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M K Stalin on Friday personally wrote to the families of the Defence personnel killed in the Coonoor helicopter crash expressing his condolences, the state government said.

All the people were with the families during this tough time, he told them in separate letters.

Stalin had rushed to Coonoor soon after coming to know of the accident and paid floral tributes to the departed on Thursday, an official release recalled.

The state government had ensured all arrangements during the rescue activities and later during transportation of the mortal remains of the deceased, which were later flown from Coimbatore to Delhi, it said.

"Further, the chief minister today wrote individually to the families of the Defence personnel killed in the accident, expressing his sincere condolences and regret."

"He said all the people were by them in this tough time and said though their loss is irreparable, he wished they got the strength to recover from it," the release said.

(PTI Inputs)
New Delhi: Chinese state media has slammed a conspiracy theory over the helicopter crash that killed India's Chief of Defence Staff General Bipin Rawat and 12 others. "The crash of a helicopter with General Bipin Rawat, India's highest-ranking military officer, on board was unfortunate. But Brahma Chellaney, a so-called scholar in India, took advantage of this misfortune, despicably, by attempting to cause new tensions in China-India ties," the Global Times said in a reported.

Following the crash on Wednesday (December 8), Chellaney, a Delhi-based author and commentator, had tweeted: "At a time when China's 20-month-long border aggression has resulted in a warlike situation along the Himalayan front, the tragic death of India's chief of defense staff, Gen. Rawat, his wife and 11 other military personnel in a helicopter crash couldn't have come at a worse time." His Twitter thread read on, "General Rawat's death has an eerie parallel with the helicopter crash in early 2020 that killed Taiwan`s chief of general staff, Gen. Shen Yi-ming, and seven others, including two major generals. Each helicopter crash eliminated a key figure in the defense against PRC`s aggression."

But then he added, "The strange parallel doesn't mean there was any connection between the two helicopter crashes or an outside hand. If anything, each crash has raised important internal questions, especially about maintenance of military helicopters transporting top generals."

The Global Times report went on to say that "Chellaney's thread cannot be more ridiculous. Rawat was not on a Chinese aircraft. The helicopter did not crash anywhere near the China-India border, but in southern India. Chellaney, however, wasted no time in spinning his conspiracy theory".

The crash immediately caused shockwaves not only in India but also in the world, as it is rare to witness such a grave accident, which claimed the life of a top military officer, it said. Observers are analysing what went wrong. Some say it could be a mechanical failure; others say it was a human error or it was weather-related, the report added.

Also watch: DNA: China mocks CDS Rawat's death in a helicopter crash

However, the China state media did not lose an opportunity to comment on India's military even during this unfortunate time of General Rawat`s death. Attacking Indian military prowess, the Global Times said, "The capability of India`s military equipment is not as impressive as the country has been boasting.

"India' defence manufacturing sector has very limited capability. It can make components of arms and some weapons at home, but most of its military equipment is imported and assembled in India. Its locally produced weapons are mostly modelled on arms from other countries. That being said, there are often hidden dangers when the arms come into actual use," it added. "Chellaney and other radical Indians should be reminded that it was India`s own military helicopter that failed to protect their defense chief. The probability of such an accident is extremely low, yet it did occur in India. This means the biggest enemy of India is not China, but its own backwardness."

"Some military equipment is quite old and outdated but still in service. These show that India`s overall military capacity is worrisome," Song Zhongping, a Chinese military expert, told the Global Times.

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New Delhi: India's first Chief of Defence Staff General Bipin Rawat's funeral will take place today (Decemeber 10, 2021) in the national capital. General Rawat, his wife Madhulika and 11 other defence personnel died after the Mi-17 chopper they were on board crashed near Coonoor in Tamil Nadu on December 8.

From 11 am, the bodies of General Rawat and his wife will be kept at their Delhi home for family, friends, and the public to pay their final respects. The general public can pay tribute to the Rawats at their Kamaraj Marg residence from 11 am to 12:30 pm, while the military personnel can pay respects between 12:30 pm-1.30 pm. According to media reports, the funeral procession is likely begin at 2 pm while at 4 pm, the actual funeral has been scheduled, at the Brar Square Crematorium.

From the chopper crash, bodies of only CDS General Bipin Rawat, his wife Madhulika Rawat, Brigadier LS Lidder and Lance Naik Vivek Kumar have been identified so far. Brigadier Lidder's funeral has been scheduled at Brar Square Crematorium at 9 am today. The bodies of others will be kept at the Army Base Hospital till identified. The Army said that the appropriate military funerals of all deceased are being planned and coordinated in close consultation with close family members. The mortal remains will be released to the next of kin for final religious rites as desired by respective families.

Defence Minister Rajnath Singh had on Thursday (Decemeber 9) said, The last rites of CDS General Bipin Rawat will be performed with full military honours. The last rites of other military personnel will be performed with appropriate military honour.

Meanwhile, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday paid his last respect to CDS Bipin Rawat and others who lost their lives in the chopper crash. The Prime Minister visited Palam airbase to pay his last respect.

Apart from General Rawat and his wife, his Defence Adviser Brigadier Lakhbinder Singh Lidder and Staff Officer Lieutenant Colonel Harjinder Singh also died in the crash. Other nine defence forces personnel who died in the chopper crash are Wing Commander Prithvi Singh Chauhan, Squadron Leader Kuldeep Singh, Junior Warrant Officer Rana Pratap Das, Junior Warrant Officer Arakkal Pradeep, Havildar Satpal Rai, Naik Gursewak Singh, Naik Jitendra Kumar, Lance Naik Vivek Kumar and Lance Naik B Sai Teja.

Group Captain Varun Singh, who is the lone survivor from the crash, has been shifted to Air Force Command hospital at Bengaluru for further treatment.

The mortal remains of General Rawat will be taken in a gun carriage for the funeral in Delhi Cantt Brar Square. The Defence Minister, Minister of State for Defence Ajay Bhatt, three service chiefs and other senior military officials will be among those present at the cremation of General Rawat. Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath and Uttarakhand Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami are also likely to be present. Tamil Nadu Chief Minister MK Stalin, Governor of Telangana and Lieutenant Governor of Puducherry Dr Tamilisai Soundararajan visited Madras Regimental Centre in Wellington on Thursday and paid floral tributes to General Rawat and others who had died in the chopper crash.

(With inputs from ANI)

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New Delhi: The Aam Aadmi Party will reward Punjab CM Charanjeet Channi with Rs. 25,000 for taking action against every site where illegal sand mining is taking place, announced AAP Co-incharge for Punjab and MLA Raghav Chadha. He said that on one hand CM Channi has made a hollow promise that those who share information about sand mafia will be given 25,000, while on the other he transferred the forest officer who complained against his beloved sand mafia.

The Chief Minister of a state is always aware and has complete information about the whereabouts of illegal mining in his state, but Channi Sahab has made a gimmick of announcing 25,000 to fool the people, he went on, the drama must end. Even today, illegal sand mining shamelessly continues in CM Channi's assembly despite the Aam Aadmi Partys raid and exposition of the same. It seems that the Chief Minister himself has become the biggest sand mafia of Punjab, Raghav Chadha concluded.

Calling out Punjab CM Charanjeet Channi on his latest gimmick, AAP Punjab Co-incharge and MLA Raghav Chadha said, AAP Punjab CM Charanjeet Channi Sahab has made an announcement saying that anyone who contacts the Punjab Government with proof or information regarding illegal sand mining in the state will be rewarded with Rs. 25,000. But I would like to point out to Channi Sahab himself, that illegal sand mining practices are taking place at various sites within his own assembly constituency Chamkaur Sahib. Till date, you have not taken any action against these illegitimate practices taking place under your own nose. And now you are asking people for proof, for information about the presence of the sand mafia? The Chief Minister of a State always has complete information when it comes to such matters  the CM knows where all this illegal mining is being practised in broad daylight in his state. But now you are making a fool out of common people, putting up a show of monetary incentives.

He continued, This dramebaazi needs to stop, Channi Sahab. If you truly wanted to bring about change, it would take you no more than 5 minutes to round up all the officers in the Punjab Government  from DC to SSP  and have all the information you want ready at your disposal. You will easily have a list of all such sites where such illicit stealing of sand is taking place, where all the sand mafia is operating. But you will just not take action against them, it is obvious. Your own constituency is seeing blatant unlawful sand mining, and then you talk about incentives of 25,000 rupees.

Raghav Chadha declared, Today, the Aam Aadmi Party is announcing that it will give 25,000 rupees to Punjab CM Channi Sahab for every single illegal sand mining site that he takes action against. AAP will incentivise shutting this unlawful trade throughout Punjab for its own Chief Minister. Channi Sahab, you know where in your state this illegal sand mafia is operating. You take strict action against each and every one of those sites, and the Aam Aadmi Party will ensure that Channi Sahab gets a reward of Rs. 25,000 upon doing so for each site. So we are challenging Channi Sahab today, that if your intentions are clear  that you intend to put a rein in the mining mafia, to put a stop to illegal sand mining in Punjab  then you go ahead, and take immediate action. We will reward you. But for your own sake, put an end to these gimmicks. Do not make a mockery out of the public.

He added, The Aam Aadmi Party exposed the illegal sand mining which has been taking place in CMs own assembly constituency, Chamkaur Sahib, in Jindapur Pind. Our raid brought the truth of the Punjab Government and CM Channi Sahabs real face to the public. However, despite such a public exposition, even at this very site the illegal mining has not been stopped. It continues, shamelessly, even today under Punjab CM Channis own nose. And it seems as if the Chief Minister himself has become the biggest sand mafia in the state. This hypocrisy of asking for proof and information will not be tolerated. How can you possibly give a cash incentive for information after not taking any action when the Aam Aadmi Party itself presented you with concrete proof? We even shared the Forest Officers letter which was addressed to the SDM and the SHO to put an end to the illegal mining taking place in Jindapur Pind in Chamkaur Sahib. But Channi Sahab, not only did you not take any action to terminate the illegal mining taking place on reserved forest land, but your government went ahead and transferred the poor forest officer merely demanding justice. This is the true face of Channi Sahabs administration.

The AAP Punjab Co-incharge further said, I have another challenge for Channi Sahab today  if you are still adamant on pretending to not know the whereabouts of these illegal sand mafias, then I myself will take you to visit these sites. You join me and I will take you to each and every illegal mining site throughout Punjab. And so, I challenge you to take strict action against the sand mafia and put a stop to illegal sand mining. It sometimes appears as if Channi Sahab is most definitely colluding with this sand mafia for these illegal practices to take place throughout Punjab. Then to produce a facade of active governance, to mislead the common man and cheat them by making such gimmicky announcements  I will give Rs. 25,000 to whoever gives me information regarding illegal sand mining  all a farce.

Raghav Chadha concluded by saying, I am sharing with you this letter written by the Forest Range Officer of Jindapur Pind. You should take action at the earliest. It falls under your assembly constituency Chamkaur Sahib, you are the MLA. The officer from your own assembly has written this, informing that illegal sand mining is going on in Jindapur. This land of Khasra number 45-46 comes in the reserved forest area. Sand mining cannot take place on the banks of the river here. But Channi Sahab is letting the illicit trade continue, not batting an eye. Channi Sahab should register the first FIR to file charges against himself in connection with the illicit sand trade going on in Jindapur Pind. I have presented this proof, documents and the address of the region in Jindapur Pind. Now it is on you to take action on this. And keep in mind, we don't want any 25 thousand rupees from you, Channi Sahab. If you take strict action and put a stop to illegal sand theft in Jindapur Pind, then on the contrary we will give you 25,000 rupees.

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New Delhi: Indias former Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi, who made headlines for his historic Ram Janmabhoomi verdict and sexual harassment allegations, said that he was targeted because of his Northeastern origin.

In an exclusive interview with Zee News Editor-in-Chief Sudhir Chaudhary, former CJI Gogoi, who is now a member of parliament, said, After Ayodhya verdict, I was not treated as a poster boy, I became the punching bag because I came from the North East. I felt targeted because of my origin.

Parliamentarian Gogoi, who has recently released his autobiography named Justice for the Judge talked to Zee media about his book and its message.

In the book, the former judge shed light on the landmark events of his life like Rafale deal controversy, sexual harassment charges against him, Ram Janmabhoomi verdict and his political career.

Gogoi said, I want people to know that a judge is very different from a politician, his work is different. The office that a judge holds needs a decorum and thats why judges do not indulge in any public debates.

Judges are not some public servant or politician who should be criticised in the public domain. People must understand the dignity of this position and behave in a certain manner. They should not judge a judge is the message I want to convey through my book, Gogoi added.

On being asked about the media coverage on judges and the judicial system these days, Gogoi said, Its not wrong to criticise a judgment, it gives the institution an opportunity to learn and grow. However, these days we witness selective criticism in media based on the judge who delivered the verdict.

If media criticises the judgment, its good for the system but if you criticise a judge, its harmful to the society, Gogoi added.

Gogoi also shared his views on the controversial press conference he conducted with some of his colleagues during CJI Deepak Misras tenure.

I dont regret that conference, though I accept I did not know the kind of coverage it was going to get but I meant what I said. When a CJI is not ready to allocate PIL on the basis of seniority, we dont have the alternative, Gogoi said.

On the historic Ayodhya verdict and the celebration controversy that followed, Gogoi said, We were a bench of judges and we worked day and night for months on this judgement. We ate together and spent time together. We were exhausted.

Once the judgement was finalised, we thought of giving ourselves a days break and we celebrated, theres nothing more to it. It was just a break from work for a few over-exhausted judges."

On being asked about the allegations of pressure related to the Ayodhya verdict, Gogoi said, "Even if we assume that there was some influence on me but what about the other four judges who comprised the bench? Were they influenced too?"

Its a loose and irresponsible allegation and such statements can damage the integrity of this great and prestigious institution, said Gogoi.

Gogoi also addressed the questions about the sexual harassment allegation against him and that he influenced the judgement.

He said, On April 23, I handed over this matter to CJI Bobde and the committee was approved with the approval of the full quota of the SC judges and they delivered the verdict afterwards."

I gave Justice Bobde my head on a silver platter and a rope to hang me, he added.

The former justice also added that the sexual allegation period was extremely hard for him and his family and he will take the memory of that time to his grave.

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Tamil Nadu Police had placed the entire Nilgiris district and the route from sulur Air Force base to Nilgiris under a security blanket, ahead of the Chief of Defence Staff Gen Bipin Rawat's visit, according to Director General of Police Sylendra Babu. The top State Police official was speaking to media on the on-going Police probe into the fatal and unfortunate Mi17 V5 VVIP chopper crash in the Nilgiri district.

As per the DGP, the State Police had made security arrangements for the General's travel via the Air and Road routes. "The aerial route and the road route were sterilized and kept under a security blanket. The entire road route from sulur to Coonoor was under full Police security" he added. The DGP's words gain significance, given that India's top Defence Official was among the victims of this unfortunate crash.

Sylendra Babu visited the Nanjappan Chatram village near the crash site, in order to thank and provide some essential winter supplies to the residents there. Living meters away from the crash site, the residents there played the most important role as first responders, in carrying out basic relief and rescue using limited resources. They had also immediately alerted the authorities to mobilize fire tenders and manpower to the crash site. This prompt action led to the rescue of three persons from the site. However, only one of them (the pilot) survived and is undergoing critical care.

READ | Amit Shah, NSA, Rahul Gandhi, AK Antony pay last respects to CDS Bipin Rawat, his wife

Regarding the ongoing probe by the Tamil Nadu Police, the DGP had said that 24 eye-witnesses had been questioned and that Muthumanickam, an Additional Superintendent rank Officer would be heading the efforts.



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Ghaziabad: The anti-narcotics cell and crime branch teams of Ghaziabad police arrested three inter-state drug peddlers and recovered 110 kilograms of ganja, officials said on Friday.

The accused have been identified as Naurangi Lal (30), Veeru (30) and Anwar (32). Nagendra (35), one of their accomplices, is at large.

SP (Crime) Deeksha Sharma said two vehicles used to peddle the drugs were also seized.

READ | Ghaziabad shocker! Man beheads friend, dumps head at vacant plot

During interrogation, the accused said they were purchasing psychotropic substances from Odisha and supplying it to sellers in Delhi-NCR to earn money, the SP added.

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New Delhi: Congress General Secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra is on a path to woo women voters, be it in Uttar Pradesh or Goa. After releasing a manifesto for women in UP, Vadra on Friday (December 10) promised 30 per cent reservation in jobs for women if Congress comes to power in Goa in the 2022 Assembly elections.

Addressing a women convention "Priyadarshini" in Aquem during her one-day visit to Goa, the Congress leader said, "Goa is a known tourism destination. Tourists from across the world come to Goa. However, during the pandemic, the state government did not help people involved in the tourism sector. The Congress party would reserve 30 per cent employment for women if Congress party is voted to power in the upcoming assembly polls in Goa."

Targeting the ruling BJP government in the state, Vadra alleged that crime against women has increased during the saffron party's regime. "Ever since the BJP government came to power, the crime rate against women is on the surge. If a case of sexual assault against women is reported, the BJP questions and blames the victim. If Congress comes to power, it would set up a police station in every taluk in Goa and deploy the maximum number of women personnel in the police station, ANI quoted Vadra as saying.

She attacked BJP over the water scarcity issue, saying, "BJP has exploited all resources in Goa for their own good. The water supply is only available for 20 minutes a day. They don't have time to think about people in the state, their only focus is on winning elections."

Further, Vadra announced that Congress would provide Rs 1 lakh to Self Help Groups (SHGs) in India.

The Congress General Secretary also visited Morpirla village to interact with tribal women where she joined them in performing their traditional dance.

(With agency inputs)

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New Delhi: Gujarat has confirmed two more cases of Omicron variant, taking the total tally in the state to three. The wife and brother-in-law of the 72-year-old NRI man, who had tested positive for Omicron last week, have been detected with the variant, Jamnagar Municipal Corporation (JMC) informed on Friday (December 10).

Genome sequencing of swab samples at the Gujarat Biotechnology Research Centre (GBRC) in Gandhinagar has established that both the COVID-19 patients were also infected with the Omicron variant, official told PTI.

As per the official release, these patients have been shifted to a special Omicron Ward created in the state-run Guru Gobind Singh Government Hospital in Jamnagar.

In order to prevent the spread of the Omicron variant, JMC had declared the residential society, where the NRI's family resides, a micro-containment zone and restricted the movement of people there by putting barricades.

The Gujarat health department had informed on December 4 that a 72-year-old man was found infected with the Omicron variant in Jamnagar city, days after he arrived in the state from Zimbabwe. The man had arrived in Gujarat from Zimbabwe on November 28 and had tested positive for COVID-19 on December 2, after which his sample was sent for genome sequencing to Ahmedabad, officials had told PTI.

After the first Omicron case, Gujarat Chief Minister Bhupendra Patel had chaired a high-level meeting to review preparedness and instructed officials to strictly implement the Centres COVID-19 guidelines.

With the detection of two more cases, Indias total Omicron caseload has reached 25.

(With agency inputs)

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New Delhi: The wife and daughter of late Brigadier Lakhwinder Singh Ladda, who lost his life in an ill-fated chopper crash on Wednesday (December 8), paid their last respects and bid a tearful farewell to their hero in New Delhis Brar Square crematorium.

Speaking to news agency ANI post his cremation, Brig Lidders wife Geetika Lidder in a heartfelt message said that her husband was an extremely cheerful man who always wore a smile on his face and thus, must be given a happy farewell.

He was larger than life, he had a great persona, people loved him because he always loved and accepted everyone like his own. Maybe this is why, people are mourning my loss with me, but we must give him a good farewell, a smiling send-off.

#WATCH | "...We must give him a good farewell, a smiling send-off, I am a soldier's wife. It's a big loss...," says wife of Brig LS Lidder, Geetika pic.twitter.com/unLv6sA7e7  ANI (@ANI) December 10, 2021

With teary eyes, Geetika Lidder said, I am a soldiers wife, I am proud of him. We have a long life to live ahead. We never wanted him to come back like this.

Brigadier Lidders 17-year-old daughter Aashna, who displayed exceptional courage throughout said that his father was always a hero for him.

#WATCH | Daughter of Brig LS Lidder, Aashna Lidder speaks on her father's demise. She says, "...My father was a hero, my best friend. Maybe it was destined & better things will come our way. He was my biggest motivator..." He lost his life in #TamilNaduChopperCrash on Dec 8th. pic.twitter.com/j2auYohtmU  ANI (@ANI) December 10, 2021

My father was my hero, he loved me a lot. He was my best friend. I will move ahead with all the good memories I have of him and happy that he didnt have to suffer.

Brigadier Lakhwinder Lidder, died in a IAF chopper crash on Wednesday in Tamil Nadus Coonoor on his way to Wellington. DCS General Bipin Rawat and his wife Madhulika Rawat also died in the crash with them.
New Delhi: The condition of Group Captain Varun Singh, the lone survivor of the IAF chopper crash, is critical but stable, officials said on Friday.

He is undergoing treatment at the Command Hospital in Bengaluru. Group Captain Singh's condition is critical but stable, the officials said.

On Thursday, he was shifted to the Command Hospital in Bengaluru from Wellington in Tamil Nadu, officials said.

The Group Captain was admitted to a hospital in Wellington with severe burn injuries following the Wednesday crash. He was initially moved to Sulur in an ambulance by road and then was flown to Bengaluru for better treatment.

Chief of Defence Staff Gen Bipin Rawat, his wife Madhulika and 11 armed forces personnel were killed in the Mi-17V5 helicopter crash near Coonoor on Wednesday.

Group Captain Singh, a decorated officer, was on board the Russian-made chopper as the liaison officer for the visit of Gen Rawat, India's senior-most military officer, to the Defence Services Staff College in Wellington.

READ | Lone survivor of chopper crash, Group Captain Varun Singh, to be shifted to Bengaluru

He was conferred with the Shaurya Chakra in August for averting a possible nid-air accident after his Tejas light combat aircraft was hit by a major technical last year.

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Coonoor: Tamil Nadu Police had placed the entire Nilgiris district and the route from Sulur Air Force base to Nilgiris under a security blanket, ahead of the Chief of Defence Staff Gen Bipin Rawat's visit, according to Director General of Police Sylendra Babu. The top state Police official was speaking to media on the on-going Police probe into the fatal and unfortunate Mi-17 V5 VVIP chopper crash in the Nilgiri district.

As per the DGP, the State Police had made security arrangements for the General's travel via the Air and Road routes. "The aerial route and the road route were sterilized and kept under a security blanket. The entire road route from Sulur to Coonoor was under full Police security", he added. The DGP's words gain significance, given that India's top Defence Official was among the victims of this unfortunate crash.

ALSO READ: General Bipin Rawat's funeral: From Rahul Gandhi to Amit Shah, India pays last respects - in Pics

Sylendra Babu visited the Nanjappan Chatram village near the crash site, in order to thank and provide some essential winter supplies to the residents there. Living meters away from the crash site, the residents there played the most important role as first responders, in carrying out basic relief and rescue using limited resources.

They had also immediately alerted the authorities to mobilize fire tenders and manpower to the crash site. This prompt action led to the rescue of three persons from the site. However, only one of them (the pilot) survived and is undergoing critical care.

Regarding the ongoing probe by the Tamil Nadu Police, the DGP had said that 24 eye-witnesses had been questioned and that Muthumanickam, an Additional Superintendent rank Officer would be heading the efforts.

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New Delhi: India on Friday (December 10) evacuated 104 people, including 10 Indian nationals, from Kabul in a special charter aircraft.

External Affairs Ministry Spokesperson Arindam Bagchi said the flight was arranged under India's operation Devi Shakti.

The operation was launched to evacuate Indians from Afghanistan after it fell to the Taliban on August 15.

"Under Operation Devi Shakti, a special Kam Air flight arranged by India has arrived in New Delhi from Kabul," Bagchi tweeted.

"It has brought 10 Indians and 94 Afghans including members of the Afghan Hindu-Sikh minority community. Among the evacuees are 9 children, including 3 infants," he said.

The flight is likely to fly back over 90 Afghan nationals stranded in India along with some medical supplies, officials said.

The flight also brought two copies of the Guru Granth Sahib and Hindu religious texts from an ancient temple in Kabul.

In a tweet, Union minister Hardeep Singh Puri said he was "deeply blessed" to join BJP president J P Nadda, Delhi BJP chief Adesh Gupta and others "in paying obeisance to the two holy Saroops of Shri Guru Granth Sahib Ji on their arrival from Kabul with members of the Sikh Sangat & Hindu community."

"Copies of Shrimad Bhagwat Geeta, Sri Ramcharit Manas & other Hindu holy scriptures & rare manuscripts from Asamaya Mandir in Kabul were also brought back by members of the Sikh Sangat & Hindu devotees on a special flight today," the minister said.

It is learnt that both the Indian government and the Afghan embassy in Delhi coordinated to arrange for the flight.

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New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday (December 10) said that the story of India serves as a clear message to the world that the power of democracy can, has and will always deliver. The PM made the statements while addressing the Summit for Democracy videoconferencing.

The Indian story has one clear message to the world that democracy can deliver, has delivered and will continue to deliver, said PM Modi during the Summit.

Sharing his vision of democracy, the prime minister added, Democracy is just not about of, by or for the people but also with the people and within the people.

Modi, while addressing the United States hosted the summit, said that he was proud to represent the worlds largest democracy in an event that is willing to counter the threat posed to the idea.

I am proud to represent the world's largest democracy at Summit of Democracy, said Modi.

The leader further said that Indias struggle for freedom is a struggle that led to a democratic system, which keeps on flourishing even after the 75 years of independence. India's independence led to an unparalleled story in democratic nation-building over the last 75 years, Modi said.

Indias democracy is a story of unprecedented socio-economic inclusion in all spheres; it is a story of constant improvements, added Modi.

The Indian PM also said that the democratic values are inbuilt in Indians and thats why years of colonial suppression could not kill these values.

Centuries of the colonial rule could not suppress the democratic spirit of Indian people, Modi added.

PM Modi on Friday addressed the Summit for Democracy, which was hosted by US President Joe Biden and attended by over 100 global leaders to discuss and counter threats to democracy worldwide.

(With agency inputs)

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Srinagar: Two cops were killed in a terror attack on a police party in Jammu and Kashmir's Bandipora district on Friday, evoking widespread condemnation from various political parties.

The terrorists opened fire on the police team at the Gulshan Chowk in the evening, officials said.

The two policemen were injured in the firing and were admitted to a hospital, where they died, they said. Security forces have cordoned off the area and have launched a search for the assailants, the officials added, and identified the slain cops as SgCt Mohammad Sultan and Ct Fayaz Ahmad.

Bandipora, J&K: Wreath laying ceremony of the two police personnel- SgCT Mohd Sultan and Ct Fayaz Ahmad has been conducted. The two succumbed to injuries in a terrorist attack in Gulshan Chowk area, earlier in the day. pic.twitter.com/BUlaMihDjv  ANI (@ANI) December 10, 2021

Police have registered a case and an investigation is in progress, they said.

The attack evoked strong condemnation from mainstream political parties.

"I condemn the militant attack on the police in Bandipore area of North Kashmir earlier today that resulted in the death in the line of duty of J&K police personnel Muhammad Sultan and Fayaz Ahmad. May Allah grant them Jannat & may their families find strength at this time," National Conference vice-president Omar Abdullah wrote on Twitter.

The Peoples Conference wrote: "We strongly condemn the militant attack in Gulshan Chowk, Bandipora today in which two policemen lost their lives. Heartfelt condolences & sympathies with their families."

CPI(M) leader M Y Tarigami also condemned the killing and demanded stern action against those responsible for the attack.

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New Delhi: Karnataka Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai on Thursday (December 9, 2021) said that separate guidelines would be issued for student hostels and Covid clusters as part of Covid management in the state.

Karnataka CM, while addressing the media after the cabinet meeting, said details have been obtained from the expert committee on the prevailing situation on Covid and the new variant Omicron.

"Considering the present positivity rate, there is no need to panic. But still, caution would continue as the committee has advised. Separate Guidelines would be issued for hostels which would include sanitisation, serving of food in staggered batches, maintaining distance, compulsory double dose vaccination for cooking personnel and setting up isolation rooms. Special standard operating procedures would also be released for managing Covid clusters in Bengaluru and other places," Bommai said.

CM Bommai also stated that the COVID-19 vaccination drive would be intensified again as the ministers suggested at the meeting.

"The precautions and guidelines at border areas of the state would continue. Action has been taken to ensure double dose vaccination and RTPCR test for students from Kerala."

On imposing night curfew, restrictions on Christmas and New Year celebrations, Bommai said that an appropriate decision would be taken next week after taking stock of the situation.

(With ANI inputs)

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Kolkata: In a shocking turn of events, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee - while holding an administrative review meeting of Nadia district on Thursday (December 9) - came down heavily on party Member of Parliament (MP) from Krishnanagar constituency, Mahua Moitra.

While pulling up Moitra, Banerjee said, ...And Mahua, I want to give you a clear message. I don't want to know who is against whom. To prepare one's own set of people who will appear on YouTube, or digital medium, or newspaper paper - this kind of politics can last for one day, but not for long. There is no reason to believe that one stays in a position forever.

The Chief Minister went on to further warn Moitra and said that the party will decide whom to give tickets during the elections. During elections, the party will decide who will contest and who will not. There should be no difference of opinion and everyone has to work together. I have the knowledge about everything, Banerjee said.

These comments come in the wake of infighting and trouble within the Nadia district leadership. Sources in the party said that the supremo Mamata Banerjee was visibly upset with the recent turn of events where two factions of the TMC are face to face within the district.

Banerjee went on to further add, that the recent clash within the party was an act of sabotage, and investigation by the police has revealed who was behind this. An inquiry by the police was conducted and I know who is behind this. This entire episode was staged and then leaked to the media. Everyone has to work together, she said.

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New Delhi: Mumbais Dharavi has reported a case of Omicron variant. The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) on Friday (December 10) confirmed that the person returned from Tanzania and now has been admitted at Seven Hills Hospital.

The Mumbai civic body, as per ANI, said, "The patient is asymptomatic and is not vaccinated; currently admitted at Seven Hills Hospital, Mumbai. Two people who had come to receive the patient have been traced as well."

#UPDATE | The patient is asymptomatic and is not vaccinated; currently admitted at Seven Hills Hospital, Mumbai. Two people who had come to receive the patient have been traced as well: BMC  ANI (@ANI) December 10, 2021

Dharavi, spread over 2.1 sq km, triggers concern with a population of over 7-10 lakh people dwelling and working here. Mumbais slum colony had reported its first COVID-19 case and death on April 1, 2020, after a 56-year-old man succumbed to the infection.

However, Dharavi has fared well during both the first and second coronavirus waves, Deccan Herald reported. The slum colony had reported the highest cases during the first wave on May 3, 2020 with 94 cases and during the second wave the peak was reached on April 9, 2021, when 99 cases were detected.

With this new case of Omicron variant, the total tally in the state has reached 11.

Allaying fears about the Omicron variant, the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) on Friday said, "Clinically, Omicron is not posing burden on the healthcare system yet, but the vigil has to be maintained."

In a media briefing, Balram Bhargava, DG, ICMR urged people not to create panic about the new variant. Regular meetings are being organised to keep a watch on the global scenario and Covid scene in India with a focus on Omicron. We need help to not spread panic. District level restrictions to be implemented where positivity over 5%, ANI quoted him as saying.

Dr VK Paul, Member-Health, NITI Aayog reminded people of the importance of masks and asked them to continue their usage. As far as protection capability is concerned, we are now operating at a risky and unacceptable level. Mask usage is declining. We have to remember that both vaccines and masks are important. We should learn from the global situation, Paul said.

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New Delhi: All the nine patients who were infected with Omicron variant of coronavirus and were admitted to a hospital in Jaipur, tested negative for COVID on Thursday (December 9, 2021). The nine patients were discharged from the RUHS Hospital after their test results came negative.

According to the state health department, all nine patients are completely healthy and asymptomatic. Their blood, CT scan and other tests are normal. The doctors advised them to remain in home quarantine for seven days.

Rajasthan Health Minister Parsadi Lal Meena said that the department was quite alert and vigilant since the news of the novel variant of coronavirus.

"After the report of genome sequencing, the treatment was started by admitting the infected persons to RUHS. Besides this, tracking and tracing of all the people who came in contact with the infected patients were started. Out of nine patients, four were discharged in the afternoon and the remaining five were discharged in the evening after both the reports came negative. All patients have been advised to remain in home quarantine," Meena said.

Sawai Man Singh Medical College Principal Dr Sudhir Bhandari said that the transmissibility of the Omicron variant is high but it is not as deadly as the Delta variant.

"Research on the Omicron variant is currently underway. This infection spreads fast, but it is not fatal as the Delta variant. It will have less effect when both doses of the COVID vaccines are taken."

Earlier on Sunday, the health department informed that a total of nine cases of COVID-19 Omicron variant have been reported in Rajasthan`s Jaipur.

Samples of 34 people (of the family that came from South Africa and the people they came in contact with) were sent for genome sequencing and nine were found to be positive for Omicron, said the health department. The remaining 25 people had tested negative.

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Indias first Chief of Defence Staff, General Bipin Rawat, has been cremated with full military honours in Delhi today. He was given the 17-gun salute at the Brar Square crematorium in Delhi Cantonment. His wife Madhulika Rawat, who also died in the chopper crash near Coonoor in Tamil Nadu, was cremated alongside him. The last rites were performed by their daughters Kritika and Tarini.

CDS Rawat was accorded a 17-gun salute and Last Post and Rouse was played by tri-services buglers, as per the military protocols.

Defence Minister Rajnath Singh, Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, Uttarakhand Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami, Defence Research and Development Organisation chief Dr G Satheesh Reddy, defence attaches of various countries, Ambassador of France in India Emmanuel Lenain and British High Commissioner Alex Ellis, were among the dignitaries who were present at the crematorium to pay their last respect.

#WATCH | Delhi: #CDSGeneralBipinRawat laid to final rest with full military honours, 17-gun salute. His last rites were performed along with his wife Madhulika Rawat, who too lost her life in #TamilNaduChopperCrash. Their daughters Kritika and Tarini performed their last rites. pic.twitter.com/uTECZlIhI0  ANI (@ANI) December 10, 2021

People from all walks of life joined the funeral procession as it proceeded towards the crematorium to pay tribute to Indias first CDS.

(With inputs from agencies)

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Kolkata: West Bengal Governor Jagdeep Dhankhar Friday fired a fresh salvo at the Trinamool Congress government, alleging that the state has set a precedent for human rights violations.

The governor, in a videographed address on Human Rights Day, said upholding of people's rights is necessary for a democratic system to flourish.

"West Bengal has set an example of human rights violations... Fear among the people is such that they cannot even discuss this openly," he said in the address posted on Twitter.

Worrisome HUMAN RIGHTS violations @MamataOfficial. Only Rule of Ruler and not of law' @India_NHRC. Need for massive uplift, he said in another tweet.

Situation @MamataOfficial far distanced from Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high Governance is distancing from Constitution and rule of law. Disturbing that administration @WBPolice @KolkataPolice ignores Be you never so high, the law is above you.  Governor West Bengal Jagdeep Dhankhar (@jdhankhar1) December 10, 2021

Dhankhar, who has been at loggerheads with the TMC government over several issues since taking over as governor in July, 2019, also alleged that the administration and officials in the state are behaving like political workers.

Situation @MamataOfficial far distanced from where the mind is without fear and the head is held high'. Governance is distancing from Constitution and rule of law, he said.

The governor urged the officials to work within the provisions of the Constitution.

Meanwhile, Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, in a message on Human Rights Day posted on Twitter around the same time as that of Dhankhar's address, called for unity among people to defeat forces that abuse fundamental rights.

Let us pledge to rise above hate and inequality. Let us come together and fight for each other, stand by each other. Together, we can defeat all forces that dare to abuse our fundamental rights," she wrote.

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New Delhi: Theres a first time for everything and heres proof!

Congress leader Shashi Tharoor, who often baffles people with new, never-heard-before English terms and puts us all to shame, has made a spelling error in one of his latest tweets.

In a Twitter post on Australia vs England test matches, Tharoor while expressing his dissatisfaction towards the umpiring that happened during the series, mistakenly wrote empire in place of umpires and the internet users are having a field day ever since.

Thats pretty atrocious umpiring. Interesting that all those who cribbed about umpiring errors in the Tests against New Zealand didnt give our empires and technology credit for avoiding such gaffes. https://t.co/xaWmeKbIBS  Shashi Tharoor (@ShashiTharoor) December 9, 2021

Thats pretty atrocious umpiring. Interesting that all those who cribbed about umpiring errors in the Tests against New Zealand didnt give our empires and technology credit for avoiding such gaffes,

While its pretty clear that the goof up is nothing more than a typo, the all-time exasperated netizens finally got an opportunity to troll the Kerala lawmaker on his English.

Did you make a spelling mistake? Empires=>Umpires, wrote one user in the comment section.

Another user asked Tharoor for a treat for finding a mistake in his tweet.

Its umpire , not empire Thinking face . You owe me a treat for finding a mistake in ur tweetFace with tears of joy Shashi ji, the user wrote.

'Empire' should always be credited otherwise it will strike back.. wrote another social media user.

My dream come true, it is umpire not empire, your humble copy editor, another wrote.

Empires??? What is happening Shashi? Asked another concerned follower.

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New Delhi: Assam Police Department has issued notification for the recruitment of constables and sub-inspectors posts. Through this recruitment drive, the Assam Police is looking to fill 2134 constables and 306 sub-inspectors posts.

The eligible and interested candidates must note that the application process will commence on December 10, 2021, and conclude on January 9, 2022. Candidates can apply for the posts on the official website of Assam Police- slprbassam.in.

Assam Police Recruitment 2021: Important dates

Online application begins on- December 10, 2021

Last date to apply for the posts- January 9, 2022

Assam Police Recruitment 2021: Vacancy details

Constables- 2134

Sub-inspectors- 306

Assam Police Recruitment 2021: Selection process

Candidates will be selected on the basis of a written exam, physical standard test and physical efficiency test. A total of 30 percent of the vacancies in each category are reserved for women candidates.

The official notice reads, Candidates numbering only 5 times the number of posts in respect of each category (Unreserved, OBC/MOBC, SC, S.T. (P), S.T.(H) & EWS) both male & transgender and female will be called for PST (Physical Standard Test) and PET (Physical Efficiency Test) on merit basis.

Assam Police Recruitment 2021: Age limit

The age of the candidates must be between 20 years to 26 years.

Assam Police Recruitment 2021: Eligibility Details

Candidates must be Indian citizens, permanent residents of Assam. Also, the candidate must be a graduate in Arts, Science, Commerce or equivalent stream from a recognized College.

Read Detailed Notification Here

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New Delhi: Pharmacy retail chain MedPlus Health Services on Friday said it has mobilised Rs 418 crore from anchor investors ahead of its initial share sale that opens for public subscription on Monday.

The company has allotted 52.51 lakh equity shares to anchor investors at Rs 796 apiece, aggregating to Rs 417.98 crore, according to a circular uploaded on the BSE website.

Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, BlackRock Global Funds, Fidelity, Nomura, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, HFFC Life Insurance Company, ICICI Prudential Life Insurance Company and SBI Life Insurance Co Ltd, SBI Mutual Fund (MF) and Aditya Birla Sun Life MF are among the anchor investors.

The Rs 1,398-crore initial share sale comprises fresh issuance of equity shares worth Rs 600 crore and an offer for sale (OFS) of up to equity shares aggregating up to Rs 798.30 crore by the promoter and existing shareholders.

The issue includes a reservation of equity shares worth Rs 5 crore for the company's employees, who will receive those shares at a discount of Rs 78 per share to the final issue price.

The issue with a price band of Rs 780-796 a share will open for public subscription on December 13 and conclude on December 15.

Proceeds of the fresh issue will be used for funding the working capital requirements of the company's subsidiary Optival.

Half of the issue size has been reserved for qualified institutional buyers (QIBs), 15 per cent for non-institutional investors and 35 per cent for retail investors.

Investors can bid for a minimum of 18 equity shares and in multiples thereof.

MedPlus was founded in 2006 by Gangadi Madhukar Reddy, who is the company's managing director and chief executive officer.

The Hyderabad-based pharmacy retailer offers a wide range of products, including pharmaceutical and wellness products, such as medicines, vitamins, medical devices and test kits, and FMCG products like home and personal care items, including toiletries, baby care products, soaps and detergents and sanitisers.

Medplus was also the first pharmacy retailer in India to offer an omnichannel platform and continues to scale up its retail store network.

The company maintains a strong focus on scaling up its store network, having grown from operating initial 48 stores in Hyderabad at the conception of the business to operating India's second-largest pharmacy retail network of over 2,000 stores distributed across Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Karnataka, Odisha, West Bengal and Maharashtra, as of March 31, 2021.

Axis Capital, Credit Suisse Securities (India), Nomura Financial Advisory and Securities (India) and Edelweiss Financial Services are the book running lead managers to the issue. Also Read: PharmEasy IPO: Traders body CAIT urges SEBI to stop offer, heres why

The equity shares are proposed to be listed on BSE and NSE. Also Read: Metro Brands IPO: Offer receives 27% subscription on first day

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New Delhi: The IPO of Footwear retailer Metro Brands Ltd, which is backed by ace investor Rakesh Jhunjhunwala will kick off on Friday.

At present, the company has 598 stores in 136 cities spread across India.

Here are 10 key points on Rakesh Jhunjhunwala backed Metro Brands IPO

1. The initial share-sale comprises fresh issuance of equity shares worth Rs 295 crore and an offer for sale of 2.14 crore equity shares by promoters and other shareholders.

2. Through the IPO, the company's promoters will offload nearly 10 per cent stake. Currently, the promoters and promoter group hold 84 per cent stake in the company.

3. The issue, with a price band of Rs 485-500 per share, opens for public subscription on December 10 and will conclude on December 14.

4. At the upper end of the price band, the public issue is expected to fetch Rs 1,367.5 crore.

5. Proceeds of the fresh issue will be used towards expenditure for opening new stores of the company, under the 'Metro', 'Mochi', 'Walkway' and 'Crocs' brands and for general corporate purposes.

6. Ahead of its IPO, on Thursday the company said that it has collected a little over Rs 410 crore from anchor investors.

7. The company has allotted 82.05 lakh equity shares to anchor investors at Rs 500 apiece, taking the total transaction size to Rs 410.25 crore, according to a BSE circular.

8. Societe Generale, Goldman Sachs, Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, HDFC Life Insurance Company, SBI Life Insurance Co Ltd, Tata AIA Life Insurance Co Ltd, HDFC Mutual Fund (MF), Aditya Birla Sun Life MF, Sundaram MF and ICICI Prudential MF are among the anchor investors.

9. Half of the issue size has been reserved for qualified institutional buyers (QIBs), 15 per cent for non-institutional investors and 35 per cent for retail investors. Investors can bid for a minimum of 30 equity shares and in multiples thereof.

10. Axis Capital, Ambit, DAM Capital Advisors, Equirus Capital, ICICI Securities and Motilal Oswal Investment Advisors are the book running lead managers to the IPO.

With PTI Inputs
New Delhi: The Central government is all set to roll out the 10th instalment under the Pradhan Mantri Kisan Samman Nidhi (PM Kisan Yojana) in the coming weeks. The government is expected to release the funds by December 25, according to media reports.

Under the PM Kisan Yojana, farmers receive three instalments of Rs 2000 three times a year. In total, the government credits Rs 6000 annually directly in the bank accounts of eligible farmers.

The Pradhan Mantri Kisan Samman Nidhi Yojana was introduced by the Central government in December 2018 to offer financial support to marginalised farmers in India.

So far, the government has released nine instalments under PM Kisan Yojana. More than 11.37 crore eligible farmers have received over Rs Rs 1.58 lakh crore directly into the bank accounts under the Pradhan Mantri Kisan Samman Nidhi scheme.

Last year, the Central government had released the due instalment to farmers on December 25. That may be the reason why many are expecting that the government will release the funds by December 25 this year too.

While most farmers will be receiving Rs 2000 instalments by December 25, a few are expected to get Rs 4000. According to reports, farmers who didnt receive Rs 2000 in the 9th instalment are likely to get Rs 4000 by December 25.

Eligible farmers can easily check their names on the official PM Kisan website. On the homepage of the website, you need to visit the Farmers Corner, followed by clicking on the Beneficiary Status option. Also Read: Post Office SCSS Policy: Start investing with only Rs 1000; choice to get Rs 14 lakh on maturity

On the next page, you need to enter your details to find out if youre eligible for receiving the benefits under PM Kisan Yoana or not. Also Read: Netflix launches Tudum, a new website for news, interviews, behind-the-scenes videos

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New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi said on Friday (December 10) that emerging technologies such as cryptocurrencies should be used to empower democracy, not undermine it.

"We must also jointly shape global norms for emerging technologies like social media and cryptocurrencies so that they are used to empower democracy, not to undermine it," Modi said in his address at a virtual "Summit for Democracy". The event was hosted by U.S. President Joe Biden.

Previously, Prime Minister Modi had said that all democratic nations must work together to ensure cryptocurrency "does not end up in wrong hands, which can spoil our youth" in what were his first public comments on the subject.

PM Modi had also urged to ensure cryptocurrency "does not end up in wrong hands, which can spoil our youth," during his speech at the Sydney Dialogue. Last month, the PM had also chaired a meeting to discuss the future of cryptocurrencies amid concerns that unregulated crypto markets could become avenues for money laundering and terror financing. Also Read: Netflix launches Tudum, a new website for news, interviews, behind-the-scenes videos

Meanwhile, the Indian government is also currently working on a cryptocurrency bill to regulate digital coins in the country. Reports suggest that the bill could also empower the Reserve Bank of India to launch its own central bank digital currency (CBDC), which is a virtual form of fiat currency. Also Read: PM Kisan Yojana: Select farmers can get Rs 4000 instead of Rs 2000 in 10th instalment, check eligibility

- With inputs from Reuters.

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New Delhi: The Department of Telecommunications (DoT) has issued an order to re-verify the SIM of subscribers holding beyond nine connections across India, six connections in the case of Jammu and Kashmir, North East and Assam, and to disconnect in case of non-verification.

The subscribers will be given the option to choose the connection they want to retain and deactivate the rest of the connections, according to the order issued on December 7.

"If during the data analytics carried out by DoT, it is found that an individual subscriber is having more than nine mobile connections (six in the case of J&K, NE and Assam LSAs) across all the TSPs (telecom service providers), all the mobile connections will be flagged for re-verification," the DoT order said.

LSA refers to Licensed Service Area.

The order comes from DoT to check incidence of financial crimes, pesky calls, automated calls and fraudulent activities.

The DoT has asked telecom operators to remove all the flagged mobile connections from the database that are not in use as per the rule.

The outgoing (including data services) facilities of the "flagged mobile connection shall be suspended within 30 days" and "the incoming service shall be suspended within 45 days" in case subscriber has turned up for verification and exercises his option to surrender, transfer to disconnect mobile connections.

In case no subscriber turns up for re-verification, the flagged number will be deactivated within 60 days to be counted from December 7.

"In case of a subscriber who is on international roaming or with physical disability or hospitalisation, additional 30 days will be provided...," the order said.

However, if the number has been flagged by any law enforcement agencies or financial institution or identified as a pesky caller then the outgoing facilities will be suspended within 5 days, incoming within 10 days and complete disconnection within 15 days in case no one turns up for verification.

"The said timelines shall be regularly intimated by the TSPs to the subscribers of flagged mobile connections via SMSs/IVRS/e-mail/app or any other available methods. The subscribers shall also be regularly intimated about the reason for barring of services," the order said.

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New Delhi: Google on Friday said it is deferring the deadline for developers in India to integrate with its Play billing system from March 2022 to October next year.

In October last year, the company had announced March 31, 2022 as the deadline for developers in India to integrate with Play's billing system.

A Google spokesperson on Friday said the extension has been done in view of the changes to India's recurring digital payments guidelines.

"We are extending this to 31st October 2022 to provide developers in India the required product support for recurring payments through convenient user payment systems, including UPI and wallets, and also provide them more time in light of the changes to India's recurring digital payments guidelines," the spokesperson said.

The spokesperson added that Google recognises the unique needs of the developer ecosystem in India and remains committed to partnering with developers in India on their growth journey.

In the past, Indian developers and startups have raised concerns around Google's Play billing system, saying the tech giant cannot force Indian app developers/owners to sell digital services by compulsorily using its billing system.

Google had previously stated that apps that choose to sell digital content through its Play Store have to use Google Play billing system and pay a percentage of the in-app purchase as a fee. It had given time until September 30, 2021 to complete the necessary updates.

However, it extended the deadline to March 31, 2022 after concerns were raised by the developer community in India.

The tech giant has emphasised that its payments policy is not new and it has always required developers who distribute their apps on Play, to use Google Play's billing system if they offer in-app purchases of digital goods.

The policy only applies if a developer charges users to download their app or they sell in-app digital items, which is less than 3 per cent of developers with apps on Google Play, it had said.

Concerns have also been raised by developers globally at the steep commissions charged by app stores owned by tech giants Google and Apple.

Earlier this year, Google had slashed the commission fee from 30 per cent to 15 per cent.

The Alliance of Digital India Foundation (ADIF), in a statement, said Google's decision to extend the deadline to October 2022 certainly gives developers a short-term relief for their anxiety.

"We, however, disagree and mark our strong objection with the reasoning given for the extension. The core issue for the developers is the gatekeeper tax of 15-30 per cent on a select category of apps and restrictions on the use of other payment options and Google fails to admit that in their announcement," it said.

ADIF said app developers, especially those selling digital goods and services, have been unhappy and vocal about their objections to the policy ever since it was announced back in September 2020.

Google has been tinkering with the policy since moving the deadline and then lowering the percentage of its app store fees to make it more palatable to the app developers, it noted.

ADIF said having failed to appease the developers with half-hearted measures, the company has now extended the deadline a second time around.

It added that the core issue for the developers is the gatekeeper tax of 15-30 per cent on a select category of apps and restrictions on the use of other payment options. Also Read: Google Photos Best of 2021 Memories collection available for users

The reality is that app owners have been in a very tough spot as they are unsure if they should unwillingly comply with Google's new policies and be hopeful of CCI's intervention on the interim relief petition for maintaining the status quo. Google's deadline extension certainly gives them more time but doesn't take away their uncertainty, ADIF Executive Director Sijo Kuruvilla George said. Also Read: Indian Railways to soon have hostesses on premium trains to offer flight like service

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Washington: The al-Qaida extremist group has grown slightly inside Afghanistan since US forces left in late August, and the country's new Taliban leaders are divided over whether to fulfill their 2020 pledge to break ties with the group, the top US commander in the region said Thursday.

Marine Gen. Frank McKenzie, head of US Central Command, said in an interview with The Associated Press that the departure of US military and intelligence assets from Afghanistan has made it much harder to track al-Qaida and other extremist groups inside Afghanistan.

"We're probably at about 1 or 2 per cent of the capabilities we once had to look into Afghanistan,? he said, adding that this makes it ?very hard, not impossible" to ensure that neither al-Qaida nor the Islamic State group's Afghanistan affiliate can pose a threat to the United States.

Speaking at the Pentagon, McKenzie said it's clear that al-Qaida is attempting to rebuild its presence inside Afghanistan, which was the base from which it planned the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks against the United States. He said some militants are coming into the country through its porous borders, but it is hard for the U.S. To track numbers.

The U.S. Invasion that followed the Sept. 11 attacks led to a 20-year war that succeeded initially by removing the Taliban from power but ultimately failed. After President Joe Biden announced in April that he was withdrawing completely from Afghanistan, the Taliban systematically overpowered Afghan government defenses and seized Kabul, the capital, in August.

McKenzie and other senior U.S. Military and national security officials had said before the U.S. Withdrawal that it would complicate efforts to keep a lid on the al-Qaida threat, in part because of the loss of on-the-ground intelligence information and the absence of a U.S.-friendly government in Kabul.

The U.S. Says it will rely on airstrikes from drones and other aircraft based beyond Afghanistan's borders to respond to any extremist threats against the U.S. Homeland.

McKenzie said no such strikes have been conducted since the U.S. Completed its withdrawal from Afghanistan on Aug. 30. He added that America's ability to conduct such strikes is based on the availability of intelligence, overhead imagery and other information and communications, "and that architecture is still being developed right now."

Al-Qaida is among numerous extremist groups inside Afghanistan. After 2001, it lost most of its numbers and its ability to directly threaten U.S. Territory, but McKenzie said it retains ?an aspirational desire? to attack the United States.

During their first period of rule in Kabul, from 1996 to 2001, the Taliban gave haven to al-Qaida and refused Washington's demand after 9/11 to expel the group and turn over its leader, Osama bin Laden. The Taliban and al-Qaida have maintained ties ever since.

"So we're still trying to sort out exactly how the Taliban is going to proceed against them, and I think over the month or two it'll become a little more apparent to us," he said.

Similarly, McKenzie said it's not yet clear how strongly Taliban will go after the Islamic State group, also known as ISIS, which has violently attacked the Taliban across the country. The United States blamed ISIS for an Aug. 26 suicide bombing at Kabul airport that killed 13 American service members in the final days of the US Evacuation.

ISIS was "reinvigorated," McKenzie said, by the release of numerous ISIS fighters from Afghan prisons in mid-August. He said both ISIS and al-Qaida are recruiting from inside and outside Afghanistan.

"So certainly we should expect a resurgent ISIS. It would be very surprising if that weren't the case," he said, adding, "It remains to be seen that the Taliban are going to be able to take effective action against them." He called al-Qaida a more difficult problem for the Taliban because of their longstanding ties.

"So I think there are internal arguments inside the Taliban about the way forward," he said. "What we would like to see from the Taliban would be a strong position against al-Qaida," which they promised as part of the February 2020 Doha agreement that committed the United States to fully withdrawing from Afghanistan. "But I don't believe that's yet been fully realized."

McKenzie declined to provide an estimate of the number of al-Qaida operatives inside Afghanistan. "I think it's probably slightly increased," he said. "There's a presence. We thought it was down pretty small, you know, toward the end of the conflict. I think some people have probably come back in. But it's one of the things we look at, but I wouldn't be confident giving you a number right now."

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Sydney: Australia will begin administering COVID-19 vaccines for children aged 5 to 11 from Jan. 10, Prime Minister Scott Morrison said on Friday, after the rollout cleared final regulatory hurdles.

"This will be welcome news for millions of families across the country who want the opportunity for their children to be vaccinated," Morrison said in a statement.

After reviewing clinical data from Canada, the country`s vaccination advisory group recommended an eight-week interval between the two doses, which can be shortened to three weeks if there is an outbreak.

Pfizer doses will be administered in the initial phase, while regulators assess the suitability of Moderna shots. A decision is expected in the coming weeks.

The decision comes as Australia seeks to accelerate the rollout of booster shots after becoming one of the world`s most-vaccinated countries against COVID-19, inoculating nearly 90% of its population above 16 with two doses. Some 70% of children aged 12 to 15 have been fully vaccinated.

Authorities have been urging people to take the booster shot concerned about the new, more transmissible Omicron variant amid a steady rise in infections in Sydney, Australia`s largest city.

New South Wales state, which includes Sydney, reported 516 new cases on Friday, its biggest rise in two months.

Most were caused by the Delta variant but the number of Omicron infections has been creeping up since Australia reported its first case about two weeks ago. Some 50 cases have been detected so far, the majority in Sydney.

Australia has reported about 225,000 COVID-19 cases and 2,084 deaths, far fewer than many comparable countries.

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